Chapter VIII: England. 1870 (2)

At this time, and for some time to come, I was engaged in collecting and correcting a book of poems of a more serious character than the "Breitmann Ballads." This was "The Music Lesson of Confucius and other Poems." Of which book I can say truly that it had a _succes d'estime_, though it had a very small sale. There were in it ten or twelve ballads only which were adapted to singing, and _all_ of these were set to music by Carlo Pinsutti, Virginia Gabriel, or others. There was in it a poem entitled "On Mount Meru." In this the Creator is supposed to show the world when it was first made to Satan. The adversary finds that all is fit and well, save "the being called Man," who seems to him to be the worst and most incongruous. To which the Demiurgus replies that Man will in the end conquer all things, even the devil himself. And at the last the demon lies dying at the feet of God, and confesses that "Man, thy creature hath vanquished me for ever--_Vicisti Galilaee_!" Some years after I read a work by a French writer in which this same idea of God and the devil is curiously carried out and illustrated by the history of architecture. And as in the case of the letter from Lord Lytton Bulwer, warm praise from other persons of high rank in the literary world and reviews, I had many proofs that these poems had made a favourable impression. The only exception which I can recall was a very sarcastic review in the _Athenaeum_, in which the writer declared his belief that the poems or Legends of Perfumes in the book were originally written as advertisements of some barber or tradesman, and being by him rejected as worthless, had been thrown back on my hands! Other works by me it treated kindly--so it goes in this world--like a recipe for a cement which I have just copied into my great work on "Mending and Repairing"--in which vinegar is combined with sugar.

While at Brighton we met Louis Blanc, whom we had previously seen several times at the Trubners', in London. In Brighton he heard the news of the overthrow of the Empire and departed for Paris. At Christmas we went to London to visit the Trubners, and thence to the Langham Hotel, where we remained till July. I recall very little of what I witnessed or did beyond seeing the Queen prorogue Parliament and translating Scheffel's _Gaudeamus_, a little volume of German humorous poems. Scheffel, as I have before written, was an old _Mitkneipant_, or evening-beer companion of mine in Heidelberg.

In July we made up a travelling party with Mrs. S. Laing and her daughters Cecilia and Floy, and departed for a visit to the Rhine--that is to say, these ladies preceded us, and we joined them at the Hotel des Quatre Saisons in Homburg. It was a very brilliant season, for the German Emperor, fresh with the glory of his great victory, was being _feted_ everywhere, and Homburg the brilliant was not behind the German world in this respect. I saw the great man frequently, near and far, and was much impressed with his appearance. _Punch_ had not long before represented him as Hans Breitmann in a cartoon, deploring that he had not squeezed more milliards out of the French, and I indeed found in the original very closely my ideal of Hans, who always occurs to me as a German gentleman, who drinks, fights, and plunders, not as a mere rowdy, raised above his natural sphere, but as a rough cavalier. And that the great-bearded giant Emperor Wilhelm did drink heavily, fight hard, and mulct France mightily, is matter of history. This was the last year of the gaming-tables at Homburg. Apropos of these, the roulette-table was placed in the Homburg Museum, where it may be seen amid many Roman relics. Two or three years ago, while I was in the room, there came in a small party of English or Yankee looking or gazing tourists, to whom the attendant pointed out the roulette-table. "And did the old Romans really play at roulette, and was _that_ one of their tables?" said the leader of the visitors. This ready simple faith indicates the Englishman. The ordinary American is always possessed with the conviction that everything antique is a forgery. Once when I was examining the old Viking armour in the Museum of Copenhagen, a Yankee, in whose face a general vulgar distrust of all earthly things was strongly marked, came up to me and asked, "Do you believe that all these curiosities air _genooine_?" "I certainly do," I replied. With an intensely self-satisfied air he rejoined, "I guess you can't fool _me_ with no such humbug."

