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ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL

IN TWO VOLUM ES

VOL. I

W ITH ILLUSTRAT IONS

M anon

ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE CO.

BOSTON AND NEW YORKHOUGHTON , MIFFLIN CO.

1906

L IBRARYUNIVERS ITY OF CAL IFORNIA

DAVIS

H IS S ISTER

LELAND HARRISON

fl.

PREFACE

MY chief authorities in writing the L ife ofCharles Godfrey Leland have been the “Memoirs ” he published during his l ifetime and thepapers he left to me after his death . But I owe:a great deal to many of his relations and friends ,who have done all within their power to aid me .

His sister , Mrs . John Harrison , has come to myassistance in every possible way. With her son ,Mr . Leland Harrison

,and my brother

,Mr .

Edward Robins , she has gone through a vastaccumulation of family papers

,and she has

entrusted me with a large part of the familycorrespondence . For many of his letters

,I am

indebted also to the kindness of the late LadyBesant

,Mrs. Edwin Edwards , Miss Lily Doer

ing, Miss Annie Dymes , Miss Mary Owen , Mr .David MacRitchie , Mr . J . Dyneley Prince , Mr .

J . C . Groome,Mr . T . Fisher Unwin . I am

also indebted to Mr . Charles Eliot Norton forauthority to reproduce a hitherto unpublishedletter by James Russell Lowell

,and to my

publishers,Messrs . Houghton , M ifflin and Com

viii PREFACE

pany; for their permission to quote several lettersfrom Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes . My thanksare also due to Lord Tennyson , for permissionto include the letters of his father ; to LordLyt ton , who has allowed me to print those of hisgrandfather ; to Mrs . Donkin and Messrs . KeganPaul

,Trench

,Triibner and Company, who have

consented to my use of Professor E . H . Palmer’sletters ; to Mr . Barrett Browning and Messrs .Smith

,Elder and Company, who have been as

generous with Browning’s . I have to thank no

less Sir John Stirling Maxwell , Lady BurneJones

,Mr . Hubert Smith , the late Lady Besant,

Mrs . Boker,Mrs . Van de Velde

,Mr . J . C .

Groome,in the case of the letters of Mrs .

Norton,Burne- Jones

,Borrow

,Besant

,George

Boker,Bret Harte

,Francis Groome

,whom

,

respectively, they represent ; and Mr . MacRitchie and Mr . John Sampson

,in the case

of their own,so important in the history of the

Romany Ryes . Dr. Moncure D . Conway hasbeen as kind . M . Bracquemond has placed hisportrait at my disposal . Old friends

,like Mr .

John E . Norcross,who was on the “

Philadel

phia Press ” in the early newspaper days,and

the friends of later years,like the Rev . J . Wood

Brown , have been helpful in supplying me with

PREFACE ix

facts and suggestive reminders . It is a pleasureto me to express my indebtedness to all thosewho

,through their affection for my uncle and

their appreciation of his work,have enabled me

to complete the story of his life .

E . R . P.

LONDON, x4 BUCKINGHAM S TREET, S TRAND,July 1 0 , 1906.

CONTENTS

EARLY YEARS

PRINCETON

HEIDELBERG

MUNICH

PAR IS IN ’

48

YEARS OF STORM AND S TRESS

YEARS OF STORM AND STRESS ( Continued)HANS BREITMANN

THE FIRST HOLIDAY

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

CHARLES G. LELAND, FROM A PHOTOTYPE BY

GUTEKUNS '

I‘

LETTER FROM OL IVER WENDELL HOLMES ON THE

BURIAL OF N. P . W ILLIS

S ILHOUETTE OF MR. LELAND,MADE AT HEIDEL

BERG IN 1 846

PAGE OF LETTER FROM MR. LELAND

PAGE OF LETTER FROM MR . LELAND

PAGE OF LETTER FROM MR. LELAND IN PARIS

PERM IT USED BY MR . LELAND WHEN PROSPECTING

FOR OIL

LETTER FROM JAMES RUS SELL LOWELL

PROFES SOR E . H . PALMER

Two ADDITIONAL VERSES TO S CHNITZERL’S PH I

LOSOPEDE , WRITTEN IN 1 88 2 364

DRAW ING To ILLUSTRATE Two ADDITIONAL VERSES 365

PLATE DECORATED BY MR. LELAND 386

POWDER HORN IN PAP IER-MACHE,MADE AND

DECORATED BY M R. LELAND

CHARLES GODFREY LELAND

CHAPTER I

EARLY YEARS

IT had for long been understood between usthat I was to finish the “ Memoirs ” of myuncle

,Charles Godfrey Leland , if he did not

live to finish them himself. He talked thematter over with me , on the far too rare occasions during his later years when I went tosee him at Florence where he lived , or j oinedhim at Siena, Baveno , or Homburg, where hespent his summers . He entered further intodetail during the last weeks of all which Ispent with him , the year before his death , inthe mountains above Pistoia. He made innumerable notes and minute Memoranda tohelp me. He left al l his papers , all his letters,all his manuscripts , to my care . I was to takeup the thread of the story where he haddropped it, and this he thought I could do thebe tter because , in his published “ Memoirs ,

”

2 CHARLES GODFREY LELAND

he had almost reached the period when fora while I was constantly with him his dailycompanion .

But no sooner did the time come to carryout his wishes , and I re-read the “ Memoirs ,than I felt the impossibility of doing the workin exactly the manner both he and I hadthought i t could be done. The Memoirsare so entirely, so intimately, so essentiallyhis , and he was a man of such marked individuality, a writer with such a personal style,that to add anything would be to destroy thecharacter he gave to them . Therefore I haveleft the “Memoirs ” the fragment the barmonious fragment— they are , and have toldthe story of his life from the beginning inmy own fashion thus fulfill ing the trust heconfided to me , without risk of spoiling thatwhich he had done so well .The “Memoirs ” are , in a measure , my guide

through the earlier years,but I have had the

benefit of important papers he did not haveby him when he wrote . After 1 8 70 , where theMemoirs ” end , there is ample material inthe letters and papers that have come to me .

Many of these were in sad confusion , eloquent of constant work and frequent jour

EARLY YEARS

neys. They left great gaps , with not a notefrom himself or a letter from anybody as aclue for my guidance , until , at the last moment

,many more were discovered by chance ,

only j ust in time for me to re write chaptersalready written without them . Of the lastperiod of his life - from 1884 onward thereis much , almost too much I am , I believe ,the Last of the Letter Writers ,

” he wroteto me once ; and , indeed , his letters to thecorrespondents he cared for were so long andfrequent that, of the number at my disposal ,*I can use but a fraction . This I regret, for Ithink he was never so delightful as whentalking on paper to his friends .I have also the “Memoranda he began

early in the N ineties , never yet published .

Memoranda Notes , Remin iscences , Jottings , Ana, Memorials ,Anecdotes , Comments ,

is the heading to one of the volumes , andthere could be no better description . Sometimes he put down the events of the day

,

sometimes he recalled the events of days longpast. More often he criticised the books h ewas reading, Copying the pas sages that struckhim , or sketched the scheme of books he waswriting, even elaborating them into the form

4 CHARLES GODFREY LE LAND

they took in print. Anything and everything—from the last discovery in science which hadinspired him to the last kind of gum or colourhe was using in his decorative work wentinto the “ Memoranda.

” And he illustratedthem : with initial letters and borders in penand-ink or brilliantly illuminated , with printsand curious advertisements out of the papers ,for one reason or another useful to him . Hepasted in letters he wished to preserve . Hefound a place for whatever was strange orodd , from the menu of an unusual dinner tothe latest broadside issued in Florence . Nowonder the Memoranda ” run to many manuscript volumes . I t is in turning over theirpages that I have most despaired of makingother people see him and know h im as he was .

His interests were wide and varied , and onlya writer as many-S ided could do full justice toall his intellectual adventures . There wereso many subjects he mastered of which myknowledge— if I have any—is S l ight, thatI can only hope to Show what they were tohim and how he was influenced by them.

One other explanation I ought to make . IfI have less knowledge than my task demands ,on the other hand , no such fault can be found

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heaven, and so , according to Catholics and

Buddhists , it is the luckiest birthday in theyear. I t was like him to take hardly lesssatisfaction in knowing that the ceremoniesperformed over him , before he was many daysold , were those of all others he would havechosen for himself had choice then been posS ible . In both the Memoirs ” and the Memoranda he tells how he was carried up to thegarret by his old Dutch nurse , who was saidto be a sorceress , and left there with a B ible,a key

,and a knife on his breast, l ighted can

dles , money, and a plate of salt at his headrites that were to make luck doubly certainby helping him to rise in life, and becomea scholar and a wizard . Even if this meantless to him than I suppose

,i t has the value

of appropriateness . I t is what might be ex

pected, as a baby, of the man who was calledMaster by witches and Gypsies , whose pockets were always ful l of charms and amulets ,who owned the B lack S tone of the Voodoos,who could not see a bit of red string at hisfeet and not pick it up

, or find a pebble witha hole in it and not add it to his store,who , in a word , not only studied witchcraftwith the impersonal curios ity of the scholar,

EARLY YEARS 7

but practised it with the zest of the in itiated .

