GREAT BRITAIN SIXTY YEARS AGO

Wordsworth Dickens The Land of Burns, etc.

The year after leaving college I made a visit to Europe, which, in those days, was a notable event. As the stormy Atlantic had not yet been carpeted by six-day steamers, I crossed in a fine new packet-ship, the “Patrick Henry,” of the Grinnell & Minturn Line. Captain Joseph C. Delano was a gentleman of high intelligence and culture who, after he had abandoned salt water, became an active member of the American Association of Science. After twenty-one days under canvas and the instructions of the captain, I learned more of nautical affairs and of the ocean and its ways than in a dozen subsequent passages in the steamships.

On the second morning after our arrival in Liverpool I breakfasted with that eminent clergyman, Dr. Raffles, who boasted the possession of one of the finest collections of autographs in England. He showed me the signature of John Bunyan; the original manuscript of one of Sir Walter Scott’s novels; the original of Burns’ poem addressed to the parasite on a lady’s bonnet, which contained the famous lines:

“Oh wad some power the giftie gie us
To see our sel’s as others see us,”

besides several other manuscripts by the same poet, and also the autograph of a challenge sent by Byron to Lord Brougham for alleged insult, a fact to which no reference has been made in Byron’s biography. From Liverpool, with my friends Professor Renwick and Professor Cuningham, I set out on a journey to the lakes of England. We reached Bowness, on Lake Windermere, in the evening. The next morning we went up to Elleray, the country residence of Professor Wilson ("Christopher North"), who, unfortunately, was absent in Edinburgh. We hired a boatman to row us through exquisitely beautiful Windermere, and in the evening reached the Salutation Inn, at the foot of the lake. My great interest in visiting Ambleside was to see the venerable poet, Wordsworth, who lived about a mile from the village. I happened, just before supper, to look out of the window of the traveller’s room and espied an old man in a blue cloak and Glengarry cap, with a bunch of heather stuck jauntily in the top, driving by in a little brown phaeton from Rydal Mount. “Perhaps,” thought I to myself, “that may be the patriarch himself,” and sure enough it was. For, when I inquired about Mr. Wordsworth, the landlord said to me, “A few minutes ago he went by here in his little carriage.” The next morning I called upon him. The walk to his cottage was delightful, with the dew still lingering in the shady nooks by the roadside, and the morning songs of thanksgiving bursting forth from every grove. At the summit of a deeply shaded hill I found “Rydal Mount” cottage. I was shown, at once, into the sitting-room, where I found him with his wife, who sat sewing beside him. The old man rose and received me graciously. By his appearance I was somewhat startled. Instead of a grave recluse in scholastic black, whom I expected to see, I found an affable and lovable old man dressed in the roughest coat of blue with metal buttons, and checked trousers, more like a New York farmer than an English poet. His nose was very large, his forehead a lofty dome of thought, and his long white locks hung over his stooping shoulders; his eyes presented a singular, half closed appearance. We entered at once into a delightful conversation. He made many inquiries about Irving, Mrs. Sigourney and our other American authors, and spoke, with great vehemence, in favor of an international copyright law. He said that at one time he had hoped to visit America, but the duties of a small office which he held (Distributer of Stamps), and upon which he was partly dependent, prevented the undertaking. He occasionally made a trip to London to see the few survivors of the friends of his early days, but he told me that his last excursion had proved a wearisome effort. His library was small but select. He took down an American edition of his works, edited by Professor Reed, and told me that London had never produced an edition equal to it. When I was about to leave, the good old poet got his broad slouched hat and put on his double purple glasses to protect his eyes, and we went out to enjoy the neighboring views. We walked about from one point to another and kept up a lively conversation. He displayed such a winning familiarity that, in the language of his own poem, we seemed

“A pair of friends, though I was young,
And he was seventy-four.”

