Two French _ladies_ of the St. Germain exclusive strain. Parents gone,
fortune gone, health gone for years. Then the struggle for a living. You
can’t think how interesting I find them. One is a genius, an exquisite
musician, a composer. Some of her compositions are the daintiest, most
poetical and pathetic I ever listened to. She is a writer of books as
well, charming ones at that. The other is a singer. They gave me a
Musicale a few nights ago. I saw some most entertaining messieurs. One
in particular, could not speak English, but could read it. You should
have heard him discuss Scott, Dickens, and Shakespeare; the last with a
fervid enthusiasm. I’ll tell you more of these “anon.” One beautiful,
_fellow_ countrywoman, “divinely tall and most divinely fair,” proves
delightful. She invites me to “four o’clock tea and homemade cake,” and
what talks we have, and what bouts of sauce, not to say wit!
Then Paris is looking its loveliest in the witchery of May greenness and
bluest of skies that fairly laugh. Long walks and longer drives and
dawdles, and _prowls_ in which plethoric purses are swiftly _depleted_.
I can not keep a sou in my pocket. How much I shall have to tell, but I
know who will never--listen!
L. G. C.
Paris, April 20, 1887.
[Illustration]
PARIS.
Ah! you good friend, both the letter and the book have come. If either
had come by itself, I would have thanked you most for it; but as they
came together, I--I thank you most for--both. How could I do less?
“Fifty-two, did you say it was?” No, I did not say. I never meddle with
figures. If I do, I am sure to get the worst of it. I do not like to get
worsted. Do you? As for a woman’s telling her age, who expects it? The
silly! As a matter of fact, I can say, in a general way, I am old
enough, though I might be older; and young enough, though I might be
younger. I might be sixty-two; I might be even no more than forty, yet
the trouble is I am neither. So far as all the world is concerned, it
has no concern whatever in the matter. So far as you are, I have a
misgiving you know without my telling. I only wish you had not known
before you finished the book; and that you had asked me, and when I thus
declined to tell on myself, you had wrought yourself into a fume about
it. But don’t I feel cheated that I shall never know how you would have
threshed out that cereal! Is not it a curious fact that overproduction
is one of the ills of the present period of our little planet’s history?
Those thousands of pictures! That magnificent, enormous “Salon!” Can you
believe it--there are ever so many other “Expositions” in full blast?
They come in such numbers and swift succession, to see each is to wipe
out the memory of the one just seen as the succeeding wave does that
just gone before. Yet the great names are a temptation you do not even
dream of struggling against. You would not if you could. The last time
it was Millet’s. I hope you have seen his “L’Angelus,” or at least an
engraving. There is the original or a replica, in Baltimore, I think,
which has been exhibited in the United States. I had seen an engraving
only, but it was an imperishable memory. When it was mentioned as one of
a full collection of his works to be exhibited, you will see I could not
have missed it.
I wish I dare attempt to describe the many out of it that won at once my
most enthusiastic homage. Almost all peasants and peasant life,
shepherds and shepherdesses, with their flocks, peasant women feeding
children or chickens, harvest fields and gleaners--the subjects so
simple and homely, the treatment just the magic of brush and colors, the
mastery of genius. Not all held me equally; but all that I liked held me
absolutely. I never had a more unalloyed enjoyment. How I wish I could
buy all of them and bring them home with me! Not one was for sale, all
being loaned by their owners for the purpose of realizing enough to
erect a monument to his memory.
But I can’t talk any more about pictures. I want to thank you for “the
little book.” Thank you for it, from its very inscription, through every
phase of its working out, to the finished volume I have just read and
laid down with a pang because it is ended, because there is no more. _It
is a book._ It is worth having written; worth having taken time to
write. It merits all the praise lavished upon it. There is not a word
too much. It may be like all those they liken it to, but it is most like
yourself. There can be no question of the brilliancy within, the
handling of such vast and varied materials; of the enormous reading, the
close attention, the critical observations, the careful judgment, the
good taste, necessary for such an acquisition of knowledge and
information as you have so delightfully utilised. The best about it is
not that it is brimming over with this information, brilliancy,
entertainingness, power, but that it is full of wisdom as well. The
combination to such degree is not common.