Had it occurred to him , he might have seen aS ign in the year 1 8 24 as well as the dayof his birth . For it was at least one of the“ strange coincidences ” he loved, that thisshould have happened to be the year whenPhiladelphia, his native town , founded boththe Franklin Institute , devoted to the causeof education for which he was later to work ,and the Pennsylvania Historical Society, thecollector, as he was to become , of the facts ,legends , and relics of the past . But, magicand coincidence apart, nothing counted formore in the influences that made him whathe was , than the town in which he was born ,where his youth and childhood were spent.Philadelphia is still apt to strike the stran

ger as the one big American city fortunateenough never to be in a hurry. But if thepeace Penn brought with him has survived

,

as every Philadelphian hopes it always wil lsurvive , at no time has it been a synonymforinaction. Throughout Colonial days , Philadelphia never rested from its labours ; i t wasstirred to its depths by the Revolution ; andafter its brilliant interval as capital , though thequiet that followed may suggest by contrast a


period of depression , i t was all the while growing into the great manufacturing and artistic centre of to-day. But this growth , duringthe first half of the last century, brought littleexternal change . The town remained muchas the Revolution had found it : everywherethe Colonial picturesqueness , everywhere theold landmarks with their associations and traditions ; everywhere, among the people , theold Quaker repose , mistaken by the ignorantfor somnolence . To the boy whose life was indreams , there was inspiration in the Friendlycalm ; the past that fascinated him was themore real because he saw it all about him .

How deeply the old-fashioned beauty andtranquill ity of the Quaker C i ty coloured histhoughts and feel ings , as he wanderedthrough its drowsy streets and squares , isshown in the tenderness with which , whenfar away, he always looked back to it. During the latter part Of his life , the Rye maynot have lived there . He found certain thingsthat suited him better in London , othersmore to his purpose in Florence . But h ismemories were ever vivid of the well-shadedpeaceful city ” of his childhood , of i ts streetslined with stately Colonial mans ions or li ttle

EARLY YEARS 9

red and black brick houses, and the gardenssweet in summer with magnolias and honeysuckle and roses , where hummingbirds andscarlet tanagers and orioles and blue andyel low birds

,not yet banished by the sparrow,

flitted here and there among the flowers , andswallows darted away and across the broadstreets . He returns to the description againand again in his Memoirs z

” As it recursto me , the spirit which was over Philadelphiain my boyhood , houses , gardens , people , andtheir l ife

, was strangely quiet , sunny, andquaint, a dream of olden time drawn into modern days . The Quaker predominated , andhis memories were mostly in the past ; ours,as I have often said , was a city of great trees,which seemed to me to be ever repeating theirold poetic legends t o the wind , of Swedes ,witches , and Indians . And a little furtheron , “ The characteristics of old Philadelphiawere so marked , and are, withal , so sweet inthe memory, that I cannot help lingeringon them He remembered everything : thegreen shade before each house ; the fireflies ofsummer nights ; the goldfish he caught in theSchuylkill ; the whales seen by old people ofhis acquaintance in the Delaware ; the Peale

IO EHARLES GODFREY LELAND

Museum,with its dark galleries , its stuffedz

l ions and tigers , its skeletons of stil l moreawful beasts and birds , a place of deliciousfears ; the flowers and fragrance of Bartram

’sgarden

,loved by many other Philadelphians

no less well ; the wild luxuriance of the valleyof the Wissahickon ;— all old Philadelphiais in these memories . And he could notkeep them out of his letters to me while hisMemoirs ” were going through the press .From the Bagni di Lucca, he wrote in thesummer of 1 893 :

“ I wish I had thought ofit— I would have made more of old Philadelphia. Should I ever return there, I wil l

f ut all my mar t into a book on the subjectand write it al l in flowers , perfumes— reedsin the rivers quaint old golden brown evenings the scent of buckwheat cakes bak ingin the early morning— magnolia fragrancemingled with roasting coffee ghosts of bygone Cadwaladers and Whartons and memories of pretty Quaker girls in the sunse tlight on Arch S treet. There are not manyliving now who can do it.”

And he liked to think that these memoriescarried him back to a time when elderly menwore queues and sat over their Madeira after

EARLY YEARS I I

dinner,— the Madeira for which Philadelphiawas as famed as for its West India turtles ;when “ fifty thousand dollars entitled a manto keep a carriage and be classed as quality ’

by the negroes z” when Fredrika Bremer’s

novels were popular, and her Count Bruno ”

apt to be discovered in the Swedish countwho strayed by chance to Philadelphia ; whenyo ung ladies worked their samplers , warbledTom Moore ’s melodies , and faint ed on th eslightest provocation . He could never forget how a famous belle who lived next doorswooned the first time N . P . Willis came tocall upon her . The postman stil l blew hishorn , the watchman still called the hour andthe weather all night long . The song of thehominy man

De hominy man is on his way,Frum de Navy-Y ardW id his barman) !

mingled with the hell of the muflin man , thecries of Hot corn Pepper-Pot Beautiful clams ! Sweep-oh and the loudTra-la-la, la-la-la-loo !

” of the darkey withlemon ice-cream an ’ wanilla too S teamboats were very new,

- his father had beenin the first that was a success on the Dela

1 2 CHARLES GODFREY LELAND

ware ; he himself made the first j ourney onthe first rai lroad out of Philadelphia . Andpeop le were still to be seen , and met, andtalked with , who brought the boy very closeto the Revolution . As soon as he could nuderstand , he was told how, a mere baby, hehad been held up at the window to look atLafayette, then on the second visit , “ as aveteran ,

” to the “ great and beautiful town ofPhiladelphia, Where he had first been welcomed “ as a recrui t . Many friends of theboy’s father had known Washington and Jefferson ; one could talk as intimately of theheroes of the French Revolution ; and whenthe boy was old enough he was allowed to si tand listen to their stories after dinner. Therewere two nieces of Benjamin Franklin ’s Whooften dropped in to tea with his mother, andanother ladywho had been educated in Franceand had actually seen Napoleon . Even theporter in his father’s store - his father thenwas a commission merchant— seemed tomove in the same wonderful past , for he hadspoken to Talleyrand -when Talleyrand l ivedin Philadelphia. Once , too, a moment neverto be forgotten , the boy Shook hands withG . R. T. Hewes , the last of the “ Boston

EARLY YEARS 1 3

Tea-Party once he saw with his own eyesCharles Carroll of Carrollton , the last of thesigners of the Declaration of

,Independence .

Nor was it less strange to think that BishopWhite , whom he sometimes met, had knownand talked with Dr. Johnson in far London .

The past was with the boy everywhere , indoors as well as out. There was not a houseof the many Into which his father moved ,one after the

'

other, without its romance . Hewas born in the “ Dolly Madison house ”

on Chestnut S treet be low Third , where thePresident’s wife had l ived in her girlhood .

He was hardly more than a baby when thefamily went to Mrs . S hinn ’

s in S econd S treet,but, when he wrote his “ Memoirs ” almostseven ty years after, he still remembered itsgarden full of flowers, and the parlour fireplace with the old Dutch tiles from whichhe learned the story of Joseph and his brethren and ! Esop’s Fables . Then came the housein Fifth S treet , with windows looking, almostdirectly opposite , to the O ld S tate Houseand , a little further, to the L ibrary, wherethere was the statue of Franklin which , asall Philadelphia knew, came down from itspedestal when i t heard the clock strike mid


night,—it was Penn ’s statue in front of the

Pennsylvania Hospital , and the hour wassix

,for the children of my generation . And

then the house in Washington S quare , wherehe had the McClellanS for neighbours , theyoungest, George , figuring in the Memoranda as “ a very j olly, very average sort ofboy

,giving no promise of his great future , or

his great failure ,” and where the windows

commanded the square , of old a potter’s

field, haunted by the spirits of the victimsof yellow fever buried there So each house ,for the boy, was a new link with : the past.Nor was the marvellousever very far away.

Not only did statues walk, but there weregreat marble dogs in Race S treet by whichthe small boy who was wise ran quickly, forthey howled when anybody in the neighbourhood died ; a dreadful sound , surely, even forgrown-up people to hear. Then , there wereIndians who came from their graves to holdtheir weekly market in Independence Square ,and , had he only waked at the midnight hour,he might (who knows ?) have seen , from theFifth S treet windows , the statue of Franklinstalking among their shadows . There wasthe Quaker girl , too , whose ghost on summer

EARLY lYEARS 1 5

nigh ts wandered among the flowers in thegarden of the old Pennington House , a ghostno one need have been afraid of. These andother pleasant terrors lurked at every corner,in every open place of the town . In the quietparlour at home he heard of worse thanghosts . For often the gossip of his motherand her friends , over their tea, went back tothe days before Penn , when there was no

Quaker City on the banks of the Delaware,but a little colony of Swedes , and the womenwere mostly witches who would go flying offon broomsticks to join in the revels on theHudson . No one knew this gossip better, orhad more awful tales to tel l , than Miss E l izaLeslie , who wrote the most practical cookbook ever published, and one of the mostpopular, too , as I have learned to my cost,the first edition being beyond reach . If anauthoress of such strong common-sense couldbelieve in these things , what was to be ex

pected of the small boy who , tremblingly, hungon her every word ? And when he investedin the D ime Novels of the day, half the timeit was to read some horror of the Salemwitches ; when he wandered into the kitchen ,Irish servants whispered of fairies , or old col


oured women muttered Voodoo incantations .” One there was , a cook , who had goneso far as to put “ a spell of death on all whodared to take her place.But, had there been no ghosts , no witches ,

no devil-lore , th e boy’s instinctive love of the

supernatural and the mysterious must stillhave been strengthened in the atmosphere ofPhiladelphia. The town had been foundedby Penn that he and his people might followundisturbed the inward light, and one truththis light had revealed to them was the rightof freedom of bel ief even for those who didnot happen to believe as they did . Therefore ,to Philadelphia and all Penn ’s country, seersand mystics, whose visions and creeds werenot tolerated in their own countries , had hurried . Quietism , swept from Europe , t ook rootafresh and flourished there . Dunker monasteries rose at Ephrata. Moravian colonieswere established at Nazareth and Bethlehem .

