OLD LONDON TOWN WATTERSON < \ j 525 (X O &H ^ 4 vJ ! > K < - 1 < Bfe !M K 1 t | 03 H >H 1 | J H c C5 h 1 ^X CO -J rt ^ W ^ > H h~H 55 - hN I_J OLD LONDON TOWN OLD LONDON TOWN AND OTHER TRAVEL SKETCHES By Henry Watterson The Torch Press, Publishers Cedar Rapids, Iowa Nineteen Ten W3S The Torch Series Edited by Joseph Fort Newton 209425 FOREWORD THESE delightful sketches of trav- el, hardly more than films, were written while the author was so- journing abroad in 1906-7. They show us a great journalist at play, revisiting familiar places, musing, philosophizing, and soliloquizing upon the course of hu- man affairs. History haunts him, as it does all who journey amid its lights and shadows, and his observations and re- flections have the mellow note of one who has lived much and meditated deep- ly one who feels the tears, not less than the comedy, in mortal things. Pic- turesque, discursive and entertaining, they are all the more charming for a touch of personal reminiscence. J. F. N. OLD LONDON TOWN EsTDON, less than any of the great Capitals of the world even less than Berlin has changed its as- pects in the last four decades of altera- tion and development. During the Sec- ond Empire, and under the wizard hand of Baron Hauseman, a new Paris sprang into existence. We know what has hap- pened in New York and Chicago. But London, except the Thames Embank- ments and the opening of a street here and there betwixt the City and the West End the mid-London of Soho and the Strand is very much the London I be- came acquainted with nearly forty years ago. To be sure many of the ancient landmarks, such as Temple Bar, the Cock and the Cheshire Cheese, have gone to the ash heap of the forgotten, whilst some imposing hostelries have risen in the region about Trafalgar Square ; but, in the main, the biggest village of Christ- endom has lost none of its familiar ear- marks, so that the exile set down any- where from Charing Cross and Picadilly Circus to the bustling region of the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, blindfold, would, the instant the bandage were re- moved from his eyes, exclaim, "It is London!" Yes, it is London; the same old Lon- don; the same old cries in the street; the same old whitey-brown atmosphere; even the same old Italian organ grinders, the tunes merely a trifle varied. Nor yet without its charm, albeit to me of a rather ghostly, reminiscential sort. I came here in 1866, with a young wife and roll of ambitious manscript, found work to do and a publisher, lived for a time in the clouds of two worlds, that of Bohemia, of which the Savage Club was headquarters, and that of the New Apo calypse of Science which eddied about the School of Mines in Jermyn Street and the ' i Fortnightly Review, ' ' then pre- sided over by George Henry Lewes, my 10 nearest friend and sponsor the late Pro- fessor Huxley. I alternated my days and nights between a somewhat familiar intimacy with Spencer and Tyndall and a wholly familiar intimacy with Tom Robertson and Andrew Halliday. Arte- mus Ward was in London and it was to him that I owed these latter associa- tions. Sir Henry Irving had not made his mark. Sir Charles Wyndham was still in America. There were Keenes and Kembles yet upon the stage. Charles Matthews ruled the roost of Comedy. George Eliot was in the glory of her powers and her popularity. Thackeray was gone, but Charles Dickens lived and wrote. Bulwer-Lytton lived and wrote. Wilkie Collins and Charles Reade vied with one another for current favor. Mod- ern Frenchification had invaded neither the Restaurants nor the Music Halls. Evans's Coffee House (Pendennis core of Harmony) prevailed after midnight in Covent Garden Market. In short, the solidarities of old England, along with its roast, succulent, abundant and intact. In the late autumn of 1864, Albert Roberts and I found ourselves in Mont- gomery, Alabama. Some friction having arisen between Gen. Johnston, to whom I was warmly attached, and Gen. Hood, with whom, after Gen. Johnston had been relieved of the command of the Army, I had been serving, I wrote to my old friend Major Banks, who owned the Montgomery Mail, asking for work and winter quarters. He replied at once, bidding me come along and take posses- sion. Of course Roberts went with me. The next morning after our arrival an advertisement offering "two single gen- tlemen board and lodging in a private family" arrested my attention. The strange, impressive part of this advertisement was an addendum which stated that "references would be given and required. " Why, at this stage of the war, demoralization on every hand, any human being should put himself or herself, to the trouble to consider the character or standing of any other hu- man being, was what stumped me; so round I went and rang the door-bell of a pretty house in a garden enveloped by 12 a vine- clad veranda. A military gentle- man of distinguished appearance was just coming out, and, made acquainted with the purpose of my visit, he said, "Oh, that is an affair of my wife/ 7 returned with me and presented me to a most handsome and gracious lady, in- dubitably English, as, indeed, he was himself. That afternoon Roberts and I moved in. It proved to be the family of Dr. Scott, the Post Surgeon beside the father and mother, two daughters, fif- teen and seventeen, respectively, and two lads, one of whom is now a Captain in the United States Navy, the other the President of a railway. Ultimately, Al- bert Eoberts married the younger of the two girls, his brother the elder. It does look as though there were such a thing as destiny, after all, does it not? I am telling, however, only so much of this story as affected my subsequent foreign journey and first experience of London. Dr. Scott was a son of that Captain Scott who commanded Byron's flagship in Grecian waters. He was actually pres- 13 ent in the room when Byron died, at that time a lad of fifteen, or thereabouts. He had come to America as surgeon to a German colony just before the War of Secession. Mrs. Scott was a sister of Prof. Huxley. Armed with letters from her I made my appearance at the School of Mines, never having heard of Prof. Huxley, but not doubting that, being a brother of Mrs. Scott, he was a person worth the knowing. A most handsome and agreeable gen- tleman met me with exceeding friendli- ness ; indeed letters had preceded the one I carried and he was expecting me. We were at once invited to dinner, of course. I shall never forget that dinner. There were three male members of the party beside myself and our host. One was a Mr. Mill. Another was a Mr. Tyndall. The third was a Mr. Spencer. They seemed respectable, middle-class Eng- lishmen, and having once reviewed a book on education by a certain Mr. Her- bert Spencer, I judged that this might be he, and, in case it were, he must be, if not a literary man, at least a peda- 14 gogue. The standing of the other two, like that of Huxley himself, was un- known to me; so that, after the ladies were gone, and the