Julia Ward Howe Part 30

Sixteen years had pa.s.sed since our mother's last visit to Rome. She found some changes in the city, but more vital ones in herself.

"I left Rome," she says, "after those days, with entire determination, but with infinite reluctance. America seemed the place of exile, Rome the home of sympathy and comfort.... And now I must confess that, after so many intense and vivid pages of life, this visit to Rome, once a theme of fervent and solemn desire, becomes a mere page of embellishment in a serious and instructive volume."

Here follows a disquisition on "the Roman problem for the American thinker"; the last pa.s.sage gives her conclusion:--

"A word to my countrymen and countrywomen, who, lingering on the edge of the vase, are lured by its sweets, and fall into its imprisonment. It is a false, false superiority to which you are striving to join yourself. A prince of puppets is not a prince, but a puppet; a superfluous duke is no dux; a t.i.tular count does not count. Dresses, jewels, and equipages of tasteless extravagance; the sickly smile of disdain for simple people; the clinging together, by turns eager and haughty, of a clique that becomes daily smaller in intention, and whose true decline consists in its numerical increase--do not dream that these lift you in any true way--in any true sense. For Italians to believe that it does, is natural; for Englishmen to believe it, is discreditable; for Americans, disgraceful."

The Terrys were at this time living in Palazzo Odescalchi. Our mother observes that "the whole of my modest house in Boylston Place would easily, as to solid contents, lodge in the largest of those lofty rooms.

The Place itself would equally lodge in the palace. I regard my re-found friends with wonder, and expect to see them execute some large and stately manuvre, indicating their possession of all this s.p.a.ce."

It was Holy Week when they arrived in Rome, and she was anxious that the "neophytes" should see as much as possible of its impressive ceremonies.

She took them to St. Peter's to see the was.h.i.+ng of the pilgrims' feet by n.o.ble Roman ladies, and to hear the "Miserere" in the Sistine Chapel.

These functions are briefly chronicled in the Journal and more fully in "From the Oak to the Olive."

"Solid fact as the performance of the _functions_ remains, for us it a.s.sumes a forcible unreality, through the impeding intervention of black dresses and veils, with what should be women under them. But as these creatures push like battering-rams, and caper like he-goats, we shall prefer to adjourn the question of their humanity, and to give it the benefit of a doubt. We must except, however, our countrywomen from dear Boston, who were not seen otherwise than decently and in order."

A vivid description follows of the ceremonies of Good Friday and Easter Sunday, ending with the illumination of St. Peter's.

"A magical and unique spectacle it certainly is, with the well-known change from the paper lanterns to the flaring _lampions_. Costly is it of human labor, and perilous to human life. And when I remembered that those employed in it receive the sacrament beforehand, in order that imminent death may not find them out of a state of grace, I thought that its beauty did not so much signify."

In the Journal she writes, April 19: "It is the golden calf of old which has developed into the papal bull."

At a concert she saw the Abbe Liszt, "whose vanity and desire to attract attention were most apparent."

Though the sober light of middle age showed Rome less magical than of old, yet the days were full of delight.

"In these scarce three weeks," she cries, "how much have we seen, how little recorded and described! So sweet has been the fable, that the intended moral has pa.s.sed like an act in a dream--a thing of illusion and intention, not of fact. Impotent am I, indeed, to describe the riches of this Roman world,--its treasures, its pleasures, its flatteries, its lessons. Of so much that one receives, one can give again but the smallest shred,--a leaf of each flower, a sc.r.a.p of each garment, a proverb for a sermon, a stave for a song. So be it; so, perhaps, it is best."