It came--“the little book”--at nine last night. I read the letter, and
another from another gentleman, then began to handle _it_. I cut the
string; took off the wrapping; looked at the binding; pondered over the
title, liking it better and better; then--the reluctant plunge. I knew I
ought not begin reading, as if I should become interested I could not
stop. Late reading tells so on me. Besides, it is the worst form of
“late”--keeping right on till the book is finished. Well, you or some
one had cut only a part of the leaves. You got the full credit. I said
when I began: “How thoughtful in him to cut the leaves.” Directly I
found some were left for me to do--of course, exactly when I could least
bear to lose a moment. My paper-knife went through with a rip, I can
tell you. On again, almost holding my breath, or swept away in a
convulsion of laughter. Then more leaves to cut. I became suspicious,
and said something not altogether amiable, maybe: “He did this on
purpose.” There was repetition of cut and uncut all the way through; and
I shall always believe, even though you convince me to the contrary,
that you did this with malice prepense--knowing the obstruction and
interruption would act like salt on thirst. At midnight I said: “I will
not read another word.” I was very tired, having had a long drive,
nearly from noon till night. A word about that drive. It was with an
invalid heiress, the same I have mentioned. I wish she and you might
“make a match of it.” She is so bright and every way agreeable, besides
having the fortune!
The drive was in the Champs Elysées and the Bois du Boulogne, the
fashionable resort. It is always a kind of gay carnival of fashion. The
brilliant afternoons; the handsome equipages, the elegant occupants
arrayed as not Solomon in all his glory was. The--your--sex not less so
than mine! You ought to have seen one I saw yesterday. Alone in his open
carriage, evidently “got up” to attract attention; a lilac ribbon tie;
vest of silk, matching in color; boutonnière of flowers in the same
dainty color; and pantaloons of plaid lilac and white. Was not that a
spectacle? But once in the beautiful park, such visions were lost sight
of. The sky, air foliage and flowers were Eden’s own. I got out of the
carriage and gathered _her_ hands full of daisies and anemones. She sat
in the shadow and quiet of the trees watching me. One avenue was
specially interesting. On the left were pretty bits of water, scarcely
lakes, low hills with tumbling cascades, stretches of thick-set trees
and flowery hedges. On the right, vanishing distances of the greenest
sward, edged with scattered clumps of trees, blotched with alternate
sunshine and shadow. Away off rose the hills that encircle Paris--a
misty greenish-black rampart against the sky. Sometimes we talked;
sometimes were silent. These blessed long days! At six o’clock we came
home, lest she should become too much fatigued. But I could not stay
indoors, and went out again for a walk. I came back loaded with
old-fashioned spice pinks--have not you some in your garden?--and great
golden marguerites.
But “the little book.” This morning I was at it again long before
getting-up time. The maid smiled when she came in at seven. And now I
have read it, and knowing the pleasure of the reading, I can not help
wishing more of it was still to do.
Hurry and write another, please. Why not “A Club of Two. From the
note-book of a woman who _was_ sociable?” Beat Mrs. Caudle if you like,
or Prue. I am so glad you have given “Prue and I” a place in your book.
It has always been one of my giving-away books. Only the other day I was
telling of it to some who do not know it. Think of their loss.
Can not say a word about coming, but that it will be soon.
L. G. C.
Paris, May 29, 1887.
[Illustration]
VENICE.
Yours of May 17th “just to hand.” Date of your previous one, April
23d--I mean its receipt. This is what I call a most unreasonable space
to let slip between. So you see, if the letters come oftener, I complain
(being conscience-stricken, thinking I am imposing on your good-nature),
and if they lag a little, I complain of that. If you can, match me with
a more telling illustration of the impossibility of satisfying a woman!
I am writing with some qualms, I can tell you. You did not ask me to
write till I got to Switzerland. A mighty neat way of putting the spaces
in for me as well as yourself! Did you ever make a note of that distich
of John Hay’s--
“There be three things which when you think they are coming are going--
When you think they are going are coming--
A crawfish, a diplomat and a woman?”
