1876
STORM IN THE ALPS--MR. BENJAMIN--KATE SHERWOOD BONNER--
ICEBERGS--A SCOTCH POET--HORATIO KING’S LITERARY EVENINGS--
COL. FORNEY--MR. ROBERT--A NEW YORK MILLIONAIRE’S HOME--A
CHRISTMAS NIGHT HURRICANE AT SEA--THE TILDEN-HAYES FIGHT--
CIVIL WAR FEARED IN WASHINGTON--DENNISON, THE INVENTOR--A
STRANGE MURDER--THE WRECK OF THE SCHILLER AND LOSS OF MISS
DIMMICK.
_September 1._--Spent a day or so of each week this summer up at the
Alpine hamlet, Obstalden, where we could look down a thousand feet into
a blue lake, or up five thousand to the tops of snow peaks. Tried to
read Milton up there on the green grass above the lake; stopped when
half way through. I got it into my head that it was only a poetical
paraphrase of the Bible. That is what Goethe thought once of doing,
turning parts of the Holy Book into verse; but as the Bible is already
done well, why not let it alone? Where is there anything in Goethe,
or Milton either, to compare with the magnificent language of the
Scriptures, and no human being would _dare_ to change the _thought_.
Curious, Byron, too, thought of putting Job into verse. Is not the book
of Job already the grandest poem of the world? When among the Alps,
I never cared to read anybody’s description of them; language is too
weak, unless the language were Lord Byron’s.
One night near Obstalden, a terrible storm of thunder and lightning
was leaping back and forth across the lake, and at moments every peak
was illuminated. In the darkness the lake was at an immeasurable depth
below us; a clap of thunder, a flash, and it seemed for an instant a
bright mirror shining in the air. We had been coming down the path from
Amden and had lost our way in the darkness, and when the lightning
flashed, it was so vivid, we were afraid to go ahead. We took shelter
under a projecting rock there on the mountain side, and watched the
spectacle. All the artificial things that man ever dreamed of would be
nothing in the presence of these elements, battling with each other
over the mountain tops.
From peak to peak, the rattling crags among
Leaps the live thunder. Not from one lone cloud,
But every mountain now hath found a tongue,
And Jura answers, through her misty shroud,
Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud.
It was nearly morning before we could find the way down the rocky path
to our little inn; but anyway we had seen a storm in the higher Alps.
A pretty little incident occurred here one day with our children. My
wife, Helen and Lawrence were at dinner out under the castanien trees
on the terrace above the lake. Two strangers got out of a rickety old
chaise that had brought them up the mountain. “May we eat dinner here
with you under the trees?” said the eldest of the strangers, a kindly
faced, white-haired gentleman, to the children. Extra plates were
brought by the landlady of the inn, and the children and the strangers
had a good time together.
“And your name is Helen,” said her new friend at parting. “Yes, and
what is your name?” answered the little girl. “Just Albert, please,”
said the man, smiling. “Good-bye, little folks,” he called as he
climbed into his one-horse wagon. “Good-bye, Mr. Albert,” called out
the little girl, waving her hands, “Aufwiedersehen.”
[Illustration: The Frau Minster, Zurich.]
In a few moments a rider hurrying up from the lake told the landlady
in bated breath that it was Albert, King of Saxony, she had been
entertaining. He was traveling in the Alps incognito. “Good gracious,”
cried the landlady, “had I known that, what a different charge I might
have made.”
_September 25, 1876._--We are in the middle of the Atlantic. On the
16th, we left London on the Anglia. Mr. Benjamin, the marine artist
(afterward Minister to Persia), is among the passengers. He made sea
sketches, all the way. Kate Sherwood Bonner, a Southern literary woman,
who put staid old Boston in an uproar last year by stirring up some
of the effete clubs of culture that did not cultivate, is also on
board. She is bright and beautiful, with her golden hair, and has the
fairest white hands imaginable. A strange incident made us acquainted.
She mentioned her home in Holly Springs, Mississippi, and in a moment
I knew that once in the war times I was a sick soldier in that very
house. I saw death scenes in its elegant chambers, in her own boudoir,
of friend and foe, too horrible to relate.
The weather is perfect. We sail to Canada. There is not a sick soul
on board. Everybody knows everybody, and there are concerts and
recitations and fun in the cabin every night. All the day we play games
on the deck. Nobody wants this journey to come to an end.
