Chapter 38

I can only remember that for the first twenty or thirty minutes Mr. Carlyle talked such a lot of skimble-skamble stuff and rubbish, which sounded like the very _debris_ and lees of his "Latter-Day Pamphlets," that I began to suspect that he was quizzing me, or that this was the manner in which he ladled out Carlyleism to visitors who came to be Carlyled and acted unto. It struck me as if Mr. Tennyson, bored with lion-hunting guests, had begun to repeat his poetry to them out of sheer sarcasm, or as if he felt, "Well, you've come to _see_ and _hear_ me--a poet--so take your poetry, and be d---d to you!" However, it may be I felt a coming wrath, and the Socratic demon or gypsy _dook_, which often rises in me on such occasions, and never deceives me, gave me a strong premonition that there was to be, if not an exemplary row, at least a lively incident which was to put a snapped end to this humbugging.

It came thus. All at once Mr. Carlyle abruptly asked me, in a manner or with an intonation which sounded to me almost semi-contemptuous, "And what kind of an American may you be?" (I _think_ he said "will you be?") "German, or Irish, or what?"

To which I replied, not over amiably:--

"Since it interests you, Mr. Carlyle, to know the origin of my family, I may say that I am descended from Henry Leland, whom the tradition declares to have been a noted Puritan, and active in the politics of his time,' and who went to America in 1636."

To this Mr. Carlyle replied:--

"I doubt whether any of your family have since been equal to your old Puritan great-grandfather" (or "done anything to equal your old Puritan grandfather"). With this something to the effect that we had done nothing in America since Cromwell's Revolution, equal to it in importance or of any importance.

Then a great rage came over me, and I remember _very_ distinctly that there flashed through my mind in a second the reflection, "Now, if I have to call you a d---d old fool for saying that, I _will_; but I'll be even with you." When as quickly the following inspiration came, which I uttered, and I suspect somewhat energetically:--

"Mr. Carlyle, I think that my brother, Henry Leland, who got the wound from which he died standing by my side in the war of the rebellion, fighting against slavery, was worth ten of my old Puritan ancestors; at least, he died in a ten times better cause. And" (here my old "Indian" was up and I let it out) "allow me to say, Mr. Carlyle, that I think that in all matters of historical criticism you are principally influenced by the merely melodramatic and theatrical."

Here Mr. Carlyle, looking utterly amazed and startled, though not at all angry, said, for the first time, in broad Scotch--

"Whot's _thot_ ye say?"

"I say, Mr. Carlyle," I exclaimed with rising wrath, "that I consider that in all historical judgments you are influenced only by the melodramatic and theatrical."

A grim smile as of admiration came over the stern old face. Whether he really felt the justice of the hit I know not, but he was evidently pleased at the manner in which it was delivered, and it was with a deeply reflective and not displeased air that he replied, still in Scotch--

"Na, na, I'm nae _thot_."

It was the terrier who had ferociously attacked the lion, and the lion was charmed. From that instant he was courteous, companionable, and affable, and talked as if we had been long acquainted, and as if he liked me. It occurred to me that the resemblance of Carlyle to my father during the row was appalling, the difference being that my father _never_ gave in. It would have been an awful sight to see and a sound to hear if the two could have "discussed" some subject on which they were equally informed--say the American tariff or slavery.

After a while Mr. Froude the historian came in, and we all went out together for a walk in the Park. Pausing on the bridge, Mr. Carlyle called my attention to the very rural English character of a part of the scenery in the distance, where a church-spire rises over ranges of tree- tops. I observed that the smoke of a gypsy fire and a tent by a hedge was all that was needed. Then we began to talk about gypsies, and I told Mr. Carlyle that I could talk Romany, and ran on with some reminiscences, whereat, as I now recall, though I did not note it then, his amusement at or interest in me seemed to be much increased, as if I had unexpectedly turned out to be something a little out of the ordinary line of tourist interviewers; and truly in those days Romany ryes were not so common as they now are. Then Mr. Carlyle himself told a story, how his father--if I remember rightly--had once lent a large sum to or trusted a gypsy in some extraordinary manner. It befell in after days that the lender was himself in sore straits, when the gypsy took him by night to a hut, and digging up or lifting the _hard-stane_ or hearth-stone, took out a bag of guineas, which he transferred to his benefactor.

