The Marrying Americans

by Hesketh Pearson

  However, one of these visitors seemed unexceptionable. In the early weeks of 1850 the Hon. Edward Twisleton arrived in Boston with letters of introduction to Mr. George Ticknor, a well-known author with a well-stocked library in his Park Street house. The younger brother of Lord Saye and Sele, of Broughton Castle, Banbury, Oxfordshire, Edward Twisleton was forty-two years old at the time of his arrival in America. One of his cousins was Lord Leigh of Stoneleigh Abbey, Kenilworth, whose early death left his children under the guardianship of Edward. Although his relations were rigidly Conservative, Edward himself was a Liberal in politics and mixed socially with Carlyle, Wordsworth, Manning, Arthur Hallam and other notabilities. He seems to have been a very charming fellow, kind, charitable, with delightful manners and intellectual tastes. Tall, well-built, with a healthy complexion, a dimpled chin, and an imposing forehead, his eyes were light blue and remarkably expressive. Altogether a restful, attractive personality in no way resembling Mr. Dickens.

  He was disappointed to hear that the Ticknors had gone to Washington accompanied by Mrs. Ticknor’s niece, Ellen Dwight. Following them to the Capital, Edward called and sent in his letters of introduction. Shown upstairs to a sitting room, he waited there patiently for some time, his solitude eventually making him impatient. A side door seeming to offer opportunities, he knocked on it. Almost at once it was opened by a beautiful girl in a white dressing gown, who was engaged in brushing her long dark hair. After, we may guess, some apologies on one side and much blushing on the other, explanations were forthcoming and Edward made the acquaintance of Ellen Dwight. He had the pleasure of dining with the Ticknors and Ellen that night, and when he got back to his hotel he wrote four words in a book: ELLEN DWIGHT—ELLEN DELIGHT. In the ensuing weeks they were together frequently, and before returning home in June 1850 he asked her to marry him. But apparently she did not feel that six weeks of formal if pleasant companionship were quite sufficient for them to be certain of their feelings for one another, and she refused him.

  Ellen was a very pretty brunette, with dark lively eyes and an oval face. “Her only defect,” we are told, “was lack of height.” She belonged to a devoted family, and the thought of sacrificing the company of her sisters no doubt influenced her present decision. She managed to be intellectual as well as religious and to love art as well as nature. She had the inquiring mind of so many Bostonians and shared their desire for information and culture. Her sense of beauty was balanced by a sense of duty. She knew all the people who were worth knowing in Boston, whether of the mercantile, literary or professorial kind. She could talk of art and commerce, politics and Christianity, but she craved for a wider knowledge and experience than she could derive from her surroundings; and the conversation of Edward Twisleton had opened out vistas into which she had only peeped with the help of books and paintings.

  By the autumn of 1850 her sister Mary, Mrs. Parkman, had reached the conclusion “that Ellen’s feelings were much engaged, Mr. Twisleton had made a much deeper mark than Ellen was aware of.” Some such rumor may have reached Edward Twisleton, because in March ‘51 he wrote to beg her reconsideration of his proposal, and so strong were his protestations of affection that her dejection turned to elation. Receiving encouragement, he sailed for Boston in September and set to work making himself popular with Ellen’s sisters, who were soon on sufficiently familiar terms to call him “Twisty.” Having nothing whatever to say against him, they favored the engagement. “Ellen’s whole heart went out to him,” reported sister Mary. “...you never saw any creature in such a radiant glory of hope and love as Ellen was.” No announcement of the engagement was made while Edward settled his affairs in England, but the news was published when he returned in April ‘52. In those days marriages between American women and English strangers had not become the fashion, and relations as well as friends expressed surprise, but it soon became clear that the two were made for one another, and Edward’s good manners and gentle disposition made him generally liked.

  The marriage took place on May 23, 1852, and the following month they sailed for England, where she quickly adapted herself to her new conditions and found most of Edward’s aristocratic relations congenial. From her letters{5} to her sisters during the ten happy years of her married life we can obtain illuminating glimpses of English social life in the middle of the nineteenth century, and of traveling on the continent in the eighteen-fifties. Their time was fully occupied with parties, visiting, sight-seeing, reading, but no inharmonious note is heard in their domestic life, which appears to have been as nearly ideal as human fallibility permits.

