HERE
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BY M.EW
SELE WOOD
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MERE&THERE & EVERYWHERE
REMINISCENCES
BY
M.E.W. SHERWOOD
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MRS. JAMES HUNTLEY CAMPBELL

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HERE & THERE & EVERYWHERE
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1


UNIV
OF
Mrs. Sherwood, from a miniature.

Here & There & Everywhere
REMINISCENCES
BY
M. E. W. SHERWOOD
HERBERT S. STONE & COMPANY
CHICAGO & NEW YORK
MDCCCXCVIII
COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY
HERBERT S. STONE & CO.
THIS EDITION IS COPYRIGHT IN THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND IS
NOT TO BE IMPORTED INTO COUNTRIES
SIGNATORY TO THE BERNE TREATY
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
ΤΟ
FOUR DELIGHTFUL CRITICS, ARTHUR MURRAY, CYNTHIA,
PHILIP HYDE
AND ROBERT EMMET SHERWOOD
THE GEMS OF MY LAST DECADE, WHO ALWAYS CONDESCEND
TO BE PLEASED
WITH THE TALES OF A GRANDMOTHER
Bequest
Begreext of Mrs. James
Husilley Campsell
2-6-321
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
ITALY AND VICTOR EMMANUEL
I
SOCIAL AND OTHER MEMORIES OF ROME
ΙΟ
MEMORIES OF NORTHERN ITALY AND THE ITALIAN LAKES
23
VENICE AND EUGENIE, EMPRESS OF THE FRENCH
35
57
66
78
ORLEANS AND TURIN
LEGENDS OF AIX AND MIOLAN
PALACES KINGS HAVE BUILT IN BAVARIA
OBER-AMMERGAU
FEUDAL CHÂTEAUX ON THE LOIRE
TAINE, ANDRÉ THEURIET, MME. ADAM, AND SOME OTHERS
BERNHARDT, COQUELIN, AND OTHERS
COQUELIN AND SOME OTHERS, AGAIN
SEVERAL SEASONS AT AIX-LES-BAINS
LORD HOUGHTON AND D'AUMALE
MATLOCK BATHS AND NEIGHBORHOODS
MEMORIES OF HOLLAND HOUSE
HOLLAND HOUSE AGAIN
87
IIO
I 20
132
142
154
173
183
190.
199
209
ENGLAND IN SPRING
GENERAL DE TROBRIAND'S ROMANTIC LIFE
22 I
GENERAL SCOTT AND WEST POINT
231
REMINISCENCES OF N. P. WILLIS
239
IRVING AND HIS HUDSON RIVER HOME AT SUNNYSIDE
249
DINNERS WITH GEORGE BANCROFT
262
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM
270
THE DECADENCE OF THE AMERICAN WATERING-PLACE
BOOKS THAT SOCIETY READS
281
289
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
FROM
MRS. SHERWOOD, FROM A MINIATURE
GARIBALDI, FROM A PHOTOGRAPH
EMPRESS EUGENIE IN 1869
EMPRESS EUGENIE AND THE PRINCE IMPERIAL
frontispiece
24
42
52
GEORGE P. MARSH IN 1864
PRINCESS MARGUERITE OF SAVOY
PRINCE NAPOLEON
PRINCE NAPOLEON IN 1869
62
74
IIO
118
PRINCESS MARGUERITE, NOW QUEEN OF ITALY
164
GEORGE BANCROFT
266
MRS. SHERWOOD, FROM A PAINTING BY JANE STUART
276
1
Italy and Victor Emmanuel
Looking in a volume of forgotten photographs, I
found one of the lovely Queen of Italy when she was
seventeen, with her young autograph, and that of Gari-
baldi near her, "given to his friend Avezanna.
This carried me back to my first visit to Florence,
in 1869, when the young royal couple had been first
married-Umberto and Marguerite. It was a notable
Summer for me, for I first saw Venice in that October
with the Empress Eugénie on her way to open the Suez
Canal, and made my first acquaintance with Italy—a
delightful experience which has been constantly refreshed
by visits to her richly freighted cities.
The novel of "Marietta," by T. Adolphus Trollope,
gives one the best idea of Florence that can be gained
from books. Florence changes from year to year less
than any foreign city, except that it has become almost
an American watering-place. It has always its Cascine,
its two great galleries, its gardens, and its memories,
its palaces, and its Romola, for that wonderful book
has filled it with the images of the past, and the flitting
travelers come and go. But Tito and Romola and all
that immortal company live there forever.
We drew up to the top of the Hill of Bellosguardo,
with Mr. Marsh, to look at the view of the Val d'Arno.
I am sorry for every one who did not go there with him,
I
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
for he knew every inch of that memory-freighted ground,
and with his all-powerful ambassadorial or ministerial
power he opened for us the Villa di San Donato, the
property of Prince Demidoff. This magnificent place
contained then one of the choicest collections in Europe,
now sold and scattered. Also the Villa di Quarto, part
of the ancient patrimony of the Medici, we saw with
him.
And we went to the Villa Salviati, partly to see the
great house of the sixteenth century, but more to see
Mario, the famous singer, but we did not see him. He
owned that villa once and lived there in 1869.
And, oh, Fiesole! nothing is more lovely than that
winding road (as familar to Americans doubtless as Fifth
Avenue), but with Mr. Marsh it revealed a thousand
ambushes of history.
It would take two lifetimes and a long immortality
properly to see Florence. I should say even to read
Hallam's tribute to it incumbers the brain. "The vast
dome of the Cathedral, the Baptistery, with gates.
worthy to be the gates of Paradise; the tall and richly
decorated belfry of Giotto, the Santa Maria Novella,
beautiful as a bride; the San Spirito, another great
monument of the genius of Brunelleschi; the Palazzo
Vecchio!" It is a fruitless struggle; no one can describe
such untold richness; one had better go home and read
the life of Lorenzo de' Medici.
It is a great thing for an ignorant person to have a
scholar at her elbow. I go back in memory to that poor
young traveler, who, guide-book in hand [myself],
sought to read Europe. Had I known how many times
I was to do it again, I might have been more patient-
2
ITALY AND VICTOR EMMANUEL
but there is nothing after all like the "first time" Mr.
Marsh was my learned cicerone.
Florence we thoroughly enjoyed, for we had there
the felicity of a visit to Mr. Marsh, one of the most
eminent men whom this country has produced. He is
so well known by his work on the English language
and by his splendid plea for our forests that it is
not necessary for me to speak his eulogy, but there
was in his daily conversation an instruction beyond all
words. He had command of all languages, spoke Italian
with the King, Victor Emmanuel, to the King's great
relief, and could meet everyone on his own ground; he
was a Mezzofanti. The present Queen Marguerite had,
as the gay young Princess, been a great favorite of his,
and his niece, Miss Crane, frequently spent weeks with
her, that they might talk English together. Mr. Marsh
used to say, with his beautiful simplicity, "For so young
a girl, the Princess has read a great deal." When I was
presented to the Queen, and had the privilege of talking
with her, in 1885, she spoke of Mr. Marsh with the most
affectionate respect, as she always does.
Mr. Marsh, was, of course, a guide to Florence of the
rarest. He went with us to the great monuments,
churches, and the Boboli Gardens; he took me across.
that melodramatic bridge which unites the Pitti with the
Uffizi. Indeed, one needs a guide there, else one skips
wonderful and rich things; he took me to the statue of
Il Pensiero of Lorenzo de' Medici, son of the greatest
Lorenzo and father of Catherine de' Medici, and quoted.
to me Rogers's lines about that mysterious statue,* the
rarest thing in Florence! this silent statue. He invited
*"It fascinates, and is intolerable."
3
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
us to his house (a villa in the suburbs, frescoed by some
immortal hand), and gave us good and most distin-
guished dinners. I remember particularly his presenting
to us Miss Arbesser, a very liberal Austrian (when liber-
ality among Austrians was almost an unheard of quality),
who had been the governess of the young Princess.
To this lady I owed so many very charming anec-
dotes of the life and daily work of this gifted Princess
that I have always felt that I knew her, and I gained a
clear idea that Princesses have to work far harder than
ordinary girls. The mastery of five or six languages,
the knowledge of history, the power to talk to men and
women of any nationality, all this was expected of Miss
Arbesser's pupil, and she did it all, and wonderfully well.
Marguerite of Savoie has been gifted by nature with
a fine mind, and a love of study, and with a singularly
good heart.
It is her smile which holds Italy together.
Sprung from a noble, warlike race, she has their cour-
age, but her goodness is that of a saint, her tact that of a
woman of the world, and her consummate power of sink-
ing herself out of sight, her unselfishness-that is her
own, a gift of God.
She is a very religious woman, and although the
Vatican and the Quirinal have been politically at odds
since she was Queen, she is still a very dear daughter of
the Pope, and receives yearly his blessing. To the
King, a knightly and noble person, but silent, reserved,
hating society and the restraints of etiquette, what has
she not been! She adores her Umberto; it is pleasant
to see her look at him. But I did not know all this
until long after. How much, however, Miss Arbesser's
conversation prepared me to believe and to enjoy I can
4
ITALY AND VICTOR EMMANUEL
་
hardly measure now. I believe Miss Arbesser lives to
enjoy seeing her perfected work, this beautiful Queen.
I hope so. It is her right.
On my first visit to Italy we went northward over the
Brenner Pass, which no traveler should skip, and saw
Verona and Nuremberg, which also let no traveler skip,
for there are the Middle Ages. There is enough in each
city to make a book out of, but we all see Europe in
the same way; we carry ourselves with us, and we make
just so much tributary as we can bring away; there is
more than we can any of us appreciate. Baden-Baden
was very charming to me. It was very gay, the play
was high, the tables were crowded. Princes traveling
incognito (even the "Baron Renfrew," which did not
in the least disguise the "Prince des Galles'') or Russian
Princesses, gambling with cool frenzy, as they do every-
thing; Frenchwomen of renown, quite indifferent to the
fate of empires, so that their flirtations and the roulette
went on undisturbed; reputable English men and
women, elbowing the fat Duchess who had run away
with her courier; the impecunious Duke who had been
assisted by Padwick; Americans with pockets full of
money, readily risked on the "trente et quarante;'
beautiful American women, exceedingly well dressed;
the famous Mme. Ratazzi, cousin of Louis Napoleon;
the Princess Suvaroff, the blind King of Hanover,
respectable old gentleman, creeping away from wife
and daughter to play heavily on the sly; women infatu-
ated with the excitement; men of all nations walking
arm in arm with the women of the demi-monde in the
face and eyes of the carefully guarded young women
whom they would afterward marry-such was the picture.
5
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
My first vision of a gambling table! I was to see it
often enough afterward at Monte Carlo and at Aix-les-
Bains; but I can remember even the faces of these far
away people while I forget the players whom I saw last
year. The ensemble is the same. Human folly has a
great likeness to itself the world over.
It discomposed
When did I last
Royalty, however, behaves better in an emergency
than we do. I saw the other day, at a public meeting, an
inkstand turned over on the stage, and this foolish acci-
dent made everybody laugh and shriek.
the orator and spoiled a lady's dress.
see an inkstand overturned? In Rome, in 1885, I was
privileged to go one Sunday afternoon to see, on the his-
torical Hill of the Capitol, the dedication of a monument
to Victor Emmanuel, the gift of United Italy. It is all
finished now, I dare say, but then it was on paper.
Old Depretis, who looked to be an old Druid, or like
the Moses of Michelangelo, with an immense white
beard to his waist, and white hair which seemed to have
been swept by all the tempests of Italy, moral, political,
and physical which have covered that peninsula for fifty
years, was to deliver the eulogium. As he began, all
the clocks began to strike, led off by the prodigious
clock of the Capitol, which sounds as if Hercules himself
were pounding on the Tarpeian Rock. Even the iron
lungs of Depretis were silenced; he could stem the tor-
rent of a parliamentary storm, but Time was too much for
him. The old Druid smiled, and the Queen put her little
hand over her pretty red lips as an enforced silence fell
on the orator.
He began: "On this historical Hill of the Capitol we
recall the words of Victor Emmanuel, those celebrated,
6
ITALY AND VICTOR EMMANUEL
:
prophetic words, 'Ci cearmo, e ci resteremo' [Here we are,
and here we shall remain.]" Proceeding, he eloquently
traced the traits of the work of "Risorgimento," upon
which Victor Emmanuel had not feared to risk his crown.
Turning to the young King Humbert he said:
"Heroism is hereditary in the house of Savoy," and he
recounted the visit of the King to Naples during the
cholera season. I saw tears in the eyes of the Queen;
it was a noble compliment, and deserved.
The great
audience rose up and cheered enthusiastically, while
Humbert, visibly moved, rose and bowed. He rarely
rises, excepting when his father's name is mentioned,
when he leaps to his feet and remains uncovered. The
King "carries," as the French say, a truly magnificent
dignity.
Then all the splendid company went forward to sign
the "procès verbal," the King, the Queen, the Prince
of Naples, the Duchess of Genoa, all the Ministers and
Ambassadors. Then occurred the accident which made
the whole crowd experience the feeling of cold chills
running down the back.
General Pasi, a superb militaire, reaching forward to
get a hammer, pulled off the tablecloth and upset the
enormous inkstand, which flowed, as if it contained a
quart of the blackest ink, all over the table, stage, and
the ladies' dresses. The Duchess of Genoa got a lib-
eral bath of it.
Now, she did not love her royal brother-in-law, the
Re Galantuomo; nor did he love her. She made a
“mésalliance” and would marry an officer much beneath
her royal rank. So there were winks and smiles in the
audience. But not one smile broke over that royal
7
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
group. The Queen looked as if a bath of ink was the
one thing needful. The King took hammer and trowel,
and put himself in the attitude of a mason. Coins and
papers were put in a box and placed in the corner-stone.
Poor General Pasi tried to wipe up the ink with his
pocket-handkerchief, but the King pounded away as if
hammering at corner-stones was his daily occupation,
and, giving a final tap to the top stone, he ended the
ceremony.
By four o'clock we were all coming down the steps of
Ara Coeli watching the crowd, the changing mass of
color, and seeing a sight never to be forgotten—the ven-
erable Capitol covered with the flags of all nations,
the Roman sky behind it of an inimitable blue.
It was
a perfect felicity of picturesqueness, while, waving on a
scarlet baldanquin, were the words "A Vittorio Eman-
uele II, Padre della Patria." On each side of the
Tribune stood a column surmounted by a statue holding
a crown of laurel, while the grandest equestrian statue in
the world, that of Marcus Aurelius, dominated the scene.
The dear little Queen, leaning on her husband's arm,
smiled at the crowd. The Ministers - Depretis, Cop-
pino, Genala, Magliani, Possina, Brin, Ricotti, and
Grimaldi-followed her down the steps. The Duke
Tortonia, the richest man in Rome, to whom had been
given the charge of the monument (he having subscribed
freely), also followed the dignitaries to the court and the
soldiers of the gallant pageant faded away.
But poor General Pasi carried away his inky handker-
chief, more terrible to him than defeat in battle, more
fatal than that of Desdemona, the one blot on the splen-
did ceremony.
4.
8
ITALY AND VICTOR EMMANUEL
Mr. Story thought the Capitol Hill too crowded for
this grand Valhalla of columns and temples; he thought
the archaic statue to Marcus Aurelius would dwarf
even the Re Galantuomo. A part of a very interesting
mediæval tower and an old convent wall had to be torn
down to make way for it.
"Why not," said the American artist, "have put the
whole thing in the Piazza Independenza, which Victor
Emmanuel made, at the end of the Via Nazionale, with a
straight vista of several miles in length for it to look
through and be looked at. Then modern Rome might
have boasted that she borrowed, but did not steal, from
ancient Rome; that she copied from afar off, but still
well, and that she did not crowd her Re Galantuomo,
but let him forever rein in his gallant steed, in the new
Rome which he had made."
When Mr. Story talked I always agreed with him-
he had such charm of manner, such artistic and common
sense. Still I was not sorry to have seen this splendid
ceremony, to have added another memory to those richly
freighted steps which Peter ascended on his knees-
"Quo vadis?"-which Rienzi, last of the Tribunes,
ascended, which are worn by the knees of pious pilgrims.
I always weep on these occasions, from an inherited Irish
hysteria which afflicts me when I see men salute the flag,
or hear "The Star Spangled Banner," or am moved by
the recital of the national hymn of any country.
So I am glad of the incident of the spilled ink, for it
gave me something to laugh at and a reason for wiping
away my absurd tears, which always expose me to ridi-
cule, particularly from those who are nearest and dear-
est to me.
9
Social and Other Memories of Rome
Horses, the King's horses, the races, and the hunt, had
much place in the pleasures of my Roman Winter of 1885.
The beautiful women of famous lineage and noble names,
the Princesses Orsini, Barbarini, and Colonna, and those
of the house of Bonaparte, and those who claimed de-
scent from Queen Christina of Spain, Rome's famous
refugee of fifty years ago, and many a titled English
woman, not to forget our American Princesses-how
they did scamper over the Roman Campagna! What
a brilliant and a peerless scene it was-some of them in
scarlet habits as bright as the wild flowers which they
trampled down. How often I met them or saw them
from afar as I made my sober way to Veii, or Tivoli, or
Albano, in a quiet barouche.
The hunt was a goodly sight. On a hunt morning
on the Roman Campagna the dogs were like those which
Hipollyta describes: "I was with Hercules and Cadmus
once, when in the woods of Crete they bayed the bear."
These Roman dogs are "dewlapped like Thessalian
bulls," indeed.
The Roman gilded youth thought much of the races
and the hunt. They were always there, so I really got
to mixing up the Count Primoli, son of a Bonaparte
Princess, and his friends with the Heavenly Twins, Castor
and Pollux, of whom the Romans cherish the fond mem-
10
MEMORIES OF ROME
ory that they visited the Forum to announce the victory
of Lake Regillus, and after watering their horses in the
Fons Internae, they disappeared, riding off into Paradise
again. The Heavenly Twins effected their departure
"on winged horses," says a veracious history. Noth-
ing can be too fabulous or even too poetical or too beau-
tiful to believe, when watching a hunting scene on the
Campagna.
And the Queen would drive by, showing her smile
and her scarlet liveries, and adding a new and better
Livia to our Roman memories.
The young Romans are very handsome and good
riders. Among these young men was many a perfect
Adonis. Beauty constantly asserts itself: it is at least
a letter of introduction. One of the best horsemen
and most perfect beauties was said to be cruel as
a tiger. He beat his wife and made twenty women
miserable, and there were also many unrecorded heart
pangs outside.
Well, these handsome men are apt
to be false and cold, like tigers and other beautiful
animals. Nero, the typical tyrant, was very handsome,
if one of his busts be correct. This demon could look
like an angel. And we might pick out many an Adonis.
among the busts of both good and bad Emperors.
The type remains. The young Roman noble is apt
to be an Adonis. The youthful eye seeks him out. I
have called him a gilded youth. He is not so gilded as
he would like to be. He seeks an American heiress
occasionally, and in nine cases out of ten he makes her a
good husband, in spite of popular prejudice. The
beauty of a strong athletic Adonis who, like the Greek,
can run, jump, pitch, toss, lift, and box, and ride like a
II
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
centaur is very dear to both men and women. It is a
high type, a sign of perfection in race, a perfect ani-
mal. Humboldt pronounced Nicholas I of Russia "the
handsomest male animal he had ever seen.
More than one such example of remarkable personal
beauty was noticeable in these gallops and runs on the
Campagna; and I once saw one of them save a life, which
is always a great feather in any man's cap.
The Campagna is a very dangerous hunting ground.
It is full of holes, in which one's horse steps and breaks a
leg, throwing the rider over his head. Mr. Hartmann
Kuhn, of Philadelphia, lost his life in that way near Rome
many years ago. As I was one day watching the hunt I
saw a lady run away with. Her vicious horse put his
foot in one of these deathtraps; twenty horses were
bearing down upon her prostrate body, when Adonis
rode between them and averted the danger. He got
off his splendid horse, picked her up, and rescued her
before one could breathe. The barouche of an Eng-
lish Countess drove up rapidly. Half a dozen carriages
came to proffer aid. The sufferer proved to be an Eng-
lish girl, quite accustomed to a "cropper," and she was
not seriously hurt. I knew her and her mother well,
and thus came to know Adonis.
I was very much struck with his modesty in disclaim-
ing any heroism in this act, although he had been badly
lamed by the horse which he intercepted and which
would have trampled down Lady Gertrude. He had to
push away his adorers. He had, I heard, twenty love
letters a day, but he bore it all with a certain scorn and
indifference. The very familiarity of his beauty had
deprived it of charm to himself. Vanity is more fre-
12
MEMORIES OF ROME
quently the vice of a flat-faced, freckled, gooseberry-
eyed, carroty-haired individual than of Adonis. Indeed,
the French verb "se pavaner," "to peacockify," which
the French use so much, is generally conjugated by the
lesser lights of Beauty. The Adonis seldom or never
struts. He would cease to be Adonis if he did strut.
So this particular specimen of manly beauty, whom I
will call Count Nero, continued to be the ultimatum of
personal attraction to the female mind. I one day hap-
pened to ask about his wife.
"She is a Russian Princess, of great eccentricity,
beauty, wealth, and prestige," answered my friend.
"They were both gamblers, but they got on very well
until they began to play against each other. He de-
clared that she ruined his luck, and then she told her
story, and said, among other things, that he threw his
boots at her."
When I looked at Count Nero's calm, beautiful,
refined Italian face, with an under jaw of bronze, and
white teeth which were so perfect that they could have
bitten a tenpenny nail in two, I concluded that if he
had not thrown boots at his wife, he might have thrown
pointed javelins, called words.
But I forgot all about Count Nero in my study of
Rome. I turned to the real Nero and philosophized
over that kick which sent Poppæa out of the world.
Lanciani and Rossi were digging up something every
day, and I went to see a wonderful room belonging to
the palace of Septimius Severus, with the frescoes as
fresh as when they were put on seventeen centuries ago.
Here we moderns get an idea of antique luxury which
puts us out of conceit with our own achievements.
13
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
Certainly Nero was a man of taste, and Poppea was a
"good dresser." In the palaces of the Cæsars on
the Palatine, I supped with Domitian. Here Rome
began. Here is Roma Quadrata. Here Romulus may
have reigned, and from this place the word Rome, which
signifies "force," was taken. I saw the gigantic remains.
of the palace of Tiberius, the palace of Caligula, the
temple of Apollo, the edifices of Septimius Severus, and
the remains of the house of Cæsar.
What did I not see? After a long, muddy walk (for
the soil was loose with recent rains), I sat down on a
fragment of sculptured rock which was a part of Livia's
bedroom, and looked into that sheltered nook where
she sat with her maidens. I had scanty time to think
during all this long, bewildering journey into history.
There was a circular vase of stone from which were
growing wild-flowers, perhaps self-planted, which was in
the center of the smaller dining-room of what was per-
haps the house of Vespasian. It gave a familiar and
feminine look to this part of the ruin, as if women and
little children had left their voices and laughter behind.
them, and I shall remember its sweet, sheltered aspect
when I have forgotten much else, even the madness of
Caligula and the spot where he was murdered.
The Cæsars, like the gentlemen they were, did not
live much at this public place. They lived at their
villas, the fortunate creatures, and they came to this
Quirinal, or White House, or Windsor Castle, by a secret
underground passage, now unearthed. I was permitted
to walk a little way through it, and I paused a moment,
where Augustus sat as a beggar to appease Nemesis, and
I wondered if any of these great people had been happy.
14
MEMORIES OF ROME
I emerged from this splendid walk, not by the Via
Sacra, which led from the Arch of Constantine to the
Arch of Titus, for that was closed for excavation, but by
the open streets of Rome, all of which lead to the
Capitol, and I soon found myself in that room which
contains the Marble Faun and the Dying Gladiator,
where I often treated myself to the pleasure of reading
over and over Hawthorne's words.
I know of no such intellectual treat as thus to com-
bine the most classic English ever written with the
noblest impressions of art.
There is the Antinous, with his perfect mouth, and
from the window just behind him that view which gives
one "the great sweep of the Colosseum, the battered arch
of Septimius Severus, and the blue Alban hills which
Raphael painted, but a little way off-consider how
much history is garnered up between!"
One day when I reached home after such a morning,
I found the card of General Garavaglia, Master of the
Horse, with a permesso to visit the royal stables to see
the King's horses.
The glory of equipage as it existed in the old Rome
of the Popes has departed forever. No more scarlet
carriages and fine horses for the cardinals in the Rome
of to-day. The only noticeable horses are those driven
by the King. This patriotic and democratic monarch
drives in an open wagon, or high phaëton, with one.
officer at his side and a servant behind, lifting his hat
to every one in answer to the vivas. But he does love a
fine horse. It is his extravagance. I was glad to see
these grand creatures at home, although General Gara-
vaglia's card was coupled with the caution that I "was
15
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
not to smoke on the premises." As I am not a Russian
Princess, this was unnecessary, but as a large party of
friends accompanied me, perhaps it was as well.
As the equine taste of the King is a passion, his two-
hundred horses are well lodged. Each horse stood in
his own loose box on straw as golden as the oats with
which the Roman Consul once fed his horse, and each
of the King's horses had his name painted over his stall
- Lepanto, Brigmano, Archippe, Iredo, Mecano,
Bembo, Brimarte, Captain Windsor, Meleaguer, "Cox,
Fox" (which I fear is Italian for Box and Cox). I
wrote some of these names in my notebook, which will
give some idea of the geographical and historical latitude
of the nomenclature of the royal stables.
Nothing could have been more kingly than the be-
havior of these noble creatures-high-strung and nervous,
their shining coats were shivering with self-restraint, for
they knew they were being admired.
"They like ladies to come and see them,” said the
groom.
Just then there was an agitation in one of the boxes,
A large rat had put in an appearance without a permesso
from General Garavaglia. The groom ran, jumped on
the rat, and killed it-the only time I ever saw a man
kill a rat! The groom was intensely mortified, and
begged of us not to mention this invasion of the propri-
eties, but ten years have passed since then. I noticed
one beautiful Arabian, half-Sardinian horse, used for the
royal reviews. He was a miracle of beauty, and should
have been named the "Star of the Morning.
The two most prized old carriage-horses, called
Monte Notte and Ercole, twenty-eight years old, were
1
16
MEMORIES OF ROME
devoted to the carriage service of the Queen. Two iron
roans called Petard and Polo, a present from the Prince
of Wales, were driven every day by the King. The
immense rank and file of these stables are kept for the
use of the Court.
When an Ambassador is invited to dine with royalty,
a carriage is sent for him. The Court ladies, when on
duty, are sent for, and driven to and from, in a royal car-
riage.
But to return to ourselves. We then were taken
into a guarded gallery, where we saw the saddles and
bridles of Victor Emmanuel. These trappings were
embroidered in gold, silver, and gems. There was a
flashing piece of raiment for a high-stepping charger, fit
for the Field of the Cloth of Gold, from the Sultan.
There was the whole story of Turkish magnificence, cruel
taxation, and the haughty arrogance of the Ottoman
Empire in that one piece of unnecessary equestrian fur-
niture. The Children of the Desert had made Victor
Emmanuel their Colonel, and had sent him a bridle
gorged with turquois and rubies.
And there was the saddle used by Napoleon when he
crossed the Alps; and a little saddle, with little stirrups
of gold, was carefully preserved. Oh, pathetic little
stirrups for little feet! Those of the King of Rome-
Napoleon II-who was but a shadow of a noble name,
he who died in his first youth, child of many hopes and
prayers, only as Duke de Reichstadt. "Ye build! Ye
build! But ye enter not in." After this I cared no
more for the royal trappings.
The King is so fond of hunting that he has a separ-
ate stable for his little string of rough ponies who carry
17
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
him in pursuit of the wild boar. He has a stud farm
just out of Pisa, where he raises horses, and thither are
sent the presents he receives from the Bey of Tunis, the
Ameer of Afghanistan, the Emperor of Austria, the Czar
of Russia, the Prince of Wales, the Emperor of Ger-
many, and the "Children of the Desert," who perhaps
send the best horses, certainly the fleetest of them all.
I was pleased to recognize some of these noble horses
as I saw them later at a royal review. They are linked
with a curious real story-an episode which has always
seemed to me to be romantic.
At my Hotel di Londra, in the Piazza di Spagua, was
a motley group of people who lived there three months
or more, meeting every day at dinner, and so there grew
up a sort of intimacy and a knowledge of each other
which was, however, fragmentary. One man, a little
Belgian lawyer, knew everybody, and used to tell the
rest of us who such and such a new-comer might be.
Lord Houghton and Lady Galway were near me, and a
famous old Neapolitan Duke and his family farther
down. One day, as the ladies of my party had left for
Florence, I was surprised to see sitting next me a beau-
tiful blond woman, simply dressed, who began to talk
to me, in a pretty voice, with a decidedly American
accent. I do not now remember how long we sat thus
chatting away, but several days after that I saw her at
the hunt, on a white horse, in a blue habit, riding
superbly.
My Belgian lawyer one day volunteered the informa-
tion that she was a countrywoman of mine, a Western
widow, he said, "or rather she is trying to be a widow.
She is seeking a divorce from her husband," he added.
18
MEMORIES OF ROME
The next day after this I was in the Vatican library,
copying and examining some of the wonderful manu-
scripts, even a palimpsest which bore on its varied surface
the De Amicitia and an oration of Cicero.
To this high honor I had been introduced by Mgr.
Cataldi, the sweetest old gentleman in Rome, a high
official of the Pope, and I was struggling with my ignor-
ance, when my American divorcée, came in. Seeing
my occupation, she became intensely interested and sat
down by me. "I cannot manage this Greek," I said to
her.
"Oh! give it to me; I will translate it for you,"
said she.
And taking my pencil she proceeded to interpret for
me the most incomprehensible of manuscripts.
"Ah," thought I, "what wonderful women my
countrywomen are! This is evidently a Vassar College
girl."
She made me regret that I, too, was not a Vassar
College girl by the variety of her knowledge. The next
day I met her at the door of our hotel, waiting for her
carriage. She was disappointed that it did not arrive.
I said, "If you are going to the royal review, so am I.
Will you drive with me?"
"Gladly," said she. So she stepped in after me,
giving me the right-hand seat pointedly, and mak-
ing herself most agreeable. She told me the names of
all the officers; and as they turned to leave the field,
several of them passed our carriage, the review being
over, and saluted her. I thought my Western divorcée
was getting on pretty well in Rome.
"You must have been often here," I remarked.
19
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
"Yes," said she, her face clouding; "too much. I
have suffered here.
I, of course, dropped the subject, and we talked of
other things.
A Court ball came shortly after, and standing near
the Queen, magnificently attired with a coronet of emer-
alds and diamonds, stood my Western divorcée.
Then I knew that the Belgian lawyer had been hoax-
ing me.
I asked the Marquis della Stufa who she was, and he
told me she was the Russian Princess of great beauty,
eccentricity, and wealth. She was the wife of Adonis,-
of Count Nero.
I then remembered that Adonis had disappeared from
the hunt. I had not seen him for several weeks, and I
afterward learned that this mismated pair did not visit
Rome at the same time.
As she sat down at breakfast on a subsequent morn-
ing, she evidently felt a change in my manner, for she
laid her hand on mine most kindly and said: “Do not
let my rank separate us. I must say I felt appalled at
the easy manner in which I had treated my supposed
countrywoman, and I told her the whole story.
said I:
"You speak English like an American."
"Do I then speak it so well?" said she.
But
We became great friends, and I felt for her a decided
admiration. She gave me the story of her life;—a sub-
ject for Ouida to handle. Never have I met a more
accomplished mind, and rarely have I seen so beautiful
a woman. Her code of morals and mine were very
different, but there was a grasp, a courage, and a sort of
20
MEMORIES OF ROME
inward purity of thought which made her most attrac-
tive.
And I found her very American-as I have found
many a Russian.
I believe that Russians are more like
us than any other nation, or we are more like them-
excepting that we neither gamble nor smoke; at least I
hope that we do not.
You enter Rome, if you approach it by the lovely
Corniche Road, over miles of the Campagna, which con-
tinues to be to you the remarkable Roman feature.
For miles away you see the dome of St. Peter's. You
see the long lines of the Roman aqueducts, like an
invertebrate animal. You realize that here, seventeen
centuries ago, dwelt millions of human beings who owned.
the world. Every step of the noble road of Septimius
Severus shows a tomb, a column, a monument, a statue,
and as you draw nearer Rome, the palaces, the arches,
the domes, the jagged outline of the Pantheon, and the
high, straight exclamation point of the Egyptian obelisk
give you that immortal profile of Rome which, once
seen, is never forgotten.
A few more shrieks of the engine, and all is lost in an
inconvenient little depot. This is the way Rome re-
ceives her guests in the nineteenth century. They did it
better in the days of Zenobia.
So that Rome became to me a fascinating appanage
of the Campagna. That is the place for memories. Of
course, on New Year's day, driving to the Quirinal, and
seeing the carriages bringing guests to honor their King,
there are still gold and fine feathers, and the liveries are
of scarlet. But it is a poor replica of the Past, even of
the immediate Past. There are a few striking figures
21
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
about-men of the Trastevere, in peaked hats, cloaks,
and splendid scarfs; a few handsome Roman women in
gay petticoats and aprons, velvet bodice, and embroid-
ered chemisette, with the famous square white cap, on top
of which they carry a brass pot. Now, the Popolo Rom-
ano is not, as a rule, picturesque. Although the army,
with the gigantic cuirassiers in gold helmets, are fine, and
the rank and file, with the Garibaldi hat and cock's feath-
ers, are very pretty, I missed color. But if on the lovely
Campagna you see a ruined tower, an almond tree, and
a silent shepherd with a shawl over his shoulder, stand-
ing motionless, you are rewarded.
There is Rome-old Rome-and that shepherd has
stood there since Cicero. I used to like to go to the
weekly auctions, and see, perhaps, some of the peasants
in costume. I bought a lamp with an owl on it, which
had perhaps lighted Cicero to bed, but it will never light
any other man-since these days of kerosene.
Its light,
like his, has gone out behind a more vulgar one.
I shall never see the Campagna again, with its scarlet
anemones and its gay riders, but I shall remember the
handsomest man, Count Nero, and the most beautiful
woman, whom he made so unhappy, and possibly she
made him equally so-the one on his black horse, and
she on her white one-as they severally and at different
times rode past that kodac which we carry in the eye,
and which left on my brain an enduring picture.
22
Memories of Northern Italy and of
the Italian Lakes
The "Arco della Pace" at Milan, built by Napoleon
to finish the great Simplon route, is a lofty gateway of
white marble with three openings for carriages. On the
top is the Goddess of Peace, drawn in a chariot by six
splendid bronze horses. At each corner of the platform.
on which she sits or stands there is a horseman, ready to
scamper to the ends of the earth; indeed, these bronze
riders have difficulty in reining in their impatient iron.
steeds. They shame the modern Italian racehorses who
endeavor to run against them below. It would be too
much to ask of these live horses to be as handsome
and spirited as their bronze brothers above, which form
part of an artistic and noble group. Nature here is less
beautiful than art.
The arch is enriched by statues and bas-reliefs, and
has been successively written over by inscriptions to
Napoleon, the Emperor Francis, and Victor Emmanuel,
as the fickle star of fortune has risen and set on these
monarchs. It is a splendid terminus to the great Sim-
plon Road, and one needs to be let down easily from
that glorious and spirit-stirring drive. We had a fellow-
traveler who ought to have sat to Mark Twain, and his
ingenuous remarks seemed to relieve our feelings in our
23
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
delight over Northern Italy. "I tell you, I dunno how
I am comin' down to common doings," said he, looking
up at the fine arch. He afterward went shopping with
us in the Promenade Vittorio Emanuele, where I
helped him to buy some pretty things for his wife.
tell you," said he, "this is the cheese.' I agreed with
him.
Milan has had an eventful and an honorable destiny.
Great as it was under the Romans, it has been repeat-
edly almost annihilated. Its troubles with the German
Emperors and its utter destruction by Barbarossa
scarcely left it a local habitation or a name, but four
Italian cities rushed to rebuild their favorite capital of
Lombardy, and for four hundred years it was constantly
growing richer and richer. It had been one of the great
silk manufacturers of the world,—that silk which Mantua
fashioned so gracefully that the word "mantua-maker'
became a universal generic term for those who are tailors
for women. Milan fell into Spanish hands with the rest
of Lombardy, and in 1714 became Austrian. The Cis-
Alpine Republic made it its capital in 1796. The king-
dom of Italy claimed it until 1815. In 1859 the Austri-
ans, whose temporary rule had been so hated, were driven
out, and now Milan prospers happy and healthy, as the
bright and beaming star of revivified Italy.
If for no other reason, Milan should be visited to con-
tradict the traveler's idea that ruin and inaction and
beggars and dirt must be associated with an Italian
city. Here is a neat, prosperous, busy town, full of
energy and success; indeed, we were a little disappointed
by its American air of business and thrift, for we were
epicures of decay and in search of antiquity. The rail-
ļ
24


G. Garibald
al suo caro amico
G. Avezzana
Garibaldi, from a photograph.
OF
MO

MEMORIES OF NORTHERN ITALY
way station, for instance, is now as commodious and
as modern as that famous one at Springfield, Mass. But,
unlike that fine temple of movement, the Milan station
is beautiful, and painted with frescoes. I can see before
me now the lovely faces which the artist has given to
the heads of Commerce and Industry, and it is certainly
agreeable to have something pretty to look at while you
are "waiting for the cars."
The mind is aroused from
body from its fatigue and
its railway torpor, and the
apprehension, and from that dyspeptic load of pain in
the chest (if we lunch at the station) which we get at an
American station; but not so in Milan. There is no
dyspepsia in Italy.
The next shock of newness was the Hotel Cavour, a
luxurious house in a new square. I daresay it has a
dozen successors newer and more luxurious, but in 1869
this hotel was famous. In front of our windows stood
the statue of Cavour, "the brains of Italy," a short, stout
man in spectacles. But the delicate Italian fancy has
placed at the foot of the pedestal a bronze figure of
"Italia," writing in letters of gold the name Cavour.
The flash of color, of sentiment, the beauty of the
female figure, began to reassure us. We began to real-
ize that we were not at any American "junction," and
in another hour the cathedral came like a strain of music
to soothe our wounded sensibilities, and we could afford,
like good citizens of the world, to be glad that Milan
was so prosperous.
The world is flooded with pictures of "this eighth
wonder of the world, the Cathedral of Milan," but not
one of them gives an idea of its majesty. In its rich,
rare, unapproachable beauty, as it rises with its thou-
25
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
sands of statues, with its immaculate whiteness, into
the bluest of skies, it seems like one of those snow moun-
tains you have just left behind you in Switzerland—a giant
of the North has wandered down to these sunny plains
and yields himself to the soft enchantment of the scene,
so purely, perfectly white, so finished and vast; whether
you gaze at it from far or near, it never loses; it always
gains. You summon your whole strength and mount
the steps-five hundred of them. After the first hun-
dred you emerge on the roof of some chapel, to survey
the statues over your head; even here you must look at
them through a glass. Three of Canova's masterpieces
are pointed out to you.
One of them bears the Roman
impress of that modern Cæsar, the first Napoleon; you
go on, and after three hundred steps you are allowed
another rest.
Here you are among the statues. A frozen army—a
procession of heroes, saints, apostles, martyrs, pass before
you; every pinnacle of the elaborate Italian Gothic is
finished with a human form. The church of Maria
Nascenti blossoms, as it should, with the human race;
and far above you, still in glorious majesty and clothed
in brightest gold, is she who, first among women, claims
this great church as her footstool, the Mother of our
risen Lord! You are ascending, until one regiment
after another of marble men is left behind you, until the
great Cathedral seems your only world. Look where
you will, blue sky and statues are all you see; still
higher, and the fair city lies at your feet, and beyond is
the soft landscape, and in the far horizon, dimly visible,
is a superb outline of the Monte Rosa and the Alps.
Here, while we were dreaming, our accidental Western
26
MEMORIES OF NORTHERN ITALY
traveler acquaintance, with a group of many other trav-
elers finds us out, and he remarked: "Considerable many
of them, ain't there? Make a good Western town if
they could travel; but I reckon they are fixed here [this
with a sickly smile]. But it's some, ain't it?''
The interior of the Cathedral is worthy of the exte-
rior. Nowhere have I seen greater surprises of delicate
color. As you gaze up at the cherub heads which seem
to be looking at you from heaven, you gather new ideas
of art and architecture from long aisles and shady al-
coves; you kneel at the altars, your prayers mingled
with the earthly delights of gratitude and surprise at all
this beauty. This is the church of St. Philip Neri,
and here he gave the name "oratorio" to the arrange-
ment we love so much, such as "Mosè in Egitto," and
other sacred operas, written by Rossini and others.
He found that the population of Milan was idle and
mischievous in the afternoon of Sundays, so he arranged
these musical plays in the oratory, which interesting bit
of history I gained from an interesting book—the Rev.
H. W. Haweis's "Music and Morals." In this church
are the relics of Carlo Borromeo, a handsome, aristo-
cratic young Prince, who took to himself the lesson
which the Saviour gave to the rich young man. In 1576,
when the plague was devastating the earth, and the fear
of contagion was such that no minister of God could be
found to bury the dead, Carlo Borromeo went forth bare-
footed, with his wooden crucifix, to pray with, and
help these stricken creatures. He studied medicine
that he might minister to them, and not only in his
religious, but in his medical capacity, showed that hero-
ism and devotion which were so rare in a bigoted and
27
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
superstitious age. He had better fortune than most
men who are larger than their fellows. He was not per-
secuted or excommunicated. Insurrections of human
intelligence cannot always be kept down. He had a
princely family behind him, and he rose to be a Car-
dinal. They show the rich gold and jeweled tributes to
him from the powerful lords, but to a man of his soul
the prayers and tears of the people were more precious.
Write him as one who loved his fellow-man.
On Isola Bella, where their palace stands, the Bor-
romeos have carved on their feudal walls the motto of
their Cardinal uncle and chief, "Humilitas;" it is the
purest pearl in their princely coronet. The famous
Ambrosian Library in Milan was founded by Archbishop
Cardinal Frederic Borromeo, another of this admirable
family. While in the Ambrosian Library I looked at
the love letters of Lucrezia Borgia, and saw a lock of her
very red hair.
She was a North of Italy blonde, appar-
ently, although born in Rome. Roscoe says "that they
are not love letters at all, but friendly letters to a pater-
nal friend;" and I suppose he knew. She was dreadfully
fascinating that I do know; and I hope that she was
good. Like all beauties she had unexampled misfor-
tunes, and has left her fair fame for historians to play
football with. Somebody else must settle the question.
The Brera, a palace of science and arts, contains that
famous statue of Napoleon, dressed as a Roman Em-
peror, with the little statue of Victory in his right hand,
which has furnished a simile for so many a budding
orator. It is by Canova, and very fine. Here, too, is
the statue of a man who deserves a wider fame-the
28
MEMORIES OF NORTHERN ITALY
great jurist Beccaria, who first called in question the
justice of capital punishment.
Milan is not so rich in pictures as Bologna, nor half so
rich as Florence, of course, but there are some good
ones-Guido's "Peter and Paul," Guerchino's "Abra-
ham and Hagar," and Titian's "St. Jerome," I happen
to remember. But, oh, the Luinis!
But, oh, the Luinis! Luini is an artist
seldom seen out of Italy. At the Church of Maria della
Grazia there are some pictures of transcendent sweet-
ness by this artist. The religious sentiment is exquis-
ite. In the Church of St. Ambrosia is a fresco of his,
preserved under glass, now made familiar by a beautiful
replica. Here the Kings of Lombardy and the Empe-
rors of Germany used to be crowned with the famous iron
crown, made of the nails of The True Cross, now preserved
at Monza. When I read this aloud from my little guide-
book to our Western friend, he shook his head; he ob-
jected to the nails. "Too far off," said he; "there are
some things which I ain't a-goin' to believe. There
are some mosaics of the ninth century, older than those
of Venice, it is said; after all, there is some antiquity
left at Milan.
The Church of San Lorenzo at Milan is the oldest,
and of great interest to architects; it is an octagon, sup-
porting a noble dome. It contains ancient mosaics,
which our Western friend did not find at all interesting.
Milan has eighty churches, and it would be a liberal
education to see any of them, but human strength gives
out, and we went to the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele,
which is simply, like the Passages des Princes in Paris, a
nice place to go shopping in, to buy pretty jewelry, and
to see the life of Milan. It seemed an immense structure,
29
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
reaching from the cathedral to La Scala, a length of two
hundred and twenty yards. It had cost £520,000, and
has a cupola one hundred and seventy feet high, lighted
at evening by two thousand jets of gas. It was a brilliant,
gay place; it was, in fact, a square of a busy city
inclosed in masonry, where one could promenade at will.
I wish we had such an useful inclosure in New York
for a rainy day. It was built by Milan, to express joy
for its emancipation from the Austrian yoke. La Scala
was closed, to my infinite disappointment, for the glories.
of all the queens of song clustered around this famous
opera house and seemed to halo it. Some weary travel-
ers are often sheepishly delighted when some famous
gallery or museum is closed, and they sit down to write
letters and rest an aching back, but I felt no such dis-
loyal sentiment at the closing of La Scala. Like Tony
Lumpkin, "I could not abide to disappoint myself."
From Milan to Sesto Calendo is an easy railroad trip,
and it takes you to the very spot where you can see
Lago Maggiore best.
been so good here.
this enchanted spot.
No wonder the Borromeos have
They were born and lived around
They own Isola Bella, an emerald
which sparkles on the breast of this beauty, this Mag-
giore. The olia fragrans blossoms all the year round.
It is the climate of virtue. Tranquillity reigns. One is
in a perpetual state of apostrophe. The noble view of
mountain and lake, the lovely villas on the banks, where
poets, philosophers, and Princes (and rich Americans)
have lived and do live, are all entrancing.
The Italian lakes! They blossom with happiness
and peace.
We drove to Orta, twelve miles back,
where there is one of those singular things, a religious
30
MEMORIES OF NORTHERN ITALY
mountain, a Calvary. From one expiatory chapel to
another you go on and upward, if you are a devout
Catholic, saying your prayers at each. Certain figures in
terra cotta, memorializing experiences in the history of
St. Francis d'Assisi, were well done. Some were ludi-
crous, but the little chapels, embowered in trees and blos-
soming vines, were lovely, and when we reached the top
we saw Orta, a gem of a lake, with mountains wooded
to the top, holding an island on which is a curious old
convent. Oh, these convent bells! how their chimes.
float upward in the evening air!
We met Mrs. Kemble at Orta-the famous wit and
genius, Fanny Kemble. She had crossed with us in the
"Russia" earlier in the season. On board the "Russia'
was her beautiful cousin, Mrs. Scott-Siddons, whom she
called a "perfect miniature of the famous Sarah Sid-
dons." Mrs. Scott-Siddons used to amuse us very much
by her anecdotes of her great cousin. Mrs. Kemble was
always a sufferer from seasickness, and kept her state-
room, with her gray hair floating over her dressing-gown.
Sitting up in a rocking-chair she would declaim for Mrs.
Scott-Siddons some of her famous parts, and especially
would Mrs. Scott-Siddons describe her Julia in "The
Hunchback." When she came to the "I hate you,
Helen," she drew her watch out of her belt, threw it
across the stateroom, and smashed it to pieces. "Did
you not go on the stage too young?" asked Fanny of
her cousin. "Oh, no; I was older than you were,
Cousin Fanny," said Mrs. Scott-Siddons, humbly. At
which Mrs. Kemble remarked: "I was a great genius;
are you?" Mrs. Kemble, in her most tragic and blood-
curdling tone was always terrible. Mrs. Scott-Siddons
31
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
was a great beauty and a woman of infinite accomplish-
ments and most amiable, but she was not a genius, and
that Mrs. Kemble knew.
Mrs. Kemble stopped to tell us at Orta that she had
been traveling though her beloved mountains. Said
she, waving her hand over the lake: "You showed your
sense in coming here. Go to Lugano," she added; and
we passed out of the spell of those grand eyes and that
magnificent voice.
The drive home from Orta to Maggiore was most
characteristically Italian. We saw the poorer kind of
Italian villagers, the beautiful peasant women and child-
ren, whom the old painters loved; the old women bust-
ling around with a distaff and driving oxen; the distant
view of the Apennines, giving us the blue-green outlines
used by Raphael, Leonardo, Guido, and Correggio.
children, with their intense physiognomy, each one look-
ing like an infant Christ; all seemed to be the realization
of a dream.
The
Lake Lugano is wild and picturesque, the mountains
higher, nearer, more precipitious than at Maggiore; the
shores splendidly fertile with grapes, olives, and walnut
groves. At Murino we followed up our friend from Ber-
nadino, a native of this place, surnamed Luini. We
went to Santa Maria degli Angeli to see his tender
religious frescoes. All of this was new to me; one of
the pleasures of the ignorant is always finding out some-
thing new, and I pity those well-informed, stupid trav-
elers, who know everything before they start. Our sail
down Lake Como brought the familiar lines of "The
Lady of Lyons" to our lips, and we could hardly keep
from quoting poetry all the time. But we had deter-
32
MEMORIES OF NORTHERN ITALY
mined that we would resist this natural impulse, so my
husband talked to an old English lady about her gout,
while I talked to her sensible daughter.
We were all going to see the Villa Carlotta and to be
charmed with its statues, for there lies the "Cupid and
Psyche," the cynosure of neighboring eyes, Canova's
masterpiece. A gentleman brought an excellent copy to
New York (I believe it is now in the Metropolitan Mu-
seum of Art) with much else that is valuable and beau-
tiful. Como is irresistible. We went to Parma to see
the Correggios, which were far more beautiful than we
had imagined, especially that room frescoed for the
unhappy Abbess who did not wish to embrace the reli-
gious life. These handsome babies, so familiar in real
life, so familiar to us in photographs, are fading away,
as if they missed their spiritual godmother, who loved
them so well that she would not eat unless she were
looking at them. We saw
We saw a ruined theatre, built for
some royal occasion, which recalled the fact that Maria
Louisa, second wife of Napoleon, spent the last years
of her life here. She did not mourn the loss of the
eagle to whom she had been mated by the politic Met-
ternich.
Napoleon loved her well, and was much too good for
her! Nor did she mourn that unhappy blond child, the
little King of Rome, whom she did not see after his
father's fall. She devoted her selfish life to Count Niep-
perg, her chamberlain, whom she afterward married, and
her large family of Niepperg children blotted out the
eaglet. We saw her uninteresting, fat face in several
portraits. She was unworthy of her Parma violets.
“I reckon she warn't worth much," said our Western
33
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
friend. We never saw him again. He met a most
tragic fate. He was drowned in the falls of the Rhine
at Schauffhausen. It seemed as if there were not water
enough to cover him, as he was very tall, and had come,
as he was fond of saying, "from the Upper Missourah "'
and had an American contempt for the rivers and water-
falls of Europe. He was exactly in real life what Arte-
mus Ward makes his heroes-ignorant, a greenhorn, but
kindly and with a wonderful acuteness. He had made
us laugh, and we regretted his tragic ending. These
accidental acquaintances whom one meets in traveling
reveal to us many a type of the American which, but for
these episodes, would remain forever unknown; he has
curiously enough got blended in with my recollections of
Northern Italy.
34
Venice and Eugenie, Empress of
the French
I consider it a piece of unqualified good luck that I
saw the most fairy-like city of the world, Venice, and
the most beautiful of women at the same time.
The month of October, 1869, found us at Venice,
just in time to see the Empress Eugenie on her way to
open the Suez Canal.
De Lesseps was her cousin-german, and she had
always befriended him; perhaps to this relationship did
the "great ditch-digger" (as his enemies called de Les-
seps) owe the help given him by France toward this
important work of his, important to civilization, the
great canal which gives us an overland route to India.
It was the most beautiful weather ever seen when we
landed in Venice, if, indeed, one can be said to land when
one leaves this earth and rows in a gondola off to Para-
dise.
There were no abominations then of steam launches
in this city by the sea; when the engine which had
brought us, stopped puffing, there was no further sound,
all was stillness, excepting the dip of the oar in the
water-sweetest echo of a sound.
"I always liked Venice because Mr. Chumley allowed
me as many chandeliers in my gondola as I wanted,'
35
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
said our modern Mrs. Malaprop. She meant gondoliers,
poor, dear woman, never mind!
But we had all the chandeliers of heaven, for Jupiter
and Venus were both bright, that night, and Orion and
the Great Bear took us under their magnificent patron-
age. We floated on to Danielli's, where our provident
Italian courier had engaged apartments. Angelo was a
great man and could wrest a parlor away from a Princess
if he wished to. It was well he had done so on this
occasion, for the house was overflowing with Italian,
French, and Austrian officers.
It was very kind of Angelo to not tell us that the
Empress was coming until we had the pleasure of the
immaculate past for a week. He allowed us (this mod-
ern Machiavelli) to float in that ether of Venice, old
Venice undefiled, by any other emotion; for at least
three days we floated up and down the Great Canal, we
saw the dear old things, like the Rialto, the Bridge of
Sighs, the Church of Maria della Salute, the great square
with St. Theodore in the Crocodile, and the Lion of St.
Mark's, also the church itself, of that fortunate saint, the
figures, and the still and the living life of Venice, which
is all the arts, Music, Painting, Sculpture, and Poetry
combined. We had visited seventy churches, and I had
fainted in one of them, before a picture by Tintoretto,
not from the picture, but simply from fatigue and emo-
tion, when Angelo entered with his account book for
Monsieur, and a suggestion that, as there would be illumi-
nations and fêtes, would not Monsieur stay another
week?
And then we knew our enjoyments were not to be
alone Venice, Queen of the Adriatic, but Eugenie,
36
VENICE AND EUGENIE
Empress of France, whom we were to look at, near or
afar, a great surprise.
It was neatly done, for Monsieur had intended to move
on, and I wanted to see Verona and Nuremburg, it was
a crowded month, that we had before us. But Angelo
wanted to stay in Venice. The idea of Festa was
precious to his Italian soul, and he determined for us
that we should stay (without saying so), and stay we
did, for the most picturesque, distinguished fortnight of
our lives.
Eugenie, Empress of the French, and Venice, too?
And what is Venice?
This jewel of art and architecture, this darling of the
poet and the painter, this mosaic set in aquamarine,
has the power to overwhelm the new comer with delight
and amazement. She is the Cleopatra of cities, and
“custom cannot stale her infinite variety," description
cannot ruin her.
Silence, pure and perfect, is the first charm with
which Venice steals your allegiance.
We too often forget the constant and unremitting
service of the slave Fine Ear.
The eye we rest gradually and often. The nose is a
pampered creature, and works only when pleased. So
with the taste; unless one is Heliogabalus, the taste has
an easy time of it. But Fine Ear must be ever on the
alert, even in sleep; he must send a message to the
drowsy brain if an alien hand touch the door-knob, or a
mouse creep along the wainscot. Sometimes he takes
a terrible revenge; all the nerves are his allies, and
to them he communicates a tremor of overwork-even
adding in that voice, the voice of the bore, which is
37
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
heard in the land, aye, in all lands, even this note is
silenced in Venice, for the "Bride of Quietness" receives
you with finger on lip and says:
"Con viso che tacendo dicea, Taci!"
-"with face that silently says, Silence"-she bids you go
silently through her watery streets, to respect the genius
of the place.
We alighted from the noisiest of railways, that which
tunnels the Apennines; our heads were reeling with
reverberation, when we became suddenly aware of the
delicious repose of the Ear. We took our omnibus,
which was a gondola, and with our trunks before us-
wretched disillusion, for they breathed of the present-
we began our Venetian experience.
Beautiful city above the water, and more beautiful
city under the water, we sail through it and over it until
we reach Danielli's Hotel, an old Venetian palace, with
famous rooms indifferently clean. It looks out on the
Grand Canal and on the Adriatic, and was quite good
enough for us; we loved its rambling surprises, its rooms
alternately low and lofty, and we liked the stone bal-
conies, outside the windows, where we sat of an evening
and watched the busy, picturesque life of the Quay, to
wonder, to admire, to dream, to rest, to enjoy, always
silently these were our duties for the coming week,
and we performed them bravely.
The siren wins you here; she wraps you in her soft,
cool atmosphere as in a garment. The dip of the oar in
the water, most musical shadow of a sound, alone breaks
the charm. Venice leads you on through her majestic
lines of palace and church, past her gloomy prisons,
38
VENICE AND EUGENIE
never permitting you to tire of her beauty, originality,
and richness. She has fused all ideas in her own over-
flowing fancy, and you feel inclined to apotheosize that
wondrous town. "That city which, though flooded,
utters no cry for help'-that city which shows you her
"golden book"-who gives you her gorgeous ceilings
painted by Paul Veronese, Bassano, and Palma Giovine,
her walls covered with Titian's, Tintoretto's, Georgi-
one's, and Bellini's masterpieces. Her architects who
have produced the wonder of the world, the dream of
poets and painters, the despair of later builders. In all
other cities your sightseeing is a fatiguing process; in
Venice it is the perfection of repose. The gondola,
swifter than the fleetest steed, more luxurious than the
best carriage, travels over the smoothest of roads in
which there is no jolting. You sit upright or lie at your
ease beneath the black canopy, which affords the most
pleasing, necessary shade for the eye. Grandly, you allow
Venice and her wondrous story, to float past you as you
gaze on what her former industry and enterprise have
accomplished—her wealth of Gothic, Moorish, Byzan-
tine palaces, her churches in the Renaissance and Italian
Gothic, her sculptures of heroic men and goddess-like
women, her beautiful Palace of the Doges, her two granite
pillars with the saint and the lion, and crowning all,
more lovely than all, her Campanile, rising above the
city like a glorified spirit of peace and repose.
The Church of Maria della Salute, which Ruskin
abuses, is a strange, magnificent thing, "like a piece of
white coral rising from the sea. I cannot imagine why
Ruskin abuses it except from his horror of the Renais-
sance, which has its failures truly, but Santa Maria della
39
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
Salute is not one of them. This glorious church, ro-
tund, grand, bristling with statues, with white angels
flying from every pinnacle, pompous, magnificent, its
domes greeting the morning sun, salutes you as you
begin your journey through the Grand Canal, like the
genius of Venice herself. The world cannot permit any
carping critic to decide that it is not beautiful; as well
try to decry the corolla of the night-blooming cereus, or
the color of the cactus-grandiflora, or the perfume of a
damask rose.
It appeals to a higher sense than that of criticism,
the elective right of every human being to admire what
pleases him.
So on through the Grand Canal, "that serpent of the
apocalypse, shining with jewels." As I saw it illuminated
later on, I shall always remember the house of Lucrezia
Borgia in blood-red, the Maria della Salute in rose color,
the Accademia in lilac, and the Rialto in every color of
the rainbow. You take a walk to the Rialto. It is out of
character to walk in Venice, still you can do it. It is a
gay walk through streets full of tempting shops and of
cheerful, swart Venetians who live out of doors.
You emerge on the Rialto itself, lined either side with
shops with a broad street between them, over which
flows a human stream perpetually.
Here walk Shylock, and Jessica, and Lorenzo, and
Antonio; they are the real people, and we are the
shadows; we shall pass away, but they will walk here
forever. The square of St. Mark's is the core of
Venice, the scene of its life and movement!
place to "go a-shopping" is this famous square!
What a
Beads
from Murano, Byzantine mosaics, turquoise ornaments.
40
VENICE AND EUGENIE
of Oriental fashion, gold chains of Venice; long, slender,
and delicate goblets, with serpents wound round them;
winged lions for your watch-chains; rings with Ricordo
di Venezia (useless request—as if you could ever forget
it!) for a legend; shops full of bric-a-brac, cabinets
which belonged to Lucrezia Borgia, fans which Jessica
may have once flirted, pictures, photographs, and all the
prettiest, most Oriental, most original jewelry in the
world. Take a pot of gold when you walk around the
Piazza.
Alas the day, there are ninety churches in Venice!
Churches are hard on the constitution and the back.
One needs several lives and a spine that knows no weak-
ness, where frescoes and marbles and immortal pictures
and monuments to the doges alternately claim your at-
tention.
The Frari, Gesuiti, Giovanni de Paolo, St. Mark's,
Maria della Salute, and Maria dell' Orto, rich in Tinto-
rettos, alone remain on my memory, that poor curtain
over which these brilliant images pass so quickly.
The Frari is certainly a very beautiful church with its
twelve pillars and lofty dome; there are some peculiar
and valuable monuments to the doges deserving of study,
if only from their queerness. One erected to the Doge
Giovanni Pesaro looks strangely familiar to American eyes.
Huge negroes in tattered garments-the black marble
skin shining through the white marble clothing-the
negroes bearing cotton bales on their woolly heads; over
these, in stately repose, lies the marble effigy of the
doge who, I suppose, "made money in cotton.' This
church is disfigured by two tasteless monuments to
Titian and Canova,
4I
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
The Gesuiti is sumptuously poor and magnificently
ugly. Its curtains of marble, its verde antique columns
inlaid with white, are marvels of labor to no pur-
pose; it is all feeble and pretentious, but it owns an
'Assumption" by Tintoretto, which is enough for one
church.
San Giovanni e Paolo, the Westminster Abbey of
Venice, is spacious and magnificent, filled with rich archi-
tectural monuments, lovely bas-reliefs, statues, and
noble pictures.
In a chapel of this church, in 1867, was burned
Titian's great picture of "St. Peter, Martyr," for
which Venice refused an offer of fifty thousand dollars
from the King of Bavaria.
San Giovanni is so vast that its treasures do not crowd
it. There is still room for an army of worshipers.
As for St. Mark's, who can describe it? Imagine its
one detail of five hundred porphyry and verde antique
columns, its Saracenic gates, its horseshoe-shaped trel-
lises!
There is a luxury and prodigality of ornament about
St. Mark's; it is so suggestive of the reckless caprice of
an Eastern monarch, who buries his favorite beneath
purple mantles, caskets of jewels, perfumes, spices, and
choicest fabrics, that its first impression is a confusing
one.
But as you sit in the gay public square sipping your
ice, and see the evening shadows descend, softening
those five domes, those gilded capitals, the whole thing
takes form and shape, and becomes forevermore the
reigning beauty of your soul. I dare not go inside,
where scarlet is lavishly laid on dead gold, where ame-
42

