"Coruncho Lopez, gallant lad,
A smuggling he would ride;
So stole his father's ambling prad,
And therefore to the galleys sad
Coruncho now I guide."
This was a final _coup_. How the _diabolo_ I, such an innocent stranger
youth, had ever learned Spanish _Gypsy_--the least knowledge of which in
Spain implies unfathomable iniquity and fastness--was beyond all
comprehension. So I departed full of honour amid thunders of applause.
From the first day our room was the resort of all the American
ship-captains in Marseilles. We kept a kind of social hall or exchange,
with wine and cigars on the side-table, all of which dropping in and out
rather reminded me of Princeton. My friend the actor had pitched upon a
young English Jew, who seemed to me to be a doubtful character. He sang
very well, and was full of local news and gossip. He, too, was at home
among us. One evening our captain told us how he every day smuggled
ashore fifty cigars in his hat. At hearing this, I saw a gleam in the
eyes of the young man, which was a revelation to me. When he had gone, I
said to the captain, "You had better not smuggle any cigars to-morrow.
That fellow is a spy of the police."
The next day Captain Jack on leaving his ship was accosted by the
_douaniers_, who politely requested him to take off his hat. He refused,
and was then told that he must go before the _prefet_. There the request
was renewed. He complied; but "forewarned, forearmed"--there was nothing
in it.
Captain Jack complimented me on my sagacity, and scolded the actor for
making such friends. But he had unconsciously made me familiar with one
compared to whom the spy was a trifle. I have already fully and very
truthfully described this remarkable man in an article in _Temple Bar_,
but his proper place is here. He was a little modest-looking Englishman,
who seemed to me rather to look up to the fast young American captains as
types or models of more daring beings. Sometimes he would tell a mildly-
naughty tale as if it were a wild thing. He consulted with me as to
going to Paris and hearing lectures at the University, his education
having been neglected. He had, I was told, experienced a sad loss,
having just lost his ship on the Guinea coast. One day I condoled with
him, saying that I heard he had been ruined.
"Yes," replied the captain, "I have. Something like this: My mother once
had a very pretty housemaid who disappeared. Some time after I met her
magnificently dressed, and I said, 'Sally, where do you live now?' She
replied, 'Please, sir, I don't live anywhere now; I've been _ruined_.'"
Sam explained to me that the captain had a keg of gold-dust and many
diamonds, and having wrecked his vessel intentionally, was going to
London to get a heavy insurance. He had been "ruined" to his very great
advantage. Then Sam remarked--
"You don't know the captain. I tell you, Charley, that man is an old
slaver or pirate. See how I'll draw him out."
'The next day Sam began to talk. He remarked that he had been to sea and
had some money which he wished to invest. His health required a warm
climate, such as the African coast. We would both, in fact, like to go
into the Guinea business. [_Bozales_--"sacks of charcoal," I remarked in
Spanish slaver-slang.] The captain smiled. He had apparently heard the
expression before. He considered it. He had a great liking for me, and
thought that a trip or two under the black flag would do me a great deal
of good. So he noted down our address, and promised that as soon as he
should get a ship we should hear from him.
After that the captain, regarding me as enlisted in the fraternity, and
only waiting till 'twas "time for us to go," had no secrets from me. He
was very glad that I knew Spanish and French, and explained that if I
would learn Coromantee or Ebo, it would aid us immensely in getting
cargoes. By the way, I became very well acquainted in after years with
King George of Bonney, and can remember entertaining him with a story how
a friend of mine once (in Cuba) bought thirty Ebos, and on entering the
barracoon the next morning, found them all hanging by the necks dead,
like a row of possums in the Philadelphia market--they having, with
magnificent pluck, and in glorious defiance of Buckra civilisation,
resolved to go back to Africa. I have found other blacks who believed
that all good darkies when they die go to Guinea, and one of these was
very touching and strange. He had been brought as a slave-child to South
Carolina, but was always haunted by the memory of a group of cocoa-palms
by a place where the wild white surf of the ocean bounded up to the
shore--a rock, sunshine, and sand. There he declared his soul would go.
He was a Voodoo, and a man of marvellous strange mind.
Day by day my commander gave me, as I honestly believe, without a shadow
of exaggeration, all the terrific details of a slaver's life, and his
strange experiences in buying slaves in the interior. Compared to the
awful massacres and cruelties inflicted by the blacks on one another, the
white slave trade seemed to be philanthropic and humane. He had seen at
the grand custom in Dahomey 2,500 men killed, and a pool made of their
blood into which the king's wives threw themselves naked and wallowed.
"One day fifteen were to be tortured to death for witchcraft. I bought
them all for an old dress-coat," said the captain. "I didn't want them,
for my cargo was made up; it was only to save the poor devils' lives."
If a slaver could not get a full cargo, and met with a weaker vessel
which was full, it was at once attacked and plundered. Sometimes there
would be desperate resistance, with the aid of the slaves. "I have seen
the scuppers run with blood," said the captain. And so on, with much
more of the same sort, all of which has since been recorded in the
"Journal of Captain Canot," from which latter book I really learned
nothing new. I might add the "Life of Hobart Pacha," whom I met many
times in London. A real old-fashioned slaver was fully a hundred times
worse than an average pirate, because he _was_ the latter whenever he
wished to rob, and in his business was the cause of far more suffering
and death.
The captain was very fond of reading poetry, his favourite being
Wordsworth. This formed quite a tie between us. He was always rather
mild, quiet, and old-fashioned--in fact, muffish. Once only did I see a
spark from him which showed what was latent. Captain Jack was describing
a most extraordinary run which we had made before a gale from Gibraltar
to Cape de Creux, which was, indeed, true enough, he having a very fast
vessel. But the _Guinea_ captain denied that such time had ever been
made by any craft ever built. "And I have had to sail sometimes pretty
fast in my time," he added with one sharp glance--no more--but, as Byron
says of the look of Gulleyaz, 'twas like a short glimpse of hell. Pretty
fast! I should think so--now and then from an English cruiser, all sails
wetted down, with the gallows in the background. But as I had been on
board with Sam, the question was settled. We _had_ made a run which was
beyond all precedent.
I fancy that the captain, if he escaped the halter or the wave, in after
years settled down in some English coast-village, where he read
Wordsworth, and attended church regularly, and was probably regarded as a
gentle old duffer by the younger members of society. But take him for
all in all, he was the mildest-mannered man that ever scuttled ship or
cut a throat, and he always behaved to me like a perfect gentleman, and
never uttered an improper word.
We had to wait one month till my cousin could get certain news from
America. We employed the time in travelling in the south, visiting
Arles, Nismes, Montpellier, and other places. An English gentleman named
Gordon, whom I had met in Marseilles, had given me a letter of
introduction to M. Saint Rene Taillandier in the latter place. I knew
nothing at all then about this great man, or that he was the first French
critic of German literature, but I presented my letter, and he kindly
went with me about the town to show me its antiquities. I can remember
discussing Gothic tracery with him; also, that I told him I was deeply
interested in the Troubadours. He recommended Raynouard and several
other books, when finding that I was familiar with them all, he smiled,
and said that he believed he could teach me nothing more. I did not know
it then, but that word from him would have been as good as a diploma for
me in Paris.
As for old Roman ruins and Gothic churches, and cloisters grey, and the
arrowy Rhone, and castellated bridges--everything was in a more original
moss-grown, picturesque condition then than it now is--I enjoyed them all
with an intensity, a freshness or love, which passeth all belief. I had
attended Professor Dodd's lectures more than once, and illuminated
manuscripts, and had bought me in Marseilles Berty's "Dictionary of
Gothic Architecture," and got it by heart, and began to think of making a
profession of it, which, if I had known it, was the very wisest thing I
could have done. And that this is no idle boast is clear from this, that
I in after years made a design according to which a "store," which cost
30,000 pounds, was built, my plan being believed by another skilled
architect to have been executed by a "professional." This was really the
sad slip and escape of my lifetime.
