Part 36

Thence we went to Cologne, where it was marvellous to find the Cathedral completed, in spite of the ancient legend which asserts that though the devil had furnished its design he had laid a curse upon it, declaring that it should never be finished. Thence up the Rhine by castles grey and smiling towns, recalling my old foot-journey along its banks; and so on to Heidelberg, where I stayed a month at the Black Eagle. Herr Lehr was still there. He had grown older. His son was taking dancing lessons of Herr Zimmer, who had taught me to waltz twenty years before. One day I took my watch to a shop to be repaired, when the proprietor declared that he had mended it once before in 1847, and showed me the private mark which he put on it at the time.

There were several American students, who received me very kindly. I remember among them Wright, Manly, and Overton. When I sat among them smoking and drinking beer, and mingling German student words with English, it seemed as if the past twenty years were all a dream, and that I was a _Bursch_ again. Overton had the reputation of being _par eminence_ the man of men in all Heidelberg, who could take off a full quart at one pull without stopping to take breath--a feat which I had far outdone at Munich, in my youth, with the _horn_, and which I again accomplished at Heidelberg "without the foam," Overton himself, who was a very noble young fellow, applauding the feat most loudly. But I have since then often done it with Bass or Alsopp, which is much harder. I need not say that the "Breitmann Ballads," which had recently got among the Anglo-American students, and were by them greatly admired, did much to render me popular.

I found or made many friends in Heidelberg. One night we were invited to a supper, and learned afterwards that the two children of our host, having heard that we were Americans, had peeped at us through the keyhole and expressed great disappointment at not finding us _black_.

In November we went to Dresden. We were so fortunate as to obtain excellent rooms and board with a Herr and Madame Rohn, a well-to-do couple, who, I am sure, took boarders far more for the sake of company than for gain. Herr Rohn had graduated at Leipzig, but having spent most of his life in Vienna, was a man of exuberant jollity--a man of gold and a gentleman, even as his wife was a truly gentle lady. As I am very tall, and detest German small beds, I complained of mine, and Herr Rohn said he had another, of which I could not complain. And I certainly could not, for when it came I found it was at least eight feet in length. It seems that they had once had for a boarder a German baron who was _more than seven feet_ high, and had had this curiosity constructed; and Herr Rohn roared with laughter as I gazed on it, and asked if I would have it lengthened.

We remained in Dresden till February, and found many friends, among whom there was much pleasant homelike hospitality. Among others were Julian Hawthorne and sisters, and George Parsons Lathrop. They were young fellows then, and not so well known as they have since become, but it was evident enough that they had good work in them. They often came to see me, and were very kind in many ways. I took lessons in porcelain-painting, which art I kept up for many years, and was, of course, assiduous in visiting the galleries, Green Vault, and all works of art. I became well acquainted with Passavant, the director. I was getting better, but was still far from being as mentally vigorous as I had been. I now attribute this to the enormous daily dose of bromide which I continued to take, probably mistaking its _influence_ for the original nervous exhaustion itself. It was not indeed till I got to England, and substituted _lupulin_ in the form of hops--that is to say, pale ale or "bitter"--in generous doses, that I quite recovered.

So we passed on to Prague, which city, like everything Czech, always had a strange fascination for me. There I met a certain Mr. Vojtech Napristek (or Adalbert Thimble), who had once edited in the United States a Bohemian newspaper with which I had exchanged, and with whom I had corresponded, but whom I had never before seen. He had established in Prague, on American lines, a Ladies' Club of two hundred, which we visited, and was, I believe, owing to an inheritance, now a prosperous man. Though I am not a Thimble, it also befell me, in later years, to found and preside over a Ladies' Art Club of two hundred souls. At that time the famous legendary bridge, with the ancient statue of St. John Nepomuk, still existed as of yore. No one imagined that a time would come when they would be washed away through sheer neglect.

So on to Munich, where, during a whole week, I saw but one _Riegelhaube_, a curious head-dress or chignon-cover of silver thread, once very common. Even the old Bavarian dialect seemed to have almost vanished, and I was glad to hear it from our porter. Many old landmarks still existed, but King Louis no longer ran about the streets--I nearly ran against him once; people no longer were obliged by law to remove cigars or pipes from their mouths when passing a sentry-box. Lola Montez had vanished. _Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan_?

So we went over the Brenner Pass, stopped at Innspruck, and saw the church described by Heine in his _Reisebilder_, and came to Verona, the Bern of the _Heldenbuch_. "_Ich will gen Bern ausreiten_, _sprach Meister Hildebrand_."

It was a happy thought of the Italians to put picturesque Verona down as the first stopping-place for Northern travellers, and I rather like Ruskin's idea of buying the town and keeping it intact as a piece of _bric-a-brac_. He might have proposed Rome while he was about it; "anything there can be had for money," says Juvenal.

