Twenty Years in Europe

The fact is, West was a Pennsylvania Quaker, though he became King George’s court artist, and at last got buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral.

I went often to the Vatican, not to see the palace itself, for that impressed me not at all, or only as a great and miscellaneous pile, but to see a certain picture there. The artist who made it was but thirty-seven years old when he died. Yet, it has been said that in the “Transfiguration” one sees “the last perfection of art.” This picture seems to be one of those things that no one ever thinks to try to emulate. Like the Iliad and Paradise Lost, nothing of their kind came before them, and nothing is looked for to follow them.

One morning I was drinking my coffee in a little den in the Via Condotti. A very singular-looking man came in and sat down at the little table next to mine. Hearing me speak English with a friend, he addressed me. “You are the Consul at Zurich, are you not? You were pointed out to me the other day in the street. I am Joaquin Miller of California. Let us get acquainted.” I moved my chair and coffee over to his table. I was greatly gratified at meeting a poet who seemed to me to have some of the genius of Byron. His “Songs of the Sierras” have the ring of the master. Last summer I read them in Switzerland. Their freshness, their flavor of the prairie and the mountain, their passionate utterance, took me by storm. What the English said of him, in their extravagant joy at “discovering” a live genius in the wilds of the United States, did not affect me, it was the stirring passion of the verse itself. The buffalo, the Indian scout, the burning prairie, the people of the desert, the women with bronzed arms and palpitating hearts, the men in sombreros, with brave lives, and love worth the dying for-that was what he was writing about, and they were all alive before me.

Sitting here at the little white marble table of an Italian café, he seemed all out of place. There was nothing in the surroundings of which this half-wild looking poet-scout of the prairies was a part. His yellow locks, flashing blue eyes, stormy face, athletic form, careless dress, and broad-brimmed hat on the floor by his feet, all told of another kind of life.

Much of his talk was cynical in the extreme. He was ridiculing everything, everybody, even himself, and he looked about him as if constantly thinking to grab his hat, bound for the door, and rush over the Tiber with a yell. He hated restraint of any kind whatever-dress, custom, language.

Miller was now writing in some little attic in Rome, but none of his friends knew where. He would not tell them; he wanted to be alone.

A boy brought us the morning journal, and we talked of newspapers. I asked him what English and American papers he read. He smiled, and answered ironically: “When I want seriousness, I read the London Punch, and for truth, I take the New York Herald.”

There was no talk that morning with him about poetry, but he was jocose and cynical.

He asked me what I was doing. I told him I was getting ready to try my hand at a drama. “Don’t do it-all damned nonsense!” he cried. “Dramas worth anything are not wanted, and if you write in blank verse, as you say you propose, not one actor in five hundred knows how to recite the lines. It must be mighty plain prose for these wind sawyers.”

Just then a tall, fine looking young man came and sat down by our table. Mr. Miller nudged me, and whispered, “Bingen on the Rhine.” “That is young Norton, son of the woman who wrote ‘Bingen on the Rhine.’” I looked at him with interest; but he was English, and I was a stranger, so conversation at that particular table suddenly stopped.

It was on this visit to Rome that I often saw Victor Emmanuel, Italy’s first King. Every Sunday afternoon he drove on the Pincian Hill. The extreme Catholics of Rome, the Pope’s party, paid him little or no attention, and scarcely greeted him when he passed; but all the rest of Rome and all Italy nearly worshiped the “Re Galantuomo.” He was a stout, dark looking man, with black eyes and a mustache like a horse’s mane. He was fifty-six years old then, and had been twelve years King of Sardinia, and sixteen years King of Italy.

At this time our Minister, Mr. Marsh, arranged to have a friend and myself presented to Pope Pius IX, but a sudden attack of Roman fever deprived me of the pleasure.

Two men have existed in my life-time whom I should have given much to know, – Mr. Gladstone and Abraham Lincoln. Once I was a bearer of dispatches to Mr. Lincoln, but illness led me to hurry away, after giving the trust to General Grant. It has been the regret of my life that I missed grasping the hand of, possibly, the greatest man that ever lived.

Back in Switzerland. Great excitement on this May Day, 1874, for on the 19th of last month, by a popular vote, the people changed the Swiss Constitution. Instead of twenty-two little cantons, doing just as they pleased, they will now have a centralized republic, more like the United States.

