Volume I Part 4 (2/2)
The house of the bride's father was well lighted, and dressed with flowers. She had no mother; but her elder sisters aided her father in bidding us welcome. The drawing-room was quite full; and while the grown-up friends found it difficult to talk, and to repress the indefinable anxiety and agitation which always attend a wedding, the younger members of the party were amusing themselves with whispered mirth. The domestics looked as if the most joyous event of their lives were taking place, and the old father seemed placid and satisfied.
In a few minutes we were summoned to another room, at the top of which stood the tall bridegroom, with his pretty little lady on his arm; on either side, the three gentlemen and three ladies who attended them; and in front, the Episcopalian minister who was to marry them, and who has since been united to one of the sisters. It was the first time of his performing the ceremony, and his manner was solemn and somewhat anxious, as might be expected.
The bridegroom was a professor in a college in the neighbouring State of New-York; a young man of high acquirements and character, to whom the old father might well be proud to give his daughter. His manners were remarkably pleasing; and there was a joyous, dignified serenity visible in them this evening, which at once favourably prepossessed us who did not previously know him. He was attended by a brother professor from the same college. When the service was over, we all kissed the grave and quiet bride. I trust that no bodings of the woes which awaited her cast a shadow over her spirits then. I think, though grave, she was not sad.
She spoke with all her father's guests in the course of the evening, as did her husband. How often have I of late tried to recall precisely what they said to me, and every look with which they said it!
We went back to the drawing-room for cake and wine; and then ensued the search for the ring in the great wedding cake, with much merriment among those who were alive to all the fun of a festivity like this, and to none of the care. There was much moving about between the rooms, and dressing with flowers in the hall; and lively conversation, as it must needs be where there are Sedgwicks. Then Champagne and drinking of healths went round, the guests poured out upon the green, all the ladies with handkerchiefs tied over their heads. There we bade good-night, and parted off to our several homes.
When I left the village the next morning two or three carriages full of young people were setting off, as attendants upon the bride and bridegroom, to Lebanon. After a few such short excursions in the neighbourhood, the young couple went home to begin their quiet college and domestic life.
Before a year had elapsed, a year which to me seemed gone like a month, I was at Stockbridge again and found the young wife's family in great trouble. She was in a raging fever, consequent on her confinement, and great fears were entertained for her life. Her infant seemed to have but a small chance under the circ.u.mstances, and there was a pa.s.sing mention of her husband being ill. Every one spoke of him with a respect and affection which showed how worthy he was of this young creature's love; and it was our feeling for him which made our prayers for her restoration so earnest as they were. The last I heard of her before I left the country was that she was slowly and doubtfully recovering, but had not yet been removed from her father's house. The next intelligence that I received after my return to England was of her husband's death; that he had died in a calm and satisfied state of mind; satisfied that if their reasonable hopes of domestic joy and usefulness had not been fulfilled, it was for wise and kind reasons; and that the strong hand which thus early divided them would uphold the gentle surviver. No one who beheld and blessed their union can help beseeching and trusting, since all other hope is over, that it may be even thus.
HIGH ROAD TRAVELLING.
”How far my pen has been fatigued like those of other travellers in this journey of it, the world must judge; but the traces of it, which are now all set o'vibrating together this moment, tell me it is the most fruitful and busy period of my life; for, as I had made no convention with my man with the gun as to time--by seizing every handle, of what size or shape soever which chance held out to me in this journey--I was always in company, and with great variety too.”--STERNE.
Our first land travelling, in which we had to take our chance with the world in general, was across the State of New-York. My account of what we saw may seem excessively minute in some of its details; but this style of particularity is not adopted without reasons. While writing my journal, I always endeavoured to bear in mind the rapidity with which civilization advances in America, and the desirablness of recording things precisely in their present state, in order to have materials for comparison some few years hence, when travelling may probably be as unlike what it is now, as a journey from London to Liverpool by the new railroad differs from the same enterprise as undertaken a century and a half ago.
To avoid some of the fatigues and liabilities of common travelling, certain of our s.h.i.+pmates and their friends and ourselves had made up a party to traverse the State of New-York in an ”exclusive extra;” a stage hired, with the driver, for our own use, to proceed at our own time. Our fellow-travellers were a German and a Dutch gentleman, and the Prussian physician and young South Carolinian whom I have mentioned in the list of our s.h.i.+pmates. We were to meet at the Congress Hall hotel in Albany on the 6th of October.
On our way from Stockbridge to Albany we saw a few objects characteristic of the country. While the horses were baiting we wandered into a graveyard, where the names on the tombstones were enough to inform any observer what country of the world he was in. One inscription was laudatory of Nelson and Nabby Bullis; another of Amasa and Polly Fielding. Hiram and Keziah were there too. The signs in the American streets are as ludicrous for their confusion of Greek, Roman, and Hebrew names, as those of Irish towns are for the arbitrary divisions of words.
One sees Rudolphus figuring beside Eliakim, and Aristides beside Zerug.
