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Our Hundred Days in Europe

O >> Oliver Wendell Holmes >> Our Hundred Days in Europe



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[Illustration: OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES AT THE AGE OF 82. From a painting
by Sarah W. Whitman]

OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE

BY

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES



To

MY DAUGHTER AMELIA

(MRS. TURNER SARGENT)

MY FAITHFUL AND DEVOTED COMPANION

THIS OUTLINE OF OUR SUMMER EXCURSION

IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED



CONTENTS.

* * * * *

INTRODUCTORY

A PROSPECTIVE VISIT



OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE.

CHAPTER

I. THE VOYAGE.--LIVERPOOL.--CHESTER.--LONDON.--EPSOM

II. EPSOM.--LONDON.--WINDSOR

III. LONDON.--ISLE OF WIGHT.--CAMBRIDGE.--OXFORD.--YORK.--EDINBURGH

IV. STRATFORD-ON-AVON.--GREAT MALVERN.--TEWKESBURY.--BATH.--SALISBURY.
--STONEHENGE

V. STONEHENGE.--SALISBURY.--OLD SARUM.--BEMERTON.--BRIGHTON

VI. LONDON

VII. BOULOGNE.--PARIS.--LONDON.--LIVERPOOL.--THE HOMEWARD PASSAGE

VIII. GENERAL IMPRESSIONS.--MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

* * * * *

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES AT THE AGE OF 82. From a painting by Sarah W.
Whitman

ROBERT BROWNING

MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD

SALISBURY CATHEDRAL

PLACE DE LA CONCORDE



INTRODUCTORY.

A PROSPECTIVE VISIT.

* * * * *

After an interval of more than fifty years, I propose taking a second
look at some parts of Europe. It is a Rip Van Winkle experiment which I
am promising myself. The changes wrought by half a century in the
countries I visited amount almost to a transformation. I left the
England of William the Fourth, of the Duke of Wellington, of Sir Robert
Peel; the France of Louis Philippe, of Marshal Soult, of Thiers, of
Guizot. I went from Manchester to Liverpool by the new railroad, the
only one I saw in Europe. I looked upon England from the box of a
stage-coach, upon France from the coupé of a diligence, upon Italy from
the cushion of a carrozza. The broken windows of Apsley House were still
boarded up when I was in London. The asphalt pavement was not laid in
Paris. The Obelisk of Luxor was lying in its great boat in the Seine, as
I remember it. I did not see it erected; it must have been an exciting
scene to witness, the engineer standing underneath, so as to be crushed
by the great stone if it disgraced him by falling in the process. As for
the dynasties which have overlaid each other like Dr. Schliemann's
Trojan cities, there is no need of moralizing over a history which
instead of Finis is constantly ending with What next?

With regard to the changes in the general conditions of society and the
advance in human knowledge, think for one moment what fifty years have
done! I have often imagined myself escorting some wise man of the past
to our Saturday Club, where we often have distinguished strangers as our
guests. Suppose there sat by me, I will not say Sir Isaac Newton, for he
has been too long away from us, but that other great man, whom Professor
Tyndall names as next to him in intellectual stature, as he passes along
the line of master minds of his country, from the days of Newton to our
own,--Dr. Thomas Young, who died in 1829. Would he or I be the listener,
if we were side by side? However humble I might feel in such a presence,
I should be so clad in the grandeur of the new discoveries, inventions,
ideas, I had to impart to him that I should seem to myself like the
ambassador of an Emperor. I should tell him of the ocean steamers, the
railroads that spread themselves like cobwebs over the civilized and
half-civilized portions of the earth, the telegraph and the telephone,
the photograph and the spectroscope. I should hand him a paper with the
morning news from London to read by the electric light, I should startle
him with a friction match, I should amaze him with the incredible truths
about anesthesia, I should astonish him with the later conclusions of
geology, I should dazzle him by the fully developed law of the
correlation of forces, I should delight him with the cell-doctrine, I
should confound him with the revolutionary apocalypse of Darwinism. All
this change in the aspects, position, beliefs, of humanity since the
time of Dr. Young's death, the date of my own graduation from college!

