a man of varied and most exquisite taste. I have the promise of seeing a
little volume of his poems, a very few copies of which have found their
way into the hands of the officers of his household, friends of these
German friends with whom I am domiciled. They are said to be full of a
melancholy sweetness and pathos. His taste is shown in the furnishing as
well as in the architecture of his palaces. Everything from the
draperies to the tiniest bit of bric-a-brac in every apartment, in all
these palaces, he has built or is building, is from his own designs.
Those who have been fortunate enough to see them rave over their rare
and wonderful beauty and richness. Will you begin to think, “Isn’t that
all; can there be anything more?” I have not told the best! This
strange, shrewd, “mad” Bavarian king has a spotless reputation. With so
much that is admirable, might it not be hoped that in the course of
time, the eccentricities will disappear and the “fittest survive?” The
prominent feature in summing up these Bavarian kings is their
unselfishness. Mere selfish gratification seems to have had no place in
their lives. All their faculties, energies, time, revenues and efforts
were devoted to a beneficent development and improvement of their realm.
Such men should rule whether “born to the purple or not.”
So endeth my letter on the kings. Sometime I may take you with me to
their palaces. We can go whenever we wish; so can the humblest subject
in their kingdom. I saw on last Saturday one, thin and old, and poorly
clad, standing before a picture in one of the royal corridors leading
from the Cologne suite to the state apartments. She seemed to be
enjoying it quite as much as I was. She had her market basket on her arm
and was on her way home: it was full. All she had to do was to make
choice of her church, or her king’s palace, or she may have gone to
both; each was alike open to her. How much the graciousness of such
custom is to be commended!
L. G. C.
Munich, January 2, 1883.
[Illustration]
MUNICH.
Here is your first letter in the new year. I have been giving you a
rest. I did a little sum in arithmetic myself, and that addition of
letters looked so formidable it drove me into sandwiching this interval.
Has the experiment been satisfactory, do you ask? Only in proving to
myself that I can be unselfish. I had a friend in Philadelphia once who
had the scathingest tongue. He used to say: “All women like and seek
more or less martyrdom.” Maybe and maybe. I know I said to myself: “He
has to answer all those. Think of such a tax! Because you are away from
home and yearn so for news, you have been thoughtless. He has many
correspondents; he has much to do. Think of how you may be interfering!
Perhaps he sits up o’ nights, or heralds the dawn to get you in. If--but
never mind how. Your conscience has been stirred; you’ll be good; you
are penitent; you’ll bring forth works meet for repentance; you’ll give
him a rest!”
I have been good. I’ve done my penance beautifully. I know I have, for
I feel like--an archangel. But--look out for the next three weeks! It
will be anomalous perfection of conduct if I do not, like the most
exemplary, “reformed drunkard,” give this self-imposed restraint a treat
a day! Best be looking around for a bookkeeper--graduate of Bryant
Commercial College--to help foot up the columns then! And what a quick
transit you will make into the beauties of multiplication--how the
twenties will multiply! Oh! I can tell you, if you are going “to keep
count” on me, I’ll see to it you’ll have enough to do. Now, aren’t you
scared? Your letter is beautiful--a prose poem! I know one when I come
across it. Did you ever read “Prue and I?” One passage, that about your
Spanish castle, recalls “My Chateaux.” I kept that for years where I
could turn to it and read it over and over again. A little less, and
your letter might have slipped alongside. If you had only not been as
poetical over that Thanksgiving turkey and pudding! How could you
substitute them for “nectar and ambrosia?” Yes, I may submit gracefully
to the “durance vile” of your Spanish castle; may lean from its windows,
meeting more than half-way the smell of the poppies--to be steeped in
blissful forgetfulness by it! but not shackles of adamant; not
“The wind-blown breath of the tossing flower;”
or,
“the scent of the sweet tuberose,
The sweetest thing for scent that blows;”
or,
“Nord and cassia’s balmy smells.”
No; not anything of all the sweetest and strangest lures and fetters you
know can ever get me into your Paradise, with its Thanksgiving turkey
every day. Goodness! what a material creature is your being of two
hundred avoirdupois! How different your Paradise is from mine, which is
“a fairy vision
Of those gay creatures of the elements
That in the colors of the rainbow live
And play i’ the plighted clouds,”
and who share the feasts of humming-birds, butterflies, and gold fishes.
