From the Oak to the Olive: A Plain record of a Pleasant Journey. Julia Ward Howe
must not, however, be supposed that our whole traversée is a squabble, open or suppressed, between nationalities which should contend only in good will. The dreamy sea-days bring, on the contrary, much social chat and comfort. Two of the Britons exercise hospitality of tea, of fresh butter, of drinks cunningly compounded. One of these glows at night like a smelting furnace, and goes about humming in privileged ears, "The great brew is about to begin." For this same great brew he ties a white apron before his stout person, breaks ten eggs into a bowl, inflicting flagellation on the same, empties as many bottles of ale in a tin pan, and flies off to the galley, whence he returns with a smoking, frothing mixture, which is dispensed in tumblers, and much appreciated by the recipients. In good fellowship these two Britons are not deficient, and the restriction of the alphabet, dimly alluded to above, does not lie at their door.
After rocking, and dreaming, and tumbling; after drowsy attempts to get hold of other people's ideas and to disentangle your own; after a week's wonder over the hot suppers of such as dine copiously at four P. M., and the morning cocktails of those who drink whiskey in all its varieties before we separate for the night; after repeated experiments, which end by suiting our gait and diet to an ever-mobile existence, in which our prejudices are the only stable points, our personal restraints the only fixed facts—we fairly reach the other side. The earliest terrene object which we behold is a light-house some sixty miles out at sea, whose occupants, we hope, are not resolutely bent upon social enjoyment. Here the sending up of blue lights and rockets gives us a cheerful sense of some one besides ourselves. Queenstown, our next point, is made at two A. M., and left after weary waiting for the pilot, but still before convenient hours for being up. Some hours later we heave the lead, and enjoy the sight of as much terra firma as can be fished up on the greased end of the same. Our last day on board is marred by a heavy and penetrating fog. We are in the Channel, but can see neither shore. In the early morning we arrive at Liverpool, and, after one more of those good breakfasts, and a mild encounter with the custom-house officers, we part from our late home, its mingled associations and associates to be recalled hereafter with various shades of regard and regret. The good captain, having been without sleep for two nights, does not come to take leave of us—a neglect which almost moves the neophytes to tears. The two veterans console them, however; and now all parties are in the little lighter which carries the steamer's passengers and luggage to the dock. Here, three shillings' worth of cab and horse convey us and ours, a respectable show of trunks, to the hotel of our choice—the Washington by name. We commend this cheapness of conveyance, a novel feature in American experience. At the hotel we find a comfortable parlor, and, for the first time in many days, part from our wrappings. After losing ourselves among the Egyptian china of our toilet set, wondering at the width of beds and warmth of carpets, we descend to the coffee-room, order dinner, and feel that we have again taken possession of ourselves.
LIVERPOOL.
A good deal of our time here is spent in the prosaic but vital occupation of getting something to eat. If Nature abhors a vacuum, she does so especially when, after twelve days of a fluctuating and predatory existence, the well-shaken traveller at last finds a stable foundation for self and victuals. The Washington being announced as organized on the American plan, we descend to the coffee-room with the same happy confidence which would characterize our first appearance at the buffet of the Tremont House or Fifth Avenue Hotel. But here no waiter takes possession of you and your wants, hastening to administer both to the mutual advantage of guest and landlord. You sit long unnoticed; you attract attention only by a desperate effort. Having at length secured the medium through which a dinner may be ordered, the minister (he wears a black dress coat and white trimmings) disappears with an air of "Will you have it now, or wait till you can get it?" which our subsequent experience entirely justifies. We learn later that a meal ordered half an hour beforehand will be punctually served.
And here, except in cases of absolute starvation, we shall dismiss the meal question altogether, and devote ourselves to nobler themes. We ransack the smoky and commercial city in search of objects of interest. The weather being incessantly showery, we lay the foundation of our English liberty in the purchase of two umbrellas, capable each of protecting two heads. Of clothes we must henceforward be regardless. In the streets, barefooted beggary strikes us, running along in the wet, whining and coaxing. We visit the boasted St. George's Hall, where, among other statues, is one of the distinguished Stephenson, of railroad memory. Here the court is in session for the assizes. The wigs and gowns astound the neophytes. The ushers in green and orange livery shriek "Silence!" through every sentence of judge or counsel. No one can hear what is going on. Probably all is known beforehand. At the hotel, the Greek committee wait upon the veteran, with asseverations and hiccoughings of to us incomprehensible emotions. We resist the theatre, with the programme of "Lost in London," expecting soon to experience the sensation without artistic intervention. We sleep, missing the cradle of the deep, and on the morrow, by means of an uncanny little ferry-boat, reach the Birkenhead station, and are booked for Chester.
CHESTER—LICHFIELD.
The Grosvenor Inn receives us, not at all in the fashion of the hostelry of twenty years ago. A new and spacious building forming a quadrangle around a small open garden, the style highly architectural and somewhat inconvenient; waiters got up after fashion plates; chambermaids with apologetic caps, not smaller than a dime nor larger than a dinner plate; a handsome sitting-room, difficult to warm; airy sleeping-rooms; a coffee-room in which our hunger and cold seek food and shelter; a housekeeper in a striped silk gown—these are the first features with which we become familiar at the Grosvenor. The veteran falling ill detains us there for the better part of two days; and we employ the interim of his and our necessities in exploring the curious old town, with its many relics of times long distant. The neophytes here see their first cathedral, and are in raptures with nothing so much as with its dilapidation. We happen in during the afternoon hour of cathedral service, and the sexton, finding that we do not ask for seats, fastens upon us with the zeal of a starved leech upon a fresh patient, and leads us as weary a dance as Puck led the Athenian clowns. This chase after antiquity proves to have something unsubstantial about it. The object is really long dead and done with. These ancient buildings are only its external skeleton, the empty shell of the tortoise. No effort of imagination can show us how people felt when these dark passages and deserted enclosures were full of the arterial warmth and current of human life. The monumental tablets tell an impossible tale. The immortal spirit of things, which is past, present, and future, dwells not in these relics, but lives in the descent of noble thoughts, in the perpetuity of moral effort which makes man human. We make these reflections shivering, while the neophytes explore nave and transept, gallery and crypt. A long tale does the old sexton tell, to which they listen with ever-wondering expectation. Meantime the cold cathedral service has ended. Canon, precentor, and choir have departed, with the very slender lay attendance. In a commodious apartment, by a bright fire, we recover our frozen joints a little. Here stands a full-length portrait of his most gracious etc., etc. The sexton, preparing for a huge jest, says to us, "Ladies, this represents the last king of America." The most curious thing we see in the cathedral is the room in which the ecclesiastical court held its sittings. The judges' seat and the high-backed benches still form a quadrangular enclosure within a room of the same shape. Across one corner of this enclosure is mounted a chair, on which the prisoner, accused of the intangible offence of heresy or witchcraft, was perforce seated. I seem to see there a face and figure not unlike my own, the brow seamed with cabalistic wrinkles. Add a little queerness to the travelling dress, a pinch or two to the black bonnet, and how easy were it to make a witch out of the sibyl of these present leaves! The march from one of these types to the other is one of those retrograde steps whose contrast only attests the world's progress. The sibylline was an excellent career for a queer and unexplained old woman. To make her a sorceress was an ingenious device for getting rid of a much-decried element of the social variety. Poor Kepler's years of solitary glory and poverty were made more wretched by the danger which constantly