Читать книгу Famous Persons and Places - N. P. Willis - Страница 3

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IMMENSITY OF LONDON—VOYAGE TO LEITH—SOCIETY OF THE STEAM PACKET—ANALOGY BETWEEN SCOTCH AND AMERICAN MANNERS—STRICT OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH ON BOARD—EDINBURGH—UNEXPECTED RECOGNITION.

Almost giddy with the many pleasures and occupations of London, I had outstayed the last fashionable lingerer; and, appearing again, after a fortnight’s confinement with the epidemic of the season, I found myself almost without an acquaintance, and was driven to follow the world. A preponderance of letters and friends determined my route toward Scotland.

One realizes the immensity of London when he is compelled to measure its length on a single errand. I took a cab at my lodgings at nine in the evening, and drove six miles through one succession of crowded and blazing streets to the East India Docks, and with the single misfortune of being robbed, on the way, of a valuable cloak, secured a berth in the Monarch steamer, bound presently for Edinburgh.

I found the drawing-room cabin quite crowded, cold supper on the two long tables, every body very busy with knife and fork, and whiskey-and-water and broad Scotch circulating merrily. All the world seemed acquainted, and each man talked to his neighbor, and it was as unlike a ship’s company of dumb English as could easily be conceived. I had dined too late to attack the solids, but imitating my neighbor’s potation of whiskey and hot water, I crowded in between two good-humored Scotchmen, and took the happy color of the spirits of the company. A small centre-table was occupied by a party who afforded considerable amusement. An excessively fat old woman, with a tall scraggy daughter and a stubby little old fellow, whom they called “pa;” and a singular man, a Major Somebody, who seemed showing them up, composed the quartette. Noisier women I never saw, nor more hideous. They bullied the waiter, were facetious with the steward, and talked down all the united buzz of the cabin. Opposite me sat a pale, severe-looking Scotchman, who had addressed one or two remarks to me; and, upon an uncommon burst of uproariousness, he laughed with the rest, and remarked that the ladies were excusable, for they were doubtless Americans, and knew no better.

“It strikes me,” said I, “that both in manners and accent they are particularly Scotch.”

“Sir!” said the pale gentleman.

“Sir!” said several of my neighbors on the right and left.

“Have you ever been in Scotland?” asked the pale gentleman, with rather a ferocious air.

“No, sir! Have you ever been in America?”

“No, sir! but I have read Mrs. Trollope.”

“And I have read Cyril Thornton; and the manners delineated in Mrs. Trollope, I must say, are rather elegant in comparison.”

I particularized the descriptions I alluded to, which will occur immediately to those who have read the novel I have named; and then confessing I was an American, and withdrawing my illiberal remark, which I had only made to show the gentleman the injustice and absurdity of his own, we called for another tass of whiskey, and became very good friends. Heaven knows I have no prejudice against the Scotch, or any other nation—but it is extraordinary how universal the feeling seems to be against America. A half hour incog. in any mixed company in England I should think would satisfy the most rose-colored doubter on the subject.

We got under way at eleven o’clock, and the passengers turned in. The next morning was Sunday. It was fortunately of a “Sabbath stillness;” and the open sea through which we were driving, with an easy south wind in our favor, graciously permitted us to do honor to as substantial a breakfast as ever was set before a traveller, even in America. (Why we should be ridiculed for our breakfasts I do not know.)

The “Monarch” is a superb boat, and, with the aid of sails and a wind right aft, we made twelve miles in the hour easily. I was pleased to see an observance of the Sabbath which had not crossed my path before in three years’ travel. Half the passengers at least took their Bibles after breakfast, and devoted an hour or two evidently to grave religious reading and reflection. With this exception, I have not seen a person with the Bible in his hand, in travelling over half the world.

The weather continued fine, and smooth water tempted us up to breakfast again on Monday. The wash-room was full of half-clad men, but the week-day manners of the passengers were perceptibly gayer. The captain honored us by taking the head of the table, which he had not done on the day previous, and his appearance was hailed by three general cheers. When the meats were removed, a gentleman rose, and, after a very long and parliamentary speech, proposed the health of the captain. The company stood up, ladies and all, and it was drank with a tremendous “hip-hip-hurrah,” in bumpers of whiskey. They don’t do that on the Mississippi, I reckon. If they did, the travellers would be down upon us, “I guess,” out-Hamiltoning Hamilton.

We rounded St. Abb’s head into the Forth, at five, in the afternoon, and soon dropped anchor off Leith. The view of Edinburgh, from the water, is, I think, second only to that of Constantinople. The singular resemblance, in one or two features, to the view of Athens, as you approach from the Piræus, seems to have struck other eyes than mine, and an imitation Acropolis is commenced on the Calton Hill, and has already, in its half finished state, much the effect of the Parthenon. Hymettus is rather loftier than the Pentland-hills, and Pentelicus farther off and grander than Arthur’s seat, but the old castle of Edinburgh is a noble and peculiar feature of its own, and soars up against the sky, with its pinnacle-placed turrets, superbly magnificent. The Forth has a high shore on either side, and, with the island of Inchkeith in its broad bosom, it looks more like a lake than an arm of the sea.

It is odd what strange links of acquaintance will develop between people thrown together in the most casual manner, and in the most out-of-the-way places. I have never entered a steamboat in my life without finding, if not an acquaintance, some one who should have been an acquaintance from mutual knowledge of friends. I thought, through the first day, that the Monarch would be an exception. On the second morning, however, a gentleman came up and called me by name. He was an American, and had seen me in Boston. Soon after, another gentleman addressed some remark to me, and, in a few minutes, we discovered that we were members of the same club in London, and bound to the same hospitable roof in Scotland. We went on, talking together, and I happened to mention having lately been in Greece, when one of a large party of ladies, overhearing the remark, turned, and asked me if I had met Lady—— in my travels. I had met her at Athens, and this was her sister. I found I had many interesting particulars of the delightful person in question, which were new to them, and, sequitur, a friendship struck up immediately between me and a party of six. You would have never dreamed, to have seen the adieux on the landing, that we had been unaware of each other’s existence forty-four hours previous.

Leith is a mile or more from the town, and we drove into the new side of Edinburgh—a splendid city of stone—and, with my English friend, I was soon installed in a comfortable parlor at Douglass’s—an hotel to which the Tremont, in Boston, is the only parallel. It is built of the same stone and is smaller, but it has a better situation than the Tremont, standing in a magnificent square, with a column and statue to Lord Melville in the centre, and a perspective of a noble street stretching through the city from the opposite side.

We dined upon grouse, to begin Scotland fairly, and nailed down our sherry with a tass of Glenlivet, and then we had still an hour of daylight for a ramble.