Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe Part 24

DEAR MRS. STOWE,--The newspapers represent you as returning to London, but I cannot wait for the chance, slender I fear, of seeing you there, for I wish to consult you on a point admitting but of little delay.

Feeling that the sufferers in Kansas have a claim not only to sympathy, but to the expression of it, I wish to send them a donation.

It is, however, necessary to know what is the best application of money and what the safest channel. Presuming that you will approve the object, I ask you to tell me. Perhaps you would undertake the transmission of my 50. My present residence, two miles beyond Richmond, is opposite. I have watched for instructions of your course with warm interest. The sale of your book will go on increasing. It is beginning to be understood.

Believe me, with kind regards to your daughters,

Your faithful and affectionate

A. T. NOEL BYRON.

To this note the following answer was promptly returned:--

GROVE TERRACE, KENTISH TOWN, _October_ 16,1856.

DEAR LADY BYRON,--How glad I was to see your handwriting once more!

how more than glad I should be to see _you_! I do long to see you. I have so much to say,--so much to ask, and need to be refreshed with a sense of a congenial and sympathetic soul.

Thank you, my dear friend, for your sympathy with our poor sufferers in Kansas. May G.o.d bless you for it! By doing this you will step to my side; perhaps you may share something of that abuse which they who "know, not what they do" heap upon all who so feel for the right. I a.s.sure you, dear friend, I am _not_ insensible to the fiery darts which thus fly around me... .

Direct as usual to my publishers, and believe me, as ever, with all my heart,

Affectionately yours,

H. B. S.

Having dispatched this note, Mrs. Stowe wrote to her husband concerning their surroundings and plans as follows:--

"_Friday, 16th_. Confusion in the camp! no baggage come, n.o.body knows why; running to stations, inquiries, messages, and no baggage.

Meanwhile we have not even a clean collar, nothing but very soiled traveling dresses; while Lady Mary Labouchere writes that her carriage will wait for us at Slough Station this afternoon, and we must be off at two. What's to be done? Luckily I did not carry all my dresses to Dunrobin; so I, of all the party, have a dress that can be worn. We go out and buy collars and handkerchiefs, and two o'clock beholds us at the station house.

"_Stoke Park_. I arrived here alone, the baggage not having yet been heard from. Mr. G., being found in London, confessed that he delayed sending it by the proper train. In short, Mr. G. is what is called an easy man, and one whose easiness makes everybody else un easy. So because he was easy and thought it was no great matter, and things would turn out well enough, without any great care, _we_ have had all this discomfort.

"I arrived alone at the Slough Station and found Lady Mary's carriage waiting. Away we drove through a beautiful park full of deer, who were so tame as to stand and look at us as we pa.s.sed. The house is in the Italian style, with a dome on top, and wide terraces with stone bal.u.s.trades around it.

"Lady Mary met me at the door, and seemed quite concerned to learn of our ill-fortune. We went through a splendid suite of rooms to a drawing-room, where a little tea-table was standing.

"After tea Lady Mary showed me my room. It had that delightful, homelike air of repose and comfort they succeed so well in giving to rooms here. There was a cheerful fire burning, an arm-chair drawn up beside it, a sofa on the other side with a neatly arranged sofa-table on which were writing materials. One of the little girls had put a pot of pretty greenhouse moss in a silver basket on this table, and my toilet cus.h.i.+on was made with a place in the centre to hold a little vase of flowers. Here Lady Mary left me to rest before dressing for dinner. I sat down in an easy-chair before the fire, and formed hospitable resolutions as to how I would try to make rooms always look homelike and pleasant to tired guests. Then came the maid to know if I wanted hot water,--if I wanted anything,--and by and by it was time for dinner. Going down into the parlor I met Mr. Labouchere and we all went in to dinner. It was not quite as large a party as at Dunrobin, but much in the same way. No company, but several ladies who were all family connections.

"The following morning Lord Dufferin and Lord Alfred Paget, two gentlemen of the Queen's household, rode over from Windsor to lunch with us. They brought news of the goings-on there. Do you remember one night the d.u.c.h.ess of S. read us a letter from Lady Dufferin, describing the exploits of her son, who went yachting with Prince Napoleon up by Spitzbergen, and when Prince Napoleon and all the rest gave up and went back, still persevered and discovered a new island?

