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NOTE
NOTE
The following papers originally appeared in the Century , the Atlantic Monthly , the Galaxy Magazine, in that of Lippincott, and in the New York Tribune and The Nation . The four last chapters in the book, which were the earliest published, can now have (in some slight degree) only the value of history. The lapse of thirteen years will have brought many changes to Saratoga, Newport, Quebec, and Niagara. I. Venice II. Italy Revisited III. Occasional Paris IV. Rheims and Laon: A Little Tour V. Cha
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I VENICE 1882
I VENICE 1882
It is a great pleasure to write the word; but I am not sure there is not a certain impudence in pretending to add anything to it. Venice has been painted and described many thousands of times, and of all the cities of the world it is the easiest to visit without going there. Open the first book and you will find a rhapsody about it; step into the first picture-dealer's and you will find three or four high-coloured "views" of it. There is nothing more to be said about it. Every one has been there
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I
I
Mr. Ruskin has given it up, that is very true; but it is only after extracting half a life-time of pleasure and an immeasurable quantity of fame from it. We all may do the same, after it has served our turn, which it probably will not cease to do for many a year to come. Meantime, it is Mr. Ruskin who, beyond any one, helps us to enjoy. He has, indeed, lately produced several aids to depression in the shape of certain little humorous—ill-humorous—pamphlets (the series of St. Mark's Rest ), which
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II
II
The danger is that you will not linger enough—a danger of which the author of these lines had known something. It is possible to dislike Venice, and to entertain the sentiment in a responsible and intelligent manner. There are travellers who think the place odious, and those who are not of this opinion often find themselves wishing that the others were only more numerous. The sentimental tourist's only quarrel with his Venice is that he has too many competitors there. He likes to be alone; to be
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III
III
It is treated as a booth in all ways, and if it had not, somehow, a great spirit of solemnity within it, the traveller would soon have little warrant for regarding it as a religious affair. The restoration of the outer walls, which has lately been so much attacked and defended, is certainly a great shock. Of the necessity of the work only an expert is, I suppose, in a position to judge; but there is no doubt that, if a necessity it be, it is one that is deeply to be regretted. To no more distres
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IV
IV
Even at first, when the vexatious sense of the city of the Doges having been reduced to earning its living as a curiosity-shop was in its keenness, there was a great deal of entertainment to be got from lodging on the Riva degli Schiavoni and looking out at the far-shimmering lagoon. There was entertainment indeed in simply getting into the place and observing the queer incidents of a Venetian installation. A great many persons contribute indirectly to this undertaking, and it is surprising how
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V
V
In this latter point the cold-blooded stranger begins at last to imitate him; he begins to lead a life that is, before all things, good-humoured: unless, indeed, he allow himself, like Mr. Ruskin, to be put out of his good-humour by Titian and Tiepolo. The hours he spends among the pictures are his best hours in Venice, and I am ashamed of myself to have written so much of common things when I might have been making festoons of the names of the masters. But, when we have covered our page with su
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VI
VI
The churches of Venice are rich in pictures, and many a masterpiece lurks in the unaccommodating gloom of side-chapels and sacristies. Many a noble work is perched behind the dusty candles and muslin roses of a scantily-visited altar; some of them, indeed, are hidden behind the altar, in a darkness that can never be explored. The facilities offered you for approaching the picture, in such cases, are a kind of mockery of your irritated desire. You stand on tip-toe on a three-legged stool, you cli
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VII
VII
Nothing in Venice is more perfect than this, and we know of no work of art more complete. The picture is in three compartments: the Virgin sits in the central division with her child; two venerable saints, standing close together, occupy each of the others. It is impossible to imagine anything more finished or more ripe. It is one of those things that sum up the genius of a painter, the experience of a life, the teaching of a school. It seems painted with molten gems, which have only been clarif
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VIII
VIII
May in Venice is better than April, but June is best of all. Then the days are hot, but not too hot, and the nights are more beautiful than the days. Then Venice is rosier than ever in the morning, and more golden than ever as the day descends. It seems to expand and evaporate, to multiply all its reflections and iridescences. Then the life of its people and the strangeness of its constitution become a perpetual comedy, or, at least, a perpetual drama. Then the gondola is your sole habitation, a
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II ITALY REVISITED 1877 I
