Part 27 (2/2)
That older American population was deeply English, with a thousand rural English traditions religiously preserved; and the chief of these is clean _neatness_, which, when fully carried out, always results in simple, unaffected beauty. This was very strongly shown in the Quaker gardens, once so common in Philadelphia--and in the people.
We arrived in London, and went directly to the Trubners', No. 29 Upper Hamilton Terrace, N.W. The first person who welcomed me was Mr.
Delepierre, an idol of mine for years; and the first thing I did was to borrow half-a-crown of him to pay the cab, having only French money with me. It was a charming house, with a large garden, so redolent of roses that it might have served Chriemhilda of old for a romance. For twenty years that house was destined to be an occasional home and a dwelling where we were ever welcome, and where every Sunday evening I had always an appointed place at dinner, and a special arm-chair for the never-failing Havannah. Mrs. Trubner had, in later years, two boxes of Havannahs of the best, which had belonged to G. H. Lewes, and which George Eliot gave her after his death. I have kept two _en souvenir_. I knew a man once who had formed a large collection of such relics. There was a cigar which he had received from Louis Napoleon, and one from Bismarck, and so forth. But, alas! once while away on his travels, the whole museum was smoked up by a reckless under-graduate younger brother.
_In fumo exit_.
How many people well known to the world--or rather how few who were not--have I met there--Edwin Arnold, G. H. Lewes, H. Dixon, M. Van der Weyer, Frith the artist, Mrs. Trubner's uncle Lord Napier of Magdala, Pigott, Norman Lockyer, Bret Harte, ”and full many more,” scholars, poets, editors, and, withal, lady writers of every good shade, grade, and quality. How many of them all have pa.s.sed since then full silently into the Silent Land, where we may follow, but return no more! How many a pleasant smile and friendly voice and firm alliances and genial acquaintances, often carried out in other lands, date their beginning in my memory to the house in Hamilton Terrace! How often have I heard by land or sea the familiar greeting, ”I think I met you once at the Trubners'!” For it was a salon, a centre or sun with many bright and cheering rays--a civilising inst.i.tution!
Mrs. Trubner was the life of this home. Anglo-Belgian by early relation and education, she combined four types in one. When speaking English, she struck me as the type of an accomplished and refined British matron; in French, her whole nature seemed Parisienne; in Flemish, she was altogether Flamande; and in German, Deutsch. If Cerberus was three gentlemen in one, Mrs. Trubner was four ladies united. Very well read, she conversed not only well on any subject, but, what is very unusual in her s.e.x, with sincere interest, and not merely to entertain. If interrupted in a conversation she resumed the subject! This is a remarkable trait!
The next day after our arrival Mrs. Trubner took Mrs. Leland, during a walk, to call on George Eliot, and that evening G. H. Lewes, Hepworth Dixon, and some others came to a reception at the Trubners'. Both of these men were, as ever, very brilliant and amusing in conversation. I met them very often after this, both at their homes and about London. I also became acquainted with George Eliot or Mrs. Lewes, who left on me the marked impression, which she did on all, of being a woman of genius, though I cannot recall anything remarkable which I ever heard from her. I note this because there were most extraordinary reports of her utterances among her admirers. A young American lady once seriously asked me if it were true that at the Sunday afternoon receptions in South Bank one could always see rows of twenty or thirty of the greatest men in England, such as Carlyle, Froude, and Herbert Spencer, all sitting with their note-books silently taking down from her lips the ideas which they subsequently used in their writings! There seemed, indeed, to be afloat in America among certain folk an idea that something enormous, marvellous, and inspired went on at these receptions, and that George Eliot posed as a Pythia or Sibyl, as the great leading mind of England, and lectured while we listened. There is no good portrait, I believe, of her. She had long features and would have been called plain but for her solemn, earnest eyes, which had an expression quite in keeping with her voice, which was one not easily forgotten. I never detected in her any trace of genial humour, though I doubt not that it was latent in her; and I thought her a person who had drawn her ideas far more from books and an acquaintance with certain types of humanity whom she had set herself deliberately to study--albeit with rare perception--than from an easy intuitive familiarity with all sorts and conditions of men. But she worked out _thoroughly_ what she knew by the intuition of genius, though in this she was very far inferior to Scott. Thus she wrote the ”Spanish Gypsy,” having only seen such gypsies two or three times. One day she told me that in order to write ”Daniel Deronda,” she had read through two hundred books. I longed to tell her that she had better have learned Yiddish and talked with two hundred Jews, and been taught, as I was by my friend Solomon the Sadducee, the art of distinguis.h.i.+ng Fraulein Lowenthal of the Ashken.a.z.im from Senorita Aguado of the Sephardim _by the corners of their eyes_!
