We ordered dinner, and sallied forth in quest of lodgings. Southampton is said to be peculiar for "long passages, bow-windows, and old maids." I can vouch that it merits the two first distinctions. The season had scarcely commenced, and we had little difficulty in obtaining rooms, the bow-window and long passage included. These lodgings comprise one or more drawing-rooms, the requisite number of bed-rooms, and the use of the kitchen. The people of the house, ordinarily tradespeople, do the cooking and furnish the necessary attendance. We engaged an extra servant, and prepared to take possession that evening.
When we returned to the Vine, we found a visitor in this land of strangers. Mrs. R——, of New York, a relative and an old friend, had heard that Americans of our name were there, and she came doubting and hoping to the Vine. We found that the windows of our own drawing-room looked directly into those of hers. A few doors below us dwelt Mrs. L——, a still nearer relative; and a few days later, we had vis-à-vis, Mrs. M'A——, a sister of A——'s, on whom we all laid eyes for the first time in our lives! Such little incidents recall to mind the close consanguinity of the two nations; although for myself, I have always felt as a stranger in England. This has not been so much from the want of kindness and a community of opinion many subjects, as from a consciousness, that in the whole of that great nation, there is not a single individual with whom I could claim affinity. And yet, with a slight exception, we are purely of English extraction. Our father was the great-great-grandson of an Englishman. I once met with a man, (an Englishman,) who bore so strong a resemblance to him, in stature, form, walk, features and expression, that I actually took the trouble to ascertain his name. He even had our own. I had no means of tracing the matter any farther; but here was physical evidence to show the affinity between the two people. On the other hand, A—— comes of the Huguenots. She is purely American by every intermarriage, from the time of Louis the Fourteenth down, and yet she found cousins in England at every turn, and even a child of the same parents, who was as much of an Englishwoman as she herself was an American.
We drank to the happiness of America, at dinner. That day, fifty years, she declared herself a nation; that very day, and nearly at that hour, two of the co-labourers in the great work we celebrated, departed in company for the world of spirits!
A day or two was necessary to become familiarized to the novel objects around us, and my departure for London was postponed. We profited by the delay, to visit Netley Abbey, a ruin of some note, at no great distance from Southampton. The road was circuitous, and we passed several pretty country-houses, few of which exceeded in size or embellishments, shrubbery excepted, similar dwellings at home. There was one, however, of an architecture much more ancient than we had been accustomed to see, it being, by all appearance, of the time of Elizabeth or James. It had turrets and battlements, but was otherwise plain.
The abbey was a fine, without being a very imposing, ruin, standing in the midst of a field of English neatness, prettily relieved by woods. The window already mentioned formed the finest part. The effect of these ruins on us proved the wonderful power of association. The greater force of the past than of the future on the mind, can only be the result of questionable causes. Our real concern with the future is incalculably the greatest, and yet we are dreaming over our own graves, on the events and scenes which throw a charm around the graves of those who have gone before us! Had we seen Netley Abbey, just as far advanced towards completion, as it was, in fact, advanced towards decay, our speculations would have been limited by a few conjectures on its probable appearance; but gazing at it as we did, we peopled its passages, imagined Benedictines stalking along its galleries, and fancied that we heard the voices of the choir, pealing among its arches.
Our fresh American feelings were strangely interrupted by the sounds of junketing. A party of Southampton cockneys, (there are cockneys even in New York,) having established themselves on the grass, in one of the courts, were lighting a fire, and were deliberately proceeding to make tea! "To tea, and ruins," the invitations most probably run. We retreated into a little battery of the bluff King Hal, that was near by, a work that sufficiently proved the state of nautical warfare in the sixteenth century.
LETTER III.
Road to London.—Royal Pastime.—Cockney Coachman.—Winchester Assizes.
—Approach to London.—The Parks.—Piccadilly.—Street Excursion.
—Strangers in London.—Americans in England.—Westminster Abbey.
—Gothic Decorations.—Westminster Hall.—Inquisitive Barber.—Pasta
and Malibran.—Drury-lane Theatre.—A Pickpocket.—A Fellow-traveller.
—English Gentlemen.—A Radical.—Encampment of Gipsies.—National
Distinctions.—Antiquities.—National Peculiarities.
To R. COOPER, ESQ. COOPERSTOWN.
At a very early hour one of the London coaches stopped at the door. I had secured a seat by the side of the coachman, and we went through the "bar" at a round trot. The distance was about sixty miles, and I had paid a guinea for my place. There were four or five other passengers, all on the outside.
The road between Southampton and London is one of little interest; even the highway itself is not as good as usual, for the first twenty or thirty miles, being made chiefly of gravel, instead of broken stones. The soil for a long distance was thirsty, and the verdure was nearly gone. England feels a drought sooner than most countries, probably from the circumstances of its vegetation being so little accustomed to the absence of moisture, and to the comparative lightness of the dews. The winds, until just before the arrival of the Hudson, had been blowing from the eastward for several weeks, and in England this is usually a dry wind. The roads were dusty, the hedges were brown, and the fields had nothing to boast of over our own verdure. Indeed, it is unusual to see the grasses of New York so much discoloured, so early in the season.
I soon established amicable relations with my companion on the box. He had been ordered at the Vine to stop for an American, and he soon began to converse about the new world. "Is America anywhere near Van Diemen's Land?" was one of his first questions. I satisfied him on this head, and he apologised for the mistake, by explaining that he had a sister settled in Van Diemen's Land, and he had a natural desire to know something about her welfare! We passed a house which had more the air of a considerable place than any I had yet seen, though of far less architectural pretensions than the miniature castle near Cowes. This, my companion informed me, had once been occupied by George IV. when Prince of Wales. "Here his Royal Highness enjoyed what I call the perfection of life, sir; women, wine, and fox-hunting!" added the professor of the whip, with the leer of a true amateur.
These coachmen are a class by themselves. They have no concern with grooming the horses, and keep the reins for a certain number of relays. They dress in a particular way, without being at all in livery or uniform, like the continental postilions, talk in a particular way, and act in a particular way. We changed this personage for another, about half the distance between Southampton and London. His successor proved to be even a still better specimen of his class. He was a thorough cockney, and altogether the superior of his country colleague, he was clearly the oracle of the boys, delivering his sentiments in the manner of one accustomed to dictate to all in and about the stables. In addition to this, there was an indescribable, but ludicrous salvo to his dignity, in the way of surliness. Some one had engaged him to carry a blackbird to town, and caused him to wait. On this subject he sang a Jeremiad in the true cockney key. "He didn't want to take the bla-a-a-ck-bud; but if the man wanted to send the bla-a-a-ck-bud, why didn't he bring the bla-a-a-ck-bud?" This is one of the hundred dialects of the lower classes of the English. One of the horses of the last team was restiff, and it became necessary to restrain him by an additional curb before we ventured into the streets of London. I intimated that I had known such horses completely subdued in America by filling their ears