II ITALY REVISITED 1877 I
I waited in Paris until after the elections for the new Chamber (they took place on the 14th of October); for only after one had learned that the celebrated attempt of Marshal MacMahon and his ministers to drive the French nation to the polls like a flock of huddling sheep, each with the white ticket of an official candidate round his neck, had not achieved the success which the energy of the process might have promised—only then was it possible to draw a long breath and deprive the republican p
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II
II
If it is very well to come to Turin first, it is still better to go to Genoa afterwards. Genoa is the queerest place in the world, and even a second visit helps you little to straighten it out. In the wonderful crooked, twisting, climbing, soaring, burrowing Genoese alleys the traveller is really up to his neck in the old Italian sketchability. Genoa is, I believe, a port of great capacity, and the bequest of the late Duke of Galliera, who left four millions of dollars for the purpose of improvi
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III
III
On leaving Genoa I repaired to Spezia, chiefly with a view of accomplishing a sentimental pilgrimage, which I, in fact, achieved, in the most agreeable conditions. The Gulf of Spezia is now the headquarters of the Italian fleet, and there were several big iron-plated frigates riding at anchor in front of the town. The streets were filled with lads in blue flannel, who were receiving instruction at a school-ship in the harbour, and in the evening—there was a brilliant moon—the little breakwater w
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IV
IV
I had never known Florence more charming than I found her for a week in that brilliant October. She sat in the sunshine beside her yellow river like the little treasure-city that she has always seemed, without commerce, without other industry than the manufacture of mosaic paper-weights and alabaster Cupids, without actuality, or energy, or earnestness, or any of those rugged virtues which in most cases are deemed indispensable for civic robustness; with nothing but the little unaugmented stock
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V
V
Below, in the city, in wandering about in the streets and churches and museums, it was impossible not to have a good deal of the same feeling; but here the impression was more easy to analyse. It came from a sense of the perfect separateness of all the great productions of the Renaissance from the present and the future of the place, from the actual life and manners, the native ideal I have already spoken of the way in which the great aggregation of beautiful works of art in the Italian cities s
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VI
VI
It was very charming, in the bright, warm days, to wander from one corner of Florence to another, paying one's respects again to remembered masterpieces. It was pleasant also to find that memory had played no tricks, and that the beautiful things of an earlier year were as beautiful as ever. To enumerate these beautiful things would take a great deal of space; for I never had been more struck with the mere quantity of brilliant Florentine work. Even giving up the Duomo and Santa Croce to Mr. Rus
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III OCCASIONAL PARIS 1877
III OCCASIONAL PARIS 1877
It is hard to say exactly what is the profit of comparing one race with another, and weighing in opposed groups the manners and customs of neighbouring countries; but it is certain that as we move about the world we constantly indulge in this exercise. This is especially the case if we happen to be infected with the baleful spirit of the cosmopolite—that uncomfortable consequence of seeing many lands and feeling at home in none. To be a cosmopolite is not, I think, an ideal; the ideal should be
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IV RHEIMS AND LAON: A LITTLE TOUR 1877
IV RHEIMS AND LAON: A LITTLE TOUR 1877
It was a very little tour, but the charm of the three or four old towns and monuments that it embraced, the beauty of the brilliant October, the pleasure of reminding one's self how much of the interest, strength and dignity of France is to be found outside of that huge pretentious caravansary called Paris (a reminder often needed), these things deserve to be noted. I went down to Rheims to see the famous cathedral, and to reach Rheims I travelled through the early morning hours along the charmi
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V CHARTRES 1876
V CHARTRES 1876
The spring, in Paris, since it has fairly begun, has been enchanting. The sun and the moon have been blazing in emulation, and the difference between the blue sky of day and of night has been as slight as possible. There are no clouds in the sky, but there are little thin green clouds, little puffs of raw, tender verdure, entangled among the branches of the trees. All the world is in the streets; the chairs and tables which have stood empty all winter before the doors of the cafés are at a premi
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VI ROUEN 1876
VI ROUEN 1876
It is quite in the nature of things that a Parisian correspondence should have flagged during the last few weeks; for even the most brilliant of capitals, when the summer has fairly begun to be summer, affords few topics to the chronicler. To a chronicle of small beer such a correspondence almost literally finds itself reduced. The correspondent consumes a goodly number of those magnified thimblefuls of this fluid, known in Paris as "bocks," and from the shadiest corner of the coolest café he ca
