May 8th.--I went last evening to the National Theatre to see a pantomime.
It was Jack the Giant-Killer, and somewhat heavy and tedious. The
audience was more noteworthy than the play. The theatre itself is for
the middling and lower classes, and I had not taken my seat in the most
aristocratic part of the house; so that I found myself surrounded chiefly
by young sailors, Hanover Street shopmen, mechanics, and other people of
that class. It is wonderful! the difference that exists in the personal
aspect and dress, and no less in the manners, of people in this quarter
of the city, as compared with other parts of it.
One would think that Oak Hall should give a common garb and air to the
great mass of the Boston population; but it seems not to be so; and
perhaps what is most singular is, that the natural make of the men has a
conformity and suitableness to the dress. Glazed caps and Palo Alto hats
were much worn. It is a pity that this picturesque and comparatively
graceful hat should not have been generally adopted, instead of falling
to the exclusive use of a rowdy class.
In the next box to me were two young women, with an infant, but to which
of them appertaining I could not at first discover. One was a large,
plump girl, with a heavy face, a snub nose, coarse-looking, but
good-natured, and with no traits of evil,--save, indeed, that she had on
the vilest gown of dirty white cotton, so pervadingly dingy that it was
white no longer, as it seemed to me. The sleeves were short, and ragged
at the borders, and her shawl, which she took off on account of the heat,
was old and faded,--the shabbiest and dirtiest dress that I ever saw a
woman wear. Yet she was plump, and looked comfortable in body and mind.
I imagine that she must have had a better dress at home, but had come to
the theatre extemporaneously, and, not going to the dress circle,
considered her ordinary gown good enough for the occasion. The other
girl seemed as young or younger than herself. She was small, with a
particularly intelligent and pleasant face, not handsome, perhaps, but as
good or better than if it were. It was mobile with whatever sentiment
chanced to be in her mind, as quick and vivacious a face in its movements
as I have ever seen; cheerful, too, and indicative of a sunny, though I
should think it might be a hasty, temper. She was dressed in a dark gown
(chintz, I suppose the women call it), a good, homely dress, proper
enough for the fireside, but a strange one to appear in at a theatre.
Both these girls appeared to enjoy themselves very much,--the large and
heavy one in her own duller mode; the smaller manifesting her interest by
gestures, pointing at the stage, and with so vivid a talk of countenance
that it was precisely as if she had spoken. She was not a brunette, and
this made the vivacity of her expression the more agreeable. Her
companion, on the other hand, was so dark, that I rather suspected her to
have a tinge of African blood.
There were two men who seemed to have some connection with these girls,--
one an elderly, gray-headed personage, well-stricken in liquor, talking
loudly and foolishly, but good-humoredly; the other a young man, sober,
and doing his best to keep his elder friend quiet. The girls seemed to
give themselves no uneasiness about the matter.--Both the men wore Palo
Alto hats. I could not make out whether either of the men were the
father of the child, though I was inclined to set it down as a family
party.
As the play went on, the house became crowded and oppressively warm, and
the poor little baby grew dark red, or purple almost, with the
uncomfortable heat in its small body. It must have been accustomed to
discomfort, and have concluded it to be the condition of mortal life,
else it never would have remained so quiet. Perhaps it had been quieted
with a sleeping-potion. The two young women were not negligent of it;
but passed it to and fro between them, each willingly putting herself to
inconvenience for the sake of tending it. But I really feared it might
die in some kind of a fit, so hot was the theatre, so purple with heat,
yet strangely quiet, was the child. I was glad to hear it cry at last;
but it did not cry with any great rage and vigor, as it should, but in a
stupid kind of way. Hereupon the smaller of the two girls, after a
little inefficacious dandling, at once settled the question of maternity
by nursing her baby. Children must be hard to kill, however injudicious
the treatment. The two girls and their cavaliers remained till nearly
the close of the play. I should like well to know who they are,--of what
condition in life, and whether reputable as members of the class to which
they belong. My own judgment is that they are so. Throughout the
evening, drunken young sailors kept stumbling into and out of the boxes,
calling to one another from different parts of the house, shouting to the
performers, and singing the burden of songs. It was a scene of life in
the rough.
