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BADEN was perfect in its way, and we left reluctantly. We “did” it quite thoroughly—had a six mile drive to the Old Schloss, a fine old ruin, on top of a high hill, with beautiful views of bergs, valleys, and the town.
Then a visit to the New Schloss, one of the residences of the Grand Duke. We were shown through some noble apartments, which I’ll describe to you in detail when we meet. We went to the Trinkhalle and drank some of the streaming water. The others made faces, but I did not find it unpleasant. Then through the great Friedrichsbad, the principal bath-house. I believe it furnishes every kind known to science or desired by either suffering or luxurious humanity. And so on. At Strassburg, the Cathedral with that wonderful clock! “The half has not been told,” and it does not begin to come up to the reality. The way that cock flaps its wings, stretches its neck and crows is enough to make all created cocks die of envy. At St. Thomas Church, with its magnificent monument to Marshal Saxe; and its most singular chapel, containingthe bodies of the Duke of Nassau and his daughter—the former embalmed, the latter a slowly crumbling skeleton—both dressed in the very clothes they wore! I cannot imagine a more ghastly and singular spectacle than that of each lying there in an air-tight coffin, the entire top of glass, thus allowing a full view.[B]Yet it was not revolting to me, except as the dead were made a spectacle of. I gazed at them with an equal fascination and reverence. We were much interested in the fortifications, great numbers of soldiers and their drilling.
And we did not fail to indulge in the Strassburg specialty of pates de foie gras. I was reminded of a criticism on a juvenile composition of mine by one who knew hownotto withhold the wholesome truth: “Its individuality is not sufficiently palpable.” At Constance we held our “Council,” and the reports from Switzerland being very unfavorable, decided to put it off to a more auspicious season.
Constance is a most charmingly situated and attractive little city. We stayed at the InselHotel, the old monastery, in which Huss was imprisoned, you know; and I saw the cell in which he was confined. It was underground, and its walls were washed by the waters of the lake. I set my feet on that white spot in the slab of the nave of the Cathedral where he stood when he was condemned to be burned at the stake. You remember it is said to remain dry always, even when the rest is wet. Finally, we drove to the stone that marks the place where he and Jerome suffered that dreadful sentence. It is a pile of rocks, all overgrown with ivy and other vines, except where slabs show through bearing commemorative inscriptions.
From Constance to Lindau we had an enchanting sail over an emerald sea, with many a pretty village gleaming along its shore, “like a white swan on her reedy nest;” and then green hills, that soon turned into denser clouds, as it were, and directly, almost in a flash, the snow-covered Alps!
Railway from Lindau here; and such a succession of pictures! Long, green valleys, dotted with picturesque villages; chains of wooded knolls; ranges of dark, pine-covered mountains, overtopped in places with a vast jumble of cones; snow-covered Alps again, thatshone in the sunlight like molten silver! Words avail little toward reproducing such a panorama. Only one’s own eyes can do it even the faintest justice. I hope you have seen it, or, if not, will some daysoon, before you grow an old man. Have had a long, lazy, inconsequential, just-going-anywhere-I-pleased stroll this perfect afternoon. The sky is without a fleck; the air crystal clear; the sunshine just that happy mingling of warmth and bracing quality that makes mere animal existence an ecstasy. I could have walked to the uttermost ends of the earth in it. The streets are wide, clean, admirably paved, handsomely built; fine houses of beautiful designs in a soft, creamy-white stone. Parks, gardens, avenues, open squares, trees, flowers, grass, and grand monuments are innumerable. I felt as if I were under a spell of enchantment. What a place to shrink from was “indoors!” I stayed out till the very last moment.
What a city indeed is this München, the capital of “pretentious little Bavaria!” Think of the days of delight before me in its vast halls of art! I am sure you will, and with an added invocation out of your kind heart for whatever else may be good for me.
L. G. C.
Munich, September 24, 1882.
THIS moment finished the second reading of yours of 22d. Ah! there are some things you don’t have any conception of; for instance, you don’t know how good it is to get a letter from home in a foreign land. I do. Oh! Oh! Oh!
I came in from the opera, Beethoven’s “Fidelio,” in German, in a “rapt ecstasy,” and, in the act of seating myself at our “after the play little supper,” I saw your letter lying on my plate. I am intuitive; I knew it was from you. I picked it up and laid it down with the address on the under side. What would “Goggles” say to that? No; he is not a woman; he is not Miss S——. The French have a proverb that runneth in this wise: “La patience c’est la genie.” If it had been wisdom those keen little epigrammatists would not have missed it so. However, I do not wish to discourage you in the exercise of that passive virtue; rather let it “work its good and perfect work.” Miss S——, not “Goggles,” then said: “Why are you notgoing to read your letter; will it keep?” Of course I blushed and hung down my head and simpered, and—but you’ve seen the process many a time. Now, what would you give to know how soon I got through with that dainty meal, and hurried away to be “all alone to myself,” to pore over the letter that confessed to two “love letters” to another woman. It does not need you or anybody else to convince me I am the superarchangelic creature I was reported to you. I know it myself now! See how good I am to write at this late hour, not finding it possible to put you off to that will-o’-the-wisp time, “a more convenient season.” And so glad of the love letters; not jealous a bit, because they went where I want them to go! “Don’t worry in well doing,” “effuse,” “flow like the lava,” “let all the currents of your being set that way,” and so come into possession of that great estate which all the kingdoms of the earth cannot match—“a noble woman nobly planned.” Oh, please, I did not write those letters for any one but my sister-in-law. She cut them up, and pieced them together again to suit them to “print,” After they were published she wrote what she had done, begging my forgiveness, but making such an appeal in behalfof the paper I not only could not condemn, I even had to tell her she might do as she pleased with my letters to her,only my name must not be known in connectionwith them. You fairly frighten me when you speak of them in the same breath with your friends Mr. W—— and “E. A.” Indeed, I feel timid about writing to you, since you have such letters as theirs. Only, we write to each other for the simple “fun of the thing,” not giving much heed to anything else, don’t we? And, on the whole, I hail from “Old Kaintuck,” and that doesn’t mean cowardice in any direction exactly!
