Chapter 7

Private intercourse is gay and agreeable, and less restrained by the exclusive pretension to dress and fashion which prevails in society both at New York and Philadelphia; whilst, if attractive women are less numerous here than in those cities, beauty is by no means rare; indeed Boston boasts of one family whose personal attractions might serve to sustain the pretensions of a larger population.

THE TREMONT THEATRE.

In the same street, and immediately opposite the great hotel, is the Tremont Theatre, certainly the most elegant exterior in the country, and with a very well-proportioned, but not well-arranged _salle_, or audience part.

I commenced here on Monday the 30th of September, three days after closing at Philadelphia, to a well-filled house, composed, however, chiefly of men, as on my _début_ at New York. My welcome was cordial and kind in the extreme; but the audience, although attentive, appeared exceedingly cold. On a first night I did not heed this much, especially as report assured me they were very well pleased; but throughout the week this coldness appeared to me to increase rather than diminish, and so much was I affected by it, that, notwithstanding the houses were very good, I, on the last day of my first engagement of six nights, declined positively to renew it, as was the custom in such cases, and as, in fact, the manager and myself had contemplated: on this night, however, the aspect of affairs brightened up amazingly; the house was crowded; a brilliant show of ladies graced the boxes; the performances were a repetition of two pieces which had been previously acted, and from first to last the mirth was electric; the good people appeared, by common consent, to abandon themselves to the fun of the scene, and laughed _à gorge deployée_. At the fall of the curtain, after, in obedience to the call of the house, I had made my bow, the manager announced my re-engagement; and from this night forth I never met a merrier or a pleasanter audience.

It was quite in accordance with the character ascribed to the New-Englanders that they should coolly and thoroughly examine and understand the novelty presented for their judgment, and that, being satisfied and pleased, they should no longer set limits to the demonstration of their feelings.

In matters of graver import they have always evinced the like deliberate judgment and apparent coldness of bearing; but beneath this prudential outward veil they have feelings capable of the highest degree of excitement and the most enduring enthusiasm.

I do not agree with those who describe the Yankee as a naturally cold-blooded, selfish being. From both the creed and the sumptuary regulations of the rigid moral censors from whom they sprung, they have inherited the practice of a close self-observance and a strict attention to conventional form, which gives a frigid restraint to their air that nevertheless does not sink far beneath the surface.

A densely-populated and ungrateful soil has kept alive and quickened their natural gifts of intelligence and enterprise, whilst the shifts poverty imposes upon young adventure may possibly at times have impelled prudence to degenerate into cunning. But look at their history as a community; they have been found ever ready to make the most generous sacrifices for the commonwealth. In their domestic relations they are proverbial as the kindest husbands and most indulgent fathers; whilst as friends they are found to be, if reasonably wary, at least steadfast, and to be relied on to the uttermost of their professions.

I can readily understand a stranger, having any share of sensibility, not liking a people whose observances are so peculiar and so decidedly marked; but I do think it impossible for an impartial person to spend any time in the country, or have any close intercourse with the community, without learning to respect and admire them, _malgré_ their calculating prudence, and the many prejudices inseparable from a system of education even to this day sufficiently narrow and sectarian.

As far as my personal experience is worthy of consideration, I must declare that some of the kindest, gentlest, and most hospitable friends I had, and, I trust I may add, have, in the Union, were natives of New-England, or, as they say here, "real Yankee, born and raised within sight of the State-house of Bosting."

JOURNAL.

_Oct. 20th, New York._--Began my second engagement here,--the weather divine. Procured a very good hack at Tattersal's, and daily "skir the country round." The environs of this city possess more variety of scenery than one would suppose from a cursory glance at the country, which appears tame and unbroken. The river views are most attractive to me.

Rode to the race-course on Long Island, this being the period of the "Fall Meeting," as it is termed. The assemblage thin on the first day--Appointments of the negro jockeys more picturesque than race-like,--ill-fitted jackets, trousers dirty, and loose, or stocking-net pantaloons ditto, but tight, with Wellingtons over or under, according to the taste of the rider; or shoes without stockings, or stockings without shoes, as weight may be required or rejected. They sit well forward on to the withers of the horses; do not seem over steady in their saddles, but cling like monkeys, their whole sleight-of-hand appears to consist of a dead pull; and their mode of running, with their time for lying back or making play, seems to be entirely governed by their masters, who, on a mile-course, they must frequently pass in heats, and who appear ever on the alert to direct them.

After the running, which was indifferent, went to see "Paul Pry," a trotting-horse of Mr. M'Leod's, now in training to do a match of eighteen miles in the hour.[5] With the exception of a few scratches on one of his legs, he looked in slapping order; a powerful grey horse, just sixteen hands, with a fine countenance, and appearing to be nearly, if not quite, thorough-bred.

