Twenty Years in Europe

I visited my home out West, and returned on the “Hammonia.” My old school-fellow, J. D. Edmundson, went along. We had then, and more than once afterward, good times together, excursioning among the Swiss Alps.

His was a case of American pluck. When we left school neither of us had a penny. I soon went to the war, and he to a Western town to earn a fortune. Not twenty years went by when the penniless youth, a banker now, traveled the world over, with his check good for half a million, and his mind stored from books and travel.

September, 1883.-The Swiss National Exhibition is open all this summer. Though small, the finest in detail I ever saw anywhere. Never saw so much of real beauty arranged together. The location, too, in a great park between two rapid running rivers, is romantic. It is in view of the Alps and the beautiful lake.

On “Newspaper Day” I had the honor, for the want of a better, to reply to the toast, “The American Press.”

I also wrote reports of the successful exhibition to our Government.

The Hon. Emil Frey, Swiss Cabinet Minister, now visited us out on the lake. Col. Frey had been a soldier in our army, was captured and suffered, with me, many horrid months in Libby prison. Our reunion under such different scenes will never be forgotten. He is a great big, generous man in body, mind, and heart. Because of his deserts, there is no post in Switzerland he can not have for the asking. In fact, he don’t have to ask. He is one of Shakespeare’s men who achieve honor and also have honor thrust upon them.

He was later elected President of Switzerland.

January, 1884.-These were the days when certain unscrupulous silk shippers were robbing the United States Treasury of almost millions yearly by undervaluation of invoiced goods. Honest importers were nearly driven out of the market. There was a constant warfare between the consul and the undervaluer. At last I succeeded in my own district, by employing (at my own expense) trained silk experts. The plan worked well, and Uncle Sam soon employed experts at many of the leading consulates. There was tremendous profit in it for the Government. For my zeal in stopping the frauds, and because of my long service, President Arthur promoted me. A little later, an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury reported officially that Consul Byers had saved the Government in his own district not less than a million dollars, or enough to support the whole consular service for years. He urged a recognition of these services. General Sherman, too, had joined in asking my advancement. One day, later, I saw this little note among the Department files:

“22nd January, 1881.

“Dear Mr. Secretary: – I commend Mr. Byers to the President’s most favorable notice. He was one of my soldier boys, whom I released from prison at Columbia. He is now at Zurich, is a real poet, a good writer, and is one of the most modest, unselfish, and zealous men I ever knew. His promotion would be a beautiful recognition of past services.

W. T. Sherman.”

November 10.-Yesterday I received the following letter from General Sherman:

“Washington, D. C, Oct. 24, 1883.

“Dear Byers: – I received in due season your valued letter of September 30th, enclosing the editorial of the London Times, which I had seen, but am none the less obliged for the thought which suggested your action. The time is now near at hand when I shall return to St. Louis, where my family is already happily domiciled. I have never known Mrs. Sherman more content, for she never regarded Washington as a home, but she recognizes her present house as a real home. The girls seem equally satisfied. The actual date of my retirement is Feb. 8, 1884, but I thought it right to allow Sheridan to come in at an earlier date so as to make any recommendations he chose for the action of the next Congress, and I asked of the President an order to authorize me to turn over the command on the first day of November, which he did in a very complimentary way on that day. I will turn over my office to Sheridan with as little fuss or ceremony as a Colonel would do in transferring his Regt. to the Lt. Col.

“I will then pay a visit to Elly at Philadelphia, afterward New York and then St. Louis. My address there will be Number 912 Garrison Avenue, a house you must remember. I have had it fitted up nicely. We are all very well, and I am especially so.

“I do not feel the least slighted in this whole business, for Congress has acted most liberally with me.

“I am constantly asked how I shall occupy my active mind and body. I postpone all thought of this till the time come, but I am resolved not to be tempted into politics, or to enter into any employment which could bring money liability.

“I hope you also will get your promotion, and then come home and settle on your Iowa farm. We should then be neighbors. Love to Mrs. Byers and the family.

“Your friend,W. T. Sherman.”

