WILLIAM WETMORE STOEY 
 
 AND HIS FRIENDS 
 
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WILLIAM WETMORE STORY 
 
 AND 
 
 HIS FRIENDS 
 
 FROM LETTERS, DIARIES, AND RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 BT 
 
 HENRY JAMES 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 VOL. II. 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 1903 
 
 All Rights reserved 
 
CONTENTS OF THE SECOND YOLUME. 
 
 MIDDLE EOMANT YEAES— continued. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 VII. SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER .... 3 
 
 VIII. THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL . . 75 
 
 IX. ENGLAND AND SOCIETY ..... 164 
 
 LAST EOMAN YEAES. 
 
 X. GRAFFITI D ITALIA 
 XI. AMERICAN COMMISSIONS 
 XII. VALLOMBROSA 
 
 215 
 
 264 
 316 
 
 INDEX 
 
 339 
 
MIDDLE ROMAN YEARS 
 
 CONTINUED 
 
WILLIAM WETIOEE STORY 
 AND HIS FEIENDS. 
 
 VII. 
 
 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER. 
 
 The Storys spent in 1857 the first of the several 
 summers they were to spend at Siena, but this 
 one passed without the company of the Brown- 
 ings, which on other occasions they were to have 
 there. Siena, like the Baths of Lucca (where, 
 with Robert Lytton, of their former party, the 
 Brownings again spent the August and September 
 of 1857), is peopled for us to-day with wander- 
 ing shades — impalpable phantoms of lightly- 
 dressed precursors that melt, for every sense, 
 into the splendid summer light, when, on the 
 chance of making them confess by some weak 
 sign to acquaintance, we take our way out of 
 
SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 one of the open gates (great mouths in the old 
 walls, overbrowed as with high pink foreheads,) 
 to the region of the haunted villas. How can 
 one hope to find the right word for the sense of 
 rest and leisure that must in olden summers have 
 awaited here the consenting victims of Italy, 
 among ancient things all made sweet by their 
 age, and with Nature helping Time very much as 
 a tender, unwearied, ingenious sister waits upon a 
 brother, heavy of limb and dim of sight, who sits 
 with his back against a sun-warmed wall. The 
 lurking shades at present, on the spot, in the 
 places they occupied and that must have changed 
 ever so little, melt, for every sense, into the actual 
 splendid light, the mere happy, indifferent, oblivi- 
 ous luxuriance of garden, vineyard and podere, 
 into the shimmer of olive-slopes, the tangle of 
 orchards and cornfields and long-armed flowers, 
 springing up like embracing girls — the blaze of 
 blue, the glow of tawny yellow and iridescence of 
 far away violet. Strange and special the effect, 
 in Italy, of the empty places (and there are 
 many) that we stand and wonder in to-day for 
 the sake of the vanished, the English poets ; the 
 irresistible reconstruction, to the all but baffled 
 vision, of irrecoverable presences and aspects, the 
 conscious, shining, mocking void, sad somehow 
 with excess of serenity. There is positively no 
 
SIENA 5 
 
 great difference between the impression of the 
 Lerici of Shelley, that of the Ravenna of Byron, 
 that of the painted chamber of Keats by the 
 Spanish Steps in Rome, and the great, bright, 
 vacant, yet all so solemn smile with which, one 
 July morning, not long ago, the cluster of Sienese 
 villas met my unanswerable questions. These 
 questions — which were, for one's self, about 
 William Story and Robert Browning and Walter 
 Savage Landor, and other spirits of the general 
 scene not here to be named — renewed, in their 
 vanity, renewed, on the high terraces meant for 
 soft evenings and in the cool bare echoing rooms 
 where shutters were pulled open for me to violet 
 views, that pang, not so much of accepted loss as 
 of resented exclusion, of which the other more 
 or less violated shrines had pressed the spring. 
 There they still stand, at any rate, the old cool 
 houses — Meschatelli, Belvedere, Spanocchi-Ser- 
 gardi, Alberti, Gori, Borghese — on their com- 
 municating slopes, behind their overclambered 
 walls and their winding, accommodating lanes ; 
 there they stand in the gladness of their gardens 
 (congruous haunts of delightfully-named young 
 gardeners, Adone and Narciso,) and in that 
 wondrous mountain ring which seems to con- 
 tract and expand as, with the time of day and 
 the state of the air, colour deepens or swoons. 
 
 U 
 
■; 
 
 6 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 And there, at its distance, on its admirable deep- 
 plunging ramparts — a presence as felt, perpet- 
 ually, as marked for your spiritual economy as 
 that of some great reduced personage on a pro- 
 longed visit to you would be for your domestic 
 and social — stands the hard old fighting, paint- 
 ing, dwindling city, even yet as embattled for the 
 eye, even yet as buttressed and bristling and 
 frowning, with its tallest sharp tower in the sky, 
 as some girt and armoured warrior who forever 
 shakes his spear. 
 
 The Storys were in villeggiatura at the date 
 of the following. 
 
 Robert Browning to W. W. Story. 
 
 " Florence, July 22nd, 1859, 
 ..." Our business is to keep what we have 
 gained, and I don't know so likely a way as by 
 getting our share in your pleasant Siena cool 
 and quiet. Will you have the goodness to 
 engage for us the Bargagli villa from August 1 
 to September 30 1 We must pay 35 francs a 
 month if they won't take 30 ; you will do for us 
 what you can, and we cheerfully abide by your 
 bargain. We bring our own plate and linen. 
 
 " I am vexed at what you tell me of poor 
 Mr Landor : I write to him, under cover to you, 
 
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 and will, if I can, prevent him doing anything 
 so foolish as going to Viareggio. I had no 
 notion of his meaning to go to Siena till he told 
 me he had written to you : he would hear of 
 no other plan. Now, through the happiest of 
 chances, he finds exactly all and far more than 
 he wanted, and he begins scheming in this 
 fruitless way. His family take no notice of 
 his letters, and, till I hear from England, which 
 I hope to do every day, I cannot be sure that 
 his agent or relatives will advance him a farthing. 
 He must at all events stay till his means are 
 assured, and were they ever so abundant he is 
 manifestly unfit to be trusted alone. Nor can I 
 engage to go about with him and be responsible 
 for what happens — as to a certain degree I 
 might in Siena. If Mr Landor is in earnest in 
 preferring any ' two rooms,' with simple board, 
 to living with his family, that arrangement may 
 be made; but Viareggio, &c., are 'not in the 
 programme.' I will make this as plain to 
 him as is consistent with the delicacy of com- 
 munication that he requires, and, no doubt, 
 he will acquiesce. What a load you have im- 
 posed on yourself, in your generosity ; but you 
 shall not long remain unrelieved of it, be assured. 
 He will show you the letter I write." 
 
8 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 To which this is complementary. 
 Robert Browning to W. W. Story. 
 
 "Florence, July 28th, 1859. 
 " I wrote to you hurriedly the day before 
 yesterday ; since then two most kind communica- 
 tions have reached us from your villa. I told 
 you that Forster had written energetically beg- 
 ging me to take every care of Landor till he 
 could make new arrangements with the brothers 
 and agents ; the serious illness of the latter 
 being all that prevented the matter from being 
 very speedily terminated. I wrote on the same 
 
 day to Mrs demanding in a mildly-gruff 
 
 way clothes, books, plate, pictures, residue of 
 cash ; in short all that poor Landor, by a note 
 just received, desired me to obtain through the 
 good offices of the Commissary of Police. How^- 
 ever, diplomacy being more efficacious than frank 
 fighting, I simply wrote, as I say, and yesterday 
 
 was favoured by a visit from Mrs , all butter 
 
 and honey (save an occasional wasp's sting over- 
 looked in the latter when she occasionally 
 designated our friend as ' the old Brute I '). The 
 end is she gives up all we require ; the clothes 
 this very day to Mr Kirkup, the rest as soon 
 as possible. I will bring them with me, and 
 the note I enclose may set our poor friend's 
 
BROWNING AND LANDOE 9 
 
 mind at rest on that point. But it will also 
 serve another purpose, I trust — induce him to 
 take that lodging you were so fortunate as to 
 place at his disposal. Of your own goodness and 
 generous hospitality you will not let me speak, 
 nor is it necessary ; but it is necessary, not on 
 your account at all so much as on his own, that 
 Landor should now fairly try the experiment 
 which he was bent on making, and show whether 
 he can indeed live independently of the immed- 
 iate superintendence of his family. The question 
 is not which of his friends will be happy and 
 ready to entertain him as a guest, but whether 
 
 he can ever be anything else ; which Mrs 
 
 very emphatically denies. I should certainly 
 like to see how he sets about it, and I strongly 
 press on him in the note the necessity of taking 
 those lodgings for a single month and finding 
 how he likes the way of life he was determined to 
 adopt. In a month we shall know exactly what 
 his means are, and can contrive how they may 
 be turned to the best account. He must try 
 noWf because a failure can be easily redeemed. 
 Had I supposed he would stay with you more 
 than a day, I should have made quite other 
 arrangements. . . . We mean to go to Siena 
 the first day that my wife is able to make the 
 effort ; she is decidedly better, but still very 
 
10 
 
 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 weak. We mean to be as happy as possible 
 for these coming two months, and therefore, to 
 avoid any precipitation and mistake we will 
 go to Siena, attack the triangle of villas in 
 succession, armed with those capital plans, and 
 establish my wife to her mind — as I know will 
 be soon done. Let us once arrive, and the rest 
 will be an easy matter." 
 
 But he writes again before starting. 
 
 Mohert Browning to W. W. Story. 
 
 [1859.] 
 
 "My wife has been so ill, and the calls on 
 my time so incessant, that I was unable to tell 
 you — what would have pleased you to know 
 two days earlier — that I have had a very satis- 
 factory letter from Forster, kind and conclusive. 
 He will make every effort to help poor Landor, 
 and entertains no doubt of being able to do so 
 effectually ; he energetically bids me hold himself 
 responsible for all expense, insists on Landor's 
 finding every comfort, an attendant, and other 
 assistance I will tell you about when we meet ; 
 but adds that he is sure there will be no need 
 of any such effort on the part of any friend, as 
 the brothers of Landor, with whom he will put 
 himself in immediate communication, are most 
 
THE BROWNINGS AT SIENA 
 
 11 
 
 ' noble, honourable gentlemen, and wealthy to 
 boot, and will never bear indignity to their 
 family's head.' They have all been under the 
 delusion that the Fiesole people used the great- 
 est kindness to our poor friend, spared no effort 
 to make him at his ease, &c. The greatest 
 inconvenience is that Mr Walter Landor, of 
 Hugely, the cousin-agent, is seriously ill, dying 
 in fact, and this may a little retard matters ; 
 but that eventually a satisfactory arrangement 
 will be made we need not doubt, and meantime 
 he and other friends just as zealous will gladly 
 take all the engagements that may be necessary. 
 I have communicated so much of this as seemed 
 needful to Landor, beseeching him to possess his 
 soul in peace and quietness — as your goodness 
 to him indeed makes a very easy matter. 
 
 " And now, dear Story, the moment my wife 
 can be moved to Siena we shall take the 
 journey ; but as there is a stop in our negotia- 
 tions about [our quarters] let me profit by 
 it to beg dear Mrs Story will let us know, 
 before we decide, what I overlooked in my 
 usual stupid way for the grounds and groves 
 and other external beauties. My wife is tena- 
 cious of a ground floor — no stairs to ascend : now 
 v^hich of the three at our discretion is the stair- 
 less villa ? I am able to satisfy her about the 
 
12 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 coolness and picturesqueness of situation, but 
 I forget the rest. Can you help us again with- 
 out finding the bore too exorbitant ? " 
 
 The help, it is needless to say, was given, and 
 the following, from Florence, in the autumn, 
 was after the event. 
 
 Robert Browning to Mrs Story. 
 
 [Florence, 1859.] 
 ..." You need not be told how entirely we 
 owe you the delightful summer we have spent at 
 Siena. Its one fault was its briefness. Ba is 
 hardly so well as when she was let thrive in 
 peace and quiet in that dear old villa and the 
 pleasant country it hardly shut out. She is 
 forced to see more people and talk oftener than 
 suits her. I am very anxious to get away, and 
 see no obstacle to our doing so by the end of 
 the first week in November, when Mr Landor 
 will be finally established in his winter quarters. 
 We are papering and carpeting and doing things 
 superiorly. He is quite well ; as gentle and 
 affectionate as ever ; and I shall regret his loss 
 more than there is any use in dwelling upon, 
 now that it must be. Ba enters the room at 
 this moment, saying ' I wish we were in Rome ! ' 
 Tell us, for we count on your goodness, the day 
 
FROM MRS BROWNING 
 
 13 
 
 you expect to be there, and, when you get 
 there, any news about houses, sunny ones, and 
 prices of the same : in short, as usual, trouble 
 yourselves infinitely for the sake of us poor 
 do- nothings - in-re turn . " 
 
 To which Mrs Browning adds — 
 
 " Yes, I am very anxious to go to Rome. 
 Nothing keeps us but the Landor necessity. 
 The air here (since it has turned to damp) and 
 too much talking make me feel more unsound 
 than I have done lately, and the prophesied-of 
 massacre at Rome (toward the imagination of 
 which Dair Ongaro contributed poetically two 
 evenings ago) does not alarm me so much as 
 thoughts of the tramontana. The Venetian poet 
 threatened us also on other points. But I am 
 steadfast in the faith that things are going 
 excellently. Let us pray that the Pope and 
 his Antonelli won't give up an inch. The 
 danger is that they give up. Will nobody 
 help the Pope away ? My kingdom for a horse, 
 or rather a mule, or rather a boat from Porto 
 d'Anzio. Then the emperor's last promise to 
 the Tuscan delegates that there should be no 
 intervention — neppure Napoletano — is worth 
 something." 
 
 b 
 
14 
 
 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 We have meanwhile Story's brief account of 
 the summer. 
 
 W. W. Story to Charles Eliot Norton. 
 
 "Villa Belvedere, Siena, Aug. 6tkf 1859. 
 ..." Walter Savage Landor has been stay- 
 ing with us here for the last three weeks. The 
 poor old man, you may remember, . . . left 
 England and made a reconciliation, . . . and 
 there at his villa (in Florence) with them he 
 has been staying for a twelvemonth. . . . He 
 was finally forced to leave the villa and take 
 refuge in an inn in Florence. There Browning 
 found him and brought him to Siena, he having 
 expressed a wish to find a little cheap apart- 
 ment here. Having previously written to me 
 for information as to the villas and houses on 
 lease, he came at once to me, and I per- 
 suaded him to stay ; so shocked was I at the 
 whole story of ingratitude which he told me 
 and which Browning fully confirmed. He looked 
 very much broken down when he came, but 
 a cheerful life, with nobody to irritate him and 
 plenty of fresh air, have made a new man of 
 him, and he has taken a villa in the neigh- 
 bourhood, where he will remain until we leave 
 for Rome. It is a noble structure of a mind. 
 
LANDOR AT SIENA 
 
 15 
 
 capacious and perfect still in all its main parts. 
 Here and there are cracks and flaws, and the 
 gigantic memory has begun to crumble away, 
 but the great imposing edifice shows much of 
 a grand front. The old man is still strong, 
 though he has completed eighty- four years and 
 looks back on a long space. Up early in the 
 morning, he reads and sometimes writes Latin 
 alcaics, and since he has been here he has 
 fired several Latin bombs into Louis Napoleon's 
 camp. He is as stout for liberty as ever, a 
 great friend to Garibaldi and a real lover of 
 Italy. We hope still to have imaginary con- 
 versations from his pen, as we have real con- 
 versations from his mouth. We have found 
 him most amiable and interesting, with certain 
 streaks of madness running through his opin- 
 ions, but frank and earnest of nature and a 
 hater of injustice. He tells us stories of past 
 times, past men and past actions, and we are 
 sorry to lose him at last, after the long dis- 
 course, looking before and after, that we have 
 had. He is now publishing a new volume 
 containing his Hellenics and additional new 
 poems. 
 
 " Browning too is at a stone's throw from us, 
 and every evening we sit on our lawn under 
 
16 
 
 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 the ilexes and cypresses and take our tea and 
 talk until the moon has made the circuit of the 
 quarter of the sky. He is well and full of life 
 as ever, but poor Mrs Browning is sadly weak 
 and ill. She is intensely interested in Italian 
 affairs, and, as you know, believes in Louis Na- 
 poleon. When the news of the peace of Villa- 
 franca came she was very much overcome by 
 it, and, having unfortunately taken cold by 
 some imprudent exposure, she has been utterly 
 prostrated. We think she has passed the 
 dangerous crisis and is slowly moving on to- 
 wards health ; but still she is terribly weak, so 
 that she cannot walk across the room, and is 
 afflicted by a racking cough which often robs 
 her of sleep by night. I have seen her only 
 once since she left Florence, for she cannot 
 talk, and every excitement must be avoided. 
 When she came up she was carried in arms to 
 the carriage and thence to the house, and looked 
 like a dark shadow. Browning is in good spirits 
 about her and has no fears now. Pen is well, 
 and as I write I hear him laughing and playing 
 with my boys and Edith on the terrace below 
 my window." 
 
 I find among my documents in relation to 
 this period two groups of careful and vivid 
 
LANDORS TALK 
 
 17 
 
 notes by Mrs Story, to which I cannot do 
 better justice than by giving them in their 
 order and mainly as they stand — that is with 
 few omissions — and with the application to 
 both of the heading borne, in faded ink, by 
 the one which is apparently the later in date. 
 
 " RECOLLECTIONS OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR ; 
 WITH AFTER-DINNER TALK AT SIENA. 
 
 " We first made Mr Landor's acquaintance at 
 Bath, where we were introduced to him by Mr 
 Kenyon. He was living there by himself, 
 away from his family, who were in Italy. We 
 found him extremely cordial and kind, and he 
 induced us by his pressing invitation to pass 
 most of our time with him. He had his walls 
 lined with paintings of no great value, I believe, 
 but bearing high-sounding names of the Italian 
 schools. He was a fierce believer in things 
 and people who interested him, and a most 
 violent denouncer of whatever didn't. He in- 
 veighed against his wife and against his 
 children, but on the other hand told us the 
 story of his love for Rose Aylmer. He was 
 altogether most brilliant and entertaining. 
 
 " Later on, at Siena, when we were living at 
 Villa Belvedere, we were surprised by a visit 
 
 VOL. II. B 
 
SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 from him.^ He arrived one sultry morning 
 with Browning, looking very old, and almost 
 as shabby and dusty and miserable as a beggar. 
 Browning had helped him to get away from 
 Florence, from great complications with his 
 belongings there, and had brought him to us 
 and to the perfect peace of Siena. He made 
 us a long visit and was our honoured and 
 cherished guest. During the time he was 
 with us his courtesy and high breeding never 
 failed him ; he was touchingly pleased and happy 
 with our life, and so delightful and amusing that 
 we ourselves grieved when it came to an end. 
 When the Brownings, who had taken the Villa 
 Alberti, about half a mile distant from us, 
 arrived to stay, a small villa close to them was 
 then engaged for him. To this he went, and 
 
 ^ . . . " One hot summer day towards noon his wife and children 
 turned him out of doors, with some 15 pauls in his pocket, on the 
 burning highway, and told him to be off and never to come back. 
 He was then past 80 ; and he wandered down to Florence a broken- 
 down, poor, houseless old man. There straying aimlessly about the 
 hot streets, exhausted and ill, he had the good fortune to meet Mr 
 Robert Browning, who was to him a good angel and who took him 
 under his protection and did everything he could to make him com- 
 fortable and happy. Shortly after this Browning brought him to 
 me at Siena, and a more pitiable sight I never saw. It was the 
 case of old Lear over again ; and when he descended from his 
 carriage with his sparse white hair streaming out, and tottered 
 into my house dazed in intellect with all he had suffered, I felt as 
 if he were really Lear come back again." — Story's " Conversations 
 in a Studio." 
 
LANDORS TALK 
 
 19 
 
 the legend presently grew that on the very- 
 day of his arrival he in a fit of anger with his 
 landlady threw his dinner, plates and all, out 
 of the window. [It has been variously related, 
 of many of Landor's dinners, of many windows. 
 It was a rate at which he must often have 
 fasted, apart from his bill for crockery.] We 
 constantly met him at Villa Alberti, and he 
 often came to us, with the Brownings, for after- 
 noon tea on the terrace. On Edith's birthday 
 he came in his best attire, wearing a wonderful 
 gay flowered waistcoat which, long years before, 
 had been a present from Count D'Orsay. His 
 laugh was a surprising inharmonious burst of 
 sound with no merriment in it. I seem to hear 
 it now in sharp quick discords. 
 
 " His habit of work was so strong in him that 
 even then, when it might be called his holiday 
 of old age, he got up early in the morning, 
 before the rest of us, before even the servants 
 were astir, and went out under the cypresses to 
 write Latin verses, which he read to W. at break- 
 fast. His memory for the far distant time was 
 extraordinary ; he gave us details of incident 
 and talk that had occurred in those years, with 
 the greatest certainty and delicacy, while the 
 ' middle distance ' was lost in a cloud and the 
 foreground, the present immediately about us, 
 
20 
 
 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 appeared to make little impression on him. His 
 judgments of our artists and authors were good 
 for nothing, as they were all the prejudice of 
 the moment, rash and intemperate ; but those 
 he had formed in the past showed the finest 
 perception about men and things, and he could 
 recall them as if written in a book and learned 
 by heart. What he most cared for was his 
 Latin verses ; at that time he seldom wrote in 
 English — only a verse or two of satire and spleen. 
 As we sat on the terrace with our beautiful 
 view the interesting hours flew by, full of wit 
 and sense and all sorts of noble things. Mrs 
 Browning was often convulsed with laughter at 
 his scorching invective and his extraordinary 
 quick ejaculations, perpetual God-bless-my-souls, 
 &c. ! But I find it too difficult to record the 
 strange charm of his talk. His stories were 
 admirably told, full of point and often of pathos. 
 His mention of Bose Aylmer — and he often 
 mentioned her — always brought the tears to his 
 eyes, if not to ours ; for there with her he had 
 evidently buried his heart. The marriage he 
 made was to do nothing for his happiness. . . . 
 So it was that in extreme old age he was driven 
 out in utter poverty, with barely sufficient to 
 support life. To the last he couldn't resist the 
 impulse to attack and fight — to fight out with 
 
MRS STORY S NOTES 
 
 21 
 
 them (his family), and with everybody, his 
 points of difference. But he was full of generous 
 instincts too, and having nothing to give, gave 
 liberally ; offering for instance several times his 
 so-called Titians and Raphaels to W., and trying, 
 later on, to force them en masse upon Browning, 
 who of course didn't accept them." 
 
 The talk we may imagine to have fallen from 
 Landor on the Siena terrace in the summer 
 nights must atone by its vivacity for its dis- 
 connectedness, and perhaps even in a few cases 
 for our impression of having already and else- 
 where caught its echo. 
 
 " Lord Ward once paid me the highest compli- 
 ment.' Somebody took a book of mine to I'ead 
 him when he was ill. ' Oh, don't talk of books ! ' 
 he said ; but my friend managed to read him 
 one of the ' Imaginary Conversations,' that of 
 Cicero with his brother. ' Well,' said my friend 
 when he had finished, ' don't you think that's 
 exactly what Cicero would have said ? ' ' Very 
 much,' said Lord Ward, ' if he could.' 
 
 " Our old housekeeper, Mrs Lockington, fell 
 ill when she had been in our house 43 years, 
 and my dear sister Elizabeth used often to go 
 to see her. One day she went over and found 
 
22 
 
 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 her groaning and very bad. 'Well, Mrs Lock- 
 ington,' said she, ' what's the matter ? ' ' Oh 
 Lord,' says old mother Lockington, ' I've got 
 such a beating of the heart, Miss, that I can 
 hear it the other side of the room.' 'Now 
 Elizabeth,' said I to my sister, 'I don't believe 
 that. How could you keep from laughing ? ' 
 ' Why,' said she, ' I did almost laugh out, but 
 I don't always laugh in people's faces, as you 
 do, Walter.' 
 
 " Keats is perhaps the most wonderful poet 
 the world ever saw. There are other greater 
 ones, but none so wonderful — and none more so. 
 They may talk of Chatterton. Well, he was 
 extraordinary ; but he was nothing to Keats, 
 for Keats was simply a Greek. Wordsworth 
 said that the Hymn to Pan was ' a pretty piece 
 of Paganism ' ; but if Wordsworth had lived to 
 a hundred, and then had the advantage of a long 
 residence in heaven, he never could have written 
 'Hyperion.' You may take the what-do-you- 
 call-it? — 'Excursion' — and find a dozen idylls 
 in it, but who can read it straight through ? I 
 did so once, but it was a labour of Hercules. 
 He once paid me, however, a pretty compliment. 
 He was a malicious person — I had heard of his 
 malice, and we were talking of Southey. I said 
 I thought he was a much greater poet than 
 
LANDORS RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 23 
 
 Byron — that Byron had more vigour than imag- 
 imation. ' Well,' says Wordsworth, ' that's ex- 
 aictly what I've always thought. I never said 
 s<o perhaps, in so many words, but it was always 
 iin my mind.' My friend Count Lecci said when 
 hie saw the three Wordsworths together, the 
 p)oet, his wife and his sister, ' The Lord of heaven 
 niever himself made three such ugly people, and 
 ilt's a satire on him to suppose he did.' 
 
 " Crabbe Robinson bored me to death with his 
 Cjrerman talk. I said I hated the language, and 
 hie said that if I knew it and understood it I 
 sjhould be delighted with it. Goethe alone, he 
 sjaid, would repay me for the trouble of learning 
 iit. ' His epigrams,' says he, ' you're fond of 
 espigrams.' I told him I didn't care a farthing 
 ffor 'em. I said I knew many Latin and Greek 
 cones — also many French ones that were better 
 Iby far than either. He repeated to me one of 
 (Goethe's, saying it was wonderful. When he 
 Ihad finished I said ' Where's the epigram ? ' 
 " What, don't you see it 1 ' says Crabbe. ' Well 
 Ithen, here's this one;' and he tried me with 
 another. ' I don't call that an epigram either,' 
 asaid I. 'No? Good Lord, then I've done.' 
 "Thank God,' said I. 
 
 " Trelawney told me that when Byron was 
 (once in company with some one who praised 
 
24 
 
 SIENA AND CHABLES SUMNER 
 
 something of mine he at first assented, but after 
 a while said, ' The devil's in me if I like any of 
 his things.' When Trelawney told me this I 
 said, ' He's right — the devil is in him.' Tre- 
 lawney was a great liar. I once said to him, 
 * You've said so-and-so in your book.' ' I didn't, 
 did I ? ' says he ; ' I don't think so, at any rate.' 
 ' Yes,' said I, ' you did, and I can show it to you.' 
 ' Sure enough,' says he. ' Well, I'm damned. 
 But it's true, for all that.' 
 
 " I once heard Sheridan, Pitt, Fox and Burke 
 speak at one sitting of Parliament. Sir Bobert 
 Adair took me. Pitt had a magnificent voice. 
 Fox screeched and screamed. Sheridan was 
 splendid. But Burke was the finest of all — yet 
 with the House quite inattentive. Somebody 
 said, ' There gets up that great fool Wilberforce ' 
 — he was a very mild-spoken man. 
 
 " I once sat next Lady Stowell at dinner, and 
 I asked her to take wine, after trying to engage 
 her in talk. ' For the love of God let me alone 
 and don't bother me so, Mr Landor,' says she ; ' I 
 don't know what I'm eating.' 'Well, my lady,' 
 said I, ' you're a long time making the acquaint- 
 ance ' : for she ate like a tiger and in great 
 quantity. . . - Don't suppose I'm proud of my 
 family (when speaking of its antiquity). I'll tell 
 you what it is. I don't care a farthing for any 
 
LANDORS ANECDOTES 
 
 25 
 
 of my ancestors, and I'm the cleverest of all of 
 'em ; so now you may believe I'm not very proud 
 of 'em. Old Wheeler the counsellor dined often 
 with my father and swore horribly. Vulgar 
 habit it is — that's luckily done away with. I 
 could see my aunt jump in her chair when he 
 came out with his horrid words. At last he 
 said something very bad, and I burst out laugh- 
 ing to see her. ' What the devil in hell are you 
 laughing at?' says he, naming not only the 
 padrone but the locality too. 
 
 " Queen Caroline died of taking medicine with- 
 out advice. She was always taking it, for she 
 was half dead with the drink she took — a bottle 
 of madeira and one of champagne at dinner. 
 Lady Hood told me she came one day to the 
 Palace and the Queen said, ' I'm quite sick, and 
 I've just taken some magnesia, but it doesn't do 
 me any good.' ' Well,' said Lady Hood, who 
 was a great fool, ' try a little castor oil.' The 
 Queen took it, and as castor oil, or any oil, and 
 magnesia mixed, make a hard cement, it killed 
 her. I know this for a fact, for the Queen's 
 medical man told it me. 
 
 " When I read Chaucer I feel as if I were in 
 the fresh, open air, but when I read Spenser I 
 feel as if I were shut up in a room full of per- 
 fumes. I admire Moliere more than any writer 
 
26 
 
 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 of comedies except perhaps Aristophanes ; but 
 
 Corneille, Racine ! Think of a nation that 
 
 calls An-dro-ma-che Andromaque. I once said to 
 a French lady who was extolling Corneille, ' Oh 
 yes, I like his comedies next to Moliere's.' ' His 
 comedies ? Grand Dieu, what d'ye mean ? ' says 
 she. ' Yes,' says I, ' all his tragedies are comedies 
 to me ; I die o' laughing over 'em.' 
 
 " Hexameters cannot be written in English. 
 Longfellow seems to me never to have read a 
 Greek or Latin poet — at least with any sort of 
 care. Dryden's great ode, Alexander's Feast, I 
 never liked much. ' Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen, 
 fallen from his high estate ! ' Four times is the 
 most a word can be repeated by a poet ; only a 
 musician perhaps can do it a fifth time. . . . 
 Franklin was a very good v/riter. Lord Auck- 
 land was to receive him once about some business 
 with the Colonies, and a person who was present 
 at the interview told me that Lord A. stood 
 up all the time and cut short the conversation, 
 bowing out Franklin, who had come in full dress. 
 Franklin went home, took off his fine clothes and 
 smoothed out his grand coat on the bed. ' Lie 
 there. You'll see better days yet, old boy ! ' 
 
 " I met Tom Paine once at dinner — his face 
 blotched and his hand unsteady with the wine 
 he took. The host gave him a glass of brandy 
 
LANDORS ANECDOTES 
 
 27 
 
 and he talked very well ; an acute reasoner, in 
 fact a monstrous clever man. I went at that 
 tlmie into very grand company, but as I was a 
 young man some of my relations who wanted to 
 putb me down said, 'Well, we hear you know 
 Tom Paine — Citizen Paine we suppose you call 
 hiira, with your ideas/ 'To persons with your 
 ide.as I call him Mister Paine,' says I. 
 
 " One day at Bath Louis Napoleon, who had a 
 chairming house there, came and asked me to 
 dime with Lady Blessington, and I went, finding 
 a ciapital dinner and rooms most tastefully dec- 
 orai;ted with flowers. After dinner Lady Blessing- 
 toni and I got into the carriage for a drive, while 
 D'Orsay sat outside with the Prince, who drove 
 — so that, you see, I've been driven by a prince. 
 LoTuis Napoleon is an extremely clever man, talk- 
 ingj well on all subjects. He always wanted me 
 to like the first Napoleon better than I did. I 
 tol(d him I admired the King of Holland more 
 than I did the Emperor. I used to spend 
 a month at Gore House every year. Lady 
 Blessington was a charming, kind, good creature, 
 a great heart. I spent evening after evening 
 with her at Florence and was quite the ami de 
 la maison. No truth at all about D'Orsay and 
 Latdy B. All a complete lie. I remember she 
 was always bothering me to write my life, and 
 
28 
 
 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 one evening she said, ' If you'll do it I'll get 
 Colburn to give you 600 guineas for it ito- 
 morrow.' ' No/ said I, ' I won't, for a pretty 
 figure some of you ladies would cut in it if I 
 told the truth.' 
 
 " I met Mrs Siddons once or twice at t^he 
 Duchess of Lancaster's ; a mighty pompo'us 
 woman, mighty pompous — but wonderful <on 
 the stage, wonderful. I knew Mr Kemble, 
 and once in the street he came up and saiid, 
 ' Or I'm very much mistaken, or this is Mr 
 Landor.' ' It is indeed,' said I, ' but who could 
 ever mistake Mr Kemble ? ' On which he said, 
 to return the compliment, * Allow me to intr-o- 
 duce my friend M. Talma.' So I had some talk 
 with Talma, and told him that I didn't see how 
 they managed in France to break the necks of 
 all their verses so well, and that French poetry 
 had a villainous metre ! He was very like 
 Napoleon the Great, had a charming mannier 
 and was perfectly a gentleman. Hachel I 
 remember as brought to Gore House by her 
 mother. She was a great creature. 
 
 " I once happened to say in a conversatiom, 
 when out for a walk, that I didn't care what 
 people believed, so they were honest ; where- 
 upon a young parson, very forward, said, ' What 
 do you believe, Mr Landor ? ' ' I'll tell ye what 
 
CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 29 
 
 I bDelleve,' said I ; ' I believe you're an impertinent 
 yoiung prig of a parson ! ' * Well, Mr Landor,' says 
 he,, 'I call that personal.' 'I'm not talking over 
 thee hedge,' said I (there were some men working 
 in the field close by,) ' I'm talking to you' " 
 
 lit is only in his own letters — and there but 
 
 alliusively — that I find a record of the visit paid 
 
 at Palazzo Barberini by a distinguished American 
 
 vissitor in the spring of 1859. Charles Sumner, 
 
 theeir friend of many years, was with the Storys 
 
 at this time from April 20th to May 13th, and 
 
 he wrote back, after departure, while completely 
 
 untder the charm of his impression. But I like 
 
 to give first a note they had had from him nearly 
 
 twro years before, written during the early part 
 
 of the long stay in Europe which remarkable 
 
 ev€ents in America had imposed on him. His 
 
 hesalth, it will be remembered, had been almost 
 
 fattally shattered by the furious assault made 
 
 upoon him in the House of Representatives at 
 
 W;ashington, in May, 1856, during the now so 
 
 scaarcely credible heat of the Southern campaign 
 
 for: the further extension of Slavery, by his Con- 
 
 greessional colleague Brooks of South Carolina. 
 
 It need scarce be recalled even to the new 
 
 gernerations that, on the morrow of Sumner's 
 
 dellivery of an impassioned, somewhat rhetori- 
 
30 
 
 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNEE 
 
 cal, but signally eloquent denunciation of the 
 Southern claims, the perusal of which may 
 still, after these years, stir Northern blood, he 
 was approached by his assailant from behind 
 (while writing, out of session- time, at his desk), 
 and so, taken unawares, struck down with a 
 bludgeon, helplessly floored, and, while uncon- 
 scious from the force of the first quick blows, 
 mercilessly beaten about the head. The im- 
 pression of the event, which was like a welt 
 raised by the lash itself across the face of the 
 North, is one that memory has kept, for this 
 careful chronicler, even though the years of a 
 life have overlaid it. I recollect, from far away, 
 the " terrace " of a little ancient house in Paris 
 — a "pavilion" in the Champs Elysees, the 
 site of which has long since ceased to know it ; 
 and the sense as of a summer morning on the 
 edge of the wide avenue, then heterogeneous 
 and queer, with other old pavilions, vaguely 
 seen as survivals of old regimes, with the Jardin 
 d'Hiver opposite, with a beautiful young Empress 
 to be watched for over the railing of the terrace, 
 with a little Prince Imperial, sublime, divine, 
 driven past in a gilded coach surrounded by 
 brilliant bobbing Cent-Gardes grasping cocked 
 pistols, and, finally, with the slow - coming 
 American papers and the great splash in the 
 
THE ASSAULT ON SUMNER 
 
 31 
 
 silver lake — the reverberation in parental breasts, 
 in talk, passion, prophecy, in the very aspect 
 of promptly -arriving compatriots, of the news 
 which may be thought of to-day, through the 
 perspective of history, as making the famous 
 first cannon-sound at Fort Sumter but the second 
 shot of the War. To very young minds, inflamed 
 by the comparatively recent perusal of ' Uncle 
 Tom's Cabin,' it was as if war had quite grandly 
 begun, for what was war but fighting, and what 
 but fighting had for its sign great men lying 
 prone in their blood ? These wonderments, 
 moreover, were to have a sequel — the appearance 
 of the great man, after an interval, in Paris 
 and under the parental roof, with the violence 
 of the scene, to one's vivid sense, still about 
 him (though with wounds by that time rather 
 disappointingly healed), and with greatness, 
 enough, visible, measureable, unmistakable great- 
 ness, to fill out any picture. His stature, his 
 head, his face, his tone — well do I remember 
 howv^ they fitted one's very earliest apprehension, 
 perhaps, of '^type," one's young conception of 
 the statesman and the patriot. They were as 
 interesting and impressive as if they had been 
 a costume or a uniform. Mr Sumner was to 
 remain abroad in search of health ; with im- 
 provements and relapses, experiments and alarms. 
 
32 
 
 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 Charles Sumner to W. W. Story. 
 
 " IvRKA, Aug. 31st, 1857. 
 
 " I am in Italy and must write to you. Do 
 you know this place ? A mountain stream is 
 now rushing under my windows with the noise of 
 Niagara. Two days ago I came over the St 
 Gothard, down Lago Maggiore to Turin, all of 
 which was new to me. I have been tempted 
 as never before, to go still further, to Florence, 
 to you and to Rome ; but my brief time would 
 fail me ; and so I turn back by the Great- St- 
 Bernard, inspired by * Excelsior,' the monks and 
 the dogs. The Val d'Aosta I shall traverse 
 to-morrow, alone. . . . Ah ! you have a happy 
 time here in Italy — particularly Dove il 'si' 
 suona. But seeing my country from abroad 
 gives a new detestation of Slavery and a new 
 determination to fight the battle." 
 
 The following also speaks for itself. 
 
 Charles Sumner to W. W. Story. 
 
 "Hotel Nevet, Montpbllier, Deo. llth, 1858. 
 
 "You cannot, my dear William, be more 
 surprised at receiving a letter with the above 
 date than I am at writing it. But the physi- 
 cians have willed it, and I am here. On reach- 
 ing Paris, after my autumn rambles, there was 
 
SUMNERS CONVALESCENCE 
 
 33 
 
 a consultation on my case : present Trousseau, 
 the eminent practitioner, Brown -Sequard, my 
 attending physician, and an excellent Dr Hay- 
 ward. They were unanimous in urging that 
 I should not return to my public duties this 
 winter, and prescribed a treatment which, though 
 painful, is most pleasant in comparison with 
 my tortures by fire. To carry this out under 
 the most favourable circumstances I have left 
 Paris and come to this quiet place, where I 
 devote myself to my health ; beginning the 
 day with ventouses seches and capsules and 
 pilules, and amusing myself by moderate walks 
 and by tranquil society. 
 
 ' ' But I turn toward Washington, and every 
 day regret this enforced absence. This of itself 
 is a torment. Two years and a half have passed 
 during which I have had trial of pain, ache 
 and smart of every kind, and at times have 
 halted between the grave and hospital. For 
 two or three days I have felt very well ; but 
 on my way here, at Avignon, I was struck by 
 a sudden relapse, which for a while promised 
 to throw me back two years. This seems now 
 to have passed away. But it has left me in 
 great distrust as to my real condition and the 
 amiount of fatigue and excitement which I can 
 bear. But for this I should take my flight 
 
 VOL. II. c 
 
34 
 
 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 at once to America. Next after my seat at 
 Washington is Rome ; but to enjoy Rome I 
 must be well, and without a constant care for 
 my health. Besides, you have about you there 
 men who, if not accessories before the fact were 
 so after the fact, to an act of assassination or 
 have made themselves its compurgators. . . . 
 Remember me kindly to all friends — especially 
 those who hate Slavery. Ah, what barbarism!" 
 
 It was his good fortune to be in Italy at 
 the time of great events, into which no visitor 
 could have entered with a larger sympathy. He 
 paid a visit at Palazzo Barberini in the spring 
 of 1859. That Future in which he had so 
 general a faith — on the whole so easy a con- 
 fidence — was all in the air and tremendously 
 in the balance. Magenta and Solferino were 
 of this summer. He writes just after leaving 
 Rome. 
 
 Charles Sumner to W. W. Story. 
 
 " May \4tth, '59. On board Lomhardo. 
 
 " It rained, dear William, torrents all the way 
 to Civita Vecchia, and at sea till seven o'clock 
 in the evening, when the sky was bright wiih 
 moon and stars. There was no American aboard ; 
 most were Italians. Tanto meglio. The captain, 
 
FROM CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 35 
 
 in reply to my inquiries, tells me that everything 
 is most tranquil at Florence and Leghorn and 
 with la gente del jpopolo. He does not venture 
 yet to say that the Austrians will be chased out 
 of Italy, which I let him know I longed for ; 
 but he declares with a good deal of pride that 
 recent events, particularly in Tuscany, have 
 shown the capacity of the Italians to govern 
 themselves. The chief news at Leghorn was 
 th<e arrival of Louis Napoleon at Genoa, and 
 threio days of festa thereupon. What I have 
 left undone at Rome haunts me even more 
 than all that I enjoyed. I think perpetually of 
 pictures and statues unseen ; but more than this, 
 I am unhappy in beautiful opportunities I let 
 slip. Why did I not press you to go with me 
 to the Capitol and the Vatican ? And why did 
 I not press Wild to a similar service in the 
 picture-galleries ? You know that I am always 
 a learner, and such tutors, with such means, 
 would have added for ever to my knowledge and 
 to my pleasant memories of art. But this is lost. 
 But I have stored away much. Borne now, as 
 when I first saw it, touches me more than any 
 other place. Then I have been so happy with 
 you. Perhaps it will be long before we meet 
 again ; but I cannot forget these latter delicious 
 days. The captain promises that we shall arrive 
 
36 
 
 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 at Genoa at 8 o'clock this evening, where I shall 
 close this scrawl, by telling you what I learn 
 there." 
 
 This last promise he handsomely keeps. 
 
 Charles Sumner to W. W. Story. 
 
 " Turin, May \Sth, 1859. 
 
 ..." And yet it [the journey from Genoa] 
 was full of interest. At every point where the 
 common road was visible there were French 
 soldiers without number, all daubed with mud 
 and draggling in the rain. Several thousand 
 were sheltered in the station of the railroad at 
 Alessandria. The train, as it entered, seemed 
 to penetrate this living mass ; and yet all was 
 order and tranquillity. Nobody knows the 
 counsels of the Emperor. I should think the 
 rain, which had lasted the last three days, must 
 have damaged the enemy much. Their course 
 is one of pillage and robbery. They live upon 
 the people. . . . Yesterdaj'- I passed half an 
 hour with the Comte de Cavour. He received 
 me in his bedroom, where he was writing. Let 
 me say that a note which he kindly wrote me 
 in French was in the clear round hand of his 
 country, so different from the French, which is 
 small and flowing like their language. This 
 
TURIN AND CAVOUR 
 
 37 
 
 national peculiarity of handwriting is curious 
 to observe, particularly in its relation to the 
 languages. He was calm, as if he felt himself 
 master of the situation, and asked me to observe 
 the tranquillity of Turin with not a soldier to be 
 seen. To my inquiry if he thought the Austrians 
 would be driven from Italy this summer he 
 quietly said ' Je Tespere.' And when I dwelt 
 upon the strength of the fortifications at Verona 
 he said that he thought they could be taken. 
 He seemed to understand the condition of things 
 at Home — that Lady William Russell is tres- 
 autrichienne ; that the people there are right ; 
 but as he spoke of the Saint-P^re I thought the 
 suhrisus of his face seemed to expand. It is 
 evident that he does not doubt of the result. 
 
 "I've also passed several hours at the house 
 of the Contessa de Coligno and at that of Mme. 
 Arconati. This I owe to Miss Weston ; pray let 
 her know how completely her introduction has 
 been honoured. There I learn that everybody 
 is full of confidence and anticipating victory. 
 They say that this is to be their last war and 
 that great armies will no longer be needed. But 
 nobody seems to understand the plan of cam- 
 paign. All, however, are sure that the Austrians 
 are to be beaten. Mme. de Coligno seemed much 
 moved at the thought of the blood that must be 
 
38 
 
 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 shed to dispossess the enemy of those immense 
 fortifications. It seems that in the hospitals 
 of Turin is a solitary Austrian soldier, wounded 
 and taken prisoner in a recent skirmish. These 
 humane ladies, who speak German, had visited 
 him, but he could not understand them. He 
 turns out to be a Hungarian. The property of 
 Mme. Arconati is near the Ticino, and of course 
 is now in possession of the Austrians. She 
 describes their conduct as barbarous. But in 
 the present deplorable condition of their finances 
 they can only live by turning highwaymen. . . . 
 Tell our friends they will find Turin more 
 tranquil than a Washington hotel. The Savoy- 
 ards are showing their monkeys in the streets, 
 the boys playing marbles, the theatres thronged, 
 the table at the hotel served with abundance ; 
 although the Austrians are within a few hours 
 of the capital. I have been charmed to learn 
 that Manzoni, who is in his house at Milan under 
 the hoof of the enemy, is Italianissimo. From 
 one of his grandchildren here, Count Bentivoglio, 
 who has called on me, I have learned the senti- 
 ments of the distinguished author. The weather 
 is execrable, but I trust it will make the 
 Austrians sufier. Thus far it has prevented me 
 from going to the Superga, where Lord Aberdeen 
 told me he enjoyed the view of the Alps more 
 
PIEDMONT AND VICTOR EMMANUEL 
 
 39 
 
 than from any other place. To-night I am to 
 meet a party invited expressly to put me au 
 courant of events here." 
 
 To which the following, late in the evening, 
 is a postscript. 
 
 ' ' I have just come from the Marchesa Arco- 
 nati's, where I have met familiarly a considerable 
 circle, all full of Italy, and I write to let you 
 kn(0w in one word the spirit which prevails. 
 No)thing can surpass the courage and hope which 
 I find in all. I cannot say that they seem even 
 to be anxious, so assured are they of the result 
 an(d so necessary as well as glorious do they re- 
 gard it. The Austrian ultimatum, which was 
 priictically a declaration of war, was welcomed as 
 a solution of their perplexities. Without that 
 they would have been delivered over to the 
 uncertainties of diplomacy. Cavour himself was 
 happy to have the knot cut. The Austrian officer 
 who came on this message is said to have ad- 
 dressed the former in the most courteous terms, 
 assuring him that the message he bore had at 
 least one pleasure for him, as it gave him an 
 opportunity to make the acquaintance of the 
 fir;st statesman of Europe. . . . Turin is a 
 magnificent lordly place, with spacious houses 
 
 to 
 
40 
 
 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 which make me understand why Alfieri, as he 
 records in his autobiography, found Paris mesquin 
 when he first entered it coming from Italy." 
 
 He continues his report with characteristic 
 abundance. 
 
 Charles Sumner to W. W. Story. 
 
 " SusA, Mai/ 20th, 1859. 
 
 " Thus far I come, dear WilUam, and to-morrow 
 morning I shall quit Italy. I am unhappy at 
 the thought, for I shall never see it again. My 
 travels will soon end. Borne haunts me perpet- 
 ually, and I wish to ask you a hundred questions 
 which I forgot. I believe this is my fourth 
 despatch. Since my last I have been in the 
 way of hearing something more of opinion in 
 Turin, particularly from a leading deputy of the 
 gauche. He looks for sympathy from the King- 
 that-will-be of Naples, and counts upon at least 
 a great northern Italian kingdom. I am aston- 
 ished at the warmth with which the King is 
 spoken of. He is said to be not only the hien- 
 aime, but the adore. He mingles with his 
 people without state or ceremony. Only the 
 other day, when Cavour returned from Paris and 
 a crowd assembled under his windows to cheer 
 him, it is said the King was among them crying 
 
RESULTS OF THE WAR OF 1859 
 
 41 
 
 Vive Cavour ! But the representatives of the 
 gauche are not strongly attached to Cavour. 
 They say that he has adopted his present 
 opinions as the means of advancing himself, and 
 that he allows no first-rate talent to be associated 
 with him, in the Cabinet, which might impair his 
 pre-eminence. The news has continued to arrive 
 of the barbarous conduct of the Austrians in 
 subsisting their troops at the expense of the 
 provinces where they are. . . . Three cheers 
 for Italy, and may the Austrian empire cease to 
 exist ! " 
 
 He was again, on leaving Italy, in the hands 
 of the doctors. 
 
 Charles Sumner to W. W. Story. 
 
 "Bains Frascati, au Havre, Aug. llth, 1859. 
 " Your generous letter, after travelling to 
 London, found me here, enjoying seclusion and 
 sea-bathing. Since I wrote you last, great 
 events and changes have occurred. The pro- 
 gramme of the Emperor has not been carried 
 out, but much has been done. Look at it. 
 (1) Lombardy wrested from Austria. (2) The 
 Duchies, Parma, Modena and Tuscany, given to 
 themselves ; for I assume that this is done. 
 (3) The idea of Italian unity and independence 
 
42 
 
 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 crowded upon the attention of Europe. (4) New 
 means established in Italy for the support of 
 these ideas. (5) An impulse toward reform 
 throughout all Italy. These are not small con- 
 quests. Out of these I hope for the great result. 
 I have recently been reading the 4 vols, of the 
 writings and speakings of Louis Napoleon. Much 
 as I dislike him I confess to having risen from 
 them with a higher idea of his intelligence and 
 of his character. During his exile and imprison- 
 ment he occupied himself with topics many of 
 which are intimately associated with human 
 welfare. Two or three of his speeches seem to 
 me masterpieces ; particularly that at Bordeaux, 
 where he said I'Empire c'est la Paix, and that 
 where he announced his marriage. But I have 
 been disgusted at seeing his repeated declara- 
 tions in favour of the Bepublic followed by its 
 most treacherous assassination. I sympathise 
 with you completely in all your aspirations for 
 dear Italy and grieve with you in her discom- 
 fitures. But I doubt not that her good time 
 will come at last. Most happy should I be on 
 your lawn. But do not tempt me. The move- 
 ment and unrest of travel are not the best 
 conditions for me. I have already passed three 
 weeks in London, where I saw much of the 
 great world ; but daily breakfasts and dinners 
 
SUMNER S TONE 
 
 43 
 
 were 5 not so good for me as my private life 
 here,, where I go to bed at nine o'clock. . . . At 
 timei^s I think of starting for Madrid, merely 
 to seee its gallery and then turn back. But I 
 say " Get well, get well, for work next December,' 
 and then I banish all such ideas. Looking 
 only yesterday at the second vol. of the magnifi- 
 cent work entitled ' Moyen Age et Renaissance,' 
 I fell I upon the chapter on ships and the drawings 
 of a Spanish caravel in the time of Columbus. 
 I thcought what beautiful materials Kogers has 
 for fiilling up the vacant space about his doors. 
 Hemeember me to the excellent and noble 
 Brow/nings." 
 
 Wfith all of which he continues the best of 
 corre&spondents, as well as the most characteristic, 
 surehy, of letter -writers. He has, as I have 
 alreacdy observed, his tone, of which he never 
 any imore fails than a great actor fails of that 
 of a , great part. Yet he was no actor ; he was 
 himseelf the person represented. 
 
 Chartles Sumner to W. W. Story. 
 
 " Bains Frascati, pres du Havre, Aug. \hth, 1859. 
 
 . .. . "To-day the wind is strong, and the 
 sea i^s heavy, and I lose my bath. But this 
 seclussion here is profitable and not unpleasant. 
 
44 
 
 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 Yesterday, however, I broke away from it to 
 see the entry of the troops, with the Emperor 
 and his marshals — the most remarkable triumph 
 since Paulus Emilius mounted the Capitol on 
 his return from Greece, and I doubt not the 
 most imposing spectacle ever seen in Paris. Why 
 not say in the world ? The arrangements and 
 appointments were perfect. I was in a balcony 
 au premier, near the corner of the Kue de la 
 Paix and the Boulevard — a most excellent place 
 to see ; price of my chair 50 francs ! — and I 
 looked closely at all that passed. The Emperor 
 was for some time at the corner near me. He 
 was superbly mounted, and sat his horse well ; 
 looked in good health and bronzed by the sun. 
 More than any marshal or general, he held his 
 head down, bowled only occasionally and seemed 
 to crawl along. While near where I was he 
 was occupied in twirling and smoothing his 
 moustache. As he passed there was a hush 
 of silence, and intense curiosity, but no enthusi- 
 asm. MacMahon looked more like an American 
 than an Irishman. Canrobert had a joyous look 
 as he turned to the right and left to receive the 
 applause. 
 
 "The news from Tuscany is inspiring. Pray 
 help them to be firm. The Brownings must work. 
 The Ducal family has ceased to reign ; let this 
 
FROM SUMNER IN PARIS 
 
 45 
 
 be the decree. If they consent to take back the 
 son the battle is postponed to another day. In 
 London I met one evening at Lady Granville's 
 the runaway Prince Corsini, and heard him say 
 that he was going to join his Grand Duke. I 
 understand that he announced the ministry that 
 wouLd be formed on the Grand Duke's return 
 to Florence. An amusement of exile ! Lady 
 G. asked me if I noticed his most excellent 
 Tuscan. I see by the late papers that ' Roba 
 di Il-oma ' again appears in the ' Atlantic' Oh, 
 I do' love Italy, and wish that I were there, 
 to latp myself in its Elysium. But I shall be 
 in another place, in scenes very different, amidst 
 tobacco -spitting, swearing slave-drivers, abused 
 by the press, insulted so far as is possible, pained 
 and racked by the insensibility about me to 
 human rights and the claims of human nature ; 
 finding little true sympathy, but cheered, let 
 me confess, by the dignity of the cause I serve. 
 . . .. Did I tell you that I saw H. in London ? 
 — once in society, trying to be eloquent, as if 
 with Mrs Ticknor. He seemed so little at ease, 
 so like a manant, that I asked if it could be he." 
 
 The following was practically his farewell. 
 Theo»dore Parker, mentioned at the end, as full 
 and eloquent a voice from pulpit and platform 
 
46 
 
 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 (on the same agitated ground) as Sumner was 
 to remain, or in strictness still further become, 
 in the Senate, reached Italy scarcely less battered 
 and spent with the fray. But, less fortunate, 
 he was not to recover his strength, and in Flor- 
 ence, the next year, he was to sink to rest. 
 
