A centennial commissioner in Europe

Preface

Immediately after my return home I was greeted

by a general request that my letters from Europe

should appear in book form ; and overrun as I was by

a pressure of new engagements, I asked my old friend

and co-laborer, Dr. R. Shelton Mackenzie, to see them

through the press, which he has done with his usual

fidelity.

J. W. F.

Philadelphia, April 20, 1876.

(Hi)

1776.] THE COMMISSION. [1876.

TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS MAY COME, GREET- ING.

JOHN W. Forney, Esquire, of Philadelphia, is hereby authorized to represent the United States Centennial Commission and the Centennial Board of Finance in Great Britain and Ireland, and in the several nations of Europe, in the circulation of all the needful information for a proper understanding of the International Exhibition to be held in Philadelphia in 1876, and for the encouragement of the people of those nations to be represented therein by such of their productions as may exhibit the most advanced skill in every department of the fine and useful arts. Commending him earnestly to the respectful consideration of the people of all nations, soliciting their attention to his presentation of the International Exhibition, we are, etc.,

(Seal) (Signed) A. T. GOSHORN,

Director- Genera I of the United States Commission. (Attest signed) JOHN L. Campbell, Secretary.

(Seal) (Signed) John Welsh,

President of Centennial Board of Finance. (Attest signed) FRED. FRALEY, Secretary.

Philadelphia, July 10, 1874.

Contents

PAGB

I. At Sea. — Approaching 1 Liverpool. —American Steamships. —

The Centennial. — Future Market of the World . . 9

II

"The Good Old Town" of Liverpool. — Noble Public Institutions. — Former Complicity in the Slave-Trade.

Comparatively few Americans stop at Liverpool ; they hurry through to the great world of London, and thereby lose much of interest in the leading seaport of the nations. Liverpool is a very interesting town. Its present population is 493,405, and yet its commerce is larger than that of any other port on earth. It is the distinctive "City of the Sea," situated on the eastern bank of the estuary of the Mersey, very near its junction with the Irish Channel, in the county of Lancaster, one hundred miles west of Leeds, two hundred and one miles northwest of London, two hundred and twelve miles south of Edinburgh, two hundred and twenty miles southeast of Glasgow, and one hundred and twenty miles east of Dublin.

What especially interests the American in modern Liverpool are the municipal government, the streets, and the public buildings. Three members of Parliament are elected for Liverpool ; there are forty-eight Councillors, sixteen Aldermen, and a Mayor. The office of Mayor is generally conferred on the most distinguished citizen. It is the universal verdict that no taint of corruption attaches to any of these servants of the people.

The environs are exquisitely beautiful, and the gre.it

LIVERPOOL.

parks objects of ever-renewing interest. Stanley Park, opened in 1S70, cost the Corporation about one hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling. The view from this splendid enclosure, laid out in walks, drives, grass-plots, and flower-beds, and adorned by a spacious ornamental lake, opens before you extensive glimpses of the surrounding country and the distant ocean. Sefton Park, an area of four hundred acres, purchased from the Earl of Sefton at a cost of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling, is singularly picturesque, opening out a noble prospect of the adjacent residences of the nobility and gentry. There, also, is the celebrated Prince's Park.

The churches are very numerous, representing every denomination; some of them are inconceivably grand. I was particularly struck with the Exchange News Rooms. We happened to arrive just as the merchants were congregating, and their appearance, dignity, manner of speech, and costume, altogether indicated refinement and great wealth. In the quadrangular area of the Exchange stands a monument to the memory of Lord Nelson, a colossal work of art, erected at an expense of nine thousand pounds sterling. The News Rooms cover an area of one thousand and eighty-four feet, and one room is one hundred and five feet in length and ninety in breadth, exclusive of the bar. The height is fifty feet to the base of the dome or ceiling. At night this room is lighted by eight massive chandeliers, and here are found not only the subscribers, of whom there are four thousand, but strangers from all parts of the world.

St. George's Hall is a magnificent structure ; the organ, by Willis of London, is one of the largest instruments in the world, and of stupendous power. I noticed statues in honor of Sir Robert Peel, Sir William Brown, Joseph Mayer (the bountiful donor and founder of the museum which bears his name), George Stephenson, the late Lord Derby, and Mr. Gladstone. The total length of this splendid edifice

:6 NOBLE PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS.

is four hundred and sixty-five feet. At the northern end there is an equestrian statue of Queen Victoria, finished in 1S71, to correspond with the statue of the late Prince Albert.