I wish you could have been with me in Nuremberg—my heart city. You’d have seen things too—all that I did not see; and between us there would not have been much left behind. I am going back there some day—ah! that misty future—it may be as the children are credited with saying, though I never heard them, “before soon,” and it may be when I die and am resurrected there. This Bavarian soil has a curiously homey tread. I can easily see how I might linger here, “maybe for years, maybe forever.” So much to do; so many places to go to; so much to see; such food for thought, imagination, fordolce far niente. You know thekind of pabulum that witching state of existence claims, but who can describe it? I am tempted to give you “a sample day” out of this wonder life in Munich. Do I count egotistically when I admit I count on your caring for it, because Icount on the interest of friendship? Did I tell you to expect and excuse repetitions? Think how many letters I write, and every one wishes to hear everything, and I try not to disappoint.
We are fortunate in pensions. I am on Maximilian Platz, and my windows look out on, first, the Schiller Monument Platz, an exquisite memorial platz, all to itself; a semi-circle, with a thick half belt of trees for the background; in front an oval plat of grass, bordered with a bed of flowers, in the center of which stands the statue in bronze on a white marble pedestal. Just in front of it, grown in the grass, is an evergreen wreath; beyond it rise, above a thicket of trees in their rich Autumn tints, the towers of the Wittelsbach Palace, the residence of Ludwig (grandfather of the present king) after his abdication, Brienner strasse on one side and Maximilian Platz (a great semicircular street) on the other. By the way, they converge, the latter here running into the other, and thus making an end of itself, from a spaciousboulevard and driveway, around which are blocks of fine edifices in a cream-colored stone. Immediately beneath my windows is a small triangular platz, abijouof a beer garden, in trees and vines, a gorgeous mosaic of greens, golds, browns and scarlets, and bowers and tables, and chairs and shaded lamps, the kind that make moonlight.
Well, I begin the day with my breakfast in my own apartment, all alone. That’s the custom of the country, you know, not my indolence. With that spectacle to interest and claim my eager eyes, I shall give you day before yesterday. At 10 a. m. Miss S—— and I went to the palace, which means an entire square composed of three immense palaces—the Konigsbau, the Alte Residenz, or Old Palace, and the Festsaalbau—each occupying one side of the square; the fourth being filled up with the Court Chapel and Court Theater. The greater part of all these is accessible, which makes so much to be seen it has to be taken in “broken doses,”so zu sagen. The Schatzkammer (Treasury) was our objective point. We ran the gauntlet of soldiers on guard, a spacious court with a handsome fountain, a kind of cloistered stretch with a wonderful grotto of shells, a maze of smallante-rooms, till finally, in a state of perfect bewilderment, we were taken in hand by the major-domo, who procured our tickets (a little ceremony requiring your cards and a silver mark), and ushered us into—oh! Monte Christo, the Arabian Nights, that stately pleasure dome that Kublai-Khan decreed in Zanadu! We wandered through them all. First, through a long gallery called the Stammbaum (Genealogical Tree), containing the portraits of the princes and princesses of the house of Wittelsbach. The room itself is most attractive in gold, gilt and white ornamentation, what space is left from the pictures—a collection that any family might be proud of. At the end, “Open Sesame,” and a great door flies back, and we enter. I wish I had Ovid’s pen, with which he wrote the description of the Palace of the Sun! Such a blaze of diamonds and rubies, and pearls and emeralds, and all the gems of the earth! There was theHausdiamant, a monster brilliant “in the Order of the Golden Fleece;” and the Palatinate pearl, half black, half white; strings of buttons by the yard of diamonds, a central one as large as a silver quarter, encircled by smaller ones; breast-plates, as it were, of pear-shaped pearls dangling from a mesh of diamonds;crowns of diamonds that had a blinding brilliancy; cabinets filled with vessels made from rich stones and inlaid with the most precious stones; a copy of Trajan’s Pillar it took the goldsmith twenty years to execute; and more of such royal belongings than I could get into a day’s description.
And one thing not put down in the catalogue: As I was standing transfixed by some ornaments inpink rubiesand diamonds, over my shoulder sounded the tones of a woman’s voice in American English. You ought to have heard the suppressed fervor of my exclamation under my breath: “Oh, you blessed American tongue!” I turned to confront a most agreeable countrywoman, just as eager as myself for recognition on that ground alone. I met her again at the opera to-night, and we had another chat. I think her husband is an artist, as they live in Florence, and he told me he had been over here sixteen or seventeen years, and was “longing to get back home.” On leaving the palace, Miss S—— came home; but I wasn’t half ready for indoors—never am except at meal-times and bed-time! So I wandered around the streets in the sunshine, looking in the shop windows and picking up a picture here and there—among
Image not available for display: The Old Kaiser at Historical Window.The Old Kaiser at Historical Window.
them that of the “Vier Konige,” as the old Kaiser calls it, himself holding his baby great-grandson with as proud an air as if it was his own first-born son, with his son and grandson on either side. Four living generations in the same picture is indeed a spectacle to be made a note of.