From the rear of his court-yard he showed me Rydal Water, a little lake about a mile long, the beautiful church, and beyond it, Grassmere, and still further beyond, Helvelyn, the mountain-king with a retinue of a hundred hills. I might have spent the whole day in delightful intercourse with the old man, but my fellow-travellers were going, and I could make no longer inroads upon their time. When we returned to the door of his cottage, he gave me a parting blessing; he picked a small yellow flower and handed it to me, and I still preserve it in my edition of his works, as a relic of the most profound and the most sublime poet that England has produced during the nineteenth century I know of but one other living American who has ever visited Wordsworth at Rydal Mount.

After passing through Keswick, where the venerable poet Southey was still lingering in sadly failing intelligence, we reached Carlisle the same evening. From Carlisle we took the mail-coach for Edinburgh by the same route over which Sir Walter Scott was accustomed to make his journeys up to London. The driver, who might have answered to Washington Irving’s description, pointed out to me Netherby Hall, the mansion of the Grahams, on “Cannobie lea,” over which the young Lochinvar bore away his stolen bride. We passed also Branksome Tower, the scene of the “Lay of the Last Minstrel,” and reached Selkirk in the early evening. The next day I spent at Abbotsford. The Great Magician had been dead only ten years, and his family still occupied the house with some of his old employees who figure in Lockhart’s biography. I sat in the great arm-chair where Sir Walter Scott wrote many of his novels, and looked out of the window of his bedchamber, through which came the rippling murmurs of the Tweed, that consoled his dying hours. I heartily subscribe to the opinion, expressed by Tennyson, that Sir Walter Scott was the most extraordinary man in British literature since the days of Shakespeare.

After reaching Glasgow I made a brief trip into the Land of Burns. At the town of Ayr I found an omnibus waiting to take me down to the birthplace of the poet. At that time the number of visitors to these regions was comparatively few, and the birthplace of the poet had not been transformed, as now, into a crowded museum. On reaching a slight elevation, since consecrated by the muse of Burns, there broke upon the view his monument, his native cottage, Alloway Kirk, the scene of the inimitable Tam o’ Shanter, and behind them all the “Banks and Braes of Bonnie Doon.” I went first to the monument, within which on a centre table are the two volumes of the Bible given by Burns to Highland Mary when they “lived one day of parting love” beneath the hawthorn of Coilsfield. One of the volumes contains, in Burns’ handwriting, “Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thy vows,” and a lock of Mary’s hair, of a light brown color, given at the time, is preserved in the treasured volumes. A few steps away is Alloway Kirk. The old sexton was standing by the grave of Burns’ father, and described to me the route of “Tam o’ Shanter.” He showed me the chinks in the sides through which the kirk seemed “all in a bleeze,” and he pointed out the identical place on the wall where Old Nick was presiding over the midnight revels of the beldames when

“Louder and louder the piper blew,
Swifter and swifter the dancers flew.”

After the old man had finished his recital, I asked him whether he had ever seen the poet. “Only aince,” he replied. “That was one day when he was ridin’ on a road near here. I met a friend who told me to hurry up, for Rabbie Burns was just ahead. I whippit up my horse, and came up to a roughly dressed man, ridin’ slowly along, with his blue bonnet pulled down over his forehead, and his eyes turned toward the groond.” “Didn’t you speak to him?” I said. “Nay, nay,” replied the man, in a tone of deep reverence, “he was Rabbie Burns. I dare na speak to him. If he had been any other mon I would have said ‘good morrow to ye.’” Beautiful and eloquent tribute, paid by an unlettered peasant, not to rank or to wealth, but to a soul a mighty soul though clad in “hodden grey” like himself!