_Second day._--Witnessed a good race, which a little mare, called Trifle, won in two four-mile heats. She had, on a former occasion, run four heats, or twenty miles, over the central course at Baltimore, and was beaten by one of her present competitors, a fine mare called Black Maria. Trifle is very little, but powerfully put together, and exceedingly handsome; her only drawback being a pair of mulish-looking ears. She has uncommon speed, and is one of the steadiest and smoothest gallopers I ever saw go over turf.

I, at the start, took a great fancy to the little pet, and backed her even against the other two horses for a dozen of gloves with my friend Mr. C----n. By the close of the second heat our bet had increased ninefold,--Next morning received a box containing nine dozen of French gloves. It will be my duty henceforth to back Trifle.

_October 29th._--The city yet crowded with strangers; every hotel full.

Find out that I am No. 1. in this enormous house; the first time I ever could boast such an honour, and now am by no means certain that it is worth the labour it imposes, since it leads me a dance to the third story: however, it is an excellent room, very large, and removed from the bustle below; the sound of the dustman-like bell, which calls the house to meals, barely reaches my ear. I often catch myself parodying poor Maturin's lines, which I have applied to this unpoetical grievance, and concluded most impotently--

----"Bell echoes bell, Meal follows meal, Till the ear aches for the last welcome summons That tolls an end to the day's cookery."

At this time there cannot be far short of one hundred and fifty persons dining daily in the public room: did I desire to dine at it, however, the hospitality of my friends I find would render this impracticable.

_November 3rd._--Dined at Harlaem, a pretty village eight miles from the city, but daily drawing closer to it. Here a certain Mrs. Bradshaw fries chickens in a _sauce tartarre_, to the which could pen of mine do justice, "I guess" I know folk "our side" the water who would be stealing across to Harlaem some fine day to dine. We had tarapins too, of whose excellence most unfortunates in Europe, happily for their poor wives and innocent children, are ignorant.

On our way home halted at Cato's, and discussed the comparative merits of hail-storm and julep, demonstrating our arguments by the practical experiments of this distinguished spirituous professor.

The day deliciously genial, and the night like a fine harvest-moon at home. Of a verity this American autumn, or fall, as they call it, is a most delicate season.

_Friday, 8th._--Up with the lark, and, accompanied by Captain D----n, got on board the steamer for Philadelphia, _viâ_ Amboy.

The morning was clear, with a warm sun just tempered by a breeze balmy and soft: the packet was crowded, and our passage across the harbour a pleasure to remember. We were soon, however, to have all the happy recollections of this journey miserably blotted out by one of the most fearful accidents I ever beheld.

At Amboy we took the railroad; and every one was delighted to find that the locomotives were now in operation, anticipating a quick and pleasant ride to Bordentown. For a time all went well: various surmises were made as to our rate; some calculated it at twenty miles in the hour; D----n and the Belgian minister, Baron de B----r, were disputing the point, watch in hand, when an alarm was given from the rear: our attention was quickly arrested by loud cries to "stop the engine," coming from the windows of every carriage in the train.

On the halt being accomplished, the carriages were deserted in a moment; for it was discovered that one of those in the rear had been overturned in consequence of the axle breaking,--its occupants' fate as yet unknown.

I was soon on the spot, and what a scene was here to witness! Out of twenty-four persons only one had escaped unhurt. One man was dead, another dying, and five others had fractures, more or less serious; a couple of ladies (sisters) dreadfully wounded; the children of one of them, two little girls, with broken limbs.

Never were sufferers more patient; one of them was a surgeon, a fine young fellow, who immediately set about doing the best his skill could accomplish for those most desperately hurt. D----n and I volunteered as his assistants; and with such splints as the shattered panels of the carriage supplied, the fractured limbs were bound up.

It was a melancholy task; but this gallant fellow stuck to it until he saw such of his patients as it was possible to remove disposed of in one of the baggage-cars, emptied for this purpose. I had, in the course of his task, frequently observed him pause, as though either faint, or finding some difficulty in the act of stooping, which was constantly required; but it was not until he had seen the last of his fellow-sufferers disposed of to his best ability that he examined his own condition, when it was discovered that two of his ribs were broken.

It was full three hours before the wounded could be removed from the sandy bank on which they had been stretched; and it was an afflicting thing to see them lying here, bloody and disfigured, exposed to the glare of a hot sun, without the possibility of procuring them shelter; for we were some miles from the nearest village when the accident occurred.

The ex-president, Mr. Quincy Adams, was in the carriage immediately attached to the one overturned: by his direction an inquest was held upon the deceased before we departed; and, this being concluded, the train once more moved forward, but with a character mournfully altered since our first departure.

We found the steam-boat yet in waiting at Bordentown; and, bearing with us those of the wounded who could proceed so far, we reached Philadelphia at a late hour in the afternoon, with such a freight as I trust may never again visit its wharves.

