16th. — Yesterday, at the coroner’s court, attending the inquest on a black sailor who died on board an American vessel, after her arrival at this port. The court-room is capable of accommodating perhaps fifty people, dingy, with a pyramidal skylight above, and a single window on one side, opening into a gloomy back court. A private room, also lighted with a pyramidal skylight, is behind the court-room, into which I was asked, and found the coroner, a gray-headed, grave, intelligent, broad, red-faced man, with an air of some authority, well mannered and dignified, but not exactly a gentleman, — dressed in a blue coat, with a black cravat, showing a shirt-collar above it. Considering how many and what a variety of cases of the ugliest death are constantly coming before him, he was much more cheerful than could be expected, and had a kind of formality and orderliness which I suppose balances the exceptionalities with which he has to deal. In the private room with him was likewise the surgeon, who professionally attends the court. We chatted about suicide and such matters, — the surgeon, the coroner, and I, — until the American case was ready, when we adjourned to the court-room, and the coroner began the examination. The American captain was a rude, uncouth Down-Easter, about thirty years old, and sat on a bench, doubled and bent into an indescribable attitude, out of which he occasionally straightened himself, all the time toying with a ruler, or some such article. The case was one of no interest; the man had been frostbitten, and died from natural causes, so that no censure was deserved or passed upon the captain. The jury, who had been examining the body, were at first inclined to think that the man had not been frostbitten, but that his feet had been immersed in boiling water; but, on explanation by the surgeon, readily yielded their opinion, and gave the verdict which the coroner put into their mouths, exculpating the captain from all blame. In fact, it is utterly impossible that a jury of chance individuals should not be entirely governed by the judgment of so experienced and weighty a man as the coroner. In the court-room were two or three police officers in uniform, and some other officials, a very few idle spectators, and a few witnesses waiting to be examined. And while the case was going forward, a poor-looking woman came in, and I heard her, in an undertone, telling an attendant of a death that had just occurred. The attendant received the communication in a very quiet and matter-of-course way, said that it should be attended to, and the woman retired.
THE DIARY OF A CORONER would be a work likely to meet with large popular acceptance. A dark passageway, only a few yards in extent, leads from the liveliest street in Liverpool to this coroner’s court-room, where all the discussion is about murder and suicide. It seems, that, after a verdict of suicide, the corpse can only be buried at midnight, without religious rites.
“His lines are cast in pleasant places,” — applied to a successful angler.
A woman’s chastity consists, like an onion, of a series of coats. You may strip off the outer ones without doing much mischief, perhaps none at all; but you keep taking off one after another, in expectation of coming to the inner nucleus, including the whole value of the matter. It proves however, that there is no such nucleus, and that chastity is diffused through the whole series of coats, is lessened with the removal of each, and vanishes with the final one, which you supposed would introduce you to the hidden pearl.
March 23d. — Mr. B. and I took a cab Saturday afternoon, and drove out of the city in the direction of Knowsley. On our way we saw many gentlemen’s or rich people’s places, some of them dignified with the title of Halls, — with lodges at their gates, and standing considerably removed from the road. The greater part of them were built of brick, — a material with which I have not been accustomed to associate ideas of grandeur; but it was much in use here in Lancashire, in the Elizabethan age, — more, I think, than now. These suburban residences, however, are of much later date than Elizabeth’s time. Among other places, Mr. B. called at the Hazels, the residence of Sir Thomas Birch, a kinsman of his. It is a large brick mansion, and has old trees and shrubbery about it, the latter very fine and verdant, — hazels, holly, rhododendron, etc. Mr. B. went in, and shortly afterwards Sir Thomas Birch came out, — a very frank and hospitable gentleman, — and pressed me to enter and take luncheon, which latter hospitality I declined.
His house is in very nice order. He had a good many pictures, and, amongst them, a small portrait of his mother, painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence, when a youth. It is unfinished, and when the painter was at the height of his fame, he was asked to finish it. But Lawrence, after looking at the picture, refused to retouch it, saying that there was a merit in this early sketch which he could no longer attain. It was really a very beautiful picture of a lovely woman.
Sir Thomas Birch proposed to go with us and get us admittance into Knowsley Park, where we could not possibly find entrance without his aid. So we went to the stables, where the old groom had already shown hospitality to our cabman, by giving his horse some provender, and himself some beer. There seemed to be a kindly and familiar sort of intercourse between the old servant and the Baronet, each of them, I presume, looking on their connection as indissoluble.
The gate-warden of Knowsley Park was an old woman, who readily gave us admittance at Sir Thomas Birch’s request. The family of the Earl of Derby is not now at the Park. It was a very bad time of year to see it; the trees just showing the earliest symptoms of vitality, while whole acres of ground were covered with large, dry, brown ferns, — which I suppose are very beautiful when green. Two or three hares scampered out of these ferns, and sat on their hind legs looking about them, as we drove by. A sheet of water had been drawn off, in order to deepen its bed. The oaks did not seem to me so magnificent as they should be in an ancient noble property like this. A century does not accomplish so much for a tree, in this slow region, as it does in ours. I think, however, that they were more individual and picturesque, with more character in their contorted trunks; therein somewhat resembling apple-trees. Our forest-trees have a great sameness of character, like our people, — because one and the other grow too closely.
In one part of the Park we came to a small tower, for what purpose I know not, unless as an observatory; and near it was a marble statue on a high pedestal. The statue had been long exposed to the weather, and was overgrown and ingrained with moss and lichens, so that its classic beauty was in some sort gothicized. A half-mile or so from this point, we saw the mansion of Knowsley, in the midst of a very fine prospect, with a tolerably high ridge of hills in the distance. The house itself is exceedingly vast, a front and two wings, with suites of rooms, I suppose, interminable. The oldest part, Sir Thomas Birch told us, is a tower of the time of Henry VII. Nevertheless, the effect is not overwhelming, because the edifice looks low in proportion to its great extent over the ground; and besides, a good deal of it is built of brick, with white window-frames, so that, looking at separate parts, I might think them American structures, without the smart addition of green Venetian blinds, so universal with us. Portions, however, were built of red freestone; and if I had looked at it longer, no doubt I should have admired it more. We merely drove round it from the rear to the front. It stands in my memory rather like a college or a hospital, than as the ancestral residence of a great English noble.
We left the Park in another direction, and passed through a part of Lord Sefton’s property, by a private road.
By the by, we saw half a dozen policemen, in their blue coats and embroidered collars, after entering Knowsley Park; but the Earl’s own servants would probably have supplied their place, had the family been at home. The mansion of Croxteth, the seat of Lord Sefton, stands near the public road, and, though large, looked of rather narrow compass after Knowsley.
The rooks were talking together very loquaciously in the high tops of the trees near Sir Thomas Birch’s house, it being now their building-time. It was a very pleasant sound, the noise being comfortably softened by the remote height. Sir Thomas said that more than half a century ago the rooks used to inhabit another grove of lofty trees, close in front of the house; but being noisy, and not altogether cleanly in their habits, the ladies of the family grew weary of them and wished to remove them. Accordingly, the colony was driven away, and made their present settlement in a grove behind the house. Ever since that time not a rook has built in the ancient grove; every year, however, one or another pair of young
