Memoirs by Charles Godfrey Leland Part 27

When we arrived at the station I alone was left to encounter the fierce douaniers. One of them, inquisitive as to tobacco, when I told him I had none, laid his finger impressively on the mouthpiece of my pipe, remarking that where the tail of the fox was seen the fox could not be far off. To which I replied that I indeed had no tobacco, but wanted some very badly, and that I would be much obliged to him if he would give me a little to fill my pipe. So all laughed. My wife entering at this instant, cried in amazement, "Why, Charles! where did you ever learn to talk Italian?" Which shows that there can be secrets even between married people; though indeed my Italian has always been of such inferior quality that it is no wonder that I never boasted of it even in confidence. It is, in fact, the Hand-organo dialect flavoured with Florentine.

There was an old lady who stood at the door of a curiosity-shop in Verona, and she had five pieces of bone-carvings from some old _scatola_ or marriage-casket. She asked a fabulous price for them, and I offered five francs. She scorned the paltry sum with all the vehemence of a susceptible soul whose tenderest feelings have been outraged. So I went my way, but as I pa.s.sed the place returning, the old lady came forth, and, graciously courtesying and smiling, held forth to me the earrings neatly wrapped in paper, and thanked me for the five francs! Which indicated to me that the good small folk of Italy had not materially changed since I had left the country.

We came to Venice, and went to a hotel, where we had a room given to us which, had we wished to give a ball, would have left nothing to be desired. I counted in it twenty-seven chairs and seven tables, all at such a distance from one another that they seemed not to be on speaking terms. I do not think I ever got quite so far as the upper end of that room while I inhabited it--it was probably somewhere in Austria. I have spoken of having met Mr. Wright at Heidelberg. He was from Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania. The next day after my arrival I found among the names of the departed, "Signore Wright-_Kilkes_, from Barre, Pennsylvania, America." This reminded me of the Anglo-American who was astonished at Rome at receiving invitations and circulars addressed to him as "Ill.u.s.trissimo Varanti Solezer." It turned out that an a.s.sistant, reading aloud to the clerk the names from the trunks, had mistaken a very large "WARRANTED SOLE LEATHER" for the name of the owner.

And this on soles reminds me that there was a _femme sole_ or lone acrimonious British female at our hotel, who declared to me one evening that she had _never_ in all her life been so _insulted_ as she was that day at a banker's; and the insult consisted in this, that she, although quite unknown to him, had asked him to cash a cheque on London, which he had declined to do. I remarked that no banker who did business properly ever ought to cash a cheque from a total stranger.

"Sir," said the lady, "do _I look_ like an impostor?"

"Madame," I replied, "I have seen thieves and wretches of the vilest type who could not have been distinguished from either of us as regards respectability of appearance. You do not appear to know much about such people."

"I am happy to say, sir," replied the lady with intense acidity, "that _I_ do _not_." But she added triumphantly, "What do you say when I tell you that I had my _cheque-book_? How could I have possessed it if I had not a right to draw?"

"Any scamp," I replied, "can deposit a few pounds in a bank, buy a cheque- book, and then draw his money."

But the next day she came to me in radiant sneering triumph. She had found another banker, who was a gentleman, with a marked emphasis, who had cashed her cheque. How many people there are in this world whose definition of a gentleman is "one who does whatever pleases _us_!"

In Florence we went directly to the Hotel d'Europe in the Via Tuornabuoni, where my Indian blanket vanished even while entering the hotel, and surrounded only by the servants to whom the luggage had been confided. As the landlord manifested great disgust for me whenever I mentioned such a trifle, and as the porter and the rest declared that they would answer soul and body for one another's honesty, I had to grin and bear it. I really wonder sometimes that there are not more boarders, who, like Benvenuto Cellini, set fire to hotels or cut up the bedclothes before leaving them. That worthy, having been treated not so badly as I was at the Hotel d'Europe and at another in Florence, cut to pieces the sheets of his bed, galloped away hastily, and from the summit of a distant hill had the pleasure of seeing the landlord in a rage. Now people write to the _Times_, and "cut up" the whole concern. It all comes to the same thing.