_Saturday._--Called to inquire after such of our wounded fellow-passengers as we could trace. The lady so severely hurt pronounced out of all danger; and her dear baby still living, with hopes of saving it. A man with numerous fractures, who had been left behind, report says, is relieved by death from all farther suffering.

This is the first serious accident that has occurred upon this line, which appears to be most carefully conducted; one of the active proprietors or more--the Messrs. Stevens, men of great prudence and practical skill--being constantly upon the road, and personally supervising every department connected with both boats and railway.

_Sunday, 10th._--At six A.M. departed for Baltimore, _viâ_ the Delaware and Newcastle railroad: the day was cloudless, and as warm as it is in England in June. I often, on these bright days, think of my good folk in Kent,--clouds and fog without, and sea-coal fire within: no bad substitute for a sun, by the way, after all; especially after one has had a sniff of the anthracite coal used in the close stoves here, an atmosphere which dread of freezing only could reconcile me to.

FOOTNOTE:

[5] Which he shortly after won with ease, and was backed on the ground to perform nineteen, and twenty. No takers.

BALTIMORE.

The day upon which I first approached this city would have given a charm even to desolation. It was on the tenth of November; the air elastic, but bland as on a fine June morning at home; the temperature was about the same too, but attended with a clearness of atmosphere in all quarters that seldom falls out within our islands.

The passage down the Elk river is quite beautiful: the shores on either hand are bold and undulating; the country finely wooded; the banks indented by numerous bays and inlets, whose jutting capes so intersect each other that in several reaches the voyager is, as it were, completely land-locked, and might imagine himself coasting about some pretty lake.

We neared the well-closed harbour amidst a fleet of some hundred and fifty sail, of all sizes and of every variety of rig, from the simple two-sailed heavy sloop to that perfection of naval architecture, the Clipper schooner of Baltimore, with her long tapering masts raking over her taffrail, and her symmetrical hull fairly leaping out of water, as though she moved from wave to wave by a succession of graceful bounds rather than held her course by cleaving a pathway through them, as did her more cumbrous fellows.

The eye was charmed and the heart elevated by these unequivocal evidences of thriving commerce sweeping towards the city; which rises gradually, as it spreads over the face of the irregular hill it occupies. Several domes of considerable magnitude, a tall column or two, with various towers and spires, rendered conspicuous from the nature of the site, invest it with an air of much importance, and have gained for it the title of the City of Monuments.

The main street, like that of Boston, has very much the look of an English county-town; and the air of the shops is wholly English. I wandered about here guided by curiosity and caprice,--the only cicerone I ever desire,--and saw most things worthy note. I attended service at the cathedral, where I heard mass admirably performed, for in this choir are several voices of a very high order.

The interior of the church is good; the altar most worthily fitted up; and the general effect would be imposing were it not marred by the introduction of regular lines of exceedingly comfortable but most uncatholic-looking pews, with the which, I confess, I felt so vexed, that I could have found in my heart, Heaven pardon me! to have wished them fairly floating in the bay, only for the delicate creatures who sat within them, on whose transparent brows and soft dark eyes it was impossible to look and breathe a wish or harbour a thought of evil.

I next mounted the Washington column, as it is called, and beheld a sunset from its top that would have well recompensed a poet or painter for a journey over "the broa-a-d At-álantic," as poor Incledon used to emphasize it.

This is a noble column and splendidly put together, of workmanship and material calculated to endure,--lasting, unimpeachable by time or change, as is the fame of the patriot to whose virtues it is well inscribed; but the statue itself is bad, ineffective, and in no situation or distance I could discover at all like the great original, whose personal characteristics were nevertheless striking, and well adapted for the artist.

The inverted bee-hive too, which is overturned on the head of the capital, for the purpose, as it were, of hoisting the figure a little higher, is in bad taste, and detracts from the plainness of the column, which, if divested of both bee-hive and figure, would be an object worthy to commemorate the citizen Washington, in whose character simplicity gave lustre to the grandeur with which it was happily blended; softening and chastening it, and making him, even in the sternest times, more loved than feared.

I rode hard for a few hours to the north and west of the city, accompanied by a Scotch friend; in the course of which ride we dived down some wooded glens, and crossed some rock-strewn brooks, that called to his memory the brawling waters of his own rugged land,--so constantly, at all times and in all places, is the wanderer's mind prepared to veer homeward.

I have sometimes smiled at the total absence of similarity between the distant original and the subject that has served to challenge comparison. In this case, however, there was, in my mind, good ground enough for the recollection: at one spot, in particular, we broke from a thickly-wooded hill side that we had for some time been blindly threading, and found ourselves just over a clear pebbled stream, skirted on the opposite bank by a fair fresh meadow, itself bounded again by a wooded height yet more stony and steep than that by which we sought to descend: on our right, in an angle of the meadow, stood a farmhouse, roughly built of grey-stone and lime, surrounded by numerous offices; and, lower down the brook, a mill of similar character.

