The Englishwoman in America

I >> Isabella Lucy Bird >> The Englishwoman in America

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We emerged from the cars upon the side of the Hudson river, in a sea of
mud, where, had not my friend offered me his arm, as Americans of every
class invariably do to an "unprotected female" in a crowd, I should have
been borne down and crushed by the shoals of knapsack-carrying pedestrians
and truck-pushing porters who swarmed down upon the dirty wharf. The
transit across occupied fully ten minutes, in consequence of the numerous
times the engine had to be reversed, to avoid running over the small craft
which infest this stream. My volunteer escort took me through a crowd
through which I could not have found my way alone, and put me into the
cars which started from the side of a street in Albany, requesting the
conductor, whose countenance instantly prepossessed me in his favour, to
pay me every attention on the route. He remained with me until the cars
started, and told me that when he saw ladies travelling alone he always
made a point of assisting them. I shook hands with him at parting, feeling
real regret at losing so kind and intelligent a companion. This man was a
working engineer.

Some time afterwards, while travelling for two successive days and nights
in an unsettled district in the west, on the second night, fairly overcome
with fatigue, and unable, from the crowded state of the car, to rest my
feet on the seat in front, I tried unsuccessfully to make a pillow for my
head by rolling up my cloak, which attempts being perceived by a working
mechanic, he accosted me thus: "Stranger, I guess you're almost used up?
Maybe you'd be more comfortable if you could rest your head." Without
further parley he spoke to his companion, a man in a similar grade in
society; they both gave up their seats, and rolled a coat round the arm of
the chair, which formed a very comfortable sofa; and these two men stood
for an hour and a half, to give me the advantage of it, apparently without
any idea that they were performing a deed of kindness. I met continually
with these acts of hearty unostentatious good nature. I mention these in
justice to the lower classes of the United States, whose rugged exteriors
and uncouth vernacular render them peculiarly liable to be misunderstood.

The conductor quite verified the good opinion which I had formed of him.
He turned a chair into a sofa, and lent me a buffalo robe (for, hot though
the day had been, the night was intensely cold), and several times brought
me a cup of tea. We were talking on the peculiarities and amount of the
breakage power on the American lines as compared with ours, and the
interest of the subject made him forget to signal the engine-driver to
stop at a station. The conversation concluded, he looked out of the
window. "Dear me," he said, "we ought to have stopped three miles back;
likely there was no one to get out!"

At midnight I awoke shivering with cold, having taken nothing for twelve
hours; but at two we stopped at something called by courtesy a station,
and the announcement was made, "Cars stop three minutes for refreshments."
I got out; it was pitch dark; but I, with a young lady, followed a lantern
into a frame-shed floored by the bare earth. Visions of Swindon and
Wolverton rose before me, as I saw a long table supported on rude
trestles, bearing several cups of steaming tea, while a dirty boy was
opening and frizzling oysters by a wood fire on the floor. I swallowed a
cup of scalding tea; some oysters were put upon my plate; "Six cents" was
shouted by a nasal voice in my ear, and, while hunting for the required
sum, "All aboard" warned me to be quick; and, jumping into the cars just
as they were in motion, I left my untasted supper on my plate. After "Show
your tickets," frequently accompanied by a shake, had roused me several
times from a sound sleep, we arrived at Rochester, an important town on
the Gennessee Falls, surrounded by extensive clearings, then covered with
hoar frost.

Here we were told to get out, as there were twenty minutes for breakfast.
But whither should we go when we had got out? We were at the junction of
several streets, and five engines, with cars attached, were snorting and
moving about. After we had run the gauntlet of all these, I found men
ringing bells, and negroes rushing about, tumbling over each other,
striking gongs, and all shouting "The cheapest house in all the world--
house for all nations--a splenderiferous breakfast for 20 cents!" and the
like. At length, seeing an unassuming placard, "Hot breakfast, 25 cents,"
I ventured in, but an infusion of mint was served instead of the China
leaf; and I should be afraid to pronounce upon the antecedents of the
steaks. The next place of importance we reached was Buffalo, a large
thriving town on the south shore of Lake Erie. There had been an election
for Congress at some neighbouring place the day before, and my _vis-a-
vis_, the editor of a Buffalo paper, was arguing vociferously with a man
on my right.

