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North America

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"And what will England do for cotton? Is it not the fact that Lord
John Russell, with his professed neutrality, intends to express
sympathy with the South--intends to pave the way for the advent of
Southern cotton?" "You ought to love us," so say men in Boston,
"because we have been with you in heart and spirit for long, long
years. But your trade has eaten into your souls, and you love
American cotton better than American loyalty and American
fellowship." This I found to be unfair, and in what politest
language I could use I said so. I had not any special knowledge of
the minds of English statesmen on this matter; but I knew as well
as Americans could do what our statesmen had said and done
respecting it. That cotton, if it came from the South, would be
made very welcome in Liverpool, of course I knew. If private
enterprise could bring it, it might be brought. But the very
declaration made by Lord John Russell was the surest pledge that
England, as a nation, would not interfere even to supply her own
wants. It may easily be imagined what eager words all this would
bring about; but I never found that eager words led to feelings
which were personally hostile.

All the world has heard of Newport, in Rhode Island, as being the
Brighton, and Tenby, and Scarborough of New England. And the glory
of Newport is by no means confined to New England, but is shared by
New York and Washington, and in ordinary years by the extreme
South. It is the habit of Americans to go to some watering-place
every summer--that is, to some place either of sea water or of
inland waters. This is done much in England, more in Ireland than
in England, but I think more in the States than even in Ireland.
But of all such summer haunts, Newport is supposed to be in many
ways the most captivating. In the first place, it is certainly the
most fashionable, and, in the next place, it is said to be the most
beautiful. We decided on going to Newport--led thither by the
latter reputation rather than the former. As we were still in the
early part of September, we expected to find the place full, but in
this we were disappointed--disappointed, I say, rather than
gratified, although a crowded house at such a place is certainly a
nuisance. But a house which is prepared to make up six hundred
beds, and which is called on to make up only twenty-five, becomes,
after awhile, somewhat melancholy. The natural depression of the
landlord communicates itself to his servants, and from the servants
it descends to the twenty-five guests, who wander about the long
passages and deserted balconies like the ghosts of those of the
summer visitors, who cannot rest quietly in their graves at home.

In England we know nothing of hotels prepared for six hundred
visitors, all of whom are expected to live in common. Domestic
architects would be frightened at the dimensions which are needed,
and at the number of apartments which are required to be clustered
under one roof. We went to the Ocean Hotel at Newport, and
fancied, as we first entered the hall under a veranda as high as
the house, and made our way into the passage, that we had been
taken to a well-arranged barrack. "Have you rooms?" I asked, as a
man always does ask on first reaching his inn. "Rooms enough," the
clerk said; "we have only fifty here." But that fifty dwindled
down to twenty-five during the next day or two.

We were a melancholy set, the ladies appearing to be afflicted in
this way worse than the gentlemen, on account of their enforced
abstinence from tobacco. What can twelve ladies do scattered about
a drawing-room, so called, intended for the accommodation of two
hundred? The drawing-room at the Ocean Hotel, Newport, is not as
big as Westminster Hall, but would, I should think, make a very
good House of Commons for the British nation. Fancy the feelings
of a lady when she walks into such a room, intending to spend her
evening there, and finds six or seven other ladies located on
various sofas at terrible distances, all strangers to her. She has
come to Newport probably to enjoy herself; and as, in accordance
with the customs of the place, she has dined at two, she has
nothing before her for the evening but the society of that huge,
furnished cavern. Her husband, if she have one, or her father, or
her lover, has probably entered the room with her. But a man has
never the courage to endure such a position long. He sidles out
with some muttered excuse, and seeks solace with a cigar. The
lady, after half an hour of contemplation, creeps silently near
some companion in the desert, and suggests in a whisper that
Newport does not seem to be very full at present.