I pitied an acquaintance of mine for being named Peleg, till I found he had baptized his two boys Peleg and Seth. On a table in a little wayside inn I found Fox's Martyr's; and against the wall hung a framed sampler, with the following lines worked upon it:--
”Jesus, permit thine awful name to stand As the first offering of an infant's hand: And as her fingers o'er the canva.s.s move, Oh fill her thoughtful bosom with thy love, With thy dear children let her bear a part, And write thy name thyself upon her heart.”
In these small inns the disagreeable practice of rocking in the chair is seen in its excess. In the inn parlour are three or four rocking-chairs, in which sit ladies who are vibrating in different directions, and at various velocities, so as to try the head of a stranger almost as severely as the tobacco-chewer his stomach. How this lazy and ungraceful indulgence ever became general, I cannot imagine; but the nation seems so wedded to it, that I see little chance of its being forsaken. When American ladies come to live in Europe, they sometimes send home for a rocking-chair. A common wedding-present is a rocking-chair. A beloved pastor has every room in his house furnished with a rocking-chair by his grateful and devoted people. It is well that the gentlemen can be satisfied to sit still, or the world might be treated with the spectacle of the sublime American Senate in a new position; its fifty-two senators see-sawing in full deliberation, like the wise birds of a rookery in a breeze. If such a thing should ever happen, it will be time for them to leave off laughing at the Shaker wors.h.i.+p.
As we approached Greenbush, which lies opposite to Albany, on the east bank of the Hudson, we met riding horses, exercised by grooms, and more than one handsome carriage; tokens that we were approaching some centre of luxury. The view of Albany rising from the river side, with its brown stone courthouse and white marble capitol, is fine; but it wants the relief of more trees within itself, or of a rural background. How changed is this bustling city, thronged with costly buildings, from the Albany of the early days of Mrs. Grant of Laggan, when the children used to run up and down the green slope which is now State-street, imposing from its width and the ma.s.siveness of the houses seen behind its rows of trees! A tunnel is about to be made under the Hudson at Albany; meantime we crossed, as everybody does, by a horse ferryboat; a device so cruel as well as clumsy, that the sooner it is superseded the better. I was told that the strongest horses, however kept up with corn, rarely survive a year of this work.
We observed that, even in this city, the physicians have not always their names engraved on bra.s.s doorplates. On the most conspicuous part of their houses, perhaps on the angle of a corner house, is nailed some glazed substance like floorcloth, with ”Dr. Such-an-one” painted upon it. At Was.h.i.+ngton I remember seeing ”MAGISTRATE” thus affixed to a mere shed.
As we surmounted the hill leading to our hotel, we saw our two s.h.i.+pmates dancing down the steps to welcome us. There certainly is a feeling among s.h.i.+pmates which does not grow out of any other relation. They are thrown first into such absolute dependance on one another, for better for worse, and are afterward so suddenly and widely separated, that if they do chance to meet again, they renew their intimacy with a fervour which does not belong to a friends.h.i.+p otherwise originated. The glee of our whole party this evening is almost ridiculous to look back upon.
Everything served to make a laugh, and we were almost intoxicated with the prospect of what we were going to see and do together. We had separated only a fortnight ago, but we had as much to talk over as if we had been travelling apart for six months. The Prussian had to tell his adventures, we our impressions, and the Southerner his comparisons of his own country with Europe. Then we had to arrange the division of labour by which the gentlemen were to lighten the cares of travelling.
Dr. J., the Prussian, was on all occasions to select apartments for us; Mr. S., the Dutchman, to undertake the eating department; Mr. H., the American, was paymaster; and Mr. O., the German, took charge of the luggage. It was proposed that badges should be worn to designate their offices. Mr. S. was to be adorned with a corncob. Mr. H. stuck a bankbill in front of his hat; and, next morning, when Mr. O. was looking another way, the young men locked a small padlock upon his b.u.t.ton-hole, which he was compelled to carry there for a day or two, till his comrades vouchsafed to release him from his badge.
The hotel was well furnished and conducted. I pointed out, with some complacency, what a handsome piano we had in our drawing-room; but when, in the dark hour, I opened it in order to play, I found it empty of keys! a disappointment, however, which I have met with in England.
Mr. Van Buren and his son happened to be in Albany, and called on me this afternoon. There is nothing remarkable in the appearance of this gentleman, whom I afterward saw frequently at Was.h.i.+ngton. He is small in person, with light hair and blue eyes. I was often asked whether I did not think his manners gentlemanly. There is much friendliness in his manners, for he is a kind-hearted man; he is also rich in information, and lets it come out on subjects in which he cannot contrive to see any danger in speaking. But his manners want the frankness and confidence which are essential to good breeding. He questions closely, without giving anything in return. Moreover, he flatters to a degree which so cautious a man should long ago have found out to be disagreeable; and his flattery is not merely praise of the person he is speaking to, but a worse kind still; a skepticism and ridicule of objects and persons supposed to be distasteful to the one he is conversing with. I fully believe that he is an amiable and indulgent domestic man, and a reasonable political master, a good scholar, and a shrewd man of business; but he has the skepticism which marks the lower order of politicians. His public career exhibits no one exercise of that faith in men and preference of principle to petty expediency by which a statesman shows himself to be great.
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