If there were boarding-houses in paradise—Blodgett, the
delight of mankind—Solomon foresaw her—A withering retort—
A modest, puny poise about her—Hidden thoughts derived
from Mother Eve and Grecian Helen—The feminine council that
ruled the Yankee captains—Bonds of fraternity, double-
riveted and copper-fastened—Through the looking-glass—Men
only of the manliest sort—The lady-paramount—Hands which
were true works of art—Retained his dignity without putting
it on—Sighed heavily over my efforts—Unctuous M. Huguenin—
"From dawn to eve I fell"—The multum-in-parvo machine—
"Beauty and the Beast"—Frank Channing—"Blood-and water!"—
A lapful of Irish stew.
It was observed a little way back that English boarding-houses were much like other boarding-houses in the civilized world. The rule is proved by the exception of Mrs. Blodgett's establishment. There never was such another; there never will be; it was unique. It has vanished from earth long since; but if there were boarding-houses in paradise, I should certainly expect it to be found again there. Who was Mrs. Blodgett? Save that she was a widow of the British middle class, I doubt if any one of her boarders knew. She had once been rich, and had lived at Gibraltar. I have often meditated with fruitless longing about what manner of man Mr. Blodgett could have been. He must have been, like the Emperor Titus, the delight of mankind in his day. He was a man, we must surmise, whose charms and virtues were such that his wife, having felt the bliss and privilege of knowing and living with him, registered a vow over his bier that she would devote her future career to the attempt to make others as happy as he had made her; that she would serve others as faithfully and generously as she had served him. It was a lofty and beautiful conception, for she must have perceived that only in that way could she keep his blessed spirit near her; that the little heaven she would make in Duke Street, Liverpool, would attract him from the kindred heaven above; that he would choose to hover, invisible, above her plenteous table, inhaling the grateful aromas that arose from it as from a savory sacrifice, basking in the smiles and sympathizing in the satisfaction of the fortunate guests, triumphing in their recognition of his beloved consort as a queen among women. One might almost fancy that the steam arising from the portly soup-tureen assumed as it arose something suggesting a human form; that from its airy and fragrant mistiness a shadowy countenance beamed down upon the good lady in black, with the white cap, who ladled out the delicious compound to her waiting devotees. The murmur of the tea-urn would seem to fashion itself into airy accents, syllabling, "Mary, thy Blodgett is here!" His genial spirit would preside over her labors in the kitchen, suggesting ever more delightsome dishes and delicate desserts. He would warn her against undesirable inmates and intractable servants, and would inspire her tradesmen to serve her with the choicest comestibles and to temper their bills to the unprotected widow. At night he would bless her lonely pillow with peace, and would gently rouse her in the morning to a new day of beneficences.
Mrs. Blodgett was about five feet four inches high, and may have weighed twelve stone; into such limits were her virtues packed. She was perhaps in the neighborhood of her fiftieth year; her dark hair was threaded with honorable gray. Her countenance was rotund and ruddy; it was the flower of kindness and hospitality in full bloom; but there was also power in the thick eyebrows and in the massy substance of the chin—of the chins, indeed, for here, as in other gifts, nature had been generous with her. There was shrewdness and discernment in the good-nature of her eyes; she knew human nature, although no one judged it with more charity than she. Her old men were her brothers, her young men were her sons, all children were her children. Solomon foresaw her in the most engaging of his Proverbs. Her maid-servants arose at six in the morning and called her blessed, for though her rule was strict it was just and loving. She was at once the mistress and the friend of her household; no Yankee captain so audacious that he ventured to oppose her law; no cynic so cold as not to be melted by her tenderness. She was clad always in black, with a white cap and ribbons, always spotless amid the grime of Liverpool; in her more active moments—though she was always active—she added a white apron to her attire. She was ever anywhere where she was needed; she was never anywhere where she could be dispensed with. Wherever she went she brought comfort and a cheerful but not restless animation. Her boarders were busy men, but it was always with an effort that they wrenched themselves from her breakfast-table, and they sat down to dinner as one man. She made them happy, but she would not spoil them. "You're a pretty young man!" she said, severely, to complacent Mr. Crane, when, one morning, he came late to breakfast. "I always knew that," returned he, reaching self-satisfiedly for the toast-rack. "Well, I'm sure your glass never told you so!" was the withering retort. Mr. Crane did not lift his neck so high after that. The grin that went round the table was too crushingly unanimous.