Ah! you have never split honeysuckle bells for those dainty drops of
honey in their depths! You have never hovered over the spiced fumes of
pinks! If you wish for an apotheosis, to be caught up into a more
etherial sphere, get a vase of gold fishes and watch how they live on
air, and learn “how much too much” the lord of creation _eats_. I have
one--here in a vase set in a thicket of tropical plants--the prettiest
creature! I call him my “Flash of Gold.” He goes for a week at a time on
just “air, thin air,” filtered through the pellucid element in which he
sports or that element itself. His health, activity, grace and symmetry
are simply perfect. Thank you for the little gem, “Summer Love.” I have
done your bidding, read it and read it again. It is worth it “for
passionate remembrance’ sake.” I made acquaintance with your friend “a
many years agone” through another little poem, which is still in the
portfolio I left behind. It was a _vade mecum_, and as sacred as if it
had been written for only me. I miss it now occasionally and wonder how
I overlooked it. I never have seen him--the author, “who builded better
than he knew”--I hope he has not killed his boys with such weight of
names. To bear them, they should have stuff to send them “a pitch beyond
the flight” of common men. I wish you _had_ gone to A---- P----’s
wedding; then you could have told me all about it, and, besides, given
me all the old town’s gossip. When you choose, do you know, you can
furnish forth “a capital dish of that cate!” And who doesn’t like it?
Even Carlyle gives us leave: “Gossip springing free and cheery from the
human heart is infinitely better than inane, grey haze.” I am quite
satisfied about “the other side of the river” since your last. Remember,
it came after my letter of the 12th was gone. Mrs. M----, my cousin
A----, is indeed a divine musician and one of the most brilliantly-gifted
women I have ever known. I am glad you met her, and sorry you did not
meet oftener. I had a letter from Miss B---- the same day I received
your last, the first for a long time. Useless to enjoin me to “write
often” under such circumstances. I am not like the stars that
scintillate in the vast silence and darkness; I must have response. The
dear woman has, however, had more sufficient cause for the prolonged
interval. Such trials of sickness, nursing, and death--one of those
heart-crushing experiences that every life must know at some period or
other. I am so glad I had written several days before her letter came. I
can say nothing because there is no escape from her present life; the
claims are those of blood, and duty, and love, and “though ‘the way
leads over the burning marl,’ her feet must tread therein.” I pray,
however, it may not last much longer. If she were stronger, I should
feel less solicitude. Do _you_ please write to her as often as you can.
Your words will do her great good; they will give her momentary
forgetfulness of that wearing round of duty--some refreshing “surcease
of care.” I wish she had been well enough to stay with me; but she was
not. I was terrified at times thinking “if she should die.” You know she
would not have come except on my account. When she seemed breaking down,
the sense of responsibility was beyond words. My disappointment in the
whole plan has been one of the most bitter in my life. Had all gone as
we thought it would, ours would have been as I said, “an ideal trip.”
You did not say a word about Christmas. Have you erased it from your
calendar? Seems to me you might have said to me at least, “A pleasant
Christmas; a good New Year.” Why didn’t you? I had such a unique and
beautiful time, I want to tell you something about it. Have I mentioned
that I am in a German family? The mother, three daughters and a young
son of sixteen constitute the little circle. We three are the only
outsiders. My friend and myself were taken possession of to help
decorate the Christmas tree that reached to the ceiling. This was Sunday
after-dinner work. We helped with a will. At five it was “a thing of
beauty,” of dazzling beauty, if it did owe its sheen and glitter to
tinsel and icicles of glass. Then we were dismissed. At seven, we sat
down to our usual supper. The frau-mutter was invisible and the doors of
the saal (salon) closed and locked on the inside. We were not allowed to
quit the table till 8:30 o’clock, when the locked doors were thrown wide
open, the portiéres thrust aside, and we were invited to enter. We
rushed! Every kind of light and color made such a blaze we could not see
for a moment. Five tables of presents, mine being one, and full of such
pretty things. Maybe I’ll show them to you when I come home. Among them
“The Niebelungenlied,” in German! After admiring everything to the full,
a pretty and tempting table appeared as if by magic, and we sat down to
a delicious collation. We lingered over it till eleven, then we went to
church to see a specially-fine and solemn service. Never did I witness
anything so strange, spectral, and weird. It lasted an hour. At the
conclusion, we made the circuit of the altars to see their decorations.
