Retrospect of Western Travel Volume I Part 4

"Upon the landscape! Oh! but we saw that yesterday."

The gentleman was perfectly serious; quite earnest in all this. When we were departing, a foreign tourist was heard to complain of the high charges! High charges! As if we were to be supplied for nothing on a perch where the wonder is if any but the young ravens get fed! When I considered what a drawback it is in visiting mountain-tops that one is driven down again almost immediately by one's bodily wants, I was ready to thank the people devoutly for harbouring us on any terms, so that we might think out our thoughts, and compose our emotions, and take our fill of that portion of our universal and eternal inheritance.

WEDDINGS.

"G.o.d, the best maker of all marriages, Combine your hearts in one!"

_Henry V._

I was present at four weddings in the United States, and at an offer of marriage.

The offer of marriage ought hardly to be so called, however. It was a pet.i.tion from a slave to be allowed to wed (as slaves wed) the nursemaid of a lady in whose house I was staying. The young man could either write a little, or had employed some one who could to prepare his epistle for him. It ran from corner to corner of the paper, which was daubed with diluted wafer, like certain love-letters nearer home than Georgia. Here are the contents:

"Miss Cunningham it is My wishes to companion in your Present and I hope you will Be peeze at it and I hope that you will not think Hard of Me I have Ben to the Doctor and he was very well satafide with Me and I hope you is and Miss Mahuw all so

"thats all I has to say now wih.e.s.h.en you will grant Me that honour I will Be very glad.

"S.B. SMITH."

The nursemaid was granted; and as it was a love-match, and as the girl's mistress is one of the tender, the sore-hearted about having slaves, I hope the poor creatures are as happy as love in debas.e.m.e.nt can make them.

The first wedding I saw in Boston was very like the common run of weddings in England. It happened to be convenient that the parties should be married in church; and in the Unitarian church in which they usually wors.h.i.+pped we accordingly awaited them. I had no acquaintance with the family, but went on the invitation of the pastor who married them. The family connexion was large, and the church, therefore, about half full. The form of celebration is at the pleasure of the pastor; but, by consent, the administration by pastors of the same sect is very nearly alike. The promises of the married parties are made reciprocal, I observed. The service in this instance struck me as being very beautiful from its simplicity, tenderness, and brevity. There was one variation from the usual method, in the offering of one of the prayers by a second pastor, who, being the uncle of the bridegroom, was invited to take a share in the service.

The young people were to set out for Europe in the afternoon, the bride being out of health, the dreary drawback upon almost every extensive plan of action and fair promise of happiness in America. The lady has, I rejoice to hear, been quite restored by travel; but her sickness threw a gloom over the celebration, even in the minds of strangers. She and her husband walked up the middle aisle to the desk where the pastors sat.

They were attended by only one bridesmaid and one groomsman, and were all in plain travelling dresses. They said steadily and quietly what they had to say, and walked down the aisle again as they came. Nothing could be simpler and better, for this was not a marriage where festivity could have place. If there is any natural scope for joy, let weddings by all means be joyous; but here there was sickness, with the prospect of a long family separation, and there was most truth in quietness.

The other wedding I saw in Boston was as gay a one as is often seen. The parties were opulent, and in the first rank in society. They were married in the drawing-room of the bride's house, at half past eight in the evening, by Dr. Channing. The moment the ceremony was over, crowds of company began to arrive; and the bride, young and delicate, and her maidens, were niched in a corner of one of the drawing-rooms to courtesy to all comers. They were so formally placed, so richly and (as it then seemed) formally dressed, for the present revived antique style of dress was then quite new, that, in the interval of their courtesies, they looked like an old picture brought from Windsor Castle. The bride's mother presided in the other drawing-room, and the bridegroom flitted about, universally attentive, and on the watch to introduce all visiters to his lady. The transition from the solemnity of Dr. Channing's service to the noisy gayeties of a rout was not at all to my taste. I imagined that it was not to Dr. Channing's either, for his talk with me was on matters very little resembling anything that we had before our eyes; and he soon went away. The noise became such as to silence all who were not inured to the gabble of an American party, the noisiest kind of a.s.semblage, I imagine (not excepting a Jew's synagogue), on the face of the globe. I doubt whether any pagans in their wors.h.i.+p can raise any hubbub to equal it. I constantly found in a large party, after trying in vain every kind of scream that I was capable of, that I must give up, and satisfy myself with nodding and shaking my head. If I was rightly understood, well and good; if not, I must let it pa.s.s. As the noise thickened and the heat grew more oppressive, I glanced towards the poor bride in her corner, still standing, still courtesying; her pale face growing paler; her nonchalant manner (perhaps the best she could a.s.sume) more indifferent. I was afraid that if all this went on much longer, she would faint or die upon the spot. It did not last much longer. By eleven some of the company began to go away, and by a quarter before twelve all were gone but the comparatively small party (including ourselves) who were invited to stay to supper.

