Part 21

There it lies in its cradle! its pure forehead yet unstained by sin, unfurrowed by care; and not an hour shall have passed without the traces of both becoming visible. And where is the mother gone? where is the fulfilled year?--Gone sorrowing to join the crowd of ancestors, who witness each against me for the unthrift waste I have made of the rich legacies they one by one have bestowed on me. Oh, new-born year! ere half thy hours are spent, how often will my weary spirit have wished them fleeter wings than even those they wear! What secrets are there folded in thy breast,--what undreamt-of chances,--what strange befallings,--what unforeseen sorrows,--what unexpected joys! Perhaps, in the mysterious accomplishments with which thou art laden, my death may be numbered!--perhaps, ere thy course be duly run, the death of Time may be decreed! Oh! this life, and all things in it, remind me of the thin veils of spiders' webs which divided Desire from his aim, and which, though light and transparent, were so numerous, that to lift them all away was hopeless. After breakfast, began writing journal. 'Twas not until dating it that I discovered it was New-year's day. When I did so, and looked at my strange surroundings, at the gloomy wintry sky, and thought of the heathenish disregard with which I was passing over, in this far land, the season of home-gathering and congregating of kin in my own country, I could not refrain from crying bitterly. In spite of the pouring rain, and Mr. ----'s hints to keep us away, my father, who wished to ascertain the truth of the reports with regard to the state of his theatre, set forward thither with me. We found a very large handsome house, larger, I think, than the Park, but dirty, dilapidated, and looking as if there had been eleven executions in it that morning. No actors, scarcely any scenes,--in short, such a state of things as rendered it totally impossible for us to think of acting there. Came home; sat diligently crying the whole morning. The afternoon cleared up, and became soft and sunny. My father insisted on my taking a walk; so I bonneted and set out with him. What I saw of the town appeared to me extremely like the outskirts of Birmingham or Manchester. Bright-red brick houses, in rows of three and five, with interesting gaps of gravel-pits, patches of meadow, and open spaces between, which give it an untidy straggling appearance. They are building in every direction, however, and in less than two years, these little pauses being filled up, Baltimore will be a very considerable place; for it covers, in its present state, a large extent of ground, and contains a vast population. Immediately after dinner, our host made his entrée with a piano-forte. I had suggested to Mr. ---- that I should be glad of one; and here it came. I had asked him to return in the evening, and was glad of the piano, for it helps the time away. At six o'clock, the managers of the Holliday Street theatre made their appearance; and my father stating that Mr. ---- was literally unable to fulfil his engagement with us, entered into arrangements with them, during which I sat up at a tremendously high window, looking at the beautiful serious skies, and radiant moon, and listening to a tolerable band playing sundry of Rossini's airs. When these men had departed, ---- came in. I sang and made him sing till tea-time. After that, he entertained us with a very long, but not very clear, account of the various processes of making, polishing, etc. steel, as practised in his manufactory. His account of their hard dealings with the poorer manufacturers was dreadful; and he himself spoke with horror of it, saying, "Oh, they are so miserably ground, poor wretches, they cannot be said to live,--they barely exist." When I remonstrated with him upon the wickedness of such proceedings, he replied, "We are compelled to do it in self-defence: if we did not use the same means as other manufacturers, we should presently be undersold." And this is the game playing all over England at this moment, in every department of her commerce and manufacture,--this cruel oppression of the poor, this forcing them by a league against them, as it were, to toil in bitterness for their scanty daily bread, while those who thus inhumanly depreciate their labour, and wring their hard earnings from their starving grasp, grow wealthy on their plunder. Are not these the things for which God has said he will avenge? Is his abomination of the false balance, and the stinted measure, and the unjust reckoning, less than in the days when he said he would visit the oppressor of the poor, and plead the cause of the widow and fatherless? Are not these the things that make a nation rotten at core, and ripe for decay? Are not these the things for which retribution is laid up, and fourfold restitution will be demanded?--'Tis awful to think of. From this the conversation grew to the means of obtaining interest upon money in this country, which the gentlemen discussed together for a length of time. I listened to them with many sad thoughts. How intent they seemed in their discourse, how much they appeared to value every slightest advantage of place or circumstance which enabled them to draw a greater profit from their capital; how eagerly, how earnestly, they seemed absorbed in these calculations. I do not know when I have been so forcibly struck with the worthlessness of money, and the strange delusion under which all men seem to be labouring, giving up their lives, as they do, to the hunting of wealth. Are these the cares that should engross the faculties of immortal souls, and rational thinking creatures? That we must live, I know, and that money is necessary to live, I know; but that our glorious capacities of soul, mind, and body, the fitting exercise of which alone, in itself, is happiness, should thus be chained down to the altar horns of Mammon, is what I never will believe wise, right, or fitting. I at length spoke, for my heart was burning within me, and burst into an eloquent lamentation on the folly and misery of which the world was guilty in following this base worship as it does. But when I said that I was convinced happiness might and did exist most blessedly upon half the means which men spent their lives in scraping together, my father laughed, and said I was the last person in the world who could live on little, or be content with the mediocrity I vaunted. I looked at my satin gown, and held my tongue, but still I was not convinced. We returned to our music till ten o'clock, when they had some supper, after which they drank a happy new year to England:--poor old England, God bless it! At about twelve o'clock, ---- departed. Sat up a long time at the window, listening to some serenading, which, in the moonlight, sounded pleasantly enough.[81]