We saw an iceberg, and we saw a whale (yesterday). We offered the
Captain $20 to stop the ship, put us down in life boats and let us row
close to the iceberg. He refused. “Company at London would raise a
row,” he said. We were so close, however, we could see beautiful little
inlets and bays worn in among the high walls of the crystal island,
against which the sea was dashing. The ice was several hundred feet
high, clear blue-green, and the sight, with the evening sun striking
it, was altogether novel and beautiful. We stood on the deck and
watched it for twenty miles. When we were near to it, the Captain said
there was a terrible drop in the temperature of the sea water. We were
sixteen days reaching New York.
_October 4._--Visiting the Centennial. By mere accident, found
telegrams telling us of the sudden death of my wife’s father, while
we have been having so long a voyage at sea. He was buried the day we
reached New York. Owing to the length of the voyage they had given up
finding us. William Gilmour was an educated Scotchman and a noble man,
from near Burns’ home, where his brother John had been one of Scotia’s
young bards.
In October, we visited home friends in the West, and returning East,
staid a time in Washington, visiting at the home of General Sherman and
elsewhere.
Horatio King, then having weekly “Literary Evenings” at his home,
invited us often. These evenings did more to enliven a taste in
Washington society for books and high culture than any other one
thing in that whirl of politics and pretentiousness. King had been
President Buchanan’s Postmaster-General. He knew almost everybody in
art and literature in the country, and the people one met at his home
were always interesting. I regarded it a great pleasure to go to his
“Evenings.” He was growing older, but his intellect was bright as in
youth, and his young wife attracted people of taste into their charming
circle.
Colonel John W. Forney we also met again in Philadelphia, though I
had known him in London. He was a man of great intellectual vigor, of
magnificent presence. I once heard a Londoner say, “Your Colonel Forney
is the finest looking American I ever saw.” He, too, like Horatio King,
knew everybody. He had been Secretary of the Senate and was a famous
newspaper man, who in his day ranked with Greeley and Raymond and
Bennett. His self-possession was wonderful, his talk enthralled, and
he had a heart kind as a woman’s. Our Government sent John W. Forney
abroad as a Commissioner, just to “talk Europe into showing her wares
at Philadelphia,” some one said. A better talker could not have been
found between the two oceans. He was emphatically, too, a “woman’s
man,” and he knew how to influence the public men through their better
natures--their wives.
In December, at New York, we visited at the home of Mr. Christopher
Robert, who, as already mentioned, built “Robert College” at
Constantinople. He was a retired millionaire, and his home life must
have been a contrast to the lives of most New York money men. It was
the life of one of the patriarchs, not on a desert among his flocks,
but in a luxurious home, in a fashionable quarter of New York City.
He was a splendid looking “old-time gentleman” of seventy-five years.
I never saw white hair so becoming and honorable to a man as his was,
not seventy-five years carried so upright and with so much dignity. His
large, smooth-shaven face was as rosy as a child’s, his eye clear as a
boy’s of twenty.
He had earned money in his life, and he used it in doing good. His
house was a sort of religious Mecca, where a poor man could go and
be sure of help. His daily life was that of a Christian gentleman.
Mornings, after breakfast, a bell rang, when every member of the
family, guests and servants, were expected to assemble in a room for
devotion. In a fine, clear voice, Mr. Robert read the Scriptures, and
though surrounded by wealth, dilated on the littleness of riches and
the greatness of a true heart. Then he prayed. It was like a morning
mass. And I thought what a city New York would be, were it filled
with rich men like to Mr. Robert. His zeal for sowing good seed was
boundless. No man hung an overcoat in that luxurious house entrance,
but on going away would discover the pockets filled with sensible
pamphlets appealing for a higher life.
Evenings, there were always a number of pleasant people at dinner, and
some delightful music. I recall an evening there with the Reverend
Doctors Taylor and Ormiston.
Knowing Mr. Robert to be a man of deep sincerity and thought, I once
asked him “if he thought the dead ever returned to be near us?” This
was when out walking in the fields of Switzerland. “Most assuredly I
do,” was his answer. “My lost ones are near me now--there in those
roses, in the sweet grass, in all beautiful things. They come near to
us when we are in a mood to want them to come. They don’t speak--but
they hear our inward breathings--and when we worship beautiful nature,
we are talking with them.”
I could not help thinking of that beautiful custom in certain parts of
India, where at funerals a vacant place is left in the procession for
the dead one who is supposed to be invisibly walking along with them.
