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On April 6, 1846, the Hutchinson Family left London, heading north.  Speaking of their singing, the Leicestershire Mercury of April 11 said,  "what it wants in science, the singers compensate by their variety of intonation, by the light and shade they introduce, and by the clearness of their enunciation."  In Loughborough, they met up with a throng of people in town for a temperance meeting.  The quartet sang and Jesse gave an exhilarating speech.  Their evening concert was a great success.  "[I]t cheered us very much,"  wrote John,  "to find ourselves in such an atmosphere, feeling we were just where we belonged."

They visited Nottingham, Derby, and Swadlincote  -  where John said they received their warmest reception anywhere in England.  Frequent published comments may be found, from this part of the tour, about large audiences and crowded halls.  After three well-attended shows in Birmingham, John wrote,  "On our return to Manchester we . . . gave another concert to a thousand people, the hall, aisles and steps so crowded we hardly had room on the stage."

On May 16, the singers gave a "farewell" concert at Free Trade Hall.   They were nervous about taking such a large room, until a crowd of 4-5,000 people assembled.  They introduced what would become one of their most famous songs, "There's a Good Time Coming."

"The utmost enthusiasm,"  said the Guardian,  "was manifested throughout on the part of the audience, who gave a hearty cheer at the termination of the evening's entertainments."

Now that the Hutchinsons had found their audience, crowded halls conspired with hot weather to make members of the quartet uncomfortably warm on stage.  They had decided to leave England on July 4, and they began to long for the cool ocean voyage home.  Each visit to a town could easily be their last, so they started bidding farewell to their many friends.

Early in June, the quartet was singing in Sheffield.  As a rule those specific criticisms we possess, of Hutchinson Family performances, come from writers who were favorably impressed.  An interesting example ran in a Sheffield paper.  "When heard separately, the listener discovers that not one of the party possesses a really good voice, while the young lady does not make quite the most of the voice she possesses.  She sings rather 'through her teeth,' as it is called, not permitting her organ to emit that clear open tone without which the finest execution in the world will never enable a person to sing well."

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The Hutchinsons took delight in the sights along the way.  "We went to Haslington,"  wrote John,  "a small manufacturing town, . . . gave a concert, and enjoyed the hospitality and enthusiasm of the people.  Here we experienced our first thunder-storm in England, and it was a grand sight indeed to see the light and shadow cast upon the intense green of the surrounding hills."

The Hutchinson Family's Old World tour was nearing its end.  So after a stop at Langton, they returned to Manchester for one last goodbye.  "We were receiving letters from all parts of the country,"  said John,  "bidding us farewell, and were packing up preparatory to leaving for America."  Then Jesse announced:

The audience was immense and the show was a great success.  After the concert, they were surrounded by their friends.

On the 15th, the Hutchinsons left Manchester for an engagement in Liverpool.  From there they left for about two weeks in Scotland, before sailing for home.

Back in Liverpool, famed writer Harriet Martineau had invited the Hutchinsons to visit her country home and sing at Ambleside.  "The large room at the White Lion was engaged,"  she wrote,  "and filled with benches so as to hold the greatest possible number  -  200.   As the time drew near, however, I met a shake of the head whichever way I turned.  Every body was sure that many more than 200 people would want admission.  People were coming from Bowness, Grasmere, Hawkshead, and even Kendal; and if they should be turned back from the door, how could they be expected to bear it patiently?  And then the heat was excessive. . . . But what could be done?   Here was the largest room that could be had; and the Hutchinsons could not stay to give a second concert."

Going north from Liverpool, the singers traveled by railroad, stagecoach, and canal boat, and rode the last fourteen miles in a chartered barouche, arriving on the 16th.  The village itself lay clustered in a valley, and Martineau's  "cottage of rough stone"  was near a beautiful lake.

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Abby stayed at the cottage, while the brothers took quarters at a nearby hotel.  Soon they visited the White Lion.

As she could not know what the Hutchinsons' sound check was to others, so we can never know what it meant to her.  Martineau's hearing had been greatly impaired since childhood, and her health had always been frail.  Now, feeling well after a lengthy illness, hearing the quartet's tight harmonies up close in a relatively confined hall, the experience must have been heavenly.  Her sparkling account of their visit to Ambleside is among a handful of the finest and most beloved pieces ever written about the Hutchinson Family; and it gives wonderful testimony to the strong, favorable impression this experience made on her.

Martineau planned  "a glorious country holiday."  On Wednesday morning the brothers and sister started on an outing to a lake three miles away.  In company with their host and her friends, they took a boat to the opposite shore, where they would be sheltered from the heat.  As Martineau described the scene,  "It was a gay little party, on the margin of a clear lake at the bottom of a basin of mountains, all green to the summit  -  dappled with woods and slopes, gay sunshine and deep shade."