When we arrived at the station I alone was left to encounter the fierce douaniers. One of them, inquisitive as to tobacco, when I told him I had none, laid his finger impressively on the mouthpiece of my pipe, remarking that where the tail of the fox was seen the fox could not be far off. To which I replied that I indeed had no tobacco, but wanted some very badly, and that I would be much obliged to him if he would give me a little to fill my pipe. So all laughed. My wife entering at this instant, cried in amazement, "Why, Charles! where did you ever learn to talk Italian?" Which shows that there can be secrets even between married people; though indeed my Italian has always been of such inferior quality that it is no wonder that I never boasted of it even in confidence. It is, in fact, the Hand-organo dialect flavoured with Florentine.

There was an old lady who stood at the door of a curiosity-shop in Verona, and she had five pieces of bone-carvings from some old _scatola_ or marriage-casket. She asked a fabulous price for them, and I offered five francs. She scorned the paltry sum with all the vehemence of a susceptible soul whose tenderest feelings have been outraged. So I went my way, but as I passed the place returning, the old lady came forth, and, graciously courtesying and smiling, held forth to me the earrings neatly wrapped in paper, and thanked me for the five francs! Which indicated to me that the good small folk of Italy had not materially changed since I had left the country.

We came to Venice, and went to a hotel, where we had a room given to us which, had we wished to give a ball, would have left nothing to be desired. I counted in it twenty-seven chairs and seven tables, all at such a distance from one another that they seemed not to be on speaking terms. I do not think I ever got quite so far as the upper end of that room while I inhabited it--it was probably somewhere in Austria. I have spoken of having met Mr. Wright at Heidelberg. He was from Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania. The next day after my arrival I found among the names of the departed, "Signore Wright-_Kilkes_, from Barre, Pennsylvania, America." This reminded me of the Anglo-American who was astonished at Rome at receiving invitations and circulars addressed to him as "Illustrissimo Varanti Solezer." It turned out that an assistant, reading aloud to the clerk the names from the trunks, had mistaken a very large "WARRANTED SOLE LEATHER" for the name of the owner.

And this on soles reminds me that there was a _femme sole_ or lone acrimonious British female at our hotel, who declared to me one evening that she had _never_ in all her life been so _insulted_ as she was that day at a banker's; and the insult consisted in this, that she, although quite unknown to him, had asked him to cash a cheque on London, which he had declined to do. I remarked that no banker who did business properly ever ought to cash a cheque from a total stranger.

"Sir," said the lady, "do _I look_ like an impostor?"

"Madame," I replied, "I have seen thieves and wretches of the vilest type who could not have been distinguished from either of us as regards respectability of appearance. You do not appear to know much about such people."

"I am happy to say, sir," replied the lady with intense acidity, "that _I_ do _not_." But she added triumphantly, "What do you say when I tell you that I had my _cheque-book_? How could I have possessed it if I had not a right to draw?"

"Any scamp," I replied, "can deposit a few pounds in a bank, buy a cheque- book, and then draw his money."

But the next day she came to me in radiant sneering triumph. She had found another banker, who was a gentleman, with a marked emphasis, who had cashed her cheque. How many people there are in this world whose definition of a gentleman is "one who does whatever pleases _us_!"

In Florence we went directly to the Hotel d'Europe in the Via Tuornabuoni, where my Indian blanket vanished even while entering the hotel, and surrounded only by the servants to whom the luggage had been confided. As the landlord manifested great disgust for me whenever I mentioned such a trifle, and as the porter and the rest declared that they would answer soul and body for one another's honesty, I had to grin and bear it. I really wonder sometimes that there are not more boarders, who, like Benvenuto Cellini, set fire to hotels or cut up the bedclothes before leaving them. That worthy, having been treated not so badly as I was at the Hotel d'Europe and at another in Florence, cut to pieces the sheets of his bed, galloped away hastily, and from the summit of a distant hill had the pleasure of seeing the landlord in a rage. Now people write to the _Times_, and "cut up" the whole concern. It all comes to the same thing.

In Florence I saw much of an old New York friend, the now late Lorimer Graham. When he died, Swinburne wrote a poem on him. He was a man of great culture and refined manner. There was something sympathetic in him which drew every one irresistibly into liking. It was his instinct to be kind and thoughtful to every one. He gave me letters to Swinburne, Lord Houghton, and others.

I made an acquaintance by chance in Florence whom I can never forget: for he was a character. One day while in the Uffizi Gallery engaged in studying the great Etruscan vase, now in the Etruscan Museum, a stranger standing by me said, "Does not this seem to you like a mysterious book written in forgotten characters? Is not a collection of such vases like a library?"