I could not get it in right, but that will not hinder you from taking in
that I am like to go
[Illustration: The Old Lion at the Arsenal, Venice.]
contrariwise. Besides, I know what you will miss if I do not
write--enough to make you go into mourning, a bit of crape at your
buttonhole. You don’t know what a Florence letter I wrote to you! Now, I
am not given to self-praise; but I know the difference between still and
sparkling catawba, glass and diamonds--stupidity and sparkle.
So I speak, “having authority”--that Florence letter, written to you
long before I was up or the sun either; yes, just as Guercino’s maidens,
fashioned of dusk and dawn, were beginning to put the stars out--that
was a letter! Had it only have reached you, _it_ would have thrown you
into a fit of St. Vitus’ dance, or something equally demonstrative. I am
a light sleeper, late to bed, later to sleep and early awake. I cannot
get up ahead of all households, so I do not even hold in the fitful
fancies, but let them have it all their own way. Such fascination as the
habit is! I just snap my fingers at the frowning brows of Messrs.
Abercrombie, Upham, Sir William Hamilton and all that cloud of accordant
authorities on mental discipline. And for that letter, as for me, I did
not have any more to do with its flash and fun and sauce and sparkle
than one who sits on the sea-shore and watches the waves in a frolic,
or as Longfellow says it for me:
“---- sits in revery and muses
Upon the changing colors of the waves that break
Upon the idle seashore of the mind.”
Ah! if you had only got that letter! Alas! and alas! it was never even
put on paper. You do not know how sorry I am, though, that you can
never, never see it, and read it, and pirouette over it, and maybe frame
it and hang it up on your walls, to be a memorial of me forever and
forever. Indeed, I did so want you to have a Florence letter, for you
know somebody, Rogers maybe, says:
“Of all the fairest cities of the earth,
None is so fair as Florence.
---- Search within,
Without; all is enchantment!”
_It was so_ while I was there! The forenoons with Raphael, Angelo, Fra
Angelica, Carlo Dolce, Guercino and a few others; the afternoons in long
drives among the haunts of Galileo, Mrs. Browning, Landor, and such
spirits. Will you ever know the delight of it, the beatitude? I hope so.
Don’t put off the coming till you are too old. But now I am in Venice!
In Venice in June! And yesterday and to-day have been each the very one
described as I have read somewhere: “The day was one of those which can
come to the world only in early June at Venice. The heaven was without a
cloud, but a blue haze made mystery of the horizon where the lagoon and
sky meet. The breath of the sea bathed in freshness the city, at whose
feet her tides sparkled and slept.” And to-morrow will be the same; and
day after day I feel in all the spirit of a prophetess. Indeed, the
weather might have been blown from Paradise. Drifting about in a
gondola! The largest, most ecstatic breath you ever drew must come in
right here. Even that will not express the exquisite, intangible bliss
of such existence. It eludes words as quicksilver eludes the grasp. I am
having long mornings, enchanting afternoons, whole days of it. Do you
wonder if I feel as if under some magician’s spell? Come, take a drift
with me, and find out for yourself. First, the length of the Grand
Canal. Your gondolier is behind; you do not see him. There is nothing to
save you from your enchanted fate. The blue sky above; the crystal waves
beneath; the beautiful, stately old palaces on either side,
time-stained, unlike anything you ever saw, a fascination to sight and
dreams, that will haunt you the rest of your life; the other gondolas
sliding by; now and then a pleasure-boat, with its crowded deck and gay
awning, and though moving by steam as noiseless as ours--no smoke;
presently another bridge shows its span ahead, and then you slip under
it and on; next you are idly noting a pleasant looking party of ladies
and cavaliers coming from the cool archway of a palace to their waiting
gondola, and you are a little startled by hearing behind the gondolier’s
voice, “That is where Lord Beeron lived.” You remember you had meant to
ask him to point out that particular one. You rouse, lean forward, give
a curious gaze, then drop back into your drift and dreams, powerless to
keep from it! Ah!--that is the Rialto. You rouse again, and give another
intense look, and then it is left behind. You shoot another bridge
and--you give it up. This can not be earth. You know it is not heaven.
Where are you? Surely you are at last on the direct way to it.
