Part 17

Were I living here I should certainly try the public schools first for my boys. But they say that the teaching there is too forcing in the earlier stages, and afterwards not liberal enough in the direction of “_the humanities_,” so that the boys get trained more into competitive money-making machines than into thinking cultivated men. There is a very considerable demand at any rate for this kind of school, as this is only one of several in New England. There is an objection too amongst New England mothers. I find that the high schools (as I ought to call them, and not public schools) being open to every one, a large class of Irish and other recent arrivals go there whose manners and language make them dangerous class-mates for their own children. At any rate, St. Mark’s school is a successful fact, and seeing how fast they go ahead here I shouldn’t be astonished to hear that in a few years it is as big as Rugby. Dr. Lowell is the principal, and a first-rate one, a High Church of England clergyman, not a ritualist. The school is founded as a denominational one, with a little chancel, which opens from the end of the big schoolroom, and in which the doctor, in his robes, reads our prayers morning and evening to the boys. He and his family live entirely with the boys, taking all their meals in the hall, and there is no fagging, the monitors having no power or responsibility, except just to keep order in the schoolroom at certain hours. They have a monthly reception of the friends from the neighbourhood, which took place on Saturday evening. All the boys were there, and handed round ices, cakes, and tea to some thirty ladies and gentlemen who came in, including several of the trustees, a judge whom I had met in England, a neighbouring squire (Boston merchant by profession), who is farming largely down there, reclaiming the stony lands and getting up a most beautiful herd of cattle. Of course I had to “address a few words” to them, all which they took most kindly. On Sunday we had two Church of England services in the pretty parish church, a copy of one in England, the plans of which the Squire, Bartlett, had brought over. We dined in the middle of the day at his house, which would be a good squire’s house at home. The family were very nice--a sweet, pretty wife, a strapping great eldest son now at Harvard, and good in all ways. He is bent on going out West as soon as he is through college, and, as a preparation, hired himself out to a farmer this summer vacation, earned ten dollars a week for some two months at hoeing and other hard work, and then had a sporting run to Canada. Two more big sons and any number of younger children. The house was tastefully furnished with some really good pictures, and altogether it was as nice a home as I have seen here. On Monday we got back to dear Elmwood, and I went hard at work on my lecture. Newspaper men came buzzing about all day and seizing my MS. as I got through with it. Also came up Julian H------, one of the Chartist prisoners of 1848. I had known him in the socialist times, and I had always a respect and liking for him, but he had quite slipped out of sight for some eighteen years. His errand touched me. He reminded me (which I had entirely forgotten) that he had applied to Lord R------ in 1851 for a loan of £20 which had been advanced to him through me. He told the long story of his life since, full of interest; I must keep it till we meet. At last he landed in the Massachussets state house, where he is a Government clerk, on a small salary for this country, but out of it he has saved a few hundred dollars, and the object of his visit was to say that he was now anxious to pay his old debt with many hearty thanks to Lord R------. Would I settle whether he should pay for interest, and he would go and draw it out and send it by me? I said I couldn’t say whether our friend would take interest, or at what rate, but promised to let him know when I got back, so that he can remit the exact amount to London. Even he has never taken up his citizenship here, but remains an Englishman, and means at any rate to come back and die in the old country. In the evening we went down to a gathering of all the Harvard students who had petitioned me to come and talk to them. They were gathered some five hundred strong in the Massachusetts Hall, and a finer and manlier set of boys I have never seen. I talked to them on Muscular Christianity and its proper limits, as they are likely to run into professional athletics like our boys at home. Told them they lived in a land which had “struck ile” and was so overflowing with wealth that every one was hasting to get rich too quick. Exhorted to patience and thoroughness; read to them Lowell’s “Hebe” (you remember the little gem of a poem); told them they ought to take more part in public affairs than their class usually do. All which they swallowed devoutly, and cheered vehemently, like good boys, and then sang a lot of their college songs: “Marching through Georgia” splendid, the rest much like our own. The war has given a magnificent lift to all the young men and boys of this country, and I think the rising generation will put America in a very different place from that which she holds now. Last night I gave my lecture in the Music Hall, which was crammed, and the whole affair a brilliant success. “John to Jonathan” is printed verbatim in the morning newspapers, so you will probably see it before I get back, and I think like it. No more time for the moment.

Ithaca, N.Y., 16th October 1870.