  They arrived at Liverpool toward the end of June and put up at the Adelphi Hotel, where Ellen instantly noticed that their “parlor” was quite different from that in any American hotel, the furniture being of old mahogany covered with dark green. The train journey to London was made in sunny showery weather, and “Mr. Twisleton requests me to state that I have seen blue sky in England!” She thought the country looked rich and beautiful. In London they stayed with Edward’s brother, Lord Saye, at 47 Upper Grosvenor Street, where a huge curtained bed “forty times as wide as I have ever seen before” convinced her that “the unseen chambermaids belong to a race of giants.” She quite liked her brother-in-law Lord Saye and Sele. After a visit to the Albany, where she inspected what had been her husband’s bachelor flat and decided that it would be “a compliment to his wife if he never feels homesick to get back there,” they went to the House of Lords where they heard Lord Brougham speak with fluency, energy, and much violent action.

  Having been introduced to her husband’s relations at various parties, she was taken to see the Carlyles in Chelsea. “Mrs. Carlyle is a very ugly woman, with a broad Scotch accent, and Mr. Carlyle the same, but they are both overflowing with intelligence and stores of agreeable conversation.” Ellen’s reproduction of Carlyle’s conversational manner caught it exactly. Speaking of an eminent Bostonian writer, Margaret Fuller, he said that “she made the impression upon me of a strange, outlandish, wearisome, wondrous being, who had something great and heroic at heart, after all, in spite of all the freckled ugliness that was in herself and her writings—but I could make nothing of her.” Ellen described the look on the faces of both Carlyles as dreary, “as if life were a terribly severe experiment, and they had fought against all its storms,” and she thought they lived in real poverty in a wretched neighborhood; but by comparison with the rich, well-bred, negative people she had been seeing, the Carlyles were wonderfully invigorating. She was greatly drawn to Mrs. Carlyle, whose simplicity of dress contrasted strangely with the “embroidered India muslins, pink and blue glacé silks flounced and embroidered, glacé silks with flounces of black and white lace, and lace shawls and scarfs of every kind,” worn at the social functions Ellen had recently attended. She thought that “a little love would be a gift” to Jane, for whom she felt an urge to do something; and she found it difficult to appreciate the social gossip of the aristocracy after listening to the intelligent talk of Thomas and Jane Carlyle.

  The arrival of an American bride was a novelty in the circles of Mayfair and Belgravia, and Ellen was displayed in countless drawing rooms. At one of them two of Edward’s relations stared hard at her, “but not unamiably, only as if their curiosity was unbounded. I wore my pink brocade and pink roses in my hair and knew I looked well, and was quite at my ease...so that they could not have chosen a better time for staring as far as my comfort was concerned.” At dinner one evening she sat near Florence Nightingale, “tall, thin, between 30 and 40, not in the least handsome, graceful or brilliant, but with an air of good sense and principle, great repose of manner, and such a bearing as attracts your respect.” This was before Florence became world-famous for her ministrations in the Crimea.

  Ellen went to hear the famous Italian prima donna Grisi in Otello at Covent Garden, saw the Elgin Marbles at the British Museum and the Horticultural Exhibition in the Duke of Devonshire’s grounds at Chiswick, dined at the Star and Garter, Richmo
nd, drove over Hampstead Heath (“a most picturesque and beautiful place—the heath covered with gorse and ferns”), visited Hampton Court, and did all the things people want to do when they see London for the first time. Her letters were sprinkled with the names of dukes, duchesses, earls and countesses, and she was able to say that she had not “met with a cold word or look since I have been here, which should be remembered in favour of poor human nature, I think.” Her husband’s interests opened the literary and scientific worlds to her, and after a dinner among the intelligentsia she remarked that “if we hear one man at home talking as well as you often hear half-a-dozen here, we open our eyes and listen with both ears.”

  They took a house at 43 Grosvenor Street and began to entertain those who had entertained them. Soon on kissing terms with Mrs. Carlyle, she delighted in her lively, caustic, amusing conversation. She became friendly with Mrs. Prinsep and her circle at Little Holland House, including the painter G. F. Watts, “a peculiar, eccentric person, always dissatisfied with and destroying what he does, living on nothing, not caring even to sell his pictures much, and has given up sending anything to the exhibitions, because his pictures were not well-hung and not appreciated.” She was taken by Mrs. Carlyle to see the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, whose name was more familiar to her than that of anyone else. “She is very small, shorter than I am,” wrote the astonished Ellen, “dressed in black and not with any particular care or nicety, but not at all sluttish either, only as if she did not spend money or thought upon the matter.” Ellen noticed the smallness of her hands and feet, her beautiful brown curling hair, gray eyes, fine forehead, gentle voice and ladylike manner.