Some interesting features of the new Swiss system are these: The President is chosen for but a year, and can not succeed himself in office. No military surrender is allowed. The post and telegraph and telephone belong to the government, which also controls all railroads and owns some. Schools are free and compulsory. Salt and gunpowder are government monopolies, and factories are under national control or regulation. Abuse of the freedom of the press may be punished by the general council. Supreme Court Judges are elected, but from the legislative body. National laws must be submitted to popular vote if demanded by 30,000 people. The President must be chosen by the Assembly from among its own members. Members of the Cabinet have seats and votes in the Assembly.

August 18, 1874.-Had a long letter some time since from General Sherman. He says: “Don’t rely too much on my influence here in Washington. Privately, we feel here that President Grant has somewhat gone back on his old friends, in trying to make alliances with new ones. Besides, I am compelled to endorse a good many on their war record, and would not like to be found to choose among them.” He also says that this fall he will probably move to St. Louis. “There are too many commanding officers here in Washington.”

On the 7th he writes interestingly about the histories of the war.

“Washington, D. C., August 7, 1874.

“Dear Byers: – I was glad to receive your letter of the 19th of July, and, with you, think the Centennial of Philadelphia will prove a lamentable failure. Congress will not probably adopt it as a national affair, and it will degenerate into a mere state or city affair.

“Economy is now the cry here, and it may be that it is forced on us by the vast cost of the Civil War, which was bridged over by paper money, that now calls for interest and principal. As in former years, the first blow falls on the Army and Navy, that are treated as mere pensioners, and every cent is begrudged.

“No one who was an actor in the Grand Drama of the Civil War, seems willing to risk its history. I have endeavored to interest Members of Congress in the preliminary steps of preparing and printing in convenient form the official dispatches, but find great opposition, lest the task should fall on some prejudiced person who would in the preparation and compilation favor McClellan or Grant or some one party.

“All histories thus far, of which Draper’s is the best, are based for facts on the newspaper reports, which were necessarily hasty and imperfect. Till the official reports are accessible, it would be unsafe for any one to attempt a narration of events beyond his personal vision, and no single person saw a tenth part of the whole. I have some notes of my own part in manuscript, and copies of all my reports and letters, but am unwilling to have them printed lest it should involve me in personal controversies.

“Minnie will be married Oct. 1st, and we will all remove to St. Louis soon thereafter.

“All send you and Mrs. Byers the assurance of their affection. Believe me always your friend,

“W. T. Sherman.”

CHAPTER XII

1875

LETTERS FROM MRS. SHERMAN AND THE GENERAL-HE TELLS ME HE IS WRITING HIS LIFE-THE NEGRO QUESTION-A CHATEAU BY LAKE ZURICH-I WRITE A BOOK ON SWITZERLAND-ALSO WRITE A PLAY-A CITY OF DEAD KINGS-GO TO LONDON-MEET COLONEL FORNEY-DINNER AT GEO. W. SMALLEY’S-KATE FIELD-VISIT BOUCICAULT-CONVERSATIONS WITH THE NEWER SHAKESPEARE-THE BEAUTIFUL MINNIE WALTON-BREAKFAST AT HER HOME-PROF. FICK-HIS HOUSE BUILT IN THE OLD ROMAN WALL-LECTURES-HOLIDAYS AT THE CONSULATE-MRS. CONGRESSMAN KELLEY-A STUDENT COMMERS-BEER DRINKING-DUKES OF THE REPUBLIC-DUELS-LETTER FROM GENERAL SHERMAN-PRUSSIAN ARMY MANEUVERS.

March 24, 1875.-Received a welcome and gossipy letter from Mrs. General Sherman. It reads:

“St. Louis, Mo., March 12, 1875.

“My Dear Major: – Your welcome letter would have been answered immediately, but I have not been well. My general health is very good, but the weather this Winter has been exceptionally cold.

“Minnie and her good husband, with whom she is very happy, live a few squares from us, and we see them every day; Minnie having learned to be a great walker, during her sojourn in Europe. We find our circle of friends and acquaintances very large, and we find that almost as much time has to be devoted to visiting here as in Washington. We are delightfully situated in the home we occupied for several years, before we removed to Washington, and which belongs to us. We have plenty of spare room for friends, and shall certainly claim a good, long visit from you and Mrs. Byers and the children, when you return to your own country. Should the next Administration be Democratic, that may not be very long hence. Pray remember that I shall expect you.