_Sunday, 6th._

At about half-past ten, Mr. ---- called for us, and we walked up to the cathedral, which is a large unfinished stone building, standing on the brow of a hill, which is to be the fashionable quarter of the town, and where there are already some very nice-looking houses. The interior of the church is large and handsome, and has more the look of a church than any thing I have been inside of in this country yet. 'Tis full eight years since I was in a Catholic church; and the sensation with which I approached the high altar, with its golden crucifix, its marble entablatures, and its glimmering starry lights, savoured fully as much of sadness as devotion. I have not been in a Catholic place of worship since I was at school. How well I remember the beautiful music of the military mass, the pageants and processions of the feast days at high mass, and the evening service, not vespers, but the Salut.[82] They sang that exquisitely mournful and beautiful _Et incarnatus est_, of Haydn's, which made my blood all run backwards. One thing disgusted me dreadfully, though the priests who were officiating never passed or approached the altar without bending the knee to it, they kept spitting all over the carpet that surrounded and covered the steps to it, interrupting themselves in the middle of the service to do so, without the slightest hesitation. We had a very indifferent sermon: the service was of course in Latin. When it was over, Mr. ---- insisted on showing me some paintings which hung on either side the grand entrance. These were a couple of pictures by Paulin Guerin; the one representing the descent from the cross, the other, the burying of the dead, by St. Charles, in the Holy Land. I do not understand much about bad pictures, but I know good ones when I see them; and I think these were not such. There was no beauty of imagination or poetical conception whatever in them, and there appeared to me to be manifold glaring faults in the execution. I could have sworn to their being French pictures. Was introduced to several people, coming out of church. A little way beyond the cathedral stands Washington's monument,--a _neat and appropriate_ pillar,--which, together with a smaller one erected at the head of our street, to the memory of the North Point heroes, has given Baltimore the appellation of the monumental city, which never could have befallen it in any other country under heaven but this. At eight o'clock, we went to Mrs. ----'s. They are all in deep mourning, and the circle was very small. They are most agreeable pleasant people, with a peculiar gentleness of manner, like very high breeding, which I have often observed in Catholics of the better orders. Their conversation appeared to me totally divested of the disagreeable accent which seems almost universal in this country. Mrs. ---- talked to me about my aunt Whitelock, and what a charming actress she was, and what an enchanting thrilling voice she had. I spent a delightful evening. Before we went away, Mr. ---- showed us a picture of Lady ----, by Lawrence. It looked quite refreshing, with its lovely dark curls unfrizzed, and the form of the neck and arms undisguised by the hideousness of modern fashions. Saw a very good likeness, too, of the Duke of ----. 'Twas very like him, though many years younger.

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By the by, somebody said that ---- had turned Roman Catholic, and very devout. Some of the Marys and Magdalens of the old Italian painters are very converting pictures, with their tearful melancholy eyes, and golden, glorious, billowy hair. Mrs. ---- amused me very much by her account of the slaves on their estates, whom, she said, she found the best and most faithful servants in the world. Being born upon the land, there exists among them something of the old spirit of clanship, and "our house," "our family," are the terms by which they designate their owners. In the south, there are no servants but blacks; for the greater proportion of domestics being slaves, all species of servitude whatever is looked upon as a degradation; and the slaves themselves entertain the very highest contempt for white servants, whom they designate as "poor white trash."

_Monday, 7th._

Young ---- called, and stayed about an hour with us. At half-past five, took coffee, and off to the theatre. The play was Romeo and Juliet; the house was extremely full: they are a delightful audience. My Romeo had gotten on a pair of trunk breeches, that looked as if he had borrowed them from some worthy Dutchman of a hundred years ago. Had he worn them in New York, I could have understood it as a compliment to the ancestry of that good city; but here, to adopt such a costume in Romeo, was really perfectly unaccountable. They were of a most unhappy choice of colours, too,--dull, heavy-looking blue cloth, and offensive crimson satin, all be-puckered, and be-plaited, and be-puffed, till the young man looked like a magical figure growing out of a monstrous strange coloured-melon, beneath which descended his unfortunate legs, thrust into a pair of red slippers, for all the world like Grimaldi's legs _en costume_ for clown. The play went off pretty smoothly, except that they broke one man's collar-bone, and nearly dislocated a woman's shoulder by flinging the scenery about. My bed was not made in time, and when the scene drew, half a dozen carpenters in patched trowsers and tattered shirt-sleeves were discovered smoothing down my pillows, and adjusting my draperies. The last scene is too good not to be given verbatim:--

ROMEO. Rise, rise, my Juliet, And from this cave of death, this house of horror, Quick let me snatch thee to thy Romeo's arms.