Another picture was that including the empress, crown princess, and the young mother herself holding her little king. It is a picture beaming with both pride and happiness. That must have been one of life’s happy moments—one of the few supreme flashes of earthly felicity. And on compulsion—dinner, always in Germany a mid-day meal. I am a true Bohemian now; but I was a housekeeper once, and I don’t like to derange the order of a household, so I am always “on time.” After dinner, out again by myself, Miss S—— having a German lesson. First, a call at a book-store for a variety of Munich gossip. The proprietor is a handsome young man—cultivated, traveled, of good family—his father being a captain in the army, and a very genial, well-mannered person. I drop in on him quite often. He has been all over the United States, even to Cincinnati. I did not ask him about W——! As I sauntered out—I doeverything just as the whim takes me—I thought I’d have a droschke drive, so I hailed one and stepped in. Oh! the earth, air and sky of these Munich days! A whole week of them, too, of that kind that makes one exclaim, “Mere existence is a luxury.”
After awhile I dismissed it at the door of the Kaulbach Gallery. It is not a large one, only a large room, as full as it can hold of the sketches and a few pictures of that popular Munich artist. It is on a retired street; a very pretty, tasteful building in a garden. A few, from one to three or four persons at a time, were coming and going the hour and a half I loitered. I am not going to bore you or any one with a catalogue or description of pictures, but one was so beautiful and touching I want you to look at it a moment through the lens of my—pen. A city still in the shadow of the night; gleams of dawn in the east; just floating up into the clear, higher air an angel clasping a little child in its arms, with only the words “Zu Gott;” such a common idea, so simply wrought out, but I could not get away from it.
The sketches were intensely interesting. Some were outlines with pencil or pen; othersquite fully worked out, of nearly all his great masterpieces.
The cunning of his good right hand seemed never to have been at a loss. His portrait, painted by himself, stood on an easel, with three fadeless chaplets placed upon it by that loving homage which honors alike those who give and those who receive.
Out again and on again, turning my feet obstinately from the “home stretch.” Several squares took me to the “English Garden,” founded by Count Rumford,ouruneuphonious “Mr. Thompson.” Acres of greenery in drives, walks, bowers, lakes, streams, etc., right on the edge of the city. Like Kane and the Polar Sea, I stood on the brink but didn’t jump in. I did not quite like strolling in its shady depths by myself. I had driven through, and the knowledge which neutralizes temptation might have had as much influence to the abstinence as the discretion. No bringing myself to the self-application of the word cowardice! Besides, there was counter-attraction somewhere within several squares which I had not seen, Ludwigkirche, with its altar painting, “The Last Judgment,” the largest oil painting in the world, sixty-three feet high and thirty-nine feet broad.Did you know that? I didn’t till the guide-book told me. You are welcome to my hard-earned information. I wish I had time to say something I want to just “in this connection.” Hm! I haven’t; I must hurry on. Of course, the painting is a masterpiece of art. Isn’t that the conventional expression that slips so “trippingly” from the half-fledged tourist? Among the spirits of the blessed is that of King Ludwig, crowned with laurels, attained presumably after his separation from Lola; also that of Dante, the poet of heaven and hell, in a red garment; and of Fra Angelico, the painter of Paradise, in the Dominican robe. I did not give a close inspection to thespirits of the other order. Vesper service was in progress, and I sat and watched the devout at their aves and paternosters, a scene in its way food for rather painful meditation. Such mechanical worship; such slavish superstition! Descending the entrance steps as I left the church, I was struck by their worn appearance. The daily tread of the multitudes of worshipers has left them almost unsafe. Then I lagged along Ludwig Strasse, the fine street entirely originated by that same King Ludwig who had public spirit and energy enough to hide a multitude of faults.
The sun was leaving me so fast I had to turn homeward, which I did as reluctantly as you turn back from some of your long tramps, I suspect. Isn’t a Munich day a rather fascinating span of life? I match the above day by day. Do you know what a large city it is—230,000 population? And how grand and clean and comfortable? I am wishing I could transport it to the United States for myself and my elect ones to dwell in! For oh! such bread and butter and coffee as abound! There! the weakness for creature comfort will not be thrust aside!
Don’t you want to know what neighbors I have? A banker at the end of thisetage, a widower with a cherub of a child, and in the next suite of apartments to mine—a baron! Such a splendid-looking man! If he had only come sooner—you know the adage about propinquity—before I had quite lost my heart! I couldn’t help it. I was taken “so unawares”—not in the least dreaming what would be the issue—when I could not wrest my gaze from that superb creature in such brilliant array. Don’t tell on me! A Prussian officer! His uniform is the acme of taste, gorgeousness and becomingness; his off-duty saunter on the street the ultimatum of grace; his easy, dignified, unconscious bearing the perfectionof deportment. He never stares at one. It was the merest accident that our eyes met, and the damage was done. Our glances got tangled in each other, and the more we struggled the more hopeless the knot. His name? You promise not to betray this weakness—but could I be a true American woman and come abroad and not lose my heart? His name is Legion; for I can’t tell them apart any more than I can help adoring them all—the graceful, gracious, gorgeous beings of gold and plumes and cockades and pompons, and altogethersuch uniforms! For what else were they made, indeed? See how I take you into my confidence? And now then, father confessor, having made a clean breast of it, I shall betake myself to my couch, in the words of “Goggles,” to “sleep the sleep of youth, innocence and beauty.” Did you say you were going to write fortnightly or weekly? The first will be best.
