1884
SOME INTERESTING LETTERS FROM GENERAL SHERMAN--REQUESTS FOR
SOUVENIRS--HIS “FLAMING SWORD”--ONE ON THE PRESIDENCY--I AM
APPOINTED CONSUL GENERAL FOR ITALY--AN AMERICAN FOURTH OF JULY
PICNIC ON LAKE ZURICH--LORD BYRON’S HOME IN SWITZERLAND--
SOME OLD LETTERS ABOUT HIS LIFE THERE--THE LAKE DWELLINGS OF
SWITZERLAND--KELLER, THE ANTIQUARIAN--POWER OF SWISS TORRENTS.
In a recent volume of my poems, some little change had been made in the
stanzas of “The March to the Sea.” General Sherman did not like these
changes, and wrote me that in his opinion “no writer, having once given
a thing to the public, had any right to change it.”
He refers again to his preference in the following letter:
“ST. LOUIS, MO., Feb. 24, 1884.
“DEAR BYERS:--Yours of Feb. 6th is received. I had previously
noticed that in the printed volumes there were variations,
especially in the ‘March to the Sea.’ And I had simply noted on
the margin of my copy that I liked the old version the best.
Indeed, I think that Minnie has the original which was handed me
at Columbia, which you remember was beautifully written. I have
no doubt you will have occasion to enlarge your volume in time,
and the last edition will always be accepted as the standard.
“We have had universally a hard winter, with storms and flood,
of which you have doubtless heard as much at Zurich as if you
were living in Iowa. The winter now begins to break, we have more
sunshine, the grass begins to grow a green tint, and even the
bark of the trees shows signs of a change. A hard winter makes a
good summer, and I shall expect a pleasant summer.
“I find not the least trouble in putting in my time. Everybody
supposes that I have nothing to do, and writes to me for tokens
of remembrance, from a baby whistle for a namesake, to the
‘flaming sword’ I carried aloft at the South, to decorate his or
her library. To comply with their kind messages, I would need
a fortune and an arsenal. In fact and truth, we have a good
comfortable home, and by economy we can live out our appointed
time, and I do aim to manage so that my children will not have
to beg of Government some pitiable office. I will build a neat
cottage on my Illinois farm, and two good dwelling houses for
rent on some lots we have around here for a long time, on which
we have been paying taxes.
“In August, I will go to Minnetonka, to attend the meeting of the
Army of the Tennessee.
“We are all reasonably well and are always glad to hear from you.
Give my best love to Mrs. Byers, and congratulate her on the
development of that boy of yours.
“Ever yours,
W. T. SHERMAN.”
_July 3._--Received a most interesting letter from General Sherman
telling of his opposition to the use of his name for the Presidency.
“ST. LOUIS, MO., June 21, 1884.
“DEAR BYERS:--I received your letter of June 1st some days ago,
and would have answered earlier, but had to go down to Carthage,
Joplin, etc., in Southwest Missouri, to see a district of country
settled up in great part by our old soldiers, who have made it
a real garden, with nice farms, pretty houses, with churches,
schools, etc., resembling New England, North Ohio, etc., rather
than old Missouri, for which the Creator has done so much and
man so little. So after all, we at St. Louis must look for
civilization and refinement to come as a reflex wave from the
West.
“We are now established in the very house in which you found us
in 1875-6, in good condition, and with employment sufficient for
recreation, diversion, etc.
“Last night I had to make a sort of an address to the Grand Army,
in presenting the portrait of Brig. Gen. T. E. G. Ransom, after
whom the post is named, and if printed, I may send you a copy. I
do all that I can to keep out of the newspapers, but they keep
paid spies to catch one’s chance expressions, to circulate over
the earth as substantial news. Recently I was informed by parties
of National fame that in the Chicago Republican Convention, in
case of a dead-lock between Blaine and Arthur, my name would be
used. I begged to be spared the nomination but was answered that
no man _dared_ refuse a call of the people. I took issue that a
political party convention was not the people of the U. S., and
that I was not a bit afraid and would decline a nomination in
such language as would do both myself and the convention harm.
Fortunately Blaine and Logan were nominated, and they are fair
representatives of the Republican party. Next month another set
of fellows will meet at Chicago and will nominate Jeff Davis,
Ben Butler, Tilden, Cleveland or some other fellow--no matter
whom--and the two parties can fight it out. Fortunately, and
thanks to the brave volunteer soldiers and sailors, the ship
of state is now anchored in a safe harbor, and it makes little
difference who is the captain. Our best Presidents have been
accidents, and it is demonstrated by experience that men of
prominent qualities cannot be elected. Therefore I will take
little part, sure that whoever occupies the White House the next
four years, will have a hard time of it, and be turned out to
grass by a new and impatient, disappointed set. Meantime all
the fertile spots of a vast domain are being occupied by an
industrious class, who will produce all the food needed by our
own population and the rest of the world, and will buy what they
need, including the silks of France and Switzerland. Of course
you do right in watching the invoices to see that the revenues
of Uncle Sam are not defrauded, but if you expect to attract the
notice of the State Department or the country, I fear you will be
disappointed.