"On that hint I spake." "I see," I replied, "you refer to the so-called Etruscan Library which an Englishman has made, and which contains only vases and inscriptions in that now unknown tongue of Etruria. And indeed, when we turn over the pages of Inghirami, Gherard, and Gori, Gray, or Dennis, it does indeed really seem--But what do you really think the old Etruscan language truly was?"

"Look here, my friend," cried the stranger in broad Yankee, "I guess I'm barkin' up the wrong tree. I calculated to tell _you_ something, but you're ahead of me."

We both laughed and became very good friends. He lived at our hotel, and had been twenty-five years in Italy, and knew every custode in every gallery, and could have every secret treasure unlocked. He was perfectly at home about town--would stop and ask a direction of a cab-driver, and was capable of going into an umbrella-shop when it rained.

We went on to Rome, and I can only say that as regards what we saw there, my memory is confused literally with an _embarras de richesses_. The Ecumenical Council was being held, at which an elderly Italian gentleman, who possibly did not know oxygen from hydrogen, or sin from sugar, was declared to be infallible in his judgment of all earthly things.

While in Rome we saw a great deal of W. W. Story, the sculptor, and his wife and daughter, Edith, for whom Thackeray wrote his most beautiful tale, and I at my humble distance the ballad of "Breitmann in Rome," which contained a remarkable prophecy, of the Franco-German war. At their house we met Odo Russell and Oscar Browning, and many more whose names are known to all. It was there also that a lady of the Royal English household amused us very much one evening by narrating how the "Breitmann Ballads," owing to their odd mixture of German and English, were favourite subjects for mutual reading and recitation among the then youthful members of the Royal family, and what haste and alarm there was to put the forbidden book out of the way when Her Majesty the Queen was announced as coming. I also met in Rome the American poet and painter T. Buchanan Read, who gave me a dinner, and very often that remarkable character General Carroll Tevis, who, having fought under most flags, and been a Turkish bey or pacha, was now a chamberlain of the Pope. In the following year he fought for the French, behaved with great bravery in Bourbaki's retreat, and was decorated on the field of battle. Then again, when I was in Egypt, Tevis was at the head of the military college. He had fairly won his rank of general in the American Civil War, but as there was some disinclination or other to give it to him, I had used my influence in his favour with Forney, who speedily secured it for him. He was a perfect type of the old _condottiero_, but with Dugald Dalgetty's scrupulous faith to his military engagements. The American clergyman in Rome was the Rev. Dr. Nevin, a brother of my friend Captain Nevin. There was also Mrs. John Grigg, an old Philadelphia friend (now residing in Florence), to whom we were then, as we have continually been since, indebted for the most cordial hospitality.

Through the kind aid of General Tevis we were enabled to see all the principal ceremonies of the Holy Week and Easter. This year, owing to the Council, everything was on a scale of unusual magnificence. I can say with Panurge that I have seen three Popes, but will not add with him, "and little good did it ever do me," for Mrs. Leland at least was much gratified with a full sight and quasi-interview with His Holiness.

There was a joyous sight for a cynic to be seen in Rome in those days--in fact, it was only last year (1891) that it was done away with. This was the drawing of the lottery by a priest. There was on a holy platform a holy wheel and a holy little boy to draw the holy numbers, and a holy old priest to oversee and _bless_ the whole precious business. The blessing of the devil would have been more appropriate, for the lotteries are the curse of Italy. What the Anglo-American mechanic puts into a savings bank, the Italian invests in lotteries. In Naples there are now fourteen tickets sold per annum for the gross amount of the population, and in Florence twelve.

One day I took a walk out into the country with Briton Riviere and some other artists. I had a cake or two of colour, and Riviere, with wine for water, at a _trattoria_ where we lunched, made a picture of the attendant maid. He pointed out to me on the road a string of peasants carrying great loaves of coarse bread. They had walked perhaps twenty miles to buy it, because in those days people were not allowed to bake their own bread, but must buy it at the public _forno_, which paid a tax for the privilege. So long as Rome was under Papal control, its every municipal institution, such as hospitals, prisons, and the police, were in a state of absolutely incredible inhuman vileness, while under everything ran corruption and dishonesty. The lower orders were severely disciplined as to their sexual morals, because it was made a rich source of infamous taxes, as it now is in other cities of Europe; but cardinals and the wealthier priests kept mistresses, almost openly, since these women were pointed out to every one as they flaunted about proudly in their carriages.