We stayed there for a week, and were very melancholy; but in our
melancholy we still talked of the war. Americans are said to be
given to bragging, and it is a sin of which I cannot altogether
acquit them. But I have constantly been surprised at hearing the
Northern men speak of their own military achievements with anything
but self-praise. "We've been whipped, sir; and we shall be whipped
again before we've done; uncommon well whipped we shall be." "We
began cowardly, and were afraid to send our own regiments through
one of our own cities." This alluded to a demand that had been
made on the Government that troops going to Washington should not
be sent through Baltimore, because of the strong feeling for
rebellion which was known to exist in that city. President Lincoln
complied with this request, thinking it well to avoid a collision
between the mob and the soldiers. "We began cowardly, and now
we're going on cowardly, and darn't attack them. Well; when we've
been whipped often enough, then we shall learn the trade." Now all
this--and I heard much of such a nature--could not be called
boasting. But yet with it all there was a substratum of
confidence. I have heard Northern gentlemen complaining of the
President, complaining of all his ministers, one after another,
complaining of the contractors who were robbing the army, of the
commanders who did not know how to command the army, and of the
army itself, which did not know how to obey; but I do not remember
that I have discussed the matter with any Northerner who would
admit a doubt as to ultimate success.

We were certainly rather melancholy at Newport, and the empty house
may perhaps have given its tone to the discussions on the war. I
confess that I could not stand the drawing-room--the ladies'
drawing-room, as such like rooms are always called at the hotels--
and that I basely deserted my wife. I could not stand it either
here or elsewhere, and it seemed to me that other husbands--ay, and
even lovers--were as hard pressed as myself. I protest that there
is no spot on the earth's surface so dear to me as my own drawing-
room, or rather my wife's drawing-room, at home; that I am not a
man given hugely to clubs, but one rather rejoicing in the rustle
of petticoats. I like to have women in the same room with me. But
at these hotels I found myself driven away--propelled as it were by
some unknown force--to absent myself from the feminine haunts.
Anything was more palatable than them, even "liquoring up" at a
nasty bar, or smoking in a comfortless reading-room among a deluge
of American newspapers. And I protest also--hoping as I do so that
I may say much in this book to prove the truth of such
protestation--that this comes from no fault of the American women.
They are as lovely as our own women. Taken generally, they are
better instructed, though perhaps not better educated. They are
seldom troubled with mauvaise honte; I do not say it in irony, but
begging that the words may be taken at their proper meaning. They
can always talk, and very often can talk well. But when assembled
together in these vast, cavernous, would-be luxurious, but in truth
horribly comfortless hotel drawing-rooms, they are unapproachable.
I have seen lovers, whom I have known to be lovers, unable to
remain five minutes in the same cavern with their beloved ones.

And then the music! There is always a piano in a hotel drawing-
room, on which, of course, some one of the forlorn ladies is
generally employed. I do not suppose that these pianos are in
fact, as a rule, louder and harsher, more violent and less musical,
than other instruments of the kind. They seem to be so, but that,
I take it, arises from the exceptional mental depression of those
who have to listen to them. Then the ladies, or probably some one
lady, will sing, and as she hears her own voice ring and echo
through the lofty corners and round the empty walls, she is
surprised at her own force, and with increased efforts sings louder
and still louder. She is tempted to fancy that she is suddenly
gifted with some power of vocal melody unknown to her before, and,
filled with the glory of her own performance, shouts till the whole
house rings. At such moments she at least is happy, if no one else
is so. Looking at the general sadness of her position, who can
grudge her such happiness?