There was a great deal of cholera that year in Germany, and I had a very severe attack of it either in an incipient form or something thereunto allied: suffice it to say that for twelve hours I almost thought I should die of pure pain. I took in vain laudanum, cayenne pepper, brandy, camphor, and kino--nothing would remain. At last, at midnight, when I was beginning to despair, or just as I felt like being wrecked, I succeeded in keeping a little weak laudanum and water on my stomach, and then the point was cleared. After that I took the other remedies, and was soon well. But it was a crisis of such fearful suffering that it all remains vividly impressed on my memory. I do not know whether any sensible book has ever been written on the moral influence of pain, but it is certain that a wonderful one might be. So far as I can understand it, I think that in the vast majority of cases it is an evil, or one of Nature's innumerable mistakes or divagations, not as yet outgrown or corrected; and it is the great error of Buddhistic-Christianity that it _accepts_ pain not merely as inevitable, but glorifies and increases it, instead of making every conceivable exertion to _diminish_ it. Herein clearly lies the difference between Science and Religion. Science strives in every way to alleviate pain and suffering; erroneous "Religion" is based on it. During the Middle Ages, the Church did all in its power to hinder, if not destroy, the healing art. It made anatomy of the human body a crime, and carried its precautions so far that, quite till the Reformation, the art of healing (as Paracelsus declares) was chiefly in the hands of witches and public executioners. _Torturers_, chiefly clergymen such as Grillandus, were in great honour, while the healing leech was disreputable. It was not, as people say, "the age" which caused all this--it was the result of religion based on crucifixion and martyrdoms and pain--in fact, on that element of _torture_ which we are elsewhere taught, most inconsistently, is the special province of the devil in hell. The _cant_ of this still survives in Longfellow's "Suffer and be strong," and in the pious praise of endurance of pain. What the world wants is the hope held out to it, or enforced on it as a religion or conviction, that pain and suffering are to be diminished, and that our chief duty should consist in diminishing them, instead of always praising or worshipping them as a cross!

We left our friends and went for a short time to Switzerland, where we visited Lucerne, Interlaken, Basle, and Berne. Thence we returned to London and the Langham Hotel. This was at that time under the management of Mr. John Sanderson, an American, whom I had known of old. He was a brother of Professor Sanderson, of Philadelphia, who wrote a remarkably clever work entitled _The American in Paris_. John Sanderson himself had contributed many articles to Appletons' _Cyclopaedia_, belonged to the New York Century Club, and, like all the members of his family, had culture in music and literary taste. While he managed the Langham it was crowded during all the year, as indeed any decent hotel almost anywhere may be by simple proper liberal management. This is a subject which I have studied _au fond_, having read _Das Hotel wesen der Gegenwart_, a very remarkable work, and passed more than twenty years of my life in hotels in all countries.

I can remember that during the first year of my residence in England I tried to persuade a chemist to import from South America the _coca_ leaf, of which not an ounce was then consumed in Europe. Weston the walker brought it into fashion "later on." I had heard extraordinary and authentic accounts of its enabling Indian messengers to run all day from a friend who had employed them. Apropos of this, "I do recall a wondrous pleasant tale." My cousin, Godfrey Davenport, a son of the Uncle Seth mentioned in my earlier life, owned what was regarded as the model plantation of Louisiana. My brother Henry visited him one winter, and while there was kindly treated by a very genial, hospitable neighbouring planter, whom I afterwards met at my father's house in Philadelphia. He was a good-looking, finely-formed man, lithe and active as a panther--the _replica_ of Albert Pike's "fine Arkansas gentleman." And here I would fain disquisit on Pike, but type and time are pressing. Well, this gentleman had one day a difference of opinion with another planter, who was, like himself, a great runner, and drawing his bowie knife, pursued him on the run, _twenty-two miles_, ere he "got" his victim. The distance was subsequently measured and verified by the admiring neighbours, who put up posts in commemoration of such an unparalleled pedestrian feat.

