We Arrived In
Time For Dinner, Which Was Brought In, Table And All, By Two
Negroes.
The party was made up by a doctor, who carved, and two of
the staff, and a very nice dinner we had.
In half an hour we were
intimate with the whole party, and as familiar with the things
around us as though we had been living in tents all our lives.
Indeed, I had by this time been so often in the tents of the
Northern army, that I almost felt entitled to make myself at home.
It has seemed to me that an Englishman has always been made welcome
in these camps. There has been and is at this moment a terribly
bitter feeling among Americans against England, and I have heard
this expressed quite as loudly by men in the army as by civilians;
but I think I may say that this has never been brought to bear upon
individual intercourse. Certainly we have said some very sharp
things of them - words which, whether true or false, whether deserved
or undeserved, must have been offensive to them. I have known this
feeling of offense to amount almost to an agony of anger. But
nevertheless I have never seen any falling off in the hospitality
and courtesy generally shown by a civilized people to passing
visitors, I have argued the matter of England's course throughout
the war, till I have been hoarse with asseverating the rectitude of
her conduct and her national unselfishness. I have met very strong
opponents on the subject, and have been coerced into loud strains of
voice; but I never yet met one American who was personally uncivil
to me as an Englishman, or who seemed to be made personally angry by
my remarks. I found no coldness in that hospitality to which as a
stranger I was entitled, because of the national ill feeling which
circumstances have engendered. And while on this subject I will
remark that, when traveling, I have found it expedient to let those
with whom I might chance to talk know at once that I was an
Englishman. In fault of such knowledge things would be said which
could not but be disagreeable to me; but not even from any rough
Western enthusiast in a railway carriage have I ever heard a word
spoken insolently to England, after I had made my nationality known.
I have learned that Wellington was beaten at Waterloo; that Lord
Palmerston was so unpopular that he could not walk alone in the
streets; that the House of Commons was an acknowledged failure; that
starvation was the normal condition of the British people, and that
the queen was a blood-thirsty tyrant. But these assertions were not
made with the intention that they should be heard by an Englishman.
To us as a nation they are at the present moment unjust almost
beyond belief; but I do not think that the feeling has ever taken
the guise of personal discourtesy.
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