talk became mascu- line and puissant, I let myself in with the intrepidity of ignorance and youth, and, it being, as I thought, a contest for the royalties of mind, I pragmatized with Mr. Mill and "jawed back" to Mr. Spencer and Mr. Tyndall, quite un- conscious, if not of the depths I was treading, yet of the dignity of the com- pany I was keeping; though I got the impression that except for an air of the school-room in Mr. Mill and Mr. Spen- cer, they were persons of more than average intelligence. Several dinners followed and I soon found my bearings ; but it was too late to mend my manners, and, to the end, I was known in this de- lightful circle as "Tenfant prodige!" But we must not let our horns get too far ahead of our hounds. To me London was Mecca. The look of it, the very smell of it, was inspiration. Inci- dentally I don't mind saying there were some cakes and ale. The nights 15 were jolly enough down in the Adelphi, where the barbarians of the Savage Club held high revel, and George Au- gustus Sala was Primate, and Edmund Yates and Tom Robertson were High Priests. Temple Bar blocked the pas- sage from Belgravia to the Bank of Eng- land, and there was no Holborn Via- duct nor Victorian Embankment. Aye, long ago! How far away it seems, and how queer? To me it was the London of story-books ; of Whitting- ton and his cat and Goody Two-Shoes and the Canterbury Shades; of Otway and Marlowe and Chatterton; of Nell Gwynne and Dick Steele and poor Gold- smith ; of all that was bizarre and fanci- ful in history, that was strange and ro- mantic in legend; and not the London of the Tower, the Museum and West- minster Abbey ; not the London of Cre- morne Gardens, newly opened, nor the Argyle Rooms, which should have been burned to the ground before they were opened at all. Since then I have been in and out of London many times. I have been amused 76 here and bored here; but give me back my old fool's paradise and I shall care for naught else. One may doubt which holds him clos- est, the London of History or the London of Fiction, or that London which is a mingling of both, and may be called simply the London of Literature, in which Oliver Goldsmith carouses with Tom Jones, and Harry Fielding dis- cusses philosophy with the Vicar of Wakefield, where Nicholas Nickleby makes so bold as to present himself to Mr. William Makepeace Thackeray and to ask his intercession in favor of a poor artist, the son of a hair-dresser of the name of Turner in Maiden Lane, and even where "Boz," as he passes through Longacre, is tripped up by the Artful Dodger, and would perchance fall upon the siding if not caught in the friendly arms of Sir Richard Steele on his way to pay a call upon the once famous beauty, the Lady Beatrix Esmond. But yesterday I strolled into Mitre Court, and threading my way through the labyrinth of those dingy old law 17 chambers known as the Middle and In- ner Temple, found myself in the little graveyard of the Temple Church and by the side of the grave of Oliver Gold- smith. Though less than a stone 's throw from Fleet Street and the Strand, the place is quiet enough, only a faint hum of wheels penetrating the cool precincts and gloomy walls. There, beneath three oblong slabs, put together like an outer stone coffin, lies the most richly endowed of all the vagabonds, with the simple but sufficient legend : "Here lies Oliver Goldsmith, Born Nov. 10th, 1728. Died April 4th, 1774. " to tell a story which for all its vagrancy and folly, is somewhat dear to loving hearts. He died leaving many debts and a few friends. He lived a lucky-go-devil, who could squander in a night of de- bauch more than he could earn in a month of labor. Yet he gave us the good Primrose and "The Deserted Village " and "The Traveller," and many a care- dispelling screed beside. 18 The Frenchman would say "his des- tiny." The less fanciful Briton, "his temperament. " Poor Noll! He seemed to know himself fairly well in spite of his dissipations and his vanity, and he sleeps sound enough now, perhaps as soundly as the rest of those who in life held him in a rather equivocal admira- tion and affectionate contempt. There are a few other tombs an effigy or two round about, the weird old Chapel of the Templars, shut in by great walls from the streets beyond, to keep them solemn company. For Goldsmith, at least, there seems a fitness; for his life, and such labor as he did, eddied round these sad precincts. Nigh at hand was the Mitre tavern, across the way the Cock, and down the street the Cheshire Cheese. Without the Vandal has been busy enough, within all remains as it was the day they buried him. Perhaps he was not a desirable visiting acquaint- ance. I dare say he was rather a trying familiar friend. Pen-craft and purse- making are often wide apart. The charm of authorship ends in most cases upon 79 OF THE UNIVERSITY the printed page. The man carries his sentiment in a globule of ink and it evaporates by exposure to the atmos- phere of the world of action. The song of Dickens died by its own fireside. Kip- ling, for all his word-painting, is hardly a miracle of grace. Why should one wish to have known Goldsmith, or grudge him his place by the side of the great old Doctor, and Burke, and Rey- nolds, and Garrick? He lived his own life, and, though it was not very clean and wholly unprosperous, perhaps he en- joyed it. He left us some rich fruitage dangling over a wall, which may well conceal all else. Of the dead, no ill! Their faults to the past. The rest to Eternity ! Gradually, but surely, a new London is showing itself above the debris of the old. Miles of roundabout are reduced by short cuts. Thoroughfares are ruthlessly cut through sacred precincts and land- marks obliterated to make room for im- posing edifices and widened streets. In the end, London will be rebuilt to rival Paris in the splendor, without the uni- 20 formity of its architecture. The grime will, of course, attach itself in time to the modern city as it did in the ancient, so that the London that is to be will grow old to the coming generations as the London that was grew old to the genera- tions that went before. 1 ' To-morrow and to-morrow and to-mor- row Creeps on this petty pace from day to day, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death." Ever and ever the old times, the dear old times! Were they really any better than these ? I don't think so we only fancy them so. They had their displace- ments. It was then, as now, "eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow ye die," life the same old walking shadow, the same old play, or, lagging superfluous, or laughing his hour upon the stage and seen no more, the same old "tale told by an idiot, Full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing." 21 Somehow, London has a tendency to call up such reflections; sombre, serious itself, to provoke moralizing, albeit a tur- moil, with incessant flashes of light and shade, the contrasts the vividest and most precipitate on earth, deep and pen- etrating, even from Hyde Park corner to St. Martins-in-the-Fields, and on east- ward beyond the Tower and into the purlieus of Whitechapel and the soli- tudes of Bethnal Green. 