Pastorius and his people went their contem

plative ways in near Germantown . In the forests there were hermits like the monks of oldin the desert. On the hills above the W issah ickon men sought the Woman of the Wilderness while preparing for the Millennium her


rare Sport for the young fisherman along theSchuylkill . In the fall , there were reed birdsto shoot in the marshes below the town . Andalways , at all times of the year, there were nearwoods to wander in , a beautiful wild country, where the boy

’s love of nature strengthened with his love of the past and the Unknown .

Perhaps he owed the feel ing for Nature,

that played so large a part in his development, even more to the many summers hespent in the North . Both h is father andmother, though l iving in Philadelphia, wereof old New England stock . His father wasdescended from Henry Leland , one of thePuritans who came to America in 1636 andsettled in Massachusetts , though some sayHenry had been preceded by a stil l earlieremigrant, Hopesti ll Leland , whose name tell sthe story of his coming, and who was the firstwhite settler in New England : as noble an

cestors these as the De Bussli who , if tradition may be trus ted , crossed to Englandfrom Normandy with the Conqueror, and forhis services was given the manor of Leland ,from which the family took their name . JohnLeland , the antiquary, Charles Leland , the

EARLY YEARS

Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries inCharles I ’s time , were other ancestors theRye delighted to claim .

His mother was a Miss Godfrey. TheGodfrey family belonged originally to RhodeIsland

,where the Puritan received an inter

mixture of French Huguenot blood , by nomeans to its disadvantage

,while one ances

tress, i t pleased the Rye to remember, married a High German ,

” a doctor with a reputation for sorcery, my mother’s opinionwas that this was a very strong case of atavism ,

and that the mysterious ancestor hadthrough the ages cropped out in me .

” Hewas, the Rye always fancied , WashingtonI rving’s High German doctor who laid themystic spell on S leepy Hollow, and I , for one ,have no desire to question what ought to havebeen , if i t were not. The Godfreys moved toMassachusetts , where the grandfather, Colonel God frey, after fighting in the War of theRevolution , was for a while aide-de-camp tothe governor

,and where an aunt and uncle

Godfrey still l ived in Milford,not far from

Holliston, Ol iver Leland’s farm .

Scarcely a summer passed that the Philadelphia family did not divide a visit of several


months among the different relatives inDedham and Milford , Mendon and Holliston .

The journey—by stage-coach , nights spenton the way at Princeton , Perth-Amboy, andProvidence—was in itself a holiday. Andonce arrived at the journey ’s end , nothing butpleasure was in store for the boy, in whom ataste for adventure mingled with his love ofmysticism . All the Lelands had been fightersin their time . All our family, without a breakin the record , have successively taken turns atfighting, and earned our pay as soldiers sincetime lost in oblivion .

” Holliston had beenonce a guard-post against the Indians, “whereall the men were soldiers , ever at war Thegreat-grandfather had served in the FrenchWar, and had been kept prisoner an entirewinter among the Indians , from whom he hadlearned the Algonkin tongue, as the greatgrandson was to learn it under more comfortable conditions . The grandfather, O l iver,great, grim , and taciturn to behold , yet witha good heart

,and not devoid of humour, had

fought in the War of the Revolution , and hadbeen at Princeton

,and at Saratoga for Bur

goyne ’s’

surrender . O thers of the family hadfigured at Lexington and Bunker Hill ; and

EARLY YEARS 2 1

the grandfather’s friends were almost all veterans

,as full of tales of battles as himself. In

the very air the boy breathed was the romanceof war. And the stories of the great-grandfather among the Algonkins were all the morereal to him , because on his uncle Seth Davenport’s large , old-fashioned farm at Mendonnear by there were Indians among the labourers , one , Rufus Pease , he could recall inhis Memoirs ” as a very dark , ruddy gypsywith a pleasant smile ” Probably this wasthe beginning of the friendship with the Indians that led in the end to his ini tiation intothe tribe of the wild Kaws of the Westernplains

,and his close all iance with the peace

ful Passamaquoddies weaving their basketsin the pine woods of Bar Harbor and Campohello .

Of the home life on the New Englandfarms , also, he retained many happy memories ,—memories of simple old homesteads“ delightfully comfortable , old-fashioned , andin a way beautiful ; of halls hung with familyportraits in antique dress ; of cool dairies andlarge gardens ; of quiet summer evenings inthe parlour with his cousins at the piano ; ofvisits to neighbours with his mother ; of old


sporting uncles who took “ Bell ’s L ife ,” of

other uncles who wore scarlet waistcoats , orwho seemed altogether to belong to the timeof Cromwell ; of cousins so gentle that thewild birds came to feed from their hands ,memories that ever had to him “ somethingof the ckz

'

aroscuro and Rembrandt colour andcharm of the M’

cihrchen or fairy tale .

”

But best of all were the days when hewandered by himself, fishing, stroll ing in thebeautiful wild places among rocks and fields ,or in the forests by the river Charles . “ I wasalways given ,

” he says in the Memoirs ,”

to loneliness in gardens and woods when Icould get into them , and to hearing wordsin birds ’ songs and running or falling water .”

He, anyway , would have understood MissPeabody, destined to become more famous asMrs . Hawthorne , when , about the same time ,she described Dedham as holy country,

”

where one could be alone with the trees andbirds . I t was this loneliness that made thelong summers on the New England farmsso dear to him , not only in his boyhood butforever after. “ During more than one thirdof a l ife which began in 1 8 24 , he wrote inhis Preface to Kuléskap,

” his last book, I

EARLY ; YEARS 23

have passed almost annually over the continent of Europe . I have lived for the pastfifteen years in Florence , in touch with theApennines , or oppos i te Bellosguardo , sung bymany a poet, and the Alps and castled cragsof the Rhine come to me often in my dreams ;yet I never found .in i t all that strange andsweet charm like a song without words whichhaunts the hills and valleys of rural NewEngland . Throughout the Memoranda,

”

i t seems as if he were trying to analyse anddefine this charm in order to understand itthe better himself, so ful l are th ey of descriptions of the land that for him lay under “ themystic spell of S leepy Hollow,

” so full oflegends of elves and spirits and the strangethings that, in his fancy, ever haunted it. Forit was the unseen that drew him to Nature ,j ust as i t was the extraordinary that fascinatedhim in every-day life . I t is characteristic thatin the midst of these stories he should breakoff, of a sudden as it appears to the reader,but as though to him there were no abrupttransition , to tel l of his own strange experiencein the full daylight of his uncle ’s store . W h erever he went , he could not get away, did notwant to get away, from the supernatural .


Once , when seated , studying an Italiangrammar on a box , an iron counterpoise , longand narrow, weighing nearly fifty pounds , fellfrom the highest loft, touching my hair asit fell— shattered the box on which I sat,and rebounding thirty feet broke through theplaster of the wall. I escaped death by halfan inch . Close escape from death

,you

say. Yet if we knew all the secrets of ourmechanism , of physiology, Of what goes onunseen around us It may be that we makeas narrow escapes daily.

” The unseen,the

strange , the extraordinary, that was whatreconciled him to life , from boyhood whenthis incident occurred , to old age when thelines recording it were written .

I t was thus , whether in Philadelphia, orin New England , the boy grew up : l ivingmuch in the past and with Nature , ever conscious of supernatural influences , seekingthe strange by preference

,and from the mo

ment he could read at all, —he learned hisletters in the melancholy l ittle New EnglandPrimer that would not let the youngest forget how

In Adam ’s fallWe sin-ned all,


tleman of many excellent qualities , althougha publisher.”

The one letter surviving from his schooldays is dated “ Jamaica Plain , Oct. 2 2nd

He was only in his twelfth year, butwhat was to be his l ifelong study of languages and drawing had begun . As the firstrecord of the dawning in him of a preference,or a passion , from which much was to come ,or as the first record from him of any kind,these few lines , in big, round , schoolboy writing, deserve a place .

CHARLES GODFREY LELAND TO MRS . CHARLES LELAND

DEAR MOTHER, S ince I was at Dedhamlast , I have begun to study French , Latin ,and drawing, and will next begin Spanish .

My French is very easy. I t is the same thatI used to study at Mrs . Dorr’s school . I wishthat when you go to Philadelphia you wouldsend me all my French books . We have thescarlet fever very bad here , three childrenhave died of it in the village , and it is in sixhouses. I remain your affectionate son ,

CHARLES G. LELAND.

To this was added by some one , most

EARLY YEARS 27

l ikely by Mr. Greene, his long experience having taught him to understand mothers andtheir fears , “All well in the house . None ofthe day scholars sick .

”

One other glimpse of his school-life thereremains in

'

a letter from his father, dated inthe Novemberof ,

.the following year ; a pleasant glimpse, for the father tel l s him , I willtry to be with you in time to go to Hollistonfor the Tl mnésg z

’

w’

ng S upper we promised totake with Grandfather.

” The importance ofthat we, any schoolboy would appreciate .

The happiness of school-days has passedinto a proverb , but it is only for the childrenof rude health and average mind . The Rye ,as a child and youth , was delicate, growingtoo fast into the man of great height andhuge frame that Philadelphia will not soonforget. “A tall and yet weak boy is the rimedamnée of any school, and the best of boysare inhuman , is h is comment in writing ofhis school-days , and in the Memoranda ”

he~

recalls how,

“ between the doctor and myschoolmates , I wished myself dead a thousand times in a week.

” Moreover,he had any

thing but an average mind . Many things heknew and unde rstood beyond his years : but


the things for which good boys at school gotgood marks he did not know

,and , what was

worse,could not learn . To the master, whose

business was to dri ll the multiplication tableinto his head , “twice two ” recited correctlywas worth all the old English ballads in theworld . But twice two ” was j ust what theboy

, wh o had most of English literature athis fingers ’ ends , could not grasp .

“ I couldnever learn the multiplication table. Thereare things which the mind , l ike the stomach ,rej ects without the least perceptible cause orreason .