I ought to consider myself highly favored to have lived through such a
half century. But it seems to me that in walking the streets of London
and Paris I shall revert to my student days, and appear to myself like a
relic of a former generation. Those who have been born into the
inheritance of the new civilization feel very differently about it from
those who have lived their way into it. To the young and those
approaching middle age all these innovations in life and thought are as
natural, as much a matter of course, as the air they breathe; they form
a part of the inner framework of their intelligence, about which their
mental life is organized. To men and women of more than threescore and
ten they are external accretions, like the shell of a mollusk, the
jointed plates of an articulate. This must be remembered in reading
anything written by those who knew the century in its teens; it is not
likely to be forgotten, for the fact betrays itself in all the writer's
thoughts and expressions.

The story of my first visit to Europe is briefly this: my object was to
study the medical profession, chiefly in Paris, and I was in Europe
about two years and a half, from April, 1833, to October, 1835. I sailed
in the packet ship Philadelphia from New York for Portsmouth, where we
arrived after a passage of twenty-four days. A week was spent in
visiting Southampton, Salisbury, Stonehenge, Wilton, and the Isle of
Wight. I then crossed the Channel to Havre, from which I went to Paris.
In the spring and summer of 1834 I made my principal visit to England
and Scotland. There were other excursions to the Rhine and to Holland,
to Switzerland and to Italy, but of these I need say nothing here. I
returned in the packet ship Utica, sailing from Havre, and reaching New
York after a passage of forty-two days.

A few notes from my recollections will serve to recall the period of my
first visit to Europe, and form a natural introduction to the
experiences of my second. I take those circumstances which happen to
suggest themselves.

After a short excursion to Strasbourg, down the Rhine, and through
Holland, a small steamer took us from Rotterdam across the Channel, and
we found ourselves in the British capital.

The great sight in London is--London. No man understands himself as an
infinitesimal until he has been a drop in that ocean, a grain of sand on
that sea-margin, a mote in its sunbeam, or the fog or smoke which stands
for it; in plainer phrase, a unit among its millions.

I had two letters to persons in England: one to kind and worthy Mr.
Petty Vaughan, who asked me to dinner; one to pleasant Mr. William
Clift, conservator of the Hunterian Museum, who asked me to tea.

To Westminster Abbey. What a pity it could not borrow from Paris the
towers of Notre Dame! But the glory of its interior made up for this
shortcoming. Among the monuments, one to Rear Admiral Charles Holmes, a
descendant, perhaps, of another namesake, immortalized by Dryden in the
"Annus Mirabilis" as

"the Achates of the general's fight."

He accompanied Wolfe in his expedition which resulted in the capture of
Quebec. My relative, I will take it for granted, as I find him in
Westminster Abbey. Blood is thicker than water,--and warmer than marble,
I said to myself, as I laid my hand on the cold stone image of the once
famous Admiral.

To the Tower, to see the lions,--of all sorts. There I found a "poor
relation," who made my acquaintance without introduction. A large
baboon, or ape,--some creature of that family,--was sitting at the open
door of his cage, when I gave him offence by approaching too near and
inspecting him too narrowly. He made a spring at me, and if the keeper
had not pulled me back would have treated me unhandsomely, like a
quadrumanous rough, as he was. He succeeded in stripping my waistcoat of
its buttons, as one would strip a pea-pod of its peas.

To Vauxhall Gardens. All Americans went there in those days, as they go
to Madame Tussaud's in these times. There were fireworks and an
exhibition of polar scenery. "Mr. Collins, the English PAGANINI,"
treated us to music on his violin. A comic singer gave us a song, of
which I remember the line,

"You'll find it all in the agony bill."