  If anything their engagements were too many for comfort, since the weather was exceptionally hot, and they were glad to get away on July 21st for a round of country-house visits. First they went to Salisbury, where Edward had been at school for three years from the age of eight. They wandered through the old town that night, and Ellen thought that nothing could exceed its picturesqueness. As for the Cathedral and its Close, “I cannot begin to tell you how beautiful this is—you must see it to know.” Then they went to Winchester, where Edward had received his education for the next six years. The Cathedral’s exterior and Close did not equal those of Salisbury, but Ellen thought the interior finer. After a short stay at Banbury, they went to Broughton Castle, the home of Lord Saye and Sele, and Ellen noted that, while her husband’s eldest brother was proud of the family and another brother was proud of the castle, Edward himself was proud of neither, preferring to rest on his individual merits. “I never saw a person so absolutely unlike the rest of his family—and if he had not been I never should have cared anything about him!” Next they visited Adlestrop House, where lived the Dowager Lady Leigh, who received them with much kindness. Here Ellen’s critical sense was aroused by the fact that the younger sons of the well-to-do families went into the Church and inherited Tory views along with fat livings. One of them, about to become rector of Adlestrop, said family prayers every morning at 9:45 and every evening at 10:30: “Mr. Cholmondeley officiates and reads ‘Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners’ in such an easy tone that it sounds in my ears as if he said ‘Thou beholdeth, O Lord, what well-dressed and well-connected people we are.” It did not help her to think differently when Lady Leigh said how important it was that the clergy should come of the best families, which only occurred in the English Church. But in conversation with Mr. Cholmondeley she discovered that they had three tastes in common: green tea, the Pickwick Papers and the Arabian Nights.

  Their next stop was at Woodlands, the home of another Twisleton, and from there they went on to an archery display at Meriden; thence to Stoneleigh Abbey, Warwick Castle, and other places in the district. Having done their duty to Edward’s family, some of whom, including Edward, were addicted to the practice of punning, they went north to Chatsworth, Haddon Hall and the Lakes, where they paid a pious pilgrimage to Wordsworth’s cottage. Returning down the east coast to view the cathedrals and Boston, whence some of the Pilgrim Fathers had sailed, they packed their belongings in London, and taking Canterbury Cathedral on the way crossed the Channel from Folkestone in the middle of September en route for Paris, where they put up at the Hôtel Windsor in the rue de Rivoli.

  All the remarkable sights in the French capital were dutifully seen, though Edward remarked that in passing through the Place Vendôme his wife’s interest in a shop window prevented her from noticing Napoleon on the top of the column. The pictures at the Louvre satisfied her aesthetic sense, and a long tramp about the quaysides and up the Champs Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe satisfied her athletic sense. They frequently visited the Théâtre Français, where Molière’s plays were “capitally acted,” theatregoing being “an excellent mode of taking French lessons.” They dined at Véfour’s, and afterwards were ravished by the performance of Rachel in Cinna: “Her eyes are very bright, her hair the richest possible and jet-black, and her figure and movements exquisite.” In a play by Corneille, though full of absurd situations and false sentiment, Rachel “hardly left a dry eye in the house,” and Ellen wished the great actress would play in Shakespeare, the only dramatist who could bring out her full genius. When they were not at the theatre Edward spent the hours after dinner reading Gibbon aloud to her, which at least gave pleasure to him; but her only complaint was that Paris “is such a dirty city, much dirtier than London, I think, and really disagreeable to walk about in.”