In Florence I saw much of an old New York friend, the now late Lorimer Graham. When he died, Swinburne wrote a poem on him. He was a man of great culture and refined manner. There was something sympathetic in him which drew every one irresistibly into liking. It was his instinct to be kind and thoughtful to every one. He gave me letters to Swinburne, Lord Houghton, and others.

I made an acquaintance by chance in Florence whom I can never forget: for he was a character. One day while in the Uffizi Gallery engaged in studying the great Etruscan vase, now in the Etruscan Museum, a stranger standing by me said, "Does not this seem to you like a mysterious book written in forgotten characters? Is not a collection of such vases like a library?"

"On that hint I spake." "I see," I replied, "you refer to the so-called Etruscan Library which an Englishman has made, and which contains only vases and inscriptions in that now unknown tongue of Etruria. And indeed, when we turn over the pages of Inghirami, Gherard, and Gori, Gray, or Dennis, it does indeed really seem--But what do you really think the old Etruscan language truly was?"

"Look here, my friend," cried the stranger in broad Yankee, "I guess I'm barkin' up the wrong tree. I calculated to tell _you_ something, but you're ahead of me."

We both laughed and became very good friends. He lived at our hotel, and had been twenty-five years in Italy, and knew every custode in every gallery, and could have every secret treasure unlocked. He was perfectly at home about town--would stop and ask a direction of a cab-driver, and was capable of going into an umbrella-shop when it rained.

We went on to Rome, and I can only say that as regards what we saw there, my memory is confused literally with an _embarras de richesses_. The Ec.u.menical Council was being held, at which an elderly Italian gentleman, who possibly did not know oxygen from hydrogen, or sin from sugar, was declared to be infallible in his judgment of all earthly things.

While in Rome we saw a great deal of W. W. Story, the sculptor, and his wife and daughter, Edith, for whom Thackeray wrote his most beautiful tale, and I at my humble distance the ballad of "Breitmann in Rome,"

which contained a remarkable prophecy, of the Franco-German war. At their house we met Odo Russell and Oscar Browning, and many more whose names are known to all. It was there also that a lady of the Royal English household amused us very much one evening by narrating how the "Breitmann Ballads," owing to their odd mixture of German and English, were favourite subjects for mutual reading and recitation among the then youthful members of the Royal family, and what haste and alarm there was to put the forbidden book out of the way when Her Majesty the Queen was announced as coming. I also met in Rome the American poet and painter T.

Buchanan Read, who gave me a dinner, and very often that remarkable character General Carroll Tevis, who, having fought under most flags, and been a Turkish bey or pacha, was now a chamberlain of the Pope. In the following year he fought for the French, behaved with great bravery in Bourbaki's retreat, and was decorated on the field of battle. Then again, when I was in Egypt, Tevis was at the head of the military college. He had fairly won his rank of general in the American Civil War, but as there was some disinclination or other to give it to him, I had used my influence in his favour with Forney, who speedily secured it for him. He was a perfect type of the old _condottiero_, but with Dugald Dalgetty's scrupulous faith to his military engagements. The American clergyman in Rome was the Rev. Dr. Nevin, a brother of my friend Captain Nevin. There was also Mrs. John Grigg, an old Philadelphia friend (now residing in Florence), to whom we were then, as we have continually been since, indebted for the most cordial hospitality.

Through the kind aid of General Tevis we were enabled to see all the princ.i.p.al ceremonies of the Holy Week and Easter. This year, owing to the Council, everything was on a scale of unusual magnificence. I can say with Panurge that I have seen three Popes, but will not add with him, "and little good did it ever do me," for Mrs. Leland at least was much gratified with a full sight and quasi-interview with His Holiness.

