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LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 BY 
 
 N. P. WILLIS, 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 " PENCILUNGS BY THE WAY," « INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE,' 
 " MELANIE," ETC. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PRINTED FOR 
 
 LONGMAN, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, & LONGMANS, 
 
 PATERNOSTER- ROW. 
 
 1840. 
 
London : 
 
 Printeil by A. Spottiswoodk, 
 N e w- Street- Square. 
 

 INSCRIBED TO 
 
 MRS. DICKINSON, 
 
 BRAMBLEBERRY, KENT, 
 
 AS A MARK OF RESPECT AND AFFECTION, 
 
 BY HER ATTACHED FRIEND, 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
 A 2 
 
 465 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Adventures — romantic events — poems 
 
 — letters and reminiscences — " What 
 will you call it ? " quoth the publisher, 
 aghast. 
 
 Significant as would seem the emphasis 
 upon the small pronoun singular repre- 
 senting such a multitudinous antecedent, 
 the contents of this book are tied with 
 but one thread in the author's memory — 
 drawn from but one pocket in his port- 
 folio. The adventures were jotted down 
 
 — the events recorded — the poems in- 
 dited, and the letters despatched, while 
 
 A 3 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 the thought was freshly born, or the inci- 
 dent freshly heard or remembered — at 
 the first place which afforded the leisure 
 
 — in short, during Loiterings of Travel. 
 If you could manage, O most amiable 
 
 reader! to forget that this is " a book" 
 — call it a rummage of a portfolio-pocket 
 
 — a chat with a traveller — wile-time 
 in a calm at sea — pick-brains over a 
 bottle ! Of all the " five gates of the 
 soul," the eye is so much the most diffi- 
 cult to enter. 
 
 These be the stories I have told over 
 inn fires — just as I told them. I would 
 have you fill up, and make allowance, as 
 fellow-travellers do — no criticism, but 
 " How very odd ! " '* Quite a romance ! " 
 ** Singular thing to happen now-a-days!" 
 And, d-propos — why should I not deny 
 this to be a book — suppose an inn fire as 
 
PREFACE. VII 
 
 they do in a play — the reader with his 
 feet on the hob, listening? Of course, 
 meaning to amuse you, I should not 
 ** talk like a book." I should tell my 
 story in outline — sketch personages in a 
 phrase — digress for an anecdote — *' skip 
 the particulars," and ** make a long story 
 short." Why should I not write as I 
 would chat — with no object on earth but 
 to entertain — indulged as much, and, if 
 you please, forgotten as soon, as a talker 
 by an inn fire ? If there be a way to en- 
 tertain you when you listen, why should 
 it not answer when you read ? There 
 should be a distinction in criticism be- 
 tween that which is put forth for immor- 
 tality, and that flung to the passing hour. 
 I have trusted things to Time which I 
 hoped would not wear out in his pocket, 
 but this is not one of them. 
 
 A 4 
 
Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 After all, kind reader, I may as well 
 " make a clean breast" to you. I am 
 like the poor sculptor who made small 
 dogs of the limbs of his broken Jupiter, 
 These tales (these true stories rather, for, 
 save one, they are narrations, all but 
 literal, of real-life events which I have 
 stumbled over in my *'loiterings,") were 
 
 to have been three hundred p , I 
 
 mean three-volumed novels. They were 
 laid away in my portfolio — embryal ro- 
 mances — nest-eggs for future incubation 
 and production. Alas ! meantime (vide 
 the publisher's prices) the rage for fiction 
 is past — novels that would once bring 
 three hundred pounds, languish at two, 
 and my unhatched nest-eggs must go for 
 an omelette ! The singular stories, the 
 piquant incidents, the lucky rencontres, 
 the odd adventures, the few-and-far- 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 between bright spots scattered through 
 years of travel — stuff for voluminous 
 fictions, in short — are spiced up for the 
 palled appetite of the public in one pro- 
 digal dish of truth ! 
 
 I am afraid the poetry sprinkled 
 through these volumes must be delivered 
 over to the tender mercies of criticism. 
 
 For the epistolary part of the book I 
 have a word to say. That sketches of 
 the whim of the hour, its manners, 
 fashions, and those ephemeral trifles, 
 which, sHght as they are, constitute in a" 
 great measure its ** form and pressure" 
 — that these, and familiar traits of persons 
 distinguished in our time, are popular 
 and amusing, I have the most weighty 
 reasons certainly to know. Theij selL 
 
X PREFACE, 
 
 " Are they innocent?" is the next ques- 
 tion. And to this I know no more dis- 
 creet answer than that mine have offend- 
 ed nobody but the critics. It has been 
 said that sketches of contemporary society 
 require little talent, and belong to an 
 inferior order of literature. Perhaps. 
 Yet they must be well done to attract 
 notice at all ; and if true and graphic, they 
 are not only excellent material for future 
 biographers, but to all who live out of 
 the magic circles of fashion and genius, 
 they are more than amusing — they are 
 instructive. To such persons, living 
 authors, orators, and statesmen, are as 
 much characters of history, and society 
 in cities is as much a subject of philo- 
 sophic curiosity, as if a century had in- 
 tervened. The critic who finds these 
 matters ** stale and unprofitable" lives in 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 the circles described, and the pictures 
 drawn at his elbow lack to his eye the 
 effect of distance ; but the same critic 
 would delight in a familiar sketch of a 
 supper with ** my lord of Leicester " in 
 Elizabeth's time, of an evening with 
 Raleigh and Spenser, or perhaps he 
 would be amused with a description by 
 an eye-witness of Mary Queen of Scots 
 riding home to Holyrood with her train 
 of admiring nobles. I have not named 
 in the same sentence the ever-deplored 
 blank in our knowledge of Shakspeare's 
 person and manners. What would not 
 a trait by the most unskilful hand be 
 worth now — if it were nothing but how 
 he gave the good-morrow to Ben Jonson 
 in Eastcheap? 
 
 How far sketches of the living are a 
 breach of courtesy committed by the 
 
Xll PREFACE. 
 
 author towards the persons described, 
 depends, of course, on the temper in which 
 they are done. To select a subject for 
 complimentary description is to pay the 
 most undoubted tribute to celebrity, and, 
 as far as I have observed, most distin- 
 guished persons sympatliise with the 
 public interest in them and their belong- 
 ings, and are willing to have their por- 
 traits drawn, either with pen or pencil, by 
 as many as offer them the compliment. 
 It would be ungracious to the admiring 
 world if they were not. The outer man 
 is a debtor for the homage paid to the 
 soul which inhabits him, and he is bound, 
 like a porter at the gate, to satisfy all 
 reasonable curiosity as to the habits of the 
 nobler and invisible tenant. He owes his 
 peculiarities to the world. 
 
 At the same time that this vein of 
 
PREFACE. Xlll 
 
 writing would seem very liable to abuse, 
 it loses its grace, point, and interest the 
 moment it is used as a weapon of ill-will. 
 What is more singularly stupid and un- 
 readable than the journals that live on 
 malicious personalities ? People of genius 
 and celebrities generally must first have 
 been acknowledged by public acclama- 
 tion, and it is no pleasure to the world to 
 see its idols disparaged. We delight in 
 their peculiarities*, told us by those 
 who chance to be near them, and who 
 idolise them as we do 5 but we resent 
 either ridicule or depreciation as an insult 
 to our enthusiasm. 
 
 For myself, however, I am free to con- 
 
 * " Fontenelle/' says an eminent writer, " has 
 told us that Newton had a thick head of hair, and 
 that he lost only one tooth, and we thank the 
 pleasant Frenchman for his information." 
 
XIV PREFACE. 
 
 fess that no age interests me like the 
 present ; that no pictures of society since 
 the world began are half so entertaining 
 to me as those of English society in our 
 day ; and that, whatever comparison the 
 living great men of England may sustain 
 with those of other days, there is no 
 doubt in my mind that English social life, 
 at the present moment, is at a higher 
 pitch of refinement and cultivation than 
 it was ever here or elsewhere since the 
 world began — consequently it, and all 
 who form and figure in it, are dignified 
 and legitimate subjects of curiosity and 
 speculation. The Count Mirabel and 
 Lady Bellair of D' Israeli's last romance 
 are, to my mind, the cleverest portraits, 
 as well as the most entertaining cha- 
 racters, of modern novel- writing ; and 
 D'Israeli, by the way, is the only English 
 
PREFACE. XV 
 
 author who seems to have the power of 
 enlarging his horizon, and getting a per- 
 spective view of the times he lives in. 
 His novels are far more popular in Ame- 
 rica than in England, because the Atlantic 
 is to us a century. We picture to our- 
 selves England and Victoria as we picture 
 to ourselves England and Elizabeth. We 
 relish an anecdote of Sheridan Knowles 
 as we should one of Ford or Marlowe. 
 This immense ocean between us is like 
 the distance of time ; and while all that is 
 minute and bewildering is lost to us, the 
 greater lights of the age and the promi- 
 nent features of society stand out apart, 
 and we judge of them like posterity. 
 Much as I have myself lived in England, 
 I have never been able to remove this 
 long perspective from between my eye 
 and the great men of whom I read and 
 
XVI PREFACE. 
 
 thought on the other side of the Atlantic. 
 When I find myself in the same room 
 with the hero of Waterloo, my blood 
 creeps as if I had seen Cromwell or 
 Marlborough ; and I sit down afterwards 
 to describe how he looked, with the 
 eagerness with which I should communi- 
 cate to my friends some disinterred de- 
 scription of these renowned heroes by 
 a contemporary writer. If Cornelius 
 Agrippa were redivivus, in short, and 
 would show me his magic mirror, I should 
 as soon call up Moore as Dryden — 
 Wordsworth or Wilson as soon as Pope 
 or Crichton. 
 
 This is a great ado, you will think, O 
 kind and considerate preface-reader, about 
 a very small portion of the book ; but 
 other productions of mine in this vein 
 having been reviewed as '' scandal," I 
 
PREFACE. XVll 
 
 wish you to grant me that nothing ill- 
 natured or reproachful — no scandal, in 
 other words — could possibly spring out 
 of the spirit in which I have written. 
 As I said in a former preface, my first 
 *' Pencillings" of living men and man- 
 ners were written for my country-people 
 only, and only they, I presumed, would 
 ever hear of or be interested in them. 
 They were sketched in the warmest 
 admiration of the men of genius and 
 the phases of society described. They 
 had no pretensions. 1 would gladly have 
 kept them the other side of the water. 
 But after ^ve years the book is still sell- 
 ing in fresh editions in England ; and I 
 am fated, very much against my will, to 
 be best known out of my own country 
 by my hastiest and most trivial produc- 
 tions. I trust it will not always be so. 
 VOL. I. a 
 
XVIU PREFACE. 
 
 It is not every performer before the 
 public, dear reader, who begins thus by 
 taking his audience through the coulisses. 
 The only other instance in my knowledge 
 (and the resemblance is rather ominous) 
 occurred to my friend and countryman, 
 Mr. Hill, who, when chief tragedian to a 
 strolling company, was advertised to ap- 
 pear in Macbeth at Buffalo. The curtain 
 drew up at the appointed hour to an 
 audience of one backwoodsman, whose 
 half dollar, paid at the door, had been 
 hurriedly expended for candles. He was 
 a dangerous-looking customer, with a 
 wolf-skin cap, and sat with his rifle across 
 his legs, quite content apparently to have 
 the pit to himself. After waiting some 
 time in vain for another spectator, a 
 council was held at the prompter's corner, 
 and it was agreed that if the candles 
 
PREFACE. XIX 
 
 could not be immediately extinguished 
 and re-sold for supper, the company must 
 starve. But how to dispose of the au- 
 dience. The state of the treasury did 
 not admit of returning the money, and 
 the only alternative was an appeal to his 
 generosity for permission to suspend the 
 play. The hunter was inexorable. The 
 manager at last invited him behind the 
 curtain, and attempted to work on his 
 sympathy by an expose of the expensive- 
 ness of the preparations, and the cost of 
 playing out the play. Nothing moved 
 him. As he was going back to his seat 
 in the pit, however, he met Lady Mac- 
 beth coming in from the grocer's with 
 a brown paper of gunpowder for the 
 witches' lightning. The waste of this 
 precious commodity for so common a 
 show as thunder and lightning revolted 
 
XX PREFACE. 
 
 his sensibilities at last, and he consented 
 to ** swap his rights ** for the powder, 
 and excuse the performance. 
 
 I trust, dear reader, that the parallel 
 ceases with showing you the stuff for my 
 thunder and lightning, and that the au- 
 dience is sufficient for the performance 
 to proceed without ruining " the com- 
 pany." 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL: — 
 
 Page 
 London - - - . . 3 
 
 The Streets of London - - -24 
 
 Stratford-on-Avon - - - - 79 
 
 Closing Scenes of the Session at Wash- 
 ington - - . _ . 121 
 
 Lady Ravelgold's Romance - - - 173 
 
 " homewabd-bound " - - - , 249 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 LONDON. 
 
 FOREIGNERS IN ENGLAND. — DISTRUST OF THEM BY THE 
 
 NATIVES. CONTINENTAL ADVENTURERS, AND "FORTUNE 
 
 HUNTERS." PRIVATE CONCERTS, AND ITALIAN ARTISTES. 
 
 — HUMILIATION OF THE LATTER IN THE ARISTOCRATICAL 
 CIRCLES. — PETIT SOUPER. 
 
 There is an inborn and inbred distrust of 
 " foreigners" in England — continental foreign- 
 ers, I should say — which keeps the current of 
 French and Italian society as distinct amid the 
 sea of London, as the blue Rhone in lake 
 Leman. The word "foreigner," in England, 
 conveys exclusively the idea of a dark-com- 
 plexioned and whiskered individual, in a 
 B 2 
 
4 LOTTERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 frogged coat and distressed circumstances ; and 
 to introduce a smooth-cheeked, plainly dressed, 
 quiet-looking person by that name, would strike 
 any circle of ladies and gentlemen as a palpable 
 misnomer. The violent and unhappy contrast 
 between the Parisian's mode of life in London 
 and in Paris, makes it very certain that few of 
 those bien nes et conv enablement riches will live 
 in London for pleasure ; and then the flood of 
 political emigres^ for the last half century, has 
 monopolised hair-dressing, &c. &c. to such a 
 degree, that the word Frenchman is synonymous 
 in English ears with barber and dancing- 
 master. If a dark gentleman, wearing either 
 whisker or moustache, chance to oiFend John 
 Bull in the street, the first opprobrious lan- 
 guage he hears — the strongest that occurs to 
 
 the fellow's mind — is, " Get out, you 
 
 Frenchman ! " 
 
 All this, malgre the rage for foreign lions in 
 London society. A well introduced foreigner 
 gets easily into this, and while he keeps his 
 
CONTINENTAL ADVENTURERS. 5 
 
 cabriolet and confines himself to frequenting 
 soirees and accepting invitations to dine, he 
 will never suspect that he is not on an equal 
 footing with any '^milor" in London. If he 
 wishes to be disenchanted, he has only to 
 change his lodgings from Long's to Great 
 Russell Street, or (bitterer and readier trial) 
 to propose marriage to the Honourable Au- 
 gusta or Lady Fanny. 
 
 Every body who knows the society of Paris, 
 knows something of a handsome and very ele- 
 gant young baron of the Faubourg St. Ger- 
 main, who, with small fortune, very great 
 taste, and greater credit, contrived to go on 
 very swimmingly as an adorable roue and 
 vaurien till he was hard upon twenty-five. At 
 the first crisis in his affairs, the ladies, who 
 hold all the politics in their laps, got him ap- 
 pointed consul to Algiers, or minister to Vene- 
 zuela, and with this pretty pretext for selling 
 his horses and dressing-gowns, these cherished 
 articles brought twice their original value, saved 
 B 3 
 
6 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 his loyaute, and set him up in fans and monkeys 
 at his place of exile. A year of this was 
 enough for the darling of Paris, and not more 
 than a day before his desolate loves would 
 have ceased to mourn for him, he galloped into 
 his hotel with a new fashion of whiskers, a 
 black female slave, and the most delicious his- 
 tories of his adventures during the ages he had 
 been exiled. Down to the earth and their 
 previous obscurity dropped the rivals who 
 were just beginning to usurp his glories. A 
 new stud, an indescribable vehicle, a suite of 
 rooms a V Africaine, and a mystery, pre- 
 served at some expense, about his negress, 
 kept all Paris, including his new creditors, 
 in admiring astonishment for a year. Among 
 the crowd of his worshippers, not the last or 
 least fervent, were the fair-haired and glowing 
 beauties who assemble at the levees of their 
 ambassador in the Rue St. Honore, and upon 
 whom le beau Adolphe had looked as pretty 
 savages, whose frightful toilettes and horrid 
 
A FORTUNE HUNTER. 7 
 
 French accent might be tolerated one even- 
 ing in the week — vu le souper ! 
 
 Eclipses will arrive as calculated by insig- 
 nificant astronomers, however, and debts will 
 become due as presumed by vulgar trades- 
 men. Le beau Adolphe began to see another 
 crisis, and betook himself to his old advisers, 
 who were desoles to the last degree ; but there 
 was a new government, and the blood of the 
 Faubourg was at a discount. No embassies 
 were to be had for nothing. With a deep 
 sigh, and a gentle tone, to spare his feelings 
 as much as possible, his friend ventures to 
 suggest to him that it will be necessary to 
 sacrifice himself. 
 
 " AM ! mais comment !" 
 
 " Marry one of these betes Anglaises, who 
 drink you up with their great blue eyes, and 
 are made of gold ! " 
 
 Adolphe buried his face in his gold-fringed 
 oriental pocket-handkerchief; but when the 
 first agony was passed, his resolution was 
 B 4 
 
8 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 taken, and he determined to go to England, 
 The first beautiful creature he should see, 
 whose funds were enormous and well invested, 
 should bear away from all the love, rank, and 
 poverty of France, the perfumed hand he 
 looked upon. 
 
 A flourishing letter, written in a small, 
 cramped hand, but with a seal on whose 
 breadth of wax and blazon all the united 
 heraldry of France was interwoven, arrived, 
 through the ambassador's despatch box, to 
 
 the address of Miladi , Belgrave Square, 
 
 announcing, in full, that le beau Adolphe was 
 coming to London to marry the richest heiress 
 in good society ; and as Paris could not spare 
 him more than a week, he wished those who 
 had daughters to marry, answering the de- 
 scription, to be hien prevenus of his visit and 
 errand. With the letter came a compend of 
 his genealogy, from the man who spoke French 
 in the confusion of Babel to le dit Baron 
 Adolphe. 
 
A FORTUNE HUNTER. 9 
 
 To London came the valet of le heau baron, 
 two days before his master, bringing his 
 slippers and dressing-gown to be aired after 
 their sea-voyage across the Channel. To 
 London followed the irresistible youth, cursing, 
 in the politest French, the necessity which 
 subtracted a week from a life measured with 
 such " diamond sparks " as his own in Paris. 
 He sat himself down in his hotel, sent his man 
 Porphyre with his card to every noble and 
 rich house, whose barbarian tenants he had 
 ever seen in the Champs Elysees, and waited 
 the result. Invitations from fair ladies, who 
 remembered him as the man the French belles 
 were mad about; and from literary ladies, who 
 wanted his whiskers and black eyes to give 
 their soirees the necessary foreign complexion, 
 flowed in on all sides, and Monsieur Adolphe 
 selected his most mignon cane and his happiest 
 design in a stocking, and " rendered himself ^^ 
 through the rain like a martyr. 
 
 No offers of marriage the first evening ! 
 
10 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL, 
 
 None the second ! ! 
 
 None the third ! ! ! 
 
 Le heau Adolphe began to think either that 
 English papas did not propose their daughters 
 to people as in France ; or, perhaps, that the 
 lady whom he had commissioned to circulate 
 his wishes had not sufficiently advertised him. 
 She had^ however. 
 
 He took advice, and found it would be 
 necessary to take the first step himself. This 
 was disagreeable, and he said to himself, " le 
 jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle ;^' but his youth 
 was passing, and his English fortune was at 
 interest. 
 
 He went to Almack*s and proposed to the 
 first authenticated fortune that accepted his 
 hand for a waltz. The young lady first 
 laughed, and then told her mother, who told 
 her son, who thought it an insult, and called 
 out le heau Adolphe, very much to the aston- 
 ishment of himself and Porphyre. The thing 
 was explained, and the baron looked about 
 
A FORTUNE HUNTER. 11 
 
 the next day for one pas si bete. Found a 
 young lady with half a million sterling, 
 proposed in a morning call, and was obliged 
 to ring for assistance, his intended having 
 gone into convulsions with laughing at him. 
 The story by this time had got pretty well 
 distributed through the different strata of 
 London society; and when le beau Adolphe 
 convinced that he would not succeed with 
 the noble heiresses of Belgrave Square, con- 
 descended, in his extremity, to send his heart 
 by his valet to a rich little vulgarian, who 
 " never had a grandfather," and lived in Harley 
 Street, he narrowly escaped being prosecuted 
 for a nuisance, and, Paris being now in the 
 possession of the enemy, he buried his sorrows 
 in Belgium. After a short exile his friends 
 procured him a vice-consulate in some port in 
 the North Sea, and there probably at this 
 moment he sorrowfully vegetates. 
 
 This is not a story founded upon fact, but 
 literally true. Many of the circumstances 
 
12 LOITE RINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 came under my own observation ; and the 
 whole thus affords a laughable example of the 
 esteem in which what an English fox-hunter 
 would call a " trashy Frenchman " is held in 
 England, as well as of the travestie produced 
 by transplanting the usages of one country to 
 another. 
 
 Ridiculous as any intimate mixture of 
 English and French ideas and persons seems 
 to be in London, the foreign society of itself 
 in that capital is exceedingly spiritual and 
 agreeable. The various European embassies and 
 their attaches^ with the distinguished travellers 
 from their several countries, accidentally belong- 
 ing to each ; the French and Italians, married 
 to English noblemen and gentry, and living in 
 London , and the English themselves, who 
 have become cosmopolite by residence in other 
 countries, form a very large society in which 
 mix, on perfectly equal terms, the first singers 
 of the opera, and foreign musicians and artists 
 generally. This last circumstance gives a 
 
PRIVATE CONCERTS. 13 
 
 peculiar charm to these re -unions, though it 
 imparts a pride and haughty bearing to the 
 prima donna and her fraternity, which is, at 
 least, sometimes very inconvenient to them- 
 selves. The remark recalls to my mind a 
 scene I once witnessed in London, which will 
 illustrate the feeling better than an essay 
 upon it. 
 
 I was at one of those private concerts given 
 at an enormous expense during the opera 
 season, at which " assisted " Julia Grisi, Ru- 
 bini, Lablache, Tamburini, and IvanhofF. Grisi 
 came in the carriage of a foreign lady of rank, 
 who had dined with her, and she walked into 
 the room looking like an empress. She was 
 dressed in the plainest white, with her glossy 
 hdir put smooth from her brow, and a single 
 white japonica dropped over one of her temples. 
 The lady who brought her chaperoned her 
 during the evening, as if she had been her 
 daughter, and under the excitement of her own 
 table and the kindness of her friend, she sung 
 
14 LOITE RINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 with a rapture and a freshet of glory (if one 
 may borrow a word from the Mississippi) which 
 set all hearts on fire. She surpassed her most 
 applauded hour on the stage — for it was worth 
 her while. The audience was composed, almost 
 exclusively, of those who are not only cultivated 
 judges, but who sometimes repay delight with 
 a present of diamonds. 
 
 Lablache shook the house to its foundations 
 in his turn; Rubini ran through his miraculous 
 compass with the ease, truth, and melody for 
 which his singing is unsurpassed ; Tamburini 
 poured his rich and even fulness on the ear, 
 and Russian IvanhofF, the one southern singing- 
 bird who has come out of the north, wire-drew 
 his fine and spiritual notes, till they who had 
 been flushed, and tearful, and silent, when the 
 others had sung, drowned his voice in the 
 poorer applause of exclamation and surprise. 
 
 The concert was over by twelve, the gold 
 and silver paper bills of the performance were 
 turned into fans, and every one was waiting till 
 
HUMILIATION OF ARTISTES. 15 
 
 supper should be announced — the prima donna 
 still sitting by her friend, but surrounded by 
 foreign attaches, and in the highest elation at 
 her own success. The doors of an inner suite 
 of rooms were thrown open at last, and Grisi's 
 cordon of admirers prepared to follow her in and 
 wait on her at supper. At this moment, one of 
 the powdered menials of the house stepped up 
 and informed her very respectfully that supper 
 was prepared in a separate room for the singers! 
 Medea, in her most tragic hour, never stood 
 so absolutely the picture of hate, as did Grisi 
 for a single instant, in the centre of that aris- 
 tocratic crowd. Her chest swelled and rose, 
 her lips closed over her snowy teeth, and com- 
 pressed till the blood left them, and, for myself, 
 I looked unconsciously to see where she would 
 strike. I knew, then, that there was more than 
 fancy — there was nature and capability of the 
 real — in the imaginary passions she plays so 
 powerfully. A laugh of extreme amusement 
 at the scene from the hiojh-born woman who 
 
16 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 had accompanied her, suddenly turned her 
 humour, and she stopped in the midst of a 
 muttering of Italian, in which I could distin- 
 guish only the terminations, and, with a sort of 
 theatrical quickness of transition, joined heartily 
 in her mirth. It was immediately proposed by 
 this lady, however, that herself and their par- 
 ticular circle should join the insulted prima 
 donna at the lower table, and they succeeded by 
 this manoeuvre in retaining Rubini and the 
 others, who were leaving the house in a most 
 unequivocal Italian fury. 
 
 I had been fortunate enough to be included 
 in the invitation, and, with one or two foreign 
 diplomatic men, I followed Grisi and her amused 
 friend to a small room on a lower floor, that 
 seemed to be the housekeeper's parlour. Here 
 supper was set for six (including the man who 
 had played the piano), and on the side-table 
 stood every variety of wine and fruit, and there 
 was nothing in the supper, at least, to make us 
 regret the table we had left. With a most im- 
 
PETIT SOUPER. 17 
 
 perative gesture and rather an amusing attempt 
 at English, Grisi ordered the servants out of 
 the room, and locked the door, and from that 
 moment the conversation commenced and con- 
 tinued in their own musical, passionate, and 
 energetic Italian. My long residence in that 
 country had made me at home in it ; every one 
 present spoke it fluently ; and I had an oppor- 
 tunity I might never have again, of seeing with 
 what abandonment these children of the sun 
 throw aside rank and distinction (yet without 
 forgetting it), and join with those who are 
 their superiors in every circumstance of life, in 
 the gaieties of a chance hour. 
 
 Out of their own country these singers 
 would probably acknowledge no higher rank 
 than that of the kind and gifted lady who was 
 their guest; yet, with the briefest apology at 
 finding the room too cold after the heat of 
 the concert, they put on their cloaks and hats 
 as a safeguard to their lungs (more valuable 
 
 VOL. I. c 
 
18 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 to them than to others) ; and as most of the 
 cloaks were the worse for travel, and the hats 
 opera-hats with two corners, the grotesque 
 contrast with the diamonds of one lady, and 
 the radiant beauty of the other, may easily 
 be imagined. 
 
 Singing should be hungry work, by the 
 knife and fork they played; and between the 
 excavations of truffle pies, and the bumpers 
 of champagne and burgundy, the words were 
 few. Lablache appeared to be an established 
 droll, and every syllable he found time to 
 utter was received with the most unbounded 
 laughter. Rubini could not recover from the 
 slight he conceived put upon him and his pro- 
 fession by the separate table; and he con- 
 tinually reminded Grisi, who by this time had 
 quite recovered her good humour, that, the 
 night before, supping at Devonshire House, the 
 Duke of Wellington had held her gloves on 
 one side, while his Grace, their host, attended 
 to her on the other. 
 
PETIT SOU PER. 19 
 
 *' E vero!" said IvanhoiF, with a look of 
 modest admiration at the prima donna. 
 
 " E vero^ e bravo!" cried Tamburini, with 
 his sepulchral- talking tone, much deeper than 
 his singing. 
 
 " Si, si, si, bravo ! " echoed all the com- 
 pany; and the haughty and happy actress 
 nodded all round with a radiant smile, and 
 repeated, in her silver tones, " Grazie I cari 
 amid! grazie!^* 
 
 As the servants had been turned out, the 
 removal of the first course was managed in 
 vic-nic fashion ; and when the fruit and fresh 
 bottles of wine were set upon the table by the 
 xttaches and younger gentlemen, the health of 
 the princess who honoured them by her presence 
 was proposed in that language, which, it seems 
 to me, is more capable than all others of ex- 
 pressing affectionate and respectful devotion. 
 All uncovered and stood up, and Grisi, with 
 tears in her eyes, kissed the hand of her 
 c 2 
 
20 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 benefactress and friend, and drank her health 
 in silence. 
 
 It is a polite and common accomplishment 
 in Italy to improvise in verse, and the lady 
 I speak of is vi^ell known among her imme- 
 diate friends for a singular facility in this beau- 
 tiful art. She reflected a moment or two 
 with the moisture in her eyes, and then com- 
 menced, low and soft, a poem, of which it 
 would be difficult, nay impossible, to convey, 
 in English, an idea of its music and beauty. 
 It took us back to Italy, to its heavenly cli- 
 mate, its glorious arts, its beauty and its ruins, 
 and concluded with a line of which I remem- 
 ber the sentiment to have been, " out of Italy 
 every land is exile /*' 
 
 The glasses were raised as she ceased, and 
 every one repeated after her, " Fuori d' Italia 
 tutto e esilio ! " 
 
 '^ Ma!" cried out the fat Lablache, hold- 
 ing up his glass of champagne, and looking 
 through it with one eye, ** siamo ben esiliati 
 
PETIT SOUPER. 21 
 
 qim!** and, with a word of drollery, the party 
 recovered its gayer tone, and the humour and 
 wit flowed on brilliantly as before. 
 