The most interesting object was yet to be visited the cottage of his birth, I entered it with reverence; and a well dressed, but very old, woman welcomed me in. “This is the room,” she said. I looked around on the rough stone walls and could not believe that it ever contained such a soul; for the cottage, with all its subsequent repairs, was hardly equal to the generality of our early log cabins. The old lady was very affable. In her early life she had been connected with an inn at Mauchline, and had seen the poet often. “Rabbie was a funny fellow,” she said; “I ken’d him weel; and he stoppit at our hoose on his way up to Edinburgh to see the lairds.” I asked her if he was not always humorous. “Nae, nae,” she replied, “he used to come in and sit doun wi’ his hands in his lap like a bashful country lad; very glum, till he got a drap o’ whuskey, or heard a gude story, and then he was aff! He was very poorly in his latter days.” Those closing days in Dumfries, steeped in poverty to the lips, forms one of the most tragic chapters in literary history; and I know scarcely anything in our language more pathetic than the letter which he wrote describing his wretched bondage to the dominion of strong drink. An old lady of Kilmarnock told my friend, the late Dr. Taylor of New York, that when a young woman she had gone to Burns’ house to assist in preparations for his funeral, and stated that there was not enough decent linen in the house to lay out the most splendid genius in all Scotland! When I was at Ayr, a sister of Burns, Mrs. Begg, was still living, and I am always regretting that I did not call upon her. His widow, Jean Armour, had died but a few years before; and when a certain pert American who called upon the old lady had the audacity to ask her: “Can you show me any relics of the poet?” answered with majestic dignity: “Sir, I am the only relic of Robert Burns.”

I went abroad on this first visit to Europe keen for lion hunting, and with an eager desire to see some of the men who had been my literary benefactors. On my arrival in London, having a letter of introduction to Charles Dickens, which a mutual friend had given to me, I resolved to present it. Charles Dickens was an idol of my college days, and I had spent a few minutes with him in Philadelphia during his recent visit to the United States. He had returned from his triumphal tour about a month before I landed in Liverpool. I called at his house, but he was not at home. The next day he did me the honor to call on me at Morley’s Hotel, and, not finding me in, invited me up to his house near York Gate, Regents Park. It was a dingy, brick house surrounded by a high wall, but cheerful and cozy within. I found him in his sanctum, a singularly shaped room, with statuettes of Sam Weller and others of his creations on the mantelpiece. A portrait of his beautiful wife was upon the wall that wife, the separation from whom threw a strange, sad shadow over his home. How handsome he was then! With his deep, dark, lustrous eyes, that you saw yourself in, and the merry mouth wreathed with laughter, and the luxuriant mass of dark hair that he wore in a sort of stack over his lofty forehead! He had a slight lisp in his pleasant voice, and ran on in rapid talk for an hour, with a shy reluctance to talk about his own works, but with the most superabounding vivacity I have ever met with in any man. His two daughters, one of whom afterward married the younger Collins, a brother novelist, were then schoolgirls of eight and ten years, came in, with books in their hands, to give their father a good-morning kiss. After parting with him, when I had reached his gate, he called after me in a very loud voice, “If you see Mrs. Lucretia Mott, tell her that I have not forgotten the slave.” His “American Notes” appeared the next week. There were some things in that hasty and faulty volume for which I sent him a cordial note of thanks, and I speedily received the following characteristic reply, which I still prize as a precious relic of the man:

I DEVONSHIRE TERRACE,
REGENTS PARK, Octh, 1842.

MY DEAR SIR: I am heartily obliged to you for your frank and manly letter. I shall always remember it in connection with my American book; and never believe me save in the foremost rank of its pleasant and honorable associations. Let me subscribe myself, as I really am

Faithfully your Friend,

CHARLES DICKENS.

Mr. Theodore Ledyard Cuyler.

I hold that Dickens was the most original genius in our fictitious literature since the days of Walter Scott. As a social reformer his fame is quite as great as it is as a master of romance. His pen was mighty to the pulling down of many a social abuse, and from the loving kindness of his writings has been got many an inspiration to deeds of charity. But how could a man who went so far as he did go no further? How could the reformer who struck at so many social wrongs spare that hideous fountain-head of misery in London, the dram-shop? And how could he descend to scurrilously satirize all societies formed for the promotion of temperance? A still greater marvel is that so kind-hearted a man as Mr. Dickens, who sought honestly the amelioration of the condition of his fellow-men, could utterly ignore the transforming power of Christianity. He did not cast contempt on the Bible, and never soiled his pages with infidelity, neither did he ever enlighten, and warm and vivify them with evangelical uplifting truth. Only a few feet of earth separate the grave of Charles Dickens from the grave of William Wilberforce. Both loved their fellow-men; but the great difference between them was that one of them invoked the spiritual power of the Gospel of Christ, which the other lamentably ignored.