The spring of 1877 saw the great adventure of our European journey begun. My mother and I sailed from Boston on the Cunard steamer Parthia, Captain Donald MacKaye commanding. As we steamed down the harbor, I looked back at the window where I had so often watched the passing ships; my turn had come at last! I too was “going to Europe”! We made friends with our captain, a bluff, hearty Scot, who gave us tea in his cabin, showed us portraits of “the wife and bairns”, and taught me to take the sun. There were advantages in those days of long crossings and small steamers, unknown on board “ocean greyhounds.” The supremacy of the Cunarders was unquestioned, the deadening touch of German efficiency was not yet upon ocean travel. The British officers “took it easily”, found time to make the passengers feel at home. Beside the fleeting steamer friendships, I was aware of another companionship: in the glory of sunny days, the mystery of moonlight nights, the chill of icebergs off the Banks, the shade of Columbus bore me company. In other transatlantic journeyings there have come moments when the great Admiral seemed near, but never again as on that first journey.
“How could you do it?” I cried out to him, when the ship rolled horribly.
The answer was always the same, whether beaten out by the screw or whispered by the wind:
“Because I was not afraid!”
On the Liverpool dock a tiny donkey in a costermonger’s cart and a burly policeman walked right out of Punch to meet us! I knew the whole series by heart, and to-day can imagine no better preparation for a visit to England.
We spent a few days in Liverpool, made a stop in Chester, and then pushed on to London, where we found rooms in Bedford Place. Our lodgings were gay with chintz hangings and window boxes of scarlet geraniums. A sprite of a maid in white cap and apron served us; a friendly ogress, the lodging-house keeper, supplied breakfast—bacon and eggs, marmalade, tea and toast—for eighteen pence. There was a lacquered box, with a canister for tea and a bowl for sugar, whose key the ogress formally handed my mother.
London in May, when the white thorn is in bloom and even the smoky city squares are lovely with the spring, when life is at the flood and every hour holds more delights than the keenest pleasure-seeker can grasp, was then the social center of the world. The year 1877 was the fortieth of Queen Victoria’s reign: to celebrate the anniversary she was proclaimed Empress of India, an honor people said she owed to Disraeli, who had lately accepted the title of Earl of Beaconsfield. The Queen was not in London, the Prince and Princess of Wales representing her at all the great functions.
We were soon deep in social engagements. My mother’s old friends and the new ones made on my account were very hospitable; our days passed in a bewildering round of dinners, dances, garden parties, races of boats, of horses; matches of cricket, of football; “shows” of pictures, flowers, vegetables, dogs!
Henry James was often my mother’s escort; I rather avoided talking with him, fancying that he was “studying” me for copy; later in life we became fast friends.
Charles Stewart Parnell was one of our earliest visitors. My mother being out when he first called, I received the visit. He seemed at a loss to begin the conversation, and sat looking at me with a puzzled expression. It finally came out that he was under the impression he was talking with Mrs. Howe. He was tall, slender, distinguished, with blue eyes and sandy hair. He was full of nervous “drive”, with something chivalric in his make-up which should have saved him from the political persecution that shortened his life. He took us to the House of Commons to hear Mr. Gladstone. I remember well the great Commoner’s eloquence, the sort of insistent magnetism he exerted over his hearers. His followers were loyal as schoolboys to their leader. Lord Rosebery, at that time Gladstone’s secretary, always spoke of him as of some superior being. Sir Stafford Northcote had something to say to the Commons that day about the strength of the Russian fleet and its close proximity to New York and San Francisco.