In those days, really _good_ red wine was given to every one at every
table; savoury old-fashioned dishes, vegetables, and fruits were served
far more freely and cheaply than they now are, when every dainty is sent
by rail to Paris or London, and the drinking of Bordeaux and Burgundy did
me much good. Blessed days of cheapness and good quality, before
chicory, the accursed poison, had found its way into coffee, or
oleomargarine was invented, or all things canned--the world will never
see ye more! I have now lived for many months in a first-class Florence
hotel, and in all the time have not tasted one fresh Italian mushroom, or
truffle, or olive--nothing but tasteless abominations bottled in France!
It was settled that my cousin should return from Marseilles to the United
States, while I was to go on alone to Italy. It was misgivingly
predicted at home by divers friends that I would be as a lamb set loose
among wolves, and lose all my money at the outstart. Could they have
learned that within a week after my arrival I had been regarded by
Spanish smugglers as a brother, and tripped up a spy of the police, and
been promised a situation as a slaver's and pirate's assistant, they
might have thought that I had begun to learn how to take care of myself
in a hurry. As for losing my money, I, by a terrible accident, _doubled
it_, as I will here describe.
Before leaving home, a lady cousin had made for Samuel and me each a
purse, and they were exactly alike. Now by a purse I mean a real
_purse_, and not a pocket-book, or a porte-monnaie, or a wallet--that is,
I mean a long bag with a slit and two rings, and nothing else. And my
cousin having often scolded me for leaving mine lying about in our room,
I seeing it, as I thought, just a few minutes before my departure, lying
on the table, pocketed it, thanking God that Sam had not found it, or
scolded me.
I went on board the steamboat and set sail towards Italy. I was sea-sick
all night, but felt better the next day. Then I had to pay out some
money, and thought I would look over my gold. To my utter amazement, it
was _doubled_! This I attributed to great generosity on Sam's part, and
I blessed him.
But, merciful heavens! what were my sensations at finding in the lower
depth of my pocket _another purse_ also filled with Napoleons in
rouleaux! Then it all flashed upon me. Samuel, the careful, had left
_his_ purse lying on the table, and I had supposed it was mine! I felt
as wretched as if I had lost instead of won.
When I got to Naples I found a letter from my cousin bewailing his loss.
He implored me, if I knew nothing about it, not to tell it to a human
soul. There was a M. Duclaux in Marseilles, with whom we had had our
business dealings, and from him Sam had borrowed what he needed. I at
once requested Captain Olive, of the steamer, to convey the purse and its
contents to M. Duclaux, which I suppose was done _secundem ordinem_.
Poor Sam! I never met him again. He died of consumption soon after
returning home. He was one of whom I can say with truth that I never saw
in him a fault, however trifling. He was honour itself in everything, as
humane as was his grandfather before him, ever cheerful and kind, merry
and quaint.
The programme of the steamboat declared that meals were included in the
fare, "except while stopping at a port." But we stopped every day at
Genoa or Leghorn, or somewhere, and stayed about fifteen hours, and as
almost every passenger fell sea-sick after going ashore, the meals were
not many. On board the first day, I made the acquaintance of Mr. James
Temple Bowdoin, of Boston, and Mr. Mosely, of whom I had often heard as
editor of the _Richmond Whig_. Mr. Bowdoin was a nephew of Lady Temple,
and otherwise widely connected with English families. He is now living
(1892), and I have seen a great deal of him of late years. With these
two I joined company, and travelled with them over Italy. Both were much
older than I, and experienced men of the world; therefore I was in good
hands, and better guides, philosophers, mentors, pilots, and friends I
could hardly have found. Left to myself, I should probably ere the
winter was over have been the beloved chief of a gang of gypsies, or
brigands, or witches, or careering the wild sea-wave as a daring
smuggler, all in innocence and goodness of heart; for truly in Marseilles
I had begun to put forth buds of such strange kind and promise as no
friend of mine ever dreamed of. As it was, I got into better, if less
picturesque, society.
We came to Naples, and went to a hotel, and visited everything. In those
days the beggars and pimps and pickpockets were beyond all modern
conception. The picturesqueness of the place and people were only
equalled by the stinks. It was like a modern realistic novel. We went a
great deal to the opera, also to the Blue Grotto of Capri, and ascended
Mount Vesuvius, and sought Baiae, and made, in fact, all the excursions.
As there were three, and sometimes half-a-dozen of our friends on these
trips, we had, naturally, with us quite a _cortege_. Among these was an
ill-favoured rascal called "John," who always received a dollar a day.
One evening some one raised the question as to what the devil it was that
John did. He did not carry anything, or work to any account, or guide,
or inform, yet he was always there, and always in the way. So John,
being called up, was asked what he did. Great was his indignation, for
by this time he had got to consider himself indispensable. He declared
that he "directed, and made himself generally useful." We informed him
that we would do our own directing, and regarded him as generally
useless. So John was discarded. Since then I have found that "John" is
a very frequent ingredient in all societies and Government offices. There
are Johns in Parliament, in the army, and in the Church. His children
are pensioned into the third and fourth and fortieth generation. In
fact, I am not sure that John is not the great social question of the
age.
There was in Philadelphia an Academy of Fine Arts, or Gallery, of which
my father had generously presented me with two shares, which gave me free
entrance. There were in it many really excellent pictures, even a first-
class Murillo, besides Wests and Allstons. Unto this I had, as was my
wont, read up closely, and reflected much on what I read, so that I was
to a certain degree prepared for the marvels of art which burst on me in
Naples. And if I was, and always have been, _rather_ insensible to the
merits of Renaissance sculpture and architecture, I was not so to its
painting, and not at all blind to the unsurpassed glories of its classic
prototypes. Professor Dodd had indeed impressed it deeply and specially
on my mind that the revival of a really pure Greek taste in England, or
from the work of Stewart and Revett, was contemporary with that for
Gothic architecture, and that the appreciation of one, if _true_, implies
that of the other. As I was now fully inspired with my new resolution to
become an architect, I read all that I could get on the subject, and
naturally examined all remains of the past far more closely and
critically than I should otherwise have done. And this again inspired in
me (who always had a mania for bric-a-brac and antiquity, which is
certainly hereditary) a great interest in the characteristic _decoration_
of different ages, which thing is the soul and life of all aesthetic
archaeology and the minor arts; which latter again I truly claim to have
brought, I may say, into scientific form and made a branch of education
in after years.
I think that we were a month in Naples. I kept a journal then, and
indeed everywhere for three years after. The reader may be thankful that
I have it not, for I foresee that I shall easily recall enough to fill
ten folios of a thousand pages solid brevier each, at this rate of
reminiscences. As my predilection for everything German and Gothic came
out more strongly every day, Mr. Mosely called me familiarly Germanicus,
a name which was indeed not ill-bestowed at that period.
From Naples we went to Rome by _vettura_, or in carriages. We were two
days and two nights on the route. I remember that when we entered Rome,
I saw the _douanier_ who examined my trunk remove from it, as he thought
unperceived, a hair-brush, book, &c., and slyly hide them behind another
trunk. I calmly walked round, retook and replaced them in my trunk, to
the discomfiture, but not in the least to the shame, of the thief, who
only grinned.
And here I may say, once for all, that one can hardly fail to have a mean
opinion of human common-sense in government, when we see this system of
examining luggage still maintained. For all that any country could
_possibly_ lose by smuggling in trunks, &c., would be a hundred-fold
recompensed by the increased amount of travel and money imported, should
it be done away with, as has been perfectly and fully proved in France;
the announcement a year ago that examination would be null or formal
having had at once the effect of greatly increasing travel. And as there
is not a custom-house in all Europe where a man who knows the trick
cannot pull through his luggage by bribery--the exceptions being
miraculously rare--the absurdity and folly of the system is apparent.
