Samuel Gridley Howe to Theodore Parker, July 5, 1850

London, July 5th, 1850.

My Dear Parker: — We have been here in this great maelstrom for nearly a week. On entering it and driving on, for miles and miles, through its streets and squares and parks, all hedged in by stores and houses and palaces, and thronged by thousands and hundreds of thousands of men and women, riding or walking, rushing or lounging, labouring or idling, we had the usual feeling of the utter insignificance of the individual in the presence of the mighty mass of the living race. What were we to London? But turning to our little boy, who was sitting and playing with the tassels of the carriage, we had another feeling: the insignificancy of the mass compared to the individual. What is London to Samuel South Boston?¹

We have already seen something of life in London; our former acquaintance with some of the big (hum) bugs saving us the usual loss of time in getting into the charmed circle. I was before painfully impressed with the hollowness, the coldness, the selfishness and the sin which pervades high life here; and the pain is more acute now that I have a more vivid perception of the cruel injustice to the masses of the people, upon whose suffering bodies the superstructure of fashion and rank is raised. The inequalities of wealth, of social advantages and of domestic servitude are bad enough with us, but here they are dreadful, and as the French say, “Ils sautent aux yeux” at every step you take. Talk about negro slavery! talk about putting iron collars around serfs' necks and stamping them with their owners' names! what are these to taking grown-up men, decent, intelligent, moral men, dressing them like monkeys, with green coats, plush breeches and cocked hats, powdering their heads, and then sticking them up behind your carriage, two or three in a row, — not to do you any service, — not the slightest, not even to open your coach door, for one could do that, — but just to show them off as your serfs, and make your neighbours die with envy because you have the power to commit more sin against humanity than they have! I have no stomach to eat a dinner after having been ushered into the house through a double row of powdered, wigged, liveried lackeys, and sitting down in a chair with half a dozen guests and finding half a dozen men to wait upon them; give me rather brown bread on a wooden platter than turbot &c. off golden plates.

But here I am interrupted by Twisleton,² who has come to carry us off to the Exhibition, so I must close and trust to luck for finishing what I have to say in a postscript; if that does not get written, good-bye.

Ever yours,

S. G. Howe.

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¹ At my brother Henry's birth, Theodore Parker said to my father, “as yon called Julia ‘Romana,’ because she was born in Rome, so you ought to call this boy ‘Sammy South Boston.’”

The boy was named Henry Marion for my mother's two brothers, but my father never forgot Mr. Parker's suggestion, and used often to speak of himself as Samuel South Boston.

² The Hon. Edward Twisleton, brother of Lord Say-and-Sele.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 313-4