“I have seen, and admire very much, your poem on ‘The Sea’ in the ‘Navy Journal.’

“I am very glad you were gratified to receive the pretty copy of your grand song, ‘When Sherman Marched Down to the Sea.’ I shall have something else to send you soon. The General’s Memoirs are in the hands of the publishers, Appleton & Co., of N. Y., and will be out in May. It will be in two volumes, excellent print, and I am sure you will find it entertaining. I will see that you get an early copy. Please write to me when you receive it, without waiting to read it, because I shall be anxious to know if it has gone safely. Should you not receive it by the last of May, let me know. Do not buy a copy, for I wish to send you one. The book begins in 1846 and extends to the close of the war. The chapters that I have read are highly interesting.

“The General seems to be growing older in appearance, but his health is good, and his spirits are the same; his vivacity has not sensibly diminished. To-night he is off to the theater, to see Charlotte Cushman, who makes her last appearance in St. Louis to-morrow. We have had a great many attractive actors and actresses here this Winter, and we have yet in store a greater treat than all. Ristori is playing in New York and will be here some time during the Spring. The General and Lizzie both admired Albani exceedingly, and think her a superior actress to Nielson and as good a singer. I did not see her, as the weather was bad and my cold was severe during her stay here.

“St. Louis is a city of great commercial enterprise and has a wonderful future before her. Perhaps you will select this as a place of residence on your return home. We would be very glad to have you here.

“I hope Mrs. Byers and the children are well and that your own health grows stronger. Lizzie joins me in best love to all. She and I are alone to-night. Elly and Rachel are away at school, Minnie in a home of her own, and Cumpsy in bed.

“Believe me very truly and warmly your friend,

“Ellen Ewing Sherman.”

I find this in my diary. On returning from Italy, we went over to “Wangensbach” by Kussnacht, on Lake Zurich, to live for a Summer or two. Wangensbach is an old chateau, or half castle-place, built by the Knights of St. John in the long, long ago. The walls are three feet thick, in places more, and there are all sorts of vaulted wine cellars and mysterious, walled-in places, under the building. The view from the windows and terrace, of blue lake and snowy mountains, is superb in the extreme. The chateau is now owned by Conrad Meyer, the Swiss poet and novelist. It is six miles to my office in the city, and I walk in and out daily, though I could go on the pretty steamers for a sixpence. Here, on a May day, “Baby Hélène” came into the world, to gladden eight sweet years for us.

Spite of Joaquin Miller’s prognostications at Rome about plays, I was foolish enough to go ahead, and write a melodrama in blank verse. Schultz-Beuthen, a friend of Liszt and follower of Wagner, wrote delightful music for its songs. I went up to Mannheim, and attended the plays in the old theater where Schiller was once a director, and where some of his best plays were brought out.

Miller wrote me about this little play of mine as follows:

“N. Y. Hotel, N. Y., U. S. A., Feb. 11, 1879.

“My Dear Mr. Byers: – I remember you with pleasure, remember the compliment you paid me in preferring a visit to me before the good Pope.

“I have read your pretty play with pleasure, and have the opinion of able managers. And I am bound to say, my dear boy, that it is for the leisure, not for the stage. Like all your work, it is well done, verses especially, but how on earth do you expect to present five scenes in one act in this swift modern day? All modern plays have, as a rule, but one scene to the act. Then you have almost altogether omitted humor. Try again. By the by, I last night brought forth a play. See enclosed bill. It was most emphatically damned. Write me if I can do ought for you, and believe me

Truly yours,J. W. Miller.”

My libretto and the music had pleased Minnie Hauk, the singer, and she herself thought of using it, but the objection to the Wagner kind of music came up. Her husband, Count Wartegg, wrote me from Paris: “The libretto is very interesting, so original, and so well written that its success is assured.”

