Twenty Years in Europe

Through Brentano’s friendship, I secured many notable acquaintances. The Revolution of 1848 in Germany was led by the brightest spirits of the country. Its failure led to death or flight. Many had crossed into the Republic of Switzerland and formed here in Zurich a circle of intellectual exiles. They were authors, musicians, statesmen, distinguished university professors. Brentano naturally stood high among them all.

The Orsini Cafe.-Around a corner, and not a block away from our home, stood a dingy, old building, known as the Cafe Orsini. Every afternoon at five, a certain number of exiles, and their friends, among them men of culture and European fame, met and drank beer at an old oak table in a dark corner of the east room. It was the room to the right of the entrance hall. Many people frequented the Orsini, for it was celebrated for its best Munich beer, and they could catch there glimpses sometimes of certain famous men. Johannes Scherr, the essayist and historian, called the “Carlyle of Germany,” came there, and Brentano, the patriot. So did Gottfried Keller, possibly the greatest novelist writing the German language, though a Swiss. There was Gottfried Kinkel, the beloved German poet, whom our own Carl Schurz had rescued from death in a German prison, now a great art lecturer at the University. Beust, the head of the best school without text-books in the world; Fick, the great lawyer and lecturer, and sometimes Conrad Meyer, the first poet of Switzerland. Earlier, Richard Wagner was also among these exiles at the Orsini, for he, too, had been driven from his country. That was in the days when the celebrated Lubke, the art writer, was lecturing at the Zurich University, together with Semper, the architect. Often the guests around the little table were noted exiles, who, even if pardoned, seldom put a foot in the German fatherland. The lamp above the table was always lighted at just five in the evening, and the landlord’s daughter, in a pretty costume, served the beer. It was my good fortune, through Mr. Brentano, to join this little German Round Table often, to listen to conversations, that, could they be reported now, would make a volume worth the reading.

Almost nightly, in the winter, at least, the little circle came together, shook hands, and sat around that table. Each paid for his own beer. To offer to “treat” would have been an offense. “How many glasses, gentlemen?” the pretty waitress would ask. Each told what he had drunk and how much cheese or how many hard-boiled eggs he had added; the pretzels were free. “Gute Nacht, meine Herren, und baldiges Wiedersehen,” called out the little waitress, as they would again shake hands and go out into the fog and darkness. For years that little waiting-girl lighted the lamp over the table, served us the beer, and found a half-franc piece under one of the empty glasses. She knew what it was for. Had she been a shorthand reporter, she could have stopped passing beer long ago, and the Orsini Café might have been her own.

CHAPTER III

1870

IN THE ORSINI CAFE-GREAT NEWS FROM FRANCE-WHAT THE EXILES THINK-LETTER FROM GENERAL SHERMAN-I GET PERMISSION TO GO AND LOOK AT THE WAR-IN THE SNOW OF THE JURAS-ARRESTED-THE SURRENDER OF THE 80,000-ZURICH IN THE HANDS OF A MOB-A FRIENDLY HINT.

August 15, 1870.-At six in the evening of this day I was sitting with these other friends in the little corner of the Orsini, when a boy called out:

“Great news from France!”

Yesterday (August 14, 1870) was a day to be forever remembered in history, the day that was to begin the foundation of the German Empire. Louis Napoleon had declared war against Prussia. The news came into our little corner of the Orsini like a clap of thunder-but the exiles around that table went right on drinking beer. Pretty soon, grave Johannes Scherr, the historian, spoke: “It is good-by to Napoleon’s crown, that.” “They don’t know Bismarck in Paris yet,” said Beust. Beust did not like Bismarck very much either. “And what can we do?” said another. “Nothing,” replied Brentano. “Look on. We are exiles.” They all loved Germany.