 The house had long been still, and the last 
 carriage belonging to the company above stairs 
 had rolled from the door, when Grisi suddenly 
 remembered a bird that she had lately bought, 
 of which she proceeded to give us a descrip- 
 tion, that probably penetrated to every corner 
 of the silent mansion. It was a mocking-bird, 
 that had been kept two years in the opera- 
 house, and between rehearsal and performance 
 had learned parts of every thing it had over- 
 heard. It was the property of the woman 
 who took care of the wardrobes. Grisi had 
 accidentally seen it, and immediately purchased 
 it for two guineas. How much of embellish- 
 ment there was in her imitations of her trea- 
 sure I do not know; but certainly the whole 
 power of her wondrous voice, passion, and 
 knowledge of music, seemed drunk up at once 
 in the wild, various, difficult, and rapid mix- 
 c 3 
 
22 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 ture of the capricious melody she undertook. 
 First came, without the passage which it 
 usually terminates, the long, throat-down, 
 gurgling, water-toned trill, in which Rubini 
 (but for the bird and its mistress, it seemed 
 to me) would have been inimitable: then, 
 right upon it, as if it were the beginning of 
 a bar, and in the most unbrea thing continuity, 
 followed a brilliant passage from the Barber 
 of Seville, run into the passionate prayer of 
 Anna Bolena in her madness, and followed 
 by the air of " Suoni la tromha intrepida" the 
 tremendous duet in the Puritani, between 
 Tamburini and Lablache. Up to the sky, 
 and down to the earth again — away with a 
 note of the wildest gladness, and back upon 
 a note of the most touching melancholy — if 
 the bird but half equals the imitation of his 
 mistress, he were worth the jewel in a sultan's 
 turban. 
 
 « Giulia!" « Giulietta ! *' « Giuliettina I " 
 cried out one and another, as she ceased, ex- 
 
PETIT SOUPER. 23 
 
 pressing, in their Italian diminutives, the love 
 and delight she had inspired by her incom- 
 parable execution. 
 
 The stillness of the house in the occasional 
 pauses of conversation reminded the gay party, 
 at last, that it was wearing late. The door 
 was unlocked, and the half-dozen sleepy foot- 
 men hanging about the hall were despatched 
 for the cloaks and carriages ; the drowsy porter 
 was roused from his deep leathern dormeuse, 
 and opened the door — and broad upon the 
 street lay the cold grey light of a summer's 
 morning. I declined an offer to be set down 
 by a friend's cab, and strolled off to Hyde 
 Park to surprise myself with a sunrise; balanc- 
 ing the silent rebuke in the fresh and healthy 
 countenances of early labourers going to their 
 toil, against the effervescence of a champagne 
 hour, which, since such come so rarely, may 
 come, for me, with what un timeliness they 
 please. 
 
 c 4 
 
24 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 CHAR II. 
 
 THE STREETS OF LONDON. 
 
 EARLY MORNING RAMBLES. — PEOPLE ABROAD AT THA'P 
 
 HOUR. SHABBY-GENTEEL EATING-HOUSES AT THE WEST 
 
 END. — THEIR FREQUENTERS. THE REGION OF FRENCH 
 
 AND ITALIAN EXILES. — SECOND-HAND FASHIONABLE FINERY 
 
 SHOPS. THE SQUALID MISERY OF THE INHABITANTS 
 
 BETWEEN THE TOWN AND CITY. THE STRAND, THE 
 
 MAIN ARTERY OF THE WORLD* 
 
 It has been said, that " few men know how 
 to take a walk." In London it requires some 
 experience to know where to take a walk. 
 The taste of the perambulator, the hour of 
 the day, and the season of the year, would 
 each affect materially the decision of the ques- 
 tion. 
 
 If you are up early — I mean early for 
 
EARLY MORNING RAMBLES. 25 
 
 London — say ten o'clock — we would start 
 from your hotel in Bond Street, and hastening 
 through Regent Street and the Quadrant, 
 (deserts at that hour), strike into the zigzag 
 of thronged alleys, cutting traversely from 
 Coventry Street to Co vent Garden. The 
 horses on the cab-stand in the Haymarket 
 " are at this hour asleep." The late supper- 
 eaters at Dubourg's and the Cafe de VEurope 
 were the last infliction upon their galled 
 withers, and while dissipation slumbers they 
 may find an hour to hang their heads upon 
 the bit, and forget gall and spavin in the 
 sunshiny drowse of morning. The cab-man, 
 too, nods on his perch outside, careless of 
 the custom of " them as pays only their 
 fare," and quite sure not to get " a gem- 
 man to drive" at that unseasonable hour. 
 The " waterman " (called a w^aferman," as 
 he will tell you, " because he gives hay to 
 the 'orses") leans against the gas-lamp at 
 the corner, looking with the vacant indifler- 
 
26 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 ence of habit at the splendid coach wiih its 
 four blood bays just starting from the Brighton 
 coach-office in the Crescent. The side walk 
 of Coventry Street, usually radiant with the 
 flaunting dresses of the frai] and vicious, is 
 now sober with the dull habiliments of the 
 early stirring and the poor. The town (for 
 this is town, not city) beats its more honest 
 pulse. Industry alone is abroad. 
 
 Rupert Street on the left is the haunt of 
 shabby-genteel poverty. To its low-doored 
 chop-houses steal after dusk the more needy 
 loungers of Regent Street, and in confined 
 and greasy, but separate and exclusive boxes, 
 they eat their mutton-chop and potato, un- 
 seen of their gayer acquaintances. Here 
 comes the half-pay officer, whose half-pay is 
 halved or quartered with wife and children, 
 to drink his solitary half pint of sherry, and 
 over a niggard portion of soup and vegetables, 
 recall, as well as he may in imagination, the 
 gay dinners at mess, and the companions now 
 
SHABBY-GENTEEL EATING-HOUSES. 27 
 
 srrown cold — in death or worldliness ! Here 
 comes the sharper out of luck, the debtor 
 newly out of prison. And here comes many 
 a " gay fellow about town," who will dine to- 
 morrow, or may have dined yesterday, at a 
 table of unsparing luxury, but who now turns 
 up Rupert Street at seven, cursing the mis- 
 chance that draws upon his own slender pocket 
 for the dinner of to-day. Here are found the 
 watchful host and the suspicious waiter — the 
 closely-measured wine, and the more closely- 
 measured attention — the silent and shrinking 
 company, the close-drawn curtain, the sup- 
 pressed call for the bill, the lingering at the 
 table of those who value the retreat and the 
 shelter to recover from the embarrassing re- 
 cognition and the objectless saunter through 
 the streets. The ruin, the distress, the de- 
 spair, that wait so closely upon the heels of 
 fashion, pass here with their victims. It is 
 the last step within the bounds of respect- 
 ability. They still live « at the West End," 
 
28 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 while they dine in Rupert Street. They may 
 still linger in the Park, or stroll in Bond 
 Street, till their better-fledged friends flit to 
 dinner at the clubs, and within a stone's throw 
 of the luxurious tables and the gay mirth they 
 so bitterly remember, sit down to an ill- dressed 
 meal, and satisfy the calls of hunger in silence. 
 Ah, the outskirts of the bright places in life 
 are darker for the light that shines so near 
 them ! How much sweeter is the coarsest 
 meal shared with the savage in the wilder- 
 ness, than the comparative comfort of cooked 
 meats and wine in a neighbourhood like 
 this ! 
 
 Come through this narrow lane into Lei- 
 cester Square. You cross here the first limit 
 of the fashionable quarter. The Sabloniere 
 hotel is in this square ; but you may not give 
 it as your address unless you are a foreigner. 
 This is the home of that most miserable fish 
 out of water — a Frenchman in London. A 
 bad French hotel, and two or three execrable 
 
REGION OF FRENCH EXILES. 29 
 
 French restaurants, make this spot of the 
 metropolis the most habitable to the exiled 
 habitue of the Palais Royal. Here he gets a 
 mocking imitation of what, in any possible 
 degree, is better than the sacre biftek, or the 
 half-raw mutton-chop and barbarous boiled 
 potato ! Here he comes forth, if the sun 
 shine perchance for one hour at noon, and 
 paces up and down on the side-walk, trying 
 to get the better of his bile and his bad 
 breakfast. Here waits for him at three, the 
 shabby, but most expensive remise cab, hired 
 by the day for as much as would support him 
 a month in Paris. Leicester Square is the 
 place for conjurors, bird-fanciers, showmen, 
 and generally for every foreign novelty in the 
 line of nostrums and marvels. If there is a 
 dwarf in London, or a child with two heads, 
 or a learned pig, you will see one or all in 
 that building, so radiant with placards, and 
 so thronged with beggars. 
 
 Come on through Cranbourne Alley. Old 
 
30 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 clothes, second-hand stays, idem shawls, capes, 
 collars, and ladies' articles of ornamental wear 
 generally : cheap straw bonnets, old books, 
 gingerbread, and stationery ! Look at this once- 
 expensive and finely-worked muslin cape ! What 
 fair shoulders did it adorn when these dingy 
 flowers were new -— when this fine lace-edging 
 bounded some heaving bosom, perhaps, like 
 frost-work on the edge of a snow-drift. It has 
 been the property of some minion of elegance 
 and wealth, vicious or virtuous, and by what 
 hard necessity came it here? Ten to one, 
 could it speak, its history would keep us stand- 
 ing at this shop window, indifferent alike to the 
 curious glances of these passing damsels and 
 the gentle eloquence of the Jew on the other 
 side, who pays us the unflattering compliment 
 of suggesting an improvement in our toilette by 
 the purchase of the half-worn habiliments he 
 exposes. 
 
 I like Cranbourne Alley, because it reminds 
 me of Venice. The half-daylight between 
 
SECOND-HAND FINERY SHOPS. 31 
 
 the high and overhanging roofs, the just 
 audible hum of voices and occupation from the 
 different shops, the shuffling of hasty feet over 
 the smooth flags, and particularly the absence 
 of horses and vi^heels, make it (in all but the 
 damp air and the softer speech) a fair resem- 
 blance to those close passages in the rear of the 
 canals between St. Mark's and the Rialto. 
 Then I like studying a pawnbroker's window, 
 and I like ferreting in the old book-stalls that 
 abound here. It is a good lesson in humility 
 for an author to see what he can be bought 
 for in Cranbourne Alley. Some "gentle 
 reader," who has paid a guinea and a-half for 
 you, has re-sold you for two-and-sixpence. 
 For three shillings you may have the three 
 volumes, " as good as new," and the shopman, 
 by his civility, pleased to be rid of it on the 
 terms. If you would console yourself, how- 
 ever, buy Milton for one-and-sixpence, and 
 credit your vanity with the eighteen-pence of 
 the remainder. 
 
32 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 The labyrinth of alleys between this and 
 Coven t Garden are redolent of poverty and pot- 
 houses. In crossing St. Martin's Lane, life 
 appears to have become suddenly a struggle 
 and a calamity. Turbulent and dirty women 
 are every where visible through the open win- 
 dows, the half-naked children at the doors look 
 already care-worn and incapable of a smile, 
 and the men throng the gin shops, bloated, 
 surly, and repulsive. Hurry through this 
 leprous spot in the vast body of London, and 
 let us emerge in the Strand. 
 
 You would think London Strand the main 
 artery of the world. I suppose there is no 
 thoroughfare on the face of the earth where the 
 stream of human life runs with a tide so over- 
 whelming. In any other street in the world 
 you catch the eye of the passer-by. In the 
 Strand, no man sees another except as a solid 
 body, whose contact is to be avoided. You 
 are safe nowhere on the pavement without all 
 the vigilance of your senses. Omnibuses and 
 
THE STRAND. 33 
 
 cabs, drays, carriages, wheelbarrows, and por- 
 ters, beset the street. Newspaper hawkers, 
 pickpockets, shop-boys, coal-heavers, and a per- 
 petual and selfish crowd dispute the side-walk. 
 If you venture to look at a print in a shop-win- 
 dow, you arrest the tide of passengers, who 
 immediately walk over you ; and, if you stop to 
 speak with a friend, who by chance has run his 
 nose against yours rather than another man's, 
 you impede the way, and are made to under- 
 stand it by the force of jostling. If you would 
 get into an omnibus you are quarrelled for by 
 half-a-dozen who catch your eye at once, and 
 after using all your physical strength and most 
 of your discrimination, you are most probably 
 embarked in the wrong one, and are going at 
 ten miles the hour to Blackwall, when you are 
 bound to Islington. A Londoner passes his 
 life in learning the most adroit mode of thread- 
 ing a crowd, and escaping compulsory journeys 
 in cabs and omnibuses ; and dine with any 
 
 VOL. I. D 
 
34 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL, 
 
 man in that metropolis from twenty-five to sixty 
 years of age, and he will entertain you, from the 
 soup to the Curacoa, with his hair-breadth 
 escapes and difficulties with cads and coach- 
 drivers. 
 
LONDON. 35 
 
 CHAP. III. 
 
 LONDON. 
 
 DEFINITION OF LONDON AS UNDERSTOOD BY THE NATIVES. — 
 TOWN AND CITY. — THEIR PECULIAR CHARACTERISTICS, — 
 
 CITY ARISTOCRACY. THE FIRKINSES. A PARTICULAR 
 
 CLASS OF CITY RESIDENTS. 
 
 A Londoner, if met abroad, answers very 
 vaguely any questions you may be rash enough 
 to put to him about " the city." Talk to him 
 of "town,'' and he would rather miss seeing 
 St. Peter's, than appear ignorant of any person, 
 thing, custom, or fashion concerning whom or 
 which you might have a curiosity. It is under- 
 stood all over the world that the "city" of 
 London is that crowded, smoky, jostling, om- 
 nibus and cab-haunted portion of the metropolis 
 of England which lies east of Temple Bar. A 
 kind of debatable country, consisting of the 
 D 2 
 
36 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 Strand, Coverit Garden, and Tottenham Court 
 Road then intervenes, and west of these lies 
 what is called " the town." A transit from 
 one to the other by an inhabitant of either is a 
 matter of some forethought and provision. If 
 milord, in Carlton Terrace, for example, finds 
 it necessary to visit his banker in Lombard 
 Street, he orders — not the blood bay and the 
 cane tilbury which he is wont to drive in the 
 morning — but the crop roadster in the cab, 
 with the night harness, and Poppet his tiger 
 in plain hat and gaiters. If the banker in 
 Lombard Street, on the contrary, emerges from 
 the twilight of his counting-house to make a 
 morning call on the wife of some foreign cor- 
 respondent, lodging at the Clarendon, he steps 
 into a Piccadilly omnibus, not in the salt-and- 
 pepper creations of his Cheapside tailor, but 
 (for he has an account with Stultz also for the 
 west-end business) in a claret-coloured frock 
 of the last fashion at Crockford's, a fresh hat 
 from New Bond Street, and (if he is young) 
 
TOWN AND CITY. 37 
 
 a pair of cherished boots from the Rue St. Ho- 
 nore. He sits very clear of his neighbours on 
 the way, and, getting out at the crossing at 
 Far ranee's, the pastry cook, steps in and in- 
 dulges in a soup, and then walks slowly past 
 the clubs to his rendezvous, at a pace that 
 would ruin his credit irrevocably if practised 
 a mile to the eastward. The difference be- 
 tween the two migrations is, simply, that though 
 the nobleman affects the plainness of the city, 
 he would not for the world be taken for a 
 citizen; while the junior partner of the house 
 of Firkins and Co. would feel unpleasantly 
 surprised if he were not supposed to be a mem- 
 ber of the clubs, lounging to a late breakfast. 
 
 There is a " town " manner, too, and a 
 "city" manner, practised with great nicety 
 by all who frequent both extremities of Lon- 
 don. Nothing could be in more violent con- 
 trast, for example, than the manner of your 
 banker when you dine with him at his country- 
 house, and the same person when you meet 
 D 3 
 
08 LOITERINGS OF TRAVIJL. 
 
 him on the narrow side-walk in Throgmorton 
 Street. If you had seen him first in his su- 
 burban retreat, you would wonder how the 
 deuce such a cordial, joyous, spare-nothing 
 sort of good fellow could ever reduce himself 
 to the cautious proportions of Change Alley. 
 If you met him first in Change Alley, on the 
 contrary, you would wonder, with quite as 
 much embarrassment, how such a cold, two- 
 fingered, pucker-browed slave of Mammon 
 could ever, by any licence of interpretation, be 
 called a gentleman. And when you have seen 
 him in both places, and know him well, if he 
 is a favourable specimen of his class, you will 
 be astonished still more to see how completely 
 he will sustain both characters — giving you 
 the cold shoulder, in a way that half insults 
 you at twelve in the morning, and putting his 
 home, horses, cellar, and servants completely 
 at your disposal at four in the afternoon. Two 
 souls inhabit the banker's body, and each is 
 apparently sole tenant in turn. As the Hamp- 
 
PECULIAR CHARACTERISTICS. 89 
 
 Stead early coach turns the corner by St Giles'^, 
 on its way to the Bank, the spirit of gain enters 
 into the bosom of the junior Firkins, ejecting, 
 till the coach passes the same spot at three in 
 the afternoon, the more gentlemanly inhabit- 
 ants. Between those hours, look to Firkins 
 for no larger sentiment than may be written 
 upon the blank lines of a note of hand, and 
 expect no courtesy that would occupy the head 
 or hands of the junior partner longer than one 
 second by St. PauPs. With the broad beam of 
 sunshine that inundates the returning omnibus 
 emerging from Holborn into Tottenham Court 
 Road, the angel of port wine and green fields 
 passes his finger across Firkins's brow, and 
 presto! the man is changed. The sight of a 
 long and narrow strip of paper, sticking from 
 his neighbour's pocket, depreciates that person 
 in his estimation, he criticises the livery and 
 riding of the groom trotting past, says some 
 very true things of the architecture of the new 
 cottage on the road-side, and is landed at the 
 D 4 
 
40 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 end of his own shrubbery, as pleasant and joyous 
 looking a fellow as you would meet on that 
 side of London. You have ridden out to dine 
 with him, and as he meets you on the lawn, 
 there is still an hour to dinner, and a blood 
 horse spatters round from the stables, which 
 you are welcome to drive to the devil if you 
 like, accompanied either by Mrs. Firkins or 
 himself; or, if you like it better, there are 
 Mrs. Firkins's two ponies, and the chaise holds 
 two and the tiger. Ten to one Mrs. Firkins 
 is a pretty woman, and has - her whims, and 
 when you are fairly on the road, she proposes 
 to leave the soup and champagne at home to 
 equalise their extremes of temperature, drive 
 to Whitehall Stairs, take boat and dine, extem- 
 pore^ at Richmond. 'And Firkins, to whom it 
 will be at least twenty pounds out of pocket, 
 claps his hands and says, " By Jove, it's a 
 bright thought ! touch up the near pony, Mrs. 
 Firkins !" And away you go. Firkins amusing 
 himself the whole way from Hampstead to 
 
CITY ARISTOCRACY. 41 
 
 Richmond, imagining the consternation of his 
 cook and butler when nobody comes to dine. 
 
 There is an aristocracy in the city, of course, 
 and Firkins will do business with twenty per- 
 sons in a day whom he could never introduce 
 to Mrs. Firkins. The situation of that lady 
 with respect to her society is (she will tell you 
 in confidence) rather embarrassing. There 
 are many very worthy persons, she will say, 
 who represent large sums of money or great 
 interests in trade, whom it is necessary to ask 
 to the Lodge, but who are far from being orna- 
 mental to her new blue satin boudoir. She 
 has often proposed to Firkins to have them 
 labelled in tens and thousands according to 
 their fortunes ; that if, by any unpleasant acci- 
 dent. Lord Augustus should meet them there, 
 he might respect them like = in algebra, for 
 what they stand for. But as it is, she is really 
 never safe in calculating on a societe choisie to 
 dine or sup. When Hook or Smith is just 
 beginning to melt out, or Lady Priscilla is in 
 
42 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 the middle of a charade, in walks Mr. Snooks, 
 of the foreign house of Snooks, Son, and Co., 
 " unexpectedly arrived from Lisbon, and run 
 down without ceremony to call on his respect- 
 able correspondent." 
 
 " Isn't it tiresome?" 
 
 " Very, my dear madam ! But then you 
 have the happiness of knowing that you pro- 
 mote very essentially your husband's interests, 
 and when he has made a plum " 
 
 " Yes, very true; and then, to be sure, Fir- 
 kins has had to build papa a villa, and buy my 
 brother Wilfred a commission, and settle an 
 annuity on my aunt, and fit out my youngest 
 brother Bob to India; and when I think of 
 what he does for my family, why I don't mind 
 making now and then a sacrifice ; but, after all, 
 it's a great evil not to be able to cultivate one's 
 own class of society." 
 
 And so murmurs Mrs. Firkins, who is the 
 prettiest and sweetest creature in the world, 
 and really loves the husband she married for 
 
CLASS OF CITY RESIDENTS. 43 
 
 his fortune; but as the prosperity of Haman 
 was nothing while Mordecai sat at the gate, it 
 is nothing to Mrs. Firkins that her father Hves 
 in hixury, that her brothers are portioned off, 
 and that she herself can have blue boudoirs and 
 pony-chaises ad libitum^ while Snooks, Son, 
 and Co. may at any moment break in upon the 
 charade of Lady Priscilla ! 
 
 There is a class of business people in London, 
 mostly bachelors, who have wisely declared 
 themselves independent of the West End, and 
 live in a style of their own in the dark courts 
 and alleys about the Exchange, but with a 
 luxury not exceeded even in the silken recesses 
 of May Fair. You will sometimes meet at the 
 opera a young man of decided style, unex- 
 ceptionable in his toilette, and quiet and gen- 
 tlemanlike in his address, who contents himself 
 with the side alley of the pit, and looks at the 
 bright circles of beauty and fashion about him 
 with an indifference it is difficult to explain. 
 Make his acquaintance by chance, and he takes 
 
44 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 you home to supper in a plain chariot on the 
 best springs Long Acre can turn out ; and 
 while you are speculating where, in the name 
 of the Prince of Darkness, these narrow streets 
 will bring you to, you are introduced through 
 a small door into saloons, perfect in taste and 
 luxury, where, ten to one, you sup with the 
 prima donna^ or la premiere ■ danseuse, but cer- 
 tainly with the most polished persons of your 
 own sex, not one of whom, though you may 
 have passed a life in London, you ever met in 
 society before. There are, I doubt not, in that 
 vast metropolis, hundreds of small circles of 
 society, composed thus of persons refined by 
 travel and luxury, whose very existence is un- 
 suspected by the fine gentleman at the West 
 End, but who, in the science of living agreeably, 
 are almost as well entitled to rank among the 
 cognoscenti as Lord Sefton or the " member for 
 Finsbury." 
 
MORNINGS AT THE WEST END. 45 
 
 CHAR IV. 
 
 LONDON. 
 
 MORNING AT THE WEST END. — THE CLUBS AND THEIR 
 HABITUES. — EQUIPAGES. — THE QUADRANT. — REGENT 
 
 STREET. CHARACTERISTIC THRONGS WHO FREQUENT 
 
 THEM. — OXFORD STREET AND ITS PECULIARITIES. 
 
 You return from your ramble in "the city" 
 by two o'clock. A bright day " toward," and 
 the season in its palmy time. The old vete- 
 rans are just creeping out upon the portico 
 of the United Service Club, having crammed 
 " The Times" over their late breakfast, and 
 thus prepared their politics against surprise 
 for the day ; the broad steps of the Athenaeum 
 are as yet unthronged by the shuffling feet 
 of the literati, whose morning is longer and 
 more secluded than that of idler men, but 
 who will be seen in swarms, at four, entering 
 that superb edifice in company with the em- 
 
46 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 ployes and politicians who affect their society. 
 Not a cab stands yet at the " Travellers," 
 whose members, noble or fashionable, are 
 probably at this hour in their dressing-gowns 
 of brocade or shawl of the Orient, smoking 
 a hookah over Balzac's last romance, or pur- 
 suing at this (to them) desert time of day 
 some adventure which waited upon their love 
 and leisure. It is early yet for the Park ; 
 but the equipages you will see by-and-by " in 
 the ring " are standing now at Howell and 
 James's, and while the high-bred horses are 
 fretting at the door, and the liveried foot- 
 men lean on their gold-headed sticks on the 
 pavement, the fair creature whose slightest 
 nod these trained minions and their fine- 
 limbed animals live to obey, sits upon a three- 
 legged stool within, and in the voice which 
 is a spell upon all hearts, and with eyes to 
 which rank and genius turn like Persians to 
 the sun, discusses with a pert clerk the quality of 
 stockings ! 
 
EQUIPAGES. 47 
 
 Look at these equipages and their ap- 
 pointments ! Mark the exquisite balance of 
 that claret-bodied chariot upon its springs — 
 the fine sway of its sumptuous hammer-cloth 
 in which the un-smiling coachman sits buried 
 to the middle — the exact fit of the saddles, 
 setting into the curve of the horses' backs so 
 as not break, to the most careless eye, the fine 
 lines which exhibit action and grace ! See 
 how they stand together, alert, fiery, yet obe- 
 dient to the weight of a silken thread ; and as 
 the coachman sees you studying his turn-out, 
 observe the imperceptible feel of the reins 
 and the just-visible motion of his lips, con- 
 veying to the quick ears of his horses the 
 premonitory, and, to us, inaudible sound, to 
 which, without drawing a hair's breadth upon 
 the traces, they paw their fine hoofs, and ex- 
 pand their nostrils impatiently ! Come nearer, 
 and find a speck or a raised hair, if you 
 can, on these glossy coats ! Observe the nice 
 fitness of the dead-black harness, the modest 
 
48 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 crest upon the panel, the delicate picking 
 out of white in the wheels, and, if you will 
 venture upon a freedom in manners, look in 
 through the window of rose- tein ted glass, and 
 see the splendid cushions and the costly and 
 perfect adaptation of the interior. The twin- 
 mated footmen fly to the carriage-door, and - 
 the pomatumed clerk who has enjoyed a Ute- 
 a-Ute for which a prince royal might sigh, 
 and an ambassador negotiate in vain, hands 
 in his parcel. The small foot presses on the 
 carpeted step, the airy vehicle yields lightly 
 and recovers from the slight weight of the 
 descending form, the coachman inclines his 
 ear for the half suppressed order from the 
 footman, and off whirls the admirable structure, 
 compact, true, steady, but magically free and 
 fast — as if horses, footmen, and chariot were 
 but the parts of some complicated centaur 
 — some swift-moving monster upon legs and 
 wheels ! 
 
 Walk on a little farther to the Quad- 
 
THE QUADRANT. 49 
 
 taut. Here commences the most thronged 
 promenade in London. These crescent colon- 
 nades are the haunt of foreigners on the look- 
 out for amusement, and of strangers in the 
 metropolis generally. You will seldom find 
 a town-bred man there, for he prefers haunt- 
 ing his clubs; or, if he is not a member of 
 them, he avoids lounging much in the Quad- 
 rant, lest he should appear to have no other 
 resort. You will observe a town dandy getting 
 fidgety after his second turn in the Quadrant, 
 while you will meet the same Frenchman 
 there from noon till dusk, bounding his walk 
 by those columns as if they were the bars 
 of a cage. The western side toward Picca- 
 dilly is the thoroughfare of the honest passer- 
 by; but under the long portico opposite, you 
 will meet vice in every degree, and perhaps 
 more beauty than on any other pave in the 
 world. It is given up to the vicious and 
 their followers by general consent. To fre- 
 quent it, or to be seen loitering there at all, 
 
 VOL. I. E 
 
50 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 is to make but one impression on the mind 
 of those who may observe you. 
 
 The two sides of Regent Street continue 
 to partake of this distinction to the end. Go 
 up on the left, and you meet the sober citizen 
 perambulating with his wife, the lady fol- 
 lowed by her footman, the grave and the re- 
 spectable of all classes. Go up on the other, 
 and in colour and mien it is the difference 
 between a grass-walk and a bed of tulips. 
 What proof is here that beauty is dangerous to 
 its possessor ! It is said commonly of Regent 
 Street, that it shows iftore beauty in an hour than 
 could be found in all the capitals of the Continent. 
 It is the beauty, however, of brilliant health — 
 of complexion and freshness, more than of sen- 
 timent or classic correctness. The English 
 features, at least in the middle and lower 
 ranks, are seldom good, though the round 
 cheek, the sparkling lip, the soft blue eye 
 and hair of dark auburn, common as health 
 and youth, produce the effect of high and 
 
REGENT STREET. 51 
 
 almost universal beauty on the eye of the 
 stranger. The rarest thing in these classes 
 is a finely-turned limb, and to the clumsiness 
 of their feet and ankles must be attributed 
 the want of grace usually remarked in their 
 movements. 
 
 Regent Street has appeared to me the 
 greatest and most oppressive solitude in the 
 world. In a crowd of business men, or in 
 the thronged and mixed gardens of the Con- 
 tinent, the pre-occupation of others is less 
 attractive, or at least, more within our reach, 
 if we would share in it. Here, it is wealth 
 beyond competition, exclusiveness and indif- 
 ference perfectly unapproachable. In the cold 
 and stern mien of the practised Londoner, 
 it is diflScult for a stranger not to read dis- 
 trust, and very difficult for a depressed mind 
 not to feel a marked repulsion. There is 
 no solitude, after all, like the solitude of cities. 
 