We went to the Hotel d'Allemagne, where I fell ill, either because I had
a touch of Neapolitan malaria in me (in those days the stench of the city
was perceptible three miles out at sea, and might have risen unto heaven
above and been smelt by the angels, had they and their home been as near
to earth as was believed by the schoolmen), or because the journey had
been too much for me. However, an English physician set me up all right
in two or three days (he wanted to sell us pictures which would have
cured any one--of a love of art), and then there began indeed a glorious
scampering and investigating, rooting and rummaging--
"'Mid deathless lairs in solemn Rome."
Galleries and gardens, ruins and palaces, Colosseum and temples, churches
and museums--ye have had many a better informed and many a more inspired
or gifted visitor than I, but whether from your first Sabine days you
ever had a happier one, or one who enjoyed you more with the simple
enjoyment of youth and hope gratified, I doubt. Sometimes among moss-
grown arches on a sunny day, as the verd-antique lizards darted over the
stones from dark to light, while far in the distance tinkled bells,
either from cows or convents, and all was calm and sweet, I have often
wondered if it could indeed be real and not a dream. Life often seemed
to me then to be too good to be true. And there was this at least good
in my Transcendentalism and Poly-Pantheism, that it quite unconsciously
or silently gave me many such hours; for it had sunk so deeply into my
soul, and was so much a real part thereof, that it inspired me when I
never thought of it, in which I differed by a heaven's width from the
professional Yankee Transcendentalists, Presbyterians, Methodists,
AEsthetes, and other spiritualists or sorcerers, who always kept their
blessed belief, as a holy fugleman, full in sight, to give them sacred
straight tips, or as a Star-spangled Bannerman who waved exceedingly,
while my spirit was a shy fairy, who dwelt far down in the depths of the
all too green sea of my soul, where it seemed to me she had ever been, or
ever a storm had raised a wave on the surface. Antiquely verdant green I
was, no doubt. And even to this day the best hours of my life are when I
hear her sweet voice 'mid ivy greens or ruins grey, in wise books, hoar
traditions. Be it where it will, it is _that_, and not the world of men
or books, which gives the charm.
It was usual for all who drew from Torlonia's bank not less than 20
pounds to be invited to his soirees. To ensure the expenses, the footman
who brought the invitation called the day after for not less than _five
francs_. But the entertainment was well worth the money, and more. There
was a good supper--Thackeray has represented a character in "Vanity Fair"
as devouring it--and much amusement.
Now I had written my name _Chas._, which being mistaken for _Chev._, I in
due time, received an invitation addressed to M. le Chevalier Godfrey de
Leland. And it befell that I once found a lost decoration of the Order
of the Golden Spur, which in those days _was_ actually sold to anybody
who asked for it for ten pounds, and was worth "nothing to nobody." This
caused much fun among my friends, and from that day I was known as the
Chevalier Germanicus, or the Knight of the Golden Spur, to which I
assented with very good grace as a joke. There were even a few who
really believed that I had been decorated, though I never wore it, and
one day I received quite a severe remonstrance from a very patriotic
fellow-countryman against the impropriety of my thus risking my loss of
citizenship. Which caused me to reflect how many there are in life who
rise to such "honours," Heaven only knows how, in a back-stairs way. I
know in London a very great man of science, _nemini secundus_, who has
never been knighted, although the tradesman who makes for him his
implements and instruments has received the title and the _accolade_.
_Fie_ at justitia!
I saw at one of the Torlonia entertainments a marvellously beautiful and
strange thing, of which I had read an account in Mme. de Stael's
_Corinne_. There was a stage, on which appeared a young girl, plainly
dressed, and bearing a simple small scarf. She did not speak or dance,
or even assume "artistic positions"; what she did was far more striking
and wonderful. She merely sat or stood or reclined in many ways, every
one of which seemed to be _perfectly_ natural or habitual, and all of
which were incredibly graceful. I have forgotten how such women were
called in Italy. I am sure that this one had never been trained to it,
for the absolute ease and naturalness with which she sat or stood could
never have been taught. If it could, every woman in the world would
learn it. Ristori was one of these instinctive _Graces_, and it
constituted nearly all the art there was in her.
This was in 1846. The Carnival of that year in Rome was the last real
one which Italy ever beheld. It was the very last, for which every soul
saved up all his money for months, in order to make a wild display, and
dance and revel and indulge in
"Eating, drinking, masking,
And other things which could be had for asking."
Then all Rome ran mad, and rode in carriages full of flowers, or carts,
or wheelbarrows, or triumphal chariots, or on camels, horses, asses, or
rails--_n'importe quoi_--and merrily cast _confetti_ of flour or lime at
one another laughing, while grave English tourists on balconies
laboriously poured the same by the peck from tin scoops on the heads of
the multitude, under the delusion that they too were enjoying themselves
and "doing" the Carnival properly. It was the one great rule among
Italians that no man should in the Carnival, under any provocation
whatever, lose his temper. And here John Bull often tripped up. On the
last night of the last Carnival--that great night--there was the _Senza
Moccolo_ or extinguishment of lights, in which everybody bore a burning
taper, and tried to blow or knock out the light of his neighbour. Now,
being tall, I held my taper high with one hand, well out of danger, while
with a broad felt hat in the other I extinguished the children of light
like a priest. I threw myself into all the roaring fun like a wild boy,
as I was, and was never so jolly. Observing a pretty young English lady
in an open carriage, I thrice extinguished her light, at which she
laughed, but at which her brother or beau did not, for he got into a
great rage, even the first time, and bade me begone. Whereupon I
promptly renewed the attack, and then repeated it, "according to the
rules of the game," whereat he began to curse and swear, when I, in the
Italian fashion of rebuke (to the delight of sundry Italians), pointed my
finger at him and hissed; which constituted the winning _point d'honneur_
in the game.
There, too, was the race of wild horses, right down through the Corso or
Condotti, well worth seeing, and very exciting, and game suppers o'nights
after the opera, and the meeting with many swells and noted folk, and now
it all seems like some memory of a wild phantasmagoria or hurried magic-
lantern show--galleries and ruins by day, and gaiety by night. Even so
do all the scenes of life roll up together at its end, often getting
mixed.
Yet another Roman memory or two. We had taken lodgings in the Via
Condotti, where we had a nice sitting-room in common and a good
coal-fire. Our landlady was lady-like and spoke French, and had long
been a governess in the great Borghese family. As for her husband, there
were thousands of Liberals far and wide who spoke of him as the greatest
scoundrel unhung, for he was at the head of the Roman police, and I
verily believe knew more iniquity than the Pope himself. It would have
been against all nature and precedent if I had not become his dear friend
and _protege_, which I did accordingly, for I liked him very much indeed,
and Heaven knows that such a rum couple of friends as Giuseppe Navone and
myself, when out walking together, could not at that time have been found
in Europe.
It may here be observed that I was decidedly getting on in the quality of
my Mentors, for, as regarded morals and humanity, my old pirate and
slaver friend was truly as a lamb and an angel of light compared to
Navone. And I will further indicate, as this book will prove, that if I
was not at the age of twenty-three the most accomplished young scoundrel
in all Europe, it was not for want of such magnificent opportunities and
friends as few men ever enjoyed. But it was always my fate to neglect or
to be unable to profit by advantages, as, for instance, in mathematics;
nor in dishonesty did I succeed one whit better, which may be the reason
why the two are somehow dimly connected in my mind. Here I think I see
the unfathomable smile in the eye of Professor Dodd (it never got down to
his lips), who was the incarnate soul of purity and honour. But then the
banker, E. Fenzi, who swindled me out of nearly 500 francs, was an
arithmetician, and I write under a sense of recent wrong. How this loss,
and Fenzi's failure, flight, and the fuss which it all caused in
Florence, were accurately foretold me by a witch, may be read in detail
in my "Etrusco-Roman Remains in Tuscan Tradition." London: T. Fisher
Unwin.