One had the Christmas child (a beauty of a wax doll) in a cradle of
roses. Men, women, and children were dropping on their knees to it. It
seemed to do them a world of good. We came home to find another table
awaiting us with beer and coffee in addition to the other good things.
How long we sat over that I cannot say, but Christmas wishes were
exchanged long before we broke up. I don’t mind acknowledging it looks
as if we “made a night of it.” The ensuing week was too full to even
touch on, so I skip to New Year’s Eve, when we had another
characteristic time. There was a German New Year’s Eve banquet, dishes
never served at any other time. One was a salad, a kind of Salmagundi
compounded of every known edible and condiment--at least I can’t think
of anything that was left out! After several courses of such came all
kinds of--oh! goodies and goodies--cakes, nuts, candies, fruits--oh!
everything, and a great, magnificent punch-bowl was borne in in a kind
of state procession. But didn’t I hope it was eggnogg! It wasn’t,
though; it was a “Burgundy punch.” Well, we ate, nibbled cakes, crunched
candies, cracked nuts and jokes, and drank toasts standing, and clinking
glasses till we rang out the Old and in the New Year. I wasn’t a success
in the drinking, “‘pon honor,” but you ought to have seen how soon I
caught the trick of clinking. Our hostess taught us. You see that was
poetry, rythm, the sweetest, softest music like Swiss bell ringing! The
punch, I take it was an innocuous drink. Nobody’s head was lost if
everybody’s tongue was found! These kindly German people, these
pleasant, social customs, “this golden, fair enchanted life in the
valley of Bohemia”--how I shall miss them when I go! Alas! I am
beginning to flutter my wings. Paris or Vienna next en route to Italy.
So sorry to leave, but I want to see them too. Now, if you were only in
Italy, what a pair of tramps we would be!
I am waiting to hear what you think of “the counterfeit presentment.” It
does not show the faded roses and the false teeth (I kept my mouth
shut), but the frosted locks and the crow’s feet wouldn’t be left out.
Remember to send it back if it does not suit.
No. 21 or 22. Pshaw! don’t let’s keep count--“The fair penitent.”
L. G. C.
Munich, January 15, 1883.
MUNICH.
I think I have written to you from this city before. Do you remember?
Well, no need for alarm. I have no intention of treating you to a second
dish of my raptures.
Yours of September 8th came to hand some days ago. My promptness in
reply is meant to point no moral. If people prefer being laggards, I
have no objection; only _I_ am not of that ilk, and must be taken in
kind. You know I can’t tell a lie. I tried my best to fix up an innocent
one--the kind that cheats oneself into thinking it not a lie at all. The
ingenious sophism would not work. Yet I have done it many a time. What
is the matter with me? My heart is troubled. I am afraid of myself;
afraid for myself; afraid I am getting too good for this world. I hope
you are not praying over me as a dear little girl I knew over her baby
brother, that all the world was praising. “Why do you pray so for Arthur
to be one of the good little children, Sprite?” “Oh! because all the
good little
[Illustration: Queen Louise.]
children die and go to heaven; and then he’ll be _out of my way_.”
Well, I just read your letter outright. That’s all there is about it.
So let all the world keep the cotton out of their ears. It has the
secret; so have the cousins! I don’t believe you know what a readable
letter you wrote. It wasn’t a bit of trouble to make the meaning plain;
and for the mere reading, why every syllable just came tripping from the
tongue. And long before I got to the announcement, the ladies exclaimed:
“Oh! we know what he is going to tell--his age.” I don’t see why you
want to keep it such a secret, anyhow. To be sure _sixty_ isn’t a boy’s
age, but then neither is it an antediluvian’s. Dear me! Only think if
you had been “the prehistoric man,” or even Methuselah! Then you might
have well prepared to whisper it into the soundless silence. Somehow you
keep all their names to yourself. It makes it very awkward for me when I
need to use them. See how inconsiderate you are. Do you think that sort
of treatment “good breeding!” If you do, I’ll give you a new version.
I don’t feel sure about your last scintillation--that is, that it was
ever started across the sea. You have not mentioned it before, and you
had plenty of chances. Instead of crossing ours didn’t it scintillate
“all of a suddint” after you heard of ours.