22 MEMORIES OF PARIS MEMORIES OF PARIS PARIS, like some agreeable people, has a winning way of making it- self detestable when put to it; and I have never known it, through forty years of intimate acquaintance, to take so much trouble in this regard as dur- ing the ten days we spent there. As a rule coming from London to Par- is is like stepping out of a cold into a warm bath. Even the little swindles with which you are cozened of your good small change have a charm about them. There is a constant suspicion of music in the air. The snake-like route from the Rue Richelieu at the head of the Boulevard des Italiens down by the Grand Opera House and the Madeline and into and across the Place de la Con- corde and up the Champs Elysees to the Arch of Stars has the true serpentine 25 fascination. The smell of the asphalt is of the Lotos bloom. The wavings of the chestnut boughs, signals of the for- bidden, are siren. The glitter is licen- tious and dazzling; a certain resplend- ency of costume and suggestion under the electric clusters about the cafes, the theaters and the hotels. Then, the procession Lord the pro- cession; the red legs of the soldiers and the white caps of the grisettes; ouvrier, cocotte and gamin, helter-skelter amid the hurrying throng of sight-seers, for- eign and domestic for even the genuine Parisian never ceases to be a sight-seer the procession is the most wondrous, the most ever-changing in the whole world, yet always the same ; and no end to it. Just back and forth again, a liv- ing loom whose shuttles flash through strands of many colors, not always of the cleanest; a merry-go-round, through whose brilliant medley of contradictions, of laughter and light, one cannot help catching glimpses of another sort of Niobe, all tears, of sorrow and want and 26 anguish. Nor any lack of humor, Har- lequin with his cap and bells. A day and a night in Paris is quite enough for old stagers at this time of the year. The ride from Cherbourg is certainly tiresome. It was 9 o'clock when we rolled into St. Lazarre. Not too late, however, to go to No. 9 Rue Duphot for a supper of oysters. The Column was still standing in the Place Yendome, though the blinds were up in the shops along the Rue de la Paix. A cold and drizzling rain was falling from the skies and oozing up from the asphalt. I looked in at Henry's and there were the same old red-noses. I looked in at the Chatham and there were the same old blue-noses. Paris does not change much. There is full as much lying about eat- ing as about drinking; nor all of it de- fensive and exculpatory. The gourmet is not always a gourmand. One may be fastidious about his food without being a hog. The good eating places of the world may be told off on one's eight fingers and two thumbs. Yet, I have 27 traveled apace and understand what is meant by the Roast Beef of Old Eng- land and the Poulet Roti of France, by a chop in London and a saute in Paris, by boiled Turbot in Mayfair and a Sole au Joinville at Champoux's in the Place de la Bourse, and to return to our mut- ton by a Bouillebaisse in Marseille. As Pascal used to build it, the Bouilla- baisse was just what Thackeray describes it "A sort of soup, or broth, or brew, Or hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes, # # # # * * # Green herbs, red-peppers, mussels, saf- fron, Soles, onions, garlic, roach and dace. ' ' to which the coquillage of the Mediter- ranean Sea, infinite in their variety, peculiarly lent themselves. Old Terre may have introduced it to Paris. That was before my time. Philipe was my man, Philipe, like Terre, "dead this many a day." They still serve it on Fridays at Champoux's and at the 28 Boeuf a la Mode away east of the old Palais Royal. Dissertations upon food are only a trifle less dangerous than dissertations upon drink. The dissertator is likely, if not berated and condemned outright, to be suspected, even by the friendliest, with regard both to his appetite and his parts of speech. Thackeray, taking his cue from Horace, made it his wont to speak fearlessly, and with surpassing knowledge and freedom of the pleasures of the table. " Respect thy dinner," was his key-note. It is often said of his writing that "the claret-stains are vis- ible, ' ' as if any man ever did any really good writing under vinous influence ; as if, to impart life to its reader, to lift his reader skyward, a writer must not have about him all his faculties and re- sources. The hapless, the much misun- derstood, and often maligned, author of "Pendennis" and "Vanity Fair" had a good digestion, and made it an article of faith e 'en to eat and drink his fill ; per- haps his prose-poems in praise of food were in a sense imprudent in a man of 29 his dignity and weight in the world of letters; that entitled "Memorials of Gormandizing" is certainly a master- piece; but he who has left us "The Bal- lad of Bouillabaisse" can afford a good deal of detraction from the unsympa- thetic, as of misconstruction from the critical. Was ever philosophy wiser, sweeter? Could there be less of literary affecta- tion, more of manly candor? I have never been able to read aloud the verse next to the last, not even to myself, without that lumpy sensation in the throat, which moves one to seek the se- clusion of a darkened chamber. The tragedy of that man's life! It was but yesterday that the poor, distraught lady once "the fair form nestled near me" that "dear, dear face that looked fond- ly up" making the beginning of life a dream of happiness to the most affec- tionate and impressionable of men was borne to her final rest from the Retreat, where she had dwelt nearly sixty years, surviving her husband by nearly forty. He a cynic ! 30 Yesterday we went out to Chantilly. It was the ancient home of the Mont- morencys and the Condes. Next after Versailles and Fontainebleau it is the most interesting and best preserved of the royal remains about Paris. Of the Kings and puppets, the Queens and Harlots, the Saints, Sinners and Heroes, who dwelt in these palaces it may be truly said that ' ' While they lived they lived in clover, When they died, they died all over. ' ' God of dreams, how they perished and have vanished! At Chantilly, among the many ob- jects of chivalry and frivolity that pre- sent to the eye of the stranger their ghastly and shameless effigies in bronze and marble, from the mounted statue of the old Constable Anne de Mont- morency standing watch and guard over the entrance of the chateau, to the tomb of Henry the Second of Bourbon, the Grand Condo, within its chapel, two por- traits caught my fancy, transfixed my attention and made me captive to th 31 exclusion of the rarer objects that filled the winding galleries ; the one of Talley- rand by Ary Scheffer, the other of Bona- parte as First Consul, by Frangois Ger- ard; both originals, of course, and