offer. I already knew London well ; that is to say, I
had long ago satisfied (so far as it was capable of satis-
faction) that mysterious yearning the magnetism of
millions of hearts operating upon one which impels
every man's individuality to mingle itself with the im-
mensest mass of human life within his scope. Day after
day, at an earlier period, I had trodden the thronged
thoroughfares, the broad, lonely squares, the lanes, alleys,
and strange labyrinthine courts, the parks, the gardens
and enclosures of ancient studious societies, so retired and
silent amid the city-uproar, the markets, the foggy streets
along the riverside, the bridges, I had sought all parts
of the metropolis, in short, with an unweariable and in-
discriminating curiosity ; until few of the native inhab-
itants, I fancy, had turned so many of its corners as



A LONDON SUBURB



197



myself. These aimless wanderings (in which my prime
purpose and achievement were to lose my way, and so
to find it the more surely) had brought me, at one time
or another, to the sight and actual presence of almost all
the objects and renowned localities that I had read about,
and which had made London the dream-city of my youth.
I had found it better than my dream ; for there is noth-
ing else in life comparable (in that species of enjoyment,
I mean) to the thick, heavy, oppressive, sombre delight
which an American is sensible of, hardly knowing
whether to call it a pleasure or a pain, in the atmosphere
of London. The result was, that I acquired a home-feel-
ing there, as nowhere else in the world, though after-
wards I came to have a somewhat similar sentiment in
regard to Rome ; and as long as either of those two great
cities shall exist, the cities of the Past and of the Present,
a man's native soil may crumble beneath his feet without
leaving him altogether homeless upon earth.

Thus, having once fully yielded to its influence, I was
in a manner free of the city, and could approach or keep
away from it as I pleased. Hence it happened, that, liv-
ing within a quarter of an hour's rush of the London
Bridge Terminus, I was oftener tempted to spend a
whole summer-day in our garden than to seek anything
new or old, wonderful or commonplace, beyond its pre-
cincts. It was a delightful garden, of no great extent,
but comprising a good many facilities for repose and
enjoyment, such as arbors and garden-seats, shrubbery,
flower-beds, rose-bushes in a profusion of bloom, pinks,
poppies, geraniums, sweet-peas, and a variety ol; other
scarlet, yellow, blue, and purple blossoms, which I did
not trouble myself to recognize individually, yet had al-
ways a vague sense of their beauty about me. The dim
sky of England has a most happy effect on the coloring
of flowers, blending richness with delicacy in the same
texture ; but in this garden, as everywhere else, the exu-
berance of English verdure had a greater charm than
any tropical splendor or diversity of hue. The hunger
for natural beauty might be satisfied with grass and green
leaves forever. Conscious of the triumph of England in



198 OUR OLD HOME

this respect, and loyally anxious for the credit of my own
country, it gratified me to observe what trouble and pains
the English gardeners are fain to throw away in pro-
ducing a few sour plums and abortive pears and apples,
as, for example, in this very garden, where a row of un-
happy trees were spread out perfectly flat against a brick
wall, looking as if impaled alive, or crucified, with a cruel
and unattainable purpose of compelling them to produce
rich fruit by torture. For my part, I never ate an Eng-
lish fruit, raised in the open air, that could compare in
flavor with the Yankee turnip.

The garden included that prime feature of English do-
mestic scenery, a lawn. It had been levelled, carefully
shorn, and converted into a bowling-green, on which we
sometimes essayed to practise the time-honored game of
bowls, most unskilfully, yet not without a perception that
it involves a very pleasant mixture of exercise and ease,
as is the case with most of the old English pastimes.
Our little domain was shut in by the house on one side,
and in other directions by a hedge-fence and a brick wall,
which last was concealed or softened by shrubbery and
the impaled fruit-trees already mentioned. Over all the
outer region, beyond our immediate precincts, there was
an abundance of foliage, tossed aloft from the near or
distant trees with which that agreeable suburb is adorned.
The effect was wonderfully sylvan and rural, insomuch
that we might have fancied ourselves in the depths of a
wooded seclusion ; only that, at brief intervals, we could
hear the galloping sweep of a railway train passing within
a quarter of a mile, and its discordant screech, moder-
ated by a little farther distance, as it reached the Black-
heath Station. That harsh, rough sound, seeking me out
so inevitably, was the voice of the great world summon-
ing me forth. I know not whether I was the more pained
or pleased to be thus constantly put in mind of the neigh-
borhood of London ; for, on the one hand, my conscience
stung me a little for reading a book, or playing with chil-
dren in the grass, when there were so many better things
for an enlightened traveller to do, while, at the same
time, it gave a deeper delight to my luxurious idleness,