Mrs. Blodgett was helped in her duties by her niece, Miss Maria, and by her sister, Miss Williams. Miss Maria was a little wisp of a woman; I do not know her age then, but I think, were she alive today, she would confess to about eighty-three. She wore ringlets, after the fashion of the early nineteenth-century books of beauty. Her face was thin and narrow, and ordinarily pale; but when Miss Maria had been a little while in conversation with one or more of the gallant Yankee captains you might see in the upper corner of each cheek a slight touch of red. For though I would not call the little lady coquettish—that is too coarse and obvious a word—yet there was in her that inalienable consciousness of maidenhood, that sentiment, at once of attraction and of recoil, towards creatures of the opposite sex, that gentle hope of pleasing man, that secret emotion of being pleased by him, that tremor at the idea of being desired, and that flush at the thought of being desirable, which, I suppose, may animate the mystic sensibilities of spinsterhood. She was anything but aggressive and confident, yet there was a modest, puny poise about her; she was like a plant that has always lived in a narrow, city flower-pot, at a window too seldom visited by the sun, which has never known the freedom of the rain, but has been skimpingly watered out of a toy watering-pot; which has never so much as conceived of the daring and voluptuous charms of its remote sisters of the forest and garden, but has cherished its rudimentary perfume and its incipient tints in a light reflected from brick walls and in the thin, stale atmosphere of rear sitting-rooms. Yet it knows that it is a flower, and that it might, somehow, fulfil its destiny and be beautiful. So Miss Maria had, no doubt, hidden thoughts remotely derived from Mother Eve and from Grecian Helen; she was aware of the potentiality in herself of all virgin privileges and powers, and assumed thereupon her own little dignity. Never but once did I see a masculine arm round Miss Maria's trig, stiff little waist, and that was at Christmas-time, when there were sprigs of mistletoe over every doorway; but, mistletoe or not, the owner of that arm, if he did succeed in ravishing a kiss, got his ears smartly boxed the next moment. I don't know precisely what was Miss Maria's function in the economy of the household; I can fancy her setting the table, and adding touches of neatness and prettiness; dusting the ornaments and fine china on the shelves of the whatnot; straightening the frames of the pictures on the walls; and, in her less romantic moments, hemming towels or sheets, or putting up preserved fruits. I know she was always amiable and obliging and that everybody loved her.
Miss Williams was a good deal the elder of her sister, and was of a clear white pallor and an aged delicacy and shyness that were very captivating. She had judgment and a clear, dispassionate brain, and I presume she acted the part in the little firm of a sort of court of appeals and final adviser and referee. She talked little and had little to do with outward affairs, but she sat observant and penetrating and formed conclusions in her mind. There had been no brother of The Blodgett to induce her to change her maidenly state, but I think there must have been a quiet, touching romance somewhere hidden in the shadows of the previous forty or fifty years. She admired and delighted in her energetic, practical sister as much as the latter adored her for her serenity and wisdom. There was between them an intimacy, confidence, and mutual understanding that were charming to behold. When the blessed Blodgett had died, one can imagine the vital support and consolation which Miss Williams had been able to afford to her afflicted sister. Each of them seemed, in some way, to explain and enlarge one's conception of the other. Widely different as they appeared outwardly, there was a true sisterly likeness deep down in them. Such was the feminine council that ruled the destinies of the Yankee captains and of their consul.
These captains and this consul formed nine-tenths of the population of the house, and such other denizens as it had were at least Americans. I never learned the cause of this predilection for representatives of the great republic and for the seafaring variety of them in particular. Be that as it might (and it is an interesting inquiry in itself), it can be readily understood that it worked out well as a business idea. There were no quarrels or heart-burnings among the jolly occupants of Mrs. Blodgett's table; first, because they were all Americans in the country of their hereditary enemies, and, secondly, because they were all men of the same calling, and that calling the sea. The bonds of fraternity between them were double-riveted and copper-fastened. Thus all who had experienced the Blodgett regime proclaimed its excellence far and wide, and the number of applicants always exceeded the accommodations; in fact, during this year 1855-56, our hostess was compelled to buy the house adjoining her own, and I had the rare delight of watching every stroke of work done by the carpenters and bricklayers who had the job of cutting a doorway through the wall from the old house to the new one. There was something magical and adventurous in stepping through that opening for the first time—crossing a boundary which had maintained itself so long. Probably the sensation resembled that which Alice afterwards experienced when she stepped through the looking-glass into the room on the other side. The additional accommodations were speedily filled; but after the first fascination had worn off nobody regarded the new house as comparable with the old one, and the people who roomed in it were looked down upon by their associates of the original dwelling. They were, I believe, as much alike as two houses could be, and that is saying much in this age, but the feeling was different, and the feeling is everything if you have a soul.