There was a joyous sight for a cynic to be seen in Rome in those days--in fact, it was only last year (1891) that it was done away with. This was the drawing of the lottery by a priest. There was on a holy platform a holy wheel and a holy little boy to draw the holy numbers, and a holy old priest to oversee and _bless_ the whole precious business. The blessing of the devil would have been more appropriate, for the lotteries are the curse of Italy. What the Anglo-American mechanic puts into a savings bank, the Italian invests in lotteries. In Naples there are now fourteen tickets sold per annum for the gross amount of the population, and in Florence twelve.

One day I took a walk out into the country with Briton Riviere and some other artists. I had a cake or two of colour, and Riviere, with wine for water, at a _trattoria_ where we lunched, made a picture of the attendant maid. He pointed out to me on the road a string of peasants carrying great loaves of coa.r.s.e bread. They had walked perhaps twenty miles to buy it, because in those days people were not allowed to bake their own bread, but must buy it at the public _forno_, which paid a tax for the privilege. So long as Rome was under Papal control, its every munic.i.p.al inst.i.tution, such as hospitals, prisons, and the police, were in a state of absolutely incredible inhuman vileness, while under everything ran corruption and dishonesty. The lower orders were severely disciplined as to their s.e.xual morals, because it was made a rich source of infamous taxes, as it now is in other cities of Europe; but cardinals and the wealthier priests kept mistresses, almost openly, since these women were pointed out to every one as they flaunted about proudly in their carriages.

From Rome we pa.s.sed into Pisa, Genoa, Spezzia, and Nice, over the old Cornici road, and so again to Paris, where we remained six weeks, and then left in June, 1870, just before the war broke out. While in the city we saw at different times in public the Emperor and Empress, also the Queen of Spain. The face of Louis Napoleon was indeed somewhat changed since I saw him in London in 1848, but it had not improved so much as his circ.u.mstances, as he was according to external appearances and popular belief now extremely well off. But appearances are deceptive, as was soon proved, for he was in reality on the verge of a worse bankruptcy than even his uncle underwent, for the nephew lost not only kingdom and life, but also every trace of reputation for wisdom and honesty, remaining to history only as a brazen royal adventurer and "copper captain."

In Rome our dear old friend Mrs. John Grigg showed us, as I said, many kind attentions, which she has, in Florence, continued to this day. This lady is own aunt to my old school friend General George B. McClellan. At an advanced age she executes without gla.s.ses the most exquisite embroidery conceivable, and her heart and intellect are in keeping with her sight.

VIII. ENGLAND. 1870.

The Trubners--George Eliot and G. H. Lewes--Heseltine--Edwards--Etched by Bracquemond and Legros--Jean Ingelow--Tennyson--Hepworth Dixon--Lord Lytton the elder--Lord Houghton--Bret Harte--France, Alsace, and Lorraine--Samuel Laing--Gypsies--The Misses Horace Smith--Brighton and odd fish--Work and books--Hunting--Dore--Art and Nature--Taglioni--Chevalier Wykoff--Octave Delepierre--Breitmann--Thomas Carlyle--George Borrow--A cathedral tour round about England--Salisbury, Wells, and York.

It is pleasant being anywhere in England in June, and the pa.s.sing from picturesque Dover to London through laughing Kent is a good introduction to the country. The untravelled American, fresh from the "boundless prairies" and twenty-thousand-acre fields of wheat, sees nothing in it all but the close cultivation of limited land; but the tourist from the Continent perceives at once that, with most careful agriculture, there are indications of an exuberance of wealth, true comfort, and taste rarely seen in France or Germany. The many trees of a better quality and slower growth than the weedy sprouting poplar and willow of Normandy; the hedges, which are very beautiful and ever green; the flowerbeds and walks about the poorest cottage; the neatly planted, prettily bridged side roads, all indicate a superiority of wealth or refinement such as prevails only in New England, or rather which _did_ prevail, until the native population, going westward, was supplanted by Irish or worse, if any worse there be at turning neatness into dirty disorder.