 Charles Sumner to Mrs Story. 
 
 " Paris, Oct. 9th, 1859. 
 
 " My paquets are made and in an hour I 
 leave Paris — which never was more beautiful. 
 Latterly I have been devoured by desires which 
 were stimulated in Rome. Here it is choice 
 engravings, bronzes and manuscripts on vellum. 
 The gentle Wild is partly responsible for the 
 bronzes, for he gave me the address of Bar- 
 bedienne, whose bill runs up to 2500 francs. 
 But my treasures are three MSS. most ex- 
 quisitely illuminated — superior to anything in 
 all Boston ! 
 
 . . . " Sartiges, who came to see me yester- 
 day, said that he expected to see me in Paris 
 au moins dix fois encore ! But I turn my back 
 now upon all such expectations and return to 
 my country and my duties there. In following 
 my career I have indeed a higher pleasure even 
 than in art. But art will cheer the graver 
 life which I pursue. 
 
FROM SUMNER IN PARIS 
 
 47 
 
 "It is too true — I cannot write a letter like 
 yours. I am dull and plain. Often with envy 
 I thought of those delicious Tuscan evenings 
 on your lawn, with Browning and the immortal 
 style of Landor. Till it became cold I followed 
 my baths at Frascati's, and then made a little 
 tour in Normandy and Brittany with an old 
 acquaintance of William's, Hamilton Aide. He 
 thinks William a very accomplished person. So 
 do I. 
 
 "You have seen in the papers that a sub- 
 scription has been started for a statue in bronze 
 of Horace Mann, to be placed in the State House 
 yard. I have written to insist that William 
 must do it ; first because he is the first American 
 sculptor, secondly because he would especially ap- 
 preciate the character and life of Mann. Tell 
 him to write me at once his ideas on this matter 
 — what of portraits or photographs he would need, 
 and how he feels about undertaking it. 
 
 " I sleep to-night at Amiens and to-morrow 
 touch English earth. I have already accepted 
 country invitations more than enough to fill all 
 the time until sea-sickness begins. 
 
 " [Theodore] Parker will winter in Bome. I 
 fear the excitement and strain of art, antiquity 
 and history there will not leave him his needed 
 repose. Pray watch him and send him home 
 
48 
 
 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 strong and well, to preach great sermons and 
 hold aloft the scales of justice. Hillard I hear 
 of in Paris, but see him not. He must be 
 ashamed of himself" 
 
 We feel by his first words from Washington 
 (January 27th, 1860) that in his absence the 
 plot has indeed thickened. "What a difference 
 between this place and Rome ! I feel it keenly. 
 And yet there is a delight here which you have 
 not. It is the standing up for truth and liberty. 
 The slave-masters seem to me more than ever 
 harharians — in manner, conversation, speeches, 
 conduct, principles, life. All things indicate a 
 crisis. Society is dislocated. The diplomats can- 
 not give a dinner without studying their lists 
 as a protocol. There is little or no intercourse 
 between sides." And he breaks out again, on 
 March 23rd, in a note from the Senate Chamber. 
 " A walk in the streets of Rome, a stroll on 
 the Pincian, a visit to the Vatican, a sight of 
 St Peter's — oh, for an hour, one brief hour, of 
 any of these ! And oh, better still, for a talk 
 with you ! I have so much to say on art — 
 and on our politics here, which have none of 
 the refinement of art. Never was such a horror 
 put into bronze as this recent statue by Clark 
 Mills, unless you except his other horror. Motley 
 
FROM SUMNER AT HOME 
 
 49 
 
 is in. the Institute (of France). A la bonne 
 heure!" And as of the same year I give the 
 following, dated Boston, August 10th, and form- 
 ing the first half of a letter of which the second 
 is occupied with requests and orders for repro- 
 ductions of busts in the Vatican, columns in 
 the Forum and other Roman relics. 
 
 Charles Sumner to W. W. Story. 
 
 " Boston, Attff. 10th, 1860. 
 ..." Yesterday I was at Mount Auburn 
 especially to see the statues in the Chapel. I 
 had not been there for years. I was pleased 
 with them all ; but yours seemed to me more 
 beautiful than ever both as portrait and as art. 
 I doubt if there be a finer portrait-statue in 
 exist<ence. . . . Your bust of Theodore Parker 
 is sp'oken of with admiration. It ought to be 
 ordered in marble for the Public Library. I 
 shall push this idea. But what a loss was 
 there ! Daily I feel the immense void which 
 his death has made, and I know not where to 
 look for any one to fill it. I know well how 
 earnestly he would have sustained me in my 
 late efforts. ... I am charmed with the news 
 from Italy. The sooner the old is rung out and 
 the new rung in the better. I hope to hear 
 very soon that Bomba has fled and Pius after 
 
 VOL. II. D 
 
50 
 
 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 him. Meanwhile I imagine you at Siena. I 
 wish that I were there. I should like to feast 
 my eyes on an Italian landscape, with glimpses 
 at Italian art, and to feel that I was in Italy. 
 But life is real, life is earnest — does not Long- 
 fellow say so ? — and I have hard work here 
 which I mean to do." 
 
 The Brownings spent again in Home the 
 winter of 1859-60, and for the summer re- 
 turned to Siena, to which the following, from 
 Florence, was prefatory. The friends were to 
 be together again for the last bright season, as 
 it was to prove, of Mrs Browning's life. The 
 journey had been pursued, after the stages 
 enumerated, to Florence, and the return to 
 Siena and the Villa Alberti was made in July. 
 There attaches to the letter something of the 
 charm of a document on the old romantic method 
 of progression at a date when such documents 
 were becoming rare. This is one of the last of 
 them. 
 
 Robert Browning to Mr and Mrs Story. 
 
 " Siena, June 8th, 1860. 
 " I said I would tell you how we found things 
 and fared on the Orvieto road. We arrived at 
 four yesterday afternoon and preferred resting 
 
FROM BROWNING AT SIENA 
 
 51 
 
 here for four-and-twenty hours to going forward 
 at once. We travelled 48 or 50 miles delight- 
 fully the first day and reached Viterbo early. 
 Next morning we began the new part of the 
 journey — continued 30 miles at a stretch and 
 got to Orvieto through a pleasant placid country 
 (much work of Luca Signorelli at the cathedral). 
 On Wednesday we advanced to Ficulli ; but 
 for Ba's fatigue it would have been better to 
 push on to Citta della Pieve, where a fresco 
 of P'erugino's is worth the trouble of a longer 
 journey and the comfort of the inn would have 
 been much greater. But it was our own choice 
 to divide the way so. We reached Chiusi 
 early, having travelled all day through exquisite 
 scenery. We felt the heat — not intolerably, 
 however, nor before this third day, and there 
 was never any dust to mention. We left Chiusi 
 at nine, or later, yesterday (I got up early 
 every morning and saw sights for an hour or 
 two), and reached Sinalunga by one o'clock. 
 Had there been an endurable inn Ba might 
 have rested sufficiently to proceed to Florence ; 
 but she was forced to choose between the 
 kitchens and the carriage, and preferred the 
 latter — so here we stopped, as I began by 
 saying. We were perfectly served throughout, 
 the vetturino caring for all things, and his 
 
52 
 
 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 charge for the three days and a half amounts 
 to 19 scudi, 2 pauls. I paid the service myself; 
 only this was not much. The end is, we have 
 had a delightful journey which Ba has borne 
 very well on the whole, though the whole 
 business is far more fatiguing than by the short 
 stages on the Perugia road. . . ." 
 
 Before the return to Siena, meanwhile, Brown- 
 ing had again written. 
 
 Robert Browning to W. W. Story. 
 
 " Florencb, Jmie 29th, 1860. 
 
 . . . "I was going to answer you leisurely, 
 when there is a sudden occasion of writing to 
 Nencini, for Landor determines at last to ac- 
 company us, and I want the old quarters for 
 him, where you helped to make him so comfort- 
 able last year. So I just write a word, without 
 prejudice to the other few words I mean to write 
 before we set out, to say that, for ourselves, 
 the best nev.^s is that we start for Marciano, and 
 you all, to-morrow week, — as I have just ap- 
 prised Alberti. Won't you like to see another 
 month or two of dear old Landor and Can'- 
 Giallo (he has just come to me for picture- 
 money — such pictures !). . . . Would you have 
 the goodness, whenever you engage your piano, 
 
MRS BROWNING AND ITALY 
 
 53 
 
 to secure for me the same that I had last year, 
 at the same terms? And beg that it may be 
 transferred to the villa on the 7th, so that we 
 may find it on arriving." 
 
 He brought his dying wife in the autumn 
 back to E,ome — they were settled in September 
 at 126 Via Felice; and Mrs Browning mentions 
 in a letter of the autumn that her husband " has 
 taken to modelling under Mr Story (at his studio) 
 and is making extraordinary progress." These, 
 it is needless to say, were months of deep anxiety 
 and suspense for lovers of Italy ; public events 
 had hurried over the stage like the contending 
 armies of Elizabethan plays; the "cause" and 
 its issue hung, as never before, in the balance : 
 with the sense, and the alternations, of all of 
 which Mrs Browning's correspondence flushes 
 and turns pale. Her letters, of this and the 
 previous time, while the pulses of her companion's 
 much more clearly throb, reflect her passion, her 
 feverish obsession, with extraordinary vivacity 
 and eloquence ; but it is impossible not to feel, 
 as we read, that to " care," in the common phrase, 
 as she is caring is to entertain one's convictions 
 as a malady and a doom. Her state of mind 
 on the public question, as her letters present 
 it almost from the first of her residence in Italy, 
 
54 
 
 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 is an interesting, an almost unique case, which 
 forces upon us more than one question ; so that 
 we wonder why so much disinterested passion, 
 so inflamed a desire that the right (and for a 
 people not her own, a people only befriended 
 and admired) should not leave us in a less 
 disturbed degree the benefit of all the moral 
 beauty. We wonder at the anomaly, wonder 
 why we are even perhaps slightly irritated, and 
 end by asking ourselves if it be not because her 
 admirable mind, otherwise splendidly exhibited, 
 has inclined us to look in her for that saving 
 and sacred sense of proportion, of the free and 
 blessed general, that great poets, that genius 
 and the high range of genius, give us the im- 
 pression of even in emotion and passion, even in 
 pleading a cause and calling on the gods. Mrs 
 Browning's sense of the general had all run, 
 where the loosening of the Italian knot, the 
 character of Napoleon III., the magnanimity of 
 France and the abjection of England were in- 
 volved, to the strained and the strenuous — a 
 possession, by the subject, riding her to death, 
 that almost prompts us at times to ask wherein 
 it so greatly concerned her. It concerned her 
 of course as it concerned all near witnesses and 
 lovers of justice, but the effect of her insistent 
 voice and fixed eye is to make us somehow feel 
 
MRS BROWNINGS TONE 
 
 55 
 
 that justice is, after all, of human things, has 
 something of the convenient looseness of human- 
 ity about it — so that we are uneasy, in short, 
 till we have recognised the ground of our critical 
 reaction. It would seem to be this ground, 
 exactly, that makes the case an example. 
 Monstrous as the observation may sound in its 
 crudity, we absolutely feel the beautiful mind 
 and the high gift discredited by their engross- 
 ment. We say, roughly, that this is what 
 becomes of distinguished spirits when they 
 fail to keep above. The cause of Italy was, 
 obviously, for Mrs Browning, as high aloft as 
 any object of interest could be ; but that was 
 only because she had let down, as it were, her 
 inspiration and her poetic pitch. They suffered 
 for it sadly — the permission of which, conscious 
 or unconscious, is on the part of the poet, on 
 the part of the beautiful mind, ever to be judged 
 (by any critic with any sense of the real) as 
 the unpardonable sin. That is our complaint : 
 the clear stream runs thick ; the real superiority 
 pays ; we are less edified than we ought to be. 
 Which is perhaps, after all, not a very graceful 
 point to make (though it must stand), while I 
 avail myself of the last fine tracings of her pen 
 that I encounter. One is but a scrap of a note 
 to Mrs Story, which sounds for the first time — 
 
 •jj^ f-i't'^ 1 
 
56 
 
 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 that is my reason — a name I must not let slip. 
 " Dearest Emelyn : I wrote to Miss Blagden 
 to-day about the Pantaleoni apartment. Thank 
 you twenty times. Wish for me, will for me, 
 mesmerise for me, that I may indeed go to bed 
 early to - night. For Mr W. is here talking 
 down art in Italy ! " This other fragment, from 
 Florence, undated, and as a postscript to a note 
 of her husband's, belongs to some moment of 
 the previous couple of years. 
 
 ..." Here are fanatics of all colours, now- 
 adays. News from Naples are threatening in 
 this ' Monitore ' just opened. Whoever goes 
 mad among the enemies of Italy she gets the 
 advantage of it. May they go mad therefore. 
 As soon as the rain ceases and I can get out 
 I will go and see your charming little Duchess 
 (di Carigliano). I like her and honour her house 
 — here in Florence I mean. Robert hasn't told 
 you that whatever Can'-Giallo may be doing 
 poetically his master is active. Robert might 
 tell you that a poem on the goddess Diana was 
 produced the other day, for instance, which had 
 the peculiarity of being so exceedingly indecent 
 (for Diana or any other goddess or woman) that 
 it might be objected to by less prudish critics 
 than Monckton Milnes." 
 
VAIN PROJECTS 
 
 57 
 
 There were to be, at any rate, no more missives 
 in the deUcate but so definite little characters. 
 This of Browning's, in Rome, must have been 
 of May, or thereabouts, 1861, and have preceded 
 but by a few days their last return to Florence. 
 The plans for the summer were to have no 
 sequel. 
 
 " I meant to go down to you to-day and thank 
 you — but Ba, who caught cold in some strange 
 way two days ago, suddenly became much worse, 
 and last night was alarmingly attacked by the 
 old obstruction at the chest. I had to fetch a 
 doctor in the night who stayed with us till 
 morning; it really seemed as if she would be 
 strangled on the spot, and that for six hours 
 together. At five o'clock she began to get 
 through it, and since then has been much 
 better. I shall be forced to leave this burning 
 place as soon as she is able — where do you go ? 
 I will write to-morrow and tell you how she is. 
 In your letter you incline to Yiareggio, do you ? 
 Or the old Siena ? Or the Baths ? Or any 
 place in the mountains, such as Corvigliaio, 30 
 miles hence in the Bologna mountains, said to 
 be cold as Switzerland, with one inn and no 
 resources beyond its romantic scenery. Let us 
 be together if we can. Such a fright this at- 
 
58 
 
 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 tack has been. Suppose we had been pleasantly 
 travelling ! " 
 
 There was to be quite another sequel to the 
 hopes so expressed for the coming weeks, but 
 that these hopes persisted until shortly before 
 the catastrophe I gather from another letter, 
 from Florence, undated, but which can scarcely 
 belong to another moment, and which refers 
 again to pleasant possibilities. The allusion 
 to the negotiation attempted for the Brown- 
 ings in Rome has a reference to the small 
 rococo apartment in the Barberini which I have 
 already mentioned, and which was in the opposite 
 wing of the palace from that of the Storys. The 
 hope of acquiring it, as "just the place," had been 
 the more fondly entertained as the Florentine 
 winter had, at the last, definitely become im- 
 possible to Mrs Browning. It would indeed 
 have been just the place, with that luxuriously 
 mild inclination of its staircase designed as if 
 for the ascent of an invalid. But the question, 
 with so many other questions, dropped. 
 
 Robert Browning to Mr and Mrs Story. 
 
 " Florence [1861]. 
 ..." There's no doubt you can have Villa 
 Orr how and when you please. Nencini said 
 the owners wanted money, would never have 
 
THE LAST SUMMER 
 
 59 
 
 refused an offer ; in short, I took it for granted 
 that any conditions so reasonable would be ac- 
 cepted unless I gave too early notice of the 
 possibility of your return. Should you incline 
 to the Baths of Lucca? I hear of the propi- 
 tious emptiness of that place also, how any 
 terms will be caught at. What do you think 
 of Viareggio, which seems rather attractive to 
 folks this season, and is praised for its sea and 
 six miles of sand ? 
 
 " How kindness's self you have been in all 
 that troublesome negotiation for the apartment ! 
 It will all come to nothing, we begin to fear, 
 as the days go by and bring no tidings. As 
 the chair could be appended without disfigure- 
 ment to the house, one sees no other reason 
 against it than that fears and scruples shake 
 the Prince and we shall probably drop off in 
 the shake — a great pity though ! — Yes, very 
 good news, good symptoms on every side, for 
 Italy. The main of it is affected, let us hope — 
 tutto e salvo, and the less of delay in these 
 plaguy dettagli the better. How hot, how 
 unpleasant to be so far away from you, how 
 pleasant to hope soon to see the good summer- 
 time again as of old in your company ! We 
 all want the same things exactly — can it not 
 be ? Ba is stronger and better, but has not 
 
 :j^&. 
 
! 
 
 60 
 
 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 left the house. Landor has cut off his beard — 
 treasure your photographs ! We hear less of 
 American news than when we were at Borne, 
 and abundantly despise our own mean newspaper 
 articles." 
 
 The sequel that did occur in June forms part 
 of a long and very interesting letter of Story's — 
 so full that I give it without curtailment. Like 
 Browning, he, that year, with his wife and 
 children, left Italy. 
 
 W. W. Story to Charles Eliot Norton. 
 
 " DiABLERETS, Av^. 15th, 1861. 
 
 ..." We are immediately under the bare 
 and broken heights of the great Diablerets, in 
 whose rocky bosom, almost, as it seems, within 
 reach of our hands, though in fact there are 
 miles of air between us, lies the flashing glacier 
 with its soiled edges. This valley is a long level 
 studded with black pines and with the lighter 
 green of maples, hazels and willows, and through 
 it are all sorts of little grassy paths leading 
 you into depths of woods or up mountain heights 
 or through groups of cedar-brown chalets. As 
 I look out from my window I see the slopes 
 of the mountains towards Sepey, whose vast 
 meadows of bright glad green are sprinkled all 
 
THE DIABLERETS 
 
 61 
 
 over with chalets and darkened here and there 
 with parhaments of pines — or rather platoons of 
 pines, which seem to be marching Hke black 
 rangers, or Ltitzow's wild hunters, down into the 
 valley. The great torrent called the Grandes 
 Eaux, which intersects the valley, rushes to 
 empty itself in the great lake below with a 
 joyous, tumultuous sound, as if glad to be free 
 from the glacial torpor above. Plant me here 
 then and imagine me looking one way down the 
 laughing valley, brilliant in the sunshine, and 
 the other way up the grey barren cliffs of the 
 Diablerets, covered with eternal snow and grim 
 as despair. . . . We were skilful enough to land 
 here the other day, after excellent fishing, our 
 friend Mr Gaskell, whom we had never before 
 He spent a week with us, and we enjoyed 
 
 seen. 
 
 his society . extremely. What a sweet, broad 
 character he has ! I was really glad to see him 
 in the flesh, for he had been but a name before. 
 We talked of you and of all our friends of the 
 Italian campaign, and it was pleasant to find 
 how truly he shared our friendships. Yesterday 
 morning we walked down the valley with him 
 and said good-bye with real regret. 
 
 " But to turn to sadder things. You have 
 before this heard of course of the death of Mrs 
 Browning, though the news had not reached you 
 
62 
 
 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 ]' 
 
 when you wrote. This was sudden and unex- 
 pected at the last, for though she had always 
 been so frail that one only wondered what kept 
 soul and body together at all, we had become so 
 accustomed to thinking of her as different from 
 all others in the matter of health that we began 
 to think that she might even outlast us. Fifteen 
 years ago her physicians told her that life was 
 impossible, yet she had lived and borne a child 
 and written immortal verses and shown an 
 amazing energy of spirit and intellect. But last 
 winter I had many fears that she was failing. 
 The death of her father had struck her a hard 
 blow ; then her sister's death struck her again, 
 as it were, when she was down, and I feared 
 that her vital energy, great as it was, might 
 not resist. Yet she revived and, as spring came 
 on, went out to drive, and, though weak, began 
 to gather herself together again, even at one 
 time projecting a journey to Paris. This how- 
 ever was impossible. Yet she went to Florence 
 by vettura and did not suffer more than usual, 
 and we were all hesitating, at Leghorn, whether 
 we should not abandon our scheme of Switzer- 
 land for another summer together in Siena when 
 the fatal news of her death reached us. Brown- 
 ing was to have come down to spend Sunday 
 with us, but on Saturday night she was attacked 
 
MRS BROWNINGS LAST ILLNESS 
 
 63 
 
 with difficulty of breathing, and at dead of night 
 he was forced to run for a physician, Dr Wilson, 
 who remained with her all night and took a 
 very gloomy view. The morning brought relief, 
 and, though weaker, she declared she was other- 
 wise as well as ever. They talked over their 
 plans for the future, decided to go to Siena for 
 the summer with us, agreed to give up Casa 
 Ouidi and take a villa in Florence to return to 
 in the spring and autumn. Being in treaty for 
 an apartment in Palazzo Barberini at Bome for 
 six years, they discussed the question of how 
 they should furnish it. During the subsequent 
 days she constantly came into the salon and lay 
 on the sofa there all day — until Friday, when 
 Lytton stayed all the morning there talking with 
 B., so that she did not come out. On Friday 
 evening they had again a long talk about their 
 future plans, and she went to bed as well as she 
 had been in general respects, though there were 
 some few symptoms which troubled B., such as 
 raising now and then her hands and holding 
 them long before her, and also a slight wander- 
 ing of the mind at intervals and as she was just 
 about to doze. But this wandering he attributed 
 to the morphine, which by order of Dr W. she 
 was obliged to take in larger quantities than those 
 she was accustomed to. At about three o'clock 
 
64 
 
 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 he was startled by her breathing and woke 
 her, but she said she was better, and reasoned 
 so quietly and justly about her state that his 
 fears were again subdued. She talked with 
 him and jested and gave expression to her love 
 for him in the tenderest words ; then, feeling 
 sleepy, and he supporting her in his arms, she 
 fell into a doze. In a few minutes, suddenly, 
 her head dropped forward. He thought she had 
 fainted, but she had gone for ever. She had 
 passed as if she had fallen asleep, without pain, 
 without thought of death. After death she 
 looked, as Browning told me, like a young girl ; 
 all the outlines rounded and filled up, all traces 
 of disease effaced, and a smile on her face so 
 living that they could not for hours persuade 
 themselves she was really dead. 
 
 " We went immediately to Florence, and it 
 was a sad house enough. There stood the table 
 with her letters and books as usual, and her 
 little chair beside it, and in her portfolio a half- 
 finished letter to Mme. Mario, full of noble words 
 about Italy. Yes, it was for Italy that her 
 last words were written ; for her dear Italy 
 were her last aspirations. The death of Cavour 
 had greatly affected her. She had wept many 
 tears for him, and been a real mourner. This 
 agitation undoubtedly weakened her and per- 
 
MRS BROWNINGS DEATH 
 
 65 
 
 haps was the last feather that broke her down, 
 ' The cycle is complete/ as Browning said, look- 
 ing round the room ; ' here we came fifteen years 
 ago ; here Pen was born ; here Ba wrote her 
 poems for Italy. She used to walk up and 
 down this verandah in the summer evenings, 
 when, revived by the southern air, she first 
 again began to enjoy her out-doors life. Every 
 day she used to walk with me or drive with 
 me, and once even walked to Bellosguardo and 
 back ; that was when she was strongest. Little 
 by little, as I now see, that distance was lessened, 
 the active out-doors life restricted, until walk- 
 ing had finally ceased. We saw from these 
 windows the return of the Austrians ; they 
 wheeled round this corner and came down this 
 street with all their cannon, just as she describes 
 it in " Casa Guidi." Last week when we came 
 to Florence I said : " We used, you know, to 
 walk on this verandah so often — come and walk 
 up and down once. Just once," I urged, and 
 she came to the window and took two steps on 
 it. But it fatigued her too much, and she went 
 back and lay down on the sofa — that was our 
 last walk. Only the night she went away for 
 ever she said she thought we must give up 
 Casa Guidi ; it was too inconvenient and in 
 case of illness too small. We had decided to 
 
 VOL. II. E 
 
 isiSe' 
 
66 
 
 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 go away and take a villa outside the gates. 
 For years she would not give up this house, but 
 at last and, as it were, suddenly, she said she 
 saw it was too small for us and too incon- 
 venient. And so it was ; so the cycle was 
 completed for us here, and where the beginning 
 was is the end. Looking back at these past 
 years I see that we have been all the time 
 walking over a torrent on a straw. Life must 
 now be begun anew — all the old cast off and 
 the new one put on. I shall go away, break 
 up everything, go to England and live and 
 work and write.' 
 
 . . . " The funeral was not impressive, as 
 it ought to have been. She was buried in the 
 Protestant cemetery where Theodore Parker lies ; 
 many of her friends were there, but fewer 
 persons than I expected and hoped to see. 
 The services were blundered through by a fat 
 English parson in a brutally careless way, and 
 she was consigned by him to the earth as if 
 her clay were no better than any other clay. 
 I did what I could, but I had arrived too late 
 to assume the arrangements. ... So I carried 
 two wreaths — it was all I could do — one of those 
 exquisite white Florence roses, and the other 
 of laurel, and these I laid on her coffin. She 
 
MRS BROWNINGS CHARACTER 
 
 67 
 
 is a great loss to literature, to Italy and to 
 the world — the greatest poet among women. 
 What energy and fire there was in that little 
 frame ; what burning words were winged by 
 her pen ; with what glorious courage she at- 
 tacked error, however strongly entrenched in 
 custom; how bravely she stood by her principles! 
 Never did I see any one whose brow the world 
 hurried and crowded so to crown, who had so 
 little vanity and so much pure humility. Praise 
 gratified her when just — blame when unjust 
 scarcely annoyed her. She could afford to let 
 her work plead for itself Ready to accept 
 criticism, she never feared it, but defended 
 herself with spirit when unjustly attacked. For 
 public opinion she cared not a straw, and could 
 not bear to be looked on as a lion. Her faiths 
 were rooted in the centre of her being. 
 
 " Browning is now with his sister in Paris. 
 The house at Florence is broken up, and I have 
 lost my best friend and daily companion in Italy. 
 You cannot imagine how I shall miss him. 
 For three years now we have been always to- 
 gether ; never a day has passed (with the ex- 
 ception of two months' separation in the spring 
 and autumn when he went to Florence) that 
 we have not met ; all the long summer evenings 
 
68 
 
 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 of these last summers at Siena he was with 
 us, and we sat on our terrace night after nig-ht 
 till midnight talking together, or we played 
 and sang together above stairs. All the last 
 winters he worked with me daily for three 
 hours in my studio, and we met either at my 
 house or at his or at that of some friend nearly 
 every evening. There is no one to supply his 
 place. Returning to Rome, I have not one 
 single intimate ; acquaintances by hundreds, but 
 no friends, no one with whom I can sympathise 
 on all points as with him, no one with whom 
 I can walk any of the higher ranges of art 
 and philosophy. This for me is a terrible 
 want. I must have some one to sail with me 
 over deeps that So-and-so and So-and-so ignore. 
 But at Rome who is there ? Only such rubbish 
 as M., R., and Co. among the artists, fellows 
 whose brains are an inch deep and who are 
 animated by all sorts of meannesses. . . 
 Englishmen who think are very rare ; they 
 are generally ganglions of prejudices, which they 
 call opinions, and what ideas they have are 
 generally narrow and bigoted or developments 
 only in a single direction. Their education is 
 never general, but special, and outside their 
 speciality they are terribly barren. There was 
 
THE ENGLISH MIND 
 
 69 
 
 for instance Newton, the British consul, with 
 whom I was in very close relation on questions 
 of art, who thought, felt and dreamed with me 
 most harmoniously, and with whom I had real 
 sympathy in these matters. But he never had 
 heard John Webster's name, asked me who 
 Thomas Middleton was, knew nothing, cared 
 nothing for poetry, music, painting, and was 
 most curiously developed in literature : an ad- 
 mirable Greek scholar, who quoted and knew, 
 who admired ^schylus and Plato and yet 
 knew nothing of English poetry beyond Shake- 
 speare, or in modern philosophy beyond Locke. 
 He never projected himself into philosophy — 
 he needed to be pushed along. You and I 
 know hundreds of such men. They are planted 
 on their ground and can't speculate ; they say 
 ' Ouh ! ouh ! ' to you when you hazard a theory 
 or state a principle. The English mind is not 
 a philosophic one ; they are not of the air, but 
 of the earth ; in the good sense of the term, 
 but still of the earth. Browning is by nature 
 not an Englishman. 
 
 . . . " The last thing I did before leaving 
 Rome was to make a bust of him which his 
 wife was good enough to call ' perfect.' It was 
 made for her as a present, but, alas 1 you see 
 
70 
 
 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 the end of that. Since you were with us I 
 have made several statues — on© of Judith at 
 the moment she makes her prayer before killing 
 Holofernes. The right hand is thrown up to 
 heaven, the left holds, a little behind her, her 
 sword. In this I endeavoured to express passion- 
 ate religious enthusiasm and the summoning of 
 all one's energy to do a great patriotic act, thus 
 putting out of view the crime. It is not to 
 kill Holofernes her betrayer, but Holofernes 
 the tyrant, the oppressor of her country, that 
 she asks the help of God in a great duty and 
 a great sacrifice. All other representations make 
 Judith a criminal, an assassin, and it is only 
 before the act that she is poetically and artisti- 
 cally grand. The deed done she is a woman 
 who has killed a man — and with Holofernes' 
 head repulsive. The painters represent her taus, 
 for sake of colour and contrast, but this con- 
 ception of her is low. The only other time 
 is when she holds the head up to the people, 
 a grand subject for a grand painting. ISext 
 I made for contrast of sentiment a boy Bacchus 
 on a panther, which is purely lyrical in treat- 
 ment. Then this last winter I finished what 
 I consider as my best work — it is so considered 
 by all, I believe — the Libyan Sibyl. I have 
 
THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 71 
 
 taken the pure Coptic head and figure, the great 
 massive sphinx-face, full-lipped, long-eyed, low- 
 browed and lowering, and the largely-developed 
 limbs of the African. She sits on a rock, her 
 legs crossed, leaning forward, her elbow on her 
 knee and her chin pressed down upon her hand. 
 The upper part of the figure is nude, and a 
 rich simple mantle clothes her legs. This gave 
 me a grand opportunity for the contrast of 
 the masses of the nude with drapery, and I 
 studied the nude with great care. It is a very 
 massive figure, big - shouldered, large - bosomed, 
 with nothing of the Venus in it, but, as far as I 
 could make it, luxuriant and heroic. She is look- 
 ing out of her black eyes into futurity and sees 
 the terrible fate of her race. This is the theme 
 of the figure — Slavery on the horizon, and I 
 made her head as melancholy and severe as pos- 
 sible, not at all shirking the real African type. On 
 the contrary, it is thoroughly African — Libyan 
 Africa of course, not Congo. This I am now put- 
 ting into marble, and if I can afford it shall send 
 to the new Exhibition in London. ... If it 
 is returned on my hands I shall abandon sculp- 
 ture, or at all events shut up my studio." 
 
 I give without interruption, as adding to the 
 
 *ff- ^'i'J 
 
72 
 
 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 record, two more letters to the same corre- 
 spondent. 
 
 W. W. Story to Charles Eliot Norton. 
 
 " Rome, May Srd, 1862. 
 
 ..." My winter is over, Rome has broken 
 up, and we are ofF to England in a couple of 
 weeks. I have been hard at work and have 
 just finished a statue of Sappho seated — a love- 
 lorn lady dreaming of him, whoever he was, 
 Phaon, Anacreon, or any other on; very tender, 
 very sweet, very sentimental. In this statue I 
 have gone into Greekland, as in the Sibyl I went 
 into Africa, and in the Cleopatra into Egypt. 
 I fancy just at this moment of time that you 
 would think it my best work — I have put all the 
 Love into it I could. The Sibyl and Cleopatra 
 are gone to the Exhibition [London 1862], and I 
 must go and look after them. But I have little 
 will to go to England, and were it not for 
 these statues nothing should persuade me to the 
 journey. Once there, it is just within the bounds 
 of possibility (and nothing more) that I may go 
 over to America for a few weeks and set my 
 house in order, following the example in that 
 respect of good king Hezekiah. But this too 
 will go terribly against my grain, and nothing 
 but necessity will drive me across the ocean. — I 
 
MOUNT FELIX 
 
 73 
 
 hope you received a little pamphlet of mine on 
 the American question. We are in a great 
 state of excitement here as the telegrams arrive 
 containing news of battles. All seems to be 
 going on well, but I am sorry not to see more 
 strong indications of Union sentiment in the 
 South. The course pursued toward McClellan 
 by a portion of the press and by a large party is 
 disgraceful. We are an impatient and ungrate- 
 ful people. But I feel confident that McClellan 
 will overcome at last all his enemies. ..." 
 
 The house from which the following is dated, 
 at Walton-on-Thames, long occupied by Mr and 
 Mrs Russell Sturgis, was to be in a manner, for 
 years, Story's headquarters during his visits to 
 England. His various sojourns there, with the 
 innumerable incidents of an irresistible hospi- 
 tality, would be almost matter for a chapter, one 
 of the pleasantest, by itself. 
 
 W. W. Story to Charles Eliot Norton. 
 
 "Mount Felix, Nov. lOth, 1862. 
 
 "Herewith I enclose to you, or rather Frederic 
 Locker will enclose to you, a copy of a little 
 volume of his poems to which I beg to call your 
 attention. They are of a light humoristic char- 
 acter. . . . Many thanks for your kind (as 
 
74 
 
 SIENA AND CHARLES SUMNER 
 
 i 
 
 usual) letter, which I should have answered at 
 once but that my time has been so completely 
 occupied with visiting and correcting for the 
 press my ' Roba di Roma,' which is finally to 
 appear. As in my art so in my literary efforts, 
 I get the best appreciation in England. The 
 publishers at home rejected my book. ... It 
 is of no use in America for me to hope for any- 
 thing. I do not expect to find a public there 
 until I have obtained it elsewhere. They will 
 resist to the last considering me as anything but 
 a poetaster, dilettante and amateur. 
 
 " My visit to England has been delightful ; 
 everywhere and from everybody I have received 
 the warmest kindness and hospitality — such as I 
 never can forget. People have vied with each 
 other in generous expressions and acts, and I 
 have been greeted with a praise which, grateful 
 as it is, I cannot feel to be quite deserved. How- 
 ever, some day I hope to deserve it. ... I 
 hope I have established myself on a new footing 
 as an artist. I am going back to Rome full of 
 good intentions and strong for work." 
 
YIII. 
 
 THE CLEOPATEA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL. 
 
 The year 1862 was a date, the date, in Story's 
 life ; bringing with it the influence, the sense 
 of possibilities of success, the prospect of a full 
 and free development, under which he settled — 
 practically for the rest of his days — and which 
 was to encounter in the time to come no serious 
 check. The time immediately to come was to 
 have its dark days — which were the dark days 
 of the American Civil War, that weary middle 
 period of anxiety almost unrelieved, especially 
 for spectators at a distance whose sympathies 
 were with the North and to whom it some- 
 times seemed that the issue scarce hung in 
 the balance. Story was in England each of 
 these years and inevitably in contact with much 
 feeling and expression, in this connection, that 
 was not of a nature to soothe patriotic soreness. 
 His own sentiments and convictions relieved 
 themselves by a demonstration on which he 
 
76 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 was distinctly to be congratulated and of which 
 we shall presently encounter evidence. But 
 meanwhile his artistic and his personal success 
 were of the greatest, and, as the shadow of 
 the War slowly cleared, life, activity and am- 
 bition opened out for him in a hundred inter- 
 esting ways. The effect produced by his work 
 at the Exhibition of 1862 was immediate and 
 general, and would carry us back, should we 
 follow the clue, to a near and suggestive view 
 of the taste, the aesthetic sensibility of the 
 time. The clue would take us, however, too 
 far ; we can only feel, as we pass, a certain 
 envy of a critical attitude easier, simpler and less 
 "evolved" than our own. "Critical" attitude 
 is doubtless even too much to say ; the sense 
 to which, for the most part, the work of art 
 or of imagination, the picture, the statue, the 
 novel, the play, appealed was not, in any strict- 
 ness, the aesthetic sense in general or the plastic 
 in particular, but the sense of the romantic, the 
 anecdotic, the supposedly historic, the explicitly 
 pathetic. It was still the age in which an image 
 had, before anything else, to tell a story, and 
 that had much to do with the immense wel- 
 come offered to the Sibyl and the Cleopatra of 
 the new American sculptor. In living over these 
 enjoyments, these enthusiasms and responses, 
 
STORY S FIRST SUCCESS 
 
 77 
 
 the pleasantness, the felicity, the intellectual 
 comfort of it all are, I confess, what most strikes 
 me, and to the point really of wishing we might 
 again have our pleasures, in this order, on terms 
 on the whole as easy. Story, as we have noted, 
 was frankly and forcibly romantic, and with a 
 highly cultivated quality in his romance ; so 
 that he penetrated the imagination of his public 
 as nobody else just then could have done. He 
 told his tale with admirable emphasis and 
 straightness, with a strong sense both of char- 
 acter and of drama, so that he created a kind 
 of interest for the statue which had been, with- 
 out competition, up to that time, reserved for 
 the picture. He gave the marble something 
 of the colour of the canvas ; he in any case 
 offered the observer a spectacle and, as nearly 
 as possible, a scene. It was a question if not 
 always absolutely of an action perpetrated, at 
 least of one meditated, prepared, remembered 
 or prompted, and, with that, of a state of 
 feeling, a state of expression, to which associ- 
 ation could lend a glamour. He chose his sub- 
 jects, for the most part, among figures already 
 consecrated to the imagination — by history, 
 poetry, legend — and so offered them with all 
 their signs and tokens, their features and en- 
 hancements. He created thus, ingenious and 
 
78 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 abundant as he was — created it, that is, above 
 all for the English taste — a tradition of sculpture 
 quite distinct from that tradition which previous 
 generations, haunters of dim Academic shades, 
 gropers in queer crepuscular cellars, were ex- 
 cusable for never having, at any moment, 
 markedly " warmed to," for having in fact 
 quite positively looked at askance, shyly, 
 coldly, unpersuadedly. Strange, starved crea- 
 tions glimmer before us in that early Victorian 
 limbo, shining with a light too pale for identi- 
 iications, yet wearing the fetters of the academic 
 without suggesting its possibilities of " style " ; 
 meagre maidens and matrons, earnest, respect- 
 able males, nymphs and heroes equally without 
 temperament or attitude, pomp or circumstance, 
 and all, somehow, blank, bereaved, disconsolate, 
 as if deprived of their proper lachrymal urns 
 or weeping willows. If the section of sculpture 
 in the old exhibitions was mainly a desert, there 
 were thus, with all respect to occasional excep- 
 tions, memories and warnings that accounted 
 for the mistrust. 
 
 Little wonder accordingly that Story's new 
 note so promptly "took" — the new note that 
 was distinctly not English, and yet was as little 
 French (as the French note was remembered 
 or conceived) ; and, still again, was not at all 
 
THE CLEOPATRA 
 
 79 
 
 American on the lines of Mr Powers's Greek 
 Slave, the only piece of American sculpture 
 then known in England. He "drew/' almost, 
 like a successful play ; he peopled, at a stroke, 
 a quarter of the desert ; he showed, in a word, 
 that marble could be made interesting even to 
 the many. On the same lines, accordingly, from 
 that time on, he continued to make it so ; the 
 rest of his work is in germ in the two statues 
 of 1862. The admirable Libyan Sibyl indeed 
 he, on the whole, I think, never surpassed — 
 never perhaps even quite equalled, for his sub- 
 ject here was a treasure to him and his vision 
 of it wholly felicitous. If it be sometimes given 
 to parents to have a child whom they recognise 
 as born happy and who is to remain for them 
 under the protection of that star, so artists — 
 and perhaps, fortunately, oftener — produce works 
 that have come into the world exactly as they 
 should, that bear the stamp of it all over, and 
 that have been provided for, solidly, from their 
 birth. By which I mean that the individual 
 producer has been blest when he has known this 
 complacency once or twice. We may really 
 say of Story that he knew it as repeatedly as 
 he might ; since the Cleopatra, exhibited for 
 the first time on the same occasion as the Sibyl, 
 ranks almost equally as one of the happy children, 
 
 ■■'Sbc^''^ 
 
80 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 creatures of inspiration and prosperity. Well 
 may these figures, with their calm intensity, 
 have been found expressive and living, and yet, 
 by the happiest art, tranquil in their beauty 
 in spite of the quantity of story they were ad- 
 dressed to telling. The Cleopatra in particular 
 is admirable for this, for the way in which line 
 and form, a composition interesting in itself, 
 control and condense the historic, the romantic 
 hints. At the same time, no doubt, not less 
 than its companion, this figure would have sown 
 the seeds of a critical objection that was to 
 express itself, freely enough, later on — the 
 restrictive view of the artist's fondness for the 
 draped body and his too liberal use of drapery. 
 The Cleopatra is practically a dressed heroine ; 
 the Sibyl is covered, voluminously enough, from 
 the middle downward ; and so, in many a case, 
 their successors were to be, in a manner, costumed. 
 The fact, however, suggests more than one reflec- 
 tion — the first of which is of the sort that, bear- 
 ing on the question of the current taste, of what, 
 in relation to the public, was possible and not 
 possible, has always an interest. Story's work 
 as a sculptor speaks, incontestably, of the' public 
 it had to confront and involves a view of that 
 public. There are things in the arts, of a truth, 
 that have more eloquence and value for us by 
 
THE EARLY VICTORIAN SCULPTURE 
 
 81 
 
 that reference than they oifer in any other way; 
 so that positively, at moments, we find ourselves 
 turn insistently from the work itself to the evoked 
 spirit of its place and hour, which become, in its 
 light, almost as concrete as itself Such, so many 
 and so perverse, are the solicitations to which 
 the critical sense is open. 
 
 It might easily here, for instance, be drawn 
 into wonderments that would carry it far ; 
 wonderments, say, as to what the felt demand 
 for drapery, in the mid -Victorian time, may 
 really have been, and then, conformably, as to 
 what coherent terms the demand would have 
 been expressed in. There was apparently no 
 case against sculpture — as, for that matter, 
 there is no case to-day against painting ; yet 
 there presumably both was and is a presentable 
 case (though never presented) against the nude, 
 to which these arts are of necessity beholden 
 for so much of their life. Story, visibly, was 
 preoccupied with this supposed interdict — which, 
 as reflected, for better or for worse, in his labours, 
 might thus, as I say, had we space, invite con- 
 sideration. How far was he right, how far 
 was he wrong? how much would the world 
 about him have " stood," had he insisted, or 
 what scarce imaginable revelations of shockability 
 might we, on the other hand, have been treated 
 
 VOL. II. F 
 
82 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 to ? Story kept, for all sorts of excellent reasons, 
 one of which I will presently mention, on the 
 " safe side " ; but it is possibly not open to 
 question that the fond critic (critic, I mean, of 
 the peculiarities of publics,) may have been de- 
 prived by this circumstance of precious lights 
 on significant abysses. There might, for all 
 we know, have been pleas, arguments, documents ; 
 and the documents might have been curious ; 
 by which I mean that the case against the nude 
 might have been, for once in a way, presented — 
 with consequences calculable, or perhaps rather in- 
 calculable, for the earnest observer, to say nothing 
 of the genial satirist. Story, obviously, at all 
 events, loved the nude, as the artist, in any field, 
 essentially and logically must ; and he paid it, 
 in marble, in verse, in prose, such frank tribute, 
 on occasion, as he might ; and I hasten to add 
 that if his relation to it is visibly enough governed 
 by influences, mistaken or other, one at least of 
 these latter operated not only quite lawfully, 
 but, from his point of view, quite happily. 
 Drapery, that is, folds and dispositions of stuff 
 and applications, intimations of ornament, became 
 a positive and necessary part of his scheme from 
 the moment that scheme was romantic ; nothing 
 being more curious than the truth that though 
 the nude may have a dozen other convincing notes 
 
THE DRAPED AND THE NUDE 
 
 83 
 
 it is eminently destitute of that one — or possesses 
 it only when conscious, contrasted or opposed. 
 To borrow from the list of Story's productions 
 alone, we no more see, for romantic illustration 
 and conviction, a naked Saul, a stripped Sar- 
 danapalus, a Medea without her robe or an 
 Alcestis without her veil, than we see a dressed 
 Agamemnon, an accoutred Antinous, an Apollo 
 protected from the weather or a Venus rising 
 from the sea in a bathing-suit. The " story " 
 of the most beautiful of legends is (at least 
 pictorially speaking) not in Andromeda, isolated 
 and divinely bare, but in the mailed and 
 caparisoned Perseus, his glorious gear, his winged 
 horse and helmet and lance. 
 
 It was in elements of this order that, even 
 with his interest in the endless human body, 
 Story found a constant charm, recognising how 
 much, in almost any case, they might do for 
 his conception. His imagination, of necessity, 
 went in preference to the figure for which acces- 
 sories were of the essence ; which is doubtless 
 a proof, one must hasten to recognise, that he 
 was not with the last intensity a sculptor. Had 
 he been this he would not, in all probability, 
 have been also with such intensity (so far as 
 impulse and eagerness were concerned) so many 
 other things ; a man of ideas — of other ideas, of 
 
84 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 other curiosities. These were so numerous with 
 him that they were active diversions, driving 
 him into almost every sort of Hterary experiment 
 and speculation. It was not that he failed to 
 grasp the plastic, but much rather that he saw 
 it everywhere, and that, wherever seen, it 
 tempted and challenged him. It tenipted him 
 perpetually in the form of verse, and he is 
 singular in having apparently, in respect to 
 some alternatives, never really made up his 
 mind. He was as addicted to poetry as if he 
 had never dreamed of a statue, and as addicted 
 to statues as if he were unable to turn a verse. 
 Add to this that he constantly overflowed, by 
 spoken and by written talk, into an extremely 
 various criticism, and we see that, if the ap- 
 proach to final form be through concentration, 
 he was not concentrated. If sculpture be a thing 
 of supreme intimacy he was not supremely in- 
 timate. He had, in a word, too many friends 
 for any one of them ever to have succeeded in 
 establishing absolute rights. It was, aesthetically 
 speaking, a wonderful all-round sociability. All 
 of which considerations, however, in this con- 
 nection, solicit me less, I feel, than the mere 
 side-issue — comparatively — of the echo started 
 for us, a while back, in Mrs Gaskell's letter. 
 She was full of her Hawthorne, she had been 
 
HAWTHORNE S CHAPTER 
 
 85 
 
 I 
 
 reading " Transformation," and she sets us, so 
 far as our connection is concerned, reading it 
 again for ourselves. Then it is that a much 
 pleasanter thing occurs than even being sure 
 we are right in estimate and characterisation — 
 then it is that we are contented and charmed to 
 be, in the matter, whatever the good Hawthorne 
 was in the golden air of his Romanised vision ; 
 then it is, in fine, that we assist, ever so con- 
 sentingly, at the odd, delightful business of the 
 practical consecration of a work of art, and are 
 moved, over and above, to brood genially on 
 the shy phenomenon. That is perhaps easier 
 than to express it, to say exactly how it is that 
 in such a case we are affected by the poetry of 
 association, the beneficence of perspective, the 
 antiquity, as we may almost say, of tone. It 
 is all a matter of the writer's singular sweetness, 
 which embalms and enshrines, for the responsive 
 mind, the figure round which it plays. The 
 mysterious Miriam, in the novel, it will be re- 
 membered, comes, in her sad unrest, to the studio 
 of Kenyon, the young American sculptor, and 
 makes acquaintance there with the image of a 
 grand seated woman, a personage royal and 
 wonderful, who is none other than a fine prose 
 transcript of Story's Cleopatra. Immensely im- 
 pressed, she questions her host as to the source 
 
 
 ...JSl^' 
 
86 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 of his vision, and his admirable answer may 
 doubtless stand for the artist's only possible 
 account of the origin of any work. " I kindled 
 a great fire in my mind and threw in the material 
 — as Aaron threw the gold of the Israelites into 
 the furnace — and in the midmost heat uprose 
 Cleopatra as you see her." She saw her, Miriam, 
 as romantically as the artist himself could have 
 wished, weaving fine fancies about her in the 
 gentle Hawthornesque way ; as a result of which, 
 and of the talk, of the scene, of the whole charm- 
 ing context and confusion, the beautiful light 
 mantle of the book, all loose and soft and ample, 
 is thrown over the statue. It is not exactly, 
 of course, as if the protection had, in advance, 
 been needed, but v/hen once the phenomenon, 
 as I have called it, occurs — the phenomenon of 
 a recognition, an assimilation, which is not as 
 that of criticism, but something tenderer and 
 more fraternal, and which fairly gains by being 
 " old-fashioned " — we take it in for our edifica- 
 tion. Such is the quality, such the diffusion, 
 such the magic of the sweetness that we impute ; 
 an element that so constantly clears and dis- 
 infects Hawthorne's so-called gloom, making it 
 light, pictorial, digestible, and in which the 
 whole thing floats as through a pleasant Sep- 
 tember haze. " Transformation," in short, with 
 
BROWNINGS RETURN TO ENGLAND 
 
 87 
 
 its laxities of insistence, its timidities of indi- 
 cation, its felicities of suggestion, its sincerities 
 of simplicity and, most of all, its total vague 
 intensity, so curiously composed of all these, is, 
 more than anything, a loveable production — 
 which, in its wandering amiability, holds up for 
 a moment a mirror to another work, a little 
 magic mirror from which the reflection, once 
 caught, never fades. 
 
 Story's liveliest sympathy meanwhile, it need 
 scarce be said, had followed Browning to England, 
 and he and his wife were constantly present in 
 spirit at that work of building up a new life 
 from the very foundation to which their friend 
 was now committed. Browning's existence had 
 sharply broken and had, in conditions completely 
 changed, to be, as it were, repaired and made 
 practicable. There would be perhaps no more 
 interesting chapter in his biography than that 
 of his return from his long Italian absence, 
 stricken and lonely (save for the place henceforth 
 taken in his thoughts by his young son), to 
 address himself to a future indefinite and obscure. 
 It was almost a fresh beginning ; he had quitted 
 London, fourteen years before, sufiiciently young 
 and sufficiently unknown to have left his possi- 
 bilities in general, his maturer contacts and 
 relations, still to establish, themselves, his im- 
 
 ...ttifc.-'-:; 
 
88 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 pressions, mainly, still to condense. His early 
 letters to his E-oman correspondents reflect, 
 vividly enough, this phase ; they are in them- 
 selves very nearly the picture of a situation and 
 the history of a period. The writer's London 
 period was in fact to be rich and ample, was to 
 be attended with felicities and prosperities, of 
 every sort, that cast the comparatively idyllic 
 Italian time into the background and seemed, 
 superficially, to build it out. But thus, really, 
 was generated, in the personal, social, intellectual 
 way, the wonderful Browning we so largely were 
 afterwards to know — the accomplished, saturated, 
 sane, sound man of the London world and the 
 world of " culture," of whom it is impossible not 
 to believe that he had arrived somehow, for his 
 own deep purposes, at the enjoyment of a double 
 identity. It was not easy to meet him and know 
 him without some resort to the supposition that 
 he had literally mastered the secret of dividing 
 the personal consciousness into a pair of inde- 
 pendent compartments. The man of the world — 
 the man who was good enough for the world, 
 such as it was — walked abroad, showed himself, 
 talked, right resonantly, abounded, multiplied 
 his contacts and did his duty ; the man of 
 "Dramatic Lyrics," of "Men and Women/' of 
 the " Ring and the Book," of " A Blot on the 
 
BROWNING IN LONDON 
 
 89 
 
 'Scutcheon," of " Pippa Passes," of " Colombe's 
 Birthday," of everything, more or less, of the 
 order of these, — this inscrutable personage sat at 
 home and knew as well as he might in what 
 quarters of that sphere to look for suitable 
 company. The poet and the "member of 
 society" were, in a word, dissociated in him as 
 they can rarely elsewhere have been ; so that, 
 for the observer impressed with this oddity, the 
 image I began by using quite of necessity com- 
 pleted itself: the wall that built out the idyll 
 (as we call it for convenience) of which memory 
 and imagination were virtually composed for him 
 stood there behind him solidly enough, but 
 subject to his privilege of living almost equally 
 on both sides of it. It contained an invisible 
 door through which, working the lock at will, he 
 could softly pass and of which he kept the 
 golden key — carrying the same about with him 
 even in the pocket of his dinner-waistcoat, yet 
 even in his most splendid expansions showing 
 it, happy man, to none. Such at least was the 
 appearance he could repeatedly conjure up to a 
 deep and mystified admirer. Our point, at any 
 rate, is that we see him vividly, during the early 
 " sixties," in the letters before us ; see him with- 
 out mystery or attitude, with his explicit sense 
 and his clear, full, masculine tone, the tone, ever, 
 
 .ci..; 'w' 1 
 
90 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 of reason and cheer. He is always, to our con- 
 ceit, on the hither side of the wall. 
 
 Rohert Browning to W. W. Story, 
 
 " Chez M. Chauvin, St Enogat, pres Dinard, 
 Ile-et-Vilaine, France, 
 Aug. 20th, 1861. 
 