At length he began to talk to me very vivaciously on politics, and
concluded by asking me what I thought of the late elections. Wishing to
put an end to the conversation, which had become tedious, I replied that I
was from England. "English! you surprise me!" he said; "you've not the
_English accent_ at all." "What do you think of our government?" was his
next question. "Considering that you started free, and had to form your
institutions in an enlightened age, that you had the estimable parts of
our constitution to copy from, while its faults were before you to serve
as beacons, I think your constitution ought to be nearer perfection than
it is." "I think our constitution is as near perfection as anything human
can be; we are the most free, enlightened, and progressive people under
the sun," he answered, rather hotly; but in a few minutes resuming the
conversation with his former companion, I overheard him say, "I think I
shall give up politics altogether; _I don't believe we have a single
public man who is not corrupt_." "A melancholy result of a perfect
constitution, and a humiliating confession for an American," I observed.

The conversations in the cars are well worth a traveller's attention. They
are very frequently on politics, but often one hears stories such as the
world has become familiarised with from the early pages of Barnum's
Autobiography, abounding in racy anecdote, broad humour, and cunning
imposition. At Erie we changed cars, and I saw numerous emigrants sitting
on large blue boxes, looking disconsolately about them; the Irish
physiognomy being the most predominant. They are generally so dirty that
they travel by themselves in a partially lighted van, called the
Emigrants' car, for a most trifling payment. I once got into one by
mistake, and was almost sickened by the smell of tobacco, spirits, dirty
fustian, and old leather, which assailed my olfactory organs. Leaving
Erie, beyond which the lake of the same name stretched to the distant
horizon, blue and calm like a tideless sea, we entered the huge forests on
the south shore, through which we passed, I suppose, for more than 100
miles.

My next neighbour was a stalwart, bronzed Kentucky farmer, in a palm-leaf
hat, who, strange to say, never made any demonstrations with his bowie-
knife, and, having been a lumberer in these forests, pointed out all the
objects of interest.

The monotonous sublimity of these primeval woods far exceeded my
preconceived ideas. We were locked in among gigantic trees of all
descriptions, their huge stems frequently rising without a branch for a
hundred feet; then breaking into a crown of the most luxuriant foliage.
There were walnut, hickory, elm, maple, beech, oak, pine, and hemlock
trees, with many others which I did not know, and the only undergrowth, a
tropical-looking plant, with huge leaves, and berries like bunches of
purple grapes. Though it was the noon of an unclouded sun, all was dark,
and still, and lonely; no birds twittered from the branches; no animals
enlivened the gloomy shades; no trace of man or of his works was there,
except the two iron rails on which we flew along, unfenced from the
forest, and those trembling electric wires, which will only cease to speak
with the extinction of man himself.

Very occasionally we would come upon a log shanty, that most picturesque
of human habitations; the walls formed of large logs, with the interstices
filled up with clay, and the roof of rudely sawn boards, projecting one or
two feet, and kept in their places by logs placed upon them. Windows and
doors there were none, but, where a door was _not_, I generally saw four
or five shoeless, ragged urchins, whose light tangled hair and general
aspect were sufficient to denote their nationality. Sometimes these cabins
would be surrounded by a little patch of cleared land, prolific in Indian
corn and pumpkins; the brilliant orange of the latter contrasting with the
charred stumps among which they grew; but more frequently the lumberer
supported himself solely by his axe. These dwellings are suggestive, for
they are erected by the pioneers of civilization; and if the future
progress of America be equal in rapidity to its past, in another fifty
years the forests will have been converted into lumber and firewood--rich
and populous cities will have replaced the cabins and shanties--and the
children of the urchins who gazed vacantly upon the cars will have
asserted their claims to a voice in the councils of the nation.

The rays of the sun never penetrate the forest, and evening was deepening
the gloom of the artificial twilight, when gradually we became enveloped
in a glare, redder, fiercer, than that of moonlight; and looking a head I
saw the forest on fire, and that we were rushing into the flames. "Close
the windows, there's a fire a-head," said the conductor; and after obeying
this _commonplace_ direction, many of the passengers returned to the
slumbers which had been so unseasonably disturbed. On, on we rushed--the
flames encircled us round--we were enveloped in clouds of stifling smoke--
crack, crash went the trees--a blazing stem fell across the line--the
fender of the engine pushed it aside--the flames hissed like tongues of
fire, and then, leaping like serpents, would rush up to the top of the
largest tree, and it would blaze like a pine-knot, There seemed no egress;
but in a few minutes the raging, roaring conflagration was left behind. A
forest on fire from a distance looks very much like 'Punch's' picture of a
naval review; a near view is the height of sublimity.