My landlady was a very zealous Catholic, and tried to convert me. This
was a new experience, and I enjoyed it. I proved malleable. So she
called in a Jesuit priest to perfect the work. I listened with deep
interest to his worn-out _fade_ arguments, made a few points of feeble
objection for form's sake, yielded, and met him more than half way. But
somehow he never called again. _Latet anguis in herba_--my grass was
rather too green, I suppose. I was rather sorry, for I expected some
amusement. But I had been _too_ deep for the Jesuit--and for myself.
The time came for my departure. I was to go alone on to Florence, in
advance of my friends. Navone arranged everything nicely for me: I was
to go by diligence on to Civita Vecchia, where I was to call on a
relative of his, who kept a bric-a-brac shop. I did not know how or why
it was that I was treated with such great respect, as if with fear, by
the conductor, and by all on the road. I was _en route_ all night, and
in the morning, very weary, I went to a hotel, called a commissionaire,
and bade him get my passport from the police, and have it _visee_, and
secure me a passage on the boat to Leghorn. He returned very soon, and
said with an air of bewilderment, "Signore, you sent me on a useless
errand. Here is your passport put all _en regle_, and your passage is
all secured!"
I saw it at once. The kind fatherly care of the great and good Navone
had done it all! He had watched over me invisibly and mysteriously all
the time during the night; on the road I was a pet child of the Roman
police! The Vehmgericht had endorsed me with three crosses! Therefore
the passport and the passage were all right, and the captain was very
deferential, and I got to Florence safely.
In Florence I went to the first hotel, which was then in what is now
known as the Palazzo Feroni, or Viesseux's, the great circulating library
of Italy. It is a fine machicolated building, which was in the Middle
Ages the prison of the Republic. From my window I had a fine view of the
Via Tornabuoni--in which I had coffee since I concluded the last line.
There were but three or four persons the first evening at the
_table-d'hote_. One was a very beautiful Polish countess, who spoke
French perfectly. She was very fascinating, and, when she ate a salad,
smeared her lovely mouth and cheeks all round with oil to her ears. Some
one said something to her about the manner in which the serfs were
treated in Poland, whereupon she replied with great vivacity that the
Polish serfs were even more degraded and barbarous than those of Russia.
Which remark inspired in me certain reflections, which were amply
developed in after years by the perusal of Von Moltke's work on Poland,
and more recently of that very interesting novel called "The Deluge." If
freedom shrieked when Kosciusko fell, it was probably, from a
humanitarian point of view, with joy.
There was, however, at the same hotel a singular man, a Lithuanian Pole
named Andrekovitch, with whom I became very intimate, and whom I met in
after years in Paris and in America. He had been at a German university,
where he had imbibed most liberal and revolutionary ideas. He
subsequently took part in one or two revolutions, and was exiled. He had
read about Emerson in a French magazine, and was enthusiastic over him.
In strange contrast to him was a handsome young man from the Italian
Tyrol, who was, like the Pole and myself, full of literary longings, but
who was still quite a Roman Catholic. He knew about as much, or as
little, of the world as I did, and was "gentle and bland." When we bade
farewell, he wept, and kissed me. Andrekovitch was eccentric, wild, and
Slavonian-odd to look at at any time. One evening he came into my room
clad in scarlet dressing-gown, and having altogether the appearance of a
sorcerer just out of a Sabbat. The conversation took a theological turn.
Andrekovitch was the ragged remnant of a Catholic, but a very small one.
He sailed close to the wind, and neared Rationalism.
"But the Pope! . . ." exclaimed the Tyrolese.
Andrekovitch rose, looking more sorcerer or Zamiel-like than ever, and
exclaiming, "The Pope be--!" left the room. The last word was lost in
the slam of the door. It was a melodramatic departure, and as such has
ever been impressed on my memory.
My father, while a merchant, and also my uncle, had done a very large
business in Florentine straw goods, and I had received letters to several
English houses who had corresponded with them. I heard, long after, that
my arrival had caused a small panic in Florence in business circles, it
being apprehended that I had come out to establish a rival branch, or to
buy at head-quarters for the American "straw-market." I believe that
their fears were appeased when I interviewed them. One of these worthy
men had been so long in Italy that he had caught a little of its
superstition. He wished to invest in lottery tickets, and asked me for
lucky numbers, which I gave him.
As I write these lines in Florence, I have within half-an-hour called for
the first time on an old witch or _strega_, whom I found surrounded by
herbs and bottles, and a magnificent cat, who fixed his eyes on me all
the time, as if he recognised a friend. I found, however, that she only
knew the common vulgar sorceries, and was unable to give me any of the
higher _scongiurazioni_ or conjurations; and as I left, the old sorceress
said respectfully and admiringly, "You come to _me_ to learn, O Maestro,
but it is fitter that I take lessons from you!" Then she asked me for
"the wizard blessing," which I gave her in Romany. So my first and last
experiences in the deep and dark art come together!
I became acquainted in Florence with Hiram Powers, which reminds me that
I once in Rome dined _vis-a-vis_ to Gibson and several other artists,
with whom I became intimate as young men readily do. I contrived to
study architecture, and made myself very much at home in a few studios.
The magnificent _Fiorara_, or flower-girl, whom so many will remember for
many years, was then in the full bloom of her beauty. She and others
gave flowers to any strangers whom they met, not expecting money down,
but when a man departed the flower-girls were always on hand to solicit a
gratuity. Twenty years later this same Fiorara, still a very handsome
woman, remembered me, and gave my wife a handsome bouquet on leaving.
I studied Provencal and Italian poetry in illuminated MSS. in the
Ambrosian or Laurentian Library, and took my coffee at Doney's, and saw
more of Florence in a few weeks' time than I have ever done since in any
one of my residences here, though some of them have been for six and nine
months. As is quite natural. Who that lives in London ever goes to see
the Tower? All things in Europe were so new and fresh and beautiful and
wonderful to me then, and I had been yearning for them so earnestly for
so many years, and this golden freedom followed so closely on the deadly
_ennui_ of Princeton, that I could never see enough.
If any of my readers want to know something of sorcery, I can tell them
that among its humblest professors it is perfectly understood that
pleasure or enjoyment is one of its deepest mysteries or principles, as
an integral part of fascination. So I can feel an _enchantment_,
sometimes almost incredible, in gazing on a Gothic ruin in sunshine, or a
beautiful face, a picture by Carpaccio, Norse interlaces, lovable old
books, my amethyst amulet, or a garden. For if you could sway life and
death, and own millions, or walk invisible, you could do no more than
_enjoy_; therefore you had better learn to enjoy much without such power.
Thus endeth the first lesson!
I arrived in Venice. There had been a time in America when, if I could
have truthfully declared that I had ever been in a gondola, I should have
felt as if I held a diploma of nobility in the Grand Order of
Cosmopolites. Having been conveyed in one to my hotel on the Grand
Canal, I felt that I at last held it! Now I had really mastered the
three great cities of Italy, which was the first and greatest part of all
travel in all the world of culture and of art. Fate might hurl me back
to America, or even into New Jersey, but I had "swum in a gondola."
I very soon made the acquaintance of two brothers from New York named
Seymour, somewhat older than myself, and men of reading and culture. With
them I "sight-saw" the city. I had read Venice up rather closely at
Princeton, and had formed a great desire to go on the Bridge of Sighs.