That older American population was deeply English, with a thousand rural English traditions religiously preserved; and the chief of these is clean _neatness_, which, when fully carried out, always results in simple, unaffected beauty. This was very strongly shown in the Quaker gardens, once so common in Philadelphia--and in the people.

We arrived in London, and went directly to the Trubners', No. 29 Upper Hamilton Terrace, N.W. The first person who welcomed me was Mr.

Delepierre, an idol of mine for years; and the first thing I did was to borrow half-a-crown of him to pay the cab, having only French money with me. It was a charming house, with a large garden, so redolent of roses that it might have served Chriemhilda of old for a romance. For twenty years that house was destined to be an occasional home and a dwelling where we were ever welcome, and where every Sunday evening I had always an appointed place at dinner, and a special arm-chair for the never-failing Havannah. Mrs. Trubner had, in later years, two boxes of Havannahs of the best, which had belonged to G. H. Lewes, and which George Eliot gave her after his death. I have kept two _en souvenir_. I knew a man once who had formed a large collection of such relics. There was a cigar which he had received from Louis Napoleon, and one from Bismarck, and so forth. But, alas! once while away on his travels, the whole museum was smoked up by a reckless under-graduate younger brother.

_In fumo exit_.

How many people well known to the world--or rather how few who were not--have I met there--Edwin Arnold, G. H. Lewes, H. Dixon, M. Van der Weyer, Frith the artist, Mrs. Trubner's uncle Lord Napier of Magdala, Pigott, Norman Lockyer, Bret Harte, "and full many more," scholars, poets, editors, and, withal, lady writers of every good shade, grade, and quality. How many of them all have pa.s.sed since then full silently into the Silent Land, where we may follow, but return no more! How many a pleasant smile and friendly voice and firm alliances and genial acquaintances, often carried out in other lands, date their beginning in my memory to the house in Hamilton Terrace! How often have I heard by land or sea the familiar greeting, "I think I met you once at the Trubners'!" For it was a salon, a centre or sun with many bright and cheering rays--a civilising inst.i.tution!

Mrs. Trubner was the life of this home. Anglo-Belgian by early relation and education, she combined four types in one. When speaking English, she struck me as the type of an accomplished and refined British matron; in French, her whole nature seemed Parisienne; in Flemish, she was altogether Flamande; and in German, Deutsch. If Cerberus was three gentlemen in one, Mrs. Trubner was four ladies united. Very well read, she conversed not only well on any subject, but, what is very unusual in her s.e.x, with sincere interest, and not merely to entertain. If interrupted in a conversation she resumed the subject! This is a remarkable trait!

The next day after our arrival Mrs. Trubner took Mrs. Leland, during a walk, to call on George Eliot, and that evening G. H. Lewes, Hepworth Dixon, and some others came to a reception at the Trubners'. Both of these men were, as ever, very brilliant and amusing in conversation. I met them very often after this, both at their homes and about London. I also became acquainted with George Eliot or Mrs. Lewes, who left on me the marked impression, which she did on all, of being a woman of genius, though I cannot recall anything remarkable which I ever heard from her. I note this because there were most extraordinary reports of her utterances among her admirers. A young American lady once seriously asked me if it were true that at the Sunday afternoon receptions in South Bank one could always see rows of twenty or thirty of the greatest men in England, such as Carlyle, Froude, and Herbert Spencer, all sitting with their note-books silently taking down from her lips the ideas which they subsequently used in their writings! There seemed, indeed, to be afloat in America among certain folk an idea that something enormous, marvellous, and inspired went on at these receptions, and that George Eliot posed as a Pythia or Sibyl, as the great leading mind of England, and lectured while we listened. There is no good portrait, I believe, of her. She had long features and would have been called plain but for her solemn, earnest eyes, which had an expression quite in keeping with her voice, which was one not easily forgotten. I never detected in her any trace of genial humour, though I doubt not that it was latent in her; and I thought her a person who had drawn her ideas far more from books and an acquaintance with certain types of humanity whom she had set herself deliberately to study--albeit with rare perception--than from an easy intuitive familiarity with all sorts and conditions of men. But she worked out _thoroughly_ what she knew by the intuition of genius, though in this she was very far inferior to Scott. Thus she wrote the "Spanish Gypsy," having only seen such gypsies two or three times. One day she told me that in order to write "Daniel Deronda," she had read through two hundred books. I longed to tell her that she had better have learned Yiddish and talked with two hundred Jews, and been taught, as I was by my friend Solomon the Sadducee, the art of distinguis.h.i.+ng Fraulein Lowenthal of the Ashken.a.z.im from Senorita Aguado of the Sephardim _by the corners of their eyes_!