And then the children--babies, I should say if I were speaking of
English bairns of their age; but seeing that they are Americans, I
hardly dare to call them children. The actual age of these
perfectly-civilized and highly-educated beings may be from three to
four. One will often see five or six such seated at the long
dinner-table of the hotel, breakfasting and dining with their
elders, and going through the ceremony with all the gravity, and
more than all the decorum, of their grandfathers. When I was three
years old I had not yet, as I imagine, been promoted beyond a
silver spoon of my own wherewith to eat my bread and milk in the
nursery; and I feel assured that I was under the immediate care of
a nursemaid, as I gobbled up my minced mutton mixed with potatoes
and gravy. But at hotel life in the States the adult infant lisps
to the waiter for everything at table, handles his fish with
epicurean delicacy, is choice in his selection of pickles, very
particular that his beef-steak at breakfast shall be hot, and is
instant in his demand for fresh ice in his water. But perhaps his,
or in this case her, retreat from the room when the meal is over,
is the chef-d'oeuvre of the whole performance. The little,
precocious, full-blown beauty of four signifies that she has
completed her meal--or is "through" her dinner, as she would
express it--by carefully extricating herself from the napkin which
has been tucked around her. Then the waiter, ever attentive to her
movements, draws back the chair on which she is seated, and the
young lady glides to the floor. A little girl in Old England would
scramble down, but little girls in New England never scramble. Her
father and mother, who are no more than her chief ministers, walk
before her out of the saloon, and then she--swims after them. But
swimming is not the proper word. Fishes, in making their way
through the water, assist, or rather impede, their motion with no
dorsal wriggle. No animal taught to move directly by its Creator
adopts a gait so useless, and at the same time so graceless. Many
women, having received their lessons in walking from a less
eligible instructor, do move in this way, and such women this
unfortunate little lady has been instructed to copy. The peculiar
step to which I allude is to be seen often on the boulevards in
Paris. It is to be seen more often in second-rate French towns,
and among fourth-rate French women. Of all signs in women
betokening vulgarity, bad taste, and aptitude to bad morals, it is
the surest. And this is the gait of going which American mothers--
some American mothers I should say--love to teach their daughters!
As a comedy at a hotel it is very delightful, but in private life I
should object to it.

To me Newport could never be a place charming by reason of its own
charms. That it is a very pleasant place when it is full of people
and the people are in spirits and happy, I do not doubt. But then
the visitors would bring, as far as I am concerned, the
pleasantness with them. The coast is not fine. To those who know
the best portions of the coast of Wales or Cornwall--or better
still, the western coast of Ireland, of Clare and Kerry for
instance--it would not be in any way remarkable. It is by no means
equal to Dieppe or Biarritz, and not to be talked of in the same
breath with Spezzia. The hotels, too, are all built away from the
sea; so that one cannot sit and watch the play of the waves from
one's windows. Nor are there pleasant rambling paths down among
the rocks, and from one short strand to another. There is
excellent bathing for those who like bathing on shelving sand. I
don't. The spot is about half a mile from the hotels, and to this
the bathers are carried in omnibuses. Till one o'clock ladies
bathe, which operation, however, does not at all militate against
the bathing of men, but rather necessitates it as regards those men
who have ladies with them. For here ladies and gentlemen bathe in
decorous dresses, and are very polite to each other. I must say
that I think the ladies have the best of it. My idea of sea
bathing, for my own gratification, is not compatible with a full
suit of clothing. I own that my tastes are vulgar, and perhaps
indecent; but I love to jump into the deep, clear sea from off a
rock, and I love to be hampered by no outward impediments as I do
so. For ordinary bathers, for all ladies, and for men less savage
in their instincts than I am, the bathing at Newport is very good.

The private houses--villa residences as they would be termed by an
auctioneer in England--are excellent. Many of them are, in fact,
large mansions, and are surrounded with grounds which, as the
shrubs grow up, will be very beautiful. Some have large, well-kept
lawns, stretching down to the rocks, and these, to my taste, give
the charm to Newport. They extend about two miles along the coast.
Should my lot have made me a citizen of the United States, I should
have had no objection to become the possessor of one of these
"villa residences;" but I do not think that I should have "gone in"
for hotel life at Newport.

We hired saddle-horses, and rode out nearly the length of the
island. It was all very well, but there was little in it
remarkable either as regards cultivation or scenery. We found
nothing that it would be possible either to describe or remember.
The Americans of the United States have had time to build and
populate vast cities, but they have not yet had time to surround
themselves with pretty scenery. Outlying grand scenery is given by
nature; but the prettiness of home scenery is a work of art. It
comes from the thorough draining of land, from the planting and
subsequent thinning of trees, from the controlling of waters, and
constant use of minute patches of broken land. In another hundred
years or so, Rhode Island may be, perhaps, as pretty as the Isle of
Wight. The horses which we got were not good. They were unhandy
and badly mouthed, and that which my wife rode was altogether
ignorant of the art of walking. We hired them from an Englishman
who had established himself at New York as a riding-master for
ladies, and who had come to Newport for the season on the same
business. He complained to me with much bitterness of the saddle-
horses which came in his way--of course thinking that it was the
special business of a country to produce saddle-horses, as I think
it the special business of a country to produce pens, ink, and
paper of good quality. According to him, riding has not yet become
an American art, and hence the awkwardness of American horses.
"Lord bless you, sir! they don't give an animal a chance of a
mouth." In this he alluded only, I presume, to saddle-horses. I
know nothing of the trotting horses, but I should imagine that a
fine mouth must be an essential requisite for a trotting match in
harness. As regards riding at Newport, we were not tempted to
repeat the experiment. The number of carriages which we saw there--
remembering as I did that the place was comparatively empty--and
their general smartness, surprised me very much. It seemed that
every lady, with a house of her own, had also her own carriage.
These carriages were always open, and the law of the land
imperatively demands that the occupants shall cover their knees
with a worked worsted apron of brilliant colors. These aprons at
first I confess seemed tawdry; but the eye soon becomes used to
bright colors, in carriage aprons as well as in architecture, and I
soon learned to like them.