Q
UNIV
OF
Empress Eugenie
in 1869.
VENICE AND EUGENIE
thyst rivals ruby. Language was made before St.
Mark's, and the Tower of Babel did not suggest it.
There are no words sufficient unto it.
Over that low, broad, delicious arch stand the famous
bronze horses-the only horses in Venice, and these have
traveled far. Once they reared their iron hoofs over
Nero's triumphal arch; thence they followed Constan-
tine to his own imperial city. From Constantinople the
Doge Dandolo brought them to Venice. For five cen-
turies they stood in this, their golden stall, when Napoleon
harnessed them to his arrogant triumphal car and drove.
them to Paris, where they baited for a while in the Place
Carrousel; but their nostrils snuffed the Eastern air, and
in 1815 they trotted back to Venice, where now let
them ever remain, adding another dignity to the proud
old church.
Opposite St. Mark's rises the graceful Campanile,
around its airy heights fly the sacred pigeons of Venice.
These fat-breasted fellows, fed at the expense of the city,
are like many of us, living on the virtues of their ances-
tors, for while Admiral Dandolo was besieging Candia
at the commencement of the thirteenth century, some
carrier-pigeons brought him important news from the
Island, and he despatched messages of his success to
Venice by the same winged telegraph. Since then their
descendants have ever been the pampered favorites of
the Venetians. They perch on the domes of St. Mark's,
they are intimate with the two vulcans who strike the
hours in La Torre dell' Orologio, and they flit undis-
mayed about the granite column where St. Theodore
stands majestically on his crocodile. They are not afraid
of the terrible winged lion who, from the other column,
43
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
has watched this glorious harbor so long, and they add,
by the shifting luster of their restless necks, and by
the grace of their perpetual flight, another beauty to a spot
which of all others in the world needs such aid the least.
If I had the tongue of men and angels I should try
to describe the resistless charm of the Palace of the
Doges, or the long line of columns which so splendidly
holds up the Biblioteca Antica, magnificent structure of
the sixteenth century, and the grand staircase where
poor old Marino Faliero, in his eightieth year, was
beheaded as a traitor. On the highest landing of these
steps the doges were crowned.
All the world was a picture in those days. No won-
der that Titian and Tintoretto were possible. They had
something to paint, those old fourteenth century peo-
ple, when the world was all agitation, noise, passion,
tyranny, and tumult, emperors, popes, doges, Guelphs,
and Ghibellines, when people dressed in purple and fine
linen; when it was some dignity, honor, emolument,
and grace to be a great man, either senator, soldier,
poet, sculptor, or painter. No one can enumerate the
treasures of these palaces and churches; Venice has been
so unlike other cities in her form of government, her
curious independent history, that long, remarkable story
of the doges, her luxuriant school of art, it of course
must be the casket of much that is almost incredibly
curious. Venice was the home of the three arts of
design; "while her streets, without noise or dust, are
like the galleries of an architectural museum." Her
workers in marble have covered the "stones of Venice"
not only with immortal cherub faces and splendid.
statues, but with an outcropping of beautiful marble
44
VENICE AND EUGENIE
vegetation which consoles one for the green things which
grow out of the earth in other towns.
The Accademia delle Belle Arte is rich in Titians.
The "Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple" is
wonderfully delightful.
A dear little girl of six years, with her pretty hair
braided down her back, trots up the grand staircase, on
which stand the gorgeous priests, the magnificent citi-
zens, the curious lookers-on. She carries with her all
the unconscious grace of youth, all the sweet, chubby
outline of a healthy childhood. She must be taken up and
kissed for her sweet sincerity, her utter artlessness.
Such was the painter's idea of the Virgin Mary in her
childhood.
The grand vista of the temple, and the glorious sky
beyond, by the painter's art, suggest the greatness of
her future as she mounts ever upward; but now for the
moment she is a sweet, human child, better and dearer
than anything else in the world. Here, too, is the grand
'Assumption," one of the five great pictures of the
world. It is the most religious picture! How the
Virgin floats upward toward the majesty which dazzles
and absorbs her! Copies are of no avail, they give no
idea of such a picture. Near it hangs in somber contrast
the Entombment." Death found the artist at work on
this picture. The pencil did not fall from those industri-
ous and clever fingers until Titian was ninety-nine years
old, when the plague carried off the still vigorous man.
He has been described as the "most happy, most for-
tunate, most healthy of his species, heaven having
awarded him nothing but favors and felicities; a man
who worthily enjoyed his good fortune. Very courte-
45
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
ous, endowed with rare politeness, and with the sweet-
est ways and manners, he takes men well, and he takes
life well."
Such a life seems to transcend humanity, it is almost
God-like. Over this magnificent old age, however, the
clouds began to gather. First, in the terrible sorrow of
an unworthy son, the priest Pomponio Vicellio, who
robbed him in his old age; secondly, as he saw his
beloved Venice sink into that abyss of corruption and
decay, so powerfully pictured by the wretch Aretino,
in whose base life, the friendship of Titian seems the
one redeeming thing.
The necessity of pleasure had extinguished the spirit
of industry and enterprise in the Venetians during the
century Titian filled, and nothing noble remained but
their love of art. Titian must have been glad to die!
Seeing his triumphant warrior city ending through "non-
chalance and voluptuousness" in ruin, he knew that
imagination would decline, that art would become insipid
and circumscribed.
A modern writer speaks eloquently of that unique
moment "between heroic and epicurean eras, when men,
having conquered, stop to enjoy and adorn their lives."
At this moment "blossoms the transient and delicate
flower of art." Then flourish painters and sculptors.
All adornments are called in "magnificently to enliven
the senses and the intellect." Then, too, often comes
that enervating luxury in which art declines as surely
as a flower fades in an overheated room.
Let us be grateful for those precious moments on the
great clock of history which gave us Titian and Tinto-
retto.
46
VENICE AND EUGENIE
One must go to Venice to appreciate Tintoretto, if
indeed only to see the "Miracle of Tintoretto, one of
those amazing pictures which are among the sensations
of a lifetime. You need no catalogue to find it; it finds
you, it runs to meet you. You need no extraordinary
ability to admire, you are not required to have any
knowledge of the art of painting, you are only requested
to look, admire, wonder, and worship. It is the story
of the deliverance of a condemned slave, by the interven-
tion of the patron saint of Venice.
This picture, a crowd without confusion, and move-
ment without hurry, is a miracle indeed of color, and
power, and commanding vigor of execution. Also the
"Madonna between Sts. Cosmo and Damian," a "Para-
dise" in the Ducal Palace, the "Last Supper," the "Mar-
riage in Cana,” a wonderful picture.
His best works are all at Venice. One comes here
to see them. They call him the "Michel Angelo" of
color, "Il Furioso," and a dozen other names; he is a
hurricane, a tornado of genius, except that he has left
no ruins, only beauty behind him. His "Heaven and
Hell," a tremendous picture in the church of Maria dell'
Orto, has in it an accidental likeness of Garibaldi in the
seventh heaven, which delights the sexton, evidently a
liberal Italian. It is said that even Titian paid Tinto-
retto the compliment of being jealous of him, but after-
ward became his admirer and friend. How serene, rich,
and silvery is Paul Veronese after Tintoretto. It is like
going from an American autumn to an English sum-
He painted Venice in its patrician aspect. Those
beautiful, calm women, so perfectly dressed, the splen-
did old men in brilliant robes, the gay scarlet housings,
mer.
47
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
his balconies, and his blue skies, give these pictures.
wondrous charm. His "Venice Queen" in the Ducal
Palace is one of these priceless gems.
All these defy description. Some forty of his pic-
tures adorn the church. Of all these the "Miracle"
seems to me still the "Miracle"! Engravings falsify
these pictures; copies almost ruin them.
Mind, warmth, movement, vigor, impetuosity, and
overwhelming richness of conception give the pictures
of Tintoretto a place in your gallery of sensations which
is unique.
How many pictures Tintoretto painted is not given
me to say.
One must live as long as Titian did, and possess the
robustness of Tintoretto, to even form a conception of
the treasures of Venice.
The accumulations of the Ducal Palace appall me as
I attempt to recollect them.
Not that I am in danger of imagining more than I saw,
but that I am in danger of forgetting everything, in such
a treasure house.
That grand marble staircase, with its sculptures and
its memories of processions which filled it with color and
movement during the thirteenth and the agitated four-
teenth, and the luxurious fifteenth centuries. Who can
even imagine it?
The splendid state saloons with heavy gilded ceilings,
whose upholsterers, and painters, and carvers were Tinto-
retto, Titian, Veronese, and Pordenone, where Venice
recorded herself at her proudest moment, her "unique
moment" between ripeness and decay-the Ducal Pal-
ace holds theṣe and more.
48
VENICE AND EUGENIE
I am glad to mention a disappointment here, for one
emotion becomes tiresome. The veiled picture of
Marino Faliero among the doges, which has pointed so
many morals, is very unobtrusive and not at all impress-
ive. You search a long time amid that line of dingy
portraits before finding it. It seems to encourage us
Americans to make treason a very insignificant crime, in
which we need no encouragement.
We made several visits to the Lido, that home of
Armenian learning and piety, and gave many a day to
its renowned retirement. All readers will remember
Lord Byron's connection with it; and the learned fathers
include his handsome face with their own in their little
photographic album of portraits. It was here that the
energetic American traveler uttered the justly cele-
brated remark, "Show me everything you have got here
in five minutes.' Imagine the disgust of the old
Armenian bishop, proud of his convent and its treasures!
A man of learning so vast, that the age seemed to him
scarcely long enough for inquiry, a man who regards
Cheops as a modern incident, and the discovery of
America as a fly on the wall-how must he have regarded
this superbly impertinent visitor? Let us hope that he
banished him altogether from his mind.
But it is not alone to the art of Venice, as illustrated
by pictures, that the visitor must bow. Her enamel and
her mosaics are quite as wonderful. We must follow up
the art of glass and pay a visit to the factories at Murano.
The first fugitives who fled to the Islands of the sea-
girt city and who made salt from its lagunes brought the
"art of glass" with them. An art which could be car-
ried on the "tips of the fingers," and which depended
49
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
on fancy, dexterity, and a little sand, could be easily
transported; much more easily, alas! than the delicate
fabric which they produce can bear moving. In 1090 there
are records of the skill of the Venetians in this delicate
art. In 1291 the factories and furnaces increased so
rapidly that they were banished to Murano, an island
and suburb of the city.
The republican aristocrats dearly loved the achieve-
ments of the glass-blowers, and gave them peculiar privi-
leges. The Council of Ten visited them officially day
and night, but treated them with favor so long as they
staid at home. A Muranese who taught his art to for-
eigners, however, was terribly punished. If he escaped
with it to foreign lands, he was followed and put to
death.
The daughters of the foremen were permitted to wed
with the patrician sons of Venice, and the Muranese
were allowed to follow first after the doge when he went
out to wed the Adriatic. In the eleventh and twelfth
centuries the Byzantine artists taught the secret of
enamel to Venice. The mosaic work became then as
famous as the blown glass. But this industry decayed
with all else Venetian through the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. About 1836 it began to revive,
and to the well-known artistic lawyer, Dr. Salviati, who
may well be translated "savior" of this beautiful art,
does Venice owe the restoration of one of her ancient
glories. Pictures are copied by these skillful workers in
this imperishable material to the utmost perfection.
The Queen of England gave them large orders for
the Wolsey chapel at Windsor, which they have filled
with exquisite success, and for the mausoleum at Frog-
50
VENICE AND EUGENIE
}
more. They are now repairing the splendid mosaics of
St. Mark's, some of which are almost in ruins. The
next undertaking is to be the "Apocalypse," which was
the grand work of the mosaicists of the fifteenth cen-
tury, from cartoons of Titian, Tintoretto, and Paul
Veronese. For this work the Venetian government
pays them twenty thousand francs a year.
The workers in glass have given a word to the lan-
guage. Why is fiasco a synonym for failure?
Because, essaying to make a goblet, the workman
sometimes fails, and burying his long tube in the molten
glass he blows a flask, which requires only a poorer art,
(flask in Italian is fiasco).
So fiasco (a flask) became the synonym of failure.
Salviati has given much of his genius to the revival
of blown glass, and now every well-furnished dinner
table can boast some proof of his cultivated skill. The
authorities in antique glass maintain that Salviati can
to-day give you all the wonders and all the beauties of
the once lost "art of glass" of the sixteenth century.
He can give you, at his famous shop in the corner of
the Square of St. Mark's, chandeliers which bear flowers
in natural tints, growing from their pendent branches,
goblets of ruby and opal, roses of sapphire and tur-
quoise, finger-bowls with roots of water plants trailing
through their sea-green waves, dessert plates with opaque
mother-of-pearl centers fringed with transparent ruffles
of rose color, lily-shaped vases, ice-frosted flagons, mir-
rors framed in mirror, filigree decanters, and long-
stemmed, flower-like glasses, with jeweled serpents
climbing to the brim. We all know what Salviati glass
has become, the prettiest in the world.
51
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
I must, however, enter upon memories more de-
cidedly personal. Angelo had condescended, at last, to
explain that we were to see Venice under the greatest
and most singular advantage, under, indeed, the only
mantle which can improve the Queen of the Adriatic,
that of illumination, and that he had gondola and per-
mit, all ready for us, yes! We were to follow her, and
catch her beautiful profile all along the Grand Canal!
A thing to see! And a place to see it in!
So the end came, and we were not so far from the
royal cortége but that we could see Victor Emmanuel,
with Eugenie at his side, float by in the track of the
ages, through that long night of music and lime-light,
and gondolas. The ugliest King and the most beautiful
Empress in all the world! It was a fairy tale! We had
seen her before, on the deck of the Aigle, yes, Eugenie
in all her beauty, the proud Empress of the French, had
been moored on her yacht, the Aigle, in front of
Danielli's Hotel. We saw her plainly walking up and
down on its deck. One Royalty after another had
gathered there to accompany her to the opening of the
Suez Canal. In the evening Victor Emmanuel gave a
fête in her honor, and we were allowed to follow in our gon-
dola. The glittering procession, accompanied by music,
airs from Otello and I duo Foscari, which breathed of
Venice and her old renown, preceded us. It was a pro-
longed opera. "I am never merry when I hear sweet
music,'' was the exquisite remark of Jessica, little ducat-
stealing apostate, to her lover Lorenzo, under the "patines
of bright gold." I felt, as the children say, like crying
all through this splendid night, when the palace of
Lucrezia Borgia shone in blood-red light, and the Rialto
52


Empress Eugenie and the Prince Imperial.
T
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VENICE AND EUGENIE
was hung with jewels, and Santa Maria della Salute
blushed in rose colors, and the lofty tower of St. Mark's
and the statue of St. Theodore were in lavender. It was
brilliant with the beauty of night, and even all that was
left in shadow, the waters of the canal, a mirror for all this
loveliness, gave us back a strange ideal city, under the
water! It was indeed "Italian festa" as a model of the
old Bucentovo, after one with which the old doges used to
wed the Adriatic, preceded the Empress, the fair woman
who was so soon to bless the wedding of India and the
West; nothing that was symbolic, nothing that was
eloquent was left out of this night. Poor woman, poor
Eugenie, where is she now? Our Lady of Vicissitudes!
She, in one year after all this splendor, was a fugitive
from her throne, and I saw her again in her weeds, a
childless widow, in London at the time of the Queen's
Jubilee, with a face on which sorrow had set its seal.
Did she remember that brilliant evening at Venice, or
the more imperial one at Ismailia when, dressed as Cata-
lina Cornaro, she opened the great ball with the Vice-
roy of Egypt. She had that splendid dress made in
Venice from the famous picture.
What days! We had followed up Titian and Tinto-
retto, and had spent hours in exploring the palaces of
Venice, and doing or being done by its churches. Every
hour in Venice is a festa; it is all music, picture, charm,
and, as we began with Eugenie, we topped off with Fred-
eric, Prince of Prussia, going to Suez, and many another
prince, now gone over to the majority. I am glad to
have seen Eugenie in this supreme moment of her bril-
liant career. She is framed in my memory with that
glorious Venetian company who have filled history and
53
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
the drama, and none will have a stranger story to tell on
the banks of the Styx than Eugenie, Empress of the
French.
We were glad when that brilliant night was ended,
so full was it of memories, we dreamed of Desdemona
and the Moor; we seemed to see the doges wedding the
Adriatic; we went over the sorrows of the prisoners
under the Piombi, we visited the terrible letter-box,
"the lion's wreath. Before us, gleaming, was the
Lion of St. Mark's, with his paw on the world, and
near him St. Theodore on his slippery crocodile. All
around us was Venice, in interest, and charm, and
novelty, unequaled on earth.
Later on I was to hear from Lord Houghton's lips
his account of meeting the beautiful Empress at Port
Said, where she asked him on board her yacht.
The Empress Eugenie and the Emperor of Austria
were the most distinguished guests of the Khedive on
this occasion, but the Eastern Monarch had asked Lord
Houghton also to be his guest, and had given him a
house and carriage at Cairo, paying all his expenses.
In entering de Lesseps's "great ditch," the Empress
led the way on the Aigle. The Empress said she only
regretted not being able to go on to India, which has
been the dream of her life.
"Ah! how can your Queen have such a delightful
dominion and not go there," she said to Lord Houghton.
Abdul Kedir stood behind the Empress at the reli-
gious services. These had to be somewhat composite. A
Moslem pulpit turned toward Mecca and a Catholic altar,
the Moslem began the prayer with covered heads. The
Catholic service followed, all heads uncovered.
54
VENICE AND EUGENIE
Only one pretty sentiment was uttered: "Our enter-
prise has but two enemies, sand and space."
"This fête at Ismailia could not have cost less than two
hundred thousand pounds," says Lord Houghton, "but
the Viceroy has six or seven millions sterling of income,
so he can stand it."
It was poor Egypt that had to stand it!
"I saw the waters of the Red Sea and the Mediter-
ranean meet. Their respective fishes must have been
rather astonished to make acquaintance with each
other," wrote Lord Houghton.
"How many wives has your lordship?" asked of him
the many-married Sultan.
"I never had but one wife, Your Majesty, but she
was so nice I wished she was half a dozen," answered
Lord Houghton.
No one could appreciate the Empress Eugenie better
than Lord Houghton, and he described her as a gifted
and amiable woman.
"I belong," said she, "to the family of the Cid and
the family of Don Quixote." She, however, did not
know English literature as well as Spanish, for she told
Lord Houghton that she admired his works more than
those of Shakespeare!
She was deceived in political matters, but he thought
her errors were caused by noble and generous senti-
ments. Her great sorrows have been courageously
borne, she has been on a level with her misfortunes.
Her starry dream changed into a horrible nightmare,
but no woman, deprived of her only child, has shown
more dignity in her sorrow. The very excess of her
misfortunes has disarmed criticism, and when she passes
55
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
through the city where she reigned with such consum-
mate grace, there is a "truce of God," as one of her
biographers says, "between all parties and all the jour-
nals to avoid distressing her."
Truly Spanish in character, impassioned for religion`
and glory, she loves all that is beautiful and chivalrous.
She is very dear to Queen Victoria and to the Princess
Beatrice; her clear, firm handwriting does not even
tremble beneath her weight of woe. She finds her pres-
ent life almost that of a religious recluse, but she remem-
bered the world and its duties well enough to send the
pearls of Hortense to the Princess Letitia on her mar-
riage to the Prince Amedéo, Duc d' Aosta, where I saw
them worn at the wedding.
How will Eugenie be remembered by posterity?
"As the Bride of the Notre Dame? As the most
beautiful woman in the world? As the Chatelaine of
the Tuileries? As the courageous heroine of Orsini's
bombs? As a Sister of Charity at the Hospitals of St.
Antoine? As the Juno reigning over an Olympus of
Emperors and Kings at the Exposition of 1867? No,
as the mother who weeps and prays for the young boy
who fell in Zululand." Such is the magnificent resumé
of Saint Armand.
But I shall remember a beautiful, tall figure, standing
alone on the deck of a yacht, framed by Venice and the
Adriatic, a Queen of Beauty in her glorious prime, in
a frame, unsurpassed, in the year 1869.
And I shall remember a sad face, framed with white
hair and a black veil, in 1887, which still bore the peer-
less contours of that countenance which had once ruled
the world of fashion, the fair, noble face of Eugenie.
56
Orleans and Turin
When I read in the papers of a duel between the
young Princes, Henri d'Orléans and the Count de Turin,
I can but remember that I saw the latter and his
brothers, the sons of the Duc d'Aosta (Amadéo, King
of Spain, youngest son of Victor Emmanuel), at perhaps
the most picturesque moment of their lives, and it was a
curious occasion, too, for it was at the wedding of their
father to his niece, Letitia Bonaparte.
And it was whispered that the Prince Emmanuel, as
he was then called, was himself in love with his cousin,
who was soon to become his stepmother.
I imagine here an Anglo-Saxon son would have
sulked. Young men in England and America seldom
assist at their father's second nuptials.
But these amiable Italian boys made themselves the
masters of the revels, and nobly led off in all matters of
decorating the city, and the plans for making the wed-
ding correspond to the ideas of old Italian festa, in
Turin. I rose early one morning to look out of my
window on an Italian sunrise, which had for its piéce
de résistance Monte Rosa, whose ivory peak the sun
gallantly kisses the last thing before he retires for the
night and the first thing in the morning. I was repaid
for this matutinal duty by seeing in the streets of Turin
a spectacle of almost equal brilliancy and of more human
57
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
interest. It was the young bride, to be, Letitia, on
horseback, coming in from her mother's residence,
about two miles from Turin, to take up her residence at
the Palazzo Madama, in the city, whence she was mar-
ried the next day. For escort she had one hundred young
horsemen, the gallant nobles of Turin, headed by the sons
of Amadéo, her cousins. She wore a scarlet habit and
black hat with plumes. It was a mediæval picture. In
spite of all the magnificence I was to see afterward, this
picture remains untouched in my memory.
But these young horsemen had another surprise in
view. After the wedding breakfast, the programme read
that all the bridal party and all the Kings and Queens
should drive in state through the city to the Square Vit-
torio Emanuele, where a lofty platform had been erected
in the shape of an immense basket of flowers, the arched
handle of which was covered with roses. Seats for
thirty thousand people were built around this immense
basket, on the top of which seats were prepared for the
bride and the Queens. On a daïs behind them stood
the groom, the King, and other gentlemen, the royal
family of Portugal, and the Bonapartes.
Here the Syndic of Turin was to be received as he
offered a bouquet and a loyal address to the bride and
groom. We secured seats in the best places on one of
the platforms, and gazed our fill at the exquisite floral
decorations and the rosy balloon floating in air, held by
ropes of roses.
But down the streets came a royal cortège led by
Prince Emmanuel. Two hundred young horsemen
dressed in the costume of Prince Eugène approached.
Oh! what a pretty sight it was! They wore powdered
58
ORLEANS AND TURIN
wigs, the little three-cornered hat which fits so grace-
fully on the head, green velvet coats, embroidered in
gold, with full skirts, knee breeches, and silk stockings,
a gala body of the pride and glory of Italian youth.
Two hundred had escorted the King, who drove after
them to the foot of the daïs. They drew up their horses
descended from his carriage
in a hollow square, while he
and then mounted to the daïs.
When lo! more music and two hundred men in coats
of blue, arrived as escort to the Queen, who, amid
bravos and vivas which shook the air, ascended to the
flower basket.
And then two hundred more; this time their coats
were of bright red, the Napoleon color. These last two
hundred arrived escorting the bride, who ascended her
temporary throne.
Then the three Gardes à Reine took up their posi-
tion, so that their coats of green, red, and blue inter-
laced the colors of the Italian flag. We, who looked
on, saw to our delight that the Queen, in delicate lilac,
sat on one side; the bride, who wore a bright prawn
pink silk dress, looked a very Bonaparte, and on the other
side was the Queen of Portugal, in a delicate mignonette
green, a lovely creation of Worth, thus making another
combination of color which had been evidently carefully
considered.
The Queen of Portugal, youngest daughter of Victor
Emmanuel, is a red-haired Princess. I thought her very
pretty, and admired her taste in dress at the wedding, in
which she shone in deep blue and a sapphire crown.
She is very fond of dress, and is blamed for her extrava-
gance, but she always looks charmingly, and has the
59
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
courage of her race. She has saved two lives from
drowning with her own right royal white arm.
But we who looked on were also listening to the most
charming music and were watching the King of Italy
talking to his brother-in-law, King of Portugal. The
bridegroom stood behind the chair of his bride. The
Queen smilingly talked to the Princess Matilde, while
"Plon Plon"-otherwise Prince Jerome, father to the
bride-stood gloomily behind the Queen, knitting his
brows in the Napoleonic, impressive manner.
It was a glorious masquerade for these young Princes,
and admirably done. After it was all over, and the six
hundred soldiers on horseback had turned, and had
melted into the Italian sunset, we still gazing at the
afterglow on Monte Rosa, I was joined by an Italian
gentleman, who told us that a party of the young
Gardes à Reine would dine at our hotel, and that we
could see them at shorter range.
So we saw the beautiful Italian eyes flashing under
the powdered wigs-it was very becoming, that dress-
and afterward the Marquis d'Azellio pointed out to me
Prince Emmanuel, him who appears in our picture
papers of to-day as wearing a helmet such as the one
Achilles wore when he sat "sulking in his tent." He is
very handsome, tall, and stately. They have all (these
children of Amadéo) inherited their mother's beauty, as
well as her immense fortune. She was remotely of
Dutch blood, and the greater spread of their stalwart
figures is due perhaps to this inheritance, for Amadéo,
although rather tall, was extremely thin and looked
very delicate.
But their courageous blood showed in all of them,
60
ORLEANS AND TURIN
these children of Victor Emmanuel, as long as they had
body enough to carry around their souls. Fortunately,
these young Princes have height and breadth and
thickness proportionate.
The death of the bridegroom, Amadéo, one year
after his marriage, at the early age of forty-four, left the
eldest son, the Duke d'Aosta. He is heir presumptive
to the throne of Italy, should the Prince of Naples die
childless, but whatever may be his fate, or his costume,
I doubt if he ever looks as handsome as he did on his
father's second wedding day. Nor could any one appear
more amiable than he did.
I have a photograph before me of that painful statue
in Turin, the group of the dying horse falling under the
Duke of Genoa, which is always avoided by strangers,
but adored by Italians, as a memento of that unfortunate
Prince who so felt his defeat at the battle of Novara
that he died of a broken heart-Prince Ferdinand, Duke
of Genoa. He was the father of their beloved Queen,
their Marguerite of Savoy, and every cab-driver takes
off his hat to this gentleman soldier. His brother, the
King Victor Emmanuel, loved him intensely.
have strong family affections in the Italian royal family.
They are a noble race, and, although the late duel was
a foolish affair, one cannot but be glad that the noble
cock sparrows fought it out.
They
There is but one descendant of this warlike race-
Don Carlos of Portugal-who seems to prefer peace to
war. He is fat, like his father, inert, and pleasure lov-
ing. He has a very vigorous spouse, daughter of the
Count de Paris. Her sympathies go with her cousin,
doubtless, the young son of the Duc de Chartres.
So
61
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
one fears that Don Carlos has to listen to some curtain
lectures just about now.
But the Count de Turin probably felt the blood of
the Re Galantuomo kindle in his young veins, as, with
his noble followers, Colonel Aveogardo de Quinto, Colonel
Vicino Pallavicino, Count of Avegliana [how splendid and
musical these names are?], he reached the field of honor.
No wonder that the Italian blood has leaped wildly at
his victory, and that the royal family of Italy has been
congratulated,-first, that no life was lost; secondly,
that the so-called insulted honor of Italy has been
avenged.
We, of the cooler blood, the Anglo-Saxon blood, do
not think that possible to thus avenge honor, nor, if it
were, that two young men, gallant and courageous,
could mend the matter much by fighting each other.
The blood of the Orleanist has proved its valor on
many a well-fought field, that of the Sardinian has never
known the meaning of the word fear; therefore it would
seem as if apologies and explanations might have served
in place of cold steel.
The duello belongs to the age of Prince Eugène, in
which romantic and becoming dress I first saw the Count
de Turin; he must have been scarcely twenty at that
time, a mere boy and a very handsome one. I observe
in the papers that he went to the duel in a very different
dress, a black frock coat with a white waistcoat, and had
his trousers turned up à l'Anglaise upon patent-leather
shoes. He wore a straw hat, which is by no means a
helmet.
Oh, shades of chivalry! Why, if the duel must be
fought, did not Henri d'Orleans wear the glorious white
62

George 8. March Surin, 1864
George P. Marsh in 1864.
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ORLEANS AND TURIN
cockade of the Bourbons? Why did he not rehabilitate
Louis XV, with his "powdered curls aflying?" Why
did they not both dress out of one of Dumas's novels?
Prince Henri d'Orleans "was dressed in a suit of blue
serge, and a white waistcoat also, with a straw hat and
tanned shoes.'
There is something mediæval and fine, however, when
we picture the two kingly youths stripping off coats and
waistcoats, as, while facing each other, they listened to
the terms of the duel, read by Count de Leontieff,
addressing them as Mes Seigneurs.
"Prince Henri attacked immediately with fiery impa-
tience" [it sounds like Amadis de Gaul]. That is fine.
"The Count de Turin, the taller man of the two, had
his sword attached to his wrist by a leather thong; he
fenced in the Italian fashion, keeping the sword in a
straight line, with the arm stretched to its utmost limit."
It might have been Emanuele Filiberto facing Fran-
cis I.
It was evident that the duel was to be a fierce one
from the first, a l'outrance!
Now we begin to sympathize with this insult to
chronology.
Courage and hot young blood, they are the same in all
the centuries. Women smile and weep and wave their
handkerchiefs. Poets sing of the combat, and the trum-
peters sound the "Tra lira lira." It is the old, dear
story of Roncesvalles, of the seige of Orleans, of Solfer-
ino, of Waterloo, of Five Forks, of the Charge of the
Six Hundred, of the "men who fired the shot heard
round the world''-yes.
No matter how or where, no matter what shaped hat
63
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
or what weapon or what cause, courage is always beau-
tiful. His Royal Highness, Prince Victor Emmanuel of
Savoy Aosta, Count of Turin, America salutes you.
You have leaped into fame, you are worthy to wear the
livery of Prince Eugène, you are doubtless worthy of
that Re Galantuomo who leaped from the saddle to a
throne in the Quirinal. But we cannot but hope you
will take a better way of showing these splendid traits,
the inherited valor of your noble blood. Keep that
strong right arm of yours intact to defend United Italy.
Be worthy of Garibaldi, the saint and savior of Italy.
Think of him as he landed in 1860 at Marsala. Remem-
ber how he saluted Victor Emmanuel at the Volturna as
King of Italy. Remember Rosalino Pio, Cavour, Maz-
zini; be statesman as well as soldier.
Prince Henri d'Orleans, remember your young father,
who, in 1862, offered his sword to the cause of liberty
in the United States; remember your great uncle, the
Prince de Joinville, who, in his letter to General McClel-
lan, said these most memorable words: "My nephews,
the Count de Paris and the Duke de Chartres, desiring
that first privilege, that last touch to the education of a
Prince, to draw their swords in a noble cause, desire to
enter the service of the United States as aides to Gen-
eral McClellan in the field."
And no knights of the days of chivalry, no heroes of
the round table, or of Agincourt, were more brave, more.
patient, more soldierly, than these two Princes of the
House of Orleans. There was not a private in the field,
fighting for an idea, for home and country, who might
not have taken a lesson from them.
And so we float from the straw hat back to the
64
ORLEANS AND TURIN
chapeau bras of Prince Eugène, and conclude that valor
is of all ages, the friendly hand clasp at the end (as
the two old friends ended their gloomy spell of lunging
at each other) shows that good blood and brave hearts
are first to forgive and to forget.
Prince Henri d'Orleans, lying wounded on the ground,
stretches his hand to the Sardinian, and says: "Mon-
seignor, permit me to take your hand."
It is not quite tragic enough to compare it to Sir
Philip Sidney and the glass of water, but if it reminds us
of that gallant chronicle it has not happened in vain.
We can think coolly, now that neither young life was
lost, of how glad we are that it is over, and hope that
they will never, never do so any more.
65
Legends of Aix and Miolan
The year 1888 was a very full and gay season at Aix,
and memorable to me for many reasons. The Queen
Marguerite was at Courmayeur, on the Italian side of the
Alps. We often heard of her heroic ascents, and we
seemed near to the charming creature. We were am-
bitious to go on later to the royal wedding of Amadéo,
which we did, and we threw in one bitter experience
at Miolan.
From Aix-les-Bains to Tresserves is one of the most
charming drives possible. It is also an agreeable walk
along the fields through vineyards and chestnut groves.
There is a fine park at Tresserves, and all sorts of beau-
ties combine to make it ever attractive; fresh rivulets
run through the green grass; hedges of beechnuts
through which scamper rabbits shut off the grand villas
of the rich proprietors (whose grounds are elegant to the
last degree of luxury) from the farms of their humble
neighbors, and above the road hangs a redoubtable preci-
pice, around which hangs a pretty legend, the spur
of the higher mountains; beyond this a precipice
gives sharply on the Lac de Bourget, and from it
once leaped a maiden. Her name was Brigitta, as
common as Bridget in Ireland. She was affianced to a
young shepherd whom she loved, but an elderly, rich
widower pursued her with his unwelcome attentions.
66
LEGENDS OF AIX AND MIOLAN
One day as she was feeding her flock at the top of the
mountain this disagreeable person appeared; but she ran
away from him, and, evoking the protection of the Vir-
gin, she flung herself from this tremendous height.
An hour later her agonized parents, who had espoused
the cause of the elderly adorer, sought for her mangled
body below, and they beheld Brigitta calmly smiling,
sitting unhurt a thousand feet below, where she ought
not to have been, alive. When she threw herself into
space she said that the Virgin came with a fleecy bank
of cloud and saved her from the arms of the widower
and from death. She was deposited safely at the foot
of the mountain, and gave her name and legend to it in
perpetuity.
The range of mountains called the Bauges, famous
for cheeses and milkmaids (who are eagerly sought for
as servants), being a healthy, hearty race, are near
enough to Aix for excursions. The mountains are
retired from the world and full of legends. One is inter-
esting, as it presents an arithmetical problem.
Three travelers, named Peter, Paul, and John, passed
the night in a simple auberge, or inn. The next morn-
ing, having paid their little "scot," they took leave of
the landlady, and gave into her care a box containing a
thousand ducats, with the promise extracted from her,
under oath, that she should not give it to any person or to
either of them unless all three were present. Some time
after Monsieur Peter appeared and claimed the box, say-
ing that his friends had sent him. The hostess, forget-
ting the principal condition imposed upon the restitution
of the casket by all three of the depositors themselves,
gave it to him alone.
He took the casket, went off, and
67
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
never has been heard of since, although that was eleven
hundred years ago. Meantime, as might have been
expected, Paul and John arrived and inquired for the
box. They blamed the landlady, and had her arrested
and taken before the Court on an action of restitution of
damages. The charge ran thus: "While this dame
has received the casket from three depositors with an
order to only deliver it to three, and has falsely delivered
it to one, who has carried it off to the detriment of the
other two, the defrauded claim damages; and may it
please the Judge to estimate the damages high. The
defrauded claim the eyes in her head." So wrote the
angry Paul and John.
Now, as the landlady had very pretty eyes-they
were all that she had, and of great importance to her-
she naturally demurred.
The tribunal, however, condemned the landlady.
She had, alas, no friends, when a black counselor crept
up and whispered in the ear of the judge:
"If Peter, away from Paul and John, had no rights,
what right had Paul and John away from Peter?”
This turned the tables, and the landlady kept her
eyes; so they call this "Auberge Les Yeux de Saint
Clemence."
There are, however, many other legends. I went to
call on a friend, Lady Whalley, who lives near Aix in a
house called Le Tour et le Maison de Diable. One half
is a formidable tower of the Middle Ages; the rest is a
modern English mansion. As we were drinking our five
o'clock tea on her piazza, looking over the vine-clad
valley toward the snow mountains, I saw this stern tower
cutting the sky. I asked her the origin of the legend.
68
LEGENDS OF AIX AND MIOLAN
"Oh," she said, "if the devil had never done any-
thing worse than to build that old tower! It keeps the
wind off us in Winter; it is an admirable place for old
boxes! Will you ascend it?'' And I went with her up
winding stairs through the heavy old stone architecture
of the day of the Robber Barons. Some old feudal lord
had essayed to build this for defense, but the serfs were
slow and stupid. "I will give my soul to the devil, if
he will finish my tower," he incautiously remarked.
the next morning he looked up, and lo! the tower was
finished, but as he attempted to enter it he fell dead on
the threshold. The passionate landlord was taken at
his word.
So
I think the tower of Chambéry at the old château
six miles from Aix is one of the most beautiful bits of
florid Gothic I have seen. It has an airy flying-buttress
which is as delicate as a lady's lace handkerchief. It is
whispered that the devil had a hand in building this
tower also, no man being considered clever enough.
What price his satanic majesty claimed for this I do not
know, but doubtless a great boon, for, as says one old
chronicler: "Mais ce qui caractérise le diable, c'est
qu'il est inaccessible à tous les bons sentiments.”
I am afraid he is rather inaccessible. So is the tower.
I have never been able to climb up to its highest turret.
Far more accessible is his satanic majesty in some of his
more recent works.
We determined to do the historical a little at Aix;
not all its memories are so sunny or so joyous as these I
have described. We determined to go to see a rem-
nant of the tyranny of the Middle Ages, horrible old
Miolan.
69
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
A gloomy old ruin is that of the Savoyard Bastille,
called Miolan. It was once a feudal château, in the
commune of St. Pierre d'Albigni, the chief place of the
canton in the neighborhood of Chambéry. It is situ-
ated on
a promontory two hundred and fifty metres
above the valley of Bourget, on a grand route which
follows the road from Chambéry to Albertville. It
looks down on the valley of the Isère, where it meets the
Aec. It is by nature defended on one side by the
mountains of Fieterive, which shut it off from the pla-
teau of Beanges. The approach is by two stony roads,
one from St. Pierre, the other from Fieterive, and Mont
Blanc looks over the shoulder of the mountain of Fie-
terive like a great white nose. The interior of the walls
of the château covers fifty-seven acres. This includes
bastion and fort, courts and gardens, château, chapel,
and fortress. In the first court is a vast fountain, the
ruins of a lordly habitation. In the second are the ter-
rible dungeons where many brave men passed many years
of their miserable lives. A vast moat or ditch sur-
rounds this gloomy place. There are different rooms in
this prison, called variously Paradise and L'Enfers, Pur-
gatory, etc. In the part of the building which was used
as a home for the noble family who once lived there,
afterward for the Governors and Lieutenants, one can
yet distinguish the vast kitchens and salons and noble
rooms; on the other side the chapel of the prisoners, the
subterranean cells, damp and dark, places of torture, also
cellars for provisions, and at the southwest a high tower
still exists where, it is said, that unlucky creature, the
"Man in the Iron Mask," was once buried, as he contin-
ued always to be buried, alive.
70
LEGENDS OF AIX AND MIOLAN
The religious history of the chapel gives us some
dates. It was an important bishopric in 1381. When
Miolan became a State prison, which was just before the
days of Louis XIV, the curé was charged with the spir-
itual care of the prisoners. The chapel owned some im-
portant relics; one of them was three thorns of the
chaplet which our Lord wore at His crucifixion, brought
by one of the Grand Seigneurs of Miolan on his return
from the Crusades. These three thorns, lately, were once
more transported to the Church of the Augustines by
one of the ladies of Miolan, and then there were several
great battles for the sacred relics. Sovereigns and Popes
fought for these thorns. One of the Miolan family be-
came a Pope in 1058, under the name of Nicholas I; and
so they go on, for many years, being bishops, priests, and
monks, Benedictines, Franciscans, and Jesuits, as it
happened, as well as soldiers, politicians, crusaders—a
great powerful family of the Middle Ages. Then they ran
out, as all families will, leaving their château behind them.
We come down to an interesting man named the
noble "Anthelme de Miolan," who rendered homage to
the great Count Edward of Savoie in 1324, and gave
him the château with all its appurtenances, its rights,
roads, farms, treasures, vineyards, laws, the "mixed
empire of justice" (which meant a right to hang, mal-
treat, and belabor all the peasantry, send them to wars,
make them slaves, in fact), also brooks, rivers, and for-
ests, “a right royal gift," and his feudal lord ennobled
him and gave him "one piece of game from the noble
royal hunt." Anthelme also continued to live at Miolan,
and from him it passed to his nephew, Anthelme de
Bonvillard.
71
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
These feudal transactions finally brought this fine.
property into the hands of the Dukes of Savoy-as we
should say "it became the property of the State"-or
the Duke of Savoy (some say) cheated the noble Clau-
dine de Miolan of her rights. Here the chronicle is
vague, but somehow the Kings of France got possession
of the château. They made it, in 1529, a prison—a
State prison. The barony was retained in the family,
but the house, alas! became a scene of torture. What
an awful history of human woes was to be enacted there
for three hundred years!
The name of Miolan in Savoy is as terrible as that of
"Bastille" in France.
in France. This prison was used as a hiding
place for all men who were dangerous to the reigning
favorites. What a terrible State prison it was. In the
memoirs of the Count of Sardinia, by M. Blondet, Chargé
d'Affaires de France at Turin, during the reign of Victor
Amedee, we find these words: "Unhappy the man for
whom the doors of this fortress open! He will never
escape, he had better die!" They were shut up there-
and forgotten. Tortured and starved while alive, they
died maniacs or committed suicide. Allowed only a
pallet of straw in a dark cell, deprived of air, without
proper clothing, heavily laden with chains, these miser-
able men, priests, noblemen, educated, refined gentlemen,
lived or died, unregarded, unpitied, the innocent victims
of an odious age.
One cell was called L'Enfer; it was in the cellar-cold
and damp, the sun never entered it; its one window
opened into the ditch whose frightful odors gave the
prisoner fever and sickness. Here were put innocent
men when the prison got too full. The shrieks of one
72
LEGENDS OF AIX AND MIOLAN
man in his cell so haunted one of the Governors that he
no longer placed his subjects there. Fortunately, his
superstitious fears saved them.
The prior of Canibus, a most holy man, sent to Miolan
in 1687, had not only no fire in his room, but he had no
clothing proper for the celebration of the mass. He
borrowed a cloak of the Governor, that he might appear
decently in the chapel. The Count Rubat, hidden in
the prison at the same time, begged that his wife might
be allowed to bring him a change of linen, as his was
covered with vermin. It was refused, this modest
request for a clean shirt, to a man who was a magnificent
Seigneur. It is difficult to even dream of the horrors
of this prison. These men in gloomy solitude, deprived
of paper, ink, or books, of every comfort, grew mad and
blasphemous. Is it strange that they sought to escape?
To murder their inhuman keepers? One of these poor
wretches, named Charles Roux, carried for three years
a chain weighing fifty pounds on his feet for having
attempted to escape. He was, it is true, a dangerous
man; three times he nearly evaded his cruel keepers,
three times he was retaken, loaded with iron, staves,
whipped, and put in the cell called "L'Enfer." A noble
and merciful Governor, called Claude des Fauyrs,
found him in this darksome cell and mitigated his
suffering, but his reason was gone. His tempera-
ment could not stand such suffering. It left him com-
pletely mad, and he imagined himself the Son of God.
He died in 1576, after twenty years of captivity, in hor-
rible anguish.
Others lost their health, and when, in 1743, the
Spaniards came to occupy Savoy, and the doors of
73
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
Miolan were thrown open, for a short time, the five
miserable wretches who were found there were not able
to support the journey to Aosta. The air of liberty
came too late, and their lungs, ruined by the detestable
malaria of tyranny, brought up blood instead of breath.
Hope and happiness broke the lacerated hearts, and they
died, as the prisoners of our War who escaped from the
Southern Bastille, without fingers, without toes, with
fatal disease, the disease of starvation-died when they
tasted the good soup which it was hoped would revive
them.
The suicides were many. In a violent paroxysm
of despair some, preferring death to long agony, threw
themselves from the ramparts. One poor wretch who
thus attempted to end his miserable career was caught by
his chains in a tree, was retaken, and tortured until he
died, a year after.
Some of the Governors of this prison were merciful,
some were inhuman brutes, who loved to maim, to starve,
and to kill. A certain Governor, Pierre le Blanc, who
held the office from 1713 to 1734, was one of these mon-
sters who delighted in cruelty. He never lost sight of
his victims, paid them visits at extraordinary hours, even
in the night. He looked on at their miserable meals, de-
priving them of knife and fork, plate and spoon: they
were obliged to tear their meat like dogs. He invented
new tortures for them, sent the disobedient and those
whom he hated to the "Enfer," loaded the young men
with chains; he had them whipped, he insulted them.
He writes all this himself in his reports, and rejoiced in
the name of the "Pitiless."
And we may now ask, what had these men done to
74


