Carlisle, George William Frederick Howard, Earl of, Letters, 1841-1842

My dearest M. Here is an experiment I make on the 10th day of our voyage to write I had fondly hoped to keep something of a journal which now appears to me a feat only second to those of Jason and Columbus. However this is really the first day upon which this act of writing has appeared the least possible.

We have now come about 1800 miles from Liverpool and want about 700 of Halifax. Many of our passengers are in the habit of crossing regularly twice a year and declare they never had so uncomfortable a passage.

You must understand that this is limited to discomfort, we have not regard upon danger.

Tocqueville is quite a book to chew; I think it most strikingly acute sagacious even eloquent, pushing its theories too far I should think at times; at the same time I doubt if I could have got through it without the impulse of an approaching visit

We have English, Americans, French & Germans, 3 very pretty American young ladies from Boston of whom Harriet will remember are in brown silk bonnet; a savant from Philadelphia too apt to conceive he is in his lecture room, 7 Methodist preachers from Canada, very many dealers in cotton, chiefly settled at Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans, Teas, some them pleasant enough, but goes against me to find any countrymen [a] possessor of even only household slaves

Announced myself for breakfast to fill up time before the country appeared to me like the last pretty parts of Scotland, producing apparently little but granite and firs; the houses are chiefly of wood, notwithstanding the neighbouring granite; the streets very steep on the side of a hill but they are well laid out and rather cheerful.

Met by Viscount Falkand, Governor of Nova Scotia, and his wife. 'It is pleasing to find one's country represented by so comely a pair. He is much pleased with the state of his province..'

It was a relief to hear of Macleod's acquittal, Fox had been writing in considerable apprehension about the result.

Of course the main interest of my expedition belongs to the real American territory but I was very pleasant upon first emerging from the Atlantic to find ourself under the flag of one's country.

The harbour looked most bright and pretty, studded with islands, bare of trees, but generally having some bright shining white building. One felt a little envy for those who were coming to their country, friends, and home. The great flag ship in the harbour, manned with naval ???? gave us rather a touching reception, with the yards manned, and the band playing first God Save the Queen and then Yankee Doodle

We began by going to the top of the state house which gives a very good view of the harbour, town and neighbourhood. He took me into the office of the secretary of state for the state of Massachusetts, who was very obliging, and immediately showed me hanging gramed in the office a manifesto with the manuscript signature of Carlisle and the commissioners

Journey by railroad from Boston to Albany and then Utica, later 'set forth in a coach at four by myself (the only bit of aristocratic travelling I have yet witnessed) to see the Trenton falls... The jolting(?) upon the road was on the rougher scale of democracy but I have learned how to sit an American vehicle on the common roads; when the jolt impends, give a spring forward from your seat & then you go with the carriage.

The falls were picturesque and beautiful, they were never know to have so little water, as I dare say has often been told to tourists. I is a deep ravine with very high rocky banks, dotted chiefly with the white cedar... applaud my docility to your parting injunctions as having seen four falls, I abstained from the 5th when the guide said he did not consider it quite safe... he recited our course by the recital of the mishaps which had occurred; among others Col. Thom's daughter (of Paris) had been dropped into the cascade, when 8 years old.

I was most struck upon entering Syracuse. We had just emerged from a cedar swamp, untroubled by man, & we at once found ourselves in a place which looked like a great bit of Paris planted there with tall white houses, well lighted shops, billiard tables, &c. The mode & hour of travelling assisted the contras, as the newly made rail roads were often carried through unbroken bits of the original forest, & under the full moonlight, the wooden spires, domes, & porticoes of the infant towns look every bit as if they were of the Parian stone.

Found a good hotel & the usual meal which I must coin the expression for as 'the soupatoire". I do not mean as the manner of some is to specify all my meals though they are not unimportant incidents in the travellers day, & to some extent furnish a significant item in national statistics. I must however give one specimen of the unfailing abundance which appears to me characteristic of the country. When I left Albany, I wished to have a mouthful of breakfast before starting at 14 past 6, & I asked for it in the modest way inspired by the consciousness that I might be asking something which was hardly discreet. When I came down, I found set out before me, by myself,... besides tea, bread, toast, & eggs, fish, potatoes, & 4 entrees of meat.