The chandelier and mantelpieces, I then saw, were dressed with flowers.

There was a splendid supper; and, before we departed, we were carried up to a well-lighted apartment, where bride cake and the wedding presents were set out in bright array.

Five days afterward we went, in common with all her acquaintance, to pay our respects to the bride. The courtyard of her mother's house was thronged with carriages, though no one seemed to stay five minutes. The bridegroom received us at the head of the stairs, and led us to his lady, who courtesied as before. Cake, wine, and liqueurs were handed round, the visiters all standing. A few words on common subjects were exchanged, and we were gone to make way for others.

A Quaker marriage which I saw at Philadelphia was scarcely less showy in its way. It took place at the Cherrystreet church, belonging to the Hicksites. The reformed Quaker Church, consisting of the followers of Elias Hicks, bears about the same relation to the old Quakerism as the Church of England to that of Rome; and, it seems to me, the mutual dislike is as intense. I question whether religious enmity ever attained a greater extreme than among the orthodox Friends of Philadelphia. The Hicksites are more moderate, but are sometimes naturally worried out of their patience by the meddling, the denunciations, and the calumnies of the old Quaker societies. The new church is thinking of reforming and relaxing a good deal farther, and in the celebration of marriage among other things. It is under consideration (or was when I was there) whether the process of betrothment should not be simplified, and marriage in the father's house permitted to such as prefer it to the church. The wedding at which I was present was, however, performed with all the formalities.

A Quaker friend of mine, a frequent preacher, suggested, a few days previously, that a seat had better be reserved for me near the speakers, that I might have a chance of hearing "in case there should be communications." I had hopes from this that my friend would speak, and my wishes were not disappointed.

The s.p.a.cious church was crowded; and for three or four hours the poor bride had to sit facing the a.s.semblage, aware, doubtless, that during the time of silence the occupation of the strangers present, if not of the friends themselves, would be watching her and her party. She was pretty, and most beautifully dressed. I have seldom pitied anybody more than I did her, while she sat palpitating for three hours under the gaze of some hundreds of people; but, towards the end of the time of silence, my compa.s.sion was transferred to the bridegroom. For want of something to do, after suppressing many yawns, he looked up to the ceiling; and in the midst of an empty stare, I imagine he caught the eye of an acquaintance in the back seats; for he was instantly troubled with a most irrepressible and unseasonable inclination to laugh. He struggled manfully with his difficulty; but the smiles would come, broader and broader. If, by dint of looking steadfastly into his hat for a few minutes, he attained a becoming gravity, it was gone the moment he raised his head. I was in a panic lest we should have a scandalous peal of merriment if something was not given him to do or listen to. Happily "there were communications," and the course of his ideas was changed.

Of the five speakers, one was an old gentleman whose discourse was an entire perplexity to me. For nearly an hour he discoursed on Jacob's ladder; but in a style so rambling, and in a chant so singularly unmusical as to set attention and remembrace at defiance. Some parenthetical observations alone stood a chance of being retained, from their singularity; one, for instance, which he introduced in the course of his narrative about Jacob setting a stone for a pillow; "a very different," cried the preacher, raising his chant to the highest pitch, "a very different pillow, by-the-way, from any that we--are--accommodated--with." What a contrast was the brief discourse of my Quaker friend which followed! Her n.o.ble countenance was radiant as the morning; her soft voice, though low, so firm that she was heard to the farthest corner, and her little sermon as philosophical as it was devout. "Send forth thy light and thy truth," was her text. She spoke gratefully of intellectual light as a guide to spiritual truth, and antic.i.p.ated and prayed for an ultimate universal diffusion of both. The certificate of the marriage was read by Dr. Parrish, an elderly physician of Philadelphia, the very realization of all my imaginings of the personal appearance of William Penn; with all the dignity and bonhommie that one fancies Penn invested with in his dealings with the Indians. Dr. Parrish speaks with affection of the Indians, from the experience some ancestors of his had of the hospitality of these poor people when they were in a condition to show hospitality. His grandfather's family were s.h.i.+pwrecked, and the Indians took the poor lady and her children home to an inhabited cave, and fed them for many weeks or months. The tree stump round which they used to sit at meals is still standing; and Dr. Parrish says that, let it stand as long as it will, the love of his family to the Indians shall outlast it.

