University of Virginia Library

114. LETTER CXIV.

It is pleasant to get back to Paris. One meets everybody
there one ever saw; and operas and coffee,
Taglioni and Leontine Fay, the belles and the Boulevards,
the shops, spectacles, life, lions, and lures to
every species of pleasure, rather give you the impression
that, outside the barriers of Paris, time is wasted
in travel.

What pleasant idlers they look! The very shopkeepers
seem standing behind their counters for
amusement. The soubrette who sells you a cigar, or
ties a crape on your arm (it was for poor old Lafayette),
is coiffed as for a ball; the frotteur who takes the dust
from your boots, sings his lovesong as he brushes
away, the old man has his bouquet in his bosom, and
the beggar looks up at the new statue of Napoleon in
the Place Vendome—everybody has some touch of
fancy, some trace of a heart on the look-out, at least,
for pleasure.

I was at Lafayette's funeral. They buried the old
patriot like a criminal. Fixed bayonets before and
behind his hearse, his own National Guard disarmed,
and troops enough to beleaguer a city, were the honors
paid by the “citizen king” to the man who had
made him! The indignation, the scorn, the bitterness,
expressed on every side among the people, and
the ill-smothered cries of disgust as the two empty
royal carriages went by, in the funeral train, seemed
to me strong enough to indicate a settled and universal
hostility to the government.

I met Dr. Bowring on the Boulevard after the funeral
was over. I had not seen him for two years, but
he could talk of nothing but the great event of the
day—“You have come in time,” he said, “to see
how they carried the old general to his grave! What
would they say to this in America? Well—let them
go on! We shall see what will come of it! They
have buried Liberty and Lafayette together—our last
hope in Europe is quite dead with him!”

After three delightful days in Paris we took the
northern diligence; and, on the second evening, having
passed hastily through Montreuil, Abbeville, Boulogne,
and voted the road the dullest couple of hundred
miles we had seen in our travels, we were set
down in Calais. A stroll through some very indifferent
streets, a farewell visit to the last French café we
were likely to see for a long time, and some unsatisfactory
inquiries about Beau Brummel, who is said to
live here still, filled up till bedtime our last day on
the continent.

The celebrated Countess of Jersey was on board the
steamer, and some forty or fifty plebeian stomachs
shared with her fashionable ladyship and ourselves the
horrors of a passage across the channel. It is rather
the most disagreeable sea I ever traversed, though I
have seen “the Euxine,” “the roughest sea the traveller
e'er—s in,” etc., according to Don Juan.

I was lying on my back in a berth when the steamer
reached her moorings at Dover, and had neither eyes
nor disposition to indulge in the proper sentiment on
approaching the “white cliffs” of my fatherland. I
crawled on deck, and was met by a wind as cold as
December, and a crowd of rosy English faces on the
pier, wrapped in cloaks and shawls, and indulging curiosity
evidently at the expense of a shiver. It was
the first of June!

My companion led the way to a hotel, and we were
introduced by English waiters (I had not seen such a
thing in three years, and it was quite like being waited
on by gentlemen), to two blazing coal fires in the
“coffee-room” of the “Ship.” Oh what a comfortable
place it appeared! A rich Turkey carpet snugly
fitted, nice-rubbed mahogany tables, the morning
papers from London, bellropes that would ring the
bell, doors that would shut, a landlady that spoke English,
and was kind and civil; and, though there were
eight or ten people in the room, no noise above the
rustle of a newspaper, and positively, rich red damask
curtains, neither second-hand nor shabby, to the windows!
A greater contrast than this to the things that
answer to them on the contiment, could scarcely be
imagined.

Malgré all my observations on the English, whom
I have found everywhere the most open-hearted and
social people in the world, they are said by themselves
and others to be just the contrary; and, presuming
they were different in England, I had made up my
mind to seal my lips in all public places, and be conscious

of nobody's existence but my own. There
were several elderly persons dining at the different tables;
and one party, of a father and son, waited on by
their own servants in livery. Candles were brought
in, the different cloths were removed; and, as my companion
had gone to bed, I took up a newspaper to keep
me company over my wine. In the course of an
hour, some remark had been addressed to me, provocative
of conversation, by almost every individual in
the room! The subjects of discussion soon became
general, and I have seldom passed a more social and
agreeable evening. And so much for the first specimen
of English reserve!