”

The things his mind digested with phenomenal ease helped him in some classes ,were terribly against him in others

,and he

paid bitterly for what his masters consideredhis stupidity. They were not all cruel l ikeEastburn , who was the coarse brutal fiend ,

”

and Hurlbut, whose school was known asHurlbut’s Purgatory ; of the Friends amongthem he spoke only with praise for their kindness . Walker, too , was “ a good kind man .

”

But kindness is not always sympathy,and

sympathy, or its substitute , was given himonly by Hunt and by Bronson Alcott. Hunt,afterwards editor of L ittell ’s ,

” long the Amer

EARLYlYEARS 29

ican short cut to contemporary literature ,was,as might have been expected , “ an extensive ,desultory reader : a schoolmaster wh o forcedhis pupils to think , who explained A ldusesand Elz evirs to at least one of their numberand introduced him to Cornel ius Agrippa, astrange acquaintance to make in a Ph iladelphia school three

'

quarters of a century ago .

A lcott the mystic , the transcendentalist, was“ the most eccentric man who ever took it onhimself to train and form the youthfulmind .

”

He believed in teaching by “moral influenceand “ sympathetic intellectual communion ,and by talking and oh

,heaven ! what a

talker he was ! ” The child , nine at the time ,loved the talk , but l ived to question its excellence as an educational method .

“ He wasthe worst or best teacher I ever had — I

quote from the Memoirs .” He encouragedme to read everything and to learn almostnothing. Such a training as his woulddevelop in any boy certain weaknessesand I had mine— which were very repulsiveto my father, who carried plain common-senseto extremes and sometimes into its oppositeof unconscious eccentricity, though there wasno word which he so much hated .


Children at school are never at ease witha companion whose love of books is greaterthan their own . The boy was nearly as aloneamong his schoolmates as among his schoolmasters . Friends he had— my own father,Charles Macalester, and many others whosenames are cherished in Philadelphia. Therewere also certain little Swedish and Spanish boys to be cultivated , for the sake of thestrange tongues they spoke , the strange songsthey sang, the guitars they could play. Andthen there was the one friend nearer anddearer than all , George Boker, whose fatherwas his father ’s partner, who shared the sametastes , who was his comrade out of school asin it. “ George Boker owned and lent me‘Don Quixote ,

’ I read in the Memoranda ;”

between that and Scott, we became verychivalric, romantic, and used to pass hoursin improvising to one another adventures ofknights , which were neither better nor worsethan those of Palamon of England and Arthur of L ittle Britain .

” But it was inevitable ,In his misery over the lessons his friendsseemed to take to as naturally as ducks towater, that he Should fall back more andmore upon himself. In other schools

,or in

EARLY YEARS 3 1

the Philadelphia schools of the present,the

whole manner of his intellectual developmentmight have been different .As it was, lessons were a tedious duty to

he got through somehow ; the only learningof use to him , because pleasure was to be hadin it, came from books, and to books heturned with an ever-Increasing passion . Hedid not read like a youthful prig parading h isprecocity : he read because it amused him to

read , because , like Charles Lamb , he lovedevery book that really was a hook thoughhe loved it all the more if it dealt with “ themysterious .” Luckily

’

for him , hismost impressionable years belong to a period when youngpeople were not yet supplied to any greatextent with a literature of their own

,and

,if

instinctively they cared for reading,had to

read what thei r elders read or what chancethrew in their way. Chance , in charge of thereading of this one young person in particular, directed it into the most varied channels .One day he was deep in Shakespeare and“ Percy’s Rel iques ,

” the next in “ Jack theGiant-Killer ” and “Hop-o ’

-my—Thumb. He

divided his pocket money between com icalmanacs a nd black letter folios . He read


the Bible everywhere , and reserved Cell inifor church . He revelled in Gil Blas ” andthe Arabian N ights and Irving, whom h eadored , and Chaucer and S terne and Swift ;but he also knew by heart the l ittle cheapbooks to be had for a penny,— and whatwould not the collector give for the copiesof Marmaduke Multiply,

”

Chrononho

tonthologos,” The World turned Upside

Down ,” for all Mr . Newberry

’

s gilt-cover toybooks that he probably thumbed out of existence ?There were books in his own home ; his

mother had been “ fromher earliest yearsdevoted to literature to a degree which wasunusual at that time in the United S tates

,

”

among those old papers , ghosts from out thepast

,I have seen a copy of verses by her, writ

ten in a letter, gay, graceful , and touchedwith a humour that accounts for much in theauthor of Breitmann .

” There were friendswith more books to lend . When he was fourteen , his father gave him a share in thePhiladelphia Library. I t is hard to say which ,nowadays , would be the more unexpected ina schoolboy, the quantity or the quality of hisreading . He was still a child when he man


ents had abandoned it for Episcopalianismwere his guides through the transcendental

maze . So also were the books of Carlyle , uponwhich he first chanced somewhere between1 838 and 1 840 , and the study they introducedhim to of Spinoza and Schelling, Kant andFichte.I t was the reading upon which most think

ers of his generation were reared , but not thereading by which students were trained forPrinceton , his college . Worse, i t carried h imfar from the practical world in which hisfather wanted to see him Shine . And worstof all , it made him appear peculiar,

”

eccen

tric ,” in the Philadelphia of the thirties and

forties . It was a good thing for his mentalbalance

,that the extraordinary in life kindled

in him no less enthusiasm than the ex traordinary in thought, and that he could find iteven in every-day occupations . Out in theopen air, on horseback, he could move throughmystery as naturally as at his desk with the“ Critique of Pure Reason ” open before him .

If there was magic in the theory Of the philosoph er, so there might be in the unaccountable intelligence and act ions of mere animals ,and his list of the books. he read . does not

EARLY! YEARS 35

reveal more of the youth , than his account ofhis long rides on the . horse that “was a perfeet devil , but also a perfect gentleman ,

” andof the understanding between horse and rider.Had there been a Gypsy to watch thoserides , he would have recognised in the ridera Master, even as the Romany, In the greenlanes of England , bowed before Borrow, theS apengro .

That the Rye , as a boy, was not alwaysdeep in metaphysics , that he was not alwaysin pursuit of adventure , but could take ahealthy, boyish interest in everything abouthim , there is curious evidence in a little oldjournal , his Notes of an excursion to S tonington, Conn in July

,1 840 ,

— towards theend , that is , of h is schooldays . I t shows h imusing his eyes to such good purpose thatmany of the “ notes ” have their value as arecord of manners and customs some sixtyor seventy years ago . For he was a youngobserver and had a talent for comparisons .He could see that the cars on the New Jersey, Camden , and Bordentown Railroad were“ very poorly buil t,

” and the road “ kept inbad repair, being inferior to either the Bostonand Providence or Columbia.” He could see


that the ten or fifteen recruits for the U . S .

mil itary service bound for Florida, who cameon with us in the same line of cars , weremiserable looking fellows who seemed to havebeen driven to the army by being excludedfrom every other honourable employment orprofession . They had a fight coming overthe face of one was cut in a terrible man

ner. The first thing that reminded him he“was quitting Philadelphia for New York

,

was the use of the wordswilling and sz'

xpem e

for levy andfifi ,

” and “ the men wearing whitefrocks over their clothes , who came onboard and endeavoured to obtain from eachpassenger the fol of carrying his luggagefor him . They were much more respectablelooking men than our draymen , from thecircumstance that they appeared mostly tobe Americans ’ and not Irish . I wouldobserve that the a

’ray s in N . York are not

as larg e as ours in P/z ilaa'elfikz

'

a nor as well

suited lo cam/

y keavy éara’ens .

Arrived in New York , “ I walked into thecity with Henry and Father to look arounda little and hear the news. We walked upPearl S treet . I saw on the signs names whichI had before heard of

,either in the news

EARLY YEARS 37

papers or by report,— such , for instance , asJohn Haggerty, the man so much hatedby the ‘ Herald ,

’ Arthur Tappan , the wellknown Abolitionist, who may be said to beat the head of that body of fanatics who , ifthey were able , would wil lingly subvert theconstitution and the laws both of nature andtheir country ! a view he was quickly to outgrow] . I noticed also the office of J . Sylvester

,who has become famous or infamous,

as you will have i t, by his extensive lotteryoperation , and also the offices of the editorsMajor Nock and Colonel Webb We wentUp as far as the Astor House , which has beenbuilt since I was last in New York .

” He sawtoo the Custom House , not then finished butnow superseded , and stores which struck hisPhiladelphia eyes as “much superior ” to anyat home . He found it a “ certainly beautiful sight to sai l past New York , “ with thespires of the numerous churches standingabove the roofs of the houses below

,as giants

among men —the spires which have dwindled into men , or pigmies , among the giants .Next follows the journey by boat, the chiefthings here to be “ noted being first, the“ string of prisoners , black and white , going


from their day labour to the prison on Blackwell ’s Island , but not looking as miserableas if “ under lock and key in a close cell ,although a guard with a gun was escortingthem ; and then the amusements of thepassengers , who , darkness coming on , betookthemselves , some to Juleps, some to bed .

”

At Stonington he had his own amusementsto observe , and they were characteristic. Hewas already getting pleasure out of the Indiannames of places , and these were supplied evenby the hotels . He was provided besides withthe books he never wearied of : “ Mr. W .

or, to give his full name , Mr. Woodbridge- mentioned to me that he had many oldbooks and papers in his garret. I obtainedleave to search them over and found manycurious papers, etc . , among which were an

original letter of Rog er S /zerm z

'

n in h is own

nandwrz'

l z'

ng , an original letter of Gov.