CHAPTER XXV

1884

SOME INTERESTING LETTERS FROM GENERAL SHERMAN-REQUESTS FOR SOUVENIRS-HIS “FLAMING SWORD”-ONE ON THE PRESIDENCY-I AM APPOINTED CONSUL GENERAL FOR ITALY-AN AMERICAN FOURTH OF JULY PICNIC ON LAKE ZURICH-LORD BYRON’S HOME IN SWITZERLAND-SOME OLD LETTERS ABOUT HIS LIFE THERE-THE LAKE DWELLINGS OF SWITZERLAND-KELLER, THE ANTIQUARIAN-POWER OF SWISS TORRENTS.

In a recent volume of my poems, some little change had been made in the stanzas of “The March to the Sea.” General Sherman did not like these changes, and wrote me that in his opinion “no writer, having once given a thing to the public, had any right to change it.”

He refers again to his preference in the following letter:

“St. Louis, Mo., Feb. 24, 1884.

“Dear Byers: – Yours of Feb. 6th is received. I had previously noticed that in the printed volumes there were variations, especially in the ‘March to the Sea.’ And I had simply noted on the margin of my copy that I liked the old version the best. Indeed, I think that Minnie has the original which was handed me at Columbia, which you remember was beautifully written. I have no doubt you will have occasion to enlarge your volume in time, and the last edition will always be accepted as the standard.

“We have had universally a hard winter, with storms and flood, of which you have doubtless heard as much at Zurich as if you were living in Iowa. The winter now begins to break, we have more sunshine, the grass begins to grow a green tint, and even the bark of the trees shows signs of a change. A hard winter makes a good summer, and I shall expect a pleasant summer.

“I find not the least trouble in putting in my time. Everybody supposes that I have nothing to do, and writes to me for tokens of remembrance, from a baby whistle for a namesake, to the ‘flaming sword’ I carried aloft at the South, to decorate his or her library. To comply with their kind messages, I would need a fortune and an arsenal. In fact and truth, we have a good comfortable home, and by economy we can live out our appointed time, and I do aim to manage so that my children will not have to beg of Government some pitiable office. I will build a neat cottage on my Illinois farm, and two good dwelling houses for rent on some lots we have around here for a long time, on which we have been paying taxes.

“In August, I will go to Minnetonka, to attend the meeting of the Army of the Tennessee.

“We are all reasonably well and are always glad to hear from you. Give my best love to Mrs. Byers, and congratulate her on the development of that boy of yours.

“Ever yours,W. T. Sherman.”

July 3.-Received a most interesting letter from General Sherman telling of his opposition to the use of his name for the Presidency.

“St. Louis, Mo., June 21, 1884.

“Dear Byers: – I received your letter of June 1st some days ago, and would have answered earlier, but had to go down to Carthage, Joplin, etc., in Southwest Missouri, to see a district of country settled up in great part by our old soldiers, who have made it a real garden, with nice farms, pretty houses, with churches, schools, etc., resembling New England, North Ohio, etc., rather than old Missouri, for which the Creator has done so much and man so little. So after all, we at St. Louis must look for civilization and refinement to come as a reflex wave from the West.

“We are now established in the very house in which you found us in 1875–6, in good condition, and with employment sufficient for recreation, diversion, etc.

“Last night I had to make a sort of an address to the Grand Army, in presenting the portrait of Brig. Gen. T. E. G. Ransom, after whom the post is named, and if printed, I may send you a copy. I do all that I can to keep out of the newspapers, but they keep paid spies to catch one’s chance expressions, to circulate over the earth as substantial news. Recently I was informed by parties of National fame that in the Chicago Republican Convention, in case of a dead-lock between Blaine and Arthur, my name would be used. I begged to be spared the nomination but was answered that no man dared refuse a call of the people. I took issue that a political party convention was not the people of the U. S., and that I was not a bit afraid and would decline a nomination in such language as would do both myself and the convention harm. Fortunately Blaine and Logan were nominated, and they are fair representatives of the Republican party. Next month another set of fellows will meet at Chicago and will nominate Jeff Davis, Ben Butler, Tilden, Cleveland or some other fellow-no matter whom-and the two parties can fight it out. Fortunately, and thanks to the brave volunteer soldiers and sailors, the ship of state is now anchored in a safe harbor, and it makes little difference who is the captain. Our best Presidents have been accidents, and it is demonstrated by experience that men of prominent qualities cannot be elected. Therefore I will take little part, sure that whoever occupies the White House the next four years, will have a hard time of it, and be turned out to grass by a new and impatient, disappointed set. Meantime all the fertile spots of a vast domain are being occupied by an industrious class, who will produce all the food needed by our own population and the rest of the world, and will buy what they need, including the silks of France and Switzerland. Of course you do right in watching the invoices to see that the revenues of Uncle Sam are not defrauded, but if you expect to attract the notice of the State Department or the country, I fear you will be disappointed.