Twenty years they had been waiting in Switzerland, to see what would happen. A new war tocsin was now really sounding. One empire was dying-great, new Germany was about at its birth. Almost that very night the strongest-souled, most dangerous man in modern times was playing his cards for empire. Even then, in a little German town, Bismarck was manipulating telegrams, deceiving the people, “firing the German heart,” deceiving his own Emperor, even. That was diplomacy. A hundred thousand men were about to die! What of it? Get ready, said the man of blood, dig their graves. The hour for Prussian vengeance on the name of Napoleon had arrived. “We are ready for war, to the last shoe-buckle,” wrote the French war minister to Louis Napoleon. Bismarck knew that to be a lie. His spies and ambassadors in Paris had not spent their time simply sipping wine on the boulevards. They had been seeing things, and he knew ten times more about the shoe-buckles of the French army than the French themselves did.

The next morning (August 16) things sounded strange enough to American ears in Zurich. A trumpeter rode through every street, blowing his bugle blasts between his cries for every German in Zurich to go home and fight for fatherland. But the exiles were not included and the little meetings in the Orsini went on. Then came a note from Napoleon to the Swiss government: “Can you defend your neutrality?” If not, he would instantly surprise Bismarck and Von Moltke by overrunning Switzerland and suddenly pour his armies all over South Germany. Then the Rhine would be behind him, not in front.

Switzerland saw her own danger. Permit this once, and her name would be wiped from the map of Europe. She knew that. A few days’ hesitancy and, for her, all would have been lost. That night at midnight the Swiss drums beat in every valley of the Alps. Twenty-three thousand men, with a hundred cannon, were thrown into the fastnesses and passes of the Jura Mountains, on the French frontier, inside of three days. That was the answer to Napoleon’s note, and it changed the destinies of the war. That prompt deed of the Swiss made the German Empire. Had the French army got possession of the Alpine passes once, and the Rhine, they would have taken Berlin. The backbone of the German minister at London was what brought on the war at last. England had proposed to join France in requesting the King of Prussia to promise that no German prince should aspire to the Spanish throne. The German minister at St. James indignantly declined to even report the British suggestion to his government. Had he reported England’s wishes, Bismarck, possibly, fearing two against him now instead of one, would have given that one little promise, and then the war would not have taken place.

The Americans had the war news by cable almost as soon as the Swiss, who were in sound of the guns.

Shortly I received a little note from General Sherman:

    “Washington, D. C., Aug. 19, 1870.

“Dear Byers: Consul H. did not hand me your letter of May 1 st until to-day, else it should have been answered earlier. I was very glad to see that your health was improved by the change of climate and country, and that you had entered on your new career with zeal and interest. So interesting a country as Switzerland, topographically and historically, cannot but prove of inestimable value to you, in whatever after career you may engage, and I feel certain that you will profit by the opportunity.

“At this moment we are all on tiptoe of expectation to hear of the first events of the war begun between France and Prussia. The cause assigned for this war seems to us in this distance so trivial that we take it to be a mere pretext, and that the real cause must lie in the deeper feelings of the two countries. You are so near and so deeply concerned in the lines of traffic that must cross the paths of the contending armies that you cannot escape the consequences. Many Americans will go abroad to see these armies, and as much of the war as will be permitted them, and it may be that you will see at Zurich some of our soldiers. General Sheridan proposes to start at once, and one of my aids, Colonel Audenreid, begs to go along. If Sheridan wishes it I will let Audenreid go, and I will remind him that you are at Zurich, and he may drop in on you, and you can talk over events. You will remember him as one of my aids at Columbia, S. C.

“Always wishing you honor and success, I am truly your friend,

    W. T. Sherman.”

With almost unbroken success for the Prussians, the dreadful war went on all that autumn. The Swiss were neutral and their sympathies were divided, or, if one-sided, they were with the Germans; at least, until that terrible Sedan day, when the Emperor himself fell a prisoner. Then Bismarck wanted more. It was Paris, and French humiliation, he wanted. He had tasted blood, and was he never to have enough? The war went on into the cold and storm of winter. Troops were nearly freezing to death in both armies in the east of France, and half the Swiss people were changing their minds. France was down, and Bismarck must not play the monster.