I missed the last mail through stress of work, chiefly on my lecture, which I mentioned in my last. The applications for lectures were so numerous and urgent that I really felt that I ought not to leave the country without giving one at any rate, and all my friends said that the Music Hall at Boston was the place if I only spoke once. It is the largest room in New England, holds nearly three thousand people, is easy to speak in, though it has great deep galleries running round three sides, and in it all the big folk talk and lecture, Wendell Phillips and Sumner follow me, so you see the class of thing at once. Well, as I was in for it much against my will, I was determined to talk out with the whole Yankee nation the controversy which. I had been carrying on already with many of them in private. I was anxious not to leave them with any false impressions, and to let them see clearly that in our national differences I think that we have a very good case, and that even if I didn’t think so, I am too good a John Bull not to stand by my own country. Lowell agreed as to the title and object, but I think had serious misgivings as to how the affair might turn out. Mundella thought it very risky and so did most other folk. However, as you know, I don’t care a straw for applause, and do care about speaking my own mind, so whether it made me unpopular or not I determined to have my say. In order that I might say nothing on the spur of the moment, I wrote out the whole address carefully, and I am very glad I did, as the reporters all copied from my MS., and consequently I was thoroughly well reported. The _Tribune and Boston Advertiser_ printed it in full, and I will bring you home copies. I was a little nervous myself when I got to the hall. Two ex-Governors and the present Governor of the State were on the platform, the two Senators (Sumner and Wilson), Longfellow, Judge Hoare, Dana, Wendell Holmes, Wendell Phillips, Lowell, and, in short, pretty nearly all the Boston big wigs. The great organ played “God save the Queen” as I came in, and the audience, generally, I am told, a very undemonstrative one, cheered heartily. My nervousness, however, wore off at once, when I got on my legs. I found that my voice filled the hall easily, and so was at my ease and got through just within the hour, without once losing the attention of the audience for a minute. They were indeed wonderfully sympathetic and hearty, and gave me three rounds of cheers at the end, far more warmly than at the beginning. Every one came and said that it was a great success; that they had never heard our side fairly stated before; that this and that fact were quite new to them, etc. In fact, if I didn’t know how soon the reaction comes in such cases, I should think I had done some good work towards a better understanding between the nations, and, as it is, I am sure I have done no harm, and have at any rate made my own position perfectly clear, and shown them that in the event of a quarrel, they can’t reckon upon me for any kind of sympathy or aid. After the lecture whom should I meet as I went out but Craft, the negro who had been the cause of one of the most exciting meetings ever held in that hall some twenty years before, when the attempt was made to seize him and his wife in Boston. I was delighted to see him and to hear a capital account of his experiment at association in Georgia. Then I went to Field’s, the publisher, to supper, where were Longfellow, Holmes, Dana, and others, and so home by the last car, thankful that it was all well over. Next morning I got a cheque for 250 dollars (£50). I had, of course, never said a word about any payment, so it was an agreeable surprise. The post brought me I know not how many letters, begging me to lecture in a dozen states on my own terms, so when all trades fail, I can come over here and earn a good living easily enough, which is a consolation. Wednesday, our last whole day with the dear Lowells, I spent peaceably. Went to his lecture in the University on Arthurian legends; Miss Mabel photographed the house and us in groups, and we talked and loafed. In the evening a supper at the house of one of the professors, to meet the whole staff, and a pleasanter or abler set of men I have never come across. Thursday, lunch with Longfellow after packing, then a run down on the car to Boston, to change my cheque, to take a berth on a packet, so as to be armed against any appeals for another day or two in New York, and to get a last look at the favourite points in the old Puritan capital, the place where I should certainly settle if I ever had to leave England. We drove a rather sad party to Mrs. Lowell’s sister, and the mother of the beautiful boy whose photograph we have, and who was killed early in the war, to tea, and from her house went to the station and took sleeping-car for Syracuse. I cannot tell you how I like Lowell and all his belongings. It is a dangerous thing to make acquaintance in the flesh with one with whose writings one is so familiar, but he has quite come up to my idea of him, and his wife and Miss Mabel are both very charming in their own ways. I slept well, woke at Albany, breakfasted, and then on to Syracuse, where Mr. Wansey, Mrs. Hamilton’s uncle, lives. We got there at two, and I was immediately seized at the station by Wilkinson, the local banker, whom I had just met at Ned’s this summer. He drove us all through and round the most characteristic town in America. Great broad streets lined with lovely maple trees, all turned now to clouds of scarlet and gold; down the principal one the railway runs without any fence. Old Mr. Wansey and others came to dine, he a dear old man of eighty, but hale and handsome, rather like my dear old grandfather’s picture, the rest pleasant country folk. We played billiards, and told stories after dinner, and had a decidedly good time till nearly midnight. The next morning we breakfasted with Mr. White, the President of this new University, and came on here with him. He is a young man of about thirty-five, and one of the finest scholars America has to boast of at present. By the way, he was a classmate of Smalley at Yale. He is a rich man, and he has nothing whatever to gain by undertaking this work. In short, he is quite worthy of having Goldwin Smith as a fellow-worker, and between them, with the excellent staff of professors and teachers they have got round them, I expect they will make this place in a wondrous short time a great working-men’s college. Everything is of course rough at present, as the buildings are still in progress, but two blocks are completed, and there are about seven hundred pupils living in them and in the town at the bottom of the hill on which Cornell stands. It is a most magnificent situation, looking over a large lake, forty miles long, and two splendid valleys, which are now ablaze with the crimson and purple colours of the maples, shumachs, American walnuts, and other trees, which make the hillsides here glow all the later autumn through. We found Goldwin Smith waiting for us at the wharf and looking much stronger than he used to do in England, and quite warm in his welcome. All the professors, with their wives and families, if married, live for the present in a huge square block of buildings originally intended for a hydropathic establishment, in which they have a private sitting-room and bedrooms and dine and take all meals in the hall. You may fancy how much I am interested in this great practical step towards association.