If the Blodgett house, or houses, were unique, so were the Yankee boarders. The race of our merchant-marine captains disappeared with their ships, and they will return no more. The loss is irretrievable, for in many respects they held the ideal of patriotic and energetic Americanism higher than it is likely to go again. When at sea, in command of and responsible for their ships and cargoes, they were, no doubt, upon occasion, despots and slave-drivers; but their crews were often recruited from among the dregs of men of all nations, who would interpret kindness as timidity and take an ell where you gave them an inch. No doubt, too, there were incarnate devils among these captains—actual monomaniacs of cruelty and viciousness—though none of these were known at Mrs. Blodgett's. Round her board sat men only of the manliest sort. They had the handiness and versatility of the sailor, wide and various knowledge of all quarters of the globe and of types of mankind, though, to be sure, their investigations did not proceed far beyond their ports, and you were sometimes more astonished at what they did not know than at what they did. They had the self-poise and self-confidence of men who day by day and month by month hold their lives in their hands, and are practised in finding a way out of danger and difficulty. They had a code of good manners and polite behavior which was not highly refined, but contained the sound, essential elements of courtesy; not expressed in fancy, but honest and solid. They had great shrewdness, and were capable of really fine diplomacy, for the school they attended demanded such proficiency. They had a dry, chuckling humor; a homely philosophy, often mingled with the queerest superstitions; a racy wit, smacking somewhat, of course, of the quarter-deck, or even of the forecastle; a seemingly incongruous sensibility, so that tears easily sprang to their eyes if the right chord of pathos were touched; a disposition to wear a high-colored necktie and a broad, gold watch-chain, and to observe a certain smartness in their boots and their general shore rigging; a good appetite for good food, and not a little discernment of what was good; a great and boylike enjoyment of primitive pleasures; a love of practical jokes and a hearty roar of laughter for hearty fun; a self-respecting naturalness, which made them gentlemen in substance if not in all technical details; a pungent contempt for humbug and artifice, though they might not mind a good, swaggering lie upon occasion; a robust sense of honor in all matters which were trusted to their honorable feeling; and, to make an end of this long catalogue, a practical command of language regarded as a means of expressing and communicating the essential core of thoughts, though the words might not always be discoverable in Johnson's dictionary or the grammatical constructions such as would be warranted by Lindley Murray. They were, upon the average, good-looking, active, able men, and most of them were on the sunny side of forty. They were ready to converse on any subject, but if left to themselves they would choose topics proper to their calling-ships and shipwrecks, maritime usages of various countries, of laws of insurance, of sea-rights, of feats of seamanship, of luck and ill luck, and here and there a little politics of the old-fashioned, elementary sort. They boasted themselves and their country not a little, and criticised everybody else, and John Bull especially, very severely often, but almost always very acutely, too. They would play euchre and smoke cigars from nine o'clock till eleven, and would then go to bed and sleep till the breakfast-bell. Altogether, they were fine company, and they did me much good. Such were the captains of our merchant marine about the middle of the last century.
Some of them would bring their wives with them for the voyage; uniformly rather pretty women, a trifle dressy, somewhat fragile in appearance, but really sound enough; naive, simple, good souls, loving their husbands and magnifying them, and taking a vicarious pride in their ships and sea-craft. The lady-paramount of these, in my estimation, was the wife of old Captain Howes, the inventor of Howes' patent rig, which he was at that time perfecting. He would sometimes invite me up to his room to see the exquisitely finished model which he had made with his own hands. He was the commodore of the captains, the oldest, wisest, and most impressive of them; a handsome, massive, Jovelike old gentleman, with the gentlest and most indulgent manners, and a straightforward, simple mariner withal. He had ceased to make voyages, and was settled, for the time being, in Liverpool. Mrs. Howes seemed, to my boyish apprehension, to be a sort of princess of exquisite and gracious refinement; I could imagine nothing in feminine shape more delicate, of more languid grace, of finer patrician elegance. She was certainly immensely good-natured and indulgent towards me, and, in the absence of my mother, tried to teach me to be less of an Orson; she had hands which were true works of art, flexible, fine-grained, taper-fingered, and lily-white; these she used very effectively, and would fain have induced me to attempt the regeneration of my own dirty and ragged little fists. She would beseech me, also, to part my hair straight, to forbear to soil my jacket, and even to get my shoes blacked. I was thankful for these attentions, though I was unable to profit by them. Sometimes, at table, I would glance up to find her eyes dwelling with mild reproach upon me; doubtless I was continually perpetrating terrible enormities. Had she herself been less perfect and immaculate, I might have felt more hopes of my own amendment; but I felt that I was not in her class at all, and I gave up at the start. She was a wonderful human ornament, the despair, I thought, of all pursuit, not to mention rivalry. Beside the heroic figure of her captain, she looked like a lily mated with an oak; but they were as happy a pair, and as well mated, as one could hope to see.