Brown's Free Public Library and Museum was presented by the late Sir William Brown. The corner-stone was laid in 1857, and the building finished in October, 1 £60, at a cost of forty thousand pounds. Here is the great collection of potteries and the noble collection of birds bequeathed to Liverpool by the late Lord Derby, and here is also deposited the munificent gift known as the " Mayer Collection," a remarkable product of energy and perseverance, the life-work of one man. The Free Library is supported by the public, and is open from ten a.m. to ten p.m. When we came in, many persons, men and women, evidently of the middle class, were seated reading at the desks. In addition to these treasures I must not forget the representative collection of ceramic works, said to be the most perfect specimens of the great Wedgwood. The services are very rich, and there is one of the thirty copies which were made of the Portland Vase. The value of this collection is upwards of one hundred and twenty thousand pounds, not including the gift of Mr. Mayer and a most extensive collection of coins.

The Corporation Baths occupy a handsome building of two hundred and thirty-nine feet in length and eighty-seven feet in breadth, with separate divisions for both sexes, and are fitted up very elegantly. The water is taken from the Mersey into a spacious tank, capable of receiving eight hundred tons, and then raised by steam-engines into a reservoir, where it is filtered until it becomes as clear as crystal. The charges are for warm baths, twopence, fourpence, and eighteenpence ; for cold baths, threepence and sixpence ; warm shower-baths, sixpence. Precisely such an establishment is grievously needed in Philadelphia.

FORMER COMPLICITY IN THE SLAVE-TRADE.

In Liverpool the American meets for the first time the well-known cab called the " Hansom." Here also are our familiar street railroads.

Such a thing as a telegraph-pole — the unsightly nuisance which disfigures all our American cities — is unknown in England. The wires are stretched along the tops of the houses, or are laid under the streets, and I am constantly asking why the same plan is not adopted in our country.

You have an explanation of the hostility at Liverpool to the North during our civil war, when you are reminded that from this port, in 1760, one-quarter of its vessels were engaged in the inhuman Slave-Trade. No fewer than ninety vessels engaged in this nefarious traffic sailed from this one city alone, and carried about twenty-five thousand seven hundred and fifty slaves. Privateering also engaged the capital of many of the merchants, precisely as blockaderunning did from i860 to 1865. It is pleasing to know that the bitterness and anger too common in this great town eight and ten years ago is succeeded by an evident desire to promote amicable arrangements with the United States.

2*

THE STAFFORDSHIRE POTTERIES.

III

Chester. — The Staffordshire Potteries. — The Ceramic Art. — Birmingham. — Stratford. — Kenilworth. — Leamington. — University of Oxford.

What a garden is England ! There is infinite progress in the large towns, but the beauty of the country must be the work of the ages. The old castles, the ancient inns, the super-solid roads, the vast estates, closed in with high stone or brick walls, the narrow streets, even the small towns, are so many evidences of the centuries of experience through which this great country has attained its present strong position.

You leave Liverpool by rail, and after a short ride reach the famous and ancient city of Chester, with its cathedral eight hundred years old ; the curious wall that still surrounds it, from one tower of which Charles I. saw his army routed by the hosts of Cromwell ; the ancient "Rows," distinctly recalling a period far remote ; the Castle, a record in stone of the Roman occupation ; and the luxurious estate of the new Duke of Westminster, Eaton Hall.

After a good night's rest in Chester at the principal hotel, "The Queen's," we started for the Staffordshire Potteries, traversing a region of varied interest and beauty. The miniature houses and gardens at most of the stations looked like toy-shops, with their flowers woven into all sorts of figures and forms, and seemed an odd set-off to the great palaces of the gentry and nobility, of which we had glimpses in the distance. The history of the world is traced in the progress of the earthen, glass, or stone articles of the saloon, the parlor, the library, and the kitchen, used by the respective nations. Under the generic name

THE STAFFORDSHIRE POTTERIES.