Thine were my thoughts by broad Ontario's side. And the soft ripple of Caynga's tide... ... I cannot keep thinking that there is something very poetical in the present condition of America, not in its specific details, they are the reverse, but in the general tendency. What can be more fresh or stirring than all this life and energy that are welling up in the desert? It has occasionally the sort of effect of taking away one's breath, a mixture of the Iliad & a Harlequin farce. The time is not come for me yet (if it ever should come) to let me feel myself warranted in speculating upon sitant results, upon guarantees for future endurance & stability. All I can now do is to look & marvel at what is going before my eyes.

I have been in the district which has manifested most of this rapid progress the western part of the state of New York, it is the great thoroughfare of the tide of emigration to the far wide west beyond. I wonder whether your ignorance will be as much startled as mine was at ascertaining the size of the state of New York, one of 26. [Re the theatre] I thought the actors rather better than the audience who were mostly boys

[On Niagara Falls] After all I had expected or read, described or seen portrayed of them they did not in the least disappoint or surprise me, but they wholly satisfied me; I felt them to be complete, and that nothing could go beyond then; volume, majesty, might, are the ideas that they convey. The emerald crest, the lens of spray, the rainbowy pictures and panoramas give a correct idea of the ??? and outline, but there they stop, for besides the technical drawback of the continuous mass of white, there is a great simplicity and what I might call absence of incidents in the scenery immediately about; or at least so great a subordination of them to the main great spectacle as altogether to prevent the falls from being in any marked degree picturesque, though they are sublime.

I am only immensely disgusted but not yet indignant. I Stayed for a week with the Wadsworths, Young Miss W. is very handsome but not I thought so pleasing as the daughter Lizzy. My acquaintance John van Buren immediately came to me [on arrival in Albany] (expressed great regret that he was obliged to set off immediately for New York but he commended me to his brother in law Mr. Vanderpoel and made me promise to go to his father's on Monday.

I admired Albany very much. It covers a sloping rather steep bank to the Hudson, parts of the lower town are picturesque with old Dutch houses, in the upper part the streets are broads, have trees planted about them, & the public buildings are spacious and of white marble but in none of them is the architecture quite satisfactory. Some of the domes look very bright with the covering & one is gilt. Vanderpoel took me to the Dutch Reformed Church in the morning.

I called upon the Governor of the State Mr Seward, & he made me come again in the evening. His party, the Whigs, have been entirely smashed at the late elections. Have I explained before that this is the more conservative of the two parties? They carried everything before them last year & ejected Mr van Buren who was a candidate for a second time for the Presidency. The reverse has been complete, & it is fully expected that he will now be re elected at the next election 3 years hence, which will be the 1st instance in their history of a re election after an ???? This made it seem a propitious time for my visit, & I was curious to see him, as I had heard the most opposite opinions, & extremely pronounced upon both sides about him. Mr Vanderpoel and a brother in law took me to Mr Van Buren's place at Kinderhook... I stayed there two nights & left him to day. He was extremely courteous, & I must say very agreeable, talking with the utmost apparent frankness & unreserve about all their politics & all their public men living & dead, many of the anecdotes & details did them, it must be said, no great credit. He has pictures of Jefferson, & Genl. Jackson the 2 great objects of his devotion, & large prints of the Queen and the Duke of Cleveland. The great drawback to his pleasantness is his indistinctness of utterance which makes it a great stretch to hear him. His manners are decorous & plausible, the countenance rather resembling the fox, & on the whole I am inclined to lean to the opinion which assigns the same tendency to his character. We had the talk pretty well to ourselves, as there was nobody staying with him but a very silent niece & silent son. We took a very pretty ride together to the "falls", & to a very fine view of the valley of the Hudson. His house will be made comfortable: he is now enacting a sort of Cincinnatus part, occupying himself with his farm, hut he will evidently feel no reluctance when summoned again from his plough. me had formed a very high estimate of Pl's [Robert Peel] sagacity but he wonders why any Prime Minister takes Sir J[ames] G[raham] into his cabinet [as home secretary]