I had read more than once Lewes's ”Life of Goethe,” his ”History of Philosophy and Physiology,” and even ”written him” for the Cyclopaedia.
With him I naturally at once became well acquainted. I remember here that Mr. Ripley had once reproved me for declaring that Lewes had really a claim to be an original philosopher or thinker; for Boston intellect always frowned on him after Margaret Fuller condemned him as ”frivolous and atheistic.” I remember that Tom Powell had told me how he had dined somewhere in London, where there was a man present who had really been a cannibal, owing to dire stress of s.h.i.+pwreck, and how Lewes, who was there, was so fascinated with the man-eater that he could think of nothing else. Lewes told me that once, having gone with a party of archaeologists to visit a ruined church, he found on a twelfth-century tombstone some illegible letters which he persuaded the others to believe formed the name Golias, probably having in mind the poems of Walter de Mapes. When I returned from Russia I delighted him very much by describing how I had told the fortunes by hand of six gypsy girls. He declared that telling fortunes to gypsies was the very height of impudence!
”A hundred jests have pa.s.sed between us twain, Which, had I s.p.a.ce, I'd gladly tell again.”
A call which I have had, since I wrote that last line, from John Postle Heseltine, Esq., reminds me that he was one of the first acquaintances I made in London. Mr. E. Edwards, a distinguished etcher and painter, gave me a dinner at Richmond, at which Mr. Heseltine was present. In Edwards'
studio I met with Bracquemond and Legros, both of whom etched my portrait on copper. Mr. Heseltine is well known as a very distinguished artist of the same kind, as well as for many other things. Edwards was very kind to me in many ways for years. Legros I found very interesting. There was in Edwards' studio the unique _complete_ collection of the etchings of Meryon, which we examined. Legros remarked of the incredibly long- continued industry manifested in some of the pictures, that lunatics often manifested it to a high degree. Meryon, as is known, was mad. I had etched a very little myself and was free of the fraternity.
Within a few days Mr. Strahan, the publisher, took me to Mr. (now Lord) Tennyson's reception, where I met with many well-known people. Among them were Lady Charlotte Locker and Miss Jean Ingelow. These ladies, with great kindness, finding that I was married, called on Mrs. Iceland, and invited us to dine. I became a constant visitor for years at Miss Ingelow's receptions, where I have met Ruskin, Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall (whom I had seen in 1848), Calverly, Edmund Gosse, Hamilton Aide, Mr. and Mrs Alfred Hunt. I conversed with Tennyson, but little pa.s.sed between us on that occasion. I got to know him far better ”later on.”
I here antic.i.p.ate by several years two interviews which I had with Tennyson in 1875, who had _ad interim_ been deservedly ”lauded into Lordliness,” and which, to him at least, were amusing enough to be recalled. The first was at a dinner at Lady Franklin's, and her niece Miss Cracroft. And here I may, in pa.s.sing, say a word as to the extraordinary kindly nature of Lady Franklin. I think it was almost as soon as we became acquainted that she, learning that I suffered at times from gout, sent me a dozen bottles of a kind of bitter water as a cure.