*9 of pottery, which includes all the varieties of earthenwork, from porcelain down, you go back to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Italy, Belgium, Germany, France, and in the seventeenth and eighteenth to England. England unquestionably leads in supplying the demand of most countries with all the varieties of these elegant and useful works. I was attracted to the Potteries by the growing interest in the ceramic art in the United States, illustrated by the enterprise at Trenton, N. J., and by the immense sums of money spent in our great cities for the products of these English manufactories.

Our visit to the Potteries in Staffordshire was a revelation. The district in which they are located is only about ten miles in length by one and a half in width ; yet into this narrow space are crowded two hundred and sixty establishments, of which one hundred and thirty-four are devoted to earthenware, sixty to china, twenty-six to Parian, and forty miscellaneous. Here most of the finest wares and ornaments are manufactured, and thousands of persons are employed. The clays are mainly English; some are dug in the vicinity of Burslem. The English trade dates back into the seventeenth century. In i 759, Josiah Wedgwood, whose marble statue at Stoke-on-Trent attracts much attention, invented the exquisite adaptations, including terra-cotta, jasper, and the famous queen's-ware so much in fashion a few years ago, that made him illustrious in English history.

We traversed the renowned Minton works, in which the finest conceptions of Wedgwood and his successors are wrought into marvellous forms by the skill of the present age. I was surprised at its comparatively small and ancient appearance. Yet here were fourteen hundred men and women, boys and girls, closely engaged. The show-room was a treasure of vases, flowers, figures, goblets, with curious devices of all ages and tastes, copies of the long-

20 BIRMINGHAM.

gone past and models of the living present. The process of manufacture was very curious. Here was the clay in its plastic state turned into inconceivable shapes by the wheel of the machinery and the cunning of the human hand ; the kneaded lump worked into cup and saucer, bowl and goblet, next passed into another room to dry, then to another to receive the picture, then to the oven to be annealed into perfect beauty. The exquisite statuettes we see in terra-cotta in our windows at Gay's, Tyndale & Mitchell's, Caldwell's, and Bailey's, with the flower-baskets and bouquets, and the wonderful conceits on walls and pillars, all come hence. It was a liberal education to watch how skilfully the artists did their work, and how quickly.

There was, however, in all this rapid review a practical side. I allude to what are known as "encaustic tiles," which have become an essential feature in nearly every public and private building in England, and which, as contributing to beauty, cleanliness, and durability, and freedom from vermin, I hope to see covering the sides and ceilings of our American houses. They are sometimes used on our floors, but rarely on the sides and ceilings of our rooms and halls. They are not so cheap as our modern processes, such as what we call calcimining, but they outlast all other methods.

From Stoke we rode to Birmingham — a robust, healthy, noble town ! We came into it with a sort of moral prologue worthy of remembrance and imitation in Philadelphia. The railroad station is over a mile from our hotel. We took a four-wheeled hack. Two friends who were with me asked, as we started, "How much apiece?" I said, "One shilling." We got to the hotel, and each offered his shilling to Cabby. He said, "No, gentlemen, my charge is only a shilling for all."

Birmingham had a population of 444,545 at the last

BIRMINGHAM. 21

census, and 65,371 inhabited houses. In 1841 the population was only 182,122, a growth that, large as it is, bears no proportion to the increase of Chicago or St. Louis. We must look at a k\v of the products of Birmingham to see the diversified capacity of this wonderful workshop of the nations. In its rifle-factories it employs 4328 persons; in brass, 3892; in locomotives, 1661 ; in iron, 1561 ; in buttons, 1578; it has goldsmiths, 2477; coachmakers, 1 1 48. Women are largely employed in lace, polishing, japanning, ribbons, steel pens, silk, and cotton. I name these occupations to show how nearly they are similar with ours ; and when I showed a friend in Birmingham how many people are employed in Philadelphia, and at what wages, and our population, the value of our annual products, the number of our houses, many owned by our mechanics, he exclaimed, "And this is only one of your cities ! What you tell me of New York, Chicago, and St. Louis, is equally wonderful. Of course, I will be at the Centennial."

The churches and hospitals of Birmingham impressed me beyond utterance. The Hospital of St. Thomas was founded in 1285 ! St. Martin's Church is so old that its origin is lost, and the foundation of the present structure belongs to the early part of the thirteenth century ! The public buildings are superb, as you may judge when the town hall is one hundred and forty-five feet in length, sixty-five in width, and in height sixty-five. Here John Bright, who represents Birmingham, has frequently spoken to four thousand persons. I cannot describe its parks, its railroad stations, its great Exchange, its theatres, its statues, its devotional temples, its great colleges.

