Maiden Voyages (6 page)

We got home alive, which agreeably surprised us; and when our parched tongues again found power of utterance, we promised each other faithfully never to propose any more parties of pleasure in the grim stove-like forests of Ohio.

We were now in daily expectation of the arrival of Mr T.; but day after day, and week after week passed by, till we began to fear some untoward circumstance might delay his coming till the Spring; at last, when we had almost ceased to look out for him, on the road which led from the town, he arrived, late at night, by that which leads across the country from Pittsburgh. The pleasure we felt at seeing him was greatly increased by his bringing with him our eldest son, which was a happiness we had not hoped for. Our walks and our drives now became doubly interesting. The young men, fresh from a public school, found America so totally unlike all the nations with which their reading had made them acquainted, that it was indeed a new world to them. Had they visited Greece or Rome they would have encountered objects with whose images their minds had been long acquainted, or had they travelled to France or Italy they would have seen only what daily conversation had already tendered familiar; but at our public schools America (except perhaps as to her geographical position) is hardly better known than Fairy Land; and the American character has not been much more deeply studied than that of the Anthropophagi; all, therefore, was new, and every thing amusing.

The extraordinary familiarity of our poor neighbours startled us at
first, and we hardly knew how to receive their uncouth advances, or what was expected of us in return; however, it sometimes produced very laughable scenes. Upon one occasion two of my children set off upon an exploring walk up the hills; they were absent rather longer than we expected, and the rest of our party determined upon going out to meet them; we knew the direction they had taken, but thought it would be as well to enquire at a little public-house at the bottom of the hill, if such a pair had been seen to pass. A woman, whose appearance more resembled a Covent Garden market-woman than any thing else I can remember, came out and answered my question with the most jovial good humour in the affirmative, and prepared to join us in our search. Her look, her voice, her manner, were so exceedingly coarse and vehement, that she almost frightened me; she passed her arm within mine, and to the inexpressible amusement of my young people, she dragged me on, talking and questioning me without ceasing. She lived but a short distance from us, and I am sure intended to be a very good neighbour; but her violent intimacy made me dread to pass her door; my children, including my sons, she always addressed by their Christian names, excepting when she substituted the word “honey”; this familiarity of address, however, I afterwards found was universal throughout all ranks in the United States.

My general appellation amongst my neighbours was “the English old woman,” but in mentioning each other they constantly employed the term “lady”; and they evidently had a pleasure in using it, for I repeatedly observed, that in speaking of a neighbour, instead of saying Mrs Such-a-one, they described her as “the lady over the way what takes in washing,” or as “that there lady, out by the Gulley, what is making dip-candles.” Mr Tollope was as constantly called “the old man,” while draymen, butchers’ boys, and the labourers on the canal were invariably denominated “them gentlemen”; nay, we once saw one of the most gentlemanlike men in Cincinnati introduce a fellow in dirty shirt sleeves, and all sorts of detestable et cetera, to one of his friends, with this formula, “D—— let me introduce this gentleman to you.”

Our respective titles certainly were not very important; but the eternal shaking hands with these ladies and gentlemen was really an annoyance,
and the more so, as the near approach of the gentlemen was always redolent of whiskey and tobacco.

But the point where this republican equality was the most distressing was in the long and frequent visitations that it produced. No one dreams of fastening a door in Western America; I was told that it would be considered as an affront by the whole neighbourhood. I was thus exposed to perpetual, and most vexatious interruptions from people whom I had often never seen, and whose names still oftener were unknown to me.

Those who are native there, and to the manner born, seem to pass over these annoyances with more skill than I could ever acquire. More than once I have seen some of my acquaintance beset in the same way, without appearing at all distressed by it; they continued their employment or conversation with me, much as if no such interruption had taken place; when the visitor entered, they would say, “How do you do?” and shake hands.

“Tolerable, I thank ye, how be you?” was the reply.

If it was a female, she took off her hat; if a male, he kept it on, then taking possession of the first chair in their way, they would retain it for an hour together, without uttering another word; at length, rising abruptly, they would again shake hands, with, “Well, now I must be going, I guess,” and so take themselves off, apparently well contented with their reception.

I could never attain this philosophical composure; I could neither write nor read, and I always fancied I must talk to them. I will give the minutes of a conversation which I once set down after one of their visits, as a specimen of their tone and manner of speaking and thinking. My visitor was a milkman.

“Well now, so you be from the old country? Ay—you’ll see sights here, I guess.”

“I hope I shall see many.”

“That’s a fact. I expect your little place of an island don’t grow such dreadful fine corn as you sees here?”

“It grows no corn at all, sir.”

“Possible! no wonder, then, that we reads such awful stories in the papers of your poor people being starved to death.”

“We have wheat, however.”

“Ay, for your rich folks, but I calculate the poor seldom gets a belly full.”

“You have certainly much greater abundance here.”

“I expect so. Why they do say, that if a poor body contrives to be smart enough to scrape together a few dollars, that your King George always comes down upon ’em, and takes it all away. Don’t he?”

“I do not remember hearing of such a transaction.”

“I guess they be pretty close about it. Your papers ben’t like ourn, I reckon? Now we says and prints just what we likes.”

“You spend a good deal of time in reading the newspapers.”

“And I’d like you to tell me how we can spend it better. How should freemen spend their time, but looking after their government, and watching that them fellers as we gives offices to, doos their duty, and gives themselves no airs?”

