Books: Our Old Home
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Nathaniel Hawthorne >> Our Old Home
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I was once present at the wedding of some poor English people, and was
deeply impressed by the spectacle, though by no means with such proud and
delightful emotions as seem to have affected all England on the recent
occasion of the marriage of its Prince. It was in the Cathedral at
Manchester, a particularly black and grim old structure, into which I had
stepped to examine some ancient and curious wood-carvings within the
choir. The woman in attendance greeted me with a smile (which always
glimmers forth on the feminine visage, I know not why, when a wedding is
in question), and asked me to take a seat in the nave till some poor
parties were married, it being the Easter holidays, and a good time for
them to marry, because no fees would be demanded by the clergyman. I sat
down accordingly, and soon the parson and his clerk appeared at the
altar, and a considerable crowd of people made their entrance at a
side-door, and ranged themselves in a long, huddled line across the
chancel. They were my acquaintances of the poor streets, or persons
in a precisely similar condition of life, and were now come to their
marriage-ceremony in just such garbs as I had always seen them wear: the
men in their loafers' coats, out at elbows, or their laborers' jackets,
defaced with grimy toil; the women drawing their shabby shawls tighter
about their shoulders, to hide the raggedness beneath; all of them
unbrushed, unshaven, unwashed, uncombed, and wrinkled with penury and
care; nothing virgin-like in the brides, nor hopeful or energetic in the
bridegrooms;--they were, in short, the mere rags and tatters of the human
race, whom some east-wind of evil omen, howling along the streets, had
chanced to sweep together into an unfragrant heap. Each and all of them,
conscious of his or her individual misery, had blundered into the strange
miscalculation of supposing that they could lessen the sum of it by
multiplying it into the misery of another person. All the couples (and
it was difficult, in such a confused crowd, to compute exactly their
number) stood up at once, and had execution done upon them in the lump,
the clergyman addressing only small parts of the service to each
individual pair, but so managing the larger portion as to include the
whole company without the trouble of repetition. By this compendious
contrivance, one would apprehend, he came dangerously near making every
man and woman the husband or wife of every other; nor, perhaps, would he
have perpetrated much additional mischief by the mistake; but, after
receiving a benediction in common, they assorted themselves in their own
fashion, as they only knew how, and departed to the garrets, or the
cellars, or the unsheltered street-corners, where their honeymoon and
subsequent lives were to be spent. The parson smiled decorously, the
clerk and the sexton grinned broadly, the female attendant tittered
almost aloud, and even the married parties seemed to see something
exceedingly funny in the affair; but for my part, though generally apt
enough to be tickled by a joke, I laid it away in my memory as one of the
saddest sights I ever looked upon.
Not very long afterwards, I happened to be passing the same venerable
Cathedral, and heard a clang of joyful bells, and beheld a bridal party
coming down the steps towards a carriage and four horses, with a portly
coachman and two postilions, that waited at the gate. One parson and one
service had amalgamated the wretchedness of a score of paupers; a Bishop
and three or four clergymen had combined their spiritual might to forge
the golden links of this other marriage-bond. The bridegroom's mien had
a sort of careless and kindly English pride; the bride floated along in
her white drapery, a creature, so nice and delicate that it was a luxury
to see her, and a pity that her silk slippers should touch anything so
grimy as the old stones of the churchyard avenue. The crowd of ragged
people, who always cluster to witness what they may of an aristocratic
wedding, broke into audible admiration of the bride's beauty and the
bridegroom's manliness, and uttered prayers and ejaculations (possibly
paid for in alms) for the happiness of both. If the most favorable of
earthly conditions could make them happy, they had every prospect of it.
They were going to live on their abundance in one of those stately and
delightful English homes, such as no other people ever created or
inherited, a hall set far and safe within its own private grounds, and
surrounded with venerable trees, shaven lawns, rich shrubbery, and
trimmest pathways, the whole so artfully contrived and tended that summer
rendered it a paradise, and even winter would hardly disrobe it of its
beauty; and all this fair property seemed more exclusively and
inalienably their own, because of its descent through many forefathers,
each of whom had added an improvement or a charm, and thus transmitted it
with a stronger stamp of rightful possession to his heir. And is it
possible, after all, that there may be a flaw in the title-deeds? Is, or
is not, the system wrong that gives one married pair so immense a
superfluity of luxurious home, and shuts out a million others from any
home whatever? One day or another, safe as they deem themselves, and
safe as the hereditary temper of the people really tends to make them,
the gentlemen of England will be compelled to face this question.