"[H]aving no regular programme,"  recalled John,  "things took their own course, of singing, running, dancing, wading in the stream, climbing the surrounding hills, piling up stones for landmarks and monuments and behaving much like little children on a picnic; and . . . at last Brother Jesse, who was to join us, having stepped off the previous day to get the mail, came to the opposite shore and we saw him, but beyond hearing distance.  He crossed over in a boat, and as he approached we sent out a song.  He answered us back, and we soon greeted him and received our mail.  The time passed joyously.  We sang songs, spoke pieces, told stories, and were as happy as mortals could be.

Harriet Martineau wrote, "Then came . . . the grouping (as if they could not help it) of the Hutchinsons to sing, their breath of song stirring up the quietest spirits of the party, like a breeze breaking the glassy calm of the lake. . . . "

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On Thursday, the Hutchinsons took a tour of the village and Martineau's farm.  It was haying season, and they tried their hands at farm work.  They found that English scythes were far heavier than their own, looked and felt unfamiliar, and were hard to manage.  Finally they admitted defeat and gave it up.

About 300 people gathered at the concert site, while even more sat on the wall or found a place just outside.  Abby remembered that she and her brothers hung their hats on bushes, mounted the temporary wooden platform, and began to sing.  The music started around 6 PM with the song,  "The Cot Where We Were Born."

"Our good lady sat at the right,"  said John,  "about four seats back, and with her trumpet to her ear seemed to catch every sound, and was apparently enjoying the entertainment.  About midway of the concert there came up a black cloud: the lightning flashed, the thunder roared and the rain fell, but not upon our audience.  Still we could see it outside the apparently charmed circle.  Soon the sullen rumble of the retreating storm could be heard in the distance."

The concert closed with  "The Old Granite State."   By all accounts, everyone involved in the visit and the entertainment had a splendid time.

The Hutchinsons dressed for the night-stage to Patterdale, ate supper, and said their goodbyes.  Sitting in their carriage, they stopped the horses for one last moment, and, as Harriet Martineau wrote,  "sent forth a sweet and most mournful chorus of farewell to me, in notes swelling and dying away in the still night air. . . . "   "[A]gain and again I went out on the terrace to look for more stars to light my friends' way over the mountain pass, and to watch the Summer lightning  -  not without some impression that their sweet strain of farewell was still floating over the valley.  To me it can never die away into silence."

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At five in the morning, the Hutchinsons switched from their chartered carriage to a regular stagecoach and started for Glasgow, where they arrived at 7 PM.   A concert on the 22nd was witnessed by a critic who went, anticipating the worst.  "[W]e expected to have our eardrum fractured and torn to the veriest scraps by the nasal drawling and discordant howls of the American minstrels.  We had not yet raised our head, when . . . forth there gushed such a volume of pure and delicious harmony, as, except from themselves, we never hope to listen to again."  This journalist described Judson's performance in an interesting way.

The quartet gave concerts during this trip; but they did not let these engagements get in the way of the important business of taking in the sights of Scotland and making new friends.  Finally they returned to Glasgow and then to Liverpool.  The singers gave two shows, amidst a flurry of social gatherings  -  continuing their tradition of mixing business with pleasure.

When the Hutchinson Family stepped on board the Cambria on Saturday, July 4, many friends, including Frederick Douglass, came to say goodbye.  During the voyage, they entertained at various gatherings, often singing nautical songs.  After a stop at Halifax, when ice and provisions were taken on board, a meal of pork and beans reminded them they were almost home.

The Cambria arrived in Boston on Friday, July 17.  According to The Republican out of Springfield, Massachusetts,  "A Townsman, who stood on the wharf, at East Boston, when the Cambria came in, says that as the vessel was nearing her destination, the Hutchinson Family, who were among the passengers, struck up, 'Home Sweet Home,' and sang with thrilling sweetness and beauty that touching song."

While the Hutchinson Family was in Europe, as might be expected, new competition sprang up at home.  Four children of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers formed a vocal group, in or around 1845 according to family tradition.  The 1845-1846 concert season seems quite likely.  That season, the Barker Family of Lynn organized a traveling company;  and by June, a New York troupe called the Alleghanians was giving concerts.  After the latter group's second New York appearance, the Tribune said:

This notice marked an auspicious beginning for a new group.  Much closer to home, after the Home Branch disbanded, Brother Joshua launched his own singing career.

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The Hutchinsons counted this trip to Europe as among the brightest and most profitable of their career.  Soon the singers were back in Milford for a delightful reunion with parents, sister, brothers, wives, and children.  Amidst the joy of their reunion with loved ones, though, they received sad news.  Ninety-three-year-old Andrew Leavitt was gravely ill, and he asked to see his roving grandchildren.  When they arrived at his home, they found him resting.  During this visit, Grandfather Leavitt told them,  "I shall never see you again."

Andrew Leavitt died at Amherst, New Hampshire, on Saturday, August 29, 1846.  "Mr. Leavitt was a respected master carpenter in his day,"  said the Farmers' Cabinet,  "and the most of the houses built in this village of thirty years standing, are the workmanship of his hands."  "He lived an honest, industrious life, and was respected by all who knew him."