 " My DEAR Friends, — For so let me write 
 to you all as I was used to talk in those days 
 which already seem so good and old. . . . 
 I did leave Florence at last — on the 1st of 
 this month — accompanied by Miss Blagden, 
 who has devoted herself to me and P., disre- 
 garding health, inconvenience, and all other 
 considerations. We took the straight road, 
 and reached Paris at last — for, being encumbered 
 with P.'s pony, we could not travel by express. 
 I had meant to cross over to London for a day 
 or two's talking with Arabel Barrett, but the 
 prospect of going over the old ground, stopping 
 at the old house, was too much, and I found it 
 impossible to go further. Paris also is unbearable 
 to me, and I only breathe freelier since we arrived 
 at this wild, primitive and lonely place — Saint- 
 Malo — with a solitary sea, bays, sands and rocks, 
 and green, pleasant country. Miss Blagden left 
 Paris on the 10th, in a very indifferent state of 
 health, for London. I shall stay here till the 
 
BROWNINGS NEW LIFE 
 
 91 
 
 autumn sets in, perhaps a month longer ; and 
 then, after just a day or two spent in Paris, 
 shall finally settle in London for the winter 
 and spring. I mean to get a very good 
 English tutor, capable of preparing P. for the 
 university without, if possible, necessitating the 
 passage through a public school ; and if I delay 
 this, as my original notion was, I may lose the 
 critical time when the English stamp (in all 
 that it is good for) is taken or missed. I have 
 written to various friends about my projects, 
 and shall be glad to profit by their experience. 
 Such a school as dear E. described would have 
 been desirable had he been brought up in 
 England from the first, but I distrust all hybrid 
 and ambiguous natures and nationalities and 
 want to make something decided of him. I 
 find, by myself, that one leans out the more 
 widely over one's neighbour's field for being 
 effectually rooted in one's own garden. . . . 
 London may suit me better than a brighter 
 place for some time to come ; but I shall have 
 no ties, no housekeeping, nothing to prevent 
 me from wandering about if circumstances permit. 
 I want my new life to resemble the last fifteen 
 years as little as possible. It is idle talking 
 just yet, however. 
 
 " I deeply feel with you about the disaster 
 
 
92 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 at Bull's Kun, so far as I know anything about 
 it from having glanced at a single newspaper. 
 I only know that the good cause has suffered 
 and that we all suffer with it. As to scurrilous 
 
 articles in the , I have had the satisfaction 
 
 of never seeing the outside of that paper ; but 
 quite sure am I that its habit of deliberate 
 maligning will have found exercise in this and 
 €very other matter interesting humanity. How 
 can you mind such writing ? I look to the end, 
 to success, with every confidence ; but, as I said, 
 I have missed all the details of this misadventure. 
 You must and will do better, and best, another 
 time — and meanwhile the fewer big words on 
 all sides, in any sense, the better ! 
 
 " ' Tannhauser ' is w^ritten by Lytton and 
 Julian Fane ; the latter's are the songs, 
 which are poor. Julian Fane wrote a volume 
 
 years ago which the reviewed much in the 
 
 way you now describe : I conclude that his 
 father's being ambassador to Austria and his 
 brother Earl of Westmorland now, has some 
 
 little to do with the • 's admiration. Lytton, 
 
 to whom the best part of the book belongs, 
 has no such influence. He gave me the book, 
 told me Fane was publishing the secret every- 
 where, and spoke modestly enough about his 
 own estimation of the thing. I have just heard 
 
A FRIEND OF THE BROWNINGS 
 
 93 
 
 from him, by the way ; he must be at Vienna 
 by this time. 
 
 *' And now it is hard to say good-bye, which 
 of late years has always gone along with ' we 
 shall so soon meet again, and so merrily.' Go 
 you, dear Story, on in your admirable way — 
 nor altogether without me, who shall continue 
 as interested in your work as when I could see 
 it in progress from the little door of the room 
 by the garden." 
 
 I 
 
 I cannot (with any fidelity to our law of 
 salutation of hovering shades) fail to take up 
 the mention, in the above, of the devoted little 
 friend who ministered to Browning at this time, 
 who had been, in Italy, not less devoted to his 
 wife, who came with him to England, who held 
 herself at his service during so much of the 
 after-period as she was herself, somewhat sparely, 
 to enjoy on earth, and who, in particular, mingles 
 her small, responsive, expressive presence with 
 old Florentine memories. My own part in them, 
 in this connection, is scant, yet such as it is it 
 remains — the impression still has sharpness ; 
 so that I pause an instant before it even though 
 over the shoulder of this particular ghost, and 
 on the very spot where it stands, other ghosts, 
 intenser, but necessarily nameless here, look out 
 
94 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 with eyes that seem to ask if they too may 
 not answer. Isa Blagden comes vaguely to light 
 in Mrs Browning's letters, some of which, in the 
 later Florentine years, are addressed to her ; 
 she figured also, not with much greater dis- 
 tinctness, I seem to recollect, on the covers of 
 old Tauchnitz volumes, having contributed to 
 that series the inevitable nice novel or two of 
 the wandering English spinster. Above all, she 
 had befriended the lonely, cheered the exile and 
 nursed the sick ; given herself indefatigably, for 
 instance, to the care of Robert Lytton, during 
 a long illness, in the good old days of casual 
 tendance, before the dawn of the capped and 
 cloaked, the now ubiquitous "trained." These 
 friendships and generosities, in a setting of 
 Florentine villas and views, of overhanging 
 terraces and arched pianterreni, of Italian 
 loyalties and English longings, of shy literary 
 yearning and confessed literary starvation — these 
 things formed her kindly little legend, and they 
 still, after long years, melt together, for my 
 personal reminiscence, into the springtime air 
 of a garden at Bellosguardo. I feel again the 
 sun of Florence in the morning walk out of 
 Porta Bomana and up the long winding hill ; 
 I catch again, in the great softness, the " accent " 
 of the straight, black cypresses ; I lose myself 
 
ISA BLAGDEN 
 
 95 
 
 again in the sense of the large, cool villa, already 
 then a centre of histories, memories, echoes, all 
 generations deep ; I face the Val d'Arno, vast 
 and delicate, as if it were a painted picture ; in 
 special I talk with an eager little lady who has 
 gentle, gay black eyes and whose type gives, 
 visibly enough, the hint of East -Indian blood. 
 The villa had, as I say, a past then, and has 
 much more of one now ; which romantic actu- 
 alities and possibilities, a crowd of international 
 relations, hung about us as we lingered and 
 talked, making, for the victim of this first im- 
 pression of the place, a mere fond fable of lives 
 led and work done and troubles suffered there. 
 She had seen the procession, the human 
 panorama, more or less polyglot ; there w^ere 
 odd people — oh, "precursors" enough, in her 
 list! — whom she had known, and of whom I 
 knew ; and then we had friends in common, 
 figures of the Florentine legend, to my know- 
 ledge of whom she added ; with which, moreover, 
 there were wistful questions that were at the 
 same time, for the passer-by, provocations of 
 envy : the books she would have liked to read, 
 the news she would have liked to get, the people 
 she would have liked to see, amounting all, in 
 their absence, as I remember ingenuously think- 
 ing, to nothing more than a sign of how deep 
 
96 THE GLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 one might be in Italy. She had come back 
 there after her pilgrimage to England with 
 Browning, and it was from there, I recall, that 
 I received in the after-years (none too many of 
 them) that other and last sign of her that was 
 to match with my Bellosguardo morning. It 
 was an invitation to be one of the friends con- 
 tributing to a memorial placed over her grave. 
 It was wonderful how much we had talked ; I 
 had become one of the friends in that one hour. 
 There is a glimpse of Miss Blagden, and of 
 other matters, in another letter. 
 
 Robert Broivning to W. W. Story. 
 
 " St Enogat, Aug. 30th, 1861. 
 
 "I had a very exact picture made of the 
 room in Casa Guidi, after vainly trying to get 
 it photographed ; and of this picture I have 
 photographs, giving a sufficient idea of it, which 
 I will send you. I think I shall not examine 
 the state of my invaluable [negative] till I get 
 to London. 
 
 "You must know that I feel your affection, 
 as I remember all your past goodness ; but I 
 can't write about anything. I could perhaps 
 speak, if we were together. But to write freezes 
 me altogether. Tell me about yourselves — what- 
 ever interests you will deeply interest me. I 
 
FROM BROWNING IN BRITTANY 
 
 97 
 
 read no newspapers, know absolutely nothing 
 of what has been going on the last two months. 
 I feel impatient at doing nothing, and long to 
 begin with P. ... It will all come into use 
 presently in our grim London. (It is ungrate- 
 ful of me to say this, with so many kind 
 friends proposing to put light into the coming 
 gloomy winter, but I feel so, and may say so 
 to you.) 
 
 "Miss Blagden will not return to Italy — at 
 all events not before she has made an endeavour 
 to live in England. She goes to Clifton, in 
 all probability, where Miss Cobbe is to see her 
 comfortably settled. I cannot believe she will 
 bear the change. She has given up her villa, 
 where she was counting upon a joyous summer 
 with Hatty [Hosmer]. I blame her for all this, 
 but unquestionably like her for it. 
 
 "Don't tell anybody about those rooms. I 
 should hate to hear that the first who could 
 climb the staircase had entered in and taken 
 possession. This is very silly, I know. But 
 I only think and write sillinesses just now. The 
 staying at Casa Guidi was not the worst of it. 
 I kept in my place there like a worm-eaten piece 
 of old furniture, looking solid enough ; but when 
 I was moved I began to go to pieces. I am 
 getting 'mended up' here, and shall no doubt 
 
 VOL. II. G 
 
98 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 last my proper time, for all the past. Landor 
 remains under my care. Lytton is very kind — 
 has written to me three times this fortnight : 
 he is at Vienna." 
 
 Brownings letters, at this moment, were as 
 interesting, as frankly and heartily personal, 
 as they were frequent, and I give them as 
 they come. 
 
 Robert Browning to the Storys. 
 
 " 1 Chichester Eoad, Upper Westbourne 
 Terrace, Nov. lOth, 1861. 
 
 " The last day I spent at St Enogat I re- 
 member I was bent on writing an answer of 
 some sort to the letters, brimful of kindness, 
 which I had received just before. I had to 
 go to St Malo, however, and could not get a 
 clear quarter of an hour. I meant therefore 
 to write on arriving at Paris. The end is that 
 all this while I have said nothing, and, as a 
 consequence, heard nothing. But you do know 
 my feeling to you all, and whether it is likely 
 to grow less now. I have one of my old 
 headaches this morning, cannot attend to Pen, 
 nor go out for a walk (in the rain), a duty of 
 religion forced on me at leisure minutes ; so I 
 will chat a little with you, if you please, as if 
 
FROM BROWNING IN LONDON 
 
 99 
 
 T came In (in) the dear old way, taking my seat 
 by the corner of the ' mobile,' whatever it should 
 be called, where my elbow goes so well — and 
 there you are in the customary places. 
 
 . . . "I had an adventure in going to Bou- 
 logne, was strangely misinformed as to the 
 proper train — that which transports horses — 
 and the people refused to take me. I proved 
 the fault was theirs (having their printed paper 
 to show, and also their officials'), and explaining 
 the loss of time and money they would put 
 me to unless I was suffered to take P.'s pony 
 by the express-train (my own, that was to 
 have been, went without me), I declared (in 
 all good humour, for they were polite enough) 
 that I would prosecute them : I was upwards 
 of two hours in this weary work of battling 
 with them. 'It could not be!' — but at the 
 last moment, literally, it was. They pushed 
 me into the train, put the horse-box on, which 
 there was no time even to pay for, and so I 
 got off, reached Boulogne in time to get the 
 pony through the custom house, and consequently 
 did not miss the boat to London which sailed two 
 hours after midnight : missing, moreover, the 
 accident which happened to the 'proper train 
 for me,' which I certainly should have taken 
 had they beaten me, which was run into by 
 
100 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 another train at Amiens — having ' 22 wounded 
 and 10 or 12 killed,' said 'The Times' two 
 days after. 
 
 "Another strange thing happened while I 
 was in the train. I had been thinking much 
 of the meeting I had had with Tennyson ten 
 years ago, when he was the first person I 
 chanced upon in Paris : I must have told you, 
 for it always impressed me. Well, I, in like 
 manner, not having seen an English friend since 
 I left Florence, put my head out of window at 
 the Amiens station, when out came Tennyson 
 and entered a carriage. He was changed, had 
 a great beard, but I could not be deceived. At 
 Boulogne I met him in the doorway and was 
 reassured, but I kept out of sight. When the 
 luggage was disposed of Pen proposed to go 
 and see the quay ; the Folkestone boat was on 
 the point of starting. I said ' I'll show you 
 Tennyson,' and presently he came forward with 
 his wife and two beautiful children. They seated 
 themselves a few yards from me ; I pulled my 
 hat over my face — not that they would have 
 recognised me ; and so saw them off. Odd, is 
 it not, to leave Florence twice, and twice meet, 
 for the first English face, Tennyson's ? I wonder 
 whether he also had missed the afternoon train 
 and its smash. 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 
 
 101 
 
 . . . " My own time (to end with all this 
 about myself) has every minute taken up : I 
 have much to do with the printers, and shall 
 have for some weeks more. I see nobody — have 
 only called on people about business. There 
 being what is called ' nobody in town/ there 
 was no need to inquire who made the exception. 
 I shall presently go about, I suppose, for people 
 have been very kind indeed. Miss Blagden is 
 opposite, in a house no further from this than 
 your ballroom from the green drawing-room. 
 She came last week and will stay three months 
 at least — pleasantly for me. 
 
 . . . "It is not because I do not feel the 
 deepest interest in the American news that I 
 rather turn from writing about it — particularly 
 to you who understand so much more, foresee 
 and perhaps apprehend more than can the un- 
 
 instructed here. The grin of the may be 
 
 hard to bear, but indeed the feeling of the few- 
 people I see is altogether free from its malicious 
 self-satisfaction. I never hear a word for the 
 South even from those who think the North 
 underestimated its strength and despair of a 
 better issue than separation. We say fight it 
 out to the last ; but for English lookers-on, 
 who abjure heroics, to say that, would be saying 
 ' Do yourselves as much harm as you can.' The 
 
 .i^mt^^ 
 
102 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 Italian hope deferred again is also a weariness — 
 but not worse, I think. Dear friends, we feel 
 together, hope together — did so and will do 
 so ! Here is a ' length,' as the actors used to 
 say. I can't stay longer with you in the cheerful 
 home. ..." 
 
 The last lines of the above refer of course 
 to interests painfully present to Browning's corre- 
 spondents ; just as his next letter was to be 
 the act of response to a demonstration that had 
 broken, in all naturalness, from Story's irritated 
 nerves. For history then, as happened, was 
 making itself in relations markedly enough 
 distinct from its immediate concern with our 
 friends. There was a good deal of English 
 feeling on the subject of the War of Secession 
 with which Story was not, and could not be, 
 especially acquainted ; whereas the feeling with 
 which he was acquainted, and which was then 
 patent and flamboyant, had no message of 
 comfort for his inflamed patriotism. The Boman 
 studio, the poetic visions struggling, with their 
 beauty and their indifference, into shape, soothed 
 him at these hours in vain ; so that he was 
 moved, in their not very helpful company, to 
 draw up a statement of the case of the North 
 that might be brought before the English public. 
 
STORY S "AMERICAN QUESTION 
 
 103 
 
 He addressed himself to the task with char- 
 acteristic vivacity and with an excellent result. 
 Despatched to London, his paper — "The Amer- 
 ican Question" — appeared, by Browning's aid, 
 in the form of three letters to the " Daily News" 
 (December 26th, 27th, 28th, 1861), and was 
 afterwards published as a pamphlet matching 
 the pamphlet composed of the letters addressed 
 shortly before to "The Times" by Mr Motley, 
 the historian of the Dutch Republic, then United 
 States Minister to Austria. Story's plea for 
 the particular justice to his country that he 
 had been so disappointed not to find is a re- 
 markably lucid and temperate performance for 
 a man whose affections were so much engaged. 
 For a sculptor and a poet it is in fact a 
 singularly methodical and reasonable document 
 — of which there would be perhaps even more 
 to say were it advisable to dive again with 
 him into the deeps of the London newspaper- 
 press of the time for the pearls of a tolerably 
 turbid sea. Kich and rare are some of those 
 produced by him in picturing the element of 
 indignant virtue that was so striking a feature 
 of the perversity against which he protests — 
 an element that may surely now be felt, all 
 round, to have contributed some of the rarest 
 curiosities of "tone" to the queer museum of 
 
104 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 history. It may be added that, on the dismal 
 "Trent" episode in especial, Browning is as 
 clear and explicit as his friend. 
 
 Robert Browning to W. W. Story. 
 
 " 1 Chichestee Eoad, Dec. 17th, 1861. 
 
 "Dearest Friends, and dearer than ever just 
 now ! . . . I will go this morning and see 
 with Edward Dicey what is to be done. I much 
 fear little or nothing, beyond some cost of 
 publishing, which you may expect, I should say. 
 Perhaps immediate circulation, even in a cheap 
 and popular paper, would put your thoughts 
 into thousands of heads at once, would be better 
 than any delay in trying for the more dignified 
 journals, and certainly than the pamphlet form : 
 this miserable affair of the ' Trent ' has so changed 
 the object of interest for the moment. I have 
 not even glanced at your writing, so anxious am 
 I to assure you at once on all the above- 
 mentioned points, but I know that we agree in 
 feeling here, as in other matters — and probably 
 do not differ even in appreciation of facts, as 
 in old subjects of disputes when our feelings went 
 equally together. I think English judgment of 
 the Northern procedures has been wrong from 
 the beginning — just as of the French procedures 
 (will you let me say ?) in Italy : our people ex- 
 
BKOWNINGS EXPLANATIONS 
 
 105 
 
 pected in both cases that the pure and simple 
 rights in the case would be declared and vigor- 
 ously carried out without one let or stop. ' Italy- 
 shall be free, and Slavery abolished, absolutely, 
 at once and for ever.' At the first hesitation 
 in face of difficulties we cried out ' Italy will 
 not be freed, nor Slavery extinguished, after all ' ; 
 and our sympathy stopped and irritation began, 
 as if the spirit of all we would have sym- 
 pathised in were not actively alive all the time, 
 and, taking the crooked road to walk, in this 
 poor world, is only reached by a straight one 
 'as the crow flies' — far above our heads and 
 rather near the heaven. The spirit of all Mr 
 Lincoln's acts is altogether against Slavery in 
 the end ; but in apprehension of the result of 
 losing the uncertain States he declared his 
 intention to be quite otherwise. 
 
 " You understand this, and the English did 
 
 not, and so all the work of the was ' cut 
 
 out for it,' and, just as in the Italian case, every 
 measure now taken by the North in the direction, 
 plainer and plainer, of complete Emancipation, 
 will be considered as ' forced upon them.' It 
 seems besides as if no mistakes on one part can 
 be met without two or more mistakes on the 
 other, to make up for their coming late into 
 observation ; so the malice of the provoked 
 
106 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 abuse enough on your side, and threatenings 
 quite beside the question : because our neutrality, 
 poor, hard, cold thing indeed, was the worst you 
 had to expect and in no moment of the fear of 
 a terrible result for the cotton -operatives here, 
 did any one dream of taking part with the South. 
 This sad affair of the ' Trent ' puts all this away, 
 however ; our people hold to the hone they have 
 got in their jaws this time, that a naval lieu- 
 tenant is not an admiralty -judge. If you put 
 things as they were, so far as possible, let the 
 prisoners be restored with an acknowledgment 
 that the seizure w^as wrong. I think the * Trent ' 
 ought in fairness to be considered as taken into 
 one of your ports and subject to adjudicature : 
 if our lawyers are right you will have to re- 
 store her and pay for the detention ; if your 
 authorities, the ship is yours, envoys and all. 
 There is remedy for our wrong in the legal way, 
 and no other ; but you are too likely to say 
 ' The ship would be confiscated, the damages 
 infinitely greater ; this twitching the sum in 
 dispute out of the waistcoat -pocket is kinder 
 than issuing writs and imprisoning the debtor' 
 — while he demurs : * If the debt be disproved 
 after all, the writ and expenses will all fall on 
 you; whereas carry ofi" my money and I lose 
 that decidedly, right or wrong. Moreover, you 
 
BROWNINGS SYMPATHY 
 
 107 
 
 treated me thus at Charing Cross ! ' So it seems 
 we may fairly say and you fairly do ; but who 
 can be sure he sees clearly, with the bad blood 
 setting toward the head? 
 
 " Come what will, I, insignificant unit, can 
 make no ' war ' in my soul with my truest 
 brother and friend. No one ever had cause to 
 love a country better than I, who have so long 
 been only not an American because people can 
 hardly experience such generosity except as 
 strangers ; nor do I mean ever to go into the 
 matter again with you, dearest of all American 
 friends, which our respective lawyers will wrangle 
 out for some time yet, I li(ype. Here is a first 
 bitter fruit of the business, that this letter, 
 which I have been meaning every day to write 
 in reply to your two precious budgets of home 
 news that gave me pleasure like pain and pain 
 like pleasure, so recently — this letter proves, 
 as you see, something altogether foreign to what 
 it should be if true to my heart and responsive 
 to yours. It is all written, moreover, while Pen 
 is practising at my elbow on a grand piano in 
 a very little London room. My minutes (I don't 
 know whether I began by saying) are numbered 
 and disposed of from morning till night. I never 
 had so much to do or so little pleasure in doing 
 it, or anything. Having scribbled what I really 
 
 ai 
 
108 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 doubt whether you or anybody else can read 
 or understand, in determination to say something 
 at once, I will leave off for a day or two. All 
 regards and remembrances from us both to the 
 Abb^ when you see him." 
 
 And the writer resumes, after a short interval, 
 with the same excellent lucidity. 
 
 Robert Browning to W. W. Story. 
 
 " 1 Chichester Eoad, Upper Westbourne 
 Terrace, Dec. 31st, 1861. 
 
 "You must have received the three numbers 
 of the 'Daily News' (Dec. 25, 26, 27) containing 
 your paper Dicey sent them ; all your thanks are 
 due to him. I put the MS. in his hands at once, 
 and he succeeded in his endeavour, as you see ; 
 but unluckily there was no time to refer to Mr 
 Adams. The editor said this ' slack week's ' 
 occasion must be seized, and so good an occasion 
 was not let slip ; for indeed every day puts the 
 past question deeper in the background beside 
 the terrible interest of the new question alto- 
 gether distinct from it. The inaccuracies there- 
 fore must be corrected in the pamphlet, should 
 you please to reprint it so ; Mr Adams has been 
 communicated with, and no doubt will explain 
 if needful. Your position so far from London 
 
BROWNING ON THE "TRENT 
 
 109 
 
 makes very excusable the slip to which you 
 refer ; those cases have been turned and tried, 
 till they are dry dust now, and it is true that 
 Americans and English here are of one mind 
 about them. Oh, the pity of it all ! Capt. 
 Wilkes with his instincts and law -studies ex- 
 temporary, and notion of ' embodied despatches ' ! 
 To quarrel about such a man's ' notions ' ! And 
 no words, nor love indeed, on this side, can help 
 it all ! Indeed you are wrong as to men's ' fury ' 
 here ! I have not heard one man, woman or 
 child express anything but dismay at the pros- 
 pect of being obliged to go to war on any 
 grounds with America ; but every one felt there 
 might be an obligation as stringent as a slap 
 on the face in public from one's bosom friend. 
 But I've done. . . . This new dear letter comes 
 warmly into the grey cold corner where I am 
 keeping alive this last day of my last good year. 
 Next year, next hundred years will change noth- 
 ing in my gratitude and love. I mean to go 
 out and see friends as I used. I shall be able 
 to gossip with you. Meantime I run in and 
 shake hands and sit by the fire as of old, see 
 you always and love you always." 
 
 It was all a question, a danger, at the over- 
 darkened hour, that could not easily drop. 
 
 A4 "l.'.- "•■1 
 
 
110 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 Robert Browning to the Storys. 
 
 " 1 Chichester Eoad, Jan. 2\st, 1862. 
 
 " I wrote two hurried letters to you, weeks 
 ago, about the American letter, and meant to 
 say something more leisurely at the first oppor- 
 tunity — which is now, and not earlier ; you shall 
 hear why. ... I at last write the word or two 
 which your kindness will take as if they were 
 worthier. First, I am very glad that, on the 
 whole, the matter of the Letter may be pro- 
 nounced successful through Dicey's energy and 
 opportunities. It would have been better could 
 the supervision have been given to Mr Adams, 
 as he wished, but the great point was to secure 
 such an advantage as the columns of the ' Daily 
 News,' a first-class paper — and you understand 
 that, no doubt. I don't remember whether I 
 told you my own poor opinion of the extreme 
 cleverness of the exposition of the question. 
 The 'Trent' afiair was necessarily less complete 
 in its handling than we should have found it 
 had you been nearer the law-books. Of my 
 heartfelt delight in the issue of that thing, 
 why try and speak? Don't mind the mean, 
 
 vindictive ; every one here understands the 
 
 difficulties that have had to be overcome, and 
 thinks the reparation complete and handsome 
 too. The purpose of the North is also under- 
 
BROWNINGS SITUATION 
 
 111 
 
 stood at last, and if the event of the struggle 
 seems less certain here than to your politicians, 
 there is no longer the notion that ' Slavery had 
 nothing to do with it.' The ' Commissaries ' will 
 be received with the contempt they deserve, and 
 the antecedents of both gentlemen are kept 
 profitably in mind here. On the other hand, 
 this blocking -up Charleston seems inconsistent 
 with any hope of eventual success on your side ; 
 for what will you do if Charleston becomes loyal 
 again? There may be better reasons for such 
 a step than we can see ; let us hope so. Dicey 
 will be a good interpreter, at least, of Northern 
 intentions and accomplishments ; he is gone, you 
 know, for some months. I gave him a few 
 letters ; you, however, will do whatever he wants 
 in that way, and as hardly anybody else can. 
 I am heartily glad he goes. 
 
 "Of myself — so little to say ; my life is as 
 grey (or yellow) as this sky, one snow-bank 
 above head at this minute. I make up my 
 mind from week to week — next Monday I will 
 begin and call on my friends. But this fort- 
 night of anxiety was a real excuse. Next week 
 I still say. I see hardly anybody, but mean, I 
 assure you, to alter all that for abundance of 
 reasons. I have got, besides, a tutor to my 
 mind — rather than to Pen's perhaps ; but he is 
 
 ■• • 'iliJK'fc A- 
 
112 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 sound to the core in grammatical niceties. . . . 
 My end of life, and particular reward for myself, 
 will be, one day years hence, to just go back to 
 Italy, to Rome, and die as I lived, when I used 
 really to live. If you knew — but you do know, 
 and can conceive, how precious every mud-splash 
 on the house-walls of Rome is, how every minute 
 of those last six months in Rome would melt up 
 into gold enough for a year's use now, if I had 
 it ! But I have not, and must think of some- 
 thing else — as that you at least are there, where 
 you were, as you were. But come here, all the 
 same ; for you can go back, you know. Surely 
 you will all come — will you not ? — for the Ex- 
 position, which (I told you truly in my last note) 
 is to go on just as it was intended. Let me 
 know what you do intend, and how far advanced 
 is the Sibyl. And, dear Mrs Story, do you 
 please write me more of those letters that I 
 was so delighted to have and that stopped of 
 a sudden : why ? I will try and make some 
 sort of return in my lame way by repeating to 
 you all the news that occurs when I go my 
 rounds and see people you know — whose very 
 letters are in a pile here unanswered, but not 
 always to remain so (observed for the hundredth 
 time). 
 
 " You may know — what I have left out in my 
 
BROWNINGS NOSTALGIA 
 
 113 
 
 account of the daily work — that I have been 
 painfully engaged with the printers and am not 
 yet absolutely out of their hands. The book, 
 advertised long ago by the publisher, will not 
 appear for a month at least. I shall send it to 
 you the first thing. (Since writing this para- 
 graph arrives an invitation from Miss Wynn to 
 dine and meet Mr Maurice only, and I have 
 accepted it as I said I would.) I have just 
 written to Cartwright — for the first time since I 
 was here. Very black it looks when actually 
 put on paper. Dear Story, tell me what you 
 can about the studio ; let me smell the wet clay 
 once more and hear the birds and the goat 
 through that dear little door to the left. T would 
 send my kind remembrances to M. Boncinelli if 
 he cared to have them, and he may, in his good 
 nature. Have you to do still with that clever 
 Lombard artist ? Probably not ; but as for your 
 being idle, I don't believe it. By-the-by, Mrs 
 Cholmondeley wrote the other day and mentioned 
 the death of poor Gajassi : if there is a sale of 
 his effects and the cast of Byron's head by 
 Thorwaldsen (with his * points ' on it) is to be 
 sold for what you consider a moderate price, I 
 should be glad to have it — supposing that there 
 is no trouble to you and that Boncinelli attends 
 such sales as of old. Keep it in your studio * till 
 
 VOL. II. H 
 
114 THE CLEOPATKA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 I come.' I want you to tell the many and true 
 friends I have in Rome and elsewhere, w^hen you 
 write to them, how they are all like portraits in 
 the one habitable room of a house ; I go in among 
 them many a time in the course of the day and 
 night. And now good-bye. If you knew how 
 the minutest news of your daily life interest me 
 you would register every chip picked up on the 
 carpet. How is Wild ? I have his picture of P. 
 facing me. Give him my true love. But you 
 need no telling how I think of old friends. Don't 
 forget to remember me most kindly and partic- 
 ularly to Mrs Dicey — to Lady William (Russell). 
 How is shef The accident had just happened, 
 and I have heard nothing, of course, since your 
 letter. There is no protracting this final shaking 
 of hands in decency." 
 
 This next has especial interest as giving us 
 a small fact of biographic value not, I believe, to 
 be found elsewhere. 
 
 Rohert Browning to the Storys. 
 
 " 1 Chichester Eoad, March \9th, 1862. 
 
 " Three letters, from one or another of you ! — 
 
 and the pleasure they gave me I can't, honestly 
 
 can't, tell you. Will it be told you in any 
 
 degree by the fact that I sit down at once to 
 
BROWNINGS LONDON NEWS 
 
 115 
 
 obey the desire in the last (that carried by 
 Miss Gaskell) 'that I should write just a word 
 at once ' f Here is the word, never minding the 
 injustice it does the many things calling for 
 many words ; but my time is almost wholly 
 taken up, first by work of a morning, then by 
 going out of evenings. Did you not bid me do 
 that too ? I ought to be able to return your 
 news by mine, and tell particularly who was 
 where, as you do so pleasantly ; but it really 
 goes out of my head the next morning. More- 
 over, what a difference between your Roman 
 names and such as I might remember ! I will 
 remember some. ... I dine to - night with 
 Emerson Tennent — but I can't go on with the 
 week's work ; enough is said to show you that 
 I try and see old friends, when my true treat 
 would be an evening over the piles of unread 
 books, or a morning with the old coat and wet 
 clay. Oh, the days ! Well, Rossetti has had 
 a miserable loss of his wife a month ago ; she 
 took an overdose of laudanum one evening — 
 they had dined out, returned early, and he had 
 left her for his class at the working - men's 
 ' Institution.' Coming back, he found her in a 
 stertorous, unnatural sleep, and presently found 
 an empty bottle. He got assistance, but in vain. 
 He is in trouble indeed, poor kind fellow. I 
 
116 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 met Dickens at dinner the other day, looking 
 very well and young. Thackeray has just re- 
 signed the editorship of the ' CornhilL' 
 
 " Why should I not trust to you what I know 
 you will keep to yourselves, but what will 
 certainly amuse you as nothing else I could 
 write is like to do ? What good in our loving 
 each other unless I do such a thing? So, O 
 Story, Emelyn (dare I say, for the solemnity's 
 sake?) and Edie — the editorship has, under 
 the circumstances, &c., &c., been offered to me! 
 I really take it as a compliment because I am, 
 by your indulgence, a bit of a poet if you like, 
 but a man of the world and able editor hardly ! 
 They count on my attracting writers — I who 
 could never muster English readers enough to 
 pay for salt and bread ! My first answer was 
 prompt enough — that my life was done for and 
 settled, that I could not change and would 
 not ; but the conveyer of the message bade me 
 consider, in a flattering way, and I took the 
 week to do so accordingly. I can't be sure 
 how I shall answer — that's the end ; for I have 
 rather an impulse, first to get the salary, which 
 P. might find something to do with, next to 
 figure as a man actually capable of choosing 
 better articles from the quantity always on 
 hand, and last to try what the business is like. 
 
BEOWNING AND THE " CORNHILL 
 
 117 
 
 It requires merely editing — no line of my own 
 writing {that would be another matter). On 
 the other hand, the little to do ought to be 
 honestly done, might take more of my time than 
 I choose to part with — and what do I want with 
 more money? I shall diplomatise accordingly — 
 write for a full statement of what I am expected 
 to do if I accept, and what, and for how long, 
 I am to receive in that case. One farthing less 
 than Thackeray got, apart from the price of his 
 substantive articles, I shall not take, of course ; 
 and if I don't like the terms the publishers have 
 my bow, I have my little piece of satisfied con- 
 ceit, and you have what is amusing you dear 
 three, I engage ! 
 
 " Seriously, now that I care not one whit 
 about what I never cared for too much, 
 people are getting good-natured to my poems. 
 There's printing a book of ' Selections from K. 
 B.' (SCULPTOR and poet) which is to popular- 
 ise my old things ; and So-and-so means to re- 
 view it, and Somebody - or - other always was 
 looking out for such an occasion, and What's- 
 his-name always said he admired me, only he 
 didn't say it, though he said something else 
 every week of his life in some journal. The 
 breath of Man ! . . . I went to Paris three 
 weeks ago and saw my father to heart's content 
 
118 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 (in his eightieth year and strong as thirty years 
 ago) ; saw no one else but Mme. Du Quaire, 
 and came back on the eighth day. I wish the 
 absence from London could be to-morrow : the 
 little book ^ is to be published, and if books 
 were to be distinguished as formerly by a great 
 red edging, this ought to have something of 
 the kind round it without help from the 
 printer. Reviewers will have my heart in their 
 rough hands for the next month or two. But 
 I am not very formidable ; witness Mr Thornton 
 Hunt, who has not printed the letter of his 
 father's which I meant to give him, but in 
 place of it, without a word to me (as he con- 
 fesses in his preface), is printed our letter to his 
 father ! He knew I should have refused leave 
 to print such a thing in the most energetic 
 terms possible — so he takes leave. It is hardly 
 worth noticing further that he prints my writ- 
 ing, which he can't read, so as to make it 
 pure nonsense in parts — as he also confesses in 
 his preface. He has printed William's letter 
 to him as well as the letter of his father, but 
 there was reason for that in the nature of the 
 communication. I ought to be angry, but can't. 
 I shall simply, when quite sure of myself, write 
 and say what I think of his proceeding, and 
 ^ The Selections just mentioned. 
 
THE END OF A LETTER 
 
 119 
 
 then propose to give his father's letter in ex- 
 change for the one actually printed, which he 
 shall cancel. There's nothing in my letter I 
 care about except the indecent nature of the 
 exposure : it's just as if, being at my toilette, 
 some clownish person chose to throw the bed- 
 room door wide. There's enough of it. 
 
 . . . "Of friends, I rejoice heartily in the 
 recovery of Lady William, and will write a 
 word to her since you encourage me. I had 
 indeed thought of doing so. . . . Mrs Procter 
 was told by a believing friend that Mr Home 
 'particularly felt the annoyance of being per- 
 petually confounded with the Mr Hume Mr 
 Browning insulted and Mr Trollope abused — 
 it was quite another man ! ' Eh, my friends ? 
 Thank the dear Abbe for his loving word. I 
 will write to you again, but give me another 
 drink of the Koman air when you can, to send 
 me rejoicing through the grey, drear lengths of 
 days here." 
 
 With the social ramifications of our friends 
 (and of their friends) in England the hovering 
 ghosts so multiply that to follow all our clues 
 would lead us well over the limit of our subject. 
 These allusions, these figures moreover represent 
 in many cases lives but recently extinct. Other- 
 
120 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 wise how pass Mme. Du Quaire without a greet- 
 ing? — how not instinctively pause at her name 
 as we used to pause, whenever we did pass, 
 at the friendly little door in Wilton Street 
 behind which it was ever a reminder of her 
 art of entertainment that the tiny and much- 
 encumbered house, the little red drawing-room, 
 decorated not only, but practically furnished, 
 with miniatures, snuff-boxes and other social 
 relics (I give at least what seems to me, after 
 a long interval, to have been my amused im- 
 pression), reconciled the generous amplitude of 
 her person with the boundless extent of her 
 acquaintance and the emphasis of her kindness 
 to those she judged most in want of it ? I think 
 of the circumference of her round table, under 
 the suspended French dinner-lamp, in the little 
 room densely garnished with old engraved por- 
 traits ; I wonder again at the single heaped 
 dish of southern fruit in the middle, all yellow 
 and green and purple, vast as some embossed 
 tray held up by a blackamoor in a Veronese 
 picture ; I recall agreeable and interesting folk 
 who lived in the light of their time, but each 
 of whom, as I pass from name to name in the 
 list, would now answer with silence if the name 
 were called. Her friends were like a family 
 bred to harmony of intercourse and left in charge 
 
MADAME DU QUAIRE 
 
 121 
 
 of a strong, soft, humorous, mildly-mothering, 
 absolutely indulgent elder sister. And the 
 silence of the roll deepens when I go back to 
 still more distant Paris days and the old red 
 house on the river, that of a common acquaint- 
 ance, opposite the Louvre, in which I first met 
 her. The salon of Mme. de Blocqville, nee 
 d'Eckmtihl, daughter of Marshal Davoust — that 
 is truly a cluster showing gaps that help it 
 to resemble, for the imagination, some riddled 
 Napoleonic array. Of old Northumberland race, 
 married to a Frenchman, then widowed, childless, 
 and loving the world, of which she took an 
 amused view, Mme. Du Quaire seemed in those 
 days, with a home on each side of the Channel, 
 to have had neither in Paris nor in London a 
 sacrifice to make. She had kept each intimacy 
 without giving up the other — which was really 
 to know how to live. But on the threshold 
 of the great chamber of London memories, I 
 remind myself, the step must yet a while falter 
 and the voice not be loud. I none the less 
 venture to recollect that this lady was a great 
 friend to Kinglake, who is mentioned, though 
 but in his character of historian, in the following 
 letter, and also a great friend to Mrs Procter ; 
 and she was interesting on the subject of the 
 difference that had parted these two for years. 
 
122 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 She knew how little there was "in it " ; she 
 knew the name of the lady — which was interest- 
 ing, assuredly, when one happened to have 
 knowledge to match ; she appreciated the 
 gentleman's embarrassment in presence of the 
 condition exacted. " Tell me you're in love with 
 her, and I'll forgive your resenting what I said 
 about her. Without that you had no right to 
 resent it. So if you weren't in love, there we 
 are." There they were indeed, since Kinglake 
 was neither in love nor, in the particular case, 
 likely to be : whereby he was unable to meet 
 the condition — which, distinct and final, was, 
 quite in the grand manner, never abated. 
 
 W. W. Story to Charles Eliot Norton. 
 
 "EoME, March l^th, 1863. 
 
 . . . "To-day is San Giuseppe's festa, and 
 in every square the frittate are hissing under 
 the decorated booths. Besides, we make three 
 cardinals this morning at the Consistory, and 
 all our party are assisting at this ceremony by 
 lending it the honour of their presence. They 
 thought it fair to do this, as they were at the 
 great reception of the new cardinals the other 
 evening. Russell and Julian (Sturgis) are to 
 join the rest here in about ten days, and I 
 am really glad that he can get a run if only 
 
THE SAUL 
 
 123 
 
 for a month, so as to change the course of 
 his life. 
 
 " My winter ever since I returned from 
 England has been full of hard work, and to- 
 day, for the first time since December came 
 in, have I an hour which is free. My Saul is 
 finished, and the tornatore is at work upon it, 
 so that I am as vain and useless at my studio 
 as a partner who has been turned out of the 
 firm. I believe I have told you about my 
 statue before, but cannot recollect. He is seated, 
 and I have represented him at the moment when 
 the evil spirit is upon him and David is called 
 in to play to him. The action is all interior — 
 the struggle of a half-demented soul ; one hand 
 clutching his beard and one fumbling at his 
 dagger. I think it my best work, but no man 
 is judge of his own. Did we not, however, be- 
 lieve in the thing on which we are engaged 
 we could never have the heart or enthusiasm 
 to go on with it. I should like you to see it, 
 but unless you come here you never will, for 
 it seems that no important work of mine ever 
 is to go to America. 
 
 " I hope you will ere this have received a 
 copy of ' Roba di Roma ' — yet one never can 
 tell ! The book seems to have met with suc- 
 cess — it is already going into a second edition. 
 
124 THE CLEOPATEA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 Yet I have not heard one word about it from 
 America ; Hke everything else of mine it drops 
 still-born there. Perhaps they will wake up 
 when they find it is liked in England. 
 
 " I received a lively letter from Hamilton 
 Wild the other day, promising to return here 
 soon, but I am afraid if he waits for exchange 
 to go down I shall wait some time before seeing 
 him. I was rejoiced to find that you look upon 
 our War prospects with so cheerful a hope. From 
 this side the water things look dreary enough, 
 and I confess that at times my fears outrun 
 my hopes. The Government at Washington 
 has in my opinion nearly compromised our future 
 by its course, and if we go on as we have been 
 going for the last six months I am afraid it 
 will all be up with us. Stanton and Halleck 
 are completely inefiicient, and the former seems 
 to me to be devoted to feathering his own 
 political nest. The only man in whom I have 
 the least confidence is McClellan, and I think 
 if he were not tied by the leg and the string 
 hitched to the White House he would in three 
 months change the whole aspect of things. Has 
 not all he said and prophesied been completely 
 justified? He was turned out for slowness, 
 but have we made any advance since he left? 
 
 " Have you read Kinglake's book ? It has 
 
STORY ON NAPOLEON III. 
 
 125 
 
 not arrived here, and I have only seen extracts, 
 but his character of Louis Napoleon is said to 
 be most masterly, and from all I hear and 
 see I think I should entirely agree with him. 
 My detestation of that man is unutterable ; I 
 never can forgive him his crimes. This poor 
 people is under his feet, and I see no issue 
 for the present from their difficulties. The 
 Pope is in precarious health and may die any 
 day — or may live for years. But I cannot see 
 that his death would affect the question. I 
 believe that L. N. has no intention, under any 
 circumstances, of leaving Rome. Nothing would 
 bring him to this but a revolution in France or 
 a series of pistol-shots at him in Paris. Orsini 
 forced him to befriend Piedmont, and another 
 Orsini may compel him to leave Rome. We 
 have had a gay and pleasant winter, warm and 
 genial weather, and numbers of agreeable people. 
 The Carnival was very dull because the Comitate 
 asked the Italians not to go into the Corso, but 
 balls and parties of every kind have abounded. 
 Arthur Dexter is here with his mother. Se- 
 cession has its allies in . . ." 
 
 The almost fanatical faith of which General 
 McClellan was the object on the part of many 
 persons at the North during the middle period 
 
126 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 of the Civil War is fairly ancient history now — 
 and the more ancient from the fact that the 
 controversy was to die a natural death almost 
 immediately after it had fiercely raged. But, 
 for those who can remember, Story's reference 
 gives it a spectral actuality, renews the " feel- 
 ing of the time " — that feeling of the time which 
 so often makes itself intense as from the sense 
 of its only chance, of foreknowing that it will 
 scarce be the feeling of any other time. This 
 indeed may still leave other times generously 
 tender to it — besides which Story was nearly 
 related, through his wife, to McClellan, who was 
 his guest in Home at the close of the war. After 
 which tribute to public history I feel a pang at 
 having to brush almost in silence by the bearer 
 of the name last pronounced in the above, per- 
 fectly private though the allusion. One must 
 have perhaps almost a morbid memory — or cer- 
 tainly an extravagant interest in the mere 
 fellow -creature, the mere honourable gentleman 
 — to feel tempted by every clue held out by 
 handsome young men of leisure, of fortune, of 
 " artistic tastes," of clever conversation, of filial 
 piety ; passionately devoted, that is, to admir- 
 able mothers and steeped, for the golden fusion 
 of effect, in the old Barberini air. So I leave 
 this decorative figure — as that is how I seem 
 
THE AMERICANS IN ROME 
 
 127 
 
 to recall it — to that Italian envoi of Story's 
 *' Graffiti d'ltalia " which I have already had 
 occasion to mention ; taking up my tale with 
 another letter, undated, but of the same or the 
 following season. 
 
 W. W. Story to Charles Eliot Norton. 
 
 "Rome [1863 or 1864]. 
 
 ..." Rome has been filled to overflowing 
 with strangers this season, and we have had 
 a very gay and pleasant society, particularly 
 among the English. They have done for me 
 what the Americans would have seen me rot 
 rather than do, and I must feel grateful. Among 
 others Coventry Patmore has been and is here, 
 and I see a good deal of him and like him very 
 much. He and De Vere hunt in couples, and I 
 suspect De Vere talks a good deal of Catholicism 
 into him. But it does not take root. . . . Miss 
 Cushman is mouthing it as usual, and has her 
 little satellites revolving around her. Tilton has 
 been improving remarkably, and has painted 
 some really beautiful pictures this year. He is 
 almost the only one of all the American artists 
 with whom I can have anything to do. The 
 American permanent society here is very low, 
 eaten up by jealousy and given shockingly to 
 cabal and scandal. Our Legation is no legation 
 
128 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 at all. is a pleasant enough man and his 
 
 wife a pleasant enough woman, but their tongue 
 is solely American, and they do nothing and see 
 nothing, have no house — that is, never receive, 
 never go into any society but that of the Ameri- 
 cans, where he likes to play cards with M. and 
 Co. The great Cushman patronises them, and 
 
 Mrs nestles under her wino^. Our real 
 
 representative (do not blush and deny it, for it 
 is the plain fact) is J. C H., who writes himself 
 on his card ' Secretaire de la Legation des Etats 
 Unis pres le Saint-Siege,' though he has not a 
 shadow of right to do so as I understand, and 
 goes to the diplomatic dinners as our represen- 
 tative and parades about in his diplomatic dress, 
 with sword and gold lace, and introduces his 
 friends into the diplomatic box at all the cere- 
 monies, to the immense disgust of the diplomatic 
 ladies, and in a word entirely supersedes our 
 Minister, who cannot speak a word of French. 
 
 Nobody refers anything to ■ , and he merely 
 
 economises here and says he cannot afford to 
 receive. Of course everybody knows what H. 
 is, and of course our Legation is in consequence 
 at the lowest ebb, the jeer of the diplomatic 
 circle. I assure you that my cheeks tingle 
 sometimes to hear the remarks made, and justly 
 made too, so that I cannot answer. I do not 
 
PIUS THE NINTH 
 
 129 
 
 mean to say anything against the s, who, 
 
 in their way, are agreeable and amiable. He 
 is a very intelligent man — only entirely out of 
 place. 
 
 " We had last night a great illumination in 
 honour of the Pope and St Agnes, on the anni- 
 versary of the miraculous interposition of the 
 Madonna by which his life was saved when the 
 Church of S. Agnese fell. The Piazza Navona 
 was a superb spectacle ; all across the square 
 were great transparent globes of light ; from the 
 windows coloured lanterns were suspended, and 
 little lamps starred the eaves and fayades, while 
 crimson Bengal lights glared in the centre, 
 round the fountains that seemed to pour wine, 
 and reddened the churches and palaces. Of 
 course the whole thing was enforced, but the 
 spectacle was beautiful. I just hear that a bomb 
 was thrown into the Piazza Minerva and a man 
 killed. The condition of things here is turbu- 
 lent ; the people are very weary of tyranny, and 
 the Papal troops constantly come to blows with 
 the French. The Pope is not well, has erysipelas 
 in his leg, which grows worse every year, and 
 was unable to perform the usual functions at 
 Easter. But he may live for years yet. Until 
 he dies there is no hope, and even then I see 
 no prospect, for the French will not withdraw, 
 
 VOL. II. I 
 
 
130 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 and until they retire what can the Romans do ? 
 — I hear that Hamilton Wild is coming out in 
 May. So much the better ; he ought not to 
 stay any longer in America ; his place is here, 
 and he is wasting his life there. We shall be 
 delighted indeed to greet him again. Pray tell 
 him from me not to stay in America any longer." 
 
 Story had meanwhile, besides writing a great 
 deal of verse, been turning to literary account, 
 in prose, those impressions of the aspects and 
 manners of Kome, its current life, public and 
 private, which had had time, since his first 
 visit in 1848, to store themselves in his spirit. 
 This attempt had taken the form of papers con- 
 tributed, at uneven intervals, to the " Atlantic 
 Monthly," and which now had so accumulated 
 as to make matter for a substantial book. The 
 book, in 1863, was about to appear, and Brown- 
 ing, helpful and wise, had undertaken to over- 
 look, in London, the publication. I have before 
 me the two volumes in which it thus came 
 forth, decorated with the book-plate — the name, 
 escutcheon and crest — of Anthony Trollope. The 
 book was eminently successful, and but that the 
 aspects it mainly celebrates have suffered more 
 alteration during the last quarter of a century 
 than for (one is tempted to say) many centuries 
 
ROBA DI ROMA 
 
 131 
 
 before, it would remain an all -competent and 
 charming companion for the city in Europe in 
 which we most find ourselves desiring a sym- 
 pathetic fellow - rambler. It did indeed for 
 many years play this part — as to its original 
 happy performance of which in my own case 
 I retain a memory so fond and grateful that I 
 perhaps scarce can speak of "Koba di Koma" 
 with proper detachment. The golden air, as I 
 look over its pages, makes a mist ; I read them 
 again in the light of old personal perceptions 
 and emotions ; I read, as we say, too much into 
 them, too many associations, pictures, other in- 
 effaceable passages. I remember perfectly the 
 consuming envy kindled, on my part, at first, 
 by the sense of an impregnation with the subject 
 at which it seemed to me I could never hope to 
 arrive, and at which the writer must have 
 arrived by all sorts of delightful steps and 
 contacts, any quantity of exquisite experience. 
 It summed up, with an extraordinary wealth 
 of statement, with perpetual illustration and 
 image, the incomparable entertainment of Rome, 
 where almost everything alike, manners, customs, 
 practices, processes, states of feeling, no less than 
 objects, treasures, relics, ruins, partook of the 
 special museum-quality. Story rambles through 
 his multitudinous subject as from room to room. 
 
132 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 up and down its many staircases and through 
 its endless corridors, quite as if showing a friend 
 some crowded collection with which habit has 
 made him familiar. His multifarious reading, his 
 love of curious knowledge, of enumeration and 
 detail, of discussing " points," historic, aesthetic, 
 linguistic, literary, here overflows, shows the 
 sense of " evidence " as a thing in his blood, that 
 passion for small cumulative facts which made 
 him, under pressure of his lore, amplify the 
 chapter on the Evil Eye into the treatise sub- 
 sequently published with the somewhat too 
 merely-enumerative monograph on the Castle of 
 St Angelo. But I used to think, I remember, 
 that the great challenge to envy was in the 
 little evoked visions of that out -of- the -season 
 Bome to which one had one's self to be a 
 stranger, the Bome of the Bomans only, of the 
 picture-making populace, both in the city and 
 the small hill-towns, who lead their lives as the 
 sun gets low on the long summer days and the 
 clear shade spreads like a tent above the narrow, 
 sociable streets. To read these passages over 
 is to taste and feel again the very air of early 
 rambles, when one was always agaze ; to hear 
 the sounds, to smell the dust, to give one's self 
 up once more as to the thing that was ancient 
 and noble even when homely or sordid, the thing 
 
ROBA DI ROMA 
 
 133 
 
 that might be mean but that yet couldn't be 
 vulgar, the thing condemned, in spite of itself, 
 in spite of weakness or ugliness or other offence, 
 to be mysteriously interesting. There is a long 
 passage of the chapter " Villeggiatura " which 
 gathers into a cluster the various different notes 
 of the writer's observation — a passage too long 
 wholly to quote, but which I would fain send 
 the reader back to the book to find. 
 
 " There is a crowd round the fountain, where 
 women are filling their great copper vases with 
 water and pausing to chat before they march 
 evenly home under its weight like stout caryatids. 
 Broad-horned white oxen drag home their creak- 
 ing waggons. In the distance you hear the long 
 monotonous wail of the peasant's song as he 
 returns from his work, interrupted now and 
 then with a shrill scream to his cattle. White- 
 haired goats come up the lanes in flocks, cropping 
 as they go the overhanging bushes, and, mount- 
 ing up the bank, they stare at you with yellow 
 glassy eyes and wag their beards. Down the 
 slopes of the pavement jar along ringing files 
 of wine-carts going towards Kome, while the 
 little Pomeranian dog who lives under the 
 triangular hood in front is running about on 
 the piled wine -casks and uttering volleys of 
 little sharp yelps and barks as the cars rattle 
 
134 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 through the streets. If you watch the wine- 
 carriers down into the valley you will see 
 them pull up at the wayside fountains, draw a 
 good flask of red wine from one of the casks 
 and then replace it with good fresh water. . . . 
 Nothing can be more exquisite than these 
 summer nights in Italy. The sky itself, so 
 vast, tender and delicate, is like no other sky. 
 The American sky is bluer, but harder, more 
 metallic. There is all the difference between 
 the two that there is between a feeling and 
 an opinion. As you stand on one of the old 
 balconies or walk along the terraces of the 
 Frascati villas, looking down over the mysterious 
 Campagna and listening to the continuous plash 
 of fountains and the song of nightingales, you 
 feel Italy, the Italy of Romeo and Juliet. . . . 
 The waves of the cool, delicate air, passing over 
 orange and myrtle groves and breathing deli- 
 cately against the brow and cheeks, seem to 
 blow open the inmost leaves of the book on 
 which youth painted its visionary pictures with 
 the colours of dreams. In a word we say this 
 is Italy, the Italy we dreamed of; not the Italy 
 of fleas, couriers, mendicants and postilions, but 
 of romance, poetry and passion." 
 
 It is interesting to meet in the following a 
 passage that has something of the quality of 
 
BROWNINGS REVISION 
 
 135 
 
 the writer's studies of imagined or reconstituted 
 character, some monologue of " Dramatic Lyrics" 
 or " Men and Women." 
 
 Robert Browning to the Storys. 
 
 " 19 Warwick Crescent, Upper Westbourne 
 Terrace, May 2nd, 1863. 
 
 "Dearest Friends, — What a time since I 
 have heard from you ! I got a letter from 
 Story nearly a month ago — a full chord ; and 
 then, instead of striking up myself, I began to 
 count my how many bars' rest — thirty days of 
 it about ; always meaning to lead off with a 
 fresh subject presently ! If I had written tivo 
 days after, and told you any little thing — for 
 instance, how I went the day after to Chapman's 
 and found that he had already printed off the 
 first volume and was working double tides to 
 despatch the second — you would have, some one 
 of you three, replied to me as you will now. 
 To go on — I easily reconciled myself to the 
 perhaps fortunate impossibility of chopping and 
 changing — a vile business. Your book has suc- 
 ceeded remarkably — Chapman told me two days 
 ago that he was getting rapidly through the 
 new edition. The praises have been universal 
 and hearty ; why not let ' well ' alone ? And 
 we must this time. But so you will next time 
 
136 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 if you take my advice. Next, ' Saul ' — I wish 
 you and us all joy of it. I know it will be all 
 I hope. Arthur Russell speaks in the highest 
 terms of it, and other opinions in the same sense 
 have reached me. That is right. And now, the 
 new statue, what will that be ? Give me another 
 to expect. 
 