This referred to a bill proposed by Sir Andrew Agnew, a noted Scotch
Sabbatarian agitator.

To the opera to hear Grisi. The king, William the Fourth, was in his
box; also the Princess Victoria, with the Duchess of Kent. The king
tapped with his white-gloved hand on the ledge of the box when he was
pleased with the singing.--To a morning concert and heard the real
Paganini. To one of the lesser theatres and heard a monologue by the
elder Mathews, who died a year or two after this time. To another
theatre, where I saw Listen in Paul Pry. Is it not a relief that I am
abstaining from description of what everybody has heard described?

To Windsor. Machinery to the left of the road. Recognized it instantly,
by recollection of the plate in "Rees's Cyclopedia," as Herschel's great
telescope.--Oxford. Saw only its outside. I knew no one there, and no
one knew me.--Blenheim,--the Titians best remembered of its objects on
exhibition. The great Derby day of the Epsom races. Went to the race
with a coach-load of friends and acquaintances. Plenipotentiary, the
winner, "rode by P. Connelly." So says Herring's picture of him, now
before me. Chestnut, a great "bullock" of a horse, who easily beat the
twenty-two that started. Every New England deacon ought to see one Derby
day to learn what sort of a world this is he lives in. Man is a sporting
as well as a praying animal.

Stratford-on-Avon. Emotions, but no scribbling of name on
walls.--Warwick. The castle. A village festival, "The Opening of the
Meadows," a true exhibition of the semi-barbarism which had come down
from Saxon times.--Yorkshire. "The Hangman's Stone." Story told in my
book called the "Autocrat," etc. York Cathedral.--Northumberland.
Alnwick Castle. The figures on the walls which so frightened my man John
when he ran away from Scotland in his boyhood. Berwick-on-Tweed. A
regatta going on; a very pretty show. Scotland. Most to be remembered,
the incomparable loveliness of Edinburgh.--Sterling. The view of the
Links of Forth from the castle. The whole country full of the romance of
history and poetry. Made one acquaintance in Scotland, Dr. Robert Knox,
who asked my companion and myself to breakfast. I was treated to five
entertainments in Great Britain: the breakfast just mentioned; lunch
with Mrs. Macadam,--the good old lady gave me bread, and not a stone;
dinner with Mr. Vaughan; one with Mr. Stanley, the surgeon; tea with Mr.
Clift,--for all which attentions I was then and am still grateful, for
they were more than I had any claim to expect. Fascinated with
Edinburgh. Strolls by Salisbury Crag; climb to the top of Arthur's Seat;
delight of looking up at the grand old castle, of looking down on
Holyrood Palace, of watching the groups on Calton Hill, wandering in the
quaint old streets and sauntering on the sidewalks of the noble avenues,
even at that time adding beauty to the new city. The weeks I spent in
Edinburgh are among the most memorable of my European experiences. To
the Highlands, to the Lakes, in short excursions; to Glasgow, seen to
disadvantage under gray skies and with slippery pavements. Through
England rapidly to Dover and to Calais, where I found the name of M.
Dessein still belonging to the hotel I sought, and where I read Sterne's
"Preface Written in a Désobligeante," sitting in the vehicle most like
one that I could find in the stable. From Calais back to Paris, where I
began working again.

All my travelling experiences, including a visit to Switzerland and
Italy in the summer and autumn of 1835, were merely interludes of my
student life in Paris. On my return to America, after a few years of
hospital and private practice, I became a Professor in Harvard
University, teaching Anatomy and Physiology, afterwards Anatomy alone,
for the period of thirty-five years, during part of which time I paid
some attention to literature, and became somewhat known as the author of
several works in prose and verse which have been well received. My
prospective visit will not be a professional one, as I resigned my
office in 1882, and am no longer known chiefly as a teacher or a
practitioner.

BOSTON, _April_, 1886.




OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE

* * * * *

I.


