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Page 7
Miss Noel heard very regularly from Mrs. Sykes all this while; and that
energetic traveller had not been idle. She had made her new friends
"take her about tremendously," she said. She had seen all the large
towns in that part of the country, and thought them "very ugly and
monotonously commonplace, but prosperous-looking,--like the
inhabitants." The scenery she had found "far too uninteresting to repay
the bother of sketching it." But she had made a few pictures of "the
views most cracked up in the White Mountains,"--where she had been,--"a
sort of second-hand Switzerland of a place; really nothing after the
Himalayas, but made a great fuss over by the Americans." She described
with withering scorn a drive she took there.
"We came suddenly one day upon a party in a kind of Cheap-Jack van," she
wrote,--"gayly-dressed people, tricked off in smart finery, and larking
like a lot of Ramsgate tradesmen on the public road. One of the impudent
creatures made a trumpet of his great ugly fist and spelt out the name
of the hotel at which they were stopping, and then put his hand to his
ear, as if to listen for the response. Expecting _me_ to tell _them_
anything about myself! But I flatter myself that I was a match for them.
I just got out my umbrella and shot it up in their very faces as we
passed, in a way not to be mistaken. And--would you believe it?--the
rude wretches called out, 'The shower is over now! and 'What's the price
of starch?' and roared with laughing." A highly-colored description of "a
visit to a great Dissenting stronghold, Marbury Park," followed: "I was
immensely curious to see one of these characteristic national
exhibitions of hysteria, ignorance, superstition, and immorality, called
a 'camp-meeting.' to which the Americans of all classes flock annually
by the thousands, so I quite insisted upon being taken to one, though my
friends would have got out of it if they could. I fancy they were very
ashamed of it; and they had need to be. I will not attempt to describe
it in detail here,--you will hear what I have said of it in my
diary,--but a more glaringly vulgar, intensely American performance you
can't fancy. I have made a number of sketches of the grounds, the tents
and tent-life, with the people bathing and dressing and all that in the
most exposed manner; of the pavilion, where the roaring and ranting is
done; and of the great revivalist who was holding forth when I got
there, and who had got such a red face and seemed so excited that it is
my belief he was _regularly screwed_, though my friends denied it, of
course. With such a preacher, you can 'realize,' as they say, what the
people were like. A regular Derby-day crowd having a religious
saturnalia,--that is what it is. It would not be allowed at home, I am
sure. Disgusting! One can't wonder at the state of society in America
when one sees what their religion is. An unpleasant incident occurred to
me while sketching in the pavilion, that shows what I have often pointed
out to you,--the radicalism and odious impertinence of this people. I
was just putting the finishing-touches to my picture of the Rev. (?)
'Galusha Wickers' (the revivalist: such names as these Americans have!),
when I heard a voice behind me saying, 'Lor! Why, that's splendid!
perfectly splendid! Well, I declare, you've got him to a t. Lemmy see.'
And, if you please, a hand was thrust over my shoulder and the sketch
seized, without so much as a 'By your leave.' Can you fancy a more
unwarrantable, insufferable liberty? But they are all alike over here. I
turned about, and saw a woman who was examining the reverend revivalist
with much satisfaction. 'Well, you _have_ got him, to be sure,' she
said, returning my angry glance with one of admiration, and quite
unabashed. 'What'll you take for it? I've sat under him for five years;
and for taking texteses from one end of the Bible to the other, and
leading in prayer, and filling the mourners' bench in five minutes, I
will say he hasn't got his equal in the universe. He's got a towering
intellect, I tell you. I'll give you fifty cents for this, if you'll
color it up nice for me and throw in a frame.' Of course I took the
picture away from the brazen creature and told her what I thought of her
conduct. 'Well, you air techy,' she said, and walked off leisurely."
Before closing her letter, Mrs. Sykes remarked of her hostess, "Quite
good for nothing physically, and absurdly romantic. She has been abroad
a good deal, and bores me dreadfully with her European reminiscences.
She is always talking in a foolish, rapturous sort of way about 'dear
Melrose,' or 'noble Tintern Abbey,' or 'enchanting Warwick Castle;' and
she has read simply libraries of books about England, and puts me
through a sort of examination about dozens of places and events, as
though I could carry all England about in my head. I really know less of
it than of most other countries: there is nothing to be got by running
about it. If one knew every foot of it, everybody would think it a
matter of course; but to be able to talk of Siam and the Fiji Islands,
Cambodia and Alaska, and the like, is really an advantage in society.
One gets the name of being a great traveller, and all that, and is asked
about tremendously and taken up to a wonderful extent. I know a man that
didn't wish to go to the trouble and expense of rambling all over the
world, and wanted the reputation of having done it, so he went into
lodgings at intervals near the British Museum and got all the books that
were to be had about a particular country, and, having read them, would
come back to the West End and give out that he had been there. It
answered beautifully for a while, and he was by way of being asked to
become a Fellow of the Royal Geographical, and was thought quite an
authority and wonderfully clever; but somehow he got found out, which
must have been a nuisance and spoiled everything. I can see that these
people consider it quite an honor to have me visit them, all because of
my having been around the world, I dare say. And of course I have let
them see that I know who is who and what is what. They are imploring me
to stay on; but I told them yesterday that it wouldn't suit my book at
all to stay over two weeks longer, when I had seen all there was to see.
That young Ramsay seems to be enjoying himself out there among those
nasty savages; and, as hunting is about the only thing he is fit for, he
had best stay out there altogether."
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