For some reason this was then very strictly forbidden. Our Consul, who
was an enterprising young man, told me that he had been for months trying
to effect it in vain. It at once became apparent to me as a piece of
manifest destiny that I must do it.
One day I had with me a clever fellow, a commissionaire or guide, and
consulted him. He said, "I think it may be done. You look like an
Austrian, and may be taken for an officer. Walk boldly into the chief's
office, and ask for the keys of the bridge; only show a little cheek. You
may get them. Give the chief's man two francs when you come out. At the
worst, he can only refuse to give them."
It was indeed a very cheeky undertaking, but I ventured on it with the
calmness of innocence. I went into the office, and said, "The keys to
the bridge, if you please!" as if I were in an official hurry on State
business. The official stared, and said--
"Do I understand that you formally demand the keys?"
"_Ja wohl_, certainly; at once, if you please!"
They were handed over to me, and I saw the bridge and gave the two
francs, and all was well. But it gave me no renown in Venice, for the
Consul and all my friends regarded it as a fabulous joke of mine,
inspired by poetic genius. But I sometimes think that the official who
yielded up the keys, and the man whom he sent with me, and perhaps the
commissionaire, all had a put-up job of it among them on those keys, and
several glasses all round out of those two francs. _Quien sabe_? _Vive
la bagatelle_!
We went on an excursion to Padua. What I remember is, that what
impressed me most was a placard here and there announcing that a work on
Oken had just appeared! This rather startled me. Whether it was for or
against the great German offshoot from Schelling, it proved that somebody
in Italy had actually studied him! _Eppure si muove_, I thought. It
cannot be true that--
"Padua! the lamp of learning
In thy halls no more is burning."
I have been there several times since. All that I now recall is that the
hotel was not very good the last time.
I met in Venice a young New Yorker named Clark, who had crossed with me
on the ship. He was a merry companion. Sailing with him one morning in
a gondola along the Grand Canal, we saw sitting before a hotel its
porter, who was an unmistakable American man of full colour. Great was
Clark's delight, and he called out, "I say, Buck! what the devil are you
doing here?"
With a delighted grin, the man and brother replied in deep Southern
accent--
"Dey sets me hyar fo' a bait to 'tice de Americans with."
I heard subsequently that he had come from America with his mistress, and
served her faithfully till there came into the service a pretty French
girl. Great was the anger of the owner of the man to find that he had
unmistakably "enticed" the maid. To which he replied that it was a free
country; that he had married the damsel--she was his wife; and so the
pair at once packed up and departed.
We used to hear a great deal before the war from Southerns about the
devotion of their slaves, but there were a great many instances in which
the fidelity did not exactly hold water. There was an old Virginia
gentleman who owned one of these faithful creatures. He took him several
times to the North, and as the faithful one always turned a deaf ear to
the Abolitionists, and resisted every temptation to depart, and refused
every free-ticket offered for a journey on "the underground railway," and
went back to Richmond, he was of course trusted to an unlimited extent.
When the war ended he was freed. Some one asked him one day how he could
have been such a fool as to remain a slave. He replied--
"Kase it paid. Dere's nuffin pays like being a dewoted darkey. De las'
time I went Norf wid massa I made 'nuff out of him to buy myself free
twice't over."
Doubtless there were many instances of "pampered and petted" household
servants who had grown up in families who had sense to know that they
could never live free in the freezing North without hard work. These
were the only devoted ones of whom I ever heard. The field-hands,
disciplined by the lash, and liable to have their wives or children or
relatives sold from them--_as happened on an average once at least in a
life_--were all to a man quite ready to forsake "ole massa" and "dear ole
missus," and flee unto freedom. And what a vile mean wretch any man must
be who would sacrifice his _freedom_ to any other living being, be it for
love or feudal fidelity--and what a villain must the man be who would
accept such a gift!
I had never thought much of this subject before I left home. I did not
_like_ slavery, nor to think about it. But in Europe I did like such
thought, and I returned fully impressed with the belief that slavery was,
as Charles Sumner said, "the sum of all crimes." In which summation he
showed himself indeed a "sumner," as it was called of yore. Which cost
me many a bitter hour and much sorrow, for there was hardly a soul whom I
knew, except my mother, to whom an Abolitionist was not simply the same
thing as a disgraceful, discreditable malefactor. Even my father, when
angry with me one day, could think of nothing bitterer than to tell me
that I knew I was _an Abolitionist_. I kept it to myself, but the reader
can have no idea of what I was made to suffer for years in Philadelphia,
where everything Southern was exalted and worshipped with a baseness
below that of the blacks themselves.
For all of which in after years I had full and complete recompense. I
lived to see the young ladies who were ready to kneel before any man who
owned "sla-aves," detest the name of "South," and to learn that their
fathers and friends were battling to the death to set those slaves free.
I lived to see the roof of the "gentlemanly planter," who could not of
yore converse a minute with me without letting me know that he considered
himself as an immeasurably higher being than myself, blaze over his head
amid yell and groan and sabre-stroke--
"And death-shots flying thick and fast,"
while he fled for life, and the freed slaves sang hymns of joy to God. I
saw the roads, five miles wide, level, barren, and crossed with ruts,
where Northern and Southern armies had marched, and where villages and
plantations had once been. I saw countless friends or acquaintances, who
had once smiled with pitying scorn at me, or delicately turned the
conversation when Abolition was mentioned in my presence, become all at
once blatant "nigger-worshippers," abundant in proof that they had always
had "an indescribable horror of slavery"--it was, in fact, so
indescribable that (until it was evident that the North would conquer)
none of them ever succeeded in giving anybody the faintest conception of
it, or any idea that it existed. I can still recall how gingerly and
cautiously--"paw by paw into the water"--these dough faces became hard-
baked Abolitionists, far surpassing us of the Old Guard in zeal. I lived
to see men who had voted against Grant and _reviled_ him become his most
intimate friends. But enough of such memories. It is characteristic of
the American people that, while personally very vindictive, they forgive
and forget political offences far more amicably--very far--than do even
the English. However, in the case of the Rebellion, this was a very easy
thing for those to do who had not, like us old Abolitionists, borne the
burden and heat of the day, and who, coming in at the eleventh hour, got
all the contracts and offices! It never came into the head of any man to
write a _Dictionnaire des Girouettes_ in America. These late converts
had never known what it was to be Abolitionists while it was
"unfashionable," and have, as it were, live coals laid on the quivering
heart--as I had a thousand times during many years--all for believing the
tremendous and plain truth that _slavery_ was a thousand times wickeder
than the breach of all the commandments put together. It was so peculiar
for any man, not a Unitarian or Quaker, to be an _Abolitionist_ in
Philadelphia from 1848 until 1861, that such exceptions were pointed out
as if they had been Chinese--"and d---d bad Chinese at that," as a friend
added to whom I made the remark. So much for man's relations with poor
humanity.
My old friend, B. P. Hunt, was one of these few exceptions. His was a
very strange experience. After ceasing to edit a "selected" magazine, he
went to and fro for many voyages to Haiti, where, singular as it may
seem, his experiences of the blacks made of him a stern Abolitionist. He
married a connection of mine, and lived comfortably in Philadelphia, I
think, until the eighties.
I travelled with Mr. Clark from Venice to Milan, where we made a short
visit. I remember an old soldier who spoke six languages, who was
cicerone of the roof of the Cathedral, and whom I found still on the roof
twenty years later, and still speaking the same six tongues. I admired
the building as a beautiful fancy, exquisitely decorated, but did not
think much of it as a specimen of Gothic architecture. It is the best
test of aesthetic culture and knowledge in the world. When you hear
anybody praise it as the most exquisite or perfect Gothic cathedral in
existence, you may expect to hear the critic admire the designs of
Chippendale furniture or the decoration of St. Peter's.