I begin this record with the columnar, self-reliant capital letter to
signify that there is no disguise in its egoisms. If it were a chapter
of autobiography, this is what the reader would look for as a matter of
course. Let him consider it as being such a chapter, and its egoisms
will require no apology.

I have called the record _our_ hundred days, because I was
accompanied by my daughter, without the aid of whose younger eyes and
livelier memory, and especially of her faithful diary, which no fatigue
or indisposition was allowed to interrupt, the whole experience would
have remained in my memory as a photograph out of focus.

We left Boston on the 29th of April, 1886, and reached New York on the
29th of August, four months of absence in all, of which nearly three
weeks were taken up by the two passages; one week was spent in Paris,
and the rest of the time in England and Scotland.

No one was so much surprised as myself at my undertaking this visit. Mr.
Gladstone, a strong man for his years, is reported as saying that he is
too old to travel, at least to cross the ocean, and he is younger than I
am,--just four months, to a day, younger. It is true that Sir Henry
Holland came to this country, and travelled freely about the world,
after he was eighty years old; but his pitcher went to the well once too
often, and met the usual doom of fragile articles. When my friends asked
me why I did not go to Europe, I reminded them of the fate of Thomas
Parr. He was only twice my age, and was getting on finely towards his
two hundredth year, when the Earl of Arundel carried him up to London,
and, being feasted and made a lion of, he found there a premature and
early grave at the age of only one hundred and fifty-two years. He lies
in Westminster Abbey, it is true, but he would probably have preferred
the upper side of his own hearth-stone to the under side of the slab
which covers him.

I should never have thought of such an expedition if it had not been
suggested by a member of my family that I should accompany my daughter,
who was meditating a trip to Europe. I remembered how many friends had
told me I ought to go; among the rest, Mr. Emerson, who had spoken to me
repeatedly about it. I had not seen Europe for more than half a century,
and I had a certain longing for one more sight of the places I
remembered, and others it would be a delight to look upon. There were a
few living persons whom I wished to meet. I was assured that I should be
kindly received in England. All this was tempting enough, but there was
an obstacle in the way which I feared, and, as it proved, not without
good reason. I doubted whether I could possibly breathe in a narrow
state-room. In certain localities I have found myself liable to attacks
of asthma, and, although I had not had one for years, I felt sure that I
could not escape it if I tried to sleep in a state-room.

I did not escape it, and I am glad to tell my story about it, because it
excuses some of my involuntary social shortcomings, and enables me to
thank collectively all those kind members of the profession who trained
all the artillery of the pharmacopoeia upon my troublesome enemy, from
bicarbonate of soda and Vichy water to arsenic and dynamite. One costly
contrivance, sent me by the Reverend Mr. Haweis, whom I have never duly
thanked for it, looked more like an angelic trump for me to blow in a
better world than what I believe it is, an inhaling tube intended to
prolong my mortal respiration. The best thing in my experience was
recommended to me by an old friend in London. It was Himrod's asthma
cure, one of the many powders, the smoke of which when burning is
inhaled. It is made in Providence, Rhode Island, and I had to go to
London to find it. It never failed to give at least temporary relief,
but nothing enabled me to sleep in my state-room, though I had it all to
myself, the upper berth being removed. After the first night and part of
the second, I never lay down at all while at sea. The captain allowed me
to have a candle and sit up in the saloon, where I worried through the
night as I best might. How could I be in a fit condition to accept the
attention of my friends in Liverpool, after sitting up every night for
more than a week; and how could I be in a mood for the catechizing of
interviewers, without having once lain down during the whole return
passage? I hope the reader will see why I mention these facts. They
explain and excuse many things; they have been alluded to, sometimes
with exaggeration, in the newspapers, and I could not tell my story
fairly without mentioning them. I got along well enough as soon as I
landed, and have had no return of the trouble since I have been back in
my own home. I will not advertise an assortment of asthma remedies for
sale, but I assure my kind friends I have had no use for any one of them
since I have walked the Boston pavements, drank, not the Cochituate, but
the Belmont spring water, and breathed the lusty air of my native
northeasters.