May 14th.--A stable opposite the house,--an old wooden construction, low,
in three distinct parts; the centre being the stable proper, where the
horses are kept, and with a chamber over it for the hay. On one side is
the department for chaises and carriages; on the other, the little office
where the books are kept. In the interior region of the stable
everything is dim and undefined,--half-traceable outlines of stalls,
sometimes the shadowy aspect of a horse. Generally a groom is dressing a
horse at the stable door, with a care and accuracy that leave no part of
the animal unvisited by the currycomb and brush; the horse, meanwhile,
evidently enjoying it, but sometimes, when the more sensitive parts are
touched, giving a half-playful kick with his hind legs, and a little
neigh. If the men bestowed half as much care on their own personal
cleanliness, they would be all the better and healthier men therefor.
They appear to be busy men, these stablers, yet have a lounging way with
them, as if indolence were somehow diffused through their natures. The
apparent head of the establishment is a sensible, thoughtful-looking,
large-featured, and homely man, past the middle age, clad rather shabbily
in gray, stooping somewhat, and without any smartness about him. There
is a groom, who seems to be a very comfortable kind of personage,--a man
of forty-five or thereabouts (R. W. Emerson says he was one of his
schoolmates), but not looking so old; corpulent, not to say fat, with a
white frock, which his goodly bulk almost fills, enveloping him from neck
nearly to ankles. On his head he wears a cloth cap of a jockey shape;
his pantaloons are turned up an inch or two at bottom, and he wears
brogans on his feet. His hair, as may be seen when he takes off his cap
to wipe his brow, is black and in perfect preservation, with not exactly
a curl, yet a vivacious and elastic kind of twist in it. His face is
fresh-colored, comfortable, sufficiently vivid in expression, not at all
dimmed by his fleshly exuberance, because the man possesses vigor enough
to carry it off. His bodily health seems perfect; so, indeed, does his
moral and intellectual. He is very active and assiduous in his duties,
currycombing and rubbing down the horses with alacrity and skill; and,
when not otherwise occupied, you may see him talking jovially with chance
acquaintances, or observing what is going forward in the street. If a
female acquaintance happens to pass, he touches his jockey cap, and bows,
accomplishing this courtesy with a certain smartness that proves him a
man of the world. Whether it be his greater readiness to talk, or the
wisdom of what he says, he seems usually to be the centre talker of the
group. It is very pleasant to see such an image of earthly comfort as
this. A fat man who feels his flesh as a disease and encumbrance, and on
whom it presses so as to make him melancholy with dread of apoplexy, and
who moves heavily under the burden of himself,--such a man is a doleful
and disagreeable object. But if he have vivacity enough to pervade all
his earthiness, and bodily force enough to move lightly under it, and if
it be not too unmeasured to have a trimness and briskness in it, then it
is good and wholesome to look at him.
In the background of the house, a cat, occasionally stealing along on the
roofs of the low out-houses; descending a flight of wooden steps into the
brick area; investigating the shed, and entering all dark and secret
places; cautious, circumspect, as if in search of something; noiseless,
attentive to every noise. Moss grows on spots of the roof; there are
little boxes of earth here and there, with plants in them. The
grass-plots appertaining to each of the houses whose rears are opposite
ours (standing in Temple Place) are perhaps ten or twelve feet broad, and
three times as long. Here and there is a large, painted garden-pot, half
buried in earth. Besides the large trees in blossom, there are little
ones, probably of last year's setting out. Early in the day chambermaids
are seen hanging the bedclothes out of the upper windows; at the window
of the basement of the same house, I see a woman ironing. Were I a
solitary prisoner, I should not doubt to find occupation of deep interest
for my whole day in watching only one of the houses. One house seems to
be quite shut up; all the blinds in the three windows of each of the four
stories being closed, although in the roof-windows of the attic story the
curtains are hung carelessly upward, instead of being drawn. I thick the
house is empty, perhaps for the summer. The visible side of the whole
row of houses is now in the shade,--they looking towards, I should say,
the southwest. Later in the day, they are wholly covered with sunshine,
and continue so through the afternoon; and at evening the sunshine slowly
withdraws upward, gleams aslant upon the windows, perches on the
chimneys, and so disappears. The upper part of the spire and the
weathercock of the Park Street Church appear over one of the houses,
looking as if it were close behind. It shows the wind to be cast now.