 "O dear, dear London" (says the com- 
 panion of Asmodeus on his return from 
 E 2 
 
52 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 France), " dear even in October ! Regent 
 Street, I salute you ! Bond Street, my good 
 fellow, how are you? And you, oh, beloved 
 Oxford Street, whom the opium-eater called 
 ' stony-hearted,' and whom I, eating no opium, 
 and speaking as I find, shall ever consider the 
 most kindly and maternal of all streets — the 
 street of the middle classes — busy without 
 uproar, wealthy without ostentation. Ah, the 
 pretty ankles that trip along thy pavement ! 
 Ah ! the odd country-cousin bonnets that peer 
 into thy windows, which are lined with cheap 
 yellow shawls, price one pound four shillings, 
 marked in the corner ! Ah ! the brisk young 
 lawyers flocking from their quarters at the 
 back of Holborn ! Ah ! the quiet old ladies, 
 living in Duchess Street, and visiting thee 
 with their eldest daughters in the hope of 
 a bargain ! Ah, the bumpkins from Norfolk 
 just disgorged by the Bull and Mouth — the 
 soldiers — the milliners — the Frenchmen — 
 the swindlers — the porters with four-post beds 
 
OXFORD STREET. 53 
 
 on their backs, who add the excitement of 
 danger to that of amusement ! The various 
 shifting, motley group that belong to Oxford 
 Street, and Oxford Street alone ! What tho- 
 roughfares equal thee in the variety of human 
 specimens ! in the choice of objects for re- 
 mark, satire, admiration ! Besides, the other 
 streets seem chalked out for a sect — narrow- 
 minded and devoted to a coterie. Thou alone 
 art catholic — all receiving. Regent Street 
 belongs to foreigners, cigars, and ladies in red 
 silk, whose characters are above scandal. Bond 
 Street belongs to dandies and picture-dealers. 
 St. James's Street to club loungers and young 
 men in the Guards, with mustachios properly 
 blackened by the cire of Mr. Delcroix; but 
 thou, Oxford Street, what class can especially 
 claim thee as its own ? Thou mockest at 
 oligarchies ; thou knowest nothing of select 
 orders ! Thou art liberal as air — a char- 
 tered libertine; accepting the homage of all, 
 and retaining the stamp of none. And to 
 E 3 
 
54 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 call thee ' stony-hearted !' — certainly thou 
 art so to beggars — to people who have not 
 the WHEREWITHAL. But thou wouldst not 
 be so respectable if thou wert not capable of 
 a certain reserve to paupers. Thou art civil 
 enough, in all conscience, to those who have 
 a shilling in their pocket — those who have 
 not, why do they live at all?" 
 
ISLE OF WIGHT. 55 
 
 CHAP. V. 
 
 ISLE OF WIGHT. — RYDE. — CONVERSATION WITH AN EN- 
 GLISH SKIPPER ABOUT AMERICAN " CALCULATORS. " — 
 
 AMERICAN FLAG. COWES. ♦— LORD YARBOROUGH's YACHT' 
 
 PLEASURE VESSELS. NETLEY ABBEY. — PIC-NIC IN THE 
 
 RUINS. — FORTUNATE ARTIST. — COMMENTS OF HUNGRY 
 
 TRAVELLERS. INDIFFERENCE OF LADIES ON BEING 
 
 INFORMED THEY HAD NO SOULS, — RETURN TO RYDE, 
 ETC. 
 
 *' Instead of parboiling you with a soiree or 
 a dinner," said a sensible and kind friend, 
 who called on us at Ryde, " I shall make 
 a pic-nic to Netley." And on a bright, 
 breezy morning of June, a merry party of 
 some twenty of the inhabitants of the green 
 Isle of Wight shot away from the long pier, 
 in one of the swift boats of those waters, with 
 a fair wind for Southampton. 
 
 Ryde is the most American-looking town 
 E 4 
 
56 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 I have seen abroad; a cluster of white houses 
 and summery villas on the side of a hill, leaning 
 up from the sea. Geneva, on the Seneca 
 Lake, resembles it. It is a place of baths, 
 boarding-houses, and people of damaged con- 
 stitutions, with very select society, and quiet 
 and rather primitive habits. The climate is 
 deliciously soft, and the sun seems always to 
 shine there. 
 
 As we got out into the open channel, I was 
 assisting the skipper to tighten his bowline, 
 when a beautiful ship, in the distance, putting 
 about on a fresh tack, caught the sun full on 
 her snowy sails, and seemed to start like an 
 apparition from the sea. 
 
 " She's a Liner, sir ! " said the bronzed 
 boatman, suspending his haul to give her a 
 look of involuntary admiration. 
 
 " An American packet, you mean?" 
 
 " They're the prettiest ships afloat, sir," he 
 continued, " and the smartest handled. They're 
 out to New York, and back again, before you 
 
AMERICAN FLAG. 57 
 
 can look round, a'most. Ah, I see her flag 
 now — stars and stripes. Can you see it, 
 sir?" 
 
 " Are the captains Englishmen, principally ? " 
 I asked. 
 
 " No, sir ! all ' caUylators ; ' sharp as a 
 needle !" 
 
 " Thank you," said I ; " I am a calculator, 
 too!" 
 
 The conversation ceased, and I thought 
 from the boatman's look, that he had more 
 respect than love for us. The cloud of snowy 
 sail traversed the breadth of the channel with 
 the speed of a bird, wheeled again upon her 
 opposite tack, and soon disappeared from view, 
 taking with her the dove of my imagination 
 to return with an olive branch from home. 
 It must be a cold American heart whose strings 
 are not swept by that bright flag in a foreign 
 land, like a harp with the impassioned prelude 
 of the master. 
 
 Cowes was soon upon our lee, with her 
 
58 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 fairy fleet of yachts lying at anchor — Lord 
 Yarborough's frigate-looking craft asleep amid 
 its dependent brood, with all its fine tracery 
 of rigging drawn on a cloudless sky, the pic- 
 ture of what it is, and what all vessels seem 
 to me — a thing for pleasure only. Dartmg 
 about like a swallow on the wing, a small, 
 gaily-painted sloop-yacht, as graceful and slen- 
 der as the first bow of the new moon, played 
 off the roadstead for the sole pleasure of mo- 
 tion, careless whither ; and meantime the low- 
 fringed shores of the Southampton side grew 
 more and more distinct, and before we had 
 well settled upon our cushions, the old tower 
 of the abbey lay sharp over the bow. 
 
 We enjoyed the first ramble through the 
 ruins the better, that to see them was a se- 
 condary object. The first was to select a 
 grassy spot for our table. Threading the old 
 unroofed vaults with this errand, the pause of 
 involuntary homage exacted by a sudden burst 
 upon an arch or a fretted window, was natural 
 
NETLEY ABBEY. 59 
 
 and true ; and for those who are disturbed by 
 the formal and trite enthusiasm of companions 
 who admire by a prompter, this stalking-horse 
 of another pursuit was not an indifferent ad- 
 vantage. 
 
 The great roof over the principal nave of 
 the abbey has fallen in, and lies in rugged and 
 picturesque masses within the Gothic shell — 
 windows, arches, secret staircases, and grey 
 walls, all breaking up the blue sky around, 
 but leaving above, for a smooth and eternal 
 roof, an oblong and ivy-fringed segment of the 
 blue plane of heaven. It seems to rest on those 
 crumbling corners as you stand within. 
 
 We selected a rising bank, under the shoulder 
 of a rock, grown over with moss and ivy, and 
 following the suggestion of a pretty lover of 
 the picturesque, the shawls and cloaks, with 
 their bright colours, were thrown over the 
 nearest fragments of the roof, and every body 
 unbonneted and assisted in the arrangements. 
 An old woman who sold apples outside the 
 
60 LOITE RINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 walls was employed to build a fire for our tea- 
 kettle in a niche where, doubtless, in its holier 
 days, had stood the effigy of a saint; and at 
 the pedestals of a cluster of slender columns 
 our attendants displayed upon a table a show 
 of pasties and bright wines, that, if there be 
 monkish spirits who walk at Netley, we have 
 added a poignant regret to their purgatories, 
 that their airy stomachs can be no more vino 
 cihoque gravati. 
 
 We were doing justice to a pretty shoulder 
 of lamb, with mint sauce, when a slender youth 
 who had been wandering around with a port- 
 folio took up an artist's position in the farther 
 corner of the ruins, and began to sketch the 
 scene. I mentally felicitated him on the acci- 
 dent that had brought him to Netley at that 
 particular moment, for a prettier picture than 
 that before him an artist could scarce have 
 thrown together. The inequalities of the floor 
 of the abbey provided a mossy table for every 
 two or three of the gaily-dressed ladies, and 
 
PIC-NIC IN THE RUINS. 61 
 
 there they reclined in small and graceful 
 groups, their white dresses relieved on the 
 luxuriant grass, and between them, half buried 
 in moss, the sparkling glasses full of bright 
 wines, and an air of ease and grace over all, 
 which could belong only to the two extremes 
 of Arcadian simplicity, or its high-bred imita- 
 tion. We amused ourselves with the idea of 
 appearing, some six months after, in the middle 
 ground of a landscape, in a picturesque an- 
 nual ; and I am afraid that I detected, on the 
 first suggestion of the idea, a little unconscious 
 attitudinising in some of the younger members 
 of the party. It was proposed that the artist 
 should be invited to take wine with us ; but as 
 a rosy-cheeked page donned his gold hat to 
 carry our compliments, the busy draughtsman 
 was joined by one or two ladies not quite so 
 attractive-looking as himself, but evidently of 
 his own party, and our messenger was re- 
 called. Sequitur — they who would find ad- 
 venture should travel alone. 
 
62 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 The monastic ruins of England derive a 
 very peculiar and touching beauty from the 
 bright veil of ivy which almost buries them 
 from the sun. This constant and affectionate 
 mourner draws from the moisture of the cli- 
 mate a vividness and luxuriance which is found 
 in no other land. Hence the remarkable love- 
 liness of Netley — a quality which impresses the 
 visiters to this spot, far more than the melan- 
 choly usually inspired by decay. 
 
 Our gaiety shocked some of the sentimental 
 people rambling about the ruins, for it is diffi- 
 cult for those who have not dined to sympa- 
 thise with the mirth of those who have. How 
 often we mistake for sadness the depression of 
 an empty stomach ! How differently authors 
 and travellers would write, if they commenced 
 the day, instead of ending it, with meats and 
 wine ! I was led to these reflections by coming 
 suddenly upon a young lady and her compa- 
 nion (possibly her lover), in climbing a ruined 
 staircase sheathed within the wall of the abbey. 
 
COMMENTS OF HUNGRY TRAVELLERS. 63 
 
 They were standing at one of the windows, 
 quite unconscious of my neighbourhood, and 
 looking down upon the gay party of ladies 
 below, who were still amid the debris of the 
 feast, arranging their bonnets for a walk. 
 
 " What a want of soul," said the lady, " to 
 be eating and drinking in such a place ! " 
 
 " Some people have no souls," responded the 
 gentleman. 
 
 After this verdict, I thought the best thing 
 I could do was to take care of my body, and I 
 very carefully backed down the old staircase, 
 which is probably more hazardous now than 
 in the days when it was used to admit damsels 
 and haunches of venison to the reverend 
 fathers. 
 
 I reached the bottom in safety, and informed 
 my friends that they had no souls, but they 
 manifested the usual unconcern on the subject, 
 and strolled away through the echoing arches, 
 in search of new points of view and fresh wild 
 flowers. " Commend me at least," I thought, 
 
64 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 as I followed on, " to those whose pulses can 
 be quickened even by a cold pie and a glass 
 of champagne. Sadness and envy are sown 
 thickly enough by any wayside." 
 
 We were embarked once more by the middle 
 of the afternoon, and with a head wind, but 
 smooth water and cool temperature, beat back 
 to Ryde. If the young lady and her lover 
 have forgiven or forgotten us, and the ghosts 
 of Netley, frocked or petticoated, have taken 
 no umbrage, I have not done amiss in marking 
 the day with a stone of the purest white. How 
 much more sensible is a party like this, in the 
 open air, and at healthy hours, than the un- 
 timely and ceremonious civilities usually paid 
 to strangers. If the world would mend by 
 moralising, however, we should have had a 
 Utopia long ago. 
 
EUROPE AND AMERICA. 65 
 
 CHAP. VI. 
 
 COMPARISON OF THE CLIMATE OF EUROPE AND AMERICA. 
 
 One of Hazlitt's nail-driving remarks is to the 
 effect that he should like very well to pass the 
 whole of his life in travelling^ if he could any 
 where borrow another life to spend afterwards at 
 home. How far action is necessary to happi- 
 ness, and how far repose — how far the appe- 
 tite for novelty and adventure will drive, and 
 how far the attractions of home and domestic 
 comfort will recall us — in short, what are the 
 precise exactions of the antagonist principles in 
 our bosoms of curiosity and sloth, energy and 
 sufferance, hope and memory — are questions 
 which each one must settle for himself, and 
 which none can settle but he who has passed 
 
 VOL. I. F 
 
66 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 his life in the eternal and fruitless search after 
 the happiest place, climate, and station. 
 
 Contentment depends upon many things 
 within our own control, but, with a certain 
 education, it depends partly upon things beyond 
 it. To persons delicately constituted or deli- 
 cately brought up, and to all idle persons, the 
 principal ingredient in the cup of enjoyment is 
 climate ; and Providence, that consults " the 
 greatest happiness of the greatest number,'* has 
 made the poor and the roughly-nurtured inde- 
 pendent of the changes of the wind. Those 
 who have the misfortune to be delicate as well 
 as poor — those, particularly, for whom there 
 is no hope but in a change of clime, but whom 
 pitiless poverty compels to languish in vain 
 after the reviving south, are happily few; but 
 they have thus much more than their share of 
 human calamity. 
 
 In throwing together my recollections of the 
 climates with which I have become acquainted 
 in other lands, I am aware that there is a 
 
EUROPE AND AMERICA. 67 
 
 greater difference of opinion on this subject 
 than on most others. A man who has agree- 
 able society about him in Montreal, but who 
 was without friends in Florence, would be very 
 likely to bring the climate in for its share of the 
 difference, and prefer Canada to Italy ; and 
 health and circumstances of all kinds affect, in 
 no slight degree, our susceptibility to skies and 
 atmospheres. But it is sometimes interesting 
 to know the impressions of others, even though 
 they agree not with our own ; and I will only 
 say of mine on this subject, that they are so 
 far likely to be fair, as I have been blessed with 
 the same perfect health in all countries, and 
 have been happy alike in every latitude and 
 season. 
 
 It is almost a matter of course to decry the 
 climate of England. The English writers 
 themselves talk of the suicidal months ; and it is 
 the only country where part of the livery of a 
 mounted groom is his master's great-coat 
 strapped about his waist. It is certainly a 
 F 2 
 
68 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 damp climate, and the sun shines less in Eng- 
 land than in most other comitries. But to 
 persons of full habit this moisture in the air 
 is extremely agreeable ; and the high condition 
 of all animals in England, from man down- 
 wards, proves its healthfulness. A stranger 
 who has been accustomed to a brighter sky, 
 will, at first, find a gloom in the grey light so 
 characteristic of an English atmosphere ; but 
 this soon wears off, and he finds a compensation, 
 as far as the eye is concerned, in the exquisite 
 softness of the verdure, and the deep and en- 
 during brightness of the foliage. The effect of 
 this moisture on the skin is singularly grateful. 
 The pores become accustomed to a healthy 
 action, which is unknown in other countries ; 
 and the bloom by which an English complexion 
 is known all over the world is the index of an 
 activity in this important part of the system, 
 which, when first experienced, is almost like a 
 new sensation. The transition to a dry climate, 
 such as ours, deteriorates the condition and 
 
EUROPE AND AMERICA* 69 
 
 quality of the skin, and produces a feeling, if I 
 may so express it, like that of being glazed. It 
 is a common remark in E^ngland, that an offi- 
 cer's wife and daughters follow his regiment to 
 Canada at the expense of their complexions; 
 and it is a well-known fact that the bloom of 
 female beauty is, in our country, painfully 
 evanescent. 
 
 The climate of America is, in many points, 
 very different from that of France and Great 
 Britain. In the middle and northern states, 
 it is a dry, invigorating, bracing climate, in 
 which a strong man may do more work than in 
 almost any other, and which makes continual 
 exercise, or occupation of some sort, absolutely 
 necessary. With the exception of the " Indian 
 summer," and here and there a day scattered 
 through the spring and the hot months, there 
 is no weather tempered so finely that one would 
 think of passing the day in merely enjoying it, 
 and life is passed, by those who have the mis- 
 fortune to be idle, in continual and active dread 
 p 3 
 
70 LOITEMNGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 of the elements. The cold is so acrid, and the 
 heat so sultry, and the changes from one to the 
 other are so sudden and violent, that no enjoy- 
 ment can be depended upon out-of-doors, and 
 no system of clothing or protection is good for 
 a day together. He who has full occupation 
 for head and hand (as by far the greatest ma- 
 jority of our countrymen have) may live as 
 long in America as in any portion of the globe 
 — vide the bills of mortality. He whose spirits 
 lean upon the temperature of the wind, or whose 
 nerves require a genial and constant atmo- 
 sphere, may find more favourable climes ; and 
 the habits and delicate constitutions of scholars 
 and people of sedentary pursuits generally, in 
 the United States, prove the truth of the ob- 
 servation. 
 
 The habit of regular exercise in the open air, 
 which is found to be so salutary in England, is 
 scarcely possible in America. It is said, and 
 said truly, of the first, that there is no day in 
 the year when a lady may not ride comfortably 
 
EUROPE AND AMERICA. 71 
 
 on horseback ; but with us, the extremes of heat 
 and cold, and the tempestuous character of our 
 snows and rains, totally forbid, to a delicate 
 person, any thing like regularity in exercise. 
 The consequence is, that the habit rarely exists, 
 and the high and glowing health so common in 
 England, and consequent, no doubt, upon the 
 equable character of the climate in some mea- 
 sure, is with us sufficiently rare to excite re- 
 mark. "Very English-looking" is a common 
 phrase, and means very healthy-looking. Still 
 our people last — and though I should define 
 the English climate as the one in which the 
 human frame is in the highest condition, I 
 should say of America, that it is the one in which 
 you could get the most work out of it. 
 
 Atmosphere, in England and America, is the 
 first of the necessaries of life. In Italy it is the 
 first of its luxuries. We breathe in America, 
 and walk abroad, without thinking of these 
 common acts but as a means of arriving at hap- 
 piness. In Italy, to breathe and to walk abroad 
 F 4 
 
72 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 are themselves happiness. Day after day — 
 week after week — month after month — you 
 wake with the breath of flowers coming in at 
 your open window, and a sky of serene and 
 unfathomable blue, and mornings and evenings 
 of tranquil, assured, heavenly purity and beauty. 
 The few weeks of the rainy seasons are for- 
 gotten in these long halcyon months of sun- 
 shine. No one can have lived in Italy a year, 
 who remembers any thing but the sapphire sky 
 and the kindling and ever-seen stars. You 
 grow insensibly to associate the sunshine and 
 moonlight only with the fountain you have 
 lived near, or the columns of the temple you 
 have seen from your window, for on no objects 
 in other lands have you seen their light so 
 constant. 
 
 I scarce know how to convey, in language, 
 the effect of the climate of Italy on mind and 
 body. Sitting here, indeed, in the latitude of 
 thirty^nine, in the middle of April, by a warm 
 fire, and with a cold wind whistling at the win- 
 
EUROPE AND AMERICA. 73 
 
 dow, it is difficult to recall it, even to the fancy. 
 I do not know whether life is prolonged, but it 
 is infinitely enriched and brightened, by the 
 delicious atmosphere of Italy. You rise in the 
 morning, thanking Heaven for life and liberty 
 to go abroad. There is a sort of opiate in the 
 air, which makes idleness, that would be the 
 vulture of Prometheus in America, the dove of 
 promise in Italy. It is delicious to do nothing — 
 delicious to stand an hour looking at a Savoyard 
 and his monkey — delicious to sit away the 
 long, silent noon, in the shade of a column, or 
 on the grass of a fountain — delicious to be 
 with a friend without the interchange of an 
 idea — to dabble in a book, or look into the 
 cup of a flower. You do not read, for you 
 wish to enjoy the weather. You do not visit, 
 for you hate to enter a door while the weather 
 is so fine. You lie down unwillingly for your 
 siesta in the hot noon, for you fear you may 
 oversleep the first coolness of the long shadows 
 of sunset. The fancy, meantime, is free, and 
 
74 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 seems liberated by the same languor that ener- 
 vates the severer faculties ; and nothing seems 
 fed by the air but thoughts, which minister to 
 enjoyment. 
 
 The climate of Greece is very much that of 
 Italy. The Mediterranean is all beloved of 
 the sun. Life has a value there, of which the 
 rheumatic, shivering, snow-breasting, blue- de- 
 viled idler of northern regions has no shadow, 
 even in a dream. No wonder Dante mourned 
 and languished for it. No wonder at the sen- 
 timent I once heard from distinguished lips — 
 Fuori d* Italia tutto e esilio. 
 
 This appears like describing a Utopia ; but it 
 is what Italy seemed to me. I have expressed 
 myself much more to my mind, however, in 
 rhyme, for a prose essay is, at best, but a cold 
 medium. If the reader chance to have lived 
 in Italy, he will excuse my unwillingness to 
 leave the theme without having given full vent 
 to my enthusiam, though to do so I must quote 
 from myself. Thus runs a passage from a 
 
EUROPE AND AMERICA. 75 
 
 poem once published in England, but probably 
 unknown to the reader : — 
 
 We came to Italy. I felt 
 
 A yearning for its sunny sky 5 
 My very spirit seem'd to melt 
 
 As swept its first warm breezes by. 
 From lip and cheek a chilling mist, 
 
 From life and soul a frozen rime, 
 By every breath seem'd softly kiss'd— 
 
 God's blessing on its radiant clime 1 
 It was an endless joy to me' 
 
 To see my sister's new delight ; — 
 From Venice in its golden sea 
 
 To Psestum in its purple light ; 
 By sweet Val d'Arno's tinted hills, 
 
 In Vallombrosa's convent gloom, 
 Mid Temi's vale of singing rills, 
 
 By deathless lairs in solemn Rome, 
 In'gay Palermo's " golden shell," 
 At Arethusa's hidden well — 
 
 We loitered like th' impassion'd sun 
 That slept so lovingly on all, 
 
 And made a home of every one — 
 Ruin, and fane, and waterfall — 
 
 And crown'd the dying day with glory 
 If we had seen, since mom, but one old haunt of story. 
 
76 LOITERINGS OF TRaVeL. 
 
 We came with spring to Tivoli. 
 
 My sister lov'd its laughing air 
 And merry waters, though, for me, 
 My heart was in another key, 
 
 And sometimes I could scarcely hear 
 The mirth of their eternal play. 
 
 And, like a child that longs for home 
 When weary of its holyday 
 
 I sighed for melancholy Rome. 
 » * * * * * 
 
 It was a mom, of such a day 
 
 As might have dawn'd on Eden first. 
 Early in the Italian May. 
 
 Vine -leaf and flower had newly burst. 
 And on the burden of the air 
 The breath of buds came faint and rare ; 
 
 And far in the transparent sky, 
 The small, earth-keeping birds were seen 
 
 Soaring deliriously high ; 
 And through the clefts of newer green 
 
 Yon waters dash'd their living pearls ; 
 And with a gayer smile and bow, 
 
 Troop'd on the merry village girls ; 
 And from the Contadino's brow, 
 
 The low-slouch'd hat was backward thrown, 
 
 With air that scarcely seem'd his own ; 
 And Melanie, with lips apart, 
 
 And clasped hands upon my arm, 
 Flimg open her impassion'd heart. 
 
 And bless'd life's mere and breathing charm, 
 
EUROPE AND AMERICA. 77 
 
 And sang old songs, and gather'd flowers, 
 And passionately bless'd once more life's thrilling hours. 
 * * * * * * 
 
 A calm and lovely paradise 
 
 Is Italy, for minds at ease. 
 The sadness of its smmy skies 
 
 Weighs not upon the lives of these. 
 The ruin'd aisle, the crumbling fane, 
 
 The broken column, vast and prone — 
 It may be joy — it may be pain — 
 
 Amid such wrecks to walk alone ! 
 The saddest man wiU sadder be, 
 
 The gentlest lover gentler there. 
 As if, whate'er the spirit's key. 
 
 It strengthened in that solemn air. 
 
 The heart soon grows to mournful things. 
 
 And Italy has not a breeze, 
 But comes on melancholy wings ; 
 
 And even her majestic trees 
 Stand ghost-like in the Caesar's home ; 
 
 As if their conscious roots were set 
 In the old graves of giant Rome, 
 
 And drew their sap all kingly yet ! 
 And every stone your feet beneath 
 
 Is broken from some mighty thought, 
 And sculptures in the dust still breathe 
 
 The fire with which their lives were wrought 
 And sunder'd arch, and plunder'd tomb. 
 Still thunder back the echo, " Rome ! " 
 
78 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 Yet gaily o'er Egeria's fount 
 
 The ivy flings its emerald veil, 
 And flowers grow feir on Numa's mount, 
 
 And light-sprung arches span the dale. 
 And soft, from Caracalla's baths, 
 
 The herdsman's song comes down the breeze, 
 While climb his goats the giddy paths 
 
 To grass-grown architrave and frieze ; 
 And gracefully Albano's hill 
 
 Curves into the horizon's line, 
 And sweetly sings that classic rill. 
 
 And fairly stands that nameless shrine, 
 And here, oh, many a sultry noon. 
 And starry eve, that happy June, 
 
 Came Angelo and Melanie, 
 And earth for us was all in tune — 
 For whUe Love talked with them, Hope walked apart 
 with me ! 
 
 MelaniCy pp. 5 — 17. 
 
" WHITE HORSE CELLAR." 79 
 
 CHAP. VII. 
 
 STRATFORD- ON- AVON. 
 
 " WHITE HORSE CELLAR," PICCADILLY. — ^A RETIRED COACH- 
 MAN. INCONSTANCY OF AN ENGLISH SKY. — LONDON IN 
 
 THE MORNING. STAGE-COACH CONVERSATION. — THE 
 
 AVON. — LANDLADY OF THE " RED HORSE." OLD EN- 
 GLISH COUNTRY HOUSES. 
 
 " One-p'un'-five outside, sir, two p'un* in." 
 
 It was a bright, calm afternoon in Sep- 
 tember, promising nothing but a morrow of 
 sunshine and autumn, when I stepped in at 
 the " White Horse Cellar," in Piccadilly, to 
 take my place in the Tantivy coach for Strat- 
 ford-on-Avon. Preferring the outside of the 
 coach, at least by as much as the difference 
 in the prices, and accustomed from long habit 
 to pay dearest for that which most pleased 
 me, I wrote myself down for the outside, 
 and deposited my two pounds in the horny 
 
80 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 palm of • the old ex-coachman, retired from 
 the box, and playing clerk in this dingy den 
 of parcels and portmanteaus. Supposing my 
 business concluded, I stood a minute specu- 
 lating on the weather-beaten, cramp-handed 
 old Jehu before me, and trying to reconcile 
 his ideas of " retirement from office " with 
 those of his almost next door neighbour, the 
 hero of Strathfieldsaye. 
 
 I had mounted the first stair toward day- 
 light, when a touch on the shoulder with the 
 end of a long whip — a technical " reminder," 
 which probably came easier to the old driver 
 than the phrasing of a sentence to a " gem- 
 man " — ' recalled me to the cellar. 
 
 " Fifteen shillin', sir," said he laconically, 
 pointing with the same expressive exponent 
 of his profession to the change for my outside 
 place, which I had left lying on the counter. 
 
 . " You are at least as honest as the Duke," 
 I soliloquised, as I pocketed the six bright 
 and substantial half-crowns. 
 
LONDON IN THE MORNING. 81 
 
 I was at the " White Horse Cellar" again the 
 following morning at six, promising myself 
 with great sincerity never to rely again on the 
 constancy of an English sky. It rained in 
 torrents. The four inside places were all taken, 
 and with twelve fellow-outsides, I mounted to 
 the wet seat, and begging a little straw by 
 way of cushion from the ostler, spread my um- 
 brella, abandoned my knees with a single effort 
 of mind to the drippings of the driver's wea- 
 ther-proof upper Benjamin, and away we sped. 
 I was " due " at the house of a hospitable 
 Catholic baronet, a hundred and two miles 
 from London, at the dinner-hour of that day, 
 and to wait till it had done raining in England 
 is to expect the millennium. 
 
 London in the morning — I mean the poor 
 man's morning, daylight — is to me matter for 
 the most speculative and intense melancholy. 
 Hyde Park in the sunshine of a bright after- 
 noon, glittering with equipages and gay with 
 the Aladdin splendours of rank and wealth, is 
 
 VOL. I. G 
 
82 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 a scene which sends the mercurial qualities of 
 the blood trippingly through the veins. But 
 Hyde Park at daylight seen from Piccadilly 
 through fog and rain, is perhaps, of all con- 
 trasts, to one who has frequented it in its 
 bright hours, the most dispiriting and dreary. 
 To remember that behind the barricaded and 
 wet windows of Apsley House sleeps the hero 
 of Waterloo — that under these crowded and 
 fog-wrapped houses lie, in their dim ^chambers 
 breathing of perfume and luxury, the high- 
 born and nobly-moulded creatures who pre- 
 serve for the aristocracy of England the palm 
 of the world's beauty — to remember this, and 
 a thousand other associations linked with the 
 spot, is not at all to diminish, but rather to 
 deepen, the melancholy of the picture. Why 
 is it that the deserted stage of a theatre, the 
 echo of an empty ball-room, the loneliness of a 
 frequented promenade in untimely hours — any 
 scene, in short, of gaiety gone by but remem- 
 bered — oppresses and dissatisfies the heart ! 
 
STAGE-COACH CONVERSATION. 83 
 
 One would think memory should re-brighten 
 and re-populate such places. 
 
 The wheels hissed through the shallow pools 
 in the Macadam road, the regular pattering 
 of the small hoofs in the wet carriage-tracks 
 maintained its quick and monotonous beat on 
 the ear ; the silent driver kept his eye on the 
 traces, and " reminded " now and then with 
 but the weight of his slight lash a lagging 
 wheeler or leader, and the complicated but 
 compact machine of which the square foot that 
 I occupied had been so nicely calculated, sped 
 on its ten miles in the hour with the steadfast- 
 ness of a star in its orbit, and as independent 
 of clouds and rain. 
 