We parted, and this was the only time I ever conversed with Mr. Carlyle, though I saw him subsequently on more than one occasion. He sent word specially by Mr. Conway to me that he would be pleased to have me call again; but "once bitten twice shy," and I had not so much enjoyed my call as to wish to repeat it. But I believe that what Mr. Carlyle absolutely needed above all things on earth was somebody to put on the gloves with him metaphorically about once a day, and give and take a few thumping blows; nor do I believe that he would have shrunk from a tussle _a la Choctaw_, with biting, gouging, tomahawk and scalper, for he had an uncommonly _dour_ look about the eyes, and must have been a magnificent fighter when once roused. But though I had not his vast genius nor wit, I had the great advantage of having often had very severe differences with my father, who was, I believe, as much Carlyled by Nature as Carlyle himself, if not more so, whereas it is morally impossible that the Sage of Chelsea could ever have found any one like himself to train under. But to Carlyle people in conversation requires constant practice with a master--_consuetudine quotidiana cum aliquo congredi_--and he had for so long a time knocked everybody down without meeting the least resistance, that victory had palled upon him, and he had, so to speak, "vinegared" on himself. With somebody to "sass him back," Carlyle would have been cured of the dyspepsia, and have lived twenty years longer.

Carlyle's was and ever will be one of the greatest names in English literature, and it is very amusing to observe how the gossip-makers, who judge of genius by tittle-tattle and petty personal defects, have condemned him _in toto_ because he was not an angel to a dame who was certainly a bit of a _diablesse_. Thus I find in a late very popular collection the remark that--

"It is curious to note in the 'Life and Correspondence of Lord Houghton' the high estimation in which Carlyle was held by him. His regard and admiration cannot but seem exaggerated, now that we know so much of the Chelsea philosopher's real character."

This is _quite_ the moral old lady, who used to think that Raphael was a good painter "till she read all about that nasty Fornarina."

There was another hard old character with whom I became acquainted in those days, and one who, though not a Carlyle, still, like him, exercised in a peculiar way a great influence on English literature. This was George Borrow. I was in the habit of reading a great deal in the British Museum, where he also came, and there I was introduced to him.

He was busy with a venerable-looking volume in old Irish and made the remark to me that he did not believe there was a man living who could read old Irish with ease (which I now observe to myself was "fished" out of Sir W. Betham). We discussed several gypsy words and phrases. I met him in the same place several times. He was a tall, large, fine-looking man, who must have been handsome in his youth. I knew at the time in London a Mr. Kerrison, who had been as a very young man, probably in the Twenties, very intimate with Borrow. He told me that one night Borrow acted very wildly, whooping and vociferating so as to cause the police to follow him, and after a long run led them to the edge of the Thames, "and there they thought they had him." But he plunged boldly into the water and swam in his clothes to the opposite shore, and so escaped.

"For he fled o'er to t'other side, And so they could not find him; He swam across the flowing tide, And never looked behind him."

About this time (1826?) George Borrow published a small book of poems which is now extremely rare. I have a copy of it. In it there is a lyric in which, with his usual effrontery, he describes a very clever, tall, handsome, accomplished man, who knows many languages and who can drink a pint of rum, ending with the remark that he himself was this admirable person. As Heine was in England at this time, it is not improbable that he met with this poem; but in any case, there is a resemblance between it and one of his own in the _Buch der Lieder_, which runs thus:--

"Brave man, he got me the food I ate, His kindness and care I can never forget, Yet I cannot kiss him, though other folk can, For I myself am this excellent man!"