L. G. C.
München, October 23, 1882.
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SAY, how many copies have you of those foaming sheets you sent me from M—— for a letter? And to how many other addresses have they been sent? I am curious to know. They were never evoked by me—of that I am sure. Nor do I attribute their existence to the overwhelming influence of any other special feminine divinity; rather to one of those supreme intervals—his satanic majesty’s own—when
“The d—l finds for idle handsSome mischief still to do.”
“The d—l finds for idle handsSome mischief still to do.”
“The d—l finds for idle handsSome mischief still to do.”
You were alone; you were “in a state of mind;” you
“Sat in revery and watchedThe changing colors of the waves that brokeUpon the idle seashore of the mind.”
“Sat in revery and watchedThe changing colors of the waves that brokeUpon the idle seashore of the mind.”
“Sat in revery and watchedThe changing colors of the waves that brokeUpon the idle seashore of the mind.”
You summoned up “spirits of that vasty deep, red, white and blue;” the flimsy creatures, what were they but shades of all your divinities, the slim maidens of your boyhood, the stately goddesses of your cavalier period, “the pretty widows” of your “old bachelor” era? And sowith the prodding of that flock of shadows and the impulse of your besetting iniquity you wrote that sample letter—good for one, good for all? I can see the whole performance. Thankee, sir; I am not to be mistaken for one of that throng. There is nothing gregarious about me. Just leave me out when you give your “free lunch” feasts of sauce and sugar-plums! You—
But I enjoyed the composition “all the same.” What a pity you have never taken to novel writing. This letter—I can’t call it mine, you see, because it belongs to all of them—ah! this letter “shows your hand.” Believe me, you’ve missed your field in literature. Are you too old to begin over? I ask this because I am beginning to have misgivings in the face of my old sturdy belief that one never outgrew the ability to do if only the will were not wanting. I—I—how shall I admit it? I find there are things I can’t do. Of course it is because one grows old, even with the best intentions not to. No, I never want to; and here I am minus the roses of other days and plus wrinkles and gray hairs beyond all calculation, and seriously contemplating a mouthful of false teeth. Sigh for me! Was ever anything so lamentable? I am so glad you told me aboutyour evening with my dear friends, the F——s. How plain you made me see the familiar room. It was good of you all to remember me so. They are of earth’s choicest—so high-souled, so loyal, so good. I have yet to see the man who does not do homage to Mrs. F——, and the Doctor is one I delight to love and honor. I hope you met my other friend, Mr. W——, of whom I dreamed last night. I was talking to you, and used this expression: “All the wrong he has ever done in his life—all and the only—is to have always done the right.” When I awoke I remembered it. How long I have known him—nearly from the beginning—away back yonder when I was a wee thing in pinafores. He said so pleasantly of that long acquaintance: “The first time I saw her she was so high” (meaning the midget I was) “and swinging in an apple tree; and she swung into my heart, and has been swinging there ever since.” Are not those the kind of words “for remembrance?” How good he has been to me. Some day I’ll make your heart throb, as these human hearts of ours are quick to do, hearing of the great and noble of earth, telling of all he has been to me and done for me in this life of mine, that has been more sorrow and heartache, you know, than comes to many.If you could know him as I do—I think, no—I know you would appreciate my affection and reverence. His life has been a constant growth, grace overcoming nature, the lower giving way to the higher, conquest upon conquest, till I almost tremble at that nearness to perfection which means fitness for that better Elsewhere, the ultimatum of all our hopes and dreams. Here are words of a man about him: “Isn’t his the tenderest, the lovingest, the gentlest, the purest, the whitest and best soul God ever gave to man?” Did ever you know any man speak so of another? Think what mine will be when I give them leave. Do you observe that I speak to you with perfect freedom, having no fear to express my enthusiasm? It is becauseI know youwill not transmute the pure gold of such a friendship into any drosser metal. Ah! I shall indeed be disappointed if you do not meet him. You should call on his wife. You would find her very companionable. You remember her that rainy noon call, I am sure.
Dear old M——! It is looking its best for you, is it? Its best cannot be easily surpassed. Those beautiful hills that I seem to have climbed and scrambled over almost as soon as I learned to walk! How it thrilled me to read your wordsabout them! Ah! you cannot know how they look to my eyes, that always see them in a twofold light—that of my vanished past as well as the present! My husband and I were always sweethearts. I do not clearly remember anything farther back than my love for him. He used to bring me the wild flowers that grew all over them; and we have climbed them together many a time and gazed at their beauty together, and planned the future that lay ahead of us in that wonderful sheen and glow that is visible only to such untried and happy beings. Dear hills! beautiful hills! sacred hills! Yes, I know them in their length and breadth, from their high crests almost to their foundation stones. Did you know I was agrangeressbefore we met? Well, I had that kind of possession of them also. From the top of mine, I could stand by a tall, bare trunk—torso, may I say?—of a monarch in its time, and look westward over the range, including Water-works Hill, to Mr. W——’s. I and my dog did it often; sometimes in the dewy mornings; sometimes the sunny noons; sometimes in the long, tranquil slants of the setting sun. Oh! I know those hills, every foot of them, at all hours of the day, in every light, under every shadow, from their oaks and beechesdown to their bramble thickets; every wild flower, every noxious weed, petrifactions, pebbles! What have they that is not a part of my very being? Do you wonder I love them?