When I returned to Brighton, after getting into lodgings, I began to employ or amuse myself in novel fashion. Old Gentilla Cooper, the gypsy, had an old brother named Matthias, a full-blood Romany, of whom all his people spoke as being very eccentric and wild, but who had all his life a fancy for picking up the old "Egyptian" tongue. I engaged him to come to me two or three times a week, at half-a-crown a visit, to give me lessons in it. As he had never lived in houses, and, like Regnar Lodbrog, had never slept under a fixed roof, unless when he had taken a nap in a tavern or stable, and finally, as his whole life had been utterly that of a gypsy in the roads, at fairs, or "by wood and wold as outlaws wont to do," I found him abundantly original and interesting. And as on account of his eccentricity and amusing gifts he had always been welcome in every camp or tent, and was watchful withal and crafty, there was not a phase, hole, or corner of gypsy life or a member of the fraternity with which or whom he was not familiar. I soon learned his jargon, with every kind of gypsy device, dodge, or peculiar custom, and, with the aid of several works, succeeded in drawing from the recesses of his memory an astonishing number of forgotten words. Thus, to begin with, I read to him aloud the Turkish Gypsy Dictionary of Paspati. When he remembered or recognised a word, or it recalled another, I wrote it down. Then I went through the vocabularies of Liebrich, Pott, Simson, &c., and finally through Brice's Hindustani Dictionary and the great part of a much larger work, and one in Persian. The reader may find most of the results of Matty's teaching in my work entitled "The English Gypsies and their Language." Very often I went with my professor to visit the gypsies camped about Brighton, far or near, and certainly never failed to amuse myself and pick up many quaint observations. In due time I passed to that singular state when I could never walk a mile or two in the country anywhere without meeting or making acquaintance with some wanderer on the highways, by use of my newly-acquired knowledge. Thus, I needed only say, "Seen any of the Coopers or Bosvilles lately on the drum?" (road), or "Do you know Sam Smith?" &c., to be recognised as one of the grand army in some fashion. Then it was widely rumoured that the Coopers had got a _rye_, or master, who spoke Romany, and was withal not ungenerous, so that in due time there was hardly a wanderer of gypsy kind in Southern England who had not heard of me. And though there are thousands of people who are more thoroughly versed in Society than I am, I do not think there are many so much at home in such extremely _varied_ phases of it as I have been. I have sat in a gypsy camp, like one of them, hearing all their little secrets and talking familiarly in Romany, and an hour after dined with distinguished people; and this life had many other variations, and they came daily for many years. My gypsy experiences have not been so great as those of Francis H. Groome (once a pupil and _protege_ of Benfey), or the Grand Duke Josef of Hungary, or of Dr. Wlislocki, but next after these great masters, and as an all-round gypsy rye in many lands, I believe that I am not far behind any _aficionado_ who has as yet manifested himself.

To become intimate, as I did in time, during years in Brighton, off and on, with all the gypsies who roamed the south of England, to be beloved of the old fortune-tellers and the children and mothers as I was, and to be much in tents, involves a great deal of strangely picturesque rural life, night-scenes by firelight, in forests and by river-banks, and marvellously odd reminiscences of other days. There was a gypsy child who knew me so well that the very first words she could speak were "_O 'omany 'i_" (O Romany rye), to the great delight of her parents.

After a little while I found that the _Romany_ element was spread strangely and mysteriously round about among the rural population in many ways. I went one day with Francis H. Groome to Cobham Fair. As I was about to enter a tavern, there stood near by three men whose faces and general appearance had nothing of the gypsy, but as I passed one said to the other so that I could hear--

"_Dikk adovo rye_, _se o Romany rye_, _yuv_, _tacho_!" (Look at that gentleman; he is a gypsy gentleman, sure!)

I naturally turned my head hearing this, when he burst out laughing, and said--

"I told you I'd make him look round."

Once I was startled at hearing a well-dressed, I may say a gentlemanly- looking man, seated in a gig with a fine horse stopping by the road, say, as I passed with my wife--

"_Dikk adovo gorgio adoi_!" (Look at that Gentile, of no-gypsy!)

Not being accustomed to hear myself called a _gorgio_, I glanced up at him angrily, when he, perceiving that I understood him and was of the mysterious brotherhood, smiled, and touched his hat to me. One touch of nature makes the whole world grin.

But the drollest proposal ever made to me in serious earnest came from that indomitable incarnate old _gypssissimus Tsingarorum_, Matthew Cooper, who proposed that I should buy a donkey. He knew where to get one for a pound, but 2 pounds 10s. would buy a "stunner." He would borrow a small cart and a tent, and brown my face and hands so that I would be dark enough, and then on the _drum_--"over the hills." As for all the expenses of the journey, I need not spend anything, for he could provide a neat nut-brown maid, who would not only do all our cooking, but earn money enough by fortune-telling to support us all. I would be expected, however, to greatly aid by my superior knowledge of ladies and gentlemen; and so all would go merrily on, with unlimited bread and cheese, bacon and ale, and tobacco--into the blue away!

I regret to say that Matthew expected to inherit the donkey.