The dangers of the cars, to my inexperience, seemed by no means over with
the escape from being roasted alive. A few miles from Cleveland they
rushed down a steep incline, apparently into Lake Erie; but in _reality_
upon a platform supported on piles, so narrow that the edges of the cars
hung over it, so that I saw nothing but water. A gale was blowing, and
drove the surf upon the platform, and the spray against the windows,
giving such a feeling of insecurity, that for a moment I wished myself in
one of our "'coon sentry-boxes." The cars were very full after leaving
Cleveland, but I contrived to sleep soundly till awakened by the intense
cold which attends dawn.

It was a glorious morning. The rosy light streamed over hills covered with
gigantic trees, and park-like glades watered by the fair Ohio. There were
bowers of myrtle, and vineyards ready for the vintage, and the rich
aromatic scent wafted from groves of blossoming magnolias told me that we
were in a different clime, and had reached the sunny south. And before us,
placed within a perfect amphitheatre of swelling hills, reposed a huge
city, whose countless spires reflected the beams of the morning sun--the
creation of yesterday--Cincinnati, the "_Queen City of the West_." I drove
straight to Burnet House, almost the finest edifice in the town, and after
travelling a thousand miles in forty-two hours, without either water or a
hair-brush, it was the greatest possible luxury to be able to remove the
accumulations of soot, dust, and cinders of two days and nights. I spent
three days at Clifton, a romantic village three miles from Cincinnati, at
the hospitable house of Dr. Millvaine, the Bishop of Ohio; but it would be
an ill return for the kindness which I there experienced to give details
of my visit, or gratify curiosity by describing family life in one of the
"homes of the New World."

CHAPTER VII.

The Queen City continued--Its beauties--Its inhabitants human and equine--
An American church--Where chairs and bedsteads come from--Pigs and pork--A
peep into Kentucky--Popular opinions respecting slavery--The curse of
America.

The important towns in the United States bear designations of a more
poetical nature than might be expected from so commercial a people. New
York is the Empire City--Philadelphia the City of Brotherly Love--
Cleveland the Forest City--Chicago the Prairie City--and Cincinnati the
Queen City of the West. These names are no less appropriate than poetical,
and none more so than that applied to Cincinnati. The view from any of the
terraced heights round the town is magnificent. I saw it first bathed in
the mellow light of a declining sun. Hill beyond hill, clothed with the
rich verdure of an almost tropical clime, slopes of vineyards just ready
for the wine-press, [Footnote: Grapes are grown in such profusion in the
Southern and Western States, that I have seen damaged bunches thrown to
the pigs. Americans find it difficult to understand how highly this fruit
is prized in England. An American lady, when dining at Apsley House,
observed that the Duke of Wellington was cutting up a cluster of grapes
into small bunches, and she wondered that this illustrious man should give
himself such unnecessary trouble. When the servant handed round the plate
containing these, she took them all, and could not account for the amused
and even censuring looks of some of the other guests, till she heard that
it was expected that she should have helped herself to one bunch only of
the hothouse treasure.] magnolias with their fragrant blossoms, and that
queen of trees the beautiful ilanthus, the "tree of heaven" as it is
called; and everywhere foliage so luxuriant that it looked as if autumn
and decay could never come. And in a hollow near us lay the huge city, so
full of life, its busy hum rising to the height where I stood; and 200
feet below, the beautiful cemetery, where its dead await the morning of
the resurrection. Yet, while contrasting the trees and atmosphere here
with the comparatively stunted, puny foliage of England, and the chilly
skies of a northern clime, I thought with Cowper respecting my own dear,
but far distant land--

"England, with all thy faults I love thee still--My country!--
I would not yet exchange thy sullen skies,
And fields without a flower, for warmer France
With all her vines, nor for Ausonia's groves,
Her golden fruitage, or her myrtle bowers."

