Home of the Pilgrim Fathers

Having made the necessary preparations, I again put myself behind the boiling kettle, en route to the republican Athens. The day was intensely hot; even the natives required the windows open, and the dust being very lively, we soon became as powdered as a party going down to the Derby in the ante-railway days. My curiosity was excited on the way, by seeing a body of men looking like a regiment of fox-hunters all well got up, fine stout fellows who entered, and filled two of the carriages. On inquiring who kept the hounds, and if they had good runs, a sly smile stole across my friend’s cheek as he told me they were merely the firemen of the city going to fraternize with the ditto ditto of Boston. It stupidly never occurred to me to ask him whether any provision was made in case of a quiet little fire developing itself during their absence, for their number was legion, and as active, daring, orderly-looking fellows as ever I set eyes upon. Jolly apopletic aldermen of our capital may forsake the green fat of their soup-making deity, to be feasted by their Parisian fraternity, without inconvenience to anybody, except it be to their fellow-passengers in the steamer upon their return, if they have been over-fed and have not tempest-tried organs of digestion. But a useful body like firemen migrating should, I confess, have suggested to me the propriety of asking what substitutes were left to perform, if need be, their useful duties; not having done so, I am constrained to leave this important point in its present painful obscurity.

A thundering whistle and a cloud of steam announce the top is off the kettle, and that we have reached Boston. Wishing to take my own luggage in a hackney, I found that, however valuable for security the ticketing system may be, it was, under circumstances like mine at present, painfully trying to patience. In three-quarters of an hour, however, I managed to get hold of it, and then, by way of improving my temper, I ascertained that one of my boxes was in a state of “pretty considerable all mighty smash.” At last I got off with my goods and chattels, and having seen quite enough of the American palace-hotels and their bountifully-spread tables, and of the unrivalled energy with which the meals are despatched; remembering, also, how frequently the drum of my ears had been distracted by the eternal rattling and crackling of plates and dishes for a couple of hundred people, and how my olfactories had suffered from the mixed odours of the kitchen produce, I declined going to the palatial Revere House, which is one of the best hotels in the Union, and put up at a house of less pretensions, where I found both quiet and comfort.

To write a description of Boston, when so many others have done so far better than I can pretend to do, and when voluminous gazetteers record almost every particular, would be drawing most unreasonably upon the patience of a reader, and might further be considered as inferring a doubt of his acquaintance with, I might almost say, a hackneyed subject. I shall, therefore, only inflict a few short observations to refresh his memory. The most striking feature in Boston, to my mind, is the common or park, inasmuch as it is the only piece of ground in or attached to any city which I saw deserving the name of a park. It was originally a town cow-pasture, and called the Tower Fields. The size is about fifty acres; it is surrounded with an iron fencing, and, although not large, the lay of the ground is very pretty. It contains some very fine old trees, which every traveller in America must know are a great rarity in the neighbourhood of any populous town. It is overlooked by the State-house, which is built upon Beacon Hill, just outside the highest extremity of the park, and from the top of which a splendid panoramic view of the whole town and neighbourhood is obtained. The State-house is a fine building in itself, and contains one of Chantrey’s best works the statue of Washington. The most interesting building in Boston, to the Americans, is, undoubtedly, Faneuil Hall, called also the “Cradle of Liberty.” Within those walls the stern oratory of noble hearts striving to be free, and daring to strike for it, was listened to by thousands, in whose breasts a ready response was found, and who, catching the glowing enthusiasm of the orators, determined rather to be rebels and free than subjects and slaves: the sequel is matter of history.

I shall not tax the temper of my reader by going through any further list of the public buildings, which are sufficiently known to those who take an interest in this flourishing community; but I must hasten to apologize for my ingratitude in not sooner acknowledging that most pleasing feature in every traveller’s experience in America, which, I need hardly say, is hospitality.

Scarce was my half-smashed box landed at the hotel, when my young American friend, who came from England with our party, appeared to welcome me perhaps to atone for the lion’s share of champagne he had enjoyed at our table on board the steamer. Then he introduced me to another, and another introduced me to another another, and another another introduced me to another another another, and so on, till I began to feel I must know the elite of Boston. Club-doors flew open, champagne-corks flew out, cicérones, pedal and vehicular, were ever ready to guide me by day and feed me by night; and though there are no drones in a Yankee hive, so thoroughly did they dedicate themselves to my comfort and amusement, that a person ignorant of the true state of things might have fancied they were as idle and occupationless as the cigar-puffers who adorn some of our metropolitan-club steps, the envy of passing butcher-boys and the liberal distributors of cigar-ends to unwashed youths who hang about ready to pounce upon the delicious and rejected morsels. Among other gentlemen whose acquaintance I had the pleasure of making, and whose hospitalities, of course, I enjoyed, I may mention Mr. Prescott and Mr. Ticknor, the former highly appreciated in the old country, and both so widely known and so justly esteemed in the world of literature. As I consider such men public property, I make no apology for using their names, while in so doing I feel I am best conveying to the reader some idea of the society which a traveller meets with in Yankee Athens.