My companion and I required an attendant, and we found one of those
useful androgynous personages known as _courier-maids_, who had
travelled with friends of ours, and who was ready to start with us at a
moment's warning. She was of English birth, lively, short-gaited,
serviceable, more especially in the first of her dual capacities. So far
as my wants were concerned, I found her zealous and active in providing
for my comfort.

It was no sooner announced in the papers that I was going to England
than I began to hear of preparations to welcome me. An invitation to a
club meeting was cabled across the Atlantic. One of my countrywomen who
has a house in London made an engagement for me to meet friends at her
residence. A reverend friend, who thought I had certain projects in my
head, wrote to me about lecturing: where I should appear, what fees I
should obtain, and such business matters. I replied that I was going to
England to spend money, not to make it; to hear speeches, very possibly,
but not to make them; to revisit scenes I had known in my younger days;
to get a little change of my routine, which I certainly did; and to
enjoy a little rest, which I as certainly did not, at least in London.
In a word, I wished a short vacation, and had no thought of doing
anything more important than rubbing a little rust off and enjoying
myself, while at the same time I could make my companion's visit
somewhat pleasanter than it would be if she went without me. The visit
has answered most of its purposes for both of us, and if we have saved a
few recollections which our friends can take any pleasure in reading,
this slight record may be considered a work of supererogation.

The Cephalonia was to sail at half past six in the morning, and at that
early hour a company of well-wishers was gathered on the wharf at East
Boston to bid us good-by. We took with us many tokens of their
thoughtful kindness; flowers and fruits from Boston and Cambridge, and a
basket of champagne from a Concord friend whose company is as
exhilarating as the sparkling wine he sent us. With the other gifts came
a small tin box, about as big as a common round wooden match box. I
supposed it to hold some pretty gimcrack, sent as a pleasant parting
token of remembrance. It proved to be a most valued daily companion,
useful at all times, never more so than when the winds were blowing hard
and the ship was struggling with the waves. There must have been some
magic secret in it, for I am sure that I looked five years younger after
closing that little box than when I opened it. Time will explain its
mysterious power.

All the usual provisions for comfort made by seagoing experts we had
attended to. Impermeable rugs and fleecy shawls, head-gear to defy the
rudest northeasters, sea-chairs of ample dimensions, which we took care
to place in as sheltered situations as we could find,--all these were a
matter of course. Everybody stays on deck as much as possible, and lies
wrapped up and spread out at full length on his or her sea-chair, so
that the deck looks as if it had a row of mummies on exhibition. Nothing
is more comfortable, nothing, I should say, more indispensable, than a
hot-water bag,--or rather, _two_ hot-water bags; for they will
burst sometimes, as I found out, and a passenger who has become intimate
with one of these warm bosom friends feels its loss almost as if it were
human.

Passengers carry all sorts of luxuries on board, in the firm faith that
they shall be able to profit by them all. Friends send them various
indigestibles. To many all these well-meant preparations soon become a
mockery, almost an insult. It is a clear case of _Sic(k) vos non
vobis_. The tougher neighbor is the gainer by these acts of kindness;
the generosity of a sea-sick sufferer in giving away the delicacies
which seemed so desirable on starting is not ranked very high on the
books of the recording angel. With us three things were best: grapes,
oranges, and especially oysters, of which we had provided a half barrel
in the shell. The "butcher" of the ship opened them fresh for us every
day, and they were more acceptable than anything else.

Among our ship's company were a number of family relatives and
acquaintances. We formed a natural group at one of the tables, where we
met in more or less complete numbers. I myself never missed; my
companion, rarely. Others were sometimes absent, and sometimes came to
time when they were in a very doubtful state, looking as if they were
saying to themselves, with Lear,--

"Down, thou climbing sorrow,
Thy element's below."