A LONDON SUBURB 199

to contrast it with the turmoil which I escaped. On the
whole, however, I do not repent of a single wasted hour,
and only wish that I could have spent twice as many in
the same way; for the impression on my memory is,
that I was as happy in that hospitable garden as the
English summer-day was long.

One chief condition of my enjoyment was the weather.
Italy has nothing like it, nor America. There never was
such weather except in England, where, in requital of a
vast amount of horrible east-wind between February and
June, and a brown October and black November, and a
wet, chill, sunless winter, there are a few weeks of in-
comparable summer, scattered through July and August,
and the earlier portion of September, small in quantity,
but exquisite enough to atone for the whole year's atmos-
pherical delinquencies. After all, the prevalent sombre-
ness may have brought out those sunny intervals in such
high relief, that I see them, in my recollection, brighter
than they really were : a little light makes a glory for
people who live habitually in a gray gloom. The Eng-
lish, however, do not seem to know how enjoyable the
momentary gleams of their summer are ; they call it
broiling weather, and hurry to the seaside with red, per-
spiring faces, in a state of combustion and deliquescence ;
and I have observed that even their cattle have similar
susceptibilities, seeking the deepest shade, or standing
mid-leg deep in pools and streams to cool themselves,
at temperatures which our own cows would deem little
more than barely comfortable. To myself, after the
summer heats of my native land had somewhat effer-
vesced out of my blood and memory, it was the weather
of Paradise itself. It might be a little too warm ; but it
was that modest and inestimable superabundance which
constitutes a bounty of Providence, instead of just a nig-
gardly enough. During my first year in England, re-
siding in perhaps the most ungenial part of the kingdom,
I could never be quite comfortable without a fire on the
hearth; in the second twelvemonth, beginning to get
acclimatized, I became sensible of an austere friendli-
ness, shy, but sometimes almost tender, in the veiled,



2 oo OUR OLD HOME

shadowy, seldom smiling summer; and in the succeed-
ing years whether that I had renewed my fibre with
English beef and replenished my blood with English
ale, or whatever were the cause I grew content with
winter and especially in love with summer, desiring little
more for happiness than merely to breathe and bask.
At the midsummer which we are now speaking of, I
must needs confess that the noontide sun came down
more fervently than I found altogether tolerable; so
that I was fain to shift my position with the shadow of
the shrubbery, making myself the movable index of a
sundial that reckoned up the hours of an almost inter-
minable day.

For each day seemed endless, though never weari-
some. As far as your actual experience is concerned,
the English summer-day has positively no beginning
and no end. When you awake, at any reasonable hour,
the sun is already shining through the curtains ; you
live through unnumbered hours of Sabbath quietude,
with a calm variety of incident softly etched upon their
tranquil lapse ; and at length you become conscious that
it is bedtime again, while there is still enough daylight
in the sky to make the pages of your book distinctly
legible. Night, if there be any such season, hangs
down a transparent veil through which the by-gone day
beholds its successor; or, if not quite true of the latitude
of London, it may be soberly affirmed of the more north-
ern parts of the island, that To-morrow is born before
its Yesterday is dead. They exist together in the golden
twilight, where the decrepit old day dimly discerns the
face of the ominous infant ; and you, though a mere
mortal, may simultaneously touch them both, with one
finger of recollection and another of prophecy. I cared
not how long the day might be, nor how many of them.
I had earned this repose by a long course of irksome
toil and perturbation, and could have been content never
to stray out of the limits of that suburban villa and its
garden. If I lacked anything beyond, it would have
satisfied me well enough to dream about it, instead of
struggling for its actual possession. At least, this was



A LONDON SUBURB 201

the feeling of the moment ; although the transitory, flit-
ting, and irresponsible character of my life there was
perhaps the most enjoyable element of all, as allowing
me much of the comfort of house and home without
any sense of their weight upon my back. The nomadic
life has great advantages, if we can find tents ready
pitched for us at every stage.