Here he pounced upon me, plucked me up in his arms like an uncomfortable bundle, and staggered down the stage with me.

JULIET. (_aside._) Oh, you've got me up horridly!--that'll never do; let me down, pray let me down.

ROMEO. There, breathe a vital spirit on thy lips, And call thee back, my soul, to life and love!

JULIET. (_aside._) Pray put me down; you'll certainly throw me down if you don't set me on the ground directly.

In the midst of "cruel cursed fate," his dagger fell out of his dress; I, embracing him tenderly, crammed it back again, because I knew I should want it at the end.

ROMEO. Tear not our heart-strings thus! They crack! they break!--Juliet! Juliet! (_dies._)

JULIET. (_to corpse._) Am I smothering you?

CORPSE. (_to Juliet._) Not at all; could you be so kind, do you think, as to put my wig on again for me?--it has fallen off.

JULIET. (_to corpse._) I'm afraid I can't, but I'll throw my muslin veil over it. You've broken the phial, haven't you?

(_Corpse nodded._)

JULIET. (_to corpse._) Where's your dagger?

CORPSE. (_to Juliet._) 'Pon my soul, I don't know.

_Sunday, 13th._

By half-past ten we were packed in what in this country is termed an _exclusive extra_, _i. e._ a stage-coach to ourselves, and progressing towards Washington. The coach was comfortable enough, and the country, for the first twelve or fifteen miles, owing to the abominable account I had heard of it from every body, disappointed me rather agreeably. It was by no means so dreary or desolate as I had been led to expect. There was considerable variety in its outline, and the quantity of cedar thickets scattered over it took away from the comfortless threadbare look of the wintry woods. Threadbare, indeed, the trees can scarce be called; for the leaves of the black oak, instead of falling as they fade, remain upon the branches, and give the trees more the effect of being lightning-struck, or accidentally blasted, than withered by the fair course of the seasons. I think the effect is more disagreeable than that of absolutely bare leafless boughs. When near, the trees look singularly deplorable and untidy, although at the distance, the red-brown of the faded oaks mingling with the bright, vivid, green cedars, and here and there a silver-barked buttonwood tree raising its white delicate branches from among them, produce a very agreeable and harmonious blending to the eye. The soil, the banks by the road-side, and broken ridges of ravines, and water-courses, attracted my attention by the variety and vividness of their colours; the brightest red and yellow, and then again pale green, and rich warm gravel-colour. I wished I had been a geologist. How much pleasure of reflection and contemplation is lost to the ignorant, whose outward sense wanders over the objects that surround it, deriving from them but half the delight that they give the wise and well-informed; even fancy is at fault, for fancy itself scarce devises images more strange, and beautiful, and wonderful, than the reality of things presents to those who understand their properties and natures. The waters were all fast frozen up, and one or two little pools, all curdled with ice, and locked up in deep gravelly basins, looked like onyx stones set in gold. As for the road, we had been assured it was exceedingly good; but mercy on us! I can't think of it without aching. Here we went up, up, up, and there we went down, down, down,--now, I was in my father's lap, and now I was half out of window. The utter impossibility of holding one's self in any one position for two minutes is absolutely ridiculous. Sometimes we laughed, and at other times we groaned, at our helpless and hopeless condition; but at last we arrived, with no bones broken, at about three o'clock, at the capital and seat of government of the United States.[83] Upon the height immediately above the city is situated the Capitol, a very handsome building, of which the Americans are not a little proud; but it seems placed there by mistake, so little do the miserable untidy hovels above, and the scattered unfinished red-brick town below, accord with its patrician marble and high-sounding title. We drove to Gadsby's, which is an inn like a little town, with more wooden galleries, flights of steps, passages, door-ways, exits, and entrances, than any building I ever saw: it reminded me of the house in Tieck's Love-charm. We had not been arrived a quarter of an hour, when in walked Mr. ---- and Captain ----, and presently Mr. ----. They sat for some time discussing, laughing, quizzing, and being funny, and then departed. Captain ---- was telling us a story about a man somewhere up in the lost lands, who was called Philemon, and whose three sons were paganed (christened, I suppose, one can't say,) Romulus, Remus, and Tiberius. I thought this was too good to be true; and D---- and I, laughing over it at dinner, agreed that we wished any thing of the sort had happened to us. "Some bread, waiter: what is your name?" said I to the black who was waiting upon us. "Horatius!" was the reply; which sent me and D---- into fits.

_Monday, 14th._