hu- manly, vividly life-like. If the proper study of man is man, no two men who ever lived will better re- pay perusal. Napoleon was the genius of action applied to arms. Talleyrand was the genius of intellect applied to civics. Had Napoleon listened to Tal- leyrand his dynasty might to-day be occupying the seats of the mighty held by a peasant President even as the dy- nasty of Bernadotte, brother-in-law of Joseph Bonaparte, survives in far-away Sweden. Talleyrand, himself, success- fully riding every wave of a tempest which abated not its fury his whole life through, died at a great age in honor and power ; wise counsellor to every par- ty he agreed to serve, traitor to none that was true to itself and France, in- dispensable to all. I have passed through all the Na- poleonic stages; the boy's adoration of 32 the prowess of the warrior; the man's reaction against tyranny and havoc ; the student's period of suspended judgment, of reflection and research, to settle upon a definite belief touching the most com- plicate and interesting human problem the world has thus far had to consider in its reading of history. This portrait of Gerard's tended to confirm my im- pression. It represents a young man of eight and twenty, rather pale and thin of visage, with dark chestnut locks and deep, blue-gray eyes full of sadness, of lips weak and feminine; not a particle of the self -consciousness which appears in the later pictures, nor the least pos- ing for effect. It is not the Napoleon of the battle-pieces; not the Napoleon of the Coronation, of Elba and Waterloo and St. Helena, " grand, gloomy and peculiar ; " it is the Napoleon of St. Cyr and the Rue St. Honore; the dreamer who owed San Gene his wash bill; the solicitous brother who watched tenderly over little Louis ; the sentimentalist who fell in love with the widow Beauhar- nais; the poor Corsican, not yet full- 33 knowing of his power, a very youth in the simplicity and earnestness with which he seemed to return my heart- throbs of compassion and sympathy. I could have gone away and cried with the thought of him and them, and all of it; the fall from grace; the de- lirium of ambition; the debauch of glory; ending upon a lone, barren isle of the ocean in one long wail of de- spair, Prometheus bound to the rock, not in fiction, or drama, but in real, actual life, in living flesh and blood. Yet he remains the most captivating figure of history. Millions of pages have been written, and will be written, about him. Myriads go over yonder to the little rotunda under the gilded dome and look down with awe upon the splen- did tomb below. Once upon a time it seemed to me that a monster lay sleep- ing there; perish the thought of it; merely a man of surpassing gifts in martial arts, and many moral infirmi- ties, the sport and prey of fortune, far more to be pitied than blamed. To me he seems a brilliant gambler, who out- 34 played his hand, and outstayed his for- tune, the salle de jouer a continent in- stead of a baize green beneath a glit- tering chandelier. The environs of Paris, hardly less than Paris itself, are deeply impressive. They awaken all that is responsive in the heart, all that is thoughtful and in- telligent in the mind of cultivated man. From Mont Valerian upon either hand round the magic circle of wood and dale, Versailles and Fontainebleau, the hill of St. Cloud and the terrace of St. Germaine, the villages of Ville D'Av- ray and of Barbaison, every footstep leads across the migrations of love and daring, over the tombs of all that was stubborn in patriotism, heroism and ro- mance when knighthood was in flower and valiants were ready to look danger in the eye and laugh death in the face for sake of a blue ribbon or a bunch of violets. But among the many spots which memory gives to the Odyssey of tears none arouses interest of the senti- mental sort more than Malmaison, some- 35 time the home of Rose Tascher, generally called Josephine Beauharnais. The grounds are ample, with plenty of outhouses and stables such as one might have seen in Virginia during the Colonial period. There is a little adja- cent private chapel. A brook wimples through the lichens. The swards are beginning to be swept, the trees to be trimmed, the flower beds to be tended, and, as the encroachments of the ad- vancing city have not quite reached thus far inland, there is not wanting an air of rustic isolation, which falls in agree- ably with the sense of fitness. The day was overcast, as it should have been, when we went there. Only now and then a glint of sunlight broke through clouds that were not of the spring, but of the autumn. An officer in uniform showed us through the more than half empty rooms and halls, and up the winding stairs, unchanged for a century. This was the music-room in it the harp of the first Empress, pre- sented by the Second and here was the cozy, rather than elegant, dining-room, 36 with a set of table ornaments, very in- elegant, presented to Napoleon by the King of Saxony. Above were three con- necting apartments; first, that of the Emperor, then a primitive bath-room opening into the bed chamber of Joseph- ine, the bed upon which she died un- disturbed, and last the boudoir of Hor- tense ; all extremely light and airy, over- looking the garden in the rear. The house is oblong, having very little dec- oration except a pair of gables at either end and two miniature obelisks, presum- ably brought by Napoleon from Egypt, along with a number of Egyptian por- traits that adorn one of the reception rooms. Napoleon was certainly an idealist and a day-dreamer, largely a man of the affections. There can be little doubt that he possessed a credulous and a lov- ing heart. He made a good son and more than a good brother. The whole of them were an unruly lot. He showed himself a loyal friend. He got little else than ingratitude. He adored Josephine. 37 She returned his adoration with infidel- ity. That he ever put a crown upon the head of a woman so faithless and friv- olous can only be accounted for by the fact that he idolized her and forgave her, for her misbehavior was not un- known to him. He loved her when he put her away from him and suffered more than she did. It was the stepping down and out of regal splendor, not the breaking of conjugal bonds she had never respected, nor the sundering of ties of companionship she never ap- preciated, which brought the tears the poor woman shed. A light-headed Creole reared in the school of the decadence, demoralized, if not debauched, by the horrors and excesses of the French Rev- olution, Napoleon came across the disc of the loose life she was leading ; first as a little monster and then as a queer prodigy, whom she took because she could do no better, and whom she never understood. The divorce was a mistake. Josephine, whatever else she may, or may not, have 38 been, was Napoleon's Mascotte. During his mismated life with Marie Louise he often visited Malmaison and passed hours with this the wife of his youth and his