“I will go up to Minnesota about the middle of July to attend an
encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic, and will wait over
at Minnetonka till the middle of August, for a meeting of the
society of the Army of the Tennessee, after which I will return
to St. Louis till mid-winter, when I will go East for social
engagements and the meetings of the Regents of the Smithsonian of
which I retain membership. Marriages and deaths and the hundreds
of incidents in every community, occupy my time so that thus far
I have not been oppressed by ennui. I recall perfectly the house
in Bocken in which I saw you in 1873, and sometimes doubt if you
will be able to content yourself equally well in Iowa when the
time forces itself on you; but the world moves right along, and
we must conform.
“I am as always your friend,
W. T. SHERMAN.”
_July 4._--To-day, joined by all the Americans we could muster, and a
few Swiss and English friends, we chartered a pretty steamer and went
to the Island of Ufenau. It was a nice sight to see the boat sailing
along the Zurich waters, covered with American flags. The Swiss band
could play none of our American airs, but “God Save the Queen” did just
as well.
“She’s nothing but an old granny, though, and everybody laughs at her,
privately,” exclaimed an English lady to me as the band struck up the
tune. This want of respect for the Queen is not so uncommon among
English living on the continent as one would imagine.
Gladstone, too, whose name I honor, comes in for any amount of bullying
and abusing among traveling Englishmen. “He simply ought to be hung,
that’s what ought to happen to him,” I heard one Englishman bawl out to
another Englishman once. I was not so especially surprised. For some
reason or other, most of the English we meet shake their heads, when
we praise the great Christian statesman. I wonder if only the jingo
English are rich enough to travel. Gladstone’s friends, if any abroad,
are dreadfully silent.
We had a fine picnic on the island to-day, with the blue waters of
the lake about us and white Alps right in front of us. One American
signalized himself by getting drunk. We left him in a farmhouse on the
island.
Came home with a glorious sunset turning the Alps into crimson and
gold. One view like this evening would repay for a journey over the
ocean, and we have had it almost daily for fifteen years.
On reaching Bocken I found a cablegram from Senator Wilson saying I had
been promoted to be Consul General at Rome. I was happier that the news
came on this particular day. When I went out on the terrace though, and
looked at the beautiful and familiar scenes around me that I must leave
forever, the pleasure over my promotion was almost turned into a pang.
* * * * *
A few weeks ago, Cupples, Upham & Co., in Boston, printed the first
edition of my volume of poems called “The Happy Isles.” They are now
sending me reviews and notices of the book. They are as good as I could
wish. It was pleasant to-day, too, to receive a warm letter commending
my poems from Oliver Wendell Holmes. Some of them “had brought the
tears to his eyes.” To me this was sweeter praise than anything the
reviewers could possibly say. Whittier, too, wrote a pretty little
Quaker letter, full of kind praise. One of the poems, “The Marriage of
the Flowers,” he had picked out as the best of all. I hear it is being
much copied. “If You Want a Kiss, Why Take It” also seems to please the
editors. A friend writes “they are copying it, everywhere.”
* * * * *
Recently we went to see Byron’s home, villa “Diadati,” a few miles out
from Geneva. It is a handsome house with windows and balconies opening
on to the lake. Here he wrote “Manfred,” “The Dream,” parts of “Childe
Harold” and “Darkness.”
[Illustration: Byron’s Home on Lake Geneva.--_Page 240._]
I could not help thinking of him and Shelley and Shelley’s wife,
sitting out there on the veranda nights, telling ghost stories. I came
across some letters the other day, long out of print, written by a
Swiss, who also was whiling his days away on this lake in 1816. The
first one says, “Last night I met Lord Byron at Madame de Stael’s. I
can compare no creature to him. His tones are music, and his features
the features of an angel. One sees, though, a little Satan shining in
his eyes which, however, is itself half pious. The ladies are mad after
him. They surround him like little bacchantes, and nearly tear him to
pieces. I hold him as the greatest living poet. Every stormy passion
is witnessed in his glance. One sees the corsair in his look, which,
though, often is good, tender, and even melancholy.”
I also have followed Byron’s footsteps in his trips in the higher
Alps. He went up into the Simmenthal to Thun, to Interlacken, and the
heights near to the Jungfrau. “These scenes,” he wrote, “are beyond all
description or previous conception.”
My boy made a picture of the old ruin of a tower near Interlacken,
pointed out as the scene where the “Manfred” of the poem struggled with
the spirits. Manfred was Byron’s best work, but the printers left the
best line of it out, by accident. What would Tennyson nowadays say to a
publisher’s leaving the best line out of his best poem?