H u tc/n'

nson , so well known in Mass . a t Me

oeg z'

nn z'

ng of Me revolu tion , and an old edition of a sermon of Dr. Increase Matherdated More to the point for a schoolboy in the month of July, h e “ found S tonington a very interesting place for fishingand boating. Captain Palmer who dis

EARLY YEARS 39

covered the well-known Palmer’

s lana’ had ,while I was here , an excellent boat in whichI was when it raced against Capt. Vanderh ilt’s , who was the guona

’

am captain of theLexington ; in which , too, there was a successful picnic one day to Watch-hill : “We

had a fine trip in about half an hour, whichwas fast considering that we had about twentyladies on board . We reached Watch-hill ,bathed in the surf, dined on blackfish andlobster, and returned to S tonington , havingenjoyed ourselves very much .

” He recalled ,i n passing, a short outing to Providence whichserved to convince h im of that city’s meanness ;

” he collected much information as toboats and fish , more especial ly “

a remaréaole

pnfifi sn, about six inches long, with largegreen eyes and large teeth and head , coveredwith short prickles and swelling into a perfect sphere when tickled .

”

The “ notes ” end with the return to Philadelphia on August 6 , after

“ a tolerably pleasant trip.

” Altogether, the little j ournal , hadhe never written h is “ Memoirs , would givea very fair idea of the k ind of boy he was ,both in his lighter and his more seriousmoodsand moments.

CHAPTER I I

PR INCETON

AT the age of seventeen the youngLeland went to Princeton , where many Philadelph ians studied , the University of Pennsylvania then hardly holding out to studentsthe inducements it now offers . George Bokerwas already there , at the end of his S ophomore year, a youth of some importance whocould introduce the timid Freshman to college life and college ways . But beyond th isadvantage , the Freshman found little atPrinceton to make up for its drawbacks .As his Mala Ma ter i t is described in theMemoranda.” I t was, the

“ Memoirs ” say,in the hands of the strictest of O ld SchoolPresbyterian theologians . P iety andmathematics rated extravagantly high in thecourse . The college was S imply a mathematical school run on Old School Presbytefrian principles , and to all my teachers saveProfessor Dodd , and to my fellow students ,myreading was rubbish and my philosophy athe


the next day, and every student in the Freshman class except myself signed it— they hadnot thought of asking me . The next morning

,Craven came into my room and told me

that th e College was out in rebellion andthat the Freshman class would not attendreci tation . When 1 1 o ’clock came on thestudents gathered on the Campus and declared that they would not go . But, observing that some of them wavered , I exertedmyself and persuaded them not to hold out

,

and was either the first or second to enter.But in the afternoon I went unprepared and

,

to tell the truth , more dead than alive, I wasso excited and unwell. All the others wereunprepared and said so , and we were all summoned to day before the Faculty and dismissed— there was a great disposition evident toexcuse me as I had not agreed with the othersto stamp at reci tation . But I told them thatI should not have dared to refuse when theclass had refused . S o they told me that theyadmired the honesty of my confession , butalthough I had no t entered into any conspiracy, yet that it was as bad , and that I mustgo to Philadelphia to-day or to-morrow. Let

me say that, although I d isapproved of the

PRINCETON 43

conduct of the class from the beginning, yetI was obliged to go with them , for it is a dreadful thing to have the students incensed againstone. There was one only of our class who toldthe Faculty a lie to get off—h e said thathe had been asleep all the afternoon and hadcome unprepared, ,

th ereby he was excused ,but he had agreed with the rest of the classnot only not to recite but to stay away fromrecitation that afternoon . All the college ,Juniors, S ophomores and all , have been. athim this morning, swearing at and shaminghim . He is

‘

half crazy with terror and hasbeen crying. He intends to go before theFaculty and recall his old excuse and be dismissed with the rest . The Faculty have toldus to leave town because the other classeswould certainly rebel if we were in town , forthey want us back. Dr. Carnahan told usthat we had done nothing morally !wrongP]dr shameful , but that they had special instruc tions from the trustees to keep order. Ibelieve that in their own hearts they approveof what we have done . My conscience doesnot reprove me and I feel glad that I persuaded the class to recite , and although Iwas fearful of being put to shame among the


students, l find that I have been regardedquite the other way. We shall not be sentaway entirely, for they will no doubt send forus or recall us in a week or two— their college is now in debt and they will not be ableto spare us . I t is a pity, for I was gettingalong so well in my studies. I had forgot tostate that the rebellion was all about ourSenior graduation day. I do not think thatyou will blame my conduct. The Facultyseemed disposed to excuse me as I had notsigned any paper or entered into any agreement not to recite , but as I admitted that Ihad been influenced by a fear of the class,I was dismissed . Write and tell me what todo . I have serious thoughts of studying toenter the next Jun ior class . Craven told methat I could do it . Do not blame me, givemy love to Mother, sisters , and all . Henry iswell . Give my love to all .

Your affectionate son ,CHARLES G. LELAND .

I have been to see Professor Dodd and hetells me that we are not actually dismissed out

sent name, and says that if we do not rebelany more we shall come back to College in aweek or two .

PRINCETON 45

P. S . I had been elected Valedictorium forthe next Freshman commencement. This isthe highest honour in College to which I ameligible . I was elected by the whole class,which consisted of members of both . soci

eties.

In two other of his college letters I findamusing proofs that, notwithstanding

“ OldSchool Presbyterian principles ,

” the studentsof Princeton were much l ike all studentseverywhere, as ready for a free fight and fora frank expression of Opinion as for rebellion , when they felt the occas ion demandedi t. One is dated July, 1 842 , only a monthbefore the Freshman rebellion , so that thesummer of that year at Princeton must havebeen a particularly lively one for professorsand students both . I print the entire letter,for the last part of it presents a curious contrast, and is more characteristic of college lifeaccording to Princeton “ principles

CHARLES GODFREY LELAND TO CHARLES LELAND

DEAR FATHER, I have resolved to writeyou a few lines al though there is a wondrousdearth of news. All the talk here to-day is


abou t a great battle which came very nearbeing fought las t n ight down at the aqueduct between Some railroad men , Jerseymen ,

etc ., and the S tudents . In fact, some blowsdid pass, and one or two men were knockeddown on both S ides , but a re inforcement ofabout 50 students with the President, Dodd ,and one or two tutors restored order andcompelled the Jerseymen to seek safety infl ight . Let me state that the attack was amost cowardly affair—the students were insulted and struck without the slightest provocation . Our examination is now over andin fact our last examination took place on Saturday. I confidently anticipate a higher grade .I find , however, that I have made a sad mistake , this S ession , in not attending morningprayers . I had thought that those who boardedout in town were excused , and I believe soyet, but the tutor says no ! and tells me to aska professor, wh ich I i ntend to do. I doubtnot but that I can get excused for the pastomissions . I should have said that the tutortold me that the exemption held good only inthe winter term .

Your affectionate son ,CARL G. LELAND.

PR INCETON 47

The second of the two lette rs was written thefollowing year

,and throws its little S ide-ligh t

on the history not only of the college , but ofthe country.


PRINCETON, S unday, 1843.

DEAR FATHER, I received Henry’s letteryesterdaymorning and must beg you to excusemy writing so often . O ld Mr. Phill ips wishedto know yesterday if I could pay some of myboard—h e was not urgent, however. Wil l yoube so kind as to get me a copy of yesterday’sSaturday Evening Post ”? There is in it anaccount of the President’s arrival in Princeton which abuses the Students very muc h . I tis exaggerated . I t is true that they did hissTyler, but not much . The way it went wasthis . After Dodd had delivered Il ls address ,the President responded (by the way, I stoodwithin a yard of h im) , and when be had concluded , one or two tried to hurrah . Then apartial hiss arose and some one then cried out,Three cheers for Professor Dodd whichwere given . Then the soldiers gave three forTyler. The “ N . York Herald ” told an outra


geous l ie when i t said that Horner incited thestudents to hiss. There was a great blowoutat Capt. S tockton ’s that evening. Many people (including students) went up and were introduced to Tyler. I might have been if I hadgone . A great many people got quite drunkwhile there, and S tockton himself was notquite sober

,so they say . We are to hold a

Sophomore Commencement at the end of thisS ession . I have been elected Valedictorium .

Give my best love to Mother, sisters , andHenry, and believe me to be

Your affectionate son ,CHARLES G . LELAND .

P . S . I will send you up to-morrow a copyof the “ Princeton Whig ” containing Dodd ’sspeech and Tyler’s reply.

If the other letters from Princeton havenothing again as exciting as rebell ion tochronicle , they are all suggestive of Princetonl ife , and Princeton expenses , and the occupations and anxieties , some prophetic in a way,of the student who eventually was to rank asone of Princeton ’s most distinguished graduates.


promised him that I would let him know bythe end of this week whether I would take hisroom or not. So please to let me know assoon as convenient what you think about i t.We can get board out in town equal to

what Mrs . Burroughs used to give (or better)for the College price . So I hope that I mayboard out anyhow. Mr. Phillips is in sometrouble about his taxes , and wants to know ifyou will be so kind as to let him have a l ittlemoney.

I have tried to get other rooms in College,

but the students say that I cannot. Thereare one or two other applicants for Fonte ’sroom , bu t he will let me have it in preference .

As my removal of my things (bureau , carpet , etc .) will cost something and as I must buya box to put the books in , and spend diversmoneys to get all fixed for departure , and asI am very poor just now, will you be so kindas to send me five dollars ? I am very sorry tobe obliged to ask for it, for I have not beenwasteful th is session . Give my love to Mother,Henry and sisters , and believe me to be

Your affectionate son ,CHARLES G. LELAND.

PRINCETON 5 1

P . S . I forgot to say that I must pay Mrs.