"Last Sunday I attended a Tombola at Piazza Navona.... I know the Piazza of old. Sixteen years since I made many a pilgrimage thither, in search of Roman trash. I was not then past the poor amus.e.m.e.nt of spending money for the sake of spending it. The foolish things I brought home moved the laughter of my little Roman public. I appeared in public with some forlorn brooch or dilapidated earring; the giddy laughed outright, and the polite gazed quietly. My rooms were the refuge of all broken-down vases and halting candelabra. I lived on the third floor of a modest lodging, and all the wrecks of art that neither first, second, nor fourth would buy, found their way into my parlor, and stayed there at my expense. I recall some of these adornments to-day. Two heroes, in painted wood, stood in my dark little entry. A gouty Cupid in bas-relief enc.u.mbered my mantelpiece. Two forlorn figures in black and white gla.s.s recalled the auction whose unlucky prize they had been. And Horace Wallace, coming to talk of art and poetry, on my red sofa, sometimes saluted me with a paroxysm of merriment, provoked by the sight of my last purchase. Those days are not now. Of their acc.u.mulations I retain but a fragment or two. Of their delights remain a tender memory, a childish wonder at my own childishness. To-day, in heathen Rome, I can find better amus.e.m.e.nt than those shards and rags were ever able to represent."

On May 26 she writes in her Journal:--

"I remembered the confusion of my mind when I was here sixteen years ago and recognized how far more than equivalent for the vivacity of youth, now gone, is the gain of a steadfast standard of good and happiness. To desire supremely ends which are incompatible with no one's happiness and which promote the good of all--this even as an ideal is a great gain from the small and eager covetousness of personal desires. Religion gives this steadfast standard whose pursuit is happiness. Therefore let him who seeks religion be glad that he seeks the only true good of which, indeed, we constantly fail, and yet in seeking it are constantly renewed.... Studios of Mozier and of Rogers--the former quite full. Both have considerable skill, neither has genius. The statues of Miss Hosmer are marble silences--they have nothing to say."

Greece was before her. On June 17 the Journal says:--

"Acroceraunian mountains, sh.o.r.e of Albania. Nothing strikes me--I have been struck till I am stricken down. _Sirocco_ and head wind--vessel laboring with the sea, I with Guizot's 'Meditations,' which also have some head wind in them. They seem to me inconclusive in statement and commonplace in thought, yet presenting some facts of interest. A little before 2 P.M. we pa.s.sed Fano, the island on which Calypso could not console herself, and no wonder. At 2 we enter the channel of Corfu."

At Corfu a Turkish pacha came on board with his harem, to our lively interest. The Journal gives every observable detail of the somewhat squalid _menage_, from the pacha's lilac trousers down to the dress of his son and heir, a singularly dirty baby. She remarks that "An Irish servant's child in Boston, got up for Sunday, looks far cleaner and better."

The pacha looked indolent and good-natured, and sent coffee to her before she disembarked at Syra. Here she was met by Mr. Evangelides, the "Christy" of her childhood, the Greek boy befriended by her father. He was now a prosperous man in middle life, full of affectionate remembrance of the family at 16 Bond Street, and of grat.i.tude to "dear Mr. Ward." He welcomed her most cordially, and introduced her not only to the beauties of Syra, but to its princ.i.p.al inhabitants, the governor of the Cyclades, the archbishop, and Doctor Hahn, the scientist and antiquary. She conversed with the archbishop in German.

"He deplored the absence of a state religion in America. I told him that the progress of religion in our country seemed to establish the fact that society attains the best religious culture through the greatest religious liberty. He replied that the members should all be united under one head. 'Yes,' said I, 'but the Head is invisible'; and he repeated after me, 'Indeed, the Head is invisible.' I will here remark that nothing could have been more refres.h.i.+ng to the New England mind than this immediate introduction to the theological opinions of the East."

A few hours later his Grace returned the visit, seeking in his turn, it would appear, the refreshment of a new point of view.

"We resumed our conversation of the morning, and the celibacy of the clerical hierarchy came next in order in our discussion. The father was in something of a strait between the Christian dignification of marriage and its ascetic depreciation. The arrival of other visitors forced us to part, with this interesting point still unsettled."