I wish some one had had a long enough memory to show you where I was born, not because of that unimportant event, but because you can see even now what an exquisite spot it must have been. It is “the point” where Limestone Creek runs into the Ohio. I am always thankful I was born on the banks of a river and in the shadow of the “everlasting hills.” We were playfellows, as it were. The shells I have scraped together; the sand hills I have heaped up; the stolen wades in the edge of the water; the skiff rows; the fishing with pin-hooks and worm-bait! Ah! my beautiful river; that you want to spoil to me by crossing against my wish! Is it you who are so “cruel?” If you are still in M——, ask Dr. F—— to show you “the little house where I was born.” It was my grandfather’s, and my father’s is near by. Make some excuse, you two, to get a walk all about them, just to see the views. You will thank me for it, I know.
Why did you not tell me who that “exuberant set” was? Give me the names. Thereis no curiosity aboutme, you see. As for that counterpart, I don’t like to feel there is another so like me. I cannot imagine who she could have been. Next time don’t let her escape you. Clutch her with, if need be, that fierce brigand salutation adapted “Yournameor your life.” There has been an annoying individual of that kind here. She even had the exasperating presumption to have not only my initials, but my name. Think of another “Mrs. Laura Collins” roving around Europe, and getting your letters and opening them. Do you think it was any satisfaction to read her indorsement, “opened but not read by Mrs. Laura Collins.” The only thing that reconciled me was that she was “Mrs. G. L. C.,” instead of “L. G. C.” I am glad she has flown “to other parts,” and hope we shall not clash again. But wasn’t it aggravating? I did not have any mail for two weeks on account of her getting and keeping it. That “Bayerische Vereinsbank,” and I let her have “a piece of our mind,” I can tell you, about it. Don’t be vicious about my “Bavarian officer.” That special one I have not seen again, though I “own up” to an eager scanning of every one I meet. To be sure, I have not the least idea I should know him, but I can’t keep from lookingfor him. It was such a peculiar experience, that rencontre. Think of having to lift your eyes to look at one exactly as if in answer to a call, in spite of yourself, and being overcome in the same instant by an utter helplessness to look away, while you became conscious that each was “slowing up in passing,” for you know not what might happen next. It was terrifying too, because I am sure he felt as I did, that nothing ought to happen, except that each should keep straight on. We did somehow manage to. But you see I can’t keep from telling you everything—after a few rods—I could not help it—I looked after him! not, however, without some feminine craftiness. I made believe I was attracted by a pretty shop window. Oh—h—h—h!
He, too, standing transfixed in the street, was looking back. Thenwasa shock! Then how each hurried away! I plunged into the shop, and quite bewildered the clerk with various wants. I simply did not know what I was asking for. And he! Ah! what has become of him? Alas! I know I shall never see him again! And also, I know equally well—and this is the saddest of it—I should not know him if I did! Could any one be more harmless?
My charming Munich is showing its kinshipto the Alps. The snow is falling fine, thick and fast. I am not quite delighted, because I do not like the “beautiful snow.” I meant to have had one whole year of summer time, getting to Italy before cold weather. But Miss B——’s sickness changed my arrangements. The party I joined were to winter here for study. Now it will be January or February before we see that “sunny clime.” Still, I am told by those who have been there that February, March and April arethemonths for it. I want to see it only under the most favorable circumstances, so am content to wait. To-night we are to attend a concert of the choicest music, given by some of Germany’s finest musicians. We have had two seasons of opera already. I don’t know how many more we are to have. Booth is to be here by and by, andwemean to give him a welcome indeed! As for chronicling all I am doing, I can’t think of wearying you to that extent. But be sure I have no idle days. They are all as full as they can hold. They will do to talk about in that wonderful “by and by” we have laid out in the future. I am sure there are some points in your letter I have not taken up; but I dare not take them up now, lest such length of letter frighten you into breaking off the correspondence. Somuch valuable time as the reading exacts—how can you spare it? Besides, those points will keep!
I shall expect a full and true and most minute report of your entire visit. Don’t keep an item back. It will be ever so mean if you did not write that “next Sunday.” Won’t you be glad you did, if you did, when you read this? But indeed and indeed, I am very grateful for your letters, and am your friend to my finger tips.
L. G. C.
Munich, November 18, 1882.
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YOUR second Sunday letter just received and read “twice over.” You can’t realize the pleasure it gives me. No woman is material for a full-blooded Bohemian. Giving myself, as I am trying to do, wholly up to this life, few would believe what a homesick heart is nearly all the time beating beneath my vivacious words—a heart sick for the home broken up forever; for the dear ones that will meet me no more on any threshold this side the grave. Think how I must feel, reading your words about my lost home—how they take me back to it. I shall never see it again. I could not bear it. Yet I am very grateful to you for thinking to tell me about it; the beautiful tree; the kindly intention to send me a leaf; the plan to see it again. May I tell you such thoughtfulness has the tenderness of a woman in it? My mother would have done the same. Thank you for it. And believe me, my heart has never before so accepted you as a friend. It is very gratifying to me to know thatyou are so delighted with M——. I have always thought it one of the most beautiful, picturesque bits of earth my eyes have ever seen.
