1869
IN SWITZERLAND--THE ALPS--EMBARRASSMENT IN NOT KNOWING
THE LANGUAGE--CELEBRATED EXILES MEET IN A CERTAIN CAFE--
BRENTANO--WAGNER--KINKEL--SCHERR--KELLER--AND OTHERS.
We stayed in Paris for a week. Then, one night, we crossed the plains
of France, and at daylight saw with beating hearts the Jura Mountains.
They were as a high wall of cliff and forest, green, deep valleys
and running rivers, between France and the land of William Tell. The
afternoon of that day saw us at our journey’s end. We were in beautiful
Zurich. “Next to Damascus,” said Dixon, the English traveler, “I adore
Zurich.”
That day the Glarus Alps, that usually shine so gloriously in front of
the city, were obscured with clouds. But the beautiful lake was there,
and old walls, and ivy-covered towers, and all the story of a thousand
years.
[Illustration: Zurich.--_Page 20._]
Zurich was half a mediæval city in 1869. Years have since changed
it; its walls and towers have been torn down, and granite blocks
and fashionable modern streets take the place, in part, of its
picturesqueness, as we saw it at that time.
Pretty soon I was, in a way, representing my country in a republic five
times as old as our own. My predecessor recognized that he had been
“rotated” out of office. He knew American party customs and turned
over to me a few chairs, a desk, some maps, a flag, some books, some
accounts and an enormous shield that hung over the door with a
terrible-looking eagle on it, holding a handful of arrows. This was the
coat of arms.
Living was cheap in Switzerland in the seventies. For one whole year we
stayed in the “Pension Neptune,” a first-class place in every sense.
Our apartment included a finely furnished salon, a bedroom, and a large
room for the consulate. For these rooms, with board for two persons,
we paid only $3.00 per day. Just outside the pension, workmen were
laying street pavements of stone. They worked from daylight till dark,
for forty cents a day. The servants in the pension were getting ninety
cents a week and board. The clerk in the consulate was working for $300
a year, without board. Good wine, and we had it always at dinner, was a
franc a bottle. Things have changed since then. Switzerland is a dear
country to live in now.
In the “Neptune” we found the interesting family of Healy, the American
artist. He had painted half the famous men of Europe, even then. There,
too, was the family of Commander Crowninshield, distinguished of late
days as an adviser of the President in the Spanish War.
What we were to do now, was to learn the French and German languages.
Good teachers received but two francs, or forty cents, a lesson, and
the necessity of the situation impelled us to hard study.
One evening, shortly after our arrival at Zurich, we were out boating
with some friends, on the beautiful lake. There were myriads of pretty
water-craft, filled with joyous people, circling all about. On a
floating raft near by, a band of music was playing airs from Wagner.
Zurich was a Wagner town. It was nearing sunset, when suddenly I
happened to cast my eyes away from the people and the boats toward the
upper end of the lake. “Look at the beautiful clouds,” I exclaimed. My
companion smiled. “They are not clouds,” said he. “They are the Glarus
Alps.” It was the fairest sight I ever beheld in my life. Some clouds
on the horizon had suddenly floated away, and the almost horizontal
rays of a setting summer sun were shining on the white snowfields and
ice walls of the mountains, turning them into jasper and gold. “That
is what we call the ‘Alpine glow,’” continued my friend. “It is like
looking at the walls of Paradise,” I exclaimed. Pretty soon the sun
went down behind the Zurich hills, the jasper and the gold faded from
the ice and the rocks of the distant mountains, a cold gray-white,
striving to keep off the coming darkness, fell upon the scene. It was
the mountains putting on their robes of night. These were the scenes
that I was now to live among. Music, they say, takes up the train of
thought, where common words leave off. That night, by the waters of
Lake Zurich, the soft strains of well-tuned instruments expressed a
delight for me that tongue could not utter or pen describe.
Switzerland is full of scenes as glorious as this Glarus range, but
this scene here, we were to have from our dining-room window always.
_September 5._--The consul of the French Empire called to-day to
pay his respects to the consul of the great republic. My consular
experiences were about to commence. I was in a dilemma. My Swiss clerk,
who spoke six languages for twenty-five dollars a month, had stepped
out. I, a plain American, spoke no language except my own.
“Bonjour, Monsieur,” cheerily chirped the Frenchman. I advanced, and,
seizing his neatly gloved hand, said “Good morning” in the plainest
American. “What! Monsieur, you no parlez Francais? Ah! certainlee.
Monsieur he parle Allemand. Monsieur speak a leetle Dutch?” he
continued, bowing and smiling. “I am sorry,” I interrupted in
embarrassment. “No Dutch--no Francais.” “Oh! Monsieur no understand.
No, no. Ah, si, Monsieur, he speak Spanish, certainlee--Spanish
better--Spanish better--very fine--Americans all speak Spanish--veree.”
Again I shook my head, and again the consul bowed, and I bowed, and
we both bowed together; and, after a few more genuflections and
great embarrassment, he smiled and went backward out of the room.
The situation was absurd. Then the Italian consul called, and then
the Austrian consul, and similar scenes occurred. The same nonsense,
without understanding a word.
I saw at once what was necessary for me to do. Solid months, years,
day and night almost, were to be spent learning the language of the
people among whom I was to live. Of course, Americans are not born with
a knowledge of international law and an ability to speak half a dozen
foreign languages.
The routine work of legalizing invoices, attending to passports,
getting foolish fellow-countrymen out of jail, and helping others who
were “strapped” to get to the nearest seaport, went on. Then there was
the doing the polite thing generally by American travelers who called
at the office to pay their respects to the consul.