December, 1870.-I had been a soldier four years in our own great war, and was anxious to see European armies on a battlefield. The commander of the Swiss troops gave me a letter to the leader of the German army next the frontier, and got me passes. It was midwinter, and fearfully cold, and the snow was two feet to three feet deep when I went into the camp of the Swiss, away up in the Jura Mountains. None but well-clad, well-fed men could stand guarding the passes in such weather. What must the French army be doing, not far away, in their worn-out shoes and ragged overcoats? The German army lay not far from Montbeliard, when one cold evening I passed the frontier, and on foot, in the snow, wended my way to a deserted French hamlet. The village just beyond was occupied by a squadron of German Uhlans. Now all was new to me. Not far away that evening I heard the constant thundering of the cannon at Belfort. At the place where I stayed, an attack by the French could be expected any moment in the night. Shortly I saw captains of Uhlans ride to every house in the village and put a chalk-mark on the door, designating what companies were to take it for quarters. There was no room left anywhere, and one could freeze out of doors, unless hugging a camp-fire. An officer of Uhlans took me in and shared his bed on the floor of a cabin. We had a cup of coffee, a glass of brandy and some rations. Nobody knew that night what would happen out in the snow before morning. Next day I could get no horse; but if I could get to General Manteuffel at the next village, I would be all right. On I trudged afoot, but the advanced pickets outside the village could not read my French papers. They fearing me to be a French spy, I was arrested and jogged about very unceremoniously. The General was out somewhere with the troops, and it was hours before I was released. All this time I was kept in a little café that was full of Uhlans carousing and drinking, and acting as if they would like to make short work of me. On the General’s return, I was marched up to headquarters, followed by a number of idle soldiers, who anticipated a drumhead court-martial and a little shooting. Of course, I was promptly released with an apology. But there I was, on foot, in the snow, and not a horse to be had, had the King himself wanted it; for the French army, 80,000 strong, was making for a battle, or else for the Swiss frontier. It was the frontier. That very night, Bourbaki, the French commander, shot himself, and the whole army, 80,000 strong, tumbled, pell-mell, into Switzerland, and surrendered. That was January 31st.

It was a sad-looking army that gave itself up to Switzerland. Their red trousers were worn, dirty and black, their shoes were almost gone. Some wore wooden sabots, some had their feet wrapped in rags. Their faces and hands were black as Africans’, from close huddling over scanty camp-fires, to keep from freezing. All were discouraged, disgraced, many boiling over with wrath at their incompetent leaders. And these leaders, hundreds of them, were followed by courtesans of Paris, in closed carriages. That was a spectacle for the gods; this host of poor, ragged, freezing privates, wading through the snow of the Alps, followed by a procession of gilded carriages, filled with debauched women, drunken officers and costly wines.

The surrender there in the snow included the whole army of 80,000 men, 284 cannon, 11,000 horses and 8,000 officers’ swords.

In a week’s time the Swiss had this great army of Frenchmen quartered at the different cities. Zurich had 11,000 of them. They were a happy lot of men, to be out of a dreadful war, and in the hands of a people who bestowed on them every kindness. Many never left Switzerland, but settled among their sympathizers and benefactors for the remainder of their lives.

The war went on. Paris, for months, lay besieged and starving. Then the end came.