CIVIC BANQUETS.
It has often perplexed one to imagine how an Englishman will be able to
reconcile himself to any future state of existence from which the earthly
institution of dinner shall be excluded. Even if he fail to take his
appetite along with him (which it seems to me hardly possible to believe,
since this endowment is so essential to his composition), the immortal
day must still admit an interim of two or three hours during which he
will be conscious of a slight distaste, at all events, if not an absolute
repugnance, to merely spiritual nutriment. The idea of dinner has so
imbedded itself among his highest and deepest characteristics, so
illuminated itself with intellect and softened itself with the kindest
emotions of his heart, so linked itself with Church and State, and grown
so majestic with long hereditary customs and ceremonies, that, by taking
it utterly away, Death, instead of putting the final touch to his
perfection, would leave him infinitely less complete than we have already
known him. He could not be roundly happy. Paradise, among all its
enjoyments, would lack one daily felicity which his sombre little island
possessed. Perhaps it is not irreverent to conjecture that a provision
may have been made, in this particular, for the Englishman's exceptional
necessities. It strikes me that Milton was of the opinion here
suggested, and may have intended to throw out a delightful and
consolatory hope for his countrymen, when he represents the genial
archangel as playing his part with such excellent appetite at Adam's
dinner-table, and confining himself to fruit and vegetables only because,
in those early days of her housekeeping, Eve had no more acceptable
viands to set before him. Milton, indeed, had a true English taste for
the pleasures of the table, though refined by the lofty and poetic
discipline to which he had subjected himself. It is delicately implied
in the refection in Paradise, and more substantially, though still
elegantly, betrayed in the sonnet proposing to "Laurence, of virtuous
father virtuous son," a series of nice little dinners in midwinter and it
blazes fully out in that untasted banquet which, elaborate as it was,
Satan tossed up in a trice from the kitchen-ranges of Tartarus.
Among this people, indeed, so wise in their generation, dinner has a kind
of sanctity quite independent of the dishes that may be set upon the
table; so that, if it be only a mutton-chop, they treat it with due
reverence, and are rewarded with a degree of enjoyment which such
reckless devourers as ourselves do not often find in our richest
abundance. It is good to see how staunch they are after fifty or sixty
years of heroic eating, still relying upon their digestive powers and
indulging a vigorous appetite; whereas an American has generally lost the
one and learned to distrust the other long before reaching the earliest
decline of life; and thenceforward he makes little account of his dinner,
and dines at his peril, if at all. I know not whether my countrymen will
allow me to tell them, though I think it scarcely too much to affirm,
that on this side of the water, people never dine. At any rate,
abundantly as Nature has provided us with most of the material
requisites, the highest possible dinner has never yet been eaten in
America. It is the consummate flower of civilization and refinement; and
our inability to produce it, or to appreciate its admirable beauty, if a
happy inspiration should bring it into bloom, marks fatally the limit of
culture which we have attained.
It is not to be supposed, however, that the mob of cultivated Englishmen
know how to dine in this elevated sense. The unpolishable ruggedness of
the national character is still an impediment to them, even in that
particular line where they are best qualified to excel. Though often
present at good men's feasts, I remember only a single dinner, which,
while lamentably conscious that many of its higher excellences were
thrown away upon me, I yet could feel to be a perfect work of art. It
could not, without unpardonable coarseness, be styled a matter of animal
enjoyment, because, out of the very perfection of that lower bliss, there
had arisen a dream-like development of spiritual happiness. As in the
masterpieces of painting and poetry, there was a something intangible, a
final deliciousness that only fluttered about your comprehension,
vanishing whenever you tried to detain it, and compelling you to
recognize it by faith rather than sense. It seemed as if a diviner set
of senses were requisite, and had been partly supplied, for the special
fruition of this banquet, and that the guests around the table (only
eight in number) were becoming so educated, polished, and softened, by
the delicate influences of what they ate and drunk, as to be now a little
more than mortal for the nonce. And there was that gentle, delicious
sadness, too, which we find in the very summit of our most exquisite
enjoyments, and feel it a charm beyond all the gayety through which it
keeps breathing its undertone. In the present case, it was worth a
heavier sigh, to reflect that such a festal achievement,--the production
of so much art, skill, fancy, invention, and perfect taste,--the growth
of all the ages, which appeared to have been ripening for this hour,
since man first began to eat and to moisten his food with wine,--must
lavish its happiness upon so brief a moment, when other beautiful things
can be made a joy forever. Yet a dinner like this is no better than we
can get, any day, at the rejuvenescent Cornhill Coffee-House, unless the
whole man, with soul, intellect, and stomach, is ready to appreciate it,
and unless, moreover, there is such a harmony in all the circumstances
and accompaniments, and especially such a pitch of well-according minds,
that nothing shall jar rudely against the guest's thoroughly awakened
sensibilities. The world, and especially our part of it, being the
rough, ill-assorted, and tumultuous place we find it, a beefsteak is
about as good as any other dinner.