There were at the dinner as guests Mr. Tennyson, Sir Samuel and Lady Baker, Dr. Quain, and myself. There was no lack of varied anecdote, reminiscences of noted people and of travel; but by far the most delightful portion of it all was to watch the gradual unfreezing of Tennyson, and how from a grim winter of taciturnity, under the glowing influence of the sun of wine, as the Tuscan Redi hath it--
”Dell' Indico Oriente Domator glorioso il Dio di Vino . . .
Di quel Sol, che in Ciel vedete . . .”--
he pa.s.sed into a glorious summer of genial feeling. I led unto it thus:--My friend Professor Palmer and I had projected a volume of songs in English Romany or Gypsy, which is by far the sweetest and most euphonious language in Europe. My friend had translated ”Home they brought her warrior dead,” by Tennyson, into this tongue, and I had the MS. of it in my pocket. Tennyson was very much pleased at the compliment, and asked me to read the poem, which I did. The work was by permission dedicated to him. At last, when dinner was over, Tennyson, who had disposed of an entire bottle of port, rose, and approaching me, took me gaily-gravely by both sides, as if he would lift me up, and drawing himself up to his full height, said, ”I like to see a poet a full- sized substantial man,” or ”tall and strong,” or words to that effect. I replied that it was very evident from the general appearance of Shakespeare's bust that he was a very tall man, but that though the thunder of height had hit twice--the Poet Laureate being the second case--that I had been very slightly singed, tall as I was. _Enfin_, some days after, Tennyson in a letter invited me to call and see him should I ever be in the Isle of Wight; which took place by mere chance some time after--in fact, I did not know, when I was first at the hotel in Freshwater, that Tennyson lived at a mile's distance.
I walked over one afternoon and sent in my card. Mr. Hallam Tennyson, then a very handsome young man of winsome manner, came out and said that his father was taking his usual _siesta_, but begged me to remain, kindly adding, ”Because I know, Mr. Leland, he would be very sorry to have missed you.” After a little time, however, Tennyson himself appeared, and took me up to his den or studio, where I was asked to take a pipe, which I did with great good-will, and blew a cloud, enjoying it greatly, because I felt with my host, as with Bulwer, that we had quickly crossed acquaintances.h.i.+p into the more familiar realm where one can talk about whatever you please with the certainty of being understood and getting a sympathetic answer. There are lifelong friends with whom one never really gets to this, and there are acquaintances of an hour at _table- d'hotes_, who ”come like shadows, so depart,” who talk with a touch to our hearts. Bulwer and Tennyson were such to me, and _apre miro zi_, as the gypsies say--on my life-soul!--if I had talked with them, as I did, without knowing who they were, I should have recalled them with quite as much interest as I now do, and see them again in dreams. And here I may add, that the common-place saying that literary men are rarely good talkers, and generally disappointing, is not at all confirmed by my experiences.
After burning our tobacco, in Indian fas.h.i.+on, to better acquaintance (I forgot to say that the poet had two dozen clay pipes ranged in a small wooden rack), we went forth for a seven miles' walk on the Downs. And at last, from the summit of one, I pointed down to a small field below, and said--
But first I must specify that the day before I had gone with a young lady of fourteen summers named Bee or Beatrice Fredericson, both of us bearing baskets, to pick blackberries for tea, and coming to a small field which was completely surrounded by a hedge, we saw therein illimitable blackberries glittering in the setting sunlight, and longed to enter.
Finding a gap which had been filled by a dead thorn-bush, I removed the latter, and, going in, we soon picked a quart of the fruit. But on leaving we were met by the farmer, who made a to-do, charging us with trespa.s.sing. To which I replied, ”Well, what is to pay?” He asked for two s.h.i.+llings, but was pacified with one; and so we departed.
Therefore I said to Tennyson, ”I went into that field yesterday to pick your blackberries, and your farmer caught us and made me pay a s.h.i.+lling for trespa.s.sing.”
And he gravely replied, though evidently delighted--”Served you right!
What business had you to come over my hedge into my field to steal my blackberries?”
”_Mea culpa_,” I answered, ”_mea maxima culpa_.”
<script>