So we passed through beautiful Lombardy and came to Domo d'Ossola, where
a strange German-Italian patois was spoken. It was in the middle of
April, and we were warned that it would be very dangerous to cross the
Simplon, but we went on all night in a carriage on sleigh-runners,
through intervals of snowstorm. Now and then we came to rushing mountain-
torrents bursting over the road; far away, ever and anon, we heard the
roar of a _lauwine_ or avalanche; sometimes I looked out, and could see
straight down below me a thousand feet into an abyss or on a headlong
stream. We entered the great tunnel directly from another, for the snow
lay twenty feet deep on the road, and a passage had been dug under it for
several hundred feet, and so two tunnels were connected. Just in the
worst of the road beyond, and in the bitterest cold, we met a sleigh, in
which were an English gentleman and a very beautiful young lady,
apparently his daughter, going to Italy. "I saw her but an instant, yet
methinks I see her now"--a sweet picture in a strange scene. Poets used
to "me-think" and "me-seem" more in those days, but we endured it. Then
in the morning we saw Brieg, far down below us in the valley in green
leaves and sunshine, and when we got there then I realised that we were
in a new land.
We had a great giant of a German conductor, who seemed to regard Clark
and me as under his special care. Once when we had wandered afar to look
at something, and it was time for the stage or _Eilwagen_ to depart, he
hunted us up, scolded us "like a Dutch uncle" in German, and drove us
along before him like two bad boys to the diligence, "pawing up" first
one and then the other, after which, shoving us in, he banged and locked
the door with a grunt of satisfaction, even as the Giant Blunderbore
locked the children in the coffer after slamming down the lid. Across
the scenes and shades of forty years, that picture of the old conductor
driving us like two unruly urchins back to school rises, never to be
forgotten.
We went by mountains and lakes and Gothic towns, rocks, forests, old
chateaux, and rivers--the road was wild in those days--till we came to
Geneva. Thence Clark went his way to Paris, and I remained alone for a
week. I had, it is true, a letter of introduction to a very eminent
Presbyterian Swiss clergyman, so I sent it in with my card. His wife
came out on the balcony, looked coolly down at me, and concluding, I
suppose from my appearance, that I was one of the ungodly, went in and
sent out word that her husband was out, and would be gone for an
indefinite period, and that she was engaged. The commissionaire who was
with me--poor devil!--was dreadfully mortified; but I was not very much
astonished, and, indeed, I was treated in much the same manner, or worse,
by a colleague of this pious man in Paris, or rather by his wife.
I believe that what kept me a week in Geneva was the white wine and
trout. At the end of the time I set out to the north, and on the way met
with some literary or professional German, who commended to me the
"Pfisterer-Zunft" or Bakers' Guild as a cheap and excellent hostelry. And
it was curious enough, in all conscience. During the Middle Ages, and
down to a very recent period, the _Zunfte_ or trade-guilds in the Swiss
cities carried it with a high hand. Even the gentlemen could only obtain
rights as citizens by enrolling themselves as the trade of aristocrats. I
had heard of the boy who thought he would like to be bound apprentice to
the king; in Berne he might have been entered for a lower branch of the
business. These guilds had their own local taverns, inns, or _Herbergs_,
where travelling colleagues of the calling might lodge at moderate rates,
but nobody else. However, as time rolled by, these _Zunfte_ or guild-
lodgings were opened to strangers. One of the last which did so was that
of the _Pfister_ or bakers (Latin, _pistor_), and this had only been done
a few weeks ere I went there. As a literary man whom I met on the
ramparts said to me, "That place is still strong in the Middle Age." It
was a quaint old building, and to get to my room I had to cross the great
guild-hall of the Ancient and Honourable Society of Bakers. There were
the portraits of all the Grand Masters of the Order from the fourteenth
or fifteenth century on the walls, and the concentrated antique tobacco-
smoke of as many ages in the air, which, to a Princeton graduate, was no
more than the scent of a rose to a bee.
I could speak a little German--not much--but the degree to which I felt,
sympathised with, and understood everything Deutsch, passeth all words
and all mortal belief. _Sit verbo venia_! But I do not believe that any
human being ever crossed the frontier who had thought himself down, or
rather raised himself up, into Teutonism as I had on so slight a
knowledge of the language, even as a spider throweth up an invisible
thread on high, and then travels on it. Which thing was perceived
marvellously soon, and not without some amazement, by the Germans, who
have all at least this one point in common with Savages, New Jerseymen,
Red Indians, Negroes, Gypsies, and witches, that they by mystic sympathy
_know those who like them_, and take to them accordingly, guided by some
altogether inexplicable clue or _Hexengarn_, even as deep calleth unto
deep and star answereth star without a voice. Whence it was soon
observed at Heidelberg by an American student that "Leland would abuse
the Dutch all day long if he saw fit, but never allowed anybody else to
do so." The which thing, as I think, argues the very _ne plus ultra_ of
sympathy.
I found my way to Strasburg, where I went to the tip-top outside of the
cathedral, and took the railway train for Heidelberg. And here I had an
adventure, which, though trifling to the last degree, was to me such a
great and new experience that I will describe it, let the reader think
what he will. I went naturally enough first-class, so uncommon a thing
then in Germany that people were wont to say that only princes,
Englishmen, and asses did so. There entered the same carriage a very
lady-like and pretty woman. The guard, seeing this, concluded
that--whatever he concluded, he carefully drew down all the curtains,
looking at me with a cheerful, genial air of intense mystery, as if to
say, "I twig; it's all right; I'll keep your secret."
It is a positive fact that all this puzzled me amazingly. There were
many things in which I, the friend and pupil of Navone, was as yet as
innocent as a babe unborn. The lady seemed to be amused--as well she
might. _Sancta simplicitas_! I asked her why the conductor had drawn
the curtains. She laughed, and explained that he possibly thought we
were a bridal pair or lovers. Common sense and ordinary politeness
naturally inspired the reply that I wished we were, which declaration was
so amiably received that I suggested the immediate institution of such an
arrangement. Which was so far favourably received that it was sealed
with a kiss. However, the seal was not broken. I think the lady must
have been very much amused. It is not without due reflection that I
record this. Kissing went for very little in Germany in those days. It
was about as common in Vienna as shaking hands. But this was my first
experience in it. So I record it, because it seems as if some benevolent
fairy had welcomed me to Germany; it took place just as we crossed the
frontier. However, I found out some time after, by a strange accident,
that my fairy was the wife of a banker who lived beyond Heidelberg; and
at Heidelberg I left her and went to the first hotel in the town.
I had formed no plans, and had no letters to anybody. I had read
Howitt's "Student Life in Germany" through and through, so I thought I
would study in Heidelberg. But how to begin? That was the question. I
went into a shop and bought some cigars. There I consulted with the
shopkeeper as to what I should do. Could he refer me to some leading
authority in the University, known to him, who would give me advice? He
could, and advised me to consult with the Pedell Capelmann.
Now I didn't know it, but Pedell--meaning beadle, commonly called Poodle
by the students--was the head-constable of the University. In honest
truth I supposed he must be the President or Pro-Rector. So I went to
Pedell Capelmann. His appearance did not quite correspond to my idea of
a learned professor. He was an immensely burly, good-natured fellow, who
came in in his shirt-sleeves, and who, when he learned what I wanted,
burst out into a _Her'r'r' Gottsdonerrwetter_! of surprise, as he well
might. But I knew that the Germans were a very _sans facon bourgeois_
people, and still treated him with deep respect. He suggested that, as
there were a great many American students there, I had better call on
them. He himself would take me to see the Herr O--, with whom, as I
subsequently learned, he had more than once had discussions relative to
questions of University-municipal discipline. As for the startling
peculiarity which attended my introduction to University life, it is best
summed up in the remark which the Herr O. (of Baltimore) subsequently
made.