Passage 4 dollars for a week’s board— i. e.

the next.We have had several noted New York

ministers preaching in our Episcopal Church,

which I now attend regularly. They were al lmore orless Puseyites,forBishop Doane sendsthem on here to preach every S unday, as wehave no regular clergyman here they wereall first-class preachers too . I heard Dr.Wainwright (tne Dr. Wainwright)preach herelately— also Messrs . Seabury and Higham

,

of whom you have doubtless heard . I amgetting to be a l ittle of a regu lar secessionist

Tractarian myself, i n other words a Puseyite.

Th’

eir only object seems to be to establ ish anuniversal Church after D r. Channing’s plan .

The leaders , to be sure, are a little too Romish .

But tnere must be some form of religion torule the vulgar, otherwise we will be run downsoon with Millerism , Mormons , etc.


PRINCETON, May 8, 1844.

DEAR FATHER, It is so long since I havewritten to you that I doubt not you think mevery neglectful. But knowing your weak


state of health I have thought that any ex ertion - such as writing a regular letter mightprove far from beneficial . I received a letterand paper from Henry last night , and wasvery sorry to hear of the riots . What is youropinion of the Native Am . party ?What do you think of Frelinghuysen as a

candidate for the Vice-Presidency ? He wi llcertainly do a great deal towards attachingthe religious and literary influence to theWhig party. I am trying to leave offsmoking ! unsuccessfully, in the end , I amafraidJ— I have smoked very l ittle this session

,and have only had one cigar (and no

pipe) for two days tell this to Henry— I

am in earnest. Mrs. Passage gave me someadvice on the subject. The Mathematics arestill keeping me behindhand . I Shall howeverbegin the Senior Year splendidly, for I shallthen have a clear field . I t is impossible to domuch now except study Latin and Locke .Prof. McLean (Greek

\

Professor) has gone toKentucky to defend the Princeton party inthe Presbyterian party in the General Assembly.

I l ike Mrs . Passage ’s better than ever. Isit often with them in the evening. They re

PRINCETON 53

member you all , and want to see Henry verymuch .

If i t were possible for me to come down andpass some Sunday with you I should like itvery much I have to speak a Junior speechat commencement and want some book helpthat I cannot get here. Please to send methe Philadelphia papers containing a ful l aocount of all the riots . They have not as yetterminated

,I believe . Give my best love to

Mother,’

Henry, and S isters , and believe meto be


I may as well say,if it be worth saying,

that I have the advantage of talking as muchFrench now as I choose , and have improvedin it very much . There is a Mr. De Voil h ereteaching in Mr. Vine ’s school with whom Iam well acquainted . I talk it with him andS enakerim the Armenian . Shall I get mysummer hat done up here ?

CHARLES GODFREY LELAND To MRS . CHARLES LELAND

PRINCETON, May 26, 1845.

DEAR MOTHER, Father has doubtless bythis time seen Mr. Bond , who went through


here last n ight on his way to Philadelphia. Ihave been in very good health so much foryour fears . Our examination was a mere trifle .I did well on the Latin , and as for the Greek ,only myself and another student attended itthe rest all staid away, and no account wil l betaken of them . I received the cigars , and youmay tell Henry that those who have smokedthem here, think them equal to anythingso much for his j udgment. I am well fixed atMrs. Phillips ’ and I hope to stay here —Ihave got number 1 7 and have my carpet laiddown in the same. I told her the next dayafter I came that I would sooner go in Collegethan take her other room , and behaved on thewhole considerably like the P . of 0 . when hesaid “ advance ” or “ retire ” to the servantswhich dignified and gentleman ly deportmentgot me everything that I wanted . There is abook which I may want when we get a littlefurther in C icero

,viz .,

“ Henry’s History of

Philosophy,”2 vols , price one dollar. I find

that it is much the best course forme to taketo send for books to Philadelphia—thosewhich I received from you would have cost

or more here . If Henry can pick thosehooks up cheap , let him try they are Har

PRINCETON 55

per’s fam . l ibrary edition . Give my best loy e toFather

,Sisters

,and Henry, and believe meYour affectionate son .

P . S . How is Mary ? She was quite il lwhen I came away . Tell Henry to keep aheadin his Spanish. Were the French books allright ? Mind and cover the “ Amis des en

fants, for it is a valuable book.

Yours affectionately,CHARLES G . LELAND.

I print no more of the Princeton letters , because the rest are mainly taken up with thesame subject of lodging, entering into minutedetails in connection with it that would seempathetic to any steam-heated , electric-l ightedstudent of to-day. I have paid Voorheesfor of a cord of wood I have got

half a cord of wood ;” “ I have about three

barrels of coal left and plenty of candles ;”

are notes I find in letter after letter. I fancy,however, that all the relations between fatherand son , as they were then , would seem barbarous to a modern student with his owntailor and his own bank account. The sonmight rise to the dignity of Freshman

, S opho

more , Junior, Senior, he might already be an


adept in Neo-P latonism and a Master ofGerman philosophy, but he stil l had to go,l ike a child , to the father for his c lothes andthe money to pay for them .

“ I do not wantany clothes at present. I may perhaps wanta pair of pants next vacation but not before ,

”

one letter says. And the next : I wish thatyou would get my boots made with high heels—not through any motive of foppery, butI really want them made so to wear withthese summer pants. If you would bringme also a pair of leather straps and adoz . steel pens you would oblige me verymuch .

Curiously it is for his mother all talk aboutthe books he reads , and the

“ pieces ” h ewrites , i s reserved .

“ I have been readinglately in the di fferent P latonic commentators ,he tells her ; Cudworth , Taylor, etc . Iwas very much troubled by Henry ’s old newspapers this morning

,change not being handy,

but the ‘Legend of Albertus Magnus S implyatoned for all that. I hope that he will sendme everything of the kind that he can find .

His “ pieces ,” as early as 1 842 , were appear

ing in the college and other magazines .Mind and look out for the Magazine for the


healthy,right-minded young student should ,

but he had the gift then , as throughout life ,‘of taking them humorously as well , and inthese letters to h is mother he could sometimes throw off his graver responsibilities forthe sake of a laugh . I have j ust come fromGreek Testament recitation ,

” he could go outof his way to write to her, where I heard thefollowing translation Matthew 8 . 20 . Thebirds have their holes , ana

’taefox es of tbe air

tneir nests.

When I remember Tom Brown and the“ l ion ’s provider,

” I have my suspicion thatthe Rye had reasons of his own for lettingHenry write home of a still gayer jest.Neither of the brothers often permitted himself the least fl ippancy in wri ting to the father, but Henry, plainly, was too bubblingover w ith the fun of it to resist tell ing him ,

There is a menagerie in Princeton , andthere is a man here with it who will bring outa wila’ a’eniz en of tae forest, that is , a lion .

I t is a queer name for this an imal , to be sure,but yet this name goes down very wel l here ,and I suppose will serve to gull some few poorfel lows .

” The Princetonian may explain , ifhe can , the relations between the wild deni

PRINCETON 59

zen of the forest and his own song of VanAmbergh and the marvellous menagerie ,upon such important matters in college history I would not venture to speak with a pretence of authority. I often wondered , thoughI always forgot to ask the Rye , whether itwas he who wrote that song.

If the Rye ’s letters to his father were seldom gay, they were always cheerful. He keptup as brave a front as he could , though henever found Princeton congenial .He had his friends , and friends help to

l ighten the heaviest burden . How well theyentered into his interests and fancies, I knowfrom the little pile of their letters which hecarefully preserved .

“ I shall call and see youand hear you relate the adventures you havehad since I saw you ,

” one friend writes toPrinceton, i. e. land of smoke ,

” from Pittsburg, in the midst of the hol iday labour of“ learning to play the flute and clarionet so Ican entertain the ladies .” “ I have heard ofyour writings , a second tells h im , in 1 842

your grand entree has been the talk abouttown for weeks past .” My dear Behmenite ,

”

a third begins,and goes on to beseech him to

throw Behmen into the Delaware and Para


celsus to the winds, to let Iamblicus and thewhole host of Neo-Platonists perish together,and to try Boccaccio instead . Other friendsregret that they have not been reading someinteresting work on mental philosophy thatthey might converse with him upon it , or theyupbraid him for his heartlessness in sendingthem Kant to translate , while the Fonte whoappears for a moment in the family correspondence finds it

“devilish lonely ” in Princeton without the young Transcendentalist,

”

detained at home by illness . He longs fora real intel lectual talk once more , I carenot how Gothic or spiritual,

” and is muchobliged for the pipes the convalescent has notforgotten to procure for him . Of long talkslate into the night, over these and other pipes ,there are many hints ; there is also muchlight and cheerful banter ; and the impressionthe letters have left with me is that thefriends the Rye made at Princeton were oneof the few compensations it offered for itsheartlessness as Mala Ma ter.

Another compensation was in the pleasantness of his relations with two or three of theprofessors who proved sympathetic : JosephHenry, “ the first natural philosopher and

PRINCETON 6 1

lecturer on science then in America ; JamesAlexander, clear-headed, but with the sternness of a Covenanter in his glance ; and , aboveall, Albert Dodd , a man in Whom “ an I talianwitch , or red Indian , or a gypsy would atonce have recognised a sorcerer,

” and who , asprofessor, lectured on architecture , a subjectthis one of his students had already studied“ passionately,

” and moreover from the samestandpoint.But these men were then exceptions , and ,

as at school , the youth was forced back uponhis own resources. He continued to readvoluminously, uncontrolled save by personalinclination .

“ I did not read for a purpose , butto gratify an intense passion ,

” is the reasonjotted down in the “ Memoranda.” He knewtoo much of Kant, had listened too often to Dr.Furness , to be guided in his reading by professors who shrunk from Voltaire and TomPaine and other “ exploded dangers ,

” and whoprescribed Paley

’

s“ Evidences of Christian

i ty.