Stratford-on-Avon is about twenty-six miles from Birmingham, and a pleasant ride it was. We had a secondclass car, and a first-class farmer to talk to. "Your crop is thin this year," I said. "Yes," he replied; "we have

had little rain to speak of. Pray, are you not Americans?" "Yes, all three." " You like England ?" "Very much, but our own country ever so much more." " I don't wonder ; my boy is away over yonder in Marysville, California, and is doing right well, sir, and he is asking me to come to him." "Are you well off here, sir ?" "Very nice, indeed, but we need our boy." " Stay where you are and let him come to you, as he can for a small sum, if he is only sober and good." "I thank you, sir. Here you are in Stratford, and you will find Shakspeare waiting for you. He has a strong, warm side for you Americans."

Stratford, like all the show towns of England, is swept clean as a parlor. The streets in these places are a marvel. The rain here cools the air, but never makes mire. The sun never makes ague. Americans were in force at Shakspeare's house and grave. The English were few. No French ; no Dutch ; no Italians, and few Germans ! Nearly all Yankees — keen, sharp, cultured, generous, grateful; never tell me America does not love England and her treasures.

We posted across the country from Stratford to Kenilworth, Warwick, Guy's Cliff, and Leamington. How level the road ! Great oaks or beeches, large, fine houses of the gentry, suffocating villages of the poor, strong beer and bad gin, no population on the roads, all elegant, odorous, and silent — a breezy day and a desolate distance. We saw Warwick, its entrance carved through stone, its lordly halls half ruined by the fire of 1871, its pictures by the oldest artists, the bed in which Queen Mary slept, the great tower — and having duly paid our shilling apiece at the Castle, and our sixpence to see the great " Warwick Vase," found in the Emperor Adrian's villa at Tivoli, capable of holding one hundred and sixty-eight gallons, we retired, and posted on to Kenilworth, five miles. When we got there the lovely evening had made a picture of the venerable

UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 2 %

place, not less lovely because there were sweet children and ladies on the lawn, and an artist, with his canvas on a portable frame, painting the scene from the green foreground. Here you stand in the midst of the centuries. From Henry I. to Elizabeth, Kenilworth was the theatre of war, diplomacy, and intrigue. Earl Clarendon is the present owner.

From Kenilworth to Leamington is about five miles. If Kenilworth is redolent of the past, Leamington is the trophy of the present. It is the growth of modern manners and customs — a mitigated sort of Saratoga — its healing waters and historic surroundings attracting crowds. England never suffers from what we know as summer. When Americans run off to the mountains and seaside in July, " the season" is at its height in London.

From Leamington by rail to another cluster of the centuries — Oxford — fifty-five miles from London. Here we stood among the stony records of ages of literature. From Alfred to Victoria we read the story of the gigantic growth of England. Over eight thousand students gather in these venerable chambers. Twenty-one Colleges and six Halls constitute what is called the University. One library — the Bodleian, of three hundred thousand volumes, next to the British Museum ; a vast procession of portraits of the great graduates and chiefs of the venerable institution ; ancient groves, and lawns, and alcoves, with "Addison's Walk," recalling the memory of the gentle Spectator. You might give a week, a month, a year, to Oxford, and still find material for interest and information.

August, 1874.

24 LONDON TO BOULOGNE.

IV

London to Folkestone and Boulogne. — England and France Contrasted, with a Side-Look at America. — Paris during the Siege, with Especial Reference to the Commissariat Department. — A Model Boarding-House. — Present Condition of the Gay Capital.

From London, with Mr. McMichael, to look into Paris and to see if we could not together help the Centennial before he returns, is a ten hours' ride. A trip ticket costs, going and coming, about twenty-five dollars in a first-class carriage. Seven years ago I crossed from Dover to Calais ; last week we crossed from Folkestone to Boulogne, and both times the sea was as smooth as the De'aware, between Philadelphia and Camden, on a summer evening.