New York, Tuesday.

Here I am in the great city again, to spend the last few days before my start for home. The reception in the great hall, speech, visit to lecture rooms, etc., enthusiasm of boys, baseball games, and football given in my honour, must all keep till we meet. For, alas! I have no time to spend here for writing, as I have another address to give before I start, on Friday evening, and I must write it carefully, as it is to be on the labour question, which is mightily exercising our cousins here. They are getting into the controversy which we are nearly through at home, and if I can give them a little good advice before I come away, I shall be very glad. As I am engaged every evening, it will not be easy to find time to do it as I should like, but I can give the morning, I think, and can at any rate make sure of not talking nonsense.

AMERICA--1880 to 1887

The Cumberland Mountains

East Tennessee, 1st September 1880.

Here I am at my goal, and so full of new impressions that I must put some of them down at once, lest they should slip away like the new kind of recruits, and I should not be able to lay my hand on them again when I want them. The above address is vague, as this range of highlands extends for some 200 miles through this State and Kentucky; but, though fixed as fate myself, I can for the moment put no more definite heading to my letters. The name of the town that is to be, and which is already laid out and in course of building here, is a matter of profound interest to many persons, and not to be decided hastily. The only point which seems clear is that it will be some name round which cluster tender memories in the old Motherland. We are some 1800 feet above the sea, and after the great heat of New York, Newport, and Cincinnati, the freshness and delight of this brisk, mountain air are quite past describing. For mere physical enjoyment, I have certainly never felt its equal, and can imagine nothing finer.

And now for our journey down. We left Cincinnati early in the morning by the Cincinnati Southern Railway, a line built entirely by the city, and the cost of which will probably make the municipality poor for some years to come. But it seems to me a splendid and sagacious act of foresight in a great community, to have boldly taken hold of and opened up at once what must be one, if not the main, artery of communication between North and South in the future. I believe the impelling motive was the tendency of the carrying trade of late years to settle along other routes, leaving the metropolis of the south-west out in the cold. If this be so, the result justifies the prompt courage of the citizens of Cincinnati, for the tide has obviously set in again with a vengeance. The passenger-cars are filled to the utmost of their capacity, and freight, as we know here too well, is often delayed for days, in spite of all the efforts of the excellent staff of the road. Besides its through traffic, the line has opened up an entirely new country, of which these highlands seem likely to prove a profitable, as they certainly are the most interesting, tract. This section has not been open for six months, and already it is waking up life all over these sparsely-settled regions. Down below on the way to Chatanooga I hear that the effect is the same, and that in that great mineral region blast-furnaces are already at work, and coal-mines opening all along the line. At Chatanooga there are connections with all the great Southern lines, so that we on this aerial height are, in these six months, in direct communication with every important seaport from Boston to New Orleans, and almost every great centre of inland population; and the settlers here, looking forward with that sturdy faith which seems to inspire all who have breathed the air for a week or two, are already considering upon which favoured mart they shall pour out their abundance of fruits and tobacco, from the trees yet to be planted and seed yet to be sown. All which seems to prove that Cincinnati, at any rate, has done well to adopt the motto, “L’audace, toujours l’audace,” which is, indeed, characteristic of this country and this time.