At Zurich, the friends of Germany now undertook to celebrate the close of hostilities. Speeches and a banquet were to be had one night at the great Music Hall on the lake. Some consuls were invited to take a part, myself among the number. I was to be asked to send a telegram to our President. At four o’clock of the afternoon a man called at my office and whispered in my ear, “Stay away from that banquet; something is to happen.” I remained at home. That night, just as the toast to the new German Emperor was being read, and at a preconcerted signal, every window in the vast hall was smashed in. Stones and clubs were hurled at the banqueters. A large and excited mob of French sympathizers and French prisoners, with side-arms, surrounded the building. Many dashed into the galleries, waved French flags, struck people down with sabers and fired revolvers. The banqueters were in terror till, led by the courageous among them, they broke their five hundred chairs into clubs and drove the rioters from the hall. A few had been killed, a number injured. All the night the mob stayed outside and howled. The police fled for their lives. The militia, called out, stood in line, but when the order to fire on the mob was given, threw down their arms.

Inside the hall, the banqueters stood with clubs in their hands till the grey of morning, waiting the attack. The women, alarmed and terrified, were hidden under the tables, or in corners.

Zurich seemed in the throes of a revolution. The bad elements of every kind joined in the mob, and the Socialists and Anarchists cried out: “This is the people, striking for their rights.”

Ten thousand troops were hurried into Zurich from other cantons. Cannon bristled at the street corners, and placards warned the people to stay in their houses. A battery was posted in the street in front of our door. Climbing up on to the terrace by the minster, I saw a terrible mob below, and watched a cavalry squadron ride through it with drawn sabers. The mob gave way, and the alarm was at an end. Murders had been committed, and many men were arrested and punished. The man who had kindly whispered to me to keep away from the banquet, fled. He was afterward condemned, and is to this day a fugitive in England.

CHAPTER IV

1871

THE PARIS HORRORS-SOME EXCURSIONS WITH LITERARY PEOPLE-BEER GARDENS-A CHARACTERISTIC FUNERAL-FUNERAL OF A POET’S CHILD-CAROLINE BAUER, THE ACTRESS-A POLISH PATRIOT-CELEBRATING THE FOURTH OF JULY AT CASTLE RAPPERSCHWYL-THE ST. BERNARD-THE MULES AND DOGS-ON A SWISS FARM-FOR BURNING CHICAGO.

June, 1871.-Horrible news continues to come of the atrocities of the “Communists” in Paris. The most beautiful city of the world is half burned up by its own children. Hundreds of innocent people have been slaughtered. Nobody here understands wholly what it is these Paris murderers want. It looks as if all the criminals and their ten thousand abettors were simply avenging themselves on civilization.

Europe looks on with horror. The world did not know that it contained a whole army of such wretches in one single city. Yet New York has just as many, if they were let loose. There are men right here in Switzerland, the kindliest governed state in the world, who are walking around the streets, quietly thanking God for all the indescribable things at Paris. There was a man in France once (Madame Roland’s husband), who killed himself, rather than live longer in a land so given over to dastards. The Paris anarchists will again, and soon enough, have made suicide sweeter than living there. That is what they want. Anarchists would rejoice if all the decent people in the world would kill themselves and get out of it.

This summer of 1871 we made many little foot excursions with the Brentanos, the Kinkels, or the Scherrs. The whole party was always more or less literary. Even Mrs. Scherr had written her book, much liked by German housewives. These afternoon walks have been to points along the beautiful lake or to some near valley, and often to the Uetliberg or to Rüssnacht. We always turned up at some simple country beer garden, with its quiet tables under shady bowers, where the beer and the pretzels were good, and the view fine of lake and mountain.

What delightful times we have had with our cheap lunches of black bread, beer and cheese and much talking! We walked home by dusk, always stopping at many a vantage point, to look in wonder at the sunset and the gorgeous glow on the Alps. I never saw these sunsets in the Alps without thinking of another world. They seemed to belong to something more beautiful, more lasting than our mere lives. If I spoke of it, however, Scherr would shrug his shoulders and say, “Ich glaub’ es nicht. Wir werden es nur hoffen,” and once he added: “The whole world is but a graveyard. Above the door is written The End.” Mrs. Scherr always smiled and said, “No, it is not so, what he says. What is all that grandeur that you see over there in the mountains for? Surely not only for a little party like us to gaze on, of an afternoon, and then say good-by to, forever. No, it is not true. I expect to see the beautiful mountains, and with these friends, too, a thousand years from now.”