I had read more than once Lewes's "Life of Goethe," his "History of Philosophy and Physiology," and even "written him" for the Cyclopaedia.

With him I naturally at once became well acquainted. I remember here that Mr. Ripley had once reproved me for declaring that Lewes had really a claim to be an original philosopher or thinker; for Boston intellect always frowned on him after Margaret Fuller condemned him as "frivolous and atheistic." I remember that Tom Powell had told me how he had dined somewhere in London, where there was a man present who had really been a cannibal, owing to dire stress of s.h.i.+pwreck, and how Lewes, who was there, was so fascinated with the man-eater that he could think of nothing else. Lewes told me that once, having gone with a party of archaeologists to visit a ruined church, he found on a twelfth-century tombstone some illegible letters which he persuaded the others to believe formed the name Golias, probably having in mind the poems of Walter de Mapes. When I returned from Russia I delighted him very much by describing how I had told the fortunes by hand of six gypsy girls. He declared that telling fortunes to gypsies was the very height of impudence!

"A hundred jests have pa.s.sed between us twain, Which, had I s.p.a.ce, I'd gladly tell again."

A call which I have had, since I wrote that last line, from John Postle Heseltine, Esq., reminds me that he was one of the first acquaintances I made in London. Mr. E. Edwards, a distinguished etcher and painter, gave me a dinner at Richmond, at which Mr. Heseltine was present. In Edwards'

studio I met with Bracquemond and Legros, both of whom etched my portrait on copper. Mr. Heseltine is well known as a very distinguished artist of the same kind, as well as for many other things. Edwards was very kind to me in many ways for years. Legros I found very interesting. There was in Edwards' studio the unique _complete_ collection of the etchings of Meryon, which we examined. Legros remarked of the incredibly long- continued industry manifested in some of the pictures, that lunatics often manifested it to a high degree. Meryon, as is known, was mad. I had etched a very little myself and was free of the fraternity.

Within a few days Mr. Strahan, the publisher, took me to Mr. (now Lord) Tennyson's reception, where I met with many well-known people. Among them were Lady Charlotte Locker and Miss Jean Ingelow. These ladies, with great kindness, finding that I was married, called on Mrs. Iceland, and invited us to dine. I became a constant visitor for years at Miss Ingelow's receptions, where I have met Ruskin, Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall (whom I had seen in 1848), Calverly, Edmund Gosse, Hamilton Aide, Mr. and Mrs Alfred Hunt. I conversed with Tennyson, but little pa.s.sed between us on that occasion. I got to know him far better "later on."

I here antic.i.p.ate by several years two interviews which I had with Tennyson in 1875, who had _ad interim_ been deservedly "lauded into Lordliness," and which, to him at least, were amusing enough to be recalled. The first was at a dinner at Lady Franklin's, and her niece Miss Cracroft. And here I may, in pa.s.sing, say a word as to the extraordinary kindly nature of Lady Franklin. I think it was almost as soon as we became acquainted that she, learning that I suffered at times from gout, sent me a dozen bottles of a kind of bitter water as a cure.