 ^^ Est ce que monsieur parle Francois ?" asked 
 at the end of the first stage my right-hand 
 neighbour, a little gentleman, of whom I had 
 hitherto only remarked that he was holding 
 on to the iron railing of the seat with great 
 tenacity. 
 
 Having admitted in an evil moment that I 
 G 2 
 
84 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 had been in France, I was first distinctly made 
 to understand that my neighbour was on his 
 way to Birmingham purely for pleasure, and 
 without the most distant object of business — 
 a point on which he insisted so long, and re- 
 curred to so often, that he succeeded at last 
 in persuading me that he was. doubtless a can- 
 didate for the French clerkship of some ex- 
 porter of buttons. After listening to an 
 amusing dissertation on the rashness of com- 
 mitting one's life to an English stage-coach, 
 with scarce room enough for the perch of a 
 parrot, and a velocity so diahlement dangereux, 
 I tired of my Frenchman ; and, since I could 
 not have my own thoughts in peace, opened a 
 conversation with a straw-bonnet and shawl 
 on my left — the property, I soon discovered, 
 of a very smart lady's maid, very indignant 
 at having been made to change places with 
 Master George, who, with his mother and her 
 mistress, were dry and comfortable inside. 
 She " would not have minded the outside 
 
STAGE-COACH CONVERSATION. 85 
 
 place," she said, " for there were sometimes 
 very agreeable gentlemen on the outside, very I 
 — but she had been promised to go inside, 
 and had dressed accordingly ; and it was very 
 provoking to spoil a nice new shawl and best 
 bonnet, just because a great schoolrboy, that 
 had nothing on that would damage chose not 
 to ride in the rain." 
 
 " Very provoking, indeed ! " I responded, 
 letting in the rain upon myself unconsciously, 
 in extending my umbrella forward so as to 
 protect her on the side of the wind. 
 
 " We should have gone down in the car- 
 riage, sir," she continued, edging a little closer 
 to get the full advantage of my umbrella ; " but 
 John the coachman has got the hirifluenzy, and 
 my missis wo'n't be driven by no other coach- 
 man ; she's as obstinate as a mule, sir. And 
 that isn't all I could tell, sir ; but I scorns to 
 hurt the character of one of my own sex." 
 And the pretty abigail pursed up her red lips, 
 and looked determined not to destroy her 
 G 3 
 
86 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 mistress's character — unless particularly re- 
 quested. 
 
 I detest what may be called a proper road- 
 book — even would it be less absurd than it is 
 to write one on a country so well conned as 
 England. 
 
 I shall say nothing, therefore, of Marlow, 
 which looked the picture of rural loveliness 
 though seen through fog, nor of Oxford, of 
 which all I remember is that I dined there 
 with my teeth chattering, and my knees sa- 
 turated with rain. All England is lovely to 
 the wild eye of an American unused to high 
 cultivation ; and though my enthusiasm was 
 somewhat damp, I arrived at the bridge over 
 the Avon, blessing England sufl&ciently for 
 its beauty, and much more for the speed of 
 its coaches. 
 
 The Avon, above and below the bridge, ran 
 brightly along between low banks, half sward 
 half meadow; and on the other side lay the 
 native town of the immortal wool-comber — 
 
THE " RED HORSE.'* 87 
 
 a gay cheerful-looking village, narrowing in 
 the centre to a closely built street, across which 
 swung, broad and fair, the sign of the " Red 
 Horse." More ambitious hotels lay beyond, 
 and broader streets; but while Washington 
 Irving is remembered (and that will be while 
 the language lasts), the quiet inn in which the 
 great Geoffrey thought and wrote of Shaks- 
 peare will be the altar of the pilgrim's devo- 
 tions. 
 
 My baggage was set down, the coachman 
 and guard tipped their hats for a shilling, 
 and, chilled to the bone, I raised my hat in- 
 stinctively to the courtesy of a slender gentle- 
 woman in black, who, by the keys at her 
 girdle, should be the landlady. Having ex- 
 pected to see a rosy little Mrs. Boniface, with 
 a brown pinafore and worsted mittens, I made 
 up my mind at once that the inn had changed 
 mistresses. On the right of the old-fashioned 
 entrance blazed cheerily the kitchen fire, and 
 with my enthusiasm rather dashed by my 
 G 4 
 
88 * LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 disappointment, I stepped in to make friends 
 with the cook, and get a little warmth and 
 information. 
 
 " So your old mistress is dead, Mrs. Cook," 
 said I, rubbing my hands with great satisfac- 
 faction between the fire and a well-roasted 
 chicken. 
 
 " Lauk, sir, no, she isn't ! " answered the 
 rosy lass, pointing with a dredging-box to the 
 same respectable lady in black who was just 
 entering to look after me. 
 
 " I beg pardon, sir," she said, dropping a 
 courtesy; "but are you the gentleman ex- 
 pected by Sir Charles ?" 
 
 " Yes, madam. And can you tell me any 
 thing of your predecessor who had the inn in 
 the days of Washington Irving ?" 
 
 She dropped another courtesy, and drew up 
 her thin person to its full height, while a smile 
 of gratified vanity stole out at the corners of 
 her mouth. 
 
 " The carriage has been waiting some time 
 
LANDLADY OF THE "RED HORSE." 89 
 
 for you, sir," she said, with a softer tone than 
 that in which she had hitherto addressed me ; 
 
 and you will hardly be at C in time for 
 
 dinner. You will be coming over to-morrow 
 or the day after, perhaps, sir; and then, if you 
 would honour my little room by taking a cup 
 of tea with me, I should be pleased to tell you 
 all about it, sir." 
 
 I remembered a promise I had nearly for- 
 gotten, that I would reserve my visit to Strat- 
 ford till I could be accompanied by Miss 
 
 J. P , whom I was to have the honour 
 
 of meeting at my place of destination; and 
 promising an early acceptance of the kind 
 landlady's invitation, I hurried on to my ap- 
 pointment over the fertile hills of Warwick- 
 shire. 
 
 I was established in one of those old Eliza- 
 bethan country houses, which, with their vast 
 parks, their self-sufficing resources of subsist- 
 ence and company, and the absolute deference 
 shown on all sides to the lord of the manor^ 
 
90 LOITER INGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 give one the impression rather of a little 
 kingdom with a castle in its heart, than of 
 an abode for a gentleman subject. The house 
 itself (called, like most houses of this size 
 and consequence in Warwickshire, a " Court,") 
 was a Gothic, half castellated square, with 
 four round towers, and innumerable embra- 
 sures and windows; two wings in front, pro- 
 bably more modern than the body of the 
 house, and again two long wings extending 
 to the rear, at right angles, and enclosing 
 a flowery and formal parterre. There had 
 been a trench about it, now filled up, and 
 at a short distance from the house stood a 
 polyangular and massive structure, well cal- 
 culated for defence, and intended as a strong- 
 hold for the retreat of the family and tenants 
 in more troubled times. One of these rear 
 wings enclosed a Catholic chapel, for the wor- 
 ship of the baronet and those of his tenants 
 who professed the same faith; while on the 
 northern side, between the house and the 
 
OLD ENGLISH COUNTRY HOUSES. 91 
 
 garden, stood a large Protestant stone church, 
 with a turret and spire, both chapel and 
 church, with their clergyman and priest, de- 
 pendent on the estate, and equally favoured 
 by the liberal and high-minded baronet. The 
 tenantry formed two considerable congrega- 
 tions, and lived and worshipped side by side, 
 with the most perfect harmony — an instance 
 of real Christianity, in my opinion, which 
 the angels of heaven might come down to 
 see. A lovely rural graveyard for the lord 
 and his tenants, and a secluded lake below 
 the garden, in which hundreds of wild ducks 
 swam and screamed unmolested, completed the 
 
 outward features of C Court. 
 
 There are noble houses in England, with 
 a door communicating from the dining-room 
 to the stables, that the master and his friends 
 may see their favourites, after dinner, with- 
 out exposure to the weather. In the place 
 of this rather bizarre luxury, the oak-panelled 
 and spacious dining-hall of C— is on a 
 
92 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 level with the organ loft of the chapel, and 
 when the cloth is removed, the large door 
 between is thrown open, and the noble in- 
 strument pours the rich and thrilling music 
 of vespers through the rooms. When the 
 service is concluded, and the lights on the 
 altar extinguished, the blind organist (an ac- 
 complished musician, and a tenant on the 
 estate,) continues his voluntaries in the dark 
 until the hall-door informs him of the retreat 
 of the company to the drawing-room. There 
 is not only refinement and luxury in this 
 beautiful arrangement, but food for the soul 
 and heart. 
 
 I chose my room from among the endless 
 vacant but equally luxurious chambers* of the 
 rambling old house ; my preference solely 
 directed by the portrait of a nun, one of the 
 family in ages gone by — a picture full of 
 melancholy beauty, which hung opposite the 
 window. The face was distinguished by all 
 that in England marks the gentlewoman of 
 
FAMILY PORTRAITS. 93 
 
 ancient and pure descent; and while it was 
 a woman with the more tender qualities of 
 her sex breathing through her features, it was 
 still a lofty and sainted sister, true to her 
 cross, and sincere in her vows and seclusion. 
 It was the work of a master, probably Van- 
 dyke, and a picture in which the most solitary 
 man would find company and communion. 
 On the other walls, and in most of the other 
 rooms and corridors, were distributed portraits 
 of the gentlemen and soldiers of the family, 
 most of them bearing some resemblance to 
 the nun, but differing, as brothers in those 
 wild times may be supposed to have differed, 
 from the gentle creatures of the same blood, 
 nursed in the privacy of peace. 
 
94 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 CHAP. VIII. 
 
 VISIT TO STRATFOED-ON-AVON. — HOUSE IN WHICH SHAK- 
 
 SPEARE WAS BORN. — ANNE HATHAWAY. CHURCH WHICH 
 
 CONTAINS SHAKSPEARE's MONUMENT. — HOSTESS OF THE 
 " RED HORSE," AND WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 One of the first visits in the neighbourhood 
 was naturally to Stratford-on-Avon. It lay 
 some ten miles south of us, and I drove down, 
 with the distinguished literary friend I have 
 before mentioned, in the carriage of our kind 
 host, securing, by the presence of his servants 
 and equipage, a degree of respect and atten- 
 tion which would not have been accorded to 
 us in our simple character of travellers. The 
 prim mistress of the " Red Horse," in her close 
 black bonnet and widow's weeds, received us 
 at the door with a deeper courtesy than usual. 
 
STRATFORD. 95 
 
 and a smile of less wintry formality; and pro- 
 posing to dine at the inn, and '* suck the 
 brain " of the hostess more at our leisure, we 
 started immediately for the house of the wool- 
 comber — the birthplace of Shakspeare. 
 
 Stratford should have been forbidden ground 
 to builders, masons, shopkeepers, and gene- 
 rally to all people of thrift and whitewash. 
 It is now rather a smart town, with gay cali- 
 coes, shawls of the last pattern, hardware, 
 and millinery, exhibited in all their splen- 
 dour down the widened and newer streets; 
 and though here and there remains a glorious 
 old gloomy and inconvenient abode, which 
 looks as if Shakspeare might have taken shelter 
 under its eaves, the gayer features of the town 
 have the best of it, and flaunt their gaudy 
 and unrespected newness in the very windows 
 of that immortal birthplace. I stepped into 
 a shop to inquire the way to it. 
 
 " Shiksper^s 'ouse, sir ? Yes, sir ! '* said a 
 dapper clerk, with his hair astonished into 
 
96 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 the most impossible directions by force of 
 brushing ; " keep to the right, sir ! Shiksper 
 lived in the white 'ouse, sir — the 'ouse, you 
 see beyond, with the windy swung up, sir." 
 
 A low, old-fashioned house, with a window 
 suspended on a hinge, newly whitewashed and 
 scrubbed, stood a little up the street. A sign 
 over the door informed us in an inflated para- 
 graph, that the immortal Will Shakspeare was 
 born under this roof, and that an old woman 
 within would show it to us for a consideration. 
 It had been used until very lately, I had been 
 told, for a butcher's shop. 
 
 A " garrulous old lady " met us at the 
 bottom of the narrow stair leading to the 
 second floor, and began — not to say any thing 
 of Shakspeare — ^ but to show us the names 
 of Byron, Moore, Rogers, &c., written among 
 thousands of others on the wall ! She had 
 worn out Shakspeare ! She had told that 
 story till she was tired of it ! or (what, perhaps, 
 is more probable,) most people who go there 
 
VISIT TO SHAKSPEARE's HOUSE. 97 
 
 fall to reading the names of the visiters so 
 industriously, that she has grown to think 
 some of Shakspeare's pilgrims greater than 
 Shakspeare. 
 
 " Was this old oaken chest here in the days 
 of Shakspeare, madam?'* I asked. 
 
 " Yes, sir," and here's the name of Byron 
 — here with a capital B. Here's a curiosity, 
 sir." 
 
 " And this small wooden box?'* 
 
 " Made of Shakspeare's mulberry, sir. I 
 had sich a time about that box, sir. Two 
 young gemmen were here the other day — just 
 run up, while the coach was changing horses, 
 to see the house. As soon as they were gone 
 I misses the box. Off scuds my son to the 
 ' Red Horse,' and there they sat on the top look- 
 ing as innocent as may be. * Stop the coach,' 
 says my son. ' What do you want?' says the 
 driver. < My mother's mulberry box ! — 
 Shakspeare's mulberry box ! — One of them 
 'ere young men's got it in his pocket.' And 
 
 VOL. I. H 
 
9iB LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 true enough, sir, one on 'em had the imperence 
 to take it out of his pocket, and flings it into 
 my son's face ; and you know the coach never 
 stops a minnit for nothing, sir, or he'd a' 
 smarted for it." 
 
 Spirit of Shakspeare ! dost thou not some- 
 times walk ahne in this humble chamber ! 
 Must one's inmost soul be fretted and frighted 
 always from its devotion by an abominable old 
 woman ? Why should not such lucrative occu- 
 pations be given in charity to the deaf and 
 dumb ? The pointing of a finger were enough 
 in such spots of earth ! 
 
 I sat down in despair to look over the book 
 of visiters, trusting that she would tire of my 
 inattention. As it was of no use to point 
 out names to those who would not look, how- 
 ever, she commenced a long story of an Ame- 
 rican, who had lately taken the whim to sleep 
 in Shakspeare's birth-chamber. She had 
 shaken him down a bed on the floor, and he 
 had passed the night there. It seemed to 
 
VISIT TO SHAKSPEARE*S HOUSE. 99 
 
 bother her to comprehend why two thirds of 
 her visiters should be Americans — a circum- 
 stance that was abundantly proved by the 
 books. 
 
 It was only when we were fairly in the 
 street that I began to realise that I had seen 
 one of the most glorious altars of memory — 
 that deathless Will Shakspeare, the mortal, 
 who was, perhaps (not to speak profanely), 
 next to his Maker, in the divine faculty of 
 creation, first saw the light through the low 
 lattice on which we turned back to look. 
 
 The single window of the room in which 
 Scott died at Abbotsford, and this in the 
 birth-chamber of Shakspeare, have seemed to 
 me almost marked with the touch of the fire 
 of those great souls — for I think we have an 
 instinct which tells us on the spot where 
 mighty spirits have come or gone, that they 
 came and went with the light of heaven. 
 
 We walked down the street to see the 
 house where Shakpeare lived on his return to 
 H 2 
 
100 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 Stratford, It stands at the corner of a lane, 
 not far from the church where he was buried, 
 and is a newish un-Shaksperian looking place 
 — no doubt, if it be indeed the same house, 
 most profanely and considerably altered. The 
 present proprietor or occupant of the house 
 or site took upon himself some time since 
 the odium of cutting down the famous mul- 
 berry tree planted by the poet's hand in the 
 garden. 
 
 I forgot to mention in the beginning of these 
 notes that two or three miles before coming to 
 Stratford we passed through Shottery, where 
 Anne Hathaway lived. A nephew of the ex- 
 cellent baronet whose guests we were occupies 
 the house. I looked up and down the green 
 lanes about it, and glanced my eye round upon 
 the hills over which the sun has continued to 
 set and the moon to ride in her love-inspiring 
 beauty ever since. There were doubtless out- 
 lines in the landscape which had been "followed 
 by the eye of Shakspeare when coming, a 
 
ANNE HATHAWAY. lOl 
 
 trembling lover, to Shottery — doubtless, teints 
 in the sky, crops on the fields, smoke-wreaths 
 from the old homesteads on the hill sides, 
 which are little altered now. How daringly 
 the imagination plucks back the past in such 
 places ! How boldly we ask of fancy and 
 probability the thousand questions we would 
 put, if we might, to the magic mirror of 
 Agrippa ? Did that great mortal love timidly, 
 like ourselves ? Was the passionate outpouring 
 of his heart simple, and suited to the humble 
 condition of Anne Hathaway, or was it the 
 first fiery coinage of Romeo and Othello? 
 Did she know the immortal honour and light 
 poured upon woman by the love of genius ? 
 Did she know how this common and oftenest 
 terrestrial passion becomes fused in the poet*s 
 bosom with celestial fire, and, in its wondrous 
 elevation and purity, ascends lambently and 
 musically to the very stars ? Did she coy it 
 with him? Was she a woman to him, as com- 
 moner mortals find woman — capricious, tender, 
 H 3 
 
102 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 cruel, intoxicating, cold — every thing by changes 
 impossible to calculate or foresee? Did he 
 walk home to Stratford, sometimes, despairing, 
 in perfect sick-heartedness, of her affection, 
 and was he recalled by a message or a lover's 
 instinct to find her weeping and passionately 
 repentant ? 
 
 How natural it is by such questions and 
 speculations to betray our innate desire to 
 bring the lofty spirits of our common mould 
 to our own inward level — to seek analogies 
 between our affections, passions, appetites, and 
 theirs — to wish they might have been no more 
 exalted, no more fervent, no more worthy of the 
 adorable love of woman than ourselves ! The 
 same temper that prompts the depreciation, the 
 envy, the hatred exercised toward the poet/ in 
 his lifetime, mingles, not inconsiderably, in 
 the researches so industriously prosecuted after 
 his death into his youth and history. To be 
 admired in this world, and much more to be 
 beloved for higher qualities than his fellow- 
 
103 
 
 men, insures to genius not only to be per- 
 secuted in life, but to be ferreted out with 
 all his frailties and imperfections from the 
 grave. 
 
 The church in which Shakspeare is buried 
 stands near the banks of the Avon, and is a 
 most picturesque and proper place of repose for 
 his ashes. An avenue of small trees and vines, 
 ingeniously over-laced, extends from the street 
 to the principal door, and the interior is broken 
 up into that confused and accidental medley 
 of tombs, pews, cross-lights, and pillars, for 
 which the old churches of England are remark- 
 able. The tomb and effigy of the great poet 
 lie in an inner chapel, and are as described in 
 every traveller's book. I will not take up 
 room with the repetition. 
 
 It gives one an odd feeling to see the tomb 
 of his wife and daughter beside him. One 
 does not realise before, that Shakspeare had 
 wife, children, kinsmen, like other men — that 
 there were those who had a right to lie in 
 H 4 
 
104 LOITERINGS OF TRAVl^L. 
 
 the same tomb; to whom he owed the 
 charities of life ; whom he may have benefited 
 or offended; who may have influenced ma- 
 terially his destiny, or he theirs; who were 
 the inheritors of his household goods, his ward- 
 robe, his books — people who looked on him — 
 on Shakspeare — as a landholder, a renter of 
 a pew, a townsman; a relative, in short, who 
 had claims upon them, not for the eternal 
 homage due to celestial inspiration, but for the 
 charity of shelter and bread had he been poor, 
 for kindness and ministry had he been sick, for 
 burial and the tears of natural affection when 
 he died. It is painful and embarrassing to 
 the mind to go to Stratford — to reconcile the 
 immortality and the incomprehensible power of 
 genius like Shakspeare's, with the space, tene- 
 ment, and circumstance of a man ! The poet 
 should be like the sea-bird, seen only on the 
 wing — his birth, his slumber, and his death 
 mysteries alike. 
 
 I had stipulated with the hostess that my 
 
ENGLISH INN DINNER. 105 
 
 baggage should be put into the chamber oc- 
 pied by Washington Irving. I was shown into 
 it to dress for dinner — a small neat room, a 
 perfect specimen, in short, of an English bed- 
 room, with snow-white curtains, a looking 
 glass the size of the face, a well polished grate 
 and poker, a well fitted carpet, and as much 
 light as heaven permits to the climate. 
 
 Our dinner for two was served in a neat 
 parlour on the same, floor — an English inn 
 dinner — simple, neat, and comfortable in the 
 sense of that word unknown in other countries. 
 There was just fire enough in the grate, just 
 enough for two in the different dishes, a servant 
 who was just enough in the room, and just 
 civil enough — in short, it was, like every thing 
 else in that country of adaptation and fitness, 
 just what was ordered and wanted, and no 
 more. 
 
 The evening turned out stormy, and the 
 rain pattered merrily against the windows. 
 The shutters were closed, the fire blazed up 
 
106 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 with new brightness, the well fitted wax lights 
 were set on the table; and when the dishes 
 were removed, we replaced the wine with 
 a tea tray, and sent for the hostess to give 
 us her company and a little gossip over our 
 cups. 
 
 Nothing could be more nicely understood 
 and defined than the manner of English hos- 
 tesses generally in such situations, and of 
 Mrs. Gardiner particularly in this. Respectful 
 without servility, perfectly sure of the propriety 
 of her own manner and mode of expression, 
 yet preserving in every look and word the 
 proper distinction between herself and her 
 guests, she insured from them that kindness 
 and ease of communication which would make 
 a long evening of social conversation pass, 
 not only without embarrassment on either 
 side, but with mutual pleasure and gratifi- 
 cation. 
 
 " I have brought up, mem," she said, pro- 
 ducing a well-polished poker from under her 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING. 107 
 
 black apron, before she took the chair set for 
 her at the table — "I have brought up a relic 
 for you to see, that no money would buy from 
 me." 
 
 She turned it over in my hand, and I read 
 on one of the flat sides at the bottom, " Geof- 
 frey crayon's sceptre." 
 
 " Do you remember Mr. Irving," asked my 
 friend, " or have you supposed, since reading 
 his sketch of Stratford-on- Avon, that the gentle- 
 man in number three might be the person?" 
 
 The hostess drew up her thin figure, and the 
 expression of a person about to compliment her- 
 self stole into the corners of her mouth. 
 
 " Why, you see, mem, I am very much in 
 the habit of observing my guests, and I think I 
 may say I knows a superior gentleman when I 
 sees him. If you remember, mem " (and she 
 took down from the mantlepiece a much worn 
 copy of the Sketch-Book), " Geoffrey Crayon 
 tells the circumstance of my stepping in when it 
 was getting late, and asking if he had rung. I 
 
108 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 knows it by that, and then the gentleman I 
 mean was an American, and I think, mem, be- 
 sides " {and she hesitated a little as if she was 
 about to advance an original and rather venture- 
 some opinion) — "I think I can see that gen- 
 tleman's likeness all through this book." 
 
 A truer remark or a more just criticism was 
 perhaps never made on the Sketch-Book. We 
 smiled, and Mrs. Gardiner proceeded : — 
 
 " I was in and out of the coffee-room the 
 night he arrived, mem, and I sees directly by his 
 modest ways and timid look that he was a gentle- 
 man, and not fit company for the other travel- 
 lers. They were all young men, sir, and business 
 travellers, and you know, mem, ignorance takes 
 the advantage of modest merits and after their 
 dinner they were very noisy and rude. So, I 
 says to Sarah, the chambermaid, says I, ' That 
 nice gentleman can't get near the fire, and you 
 go and light a fire in number three, and he shall 
 sit alone, and it shan't cost him nothing, for I 
 like the look on him.' Well, mem, he seemed 
 
HOSTESS OF THE '* RED HORSE." 109 
 
 pleased to be alone, and after his tea, he puts 
 his legs up over the grate, and there he sits with 
 the poker in his hand till ten o*clock. The 
 other travellers went to bed, and at last the 
 house was as still as midnight, all but a poke in 
 the grate now and then in number three, and 
 every time I heard it, I jumped up and lit a 
 bed- candle, for I was getting very sleepy, and 1 
 hoped he was getting up to ring for a light. 
 Well, mem, I nodded and nodded, and still no 
 ring at the bell. At last I says to Sarah, says 
 I, ' Go into number three, and upset something, 
 for I am sure that gentleman has fallen asleep.' — 
 « La, ma'am,* says Sarah, ' I don't dare.' — ' Well, 
 then,' says I, ' I'll go.' So I opens the door, and 
 I says, ' If you please, sir, did you ring ? ' little 
 thinking that question would ever be written 
 down in such a beautiful book, mem. He sat 
 with his feet on the fender poking the fire, and 
 a smile on his face, as if some pleasant thought 
 was in his mind. ' No, ma'am,' says he, ' I did 
 not.' I shuts the door, and sits down again. 
 
110 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 for I hadn't the heart to tell him that it was 
 late, for he ivas a gentleman not to speak rudely 
 to, mem. Well, it was past twelve o'clock, when 
 the bell did ring. ' There,' says I to Sarah, 
 * thank Heaven he has done thinking, and we 
 can go to bed.' So he walked up stairs with his 
 light, and the next morning he was up early and 
 off to the Shakspeare house, and he brings me 
 home a box of the mulberry tree, and asks me 
 if I thought it was genuine, and said it was for 
 his mother in America. And I loved him still 
 more for that, and I'm sure I prayed she might 
 live to see him return." 
 
 " I believe she did, Mrs. Gardiner ; but how 
 soon after did you set aside Xbe poker." 
 
 " Why, sir, you see there's a Mr. Vincent that 
 comes here sometimes, and he says to me one 
 day, ' So, Mrs. Gardiner, you're finely immor- 
 talised. Read that.' So the minnit I read it, 
 I remembered who it was, and all about it, and 
 I runs and gets the number three poker, and 
 locks it up safe and sound, and by and by I sends 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING. Ill 
 
 it to Brummagem, and has his name engraved 
 on it, and here you see it, sir — and I wouldn't 
 take no money for it." 
 
 I had never the honour to meet or know Mr. 
 Irving, and I evidently lost ground with the 
 hostess of the "Red Horse" for that misfortune. 
 I delighted her, however, with the account which 
 I had seen in a late newspaper, of his having 
 shot a buffalo in the prairies of the west ; and she 
 soon courtesied herself out, and left me to the 
 delightful society of the distinguished lady who 
 had accompanied me. Among all my many 
 loiter ings in many lands, I remember none more 
 intellectually pure and gratifying, than this at 
 Stratford-on-Avon. My sleep, in the little bed 
 consecrated by the slumbers of the immortal 
 Geoffrey, was sweet and light ; and I write my- 
 self his debtor for a large share of the pleasure 
 which genius like his lavishes on the world. 
 
112 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 
 CHAP. IX, 
 
 CHAKLECOTE. 
 
 Once more posting through Shottery and Strat- 
 ford-on-Avon, on the road to Kenilworth and 
 Warwick, I felt a pleasure in becoming an 
 habitue in Shakspeare's town — in being recog- 
 nised by the Stratford post-boys, known at the 
 Stratford Inn, and remembered at the toll-gates. 
 It is pleasant to be welcomed by name any 
 where; but at Stratford-on-Avon, it is a recog- 
 nition by those whose fathers or predecessors 
 were the companions of Shakspeare's frolics. 
 Every fellow in a slouched hat — every idler on 
 a tavern bench — every saunterer with a dog at 
 his heels on the highway — should be a deer- 
 
CHARLECOTE. 113 
 
 Stealer from Charlecote. You would almost 
 ask him, " Was Will Shakspeare with you last 
 night?" 
 
 The Lucys still live at Charlecote, immortal- 
 ised by a varlet poacher who was tried before 
 old Sir Thomas for stealing a buck. They have 
 drawn an apology from Walter Savage Landor 
 for making too free with the family history, 
 under cover of an imaginary account of the trial. 
 I thought, as we drove along in sight of the fine 
 old hall, with its broad park and majestic trees 
 — very much as it stood in the days of Sir 
 Thomas, I believe — that most probably the 
 descendants of the old justice look even now 
 upon Shakspeare more as an offender against 
 the game-laws than as a writer of immortal 
 plays. I venture to say, it would be bad tact 
 in a visiter to Charlecote to felicitate the family 
 on the honour of possessing a park in which 
 Shakspeare had stolen deer — to show more 
 interest in seeing the hall in which he was tried 
 than in the family portraits. 
 
 VOL. I. I 
 
114 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 On the road which I was travelling (from 
 Stratford to Charlecote) Shakspeare had been 
 dragged as a culprit. What were his feelings 
 before Sir Thomas ! He felt, doubtless, as every 
 possessor of the divine fire of genius must feel, 
 when brought rudely in contact with his fellow- 
 men, that he was too much their superior to be 
 angry. The humour in which he has drawn 
 Justice Shallow proves abundantly that he was 
 more amused than displeased with his own trial. 
 But was there no vexation at the moment ? A 
 reflection, it might be, from the estimate of his 
 position in the minds of those who were about 
 him — who looked on him simply as a stealer of 
 so much venison. Did he care for Anne Hatha- 
 way's opinion then ? 
 
 How little did Sir Thomas Lucy understand 
 the relation between judge and culprit on that 
 trial ! How little did he dream he was sitting 
 for his picture to the pestilent varlet at the 
 bar; that the deer-stealer could better afford 
 to forgive him than he the deer-stealer ! Ge- 
 
CHARLECOTE. 115 
 
 nius forgives, or rather forgets, all wrongs done 
 in ignorance of its immortal presence. Had 
 Ben Jonson made a wilful jest on a line in 
 his new play, it would have rankled longer 
 than fine and imprisonment for deer-stealing. 
 Those who crowd back and trample upon men 
 of genius in the common walk of life; who 
 cheat them, misrepresent them, take advantage 
 of their inattention or their generosity in 
 worldly matters, are sometimes surprised how 
 their injuries, if not themselves, are forgotten. 
 Old Adam Woodcock might as well have 
 held malice against Roland Graeme for the 
 stab in the stuffed doublet of the Abbot of 
 Misrule. 
 