So much for the interior of our abode, a spot of
deepest quiet, within reach of the intensest activity.
But, even when we stepped beyond our own gate, we
were not shocked with any immediate presence of the
great world. We were dwelling in one of those oases
that have grown up (in comparatively recent years, I
believe) on the wide waste of Blackheath, which other-
wise offers a vast extent of unoccupied ground in singu-
lar proximity to the metropolis. As a general thing, the
proprietorship of the soil seems to exist in everybody
and nobody ; but exclusive rights have been obtained,
here and there, chiefly by men whose daily concerns link
them with London, so that you find their villas or boxes
standing along village streets which have often more of
an American aspect than the elder English settlements.
The scene is semi-rural. Ornamental trees overshadow
the sidewalks, and grassy margins border the wheel-
tracks. The houses, to be sure, have certain points of
difference from those of an American village, bearing
tokens of architectural design, though seldom of indi-
vidual taste; and, as far as possible, they stand aloof
from the street, and separated each from its neighbor
by hedge or fence, in accordance with the careful exclu-
siveness of the English character, which impels the oc-
cupant, moreover, to cover the front of his dwelling with
as much concealment of shrubbery as his limits will
allow. Through the interstices, you catch glimpses of
well-kept lawns, generally ornamented with flowers, and
with what the English call rock-work, being heaps of
ivy-grown stones and fossils, designed for romantic effect
in a small way. Two or three of such village streets as
are here described take a collective name, as, for
instance, Blackheath Park, and constitute a kind of



202 OUR OLD HOME

community of residents, with gateways, kept by a police-
man, and a semi-privacy, stepping beyond which, you
find yourself on the breezy heath.

On this great, bare, dreary common I often went astray,
as I afterwards did on the Campagna of Rome, and drew
the air (tainted with London smoke though it might be)
into my lungs by deep inspirations, with a strange and
unexpected sense of desert freedom. The misty atmos-
phere helps you to fancy a remoteness that perhaps does
not quite exist. During the little time that it lasts, the
solitude is as impressive as that of a Western prairie or
forest ; but soon the railway shriek, a mile or two away,
insists upon informing you of your whereabout ; or you
recognize in the distance some landmark that you may
have known, an insulated villa, perhaps, with its gar-
den wall around it, or the rudimental street of a new
settlement which is sprouting on this otherwise barren
soil. Half a century ago, the most frequent token of
man's beneficent contiguity might have been a gibbet,
and the creak, like a tavern sign, of a murderer swing-
ing to and fro in irons. Blackheath, with its highway-
men and footpads, was dangerous in those days ; and
even now, for aught I know, the Western prairie may
still compare favorably with it as a safe region to go
astray in. When I was acquainted with Blackheath,
the ingenious device of garroting had recently come
into fashion ; and I can remember, while crossing those
waste places at midnight, and hearing footsteps behind
me, to have been sensibly encouraged by also hearing,
not far off, the clinking hoof-tramp of one of the horse-
patrols who do regular duty there. About sunset, or a
little later, was the time when the broad and somewhat
desolate peculiarity of the heath seemed to me to put
on its utmost impressiveness. At that hour, finding my-
self on elevated ground, I once had a view of immense
London, four or five miles off, with the vast Dome in
the midst, and the towers of the two Houses of Parlia-
ment rising up into the smoky canopy, the thinner sub-
stance of which obscured a mass of things, and hovered
about the objects that were most distinctly visible, a



A LONDON SUBURB 203

glorious and sombre picture, dusky, awful, but irresisti-
bly attractive, like a young man's dream of the great
world, foretelling at that distance a grandeur never to
be fully realized.