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VII ETRETAT 1876
VII ETRETAT 1876
The coast of Normandy and Picardy, from Trouville to Boulogne, is a chain of stations balnéaires , each with its particular claim to patronage. The grounds of the claim are in some cases not especially obvious; but they are generally found to reside in the fact that if one's spirits, on arriving, are low, so also are the prices. There are the places that are dear and brilliant, like Trouville and Dieppe, and places that are cheap and dreary, like Fécamp and Cabourg. Then there are the places tha
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VIII FROM NORMANDY TO THE PYRENEES 1876
VIII FROM NORMANDY TO THE PYRENEES 1876
The other day, before the first fire of winter, when the deepening dusk had compelled me to close my book and wheel my chair closer, I indulged in a retrospect. The objects of it were not far distant, and yet they were already interfused with the mellow tints of the past. In the crackling flame the last remnant of the summer appeared to shrink up and vanish. But the flicker of its destruction made a sort of fantastic imagery, and in the midst of the winter fire the summer sunshine seemed to glow
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I
I
One of the first was that of a perfect day on the coast of Normandy—a warm, still Sunday in the early part of August. From my pillow, on waking, I could look at a strip of blue sea and a great cube of white cliff. I observed that the sea had never been so brilliant, and that the cliff was shining as if it had been painted in the night. I rose and came forth with the sense that it was the finest day of summer, and that one ought to do something uncommon by way of keeping it. At Etretat it was unc
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II
II
It was another picked day—you see how freely I pick them—when I went to breakfast at Saint-Jouin, chez la belle Ernestine. The beautiful Ernestine is as hospitable as she is fair, and to contemplate her charms you have only to order breakfast. They shine forth the more brilliantly in proportion as your order is liberal, and Ernestine is beautiful according as your bill is large. In this case she comes and smiles, really very handsomely, round your table, and you feel some hesitation in accusing
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III
III
In a month of beautiful weather at Etretat, every day was not an excursion, but every day seemed indeed a picked day. For that matter, as I lay on the beach watching the procession of the easy-going hours, I took a good many mental excursions. The one, perhaps, on which I oftenest embarked, was a comparison between French manners, French, habits, French types, and those of my native land. These comparisons are not invidious; I do not conclude against one party and in favour of the other; as the
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IV
IV
After this came two or three pictures of quite another complexion—pictures of which a long green valley, almost in the centre of France, makes the general setting. The valley itself, indeed, forms one delightful picture, although the country which surrounds it is by no means one of the regions that place themselves on exhibition. It is the old territory of the Gâtinais, which has much history, but no renown of beauty. It is very quiet, deliciously rural, immitigably French; the typical, average,
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V
V
My next impressions were gathered on the margin of a southern sea—if the Bay of Biscay indeed deserve so sympathetic a name. We generally have a mental image beforehand of a place on which we may intend to project ourself, and I supposed I had a tolerably vivid prevision of Biarritz. I don't know why, but I had a singular sense of having been there; the name always seemed to me expressive. I saw the way it lay along its gleaming beach; I had taken in imagination long walks toward Spain over the
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IX AN ENGLISH EASTER 1877 I
IX AN ENGLISH EASTER 1877 I
It may be said of the English, as is said of the council of war in Sheridan's farce of The Critic by one of the spectators of the rehearsal, that when they do agree, their unanimity is wonderful. They differ among themselves greatly just now as regards the machinations of Russia, the derelictions of Turkey, the merits of the Reverend Arthur Tooth, the genius of Mr. Henry Irving, and a good many other matters; but neither just now nor at any other time do they fail to conform to those social obse
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II
II
Passion Week, in London, is distinctly an ascetic period; there is really an approach to sackcloth and ashes. Private dissipation is suspended; most of the theatres and music-halls are closed; the huge dusky city seems to take on a still sadder colouring and a sort of hush steals over its mighty uproar. At such a time, for a stranger, London is not cheerful. Arriving there, during the past winter, about Christmas-time, I encountered three British Sundays in a row—a spectacle to strike terror int
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III
III
The element of the grotesque was very noticeable to me in the most striking collection of the shabbier English types that I had seen since I came to London. The occasion of my seeing them was the funeral of Mr. George Odger, which befell some four or five weeks before the Easter period. Mr. George Odger, it will be remembered, was an English radical agitator of humble origin, who had distinguished himself by a perverse desire to get into Parliament. He exercised, I believe, the useful profession
