and tenderness, and love, and anxiety, as this little woman was:
and all day long she wondered whether 'He' would be at the wharf;
and whether 'He' had got her letter; and whether, if she sent the
baby ashore by somebody else, 'He' would know it, meeting it in the
street: which, seeing that he had never set eyes upon it in his
life, was not very likely in the abstract, but was probable enough,
to the young mother. She was such an artless little creature; and
was in such a sunny, beaming, hopeful state; and let out all this
matter clinging close about her heart, so freely; that all the
other lady passengers entered into the spirit of it as much as she;
and the captain (who heard all about it from his wife) was wondrous
sly, I promise you: inquiring, every time we met at table, as in
forgetfulness, whether she expected anybody to meet her at St.
Louis, and whether she would want to go ashore the night we reached
it (but he supposed she wouldn't), and cutting many other dry jokes
of that nature. There was one little weazen, dried-apple-faced old
woman, who took occasion to doubt the constancy of husbands in such
circumstances of bereavement; and there was another lady (with a
Page 117
Dickens, Charles - American Notes for General Circulation
lap-dog) old enough to moralize on the lightness of human
affections, and yet not so old that she could help nursing the
baby, now and then, or laughing with the rest, when the little
woman called it by its father's name, and asked it all manner of
fantastic questions concerning him in the joy of her heart.
It was something of a blow to the little woman, that when we were
within twenty miles of our destination, it became clearly necessary
to put this baby to bed. But she got over it with the same good
humour; tied a handkerchief round her head; and came out into the
little gallery with the rest. Then, such an oracle as she became
in reference to the localities! and such facetiousness as was
displayed by the married ladies! and such sympathy as was shown by
the single ones! and such peals of laughter as the little woman
herself (who would just as soon have cried) greeted every jest
with!
At last, there were the lights of St. Louis, and here was the
wharf, and those were the steps: and the little woman covering her
face with her hands, and laughing (or seeming to laugh) more than
ever, ran into her own cabin, and shut herself up. I have no doubt
that in the charming inconsistency of such excitement, she stopped
her ears, lest she should hear 'Him' asking for her: but I did not
see her do it.
Then, a great crowd of people rushed on board, though the boat was
not yet made fast, but was wandering about, among the other boats,
to find a landing-place: and everybody looked for the husband:
and nobody saw him: when, in the midst of us all - Heaven knows
how she ever got there - there was the little woman clinging with
both arms tight round the neck of a fine, good-looking, sturdy
young fellow! and in a moment afterwards, there she was again,
actually clapping her little hands for joy, as she dragged him
through the small door of her small cabin, to look at the baby as
he lay asleep!
We went to a large hotel, called the Planter's House: built like
an English hospital, with long passages and bare walls, and skylights
above the room-doors for the free circulation of air. There
were a great many boarders in it; and as many lights sparkled and
glistened from the windows down into the street below, when we
drove up, as if it had been illuminated on some occasion of
rejoicing. It is an excellent house, and the proprietors have most
bountiful notions of providing the creature comforts. Dining alone
with my wife in our own room, one day, I counted fourteen dishes on
the table at once.
In the old French portion of the town, the thoroughfares are narrow
and crooked, and some of the houses are very quaint and
picturesque: being built of wood, with tumble-down galleries
before the windows, approachable by stairs or rather ladders from
the street. There are queer little barbers' shops and drinkinghouses
with blinking casements, such as may be seen in Flanders. Some of
these ancient habitations, with high garret gable-windows perking
into the roofs, have a kind of French shrug about them; and being
lop-sided with age, appear to hold their heads askew, besides, as
if they were grimacing in astonishment at the American
Improvements.
It is hardly necessary to say, that these consist of wharfs and
warehouses, and new buildings in all directions; and of a great
many vast plans which are still 'progressing.' Already, however,
some very good houses, broad streets, and marble-fronted shops,
Page 118
Dickens, Charles - American Notes for General Circulation
have gone so far ahead as to be in a state of completion; and the
town bids fair in a few years to improve considerably: though it
is not likely ever to vie, in point of elegance or beauty, with
Cincinnati.
The Roman Catholic religion, introduced here by the early French
settlers, prevails extensively. Among the public institutions are
a Jesuit college; a convent for 'the Ladies of the Sacred Heart;'
and a large chapel attached to the college, which was in course of
erection at the time of my visit, and was intended to be
consecrated on the second of December in the next year. The
architect of this building, is one of the reverend fathers of the
school, and the works proceed under his sole direction. The organ
will be sent from Belgium.