Did I not write that Heidelberg, so famous in song and story and guide-books for its scenery, reminds me of it? It is fortunate you are such a walker and climber. No one who is not can know the beauty of this little planet. Be sure to go over all Mr. W——’s hill, or, rather, his chain. I think you will say it is unequaled, or almost so. If you could only have him for a companion, he would show you many points we have enjoyed so many times, morning, noon, and night. There is a moonrise view that would make you speechless with ecstasy. He found it out for the rest of us. One special hillside is full of wild flowers in the later springtime, where in the earlier spring he has a charming little sugarcamp. We have had such frolics and picnics in the sugar-making season! Be sure to find “Maple Point,” and the oak tree with the gnarled roots, where we sat to gaze and talk. You can see away across the river there, even to the home of your friends.
We had quite a snowfall on Saturday. Sunday was a day of steady cold. It and to-day were one of the innumerable church feasts—the anniversary of the founding of the order of St.Elizabeth. You know the story—her great charitableness and her husband’s opposition; how he caught her going out with a basket of food and commanded her to uncover it; and lo! when she obeyed, the contents had been changed into flowers—to meet the emergency! Well, the royal family here, the ladies only, belong to this order, and enter into the celebration with great ardor. The first day, the service is a brilliant one, the princesses in fine carriage toilettes, with their gilt and crimsonprie-dieuand seats, on magnificent rugs, the priests in splendid vestments, the royal usher in blue and silver, and another gorgeous attendant in scarlet and gold. The service is for theliving. The royal dames give alms. The service to-day was for the dead, with a total change of programme; the church draped in mourning, the princesses and their seats and desks, the priests, and a grand catafalque. This was lighted by innumerable tall wax candles, in tall silver candlesticks. The music was low and solemn; the people subdued and sympathetic. I was much interested in the spectacle. Besides, I had such close and satisfactory views ofroyalty! And, let me tell you, royalty looked at me with quite as much curiosity as I looked at them. One of the princesses is adaughter of the Emperor of Austria. You know the empress is said to be the most beautiful woman on a European throne. She was a Bavarian princess, and her portraits here justify that verdict. This daughter of hers, the wife of a Bavarian prince, cousin to the king, is a tall, elegant-looking creature, one of the most so I have ever seen, with pretty brown eyes, sunny light brown hair and fine complexion. Her mouth and nose spoil her for a beauty. She looks happy and good. The king likes her, and sometimes invites her to dine with him, without including her husband! Don’t think there is any scandal; this is simply one of his eccentricities. Hemaybe mad, heisqueer, but his reputation is as spotless as a woman’s. Poor king! You know it was a love affair that upset him. You don’t know how my sympathies are enlisted in his behalf. And he really seems just to miss being a grand being. The concert was a wild German enthusiasm. The handsome tenor—tenors are always handsome—“nicht war?”—sang twelve songs, so clamorous was the audience; and he looked like—“Goggles,” only “Goggles” is even handsomer.
Oh! I have so much to tell you; but yesterday and to-day in the cold, damp church—no
Image not available for display: Louis $3, the Mad King of Bavaria.Louis II, the Mad King of Bavaria.
fire or heat even—have given me a dreadful cold, and I must stop and cosset myself and try to get rid of it. Thank you for your liberality about my religion. You are right in your suspicion. Even my good friend Dr. F—— calls me “heterodox.” Indeed, I believe my only religion is, that the life be right and then the soul cannot be false.
L. G. C.
Munich, November 20, 1882.
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“YOU couldn’t do it again!” I never repeat myself. It would indeed lower my “crest of haught” to find such barrenness or stinginess of entertaining powers as that shows. “Madam, there be those more gifted who make a point of repetition; it is set quite above your contempt,” will you say? Do not I know that? I can quote you the prettiest kink in rhyme “o’ that side of the question.” Listen:
“That’s your wise thrush; he sings his song twice over,Lest you should think he never could recaptureThat first, wild, passionate rapture.”
“That’s your wise thrush; he sings his song twice over,Lest you should think he never could recaptureThat first, wild, passionate rapture.”
“That’s your wise thrush; he sings his song twice over,Lest you should think he never could recaptureThat first, wild, passionate rapture.”
And I could show you in the daintiest script where one “not all unknown to fame,” a latter-day writer of much popularity, as I have seen stated, raves and raves again over “the sweet widows.” Such things stare me in the face and might silence me, so potent is the force of example. But was ever woman made so meek and yet so set in her own way? Even your taunt does not goad me to a second letter of “the altogethery” type. I—I think indeed I only wish to show youI know the trick of that style without the help of wine or whisky. Pitiable pair, your Byron and Sheridan! Please, sir, you insist upon my style so much, you wonder more and more where I picked it up. I am urged to ask, is it all style and no sense? I am sure I told you once I picked it up where I picked up my brains. I don’t see why you do not accept that statement. You will never get nearer the truth, will you?
“True it is, and pity ’t is ’t is true.”
“True it is, and pity ’t is ’t is true.”
“True it is, and pity ’t is ’t is true.”
I re-read the passage at once, and it reads just as I wrote you—“in,”not“within.” I reckon you’ll have to come down, “Capting Scott;” not I “cushion my claws.” But a victory is twice a victory when the victor is generous. I shall not sing peans over your “altogetheriness.” “Poetical justice” is divine when it is on the right side of the river.
How you linger in the land of enchantment! Who would not under the same witchery? “The divine weather” and Hood will help us out—
“Oh! there’s nothing in life like making love,Save making hay in fine weather.”
