I
IN the summer of 1895, after the adjournment of the legislature, Mr. Kern, on the advice of his physician, went to Europe for a period of rest and relaxation, and spent a few weeks in France and England. We are permitted glimpses of him in his meanderings through letters written at the time to his father and sister, Mrs. Sarah E. Engel. He sailed from New York on June 29th on a German ship “not fashionable but substantial and safe.” Landing at Southampton, he hurried on to London, greatly impressed by “the beautiful agricultural country—said to be the finest part of rural England, and rivaling in appearance any part of America I have seen,” but amused at “the little Jim Crow cars” and the “freight cars about the size of covered wagons.” In London, where he stayed at the Morley Hotel, he was fascinated by the throbbing greatness of things. “It is as far ahead of New York as New York is ahead of Indianapolis,” he wrote. Here he settled down to seeing London in his own way, and we find him seated beside the driver of an omnibus, “getting a bird’s-eye view” of the city, and for an additional six pence having pointed out the great parks, the British Museum, St. Pauls, London Bridge, the Bank of England, the Tower, the Mansion House, the Temple, Westminster, and the various churches. Having thus got his bearings he settled down to intensive touring, delighted with everything he saw except the people whose condescension he resented. General Patrick Collins of Boston, a friend, and then consul-general to London, was attentive, and he had a letter to T. P. (Tay Pay) O’Connor, the famous member of the Irish parliamentary party, who pointed out the lions of English public life in the House of Commons. He spent some time in the courts, visited points of historic interest, and attended services in St. Pauls, which he found “bewildering.” “The music of the great double organ and all the hundred voices of the choir, reverberating throughout the arches and the domes, was beautiful, but awe inspiring.”
At the Morley Hotel he met Judge Alton B. Parker, a prominent member of the New York bar, destined to be his party’s nominee for the presidency nine years later, and discovering many mutual interests and friendships, an attachment was formed which existed to the day of Kern’s death. The two lawyers tramped the tourist’s path together and had many a chat at the Morley.
After little more than a week in London he crossed to Paris, where his personal friend and political co-worker, Samuel E. Morss, editor of The Indianapolis Sentinel, was consul-general, and here he was given every advantage that the official prestige of his friend could bestow. He was delighted with Paris, “the most beautiful city in the world,” and especially with the French people. “The people of all classes are happy,” he wrote his father, “and go in for having a good time. The very poorest classes are bright, cheerful, and clean. I don’t think I saw a sad face in France. They are quite prosperous and show great evidence of thrift.” Morss turned his office over to his subordinates and devoted his entire time to entertaining the man from home, and it is not improbable that not a little Hoosier politics was discussed between the two.
While it was his intention to visit Ireland, his experience in channel crossing on his return to England was so disheartening that he abandoned his original plan of visiting Dublin and the Killarney lakes. On learning that the weather at the time was abominable in Scotland he decided to spend the remainder of his time in England and see some of the country outside London. “One of the most interesting trips I have made,” he wrote Mrs. Engel, “was to the Shakespeare country. I went from London to Harrow, then to Rugby, made famous by Tom Hughes’ great book, then to Coventry, then to Lemington, a great watering place, thence by coach along the banks of the Avon to Stratford-on-Avon, where Shakespeare was born and is buried. This trip—thirteen miles—was through the most beautiful country I have ever seen. Stratford is a little city of 8,000, and one sees and hears nothing but Shakespeare. The house in which he was born, and the cottage where Ann Hathaway lived and in which he courted and married her are very old, but are preserved by trustees. The house in which he was born is filled with Shakespearian relics of every description. His tomb and monument are in the village church. The people get their principal living from tourists. There have been over 20,000 visitors there this year, and each one has something to pay every time he turns around.”
On this trip, too, he visited Warwick Castle, and later on Windsor Castle. Like a true Democrat he did not fail to “drive out three miles to the fields of Runnymede, where the English barons compelled King John to sign the Magna Charta;” and the sentimental side of his nature impelled him to make a journey of reverence to the tomb of Gray, the poet, and the church whose curfew “tolls the knell of parting day.” Contrary to the spirit of the average tourist, he took a deep interest in English farms and farming and in a letter to his sister, who lived upon a farm, he observed: “The farming here is splendid. Every foot of ground is made to produce and produce well. There is no poor farming here, and no poor crops this year. The wheat is now being harvested. They raise no corn here—but produce an article called ‘horse beans’—something similar to our peas, which the horses thrive on. The horses are splendid beasts. Those used for draft purposes look nearly as large as elephants, and their driving horses are very fine. It is a great mutton-eating nation, and sheep are raised by the thousand—you see them everywhere.”
By the latter part of August he admits that he has “had his fill of sightseeing and anxious to get back home and to work.” His health was greatly benefited by the change when he reached New York in the first week of September.