The foregoing reminiscence, however, has drawn me aside from the main
object of my sketch, in which I purposed to give a slight idea of those
public, or partially public banquets, the custom of which so thoroughly
prevails among the English people, that nothing is ever decided upon, in
matters of peace and war, until they have chewed upon it in the shape of
roast-beef, and talked it fully over in their cups. Nor are these
festivities merely occasional, but of stated recurrence in all
considerable municipalities and associated bodies. The most ancient
times appear to have been as familiar with them as the Englishmen of
to-day. In many of the old English towns, you find some stately Gothic
hall or chamber in which the Mayor and other authorities of the place
have long held their sessions; and always, in convenient contiguity,
there is a dusky kitchen, with an immense fireplace where an ox might be
roasting at his ease, though the less gigantic scale of modern cookery
may now have permitted the cobwebs to gather in its chimney. St. Mary's
Hall, in Coventry, is so good a specimen of an ancient banqueting-room,
that perhaps I may profitably devote a page or two to the description
of it.
In a narrow street, opposite to St. Michael's Church, one of the three
famous spires of Coventry, you behold a mediaeval edifice, in the
basement of which is such a venerable and now deserted kitchen as I have
above alluded to, and, on the same level, a cellar, with low stone
pillars and intersecting arches, like the crypt of a cathedral. Passing
up a well-worn staircase, the oaken balustrade of which is as black as
ebony, you enter the fine old hall, some sixty feet in length, and broad
and lofty in proportion. It is lighted by six windows of modern stained
glass, on one side, and by the immense and magnificent arch of another
window at the farther end of the room, its rich and ancient panes
constituting a genuine historical piece, in which are represented some of
the kingly personages of old times, with their heraldic blazonries.
Notwithstanding the colored light thus thrown into the hall, and though
it was noonday when I last saw it, the panelling of black-oak, and some
faded tapestry that hung round the walls, together with the cloudy vault
of the roof above, made a gloom, which the richness only illuminated into
more appreciable effect. The tapestry is wrought with figures in the
dress of Henry VI.'s time (which is the date of the hall), and is
regarded by antiquaries as authentic evidence both for the costume of
that epoch, and, I believe, for the actual portraiture of men known in
history. They are as colorless as ghosts, however, and vanish drearily
into the old stitch-work of their substance when you try to make them
out. Coats-of-arms were formerly emblazoned all round the hall, but have
been almost rubbed out by people hanging their overcoats against them or
by women with dishclouts and scrubbing-brushes, obliterating hereditary
glories in their blind hostility to dust and spiders' webs. Full-length
portraits of several English kings, Charles II. being the earliest, hang
on the walls; and on the dais, or elevated part of the floor, stands an
antique chair of state, which several royal characters are traditionally
said to have occupied while feasting here with their loyal subjects of
Coventry. It is roomy enough for a person of kingly bulk, or even two
such, but angular and uncomfortable, reminding me of the oaken settles
which used to be seen in old-fashioned New England kitchens.
Overhead, supported by a self-sustaining power, without the aid of a
single pillar, is the original ceiling of oak, precisely similar in shape
to the roof of a barn, with all the beams and rafters plainly to be seen.
At the remote height of sixty feet, you hardly discern that they are
carved with figures of angels and doubtless many other devices, of which
the admirable Gothic art is wasted in the duskiness that has so long been
brooding there. Over the entrance of the hall, opposite the great arched
window, the party-colored radiance of which glimmers faintly through the
interval, is a gallery for minstrels; and a row of ancient suits of armor
is suspended from its balustrade. It impresses me, too (for, having gone
so far, I would fain leave nothing untouched upon), that I remember,
somewhere about these venerable precincts, a picture of the Countess
Godiva on horseback, in which the artist has been so niggardly of that
illustrious lady's hair, that, if she had no ampler garniture, there was
certainly much need for the good people of Coventry to shut their eyes.