Heaven--the Heaven of not your reading the Sunday-school and catechisms
taught, but of your dearest dreams and purest moods--that is awaiting
you there in
[Illustration: Lord Byron’s Palace, Venice.]
that dazzling glory of silver radiance where the sky and water meet. You
lean forward involuntarily, your very soul in your eyes, striving to
pierce that shining veil right to the Great Mystery. You do not feel
baffled. You might have done it, only the gondola has curved into a side
canal and your vision is shut from sight. Best so. One could not bear
such ecstasy longer and live, I think. But you are like one in a trance
for the rest of the way. Before you sleep, you open your little day-book
to make a record of the day. Here is what will greet you when you turn
its pages in the future--“Perfect, Perfect Venice.” That is all. Will
you smile over it then? I wonder. Dear me! I hope not, for the
experience has come _after_ my head is gray. Earlier you know--
“Little we dream when life is new,
And pleasures fresh and fair to view,
While beats the heart to pleasure true
As if for naught it wanted.
That year by year, ray by ray,
Romance’s sunlight dies away,
And long before the head is gray,
The heart is disenchanted.”
No! no! a thousand times, no! You will droop over it and dream it all
over again, and thrill and throb with the remembered rapture as even
now--
“For passionate remembrance’ sake.”
You are good to tell me so much of your life. I am glad you had the
gracious hours at C---- with your friend. Will his verdict have anything
to do with the fate of the “Essays?” But you must never think of me as a
judge and critic. I appreciate, enjoy and have a wonderful fund of
enthusiasm, once it is set going. As for anything that does not “commend
itself to my taste,” I simply turn away from it. Why use the scalpel or
scathing tongue? I should be marvelously well-pleased, though, to have a
reading of the Essays.
I had a letter, so long in the coming, from Miss B---- some days since;
so was already in possession of the “pitiful story.” No, not that. I
think whatever comes to us is our true work, hard as it may seem at the
time. Did you ever see or hear of an argument of William Corry’s in his
prime that had a speech of Caesar’s in it? One line of it left its brand
in my memory. John (my husband) brought it to me to read when he was
George Pugh’s partner, and we were living in Cincinnati. “If I am to
die to-morrow, then that is what I have to do to-morrow.” John declaimed
it for me as he had just heard Mr. Corry. It was never to be forgotten.
I hope you have written to her ere this is in your hands, and may your
words be indeed helpful, inspiring. How often we all need such. She is a
splendid creature, so gifted for a household deity! “Caterer, cook and
nurse,” who so shines at the festal board, in the fireside circle,
wherever knowledge, wit and wisdom shed their light and graces! All that
is wanting is the proper sphere. And yet there be those so blind they
will not see! _Who_ is of them?
What have you found in me that gave you leave to think I cared specially
for “Kentucky gossip,” or indeed for any gossip? Please, if you have
such an impression, seek for a revised edition of me. “Assuredly”
(Mahomet’s cuss-word), your letters hitherto have not run to gossip and
I have not complained. “A continuation of the same to the same,” may
chance to be all sufficient.
Yes, do not hunt up strange fiddle-strings on my account. You know I
have reached the years where old strains are best. “All the same,”
write whatever goads you to bestow it upon me. Oh! I glanced from my
window--if you could just see that overarching sky, that _is_ heaven; if
you could drink in a draught of this air, that is very elixir of life,
if--if you could see what I see, feel what I feel Oh! oh! oh! Perfect,
perfect Venice!
L. G. C.
Venice, June 8, 1883.
[Illustration]
LUCERNE.
Saturday, at Zurich, yours of June 26th “came to hand.” Here in the
filtered waters of glacier torrents, I drink to the letters that are
never written! Now for your response. Let it be brilliant as the
dewdrops of early morning, alluring as was to our childhood that trip to
find the end of the rainbow with its reward of a bag of gold, satisfying
as his day to Longfellow’s “Blacksmith.”
“Something attempted, something done.” Be sure it be of many simples
“composed in all parts to perfection.” See to it you fall not short of
Lamb’s happy hit--only this and nothing less.
Are you ready? I am in Switzerland. Bow your head; here is a snow-cap.