 Yet, as I might have remarked in the para- 
 graph gone before, it is probably not easy to 
 put conscious and secret superiority entirely 
 between the mind and the opinions of those 
 around who think differently. It is one reason 
 why men of genius love more than the common 
 share of solitude — to recover self-respect In 
 I 2 
 
 k. 
 
116 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 the midst of the amusing travesty he was 
 drawing in his own mind of the grave scene 
 about him, Shakspeare possibly felt at moments 
 as like a detected culprit as he seemed to the 
 gamekeeper and the justice. It is a small 
 penalty to pay for the after worship of the 
 world ! The ragged and proverbially ill- 
 dressed peasants who are selected from the 
 whole campagna, as models to the sculptors of 
 Rome, care little what is thought of their good 
 looks in the Corso. The disguised propor- 
 tions beneath their rags will be admired in 
 deathless marble, when the noble who scarce 
 deigns their possessor a look will lie in for- 
 gotten dust under his stone scutcheon. 
 
WARWICK CASTLE* 117 
 
 CHAP. X. 
 
 WARWICK CASTLE. — PORTRAITS OF QUEEN ELIZABETH, 
 MACHIAVELLI, ESSEX, AND SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 
 
 Were it not for the " out-heroded" descrip- 
 tions in the Guide-Books, one might say a 
 great deal of Warwick Castle. It is the quality 
 of overdone or ill-expressed enthusiasm to 
 silence that which is more rational and real. 
 Warwick is, perhaps, the best kept of all the 
 famous old castles of England. It is a superb 
 and admirably appointed modern dwelling, in 
 the shell, and with all the means and appli- 
 ances preserved, of an ancient stronghold. It 
 is a curious union, too. My lady's maid and 
 my lord's valet coquet upon the bartizan, 
 where old Guy of Warwick stalked in his 
 coat of mail. The London cockney, from his 
 two days' watering at Leamington, stops his 
 I 3 
 
118 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 pony-chaise, hired at half-a-crown the hour, 
 and walks Mrs. Popkins over the old draw- 
 bridge as peacefully as if it were the threshold 
 of his shop in the Stran.d. Scot and French- 
 man saunter through fosse and tower, and no 
 ghost of the middle ages stalks forth, with closed 
 visor, to challenge these once natural foes. The 
 powdered butler yawns through an embrasure, 
 expecting " miladi,'* the countess of this fair 
 domain, who in one day's posting from London 
 seeks relief in Warwick Castle from the routs 
 and soirees of town. What would old Guy 
 say, or the "noble imp" whose effigy is among 
 the escutcheoned tombs of his fathers, if 
 they could rise through their marble slabs, 
 and be whirled over the drawbridge in a post- 
 chaise? How indignantly they would listen 
 to the reckoning within their own portcullis, 
 of the rates for chaise and postilion ! How 
 astonished they would be at the butler's bow, 
 and the proffered officiousness of the valet. 
 " Shall I draw off your Lordship's boots? 
 
PORTRAITS IN WARWICK CASTLE. 119 
 
 Which of these new vests from Staub will your 
 Lordship put on for dinner?" 
 
 Among the pictures at Warwick, I was in- 
 terested by a portrait of Queen Elizabeth (the 
 best of that sovereign I ever saw) ; one of 
 Machiavelli, one of Essex, and one of Sir 
 Philip Sidney. The delightful and gifted 
 woman whom I had accompanied to the castle 
 observed of the latter, that the hand alone ex- 
 pressed all his character. I had often made 
 the remark in real life, but I had never seen 
 an instance on painting where the likeness was 
 so true. No one could doubt, who knew Sir 
 Philip Sidney's character, that it was a literal 
 portrait of his hand. In our day, if you have 
 an artist for a friend, he makes use of you 
 while you call, to "sit for the hand" of the 
 portrait on his easel. Having a preference 
 for the society of artists myself, and frequent- 
 ing their studios habitually, I know of some 
 hundred and fifty unsuspecting gentlemen on 
 canvass, who have procured for posterity and 
 I 4 
 
120 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 their children portraits of their own heads and 
 dress-coats to be surej but of the hands of other 
 persons ! 
 
 The head of Machiavelli is, as is seen in the 
 marble in the gallery of Florence, small, 
 slender, and visibly "made to creep into cre- 
 vices/' The face is impassive and calm, and 
 the lips, though slight and almost feminine, 
 have an indefinable firmness and character. 
 Essex is the bold, plain, and blunt soldier 
 history makes him, and Elizabeth not un- 
 queenly, nor (to my thinking) of an uninter- 
 esting countenance; but, with all the artist's 
 flattery, ugly enough to be the abode of the 
 murderous envy that brought Mary to the 
 block* 
 
 We paid our five shillings for having been 
 walked through the marble hall of Castle 
 Warwick, and the dressing room of its modern 
 lady, and, gratified much more by our visit 
 than I have expressed in this brief description, 
 posted on to Keiiilworth. 
 
ROUTINE OF AMUSEMENT. 121 
 
 . CHAP. XI. 
 
 CLOSING SCENES OF THE SESSION AT 
 WASHINGTON. 
 
 ROUTINE OF AMUSEMENT. — THE HICKORY SULKY. THE 
 
 CONSTITUTION PHAETON. 
 
 The paradox of " the more one does, the 
 more one can do," is resolved in hfe at Wash- 
 ington with more success than I have seen it 
 elsewhere. The inexorable bell at the hotel 
 or boarding-house pronounces the irrevocable 
 and swift transit of breakfast to all sleepers 
 after eight. The elastic depths of the pillow 
 have scarcely yielded their last feather to the 
 pressure of the sleeper's head, before the 
 drowse is rudely shaken from his eyelids, and 
 with an alacrity which surprises himself, he 
 
122 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 finds his toilet achieved, his breakfast over, 
 and himself abroad to lounge in the sunshine 
 till the flag waves on the Capitol. He would 
 retire to his chamber to read during these two 
 or three vacant hours, but the one chair in 
 his pigeon-hole creaks, or has frno back or 
 bottom, or his anthracite fire is out, or is too 
 hot for the size of the room; or, in short, 
 Washington, from whatever cause, is a place 
 where none read except those who stand up 
 to a padlocked newspaper. The stars and 
 stripes, moving over the two wings of the 
 Capitol at eleven, announce that the two cham- 
 bers of legislation are in session, and the hard» 
 working idler makes his way to the senate or 
 the house. He lingers in the lobby awhile, 
 amused with the button-hole seizers plying the 
 unwilling ears of members with their claims, 
 or enters the library, where ladies turn over 
 prints, and enfilade, with their battery of 
 truant eyes, the comers-in at the green door. 
 He then gropes up the dark staircase to the 
 
ROUTINE OF AMUSEMENT. 123 
 
 senate gallery, and stifles in the pressure of a 
 hot gallery, forgetting, like listeners at a 
 crowded opera, that bodily discomfort will un- 
 link the finest harmonies of song or oratory. 
 Thence he descends to the rotunda to draw 
 breath and listen to the more practical, but 
 quite as earnest eloquence of candidates for 
 patents ; and passes, after awhile, to the crowded 
 gallery oT the house, where, by some acoustic 
 phenomena in the construction of the building, 
 the voices of the speakers come to his ear as 
 articulate as water from a narrow-necked bottle. 
 " Small blame to them ! " he thinks, however : 
 for behind the brexia columns are grouped all 
 the fair forms of Washington ; and in making 
 his bow to two hundred despotic lawgivers in 
 feathers and velvet, he is readily consoled that 
 the duller legislators who yield to their sway 
 are inaudible and forgotten. To this upper 
 house drop in, occasionally, the younger or 
 gayer members of the lower, bringing, if not 
 political scandal, at least some slight resumer 
 
e 
 
 124 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 of what Mr. Somebody is beating his desk 
 about below ; and thus, crammed with the day's 
 trifles or the day's business, and fatigued from 
 heel to eyelid, our idler goes home at five to 
 dress for dinner and the night's campaign, 
 having been up and on his legs for ten mortal 
 hours. 
 
 Cold water and a little silence in his own 
 room have rather refreshed him, and he dines 
 at six with a party of from fifteen to twenty- 
 five persons. He discusses the vital interests 
 of fourteen millions of people over a glass of 
 wine with the man whose vote, possibly, will 
 decide their destiny, and thence hurries to a 
 ball-room crammed like a perigord-pie, where 
 he pants, elbows, eats supper, and waltzes till 
 three in the morning. How human constitu- 
 tions stand this, and stand it daily and nightly, 
 from the beginning to the end of a session, 
 may well puzzle the philosophy of those who 
 rise and breakfast in comfortable leisure. 
 
 I joined the crowd on the twenty-second of 
 
ROUTINE OF AMUSEMENT. 125 
 
 February, to pay my respects to the President, 
 and see the cheese. Whatever veneration existed 
 in the minds of the people toward the former, 
 their curiosity in reference to the latter pre- 
 dominated, unquestionably. The circular jo«ve, 
 extending from the gate to the White House, 
 was thronged with citizens of all classes, those 
 coming away having each a small brown paper 
 parcel and a very strong smell ; those ad- 
 vancing manifesting, by shakings of the head 
 and frequent exclamations, that there may be 
 too much of a good thing, and particularly of 
 a cheese. The beautiful portico was thronged 
 with boys and coach-drivers, and the odour 
 strengthened with every step. We forced our 
 way over the threshold, and encountered an 
 atmosphere, to which the mephitic gas floating 
 over Avernus must be faint and innocuous. On 
 the side of the hall hung a rough likeness of 
 the General, emblazoned with eagle and stars, 
 forming a background to the huge tub in which 
 the cheese had been packed ; and in the centre 
 
126 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 of the vestibule stood the " fragrant gift," 
 surrounded with a dense crowd, who, without 
 crackers, or even " malt to their cheese," had, 
 in two hours, eaten and purveyed away fourteen 
 hundred pounds / The small segment reserved 
 for the President's use counted for nothing in 
 the abstractions. 
 
 Glad to compromise for a breath of cheese- 
 less air, we desisted from the struggle to obtain 
 a sight of the table, and mingled with the 
 crowd in the east room. Here were diplomates 
 in their gold coats and officers in uniform, 
 ladies of secretaries and other ladies, soldiers 
 on volunteer duty, and Indians in war-dress 
 and paint. Bonnets, feathers, uniforms, and 
 all — it was rather a gay assemblage. I remem- 
 bered the descriptions in travellers' books, and 
 looked out for millers and blacksmiths in their 
 working gear, and for rudeness and vulgarity 
 in all. The offer of a mammoth cheese to the 
 public was likely to attract to the presidential 
 mansion more of the lower class than would 
 
ROUTINE OF AMUSEMENT. 127 
 
 throng to a common levee. Great-coats there 
 were, and not a few of them, for the day was 
 raw, and unless they were hung on the palings 
 outside, they must remain on the owners' 
 shoulders ; but, with a single exception, (a 
 fellow with his coat torn down his back, possibly 
 in getting at the cheese,) I saw no man in a 
 dress that was not respectable and clean of its 
 kind, and abundantly fit for a tradesman out 
 of his shop. Those who were much pressed 
 by the crowd put their hats on ; but there was 
 a general air of decorum which would surprise 
 any one who had pinned his faith on travellers. 
 An intelligent Englishman, very much inclined 
 to take a disgust to mobocracy, expressed to 
 me great surprise at the decency and proper 
 behaviour of the people. The same experiment 
 in England, he thought, would result in as 
 pretty a riot as a paragragh-monger would 
 desire to see. 
 
 The President was down stairs in the oval 
 reception room, and, though his health would 
 
128 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 not permit him to stand, he sat in his chair 
 for two or three hours, and received his friends 
 with his usual bland and dignified courtesy. 
 By his side stood the lady of the mansion, 
 dressed in full court costume, and doing the 
 honours of her place with a grace and amenity 
 which every one felt, and which threw a bloom 
 over the hour. General Jackson retired, after 
 a while, to his chamber, and the president- 
 elect remained to support his relative, and 
 present to her the still thronging multitude, 
 and by four o'clock the guests were gone, and 
 the "banquet hail" was deserted. Not to 
 leave a wrong impression of the cheese, I 
 dined afterwards at a table to which the Pre- 
 sident had sent a piece of it, and found it of 
 excellent quality. It is like many other 
 things, more agreeable in small quantities. 
 
 Some eccentric mechanic has presented the 
 President with a sulky, made entirely (except 
 the wheels) of rough-cut hickory, with the 
 bark on. It looks rude enough, but has very 
 
THE CONSTITUTION PHAETON. I "29 
 
 much the everlasting look of old Hickory 
 himself; and if he could be seen driving a high- 
 stepping, bony old iron-grey steed in it, any 
 passer by would see that there was as much 
 fitness in the whole thing as in the chariot of 
 Bacchus and his reeling leopards. Some 
 curiously twisted and gnarled branches have 
 been very ingeniously turned into handles and 
 whip-box, and the vehicle is compact and 
 strong. The President has left it to Mr. Van 
 Buren. 
 
 In very strong contrast to the sulky, stood 
 close by, the elegant phaeton, made of the 
 wood of the old frigate Constitution. It has 
 a seat for two, with a driver's box, covered 
 with a superb hammercloth, and set up rather 
 high in front; the wheels and body are low, 
 and there are bars for baggage behind; alto- 
 gether, for lightness and elegance, it would 
 be a creditable turn out for Long Acre. 
 The material is excessively beautiful — a fine- 
 grained oak, polished to a very high degree, 
 
 VOL, I. K 
 
]30 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 with its colours delicately brought out by a 
 coat of varnish. The wheels are very slender 
 and light, but strong, and, with all its finish, 
 it looks a vehicle capable of a great deal of 
 service. A portrait of the Constitution, under 
 full sail, is painted on the panels. 
 
THE INAUGURATION. 131 
 
 CHAP. XII. 
 
 THE INAUGURATION. 
 
 While the votes for president were being 
 counted in the Senate, Mr. Clay remarked to 
 Mr. Van Buren, with courteous significance, — 
 
 " It is a cloudy day, sir !" 
 
 " The sun will shine on the fourth of March ! " 
 was the confident reply. 
 
 True to his augury, the sun shone out of 
 heaven without a cloud on the inaugural morn- 
 ing. The air was cold, but clear and life-giving ; 
 and the broad avenues of Washington for once 
 seemed not too large for the thronging popu- 
 lation. The crowds who had been pouring in 
 from every direction for several days before, 
 ransacking the town for -but a shelter from 
 K 2 
 
132 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 the night, were apparent on the spacious side- 
 walks ; and the old campaigners of the winter 
 seemed but a thin sprinkUng among the thou- 
 sands of new and strange faces. The sun shone 
 alike on the friends and opponents of the new 
 administration, and, as far as one might observe 
 in a walk to the Capitol, all were made cheerful 
 alike by its brightness. It was another augury, 
 perhaps, and may foretell a more extended fusion 
 under the light of the luminary new risen. In 
 a whole day passed in a crowd composed of all 
 classes and parties, I heard no remark that the 
 President would have been unwilhng to hear. 
 
 I was at the Capitol a half hour before the 
 procession arrived, and had leisure to study a 
 scene for which I was not at all prepared. The 
 noble staircase of the east front of the building 
 leaps over three arches, under one of which car- 
 riages pass to the basement door ; and, as you 
 approach from the gate, the eye cuts the ascent 
 at right angles, and the sky, broken by a small 
 spire at a short distance, is visible beneath. 
 
THE INAUGURATION. 133 
 
 Broad stairs occur at equal distances, with cor- 
 responding projections; and from the upper plat- 
 form rise the outer columns of the portico, with 
 ranges of columns three deep extending back to 
 the pilasters. I had often admired this front with 
 its many graceful columns, and its superb flight 
 of stairs, as one of the finest things I had seen 
 in the world. Like the effect of the assembled 
 population of Rome waiting to receive the bless- 
 ing before the front of St. Peter's, however, the 
 assembled crowd on the steps and at the base of 
 the Capitol heightened inconceivably the gran- 
 deur of the design. They were piled up like 
 the people on the temples of Babylon in one of 
 Martin's sublime pictures — every projection 
 covered, and an inexpressible soul and character 
 given by their presence to the architecture. 
 Boys climbed about the bases of the columns, 
 single figures stood on the posts of the surround- 
 ing railings in the boldest relief against the sky ; 
 and the whole thing was exactly what Paul 
 Veronese would have delighted to draw. I 
 K 3 
 
134 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 Stood near an acomplished artist who is commis- 
 sioned to fill one of the panels of the rotunda, 
 and I cannot but hope he may have chosen this 
 magnificent scene for his subject. 
 
 The republican procession, consisting of the 
 presidents and their families, escorted by a small 
 volunteer corps, arrived soon after twelve. The 
 General and Mr. Van Buren were in the Con- 
 stitution phaeton, drawn by four greys, and as 
 it entered the gate, they both rode uncovered. 
 Descending from the carriage at the foot of the 
 steps, a passage was made for them through the 
 dense crowd, and the tall white head of the old 
 chieftain, still uncovered, went steadily up 
 through the agitated mass, marked by its pecu- 
 liarity from all around it. 
 
 I was in the crowd thronging the opposite 
 side of the court, and lost sight of the principal 
 actors in this imposing drama, till they returned 
 from the Senate Chamber. A temporary plat- 
 form had been laid, and railed in on the broad 
 stair which supports the portico, and, for all 
 
THE INAUGURATION. 135 
 
 preparation to one of the most important and 
 most meaning and solemn ceremonies on earth 
 — for the inauguration of a chief magistrate 
 over a republic of fifteen millions of freemen — 
 the whole addition to the open air, and the pre- 
 sence of the people, was a volume of holy writ. 
 In comparing the impressive simplicity of this 
 consummation of the wishes of a mighty people, 
 with the tricked-out ceremonial, and hollow 
 show, which embarrasses a corresponding event 
 in other lands, it was impossible not to feel that 
 the moral sublime was here — that a transaction 
 so important, and of such extended and weighty 
 import, could borrow nothing from drapery or 
 decoration, and that the simple presence of the 
 sacred volume, consecrating the act, spoke more 
 thrillingly to the heart than the trumpets of a 
 thousand heralds. 
 
 The crowd of diplomatists and senators in the 
 rear of the columns made way, and the Ex- 
 President and Mr. Van Buren advanced with 
 uncovered heads. A murmur of feeling rose 
 K 4 
 
136 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 up from the moving mass below, and the infirm 
 old man, emerged from a sick chamber, which 
 his physician had thought it impossible he should 
 leave, bowed to the people, and, still uncovered 
 in the cold air, took his seat beneath the portico. 
 Mr. Van Buren then advanced, and with a voice 
 remarkably distinct, and with great dignity, read 
 his address to the people. The air was elastic, 
 and the da}^ still ; and it is supposed that near 
 twenty thousand persons heard him from his 
 elevated position distinctly. I stood myself on 
 the outer limit of the crowd ; and though I lost 
 occasionally a sentence from the interruption 
 near by, his words came clearly articulated to 
 my ear. 
 
 When the address was closed, the Chief Justice 
 advanced and administered the oath. As the 
 book touched the lips of the new President, there 
 arose a general shout, an expression of feeling 
 common enough in other countries, but drawn 
 with difficulty from an American assemblage. 
 The sons, and the immediate friends of Mr. 
 
THE INAUGURATION. 137 
 
 Van Buren, then closed about him ; the Ex- Pre- 
 sident, the Chief Justice, and others, gave him 
 the hand in congratulation, and the ceremony 
 was over. They descended the steps, the peo- 
 ple gave one more shout as they mounted the 
 Constitution carriage together, and the proces- 
 sion returned through the avenue, followed by 
 the whole population of Washington. 
 
 Mr. Van Buren held a levee immediately 
 afterwards, but I endeavoured in vain to get 
 my foot over the threshold. The cro\yd was 
 tremendous. At four, the diplomatic body had 
 an audience ; and in replying to the address of 
 Don Angel Calderon, the President astonished 
 the gold coats, by addressing them as the demo- 
 cratic corps. The representatives of the crowned 
 heads of Europe stood rather uneasily under 
 the epithet, till it was suggested that he possibly 
 meant to say diplomatic. 
 
138 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 CHAP. XIII. 
 
 WASHINGTON IN THE SESSION. 
 
 There is a sagacity acquired by travel on the 
 subject of forage and quarters, which is useful 
 in all other cities in the world where one may 
 happen to be a stranger, but which is as in- 
 applicable to the emergencies of an arrival in 
 Washington as waltzing in a shipwreck. It is 
 a capital whose peculiarities are as much sui 
 generis as those of Venice ; but as those who 
 have become wise by a season's experience 
 neither remain on the spot to give warning, 
 nor have recorded their experiences in a book, 
 the stranger is worse off in a coach in Washing- 
 ton than in a gondola in the " city of silver 
 streets." 
 
 It is well known, I believe, that when the 
 
WASHINGTON IN THE SESSION. 139 
 
 future city of Washington was about being 
 laid out, there were two large lot buyers or 
 land owners, living two miles apart, each of 
 whom was interested in having the public 
 buildings upon the centre of his own domain. 
 Like children quarrelling for a sugar horse, 
 the subject of dispute was pulled in two, and 
 one got the head, the other the tail. The 
 Capitol stands on a rising ground in solitary 
 grandeur, and the President's house and de- 
 partment buildings two miles off on another. 
 The city straddles and stretches between, doing 
 its best to look continuous and compact; but 
 the stranger soon sees that it is, after all, but 
 a " city of magnificent distances," built to 
 please nobody on earth but a hackney coach- 
 man. 
 
 The new-comer, when asked what hotel he 
 will drive to, thinks himself very safe if he 
 chooses that nearest the Capitol — supposing, 
 of course, that, as Washington is purely a 
 legislative metropolis, the most central part 
 
140 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 will naturally be near the scene of action. 
 He is accordingly set down at Gadsby's, and, 
 at a price that would startle an English noble- 
 man, he engages a pigeon-hole in the seventh 
 heaven of that boundless caravanserai. Even 
 at Gadsby's, however, he finds himself over 
 half a mile from the Capitol, and wonders, for 
 two or three days, why the deuce the hotel 
 was not built on some of the waste lots at the 
 foot of Capitol Hill, an improvement which 
 might have saved him, in rainy weather, at 
 least five dollars a day in hack-hire. Mean- 
 time the secretaries and foreign ministers leave 
 their cards, and the party and dinner-giving 
 people shower upon him the " small rain" of 
 pink billets. He sets apart the third or fourth 
 day to return their calls, and inquires the ad- 
 dresses of his friends, (which they never write 
 on their cards, because, if they did, it would 
 be no guide,) and is told it is impossible to 
 direct him, hut the hackney coachmen all know ! 
 He calls the least ferocious-looking of the most 
 
WASHINGTON IN THE SESSION. 141 
 
 bullying and ragged set of tatterdemalions he 
 has ever seen, and delivers himself and his 
 visiting list into his hands. The first thing 
 is a straight drive two miles away from the 
 Capitol. He passes the President's house, and 
 getting off the smooth road, begins to dive 
 and drag through cross lanes and open lots, 
 laid out according to no plan that his loose 
 ideas of geometry can comprehend, and finds 
 his friends living in houses that want nothing 
 of being in the country, but trees, garden, and 
 fences. It looks as if it had rained naked 
 brick' houses upon a waste plain, and each 
 occupant had made a street with reference to 
 his own front door. The much shaken and 
 more astonished victim consumes his morning 
 and his temper, and has made, by dinner-time, 
 but six out of forty calls, all imperatively due, 
 and all scattered far and wide with the same 
 loose and irreconcilable geography. 
 
 A fortnight's experience satisfies the stranger 
 that this same journey is worse at night than at 
 
142 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 morning; and that, as he leaves his dinner 
 which he pays for at home, runs the risk of his 
 neck, passes an hour or two on the road, and 
 ruins himself in hack-hire, it must be a very — 
 yes, a very pleasant dinner-party to compensate 
 him. Consequently, he either sends a " p. p. c." 
 to all his acquaintance, and lives incog., or, 
 which is a more sensible thing, moves up to the 
 other settlement, and abandons the Capitol. 
 
 Those who live on the other side of the 
 President's house are the secretaries, diploma- 
 tists, and a few wealthy citizens. There is no 
 hotel in this quarter, but there are one or two 
 boarding-houses, and (what we have been lucky 
 enough to secure ourselves) furnished lodgings, 
 in which you have every thing but board. Your 
 dinner is sent you from a French cook's near 
 by, and your servant gets your breakfast — a 
 plan which gives you the advantage of dining 
 at your own hour, choosing your own society, 
 and of having covers for a friend or two when- 
 ever it suits your humour, and at half an hour's 
 
WASHINGTON IN THE SESSION. 143 
 
 warning. There are very few of these lodgings 
 (which combine many other advantages over a 
 boarding house), but more of them would be a 
 good speculation to house owners, and I wish 
 it were suggested, not only here, but in every 
 city in our country. 
 
 Aside from society, the only amusement in 
 Washington is frequenting the Capitol. If one 
 has a great deal of patience and nothing better 
 to do, this is very well ; and it is very well at 
 any rate till one becomes acquainted with the 
 heads of the celebrated men in both the cham- 
 bers, with the noble architecture of the building, 
 and the routine of business. This done, it is 
 time wearily spent for a spectator. The finer 
 orators seldom speak, or seldom speak warmly, 
 the floor is oftenest occupied by prosing and 
 very sensible gentlemen, whose excellent ideas 
 enter the mind more agreeably by the eye than 
 the ear, or, in other words, are better delivered 
 by the newspapers, and there is a great deal of 
 formula and etiquettical sparring which is not 
 
144 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 even entertaining to the members, and which 
 consumes time " consumedly." Novi^ and then 
 the Senate adjourns when some one of the great 
 orators has taken the floor, and you are sure of 
 a great effort the next morning. If you are 
 there in time, and can sit, like Atlas with a 
 world on your back, you may enjoy a front seat 
 and hear oratory, unsurpassed, in my opinion, 
 in the world. 
 
 The society in Washington, take it all in all, 
 is by many degrees the best in the United 
 States. One is prepared, though I cannot 
 conceive why, for the contrary. We read in 
 books of travels, and we are told by every body, 
 that the society here is promiscuous, rough, 
 inelegant, and even barbarous. This is an 
 untrue representation, or it has very much 
 changed. 
 
 There is no city, probably no village in 
 America, where the female society is not re- 
 fined, cultivated, and elegant. With or without 
 regular advantages, woman attains the refine- 
 
WASHINGTON IN THE SESSION. 145 
 
 ments and the tact necessary to polite inter- 
 course. No traveller ever ventured to com- 
 plain of this part of American society. The 
 great deficiency is that of agreeable, highly- 
 cultivated men, vi^hose pursuits have been 
 elevated, and whose minds are pliable to the 
 grace and changing spirit of conversation. 
 Every man of talents possesses these qualities 
 naturally, and hence the great advantage which 
 Washington enjoys over every other city in our 
 country. None but a shallow observer, or a 
 malicious book-maker, would ever sneer at the 
 exteriors or talk of the ill-breeding of such men 
 as form, in great numbers, the agreeable so- 
 ciety of this place — for a man of great talents 
 never could be vulgar ; and there is a superiority 
 about most of these which raises them above 
 the petty standard which regulates the outside 
 of a coxcomb. Even compared with the dress 
 and address of men of similar positions and 
 pursuits in Europe, however, (members of the 
 
 VOL. I. L 
 
146 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 House of Commons, for example, or of the 
 Chamber of Deputies in France,) it is positively 
 the fact that the senators and representatives of 
 the United States have a decided advantage. 
 It is all very well for Mr. Hamilton, and other 
 scribblers whose books must be spiced to go 
 down, to ridicule a Washington soiree for En- 
 glish readers ; but if the observation of one who 
 has seen assemblies of legislators and diploma- 
 tists in all the countries of Europe may be 
 fairly placed against his and Mrs. Trollope's, 
 I may assert, upon my own authority, that they 
 will not find, out of May Fair in England, so 
 well dressed and dignified a body of men. I 
 have seen as yet no specimen of the rough 
 animal described by them and others as the 
 "Western member;" and if David Crockett 
 (whom I was never so fortunate as to see) was 
 of that description, the race must have died 
 with him. It is a thing I have learned since I 
 have been in Washington, to feel a wish that 
 foreigners should see Congress in session. We 
 
WASHINGTON IN THE SESSION. 147 
 
 are so humbugged, one way and another, by 
 travellers' lies. 
 
 I have heard the observation once or twice 
 from strangers since I have been here, and it 
 struck myself on my first arrival, that I had 
 never seen within the same limit before, so 
 many of what may be called " men of mark." 
 You will scarce meet a gentleman on the side- 
 walk in Washington who would not attract your 
 notice, seen elsewhere, as an individual possess- 
 ing in his eye or general features a certain 
 superiority. Never having seen most of the 
 celebrated speakers of the senate, I busied my- 
 self for the first day or two in examining the 
 faces that passed me in the street, in the hope 
 of knowing them by the outward stamp which, 
 we are apt to suppose, belongs to greatness. I 
 gave it up at last, simply from the great number 
 I met who might be (for all that features had 
 to do with it) the remarkable men I sought. 
 