Well, this was the same man. A thin, slender person, not at all the man you would fancy as a Mr. Great Heart,--lively, cheery, and conversational.

"Lord Alfred is also very pleasant.

"Lady Mary prevailed on Lord Dufferin to stay and drive with us after lunch, and we went over to Clifden, the d.u.c.h.ess's villa, of which we saw the photograph at Dunrobin. For grace and beauty some of the rooms in this place exceed any I have yet seen in England.

"When we came back my first thought was whether Aunt Mary and the girls had come. Just as we were all going up to dress for dinner they appeared. Meanwhile, the Queen had sent over from Windsor for Lady Mary and her husband to dine with her that evening, and such invitations are understood as commands.

"So, although they themselves had invited four or five people to dinner, they had to go and leave us to entertain ourselves. Lady Mary was dressed very prettily in a flounced white silk dress with a pattern of roses woven round the bottom of each flounce, and looked very elegant. Mr. Labouchere wore breeches, with knee and shoe buckles sparkling with diamonds.

"They got home soon after we had left the drawing-room, as the Queen always retires at eleven. No late hours for her.

"The next day Lady Mary told me that the Queen had talked to her all about 'Dred,' and how she preferred it to 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' how interested she was in Nina, how provoked when she died, and how she was angry that something dreadful did not happen to Tom Gordon. She inquired for papa, and the rest of the family, all of whom she seemed to be well informed about.

"The next morning we had Lord Dufferin again to breakfast. He is one of the most entertaining young men I have seen in England, full of real thought and n.o.ble feeling, and has a wide range of reading. He had read all our American literature, and was very flattering in his remarks on Hawthorne, Poe, and Longfellow. I find J. R. Lowell less known, however, than he deserves to be.

"Lord Dufferin says that his mother wrote him some verses on his coming of age, and that he built a tower for them and inscribed them on a bra.s.s plate. I recommend the example to you, Henry; make yourself the tower and your memory the bra.s.s plate.

"This morning came also, to call, Lady Augusta Bruce, Lord Elgin's daughter, one of the d.u.c.h.ess of Kent's ladies-in-waiting; a very excellent, sensible girl, who is a strong anti-slavery body.

"After lunch we drove over to Eton, and went in to see the provost's house. After this, as we were pa.s.sing by Windsor the coachman suddenly stopped and said, 'The Queen is coming, my lady.' We stood still and the royal cortege pa.s.sed. I only saw the Queen, who bowed graciously.

"Lady Mary stayed at our car door till it left the station, and handed in a beautiful bouquet as we parted. This is one of the loveliest visits I have made."

After filling a number of other pleasant engagements in England, among which was a visit in the family of Charles Kingsley, Mrs. Stowe and her party crossed the Channel and settled down for some months in Paris for the express purpose of studying French. From the French capital she writes to her husband in Andover as follows:--

PARIS, _November_ 7, 1856.

MY DEAR HUSBAND,--On the 28th, when your last was written, I was at Charles Kingsley's. It seemed odd enough to Mary and me to find ourselves, long after dark, alone in a hack, driving towards the house of a man whom we never had seen (nor his wife either).

My heart fluttered as, after rumbling a long way through the dark, we turned into a yard. We knocked at a door and were met in the hall by a man who stammers a little in his speech, and whose inquiry, "Is this Mrs. Stowe?" was our first positive introduction. Ushered into a large, pleasant parlor lighted by a coal fire, which flickered on comfortable chairs, lounges, pictures, statuettes, and book-cases, we took a good view of him. He is tall, slender, with blue eyes, brown hair, and a hale, well-browned face, and somewhat loose-jointed withal. His wife is a real Spanish beauty.

How we did talk and go on for three days! I guess he is tired. I'm sure we were. He is a nervous, excitable being, and talks with head, shoulders, arms, and hands, while his hesitance makes it the harder.

