Josiah and I wandered round there for hours, and should most probable got lost and mebby been gropin’ round there to-day if it hadn’t been for the guide.
I wuz dretful interested in London Bridge. The present structure cost seven million, so they say, and I wouldn’t have built it for a cent less. I thought as I stood there of what had took place on that spot since Sir William Wallace’s day and how his benign head (most every bump on it good ones) wuz put up there a mark for the insultin’ jeers of the populace, and it made me feel bad and sorry for Helen, his last wife, she that wuz Helen Mar. But Sir Thomas More’s head wuz nailed up in the same place, and the Bishop of Rochester’s and lots of others.
It wuzn’t right.
And then I thought of the gay seens that had took place there, the tournaments and triumphal marches and grand processions and sad ones, and the great multitude who have passed over it, prince and beggar, velvet and rags, a countless throng constantly passing, constantly changing, no more to be counted than the drops of water in the silent stream below, all the time, all the time sweepin’ on to the sea. I had sights of emotions.
And all the while I wuz in London, in the gay streets and quiet ones, in palace or park, the shade of Dickens walked by my side or a little in advance, seemin’ to pint out to me the places where he had walked when he see visions and dreamed dreams. And I almost expected to meet Little Nell leading her grandpa, or David Copperfield, or Peggoty searching for Em’ly, or some of our Mutual Friends.
And so with Thackeray. As I looked up at the gloomy houses on some quiet street I almost expected to see the funeral hatchment of old Sir Pitt Crawley’s wife and Becky Sharp’s little pale face peering out, or sweet Ethel Newcomb and her cousin Clive, and the dear old General and Henry Esmond, and etc., etc. And so with Alfred Tennyson. In some beautiful place of drooping foliage and placid water I almost felt that I should see the mystic barge drawin’ nigh and I too should float off into some Lotus land. And so with all the other beloved poets and authors who seem nigher to us than our next door neighbors in the flesh.
Dorothy havin’ never been there, felt that she must see Shakespeare’s home, which is a journey of only three hours by rail, so we made a visit there one day, passing through some of England’s most beautiful seenery on our way, grand old parks with stately houses rising up in their midst, gray stun churches in charming little villages, thatched-roof cottages, picturesque water-mills; it wuz all a lovely picture of rural England.
It being a little too long a journey for one day, we stayed all night at Shakespeare’s Inn, where the great poet went 442 daily for his glass of stimulant––so they say. But I am glad I don’t believe everything that I hear.
Arvilly mourned to think that she couldn’t have sold him America’s twin crimes: “Intemperance and Greed”; but I kinder changed the subject. As much store as I set by Arvilly’s cast-iron principles, somehow I couldn’t bear the thought of having Shakespeare canvassed.