Alas! sooner than we knew, she was to look beyond these Alps. A heart trouble, aggravated by the deeper heart trouble of a mother, through a wayward son, suddenly terminated her life. Just after leaving our home, one day, where she had been calling, she fell dead upon the steps of St. Peter’s church.

I was present at this friend’s funeral, conducted in accordance with German Swiss custom.

An old woman had carried the funeral notices to the friends. They were printed on large, full sheets of paper, with black edges an inch wide. The woman, in delivering these messages, was in full black, and carried with her an enormous bunch of flowers, apparently a symbol of her office. At the appointed hour I found all our male friends at the house of mourning. It was designated by a broad, black cloth stretched across the front of the building and running up the stairway. Here, in a room denuded of all carpet and furniture, I found Prof. Scherr, waiting to receive the condolence of the invited friends.

“To the left,” said the old messenger woman, who had brought the death notices. She stood in the hall, beside an urn, into which friends put their black-edged cards. Again she held a bunch of flowers. All, as they entered the room, turned to “the left,” where they silently grasped the Professor’s hand a moment, and then took their places, standing in a line along the four walls of the room. No one spoke. There was utter silence. All had tall hats and wore black gloves. Those who had not been invited by card, remained in the street, to join the procession as it left the house. There was not a woman in sight anywhere, save the old messenger. Just as the church bells were ringing the hour, the messenger called in at the open door: “Gentlemen, it is three o’clock,” and the little procession of friends followed the Professor down to the rear of the hearse. There had been no ceremony. The body, during the waiting, lay in a plain coffin in the lower hall. The day before, we had called to have a last look at our friend. To us, accustomed to American ostentation over the dead, the extreme simplicity seemed shocking. She was in a plain, white cotton robe. The coffin, or pine box, was not even painted. But it was not indifference nor littleness, this simplicity. It was a custom. A hundred years ago in Switzerland, people were buried in sheets, and without any coffins. Our friend was borne to the chapel in the graveyard, followed by many people, all on foot. There was no carriage, save the hearse. There was a short address in the chapel, no singing or prayers; then the body was carried out to the grave. Each of us threw a spray of evergreen, or a bit of earth, into the grave. When the friends had mostly gone, the Professor looked long and sadly into the grave, lifted his hat to her who had been his helpmeet, and silently and alone walked away. The funeral had been characteristic of the country; plain, and simple, and impressive. To the Swiss, the ostentation and the gorgeous casket at American funerals are not only unbecoming, but a sacrilege and sin. “What good can we do the poor dead bodies?” said Kinkel to me one night at the Round Table in the Orsini. “If you have something to do for a man, do it for him while he lives, and not to his poor, senseless dust.”

Kinkel carried out his theory when his beloved daughter died. They came first to my wife, to have her select them a little black crepe-that was all-and a plain board coffin, and some flowers. All her schoolmates must be invited to come and stand by her grave. When the coffin containing his most loved of earth was lowered, the good, gray-haired poet bared his head, stepped to the side of the grave, and, with eyes full of tears, made a touching speech. It was about the child’s goodness in life, its sweetness and sunshine, and its father’s and mother’s loss. Deep emotion filled all present. The children sang a song, and then strewed many flowers upon the grave.

“I will never see her again,” he said to me long days afterward. “Like all beautiful, changing things, she has become a part of the beautiful universe. I know her breath will be in the perfume of the flowers, and she will linger in the summer wind.” He spoke in sincerity, but the beauty and poetry of his belief had little comfort for us, who also had lost, but with an absolute faith that we should find our buried one again.