Princess Marguerite of Savey.
UN
OF
M
LEGENDS OF AIX AND MIOLAN
deserve these terrible sufferings? Were they murderers?
No, they were principally disobedient priests, men per-
haps like Martin Luther, who had too much courage; or
they were noblemen who differed from their sovereign
on some petty interpretation of the law; or they were
dangerous political offenders who perhaps doubted the
divine right of Kings. All were of gentle blood; it was
a distinction to be sent to Miolan; no plebeian was put
in this pandemonium; that is to say, at first.
No doubt
after these tortures, this horrible solitude, their fierce.
and gloomy wrongs, many a man became dangerous.
No doubt the poor creature, Chiafrelli, an unfrocked
priest, who was chained, arms and legs, and whipped,
who lay in his irons until he was covered with vermin,
who was finally fastened with three fetters so that he
could not knock his head against the wall and kill him-
self, blasphemed and cried, and called the Governor a
"dog." It was an insult to the poor animal, a compli-
ment to the Governor, but he got only more punish-
ment and so died.
Sometimes a more merciful man came; whose kind
heart made him too lax for the place. Such a one was
the Governor de Launay, who allowed his prisoners pen
and ink, and color boxes, and food and warmth. Inter-
preting too largely the instructions of the Commander
General of Savoy, he gave to the Marquis de Sade his
liberty or allowed him to escape. Of course, such a
Governor was soon removed.
One of the curious anecdotes remains of the ingenuity
of a prisoner who made ink of the juice of tobacco in his
pipe, caught a bird and pulled a quill from his wing, and
found a morsel of paper in the stuffing of a chair. With
75
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
these materials he wrote a note and threw it to the hat
of a visitor. For which crime he was sent to L'Enfer,
where he died.
Some young men were sent here because they were
disobedient to their parents. If they paid a certain sum
they were afterward comparatively well cared for, but
many of these men were forgotten when a change of
government came, and they languished out a long life of
miserable captivity behind these gloomy walls. When a
prisoner of state died it was promised to his friends that
he should have the right of sepulture, but this was often
denied him. Their bodies were thrown to the dogs, and
a ditch is still shown where this last act of inhumanity
was practiced.
The Père Monod, who had been a Jesuit and who
became a Protestant, a faithful, humble servitor of the
Duchess of Savoy, spent a long time in this prison.
Finally dying here, he left to "Madame Royale" his
memoirs and the pictures he had painted in his captivity.
Many of these details are drawn from his papers, now
preserved at Chambéry.
Le Père Ballard was also confined here for a long
time because he had some state secrets which he would
not divulge. After great suffering he died in convulsions
at the age of seventy-seven.
The cord, the rack, the "question," the torture, were
applied to all these poor men.
But enough of these horrors. From 1555 to 1789
these now ruined walls continued to be the scene of hor-
rible cruelty and wrong.
The history of Miolan as a State prison stops in the
year 1792. The château, evacuated after the occupa-
76
LEGENDS OF AIX AND MIOLAN
tion of Savoy by the French army under Montesquion,
was abandoned. For a time Napoleon proposed to keep
it up as a prison, but it was forgotten. It was not sold
during the revolutionary period, and the Sardinian Gov-
ernment took possession of it in 1815.
To-day Miolan is a picturesque ruin, serving the pur-
pose to the gay visitors of Aix-les-Bains of an afternoon
excursion. It is a contrast worthy of note that, after
one hundred years, one goes from a spot where human
infirmities are mercifully relieved to look with wonder
on the spot where they were enormously intensified.
Our visit here came very near having a gloomy and
tragic end, as one of our party wandered off and got
lost. We feared that she had fallen down an oubliette,
whence she could never be discovered; but after making
us suffer an hour, she walked back by another route
smiling, and we all drove back to cheerful Aix to a gay
supper.
77
Palaces Kings have Built in Bavaria
I have been in Munich three or four times-the last
two against my will, for one sight is enough. To be
sure, I came there once from Florence, that flower of
all cities and city of all flowers (and nothing can take
the taste of Florence out of one's mouth); and again I
came to it from Nuremberg, that gem of the Middle
Ages; and again I reached it from Innsbruck, also very
unbecoming to it. A lovely daughter of the consecrated
Past is Innsbruck, with natural scenery the most noble.
What a lift of snow mountains!
I somehow never forgave Munich for its long, flat
plain, its artificial air, its assumption of being a little
Rome, its cold, forlorn climate, until I went there to
and from Ober-Ammergau. That made me at peace with
all the world—even with Munich!
And yet, when you come to think of it, Munich is the
greatest wonder of them all. More ambitious than the
great Prince of Condé, who only built Chantilly; more
cheerful than Philip II, who built a monastery, palace,
and tomb, and called it the Escurial; more hopeful than
any of them was Ludwig I of Bavaria, who aspired to
build a city, and from 1825 to 1848 worked at his mod-
ern Rome. He had enthusiasm and money, and with
these two arms one can sling the sledge-hammer and build
almost anything. This city grew up amid the marshes
78
PALACES IN BAVARIA
of the River Isar, in the wild forests of Bavaria, as if by
magic.
This little forest-girt mountainous Bavaria has been
the treasure-house of the traveler since the Emperors
Trajan and Hadrian built strongholds from the Lake of
Constance to Mayence, and from Mayence to Kelheim,
on the Danube. But the irrepressible barbarians broke
through, and the four great Teutonic tribes broke
through and founded some of the most quaint and inter-
esting cities of medieval Germany-towns which make
Munich look new and fictitious. From their geograph-
ical position the Bavarians have thus a strong mixture of
Celtic, Italian, and Saxon blood. They seem a different
nationality from the Germans.
A sturdy race are these settlers of the fruitful plains
which fill the mountain valleys of Bavaria. They are
satisfied with their lot and ready to defend their beauti-
ful country. They are full of music, of dramatic per-
ception. They have the contrasts of their scenery,
where grim, dark forest and mountain give way and
reveal fairy lakes and valleys full of cherry blossoms-
an exquisite contrast.
In the days of Charlemagne the Bavarian people
became merged in the great empire which Pepin had
founded; for this small father of a big and famous son.
fell in love with and married a daughter of a Duke of
Bavaria, who became the mother of the "Carlo Magno"
of the opera, the Charlemagne of history and the world,
who could neither read nor write, but who has made his
mark on the world-this great man and his paladins.
We will skip eleven hundred years to save bother and
come down to Ludwig I, successor to Maximilian I.
79
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
This Prince found Munich an unimportant, dull place—a
plain, provincial city. He left it full of palaces and a
museum of the world's choicest art treasures, and the
head of a school of music. He restored at enormous
outlay, the cathedrals of Bamberg and Regensburg, and
erected a Pantheon unequaled in the world.
Although his artistic and classical tastes, as well as
his genuine patriotism, made him popular, he was more
of a dilettanté than a King, so that he had no very
strong hold on his people. He had a fatal facility for
falling in love. Fanny Elssler and Lola Montez finally
ruined him and drove him from his throne. The Bava-
rians drove the spoiled favorite out of town with whips,
and the gentle-hearted King was impotent to save her.
He gave his indignant subjects such a Constitution as
they wished, and then retired to an intellectual seclu-
sion, giving his crown to his son, Maximilian II, who
died in 1864, leaving the crown to Ludwig II, a boy of
seventeen.
The Glyptothek and Pinacothek remain to praise the
taste and the prescience of Ludwig I. The visitor
fresh from Rome and Florence again dreams of the
Vatican and the Uffizi Gallery. This trend of the arts
toward the North found out and left improved those
great workers in bronze for which Bavaria has been fam-
ous. Bavaria was the natural channel north, the high-
road by which the arts traveled.
Ludwig I attempted to do the work of centuries in
fifty years.
His work lacks charm. Perhaps Count
Rumford made it rather Yankee in character. His sin-
gular visit to Ludwig, his admirable management of the
poor, his invention of a stove which still bears his name,
80
PALACES IN BAVARIA
his rise from plain Benjamin Thompson, of Concord, N.
H., to Count Rumford, the friend of the King, should
have impressed me more than it did. I do not go to
Europe for useful ideas. I go for antiquity and art, the
beauties of nature; and where can one find them better
than in Bavaria?
Poor, crazy King Ludwig II, "lord of himself, that
heritage of woe,
of woe," interested me far more than any
reminiscences of Count Rumford, and when I passed the
Lake of Starnberg, where he drowned himself, I felt the
deepest sorrow that a creature so gifted could not have
kept his wits. Handsome, gifted, beloved by his peo-
ple, he was seized with melancholia, and gave himself up
to solitary concerts with Wagner, and he has earned my
eternal gratitude that he finally wore out Wagner, who
got bored with himself-Wagner, who has so often bored
me!
Then he took to building and to ornamenting the
many beautiful palaces which one can now see and
admire, although the hand which built them lies still in
death. Ludwig I built in his own royal "Königsland"
an imitation of the Pitti Palace at Florence. The Hall of
the Marshals is a repetition of the Loggia di Lanzi.
magnificent gateway and the Hall of Fame are models
of pure Greek taste. These we owe to Ludwig I.
A
There is a fresco by Schnorr illustrating the "Nibe-
lungenlied," that great national epic. It is superb, as
are the frescoes by Kaulbach. I am afraid that I am
not making out Munich as disagreeable as it is! Here
you see how, in the times of the great Italian republics,
the commerce, the art, and the civilization of the south
made its way to the world north of the Alps. Bavaria
81
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
has ever been a stopping-place for artists, architects, and
designers. What were earlier shooting-lodges and hunt-
ing-boxes for the warlike Dukes became, after two cen-
turies, the palaces of art-loving Kings.
After seeing the great drama at Ober-Ammergau,
and returning to Munich, a party of us took a driving
tour from Munich to Innsbruck, through Partenkeichen
and Mittenwald, to enjoy the stupendous and wonderful
scenery of the Bavarian highlands, and on our way to
stop and look at the folly of many an art-loving King.
Such a palace is Hohenschwangau, restored and rebuilt by
Maximilian, and added to by Ludwig. Hohenschwangau,
the "home of the swan," was a historic pile in 1540,
and lies at the foot of a great sombre mountain, with a
placid lake in front. Here, in great seclusion, that
stately bird, the swan, increases and multiplies. The
waters of the lake are white with beautiful forms, which
float double, swan and shadow." This romantic castle
is the home of the mythical and heroic story of Lohen-
grin, and all its walls are painted with that story. The
view from the oriel window of the King's room over the
pure, glistening Alpensee and the dark, pine-clad moun-
tains is so peaceful that one can well believe that
he sat there night after night saying "Here I can find
peace.'
This and Linderhof, and Neuchwanstein, near Ober-
Ammergau, were the favorite homes of Ludwig II. The
royal gardens, the three handsome fountains, the walks
and drives up the mountain, are all kingly in their
arrangement. A palace in a solitary amphitheatre of
richly, forest-clad mountains, and between two beautiful
lakes is not to be found every day. The sleeping-room
82
PALACES IN BAVARIA
of the poor King, simply furnished, possessed a sad
interest. It looks out on the snowy Alps.
I could write forever of the pleasures of this drive,
which took us through the cherry trees from which the
Kirschwasser derives its delicate bouquet. We went
through these flower-laden valleys and over the pictur-
esque points of Bavarian forests with scarcely a draw-
back to our pleasure. In the early hours we would start
from some comfortable inn, after a delicious breakfast,
with our easy berlin and with fast horses, seeing on the
way the handsome peasant lovers springing with rapid,
light steps up the almost precipitous heights, caring for
their herds the man in an embroidered shirt, hussar
jacket, and green felt steeple hat covering his thick black
curls; the girl in her blue and red petticoat, embroid-
ered jacket, and white chemisette. These Bavarian men
are mostly foresters, of great fame as to the care of
trees: the women are excellent dairy women.
From the haunts of the Alpine rose we would drive to
some magnificent castle, whose custodian was willing to
show it to us for a fee, ready to point out a fresco and to
tell us the story of Siegfried and the dragon, or "Sieg-
fried and the worm," as they called it, and by the wayside
we would see the crucifix, which has replaced to these
Old Catholics the more cheerful Madonna and child of
Italian lands. These so-called "Old Catholics" seem to
look at man's sin rather than at God's forgiveness. The
legends of Judas, the blighted tree, the three sorrowing
Marys, the vision of Jesus as He hangs on the tree-
these are their favorites. We love Him as He lies in the
cradle, with His sweet mother hanging over Him, or,
better still, as she stands with Him in her tender arms.
83
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
For a man of such exalted temperament as was the
crazy King, the Passion Play at Ober-Ammergau
appealed with intense force. To them he gave a mag-
nificent group in marble of the crucifixion, with the three
Marys kneeling, and the noble figure of the Man of Sor-
rows copied from their great actor, Joseph Maier. For
their costumes he opened the treasure house of Munich,
giving Caiaphas the high priest a breastplate of real
jewels, such as are mentioned in the Bible.
The high religious enthusiasm with which these peas-
ants garner in their hearts their sacred vow reached the
heart of the unfortunate King. His fairy château of
Neuchwanstein, remote and lonely, stands on a high
bluff, while three precipices fall from its three sides, its
Gothic towers throw themselves bravely up in the air,
while behind it rise the savage summits of the Tyrolese
Alps. It is approached on one side through a long,
solitary forest. Across a gulf is thrown the aërial
bridge, the Marienbrücke, while the Lakes Schwansee
and Alpensee add their mirrors to the landscape. From
an intense solitude this bit of Gothic stands out in all its
elaborate magnificence, gargoyles, carvings, towers, and
machicolated roof, while a Venetian loggia ornaments
the façade, filled with stained glass. Within, what fres-
coes! what furnishing! This fine palace was left unfin-
ished, and the Bavarian people have yet to pay for it.
Here are fine pictures by Piloty, Hauschid, and Spiers,
the subjects from Wagner's operas.
From the dining-room of the King we got the most
beautiful view of the ravines and mountains.
The hang-
ings are of rose color, embroidered in gold. The walls
are dedicated to the Meistersingers. The King's bed-
84
PALACES IN BAVARIA
room was consecrated to the delicious memory of Tristan
and Iseult. This room is of blue and gold. The royal
bed was of carved wood, richly incrusted in gold. The
oratory opens out of this room, and the prie-dieu showed
signs of frequent kneeling. It was under a picture of
the Virgin.
Other rooms had hangings of purple velvet, embroid-
ered with peacocks. The grand salon was consecrated
to Lohengrin, and here was a bust of Louis XIV of
France, a man whom Ludwig II admired and sought to
emulate. We seem to hear in this room the Wedding
March and Elsa's song, that unconscious apology of
Wagner for his many long disquisitions into the algebra
of music. To Tannhäuser the King dedicated his work-
ing-room, his council chamber.
On the other side of the château is the throne-room, a
marvel of Byzantine splendor. It is surrounded by a
double gallery of arches, and enriched with the rarest
Oriental mosaics, and supported by pillars of porphyry
and lapis lazuli. The floor is inlaid with choice marbles.
A vast elevation in white marble was to have held a
throne, but that remains unfinished. But in this Châ-
teau en Espagne, this dream house, he finished one room,
the Salle des Chanteurs. His opera house, his theatre,
was always built. And at Neuchwanstein this is a fairy
vision, delicate yet superb, with a vast circular tribune
for great people, a pit for humbler guests, full of crystal
chandeliers and most gorgeous upholstery, capitonée
with red and gold and purple, vastly more splendid than
any theatre which we have in New York. This com-
plete empty theatre is dedicated to Parsival.
This house was his bonbonnière; it has not the cachet
85
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
1
d'antiquité which Hohenstauffen has; but it is exquis-
ite. It is now being pillaged, and it will soon be a
royal ruin.
It was at Linderhof, however, that all the contrarie-
ties of his queer insanity next showed themselves. One
must cross the Austrian frontier to reach Linderhof,
over one of the grandest of Tyrolese passes. The route
becomes almost lost in the vast depth of the forest.
One hears the sound of the zither and of the cattle
bells, and nothing else.
As the world will turn its face toward the Passion
Play" at Ober-Ammergau in 1900, the traveler should
arrange not only to see Munich well, but also these won-
derful houses, and should approach by Zurich, which
gives a fine view of the Bavarian Tyrol.
Nor should any traveler neglect to drive, if possible,
to Innsbruck to gain that vision of the country which, in
June, lighted up by the cherry blossoms, has a beauty
and a fragrance which, although unlike the charm of the
other Alpine passes, has a delight quite peculiar to itself.
86
Ober-Ammergau
It presented a curious antithesis of human character
and human curiosity to see the crowds rush, in the Sum-
mer of 1889, to Paris, to look at the World's Fair, at
the rate of 350,000 a day, and, in the Summer of 1890,
to see them all rush back to the remote corner of the
Bavarian Tyrol, to watch a few peasants play in that
immortal drama which is, to Christians, the most impor-
tant story in the world; but in this age of unbelief who
could think that even skeptical Germans, French, and
English critics, French actors, Roman Catholic clergy,
English bishops, Mohammedans, priests of the Greek
Church, and, of course, the globe-trotting Americans—
all would be on the move for Ober-Ammergau? Yet so
it was.
Now, what had stimulated this vast curiosity? A
Miracle Play can be seen in many an old German town,
and has always been occasionally on the programme of
European amusements; many more mediæval and curious
than this one.
Ober-Ammergau has, however, been fortunate in
two things: First, in the fact that sixty years ago a
man of genius, the pastor Daisenberger, himself a dra-
matist of some distinction, a learned Monk, from the
neighboring monastery of Ettal, one who had translated
the Antigone of Sophocles, came to live at Ober-Am-
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HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
mergau. He seized the opportunity, finding how deep
a hold this play had on the religious sensibilities of the
peasants, he re-wrote it yearly, obliterated what was vulgar
and profane, and introduced music and trained the peas-
ants in the arts of elocution. For many years, unknown
and unsung, this poor man labored for the love of God
and the intellectual delights of this highly creditable
work, until about 1840 William and Mary Howitt hap-
pened to visit Ober-Ammergau and wrote such delight-
ful sketches of this wonderful thing that the world began
to look behind the Kofel, their mountain screen, and
every tenth year since that time, Ober-Ammergau has
become an objective point, to the lover of the drama and
to those who respect the high religious enthusiasm which
these Suabian peasants garner in their hearts.
No one who has not seen it, can begin to understand
how magnificently the play is presented as to costumes,
scenery, and artistic effect. Remember, they have been
always near Munich, that home of art; also they have
been for forty years patronized by those two art-lovers,
the King Ludwig of Bavaria, who made Munich, and
later on by the Wagner-loving King Ludwig, so unhap-
pily crazed, and a suicide, in the Lake of Starnberg.
Ober-Ammergau has also been very fortunate in its
eulogists. Helen Hunt wrote one of her charming
papers after seeing it in 1870. The first year that Josef
Maier played his divine part Dean Stanley touched it
with his glowing pencil. I cannot enumerate all who
have described it.
Let me give you a plain, unvarnished tale of how I
reached there; what I saw, felt, and suffered; and I wish
that I could tell you all I enjoyed.
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OBER-AMMERGAU
L
There was nothing talked of in Paris, during May so
much as "How shall we get to Ober-Ammergau?" Two
rival ticket agents commanded every route and every
bedroom which could be engaged. Strange stories of
hardships, sleeping in barns, etc., were circulated—all of
which were absurd. Ober-Ammergau is a large, com-
fortable German village, and they continued to "put
up" five thousand people a day very decently. In a
rainy day it would be very gloomy, but in the bright
sunlight in which I saw it seemed transcendently beau-
tiful. The physical discomforts of which we heard
so much belonged to that earlier Ober-Ammergau, when
they were not prepared for visitors. The fatigue of sit-
ting, for ten hours, to see the play, is a serious matter;
but of that more anon. I saw it on the 22d of June,
1890, and I consider it one of the greatest privileges of
my life.
;
I found myself in Munich on June 18th, having bought
my tickets of Cook a month before. I went by way of
Geneva and Zurich, by far the best way if one happens
to be in Paris, for on the road between Zurich and
Munich the peculiar character of the scenery bursts upon
one, and the pictures and images by the wayside of
Christ on the Cross, which take the place of the usual
Shrine to the Virgin and Child, prepare the mind for the
eminently devout and religious ceremony which is to
follow. Here were the early Christians who did not
celebrate Christmas, but began their teaching with Christ
crucified.
At Munich I went with some trepidation to the office
of Cook to see if my tickets really entitled me to a car-
riage from Oberau and a room at Ober-Ammergau.
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HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
I found that my German maid and I were as carefully
recorded as if we were the only people arriving—a great
feat of system, when one remembers that twenty thou-
sand people a week have been to see this play all Sum-
mer. The short railroad from Munich to Oberau only
took some three hours. At the end we found our car-
riage amidst many others. Irate Englishmen were quar-
reling, and threatening to "report" everybody; but
Cook's agent remained unmoved. We drove off over a
splendid mountain pass, through forests of fir, under
precipices, by waterfalls, and glorious distant views,
through fields of Alpine roses and blue gentian, to the
town of Ober-Ammergau, which is on a plateau. We
passed the Monastery of Ettal where lived the learned
Daisenberger, the man to whom the Ober-Ammergauites
owe so much, and several small villages; finally, turning
around the edge of a strange mountain called the Kofel,
we entered a large and comfortable Alpine town, with
many houses and an air of prosperity. What a scene
was that! As we entered, forty carriages in line were
we, and the streets were swarming with people, pedes-
trians, peasants in a hundred costumes, English men and
women (unmistakable everywhere), many Roman Cath-
olic clergymen; Bishops, Priests, and Deacons of our
church; the Sultan of Lahore, a black Mussulman with
his dusky followers all covered with jewels, wearing tur-
bans and the Eastern robes; many Americans, easily dis-
tinguished by their neat and natty clothes; Germans,
French, Italians; and even a few dark Arabs from Tan-
giers, eager, intent, swift,-by hundreds and hundreds
they pressed in. It was like the movement of armies.
The only thing to do was to sit still and await my time.
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OBER-AMMERGAU
By and by my carriage arrived at the door of Bürgo-
meister Lang. I handed my card and Cook's tickets. I
asked Caroline, my German maid, if she would go in and
interpret for me; but before she even could descend, a
very respectable old gentleman came out, and, with an
air of authority, said "Frau Sherwood and maid, drive to
Spigel's." A little girl, very pretty and with long hair,
jumped on the box, and telling me that she was “Lena
and that she owned me,'' we drove o on.
Nothing but the movement of an army could possibly
have resembled our progress to the house of Spigel, but
once arrived there we found good rooms, a fair, clean
table, as good as we should usually find in a country inn
in Germany. After some necessary ablutions and a sup-
per of roasted goose, venison, fresh eggs, and coffee, I
seated myself outside my bedroom window on an over-
hanging balcony and watched the motley groups: young
peasant men with the Alpine hat full of Alpine roses, the
women in high headdresses with magnificent silver orna-
ments and brocaded jackets mingled in the crowd. Pres-
ently around the corner came a strain of martial music;
then a hurly-burly of children: beautiful boys with long
hair, and bright feathers in their ragged hats; active little
girls with floating long ringlets, all rugged and happy;
the fire company, dressed in high helmets, marched by,
executing with ceremony and music the introduction
to the morrow. It was so like the scene in the opera
of Faust when the soldiers return, that I was sure
the author of that beautiful music had seen just such a
demonstration. Then the sun went down, bathing the
top of the giant mountains in a red light; a cannon
was fired; and as the little new moon rose over the
i
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HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
Kofel I left my exalted position and came in to have
an audience with the housefather. Caroline introduced
him with much ceremony, and I found him very polite.
He informed me that he had two tickets for me at ten
marks apiece: I could sit out in the open, if I preferred,
for five marks apiece, but I told him the "rheumatism
would cost me more than twenty marks," so I paid the
highest price. This rather feeble witticism pleased him
very much, and he proceeded to tell me "that I was
wise."
I asked him what part he played. He said, with
true dramatic instinct, "Oh, I am one of the money-
changers driven from the temple. I am also one of those
who reviles our blessed Lord; but I dress the hair of the
Christus [he was the village barber], and Lena," said
he, "is one of the angels and a bridesmaid; she appears
in all the tableaux on account of her beautiful hair.
He then advised me to go to bed, for I must be up at
five in the morning; a cannon was fired at that hour.
Such a noise of five thousand people moving in all
directions can scarcely be described. All the people
who were to play were going to the church, first to take
the communion, only the Housemother and one maid
remained to give us some breakfast.
little luncheon and a bottle of wine
were in our seats at eight o'clock.
conducting me with much ceremony. Never did I find
myself in such a pack, such a jam, yet the seats were
most comfortable, high, broad, large armchairs.
My maid took a
with her, and we
The housefather
Off in the open, as far from our covered shed as
across Fifth Avenue, stood the theatre, a pretty build-
ing with a centre stage drop-curtain, and all the belong-
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OBER-AMMERGAU
ings of a theatre, with two immense wings stretching
either side, giving suggestions of a street of a city, and
a palace for Pilate later on. This is on the Greek
model; and as the chorus singers emerge, eighteen in
number, dressed in beautiful Greek costumes, and sing
delightfully, you seem to see the chorus of an opera;
also, as it is all in the open air, you get an idea of the
Greek drama. Then they retire and fall back in a sort
of half-moon circle, and the curtain rises upon a tableau.
This closed part of the theatre is the only part which
has a roof over it. In other parts the rain falls or the sun
shines on these hard-working actors as it does on all the
spectators who have only paid five marks, and who sit in
the open air. The birds fly about and cast their fitful
shadows on the actors, as they once might have done in
Judea. The Kofel rises in spendid majesty behind the
theatre. It is an indescribable mixture of noble nature and
the highest art.
I had taken a powerful opera glass with me, and
I needed it as the curtain rose on a tableau in which
I recognized my friend Lena. These pictures are
directly typical, and intended to be prophetic in the
scenes in the life of Christ which follow. They are
rendered with marvelous effect. I could not see a
muscle move, even in the smallest child's face. There
were two tableaux presented, one after the other, in
which the actors were motionless.
Then the curtain rose on the living drama. Of a
sudden the whole scene was filled with the streets of
Jerusalem, and down one of them came a man riding on
an ass, led by a young adoring disciple. The populace
shouted and threw palm branches. It was the entrance
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HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
of our Lord into Jerusalem. One glance was enough;
from that moment the play became entrancing. It was
something above and beyond humanity; it is opera,
drama, tableau, and something else, something higher.
Josef Maier, the Christus, is one of those exceptional
men who seem to have been made for the part. He is
very tall, graceful, slender, and the side face beautiful,
the hair long and silken, the hands fine, white and
meant for a benediction. He is dignified, so superb that
one takes him at once into that most sacred temple
where one keeps the vision of the Savior. His voice
is refined, low and thrilling; it is impossible that any
man could play this part so intensely trying unless
he were influenced by real religious enthusiasm. One's
natural credulity as to the possibility of a humble
and unlettered peasant being able to play this most
sublime rôle disappears from this moment. The whole
lesson of Christ's life, the whole lesson of Christ's
death, are shown, taught, impressed with a vividness
which one must be callous not to feel, and the mind
that can remain antagonistic to the end, and declare this
an impious or irreverent personation, is not to be envied.
Indeed, looking at this as a merely dramatic spectacle, a
matter of acting, of pictorial effects, it is to my mind
more powerful than any sermon, more impressive and
more useful than most ceremonials in church — and I
believe that I have seen the grandest ceremonials of all,
in every country where cathedrals and cathedral services
are at their best, from London to Rome.
-
The stage open to the sky, a background so ingen-
iously arranged as to give a good representation of sev-
eral streets of a city, was crowded by a roving mass of
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OBER-AMMERGAU
five hundred people, waving palm branches and singing
hosannas, the central figure being Jesus. The versimili-
tude to an old picture was astonishing; the splendor of
the colors was dazzling—it was like our Autumn woods
in North America.
The whole five hundred were acting as if each one
were the central and prominent part. It was so natural
that it was not acting, and this is the grand distinction
of the play. The interest is so intense, and the move-
ment so rapid, that you scarcely notice that the Christ
has descended from his beast; John has led him away.
The crowd has melted, and the money-changers are
picking up their coins in the temple, when our Lord
charges upon them and drives them out.
I noticed my
little landlord; he was strangely transformed by his won-
derful dress, right out of Rembrandt, but he acted his
humble part as if he had been Salvini. There is a native
and long trained dramatic instinct in these people.
While the Saviour is on the scene every eye is fixed on
Him. The strain would be too great if infinite tact
were not shown in this long drama, which is interrupted
at every act by the chorus and by the two tableaux,
which help to carry on the Old and New Testament
story.
Then they
The recess opens, the curtain rises on the council of
the Sanhedrin, the assembly of the High Priests of the
Synagogue, which is a magnificent picture. They remain
quiet a few minutes that one may see it.
begin to talk, to argue, and reminded me very much of
other grand assemblies of law-givers whom I had seen in
Congress and elsewhere; they became tedious, they
were long-winded, and as the Scotchmen say "contra-
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HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
deectin."
It was, however, a grand display of acting
on the part of Johann Lang, who enacted the part of the
despotic and irritable High Priest Caiaphas in a mas-
terly manner.
Then we see Christ's departure for Bethany, his fare-
well to his mother, his relations with his sorrowing dis-
ciples; which all lead up to the Last Supper, the climax
of the morning's performance. This scene introduces
Judas and his avarice. He starts as he sees Mary Mag-
dalene breaking the pot of precious ointment. It is curi-
ous that the vice of avarice has been permitted to play
so great a part in the tragedy of Humanity. Murder
comes first in the history of Cain. False-hearted jeal-
ousy comes next in the story of Joseph. Perhaps we
should put curiosity first, as betraying the promptings
of human passion; but even these are all nobler than
that miserable greed which was the sin of Judas. Per-
haps it was to be the curse of the Jews for all time, as
their easily besetting sin, to thus put on record the fear-
ful effect which this one pot of ointment has had on
their race.
Judas was played by a man named Zwing, a most
powerful and wonderful actor. His very dress of two
shades of yellow velvet was magnificent but repulsive;
his fiery hair stood in tangles over a low, mean brow.
He seems to love his Master, he looks at Him a great
deal, he is devout until his love of money comes in;
but from the moment he sees money wasted to the end of
his tragic career, when he takes his own life, his remorse
and despair are superb. Face, attitude, voice, action,
are grandly true to life. Nothing can surpass the sub-
tlety of this conception. He makes you at once, like,
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hate, and pity him. It is not a malignant, willful
treachery, but pure, unrestrained avarice, which seizes
his soul with a fiendish hand. He holds himself, poor
creature, in detestation, and the gesture and look with
which he flings down the bag of money, in the presence
of the Sanhedrin, is a triumph of the dramatic art, never
to be forgotten.
Only the profoundest religious fervor could carry
Josef Maier through the scene of the Last Supper. The
curtain rises on the well-known Leonardo da Vinci pic-
ture which we know in our Prayer Book. There sits
the Man of Sorrows with His disciples about him, next
Him the beloved John, whom he constantly appeals to,
embraces, and seems to lean on. John is played by a
beautiful youth who is destined to be the next actor in
the divine part.
In this most holy and affectionate ceremony, where
he washes His disciples' feet and gives them the bread
and wine, Josef Maier rises to his highest excellence.
It seems almost wicked to call it acting, it is so near the
divine ideal; he was so graceful, so winning, so saintly,
so tender, that everyone wept. The Sultan of Lahore
who sat in front of me, and his dusky Mohammedan
followers, wept aloud; many women fell on their knees
and crossed themselves; even he who has played this
part many hundred times was visibly affected, his voice
and gestures betraying his emotion. I shall never hear
the words, "Remember that Christ died for thee, 'with-
out recalling this scene with a depth of feeling rarely
experienced before.
The scene "Over the brook Kedron, unto a place
called Gethsemane," that eventful garden, was very
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HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
beautiful, solemn, and heart-rending. Oh, the disap-
pointment in his face when he saw that even His be-
loved John was sleeping and His human heart-throb as
He proved the insufficiency of human friendship! All
was portrayed in a manner so subdued, so powerful, so
actual, and so almost divine, that it brought the audi-
ence into a state of most intense sympathy. "Could you
not watch with me one little hour?" says the lonely
man.
That dear human weakness which our blessed Lord
showed, as He knelt three times and prayed that this
cup might pass from Him, has been the support of many
of us in hours of superhuman anguish, and this vision of
that kneeling figure in the Garden has brought Him
nearer to us than any act of His divine life.
Then followed the wild tumultuous scene, the discov-
ery of treachery always so horrible, the confusion of the
Judas kiss, the soldiers seizing and binding the Saviour,
and the terrible grief of the impulsive Peter, the heart-
break of the youthful John,—all finish the human part
of the Saviour's life on earth.
From that moment an intense solitary grandeur seems
to envelop Him. He is no more with John, no more
with Peter, no more with the loving Luke or the hospi-
table Mark-they have all left Him. Henceforth He,
the God-man; He, their friend and brother; He, the
Redeemer of our race is alone with his enemies, to be
scourged, tortured, insulted, and crucified.
Happily for our poor human strength we were here.
permitted an hour's intermission. Four hours had we sat,
unconscious of time. We went back to our hotels to
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OBER-AMMERGAU
*
get a dinner; to rest; to prepare for an afternoon so full
of emotion that as I look back upon it I wonder how I
could have endured it. Actors as well as spectators
went home, and the villagers resumed their homely
functions. My host waited on his own table and Lena
washed the dishes. Herod and Pontius Pilate and
Caiaphas and Judas and the angels took to cooking,
sewing, and so on. Here the domestic, funny side of
Ober-Ammergau comes in.
The firing of a cannon on the Kofel, however, an-
nounced to the six thousand spectators and the five
hundred actors that it was time to go back to the play.
The singers commenced again. The tableaux preced-
ing "Christ before Caiaphas" were, appropriately,
"Naboth stoned to death on false accusations" and "Job
in affliction derided by his wife and friends." Both were
very impressive.
The scene of Jesus before his judges is one of the
most stirring of the dramatic incidents. The stage is
crowded; everyone is excited; old Caiaphas throws off
his splendid breastplate, his robes of office, so he can
harangue with greater ease. He is an old busybody;
he is nervous; he talks and laughs with his next neigh-
bor; he is in a great hurry, and wants to get it all over
with. Jesus stands unmoved, His eyes on the ground.
He is there, but not of it. The soldiers abuse Him, hustle
Him about, remove Him, but He does not change coun-
tenance; He is far away.
In the scene where Peter denies Him, he starts, and
then, as Peter catches his frowning gaze and weeps, the
Saviour stretches His hand toward the poor, weak, old
man, in blessed forgiveness. Here Josef Maier again
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HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
:
reaches the highest point in the dramatic art; it is the
grandest achievement; he is the part he personates.
It seems almost cruel to attempt to describe the cap-
tive, bound and helpless, naked, bleeding, treated with
every ignominy, bearing the brutal blows of the soldiery
with calm courage, firm nobility, and elevated dignity;
he is The Christ; no mortal could do this thing says the
heart; it is the King of Heaven who suffers; he is a
lofty victor through it all. The soldiers sing low and
vulgar songs, deride Him, push Him from his bench, but
he seems neither to see nor to hear. Until interrupted
by a messenger from Caiaphas (a dramatic necessity
which for the moment removes the Christ from the
scene), the despair of Judas, his suicide, relieves the
horrible tension of our sympathy. Judas raves, tears
his hair, and hangs himself to everyone's satisfaction.
Here ends the rôle of Iscariot as to the play; but the
modern Judas does not hang himself! No, he goes on
'Change, becomes a
becomes a money
money king, and is admired,
courted, beloved, and feared forever after; he gives laws
to kings, rules society, makes war, and overturns or
builds up thrones on this still unregenerate earth. The
scenes of Christ before Pilate are all superb; the majesty
of the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, his real kind-
heartedness and desire to save the Galilean; the gorgeous
Roman soldiery, mounted on pure white horses; the "S.
P. Q. R.," that insignia of the power of the great Roman
people, which no one even yet can see unmoved; the
power of Cæsar, even in this remote Jewish province-
all was splendid contrast indeed to that noble, mournful,
lofty figure, wearing the crown of thorns. The difference
between him and Barabbus, the mean-looking thief, was
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OBER-AMMERGAU
admirably managed, and the little conversation, Pilate
standing high on the steps of his palace, the Galilean
below in the crowd, was wonderfully telling. It was all
managed with the most perfect and telling simplicity.
That question which has never been answered-
"What is truth?" and the episode of the dream of
Pilate's wife were all exciting to the immense crowd,
who were standing about listening; the excitement
when, at the suggestion of Caiaphas, Pilate concludes
that "this Galilean is not in his jurisdiction" and hands
him over to Herod, is enormous.
Caiaphas was especially good; indeed, four actors,
Lang, Zwing, Thomas Rendl (the Pilate), and Josef
Maier, are as great as Salvini—as great as they can be.
Thomas Rendl as Pontius Pilate was in the most con-
summate good taste; he was astonishing in his excel-
lence-a dignified Roman governor.
The women played very subordinate parts, as they
did in Judea; they were none of them pretty or particu-
larly good, except the mother of Jesus. This part
(played by a daughter of Lang, who is bürgermeister,
stage-manager, and everything) was very touching how-
ever. She is a pretty woman. But nature has denied
to these Bavarian peasant women the high type of
beauty which she has bestowed on Josef Maier. Their
singing was remarkably good; it is a requirement in the
village of Ober-Ammergau that the schoolmaster shall
be a musician, and they are all taught music.
Then came that mournful procession; the Saviour fall-
ing three times under the load of the cross; those last
dreadful scenes. How can I describe them? But they
are immeasurably dear and valuable to the Christian.
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HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
As the curtain goes up on the scene of the crucifixion,
the two thieves are already hanging on their elevated
scene of punishment, but the principal cross is on the
ground; they are driving the nails in His hands and
feet! The cross is raised by invisible machinery. For
twenty-two minutes, this man hangs thus suspended.
However well supported by mechanical means, it is a
terrible strain; he is, by measurement, an inch shorter
when taken down-temporarily, of course. The seven
remarkable sayings, the scenes of the parting of the gar-
ments, the three Marys at the foot of the cross, the
mother's heartbreak-it is all there. At length the sol-
dier thrusts his spear in His side, and blood runs out.
They give him vinegar to drink-then a horrible shudder
runs through His frame, and all is over.
The descent from the cross is managed with great
skill, and is a perfect copy of Rubens's great picture. It
is slow, majestic, sublime, terrible.
I am glad of the stately sorrows of that day! It was
profoundly affecting and hard to bear, but it has given
me an inspiration to live a nobler life, and I hope its les-
sons will not forsake me on the bed of death.
No amount of atheistic indifference could carry any
man through the part of Josef Maier. He has played it
four times—in 1870, 1871, 1880, and 1890. He says
he cannot play it again, as he is now fifty years old, and
he feels his strength abating. He is teaching his be-
loved apostle John to take the part in the year 1900, if
the Pope permits them to play it again.
And now let us look for a moment at the history of
this wonderful performance and the record of the Miracle
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OBER-AMMERGAU
Plays. They were to the masses during the Dark Ages,
what the public-school and the Bible is to the youth of
to-day. Very few, even of the Kings, could read.
There were no books. The monks carried about with
them all the learning there was. Something to amuse
and instruct the people must be thought of. The
Miracle Play was the result. It was sacred and profane
at once; often degenerating into coarseness and obscen-
ity, it yet, in its way, taught the people religious truth.
In the early plays the Devil was a favorite and gymnastic
character. Jonah and the whale were also much intro-
duced, and a manuscript copy of the first text-book of
this very Ammergau play is still preserved in the Lang
family, with long speeches by both these characters.
Miracle Plays, after the Reformation, were generally
thrown out and forbidden. In Chester, England, one
of their strongholds, they were played for the last time
in 1574. They have lingered however, here and there,
in remote districts. But this did not reach the Bavarian
peasant; and when the plague came, he knew no better
device to stay it than to vow to God the performance.
of this play every ten years. It is as holy a thing to the
Ober-Ammergau people, now as it was in 1662, and no
one should look at it without a recognition of this great
fact.
In 1845 they had the great good fortune to secure for
their priest and father, Daisenberger, who was educated
at the monastery of Ettal, and who saw the Passion Play
in 1830. He was a dramatic author, as well as a good,
religious priest. He saw his opportunity; retaining the
good parts, he struck out the Devil and all his works, for
the Devil was always a coarse, comic, and rather laugh-
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HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
able character in the early Miracle Play; he struck out
all else that was unworthy, wrote and re-wrote the parts,
and trained the actors. A half-century's training under
the guidance of so learned and dramatic a writer, who
added to his fine faculties profound spirituality and a
passionate adherence to the faiths and dogmas of the
church, might well create the excellence we find in this
now highly intellectual drama. We must remember
that the subtle influence of tradition and the acting of
plays is the one recreation of their lives, hard-worked,
sombre, and stern as must be the life of a Bavarian
peasant. It has been their one channel for the two
greatest passions of the human heart-love of approba-
tion and the instinct of religious worship. To win
fame, please his priest, and to honor God by playing
worthily some part in the Passion Play has been the
ambition of an Ober-Ammergau peasant for three hun-
dred years.
If a man be chosen once for a part,
and is found unworthy of it, he suffers terribly and can
hardly bear it. As my housefather said (as if they were
synonymous terms) "He would either commit suicide or
emigrate to America;" he could not stay at home to
meet his shame.
Now, as to the preparation of the play. The election
of actors takes place in December, one year before the
production of the play; and the members of the Com-
mittee, before going into council, attend a mass in the
church. In regard to the seven or eight principal parts
there is rarely any disagreement, but in regard to the
seven hundred minor parts there are doubtless antagon-
isms and jealousies; but when the votes of the Commit-
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OBER-AMMERGAU
tee are made public no dissentient voice is heard. One
of the older actors is appointed to take charge of the
rehearsals, and from his authority there is no appeal.
Thus, as they rehearse five times a week, the year of a
Passion Play is very hard work; except for their con-
stant familiarity with stage routine, and unbroken habits
of stage representation during the intervening years,
they could not stand the strain.
It is a thankless return for their hard work that some
travelers call them a set of mountebanks acting for
money. The truth is the individual actors receive very
little. In 1880 Josef Maier got only £60, or $300. In
1890 he only got three times that, while the proceeds
were twenty times as much in that Summer. Every
dollar of the money goes into the hands of a committee
selected by the people. After all expenses are paid,
the profits are divided into four portions, one of which
goes to the church, the school, the poor; another for
the improvement of the village, repair of highway, pub-
lic buildings, etc.; a third is divided amongst the taxpay-
ers who have incurred the expenses of preparing for the
Play, buying the costumes, etc., which are very expen-
sive; the remaining fourth is distributed amongst the
players, and as there are seven hundred, their individ-
ual gains cannot be great. Every one, except the
babies in the tableaux, gets something; fourteen marks
to one of these was the smallest sum paid in 1880.
Too much praise cannot be bestowed on the cos-
tumes. They are gorgeous in fabric and color, have
been carefully studied from the best pictures, and one
who goes to see this Play, even remembering the re-
sources of the Théâtre Français, will be astonished.
105
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
The splendor of some of the more crowded scenes is
rarely equaled; such a combination of severe simplicity
of outlines and contours, classic models of drapery, with
brilliancy of coloring, is not to be seen in any other play
now acted in the world. These peasants have had
other assistance than Daisenberger. The King of
Bavaria, Ludwig II, he who made Munich a second
Rome or Athens, who loved art so well, and his
nephew, the Wagner-loving, crazy King, both had great
interest in these humble actors. They gave them every
assistance to see and learn what was to be seen in
Munich, and sent them valuable stage properties. The
breastplate of Caiaphas, which is made of real and very
valuable jewels, was a present from the second Ludwig;
and a beautiful statue of the last scene, the crucifixion,
in marble, which stands near their theatre, was the gift
to the town by the unfortunate mad King who drowned
himself in the Lake of Starnberg.
21
From 1814 they had a schoolmaster named Rochus
Dedlar, who was a man of almost inspired nature as to
music. He was a Wagnerite, no doubt, and composed
all this very beautiful music, these choral chants which
are the expression and setting of the Play. They re-
semble Mozart's masses in a way, and are full of solemn
beauty. Every day the school-children are drilled in
chorus-singing and recitative; with masses and other
church music they are naturally very familiar. At their
meals each humble family sings a grace most harmoni-
ously. A daughter of this Dedlar is still living in
Munich, and the pious Ober-Ammergauites send her a
yearly sum of money as a token of their gratitude for
her father's services.
106
OBER-AMMERGAU
I wish I could make you see that beautiful group of
chorus-singers—“schulzgeister," as they are called, or
guardian angels-who first come on the stage. It lifts
the play to its high plane of dignity and beauty at once.
They are eighteen men and women in strictly classic
costumes, a full white tunic, with scarlet or gold or
purple peplum, embroidered in gold, with bands of
gold across the breast. They have crowns, or tiaras,
on their heads. The women allow their long, luxuriant
hair to float on their shoulders. The men are some of
them very handsome. The rhythmic precision with
which they enter, take their places, sing their strophe
and antistrophe, then fall back to the right and left, is a
marvel. Their motions are slow and solemn, their
expressions exalted and rapt, their voices beautiful.
Just before and just after the crucifixion they come in
solemn black. I wondered very much how their
dresses stood the drenching which they occasionally get
-the rain and the sun is free to fall on them or scorch
them, neither of which moves them at all, but all looked
perfectly fresh the day I saw them, which was a fine
day. They are always in the open.
In any opera house in the United States I wish we
could see so perfect a set of chorus-singers as these were.
There must be many a soul, I am sure, which has felt
nearer to those who are gone before, nearer to those
spiritual existences, nearer to our own guardian angels,
while listening to these inspired singers.
After the crucifixion came the "rolling away of the
stone," the Lord appears, and there is an ascension,
which is as perfect a picture as all the rest.
Many were disappointed at not seeing the youthful.
107
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
Christ, the scene in the Temple "Disputing with the
Doctors," but this the learned Daisenberger did not
attempt. The play begins, as we have said, with Christ's
entry into Jerusalem.
Thus the Passion Play is opera, tableaux, and drama
all in one. As a literary work it is of the highest merit.
It is divided into eighteen acts, and takes eight hours;
but how incomparable were these effects as heightened
by the background of mountain and sky, fine distances,
and vistas of mountain and meadow, with the canopy of
Heaven overhead, with birds flying in and out, while
great banks of white clouds gathered and rested and
dissolved and floated away as the morning grew to noon-
day, and the noonday wore on toward night. This
closeness of nature is an accessory of illimitable effect,
and adds to the last and crowning charm.
And so I listened to the story which to all of us has
the most profound significance. How study has refined
and educated these poor peasants! What a mine of
talent, capacity, dramatic and musical, does this remote
mountain village put forth, all because there was one
guiding brain and the stimulus of a great idea to lead on
and upward the talent which lies dormant in us all.
I should not wish, in this age of doubt and apathy
and atheism, to have this Passion Play brought away
from its present sacred shelter; but I do wish that in
every mountain village there could be the same thorough,
careful, and artistic training which these people have
had, which has made their faces “to shine like the face
of an angel;' they do not look like peasants.
What were our sensations, you will ask, as we wit-
nessed this terrible realism? We forgot that we had
108
OBER-AMMERGAU
any sensations; we were elevated as we are by the bed
of death, in a shipwreck, or in hours of great emotion;
we were awed and stilled; and it has occurred to me
since that to us who have enjoyed the blessing of being
Christians all our lives, daily readers of the Bible, and
attendants of church, whether the very familiarity of
these blessed truths has not blunted our sensibilities to
the wonderful dramatic poetry of this great story.
In
this play there is no allusion to the infancy of Christ.
They are the "Old Catholics" who never keep Christmas,
but who celebrate, not "the Mother and Child," but the
gloomy crucifixion. Every one who can go should see
this play in 1900. And let no one be deterred by the
fear that it is an irreligious performance.
109
Feudal Châteaux on the Loire
I approached Chambord after a contest and a blood-
less victory over my courier which put me in that frame
of mind with which one should visit the more blood-
stained Château of Blois later on.
Couriers, however well mannered, have always one.
obstinate point which must be combated. They do not
intend that their employers shall go where they wish at
the time they wish. So long as you are wax in their
hands, and "will be taken," they are the most valuable
servants; but if you say "I will go to St. Peter's" when
the courier has ordained that you shall go to St. Paul's,
not all the powers of earth can prevail against them.
Fritz was fatigued; he wished to stay at Blois, where
is an excellent inn, and not to show off the glories of the
house of Valois until the next day. So there were no
horses to be had. Touraine is a fertile province, but to
hear Fritz hold forth when I summoned him for his
orders after the mid-day breakfast, one would imagine
that the equine race had disappeared from France. One
would have supposed that the Houyhnhnms had been
Protestants, and that a tyrannical Catherine de' Medici
had cut off all their heads, to hear Fritz lament the lack
of horseflesh to drag us to Chambord.
It was a glorious afternoon. We were not at all tired,
although Fritz declared that we looked exhausted.
ΙΙΟ

Prince Napoleon.
UNIV
OF
MICH
FEUDAL CHÂTEAUX ON THE LOIRE
room.
There was the spirit of '76 in us, and the more we were
told that there were no horses the more we determined
to have four, if need be. I saw an amused gleam in the
eye of the landlady, and I beckoned her to come to my
She came.
Her neat cap was very much on the
top of her head, and triumph in her bright eyes.
"Horses?" said I. "Oui, Madame," said she, "many
horses. Much horses."
Much horses." Soon a neat Victoria and pair
stood triumphantly at the private door. And there, in
high hat, de rigueur, stood the discomfited Fritz. I had
disdained to mention to him that he was expected to do
his usual service.
And in that way, by hiring a valet de place, I had
broken his proud spirit. I willingly paid two francs and
a half for this Roman triumph. Never did so little
money buy so much victory. Fritz would no more have
relinquished the pleasure of informing us all about
Chambord than would Sidney Smith have given up the
pleasure of talking down Macaulay. "Valet de place,"
indeed! "It is strange," said I, contemplatively, "that
I can always get horses when you cannot, Fritz."
But this was most ignoble. As the discharged valet
de place trotted off on half-pay, I rose to the situation
and gave myself up to dreams of Francis I. If ever
there was a King worth dreaming of, he was the man.
I had been dreaming of him during my journey
through Feudal France, from beautiful, fortified Carcas-
sonne, through Toulon, and Narbonne, and Avignon,
Pau, etc., up to noble old Bordeaux, and here I was
within an afternoon's drive of the house he built in his
gay youth. Do you wonder I wished to circumvent
Fritz? Touraine is always lovely, and history in all its
III
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
most poetical amplitude lay about me. Here I might
follow up the story of the most gallant boy of all those
three gallant boys who began to reign before they were
twenty-Francis I, Henry VIII, and Charles V. They
kicked kingdoms about as to-day they might kick foot-
ball. I should recall the footmarks of their contempo-
raries. Their spiritual father, Pope Leo X, was only
thirty-six, and was walking about, laying his white Medi-
cean hand on the shoulders of Raphael when Francis
was picking up Titian's brush, and art was religion to
them all.
And I could remember the other famous contem-
poraries whom time had not yet revealed the gay Don
Ignace, who was playing a guitar to some beautiful
señorita, and who afterwards played on the heart strings
of men as Ignatius Loyola; and I might give a thought
to the little German monk who was composing "Old
Hundred' for us to sing four hundred years later on
one Martin Luther. And where were the three Mar-
guerites, of Valois, of Lorraine, and of Navarre? Could I
not reanimate Catherine de' Medici, Diane de' Poictiers,
Mary Queen of Scots, and was even Joan of Arc, in her
armor,
to be seen?
"Thou fairest lily in the shield of France,
With heart of virgin gold,"
You see I got into better company than Fritz long
before I reached Chambord. Yes, there it lay before
me, serene and beautiful, the handsomest empty, useless
house in France, lying serenely on its vast green plain.
Nor can I give its surprising effect upon me as I gazed
at its many gables, turrets, ornamental chimneys, vast
112
FEUDAL CHÂTEAUX ON THE LOIRE
sweep of front, noble stone platforms and loggias. Oh,
how lovely it looks as it stands there alone, a rectangle
five hundred feet long, in pale gray stone! It is a type
of a vanished age, a powerful voice from a powerful
past when Might meant Right. Here grew up, to
gratify the caprices of the most romantic of lovers, a
grand flirt on a grand scale, this exquisite Italian
palace fortress.
Francis I, when young Count d'Angoulème, had here
fallen in love with the Countess de Thomy (Chambord
had become Crown property under Louis XII, but it was
simply a hunting box for the Counts of Blois). He
found it a ruin, he left it a palace. He began to improve
it in 1525, just after his return from Spain, that sad cap-
tivity. He spent 444,570 livres in building his folly be-
fore he died, in 1547-an enormous sum when labor was
so cheap, the masons getting only five cents a day.
Stately as is the outside, the inside of Chambord is
even more superb and wonderful. There is the famous
spiral staircase, two corkscrews following each other,
soaring up two hundred feet, until one emerges in the
lantern, where Catherine de' Medici consulted the stars.
with Ruggieri, her astrologer. This colossal fleur-de-lis
on the roof towers above a forest of pinnacles. There
are twelve staircases at Chambord! It was intended as
a home for a royal retinue; and well it served its pur-
pose. Who could give any idea of its architectural
anatomy. There are five hundred spacious rooms, many
vast salons, once filled with rich furniture, rare books,
costly pictures, and all the elaborate frescoes, stately
sculptures, which their art-loving King gathered around
him. Here once assembled the wit, poetry, and intel-
113
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
lect of a cultivated age, surrounding Francis in his beauti-
ful dress, the trunk hose and slashed doublet, the broad
hat trimmed with jewels, one of the handsomest men of
his day, in spite of his too large nose.
Francis was always beautifully dressed. He had the
Italian sense of costume, formed perhaps from his friend
Leonardo da Vinci, whom he brought to France. This
enlightened, gay flirt and unfortunate warrior-for he
was always beaten by Charles V--founded the Collége
de France and the École des Beaux Arts. In fact, he
was the father of the Renaissance in France and was
the most magnificent builder of fine houses. Chambord
was, however, his greatest achievement in building; and
as one comes down to the great donjon, which is divided
on each floor into four salles des gardes, one sees how
admirably this château is arranged for defense. This
was a fortress as well as a palace. A hundred separate
lives, the soldier-King, lover, poet, student, and monk,
a hundred beautiful women, in brocades and diamonds,
might have lived here and have seldom met.
It is an
enchanted palace, guarded by Titan towers, and as we
drove away, its pinnacles and spires, under the light of
a new moon, looked like a fantastic army of plumed
knights.
In 1547, Francis I, the gallant Captain of Pavia, died,
and the bright light went out of Chambord. It was
never so gay again, although always a royal residence
(until the days of the Terror), but was not again
destined to so glorious a scene of royal frivolity as dur-
ing the period from 1515 to 1540, the days of the impe-
rial power of Francis. The little monk and the Spanish
soldier became the rulers of men's thoughts, and the
114
FEUDAL CHÂTEAUX ON THE LOIRE
struggle for religious ideas began. Persecution also was
to reign for a couple of centuries. It gave name and
title to the disappointed Henri V, the last of the Bour-
bons. He never even visited it. The phantom of
feudal power had passed. Chambord is the Don
Quixote of palaces. And with persecution comes up
the name of Catherine de' Medici, who lived much at
Chambord.
We drove back to Blois to sleep over it, and the next
day attacked the Château of Blois. Right in the city it
stands, for ages the residence of Princes and Kings, the
haunt of bigotry, the stage of direful tragedy.
It is a picturesque assemblage of the architecture of
three great epochs-the thirteenth, fifteenth, and six-
teenth centuries. It was destroyed after its occupancy
by the Valois Kings, but Duban restored it. It is built
on the site of a Roman camp, at the conjunction of the
Loire and the Aron. Here was born Louis XII of
France, called the "Father of his People." Almost all
the political acts of this great, wise, and good monarch
were performed at Blois, where he always lived excepting
when off with his army in Italy.
He had magnificent taste, and enriched this palace
with a valuable gallery of pictures, and gathered books
which became the foundation of the great library of
Paris. Here one sees the fretful porcupine, the device
of Louis XII, on the ceiling, walls, and tapestries—a
curious emblem for this peace-loving King. Here died
Claude of Lorraine, the wife of Francis I, and here died
Anne of Brittany. And here also lived cruel Catherine
de' Medici. Here secret duel and assassination were the
order of the day; here magnificent fêtes and pompous
115
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
ceremonials were constantly happening; and here, on
December 23, 1588, the Duc de Guise, head of the
Catholic League, was foully murdered, and the next day
was assassinated his brother, the haughty, unscrupulous
Cardinal de Lorraine-all because they stood in the way
of Catherine de' Medici. The Loire ran red with blood.
This castle is picturesque, as what is not picturesque
in the Valley of the Loire? As a mediæval curiosity,
enlivened for us all by the novels of Dumas, Blois is
interesting.
Fritz had forgiven me, and so he made no trouble
about horses when I told him that we would drive to
Amboise and to Chenonceaux. A pretty drive from
Blois brought us to Amboise, now the property of the
heirs of the Count de Paris. A charming park, well
cared for, surrounds it for several miles, and, standing
high on a bluff, rises this vast and powerful citadel.
Enormous towers ninety feet high and forty-two feet in
diameter are at either extremity. A carriage road cut
through the solid rock took us to the top, whence we saw
a picture of romantic beauty.
The chief attractions of Amboise are its eighteen cen-
turies of historic associations. Here occurred tragic
scenes, sieges and battles, bloody butcheries, and
Machiavellian plots, pompous ceremonials, and sumptu-
ous fêtes. Noted births, deaths, and marriages all
occurred here. Here was born Charles VII, and here he
was accidentally killed. Here Francis I spent his idol-
ized youth. Here he received his cruel jailer, Charles
V, and, with a magnanimity which nothing could surpass,
gave him free pass to his own fair city of Ghent.
Francis II and the beautiful Mary Queen of Scots spent
Here
116
FEUDAL CHÂTEAUX ON THE LOIRE
their honeymoon. Here occurred that effort of the
Guises to get the young King away from his Jezebel of
a mother, which she answered back politely but suc-
cinctly by cutting off all their heads. So they were
naturally silenced. Catherine had a little way with her
which was most convincing and saved discussion.
Here as a prisoner, in 1842, came Abd-el-Kader, and
one can see the blood of the sheep slaughtered for his
dinners on the stone floors. But Amboise has a little
Chapel of St. Hubert-most lovely, worth coming to
France to see.
Only ten miles farther on stands Chenonceaux,
unique in its situation, construction, and history. It is
still as fair and beautiful as when Diana of Poitiers
combed her black hair, looking up and down the river.
"I throw my wishes out of one window and my regrets
out of the other," she wrote to her royal lover, who had
built her a dressing-room right across the river. This
most beautiful of all the feudal châteaux, a monument
of the Renaissance, spanning the river, and confronting
us with memories of medieval days with its picturesque
mass of lofty walls and hanging balconies, bold but-
tresses, pillared arches, graceful doorways, and pointed
turrets, is a most exquisite thing. Its principal rooms
look up and down the Loire. Words fail to describe
this château of Chenonceaux, this darling of architec-
ture. After having been the favorite of Francis I,
Diana fascinated his son, Henri II, husband to Cathe-
rine, and Chenonceaux was purchased for Diana,
and became a royal residence. Diana continued the
building by extending the bridge to the north bank
of the river and erecting thereon a handsome gallery
117
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
and rooms. Thither her royal lover would join her
after hunting. Her initial, "D," with a crescent, is
joined to his everywhere. Here she spent eleven years.
I wonder Catherine de' Medici did not poison or throttle
her; but, in the midst of her luxury, her tasteful embel-
lishment of the château, and her lawns and flower gar-
dens, came the disastrous news that the King, Henri II,
had been killed in a tournament. Catherine made no
bones of turning Diana out, and gave her the alternative
of going to the gloomy Château de Chaumont.
Then came in a residence of thirty years at Chenon-
ceaux for Catherine. She made it the arena of festivi-
ties, pleasures, and artistic work. She took Francis II
and Mary Queen of Scots there after the bloody butch-
eries of Amboise.
It is curious that a deserted wife could bear to live in
a house which bore the reminiscences of a husband so
faithless as was Henri II, but Catherine did not mind
them. She enriched it immensely with her splendid
Italian taste. She made the most lavish expenditures
on park and garden. Here she lived with her forty
beautiful women-"her forty fair frailties," as she
called them. The old wretch! She used them to
fascinate Protestants and Catholic alike, and lived
through three decades. She would have triumphal
arches, monumental columns, and statues erected, with
leaping fountains, antique altars, fireworks and the
thunders of artillery, and all kinds of devices and poetic
descriptions to give her fêtes the stamp of magnificence,
novelty, and refined art. The long gallery on the
bridge, filled with pictures, became one vast banquet
hall, and the songs and jests of courtiers replaced the
118