"Great God, fellows! _he made his first call on old Capelmann_!!"
He took me to the Herr O. and introduced me. I was overwhelmed with my
cordial reception. There was at once news sent forth that a new man and
a brother fellow-countryman had come to join the ranks. "And messengers
through all the land sought Sir Tannhauser out." I was pumped dry as to
my precedents, and as I came fresh from Princeton and had been through
Italy, I was approved of. The first thing was a discussion as to where I
was to live. The Frau Directorinn Louis in the University Place had two
fine rooms which had just been occupied by a prince. So we went and
secured the rooms, which were indeed very pleasant, and by no means dear
as it seemed to me. I was to breakfast in my rooms, dine with the family
at one o'clock, and sup about town.
Then there was a grand council as to what I had better study, and over my
prospects in life; and it was decided that, as the law-students were the
most distinguished or swell of all, I had better be a lawyer. So it was
arranged that I should attend Mittermayer's and others' lectures; to all
of which I cheerfully assented. The next step was to give a grand supper
in honour of my arrival. After the dinner and the wine, I drank twelve
_schoppens_ of beer, and then excused myself on the plea of having
letters to write. I believe, however, that I forgot to write the
letters. And here I may say, once for all, that having discovered that,
if I had no gift for mathematics, I had a great natural talent for
Rheinwein and lager, I did not bury that talent in a napkin, but, like
the rest of my friends, made the most of it, firstly, during two
semesters in Heidelberg:
"Then I bolted off to Munich,
And within the year,
Underneath my German tunic
Stowed whole butts of beer;
For I drank like fifty fishes,
Drank till all was blue,
For whenever I was vicious
I was thirsty too."
The result of which "dire deboshing" was that, having come to Europe with
a soul literally attenuated and starved for want of the ordinary gaiety
and amusement which all youth requires, my life in Princeton having been
one continued strain of a sobriety which continually sank into subdued
melancholy, and a body just ready to yield to consumption, I grew
vigorous and healthy, or, as the saying is, "hearty as a buck." I
believe that if my Cousin Sam had gone on with me even-pace, that he
would have lived till to-day. When we came abroad I seemed to be the
weakest; he returned, and died in a few months from our hereditary
disease. How many hecatombs of young men have been murdered by
"seriousness" and "total abstinence," miscalled _temperance_, in our
American colleges, can never be known; perhaps it is as well that it
never will be; for if it were, there would be a rush to the other
extreme, which would "upset society." And here be it noted that, with
all our inordinate national or international Anglo-Saxon sense of
superiority to everybody and everything foreign, we are in the _main_
thing--that is, the truly rational enjoyment of life and the art of
living--utterly inferior to the German and Latin races. We are for the
most part either too good or too bad--totally abstemious or raving
drunk--always in a hurry after excitement or in a worry over our sins, or
those of our neighbours. "Rest, rest, perturbed Yankee, _rest_!"
My rooms were on the ground-floor, the bedroom looking into the
University Square and my study into a garden. Next door to me dwelt
Paulus, the king of the Rationalists. He was then, I believe, ninety-
four years of age. He remained daily till about twelve or one in a
comatose condition, when he awoke and became lively till about three,
when he sank into sleep again. His days were like those of a far
Northern winter, lit by the sun at the same hours.
The next morning a very gentlemanly young man knocked at my door, and
entered and asked in perfect English for a Mr. Bell, who lived in the
same house. I informed him that Mr. Bell was out, but asked him to enter
my room and take a chair, which he did, conversing with me for half an
hour, when he departed, leaving a card on a side-table. In a few minutes
later, O., who was of the kind who notice everything, entered, took up
the card, and read on it the name and address of the young Grand Duke of
Baden, who was naturally by far the greatest man in the country, he being
its hereditary ruler.
"Where the devil did you get this?" asked O., and all, in amazement.
"Oh," I replied, "it's only the Duke. He has just been in here making a
call. If you fellows had come five minutes sooner you'd have seen him.
Have some beer!"
The impression that I was a queer lot, due to my making my first call on
Capelmann _et cetera_, was somewhat strengthened by this card, until I
explained how I came by it. But as Dr. Johnson in other words remarked,
there are people to whom such queer things happen daily, and others to
whom they occur once a year. And there was never yet a living soul who
entered into my daily life who did not observe that I belong to the
former class. If I have a guardian angel, it must be Edgar A. Poe's
Angel of the Odd. But he generally comes to those who belong to him!
It was a long time before I profited much by my lectures, because it was
fearful work for me to learn German. I engaged a tutor, and worked hard,
and read a great deal, and talked it _con amore_; but few persons would
believe how slowly I learned it, and with what incredible labour. How
often have I cursed up hill and down dale, the Tower of Babel, which
first brought the curse of languages upon the world! And what did I ever
have to do with that Tower? Had I lived in those days, I would never
have laid hand to the work in merry, sunny, lazy Babylon, nor contributed
a brick to it. By the way, it was a juvenile conjecture of mine that the
Tower of Babel was destroyed for being a shot-tower, in which ammunition
was prepared to be used by the heathen. Which theory might very well
have been inspired by a verse from the old Puritanical rendering of the
Psalms:--
"Ye race itt is not alwayes gott
By him who swiftest runns,
Nor ye Battell by ye Peo-pel
Who shoot with longest gunnes."
Even before I had gone to Princeton I had read and learned a great deal
relative to Justinus Kerner, the great German supernaturalist, mystic,
and poet, firstly from a series of articles in the _Dublin University
Magazine_, and later from a translation of "The Seeress of Prevorst," and
several of the good man's own romances and lyrics. I suppose that, of
all men on the face of the earth, I should have at that time preferred to
meet him. Wherefore, as a matter of course, it occurred that one fine
morning a pleasant gentlemanly German friend of mine, who spoke English
perfectly, and whose name was Rucker, walked into my room, and proposed
that we should take a two or three days' walk up the Neckar with our
knapsacks, and visit the famous old ruined castle of the Weibertreue. My
mother had read me the ballad-legend of it in my boyhood, and I had
learned it by heart. Indeed, I can still recall it after sixty years:--
"Who can tell me where Weinsberg lies?
As brave a town as any;
It must have sheltered in its time
Brave wives and maidens many:
If e'er I wooing have to do,
Good faith, in Weinsberg I will woo!"
"And then, when we are there," said Rucker, "we will call on an old
friend of my father's, named Justinus Kerner. Did you ever hear of him?"
Did a Jew ever hear of Moses, or an American of General Washington? In
five minutes I convinced my friend that I knew more about Kerner than he
himself did. Whereupon it was decided that we should set forth on the
following morning.
Blessed, beautiful, happy summer mornings in Suabia--green mounts and
grey rocks with old castles--peasants harvesting hay--a _Kirchweih_, or
peasant's merry-making, with dancing and festivity--till we came to
Weinsberg, and forthwith called on the ancient sage, whom we found with
the two or three ladies and gentlemen of his family. I saw at a glance
that they had the air of aristocracy. He received us very kindly, and
invited us to come to dinner and sup with him.
The Weibertreue is an old castle which was in or at the end of Dr.
Kerner's garden. Once, when all the town had taken refuge in it from the
Emperor Conrad, the latter gave the women leave to quit the fort, and
also permission to every one to carry with her whatever was unto her most
valuable, precious, or esteemed. And so the dames went forth, every one
bearing on her back her husband.