At one of the windows of the third story sits a woman in a colored dress,
diligently sewing on something white. She sews, not like a lady, but
with an occupational air. Her dress, I observe, on closer observation,
is a kind of loose morning sack, with, I think, a silky gloss on it; and
she seems to have a silver comb in her hair,--no, this latter item is a
mistake. Sheltered as the space is between the two rows of houses, a
puff of the east-wind finds its way in, and shakes off some of the
withering blossoms from the cherry-trees.
Quiet as the prospect is, there is a continual and near thunder of wheels
proceeding from Washington Street. In a building not far off, there is a
hall for exhibitions; and sometimes, in the evenings, loud music is heard
from it; or, if a diorama be shown (that of Bunker Hill, for instance, or
the burning of Moscow), an immense racket of imitative cannon and
musketry.
May, 16th.--It has been an easterly rain yesterday and to-day, with
occasional lightings up, and then a heavy downfall of the gloom again.
Scenes out of the rear windows,--the glistening roof of the opposite
houses; the chimneys, now and then choked with their own smoke, which a
blast drives down their throats. The church-spire has a mist about it.
Once this morning a solitary dove came and alighted on the peak of an
attic window, and looked down into the areas, remaining in this position
a considerable time. Now it has taken a flight, and alighted on the roof
of this house, directly over the window at which I sit, so that I can
look up and see its head and beak, and the tips of its claws. The roofs
of the low out-houses are black with moisture; the gutters are full of
water, and there is a little puddle where there is a place for it in the
hollow of a board. On the grass-plot are strewn the fallen blossoms of
the cherry-tree, and over the scene broods a parallelogram of sombre sky.
Thus it will be all day as it was yesterday; and, in the evening, one
window after another will be lighted up in the drawing-rooms. Through
the white curtains may be seen the gleam of an astral-lamp, like a fixed
star. In the basement rooms, the work of the kitchen going forward; in
the upper chambers, here and there a light.
In a bar-room, a large, oval basin let into the counter, with a brass
tube rising from the centre, out of which gushes continually a miniature
fountain, and descends in a soft, gentle, never-ceasing rain into the
basin, where swim a company of gold-fishes. Some of them gleam brightly
in their golden armor; others have a dull white aspect, going through
some process of transformation. One would think that the atmosphere,
continually filled with tobacco-smoke, might impregnate the water
unpleasantly for the scaly people; but then it is continually flowing
away and being renewed. And what if some toper should be seized with the
freak of emptying his glass of gin or brandy into the basin,--would the
fishes die or merely get jolly?
I saw, for a wonder, a man pretty drunk at Parker's the other evening,--a
well-dressed man, of not ungentlemanly aspect. He talked loudly and
foolishly, but in good phrases, with a great flow of language, and he was
no otherwise impertinent than in addressing his talk to strangers.
Finally, after sitting a long time staring steadfastly across the room in
silence, he arose, and staggered away as best he might, only showing his
very drunken state when he attempted to walk.
Old acquaintances,--a gentleman whom I knew ten years ago, brisk, active,
vigorous, with a kind of fire of physical well-being and cheerful spirits
glowing through him. Now, after a course, I presume, of rather free
living, pale, thin, oldish, with a grave and care or pain worn brow,--yet
still lively and cheerful in his accost, though with something invincibly
saddened in his tones. Another, formerly commander of a revenue vessel,
--a man of splendid epaulets and very aristocratic equipment and
demeanor; now out of service and without position, and changed into a
brandy-burnt and rowdyish sort of personage. He seemed as if he might
still be a gentleman if he would; but his manners show a desperate state
of mind by their familiarity, recklessness, the lack of any hedge of
reserve about himself, while still he is evidently a man of the world,
accustomed to good society. He has latterly, I think, been in the
Russian service, and would very probably turn pirate on fair occasion.
Lenox, July 14th.--The tops of the chestnut-trees have a whitish
appearance, they being, I suppose, in bloom. Red raspberries are just
through the season.
Language,--human language,--after all, is but little better than the
croak and cackle of fowls and other utterances of brute nature,--
sometimes not so adequate.
July 16th.--The tops of the chestnut-trees are peculiarly rich, as if a
more luscious sunshine were falling on them than anywhere else.
"Whitish," as above, don't express it.