_On December 16_, we had left New York on the “Elysia” and had tempests
all the way across the ocean. On Christmas night, a hurricane set in,
such as is not seen outside of the Indian seas. Everything on the
outside of the ship was torn to pieces--not a life boat, nor bridge,
nor boom pole, nor sail left. Everything gone. We were blown back
thirty miles towards New York. The sea was churned into mountains of
milk, and the thunder and lightning at midnight was something perfectly
terrific. The ship’s hatches were all battened down with tarpaulins,
and we were fastened in below. Spite of the precautions, water rushed
down the ship’s stairways by hogsheads full. Two or three passengers
lost their minds. Many said farewell to each other, including the
ship’s officers, and we all thought ourselves lost.
_On New Year’s Day_ we reached England, just ahead of another storm
such as Britain had not seen in a hundred years. Hundreds and hundreds
of coast vessels went to the bottom, carrying unnumbered British
sailors and passengers with them.
As we passed the great pier of Dover, we saw how the mighty rocks
composing it had been hurled in vast piles by the storm, as if they
were boxes made of straw. The work of the engineers had been as nothing.
Man marks the earth with ruin; his control
Stops with the shore.
* * * * *
While I had been in Washington, the contest was going on over the
election of Governor Hayes and Samuel Tilden to the Presidency.
In official circles at Washington, the fear of disorder, rebellion,
revolution, was extremely grave. Troops were being silently, secretly
slipped to Washington. Many looked for an immediate storm. General
Sherman told me privately he was preparing for it the best he could.
“If a civil war breaks out,” said he, “it will be a thousand times
_worse_ than the other war. It will be the fighting of neighbor against
neighbor, friend against friend.” He grew almost pessimistic in his
views for the future of our country. “It is only a question of time,”
said he, “till the politicians will ruin all of us. _Partisanship is a
curse._ These men are not howling for their country’s good, but their
own political advantage, and the people are too big fools to see it.
We are liable to smash into a thousand pieces every time we have an
election.” He was greatly moved, and almost wept at the thought of what
would happen, were the violence then threatened really to break out.
_January 4, 1877._--Again in Zurich. When we reached our home, we found
the servants had returned, the house was warmed for us, and everything
was in place as if we had not been gone a day; yet we had traveled
13,000 miles. Above the hall door, in evergreen and holly, were the
words--“Welcome Home!”
How many of our American servants think of such a pretty, feeling act
as that, for their employers!
* * * * *
Some of our first Winter evenings here we spent in playing whist at
the Dennison home. They are worth mentioning, for the people who
played with us, and the story of some of them. Mr. Dennison had once
been manager of the Waltham Watch Works, and it was he who _invented_
watch making by machinery. He is called the “father of American watch
making.” He is a tall, fine looking gentleman of seventy, with kind
eyes, pleasant speech, modest manners, and universal genius. He seemed
to know everything that concerns the working of a machine.
Our best whist-player at the table was Mr. Sadler, a kind old English
gentleman who brought Christmas cake to my wife, regularly as the
holiday came. He kept the story of his life secret. He was a mystery,
and no one dared to pry into his past. We knew him to be rich, though
he lived like a poor man in an obscure pension.
One day, just as I was in Liverpool on my way home from New York, he
was murdered in a quiet park; no soul suspects by whom. Then we found
out that he had been a member of the English Parliament, who for
some mysterious misdemeanor, in association with his brother, also
in Parliament, had to fly England. He got away by feigning sickness
and death, having himself carried out of the hospital in a coffin.
His wife, of whom we had never heard before, appeared suddenly at
his death, like a specter. She claimed his money, which can not be
found, though I personally knew he had thousands, and as suddenly and
specter-like departed. It is all mystery, even to-day. His banker,
shortly after the murder, received a mysterious and unsigned telegram
from New York City, saying: “Give yourself no trouble as to who killed
Sadler. He will not be found.” The murderer had not had time to reach
New York. Who sent the telegram?
Another of that card quartette was the lovely Miss Dimmick, of Boston,
a medical student at the University here. She was the first young lady
graduate at Zurich, and she finished with great honors. Then she went
home on a visit. On her return, we arranged to meet her in Paris, but
one morning came the shocking news that she and five hundred others had
drowned at the wreck of the “Schiller.”
Early one morning, in a terrible fog, the steamer Schiller struck a
rock off the Scilly isles. Almost everybody was lost. The last seen
of Miss Dimmick she was on the deck, kneeling in her night robe, her
hands clasped, her face turned to heaven in prayer. When the peasants
of the island found her body, there was a beauty and a peace in her
countenance that touched them, and moved them to treat her tenderly.
They placed her by herself, and when the officers came later to take
some of the bodies away, they prayed permission to bear her coffin on
their shoulders to the ship.
Boston City Hospital voted some money and named one of the free ward
beds in honor of Miss Dimmick.
Now I recall those little card evenings at the Dennison’s with strange
feelings.