bosom, much to the worry of the frowsy and ignoble Austrian woman he had for reasons of State and dynasty taken in her stead and who had brought him nothing but trouble and ill-fortune. When Napoleon returned from Elba, Josephine having died during his ab- sence, hither he came as to an altar of mourning. Hortense showed him silent- ly into the room where she had breathed her last and gently closed the door. He stayed an hour and when he came out his eyes were red with weeping. Yet there are those who would have us be- lieve that this was a man of blood and iron. I do not think Josephine was a bad woman; she was a weak, a vain and foolish woman, who could not rise to her fortunes. Except for her insuffi- ciency she could have held her place to the end. She died the 29th of May, 1814, at Malmaison, and was buried June 39 2nd, in the little Parish of Ruell, hard by. Over her grave a monument, bear- ing the figure of a recumbent and weep- ing woman, was placed by her two child- ren. It bears the inscription, "A Joseph- ine " and below "Eugene and Hor- tense. ' ' In 1837, Hortense died and was brought here for interment by the side of her mother, the Emperor Louis Na- poleon, her son, later along, erecting a monument over her grave. Our party visited the little old church and stood by the grave of these two frail, fair and unfortunate women; least for- tunate in their splendor. I have stood by the tomb of Napoleon many a time the emotions varied and varying and the emotions here, though mingled, were mostly of pity and sadness. Do you remember the visit of Col. Henry Esmond to the grave of his mother in the lowlands, the shadow of the crosses upon the hillside, the tinkle of the bell in the valley? Well, something of that visitation crept over me as I stood in this church of Ruell. Here, too, was a woman who had climbed high in dream- 40 land, like a star to fall, never to hope again. Who shall judge her? Surely not Paul Barras. Nor the shade of Tallien point finger at her ; not even the ghost of Bonaparte. There is in Pere la Chaise, an upright shaft of granite above the last resting place of a woman of genius of sur- passing beauty and genius whose life was a defiance poor Ada Isaacs Men- ken bearing the two significant words "Thou Knowest." And so with Rosa Tascher, otherwise Josephine Beauhar- naise, whilom Empress of France. Yet, let us not forget the man in the case. He too suffered. He too fell. Nor all the gorgeous trappings beneath the gild- ed dome that rises over the Champ de Mars, nor the drums and tramplings of the legions that idolize his memory, may soothe one aching heart-throb, nor lessen by a single drop of blood, or tears, the usurious price he paid for his glory! 41 OUR ARMY IN FLANDERS OUR ARMY IN FLANDERS THE Low Countries have as far back as I can remember held a wand of enchantment over my er- rant fancies. ' ' Our Army in Flanders, ' ' from the lips of my Uncle Toby, told me of broils and battles, of swearing and strong drink, when I was but a kid in knee-breeches. I followed Quentin Dur- ward from Lille to Liege, from Antwerp to Limoges, from the Hague to Hell, and back again. The story of Gerard and Margaret, of Rotterdam, the fa- ther and mother of Erasmus, never fails to bring tears to my eyes, and I yet choke with the thought of the visit paid by Henry Esmond to the grave of his mother "upon a little, sunlit hillock outside the convent wall." Aix brings back Browning's breezy verses, Bruges Longfellow's melodious poem, whilst 45 the very railway time-tables make Marl- borough and Conde and Turenne, to say nothing of Napoleon and Wellington, to live and fight again. There were heroes as well as giants in those days. The dykes mirror their mem- ory to the stars and the chimes proclaim it from tower and steeple "My name is Roland " still sounds from the Belfry over the market-place. "When I toll there is fire, and when I ring there is triumph/' as many a time in days of yore it thundered responsive to the Bells of Bruges shall you ever forget the lines exclaiming "Till the bell of Ghent responded o'er lagoon and dyke of sand, 1 1 am Roland ! I am Roland ! there is victory in the land.' 3 I catch the hoof -beats of Alva's horse, the thud, thud, thud of the Burgundian cuirassiers, the furious charge of the legions of Otterberg and Orange. I see the White Hoods swarm in the Place d'Armes. Why, bless you, at this mo- ment I am looking out of a window 46 across the peaked eaves and crooked ga- bles upon the monster ruins of the an- cient castle of the Counts of Flanders frowning to the skies, as dark and mas- sive a fortress as the Middle Ages have sent down to us to mark the reign of despotism and the thralldom of man; and I have stood before the Statue of Jacques Van Artevelde, and, as in a dream, drunk of the Heaven-born in- spiration of freedom. Alas, for all his service to the people and the State they murdered him, and yonder is the spot it is marked by a cross where he lived and died! It was Philip Van Artevelde, more than his father Jacob, or Jacques Van Artevelde, who was early impressed upon me by the unacted and unactable tragedy of Sir Henry Taylor. The oth- er day I tried to get a copy of it, hav- ing lost my own. It is out of print. I wonder how many educated Americans know of it the most Shakespearean dramatic poem after Shakespeare in our language? There is no monument to Philip Van Artevelde in Ghent. His 47 OF THE UNIVERSITY OF career was neither so long, nor so iden- tified with civic affairs as that of Jacques; but it was surpassing fine whilst it lasted. He took the helm at a venture in desperate times a bookish youth, with a fair and noble lady to share his elegant leisure, along with the sense of a deep wrong as a reason for keeping out of public life serving as a kind of jury-mast whereof to prop the canvas of the tottering Commonwealth. It often happens that the people know not what is best for them, that they are cheated and misled by rogues and demagogues, that they forget their servants and alternate between the ad- oration and the rending of their idols. It was so in the days of the Arteveldes and the DeWitts. It is so in our day. It will continue so to the end of popu- lar Government, which nevertheless is the best Government in the world, be- ing, like all other mundane things, im- perfect. Philip Van Artevelde took the field and in the teeth of incredible odds held it until at last he bravely fell in disas- 48 trous battle. When they found him as Davy Crockett was found amid a heap of the slain of his own hand, and were about to hurl his body into a neighboring trench, the Duke of Bur- gundy, against whom he had fought so long and so well, and who had rid- den up betimes, stayed the threatened desecration. "Nay, not so," he said I am quoting from memory out of Sir Henry Taylor's drama and must be for- given if I trip upon a word or two "Nay, not so" "dire rebel though he was, Yet with a noble nature and great gifts Was he endowed; courage, discretion, wit, An equal