After all my pains, I fear that I have made but a poor hand at the
description, as regards a transference of the scene from my own mind to
the reader's. It gave me a most vivid idea of antiquity that had been
very little tampered with; insomuch that, if a group of steel-clad
knights had come clanking through the doorway, and a bearded and beruffed
old figure had handed in a stately dame, rustling in gorgeous robes of a
long-forgotten fashion, unveiling a face of beauty somewhat tarnished in
the mouldy tomb, yet stepping majestically to the trill of harp and viol
from the minstrels' gallery, while the rusty armor responded with a
hollow ringing sound beneath,--why, I should have felt that these
shadows, once so familiar with the spot, had a better right in St. Mary's
Hall than I, a stranger from a far country which has no Past. But the
moral of the foregoing description is to show how tenaciously this love
of pompous dinners, this reverence for dinner as a sacred institution,
has caught hold of the English character; since, from the earliest
recognizable period, we find them building their civic banqueting-halls
as magnificently as their palaces or cathedrals.
I know not whether the hall just described is now used for festive
purposes, but others of similar antiquity and splendor still are. For
example, there is Barber-Surgeons' Hall, in London, a very fine old room,
adorned with admirably carved wood-work on the ceiling and walls. It is
also enriched with Holbein's masterpiece, representing a grave assemblage
of barbers and surgeons, all portraits (with such extensive beards that
methinks one half of the company might have been profitably occupied in
trimming the other), kneeling before King Henry VIII. Sir Robert Peel is
said to have offered a thousand pounds for the liberty of cutting out one
of the heads from this picture, he conditioning to have a perfect
facsimile painted in. The room has many other pictures of distinguished
members of the company in long-past times, and of some of the monarchs
and statesmen of England, all darkened with age, but darkened into such
ripe magnificence as only age could bestow. It is not my design to
inflict any more specimens of ancient hall-painting on the reader; but it
may be worth while to touch upon other modes of stateliness that still
survive in these time-honored civic feasts, where there appears to be a
singular assumption of dignity and solemn pomp by respectable citizens
who would never dream of claiming any privilege of rank outside of their
own sphere. Thus, I saw two caps of state for the warden and junior
warden of the company, caps of silver (real coronets or crowns, indeed,
for these city-grandees) wrought in open-work and lined with crimson
velvet. In a strong-closet, opening from the hall, there was a great
deal of rich plate to furnish forth the banquet-table, comprising
hundreds of forks and spoons, a vast silver punch-bowl, the gift of some
jolly king or other, and, besides a multitude of less noticeable vessels,
two loving-cups, very elaborately wrought in silver gilt, one presented
by Henry VIII., the other by Charles II. These cups, including the
covers and pedestals, are very large and weighty, although the bowl-part
would hardly contain more than half a pint of wine, which, when the
custom was first established, each guest was probably expected to drink
off at a draught. In passing them from hand to hand adown a long table
of compotators, there is a peculiar ceremony which I may hereafter have
occasion to describe. Meanwhile, if I might assume such a liberty, I
should be glad to invite the reader to the official dinner-table of his
Worship, the Mayor, at a large English seaport where I spent several
years.
The Mayor's dinner-parties occur as often as once a fortnight, and,
inviting his guests by fifty or sixty at a time, his Worship probably
assembles at his board most of the eminent citizens and distinguished
personages of the town and neighborhood more than once during his year's
incumbency, and very much, no doubt, to the promotion of good feeling
among individuals of opposite parties and diverse pursuits in life. A
miscellaneous party of Englishmen can always find more comfortable ground
to meet upon than as many Americans, their differences of opinion being
incomparably less radical than ours, and it being the sincerest wish of
all their hearts, whether they call themselves Liberals or what not, that
nothing in this world shall ever be greatly altered from what it has been
and is. Thus there is seldom such a virulence of political hostility
that it may not be dissolved in a glass or two of wine, without making
the good liquor any more dry or bitter than accords with English taste.