”It was like inviting Carlyle ’s young lion

to a feast of chickweed , he thought. Leftto direct his own reading, he chanced uponvast measures of strange matter in the libraryof the Princeton Theological S eminary. Out


of a cob-webbed dusty pile of books in a

corner of a was te-room , he raked a blackletter Lyly

’

s Euphues,” an E rra Pater,

” andother marvels so little esteemed in Princetonthat one of the professors , seeing him “ daftwith delight over his finds ,

” told him he waswelcome to keep them , which he was toohonest to do , and they may be now somewhere on the l ibrary Shelves of a more en

l ightened Faculty.

Of his unhappiness at Princeton I shall sayno more. His Memoirs ” g1ve details interesting to the historian of the college. But theyears there leave a blank in the h istory of hisown development.He did graduate at the end of four years ,

but he agreed with an unknown writer Who ,

a quarter of a century later in “ The Nassau Monthly ,

” declared that if Charles Godfrey Leland had become known in literature

,

i t was in spite of h is college. Because he fellso short in mathematics

,he was rated the

lowest except one of his class . The authorities , apparently, were conscious of some incongruity between the brill iant talents of thestudent and the lowness of his grade . For

,

of the two great honours , the Valedictory

PR INCETON 63

O ration and the Valedictory Poem , the second was awarded to him . But his youthful pride had been hurt to the quick. Hedeclined the honour, though he wrote thepoem and submitted the manuscript to theFaculty to show them that they were notmistaken and that he was not unworthy ofthe distinction .

From P rinceton he returned to Ph iladelphia

,much as he had left it : as unversed in

the ways of the world as “most boys in theUnited S tates are at twelve or thirteen ,

” aninsatiate reader of books, a dreamer to whomthe pas t was more real than the present, andthe mysteri es of nature and philosophy asimportant as the practical problems of existence ; a youth as l ittle fitted to face the business of life as the student had been preparedto face the business of college . He often re

gretted i t, he often thought what he mighthave been , what he might have done , broughtup in another town and trained in the stimulating atmosphere of “ l iberal Harvard . I tis true that Boston , or even New York , combined with Harvard , might have turned himout a l iterary man

,a professor, of the regula

tion pattern . But Philadelphia and Princeton


did better. They left him to develop himselfon his own lines , a fact, much as he was inclined to deplore it, that helped to make ofhim one of the most picturesque figures andstrongest individualities in American li terature .


Kemble,already too famous , however, to

condescend to speak to any one on board . Idoubt if life ever held for the Rye anothermoment as fair as the moment of sai ling,unless, indeed , it was when , weeks later, onthat slow, that deliciously slow sailing vessel ,“ a fishing smack came clipping under herlees —I can fancy his joy in the nauticalsound of it and , at the captain

’s request,be

flung down a question in Span ish to the fisherman A a

’ona

’e oenga V.

—where do youcome from The cynical may see in thisonly a phrase that any child or bungler couldborrow from a phrase-book . But to the youngPhiladelphian it was the miracle of miracles

,

for i t was his first word in a European language to a European in EuropeWhat is now the commonplace of travel

was to him an endless marvel . Every personhe saw seemed a figure out of romance , everyword he heard was music in his ears . Thefirst landing was at Gibraltar, “ like a fancyball he thought its streets , rememberingsober Philadelphia. When his ship set sai lagain , it was to sk i rt a coast where there wereruins to sketch all day long ; when he cameinto the harbour of Marseilles, it was to see

HEIDELBERG 67

the sails he had never as yet seen except onold Phenician coins

,to hear the boatmen

crying aloud in the tongue of the trouba

dours, strange to him hitherto except on theprinted page . And scarcely had he set footupon Provencal shores before he was deep inadventures of a kind that always had for hima curious fascination , the adventures withstrange people that he was to seek eventuallyin the Gypsy camp and among the witchesof Tuscany. A fellow-passenger, an actor, gotInto difficulties , and the young Leland , calledto the rescue , found himself in a den ofSpanish smugglers

,and his story of how

he sang their own smuggling songs notlearned at Princeton “ with a crowd of dark,fierce , astonished faces round

” him , reads likethe description of many a visit to a Romanytent in the years to come . Then the captainof the ship had taken a fancy to the Ph iladelphia boy ,— h e was really l ittle more ,— in

many ways so ignorant,in many ways so full

of the knowledge least to be looked for fromhim , and in Marseilles introduced him to anold S laver and pirate

,

- company that wouldhave startled the family at home , l iving therespectable l ife of Walnut S treet.


But the picturesqueness of place was calling, and Provence overflowed with it. Mont

pellier, Arles , Nimes , Avignon were townsstudy had made as famil iar to him as Philadelphia and Princeton , Dedham and Milford .

I t was like having old dreams come true tostand in front of their “ antiquities

,

” to passbetween the olive gardens and vineyards ofthis “ sunburnt-land ,

” to l ive for a day or anight where troubadours long since sang thesongs that, re

'

echoing across the centuriesand the seas, had reached him in the stil lsongless town on the Delaware . He found itnatural to be there , that was the strangestpart of i t all . He used to laugh when he remembered the youthful assurance with whichhe had talked of Provencal art and song toS aint-Rene Taillandier , to whom he hadbrought a letter of introduction .

After Provence , it was I taly ; the journeyby sea from Marseilles to Naples

,with one

day at Leghorn on the way,another at Genoa.

In his Memoirs ” he congratulates his readers on their escape because the j ournal hekept at the time was not then at hand to quotefrom . But whoever cares for I taly

,or the study

of character in its development,must regret

HEIDELBERG 69

that this journal is not yet, and thereforeprobably never will be , at hand , never canbe quoted from . For the I taly he saw was thewonderful old I taly, vanished as completelyas his daily notes of it, while the travels ofthose impressionable years rounded out thework begun by Philadelphia and Princeton ,bringing what he calls h is “ buds of strangekind and promise ” to their flowering. Hestayed “ a long beautiful month ” in Naples ;then

,by vettura , and the word to him was

so full of romance , I have not the heart touse the plain English carriag e, he journeyed on to Rome, to Florence , to Venice .The landmarks these of the regulation Cook’sTour, i t may be objected . But in 1 846 Cookdid not exist, the regulation tour had not beeninvented , and the journey appeared one ofsome hazard to the least imaginative traveller.To the youth who had almost died of hisdesire for Europe, i t was a much more emotional, much more wonderful undertaking.

The hope of strange adventures gave zestto every stage of it. In Naples things wenttamely, but there was the delightful consciousness that, had he not j oined company withMr. James Temple Bowdoin of Boston and


Mr. Mosely, editor of the“Richmond Whig

,

friends made on the boat from Marseilles,he

might already have been “ the beloved chiefof a band of Gypsies

,or brigands

,or witches ,

or careering the wild sea-wave as a daringsmuggler.” He really would could neverhave been anything so lawless . But he hada literary sense of the value of the situationthat turned the possibility into an enormousadventure in itself. In Rome , he Spent daysof “glorious scampering and investigating ,rooting and rummaging in galleries andgardens

,ruins and palaces ; he shared in

the splendour and th e gaiety of the Carn ival , “ the last real one which I taly ever beheld

”

—the Carnival of 1 846 ; he was a guest atthe famous Torlonia entertainments . But thecrowning pleasure was the chance that madehim the lodger, and promptly the friend , ofGiuseppe Navone , the head of the Romanpolice

,to whom the pirate of Marseilles was

as “ a lamb and an angel of l ight.” Here wasthe substance of adventure , not the shadow,

and Rome dwindled into a background forthis “ rum couple of friends .” The journey toFlorence was by vettura and boat, but if wonders were passed by the way, they were lost

HEIDELBERG 7 1

i n the amazement of the traveller at findinghimself a “ pet child of the Roman policeand learning that “ the great and good Navone

had done it all . In Florence there werepictures to be seen , Provencal and I tal ianpoetry in I lluminated MSS . to be read , HiramPowers and other popular artists to be visited, ices to be eaten at Doni

’s ; but there werealso lovely Polish countesses with ex traordi

nary “ table manners ” and more extraordinarypolitical views , and Polish anarchists in reddressing-gowns and look ing the “ sorcererj ust out of a Sabbat.” In Venice— well

,

There had been a time in America when,

if I could have truthfully declared that I hadever been in a gondola , I should have felt asif I held a diploma of nobility in the GrandO rder of Cosmopolites .” And so we passedthrough beautiful Lombardy and came toDomo d ’ Ossola .

” And the S implon was theroad , by way of Switzerland , to Germany,the home of Kant and Fichte and Hegel

,

the home by study and sympathy of thisstrange duckling in the Princeton brood ,known with a thoroughness that won for him

,

before he crossed the frontier, the nicknameof Germanicus .


From letters written to him at the time byhis father and mother, and , above all , by hisbrother, Henry Leland , I gather that he senthome glowing accounts of this journey. Butin my collection of his papers there is nothingrelating to i t, except a fragment of a letter,never finished , to his friend William Tiffany .

This may be because the descriptions he wrotefor his family were passed on by them toGodey’s Lady’s Book ,

”“Neal ’s Gazette ,” and ,

eventually, the“North American ,

” which wasstrongly and rightly recommended to him byhis mother as a paper of more weight and importance . She, anyway, saw how things weredrifting a nd was quick to encourage him inpublishing al l he could , for she had heard , soshe wrote as a rule , literary men ofeminence began by contributing to the press .His letters , before they got into print mustnaturally have been somewhat edited , In theprocess losing the personal note which wastheir great charm ; for this reason I prefer toquote the gay little fragment preserved bychance in the Rye ’s letter files , rather thanto resurrect letters transformed into newspaper articles .


went ober de mountain in the Alps , an adventure which sevefal tough Swiss have sincewondered at

,and under the circumstances it

was deemed dangerous only 20 feet of snowat the time , “with more coming .