While I lived in that neighborhood, the tents of two or
three sets of cricket-players were constantly pitched on
Blackheath, and matches were going forward that seemed
to involve the honor and credit of communities or coun-
ties, exciting an interest in everybody but myself, who
cared not what part of England might glorify itself at
the expense of another. It is necessary to be born an
Englishman, I believe, in order to enjoy this great
national game ; at any rate, as a spectacle for an outside
observer, I found it lazy, lingering, tedious, and utterly
devoid of pictorial effects. Choice of other amusements
was at hand. Butts for archery were established, and
bows and arrows were to be let, at so many shots for a
penny, there being abundance of space for a farther
flight-shot than any modern archer can lend to his shaft.
Then there was an absurd game of throwing a stick at
crockery ware, which I have witnessed a hundred times,
and personally engaged in once or twice, without ever
having the satisfaction to see a bit of broken crockery.
In other spots you found donkeys for children to ride, and
ponies of a very meek and patient spirit, on which the
Cockney pleasure seekers of both sexes rode races and
made wonderful displays of horsemanship. By way
of refreshment there was gingerbread, (but, as a true
patriot, I must pronounce it greatly inferior to our native
dainty,) and ginger-beer, and probably stancher liquor
among the booth-keeper's hidden stores. The frequent
railway trains, as well as the numerous steamers to Green-
wich, have made the vacant portions of Blackheath a play-
ground and breathing-place for the Londoners, readily
and very cheaply accessible ; so that, in view of this
broader use and enjoyment, I a little grudged the tracts
that have been niched away, so to speak, and individual-
ized by thriving citizens. One sort of visitors especially
interested me : they were schools of little boys or girls,
under the guardianship of their instructors, charity



2^4 OUR >LD HOME

schools, I often surmised fiom their aspect, collected
among cu.rk alleys and squaiid courts ; and hither they
were brought to spend a summer afternoon, these pale
little progeny of the sunless nooks of London, who had
never known that the r-ky was any broader than that narrow
and vapory strip above their native lane. I fancied that
they took but a doubtful pleasure, being half affrighted
at the wide, empty space overhead and round about them,
finding the air too little medicated with smoke, soot, and
graveyard exhalations, to be breathed with comfort, and
feeling shelterless and lost because grimy London, their
slatternly and disreputable mother, had suffered them to
stray out of her arms.

Passing among these holiday people, we come to one
of the gateways of Greenwich Park, opening through
an old brick wall. It admits us from the bare heath
into a scene of antique cultivation and woodland orna-
ment, traversed in all directions by avenues of trees,
many of which bear tokens of a venerable age. These
broad and well-kept pathways rise and decline over the
elevations and along the bases of gentle hills which
diversify the whole surface of the Park. The loftiest
and most abrupt of them (though but of very moderate
height) is one of the earth's noted summits, and may hold
up its head with Mont Blanc and Chimborazo, as being
the site of Greenwich Observatory, where, if all nations
will consent to say so, the longitude of our great globe
begins. I used to regulate my watch by the broad dial-
plate against the Observatory wall, and felt it pleasant
to be standing at the very centre of Time and Space.

There are lovelier parks than this in the neighborhood
of London, richer scenes of greensward and cultivated
trees ; and Kensington, especially, in a summer after-
noon, has seemed to me as delightful as any place can
or ought to be, in a world which, some time or other, we
must quit. But Greenwich, too, is beautiful, a spot
where the art of man has conspired with Nature, as if he
and the great mother had taken counsel together how to
make a pleasant scene, and the longest liver of the two
had faithfully carried out their mutual design. It has,



A LONDON SUBURB 205

likewise, an additional charm of its own, because, to all
appearance, it is the people's property and play-ground
in a much more genuine way than the aristocratic resorts
in closer vicinity to the metropolis. It affords one of the
instances in which the monarch's property is actually
the people's, and shows how much more natural is their
relation to the sovereign than to the nobility, which pre-
tends to hold the intervening space between the two : for
a nobleman makes a paradise only for himself, and fills it
with his own pomp and pride ; whereas the people are
sooner or later the legitimate inheritors of whatever
beauty kings and queens create, as now of Greenwich
Park. On Sundays, when the sun shone, and even on
those grim and sombre days when, if it do not actually
rain, the English persist in calling it fine weather, it was
too good to see how sturdily the plebeians trod under their
own oaks, and what fulness of simple enjoyment they
evidently found there. They were the people, not the
populace, specimens of a class whose Sunday clothes
are a distinct kind of garb from their week-day ones ;
and this, in England, implies wholesome habits of life,
daily thrift, and a rank above the lowest. I longed to be
acquainted with them, in order to investigate what man-
ner of folks they were, what sort of households they kept,
their politics, their religion, their tastes, and whether they
were as narrow-minded as their betters. There can be
very little doubt of it: an Englishman is English, in
whatever rank of life, though no more intensely so, I
should imagine, as an artisan or petty shopkeeper, than
as a member of Parliament.

