Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/30

xx him to his Boston audience. He was most struck with the buoyancy, enjoyment and freedom from constraint, the universal good nature of the American people. He found much pseudo-culture: few men of note had ever heard of Obermann, and as a knowledge of Obermann was in his eyes a test of civilization, he thought our philistinism extremely depressing, all the more when it was often glossed over with a varnish of pretence. Some individuals even confused him with Sir Edwin Arnold, and supposed that he was the author of "Tom Brown": these confusions naturally disgusted him.

But on the whole he grew more and more interested in the American people, and his lectures were a success from the start. His fee was $150, and, besides what he made, he felt that he was learning much. His delight in some of the chefs-d'œuvre of the American table was quite amusing. He was ready to hymn a panegyric to the Yankee Cock-tail! He was delighted with the Richmond schools for negroes and "could have passed hours there." He preferred Philadelphia to Boston. He found nothing picturesque in America except a sledge on a lake with the horses half turned round.

He was greatly amused at the comments of the newspapers. A Chicago paper declared that he had "harsh features, supercilious manners, parted his hair down the middle, wore a single eye-glass and ill-fitting clothes." A Detroit newspaper compared him, as he stooped now and then to look at his manuscript, to "an elderly bird pecking at grapes on a trellis."

After his return from the United States he was sent for the third time to the Continent to report on schools, and was cordially received by the most exclusive circles. Most of the time he was in Prussia. His eldest daughter married a gentleman in New York, and he was in this country again in the summer of 1886 lecturing and taking great delight in "nursing" his little granddaughter. He thought the wooden American country-house with its great piazza the prettiest villa in the world.

On his return to England he retired definitely from his inspectorship, the Westminster teachers presenting him with a handsome jug and salver.

Before and during his summer in America he had premonitions of heart trouble,—the same malady which had struck down his father and grandfather in active life. He regarded death as a quite natural event and did not look forward to it with dread. In April, 1888, he went to Liverpool, expecting, on the day after his arrival, to meet his elder daughter coming