The town has one charm to me, which it shares in common with Baltimore. Not only is it built on undulating ground, but there are old parts remaining, whereby the eye is relieved from the tiring monotony of broad and straight streets, while the newer parts form a pleasing variety, and bear gratifying evidence of the increasing wealth of its intelligent and industrious population. Then, again, the neighbourhood of the town has a charm for a wanderer from the old country; the roads are excellent, the fields and gardens are tidied up, creepers are led up the cottage walls, suburban villas abound, everything looks more clean, more soigne, more snug, more filled and settled than the neighbourhood of any other city I visited in America, and thus forces back upon the mind associations and reflections of dear old home.

Having enjoyed a visit to a friend in one of the suburban villas inland, to which he drove me in his light waggon, another vehicular cicerone insisted that I should drive out to his uncle’s, and spend a day at his marine villa, about twelve miles distant. I joyfully assented to so pleasant a proposition, and, “hitching a three-forty before a light waggon” as the term is in America we were soon bowling away merrily along a capital road. A pleasant drive of nine miles brought us to a little town called Lynn, after Lynn Regis in England, from which place some of the early settlers came. How often has the traveller to regret the annihilation of the wild old Indian names, and the substitution of appellatives from every creek and corner of the older continents; with Poquanum, Sagamore, Wenepoykin, with Susquehanna, Wyoming, Miami, and a thousand other such of every length and sound, all cut-and-dried to hand, it is more than a pity to see so great a country plagiarizing in such a wholesale manner Pékins, Cantons, Turing, Troys, Carmels, Emmauses, Cairos, and a myriad other such borrowed plumes, plucked from Europe, Asia, and Africa, and hustled higgledy-piggledy side by side, without a single element or association to justify the uncalled-for robbery.

Forgive me, reader, all this digression comes from my wishing Lynn had kept its old Indian name of Saugus; from such little acorns will such great oak-trees spring. To resume. The said town of Lynn supplies understandings to a very respectable number of human beings, and may be called a gigantic shoemaker’s shop, everything being on the gigantic scale in America. It employs 11,000, out of its total population of 14,000, in that trade, and produces annually nearly 5,000,000 of women’s and children’s boots, shoes, and gaiters, investing in the business a capital amounting to 250,000l. Moses and Son, Hyam and Co., Nicoll and Co., and the whole of the three-halfpence-a-shirt-paying capitalists, can show nothing like my shoemakers’ shop, “fix it how you will,” as they say in the Great Republic.

The three-forty trotter soon left boots, shoes, and all behind, and deposited us at the door of the uncle’s villa, where a friendly hand welcomed us to its hospitalities. It was very prettily situated upon a cliff overlooking Massachusetts Bay, in which said cliff a zigzag stepway was cut down to the water, for the convenience of bathing. The grounds were nicely laid out and planted, and promised in time to be well wooded, if the ocean breeze driving upon them did not lay an embargo upon their growth, in the same heartless manner as it does upon the west coast of Scotland, where, the moment a tree gets higher than a mop handle, its top becomes curved over by the gales, with the same graceful sweep as that which a successful stable-boy gives a birch broom after a day’s soaking. I hope, for my hospitable friend’s sake, it may not prove true in his case; but I saw an ostrich-feathery curve upon the tops of some of his trees, which looked ominous. Having spent a very pleasant day, and enjoyed good cheer and good company, Three-forty was again “hitched to;” joined hands announced the parting moment had arrived; wreaths of smoke from fragrant Havanas ascended like incense from the shrine of Adieu; “G’lang” the note of advance was sounded; Three-forty sprang to the word of command; friends, shoes, and shoemakers were soon tailed of; and ere long your humble servant was nestling his nose in his pillow at Boston.

Hearing that the drama was investing its talent in Abolitionism, I went one evening to the theatre, to see if I could extract as much fun from the metropolis of a free state as I had previously obtained from the capital of slave-holding Maryland; for I knew the Americans, both North and South, were as ticklish as young ladies. I found very much the same style of thing as at Baltimore, except that her abolitionist highness, the Duchess of Southernblack, did not appear on the stage by deputy; but as an atonement for the omission, you had a genuine Yankee abolitionist; poor Uncle Tom and his fraternity were duly licked and bullied by a couple of heartless Southern nigger-drivers; and while their victims were writhing in agony, a genuine abolitionist comes on the stage and whops the two nigger-drivers, amid shouts of applause. The suppliant Southerners, midst sobs and tears, plead for mercy, and in vain, until the happy thought occurs to one of them, to break forth into a wondrous tale of the atrocities inflicted upon the starving and naked slaves of English mines and factories, proving by contrast the superior happiness of the nigger and the greater mercifulness of his treatment. The indignant abolitionist drops the upraised cowhide, the sobs and tears of the Southerners cease, the whole house thunders forth the ecstasy of its delight, the curtain drops, and the enchanted audience adjourn to the oyster saloons, vividly impressed with British brutality, the charms of slavery, and the superiority of Abolitionism.