Folkestone was full of English people seeking health from the sea. The English girls are not nearly so lovely as ours, yet they excel in " the low sweet voice." They are never loud, and the flexibility and sweetness of their tones are, let me say it, in strong contrast to the too often sharp and aggressive utterance of our ladies. Call it affectation, if you please, the cultured English speak the best English. And now we are at Boulogne — the Boulogne of English bankrupts in olden railroad times escaping from hungry creditors. How French, how white, how sandy, and how sunny! Where are all the people? The day is not hot ; but, save the idlers on the long bridge, Fashion seems to have gone asleep. Two hours ago I left England, and here is France ! Engl.ind, robust, ruddy, and self-assuring — France, prim, peculiar, and opinionated. At Folkestone the sea-shore was full of gayly-dressed crowds, and there was hardly any visible commerce. At Boulogne there were

ENGLAND AND FRANCE CONTRASTED.

2 5 great ships unloading, and sailors and tar and nets and an ''ancient and fishlike smell." Workingmen in blue blouses, and women without bonnets or caps, old and young, with curious shoes, some wooden and some slippers. It was a picturesque contrast.

From Boulogne to Paris, a long waste of nearly two hundred miles of willows and poplars and the sepulchral stone that prevails in France from chateau to cottage; women in the fields cutting the grass and grain, following the horses, and bending over among the vegetables for the towns. It was so dry and white, and evidently so sterile, and the crops looked so thin, and the little houses so broken, and the roads so ghastly white, that I shut my eyes and longed for the green lanes of England or for the broad, fresh acres of Chester and Lancaster in my own native Pennsylvania, to come back to me.

I have been staying since my arrival in Paris at Madame Dijon's Pension, 29 Rue Caumartin. A pension is a boarding-house, but it is very different from that institution as we know it in Philadelphia. You get into it, as you do into most Paris edifices, public and private, by what looks like the gate of a great stable or barnyard. The house is built round a court, and the windows of nearly all the rooms, instead of opening into the street, look down into this court. You ring at the outer gate, which swings open, and a Frenchwoman, who talks no English, motions you to the first floor, which ought to be the second, but is not, and there you meet Madame Dijon, who, happily, talks French and English, and is a sharp, curly lady, who has divided her century with a smile for the wintry half upon which she has entered. Think of it — nine francs a day (about two dollars of our money), with a good room, good bed, attendance, and meals ! That is what her boarders pay. At the Grand Hotel, the L'Athenee, and the Louvre, you escape well at twenty-five francs, or six

2 6 PARIS DURING THE SIEGE.

dollars a day. Better bread, butter, coffee, omelets, beefsteak, fruit, or pastry, than you get from Madame Dijon, could not be provided. Two meals a day — breakfast from nine to eleven ; dinner from six to eight. Waffles at breakfast and wine at dinner included in the nine francs. Madame Dijon has about thirty boarders, and her fine fare and low rates attract about thirty more from the hotels, and she is rich, having been at the business for forty years.

Madame was in Paris during the siege and the Commune, and although, as I talked to her, she was a little chary about the cats, I thought she yielded a little on the question of horse. I have before me now a curious little record of the sufferings of the Paris people during these terrible intervals. It is entitled " Diary of the Siege of Paris," taken from GalignanV s Messenger, the English paper, and was written by one of the editors and owners of that great journal, J. C. Mackenzie, Esq., the brother of Dr. Mackenzie of The Press. I fear if Madame Dijon ever reads these pages she will think I betrayed her secret, but as I may not see Paris often before the next Centennial, 1976, I venture a few extracts from this little book. It is the journal of one hundred and thirty-two days during which, to employ Mr. Mackenzie's language, " Paris was hemmed in by an impenetrable circle of iron. The railways had been cut, the post-office was no longer able to transmit letters, and the telegraph lines had ceased to act— in fact, the great French capital had been as much debarred from communication with the outer world as if it had been all at once reduced to the very lowest depth in the scale of civilization."

After chaffing Madame Dijon about the food she supplied to her boarders during these one hundred and thirty-two days, and conversing with the author of this interesting little volume, I was not surprised to read in it such statements as these :

PARTS DURING THE SIEGE.

Sept. 29, 1870.— Provisions rising in price ; fresh butter, 4 francs a pound ; a fowl, 6 francs ; a rabbit, 7 francs.