 " I told Mrs Story what T thought about the 
 pleasant charge against that hardened reprobate, 
 Don Juan redivivus and so on, poor dear good 
 
 simple . His sister's defection doesn't surprise 
 
 me one bit more than his wife's, though on quite 
 different grounds. I never knew but a very 
 little of Miss X., who was, had one cared to look 
 into the matter, a far more curious study than 
 her sister-in-law ; for you had a person neither 
 stupid, nor vain, nor pretentious, nor scheming, 
 nor false in any discernible way, who yet, for 
 some inexplicable reason, chose not to see, or by 
 some miracle would not see, what must have been 
 perked in her face daily and hourly. You know 
 that those inventions about 'spirits,' &c., were 
 not at all more prodigious than the daily-sprout- 
 ing toadstools of that dunghill of a soul — lies 
 about this, that and the other. I am convinced 
 that even her husband caught a sight of these ; 
 indeed more than once came full upon some 
 outrageous specimen and then resolutely shut 
 
A STUDY BY BROWNING 
 
 137 
 
 his eyes and said black should be white to the 
 end of the chapter. But then he was in love. 
 I remember once inadvertently telling him some- 
 thing she had said about an invitation ' she had 
 reluctantly accepted to please him' — whereas, as 
 he cried in amazement, ' she had forced him to 
 go purely to please her.' I saw his face change, 
 and was afraid he would go home and explode : 
 not he 1 It was gulped down and ignored thence- 
 forth and forever. But for his sister to gulp 
 and ignore — I can't explain. But it must have 
 been so, and I shall continue to believe that here 
 has been a swallow of a camel, where no gnats 
 nor blackbeetles have been ' strained at.' My 
 own fancy is that the intercourse with Lady Y. 
 has fired Z. with a noble emulation — the interest 
 and mystery of the ' injured wife,' the glory of 
 becoming a Lady — in 24 months ; and from the 
 wanting this to the oldest of old ways of getting 
 this was, as Hamlet says, ' as easy as lying.' 
 The more I discover the perfect ease of it the 
 more do I feel humbled before minds so made 
 that to them the immense difficulty of lying 
 appeared an impossibility ; made to accept Z. with 
 her wallet of wares for an angel laden with 
 roses. / accept her now as a familiar blotch on 
 a picture of the past, and I solaced myself the 
 other day by placing two portraits of her on 
 
138 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 each side of a delicious drawing of a ' model ' in 
 the costume of Truth, just given to me by Leigh- 
 ton. I should like above most things to have a 
 good talk with her : no hurting me, alas ! 
 
 "Lady William more and more dear and de- 
 lightful. She suffers much, but recovers soon. I 
 am hopeful as to the result, and that she will 
 yet walk as she can talk. I dine with her 
 to-day : she always asks (did ask two days since) 
 'when I heard last from you.' Let me tell her 
 something soon." 
 
 The Storys meanwhile were returning to Siena 
 for this summer. 
 
 Robert Broiuning to the Storys and their Daughter. 
 
 " Ste.-Marie, prfes Pornic, Brittant, 
 Sept. 5th, 1863. 
 
 . , . " I shall only scribble a word or two 
 and leave myself in your hands and hearts. 
 Here are we in the old place, just as we left 
 it last year, and I rather like it better on ac- 
 quaintance. The barrenness of the country is 
 not a bad thing — the silence and surrounding 
 sea all one could wish. The weather, however, 
 is broken up and autumnal ; they say here that 
 never was so hot and unvaried a summer — we 
 came in for the end of it. Not that I object 
 
MORE OF BROWNING 
 
 139 
 
 to the blusterous winds and bursts of rain, but 
 the bathing gets colder. I bathe duly and fancy 
 it is particularly good for me, body and spirit. 
 . . . Eossetti I saw just before I quitted London ; 
 he lives after an easy fashion in a large old 
 house at Chelsea, amid carvings and queernesses 
 of every picturesque kind. I will certainly give 
 him your message and remembrance on my return. 
 . . . Now I have done with England and all 
 in it, let me breathe Siena to the end of my five 
 minutes. It was indeed stupid to fancy you 
 could have been unfaithful to the old villa, 
 but the ' Orr '-name used to be enough for me. 
 There is something in this place that brings Siena 
 to my mind always. No two places were ever 
 more unlike, but the autumn feeling, winter cares, 
 comparative idleness and stoppage of one's life, 
 besides the stillness — these are here as they 
 used to be there. . . . Oh, (Louis) Napoleon ! 
 do we really differ so thoroughly about him 
 after all ? No understanding comes out of talk 
 on such questions, because one presses to the 
 support of the weaker points — not necessarily 
 untenable, but weak ; and the end is these seem 
 the argument. But I never answer for what 
 any man may do, if I try and appreciate what 
 he has done ; my opinion of the solid good 
 rendered years ago is unchanged. The subsequent 
 
 
140 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 deference to the clerical party in France and 
 support of brigandage is poor work, but it surely 
 is doing little harm to the general good. As 
 for the party of action one sees the main chance 
 tolerably clear from this distance : Austria is 
 uncommonly strong just now, and if Italy attacks 
 her without France to help she will rue it, that's 
 too likely. . . . Well, two of my English years 
 have slipped away. If I live (and I am particu- 
 larly well) I shall have plenty of Italy yet. I 
 bring out two volumes of new things ('Men 
 and Women'), but under some other name to 
 please the publisher." 
 
 To Siena still, and doubtless longingly enough, 
 went the following ; with its visible reflection, 
 however, in spite of all longings, of the form 
 already more or less taken by the writer's London 
 life — a life henceforth of multiplied contacts and 
 impressions, "social" activities. 
 
 Robert Broivming to the Storys. 
 
 " London, 19 Warwick Crescent, Upper Westbourne 
 Terrace, Jul^i/ Vlth, 1863. 
 
 . . . " This scrap shall go to beloved Siena 
 
 therefore, where I am better contented to fancy 
 
 you than elsewhere. I cannot remember which 
 
 the Belvedere villa is — tell me exactly. . . . 
 
LADY WILLIAM RUSSELL. TENNYSON 141 
 
 This has been a busy season ; I have gone out 
 constantly, but not too much of my experiences 
 stays in my head, except a general feeling of 
 thankfulness and wonder at people's kindness. 
 Lady William will be your first object of interest 
 — very dear, and exceedingly clever, as well 
 as admirably patient under her prolonged im- 
 prisonment. I much fear the summer is slip- 
 ping away and will hardly find her prepared 
 to make the efibrt of leaving home. Indeed 
 she has not yet even left the house. The general 
 health seems sadly afiected by this vile indoor 
 life. Still one sees little of this late of an even- 
 ing, when visitors and their contribution of news 
 bring out the old colour and quality — and you 
 know how pleasant that is. Another invalid 
 here is no less than A. Tennyson, who is kept 
 in bed by an ambiguous sort of rash — supposed 
 hay-fever and irregularly-acting vaccination ; the 
 learned don't know. I saw him and found him 
 his fine self two days ago, affectionate and 
 simple as ever. He has poems which will be 
 printed soon ; of one, ' Enoch ' (the Fisherman 
 or Sailor) friends speak highly. Kuskin is 
 back from Switzerland, and well : I see him now 
 and then, with Dickens, Ristori (I sat with her 
 twice at dinner lately) and a few others you 
 would care to know, and plenty you may guess. 
 
 ,} 
 
142 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 ... I could not go to Italy this summer, but 
 next year I must go if I live. I confess I never 
 think of seeing you again satisfactorily till the 
 end of things here, till a few years more go by 
 — and they do go like a dream. That it should 
 be already two years, all but a few days, since 
 I left Italy ! I hope to end my life in the land 
 I love best, and, what with work and troubles 
 of great and little degree, five or six years will 
 pass, if I don't pass them. So one day a very 
 aged person will come knocking, &c., as in the 
 story books. Who lives at the old villa, ours? 
 And at Lander's and Orr's, if you are really not 
 there ? And the people — who is there dead or 
 just the same ? tell me, won't you ? Last Sunday 
 who came here but Annunziata? she is with 
 Lady Duff Gordon. Remember — but I must 
 have said this before — you cannot tell me the 
 number of flies that buzz in your window without 
 interesting me, I believe if you made mere 
 crosses on the paper I could read the sheet full. 
 Landor wrote yesterday ; was very well. He 
 has been ill, dangerously so, but seems likely to 
 bear up against his eighty-nine years." 
 
 Browning continued, it will be seen, to give 
 his friend his best service as negotiator, proof- 
 reader, it may almost be said editor. 
 
ROBA DI ROMA : BROWNING S AID 
 
 143 
 
 Robert Browning to W. W. Story. 
 
 " Athenaeum, Nov. 20th, 1863, 
 
 ..." But to business, for Odo Russell goes 
 to-morrow. I forwarded the parcel to Lansdowne 
 House, at once, and I hope you know as much. 
 I did the same by Lady Ashburton's on her 
 return. And now listen. Chapman formally 
 asked me to do what you shall hear. He said 
 you had agreed to reduce the two vols, of ' Roba 
 di Roma ' to one for handbook use ; that your 
 abstractions were not sufficient, accompanied as 
 they were by new matter, and that something 
 more must be done to effect your purpose as 
 well as his own. I at first refused decidedly, 
 on the ground that you had pleased yourself, 
 and I could not and would not cut away what 
 you wished to leave. I bade him send me the 
 proofs, however, which I engaged to correct 
 thoroughly. He said somebody else must 
 attempt it in consequence. When the first 
 proofs arrived I bethought me, and made up 
 my mind that you would be safer under my 
 hand than any other's. I accordingly went 
 through the whole book again and, with proper 
 tenderness, have only touched a few corroborative 
 passages which do not interfere with the text 
 and may be supposed to answer the purpose of 
 notes — so can be producible at any time in 
 
144 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 another shape. There was no removing any 
 of your own descriptions or remarks, but some 
 of the historical notices of early times are not 
 so immediately to the present purpose of the 
 book and may be postponed — let us say. Thus 
 in the paper on the Jews, while all the part 
 relating to the mediaeval and modern state of 
 things is retained, some of the more recondite 
 and preliminary matter is removed. Also, I 
 much fear, the final note on the Population of 
 Old Rome must be given up. I shall see, at 
 the very end ; but, according to the project, 
 something must be sacrificed — the volume would 
 otherwise be too bulky, — and I preferred, as I 
 say, detaching what might be used separately 
 hereafter to breaking up the pictures and dis- 
 courses in the book which are in immediate 
 request. At all events I have done my best, 
 and certainly better — inasmuch as more liberally 
 to my author — than the regular man-of-all-work 
 would have done ; but the task is an ungracious 
 one, and I don't like it, though I like you to 
 judge of it, for you will understand and forgive. 
 To make amends, be sure that what is printed 
 shall be flawless and perfect as care can make 
 it. This much said, I will go on, the first day 
 I can find, and write in my old way — not having 
 time now for the many things." 
 
BROWNING S PROOF-READING 
 
 145 
 
 This delicate business, the reducing and re- 
 touching of " Roba di Boma," meanwhile pro- 
 ceeds with a discretion and a harmony that are 
 to the honour of both parties. 
 
 Robert Browning to W. W. Story. 
 
 " 19 Warwick Crescent, Jan. 8th, 1864. 
 
 . . . " I finished last year correcting the 
 book. The delay in getting it out was none of 
 mine, depend on it ; but there is a good deal of 
 new matter, beside corrections, and the printer 
 would do it no quicklier. You may have got 
 a copy by this, for aught I know. If the 
 printers attended to my corrections all is right 
 now. I am sure you will forgive me if anything 
 may seem overcorrected, in some trifling matters ; 
 but I wanted the book to be right — not merely 
 blameless so far as my strict share in it goes. 
 Thus I try at uniformity in the titles Saint, &c. ; 
 since we say St Augustine I say St Bernardine, 
 not San — St Anne, not St a. Anna, &c. Also 
 when an English expression or word is referred 
 to as original, if that is Latin I give it rather 
 than Italian — equally a derivative — when this 
 last would look like a blunder ; e.g., ' beaks of 
 ships (rostri) ' I changed to the real rostra ; and 
 so on. The book reads well throughout, and 
 nothing is lost, you will see, except the early 
 
 VOL. II. K 
 
 ■,«.^.t^._ Af r. 
 
146 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 history of the Jews. All the statistics are in 
 — so good luck to it 1 Always, if you are 
 satisfied with my doings, let me have the 
 correcting your labours of this kind. 
 
 . . . " G. writes to me about that impossible 
 Bust — it can only be from his little acquaintance 
 with the procedures of art, especially your art. 
 For a painter might give a few traits in full 
 and leave the rest to one's fancy, but a sculptor 
 must make a whole somehow, and for me at 
 least the result would be ' the better the worse.' 
 To strangers an idealisation might do very well. 
 In the Tomb now constructing the central circle 
 will contain no attempt at a portrait, much as 
 I should desire it, but a simple ' Poetry,' with 
 no pretence at anything but a symbol. G. 
 thinks there would be help in the magnified 
 reproduction of the photograph made at H^vre ; 
 he does not remember that it is an ambrotype — 
 beneath, or at the back, of glass — incapable 
 of being reproduced, as a picture would be with 
 a glass over it. Even the original is not in a 
 state to be sent to Italy, having been cracked 
 across the face in its passage thither — the least 
 motion would divide it. I can quite believe 
 that G., seeing what you can do, — 'Saul' and 
 ' Sappho,' — may hope that even this might be 
 within your compass ; but I know" it will never 
 
THACKERAY S DEATH 
 
 147 
 
 be, and I hate that you should even try vainly 
 to do anything — and that, of all things. Under- 
 stand me, dear Story ! I shall write to G. ; 
 the first disappointment will be easier to bear 
 than a later one. If you made a beautiful head 
 
 which we could not bear to look on ! (Poor 
 
 Thackeray ! I was to have met him on Wednesday 
 23rd at dinner — we talked about his empty chair. 
 He was to dine next day, 24th, at another 
 friend's where I was certainly to see him, and 
 where I heard, on arriving, what had happened 
 in the morning.) He was no worse than I ever 
 knew him ; in higher spirits than of old ; I often 
 met him. He never got rid of his way of doing 
 himself injustice by affecting — but never mind 
 now. One has forgotten all about it. . . . 
 Love to Mme. Du Quaire particularly. She 
 writes great things of ' Sappho.' " 
 
 This next, though of a date of several months 
 later, may find its place conveniently here. 
 
 W. W. Story to James Russell Lowell. 
 
 '•' Rome, December 10th, 1864. 
 
 "My dear James, — I was taken ill a month 
 ago at Paris, and while I was lying on my bed 
 E. read to me your delightful book of ^ Fireside 
 Travels,' which I was fortunate enough to pro- 
 
 .■>i:.>k 
 
148 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 cure from London. As she read it all the old 
 days revived, all the old passages of love and 
 hope and joy which we have known together 
 came before me, and my heart yearned toward 
 you as to one of the oldest and best loved of 
 all my old friends. For years our correspondence 
 has ceased — why I know not ; but my affection 
 has never wavered for a moment, and I've eagerly 
 sought from all who had seen you news and in- 
 formation about you and yours. But as I read 
 your book — so genial, so rich in humour and 
 fancy — I seemed as it were to be again talking 
 with you, and I determined, as soon as I should 
 be well and have a half hour of unoccupied time, 
 to write and break this long silence, and thank 
 you for the kindly mention of me which is 
 scattered through your book, and for the dedica- 
 tion of it to me. I hear that there is a sonnet 
 or some verses prefixed to the American edition, 
 but this I have not seen, as it is omitted in the 
 English edition. 
 
 " How I wish you were again here as in the 
 olden times, and that we again could wander 
 about the streets of the city and through the 
 mountain towns, or sit long evenings before the 
 fire late into the night and talk as we used to 
 do. There is one great drawback to me in my 
 Roman life, and that is the want of some friend 
 
TO LOWELL AGAIN 
 
 149 
 
 with whom I can thoroughly sympathise and 
 whom I can meet on the higher ranges of art 
 and Hterature. For the most part, and with 
 scarcely an exception among the American artists, 
 art is (here) but a money-making trade, and I 
 can have no sympathy with those who are artists 
 merely to make their living. As for general 
 culture there are none of our countrymen here 
 who pretend to it, and I hunger and thirst after 
 some one who might be to me as you were. 
 But nobody makes good the place of old friends. 
 We are knitted together with our youth as we 
 never can be in our older age. . . . Has the 
 wild love of travel gone out of your blood as it 
 has out of mine ? Are you growing respectable, 
 solemn, professorial and dignified ? I figure you 
 to myself sometimes as sitting in the academic 
 robes on the platform at Commencement, and 
 cannot but smile as I see you there. Once 
 in a while I hear your trumpet sound through 
 the columns of the ' Atlantic ' or the ' North 
 American,' and more rarely I read some new 
 poem. But why are the poems so rare ? Do 
 not let the dust of the University drop too 
 thickly upon you. Do not yoke Pegasus down 
 into the professor's harness. You see I have not 
 touched your hand and heard your voice for so 
 long that I cannot do more than grope after you 
 
 .... *;^' 
 
150 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 in the dark, wondering about you and fearing and 
 hoping, and getting perhaps everything wrong. 
 
 " This year I thought of going to America 
 and seeing the old places again. But I hate 
 to travel, and the expense, added to my dislike 
 of worry, prevented me. Besides, I was not 
 quite well in England, and loved better to lounge 
 on the lawn at Mount Felix than to be tossed 
 on the restless and roaring ocean — but it is just 
 possible that next year I may brace myself up 
 to this terrible voyage, and then I shall see 
 you. If I do come I hope to bring with me 
 some statue ... to show as token of how I 
 have spent my thoughts and my life here. At 
 present there is nothing of mine in America of 
 the best that I have done, and I should like 
 that something should be there containing my 
 best — which is nothing too good. I suppose as 
 yet that nobody is convinced that there is much 
 in me, and I fear that they are all right. They 
 still pat me on the head and feebly encourage 
 me now and then, 
 
 " Edith has grown up to be a woman, and 
 so has Mabel. How I wish they could see 
 each other and have the friendship their mothers 
 had ! But it has been ordered otherwise. Bobo 
 you have seen ; he is now ten years old and 
 yesterday was his birthday. But Julian you 
 
THE BUST OE MRS BROWNING 
 
 151 
 
 have never seen — who is going to be an artist, 
 I think. I let him work out his own way. If 
 the love of art is real it will domineer ; if not 
 real it is useless to foster it. . . . We live 
 in the Barberini Palace and look down from 
 our windows over all Rome, but there is not a 
 person in any house so dear to us as you are." 
 
 But meanwhile, that summer, Story had re- 
 ceived the following. The bust in question 
 was his portrait, in marble, of Mrs Browning — 
 not the least interesting feature of that collection 
 of relics of both poets preserved during these 
 latter years, in the Bezzonico Palace at Venice, 
 the house in which Browning died. None, 
 among Story's busts, has a greater appearance 
 of delicate truth and tender characterisation. 
 
 Robert Browning to W. W. Story. 
 
 "19 Warwick Crescent, May 3rd, 1864. 
 
 . . . "Of the Bust — I have told you : I could 
 not but fear and be repugnant, for reasons as 
 utterly removed from any suspicion of your 
 power to do anything short of miraculous as 
 one thing well can be from another. Miss 
 Blagden and you both think a miracle has 
 been done, and I believe in miracles, though 
 I don't count upon them. I may easily be 
 
152 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 morbid, and the Bust is not meant for me. 
 That a beautiful work would come from the 
 genius I always recognised is a very natural 
 matter. One day I shall see — waiting hopefully 
 meantime. . . . Let me bury these under 
 the hopes of occupying any ultimo piano in 
 Rome one day. What do you mean by talking 
 about the ending of the lease in the P. Bar- 
 berini? That you would ever, in any con- 
 ceivable circumstances, leave Bome? I am 
 not sure, however, that I might not incline 
 to try the south, Naples or Sicily, when the 
 railways overhaul Bome, as they seem likely 
 to do. But don't let us think of that now. 
 I do not call the week or whatever it may be 
 which I suppose I shall have to spend in Florence 
 a return to Italy, any more than Father Matthew 
 called taking the sacrament wine -drinking. I 
 shall send you my Poems when they appear — 
 on the 21st. They have been delayed thus 
 
 long to suit the requirements of Mr , who 
 
 made such an offer as induced me to conquer 
 my repugnance and let him print some of the 
 things before publication. When he had got 
 them safe he informed me that the money should 
 be forthcoming — in better times ! Suppose I 
 had reversed the process, required the money 
 Jirst, and then announced that when my in- 
 
FROM BROWNING AT CAMBO 
 
 153 
 
 vention was better I would remit the owing 
 verses with five per cent interest, meanwhile 
 praising extremely the quality of his cheque ! 
 But enough of him." 
 
 And I insert here, for general congruity, this 
 last article of an interesting docket — undated, 
 but belonging to the years immediately following 
 the writer's return to England. 
 
 Rohert Browning to Mrs Story. 
 
 " Cambo, pres Bayonne, Basses Pyri^nj^es \no date], 
 
 . . . " We had a fancy to try a new place, 
 Arcachon by Bordeaux, and reached it in two 
 days' easy journeying only to find what was 
 a few years ago a beautiful pine -forest turned 
 into a toy-town, with boulevards traced through 
 the sand-hills, tirs-au-pistolet, a casino and 
 other French institutions, and the whole full 
 to the edge of strangers. There was nothing 
 to be had, though I spent a couple of days in 
 trying my luck. We looked at an adjoining 
 old town of a difierent sort, La Teste (?) — 
 nothing to let there ; so we determined to go 
 on to Bayonne, and did so, hoping for rest to 
 the foot-sole at St-Jean-de-Luz. This is really 
 an exquisite little place, with a delicious sea, 
 and great mountains in the background ; (but 
 
154 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 with) every house taken, every one of not a 
 few. Last we braved the awful Biarritz, but 
 liked the noise and crowd of it still less than 
 Arcachon, The prices moreover were calculated 
 for diplomatists, ambitious senators and so on. 
 There seemed no course open to us — pushed 
 up at the very end of France as we were — 
 but to lie by in some quiet place till the 
 bathers should begin to leave St -Jean; they 
 never stay long, in France, but come and go 
 in a crowd. So here we are at Cambo, a village 
 in the Pyrenees fifteen or sixteen miles from 
 Bayonne, in repute for its mineral waters, but 
 out of the season now, we thankfully find. The 
 country is exceedingly beautiful, the mountains 
 just like the Tuscan ranges, with plenty of 
 oak and chestnut woods, and everywhere the 
 greenest of meadows — the great characteristic 
 of the place. The little fresh river that winds 
 in and out of the hills and vales, the Nive, 
 comes from Spain, which is three hours' walk 
 ofi". This is the Basque country, moreover, 
 the people talk French with difiiculty, and 
 charming girl -faces abound. There is no lack 
 of necessaries, or even something over, and we 
 have some fifty visitors — but after a few yards' 
 striding one is alone to all intents and purposes. 
 "I went two days ago to see a famous moun- 
 
PYRENEAN FRANCE 
 
 155 
 
 tain-pass, le pas de Roland, so called because 
 that paladin kicked a hole in a rock, which 
 blocked the way, to allow Charlemagne's army 
 to pass. Very striking and picturesque it was, 
 while the meadows by the riverside were de- 
 lightful. But it is strangely hot, in spite of the 
 greenness, though this morning there is scirocco 
 and approaching rain ; the wind being so many 
 puffs from a blast-furnace. Well, our plan is to 
 stay here three weeks longer, till the 13th, and 
 then spend the rest of our holiday at St-Jean — 
 say three weeks, bathing assiduously to make up 
 for lost time. There will be room and to spare, 
 and we may recover our position ; for the last 
 two years in the dear rough old Ste. Marie, 
 stark-naked as she was of all comfort to the 
 British mind, put this smug little village in un- 
 pleasant relief. I don't see the sea all day long. 
 On the other hand my sister, who never was so 
 far south, is delighted with everything, for we 
 have cicale and other unusualities. Moreover, 
 there is a certain temptation which we may be 
 unable to withstand — and if so, farewell to St- 
 Jean. We are within an easy day's journey of 
 Madrid, and P.'s ears prick up like unto one of 
 these Spanish mule's at his mates on a hilltop. 
 After all, one would sacrifice something for a 
 sight of the Titians and Velasquez. Still, I hold 
 
156 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 for my original scheme till forced to strike my 
 flag. Be where we may we return to Paris in 
 the first week of October, and if you are really 
 to be found there how good it will be you know 
 well enough. I shall content myself with saying 
 that nobody used to the quantities of you which 
 I can boast to have been could bear the miser- 
 able London allowance with such a superhuman 
 equanimity as I think you appreciate in myself, 
 in spite of a mock reproach or two. Now in 
 earnest I am grieved to hear that Story has 
 been ill; I suppose that the quiet days and 
 perfect friendliness at Mount Felix would set 
 all wrong right. You see you need to keep 
 trimming the family boat, which doesn't make 
 way unless every member of the crew is in 
 his exact place, well and merry. Why should 
 Story work and worry and spoil everything?" 
 
 Meanwhile, during the War, Story had heard 
 at moments, characteristically and in spite of 
 the stress of public affairs, from the friend at 
 home most engaged in them. 
 
 Charles Sumner to W. W. Story. 
 
 " "Washington, May \st, 1863. 
 
 . . . " I heard of your brilliant success 
 through public report and various articles. It 
 
AN APPEAL FROM SUMNER 
 
 157 
 
 was great — just what my instinct always told 
 me would be yours. Those two statues were 
 victories, beautiful and noble. What next ? 
 I hear of 'Judith.' But what then? Do make 
 in marble the record of our national regener- 
 ation, which is now at hand. Let that be your 
 contribution, 
 
 " Already we feel most hopeful and confident. 
 Perhaps there will be other reverses. I am 
 not sure that Providence has given us all the 
 chastisement needed for our case. Had we 
 prevailed earlier we should have escaped from 
 our sin too easily. More of expiation was re- 
 quired. But we shall throw it all off. Of this 
 be sure. The Rebellion will be crushed, and 
 Slavery too. If at any moment the way has 
 seemed uncertain, it is so no longer. Our army 
 is in admirable condition. But better than [an] 
 army, at last we have a 'policy. ... I wish 
 I could talk with you while we sipped the 
 white wine of Rome. It would be refreshing 
 to have a day of art. But I am at work 
 always. At home I look upon my few marbles 
 and bronzes, and wish I had more ; but here 
 in Washington there is nothing ; . . . But 
 you are angry. Perhaps you will not write. 
 Then let Emelyn. She cannot be angry. But 
 I must hear from you. The temporal power 
 
 v'':Mi 
 
158 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 seems to hold like Slavery. Prince Napoleon 
 told me when he was here that he gave it 
 six months longer. That was all. His pro- 
 phecy was like some of those to which we are 
 accustomed." 
 
 And the following is not less expressive of the 
 man, the time, all the feelings of the hour. 
 
 Charles Sumner to W. W. Story. 
 
 " "Washington, Jan. \st, 1864. 
 
 . . . " Of course I watch your ascending 
 glory. Nobody followed with intenser interest 
 your English success ; and now I am preparing 
 for something grander ; for George Kussell tells 
 me that your ' Saul ' is ' the finest statue he 
 ever saw.' Good ! It made me happy and 
 proud to hear this. When will it be in marble ? 
 And where Mall it go? But don't become im- 
 patient with us here. The time will come 
 when all that you have done will be recognised. 
 I wish it were at once. But I know something 
 of hope deferred. . . . You will be happy to 
 know that the fate of Slavery is settled. This 
 will be a free country. Be its sculptor. Give 
 us, give mankind, a work which will typify or 
 commemorate a redeemed nation. You are the 
 artist for this immortal achievement. . . . Ens- 
 
ANOTHER APPEAL 
 
 159 
 
 land will yet regret every act or word of her 
 semz-alliance with Slavery. The Rebellion, you 
 know, is nothing but Slavery in arms. That 
 concession of Belligerency to Slavery in arms 
 was insufferably wicked. Pardon me ; I cannot 
 help it. Longfellow's son had a ball enter under 
 one shoulder, traverse the body and come out 
 under the other. It was from an English rifle — 
 typical ! " 
 
 To which this, again, may serve as a sequel. 
 
 Charles Sumner to W. W. Story. 
 
 " Boston, Axtg. %th, 1864, 
 
 " I have just returned from a week with 
 Longfellow in your Nahant home, where I was 
 installed in your room. The air, the breeze, 
 the sea, were kindly. I sat on the piazza 
 much of the time when I was not asleep. There 
 I read, or rather we read, the new volume of 
 Tennyson and enjoyed it more than air or 
 breeze or sun. Is it not exquisite ? But answer 
 me this question. How can a country which 
 produces such fruit, send forth such doctrines 
 and sympathies as it shows now with regard 
 to belligerent Slavery ? Tell me. You are 
 there and can ascertain. I have never felt 
 the supremacy of Tennyson more than now 
 
160 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LIBYAN SIBYL 
 
 when I feel how low down our England — dear 
 old England — has gone. . . . Pray, try to 
 fashion and carve the English mind into its 
 old beauty ; awaken its earlier sympathies with 
 freedom and justice ; tell Englishmen that their 
 country has fallen into a moral insensibility 
 different and yet kindred to that when 
 Charles II. ruled. I cannot see it otherwise. 
 Sad enough, but so it is. I imagine you anxious 
 at the tidings of each packet. Have faith. 
 This republic is a lifeboat which cannot be 
 sunk. Grant assures the President that he 
 shall take Richmond. He delays now to avoid 
 effusion of blood. Sherman is a consummate 
 commander, whose march has shown the greatest 
 military faculties. Have faith." 
 
 This was clearly a delightful correspondent 
 to hear from. Sumner remained to the end 
 the same generous friend who, years before, 
 in a letter I have not cited, had written to 
 Story : "I marvel at your work on the law, 
 and I wish I could go to Europe with you." 
 His friendship embraced and comprehended, as 
 friendship in every case should. 
 
SUMNER S APPLAUSE 
 
 161 
 
 CJiarles Sumner to W. W. Story. 
 
 " Boston, Oct. 8th, 1864. 
 
 " I know not which I enjoyed most, the poem 
 of Leonardo in ' Blackwood ' or the criticism on 
 Enghsh neutrality in the ' Daily News.' I doubt 
 if anybody has ever lived before who could have 
 produced those two things, which testify to equal 
 eminence in jurisprudence, art and poetry. I 
 took ' Blackwood ' to the ' Transcript,' and 
 Whipple was so inspired by the poem that he 
 printed it, although war and politics exclude 
 everything else now. I have asked Denis to 
 see that the article is printed in a pamphlet 
 here. It ought to be in England and a copy 
 sent to M.P.'s generally. Will not Americans, 
 and Englishmen who love peace and justice, see 
 that this is done? You have done a patriotic 
 service, and I am anxious that its influence 
 should be extended. I cannot think of England 
 without a pang. Her true course was as plain 
 as a turnpike. Indeed she had marked it out 
 by her previous policy for more than a genera- 
 tion. She should have had nothing to do with 
 the support of belligerent Slavery. It was her 
 Concordat with this monster that disturbed me. 
 I felt that all who loved her best ought to pro- 
 test and to cry out. Private relations were 
 nothing by the side of public duty. ... I 
 
 VOL. II. L 
 
162 THE CLEOPATRA AND THE LI YEAN SIBYL 
 
 should not be surprised if the next Christmas 
 saw us very near peace and with gold at par. 
 The opening of the cotton-trade will tell every- 
 where, but nowhere more than in London. 
 Don't draw from America if you can help it. 
 Live on Europe as long as you can. But does 
 not Europe rejoice to support you ? I am dis- 
 gusted with the delays about the statue of 
 Quincy. . . . Among visitors here are the 
 Auguste Laugels — much liked. He has held 
 the pen for us bravely. I wish you were min- 
 ister at Rome. I have always said you ought 
 to be, but Seward keeps that place as a sort of 
 ' preserve ' for himself and friends. But General 
 King is a most amiable gentleman." 
 
 And of this interesting docket there are a few 
 final words which, though of two years later 
 date, I give here for their appreciative ring. 
 The memorial referred to in the second place 
 was not to become a reality till, after Story's 
 death, Augustus Saint -Gaudens brought to its 
 slow completion the monument now erected, on 
 the edge of Boston Common, opposite the State 
 House, to Colonel Bobert Gould Shaw, who, 
 commanding the first regiment of coloured troops 
 raised in the North, fell in the assault on Fort 
 Wagner, in South Carolina. " I wish," Sumner 
 
A FRESH APPEAL 
 
 163 
 
 writes, " you might make a statue of Lincoln. 
 He is an historic character worthy of bronze 
 and marble. I do not give up the Shaw Statue. 
 In my absence there was an indescribable torpor 
 of the committee. But [illegible] says it shall 
 be done ; and I say so too. ... I sorrow 
 for Seward, who seems to be more than usually 
 perverse. But he lost his head when he lost 
 the nomination at Chicago, and has done nothing 
 but blunder since. He never understood our 
 war, and now does not understand how peace 
 is to be secured." 
 
 4.-. h 
 
IX. 
 
 ENGLAND AND SOCIETY. 
 
 It was, as I have mentioned, during the years 
 immediatedly following Story's first artistic " suc- 
 cess" in London that his English visits, friend- 
 ships, familiarities of every cordial kind, most 
 increased and multiplied, nourished as they more- 
 over were by frequent Koman opportunities, 
 points of contact with the English colony abroad, 
 comings and goings- of old acquaintances and 
 " introduced " travellers. Both his reputation 
 and his activity continued to grow, and the 
 twelve or fiffcee-n years from 1862 were doubt- 
 less in all sorts of ways the happiest of his life. 
 He liked the " world," and the world also thor- 
 oughly liked him ; he was not the artist to 
 whom solitary brooding is a need or a luxury ; 
 concentration he arrived at (with the artist's 
 usual struggle) during the fresh, the early hours 
 of the insidious Roman day ; but on the basis 
 of that common and consecrated triumph there 
 
THE BETTER TIME 
 
 165 
 
 were doubtless few things of more relish for him 
 than his easy hospitality and, as may be frankly 
 said, his personal success. Talk was his joy 
 and pleasantry his habit — to all of which the 
 human, the social panorama constantly, richly 
 ministered. Living in a large circle — for during 
 all the brightest years it grew and grew — he 
 carried about with him, in every direction, his 
 handsome, charming face, his high animation, 
 his gaiety, jocosity, mimicry, and, even more 
 than these things, his interest in ideas, in people, 
 in everything — his vivacity of question, answer, 
 demonstration, disputation. In England at least 
 he was still in time for the "good" years, the 
 period during which, in society, it was possible 
 to be yet a while longer unconscious of the em- 
 phasised rule of the mob. He may have heard 
 the growl of the rising tide, the roar of the 
 flooding waters, but it is our fancy — though 
 perhaps but the fond fancy any later generation 
 is apt to cherish — that if the menace was then 
 near enough for vigilance (which indeed, within 
 the circle, would have added a zest) it was not 
 quite near enough for alarm. We make our 
 landmarks, we find support in our dates, so far 
 at least as we are musingly retrospective, or as 
 we try to be finely observant ; and we thus settle 
 upon the dread year of the Franco- German War 
 
166 
 
 ENGLAND AND SOCIETY 
 
 as — for the chronicler with a sense of shades — 
 the hitherward limit of the liveable era, the age 
 that had not wholly thrown up the sponge of 
 Selection. In some such pleasant world as must 
 have been formed by some such principle as 
 that, I like, in imagination, at all events, to see 
 our friends launched, and I only regret that in 
 respect to these liveliest middle ^years I find few 
 letters or journals at hand. 
 
 This is a proof, no doubt, that life itself was 
 more exacting ; but in the absence of docu- 
 mentary detail Story's English summers and 
 autumns, which became, for some years, custom- 
 ary and regular, are in danger of showing mainly 
 as a list of persons and " places," an array of 
 celebrated names, country visits and other social 
 occasions. He had other things to do, in these 
 years, than keep records ; his artistic production 
 was constant and profuse, and there were com- 
 plications enough connected with an existence 
 carried on partly in Rome and partly, as his 
 children grew older, beyond the Alps and the 
 Channel, in the land of preferred schools and 
 universities, preferred sport, preferred interest 
 as to many of the deeper connections. He was 
 to send his two sons, in due course, to Eton 
 and to Oxford ; he was to introduce his daughter, 
 with every auspicious omen, to English society; 
 
THE AMERICAN COMMISSIONS 
 
 167 
 
 he was to feel, for himself, the attraction of 
 English sport and to take for several seasons 
 a Cumberland shooting -haunt, Crosby Lodge, 
 near Carlisle — which I come, amid the contents 
 of my box, upon faded photographs of, yellowing 
 naementoes that have their share of that par- 
 ticular sweetness, particular sadness, defying 
 notation, that attaches to grouped families, 
 happy clustered house -parties, seen in their 
 other years, other aspects, fashions, combinations, 
 so often seemingly impossible, against a back- 
 ground of ivied friendly walls, old gardens or 
 woods. It is to this period and the immediately 
 following that his numerous invitations to com- 
 memorate eminent Americans belong — the mon- 
 uments, in especial, of Edward Everett in the 
 public garden at Boston, the Chief- Justice 
 Marshall for the United States Supreme Court, 
 the Joseph Henry for the American Institute 
 of Science, the President Quincy for Harvard 
 University, the Colonel Prescott, to stand in 
 the shadow of the great bleak obelisk at Bunker's 
 Hill, the George Peabody, to sit in bronze, as we 
 have noted, in that of the London Royal Ex- 
 change. Some of these things I have not seen 
 in position ; but of those of which this is the 
 case the impression, I find, has fixed itself; 
 notably that of the Boston bronze of Everett 
 
 L* ■"£< 
 
168 
 
 ENGLAND AND SOCIETY 
 
 the orator, so happily conceived both as a 
 portrait of the man and as a presentment of 
 the speaker. Complete indeed, in this statue, 
 is the fusion of the speaker and the man, so 
 that it is, quite characteristically, the latter 
 who stands there for ever, in presence of a 
 benched and hushed posterity, throwing back 
 his fine, cold head, raising high his practised 
 arm, maintaining his lofty level and rounding 
 his admirable period. No monumental portrait, 
 as I remember this one, could characterise more 
 closely while remaining conscious of the need 
 to generalise nobly. 
 
 Hand in hand with this work for public uses — 
 fertile, always, for artists, from Michael Angelo 
 down, in frustrations of idea, in the inexorable 
 element of compromise, in worries of every sort — 
 went the frequent production of portrait -busts, 
 now valued private possessions, and went also, 
 above all, the multiplication of those studies of 
 legendary, poetic, symbolic character, to the 
 imposing array of which each year, for a long 
 time, added a figure, so that they were to 
 become, as ingenious personifications and em- 
 bodied ideas, the leading note of the sculptor s 
 talent and the supplementary afiirmation of the 
 poet's. They are dispersed to-day over many 
 cities — the Saul and the Sardanapalus, the 
 
THE SUCCESSORS OF THE SIBYL 
 
 169 
 
 Semiramis and the Judith, the Alcestis, the 
 Medea, the Dehlah, the panting, resting 
 daughter of Herodias, the tenderly - brooding 
 Electra, the grandly tragic Jerusalem Desolate, 
 the so simple and striking Nemesis, watching, 
 under her hood, with hidden and as if fumbling 
 hands ; London and Paris, Washington, New 
 York, Boston, Philadelphia have them to show 
 either as ornaments of ample habitations or as 
 gifts and bequests to open collections. Deep 
 and living, in Story, was the sense of the grace 
 of women, at its finest ; which never took on, 
 with him, moreover, the least hint of affectation 
 or of "manner," in spite of its inclining, in- 
 evitably, given his romanticism, to modern types 
 — in spite especially of his being so haunted with 
 the American, in its delicacy, that we feel how 
 quickly, in his studio, without other light, we 
 should guess the land of his birth. I have 
 already mentioned how this spacious reliquary, 
 where everything that came from his hands 
 exists in repeated form, offers to-day, quite in 
 the image of the silent workshops of the Canovas, 
 Teneranis, Thorwaldsens, places of elder pilgrim- 
 age, the close record of his persistent unfolding. 
 It is pre-eminently the history of a worker, 
 of a man who, whether in felicity or in frustra- 
 tion, required of himself all he had to give. 
 
170 
 
 ENGLAND AND SOCIETY 
 
 He was never, meanwhile, at any time, free 
 from the literary obsession. Restless, as I 
 have more than once noted, was his literary, 
 in especial his poetic, curiosity ; subject to 
 easiest provocation in fact his love of know- 
 ledge in any direction, various illustrations of 
 which we shall presently meet. Story's passion, 
 however, was predominantly for the poetic mys- 
 tery, which he kept constantly sounding and 
 exploring for his personal satisfaction, as might 
 be said — while offering to the public, that is, 
 a comparatively small quantity of the verse 
 that he, almost uncontrollably, distilled. It 
 was drawn from him, the total quantity, by 
 every emotion and impression, by almost any 
 occasion or any accident ; there can have been 
 no free hour, no aspect presented or renewed, 
 under suggestion of which he was not thus 
 all unpretentiously improvising. Fairly curious 
 the case, in presence of the gathered evidence, 
 and fairly enviable, above all, the easy play 
 of the gift. In few poets not of the first felicity 
 can the love of the lyric, and scarce less of the 
 dramatic, idea so have worked, and we remain 
 rather puzzled by the failure of the love to 
 cover the whole precarious ground. Story's 
 poetry is prompt and sincere, and has often 
 the happiest moments ; yet we feel it not to 
 
TO T. G. APPLETON 
 
 171 
 
 move passibus cequis with his lively interest 
 in his medium. Of any such treachery, at 
 the same time, he would doubtless himself never 
 have complained. He treated his muse as a 
 consoler, cheerer, beguiler, and would honestly 
 have said, beyond question, that she had done 
 enough for him in letting him live with her. 
 To have had such a connection to cultivate had 
 assuredly been for him, from the first, a partial 
 provision for happiness. 
 
 But in making these points I brush by my 
 dates perhaps too fast, and I retrace the way 
 a moment to pick up a letter that I may not 
 omit. 
 
 W. W. Story to T. G. Appleton. 
 
 " MouKT Felix, Oct. 1st, 1862. 
 . . . "I thank you most sincerely for all the 
 very kind words you say about my statues. 
 They have had a success here far above their 
 merits, but it none the less has been most 
 grateful to me. Yes, I am really glad not to 
 be called an amateur any longer, and patted on 
 the head and patronised (in words, not in com- 
 missions) by my countrymen. . . . We have 
 been greatly enjoying our summer in England, 
 and though I find the sympathies of all English- 
 men completely in favour of the South, yet I 
 
172 
 
 ENGLAND AND SOCIETY 
 
 am personally treated with the greatest kind- 
 ness and courtesy, and all my arguments are 
 listened to with consideration. I flatter myself 
 that I have made some little impression some- 
 times, but it is impossible to clear up the 
 English mind on the subject of the War. There 
 is the greatest ignorance and the greatest 
 prejudice. The Englishman knows no logic but 
 that of facts, has little perception of principles, 
 no notion of what a written constitution is, and 
 gets into such an inextricable muddle between 
 the Declaration of Independence and the Con- 
 stitution of the United States that I at last 
 am always obliged to give up the task of en- 
 lightening him as hopeless. But nothing can 
 exceed their personal kindness to me, and I 
 can never forget it. ... I hear sometimes 
 from Motley at Vienna. He is terribly excited 
 about American aifairs — too much so, as every- 
 body reports. H. writes that he is more violent 
 than a diplomatist ' doit etre ou au moins 
 paraitre.' Adams I see sometimes — he is doing 
 admirably ; cool to coldness, never losing his 
 temper, and giving back as hard blows as he 
 gets when necessity demands. Montalembert 
 expressed himself to me the other night as 
 deeply sympathising with the North, and said 
 it was amazing to him to hear the opinions 
 
A STAY IN AMERICA 
 
 173 
 
 expressed in England in favour of the South. 
 Do you know Montalembert ? He is most 
 agreeable. You see I keep getting back into 
 this question. . . . We have just returned 
 from a series of visits in the north which were 
 delightful. Next week we pass at Lord Lans- 
 downe's, and afterwards go to the Ashburtons, 
 Cranworths and Wensleydales — if we can make 
 time. But we are anxious to get back to Kome. 
 The Boman question is in a state of ferment, 
 but I do not see any strong indication that 
 Louis Napoleon means to withdraw his troops. 
 Nothing will force him to this but a shot on 
 the Boulevard. Bussell and Julia Sturgis are 
 the same as ever — both as handsome and as 
 kind as they can be." 
 
 On the close of the war, during the summer 
 of 1865, Story returned to America, with his 
 wife, for a few weeks — for light on which brief 
 visit I avail myself of the latter's frank and 
 interesting communications. Our friends looked 
 at things, on this occasion, inevitably, with a 
 fresh eye — that is, with an eye now accustomed, 
 in many respects, to other conditions and ap- 
 pearances ; they became aware, as repatriated 
 Americans of the earlier time seldom escaped 
 doing, of a change in the value, proportion, 
 
 . ..'..c.if^v.'fcki 
 
174 
 
 ENGLAND AND SOCIETY 
 
 dignity, decency, interest, whatever it might 
 be called, of objects and aspects once agreeably, 
 once innocently enough familiar to them. These 
 perceived differences furnished, precisely, in gen- 
 eral, some of its liveliest passages to the drama 
 of repatriation. The drama, it must be added, 
 was well advised, for the most part, not to be 
 too publicly played, and the liveliness I speak 
 of was perhaps the greater for finding itself 
 not a little compressed and curtained. The 
 echo of it here was, be it remembered, alto- 
 gether confidential. The need for precautions, 
 in the case, has, however, long since vanished, 
 if only because of the difference, to - day, in 
 many of the facts themselves. Any such 
 present impression of them would, doubtless, 
 at a hundred points, utter itself in a different 
 voice ; the fresh eye would in fact probably 
 need, quite urgently, all its freshness. 
 
 Mrs Story to her Daughter. 
 
 " Boston, Jtdy 24th, 1865. 
 . . . "I have never yet taken a step out 
 of doors, though I often drive with friends in 
 the lovely environs of Boston. We went to the 
 Commencement exercises at Cambridge, where 
 great was our disappointment over the general 
 shabbiness and seediness of the procession. Tell 
 
HARVARD COMMEMORATION OF PEACE 175 
 
 [Mrs Russell Sturgis] that in memory of the 
 glorified past she should never lift this veil and 
 behold the actual fact. It is too dreary. Fancy 
 the musty old professors dressed not in the 
 academic robe of former days, but according to 
 the caprice of individual New England taste, 
 than which nothing is more eccentric. Consider 
 the motley group upon the stage, some dressed 
 in light tweeds, others in linen sacks, with straw 
 hats and boots uncleaned. . . . All this in a 
 whitewashed church, to the sound of Latin verse 
 and classical quotations. We met many an old 
 friend there, and it went straight to my heart 
 to see papa walking arm-in-arm with James 
 Lowell. But the day of days at Harvard was 
 that of ' Commemoration,' two days later, when 
 all the world of mutual admiration, with many 
 an outsider, were convened to talk over the War, 
 its heroes and victories, deciding, as it seemed 
 to me, that the State of Massachusetts had 
 fought all the battles and raised all the money 
 and troops. I never heard such a crowing as 
 there was, and though I quite agree that Massa- 
 chusetts has distinguished herself beyond the 
 rest and come out of the struggle with the 
 fairest record, yet I can admit some virtue in 
 the sister States, some laurels for other sons 
 than those of Harvard. It was a charming 
 
176 
 
 ENGLAND AND SOCIETY 
 
 scene and full of interest to us. I wish you had 
 been with us, and as Emerson's well-remembered 
 tones fell upon my ear I found it hard to be 
 comforted for your absence. I should so much 
 have liked you to hear my old favourite. There 
 too James Lowell read a very fine poem, full of 
 spirit and pathos. I met so many old friends 
 and acquaintances that I was entirely beleaguered 
 by the cloud of old associations that they recalled. 
 My long-dead past seemed actually to live again. 
 Papa has not yet decided as to whether he 
 will make the Everett statue. If they agree to 
 his views about position, material, &c., I think 
 it probable that he will undertake it. Miss 
 Stebbins's statue of Horace Mann has been re- 
 ceived by the populace very unfavourably and 
 is everywhere denounced. In fact, it is the very 
 worst thing I ever saw. We dined with the 
 Wilds and met there S. C and John Field — it 
 savoured of the Siena days. I enclose a list of 
 papa's wine left from his father's cellar. If 
 [Russell Sturgis] would like any, let him say so 
 and it shall be freely his." 
 
 To all of which I may add that a single name, 
 in these last lines, touches the train of asso- 
 ciation and causes the shades again to hover. 
 John Field, of Philadelphia, of Newport, of 
 
JOHN FIELD 
 
 177 
 
 Washington, of London, of Paris, of twenty 
 places beside, John Field, the personally valued 
 friend of our friends and, again, of numbers of 
 their friends, of more people elsewhere, every- 
 where, than I can pretend to indicate, has already 
 hovered for us to the extent of a glimpse afforded 
 by one of Low^ell's letters. He had ridden with 
 the latter (to whom he remained long devoted, 
 even through anxious Madrid days,) with Black 
 and Charles Eliot Norton up and down the still 
 primitive Sicily, and the small mild memory of 
 a brief hour of which he was the centre obtrudes 
 itself on me, here, too irresistibly either to suffer 
 contradiction or to need apology. The Storys 
 were to go, shortly after the despatch of the 
 above, to Newport — the Newport of the ancient 
 days and of more of those sweet old impressions, 
 long since bedimmed by change, than can, at 
 this time of day, be reproduced or reckoned, and 
 my innocent anecdote refers itself, visibly, to the 
 short interval before they had come. It refers 
 itself to a hot summer night, of that (again) 
 irreproducible quality of the Newport evenings 
 of other years, — evenings when, after closely- 
 peopled hours of talk, of movement, of idleness, 
 through which the light of blue seas, yellow 
 sands, pearl - grey lichened rocks, lily - sheeted 
 inland ponds and daily intensities and lustres of 
 
 V^OL. II. 
 
 M 
 
178 
 
 ENGLAND AND SOCIETY 
 
 sunset seemed breezily to play, the air was filled 
 with something soft and multitudinous that 
 might have been all at once the murmur of 
 stirred shrubberies, the waft, from wide, glowing 
 windows, of dance-music and song, the latter in 
 especial, the high, brilliant notes of women's art — 
 the general presence, above all, of clustered gossip- 
 ing groups on vague verandahs, where laughter 
 was clear and the "note" of white dresses, 
 waistcoats, trousers, cool. Of the company on the 
 vague verandah of my reminiscence no other 
 member remains, not one of the kindly intimates 
 who listened to John Field's recital of the scene 
 described, less indulgently, in Mrs Story's letter 
 — listened with interest enough, yet interest 
 doubtless in no case greater than that of the 
 youngest of the party, who sat on the steps of 
 the porch where the shade of evening was 
 thickest, and who wanted to ask more questions 
 than his modesty, his juniority, allowed. Not 
 yet perhaps had the sense been so sharp in him 
 that his seniors never asked enough, or not at 
 least the right ones, the particular ones he 
 desired. 
 
 The day — it must have been the previous 
 day, or even the one before that — had been, 
 in Boston and at its Cambridge suburb, of 
 maximum heat, and the talker, coming back 
 
OLD NEWPORT 
 
 179 
 
 from it, acknowledged the refreshment, the 
 benediction of Newport — all of which conveyed 
 something of the high historic pitch, the patriotic 
 and poetic temperature of the other scene. A 
 wealth of eloquence and cheer had attended 
 the Harvard celebration of the return of Peace, 
 at which our friend had gone up to be present, 
 but the climax had been Lowell's delivery of 
 his noble Commemoration Ode, as to which one 
 now sees — as to which one even then perhaps 
 mutely, mystically made out — that a great 
 thing that was to live had been but half-notedly 
 born. The occasion, I daresay, might actually 
 figure, had we time to extract the moral, as 
 a convenient measure of the way in which 
 great things with a future are, for the most 
 part, born. The future of this one (which was 
 heard of, naturally, with all interest) sat there 
 unseen and unfelt with us, or very nearly ; and 
 yet it is now the one member of the party 
 particularly alive. That, however, is not the 
 moral of my reminiscence — and all the less 
 that a moral was what, in the course of the 
 talk, especially disengaged itself This element, 
 for our reporter, had been that he had spent 
 his day with William and Emelyn Story, whom 
 it had been a joy to see again, and who were 
 still wonderful (even to putting every one else 
 
180 
 
 ENGLAND AND SOCIETY 
 
 present to shame) for youth and good looks. 
 The lesson was none other, accordingly, than 
 the dear old lesson, once more, that " Europe," 
 bless its dear old name, was the real fontaine 
 de Jouvence, the true and sovereign preserver. 
 Such was the appearance presented by those 
 who had been happily able to keep drinking 
 at the spring. We had all drunk as we could, 
 and the taste was still on our lips ; only we 
 had had, unlike the Storys, to snatch our lips 
 away. I remember, after long years, how, in 
 the charitable gloom, which veiled, from each 
 of us to each, the fierce American ravage, we 
 sighingly acknow^ledged our loss. I hear again 
 the good John Field — I am conscious again of 
 the response. " I told them how Europe had 
 kept them — " and then the resigned unanimity 
 of the " So ive might have been kept — ! " But 
 there was only one of us for whom it was not 
 perhaps already too late. 
 