The change in the climate was great from that in which I had shivered a
week before, with a thermometer at 33 in the sun; yet I did not find it
oppressive here at 105 in the shade, owing to the excessive dryness of
the air. The sallow complexions of the New Englanders were also exchanged
for the fat ruddy faces of the people of Ohio, the "_Buckeyes_," as their
neighbours designate them. The town of Cincinnati, situated on the
navigable stream of the Ohio, 1600 miles from the sea, is one of the most
remarkable monuments of the progress of the West. A second Glasgow in
appearance, the houses built substantially of red brick, six stories high
--huge sign-boards outside each floor denoting the occupation of its owner
or lessee--heavily-laden drays rumbling along the streets--quays at which
steamboats of fairy architecture are ever lying--massive warehouses and
rich stores--the side walks a perfect throng of foot-passengers--the
roadways crowded with light carriages, horsemen with palmetto hats and
high-peaked saddles, galloping about on the magnificent horses of
Kentucky--an air of life, wealth, hustle, and progress--are some of the
characteristics of a city which stands upon ground where sixty years ago
an unarmed white man would have been tomahawked as he stood. The human
aspect is also curious. Palmetto hats, light blouses, and white trowsers
form the prevailing costume, even of the clergy, while Germans smoke
chibouks and luxuriate in their shirt-sleeves--southerners, with the
enervated look arising from residence in a hot climate, lounge about the
streets--dark-browed Mexicans, in _sombreras_ and high slashed boots, dash
about on small active horses with Mamelouk bits--rovers and adventurers
from California and the Far West, with massive rings in their ears,
swagger about in a manner which shows their country and calling, and
females richly dressed are seen driving and walking about, from the fair-
complexioned European to the negress or mulatto. The windows of the stores
are arranged with articles of gaudy attire and heavy jewellery, suited to
the barbaric taste of many of their customers; but inside I was surprised
to find the richest and most elegant manufactures of Paris and London. A
bookseller's store, an aggregate of two or three of our largest, indicated
that the culture of the mind was not neglected.

The number of carriages, invariably drawn by two horses, astonished me.
They were the "_red horses_" of Kentucky and the jet black of Ohio,
splendid, proud looking animals, looking as if they could never tire or
die. Except the "trotting baskets" and light waggons, principally driven
by "swells" or "Young Americans," all the vehicles were covered, to
preserve their inmates from the intense heat of the sun. In the evening
hundreds, if not thousands, of carriages are to be seen in the cemetery
and along the roads, some of the German ladies driving in low dresses and
short sleeves. As everybody who has one hundred yards to go drives or
rides, rings are fastened to all the side walks in the town to tether the
horses to. Many of the streets are planted with the ilanthus-tree, and
frequently one comes upon churches of tasteful architecture, with fretted
spires pointing to heaven.

I went upon the Ohio, lessened by long drought into a narrow stream, in a
most commodious high-pressure steamboat, and deemed myself happy in
returning uninjured; for beautiful and fairy-like as these vessels are,
between their own explosive qualities and the "snags and sawyers" of the
rivers, their average existence is only five years!

Cincinnati in 1800 was a wooden village of 750 inhabitants; it is now a
substantially-built brick town, containing 200,000 people, and thousands
of fresh settlers are added every year. There are nearly 50,000 Germans,
and I believe 40,000 Irish, who distinctly keep up their national
characteristics. The Germans almost monopolise the handicraft trades,
where they find a fruitful field for their genius and industry; the Irish
are here, as everywhere, hewers of wood and drawers of water; they can do
nothing but dig, and seldom rise in the social scale; the Germans, as at
home, are a thinking, sceptical, theorising people: in politics,
Socialists--in religion, Atheists. The Irish are still the willing and
ignorant tools of an ambitious and despotic priesthood. And in a land
where no man is called to account for his principles, unless they proceed
to physical development, these errors grow and luxuriate. The Germans, in
that part of the town almost devoted to themselves, have succeeded in
practically abolishing the Sabbath, as they utterly ignore that divine
institution even as a day of rest, keeping their stores open the whole
day. The creeds which they profess are "Socialism" and "Universalism," and
at stated periods they assemble to hear political harangues, and address
invocations to universal deity. Skilled, educated, and intellectual, they
are daily increasing in numbers, wealth, and political importance, and
constitute an influence of which the Americans themselves are afraid.

The Irish are a turbulent class, for ever appealing to physical force,
influencing the elections, and carrying out their "clan feuds" and
"faction fights." The Germans, finding it a land like their own, of corn
and vineyards, have named the streets in their locality in Cincinnati
after their towns in the Old World, to which in idea one is frequently
carried back.