temper and an ample soul, Rock-bound 'gainst transitory passion, But below, built on a surging, subter- ranean flood That stirred and lifted him to high at- tempt ; So prompt and capable, and yet so calm, He nothing lacked of sovereignty, but the right, Nothing of soldiership except good for- tune ; 49 Wherefore with honor lay him in his grave, And thereby shall increase of honor come Unto those arms that vanquished one so wise, So valiant, so renowned!" Not an unfitting inscription to be placed by the people of the North upon a monument to be erected at Arlington in commemoration of Robert E. Lee. They call it "Gand" curiously enough. I was never in "Gand" before. Resolved not again to pass a spot so historic and exhilarating, we took the boat from Dover to Ostend by far the most splendid seaside resort in the world, albeit, the season was over and including Bruges by the way, we rolled into the quaint old city that once vied with Venice and Antwerp for the com- mercial supremacy of the universe, and which, though submerged as a metrop- olis, is still rich and prosperous. It was in the Carthusian Convent, where the famous Congress of Ghent assembled in 1814, of which Talleyrand 50 and Metternich were the leading figures, and where the signing of the Treaty of Peace between England and the United States was witnessed, Clay, Adams and Gallatin being three of our Commis- sioners. In the Clay homestead of Ashland, near Lexington, there hangs a picture which has a story. It was won by Henry Clay from Albert Gallatin at a game of "Old Sledge/ 7 it having been won in the first place by Gallatin him- self at a church raffle in Ghent. "I liked the picture," said Mr. Clay as I have heard Mr. Beck relate the inci- dent ' ' and Gallatin had neither taste nor knowledge of pictures. But he thought he could beat me at 'seven up.' So I proposed to play him the best two out of three for possession. Well, we played and thar's the picture!" Nowhere in the world can philosophy survey history in its relation to civic affairs, embracing national and popular vicissitudes, the rise and fall of parties, the outer perils and the internal con- vulsions of the State with better ad- 51 vantage than here in Ghent. Democracy was, during five hundred years, nowhere so exemplified and tested. It is much to say that it was not a total failure. History does not often repeat herself, but human nature does, for human na- ture is ever the same tangled web of good and evil, of greed and pelf, of high ideals and degrading passions the strong seeking to lord it over the weak, the cunning to overreach the simple; each result in nine cases out of ten the merest toss-up of fortune. 52 CASTLES IN SPAIN CASTLES IN SPAIN SKYWABD, fleecy clouds, here and there tinted with opal and russet, upon a field of blue; seaward, glimpses of crested waves tumbling into pebbly nooks, and distant, sun-lit sails filled by winds from Never-never- land, and bound for No-Place-in-Par- ticular; midway, betwixt Heaven and Earth and Ocean, the rugged peaks of the Pyrenees, purple-dark and snow- flecked, like velvet jerkin of medieval Don, slashed with white satin vine- yards and olive-groves clinging tena- ciously and lovingly to mouldering walls now and then a belated village, or a lost hamlet, forgotten by the Deluge and left high and dry to play hide-and-seek with Destiny that is the route from Narbonne to Perpignan, from Perpignan to Cerbere and thence across the Franco- 55 Spanish border, to Port Bou, and there you are; there you are, a full-fledged Grandee in case you come down with the stamps, as the saying hath it, freely to the customs officials a bandit of the Captain Eolando class, in case you don't and well upon your journey to Bar- celona. Alexander Dumas it was who de- clared Spain to be in Africa, not in Eu- rope. He meant, of course, that it is more African than European. True enough, despite their Latin origin, the Spaniard and the Frenchman are most unalike. Queer what pranks Dame Nature plays, and equally upon mice, moun- tains and men; the low-lander differing from the high-lander; the white-mouse from the gray-mouse, according to Mr. Master-of -Bee-Ceremonies, Maeterlinck, working at cross-purposes; a single line of hills separating two distinct races and racial systems, marking the distinction not merely on the map, but in language, climate, custom, mental process, pro- ductivity and outgrowth of every kind 56 and degree. "What could the dread old Vestal have meant by such perversities? Is she a Humorist, and did she seek to amuse herself? Or, a Tragedy Queen, cruel and vengeful, loving strife and carnage, tears and sorrow, because of some early disappointment of her own? The poets call her beautiful. The phil- osophers praise her bounty. Me ! I hate her; but I fear her and obey her; am ready ever at her beck and call " Her slightest touches instant pause, Debar a' side pretenses, And resolutely keep her laws, Uncaring consequences, ' ' but I detest her and them; fickle, re- morseless both! Barcelona is, in some of its aspects, even as brilliant as Paris. The Eambla may fairly claim kinship with the Boulevard des Italiens, the Plaza de Cataluna with the Place de la Concorde, less the decorations. In Paris, where it is not French, it is cosmopolitan; in Barcelona, it is mainly Spanish, the cloak of the cabaleros, the mantilla of 57 the senoras conspicuous; an air of so- lemnity more conspicuous still ; nothing loud, or hysterical ; the very cries of the newsboys a little subdued, and no so- licitation, except from the beggars, who are, however, almost as much in evi- dence as fleas, or lazzaroni, in Naples. The new Spain, of which we hear so much, may be upon the way, but it has not yet arrived, albeit Barcelona is a modern city that is the Barcelona which has grouped itself around the old medieval town in all its appointments, and a most rich and beautiful city in- deed. The elbowing of the antique and the current makes some strange contrasts. Old Barcelona lies about the water's edge, pierced here and there by a broad avenue connecting New Barcelona with the quays. These avenues are lined with handsome buildings. Turn out of one of them and you stand face to face with all that is quaint in streetdom, feudal in architecture; little, narrow lanes running zig-zag one into another, overhung by sky-scrapers which seem 58 to touch roofs, and from whose bal- conies lovers might touch hands; the walls built to stand against assault; great iron doorways, and tiny loop- hole windows; no room for battering ram, small hope for ladders of silk, or rope, or fancy. They are as polite as the French but gentler, statelier; plenty of independ- ence, but no swagger. An English woman, whose relative had bought her a bunch of violets, paying five pesetas for it, sought the booth in the flower market whence the violets had come, and taxed the old woman in charge with extortion. "Madame," says she, "give me back four pesetas and I will return you the flowers. ' ' With the