I was, perhaps, more in my proper element among the captains down in the smoking-room, which was at the back of the house, at the end of the hallway, on the left. My father sat there foot to foot with them, played euchre with them, listened to their yarns, laughed at their jokes, and felt, probably, the spirit of his own old sea-captain ancestors stirring within him. Some of them were a little shy of his official position at first, and indeed he was occasionally constrained to adopt towards one or another of them, in the consulate, a bearing very different from the easy comradeship of the Blodgett evenings; but in process of time they came to understand him, and accepted him, on the human basis, as a friend and brother. My father had the rare faculty of retaining his dignity without putting it on. No one ever took liberties with him, and he took none with anybody; yet there was no trace in his intercourse of stiffness or pose; there did not need to be, since there was behind his eye that potentiality of self—protection which renders superfluous all outward demonstration of personal sanctity. On the other hand, he obviously elevated the tone of our little society; the stout captains, who feared nothing else, feared their worser selves in his presence. None of them knew or cared a straw for his literary genius and its productions; but they were aware of something in him which they respected as well as liked, and there was no member of the company who was more popular or influential.
Without letting me feel that I was the object of special solicitude or watchfulness, my father knew all that I did, and saw to it that my time was decently occupied. In addition to the dancing-lessons already mentioned (in which I became brilliantly proficient, and achieved such feats in the way of polkas, mazurkas, hornpipes, and Scotch reels as filled my instructor and myself with pride)—in addition to this, I was closeted twice a week with a very serious and earnest drawing-master, who taught me with infinite conscientiousness, and sighed heavily over the efforts which I submitted to him. The captains, who were my champions and abettors in all things, might take in their large hands a drawing of mine and the copy by the master which had been my model, and say, one to the other, "Well, now, I couldn't tell which was which—could you?" But the master could tell, and the certainty of it steeped his soul in constant gloom. I doubt if he recovered from the pangs I gave him. The fact was, I thought an hour of dancing with lovely Mary Warren was worth all the art in the world. Another instructor to whom I brought honor was thick-shouldered, portly, unctuous M. Huguenin, a Swiss, proprietor of the once-famous gymnasium which bore his name. He so anointed me with praise that I waxed indiscreet, and one day, as I was swinging on the rings, and he was pointing out to some prospective patrons my extraordinary merits, my grasp relaxed at the wrong moment and I came sailing earthward from on high. It seemed to me that, like Milton's Lucifer, "from dawn to eve I fell," M. Huguenin sprinting to intercept my fall; but I landed on a mat and was little the worse for it. I fear the prospective patrons were not persuaded, by my performance, of the expediency of gymnastic training. On the other hand, M. Huguenin managed to dispose to my father of one of his multum-in-parvo exercising-machines, on the understanding that it was to be taken back at half-price on the expiration of our stay in Liverpool; but, when that time came, M. Huguenin failed to remember having been a party to any such understanding; so the big framework was boxed up, and finally was resurrected in Concord, where I labored with it for seven or eight years more during my home-comings from Harvard.
In the intervals of my other pursuits, I was, at this period, sent into society. The society at Mrs. Blodgett's was, indeed, all that I desired; but it was doubtless perceived that it was not all that my polite development required; my Orsonism was too much indulged. I was sent alone to Sandheys, the Brights' and Heywoods' place, where I was moderately ill at ease; and also to the house of a lady in town, who received a good deal of company, and there I was, at first, acutely miserable. The formalities of the drawing-room and the elegant conversation overwhelmed me with the kind of torture which Swedenborg ascribes to those spirits of the lower orders who are admitted temporarily into the upper heavens. Unlike these unfortunates, however, I presently got acclimated; other boys of my age appeared, and numbers of little girls (Mary Warren among them), and now society occupied all my thoughts. The lady of the house got up private theatricals—"Beauty and the Beast" was the play. I was cast for the parts of the Second Sister and of the Beast; Mary Warren was the Beauty. I got by heart not only my own lines, but those of all the other performers and the stage directions. The play was received with applause, and after it was done the actors were feted; my father was not present, but he appeared greatly diverted by my account of the proceedings. He was probably testing me in various ways to see what I was made of, and whether anything could be made of me. He encouraged my predilection for natural history by getting me books on conchology and taking me to museums to study the specimens and make pencil drawings of them. In these avocations I was also companioned by Frank Channing, whose specialty was ornithology, and who was making a series of colored portraits of the birds in the museum, very cleverly done.