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IV
IV
At Rochester I stopped for the sake of its castle, which I espied from the railway-train, perched on a grassy bank beside the widening Medway. There were other reasons as well; the place has a small cathedral, and one has read about it in Dickens, whose house of Gadshill was a couple of miles from the town. All this Kentish country, between London and Dover, figures indeed repeatedly in Dickens; he is to a certain extent, for our own time, the spirit of the land. I found this to be quite the cas
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X LONDON AT MIDSUMMER 1877
X LONDON AT MIDSUMMER 1877
I believe it is supposed to require a good deal of courage to confess that one has spent the month of August in London; and I will therefore, taking the bull by the horns, plead guilty at the very outset to this dishonourable weakness. I might attempt some ingenious extenuation of it. I might say that my remaining in town had been the most unexpected necessity or the merest inadvertence; I might pretend I liked it—that I had done it, in fact, for the love of the thing; I might claim that you don
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XI TWO EXCURSIONS 1877 I
XI TWO EXCURSIONS 1877 I
They differed greatly from each other, but each had an interest of its own. There seemed (as regards the first) a general consensus of opinion as to its being a great pity that a stranger in England should miss the Derby day. Every one assured me that this was the great festival of the English people, and the most characteristic of national holidays. So much, since it had to do with horse-flesh, I could readily believe. Had not the newspapers been filled for weeks with recurrent dissertations up
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II
II
It seemed to me such a piece of good fortune to have been asked down to Oxford at Commemoration by a gentleman implicated in the remarkable ceremony which goes on under that name, who kindly offered me the hospitality of his college, that I scarcely waited even to thank him, I simply took the first train. I had had a glimpse of Oxford in former years, but I had never slept in a low-browed room looking out on a grassy quadrangle, opposite a mediæval clock-tower. This satisfaction was vouchsafed m
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XII IN WARWICKSHIRE 1877
XII IN WARWICKSHIRE 1877
There is no better way for the stranger who wishes to know something of England, to plunge in medias res , than to spend a fortnight in Warwickshire. It is the core and centre of the English world; midmost England, unmitigated England. The place has taught me a great many English secrets; I have interviewed the genius of pastoral Britain. From a charming lawn—a lawn delicious to one's sentient boot-sole—I looked without obstruction at a sombre, soft, romantic mass, whose outline was blurred by m
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XIII ABBEYS AND CASTLES 1877
XIII ABBEYS AND CASTLES 1877
It is a frequent reflection with the stranger in England that the beauty and interest of the country are private property, and that to get access to them a key is always needed. The key may be large or it may be small, but it must be something that will turn a lock. Of the things that contribute to the happiness of an American observer in the country of parks and castles, I can think of very few that do not come under this definition of private property. When I have mentioned the hedgerows and t
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XIV ENGLISH VIGNETTES 1879 I
XIV ENGLISH VIGNETTES 1879 I
Toward the last of April, in Monmouthshire, the primroses were as big as your fist. I say "in Monmouthshire," because I believe that a certain grassy mountain which I gave myself the pleasure of climbing, and to which I took my way across the charming country, through lanes where the hedges were perched upon blooming banks, lay within the borders of this ancient province. It was the festive Eastertide, and a pretext for leaving London had not been wanting. Of course it rained,—it rained a good d
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II
II
The Isle of Wight is disappointing at first. I wondered why it should be, and then I found the reason in the influence of the detestable little railway. There can be no doubt that a railway in the Isle of Wight is a gross impertinence; it is in evident contravention to the natural style of the place. The place is minutely, delicately picturesque, or it is nothing at all. It is purely ornamental; it exists for the entertainment of tourists. It is separated by nature from the dense railway-system
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III
III
It was probably a mistake to stop at Portsmouth. I had done so, however, in obedience to a familiar theory that seaport-towns abound in local colour, in curious types, in the quaint and the strange. But these charms, it must be confessed, were signally wanting to Portsmouth, along whose sordid streets I strolled for an hour, vainly glancing about me for an overhanging façade or a group of Maltese sailors. I was distressed to perceive that a famous seaport could be at once untidy and prosaic. Por
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IV
IV