 There is a very simple reason why a Con- 
 gress of the United States should be, as they 
 L 2 
 
148 LOITEKINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 certainly are, a much more marked body of 
 men than the English House of Commons or 
 Lords, or the Chamber of Peers or Deputies in 
 France. I refer to the mere means by which, 
 in either case, they come by their honours. In 
 England and France the lords and peers are 
 legislators by hereditary right, and the mem- 
 bers of the commons and deputies from the 
 possession of extensive property or family in- 
 fluence, or some other cause, arguing, in most 
 cases, no great personal talent in the indivi- 
 dual. They are legislators, but they are de- 
 voted very often much more heartily to other 
 pursuits — hunting or farming, racing, driving, 
 and similar out-of-door passions common to 
 English gentlemen and lords, or the corre- 
 sponding penchants of French peers and de- 
 puties. It is only the few great leaders and 
 orators who devote themselves to politics exclu- 
 sively. With us every one knows it is quite 
 the contrary. An American politician delivers 
 himself, body and soul, to his pursuit. He 
 
WASHINGTON IN THE SESSION. 149 
 
 never sleeps, eats, walks, or dreams, but in 
 subservience to his aim. He cannot afford to 
 have another passion of any kind till he has 
 reached the point of his ambition — and then 
 it has become a mordent necessity from habit. 
 The consequence is, that no man can be found 
 in an elevated sphere in our country, who has 
 not had occasion for more than ordinary talent 
 to arrive there. He inherited nothing of his 
 distinction, and has made himself. Such or- 
 deals leave their marks, and they who have 
 thought, and watched, and struggled, and con- 
 tended with the passions of men as an Ame- 
 rican politician inevitably must, cannot well 
 escape the traces of such work. It usually 
 elevates the character of the face — it always 
 strongly marks it. 
 
 A-propos of " men of mark ;" the dress circle 
 of the theatre, at Power's benefit, not long 
 since, was graced by three Indians in full cos- 
 tume — the chief of the Foxes, the chief of 
 the loways, and a celebrated warrior of the 
 L 3 
 
150 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 latter tribe, called the Sioux-killer. The Fox 
 is an old man of apparently fifty, with a heavy, 
 aquiline nose, a treacherous eye, sharp as an 
 eagle's, and a person rather small in propor- 
 tion to his head and features. He was dressed 
 in a bright scarlet blanket, and a crown of 
 feathers, with an eagle's plume, standing erect 
 on the top of his head, all dyed in the same 
 deep hue. His face was painted to match, 
 except his lips, which looked of a most ghastly 
 sallow, in contrast with his fiery nose, forehead, 
 and cheeks. His tomahawk lay in the hollow 
 of his arm, decked with feathers of the same 
 brilliant colour with the rest of his drapery. 
 Next him sat the Sioux-killer, in a dingy 
 blanket, with a crown made of a great quan- 
 tity of the feathers of a pea-hen, which fell 
 over his face, and concealed his features almost 
 entirely. He is very small, but is famous for 
 his personal feats, having, among other things, 
 walked one hundred and thirty miles in thirty 
 successive hours, and killed three Sioux (hence 
 
WASHINGTON IN THE SESSION. 151 
 
 his name) in one battle with that nation. He 
 is but twenty-three, but very compact and 
 wiry- looking, and his eye glowed through his 
 veil of hen-feathers like a coal of fire. 
 
 Next to the Sioux-killer sat " White Cloud," 
 the chief of the loways. His face was the 
 least warlike of the three, and expressed a 
 good nature and freedom from guile, remark- 
 able in an Indian. He is about twenty-four, 
 has very large features, and a fine, erect per- 
 son, with broad shoulders and chest. He was 
 painted less than the Fox chief, but of nearly 
 the same colour, and carried, in the hollow of 
 his arm, a small, glittering tomahawk, orna- 
 mented with blue feathers. His head was en- 
 circled by a kind of turban of silver-fringed 
 cloth, with some metallic pendants for ear- 
 rings, and his blanket, not particularly clean 
 or handsome, was partly open on the breast, 
 and disclosed a calico shirt, which was pro- 
 bably sold to him by a trader in the west. 
 They were all very attentive to the play, but 
 L 4 
 
152 tOlTERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 the Fox chief and White Cloud departed from 
 the traditionary dignity of Indians, and laughed 
 a great deal at some of Power's fun. The 
 Sioux-killer sat between them, as motionless 
 and grim as a marble knight on a tomb- 
 stone. 
 
 The next day I had the pleasure of dining 
 with Mr. Power, who lived at the same hotel 
 with the Indian delegation ; arid while at din- 
 ner he received a message from the loways, 
 expressing a wish to call on him. We were 
 sitting over our wine when White Cloud and 
 the Sioux-killer came in with their interpreter. 
 There were several gentlemen present, one of 
 them in the naval undress uniform, whose 
 face the Sioux-killer scrutinised very sharply. 
 They smiled in bowing to Power, but made 
 very grave inclinations to the rest of us. The 
 chief took his seat, assuming a very erect and 
 dignified attitude, which he preserved immove- 
 able during the interview; but the Sioux- 
 killer drew up his legs, resting them on the 
 
WASHINGTON IN THE SESSION. 153 
 
 round of the chair, and, with his head and 
 body bent forward, seemed to forget himself, 
 and give his undivided attention to the study 
 of Power and his naval friend. 
 
 Tumblers of champagne were given them, 
 which they drank with great relish, though 
 the Sioux- killer provoked a little ridicule from 
 White Cloud, by coughing as he swallowed it. 
 The interpreter was a half-breed between an 
 Indian and a negro, and a most intelligent 
 fellow. He had been reared in the loway 
 tribe, but had been among the whites a great 
 deal for the last few years, and had picked up 
 English very fairly. He told us that White 
 Cloud was the son of old White Cloud, who 
 died three years since, and that the young 
 chief had acquired entire command over the 
 tribe by his mildness and dignity. He had 
 paid the debts of the loways to the traders, 
 very much against the will of the tribe ; but he 
 commenced by declaring firmly that he would 
 be just, and had carried his point. He had 
 
154 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 come to Washington to receive a great deal of 
 money from the sale of the lands of the tribe, 
 and the distribution of it lay entirely in his 
 own power. Only one old warrior had ven- 
 tured to rise in council and object to his mea- 
 sures; but when White Cloud spoke, he had 
 dropped his head on his bosom and submitted. 
 This information and that which followed was 
 given in English, of which neither of the loways 
 understood a word. 
 
 Mr. Power expressed a surprise that the 
 Sioux-killer should have known him in his 
 citizen's dress. The interpreter translated it, 
 and the Indian said in answer, — 
 
 " The dress is very different, but when I 
 see a man's eye I know him again." 
 
 He then told Power that he wished, in the 
 theatre, to raise his war-cry and help him 
 fight the three bad-looking men who were his 
 enemies (referring to the three bailiffs in a 
 scene in Paddy Carey). Power asked what 
 part of the play he liked best. He said that 
 
WASHINGTON IN THE SESSION. 155 
 
 part where he seized the girl in his arms and 
 ran off the stage with her (at the close of an 
 Irish jig in the same play). 
 
 The interpreter informed us that this was 
 the first time the Sioux-killer had come among 
 the whites. He had disliked them always till 
 now, but he said he had seen enough to keep 
 him telling tales all the rest of his life. Power 
 offered them cigars, which they refused. We 
 expressed our surprise; and the Sioux-killer 
 said that the Indians who smoked gave out 
 soonest in the chase ; and White Cloud added, 
 very gravely, that the young women of his 
 tribe did not like the breaths of the smokers. In 
 answer to an inquiry I made about the com- 
 parative size of Indians and white men, the 
 chief said that the old men of the whites 
 were larger than old Indians, but the young 
 whites were not so tall and straight as the 
 youths of his tribe. We were struck with the 
 smallness of the chiefs hands and feet; but he 
 seemed very much mortified when the inter- 
 
156 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 preter translated our remark to him. He 
 turned the little sallow fingers over and over, 
 and said that old White Cloud, his father, who 
 had been a great warrior, had small hands like 
 his. The young chief, we were told by the 
 interpreter, has never yet been in an engage- 
 ment, and is always spared from the heavier 
 fatigues undergone by the rest of the tribe. 
 
 They showed great good nature in allowing 
 us to look at their ornaments, tomahawks, &c. 
 White Cloud wore a collar of bear's claws, 
 which marked him for a chief; and the Sioux- 
 killer carried a great cluster of brass bells on 
 the end of his tomahawk, of which he explained 
 the use very energetically. It was to shake 
 when he stood over his fallen enemy in the 
 fight, to let the tribe know he had killed him. 
 After another tumbler of champagne each, they 
 rose to take their leave, and White Cloud gave 
 us his hand gently, with a friendly nod. We 
 were all amused, however, with the Sioux- 
 killer's more characteristic adieu. He looked 
 
WASHINGTON IN THE SESSION. 157 
 
 US in the eye like a hawk, and gave us each a 
 grip of his iron fist, that made the blood tingle 
 under our nails. He would be an awkward 
 customer in a fight, or his fixed lip and keen 
 eye very much belie him. 
 
158 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 CHAP. XIV. 
 
 WASHINGTON AFTER THE SESSION. 
 
 The leaf that is lodged in some sunny dell, 
 after drifting on the whirlwind — the Indian's 
 canoe, after it has shot the rapids — the drop 
 of water that has struggled out from the 
 Phlegethon of Niagara, and sleeps on the 
 tranquil bosom of Ontario — are faint images 
 of contrast and repose, compared with a Wash- 
 ingtonian after the session. I have read some- 
 where, in an Oriental tale, that a lover, having 
 agreed to share his life with his dying mistress, 
 took her place in the grave six months in the 
 year. In Bagdad it might have been a sacri- 
 fice. In Washington I could conceive such an 
 arrangement to make very little difference. 
 
WASHINGTON AFTER THE SESSION. 159 
 
 Nothing is done leisurely in our country; 
 and, by the haste with which every body rushes 
 to the railroad the morning after the rising of 
 Congress, you would fancy that the cars, like 
 Cinderella's coach, would be changed into 
 pumpkins at the stroke of twelve. The town 
 was evacuated in a day. On the fifth of March 
 a placard was sent back by the innkeepers at 
 Baltimore, declaring that there was not so 
 much as a garret to be had in that city, and 
 imploring gentlemen and ladies to remain 
 quietly at Washington for twenty-four hours. 
 The railroad engine, twice a day, tugged and 
 puffed away through the hills, drawing after it, 
 on its sinuous course, a train of brick-coloured 
 cars, that resembled the fabulous red dragon 
 trailing its slimy length through the valley of 
 Crete. The gentlemen who sit by the fire 
 in the bar-room at Gadsby's, like Theodore 
 Hook's secretary, who could hear his master 
 write " Yours faithfully " in the next room, 
 learned to distinguish " Received payment" 
 
160 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 from " Sundries," by listening to the cease- 
 less scratch of the bookkeeper. The ticket- 
 office at the depot was a scene of struggle and 
 confusion between those who wanted places; 
 while, looking their last on these vanishing 
 paymasters, stood hundreds of tatterdemalions, 
 white, yellow, and black, with their hands in 
 their pockets, and (if sincere regret at their 
 departure could have wrung it forth) a tear 
 in their eye. The bell rang, and the six 
 hundred departures flocked to their places — 
 young ladies, with long faces, leaving the 
 delights of Washington for the dull repose of 
 the country — their lovers, with longer faces, 
 trying, in vain, to solve the X quantity ex- 
 pressed by the aforesaid " Sundries" in their 
 bill — and members of Congress with long 
 faces, too — for not one in twenty has "made 
 the impression " he expected ; and he is moral- 
 ising on the decline of the taste for eloquence, 
 and on the want of "golden opportunity" for 
 the display of indignant virtue ! 
 
WASHINGTON AFTER THE SESSION. 161 
 
 Nothing but an army, or such a concourse 
 of people as collects to witness an inauguration, 
 could ever make Washington look populous. 
 But when Congress, and its train of ten thou- 
 sand casual visiters are gone, and only the 
 official and indigenous inhabitants remain, Bal- 
 bec, or Palmyra, with a dozen Arabs scattered 
 among its ruins, has less a look of desolation. 
 The few stragglers in the streets add to its 
 loneliness — producing exactly the effect some- 
 times given to a woodland solitude by the pre- 
 sence of a single bird. The vast streets seem 
 grown vaster and more disproportionate — the 
 houses seem straggling to greater distances — 
 the walk from the President's house to the 
 Capitol seems twice as long — and new faces 
 are seen here and there, at the doors and 
 windows — for cooks and innkeepers that had 
 never time to lounge, lounge now, and their 
 families take quiet possession of the unrentea 
 front parlour. He who would be reminded 
 of his departed friends should walk down on 
 
 VOL. I. M 
 
162 LOITERINfiS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 the Avenue. The cai^et, associated with so 
 many pleasant recollections — which has been 
 pressed by the dainty feet of wits and beauties 
 — to tread on which was a privilege and a 
 delight — is displayed on a heap of old fur- 
 niture, and while its sacred defects are rudely 
 scanned by the curious, is knocked down, with 
 all its memories, under the hammer of the 
 auctioneer. Tables, chairs, ottomans — all 
 linked with the same glowing recollections — 
 go for most unworthy prices ; and while, hu- 
 miliated with the sight, you wonder at the 
 artificial value given to things by their pos- 
 sessors, you begin to wonder whether your 
 friends themselves, subjected to the same 
 searching valuation, would not be depreciated 
 too ! Ten to one, if their characters were 
 displayed like their carpets, there would come 
 to light defects as unsuspected ! 
 
 The person to whom this desolation is the 
 " unkindest cut" is the hackney- coachman. 
 " His vocation " is emphatically gone ! Gone 
 
WASHINGTON AFTER THE SESSION. 163 
 
 is the dollar made every successive half-hour ! 
 Gone is the pleasant sum in compound ad- 
 dition, done "in the head," while waiting 
 at the doors of the public offices ! Gone are 
 the short, but profitable, trips to the theatre ! 
 Gone the four or five families, all taken the 
 same evening to parties, and each paying the 
 item of " carriage from nine till twelve ! " 
 Gone the absorbed politician, who would rather 
 give the five-dollar bill than wait for his 
 change; the lady who sends the driver to be 
 paid at " the bar ; " the uplifted fingers, hither 
 and thither, which embarrass his choice of a 
 fare — gone, all ! The chop-fallen coachy drives 
 to the stand in the morning and drives home 
 at noon ; he creeps up to Fuller's at a snail- 
 pace, and, in very mockery of hope, asks the 
 homeward-bound clerk from the department 
 if he wants a coach! Night comes on, and 
 his horses begin to believe in the millen- 
 nium — and the cobwebs are wove over his 
 whip-socket. 
 
 M 2 
 
164 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 These changes, however, affect not un- 
 pleasantly the diplomatic and official colony 
 extending westward from the President's. The 
 inhabitants of this thin-sprinkled settlement are 
 away from the great thoroughfare, and do not 
 miss its crowds. The cessation of parties is to 
 them a relief from night-journeys, colds, card- 
 leavings, and much wear and tear of carriage- 
 horses. They live now in dressing-gowns and 
 slippers, read the reviews and the French 
 papers, get their dinners comfortably from the 
 restaurateurs^ and thank Heaven that the Capi- 
 tol is locked up. The attaches grow fat, and 
 the despatches grow thin. 
 
 There are several reasons why Washington, 
 till the month of May, spite of all the draw- 
 backs in the picture delineated above, is a more 
 agreeable residence than the northern cities. 
 In the first place, its climate is at least a month 
 earlier than that of New York, and, in the 
 spring, is delightful. The trees are at this 
 moment (the last week in March) bursting into 
 
COUNTRY ABOUT WASHINGTON. 165 
 
 buds ; open carriages are every where in use ; 
 walking in the sun is oppressive; and for the 
 last fortnight, this has been a fair chronicle of 
 the weather. Boston and New York have been 
 corroded with east winds, meantime, and even 
 so near as Baltimore, they are still wrapped in 
 cloaks and shawls. To those who, in reckoning 
 the comforts of life, agree with me in making 
 climate stand for nine tenths, this is powerful 
 attraction. 
 
 Then the country about Washington, the 
 drives and rides, are among the most lovely in 
 the world. The banks of Rock Creek are a 
 little wilderness of beauty. More bright waters, 
 more secluded bridle-paths, more sunny and 
 sheltered hill-sides, or finer mingling of rock, 
 hill, and valley, I never rode among. Within a 
 half hour's gallop, you have a sylvan retreat of 
 every variety of beauty, and in almost any di- 
 rection ; and from this you come home (and this 
 is not the case with most sylvan rides) to an 
 excellent French dinner and agreeable society, 
 M 3 
 
166 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 if you like it. You have all the seclusion of a 
 rural town, and none of its petty politics and 
 scandal — all the means and appliances of a 
 large metropolis, and none of its exactions and 
 limitations. That which makes the charm of a 
 city, and that for which we seek the country, are 
 equally here, and the penalties of both are re- 
 moved. 
 
 Until the reflux of population from the 
 Rocky Mountains, I suppose Washington will 
 never be a metropolis of residence. But if it 
 were an object with the inhabitants to make it 
 more so, the advantages I have just enumerated, 
 and a little outlay of capital and enterprise, 
 would certainly, in some degree, effect it. Peo- 
 ple especially who come from Europe, or have 
 been accustomed to foreign modes of living, 
 would be glad to live near a society composed 
 of such attractive materials as the official and 
 diplomatic persons at the seat of government. 
 That which keeps them away is, principally, 
 want of accommodation, and, in a less degree. 
 
MODE OF LIVING IN WASHINGTON. 167 
 
 it is want of comfortable accommodation in the 
 Other cities which drives them back to Europe. 
 In Washington you must either live at an hotel 
 or a boarding-house. In either case, the mode 
 of life is only endurable for the shortest possible 
 period, and the moment Congress rises, every 
 suiFerer in these detestable places is off for 
 relief. The hotels are crowded to suffocation ; 
 there is an utter want of privacy in the arrange- 
 ment of the suites of apartments ; the service is 
 ill ordered, and the prices out of all sense or 
 reason. You pay for that which you have not, 
 and you cannot get by paying for it that which 
 you want. 
 
 The boarding-house system is worse yet. To 
 possess but one room in privacy, and that open- 
 ing on a common passage; to be obliged to 
 come to meals at certain hours, with chance 
 table companions, and no place for a friend, and 
 to live entirely in your bedroom or in a public 
 parlour, may truly be called as abominable a 
 routine as a gentleman could well suffer. Yet 
 M 4 
 
168 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 the great majority of those who come to Wash- 
 ington are in one or the other of these two 
 categories. 
 
 The use of lodgings for strangers or transient 
 residents in a city does not, after all the de- 
 scriptions in books, seem at all understood in 
 our country. This is what Washington wants, 
 but it is what every city in the country wants 
 generally. Let us describe it as if it was never 
 before heard of, and perhaps some enlightened 
 speculator may advance us half a century in 
 some of the cities, by creating this luxury. 
 
 Lodgings of the ordinary kind in Europe 
 generally consist of the apartments on one floor. 
 The house, we will suppose, consists of three 
 stories above the basement, and each floor con- 
 tains a parlour, bed- room, and dressing-room, 
 with a small antechamber. (This arrangement 
 of rooms varies, of course, and a larger family 
 occupies two floors.) These three suites of 
 apartments are neatly furnished ; bed-clothes. 
 
LODGINGS. 169 
 
 table-linen, and plate, if required, are found by 
 the proprietor, and in the basement story usually 
 lives a man and his wife, who attend to the 
 service of the lodgers ; i. e, bring water, answer 
 the door-bell, take in letters, keep the rooms in 
 order, make the fires, and, if it is wished, do 
 any little cookery in case of sickness. These 
 people are paid by the proprietor, but receive a 
 fee for extra service, and a small gratuity, at 
 departure, from the lodger. It should be added 
 to this, that it is not infra, dig, to live in the 
 second or third story. 
 
 In connexion with lodgings, there must be of 
 course a cook or restaurateur within a quarter 
 of a mile. The stranger agrees with him for 
 his dinner, to consist of so many dishes, and to 
 be sent to him at a certain hour. He gives 
 notice in the morning if he dines out, buys his 
 own wine of the wine-merchant, and thus saves 
 two heavy items of overcharge in the hotel or 
 boarding-house. His own servant makes his tea 
 
170 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 or coffee (and for this purpose has access to the 
 fire in the basement), and does all personal 
 service, such as brushing clothes, waiting at 
 table, going on errands, &c. &c. The stranger 
 comes in, in short, at a moment's warning, brings 
 nothing but his servant and baggage, and finds 
 himself in five minutes at home, his apartments 
 private, and every comfort and convenience as 
 completely about him as if he had lived there 
 for years. 
 
 At from ten to fourteen dollars a week, such 
 apartments would pay the proprietor hand- 
 somely, and afford a reasonable luxury to the 
 lodger. A cook would make a good thing of 
 sending in a plain dinner for a dollar a head 
 (or more if the dinner were more expensive), 
 and at this rate, a family of two or more persons 
 might have a hundred times the comfort now 
 enjoyed at hotels, at certainly half the cost. 
 
 We have been seduced into a very unsenti- 
 mental chapter of " ways and means," but we 
 
"ways and means." 171 
 
 trust the suggestions, though containing nothing 
 new, may not be altogether without use. The 
 want of some such thing as we have recom- 
 mended is daily and hourly felt and complained 
 of. 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD'S ROMANCE. 
 
LADY EAVELGOLD'S ROMANCE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " What would it pleasure me to have my throat cut 
 With diamonds ? or to be smothered quick 
 With cassia, or be shot to death with pearls ? " 
 
 Duchess ofMalfy. 
 
 " I've been i'the Indies twice, and seen strange things — 
 But two honest women ! — Owe, I read of once ! " 
 
 Rule a Wife. 
 
 It was what is called by people on the Conti- 
 nent a " London day." A thin, grey mist driz- 
 zled down through the smoke which darkened 
 the long cavern of Fleet Street ; the sidewalks 
 were slippery and clammy ; the drays slid from 
 side to side on the greasy pavement, creating 
 a perpetual clamour among the lighter carriages 
 
176 LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 
 
 with which they came in contact; the porters 
 wondered that " gemmen " would carry their 
 umbrellas up when there was no rain, and the 
 gentlemen wondered that porters should be 
 permitted on the sidewalks; there were pas- 
 sengers in box-coats though it was the first of 
 May, and beggars with bare breasts though it 
 was chilly as November ; the boys were looking 
 wistfully into the hosier's windows who were 
 generally at the pastry-cook's, and there were 
 persons who wished to know the time, trying 
 in vain to see the dial of St. Paul's through 
 the gamboge atmosphere. 
 
 It was twelve o'clock, and a plain chariot, 
 with a simple crest on the panels, slowly picked 
 its way through the choked and disputed 
 thoroughfare east of Temple Bar. The smart 
 glazed hat of the coachman, the well-fitted 
 drab great-coat and gaiters of the footman, and 
 the sort of half-submissive, half-contemptuous 
 look on both their faces, (implying that they 
 were bound to drive to the devil if it were 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE, 177 
 
 miladfs orders, but that the rabble of Fleet 
 Street was a leetle too vulgar for their contact,) 
 expressed very plainly that the lady within was 
 a denizen of a more privileged quarter, but had 
 chosen a rainy day for some compulsory visit 
 to " the city." 
 
 At the rate of perhaps a mile an hour, the 
 well-groomed night horses (a pair of smart, 
 hardy, twelve-mile cobs, all bottom but little 
 style, kept for night- work and forced journeys,) 
 had threaded the tortuous entrails of London, 
 and had arrived at the arch of a dark court in 
 Throgmorton Street. The coachman put his 
 wheels snug against the edge of the sidewalk, 
 to avoid being crushed by the passing drays, 
 and settled his many-caped benjamin about 
 him; while the footman spread his umbrella, 
 and making a balustrade of his arm for his 
 mistress's assistance, a closely-veiled lady de- 
 scended and disappeared up the wet and ill- 
 paved avenue. 
 
 The green-baize door of Firkins and Co. 
 
 VOL. I. N 
 
178 LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 
 
 opened on its silent hinges and admitted the 
 mysterious visiter, who, inquiring of the nearest 
 clerk if the junior partner were in, was shown 
 to a small inner room containing a desk, two 
 chairs, a coal fire, and a young gentleman. 
 The last article of furniture rose on the lady's 
 entrance ; and as she threw off her veil he made 
 a low bow, with the air of a gentleman who is 
 neither surprised nor embarrassed, and pushing 
 aside the door-check, they were left alone. 
 
 There was that forced complaisance in the 
 lady's manner on her first entrance, which 
 produced the slightest possible elevation in a 
 very scornful lip owned by the junior partner, 
 but the lady was only forty-five, high-bom, and 
 very handsome ; and as she looked at the fine 
 specimen of nature's nobility, who met her 
 with a look as proud and yet as gentle as her 
 own, the smoke of Fleet Street passed away 
 from her memory, and she became natural and 
 even gracious. The effect upon the junior 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 179 
 
 partner was simply that of removing from his 
 breast the shade of her first impression. 
 
 " I have brought you," said his visiter, draw- 
 ing a card from her reticle, " an invitation to 
 the Duchess of Hautaigle's ball. She sent me 
 half-a-dozen to fill up for what she calls ' orna- 
 mentals ' — and I am sure I shall scarce find 
 another who comes so decidedly under her 
 Grace's category." 
 
 The fair speaker had delivered this pretty 
 speech in the sweetest and best-bred tone of 
 St. James's, looking the while at the toe of the 
 small hrodequin which she held up to the fire 
 — perhaps thinking only of drying it. As she 
 concluded her sentence, she turned to her com- 
 panion for an answer, and was surprised at the 
 impassive politeness of his bow of acknowledg- 
 ment. 
 
 " I regret that I shall not be able to avail 
 myself of your Ladyship's kindness," said the 
 junior partner, in the same well-enunciated 
 tone of courtesy. 
 
 N 2 
 
180 LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 
 
 " Then," replied the lady with a smile, 
 " Lord Augustus Fitz-Moi, who looks at him- 
 self all dinner-time in a spoon, will be the 
 Apollo of the hour. — What a pity such a 
 handsome creature should be so vain ! By the 
 way, Mr. Firkins, you live without a looking- 
 glass, I see." 
 
 " Your Ladyship reminds me that this is 
 merely a place of business. May I ask at once 
 what errand has procured me the honour of a 
 visit on so unpleasant a day ? " 
 
 A slight flush brightened the cheek and 
 forehead of the beautiful woman, as she com- 
 pressed her lips, and forced herself to say, 
 with affected ease, " The want of five hundred 
 pounds." 
 
 The junior partner paused an instant while 
 the lady tapped with her boot upon the fender 
 in ill-dissembled anxiety, and then, turning to 
 his desk, he filled up the check without remark, 
 presented it, and took his hat to wait on her to 
 her carriage. A gleam of relief and pleasure 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 181 
 
 shot over her countenance as she closed her 
 small jewelled hand over it, followed imme- 
 diately by a look of embarrassed inquiry into 
 the face of the unquestioning banker. 
 " I am in your debt already." 
 " Thirty thousand pounds, madam ! " 
 " And for this you think the securities on 
 the estate of Rockland — — " 
 
 " Are worth nothing, madam ! But it rains. 
 I regret that your Ladyship's carriage cannot 
 come to the door. In the old-fashioned days 
 of sedan-chairs, the dark courts of Lothbury 
 must have been more attractive. By the way, 
 talking of Lothbury, there is Lady Roseberry's 
 fete champ^tre next week. If you should chance 
 
 to have a spare card " 
 
 " Twenty, if you like — I am too happy — 
 
 really, Mr. Firkins " 
 
 " It's on the fifteenth : I shall have the 
 honour of seeing your Ladyship there ! Good 
 morning ! — Home, coachman !" 
 N 3 
 
182 LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 
 
 " Does this man love me ? " was Lady 
 Ravelgold's first thought, as she sank back in 
 her returning chariot. Yet no ! he was even 
 rude in his haste to be rid of me. And I 
 would willingly have staid, too, for there is 
 something about him of a mark that I like. 
 Ay, and he must have seen it — a lighter en- 
 couragement has been interpreted more readily. 
 Five hundred pounds I Really five hundred 
 pounds ! And thirty thousand at the back of 
 it! What does he mean? Heavens, if he 
 should be deeper than I thought ! If he should 
 wish to involve me first ! " 
 
 And spite of the horror with which the 
 thought was met in the mind of Lady Ravel- 
 gold, the blush over her forehead died away 
 into a half smile and a brighter tint on her lips ; 
 and as the carriage wound slowly on through 
 the confused press of Fleet Street and the 
 Strand, the image of the handsome and haughty 
 young banker shut her eyes from all sounds 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 183 
 
 without, and she was at her own door in 
 Grosvenor Square before she had changed 
 position or wandered for half a moment from 
 the subject of those busy dreams. 
 
 N 4 
 
184 LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 
 
 CHAP. II. 
 
 The morning of the fifteenth of May seemed 
 to have been appointed by all the flowers as a 
 jubilee of perfume and bloom. The birds had 
 been invited, and sang in the summer with a 
 welcome as full-throated as a prima donna sing- 
 ing down the tenor in a duet ; the most laggard 
 buds turned out their hearts to the sunshine, 
 and promised leaves on the morrow, and that 
 portion of London that had been invited to 
 Lady Roseberry's fite thought it a very fine 
 day ! That portion which was not, wondered 
 how people would go sweltering about in such a 
 glare for a cold dinner ! 
 
 At about half-past two, a very elegant dark 
 green cab without a crest, and witli a servant 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 185 
 
 in whose slight figure and plain blue livery there 
 was not a fault, whirled out at the gate of the 
 Regent's Park, and took its way up the well- 
 watered road leading to Hampstead. The 
 gentlemen whom it passed or met turned to 
 admire the performance of the dark grey horse, 
 and the ladies looked after the cab as if they 
 could see the handsome occupant once more 
 through its leather back. Whether by con- 
 spiracy among the coachmakers, or by an aris- 
 tocracy of taste, the degree of elegance in a 
 turn-out attained by the cab just described is 
 usually confined to the acquaintances of Lady 
 
 ; that list being understood to enumerate 
 
 all " the nice young men " of the West end. 
 