The matrimonial promise was distinctly and well spoken by both the parties. At the request of the bride and bridegroom, Dr. Parrish asked me to put the first signature, after their own, to the certificate of the marriage; and we adjourned for the purpose to an apartment connected with the church. Most ample sheets of parchment were provided for the signatures; and there was a prodigious array of names before we left, when a crowd was still waiting to testify. This mult.i.tudinous witnessing is the pleasantest part of being married by acclamation. If weddings are not to be private, there seems no question of the superiority of this Quaker method to that of the Boston marriage I beheld, where there was all the publicity, without the co-operation and sanction.

The last wedding which I have to give an account of is full of a melancholy interest to me now. All was so joyous, so simple, so right, that there seemed no suggestion to evil-boding, no excuse for antic.i.p.ating such wo as has followed. On one of the latter days of July, 1835, I reached the village of Stockbridge; the Sedgwicks' village, for the second time, intending to stay four or five days with my friends there. I had heard of an approaching wedding in the family connexion, and was glad that I had planned to leave, so as to be out of the way at a time when I supposed the presence of foreigners, though friends, might be easily dispensed with. But when Miss Sedgwick and I were sitting in her room one bright morning, there was a tap at the door. It was the pretty black-eyed girl who was to be married the next week. She stood only a minute on the threshold to say, with grave simplicity, "I am come to ask you to join our friends at my father's house next Tuesday evening." Being thus invited, I joyfully a.s.sented, and put off my journey.

The numerous children of the family connexion were in wild spirits all that Tuesday. In the morning we went a strong party to the Ice Hole; a defile between two hills, so perplexed and enc.u.mbered with rocks that none but practised climbers need attempt the pa.s.sage. It was a good way for the young people to work off their exuberant spirits. Their laughter was heard from amid the nooks and hiding-places of the labyrinth, and smiling faces might be seen behind every shrubby screen which sprang up from the crevices. How we tried to surpa.s.s each other in the ferns and mosses we gathered, rich in size and variety! What skipping and scrambling there was; what trunk bridges and ladders of roots! How valiant the ladies looked with their stout sticks! How glad every one was to feast upon the wild raspberries when we struggled through the close defile into the cool, green, breezy meadow on the banks of the Housatonic! During the afternoon we were very quiet, reading one of Carlyle's reviews aloud (for the twentieth time, I believe, to some of the party), and discussing it and other things. By eight o'clock we were all dressed for the wedding; and some of the children ran over the green before us, but came back, saying that all was not quite ready; so we got one of the girls to sing to us for another half hour.

The house of the bride's father was well lighted, and dressed with flowers. She had no mother; but her elder sisters aided her father in bidding us welcome. The drawing-room was quite full; and while the grown-up friends found it difficult to talk, and to repress the indefinable anxiety and agitation which always attend a wedding, the younger members of the party were amusing themselves with whispered mirth. The domestics looked as if the most joyous event of their lives were taking place, and the old father seemed placid and satisfied.

In a few minutes we were summoned to another room, at the top of which stood the tall bridegroom, with his pretty little lady on his arm; on either side, the three gentlemen and three ladies who attended them; and in front, the Episcopalian minister who was to marry them, and who has since been united to one of the sisters. It was the first time of his performing the ceremony, and his manner was solemn and somewhat anxious, as might be expected.

The bridegroom was a professor in a college in the neighbouring State of New-York; a young man of high acquirements and character, to whom the old father might well be proud to give his daughter. His manners were remarkably pleasing; and there was a joyous, dignified serenity visible in them this evening, which at once favourably prepossessed us who did not previously know him. He was attended by a brother professor from the same college. When the service was over, we all kissed the grave and quiet bride. I trust that no bodings of the woes which awaited her cast a shadow over her spirits then. I think, though grave, she was not sad.

She spoke with all her father's guests in the course of the evening, as did her husband. How often have I of late tried to recall precisely what they said to me, and every look with which they said it!

