Visit to Rome.—Attractions of its Ruins.—Bayard’s Persistent
Searches.—His Limited Means.—Sights and Experiences.—Journey to
Marseilles.—Walks to Lyons.—Desperate Circumstances.—Stay in
Paris.—Employment of his Time.—Departure for London.—Failure
to obtain Money or Work.—Seeks a Friend.—Obtains Help from a
Stranger.—Voyage to New York.—Arrival Home.
Who has entered the aged city of Rome and not felt the power of its
thrilling associations? How the doors of history swing open before the
traveller, and how sublime the panorama which unfolds to his view! How
swiftly pass the scenes of pomp and the parades of heroes! It cannot be
described. It must be felt to be understood. It requires no very active
imagination to see again the strong walls, the towers, the gates, the
majestic temples, and the superb Capitol rising over all. To be able
to walk its paved streets, and wend about its Corinthian porches, and
through its marvellous arches; to rush with the crowds of Romans to a
seat in the Coliseum; to march in the triumphal processions, and to
listen to the echo of Cicero’s voice among the pillars of the Forum, is
no very difficult dream, when the same buildings which saw and heard
those things are yet before you. One can stand in the shadows of ancient
ruins, when the moon gives light enough to see the outline, but not
sufficient to show the scars which the ages have given them, and witness
again the gatherings of the Roman people, and make out the forms of
Cincinnatus, of Scipio, of Marius, of Cæsar, of Cicero, of Augustus,
or of Constantine, as their lumbering chariots jolt over the pavements
and around the palace walls. The Tiber, which rolls on its ceaseless
course, and which saw the faces of Livy, Horace, and Virgil, moves by the
Tarpeian Rock, and the Campus Martius, with the same eddying playfulness
as it exhibited then. New glories gild the clouds, and new temples adorn
the adjacent plains. Jupiter gives way to Jehovah, priests of Janus and
Venus stand aside for monks and friars to fill their office. The Coliseum
crumbles, as St. Paul’s lifts its grand façades. Capitolinus falls and
St. Peter’s fills the bow of heaven. Marvels of ancient art grow dusty
with the ages, while new forms, so divinely conceived, so incomparably
wrought, and so immaculate in modesty and matchless in color, spring
into being at the call of the later civilization. All is interesting,
exciting, glorious! One walks the streets in dreams, lulled by the
musical cadences of the rippling native language. Words cannot convey
the feelings awakened by that new sense, which discerns and interprets
the ancient and modern associations of Rome. The traveller feels as if
he were a companion of the great and powerful, of the refined and good,
who have walked those streets before him, and ever after the words they
spoke, and the books they wrote, have a fresh and unabating interest.
[Illustration: THE ARENA OF THE COLISEUM.]
So Bayard saw the ancient city, although he has described it somewhat
differently. Rome was to Florence what the Apollo is to the Venus de
Medici, each enhancing the beauty of the other, and losing nothing by
comparison. It was near the first of January, 1846, when the subject
of these sketches entered Rome and took up his abode in a lowly tavern
opposite the front of the Pantheon. In a most humble, almost beggarly
way, he obtained his food at the cheapest places, and walked among those
old ruins in the most unobtrusive manner. He was too poor, and earned
too little as a newspaper correspondent, to spend aught on the luxuries
of Rome. Hence all his time and attention were on that which pleased
the eye and satisfied the mind, rather than upon those things which
gratify the appetite or inflate the pride. He walked to the Coliseum by
moonlight, and heeded not fatigue. For within its cragged circuit he
saw again the excited hosts, the gay ladies about the imperial throne,
the writhing Christian, and the lions with bloody jaws. Or he saw the
fiercer human beings engaged in the gladiatorial combat, saw the flash
of shields and swords, heard the groan of the dying as it was drowned by
the rising shouts for the victor. He searched the hidden recesses of the
baths, palaces, arches, prisons, and churches, which remain as reminders
of the old city; he marched far out on the Appian Way and contemplated
its tombs and mysterious piles in laborious detail; he sketched the
spirals of Trajan’s Column, and drew a plan of the ancient Capitol. In
awe-stricken silence he walked beneath the dome of mighty St. Peter’s,
and marvelled in worshipful mood before those exquisite mosaics. He
lingered long and lovingly in the great labyrinth of the Vatican, wept at
the sight of some of those great paintings, and bowed with respect to the
greatest productions of the greatest sculptors. Few will give credit to
the glowing pictures which he draws of the arts in Rome, nor believe the
strong assertions we herein make, who have not been there and experienced
the same sensations.
He visited in pious respect the tombs of Tasso, Keats, and Shelley, and
found his way into the studios of the modern artists. He took short trips
into the country, and once stopped for the night under the shadows of
the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli. Beyond Rome he could not go. For once,
Dame Fortune turned her back upon him. If he would see Naples, Pompeii,
and Samos, he must have money. Money he could not get. Grievously
disappointed, yet thankful for what he had seen, he most devoutly thanks
God, and turns northward.
At Civita Vecchia to which place he, as usual, walked, he embarked,
third class, on a steamboat for Marseilles. The beds were rough planks,
the food was drenched like himself, and fleas infested every stitch of
covering. It stormed, and Bayard might have perished with exposure to the
bad weather, had not a sailor taken compassion on him and his companion,
and lent them some clothing. That kindness he ever remembered, and it may
have been in his mind when, after meeting many sailors, he wrote of them:—
“They do not act with a studied grace,
They do not speak in delicate phrase,
But the candor of heaven is on their face,
And the freedom of ocean in all their ways.