Minnie Hauk was just now at the height of her fame. In Scotland and England she was very popular. At Edinburg the college students one night, at the close of the opera, unhitched the horses from her carriage and pulled her to the hotel themselves. I knew her quite well in Switzerland. In fact, her secret marriage with Count Wartegg had taken place in my office, and I had been a part of the little adventure. She was a wife for years before the public found it out. Her husband had an historic old castle over in the mountains of the Tyrol.

In the meantime I had prepared another little play, and Miss Kate Field had given them both to Genevieve Ward, who sent me this about them:

“232 Rue de Rivoli, Paris, 26 Dec., 1875.

“Dear Sir: – I received the plays you confided to Miss Field, and read them with much pleasure. Pocahontas should be very popular in America, and I trust you will be fortunate in having it well produced. The sympathies of the public should also be warmly enlisted for the ‘Princess Tula,’ a charming character, which requires delicate handling. Miss Clara Morris would personate it most charmingly. I regret that they are both lighter than my line of business, which is the heaviest. I feel none the less honored that you should have sent them to me, and again thanking you, and wishing you every success, I remain

Yours truly,“Genevieve Ward.”

The second drama was not offered to the managers at all, and the two plays were laid away forever.

While on the Rhine I also visited Speyer, “The City of Dead Kings.” In one crypt seven German monarchs lie side by side. Next to Westminster Abbey in London, and the Capuchin Church in Vienna, no one spot can show so much royal dust, and nowhere on earth can one feel so much the fleeting littleness of man as in these three places.

*****

I had spent much time in preparing my book, called “Switzerland and the Swiss.” Now when I asked permission of our State Department to print it they promptly telegraphed me a refusal.

A Consul, not long before, had published a book on Turkey that was not liked by some of the satraps of the Sultan. So a veto was put on all books by Consuls.

My book was then printed anonymously, but received most favorable comment. “Whoever the author is,” said the “Zurcher Zeitung,” the principal Swiss journal, “he has shown more thorough knowledge of the Swiss people than any foreigner who has written about us.” The large edition was sold, spite of its being published anonymously.3

The London papers have much to say now about the mixed condition of party affairs in America. Yesterday I had a letter from General Sherman bearing on the same subject. It also tells me he is writing a history of his life. It also gives his views of negroes voting.

“St. Louis, Mo., Jan. 26, 1875.

“Dear Byers: – Your letter of Nov. 21st, sending a copy of the London Saturday Review, has been in my pigeon hole ‘For answer’ so long that I am ashamed. I have always intended to avail myself of the opportunity to write you a long, gossipy letter, but have as usual put it off from day to day, so that now I hardly know what to tell you. We are now most comfortably established in St. Louis, a large, growing and most dirty city, but which in my opinion is a far better place for the children than the clean and aristocratic Washington. Minnie, also, is domiciled near us in a comfortable home, whilst her husband seems busy on his new work in connection with a manufactory of wire.

“I have no doubt that General Grant and the Cabinet think me less enthusiastic in the political management than I ought to be. And they may be right. In some respects they have been selfish and arrogant, and are fast losing that hold on public respect they used to enjoy, and there is now but little doubt but that they have thrown the political power into an opposition that the old Democratic party will utilize for itself. The mistake began in 1865 when they gave votes to the negroes, and then legislated so as to make the negro dominant at the South where the old Rebel whites represent eight millions to the four of the blacks, and the first have united solidly into a dangerous opposition. In our form of Government, when the majority rules in local Government, it is hard for the National Government to coerce this majority to be docile and submissive to a party outside, however respectable.

“I had seen that article in the Review, as also many others of mine which, on the whole, are flattering. I have, after considerable hesitation, agreed to publish the whole, of which that one was the conclusion. The book, still in manuscript, is estimated to make two octavo volumes of about four hundred pages each, and I have given the manuscript of the first volume to the Appletons of New York, and will send the balance this week. The whole should be out in about three months, when I trust it will afford you a couple of days of pleasant reading. Thus far the public has no knowledge of this thing, but I suppose I can not conceal it much longer.

“We are all well. Give our best love to Mrs. Byers, and believe me truly your friend,

“W. T. Sherman.”

After a while the book appeared, and again the General wrote about it.

“St. Louis, Mo., Aug. 31, 1875.