The fires were burning brilliantly, and the coffee-room
was in the nicest order when we descended to
our breakfast at six the next morning. The tea-kettle
sung on the hearth, the toast was hot, and done to a
turn, and the waiter was neither sleepy nor uncivil—
all, again, very unlike a morning at a hotel in la belle
France.

The coach rattled up to the door punctually at the
hour; and, while they were putting on my way-worn
baggage, I stood looking in admiration at the carriage
and horses. They were four beautiful bays, in small,
neat harness of glazed leather, brass-mounted, their
coats shining like a racer's, their small, blood-looking
heads curbed up to stand exactly together, and their
hoofs blacked and brushed with the polish of a gentleman's
boots. The coach was gaudily painted, the only
thing out of taste about it; but it was admirably built,
the wheel-horses were quite under the coach-man's
box, and the whole affair, though it would carry twelve
or fourteen people, covered less ground than a French
one-horse cabriolet. It was altogether quite a study.

We mounted to the top of the coach; “all right,”
said the ostler, and away shot the four fine creatures,
turning their small ears, and stepping together with
the ease of a cat, at ten miles in the hour. The driver
was dressed like a Broadway idler, and sat in his
place, and held his “ribands” and his tandemwhip
with a confident air of superiority, as if he were quite
convinced that he and his team were beyond criticism
—and so they were! I could not but smile at constrasting
his silence and the speed and ease with which
we went along, with the clumsy, cumbrous diligence
or vetturino, and the crying, whipping, cursing and
ill-appointed postillions of France and Italy. It seems
odd, in a two hours' passage, to pass over such strong
lines of national difference—so near, and not even a
shading of one into the other.

England is described always very justly, and always
in the same words: “it is all one garden.” There is
not a cottage between Dover and London (seventy
miles), where a poet might not be happy to live. I
saw a hundred little spots I coveted with quite a heartache.
There was no poverty on the road. Everybody
seemed employed, and everybody well-made and
healthy. The relief from the deformity and disease
of the way-side beggars of the continent was very
striking.

We were at Canterbury before I had time to get accustomed
to my seat. The horses had been changed
twice; the coach, it seemed to me, hardly stopping
while it was done; way-passengers were taken up and
put down, with their baggage, without a word, and in
half a minute; money was tossed to the keeper of the
turnpike gate as we dashed through; the wheels went
over the smooth road without noise, and with scarce
a sense of motion—it was the perfection of travel.

The new driver from Canterbury rather astonished
me. He drove into London every day, and was more
of a “swell.” He owned the first team himself, four
blood horses of great beauty, and it was a sight to see
him drive them! His language was free from all slang,
and very gentlemanlike and well chosen, and he discussed
everything. He found out that I was an Amer
ican, and said we did not think enough of the memory
of Washington. Leaving his bones in the miserable
brick tomb, of which he had read descriptions,
was not, in his opinion, worthy of a country like mine
He went on to criticise Julia Grisi (the new singer just
then setting London on fire), hummed airs from “Il
Pirata,” to show her manner; sang an English song
like Braham; gave a decayed count, who sat on the
box, some very sensible advice about the management
of a wild son; drew a comparison between French
and Italian women (he had travelled); told us who the
old count was in very tolerable French, and preferred
Edmund Kean and Fanny Kemble to all actors in the
world. His taste and his philosophy, like his driving,
were quite unexceptionable. He was, withal, very
handsome, and had the easy and respectful manners of
a well-bred person. It seemed very odd to give him
a shilling at the end of the journey.

At Chatham we took up a very elegantly dressed
young man, who had come down on a fishing excursion.
He was in the army, and an Irishman. We had
not been half an hour on the seat together, before he
had discovered, by so many plain questions, that I was
an American, a stranger in England, and an acquaintance
of a whole regiment of his friends in Malta and
Corfu. If this had been a Yankee, thought I, what
a chapter it would have made for Basil Hall or Madame
Trollope! With all his inquisitiveness I liked
my companion, and half-accepted his offer to drive me
down to Epsom the next day to the races. I know no
American who would have beaten that on a stagecoach
acquaintance.