And the big work has not only been done, but done well and permanently. The engineering difficulties must have been very great; the cuttings and tunnels had to be made through hard rock, and the bridges over streams which have cut for themselves channels hundreds of feet deep. We crossed the Kentucky river, on (I believe) the highest railway bridge in the world, 283 feet above the water; and rushed from a tunnel in the limestone rock right on to the bridge which spans the north fork of the Cumberland river, 170 feet below. The lightness of the ironwork on which these bridges rest startles one at first, but experience has shown them to be safe, and the tests to which they have been put on this line would have tried most seriously the strength of far more massive structures. But it is only in its bridges that the Cincinnati Southern Railway has a light appearance. The building of the line has a solid and permanent look, justifying, I should think, the very considerable sum per mile which has been spent on it above the ordinary cost in this country. And by the only test which an amateur is as well able to apply as an expert, that of writing on a journey, I can testify that it is as smoothly laid as the average of our leading English lines. For the last fifty miles we ran almost entirely through forests, which are, however, falling rapidly all along the side of the line, and yielding place to corn-fields in the rich bottoms, wherever any reasonably level ground bordered the water-courses, up which we could glance as we hurried past. I was surprised, and, I need not say, greatly pleased, to see the apparently excellent terms on which the white and coloured people were, even in the Kuklux regions through which we came. A Northern express man, our companion at this point, denounced it as the most lawless in the United States. About one hundred homicides, he declared, had taken place in the last year, and no conviction had been obtained, the juries looking on such things as regrettable accidents. This may be so, but I can, at any rate, testify, from careful observation of the mixed gangs of workmen on the road, and the groups gathered at the numerous stations, to the familiar and apparently friendly footing on which the races met. As for the decrease of the blacks, it must be in other regions than those traversed by the Cincinnati Southern Railway, for the cabins we passed in the clearings and round the stations swarmed with small urchins, clad in single garments, the most comic little figures of fun, generally, that one had ever seen, as they stood staring and signalling to the train. There is something to me so provocative of mirth in the race, and I have found them generally such kindly folk, that I regret their absence from this same Alpine settlement,--a regret not shared, doubtless, by the few householders, to whom their constant small peculations must be very trying.

About five we stopped at the station from which this place is reached, and turning out on the platform were greeted by four or five young Englishmen, who had preceded us, on one errand or another, every one of whom was well known to me in ordinary life, but whom for the first moment I did not recognise. I had seen them last clothed in the frock-coat and stove-pipe hat of our much-vaunted civilisation, and behold, here was a group which I can compare to nothing likely to be familiar to your readers, unless it be the company of the _Danites_, as they have been playing in London. Broad-brimmed straw or felt hats, the latter very battered and worse for wear; dark-blue jerseys, or flannel shirts of varying hue; breeches and gaiters, or long boots, were the prevailing, I think I may say the universal costume, varied according to the taste of the wearer with bits of bright colour laid on in handkerchief at neck or waist. And tastes varied deliciously, two of the party showing really a fine feeling for the part, and one, our geologist, 6 ft. 2 in. in his stockings, and a mighty Etonian and Cantab, in brains as well as bulk, turning out, with an heroic scorn of all adornment, in woefully battered nether-garment and gaiters, and a felt which a tramp would have looked at several times before picking it out of the gutter. There was a light buggy for passengers and a mule waggon for luggage by the platform; but how were nine men, not to mention the manager and driver, both standing over 6 feet, and the latter as big at least as our geologist, to get through the intervening miles of forest tracks in time for tea up here? Fancy our delight when a chorus of “Will you ride or drive?” arose, and out of the neighbouring bushes the Danites led forth nine saddle-horses, bearing the comfortable half-Mexican saddles with wooden stirrups in use here. Our choice was quickly made, and throwing coats and waistcoats into the waggon, which the manager good-naturedly got into himself, surrendering his horse for the time, we joined the cavalcade in our shirts.