Passage in a sailing ship--Gibraltar--Marseilles--Smugglers and a
slaver--Italy--Life in Rome--Torlonia's balls and the last great Carnival
of 1846--Navone, the chief of police--Florence--Venice--How I passed the
Bridge of Sighs--The Black Bait--Slavery--Crossing the
Simplon--Switzerland--Pleasing introduction to Germany--Student life at
Heidelberg--Captain Medwin--Justinus Kerner--How I saw Jenny
Lind--Munich--Lola Montez--Our house on fire--All over Germany--How I was
turned out of Poland--Paris in 1847--The Revolution of 1848--I become
conspirator and captain of barricades--Taking of the Tuileries--The
police bow me out of Prance--A season in London--Return to America.
After our return to Philadelphia something of great importance to me
began to be discussed. My cousin Samuel Godfrey, who was a few years
older than I, finding himself threatened with consumption, of which all
his family died, resolved to go to Marseilles on a voyage, and persuaded
my father to let me accompany him. At this time I had, as indeed for
many years before, such a desire to visit Europe that I might almost have
died of it. So it was at last determined that I should go with "Sam,"
and after all due preparations and packing, I bade farewell to mother and
Henry and the dear little twin sisters, and youngest Emily, our pet, and
went with my father to New York, where I was the guest for a few days of
my cousin, Mrs. Caroline Wight, whom the reader may recall as the one who
used to correct my French exercises in Dedham.
We were to sail in a packet or ship for Marseilles. My father saw me
off. He was wont to say in after years, that as I stood on the deck at
the last moment and looked affectionately at him, there was in my eyes an
expression of innocence or goodness and gentleness which he never saw
again. Which was, I am sure, very true; the great pity being that that
look had not utterly disappeared years before. If it only _had_ vanished
with boyhood, as it ought to have done, my father would have been spared
much sorrow.
At this time I was a trifle over six feet two in height, and had then and
for some time after so fair a red and white complexion, that the young
ladies in Philadelphia four years later teased me by spreading the report
that I used rouge and white paint! I was not as yet "filled out," but
held myself straightly, and was fairly proportioned. I wore a cap _a
l'etudiant_, very much over my left ear, and had very long, soft,
straight, dark-brown hair; my dream and ideal being the German student. I
was extremely shy of strangers, but when once acquainted soon became very
friendly, and in most cases made a favourable impression. I was "neat
and very clean-looking," as a lady described me, for the daily bath or
sponge was universal in Philadelphia long ere it was even in England, and
many a time when travelling soon after, I went without a meal in order to
have my tub, when time did not permit of both. I was very sensitive, and
my feelings were far too easily pained; on the other hand, I had no trace
of the common New England youth's vulgar failing of nagging, teasing, or
vexing others under colour of being "funny" or "cute." A very striking,
and, all things considered, a remarkable characteristic was that I
_hated_, as I still do, with all my soul, gossip about other people and
their affairs; never read even a card not meant for my eyes, and detested
curiosity, prying, and inquisitiveness as I did the devil. I owe a great
development of this to a curious incident. It must have been about the
time when I first went to college, that I met at Cape May a naval
officer, who roomed with me in a cottage, a farm-house near a hotel, and
whom I greatly admired as a man of the world and a model of good manners.
To him one day I communicated some gossip about somebody, when he
abruptly cut me short, and when I would go on informed me that he never
listened to such talk. This made a very deep impression on me, which
never disappeared; nay, it grew with my growth and strengthened with my
strength. Now the New England people, especially Bostonians, are
inordinately given to knowing everything about everybody, and to "tittle-
tattle," while the Southerners are comparatively free from it and very
incurious. Two-thirds of the students at Princeton were of the first
families in the South, and there my indifference to what did not
personally concern one was regarded as a virtue. But there is a spot in
this sun--that he who never cares a straw to know about the affairs of
other people, will, not only if he live in Boston, but almost anywhere
else--Old England not at all excepted--be forced, in spite of himself,
and though he were as meek and lowly as man may be, into looking down on
and feeling himself superior unto those people who _will_ read a letter
not meant for their eyes, or eavesdrop, or talk in any way about anybody
in a strain to which they would not have that person listen. Which
reminds me that in after years I got some praise in the newspapers for
the saying that a Yankee's idea of hell was a place where he must mind
his own business. It came about in this way. In a letter to Charles
Astor Bristed I made this remark, and illustrated it with a picture of
Virgil taking a Yankee attired in a chimney-pot hat and long night-gown
into the Inferno, over whose gate was written--
"Badate a vostri affari voi che intrate!"
(Mind your own business ye who enter here!)
One day soon after my arrival at Princeton, George Boker laid on the
table by me a paper or picture with its face down. I took no notice of
it. After a time he said, "Why don't you look at that picture?" I
replied simply, "If you wanted me to see it you would have turned it face
up." To which he remarked, "I put it there to see whether you would look
at it. I thought you would not." George was a "deep, sagacious file,"
who studied men like books.
My cousin who accompanied me had as a boy "run away and gone to sea" cod-
fishing on the Grand Banks. If I had gone with him it would have done me
good. Another cousin, Benjamin Stimson, did the same; he is the S. often
mentioned in Dana's "Two Years Before the Mast." Dana and Stimson were
friends, and ran away together. It was quite the rule for all my Yankee
cousins to do this, and they all benefited by it. In consequence of his
nautical experience Sam was soon at home among all sailors, and not
having my scruples as to knowing who was who or their affairs, soon knew
everything that was going on. Our captain was a handsome, dissipated,
and "loud" young man, with rather more sail than ballast, but
good-natured and obliging.
"Come day, go day," we passed the Gulf Stream and the Azores, and had
long sunny calms, when we could not sail, and lay about on deck, warm and
lazy, and saw the Azores, and so on, till we were near the Spanish coast.
One evening there clipped right under our lee a fisherman's smack. "I
say, Leland, hail that fellow!" said the captain. So I called in
Spanish, "Adonde venga usted?"
"Da Algesiras," was the reply, which thrilled out of my heart the thought
that, like the squire in Chaucer--
"He had been at the siege of Algecir."