Rhode Island, as the State is usually called, is the smallest State
in the Union. I may perhaps best show its disparity to other
States by saying that New York extends about two hundred and fifty
miles from north to south, and the same distance from east to west;
whereas the State called Rhode Island is about forty miles long by
twenty broad, independently of certain small islands. It would, in
fact, not form a considerable addition if added on to many of the
other States. Nevertheless, it has all the same powers of self-
government as are possessed by such nationalities as the States of
New York and Pennsylvania, and sends two Senators to the Senate at
Washington, as do those enormous States. Small as the State is,
Rhode Island itself forms but a small portion of it. The
authorized and proper name of the State is Providence Plantation
and Rhode Island. Roger Williams was the first founder of the
colony, and he established himself on the mainland at a spot which
he called Providence. Here now stands the City of Providence, the
chief town of the State; and a thriving, comfortable town it seems
to be, full of banks, fed by railways and steamers, and going ahead
quite as quickly as Roger Williams could in his fondest hopes have
desired.

Rhode Island, as I have said, has all the attributes of government
in common with her stouter and more famous sisters. She has a
governor, and an upper house and a lower house of legislature; and
she is somewhat fantastic in the use of these constitutional
powers, for she calls on them to sit now in one town and now in
another. Providence is the capital of the State; but the Rhode
Island parliament sits sometimes at Providence and sometimes at
Newport. At stated times also it has to collect itself at Bristol,
and at other stated times at Kingston, and at others at East
Greenwich. Of all legislative assemblies it is the most
peripatetic. Universal suffrage does not absolutely prevail in
this State, a certain property qualification being necessary to
confer a right to vote even for the State representatives. I
should think it would be well for all parties if the whole State
could be swallowed up by Massachusetts or by Connecticut, either of
which lie conveniently for the feat; but I presume that any
suggestion of such a nature would be regarded as treason by the men
of Providence Plantation.

We returned back to Boston by Attleborough, a town at which, in
ordinary times, the whole population is supported by the jewelers'
trade. It is a place with a specialty, upon which specialty it has
thriven well and become a town. But the specialty is one ill
adapted for times of war and we were assured that the trade was for
the present at an end. What man could now-a-days buy jewels, or
even what woman, seeing that everything would be required for the
war? I do not say that such abstinence from luxury has been
begotten altogether by a feeling of patriotism. The direct taxes
which all Americans will now be called on to pay, have had and will
have much to do with such abstinence. In the mean time the poor
jewelers of Attleborough have gone altogether to the wall.



CHAPTER III.

MAINE, NEW HAMPSHIRE, AND VERMONT.