Prince Louis Napoleon in 1869
WHIL
OF
FEUDAL CHÂTEAUX ON THE LOIRE
wishes and the regrets which Diana of Poitiers used to
throw out to the fishes. There was Marguerite, the
sparkling daughter of Catherine, whose love match with
Balafré, the Duc de Guise, she broke up because old
Catherine wished her to become the Aspasia-wife of
Henry of Navarre.
But here one invades the great province of the novel-
ist. Alexandre Dumas will tell you in his gay pages all
that story better than I can.
119
Taine, André Theuriet, Mme. Adam,
and Some Others
In the Summer of 1887 I had a great bit of good for-
tune in seeing in his retirement, at Annecy, the author
of those splendid compilations and critical essays on the
English dramatists, Hippolyte Adolphe Taine, the most
accomplished writer of his day on literature.
To go to Annecy was of itself a treat, the most beau-
tiful of all the old Savoyard cities. Situated on its own
beautiful lake, sacred to the memory of François de
Sales, this exquisite town is the dearest of all the resorts
of the antiquary within the radius of a day from Aix-les-
Bains, which is saying everything.
My cousin, the Countess Gianotti, had taken a villa
there for the Summer, and had asked me to pay her a .
little visit. It was but a short distance from Aix by
train, and I gladly accepted. She promised me not
only a view of the lake, but a visit from André Theuriet,
the author of "Amour d'Automne," the most delicate,
pure, and flower-like of modern French novels, and she
added on to the attractiveness of her welcome to the
pretty villa where she rested with her beautiful young
daughters for the Summer, a visit to Taine, who, with
his wife and daughter, was her near neighbor.
I had just been reading Taine's tribute to Ben Jon-
120
TAINE, THEURIET, AND SOME OTHERS
son, and I could not but ask him how he could so well
understand that somewhat incomprehensible genius. He
pointed to his wife, an accomplished Englishwoman, who
he said was his English teacher. Taine was a tall man,
afflicted with a determined squint, but otherwise good-
looking, and of quiet, not demonstrative address. He
had the charm of a scholar, the free, flowing, almost
ceaseless, way of talking, which reminded me of his
writing, in which he never seemed to get to the end of
his knowledge.
He talked to me very much of our American writers;
thought we were rich in historians. "Your Bancroft,
Prescott, Motley, Irving; your poets, Bryant, Halleck,
Willis, Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier; your novel writers
[he went on with ceaseless rapidity]; your Mark Twain,
where shall I put him?" He looked at his wife for help,
for he spoke no English.
"Humorist," said she.
"Universal genius," said
I. “Oui, oui," said he; and he talked long and well
about Mark Twain.
Had he ever read "Joan of Arc," by that versatile
author, he would have been most enthusiastic and more
astonished.
I was astonished that he could have understood Mark
Twain, but on asking Mme. Taine, she said that "type
had no secrets from Taine.'
As he talked with enthusiasm of the calm and quiet
of the retreat by the Lake of Annecy, "a good place to
write," he said, we rather took that as a hint to go, so
left the great critic reluctantly.
But the next morning he returned our call, attired in
a soft felt hat and loose Summer costume, which rather
121
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
recalled Tennyson, and charmed me with his simplicity
and gentleness and his wonderful knowledge.
The
André Theuriet came to luncheon with us.
simplest of men, with an air of such ease and indifference
to outward things that it was impossible to believe that
this country gentleman was the man about whom all
learned Paris was at that time quarreling as to whether
or not he should have a chair in the Academy.
He was elected, however, and is one of the Immortal
Forty. He was very much pleased with my enthusiasm
over "Amour d'Automne," and gave me leave to trans-
late it. I found, however, that some one else had fore-
stalled me here.
He spoke of the Lake of Annecy as a perpetual in-
spiration. Its gemlike atmosphere, the sun always
going down in opal tints, and the rose light, inseparable
to that neighborhood south of Mont Blanc, to its ample
flora, those wild flowers of which he always makes such
use in his beautiful stories.
"And then, antiquity so near, I ventured to say.
"It always seems to me that Time stands here, with
finger on lip, saying, 'Respect some of my best work.
"That is true of all France and of all Savoy," he
added. "That is a great help-one which your American
novelists have not."
"No, we have too much Present and no Past."
"The Present alone is ours," said Theuriet.
I have just come from the Feudal Châteaux on the
Loire, the ever fascinating scenery of Touraine, and we
talked much of them and their builders, particularly of
Francis I, who, he said, was reading enough for all
time. "It would be delightful to be able to write
122
TAINE, THEURIET, AND SOME OTHERS
one's romances in stone and mortar, as he did," said
Theuriet.
"Do you remember what D'Israeli said of Munich:
'A poet on a throne has realized his dreams.'
"Yes," said Theuriet, "I have always wished that
Louis of Bavaria had been better worth that noble say-
ing."
"But it is much more the great privilege of genius to
lead a little girl out of the fields and make us her slave.'
He bowed low to the compliment, and with the grace
of a French gentleman said: "You bring honeyed words
from your great country."
He said the
He was very curious about America.
more he read about it the less he understood it. I told
him that the confusion and the noise, the labor question,
and the fight all floated across the Atlantic, but that the
charm of the American home was silenced: that did not
travel, but that was a fact.
"But the American travels. I see many of them in
Paris and Aix-les-Bains, and they seem so prosperous,
so serene, so untroubled. Madame so sympathetic
[he bowed to us American ladies]-Monsieur not so
much so."
We laughed and told him that he should come to
America, where we found "Monsieur" so very attrac-
tive. "No, too afraid of the sea," he said; and then he
began talking, as all Frenchmen do, of Edgar Allan Poe.
I think I never talked with any Frenchman who had
not this stereotyped remark of his lips: "Did you know
Edgar Allan Poe, and what was the secret of his exist-
ence?'' As I did not know him, I used to whisper
"Absinthe," with a look of mystery. Then the French
:
123
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
questioner would nod his head, and seek no farther.
This answer conveyed the idea; but there was a woeful
lack of local color, for I suppose poor Poe had to put up
with American whisky, and perhaps had never tasted
the fatal green fluid so well known to Frenchmen. But
I struck on a subject as full of ennui to Theuriet as
Edgar Allan Poe was to me. I asked him if he had
known Eugène Sue, who lived at Annecy once on a
time.
I think he told me that he had gone to school to him.
At any rate, he said that Sue had taught some boys at
Annecy, after he was compelled to fly from Paris for his
political heresies, and that no
and that no one suspected him of
being a genius, although he had wonderful eyes. When
I told him that I had known Sue's half-sisters, the little
"Rose et Blanche" of "The Wandering Jew," he
seemed to take an interest. "That makes him human,"
he said. Evidently he did not care much for Sue, but
gladly heard about the little twin sisters, the daughters
of Dr. Niles, who married Eugène Sue's mother. One
has lately died in Europe; the other became Mme. .
Adam Badeau, and is, I believe, still living.
They could tell me very little of their distinguished
half-brother, whose enormous genius as a story teller
once affected the world as only Stevenson has done
since. When I told André Theuriet that I cried half a
day over the murder of the poor white horse who was to
save the twins, in my youth, as I first read "The Wan-
dering Jew," he laughed and said, "That was indeed an
embarrassing situation.”
He evidently found Eugène Sue as great a bore as I
found Edgar Allan Poe, so we relegated these two to
124
TAINE, THEURIET, AND SOME OTHERS
their immortality, while we talked of St. François de
Sales, ever a present and interesting topic to a resident
of Annecy, where they regarded him with so much ten-
derness that it was made an article in the treaty by
which Savoy was ceded to France in 1845, that his
remains should not be removed from Annecy, where
they have reposed in the Cathedral for centuries.
What struck me in Theuriet and in Taine was the
quiet absence of any appearance of ambition. There
was perfect tranquillity, such as one never sees in any
American man. That hope for something better in the
future, that earnest unrest so characteristic of our men
and women, to whom the future is so full of possibilities
that brain, which Dr. Howe used to say “made so many
Boston people go crazy," is not so uneasy there as here.
To be content to be poor, comparatively unknown, liv-
ing humbly, seems to even the most celebrated men and
women in France their natural fate. A tranquil and safe
livelihood they all desire, and most of them attain, but
they are not envious of the Rothschilds. They do
respect the ancien noblesse, but when Louis XI put an
end to the feudal power he did not rub out that feudal
influence, born and bred in the French people. This
contentment with a little, this making so much of every
day, this mediæval pleasure in doing one's work well
and in tranquil ease waiting for it to be appreciated, is
so un-American that it is, or was, to me a perpetual
study.
I noticed it very much in Mme. Henri Gréville, a
literary queen, whose romances are a joy to all contem-
poraneous French readers, and highly appreciated all
over the world.
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HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
Mme. Gréville is a disciple of George Sand at her
best-the George Sand of "La Petite Fadette," "La
Marc au Diable," those lovely and pure romances, the
white alabaster stone in Sand's variegated monument.
I found her a very agreeable and most unpretending
woman, living simply on the other side of the Seine on
the Quai Voltaire, that interesting part of Paris where
we Americans go so seldom except to buy books and
curios, or to make our infrequent journeys to the an-
tiquities of Paris, and there was a silent renunciation of
the distinction which she might have claimed which was
most beautiful. She became a great friend of mine. I
hope that she remembers me with half the pleasure that
I remember her, as, seated in her pretty salon, with the
floor covered with fur, a taste she must have brought
from Russia, where she spent many years, she told me
so many interesting things which had happened to
herself.
"But tell me," I asked her, "why you never by any
chance gave us the story of that dissolute and fascinating
creature known as the Russian Princess in all the novels,
of the period? The Nadeje of Balsac and the Nadine
of the younger Dumas? You have no Dame aux Camé-
lias in your Russian stories."
"It was not for lack of material," said Mme. Gréville,
the woman getting the better of the artist for a moment.
"But I owed everything to those noble Russian women
who were kind to me, and I lived in religious families
and saw what never gets into the novels, a side of Rus-
sian life most respectable and orderly and good, that I
have tried to depict. There were many other pens at
It is a
work with the Dolgorukis and Suvaroffs.
126
TAINE, THEURIET, AND SOME OTHERS
great part of the life of a romance writer to know what
I never loved or envied the lurid side of
to renounce.
life.”
Here, I thought, is the reverse of Ouida.
We talked of George Sand, and she attributed her
inspirations to Jean Jaques Rousseau.
"But," said I, "did not Balzac inspire Flaubert, and
both inspire George Sand?"
"Oh, no! She inspired herself, and back of her was
Rousseau. She was a woman inherently noble, and her
later novels were written to excuse her 'fantasies,' by
which she was crowded into a path which all her natural
instincts abhorred."
I tried to make Mme. Gréville talk of "Elle et Lui”
and "Lui et Elle," but she would not. She seemed to
hate and to despise all that sort of criticism and not to
love the author of "Une Nuit d'Octobre.
The last of these immortals whom I was to see in that
year was Mme. Adam, the editor of the Nouvelle Revue,
of whom I had read such enthusiastic accounts, as the
"beautiful Juliette Lamber," whose tender eyes, wreath-
ing lips, and exquisite physiognomy had inspired this
account, when she first started the Nouvelle Revue.
"The vocation of Mme. Adam is for politics; of that
fact there has never been a doubt in the minds of
thoughtful men in America and Europe. Her clear
judgment and trenchant opinions will soon find their
natural and untrammeled outlet in the pages of her
magazine. She is a living power in the intellectual
pageant of the times, and many a politician whose ambi-
tion for self-aggrandizement exceeds his desire for the
good of the race [sic] will receive his deathblow from
127
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
those rosy fingers armed with the stiletto keener than an
Italian's dagger, the pen of a woman editor."
This writer went on to say, I remember: "Looking at
Mme. Adam and hearing her talk is occupation so de-
lightful and satisfying that one has little opportunity to
desire to take in her outward surroundings; yet while
she presses the hand of a friend at the door as he
departs a great light in contemporary French history,
or while she rapidly scans the cards which are brought
in unceasingly, one's eye travels over her noble editorial
room," etc. "But those who have penetrated the heart
of the rose find out how charmingly feminine, how nobly
artistic are the private tastes of Juliette Lamber," and
so on.
She was doubtless a beautiful woman, stepping from
a high position in the fashionable world to the function
of dictator in a great paper. She became, it was said,
the Egeria of Gambetta.
But it was not my fortune to see her until twenty
years after.
I never saw those editorial rooms in the
Boulevard Poissonière which she made so famous. I
was taken by an American friend of hers to her quiet,
handsome house (in the Avenue de l'Alma I should say,
but I do not remember where), and introduced to a fine-
looking old lady with white hair, who presented to me
her granddaughter. A Frenchwoman's dress always fits
well, no matter how old she is, and I noticed the neat
little feet in black satin boots. The address and wel-
come of Mme. Adam were dignified and courteous.
She offered us a cup of chocolate and a biscuit, and
some very good music was being played by the composer
from an opera which was to be produced that evening.
128
TAINE, THEURIET, AND SOME OTHERS
On the walls were drawings by Bastien-Lepage, the artist
of Joan of Arc, and she showed me a very funny note
from him, with a hastily drawn pen-and-ink sketch of
himself and his brother as they returned from fishing,
two of the wettest, most bedraggled figures; it was his
way of declining a hasty invitation to dinner, she said.
Some one talked to me of the amusements going, advised
me to see George Sand's "François de Champi'' at the
Comédie, the splendid spectacle at the Gymnase, “Les
Femmes Nerveuses" at the Vaudeville (perhaps the title
attracted me), and "Le Roy d'Ys," which I had just
heard at Aix-Mme. Adam making funny comments on
all this catalogue. Then they all began talking of a
piece which M. Vacquerie was to bring out at the Gym-
nase called "Jealousy.'
They were all excited that a man who had hitherto
written only classical pieces for the Odéon and Théâtre
Français should descend to the Gymnase. And he, it
was said, had answered that drama was banished from
the house of Molière, and that it was no disgrace to
bring out his work at a house where "'Le Maître de
Forge' and 'Serge Panine' had been played."
I was immensely amused at the seriousness with
which this question was argued by all present, and
thought it typical of that interest in the drama and in
music which is never absent from the French mind.
Then a wit present told a story of a nouveau riche
who wished to buy a picture of the "Curiaces," those
three noble brothers whom we remember in "Viri
Romæ.
"How much is it?" she asked.
"Three thousand francs," was the answer.
•
129
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
"That is too high," she said. "Ah, could you not
sell me two Curiaci?"
That sounded rather American, and I was glad when
the composer struck up again a waltz from his new
opera, which was wildly danceful.
Mme. Adam, in her gray, well-fitting gown, her still
handsome face, her delightful conversation, surrounded
by her children and grandchildren, still keeps her hold
on that esprit de Paris. She grows old gracefully. To
her come all the artists, musicians, and men of letters.
Fascination is a gift of the gods. It knows no limitation
of youth or age. It is a quality as hidden as electricity.
We are drawn to people we know not why. Mme.
Adam was perhaps sixty-six when I saw her, and she had
advanced boldly to meet Time, asking no concessions,
yet I think she was enjoying life as well as she did at
twenty-six perhaps far more, for she had her own
library of well-filled books to draw upon in her own
brain.
She has said some good things; such as "We need
the friendship of a man in great trials, in momentous
epochs; that of a woman in the affairs of every day.'
In speaking of Ouida, whose talents she greatly
admired, she said:
"Ouida is like Doré-she requires a large canvas.
She has always been a great admirer of Gladstone.
She was charmed "that after two thousand years he
found something new to say about Homer.' She is
herself a good Greek scholar, and has a profound appre-
ciation of those mines of literary treasure.
Her house is full of paintings, statues, bric-à-brac,
and tapestries, books everywhere, and on the tapestries.
130
TAINE, THEURIET, AND SOME OTHERS
hung in little frames the letters, autographs, sketches of
nearly every celebrity of the last forty years.
It has been her good fortune to make a friend of Miss
Helen Stanley, who has translated many of her articles
for the American magazines, for Mme. Adam has never
learned English. She knows her own tongue so well
that perhaps she should be forgiven for not learning
ours. The importance of other vocabularies did not
seem great to women of her epoch. Now nearly all
young French people speak English, and it is taught in
the schools by a national edict. She is fond of Ameri-
cans and always treats them graciously.
131
i
Bernhardt, Coquelin, and Others
It was in 1880 that I saw Sarah Bernhardt, on her first
visit to America. She was met at the theatre by a most
superb and attentive audience. This modern Parisienne,
born for "Frou-Frou" and "Marguerite Gautier,
made a lamentable failure in "Phèdre." That master-
piece of Racine was too large for her. Even her poetic
admirer, William Winter, declared that there was neither
"majesty nor tenderness in her impersonation, and that
the nameless agonies of self-contempt, the remorse for
degrading and remorseless sin, she did not feel."
Now, as this is about all that there is to "Phèdre,'
this was a most discouraging criticism. The "rhymed
anguish of the great Racine" wore out even William
Winter. Measuring her with Rachel, she was a failure,
but as an emotional, clever, dramatic artist of the sec-
ond class, superb in depicting the modern morbid
(which is a school by itself, not the antique morbid, which
is another school), there was a versatile cleverness and
Her
power in her which won admiration and wonder.
beautiful voice, her exquisite French, caused her to
become a real teacher of that wonderful language. The
singularity of her appearance, so thin that she was said
to sleep in an umbrella case; her long arms, accentuated
by spotted sleeves, looked like snakes; her fondness for
disagreeable animals-all these eccentricities were pub-
T
132
BERNHARDT, COQUELIN, AND OTHERS
lished by her advertisers, until she had to deny some of
the things said of her in print. "No, I do not sleep in
a coffin," she wrote. "I prefer a bed.
"I prefer a bed. I do not eat
stewed cats, lizard's tails, and peacock's brains. Do I
like to play at croquet with skulls? Perhaps! I have
the skeleton of a man who died of love for me! Perhaps!
"No! You ask me what my theory of life is. It is
represented by the word 'Will,' just as my art is repre-
sented by the word 'nature.' Quand même, you know
is my device."
Sarah Bernhardt is the daughter of a Dutch Jewess
mother and a Parisian Catholic father, the latter causing
her to be brought up in a convent at Grandchamps, as
a Catholic, until she was fifteen. After that her Jewish
mother took her from the nuns, who were distracted
with her pranks, and declared that she should be an
actress. She was presented for examination at the Con-
servatoire. To gain admission she had to recite a piece
of poetry. All she knew was the "Deux Pigeons," by
Lafontaine. Auber presided on the occasion, and as
she boldly trotted up on the stage he said he saw all her
future in her strange eyes-"comedy, tragedy, drama,
and a bit of madness.
“Assez, assez," said Auber, "you have told your
fable very well, and are admitted."
and are admitted." Instructed by
Prévost and Samson, she made her début in "Iphigenie
en Aulide," in 1862. She did not make a success;
Sarah has never been classic. She forsook the "Maison
de Molière" for the "Gymnase," from which she ran
away to Spain; re-appeared at the Théâtre Port St.
Martin under an assumed name; played the part of the
Princess Desirée in the "Biche au Bois"; and even sank
i.
133
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
so low as to sing in the choruses. Afterward she made
an engagement at the Odéon, where she appeared in
1867, on Molière's birthday, as Armand in the "Femmes.
Savantes," and began to be famous.
Here in the next five years this original and eccentric
woman produced "Zacharte in Athalie," her first the-
atrical success, to be followed by a great day of triumph
by the creation of Zanetto in François Coppé's “La
Passant," in 1869, and in "Ruy Blas," in which she
played the part of the Queen of Spain, and showed herself
an artist. These two pieces attracted the attention of
Perrin, the reconstructor of the Comédie Française, who
offered her an engagement. This, to a French artist, is
the culmination of human hopes. She, however, made
two failures-first one in "Delila," and the other as
Cherubin in the "Mariage de Figaro." But Octave
Feuillet's "Sphinx" brought the extraordinary powers
of this fine, passionate, gifted actress to the fullest devel-
opment; and although, after her, Croizette, who
appeared in the same piece, gained the greater applause
of the multitude, Sarah always commanded the appro-
bation of the critics.
I have seen her at her best in Théodora, a part
absolutely made for her, and at her very worst as Joan
of Arc. I can conceive of no greater power of failure
than she displayed in this familiar story, in which she
was dwarfed by her dress, by her monotonous mono-
logue, which William Winter found so tiresome; nor
anything so consummate as her success in the wily wife
of the learned Justinian, where she jumps from the
feeder of the bears to a throne, the great Théodora. It
was immense.
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BERNHARDT, COQUELIN, AND OTHERS
She can die better than any other actress on the
stage. I once saw her die from slow poison. I forget
the name of the play, but she hears, as she is losing
sight and hearing, the voice of the man she loves seek-
ing to enter. Her groping for her lost senses, her effort
to shake off the clouds of the insidious draught, the final
sudden drop forward dead, as her lover enters, was per-
haps the finest dramatic death ever seen. It is horrible;
it is bad art to represent death on the stage; but if it
must be done, let Sarah do it. She has a terrible gift
that way.
At times she is very pretty, exquisitely graceful; her
soft brown hair curls in fringes about her forehead, she
can be as feminine, as alluring, as coquettish, as sweet
as she pleases.
She made capital out of her defects, and made her
thinness so attractive that she was sought for by all the
artists in tea gowns. There were one hundred and fifty
full-length portraits of her in the Salon in twelve years.
Of her curious taste in animal pets I once had an
illustration. I was staying at a hotel in St. Louis. She
came along in her private car to play an engagement in
that city. She desired to take up her quarters at my
hotel. I think it may have been the Planters' House,
but she declared that she must bring her beloved snakes,
a box full of them, to sleep in her room. All the ladies
in the house protested, and the divine Sarah and her
snakes slept in her car.
She also pets a scratching wildcat, which tears her.
hands. Here comes out
out that character which she
assumes so well in Théodora-of the daughter of the
bear trader. She dresses her parts superbly. "Wedges
135
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
of gold! great anchors, heaps of pearls, inestimable
stones, unvalued jewels." Splendid, brilliant, fantastic,
odd, Sarah Bernhardt is an exceptional creature, a new
departure of the human race. She is very rich, she
saves her money-here her Jewish blood comes to her
rescue, although French actors are apt to be provident;
Berthelier, whom some one called the Lester Wallack of
Paris, died, in 1887, very rich, leaving two large houses
and a splendid collection of pictures. He had played
enormous number of rôles and died universally
respected. I saw him in "Le Dragon de la Reine,”
very handsome and gallant, just before he died.
an
Sarah Bernhardt is said to have given her son,
Maurice Bernhardt, a handsome dot, 50,000f, when he
married the Princess Jauboulouski, who was a fellow
student of some American artists at Julian's, in Paris.
They described her as "pretty but dangerous.
A very handsome actor in Paris, named Damala, is
called "Sarah Bernhardt's husband.' I believe that she
went through a marriage ceremony with him, but soon
divorced him. When I saw him he was playing "The
Ironmaster" with Jane Hading, one of the most beau-
tiful women I ever saw on the stage.
They were neither
of them such great geniuses as is Sarah.
This distinguished woman has now grown rather stout.
She is not her old self, but she is something very fine still.
Born in 1845, she is but a little over half a century old,
and has twenty years yet before she will reach the age
at which many a French actress has made a conquest of
her public..
All good Americans who have been to Paris will feel
a pleasant sensation as I name Coquelin, prince of the
136
BERNHARDT, COQUELIN, AND OTHERS
great dramatic art. I had the pleasure once to cross the
ocean with him, and to talk of the curious tribute to him
paid by the Comédie Française when he tried to leave it.
He was just then returning to Paris, out of which he
could no more live than a humming bird could live out
of a flower garden. He was a Boulevardier in his heart,
but he had enjoyed America and his great American
triumph. He had never been more admired or appre-
ciated.
I showed Coquelin what had been written about all
this and about his coming to America. He laughed
and refused to talk of it, but he acknowledged its cor-
rectness.
Coquelin argues that he has served his time out; that he has
made them laugh a quarter of a century, and that he has been but
poorly paid. It is evident that he was sighing for some of our Amer-
ican dollars. No one can deny that Coquelin has been one of the
most active and useful of all the workers at the Comédie. What will
it be without him? He is the best comedian in the world; no one
can speak too highly of him. To see him play "Le Parisian” is to
see the dramatic art at its culminating point. But will he be so good
out of his setting? There are thus two sides to the question. What
has the Comédie Française done for Coquelin?
Among his celebrated contemporaries are Delannay and Got.
The former, it is argued, does not claim his right to leave, and does
not go to make money in the provinces of his renown gained at the
Française. Got is still in his place, although legally he has won the
right to "retire into the cheese." Public opinion is against the literal
interpretation of the legal contract which enables an actor to retire
after twenty-five years' service with a pension, and also to commute,
so to speak, his vacations, taking them all in one lump. That is to
say, so intensely do the Parisians desire Coquelin, so immensely do
they appreciate him, that they do not intend to give him up.
Still, no one can compel Coquelin to play at the Comédie any
more than we can compel a nightingale to sing. He will go to Amer-
ica if he chooses; and happy shall we be to get him. Coquelin cannot
reproach the Comédie with any neglect or inattention. He has the
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HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
highest position which an artist can desire. They have put him in
the best place, the highest rank. He is the first comedian of his day
in the city where theatrical fame is most considered and most to be
desired. Indeed, people have stopped praising him, as no one speaks
of the light of the sun-it is an established fact. His presence has
made the fortune of the Comédie; his absence threatens it with ruin,
and even the public asks, almost plaintively, “Can you forget, Coque-
lin, all our flowers, all our praises, all our tears, when you were
sublime and inspired-all our smiles when you were funny, all our
applause when you were clever? Of all our applause does no souve-
nir remain in your heart?"
They urge that an artist has, above all, his moral contract with the
public, and that every great artist respects it. I was much touched
to hear the message which old Alboni sent in before she began to
sing at Aix. She was so lame and so heavy that she could not stand,
but she sent a polite message that she "trusted her audience would
forgive her, and would not think her disrespectful if she sat during
her song." Now, that was the feeling of the true artist, respecting
herself and respecting the public. The Parisian press feels aggrieved.
at the cool manner in which Coquelin takes the key from the door
and shuts it behind him, as if it were a house he had hired, and now
leaves, without a regret for the house or for the public or for his com-
rades or for his friends. They remind him that for him the authors.
have written important rôles, that for him they have all worked, that
the French dramatic literature has been influenced in his favor, and
they claim that he simply balances himself upon his "talon wage"-
great toe-and says, "De quoi te mêles, tu, faquin?" They are.
wounded to the quick!
But they must remember that Coquelin has rescued Molière for
their répertoire; that indeed upon him has fallen the mantle of his
distinguished predecessor. The renown of a comedian is never,
however, his own property; he has to consider his author, his public,
his collaborateurs. Again, if he does not wish to play here he cannot
be forced. “He is not Mascarille, between two gendarmes." Genius
is always free-alas! it is sometimes freaky!
It is doubtful whether his marvelous diction, his exquisite fun,
his superhuman cleverness, will be as much appreciated in Buenos
Ayres and New York as it is in Paris, where people go to the theatre
every night and make the dramatic art a study—and a profound one.
These admirers claim that if Coquelin thinks more of money than of
his fame as an artist, that it is a sign of approaching decadence. In
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BERNHARDT, COQUELIN, AND OTHERS
fact, the critics try every possible art of satire, of abuse, of sugges-
tion, of advice, of threat, even, to make Coquelin stay here with them.
They say if he comes back hungering and thirsting for his Paris, as
he doubtless will, that they will then not receive him.
Paris is an exceptional city as regards theatricals. There are no
such audiences elsewhere. A Parisian audience will mark the
slightest shade of the delicate art of the comedian. It is a city of
artists. Its bourgeoisie live at the theatre, and, as one of the papers
wittily says, there is a subtile agent in the air, a sort of microbe,
which enlarges the mind for the critical faculty, which excites the
fancy and improves the taste. It is this neat decision which gives
an artist the "médaille d'or," the appreciation of Paris. Ask any
painter, musician, or actor if he feels the same inspiration out of
Paris that he does in it. He will tell you that away from Paris he
feels no inspiration; that he does not work with the same energy or
spontaneity. When Coquelin, after dining in the Rue Lafayette, goes
to the Théâtre Français he is full of this Parisian fever-he burns to
be superior to himself.
This is so unlike our way of looking at things in America. We
do not hold the dramatic art in the same esteem. I was one day
talking with a lady, eminent in literature, of a high social position in
Paris, whose daughter had gone on the stage. She said that an
eminent tragedian in America, whom we all knew, had just broken
his contract with her daughter, treating her very badly. That she
intended publishing all the letters. She said that the one evil the
young lady had not been warned against, the utter unreliability of
managers, was the great evil attending the dramatic art in America,
and that it was a most severe evil for the young artist. She quoted,
with some decided expressions of approval, the better system in
France, by which both parties are bound.
After enjoying seeing Coquelin and his son, who is
his image, play together on the steamer some charming
farces, I had the pleasure to see them together at the
house of Dr. Brachet in Aix-les-Bains, a hospitable
house always open to actors. We went to picnics to-
gether, and Coquelin brought his old mother, to whom
he was most kind, like all French sons. Coquelin Cadet,
his brother, was of the party, and as funny and as awk-
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HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
ward as he can be on the stage when he prefers to play
the gawky. The pretty little Reichamberg was with
him, as soft and sweet an ingénue as ever smiled on an
audience.
I once saw, at Mrs. Mackay's, in London, Coquelin
Cadet and Mme. Reichamberg play in a little comedy,
of two people who had been left by the train. They did
not know each other; they were left there for the night.
The only stage property was the lady's trunk, which she
sat upon. Coquelin Cadet attempted to share her seat, but
she immediately rose. He then shouldered his umbrella,
as if it were a rifle, mounted guard, and marched up and
down to protect her. He finally asks her if she is
married, and her "Non, Monsieur, Je suis veuve"
was accompanied by such a look of supreme modesty
and ladylike caution that the whole audience shrieked
with laughter. Out of this very slight material these
two great artists, imported by Mrs. Mackay, at an im-
mense expense, to amuse the Prince, kept us laughing
for an hour.
·
I saw Mounet-Sully's Hamlet, which struck me as
hysterical. I never could admire that actor. Indeed,
it seemed to show what a great dramatist Shakespeare
was, that he could draw two characters so diametrically
opposite as Booth's Hamlet and Mounet-Sully's Hamlet.
As in portrait painting, it is not the person painted, but
the artist who paints himself. Therefore,
"
This is the Jew
That Shakespeare drew"
cannot be exact: it is the actor's interpretation of the
part. It is Irving's Jew or Mounet-Sully's Jew.
Coquelin impressed me as a very remarkable person,
140
BERNHARDT, COQUELIN, AND OTHERS
of great common sense and some learning. Unlike most
actors, he was a very good talker, and eloquent in his
own words besides those which were set down for him.
I once asked him why he never played Romeo.
said:
He
"Nature decided that question for me by putting my
nose, on my face, the wrong side up."
–
Yet with all the turned-up nose and the plainness of
his features, Coquelin can look like anybody hero,
general, gentleman, poet, priest, and lover. His face is
a willing mask, obeying the impulses of his versatile,
original, and remarkable brain.
The most famous of Coquelin's successes is doubtless
"Mascarille," in the mingled wit, impertinence, and glori-
ous rollicking humor of this king of dishonest varlets.
The French will go to see him play it twenty times in
one Winter, and if he varies a hair from his well-known
impersonation they will hiss him. He loves this
demand; it shows such appreciation.
Equally perfect.
Poirier," as he
The part of the drunken man in "L'Aventurière” is
again the triumph of genius, as he sits in a chair in a
sort of drunken sleep, yet, by his wonderful facial
expression plays the whole comedy.
is he in the "Gendre de Monsieur
assumes the suddenly rich Parisian grocer. Far greater
and more delightful is he in these parts where he can
indicate the noblest emotions; for Coquelin is a true
artist, and he knows that, as much as his audience may
laugh with him, it is well to give them a good heart
thrill occasionally.
141
Coquelin and Some Others, Again
In my little paper published in "The Times' Review
of Books and Art" of Nov. 6th, I mentioned that "we
guests at Aix often went to picnics with Coquelin." I
have received several letters on that subject, asking
what I “meant by a picnic."
The people of Aix, being composed of the inhabit-
ants of all nations, many Italians among them, and hav-
ing all about Aix the loveliest places to visit, often
formed a combination party, each one invited by Dr.
Brachet for an excursion of seven or it might be twenty
miles to dine at Chambéry or at Annecy, or even a much
longer excursion to the Grande Chartreuse, or to the neigh-
boring Chatillon, where we got an excellent dinner, and
saw the exquisite sunset on the Dauphinoise Alps, driving
home in the still evening air, and choosing a favored
guest for our carriage group. Then, if we wished, we
would sup together at the Grand Hôtel d'Aix, insuring
an afternoon and evening of great pleasure, each one
paying his or her proportion of the expense.
That was
our picnic.
One can imagine what a piece of good fortune it was
to capture Coquelin, or old Toole, the English actor, for
such an expedition-men who were both really and pro-
fessionally bound to be amusing.
I remember that Lady Sefton brought Toole, the actor,
142
COQUELIN AND SOME OTHERS, AGAIN
who was very funny, to one of these al fresco entertain-
ments, and we ate and talked on the stone terrace
which runs out into the Lake of Bourget. We took a
drive of several miles; we ascended and descended the
famous Napoleon road, over the Mont du Chat, that
curious peak which looks as if its varied outlines had
been cut out by the scissors. All these queer moun-
tains, which are near Mont Blanc, have the jagged out-
line, as if nature had tried to get down from that perilous
height by a series of gigantic stairs or steps.
This formation of hill in the Jurassic limestone is
unlike anything which I have seen elsewhere, and,
ascending from the tropical verdure of Aix toward the
snowy giants of the Jura and the Dauphinoise Alps, it is
most wonderful and picturesque. The Lake of Bourget
has a peculiar peacock blue which is really unrivalled for
curious beauty, so that it was pleasure enough to look
at it by the dying sunlight and to breathe the soft air
without also having Coquelin and Toole to keep one
laughing; but we had both, sometimes, at these al fresco
dinners, also the delicious Italian cookery to complete
our pleasure.
The Italians are very fond of al fresco entertainments,
their fine climate making them possible, while with us
over here they would be dangerous. Many pictures
have been suggested by them, such as illustrate the
stories of Boccaccio, up to the beautiful sketch of Tasso
at the Court of Duc d'Este, where he worshiped Leo-
nora, and will occur to every one. A distinguished fête.
given by Dr. Brachet to the King of Greece could have
made a dozen pictures. We were taken down a deep,
sunken river, the Gorge of Grésy, on boats, by torch-
143
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
light. This was almost a subterranean progress; thence
by carriage to Lady Somers', who hired Dr. Brachet's
château at Grésy, where we spent the evening, until his
amiable Majesty chose to leave us. I remember meet-
ing at this fête Mrs. Wemyss, now dead, a most amus-
ing woman, whose daughter married a son of the Duke
of Westminster; also Lady Augusta FitzClarence, and
I know not how many very agreeable scions of the aris-
tocracy of England, France, and Italy.
Our favorite picnic was to Chambéry, the ancient
capital of Savoy, which is in itself well worth a voyage
across the Atlantic to see. Its mediæval architecture,
its beautiful situation, the memories which cluster around
it of Jean Jacques Rousseau (for one can go to see the
pretty villa where he lived with Mme. de Warens, and
to visit one of the wonders of this volcanic country, his
favorite waterfall called Le bout du Monde), and coming
home after a long drive through the lovely scenery, and
with memories of Emanuele Philiberto in one's mind,
the dinner at the inn in Chambéry is a treat for the
gourmet.
The excellence of Italian cookery is beyond compare.
The same drift of talent, a due sense of proportion-
which shows itself in all their art; that art which built St.
Mark's at Venice and the Duomo at Florence, Palladio's
churches, and the Cathedral at Milan-comes out in their
cookery. Their cooks are Michaelangelos and Leo-
nardo da Vincis in a humble sphere.
They, of course, can cook macaroni as no other peo-
ple can cook it. They apply cheese admirably. Choux-
fleurs aux Parmesan is a different conception in Italy
from cauliflower with cheese here. It is not that it has
144
COQUELIN AND SOME OTHERS, AGAIN
been translated, but that when we eat it we are trans-
lated! Oh! how good it is at Bologna, that city of
learned women, professors of Greek, and fine pictures.
They have the Parmesan at hand, and the melting deli-
ciousness with which it enters the very soul of the maca-
roni or the choux-fleur is enchanting. They have the
only perfect sweet oil in the world. No cotton-seed
abominations, but the golden liquid, full of Italian sun-
shine, with no marked taste. It simply lends a "lam-
bent richness to the whole."
They cook game-especially their own beccafico—well;
but I would rather hear these little birds sing than eat
them. Their cookery suffers no loss of flavor from the
fire. They do not dry up things. Their roast lamb with
pistachio nuts is right out of the Arabian Nights; nor do
I dislike that flavor of a clove of garlic added to roast
mutton.
For all sorts of dishes, with truffles, cockscombs,
mushrooms, and olives, added on to filet de boeuf,
chicken, game, and fish, they are unrivalled. They have
learned, owing to their sense of proportion, that the
onion and garlic are to cookery what accent is to speech.
Nor do they make either trop prononcée. Their frittata
is excellent, and one gets a good one in the humblest
inn. Even the porter at the door of a great house sits
eating a frittata, also a dish of frog's legs, which are so
well cooked and of such a delicate brown that the hungry
American envies him. With his flask of Chianti and his
loaf of excellent bread, the Italian porter does not look
unhappy.
They give you, in country houses, for an Italian mid-
day breakfast, a bit of soup, very savory, probably made
145
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
of chicken; then one plat, possibly liver or kidneys;
then a huge dish of macaroni with meat through it; and
after that a white curd species of blanc mange, covered
with powdered sugar and cinnamon, very good; some
excellent pastry, a bottle of Vino Santo, a cup of coffee
or chocolate, and bread of unrivaled whiteness and light-
ness, and butter which is like glorified cream.
Our mid-day breakfasts at Aix were cosmopolitan
gems-steaks and chops for the Americans, cold meats
and salads, always cold roast chicken with the delicate,
delicious salads, pastry absolutely perfect, and the wine
of the country, also strawberries every month in the
year, and figs and apricots.
Thus we picnicked with Countesses and with Co-
quelin, or the King or the old Emperor of Brazil, or the
Princess Louise, or with that most attractive of Russian
Princesses, of whom there are always many at Aix (I
reserve my best story of one, a real romance, for some
future number), we had at Chambéry a really grand din-
ner. Our parties were often fifty people. The suave
host of the Lion d'Or must be a Rothschild by this
time. The gentlemen would order many wines-as the
Falernian from the Bay of Naples, the wine of the poets;
the Lacryma Christi, from the loose volcanic soil of Mount
Vesuvius; the dark Grigno Vino from the vineyards of
Artesan and Monferrato; the Montepulciano, Victor
Emmanuel's favorite wine. "Montepulciano d'ogni vino
el Rè" was always quaffed by the Italians at our picnics.
Its brilliant purple color, like an amethyst, the aromatic
odor, its sweetness, tempered by an agreeable astrin-
gency, leaves a flattering flavor on the tongue, so I am
told. I have never been able to drink wine at the
146
COQUELIN AND SOME OTHERS, AGAIN
rate of more than half a glassful-"half of one per cent.'
on account of rheumatism, so I describe them from
the lips of others. I am like a blind man who describes
beauty, or a deaf man who thrills with the melodies of
Mozart, when I attempt to describe wine, but I delight
in their beauty-and Italian wines are beautiful to look
at, in their exquisite bottles, with a drop of oil on top to
keep the wine sweet.
We can all of us remember Hawthorne's description.
of the "wine of Monte Beni," when Kenyon visited
Donatello; and if the wine was half as good as the de-
scription, looking at it must have been enough:
The lustre should not be forgotten among the other admirable
enchantments of the Monte Beni wine, for as it stood in Kenyon's
glass, a little circle of light glowed on the table round about it, as if
it were really so much golden sunshine.
So I got the golden sunshine of the Italian wines, as
I picnicked with Coquelin, with Anne Richmond Ritchie
-the dear Anne Thackeray; with Italian Princes, with
many of the gouty Dukes of Great Britain, with Lord
Aberdare, with Sir Victor Houlton, with Sir John and
Lady Constance Leslie, with charming, gentle Lady
Somers, with Lady Doneraile, with much goodly com-
pany, and my dear friend Mrs. Wellesley.
I remember with pleasure a friend, now dead, Miss
Ricardo, the niece of the great political economist, a
London society woman, who knew everybody. She
was small, white-haired, brilliantly dressed. She looked
as if she had stepped out of the "Siècle Louis Quinze."
She was most amusing, most kind. Together we drove
that I might see the spot where Lamartine wrote
"Raphael," and to the Falls of Grésy, where Hor-
147
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
tense, the mother of Louis Napoleon, erected a
monument to the young friend who perished there.
Together we drove up to the "Tour de César," and
picked up Roman coins and bracelets, for it is full of
Roman remains. The famous Tenth Legion camped in
battle here ten centuries ago. I saw much of Miss Ri-
cardo, for she never got tired of my medieval craze; her
conversation was most agreeable; also that of the Mar-
quise de' Medici, an Italian lady who had lived at Courts,
and used to come to my rescue, if I was, by any chance,
sitting alone at the picnic, and tell me stories of Victor
Emmanuel (Savoy is at heart still Italy).
The King was a mighty hunter, and had a mighty ap-
petite; so he used to dine alone, and satisfy his hunger
before sitting down to a state dinner. There, with
sword in hand (he always leaned both hands on the
hilt, which was jeweled), in full uniform, tightly belted,
his breast covered with orders, this most kingly King
sat at the head of his royal table and talked to the
man next to him (generally our own Mr. Marsh, who
was the Dean of the Ambassadorial College), but never
touched a morsel of the splendid dinner which the best
cook in the world served up to him. These royal ban-
quets are generally dull to every one else, for the pres-
ence of so great a man has ever a depressing effect. The
guest must then fix his mind on the glorious past of Italy,
or its present excellent cookery, or on the magnificent
furnishing of the table, such as cups from Benvenuto
Cellini, the vases and ornamental pieces of Capo di
Monte, with superb porcelain, the gift of Kings, from
Louis XIV, and so on, down to the Venetian glass like
imprisoned sunshine.
148
COQUELIN AND SOME OTHERS, AGAIN
At parties in Rome and Florence it was not the fash-
ion to offer much refreshment—a cup of tea, some light
wine, and a macaroon were all that were offered, even
in American houses in Rome. A lady in Florence
wrote: "I have been within the walls of four Italian
houses at evening parties; no conversation, cold rooms,
floors imperfectly covered with drugget; topics-theatre,
music, personal slander; and only in one house, whose
mistress was a German, tea was handed."
Well, I never had such bad luck as that. I frequently
was cold and shivered, for there was never any fire; and
the Princess Barberini sat with her hands in a muff
when I went to see her, but her conversation was de-
lightful. I must say, however, that the Italians are not
hospitable in our way; they do not feed you overmuch,
although their dinners with the national dishes, the
aqua dolce (being wild boar cooked with sugar and pine
cones), the turkey fully truffled, the delicate entrées, the
delicious artichokes, the little birds, the truffles in a
thousand ways, the fruit, the confetti, the pâtisserie,
cakes and ices (tutti-frutti is an Italian invention), all
seemed to me delicious. The music of their composers
reminds me of the work of these confectioners (the Italians
have so much genius!). It is so universal that they leave
some to be thrown away on the ornamental, and they
can afford to allow a humble Rossini to crown the feast
with an edifice in spun-sugar occasionally.
However, I have wandered far away from our picnics.
Savoy is not a poor country. It is not often that one
sees a hungry beggar there. Go where we would, we
could order an omelet, enriched with morsels of kidney
and bacon, frittata, a bottle of the wine of the coun-
149
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
try, and fish, often from the lake, sure to be good and
well cooked. Were it an auberge of any size, the man
of the house was an artist, a cook. He might have
been the chef of some Russian Duke, and his wife did all
the rest. Often we trusted in luck, and drove off to
dine on the sunset, if we could get nothing better.
Sometimes we came home hungry, glad to find Mme.
Guibert of the Grand Hotel d'Aix, who smiled when we
said "Vite, vite, Madame! Oh, Madame, que j'ai
faim." "Certainement, Madame," she would answer,
scornfully, for she thought us fools-and we were, to
leave her exquisite dinners (her husband had been chef
to the Grand Duke Michael). However, she forgave us,
and in fifteen minutes a feast of Lucullus would smoke
on the supper table.
Give an Italian a chestnut and he will make you a
dinner. In Southern Italy poor people have not always
even frogs or mushrooms to eat: they have only chest-
nuts. In Southern Italy one sometimes sees a massive
house looming up in mediæval grandeur, with shafts of
marble, columns of porphyry, lonely, unspeakably desolate,
infinitely impressive, wonderfully grand. Some mem-
bers of a ruined family shiver within these walls. Around
this time-honored house cluster the tenants, shaking
with malaria, pale and half-starved. They live on chest-
nuts. Perhaps that is the reason they have learned to
make such perfect stuffing for a turkey out of this nut.
At a farmhouse near Florence one could get a fat capon,
a chestnut sauce, a frittata, a bunch of grapes, a bottle
of Poggio Secco, the sweet Italian wine; but what one
could get near Naples, excepting macaroni, I don't
know always fruit and fish.
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COQUELIN AND SOME OTHERS, AGAIN
I was generally astonished near Aix by the quickness
with which our demands for a picnic dinner would be
met in the humblest of inns. A table would be brought
out, covered with a coarse, but clean cloth. Glasses,
knives and forks, bottles of wine shining in the fading
light of a Summer's sun; soup, tasting delicious; a roast
chicken (the chickens are hatched roasted, I think, near
Aix, and already stuffed with truffles); the clever, neat-
handed patronne; the obsequious waiter; the salad-it
all came and disappeared like a scene of a pantomime.
And so we went picnicking with Coquelin and other
celebrities. Of course, the acquaintance grew quickly.
We parted when we reached the hotel; perhaps we never
were to meet again, but the day had been most happily
and innocently spent in the most beautiful climate and
the choicest scenery in the world. Aix is only two
hours from Geneva, and we could drive from a point
where we could picnic with Mont Blanc looking over
our shoulders, a wonderful view, and see (bad luck to it)
that horrible old prison of Miolan, one of those torture
holes of the age of Louis XIV, the Conciergerie of
Savoy. It is a ruin now, with its oubliettes and its enfer
and other diabolical types of cruelty. But to sit reading
its history of a Summer evening at its gates did not
improve my appetite for dinner.
Sometimes we picnicked on a side hill, carrying our
baskets. I did not enjoy these so much, but I met
very good company on these occasions; Hamilton Aïdé
once, with his cousin, Miss Tennant, now Mrs. Stanley,
and her brother. The history of the company of one
Summer at Aix would include all the celebrities of the
world. I saw an old, tall gentleman and an old, short
151
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
lady wandering through the vineyards as the leaves grew
red. They were the Prince de Joinville and the Princess
Clementine.
The Autumn at Aix is most lovely. I drove to
the Grande Chartreuse on a glorious
a glorious October day.
It is one of the finest drives in Europe. I twice met
Queen Victoria at Aix, but I did not go picnicking with
her-I only saw her go by. I dined with some members
of her suite. I knew very well Lady Ely, her intimate
friend, who told me that she had herself carried up in a
chair to the Chambottes, a high peak, to see if she dared
trust the Queen. But the Queen declined even her tes-
timonials and footed it up resolutely. The Queen then
liked to walk. It was before her lameness.
The cycleman flourishes at Aix. Everything flour-
ishes at Aix-even modest merit. The flowers are of
the choicest, both flowering trees and the beautiful wild
flowers, from the cowslip to the wild orchid, and the
purple colchicum, like a crocus. The peasantry are
well-mannered, and the most healthy, rosy, white-
toothed people, masséing everybody with impartial jus-
tice, from the American Countess up to a Countess Nes-
selrode, whose great-uncle is immortalized by a pudding
which will long survive his flimsy schemes. They massé
Kings and Queens, judges, deacons, actors, nuns, saints,
and sinners impartially, to the great benefit of the
masséd.
The fashionable doctors lead a very amiable life, in
which principalities and powers are represented by the
great leveler, rheumatism. To the discreet and evi-
dently prudent brain of the doctor all people confide their
secrets and their sorrows. He is a judge also of dancing
152
COQUELIN AND SOME OTHERS, AGAIN
and deportment, and often leads the German cotillon,
and watches with impartial interest the beginning of a
brilliant career or the sad and sorrowful blight of an
unsuccessful one. Men of society in the fashionable
world, greeted in London, at Nice, and at Rome, with
enthusiasm, these Aix doctors who lead off the picnics,
might well keep bound volumes of their experiences and
knowledge with the dates in letters of gold.
1
153
Several Seasons at Aix-les-Bains
AIX-LES-BAINS, August 5, 1886.
This is a remarkable place for many things, in none
more than the possibility of meeting distinguished peo-
ple. I have met here, in twenty-four days, Coquelin
Aine; Toole, the English actor; and last, not least, I
have heard Alboni, the great, the inimitable cantatrice;
she was the Alsace of "Semiramide," the Rosina of the
"Barber," the Anna Bolena, the Fides of the
"Prophete," the Page Urbino of the "Huguenots;" for
whose glorious voice Meyerbeer wrote his immortal cava-
tina; the "Stabat Mater' of Rossini was written for her;
Verdi's Mass as well. The theater of the Cercle was
filled to overflowing, as the great elephantine woman
came slowly down the principal entrance. She had not
been heard for a dozen years, and every one was on
tiptoe. It was a kind of solemnity.
She sent in an apology, regretting that she must sing
sitting in a chair. She weighed nearly four hundred
pounds, and was very lame. I sat near her in the salle à
manger, and can testify to her having had an immense
appetite. Nevertheless, she gave up her dinner for the
concert. But the illustrious cantatrice had but to open
her mouth to cease to be a woman. She became a great
church organ.
Her first song was from "Romeo and
Juliet." Her second, the well-known "O mio Fer-
nando," and her encore was something of Meyerbeer's.
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SEVERAL SEASONS AT AIX-LES-BAINS
Of course, her voice had lost its freshness, but the style
was incomparable. Alas! a sudden breathlessness over-
came her at the end. She was, however, the last of the
giantesses of a great school. This admirable cantatrice,
one of the most remarkable artists of our day, lent her
fine talent to the cause of charity on this occasion. The
concert was in favor of the employees of the baths.
Although Mme. Alboni retired definitely from the stage
long ago, she cannot refuse to sing occasionally for a
good cause, and I can testify that she sings to herself
much of the time, for I have had the pleasure of hearing
her. She says that her remarkable organ is not a con-
tralto or a soprano, but a mixture of both, a sort of alto;
but certainly, for perfection in purity of tone, for extra-
ordinary richness it is quite unparalleled. Jules Janin
said that "she was an elephant who had swallowed
a nightingale,” a very witty, correct description; she
weighed three hundred and eighty pounds. The enthu-
siasm of the public was something wonderful. "Brava,
rava, rava,” rang through the house, flowers bearing her
monogram, all sorts of plaudits followed her. Her phy-
sicians told me that she cried all night after this triumph,
saying: "Is it not too bad that I have had to give up all
these years of triumph!" It is a shame that a super-
abundant deposit of adipose has kept such a wonder
from the operatic stage. It is a marvelous souvenir to
add to the many reasons which I have for loving Aix-
les-Bains, for here I have heard Alboni. In private life
Alboni was the wife of a humble-looking Swiss gentleman,
who seems devoted to her. She was never handsome,
having a full-moon face, wears glasses, pins her napkin
under her chin as she eats one of Mme. Guibert's
155
I
:
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
very good dinners, and was a very jolly, laughing person,
talking loud; an enormous woman.
The concert at which she sang brought together the
good company at Aix, Lady Augusta FitzClarence,
Lord Lamington, Count and Countess Lakens, Colonel
Eden, Marquis and Marquise d'Adda of Milan, Comte
de Vaureal, Count and Countess Brettes Thurin, Comte
de St. Clair, Chevalier Bezzi, Viscomtesse de Thorsy,
Princesse de la Tour d'Auvergne. Never was there a
more distinguished, cosmopolitan society, than the com-
pany at Aix.
(Alboni died, I think, in 1892. She was a great suf-
ferer from rheumatism, and her enormous mountain of
flesh, which she tried in vain to get rid of, was always
a dreadful burden to carry.)
We had also, at the concert, the pleasure of hearing
one of the principal ornaments of the "Comédie Fran-
çaise" declaim, Mme. Favart.
She gave
gave us
us Victor
Hugo's "Pour les Pauvres," and "Le Missel" of Sully
Prudhomme.
She is a handsome woman, but I did not like her
style. It was too theatrical. We also enjoyed the fine
music of Colonne's orchestra, and heard his daughter,
Matilde, the daughter of Irma Marie, sing very prettily.
(Irma Marie was one of the first of the French opera
bouffe singers to come to this country.)
A very funny practical joke was a recitation called
"Solo de Flute, by M. Huguenot, of the Théâtre
Français, in which he seems about to play the flute, but
never does.
One evening we had an open-air concert, and some
splendid fireworks. I made an excursion to a high
156
SEVERAL SEASONS AT AIX-LES-BAINS
mountain, from which I saw Mont Blanc, the Rhone val-
ley, the Dauphinoise Alps, the Jura, the Lake Bourget,
by the glorious light of a red sunset, in unrivaled view.
These are but a few of the delights of a sojourn at Aix-
les-Bains.
At the Casino Villa des Fleurs, which is not my
casino, but another, they enjoy one of the most superb
gambling rooms in the world. I went in to look at the
gambling one evening. The play was baccarat, and play
runs high. Every evening poor, crippled men and
women are brought in in chairs, or by their guides,
nurses, or maids, and seated at the tables, where they
play until they are exhausted, purse and all, then are
trundled out. There are many gamblers who are not
crippled; young and beautiful women, young men of
every grade; and Mme. Ratazzi, neither young nor
crippled, but still pretty, although in her fifty-eighth
year, and married to a young man, a woman of remark-
able celebrity, or notoriety, as the case may be, and still
a desperate gambler. She is a cousin of Louis Napo-
leon.
They give grand opera at the Villa des Fleurs. It is
a pretty, coquette little theater. They have just given
rather a careful representation of "Lucia." There is a
Miss Aline Jacob, who sings the role with perfect taste,
charm, and simplicity, in the crazy scene especially
touching. M. Massart is a good Edgardo; he sings
these passionate accents with Italian fervor, has a rare
power and a sympathetic fire. M. Manovey is an artist
of merit. He gives his songs with authority, with sci-
ence, and with perfect taste. M. Hyacinth is the first
of the second tenors, and adds to the general success.
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HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
The chorus is well-dressed and well-trained, so in this
far-off place, in a little casino theater, we hear "Lucia"
better sung than it often is in New York.
We were destined to hear of the death of Wagner at
this famous place. It dispersed the German crowd.
The Crown Princess of Germany and the Princess Vic-
toria have gone to Beyreuth to attend his funeral.
What a singular history! The French papers are full
of the scene at Beyreuth, as the dead master lies in his
modest house, Mme. Wagner at his feet, princes and
grand dukes bring flowers to lay on his coffin—a noble
tribute to genius.
His face has been copied by several sculptors, and it
will be a noteworthy one to preserve; large, fine features,
a superb brow and the mouth of a genius, retiring,
small, sensitive, with the underlip somewhat protuber-
ant. He was born in 1811, at Raidix, in Hungary. His
father was a friend of Haydn, of Cherubini, and of
Mozart's pupil Hammel, so he was, as to music, born in
the purple.
I meet constantly here, people from the various
watering-places and from Switzerland. The crowds of
English tourists which usually flow thick and fast into
Switzerland at this time have been interrupted by the
elections. They are now coming like an avalanche to
Aix-les-Bains. People are delighted to find a new spot.
The Valasian valley, St. Luc, is the latest enthusiasm
this summer. From the Weisshorn Hotel may be seen
two hundred and thirty of the principal mountain peaks
of the Alps. From the Dent du Midi to Monta Ross,
from Mont Blanc to the Jungfrau, all is embraced in that
immense panorama. The Matterhorn and its chain of
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SEVERAL SEASONS AT AIX-LES-BAINS
Alps block the horizon at the end of the valley; three
glaciers, the Duraud, the Bella Tolla, and Touete Mague
are all within easy walks. The air is almost always
cold. The Hotel de Luc, fifty-five hundred feet above
sea level, is said to be a good one. So, when I have
finished my cure, I intend to go and have a look at it.
The most recent American traveler reports that the prin-
cipal hotels were empty everywhere but at Lucerne.
Homburg is full, however; Vichy is full, at Aix-les-
Bains there are recorded 12,248 visitors up to this date.
About three or four thousand are here now. The little
city of Aix is crammed, and I was amused yesterday, in
paying a series of visits, to see what hardships and in
what curious nooks and corners, people are willing to
bestow themselves who certainly live better at home.
Only the fine weather and the lovely gardens could com-
pensate for these crowded, unpleasant quarters, to which
some people subject themselves.
To have coffee out of doors, to sit under the shade of
trees, to hear a passing strain of music, to look up at a
snow Alp, however, compensates them. At the Europe,
the Grand Hotel, and the Splendide, the comforts are as
great as they can be anywhere, and Aix is always most
amusing with its cosmopolitan crowds. And there is
much more amusement and less fatigue of dressing than
at Saratoga or Newport. One gets that variety of com-
panionship, the glimpse of famous people, the hearing
of good music, the fun of "going a-shopping" to buy
curious bibelots, which is left out of our American water-
ing-place life.
I had a long talk with Lord Lamington, who wrote.
"In the Days of the Dandies," after a dinner at Dr.
159
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
Brachet's. He had become an old man, but was most
delightful, and told me some new stories of the famous
Lady Vassell Holland.
AIX-LES-BAINS, August 23, 1888.
To-day we are taking our share of rain, and from my
window, which commands a view of the Mont du Chat,
I see nothing but clouds, yet Aix-les-Bains is so full
that nobody can get a room who has not written, and writ-
ten, and written. A more brilliant season has never hap-
pened here.
One of the journalists says: "Unless the
tourist will hide himself in a cloud of vapor from the hot
baths, or in the plantations of the park, he could hardly
remain over night. Even Sara Bernhardt could not get
in. She, however, might wrap herself in a cigarette
paper." They are never tired of laughing at Sara's
extreme thinness.
Truly this season is the most brilliant year known.
One could begin with the great names of the Emperor
and Empress of Brazil, the Prince and Princess de Join-
ville, and go on with the Duc de Montpensier, the Count
and Countess de la Perouse, the Baron d'Ariseos, Min-
ister of Brazil; the Count and Countess Causacchi, the
Chevalier Pacchiotti, General Mezecappo of Naples, and
old Mancini, the first Minister of King Humbert, dying,
poor man, of cancer of the lungs. Numerically speak-
ing, the Italian nobility are here in greatest force; to
be sure, some of them do not date back to Philip V,
quite, who, when he mounted the throne of Spain,
made a little journey of popularity in Sicily, and, to
attach the title-loving to his throne, created a hun-
dred dukes and princes. Charles III made three
hundred; Francis I made two hundred Sicilian dukes.
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SEVERAL SEASONS AT AIX-LES-BAINS
It is true that dukes and princes are less rare in Italy
than barons and counts. Many have been added on by
the popes, who have titles to sell. The popes are very
much encumbered by this aristocratic merchandise.
There is even a story told, apropos of this, of a Mon-
sieur Godet, in 1814, who was formally presented at one
of the receptions of Louis XVIII, to a very magnificent
Sicilian prince, loaded with orders and embroideries, who
rather patronized Monsieur Godet, of whom he wished
later to purchase some stuffs. "Please to remember,
Majesty," said the latter, "that I am a Bourgeois of
Paris," which he thought an older and less disputable
title than that of prince.
I hardly know when Aix is the more beautiful, in the
glorious fulness of the vintage, or in the spring when the
fruit trees are in blossom, when the nightingales are
singing, and the wild flowers are in blossom. The prim-
roses are yellow on every hillside; the cowslips and the
oxslip are their neighbors. The yellow kingcups are like
Danae's shower of gold, and the pretty little purple
grape hyacinth keeps them company, while the fields of
lilies of the valley open on every side. I have never
experienced greater rapture of the ear than to hear the
nightingales. As I am brought from my bath of a
morning (a terrible sufferer again from rheumatism), I
am greeted with such a chorus, in the park, of these
delicious creatures that I forget my pain, and think that
I am the queen enjoying a birthday. Their tender notes
seem almost too sweet to be joyous.
The number of wandering princesses increases at Aix,
and they are becoming as plentiful as blackberries. I had
the honor of dining with one the other day, the Princessa
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HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
della Marmora, and also Contessa Gabriella Pionasco
D'Airasca. How beautiful these Italian names are!
Also, in the same company, was a distinguished senator
from Turin. These Italian nobles have the simplest and
most charming manners, and I learn, as I come near the
great, how very much they are like our best bred people
at home. In fact, as Lady Mary Wortley Montague
said, they are "men and women." She said, in all
her travels she had met only two kinds of people,
"men and women." These are well-bred men and
women.
I do think they have more flattering manners than we
have. They never say disagreeable things. They never
tell you what certain Anglo-Saxons feel it "their duty"
to tell you, what they call "plain truths," but which
sound like disagreeable criticisms. Their manners might
serve as models for us in simplicity, kindness, and polish.
The people here now are mostly Italians, although we
have the Duchess of Manchester, in whose suite is James
Gordon Bennett and several young English noblemen
and soldiers. The Princess Louise goes to the theater
every evening with her attendant, Miss Harvey, an
Italian Count Massa, another Italian named Foutana,
and I learn not who else,-Lady Mandeville, Lord and
Lady Latham, and every day comes some new English
nobility. All this shows that "Perfide Albion" is still
well represented at the baths.
Now in October, Aix is beginning to put on its au-
tumnal livery, the grape leaves are turning red, and the
grapes purple. It is more lovely than words can express,
as the purple shadows flit over the high needle-shaped
peaks. The vineyard owners fear that the frequent rains
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SEVERAL SEASONS AT AIX-LES-BAINS
will injure the wine. We have had much rain lately.
It is a very important industry here-the wine.
Meantime I have been amusing myself in gathering
together certain legends of Savoy.
We are very fond of making our picnics at the beau-
tiful château of Chatillon, which had the honor of giving
a pope to the church. Celestin IV was lord of Chatil-
lon, so this château, now on a par with the other châ-
teaux around the Lake of Bourget, had once the honor,
in the middle ages, of giving its name to the surrounding
waters. It was called the Lake of Chatillon. But
because a château owns a pope, is no reason that it
should not also own a beautiful young lady. So, after
hearing the story of the pope, one is treated to the legend
of the lovely Châtelaine. Without referring to classic his-
tory, it is breathed that she had the power of bringing
many adorers to her feet. Noble lords sued in vain.
She loved a humble fisherman of the Rhone. It is not
an unusual circumstance that a great belle loves the
least worthy of her adorers, and the worst part of this is
that the unworthy adorer is often not in love with her.
The great lovers came frequently to Chatillon, but the
handsome fisherman only appeared at long intervals.
She determined to go after him and arouse his insensible
heart. But how to reach him! The Lake of Bourget
was then separated from the Rhone by an impassable
morass. There were no canals, no steamships, no rail-
roads in the eleventh century, so how to get to her fish-
erman of the Rhone was a problem.
It is said she conceived the idea of making a canal
through the morass, and that she and her maid cut the
first passage with her scissors, which sounds improbable.
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HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
She, however, still has the credit of making the canal of
Savières, which now unites the Lac du Bourget and
the Rhone. It is said that she and her maid impro-
vised a raft, and made the first voyage through. The
fisherman was captured by such indomitable energy.
I dare say he turned out to be a lord in disguise. I
hope so.
The father of the enterprising engineer Châtelaine
forgave her, as the canal became a source of infinite
profit to him, and he allowed her to marry her love.
The queen, Marguerite, has this summer gone to Cour-
meyer, the Chamounix of the Alps, a hot valley shut in
by the great wall of Mont Blanc, and destitute of any
charm, even good hotels. At Aix-les-Bains she would
have had the best hotels in the world, the most beautiful
views, and also the sight of the ruins of the old Château
de Charbonnière, which was the beginning of the
house of Savoy, it was the birthplace of a kingly race,
the house of Victor Emmanuel. The Château de Char-
bonnière, holds a marked place in history, if it no
longer has a place on the maps. Francis I took this
château in 1536, and razed it to the ground.
uel Philiberto repaired and restored it.
Charles Emmanuel became its master. In 1599, it
fell into the power of Créquy. In 1600, Sully, who
attacked it, met with a formidable resistance. The
explosion of a magazine of powder did not even
bring these brave men to surrender; they refused to
submit to the rigorous conditions of the besiegers.
Finally, the women of the garrison, tired of war,
prayed Sully to retire, but he emulated the virtue
of Scipio, and refused to see them. Had they heard of
Emman-
In
In 1590,
164