“My Dear Friend: – I have received your welcome favor of July 31st. Mrs. Sherman has since got one of later date, in which you acknowledge the receipt of the Memoirs. I am glad, of course, that they pleased you in form and substance. Such is the general judgment of those who embraced the whole book, whilst others, picking out a paragraph here and there, find great fault. When I had made up my mind to publish, I prepared myself for the inevitable consequences of offending some. I tried to make a truthful picture of the case, as it was left in my mind, without fear, favor or affection, and though it may cause bad feelings now, will in the end be vindicated. I want no friend to eulogize or apologize, but leave the volumes to fight out their own battle.

“We are all now at home except Minnie, who has her own home not far from us. Her baby is growing and beginning to assume the form of humanity, recognizing objects and manifesting a will and purpose of his own.

“Early in September all the children will resume their schools-Tom at Yale, Elly at Manhattanville, N. Y., the rest here in St. Louis. With the exception of some minor excursions I will remain close at home. Our annual meeting of the Army of the Tennessee will be at Des Moines this year-Sept. 29–30. We don’t expect much, only to keep it alive. We look for a stormy political Winter, and next year another of the hurricanes that test our strength every four years.

“My best love to Mrs. B. and the children.

“Yours,W. T. Sherman.”

January, 1875.-I went to London to see about my play. Stopped at 10 Duchess Street. General Schenck was our Minister then, and he and Colonel John W. Forney gave me letters to theatrical people. Mr. Geo. W. Smalley was also polite to me.

It was a nice American dinner-party I participated in at Mr. Smalley’s home, and while there was a little air of stiffness in the white-gloved, side-whiskered waiters, it was a hospitable, jolly occasion. Among the guests were Kate Field, Col. Forney, Secretary McCullough, and some English literary people. Kate Field was wide awake, and she, and Col. Forney, one of the best talkers and best informed men I ever knew, kept things lively till midnight. Col. Forney was one of the handsomest men I ever met, and was loyally faithful to friends.

One of my letters was to Dion Boucicault, the actor, probably the biggest dramatic plagiarist since Shakespeare. His name was to about two hundred plays, of which he certainly never wrote a dozen complete. He was of immense talent in the way of absorbing, or transposing, or cribbing outright other people’s work, without their even knowing it. In a sense, he did make things his own. If what he afterward said to me about there not being an absolutely new idea in the world is true, then he was not a stage plagiarist, as much as a first class boiler-over.

In this Winter of 1874–5 he was the most popular actor in London, and Joe Jefferson was playing there too, as was Henry Irving. At Drury Lane theater, there was nothing but standing room, day or night, when Boucicault was on the boards. His wife was playing with him. Several times I stood up among a crowd of Londoners whose hands were too pressed in to clap, but they made it up in crying or laughing. It was melodrama in perfection. All the immense crowd felt themselves actual participants in the play. What a bag full of money the English-American must have lugged home this winter.

One evening a note came for me to call on him at his house, at 9 o’clock next morning. It was foggy and almost dark on the streets when I rang the door bell. I was shown into a drawing room dimly lighted, where, sitting in the half dark, by a low open fire, was a man I could have taken for William Shakespeare. The lofty brow, the intellectual face, the partly bald head, looked like no other. He did not see me as I entered, nor did he turn around, but went on looking into the fireplace. I looked at him a moment sitting there, and then said good morning. “Ah,” he said, looking up as calmly as if his whole attitude had been affected. “Good morning, take a seat. I read your play, it is melodrama, it is no account; that is, as it stands, you know. You had best hire a good stage man to go over it for you. You haven’t studied the stage, that’s clear, and that is what is the matter of our countrymen, Mr. – and Mr. – . They can write, but they know no more about the stage plays than new-born babes.” I sat there and listened to him in astonishment.

He talked much of himself, and related some of his methods of making plays play. But the real secret, he could not translate for me further than to say, “The way to write a play, is to write a play.”

I could not help thinking, as I sat there listening to the voice by the firelight, of the time when Boucicault had to sell a play for from $200 to $300, and of that later time when a play with his name to it brought him almost $50,000.

I took his advice as to my melodrama and had a playwright go through it with pencil and shears.

When I got home to Zurich a telegram asked that I forward the music at once. A London theater had accepted my play. Shortly the theatrical hard times set in; my theater closed doors, and that was the last of “Pocahontas,” a melodrama.