About this time, as all my friends went hunting once or twice a week, I determined to do the same. Now, as I had never been a good rider, and had anything but an English seat in the saddle, I went to a riding-school and underwent a thorough course both on the pig-skin and bare-backed. My teacher, Mr. Goodchild, said eventually of me that I was the only person whom he had ever known who had at my time of life learned to ride well. But to do this I gave my whole mind and soul to it; and Goodchild's standard, and still more that of his riding-master, who had been a captain in a cavalry regiment, was very high. I used to feel quite as if I were a boy again, and one under pretty severe discipline at that, when the Captain was drilling me. For his life he could not treat his pupils otherwise than as recruits. "Sit up straighter, sir! Do you call _that_ sitting up? _That's_ not the way to hold your arms! Knees in! Why, sir, when I was learning to ride I was made to put shillings between my knees and the side, and if I dropped one _I forfeited it_!"

Then in due time came the meets, and the fox and hare hunting, during which I found my way, I believe, into every village or nook for twenty miles round. By this time I had forgotten all my troubles, mental or physical, and after riding six or seven hours in a soft fog, would come home the picture of health.

I remember that one very cold morning I was riding alone to the meet on a monstrous high black horse which Goodchild had bought specially for me, when I met two gypsy women, full blood, selling wares, among them woollen mittens--just what I wanted, for my hands were almost frozen in Paris kids. The women did not know me, but I knew them by description, and great was the amazement of one when I addressed her by name and in Romany.

"_Pen a mandy_, _Priscilla Cooper_, _sa buti me sosti del tute for adovo pustini vashtini_?" (Tell me, Priscilla Cooper, how much should I give you for those woollen gloves?)

"Eighteen pence, master." The common price was ninepence.

"I will _not_ give you eighteen pence," I replied.

"Then how much _will_ you give, master?" asked Priscilla.

"_Four shillings_ will I give, and not a penny less--_miri pen_--you may take it or leave it."

I went off with the gloves, while the women roared out blessings in Romany. There was something in the whole style of the gift, or the _manner_ of giving it, which was specially gratifying to gypsies, and the account thereof soon spread far and wide over the roads as a beautiful deed.

The fraternity of the roads is a strange thing. Once when I lived at Walton there was an old gypsy woman named Lizzie Buckland who often camped near us. A good and winsome young lady named Lillie Doering had taken a liking to the old lady, and sent her a nice Christmas present of clothing, tea, &c., which was sent to me to give to the Egyptian mother. But when I went to seek her, she had flown over the hills and far away. It made no difference. I walked on till I met a perfect stranger to me, a woman, but "evidently a traveller." "Where is old Liz?" I asked. "Somewhere about four miles beyond Moulsey." "I've got a present for her; are you going that way?" "Not exactly, but I'll take it to her; a few miles don't signify." I learned that it had gone from hand to hand and been safely delivered. It seems a strange way to deliver valuables, to walk forth and give them to the first tramp whom you meet; but I knew my people.

I may here say that during this and the previous winter I had practised wood-carving. In which, as in studying Gypsy, I had certain ultimate aims, which were fully developed in later years. I have several times observed in this record that when I get an idea I cherish it, think it over, and work it up. Out of this wood-carving and _repousse_ and the designing which it involved I in time developed ideas which led to what I may fairly call a great result.

We remained at Brighton until February, when we went to London and stayed at the Langham Hotel. Then began the London life of visits, dinners, and for me, as usual, of literary work. In those days I began to meet and know Professor E. H. Palmer, Walter Besant, Walter H. Pollock, and many other men of the time of whom I shall anon have more to say. I arranged with Mr. Trubner as to the publication of "The English Gypsies." I think it was at this time that I dined one evening at Sir Charles Dilke's, where a droll incident took place. There was present a small Frenchman, to whom I had not been introduced, and whose name therefore I did not know. After dinner in the smoking-room I turned over with this gentleman a very curious collection of the works of Blake, which were new to him. Finding that he evidently knew something about art, I explained to him that Blake was a very strange visionary--that he believed that the spirits of the dead appeared to him, and that he took their portraits.

"_C'etait donc un fou_," remarked the Frenchman.

"_Non_, Monsieur," I replied, "he was not a madman. He was almost a genius. Indeed, _c'etait un Dore manque_" (he was all but a Dore).

There was a roar of laughter from all around, and I, innocently supposing that I had said something clever unawares, laughed too.

After all had departed, and I was smoking alone with Sir Charles, he said--

"Well, what did you think of Dore?"

"Dore!" I replied astonished, "why, I never saw Dore in all my life."

"That was Dore to whom you were talking," he answered.

"Ah! well," was my answer, "then it is all right."