How strange, that in a country like this, boasting of its education, and certainly with every facility for its prosecution how strange, that in the very Athens of the Republic, the deluded masses should exhibit as complete ignorance as you could find in the gallery of any twopenny-halfpenny metropolitan theatre of the old country!

Another of the lions of Boston which I determined to witness, if possible, was “spirit-rapping.” A friend undertook the arrangement for me; but so fully were the hours of the exhibitor taken up, that it was five days before we could obtain a spare hour. At length the time arrived, and, fortified with a good dinner and a skinful of “Mumm Cabinet,” we proceeded to the witch’s den. The witch was a clean and decent-looking girl about twenty, rather thin, and apparently very exhausted; gradually a party of ten assembled, and we gathered round the witch’s table. The majority were ladies those adorers of the marvellous! The names of friends were called for; the ladies took the alphabet, and running over it with the point of a pencil, the spirit rapped as the wished-for letter was reached. John Davis was soon spelt, each letter probably having been indicated by the tremulous touch of affectionate hope. Harriet Mercer was then rapped out by the obliging spirit. The pencil and the alphabet were then handed to me, and the spirit being asked if it would answer my inquiries, and a most satisfactory “Yes” being rapped out, I proceeded to put its powers to the test. I concentrated my thoughts upon a Mr. L and his shop in Fleet-street, with both of which being thoroughly familiar I had no difficulty in fixing my attention upon them. The pencil was put in motion, powerful rappings were heard as it touched the D. I kept my gravity, and went on again and again, till the name of the illustrious duke, whose death the civilized world was then deploring with every token of respect, was fully spelt out. The witch was in despair; she tried again and again to summon the rebellious spirit, but it would not come. At last, a gentleman present, and who evidently was an habitue of the witch’s den, proposed that the refractory spirit should be asked if any of the company were objectionable to it. This being done, a rattling “Yes” came forth, upon which each person asked in succession, “Am I objectionable to you?” There was a dead silence until it came to my friend and myself, to each of whom it gave a most rappingly emphatic “Yes.” Accordingly, we rose and left the field to those whose greater gullibility rendered them more plastic objects for working upon. Never in my life did I witness greater humbug; and yet so intense was the anxiety of the Boston public to witness the miracle, that during all the day and half the night the spirit was being invoked by the witch, into whose pockets were pouring the dollars of thousands of greater gabies than myself, for many went away believers, receiving the first germs of impressions which led them to a Lunatic Asylum, or an early grave, as various statistics in America prove most painfully.

To show the extent to which belief in these absurdities goes, I subjoin an extract from a paper, by which it appears that even the solemnities of a funeral cannot sober the minds of their deluded followers. Mr. Calvin R. Brown better known as the husband of Mrs. Anne L. Fish, a famous “spirit medium” in New York having died, we read the following notice of the funeral: “After prayer, the Rev. S. Brittan delivered an address, in which he dwelt with much earnestness upon the superiority of the life of the spirit, as compared with that of the body. At various points in his address there were rappings, sometimes apparently on the bottom of the coffin, and at others upon the floor, as if in response to the sentiments uttered. After concluding his address, Professor Brittan read a communication purporting to have come from the deceased after his entrance into the spirit world. While it was being read, the reporter states that the rappings were distinctly heard. Several friends then sang, “Come, ye disconsolate,” after which the Rev. Mr. Denning made a few remarks, during which the rappings were more audible than before. Other ceremonies closed the funeral. The whole party, preachers, physicians, and all, were spiritualists,” &c.

But I have before me a letter written by Judge Edmonds, which is a more painful exemplification of the insanity superinduced by giving way to these absurdities; in that document you will find him deliberately stating, that he saw heavy tables flying about without touch, like the leaves in autumn; bells walking off shelves and ringing themselves, &c. Also, you will find him classing among his co-believers “Doctors, lawyers, clergymen, a Protestant bishop, a learned and reverend president of a college, judges of higher courts, members of congress, foreign ambassadors (I hope not Mr. Crampton), and ex-members of the United States Senate.”

The ladies of the old country will, no doubt, be astonished to hear that their sisters of the younger country have medical colleges in various States; but, I believe, mostly in the northern ones. To what extent their studies in the healing art are carried, I cannot precisely inform them; it most probably will not stop at combinations of salts and senna, or spreading plasters for which previous nursery practice with bread and butter might eminently qualify them. How deeply they will dive into the mysteries of anatomy, unravelling the tangled web of veins and arteries, and mastering the intricacies of the ganglionic centre; or how far they will practise the subjugation of their feelings, whether only enough to whip off some pet finger and darling little toe, or whether sufficiently to perform more important operations, even such as Sydney Smith declared a courageous little prime minister was ready to undertake at a minute’s notice; these are questions which I cannot answer: but one thing is clear, the wedge is entered. How far it will be driven in, time must show.