From the Right Hon. Edward Antrobus, M.P., in Boston to the Honourable Mrs. Antrobus

November 1880.

MY DEAR SUSAN,

I sent you a post-card on the 13th and a native newspaper yesterday; I really have had no time to write. I sent you the newspaper partly because it contained a report — extremely incorrect — of some remarks I made at the meeting of the Association of the Teachers of New England; partly because it’s so curious that I thought it would interest you and the children. I cut out some portions I didn’t think it well the children should go into — the passages remaining contain the most striking features. Please point out to the children the peculiar orthography, which probably will be adopted in England by the time they are grown up; the amusing oddities of expression and the like. Some of them are intentional; you’ll have heard of the celebrated American humour — remind me, by the way, on my return to Thistleton, to give you a few of the examples of it that my own experience supplies. Certain other of the journalistic eccentricities I speak of are unconscious and are perhaps on that account the more diverting. Point out to the children the difference — in so far as you’re sure that you yourself perceive it. You must excuse me if these lines are not very legible; I’m writing them by the light of a railway lamp which rattles above my left ear; it being only at odd moments that I can find time to extend my personal researches. You’ll say this is a very odd moment indeed when I tell you I’m in bed in a sleeping-car. I occupy the upper berth (I will explain to you the arrangement when I return) while the lower forms the couch — the jolts are fearful — of an unknown female. You’ll be very anxious for my explanation, but I assure you that the circumstance I mention is the custom of the country. I myself am assured that a lady may travel in this manner all over the union (the union of States) without a loss of consideration. In case of her occupying the upper berth I presume it would be different, but I must make inquiries on this point. Whether it be the fact that a mysterious being of another sex has retired to rest behind the same curtains, or whether it be the swing of the train, which rushes through the air with very much the same movement as the tail of a kite, the situation is at the best so anomalous that I’m unable to sleep. A ventilator’s open just over my head, and a lively draught, mingled with a drizzle of cinders, pours in through this dubious advantage. (I will describe to you its mechanism on my return.) If I had occupied the lower berth I should have had a whole window to myself, and by drawing back the blind — a safe proceeding at the dead of night — I should have been able, by the light of an extraordinary brilliant moon, to see a little better what I write. The question occurs to me, however, would the lady below me in that case have ascended to the upper berth? (You know my old taste for hypothetic questions.) I incline to think (from what I have seen) that she would simply have requested me to evacuate my own couch. (The ladies in this country ask for anything they want.) In this case, I suppose, I should have had an extensive view of the country, which, from what I saw of it before I turned in (while the sharer of my privacy was going to bed) offered a rather ragged expanse dotted with little white wooden houses that resembled in the moonshine large pasteboard boxes. I’ve been unable to ascertain as precisely as I should wish by whom these modest residences are occupied; for they are too small to be the homes of country gentlemen, there’s no peasantry here, and (in New England, for all the corn comes from the far West) there are no yeomen nor farmers. The information one receives in this country is apt to be rather conflicting, but I’m determined to sift the mystery to the bottom.

I’ve already noted down a multitude of facts bearing on the points that interest me most — the operation of the school-boards, the coeducation of the sexes, the elevation of the tone of the lower classes, the participation of the latter in political life. Political life indeed is almost wholly confined to the lower middle class and the upper section of the lower class. In fact in some of the large towns the lowest order of all participates considerably — a very interesting phase, to which I shall give more attention. It’s very gratifying to see the taste for public affairs pervading so many social strata, but the indifference of the gentry is a fact not to be lightly considered. It may be objected perhaps that there are no gentry; and it’s very true that I’ve not yet encountered a character of the type of Lord Bottomley — a type which I’m free to confess I should be sorry to see disappear from our English system, if system it may be called where so much is the growth of blind and incoherent forces. It’s nevertheless obvious that an idle and luxurious class exists in this country and that it’s less exempt than in our own from the reproach of preferring inglorious ease to the furtherance of liberal ideas. It’s rapidly increasing, and I’m not sure that the indefinite growth of the dilettante spirit, in connexion with large and lavishly-expended wealth, is an unmixed good even in a society in which freedom of development has obtained so many interesting triumphs. The fact that this body is not represented in the governing class is perhaps as much the result of the jealousy with which it is viewed by the more earnest workers as of its own (I dare not perhaps apply a harsher term than) levity. Such at least is the impression made on me in the Middle States and in New England; in the South-west, the North-west and the far West it will doubtless be liable to correction. These divisions are probably new to you; but they are the general denomination of large and flourishing communities, with which I hope to make myself at least superficially acquainted. The fatigue of traversing, as I habitually do, three or four hundred miles at a bound, is of course considerable; but there is usually much to feed the mind by the way. The conductors of the trains, with whom I freely converse, are often men of vigorous and original views and even of some social eminence. One of them a few days ago gave me a letter of introduction to his brother-inlaw, who’s president of a Western University. Don’t have any fear therefore that I’m not in the best society!

The arrangements for travelling are as a general thing extremely ingenious, as you will probably have inferred from what I told you above; but it must at the same time be conceded that some of them are more ingenious than happy. Some of the facilities with regard to luggage, the transmission of parcels and the like are doubtless very useful when thoroughly mastered, but I’ve not yet succeeded in availing myself of them without disaster. There are on the other hand no cabs and no porters, and I’ve calculated that I’ve myself carried my impedimenta— which, you know, are somewhat numerous, and from which I can’t bear to be separated — some seventy or eighty miles. I have sometimes thought it was a great mistake not to bring Plummeridge — he would have been useful on such occasions. On the other hand the startling question would have presented itself of who would have carried Plummeridge’s portmanteau? He would have been useful indeed for brushing and packing my clothes and getting me my tub; I travel with a large tin one — there are none to be obtained at the inns — and the transport of this receptacle often presents the most insoluble difficulties. It is often too an object of considerable embarrassment in arriving at private houses, where the servants have less reserve of manner than in England; and to tell you the truth I’m by no means certain at the present moment that the tub has been placed in the train with me. “On board” the train is the consecrated phrase here; it’s an allusion to the tossing and pitching of the concatenation of cars, so similar to that of a vessel in a storm. As I was about ............