The English character, as I conceive it, is by no
means a very lofty one ; they seem to have a great deal
of earth and grimy dust clinging about them, as was
probably the case with the stalwart and quarrelsome
people who sprouted up out of the soil, after Cadmus
had sown the dragon's teeth. And yet, though the
individual Englishman is sometimes preternaturally dis-
agreeable, an observer standing aloof has a sense of
natural kindness towards them in the lump. They
adhere closer to the original simplicity in which man-



20 6 OUR OLD HOME

kind was created than we ourselves do ; they love, quar-
rel, laugh, cry, and turn their actual selves inside out,
with greater freedom than any class of Americans
would consider decorous. It was often so with these
holiday folks in Greenwich Park ; and, ridiculous as it
may sound, I fancy myself to have caught very satis-
factory glimpses of Arcadian life among the Cockneys
there, hardly beyond the scope of Bow-Bells, picnicking
in the grass, uncouthly gambolling on the broad slopes,
or straying in motley groups or by single pairs of love-
making youths and maidens, along the sun-streaked
avenues. Even the omnipresent policemen or park-
keepers could not disturb the beatific impression on my
mind. One feature, at all events, of the Golden Age
was to be seen in the herds of deer that encountered
you in the somewhat remoter recesses of the Park, and
were readily prevailed upon to nibble a bit of bread out
of your hand. But, though no wrong had ever been
done them, and no horn had sounded nor hound bayed
at the heels of themselves or their antlered progenitors,
for centuries past, there was still an apprehensiveness lin-
gering in their hearts ; so that a slight movement of the
hand or a step too near would send a whole squadron
of them scampering away, just as a breath scatters the
winged seeds of a dandelion.

The aspect of Greenwich Park, with all those festal
people wandering through it, resembled that of the
Borghese Gardens under the walls of Rome, on a Sun-
day or Saint's day ; but, I am not ashamed to say, it a
little disturbed whatever grimly ghost of Puritanic strict-
ness might be lingering in the sombre depths of a New
England heart, among severe and sunless remembrances
of the Sabbaths of childhood, and pangs of remorse for
ill-gotten lessons in the catechism, and for erratic fan-
tasies or hardly suppressed laughter in the middle of
long sermons. Occasionally, I tried to take the long-
hoarded sting out of these compunctious smarts by
attending divine service in the open air. On a cart
outside of the Park-wall (and, if I mistake not, at two
or three corners and secluded spots within the Park



A LONDON SUBURB 207

itself) a Methodist preacher uplifts his voice and speed-
ily gathers a congregation, his zeal for whose religious
welfare impels the good man to such earnest vocifera-
tion and toilsome gesture that his perspiring face is
quickly in a stew. His inward flame conspires with the
too fervid sun and makes a positive martyr of him, even
in the very exercise of his pious labor ; insomuch that
he purchases every atom of spiritual increment to his
hearers by loss of his own corporeal solidity, and, should
his discourse last long enough, must finally exhale be-
fore their eyes. If I smile at him, be it understood, it
is not in scorn; he performs his sacred office more
acceptably than many a prelate. These wayside ser-
vices attract numbers who would not otherwise listen to
prayer, sermon, or hymn, from one year's end to an-
other, and who, for that very reason, are the auditors
most likely to be moved by the preacher's eloquence.
Yonder Greenwich pensioner, too, in his costume of
three-cornered hat, and old-fashioned, brass-buttoned
blue coat with ample skirts, which makes him look like
a contemporary of Admiral Benbow, that tough old
mariner may hear a word or two which will go nearer
his heart than anything that the chaplain of the Hospi-
tal can be expected to deliver. I always noticed, more-
over, that a considerable proportion of the audience
were soldiers, who came hither with a day's leave from
Woolwich, hardy veterans in aspect, some of whom
wore as many as four or five medals, Crimean or East-
Indian, on the breasts of their scarlet coats. The mis-
cellaneous congregation listen with every appearance
of heartfelt interest ; and, for my own part, I must
frankly acknowledge that I never found it possible to