I suppose that Dore believed that I knew at the time who he was. Had he been aware that I did not know who he was, the compliment would have seemed much stronger.

I have either been introduced to, conversed with, or been well acquainted at one time or another with Sir John Millais, Holman Hunt, the Rossettis, Frith, Whistler, Poynter, Du Maurier, Charles Keene, Boughton, Hodges, Tenniel (who set my motive of "Ping-Wing," as I may say, to music in a cartoon in _Punch_), the Hon. John Collier, Riviere, Walter Crane, and of course many more--or less--here and there in the club, or at receptions. Could I have then foreseen or imagined that I should ever become--albeit in a very humble grade--an artist myself, and that my works on design and the minor arts would form the principal portion of my writings and of my life's work, I should assuredly have made a greater specialty of such society. But at this time I could hardly draw, save in very humble fashion indeed, and little dreamed that I should execute for expensive works illustrations which would be praised by my critics, as strangely happened to my "Gypsy Sorcery." But we never know what may befall us.

"Oh, little did my mother think,
The day she cradled me,
The lands that I should travel in,
Or the sights that I should see;
Or gae rovin' about wi' gypsy carles,
And sic like companie."

As the _Noctes_ varies it. For it actually came to pass that a very well- known man of letters, while he, with the refined politeness characteristic of his style, spoke of mine as "rigmarole," still praised my pictures.

In April we went to Leamington to pay a visit to a Mr. Field, where we also met his brother, my old friend Leonard Field, whom I had known in Paris in 1848. During this, journey we visited Kenilworth, the town and castle of Warwick, Stratford-on-Avon, and all therewith connected. At the Easter spring-tide, when primroses first flush by running waters, and there are many long bright sunny days in the land, while birdes' songs do ripple in the aire, it is good roaming or resting in such a country, among old castles, towers, and hamlets quaint and grey. To him who can think and feel, it is like the reading of marvellously pleasant old books, some in Elizabethan type, some in earlier black letter, and hearing as we read sweet music and far-distant chimes. And apropos of this, I would remark that while I was at Princeton an idea fixed itself so firmly in my mind that to this day I live on it and act on it. It is this:--There is a certain stage to be reached in reading and reflection, especially if it be aided by broad aesthetic culture and science, when every landscape, event, or human being is or may be to us exactly the same as a _book_. For everything in this world which can be understood and felt can be described, and whatever can be described may be written and printed. For ordinary people, no ideas are distinct or concentrated or "literary" till they are in black and white; but the scholar or artist in words puts thoughts into as clear a form in his own mind. Having deeply meditated on this idea for forty years, and been constantly occupied in realising it, I can say truly that I _often_ compose or think books or monographs which, though not translated into type, are as absolutely _literature_ to me as if they were. There is so _much_ more in this than will at first strike most readers, that I can not help dwelling on it. It once happened to me in Philadelphia, in 1850, to pass _all_ the year--in fact, nearly two years--"in dusky city pent," and during all that time I never got a glimpse of the country. As a director of the Art Union, I was continually studying pictures, landscapes by great artists, and the like. The second year, when I went up into Pennsylvania, I found that I had strangely developed what practically amounted to a kind of pseudophia. Every fragment of rural scenery, every rustic "bit," every group of shrubs or weeds, everything, in fact, which recalled pictures, or which could itself be pictured, appeared to me to be a picture perfectly executed. This lasted as a vivid or real perception for about a week, but the memory of it has been in my mind ever since. It was not so much the beautiful in all Nature which I saw, as that in Nature which was within the power of the skilled artist to execute. In like manner the practised reflector and writer reads books in everything to a degree which no other person can understand. Wordsworth attained this stage, and the object of the "Excursion" is to teach it.