Be a “living monument” of moral courage that owns up--when cornered!
_Be._
I had a letter from Miss B---- last week. She is in Paris, and wished me
to join her and go to Sweden and Norway. Had it been two months earlier
it would have been the very thing to do; but it is now too late for the
midnight sun. When I go I want to see that too. Do you know she is a
writer spoken of as the delightful authoress of “A Trip to Scandinavia,”
“The Midnight Sun,” and “Travels through Russia and the Orient”? I don’t
believe you dreamed what she was when you saw her. You would have been
less _presumptuous_! You have done it. Tremble and quake as you recall
your audacity. What is left for you to do next time? I have had a letter
from the other Miss B----, too, recently. Do you write often to her? It
is worth any one’s while to wring her letters from her. Such weather as
she wrote of! It made one think of the “Garden of Eden.”
As for coming home, I don’t see my way to that yet; perhaps in the
Spring. I do not bind myself to go or to stay; only I wish to go to
Spain, Greece and the Orient first. Once back, then I doubt if I shall
ever come again. Chimney corner days are at hand. We are meantime
enjoying the world about us. This city is brimful of interest, you know.
Yesterday was a grand gala day. I must have written to you of the
October Fest, a mixed exposition of the peasants and common classes,
agricultural, cattle, horse-racing, games, and side-shows. It is held in
some meadows at the foot of the great statue; lasts about two weeks.
Open on Sunday, and the second Sunday is the one set apart for the
attendance of the court. The late king, poor, mad, gifted, handsome
Louis, omitted this. He kept up no customs that exacted his appearance
in public. The regent announced his intention to resume. This meant a
full attendance of all the royal family in all their gorgeousness. It
attracted an immense crowd reckoned at 70,000. We were of it. The day
was perfect, crystal clear, and just cool, just warm enough. All sorts
of costumes, equipages, and human beings, the last a well-dressed,
well-behaved, most amiable mass.
The regent came in an open carriage with six horses and jockeys in
brilliant trappings, preceded and followed by a fine body-guard. His
three sons and two nephews came in open carriages likewise, but with
only four horses. Some ducal kinsmen in two-horse carriages; ambassadors
and government officers in all their state. It was a most brilliant
spectacle. I wish I had time to tell you all about it.
We had a day last week at the Augsburg six months’ Exposition just
closing. The show was, of course, a “Centennial” on a small scale; the
old city was ravishingly quaint, medieval and interesting.
But a four o’clock tea at the apartments of an officer in the army, who
has married a young German friend of mine, was beyond words. “The linen
closet!” If you had seen it, you would have bewailed your bachelor fate.
The “tea” was a drink fit for the gods, with a _soupçon_ of ---- _rum_ in
it.
L. G. C.
Munich, October 4, 1886.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: The Historic Windmill.]
PARIS.
Well, here I am at last in Paradise! I was a long time on the way, but I
would not have back one moment. To paraphrase dear, simple-hearted,
child-like Hans Christian Anderson, “My journey has been a lovely dream,
happy, and full of incident.”
I left Munich two weeks ago alone, for a twenty-four hours’ railway
trip, in a mixture of foreign countries and a medley of foreign
languages that would have swallowed me up in inextricable confusion, but
for the wise precautions I had taken to fend it off. I made requisitions
in every direction and on every available person on almost as extensive
a scale as the Kaiser might if he were going in for a big war; the
American consul and all my other acquaintances--their name was not
“legion”--all being called upon. I had a royal escort to the
station--three ladies and Mr. S---- placed me in the care of the “guard”
(conductor), who spoke French and German. His fluency in both I’ll own
was a trifle aggravating. My friends had put me in my “carriage”
(sleeper), which was elegant and commodious, such as only princes and
princesses and the like are in the habit of using. I had it all to
myself. How I wish that Tower of Babel incident had happened on some
other planet. Then they all smothered me with kisses, and the dear,
young fräuleins with tears. The warning shriek sent them tumbling over
each other to get off the train. Handkerchiefs were waved from the
platform, and oh! in a flash I was out in the universe of moonlight and
solitude, cut off from all I know. But, having obeyed the instructions
of my special advisers, the American consul and others, not to have a
courier, I felt no anxiety. Said the A. C., “Tip the guard.” Ditto, said
Mr. S----, “Tip the guard,” and “Tip the guard,” chimed in No. 3. And on
my order to that effect, said Mr. S----, young America, Harvard
graduate! “I’ve made it bully with the guard.” So that guard didn’t mean
to bear the weight on his conscience without rendering a fair equivalent
of service. In he came popping every few minutes to say something in
that dreadfully fluent German. If he thought I was not understanding
fast enough, resorting to French (and this is a most mortifying
admission); when both seemed failing, he tripped into the most
ludicrously despairing pantomime! At bedtime he put a crimson shade over
my lamp and bade me “good-night” with that exquisite French politeness
that has not its match in the world, charging me to call him if I needed
anything. But--the chilly little bed he had made for me--Ugh! It made me
shiver just to look at it. Think of it, linen sheets and one spread
after my German nest of down--a bed of it under and another over me.