Arrived in Athens, the travellers found the "veteran" (as the Doctor is called throughout her book) in full tide of work. The apartment in the pleasant hotel swarmed with dark-eyed patriots, with Cretan refugees, with old men who had known "Xaos" in the brave days of old, with young men eager to see and greet the old Philh.e.l.lene. Among the latter came Michael Anagnostopoulos, who was to become his secretary, and later his son-in-law and his successor at the Perkins Inst.i.tution for the Blind.

The ladies of Athens came too, full of hospitable feeling. There were visits, deputations, committee meetings, all day long, and in the evening parties and receptions.

Spite of all this, her first impression of Athens was melancholy. She was oppressed and depressed at sight of the havoc wrought by Time and war upon monuments that should have been sacred. Speaking of the Parthenon, she exclaims:--

"And Pericles caused it to be built; and this, his marble utterance, is now a lame sentence, with half its sense left out....

"Here is the Temple of Victory. Within are the bas-reliefs of the Victories arriving in the hurry of their glorious errands. Something so they tumbled in upon us when Sherman conquered the Carolinas, and Sheridan the Valley of the Shenandoah, when Lee surrendered, and the glad President went to Richmond. One of these Victories is untying her sandal, in token of permanent abiding. Yet all of them have trooped away long since, scared by the hideous havoc of barbarians. And the bas-reliefs, their marble shadows, have all been battered and mutilated into the saddest mockery of their original tradition. The statue of Wingless Victory, that stood in the little temple, has long been absent and unaccounted for. But the only Victory that the Parthenon now can seize or desire is this very Wingless Victory, the triumph of a power that retreats not--the power of Truth.

"I give heed to all that is told me in a dreary and desolate manner. It is true, no doubt,--this was, and this, and this; but what I see is, none the less, emptiness,--the broken eggsh.e.l.l of a civilization which Time has hatched and devoured. And this incapacity to reconstruct the past goes with me through most of my days in Athens. The city is so modern, and its circle so small! The trumpeters who shriek around the Theseum in the morning, the cafe-keeper who taxes you for a chair beneath the shadow of the Olympian columns, the _custode_ who hangs about to see that you do not break the broken marbles further, or carry off their piteous fragments, all of these are significant of modern Greece; but the ruins have nothing to do with it.

"Poor as these relics are, in comparison with what one would wish them to be, they are still priceless. This Greek marble is the n.o.blest in descent; it needs no eulogy. These forms have given the models for a hundred familiar and commonplace works, which caught a little gleam of their glory, squaring to shapeliness some town-house of the West, or Southern bank or church. So well do we know them in the prose of modern design that we are startled at seeing them transfigured in the poetry of their own conception. Poor old age! poor old columns!"

There was a colony of Cretan refugees at Nauplia, another at Argos, both in dire need of food and clothing. The Doctor asked the Government for a steamer, and received the Parados, in which he promptly embarked with wife, daughters, and supplies, and sailed for Nauplia.

The travelling library of this expedition was reduced to "a copy of Machiavelli's '_Principe_,' a volume of Muir's 'Greece,' and a Greek phrase-book on Ollendorff's principle." Our mother also took some worsted work, but she suffered such lively torment from the bites of mosquitoes and sand-fleas on her hands and wrists that she could make little use of this. To one recalling the anguish of this visitation, it seems amazing that she could even write in her Journal; indeed, the entries, though tolerably regular, are brief and condensed.

"_June 24...._ We arrived in the harbor of Nauplia by 7 P.M. ... Crowd in the street. Bandit's head just cut off and brought in. We go to the prefect's house, ... he offers us his roof--sends out for mattresses....

I mad with my mosquito bites. Mattresses on the floor. We women lie down four in a row, very thankfully...."

At the fortress of Nauplia, she was deeply touched by the sight of a band of prisoners waiting, in an inner court, for the death to which they had been condemned.

"'Do not pity them, madam!' said the major; 'they have all done deeds worthy of death.'