It came to pass that after a while I wrote my book on "The English Gypsies and their Language," and sent a note to Mr. Borrow in which I asked permission to dedicate it to him. I sent it to the care of Mr. Murray, who subsequently assured me that Mr. Borrow had actually received it. Now Mr. Borrow had written thirty years before some sketches and fragments on the same subject, which would, I am very certain, have remained unpublished to this day but for me. He received my note on Saturday--never answered it--and on Monday morning advertised in all the journals his own forthcoming work on the same subject.

Now, what is sincere truth is, that when I learned this I laughed. I thought very little of my own work, and if Mr. Borrow had only told me that it was in the way of his I would have withdrawn it at once, and that with right goodwill, for I had so great a respect for the Nestor of gypsyism that I would have been very glad to have gratified him with such a small sacrifice. But it was not in him to suspect or imagine so much common decency in any human heart, and so he craftily, and to my great delight and satisfaction, "got ahead" of me. For, to tell the truth of truth, I was pleased to my soul that I had caused him to make and publish the work.

I have said too hastily that it was written thirty years before. What I believe is, that Mr. Borrow had by him a vocabulary, and a few loose sketches, which he pitchforked together, but that the book itself was made and cemented into one with additions for the first time after he received my note. He was not, take him altogether, over-scrupulous. Sir Patrick Colquhoun told me that once when he was at Constantinople, Mr. Borrow came there, and gave it out that he was a marvellous Oriental scholar. But there was great scepticism on this subject at the Legation, and one day at the _table-d'hote_, where the great writer and divers young diplomatists dined, two who were seated on either side of Borrow began to talk in Arabic, speaking to him, the result being that he was obliged to confess that he not only did not understand what they were saying, but did not even know what the language was. Then he was tried in Modern Greek, with the same result. The truth was that he knew a great deal, but did all in his power to make the world believe it was far more--like the African king, or the English prime minister, who, the longer his shirts were made, insisted on having the higher collars, until the former trailed on the ground and the latter rose above the top of his head--"when they came home from the wash!"

What I admire in Borrow to such a degree that before it his faults or failings seem very trifling, is his absolutely vigorous, marvellously varied originality, based on direct familiarity with Nature, but guided and cultured by the study of natural, simple writers, such as Defoe and Smollett. I think that the "interest" in or rather sympathy for gypsies, in his case as in mine, came not from their being curious or dramatic beings, but because they are so much a part of free life, of out-of-doors Nature; so associated with sheltered nooks among rocks and trees, the hedgerow and birds, river-sides, and wild roads. Borrow's heart was large and true as regarded English rural life; there was a place in it for everything which was of the open air and freshly beautiful. He was not a view-hunter of "bits," trained according to Ruskin and the _deliberate_ word-painting of a thousand novels and Victorian picturesque poems; but he often brings us nearer to Nature than they do, not by photography, but by casually letting fall a word or trait, by which we realise not only her form but her soul. Herein he was like Washington Irving, who gives us the impression of a writer who was deeply inspired with calm sweet sunny views of Nature, yet in whose writings literal description is so rarely introduced, that it is a marvel how much the single buttercup lights up the landscape for a quarter of a mile, when a thousand would produce no effect whatever. This may have possibly been art in Irving--art of the most subtle kind--but in Borrow it was instinct, and hardly intentional. In this respect he was superior even to Whitman.

And here I would say, apropos of Carlyle, Tennyson, Irving, Borrow, Whitman, and some others whom I have met, that with such men in only one or two interviews, one covers more ground and establishes more intimacy than with the great majority of folk whom we meet and converse with hundreds of times. Which fact has been set forth by Wieland in his work on Democritus or the Abderites so ingeniously, as people expressed it a century ago, or so cleverly, as we now say, or so sympathetically, as an Italian would say, that my pen fails to utter the thoughts which arise in me compared to what he has written.