 W. W. Story to his Daughter. 
 
 " Newport, Summer of 1865. 
 ..." Mrs Kobert Sturgis had a little dance, 
 and we stood round on the edges and were 
 probably a lot in the way. I didn't see a 
 handsome face there — all wan and worn and 
 haggard. There was a famous Miss , Jewish 
 
NEWPORT EVENINGS 
 
 181 
 
 in style, hollow- cheeked, with two drumsticks 
 for arms, broken and sharpened off at the 
 elbows. To her immense attention was paid, 
 because she is very rich. All the talk here 
 is about dollars, how much money this and 
 that one has got, and a dreary and monotonous 
 thing is it to hear it so constantly. The girls 
 are excited in their style, and do not articulate 
 
 half their words. . . . Mrs was by 
 
 far the prettiest woman in the room, but pert 
 as usual, and not successful in imitating J. S. 
 I am writing while everybody is talking, and 
 Wild has just immensely amused us by a story 
 about Edward Everett, which I will tell you. 
 He was going 'down east,' a short time before 
 his death, and as usual the train was crowded 
 and there were more people than seats. Mr 
 Everett then kindly took on his knee a little 
 girl and carried her thus for a considerable 
 distance. When the child came to a station 
 where she was to stop she rose, and her bene- 
 factor said as she was leaving him : ' Perhaps 
 you would like to know, my little girl, who 
 has been holding you on his knee all this time. 
 It is the Hon. Edward Everett.' To which 
 the little girl answered ingenuously and inter- 
 rogatively : ' Salem man, sir ? ' 
 
 ..." Newport is all shingle and clapboard, 
 
 
182 
 
 ENGLAND AND SOCIETY 
 
 with a lot of pretentious wooden houses each 
 on its little acre, or half-acre, of land, and sub- 
 ject each to the supervision of at least one 
 neighbour. There is no such thing as privacy, 
 and nobody seems to desire it. The great thing 
 is to drive every day up and down the Avenue, 
 as it is called, which is a loose line of wooden 
 cottages with board ornamentation, or to bathe 
 from the beach or to go on Saturday evening 
 to the ' Ocean House ' to dance. The air is 
 scirocco cooled off by the sea. Yesterday we 
 went out on a yachting party — Commodore 
 Stevens's yacht, The Maria — and had a charm- 
 ing sail in the bay. . . . There were two 
 young — girls, one -inch -one in the waist and 
 half-an-inch in the arms, and rather attractive 
 notwithstanding ! In the evening, at the Ocean 
 House, we were greatly amused. There was a 
 great crowd, coming from everywhere, and 
 among them some very pretty persons. The 
 band played, and the great hall was crowded 
 with dancers. People came in from the cottages 
 — girls, old men, servants and shopkeepers mixed 
 together, and yet there was nothing disagree- 
 able in the manners of any of them — all were 
 decorous and pleasant. I have scarcely seen a 
 mutilated man — there was not one last night ; 
 
AMERICA AFTER THE WAR 
 
 183 
 
 and another thing that has surprised me is the 
 entire absence of soldiers in the streets. Here 
 and there you see an officer, but no soldiers. 
 It is scarcely possible to believe that we have 
 just finished a long and terrible war. Nobody 
 thinks about it, nobody talks about it. In fact, 
 one hears it more spoken of in one day in Europe 
 than in a month here. Everything looks pros- 
 perous, nobody is depressed in spirits or in hope. 
 Shoddy and petroleum have raised their heads 
 very high, but money is not an aristocracy and 
 cannot make one in a day. People begin to 
 affect being poor as dividing them at once from 
 such sources of wealth." 
 
 The above, as descriptive of Newport archi- 
 tecture and Newport roads, becomes, in the 
 light of social and material revolutions, a bit 
 of very ancient history. The first allusion in 
 the following, it may be added, is to a " cottage " 
 that had belonged, on the cool Massachusetts 
 promontory,^ to Story's parents and his child- 
 hood and youth. "Aunt Julia" is Mrs Kussell 
 Sturgis, younger than Story, and affectionately 
 invoked in that beneficent character by his 
 children. 
 
 ^ Nahant. 
 
184 
 
 ENGLAND AND SOCIETY 
 
 W. W. Story to his Daughter. 
 
 " Beverly, Mass., Juli/ 30th, 1865, 
 ..." Very pleasant indeed it was to see the 
 old places and the old faces and to hear the old 
 voices. Some of the beards — shall I say all ? 
 — were greyer ; but there was the old ring of 
 the voice. Longfellow is aged very much and 
 wears a grey beard and long hair. He and 
 Tom Appleton are in our old cottage, which is 
 entirely unaltered in every respect ; the same 
 old papers on the walls, the same plates on the 
 table, the same chairs and furniture, and one 
 old tea-caddy with all our names on it, beginning 
 with Russell Sturgis and Julia Boit, and now 
 ending with Edith Longfellow. It was the 
 flowery -pekoe tea-caddy, which is now, I am 
 sorry to say, quite empty. We had Chowder 
 at dinner, tell Aunt Julia, and it was stu- 
 pendous. . . . They were all as kind as could 
 be, and old Mrs Cary was as peaceful and full 
 of repose as if she had never lived in America. 
 The old hotel is but a mass of ruins, and it was 
 mournful to see them. It was in those old walls 
 that I first saw Aunt Julia — and I didn't call 
 her aunt then. . . . We go driving about 
 in a sort of toy carriages, which are so slight 
 that I expect each moment to be smashed. The 
 roads are outrageous and everywhere cut up 
 
APPARITIONS CHARMING AND OTHER 
 
 185 
 
 with the rails of the horse-cars. These horse- 
 cars are the pest of the country, but you must 
 take them or walk, unless you choose to pay a 
 fortune away in carriages. There are no such 
 conveniences as cabs. The first day I arrived 
 in Boston I saw framed in the inside of a horse- 
 car an advertisement of ' Reversible Food ' and 
 one of ' Overstrung Pianos.' I had seen enough 
 reversible food on shipboard to derive any 
 pleasure from the idea of it ; but the Over- 
 strung Piano struck me as thoroughly American. 
 Isn't everything here overstrung ? " 
 
 If I find myself, amid the play of allusion, 
 in the presence of names delicately spectral, 
 divided between the desire not to pass without 
 some grace of recognition, and the desire, on 
 the other hand, to spare even spectral sensi- 
 bility, in what case could I more justly hesitate 
 than in the connection indicated (all for acknow- 
 ledgment of kindness shown) by the second 
 sentence of the following ? Yet a word of 
 greeting is, for us, at any moment but the lay- 
 ing of a flower on a grave. Even had she not 
 come a little too late for the pioneer-time Miss 
 Weston would have been, for a precursor, 
 already too formed, too initiated and, as it 
 were, too decorative. She was a person to 
 
 
186 
 
 ENGLAND AND SOCIETY 
 
 arrive, in her gentleness, when the road was 
 made and the service organised. She was a 
 person also to remind us that one of the main 
 effects of such a retrospect as this is to illus- 
 trate, for our perception, on the part of the 
 general company, some of the finest, even 
 if strangest, possibilities of union and fusion. 
 There positively existed, among our vanished 
 cosmopolites, combinations of elements, practical 
 mixtures and harmonies, that were not to have 
 been expected. That the tone of New England 
 " at its best " should melt into the tradition of 
 France at its best and that the result should 
 be something consistent and exquisite, was, for 
 example, a charming surprise — the simple recall 
 of which may serve as our salutation. And 
 shall I offer another to Alley ne Otis, a figure, 
 almost the figure, for supreme sophistication — 
 a rudimentary shade of it — of the old Newport 
 days ? If I should hesitate here it would be for 
 fear of going too far. Yet we owe something, 
 always, to those who, at the time of our fresh- 
 ness, were revelations, for us, of type, who 
 rendered to our development the service of 
 fitting images to names that were otherwise but 
 as loose labels. Newport, somehow, even for 
 young observation, was not Thackerayan, but 
 the figure and face, the attitude and approach 
 
ALLEYNE OTIS 
 
 187 
 
 and address of Alleyne Otis unmistakably were. 
 He "did" nothing — he only was: which, in the 
 antediluvian America, was always a note of 
 character, always argued some intensity. He 
 persisted in survival, in idleness, in courtesy, in 
 gallantry, and yet, even though gallant, persisted 
 also, it seemed, in mystery, in independence of 
 apparel, above all in an imputed economy that 
 was his finishing mark and that indicated real 
 resources. Given his "social position" he was 
 the more Thackerayan for this eccentric thrift, 
 which was a touch, for the personage, almost 
 recalling Balzac or Saint-Simon, some master of 
 literary portraiture. Was he not, au besoin, 
 nobly impertinent, latently insolent ? — which is 
 what they would infallibly have made him. I 
 cannot make him as well as they, but I do, as I 
 cast about me, what I can. The particular re- 
 sources I allude to were wanting, if he lacked 
 them, to his perfection. But I have already gone 
 too far. 
 
 Mrs Story to her Daughter. 
 
 " Newport, Aug. 8th, 1865. 
 
 ..." My heart aches for the poor Van de 
 Weyers — what a terrible thing ! Emma Weston 
 has written to ask us to stay with her ; they 
 are full of anxious sympathy for the Van de 
 
 * . .^r^ 
 
188 ENGLAND AND SOCIETY 
 
 Weyers. We arrived here last night, meeting 
 John Field at the train. We were behind our 
 time by one train, and so missed a bevy of 
 friends who had gone to the terminus to meet 
 us. The Turner Sargeants were there among 
 others to take us home in their carriage. We 
 find it most pleasant and charming here. James 
 Lowell, here for the day, came to breakfast with 
 us. He is just as loveable and cordial as ever, 
 and as I write he sits joking and chatting with 
 papa after the old fashion so delightful to me 
 to hear. I feel as if I were in a dream ; the 
 past is so vividly brought before me. Tell [Mrs 
 Eussell Sturgis] that Alleyne Otis still disports 
 himself and does the old beau." 
 
 The American visit, however, was a brief 
 parenthesis, and the rich-coloured Roman life, 
 interrupted only for the summer and the autumn, 
 continued, with its happy activities and relations, 
 to account, almost monotonously, for Story's 
 maturer years. The general serenity of his 
 career would give indeed small advantage to 
 the biographer. Misfortune may be detailed 
 or analysed, but happiness eludes us more, 
 and Story was as happy as a man could be 
 who was doing, on the whole, what he liked, 
 what he loved, and of whom the gods had 
 
LADY WILLIAM RUSSELL 
 
 189 
 
 shown jealousy but on the one cruel occasion 
 of the death of his eldest boy. As the world was 
 interesting to him, so likewise the world was 
 kind ; he rejoiced in his near relationships, 
 which cost him no second pang. The difficulty 
 is, in any case, that our privilege of evocation 
 rather shrinks as the years float us on. The 
 procession of friends and guests thickens, but 
 there are fewer we can take by the sleeve. One 
 of the most valued, fortunately, is commemorated 
 for me, on the occasion of her death, by Mrs 
 Story's hand — in addition to which I find in 
 an old heterogeneous scrap-book the interesting 
 article contributed to "The Morning Post," at 
 the" same moment, by Mrs Grote. I can well 
 remember that in the early years of a long 
 residence (that was to be) in London, a good 
 deal of light was thrown for me — as it has 
 always had to be thrown for the stranger 
 acquainted with other capitals — on the habit, 
 rooted in English society and less exceptional 
 now than then, of receiving in the evening 
 only by invitation. It was explained that in 
 the annals of comparatively modern London 
 but a single person had proved it possible to 
 be successfully " at home " on other than desig- 
 nated and published occasions. Lady William 
 Russell had achieved this feat, which had re- 
 
190 
 
 ENGLAND AND SOCIETY 
 
 malned, for all the world, a monument to her 
 powers. During the later years of her life, 
 which had begun in a distant and magnificent 
 era, she had never, summer or winter, quitted 
 her house, and yet had never found herself 
 alone. The aspect thus presented was impressive 
 to the inquirer — especially in the pleasant light 
 of nearer approach to the circle of the wondrous 
 lady. There are no such figures in the world 
 (so far as it is a world of conversation) as 
 those of the interesting women who have only 
 to sit still to find themselves a centre of life ; 
 and the very places in which they sit, the con- 
 stituted scene of the spell, seldom fail to make 
 for the student of manners an attaching, an 
 inspiring picture. In this case the scene, with 
 many of its features, is still more or less to 
 be identified. It had a dim but a rich historic 
 background, that of a youth spent almost amid 
 the clash of Napoleonic arms — quite, at all 
 events, amid the glitter of ancient allied Courts, 
 to the tune of what was to become Lady 
 William's legend, the glory of her having, in 
 Paris, at the Restoration, among the gathered 
 sovereigns, been able to flirt with each potentate 
 in his own language. The Storys had enter- 
 tained, from early Boman days, a lively 
 sympathy for her second son. 
 
LADY WILLIAM RUSSELL 
 
 191 
 
 "As we had a great friend in Lord Odo, he 
 made us acquainted with his mother as soon 
 as she arrived in Rome, and from that moment 
 grew up one of the most intimate and inter- 
 esting friendships of our Hfe. Lady WilHam 
 was full of all good things, heart and head. I 
 learnt from her much of the philosophy of life, 
 and her lessons are never forgotten. Full of 
 gifts, accomplishments and knowledge, she was 
 yet wholly without pedantry, and was extra- 
 ordinarily wise about the world without being 
 at all of it. Her ideas and feelings were all 
 noble. After her carriage-accident in Rome, by 
 which her leg was broken, I sat by her bedside 
 during long visits, for she could even then talk 
 and carry me back to old and wonderful days. 
 She had been for years, abroad and in England, 
 at Court and at home, the centre of everything 
 that was distinguished and wise and witty. The 
 devotion of her sons, especially of her best-be- 
 loved Odo, was perfect ; Odo ministered to her 
 wants with the tenderness of a woman, watched 
 her and took care of her as if she had been 
 his child. Her own care of the three, and of 
 their education, had been beyond praise ; they 
 had been her sole companions during her widow- 
 hood ; she had studied with them and for them, 
 taught them Latin and Greek and everything 
 
192 
 
 ENGLAND AND SOCIETY 
 
 she had learned or could learn. She was a 
 linguist of the first order, so that when one 
 listened to her different facilities one scarcely 
 knew which to think the greatest. An old- 
 fashioned disciplinarian as to manners and 
 customs, she (while their intimate and best 
 friend) exacted from her boys the utmost con- 
 sideration and deference ; often, when they were 
 young, keeping them standing in her presence 
 and sometimes obliging them to have their 
 hats off even when driving with her. By 
 whatever means employed, she had absolutely 
 gained their confidence and devotion ; it was 
 a relation unlike any I have seen in other sons. 
 Often, at this time, when I left her bedside, 
 I walked back to Palazzo B. with the Duke 
 of Sermoneta, who was then at the height of 
 his cleverness and brilliancy, a particularly witty 
 talker. We were thus brought so much to- 
 gether and so associated with Lady William 
 that, long after, when he married again, he 
 brought me all the letters she had ever written 
 him (a large collection) and formally gave them 
 to me to be kept with mine, suggesting for 
 them a motto from Virgil. 
 
 " When at last she was well enough to make 
 the journey we left Rome together for England, 
 and she was carried all the long way in her 
 
LADY WILLIAM RUSSELL 
 
 193 
 
 own carriage, which, with her devoted maid and 
 Odo in constant attendance, was placed on the 
 railway - trains and the deck of the steamer. 
 Lord Loughborough joined us on the way, and 
 our party became a large one (the latter read- 
 ing us his verses when, at night, we couldn't 
 sleep !), but we all saw her from time to time. 
 She bore the journey extraordinarily, and we 
 were together in Paris for some days ; then 
 we preceded her to London and saw her again, 
 a little later, in Audley Square. We found, 
 at this time, that, thinking, as she had already 
 often done, of what she could do for us, she 
 had written to various friends asking them to be 
 good to us. Thus, without delivering a single 
 letter of introduction, we found ourselves warmly 
 welcomed by her family and hosts of her friends. 
 It was to her original kindness that we owed 
 what was most pleasant, from the first, in our 
 London periods, and I remember how, late every 
 evening, when the full day was over, I went 
 to open the budget of our impressions to her, 
 and found her always amused and interested 
 and sympathetic. Her own comments and 
 judgments, her remarks on people and things 
 she knew so much better than I, were immensely 
 to the point and often the most trenchant im- 
 aginable. When I made a new and apparently 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
 N 
 
194 
 
 ENGLAND AND SOCIETY 
 
 agreeable acquaintance I went to her for light 
 and information as to character and antecedents, 
 and never found her the least at a loss. She 
 knew about everything and every one, circum- 
 stances, history, family, root and branch. Her 
 faithful German maid, Mati, librarian, companion 
 almost, and housekeeper in one, w^as a feature of 
 much interest in the household and was treated 
 with great affection. To her Lady William 
 would apply for a book, old or new, and no 
 matter in what tongue, and it always appeared 
 without delay. A certain, a very considerable, 
 number of cats of low degree were given harbour 
 as the pets of Mati, and, though they were by no 
 means pets of her mistress, it would never have 
 done for even the dearest friend to speak of 
 them to Lady William as objectionable. If, 
 however, she could bear the cats to please 
 her maid, she couldn't bear bores to please any 
 one, and, constantly repeating that life was too 
 short for them, declined to receive them on any 
 terms. Her doorkeepers had been taught very 
 carefully to sift for her, and mistakes in this 
 respect were very seldom made. 
 
 " She had more than once spoken to me of her 
 having lately embraced the Catholic faith. Her 
 earliest religious impressions had come to her 
 at Vienna, where her father was English Am- 
 
LOUISA LADY ASHBURTON 
 
 195 
 
 bassador. She was left almost entirely to the 
 guidance of a French governess, who, as a strong 
 Catholic, carried her at the most impressionable 
 age to the ceremonies of that Church, which 
 produced a deep effect on her young mind. The 
 impressions then received revived in after years 
 and sustained and consoled her under the stress 
 of sorrow and illness. She was at the same 
 time never narrow or violent in her faith, and 
 when once Mrs H., in her presence, began to 
 use arguments to convert me, Lady William 
 reproved her and said ' Don't meddle with her 
 beliefs ; they are what she needs — probably 
 better than any you can supply.' Again, at 
 a time when she was really ill, and I was with 
 her, and a Monsignore was announced, she wrote 
 on a slip of her queer paper and handed it 
 to me : ' Tell them not to let him come in. 
 I will not see him.' No such 'good' Catholic 
 could have been, in short, more easy — which 
 converts so rarely are ; and she was buried 
 not in Catholic ground, but at Chenies with 
 her husband's folk." 
 
 We wander here still among shades — not 
 the less, I feel, at a moment when the late 
 Louisa Lady Ashburton, one of the most eminent 
 of the friends from early years, joins the 
 company. This so striking and interesting 
 
 ")J!: ■;>r'''M^i-'^'^':'fi::;-'t'^''l'!^'^.'i'**ii,'-^^^ ;iy:'-k'-afc.:'iif<(>^i- '* 
 
 
196 
 
 ENGLAND AND SOCIETY 
 
 personage, a rich, generous presence that, wher- 
 ever encountered, seemed always to fill the fore- 
 ground with colour, with picture, with fine 
 mellow sound and, on the part of every one else, 
 with a kind of traditional charmed, amused 
 patience — this brilliant and fitful apparition 
 was a familiar ^^w re for our friends, as, through- 
 out, for the society of her time, and I come, 
 in my blurred record, frequently upon her name. 
 The difficulty is really that she is one of those 
 vivid, represented characters, one of those stamped 
 and finished appearances that tempt the historian 
 (especially if he have memory and imagination 
 always at his heels) only too much and challenge 
 him too far. There are figures v/e may pass 
 with a look and touch with a finger, feeling 
 any recognition kind and almost any adequate. 
 But there are others whom to pass at all is, 
 as it were, to pass before them — on the stairs 
 or out of the room ; so that we wait on them 
 a little and hover, and while we thus wait find 
 ourselves again in relation with them ; than 
 which any more summary process would be, we 
 seem aware, both a breach of manners and a 
 loss of opportunity. It easily happens, however, 
 that the "relation," the old impression, the 
 cluster of reminiscence, would take too much 
 explaining, or require perhaps even too much 
 
LOCH LUICHART 
 
 197 
 
 profaning ; so that we find ourselves wishing we 
 only had, so to speak, a free hand and a clean 
 slate altogether, the really right conditions for 
 transposing and reproducing. All of which 
 simply means, I think, that the prose -painter 
 of life, character, manners, licensed to render 
 his experience in his own terms, might do 
 more justice to such a subject than the mere 
 enumerator, to whom liberties, as they are 
 called, are forbidden. What matters indeed, 
 what results from faded notes, I hasten to add, 
 is that Lady Ashburton was, admirably, delight- 
 fully, a subject — for irresistible consideration, for, 
 positively, a sort of glow of remembrance, the 
 glow from which artistic projection sometimes 
 eventually springs. This friendly light rests 
 on occasions, incidents, accidents, in which a 
 liberal oddity, a genial incoherence, an expected 
 half funny, half happy turn of the affair, for 
 the most part, appears to declare itself as the 
 leading note. I come across too brief a mention, 
 in particular, of a baffled visit to Loch Luichart 
 in August, 1869 — baffled, for the little party 
 consisting of our friends, their daughter and 
 Browning, because the lady of the Lake was 
 far from home at the date of the appointment, 
 and her guests made merry, for the time, instead, 
 at a little inn, then described as " squalid," on 
 
 A »■ v.i' 
 
198 
 
 ENGLAND AND SOCIETY 
 
 Loch Achnault, near Garve, with assistance from 
 picnics (of the four) in the neighbouring heather, 
 where, the rough meal not unsuccessfully enjoyed, 
 Browning loudly read out "Rob Hoy." Many 
 persons will remember how freely it belonged 
 to what I have called the fine presence (if 
 presence be here the word) of the absent hostess 
 of such occasions that the occasions themselves 
 always somehow, before it was too late, recovered 
 their feet, their breath, or whatever it might 
 best be, and wound up in felicity. The episode 
 of August, 1869, was, at any rate, it appeared, 
 no exception to the rule ; the delayed visit 
 took place, with compensations abounding, with, 
 in fact, for the consciousness of the present 
 chronicler, more interesting passages of personal 
 history than may here be touched upon. 
 
 I move here, indeed, between discretions and 
 disappearances, in a somewhat dim backward 
 labyrinth, where names and places are mainly 
 the clue, though where, also, vague, small, 
 pleasant lights, as in some old-time pleached 
 walk, break in through the dusk. At the Grange, 
 with the same incalculable friend, the Storys 
 seem to have been, more or less repeatedly, 
 from the first, in interesting company, and if 
 names without faces — that is, without the pro- 
 vided peg to hang them to — were not, at the 
 
AT THE GRANGE 
 
 199 
 
 best, but a meagre array, I might be content 
 simply to enumerate. It is something of a peg 
 possibly that in the autumn of 1862, which must 
 have been the first occasion at the Grange, our 
 friends listened to an interchange between Car- 
 lyle, the then Bishop of Oxford (Wilberforce) 
 and (odder collocation still) General Sir William 
 Gomme ; an echo of which has remained with 
 the youngest of the party. She remembers 
 Carlyle's discussing with the Bishop, after dinner, 
 the merits of a good conscience, a discussion in- 
 terrupted by the return of the party to the 
 dining-room, where, amid the still-lingering fumes 
 of the rich repast, the Bishop read the evening 
 prayers and then addressed the party, including 
 the clustered domestics, an army, who had been 
 busy clearing the board, on the virtue of self- 
 sacrifice. It appears to have been at some hour 
 of this sojourn that Carlyle, in an image that 
 was to reverberate, described the American Civil 
 War, then raging, as the burning -out of the 
 smokiest chimney of the century. It was at all 
 events perhaps after their restoration to the 
 drawing-room that he took up again the other 
 matter. " Good conscience, my Lord Bishop — 
 what was ever the use of such a thing to any 
 man ? Take two of the best men that ever lived 
 — what good did his good conscience ever do to 
 
200 
 
 ENGLAND AND SOCIETY 
 
 I 
 
 Oliver Cromwell or to St Paul?" And then on 
 the Bishop's protesting against his speaking of 
 these celebrities in the same breath : " Well 
 then, confine it, if ye will, to St Paul. With his 
 good conscience he was the most meeserable of 
 men." Which is doubtless indeed a sufficiently 
 pale gleam, even when I find it noted that a 
 visit to Bowood had more or less immediately 
 preceded this occasion. Visits to Naworth and 
 to Ashridge were also, I gather, not a little in 
 order in these years — the friendliest relation 
 having, in one of those connections (and to name 
 only the dead), established itself with Lady 
 Marian Alford. "At Naworth" — I find the 
 note in reference to a sequel to the episode, 
 just related, of Loch Luichart — " Browning read 
 aloud to us parts of ' The Ring and the Book.' " 
 Taking scraps, further, as they come, in reference 
 to this general period, I light upon a memor- 
 andum of Mrs Story's on her husband's acquaint- 
 ance, and her own, with the first Lord Houghton, 
 which, though that so distinguished and so 
 amiable man has not wanted for commemoration, 
 I reproduce, in part, from an equal impulse of 
 sympathy. To what commemoration of him may 
 not another friendly, another grateful, another 
 highly vivid memory feel prompted to allow all 
 its advantage ? 
 
LORD HOUGHTON 
 
 201 
 
 "We first knew R M. Milnes in London," 
 Mrs Story writes, " before his marriage, and I 
 remember our breakfasting- with him, the first 
 time, in company with Mrs Norton and StirHng 
 of Keir. He was wonderfully kind to us, and 
 we owed him many of our pleasantest acquaint- 
 ances. After his marriage we continued to 
 breakfast, for these occasions, thanks to his 
 gentle and amiable wife, were still more attrac- 
 tive. Later on they became, I think, a little 
 less ' select,' and even had sometimes, with the 
 incongruous people, rather a Bohemian cast. 
 Sir William Stirling used to call him the Bird 
 of Paradox. I often met him at Lady William 
 Bussell's — who didn't, however, perhaps, do him 
 full justice ; and I recall one memorable night 
 when he discussed with Abraham Hayward, with 
 great warmth and far into the small hours, the 
 question of the birth and extraction of Mary 
 Fox, Lady Holland's adopted daughter. We 
 never went to Fryston till 1884, though we had 
 promised it ten years earlier. Then, at last, he 
 was out of health and out of spirits, and, though 
 full of kindness, it was not as of old. He came 
 to E-ome in 1885, and he at this time asked to 
 sit to W. for his bust. At the sittings in the 
 studio I made a point of being present that he 
 might be diverted and content not to go to sleep 
 
 x;.'.- jf' 
 
 ( • .to. * 
 
202 
 
 ENGLAND AND SOCIETY 
 
 while W. worked — as sitters not always are. 
 At times he was in excellent ' form,' most 
 amusing, and very anecdotic ; but he had also 
 his silences, and then his slumber was deep. 
 He reminded us of Landor by his going back 
 with such vividness, as people of his age almost 
 always do, to his far past life, his caring to talk 
 almost only of what he had seen and done in 
 youth. Landor he had known and talked of 
 frankly and freely ; and, like Landor himself, of 
 Lord Byron, Lady Blessington, Louis Napoleon 
 and others. The bust seemed a surprising 
 success, considering his deficiencies as a sitter, 
 and he said of it, with a laugh, when it was 
 finished, ' It looks, I think, the Poet and the 
 Peer.' He came to breakfast one morning, with 
 Lady Galway, to meet Bishop Whipple of Min- 
 nesota, and he afterwards amiably said that this 
 had been the thing in Bome that had given him 
 the greatest pleasure — which we thought a great 
 tribute to the excellent company of the Bishop. 
 Lord Houghton would go anywhere, to the last, 
 in spite of infirmity and fatigue, to see any one 
 or anything that might amuse him, no matter 
 who or what or where they were. He was truly 
 brave in this pursuit." 
 
 It is perhaps early to take up some of these 
 later of the old names, yet memory protests a 
 
ABRAHAM HAYWARD 
 
 203 
 
 little against letting them quite go. And more- 
 over if the London of Abraham Hayward is 
 divided by but twenty years from the London 
 of our new century, it seems really to look 
 on at us from a greater antiquity. It was con- 
 siderably more than twenty years ago that, 
 dining out during the phase, as it now appears 
 to me, of initiation and wonder, I received a 
 hint of the stamp that the time and place 
 were indeed assumed to have taken from the 
 distinguished talker just named. I had begun 
 by addressing myself to the lady on my left, 
 who, however, gently enough, though with a 
 certain anxiety, checked me. "Don't you think 
 we ought to listen, rather, to what Mr Hayward 
 is saying ? " — she evidently had her opportunity 
 on her conscience. My own was, accordingly, 
 at that moment revealed to me, and I never 
 failed, afterwards, with the renewal of my 
 privilege, to listen. There links itself with this 
 recollection — they may make a pair — that of 
 an ancient gentleman — an ancient gentleman 
 full of type, full of a tone that was dying out — 
 who lived in a street, out of Piccadilly, in which 
 the houses overlooked an amplitude of preserved 
 space, and who entertained at a round table of 
 noble dimensions. At this table, I learned from 
 my host, one might precisely not hope ever to 
 
 
 ,'* 1 .-ft i 
 
204 
 
 ENGLAND AND SOCIETY 
 
 " listen to Mr Hay ward " — and for reasons that 
 were, in the warning, sufficiently emphasised. 
 I may not emphasise them here — and all the 
 less, doubtless, as they appear to have been 
 somewhat special to my friend, who was de- 
 cidedly "quaint" and who afterwards suffered 
 some cerebral disturbance. I was still able for 
 a year or two to listen often enough for the 
 lesson that practically resulted — the lesson that 
 the talk easily recognised in London as the best 
 is the delivery and establishment of the greatest 
 possible number oi facts, or in other w^ords the 
 unwinding, with or without comment or quali- 
 fication, of the longest possible chain of " stories." 
 One associated Mr Hayward and his recurrent, 
 supereminent laugh thus with the story, and 
 virtually, I noted, with the story alone — taking 
 that product no doubt also, when needful, in 
 the larger sense of the remarkable recorded or 
 disputed contemporary or recent event, cases 
 as to which the speaker was in possession of 
 the " rights." What at all events remained 
 with one was a contribution, of a kind, to the 
 general sense that facts, facts, and again facts, 
 were still the thing dearest to the English mind 
 even in its hours of ease. I indeed remember 
 wondering if there were not to be revealed to 
 me, as for the promotion of these hours, some 
 
ENGLISH TALK 
 
 205 
 
 other school of talk, in which some breath of 
 the mind itself, some play of paradox, irony, 
 thought, imagination, some wandering wind of 
 fancy, some draught, in short, of the idea, might 
 not be felt as circulating between the seated 
 solidities, for the general lightening of the mass. 
 This would have been a school handling the fact 
 rather as the point of departure than as the 
 point of arrival, the horse-block for mounting 
 the winged steed of talk rather than as the 
 stable for constantly riding him back to. The 
 '* story," in fine, in this other order — and surely 
 so more worthy of the name — would have been 
 the intellectual reaction from the circumstance 
 presented, an exhibition interesting, amusing, 
 vivid, dramatic, in proportion to the agility, 
 or to the sincerity, of the intellect engaged. 
 But this alternative inquiry, I may conclude, 
 I am still conducting. 
 
 Aids of the causal sort I have just gathered 
 from Mrs Story project, at all events, but faint 
 shadows over the field of the pleasant Roman 
 years, the happiest time of production, the fullest 
 also of surrender (in hospitality, in curiosity, in 
 free response) to the sovereign spirit of the 
 place. The spirit of the place is what most 
 comes back, in respect to any occasion, for the 
 fond invoker of memories still denounceable as 
 
 ■^ v.'i 
 
206 
 
 ENGLAND AND SOCIETY 
 
 at their best too meagre ; since it is only as 
 holding fast that key to all impressions, hetero- 
 geneous or other, that one may keep them 
 either together or apart. Was it not, in old 
 days, the special solvent of all appearances, all 
 encounters, the element into which they simply 
 melted, so that it mattered comparatively little 
 who or what they individually were — mattering, 
 as it did, so very much more, for the mind, 
 that they were part of the general experience 
 of Rome "? This experience was in itself so 
 constant and penetrating that almost nobody 
 one might meet, almost nothing one might see, 
 could aspire to any higher dignity than that 
 of a note struck, just sensibly sounded, but 
 made quite humble and relative, for the effect of 
 the symphony. The symphony was a majestic 
 whole, with which the individual would have 
 been ill-advised to take a liberty, so that the 
 greatest celebrities became thus nothing more 
 than placed and waiting fiddles in the mighty 
 orchestra, receiving their cue, as one took one's 
 own explicit order, the sharp rap or recall, from 
 the controlling influence that kept us all in 
 tune. The spirit of the place figured, in fact, 
 the master -conductor of a great harmonious 
 band in which differences were disallowed, so 
 near did one performer come to being as im- 
 
THE SENSE OF ROME 
 
 207 
 
 port ant — in other words as insignificant — as 
 any other. That certainly was the great charm 
 and the great ease — that no one, really, could 
 be a bore about Rome, or even, to any purpose, 
 under its cover, about anything else. For 
 nothing practically existed but that our con- 
 ditions met every want, and that we were 
 absolutely in the spirit of them even in trying 
 to name those they failed to supply. This effect 
 was wholly peculiar — an action on the mind, 
 the temper, the life, on speech, manners, inter- 
 course, with which that of no other place could 
 for a moment compete. People might elsewhere 
 be stupid, might elsewhere be vulgar or cross 
 or ugly, for the ways of offence are many ; 
 whereas here you cared so little whether they 
 were or not that it was virtually as good as 
 not knowing. They were not, in fact ; nobody 
 was any of these things, for the simple reason 
 that nobody could afford, for very shame, to 
 deny the harmonising charm. The truth is 
 even, no doubt, that nobody could grossly dare 
 any such profanity and expect still to live. 
 Something would have happened — something 
 that never did happen, thanks to our cheerful 
 humility and exalted equality. I remember that 
 in days, or rather on evenings, that now seem 
 to me exquisitely dim, I met Matthew Arnold, 
 
 HtM 
 
208 
 
 ENGLAND AND SOCIETY 
 
 for the first time, at Palazzo Barberini, and 
 became conscious then and there — more so at 
 least than I had been before — of the interesting 
 truth I attempt to utter. He had been, in prose 
 and verse, the idol of my previous years, and 
 nothing could have seemed in advance less 
 doubtful than that to encounter him face to 
 face, and under an influence so noble, would 
 have made one fairly stagger with a sense of 
 privilege. What actually happened, however, 
 was that the sense of privilege found itself 
 positively postponed ; when I met him again, 
 later on, in London, then it had free play. It 
 was, on the Roman evening, as if, for all the 
 world, we were equally great and happy, or 
 still more, perhaps, equally nothing and nobody ; 
 we were related only to the enclosing fact of 
 Rome, before which every one, it was easy to 
 feel, bore himself with the same good manners. 
 They then, as it were, the good manners, be- 
 came the form in which the noble influence was 
 best recognised, so that you could fairly trace 
 it from occasion to occasion, from one consenting 
 victim to another. The victims may very well 
 not have been themselves always conscious, but 
 the conscious individual had them all, atten- 
 tively, imaginatively, at his mercy — drawing 
 precisely from that fact a support in his own 
 
THE SENSE OF ROME 
 
 209 
 
 submission. He had the rare chance of seeing 
 people kept in order, kept in position before the 
 spectacle, so as to be themselves peculiarly ac- 
 cessible to observation. This faculty had, of 
 course, in the nature of the case, to feed more 
 on their essence and their type than, as it might 
 have done elsewhere, on their extravagance and 
 their overflow ; but at least they couldn't elude, 
 impose or deceive, as is always easy in London, 
 Paris or New York, cities in which the spirit 
 of the place has long since (certainly as an in- 
 sidious spell) lost any advantage it may ever 
 have practised over the spirit of the person. 
 So, at any rate, fanciful as my plea may appear, 
 I recover the old sense — brave even the imputa- 
 tion of making a mere Bome of words, talking 
 of a Home of my own which was no Rome of 
 reality. That comes up as exactly the point — 
 that no Rome of reality was concerned in our 
 experience, that the whole thing was a rare 
 state of the imagination, dosed and drugged, 
 as I have already indicated, by the effectual 
 Borgia cup, for the taste of which the simplest 
 as well as the subtlest had a palate. Nothing, 
 verily, used to strike us more than that people 
 of whom, as we said, we wouldn't have expected 
 it, people who had never before shown know- 
 ledge, taste or sensibility, had here quite knocked 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
 o 
 
210 
 
 ENGLAND AND SOCIETY 
 
 under. They haunted Vatican halls and Pala- 
 tine gardens ; they were detached and pensive 
 on the Pincian ; they were silent in strange 
 places ; the habit of St Peter's they clung to 
 as to a vice ; the impression of the Campagna 
 they stopped short in attempting to utter. And 
 just as the lowly were brought up, so the mighty 
 were brought down, there being no tribute to 
 the matters in question that was not of the 
 nature of sensibility. Such is the pleasant light 
 with which I see the Barberini drawing-room 
 suffused. It was not that there were not dur- 
 ing the same years other interiors on which the 
 benediction also rested ; each interior — that was 
 the secret — had its share of the felicity, very 
 much as places of reunion to-day have their 
 share of the electric light. It was virtually 
 " turned on," for instance, during the late hours, 
 that every one had, all day, to have been breath- 
 ing golden air, and that the golden air was ex- 
 haled again by the simple fact of any presence. 
 I see, as in a picture, remembered figures sit 
 content or move about in it ; I see, fairly, where 
 it prevails, a sweetness in any combination of 
 couples or groups. I listen to the rich voices 
 of young women at the piano and find them all 
 charged with the quality of the day. For there 
 had always been a day — a day that, moreover, 
 
THE ROMAN TOUCH 
 
 211 
 
 was never so much of one as when (which was 
 often) there was, for its expectation, to be also 
 an evening. These sequences, these presciences 
 certainly exist by Thames and Seine and 
 Hudson, but quite, as they become famiUar, 
 without making us thrill at their touch. Their 
 touch (since we discriminate) is coarse ; it was 
 only the Koman touch that was fine — which is 
 the simple moral of my remarks. 
 
LAST ROMAN YEARS 
 
 H«' 
 
 •;i 
 
X. 
 
 GRAFFITI D'lTALIA. 
 
 We have seen that Charles Sumner wrote to 
 Story in 1864 that he had been reading at once 
 his " Leonardo," in " Blackwood," and his letters 
 on the American Question in the " Daily News," 
 and that he knew no other man who could have 
 shown equal talent in such different styles of 
 composition. The compliment may surely stand, 
 for it was of a sort that, in various ways. Story 
 never ceased to deserve. In turning over his 
 pages and his papers I am even almost prompted, 
 I confess, to commiserate his flexibility of at- 
 tention. He was of course not so curst as not 
 to have preferences of mind — having in abun- 
 dance preferences of feeling ; yet he almost 
 grazed such a fate, and his success may perhaps 
 be expressed by saying that he had not (either 
 for his own perfect comfort or for that of his 
 reader) enough indifferences. One might have 
 been inclined to wish him the comparative rest 
 
216 
 
 GRAFFITI D ITALIA 
 
 of an exclusive passion. Singularity, intensity 
 of genius makes for repose, at its hours, scarcely 
 less than it makes for agitation, and it is a 
 question if we are really happiest when our 
 powers keep such easy pace with our interests. 
 Story was never conscious, when he was in- 
 terested, of a lack of power — which is a state 
 of mind to make interest a doubtful anodyne. 
 There are eagernesses that genius of the ex- 
 clusive order drops or recovers from. But he 
 disliked at any time to drop anything, and that 
 was, in a manner, a qualification of his heat. I 
 have already spoken of his poetic spontaneity, 
 the constitution of which might become for us, 
 were we to surrender ourselves to criticism, a 
 riddle worth the guessing. I speak of riddles 
 because we feel in the presence of something 
 that requires an explanation. How could he 
 be, our friend, we sometimes find ourselves 
 wondering, so restlessly, so sincerely aesthetic, 
 and yet, constitutionally, so little insistent ? 
 We mean by insistence, in an artist, the act of 
 throwing the whole weight of the mind, and 
 of gathering it at the particular point (when 
 the particular point is worth it) in order to do 
 so. This, on the part of most artists — or at 
 least on the part of those who are single in spirit 
 — is an instinct and a necessity, becomes in fact 
 
STORY S FACILITY 
 
 217 
 
 the principal sign we know them by. They feel 
 unsafe, uncertain, exposed, unless the spirit, such 
 as it is, be, at the point in question, " all there." 
 Story's rather odd case, if I may call it so, was 
 that when he wrote, prose or verse, he was 
 "there" only in part — not, we infer, as com- 
 pletely, as anxiously, as he might have been. 
 And this in spite of a great and genuine love ; 
 it was not at all as if prose and verse had been 
 for him perfunctory cares. It was impossible to 
 be more interested in the things of the mind 
 and in the forms and combinations into which 
 they overflow. The question of expression and 
 style haunted him ; the question of representa- 
 tion by words was ever as present to him as 
 that of representation by marble or by bronze. 
 Once in a while these ideas move him in the 
 same direction with equal force ; he produced, 
 for instance, two Cleopatras, and it is diflicult 
 to say that the versified, the best of his shorter 
 poems, is not as "good" as the so interesting 
 statue with which it competes. The weight of 
 the mind, taking the different occasions, threw 
 itself wholly, we feel, into each ; so that the 
 image is about as living in the one case as in 
 the other. Here, rather by exception, Story 
 arrived at literary intensity — making his verses 
 insist, as I have called it, just as he had, quite 
 
 /if)*;-- 
 
 yj^. 
 
218 
 
 GRAFFITI D ITALIA 
 
 admirably, been able to make the execution of 
 
 his figure. 
 
 " Ah, me ! this lifeless nature 
 Oppresses my heart and brain ! 
 Ob, for a storm and thunder — 
 For lightning and wild fierce rain ! 
 Fling down that lute — I hate it ! 
 Take rather his buckler and sword, 
 And crash them and clash them together 
 Till this sleeping world is stirred. 
 Hark to my Indian beauty — 
 My cockatoo creamy white, 
 With roses under his feathers — 
 That flashes across the light ! 
 Look, listen, as backward and forward 
 To his hoop of gold he clings, 
 How he trembles with crest uplifted, 
 And shrieks as he madly swings ! 
 Oh, cockatoo, shriek for Antony ! 
 Cry ' Come, my love, come home ! ' 
 Shriek * Antony, Antony, Antony ! ' 
 Till he hears you even in Rome. 
 
 I will lie and dream of the past time, 
 
 Aeons of thought away. 
 
 And through the jungle of memory 
 
 Loosen my fancy to play ; 
 
 "When, a smooth and velvety tiger, 
 
 Ribbed with yellow and black, 
 
 Supple and cushion-footed, 
 
 I wandered my mate to greet. 
 Come to my arms, my hero. 
 The shadows of twilight grow, 
 And the tiger's ancient fierceness 
 In my veins begins to flow. 
 
GIANNONE 
 
 219 
 
 Come not cringing to sue me ! 
 Take me with triumph and power, 
 As a warrior storms a fortress ! 
 I will not shrink or cower. 
 Come, as you came in the desert, 
 Ere we were women and men, 
 When the tiger passions were in us, 
 And love as you loved me then ! " 
 
 " Gianiione," in " Graffiti d'ltalia," is another 
 charming thing that has come, by its own force, 
 or that has, in other words, held the author 
 hard enough to make him, in turn, squeeze out 
 of his subject all it had to give, at the same 
 time that the hand displayed is certainly a light 
 hand, not concerned sternly to press. What 
 happens here is that the poet really gives him- 
 self to the charm of his vision, so that there 
 is no reserve : the pleasant image of the idle 
 and hapless young Roman of the Pio Nono, of 
 the Antonelli time stands before us with in- 
 tensity, catching the light at every inch of 
 his surface. The subject indeed really is the 
 modern Roman temperament itself — as exhibited 
 in youth ; a little excised square of the Roman 
 social picture. Nothing of Story's has more of 
 the felicity (as also of the moral reaction) of 
 his earlier experience. 
 
 " 'Tis years, as you know, that I've lived in Eome, 
 Till now it's familiar to me as home ; 
 
220 
 
 GRAFFITI D ITALIA 
 
 And 'tis years ago I knew Oiannone, 
 
 A capital fellow, with great black eyes, 
 
 And a pleasant smile of frank surprise, 
 
 And as gentle a pace as a lady's pony, 
 
 Keady to follow wherever you bid ; 
 
 His oaths were ' Per Bacco ! ' and ' Dio Mio ! ' 
 
 And ' Guardi ! ' he cried to whatever you said ; 
 
 But though not overfreighted with esprit or &m, 
 
 His heart was better by far than his head. 
 
 His education was rather scanty ; 
 
 But what on earth could he have done 
 
 With an education, having one. 
 
 Unless he chose for the scarlet to run. 
 
 And study the Fathers and lives of the Santi 1 
 
 Nevertheless I know he had read. 
 
 Because he quoted them, Tasso and Dante ; 
 
 And so often he recommended the prosy 
 
 ' Promessi Sposi,' I must suppose he 
 
 Had also achieved that tale of Manzoni. 
 
 And besides Monte Cristo and Uncle Tom, 
 
 And the history of Italy and Rome 
 
 (Por he thoroughly knew how liberty's foot 
 
 Had been pinched and maimed and lamed in her boot). 
 
 He had studied with zeal the book of the mass 
 
 And libretti of all the operas. 
 
 A ' guardia nobile ' was Giannone, 
 By which he earned sufficient money 
 For his gloves, shirt-buttons, boots and hat, 
 Though it was scarcely enough for that. 
 And splendid he was on a gala day, 
 With his jingling sword and scarlet coat. 
 And his long jack-boots and helmet gay. 
 When along the streets he used to trot ; 
 And great good luck it was to meet 
 Giannone when you wanted a seat 
 
GIANNONE 
 
 221 
 
 To hear the chant of the Miserere, 
 Or to get on the balcony high and airy, 
 To see the papal procession go 
 Over St Peter's pavement below, 
 Streaming along in its gorgeous show. 
 And then at Carnival such bouquets, 
 Such beautiful bonbons and princely ways, 
 Such elegant wavings of hat and hand, 
 Such smiles as no one could withstand, 
 Such compliments as made ours seem 
 Like pale skim-milk to his rich cream." 
 
 The end of this sketch of Roman manners in 
 the unreformed day — a picture half humorous, 
 half tender and all vivid — is that the ingenuous 
 young man suffers himself to be entrapped by a 
 governmental spy, who is not less neatly pre- 
 sented, and who extracts from him, in his cups, 
 the secret of that little locked - up spark of 
 liberalism which could glow even in the heart of 
 a feather-headed dandy : whereby fate abruptly 
 invests poor Giannone with a quite mismatched 
 tragic dignity, and the shadow of the Inquisition, 
 or of some other salutary discipline, like a wheel 
 breaking a butterfly, passes over him so straight 
 that he is reduced to the unknowable. He be- 
 comes interesting by being missed. These, at 
 any rate, are a couple of the many -coloured 
 flowers of " Graffiti d'ltalia," which volume con- 
 tains Story's most substantial poetic work. The 
 sixty pieces or so of which it consists, and of 
 
222 
 
 GRAFFITI D ITALIA 
 
 which the fine " Ginevra da Siena" is the most 
 sustained and most important, had appeared 
 from time to time, during some ten years, in 
 "Blackwood," and this collection was in 1875 
 in its second edition. I have before me the 
 whole of the author's copious correspondence 
 with Mr John and Mr William Blackwood, 
 than which nothing could more sufficiently show 
 that Story abounded, whether for verse or for 
 prose, in literary ideas. Not all of these, indeed 
 but a small portion of them, did he find occasion 
 to carry out ; living, as he did, in the pleasantest 
 place in the world, it was his fate, inevitably, to 
 be interrupted and scattered, to expend himself 
 for results of which, when time had sifted them, 
 little remained but the appearance of his having 
 been happy. But there was at the same time 
 almost nothing he did not like to think of him- 
 self as doing, not dream of being able to do if 
 this or that condition had been present. The 
 conditions, the present and the absent, come 
 back, no doubt, as we look at his life — which is 
 called, w^e are well aware, being wise after the 
 fact. It becomes interesting, in the light of so 
 distinct an example, to extract from the case — 
 the case of the permanent absentee or exile — 
 the general lesson that may seem to us latent 
 in it. This moral seems to be that somehow, 
 
THE BID FOR HAPPINESS 
 
 223 
 
 in the long-run, Story paid — paid for having 
 sought his development even among the circum- 
 stances that at the time of his choice appeared 
 not alone the only propitious, but the only 
 possible. It was as if the circumstances on 
 which, to do this, he had turned his back, had 
 found an indirect way to be avenged for the 
 discrimination. Inevitably, indeed, we are not 
 able to say what a lifetime of Boston would 
 have made, in him, or would have marred ; we 
 can only be sure we should in that case have 
 had to deal with quite a different group of re- 
 sults. The form in which the other possibility 
 perhaps presents itself is that of our feeling that, 
 though he might have been less of a sculptor 
 " at home," he might have been more of a poet. 
 
 Speculations as to what might have been are 
 ever, I know, almost as futile as they are fas- 
 cinating ; but as alternative visions in respect 
 to the American absentee in general I confess 
 to finding that even at the worst their fas- 
 cination justifies them. When I say " at the 
 worst" I allude to those existences, numerous 
 enough, that, in alien air, far from their native 
 soil, have found themselves (sometimes quite 
 unconsciously, but sometimes sorely suspecting) 
 the prey of mere beguilement. That really rises 
 before us as the formula of Story's Homan years, 
 
 ■ ■^-- d !!.■ .1 
 
 ■k*. 
 
 1^'. 
 
224 
 
 GRAFFITI D ITALIA 
 
 making us — unless we yield, in the view, too 
 much to wanton fancy — figure his career as a 
 sort of beautiful sacrifice to a noble mistake. I 
 cannot, in truth, otherwise describe the mistake 
 than as that of the frank consent to be beguiled. 
 It is for all the world as if there were always, 
 for however earnest a man, some seed of danger 
 in consciously planning for happiness, and a seed 
 quite capable of sprouting even when the plan 
 has succeeded. To have said "No — I give up 
 everything else for a lifetime of the golden air ; 
 the golden air is the thing, no matter what 
 others may be, and to have had it, all there 
 is of it, that alone, for me, won't have been 
 failure " : to have expressed one's self in that 
 sense, which was practically what Story did, 
 was to make one's bid for felicity about as 
 straight as possible. For, simply enough, it is 
 of the old-time victim of Italy, and not of any 
 more colourless fugitive from the Philistines, that 
 I am thinking. His conception of the agreeable 
 as of something constant, crude, immediate was 
 doubtless the conception most involving an ulti- 
 mate penalty. And so, accordingly, does our 
 critical imagination play. The experience he had 
 invoked, the experience he achieved, suggested 
 to our friend a variety of subjects that might 
 not otherwise have come in his way. That is 
 
THE BEGUILEMENT OF ITALY 
 
 225 
 
 much, for any poet — so much that it may be 
 asked what more there need have been. Only 
 one thing more, in truth ; to which I attach 
 myself as to a tangible thread in this possibly 
 too vague speculation. If the verse and the 
 prose might, in other conditions, as I have 
 hinted, have more completely filled out their 
 scheme, the reason would seem to be not in any 
 question of the encounter of other subjects, but 
 in something deeper still — say, taking subjects 
 for granted, in the relation of the writer to any 
 of these and to all. The golden air, we tend 
 to infer, did not make that relation quite in- 
 tense, quite responsible ; partly, no doubt, by 
 taking it too much as a matter of course. Sub- 
 jects float by, in Italy, as the fish in the sea 
 may be supposed to float by a merman, who 
 doubtless puts out a hand from time to time to 
 grasp, for curiosity, some particularly iridescent 
 specimen. But he has conceivably not the 
 proper detachment for full appreciation. And 
 I come round by the aid of this analogy to the 
 truth I have been feeling my way to. 
 
 This truth — to make the matter comfortably 
 clear — is that the " picturesque " subject, for 
 literary art, has by no means all its advantage 
 in the picturesque country ; yields its full taste, 
 gives out all its inspiration, in other words, in 
 
 VOL. II. P 
 
 £■ :• 
 
226 
 
 GRAFFITI D ITALIA 
 
 some air unfriendly to the element at large. I 
 seem, for instance, to see Story gouge out 
 " Ginevra da Siena " from the block of his idea 
 with a finer rage in — let me tell the whole 
 truth — Boston by the Charles, or even in London 
 by the Thames, than in Rome, in Florence, or, 
 most of all, in the shuttered noon of the Sienese 
 day itself In London, in Boston, he would have 
 had to live with his conception, there being 
 nothing else about him of the same colour or 
 quality. In Home, Florence, Siena, there was 
 too much — too much, that is, for a man for 
 whom, otherwise dedicated, it had not been in 
 question to become a second Gregorovius. Was 
 it not this " too much " therefore that, given the 
 nature of Story's mind and that disposition in 
 it to flit rather than to rest for which I have 
 almost commiserated it — was it not this too 
 much that constituted precisely, and most char- 
 acteristically and gracefully, the amusement of 
 the wanton Italy at the expense of her victim ? 
 It may easily be said of course that such penal- 
 ties should be smoothly faced, and my conten- 
 tion, I know, — for all it is worth, — is apparently 
 refuted on the spot by the history of Robert 
 Browning and his inspiration, suggestive as 
 they both are of a quite opposed moral. Italy, 
 obviously, was never too much for the author 
 
SIR EDWARD HAMLEY 
 
 227 
 
 of " Men and Women." He wrote " The King 
 and the Book" indeed after he had come away, 
 just as he had written most of his finest earlier 
 things before he had migrated. As to " Men 
 and Women," however, produced on the spot 
 and face to face with the sources of his inspir- 
 ation, his ten years of Florence and E-ome may 
 claim a full participation. There is nothing 
 therefore to say in that connection but that the 
 writer s " relation to his subject," which I have 
 so freely made the golden air responsible for 
 undermining, was, in Browning, constitutionally 
 stout and single. That weight of the whole 
 mind which we have also speculatively invoked 
 was a pressure that he easily enough, at any 
 point, that he in fact almost extravagantly, 
 brought to bear. And then he was neither 
 divided nor dispersed. He was devoted to no 
 other art. This quite irrespectively of the 
 question of his inherent power. 
 