It Mrs. Sherwend
realbution – of
Princess Marguerite,
now
KONTABONE
Queen of Italy
UNIV
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SEVERAL SEASONS AT AIX-LES-BAINS
Henry IV and his amiable chivalry? To be sure they
had, and they thanked God that a King of France was
accessible to tears and smiles. Henry IV had no idea of
emulating Scipio, so, when a weeping train of damsels
from Charbonnière and from Aiguebelle came out to
greet him, they proved more dangerous than many can-
non. The most beautiful of the ambassadors obtained
an honorable capitulation for the château, and here Mar-
guerite de Savoie would learn that she is not the first, or
the only, beautiful, courageous woman of her race.
Savoy is a very religious Catholic country, and the
legends are mostly connected with some old monastery.
The famous proverb of the "Bocal de St. Jacques'' led
me to find out a rather improbable, but characteristic
story. The village of Moutiers owes its name to a
reconstructed monastery, where dwelt St. Jacques. Gon-
tran, King of Bourgogne, dying of a terrible disease, was
miraculously cured by the prayers of this great saint.
He gave great gifts of land to this monastery. The con-
vent grew in prosperity and wealth, a city became
necessary to accommodate the pilgrims who flocked to
it, and the industries which flourished about it soon
made the whole country rich. St. Jacques became a
great cattle-raiser, and a breed still in existence, called
“le race tarine," flourishes on the hills. But saints have
enemies as well as other people, and the prelate offended
the nobles by his success. There does not to-day, as we
observe at Rome and in England, always exist harmony
between church and state. The nobles got the devil
on their side; he promised to help them, and, as usual,
proved a very useful ally. He took the form of a bear
(the woods above Moutiers are full of bears to this day),
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HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
and, descending on the fine cattle of St. Jacques, he ate
them up indiscriminately.
The saint was long in suspecting that the bear was the
devil himself. He sent men out to kill bears, and he
poured out many a fine yoke of cattle to replace those
who were lost, but when they went too, the good saint
began to suspect something. He watched for the bear
with a cross in his hand and a yoke handy, and so, one
morning, finding him asleep, Mr. Bruin was then and
there yoked to a powerful bull, and over him stood the
saint with the cross! It was no go, the devil was dis-
tanced, and finding the yoke intolerable and the bull
very cross, he yielded to terms. Out of the woods came
the slaughtered oxen as good as new, and then the
discomfited Bruin himself went off to the woods, chap-
fallen. The "race tarine" all have the mark of a
cross on the back to this day, which is entirely confirm-
atory.
It is not astonishing that, in the sight of these snow
mountains, within a few hours of Mont Blanc, we should
hear of "Our Lady of the Snow." Many a humble
wayside shrine is dedicated to "Notre Dame des
Neiges."
Strange that it should be connected, in one instance,
with mines of black lead, yet such is the contradiction
possible to legendary history.
The "Isere" is the pretty glacier-fed river which
flows through Aix, and it comes down from Tarentaise,
where are mines which have been deemed worthy of
attention by all the companies of Europe.
After ruining two or three companies, they became
the property of the state. The state, however, is never
|
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SEVERAL SEASONS AT AIX-LES-BAINS
an enterprising proprietor, and did not trouble the
mines of Peisey, but Napoleon II happened to hear of
them, and, with his quick, practical energy, he instituted
a school for miners. The mines, however, only worked
for educational purposes, were not profitable, and an
inundation coming along, they were swept out of sight,
and the poor inhabitants were forced to leave their native
soil, and go to other lands. One dear attachment they
carried with them to their church "Notre Dame des
Neiges." This chapel of the Virgin is situated very
much at the top of a mountain near the opening of the
mine. Young people had a reason for going to the chapel
Dame des Neiges for she has a particular fancy for
arranging happy marriages. The young girls in quest
of husbands, the young men in search of wives, all
made a pilgrimage to the oratory of the Mother of
God, to supplicate her intercession for the object of
their hearts. The population is a very handsome
one-the young men tall, well formed, and robust;
the girls very rosy and pretty. The Virgin listens; they
get married. One young pair, many years ago married,
sailed for America-to Wisconsin. The wife dreamed,
doubtless very homesick, that the Dame des Neiges told
her to come home and bring her husband, to open again
the blacklead mines. They came, and they brought
some money and much practical sense. They are work-
ing the mines now profitably, or their son is. Some
descendant of this happy pair will continue to solicit
the good-will of the virgin. Some one still works the
blacklead mines with American money and American
energy.
Mont Blanc peeped over the shoulder of the Rivard as
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HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
I looked the other evening at the sky, from a great
height, and as the majesty of the spectacle moved me
for the nonce, I was not astonished to hear that the
peasants all look upon the "massif" of Mont Blanc
with terror. In vulgar souls, fear always precedes
admiration. That grandeur which can make us tremble,
how we admire it!
The lower classes people these dreadful solitudes of
snow with fabulous monsters and fantastic animals,
with supernatural beings and gods of an inferior order,
supposed to guard the grottoes full of diamonds, which are
certainly there when the sun shines. They believe that
demons open the perfidious crevasses or send the trav-
eler down the bottomless abyss. Credulity never stops-
it makes these evil spirits to howl through the storm, to
descend on the glacier. In the storms which rage they
hear the vengeance of infernal spirits, incited by the
celestial anger, sent to punish these poor peasants for
any lack of faith. Certain years the glaciers come
down near to the villages and threaten them all with
ruin. Their poor little gardens disappear. Then they
apply to the priests, who come as did the bishop of
Geneva, Jean of Arathon, in the sixteenth century, to
bless the people kneeling at his feet, then exorcised
the spirits, and excommunicated the glaciers with most
formal ritual. It is said that the glaciers, however, had
the temerity to appear again in that spot. Some witty
and learned unbeliever has said that "if anybody at
Geneva has modified the glaciers it is not d'Arathon, but
Monsieur de Saussure.
There is another very orthodox legend, which always
amused me, called "La Prienne de Mattasine."
A
1
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SEVERAL SEASONS AT AIX-LES-BAINS
!
priory, a cross, a shrine to the Virgin meets one at
every turn, and the old Abbey of Hautecombe on the
Lake Bourget is a dépendence of the Grande Chartreuse,
full of Carmelite monks, whose rule is not, however, as
strict as are those of the parent house.
In the little hamlet of Mattasine, the remains of a fine
old priory are to be
be seen which has this legend.
Addore, Abbe of Cluny, was, by a bad fever, stopped at
the house of a priest at Mattasine. In the height of his
delirium he saw St. Maurice holding in his hands a
luminous cross, which Count Amédée of Savoy helped
him to place on the hill of St. John, near Mattasine.
This work completed, the saint touched Addore, who
was immediately cured. The saint disappeared. The
next day Addore started for Aix. There he found Count
Humbert of the White Hands, and his son Amédée,
the very men whom he had just seen in his dreams.
They, lords of the country, grateful for this manifesta-
tion of the will of God, erected the priory on the hill,
made Addore the abbot, and endowed it well. It must
be observed here that these medieval saints were very
good judges of real estate, and the priests always got a
very sunny exposure, in a fine situation, where fruit and
corn would grow. They trusted in God and kept their
powder dry, these early bishops. If you see the most
charming of all situations with a convent in its midst,
you may be sure that some monarch, with an uneasy
conscience, gave it to some intelligent bishop who
was not so unworldly as was Bruno of La Grande Char-
treuse.
Then these learned fathers were not slow to turn to
account the wonders of Nature. The words balme,
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HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
banme, baime, signifying a grotto, an excavation, a
fissure through the rocks, occur everywhere in the sul-
phurous region about Aix. There are many of these
natural grottoes, extremely curious, near that town-one
is called "La Balme à Colomb." The entrance to it is
marked by a pillar on which are rudely carved the arms
of Dauphiny. Here is the boundary of Savoy. To pen-
etrate the Balme à Colomb is as dangerous and dreary as
to go behind Niagara. Not alone does one feel a sensa-
tion of real cold, but the imagination is chilled; it is a
labyrinth, dark, mysterious and dangerous, and as one
proceeds the most lamentable groans and shrieks are
heard. It seems that a wretch named Colomb tried to
penetrate, to find hidden treasure, but as he advanced
without making the sign of the cross, he was led on until
he could not get out, and so he groans there still.
His
frightful cries are still farther increased by the echoes of
the cavern. He has now groaned for eleven centuries,
and if he is not worn out by this time, he probably never
will be. The naturalists try to make us believe that
imprisoned water is making all these noises, but we,
with imagination, adhere to Colomb.
The sulphur water which cures our rheumatism at
Aix thus fulfills another mission and tells us to remem-
ber our religion. As it is one of the greatest gambling
spots of Europe, it is as well that we should be warned
against seeking for hidden treasure, for the Devil's Pic-
ture Books are notoriously seductive, with their treasure
behind them. There are too many Colombs about Aix,
who are apt to groan and shriek aloud about four in the
morning, and long after-an unsuccessful game. There
is a lovely old church, as venerable as the face of St.
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SEVERAL SEASONS AT AIX-LES-BAINS
Jerome, near Aix, where was once the "Saint Suaise,'
or Holy Napkin. Marguerite of Austria placed it in
a beautiful box of gold with precious stones, and gave it
to the Cathedral of St. Francis d'Assisi. This church
was burned in 15 and something. The box of gold and
jewels disappeared (naturally), but the holy napkin
remained; being a relic, it was miraculously preserved.
Carlo Borromeo started on foot from Isola Bella to see
it, during the plague. But the Duke of Savoy met the
prelate half way and took the napkin to Turin with him.
There it has remained ever since, to the great disgust
of the pious Savoyards, who have made every effort to
get their relic back.
But one can see the place where it was.
These legends delighted me. I was never tired of
going to see the spots which had given birth to so much
simple, beautiful credulity and poetic absurdity. It
was like that early, childish dawn of Faith, unhappily
so much rubbed out.
"The Faith which round a Legend glows
Is like the fragrance of a rose;
It blesses every passerby;
One asks not whence, one knows not why."
The priory, the cross, the shrine to the Virgin by the
wayside, all, all are most interesting. "Savoie! c'est la
grace alpestre," said Victor Hugo, and she is indeed the
naiad, the dryad of the mountains, this beautiful coun-
try, with one hand on the pines of Switzerland, and with
the other gathering the grapes of Italy; she has the
charms of both.
And her piety is sincere. Although only two hours
from Geneva, the old Catholics were never touched by
t
171
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
the breath of Calvin. They held out stoutly against
Martin Luther and all his works, if, indeed, they ever
heard of him. Their piety is like their farming-they
carry it on with all the old tools. The plough is a pri-
meval one, and there is neither a reaping nor a mowing
machine in Savoy. They drive their farm horse with a
ragged rope, and are content with a fire shovel for a
hoe. The name of McCormick is not known in the land.
I once saw a woman and a cow ploughing a field
together. No patent ploughs, no mowing machines, no
reapers. Yet it is the garden spot of the universe. Its
vineyards yield an admirable increase. Their strawberry.
beds produce four crops a year. Figs hang heavily on
their trees, and the mulberry and peach each hold up a
vine. The husbandry is the perfection of neatness, and
the flowers blossom everywhere. Is it the smile of the
Virgin?
172
Lord Houghton and d'Aumale
My friend, the sister of Lord Houghton, Harriette,
Lady Galway, is thus described by Carlyle in a letter
dated in April, 1841, written while the author was on a
visit to Fryston, Lord Houghton's residence in Yorkshire:
"Besides these waifs and strays, we have had, and are likely to
have, certain Yorkshire cousins, male and female, from the Northern
Dales, rosy-faced persons, who do thee neither ill nor good. Richard's
sister is also here these two days until to-morrow. They call her
Harriette and Ladyship. 'Will Ladyship have fowl?' etc., and he
seems to have made a pet of her from the beginning. Even this has
not entirely spoiled her. I think she is decidedly worth something.
I think she must be something taller than Richard; the same face as
his, but translated into the female cut, and surrounded with lace and
braided hair, of a satirical, witty turn, not wanting affability, but
rather wanting art of speech; above all, rather afraid of me. She
plays, sings, reads German, Italian, to great lengths, looks really
beautiful, but somewhat moony, with her great, blue eyes, and I do
believe there is more in her that we yet see. Her husband, who is
her cousin, the Viscount, is a furious, everlasting hunter of foxes. I
mean furious on the foxes-good to all other things and men. They
live in Nottinghamshire, some thirty miles off, and Richard will take
me down there."
Thus did the author of "Sartor Resartus" mention
the lady whom I was to know well forty-five years later.
I met Lady Galway in Rome in 1885, in Lord Hough-
ton's company at the Hotel di Londra. He and she
were both very old people, but as lively and amusing as
they could have been at twenty-five. I asked Lord
1
173
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
Houghton to dine with me, to meet Mr. and Mrs. Story,
Dr. and Mme. Brachet, of Aix-les-Bains, Mr. and Mrs.
George Betts, of New York, the author T. Adolphus
Trollope, the sculptor Franklin Simmons, the painter
Terry, Count and Countess Gianotti, some American
Princesses, and altogether a goodly company.
"And Lady Galway?" said he, as he immediately
accepted. "Oh!" said I, "I do not dare; I do not
know her. She is a great English lady, and I am afraid
of her." "She 'll come,
'She'll come," said he. So I sent up my
card and a carefully worded, rather apologetic invitation,
which was most immediately accepted, and followed by
the advent of a tall, slender, rather loud-speaking lady
who was cordiality itself, and as funny and witty (two
different things) as she could be. She spoke Italian like
a native, I found out afterward.
The Hotel di
The dinner was a decided success.
Londra had a great artist as cook, and I dressed the long
table with Roman wild flowers which I bought on the
Campagna. The effect was novel and much admired.
The cosmopolitan quality of the company made a most
agreeable dinner. Mr. Story and Lord Houghton talked
delightfully. I wrote some verses to put at each plate,
with an attempted characterization of each person, which
amused them and started the talk. But I had great
difficulty in composing a verse for Lady Galway, whom
I did not know at all. However, one distinguished guest
of the dinner whom I have not mentioned helped me
out. This was Mrs. Wynne Finch, the mother of Mrs.
Laurence Oliphant, herself a most clever and lady-like
woman, full of experiences of all countries, and already
a friend of mine.
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LORD HOUGHTON AND D'AUMALE
She called late in the afternoon as I was finishing my
dinner cards, and I said, "What is Lady Galway's
specialty?” “Love of her brother, oddity, frankness,
truth, and remembrance that Carlyle admired her,"
said the ready Mrs. Wynne Finch. I do not know
how I managed to put all this into a dinner card, but
somehow I did, and it pleased her. We were friends
from that moment.
She and Lord Houghton wanted a list of everybody's
'day," that is, of all the entertainers, and came to me,
as I was in the hotel and going out a great deal, for the
American dates. I think they were infinitely pleased
with our American Princess Vicovara, who was then giv-
ing some receptions. She was Miss Spencer, of New
York, a charming and elegant person, and there
were others whom they liked. In everything I did for
them they did ten times as much for me. Of course
they could. Lady Galway had come to Rome as a girl
and went to her first ball in the very apartment of the
Barberini Palace where Mr. and Mrs. Story lived, and
she told with infinite gusto the story of the late Lady
Holland, who thought she was pursued by a bravo
through the ballroom, and who tumbled down a steep
stair into the arms of "the handsomest man in Rome,'
in the early thirties. A story lost nothing by coming
through Lady Galway's lips. As every room in Rome
reminded her of something, and as she knew everybody
she was a most charming cicerone to the old Italian
houses which I should never have entered but for her.
The union between the brother and sister was very
beautiful, and none the less so that they quarreled good-
naturedly all the time. Lady Galway had the most
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HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
unbounded admiration for her brother's talents, and gave
me anecdotes of him all along from their youth through
his very remarkable manhood, so that I could almost
have written a life of Richard Moncton Milnes, if Mr. T.
Wemyss Reid had not done it so much better. They
both honored me with their letters ever after; hers I
could read, but Lord Houghton's I could not-such a
handwriting had never been before given to a man with
which to conceal his ideas, excepting that of our dear
Bishop of Albany, the Right Rev. William Croswell
Doane, who, with Lord Houghton, always brings the
magnifying glass and a professional decipherer of
hieroglyphics into immediate use. The matter be-
hind the hieroglyphics, deserved a Rosetta stone, in both
cases.
In reading Lord Houghton's life, one learns fortu-
nately how much he had to do politically and personally
with the family of Louis Philippe, and one is not as-
tonished to see that in 1861 the Duc d'Aumale and his
young nephew, the Duc de Chartres, were guests of
Lord Houghton at Fryston. Our own Minister, Mr.
Adams, was there a few months later, and there received
the news that Mason and Slidell had been taken off an
English mail steamer by a United States man-of-war.
Of this incident Lord Houghton made me once a full
account in his most graphic language, and paid a deserved
tribute to Mr. Adams's coolness.
In 1869 my first visit to England occurred, and, hav-
ing letters to Lord Houghton, from Charles Astor
Bristed, my husband and myself were asked to more
than one of the historical breakfasts in Brook Street,
and in October, 1875, we gave Lord Houghton a recep-
1
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LORD HOUGHTON AND D'AUMALE
tion and greeting in New York on his first visit to
America.
After that I was honored by his correspondence up
to the time of his lamented death. But I must not
attempt to speak of him in this paper, as it would lead
to a long memoir.
I only wish to account for my place in that full cup,
the friendship of these two very distinguished persons,
Lord Houghton and Lady Galway, and why I received
from her, after his death, such favors and honors in Lon-
don, where she was a social power. Lord Houghton
died in 1885, and I sent to Lady Galway all the Ameri-
can papers which I could collect, filled, as they were,
with eulogies of him who was our faithful friend and
most consistent defender in Parliament during the war.
Her letters to me at this time go far fully to realize
Carlyle's definition of her—that she was "decidedly
worth something." She was worth a very great deal, a
noble woman. When I went to London in the jubilee
year I did not expect to see my old, dear friend, but I
drove to her house, in Rutland Gardens, to inquire for
her the very day I landed. She sent for me to come
up, and I found her very cheerful, and, of course, about
to give a dinner party. Neither she nor Lord Hough-
ton could live without entertaining.
"Now," said she, "that I think of it, I have a seat
for you. Lady So and So has gone to Homburg, and
you shall have her seat. You will meet the Duc
d'Aumale. No, do n't start so; he is only an ordinary
old, gouty gentleman, very nice."
"But," said I, "the man who has given Chantilly to
France-the Athenian of Paris? I have just seen his
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HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
superb palace. I have sat in his box at the Comédie. I
knew his nephews and his brother in America! You
do n't mean to say you will invite me to see him!''
"Yes, if your boxes are come. Now, what will you
wear?"
I laughed at this. It was so extremely characteristic,
for her mind jumped at small things as well as great,
and she took care of her friends.
"My boxes have arrived, and I have a Worth dress of
white silk, trimmed with Chantilly lace."
"Black over white," said she, reflectively, "that will
do. But do not, like your countrywomen generally,
wear too many diamonds, or too large stones.'
"Oh, make yourself easy on that score," I said. "I
have no large stones. But why do you score my coun-
trywomen thus? They do not wear one-half the big
stones that you Englishwomen do, and I saw you at the
Queen's ball in Rome with a diamond plume in your
hair; do you remember?''
"The Galway diamonds.
This is a quiet din-
Be punctual.”
"Yes," she said, mollified.
are good; but no display to-night.
ner-with a few friends afterward.
So I was there and met a most distinguished company
in her rather small dining-room, for which the table was
made most wonderfully narrow, SO one could talk
across.
After dinner she contrived that I should have a few
words with the guest of honor. His poor, gouty feet
in convenient shoes impelled him to shorten the courtly
attention of standing, and, to my relief and his, we
both sat down. He asked me much about the Count de
Paris and the Duc de Chartres in America; and I told
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LORD HOUGHTON AND D'AUMALE
}
him that no incident in history had been so romantic
and so beautiful as that visit, nor any words of the
Chevalier Bayard more eloquent than those of the Prince
de Joinville, as he asked permission to introduce them
on General McClellan's staff-his two nephews. “Ah!"
said he, "Joinville is my favorite brother!" He looked
pleased.
Lady Galway had told him that I had written some-
thing about Chantilly and he asked to see it. So I sent
him the following sketch next day, getting back a note,
eloquent and tasteful, signed “Aumale.”
"I was in Paris when the Duc d'Aumale gave back Chantilly to
France, after which his sentence of banishment closed. Chantilly is
about forty kilometers north of Paris, near vast forests, such as the
sense of Europeans preserves, instead of cutting down. From the
little station, Senlis, I think, we took a carriage and drove to the
château, entered by the connetable, or great gate, before which stands
the statue of Anne de Montmorency. It is an immense feudal build-
ing, with towers, angles, façades, chapels, picture galleries, a fosse, a
wall, all reproduced from the original designs of the last Conde, for
the original château was completely destroyed under the Terror,
robbed and despoiled. It was said that among its treasures was the
original armor of Joan of Arc. But this is uncertain. We only know
that the statue of the connetable was broken by the mob, as was that
of Henry IV and Louis XIII. This great connetable, Anne de Mont-
morency, the founder of the family, was born here in 1493. He was
the last of the Soldiers of Fortune, and the first of the great Seigneurs
of France. He passed his youth in a dungeon, and came out of the
wars in 1538 covered with scars, swearing like a trooper. Rich and
generous and magnificent, he determined to transform this old fortress
in its triangular rock into a sumptuous habitation. The day of the
feudal lords was ended, intestine wars had stopped for a moment,
but still a man had to carry his life in his hand. Even then he was
quite able to take care of his. Charles VIII, Louis XII, Francis I,
had led the French army into Italy; French soldiers began to admire
Italian art, and wonder at the glories of the Renaissance. The con-
netable's grandson was a man of taste.
He was a rude soldier, but he was superb and magnificent. He
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HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
had taste―he has left us a proof of it. And it was this grandson who
made the first Chantilly.
'He got Jean Bullant, who was one of the first architects of the
Tuileries, who built for Catherine de Medicis, to build for him a beau-
tiful little house called La Châtelet. He pierced the gigantic rock of
Chantilly for fortifications. He had his soldiers there. It was half
palace, half fortress. His taste for the arts made him called the
first amateur of France.' From his son, who was beheaded in 1632,
the house, confiscated, passed to the Prince of Conde, who was Henri
de Bourbon. It never went out of their hands, these victorious
Condes.
"The great Conde, the hero of Rocroy, the friend of Louis XIV,
led off in the sumptuosity of building which preceded the follies of
Versailles. It was here in his day that Vatel killed himself because
the fish did not arrive in time for dinner. Then came colossal ban-
quets and gigantic receptions. It never was a private residence after
that day. It was a royal residence in which to receive the king.
The great Conde himself, however, prefered to live at La Châtelet.
The gardens, the alleys, the statues, the fountains were as grand,
perhaps more so, than they are to-day. His friends were Boileau,
Racine, Bossuet. The last pronounced his funeral oration, saying:
'We see here the great Conde as at the head of his armies, without
ostentation, without noise; always great in repose as in action. We
see him entertaining his friends in these alleys, and listening to the
music of fountains, which never cease day or night to bring their
liquid notes to the ear.' This great man died in 1686. Then follows
the long story of the descendants until we come to the name of the
Duc d'Enghein, whose murder was the fatal error of Napoleon.
"The last Conde was Joseph de Bourbon, who as exile, emigre,
returned to France in 1818. The story of his death, with its sinister,
suspicious surroundings, is too familiar for us to tell here. He was
found hanging, dead, to a window blind. In his will, dated August
31, 1829, he left all this great estate, valued at £5,000,000, to his grand-
nephew, Henri Eugene Philippe Louis d'Orleans, Duc d'Aumale.
"The château was a ruin, but the young Prince, serving in Africa
in 1843, at the time of his inheritance determined to rebuild it. How
nobly he has succeeded the visitor of to-day who visits the Cour
d'Honneur, the Galerie des Cerfs, the Chapelle, the Galerie de Pein-
teurs, the Galerie de Psyche, the noble library, the splendid salons,
the gorgeous ballroom and theater, the Tour du Tresor, the Cabinet
des Etampes, and the Tribune, where is hung the famous Raphael
f
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LORD HOUGHTON AND D'AUMALE
secured from England at a fabulous price; his Boticelli, an immense
favorite of his; his Fra Lippo Lippis, his exquisite Italian pictures;
the Delesserts and Bouguereaus and Davids, and the later masters
testify that all the spirit of the world's great painters is there. The
stained glass of the Château of Ecuoun, chef d'œuvre of the art, ad-
mirable wood carving, the fine masterpiece of Jean Bullant, the bas-
reliefs of Jean Gousson saved from the destruction of the Terror;
statues, altars, tapestries, enamels, bronzes, famous tombs, violated
under the Terror, were found by the Duc d'Aumale and restored at
immense pains-all are there.
For forty years one of the richest men in the world, a widower
and childless, worked to this one end to restore Chantilly, to bring
thither the treasures of the Château d'Ecuoun one of the most beau-
tiful remains of the art of France, at its best, to make a building a
memorial to the great Conde, and also to his two lovely young Princes,
his sons, who died in the flower of their youth, the Prince of Conde
and the Duc de Guise; that has been the not ignoble use to which
this learned son of Louis Philippe, this 'Athenian of Paris,' has put
his life, and to which he consecrated his mind and consecrated his
ruined hopes.
"He had, besides, the immense revenues of Chantilly, a large for-
tune from his wife, who was a Sicilian Princess, and in the sale of
those vineyards and wines he drew from it, it is said, one-third of the
revenue of Sicily. He has given it all to France-the noble park,
fifty miles in diameter, filled with deer (the shooting alone is worth
very much), and all its other industries and products-to the country
which exiled him. As he says: 'It will be a museum of the arts, the
antiquities, and the industries of France.' He felt the death of his
sons most keenly. The family affections are strong in his race.
is said to have uttered the famous phrase, 'God takes from us our
first born as a judgment for our sins,' when his noble brother, the
Duc d'Orleans, was killed, and again when he looked at his own dead
boys-a phrase for which his more prudent father, Louis Philippe,
had once reproached him.
He
The Duc d'Aumale was much beloved at Chantilly, where he
led the grand life of a French seigneur of the Moyen Age, without its
crimes and mistakes.
"The chapel is of the Moyen Age, and bears the marks of that
grand artist of elegance, Jean Goupin. The stained glass is from the
Château d'Ecuoun, the very best specimen of that art in France.
Nothing more noble than its entrance can be imagined. Here are
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HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
the tombs of the Condes, found and saved after the Terror, orna-
mented with statues of bronze, made by Pierre Surrozin. The chapel
is a museum of French art, and all the names of those of French
artists of the finest epochs, of their respective work. The immense
stables are built to accommodate 200 horses in princely state. They
took sixteen years to build, from 1719 to 1735, and they remain useless
now, and will be more useless hereafter, when electricity will carry us
everywhere.
"How can I describe that little sanctuary of art, 'Le Tour du
Tresor,' filled with little delicate objects, antique bronzes, miniatures,
marbles, gems, bitong, snuff boxes-all kept under glass-refinement,
beauty, luxury, and magnificence.
"Chantilly is the work of a scholar who had a purpose, a love of
art, a lover of bibelots; who was also a Prince and a multi-millionaire.
The Athenian of Paris has conserved for France what she would
never have saved for herself."
The Duc d'Aumale died in 1897, just after the
horrible holocaust in Paris, which lost him his favorite
niece. He was one of the most distinguished and agree-
able men of his day—one of the many choice specimens
of our race, whose acquaintance I owed to my dear
friend, Lady Galway.
}
182
!
1
Matlock Baths and Neighborhoods
The joy of Matlock is its neighborhood. We are
only a driving distance from Chatsworth, Haddon Hall,
Eyam (the home of Anna Seward, the poetess), Dove-
dale (celebrated by poets for its beauty, and the beloved
haunt of Izaak Walton). Indeed a little inn is named
for the "Father of Angling," from which one wanders,
on the margin of the river, past banks covered with ash,
hazel, birch, drooping willow, wild honeysuckle, wild
roses and brambles, ferns and hawthorn.
Byron says of Derbyshire: "There are things there
as noble as in Greece or Switzerland;" and it is true.
There also is a hotel, called "Peveril of the Peak." We
were in the scenery which Scott has endeared to us in
that famous romance, and we pass "Pike Pool" where
"young Mr. Izaak Walton used to fish."
Dr. Johnson, when he wrote "Rasselas," is said to
have had the neighborhood of Ilam in view as the pat-
tern of his "Happy Valley." Ilam Hall is close to
Dovedale. Congreve wrote his "The Old Bachelor" and
"The Mourning Bride" near to Ilam.
And we shall drive hence to Haddon Hall, over the
clear waters of the River Wye, "amid rich pastures,
shady nooks, and sedgy banks.'
Some one said "you come to London to realize your
Dickens." We have come to Derbyshire to realize our
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HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
Sir John Suckling, our Drummond of Hawthornden,
our Herrick, and our Shakespeare. "Daisies pied and
violets blue" pave the turf; and shall we not go to
Hardwick Hall, the seat of Bess of Hardwick, the jailer
of Mary Queen of Scots and the founder of Chatsworth?
They have a statue of the poor Queen there now, where
she was imprisoned for eight years. One would think it
would walk o'nights." There, too, is her bed furni-
ture, embroidered by her own poor lovely hands.
And thence we go to Hathersage, where Little John
and bold Robin Hood lived. Here we enter Sherwood
Forest, and shall try to people it with "men in green”
-very interesting to me, for I have the same coat of
arms as had Robin Hood.
It is said that in Hathersage Church the remains of a
gigantic man, possibly Little John, was found as late as
1728, and that "little" John's cap hung there within
memory of the oldest inhabitant.
We hope to see Chatsworth to advantage, and to
stop at the lovely little inn at Edensor, in the Park;
also to travel thence to Newstead Abbey, if one week
will only be long enough. Everything is so enchanting,
however, that we are like the "petrified ladies" so often
painted and sculptured; we like to stand still and look,
to listen to the nightingales and linnets "forever and
forever."
This is the way to see England: to come and stay
two or three months. These wooded heights, crowned
by an ancient ruin, an old castle, or a homely English
farmhouse, these are the delights of a Spring in Eng-
land.
We came through lovely scenes of English beauty to
!
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MATLOCK BATHS
7
I
Matlock Baths, a spot eminent for its scenery. Here
was built the first cotton mill in England; here still live
the Arkwrights, true descendents of the Sir Richard
who invented the spinning jenny. The Derwent, a
beautiful stream, runs through the valley, and precipi-
tous mountains, called Tors, rise on either side. Here is
the famous Derbyshire spar, the petrifying springs, the
caves, and the tufa rock so useful in aquaria. To see it
now, with every pink and white hawthorn in its freshest
beauty, with lilacs growing out of rocks in the steepest
hillsides, and the very gravel walk full of little wild flow-
ers, is to see Proserpine re-visiting the earth.
I should say Derbyshire was the stone quarry of the
universe, had I not been born in New Hampshire. Every
little town is engaged in the gritty work of getting out that
peculiar and beautiful sandstone which crops out in those
hills. The quartz and the "Blue John" and the Derby-
shire spar which is found in the caves and mines is, of
course, a smaller but a very productive industry, for no
one has the moral courage to come away without buy-
ing some jewelry, if only a pair of sleeve buttons.
went to one stone village called Middlebury, where the
stone pavements, stone houses, and stony-looking miners
all looked as if they had been formed in the tertiary
period of the earth's construction, and it was a singular
contrast to the beauty of the neighboring flowery dales.
We
We drove up one valley which was a procession of
wild flowers. The blue forget-me-nots grow in greatest
profusion, the lily of the valley covers acres, and the
purple hyacinth looks as if a Roman emperor had walked
that way, leaving his imperial mantles, with true Roman
magnificence, on the ground as he passed. The yellow
185
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
tulips and pink pimpernels were most exquisite. I be-
lieve I have said all of this before.
We saw an old Derbyshire custom at two towns,
Wirksworth and Tissington that of "Dressing the
Wells." It seems that in old times-say fifteen hundred
and something-the drought was fearful, and all wells
dried up except in these two towns, so the pious inhabit-
ants have ever since, on Whitsuntide, "dressed" these
wells with flowers. It is a beautiful idea, full of that old
touching poetry which founded the Tichborne dole, and
the memorial wells, and the crosses at the wayside, and
so on, now gone from our prosaic age. It might have
been better done. We expected garlands of flowers and
singing maidens-in short, Tennyson's "Maud” every-
where; but we saw only clay boarded up, with hideous
floral designs put in, and mottoes very elaborately con-
structed out of slaughtered buttercups and daisies, which
had been torn to pieces to suckle the dreadful clay com-
position. Women with dirty babies presented teacups
for our pence, and we had to pay-pay-pay.
At Tissington it was prettier. There they had a reli-
gious service, and the chimes were rung, and the rector
went about with the people blessing the wells, now,
however, represented by a tap in the wall. It is the
"living water," however, so sacred in poetry and legend
and serving for such a vital parable in the Scriptures.
I wonder if any of your readers remember Miss Mar-
tineau's lovely story, "The Anglers of the Dove.” I
remember it from my Sunday-school days, when it was
the prize book. It seemed very far off then. But
when I was on the spot, and Dovedale and the Izaak
186
MATLOCK BATHS
4
?
}
:
won-
Walton Inn and the "Peveril of the Peak" Inn were
within a morning drive, and the beautiful wild scenery of
the Dove recalled all those early memories, I was glad
that I had read it. It was full of the proposed rescue
of Mary Queen of Scots from Hardwick Hall. We
spent a quiet hour looking at the ivy-clad wall and dia-
mond crescents of Haddon Hall, where Dorothy Ver-
non's shade haunts the peacock walk, and we
dered how the noble family of Rutland could leave this
sweetest and most picturesque "Pleasance" to the owls
and the ravens. It is a thousand times more interesting
than Chatsworth. To me, however, the park at Chats-
worth and a delightful inn at Edensor, in the park,
where I recommend every American to go and spend six
weeks, is not to be despised. This is patronizing to the
Duke of Devonshire! In fact the landscape gardening
at Chatsworth at Sir Joseph Paxton's place, at Sir Rich-
ard Arkwright's, and at Sir Joseph Whitworth's, all
within a morning's drive, is most wonderful. Our
American rhododendron and what they call the Ameri-
can yellow azalea, although I have never seen it in
America, are splendidly beautiful in groups.
I drove to look at the outside of Florence Nightin-
gale's home, Lea Croft, a picturesque and pretty home,
with an avenue of rhododendrons five miles long.
Derbyshire is the home of the successful artisans of
Manchester and Birmingham and Wolverhampton and
Sheffield. The operatives, out on their Whitsuntide holi-
day, filled the green hillsides and the woods, and form-
erly enjoyed the perpetual hospitality of Chatsworth,
which princely possession is now shut to these hard-
handed sons and daughters of toil.
187
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
We came to London after a profuse rainfall, perhaps
brought down by the prayers of the well-dressers. They
are very superstitious about it, and this rain was cer-
tainly very much needed, for all England is suffering
from a drought, and the "Anglers of the Dove" com-
plained bitterly that the fish would not bite. We found
cold and dreary weather, the first we have seen since we
have been in England. But London, with its thousand
attractions, makes us superior to the weather, which
however, is again warm and fine. We returned to
London on June 10th.
The Temple Church opened its time-honored doors.
for me on Trinity Sunday, and I walked by Robert de
Ross and the Earl of Pembroke and other recumbent
figures in dark marble of knights in full armor, lying
there with their legs crossed under their shields. We
entered, with much emotion, the fine handsome Norman
interior, looking upward to the rich arabesques of the
ceiling through quadrangular clustered pillars. The
Agnus Dei, the emblem of humility chosen by the
proudest soldiers of the cross that ever fought the paynim
and the pagan, is everywhere, "and fills the soul with
beauty." This heraldic emblem of the Templars is a
perfect thing in its way as an order, an ornament, an
architectural addition, or an emblazonment for a stained-
glass window. Music and the psalms would have been
enough, with memory, for a morning service, but we had
a sermon from Dr. Vaughn, one of the great preachers
of England, whom I did not think so great a preacher
as Phillips Brooks-no, nor half so great. But compar-
isons are odious; and it is enough honor and glory to be
allowed to pray in the historical church of the Templars.
1
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MATLOCK BATHS
1
1
}
1
I saw many Americans in the congregation, and as I
was coming out, thinking of Baldwin, King of Jerusa-
lem, and of the Holy Sepulchre and the "poor soldiers
of the Temple of Solomon," some one said in my ear:
"You know Mr. Blaine has received the Republican
nomination for President?" This brought me back
to the nineteenth century, and I thought how busy
you had all been at home, thinking of far different
knights than those who are lying there in bronze, who,
in their silent way, had led me back to the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries.
I sent to the dignitary of another church, with a re-
quest for seats, the letter of a dignitary of our church,
and received them with the polite announcement that
"It was usual to send a stamped order, for the return of
the note and seats!" What an incomprehensible mean-
ness, to the American mind! Who in our vast land
would have said that to a lady ignorant of the custom?
Would Bishop Potter of New York have grudged the
penny stamp, and have mentioned the fact? I shall
preserve that autograph. It is an English peculiarity
to be saving, but "this exceedeth them all." Of course,
as the reverend gentleman had never seen or heard of his
applicant it was of no consequence to her; but it seems
like an insult to the person who wrote the letter of intro-
duction.
189
Memories of Holland House
I find in an old journal of 1884 an account of my first
visit to Holland House. The visit was so often repeated,
and I became so learned on the subject, that I find it
difficult to condense the story. I will try, however, to
make it as brief and pick out the plums only, of which,
however, the cake is very full.
Yesterday I had the supreme pleasure of going over
Holland House. The park I had seen, but the house is
not often shown. With the best of all possible guides,
Mr. McHenry, whose passion it is, and who has eleven
folio volumes filled with illustrations of the history of
Holland House, rare prints and documents, autographs
of fabulous value, and other interesting matter, we went
slowly through, as he told us the history of each room
and of all the pictures. As every Lady Holland has a
history, and as every Lord Holland was a collector, the
stories would fill an encyclopædia and the gems of art a
museum. Presuming that nearly every one has read the
Princess Lichtenstein's book on Holland House-if not,
they should do so; that every one has read the story of
Fox and Pitt, and can quote the best anecdotes about
Charles James Fox; and also that every one has read
the Greville "Memoirs," I will not allow "my pen to
be caught in the tissues of a threadbare scheme." But
190
MEMORIES OF HOLLAND HOUSE
every one has not seen Holland House on a fine June
day, at leisure, with such a cicerone, and I may be for-
given if I give a word to the old carved staircase; the
unexpected vision from the windows of a Dutch garden
laid out in patterns like a bedquilt, with boxwood out-
lines; the splendid majesty of the trees, which look in
at every casement; to the long library where Addison
paced between the bottle of sherry and the bottle of
brandy; to the grand suite of apartments arranged for
the honeymoon of Charles I and Henrietta Maria; to
the rich Sir Joshua Reynolds's room, where we see the
famous picture of young Charles James Fox offering his
tragedy of "Jane Shore" to his two handsome sisters,
and his more beautiful aunt, Lady Sarah, made hay on
the lawn to attract George III, but afterwards married
Sir Charles Bunbury, ran away with her cousin Churchill
-they all ran away perpetually in this family-and after-
ward married Lord Napier and became the mother of
the famous Napiers.
One of the most interesting pictures is that of Charles
James Fox himself, and near it hangs the receipt of
"Joshua Reynolds" for one hundred guineas, which
Fox paid for the picture-it is worth a thousand guineas
to-day. We saw the picture of the stern Lady Holland
whom Addison married. "She will lead you a devil of
a life, your Countess," said Steele. Addison found that
Holland House could not hold three guests, of whom one
was Peace, and she fulfilled the prophecy. We saw
the picture of the questionable Lady Vassall Holland,
who used to snub Macaulay. She was a lamb-like lady,
with a lamb in her lap, when she was painted at twenty,
before she ran away from Sir Godfrey Webster. We
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HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
saw twenty pictures of the present Lady Holland, a
descendant of one of the beautiful Gunnings painted by
Watts (Ellen Terry's first husband), and we saw models
of her beautiful feet. The collections of china, clocks,
bric-à-brac, and rare old pictures, which are unique in the
kingdom. Holland House is now the property of Lord
Ilchester (it was Crown property before Cromwell's
time), who has promised to preserve this wonderfully
beautiful old house and its priceless treasures as long as
he lives, and longer if he can.
One original picture by Hogarth, of a play presented
at Holland House by the children of George III, hangs
in the grand salon, which looks out on the Dutch garden.
Autographs of Hogarth and his receipts for payment of
pictures are there also. The dressing-room of the pres-
ent Lady Holland is full of memorials of Bonaparte at
St. Helena, and of Louis Philippe and family, who
spent six months at Holland House. But the Council
Room, where hang the portraits of Sir Samuel Romilly,
Talleyrand, Lord Archie Campbell, Lord Edward Fitz-
Gerald, the Princess Lieven, Sir Walter Scott, Lord
Byron, and many of England's great judges, statesmen,
and thinkers, was most impressive. A great canopy of
thought seems to tapestry the walls, and one can hardly
speak for fear of driving away the ghost of a majestic
idea. There are two private libraries, besides the grand
library where Addison walked. On the shelves rest the
books which the truly cultivated third Lord Holland,
Henry, the best of the lot, collected for his own pleas-
ure. Of course we saw nothing but the bindings
of old Russia leather, but we felt more cultivated and
well-read, even from being an hour in their illustrious
192
MEMORIES OF HOLLAND HOUSE
1
companionship. From this we went to a magnificent
salon.
The house is a great, beautiful Tudor Gothic edifice,
containing some seventy rooms, almost all of immense
size. The grand dining-room, with carved wood ceiling
is very dreary, but the private dining-room is quite cozy
and luxurious. No language could do any sort of jus-
tice to the delights of the park, as it stretches away in
every direction, filled with large trees, and carpeted
with velvet turf. That park is simply the most beauti-
ful in England, and, one may say, in the world.
views from the windows are supremely lovely.
The
After this was all over, we drove back to Mr. Mc-
Henry's pleasant home, Oak Lodge, to look at his auto-
graphs. He had a remarkable collection of the letters.
of Mrs. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who was the Miss
Linley of concert-singing fame, the mother of "Tom"
and the grandmother of Mrs. Norton, Lady Dufferin,
and Lady Seymour. They are written in the free and
easy style of the day. He had also many autograph
letters of Sheridan and the first playbills of "The
School for Scandal." In telling how he became the
possessor of these invaluable things, he said it was a
romantic story. In 1809 Drury Lane Theatre was
burned to the ground, and the possessions of Sheridan
contained in a certain desk were supposed to have been
destroyed. They were, however, hurriedly put into a
bag, and carried off to a garret, where they lay sixty-nine
years, no one knowing anything about them. Mr. Mc-
Henry's agents, looking for old prints and letters for
him to add to his work on Holland House, stumbled
over this bag of old papers saved from the Drury Lane
193
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
fire, and sold it to him for a mere song. I was permitted
to copy off several of Mrs. Sheridan's letters. [Very
much amused I have been to hear that they are now the
property of Augustin Daly, in New York, and to read
in W. Fraser Rae's "Life of Sheridan" a paper by Lord
Dufferin to the effect that he ought to give them back
to the family. I should think so! They have the
license of the time in them. They were not intended
for publication.] With them are the first play-
bills of the first night of "The School for Scandal'
and other reminiscences of the greatest of England's
modern playwrights-that name which gives distinction
to all his gifted descendants—the name of Sheridan.
It is to Henry, third Lord Holland, the nephew of
Charles James Fox, that Holland House owes its liter-
ary celebrity. Born in 1773, the oldest son of the
second Lord Holland, he became a perfect idol to his
eccentric gaming uncle, a fact to which he gracefully re-
ferred in his old age:
Nephew of Fox and Friend of Gay,
Be this my meed of fame :
May those who deign to observe me say
I've injured neither name.
He did far more to illustrate both names than the
owners thereof, but he had one moment of weakness.
He ran away with the vulgar wife of Sir Godfrey
Webster. Herself a West Indian heiress, named Vas-
sall, from her portrait one would surmise that she had
negro blood in her veins, and before she could be
divorced from Sir Godfrey one child was born to them—
always called Colonel Fox. The affair is all recorded
in the Annual Register of 1796 as "one of the most
1
}
194
MEMORIES OF HOLLAND HOUSE
+
3
1
scandalous ever mentioned in the divorce courts." They
were married afterward. But bad women have ever had
great power over good men. He called himself Lord
Vassall-Holland, but there ended his weakness. He
possessed the family talent, and Macaulay says that he
had not his equal in the House of Commons. His public
life of over forty years was honorable and consistent.
He was a constant protector of all oppressed races and
persecuted sects. Neither the prejudices nor the inter-
ests belonging to his station could swerve him. In his
capacity as peer he protested against the injustice done
to Napoleon. That iniquitous decree which tied the
fallen Emperor to a rock at St. Helena touched his noble
heart. He and Lady Holland were always solacing
that captivity with books, food, and money.
He took possession of Holland House in 1796.
Doubtless he found much to do in the way of restora-
tion. He began to adorn it. His own ample fortune
and that of the West Indian heiress enabled him to
indulge his luxurious tastes. Valuable paintings, noble
statuary, massive plate, exquisite china, rare books,
ornate furniture, hangings of silk and Cordova leather,
objects of curiosity and taste, filled those noble rooms.
According to Macaulay his hospitality was princely.
Not a few of the ablest men and the best were his guests.
His home became the favorite resort of philosophers,
statesmen, poets, and wits. Every one who had done
anything was hailed there gladly. Lord Holland had
that frank cordiality, that winning kindness, which
relieved the embarrassment of the timid. What a con-
trast he was to that rude wife of his!
There was another aspect which Macaulay the eulo-
195
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
gist-Macaulay the Englishman-did not mention. Hol-
land House in those days, was under a social cloud.
The unfaithful wife of Godfrey Webster could not, even
as Lady Holland, be received into English society.
This Lady Vassall-Holland must have had, however,
great talents, or she could not for years have reigned,
an unpleasant hostess, over her husband and over the
wits of England. She certainly snubbed her guests in
a most impertinent manner.
How she must have suffered, however! It is women.
who suffer when they have something in their past which
galls. It is they who are impertinent. It is galling
enough to a man to be systematically shut out from
intercourse with his natural associates. For a woman
to be tabooed by hers must be a perpetual torture.
Who could live, a woman to whom other women would
not speak? But Lady Vassall-Holland lived to be very
old, dying in 1845. It was her first legitimate son who
was the last Lord Holland, who, in 1833, married the
daughter of the Earl of Coventry. With him the line
of the Fox-Hollands became extinct. He kept up the
prestige of the house for forty years, and the late Lady
Holland felt great interest in it.
Lord Ilchester is a descendant of Stephen Fox, and
he will gladly preserve intact the historical memories of
this old place, which should have become the property of
the nation—a great historical museum.
It was easy to go back in memory to 1806 and to
1833. Within these walls what memories met us!
Here came Lord Moira, "airing his vocabulary;" Sir
Humphry Davy, Thurlow, Payne, Knight, Monk
Lewis, Lord Jeffrey of the "Edinburgh Review"; Byron,
1
+
196
MEMORIES OF HOLLAND HOUSE
who dedicated "The Bride of Abydos" to Lord Hol-
land; Dr. Parr, Sir Philip Francis; Sheridan, the wit
and genius; Macaulay, Sydney Smith, the two Hum-
boldts, Talleyrand, Canova, Thomas Moore, Mme. de
Staël, Georgiana, the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire;
Carlyle [who has not shone at Holland House?], Metter-
nich, Louis Philippe, Coleridge, Count d'Orsay, and
Lord Brougham-in fact, all those famous in politics,
diplomacy, and art were visitors there, and left their por-
traits behind them.
When the fourth Lord Holland took possession (he
whose widow has but lately died), he kept up the tradi-
tions. Chateaubriand, Scribe, and Thackeray were con-
stant visitors. Great fêtes were given in the beautiful
old gardens, which were unrivaled in either France or
England. Lord Holland was made Ambassador to
Naples. When they were in England the Queen and
Prince Albert used to honor the house with frequent
visits, as their children continued to do. The Prince
and Princess of Wales were often at these more recent
garden parties. Louis Napoleon visited Lord Holland,
both before he was anybody and after he was everybody.
Here came his beautiful favorites, Marquise de Gallifet
and Countess Castiglione, and others. Here the exiled
family of Louis Philippe came when the "reign was
over," and it was whispered that Lady Holland and the
Duc d'Aumale did not hate each other. A "censorious
world," as Mephistopheles says.
On coming home from one of these long absences in
Naples, Lord and Lady Holland, who had no children,
brought a young lady with them, whom they called
Mary Fox.
When she was to be presented, the Queen
197
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
called for a private interview with Lady Holland. When
they parted both were in tears. But the Queen said:
"Let Mary Fox be treated with royal honors." And
when she came to be married in 1872, in the Roman
Catholic church at Kensington, the Diplomatic Corps,
the Cabinet Ministers, and the Prince and Princess of
Wales were present. It was the first time that a mem-
ber of the royal family has assisted at mass since the
reign of James II. Mr. Gladstone would not attend;
but Lord Granville, the head of the church, was pres-
ent, and kept his eyes on Count Beust to see when to
kneel. I give this anecdote on the authority of Lord
Houghton.
She
She
Who was Mary Fox, Princess Lichtenstein?
died young, estranged from her supposed mother.
never recovered from the shock it is said, of being told
that she was not a daughter of Lord and Lady Holland.
Gossip gave her for a mother a Queen of Naples, or a
father among the sons of Louis Philippe. So far as I
know, nobody knew who she was. She came very near
being married to a royal Duke in England, it was said;
and so she added another to the many romances of Hol-
land House.
Those who like to believe that fashion and rank
should honor genius will honor Holland House.
hopes that so noble a legend may continue:
Surely may we delight to pause
On our care-goaded road,
Refuged from Time's most bitter laws,
In this august abode.
One
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Holland House Again
Since writing about Holland House a few weeks ago,
several letters have reached me on that subject, one of
them the following:
"Dear Mrs. SHERWOOD: I do not know anything about the
early history of Holland House. Will you kindly inform me what
was the origin of the name, also of the two families who both lived
there, the Rich Hollands and the Fox Hollands. Yours truly,
And here is another letter:
A. STOCKTON."
"DEAR MRS. SHERWOOD: You are wrong as to the statement
that Lady Vassall Holland had negro blood in her veins. Her father
was brother to the Vassall who built Mr. Longfellow's house in Cam-
bridge, and her mother was a daughter of Col. Clark, who was a very
dissolute man, &c. He left two families in Jamaica, from which fact
that rumor may have arisen, &c. Yours,
A. C.
This lady sends her full name, and writes so clearly,
that I suppose the memoirs from which I derived the
idea that Lady Vassall Holland had colored blood in her
veins must have been incorrect, but her portrait at Hol-
land House would lead one to that belief.
Holland House, then, to answer some of these ques-
tions, is in London. It is a large structure, built in the
Elizabethan style, surrounded by a very large park. It
lies in the middle of Kensington. Busy London has now
crept up to it, and surrounded its vast park. It may be
said to be an oasis in the midst of brick and mortar. It
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HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
1
was at one time called Kensington Manor, and later on
Cope Castle, from the name of a Gentleman of the Bed-
chamber of James I, who had acquired the property and
erected a part of the residence. Through the daughter
of this gentleman it passed to the nephew of the Earl of
Essex, created Baron Kensington and Holland. It is he
who gave this name to the house. Even in that period
it became the resort of fashionable loungers, artists, and
men of letters. Van Dyck spent several years under its
roof and painted its owner in 1675. This Lord Holland
was beheaded. His son's widow married Addison.
Then began the literary history of Holland House. It
became a literary centre, and Milton's daughters were
seen there. The members of the English aristocracy
were proud to be asked to meet the literary people.
In 1716, Holland House became the home of Addi-
son, who had married the Countess of Warwick. She
owned it for the time being. Previously it had been a
sort of Parliamentary headquarters. There came Crom-
well, Lambert, Fairfax, Ireton, and other Puritans.
Before Addison married he had a pretty little house of
his own which Charles II had fitted up for Nell
Gywnne, and he became tutor to the graceless son of the
noble widow. The amusements of this stepson of Addi-
were breaking windows, beating watchmen, and
trundling women, headed up in hogsheads, down Hol-
born Hill. The Countess coquetted with her son's
tutor, but at length, when he received a large legacy
from a brother in India, and it appeared that he was to be
appointed Secretary of State, the Countess promised to
marry him, in terms which Dr. Johnson characterizes as
"terms in which a Turkish Princess is espoused, to
;
200
HOLLAND HOUSE AGAIN
1
whom the Sultan is reputed to declare: 'Daughter, I
give thee this man for thy slave.'"'
But long before this, Holland House had been the
property of Sir Walter Cope, whose daughter and heiress.
married Sir Henry Rich, who was created Earl Holland.
He added the wings, which complete the beautiful house
as it now stands. They must not be confounded with
the later family of Fox, who were Barons Holland, the
only connection between the two families being that
they both lived in Holland House. During various peri-
ods Holland House was rented. Among other celeb-
rities who hired it was William Penn, who, while living
there was so favorite a courtier that he had to go out of
the cellar door to get rid of the applicants for place.
But Stephen Fox, a poor choir boy, a handsome lad,
a favorite with his Bishop, had the good luck to follow
another patron, Lord Percy, after the battle of Worces-
ter, to France, where they formed part of the forlorn
little Court of the exiled Stuart. He had the good luck
to hear of the death of Cromwell six hours before the
express had arrived, and, rushing into the tennis court
where the Merry Monarch was amusing himself, he
begged leave to call him really "King of Great Britain."
He was easily forgiven for bringing such good news;
became a favorite with the pleasure-loving Charles II,
and rose from being a servant to almost the rank of a
Privy Councilor.
After the Restoration the fortunes of Stephen Fox
grew flourishingly. He was knighted in 1665, made
Commissioner of the Treasury and Paymaster of the
army, and accumulated a vast fortune. He married
his eldest daughter to Lord Cornwallis, whose son
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HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
surrendered at Yorktown, giving her £12,000, equal
perhaps to a quarter of a million to-day. Stephen
Fox was honest and a man of mark. He held office
under William and Anne; he founded hospitals, built
churches, and performed many philanthropic deeds. To
him more than any other man does England owe Chelsea
Hospital. He made a second marriage, when he was
seventy-six, with a young girl named Christian Hope.
This beautiful name proved an augury, and it was a
happy marriage. The great estates of the whilom choir
boy devolved on her two sons. Henry became an
eminent statesman, bought Holland House, and was
made Baron Holland, the first of the Fox-Hollands.
This Henry Fox, born in 1705, now became owner of
the property. We all know Fox and Pitt. Fox and
William Pitt (afterwards Earl of Chatham) were rivals at
school and rivals in politics. The rivalry descended to
another generation, and Charles James Fox, the son of
Henry, was the great rival of the younger William Pitt.
Fox was returned to Parliament in 1735, and attached
himself to Walpole, perhaps the first man to admit that
in politics there is nothing but corruption.
The genius of Henry Fox as a debater hides from
the reader his utter unscrupulousness.
He became
thoroughly unpopular. He sold himself for a peerage;
got cheated; and, finally, when about forty, married Lady
Caroline Lennox in 1749, hired Holland House, and
in 1767 bought it. This Lady Caroline Lennox was a
granddaughter of Louise de Querouaille, the Duchess of
Portsmouth, and Charles II, and the Duke, her father,
scouted at the idea of her marrying a commoner, but
when they tried to marry her to some one else she
i
202
HOLLAND HOUSE AGAIN
1
shaved off her eyebrows and ran away with Henry Fox.
Her father's cousin, the Duke of Grafton, was particu-
larly angry at this mésalliance, but his daughter, Lady
Susan Strangeways, afterward ran away with an actor.
Lady Caroline Lennox became mother of the
famous Charles James Fox. Henry Fox and Lady
Caroline Lennox were forgiven, and they lived many
years together, protecting her young sister, Lady Sarah
Lennox, whose history would make a three-volume
novel. This beautiful girl of fifteen used to make hay in
the park, and Kensington House, then the royal resi-
dence, held an inflammable Prince of Wales, who became
George III, who fell in love with the beauty, and soon
after his accession to the throne asked Lady Sarah to be
his wife, but she was engaged in a flirtation with a cer-
tain Lord Newbottle, whose very name is ominous.
The young King was piqued by this, but every fine
morning he went riding on horseback up Holland Lane
to see Lady Sarah make hay in the park. No doubt
Henry Fox was pleased at the idea of being brother-in-
law to a King, but the rest of England did not like it, so
Lord Bute was sent off and secured for the Prince a very
ugly Princess called Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.
Lady Sarah was very plucky. "I shall take care,”
she wrote, "to show that I am not mortified. Luckily
for me I never loved him. I only liked him. The
thing I am most angry at is for having looked so like a
fool and at having gone so far for nothing”—to make
hay! Is not that a true woman? All she regretted was
the time lost in her amateur haymaking and a freckle or
two received from the sun. This beautiful Lady Sarah
Lennox, if she did not marry the future King, was asked
203
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
to be bridesmaid at the royal wedding, when she so out-
shone the ugly little Princess who did marry him that
the Earl of Westmoreland, who had been off with the
Pretender, mistook her for the Queen, and, plumping
down on both knees, kissed her hand. Some ready-
witted fellow remarked that "the Earl had always loved
pretenders."
This beautiful creature became Lady Napier and the
mother of three famous sons. She had several early
escapades, but she disappeared from public view until
the incident recited in the following pathetic anecdote
revealed her in her old age: The Dean of Canterbury
preached a sermon in behalf of an infirmary for diseases
of the eye. This had been founded by George III, when
he began to lose his own sight. A poor old woman was
led out weeping bitterly. This was no other than the
aged Lady Napier, herself blind, and so we see our last
of the pretty haymaker. Perhaps she had loved the
King all her life. Who knows?
One of the loveliest portraits at Holland House is
that of Lady Susan Strangeways, daughter of Lord
Ilchester and cousin of this same Henry Fox.
She ran
away with one William O'Brien, an actor, and Horace
Walpole, writing of it, says: "Even a footman would
have been preferable." However, they made a country
gentleman of him, and she lived, it is said, happily with
him until 1827.
Henry Fox died in 1774, leaving three sons.
Stephen, the eldest, died six months after succeeding to
the title, leaving an infant son, who was to become the
third Lord Holland, to whom Holland House owes its
celebrity. The second was Charles James Fox, the
204
HOLLAND HOUSE AGAIN
་
orator and statesman; the third, Edward, a General in
the army.
For almost a generation Burke, Pitt, and
Fox were the foremost statesmen of England. They
ranked as Calhoun, Clay, and Webster afterward ranked
in our history. Many writers call Charles Fox the
greatest of British statesmen.
No servant was allowed to
Before he was fourteen his
Holland House is full of memorials of him. His
father had a pride and delight in him almost affecting,
and spoiled him religiously.
thwart his lightest caprice.
father took him to the Continent to show him life.
Trevylyan in his life of Charles James Fox says. "Here
the devil seems to have entered into Lord Holland." At
Paris and Baden they visited the gaming houses, and the
boy alarmed his too foolish father by his love of play.
He commenced here that habit which became the ruling
passion of his life, and which, in spite of the enormous
fortune left him by his father, became his ruin. He would
always pay his debts of honor. One of his creditors,
to whom he owed a common debt for household expenses,
despairing of ever getting his £800, tore the paper in
his presence—a promissory note and saying, “Now it
is a debt of honor," the curious creature paid it.
Old Kensington Palace, now the home of the lively
Princess Louise, is not far from Holland House. I
have heard that she has often walked across the park
to sketch this wonderful house, and that she once
sat in the sedan chair in the hall to have her own photo-
graph taken. Sedan chairs were first introduced into
England by Charles I, and this one had carried the way-
ward Lady Holland to many a "rout" and “drum” no
doubt. On certain great gates on Kensington Road are
205
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
gilded letters "H. H.," behind whose spell I feared I
could not enter. Mr. Lowell told me that even he, who
had unlocked every door for me in England, could not
give me the "Open sesame." But I fortunately remem-
bered that Mr. Bierstadt had given me a letter to James
McHenry, Esq., who lived in Addison Road, Holland
Park. He and Sir Frederic Leighton had brought a
few acres of Lady Holland, and had built themselves
lovely houses there. On the immediate right hand of
Mr. McHenry's portico stood a church, and the music
was floating up to heaven as the door opened into a
room which was half conservatory. As we sat there
talking to our host and looking into Holland Park it
seemed paradise. The next day he took us all over the
famous house, which had become his passion. The first
surprise of the fine façade was followed by the coup
d'ail of the great hall and then the ascent of the tor-
tuous little staircase in the wall, from whose slits of win-
dows one saw the formal exquisite Dutch gardens, laid
out in patterns. The ice has been broken. I went
again and again.
At Aix I met a lady who had been a companion to
Lady Holland. She gave me permission to see the
house. This lady told me of the two ghosts which
always appear to any Lady Holland who is about to die.
One is Lady Susan Strangeways. I believe the old
house is not now shown to strangers-a very great pity,
for its treasures are inexhaustible. There are forty of
Sir Joshua Reynolds's best portraits in it, for one thing,
and one is reminded of his fabled epitaph, the best
specimen of that kind of wit: The epigram—
!
206
HOLLAND HOUSE AGAIN
•
Here Reynolds is laid, and, to tell you my mind,
He has not left a wiser or better behind.
His pencil was striking, resistless, and grand;
His manners were gentle, complying, and bland;
Still born to improve us in every part,
His pencil our faces, his manners our heart;
To coxcombs averse, yet most civilly steering,
When they judged without skill he was still hard of hearing;
When they talked of their Raphaels,Correggios, and stuff,
He shifted his trumpet and only took snuff!
To even hint of the inexhaustible treasures of paint-
ings, books, and unique treasures would fill a book. Mr.
McHenry made eleven volumes, illustrated with pictures,
relating to this house.
To another famous house in this lovely park I was
welcomed every Sunday. This was the house of Sir
Frederic Leighton, the President of the Royal Academy,
and the most famous figure-artist of Great Britain. This
wonderful house has been so often described that I need
hardly refer to its beautiful tiled Moorish court and foun-
tain, its treasures of art, and its truly charming host, a
prince by nature. Sir Frederic Leighton, apart from his
genius as an artist, had social gifts of the highest, and
to me he became the guide to much of the art of Lon-
don, which included visits under his guidance to most
of the celebrated collections.
He showed me in his own gallery a portrait of Sir
Joshua Reynolds painted by himself, sitting in the very
chair which Sir Frederic had been lucky enough to buy,
and in which he himself always sat as he presided at the
business meetings of the Royal Academy. The Presi-
dent of the Royal Academy has a right to claim at any
time a private audience with the Queen. So fond of
him were the members of the royal family that it was
207
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
said that he never had officially to enforce this right.
He was ever a favorite guest at the Queen's dinners, and
he told me an anecdote which I had not heard before,
which he said the Prince Consort was fond of repeating
as illustrating the quick wit of George IV, a Prince sel-
dom praised. Once, while he was Prince Regent,
George asked Sydney Smith who was the wickedest man
that ever lived. "The Regent Orleans, and he was a
prince," said Sydney Smith. "No," said the Regent,
"I should give the preference to his tutor, the Abbé
Dubois, and he was a priest, Mr. Sydney."
Sir Frederic vastly admired a saying of Henry, the
third Lord Holland "Slander is a two-edged knife
without a handle; he who clutches at it gets the worst
cut himself." Macaulay said of Holland House: "The
shadows on the wall are still eloquent. Many men who
have guided the politics of Europe, who have moved
great assemblies, who have put life into bronze and
canvas, and who have left to posterity things which it
will not wittingly let die, have gathered there." And
after this noble encomium on its past, I can say nothing.
I must take my way back under its graceful elms to
busy London, and to common, every-day life, grateful
for the Summer days when I was permitted these
glimpses of its precious collection and of its unique
position in the world of thought as a republic of talent..
208
1
England in Spring
More singing birds-a voyage with Patti and Sem-
brich-what was considered a fast trip on the Oregon,
in April, 1884—a spring journey to England, and an ex-
perience of the coaching parade, and a drive with a
modern Mr. Weller.
I copy from my journal, 1884:
The service of the "Oregon
Oregon" is perfect, so far as the
stewards and stewardesses are concerned, the table lux-
urious; and Captain Price is a fine old sea-dog, who takes
good care of his ship. He, of course, is highly elated, as
the commodore of a Guion line, to have made the two
quickest passages on record with his great new ship,
whose smokestacks, even, are sixteen feet in diameter, and
whose decks afford a promenade like walking around
Boston Common. We went very far south to avoid the ice,
and on Wednesday we were rewarded with a warm, soft,
smooth day; the decks looked like a garden party, as the
ladies sat about knitting, crocheting, and embroidering.
Patti and Sembrich were on board, and the famous prima
had a dog, a rooster, and a parrot, which she was bear-
ing to her home in Wales. I talked with her as she sat
smiling on deck, in a little blue hood, looking very
pretty. She was sprightly and pleasant, but said she
should not come to America again. She was very com-
plimentary to Sembrich, who, she says, has the "coming
voice." "Not weak like Madame Gerster," she added.
209
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
I asked them both to sing for us, but they said they could
not, as they could not eat. "If we do not eat well, we
cannot sing,'' remarked both the ladies; but as I saw them
on either side of Captain Price at the dinner-table, he
playing Sir Roger de Coverley to them, I did not notice
any lack of appetite. They could have sung if they
would. Sembrich is a very gay-hearted, romping school-
girl of a person. Her husband, a Pole, a distinguished
musician, found her a poor girl at the Conservatoire,
married her, teaches her her roles, and is making her
career for her. On Thursday and Friday we got a chop-
ping sea again, and balls of worsted and cotton, purses,
reticules, and umbrellas went sliding out of laps into the
sea. Chairs were tied to the rails of the ship, and lively
times ensued. But there was no, or very little, seasick-
ness. I advise every one who crosses the Atlantic to
strive for the "Oregon." (Alas! for human hopes! the
"Oregon" was mysteriously lost near New York a few
years after this.) The arrival at Liverpool, and the custom-
house business, seemed very bunglingly managed, and
the distinguished capitalist, Mr. McCormick of Chicago,
who was on board, said that, "Such mismanagement
would not be endured in the West if one was shipping
goods."
All our trunks were examined for dynamite, and the
officials evidently thought we brought it in our smelling-
bottles. Two English officers on board, who ought to have
known better, were "awfully alarmed" about dynamite,
and told me of seditious newspapers, and of plots, "at
which our government winked" (of which I had never
heard). Indeed, no old nurse's tale was ever more absurd
and foolish than the talk of these educated men. It is a
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ENGLAND IN SPRING
queer trait of the English people that such a national
scare as this of dynamite makes them all cowards, and
really unable to see the truth. We, however, got off
without revealing our dynamite, even if we had charged
ourselves with it in lumps (so pleasant a thing it would be
to carry around!), and reached the Northwestern Hotel,
unblown-up. It is a satisfaction now to remember that
one of the English officers who had been most accusa-
tory about the dynamite was one of the "suspects" of
the custom-house, and his neat boxes of American turnip-
seeds were all overturned and looked at suspiciously,
while our real American boxes were most lightly handled.
The Northwestern Hotel, at Liverpool, received us all
most comfortably, including the parrot, "Ben Butler,"
Madame Patti's parrot, who seemed to me, with his
"battle-stained eye," to bear quite a resemblance to his
distinguished godfather, and a rooster, who was a con-
tribution to the farm in Wales. Pretty Rab, the English
setter, belonging to Madame Patti, frightened to death,
though he was at sea, still contributed to our amuse-
ment. Nicolini took care of him.
We had other distinguished people on board; Major
Walter, who owns the original Sharpless portraits of
Washington, and who is indignant that some Chicago
merchant said, "Washington! there is n't a dollar in
him!"—and righteously offended that our government
does not buy these fine originals, so praised by Washing-
ton Irving, Longfellow and Bryant is a very cultivated.
scholar, has written a folio volume on Shakespeare, and
is the friend of R. D. Blackmore, the accomplished
author of "The Maid of Sker," "Alice Lorraine," and
other delightful English novels. Blackmore, he says,
-
211
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
only writes when his pear-trees will not blossom; he is,
in fact, a nursery gardener at heart. Hence the deli-
cious descriptions of gardens in Kent which fill "Alice
Lorraine." Major Sharpless Walter has been praying
ever since that this late, cold spring might blight all Black-
more's blossoms, so that Blackmore would write another
novel.
It seems a jump from Madame Patti and "Ben
Butler," the "Oregon" and her motley crew, to Chester,
St. Chads, the somber cathedral and its restorations, but
we were there before the leviathan could swim a league, and
a lovely English morning greeted us. Curiously, the races
were going on, and in the public drawing-room we met
an English racing professional bookmaker, who thought
we were English ladies of rank, interested in betting, and
he offered to give us "points.' When he heard that
we did not care for anything at Chester which was not
a thousand years old, he was disgusted; and said the
countrywomen of Iroquois, and Foxhall, and Ethan
Allen, ought to like to see a race. But we told him old
Father Time was quick enough for us, and we wanted to
go back on him, even for a few centuries; so we went out
to look at the rows, and the ancient walls, and the cathe-
dral, which I, for one, do not find improved by its resto-
rations. We drove to Eaton Hall, the splendid show-
place of the Duke of Westminster, now in deep sorrow
over the death of Earl Grosvenor, his eldest son, pros-
pective heir to millions. Pallida mors æquo pede pulsat;
it has invaded this splendid palace, walked these corridors,
where hang the masterpieces of Rubens and Vandyke,
and has stolen that glorious young life which alone made
them valuable. In the chapel I saw a marble effigy of
i
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ENGLAND IN SPRING
i
i
the late Duchess, a woman whom I thought the most
beautiful, gracious creature in all England, when I vis-
ited London before. There she lies, in marble majesty,
her little dog at her feet, her fine profile befitting the
classic marble. She was a daughter of the beautiful
Duchess of Sutherland, and died about 1879. Her
brother, Lord Ronald Gower, made this recumbent
statue.
The late English spring, unusually cold after a warm
winter, had hindered the flowers and trees, but still the
yellow gorse was out on every bank, and primroses lin-
gered in the hedge-rows. The trees tasseled forth a few
reluctant green leaves, and the grass was an emerald. In
the midst of all this spreads Eaton Hall, a most stately,
superb structure.
inates the scene.
Like nothing out of England, it dom-
Several of Millais's best portraits are
on the walls, of the Duke's beautiful daughters, of him-
self, and his wife; and the library, an immense room,
contains some of the choice books of the world. We
were allowed, on payment of a shilling, to see the
interior, with its priceless bric-a-brac and magnificent
ornamentation. We went thence, by the time-honored
custom, to Leamington, and thence to Stratford-upon-
Avon. The weather was cold and forbidding, and noth-
ing has happened about Shakespeare since 1650. I
spare you a description, beautiful, rare, rich, and thrill-
ing as is Stratford-upon-Avon.
London is dull (1884) on account of the recent death of
the Duke of Albany, and the more recent death of the Em-
press of Austria. The weather for a week has been bad,
but to-day the sun shines. We are in time for the one
hundred and sixteenth exhibition of the Royal Academy,
213
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
The
where there are some eighteen hundred noteworthy pic-
tures. There are, of course, some very fine pictures,
but also a woful amount of rubbish. Mr. Alma-Tadema's
picture of the Emperor Hadrian in England visiting a
Roman-British pottery, is an exquisite thing. It is a
piece of historical genre, characterized by a rather com-
plicated arrangement of figures, but is rich in that vivid
sense of reality which inspires this author's works.
painting of the primroses, ivy, and wall-flowers, the neces-
sary and varied accessories of vases, jars, cups, dresses,
potters' implements, and the wondrous painting of a piece
of marble mosaic, is a triumph of artistic discrimination
of tint and texture. Our American Broughton has made
a new departure with his outdoor Flemish subjects. "A
Field Maiden, Brabant," is a fresh, nice picture. There
is a classic picture, "Cymon and Iphigenia," which
shows the artistic sensibility and refined taste of Sir
Frederic Leighton, that man so accomplished that they
say of him, "He is the best rider, fencer, musician, and
man of society in London, and occasionally he does a
little drawing and painting, pour passer le temps.
Mr. A. W. Bayes, an artist hitherto unknown to me,
has a capital genre picture, full of fun, of two gay danc-
ing maidens surprised by an old Puritan father. Mr.
Yeames, R. A., has an historical piece in which the big
wigs of a past generation, Addison, Steele, Marlborough,
and Congreve, are imaged forth. Mr. Millais has an
original picture called, "The Idyl,"-a fifer in a garrison
in the Highlands is solacing his leisure by practicing his
instrument, and three idle lassies are listening to him.
Although it is heresy to say so, I was not much pleased
with this picture. There was a much-admired picture of
!
214
ENGLAND IN SPRING
:
"Thisbe," by E. Long, R. A., white and gray and “long
drawn out," and the catalogue says that it immortal-
izes "that moment when at the chink in the wall, the
lovers
Kissed its stony mouth, like lovers true,
But neither side could let the kisses through."
The landscapes did not seem to me equal to our Ameri-
can work except two fine examples of sea work, by J. C.
Hook "The Mirror of the Sea Men," and "Catching
Sand Eels."
It
Mr. Filk has some excellent genre pictures, in which
he excels; one brings home to us Ellen Terry in her
most delightful part, "Beatrice Overhearing Ursula and
Hero Discoursing of Benedict's Passion," and "Cruel
Necessity," founded on that somewhat fabulous "Mock
Pearl of History," the not-well authenticated anecdote
that Cromwell visited Whitehall, and, looking on the dead
features of Charles, said: "Cruel Necessity." I do not
believe Cromwell ever did anything half so humane.
is not so good a conception of the same (supposed) his-
torical incident as Delaroche's. There is
There is a sort of
Hogarthian picture by Orchardson,
age de Convenance," which is a gem.
the bloom of youth, who has a head as shining as a bil-
liard-ball, is seated at the dinner-table, opposite his young
wife. She has married him, evidently, for an "estab-
lishment," and they sit at table, mutually bored. The
dinner of twelve courses is coming to an end, the velvet-
footed butler is about retiring. Soon will come the
dreaded tête-à-tête between the uncongenial pair. The
flowers, fruit, decanters, glass, everything is painted in
the most skillful way. It is delicate and strong in its
called the "Mari-
A gentleman past
215
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
scheme of color. I have rarely seen a modern picture
more in the style of that great master, Hogarth.
I wish I had time and space to describe some of these
pictures, those of Denby Sadler, P. R. Morris Wells, R.
A., Ned Morgan, and the Millais portraits. Oaless and
Frank Holl have fine portraits, the latter one of the
Prince of Wales, as a "Bencher of the Middle Temple,'
very forcible and fine, and like.
One of our gayest amusements is to go to see the
coaches depart from White Horse Cellars, the four ama-
teur coaches, which start every morning from Piccadilly
on their journey to Windsor, Guildford, Dorking, and
Virginia Water. No country in existence could do this
but England in such fine style, with a "noble lord” on
the box, who does not refuse the tip of a shilling. They
are spruce amateur whips, these successors of old Mr.
Weller, and no doubt drive through "seventy miles of
adoring females." Without hope of profit or reward,
these enterprising gentlemen mount the box of the "New
Lines," or the "Old Lines," or the "Perseverance,'
and drive three horses out and back, and bear the
expense of horsing these amateur drags. The drive to
Guildford, through Kingston Vale, Thames Ditton,
Kingston, and Wisley Heath affords one a charming
glimpse of English scenery from the top of a coach, and
Guildford is well worth the visit. The price of such a
trip is about ten dollars, and is worth twice the money.
An excellent lunch is served at Guildford; one must
lunch at the "Angel."
The entertainments at the Crystal Palace, at Syden-
ham, are dreadfully crowded and fatiguing, but it is best
to go out and make a day of it. They certainly give you
1
216
ENGLAND IN SPRING
a great deal. There is an admirable orchestral concert,
a military band, a drama, and a performance on the
An exhibition of arts and manufactures
is now going on. A very good dinner may be had at
the restaurant, and it is well always to lunch there.
great organ.
Afterwards we dined with Edmund Gosse, the genial
poet. We are amazed at the promptitude with which
Our cards and notes and letters of introduction are
answered. It is a rebuke to our American dilatoriness
in this direction. The London post delivers your letter
and your answer in two hours, and the frequency of
telegrams is somewhat confusing. I wish that in our
large cities we could count on a similar convenience, par-
ticularly of note delivery.
London, grand and mysterious city, has taken a strong
hold on us. "Those who established the mysteries, who-
ever they were," says Socrates, "knew much of human
nature." To see these vast old streets, this sweeping
tide of human beings, to go down to the People's Palace,
and to come back to Buckingham Palace, and then to
go to the Thames Embankment and to notice how new
and glittering it looks, to watch "all sorts and conditions
of men," to see the tide of fashionable life coming back
to Whitehall, and to believe that the next generation
may see the court end of town again, there, where
Charles and Henrietta Maria embarked and fed the
swans—all this is a perpetual subject for thought and
memory and dreaming, and the great city is full of mys-
tery, mystery, everywhere. How many a human life
has been built up in these walls! How many a human
sacrifice is going up perpetually! We believe in tales of
gnomes, kobolds, Telchines, and the Cabiri, as we look
217
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
1
up these endless streets, and then comes along the
mummery of the Salvation Army, blowing trumpets and
playing drums, followed, I am sorry to say, by an
army of children in white robes, poor, fatigued, deluded
wretches, and an endless river of vagabondage-this is
the living mystery of the nineteenth century, that there
can be such deluded people!
We find the London lodging-house very expensive,
and somewhat stuffy. But we believe that the days of
the lodging-house are numbered; a thin and almost
indivisible line divides the London season from the
months which precede it, but in the "season" the lodg-
ing-house keeper makes enough to bear him through the
rest of the year. The public in May rush to London,
and all the world becomes conscious that it is the thing
to be diverted and dazzled, and "Scrooge from Scrooge-
ville" takes it out of one in the model lodging-house.
Immense American styles of hotels are consequently being
built, and one, the Grand Hotel (formerly Northumber-
land House, or on its site), is a monument of comfort.
There one really lives more cheaply, getting more for his
money than in the stuffy lodging-house, although, it must
be conceded that cleanliness, comfort, good cooking and
extreme respectability and quiet can be obtained in
the best lodgings. The opening of the Royal Academy
seems to be a kind of official proclamation that the sea-
son has commenced, the festival begun, and then the
lodging-house keeper begins to fleece, or "charge,
Chester, charge." An immense structure, the Hotel
Metropole, is going up, and in these and many other
enormous houses, built on the American plan, the Lon-
don lodging-house keeper begins to hear the death-knell
1
i
218
ENGLAND IN SPRING
ན་
of his annual delights in bringing in so many shillings for
a lamp, so much for a cup of tea, and ten guineas a week
for the third story, merely rent, all the rest extra, until
the starved lodger looks like the "thin edge of a worn
sovereign." We have not had time yet to go to the
National Health Exhibition. It is much talked of, but
it is feared that it is a mere advertising medium for
enterprising tradesmen, who can thus bring their wares
before thousands who would otherwise not see them.
For instance, a high block is devoted to Yeatman's yeast
powder, another to a milk company, and enclosed cases
filled with hams, cheeses, and such ordinary comestibles.
I shall devote my spare hours to the pictures. The
Archbishop of Canterbury has expressed a wish that
"art were less the luxury of the rich, and that the poor
could enjoy it more.' Popular art should mean more
than the diffusion of chromo-lithographs. Indeed, the
archbishop read a letter from a workman, who begged
that people of his class might be helped to see good
pictures. He said that it would be desirable to people
with "hard lives and cheerless prospects." We all know
how little harm there could be in this form of socialism.
In the House of Lords they are busying themselves
putting down pigeon shooting. It seems a small busi-
ness for such great names as Lord Balfour of Burleigh,
Lord Redesdale, Lord Cowper, and Lord Aberdare, yet
they discussed it with feeling and with temper.
We make the inquiry, Where is the shrine to Charles.
Dickens?
Where is there consecrated earth for him who had
inspired the English people with a new heart-who awoke
sympathies and feelings and impulses all unknown before?
219
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
Why do not London streets open hospitals and build
monuments to this great spirit, who made the poor boy
so interesting, the poor girl so poetical, who remedied
abuses, pulled down old and foolish structures, the king
of wits, the melter of hearts!
Well done, old Abbey, to take him to thy grand
bosom! There in the clay, made rich by thy dead of a
thousand years, there should fitly lie Charles Dickens,
and as he has said in the dearest of his Christmas stories,
We keep his memory green!
"The American," says a good writer, "has learned
his London and his England principally through Shakes-
peare, and later on through Dickens. How can he show
his gratitude to these two great guides?''
:
--ན …་
220
}
General de Trobriand's Romantic Life
Romantic was the life of General de Trobriand, who
died last month, the only Frenchman since LaFayette
to attain the rank of Major-General in our army. Phi-
lippe Régis Denis de Keredern, Baron (afterward Comte)
de Trobriand, was born June 4, 1816, at the Château
des Rochettes, near Tours. He belonged to the old no-
bility of Brittany, but was born in Tours, for at that time
his father, Gen. Joseph de Trobriand, was commanding
that military district. When a youth, Régis de Tro-
briand was put on the list of the pages of Charles X, then
King of France. During the monarchy the young nobles
who became pages were brought up at Court, under the
superintendence of one of the Marshals of France, who
took charge of their education and prepared them for en-
tering St. Cyr, the West Point of France. From St. Cyr
they took their commissions in the army.
The revolution of 1830-which sent the Bourbons.
into their last exile-changed the course of de Trobri-
and's military education. Not wishing to serve under
the new government, his father, General de Trobriand,
who was then commanding at Rouen, resigned from the
army and made his son follow another course of military
studies at the same time that he was taking his college
degrees. Trobriand was graduated as Bachelier-es-lettres
at Orleans in 1834, and as licencié-en-droit at Pottiers in
221
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
1838. While at Pottiers he wrote a novel,-"Les Gentils-
hommes de l'Quest"-which created a great sensation.
In 1841, after his father's death, and being then Baron
de Trobriand, he came with a friend to America as a
traveler to see the country. In those days few persons,
particularly Frenchmen, came to America. His arrival,
bringing letters to our first people, was quite a social inci-
dent. His good looks, title, accomplishments, and great
personal attractions made him a social lion. He met and
became engaged to Mary Mason Jones, daughter of Isaac
Jones, second President of the Chemical Bank, and
granddaughter of John Mason, founder and first Presi-
dent of that institution. The marriage took place in
Paris in January, 1843, with great ceremony. The
reception, at which many members of the Faubourg St.
Germain were represented, was held at the Hotel Galli-
fet, where the family resided that Winter. The wit-
nesses to the marriage on the side of the bridegroom
were the Duc de Clermont Tonnerre, formerly minister
of Charles X, and the Marquis de la Rochejaquelin.
The witnesses for the bride were two American gentle-
men, Robert Ray, Esq., and Colonel Thorn. After their
marriage the Baron and Baroness de Trobriand went to
Italy, where they joined the Court of the Duchesse de
Berri, mother of Henri V, the Bourbon heir to the
throne of France.
Here, attached to the exiled Princes, de Trobriand
led, for several years, a life divided between his duties
at Court, and the cultivation of his talents for music and
painting.
Henri V was young and his companions were
young, so all was done in those days to dispel the
222
DE TROBRIAND'S ROMANTIC LIFE
1
dreariness of exile in a life of incessant activity and
amusement. Venice was then part of the Austrian
Kingdom of Lombardy, and ruled over by the Grand
Duke Regnier as Viceroy, who, with his beautiful wife,
a Princess of Savoy, also held a brilliant Court. Din-
ners, balls, visits from different royalties of Europe, for
whom great receptions had to be given, all helped to
make those Winters pass in a round of gayety. Ama-
teur theatricals were given every two weeks in the palace
of the Duchesse de Berri, Palazzo Vendramin. De
Trobriand was stage manager and principal actor. The
little theater was filled with the ladies and gentlemen of
the Court, and once, in the front row, sat seven royal-
ties (one being the Emperor Nicholas I of Russia) who
were visiting Henri V.
An incident of that time of youthful exuberance
among the young men of the Court made a sensation
throughout Europe.
A discussion having arisen on the subject of Lord
Byron's famous seven-mile swim, a wager was laid by
the Comte de Chambord (Henri V) and three young
men, of whom de Trobriand was one, that they would
also accomplish it. The terms were that, though accom-
panied by boats, they were never to rest even a finger
on a boat during the distance of seven miles.
The feat was performed by all four, though they all
were made quite ill by it. The only one who escaped
evil consequences was Trobriand, who was dared
by Monseigneur (Henri V) to row him home in his
gondola; and he did it. The strain at first was intense,
but this second and different exercise of his muscles
saved Trobriand the illness suffered by his compan-
!
223
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
ions. This swimming feat on the part of Henri V was
noised abroad all over Europe by his adherents to dis-
prove the assertion of his opponents that he was a
weakling unfit to reign.
In 1848 or 1849, at the request of his father-in-law,
Trobriand came to reside in America. His fondness
for literary work and desire for occupation induced him
to start a French review, the Revue du Nouveau Monde.
In 1851 family matters obliged him to return to
France and discontinue his review.
In 1854 the death of his father-in-law brought him.
back to America, where he settled permanently, devot-
ing himself again to literary work in connection with the
French newspaper, the Courrier des États Unis.
When the war broke out Régis de Trobriand was deeply
impressed by the justice of the Union cause, and, becom-
ing an American citizen, took command of the Fifty-
fifth Regiment New York Volunteers (Gardes LaFay-
ette). He was engaged in all the campaigns of the
Army of the Potomac, from Yorktown to and after
Gettysburg. His services on the second day at Gettys-
burg were of the most efficient and sturdy description,
his brigade being one of those holding the Peach Orch-
ard, the central point of Sickles's line, until it was no
longer tenable, after which, with only two regiments, he
held the north bank of Plum River until the rebel onset
forced his men back across the wheat field, and then
they were foremost in the new line formed by Birney,
which charged through the wheat field and drove the
enemy back to the stone fence which bounded it. It
was one of the most exciting and important contests of
that battlefield. In January, 1864, de Trobriand was
224
DE TROBRIAND'S ROMANTIC LIFE
}
made a Brigadier General, and in May and June of that
year, he commanded the defenses of New York. He
returned to the field, and, as brigade commander in the
Second Corps in Grant's army, fought at Deep Bottom
and Five Forks, and was in command of the Third
Division of the Second Corps in the final pursuit of Lee,
which ended at Appomattox. On the day of Lee's
surrender (April 9, 1865), he was brevetted Major Gen-
eral of Volunteers, thus being the only Frenchman,
excepting LaFayette, who has held the rank of Major-
General in the United States army.
After the army was disbanded General de Trobriand
spent a year in France writing (in French) his reminis-
cences of the War, which were published under the title of
"Quatre Ans de Campagne avec l'Armée du Potomac”
(which has been translated under the title "Four Years
with the Army of the Potomac ").
General de Trobriand entered the regular army as
Colonel of the Thirty-first Infantry in 1866, and was
brevetted Brigadier-General of the United States army
March 2, 1867. He commanded the District of Dakota
in August of that year. He was transferred to the com-
mand of the Thirteenth Infantry March 15, 1869, and
commanded the District of Montana, and after that the
District of Green River.
While in Montana he put an end (January, 1870) to
the Indian depredations by his energetic campaign
against the Piegan Indians. He was sent to Salt Lake
City in September, 1870, and by his firmness and tact
prevented the threatened outbreak of the Mormons
under Brigham Young. He commanded in Utah until
January, 1875, when he was sent to New Orleans.
225
1
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
Under orders from his superior officers it became neces-
sary to arrest Speaker Wiltz, and to disperse the Mc-
Enery Legislature. This duty he performed with a tact
and firmness which won him the respect of his oppo-
nents. General de Trobriand remained in command in
New Orleans from 1875 to 1879, when, at his own
request, he was retired from the army. In 1874 he had
inherited the title of Count, and became head of his
family, owing to the extinction of the elder branch, but
he never carried his title in this country. Having lived
for five years in New Orleans, General de Trobriand
decided to make it his winter home, and, after his retire-
ment, bought a house in Clouet Street, where he resided
until 1897. In Summer he visited alternately his
family in France and his daughter on Long Island.
His visits to France were made interesting by meet-
ing, on intimate terms, most of the statesmen, and most
of the men of rank and mark who have been identified
with the history of that country.
He was a regular visitor at the Château d'Eu before
the Comte de Paris was sent into exile, and after that
time, when they could not meet, they corresponded reg-
ularly. The Comte de Paris always loved him very
much. All the members of the Orleanist family, the
Duc d'Aumale, the Princess de Joinville, the Duc de
Montpensier, etc., showed the General marked kindness
and friendship, and he was received by them in the
intimacy of the family circle, though having become
converted to republican ideas he never hesitated to
express his convictions. General de Trobriand's ac-
complishments as writer, poet, painter, and musician,
fitted him for the power of criticism and the enjoyment
I
1
!
226
DE TROBRIAND'S ROMANTIC LIFE
}
}
of the society of all men of all callings. This, united
with a wonderful memory, great conversational powers,
and delightful charm of manner, together with the fact
that in his varied career as courtier, soldier, writer, he
had known all the distinguished men of his time, gave
him reminiscences of royalties, statesmen, artists, lit-
térateurs, soldiers, in Europe and America — all this
helped to make him, to the last moment of his long life,
a most delightful companion to those who came in con-
tact with him. He preserved his wonderful powers to
the last, and died in his eighty-second year, still in the
full possession of his brilliant mental faculties.
General de Trobriand died on July 15th, at the resi-
dence of his daughter, Mrs. Charles A. Post, Bayport,
L. I. He leaves a widow-the Comtesse de Trobriand,
who lives in Paris, and two daughters, Mrs. Charles A.
Post and Mrs. Burnett Stears. The last-named resides
in France.
General de Trobriand, who offered his sword to his
adopted country, the United States of North America,
was a second cousin of Bolivar, the Washington of South
America; their grandmothers were sisters.
Such was the man who lighted up that period in
society from the early "fifties," when I first knew it, in
New York, and for thirty years after, he was an occa-
sional resident of this city. He was very handsome, but
singularly retiring, and always marked by a modest self-
effacement. Married as he was, into the richest and
most fashionable set in New York, his wife a leader of
the gay set, he could not remain in obscurity, but his
early experiences at the Court and the retirement and
misfortunes of the royal family, whom he had served,
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HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
I
had marked him with a gravity and sadness which made
him seem older than he was. But a more delightful
companion at a little dinner could not be found.
remember his telling me of the baptism of his little
daughter, the goddaughter of the Duchesse de Berri
(whom he considered the Queen of France), and after-
ward her being tossed up in the arms of the Duchesse
d'Angoulême (the Orphan of the Temple), when the
little girl, not respecting gloomy traditions, pulled off
the cap and wig of the daughter of Louis XVI, making
her laugh heartily, a thing she seldom did, poor, unfor-
tunate daughter of Marie Antoinette.
But the young couple whom he served (Count and
Countess de Chambord, later Henri Cinq), were not
the only acquaintances of whom de Trobriand could
talk. He knew well the Republican leaders, Thiers,
Jules Simon, Jules Favre, Guizot, Lamartine, etc. He
had met Chateaubriand and Mme. Recamier, who spoke
of him as "çe charmant jeune homme." He knew well
the great littérateurs, George Sand and Alfred de Mus-
set; he could tell the intimate history of "Elle et Lui."
He knew Rachel, and kept many of her letters.
As a
cultivated musician himself, he knew Lizst, Chopin,
Auber, and their best interpreters. Imagine what it was
to hear such a man talk.
While he was editor of the Courrier des États
Unis he translated a little poem of mine into French
verse. It was called "The Lighthouses of the World,'
and attracted the attention of Victor Hugo, who wrote
a letter on the subject. Although "lighthouse" is not
a very easy word to versify he had the advantage of the
more poetical “Pharos," and he was so much the master
228
DE TROBRIAND'S ROMANTIC LIFE
I
}
of the genius of the two languages that he made a pretty
thing of it. In fact, in America he devoted himself to
literature, to the arts, to the quiet amusements of chess,
more than to dancing and to dinners.
But a hero was slumbering within him, impatient for
development. He was as brave as his sword, and longed
to draw it in a congenial cause. From the first he
showed that he was a born soldier. His camp was a
model of neatness and order. The "Fifty-fifth Regi-
ment New York Volunteers, Gardes LaFayette," be-
came a famous, well-disciplined regiment. I have heard
a young lieutenant who served under him say that the
General taught them to make an excellent cup of coffee,
to husband their rations, to keep their quarters clean.
He gave them excellent lessons in sanitary reform.
The pupil of the Marshals of France, educated in what
was then the grandest military school in the world, knew
all these minor details. He was kind to them in sick-
ness, and knew more than most surgeons as to the treat-
ment of a gunshot wound.
Such was the man, so universal, so gallant, so pains-
taking, and conscientious, who was to take the oriflamme
of France, under the Stars and Stripes, to victory at
Yorktown, at Gettysburg, at Five Forks, until on the
great day at Appomattox Court House, this second La-
Fayette ended his service in the field to his adopted and
grateful country.
I had the honor to be a guest at a banquet, one of
the most brilliant I remember in New York, at Delmon-
ico's, to the Comte de Paris, given by General Sickles, at
which were present, among other representatives of our
highest fashion, Mrs. Post, the daughter of General de
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HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
}
Trobriand, who could not himself be there. She was the
very "Marie Carolina," the goddaughter of a Princess of
the old Bourbon days, and she had the pleasure of hearing
General Sickles refer to that brilliant action of her father
at the Peach Orchard episode, the second day of Gettys-
burg. This splendid dash made Trobriand a Briga-
dier-General, and in the curious twists and turnings of
life this was certainly one of the most curious, that in
the presence of the last of the Bourbons-that family
whom her father had so gallantly served-a woman, still
young, should have listened again to the story of his
conquests on a second field of honor from one of our
most gallant commanders, in the War of the Republic, in
the very presence of the Comte de Paris, the King of his
heart.
The old age of this valuable, accomplished, universal
man was spent in the congenial French town, which he
loved, New Orleans, where, in the gentle occupation of
cultivating roses, and with the society of a few friends,
with French servants to cook for him the dainty dishes
which he liked, he grew older and older, as a French
soldier should, getting something out of every day, con-
soled by music, painting, and reading. He had fought
the good fight; he had written his book (a valuable one);
he had kept his honor bright; to the last the most
agreeable of men, he was blessed in the moment of
departure by the tender care of his daughter, whom he
dearly loved, the little girl who had been sent to him in
his bright youth, and who never failed him in the loving
duty and admiration, care and respect, which he so
well deserved.
1
!
J
230
1
General Scott and West Point
Henry James, in his inimitable manner, speaks of the
"private emotions of the historic sense."
My private historical emotions are all very strong at
West Point. I was here many Summers before and after
the War, before fashion had deserted it as a watering-
place.
Grim-visaged war has never reared its awful front in
a more enchanting region than this, and, although never
before has West Point, as a military school, been in a
greater state of perfection than it is now, there is not the
same flutter of ribbons and fine gowns which once made
“the evening parade” a “reunion" of the best people of
society, as it was also the most charming and dangerous
battle-ground of the young female heart. As one of the
prettiest belles of New York once exclaimed, “There is
no such tremendous compliment as to have fine young
Cadet Captains walk forward to greet you after evening
parade."
Music was added to the charms of soldier, sunset, and
scenery. Then the old band, under Apelles, a first-rate
leader, had sixty pieces. It was a most excellent band.
Now the thirty pieces allowed by an economical, pater-
nal Government, which gives out $150,000,000 as pen-
sion money to those who do not need it, and economizes
on the West Point band, is but a feeble reminder of the
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HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
}
old-time clangor and military thrill of that once remark-
able association. There should be a good band at West
Point to cheer the dull Winter for these patient, hard-
working boys and music also adds the last emotional
charm to the hearts of the softer sex.
Is it possible that the softer sex has disappeared into
the new woman? Has the West Point button, that
symbol of valor, gone down before the bicycle, the golf
tools, etc., and the "right of woman" to the ballot? No
one now writes novels with such titles as "Cupid in
Shoulder Straps." Indeed, the new woman may be
said to wear shoulder straps herself, and Cupid himself,
might be confused did he try to discriminate the out-
lines of the masco-feminine shirt collar and cravat as
differing from the feminine.
But a-many years ago the cadet was a creature to
adore; and the young Lieutenant and the Captain, what
was he not? Let Memory try to answer.
West Point was for the last ten years of his life the
Summer home of General Scott, the grand hero of the
Mexican War. He wore always his old military coat on
the Fourth of July, the one in which he rode into Mex-
ico "on top of a panic," as he used to say.
"Very shabby old coat, Madame, very shabby old
coat," the gratified old man would exclaim, as he felt
a lady's hand laid gently on his arm, as she asked to
touch the sacred cloth. He wore the coat on many
historic days, and was pleased to shoulder his cane and
fight his battles o'er again. He was a good Shakes-
pearean scholar, and liked to correct his young officers if
they missed a word in their quotations. General Cul-
lom, himself an apt scholar, used to delight in tripping
..
1
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232
GENERAL SCOTT AND WEST POINT
}
up the General, if that were possible, and succeeded
once in the famous "My kingdom for a horse," which
proved to have been written by Garrick, so the commen-
tators say.
General Scott always lived at Cranston's- then, as
now, the most desirable locality for a hotel in the State
of New York, not alone for its beauty, but its health-
giving air. How many times have I stood on that
piazza, looking down the Hudson, as the giant General
(he was six feet six inches) has pointed out the innumer-
able historical spots. He would tell the story of
Arnold's treason, and point out every inch where he
must have stood. It was he who said that "Mrs.
Arnold clung like ivy to a worthless thing," referring to
her devotion to the traitor.
In fact, General Scott's conversation was well worth
noting down. Somewhat grandiloquent by nature, very
full of himself, General Scott's "hasty plate of soup,
which won him the sobriquet of "Marshal Tureen" and
the absurd name of "Old Fuss and Feathers," which
was given him before his defeat for the Presidency,
only marked that temporary disdain for his high quali-
ties as a man, a soldier, and a scholar which posterity
has already accorded to him. Brave as his sword,
General Scott had the probity and the patriotism of an
old Roman.
A military funeral is always a grand sight at West
Point, and what a glorious day was that which saw him
laid to rest!
The drives about West Point are endless and most
interesting. From Cranston's it is but a short drive to
Fort Montgomery, most beautiful during the change-
233
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
ful hues of the American Autumn. Those who like to
rise early can walk to Fort Putnam, on the pinnacle of
Mount Independence, nearly five hundred feet above
the river. The person who cares for flowers rather than
for fortifications can drive through the beautiful gar-
dens of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan's country-seat, and see
also his dear doggies, the best kennels in the country,
and, as the sun looks westward the visitor can drive
through the woods of Eagle Mountain to the Point, to
watch the evening parade. As the last rays of the King
of Day leave Bear Hill and the Sugar Loaf out come
those superb young fellows, the cadets. The proof of
what discipline can do-two hundred marching as one
man. Sitting down on a bench in front of the
Superintendent's quarters, I watch the evening parade,
invoking again the "private emotions of the his-
toric sense,
and recall what I have seen on this very
plain. In the late fifties "the three handsome cadets,"
as they were called then, were Jerome Bonaparte,
Lawrence Williams, and G. W. P. C. Lee, son to the
great General of the Southern Confederacy. General
Lee was then the Superintendent, and one of the hand-
somest men in the world. A studious young fellow
named George B. McClellan had gained great fame as a
scholar, and in those years, somewhere down in the
ranks, was a plain boy named Grant. I suppose over
his head the genius of the future was holding the laurel,
but we did not see it then.
Over which youthful head,
O Goddess! watchest thou?
Inspire each manly heart,
Record each faithful vow.
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GENERAL SCOTT AND WEST POINT
}
}
Later on I was to know a handsome cadet, known as
Alexander S. Webb, now a grave General, with a scar
which tells an honorable story. Fitz John Porter, a
very splendid officer, always spick and span, led his
young students to the flying artillery. Major Clitz was
another fine officer and very favorable beau. The echo
is endless.
D'Oremieulx, an extremely accomplished French
gentleman, was Professor of French. Mahan, famous
father of a more famous son, was the companion of
Bartlett, and Church, Davies, Aguel, Kendrick, Cullom,
French-I cannot remember half of them. The dreadful
story of the War comes in and confuses my dates.
But after many years, when I had "waked from
a long sleep of many changing dreams," I came again to
West Point, to see this same illustrious board go from
their seats, before which august tribunal so many gray
jackets had "quaked," to greet Ulysses S. Grant, their
whilom, not too studious scholar, but whose golden
heart and rugged courage and patient brain had saved
his country. It was glorious!
The evening gun dispels all these dreams. The
young Captain says to the officer of the day, as he
marches forward, "Sir, the parade is formed." Then a
little later comes that moment when the young belles'
hearts begin to flutter.
I drive off to look at old Cro' Nest from beautiful
Cragside. As General Morris wrote:
Where Hudson's waves through silvery sands
Wind through the hills afar,
And Cro' Nest like a monarch stands
Crowned with a silver star.
F
235
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
Here an elegant hospitality has reigned for thirty
years. From these portals went forth two noble boys.
to offer their lives to their country. Here has come the
thought, the wit of Gouverneur Kemble, of Paulding, of
George P. Morris, of Willis—of almost every officer and
graduate of West Point; and now a retired soldier, after
honorable record, is spending here, in delightful security
and happiness, the "early evening of industrious days.
There is an anachronism, however. What is that light
which streams up into old Cro' Nest? The flashlight of
that great steamer, the "Adirondack," sends its intrusive
glare into the home and haunts of the "Culprit Fay"
and brings the secret down to Cragside.
Ouf and goblin! imp and sprite,
Elf of eve and starry fay;
Ye that love the morn's soft light,
Hither, hither wend your way!
Twine ye in a jocund ring,
Sing and trip it merrily,
Hand to hand, and wing to wing,
Round the wild witchhazel tree.
This perfect classic was written on the opposite shore
from Cragside by Joseph Rodman Drake, during a ram-
ble in the Highlands, in answer to a challenge of Hal-
leck, that no poem could be written without a human
love story entwined in its meshes, but Drake won the bet.
Undercliff, the seat of George P. Morris, was near
neighbor to Cragside, and is now included in its grounds.
General Morris had a martial soul behind his soft Pan's
pipes, and we hear the shrill fife and the spirit-stirring
drum resounding through his delicate and beautiful
verses. They are consonant to West Point, and its
memories.
Y
236
GENERAL SCOTT AND WEST POINT
George P. Morris was a favorite with all who knew
him. Once Fitz-Greene Halleck called upon me in New
York, in his old age, and I asked him to define for me
"what was poetry and what was prose." Said he:
"When General Morris commands his brigade, and says
'Soldiers, draw your swords,' he talks prose. When he
says 'Soldiers, draw your willing swords,' he talks
poetry." I thought it a very neat definition.
The magnificent cleft of the Hudson through these
historic mountains, the high plain of West Point, is
known to everybody-at least it should be. General
Scott said that there was no such view in the world.
The fine public academic buildings, the beautifully
shaded homes of officers and professors, the statues of
the brave officers who fell in the War, the natural beau-
ties of Flirtation Walk (here the historic sense becomes
confused), the inscriptions cut in the rocks—“sermons
in stones''; the interesting monument to Kosciusko, that
brave Pole, the real Thaddeus of Warsaw to us, "And
Freedom shrieked when Kosciusko fell;" the view
across the river-the old Beverly House, from which
Arnold escaped to the "Vulture"-all, all, is familiar,
yet forever new, and always beautiful.
Around on the neighboring heights across the river
one sees the deserted house of the late distinguished
statesman, Hamilton Fish; the house of Samuel Sloan
and other rich residents, the beautiful estate and fine
grounds of the widow of Judge Pierpont, eminent jurist
and Minister to England. Here lie the remains of their
young son who died in Rome in 1885, in the flower of
his youth, full of promise and of goodness. I knew him
well, and received at his hands much kindness in the
237
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
fr Lampy
Winter which I spent in Rome, the last of his dear
young life.
He was taken with the fever late in the
winter and died six weeks after. I happened to come
north with Mr. and Mrs. W. W. Astor, and at every
station Mr. Astor stopped to get telegrams of the state
of health of "Eddy" Pierpont. Alas! When we
reached Turin they were fearfully sad.
So this becomes now one of the historic memories.
"So much of hope, so much of heartbreak," has al-
ways been associated with West Point since the War.
Spending every June here for many years, I grew to
know the officers who fought on both sides in our Civil
War. It was to me the bulletin of sorrow or of joy,
as I read the daily papers of those dismal years, and as I
listen to the band at evening parade its most joyous
notes become a requiem as I recall the early dead, the
brave and generous youth who so smilingly accepted the
order from headquarters to give up life and love for home
and country.
'Onward, Christian soldiers!
Marching as to war."
The notes of the "Star Spangled Banner" sounding
over our heads, like the silver trumpets of the angels,
fill my heart anew with a noble thrill and a sorrow which
is akin to the highest joy.
238
1
Reminiscences of N. P. Willis
"There is something in a deep crimson rose which
makes me happy. I love all roses, but I am sensible of
a singular exaltation of all my senses when I look into a
deep red one. I think of old George Herbert's line:
"O rose
Whose hue, angry and brave,
Makes the rash gazer wipe his eye."
Thus wrote N. P. Willis to me in the Summer of
1858, and this beautiful excerpt shows how refined and
how delicate were his taste and his expressions.
Now that the anecdotes of him are in the air, I
remember that I am one of the few people living who
knew him and of him in his prime, that I really can
throw more light, perhaps, upon a character so strangely
misjudged by some of those who lived by him and with
him, and so unfairly recorded by those who came after
him, than any one now living.
It is not strange that those who saw Willis superfi-
cially considered him only a dandy and a trifler, for he
was a dandy. He belonged to that age and that imme-
diate phase of civilization which cropped out in England
after George IV had made all the men in love with
small waists and flowing neckgear. Lord Lamington
has put them before us in the "Days of the Dandies.'
The Prince of all these was Count d'Orsay, a man of
239
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
genius, whose sculpture would have won him fame (even
if his clothes had not), but who had that singular prefer-
ence for the title of a King of Fashion to that of man
of genius, and who for twenty years set the fashion in
London as to a hat or an equipage, which had been
done as to waistcoats and neckties by poor Brummell
before him.
When Willis, the son of a Boston clergyman, poor
and struggling, went to England on a very small, precar-
ious income, he was most accidentally and wonderfully
introduced to this set, presided over then by the beauti-
ful Countess of Blessington. It was a supremely lucky
incident for the editor of a struggling newspaper, but an
unlucky one for that sterner style demanded by his
countrymen, who did not know how much this man was
to do for the refinement of manners, letters, and arts in
the then chaotic society of the United States.
I remember well the intense interest with which his
book, "Pencilings by the Way," was greeted in country
neighborhoods, and it is, by the way, now most charm-
ing reading.
Looking back, as I had the privilege of doing last Sum-
mer, in the library of a friend, to the many novels, jour-
nals, and literary labors of the Countess of Blessington,
I felt that I was reading a sort of apology for what was
considered weak, affected, and perhaps sentimental, in
the writings of one of the most industrious, and certainly
one of the most gifted, of our earlier journalists.
Willis had to contend with poverty, and, with the wolf
at the door all his early life, perhaps it was never very far
away.
His "Letters from Under a Bridge" are perfect
240
REMINISCENCES OF N. P. WILLIS
idyls; his love of country life most sincerely respectable;
his economy and sobriety and patient industry most
commendable; and yet a certain dainty attention to
dress, and a certain expression to which his cloud of fair
curling hair lent a suggestion of foppishness, brought
down upon him always the half ridicule of the people,
the public for which he worked so hard.
Had he looked like Dr. Holmes or like Longfellow;
had he gone carelessly dressed; had he had the impress-
ive face of Parke Godwin,-his great talents would have
brought him much more fame, and would have entitled
him to the respect which we now most elaborately give
to the man who showed a heroic and undoubted power
of work and an enviable gift of expression.
But a dainty fellow with pink cheeks and golden hair,
with rather a fat face, with the latest London cut as to
clothes, was always at a disadvantage in those earlier
and hard-working days from 1838 to 1850.
He had known also the disadvantages which men
could never forgive him- he was very interesting to
women. Something of Byron's fascination attended
him, and the man who could write such vers de société as
he could, and at the same time write religious poetry,
and the very beautiful little sad verses on the grave of a
child-
Room, gentle flowers!
My child would pass to heaven,—
a thing not inferior in pathos to Hood's
We watched her breathing through the night,
Her breathing soft and low,
As in her breast the wave of life
Kept beating to and fro-
241
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
such a man, of course, had the open sesame to the
female heart.
And then he made us the confidants of his love for
Mary, his young English wife, whom he so imprudently
married, and for whom Glen Mary was named, from
which he wrote his "Letters from Under a Bridge,'' and
more exquisite letters were never written anywhere-all
this made Willis the adored of the sentimental young
lady. He received all the callow poems, the gooseflesh
first musings, the green apple stories of first love, which
the maidens who wore long curls dangling down in front
of their ears, were writing then.
George Eliot makes her Theophrastus Such say:
"At that time I was dancing a hornpipe, in which I
appeared very badly. What sort of a hornpipe am I
dancing now?" If we could all transplant our past
into our present, and see how much less we think
of our performances now, well it would weed out our
follies!
Well, my verses (my early hornpipe), written behind
those drooping black curls which were fashionable then,
were sent to Willis, and they were sent back again, with
a most hopeful and consolatory note. He thought they
had much feeling, great good taste, promise, etc., and
his regrets, etc.-how well I learned that formula later!
With a generosity most admirable, he asked me to send
him something else. I proudly returned him a criticism on
"Jane Eyre," which had been accepted by The Tribune.
That he did like and commend and copy, and praised
loudly. So I kept on sending many things, to the great
advantage of the United States mail, which was the only
thing which derived any benefit from most of that im-
242
REMINISCENCES OF N. P. WILLIS
1
>
}
i
mature versification, but the kindness, the good advice,
was never wanting from Willis.
About this time he took a great interest in Emily
Chubbuck (dreadful name), and published her letters
under the pseudonym of "Fanny Forester." They were
weak and foolish we all thought (we who had been
rejected). She married Dr. Judson, the missionary,
and wrote a beautiful poem to her first-born,
Ere last year's moon had left the sky,
A birdling sought my Indian nest,
And folded, O! so lovingly,
Her little wings upon my breast;
and then she died, poor thing, and we found out that
she had genius, and that Willis had not been mistaken.
This popular and famous man was severely judged by
the public for his attentions to Mrs. Forrest, the di-
vorced wife of the actor; and strangely enough, I have a
note written at the time of the trial, in which he excuses
himself from calling on me at that epoch because he
is engaged in defending "one less fortunate and less
beautiful."
It is a chivalrous note and does him honor; it would
do me much honor, only that he had never seen me,
then. I had corresponded with him as authors do with
editors, but staying with some friends in New York I
was anxious to see the man who had by this time been
kind to some of my written efforts. I had asked him to
call on me. He was standing very low in public opinion
just then, but he was found to be guiltless, and he rose
perhaps several degrees in public opinion afterward, as
did the Prince of Wales from a similar case.
I never saw him until long afterward in New York,
243
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
when I had been married several years. I met him at
a breakfast given to Willis by Mr. Ruggles, at which
Henry T. Tuckerman and Dr. Bellows were present.
Mary was long since dead, and he had been married
several years to the excellent woman who proved such a
peerless wife to him, at Idlewild. It was no longer the
young dandy, the echo, however remotely, of Count
d'Orsay, but a grave and slender invalid, coughing
behind his hand. The voluminous hair hung about his
cheeks, which now had a painful hectic hue; but he was
handsome and interesting still, and his conversation was
charming. I remember that Dr. Bellows had just writ-
ten his defense of actors, and Willis said, with some
feeling:
"Poor Prynne, in the time of Charles I, lost his ears,
and his nose was slit because he abused actors and plays
and Maypoles and dancing. The gay Court had him
flogged and made him die a terrible death. Now you
and I will be martyred because we do not abuse actors,
but think there is some good in them, they can say, with
Shylock, 'Hath not a Jew flesh?'"
After this breakfast, at which, as Mr. Willis said, "he
and I had broken a long fast and at last had met in the
flesh," I saw much of him at Mrs. Botta's, whose very
dear friend he was, and I heard from him how much he
felt the abuse of the public and the coldness of his sis-
ter, Fanny Fern. She pilloried him in a satirical novel,
angry because he would not publish her letters in The
Home Journal. He was a man of strong domestic
affections, and dearly loved his admirable brother, Rich-
ard Storrs Willis, who had much of the genius and none
of the eccentricities of this gifted family.
1
244
REMINISCENCES OF N. P. WILLIS
•
I was present at many dinners when Willis was the
life of the company, and, although I did not hear the
famous repartee of the Washington dinner so often
recorded, I will record it here. It was Mrs. Gales, I
think, who at one of her own dinners wrote on a card to
her niece at the other end of the table: "Do n't flirt so
with Nat Willis.' She was talking vivaciously herself
Willis replied:
to Mr. Campbell.
"Dear aunt, do n't attempt my young feelings to trammel,
Nor strain at a Nat while you swallow a Campbell”—
That a
probably the quickest-witted couplet on record.
man could turn over a card at a dinner and remember a
text so appropriate was wonderful, and the having a pen-
cil with him (being an author), was still more wonderful.
I once heard him quote with preternatural quickness
-perhaps this, too, was original-these lines:
A lady was complaining to him of her wrinkles. He
immediately improvised the following:
"Oh, talk not to me of the charms of youth's dimples;
There's more sentiment centred in ladylike wrinkles.
They're the triumph of Time, which marks Beauty's decay,
Writing lines to the charms which could not fade away."
Now, if Winthrop Praed had written that, all London
would have been on fire, and have quoted it still. Willis
had the true Italian gift of the improvisatore and the
French facility for "vers de société."
He
Willis was born a century too early for himself. He
had the Amphytrion spirit of Ward McAllister.
had the sense of coming luxury, a pamphlet of his,
written fifty years ago, perfectly foretells the present
state of New York society, then undreamed of.
His attraction as a talker was perfect. His respect
245
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
for others, his ready outpouring of his own surplus for
the duller intellects about him, the great stores of recol-
lections which he had to fall back upon, all made him,
either on his piazza at Idlewild or at a friend's table, the
most agreeable of men.
He had head Tommy Moore sing "Take Hence the
Bowl, Though Beaming." He had awaited his turn to
kiss Lady Blessington's hand after the little poet; he
had hobnobbed with that select company of wits and
beaus and belles so noted in the last memoirs of Greville
and of Henry Crabbe Robinson; he had returned to our
shores when they were dreary enough, and he had
sought to bring with him something of the elegance of
that old world, which he so loved. He had only half
succeeded, and yet he bravely struggled on. Now it is
left for us to discover that there was much that was refined,
and absolutely nothing that was pernicious, in the flood
of daily literature which he poured out. Since he is
gone we learn that no one did him half justice.
Willis occasionally rose to an immortal height. When
General Harrison died, in 1841, after being President
one month, Willis wrote
"What! soared the old eagle to die in the sun?"
-one of the most vigorous and impassioned lyrics in
all our American poetry, all the grief and disappoint-
ment of the American heart was in it. A terrible grief
was the death of General Harrison, the first, to that
great Whig heart which had hoped for him so long.
I met Willis at Washington in 1862, at the tremen-
dously trying moment when McClellan was in command
of Washington as a camp. He was there, I believe,
246
REMINISCENCES OF N. P. WILLIS
writing war letters. I heard that he was a great favorite
at the White House, enjoying the gay company very
much. To show the versatility of the man, I heard him
offer, as there was lack of hairdressers for the great
McClellan ball, to dress the hair of two ladies. He
said, when in London, he had learned to dress his wife's
hair to save the expense, and that he still retained the
facility. So they, rather in joke, allowed him to do it.
He took off his coat, pinned a towel around his waist,
and combed and curled, talking gayly and well all the
time. Perhaps there was lack of dignity in this. Per-
haps he had not a great deal of dignity.
If he had been more of a Turveydrop he would have
enjoyed a higher place in the consideration of his coun-
trymen.
But he was greatly grieved, as we all were, when the
news reached the National Hotel that poor little Tad,
the President's child, had died that day. A ball was
going on when Colonel Hudson brought the news.
Many of us left the gay scene, and Willis walked
with me to my parlor.
I
"Why do you not write an immortal poem?''
asked. "You once wrote a poem on a death at the
White House. Here is another, a sadder, domestic note
of woe; put it in the Jeweled Chalice of your verse.
(Willis once wrote a poem called "The Jeweled Chalice"
and gave it to me.)
"No," said he. "I no longer write poetry. I gave it
up long ago. The muse has deserted me."
I
He once wrote for me a most witty and delightful
anacreontic on the manufacture of punch. I am sorry
have lost it, although I have many of his notes. Charles
247
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
Astor Bristed wrote me another poetic receipt for punch,
which I fortunately still possess. There was another
eccentric genius, who deserves to be remembered.
I never wrote for The Home Journal or for any of
Mr. Willis's publications after those early days, but he
was kind enough to make my sonnet to the memory of
Prescott the subject of one of his most beautiful essays.
He also wrote me a letter of praise on my translation of
Carcassonne. We remained friends, I hope, to the end
of his life, although I saw very little of him, but I
believe him to have been one of the most kindly and
honorable of men. It was, perhaps, easy to laugh at
him, for he had peculiarities which the world is apt to
call flippant and undignified, but at heart he was
neither; he was an earnest worker in the fields he had
chosen; he was an industrious and independent person.
And could his books be republished with “Pencilings
by the Way" as l'envoi, much of that charm which
made George William Curtis's "Arm Chair'' immortal,
would be found in them. Willis was a sort of avant-
coureur of that incomparable man.
248
1
Irving and his Hudson River Home
at Sunnyside
It does not need a bi-centennial to make Irvington
beautiful. It is more like an English park than any spot
on the Hudson, all of which, from Riverdale to Pough-
keepsie, has a park-like aspect. Aristocratic wealth and
old Tory principles began this preservation of fine trees
and pleasure grounds, and the Phillipses and Beekmans,
Van Courtlandts and Clintons, deserve our thanks, that
-now as we drive through bosky dells and antique
avenues, the latter as stately as those dames who inspired
General Washington to some stately love-making-we
can see these unrivaled trees.
The most historic of English parks was created to
give Henry VIII a rural expanse in which to lounge
away his idle hours and to hunt deer, in what is now the
West End of London. Hyde Park remained a royal
park, to which none but the sovereign and his gay court-
iers were admitted, for centuries after Bluff King Hal
had stopped cutting off his wives' heads, and the result
is that the people have gained at last, by reason of this
long-time royal monopoly, a wooded territory where all
may wander at will. Kensington Gardens, contiguous
to and forming a part of Hyde Park, are due to William
of Orange, Queen Anne, and Queen Caroline, the ami-
249
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
able wife of George II, who so complacently endured
the various tastes of her horrid little King. These gar-
dens were the favored walks of the ladies of Queen
Anne, that stupid woman who gave her name to so much
that was brilliant. Here came the fine old bad-tempered
Duchess of Marlborough to rustle her brocades, while
the wits and gossips and politicians of the Augustan age
exchanged polished sarcasms, according to party, as to-
day the wits and politicians who wander up and down
through the wide shaded high roads of Irvington, or who
hold converse at the Ardsley Casino, discuss bimetal-
ism and the Mayor of Greater New York. Given
the trees! That is all we want, and we will again recon-
struct for you the past. London was fortunate in hav-
ing many good tyrants, a power which every city needs,
to make it clean and beautiful, to keep its lungs clear,
and Henry VIII, by consulting his own caprice, became
the benefactor of every cockney who now wanders
through that lovely seclusion by the banks of the Serpen-
tine. To George IV does the public of London owe
that notable system of parks extending from the musty
old Government offices in Whitehall to the suburb of
Kensington.
Regents Park is modern, as it was laid out in 1812
by "Florizel," George IV, who gave it to the people.
This once embraced the famous Primrose Hill, and it is
touched by the secluded cottages of St. John's Wood.
From a pretty street near it George Eliot looked out on
its undulating expanse, and just north of it resided Cole-
ridge, Leigh Hunt, Keats, and Shelley. It is a literary
neighborhood. It is almost reproduced in our new
world by the smooth, broad avenues of Irvington and
250
IRVING AND HIS HOME
winding paths which intersect its noble demesnes, while
wealth and taste have thrown in those comfortable
houses which also shelter the citizen, the poet, the poli-
tician, and the orator. Irvington and Tarrytown are
our Regents Park, where not alone may the tired citizen
come to walk and drive, but where he may come to live,
to bring his family; and he may even import thither his
industries, that those "who serve him for wage" may
breathe the pure air, and look upon the grand expanse of
that river which has in it the capacity of a lake and on its
shores the hillsides of the Rhine. No doubt these early
aristocratic Tories, whom we properly disgraced and
confiscated in 1775, had the visions of Hyde Park in
their minds, as they saved their fine trees and bordered
their parks with shrubbery, and built pretty bridges
embowered in flowers and foliage. No more delightful
walks can be taken than those around what were once
proud old Tory mansions, where the handsome terraces
lead down to the placid river. Those terraces, now
so beautifully copied by the famous Ardsley Casino,
perpetuate for us the best features of English park
scenery.
These picturesque and historic heights are also
crowned with one ruin, that of Bierstadt's famous beau-
tiful house, which commands the remarkable view that
people traveled to his studio to look at. I remember
paying a visit to that hospitable house with Vice-Ad-
miral Gore Jones and his wife. He was at that time
Naval Attaché at Washington. He told me that in all
his travels he had never seen such a river expanse, or
anything more commanding. It is a pity that fire could
not have spared that studio-that house so consecrated
251
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
}
!
to art.
We are not rich in ruins in America. Perhaps
the artist made the best use of his in leaving them where
they are. The distant view of Ardsley Towers is sug-
gestive of the Rhine, while the view of that noble cleft
in the Hudson River, looking upward, is seen from Mr.
Villard's place as we see it who look down from West
Point. In both instances it is one of the most serene
of views.
Even the sunset, that miracle of nature, gains new
charms as it lingers with a rosy scarf fluttering in the
western sky, like a reluctant beauty who leaves the ball-
room with one dance still on her mind.—
'Oh, papa! Stay, papa! Stay a little longer."
Even the sunset coquets with this delicious bit of
earth. But we travel onward toward a church; there is
one memory which in this wooded expanse holds royal
monopoly. It is that of Washington Irving, the great
and gentle genius, the humorist who wrote such English
that we fain turn back to his well-worn pages that we
may know of what power our noble English tongue is
capable.
It was my great good fortune once to drive to Sun-
nyside to pay Mr. Irving a morning visit with the dearest
of my friends (and one of the most valued of his), Miss
Mary Morris Hamilton. On the drive from her father's
house, Nevis (now I believe included in Tarrytown),
the home of the Hon. James A. Hamilton, to Mr.
Irving's, she told me many traits of this man, their
old family friend, and how he drove down, when ap-
pointed Minister to Spain, to ask her brother, Alexander
Hamilton, to go to Spain with him. She told me of
252
IRVING AND HIS HOME
his excellent nieces, who made such a home for him, and
of his attachment to Pierre Irving, his biographer, and
many nice anecdotes.
We stopped, I remember, on our way at Mr. W. H.
Aspinwall's beautiful place. Mrs. Aspinwall gave us an
armful of greenhouse flowers, which we poured out
before Mr. Irving as the old man gave us cordial wel-
come. He was very fond of flowers.
"Ah!" said he, "that is the Deity's idea of how
things should be done! What is the use of our trying
to do anything! Look at the perfection of one single
flower!" And he handled them with delight.
He told us that the day we called was one of his
anniversaries; that he had started fifty years before to go
out with David Ogden to found Ogdensburg. He
described the perils of the journey, often in oxcarts,
through unbroken forests, but they had a gay young
party, who did not mind bruises. "And," said he, “I
was a youngster, and enjoyed it."
Miss Hamilton told him that I had just come from
Mr. Prescott's at Nahant, whereupon he spoke most
nobly of Prescott's Spanish work.
It was inexpressibly fine to hear from lips that had
made Spain familiar to us all these praises of the his-
torian of Ferdinand and Isabella. Indeed, one remem-
bered Irving's own words on "Spanish Romance” in
the tales of the Alhambra.
The annals of the time teem with illustrious instances of high-
wrought courtesy, romantic generosity, lofty disinterestedness, and
punctilious honor that warm the very soul to read of them.
In the present day, when popular literature is running into the
low levels of life and luxuriating in the vices and follies of mankind,
and when the universal pursuit of gain is trampling down the early
253
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
growth of poetic feeling and wearing out the verdure of the soul, I
question whether it would not be of service for the reader occasionally
to turn to those records of prouder times and loftier modes of think-
ing, and to steep himself to the very lips in old Spanish romance.
No Hidalgo of them all was a more perfect incorpora-
tion of "lofty disinterestedness" than Mr. Irving. I
noticed that his three nieces sat listening to him as if
they heard these silvery tones for the first time.
When Miss Hamilton rose to go, Mr. Irving asked us
into his den, and showed us his books, some valuable
autographs, etc., and I ventured to ask for his.
He sat
down and wrote it for me with a funny anecdote, as I
apologized for this tiresome request, and he assisted us
to our carriage with all the grace of that genuine ele-
gance which he has loved to dwell upon in his "Sketch
Book." Indeed, he was ever a stickler for "old-fashioned
gallantry, devoted attentions, and eternal constancy."
He told us about his sleepless nights, saying that he
got up and shaved himself at two o'clock at night, to try
to break the current of his thoughts. "It is a shame,
said he, "that youth, which has so much to enjoy, sleeps
nine hours on a stretch and wakes up reluctantly, while
age, which has nothing to covet but oblivion, must lie
awake with only regrets to keep it company."
This vineclad porch, at which I last saw Washington
Irving standing, is now marked by a dozen gables, and
a great, luxurious modern house expands behind and
around it, all in perfect keeping and beautiful harmony.
His grandnephew, Mr. Irving Duer, the present owner
of the most renowned house in America after Mount
Vernon, thus emblemizes in brick and mortar the
extended mansion which has grown in the American
254
IRVING AND HIS HOME
heart, for its most learned historian, its most delicious
humorist, and its most perfect literary artist.
In the "Author's Farewell," at the conclusion of the
"Sketch Book," published in 1840, Irving uses these
touching words:
"It is my foible, however, to get on such companionable terms
with my reader, in the course of a work, that it really costs me
some pain to part with him, and I am apt to keep him by the hand,
and have a few farewell words at the end of my last volume."
And in this lovable "foible" did Washington Irving
continue for years to pour forth his wit and wisdom, ever
keeping his "reader by the hand," who will not yet let
him go, but who reaches for the delicious pages when-
ever one's busy, hard-working days will permit him to
dream with that happy vagabond, Rip Van Winkle,
radiant with humor and pathos, as he is (made real by
Joseph Jefferson, God bless him!). To smile and weep
over the "Tales of the Alhambra," to dance the "Sir
Roger de Coverley" with the worthy Squire in Brace-
bridge Hall, or to linger with our fascinated sense of
perfection in the classic pages of "A Legend of Sleepy
Hollow." Could I paint for myself a possible Utopia,
it would be to drive all day-a Summer's day-through
the enchanting groves of Irvington and Tarrytown, real-
izing that exquisite description of the American Autumn;
to turn aside to some farmer's precincts; to watch the
"gallant cock," "that pattern of a husband, a warrior,
and a fine gentleman;" to see "those rich fields of wheat,
of rye, of buckwheat, and of Indian corn, and the
orchards burdened of ruddy fruit which surrounded the
warm tenement of Van Tassel" (notice the choice epithet
"warm"); and after such a drive taken under the per-
255
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
fect blue of an American sky, to dine well "on pigeons
snugly put to bed in a comfortable pie, or ducks pairing
cozily in dishes like snug married pairs, with a decent
competency of onion sauce;" after such a dinner to sit
by a wood fire, while a melodious voice should read to
me aloud the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," slowly, in
a drowsy undertone, lingering over each gem of humor
and felicitous phrasing! I think I might be happy. If
I were not, I never deserve to be, but I believe in pos-
sible Utopias.
To drive from Irvington to the church of Sleepy Hol-
low was of course a pious pilgrimage. We stopped a
moment to read the inscriptions on the façade of another
church, to Washington Irving, "Beloved, Honored, and
Revered," and then under those immemorial elms sped
on our way to the church at Sleepy Hollow, made most
renowned by his genius. He has peopled all this scene
as Shakespeare has peopled Venice, with a group which
never dies.
Who walks the Rialto to-day but Shylock
and Jessica, Lorenzo and Antonio and Portia?
Who lives in Sleepy Hollow? Who holds, in mort-
main, the acres of these millionaires? Who patrols the
country but the headless horseman? Who blushes
round the corner but Katrina Van Tassel? And what
heretical disbeliever in ghosts can pass the twisted enor-
mous tulip tree, with its gnarled fantastic limbs, except
to hear at midnight the groans of the unlucky André?
Who bestrides the lean ribs of Gunpowder but "the
poor, affrighted pedagogue, Ichabod Crane," the em-
bodiment of that terror which lingers in us all, as,
hungry and sorrowful, we encounter Life, the unknown,
the mysterious, the disappointing?
"
256
IRVING AND HIS HOME
I
The fame of this most "celebrated short story in the
English language," as Taine calls it, has a curious cor-
roboration in my own limited literary experience.
knew, in Paris, a famous translator of Poe's stories, and
he gave me, in his eloquent French, his experience of
trying to translate Irving's "Legend of Sleepy Hol-
low." "I could not do it," said he; "beyond and
above me everywhere was the untranslatable!
It was
without a parallel; as well try to translate Dante into
French argot.
As for the bi-centennial at the church of Sleepy Hol-
low, we can only say with a kindred spirit, Bryant, who
wrote an ode for his own church at Bridgewater:
Two hundred times has June renewed
Her roses since that day
When here, amid the lonely wood,
Our fathers met to pray.
Beside this gentle stream that strayed
Through pathless deserts then
The calm, heroic women prayed,
The grave undaunted men.
Hymns on the ancient silence broke
From hearts that faltered not,
And undissembling lips that spoke
The pure and guileless thought.
It was of such stock that our Washington Irving
came; his genius was his own, his virtues inherited, and
well may we quote from Bryant again:
The plant they set, a little vine,
Hath stretched its boughs afar
To distant hills and streams that shine
Beneath the Evening Star.
257
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
The preservation of an old church in America has
always a grand significance. This beautiful neighbor-
hood of Irvington begins to blossom with the immortelles.
of statues and memorial stones. We see the names of
Washington and Rochambeau, and of Sir Guy Carleton
-important notched sticks those; we behold the capture
of André and the disgrace of Arnold-the one traitor
whom we pin on the wall. We are pointed out this and
that old house which our Chief honored as his head-
quarters. It is a town of memories. It is the luxurious
home of famous citizens, whose horses might be fed on
golden oats. It is the suburb of a majestic city. Some
of its enterprising citizens are ready to send millions to
far-off Chicago to found universities, others are ready
with open hand to found them here all over the land.
From the silence of Sleepy Hollow one hundred years
ago the sound of a barking dog could be heard across the
river. To-day who shall count the shrieks, up and down
the river, of innumerable trains? Who shall record the
diapason of the hymn of Industry? From the Dutch
calm of Farmer Van Tassel to the incarnate energy of
its present inhabitants, what a flight of the gods! Is
that great Egyptian god Kneuph, who moved over the
face of creation, breathing life into the world, from his
boat which he piloted himself is he here, the hard-
working god? We must call him Steam to-day.
tunate those who have floated into the shady avenues
and flower-bedecked regions of the once Sleepy Hollow
—into the church where Washington Irving worshiped
God-those who have inherited these blissful valleys.
For-
258
IRVING AND HIS HOME
Ours are their fields, those fields that smile with Summer's latest
flowers;
Oh, let their fearless scorn of guile, their love of truth, be ours!
It is astonishing, as we turn back in the pages of
Irving's own fascinating work, to read anew the very
sensible essay "On English Writers on America."
might well be spoken to-day:
It
Why are we so exquisitely alive to the aspersions of England?
Why do we suffer ourselves to be so affected by the contumely she
has endeavored to cast upon us? It is not in the opinion of England
alone that honor lives and reputation has its being. The world at
large is the arbiter of a nation's fame; with its thousand eyes it wit-
nesses a nation's deeds, and from their collective testimony is National
glory or National disgrace established.
For ourselves, therefore, it is comparatively of but little import-
ance whether England does us justice or not; it is perhaps of far
more importance to herself. She is instilling anger and resentment
into the bosom of a youthful nation, to grow with its growth and
strengthen with its strength. If in America, as some of her writers
are laboring to convince her, she is hereafter to find an invidious
rival and a gigantic foe, she may thank those very writers for having
provoked rivalship and irritated hostility. Every one knows the all-
pervading influence of literature at the present day, and how much
the opinions and passions of mankind are under its control. The
mere contests of the sword are temporary, their wounds are but in
the flesh, and it is the pride of the generous to forget and forgive
them, but the slanders of the pen pierce to the heart, they rankle
longest in the noblest spirits, they dwell ever present in the mind,
and make it morbidly sensitive to the most trifling collision.
And SO on through the whole of this most noble
paper we read how wise, and how judicious and how all-
round, was Irving's mind. It was the more wonder-
ful because he was a natural-born funny man, whose
tendency, like that of Charles Lamb, leaned to quip and
quirk and the fantastic view of things, whose philoso-
phy was bounded by a laugh. That he could have had
259
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
the calm philosophy to write such a paper as this, and
to rise to the dignity of "The Life of Washington," is
most astonishing.
Pleasant reading to-day, is his "Life of Goldsmith."
With the clairvoyance of genius, Irving saw all the short-
comings and absurdities of the man of many gifts, all
of which he was to escape himself, for Irving seems to
have had no weaknesses-a strange thing to say of so
loveable a man! But he had a tender spot in his heart
for poor Noll, and one can but believe that Irving
enjoyed writing that biography, with its old-fashioned
epigrams and the retorts of Johnson and Mrs. Thrale,
Garrick and Beattie. The "Philosophic Vagabond”’
who could write "The Vicar of Wakefield” and “She
Stoops to Conquer" pleased Irving, who was a well-reg-
ulated old bachelor, always well dressed, and who always
paid his debts. There is something very dear to us in
our opposites.
How much to be envied are those who recently
attended the bi-centennial of the church of Sleepy Hol-
low and who have before them the pleasure of reading
the works of Washington Irving for the first time! It is
the privilege of the young to open "The Sketch Book,"
the "Tales of the Alhambra," and the "Life of Wash-
ington;" to read "The Conquest of Granada," that
most romantic of histories; to linger over the fascinating
"Life of Mohammed," more like what a three-volume
novel ought to be than anything we have from the sen-
sational press, its only drawback being that it is all true.
How we envy them, these travelers to an old, ever-new
Klondike, where, without cold or hunger or hope deferred,
they may pick up nuggets of gold and enter into the
260
IRVING AND HIS HOME
fairyland of a mind which was as sweet and wholesome
as the gardens of Sunny Side, with a sweep as noble as
that of the broad river which bathes its banks, that
Hudson River which Irving loved. "It is an honest
river," he says of it, "with no quicksands or hidden
rocks."
261
Dinners with George Bancroft
Before the war-1856, 1859, 1860, and so on-I
used to dine very often with Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft, at
their delightful villa in Newport, which was always the
scene of an elegant and quiet hospitality. I now recall
(with the aid of my little book) one dinner at which
Mme. de Limburg (Belle Cass), the daughter of General
Cass, was present. And she was very brilliant that
day. Mr. Bancroft called her "Belle," and they began
to talk about the coming in of anti-slavery ideas, which
neither of them enjoyed.
So was
Mrs. Van Buren, the daughter-in-law of the Presi-
dent, a very dignified woman, was present.
Mrs. Curtis, the stepmother of George William Curtis,
a very lovely woman, who was said to have suggested
the character of Prue, in one of his most delightful
books. Mr. Curtis's devotion to this lady was SO
filial, tender, and true, that she used to say to her
own sons: "I hope you will treat me when I am old
as well as your brother George does." It was a beau-
tiful refutation of the opinion that stepmothers must be
necessarily hated.
Mr. Bancroft, having been in the Cabinet of Mr.
Polk, could not meet the Northern heart on the subject
of the election of Lincoln; therefore, after a few min-
utes, politics were dropped, although I remember that
Mrs. Van Buren spoke her mind quite freely on the
202
DINNERS WITH GEORGE BANCROFT
other side. So we talked of the Misses Berry, in Lon-
don, of whose famous salons both Mr. and Mrs. Ban-
croft had many brilliant reminiscences. There were
some English people present, and the character and per-
sonality of Taglioni, the celebrated danseuse came up.
One of these ladies had sent her daughters to Taglioni
to learn to dance, and I afterward saw a most graceful
woman in London in the salon of Lady Constance
Leslie, who was a beautiful dancer. She had learned
of Taglioni. I think this was a daughter of Lady
Chandos Pole.
"Taglioni told me," said Mr. Bancroft, "that Eng-
lish girls were awkward because they were timid. 'I
made them natural and at ease, and they became grace-
ful at once.
"What was her history?" I asked. "I only knew
that she danced so lightly that it seemed a trouble for
her to return to earth."
"It was," said Mr. Bancroft, "as if she flew upward
like a butterfly, but came back to earth unwillingly.
She was married to Count de Voisins in 1834. He made
her unhappy, and the brilliant creature went from her
triumphs on the stage to abuse at home. She had one
beautiful daughter, the Princess Troubetskoy, whom I
have seen at various Courts of Europe, and a noble sol-
dier son in the French army; but, although she was poor
after her life of industry, she preferred a life of labor in
England to living on her children, for whom she had
spent a fortune. She had a most interesting home. I
asked her if she had any relics of Rossini. 'Oh, yes,'
said she, showing me a drawing by Chalms of the ‘Tyro-
lienne' in 'William Tell.' 'Rossini composed that opera
263
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
for me, at my own place, in my own house, while I
looked on and wondered. When I look at the wonder-
ful "Neapolitaine" I think of glorious Rubini, and of
how badly he danced before he sang so divinely.
"And let me tell of her shoes," said Mrs. Bancroft;
"they were all sewed round with packthread, in a sort
of button-hole stitch, which she had done to keep them
firm. She showed me a pair which she had worn at the
great triumph in 1842 at St. Petersburg. And she
showed us the golden wreath given her at the close of a
Milan triumph, with all her favorite parts inscribed on
golden leaves, the silver group of Diana and Endymion,
presented at the close of the Lumley period, and a testi-
monial from the 'Dandies,' of the time of d'Orsay,
in which Lord Lammington's name, was conspicuous.'
One of the English couples at the table had brought
a letter from Lord Lammington to Mr. Bancroft, so
this was a very apt anecdote.
"And do not forget her case of beautiful things,
George," said Mrs. Bancroft-"a fan from the Countess
Nesselrode and her bracelets from the Emperor of Rus-
sia.''
said
"I will leave that to your more facile tongue,
the historian. "I prefer to remember her Golden Book,
the roll of her victories, from the press, especially
the one rare Punch of 1846, with the 'Taglioni Treaty,'
in which all the powers are represented bringing bags of
gold to lay at the feet of La Sylphide, the victorious
Lumley bringing the heaviest, largest satchel of all."
"I remember seeing the 'Pas de Quatre,' " said
Mme. de Limburg.
"So do I," said several voices.
264
DINNERS WITH GEORGE BANCROFT
"But I was more impressed with the woman, who
after such a career, could appear again in the gloomy
regions of Connaught Square as a teacher of dancing.
"What an enviable temperament she must have had!
You see, she could come down to earth again," said
Mrs. Van Buren.
"Yes, thirty years of retirement, the loss of fortune,
the memory of past triumphs-none of these things had
made her ill-tempered," said Mme. de Limburg.
The conversation wandered off to the Court of Vic-
toria and the royal children, whom Mrs. Bancroft had
seen in their nursery. She described the little Prince of
Wales, with his hair freshly brushed, being brought in,
with his nurse, to see her, and a noble Englishwoman-
it might have been Lady Palmerston-courtesying to
the ground as this child entered the room. It struck
on her American sense queerly.
She
Mrs. Bancroft had great talent as a raconteuse.
was quite beautiful then, with a very pretty mouth, and
she adored Mr. Bancroft. Her kinsman, George T.
Davis, of Greenfield, the wittiest talker of his day, said:
"She has been married twice, and has been an admirable
wife. But now she is in love, for the first time in her
life." I think Mrs. Bancroft grew old more gracefully
than any one I ever saw. In her very old age Major
Alexander Bliss, her admirable son, gave me a lovely
photograph of her, which I keep with fidelity.
Bancroft used always to say at dinner: "Betsey, will
you have fish?" To which she said, gravely, "No,
I thank you;" and then she would turn to some
one, with her pretty smile, and say: "He knows I never
take it, but we go through this form every day."
Mr.
265
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
Her dinners were remarkably nice, but not at all
equal to the splendors of the modern dinner table. There
were no flowers used in those early days, but exquisite
damask, plain, solid silver, candles, and the finest cut
glass. She declaimed against embroidered and laced
tablecloths, colored velvet under the épergne, and laced
napkins and doilies. She was a handsome, dignified,
elegant Boston lady, somewhat prim.
At this particular dinner Mr. H. T. Tuckerman was
present, and we talked much of Rogers and his break-
fasts, of which Mr. Bancroft had many anecdotes. He
thought their agreeability singularly overrated, although
he acknowledged that they had brought him to know
some famous men.
Lady Palmerston he found most fascinating. "The
most singularly tactful person," he said; "and she intro-
duced me to Grisi." Then he added some anecdotes of
Grisi, "whose arms were those which the Venus of Milo
had lost," and who said of her daughters, when some
one called them her "Grisettes," "No, they are my Mari-
onettes.''
"She was greatly in love with Mario," said Mr. Ban-
croft, "and it improved her acting.
"He was not in love with her, which injured his,'
said Mme. de Limburg.
"Oh, he was a stupid fellow," said Mr. Bancroft,
"vox et præterea nihil."'
"But that was enough," said Mme. de Limburg;
"what a voice!"
Mr. Bancroft was very fond of music. I used to go
to the opera with him for many winters, when he had
two seats in the front row of the orchestra at the old
266