  Early in October they set out for Italy, passing through the Burgundy country, where their drinking habits were transformed: “After having become attached to porter, ale and beer in England, I have now fallen peaceably into liking Bordeaux, Burgundy, and the Rhône wines in all their variety.” Dijon, Châlons, Lyons, Valence, Avignon, Nîmes, were inspected, and they reached Nice toward the end of the month. Having suffered all the discomforts of traveling in France, they were delighted with the cleanliness of the Hotel Victoria, which looked on the sea, and Ellen confessed: “I am so glad that it is England and not France that I am to live in.” They traveled along the Corniche from Nice to Genoa by vettura, taking four days. At the inns they were bitten by mosquitoes and Ellen, her face decorated with sixteen spots, grumbled to Edward, “If things go on at this rate for a day or two longer, I shall be perfectly frightful!” Edward, who was reading on a sofa, looked up, said, “You will, darling,” and resumed his reading.

  At Genoa an attack of sciatica kept her supine for a week, after which they proceeded to Spezia, Pisa and Florence, where they called on Robert Browning and his wife Elizabeth Barrett. Although Robert’s manners were friendly and cheerful, Ellen could not help feeling nervous in the presence of a goddess like Elizabeth and became “so horribly frightened as soon as I begin to speak to her that I make a perfect ass of myself.” Mrs. Browning’s husband called his wife “Ba” which he pronounced “Bar,” and this sounded “so very oddly from Mr. Browning’s lips that it has reconciled me to Edward’s system of calling me nothing but Ellen, ever, under any interest or temptation!”

  Early in January they arrived at Rome and began the usual tripper’s progress. St. Peter’s failed to thrill her, but the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel fulfilled all expectations and made her feel that nothing could induce her to leave Rome. Their trunks arrived by water, and Edward was made happy by the arrival of his books, 150 volumes of them. Every day they took lessons in Italian and explored the city and its surroundings, Ellen coming to the conclusion that “pictures and churches are good, but the hills and the open sky are better.” An English clergyman, Mr. (afterwards Cardinal) Manning, called on them. Edward had known him for some years and Ellen observed him with interest, noting that he was excessively thin, pale and worn, bald and old-looking, though only forty-three. He talked sensibly and cheerfully, but appeared restless. An ample cloak covered his priestly dress.

  They attended a service in the Sistine Chapel and Ellen stared hard at the red-robed, purple-trained, ermine-caped, skull-capped Cardinals as
they passed. Their faces were far from spiritual, but at least they looked clean, whereas “the average of the Catholic priests are the most piggish, coarse, brutish, besotted-looking set of men I ever saw anywhere—taking snuff and spitting, nasty creatures...” Fortunately the fauna and avifauna of the country contained more attractive objects than priests, and “today for the first time, out on the campagna, I heard a skylark sing, which I recognised instantly for what it was by force of Wordsworth’s and Shelley’s descriptions.” During their winter in the city they read the biographies of the Roman emperors, and an American sculptor named Richard Greenough made a profile bas-relief of Ellen, who decided that “in spite of its dripping streets and cloudy skies” Rome would always remain in her memory as “the most beloved of cities.”

  In the first week of April 1853 they started for Naples, where they found that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was being performed at the theatre, a compatriot confiding in them that while witnessing it he felt “every American ought to be skinned.” Ellen considered slavery an endless disgrace to her nation; but the discomfort she felt in the accusing eyes of other people did not prevent her from enjoying herself, and a trip to Sorrento enraptured her. They were back in Florence by the beginning of May, noting on their journey the miserable and poverty-stricken condition of the villages in the Roman States. Then they started for the north, visiting Milan, the Cathedral of which impressed Ellen far more than St. Peter’s had done, lakes Como and Garda, and Venice, where they were able to break the silence of the canals by indulging in the usual exclamations on the charm of silence. “If Rome is the city of the soul, Venice is the city of the imagination,” Ellen declared, reporting to her sisters that “nothing wearies or jars on you in Venice; everything soothes and charms; and, oh, girls! think of the luxury of a city where one absolutely couldn’t walk!” To glide on a gondola was like sailing on a summer cloud, and the sensation possessed her so completely that she did not wish to see the paintings of Titian and Giorgione. They experienced a hazardous journey over the Splügen by vettura and traveled home via Zurich, Baden and Basle, where they exchanged their carriage for a train. At Paris they put up at the Hotel Meurice and reached London in the middle of June, staying at the Brunswick Hotel, Jermyn Street. Almost at once they were engaged to dine with one of Edward’s relations, described by Ellen as “a tall, handsome, nonchalant lady, with every mark upon her of an estate in the country and a house in town, and a passport to Heaven signed by the Archbishop of Canterbury.”