 The junior Firkins seemed an exception to 
 this exclusive rule. No " nice man " could 
 come from Lothbury, and he did not visit Lady 
 
 ; but his horse was faultless; and when he 
 
 turned into the gate of Rose-Eden, the police- 
 man at the porter's lodge, though he did not 
 know himj thought it unnecessary to ask for his 
 
186 LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 
 
 name. Away he spattered up the hilly avenue ; 
 and giving the reins to his groom at the end of 
 a green arbour leading to the reception-lawn, 
 he walked in and made his bow to Lady Rose- 
 berry, who remarked, " How very handsome ! 
 Who can he be? " and the junior partner walked 
 on and disappeared down an avenue of labur- 
 nums. 
 
 Ah; but Rose-Eden looked a paradise that 
 day I Hundreds had passed across the close- 
 shaven lawn, with a bow to the lady-mistress of 
 this fair abode. Yet the grounds were still 
 private enough for Milton's pair, so lost were 
 they in the green labyrinths of hill and dale. 
 Some had descended through heavily-shaded 
 paths to a fancy dairy, built over a fountain in 
 the bottom of a cool dell ; and here, amid her 
 milk-pans of old and costly china, the prettiest 
 maid in the country round pattered about upon 
 a floor of Dutch tiles, and served her visiters 
 with creams and ices, already, as it were, adapted 
 to fashionable comprehension. Some had strayed 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 187 
 
 to the ornamental cottages in the skirts of the 
 flower-garden — poetical abodes, built from a 
 picturesque drawing, with imitation roughness 
 thatch, lattice-window, and low paling, all com- 
 plete ; and inhabited by superannuated depen- 
 dents of Lord Roseberry, whose only duties were 
 to look like patriarchs, and give tea and new 
 cream-cheese to visiters on fete-days. Some 
 had gone to see the silver and gold pheasants 
 in their wire-houses — stately aristocrats of the 
 game tribe, who carry their finely-pencilled 
 feathers like " Marmalet Madarus," strutting in 
 hoop and farthingale. Some had gone to the 
 kennels, to see setters and pointers, hounds and 
 terriers, lodged like gentlemen, each breed in 
 its own apartment — the puppies, as elsewhere, 
 treated with most attention. Some were in the 
 flower-garden, some in the green-houses, some 
 in the graperies, aviaries, and grottoes ; and at 
 the side of a bright sparkling fountain, in the 
 recesses of a fir-grove, with her foot upon its 
 marble lip, and one hand on the shoulder of a 
 
188 LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 
 
 small Cupid, who archly made a drinking-cup 
 of his wing, and caught the bright water as it 
 fell, stood Lady Imogen Ravelgold, the love- 
 liest girl of nineteen that prayed night and 
 morning within the parish of May Fair, listen- 
 ing to very passionate language from the young 
 banker of Lothbury. 
 
 A bugle on the lawn sounded a recall. From 
 every alley, and by every path, poured in the 
 gay multitude, and the smooth sward looked 
 like a plateau of animated flowers, waked by 
 magic from a broidery on green velvet. Ah ! 
 the beautiful demi-toilettes ! — so difficult to at- 
 tain, yet, when attained, the dress most modest, 
 most captivating, most worthy the divine grace 
 of woman. Those airy hats, sheltering from the 
 sun, yet not enviously concealing a feature or a 
 ringlet that a painter would draw for his exhi- 
 bition picture! Those summery and shapely 
 robes, covering the person more to show its 
 outline better, and provoke more the worship, 
 which, like all worship, is made more adoring 
 
LADY RAVELGOLd's ROMANCE. 189 
 
 by mystery! Those complexions which but 
 betray their transparency in the sun : lips in 
 which the blood is translucent when between 
 you and the light ; cheeks finer grained than 
 alabaster, yet as cool in their virgin purity as 
 a .tint in the dark corner of a Ruysdael : the 
 human race was at less perfection in Athens in 
 the days of Lais — in Egypt in the days of 
 Cleopatra — than that day on the lawn of Rose- 
 Eden. 
 
 Cart-loads of ribands, of every gay colour, 
 had been laced through the trees in all direc- 
 tions ; and amid every variety of foliage, and 
 every shade of green, the tulip-tints shone vivid 
 and brilliant, like an American forest after the 
 first frost. From the left edge of the lawn, the 
 ground suddenly sunk into a dell, shaped like 
 an amphitheatre, with a level platform at its 
 bottom, and all around, above and below, thick- 
 ened a shady wood. The music of a delicious 
 band stole up from the recesses of a grove, draped 
 as an orchestra and green-room on the lower 
 
190 LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 
 
 side, and while the audience disposed themselves 
 in the shade of the upper gi'ove, a company of 
 players and dancing-girls commenced their 
 theatricals. — Imogen Ravelgold, who was se- 
 parated, by a pine tree only, from the junior 
 partner, could scarce tell you, when it was 
 finished, what was the plot of the play. 
 
 The recall-bugle sounded again, and the band 
 wound away from the lawn, playing a gay 
 march. Followed Lady Roseberry and her 
 suite of gentlemen ; followed dames and their 
 daughters; followed all who wished to see the 
 flight of my lord's falcons. By a narrow path 
 and a wicket-gate, the long music-guided train 
 stole out upon an open hill-side, looking down 
 on a verdant and spreading meadow. The 
 band played at a short distance behind the gay 
 groups of spectators ; and it was a pretty picture 
 to look down upon the splendidly-dressed fal- 
 coner and his men holding their fierce birds 
 upon their wrists, in their hoods and jesses, a 
 foreground of old chivalry and romance ; while 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 191 
 
 far beyond, extended, like a sea over the horizon, 
 the smoke-clad pinnacles of busy and every-day 
 London. There are such contrasts for the eyes 
 of the rich ! 
 
 The scarlet hood was taken from the trustiest 
 falcon, and a dove, confined, at first, with a 
 string, was thrown up, and brought back, to 
 excite his attention. As he fixed his eye upon 
 him, the frightened victim was let loose, and the 
 falcon flung off; away skimmed the dove in a 
 low flight over the meadow, and up to the very 
 zenith, in circles of amazing swiftness and power, 
 sped the exulting falcon, apparently forgetful 
 of his prey, and bound for the eye of the sun 
 with his strong wings and his liberty. The 
 falconer's whistle and cry were heard ; the dove 
 circled round the edge of the meadow in his 
 wavy flight ; and down, with the speed of light- 
 ning, shot the falcon, striking his prey dead to 
 the earth before the eye could settle on his form. 
 As the proud bird stood upon his victim, look- 
 ing around with a lifted crest and fierce eye. 
 
192 LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 
 
 Lady Imogen Ravelgold heard, in a voice of 
 which her heart knew the music, " They who 
 soar highest strike surest ; the dove lies in the 
 falcon's bosom." 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD*S ROMANCE. 193 
 
 CHAP. III. 
 
 The afternoon had, meantime, been wearing 
 on, and at six the ** breakfast " was announced. 
 The tents beneath which the tables were spread 
 were in different parts of the grounds, and the 
 guests had made up their own parties. Each 
 sped to his rendezvous ; and as the last loiterers 
 disappeared from the lawn, a gentleman in a 
 claret coat and a brown study found himself 
 stopping to let a lady pass who had obeyed the 
 summons as tardily as himself. In a white 
 chip hat, Hairbault's last, a few lilies of the 
 valley laid among her raven curls beneath, a 
 simple white robe, the chef-cC ceuvi-e of Victorine 
 in style and toumure^ Lady Ravelgold would 
 
 VOL. I. o 
 
194 LADY RAVELGOLD*S ROMANCE. 
 
 have been the belle of the fete, but for her 
 daughter. 
 
 " Well emerged from Lothbury ! " she said, 
 courtesying, with a slight flush over her features, 
 but immediately taking his arm ; " I have lost 
 my party, and meeting you is opportune. Where 
 shall we breakfast ? " 
 
 There was a small tent standing invitingly 
 open on the opposite side of the lawn ; and by 
 the fainter rattle of soup-spoons from that 
 quarter, it promised to be less crowded than 
 the others. The junior partner would wil- 
 lingly have declined the proffered honour, but 
 he saw at a glance that there was no escape, 
 and submitted with a grace. 
 
 " You know very few people here," said his 
 fair creditor, taking the bread from her napkin. 
 
 " Your Ladyship and one other." 
 
 " Ah, we shall have dancing by and by, and 
 I must introduce you to my daughter. By the 
 way, have you no name from your mother's 
 side ? ' Firkins ' sounds so very odd. Give 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 195 
 
 me some prettier word to drink in this cham- 
 pagne." 
 
 " What do you think of Tremlet ? " 
 
 " Too effeminate for your severe style of 
 beauty — but it will do. Mr. Tremlet, your 
 health ! Will you give me a little of the pate 
 before you ? Pray, if it is not indiscreet, how 
 comes that classic profile, and, more surprising 
 still, that distinguished look of yours, to have 
 found no gayer destiny than the signing of 
 ' Firkins and Co.' to notes of hand ? Though 
 I thought you became your den in Lothbury, 
 upon my honour you look more at home here." 
 
 And Lady Ravelgold fixed her superb eyes 
 upon the beautiful features of her companion, 
 wondering partly why he did not speak, and 
 partly why she had not observed before that he 
 was incomparably the handsomest creature she 
 had ever seen. 
 
 "I can regret no vocation," he answered, 
 after a moment, "which procures me an ac- 
 quaintance with your Ladyship's family." 
 o 2 
 
196 LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 
 
 " There is an arriere-pensee in that formal 
 speech, Mr. Tremlet. You are insincere. I 
 am the only one in my family whom you know, 
 and what pleasure have you taken in my ac- 
 quaintance ? And, now I think of it, there is 
 a mystery about you, which, but for the noble 
 truth written so legibly on your features, I 
 should be afraid to fathom. Why have you 
 suffered me to overdraw my credit so enor- 
 mously, and without a shadow of a protest ? " 
 
 When Lady Ravelgold had disburdened her 
 heart of this direct question, she turned half 
 round and looked her companion in the face 
 with an intense interest, which produced upon 
 her own features an expression of earnestness 
 very uncommon upon their pale and impassive 
 lines. She was one of those persons of little 
 thought, who care nothing for causes or conse- 
 quences, so that the present difficulty is re- 
 moved, or the present hour provided with its 
 wings ; but the repeated relief she had received 
 from the young banker, when total ruin would 
 
LADY UAVELGOLD's llOMANCE. 197 
 
 have been the consequence of his refusal, and 
 his marked coldness in his manner to her, had 
 stimulated the utmost curiosity of which she 
 was capable. Her vanity, founded upon her 
 high rank and great renown as a beauty, would 
 have agreed that he might be willing to get 
 her into his power at that price, had he been 
 less agreeable in his own person, or more eager 
 in his manner. But she had wanted money 
 sufficiently to know, that thirty thousand 
 pounds are not a bagatelle, and her brain was 
 busy till she discovered the equivalent he sought 
 for it. Meantime her fear that he would turn 
 out to be a lover, grew rapidly into a fear that 
 he would not. 
 
 Lady Ravelgold had been the wife of a dis- 
 solute earl, who had died, leaving his estate 
 inextricably involved. With no male heir to 
 the title or property, and no very near relation, 
 the beautiful widow shut her eyes to the diffi- 
 culties by which she was surrounded, and at the 
 first decent moment after the death of her lord 
 o 3 
 
198 LADY RAVELGOLD'S ROMANCE. 
 
 she had re-entered the gay society of which she 
 had been the bright and particular star, and 
 never dreamed either of diminishing her estab- 
 lishment, or of calculating her possible income. 
 The first heavy draft she had made upon the 
 house of Firkins and Co., her husband's bank- 
 ers, had been returned with a statement of the 
 Ravelgold debt and credit on their books, by 
 which it appeared that Lord Ravelgold had 
 overdrawn four or five thousand pounds before 
 his death, and that from some legal difficulties 
 nothing could be realised from the securities 
 given on his estates. This bad news arrived on 
 the morning of Q.f4te to be given by the Rus- 
 sian ambassador, at which her only child, Lady 
 Imogen, was to make her debut in society. 
 With the facility of disposition which was pe- 
 culiar to her, Lady Ravelgold thrust the papers 
 into her drawer, and determining to visit her 
 banker on the following morning, threw the 
 matter entirely from her mind, and made pre- 
 parations for the ball. With the Russian 
 
LADY KAVELGOLd's ROMANCE. 199 
 
 government the house of Firkins and Co. had. 
 long carried on very extensive fiscal transac- 
 tions ; and in obedience to instructions from the 
 emperor, regular invitations for the embassy 
 fites were sent to the bankers, accepted occa- 
 sionally by the junior partner only, who was 
 generally supposed to be a natural son of old 
 Firkins. Out of the banking-house he was 
 known as Mr. Tremlet; and it was by this 
 name, which was presumed to be his mother's, 
 that he was casually introduced to Lady Imogen 
 on the night of the fite^ while she was separ- 
 ated from her mother in the dancing-room. 
 The consequence was, a sudden, deep, inefface- 
 able passion in the bosom of the young banker, 
 checked and silenced, but never lessened or 
 chilled, by the recollection of the obstacle of his 
 birth. The impression of his subdued manner, 
 his worsliipping, yet most respectful tones, and 
 the bright soul that breathed through his hand-, 
 some features with his unusual excitement, was, 
 to say the least, favourable upon Lady Imogen, 
 o 4 
 
200 LADY RAVELGOLD*S ROMANCE. 
 
 and they parted, on the night of the^e^^, mutu- 
 ally aware of each other's preference. 
 
 On the following morning Lady Ravelgold 
 made her proposed visit to the city ; and in- 
 quiring for Mr. Firkins, was shown in as usual 
 to the junior partner, to whom the colloquial 
 business of the concern had long been entrusted. 
 To her surprise she found no difficulty in ob- 
 taining the sum of money which had been 
 refused her on the preceding day — a result 
 which she attributed to her powers of persua- 
 sion, or to some new turn in the affairs of the 
 estate ; and for two years these visits had been 
 repeated at intervals of three or four months, 
 with the same success, though not with the 
 same delusion as to the cause. She had dis- 
 covered that the estate was worse than nothing, 
 and the junior partner cared little to prolong 
 his Utes-a-tites with her; and, up to the visit 
 with which this tale opened, she had looked to 
 every succeeding one with increased fear and 
 doubt. 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 201 
 
 During these two years, Tremlet had seen 
 Lady Imogen occasionally at balls and public 
 places, and every look they exchanged wove 
 more strongly between them the subtle threads 
 of love. Once or twice she had endeavoured to 
 interest her mother in conversation on the sub- 
 ject, with the intention of making a confidence 
 *of her feelings ; but Lady Ravelgold, when not 
 anxious, was giddy with her own success, and 
 the unfamiliar name never rested a moment on 
 her ear. With this, explanation to render the 
 tale intelligible, " let us," as the French say, 
 " return to our muttons." 
 
 Of the conversation between Tremlet and 
 her mother, Lady Imogen was an unobserved 
 and astonished witness. The tent which they 
 had entered was large, with a buffet in the 
 centre, and a circular table waited on by ser- 
 vants within the ring ; and, just concealed by 
 the drapery around the pole, sat Lady Imogen 
 with a party of her friends, discussing very 
 seriously the threatened fashion of tight sleeves. 
 
202 LADY ravelgold's romanpe. 
 
 She had half risen, when her motlier entered, 
 to offer her a seat by her side, but the sight 
 of Tremlet, who immediately followed, had 
 checked the words upon her lip; and to her 
 surprise they seated themselves on the side 
 that was wholly unoccupied, and conversed in 
 a tone inaudible to all but themselves. Not 
 aware that her lover knew Lady Ravelgold, she 
 supposed that they might have been casually 
 introduced, till the earnestness of her mother's 
 manner, and a certain ease between them in 
 the little courtesies of the table, assured her 
 that this could not be their first interview. 
 Tremlet's face was turned from her, and she 
 could not judge whether he was equally in- 
 terested; but she had been so accustomed to 
 consider her mother as irresistible when she 
 chose to please, that she supposed it of course ; 
 and very soon the heightened colour of Lady 
 Ravelgold, and the unwavering look of mingled 
 admiration and curiosity which she bent upon 
 the handsome face of her companion, left no 
 
I.ADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 203 
 
 doubt in her mind that her reserved and ex- 
 clusive lover was in the dangerous toils of a 
 rival whose power she knew. From the mortal 
 pangs of a first jealousy, Heaven send thee 
 deliverance, fair Lady Imogen ! 
 
 " We shall find our account in the advances 
 on your Ladyship's credit," said Tremlet, in 
 reply to the direct question that was put to 
 him. " Meantime permit me to admire the 
 courage with which you look so disagreeable 
 a subject in the face." 
 
 " For * disagreeable subject ' read ' Mr. 
 Tremlet.' I show my temerity more in that. 
 A-propos of faces, yours would become the 
 new fashion of cravat. The men at Crock- 
 ford's slip the ends tlirough a ring of their 
 lady-love's, if they chance to have one — thus !" 
 and untying the loose knot of his black satin 
 cravat, Lady Ravelgold slipped over the ends 
 a diamond of small value, conspicuously set in 
 pearls. 
 
 ** The men at Crockford's," said Tremlet, 
 
204 LADY RAVELGOLD*S ROMANCE. 
 
 hesitating to commit the rudeness of removing 
 the ring, "are not of my school of manners. 
 If I had been so fortunate as to inspire a lady 
 with a preference for me, I should not ad- 
 vertise it on my cravat." 
 
 " But suppose the lady were proud of her 
 preference, as dames were of the devotion of 
 their knights in the days of chivalry, would 
 you not wear her favour as conspicuously as 
 they?" 
 
 A flush of mingled embarrassment and sur- 
 prise shot over the forehead of Tremlet, and 
 he was turning the ring with his fingers, when 
 Lady Imogen, attempting to pass out of the 
 tent, was stopped by her mother. 
 
 " Imogen, my daughter ! this is Mr. Trem- 
 let. Lady Imogen Ravelgold, Mr. Tremlet !" 
 
 The cold and scarce perceptible bow which 
 the wounded girl gave to her lover betrayed 
 no previous acquaintance to the careless Lady 
 Ravelgold. Without giving a second thought 
 to her daughter, she held her glass for some 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD*S ROMANCE. 205 
 
 champagne to a passing servant ; and as Lady 
 Imogen and her friends crossed the lawn to 
 the dancing tent, she resumed the conversation 
 which they had interrupted; while Tremlet, 
 with his heart brooding on the altered look he 
 had received, listened and replied almost un- 
 consciously; yet from this very circumstance, 
 in a manner which was interpreted by his 
 companion as the embarrassment of a timid 
 and long-repressed passion for herself. 
 
 While Lady Ravelgold and the junior part- 
 ner were thus playing at cross purposes over 
 their champagne and hons-hons, Grisi and La- 
 blache were singinj; a duet from / Puritani, 
 to a full audience in the saloon ; the drinking 
 young men sat over their wine at the nearly 
 deserted tables ; Lady Imogen and her friends 
 waltzed to Collinet's band, and the artisans 
 were busy below the lawn erecting the ma- 
 chinery for the fire- works. Meantime every 
 alley and avenue, grot and labyrinth, had been 
 dimly illuminated with coloured lamps, showing 
 
206 LADY RAVELGOLD*S IIOMANCE. 
 
 like vari-coloured glow-worms amid the foliage 
 and shells ; and if the bright scenery of Rose- 
 Eden had been lovely by day, it was fay-land 
 and witchery by night. 
 
 " Shall we stroll down this alley of crimson 
 lamps?" said Lady Ravelgold, crossing the 
 lawn from the tent where their coffee had been 
 brought to them, and putting her slender arm 
 far into that of her now pale and silent com- 
 panion. 
 
 A lady in a white dress stood at the entrance 
 of that crimson avenue, as Tremlet and his 
 passionate admirer disappeared beneath the 
 closing lines of the long perspective, and, re- 
 maining a moment gazing through the un- 
 broken twinkle of the confusing lamps, she 
 pressed her hand hard upon her forehead, 
 drew up her form as if struggling with some 
 irrepressible feeling, and in another moment 
 was whirling in the waltz with Lord Ernest 
 Fitzantelope, whose mother wrote a compli- 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD*S ROMANCE. 207 
 
 mentary paragraph about their performance for 
 the next Saturday's Court Journal. 
 , The bugle sounded, and the band played a 
 march upon the lawn. From the breakfast 
 tents, from the coffee-rooms, from the dance, 
 from the card-tables, poured all who wished 
 to witness the marvels that lie in saltpetre. 
 Gentlemen who stood in a tender attitude in 
 the darkness held themselves ready to lean the 
 other way when the rockets blazed up, and 
 mammas who were encouraging flirtations with 
 eligibles whispered a caution on the same sub- 
 ject to their less-experienced daughters. 
 
 Up sped the missiles, round spun the wheels, 
 fair burned the pagodas, swift flew the fire- 
 doves off and back again on their wires, and 
 softly floated down through the dewy atmo- 
 sphere of that May night the lambent and 
 many-coloured stars, flung burning from the 
 exploded rockets. Device followed device, and 
 Lady Imogen almost forgot, in her child's 
 delight at the spectacle, that she had taken 
 
208 LADY RAVELGOLD*S ROMANCE. 
 
 into her bosom a green serpent, whose folds 
 were closing like suffocation about her heart. 
 
 The Jinale was to consist of a new light, 
 invented by the pyrotechnist, promised to 
 Lady Roseberry to be several degrees brighter 
 than the sun — comparatively with the quan- 
 tity of matter. Before this last flourish came 
 a pause; and while all the world were mur- 
 muring love and applause around her, Lady 
 Imogen, with her eyes fixed on an indefinite 
 point in the darkness, took advantage of the 
 cessation of light to feed her serpent with 
 thoughts of passionate and uncontrollable pain. 
 A French attache^ Phillipiste to the very tips 
 of his mustache, addressed to her ear, mean- 
 time, the compliments he had found most 
 effective in the Chaussee D'Antin, 
 
 The light burst suddenly from a hundred 
 blazing points, clear, dazzling, intense — illu- 
 minating, as by the instantaneous burst of day, 
 the farthest corner of Rose-Eden. And Mon- 
 sieur Mangepoire, with a French contempt for 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 209 
 
 English fire-works, took advantage of the first 
 ray to look into Lady Imogen's eyes. 
 
 ^^ Mais, miladi/" was his immediate ex- 
 clamation, after following their direction with 
 a glance, " ce n'est qu*un tableau vivant, cela f 
 Help, gentlemen ! EUe s'evanouit. Some salts ! 
 Misericorde! Mon Dieu ! Mon Dieuf" And 
 Lady Imogen Ravelgold was carried fainting 
 to Lady Roseberry's chamber. 
 
 In a small opening at the end of a long 
 avenue of lilachs, extended from the lawn in the 
 direction of Lady Imogen's fixed and uncon- 
 scious gaze, was presented, by the unexpected 
 illumination, the tableau vivant, seen by her 
 Ladyship and Monsieur Mangepoire at the 
 same instant, a gentleman drawn up to his 
 fullest height, with his arms folded, and a lady 
 kneeling on the ground at his feet with her 
 arms stretched up to his bosom. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
210 
 
 CHAP. IV. 
 
 A LITTLE after two o'clock on the following 
 Wednesday, Tremlet's cabriolet stopped near 
 the perron of Willis's rooms in King Street, and 
 while he sent up his card to the lady patronesses 
 for his ticket to that night's Almack's, he busied 
 himself in looking into the crowd of carriages 
 about him, and reading on the faces of their 
 fair occupants the hope and anxiety to which 
 they were a prey till John the footman brought 
 them tickets or despair. Drawn up on the 
 opposite side of the street stood a family car- 
 riage of the old style, covered with half the 
 arms of the herald's office, and containing a fat 
 dowager and three very over-dressed daughters. 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 2J 1 
 
 Watching them, to see the effect of their appli- 
 cation, stood upon the sidewalk three or four 
 young men from the neighbouring club-house ; 
 and at the moment Tremlet was observing these 
 circumstances, a foreign brits^ka, containing a 
 beautiful woman of a reputation better under- 
 stood than expressed in the conclave above 
 stairs, flew round the corner of St. James's 
 Street, and very nearly drove into the open 
 mouth of the junior partner's cabriolet. 
 
 " I will bet you a Ukraine colt against this 
 fine bay of yours," said the Russian secretary 
 of legation, advancing from the group of dandies 
 to Tremlet, " that miladi, yonder, with all the 
 best blood of England in her own and her 
 daughter's red faces, gets no tickets this morn- 
 ing." 
 
 " I'll take a bet upon the lady who has nearly 
 extinguished me, if you like," answered Trem- 
 let, gazing with admiration at the calm, delicate, 
 child-like looking creature, who sat before him 
 in the britS9ka, 
 
 p 2 
 
212 LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 
 
 " No !" said the secretary, ** for Almack's is 
 a republic of beauty, and she'll be voted in 
 without either blood or virtue. Par exemple. 
 Lady Ravelgold's voucher is good here, though 
 she does study tableaux in Lothbury — eh, 
 Tremlet?" 
 
 Totally unaware of the unlucky discovery by 
 the fireworks at Lady Roseberry's f^te^ Trem- 
 let coloured, and was inclined to take the in- 
 sinuation as an affront ; but a laugh from the 
 dandies drew off* his companion's attention, and 
 he observed the dowager's footman standing at 
 her coach window with his empty hands held 
 up in most expressive negation, while the three 
 young ladies within sat aghast, in all the agonies 
 of disappointed hop^s. The lumbering car- 
 riage got into motion • — its ineffective blazonry 
 paled by the mortified blush of its occupants; 
 and as the junior partner drove away, philoso- 
 phising on the arbitrary opinions and unpro- 
 voked insults of polite society, the brits9ka shot 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 213 
 
 by, showing him, as he leaned forward, a lovely 
 woman who bent on him the most dangerous 
 eyes in London, and an Almack's ticket lying 
 on the unoccupied cushion beside her. 
 
 p 3 
 
214 
 
 CHAP. V. 
 
 The white relievo upon the pale blue wall of 
 Almack's showed every crack in its stucco 
 flowers, and the faded chaperons who had de- 
 fects of a similar description to conceal took 
 warning of the walls, and retreated to the 
 friendlier dimness of the tea-room. Collinet 
 was beginning the second set of quadrilles, and 
 among the fairest of the surpassingly beautiful 
 women who were moving to his heavenly music 
 was Lady Imogen Ravelgold, the lovelier to- 
 night for the first heavy sadness that had ever 
 dimmed the roses in her cheek. Her lady- 
 mother divided her thoughts between what this 
 could mean and whether Mr. Tremlet would 
 come to the ball ; and when, presently after, in 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE 215 
 
 the dos-a-dos, she forgot to look at her daughter, 
 on seeing that gentleman enter, she lost a very 
 good opportunity for a guess at the cause of 
 Lady Imogen's paleness. 
 
 To the pure and true eye that appreciates the 
 divinity of the form after which woman is made, 
 it would have been a glorious feast to have seen 
 the perfection of shape, colour, motion, and 
 countenance shown that night on the bright 
 floor of Almack's. For the young and beautiful 
 girls whose envied destiny is to commence their 
 woman's history in this exclusive hall, there 
 exist aids to beauty known to no other class or 
 nation. Perpetual vigilance over every limb 
 from the cradle up; physical education of a 
 perfection, discipline, and judgment, pursued 
 only at great expense and under great respon- 
 sibility ; moral education of the highest kind ; 
 habitual consciousness of rank ; exclusive con- 
 tact with elegance and luxury, and a freedom 
 of intellectual culture which breathes a soul 
 through the face before passion has touched it 
 p 4 
 
216 LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 
 
 with a Jine or a shade — these are some of the 
 circumstances which make Almack's the cy- 
 nosure of the world for adorable and radiant 
 beauty. 
 
 There were three ladies who had come to 
 Almack's with a definite object that night, each 
 of whom was destined to be surprised and 
 foiled: Lady Ravelgold, who feared she had 
 been abrupt with the inexperienced banker, 
 but trusted to find him softened by a day or 
 two's reflection; Mrs. St. Leger, the lady of 
 the brits9ka, who had ordered supper for two 
 on her arrival at home from her morning's 
 drive, and intended to have the company of the 
 handsome creature she had nearly run over in 
 King Street; and Lady Imogen Ravelgold, as 
 will appear in the sequel. 
 
 Tremlet stood in the entrance from the tea- 
 room a moment, gathering courage to walk 
 alone into such a dazzling scene, and then, 
 having caught a glimpse of the glossy lines of 
 Lady Imogen's head at the farthest end of the 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. '217 
 
 room, he was advancing toward her, when he 
 was addressed by a lady who leaned against 
 one of the slender columns of the orchestra. 
 After a sweetly-phrased apology for having 
 nearly knocked out his brains that morning 
 with her horses' fore feet, Mrs. St. Leger took 
 his arm, and walking deliberately two or three 
 times up and down the room, took possession, 
 at last, of a banquette on the highest range, so 
 far from any other person, that it would have 
 been a marked rudeness to have left her alone. 
 Tremlet took his seat by her with this instinc- 
 tive feeling, trusting that some of her acquain- 
 tances would soon approach, and give him a 
 fair excuse to leave her ; but he soon became 
 amused with her piquant style of conversation, 
 and, not aware of being observed, fell into the 
 attitude of a pleased and earnest listener. 
 