most perfect courtesy the old woman replied : "Madame, here are your five pesetas, and you may keep the flowers. " We went to the cafe Novedades to see the old year out and the new year in. This cafe is the most respleiidently lighted of any in the world, and, per- haps it is the largest. It was crowded to the uttermost. A Viennese band was 59 in attendance, the leader a fair-haired Austrian, who knew her business, and, in honor of her American guests, gave us a cake-walk on the turn of the hour, whilst the drum tapped twelve, and the assembled throng with perfect decorum yet not without enthusiasm, gave a welcoming huzza. The place swarmed with women and children, old women and young women, dandies and men-about-town, nor anything tipsy, or unclean, a thing impossible in Paris. The French love to dance and to sing, but at bottom I have a fancy that the Spaniards love music more than the French. The Cafe Chantants of Barce- lona are famous. They are also nu- merous. Two of them indeed are far and away ahead of the Moulin Rouge in Paris, and the Alhambra in London; equally brilliant, whilst much more odd and attractive. There is little or no vulgarity on the stage. The demi-mondaine is around, of course, but she is neither impudent nor aggressive, keeps in the back- ground and shows fewer signs of de- 60 bauchery than elsewhere. In public and in Spain Carmen must behave her- self. Calve makes up the part, and sings and plays it very well, as such parts go; but in actual life I have seen many such who could far surpass her acting in the decorous, albeit decollette, graces and the pretty, though artificial, modesty of the real wanton. They dance divinely particularly the Andalusians. None of them rely upon high-kicking and short skirts. Their use of the cas- tanet possesses a rythm no less than a rattle all their own. They melt and die away in the languor of the music, and, presto, a shimmer of white tulle, a flash of red satin and black eyes, they are gone. The journey betwixt Barcelona and Madrid, unlike that betwixt Dan and Beersheba, is, and very decidedly, "all barren. " The best parts of Spain are very like the worst parts of Florida. Looking from the car-window as one wakens a night out from Barcelona on his way to Madrid, he might fancy him- self traversing the "bad lands " of North 61 Dakota ; gravel-beds and stubble, with a glimpse of far-away snow-mountains such as one begins to descry as he ap- proaches the foot-hills of the Rockies. Madrid itself sits upon an arid plateau among the foot-hills of the Guardaram- ma, an ugly, half -built imitation of Paris. There is little to be seen here, or here- abouts, except the Museum with its rich deposits of Murillos, Velasquez and Goyas, and the Escorial, with its not very rich deposit of royal bones, topped by those of Charles V and Philip II, of memory hated, or sainted, according to the theologic point of view. Picture galleries, let me say at once, have never very much taken my fancy. I remember them for the most part by the mile and rate them at their market value. Doubtless the "old masters " drew scientifically. They had made a close study of nature and anatomy. They had learned the trick of color. Every now and then there breaks out from their stiff canvases a beaming face, or a flash- ing thought. But their subject themes mainly affront and disgust me. I do 62 not like the materialization of Heavenly things, the attempt at a visible present- ment of the spiritual. Murillo's Virgin Mary is the loveliest portrait of a shep- herd girl to my poor eyes, nothing more Velasquez's Crucifixion of Christ most realistic and horrible. Alike in the gal- leries of the Uffizi at Florence, in the Louvre at Paris and here in the Real Museo de Pinturas the endless Bible pictures seem perfunctory, hard and cold, as if made to the order of some grim recluse, or dogmatic controversial- ist, who says "believe as I do, or I will kill you." That kind of religion, even that kind of politics, has never greatly appealed to me. It is easy to see that Michael Angelo was a great man; that Rubens and Claud Lorain, Murillo and Velasquez were great artists. Bits of their work are charming. Many of their concep- tions are appalling. All of their por- traits particularly those of Raphael and Rembrandt are life-like. Yet, do I prefer the modern, and would not swap a Turner or a Gerome for a room- 63 full of Guides, Titians and Tintorettos. The Germans especially please me. To my mind, there is more good work in Munich than in Madrid. I know a mod- ern "Temptation of St. Anthony/ ' hang- ing neglected in an atelier at Florence, which is worth all the nude creations of these ancients. It is realism incarnate. Now let us go down into the tomb of Kings and muse awhile upon the vanity of things human, albeit claiming the Right Divine; for nowhere else on earth not even in Westminster Abbey is the lesson taught so impressively as in the Escorial. The Abbey is not without its human features. It has, as it were, a soft and sunny side to it. Out of Poet's Corner is exhaled a certain fragrance of the past and the hand of Chatham, though in marble effigy, still points inspiringly to the greatness and glory of England. The whir and din of London's streets, like the roar of the ocean, lull the dreams of those who sleep in the Abbey. Not a sound save the scream of eagle or the screech of night-hawk, penetrates the walls of the 64 Escorial to disturb the rest of the Haps- burgs, the Bourbons and the Montpen- siers, silent if not snug lying there in their iron coffins, with gold clasps and jeweled labels, each upon another, like so many steel-blooms, awaiting the Day of Judgment. And, what a Judg- ment! Upon a bleak hillside, thirty miles away from Madrid, stands the Escorial, a huge gray pile of forgotten grandeur, a mausoleum of dead hopes and fears, a fortress of faded glory, a shrine of ob- solete fanaticism, to which good Catho- lics might come, not in pious homage, but in holy dread, seeking lessons of wisdom, words of warning, out of the appalling shadow and loneliness that en- velop the final resting-place of ruthless despotism and abhorrent cruelty done upon man in the name of God. Neither Charles the Fifth, the grim Emperor, nor his son, Philip the Second, the iron King, took any ac- count of the generality of mankind. They were as they firmly believed anoint of God. They were undoubt- 65 ing and honest bigots. But they were able men and born to the purple, and they ruled with one hand lifting the mitre, the other hand the sword. Who- ever got in the way of either must die. Whoever refused the service of either must die. Intolerance was their atmos- phere, Horror their weapon. They ele- vated Cruelty into a fine art and called it Religion. Man was to be saved not by grace, but by the gibbet and the stake. The hob-nail style of preaching was supplemented by the thumb-screw style of prayer, and, between the two, they made sad havoc in Spain ; in point of fact they made the Church and the State to