Of his theology I will say more some other time. He, also, has been through the great distress, the "Conflict of Ages," but has come out at a different end from Edward, and stands with John Foster, though with more positiveness than he.

He laughed a good deal at many stories I told him of father, and seemed delighted to hear about him. But he is, what I did not expect, a zealous Churchman; insists that the Church of England is the finest and broadest platform a man can stand on, and that the thirty-nine articles are the only ones he could subscribe to. I told him you thought them the best summary (of doctrine) you knew, which pleased him greatly.

Well, I got your letter to-night in Paris, at No. 19 Rue de Clichy, where you may as well direct your future letters.

We reached Paris about eleven o'clock last night and took a carriage for 17 Rue de Clichy, but when we got there, no ringing or pounding could rouse anybody. Finally, in despair, we remembered a card that had been handed into the cars by some hotel-runner, and finding it was of an English and French hotel, we drove there, and secured very comfortable accommodations. We did not get to bed until after two o'clock. The next morning I sent a messenger to find Mme. Borione, and discovered that we had mistaken the number, and should have gone to No. 19, which was the next door; so we took a carriage and soon found ourselves established here, where we have a nice parlor and two bedrooms.

There are twenty-one in the family, mostly Americans, like ourselves, come to learn to speak French. One of them is a tall, handsome, young English lady, Miss Durant, who is a sculptress, studying with Baron de Triqueti. She took me to his studio, and he immediately remarked that she ought to get me to sit. I said I would, "only my French lessons."

"Oh," said he, smiling, "we will give you French lessons while you sit." So I go to-morrow morning.

As usual, my horrid pictures do me a service, and people seem relieved when they see me; think me even handsome "in a manner." Kingsley, in his relief, expressed as much to his wife, and as beauty has never been one of my strong points I am open to flattery upon it.

We had a most agreeable call from Arthur Helps before we left London.

He, Kingsley, and all the good people are full of the deepest anxiety for our American affairs. They really do feel very deeply, seeing the peril so much plainer than we do in America.

_Sunday night_. I fear I have delayed your letter too long. The fact is, that of the ten days I have been here I have been laid up three with severe neuralgia, viz., _toothache in the backbone_, and since then have sat all day to be modeled for my bust.

We spent the other evening with Baron de Triqueti, the sculptor. He has an English wife, and a charming daughter about the age of our girls. Life in Paris is altogether more simple and natural than in England. They give you a plate of cake and a cup of tea in the most informal, social way,--the tea-kettle sings at the fire, and the son and daughter busy themselves gayly together making and handing tea.

When tea was over, M. de Triqueti showed us a ma.n.u.script copy of the Gospels, written by his mother, to console herself in a season of great ill-health, and which he had ill.u.s.trated all along with exquisite pen-drawings, resembling the most perfect line engravings. I can't describe the beauty, grace, delicacy, and fullness of devotional feeling in these people. He is one of the loveliest men I ever saw.

We have already three evenings in the week in which we can visit and meet friends if we choose, namely, at Madame Mohl's, Madame Lanziel's, and Madame Belloc's. All these salons are informal, social gatherings, with no fuss of refreshments, no nonsense of any kind. Just the cheeriest, heartiest, kindest little receptions you ever saw.

A kiss to dear little Charley. If he could see all the things that I see every day in the Tuileries and Champs Elysees, he would go wild.

All Paris is a general whirligig out of doors, but indoors people seem steady, quiet, and sober as anybody.

_November_ 30. This is Sunday evening, and a Sunday in Paris always puts me in mind of your story about somebody who said, "Bless you! they make such a noise that the Devil couldn't meditate." All the extra work and odd jobs of life are put into Sunday. Your washerwoman comes Sunday, with her innocent, good-humored face, and would be infinitely at a loss to know why she shouldn't. Your bonnet, cloak, shoes, and everything are sent home Sunday morning, and all the way to church there is such whirligiging and pirouetting along the boulevards as almost takes one's breath away. Today we went to the Oratoire to hear M. Grand Pierre. I could not understand much; my French ear is not quick enough to follow. I could only perceive that the subject was "La Charite," and that the speaker was fluent, graceful, and earnest, the audience serious and attentive.