On Sunday, after passing through this continental portion of the town, I
found all was order and decorum in the strictly American part, where the
whole population seemed to attend worship of one form or another. The
church which I attended was the most beautiful place of worship I ever
saw; it had neither the hallowed but comfortless antiquity of our village
churches, nor the glare and crush of our urban temples; it was of light
Norman architecture, and lighted by windows of rich stained glass. The
pews were wide, the backs low, and the doors and mouldings were of
polished oak; the cushions and linings were of crimson damask, and light
fans for _real use_ were hung in each pew. The pulpit and reading-desk,
both of carved oak and of a tulip shape, were placed in front of the
communion-rails, on a spacious platform ascended by three steps--this, the
steps, and the aisles of the church were carpeted with beautiful
Kidderminster carpeting. The singing and chanting were of a very superior
description, being managed, as also a very fine-toned organ, by the young
ladies and gentlemen of the congregation. The ladies were more richly
dressed and in brighter colours than the English, and many of them in
their features and complexions bore evident traces of African and Spanish
blood. The gentlemen universally wore the moustache and beard, and
generally blue or green frock-coats, the collars turned over with velvet.
The responses were repeated without the assistance of a clerk, and the
whole service was conducted with decorum and effect.

The same favourable description may apply generally to the churches of
different denominations in the United States; coldness and discomfort are
not considered as incentives to devotion; and the houses of worship are
ever crowded with regular and decorous worshippers.

Cincinnati is the outpost of manufacturing civilization, though large,
important, but at present unfinished cities are rapidly springing up
several hundred miles farther to the west. It has regular freight steamers
to New Orleans, St. Louis, and other places on the Missouri and
Mississippi; to Wheeling and Pittsburgh, and thence by railway to the
great Atlantic cities, Philadelphia and Baltimore, while it is connected
with the Canadian lakes by railway and canal to Cleveland. Till I
thoroughly understood that Cincinnati is the centre of a circle embracing
the populous towns of the south, and the increasing populations of the
lake countries and the western territories, with their ever-growing demand
for the fruits of manufacturing industry, I could not understand the
utility of the vast establishments for the production of household goods
which arrest the attention of the visitor to the Queen City. There is a
furniture establishment in Baker Street, London, which employs perhaps
eighty hands, and we are rather inclined to boast of it, but we must keep
silence when we hear of a factory as large as a Manchester cotton-mill,
five stones high, where 260 hands are constantly employed in making
chairs, tables, and bedsteads.

At the factory of Mitchell and Rammelsberg common chairs are the principal
manufacture, and are turned out at the rate of 2500 a week, worth from
1_l._ to 5_l._ a dozen. Rocking-chairs, which are only made in perfection
in the States, are fabricated here, also chests of drawers, of which 2000
are made annually. Baby-rocking cribs, in which the brains of the youth of
America are early habituated to perpetual restlessness, are manufactured
here in surprising quantities. The workmen at this factory (most of whom
are native Americans and Germans, the English and Scotch being rejected on
account of their intemperance) earn from 12 to 14 dollars a week. At
another factory 1000 bedsteads, worth from 1_l._ to 5_l._ each, are
completed every week. There are vast boot and shoe factories, which would
have shod our whole Crimean army in a week, at one of which the owner pays
60,000 dollars or 12,000_l._ in wages annually! It consumes 5000 pounds
weight of boot-nails per annum! The manufactories of locks and guns,
tools, and carriages, with countless other appliances of civilized life,
are on a similarly large scale. Their products are to be found among the
sugar plantations of the south, the diggers of California, the settlers in
Oregon, in the infant cities of the far West, the tent of the hunter, and
the shanty of the emigrant; in one word, wherever demand and supply can be
placed in conjunction.

And while the demand is ever increasing as the tide of emigration rolls
westward, so the inventive brains of the Americans are ever discovering
some mechanical means of abridging manual labour, which seldom or ever
meets the demand. The saws, axes, and indeed all cutting tools made at
respectable establishments in the States, are said to be superior to ours.
On going into a hardware store at Hamilton in Upper Canada, I saw some
English spades and axes, and I suppose my face expressed some of the
admiration which my British pride led me to feel; for the owner, taking up
some spades and cutting-tools of Cincinnati manufacture, said, "We can
only sell these; the others are bad workmanship, and won't stand two days'
hard work."

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