Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2

by George Frisbie Hoar

After leaving Paris I spent a few delightful weeks at Innsbruck in Austria, and Reichenhall in Germany, both near the frontier between those two countries. The wonderful scenery and the curious architecture and antiquity of those towns transport one back to the Middle Ages. But I suppose they are too well known now, to our many travellers, to make it worth while to describe them. I went to those places for the health of a lady nearly allied to my household. She was under the care of Baron Liebig, one of the most famous physicians in Germany, the son of the great chemist. I got quite well acquainted with him. He was a very interesting man. He had a peculiar method of dealing with the diseases of the throat and lungs like those under which my sister-in-law suffered. He had several large oval apartments, air-tight, with an inner wall made of porcelain, like that used for an ordinary vase or pitcher. From these he excluded all the air of the atmosphere, and supplied its place with an artificial air made for the purpose. The patients were put in there, remaining an hour and three quarters or two hours each day—I do not know but some of them for a longer time. Then they were directed to take long walks, increasing them in length day by day, a considerable part of the walk being up a steep hill or mountain. I believe his method was of very great value to the patient who was in my company. The Baron thought he could effect a complete cure if she could stay with him several months. But that was impossible.

CHAPTER XXIII VISITS TO ENGLAND 1899

I visited England again in 1899. I did not go to the Continent or Scotland. My wife consulted a very eminent London physician for an infirmity of the heart. He told her to go to the Isle of Wight; remain there a few weeks; then to go to Boscombe; stay a few weeks there; then to Malvern Hills, and thence to a high place in Yorkshire, which, I believe, is nearly, if not quite, the highest inhabited spot in England. This treatment was eminently advantageous. But to comply with the doctor's direction took all the time we had at our command before going home.

We had a charming and delightful time in the Isle of Wight. We stayed at a queer little Inn, known as the "Crab and Lobster," kept by Miss Cass, with the aid of her sister and niece. We made excursions about the island. I saw two graves side by side which had a good deal of romance about them. One was the grave of a woman. The stone said that she had died at the age of one hundred and seven. By its side was the grave of her husband, to whom she had been married at the age of eighteen, and who had died just after the marriage. So she had been a widow eighty-nine years, and then the couple, separated in their early youth, had come together again in the grave.

We found a singular instance of what Americans think so astonishing in England, the want of knowledge by the people of the locality with which they were familiar in life, of persons whose names have a world-wide reputation. In a churchyard at Bonchurch, about a mile from our Inn at Ventnor, is the grave of John Stirling—the friend of Emerson—of whom Carlyle wrote a memoir. Sterling is the author of some beautiful hymns and other poems, including what I think is the most splendid and spirited ballad in English literature, "Alfred the Harper." Yet the sexton who exhibited the church and the churchyard did not seem to know anything about him, and the booksellers near by never had heard of him. The sexton showed, with great pride, the grave of Isaac Williams, author of the "Shadow of the Cross" and some other rather tame religious poetry. He was a devout and good man, and seemed to be a feeble imitator of Keble. I dare say, the sexton first heard of Sterling and saw his grave when we showed it to him.

The scenery about Boscombe and the matchless views of the Channel are a perpetual delight, especially the sight, on a clear day, of the Needles.

We did not find it necessary to obey the doctor's advice to go to Yorkshire. After leaving Boscombe, I spent the rest of my vacation at Malvern Hills, some eight or nine miles north of Worcester, and some twenty miles from Gloucester.

The chief delight of that summer—a delight that dwells freshly in my memory to-day, and which will never be forgotten while my memory endures—was a journey through the Forest of Dean, in a carriage, in company with my friend—alas, that I must say my late friend!—John Bellows, of Gloucester. He was, I suppose, of all men alive, best qualified to be a companion and teacher of such a journey. He has written and published for the American Antiquarian Society an account of our journey— a most delightful essay, which I insert in the appendix. He tells the story much better than I could tell it. My readers will do well to read it, even if they skip some chapters of this book for the purpose. I am proud and happy in this way to associate my name with that of this most admirable gentleman.

I visited Gloucester. I found the houses still standing where my ancestors dwelt, and the old tomb in the Church of St. Mary de Crypt, with the word Hoare cut in the pavement in the chancel.

My ancestors were Puritans. They took an active part in the resistance to Charles I., and many traces are preserved of their activity in the civic annals of Gloucester. Two of my name were Sheriffs in those days. There were two other Sheriffs whose wives were sisters of my direct ancestors. Charles Hoar, my direct ancestor, married one of the Clifford family, the descendant of the brother of Fair Rosamond, and their arms are found on a tomb, and also on a window in the old church at Frampton-on-Severn, eight miles from Gloucester, where the Cliffords are buried. The spot where fair Rosamond was born, still, I believe, belongs to the Clifford family.