And now to leap over twenty-five years, at which interval I paid my second visit to America in 1876, when again I had the privilege of being Longfellow's guest in the same historic abode where Washington had once his headquarters. My kind-hearted host insisted on my occupying the same arm-chair I had before, and which since, he said, had been the throne of Dickens and Thackeray, and every book-celebrity that had visited Cambridge. Among invited guests unable to come was Oliver Wendell Holmes, but I soon after made up for this loss by having a long talk with that shrewd and amusing writer at Boston; and once more, alas! no Lowell, whom I missed again, though I had waited for him that quarter of a century! Longfellow, out of compliment (so he kindly said) to his English guest, had specially provided pheasants and Stilton cheese, among such more Transatlantic delicacies as wild venison (from Tupper Lake, in the Adirondacks), and canvas-back ducks from Baltimore; to say less of terrapin soup, whereof the unhatched eggs of tortoises are the _bonne-bouche_! After dinner he gave me an apple from Beaupré, Evangeline's farm, the pips whereof I sent to Albury for planting. Longfellow was much interested to hear that my collateral ancestor had married Martha, the heiress of "the Vineyard" in Rhode Island. Mr. Fields, on this festive occasion, recited some of Mark Twain's humour, and I had to give sundry of my American ballads, and the host himself his exquisite "Psalm of Life;" my "Venus," in reply to his "Mars," having appeared, and been praised by him, some years before. And this meagre record is all I care, or have space, to give of that feast of reason and flow of soul.
With _Charles Kingsley_, however seldom we met, I had strong sympathy in many ways, as a man of men, to be loved and admired; but chiefly we could feel for each other in the matter of stammering,--a sort of affliction not sufficiently appreciated. Kingsley conquered his infirmity, as I did mine, and rose to frequent eloquence in his public ministrations: privately his speech would often fail him, and was his "thorn in the flesh" to the end.
I remember a most pleasant day spent with him about the fishponds and cascades of Wotton,--and I noted how skilfully he threw the fly some five-and-twenty feet under the bushes, to the wonder of a gaping trout, soon to find its lodging in the creel: and our kind host may still recollect, as I do, how charming was our intercourse that day with the genial author of "Yeast," "Alton Lock," "Hypatia," "Westward ho!" and other of our favourites. I have met Kingsley later, in his cloistered nest, as Canon of Westminster, and remember how heartily he expressed his abundant charity for all sorts of miserable sinners, especially about one of whom I came to speak, for there never lived a more universal excuser of human imperfection than Charles Kingsley. His bust, very like him, is in a side chapel of the Abbey, near the west door. With the learned and eloquent Canon Farrar, too, I have held converse in the same Broad Sanctuary, though but briefly. Harrison Ainsworth has often crossed my orbit. In particular, as a very early contributor to his magazine (wherein, by the way, my "Flight upon Flying" originally appeared, to be afterwards reproduced at the Royal Aquarium a year or two ago), I was among his invited guests at Kensal Manor house, for the inauguration of his magazine, meeting Douglas Jerrold, Blanchard, Albert Smith, and others of like note. Also, at Lord Mayor's feasts we have periodically met, and at Literary Fund dinners. I may mention that when we came near one another a few years since, at the Mansion-House, an American friend with me was startled at the resemblance between Ainsworth and myself: in fact, our photographic portraits have often been mutually sold for each other, and I remember in a shop window seeing my name written under a photo clearly not myself, however like; and my daughter with me said "It must be a mistake, for you never had such a waistcoat as that," it being a brilliant plaid: so we went in to set matters right, and the shopman, in correcting the mistake, observed he didn't wonder, we were so alike: furthermore, on the outside cover of a cheap edition of Ainsworth's "James II.," his portrait is the very counterpart of one painted, by Rochard, long years ago, of myself.