As for the intellectual condition of the passengers, I should say that
faces were prevailingly vacuous, their owners half hypnotized, as it
seemed, by the monotonous throb and tremor of the great sea-monster on
whose back we were riding. I myself had few thoughts, fancies, emotions.
One thing above all struck me as never before,--the terrible solitude of
the ocean.

"So lonely 'twas that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be."

Whole days passed without our seeing a single sail. The creatures of the
deep which gather around sailing vessels are perhaps frightened off by
the noise and stir of the steamship. At any rate, we saw nothing more
than a few porpoises, so far as I remember.

No man can find himself over the abysses, the floor of which is paved
with wrecks and white with the bones of the shrieking myriads of human
beings whom the waves have swallowed up, without some thought of the
dread possibilities hanging over his fate. There is only one way to get
rid of them: that which an old sea-captain mentioned to me, namely, to
keep one's self under opiates until he wakes up in the harbor where he
is bound. I did not take this as serious advice, but its meaning is that
one who has all his senses about him cannot help being anxious. My old
friend, whose beard had been shaken in many a tempest, knew too well
that there is cause enough for anxiety.

What does the reader suppose was the source of the most ominous thought
which forced itself upon my mind, as I walked the decks of the mighty
vessel? Not the sound of the rushing winds, nor the sight of the
foam-crested billows; not the sense of the awful imprisoned force which
was wrestling in the depths below me. The ship is made to struggle with
the elements, and the giant has been tamed to obedience, and is manacled
in bonds which an earthquake would hardly rend asunder. No! It was the
sight of the _boats_ hanging along at the sides of the deck,--the
boats, always suggesting the fearful possibility that before another day
dawns one may be tossing about in the watery Sahara, shelterless,
fireless, almost foodless, with a fate before him he dares not
contemplate. No doubt we should feel worse without the boats; still they
are dreadful tell-tales. To all who remember Géricault's Wreck of the
Medusa,--and those who have seen it do not forget it,--the picture the
mind draws is one it shudders at. To be sure, the poor wretches in the
painting were on a raft, but to think of fifty people in one of these
open boats! Let us go down into the cabin, where at least we shall not
see them.

The first morning at sea revealed the mystery of the little round tin
box. The process of _shaving_, never a delightful one, is a very
unpleasant and awkward piece of business when the floor on which one
stands, the glass in which he looks, and he himself are all describing
those complex curves which make cycles and epicycles seem like
simplicity itself. The little box contained a reaping machine, which
gathered the capillary harvest of the past twenty-four hours with a
thoroughness, a rapidity, a security, and a facility which were a
surprise, almost a revelation. The idea of a guarded cutting edge is an
old one; I remember the "Plantagenet" razor, so called, with the
comb-like row of blunt teeth, leaving just enough of the edge free to do
its work. But this little affair had a blade only an inch and a half
long by three quarters of an inch wide. It had a long slender handle,
which took apart for packing, and was put together with the greatest
ease. It was, in short, a lawn-mower for the masculine growth of which
the proprietor wishes to rid his countenance. The mowing operation
required no glass, could be performed with almost reckless boldness, as
one cannot cut himself, and in fact had become a pleasant amusement
instead of an irksome task. I have never used any other means of shaving
from that day to this. I was so pleased with it that I exhibited it to
the distinguished tonsors of Burlington Arcade, half afraid they would
assassinate me for bringing in an innovation which bid fair to destroy
their business. They probably took me for an agent of the manufacturers;
and so I was, but not in their pay nor with their knowledge. I
determined to let other persons know what a convenience I had found the
"Star Razor" of Messrs. Kampf, of New York, without fear of reproach for
so doing. I know my danger,--does not Lord Byron say, "I have even been
accused of writing puffs for Warren's blacking"? I was once offered pay
for a poem in praise of a certain stove polish, but I declined. It is
pure good-will to my race which leads me to commend the Star Razor to
all who travel by land or by sea, as well as to all who stay at home.

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