Oct. 8. — All salt provisions have now disappeared from the market, and there is no butter to be found there ; a lean fowl, 8 francs; a fat one, 12 francs; carp, 10 to 12 francs. Asses' flesh has appeared on some of the stalls at 1 franc 25 centimes the pound.

Oct. 12. — Horseflesh eaten very generally, and considered palatable. Turkeys have risen to 25 francs (#5), and some to 30 francs; chickens, 12 francs.

Oct. 15. — Provisions continue to advance in prices.

Oct. 22. — Provisions scarcer every day ; ass, 3 francs the pound ; horserump steak, 5 francs the pound.

Nov. 16. — A shop opened in Belleville for the sale of dogs, cats, rats, and sparrows.

Dec. 1. — Seventy-ninth day of the siege. Weather dreadfully severe, four degrees below zero.

Dec. 3. — Mortality increasing in consequence of the terrible cold ; a turkey, 70 francs (about $16).

Dec. 10. — Fresh butter, 30 francs the pound ; a turkey, 95 francs ; nearly all the gas-lamps without lights; theatrical representations entirely at an end.

Dec. 16. — At Central Market, horse fillet, 16 francs a pound; dog, 3 francs per pound ; a rabbit, 30 to 35 francs ; a turkey, 100 francs (about $2u).

Dec. 25. — Horses of the Paris Cab Company reduced from 4000 to 1000, part taken for the army, the rest for human food ; a turkey, no francs ; a duck, 36 ; a rabbit, 40; a chicken, 30.

Dec. 26. — The bodies of the animals of one of the public zoological gardens exposed for sale for food. The camel, dromedary, kangaroo, and elephant, 10 francs a pound; antelopes, stags, and bears, 15 francs at first, then 20 ; large sale of dead dogs and cats in the Market St. Germain at about 30 francs the pound.

Dec. orj. — Outcry for wood becoming more and more desperate, poorer classes at night pulling down palisades and wooden defences.

Dec. 31. — Mortality, afflicting to say, much increased. In the market a turkey sells for 180 francs; a goose, 150; eggs, 3 francs (60 cents) apiece.

jfan. 1, 1871. — One hundred and fifth day of the siege. The writer ot these brief items was to-day waited on by his landlord, a man of large property, probably 150,000 francs a year, and after the usual compliments of the season, very gravely stated that in ordinary times he would most probably have offered a box of bonbons or some other such trifle, but at the present time he would show his esteem by bringing something useful, at the same time presenting his tenant a paper bag containing 25 potatoes. Present received with gratitude.

There are over two millions of people in Paris, and as I

2 8 THE BOULEVARDS.

pass along these boulevards and streets, walking or riding, it is almost impossible to believe these statements; and yet with such a witness, whose figures are facts, and whose facts are tragedies, we dare not question.

We are on the Boulevards. What a variety of costumes and of character ; what a medley of the nations ! On these benches and under these trees, we see the old men and women looking the last of life, and the young making love for the generations to come. A beautiful thing in Paris is the devotion of the children to their parents. The son with his mother on one side, and his sweetheart on the other, is a familiar sight. The blue blouse of the workman is seen near the broadcloth of the parvenu. Before the private houses gather the old and the young to see the passing throng — the mother knitting, the father smoking, the children playing, while on the broad pavements of the hotels sit hundreds before the little tables, drinking cheap wines and chatting cheap gossip. Meanwhile, the broad avenues, or boulevards, are crowded with carriages occupied by the other actors in this Vanity Fair. Many of these were absent during the interval described above, but the great majority were glad enough to eat rats, cats, cows, horses, and rhinoceros during that fearful siege. "What a tender dish you gave us to-day," said a satisfied gourmand to the chef of his restaurant. "Yes, indeed," was the answer, " but it was hard enough for me to kill my favorite Newfoundland to please my guests."

I wish I had Mr. Stokley and Mahlon H. Dickinson here now, to walk or drive with me through these Paris streets. I am not Mayor of Philadelphia or Superintendent of Highways, but if I were either, I should learn a good deal from these magnificent foreign cities. I board in a street like Locust, between Sixth and Seventh, Philadelphia, only . more shops, more travel, and therefore more excuse for dirt. I declare to you it is as clean always as the floor of