After a long look upon this pretty sequestered spot, we descended to the bed of the stream, and found a railroad already skirting its course.

Passing the mill by a bridle-path, we here saw the bed of our little brook, fallen far beneath, tossing, raging, and whirling its way amongst great masses, and tumbling over the rocky ledges dividing smooth beds of close black gneiss. Yet a little lower, we struck a road leading over a bridge, by which we re-crossed the now important current; and hence the upward view was as glen-like, gloomy, and wild as Scottish imagination could desire.

BALTIMORE.

JOURNAL CONTINUED.

_Monday, 11th._--Find other Richmonds in the field, the Kembles being announced also, for to-night, at the Holiday Theatre, under the management of Mr. De Camp: I occupying "Front Street," with what is termed the regular Baltimore company. My front will prove in the rear, I fear.

This _untoward_ meeting was purely accidental; a thing not desired or premeditated by either party: my interest and inclination making it desirable that I should give these attractive objects to the rest of the world, what sailors term, "a wide berth." Shame that I should say so, and a lady concerned too!

_The Front Street._--A huge theatre, nearly as large as Covent-Garden. At night, I found there was indeed ample space "and verge enough." My clients, however, were uproariously merry, and made up for half an audience by bestowing upon the performance a double allowance of applause.

_Tuesday, 12th_--At 'em again!--"the Holiday" against "the Front!" I have discovered that the _people_ are with _us_; "the Holiday" being considered the aristocratic house, and "the Front," being, indeed, the work of an opposition composed of the sturdy democracy of the good city.

The manager says that last night our side was taken by surprise, but that now our forces are afoot. The worst of my case is, that I am compelled, _mal-gré bon-gré_, to laugh at my "beggarly account of empty boxes:" my tragic rivals may, at least, have the satisfaction of lowering upon their empty pit. But the _people_ are for us, consequently the right is with us; _ergo_, we must prevail.

_Eight o'clock_ P.M.--A narrower selvage round the vast area of our _parterre_. "Front Street" for ever!

_Wednesday, 12th._--I, this night at least, had the satisfaction of seeing my antagonists; for in the side-box I spied Messrs. Kemble and De Camp laughing to my teeth. I would have forgiven this, and joined with the wags, had my forces been assembled; but the musters on our side I find are not yet quite complete.

_Tuesday, 18th._--The struggle continued until yesterday without either party being able to claim an absolute victory; nor is it for me now to record a triumph, since I left the allies yet camping on the field, whilst on their part they must at least admit that I marched off with all the honours of war.

This day returned to Philadelphia--weather yet unbroken. Reached Mr. Head's in time to come in with the dinner.

_Wednesday, Nov. 20th._--Took a long walk round the city; the weather fine. About midday Chestnut-street assumed quite a lively and very attractive appearance, for it was filled with shopping-parties of well-dressed women, and presented a sprinkling of carriages neatly appointed and exceedingly well horsed.

Satisfied that I am correct in my judgment, when I assert that this population has the happiness to possess an unusual share of handsome girls. They walk with a freer air and more elastic step than their fair rivals of New York; have clear brunette complexions, and eyes of great beauty.

The theatre very full, and the dress-boxes containing a large proportion of ladies.

_21st._--On horseback early; crossed the Schuylkill, over the Manayunk bridge, and back by the right bank of the river. The piers of a viaduct, about to be thrown from the opposite heights by the Lancaster Rail-road Company, already much elevated since my first visit here in September. Highly beneficial to the community, no doubt; but destructive of the repose and seclusion of this charming scene. The sweetest spots, and such as one would most desire to conserve, seem to be always the places peculiarly selected for these useful but most unpicturesque invasions.

_23rd._--Visited the dock-yard in company with Lieutenant I----d. A three-decker, classed according to law as a seventy-four, almost ready to be sent off the stocks--a noble ship. A frigate is housed close by her, but looks a mere toy when one views it immediately after having contemplated the proportions of the Pennsylvania. This dockyard is smaller, and in appearance inferior every way to that of Boston.

_27th._--Having exhausted all the rides in the immediate neighbourhood, I this day determined upon widening my circle; so went, accompanied by K----r, about fifteen miles up the Delaware by the Bristol road.

On the way-side we halted to look upon a mansion, made memorable for ever by one of those wild atrocities, the details of which indeed appear, upon review, fitter for the pages of romance than for a journal of every-day life, yet too striking to be heard and forgotten, or passed by without comment. I must only premise, that the affair I am about to describe is of recent occurrence, and strictly true in all its horrible details.

THE TEMPERANCE HOUSE.