“I will go up to Minnesota about the middle of July to attend an encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic, and will wait over at Minnetonka till the middle of August, for a meeting of the society of the Army of the Tennessee, after which I will return to St. Louis till mid-winter, when I will go East for social engagements and the meetings of the Regents of the Smithsonian of which I retain membership. Marriages and deaths and the hundreds of incidents in every community, occupy my time so that thus far I have not been oppressed by ennui. I recall perfectly the house in Bocken in which I saw you in 1873, and sometimes doubt if you will be able to content yourself equally well in Iowa when the time forces itself on you; but the world moves right along, and we must conform.

“I am as always your friend,W. T. Sherman.”

July 4.-To-day, joined by all the Americans we could muster, and a few Swiss and English friends, we chartered a pretty steamer and went to the Island of Ufenau. It was a nice sight to see the boat sailing along the Zurich waters, covered with American flags. The Swiss band could play none of our American airs, but “God Save the Queen” did just as well.

“She’s nothing but an old granny, though, and everybody laughs at her, privately,” exclaimed an English lady to me as the band struck up the tune. This want of respect for the Queen is not so uncommon among English living on the continent as one would imagine.

Gladstone, too, whose name I honor, comes in for any amount of bullying and abusing among traveling Englishmen. “He simply ought to be hung, that’s what ought to happen to him,” I heard one Englishman bawl out to another Englishman once. I was not so especially surprised. For some reason or other, most of the English we meet shake their heads, when we praise the great Christian statesman. I wonder if only the jingo English are rich enough to travel. Gladstone’s friends, if any abroad, are dreadfully silent.

We had a fine picnic on the island to-day, with the blue waters of the lake about us and white Alps right in front of us. One American signalized himself by getting drunk. We left him in a farmhouse on the island.

Came home with a glorious sunset turning the Alps into crimson and gold. One view like this evening would repay for a journey over the ocean, and we have had it almost daily for fifteen years.

On reaching Bocken I found a cablegram from Senator Wilson saying I had been promoted to be Consul General at Rome. I was happier that the news came on this particular day. When I went out on the terrace though, and looked at the beautiful and familiar scenes around me that I must leave forever, the pleasure over my promotion was almost turned into a pang.

*****

A few weeks ago, Cupples, Upham & Co., in Boston, printed the first edition of my volume of poems called “The Happy Isles.” They are now sending me reviews and notices of the book. They are as good as I could wish. It was pleasant to-day, too, to receive a warm letter commending my poems from Oliver Wendell Holmes. Some of them “had brought the tears to his eyes.” To me this was sweeter praise than anything the reviewers could possibly say. Whittier, too, wrote a pretty little Quaker letter, full of kind praise. One of the poems, “The Marriage of the Flowers,” he had picked out as the best of all. I hear it is being much copied. “If You Want a Kiss, Why Take It” also seems to please the editors. A friend writes “they are copying it, everywhere.”

*****

Recently we went to see Byron’s home, villa “Diadati,” a few miles out from Geneva. It is a handsome house with windows and balconies opening on to the lake. Here he wrote “Manfred,” “The Dream,” parts of “Childe Harold” and “Darkness.”

I could not help thinking of him and Shelley and Shelley’s wife, sitting out there on the veranda nights, telling ghost stories. I came across some letters the other day, long out of print, written by a Swiss, who also was whiling his days away on this lake in 1816. The first one says, “Last night I met Lord Byron at Madame de Stael’s. I can compare no creature to him. His tones are music, and his features the features of an angel. One sees, though, a little Satan shining in his eyes which, however, is itself half pious. The ladies are mad after him. They surround him like little bacchantes, and nearly tear him to pieces. I hold him as the greatest living poet. Every stormy passion is witnessed in his glance. One sees the corsair in his look, which, though, often is good, tender, and even melancholy.”

I also have followed Byron’s footsteps in his trips in the higher Alps. He went up into the Simmenthal to Thun, to Interlacken, and the heights near to the Jungfrau. “These scenes,” he wrote, “are beyond all description or previous conception.”

