Good Mr. Vice-Chancellor,
Your affectionate servant,
CLARENDON.
CALAIS, this 7-17 Dec., 1667.
In 1871 I went abroad alone. I spent the whole time in England, except for a brief visit to Scotland. My purpose in going away was to get a vacation. I meant to do some studying in the British Museum, especially to make a thorough study of the conditions and economic principles affecting the strife between capital and labor, which then threatened both this country and England. I got a collection of the authorities and the references. But I did not find that I got a great deal of light from anything that had been written or said so far. I made a few very agreeable acquaintances. I had a letter to Thomas Hughes, and visited at his house. I found George W. Smalley, who had been a pupil in my office, established in a delightful house near London. He seemed to be on terms of intimacy with the famous Englishmen who were the leaders of both political parties, and with many eminent men of letters. I spent a delightful evening with Mr. Hughes at a club which I think was called the European Club, or something like that, where the members smoked clay pipes and drank beer. There seemed to be no other provision for the refreshment of the body or soul. But the conversation was very pleasant. The members sat together about a table, and the conversation was quite general and very bright. The talk turned, during the evening, on Scotsmen. The Englishmen present seemed to have something left of the old prejudice about Scotland with which Dr. Johnson was possessed. They imputed to the modern Scotsmen the same thrifty habit and capacity for looking after himself that prevailed a hundred years before, when Dr. Johnson and John Wilkes, who quarrelled about everything else, became reconciled when they united in abuse of their Northern neighbors. Sir Frederick Pollock cited a marginal note from the report of some old criminal case, to the following effect: "Possession of property in Scotland evidence of stealing in England."
I was guilty of one piece of stupid folly. Mr. Hughes kindly proposed to take me to see Carlyle. This was not very long after our war, when our people were full of indignation at Carlyle's bitter and contemptuous speech about us, especially his "American Iliad in a Nutshell." I was a little doubtful about what sort of a reception I should get, and declined the invitation. I have bitterly regretted this ever since. My brother visited Carlyle about 1846, bearing with him a letter from Emerson. Carlyle was very civil to him, and liked him very much, as appears by a letter from him to Mr. Emerson.
During the visit I heard a great debate between Gladstone and Disraeli. A brief account of it will be found in the chapter on "Some Famous Orators I have Heard."
A friend in Worcester gave me a letter to Mr. Wornum, the Director of the National Gallery, with whom he had been a fellow-pupil at Kensington. Mr. Wornum received me with great cordiality. He asked me to come to the Gallery the next day, when it would be closed to the public. He said he would be glad to show it to me then, when we would be free of interruption. He was the author of what I understand to be an excellent history of painting, and was regarded as the most competent judge in Europe of the value and merit of paintings. I suppose Parliament would at any time, on his sole recommendation, have given ten or twenty or perhaps fifty thousand guineas for a masterpiece. I shall never forget the delight of that day. He told me the history of the great paintings in the National Gallery, some of which had belonged to monarchs, popes, noblemen or famous merchants of almost all the countries in Europe. He said that while there were many larger galleries, the National Gallery was the best in the world as affording the best and most characteristic examples of every school of painting. I cannot remember much that was said in that long day, interrupted only by a pleasant lunch together. But it was a day full of romance. It was as if I had had in my hand the crown jewels of every potentate in the world, and somebody had told me the history of each gem. For this picture Francis the First, or Charles V., or Henry VIII. had been bidders. This had belonged to Lorenzo de Medici, or Pope Leo X. This had come from the famous collection of Charles I., scattered through Europe on his death; and this had belonged to some nobleman whose name was greater than that of monarchs.
Mr. Wornum spoke of his treasures with an enthusiasm which no worshipper at the throne of any Saint or Divinity could surpass. That day was among the few chiefest delights of my life.
CHAPTER XX VISITS TO ENGLAND 1892
My next visit to England was in the spring of 1892. The winter before, I had a severe attack of iritis, which left my eyes in a very demoralized condition. I did not find much relief in this country, not, I suppose, because of want of skill in our ophthalmic surgeons, but because of the impossibility of getting any rest anywhere where I could be reached by telephone or telegraph. To a person who can bear an ordinary voyage there is no retreat like an ocean steamer. Telephone, telegraph, daily paper; call or visit of friend, client, or constituent; daily mail—sometimes itself, to a busy public man, enough for a hard day's work—all these are forgotten. You spend your ten days in an infinite quiet like that of Heaven. You sit in your deck-chair with the soft sea breeze on your forehead, as the mighty ocean cradle rocks you, and see the lace of an exquisite beauty that no Tyrian weaver ever devised, breaking over the blue or purple waves, with their tints that no Tyrian dye ever matched. Ah! Marconi, Marconi, could not you let us alone, and leave the tired brain of humanity one spot where this "hodge-podge of business and trouble and care" could not follow us and find us out?
On this journey I visited England, France and Switzerland. It so happened that I had had a good deal to do with the appointment of our Ministers to these three countries. Colonel John D. Washburn, a very accomplished and delightful gentleman, now dead, had been a pupil of mine as a law student. He lived in Worcester and had been a very eminent member of the Massachusetts Legislature. I think he would have been Governor of the State and had a very brilliant career but for a delicacy of organization which made him break down in health when under any severe strain of responsibility, especially such as involved antagonism and conflict. He was of a very friendly, gentle disposition, and disliked to be attacked or to attack other men. I told Mr. Blaine, the Secretary of State when Mr. Harrison's Administration came in, that I had but one favor to ask of it; that was, that he should send Washburn as Minister to Switzerland. I had two or three very pleasant days with him at Berne. But he had sent his family away and was preparing to resign his place. So I had not much opportunity of seeing Switzerland under his guidance.
Thomas Jefferson Coolidge, then Minister to France, had also been appointed on my very earnest recommendation. He was a great-grandson of Thomas Jefferson, a very able business man, highly esteemed throughout the country. His guidance was implicitly followed by many people in important business transactions. He had had the charge of the financial affairs of some large manufacturing corporations, and was understood to have extricated the Northern Pacific Railroad out of some serious difficulties, into which it fell again after he left its control. He had been a Democrat. But he had seen the importance of the protective policy to American interests, as would naturally be expected of a descendant of that high protectionist, Thomas Jefferson. He had no sympathies with any measures that would debase or unsettle the currency, and set his face and gave his powerful influence against all forms of fiat or irredeemable paper money, and the kindred folly of the free coinage of silver by this country alone, without the concurrence of the commercial nations of the world.