There were many Americans abroad even then. The Swiss hotels reaped
great harvests from the rich American and English nabobs who traveled
about, displaying themselves and throwing away money.
“I have special charges for all these fine fellows,” said the landlord
of the Bellevue to me. “Indeed, I have three rates, one for the Swiss,
a higher one for foreigners, and a still higher one for the Americans
and English. The rooms are the same, the dinners are the same, the
wines the same; but the bills--ah, well, I am very glad they come.”
Soon I commenced writing reports for our Government. They were asked
for on every conceivable subject, from sewer building to political
economy. Every American who has a hobby, writes to his Congressman to
know what they do about such things in Europe. The Congressman asks the
State Department and the State Department asks the consul. _He_ must
answer in some way.
In this way, and in guarding against frauds on the customs, the time
passed.
In the meantime my official position secured me the entrée into Swiss
society. It enabled me at last to know Swiss life and to meet men and
women worth the knowing. Many of them living in Zurich, or passing
there, had European reputations, for the city, like Geneva, had that
about it that attracted people of intellect. Zurich is called the Swiss
Athens. Novelists, poets, historians, statesmen and renowned professors
occupied chairs in the great University, or whiled away pleasant
summers among the glorious scenery of the Alps near by.
[Illustration: Lorenzo Brentano.--_Page 24._]
_August 10, 1870._--On this day I made the acquaintance of a remarkable
man. It was Lorenzo Brentano of Chicago. He called at the consulate,
and, after first greetings, I found out who he was. It was that
Brentano who had been condemned to death after the Revolution of 1848
in South Germany. He had been more than a leader; he had been elected
provisional president of the so-called German Republic. When the cause
failed on the battlefield, he fled to America, and there, for many
years, struggled with voice and pen for the freedom of the slaves, just
as he had struggled in Germany for the freedom of his countrymen. The
seed he helped to sow in Germany, at last bore fruit there, and he also
lived to see American slavery perish. He was a hero in two continents.
He had made a fortune in Chicago and was now educating his children
in Zurich. His son is now an honored judge of the Superior Court of
Chicago, a city Brentano’s life honored. He was also at this time
writing virile letters for European journals, moulding public opinion
in our favor as to the Alabama claims. We needed his patriotism.
Americans will never know the great help Brentano was to us, at a
time when nine-tenths of the foreign press was bitterly against us. I
once heard a judge on the bench ask Brentano officially if he wrote
the letters regarding America. “Yes,” said Brentano, who was trying a
case of his own, and was a witness, “I wrote them.” “Then that should
be reckoned against you,” said the judge, so bitter and unjust was
the feeling abroad concerning our country, especially among Englishmen
traveling or living on the Continent at this time. A kind word for
America or Americans was rare.
Through Brentano’s friendship, I secured many notable acquaintances.
The Revolution of 1848 in Germany was led by the brightest spirits
of the country. Its failure led to death or flight. Many had crossed
into the Republic of Switzerland and formed here in Zurich a circle
of intellectual exiles. They were authors, musicians, statesmen,
distinguished university professors. Brentano naturally stood high
among them all.
[Illustration: Johannes Scherr.--_Page 24._]
_The Orsini Cafe._--Around a corner, and not a block away from our
home, stood a dingy, old building, known as the Cafe Orsini. Every
afternoon at five, a certain number of exiles, and their friends,
among them men of culture and European fame, met and drank beer at an
old oak table in a dark corner of the east room. It was the room to
the right of the entrance hall. Many people frequented the Orsini,
for it was celebrated for its best Munich beer, and they could catch
there glimpses sometimes of certain famous men. Johannes Scherr, the
essayist and historian, called the “Carlyle of Germany,” came there,
and Brentano, the patriot. So did Gottfried Keller, possibly the
greatest novelist writing the German language, though a Swiss. There
was Gottfried Kinkel, the beloved German poet, whom our own Carl Schurz
had rescued from death in a German prison, now a great art lecturer at
the University. Beust, the head of the best school without text-books
in the world; Fick, the great lawyer and lecturer, and sometimes Conrad
Meyer, the first poet of Switzerland. Earlier, Richard Wagner was
also among these exiles at the Orsini, for he, too, had been driven
from his country. That was in the days when the celebrated Lubke, the
art writer, was lecturing at the Zurich University, together with
Semper, the architect. Often the guests around the little table were
noted exiles, who, even if pardoned, seldom put a foot in the German
fatherland. The lamp above the table was always lighted at just five in
the evening, and the landlord’s daughter, in a pretty costume, served
the beer. It was my good fortune, through Mr. Brentano, to join this
little German Round Table often, to listen to conversations, that,
could they be reported now, would make a volume worth the reading.
[Illustration: Gottfried Kinkel.--_Page 25._]
[Illustration: Richard Wagner.--_Page 25._]
Almost nightly, in the winter, at least, the little circle came
together, shook hands, and sat around that table. Each paid for his
own beer. To offer to “treat” would have been an offense. “How many
glasses, gentlemen?” the pretty waitress would ask. Each told what
he had drunk and how much cheese or how many hard-boiled eggs he had
added; the pretzels were free. “Gute Nacht, meine Herren, und baldiges
Wiedersehen,” called out the little waitress, as they would again shake
hands and go out into the fog and darkness. For years that little
waiting-girl lighted the lamp over the table, served us the beer, and
found a half-franc piece under one of the empty glasses. She knew what
it was for. Had she been a shorthand reporter, she could have stopped
passing beer long ago, and the Orsini Café might have been her own.