 Story had been introduced to the Blackwoods 
 by Colonel Hamley — in later years General Sir 
 Edward Bruce Hamley — an intimate friend of 
 his hosts of Mount Felix, where they must have 
 met at an early date. The author of "Lady 
 Lee's Widowhood" was, in respect of Maga, an 
 excellent introducer, whose good office was, later 
 on, to renew itself, happily for all concerned, 
 
228 
 
 GRAFFITI D ITALIA 
 
 on behalf of another, one of the youngest, of 
 his Mount Felix associates. I may add that 
 his name meets me, as it comes up, with that 
 imputed recognition to which we have responded 
 for every figure in our dim procession, he too 
 being, in his degree, one of the friendly, the less 
 ghostly, shades. It was given me to know him 
 in years subsequent to the dates just indicated, 
 and I recognise to-day a small passage of history 
 — the history of a sentiment and its accepted 
 catastrophe, or at least conversion — in those 
 pleasant relations with him that I like here to 
 note. I remember his having been at the be- 
 ginning of the Civil War one of the English 
 names of warning to ears reached by social 
 echoes — echoes wafted across the sea even from 
 the lawn of kind Mount Felix. We had all 
 read, in the North, " Lady Lee's Widowhood," 
 and had admired the author even if we had not 
 paid him ; and it was, to express the thing 
 mildly, a chill to our admiration to hear of his 
 neither wishing nor prophesying success to our 
 arms, but, on the contrary, quite luridly (as we 
 gathered) calling down on them the last humilia- 
 tion. Had we not, even during the War itself, 
 flocked in our thousands to the romantic drama 
 that Lester Wallack, the scenic idol of the 
 period, had extracted from the charming book 
 
SIR EDWARD HAMLEY 
 
 229 
 
 and was causing everywhere to be played — 
 whether or no to the advantage of the author's 
 "rights"? I can scarce say to-day by what 
 accident the legend of Hamley's ironic voice in 
 particular acquired consistency — ironic voices 
 having, in every quarter, sufficiently abounded ; 
 it is enough that I suffer myself to call back, 
 across the gulf of forty years, and amid so many 
 ghostly things, the shy, faint ghost of an im- 
 pression. The impression is that of youth and 
 a Newport summer night, that of three charm- 
 ing young women (two of them now no more) 
 in a lamp -lit room the long windows of which 
 stood open to a verandah and to the heavy Sep- 
 tember air. A young man, happy then in his 
 kinship with the two, had sociably "looked in," 
 and vividly remembers still how he was held by 
 the charm of the third presence, that of the 
 beautiful visitor who was staying for a week and 
 who had just come back from England and from 
 Mount Felix, where she had been entertained as 
 a niece and a cousin. She was anecdotic, the so 
 handsome girl, and I seem to have in my eyes 
 again the light of happy experience and high 
 social adventure with which, as well as with 
 that of her noble beauty, she struck me as 
 shining. One of her reminiscences bore upon 
 a passage in which she had found herself patri- 
 
230 
 
 GRAFFITI D ITALIA 
 
 otically engaged with the " chaffing " Artillery- 
 officer encountered at her uncle's house, whom 
 (thanks to his association with that light liter- 
 ature of which I fear I consumed quantities) 
 I was able to place, and whom I yet liked to 
 think of as perhaps retreating before his brisk 
 adversary in no too good order. Such were 
 to remain the consequences of the imaginative 
 habit — that trifles light as air (I leave my im- 
 pression for that) only had to ofler an appear- 
 ance of interest to become absurdly concrete, 
 in which form they constituted figures, pictures, 
 stories. There was, I daresay, no other origin, 
 or at least no better one, for my subsequent 
 sense of a prepossession than this sweetly- 
 uttered Newport echo, which, the other im- 
 pressions mixed with it helping it to last, had 
 not even after more than a dozen years died out. 
 Which precisely was fortunate, as the history 
 of our impressions goes ; inasmuch as if it had 
 faded away I should have missed the pleasure, 
 the amusement, the interest (I scarce, again, 
 know what to call it) of feeling the new as- 
 sociation displace and supersede the old. I 
 prolong more than I had meant my very small 
 story — the second chapter of which was to be 
 simply my coming to know, in London, at a 
 later stage of my development and of his own, 
 
SIR EDWARD HAMLEY 
 
 231 
 
 the false prophet, or whatever he might be 
 named, of Mount Felix, the not wholly unchival- 
 rous figure of the Newport anecdote. I think 
 he must have accepted by that time the true 
 revelation ; or perhaps rather it then scarce 
 mattered if he had not. We had lived on into 
 the modern world and there was plenty of fresh 
 ground. I seem to remember him as justifying 
 one's conception of one of the finest of types, 
 that of the "cultivated" soldier, of the lover of 
 letters who was also apt for action. If he had 
 written on the art of war he had also written on 
 Voltaire. He was firm enough, obviously, for 
 anything, but his firmness was also itself a fine- 
 ness, of which his talk gave the measure. So 
 one had lived on to be amused at the other con- 
 notation, as the philosophers say, of his name — 
 just as one was, less fortunately, to live on to 
 see the whole strong personality avail him little 
 when his hour had come, to see once more the 
 grim play of the high London tide that reaches 
 up and, with a single silent lap of its monstrous 
 tongue, engulfs and washes away. I have liked, 
 with that sad final vision, to rewrite his name. 
 
 " Ginevra da Siena," which appeared in 
 "Blackwood" in 1872, is the most important 
 of that group of poems as to which it was 
 inevitable that Story should incur the charge 
 
232 
 
 GRAFFITI D ITALIA 
 
 of trying to fit his tread to the deep footprints 
 of Browning. These things — the "Padre 
 Bandelli Proses," the " Leonardo da Vinci 
 Poetises," the " Contemporary Criticism on 
 Raffaelle," the "Primitive Christian in Rome" 
 — affect us indeed as marked with two different 
 degrees of the inevitable. The author's ambiente 
 was for years the same as Browning's ; his 
 impressions, contacts, ideals were the same, 
 producing for him — given indeed his difference 
 of mind — very much the same intellectual 
 experience. Italian history, the cinquecento, 
 its figures, passions, interests, imagery, appealed 
 to him, beset him, while at the same time he 
 saw his friend, his master (as he would have 
 liked to hold him) still more largely exposed 
 to the influence and strongly moved by it to 
 produce. His disposition, moreover, as his 
 sculpture sufficiently shows, was to project 
 characters, individuals, states of mind and of 
 feeling ; which was what Browning had again 
 done with splendid success. The only way in 
 which Browning could have warned him off 
 would have been, perhaps, by the splendour; 
 he had certainly done nothing to discredit the 
 attempt — had only made the challenge of the 
 general field more effective and inspiring. He 
 had placed the challenge, in a word, in its light. 
 
THE EXAMPLE OF BROWNING 
 
 233 
 
 for Story, or for any one, to take up, and Story 
 took it up as being, so to speak, the person 
 nearest. He is surely not to be accused of 
 having Browningised without being Browning ; in 
 the first place, because the effort not to write 
 about an importunate Italy is an unfair strain 
 to impose on any responsive mind ; and in the 
 second because, as the experiment shows, the tone 
 achieved is as little Browningesque as possible. 
 Story is limpid, so far as he goes — is crystalline ; 
 he is simple, in fine, where Browning bristles 
 with complexity. He arrives, naturally, at a 
 very much lower degree of intensity, but there 
 is at any rate nothing either presumptuous or 
 ridiculous in his handling of the bow. He 
 bends it, and the arrow goes straight enough. 
 
 " At last, however, as you see, 'tis done — 
 All but our Lord's head, and the Judas there. 
 A month ago he finished the St John 
 And has not touched it since that I'm aware. 
 And now he neither seems to think or care 
 About the rest, but wanders up and down 
 The cloistered gallery in his long dark gown, 
 Picking the black stones out to step upon ; 
 Or through the garden paces listlessly 
 With eyes fixed on the ground, hour after hour, 
 "While now and then he stoops and picks a flower. 
 And smells it, as it were, abstractedly. 
 What he is doing is a plague to me ! 
 Sometimes he stands before yon orange-pot, 
 
 k 
 
234 
 
 GRAFFITI D ITALIA 
 
 His hands behind him, just as if he saw 
 
 Some curious thing upon its leaves, 
 
 And then with a quick glance as if a sudden thought 
 
 Had struck his mind there standing on the spot, 
 
 He takes a little tablet out to draw ; 
 
 Then, muttering to himself, walks on agen. 
 
 He is the very oddest man of men ! 
 
 Brother Anselmo tells me that the book 
 
 ('Twas left by chance upon a bench one day, 
 
 And in its leaves our brother got a look) 
 
 Is scribbled over with all sorts of things — 
 
 Notes about colours, how to mix and lay. 
 
 With plans of flying figures, frames for wings, 
 
 Caricatures and forts and scaffoldings, 
 
 The skeletons of men and beasts and birds, 
 
 Engines and cabalistic signs and words, 
 
 Some written backwards, notes of music, lyres, 
 
 And wheels with boilers under them and fires, 
 
 A sort of lute made of a horse's skull. 
 
 Sonnets and other idle scraps of rhyme — 
 
 Of things like this the book was scribbled full. 
 
 I pray your Highness now, is this the way, 
 
 Instead of painting every day all day. 
 
 For him to trifle with our precious time 1 " 
 
 — which, as may easily be gathered, is the 
 contemporary view of Leonardo during his 
 troubled work on his Last Supper. We feel 
 the contemporary view, I think, quite pleasantly 
 enough caught to refresh our conviction of 
 the puerility of any pretended estimate of 
 property in subject. A subject is never any- 
 thing but his who can make something of it, 
 
GINEVRA DA SIENA 
 
 235 
 
 and it is the thing made that becomes the 
 property. But as between the thing made and 
 the making the distinction is not to be seized, 
 it is to the treatment alone that the fact of 
 possession attaches — from which it is superfluous 
 to warn us ofi". The treatment — it was long 
 ago said in another way — is the man himself, 
 whom we may be left free to plagiarise if we 
 are able. Such, in other words, is the looseness 
 with which we speak of another's doing the 
 thing "like" him. Its being the fruit of an- 
 other's identity may ever be trusted to make 
 it different enough. 
 
 In " Ginevra," at all events. Story's subject 
 is fine, as he had almost inveterately, and in 
 a degree that his success in production scarce 
 matched, the sense of the fine subject. Ginevra 
 is a young, unhappy wife — as to whom we feel 
 a little that, though the place about her gives 
 out a colour, her period is ambiguously expressed 
 — practically shut up for life, through long, 
 blank years, in punishment for the appearance 
 of infidelity to her husband. Childless, ne- 
 glected, forlorn, she has conceived a passion for 
 a young man who offers her the happiness her 
 husband denies her — a passion under stress of 
 which she has stood with him, for an hour, on 
 the edge of their common abyss. What has 
 
236 
 
 GRAFFITI D ITALIA 
 
 happened, however, is that, the abyss somehow 
 yawning too ominously, they have receded in 
 a sort of accepted terror and have separated 
 while still innocent in fact. "Ideal" beauty, 
 rather perhaps than familiar, or at least than 
 historic, truth, is the mark, at this moment, of 
 their conduct — the presentation of which does 
 for them, none the less, all it artfully can. The 
 case as given us is moreover the interesting 
 one, since the subject springs straight out of it. 
 This consists, in three words, of the fact that 
 the husband, cognisant, and willing to be, only 
 of their secret passion, with its offence to him- 
 self alone vivid to him, charges the young 
 woman, formidably, with the guilt from which 
 she has really, at the crisis, recoiled, and, 
 whether wholly convinced or but coldly vin- 
 dictive (since she is, after all, but too tangibly 
 in love), will receive no denial and grant no 
 mercy. The pair, for him, naturally perjured, 
 cannot not have done the deed and stained his 
 honour, and of the mystic influence under which 
 we are to understand that they recovered them- 
 selves in time he is incapable of taking account. 
 He vows vengeance upon the lover, whose life, 
 he declares to his wife, is now forfeit, so that 
 she, seeing her friend doomed, and doomed for 
 nothing, has a wonderful, and not unnatural, 
 
GINEVRA DA SIENA 
 
 237 
 
 revulsion and outbreak. She too is doomed, 
 and doomed, like the young man, for a com- 
 pleteness of union she has never known ; so that 
 not to have known it is what becomes for her, 
 of a sudden, horribly intolerable, and, as if to 
 falsify the barren fact even to her own sense, 
 she frantically proclaims and publishes what she 
 has at first denied. Her confession then, for 
 her husband, has not the truth of her original 
 protest ; the character of the passion of her 
 second attitude contrasts with that of the 
 passion of her first. By a revulsion of his own 
 thereupon, he is obliged to embrace something 
 even more detestable than the idea of his wrong, 
 some notion of the refinement of devotion, on 
 the part of each of the others, that had, at any 
 rate for the time, operated ; and this vision it 
 is — practically a deeper defiance of him than 
 any other — that most inflames and determines 
 him. He challenges, fights and slays the lover; 
 after which he has with his wife an encounter 
 that marks the dramatic climax of the situation, 
 bringing out as it does, for each, the tragic 
 vanity of all that has happened. For this 
 humiliation, however, he has at least the remedy 
 of the old-time marital power ; Ginevra can but 
 drink to the dregs the cup he compels her to 
 drain. Banished and rigidly confined, she be- 
 
 A ■ ■ i&t. 1 
 
238 
 
 GRAFFITI D ITALIA 
 
 comes another blighted Mariana, with the lone 
 Sienese villa for her moated grange, where she 
 is visited at last by a friend of her younger 
 years, to whom she counts over the links that 
 chain her to the past. She sits, she roams, in 
 the maddening stillness with her "fault" — that 
 worst of faults (now a mere mocking mistake) 
 of which the bitterness is that she has not even 
 the memory of possession. So at least, to my 
 eyes, the subject presents itself, though I will 
 not engage that this is the closest possible 
 report of Story's treatment of it. He has none 
 the less, through the whole thing, felicities of 
 tone, happy notes and shades that are like 
 memories of the Tuscan midsummer on terraces 
 where the lizard darts and in rooms where the 
 fixed frescoes, in long siestas, give upon nerves 
 strained by exile. 
 
 The poems contained in " Graffiti d'ltalia " 
 were in 1885 republished by the author in a 
 general collection of his verse. These two 
 volumes, designated respectively as " Parchments 
 and Portraits" and as "Monologues and Lyrics," 
 contain a number of pieces — notably "A Roman 
 Lawyer in Jerusalem : the Case of Judas " — not 
 included in the Graffiti. Dear to Story's imag- 
 ination, he repeatedly showed, was the rank 
 Rome of the earlier or later Empire ; witness, 
 
A ROMAN LAWYER 
 
 239 
 
 for instance, in the "Introduction" to the poem 
 just named, his mention of what he covets more 
 than any of the so numerous lost literary 
 treasures of antiquity — 
 
 " Stern Agrippina's diary and life, 
 Writ by herself, recording all her thoughts, 
 Deeds, passions — all the doings of old Eome, 
 Swarming around her, rife with scandals, crimes." 
 
 He speaks of these things always with force 
 
 and felicity — 
 
 " He pants to stand 
 In its vast circus all alive with heads 
 And quivering arms and floating robes, the air 
 Thrilled by the roaring fremitus of men, 
 The sun-lit awning heaving overhead, 
 Swollen and strained against its corded veins, 
 And flapping out its hem with loud report ; 
 The wild beasts roaring from the pit below. 
 The wilder crowd responding from above." 
 
 " A Koman Lawyer," the most sustained and on 
 the whole the most successful of his attempts to 
 reconstitute, as an individual case, some outlived 
 view of some historic event, joins to the merit 
 of a great deal of ingenuity and of point the 
 misfortune of a want of the poetic quality. This 
 deficiency, of a truth, it shares with Browning's 
 "Mr Sludge" or "Bishop Blougram," yet with 
 the elements of irony and philosophy less potent 
 than in those examples. What most strikes us, 
 
240 
 
 GRAFFITI D ITALIA 
 
 on Story's behalf, in the particular instance, is 
 the play of a mind that had enjoyed a legal as 
 well as a poetic training. Had the author ad- 
 hered to his original profession it would doubtless 
 have come in his way to do his best for no small 
 number of Judases not known to fame, or con- 
 demned at least to a more limited execration ; 
 in which direction, also, he would probably have 
 obtained his due proportion of acquittals. He 
 works brilliantly, at all events, in "A Roman 
 Lawyer " for that of his supposititious client, for 
 whose good faith he pressingly pleads, for whom 
 he in fact claims the distinction, among the 
 other followers of Christ, of supreme loyalty. 
 Judas's apparent lapse from this attitude was a 
 mistake of judgment and an excess of zeal. He 
 was but too passionately impatient to act in the 
 sense of his Lord's sublimest pretension and to 
 help him to the opportunity to be deified. The 
 changes are richly rung on all the possibilities 
 of the paradox, and what the author enjoys, we 
 feel, is his finding it intellectually, professionally, 
 so workable. He becomes thereby himself the 
 Roman lawyer, circulating in memory amid the 
 scenes and objects to which his fondest fancy 
 was attached. 
 
 Visibly, during all his Roman years, he lived 
 a double, or perhaps rather a triple inner life. 
 
THE TRIPLE LIFE 
 
 241 
 
 I count his personal and social existence as his 
 outer. Then came, in the first place, his com- 
 munion with the forms that the art of the studio 
 was to translate. After that came the constant 
 appeal of the actual and present Roman world, 
 always nudging him with suggestions for satires, 
 for portraits, for pictures grave and gay. Most 
 deeply within, to all appearance, sat the vision 
 of the other time, the alternative, the incompar- 
 able, real Rome ; in the light of which I am 
 mistaken if the past was not still more peopled 
 and furnished for him than the present. There 
 was the crowd in which, in excursions of the 
 spirit, he lost himself Let me add, however, 
 that the echoes of the contemporary scene, in 
 the two volumes of 1885, testify to the colour, 
 to the innumerable sharp accents, of surrounding 
 life in a way to excite, at a distance, our bitter 
 envy of so much precious opportunity. I have 
 mentioned " Giannone," and should like, with 
 more margin, to advert to such things as " The 
 Antechamber of Monsignore," as " II Curato," as 
 " Baron Fisco at Home," as, above all, " Zia 
 Nica," this last-named (the portrait of an old 
 tavern-crone in whom the memory of adventures 
 and the fires of passion still smoulder) being a 
 small cabinet-picture brilliantly brushed. To one 
 of the poems in particular contained in "Parch- 
 
 VOL. II. Q 
 
242 
 
 GRAFFITI D ITALIA 
 
 ments and Portraits" attaches, I think, the 
 interest of a high degree of sincerity. " Giro- 
 lamo, detto il Fiorentino, Desponds and Abuses 
 the World" — this heading is borne by a com- 
 position of some eight pages which is further 
 ushered in by an extract, in the original Italian, 
 from a lettera inedita di Girolamo really pro- 
 ceeding, we feel, from the same pen. The whole 
 thing expresses finely and pathetically the weari- 
 ness of the artist who, with whatever native 
 distinction, has had, at maturity, his full share 
 of disappointment and frustration. 
 
 " Success ! Yes, while you stinted me in praise 
 My pride upheld me ; to myself I said 
 * Some time they'll praise me, after I am dead. 
 The work is good, although the world delays ; 
 I for the prize can wait.' But now you blow 
 The trumpet in my honour I bend low, 
 And from my eyes my work's best charm has fled. 
 Once I compared it with the world's neglect, 
 And proudly said ' 'Tis better than they see.' 
 l^ow I behold it tainted with defect 
 In the broad light of what it ought to be." 
 
 Such passages in an artist's projection of another 
 artist may mostly be taken as the revelation of 
 the former's own emotion. Not less autobio- 
 graphic, and touching precisely by reason of their 
 slenderness of artifice, are, among the lyrics, the 
 
THE OLD ACHE 
 
 243 
 
 few verses entitled " The Sad Country," evidently 
 the persistent echo, after years, of the least en- 
 durable of the writer's bereavements. 
 
 " There is a sad, sad country, 
 Where often I go to see 
 A little child that for all my love 
 Will never come back to me. 
 
 There smiles he serenely on me 
 
 With a look that makes me cry ; 
 And he prattling runs beside me 
 
 Till I wish that I could die. 
 
 That country is dim and dreary, 
 
 Yet I cannot keep away. 
 Though the shadows are heavy and dark. 
 
 And the sunlight sadder than they. 
 
 And there, in a ruined garden, 
 
 Which once was gay with flowers, 
 I sit by a broken fountain. 
 
 And weep and pray for hours." 
 
 The lyrics in this collection are the least numer- 
 ous pieces, and, though Story was, as I have 
 noted, familiar with his lyre, are not perhaps the 
 most successful. Among them nevertheless is 
 the fine "lo Victis!" which was apparently to 
 excite a very general admiration. It will be 
 found, if I mistake not, in many an American 
 anthology. 
 
244 
 
 GRAFFITI D ITALIA 
 
 " I sing the hymn of the conquered, who fell in the Battle of 
 
 Life, 
 The hymn of the wounded, the beaten, who died overwhelmed 
 
 in the strife. 
 Not the jubilant song of the victors, for whom the resounding 
 
 acclaim 
 Of nations was lifted in chorus, whose brows wore the chaplet 
 
 of fame, 
 But the hymn of the low and the humble, the weary, the 
 
 broken in heart. 
 Who strove and who failed, acting bravely a silent and 
 
 desperate part ; 
 Whose youth bore no flower on its branches, whose hopes 
 
 burned in ashes away. 
 From whose hands slipped the prize they had grasped at, who 
 
 stood at the dying of day 
 With the wreck of their life all around them, unpitied, un- 
 heeded, alone. 
 With Death swooping down o'er their failure, and all but their 
 
 faith overthrown." 
 
 The two small volumes entitled respectively 
 "He and She: A Poet's Portfolio" and "A 
 Poet's Portfolio : Later Readings," and published 
 in 1884 and 1894, strikingly commemorate Story's 
 lyric overflow, really illustrating, on this account, 
 a case of some oddity. The Poet meets the Lady 
 in a woodland place, and, spending summer hours 
 together, they talk of many things, more or less 
 of everything ; during the intervals of which — 
 and the intervals diminish as the book proceeds 
 
STORY S POETIC EASE 
 
 245 
 
 — he reads out to her the loose verses, " fugitive " 
 pieces, as such things are called, that he happens 
 to have on hand. He is well provided, for his 
 portfolio produces them as freely as if they had 
 long been, from twenty quarters, regularly re- 
 turned with thanks. The friends discuss them 
 a little, but not overmuch, for it is the sign of 
 the colloquial form, as Story liked to use it, 
 that the talk is off on the instant, in any 
 direction, whenever the scent is crossed. And 
 so the "inedited" poems succeed each other, 
 untitled and unclassified, almost like improvisa- 
 tions of the moment, till they beget at last that 
 perplexity as to the author's poetic consciousness 
 which I have already noted. It becomes, in a 
 manner, an irresponsible outpouring ; so that, to 
 repeat, we wonder at the mixture of so much 
 eloquence with so much indifference. The lyric 
 voice is all there, but it seems detached and 
 automatic, sounding — even when most charm- 
 ingly — as from some pleasant but unregulated 
 habit. Story therefore affects us as concurring, 
 curiously, almost perversely, in some fine ex- 
 travagant waste or leakage, the consequence of 
 his living with a certain poetic magnificence. 
 He has the air, through the two volumes in 
 question, of caring inordinately little to present 
 
 ■ .%-ji 
 
246 
 
 GRAFFITI D ITALIA 
 
 his compositions, to prepare them for company 
 or otherwise insist on their individual dignity. 
 Such are the eccentricities of free and abundant 
 dreamers. Touching, in a high degree, at the 
 same time, on a possible supposition, is the 
 particular device of form that I have described. 
 The supposition is that some of the many lyrics 
 so gathered in may have returned to the fold, 
 disconcerted, out of countenance, after a rough 
 experience of the periodical press. Had some 
 of them really wandered far without encounter- 
 ing sympathy ? Their fate would have differed 
 in this case markedly from that of many mem- 
 bers of the same general flock, who, going forth 
 to seek their fortune, had also promptly enough 
 found it. Yet one catches one's self, critically, 
 fairly liking to think, for the beautiful pathos 
 of it, that we have here an almost unique case 
 of free ventures practically shipwrecked, bruised 
 and scared creatures welcomed back, in all the 
 silence of their misadventure, without a complaint 
 or a sigh. It is as if the author had really said, 
 with proud good-humour, " Well then, poor dears, 
 I'll do what I can for you " ; and then, having 
 detached from each the little tinkling bell of its 
 original appeal, had mustered them all afresh and 
 dropped them into the promiscuous pot, so that 
 lent, as it were, to the tragi-comic joke, they 
 
THEATRICALS 
 
 247 
 
 should at least flavour the broth. So, at any rate, 
 on their behalf, a restless critic may embroider. 
 
 I gather, meanwhile, however, that our friend's 
 fondest dream in a poetic way would have been 
 to write some play susceptible of presentation — 
 a possibility round which his imagination, it 
 must be added, all too sceptically hovered. It 
 was the effort in the world that most required 
 confidence, and not only confidence in general, 
 but an adequate dose of the particular theatric 
 intimacy. He published "Nero" in 1875, and, 
 more reservedly, he caused "Stephania" to be 
 privately printed a few years later. I do not 
 speak of the two or three small comedies ofl'ered 
 during bright Roman winters to Barberini 
 audiences — or at least speak of them, and of 
 Shakespearean evenings equally offered, and of 
 his personal love of the actor's art, and of the 
 handsome young costumed figures, the Portia, 
 the Nerissa, the Antonio, the Bassanio, that I 
 seem to see clustered as in a Veronese picture 
 round his vivid Shylock, only for their recall, 
 which I find in its way touching, of that dis- 
 couraged scenic curiosity which would yet not 
 consent to become a sound indifference. Having 
 printed " Stephania," of which the subject (given 
 the kind of thing) is, again, full of possibilities, 
 he sent the piece to his old friend Lord Lytton, 
 
 JfX' 
 
248 
 
 GRAFFITI D ITALIA 
 
 whose acknowledgment is before me. Their cor- 
 respondence had, with the lapse of time and the 
 multiplication of the other occupations of each, 
 inevitably shrunken, and Lytton was at this 
 time British Ambassador to France. Story, I 
 may premise, had heard from him a short time 
 previously, in a note of February 21st, 1888. 
 "A thousand affectionate thanks," he then wrote 
 from Paris, "for your letter of the 18th, just 
 received. I have already had the pleasure of 
 making your son Julian's acquaintance here at 
 the Embassy, and have long been impatient for 
 an opportunity to make acquaintance with his 
 studio. But human language cannot describe the 
 incessant rush of my life at Paris up to the 
 present moment. Niagara is nothing to it. I 
 have scarce time to breathe, and as for literary 
 
 work ! Good heavens, how I envy you the 
 
 life of calm creation, and how I wish I had 
 never set my foot on this treadmill ! You will 
 have a charming Ambassador [to Italy] in 
 Dufferin, and I envy him, and congratulate 
 you, on his appointment." At the time of his 
 later writing Story was at St Moritz, in the 
 Engadine, where, as we shall see, he had built 
 himself a final refuge from the stress of the 
 Italian summer. 
 
A FRIEND S REMARKS 
 
 249 
 
 Lord Lytton to W. W. Story. 
 
 " Hotel Bernina, Samaden, Aug. 22nd, 1888. 
 
 . . . " I can't tell you how delightful to 
 me was my little glimpse of you the other day, 
 nor what old and sweet associations it revived. 
 I have often thought of your Engadine home 
 and wondered what it was like, for I fancied 
 you had built your tabernacle among these 
 mountains many years ago, knowing that you 
 had long been a Swiss proprietor. And, though 
 I have not fallen in love either with the 
 scenery or the climate of this lofty land, I 
 must say that the loveliest spot I have seen 
 here is your domain, and that I think your 
 house, ' both in conception and execution,' a 
 real creation of genius. I missed however, or 
 perhaps I ought to say neglected, the opportun- 
 ity of a word with you about your ' Stephania,' 
 which I read at Paris with great interest. The 
 fact is, I felt shy of talking about it before a 
 family audience ; and the more so as my im- 
 pressions of the play are mixed and not easily 
 describable without tedious reference to certain 
 notions of my own about dramatic construction. 
 I read it under the great disadvantage of having 
 read not long previously an acting play on the 
 same subject by Karl Edler, which had powerfully 
 affected me, and parts of which, indeed, I had 
 
 .^\_ 
 
250 
 
 GRAFFITI D ITALIA 
 
 read with very wet eyes. I came therefore to 
 the perusal of your play with a mind prepos- 
 sessed by the emotional effects of a different 
 conception and treatment of its subject. I have 
 never read any imaginative writing of yours 
 that has not seemed special to yourself, and 
 your ' Stephania ' is no exception. What little 
 I know of the story of Crescentius and his 
 wife inclines me to think, moreover, that your 
 treatment of it is probably more true to history 
 than Edler's ; but his, at least in its effect 
 upon myself, is more pathetic ; and, rightly or 
 wrongly, I have accustomed myself to regard 
 drama as the most emotional of all arts. Con- 
 flict of motives, producing in circumstance situa- 
 tions from which there is apparently no issue, 
 and in feeling or action problems that on the 
 face of them strike the audience or the reader 
 as insoluble, seems to me to lie at the founda- 
 tion of all its effects ; and it deals in such 
 rapid and vehement contrast that of all arts it 
 is perhaps the most opposed in every one of its 
 conditions to the art in which your genius has 
 found its fullest and freest, as well as highest, 
 development." 
 
 The situation depicted in " Stephania " had 
 already been presented by Story in that com- 
 
STEPHANIA 
 
 251 
 
 pressed volume on Castle St Angelo which may- 
 be taken as a sequel or appendix to "Roba di 
 Roma." The record of mediaeval turbulence finds 
 itself in those pages rather too foreshortened 
 for lucidity, but the anecdote of the perjury 
 of the Emperor Otho III. and of Stephania's 
 vengence emerges sufficiently distinct. Crescen- 
 tius, Consul of Rome in 1002, holding the castle 
 against the Emperor at some customary crisis, 
 surrenders at last on Otho's taking a solemn 
 engagement to spare his life. In possession of 
 the stronghold, and with Crescentius in his 
 power, Otho then, in defiance of his sacred 
 pledge, causes his victim to be hanged from 
 the ramparts, after which he departs from Rome. 
 Stephania, meanwhile, the Consul's beautiful and 
 brooding widow, takes refuge in a convent, 
 nursing her wrong and her grief till, in the 
 fulness of time, Otho reappears. Her oppor- 
 tunity, with this, dawns upon her ; she comes 
 back to the world and obtains access to the 
 Emperor, on whom she exerts such fascination 
 that, though aware of her identity, he offers 
 her the apparent possibility of becoming his 
 wife. He, more substantially, does make her 
 his mistress, which she consents to become in 
 order to carry out the more effectively her 
 prime intention — that of making him pay with 
 
252 
 
 GRAFFITI D ITALIA 
 
 his own false life for her husband's. This, in 
 the end, is what she accomplishes : Otho dies 
 by her hand when most completely in her 
 power. The subject, for a writer getting into 
 close quarters with it, had much to give, the 
 general measure of which is all to Storj^'s 
 honour. His difficulty, however, has been that 
 he marches through it with too straight a 
 step and reaches his catastrophe by too simple 
 a process. He had evidently, after his " Nero," 
 felt, for the dream of representation, the im- 
 portance of being simple ; but endless are the 
 possible vicissitudes of that perilous pursuit. 
 The writer who holds his situation tight squeezes 
 too much out of it — more than managers, actors, 
 more even than the round-mouthed public itself 
 can swallow, or at any rate digest. The writer 
 who holds it loosely, on the other hand, lets 
 it slip through his fingers. So, possibly, would 
 Story's correspondent have described the mis- 
 adventure that, dramatically speaking, had lain 
 in wait for " Stephania." The drama was to 
 turn inevitably to the play of inward things, 
 of mixed and discordant feelings, and of this 
 progression the heroine's mind and attitude were 
 to become the open field. This, I take it, repre- 
 sents the " emotion " for which the situation 
 would have been valuable to Lord Lytton. 
 
NERO 
 
 253 
 
 Story cuts the emotion short — considers it too 
 little, flattering himself, no doubt, that he has 
 in hand a vivid picture of action. This is too 
 questionably the case ; the theme, all round, 
 requires amplification ; its interest is in its 
 possible details and in the amount of illustra- 
 tion the heroine's ambiguous behaviour demands. 
 Story has faced indeed the ambiguity, shown 
 her as apparently tempted — that is pacified, 
 or, as we say, "squared" — so long as she can 
 believe in her chance of becoming Empress. 
 It is when this chance fails that her purely 
 vindictive passion revives ; she would other- 
 wise, we seem to gather, have been precariously 
 bribable. The complication is interesting, though 
 making the story materially less the illustration 
 of a mere vindictive plan. The author may 
 very well have thought the mere vindictive 
 plan too stale a theatrical property. Only in 
 that case he should have insisted more on his 
 alternative. 
 
 "Nero," published in 1875, is not open to the 
 charge of a want of amplification, inasmuch as 
 its five acts deal, in successive scenes and jumps 
 of space, with every incident of the engaging 
 protagonist's career. The author speaks of it 
 as a play, and as if it might have been placed 
 on the stage ; yet it is in fact but a scenic 
 
254 
 
 GRAFFITI D ITALIA 
 
 chronicle, of a sort for which he had, in the 
 Elizabethan drama, or even in Goethe's " Gotz 
 von Berlichingen," plenty of precedent. More 
 than anything, indeed, this production exempli- 
 fies that fondest habit of the writer's fancy at 
 which we have already glanced, the curiosity, 
 the artistic sympathy, that he held at the dis- 
 posal of the more "lurid" Koman past. The 
 thing becomes thus a piece of not particularly 
 pondered intellectual sport, an imaginative romp, 
 for exercise, through Tacitus and Suetonius. I 
 find its most attaching page, I confess, its dedi- 
 cation. In this epistle, addressed to the late 
 Frances Anne Kemble, he recalls the occasion 
 of his having, during the winter of 1873-74, read 
 his composition aloud to three or four friends, 
 of whom Mrs Kemble had been one. The author 
 of these reminiscences happened to be another, 
 and he well remembers how the shock of earth- 
 quake to which the letter alludes contributed to 
 our general impression of evoked horror. For 
 Story read so richly and forcibly that he did 
 vividly evoke, and that the interpretation for 
 which he enviously sighs might well have 
 rested in his own hands. To know Mrs Kemble 
 was to know, certainly, the one, the supreme 
 reader — a range of tone, an expression, a variety 
 that nothing could equal ; but it was to know 
 
THE DIALOGUE FORM 
 
 255 
 
 at the same time, wonderfully enough, a listener 
 almost as articulate, whose admirable face was 
 then scarce less at play than when it accom- 
 panied her admirable voice. I seem to recall 
 that, though my ears, on the far-away evening 
 in question, were all for Story, my eyes were 
 for our distinguished companion, in whom the 
 whole matter was mirrored, commented, silently 
 represented. 
 
 By nothing that Story published is he per- 
 haps so completely characterised as by the two 
 volumes of " Conversations in a Studio " which 
 appeared in 1890, after having run their course 
 in " Blackwood." Their particular weakness 
 may be mentioned at once, to get it out of the 
 way : they suffer, that is, as prolonged colloquies 
 between a pair of talkers, by the absence, in any 
 case, of a thesis or argument, and above all by 
 that of any exemplified opposition of view be- 
 tween the interlocutors. A talk, a "real" talk, 
 when of interest, is in its degree, at the least, 
 a drama, with some question or conclusion in the 
 balance and in suspense ; and that the author 
 should, in these things, not have been mindful 
 of that truth illustrates markedly enough that 
 friendly and confident attitude in him toward 
 his subject which ever lightened his sense of 
 diflficulty. A letter from his publisher, while 
 
256 
 
 GRAFFITI D ITALIA 
 
 the Conversations were coming out in Maga, 
 expresses regret that the two discursive friends 
 should not have been more differentiated ; to 
 which Story's reply was, precisely ivith his con- 
 fidence, that he had not intended in any degree 
 an action or a scene, or that anything should 
 depend on Belton's or on Mallett's character. 
 What he had, none the less, we take it, meant, 
 was that something should depend on their 
 differences — nothing less in fact than the full 
 squeeze to be administered, at every turn, to 
 the idea in hand. Yielding or not, at any rate, 
 to the highest pressure, the idea, in these pages, 
 does spring up and abound, testifying to the 
 variety of the author's preoccupations and curi- 
 osities. These are historic, aesthetic, scientific, 
 theologic, and to each of his lively hares, as 
 he starts it, he gives the most animated chase. 
 Wit and fancy, as well as a multifarious reading, 
 accompany the pursuit, with the single draw- 
 back, as I say, that our friends hunt too much 
 together. It had been the author's notion, we 
 can scarce doubt, that one of them should have 
 represented his own mind, own sympathies and 
 convictions, and that the other should have 
 offered a surface to react or rebound from ; but 
 this purpose, if entertained, soon fails of effect. 
 The speakers abound mainly in each other's 
 
 I 
 
SHAKESPEAREOLATRY 
 
 257 
 
 sense, and with the consequence, really, that 
 this sense becomes all the author's. They 
 project together on one occasion a " night of 
 revel," in which certain of the great figures of 
 history may meet round a table splendidly 
 spread ; whereupon Story inevitably strikes his 
 leading note. " My first man then shall be 
 Antony, with his bull -neck, his rich curling 
 hair, his robust figure, his deep -set sparkling 
 eyes and his brave open look." It is impossible 
 to do more for Antony — with what the 
 " Grafiiti " had already done for him in the 
 verses, of such breadth and ease, that show him 
 as panting to rejoin Cleopatra and as yielding 
 blindly to his impulse. 
 
 I should add that the ''first man" of the 
 second speaker is, no less characteristically, 
 Shakespeare, for Story is a signal case of the 
 obsession of that name, which seldom fails to 
 shine out for him, at the end of a few steps, 
 in whatever direction he moves. His vision of 
 Goethe, in truth, is scarce less importunate, but 
 quite to the opposite end, his tolerance of the 
 great German being probably the shortest ever 
 placed on record and his antipathy expressed 
 with amusing frankness. Shakespeare, on the 
 great occasion, will be " the handsomest man 
 at the table, whoever comes" — which gives as 
 
 VOL. II. R 
 
 •Jdl: \^M' i-:lt'": ':■«. Ut:."illW rL^:lks3*^i ■"■ *: 'd^ 
 
258 
 
 GRAFFITI D ITALIA 
 
 nothing could do the scale and tone of our 
 friend's loyalty. It was certainly for his peace 
 of mind that he was not to live to be present 
 at the so marked multiplication of our late- 
 coming wonderments, questions, doubts. We 
 feel that he could scarce decently have endured 
 them ; we feel assuredly that they would have 
 darkened his close of life ; while nothing indeed 
 is, further, more apparent than the dramatic 
 value, as it may be called in the connection 
 here suggested, of so typical a case of Shake- 
 speareolatry. So much of Story's attitude can 
 be gathered from his various prose pages that 
 we feel him to present uncritical adoration in 
 its most ingenuous, though truly not in its 
 least militant, form ; and we get thereby an 
 interesting measure of the positively personal 
 ravage that might become the consequence, far 
 and wide, of any effective movement for the 
 revision of the most attaching of literary mys- 
 teries. We fairly see it, the question of the 
 title of the Stratford player, loom before us, 
 in this lurid light, as a sort of huger Dreyfus 
 Case of the future, splitting the Anglo-Saxon 
 race into monstrous hostile camps, dividing and 
 desolating families and friendships as nothing 
 has ever done, arraying in short mighty armies 
 
FROM LONGFELLOW TO GOETHE 
 
 259 
 
 face to face. The vision is apocalyptic, and 
 may give us all pause ; and I meanwhile feel 
 it, without joking, a point made for peace that 
 our irrepressible friend is out of the fray. 
 
 When Belton, in the " Conversations," suggests 
 Sir Philip Sidney for their symposium, his 
 companion, though admitting the claim, hopes 
 the author of the "Arcadia" will not wish to 
 read that work to them. "No fear of that," 
 Belton wittily answers ; "he is a gentleman 
 every inch of him" — than which nothing could 
 better cover all the delicacies of the case. 
 Whereupon the current suddenly floats us, as 
 is its wont, a million miles away, to the question 
 of the wines of antiquity, and of the queer com- 
 position of several, in which the writer shows 
 himself intimately versed. This carries us, 
 through other matters, to an amusing echo of 
 the most popular manner of Longfellow, boldly 
 but not viciously thrown off by Mallett, on 
 whom, as so far from the first to see how his 
 illustrious friend, as the phrase is, lent himself, 
 the guilt of parody may doubtless sit lightly. 
 
 " Spake full well in ages olden 
 One of the Teutonic race : 
 Speech is silvern — silence golden ; 
 Everything should have its place. 
 
 ,i». ...i.. it.. 
 
 1 *\ I 
 
 .J jdt.,i* ."ji^, jL.'i: .di 
 
 fcl. ,4. 
 
260 
 
 GRAFFITI D ITALIA 
 
 Least said is the soonest mended ; 
 
 We must give as we would take ; 
 And the bow too rudely bended, 
 
 In the end is sure to break." 
 
 But I may not attempt an enumeration of the 
 constant heterogeneous haul, in these pages, of 
 Story's large loose net. He darts from the 
 Koman Code to the Decay of Enthusiasm, and 
 from a long and extraordinarily enumerative 
 disquisition on recorded longevities to the pro- 
 nunciation of Latin, taking Byron, Michael 
 Angelo, Lope da Vega, Dryden, Goethe and a 
 hundred other matters by the way, and looking 
 in on Shakespeare with or without an occasion. 
 Gallantly frank is his impatience of " Faust," 
 which he regards as a strangely overesteemed 
 performance; making dauntlessly the point — 
 obviously makeable — of the curiously inadequate 
 nature of the bribe offered by Mephistopheles, 
 the meagre bait (the mere taste of youth and 
 of a simple girl) with which so seasoned a sage 
 is caught. The question is interesting and 
 may be, has been, argued ; the critic's idea being 
 that the quality of the miracle was worthy 
 neither of the tempter nor of the tempted ; but 
 to follow here at all is to follow too far. I 
 follow, for the moment, but into the volume 
 of "Excursions in Art and Letters," published 
 
MARCUS AURELIUS 
 
 261 
 
 in 1891 and consisting of five papers, on technical 
 subjects, that had already appeared. They are 
 animated studies, and when Story went into 
 things he went in well, astride, for the most 
 part, of some active hobby of his own, and rode 
 hard to a conclusion. He concludes, for instance, 
 almost with passion, against the presumed con- 
 nection of Phidias and the Elgin marbles. He 
 concludes, as to the history of the art of cast- 
 ing in plaster, against the views of his old friend 
 of Boston and of Rome, Charles C. Perkins — 
 author of " Du Moulage en Platre chez les 
 Anciens" — controverts with a success I may 
 not estimate the assumption of the early birth 
 of the process, placing it, to his own satisfaction, 
 at the dawn of the Renaissance. And when 
 I speak of his inclination to find subjects it is 
 with a sense of the bravery that makes it 
 possible for him to call down into colloquy the 
 shade of Marcus Aurelius, with whom he dis- 
 cusses, and on no poor level, the respective 
 merits of Paganism and Christianity. He was 
 as attached to the great philosophic emperor 
 as he was indifferent to the great German poet. 
 " There he stood before me as I knew him from 
 his busts and statues, with his full brow and 
 eyes, his sweet mouth, his curling hair, now 
 a little grizzled with age, and a deep meditat- 
 
 
 ■i t J, ■ y- 
 
 i A 
 
262 
 
 GRAFFITI D ITALIA 
 
 ive look of tender earnestness on his face. I 
 know not why I was not startled to see him 
 there, but I was not. Nothing seemed more fit- 
 ting. . , ." The case being, admirably, that 
 on the stormy winter night, in the old Roman 
 palace, when the bells of the Capucin convent 
 had struck two, the student of the Meditations 
 sat so under their noble spell that communion 
 of spirit with spirit rose to its highest possi- 
 bility. The student's reverence indeed is not 
 paralysing, else we should have had none of 
 the beauty of the conversation, which comes 
 out admirably, for instance, in the emperor's 
 retort upon his guest's challenge in respect to 
 the puerility of so much of the ancient annals 
 of Olympus. What had the Christians to show, 
 was inquired on this occasion, if they compared 
 their weak Madonna and her emaciated Son 
 with the splendour of the Greek types ? " Who 
 could look at that magnificent impersonation 
 of Zeus at Olympia, by Phidias, so grand, so 
 simple, so serene, with its golden robes and 
 hair, its divine expression of power and sweet- 
 ness, its immense proportions, its perfection of 
 workmanship, and not feel that they were in 
 the presence of an august, tremendous and im- 
 passionate power ? " Which is a question that, 
 letting the answer drop, we may like to leave 
 
THE SMALL HOURS 
 
 263 
 
 our accomplished friend contentedly, gratefully 
 submissive to ; in the attitude of charmed 
 response to the sovereign suggestion of Rome, 
 housed, alike for study and for society, by the 
 brave Barberini walls, and with the familiar, 
 the year -long sound from the neighbouring 
 convent just figuring the voice of the siren. 
 
 J. ^'.. ». A "ft • 
 
 Sb 
 
 "iA\ 
 
XI. 
 
 AMERICAN COMMISSIONS. 
 
 Story paid, with his wife, in 1882, a visit of 
 some length to his own country, where his time 
 was mainly spent in New York, Boston and 
 Washington. His daughter had married in 1876 
 a distinguished Florentine and retired soldier, 
 the Commendatore Simone Peruzzi, attached to 
 the service and high in the confidence of the 
 late King Humbert, and, separated in conse- 
 quence from her parents, she was from this time 
 the correspondent to whom their letters were 
 mainly addressed. I find one of these, from the 
 neighbourhood of Boston, but undated, and I 
 refer it, from presumption, though not with 
 entire confidence, to this summer of 1882. 
 
 Mrs Story to her Daughter. 
 
 " Elm Hill, EoxBURy, Aug. 6tL 
 . . . "I can get no time for retiring to my 
 own occupations ; life is all en evidence, and 
 
AN UNDATED LETTER 
 
 265 
 
 pretty nearly all of it passed in full conclave 
 somewhere or other. But this is the necessary 
 consequence of a short visit at the end of a 
 long absence. We had a most charming and re- 
 freshing visit at the Dexters' — refreshing in more 
 senses than one, for the heat of Boston is beyond 
 anything you have ever dreamed of. We re- 
 turned there to Grandmama's house, but were 
 forced to flight again by the heat of the nights 
 and the army of mosquitoes. Here at Elm Hill 
 it is most charming ; a beautiful house in a 
 lovely spot, handsome and agreeable people and 
 lovely children, horses and carriages to any 
 extent, and sweet corn and tomatoes to the 
 same. I have a thousand things to tell you, 
 but am so pressed for time that I have only one 
 thought — which is how to carry out the day's 
 programme without getting into positive disgrace 
 with somebody. Papa enjoys himself, but is so 
 utterly unable to get a moment for work of any 
 sort that he does not even write a letter. He 
 is distracted with engagements and longs for 
 the peace of shipboard — think of that. We have 
 a dozen large boxes to pack, and no end of be- 
 longings scattered about in all directions. If I 
 could get all this roha out to Bome it would 
 help to fill up the dear old barrack -palazzo. 
 What do you think of Nice for a fortnight en 
 
 ta 
 
 ,,J f. ..?: *-\¥/-J-: 
 
 
 i,../^ 
 
 -^■^: 
 
266 
 
 AMERICAN COMMISSIONS 
 
 route f I long to hear about Miss Thesiger. 
 Milnes Gaskell, how is he? . . ." 
 
 To which the following, of a few days later, 
 may serve as postscript. 
 
 Mrs Story to her Daughter. 
 
 " Boston, Aug. VI th. 
 
 . . . "I thought that my visit to America 
 would be the means of uniting more firmly the 
 family circle, but, alas ! I fear we but sow the 
 seeds of bitterness, for they are all jealous of 
 the duration of our visits and fearful that we 
 shall unfairly distribute our time and attentions. 
 Often it is not where we would go, but where 
 we must, imperiously dictated by the powers that 
 be. I do not see how we can possibly squeeze 
 into our remaining days one -half of the visits 
 we have accepted, and these are not a tenth part 
 of our invitations, the greater number having 
 been on the instant declined. As we were 
 sitting on the lawn yesterday afternoon at Elm 
 Hill, watching the game of croquet, Mr Sumner 
 drove up with Laurence Oliphant, who had ar- 
 rived that very morning in the steamer. They 
 stayed some time and then we drove into town 
 with them. Mr Oliphant leaves to-day for 
 Newport, and Papa has given him some letters 
 to friends there." 
 
RENEWED AMERICAN IMPRESSIONS 267 
 
 This next more definitely places itself. 
 Mrs Story to her Daughter. 
 
 "New York, Nov. nth, 1882. 
 . . . "We have had the committee here, 
 and they have discussed the monument to Judge 
 Marshall, leaving it all to Papa's taste and 
 genius. He is to go to Washington to select 
 the site, but they wish him to be there during 
 the session of Congress, so that his selection 
 may be at once confirmed by the House. You 
 remember well enough the whirl of a London 
 season ; this is like it for us, and I can never 
 find time to write at ease. Some stray tired 
 moment is all I can find, and the card-leaving, 
 which must all be done in person, and the notes 
 to be answered, and the lists, very complicated, 
 to be kept without mistake of time and place, 
 give me more than enough to do. At the 
 weddings and afternoon tea - parties the fine 
 clothes surprise me. I have never seen such 
 gorgeousness on such small occasions. We saw 
 at Mrs Paran Stevens's on Sunday night the 
 jeunesse doree, and it reeked — one half of it — of 
 Worth. Young ladies, * buds ' they call them, 
 
 in sleeveless gowns ! Mrs is not a success 
 
 either as an actress or as a beauty. Of the 
 latter they have scores of a superior brand. The 
 
 it-,. . J : . -mt 1*3.1, 
 
268 
 
 AMERICAN COMMISSIONS 
 
 climate is at this time very trying — one day 
 Siberian, the next tropical, and the rest the 
 worst kind of heavy scirocco. We die over the 
 heat of the houses, and the hotels are suffocating." 
 
 One of Story's professional concerns during 
 this sojourn was the question of the site, at 
 Washington, for the monument to Chief- Justice 
 Marshall, for which he had accepted the com- 
 mission a year or two earlier. This work, placed 
 in position in 1884 and, as the pedestal records, 
 " Erected by the Bar and the Congress of the 
 United States," has, in a high degree, the mass 
 and dignity prescribed by its subject, and the 
 great legal worthy, seated aloft, in the mild 
 Washington air, before the scene of his enacted 
 wisdom, bends his high brow and extends his 
 benevolently demonstrative hand in the exem- 
 plary manner of the recognised sage and with 
 all the serenity of the grand style. I find a 
 letter from the Librarian of Congress informing 
 the author that the work was on May 10th 
 "unveiled with appropriate ceremonies"; and 
 with this communication connects itself that of 
 an eminent Washington friend who writes to 
 him immediately after the proceedings. " You 
 have a right to be proud of the admirable work, 
 as I am for you. The image is fully up to the 
 
STATUES AT WASHINGTON 
 
 269 
 
 greatness of the original, and that is enough to 
 say, for he was one of the really great Americans 
 of his time." The spring of the previous year 
 had meanwhile seen due honour rendered to 
 the bronze image of Joseph Henry, revered in 
 American science and long the animating genius 
 of the Smithsonian Institute — the Professor 
 Henry whose name, I cannot here forbear to 
 record, thanks to a former family connection 
 with the bearer of it (the connection, remem- 
 bered, cherished, anecdotic, on the paternal part, 
 of grateful pupil with benignant tutor), had had 
 for my early years such a suggestion of mysteri- 
 ous greatness as inevitably determines now, to 
 my fancy, the character of the memorial. " This 
 is the week of the annual meeting of the American 
 Academy of Science," writes another Washington 
 friend in April, 1883 — a friend whose name would 
 figure again one of our " shades," a shade of old 
 Newport days, could our shades still be pursued. 
 " Its members and magnates were all present," 
 Mr Alexander Bliss continues, " as well as the 
 officials of State, all the Judges, the Senators, 
 and all the Members in town. The President 
 only was absent — he being, as the papers will 
 have told you, fishing in Florida. The day was 
 bright and joyous, and the bronze eyes of the 
 good old savant first saw the light amid the 
 
 k - J 
 
 .1. .'^ ■;;:.„<; 
 
 .i^. 
 
270 
 
 AMERICAN COMMISSIONS 
 
 budding trees of his own Smithsonian, in its 
 fresh spring garb. The Misses Henry are 
 thoroughly satisfied, as they will doubtless report 
 to you. Chief- Justice Waite Avas rather the 
 presiding genius of the occasion, making the 
 address at the actual dropping of the veil." I 
 turn over light mementoes, of pleasant sugges- 
 tion, of this Washington winter, invitations to 
 dine at the White House, " to meet H. E. the 
 Govr. - Genl. of Canada/' lady's dinner - cards, 
 relics of such banquets, with the names and the 
 order of each of the thirty-six guests, courteous 
 requests from high officials — a list of eminent 
 signatures — for a hearing of the lecture on 
 Michael Angelo already elsewhere delivered and 
 eventually published in the " Excursions." The 
 particular pleasantness of Washington still abides 
 in these reminders, giving out, for any initiated 
 sense, a faint fragrance as of old dried rose- 
 leaves ; so fast, as we feel in the American air 
 the pulse of change, does even a comparatively 
 recent antiquity take on, with faded flowers and 
 ribbons, with superseded performers, " the tender 
 grace of a day that is dead." I should call up 
 ghosts indeed were I here to be beguiled into 
 any reference to my own handful of impressions 
 of the American federal capital more than twenty 
 years ago. 
 