Perhaps I ought to assume that all the world in England knows that
that portion of the United States called New England consists of
the six States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts,
Connecticut, and Rhode Island. This is especially the land of
Yankees, and none can properly be called Yankees but those who
belong to New England. I have named the States as nearly as may be
in order from the north downward. Of Rhode Island, the smallest
State in the Union, I have already said what little I have to say.
Of these six States Boston may be called the capital. Not that it
is so in any civil or political sense; it is simply the capital of
Massachusetts. But as it is the Athens of the Western world; as it
was the cradle of American freedom; as everybody of course knows
that into Boston harbor was thrown the tea which George III. would
tax, and that at Boston, on account of that and similar taxes,
sprang up the new revolution; and as it has grown in wealth, and
fame, and size beyond other towns in New England, it may be allowed
to us to regard it as the capital of these six Northern States,
without guilt of lese majeste toward the other five. To me, I
confess this Northern division of our once-unruly colonies is, and
always has been, the dearest. I am no Puritan myself, and fancy
that, had I lived in the days of the Puritans, I should have been
anti-Puritan to the full extent of my capabilities. But I should
have been so through ignorance and prejudice, and actuated by that
love of existing rights and wrongs which men call loyalty. If the
Canadas were to rebel now, I should be for putting down the
Canadians with a strong hand; but not the less have I an idea that
it will become the Canadas to rebel and assert their independence
at some future period, unless it be conceded to them without such
rebellion. Who, on looking back, can now refuse to admire the
political aspirations of the English Puritans, or decline to
acknowledge the beauty and fitness of what they did? It was by
them that these States of New England were colonized. They came
hither, stating themselves to be pilgrims, and as such they first
placed their feet on that hallowed rock at Plymouth, on the shore
of Massachusetts. They came here driven by no thirst of conquest,
by no greed for gold, dreaming of no Western empire such as Cortez
had achieved and Raleigh had meditated. They desired to earn their
bread in the sweat of their brow, worshiping God according to their
own lights, living in harmony under their own laws, and feeling
that no master could claim a right to put a heel upon their necks.
And be it remembered that here in England, in those days, earthly
masters were still apt to put their heels on the necks of men. The
Star Chamber was gone, but Jeffreys had not yet reigned. What
earthly aspirations were ever higher than these, or more manly?
And what earthly efforts ever led to grander results?

We determined to go to Portland, in Maine, from thence to the White
Mountains in New Hampshire--the American Alps, as they love to call
them--and then on to Quebec, and up through the two Canadas to
Niagara; and this route we followed. From Boston to Portland we
traveled by railroad--the carriages on which are in America always
called cars. And here I beg, once for all, to enter my protest
loudly against the manner in which these conveyances are conducted.
The one grand fault--there are other smaller faults--but the one
grand fault is that they admit but one class. Two reasons for this
are given. The first is that the finances of the companies will
not admit of a divided accommodation; and the second is that the
republican nature of the people will not brook a superior or
aristocratic classification of traveling. As regards the first, I
do not in the least believe in it. If a more expensive manner of
railway traveling will pay in England, it would surely do so here.
Were a better class of carriages organized, as large a portion of
the population would use them in the United States as in any
country in Europe. And it seems to be evident that in arranging
that there shall be only one rate of traveling, the price is
enhanced on poor travelers exactly in proportion as it is made
cheap to those who are not poor. For the poorer classes, traveling
in America is by no means cheap, the average rate being, as far as
I can judge, fully three halfpence a mile. It is manifest that
dearer rates for one class would allow of cheaper rates for the
other; and that in this manner general traveling would be
encouraged and increased.

But I do not believe that the question of expenditure has had
anything to do with it. I conceive it to be true that the railways
are afraid to put themselves at variance with the general feeling
of the people. If so, the railways may be right. But then, on the
other band, the general feeling of the people must in such case be
wrong. Such a feeling argues a total mistake as to the nature of
that liberty and equality for the security of which the people are
so anxious, and that mistake the very one which has made shipwreck
so many attempts at freedom in other countries. It argues that
confusion between social and political equality which has led
astray multitudes who have longed for liberty fervently, but who
have not thought of it carefully. If a first-class railway
carriage should be held as offensive, so should a first-class
house, or a first-class horse, or a first-class dinner. But first-
class houses, first-class horses, and first-class dinners are very
rife in America. Of course it may be said that the expenditure
shown in these last-named objects is private expenditure, and
cannot be controlled; and that railway traveling is of a public
nature, and can be made subject to public opinion. But the fault
is in that public opinion which desires to control matters of this
nature. Such an arrangement partakes of all the vice of a
sumptuary law, and sumptuary laws are in their very essence
mistakes. It is well that a man should always have all for which
he is willing to pay. If he desires and obtains more than is good
for him, the punishment, and thus also the preventive, will come
from other sources.

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