The queer gestures and sounds of a hen looking about for a place to
deposit her egg; her self-important gait; the sideway turn of her head
and cock of her eye, as she pries into one and another nook, croaking all
the while,--evidently with the idea that the egg in question is the most
important thing that has been brought to pass since the world began. A
speckled black and white and tufted hen of ours does it to most ludicrous
perfection; and there is something laughably womanish in it too.
July 25th.--As I sit in my study, with the windows open, the occasional
incident of the visit of some winged creature,--wasp, hornet, or bee,--
entering out of the warm sunny atmosphere, soaring round the room in
large sweeps, then buzzing against the glass, as not satisfied with the
place, and desirous of getting out. Finally, the joyous, uprising curve
with which, coming to the open part of the window, it emerges into the
cheerful glow of the outside.
August 4th.--Dined at hotel with J. T. Fields and wife. Afternoon, drove
with them to Pittsfield and called on Dr. Holmes.
August 5th.--Drove with Fields and his wife to Stockbridge, being thereto
invited by Mr. Field of Stockbridge, in order to ascend Monument
Mountain. Found at Mr. Field's Dr. Holmes and Mr. Duyckinck of New York;
also Mr. Cornelius Matthews and Herman Melville. Ascended the mountain;
that is to say, Mrs. Fields and Miss Jenny Field, Mr. Field and Mr.
Fields, Dr. Holmes, Messrs. Duyckinck, Matthews, Melville, Mr. Henry
Sedgewick, and I, and were caught in a shower. Dined at Mr. Field's.
Afternoon, under guidance of J. T. Headley, the party scrambled through
the ice-glen.
August 7th.--Messrs. Duyckink, Matthews, Melville, and Melville, junior,
called in the forenoon. Gave them a couple of bottles of Mr. Mansfield's
champagne, and walked down to the lake with them. At twilight Mr. Edwin
P. Whipple and wife called.
August 8th.--Mr. and Mrs. Whipple took tea with us.
August 12th.--Seven chickens hatched. J. T. Readley and brother called.
Eight chickens.
August 19th.--Monument Mountain, in the early sunshine; its base
enveloped in mist, parts of which are floating in the sky, so that the
great hill looks really as if it were founded on a cloud. Just emerging
from the mist is seen a yellow field of rye, and, above that, forest.
August 21st.--Eight more chickens hatched. Ascended a mountain with my
wife; a beautiful, mellow, autumnal sunshine.
August 24th.--In the afternoons, nowadays, this valley in which I dwell
seems like a vast basin filled with golden sunshine as with wine.
August 31st.--J. R. Lowell called in the evening.
September 1st.--Mr. and Mrs. Lowell called in the forenoon, on their way
to Stockbridge or Lebanon to meet Miss Bremer.
September 2d.--"When I grow up," quoth J-----, in illustration of the
might to which he means to attain,--"when I grow up, I shall be two men."
September 3d.--Foliage of maples begins to change. Julian, after picking
up a handful of autumnal maple-leaves the other day,--"Look, papa, here's
a bunch of fire!"
September 7th.--In a wood, a heap or pile of logs and sticks, that had
been cut for firewood, and piled up square, in order to be carted away to
the house when convenience served,--or, rather, to be sledded in
sleighing time. But the moss had accumulated on them, and leaves falling
over them from year to year and decaying, a kind of soil had quite
covered them, although the softened outline of the woodpile was
perceptible in the green mound. It was perhaps fifty years--perhaps
more--since the woodman had cut and piled those logs and sticks,
intending them for his winter fires. But he probably needs no fire now.
There was something strangely interesting in this simple circumstance.
Imagine the long-dead woodman, and his long-dead wife and family, and the
old man who was a little child when the wood was cut, coming back from
their graves, and trying to make a fire with this mossy fuel.
September 19th.--Lying by the lake yesterday afternoon, with my eyes
shut, while the waves and sunshine were playing together on the water,
the quick glimmer of the wavelets was perceptible through my closed
eyelids.
October 13th.--A windy day, with wind northwest, cool, with a prevalence
of dull gray clouds over the sky, but with brief, quick glimpses of
sunshine.