[IMAGE: WILLIAM HENRY CHANNING, 1855]
Frank was the son of the Rev. William Henry Channing, who was pastor of a Unitarian church in Liverpool; he had brought his family to England at about the same time that we came. He was a nephew, I believe, of the William Ellery Channing who was one of the founders of American Unitarianism, and the brother, therefore, of the Ellery Channing of Concord. Frank inherited much of the talent of his family. He was afterwards sent to Oxford, where he took the highest honors. All intellectual operations came easy to him. He also showed a strong proclivity to art, and he was wonderfully clever in all kinds of fine handwork. He was at this time a tall and very handsome boy, about two years my senior. He was, like myself, fanatically patriotic, an American of Americans, and this brought us together in a foreign land; but, aside from that, I have seldom met a more fascinating companion. I followed him about with joy and admiration. He used to make for me tiny little three-masted ships, about six inches long, with all the rigging complete; they were named after the famous American clippers of the day, and he painted microscopic American flags to hoist over the taff-rail. He tried to teach me how to paint in water-colors, but I responded better to his eloquence regarding the future of our country. He proved to me by a mathematical demonstration, which I accepted without in the least understanding it, that in fifty years New York would be larger and more populous than London at the end of the same period. This brilliant boy seemed fitted for the highest career in his native country; his father did not contemplate a permanent stay in England, and in after years I used to look for his name in our Senate, or among the occupants of the Supreme Bench. But, as it turned out, he never revisited America, except for short periods. His father was induced to remain abroad by the success of his preaching, and Frank, after his career at Oxford, was overpowered by the subtle attractions of English culture, and could not separate himself from the old country. I saw him once while I was at Harvard. He was an Englishman in all outward respects, and seemed to be so inwardly likewise. The other day I heard of a Frank Channing in Parliament; probably the same man. But either the effect upon him of his voluntary expatriation—his failure to obey at eve the voice obeyed at prime—or some other cause, has prevented him from ever doing anything to attract attention, or to appear commensurate with his radiant promise. Henry James is the only American I know who has not suffered from adopting England; and even he might have risen higher than he has done had he overcome his distaste to the external discomforts of the democracy and cast in his lot with ours.
Frank's father was a tall, intellectual, slender Yankee, endowed with splendid natural gifts, which he had improved by assiduous cultivation. In the pulpit he rose to an almost divine eloquence and passion, and a light would shine over his face as if reflected from the Holy Spirit itself. My father took a pew in his church, and sent me to sit in it every Sunday; he never went himself. He was resolved, I suppose, if there was any religion in me, to afford it an opportunity to come out. Now, I had a religious reverence for divine things, but no understanding whatever of dogma of any sort. I never learned to repeat a creed, far less to comprehend its significance. I was moved and charmed by Mr. Channing's discourses, but I did not like to sit in the pew; I did not like "church." I remember nothing of the purport of any of those sermons; but, oddly enough, I do recall one preached by a gentleman who united the profession of preacher with that of medicine; he occupied Channing's pulpit on a certain occasion, and preached on the text in John xix., 34: "But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came thereout blood and water." The good doctor, drawing on his physiological erudition, demonstrated at great length how it was possible that blood should be mingled with the water, and showed at what precise point in Christ's body the spear must have entered. I seem to hear again his mellifluous voice, repeating at the close of each passage of his argument, "And forthwith came thereout blood-AND WATER!" I did not approve of this sermon; I was not carried to heaven in the spirit by it, as by Channing's; but somehow it has stuck in my memory all these forty-eight years.
Often I stayed for a few days at a time at Channing's house; his wife was a handsome, delicate, very nervous woman; his daughter Fanny was a beauty, and became still more beautiful in after years; she was married, when past her first youth, to Edwin Arnold, author of "The Light of Asia," and of many rhetorical leading articles in the London Telegraph. She died a few years ago. They were, all of them, kind to me. I did the best I could to be a good little boy there; but I recollect Mrs. Channing's face of sorrow and distress when, one day at dinner, I upset into my lap my plate, which she had just filled with Irish stew—one of my best-loved dishes. "Frank never does that," she murmured, as she wiped me up; "never-never!" Nobody looked cheerful, and I never got over that mortification.
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