“Oh! there’s nothing in life like making love,Save making hay in fine weather.”
“Oh! there’s nothing in life like making love,Save making hay in fine weather.”
It is always violent when the attack comes late in life-like whooping cough, measles, etc. But I’d by all odds rather have it then thannot at all. The life that misses that delicious frenzy is a failure. Yes, I see you like the Indian summer. Just a sentence about it from your sympathetic pen, and you make picture days float before inward eyes. The languid, indolent, dreamy lapse of the autumnal sunshine; the ground beneath the walnut trees black with fallen nuts—I can hear them dropping from the branches, and the excited barking of the pretty gray squirrel; “clear, running brooks,” their babble somewhat deadened by their “freighted argosies” of dead leaves; flecks of grass here and there, green as that of early summer; misty distances, half blue, half gold; purplish shadows where the sun does not strike; flocks and herds browsing as if they too were more than half dreaming; farm-houses dotting the landscape, with their great orchards near by—oh! the heaps and heaps of “golden pippins,” “rosy-cheeked bellflowers,” “Rome beauties,” “tawny russets,” and so on; and the cider-press, with its running stream, and the big bucketfuls carried to the house; and the sheets of “piping hot” gingerbread waiting for them!
Yes, that is what you make me see. And maybe one’s sweetheart made it while he was fetching the cider! Be sure they will eat anddrink together! Don’t you see their eyes foaming over with felicity? Bless me! I shouldn’t wonder if you were the very fellow. Napoleon knew all about that sort of bliss: “The happiest hours of my life were those I spenteating cherries with my little sweetheartwhen I was a boy.”
Shouldn’t wonder if they had a frolic shooting the seeds, should you?Itused to be a farm, that place “on the Ohio side” you took in with the “Germantown view.” Perhaps that’s where you got your “Indian Summer of life” taste!
When your gaze went wandering and “lingering lovingly” in that direction, did it light on the two mounds that give their own interest to
“That vale of Aberdeen,The vale of gold and green?”
“That vale of Aberdeen,The vale of gold and green?”
“That vale of Aberdeen,The vale of gold and green?”
There’s a distich of Mr. W——’s for you—I hope so. Were you alone? or accompanied by “an exuberant set,” I wonder. Surely, either way, some one must have told you of the mounds. Perhaps your “most pretentious” prattler would have told you they were antediluvian as well as anti-historic. It is plain she would have given some astonishing turn to the crank of knowledge. And had your exclamatory friend been presenthe might have added to the hilarity of the occasion with some such remark as—I have had so many interruptions, that flash of brilliancy has escaped me. Please put it in for me. You can do that, though you begged off on the cat. Yet you knew! You did not fool me a bit with that pretense of worrying all night. In fact, if you only remember that I am on the shady side—almost shaky—of the autumn of life, the “Indian Summer” which you enjoy, you will forbear any attempt in that direction. How gently you put it—“You’ll know about it one of these days,” just as if I didn’t already know. Some “antique gems” are afraid of their antiquity: others are worldly-wise enough to know it is that which gives them their value: while a rare few shine resplendent in that gracious acceptance of the course of nature, which takes captive “Old Father Time,” and converts the awful conqueror into the loyalest henchman. I at least feel no shame of my plus half-century of years. Though, maybe, my counter weakness is the hope of growing into one of that “rare few,” the beautiful “old ladies” I have known, and loved, and revered, and been made a little friend of when I was young! Their memory is one of my richest treasures. Andnow that their crown of years is hovering over my own head, may I prove worthy to wear it.
Wasn’t I right when I said, “all such gravitate to you as apples and cannon-balls to the ground?” I might have said, more simply, as “the sweet widows” gravitate to you, only I didn’t think of that in time. It was the happier “afterthought.” See how you are attracting all the most felicitous marvels of speech and gossip garnered in the memories of the experienced; now rising to the surface and exploding like bubbles in the froth of talk; now bobbing here and there like cork in the current, as light and imperishable! What store you will have for illustrations in some future “Noctes Ambrosion!” That singular death-bed speech I heard of by accident. The person was not a friend; I just knew her, though she was connected by marriage with connections of mine in the same way. It seems to me she died years ago, though I do not know. Who was “the clergyman’s” wife that told you? Why are all your friends left unnamed? Haven’t they been christened yet? It seems the strangest thing that you should have got hold of that speech! The mere fact haunts me. Was Mrs.M—— the divine musician? Front street west of Sutton runs so far—way down around the point, where you’ll lose sight of the old city, “with its dozens and dozens of agreeable people.” I can’t go prying into every house all that way to find out who she was. Please hereafter mention names.
I never read your side-splitting “French book,” “Petty Annoyances,” but I’ll get it to-day if I can. I have read some of that “bad fellow’s” books for the French some years ago. Since I have been here I have been reading Souvestre and Sainte-Beuve. I always liked the former. His was a noble soul, and I am sure he never wrote a word that he repented of on that too early death-bed. Did you ever read his “Au Coin du Feu,” a collection of stories? It shows his sweet, good, wise spirit. You must have read his “Attic Philosopher.” It had a great run, I remember—how many years ago? Sainte-Beuve I feel sure you know. I enjoy his incisiveness and his (on the whole) impartial criticisms. But I am “over head and ears” in Dutch reading: am now deep in the “Nibelungenlied.” Having seen the Nibelungenlied suite of rooms in the king’s palace, I wished to read the story in the original. I had read it in English “ever so long ago”—long enough for the mists of memory to have made a blur over some of the details. I sat uptill midnight reading it—couldn’t stop, though knowing I should. It cannot need other evidence of its fascination. The frescoes at the palace no doubt added to the interest. They are hauntingly wonderful and beautiful. Even the extraordinary chanting of the story of each by the stolid guide could not spoil the impression. If ever I have a chance, I’ll favor you with a specimen of his performance. Alas! that I shall not have the cut and tinsel of his royal livery! How I wish you could see all the treasures of this “king’s palaces.” They have been gathered from a range of time reaching as far back as his ancestral line, to 1180. I doubt if any other royal line can quite equal it in many things. And the opinion is not held in the interest of my Bavarian blood either.