The passage down the Hudson is most beautiful. The highlands are les bald than expected but infinitely picturesque. The town has a very ??? lighted up appearance upon driving into it. Upon further inspection It has a sort of mixed effect of Liverpool & Paris, not so solid in their different ways as either, but it is acquiring more of that character as the used buildings & houses are of granite & white marble of which they have great abundance. I might as well be in Dublin or London for any quiet I find here. I sat yesterday at dinner by an old retired judge chancellor Kent of high repute.

Your powers of logic will enable you to perceive that if I have not time to write to one, I should have still less to write to all. Indeed you must be content to consider my letters in the light of circulars by whjch no one can lose anything as I have only one set of things to tell. I find the better society here very easy, pleasant and unpretending; I have been to 3 balls which I find pretty much the same abomination as rather small crowded balls are in any capital, the ladies are dressed and the houses furnished in very close imitation of Paris; many of the first are very pretty and it is impossible to see anyone with more grace of countenance and manner than Angelina Uyingstone.

The speech of the other night is not reported very accurately. I have had nobody yet so severe on this country as M de Bacourt, who is now minister from France. He, like M van Buren expressed the highest opinion of Mr Fox's ability and said he had decidedly prevented a war 2 years ago. The Prince seems a good deal young many, very unpretending and as far as appearance and manners go, without much intelligence. I return to Boston on the 6th 'and I look forward with satisfaction to the greater sobriety of that town.

I need not tell you that the idea of you all was very present with me yesterday both at the sacred table, & in the eve[nin]g over Miss Pulman's(?) turkey & mince pie, & afterwards at a little childs ball at Mary Otis's, where I was guilty of two Quadrilles, & wore for the 1st time your peacock waistcoat, which produced a great effect, tho' for the most part American ladies would scruple in observing upon any such article of attire. It even struck the dismal eyes of Prescott. I have seen a good deal of him since I wrote, & I do not think I deceive myself in the very high place I assign to him in every mode of attractiveness. I think I never knew such an union of simplicity, sense, gaiety & feeling. I cannot help grudging what I feel to be one drawback; he is, according to the prevailing mode of this place, an Unitarian, which has led to some little talk between us on the subject. One gets however to look upon them here, as almost orthodox, as there is now rather in vogue a new faith called Transcendentalism, of which Mr. Emerson is the head: he gives lectures which are being much attended, but which by the accounts seem made up of gibberish & blasphemy: it seems to me that I mentioned him to you before. They tell of his going one night with a lady disciple to see Mdelle Esler (whom by the way I did not happen to go to see at my first arrival, as I see recorded in the English papers,) at one twirlig more than usual licence, the fair exclaimed "that is poetry. "There came a still bolder bound "that is religion" rejoined Mr. Emerson.

I have been to an anti slavery fair held by some ladies here, Mrs Chapman [presumably the abolitionist Maria Weston Chapman] at the head, this is the present state of feeling on the subject her is almost a measure. I did even more, I gave them some of the pottery china buttons to sell... for the 1st time this year they procured the use of a spacious hall, & some of the richest ladies of the town come to buy. I wonder whether the Creole affair will excite any interest in England as it does in the Southern states & in me.

Final part of a letter, incomplete, beginning 'an excess of faith'. I am tomorrow to lunch at Dr Channing's [the Unitarian preacher William Ellery Channing, 178— 1842], Maria Chapman, who is arriving to give him an account a visit she has just made to Haiti. I have had my interview with Mrs Chapman who is pleasing like a less handsomely Sheffield tres elegante, she ... gives on the whole a very flourishing account of Haiti. Most all the better society here are very conservative on American politics, and great croakers about the making of their govnt. There is an exception in Mr Bancroft [George Bancroft, 1800-1891,] who has published part of a history of America with whom I am to dine in a day or two.