There were at the dinner as guests Mr. Tennyson, Sir Samuel and Lady Baker, Dr. Quain, and myself. There was no lack of varied anecdote, reminiscences of noted people and of travel; but by far the most delightful portion of it all was to watch the gradual unfreezing of Tennyson, and how from a grim winter of taciturnity, under the glowing influence of the sun of wine, as the Tuscan Redi hath it--

"Dell' Indico Oriente Domator glorioso il Dio di Vino . . .

Di quel Sol, che in Ciel vedete . . ."--

he pa.s.sed into a glorious summer of genial feeling. I led unto it thus:--My friend Professor Palmer and I had projected a volume of songs in English Romany or Gypsy, which is by far the sweetest and most euphonious language in Europe. My friend had translated "Home they brought her warrior dead," by Tennyson, into this tongue, and I had the MS. of it in my pocket. Tennyson was very much pleased at the compliment, and asked me to read the poem, which I did. The work was by permission dedicated to him. At last, when dinner was over, Tennyson, who had disposed of an entire bottle of port, rose, and approaching me, took me gaily-gravely by both sides, as if he would lift me up, and drawing himself up to his full height, said, "I like to see a poet a full- sized substantial man," or "tall and strong," or words to that effect. I replied that it was very evident from the general appearance of Shakespeare's bust that he was a very tall man, but that though the thunder of height had hit twice--the Poet Laureate being the second case--that I had been very slightly singed, tall as I was. _Enfin_, some days after, Tennyson in a letter invited me to call and see him should I ever be in the Isle of Wight; which took place by mere chance some time after--in fact, I did not know, when I was first at the hotel in Freshwater, that Tennyson lived at a mile's distance.

I walked over one afternoon and sent in my card. Mr. Hallam Tennyson, then a very handsome young man of winsome manner, came out and said that his father was taking his usual _siesta_, but begged me to remain, kindly adding, "Because I know, Mr. Leland, he would be very sorry to have missed you." After a little time, however, Tennyson himself appeared, and took me up to his den or studio, where I was asked to take a pipe, which I did with great good-will, and blew a cloud, enjoying it greatly, because I felt with my host, as with Bulwer, that we had quickly crossed acquaintances.h.i.+p into the more familiar realm where one can talk about whatever you please with the certainty of being understood and getting a sympathetic answer. There are lifelong friends with whom one never really gets to this, and there are acquaintances of an hour at _table- d'hotes_, who "come like shadows, so depart," who talk with a touch to our hearts. Bulwer and Tennyson were such to me, and _apre miro zi_, as the gypsies say--on my life-soul!--if I had talked with them, as I did, without knowing who they were, I should have recalled them with quite as much interest as I now do, and see them again in dreams. And here I may add, that the common-place saying that literary men are rarely good talkers, and generally disappointing, is not at all confirmed by my experiences.

After burning our tobacco, in Indian fas.h.i.+on, to better acquaintance (I forgot to say that the poet had two dozen clay pipes ranged in a small wooden rack), we went forth for a seven miles' walk on the Downs. And at last, from the summit of one, I pointed down to a small field below, and said--

But first I must specify that the day before I had gone with a young lady of fourteen summers named Bee or Beatrice Fredericson, both of us bearing baskets, to pick blackberries for tea, and coming to a small field which was completely surrounded by a hedge, we saw therein illimitable blackberries glittering in the setting sunlight, and longed to enter.

Finding a gap which had been filled by a dead thorn-bush, I removed the latter, and, going in, we soon picked a quart of the fruit. But on leaving we were met by the farmer, who made a to-do, charging us with trespa.s.sing. To which I replied, "Well, what is to pay?" He asked for two s.h.i.+llings, but was pacified with one; and so we departed.

Therefore I said to Tennyson, "I went into that field yesterday to pick your blackberries, and your farmer caught us and made me pay a s.h.i.+lling for trespa.s.sing."

And he gravely replied, though evidently delighted--"Served you right!

What business had you to come over my hedge into my field to steal my blackberries?"

"_Mea culpa_," I answered, "_mea maxima culpa_."