In addition to these establishments, there is a Roman Catholic
cathedral, dedicated to Saint Francis Xavier; and a hospital,
founded by the munificence of a deceased resident, who was a member
of that church. It also sends missionaries from hence among the
Indian tribes.
The Unitarian church is represented, in this remote place, as in
most other parts of America, by a gentleman of great worth and
excellence. The poor have good reason to remember and bless it;
for it befriends them, and aids the cause of rational education,
without any sectarian or selfish views. It is liberal in all its
actions; of kind construction; and of wide benevolence.
There are three free-schools already erected, and in full operation
in this city. A fourth is building, and will soon be opened.
No man ever admits the unhealthiness of the place he dwells in
(unless he is going away from it), and I shall therefore, I have no
doubt, be at issue with the inhabitants of St. Louis, in
questioning the perfect salubrity of its climate, and in hinting
that I think it must rather dispose to fever, in the summer and
autumnal seasons. Just adding, that it is very hot, lies among
great rivers, and has vast tracts of undrained swampy land around
it, I leave the reader to form his own opinion.
As I had a great desire to see a Prairie before turning back from
the furthest point of my wanderings; and as some gentlemen of the
town had, in their hospitable consideration, an equal desire to
gratify me; a day was fixed, before my departure, for an expedition
to the Looking-Glass Prairie, which is within thirty miles of the
town. Deeming it possible that my readers may not object to know
what kind of thing such a gipsy party may be at that distance from
home, and among what sort of objects it moves, I will describe the
jaunt in another chapter.
CHAPTER XIII - A JAUNT TO THE LOOKING-GLASS PRAIRIE AND BACK
I MAY premise that the word Prairie is variously pronounced
PARAAER, PAREARER, PAROARER. The latter mode of pronunciation is
perhaps the most in favour.
We were fourteen in all, and all young men: indeed it is a
singular though very natural feature in the society of these
distant settlements, that it is mainly composed of adventurous
persons in the prime of life, and has very few grey heads among it.
Page 119
Dickens, Charles - American Notes for General Circulation
There were no ladies: the trip being a fatiguing one: and we were
to start at five o'clock in the morning punctually.
I was called at four, that I might be certain of keeping nobody
waiting; and having got some bread and milk for breakfast, threw up
the window and looked down into the street, expecting to see the
whole party busily astir, and great preparations going on below.
But as everything was very quiet, and the street presented that
hopeless aspect with which five o'clock in the morning is familiar
elsewhere, I deemed it as well to go to bed again, and went
accordingly.
I woke again at seven o'clock, and by that time the party had
assembled, and were gathered round, one light carriage, with a very
stout axletree; one something on wheels like an amateur carrier's
cart; one double phaeton of great antiquity and unearthly
construction; one gig with a great hole in its back and a broken
head; and one rider on horseback who was to go on before. I got
into the first coach with three companions; the rest bestowed
themselves in the other vehicles; two large baskets were made fast
to the lightest; two large stone jars in wicker cases, technically
known as demi-johns, were consigned to the 'least rowdy' of the
party for safe-keeping; and the procession moved off to the
ferryboat, in which it was to cross the river bodily, men, horses,
carriages, and all, as the manner in these parts is.
We got over the river in due course, and mustered again before a
little wooden box on wheels, hove down all aslant in a morass, with
'MERCHANT TAILOR' painted in very large letters over the door.
Having settled the order of proceeding, and the road to be taken,
we started off once more and began to make our way through an illfavoured
Black Hollow, called, less expressively, the American
Bottom.
The previous day had been - not to say hot, for the term is weak
and lukewarm in its power of conveying an idea of the temperature.
The town had been on fire; in a blaze. But at night it had come on
to rain in torrents, and all night long it had rained without
cessation. We had a pair of very strong horses, but travelled at
the rate of little more than a couple of miles an hour, through one
unbroken slough of black mud and water. It had no variety but in
depth. Now it was only half over the wheels, now it hid the
axletree, and now the coach sank down in it almost to the windows.
The air resounded in all directions with the loud chirping of the
frogs, who, with the pigs (a coarse, ugly breed, as unwholesomelooking
as though they were the spontaneous growth of the country),
had the whole scene to themselves. Here and there we passed a log
hut: but the wretched cabins were wide apart and thinly scattered,
for though the soil is very rich in this place, few people can
exist in such a deadly atmosphere. On either side of the track, if
it deserve the name, was the thick 'bush;' and everywhere was
stagnant, slimy, rotten, filthy water.