The foliage having its autumn hues, Monument Mountain looks like a
headless sphinx, wrapped in a rich Persian shawl. Yesterday, through a
diffused mist, with the sun shining on it, it had the aspect of burnished
copper. The sun-gleams on the hills are peculiarly magnificent just in
these days.
One of the children, drawing a cow on the blackboard, says, "I'll kick
this leg out a little more,"--a very happy energy of expression,
completely identifying herself with the cow; or perhaps, as the cow's
creator, conscious of full power over its movements.
October 14th.--The brilliancy of the foliage has passed its acme; and
indeed it has not been so magnificent this season as in some others,
owing to the gradual approaches of cooler weather, and there having been
slight frosts instead of severe ones. There is still a shaggy richness
on the hillsides.
October 16th.--A morning mist, filling up the whole length and breadth of
the valley betwixt my house and Monument Mountain, the summit of the
mountain emerging. The mist reaches almost to my window, so dense as to
conceal everything, except that near its hither boundary a few ruddy or
yellow tree-tops appear, glorified by the early sunshine, as is likewise
the whole mist-cloud.
There is a glen between this house and the lake, through which winds a
little brook with pools and tiny waterfalls over the great roots of
trees. The glen is deep and narrow, and filled with trees; so that, in
the summer, it is all a dense shadow of obscurity. Now, the foliage of
the trees being almost entirely a golden yellow, instead of being full of
shadow, the glen is absolutely full of sunshine, and its depths are more
brilliant than the open plain or the mountain-tops. The trees are
sunshine, and, many of the golden leaves being freshly fallen, the glen
is strewn with sunshine, amid which winds and gurgles the bright, dark
little brook.
December 1st.--I saw a dandelion in bloom near the lake.
December 19th.--If the world were crumbled to the finest dust, and
scattered through the universe, there would not be an atom of the dust
for each star.
"Generosity is the flower of justice."
The print in blood of a naked foot to be traced through the street of a
town.
Sketch of a personage with the malignity of a witch, and doing the
mischief attributed to one,--but by natural means; breaking off
love-affairs, teaching children vices, ruining men of wealth, etc.
Ladislaus, King of Naples, besieging the city of Florence, agreed to show
mercy, provided the inhabitants would deliver to him a certain virgin of
famous beauty, the daughter of a physician of the city. When she was
sent to the king, every one contributing something to adorn her in the
richest manner, her father gave her a perfumed handkerchief, at that time
a universal decoration, richly wrought. This handkerchief was poisoned
with his utmost art, . . . . and they presently died in one another's
arms.
Of a bitter satirist,--of Swift, for instance,--it might be said, that
the person or thing on which his satire fell shrivelled up as if the
Devil had spit on it.
The Fount of Tears,--a traveller to discover it,--and other similar
localites.
Benvenuto Cellini saw a Salamander in the household fire. It was shown
him by his father, in childhood.
For the virtuoso's collection,--the pen with which Faust signed away his
salvation, with a drop of blood dried in it.
An article on newspaper advertisements,--a country newspaper, methinks,
rather than a city one.
An eating-house, where all the dishes served out, even to the bread and
salt, shall be poisoned with the adulterations that are said to be
practised. Perhaps Death himself might be the cook.
Personify the century,--talk of its present middle age,--of its youth,--
and its adventures and prospects.
An uneducated countryman, supposing he had a live frog in his stomach,
applied himself to the study of medicine in order to find a cure for this
disease; and he became a profound physician. Thus misfortune, physical
or moral, may be the means of educating and elevating us.
"Mather's Manuductio ad Ministerium,"--or "Directions for a candidate"
for the ministry,--with the autographs of four successive clergymen in
it, all of them, at one time or another, residents of the old Manse,--
Daniel Bliss, 1734; William Emerson, 1770; Ezra Ripley, 1781; and Samuel
Ripley, son of the preceding. The book, according to a Latin memorandum,
was sold to Daniel Bliss by Daniel Bremner, who, I suppose, was another
student of divinity. Printed at Boston "for Thomas Hancock, and sold at
his shop in Ann St. near the Draw Bridge, 1726." William Emerson was
son-in-law of Daniel Bliss. Ezra Ripley married the widow of said
William Emerson, and Samuel Ripley was their son.
Mrs. Prescott has an ox whose visage bears a strong resemblance to Daniel
Webster,--a majestic brute.