The first dinner of this kind at which I had the honor to be present took
place during assize-time, and included among the guests the judges and
the prominent members of the bar. Reaching the Town Hall at seven
o'clock, I communicated my name to one of several splendidly dressed
footmen, and he repeated it to another on the first staircase, by whom it
was passed to a third, and thence to a fourth at the door of the
reception-room, losing all resemblance to the original sound in the
course of these transmissions; so that I had the advantage of making my
entrance in the character of a stranger, not only to the whole company,
but to myself as well. His Worship, however, kindly recognized me, and
put me on speaking-terms with two or three gentlemen, whom I found very
affable, and all the more hospitably attentive on the score of my
nationality. It is very singular how kind an Englishman will almost
invariably be to an individual American, without ever bating a jot of his
prejudice against the American character in the lump. My new
acquaintances took evident pains to put me at my ease; and, in requital
of their good-nature, I soon began to look round at the general company
in a critical spirit, making my crude observations apart, and drawing
silent inferences, of the correctness of which I should not have been
half so well satisfied a year afterwards as at that moment.
There were two judges present, a good many lawyers, and a few officers of
the army in uniform. The other guests seemed to be principally of the
mercantile class, and among them was a ship-owner from Nova Scotia, with
whom I coalesced a little, inasmuch as we were born with the same sky
over our heads, and an unbroken continuity of soil between his abode and
mine. There was one old gentleman, whose character I never made out,
with powdered hair, clad in black breeches and silk stockings, and
wearing a rapier at his side; otherwise, with the exception of the
military uniforms, there was little or no pretence of official costume.
It being the first considerable assemblage of Englishmen that I had seen,
my honest impression about then was, that they were a heavy and homely
set of people, with a remarkable roughness of aspect and behavior, not
repulsive, but beneath which it required more familiarity with the
national character than I then possessed always to detect the good
breeding of a gentleman. Being generally middle-aged, or still further
advanced, they were by no means graceful in figure; for the comeliness of
the youthful Englishman rapidly diminishes with years, his body appearing
to grow longer, his legs to abbreviate themselves, and his stomach to
assume the dignified prominence which justly belongs to that metropolis
of his system. His face (what with the acridity of the atmosphere, ale
at lunch, wine at dinner, and a well-digested abundance of succulent
food) gets red and mottled, and develops at least one additional chin,
with a promise of more; so that, finally, a stranger recognizes his
animal part at the most superficial glance, but must take time and a
little pains to discover the intellectual. Comparing him with an
American, I really thought that our national paleness and lean habit of
flesh gave us greatly the advantage in an aesthetic point of view. It
seemed to me, moreover, that the English tailor had not done so much as
he might and ought for these heavy figures, but had gone on wilfully
exaggerating their uncouthness by the roominess of their garments; he had
evidently no idea of accuracy of fit, and smartness was entirely out of
his line. But, to be quite open with the reader, I afterwards learned to
think that this aforesaid tailor has a deeper art than his brethren among
ourselves, knowing how to dress his customers with such individual
propriety that they look as if they were born in their clothes, the fit
being to the character rather than the form. If you make an Englishman
smart (unless he be a very exceptional one, of whom I have seen a few),
you make him a monster; his best aspect is that of ponderous
respectability.
To make an end of these first impressions, I fancied that not merely the
Suffolk bar, but the bar of any inland county in New England, might show
a set of thin-visaged men, looking wretchedly worn, sallow, deeply
wrinkled across the forehead, and grimly furrowed about the mouth, with
whom these heavy-checked English lawyers, slow-paced and fat-witted as
they must needs be, would stand very little chance in a professional
contest. How that matter might turn out, I am unqualified to decide.
But I state these results of my earliest glimpses at Englishmen, not for
what they are worth, but because I ultimately gave them up as worth
little or nothing. In course of time, I came to the conclusion that
Englishmen of all ages are a rather good-looking people, dress in
admirable taste from their own point of view, and, under a surface never
silken to the touch, have a refinement of manners too thorough and
genuine to be thought of as a separate endowment,--that is to say, if the
individual himself be a man of station, and has had gentlemen for his
father and grandfather. The sturdy Anglo-Saxon nature does not refine
itself short of the third generation. The tradesmen, too, and all other
classes, have their own proprieties. The only value of my criticisms,
therefore, lay in their exemplifying the proneness of a traveller to
measure one people by the distinctive characteristics of another,--as
English writers invariably measure us, and take upon themselves to be
disgusted accordingly, instead of trying to find out some principle of
beauty with which we may be in conformity.
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