We went back to the drawing-room for cake and wine; and then ensued the search for the ring in the great wedding cake, with much merriment among those who were alive to all the fun of a festivity like this, and to none of the care. There was much moving about between the rooms, and dressing with flowers in the hall; and lively conversation, as it must needs be where there are Sedgwicks. Then Champagne and drinking of healths went round, the guests poured out upon the green, all the ladies with handkerchiefs tied over their heads. There we bade good-night, and parted off to our several homes.

When I left the village the next morning two or three carriages full of young people were setting off, as attendants upon the bride and bridegroom, to Lebanon. After a few such short excursions in the neighbourhood, the young couple went home to begin their quiet college and domestic life.

Before a year had elapsed, a year which to me seemed gone like a month, I was at Stockbridge again and found the young wife's family in great trouble. She was in a raging fever, consequent on her confinement, and great fears were entertained for her life. Her infant seemed to have but a small chance under the circ.u.mstances, and there was a pa.s.sing mention of her husband being ill. Every one spoke of him with a respect and affection which showed how worthy he was of this young creature's love; and it was our feeling for him which made our prayers for her restoration so earnest as they were. The last I heard of her before I left the country was that she was slowly and doubtfully recovering, but had not yet been removed from her father's house. The next intelligence that I received after my return to England was of her husband's death; that he had died in a calm and satisfied state of mind; satisfied that if their reasonable hopes of domestic joy and usefulness had not been fulfilled, it was for wise and kind reasons; and that the strong hand which thus early divided them would uphold the gentle surviver. No one who beheld and blessed their union can help beseeching and trusting, since all other hope is over, that it may be even thus.

HIGH ROAD TRAVELLING.

"How far my pen has been fatigued like those of other travellers in this journey of it, the world must judge; but the traces of it, which are now all set o'vibrating together this moment, tell me it is the most fruitful and busy period of my life; for, as I had made no convention with my man with the gun as to time--by seizing every handle, of what size or shape soever which chance held out to me in this journey--I was always in company, and with great variety too."--STERNE.

Our first land travelling, in which we had to take our chance with the world in general, was across the State of New-York. My account of what we saw may seem excessively minute in some of its details; but this style of particularity is not adopted without reasons. While writing my journal, I always endeavoured to bear in mind the rapidity with which civilization advances in America, and the desirablness of recording things precisely in their present state, in order to have materials for comparison some few years hence, when travelling may probably be as unlike what it is now, as a journey from London to Liverpool by the new railroad differs from the same enterprise as undertaken a century and a half ago.

To avoid some of the fatigues and liabilities of common travelling, certain of our s.h.i.+pmates and their friends and ourselves had made up a party to traverse the State of New-York in an "exclusive extra;" a stage hired, with the driver, for our own use, to proceed at our own time. Our fellow-travellers were a German and a Dutch gentleman, and the Prussian physician and young South Carolinian whom I have mentioned in the list of our s.h.i.+pmates. We were to meet at the Congress Hall hotel in Albany on the 6th of October.

On our way from Stockbridge to Albany we saw a few objects characteristic of the country. While the horses were baiting we wandered into a graveyard, where the names on the tombstones were enough to inform any observer what country of the world he was in. One inscription was laudatory of Nelson and Nabby Bullis; another of Amasa and Polly Fielding. Hiram and Keziah were there too. The signs in the American streets are as ludicrous for their confusion of Greek, Roman, and Hebrew names, as those of Irish towns are for the arbitrary divisions of words.

One sees Rudolphus figuring beside Eliakim, and Aristides beside Zerug.

I pitied an acquaintance of mine for being named Peleg, till I found he had baptized his two boys Peleg and Seth. On a table in a little wayside inn I found Fox's Martyr's; and against the wall hung a framed sampler, with the following lines worked upon it:--

"Jesus, permit thine awful name to stand As the first offering of an infant's hand: And as her fingers o'er the canva.s.s move, Oh fill her thoughtful bosom with thy love, With thy dear children let her bear a part, And write thy name thyself upon her heart."