In the "Letters of James Smetham" there is a passage to the effect that he felt extremely happy among English hedgerows, and found inexhaustible delight in English birds, trees, flowers, hills, and brooks, but could not appreciate his little back-garden with a copper-beech, a weeping-ash, nailed-up rose trees, and twisting creepers. After I had made a habit, till it became a passion, of seeking decorative motives, strange and novel curves--in short, began to detect the transcendent alphabet or written language of beauty and mystery in every plant whatever (of which the alphabet may be found in the works of Hulme), I found in every growth of every kind, yes, in every weed, enough to fill my soul with both art and poetry; I may say specially in weeds, since in them the wildest and most graceful motives are more abundant than in garden flowers. Unto me _now_ anything that grows is, in simple truth, more than what any landscape once was. This began in youth in much reading of, and long reflection on, the signatures, correspondences, and mystical fancies of the Paracelsian writers--especially of Gaffarel, of whom I have a Latin version by me as I write--and of late years I have carried its inspiration into decorative art. I have said so much of this because, as this is an autobiography, I cannot omit from it something which, unseen in actions, still forms a predominant motive in my life. It is something which, while it perfectly embraces _all_ landscaping or picture-making or dainty delicate cataloguing in poetry, _a la_ Morris at times, or like the Squyre of Lowe Degre, in detail, also involves a far more earnest feeling, and one which combines thought or _religion_ with emotion, just as a melody which we associate with a beautiful poem is worth more to us than one which we do not. Burne Jones is a higher example of this.

During this season we met at Mrs. Inwood Jones'--who was a niece of Lady Morgan and had many interesting souvenirs of her aunt--several people of note, among whom was Mme. Taglioni, now a very agreeable and graceful though naturally elderly lady. I was charmed with her many reminiscences of well-known characters, and as I had seen her as well as Ellsler and all the great _ballerine_ many times, we had many conferences. Somebody said to her one day, "So you know Mr. Leland?" "Yes," replied Taglioni in jest, "he was one of my old lovers." This was reported to me, when I said, "I wish she had told me that thirty years sooner." In 1846 Taglioni owned three palaces in Venice, one of them the Ca' d'oro, and in 1872 she was giving lessons in London. At Mrs. Frank Hill's I made the acquaintance of the marvellously clever Eugene Schuyler, and at Mr. Smalley's of the equally amazingly cheeky and gifted "Joaquin" Miller. Somewhere else I met several times another curious celebrity whom I had known in America, the Chevalier Wykoff. Though he was almost the type and proverb of an adventurer, I confess that I always liked him. He was gentlemanly and kind in his manner, and agreeable and intelligent in conversation. Though he had been Fanny Ellsler's agent or secretary, and written those two curiously cool works, "Souvenirs of a Roving Diplomatist" (he had been employed by Palmerston) and "My Courtship and its Consequences" (in reference to his having been imprisoned in Italy for attempting to carry off an elderly heiress), he was also the author of a really admirable work on the political system of the United States, which any man may read to advantage. A century ago or more he would have been a great man in his way. He knew everybody. I believe that as General Tevis formed his bold ideal of life from much reading of _condottieri_ or military adventurers, and Robert Hunt from Cooper's novels, so Wykoff got his inspiration for a career from studying and admiring the diplomatic _parvenus_ of Queen Anne's time. These _Bohemiens de la haute volee_, who drew their first motives from study, are by far more interesting and tolerable than those of an illiterate type.

One summer when I was at Bateman's, near Newport, with G. H. Boker, Robert Leroy, and our wives, Leroy reported one day that he had seen Wykoff, Hiram Fuller, a certain very dashing _prima donna_, and two other notorieties sitting side by side in a row on the steps of the Ocean House. I remarked that if there had only been with them the devil and Lola Montez, the party would have been complete. Leroy was famous for his quaint _mots_, in which he had a counterpart in "Tom Appleton," of Boston, whom I also knew very well. The Appletoniana and Leroyalties which were current in the Sixties would make a lively book.

I remember that one evening at a dinner at Trubner's in this year there were present M. Van der Weyer, G. H. Lewes, and M. Delepierre. I have rarely heard so much good talk in the same time. Thoughts so gay and flashes so refined, such a mingling of choice literature, brilliant anecdote, and happy jests, are seldom heard as I heard them. _Tempi passati_!

Apropos of George H. Boker and Leroy, I may here remark that they were both strikingly tall and _distingue_ men, but that when they dressed themselves for bass-fishing, and "put on mean attire," they seemed to be common fisher-folk. One day, while fishing on the rocks, there came up the elegant _prima donna_ referred to, who, seeing that they had very fine lobsters, ordered them to be taken to the hotel for her. "Can't do it, ma'am," answered Leroy brusquely; "we want them for bait." The lady swept away indignantly. To her succeeded Ralph Waldo Emerson, who did not know them personally, and who began to put to Mr. Boker questions as to his earnings and his manner of life, to all of which Mr. Boker replied with great _naivete_. Mr. B., however, had on his pole a silver reel, which had cost 30 pounds ($150), and at last Mr. Emerson's eye rested on that, and word no more spoke he, but, with a smile and bowing very politely, went his road. _Ultimam dixit salutem_.