As it is the custom in these parts to give a horse a gallon or so
of cold water whenever he is in a foam with heat, we halted for
that purpose, at a log inn in the wood, far removed from any other
residence. It consisted of one room, bare-roofed and bare-walled
of course, with a loft above. The ministering priest was a swarthy
young savage, in a shirt of cotton print like bed-furniture, and a
pair of ragged trousers. There were a couple of young boys, too,
nearly naked, lying idle by the well; and they, and he, and THE
traveller at the inn, turned out to look at us.
The traveller was an old man with a grey gristly beard two inches
Page 120
Dickens, Charles - American Notes for General Circulation
long, a shaggy moustache of the same hue, and enormous eyebrows;
which almost obscured his lazy, semi-drunken glance, as he stood
regarding us with folded arms: poising himself alternately upon
his toes and heels. On being addressed by one of the party, he
drew nearer, and said, rubbing his chin (which scraped under his
horny hand like fresh gravel beneath a nailed shoe), that he was
from Delaware, and had lately bought a farm 'down there,' pointing
into one of the marshes where the stunted trees were thickest. He
was 'going,' he added, to St. Louis, to fetch his family, whom he
had left behind; but he seemed in no great hurry to bring on these
incumbrances, for when we moved away, he loitered back into the
cabin, and was plainly bent on stopping there so long as his money
lasted. He was a great politician of course, and explained his
opinions at some length to one of our company; but I only remember
that he concluded with two sentiments, one of which was, Somebody
for ever; and the other, Blast everybody else! which is by no means
a bad abstract of the general creed in these matters.
When the horses were swollen out to about twice their natural
dimensions (there seems to be an idea here, that this kind of
inflation improves their going), we went forward again, through mud
and mire, and damp, and festering heat, and brake and bush,
attended always by the music of the frogs and pigs, until nearly
noon, when we halted at a place called Belleville.
Belleville was a small collection of wooden houses, huddled
together in the very heart of the bush and swamp. Many of them had
singularly bright doors of red and yellow; for the place had been
lately visited by a travelling painter, 'who got along,' as I was
told, 'by eating his way.' The criminal court was sitting, and was
at that moment trying some criminals for horse-stealing: with whom
it would most likely go hard: for live stock of all kinds being
necessarily very much exposed in the woods, is held by the
community in rather higher value than human life; and for this
reason, juries generally make a point of finding all men indicted
; for cattle-stealing, guilty, whether or no.
The horses belonging to the bar, the judge, and witnesses, were
tied to temporary racks set up roughly in the road; by which is to
be understood, a forest path, nearly knee-deep in mud and slime.
There was an hotel in this place, which, like all hotels in
America, had its large dining-room for the public table. It was an
odd, shambling, low-roofed out-house, half-cowshed and halfkitchen,
with a coarse brown canvas table-cloth, and tin sconces
stuck against the walls, to hold candles at supper-time. The
horseman had gone forward to have coffee and some eatables
prepared, and they were by this time nearly ready. He had ordered
'wheat-bread and chicken fixings,' in preference to 'corn-bread and
common doings.' The latter kind of rejection includes only pork
and bacon. The former comprehends broiled ham, sausages, veal
cutlets, steaks, and such other viands of that nature as may be
supposed, by a tolerably wide poetical construction, 'to fix' a
chicken comfortably in the digestive organs of any lady or
gentleman.
On one of the door-posts at this inn, was a tin plate, whereon was
inscribed in characters of gold, 'Doctor Crocus;' and on a sheet of
paper, pasted up by the side of this plate, was a written
announcement that Dr. Crocus would that evening deliver a lecture
on Phrenology for the benefit of the Belleville public; at a
charge, for admission, of so much a head.
Straying up-stairs, during the preparation of the chicken fixings,
Page 121
Dickens, Charles - American Notes for General Circulation
I happened to pass the doctor's chamber; and as the door stood wide
open, and the room was empty, I made bold to peep in.
It was a bare, unfurnished, comfortless room, with an unframed
portrait hanging up at the head of the bed; a likeness, I take it,
of the Doctor, for the forehead was fully displayed, and great
stress was laid by the artist upon its phrenological developments.
The bed itself was covered with an old patch-work counterpane. The
room was destitute of carpet or of curtain. There was a damp
fireplace without any stove, full of wood ashes; a chair, and a
very small table; and on the last-named piece of furniture was
displayed, in grand array, the doctor's library, consisting of some
half-dozen greasy old books.