My boy made a picture of the old ruin of a tower near Interlacken, pointed out as the scene where the “Manfred” of the poem struggled with the spirits. Manfred was Byron’s best work, but the printers left the best line of it out, by accident. What would Tennyson nowadays say to a publisher’s leaving the best line out of his best poem?

Byron liked the Jungfrau better than Mt. Blanc, and the scenes about the upper end of Lake Geneva inspired him. “All about here,” he exclaimed once, “is a sense of existence of love in its most extended and sublime capacity, and of our participation of its good and its glory.”

His trip among the grandeur of the higher Alps did not tear him away from his wretched self. He could not forget that he was Byron, and his “Manfred,” arguing with ghosts in the old ruin by Lake Thun, might have been a photograph of himself. That’s what Goethe believed it to be, anyway.

Last week, Professor Ferdinand Keller, the Swiss antiquarian, asked me to visit the Lake Dwelling excavations at Robenhausen. This is an excavated village of the stone age, 5,000 years old, the experts think-maybe older still. The famous Keller himself is a marvel, and might be out of some other age. He is eighty or ninety years old, a little, short man, with white hair standing straight on end, shaggy eyebrows, perfectly immense in their projection above a pair of eyes that burn like stars. Spite of his many years, he is bright, cheery and active, and capable of labor as a boy of thirty. His face is as well known in Zurich as one of the city monuments. The young people think he has walked the streets always, and nobody expects him ever to die.

His antiquarian rooms look out over the lake. Indeed the old stone Helmhouse is built in the lake, and it contains the greatest curiosities of the world. One day Keller was looking out of his window and observed some queer shadows of things down in the water. Investigation proved these “things” to be piles, on which in some remote age, houses and towers had been built. Shortly, the shallow inlets of half the lakes of the country were found to have once been the abode of peoples. The oldest of all, like Robenhausen, were of the age of stone. I was glad of a chance to go, and excavate a little for myself in these towns that were old and forgotten a thousand years before Pompeii was even born. This particular village has been perhaps twelve hundred feet square and stood on a platform supported by 100,000 piles. It was three hundred feet from the shore and was once connected with the mainland by a bridge. In some of the villages once lived a people possibly as much civilized as the Mexican of to-day. This is proved by the relics found in the later ones of looms and cloth, and swords and jewelry of lovely patterns. At Robenhausen life had been simple, but I myself dug out specimens of good cloth. There is nothing to see at Robenhausen save the myriad of rotting piles where the turf bed that took the place of what was once a lake has been removed. All the belongings of the village are buried in mud and water. The cedar and beech poles on which the town once stood had been sharpened by fire before driving. They were twelve feet long and eighteen inches around and stood in regular rows. The huts on the platform (two or three complete ones have been found) were one story high, twenty-two feet wide and twenty-seven feet long, built of upright poles matted together with willows and plastered with clay inside and out. The floors, too, were plastered and the roofs were made of rushes. The remains of grinding stones and mills have been found in every cabin. Not the sign of a hieroglyphic or an alphabet has ever been found, to show who those people were.

I prepared for Harper’s Magazine a paper called “The Swiss Lake Dwellers,” describing the excavations at all the Swiss lakes up to the present time. A Swiss artist illustrated it for me.9

*****

We hear much of the awful force of Swiss mountain torrents. The other day I saw what is ordinarily a brook suddenly rise and sweep thousands of tons of huge rocks on to farms in the valley. The debris of rock and granite was from three to ten feet deep for a mile. The force of these streams is simply tremendous beyond belief-the fall is so great; even the wide river Reuss falls 5,000 feet in thirty miles.

It is a constant wonder why people build homes and hamlets in the way of these awful torrents when their destruction some day is almost certain. However, it is on a par with their building villages on mountain crags and on almost unapproachable slopes when there is plenty of level land in the word.