Byron liked the Jungfrau better than Mt. Blanc, and the scenes about
the upper end of Lake Geneva inspired him. “All about here,” he
exclaimed once, “is a sense of existence of love in its most extended
and sublime capacity, and of our participation of its good and its
glory.”
His trip among the grandeur of the higher Alps did not tear him away
from his wretched self. He could not forget that he was Byron, and his
“Manfred,” arguing with ghosts in the old ruin by Lake Thun, might have
been a photograph of himself. That’s what Goethe believed it to be,
anyway.
Last week, Professor Ferdinand Keller, the Swiss antiquarian, asked
me to visit the Lake Dwelling excavations at Robenhausen. This is
an excavated village of the stone age, 5,000 years old, the experts
think--maybe older still. The famous Keller himself is a marvel, and
might be out of some other age. He is eighty or ninety years old, a
little, short man, with white hair standing straight on end, shaggy
eyebrows, perfectly immense in their projection above a pair of eyes
that burn like stars. Spite of his many years, he is bright, cheery and
active, and capable of labor as a boy of thirty. His face is as well
known in Zurich as one of the city monuments. The young people think he
has walked the streets always, and nobody expects him ever to die.
His antiquarian rooms look out over the lake. Indeed the old stone
Helmhouse is built in the lake, and it contains the greatest
curiosities of the world. One day Keller was looking out of his
window and observed some queer shadows of things down in the water.
Investigation proved these “things” to be piles, on which in some
remote age, houses and towers had been built. Shortly, the shallow
inlets of half the lakes of the country were found to have once been
the abode of peoples. The oldest of all, like Robenhausen, were of the
age of stone. I was glad of a chance to go, and excavate a little for
myself in these towns that were old and forgotten a thousand years
before Pompeii was even born. This particular village has been perhaps
twelve hundred feet square and stood on a platform supported by 100,000
piles. It was three hundred feet from the shore and was once connected
with the mainland by a bridge. In some of the villages once lived a
people possibly as much civilized as the Mexican of to-day. This is
proved by the relics found in the later ones of looms and cloth, and
swords and jewelry of lovely patterns. At Robenhausen life had been
simple, but I myself dug out specimens of good cloth. There is nothing
to see at Robenhausen save the myriad of rotting piles where the turf
bed that took the place of what was once a lake has been removed. All
the belongings of the village are buried in mud and water. The cedar
and beech poles on which the town once stood had been sharpened by fire
before driving. They were twelve feet long and eighteen inches around
and stood in regular rows. The huts on the platform (two or three
complete ones have been found) were one story high, twenty-two feet
wide and twenty-seven feet long, built of upright poles matted together
with willows and plastered with clay inside and out. The floors, too,
were plastered and the roofs were made of rushes. The remains of
grinding stones and mills have been found in every cabin. Not the sign
of a hieroglyphic or an alphabet has ever been found, to show who those
people were.
I prepared for Harper’s Magazine a paper called “The Swiss Lake
Dwellers,” describing the excavations at all the Swiss lakes up to the
present time. A Swiss artist illustrated it for me.[9]
* * * * *
We hear much of the awful force of Swiss mountain torrents. The other
day I saw what is ordinarily a brook suddenly rise and sweep thousands
of tons of huge rocks on to farms in the valley. The debris of rock
and granite was from three to ten feet deep for a mile. The force of
these streams is simply tremendous beyond belief--the fall is so great;
even the wide river Reuss falls 5,000 feet in thirty miles.
It is a constant wonder why people build homes and hamlets in the way
of these awful torrents when their destruction some day is almost
certain. However, it is on a par with their building villages on
mountain crags and on almost unapproachable slopes when there is plenty
of level land in the word.
* * * * *
Yesterday Koller, the animal painter, asked us to take tea in his
studio. Congressman Lacey and his wife went with us. Koller is
pronounced, by the Swiss at least, to be the greatest animal painter
living. He had a splendid harvest scene on the easel--storm coming up,
peasants hurrying to get the hay on the wagon, the threatening sky, the
uneasy horses, their tails and manes, like the dresses of the girls,
blown aside with the wind. It seemed to me I never saw so much action
in a picture. Koller was threatened with blindness not long ago, when
the prices of his pictures went sky high. Agents were sent out of
Germany to buy them up at whatever figure. His great painting of the
St. Gothard diligence crossing the Alps is famous. Nothing finer in
the way of galloping horses and mountain pass scenery can be imagined.
His home and studio are on a little horn of land running out into the
lake. He keeps a herd of his own cattle for painting, and every day
these beautiful dumb helpers of his are seen in the shallow water of
the lake. Mrs. Koller poured the tea for us. She looks like an artist’s
wife. Koller is a big, full-bearded German-looking Swiss, seventy years
old, who is beloved all over the little republic for his supreme art.
Switzerland has four great names in art: Calame, Stückelberg, Böcklin,
Koller.