I am going to plunge out of the region of posts and conveyances - If you have any maps that can at all give you an idea of my progress... I return to Toronto tomorrow, then cross by Lake Simcoe to [Pentaquishire?] where our canoe life begins. You are aware that though this may not be speedy, it is an eminently safe mode of conveyance. I liked my 4 days at Quebec extremely & increasingly. It is quite a place to give one the marathon & Jones feeling of Johnson & the effect on me one brilliant afternoon as I sat reading very well written accounts of Wolfe's death under the retired shade in a public garden, just opposite the pillar raised to commemorate him, the band of the guards playing at a little distance beyond... Then there was a full parade of the Guards for Sir C. Bagot,... to see those fine men... all brough over from the far Atlantic, marching under the banners inscribed with the victories of Spain, Waterloo, & upon the ramparts of Quebec beneath which with the loss of 45 men we transferred the dominion of a continent. The Patterson's & all other timber merchants bewail themselves over Sir Robert's tariff.

Today I dine with the Vice Chancellor of the Province. Mr. Jamison, husband to our author. I fear she did not much appear to enjoy the wmter? She spent with him at Toronto. At all events she seems to have confined it to a single experience. By way of authors, you mention having seen Wordsworth, & I have to tell you that I finished the Excursion, where I began it, at Niagara. I believe I promised my verdict when this should happen I fear it would satisfy neither his friends or foes. I liked it much better than I expected. I thought it full of accurate, beautiful descriptions of nature, of great & varied harmony of versification of pure, refined & lofty feeling. These high & shining merits appear to me in a great degree counter balanced by one grave & it might perhaps be thought fatal objection to the Poem considered as a whole, or still more as it professes to be, only one part of a whole, which is that I think it intolerably tedious; it was almost a necessary result of its plan, what else could be expected from 9 long cantos, composed entirely out of the conversation of 4 old men; it may be thought that there is a sort of precedent in the book of Job, but I need not remark on the strong points of difference. I suppose the perusal made my thoughts naturally refer to the qualities of the Patriarch.

[The conclusion of a letter beginning] 'is that any arrangement concerning them should' I gave up Jamaica, the upper Mississippi, the Lake St. Marie, but I believe my virtue must yield to the midnight echoes of Lake Huron. I have an offer from the Superintendent of India Affairs to take me up there in his annual naval cortege for the distribution of presents to the assembled Indians; he takes also some officers of the army & to make it wholly reputable the Bishop of Toronto for the 1st time to visit the Missionary Stations.

[The first four pages of a letter beginning] My dearest M. Our expedition has been very prosperous... After a paddle of about 3 hours [on lake Huron] in the canoes, we select one of the innumerable islands to eat our breakfast on; while it is preparing, we generally all bather; then breakfast or hot tea & coffee & fresh broiled fish which we may procure from some of the Indian canoes we may pass during our paddle. We get off from this ??? usually before 12 & then paddle on till near sunset where we pith on some thin island where there is enough of flat rock for pitching the tents & wood for the fires to cook; this is a very busy & picturesque home of preparation, with tens being fixed, baggage pulled about, the canoes [sic] of their respective canoes lighting their separate fires, boiling their pots... the meal was spread upon one oil cloth on the bare rock under the star light & consisted of hot pea soup, hot fish, the fine trout & white fish of these lakes, a cold round of beef, hot potatoes, hot plum pudding, wine & hot brandy & water in some abundance & I must own that the song & chorus of our party sometimes rose upon the midnight echoes of the lake... We were in the midst of an encampment of about 6000 Indians; some of them from great distances & the wildest & most grotesque figures imaginable; we had war dances, canoe races, councils, smoking of pipes; mixed with all this we had our Protestant Bishop, besides Baptists & Methodists &