George Bancroft,
George Bancroft in 1863.
UNIV
OF
MICH
DINNERS WITH GEORGE BANCROFT
Academy of Music, on a line with Mrs. Belmont's box,
in which she, a vision of beauty, always sat, the fairy
queen of fashion.
Over our heads, just beyond in the
upper proscenium box, was Mrs. Robert Cutting, hand-
some, and a great authority in music. Around her was
always a galaxy of beauty-Mrs. Heywood Cutting and
Mrs. Brockholst, and a number of dark, elegant Cutting
men, "the rose and the expectancy of the fair state.
Sometimes the party was reinforced by the more beauti-
ful Mrs. Lloyd Aspinwall, the wife to the General.
Opposite to us, would be the Baron and Baroness.
von Hoffman, while right over our heads, were Col.
Henry G. Stebbins and his family. He educated Clara
Louise Kellogg, who was an admirable Marguerite be-
fore Nilsson, and good in everything.
In these days the great Italian artist Salvi, was the
incomparable tenor, and Steffanoni, wonderful singer,
with her veiled voice, gave us the renowned rendering of
the "Lucrezia Borgia," which I have never heard
excelled. Piccolomini also sang-the little niece of the
Pope, as she proudly claimed to be; and the great, too
early lost, Parepa Rosa, came later on.
Mr. Bancroft was exceedingly fond of the opera and
Mrs. Bancroft did not care for it. "Will you go, and
amuse George?" she would say to me. So I went, a
young woman, fond to folly of Italian music, and not.
afraid of the night air (then)! This and many a dinner
later on at their delightful house in West Twenty-first
Street, brought me to know this wonderful and many-
sided man very well. His memory was phenomenal.
After the Newport dinner we all went to a beautiful
ball at the Bareda mansion, where we met Mr. Tom
267
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
Appleton and many another Boston person.
It seems
to me that Philadelphia and Boston people came to
Newport then more than the New Yorkers. I remember
a distinguished quartet who used to play whist at the
Fillmore Mrs. Walden Pell, Mrs. James Otis (very
handsome, with beautiful hands), Mr. E. S. Willing,
and Mrs. Jones McCall (a charming Southerner from New
Orleans). They were all quite worthy of the legends of
Court life under Louis XV, elegant devotees of whist.
While there was no such luxury as at the present, there
was far more stately grace to these Newport seasons tham
there has been since. Mrs. Sidney Brooks, who built
the stone house now belonging to Mr. Bennett (I
believe), was a Miss Dehon, of Boston, a scholarly,
accomplished woman, worthy to be sister-in-law to
Edward Everett. Indeed, she always had rather a
classic style in her conversation. Mrs. Viele, a ram-
pant wit of those days, said of her: "I had a meeting
with Mrs. Sidney Brooks yesterday, she with forty
curls on the side of her face, I with no curls at all. We
had a little gossip about Copernicus, in which I fared
very badly.'
Mrs. Brooks would never call on her near neighbor,
Mrs. Paran Stevens, of the Marietta villa, which caused
the latter to shed many tears. And later on, Mrs. Cul-
lum and Mrs. Astor both refrained from calling on that
hospitable woman, whose victory over society was
accomplished by so much bloodshed that it recalled the
Duke of Wellington's remark that "there was but one
thing more terrible than a defeat, and that was a vic-
tory." Mr. Sidney Brooks, an elegant Boston gentle-
man and a cultivated person, was more lenient than his
268
DINNERS WITH GEORGE BANCROFT
wife, and would have floated with the tide, but she,
never! Give one a woman for tenacity of purpose.
They gave most charming dinners at what Mr.
Brooks called Sebastopol, his stone villa, and Mrs. Bel-
mont was often at his right hand.
Indeed, it was an aristocratic, proud, exclusive, par-
ticular, little circle, not as gay, perhaps, as the one
which Mr. Travers and Mr. McAllister made later, but
well worth remembering, with its very decided features
of an ideal summer resort.
While Mr. Bancroft was
was Minister to Germany,
Prof. Fairman Rogers hired his villa, and took good
care of Mr. Bancroft's roses, which Mr. Bancroft, in
common with his fellow-historian Parkman, delighted in
cultivating. This was an improvement upon the Roman
Emperor's task, who cultivated cabbages; and one can
scarcely refrain from wishing to put in his garden the
offshoot of one of these bushes, which had such learned
hands at their roots.
→.
I never heard Mr. Bancroft talk "history" but once,
and then he gave us a really amusing account of his
bouts with "revolutionary grandsons."
269
Flotsam and Jetsam
Having just seen an illustrated paper of Newport in
Mr. Lorillard Spencer's Pictorial for August, 1897, I
find much that I had forgotten, of this most famous
watering-place, coming back like seaweed floating in,
to a memory which always refuses to let go, that, which
is comparatively of no importance, I do not remember
valuable dates of history very well, but I might open a
little book which will be of value in 1997-accounts written
(at the time) of Newport dinners and festivals, a journal
of "seventeen visits to Newport," ranging from the
beginning of time to the present moment, 1897.
What a little snug town it was, when I first saw it, in
1848, and long after, with only a few villas, stretching
down on Bellevue avenue, from Beaulieu to Finisterre,
the home of the Brewers.
I open vaguely at the date "August 21, 1879, "and will
go backward and forward as I pick out interesting items.
"The present rainy season makes this record particularly
timely, showing that St. Swithin was not born yester-
day.
"Monday evening was Mrs. Morton's great ball,
and every one wanted to go. To us, who did go,
the journey was perilous, as the water came down on
the top of the carriage like Niagara, and the wind
nearly blew us over. However, the elegance of the
house and the cordiality of the hostess, the charming
270
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM
beauty of the débutantes, and the perfection of the
arrangements, made one forget the howling night until
it was time to go home. The cottagers who lived far
off had fearful experiences." Col. De Lancey Kane had
to take the reins and send his coachman down to feel for
a bridge. Those who had to cross the causeway trem-
bled as their carriages swayed to and fro. The fury of
the wind shook their houses, threatening to demolish
them. Altogether, it was a fearful night, and the beau-
tiful tent which presented such an "Arabian Nights"
entertainment at Mrs. Fred Stevens's on Friday evening
previous, and which was left for the next Friday, blew
over and demolished the fairy-like arrangement of fes-
toons, Japanese fans, ferns, smilax, and pillars of ice,
with vines growing over them which ornamented its
interior."
This idea was perhaps taken from an entertainment
given by the Swedish minister at Washington in 1874.
They look like diamonds, these Arctic pillars, when
illuminated by a thousand lamps. They cool the air,
and present a glacier-like effect when covered with vines.
They remind one of Switzerland as the glittering ice runs
down into the green valley, the crocuses growing at their
feet.
"However, the howling storm did not content itself
with blowing down the tent alone. Some of Mr.
Charles H. Russell's fine trees went next, and there was
incalculable mischief done to the flowers and green-
houses.
However, by four in the morning the skies were.
clear, and Jupiter-the morning star-was smiling and
laughing down upon the little world which he had
271
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
helped to perturb, like a malignant, but handsome,
giant.
Tuesday was so glorious that all Newport went forth
to see the sea, which was in a fine state of unrest. Some
merman Byron was stirring up his fellows to utter the
great poem of discontent. It was all so fine that one
forgot the storm.
The Town and Country Club held a meeting at Mr.
John N. A. Griswold's delightful house, to hear Mr.
Atkinson read a paper on "Distinguished Boys." It
was clear, original, and pleasing, giving us the stammer-
ing little Elia, Charles Lamb, the lame little Sir Walter,
the handsome, unhappy Noel Byron, who, with true
schoolboy instinct, cried when his master called out
"Dominus" after his name. No schoolboy will forget
what martyrdom that meant to the fourth form. The
coming gibes of his schoolfellows struck on his pro-
phetic soul. Mr. Atkinson said that "Byron was half a
Philistine and half a poet. I did not agree with this
criticism, for I consider Byron very much of a whole
poet.
"Lord of himself, that heritage of woe," he showed
his sense when he cried at being called "Dominus.'
But it was a good paper, and Mrs. Julia Ward Howe,
always witty, said some pungent things about it, and
declared that the next meeting would be at her house,
and that some "good girls' would follow the "distin-
guished boys," from which we hope that she is to read a
paper herself.
"Captain Candy, an eccentric Englishman, has made a
sensation by riding his horse into the club! This gentle-
man, who is half a centaur (on this occasion he forgot
272
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM
that he was not wholly one), was on a polo pony, and,
suffering from the ennui of a rainy morning, accepted an
invitation from a young man on the piazza, who said,
'Come in with your pony.' He immediately, in that
spirit of practical joking and dare-devil courage which
seems to possess a certain class of young Englishmen,
rode up a very shallow set of steps on the club veranda
and off again. An hour after he was expelled by the
older governors, and has been severely criticised for a
breach of etiquette. He apologized, and was reinstated
last evening.
"When people say that he would not have done that
thing in his own country, I disagree, for an eccentric
Englishman will do anything in his own country if his
fancy moves him that way.
A very different order of Englishman is Mr. T. Bay-
ley Potter, visiting Mr. Cyrus W. Field, who has a
house here this summer. The great free-trader enjoyed
a lunch at Mr. Field's on Tuesday. Mr. C. H. Russell,
Mr. Morton, General Potter, and the Butler Committee
met him. He made a neat little speech, and expressed
acknowledgment of his admiration for the Stars and
Stripes, which he said he should dislike to have disap-
pear from foreign waters. The Butler Committee were
entertained at dinner by Governor Lawrence. Some
foolish women were asking "what they were here for,"
when one of them answered, "We are holding a com-
mittee which will cost ten thousand dollars to investi-
gate an office which is worth two thousand dollars."
There is a line of wrecks along the shore. Several
fishermen lost their little all. Weeping women are sit-
ting on the rocks lamenting the loss, and looking, per-
273
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
haps, for some vestige of the frail boat which sailed.
between them and starvation.
For men must work and women must weep,
While the harbor bar is moaning!"
Many suggestions are made that these gay young
gentlemen of Newport should get up tableaux and cha-
rades, by the proceeds of which they can buy a new boat
for an old fisherman. Mrs. Wheeler, the daughter of
Governor Lawrence, will superintend these entertain-
ments.
A young man, who wears a bracelet and is other-
wise a very dilettante youth, saved a drowning man on
Monday evening, with splendid bravery and heroic self-
forgetfulness. This makes one think of the fop in his-
tory, and of the affectations which brave men enjoy. I
met one of these modern Vikings last evening faultlessly
attired. He took much pains to tell me as he was lolling
in a chair, that he was going to Norway fishing, and that
he always took a great deal of orange marmalade and his
own tea with him. As he was as big as Siegrist, as
strong as Thor, and as splendid as Amri, I was amused
to hear him dilate on this attention to his little comforts.
I knew he could subsist, if he chose to do so, for years
on blubber and whale oil, and wrapped in a sealskin
could sleep on an iceberg all winter. I thought of those
heroes from whom he is remotely descended, who drank
their mead out of the skulls of their enemies, while this
fop measures the thinness of his tea-cup to that of an
egg-shell. I imagine he carries along a bag as big as a
writing-desk with implements for cleaning his nails, but
on occasion he could twist those implements into fish-
hooks with his one "Guy Livingston" right hand.
愛
​274
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM
Newport is one long panorama of luxury, healthy
summer pleasure, and dreamy delight, and again, of the
dolce far niente. It is more what you do not do than
what you do do.
do do. I remember Channing's beautiful
tribute to its climate: "Nothing ever did for me what
Newport did; the rest, the rest, the repose! its romantic
soft charm. It is a pillow of rose leaves." Add to
these, memories of "Queen's Hythe," the little.
harbor, the French officers, those beautiful Hunters, the
chapter of Jewish history and beneficence, the old
haunted houses, the princely merchants like Malbone, the
three artists of renown, Stuart, Malbone, and Staigg—
who was the most famous of miniature painters, thirty
years ago, and who was taught to paint by Miss Jane
Stuart herself, are distinguished landmarks.
This lady,
I met first at a ladies' lunch, of twenty-five fashionables,
she in her old bonnet and gown, and plain face-she was
the most honored, famous woman of them all. She said
to me: "You look like a Stuart picture; if you will
come to my house and sit for me I will paint your
portrait. I alone have the secret of my father's red and
white." I went, and the enjoyment I felt in her con-
versation remains still, as does the portrait, very badly
drawn, but beautifully colored. I tried to make her
talk of her father. "He was very homely, like me,'
she said, "and he spent his money outside, leaving
only a few pictures to his wife and daughters. He said
that Mrs. Washington was very corn-fed." I did not get
an amiable picture of Gilbert Stuart from her, but I
learned to respect her fine, independent character, her
wit, and her most amusing, sarcastic talk.
She copied
her father's pictures well and often. This amid the
275
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
reminiscences of old Newport and memories of its ban-
ished prosperity and slumber, of fifty years, to be followed
by this great wave of fashion, and progress, all go by with
me, as I take the ocean drive and fill the sunset with
strange figures from imagination now.
An old friend told me that her mother, who was
a de Wolfe, told her that she remembered well see-
ing the cargoes of slaves first brought in a slaveship!
(the noble traffic of our Northern merchants!) allowed to
cool their poor feet in the waves, sitting along the
wharves, to try and forget the heat, the constraint, and
the sorrow of the middle passage. She said their faces,
which she looked at as a little child, would haunt her
to her grave.
Perhaps it will do us no harm to remember that group,
and, while we are rejoicing that the slaveship never
comes to Newport now, to remember that everywhere
there are suffering, cramped destinies and weary souls.
whom, perhaps, we may cheer some day.
So far from my old journal! I will not quote much
more from any one date, except to say that it shows us
here how much we forget. There is an account of the
good horse Parole, who had in April won for his owner,
Mr. Pierre Lorillard, $118,000, and of whom we talked
at dinners. Who remembers Parole now?
But every one remembers the splendid balls which
Mrs. Lorillard used to give at The Breakers, "herself the
fairest flower," and the grand picnics of Mr. Bennett,
most hospitable of hosts. My first clambake had been
many years before, but Mr. Bennett's surpassed them all.
"The Duke of Beaufort had a bass before him which
weighed forty pounds. He had caught it himself.
It
276