 Lady Ravelgold's feelings during this petit 
 entretien, were of a very positive description. 
 She had an instinctive knowledge, and, conse- 
 quently, a jealous dislike, of Mrs. St. Leger's 
 
218 LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 
 
 character ; and, still under the delusion that the 
 young banker's liberality was prompted by a 
 secret passion for herself, she saw her credit in 
 the city and her hold upon the affections of 
 Tremlet (for whom she had really conceived a 
 violent affection) melting away in every smile 
 of the dangerous woman who engrossed him. 
 As she looked around for a friend, to whose ear 
 she might communicate some of the suffocating 
 poison in her own heart, Lady Imogen returned 
 to her from a galopade; and, like a second 
 dagger into the heart of the pure-minded girl, 
 went this second proof of her lover's corrupt 
 principle and conduct. Unwilling to believe 
 even her own eyes on the night of Lady Rose- 
 berry's fite^ she had summoned resolution on 
 the road home to ask an explanation of her 
 mother. Embarrassed by the abrupt question, 
 Lady Ravelgold felt obliged to make a partial 
 confidence of the state of her pecuniary affairs ; 
 and to clear herself, she represented Tremlet as 
 having taken advantage of her obligations to 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 219 
 
 him, to push a dishonourable suit. The scene 
 disclosed by the sudden blaze of the fire-works 
 being thus simply explained, Lady Imogen de- 
 termined at once to give up Tremlet's acquain- 
 tance altogether ; a resolution which his open 
 flirtation with a woman of Mrs. St. Leger's 
 character served to confirm. She had, however, 
 one errand with him, prompted by her filial 
 feelings, and favoured by an accidental circum- 
 stance which will appear. 
 
 "Do you believe in animal magnetism?" 
 asked Mrs. St. Leger ; " for by the fixedness of 
 Lady Ravelgold's eyes in this quarter, some- 
 thing is going to happen to one of us." 
 
 The next moment the Russian secretary ap- 
 proached, and took his seat by Mrs. St. Leger, 
 and with diplomatic address contrived to con- 
 vey to Tremlet's ear that Lady Ravelgold 
 wished to speak with him. The banker rose, 
 but the quick wit of his companion compre- 
 hended the manoeuvre. 
 
 " Ah ! I see how it is," she ^id, but stay — 
 
220 LADY ravelgold's romance. 
 
 " you*ll sup with me to-night ? Promise me — 
 parole dUionneur*'' 
 
 " Parole ! " answered Tremlet, making his 
 way out between the seats, half pleased and 
 half embarrassed. 
 
 " As for you, Monsieur le Secretaire" said 
 Mrs. St. Leger, " you have forfeited my favour, 
 and may sup elsewhere. How dare you con- 
 spire against me?" 
 
 While the Russian was making his peace, 
 Tremlet crossed over to Lady Ravelgold; but, 
 astonished at the change in Lady Imogen, he 
 soon broke in abruptly upon her mother's con- 
 versation, to ask her to -dance. She accepted 
 his hand for a quadrille ; but as they walked 
 down the ro6m in search of a vis-d-vis, she 
 complained of heat, and asked timidly if he 
 would take her to the tea-room. 
 
 " Mr. Tremlet," she said, fixing her eyes 
 upon the cup of tea which he had given her, 
 and which she found some difficulty in holding, 
 "I have come here to-night to communicate 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 221 
 
 to you some important information, to ask a 
 favour, and to break off an acquaintance which 
 has lasted too long." 
 
 Lady Imogen stopped, for the blood had 
 fled from her lips, and she was compelled to 
 ask his arm for a support. She drew herself 
 up to her fullest height the next moment, 
 looked at Tremlet, who stood in speechless 
 astonishment, and, with a strong effort, com- 
 menced again, in a low, firm tone,^ — 
 
 " I have been acquainted with you some 
 time, sir, and have never inquired, nor knew 
 more than your name, up to this day. I suf- 
 fered myself to be pleased too blindly " 
 
 " Dear Lady Imogen ! " 
 
 " Stay a moment, sir I I will proceed di- 
 rectly to my business. I received this morning 
 a letter from the senior partner of a mercantile 
 house in the city with which you are con- 
 nected. It is written on the supposition that 
 I have some interest in you, and informs 
 me that you are not, as you yourself sup- 
 
222 LADY ravelgold's romance. 
 
 pose, the son of the gentleman who writes 
 the letter." 
 
 « Madam!'* 
 
 " That gentleman, sir, as you know, never 
 was married. He informs me that in the 
 course of many financial visits to St. Peters- 
 burgh he formed a friendship with Count 
 ManteufFel, then minister of finance to the 
 emperor, whose tragical end, in consequence 
 of his extensive defalcations, is well known. 
 In brief, sir, you were his child, and were 
 taken by this English banker, and carefully 
 educated as his own, in happy ignorance, as 
 he imagined, of your father's misfortunes and 
 mournful death.'* 
 
 Tremlet leaned against the wall, unable to 
 reply to this astounding intelligence, and Lady 
 Imogen went on : — 
 
 " Your title and estates have been restored 
 to you, at the request of your kind benefactor, 
 and you are now the heir to a princely 
 fortune, and a count of the Russian empire. 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 223 
 
 Here is the letter, sir, which is of no value 
 to me now. Mr. Tremlet ! one word more, 
 sir." 
 
 Lady Imogen gasped for breath.. 
 
 " Jn return, sir, for much interest given 
 you heretofore — in return, sir, for this in- 
 formation ■ " 
 
 " Speak, dear Lady Imogen ! " 
 
 " Spare my mother !" 
 
 " Mrs. St. Leger's carriage stops the way ! " 
 shouted a servant at that moment at the top 
 of the stairs; and as if there was a spell in the 
 sound to nerve her resolution anew, Lady 
 Imogen Ravel gold shook the tears from her 
 eyes, bowed coldly to Tremlet, and passed out 
 into the dressing-room. 
 
 '' If you please, sir," said a servant ap- 
 proaching the amazed banker, " Mrs. St. Leger 
 waits for you in her carriage." 
 
 " Will you come home and sup with us?" 
 said Lady Ravelgold at the same instant, 
 joining him in the tea-room. 
 
224 LADY ravelgold's romance. 
 
 " I shall be only too happy, Lady Ravel- 
 gold." 
 
 The bold coachman of Mrs. St. Leger con- 
 tinued to " stop the way,** spite of policemen 
 and infuriated footmen, for some fifteen minutes. 
 At the end of that time Mr. Tremlet ap- 
 peared, handing down Lady Ravelgold and 
 her daughter, who walked to their chariot, 
 which was a few steps behind ; and very much 
 to Mrs. St. Leger's astonishment, the handsome 
 banker sprang past her horses' heads a minute 
 after, jumped into his cabriolet, which stood 
 on the opposite side of the street, and drove 
 after the vanishing chariot as if his life de- 
 pended on overtaking it. Still Mrs. St. Leger's 
 carriage "stopped the way." But, in a few 
 minutes after, the same footman who had sum- 
 moned Tremlet in vain, returned with the 
 Russian secretary, doomed, in blessed uncon- 
 sciousness, to play the pis aller at her Ute-d-Ute 
 supper in Spring Gardens. 
 
 " Heigh-ho ! " said the mortified beauty, sink- 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 225 
 
 ing back upon her cushions, as her coachman 
 let his horses off Kke a start for a chariot-race 
 in the Hippodrome — "a life of pleasure is a 
 life of desertion. I but keep these birds at 
 my call till they are better mated." 
 
 VOL. I. Q 
 
226 LADY ravelgold's homance. 
 
 CHAP. VI. 
 
 If Lady Ravelgold showed beautiful by the 
 uncompromising light and in the ornamented 
 hall of Almack's, she was radiant as she came 
 through the mirror door of her own love-con- 
 trived and beauty-breathing boudoir. Tremlet 
 had been shown into this recess of luxury and 
 elegance on his arrival ; and Lady Ravelgold 
 and her daughter, who preceded her by a 
 minute or two, had gone to their chambers, the 
 first to make some slight changes in her toilette, 
 and the latter (entirely ignorant of her lover's 
 presence in the house) to be alone with a heart 
 never before in such painful need of self-aban- 
 donment and solitude. 
 
 Tremlet looked about him in the enchanted 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 227 
 
 room in which be found himself alone, and, 
 spite of the prepossessed agitation of his feelings, 
 the voluptuous beauty of every object had the 
 effect to divert and tranquillise him. The 
 light was profuse, but it came softened through 
 the thinnest alabaster ; and while every object 
 in the room was distinctly and minutely visible, 
 the effect of moonlight was not more soft and 
 dreamy. The general form of the boudoir was 
 an oval, but within the pilasters of folded silk 
 with their cornices of gold lay crypts con- 
 taining copies exquisitely done in marble of 
 the most graceful statues of antiquity, one of 
 which seemed, by the curtain drawn quite aside 
 and a small antique lamp burning near it, to 
 be the divinity of the place — the Greek An- 
 tinous, with his drooped head, and full, smooth 
 limbs, the most passionate and life-like represent- 
 ation of voluptuous beauty that intoxicates the 
 slumberous air of Italy. Opposite this, another 
 niche contained a few books, whose retreating 
 shelves swung on a secret door; and as it stood 
 Q 2 
 
228 LADY ravelgold's romance. 
 
 half open, the nodding head of a snowy mag- 
 nolia leaned through, as if pouring from the 
 lips of its broad chalice the mingled odours of 
 the unseen conservatory it betrayed. The 
 first sketch in crayons of a portrait of Lady 
 Ravelgold by young Lawrence stood against 
 the wall, with the frame half buried in a satin 
 ottoman ; and as Tremlet stood before it, ad- 
 miring the clear, classic outline of the head and 
 bust, and wondering in what chamber of his 
 brain the gifted artist had found the beautiful 
 drapery in which he had drawn her, the dim 
 light glanced faintly on the left, and the broad 
 mirror by which he had entered swung again 
 on its silver hinges, and admitted the very 
 presentment of what he gazed on. Lady 
 Ravelgold had removed the jewels from her 
 hair, and the robe of wrought lace, which she 
 had worn that night over a bodice of white 
 satin laced loosely below the bosom. In the 
 place of this she had thrown upon her shoulders 
 a flowing wrapper of purple velvet, made open 
 
LADY RAVELGOLd's ROMANCE. 229 
 
 after the Persian fashion, with a short and 
 large sleeve, and embroidered richly with gold 
 upon the skirts. Her admirable figure, grace- 
 fully defined by the satin petticoat and bodice, 
 shov;ed against the gorgeous purple as it 
 flowed back in her advancing motion, with a 
 relief which would have waked the very soul of 
 Titian ; her complexion was dazzling and 
 faultless in the flattering light of her own 
 rooms ; and there are those who will read this 
 who know how the circumstances which sur- 
 round a woman — luxury, elegance, taste, or 
 the opposite of these — enhance or dim, beyond 
 help or calculation, even the highest order of 
 woman's beauty. 
 
 Lady Ravelgold held a bracelet in her hand 
 as she came in. 
 
 " In my own house," she said, holding the 
 glittering jewel to Tremlet, " I have a fancy 
 for the style antique. Tasseline, my maid, has 
 gone to bed, and you must do the devoir of a 
 knight, or an abigail, and loop up this Tyrian 
 Q 3 
 
230 LADY RAVELGOLD*S ROMANCE. 
 
 sleeve. Stay — look first at the model — that 
 small statue of Cytheris, yonder ! Not the 
 shoulder — for you are to swear mine is prettier 
 — but the clasp. Fasten it like that. So ! 
 Now take me for a Grecian nymph the rest of 
 the evening." 
 
 « Lady Ravelgold ! " 
 
 " Hermione or Aglae, if you please ! But let 
 us ring for supper ! " 
 
 As the bell sounded, a superb South Ameri- 
 can trulian darted in from the conservatory, 
 and, spreading his gorgeous black and gold 
 wings a moment over the alabaster shoulder 
 of Lady Ravelgold, as if he took a pleasure in 
 prolonging the first touch as he alighted, turned 
 his large liquid eye fiercely on Tremlet. 
 
 " Thus it is," said Lady Ravelgold, " we 
 forget our old favourites in our new. See how 
 jealous he is ! " 
 
 "Supper is served, mz7ac?2 / " said a servant 
 entering. 
 
 " A hand to each, tljen, for the present," she 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 231 
 
 said, putting one into Tremlet's, and holding 
 up the trulian with the other. " He who 
 behaves best shall drink first with me." 
 
 " I beg your Ladyship's pardon," said Trem- 
 let, drawing back, and looking at the servant, 
 who immediately left the room. " Let us 
 understand each other ! Does Lady Imogen 
 sup with us to-night?" 
 
 " Lady Imogen has retired," said her mother, 
 in some surprise. 
 
 " Then, madam, ^ will you be seated one 
 moment and listen to me ? " 
 
 Lady Ravelgold sat down on the nearest 
 ottoman, with the air of a person too high bred 
 to be taken by surprise, but the colour deepened 
 to crimson in the centre of her cheek, and the 
 bird on her hand betrayed by one of his 
 gurgling notes that he was held more tightly 
 than pleased him. With a calm and decisive 
 tone, Tremlet went through the explanation 
 given in the previous parts of this narration. 
 He declared his love for Lady Imogen, his 
 Q 4 
 
232 LADY ravelgold's romance. 
 
 hopes (while he had doubts of his birth) that 
 Lady Ravelgold's increasing obligations and 
 embarrassments and his own wealth might 
 weigh against his disadvantages, and now, his 
 honourable descent being established, and his 
 rank entitling him to propose for her hand, he 
 called upon Lady Ravelgold to redeem her 
 obligations to him by an immediate explanation 
 to her daughter of his conduct toward herself, 
 and by lending her whole influence to the 
 success of his suit. 
 
 Five minutes are brief time to change a lover 
 into a son-in-law ; and Lady Ravelgold, as we 
 have seen in the course of this story, was no 
 philosopher. She buried her face in her hands, 
 and sat silent for awhile after Tremlet had 
 concluded ; but the case was a very clear one. 
 Ruin and mortification were in one scale, mor- 
 tification and prosperity in the other. She 
 rose, pale but decided, and requesting Mon- 
 sieur le Comte Manteuffel to await her a few 
 minutes, ascended to her daughter's chamber. 
 
" If you please, sir," said a servant, entering 
 in about half an hour, " miladi and Lady 
 Imogen beg that you will join them in the 
 supper-room." 
 
234 LADY ravelgold's romance. 
 
 CHAP. VII. 
 
 The spirit of beauty, if it haunt in such arti- 
 ficial atmospheres as Belgrave Square, might 
 have been pleased to sit invisibly on the vacant 
 side of Lady Ravelgold's table. Tremlet had 
 been shown in by the servant to a small apart- 
 ment, built like a belvidere over the garden, 
 half boudoir in its character, yet intended as a 
 supper-room, and at the long window (opening 
 forth upon descending terraces laden with 
 flowers and just now flooded with the light of 
 a glorious moon) stood Lady Imogen, with her 
 glossy head laid against the casement, and the 
 palm of her left hand pressed close upon her 
 heart. If those two lights — the moon faintly 
 shed off from the divine curve of her temple, 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 235 
 
 and the stained rose-lamp pouring its mellow 
 tint full on the heavenly shape and whiteness 
 of her shoulder and neck — if those two lights, 
 I say, could have been skilfully managed, Mr. 
 Lawrence ! what a picture you might have 
 made of Lady Imogen Ravelgold ! 
 
 "Imogen, my daughter! Mr. Tremlet!" 
 said her mother as he entered. 
 
 Without changing her position, she gave him 
 the hand she had been pressing on her heart. 
 
 « Mr. Tremlet ! " said Lady Ravelgold, 
 evidendy entering into her daughter's embar- 
 rassment, " trouble yourself to come to the 
 table and give me a bit of this pheasant. Imo- 
 gen, George waits to give you some cham- 
 pagne." 
 
 "Can you forgive me?" said the beautiful 
 girl, before turning to betray her blushmg 
 cheek and suffused eyes to her mother. 
 
 Tremlet stooped as if to pluck a leaf from 
 the verbena at her feet, and passed his lips over 
 the slight fingers he held. 
 
236 LADY ravelgold's romance. 
 
 " Pretty trulian ! " murmured Lady Ravel- 
 gold, to her bird, as he stood on the edge of 
 her champagne glass, and curving his superb 
 neck nearly double, contrived to drink from 
 the sparkling brim, " pretty trulian ! you will 
 be merry after this ! What ancient Sybarite, 
 think you, Mr. Tremlet, inhabits the body of 
 this bright bird ? Look up, mignon, and tell 
 us if you were Hylas or Alcibiades ! Is the 
 pheasant good, Mr. Tremlet ? " 
 
 " Too good to come from Hades, miladi. Is 
 it true that you have your table supplied from 
 Crockford's ? " 
 
 " Tout bonnement I I make it a principle to 
 avoid all great anxieties, and I can trust nobody 
 but Ude. He sends my dinners quite hot, 
 and if there is a particular dish of game, he 
 drives round at the hour and gives it the last 
 turn in my own kitchen. I should die to be 
 responsible for my dinners. I don't know how 
 people get on that have no grand artiste. Pray, 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 237 
 
 Mr. Tremlet (I beg pardon — Monsieur le 
 Comte, perhaps I should say ? ") — ■ — ^ 
 
 " No, no, I implore you ! ' Tremlet ' has 
 been spoken too musically to be so soon for- 
 gotten. Tremlet or Charles, which you will ! '* 
 
 Lady Ravelgold put her hand in his, and 
 looked from his face to her daughter's with a 
 smile, which assured him that she had obtained 
 a victory over herself. Shrinking immediately, 
 however, from any thing like sentiment (with 
 the nervous dread of pathos so peculiar to 
 the English), she threw off her trulian, that 
 made a circle and alighted on the emerald 
 bracelet of Lady Imogen, and rang the bell for 
 coffee. 
 
 *' I flatter myself, Mr. Tremlet," she said, 
 " that I have made a new application of the 
 homoeopathic philosophy. Hahnemann, they 
 say, cures fevers by aggravating the disease ; 
 and when I cannot sleep, I drink coffee. J^en 
 suis passahlement Jiere ! You did not know I 
 was a philosopher ? " 
 
238 LADY ravelgold's romance. 
 
 « No, indeed ! " 
 
 " Well, take some of this spiced mocha. I 
 had it from the Turkish ambassador, to whom 
 I made heaux yeux on purpose. Stop ! you 
 shall have it in the little tinsel cups he sent 
 me. George, bring those filagree things ! 
 Now, Mr. Tremlet, imagine yourself in the 
 serail du Bosphore — Imogen and I, two lovely 
 Circassians, par exemple ! Is it not delicious ? 
 Talking of the Bosphorus, nobody was classical 
 enough to understand the device in my coiffure 
 to-night." 
 
 " What was it?" asked Tremlet absently, 
 gazing, while he spoke, with eyes of envy at 
 the trulian, who was whetting his bill backward 
 and forward on the clear bright lips of Lady 
 Imogen. 
 
 " Do you think my profile Grecian ? " asked 
 Lady Ravelgold. 
 
 "Perfectly!" 
 
 " And my hair is coiffed a la GrecJ* 
 
 " Most becomingly." 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 239 
 
 " But Still you wo'n't see my golden gras- 
 hopper ! Do you happen to know, sir, that to 
 wear the golden grashopper was the birthright 
 of an Athenian ? I saw it in a book. Well ! 
 I had to explain it to every body. By the way, 
 what did that gambler, George Heriot, mean 
 by telling me that its legs should be black? 
 * All Greeks have black legs,' said he, yawning 
 in his stupid way. What did he mean, Mr, 
 Tremlet?" 
 
 " ' Greeks' and blacklegs are convertible 
 terms. He thought you were more au fait of 
 the slang dictionary. — Will you permit me to 
 coax my beautiful rival from your hand. Lady 
 Imogen?" 
 
 She smiled, and put forward her wrist, with 
 a bend of its slender and alabaster lines which 
 would have drawn a sigh from Praxiteles. The 
 trulian glanced his fiery eyes from his mis- 
 tress's face to Tremlet's, and as the strange 
 hand was put out to take him from his emerald 
 perch, he flew with the quickness of lightning 
 
240 LADY ravelgold's romance. 
 
 into the face of her lover, and buried the sharp 
 beak in his lip. The blood followed copiously; 
 and Lady Imogen, startled from her timidity, 
 sprang from her chair and pressed her hands 
 one after the other upon the wound, in pas- 
 sionate and girlish abandonment. Lady Ravel- 
 gold hurried to her dressing-room for something 
 to stanch the wound, and, left alone with the 
 divine creature, who hung over him, Tremlet 
 drew her to his bosom and pressed his cheek 
 long and closely to hers, while to his lips, as if 
 to keep in life, clung her own crimsoned and 
 trembling fingers. 
 
 " Imogen !" said Lady Ravelgold, entering, 
 *' take him to the fountain in the garden and 
 wash the wound ; then put on this bit of gold- 
 beater's skin. I will come to you when I have 
 locked up the trulian. Is it painful, Mr. 
 Tremlet?" 
 
 Tremlet could not trust his voice to answer, 
 but with his arm still around Lady Imogen, he 
 
LADY RAVELQOLD's ROMANCE. 241 
 
 descended by the terrace of flowers to the foun- 
 tain. 
 
 They sat upon the edge of the marble basin, 
 and the moonlight, striking through the jet of 
 the fountain, descended upon them like a rain 
 of silver. Lady Imogen had recovered from 
 her fright and buried her face in her hands, 
 remembering into what her feelings had be- 
 trayed her; and Tremlet, sometimes listening 
 to the clear bell-like music of the descending 
 water, sometimes uttering the broken sentences 
 which are most eloquent in love, sat out the 
 hours till the stars began to pale, undisturbed 
 by Lady Ravelgold, who, on the upper stair 
 of the terrace, read by a small lamp, which, 
 in the calm of that heavenly summer night, 
 burned unflickeringly in the open air. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
242 LADY RAVELGOLD*S ROMANCE. 
 
 CHAP. VIII. 
 
 It was broad daylight when Tremlet, on foot, 
 sauntered slowly past Hyde Park Corner on 
 his way to the Albany. The lamps were still 
 struggling with the brightening approach to 
 sunrise, the cabmen and their horses slept on 
 the stand by the Green Park, and with cheerful 
 faces the labourers went to their work, and 
 with haggard faces the night-birds of dissipa- 
 tion crept wearily home. The well ground 
 dust lay in confused heel-marks on the side- 
 walk, a little dampened by the night-dew ; the 
 atmosphere in the street was clear, as it never 
 is after the stir of day commences ; a dandy, 
 stealing out from Crockford's, crossed Picca- 
 dilly, lifting up his head to draw in long 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 243 
 
 breaths of the cool air, after the closeness of 
 over-lighted rooms and excitement ; and Trem- 
 let, marking none of these things, was making 
 his way through a line of carriages slowly 
 drawing up to take off their wearied masters 
 from a prolonged fite at Devonshire House, 
 when a rude hand clapped him on the shoulder. 
 
 " Monsieur Tremlet!" 
 
 " Ah^ Baron! Men honjour!" 
 
 " Bien rencontre, Monsieur ! You have in- 
 sulted a lady to-night, who has confided her 
 cause to my hands. Madam St. Leger, sir, 
 is without a natural protector, and you have 
 taken advantage of her position to insult her 
 — grossly, Mr. Tremlet ! grossly ! " 
 
 Tremlet looked at the Russian during this 
 extraordinary address, and saw that he was 
 evidently highly excited with wine. He drew 
 him aside into Berkeley Street, and in the 
 calmest manner attempted to explain what was 
 not very clear to himself. He had totally for- 
 gotten Mrs. St. Leger. The diplomate, though 
 R 2 
 
244 
 
 quite beyond himself with his excitement, had 
 suflScient perception left to see the weak point 
 of his statement, and infuriated with the placid 
 manner in which he attempted to excuse him- 
 self, suddenly struck his glove into his face, 
 and turned upon his heel. They had been 
 observed by a policeman ; and at the moment 
 that Tremlet, recovering from his astonish- 
 ment, sprang forward to resent the blow, the 
 grey-coated guardian of the place laid his hand 
 upon his collar and detained him till the Baron 
 had disappeared. 
 
 More than once on his way to the Albany, 
 Tremlet surprised himself forgetting both the 
 Baron and the insult, and feeding his heart in 
 delicious abandonment with the dreams of his 
 new happiness. He reached his rooms and 
 threw himself on the bed, forcing from his 
 mind, with a strong effort, the presence of Lady 
 Imogen, and trying to look calmly on the un- 
 pleasant circumstance before him. A quarrel 
 which, the day before, he would have looked 
 
LADY ravelgold's uomance. 245 
 
 upon merely as an inconvenience, or which 
 under the insult of a blow, he would have 
 eagerly sought, became now an almost insup- 
 portable evil. When he reflected on the subject 
 of the dispute — a contention about a woman 
 of doubtful reputation taking place in the same 
 hour with a first avowal from the delicate and 
 pure Lady Imogen — when he remembered the 
 change in his fortunes, which he had as yet 
 scarcely found time to realise — on the conse- 
 quences to her who was so newly dear to him, 
 and on all he might lose, now that life had 
 become invaluable, his thoughts were almost 
 too painful to bear. How seldom do men play 
 with an equal stake in the game of taking life, 
 and how strange it is that equality of weapons 
 is the only comparison made necessary by the 
 laws of honour ! 
 
 Tremlet was not a man to be long undecided. 
 He rose, after an hour's reflection, and wrote 
 as follows : — 
 
 " Baeon — Before taking the usual notice 
 R 3 
 
246 LADY RAVELGOLD*S ROMANCE. 
 
 of the occurrence of this morning, I wish to 
 rectify one or two points in which our position 
 is false. I find myself, since last night, the 
 accepted lover of Lady Imogen Ravelgold, and 
 the master of estates and title as a count of the 
 Russian empire. Under the etourdissement of 
 such sudden changes in feelings and fortune, 
 perhaps my forgetfulness of the lady in whose 
 cause you are so interested, admits of indul- 
 gence. At any rate, I am so newly in love 
 with life that I am willing to suppose for an 
 hour that had you known these circumstances 
 you would have taken a different view of the 
 offence in question. I shall remain at home 
 till two, and it is in your power till then to 
 make me the reparation necessary to my honour. 
 " Yours, &c. Tremlet." 
 
 There was a bridal pn the following Monday 
 at St. George's church, and the Russian secre- 
 tary stood behind the bridegroom. Lady 
 Ravelgold had never been seen so pale, but her 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD's ROMANCE. 247 
 
 face was clear of all painful feeling ; and it was 
 observed by one who knew her well, that her 
 beauty had acquired, during the brief engage- 
 ment of her daughter, a singular and undefin- 
 able elevation. As the carriages with their 
 white favours turned into Bond Street, on their 
 way back to Belgrave Square, the cortige was 
 checked by the press of vehicles ; and the Rus- 
 sian, who accompanied Lady Ravelgold in her 
 chariot, found himself opposite the openbrits9ka 
 of a lady who fixed her glass full upon him 
 without recognising a feature of his face. 
 
 " I am afraid you have affronted Mrs. St. 
 Leger, Baron ! " said Lady Ravelgold. 
 
 " Or I should not have been here ! '* said 
 the Russian ; and as they drove up Piccadilly, 
 he had just time between Bond Street and Wil- 
 ton Crescent to tell her ^.adyship the foregone 
 chapter of this story. 
 
 The trulian, on that day, was fed with wed- 
 ding-cake — and the wound on Mr. Tremlef s 
 lip was not cured by letting alone. 
 R 4 
 
6i 
 
 HOMEWARD BOUND." 
 
a 
 
 HOMEWARD BOUND." 
 
 Bright flag at yonder tapering mast, 
 Fling out your field of azure blue I - 
 
 Let " Star and Stripe " be westward cast, 
 And fly — as Freedom's eagle flew I 
 
 Strain on, oh lithe and quivering spars I 
 
 Point home, my country's flag of stars ! 
 
 The wind sits fair. The vessel feels 
 The pressure of the rising breeze ; 
 
 And, swiftest of a thousand keels, 
 
 The white-wing*d " Liner " cuts the seas. 
 
 Oh fair, fair cloud of snowy sail 
 In whose white breast I seem to lie, 
 
252 " HOMEWARD BOUND." 
 
 How oft, when blew this western gale 
 I've seen your semblance in the sky, 
 
 And long'd, with breaking heart to flee 
 On cloud-like pinions o'er the sea ! 
 
 Adieu, my father-land I 1 see 
 
 Your white cliff's on th' horizon's rim. 
 And though to fairer skies I flee, 
 
 My heart swells, and my eyes are dim ; 
 As knows the bird the task you give her, 
 
 When loosed upon a foreign shore. 
 As melts the rain-drop in the river 
 
 In which it may have flowed before. 
 To England, over vale and mountain. 
 
 My fancy flew from climes more fair, 
 My blood, that knew its parent fountain, 
 
 Ran warm and fast in England's air I 
 
 Dear mother I in thy prayer to-night 
 
 There come new words and warmer tears. 
 
 On long, long darkness breaks the light — 
 Comes home the loved, the lost for years. 
 
 Sleep safe, oh wave- worn mariner ! 
 Fear not to-night or storm, or sea ! 
 
" HOMEWARD BOUND." 253 
 
 The ear of Heaven bends low to her — 
 He comes to shore who sails with me ! 
 
 The spider knows the roof unriven 
 
 While swings his web, though lightnings blaze, 
 
 And by a thread still fast on Heaven 
 1 know my mother lives and prays. 
 
 Dear mother ! when our lips can speak — 
 
 When first our tears will let us see — 
 When I can gaze upon thy cheek, 
 
 And thou with thy dear eyes on me — 
 'Twill be a pastime little sad 
 
 To mark what weight Time's heavy fingers 
 Upon each other may have had. 
 
 For all may flee while feeling lingers — 
 But there's a change, beloved mother I 
 
 To stir far deeper thoughts of thine — 
 I come — but with me comes another 
 
 To share the heart once only mine I 
 Thou, on whose thoughts, when sad and lonely, 
 
 One star arose in memory's heaven — 
 Thou who hast watch'd one treasure only — 
 
 Water'd one flower with tears at even — 
 
254 " HOMEWARD BOUND." 
 
 Room in thy heart I The home she left 
 
 Is darken'd to lend light to ours — 
 There are bright flowers of care bereft, 
 
 And hearts, that languish more than flowers 
 
 She was their light, their very air — 
 Room, mother, in thy heart ~ place for her in thy 
 prayer, 
 
 English Channel^ May^ 1836. 
 
 END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 London: 
 
 Printed by A. Spottiswoode, 
 New-Street- Square. 
 
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