serve as upper and nether mill- stones for the deification of King-craft and Priest-craft, grinding out of the souls and bodies of men a grist for the delectation alike of princes and pre- lates, not all of them bad or insincere, by far the most of them thinking they did but the service of the Lord, notably the father and son who lie here in this Escorial, built by the one to the 66 glory of the other, now given over to the equal celebration of both. The arts alike of pen and pencil stand aghast at the thought of undertaking the job of describing the Escorial. Stu- pendous! Guides, along with guide- books, become discreetly reticent in the presence of the most awful pile of rocks and reminiscence conceivable to the modern mind. St. Peter's, at Rome, is distinctly one sentiment. The Yosemite is another. The Escorial is unequaled in silent oppression and grandeur; an ever-living monument to the mistaken in Theology and Government. Alas, for human infirmity! Why could not Eras- mus have thrown his gentle, far-reach- ing spirit around Luther ; why could not Luther have irradiated Erasmus with some of his puissant militancy? Why two centuries of blood and terror, and a succeeding century of skepticism and distraction, as the offspring of a Reform which could the Religion of Christ have prevailed would have never in- volved a division of the Christian church? To what end disputed ortho- 67 doxy if it be to end in Infidelism? I came away from the Escorial with a heavy heart, nowise edified, or elated, or instructed. It was some twenty years ago, at a banquet in Paris, that I met Emilio Castelar. A mutual friend carried us away after the post-prandial cere- monies to a comfortable Hole-in-the- Wall, where we passed the greater part of the remaining night. His style of speaking, and, indeed, his entire person- ality, reminded me of Mr. Lamar, of Mississippi, who had just entered Mr. Cleveland's Cabinet; the circumstance pleased him; and we soon fell into the most familiar and agreeable conversa- tion. The greatest of modern Spaniards loved Washington and Lincoln. He was a Republican, and had worked out for himself the problem of Eepublican Government. The opportunity to apply his theories to Spain came to him, and he failed miserably. There were not wanting those who argued thence his unfitness for practical rulership, to 68 draw learned contrasts between the world's men of action and its orators, to write, in short, dissertations upon real statesmen and closet statesmen, with illustrations from Mirabeau to Bis- marck, from Napoleon to Cavour, and to Castelar himself. After all, what is suc- cess in government, even in war, except opportunity? Suppose either Hoche, or Marceau, or both of them, had lived and returned to Paris from their victorious campaigning on the Rhine suppose Bernadotte had not been the brother-in- law of Joseph Bonaparte, which tied his hands that fateful day of the 18th Brumaire should we ever have heard of Napoleon except as a brilliant young general of Italy? Bismarck tells us himself that on a certain occasion he planned the taking of his own life. It is the coincidence of the man and the occasion; and judged by this rule of time, person and place, the Republic of Emilio Castelar was impossible; nor could any statesman, or warrior, have saved the day except by the sword. We talk of Cromwell ; why, he was a 69 butcher and a hypocrite. He a Repub- lican? In 1648 England was quite as ready for a Republican Government as were the colonies in 1776. Cromwell had a better chance to play the part afterward played by Washington than Washington had himself. In Cromwell the opportunity and the man had met, but because of his ambition and his dishonesty, and not because of any lack of ability he failed, founding neither a Dynasty nor a Common- wealth. Even Napoleon did better than that. So, why should it be written that Castelar failed in Spain because, and solely because, he was a scholar and not a man of action. When Houston had succeeded in establishing the Republic of Texas, Burr exclaimed: "I was thirty years before my time." Maybe Burr was right. I very distinctly recall the conversa- tion with Senor Castelar. Naturally, the talk took a retrospective and doc- trinal turn, for both of us had just spoken upon the ethics of popular Gov- ernment apropos of the then struggling 70 Republic of France. Castelar declared that Spain, more than France, was the victim of Beaurocracy. In France, said he, there is some system, some intelli- gence; in Spain nothing except pre- rogative, corrupt and corrupting. "The Spanish people" I think I quote very nearly his exact language "are the most Democratic people in the world, and, the most conservative. They cling to their dignity and their sloth. Each would have his own way. But, as a body, they do not love liberty for the sake of liberty, and they have no con- ception of liberty as a public asset, as a political quantity. I found this out too late to save myself a disaster. I had been an enthusiast, perhaps a dreamer; but as soon as I did find it out, I reversed such engineries as I was still able to control, and refused to in- volve my country in my own ruin. ' ' In other words, he had made no provision to retain power by force. He remained true to his ideals. Rather than purchase success by the sacrifice of those ideals, he stepped down and out. 77 It is easy enough to see now that he was right unless he had the spirit of Cromwell, the genius of Napoleon, as- sisted by fortune in the creation of a new order of things resting on all the odious features of the old order. The Democracy of which Castelar spoke is plain enough to be seen. The average Spaniard is as self-contained and sturdy as the wood-sawyer of the aphorism is supposed to be. He is his individual self, independent, isolated. He has no conception of concert of action, none of liberty, as a public force. He is not a Socialist. None of the theories of the French Revolution reached him. He chooses to live in the past, and the past is represented to his mind by the gran- dees and glories of the Medieval Ages. In contemplating the startling con- trasts between foreign life and foreign history, with our own, I can not help reflecting upon the yet more startling contrasts of ancient and modern Re- ligion and Government. I have been coming over here at irregular intervals for more than forty years. Always a 72 devotee to American institutions, I have been strengthened in my beliefs and in my sentiments by what I have en- countered in Europe. 73 In the same Series Edited by J. F. Newton Abraham Lincoln An Essay By Joseph Fort Newton A Golden Book and The Literature of Childhood By William Marion Reedy Henry Thoreau and Other Children of the Open Air By Theodore Watts-Dunton Isaiah as a Nature Lover By Frederick John Lazell (others to follow) OF THE UNIVERSITY OF The Torch Series Gems of the purest literature of our day carefully chosen, edited and printed; each 60 cents net (Postage .06) 02-712 illu * jlo even ^