Fortunately, I think the earth never saw a lovelier night, a full moon
and that clear, keen air that tells “Jack Frost” is busy; and the pretty
country slipping past so fast in the dazzling white light. I sat up, of
course. Towards morning it grew “cold, very cold.” It was ruthless in
me, but I stripped that bed of its one cover to wrap up in. When we ran
into Strassburg at five and got out for breakfast, I just roasted myself
by the great, generous fire. My waiter spoke English. I crossed his hand
with that douceur, “a silver shilling,” in England, mark, in Germany.
Believe me, the sweetest sounds ever syllabled by human tongue are those
of one’s own vernacular. On the frontier, we changed from German to
French cars, from the luxurious warmth of the former to the comfortless
cold of the latter; the one heated by invisible registers, the other by
a tube of hot water laid on the floor--merely a poor foot-warmer. I was
never more tired of a journey, all because of the cold; therefore never
so glad to see the end.
When I jumped out of the carriage at the Gare de L’Est, you need not be
told how glad I was to find a relative awaiting me. He took me to the
Grand Hotel, the largest and most fashionable in Paris, and after I was
rested, out on the balcony attached to show me the Rue des Capucins by
gas-light, lamp-light, moon-light, and star-light. I was overwhelmed
with the sight, speechless at such a brilliant spectacle--millions, it
seemed, of lights in every possible arrangement. This winter has been so
rainy, I am glad I came no sooner. I shall be away by the middle of the
month to Italy, and return again to Paris later.
The view from my private balcony (at a pension kept by a French lady, to
which I have changed from the hotel) is charming, and the Arc de
Triomphe de l’Étoile is not a stone’s throw distant. I also see the
great palace of Mrs. Mackey from my balcony; it is nearer than the Arc.
It has a little square all to itself. She is now at Nice, and it is
closed. I heard that Mr. Mackey is worth two hundred millions! Grace
Greenwood is in Paris. Her daughter is pronounced by everyone to be
“exquisitely beautiful.”
I have seen the Hotel des Invalides, Champs de Mars, Trocadero, Passy,
the loveliest suburb of homes; the Bois de Boulogne, that you know by
heart, but oh! what an enchantment to know by sight; the Champs Elysées;
the Place de la Concorde; the garden of the Luxembourg; the Palace de
l’Étoile with the grand Arc de Triomphe, the largest, they say, in the
world; the Madeleine; Chapelle Expiatoire; and the afternoon at the
Gobelins, looking at those wonders of wool, silk, gold and silver,
wrought in such patience “by the most practiced eye” by men’s fingers
never allowed to demean themselves by other work of whatever kind; and
the Champs Elysées on Sunday afternoon! This last is the great moving
human spectacle. I have seen nothing like it but Hyde Park on that
gala-day of “The meet of the four-in-hands.” Such countless lines of
carriages in the street! Looking ahead I could not see how we were ever
going to get through the approaching host, apparently as compact and
impregnable as one’s idea of the advancing columns of an army. I tell
you it filled me with awe. In the street I could not detect space enough
for even one more carriage. One must see to comprehend how grand and
imposing such a vast concourse of seething humanity is.
The weather is like our last of April. The grass is thick and green, and
from three to five inches high. The flower-beds in the squares are full
of flowers. As one walks or drives, whiffs of sweet violets are
constantly blown to you. At least one great flower-shop greets the
delighted eye every half-square. The sunshine is a dazzle most of the
time. I must stop, but will write more at an early date.
L. G. C.
Paris, February 4, 1883.
[Illustration]
PARIS.