When the summer came, or on the 1st of August, we started on a grand tour about England. First we went to Salisbury. I was deeply interested in the Cathedral there, because it is possibly the only great Gothic structure of the kind in Europe which was completed in a single style during a single reign. Stonehenge was to me even more remarkable, because it is more mysterious. Its stupendous barbarism or archaic character, involving a whole lost cycle of ideas, contrasts so strangely with the advanced architectural skill displayed in the cutting and fitting of the vast blocks, that the whole seems to be a mighty paradox. This was the work of many thousands of men--of very well directed labour under the supervision of architects who could draw and measure skilfully with a grand sense of _proportion_ or symmetry, who had, however, not attained to ornament--a thing without parallel in humanity. This is absolutely bewildering, as is the utter want of all indication as to its real purpose. The old British tradition that the stones were brought by magic from Africa, coupled with what Sir John Lubbock and others declare as to similar remains on the North African coast, suggest something, but what that was remains to be discovered. Men have, however, developed great works of the massive and simple order in poetry, as well as in architecture. The Nibelungen Lied is a Stonehenge. There are in it only one or two similes or decorations. "Simplicity is its sole ornament."

From Salisbury we went to Wells. The cathedrals of England form the pages of a vast work in which there is written the history of a paradox or enigma as marvellous as that of Stonehenge; and it is this--that the farther back we go, even into a really barbarous age, almost to the time when Roman culture had died and the mediaeval had not begun, the more exquisite are the proportions of buildings, the higher their tone, and, as in the case of Early and Decorated English, the more beautiful their ornament. That is to say, that exactly in the time when, according to all our modern teaching and ideas, there should have been _no_ architectural art, it was most admirably developed, while, on the contrary, in this end of the nineteenth century, when theory, criticism, learning, and science abound, it is in its lowest and most depraved state, its highest flights aiming at nothing better than cheap imitation of old examples. The age which produced the Romanesque architecture, whether in northern Italy, along the Rhine as the Lombard, or in France and England as Norman, was extremely barbarous, bloody, and illiterate; and yet in the noblest and grandest conceptions of architectural art it surpassed all the genius of this our time as the sun surpasses a star. While we _know_ that man has advanced, it still remains true that the history of architecture alone for the past thousand years indicates a steady retrogression and decay in art, and this constitutes the stupendous paradox to which I have alluded. But Milton has fully explained to us that when the devils in hell built the first great temple or palace--Pandemonium--they achieved the greatest work of architecture ever seen!

York Cathedral made on me a hundred times deeper and more sympathetic impression than St. Peter's of Rome. There is a grandeur of unity and a sense of a single cultus in it which the Renaissance never reached in anything. Even from the days of Orcagna there is an element of mixed motives and incoherence in the best of Italian architecture and sculpture. It requires colour to effect that which Norman or Gothic art could produce more grandly and impressively with _shade_ alone. It is the difference between a garden and a forest. This is shown in the glorious mediaeval _grisaille_ windows, in which such art proves its absolute perfection. While I was looking at these in rapt admiration, an American friend who did not lack a certain degree of culture asked me if I did not find in them a great want of colour!

I made in York the acquaintance of a youth named Carr, son of a former high sheriff, who, by the way, showed us very great hospitality whenever we visited the city. This young man had read Labarthe and other writers on archaeology, and was enthusiastic in finding relics of the olden time. He took me into a great many private houses. I visited every church, and indeed saw far more than do the great majority of even the most inquiring visitors. The Shambles was then and is still perhaps one of the most curious specimens of a small mediaeval street in the world. I felt as if I could pass a life in the museum and churches, and I did, in fact, years after, remain there, very busy, for three weeks, sketching innumerable corbels, gargoyles, goblins, arches, weather-worn saints and sinners. And in the Cathedral I found the original of the maid in the garden a-hanging out the clothes. She is a fair sinner, and the blackbird is a demon volatile, who, having lighted on her shoulder, snaps her by the nose to get her soul. The motive often occurs in Gothic sculpture.