"But how not to pity them," she cries, "when they and we are made of the same fragile human stuff, that corrupts so easily to crime, and is always redeemable, if society would only afford the costly process of redemption!

"As I looked at them, I was struck by a feeling of their helplessness.

What is there in the world so helpless as a disarmed criminal? No inner armor has he to beat back the rude visiting of society; no secure soul-citadel, where scorn and anger cannot reach him. He has thrown away the jewel of his manhood; human law crushes its empty case. But the final Possessor and Creditor is unseen."

After Nauplia came Argos, where the Cretan refugees were gathered in force. Here the travellers had the great pleasure of helping to clothe the half-naked women and children. Many of the garments had been made by Florence and her young friends in their sewing circle; the book recalls "how the little maidens took off their feathery bonnets and dainty gloves, wielding the heavy implements of cutting, and eagerly adjusting the arms and legs, the gores and gathers! With patient pride the mother trotted off to the bakery, that a few buns might sustain these strenuous little cutters and sewers, whose tongues, however active over the charitable work, talked, we may be sure, no empty nonsense nor unkind gossip. For charity begins indeed at home, in the heart, and, descending to the fingers, rules also the rebellious member whose mischief is often done before it is meditated. At sight of these well-made garments a little swelling of the heart seized us, with the love and pride of remembrance so dear."

The Journal describes briefly the distribution among the Cretans, "some extremely bare and ragged, with suffering little children. Our calico skirts and sacks made a creditable appearance. We gave with as much judgment as the short time permitted. Each name was called by a list, and as they came in we hastily selected garments: the dresses, however, gave out before we had quite finished.... Ungrateful old woman, who wanted a gown and would hardly take a chemise. Meddlesome lady of the neighborhood bringing in her favorites out of order."

Generous as the supplies from America were, they did not begin to meet the demand. After visiting Crete (in spite--perhaps partly because--of the fact that a high price was set on his head) and the various colonies of refugees, the Doctor felt that further aid must be obtained.

Accordingly, the journeyings of the little party after leaving Greece were for the most part only less hurried than the earlier ones, the exception being a week of enchantment spent in Venice, awaiting the Doctor, who had been called back to Athens at the moment of departure.

The Journal tells of Verona, Innsbruck, Munich. Then came flying glimpses of Switzerland, with a few days' rest at Geneva, where she had the happiness of meeting her sister once more; finally, Paris and the Exposition of 1867.

After a visit to Napoleon's tomb, she writes: "Spent much of the afternoon in beginning a piece of tapestry after a Pompeiian pattern copied by me on the spot."

Worsted work was an unfailing accompaniment of her journeyings in those days; indeed, until age and weariness came upon her, she never failed to have some piece of work on hand. When her eyes could no longer compa.s.s cross-st.i.tch embroidery, she amused herself with knitting, or with "hooking" small rugs.

Her sketchbook was another resource while travelling. She had no special talent for drawing, but took great pleasure in it, and was constantly making pencil sketches of persons and things that interested her. We even find patterns of Pompeiian mosaic or of historic needlework reproduced in the Journal.

From Paris the travellers hurried to Belgium, and after a glance at Brussels, spent several days in Antwerp with great contentment. Both here and in Brussels she had been much interested in the beautiful lace displayed on every hand. She made several modest purchases, not without visitings of conscience.

"I went to the Cathedral.... I saw to-day the Elevation of the Cross [Rubens] to special advantage. As I stood before it, I felt lifted for a moment above the mean and foolish pleasures of shopping, etc., on which I have of late dwelt so largely. The heroic face before me said, 'You cannot have those and these, cannot have Christian elevation with heathen triviality.' That moment showed me what a picture can do. I hope I shall remember it, though I do plead guilty of late to an extraordinary desire for finery of all sorts. It is as if I were going home to play the part of Princess in some great drama, which is not at all likely to be the case."

Yet the same day she went to the beguinage and bought "Flossy's wedding hdkf, 22 frc--lace scarf, 3 fr., piece of edging, 4 fr."