Twenty Years in Europe

Had an interesting letter from General Sherman yesterday.

    “St. Louis, Mo., Nov. 14, 1884.

“Dear Byers: – I was very glad to receive your letter of October 28, from Rome, telling us that you are now fairly established in the Eternal City. Somehow that renowned city did not make the impression on me that its fame warranted, but I was told that it grew upon every man who dwelt there long enough. I hope you will experience that result, and realize not only contentment, but gather much material for future literary work, because I fear your diplomatic career is drawing to a close. It now seems almost certain that all the little petty causes of discontent and opposition inside the Republican party have united with the Democrats and elected Cleveland President. When installed next spring he will be a stronger man that he has credit for, if he can resist the pressure sure to be brought on him, and consulships will be in great demand, for distance lends enchantment, and exaggerates the value of such offices. I have no fear of violence, and believe that Cleveland will not allow the solid South to dictate to him. If he does, and the old Rebels show the cloven foot, the reaction four years hence will be overwhelming.

“We are all very well in St. Louis, and the autumn has been beautiful, crops good and bountiful, general business dull by reason of apprehended change of tariff, but the country growing steadily all the time. My daughter Rachel is in Maine on a visit to the Blaines, at this critical period. Mrs. Sherman is at Philadelphia on a short visit to our daughter Elly, so that the family here is small. I expect to make a short visit to New York and Washington about Christmas, with which exception I propose to remain quiet. Time, with me, glides along smoothly and I am amply convinced that I was wise in retiring just when I did. I don’t believe the Democrats will materially hurt the army, but they will make Sheridan’s place uncomfortable. I visited Des Moines in September and found it a prosperous, fine city. I should suppose you might make it your home, devote your time to literature, and give general supervision to your farm. I’m afraid, however, that you have been so long abroad that it will be hard to break yourself and family into the habits of Iowa farmers. Give to Mrs. Byers and son the assurance of our best love.

    “Your friend,
    W. T. Sherman.”

The other night we were at a private musicale, next door to one of the hotels. Some girls, and a certain princess, played and sang extremely well. In the midst of the evening the door opened and who should walk in? It was Franz Liszt. He was in his slippers just as he had been in his room next door. He had heard the music and had just dropped in. Quite a little emotion was created among us all, when after standing and listening a little bit, he went straight over to the young girl at the piano and put a rousing kiss on her forehead. She blushed, and was stamped for immortality. To her last hour she will remember that approving kiss of the master.

After the musicale I was presented and was glad he remembered me so well from Zurich. He recalled a kissing scene that I had witnessed there as well, and laughed heartily about it.

But Liszt is getting old. He has had his day of great life. What genius and a great deal of work can do for a man in this world anyway! Liszt, with his genius, worked too at the piano like a galley slave, years before any soul applauded.

*****

Yesterday, one of the Bonapartes came to the office on some business. It was Napoleon Charles. He owns the villa Bonaparte and is a rich man, for his villa grounds are to be sold off at great prices for the new Rome rapidly building. I observed him closely because I had been told that his is the real Bonaparte face. He is taller than was the First Consul. His family name is still a power in Rome. It interested me to see one who is closely connected with the Great Napoleon. He wrote me a pretty French note of thanks, and that is pasted in among my autograph letters from interesting people.

CHAPTER XXVII

1885

STILL IN ROME-PRESENTED TO POPE LEO XIII-STORY, THE POET SCULPTOR-RANDOLPH ROGERS-TILTON-ELIHU VEDDER-ASTOR RESIGNS-SECRETARY OF LEGATION DIES WITH ROMAN FEVER-I AM PUT IN CHARGE OF LEGATION-CAPRI-GOVERNOR PIERPONT-THINGS SUPERNATURAL-TALK AGAINST GLADSTONE-SHAKESPEARE WOOD-SENATOR MOLESCHOTT, A REMARKABLE MAN-INTERESTING LETTERS FROM GENERAL SHERMAN-PARTY STRONGER THAN PATRIOTISM; MY RECALL-MONEY LENDING AND TAXES-KEEP OUT OF DEBT.