Mrs. Sherwood, from a painting by Jane Stuart.
UNIV
MICH
OF
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM
was dressed by Mr. Bennett's chef, a man of fine feeling,
who would have been capable of killing himself if the fish
had not arrived (at the picnic). But there it was “in the
fish;" inspiring many an amateur Izaak Walton to tell
of his triumphs. Mr. Charles Strong brought in one
from West Island, weighing fifty-eight pounds, and fre-
quently there is a capture of one that turns the scale (or
the scales) at one hundred pounds. West Island was
then the scene (in 1879) of these scaly triumphs.
"Forced, like a Hessian, from his native soil
To seek destruction in a foreign broil,"
the Newport fish has to go down to New York to be pre-
sented in the market, then returned to Newport, before
he can be eaten. It is a very great shame.'
I find that I met a good amateur poet, my friend,
Edward Tuckerman Potter, architect, musician, con-
noisseur, who read a charming poem called "The
Soldan, at Mrs. Julia Ward Howe's. Mr. S. Hall
Powell read a paper on the microscope.
Shall I descend to a description of what dress was
then? From philosophy and Bishop Berkeley to a “tale
or tail, of gowns"-what a descent! The gowns were
awfully splendid, according to my little yellow book.
"A strawberry cream chintz, and a Gainsborough
hat."
"A black silk with cuirass waist covered with gold,
ay, a network of gold;" or, better still, "a pale blue
India mull with white embroidery." Sleeves were tight
and trains were long, and there was a bustle of consider-
able dimensions.
There
There was no casino, and no lawn tennis.
was much talk of this belle and that beau. The words
277
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
"snob and nob" rang loudly, and "good form and posi-
tion, and bad lot and no position," all of which amused
the Englishmen. They did not realize that "position"
meant more to an American than to any one else.
As I turn over the pages of the little book, Ï find
accounts of dinners at Mr. Bancroft's, each a bit of his-
tory; lectures by Dr. Ellis, most delightful; many
receptions, with dancing and singing, and beginning as
far back as 1857, when Brignoli sang with the beauti-
ful Mrs. Yznaga (mother of the Duchess Consuelo), at
the Bellevue-or was it the Fillmore? A lovely woman
and a lovely voice! I did everything, but mention
dates. I am generally bad about dates, my reminiscences
(penciled down the next morning) fail to tell where I
was at the moment. As I visited one dear friend in five
different houses, this is confusing.
But there is enough left to make a volume, and if this
one unimportant season has held such keys to pleasant
memories, I hope that others may do better.
I met,
in 1882, President Arthur at Newport (indeed, I once
met (in 1850 I believe), Henry Clay there). My recol-
lections may hold some agreeable surprises for those now
living who remember, and for those who like to be told
of their ancestors.
One of my most agreeable reminiscences of Newport
is a visit to Miss Catharine Wolfe, the Baroness Burdett-
Coutts of that period, of New York. Not only had
she then given a chime of bells to Grace church, but her
private munificence was so wonderful, so silent, her con-
tributions to all worthy objects so magnificent; yet she
found time to help poor and gifted girls. I find among
my papers this allusion to one of them:
278
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM
"Heard at a musical party last night a fine contralto.
It was that of Miss O'Keefe, a protégée of Miss Catha-
rine Wolfe, who has given her her musical education. It
was a superb voice, reminding me of Antoinette Sterling.
Frederic Clay says that he has not heard in London or
Paris such amateurs as in New York.'
Miss Wolfe went on spending her vast fortune well,
and her beautiful house at Newport she had hoped would
always remain in her family, but, alas! its wealthy owner,
her favorite nephew, chose to live abroad. Newport is
no continuing city, and of the friends I knew first, no
one is living in the same house in which he lived then,
or, perhaps, only three houses are even in the same fam-
ily. The longest continuous resident is my dear and
hospitable friend, Mrs. C. N. Beach. Death has taken
many, many, but love of change has taken many more.
How well I remember the beautiful garden parties given
by Miss Fanny Russell at her father's splendid place,
where a perpetual, gorgeous supper-dinner-tea went on
for hours of the golden afternoon! How well I remem-
ber also the glories of the first coach-and-four drive
which I took with Mr. Fairman Rogers, when a coach-
and-four was something very new in Newport!
But, like the waves of the sea, these recollections
overwhelm me, and I must stop. It is not, however, all
flotsam and jetsam. There are still some gems and
some beautiful seaweed in my little book.
Prof. Fairman Rogers had what was then called
(1879) one of the show places of Newport. It certainly
was beautiful enough, within and without, to satisfy
most people, yet I hear that it has been taken down and
a finer house erected on the perfect site. There was
279
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
and is a little dimple in the sea, as it caresses the shore,
in front of this place, which is one of the most charming
things in Newport. This parlor was considered very
pretty, even splendid, in its day, but fashions have
changed that tufted round seat is now relegated to the
steamboats. The papers have been full of the gorgeous.
entertainments given in this house by its present owners,
Mr. and Mrs. A. J. Drexel, of Philadelphia. Mr. and
Mrs. George W. Wales had a very beautiful house full
of exquisite china near Finisterre, now a palace owned
by Mrs. Brooks.
Cer-
I once heard a fine lecture by Dr. George Ellis, on
Bishop Berkeley, in a room which was, I believe,
modeled after their famous dining-room in Boston.
tainly, it was very full of china. I suspect this house
remains unchanged.
From Mrs. Julia Ward Howe's simple cottage, six
miles out of town, full of "plain living and high think-
ing," from Mr. George Calvert's plain little bungalow in
Catherine street, where Rubens' pictures hung on the
walls, up to Beaulieu and Beachwood, the distance was
even then great; but who shall describe the distance
between even those fine places and Mr. Ogden Goelet's
superb Italian villa, to the gorgeous "Marble House,'
and to the unapproachable magnificence of Mr. Cornelius
Vanderbilt's splendid villa, within and without, nous
avons changé tout cela! Tout passe, tout casse, tout lasse!
280
The Decadence of the American
Watering-Place
The universal note as to the agreeability of watering-
places is, this Summer, one of despair. I have a letter
from the beautiful, fashionable mother of many fair
daughters before me, and she writes a jeremiad on this
subject:
Newport is very stupid, not a man there; and Narragansett has
exploded, gone out, nobody there. We are now at Saratoga; and the
girls, who have been in Europe several years at school, and who have
heard me describe my once old delightful days here, are calling me
a dreamer and an optimist. I think they would call me a worse name
if they dared. But why is it that the world has deserted this conve-
nient, healthful, and most lovely place, Saratoga? Where are all the
people? Where is that life that you and I led as young girls, when
even Niagara was utilized as a watering-place, and when G. P. R.
James said that it was "the only watering-place in America that was
not as dry as a bone?" Do you not remember the army of colored
waiters at the three o'clock dinner, coming in in single file with each a
dish, headed by an Indian (the best head-waiter I ever saw), and how
we met the gay fashion at Niagara, and how we danced at the Clifton
House and went out to look at the lunar rainbow by moonlight? Do
you remember the two houses at Newport, the Bellevue and the Fill-
more, one of which was governed by Mrs. Walden Pell, and the other
by Mrs. Julius Pringle; and what belles we were! and how our Sum-
mer, we divided thus: June at West Point, July at Saratoga, the gay-
est of the gay, governed by Mrs. Rush, of Philadelphia, (with Frank
Waddell for a Beau Nash) and August at Newport; our yellow and
pink muslins, the elderly dames in brocade and diamonds? Do you
remember those Southern beauties, with a new dress for every day
281
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
t
while they stayed? Do you remember Long Branch, with How-
land's, full of most aristocratic Philadelphians? There surely was
no lack of the eligible beau there. I remember a ball at Newport,
given by Mme. Barreda, who built the house now called Beaulieu-
what a dream of splendor we thought that! I know it has always
been the home of hospitality ever since, but I doubt if the girls of to-
day have as enviable a time as we did.
As for the smaller watering-place hotels, so many of them are
now closed which I once knew; but even those which are open have
more servants than guests. Where is everybody?
You remember that, after Newport (where we spent August), we
went to West Point in September. There we met General Scott at
Cranston's. What a scene of unbridled dissipation we thought that,
when we danced every evening with an officer in uniform, and our
shoulders got fearfully scratched with their dear epaulets! Gallant
fellows, were they not?
Now, my girls are not having any such chances. Cranston's is
as picturesque as ever, and well kept, but there are no officers, at least
who come down here to flirt. Then, fashion has deserted West Point
and Cupid has left town. He must be sulking near Mount Ida or in
dull Boeotia. That reminds me even that poor little Greece has col-
lapsed, and we shall read of it hereafter in an encyclopædia some-
thing in this wise:
44
Greece, a forlorn peninsula, once visited by Byron. See Byron's
Poems, in three volumes.
etc.; also,
44
The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece,
Where burning Sappho loved and sung.'
"Maid of Athens, ere we part,
Give, oh, give me back my heart.""
Thus, Greece, a finished volume.
I think that is "all in the air" since I see the change in watering-
place life in America. No one of my poor girls will be asked by any
young man to "give him back his heart." Where are all the young
men? We hear that they are in the Adirondacks; but we went there
last summer-we found nobody but guides.
My friend says very much more, comparing the fading
away of the life, once so amusing, of the American
watering-place. She will wind up at Newport for
August, and find it gay, no doubt, and will manage at
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DECADENCE OF THE WATERING-PLACE
Tuxedo or Southampton, or at the Ardsley Casino, or
some other attractive spot, to get through with Septem-
ber and October.
But she must remember that the old life at Saratoga
was doomed when the Adirondacks were discovered, and
young men found that a flannel shirt was much more
comfortable round the neck than a starched one. Local
causes may ruin one place, and another starts up. The
bicycle and the game of golf completed the ruin of that
cotillion party which once solaced the evenings at the
smaller as at the larger watering-places.
My friend refers to the superior amusement to be
found at Homburg, Aix-les-Bains, Schwalbach, and Evian-
les-Bains-in fact, at all foreign watering-places. They
live on wandering Princes and on the gambling, as well as
on the cures of the rheumatic-and also on that much
wiser plan of making the watering-place full of good
music, having a "cure" and a theatre and something to
do all the time. We have never reached that pitch of
refinement, excepting at Newport, which is a place for
the very rich, and therefore is not to be quoted as a uni-
versal solvent.
The hard times have doubtless conspired to make the
watering-places empty. People now can hardly afford
to take a large family to any hotel for several weeks.
As the girls are very happy with their bicycles and pic-
nics, economy becomes easier. Each little village has
now its golf course, or links, or should have, for al-
though it ruins conversation, golf has come to stay;
each village is its own watering-place. Parents no
longer think it their duty to take Sarah to Saratoga for
a fortnight, that she may see the world and learn the
283
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
fashions. The fashions travel by telegraph, as Bret
Harte says, and Harper's Bazar leaves no
doubt as to the cut of sleeves.
one in
It is astonishing to enter what once was a rural and a
retired spot, to see even the serving maids with high
hats, a choking ribbon tied round the throat, with a high
bow behind, and a voluminous shoulder-trimming of
lace. Yet there is no solitude so vast, no endless con-
tiguity of space, that is not invaded by all the affecta-
tions which may have been invented by a scrofulous
Princess, in the name of fashion.
Vanity Fair, in a recent article, speaks with great
bitterness of the utter decay of London society.
this vivacious sheet:
Says
The wave of vulgarity has washed away all that aristocracy and
culture have been building up for centuries. It declares that what
exists to-day is but a hideous caricature, and that in Rome and
Vienna, and even in republican Paris, London society has become a
laughing stock. Blood, pride of race, what are these; where are
they nowadays? Money, above all the willingness to entertain, these
are the pass-keys to what was once a fortress to be entered by birth,
and birth alone. Even good character is not essential, for if the wine
is good and the room handsome, and the orchids beautiful, what mat-
ter antecedents?
Thus the severe Vanity Fair upon London society,
which Americans have hitherto regarded as the one spot
where society was safe.
This would seem to have little to do with the dullness
of the American watering-place, but it is quoted to mark
that great law of change which has swept over the whole
world of late. No doubt the splendor of the palaces at
Newport appall a great many sober citizens and keep
them away from our opal of the sea. But the life is in-
dividual cottage life, not a watering-place hotel life at all.
284
DECADENCE OF THE WATERING-PLACE
.
The more we approach this subject the harder it be-
comes to understand its sudden collapse. It would be
well if we could believe that a growing love of country
life, of individual homes, should be the reason why the
watering-place is suffering such neglect.
It is almost too good to be believed that the homo-
geneous American people are really getting into country
homes wherein they and their children can be happy all
the year round. That would indeed be the desired
Utopia. The busy New York man, who must be in New
York all of his business-day, is fond of the semi-detached
villa, if he cannot afford a better, where he can rejoin
his family of nights, and dig about his rose-trees and kill
the grasshoppers in the seldom-recurring holiday. This
is the healthy sign of the times.
And so on up to the very rich man who builds on
the Hudson River, or out at Tuxedo, or at Saratoga, his
palatial country house, where he lives like an English
lord, and where his wife is very happy while the house
party lasts, if the cook will remain.
These people, how-
ever, are always shutting up the delightful house and
going over to Europe.
How many houses on the Hudson are open to-day?
The greater number of their owners are probably lingering,
after the Diamond Jubilee, to taste the sweets of that
London society of which Vanity Fair says such evil
things. Another contingent is bathing in European
waters and tossing the coins about at Aix-les-Bains.
The hegira to Europe, however-so say the steamship
companies—has not been so great this Summer (1897) as
usual.
Where, then, are all the people? Are they in some
285
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
1
quiet country house, the man stretched on the grass
under the elm, which entirely shelters him? He has
returned, perhaps, to the town where he was born, and is
striking down his roots, those fine deep roots which
attach a man to the soil where his forefathers were. His
wife does not love as well as he does the localisms of
speech, the peculiar intonation "unto which she was not
born." No vulgarities, no Yankee twangs, no drawls,
are dear to us but our own. She finds the days long,
the evenings unendurably dull. The lamps all smell of
kerosene. Madame is not as happy as Monsieur. She
would like to go to a watering-place, if she could find one
open.
"What are these mysterious influences which change
our happiness into discouragement and our confidence
into distress?" says Guy de Maupassant. "One would
almost say that the air was full of unknowable powers, to
whose mysterious proximity we submit. I am all full of
gayety, with desires to sing in my throat; whence comes
this shiver of cold, which, brushing across my skin, has
unsettled my nerves and darkened my soul?''
It may be a coming thunderstorm or a sudden acces-
sion of humidity.
Our American climate is a very trying one. It has
not been of the same mind as to weather for two weeks
at a time this trying Summer of 1897. That renders us
all very nervous. We are haunted by the mystery of
the invisible; we need change. Were we in an old
inherited English home we should be as placid as oxen
and drink in repose at every breath.
however, sit in the forest we get tired of its aromatic
odors, its aisles of Gothic extent, its wonderful beauty,
As we Americans,
286
DECADENCE OF THE WATERING-PLACE
its birds and its wild flowers, and we sigh for that im-
mense blue bay which we once saw stretching out between
two lovely shores. We think of the white sail which
once wafted us on to perfect bliss, and we wish to breathe
a breath of salt air once more.
If we are in a valley, we long for the profile of that
fantastic rock which is black against a glaring sunset. If
we are Americans, we wish we were somewhere else but
in the place where we are now. For this reason, if for
no other, the bicycle is ruining the watering-place. It
ministers to this universal unrest. No one who can com-
mand that obedient steed need stay anywhere long.
Our great country has so many attractive spots, such
delicious Summer abiding-places, from Newport to
Niagara, from the Delaware Water Gap to the isles of
the St. Lawrence, from the great lakes to the Adiron-
dacks, from the Falls of Niagara to Canada and to Nova
Scotia-what a choice and chance we have! Rapid
transit and parlor cars have made change imperative; for
who will sit down on the piazza at the United States for
a month, when for half the money he can go to Japan,
he can explore the Yukon (beautiful Greek sounding
name), and bring home nuggets enough in his pocket
handkerchief to last him all Summer? How many a
hostess potent at Lenox is taking her repose by a journey
to Alaska or to a camp in the Adirondacks, and all the
way in a parlor car?
This is another cause for the forsaking of the watering-
place. Once, when we went half the way to Sharon
Springs by stage coach, with our trunks slung under the
carriage, or more frequently left them behind at Herki-
mer, we were not in such a hurry to come away.
•
287
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
"Nous avons changé tout cela.
Newport at one time seemed a delightful resting place
for the European diplomatist, and yet I now see that
the home of "the English legation will be this Summer
at Manchester-by-the-Sea." Bar Harbor complains that
it has no public-spirited citizens who will build a Casino,
and that its clientèle is too changeful. In fine weather
Bar Harbor seems to me the peerless place of the world,
with its woods and waters, the place where heaven
touches earth, but in a fog they say it is detestable.
found Poland Springs entirely entrancing one Summer,
but I sent some friends there who declared that the
"demon of whist had ruined it." I should rather look
at the fine profile of Mount Washington than a whist
table, but even with scientific whist I should think it
would be hard to spoil Poland Springs and its sparkling
water.
I
Yet I can sympathize with my friend, who has
daughters, as to that old gay life for the budding débu-
tante, and for the unquiet old lady, the American young
grandmother, who, as somebody said, was "still running
for office.
once were.
These are not housed and amused as they
Doubtless soon—perhaps in 1900—we shall
have definitely settled on some place where both can
again be happy. But at this present speaking there seems
to be a lack somewhere. There is nothing perfect in
this world.
288
Books That Society Reads
What does society read? Principally novels; and
just now it is reading those of Anthony Hope. Most
delightful things they are, too-healthy and brilliant and
amusing.
Anthony Hope is like a jeweler who studies the
designs of past artists. He adds to his images the
images of others, borrowing and recasting their inven-
tions, as an artist who unites and multiplies the precious
stones and gold filagree, all ready for the diadem, which
many workmen before him have prepared. He has made
for himself, thus, a composite and brilliant style, less
natural than that of Stevenson, less fit for effusion, less
akin to the first lively gleam of sensation, but more
witty (his wit is his own), more regular, more capable of
concentrating in one large patch of light all the spark-
lings and splendors of everybody's diamonds. His love-
making and his love episodes are always charming. It is
like dressing for a Court ball in a strange country; it is
like being present at a magnificent royal wedding; it is
fête day all the time, to read “A Prisoner of Zenda."
No wonder society loves it and all that he writes; he is a
great artist.
The trifles which he has thrown us later as "The
Dolly Dialogues," etc., are like the bouquets which ar-
rive after we are dressed. We receive them with pleas-
ure, but with abated enthusiasm.
289
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
Next after him does society rush into a little Scotch
village and read "A Window in Thrums" and "The
Little Minister." Here we have a bit of Rembrandt
painting; nothing is better, nothing sweeter.
Here is a
classic. Some critic of Milton said that Adam entered
paradise by way of England, where he learned respect-
ability and moral speechifying. Eve had become a good
housekeeper, and so gave the angels most excellent din-
ners. Barrie takes us to Bonnie Scotland to teach us
how to use our eyes and make observation noble-even if
it wrecks itself on watching how many pints of milk a
neighbor takes in. The exquisite humor and the under-
lying poetry are unspeakably dear, but perhaps the ob-
server has dwarfed the poet. There is something to
regret in this.
The man who wrote "A Gentleman of France' is a
benefactor of the human race. What a friend to the
young! A sort of modern, healthy, not too diffuse
Dumas. Stanley J. Weyman is a favorite with society,
as is W. Clark Russell, who, ever since he wrote "The
Wreck of the Grosvenor," has proved that he knows
how to tell a story.
But it is only fair to say that Molly Elliot Seawell is
intensely a favorite. She seems a long way off from
these other writers, but she is delightful, amusing, and
clean. One must remember that society is not a very
reflective body. One must remember that it is made up
of the descendants of the Puritans who, behind their fer-
vent faith, had the blood in their veins of "Brutal Brit-
ons," who loved bear-baiting, who went to the play and
afterwards whipped the actors. To make crime more
certain they persecuted pleasure.
290
BOOKS THAT SOCIETY READS
So the literary taste of the average American varies be-
tween "The Pilgrim's Progress" and the novels of
Ouida, and has taken a turn at Zola.
In no sense, except the fact that Thomas Otway
must be in our blood somewhere, can we attribute the
taste shown for the later works of that once refined
writer, Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett. The author of
"Little Lord Fauntleroy" might once have been taunted
with sentimentalism, but not with impurity. Her latest
novels and plays have the coarse and vicious qualities of
Thomas Otway, who, a student, an actor, an officer,
always poor, always in excess and in misery, had the fire
and intensity of the older dramatists. He was a fol-
lower of that school which Dryden founded, and which
exhibited itself in the reign of Queen Anne in all its
completeness, authority, and splendor. But Thomas
Otway pleased the passions of a detestable age with his
coarse and vicious cavaliers, who were rogues on princi-
ple. "The Soldier's Fortune, "The Atheist,'
"Friendship in Fashion," "Venice Preserved, and
"The Orphan'-they are all obscene, vulgar, and un-
wholesome, and they form the staple of "The Lady of
Quality" and "His Grace, the Duke of Osmonde.
should be sorry to record that they are favorites of soci-
ety. Mrs. Burnett is a great loss, for she was de-
servedly a favorite in her simpler work, particularly in
her recollections.
I
But there is still much of the hearty English blood in
our people demanding amusement, gayety, Maypoles,
and bear-baiting. We like to burn a few witches occa-
sionally, "pour passez le temps;" so, in indulging that
inherited instinct, we read Marie Corelli and Mrs. Ath-
291
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
erton and Hall Caine. Who reads George Meredith, and
for what reason, must ever remain a mystery-unless
people like that which they cannot understand and in
their secret souls despise. Old Jonathan Mason of
Massachusetts, one of the most vigorous of thinkers, in
talking of something which a transcendentalist had put
forth said: "I can't understand it myself, but my gals
can." Was there ever a better bit of satire ?
Rudyard Kipling is sometimes as grand as a forest of
orchids in one of his own Indian forests, and sometimes
as trivial as the monkeys and paroquets who jabber in
the branches of the jungle. He is seldom up to "The
Jungle Book," which is Homeric. Oh! the wealth
of Nature and Fancy in that surprising book! He has
steeped himself in all the wonders of the flowers which
open under a Southern sun, and in all the most lovable
of the traits of a gracious spirit, in that book: the dar-
ling of childhood, the delight of maturity. I am sure
society reads "The Jungle Book" more than it does
"Captains Courageous." It is a great thing to write a
book for a little boy who is just beginning his pilgrimage
of thought and life. Primitive nature wraps him in
ecstasy, and the battles of the beasts are to him the bat-
tles of the gods. No doubt a serious thought regulated
the great toil of writing this book, but it is a pure out-
burst of genius.
Novels of society are the novels which society loves,
and particularly those of Mrs. Humphrey Ward. "Mar-
cella' is the queen of them all, and "Sir George Tres-
sady," which is only "Marcella" continued, is equally
delightful. Here a lady speaks. She makes no mis-
takes in describing the great world.
Her heroines are
292
BOOKS THAT SOCIETY READS
real.
They know their trade, and the men and women
who are called on to play their part in society are not
mechanics, servant girls, or horse boys, masquerading.
Nor has she that socialistic nonsense to promulgate that
because a man is dirty and badly dressed therefore he is
a hero; or that a woman is necessarily lovable because
she does housework all the time. Labor is sufficiently
honorable in its own place. It should not be trans-
planted-not at least until it has washed its hands.
There have been well-dressed and refined women who
keep the ten commandments and who knew how to
spell. Mrs. Ward is a thinker and a philanthropist.
She also knows society. Therefore she is invaluable.
And Mrs. Ward shows that a woman can write a society
novel better than a man can, although Disraeli and some
others have not botched the work. Certain feelings fol-
low upon certain positions. People of society like to
read about society. In fact, who does not? No one
seeks the commonplace in fiction. We have enough of
that in every-day life.
"Defend me," says Lady Eastlake in her admirable
memoirs, "from your very humble people. They are
sure to entangle themselves and fall down in their own
awkward lowmindedness. The consequence is that
others are at the trouble of picking them up and prop-
ping them ever after." Again she says: "There is a cer-
tain aggregate ideal of the commonest subject. There is
an ideal ugliness as well as an ideal beauty. Teniers gave
us the poetry of pots and pans. Titian, in his old
nurse, gave ugliness a charm. Hogarth, in his 'Mar-
riage à la Mode,' lent even to vacancy an interest."
But it takes a great genius to do these things. An
293
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
ordinary one had better describe a Grecian vase, a beau-
tiful woman, and not vacancy, but full, happy, exciting
life. Such a novelist and a great favorite is W. E. Nor-
ris. He did not try for the pomp and solemnity of
greater novelists, but he has the light, tripping measure,
the wit and playfulness of the "Midsummer's Night
Dream." He is a pleasant man with whom to wander
through an English lane. One would like to meet him
at every country house. He is a capital interpreter of
English fashionable society of the better class. He
seems to attain the beautiful by accident while pursuing
the useful and the good on principle.
Two special powers lead mankind-impulse and ideal:
the one influencing sensitive, unlettered souls; the other
governing action and relieving (as all novels should) the
weary, the disappointed, and the over-worked. The
first of these divisions leads the "sensitive, unlettered
souls' to Marie Corelli, Ouida, and Miss Braddon (the
latter much better than either of the others), and so on.
The second class turn to Robert Louis Stevenson and
his followers; to Anthony Hope, to W. Clark Russell,
to Maarten Maarten, and many others.
The novel of to-day should be no mere study of char-
acter, no mere sketch of manners. It should be of con-
certed movement, dramatic, interesting, alive with the
play of passion. It should gratify and overcome us.
Such novels Octave Feuillet wrote, and Victor Cherbu-
liez-the dear delights; and such
such a novel, too, is
"Marcella." Why should women be ambitious to show
that they "can do things like men" when they thus
disregard the fact that they can do much more as
women!
294
BOOKS THAT SOCIETY READS
It is a trait of American society that it prefers novels
written in England and in France to those written on
this side of the water, and so much do most English-
speaking readers prefer the French novel that some
witty essayist said the following good thing of the wholly
"Depraved Novel Readers': "The modern English-
man acknowledges that it is almost impossible for a
Frenchman to write such bad prose as an Englishman
writes easily and with joy; that his language helps him
to that mixture of sobriety, inventiveness, precision,
wit, and the critical spirit which go to make the most
perfect prose, and every good French writer clarifies still
further the clearness of his speech, and gets to that pel-
lucid simplicity which we love in such writers as Daniel
Defoe and John Bunyan. The French writer goes the
whole way.
You do not have to laboriously follow him
The American imitator
to learn what he has to say.
should remember this!"'
Perhaps this was leveled at the head of George Mere-
dith, and a little at Henry James, who is not always
pellucid.
American fashion is very various in its tastes as to
reading. There are many women of extraordinary talents
among our highest fashion, and the ardor with which
the female Americans study, has no rival excepting the
ardor with which their brothers make money in Wall
Street or in the wheat deal in Chicago. The same atmos-
phere is driving the two sexes along. The girls have time
to study, which the boys have not. However, the great-
est misfortune which can befall a nation is to grow inert
and uninterested, and that has not yet befallen ours.
Better a fleet horse who may stumble and throw one over
295
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
his head occasionally than a spavined old brute who
never gets there.
With all its mistakes, follies, and stupidities, fashion
never stood higher than it does now. There is in the
first place a great mania to do good; the second mania
is to know something; and the third mania is to throw
away the bad books which have deluged the land since
"The Kreutzer Sonata." Fashion is changeable—here
Fashion in books is like
to-day and gone to-morrow.
fashion in everything else. When Tourguenieff and
Tolstoi first became the talk of literary men, they were
found in every boudoir. Just as our mothers read
George Sand, hiding the offending "Indiana” under a
crease of the camel's-hair shawl, so did the wearer of a
tea-gown hide "The Kreutzer Sonata' under the flow-
ing pink drapery until the danger grew, and there came
that embarras des horreurs-the works of Sarah Grand,
"The Superfluous Woman," and the other nameless
abominations. This got to be so bad that it speedily
worked a cure and "The Doll's House" and other
Ibsenites took their places. Fortunately for fashion a
stern and vigorous correction to that which not every-
body could understand, and which a great many did not
wish to understand followed. The "Quo Vadis" and
other historical novels by great minds came into being,
and fashion stood up straighter and breathed deeper.
One of the best signs of this strong tonic has been the
horror and disappointment caused by Hall Caine's
miscalled "Christian," which has been flung down in the
very dirtiest lane in the neighborhood in disgust by most
pure-minded women. The dreadful "Jude, the Ob-
scure," the flippery, vicious tales of refined or coarse
296
BOOKS THAT SOCIETY READS
cruelty, or undisguised indecency, are no longer to be
found in the "best society;" and that term means a
great deal.
Society reads and always will read the
French novels of Pierre Loti, of Paul Bourget; those of
the saucy "Gyp," because she amuses them. And it
will read a great many better ones, as "La Morte,
"Sybille," "Monsieur de Camors," and some worse ones,
for the language and the charm and because a French-
man knows how to tell a story. The style of a good
French writer is so fascinating that it is like that airy
coloring which an Italian atmosphere gives to the bleak-
est and foulest things. It sets everything in a sea of
light, and it becomes impossible sometimes for the moral
sense to discern the boundary line, in that glow which
wraps heaven and earth, and all things visible, in one
great world of loveliness.
It is a part of this charm which recommends the
faulty and exaggerated Ouida to the reading of society.
I suppose more copies of her "Massarenes" have been
read by society than of any other novel of the day,
partly because the story is about the beloved London,
partly because it hits on a very evident truth, partly
because the author's genius carries one along, and per-
haps because it is a very strong story, although this
should not perhaps be a reason for reading a work of
fiction. Fiction should be a life above our every-day
life; a rainbow glinting the clouds. I regard the lack
of popularity which exists in society as to Mr. Howell's
novels as due to the absence of romance. "I am not
the least interested in his people," said a young fashion-
able woman to me when I recommended one of his
books for its humor.
297
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
No one
The zigzags of fashion are very sharp.
knows when coupés will go out of fashion and when til-
burys will come in. Therefore it is not to be explained
why George Meredith disappears before Marie Corelli,
although it is easy enough to see why some English
women writers, such as Mrs. Walford, are great favorites.
Society adores Henry James. His last three novels are
without any doubt his best and most permanent suc-
cesses, not alone for their consummate merit as literary
works, but for their attractive houses, pretty women,
and general atmosphere of what is most delightful.
These make him the popular favorite in the home of the
luxurious. Indeed, it would be impossible at a fashion-
able dinner party to speak of a character or an episode
in one of Henry James's novels that every one at the
table would not know as well whom you meant as if you
spoke of Becky Sharp or Mr. Micawber. It is the fash-
ion to read him, as it was the fashion to read “Trilby,”
but that fashion has not lasted to "The Martian."
Marion Crawford is a firm favorite in the boudoirs.
And it is an excellent sign of the times that he is. No
one can wish for a purer hand, a stronger touch, a more
romantic uplift, or a better friend to a young woman's
mind than is this delightful writer, who garners in the
customs and the thoughts of all people and the new and
precious outlook of foreign lands. His books are full of
pictures. They are like going from room to room in an
Italian palace. These rooms of his, instead of ending,
lead off to other rooms even more richly furnished, each
more magnificent than the first. Our host is truly en
Prince, not stopping with his palaces, but giving us
such queer little journeys into Paul Patoff's land, and
298
BOOKS THAT SOCIETY READS
that of the "Cigarettemaker," the latter story one of
the most original novels ever written. He never fails
us.
Society reads a great many memoirs, like W. Frazer
Rae's "Life of Sheridan," "Two Noble Lives" by
Hare, and Lady Eastlake's memoirs-the last the most
delightful of all; and society reads far too many maga-
zines and reviews and newspapers and criticisms and
little books and big books, which are like eating jam
tarts and cakes, sure to spoil the appetite for dinner.
Who will ever get time to read Guizot's "History of
Civilization?" No one, until we are done with civiliza-
tion. Society reads much of isms,-Buddhism, The-
osophy, the mind cure, the faith cure; Socialism and
Anarchists have a great hearing; and the Indian priests
are favorites who are doted on. A pale, delicate, lame,
beautiful Parsee, in white raiment, will be heard and
read from cover to cover. He can afford to give.
double prayers, double hymns, and double sermons each
time. If any book can unravel the thread of destiny or
unroll a scroll of the future, if any one can give a new
color to the web of life, let him write many books.
They will all be read in "society."
The East Indian thinkers, being dyed in the wool, so
to speak, in all that is most dreamy, spiritual, and the-
oretical, are especially dear to these dilettante thinkers,
and more women have committed Richard de Gallienne's
translation of the Rubàiyàt of Omar Khayyam to mem-
ory since it appeared in the "Cosmopolitan" of Septem-
ber and subsequent months, than any other poem of the
day. It reached their "unmentionable sympathies,'
poor things!
299
HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE
"How easily can sorrows be borne in which there is
no sin," says the moralist, and how dear is sin which
has never been committed. A stupid novel does not
come under any of these heads-that is a sorrow which
cannot be borne; and we had not rather, or we would
rather not, shut out the possibility of evil, perhaps, if
thereby we must take unmitigated balderdash of virtue
or the weak milk-and-water of a fashionable novel (so-
called) done on the spot. As some brilliant wit re-
marked, "I like to take my metaphysics straight." Nor
does the novel reader relish those dishonest novels which
come with a bit of science hidden under their butterfly
wings.
The useful novel? Society does not read that much.
The novel with a purpose? No. Society reads the
most interesting,-not always the deepest, not always the
most useful, not always the most congruous; but if
society reads a book, it has something in it, you may be
sure of that. Society is interested in dissent as in assent.
The clergy have no such friends and readers as society
women. It is the clearest evidence of our belief in an
infinite future that we are always too interested in those
who are at hand to read for us the "Book of the Fu-
ture.
The extraordinary writing, witty and clever, which
is such a sign of the times,—that of Anstey and other wits
across the water, and of Kipling, as he was; or Bret
Harte, as he was; of Mark Twain, of all men who amuse
-all this is much read in society. It suits the move-
ment of the age, racing, golf, tennis, the bicycle.
Everything but the Book of Psalms has now been put
on wheels. But there is one thing which is little read
300
BOOKS THAT SOCIETY READS
in society, too, and that is poetry. The thought comes
over me that this is a lost chord in the fin de siécle; that
past when we read Southey, Shelley, Keats, Byron, and
Walter Scott; that nearer past when we read Lowell,
Longfellow, and Holmes, Browning and Mrs. Browning,
George Eliot, and Tennyson-was it not a past when
the hills were higher, the solitude greater, the heavens
more blue, and the sunsets more splendid? Did not a
thousand fantastic shadows visit and veil the horizon,
making it more beautiful?
little?
Have we not hardened a
301
ADVERTISEMENT OF
"
MENTICULTURE."
Menticulture" was first issued in a sufficiently
modest way. It described a personal experience
which has been of inestimable value to the author.
The revelation to him of the possibility of the absolute
elimination of the seeds of unhappiness has changed
life from a period of constant struggle to a period of
security and repose, and has insured delightful real-
ities instead of uncertain possibilities. One hundred
and fifty copies of the book were privately printed,
and entitled "The A B C of True Living." It also
carried within its pages the title of "Emancipation."
The suggestion met with such hearty appreciation
on the part of personal friends in many various walks
of life, that a public edition was proposed, and the
name of "Menticulture," a name that had to be coined
for the purpose, was chosen for it.
The aptness of the suggestion has been evidenced
by the approval of the brotherhood at large by ap-
preciative notices in many of the leading periodicals
of the country, by the receipt of more than a thou-
sand personal letters by the author, many of them at-
testing to greatest benefits growing out of the new
point of view of life suggested by the book, and by
very large sales.
One gentleman-altruist-whose name is W. J.
Van Patten, found the suggestion contained in "Men-
ticulture" so helpful to himself and friends that he
purchased a special edition of two thousand copies of
the book for distribution in his home city of Burling-
ton, Vermont, one to each household, with the idea of
accentuating the suggestion by widespread inter-
discussion. The special Burlington edition has an
inset page bearing Mr. Van Patten's raison d'être
for the distribution, which reads as follows:
PERSONAL NOTE.
Some time in the early part of the year 1896 a friend
sent me a copy of Menticulture." I read it with
interest, and became convinced that I could apply its
truths to my own life with profit. Experience con-
firmed my faith in the power of its principles to over-
come many of the most annoying and damaging ills
tbat are common to humanity.
I procured a number of copies from time to time.
and gave to friends who I felt would appreciate it.
The universal testimony to the good which the little
book did, and the new strength of purpose and will it
gave to some who were sore beset with the cares and
worries of life, increased my interest and my confi-
dence in the truths set forth.
I formed the idea of making an experiment by giv-
ing the book a general distribution in our city, to see
if it would not promote the general good and happi-
ness of people.
I wrote to the author, Mr. Fletcher, and he entered
into the plan very cordially, and had this special edi-
tion prepared for me. The object which we hope to
gain is to turn the thoughts and purposes of those
whom we reach to the old truths taught by Christ, and
a determination to live above those evils which do so
much to make our lives unhappy for ourselves and
annoying to those about us.
I would ask, therefore, that you would kindly give
the book careful and thoughtful reading, and, when
you have opportunity, recommend it to your friends.
W. J. VAN PATTEN.
PERSONAL NOTE.
Mr. Van Patten is a prominent manufacturer of
Vermont, and was recently Mayor of Burlington for
two years. He is also prominent in the Christian En-
deavorer movement, having been the first president
of the United Society, and being at present one of its
trustees, as well as the president of the Congrega-
tional Club of western Vermont.
"Menticulture" has found favor among physicians,
and also with life-insurance companies, obviously
because of the live-saving quality of the suggestions
contained in it.
THE PUBLICATIONS OF
HERBERT S. STONE
& CO. THE CHAP-BOOK
The HOUSE BEAUTIFUL