STATUE ON BUNKER HILL 
 
 271 
 
 I find myself doubtless better employed in 
 noting two or three occasions, belonging to the 
 previous period, that had still served, for Story, 
 as opportunities of intercourse with his own 
 country. His bronze statue of Colonel William 
 Prescott, who survived, heroically, the battle of 
 Bunker Hill, was set up, on the anniversary of 
 that day in 1881, in the immediate presence of 
 the existing monument. I find it noted that, 
 modelled in the Eoman studio, the features of 
 the young colonial general, as to which docu- 
 ments were not abundant, had been visibly in- 
 spired by those of the artist's friend Arthur 
 Dexter, Prescott's great-grandson. Mr Robert 
 C. Winthrop, who delivered the elegant address 
 that accompanied the unveiling of the image, 
 alludes to Story's presentation of the hero " in 
 the light banyan coat and broad -brimmed hat 
 which he is known to have thrown on in the 
 intense heat of the day and the battle, in ex- 
 change for the more stately and cumbrous uni- 
 form in which he had marched from Cambridge 
 the night before and which may be seen dropped 
 beneath his feet. His eagle gaze," this speaker 
 continued, " is riveted with intense energy on 
 the close-approaching foe. With his left hand 
 he hushes and holds back the impetuous followers 
 who are to await his word ; with his right he 
 
 f . ; 
 
 ■^i 
 
272 
 
 AMERICAN COMMISSIONS 
 
 is about to lift the sword that is to be their 
 signal for action" — the sword still preserved, 
 for us, at a distance, in that literary com- 
 memoration given it by Thackeray, who relates 
 in the opening passage of "The Virginians" 
 that he had seen it crossed with another, the 
 weapon carried by an ancestor on the Tory side, 
 over the chimney-piece of the soldier's grandson, 
 the historian of Mexico and Peru. The lecture 
 on Michael Angelo, just mentioned, brings back 
 to me the remembrance of one of Story's later 
 and more interspaced visits to London — an im- 
 pression with which the presence of Lowell is 
 much mingled — and the somewhat blurred vision 
 in particular of the beautiful great room of a 
 generous house facing the Marble Arch, in which, 
 one summer afternoon, a host of distinguished 
 people gathered to listen to the lecturer. The 
 latter's compendious tribute to the supreme 
 sculptor-painter, which may now so conveniently 
 be read, had all the interest and eloquence that 
 his special authority could give it, but I seem 
 to have preserved from the scene much less the 
 sense of the address itself, and of the points 
 made in it, than that of a fine, a delightful 
 illustration of one of the great London fashions. 
 This fashion, at the height of the " season," with 
 so wonderful a rush, was to slip in a slice of 
 
A LONDON AFTERNOON 
 
 273 
 
 Michael Angelo, or of any other cold joint from 
 the sideboard of the higher life, between three 
 and four o'clock, between the copious lunch and 
 the drive to Hurlingham, the impending private 
 view, the garden-party out of town, the tea- 
 party at home, between the jaws in fine, power- 
 fully made to gape, of the gorged afternoon, and 
 to have available for each of these sequences the 
 same unperturbed blandness. The occasion was 
 thus surrounded, amid the courtesies and splen- 
 dours of the house, with the rustle and fragrance 
 and shimmer that were the mark of great enter- 
 tainments, so that one could freely admire, in 
 the rich and artful light, that triumph of good 
 manners which consists in the mastery of such 
 signs of attention as will serve for any one social 
 object as well as for any other, such attestations 
 of presence as will almost represent a felt relation. 
 Not one of these had been wanting for one of the 
 auditors who afterwards walked westward, south- 
 ward, over the green stretches of the Park, to 
 Kensington ; and yet what was mainly striking 
 to him, as I say, was not the stuff of the lecture, 
 to which he was to do justice in the future, but 
 the brilliant, graceful, successful comedy of all 
 the rest of the matter. Which view of the case 
 may be noted, moreover, without prejudice to 
 any one concerned. The act of homage, all 
 VOL. II. s 
 
274 
 
 AMERICAN COMMISSIONS 
 
 round, was an act of aspiration, of noble yearn- 
 ing amid dire distractions, and the sculptor's — 
 that is Story's — florid Sardanapalus throned in 
 one of the rooms. 
 
 A demonstration of a simpler strain had 
 meanwhile doubtless been the delivery at Salem, 
 Massachusetts, in 1878, of the Ode addressed by 
 Story to the memory of the founder and first 
 Governor of the province, John Endicott, the 
 anniversary of whose landing on the site of the 
 present city, September 18th, is kept from half- 
 century to half- century. 
 
 " I send my voice from far beyond the sea ; 
 Only a voice — and therefore fit to be 
 Among the dim and ghostly company 
 
 That, from historic realms of shadowy gloom, 
 And from the silent world beyond the tomb, 
 This day shall come, their living sons to greet 
 With voiceless presence, and with noiseless feet, 
 To join the long procession in the street, 
 And listen to the praise 
 Of the old deeds and days 
 That in our memories evermore are sweet." 
 
 Incorrigibly absent and, from the native point of 
 view perhaps, sadly Romanised, the poet invokes 
 with evident sincerity, and with all due lyric 
 dignity, the traditions and the personal memories 
 of his younger time — rejoicing in his task more- 
 
THE SALEM COMMEMORATION 
 
 275 
 
 over if only for the occasion given him poetically 
 to greet his father. 
 
 " Dearest to me, and first of all the throng 
 
 That slowly moves along, 
 
 Is one belovM form, with face benign. 
 Whose birthday fell on the same day as thine, 
 Oh pleasant town of mine ! 
 
 'Tis the great Jurist, all his features bright 
 
 With an irradiating inner light." 
 
 He warms again, as he fixes it, in his alien air, 
 to the picture of his New England boyhood and 
 the renewed voice of its attendant spirits. 
 
 " They peer from every window-pane, 
 From every alley, street and lane 
 
 They whisper on the air. 
 They haunt the meadows green and wide. 
 The garden-walk, the riverside, 
 The beating mill adust with meal, 
 The rope- walk with its whirring wheel, 
 The elm grove on the sunny ridge, 
 The rattling draw, the echoing bridge ; 
 The lake on which we used to float 
 What time the blue jay screamed his note, 
 The voiceful pines that ceaselessly 
 Breathe back their answer to the sea." 
 
 And then, with this note, he recalls, as the rich- 
 est treasure of the time, that breath of outlandish 
 ports that was borne home, for watchful young 
 
 i#'^'i'- :*<■■'*-,. 
 
 
 ^'t 
 
276 AMERICAN COMMISSIONS 
 
 senses, by the tokens, so early to shrink, of ^eat 
 sea-traiBc. 
 
 " Ah me, how many an autumn day 
 "We watched with palpitating breast 
 Some stately ship, from India or Cathay, 
 Laden with spicy odours from the East, 
 
 Come sailing up the bay ! 
 Unto our youthful hearts elate 
 What wealth beside their real freight 
 Of rich material things they bore ! 
 Ours were Arabian cargoes, fair, 
 Mysterious, exquisite and rare ; 
 From far romantic lands built out of air 
 
 On an ideal shore ; 
 Sent by Aladdin, Camaralzaman, 
 Morgiana or Badoura or the Khan ; 
 Treasures of Sinbad, vague and wondrous things, 
 Beyond the reach of aught but youth's imaginings." 
 
 With Browning, in these later years, his 
 correspondence ceased to be frequent, not from 
 any diminution of friendship, but because of their 
 opportunities for meeting, eventually more re- 
 peated, in particular through Story's multiplied 
 excursions to England. Other chances than these 
 latter, moreover, came up ; autumn weeks in 
 Venice — the rigid limit, for so long, of any 
 movement of Browning's toward Florence, and 
 the August and September days in which 
 Switzerland, year after year, made them more 
 or less neighbours. The high places, for the 
 
DULWICH COLLEGE 
 
 277 
 
 annual absences from Italy and from England, 
 called them both, and the Storys, from early in 
 the eighties, had become, as I have mentioned, 
 " braced " proprietors in the Engadine. My 
 shrunken collection of documents yields, how- 
 ever, a remnant or two, at contact with one of 
 which I find association promptly waking up. 
 
 Robert Browning to W. W. Story. 
 
 " 29 De Verb Gardens, W., July 19th, 1888. 
 
 " My dear Story, — I had just telegraphed to 
 Dulwich that I should be unable, to my great 
 regret, to go there this morning, when your 
 message comes — still more adding to my regret. 
 I have a vile cough, and a general sense of in- 
 disposition which quite prevent my attendance 
 on an occasion which I think will interest you — 
 as it used to do in my case. Ever affectionately 
 yours, KoBERT Browning." 
 
 "As it used to do in my case," too, the author 
 of these notes is almost emboldened to subjoin, 
 remembering: old summer afternoons when the 
 consigne, among the children of light — which was 
 a fair description of the favoured friends of the 
 then Governors, Mr Charles E-oundell and the 
 Eev. William Rogers, Rector of St Botolph's, 
 Bishopsgate — was the annual reception at Dul- 
 
 
 r^ 
 
 .^■_ 
 
278 
 
 AMERICAN COMMISSIONS 
 
 wich College. Even though, as I hope, these 
 hospitalities still take place for new generations, 
 I view them, afar off, in a mellow social light 
 which is one with the sweet-coloured glow of the 
 long picture-gallery of that fortunate institution, 
 a vista of Dutch and other of the minor masters, 
 looking down upon tables of tea and of heaped 
 strawberries and ices, upon smiling pilgrims from 
 town, amiable women and eminent men, upon 
 hosts as genial as their background of treasures, 
 upon individuals and couples detached and ab- 
 sorbed, preferring eagerly the precious pictures 
 even to the strawberries, nowhere else so big, 
 upon high doors opened, to the ripe afternoon, 
 for adjournment to beautiful grounds. With 
 which, but for the fear, under the touch of 
 Browning's note, of waking up to excess, I 
 should trace my association, as I have called 
 it, further still, suffer it to pursue my second- 
 named of the Dulwich dispensers, much-doing, 
 much- enduring and all-beneficent and delightful 
 man, to the sober shade (as I reconstitute it) 
 of the Bishopsgate parsonage, to the small and 
 intimate dinner, exactly, that, both for company 
 and for cheer, one felt as of the sound City 
 tradition— the City familiar and at home ; with 
 the high political world, with even the Bank, 
 made human, made charming, fairly seated 
 
FROM BROWNING TO MADAME PERUZZI 279 
 
 opposite and speaking in a voice as pleasant 
 as the ring of new-minted money. 
 
 I turn over still another of Browning's letters 
 — not addressed, this one, to either of our 
 friends, but to their daughter, whom he had 
 known from childhood and who had sent him, 
 in the summer of 1884, the translation she had 
 lately made of the Autobiography of Giovanni 
 Dupre, the so interesting Tuscan sculptor. " It 
 is not so very ' little ' an affair ; and, in the 
 fear that, when my sister has finished it, I 
 may have to begin my own reading, and end 
 it so late as to lead you to suppose that either 
 book or letter has gone wrong ; on this account 
 I write at once to thank you most heartily. 
 My sister says the Autobiography m fascinating : 
 I can well believe it, for I never knew such a 
 work to be without interest, and this of Dupre 
 must abound in precisely the matters that in- 
 terest me most. . . . When I have thoroughly 
 gone through the book I will write again, if you 
 permit me — as I know your old memories will 
 be indulgent in the case. There is not much 
 likelihood of our going to Italy this autumn ; 
 the silly quarantine regulations [against cholera] 
 effectually hinder our attempting that : and in 
 no case should I — probably — trust myself again 
 in Florence. Yet such an event might be ; and 
 
 /.,r,^' 
 
280 
 
 AMERICAN COMMISSIONS 
 
 if you are within reach you will be certain to 
 see the old friend who always rejoices when 
 he hears of your wellbeing and trusts it may 
 continue." And I go on — not for the special 
 weight of the words, or for any close relevancy 
 in their reference ; rather merely to feel this 
 last link in my hand as long as possible. " Pen 
 is very well ; at Dinant, just now, painting 
 landscape in the open air. I have told him 
 already of the book, which I know he will 
 delight in reading. I am occupied this very 
 day in sending his statue of Dryope to Brussels, 
 where the Exhibition will give it a chance of 
 being judged by better knowledge than is found 
 here. Your own brothers' works are capital — 
 Julian's picture at the Grosvenor admirable in 
 many respects and above the works on each 
 side of it. Waldo's statuette is exceedingly 
 good also ; they have, each of them, enjoyed 
 a better education than is easily obtainable here. 
 My sister sends her kindest love to you. We 
 are ordered to find mountain air for her and 
 must somehow manage it ; but our Gressoney 
 in the Val d'Aosta is a barred paradise at 
 present ; Switzerland is our resource, I suppose. 
 What do you think ? We get this moment a 
 word from your mother to say she — or *we' — 
 may be seen in town this day only, as she 
 
BROWNINGS LAST ILLNESS 
 
 281 
 
 leaves early to-morrow. I shall contrive to call 
 this evening, and will keep my letter open to 
 make it worth your reading by my news. Their 
 plan is to go somewhere for a week or two's 
 refuge from the heat, and thence, returning to 
 London, get to Rome as soon as the difficulties 
 on the frontier are removed." 
 
 There were other meetings after this, but my 
 only other records are half a dozen notes, of 
 the autumn of 1889, from Mrs Story in Rome 
 to her daughter in Florence. " We have had 
 a week of such emotions that I have been much 
 upset, and, having had to write so much, have 
 not had a moment for you. Browning is lying 
 dangerously ill at Palazzo Rezzonico. Write at 
 once to Pen — it will help him to hear from you. 
 I have letters and telegrams every day, but they 
 are very disheartening, and I fear the worst. 
 His heart is very weak and he is seventy- five. 
 His admirable constitution and temperate life 
 are greatly in his favour. Still, I despair. I 
 cannot tell you how we rejoice to have seen 
 him so lately at Asolo, when he was so well 
 and in such force, brilliant and delightful as 
 ever. Mrs Bruce's death was a terrible shock 
 to us all, and Uncle James's state, though not 
 worse, gives me profound anxiety." Mrs Bruce, 
 gentlest of ladies, who had retired, in ill-health, 
 
 A.^. 
 
282 
 
 AMERICAN COMMISSIONS 
 
 from the service of her Queen, and whom I 
 remember as presented, in alternation, against 
 the background of the old Barberini drawing- 
 room and her own, of the homelier note, in 
 grey St James's Palace, was a friend of many 
 years and a regular participant in the Roman 
 winter. "Uncle James" was the title conferred 
 by long intimacy upon J. R. Lowell, at this time 
 under the shadow of the illness which was to 
 lead, somewhat more than a year later, to his 
 death. The happy days at Asolo had been spent 
 by the Storys under the roof of their supremely 
 amiable countrywoman, Mrs Arthur Bronson, long 
 resident at Venice, but devoted to the little hill- 
 town immortalised (as we must verily say) in 
 " Pippa Passes," which, from under its ruin- 
 crested rocca^ looks out across the purple plain 
 to Bassano, Padua, Vicenza, other places, other 
 names, charged with memories. Here, beside 
 the "gate" where our friends had seen their 
 last of Browning, also a visitor tenderly protected 
 by her, she had established one of the quaintest 
 possible little places of villeggiatura — the gate 
 being the empty arch of one of the old town 
 entrances, a barrier long since humbly removed, 
 to match with all the other final humilities, 
 and the house itself resting half upon the dis- 
 mantled, dissimulated town-M^all. No sweeter 
 
BROWNINGS DEATH 
 
 283 
 
 spot, in all the sweetness of Italy, could have 
 offered itself to old Italianised friends for con- 
 fident renewals and unwitting farewells. 
 
 The note I have just quoted from Mrs Story 
 had its inevitable sequel. " Our dearest Brown- 
 ing died last night at ten o'clock in Venice. I 
 think you can help poor Pen, who wants to 
 have his father buried at Florence beside his 
 mother. Get Simone to intercede with the 
 authorities and telegraph yourself to Pen at 
 the Pezzonico." And again on the morrow : 
 *' We are utterly prostrated by our loss and 
 grief His last words to us, as he stood at the 
 gate at Asolo, having bade us a most tender 
 farewell, were ' We have been friends for over 
 forty years without a break.' I knew not how 
 to break the news, when it came, to dear Papa, 
 but I waited, in the evening, till he had eaten 
 some dinner, and then, in a quiet moment, I 
 told him. He spent the evening in tears and 
 in talking about him and the old time. What 
 can we say or do? How golden seem the 
 memories of those rich days and hours with 
 him at Asolo ! How grateful are we for this 
 comfort, and how nearly I had missed it ! I 
 feel sure that if he expressed any wish it must 
 have been to be buried beside his ever-beloved 
 wife at Florence. No Westminster Abbey could 
 
 ''-^3% !«i;'.-d»: ''A',:'&^'ikt'j '-:*'r ■'-■ ''n'l 
 
 ■..i-*f>^i,-vii|i ^. 
 
284 
 
 AMERICAN COMMISSIONS 
 
 in his loyal heart have had an allurement to 
 be named beside that dear Florentine grave. 
 I hope you and Simone may be able to help to 
 this end. . . . His new book of Lyrics was 
 to have been published yesterday ! But how 
 dreary cold looks life to-day ! The loss of him 
 is beyond words a blow to us." After which a 
 final line expresses, as the sense of our friends, a 
 preference coloured by their attachment to Italy. 
 " I now hear from Venice that Browning is to be 
 buried in London, in the Abbey. I am sorry ; 
 one feels it so much more suitable that he should 
 lie in Florence and beside her. But I suppose 
 the stupid authorities would not, after what they 
 have done, permit the intramural burial. What 
 a mistake to have forfeited such an honour and 
 glory to Florence ! There is to be a service 
 to-day at the Bezzonico." All visitors to Venice 
 remember the imposing palace of that name, one 
 of the creations of a late and no longer super- 
 stitiously " sincere " period, which, with its wide 
 florid front, all staged and pillared and embossed, 
 commands a bend of the Grand Canal and, like 
 certain others of its company, reminds one, from 
 the low level of the gondola, of some broad- 
 breasted mythological sea-horse rearing up from 
 the flood with the toss of a sculptured crest and 
 with emergent knees figured by the water-steps. 
 
THE PALAZZO REZZONICO 
 
 285 
 
 To this stately temple of the rococo, admirable 
 in its order and which had become the property 
 of his son, the author of " Men and Women " 
 was to bequeath the association most interest- 
 ing for ourselves. Only, the association remains, 
 through the years, as may be said, scarce assim- 
 ilated, slightly discordant — an impression (the 
 impression of the strange short ways life and 
 death are apt to take with us) not dispelled 
 by the beautiful, cold, pompous interior, partly 
 peopled though the latter be, in its polished 
 immensity, by every piously -kept relic of Casa 
 Guidi and of London years. For all his "diffi- 
 culty " Browning was, with his lovers, the 
 familiar and intimate, almost the confidential 
 poet, fairly buttonholing the reader with the 
 intensity of his communication and the emphasis 
 of his point. The Italy of the Rezzonico was 
 not, in spite of "A Toccata of Galuppi," the 
 Italy we felt and cherished in him — not a place 
 consonant with the charged messages I speak 
 of, but the suggestive scene, much rather, of 
 emptier forms and salutations, conventions and 
 compliments. After which it may doubtless be 
 added that we are ever ill-advised to challenge, 
 on behalf of a mortal memory, any benefit what- 
 ever of chance, any object with a power to pre- 
 serve, to mark a passage through the sands of 
 
286 
 
 AMERICAN COMMISSIONS 
 
 time. Let us put it that the Rezzonico, even 
 though all mirrored in the Adriatic channel, 
 rises above these sands very much as the Sphinx 
 or the great Pyramid rises above those of the 
 desert. The travellers of the future will not 
 trouble about shades of affinity when the gon- 
 dolier of their day, coming on from the Rialto 
 and the Mocenigo toward the palace of the 
 Venetian Pope, pronounces, mispronounces, with 
 his hoarse, loud cry, the name of the English 
 poet he has learned to add to those of Shake- 
 speare and Byron. 
 
 Browning's death, for our friends, was to make 
 that of Lowell, which took place a year and a 
 half later, the more of a loss. They had found 
 Lowell in London from time to time, while he 
 occupied the post of American Minister, and 
 then again during the years, signally interesting 
 to a near observer of them, as I am impelled to 
 say, that saw him regularly reappear as a visitor, 
 indifferent to the rigour of custom in such cases, 
 on the scene to which his official period had so 
 deeply attached him. It was the situation made 
 for him by this lasting attachment that was 
 interesting in the degree I mention — interesting 
 to a fellow-countryman who often found occasion 
 to rejoice that his own predicament, in the same 
 air, was comparatively simple ; though indeed 
 
LOWELLS LAST LONDON YEARS 
 
 287 
 
 it may be added that the personage in question 
 sometimes felt a kind of cruelty in his compara- 
 tive independence. London, when she takes the 
 trouble to bite at all, bites deep, and one who 
 had himself been bitten inevitably watched with 
 attention such other marks of the teeth as met 
 his view. They had entered Lowell's life sharply 
 enough, but he had the inconvenience, I think, of 
 not being quite free to confess to the wound. As 
 he was representative, and his representative 
 character stuck to him, so he was responsible — 
 which created elements of situation that rather 
 failed to hang together. Speaking of it, I mean, 
 as his last period made it, he was, while un- 
 official, too distinguished a stranger to be priv- 
 ate, and yet was too private to have been " sent " ; 
 which latter fact in turn spoiled a little the 
 harmony between his theory and his practice. 
 His theory was that of the American for whom 
 his Americanism filled up the measure of the 
 needful ; his practice was that of freely finding 
 room for any useful contribution to the quantity 
 from without. The best account of his incon- 
 sistencies would doubtless be that they were 
 for no one more " funny " than for himself, who 
 could always moreover, for occasion, make the 
 funny funnier still. To which recollections, 
 however, I can do no justice in a glance by 
 
288 
 
 AMERICAN COMMISSIONS 
 
 the way. I am afraid that what is easiest to 
 express in them is the observer's near "subjective" 
 and perhaps too imaginative sympathy ; some- 
 thing like a resentful vision of the way in 
 which those who sacrifice to great democracies 
 and sovereign peoples, occupying in their service 
 what are called " high posts," are apt all too soon 
 to become the sport of fate, the victims of a 
 fleeting hour. With limited philosophy perhaps, 
 but with lively sensibility, one deplored, on behalf 
 of one's admirable friend's distinction, all his high 
 quality, the rudeness of the political game that 
 could so take and leave, so want and yet so 
 waste him. It was a question of "treatment," 
 of his having been, as it were, almost more 
 abused than used. And the fact that it was 
 the System but made the case worse ; it would 
 have shown as less ugly had it been a rare 
 accident. So, at any rate, before the spectacle, 
 in London, of other ordered ways, and doubtless 
 fantastically enough, one contrasted the luxury 
 of the European " career" with the mere snatched 
 dignity of the American — indulging really in 
 wanton wishes that ever so many things might 
 have been different, and profiting by the licence 
 of friendship to dream extravagant dreams. 
 These were but the melancholy air -castles of 
 fond, disinterested fancy. Neither participant 
 
DEATH OF MRS LOWELL 
 
 289 
 
 in the relation I thus recall could possibly have 
 so discriminated for himself. 
 
 But I must not multiply words over the too 
 few remaining lines in my boxful of letters that 
 have a connection here. I find scarce more 
 than a note or two, the earliest of which in 
 date belongs to March 5th, 1885. It is from 
 the house in Lowndes Square that he occupied 
 during his diplomatic term, and refers to the 
 death of his second wife, three weeks before. 
 *' I had had a letter to you on my conscience 
 for a good while but never found a time when 
 moods and leisure made it possible. I little 
 dreamed that when I wrote it would be within 
 these black boundaries. I cannot yet say," 
 he presently adds, " what my own plans will 
 be. I suppose that there is little doubt that 
 some one will be sent to take my place here. 
 But I cannot now go back to live at Elmwood 
 as I hoped. Probably I shall stay here for the 
 present, as I took on my house till the end of 
 the year. ... I cannot say enough of the 
 kindness and sympathy I have received here. 
 Lady Lyttelton especially has been as a sister. 
 It has done me all the good that can be done 
 — and that is something. I thank you and 
 Emelyn, dear old friend, as you know, but find 
 it hard to say what I would as I would. God 
 
 VOL. 11. T 
 
290 
 
 AMERICAN COMMISSIONS 
 
 bless you both, and keep you together 1 " After 
 which comes another scrap, of June 2nd, 1887, 
 again from London, but during a friendly visit. 
 Story was about to go to Oxford to receive the 
 honour of a D.C.L. degree. " I am delighted 
 to hear that Oxford is to do for you what she 
 ought to have done sooner. It will be no addition 
 to you, but a very sensible one to me, since it 
 will give me the chance to see you again. I 
 won't say we are getting old, but we are getting 
 on, and every milestone is nearer to the inevitable 
 twilight. . . . Let me know also the date 
 of Commemoration, that I may go down with 
 you to say Placet. I will keep the day open. 
 London is unhappy just now v/ith the eternal 
 Irish indigestion, but I still find it pleasanter 
 than any other place in the world. I who lived 
 a hermit so long and found my burrow delightful, 
 find the sense of enormous human neighbourhood 
 here comfortable in my old age. It shelters me 
 from the wind. . . ." Which makes the right 
 place for the following. 
 
 W. W. Story to his Daughter. 
 
 "16 Half Moon Street, July 8th, 1887. 
 
 ..." The heat here has been most exhaust- 
 ing — I never knew it hotter in Rome ; and we 
 long to get out of the turmoil of life into some 
 
STORY S D.C.L. DEGREE 
 
 291 
 
 quiet. By the end of next week we shall in 
 all probability leave for St Moritz. Mama is 
 trying to arrange here about furniture, but the 
 heat is so great that she can do very little. 
 Our Oxford experience was very pleasant ; we 
 stayed at the Deanery (Christ Church), and the 
 Dean and Mrs Liddell were extremely, kind and 
 did everything for us. I appeared in my red 
 gown and college cap, and was warmly received 
 and cheered by the undergraduates in the college 
 theatre. In the afternoon we had a charming 
 garden-party, where all the Oxford world was, 
 with bands and glees and part - songs and a 
 collation under a great tent ; and we wandered 
 about by the water and under the trees till twi- 
 light, when I went to a great banquet in C. Ch. 
 Hall, and sat on the dais, in my red gown, with 
 the Dons and Doctors. There were speeches, 
 of course, and toasts, and though I had been 
 assured that I should not be called upon, another 
 Dr having been appointed to answer for the 
 new Drs, yet when he sat down there was such 
 a shout and call for me that I was obliged to 
 get up. I hope it was not disgraceful. We also 
 attended an open-air representation of ' As You 
 Like It ' in Worcester College grounds, which 
 was most interesting and delightful. The actors 
 were from London and the whole effect charm- 
 
 JV ■ . 'A 
 
292 
 
 AMERICAN COMMISSIONS 
 
 ing. . . . The Jubilee procession (in London) 
 was remarkable and effective, though the in- 
 tervals between the different bodies were alto- 
 gether too long. The conduct of the crowd was 
 what surprised me most. They patiently waited 
 for hours under the burning sun — some of them 
 from 2 o'clock in the morning till 12 noon — with- 
 out riot or confusion. And when the royal 
 cortege passed there were universal cheers that 
 split the air, a great spontaneous outburst of 
 enthusiasm and loyalty. After that it is no use 
 for Gladstone to talk of masses as opposed to 
 classes. We saw the procession from Lord 
 Rothschild's as it went down and from the 
 Becketts' as it returned." 
 
 This was a period of interesting University 
 episodes, for Story was in the following year 
 invited to represent his own Alma Mater at 
 the great commemorative celebration of Bologna, 
 in respect to which he writes to his wife on June 
 12th. Lowell, it may be mentioned, was another 
 of the Harvard deputies, but, on the scene of 
 action, had been taken inopportunely ill and 
 was most of the time confined to his hotel. 
 " We had a Jiaccolata of the military last night, 
 which we saw admirably from our balcony, with 
 various friends of the Covaglia family. It was 
 
THE UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA 
 
 293 
 
 really splendid : each man carried a tall frame- 
 work of coloured lamps, red, green, yellow, 
 representing stars, flowers, towers, and producing 
 an uncommonly splendid effect. They all filed 
 down Piazza Galvani on which this house fronts, 
 and turned our corner, so that far away on both 
 sides we saw them coming and going. Immedi- 
 ately afterward I dressed for the Koyal reception 
 at the Prefettura, and went at 10. The Queen 
 most gracious, and asked particularly for you ; 
 shook hands with the King." All of which 
 brilliancy appears to have been, in some degree, 
 a medal with a reverse — as I gather at least 
 from a very concise diary kept by Story at the 
 time. On June 10th, the day after his arrival 
 from Rome, " Went to the University to get 
 programme and orders. Such a confusion in all 
 the arrangements I never saw ; more of the 
 names on the list wrong than right, and the 
 printed list full of the most ridiculous mistakes 
 — South America coming under the head of 
 Canada, and New Jersey appearing as an inde- 
 pendent republic with the designation ' Neo- 
 Cesarensis.' My own name was on no list and 
 I was obliged to write it down myself. . . . 
 Lowell in wretched quarters and very unwell, 
 and all the American deputation irritated at the 
 want of recognition and the confusion of every- 
 
294 
 
 AMERICAN COMMISSIONS 
 
 thing." It was Story's fate, in the various pro- 
 cessions, to be consigned, insistently, to the 
 South American section ; after which, on his 
 finally protesting that the United States were 
 on the northern continent, the error was rectified. 
 " Ah, then, you must go under Australia ! " And 
 the last words are that Carducci, alas ! was dull, 
 and that the heat was sufibcating. 
 
 I give in this connection the last words I 
 find from Lowell. 
 
 J. R. Loivell to W. W. Story. 
 
 "Elmwood, Cambridge, Mass., October 2nd, 1890. 
 
 "My dear William, — It was very pleasant 
 to see your well-remembered handwriting again, 
 and to see it without any hint of that quaver 
 in it into which the hand as well as the voice 
 is betrayed by the accumulating years. I say 
 this not in malicious sympathy, but as a respect- 
 ful tribute to your seniority — it isn't great, to 
 be sure, but at our time of life even ten days 
 have a value of which youth could not conceive. 
 
 " But why do I talk of old age, I in whom 
 autumn (of all seasons of the year) has renewed 
 my youth ? I was seriously ill last winter and 
 spring, even dangerously so, I believe, for a day 
 or two, and all "summer have been helplessly 
 languid and inert. Not that I didn't feel much 
 
THE LAST FROM LOWELL 
 
 295 
 
 as usual in body, but my mind had no grip, 
 * couldn't seem to catch hold,' as our vivid 
 American phrase puts it. And my memory 
 fumbled in vain when it tried to pick up any- 
 thing smaller than a meeting-house. But all of 
 a sudden ten days ago I got up in the morning 
 a new man. My memory still boggles a little 
 about dates, but, as well as I can make out, I 
 am about fifty. ... I am here in my birth- 
 place and I find it very gracious to me. I look 
 upon the trees and fields I first saw and find 
 them as good as then. ... I still have elbow- 
 room, but I am more and more persuaded that 
 the new generation shouldn't be allowed to start 
 till the old be off the stage. It would save much 
 unseemly hustling and many heartburnings. It 
 is very good of you to tempt me with Rome and 
 the Barberini, but, setting aside any scruples I 
 might have as an American about living in a 
 palace, I am anchored here for the winter. . . . 
 Then too, if I am well enough, I am to read over 
 again some old lectures in Philadelphia, for it 
 pleases me to earn a little money in this way 
 and convince myself that my hand can still keep 
 my head. I shall send you one of these days a 
 little book to which I have written a preface, 
 and which will have the value of being at once 
 pretty and scarce — 250 copies printed for a club. 
 
296 
 
 AMERICAN COMMISSIONS 
 
 It isn't much of a preface, but a good deal of 
 a book, being Milton's ' Areopagitica.' . . . 
 Though I cannot come now, I am not without 
 hope of seeing you in Italy again before I vanish. 
 A longing has been growing in me for several 
 years now, chiefly, I confess, for Venice, but 
 with subsidiary hankerings after Rome and 
 Florence. Neither of them is the old one, of 
 course, but they are better than anything else. 
 But it grows harder and harder for me to get 
 away. For reasons into which I need not enter, 
 but which are imperative, I am not my own 
 man so much as I should like to be, and as I 
 expected to be, in my old age. For better or 
 for worse one is married to duty, and one mustn't 
 dally with other baggages." 
 
 The history of our friends' closing years is not, 
 it will be perceived, a chronicle of events. Life 
 continued largely serene for them, inflicting no 
 deep wounds and making no cruel demands ; the 
 golden air, as we have called it, was never really 
 darkened for them, nor the spell of old Rome 
 broken. Story worked bravely on, from year to 
 year, meeting as he could the conditions, often, 
 inevitably, the reverse of inspiring, involved in 
 the appeals reaching him for monuments to 
 American worthies — making, that is, the best 
 
WORK FOR SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 297 
 
 of the dire ordeal of the sculptor fighting for 
 his idea, fighting for his life, or for that of his 
 work, with an insensible, an impenetrable, a 
 fatal committee. To 1869 belongs his London 
 statue, that of George Peabody, massive, yet 
 human, seated, by the Royal Exchange, where 
 the sound of quick feet, on sharp City errands, 
 most abounds ; but much of the later time was 
 occupied with the most elaborate of his produc- 
 tions in the public order, the large memorial to 
 Francis Scott Key, author of " The Star-Spangled 
 Banner," presented to the city of San Francisco 
 by her so largely munificent son Mr James Lick. 
 Looking out to the Golden Gate of the Pacific, 
 uplifted on a pedestal embossed with a frieze of 
 reliefs, and surmounted with a canopy which 
 itself carries further aloft a colossal statue of 
 America partly enshrouded in the folds of the 
 flag, this image, probably precious beyond any 
 other in the world as an example, on the part 
 of the originating body, of the sense of propor- 
 tion defied, must have represented, on the side 
 of the artist, the sharpest of inward, the queerest 
 of aesthetic, struggles. There is always, for- 
 tunately, for the strained consistency of the 
 sculptor so confronted and so divided, an efficient 
 salve in the consciousness that though his work 
 may not do, or undo, what he would like, it is 
 
 l^* 
 
298 
 
 AMERICAN COMMISSIONS 
 
 still at least preventive in respect to worse mis- 
 deeds. A colossal statue to Mr Key demands 
 a particular perspective, but what perspective 
 would have been possible with, for instance, an 
 uncompromising obelisk ? Who can deny that 
 the obelisk was possible, a landmark from afar 
 for Pacific voyagers ? We may dream at any 
 rate that Story averted the obelisk. Echoes of 
 these productive years, as well as of projects 
 and possibilities that failed of eifect, sound for 
 me, here and there, in stray letters and other 
 scraps of reminder. His impressive statue of 
 " Jerusalem Desolate " paused, in London, in 
 1873, on its journey to America, and, being 
 offered for a short time on view there, elicited 
 the following-. 
 
 A. W. Kinglahe to W. W. Story. 
 
 " I went on Monday to see the Jerusalem, and 
 was so fortunate as to find in the room a lady 
 who knew me, who understood the glories of 
 sculpture, and was in a state of enthusiasm about 
 your great work. My appreciation of high Art 
 has been so poorly cultivated that I was ex- 
 ceedingly glad to have her guidance. Her de- 
 light in the general conception alternated with 
 admiration of the separate beauties. Pointing 
 out for instance the arms, she taught me to 
 
THE QUESTION OF MONUMENTS 
 
 299 
 
 appreciate the power with which j^ou have forced 
 the cold marble to express glowing flesh. You 
 must be very happy. The aspect I preferred to 
 all was the one towards the left of the statue." 
 
 Story writes in 1886 to Mr Wurts Dundas in 
 response to a proposal that he should enter the 
 field as a competitor for the design of a monu- 
 ment to General Grant. "I had never supposed 
 I should be thought of in relation to it, knowing 
 as I do the strong pressure which would be made 
 in many directions to obtain it, and having in 
 this as in all other cases no intention to offer 
 my services or to put forward any claim. As 
 for competition, I have always steadily refused 
 to enter into it. It requires a great deal of 
 knowledge and experience to be able to decide 
 upon models for a great monument, and the 
 judging committees are generally incompetent." 
 After which he enumerates, lucidly enough, the 
 drawbacks and disasters involved in the process 
 In question. "It Is very easy," he adds, "to 
 make a mistake in judging of a great monument 
 from a small sketch. Eflects are quite different 
 in small from what they are in colossal pro- 
 portions, and my own experience is that I have 
 invariably found it necessary In the large to 
 modify much that is fairly satisfactory in the 
 
 r' "v"'^ . v.. ..'^.,i".kv. 
 
300 
 
 AMERICAN COMMISSIONS 
 
 small." And more of the letter is worth quot- 
 ing. " Various schemes have occurred to me ; 
 a triumphal arch, a portico, a tabernacle, or a 
 far more grandiose and effective combination of 
 all, with a great frieze in high relief representing 
 all the distinguished coadjutors and generals of 
 the War, or, round the portico, a triumphal, or 
 even a funereal, procession of the same (in 
 relief), with a colossal statue of Grant in the 
 centre. Otherwise a mausoleum surrounded on 
 the outside by such a procession, surmounted by- 
 America Victrix and with a colossal figure of 
 Grant on a platform in front. I have in my 
 mind such a combination, which it is impossible 
 to explain in words — in addition to which my 
 ideas are of course as yet but first impressions, 
 and require much further consideration. . . . 
 The monuments at Edinburgh and at Berlin to 
 Scott and to Fritz are, as you mention, admirable 
 in themselves, but I think that with unlimited 
 money something more imposing than these 
 ought to be produced. I am now making a 
 monument to Francis Key, in which I have 
 embodied some such general scheme as that to 
 Scott at Edinburgh, though it is different enough. 
 It consists of an open loggia or tabernacle on 
 four Corinthian columns, standing on a base and 
 surmounted by a statue of America with the 
 
TO COMMEMORATE GENERAL GRANT 
 
 301 
 
 Flag. In the centre of the tabernacle is the 
 statue of Key, and on the base a bas-relief of 
 singers and players performing the song. I am 
 very tired of the stale idea, so often repeated, 
 of a monument with a portrait -statue on top 
 and four figures at the corners of the base ; it is 
 the resource of all commonplace sculptors. What 
 we want in this case is grand character, real 
 interest, poetic conception. But I thoroughly 
 agree with you that all violent action is to be 
 avoided. It is always unhappy, in the end, 
 however striking, often, at first sight. The idea 
 of victory should be indicated not by any violence 
 or energy in the figure, but in some big symbolic 
 way, making the man the director and inspirer, 
 not the physical actor. Grant never went about 
 gesticulating wildly and crowing, but was re- 
 markably quiet and sternly calm, the soul, not 
 the body, of the War." Keturning to the subject 
 in another letter to the same correspondent, he 
 gives his reasons for disapproving of an elaborate 
 scheme of which some detailed account had been 
 published, criticising it mainly as a feeble and 
 confused attempt to arrive at mere size and 
 quantity. What becomes, he asks, in such a 
 mere material jumble, of beauty or of lucidity? 
 '' Such ideas did not animate the Florentines 
 when Giotto built that exquisite campanile that 
 
302 
 
 AMERICAN COMMISSIONS 
 
 gives a grace and beauty to the whole city and 
 is the delight of the world. The Washington 
 monument in our national capital is double its 
 size, and we may brag of it as the tallest obelisk 
 in the world. But we must in honesty also add 
 that it is the ugliest, unable to compete, for 
 anything like beauty, even with many a factory 
 chimney. As a monument to Washington it 
 means absolutely nothing whatever. Think of 
 the grand Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and of 
 that to Hadrian at Rome, and then look at our 
 biggest of all chimneys to the father of his 
 country ! " 
 
 In the " finds " of antiquity he would have 
 been, by the mere habit of an old Roman, al- 
 ways interested ; but they moved him, beyond 
 this, so far as he could take cognisance of them 
 when occurring elsewhere than at Home, to 
 special and individual emphasis of attention 
 and judgment. A long letter to Mr Richard 
 Greenough, of the spring of 1882, expresses the 
 opinions he had promptly formed on the author- 
 ship of the beautiful Hermes then lately brought 
 to light at Olympia. He is against the attribu- 
 tion of the work to Praxiteles, and thinks the 
 evidence adduced for it "very lame on certain 
 points. Of course it stands in the first place 
 simply upon the curt statement of Pausanias, 
 
FROM SIR CHARLES NEWTON 
 
 303 
 
 and the immediate question is of the value of 
 his testimony, even if this could be shown 
 directly to apply. It seems always to be for- 
 gotten that he wrote his book towards the end 
 of the second century of our era, that is at 
 least 500 years after Praxiteles — in itself a very 
 damaging fact." And he goes into the matter, 
 for some eight pages, much further than we may 
 follow him. " I am much disturbed, again, by 
 the account of the execution of the hair, evi- 
 dently merely blocked out and left unfinished 
 or carelessly treated " — which launches him into 
 much archaeological learning and reasoning ; in- 
 teresting to us now mainly as evidence of his 
 disposition, on all such questions, immediately 
 to " rise." The rise, as we say, on behalf of 
 his own opinion, could alM^ays promptly be ob- 
 tained from him, with plenty of information and 
 acuteness to support it. Nor may I follow him, 
 further, through a correspondence maintained for 
 many years with the late Sir Charles Newton, 
 of the British Museum, interesting as the letters 
 before me (Newton's own) may be held as com- 
 munications of the results of the writer's archse- 
 oloffical work, and as a series of answers. Yet 
 I like not simply to brush by this valuable 
 relation, which, beginning apparently in 1862, 
 was to continue for years. " I read out your 
 
304 
 
 AMERICAN COMMISSIONS 
 
 'Leonardo' poem/' he writes in 1864, "to my 
 wife, who enjoyed it as a true artist should. If 
 you will write a small volume of poems equal 
 to this and the others you read me in Rome, 
 I venture to prophesy that you will take rank 
 among English poets when many now extolled 
 are forgotten. I am vexed to think that I 
 missed you at the Museum, and that we saw so 
 little of each other here. I wanted particularly 
 to have shown you the cast of Mausolus. And 
 I have just received a wonderful collection of 
 antiquities from Rhodes, among which is a 
 cup with a figure of Aphrodite, on a swan of 
 extraordinary beauty." With which, further, 
 " Panizzi desires to be kindly remembered to 
 you, and will you ask Tilton to relieve me of 
 the custody of his pictures ? " This last inquiry 
 causes again a sad, faint wraith to walk a little ; 
 that is by the dim light of a further allusion, 
 made the same year. " I find that Mrs Newton 
 wrote to Lady Eastlake about Tilton's pictures, 
 but Sir Charles has not yet been to see them. 
 Lord Overs tone saw the Claude and thought 
 that £200 would be a fair price for it. Col- 
 naghi thought that Tilton has greatly over- 
 estimated both pictures. Lord Somers saw the 
 Claude yesterday and thought it was by a pupil 
 of Claude's, of whom he also has a picture. But 
 
TILTONS CLAUDE 
 
 305 
 
 he admired it." All of which brings back to 
 my own recollection the little cherished Claude, 
 thrown up to the surface in some small untrace- 
 able Roman convulsion, and the subject of high 
 hopes, deferred, renewed, blighted, yet bloom- 
 ing again, on the part of Story's neighbour and 
 countryman in the other wing of the Barberini. 
 One had been present at revelations of the 
 treasure — truly, in memory's eye, a delightful 
 possession ; one was sympathetically interested 
 in its fortune, having the impression of all that 
 was involved, and one at the same time em- 
 braced the case as almost romantically, quite 
 "picturesquely" typical, by its general analogy 
 with all the other cases (a class by themselves) 
 of Italian decaduti looking for redemption from 
 the surrender of an heirloom inordinately valued. 
 The " Claude " was not an heirloom — was only 
 a mysterious and charming acquisition, which, 
 it is to be hoped, has since ceased its anxious 
 wanderings and is comfortably placed ; but the 
 reminiscence is, as I say, quickened for me by 
 the sense of this cold whiff of the irony of fate 
 directed upon it from the faded note. The old 
 London millionaires and connoisseurs round off 
 the little drama. 
 
 Our friend's correspondent, at any rate, writes 
 in the autumn of 1875 about another matter. '* I 
 
 VOL. II. u 
 
306 
 
 AMERICAN COMMISSIONS 
 
 have consulted my colleagues, Mr Pincher, who 
 is our new Assyriologue, and Dr Birch, and they 
 tell me there is no portrait of Sardanapallos in 
 Assyrian art, but that there are portraits of 
 the king who was so designated by the Greeks. 
 I send you by to-day's post a batch of photo- 
 graphs from our Assyrian sculptures. At the 
 back of each is written the name of the king 
 as Pincher reads it. I cannot tell you how 
 the dress of these worthies was put on, but I 
 hope to see you in Rome next month, when 
 we will go into these matters with the photos. 
 I leave for Berlin on the 10th (November) to 
 see the cast of the Olympian statue (the 
 Hermes)." Story was working at his great 
 seated figure of the personage in question, for 
 the "putting-on" of whose dress, as well as 
 for the art of his reconstituted " swagger," this 
 suggestion of research and of the invocation of 
 learned aid establishes an interesting history. 
 Let me add that I cannot drop the question 
 of our friend's ever-lively disposition to fumble 
 in odd corners of the past without mention of 
 his so characteristic plunge, undertaken during 
 a few idle weeks of summer, into the history 
 of the town of Dieppe. It has been noted that 
 he made a stay there in 1856, shortly after 
 the death of his eldest boy, which led to his 
 
INEDITED PAPERS 
 
 DIEPPE 
 
 307 
 
 betaking himself promptly, after his wont, to 
 an exploration of the local archives. The know- 
 ledge acquired, the speculations provoked by 
 these studies, bore fruit long afterwards in a 
 copious monograph — " A Sketch of Dieppe and 
 its Early Navigators, with their Discoveries in 
 Africa, the Indies and America" — which was by 
 a perverse fortune not in his lifetime to see 
 the light. The perversity lies in its being before 
 me in the proof-sheets of a conspicuous London 
 periodical, under the care of the editor of which 
 it was so far prepared for publication. It was 
 then found too long, extending to more than 
 even two numbers, so that, sacrificed at the 
 eleventh hour, it exists for the present mainly 
 as a striking illustration of the almost whimsi- 
 cally inquisitive side of Story's mind and of 
 that element in him that his friends mostly 
 greeted (with an affectionate enjoyment of it 
 shared by himself) as the courage of his con- 
 victions. It had substantially become his con- 
 viction, in a word, during his Normandy summer, 
 that the Dieppe mariners had discovered the 
 New World, and that, by the great sailor Jean 
 Cousin in especial, the laurel of Columbus was 
 gravely menaced. The paper is full of curious 
 facts, of a detailed investigation of evidence, of 
 a computation of the probabilities, into which 
 
308 
 
 AMERICAN COMMISSIONS 
 
 I may not, at this point, enter. He builds up 
 the vision that had come to him, at the end 
 of September, with the dispersal of the crowd 
 of bathers and idlers ; he strolls along the 
 shore while the history of the place takes hold 
 of his imagination. " There is nothing between 
 us and America but the wide expanse of sea ; 
 and, sitting on the pebbles and gazing out 
 over the sea -horizon, the mind naturally goes 
 back to the time when, perhaps on the very spot 
 where we pause, once wandered Descaliers and 
 Cousin, Braquemont and Parmentier, Ribaut 
 and Dominique de Gourgues, Villegagnon, Cartier 
 and Duquesne," — the brave captains, in short, 
 who first tried the unknown seas of the east 
 and west. "As we sit here in quiet the long 
 scroll of history unrolls before us its sorrows 
 and adventures, its triumphs and defeats. Full 
 of interest as these incidents are to all the 
 world, they are, as we shall see, especially in- 
 teresting to America, the discovery and colonisa- 
 tion of which is so closely linked with this port 
 of Dieppe." If certain claims made for Cousin 
 in the last century " can be substantiated, there 
 is no doubt that he was not only the original 
 discoverer of the new continent, but was also 
 the first to double the Cape of Good Hope, 
 and show the way on to the East Indian seas." 
 
THE FRENCH NAVIGATORS 
 
 309 
 
 It is to this substantiation that Story, through 
 a long and minute discussion, addresses himself, 
 not indeed absolutely concluding but marshalling 
 the presumptions in his hero's favour, and pre- 
 paring the ground for a return, if possible, to 
 his subject. He has perhaps left it a little sus- 
 pended in the air. But I must quote, for the 
 pleasure of it, his final paragraph — the pleasure, 
 I say, in particular, because we catch him here 
 in a generous inconsequence of feeling. It was 
 not in all manifestations, it was rather in too 
 few, that the genius of France, in general, 
 appealed to him. 
 
 " One fact seems to me clear, and that is that 
 the French were the pioneers of discovery in 
 the south and east as well as in the west. The 
 vaunted voyages of Spain and Portugal, which 
 so vividly illuminate the pages of history, were 
 in fact quite secondary to those of France. It 
 was she who led the way by her energy, her 
 enterprise and her daring, and of her early 
 navigators none are entitled to take precedence 
 of those who issued from the port of Dieppe. 
 If, besides those whom we have named, and 
 some whose deeds we have attempted to sketch, 
 we pass along the coast beyond the limits of 
 their little town, how large and brave an assem- 
 blage should we find — too large indeed for the 
 
310 
 
 AMERICAN COMMISSIONS 
 
 limits of so slight an essay as this. Their very 
 names alone would testify to the constant con- 
 nection of America and France, and strengthen 
 the bonds which unite these two great nations. 
 Scarce more closely connected with the later 
 history of America are the names of Lafayette 
 and Rochambeau, than with its earlier history 
 those of Champlain, the father of New France, 
 Cartier, De la Rocque, La Roche, Du Monts, 
 Lescarbot, Poutren court, Saussaye, and Argall, 
 and the already-named hardy captains of Dieppe 
 and Rouen." 
 
 The little desultory diaries meanwhile, whether 
 Story's or his wife's, are the record, through the 
 revolving years, of the extremely peopled Roman 
 life, and of ease and industry exempt, happily, 
 from sharp interruptions. The anxieties and 
 complications inevitable in all full lives take 
 quite the minor place for the reader of the 
 pleasant scroll, and the golden roof of Rome 
 spreads with its noble span, and with an almost 
 equal benignity, over the pleasures and the pains. 
 The Roman names, as they recur, themselves 
 brighten the page, which creates a wistfulness 
 even when repeatedly beginning with " Scirocco, 
 always scirocco ! " Mrs Story is the more copious, 
 but too concise and too intimate for quotation ; 
 with only here and there the detached Roman 
 
THE QUEEN OF ITALY 
 
 311 
 
 note, as for instance " Our poor Cardinal Pecci 
 lies dying in the room below, and I cannot 
 receive" — a frustration made up for, visibly, on 
 many another occasion when the names of visitors 
 abound. " A dinner of forty-three persons in the 
 studio above," Story notes on the Shrove Tuesday 
 of 1892, "arranged by Marion Crawford and 
 Waldo to celebrate the death of King Carnival. 
 Great gaiety and many costumes — Marion as 
 Mephistopheles and I as Cimabue. Dufferin and 
 Lady D. and their daughters came in, and he 
 made a very happy and graceful speech. It was 
 really a jollification in the manner of old days. 
 We had the whole English Legation and several 
 of the French, besides Vitelleschi, Simone P. 
 Liibke and more." After which, on April 30th : 
 "The Queen (of Italy) with the Marchesa Villa- 
 Marina came to the studio and stayed some 
 three - quarters of an hour, mainly to see 
 ' Nemesis,' which I have still kept in the clay. 
 She was most kind and amiable, looking also at 
 everything else, and surprising me by her re- 
 membrance of what she had seen previously. I 
 went with Edith in the evening to a small 
 musical reception at the Quirinal — some twenty 
 to thirty persons, and a trio, sonata and quartet, 
 the music all Beethoven's — where she was again 
 most gracious." He had taken some time before 
 
 HH^n^ 
 
312 
 
 AMERICAN COMMISSIONS 
 
 this date, largely for the use of his sons, a small 
 rough shooting -lodge, the "capanna" of many 
 entries, at Castel Fusano, and the note of Whit- 
 sunday in the same year records the day as 
 exquisite and as spent there with several friends. 
 *' To bridge in carriage and then took boat and 
 was punted along an hour, with the shore all 
 alive with birds, who kept up a tremendous 
 chatter. The sea enchanting and the coolness 
 of the breeze quite life-giving. Found at the 
 capanna Louise Broadwood and Maud, Reschid 
 Bey and Waldo ; after which presently took gun 
 and roamed along the shore — to shoot but a 
 solitary quail. Luncheon very gay, and when 
 it was half over a sudden party of friends, the 
 Marion Crawfords and (others). M. C went 
 off to walk alone with Mrs M., and they were 
 gone all the afternoon. We punted again 
 through the stagni, and the sunset was beauti- 
 ful. The whole day delightful." This impres- 
 sion appears to have been renewed the following 
 year (May, 1893). "The quails were abundant, 
 but I was out of practice and shot but four. 
 Waldo slept on the floor of the dining capanna, 
 and the rest of us in the other. Dinner was 
 jolly, and the evening not less, so that we were 
 not in our beds till midnight. But we were up 
 the next morning at five, and every one went 
 
CASTEL FUSANO 
 
 313 
 
 for quail. I got a few, but only shot for an 
 hour. The others were out till luncheon, while 
 I wandered, in the delicious air and the perfect 
 day, along the beach. After luncheon we shot 
 again, and Waldo admirably ; so that we got 
 in all some 100 birds. That night, it appeared, 
 I for some reason talked Greek in my sleep, 
 better, I hope, than I should have done awake. 
 I didn't shoot next day — Wednesday, 10th — 
 but walked and wandered again, and liked that 
 better. Chigi came over on horseback, stayed 
 to lunch and was very pleasant ; after which 
 we fired rifles at a tin target, but with success 
 only for him and Waldo. I came back on 
 Wednesday p.m., feeling as if I had laughed 
 all the while, and also as if I had consumed 
 (with the aid of the others) much wine and 
 even much whisky." 
 