One evening I was sitting in the smoking-room of the Langham Hotel, when an American said to me, "I hear that Charles Leland, who wrote 'Breitmann,' is staying here." "Yes, that is true," I replied. "Could you point him out to me?" asked the stranger. "I will do so with pleasure--in fact, if you will tell me your name, I think I can manage to introduce you." The American was very grateful for this, and asked when it would be. "_Now_ is the time," I said, "for I am he." On another occasion another stranger told me, that having heard that Mr. Leland was in the smoking-room, he had come in to see him, and asked me to point him out. I pointed to myself, at which he was much astonished, and then, apologetically and half ashamed, said, "Who do you really suppose, of all the men here present, I had settled on as being you?" I could not conjecture, when he pointed to a great broom-bearded, broad-shouldered, jovial, intemperate, German-looking man, and said, "There! I thought that must be the author of 'Hans Brietmann.'" Which suggested to me the idea, "Does the public, then, generally believe that poets look like their heroes?" One can indeed imagine Longfellow as Poor Henry of the "Golden Legend," but few would expect to find the counterpart of Biglow in a Lowell. And yet this belief or instinct is in every case a _great_ compliment, for it testifies that there is that in the poem which is inspired by Nature and originality, and that it is not all mere art-work or artificial. And it is true that by some strange law, name, body, and soul generally do preserve some kind of unity in the realm of literature. There has never been, as yet, a really great Gubbins or Podgers in poetry, or Boggs in romance; and if literature has its Hogg, let it be remembered that the wild boar in all Northern sagas and chronicles, like the Eber in Germany, or the Wolf, was a name of pride and honour, as seen in Eberstein. The Whistler of St. Leonard's is one of the most eccentric and original of Scott's characters, and the Whistler of St. Luke's, or the patron saint of painting, is in no respect deficient in these noble qualifications. The Seven Whistlers who fly unseen by night, ever piping a wild nocturne, are the most uncanny of birds, while there is, to my mind, something absolutely grotesquely awful (as in many of "Dreadful Jemmy's" pictures) in the narration that in ancient days the immense army of the Mexican Indians marched forth to battle all whistling in unison--probably a symphony in blood-colour. Fancy half a million of Whistlers on the war-path, about to do battle to the death with as many Ruskins--I mean red-skins! _Nomen est omen_.

One of the most charming persons whom I ever met in my life was the Hon. Mrs. Caroline Norton, and one of the most delightful dinners at which my wife and I were ever present was at her house. As I had been familiar with her poems from my boyhood, I was astonished to find her still so beautiful and young--if my memory does not deceive me, I thought her far younger looking than myself. I owe her this compliment, for I can recall her speaking with great admiration of Mrs. Leland to Lord Houghton and "Bulwer."

Mrs. Norton had not only a graceful, fascinating expression of figure and motion, but narrated everything so well as to cast a peculiar life and interest into the most trifling anecdote. I remember one of the latter.

"Lord Houghton," she said, "calls you, Mr. Leland, the poet of jargons." (He indeed introduced me to all his guests once by this term.) "Jargon is a confusion of language, and I have a maid who lives in a jargon of ideas--as to values. The other day she broke to utter ruin an antique vase"--(I do not accurately recall what the object was)--"which cost four hundred pounds, and when I said that it was such a grief to me to lose it, she replied, while weeping, 'Oh, do not mind it, my lady; _I'll_ buy you just such another,' as if it were worth tenpence."

Mrs. Norton had marvellously beautiful and expressive eyes, such as one seldom meets thrice in a life. As a harp well played inspires tears or the impulse to dance, so her glances conveyed, almost in the same instant, deep emotion and exquisite merriment. I remember that she was much amused with some of my American jests and reminiscences, and was always prompt to respond, _eodem genere_. So nightingale the wodewale answereth.

During this season in London I met Thomas Carlyle. Our mutual friend, Moncure Conway, had arranged that I should call on the great writer at the house of the latter in Chelsea. I went there at about eleven in the morning, and when Mr. Carlyle entered the room I was amazed--I may say almost awed--by something which was altogether unexpected, and this was his _extraordinary_ likeness to my late father. A slight resemblance to Carlyle may be seen in my own profile, but had he been with my father, the pair might have passed for twins; and in iron-grey grimness and the never-to-be-convinced expression of the eyes they were identity itself.

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.