In the tower of the castle, or in its wall, which was six feet thick,
were eight or ten windows, gradually opening like trumpets, through which
the wind blew all the time, and pleasantly enough on a hot summer day. In
each of these the Doctor had placed an AEolian harp, and he who did not
believe in fairies or the gentle spirit of a viewless sound should have
sat in that tower and listened to the music as it rose and fell, as in
endless solemn glees or part-singing; one harp stepping in, and pealing
out richly and strangely as another died away, while anon, even as the
new voice came, there thrilled in unison one or two more Ariels who
seemed to be hurrying up to join the song. It was a marvellous strange
thing of beauty, which resounded, indeed, all over Germany, for men spoke
of it far and wide.
Quite as marvellous, in the evening, was the Doctor's own performance on
the single and double Jew's harp. From this most unpromising instrument
he drew airs of such exquisite beauty that one could not have been more
astonished had he heard the sweet tones of Grisi drawn from a cat by
twisting its tail. But we were in a land of marvels and wonders, or, as
an English writer described it, "Weinsberg, a place on the Neckar,
inhabited partly by men and women--some in and some out of the body--and
partly by ghosts." There were visions in the air, and dreams sitting on
the staircases; in fact, when I saw the peasants working in the fields, I
should not have been astonished to see them vanish into mist or sink into
the ground.
And yet from the ruined castle of the Weibertreue Kerner pointed out to
us a man walking along the road, and that man was the very incarnation of
all that was sober, rational, and undream-like; for it was David Strauss,
author of the "Life of Jesus." And at him too I gazed with the awe due
to a great man whose name is known to all the cultured world; and to me
much more than the name; for I had read, as before mentioned, his "Life
of Jesus" when I first went to Princeton.
Dr. Kerner took to me greatly, and said that I very much reminded him, in
appearance and conversation, of what his most intimate friend, Ludwig
Uhland, had been at my age; and as he repeated this several times, and
spoke of it long after to friends, I think it must have been true,
although I am compelled to admit that people who pride themselves on
looking like this or that celebrity never resemble him in the least,
mentally or spiritually, and are generally only mere caricatures at best.
On our return we climbed into an old Gothic church-tower, in which I
found a fifteenth-century bell, bearing the words, _Vivas voco_, _mortuos
plango_, _fulgura_ _frango_, and much more--
"The dead I knell, the living wake,
And the power of lightning break!"
which caused me to reflect on the vast degree to which all the minor uses
and observances of the Church--which are nine-tenths of all their
religion to the multitude--were only old heathen superstitious in new
dresses. The bell was a spell against the demons of lightning in old
Etrurian days; to this time the Tuscan peasant bears one in the darkening
twilight-tide to drive away the witches flitting round: in him and them
"those evening bells" inspired a deeper sentiment than poetry.
In a village, Rucker, finding the beer very good, bought a cask of it,
which was put on board the little Neckar steamboat on which we returned
to Heidelberg. And thus provided, the next evening he gave a "barty" up
in the old castle, among the ruins by moonlight, where I "assisted," and
the _lager_ was devoured, even to the last drop.
I soon grew tired of the family dinners with the Frau Inspectorinn and
the Herr Inspector with the _one_ tumbler of Neckar wine, which I was
expected not to exceed; so I removed my dining to the "Court of Holland,"
a first-class hotel, where O. and the other Americans met, and where the
expectation was not that a man should by any means limit himself to one
glass, but that, taking at least one to begin with, he should
considerably exceed it. This hotel was kept by a man named Spitz, who
looked his name to perfection.
"Er spitzt betrubt die Nase,"
as Scheffel wrote of him in his poem, _Numero Acht_, the scene of which
is laid in the "Court of Holland." Here a word about Scheffel. During
the following semester he was for months a daily table-companion of mine
at the Bremer-Eck, where a small circle of students--_quorum pars
fui_--met every evening to sup and _kneip_, or to drink beer and smoke
and sing until eleven. Little did I dream in those days that he would
become the great popular poet of his time, or that I should ever
translate his _Gaudeamus_. I owe the "Court of Holland" to this day for
a dinner and a bottle of wine. It is the only debt I owe, to my
knowledge, to anybody on earth.
It was resolved among the Americans that we should all make a
foot-excursion with knapsacks down the Rhine to Cologne. It was done. So
we went gaily from town to town, visiting everything, making excursions
inland now and then. We had a bottle or two of the best Johannisberg in
the very Schloss itself--_omne cum praetio_--and meeting with such
adventures as befell all wandering students in those old-fashioned, merry
times. The Rhine was wild as yet, and not paved, swept, garnished and
full of modern villas and adornment, as now. I had made, while in
America, a manuscript book of the places and legends of and on the Rhine,
with many drawings. This, and a small volume of Snow's and Planche's
"Legends of the Rhine," I carried with me. I was already well informed
as to every village and old ruin or tower on the banks.
So we arrived at Cologne, and saw all the sights. The cathedral was not
then finished, and the town still boasted its two-and-seventy stinks, as
counted by Coleridge. Then we returned by steamer to Mainz, and thence
footed it home.
Little by little I rather fell away from my American friends, and began
to take to German or English associates, and especially to the company of
two Englishmen. One was named Leonard Field, who is now a lawyer in
Lincoln's Inn Fields; the other was Ewan P. Colquhoun, a younger brother
of Sir Patrick Colquhoun, whom I knew well, and as friend, in after
years, until his recent death. I always, however, maintained a great
intimacy with George Ward, of Boston, who became long after a banker and
Baring's agent in America. In one way and another these two twined into
my life in after years, and led to my making many acquaintances or
friends.
I walked a great deal all about Heidelberg to many very picturesque
places, maintaining deep interest in all I saw by much loving reading of
_Des Knaben Wunderhorn_ and Uhland's collection of old German songs--his
own poems I knew long before--the _Nibelungen_ and _Hero-Book_, and a
great variety of other works. I had dropped the Occulta, and for a year
or two read nothing of the kind except casually the works of
Eckhartshausen and Justinus Kerner. I can now see that, as I became
healthy and strong, owing to the easy, pleasant existence which I led, it
was best for me after all. "Grappling with life" and earnestly studying
a profession then might have extinguished me. My mental spring, though
not broken, was badly bent, and it required a long time to straighten it.
Colquhoun was only eighteen, but far beyond his years in dissipation, and
well-nigh advanced to cool cynicism. With him I made many an excursion
all about the country. Wherever a _Kirclweih_ or peasants' ball was to
be held, he always knew of it, and there we went. One morning early he
came to my rooms. There was to be a really stunning duel fought early
between a Senior and some very illustrious _Schlager_, and he had two
English friends named Burnett who would go with us. So we went, and
meeting with Rucker at the _Pawkboden_, it was proposed that we should go
on together to Baden-Baden. To which I objected that I had only twenty
florins in my pocket, and had no time to return home for more. "Never
mind," said Colquhoun; "Rucker has plenty of money; we can borrow from
him."
We went to Baden and to the first hotel, and had a fine dinner, and saw
the Burnetts off. Then, of course, to the gaming-table, where Colquhoun
speedily lost all his money, and I so much that I had but ten florins
left. "Never mind; we'll pump on Rucker," said Colquhoun.
We went up to visit the old castle. While there, Rucker took off his
overcoat, in which he had his pocket-book, and laid it over a chair. When
we returned to the hotel the pocket-book was gone! There we were, with a
hotel-bill to pay and never a cent wherewith to pay it. I had, however,
still ten florins. Colquhoun suddenly remembered that he had seen
something in the town, price ten florins, which he _must_ buy. It was
something which he had promised to buy for a relative in England. It was
a very serious case of necessity.
I doubted my dear friend, but having sworn him by all his gods that he
would _not_ gamble with the money, I gave it to him. So he, of course,
went straight to the gaming-table, and, having luck, won enough to pay
our debt and take us home.