“But I sometimes think, sir, that your fences might be in more thorough repair, and your roads in better order, if less time was spent in politics.”

“The Lord! to see how little you knows of a free country! Why, what’s the smoothness of a road, put against the freedom of a free-born American? And what does a broken zig-zag signify, comparable to knowing that the men what we have been pleased to send up to Congress, speaks handsome and straight, as we chooses they should?”

“It is from a sense of duty, then, that you all go to the liquor store to read the papers?”

“To be sure it is, and he’d be no true born American as didn’t. I don’t say that the father of a family should always be after liquor, but I do say that I’d rather have my son drunk three times in a week, than not look after the affairs of his country.”

Our autumn walks were delightful; the sun ceased to scorch; the want of flowers was no longer peculiar to Ohio; and the trees took a colouring, which in richness, brillance, and variety, exceeded all description. I think it is the maple, or sugar-tree, that first sprinkles the forest with rich crimson; the beech follows, with all its harmony of golden tints, from pale yellow up to brightest orange. The dog-wood gives almost
the purple colour of the mulberry; the chestnut softens all with its frequent mass of delicate brown, and the sturdy oak carries its deep green into the very lap of winter. These tints are too bright for the landscape painter; the attempt to follow nature in an American autumn scene must be abortive. The colours are in reality extremely brilliant, but the medium through which they are seen increases the effect surprisingly. Of all the points in which America has the advantage of England, the one I felt most sensibly was the clearness and brightness of the atmosphere. By day and by night this exquisite purity of air gives tenfold beauty to every object. I could hardly believe the stars were the same; the Great Bear looked like a constellation of suns; and Jupiter justified all the fine things said of him in those beautiful lines, from I know not what spirited pen, beginning,

I always remarked that the first silver line of the moon’s crescent attracted the eye on the first day, in America, as strongly as it does here on the third. I observed another phenomenon in the crescent moon of that region, the cause of which I less understood. That appearance which Shakespeare describes as “the new moon, with the old moon in her lap,” and which I have heard ingeniously explained as the effect of
earth light
, was less visible there than here.

Cuyp’s clearest landscapes have an atmosphere that approaches nearer to that of America than any I remember on canvas; but even Cuyp’s
air
cannot reach the lungs, and, therefore, can only give an idea of half the enjoyment; for it makes itself felt as well as seen, and is indeed a constant source of pleasure.

Our walks were, however, curtailed in several directions by my old Cincinnati enemies, the pigs; immense droves of them were continually arriving from the country by the road that led to most of our favourite walks; they were often fed and lodged in the prettiest valleys, and worse still, were slaughtered beside the prettiest streams. Another evil threatened us from the same quarter, that was yet heavier. Our cottage had an ample piazza, (a luxury almost universal in the country houses of
America), which, shaded by a group of acacias, made a delightful sitting-room; from this favourite spot we one day perceived symptoms of building in a field close to it; with much anxiety we hastened to the spot, and asked what building was to be erected there.

“ ’Tis to be a slaughter-house for hogs,” was the dreadful reply. As then there were several gentlemen’s houses in the neighbourhood, I asked if such an erection might not be indicted as a nuisance.

“A what?”

“A nuisance,” I repeated, and explained what I meant.

“No, no,” was the reply, “that may do very well for your tyrannical country, where a rich man’s nose is more thought of than a poor man’s mouth; but hogs be profitable produce here, and we be too free for such a law as that, I guess.”

During my residence in America, little circumstances like the foregoing often recalled to my mind a conversation I once held in France with an old gentleman on the subject of their active police, and its omnipresent gens d’armerie; “Croyez moi, Madame, il n’y a que ceux à qui ils ont à faire, qui les trouvent de trop.” Believe me, Madame, it is only those for whom they exist who find them to be excessive.” And the old gentleman was right, not only in speaking of France, but of the whole human family, as philosophers call us. The well disposed, those whose own feeling of justice would prevent their annoying others, will never complain of the restraints of the law. All the freedom enjoyed in America, beyond what is enjoyed in England, is enjoyed solely by the disorderly at the expense of the orderly; and were I a stout knight, either of the sword or of the pen, I would fearlessly throw down my gauntlet, and challenge the whole Republic to prove the contrary; but being, as I am, a feeble looker on, with a needle for my spear, and “I talk” for my device, I must be contented with the power of stating the fact, perfectly certain that I shall be contradicted by one loud shout from Maine to Georgia.

(1815–1864)

from
LIFE IN PRAIRIE LAND

At four o’clock we reached the southern bank of Rock River, at a place called, indiscriminately, Dixon’s Ferry, Dixon, and Dixonville. By the first of these names it has been known many years, as corresponding on Rock River, to Fort Clark, now Peoria, on the Illinois. There is much natural beauty about the upper part of the town. The bank of the river is broken, and a bold bluff of lime-rock rises abruptly to a considerable height above the lower level, the summit of which is wooded with open, beautiful barrens. The trees hang on the brow of the ledge, and wave their arms pleasantly to those below. A fine spring
issues from the foot of the rock, but I did not visit it. Opposite this portion of the town is a beautiful plot of table-land, smooth as a summer lake, which its owner had converted into eastern capital and western promises, by consenting to divide it into town lots. He had paid liberally for an engraved map, on which the streets were adorned with trees, and the public grounds with churches and other lofty edifices. Neither the trees nor churches, however, seemed to have any very fair prospect of becoming distinguished elsewhere.