Crane your neck; here is a chain of the Rigi’s lightning. Now straighten
to your loftiest stature; only that can wear this mantle of clouds I
snatch from the shoulders of Pilatus to fling over yours. And last, here
is a dazzle of sunlight to set you in--like a saint in an aureole. How
do you feel? Do not be frightened. You are not ready for your
apotheosis; and I am no high priestess. Besides, in a breath you will
seem to yourself never to have been other than the grand creature I have
made you. You know that vital quality of us mortals that makes us feel
we are greater than anything that comes to us.
“We feel that we are greater than we know.”
Just to think my last letter was from Venice. How long ago that seems,
eons and eons! “I have lived so much since then.” Can I ever tell you
the half? Ah! me! No, no. Only this impotent--I wish, oh! how I wish I
could!
I have ransacked “ancient Padua,” thinking of exiled Romeo. Saw the
great wooden horse of Danatello, that stands in the largest hall in
Europe; holds sixteen men and is taken to pieces, carried down into the
street, and put together again and used in procession on fête occasions.
“Think of that Master Brook!” It is really a splendid, spirited-looking
creature. Did any of your traveled friends ever tell you about it? I saw
also, besides “the thousand things” I must omit, Goethe’s palm tree, the
one he made use of in his theory of the Metamorphoses of Plants. The
tree remains and flourishes. The man--where is he? “Light, give us more
light,” were his last words. I think he has found it. From Padua, I
hastened to Verona. Such a beautiful old city! There I sought out
Juliet’s tomb, in the old monastery hid away in its garden. And I found
the house of the Capulets, and stood in its court and gazed with eager
interest at that queer hat carved on its shield, placed above the
entrance in the wall. This repeated itself on columns and in different
places, giving evidence of the prominent position of the family. I was
quite unprepared to find the situation of Verona so picturesque, and one
feature I have not seen elsewhere, that of its innumerable mills on
wheels to be run into and out of “the rapid Adige.” Just fancy a line of
these queer-looking structures some distance from shore, working away
with all the impetuosity that swift current can give, and as steadily as
is their wont! But everything about that Shakespeare-famed city is
unique and fascinating. Thence to Milan, where I lingered a week, but
was not specially impressed. The Cathedral is all that descriptions and
pictures make it, and the Milanese claim for it, “the eighth wonder of
the world.” I climbed to its tip-top perch, and every step revealed
some marvel of architecture and sculpture. The workmanship is amazing.
You have read all about it, and doubtless think you have a very good
idea of it; but just come and stand before it and haunt it, and you will
despair of ever taking in the half of its details! No two ornaments or
points are alike! I quickly gave up, and looked away from it to the
everlasting hills, too far away to force me to mathematical
calculations. Have you read of the Grand Victor Emanuel Gallery, that
“finest arcade in the world,” in shape like a cross, with an octagon
center surmounted by a dome, and paved with beautiful mosaic, where the
finest shops are, and which is the fashionable promenade, lit by 2,000
gas-lights, and--goodness! if I go on, you will think I am preparing to
rival Badeker and get up a guide-book. Well, I just want you to know my
apartments were on it, and I was quartered equal to a queen! Everything
was gold and glitter, and grandeur and gorgeousness. And I took to it as
naturally as a lark to the highest regions of air! Of course, I saw all
the libraries, picture galleries, strange old churches, etc., and drove
at the fashionable hour on the Corso, watching the gay and festive
throngs in carriages, on horseback and afoot, this last most
characteristic feature, perhaps, of all I saw. The fair dames in superb
toilets holding levées in their splendid equipages! I enjoyed the
spectacle. Then I sped away to the Italian lakes. Guess how my heart
beat at the prospect of seeing those romantic sheets of water. That was
a summerland, indeed, with tideless summer seas and tropical blooms and
sounds and sights! Nightingales sang there night and _day_. Magnolias,
oleanders, mimosas and myrtles were in full bloom, and the sun shone
with almost pitiless fervor. I saw them all in their length and breadth.
I haunted their shores and floated over their lovely green waters. And I
fell in love with that bijou, Lake Lugano. Next to our own Lake George,
it is the most exquisite sheet of water I have ever seen, and I have
seen so many!