They cannot fathom the subtle cheats,
The lying arts that the landsmen learn:
Each looks in the eyes of the man he meets,
And whoso trusts him, he trusts in turn.
But whether they die on sea or shore,
And lie under water, or sand, or sod,
Christ give them the rest that he keeps in store,
And anchor their souls in the harbor of God!”
He arrived at Marseilles with but five dollars for the expense of a
journey of five hundred miles on foot. Dark outlook, indeed, on entering
for the first time a country with whose language he was unacquainted.
Through rain and mud, sunshine and darkness, he moved on, courageous as
ever, and enjoying with the same zest his glimpses of ancient cathedrals
and renowned localities. At Lyons he received a small amount of money
by mail, and at a time when death by starvation seemed but a few hours
removed. The story of his mishaps by land and by water, on his way
from Lyons to Paris is a very exciting narration, as he relates them
in his “Views Afoot,” and yet shows the best side of a most terrible
experience. But Paris was reached at last, and in the first week of
February, 1846, they found a lodging place in the Rue de la Harpe, at the
rate of two dollars and eighty cents a month. He lived on twenty cents
a day, and in place of a teacher of French, subscribed at a circulating
library and picked out the words and phrases by downright hard study
in his fireless and damp attic. For five weeks he studied and rambled
and endured privation, learning Paris by heart and finding himself made
free and happy by the atmosphere of gayety which pervades everything
there. His favorite resort was the Place de la Concorde, which is an
open space at one side of the palace of the Tuileries, and at the foot
of that magnificent embowered avenue called the Champs Elysées. There
were then, as now, the enchanting groves, with the gardens, concert
bowers, and shy booths. There was the obelisk from Luxor, which called
Bayard’s attention to Egypt and created a strong desire to see that
ancient land of the Nile. There were the solid walls of the Tuileries
upon one side, the river Seine upon another, while the twin palaces, with
the distant front of the Madeleine Church showing between them, shut out
the populous city on the other. But the pavements, flowers, fountains,
bronze figures, obelisk and palaces were the least of the attractions
which called this persevering young student to that celebrated square. It
was there that many of the most important acts in the history of France
were performed. It was there that kings were made, and there they were
beheaded. It was there that priests had preached, and there that they
were murdered. It was there that in the crimson and lurid days of ’94,
the Red Revolutionists each day filled the baskets at the foot of the
guillotine with the heads of twoscore and often threescore citizens. Who
would surmise that in a city so gay, so cheerful, so imbued with the very
spirit of pleasure and childlike life, such hideous deeds of blood and
destruction could be performed! Quick-tempered, excitable people, going
with the flash of a thought from one extreme to the other. No place in
all Paris better exhibits the character of the nation, than the Place de
la Concorde. There Bayard often lingered and pondered, seeing clearly
through the film of gay attire, garlands of roses, delightful wines, and
gorgeous carriages, the dangerous yet often heroic elements, which have
so often thrown off the crust of fashion and politeness, and flooded the
beautiful city with seething torrents from the deepest hell.
[Illustration: PLACE DE LA CONCORDE.]
He sought out the master-pieces of art in the galleries, cathedrals,
and parks, and dwelt long and caressingly upon their entrancing forms,
having now passed through a school that left him a competent critic. He
gazed after the carriage where Louis Philippe rode in state, and wondered
if such a monarchy could endure, and with a powerful yearning fumbled
the unintelligible leaves of Victor Hugo, Beranger, and Lamartine—not,
however, to be long unintelligible.
There, again, he was in financial distress, and was saved from great
suffering by the unexpected kindness of a merchant, who, like Mr.
Chandler and Mr. Patterson at the beginning of his career, loaned him
money, although Bayard was a stranger and could give no security.
From Paris _via_ Versailles and Rouen, he walked to Dieppe, and, after
crossing the Channel, travelled by third-class car to London, where he
arrived with but thirty cents in French money. With no money to pay his
lodging, with a letter from home in the post-office, on which he could
not pay the postage, he made desperate attempts to obtain employment as
a printer. But the “Trade Unions” were so omnipotent, that no stranger
without a certificate could be set at work without a “strike.” At last,
when long without his usual meals, and sure of being refused a lodging,
he applied to Mr. Putnam, who was conducting the London agency of the
American publishing firm, who loaned him five dollars, and he could
again eat and sleep. Several weeks of waiting intervened, in which Mr.
Putnam kindly kept Bayard in employment, at a salary sufficient to pay
his board, before the money came from America to take them home. Even
then the captain of the vessel on which he returned with his two friends
who started with him nearly two years before, was compelled to take a
promise for a part of the fare. Captain Morgan, who commanded the vessel,
was one of the noblest men that ever paced a deck, and so popular did he
become, that his biography was published thirty years after this passage,
in an illustrated number of “Scribner’s Magazine.” Their voyage was a
fair one, their landing in New York a happy one; but no pen except his
own can describe the joy of seeing again his own country, and of walking
at evening into the door of that home which he left two years before as
_a boy_, and to which he then returned _a man_.