 In the midst of which gentle journalising turns 
 up, with slight inconsequence, another page, still 
 gentle, but referring to a date — January, 1886 — 
 considerably previous. " At work at Key's statue, 
 which is well on. Alma Tadema called to see 
 me, and was warm in praise of Salome and the 
 second Cleopatra. How sincerely, however, who 
 can tell ? " On February 4th he was still en- 
 gaged with Key. " But he is now all together 
 and only needs superficial finish. Guthrie, Ren- 
 
314 
 
 AMERICAN COMMISSIONS 
 
 nell Rodd and Ralph Curtis to dinner. Shake- 
 speare Wood died yesterday." A letter of Mrs 
 Story's, of August 23rd, 1886, from St Moritz 
 in the Engadine, mentions that, "As the weather 
 promises to be fine, though we are under a fear- 
 ful moon, we are to-morrow to lay the corner- 
 stone of our Villa of the Future in honour of 
 your birthday." And she adds on the morrow : 
 " It all went off so well — the afternoon charming. 
 We had asked every one, and Italians, English 
 and Americans crowded alike about us with 
 warmest wishes and felicitations. Every one 
 admires the position. Papa had written a verse 
 of dedication, which he read aloud, and a parch- 
 ment was enclosed in a strong box in which, 
 after the motto, were inscribed the names of 
 all present. This was placed by me in the 
 hollow of the corner - stone, and then by me 
 plastered over. Then rose the singing voices 
 of those who could sing (and even of some who 
 couldn't 1), and the glorious old Anthem ' Praise 
 God,' &c., was re-echoed by the hills. Your 
 health was drunk with three loud cheers ; and 
 then we had tea ; after which Papa and I sat 
 alone together on the logs. We believe more 
 than ever in the place, and shall not be able 
 to tear ourselves away before the middle of 
 
THE VILLA AT ST MORITZ 
 
 315 
 
 September or even later." The house was in 
 course of time built, solidly and spaciously, of 
 rugged stone and on a perfect site, and, as a 
 cool Alpine refuge after so many years of the 
 Italian climate, was precious to them for the 
 too few remaining years. 
 
 afii 
 
XII. 
 
 VALLOMBROSA. 
 
 A RESORT of briefer moments, meanwhile, had 
 been the admirably placed summer home of 
 their daughter, the high - perched Lago di 
 Vallombrosa, in Tuscany, more than two thou- 
 sand feet up from Pontassieve, in which, on 
 October 31st 1893, they had celebrated their 
 golden wedding (an occasion still present to 
 me in the form of a goodly pile of notes and 
 telegrams of congratulation), and in which, after 
 his wife's death, Story's last days were to be 
 spent. This immitigable loss overtook him in 
 the spring of 1894 and, it may frankly be said, 
 was practically his own deathblow. Mrs Story 
 had been, in his existence, too animating and 
 sustaining a presence to leave it, when withdrawn 
 from it, unshattered — to leave it in fact, for its 
 lonely nominal master, at all workable, or even 
 tolerable. " She was my life, my joy, my stay 
 and help in all things." So he writes to an 
 
DEATH OF MRS STORY 
 
 317 
 
 old friend in the summer of the sad year, and 
 he expresses his case without reserve. " What 
 is left seems to be but a blank of silence, a 
 dead wall which, when I cry out — and I do 
 CTj out — only echoes back my own voice. I 
 cry out Where is she? and no answer comes." 
 To which the compiler of these notes, under 
 the impression of the whole record, may be 
 permitted to add his own sense of the admirable 
 efficacity, as it were, of Mrs Story's presence in 
 her husband's career — a presence indefatigably 
 active and pervasive, productive in a large 
 measure of what was best and happiest in it. 
 
 In sight here of the term of his own years 
 I find myself aware of not having given him 
 the benefit of two or three minor biographic 
 facts — of the earliest in date of which, for 
 instance, I meet this record. 
 
 Lord Arthur Russell to W. W. Story. 
 
 "Athenaeum Club, March lOth^ 1874. 
 
 " My dear Story, — I write in haste to in- 
 form you that you have been elected a member 
 of this Club by the Committee, one of the 9 
 illustrious men who are annually chosen. The 
 honour is very great, because the Committee 
 must be unanimous and is composed of the first 
 intellectual authorities in England — of whom 
 
318 
 
 VALLOMBROSA 
 
 I am one ! A single objection is fatal. Accept 
 therefore my sincere congratulations. The first 
 effect you will experience will be a demand for 
 37 guineas from the Secretary, 30 as entrance- 
 fee and 7 for your annual subscription. But 
 now you can scold the waiters and complain 
 of the dinner, which you could not do properly 
 when you were an invited guest. And you will 
 have other privileges. I had an opportunity of 
 seeing while I worked in your cause how many 
 friends you have here. It was a great pleasure 
 to me ; and I am, with kind remembrances to 
 Mrs Story — Yours sincerely, 
 
 " Arthur Russell." 
 
 It was a less lasting advantage (besides being 
 of a different order) that he was appointed in 
 1878 one of the United States Commissioners 
 on the Fine Arts to the Paris Universal 
 "Exposition" of 1878, after which he received 
 the ribbon of the Legion of Honour — an oppor- 
 tunity for interest signally attenuated by the 
 circumstance, expressed in his excellent and 
 copious Report, that the American Government 
 not only had failed to appropriate a fund " to 
 enrich our country," in his words, " with treasures 
 of art," but had doomed itself by its parsimony 
 to make, in the case, a sadly insignificant figure. 
 
THE PARIS EXHIBITION OF 1878 
 
 319 
 
 "The small sum of 150,000 dols. actually ap- 
 propriated to cover all expenses of every kind, 
 was not only insufficient in itself, but was so 
 tardily given as to render it impossible for 
 America to make an exhibition worthy of a 
 great country, not only in the department in 
 the fine arts, but even in those of industry, 
 commerce, machinery, manufactures, natural 
 products and mechanical arts." What more 
 nearly touched Story moreover was that, thanks 
 to this meagreness of provision, American sculp- 
 ture had no place and no representative. It 
 was completely absent. "The expenses and 
 risks incident to an exhibition of sculpture are 
 of course far greater than those which are required 
 for an exhibition of paintings, and had such an 
 exhibition been determined upon, these would 
 have fallen solely upon the sculptors themselves, 
 some of whom were unable and some unwilling 
 to bear them. Those whose reputations were 
 already established had little desire to assume 
 such burdens, with nothing to gain and every- 
 thing to risk, while others who properly had a 
 right to be represented had not the means." And 
 he recalls the fact that " with most nations the 
 department of the fine arts has ever been looked 
 upon as the flower of their exhibition," the de- 
 partment repaying most, for effect and honour, 
 
320 
 
 VALLOMBROSA 
 
 the expenditure of pains and money. He recalls 
 in particular the grand style of the R-oman Court 
 in the London Exhibition of 1862, and may 
 well be imagined to have inwardly contrasted 
 his own so fruitful opportunity there with his 
 excluded and eclipsed situation in Paris. The 
 Keport, however, is concerned with European 
 work ; with the effect, read over at this day 
 (which is the effect, for that matter, of all Re- 
 ports), of making the pensive contemporary live 
 back into old sympathies and antipathies, old 
 curiosities, admirations, mistakes. Such a docu- 
 ment, as we turn it over, seems to consist half 
 of the record of old, or even of young actualities 
 that have since faded, and half of young, or 
 even of old, obscurities that have since bloomed. 
 Strange and sad the vision renewed for us of 
 all the freshness that has now turned stale, all 
 the earnest speculations that have lost their 
 point. It is astonishing, in short, how soon such 
 pages begin to strike us, on their critical side, as 
 the mirror of an age less complicated, less initiated. 
 Story himself had indeed — which is precisely 
 what I am remembering here — other initiations 
 and extensions, other activities of curiosity, on 
 subjects to all appearance rather casually deter- 
 mined, that profit still for us by their concern 
 with questions rather of science than of taste. 
 
INEDITED RELICS 
 
 321 
 
 His inedited relics are nuraerous, and I find 
 among them, for instance, a poem in blank 
 verse, of many pages, bearing the title of " An 
 Agnostic's Foolish Confession to his Friend 
 the Priest " ; which I should, I admit, more 
 confidently refer to the class of meditations 
 inspired by " science," were it not for the 
 adjective that qualifies the supposed overflow. 
 This is followed, however, it is further to be 
 •discerned, by a critical monologue, still in verse, 
 from the priest himself, which shows us the 
 ^abyss that, in spite of friendship, separates 
 the pair, and from which we gather that the 
 "*' foolishness " of the Agnostic is in having 
 dreamed a bondman of the Church could under- 
 stand him. Current criticism, had it had an 
 opportunity to occupy itself with the pages in 
 -question, would certainly not have spared the 
 author the irritation of the sage discovery that 
 they offered an echo of the manner of Brown- 
 ing. And that imputation would probably have 
 extended even to another composition, " An 
 Author's View of Copyright " — a view of 
 which, whimsically, blank verse is again the 
 medium. If instead of "Author" Story had 
 written " Poet and Sculptor," the whimsicality 
 would rather more have hung together, making 
 possible perhaps a reply, the other side, also 
 
 VOL. II. X 
 
322 
 
 VALLOMBROSA 
 
 in verse, on the thesis that sculptors and poets 
 have nothing to do with anything so sordid. 
 But into the province of the unpubUshed, on 
 our friend's part, I must not propose to penetrate. 
 I leave aside, from that necessity, the Lecture 
 on Art delivered by him repeatedly in the 
 United States during the winter of 1877-78; 
 just as, in the absence from my material of any 
 correspondence or diary relating to it, I left 
 the sojourn itself (made in company with his 
 elder son) unmentioned in its order. The char- 
 acter of the performance in question, I take it, 
 had been that of the talked conference, animated, 
 expressive, and in which the personality of the 
 speaker counted for much in the success enjoyed, 
 counted for more than half; so that mere verbal 
 publication would have been a comparatively 
 colourless record. My discrimination attaches 
 better to his Study of "The Proportions of the 
 Human Figure," to his " Mystery or Passion 
 Plays," published in the " Blackwood " of De- 
 cember 1869, and best of all perhaps to a paper 
 on " The Origin of the Italian Language " in 
 " The North American Review " of January- 
 February 1878 and two others on "The Pro- 
 nunciation of the Latin Language " in the issues 
 of the same periodical for March and April 1879. 
 These disquisitions are, to the mere unlearned 
 
ITALIAN AND LATIN 
 
 323 
 
 sense, quite delightfully coloured by irresistible 
 Italian sympathies — a remark which especially 
 applies to the second and third. He inclines 
 to the opinion, of which Cesare Cantu was at 
 the time he wrote the most authoritative ex- 
 ponent, that — thrilling thought ! — the Italian 
 tongue is a survival and development of a 
 language actually spoken, the lingua rustica 
 of the Latin populations, as distinguished from 
 their urban, and still more from their literary 
 speech ; and not a resultant of Transalpine in- 
 fluences wrought by invasions and migrations. 
 In the articles on pronounced Latin he naturally 
 therefore concludes in favour of the hypothesis 
 based on analogy with this same far-descended 
 Italian, and treats himself, as any human sense 
 that has been Romanised through long years 
 of the golden air infallibly must, to a luxury of 
 reaction from the hapless subjection of the 
 uttered phrase to the thin English scheme of 
 sound. Story felt that an irresistible conviction 
 on this matter was almost the result of any 
 good talk — for how delightful and suggestive 
 such talks might be no one knew better — with 
 one of those brave, sane Romans of the people, 
 deep -voiced sons of the soil, or of the City, 
 whose words come out, one by one, with the 
 distinction of classed coins in a museum - case. 
 
 ^v 
 
324 
 
 VALLOMBROSA 
 
 and whose sentences stand up for the ear very 
 much as an inscription on a triumphal arch 
 stands up for the eye. 
 
 Old Italy, at all events, was never to have 
 closed so beneficently round him as when the 
 end approached. The end was already almost 
 there by the time he had finished the only 
 work that occupied him after the death of his 
 wife. "I am making a monument to place in 
 the Protestant Cemetery," he wrote to a relative 
 in the spring of 1894 ; " and I am always asking 
 myself if she knows it and if she can see it. 
 It represents the angel of Grief, in utter aban- 
 donment, throwing herself with drooping wings 
 and hidden face over a funeral altar. It repre- 
 sents what I feel. It represents Prostration. 
 Yet to do it helps me." The figure thus pro- 
 duced, unsurpassed, in all his work, for intensity 
 of expression, mingles the sincerity of its message 
 now, for all time, as we may say, with that 
 exquisite, soundless collective voice that nowhere 
 hangs in the golden air with such a weight — 
 resting here, so sensibly, straight upon the heart 
 — as in that flower - smothered corner, beneath 
 the time - silvered Pyramid, where Shelley's 
 ashes supremely ennoble the interest and the 
 passion of his verse, hauntingly, returns upon 
 the beauty ; the spot, in a word, at which the 
 
THE DEBT TO THE PERUZZI 
 
 325 
 
 mind never glances without some fine enjoyment 
 of the fact, even some harmless trimnph in it, 
 that the place of sweetest sanctity in all Kome 
 should so oddly chance to be dedicated to the 
 great other, the great opposed faith. His studio 
 closed, our friend spent the summer of 1895 with 
 his daughter, in the Tuscan hills, as he had 
 in the previous years paid her other visits. 
 Relevantly to which — that is, to one of the 
 interesting connections made present to him 
 by her marriage — I may quote here the greater 
 part of a letter that he had addressed to 
 Madame Peruzzi, from the Baths of Ragatz, in 
 October 1891. 
 
 . . . " I have thought of something which 
 I hope may result in some benefit to you. It 
 is a grand peut-etre. but still it is a jpeut-etre 
 and I thought it worth trying. Mrs McClellan 
 sent me an excerpt from some Italian paper 
 containing a statement of the Bardi and Peruzzi 
 claim for the loan made to Edward III., by 
 means of which the battles of Cre^y and Poictiers 
 were fought, and on reading over this I wrote 
 a long letter to Lord Hartington, setting forth 
 the facts and saying that I could not but think 
 that if the English Government were made 
 aware of the state of things, and that this 
 
 .': -t-j'jr 
 
 4i 
 
326 
 
 VALLOMBROSA 
 
 Loan, large as it was, was never repaid, even 
 in the smallest part, it would, or might, be in- 
 duced to take some steps to recognise the debt, 
 and if not wholly repay it (for that would be 
 impossible), at least do something toward re- 
 munerating the Peruzzi for a loss which had 
 been ruin to them. I endeavoured to urge him 
 to bring the matter before the House of Lords, 
 telling him that (as I had been told) such was 
 the determination of the late Duke of Welling- 
 ton, who was prevented from doing so by death. 
 Perhaps, chi lo saf he may do something, and 
 then again he may not. But I thought that 
 for your sakes I would at least make the 
 attempt." 
 
 It is perhaps scarcely needful to add that the 
 attempt has not, up to the present writing, 
 been crowned with success. I meet, at all 
 events, in an old scrap - book a reminder of 
 Story's presence at Vallombrosa, on I know not 
 which of many occasions, in the form of a little 
 photograph of a pair of very animated inter- 
 locutors seated together, in light summer attire, 
 under a spreading tree. One of the vivid talkers 
 is, quite inevitably, Story ; the other is, not more 
 dramatically, Tommaso Salvini. The rare actor 
 was a friend of the house and, whether in the 
 
A STUDY OF MACBETH 
 
 327 
 
 country or in Florence, a frequent visitor. 
 Given Story's interest in the tricks of the 
 great trade professed by the latter, it is visible 
 that the pair of guests are, in the picture, dis- 
 cussing some question of interpretation, of scenic 
 effect, from which the name of Shakespeare, con- 
 stantly supreme with both, is not absent. How 
 sharply present all such questions could be for 
 Story is shown by his careful paper on some 
 " Distortions of the English Stage," originally 
 published in " Blackwood " and reprinted in his 
 "Excursions." He there deals with the per- 
 version of the characters of Macbeth and his 
 wife as our theatre traditionally presents them, 
 and uses much ingenuity — some of it I think 
 misapplied — to show that, as the heroine of the 
 play in which they figure, she is much more 
 sentimentally interesting than we are accustomed 
 to allow, and that, as the hero, the Thane of 
 Cawdor is much less so. For the fashion of 
 representing Lady Macbeth as bold and bad 
 the magi^ificent personality of Mrs Siddons was, 
 early in our age, responsible ; she imposed upon 
 us, by her great authority, a conception of the 
 part quite at variance with a careful study of 
 the text : which careful study places also in its 
 true light the nature of her husband, whose 
 assumedly rich mystic side, that of a man^ 
 
328 
 
 VALLOMBROSA 
 
 struggling, amid dire temptations, with his soul 
 and his conscience, it effectually dispels. One 
 of the parties to the monstrous chain of crime 
 is, in a word, all nerves and sensibility, all dis- 
 interested passion and exquisite anguish, while 
 the other is all ruthless ambition, monstrous, 
 mad, delirious, and thereby dishumanised. The 
 paradox is pleasant enough, and is artfully sup- 
 ported, but the difficulty is that we scarce see 
 how the interest of the play, and still more how 
 the interest of any performance of it, gains by 
 the contention. In proportion as the protag- 
 onist is fatuous, rhetorical and brutal (as Story 
 insists), in that proportion do tragedy, poetry, 
 sincerity, all his general significance, fall away 
 from him, cutting off his moral connections and 
 leaving him a mere ugly, bloody, abnormal case. 
 Be this, however, as it may, the collocation 
 puts before me again another hour — an hour of 
 the noble house in Via Maggio that was for 
 the Storys the Florentine alternative to Lago — 
 from which high ingenuity was as little absent. 
 Meeting there the potent old actor who grati- 
 fied graciously some of my curiosities, I was im- 
 pressed by nothing so much as by his original 
 view of a great Shakespearean passage. He 
 held, his rich voice and grave face explained, 
 that Lady Macbeth's walk in her haunted sleep 
 
TOMMASO SALVINI 
 
 329 
 
 had been an incident originally attributed by the 
 poet to Macbeth himself, and transferred from 
 the latter's to the former's part either because 
 the poet had yielded to the cajolery of a charm- 
 ing actress, or because some actress, vain and 
 rapacious, had, early in the career of the play, 
 laid such successful hands on the morsel that 
 the abuse had become established. When it 
 was suggested in response to this argument 
 that the poor woman's mention of her "little" 
 hand offered a difficulty, Macbeth's own bloody 
 fist having been probably of normal size, the 
 answer was, pertinently enough, that the word 
 had of course been speciously put in (anything 
 was possible in those times) by the performer 
 herself. I remember well how little it could 
 seem proper on this occasion to plead any such 
 clumsy fact as that Mrs Siddons's remote pre- 
 decessors had been, at the worst, but beardless 
 boys. It is not, moreover, in any memory of 
 contention that I invoke these charming or 
 these mighty shades. My particular reminis- 
 cence was to remain with me as an interesting 
 example of the sincerity of the artistic tempera- 
 ment. The admirable actor, conscious of the 
 splendid use he would have made of the oppor- 
 tunity, had always so hungered and thirsted 
 for it as to come finally to think of it as of a 
 
330 
 
 VALLOMBROSA 
 
 right of which he had been deprived. One can 
 surely but regret that he had not on some oc- 
 casion supremely affirmed his sincerity by re- 
 storing the scene, at least experimentally, to his 
 own part. 
 
 It is with the shades of Vallombrosa itself, 
 those of the great Miltonic line, that we are 
 directly concerned — the green density of which, 
 and the soft murmur through all the summer 
 months, make an undertone for our friend's short 
 idyllic novel entitled " Fiammetta," composed in 
 the course of an early visit paid to his daughter 
 and published in 1886. This single piece of 
 prose fiction produced by him with the exception 
 of "A Modern Magician," which appeared in 
 "Blackwood" in May 1867, contains an inscrip- 
 tion to his wife and his hostess, recording that 
 he had read it aloud to them " on three beauti- 
 ful mornings as we sat under the shadows of 
 the whispering pines. You thought well of it — 
 too well, I fear — and encouraged me to print it. 
 To you therefore I dedicate it, with my truest 
 love and in memory of those happy summer days 
 in the ' Etrurian shades.' " The tale, simple and 
 sincere, lightly and easily told, is that of a maid 
 of the mountains, the hills and woods there 
 present, who, for a few weeks of inward ecstasy 
 to herself, sits, by a pool in the forest, as model 
 
FIAMMETTA 
 
 331 
 
 to a young painter engaged on the picture of 
 a naiad, and dies of her apparently unrequited 
 love when the artist has, as the phrase is, no 
 further use for her. Her mother, to the young 
 man's knowledge, has had a misadventure, been 
 seduced and forsaken, so that Fiammetta herself 
 is a child of passion and despair ; and this, with 
 him, the fear of setting in motion a like doom, 
 has been a reason for mounting guard on his 
 conduct. He does so to such purpose that the 
 wrong he has wished to avoid — or something 
 practically as bad — springs directly from his de- 
 sire for the right, and the ironic note, in the 
 catastrophe, mingles with the tragic if we pause 
 long enough to listen for it. Such pausing in- 
 deed perhaps is scarcely fair — it was clearly not, 
 for us, the author's intention. Romantic, in 
 imagination, to the end. Story saw his theme 
 all sentimentally, and was content to leave it 
 for the lightest of woodland elegies. The other 
 light that plays in but plays for us as the gaps 
 open and the patches mockingly flicker under 
 the idle breath of analysis. Transpose the situa- 
 tion into a different tone, the tone of the real, 
 we thus for convenience say, and we get a 
 different meaning : the scruples of the youth, 
 the yearning of the maiden, the rupture of the 
 contact, the loss of the possibility, all so logically 
 
332 
 
 VALLOMBROSA 
 
 produce it. He would have died, or almost, 
 rather than not respect her, and what is fatal 
 to her, at the end, is that she has been consist- 
 ently respected. Which is the honest fashion, 
 as I say, of turning it all about. 
 
 But the full voice of Vallombrosa is meanwhile 
 in the author's charming monograph bearing the 
 name of the enchanted place, originally published 
 * Blackwood," and reissued, as a volume of 
 
 m 
 
 scarce more than a hundred pages, in 1881. 
 Preceding " Fiammetta " by several years, it 
 gave the first freshness of Story's impression. I 
 am too conscious of the difficulty, I fear, however, 
 of giving the first freshness of mine. That spur 
 of the Apennines on which the convent visited 
 by Milton stands in its shrunken but still im- 
 pressive forest only welcomes the occasion to 
 plant in the mind of a tourist submissive to Italy 
 and addicted to long walks and long lounges one 
 of the most romantic of Italian memories. Com- 
 paratively cockneyfied doubtless now, scarred 
 and dishonoured by the various new contrivances 
 for access without contact and acquaintance with- 
 out knowledge, it was still, a few years since, 
 a solitude tempered by hospitalities convenient 
 enough and enlivened, as the Italian scene when 
 sufficiently left to itself almost always is, by a 
 natural elegance, the light stamp, everywhere, 
 
THE LAST SUMMER 
 
 333 
 
 of the grand style, the touch of the true Arcadian 
 picture. Story describes better than I can do 
 the charm alike of the "dense Etrurian coverts" 
 and of the open, vertiginous views, as well as 
 the aspect of the habitation to which he finally 
 retired. " I had been invited by a friend to pass 
 a few days with her and her family in one of 
 the most lonely regions of the large tract which 
 bears the name of Vallombrosa. The once famous 
 convent lies at a distance of about three miles 
 from this spot ; and here, in one of the hollows, 
 they had hired an old deserted house, built 
 centuries ago by the Medici as a stronghold and 
 hunting-box, which they had fitted up and put 
 into habitable condition as a summer retreat from 
 the heats of Florence. Originally the house was 
 flanked by two tall towers, and was castel- 
 lated in form ; but within the last few years 
 the present Government, caring little for the 
 picturesque, and apparently seeking rather to 
 obliterate than to preserve the traces of the past, 
 had ruthlessly and for no sufficient reason levelled 
 the two towers and raised the upper storey : so 
 that the house is now a square unpicturesque 
 but solidly-built construction two storeys high, 
 and with walls massive enough to resist the 
 assault of anything but modern cannon. Here 
 my friends had made their summer home, far 
 
 . V ^ .jj. 
 
334 
 
 VALLOMBROSA 
 
 from all society and neighbours, to enjoy freedom, 
 solitude, and the silence and charm of nature. 
 There is no highway to lead the wandering 
 tourist to their doors, . . . but the foot- 
 passenger, with stout boots and country dress, 
 is amply repaid for his walk, whether he come 
 by the way of Podere Nuovo on the north, along 
 a winding path through the woods, or by the 
 monastery on the south, over a road commanding 
 the loveliest and largest views of an exquisite 
 and varied valley strown with far - gleaming 
 villages and towns, bounded by swelling outlines 
 of hills or mountains, one rising after another 
 against the delicate sky." 
 
 My own most intimate recollection, from the 
 greater part of a summer spent some years ago 
 at this admirable altitude, is of the small settle- 
 ment that at that time clustered about the old 
 forest monastery, and the extent of the recent 
 growth of which has been, I believe, much more 
 marked than its felicity. The convent, grey and 
 massive amid the murmurous green, and perched 
 on its broad mountain-ledge, still squared itself 
 like a fortress, but the good brothers had been 
 expropriated and all but completely dispersed, 
 with their foundation transformed into a State 
 School of Forestry. About on the level of the 
 convent was a small, decent hotel, the happiest 
 
THE LAST SUMMER 
 
 335 
 
 feature of which was a subsidiary guest-house 
 or minor annexe, standing considerably higher 
 up the mountain and having of old served as 
 the foresteria of the convent, its place of re- 
 ception for visitors. This interesting structure, 
 which has of late become private property, formed 
 of itself, in those days, an ideal mountain-inn, 
 lifted above the small bustle of the little com- 
 munity, niched against its high background of 
 wooded slopes and summits, with its ancient 
 thick-walled cells making cool, clean rooms, and 
 the small stone-paved terrace before it, propped 
 upon the steep and guarded by a parapet, pro- 
 truding into space like the prow of a ship. Here 
 everything had poetry, but the fresh evenings, 
 under the stars, had most. The outlook, by 
 day, divine as the afternoon deepened, was 
 the prospect Story perfectly describes. " There, 
 far away in the misty distance, can be seen 
 the vague towers and domes of Florence ; and 
 through the valley the Arno and the Sieve 
 wind like silver bands of light, through olive- 
 covered slopes and vineyards that lie silent in 
 the blue haze of distance, spotted by wandering 
 cloud- shades and taking every hue of changeful 
 light from the pearly gleams of early morning 
 to the golden transmutations of twilight and 
 the deep intensity of moonlit midnight. Nearer, 
 
336 
 
 VALLOMBROSA 
 
 magnificent chestnuts throng the autumnal slopes, 
 their yellow leaves glowing in the autumn sun. 
 Sombre groves of firs, marshalled along the hill- 
 sides for miles, stand solemn and dark. Beech- 
 trees rear at intervals their smooth trunks, or 
 gather together in close and murmurous conclave. 
 The lower growth of gorse and broom and brush 
 and feathered fern roughen the hills where the 
 axe has bereft them of their forest-growth ; and 
 in every direction are wild and enchanting walks 
 through light and shadow, alluring us on and 
 on for miles. Here and there columns of waver- 
 ing blue smoke tower and melt away into the 
 blue sky, where the charcoal-burners are at work. 
 Little brooks come trickling down at intervals, 
 finding their devious way among the rocks and 
 leaves and singing to themselves a slow and 
 silvery song. Now and then a partridge whirs 
 up beneath your feet, or a whistling woodcock 
 suddenly takes fiiight, or a startled hare with 
 up- cocked tail may be seen tilting through the 
 underbrush, or a sly fox steals cautiously away." 
 Our friend gives the romantic history of the 
 convent, founded in 1008 by the Florentine San 
 Giovanni Gualberto, on his secession from the 
 house of San Miniato with a view to a more 
 rigorous life. But what more closely concerns 
 us, and meets my own reminiscence, is the road 
 
THE LAST HOUR 
 
 337 
 
 connecting Vallombrosa with Lago, the one road 
 of approach, in his time, and commanding those 
 " loveliest and largest views " his mention of 
 which I have quoted. He vividly sketches it 
 again, though inadvertently exaggerating its 
 number of miles. This I used to find the 
 direction to take, since I was so privileged, 
 when the afternoon ramble was not preferably 
 higher and higher, up through the shade, so 
 clear as to be almost faintly blue, of the straight 
 fir-woods, which left the belts of generous chest- 
 nut and mighty beech far below, and out upon 
 the uncovered tops of the hills, where the cloud- 
 less air was cool, the great grassy hollows more 
 violet than green, the far horizon, with its tinted 
 lights, a warm shimmer of history, and the crown 
 of the impression, when it was possible, a plunge 
 of the eye and the imagination, from over some 
 final buttress, down into the rich Casentino. The 
 passage to Lago, level, after a short descent, 
 along the sides of the heights, had more of the 
 social motive, being both lonely and gay, like 
 a woodman's song, and with no company by the 
 way but that of the great friendly chestnuts and 
 an occasional vast princely beech. Sociability 
 was the end, was in the greeting and all the 
 persuasion of the green cleared circle in the 
 woods, where the rather dark-faced lodge kept 
 
 VOL. II. Y 
 
338 
 
 VALLOMBROSA 
 
 guard and the tea-hour, the hour of talk in the 
 open, made for all gossip and gaiety one scarcely 
 knew what murmurous undertone of tree-tops, of 
 history again, of poetry, almost of melancholy. 
 It was all so beautiful that it was sad — with a 
 distinction the sense of which weighed like an 
 anxiety. Something of that sort, something 
 supreme in the solemn sweetness with which the 
 whole place surrounded him, I can imagine our 
 friend to have felt as he sat, with the last 
 patience, in the September days, listening to its 
 voices. They might have been saying to him 
 how far he had come from the primary scene, 
 and how much he had left by the way, as well 
 as, indeed, how much he had found and laboured 
 and achieved. They might, above all, have 
 seemed to breathe upon him the very essence 
 of the benediction of the old Italy he had chosen 
 and loved and who thus closed soft arms about 
 him. Death came to him, as with a single sound- 
 less step, early on the October morning, and, two 
 days later (October 7th, 1895), he was laid to 
 rest near his wife. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Adams, John Quincy, references 
 to, i. 60, 106. 
 
 Alcestis, Story's statue of, ii. 169. 
 
 American war, the. Story's pam- 
 phlet, "The American Quest- 
 ion," on, ii. 103, 108 — Brown- 
 ing's opinions regarding, 104 et 
 seq., 109 et seq. 
 
 Andersen, Hans, touching incident 
 of, i. 285. 
 
 Appleton, T. G., references to, i. 
 321, 363; ii. 184 — letter to, 
 from Story, 171. 
 
 Arnim, Mme. Bettina von, a visit 
 to, i. 204 etseq., 217. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, meetings with, 
 ii. 207 et seq. 
 
 Ashburton, Lady Louisa, notice 
 of, ii. 195 et seq. 
 
 Athenaeum Club, Story elected a 
 member of the, ii. 317. 
 
 Belgiojoso, Princess, references to, 
 i. 134, 136, 151, 155, 157— 
 the career of, 161 et seq. 
 
 Berlin, a winter in, i. 195 et seq. — 
 at the University of, 211 et seq. 
 
 "Blackwood's Magazine," Story's 
 contributions to, ii. 161, 215, 
 222, 231, 255, 327, 330, 332. 
 
 Blagden, Isa, references to, ii. 56, 
 90, 93 et seq., 97, 151. 
 
 Bologna commemoration celebra- 
 tion. Story represents Harvard 
 University at, ii. 292. 
 
 Boott, Frank, references to, i. 
 116, 252, 270. 
 
 Bronson, Mrs Arthur, notice of, 
 ii. 282. 
 
 Browning, Mrs, Story's first meet- 
 ing with, i. 96 — references to, 
 102, 115, 119, 129, 172, 267, 
 271, 272, 284 et seq. passim 
 — her love for Italy and the 
 Italians, ii. 53 et seq., 64 — her 
 death, 61 et seq. — the funeral 
 of, 66 — character of, 67 — me- 
 morial tomb of, 146 — Story's 
 bust of, 151 — letters from : see 
 Letters. 
 
 Browning, R. B. ("Pen"), son of 
 the poet, references to, i. 369, 
 370; ii. 16, 65, 87, 90, 91, 98, 
 99, 107, 280, 283. 
 
 Browning, Robert, Story's first 
 meeting with, i. 96 — references 
 to, 102, 113, 171, 227, 264, 
 267, 271, 273, 274 et seq. pas- 
 sim — death of his wife, ii. 61 
 et seq. — Story's close intimacy 
 with, 67— his bust of, 69— re- 
 turn of, to England, 87 et seq. 
 — editorship of the "Cornhill" 
 offered to, 116 — in the Pyrenees, 
 153 et seq. — his last illness, 281 
 — his death, 283 — letters from : 
 see Letters. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, anecdote of, ii. 
 199. 
 
340 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Casa Guidi, the Florentine home 
 of the Brownings, references to, 
 i. 96, 115, 119; ii. 65, 96, 97, 
 271, 285. 
 
 Cass, General Lewis, references 
 to, i. 243, 246— the statue of, 
 247. 
 
 Catermole, George, notice of, i. 
 230. 
 
 Child, Lydia Maria, reference to, 
 i. 40, 49. 
 
 Cleopatra, Story's statue of, i, 
 32; ii. 72, 76, 79, 80, 217, 
 313 — Hawthorne's reference to, 
 in his "Transformations," i. 
 358 ; ii. 85 et seq. — Story's 
 poem entitled, 217. 
 
 "Commemoration" day at Har- 
 vard, celebration of, ii, 175 — 
 Lowell's ode delivered on, 176, 
 179. 
 
 "Conversations in a Studio," pub- 
 lication of, ii. 255 et seq. 
 
 "Cornhill," editorship of the, 
 offered to Browning, ii. 116. 
 
 Corpus Domini, the procession of, 
 in Florence, i. 166. 
 
 Cranch, Christopher Pearse, notice 
 of, i. 110 et seq. 
 
 Crawford, Marion, references to, 
 ii. 311, 312. 
 
 Crawfords, the, references to, i. 
 115, 122, 123, 251, 252, 269 
 et seq. passim. 
 
 Curtis, George William, notices 
 of, i. 304, 310. 
 
 Cushman, Miss, notices of, i. 255, 
 259 et seq.; ii. 127, 128. 
 
 Dana, Richard Henry, references 
 
 to, i. 41, 321. 
 Delilah, Story's statue of, ii. 169. 
 Diablerets, Switzerland, residence 
 
 of the Storys at, ii. 60 et seq. 
 Dickens, Charles, in Boston, i. 57, 
 
 59 — references to, ii. 116, 141, 
 Dieppe, a visit to, i. 289 — Story's 
 
 monograph on, ii, 306 et seq. 
 Drapery, the place of, in art, ii. 
 
 82 et seq. 
 
 Dupr6, Giovanni, the Autobiog- 
 raphy of, translated by Story's 
 daughter, ii. 279. 
 
 Eldredge, Emelyn, marriage of 
 W. W. Story to, i. 30, 39— 
 letter from J. R. Lowell to, 
 47 : see also Story, Mrs. 
 
 Electra, Story's statue of, ii. 169. 
 
 Endicott, John, founder and first 
 Governor of Massachusetts, 
 Story's Ode in memory of, ii. 
 274 et seq. 
 
 " Enoch Arden," reference to, ii. 
 141. 
 
 Everett, the Hon. Edward, Story's 
 statue of, in Boston, ii. 167 — 
 anecdote of, 181. 
 
 " Fiammetta," Story's novel en- 
 titled, ii. 330 et seq. 
 
 Field, John, notices of, ii. 176, 
 180 188 
 
 "Flight of Youth, The," Story's 
 bas-relief of, i. 256. 
 
 Florence, visits to, i, 109 et seq., 
 141, 164 — Mrs Browning's death 
 at, ii. 61 — Robert Browning's 
 death at, 283. 
 
 Forster, John, a dinner at the 
 house of, i. 231 — references to, 
 ii. 8, 10. 
 
 Franklin, Benjamin, anecdote of, 
 ii. 26. 
 
 Fuller, Margaret (Mme. Ossoli), 
 the Storys' renewed intimacy 
 with, at Rome, i. 98, 105, 121, 
 122 et seq. passim — strange 
 career of, 127 et seq., 228. 
 
 Gaskell, Mrs, notices of, i, 352 
 et seq. ; ii. 84 et seq. 
 
 " Giannone," Story's poem en- 
 titled, ii. 219 et seq. 
 
 " Ginevra da Siena," Story's poem 
 entitled, ii. 231 et seq. 
 
 Goethe, the statue of, at Frank- 
 fort, i. 184. 
 
 " Graffiti d'ltalia," the poem of 
 " Giannone " in, ii. 219 et seq. — 
 
INDEX 341 
 
 literary estimate of, 221 — re- 
 
 Italian language, supposed origin 
 
 publication of poems in, 238. 
 
 of the, ii. 323. 
 
 Greenwood, Grace, notices of, i. 
 
 
 262, 285. 
 
 Jerusalem Desolate, Story's statue 
 
 Gregorovius, Ferdinand, the " Ro- 
 
 of, ii. 169, 298. 
 
 man Diaries " of, i. 329. 
 
 Judith and Holofernes, Story's 
 
 Griswold, Rufus, notice of, i. 76 
 
 bust of, ii. 69, 169, 
 
 et seq. 
 
 
 
 Key, Francis Scott, Story's statue 
 
 Hamley, General Sir Edward 
 
 of, at San Francisco, ii. 297 et 
 
 Bruce, notice of, ii. 227 et seq. 
 
 seq., 313. 
 
 Hawthorne, reference by, in the 
 
 Kinglake, A. W., references to. 
 
 "Transformation," to Story's 
 
 i. 223, 227; ii. 121, 122, 
 
 statue of Cleopatra, i. 358 ; ii. 
 
 124 — letter from, to Story, 
 
 85 et seq. 
 
 298. 
 
 1 Hayward, Abraham, notice of, ii. 
 
 
 203 et seq. 
 
 Lago di Vallombrosa, the villa re- 
 
 «'He and She: A Poet's Port- 
 
 sidence of Story's daughter, a 
 
 folio," publication of, ii. 244. 
 
 golden wedding celebration at. 
 
 Heath, Frank, references to, i. 
 
 ii. 316— Story's death at, 338 : 
 
 113, 116, 123, 135, 137, 170, 
 
 see also Vallombrosa. 
 
 178, 210, 256 et seq. passim. 
 
 Landor, Walter Savage, helpless 
 
 Heidelberg, a visit to, i. 183. 
 
 condition of, in Italy, ii. 7 — 
 
 Henry, Professor Joseph, Story's 
 
 his case taken up by Robert 
 
 statue of, ii. 167, 269. 
 
 Browning, ib. et seq., 18 note — 
 
 Hermes, Story's statue of, ii. 306. 
 
 with the Storys at Siena, 14 ei 
 
 Hero and Leander, Story's statue 
 
 seq. — recollections of, by Mrs 
 
 of, i. 32. 
 
 Story, n et seq. — some anec- 
 
 Herodias, the Daughter of, Story's 
 
 dotes related by, 21 et seq. — 
 
 statue of, ii. 169. 
 
 with the Brownings at Siena, 
 
 "Hiawatha," Longfellow's, recep- 
 
 52. 
 
 tion of, i. 300. 
 
 Law Cases, publication of three 
 
 Holy Week in Rome, description 
 
 volumes of, by Story, i. 19, 
 
 of, i. 100. 
 
 31. 
 
 Hosmer, Harriet, notices of, i. 
 
 Legion of Honour, ribbon of the, 
 
 255, 256, 257. 
 
 conferred on Story, ii. 318. 
 
 Houghton, Lord, notice of, ii. 
 
 Letters — 
 
 201— Story's bust of, 202. 
 
 Mrs Browning to W. W. 
 
 Humboldt, Professor von, notice 
 
 Story, i. 282— to Mrs Story, i. 
 
 of, i. 215. 
 
 369; ii. 13. 
 
 Hunt, Leigh, notices of, i. 220, 
 
 Robert Browning to W. W. 
 
 226. 
 
 Story, i. 279, 287 ; ii. 6, 8, 
 
 
 10, 52, 90, 96, 104, 108, 143, 
 
 "Imaginary Conversations," the, 
 
 145, 151, 277— to Mrs Story, 
 
 of Walter Savage Landor, anec- 
 
 ii. 12, 153— to Mr and Mrs 
 
 dote regarding, ii. 21. 
 
 Story, ii. 50, 58, 98, 110, 114, 
 
 Inedited relics, some of the, by 
 
 135, 140— to the Storys and 
 
 Story, ii. 321 et seq. 
 
 their Daughter, ii. 138. 
 
 ' ' lo Victis ! " the poem entitled. 
 
 A. W. Kinglake to W. W. 
 
 ii. 243. 
 
 Story, ii. 298. 
 
342 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Letters (continued) — 
 
 J. R. Lowell to Miss Emelyn 
 Eldredge, i. 47 — to W, W, 
 Story, i. 103, 175, 291, 313, 
 322, 325; ii, 294 — to Mrs 
 Story, i. 326. 
 
 Robert Lytton (Lord Lytton) 
 to W. W. Story, i. 235, 289 ; 
 ii. 249. 
 
 Lord Arthur Russell to W. W. 
 Story, ii. 317. 
 
 Mrs Story to her Daughter, 
 ii. 174, 187, 264, 266, 267. 
 
 W. W. Story to Judge Story, 
 i. 51, 54 [Us), 57, 61, 64, 66, 
 80— to J. R. Lowell, i. 72, 99, 
 169, 208, 242, 249, 253, 265, 
 297, 309; ii. 147— to Charles 
 Eliot Norton, i. 351 ; ii. 14, 60, 
 72, 73, 122, 127— to T. G. Apple- 
 ton, ii. 171 — to his Daughter, ii. 
 180, 184, 290. 
 
 Charles Sumner to W. W. 
 Story, i. 43, 88 ; ii. 32, 34, 36, 
 40, 41, 43, 49, 156, 158, 159, 
 161 — to Judge Story, i. 85 — to 
 Mrs Story, ii. 46. 
 Lexington, burning of the steam- 
 boat, i. 50. 
 Libyan Sibyl, Story's statue of 
 the, i. 32 ; ii. 70, 72, 76, 79, 80. 
 Loch Luichart, a visit to, ii. 197. 
 Longfellow, H. W. , references to, 
 i. 106, 300, 311, 327; ii. 159, 
 184. 
 Lowell, James Russell, the Storys' 
 early friendship with, i. 39 — the 
 "Fireside Travels " of, 41, 316 ; 
 ii. 147 — Mrs Procter's esteem 
 for, i. 227 — references to, 234, 
 316, 321 ; ii. 175, 176, 179, 
 188, 282 et seq. passim — last 
 years of, in London, 286 et seq. 
 — death of his second wife, 289 
 — letters from and to : see 
 Letters. 
 Lucca, a visit to the Baths of, i. 
 
 267 et seq. 
 Lytton, Lord, Story's first meeting 
 with, i. 229 — references to, 289 ; 
 
 ii. 3, 63, 92, 94, 
 from : see Letters. 
 
 98— letters 
 
 " Marriage of Figaro," a perform- 
 ance of, at the Opera in Berlin, 
 i. 197. 
 
 Marshall, Chief - Justice, Story's 
 monument to, at Washington, 
 ii. 167, 268. 
 
 Medea, Story's statue of, ii. 169. 
 
 Mohl, Mme., reference to, i. 364 
 et seq. 
 
 "Monologues and Lyrics," publi- 
 cation of, ii. 238. 
 
 Montagu, Basil, the story of, i. 
 273. 
 
 Mount Felix : see Walton - on- 
 Thames. 
 
 Munich, a visit to, i. 186. 
 
 Napoleon III., Story's estimate 
 
 of, ii. 125 — Browning on, 139. 
 Neander, Professor, sketch of, i. 
 
 211. 
 Nemesis, Story's statue of, ii. 169, 
 
 311. 
 "Nero," Story's tragedy entitled, 
 
 ii. 247, 253 — dedication of, to 
 
 Mrs Kemble, 254. 
 Newton, Sir Charles, Story's 
 
 correspondence with, ii. 303, 
 
 306. 
 Norton, Charles Eliot, notice of, 
 
 i. 229 — letters to : see Letters. 
 
 Oliphant, Laurence, reference to, 
 
 ii. 266. 
 Ossoli, Madame : see Fuller, 
 
 Margaret. 
 Otis, Alleyne, notices of, ii. 186, 
 
 188. 
 Oxford University, Story receives 
 
 degree of D.C.L. from, ii. 290. 
 
 Page, William, notices of, i. 47, 
 49, 173, 269, 270, 287, 324. 
 
 Palazzo Barberini, the. Story 
 takes up his residence in, i. 
 337 — legend of, 339 — descrip- 
 tion of, 340 et seq. — visit paid 
 
INDEX 
 
 343 
 
 at, by Charles Sumner, ii. 29 
 et seq. 
 
 " Parchments and Portraits," pub- 
 lication of, ii. 238. 
 
 Paris Exhibition, the, of 1878, ii. 
 318 et seq. 
 
 Parker, Theodore, notices of, ii. 
 45, 47, 49, 66. 
 
 Patniore, Coventry, reference to, 
 ii. 127. 
 
 Peabody, George, notice of, i. 221 
 — Story's statue of, in London, 
 ii. 167. 
 
 P6re-la-Chaise, a visit to, i. 85. 
 
 Perkins, Charles, reference to, i. 
 144. 
 
 Phi Beta Kappa association of 
 Harvard alumni. Story ap- 
 pointed poet to the, i. 71. 
 
 Poe, Edgar Allan, the death of, i. 
 182. 
 
 "Poet's Portfolio, A : Later Read- 
 ings," publication of, ii. 244. 
 
 Prescott, Colonel William, Story's 
 statue of, at Bunker Hill, ii. 
 167, 271. 
 
 Procter, Mrs, notices of, i. 219, 
 220, 222 etseq.; ii. 119, 121. 
 
 Quaire, Mme. Du, notices of, ii. 
 118, 120 etseq. 
 
 Queen Caroline, anecdote of, ii. 
 25. 
 
 Quincy, Josiah, reference to, i. 67 
 — Story's statue of, at Har- 
 vard, ii. 167. 
 
 Rachel, Mme., reception of, in 
 
 Boston, i. 303. 
 Ranke, Professor, sketch of, i. 213. 
 Ristori, Adelaide, notices of, i. 
 
 116, 132, 301 ; ii. 141. 
 " Roba di Roma," publication of, 
 
 ii. 74, 130 et seq. — second 
 
 edition of, 123 — Browning's 
 
 revision of, 143 et seq. 
 Robinson, Crabbe, anecdote of, ii. 
 
 23. 
 " Roman Lawyer, A," the poem 
 
 entitled, ii. 239. 
 
 Rome, arrival of Story and his 
 wife in, i. 93 et seq. — the French 
 siege of, in 1849, 107 et seq., 134 
 et seq. — Easter illumination of 
 St Peter's at, 147 — Story settles 
 in, "for good," 321— his last 
 years in, ii. 215 et seq. 
 
 Rossetti, Mrs, tragic death of, ii. 
 115. 
 
 Russell, Lady William, references 
 to, ii. 37, 114, 119, 138— sketch 
 of the life of, 189 et seq. 
 
 Russell, Lord Arthur, letter of, to 
 Story, ii. 317. 
 
 Russell, Lord Odo, reference to, 
 ii. 191. 
 
 Salome, Story's statue of, ii. 313. 
 
 Salvini, Tomasso, notices of, ii. 
 326, 328 et seq. 
 
 Sappho, Story's statue of, ii. 72. 
 
 Sardanapalus, Story's statue of, ii. 
 168. 
 
 Saul, Story's statue of, ii. 123, 
 136, 158. 
 
 Savigny, Mme. von, a party at the 
 house of, i. 202 — character of, 
 216. 
 
 vSavigny, Professor von, notice of, 
 i. 215. 
 
 "Selections from Robert Brown- 
 ing," production of, ii. 117. 
 
 Semiramis, Story's statue of, ii. 
 169. 
 
 Shaw, Colonel Robert Gould, 
 Story's statue of, in Boston, ii. 
 162. 
 
 Siena, summer visits to, ii. 3 et 
 seq., 50 et seq., 138. 
 
 St Moritz, laying corner - stone 
 of the Storys' villa at, ii. 
 314. 
 
 St Peter's, Rome, an evening visit 
 to, i. 139 — an Easter illumina- 
 tion of, 147 — view from the 
 cupola of, 149. 
 
 " Stephania," Story's play entitled, 
 ii. 247 — Lord Lytton's apprecia- 
 tion of, 249 — the situation in, 
 depicted, 250 et seq. 
 
 '.*-^!Tl'fcS.' 
 
844 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Stirling, Sir William, reference to, 
 ii. 201. 
 
 Story, Judge, anecdote of, i. 12— 
 life of, by his son, 20 et seq., 
 35 et seq., 68, 234 — monument 
 to, at Mount Auburn, Boston, 
 23, 31— letters to : see Letters. 
 
 Story, Julian, references to, ii. 150, 
 280. 
 
 Story, Miss, marriage of, ii. 264 
 — letters from Mrs Story to : 
 see Letters. 
 
 Story, Mrs, domestic trials of, i, 
 284 — description of Mme. Mohl 
 by, 365 — recollections of Walter 
 Savage Landor by, ii. IT et seq. 
 — death of, 316 — monument to, 
 i. 23 ; ii. 324 — letters from and 
 to : see Letters. 
 
 Story, Waldo, references to, i. 
 334; ii. 280, 311, 313, 334, 
 367. 
 
 Story, William Wetmore : 
 
 Early Years and Early Work. 
 — His choice of a profession, i. 
 19 et seq. — autobiographical 
 sketch of, 29 et seq. — college 
 life and marriage, 38 — early 
 friendships of, 39 et seq. — 
 earliest letters of, to his father, 
 50 et seq., 78 et seq. — first visit 
 to Italy, 81 et seq. 
 
 Early Roman Years. — Settles 
 in Rome, i. 93 et seq. — present 
 at the siege of Rome, 107 — an 
 autumn residence in Florence, 
 109 et seq. — again in Rome, 121 
 et seq. — experiences during the 
 French occupation, 133 et seq. 
 — Florence again, 141— return 
 to Rome, and the Roman diary, 
 143 et seq. — at Florence, en route 
 for Germany, 164 et seq. — travel 
 in Germany, 184 ei seq. — arrival 
 at Venice, 188 — impressions of 
 Venice, 191 ei seq. — a winter in 
 Berlin, 195 et seq. — in London, 
 219 et seq. — returns to America, 
 233 et seq. — back in Rome, 242 
 et seq. — at the Baths of Lucca, 
 
 266 et seq. — a winter at Rome 
 with the Brownings, 282 et seq. 
 — again in America, 292 et seq. 
 
 Middle Roman Years. — Leaves 
 America, to settle in Rome *' for 
 good," i. 321 et seq. — a summer 
 at Siena, ii. 3 et seq. — in Swit- 
 zerland, 60 et seq. — a visit to 
 England, 73 et seq. — again in 
 Rome, 122 et seq. — publication 
 of "Roba di Roma," 130 et seq. 
 — in England, and enjoyment 
 of English society, 164 et seq. — 
 a short visit to America, 173 
 et seq. — life in Rome resumed, 
 188 eJ seq. 
 
 Last Roman Years. — The 
 "Graffiti d' Italia," ii. 215 et seq. 
 —publishes other two volumes 
 of poetry, 244 et seq. — his plays, 
 247 et seq. — his "Conversations 
 in a Studio," 255 et seq. — a 
 lengthened stay in America, 
 264 et seq. — his monument to 
 Chief - Justice Marshall, at 
 Washington, 268 — his bronze 
 statue of Colonel William Pres- 
 cott, at Bunker Hill, 271— 
 receives the degree of D.C.L. 
 from Oxford, 290 — represents 
 Harvard University at the 
 Bologna celebration, 292 — his 
 San Francisco statue, 297 et 
 seq. — writes a monograph on 
 Dieppe, 307 — erects a villa 
 at St Moritz, 314 — death of 
 his wife, 316 — elected a mem- 
 ber of the Athenaeum Club, 
 317 — his inedited relics, 321 — 
 publication of his novel, ' ' Fiatn- 
 metta," 330 — his last summer, 
 333 et seq.— hia death, 338— 
 letters from and to : see 
 Letters. 
 
 Sturgis, Russell, Story's first meet- 
 ing with, i. 231. 
 
 Sumner, Charles, early friendslip 
 of, i. 39 — becomes a Boston 
 lawyer, 46 — first trip of, to 
 Europe, 85 et seq. — references 
 
INDEX 
 
 345 
 
 to, 234 — visit paid to the Storys 
 by, at Palazzo Barberini, ii. 29 
 et seq. — death of, 46 — letters 
 from : see Letters. 
 
 Taglioni, Marie, notice of, i. 198. 
 
 ' ' Tannhauser," by Lord Lytton 
 and Julian Fane, reference to, 
 ii. 92. 
 
 Tennyson, Lord, references to, ii. 
 100, 141, 159. 
 
 Thackeray, Annie (Mrs Richmond 
 Ritchie), taken to her first ball 
 by Mrs Story, i. 367. 
 
 Thackeray, W. M., a touching 
 recollection of, i. 286 — lectures 
 of, in Boston, 301 — references 
 to, 321, 367; ii. 116— death of, 
 147. 
 
 Tocqueville, Alexis de, reference 
 to, i. 366. 
 
 "Tolla," by Edmond About, re- 
 ference to, i. 359 et seq. 
 
 * ' Treatise on Sales of Personal 
 Property," publication of, i. 19, 
 30. 
 
 "Treatise on the Law of Con- 
 tracts," publication of, i. 19, 30, 
 
 31— new editions of, 240, 299, 
 
 311. 
 Trent, affair of the, in the American 
 
 war. Browning on, ii. 104 et seq., 
 
 108, 110. 
 Trollope, Mrs, references to, i. 
 
 112, 116. 
 
 Ursuline nuns, destruction of a 
 convent of, near Boston, i. 54. 
 
 Vallombrosa, Story's monograph 
 on, ii. 332 — the convent of, 333 
 et seq. 
 
 Venice, a visit to, i. 188 — impres- 
 sions of, 189 et seq. 
 
 Vienna, a visit to, i. 187. 
 
 Walton-on-Thames, residence of 
 the Storys in, at Mount Felix, 
 i. 322 ; ii. 73 — references to, 
 150, 156, 228, 229, 231. 
 
 Webster, Daniel, record of a 
 journey made with, i. 36. 
 
 Weston, Emma, notices of, ii. 37, 
 185, 187. 
 
 Wordsworth, Wm,, anecdote of, 
 ii. 22. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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