*****

Yesterday Koller, the animal painter, asked us to take tea in his studio. Congressman Lacey and his wife went with us. Koller is pronounced, by the Swiss at least, to be the greatest animal painter living. He had a splendid harvest scene on the easel-storm coming up, peasants hurrying to get the hay on the wagon, the threatening sky, the uneasy horses, their tails and manes, like the dresses of the girls, blown aside with the wind. It seemed to me I never saw so much action in a picture. Koller was threatened with blindness not long ago, when the prices of his pictures went sky high. Agents were sent out of Germany to buy them up at whatever figure. His great painting of the St. Gothard diligence crossing the Alps is famous. Nothing finer in the way of galloping horses and mountain pass scenery can be imagined. His home and studio are on a little horn of land running out into the lake. He keeps a herd of his own cattle for painting, and every day these beautiful dumb helpers of his are seen in the shallow water of the lake. Mrs. Koller poured the tea for us. She looks like an artist’s wife. Koller is a big, full-bearded German-looking Swiss, seventy years old, who is beloved all over the little republic for his supreme art. Switzerland has four great names in art: Calame, Stückelberg, Böcklin, Koller.

CHAPTER XXVI

1884

START FOR ITALY-THE CHOLERA-TEN DAYS IN QUARANTINE ON LAKE MAGGIORE-A HEROIC KING-WE ARE PRESENTED TO QUEEN MARGARET-AMERICAN ARTISTS IN ROME-THE ROYAL BALLS-RECEPTIONS AND PARTIES-MEET MANY PEOPLE OF NOTE-THE HILLS OF ROME-MINISTER ASTOR AND HIS HOME-HUGH CONWAY-IBSEN-MARION CRAWFORD-ONE OF THE BONAPARTES-KEAT’S ROOM-THE CARDINALS-ISCHIA DESTROYED-CHRISTMAS IN ROME-LETTER FROM GENERAL SHERMAN-HIS VIEWS OF ROME-CLEVELAND’S ELECTION-FRANZ LISZT AGAIN.

August 4.-Sunday evening I walked from Bocken to Zurich to take the train for my new post at Rome. Walked along the Albis hills above the lake, ten miles. It was a delightful summer evening and the view of mountains and lake seemed finer than ever before. I could not help stopping many times to turn round and drink in the glorious scene, possibly for the last time. It was the only time I ever shed tears on leaving a scene of beauty. Besides I was leaving Switzerland, where I had had fifteen happy years.

It was a dangerous time to go to Italy. The cholera was raging in Spezia not less than in Marseilles and Toulon. Many Italians were flying home from the scourge-stricken districts, and at the last moment I learned that a quarantine had been established on the Italian frontier. I hoped, however, to get through at a little village on Lake Maggiore. To my surprise all the lake region was filled with guards and I was soon arrested and cooped up with a thousand others at an old sawmill by the lake.

For ten long days I walked alone up and down the upper floor of that big sawmill, every hour expecting the cholera to break out among the crowd of refugees down in the yard. Once a day a guard was sent to conduct me down to the lake, where I could go in and swim. What a treat that was for me! The guard stood on the shore with fixed bayonet, watching that I did not swim out too far and get away. Mrs. Terry, our good American friend, happened to be spending the summer in the mountains near by. She heard of me and, like a good Samaritan, brought me grapes and other delicacies. We could only stand and talk to each other at a distance with the line of guards between us.

One morning I received a great big document, it looked like a college diploma, saying that I had finished with the quarantine and could proceed on my way.

In the early morning twilight I crossed beautiful Lake Maggiore in a row boat, and like a bird let loose from its cage flew away to Rome.

Once on a time when my wife and I had been in Rome visiting, a lady friend said to us just as we were about leaving: “Come first with me to the fountain of Trevi, throw a penny into the water, and you will return to Rome.” We went one beautiful moonlight night and tossed our coins into the fountain. And now, sure enough, here I was again in the Eternal City.

The officials of the consulate met me at the train. I went through another terrible fumigation for the cholera, and was soon settled down to live in Italy. The office was at once moved to Palazzo Mariani, 30 Via Venti Settembre, and there later we made our home, when it was safe for my family to follow me.

My friends, Congressman Lacey and wife, who seemed to be about the only strangers in Rome, also met me. We stopped at the great, big, empty “Hotel di Roma.” We had it all to ourselves, and we had much amusement with the waiter, who understood none of our lingo, nor we his, further than the word “ancora” (more). The little mugs of milk he brought us for our figs, were but spoonfuls, so we constantly cried “ancora!” He smiled, and the mugs came almost by the dozen. I was no little surprised to see on my bill a long list of repeated charges, sometimes written out, sometimes dotted down, for half a yard. It was the word “ancora,” at a half a franc apiece.