We may trace it back--_vide_ the "Pharaohs, Fellahs, and Explorers" of Amelia B. Edwards (whom I have also met at an Oriental Congress)--to Roman Harpies and the Egyptian _Ba_, depicted in the "Book of the Dead" or the "Egyptian Bible."

THE END.

Footnotes:

{1} As I was very desirous of learning more about this celebrated fireplace, I inserted a request in the _Public Ledger_ for information regarding it, which elicited the following from some one to me unknown, to whom I now return thanks:--

"MR. CITY-EDITOR OF THE _Public Ledger_,--In your edition of this date, I notice a communication headed 'To Local Antiquarians.' Without any well-founded pretensions to the designation 'Antiquarian,' as I get older I still take a great interest in the early history of our beloved city. I remember _distinctly_ the fact, but not the date, of reading a description of the 'mantelpiece.' It was of wood, handsomely carved on the pillars, and under the shelf, and on the centre between the pillars, was the following quaint and witty _hieroglyphic_ inscription:--

When the grate is M. T. put: When it is . putting:

which is a little puzzling at first sight, but readily translated by converting the punctuation points into written words.

SENIOR.

"_Frankford_, _May 24_, _1892_."

I can add to this, that the chimney-piece was originally made for wood- fires, and that long after a grate was set in and the inscription added.

{13} Also given as Delaund or Dellaund in one copy. De Quincey was proud of his descent from De la Laund. I may here say that John Leyland, who is a painstaking and conscientious antiquarian and accomplished genealogist, has been much impressed with the extraordinary similarity of disposition, tastes, and pursuits which has characterised the Lelands for centuries. Any stranger knowing us would think that he and I were nearly related. It is told of the manor of Leyland that during the early Middle Ages it was attempted to build a church there in a certain place, but every morning the stones were found to be removed. Finally, it was completed, but the next dawn beheld the whole edifice removed to the other spot, while a spirit-voice was heard to call (one account says that the words were found on a mystic scroll):

"Here shall itt bee, And here shall itt stande; And this shall bee called: Ye Churche of Leyland."

{16} A similar incident is recorded in _Kenelm Chillingly_. I had long before the publication of the work conversed with Lord Lytton on the subject--which is also touched on in my _Sketch-Book of Meister Karl_, of which the illustrious author had a copy.

{56} Since writing the foregoing, and by a most appropriately odd coincidence or mere chance, I have received with delight a copy of this work from Jesse Jaggard, a well-known dealer in literary curiosities in Liverpool, who makes a specialty of _hunting up_ rarities to order, which is of itself a quaint business. The book is entitled "Curiosities for the Ingenious, Selected from the Most Authentic Treasures of Nature, Science and Art, Biography, History, and General Literature. London: Thomas Boys, Ludgate Hill, 1821." Boys was the publisher of the celebrated series of "The Percy Anecdotes." I should here, in justice to Mr. Jaggard, mention that I am indebted to him for obtaining for me several rare and singular works, and that his catalogues are remarkably well edited.

{98} May I be pardoned for here mentioning that Mr. Symonds, not long before his death, wrote a letter to one of our mutual friends, in which he spoke "most enthusiastically" of my work on "Etruscan Roman Traditions in Popular Tradition." "For that alone would I have writ the book."

{101} "Susan Cushman was extremely pretty, but was not particularly gifted; in personal appearance she was altogether unlike Charlotte; . . . the latter was a large, tall woman" ("Gossip of the Century," vol. ii.). John Du Solle took me for the first time to see Charlotte Cushman, and then asked me what I thought she looked like. And I replied, "A bull in black silk."

{156} He was the real head, and the most sensible, of that vast array of wild antiquaries, among whom are Faber, Godfrey Higgins, Inman, Bryant, and several score more whom I in my youth adored and devoured with a delight surpassing words.

{225} (Here I forgot myself--this occurred in New York.)

{237} Herzen once sent me a complete collection of all his books.