February, 1885.-On Sunday morning we (myself, wife and son) together with others, were presented to the Pope, Leo XIII. The card of notification told us how we should dress. Full evening suit, with black cravat and black gloves for the gentlemen; black silk dress for the ladies, with black lace veils over the head, instead of bonnets. Our carriage entered the court yard at a private entrance, where dismounting we entered at a side door and went up the Bernini stairway. The Swiss guards, glad to hear their own tongue spoken, were very polite to us. Colonel Schmidt, their commander, is also a personal friend, who had visited us in Switzerland. He soon turned us over to the Pope’s personal body guard. These are young Roman nobles. We were led through a labyrinth of apartments, and put in charge of some of the court officers at the reception room.

“The reception will take place in just thirty minutes,” said one of the officials, and this gave us time to look out of the window, and wonder what part of the enormous pile called the Vatican, we were in.

Outside, the four thousand room building, with its two hundred stairways, looks like an ugly collection of big yellow factories. Inside, it is all magnificence. We were standing in rooms where the Popes ruled Rome, at a time when Rome ruled the world. The history of a thousand years was made and written under this roof. The genius of many ages found a resting place here. Here for centuries God, himself, was supposed to have his only agent on earth.

Just as we were meditating on all this, a rustle of officers entering the room is heard. We are placed in a line, single file, around the walls of the apartment. “You will all kneel,” whispers an official, “as his Holiness enters.” That moment the door opened, and Leo XIII, robed in scarlet, entered the room. Everybody knelt. As he passes the door an attendant draws the scarlet robe away, and he stands before us in white and gold. He is a very old man, tall and thin, colorless in face, and with silvery hair; there is a soft, sad smile on his lips; his clear, steady eyes look out of a kindly face. He motions us all to rise, and then slowly walks around the room, speaking a gracious word to each as presented. An official walks with him carrying a list of our names. The Pope’s half-gloved hand with the signet ring, is held forward for us to kiss. His words are kindness itself. I never saw so saintly a face before. I do not wonder that many in the room are weeping. They are faithful Catholics and this moment is the event of their lives. Some have traveled ten thousand miles to have that white hand placed on their heads with a blessing. To them, the doors of paradise are this moment visibly opening.

Everybody, Catholic or not, was affected. Shortly the kindly voice comes to us, “And you are from America-America-good, far off America,” he says in English, and then changes to French, and Italian. He placed his hand on our heads and blessed us-and, believing or disbelieving-a feeling of a holy presence moved us.

Shortly, a signal indicated that all should come to the center of the room and kneel, and then a blessing was asked on the lands from which we came. It was an impressive moment. Numbers kneel down and kiss the gold cross on his embroidered slipper. An attendant enters, throws the scarlet robe gently over his shoulders again. There are some kindly smiles, a bow, and the Pope leaves the room. Our reception at the Vatican was over.

*****

Last evening visited Mrs. Greenough, wife of the celebrated sculptor. They have lived here many years. She is an interesting woman, but delicate as a lily. She talked much of Margaret Fuller, whom she had known well for many years.

We find many self-expatriated Americans here, first-class snobs, mostly a rich and terribly stuck-up gentry, hanging around the edge of Italian society, watching opportunity to pick up an alliance with somebody with some sort of a title. They are usually ashamed of their own countrymen, even those of them who are here, and regard themselves entirely too good to be Americans. It is a great pity in their minds that they were born in the United States at all, where, likely as anyway, their fathers made their fortunes selling hides and hominy.

*****

March 21.-Spent last evening till very late, sitting on the steps of Frank Simmons’ studio, talking with W. W. Story, sculptor and poet. He is the finest talker I ever heard. Of course, he knows everything about Italy; he has lived here most of his life, and his “Roba di Roma” tells more worth knowing about Rome than any similar book ever written. We talked, too, of America. He lamented that he had never achieved distinction in the United States as a poet. That, not sculpture, had been his first ambition. I told him he did not know how many loved his name at home for the poetry he had written. On my last trip over the sea, a young and discriminating newspaper man had envied me that I was going where I would know Story, the poet. He had committed “Antony and Cleopatra” to memory, repeated it to me walking on the ship deck one evening, and said it was the “best American poem.” The incident gratified Mr. Story very much, as it should.

We spoke of the Washington monument at the capital. “It is nothing but a great, high smoke stack,” he said. “There was a design offered, for a monument, that had some taste, art, grandeur about it, but the mullet-headed politicians, knowing nothing, and thinking they knew everything, naturally threw that aside.”