From Rome we passed into Pisa, Genoa, Spezzia, and Nice, over the old Cornici road, and so again to Paris, where we remained six weeks, and then left in June, 1870, just before the war broke out. While in the city we saw at different times in public the Emperor and Empress, also the Queen of Spain. The face of Louis Napoleon was indeed somewhat changed since I saw him in London in 1848, but it had not improved so much as his circumstances, as he was according to external appearances and popular belief now extremely well off. But appearances are deceptive, as was soon proved, for he was in reality on the verge of a worse bankruptcy than even his uncle underwent, for the nephew lost not only kingdom and life, but also every trace of reputation for wisdom and honesty, remaining to history only as a brazen royal adventurer and "copper captain."

In Rome our dear old friend Mrs. John Grigg showed us, as I said, many kind attentions, which she has, in Florence, continued to this day. This lady is own aunt to my old school friend General George B. McClellan. At an advanced age she executes without glasses the most exquisite embroidery conceivable, and her heart and intellect are in keeping with her sight.

VIII. ENGLAND. 1870.

The Trubners--George Eliot and G. H. Lewes--Heseltine--Edwards--Etched by Bracquemond and Legros--Jean Ingelow--Tennyson--Hepworth Dixon--Lord Lytton the elder--Lord Houghton--Bret Harte--France, Alsace, and Lorraine--Samuel Laing--Gypsies--The Misses Horace Smith--Brighton and odd fish--Work and books--Hunting--Dore--Art and Nature--Taglioni--Chevalier Wykoff--Octave Delepierre--Breitmann--Thomas Carlyle--George Borrow--A cathedral tour round about England--Salisbury, Wells, and York.

It is pleasant being anywhere in England in June, and the passing from picturesque Dover to London through laughing Kent is a good introduction to the country. The untravelled American, fresh from the "boundless prairies" and twenty-thousand-acre fields of wheat, sees nothing in it all but the close cultivation of limited land; but the tourist from the Continent perceives at once that, with most careful agriculture, there are indications of an exuberance of wealth, true comfort, and taste rarely seen in France or Germany. The many trees of a better quality and slower growth than the weedy sprouting poplar and willow of Normandy; the hedges, which are very beautiful and ever green; the flowerbeds and walks about the poorest cottage; the neatly planted, prettily bridged side roads, all indicate a superiority of wealth or refinement such as prevails only in New England, or rather which _did_ prevail, until the native population, going westward, was supplanted by Irish or worse, if any worse there be at turning neatness into dirty disorder.

That older American population was deeply English, with a thousand rural English traditions religiously preserved; and the chief of these is clean _neatness_, which, when fully carried out, always results in simple, unaffected beauty. This was very strongly shown in the Quaker gardens, once so common in Philadelphia--and in the people.

We arrived in London, and went directly to the Trubners', No. 29 Upper Hamilton Terrace, N.W. The first person who welcomed me was Mr. Delepierre, an idol of mine for years; and the first thing I did was to borrow half-a-crown of him to pay the cab, having only French money with me. It was a charming house, with a large garden, so redolent of roses that it might have served Chriemhilda of old for a romance. For twenty years that house was destined to be an occasional home and a dwelling where we were ever welcome, and where every Sunday evening I had always an appointed place at dinner, and a special arm-chair for the never-failing Havannah. Mrs. Trubner had, in later years, two boxes of Havannahs of the best, which had belonged to G. H. Lewes, and which George Eliot gave her after his death. I have kept two _en souvenir_. I knew a man once who had formed a large collection of such relics. There was a cigar which he had received from Louis Napoleon, and one from Bismarck, and so forth. But, alas! once while away on his travels, the whole museum was smoked up by a reckless under-graduate younger brother. _In fumo exit_.

How many people well known to the world--or rather how few who were not--have I met there--Edwin Arnold, G. H. Lewes, H. Dixon, M. Van der Weyer, Frith the artist, Mrs. Trubner's uncle Lord Napier of Magdala, Pigott, Norman Lockyer, Bret Harte, "and full many more," scholars, poets, editors, and, withal, lady writers of every good shade, grade, and quality. How many of them all have passed since then full silently into the Silent Land, where we may follow, but return no more! How many a pleasant smile and friendly voice and firm alliances and genial acquaintances, often carried out in other lands, date their beginning in my memory to the house in Hamilton Terrace! How often have I heard by land or sea the familiar greeting, "I think I met you once at the Trubners'!" For it was a salon, a centre or sun with many bright and cheering rays--a civilising institution!

Mrs. Trubner was the life of this home. Anglo-Belgian by early relation and education, she combined four types in one. When speaking English, she struck me as the type of an accomplished and refined British matron; in French, her whole nature seemed Parisienne; in Flemish, she was altogether Flamande; and in German, Deutsch. If Cerberus was three gentlemen in one, Mrs. Trubner was four ladies united. Very well read, she conversed not only well on any subject, but, what is very unusual in her sex, with sincere interest, and not merely to entertain. If interrupted in a conversation she resumed the subject! This is a remarkable trait!