December 26th.—On Christmas eve and yesterday, there were little branches of mistletoe hanging in several parts of the house, in the kitchen, the entries, the parlor, and the smoking-room,—suspended from the gas-fittings. The maids of the house did their utmost to entrap the gentlemen boarders, old and young; under the privileged places, and there to kiss them, after which they were expected to pay a shilling. It is very queer, being customarily so respectful, that they should assume this license now, absolutely trying to pull the gentlemen into the kitchen by main force, and kissing the harder and more abundantly the more they were resisted. A little rosy-checked Scotch lass—at other times very modest —was the most active in this business. I doubt whether any gentleman but myself escaped. I heard old Mr. S——— parleying with the maids last evening, and pleading his age; but he seems to have met with no mercy, for there was a sound of prodigious smacking immediately afterwards. J——- was assaulted, and fought, most vigorously; but was outrageously kissed,—receiving some scratches, moreover, in the conflict. The mistletoe has white, wax-looking berries, and dull green leaves, with a parasitical stem.
Early in the morning of Christmas day, long before daylight, I heard music in the street, and a woman's voice, powerful and melodious, singing a Christmas hymn. Before bedtime I presume one half of England, at a moderate calculation, was the worse for liquor.
The market-houses, at this season, show the national taste for heavy feeding,—carcasses of prize oxen, immensely fat, and bulky; fat sheep, with their woolly heads and tails still on, and stars and other devices ingeniously wrought on the quarters; fat pigs, adorned with flowers, like corpses of virgins; hares, wild-fowl, geese, ducks, turkeys; and green boughs and banners suspended about the stalls,—and a great deal of dirt and griminess on the stone floor of the market-house, and on the persons of the crowd.
There are some Englishmen whom I like,—one or two for whom I might say I have an affection; but still there is not the same union between us as if they were Americans. A cold, thin medium intervenes betwixt our most intimate approaches. It puts me in mind of Alnaschar and his princess, with the cold steel blade of his scimitar between them. Perhaps if I were at home I might feel differently; but in a foreign land I can never forget the distinction between English and American.
January 1st, 1856.—Last night, at Mrs. Blodgett's, we sat up till twelve o'clock to open the front door, and let the New Year in. After the coming guest was fairly in the house, the back door was to be opened, to let the Old Year out; but I was tired, and did not wait for the latter ceremony. When the New Year made its entrance, there was a general shaking of hands, and one of the shipmasters said that it was customary to kiss the ladies all round; but to my great satisfaction, we did not proceed to such extremity. There was singing in the streets, and many voices of people passing, and when twelve had struck, all the bells of the town, I believe, rang out together. I went up stairs, sad and lonely, and, stepping into J——-'s little room, wished him a Happy New Year, as he slept, and many of them.
To a cool observer, a country does not show to best advantage during a time of war. All its self-conceit is doubly visible, and, indeed, is sedulously kept uppermost by direct appeals to it. The country must be humbugged, in order to keep its courage up.
Sentiment seems to me more abundant in middle-aged ladies in England than in the United States. I don't know how it may be with young ladies.
The shipmasters bear testimony to the singular delicacy of common sailors in their behavior in the presence of women; and they say that this good trait is still strongly observable even in the present race of seamen, greatly deteriorated as it is. On shipboard, there is never an indecorous word or unseemly act said or done by sailors when a woman can be cognizant of it; and their deportment in this respect differs greatly from that of landsmen of similar position in society. This is remarkable, considering that a sailor's female acquaintances are usually and exclusively of the worst kind, and that his intercourse with them has no relation whatever to morality or decency. For this very reason, I suppose, he regards a modest woman as a creature divine and to be reverenced.
January 16th.—-I have suffered wofully from low spirits for some time past; and this has not often been the case since I grew to be a man, even in the least auspicious periods of my life. My desolate bachelor condition, I suppose, is the cause. Really, I have no pleasure in anything, and I feel my tread to be heavier, and my physical movement more sluggish, than in happier times. A weight is always upon me. My appetite is not good. I sleep ill, lying awake till late at night, to think sad thoughts and to imagine sombre things, and awaking before light with the same thoughts and fancies still in my mind. My heart sinks always as I ascend the stairs to my office, from a dim augury of ill news from Lisbon that I may perhaps hear,—of black-sealed letters, or some such horrors. Nothing gives me any joy. I have learned what the bitterness of exile is, in these days; and I never should have known it but for the absence of "Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,"—I can perfectly appreciate that line of Goldsmith; for it well expresses my own torpid, unenterprising, joyless state of mind and heart. I am like an uprooted plant, wilted and drooping. Life seems so purposeless as not to be worth the trouble of carrying it on any further.
I was at a dinner, the other evening, at Mr. B———'s, where the entertainment was almost entirely American,—New York oysters, raw, stewed, and fried; soup of American partridges, particularly good; also terrapin soup, rich, but not to my taste; American pork and beans, baked in Yankee style; a noble American turkey, weighing thirty-one pounds; and, at the other end of the table, an American round of beef, which the Englishmen present allowed to be delicious, and worth a guinea an ounce. I forget the other American dishes, if there were any more,—O yes! canvas-back ducks, coming on with the sweets, in the usual English fashion. We ought to have had Catawba wine; but this was wanting, although there was plenty of hock, champagne, sherry, madeira, port, and claret. Our host is a very jolly man, and the dinner was a merrier and noisier one than any English dinner within my experience.