There was but little outlook, he said, for any immediate realization of true art in America. “There was but one god there-money getting.”

I liked Mr. Story’s generosity of speech concerning other sculptors less famous than himself, and for poets with less renown than he believed he had. He is altogether one of the most agreeable men I ever knew. His studio is full of fine work that brings great prices, but it does not seem to me greater than the work of Frank Simmons, or even some of the statues of Ives and Rogers. There is a sea nymph at Ives’ studio more beautiful than anything else I ever saw in marble.

We often go to the studio and the home of Randolph Rogers. He is an invalid, has been paralyzed, and sits most of his time in his chair; but he has a great, big, joyous heart, and is happy at seeing his friends. His fame is very wide. His “Blind Nydia” is one of the great things in marble. Very many copies of it have been made. They are everywhere. “Nydia” and his bronze doors at the Capitol in Washington, more than all else, made his reputation.

I have met no one in Rome who seemed to retain his real, joyous, bluff Americanism as Mr. Rogers does. He knows his art, but he has not forgotten his country.

His home is one of the most delightful here. He is justly proud of his wife, as she is proud of his art. “She must have been very beautiful in her youth,” said an American innocently. “Yes,” replied Mr. Rogers, “my wife is beautiful now.”

The other morning occurred the wedding of his daughter to a worthy and handsome officer of the Italian army. Every hour he is expecting orders to go to Africa to help avenge the massacre of a lot of his countrymen.

Mr. Tilton, the American painter, showed us a Venetian scene yesterday of supreme loveliness, as most of his water scenes are. I never saw so much delicious coloring as is always in his pictures of the Adriatic.

He sells mostly to the English, and at great prices. He showed me his selling book, and I was astounded at what he got. It was pounds, where others of our artist friends got dollars.

Went to Elihu Vedder’s studio. He received me very coolly at first, because he thought I mispronounced his name; a very important matter. Afterward, he took some pains to show me his work. It is certainly characteristic, at least, and original, and nobody ever misses guessing whose picture it is, if it should be from his brush.

March 25.-Mr. Pierpont, the Secretary of Legation, is down with the Roman fever. Strong and young and handsome as he was, constant late hours and cold stone floors were too much for him. He may never recover.

His coming here was almost a sensation, and no one ever got into “good society” in Rome so promptly. His handsome face, genial ways, good family and fine talents have made him welcome everywhere. He is a son of Attorney General Edwards Pierpont, of New York, once Minister to England.

They have taken him to the German hospital up by the Capitol. What makes his illness worse just now is that Mr. Astor, the Minister, has sent in his resignation and will go home at once.

April, 1884.-Went to the Island of Capri, only a couple of hours’ sail from the most beautiful bay in the world. This is the spot where the Garden of Eden ought to have been.

Went to the Blue Grotto-wonderful! While floating about there in a little boat, I thought of T. Buchanan Read’s lines:

Oh, happy ship to rise and dip
With the blue crystal at your lip

Just mere common existence ought to be a delight on Capri. The combination of romantic scene, delicious air, blue sky, and almost bluer sea, make it adorable.

One should need little to live on here, and I think the peasants indeed have little aside from fruits and olive oil and wine. The young women are strikingly beautiful.

Tiberius, when he built his palace up on top of this wonderful Isle of the Sea, at least knew where to find the beautiful.

Ischia, even more beautiful, if possible, is close by, and we look over and think of the terrible fate of its people only a few months ago.

In front of us is Naples, and, in sight, Vesuvius sullenly smokes away as if to remind us of the eternal peril to all who stay among these loveliest scenes of earth.

We visited Pompeii, with its lifted mantle of ashes and cinder, that have helped mankind to patch out history. I was impressed by the extreme smallness of the Pompeiian houses. They look like little stone kitchens. Everything in the excavated city seems in miniature. One could think of a toy town built of stone, but supplied with everything wonderful of art and luxury.

I fail to see anything wonderful in unearthing Pompeii. It was easy to dig it out of its ashes. There is no lava there. And it would seem a question if two dozen people ever lost their lives in the disaster. It simply snowed ashes for a day or so, and why should people deliberately sit there and smother!

From the top of Capri we fancied we could almost see the temples of Paestum by the other bay, those temples without a history-those grandest ruins on the earth.

They want no history-their’s a voice