In one of our little excursions, Professor Kinkel took us to see the celebrated actress, Caroline Bauer, now the Countess Plater. She and her husband, a rich Pole, who has good claims on the throne of Poland, live on an estate overlooking Lake Zurich. They received us all with great courtesy, and insisted on our having lunch with them on the terrace. The whole estate, not large, is surrounded by a high stone wall, and inside of that a line of trees and hedges higher still. The Countess is seventy, white haired, good looking, genial and happy as a girl. She played several airy things on the piano for us, and would have danced a jig, I think, had Professor Kinkel but said the word. In her heyday of beauty and fame she was the morganatic wife of the King of Belgium. But little was thought of that, for she showed us his picture hanging in the drawing-room, with pride. She and Kinkel talked and laughed much about things that were Greek to us. When we were leaving, the white-haired old beauty followed the white-haired old poet out to the garden gate, and gave him a good-by kiss. It was, in fact, a pretty and touching scene. The Count owns the great Castle of Rapperschwyl at the end of the lake. It contains a Polish museum. One Fourth of July, later, he invited all the Americans to celebrate the day there, and sent a steamer, with music and flags, to carry us up to his banquet. The flags of lost Poland were intertwined with the flags of the United States.

August, 1871.-Next to Westminster Abbey, in London, I have always wanted to see the St. Bernard pass, with its hospice and its dogs. At Martigny, the other day, my wife and I hired a man and a mule to help us up the pass that gave Bonaparte so much trouble. The man’s name was “Christ.” He often addressed the mule as “you diable.” We walked, rode and climbed past the most poverty-stricken villages in the Dranse valley I ever saw in my life. This should be called the valley of human wretchedness. We reached the famous stone hospice on the top of the pass late at night, in a storm of sleet, and tired to death. We had overtaken a German student on the way, and our poor mule had to drag or carry four of us up the worst part of the pass. The thunderstorm also made us overdo ourselves. My wife sat on the saddle; the student hung to the mule’s tail; I hung to one stirrup, and Christ to the other. I am glad it was dark, for the scene was not heroic, like that of Napoleon leading his army over the mountains.

The monks met us at the hospice entrance, and gave us places to rest for an hour. To me, who was utterly exhausted and used up, they gave drams of good, hot whisky.

An hour later they took us down to the Refectory, where we had a substantial supper of hot soup, bread, potatoes, omelets, prunes, and also wine. A fire blazed in the immense fireplace, for it is chilly and cold up here even in August. A wind was now blowing outside, and it was very dark. We were glad to sit around the fire with some of the monks and tell them strange things about the country we came from. One of them spoke English, a few of them German.

These zealous monks live up in this inhospitable pass solely to rescue and aid lost travelers. Thousands of poor men, seeking labor in better climates, walk over this pass to Italy every season. Many lose their way and are hunted up by the noble St. Bernard dogs; many freeze to death, and the monks have piled their unidentified bodies up out there in the stone dead-house. There is not enough soil on this rocky height for a grave. And the air is so rarefied that graves are not needed; the dead simply dry away at last, or, in their half-frozen condition, remain like unembalmed mummies. The high air is ruinous to health, and the monks after a few short years go down into the Rhone valley to die, while others for another little space take their places.

The next morning I climbed through an open window into the dead-house. The dead found on the pass during twenty years either lay on the floor or stood against the wall. It was a hideous spectacle, and yet numerous of the bodies were lifelike in every feature. They were placed in there just as they were found. All have the clothes on they wore when they were lost. Many are in the same attitude of despair and agony they had when the storm closed them in its icy embrace. I saw a man with form bent and arms extended as if groping to find his way. A dead woman sat in the corner with her frozen child in her arms. She has been there these dozen years. Some of the faces could yet be recognized had any friend in the world come to look at them.

After breakfast we had a play with a number of the noble dogs that have saved human lives on this pass, time and again. They were very large, mostly tawny colored, extremely intelligent and kind.

The devoted lives of these monks, and these dogs, is something pathetically noble.