In these small inns the disagreeable practice of rocking in the chair is seen in its excess. In the inn parlour are three or four rocking-chairs, in which sit ladies who are vibrating in different directions, and at various velocities, so as to try the head of a stranger almost as severely as the tobacco-chewer his stomach. How this lazy and ungraceful indulgence ever became general, I cannot imagine; but the nation seems so wedded to it, that I see little chance of its being forsaken. When American ladies come to live in Europe, they sometimes send home for a rocking-chair. A common wedding-present is a rocking-chair. A beloved pastor has every room in his house furnished with a rocking-chair by his grateful and devoted people. It is well that the gentlemen can be satisfied to sit still, or the world might be treated with the spectacle of the sublime American Senate in a new position; its fifty-two senators see-sawing in full deliberation, like the wise birds of a rookery in a breeze. If such a thing should ever happen, it will be time for them to leave off laughing at the Shaker wors.h.i.+p.

As we approached Greenbush, which lies opposite to Albany, on the east bank of the Hudson, we met riding horses, exercised by grooms, and more than one handsome carriage; tokens that we were approaching some centre of luxury. The view of Albany rising from the river side, with its brown stone courthouse and white marble capitol, is fine; but it wants the relief of more trees within itself, or of a rural background. How changed is this bustling city, thronged with costly buildings, from the Albany of the early days of Mrs. Grant of Laggan, when the children used to run up and down the green slope which is now State-street, imposing from its width and the ma.s.siveness of the houses seen behind its rows of trees! A tunnel is about to be made under the Hudson at Albany; meantime we crossed, as everybody does, by a horse ferryboat; a device so cruel as well as clumsy, that the sooner it is superseded the better. I was told that the strongest horses, however kept up with corn, rarely survive a year of this work.

We observed that, even in this city, the physicians have not always their names engraved on bra.s.s doorplates. On the most conspicuous part of their houses, perhaps on the angle of a corner house, is nailed some glazed substance like floorcloth, with "Dr. Such-an-one" painted upon it. At Was.h.i.+ngton I remember seeing "MAGISTRATE" thus affixed to a mere shed.

As we surmounted the hill leading to our hotel, we saw our two s.h.i.+pmates dancing down the steps to welcome us. There certainly is a feeling among s.h.i.+pmates which does not grow out of any other relation. They are thrown first into such absolute dependance on one another, for better for worse, and are afterward so suddenly and widely separated, that if they do chance to meet again, they renew their intimacy with a fervour which does not belong to a friends.h.i.+p otherwise originated. The glee of our whole party this evening is almost ridiculous to look back upon.

Everything served to make a laugh, and we were almost intoxicated with the prospect of what we were going to see and do together. We had separated only a fortnight ago, but we had as much to talk over as if we had been travelling apart for six months. The Prussian had to tell his adventures, we our impressions, and the Southerner his comparisons of his own country with Europe. Then we had to arrange the division of labour by which the gentlemen were to lighten the cares of travelling.

Dr. J., the Prussian, was on all occasions to select apartments for us; Mr. S., the Dutchman, to undertake the eating department; Mr. H., the American, was paymaster; and Mr. O., the German, took charge of the luggage. It was proposed that badges should be worn to designate their offices. Mr. S. was to be adorned with a corncob. Mr. H. stuck a bankbill in front of his hat; and, next morning, when Mr. O. was looking another way, the young men locked a small padlock upon his b.u.t.ton-hole, which he was compelled to carry there for a day or two, till his comrades vouchsafed to release him from his badge.

The hotel was well furnished and conducted. I pointed out, with some complacency, what a handsome piano we had in our drawing-room; but when, in the dark hour, I opened it in order to play, I found it empty of keys! a disappointment, however, which I have met with in England.

Mr. Van Buren and his son happened to be in Albany, and called on me this afternoon. There is nothing remarkable in the appearance of this gentleman, whom I afterward saw frequently at Was.h.i.+ngton. He is small in person, with light hair and blue eyes. I was often asked whether I did not think his manners gentlemanly. There is much friendliness in his manners, for he is a kind-hearted man; he is also rich in information, and lets it come out on subjects in which he cannot contrive to see any danger in speaking. But his manners want the frankness and confidence which are essential to good breeding. He questions closely, without giving anything in return. Moreover, he flatters to a degree which so cautious a man should long ago have found out to be disagreeable; and his flattery is not merely praise of the person he is speaking to, but a worse kind still; a skepticism and ridicule of objects and persons supposed to be distasteful to the one he is conversing with. I fully believe that he is an amiable and indulgent domestic man, and a reasonable political master, a good scholar, and a shrewd man of business; but he has the skepticism which marks the lower order of politicians. His public career exhibits no one exercise of that faith in men and preference of principle to petty expediency by which a statesman shows himself to be great.