Now, tell me quick about “the last from B——.” Don’t keep me waiting. “Dogs and children cannot bear suspense,” and I am just like ’em. And when are you going to tell me all about the sweet detaining cause? I am a paragon of a confidante. Try me. I shan’t tell it to one, and then she can’t tell it to two. And so A. P. R. will have nothing to rue. Impromptu sparkle! Catch it and preserve it under glass.
L. G. C.
Munich, December 12, 1882.
JUST see what your last letter has done. You wished my “counterfeit presentment.” Here it is. Will you be pleased with it, I wonder?
Had you called on Mrs. W——, as you should have done, you’d have seen a life-size crayon copy of “that same,” which Mrs. W—— had done in Washington. It is considered a superb picture and a perfect copy, which makes it a matter of inferior moment if it is no particular likeness. It was very well for Cromwell to insist, “Paint me as I am;” but for a woman, if the beauty is there, paint her as she is; if not, paint her as she should be.
The photographs I have rejected, destroyed or hid away from sight forever, because of the lack of this essential! This München artist kept coaxing: “Look brighter;” “smile;” “don’tlook so sad;” “you look as if you had not a friend in the world;” till I tried my best. “There, that is good;” “that will do;” “now”—and he “turned the sun on.” All the same, I am nota picture woman, and I know it. “Why, bless you! of course you don’t make a good photograph.”
“Don’t you know why?” said a friend in Philadelphia a few years ago, ere the brown was silver and the roses had faded; “I can tell you.” I looked an eager inquiry. “When you sit for a picture your face is discharged of all expression, and the glow of the roses can’t be shown in black and white.” But wasn’t he a comforter!
Yes, the home of my childhood, but not the house in which I was born, is gone. I was born in the large old-fashioned house nearest the mill. I think it is now occupied by a Mr. L——. You must have noticed it. It is a pleasant-looking place even now; spoiled as all the Point is by those later houses. When we lived there the houses of my father and grandfather were the only ones for perhaps a quarter of a mile. There were, maybe, a dozen houses in “Newtown,” as it was called then. There was no street except on the river bank in front of our places. The front yards of both were full of grass, plants, flowers and shrubbery. My mother had so many roses, ours was called “The Place of Roses.” Each had large gardens and meadows and orchards.Some of the pear trees are living and flourishing now, over a hundred years old!
I thought seriously of buying the place of my grandfather when I sold my other one; went and looked at it several times, but I was too alone to attempt another home. Now I am sure it was best I did not. You can comprehend how it made my heart ache to hear of that fire. I have not been in the house for years; I think not since my father moved into Maysville, and in all probability would never have been again, but the pain is inevitable.
I have found and read “Les Petites Miseres de la vie Conjugale.” Psha! Don’t you believe him—that ruthless anatomist. I believe I could forgive him if he had not made these “Annoyances” so life-like and comical. I laughed even when I was “boiling over with rage” at his revelations. Wish I was not so indolent; I’d write a counter-statement if I were not! I could, and it would be the God’s truth, just as his is the devil’s truth. But for one thing I’d set you to do that “spiriting.” So unfortunately you lackexperience! But why couldn’t you, any way, just as well as “Ike Marvel” wrote “Dream Life?” Did you ever read “the Pendant” to “Les Petites Miseres, Les Menages d’une femme vertuense?”I got it at the same time, and found it intensely interesting as a picture of French character and life. But I must not get on to books, or I shall write all night.
Do you know Christmas is coming? It is so near it takes my breath away to think of it. This is Friday night—and Monday! I’ll catch you anyhow, “My Christmas Gift.” Isn’t that the way you shouted it as you tiptoed round in the early dawn of Christmas morning, when you were a boy? And hadn’t you already hung up your little sock the night before, knowing you would find it stuffed full of “goodies and things?” I had a young bachelor friend in C——, “a fellow of infinite jest,” and much curious and quaint humor. He was alone at home, so I sent for him to dine with us.
“What did you do last night, John? Were you not lonesome? Why did you not come round?”
“Oh! I read awhile! Then I ate apples and nuts. It was lots of fun to roast the apples and hear them sizzle and sputter and burst, to say nothing of the eating and burnt fingers. And you never saw ‘a stoker’ (I think that was the word) beat me at keeping up a fire withmy nut-shells. When I got tired, Ihung up my sockand went to bed.”
Will you do the like? I hope you will have “the goodies and things,” whether you do or not. Yes, I hope you will have the very best Christmas of all your life. It is to be very “gay and festive” here, and I shall see many novel and magnificent sights. Maybe I’ll tell you about some of them.
A merry Christmas! A happy Christmas! The best Christmas of all your life!
L. G. C.
Munich, December 22, 1882.