CAXTON BUILDING, CHICAGO
III FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
1898
CAXTON BUILDING, CHICAGO
III FIFTH AVE., NEW YORK
THE PUBLICATIONS OF
HERBERT S. STONE
& CO. THE CHAP-BOOK
The HOUSE BEAUTIFUL
Ade, George.
ARTIE: A Story of the Streets and of the
Town. With many pictures by JOHN T.
MCCUTCHEON. 16mo. $1.25.
Ninth thousand.
"Mr. Ade shows all the qualities of a successful
novelist."-Chicago Tribune.
"Artie is a character, and George Ade has
limned him deftly as well as amusingly. Under
his rollicking abandon and recklessness we are
made to feel the real sense and sensitiveness, and
the worldly wisdom of a youth whose only lan-
guage is that of a street-gamin. As a study of the
peculiar type chosen, it is both typical and inimi-
table."-Detroit Free Press.
"It is brim full of fun and picturesque slang.
Nobody will be any the worse for reading about
Artie, if he does talk slang. He's a good fellow
at heart, and Mamie Carroll is the 'making of
him.' He talks good sense and good morality, and
these things have n't yet gone out of style, even in
Chicago."-New York Recorder.
2
!
"Well-meaning admirers have compared Artie
to Chimmie Fadden, but Mr. Townsend's creation,
excellent as it is, cannot be said to be entirely free
from exaggeration. The hand of Chimmie Fad-
den's maker is to be discerned at times. And just
here Artie is particularly strong-he is always
Artie, and Mr. Ade is always concealed, and never
obtrudes his personality."-Chicago Post.
George Ade is a writer, the direct antithesis of
Stephen Crane. In 'Artie' he has given the world
a story of the streets at once wholesome, free, and
stimulating. The world is filled with people like
'Artie' Blanchard and his 'girl,' 'Mamie' Carroll,
and the story of their lives, their hopes, and
dreams, and loves, is immeasurably more whole-
some than all the stories like 'George's Mother'
that could be written by an army of the writers.
who call themselves realists."-Editorial, Albany
Evening Journal.
Ade, George.
PINK MARSH: A Story of the Streets and
of the Town.
With forty full-page pic-
tures by JOHN T. MCCUTCHEON. 16mo.
Uniform with Artie. $1.25.
Fourth thousand.
"There is, underlying these character sketches,
a refinement of feeling that wins and retains one's
admiration."-St. Louis Globe-Democrat.
*
*
*
"Here is a perfect triumph of characterization.
Pink must become a household word."-
Kansas City Star.
"These sprightly sketches do for the Northern
town negro what Mr. Joel Chandler Harris's
3
• Uncle Remus Papers' have done for the South-
ern old plantation slave."-The Independent.
"It is some time since we have met with a more
amusing character than is 'Pink Marsh,' or to
give him his full title, William Pinckney Marsh, of
Chicago. * * * 'Pink' is not the conventional
'coon' of the comic paper and the variety hall,
but a genuine flesh and blood type, presented
with a good deal of literary and artistic skill."-
New York Sun.
"The man who can bring a new type into the
literature of the day is very near a genius, if he
does nothing else. For that reason Mr. George
Ade, the chronicler of 'Artie,' the street boy of
Chicago, did a rather remarkable thing when he
put that young man into a book. Now Mr. Ade
has given us a new character, and to me a much
more interesting one, because I do not remember
having met him face to face in literature be-
fore. Cincinnati Commercial Tribune.
Benham, Charles.
THE FOURTH NAPOLEON: A Romance.
I2mo.
$1.50.
An accurate account of the history of the Fourth
Napoleon, the coup d'état which places him on
the throne of France, the war with Germany, and
his love intrigues as emperor. A vivid picture of
contemporary politics in Paris.
Bickford, L. H.
(and Richard Stillman Powell.)
PHYLLIS IN BOHEMIA. With pictures
and decorations by ORSON LOWELL, and
4
a cover designed by FRANK HAZENPLUG.
16mo. $1.25.
It is
Sentimental comedy of the lightest kind.
the story of Phyllis leaving Arcadia to find Bohe-
mia, and of her adventures there. Gentle satire
of the modern literary and artistic youth and a
charming love story running through all.
Blossom, Henry M., Jr.
CHECKERS: A Hard - Luck Story. By
the author of "The Documents in Evi-
dence." 16mo. $1.25. Tenth thousand.
“Abounds in the most racy and picturesque
slang."-New York Recorder.
"Checkers' is an interesting and entertaining
chap, a distinct type, with a separate tongue and a
way of saying things that is oddly humorous.
Chicago Record.
"If I had to ride from New York to Chicago on
a slow train, I should like a half dozen books as
gladsome as 'Checkers,' and I could laugh at the
trip."-New York Commercial Advertiser.
"Checkers' himself is as distinct a creation as
Chimmie Fadden, and his racy slang expresses a
livelier wit. The racing part is clever reporting,
and as horsey and up to date' as any one could
ask. The slang of the racecourse is caught with
skill and is vivid and picturesque, and students of
the byways of language may find some new gems
of colloquial speech to add to their lexicons."
Springfield Republican.
5
Bloundelle-Burton, John.
ACROSS THE SALT SEAS: A Romance of
the War of Succession. By the author of
"In the Day of Adversity," "The Hispan-
iola Plate," "A Gentleman Adventurer,"
etc. 12mo. $1.50.
In "The Hispaniola Plate” Mr. Burton showed
his familiarity with the stories of the buccaneers
of the Spanish Main. In this new story there is
still this picturesque element, although the scene
is the battle of Vigo and the looting of the Spanish
galleons. The hero escapes through Spain in an
attempt to reach Marlborough in Flanders, and
has many exciting though not improbable adven-
tures. Any one who cares for good fighting, and
in whose ears the "sack of Maracaibo" and the
"fall of Panama" have an alluring sound, will
like the book. There is also an attractive love
story in a rather unusual form.
Chap-Book Essays.
A VOLUME OF REPRINTS FROM THE
CHAP-BOOK. Contributions by T. W.
HIGGINSON, H. W. MABIE, LOUISE
CHANDLER MOULTON, H. H. BOYE-
SEN, EDMUND GOSSE, JOHN BURROUGHS,
NORMAN HAPGOOD, MRS. REGINALD
DE KOVEN, LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY,
LEWIS E. GATES, ALICE MORSE Earle,
LAURENCE JERROLD, RICHARD HENRY
STODDARD, EVE BLANTYRE SIMPSON,
6
and MAURICE THOMPSON, with a cover
designed by A. E. BORIE. 16mo. $1.25.
Chap-Book Stories.
A VOLUME OF REPRINTS FROM THE
CHAP-BOOK. Contributions by OCTAVE
THANET, GRACE ELLERY CHANNING,
MARIA LOUISE POOL, and Others, 16mo.
$1.25.
Second edition.
The authors of this volume are all American
Besides the well-known names, there are some
which were seen in the Chap-Book for the first
time. The volume is bound in an entirely new
and startling fashion.
Chatfield-Taylor, H. C.
THE LAND OF THE CASTANET: Span-
ish Sketches, with twenty-five full-page
illustrations. 12mo. $1.25.
"Gives the reader an insight into the life of
Spain at the present time which he cannot get
elsewhere."-Cincinnati Commercial Tribune.
"Mr. Chatfield-Taylor's word-painting of special
events the bull-fight for instance-is vivid and
well colored. He gets at the national character
very well indeed, and we feel that we know our
Spain better by reason of his handsome little
book."-Boston Traveler.
He writes pleasantly and impartially, and very
fairly sums up the Spanish character. * * * Mr.
Taylor's book is well illustrated, and is more read-
able than the reminiscences of the average globe-
trotter."-New York Sun.
7
:
Chatfield-Taylor, H. C.
THE VICE OF FOOLS: A Novel of Society
Life in Washington. By the author or
"The Land of the Castanet," "Two
Women and a Fool," "An American
Peeress," etc. With ten full page pictures
by Raymond M. Crosby. 16mo. $1.50.
The great success of Mr. Chatfield-Taylor's so-
ciety novels gives assurance of a large sale to this
new story. It can hardly be denied that few per-
sons in this country are better qualified to treat
the "smart set" in various American cities, and
the life in diplomatic circles offers an unusually
picturesque opportunity.
D'Annunzio, Gabriele.
EPISCOPO AND COMPANY.
Translated
by Myrta Leonora Jones. 16mo. $1.25.
Third edition.
Gabriele d'Annunzio is the best known and
most gifted of modern Italian novelists. His work
is making a great sensation at present in all lite-
rary circles.
The translation now offered gave
the first opportunity English-speaking readers
had to know him in their own language.
De Fontenoy, The Marquise.
EVE'S GLOSSARY. By the author of "Queer
Sprigs of Gentility," with decorations in
two colors by FRANK HAZENPLUG. 4to.
$3.50.
8
An amusing volume of gossip and advice for
gentlewomen. It treats of health, costume, and
entertainments; exemplifies by reference to noted
beauties of England and the Continent; and is
embellished with decorative borders of great
charm.
Earle, Alice Morse.
CURIOUS PUNISHMENTS OF BYGONE
DAYS, with twelve quaint pictures and a
cover design by FRANK HAZENPLUG.
I2mo. $1.50.
To
"In this dainty little volume Alice Morse Earle
has done a real service, not only to present read-
ers, but to future students of bygone customs.
come upon all the information that is here put
into readable shape, one would be obliged to search
through many ancient and cumbrous records."-
Boston Transcript.
"Mrs. Alice Morse Earle has made a diverting
and edifying book in her 'Curious Punishments
of Bygone Days,' which is published in a style of
quaintness befitting the theme."-New York
Tribune.
"This light and entertaining volume is the most
recent of Mrs. Earle's popular antiquarian sketches,
and will not fail to amuse and mildly instruct
readers who love to recall the grim furnishings and
habits of previous centuries, without too much
serious consideration of the root from which they
sprang, the circumstances in which they flour-
ished, or the uses they served."-The Independent.
9
Embree, Charles Fleming.
FOR THE LOVE OF TONITA, AND OTHER
TALES OF THE MESAS. With a cover
designed by FERNAND LUNGREN. 16mo.
$1.25.
Characteristic and breezy stories of the South-
west, by a new author. Full of romantic interest
and with an unusually humorous turn. The book
coming from a new writer, is likely to be a real
surprise. The cover is an entirely new experi
ment in bookbinding.
Fletcher, Horace.
OTHER
HAPPINESS AS FOUND IN FORETHOUGHT
MINUS FEARTHOUGHT, AND
SUGGESTIONS IN MENTICULTURE. 12mo.
$1.00.
The enormous popularity of Mr. Fletcher's
simple philosophy, as shown in the sale of his
first volume, "Menticulture" is a sufficient evi-
dence of the prospects of the new book. In it he
develops further the ideas of menticulture, and
urges with energy and directness his plea for the
avoidance of worry.
Fletcher, Horace.
MENTICULTURE: or the A-B-C of True
Living. I2mo. $1.00.
Nineteenth thousand.
Transferred by the author to the present publishers.
ΙΟ
Gordon, Julien
EAT NOT THY HEART: A Novel. By
the author of A Diplomat's Diary," etc.
16mo, $1.25.
Life on Long Island at a luxurious country
place, is the setting for this story, and Mrs.
Cruger's dialogue is as crisp, as witty, as satirical
of the foibles of fashionable life as ever, She has
tried a new experiment, however, in making a
study of a humbler type, the farmer's wife, and
her ineffectual jealousy of the rich city people.
Hapgood, Norman.
LITERARY STATESMEN AND OTHERS.
A book of essays on men seen from a distance.
12mo. $1.50.
Essays from one of our younger writers, who is
already well known as a man of promise, and who
has been given the unusual distinction of starting
his career by unqualified acceptance from the En-
glish reviews. Scholarly, incisive, and thought-
ful essays which will be a valuable contribution to
contemporary criticism.
Hichens, Robert.
FLAMES: A Novel. By the author of “A
Green Carnation," "An Imaginative
Man," "The Folly of Eustace," etc., with
a cover design by F. R. KImbrough.
I2mo. $1.50.
Second edition.
II
✓
"The book is sure to be widely read."-Buffalo
Commercial.
"It carries on the attention of the reader from
the first chapter to the last. Full of exciting in-
cidents, very modern, excessively up to date."-
London Daily Telegraph.
"In his last book Mr. Hichens has entirely
proved himself.
His talent does not so much lie
in the conventional novel, but more in his strange
and fantastic medium. 'Flames' suits him, has
him at his best.”—Pall Mall Gazette.
,,
"Flames, says the London Chronicle, in a long
editorial on the story, "is a cunning blend of the
romantic and the real, the work of a man who can
observe, who can think, who can imagine, and who
can write."
* *
"Flames' is a powerful story, not only for the
novelty of its plot, but for the skill with which it
is worked out, the brilliancy of its descriptions of
the London streets, of the seamy side of the city's
life which night turns to the beholder; but the
descriptions are neither erotic nor morbid. *
We may repudiate the central idea of soul-trans-
ference, but the theory is made the vehicle of
this striking tale in a manner that is entirely sane
and wholesome. It leaves no bad taste in the
mouth. * * * 'Flames 'it is the author's
fancy that the soul is like a little flame, and hence
the title-must be read with care. There is much
brilliant epigrammatic writing in it that will
delight the literary palate. It is far and away
ahead of anything that Mr. Hichens has ever writ-
ten before."-Brooklyn Eagle.
James, Henry.
WHAT MAISIE KNEW: A novel. 12mo.
$1.50.
12
The publication of a new novel-one quite un-
like his previous work-by Mr. Henry James,
cannot fail to be an event of considerable literary
importance. During its appearance in the Chap-
Book, the story has been a delight to many read-
As the first study of child-life which Mr.
James has ever attempted, it is worth the attention
of all persons interested in English and American
letters.
ers.
Kinross, Albert.
THE FEARSOME ISLAND; Being a mod-
ern rendering of the narrative of one
Silas Fordred, Master Mariner of Hythe,
whose shipwreck and subsequent adventures
are herein set forth. Also an appendix,
accounting, in a rational manner, for the
seeming marvels that Silas Fordred en-
countered during his sojourn on the fearsome
island of Don Diego Rodriguez. With a
cover designed by FRANK HAZENPLUG.
16mo. $1.25.
Le Gallienne, Richard.
PROSE FANCIES:
Second series. By the
author of "The Book-Bills of Narcissus,"
"The Quest of the Golden Girl," etc.
With a cover designed by FRANK HAZEN-
PLUG. 16mo. $1.25. Second edition.
"In these days of Beardsley pictures and deca-
dent novels, it is good to find a book as sweet, as
13
1
pure, as delicate as Mr. Le Gallienne's."-New
Orleans Picayune.
"Prose Fancies' ought to be in every one's
summer library, for it is just the kind of a book
one loves to take to some secluded spot to read
and dream over."-Kansas City Times.
"There are witty bits of sayings by the score,
and sometimes whole paragraphs of nothing but
wit. Somewhere there is a little skit about Scot-
land, the country that takes its name from the
whisky made there'; and the transposed proverbs,
like It is an ill wind for the shorn lamb,' and
'Many rise on the stepping-stones of their dead
relations,' are brilliant. 'Most of us would never
be heard of were it not for our enemies,' is a cap-
ital epigram."-Chicago Times-Herald.
"Mr. Le Gallienne is first of all a poet, and these
little essays, which savor somewhat of Lamb, of
Montaigne, of Lang, and of Birrell, are larded
with verse of exquisite grace. He rarely ventures.
into the grotesque, but his fancy follows fair
paths; a certain quaintness of expression and the
idyllic atmosphere of the book charm one at the
beginning and carry one through the nineteen
'fancies' that comprise the volume."-Chicago
Record.
Magruder, Julia.
MISS AYR OF VIRGINIA, AND OTHER
STORIES. By the author of "The Princess
Sonia," "The Violet," etc. With a
cover-design by F. R. KIMBROUGH. 16mo.
$1.25.
"By means of original incident and keen por-
traiture, 'Miss Ayr of Virginia, and Other Stories,'
14
is made a decidedly readable collection.
In the
initial tale the character of the young Southern
girl is especially well drawn; Miss Magruder's
most artistic work, however, is found at the end
of the volume, under the title' Once More.""--The
Outlook.
"The contents of Miss Ayr of Virginia' are not
less fascinating than the cover.
*** These
tales * * * are a delightful diversion for a
spare hour. They are dreamy without being can-
didly realistic, and are absolutely refreshing in
the simplicity of the author's style."—Boston
Herald.
"Julia Magruder's stories are so good that one
feels like reading passages here and there again
and again. In the collection, 'Miss Ayr of Vir-
ginia, and other stories,' she is at her best, and
Miss Ayr of Virginia,' has all the daintiness, the
point and pith and charm which the author so
well commands. The portraiture of a sweet, un-
sophisticated, pretty, smart Southern girl is be-
witching."-Minneapolis Times.
Malet, Lucas.
*
THE CARISSIMA : A modern grotesque.
By the author of "The Wages of Sin,"
etc. 12mo. $1.50.
Second edition.
**This is the first novel which Lucas Malet
has written since "The Wages of Sin.”
"The strongest piece of fiction written during
the year, barring only the masters, Meredith and
Thomas Hardy."-Kansas City Star.
"There are no dull pages in 'The Carissima,' no
perfunctory people. Every character that goes in
and out on the mimic stage is fully rounded, and
the central one provokes curiosity, like those of
15
that Sphinx among novelists, Mr. Henry James.
Lucas Malet has caught the very trick of James's
manner, and the likeness presses more than
once."-Milwaukee Sentinel.
"The interest throughout the story is intense
and perfectly sustained. The character-drawing
is as good as it can be. The Carissima, her father,
and a journalistic admirer are, in particular, abso-
lute triumphs. The book is wonderfully witty,
and has touches of genuine pathos, more than two
and more than three. It is much better than any-
thing else we have seen from the same hand."
Pall Mall Gazette.
"Lucas Malet has insight, strength, the gift of
satire, and a captivating brilliance of touch; in
short, a literary equipment such as not too many
present-day novelists are possessed of."-London
Daily Mail.
"We cannot think of readers as skipping a line
or failing to admire the workmanship, or to be
deeply interested, both in the characters and the
plot. Carissima' is likely to add to the reputa-
tion of the author of 'The Wages of Sin.'”—Glas-
gow Herald.
Merrick, Leonard.
ONE MAN'S VIEW.
"A Daughter of the
16mo.
$1.00.
By the author of
Philistines," etc.
The story of an ambitious American girl and
her attempts to get on the English stage, her mar-
riage and subsequent troubles, and the final hap-
piness of every one. The author's point of view
and the story itself are unusual and interesting.
"Very well told."-The Outlook.
16
"Clever and original."-Charleston News and
Courier.
66
Eminently readable."--New Orleans Times-
Democrat.
"A highly emotional, sensational story of much
literary merit."-Chicago Inter Ocean.
"A novel over which we could fancy ourselves
sitting up till the small hours."
London Daily
Chronicle.
* * *
"A really remarkable piece of fiction
a saving defense against dullness that may come
in vacation times."—Kansas City Star.
Moore, F. Frankfort.
THE IMPUDENT COMEDIAN
AND
OTHERS. Illustrated. I 2mo. $1.50.
"Several of the stories have appeared in the
Chap-Book; others are now published for the first
time. They all relate to seventeenth and eigh-
teenth century characters - Nell Gwynn, Kitty
Clive, Oliver Goldsmith, Dr. Johnson, and David
Garrick. They are bright, witty, and dramatic.
"Capital short stories."-Brooklyn Eagle.
"A thing of joy."-Buffalo Express.
"The person who has a proper eye to the artis-
tic in fiction will possess them ere another day shall
dawn."-Scranton Tribune.
"Full of the mannerisms of the ståge and thor-
oughly Bohemian in atmosphere."--Boston Herald.
"The celebrated actresses whom he takes for
his heroines sparkle with feminine liveliness of
mind."-New York Tribune.
"A collection of short stories which has a flash
of the picturesqueness, the repartee, the dazzle of
17
the age of Garrick and Goldsmith, of Peg Wof-
fington and Kitty Clive."-Hartford Courant.
"The stories are well conceived and amusing,
bearing upon every page the impress of an inti-
mate study of the fascinating period wherein they
are laid."-The Dial.
"Mr. F. Frankfort Moore had a capital idea
when he undertook to throw into story form some
of the traditional incidents of the history of the
stage in its earlier English days. Nell Gwynn,
Kitty Clive, Mrs. Siddons, Mrs. Abington, and
others are cleverly depicted, with much of the
swagger and flavor of their times."-The Outlook.
Moore, F. Frankfort.
THE JESSAMY BRIDE: A Novel. By
the author of "The Impudent Comedian."
I2mo. $1.50.
A novel of great interest, introducing as its
chief characters Goldsmith, Johnson, Garrick,
Sir Joshua Reynolds, and others. It is really a
companion volume to "The Impudent Comedian."
The first large English edition of "The Jessamy
Bride" was exhausted before publication.
great popularity of his other books is sufficient
guaranty of the entertaining qualities of this latest
volume.
"
Admirably done."-Detroit Free Press.
The
"It is doubtful if anything he has written will
be as well and a widely appreciated as 'The
Jessamy Bride.'"-Kansas City Times.
"This story seems to me the strongest and sin-
cerest bit of fiction I have read since Quo
Vadis.'"-George Merriam Hyde in The Book
Buyer.
18
"A novel in praise of the most lovable of men
of letters, not even excepting Charles Lamb, must
be welcome, though in it the romance of Gold-
smith's life may be made a little too much of for
strict truth * * * Mr. Moore has the history
of the time and of the special circle at his finger-
ends. He has lived in its atmosphere, and his
transcripts are full of vivacity. *
'The
Jessamy Bride' is a very good story, and Mr.
Moore has never written anything else so chival-
rous to man or woman."-The Bookman.
Morrison, Arthur.
* *
A CHILD OF THE JAGO. By the author
of "Tales of Mean Streets." 12mo.
$1.50.
Second edition.
"The book is a masterpiece.”—Pall Mall Gazette.
"The unerring touch of a great artist."—London
Daily Graphic.
"Told with great vigour and powerful simplic-
ity."-Athenæum.
"Remarkable power, and even more remarka-
ble restraint."-London Daily Mail.
"A novel that will rank alone as a picture of
low-class London life."-New Saturday.
"The power and art of the book are beyond
question."-Hartford Courant.
"It is one of the most notable books of the
year."-Chicago Daily News.
"A Child of the Jago' will prove one of the
immediate and great successes of the season.".
Boston Times.
"The description of the great fight between
Josh Perrott and Billy Leary is a masterpiece."
-Punch.
19
"Never, certainly, a book with such a scene on
which so much artistic care has been lavished.
* * The reader has no choice but to be con-
vinced."-Review of Reviews.
"Mr. Arthur Morrison has already distinguished
himself (in his Tales of Mean Streets) as a deline-
ator of the lives of the East-end poor, but his
present book takes a deeper hold on us."-London
Times.
“Is indeed indisputably one of the most inter-
esting novels this year has produced. * * One
of those rare and satisfactory novels in which
almost every sentence has its share in the entire
design.”—Saturday Review.
"Since Daniel Defoe, no such consummate
master of realistic fiction has arisen among us as
Mr. Arthur Morrison. Hardly any praise could
be too much for the imaginative power and artis-
tic perfection and beauty of this picture of the de-
praved and loathsome phases of human life.
There is all of Defoe's fidelity of realistic detail,
suffused with the light and warmth of a genius
higher and purer than Defoe's.”—Scotsman.
"It more than fulfills the promise of Tales of
Mean Streets '-it makes you confident that Mr.
Morrison has yet better work to do. The power
displayed is magnificent, and the episode of the
murder of Weech, 'fence' and 'nark,' and of the
capture and trial of his murderer, is one that
stamps itself upon the memory as a thing done.
once and for all. Perrott in the dock, or as he
awaits the executioner, is a fit companion of Fagin
condemned. The book cannot but confirm the
admirers of Mr. Morrison's remarkable talent in
the opinions they formed on reading 'Tales of
Mean Streets.'"-Black and White.
20
:
Powell, Richard Stillman.
(See Bickford, L. H.)
Pritchard, Martin J.
*
WITHOUT SIN: A novel. 12mo. $1.50.
Third edition.
**The New York Journal gave a half-page
review of the book and proclaimed it "the most
startling novel yet."
"Abounds in situations of thrilling interest. A
unique and daring book."- Review of Reviews
(London).
"One is hardly likely to go far wrong in pre-
dicting that 'Without Sin' will attract abundant
notice. Too much can scarcely be said in praise
of Mr. Pritchard's treatment of his subject.".
Academy.
"The very ingenious way in which improbable
incidents are made to appear natural, the ingenious
manner in which the story is sustained to the end,
the undoubted fascination of the writing and the
convincing charm of the principal characters, are
just what make this novel so deeply dangerous
while so intensely interesting." The World
(London).
Pool, Maria Louise.
IN BUNCOMBE COUNTY. 16mo. $1.25.
Second edition.
"In Buncombe County' is bubbling over with
merriment one could not be blue with such a
companion for an hour."-Boston Times.
21
"Maria Louise Pool is a joy forever, principally
because she so nobly disproves the lurking theory
that women are born destitute of humor. Hers is
not acquired; it is the real thing. 'In Buncombe
County' is perfect with its quiet appreciation of
the humorous side of the everyday affairs of life."
-Chicago Daily News.
"It is brimming over with humor, and the
reader who can follow the fortunes of the redbird
alone, who flutters through the first few chapters,
and not be moved to long laughter, must be sadly
insensitive. But laugh as he may, he will always
revert to the graver vein which unobtrusively
runs from the first to the last page in the book.
He will lay down the narrative of almost gro-
tesque adventure with a keen remembrance of its
tenderness and pathos."-New York Tribune.
Raimond, C. E.
THE FATAL GIFT OF Beauty, and
OTHER STORIES. By the Author of
"George Mandeville's Husband," etc.
16mo. $1.25.
A book of stories which will not quickly be sur-
passed for real humor, skillful characterization
and splendid entertainment. "The Confessions.
of a Cruel Mistress " is a masterpiece, and the
"Portman Memoirs" exceptionally clever.
Rossetti, Christina.
MAUDE: Prose and Verse. With a pref-
ace by William Michael Rossetti.
$1.00.
16mo.
22
THE CHAP-BOOK
A Semi-Monthly Miscellany and Review of Belles-Lettres. Price, 10
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THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL
A Monthly Magazine devoted to Houses and Homes. Articles on Rugs,
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*
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Some good reviews and
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"There is room for a magazine like The House Beautiful, and the
third number of that excellent monthly indicates that the void is in a fair
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* *
It
"The House Beautiful is the title of the new monthly which deals
principally with art as applied to industry and the household.
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Worcester Spy.
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