But I recouped myself, as they say in England, by stopping afterwards at Chichester. In this dense and various old England two places may be very near together and yet strike a very different note. I knew in a general way that there was a cathedral at Chichester; indeed, I had seen its beautiful spire from the window of the train. I had always regarded an afternoon in a little cathedral-town as a high order of entertainment, and a morning at Portsmouth had left me in the mood for not missing suc
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V
V
If Oxford were not the finest thing in England, Cambridge would certainly be. Cambridge was so, for that matter, to my imagination, for thirty-six hours. To the barbaric mind, ambitious of culture, Oxford is the usual image of the happy reconciliation between research and acceptance. It typifies, to an American, the union of science and sense—of aspiration and ease. A German university gives a greater impression of science, and an English country-house or an Italian villa a greater impression of
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VI
VI
Cambridgeshire is one of the so-called ugly counties; which means that it is observably flat. It is for this reason that Newmarket is, in its own peculiar fashion, so thriving a locality. The country is like a board of green cloth; the turf presents itself as a friendly provision of nature. Nature offers her gentle bosom as a gaming-table; card-tables, billiard-tables are but a humble imitation of Newmarket Heath. It was odd to think that amid this gentle, pastoral scenery, there is more betting
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XV AN ENGLISH NEW YEAR 1879
XV AN ENGLISH NEW YEAR 1879
It will hardly be pretended this year that the English Christmas has been a merry one, or that the New Year has the promise of being particularly happy. The winter is proving very cold and vicious—as if nature herself were loath to be left out of the general conspiracy against the comfort and self-complacency of man. The country at large has a sense of embarrassment and depression, which is brought home more or less to every class in the closely-graduated social hierarchy, and the light of Chris
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XVI AN ENGLISH WINTER WATERING-PLACE 1879
XVI AN ENGLISH WINTER WATERING-PLACE 1879
I have just been spending a couple of days at a well-known resort upon the Kentish coast, and though such an exploit is by no means unprecedented, yet, as to the truly observing mind no opportunity is altogether void and no impressions are wholly valueless, I have it on my conscience to make a note of my excursion. Superficially speaking, it was certainly wanting in originality; but I am afraid that it afforded me as much entertainment as if the idea of paying a visit to Hastings had been an inv
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XVII SARATOGA 1870
XVII SARATOGA 1870
The sentimental tourist makes images in advance; they grow up in his mind by a logic of their own. He finds himself thinking of an unknown, unseen place, as having such and such a shape and figure rather than such another. It assumes in his mind a certain complexion, a certain colour which frequently turns out to be singularly at variance with reality. For some reason or other, I had supposed Saratoga to be buried in a sort of elegant wilderness. I imagined a region of shady forest drives, with
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XVIII NEWPORT 1870
XVIII NEWPORT 1870
The season at Newport has an obstinate life. September has fairly begun, but as yet there is small visible diminution in the steady stream—the splendid, stupid stream—of carriages which rolls in the afternoon along the Avenue. There is, I think, a far more intimate fondness between Newport and its frequenters than that which in most American watering-places consecrates the somewhat mechanical relation between the visitors and the visited. This relation here is for the most part slightly sentimen
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XIX QUEBEC 1871 I
XIX QUEBEC 1871 I
A traveller who combines a taste for old towns with a love of letters ought not, I suppose, to pass through "the most picturesque city in America" without making an attempt to commemorate his impressions. His first impression will certainly have been that not America, but Europe, should have the credit of Quebec. I came, some days since, by a dreary night-journey, to Point Levi, opposite the town, and as we rattled toward our goal in the faint raw dawn, and, already attentive to "effects," I beg
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II
II
To express the historical interest of the place completely, I should dwell on the light provincial—French provincial—aspect of some of the little residential streets. Some of the houses have the staleness of complexion which Balzac loved to describe. They are chiefly built of stone or brick, with a stoutness and separateness of structure which stands in some degree in stead of architecture. I know not that, externally, they have any greater charm than that they belong to that category of dwellin
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XX NIAGARA 1871
XX NIAGARA 1871
My journey hitherward by a morning's sail from Toronto across Lake Ontario, seemed to me, as regards a certain dull vacuity in this episode of travel, a kind of calculated preparation for the uproar of Niagara—a pause or hush on the threshold of a great impression; and this, too, in spite of the reverent attention I was mindful to bestow on the first seen, in my experience, of the great lakes. It has the merit, from the shore, of producing a slight ambiguity of vision. It is the sea, and yet jus
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