” Well , at lastI arrived at Geneva— dull town and onlyrelieved by the cigars , which were the firstreal Havanas I have found abroad in shops .Being an American

,I was considered as un

cheatable and got good ones . Then I wentto Lausanne beautiful exceedingly ! Gothicchurch , etc view of the Lake , and from Lausanne to Berne - and now you see ! ! I amtravelling all alone , and have not spoken aword of English for five or six days . While inGeneva I became acquainted with a certainRosenmund— a Waffensch imdt wh o didsome small work for me . He naturally likedme as American and said solemnly to me ,When you go to Berne go to t he Pfi stern

Z unft .” I did so . Do you know what a Z unftis ? In the Middle Ages there were certain

guila’s or corporations formed which received

all strangers of a S imilar trade for instance ,the Baker Guild received travell ing bakers .As the bourgeois got the upper hand

,these

institutions became aristocratic and noblemen

HEIDELBERG 75

j oined them . In Berne they stil l exist , buthave so far changed as to receive anybody.

S till,they are very different from hotels . The

next room to mine is the Hall , a most antiqueapartment where the Guild , or Zunft, hasheld its sittings for several centuries . Thereis a tremendous smell of stale tobacco smokepervading said room , as you may imagine . Onone side hangs a noble , cavalier-looking portrait of an old burgher, which is as old as thesociety, and a curious clock , etc . , make mefeel as if I were reading Washington Irving’saccounts of the O ld Dutch burgmeisters. Ialways lounge in it (the room), and amusemyself by imagining the speeches and palavers which have been going on . Berne is anoble old town . Every house, l ike Bologna,has an arcade where our front parlour wouldbe , or a sort of portico, over which the upperstories proj ect, which consequently forms acovered walk . But such immense massy pillars as support them ! so squat and stumpylooking, as if they all said , “H ier oin anuna

’

nier will anoleioen .

” The whole town is built

j iss so .

” Around are very fine walks commanding such scenes as you see in annuals .The houses have immense proj ecting roofs .


At every turn you find a fountain —very ancient—and everywhere , on post, pillar, fountain and house you see painted , sculptured , ormoulded the B ear of B erne. The Bear isa great man here. He is on the money— thebutter. The famed town clock , manufacturedA . D . I 3 is a perfect complication of bears ,which ride in at one hole and out at thet’ other. A fountain represents Bear armedlike a knight— while I amused myself thisafternoon by watching two l ive Bruins keptin a Baargraben j ust near the AarburgThor.As a curious fact, I will mention that thenatives here think that I speak beautifulpure German , and well they may, as far aspronunciation is concerned . They do pronounce German here in the worst mannerimaginable . I have had th is evening a longtalk with the Herr Wirth ’s tbch terlein— shecalls “ allein allene ,

” etc . As long as I amnot ou t for a word , they do not know but whatI am talking as good German as themselves .I find i t to be true , what I have often sus

pected ,that if a man talks German at all

,he

will always find some Germans who talk i tworse , and they talk i t ten times better here

HEIDELBERG 77

than in some other districts . I have heard apatois (half I talian) in which German wordsending like I talian occurred ! This was inS implon .

In I taly the Rye had had no more definiteobject than to see all there was to be seen . In

Germany he meant to work . For the American student to take a post graduate course onthe Continent was not uncommon . Motley atG

'

ottingen and Berlin , Holmes at Paris , Longfellow at Heidelberg, were no mere ex cep

tions. The young Princeton graduate wantednot to follow any special course , but to profitby the atmosphere and influence of a collegemore liberal than his own

,and , his father

leaving him free to make his plans, he decidedupon Heidelberg. Howitt

’

s S tudent L ifein Germany, he says , helped him to thisdecision . Heidelberg was then probably thebest known of all the German universities

,

thanks to its popularity in romance,and the

town was one of the most picturesque in thecountry, though another young enthusiastfresh to Europe , W . W . S tory, was to be h itterly disappointed in this picturesquenessonly three years later. To the Rye , the seeker


after the marvellous , everything was a separate marvel— town and university both ; hisown blunders ; the H err Gottsa

’onnerwetter of

the beadle ; the welcome given him by theAmerican students

,and the fact that there

were Americans to w elcome him ; the beerhe drank after his first dinner, twelveson

'

oppen

without a tremor, as if already seized with theterrible thi rst the (brave Von

-Rodenstein be

queathecl ,

to the ,stj1dents of Heidelberg ; theGrand Duke ;of, Baden knocking at his door ;— anything and everything in the ‘

first be

wildering excitement of ' it all . And; moremarvellous , h e never got over his astonishment at himself -and his sudden transformation . Th is ~was; the -real secret Of his genius ,that he should t be f able to see what was

strange , or queer, ;or“ rum ” in a S i tuation ,

and not be ashamed to say he saw it, even ifhe was the hero . Triumph rings

_

In his confeS S IOn , at this point, that people who enteredinto his daily l ife were tempted to believe hisguardian angel , if he had Poe ’s

Angel of the OddThe great thing Heidelberg did for him

was to teach him h ow,

fi lay . He workedhard enough to satisfy the strictest . It may


erally attenuated and starved for want of theordinary gaiety and amusement which allyouth requires , my life in Princeton havingbeen one continued strain of a sobriety whichcontinually sank into subdued melancholy

,

and a . body just ready to yield to consumption , I grew vigorous and healthy, or, as thesaying is , hearty as a buck .

’

At its worst, this terrible “ debaucherymeant the consumption of beer, “ wholebutts of beer,

”— without which play or studyor existence is an impossibili ty to any German

,no debauchery at all , some students

might protest in scorn . But accustomed to asterner standard,as he was, the simplest eventsof Heidelberg daily life savoured of dissipation . He found it in the taole a

”néte, first atthe Court of Holland , the inn all the worldat least al l the student world—knows in thesong of Scheffel , and then at the Black Eagle

,unsung but as deserving of fame in his

eyes . There was adventure in the mere talkwith people dining there : for one , the oldGerman poetess to whom Heine had ad

dressed his epigrams ; for another,“ an elderly

and very pleasant Englishman ,” who turned

out to be Captain Medwin , tell ing stories ,

HEIDELBERG 8 1

not yet everybody’s property, of Byron , andShelley

,and Trelawney. He found it again

in the evenings at the Bremer-Eck , in company with none so well remembered as ayoung Englishman , Ewen P . Colquhoun ,wh o was to remain his friend for life , andS cheffel , whose Gaudeamus and Heidelberg Days ,

” when written , he was to translate . Gayer still were the more occasionalevents ,— the masked balls, ceremonious inHeidelberg, and anything else “ over therIver,

” the great university functions , the official receptions , and reunions . But gayestand best of all were the holidays , when , a fewnecessities thrust into a knapsack, with a fewchosen companions he tramped through thepleasant land of vine and song, to Johannisberg, to Mainz, to Baden , to Frankfurt— tohear Jenny Lind sing, perhaps, and a fewmiles further to Homburg, to get the moneyto pay for i t. “ Now there is no more gambling, and no loose fish (to speak of) , and all isvery proper and decent,

” he wrote to MissOwen from Homburg in 1 890 ,

“ but whenI looked at that same old roulette wheel yesterday in the Museum , I sighed and wishedfor the dear, good , bad , horrid , awful old


times . Anyhow, it was joll ier then— if not

quite so moral .” And there were other trampsup the Neckar to the W eibertreue .

Who can tell me where Weinsberg l ieshis mother had recited to him in his boyhood . And now, forever after, he was to re

member it for its new associations , for themeeting with K

'

orner, the mystic , the poet, theman of all men he then wished to meet. Hecould never make up his mind whether Khrner, seen in the flesh , was most stupendousand unbelievable when he was “ drawing airs ofexquisite beauty from the j ew’s-harp

,

” or when,

up in the ruins of the castle , he was pointingout David S trauss, “ the very incarnation ofall that was sober, rational , and undreamlike , walking along the road below.

”

I t is provoking that, though the Rye keptthe letters written to him at this time , so manyof his from Heidelberg have disappeared , probably in newspaper offices. They were “ allthat one could wish ,

” they were Howitt allover

,through and through

,

” Henry assuredhim in answering them . But, while I haveenough letters from Henry Leland to make asmall book , from the Rye at Heidelberg Ican give only two or three . These few, how


recently with a knapsack weighing twen ty

pounds, and can eat or drink anything. Mycompanions , five strong young men , all declined wrestling with me ! I exercise a greatdeal and at this instant have j ust come from along walk . The German plan is to drink weakbeer and exercise ; the beer, they say, all turnsto nutriment, and is about as strong as sprucebeer in America. I used to think it not so , butam convinced that the Germans are right, solong as they limit the beer and do not limitthe exercise . One nas to keep good hours ina

‘

country where , at 9 o’clock , every shop is

closed,and by 1 0 the streets almost empty.

D inner always at one , which is the fashionablehour ; among the lower classes at 1 2 . I hopeto hear good accounts of your health . Nowthat I am abroad , I hate to lose a minute bysickness . Here in Europe there is no occasion to be unemployed . Every little place isfil led with attractions . Even here , in Heidelberg, there are curiosities enough to employone for a week . I am getting along grandlyin German , and do not neglect my I tal ian ;as for French it seemed in I taly my properlanguage, not but that I speak i t ungrammatically. But that, I shall never be cured of.

HEIDELBERG 85

I board in a good , common-sense Germanprofessor’s family, where we get roast meat

(with cherry sauce) , pancakes , cutlets , andsalad all together, eat soup without salt, andRhine wine on raspberries . Every countryhas its ways , and a man S hews his head byconforming to them , and not , l ike many travellers

,making a fuss because things are not

as they wan t them . I can put up with anything

,but l ike to get things good when I can .

After fl eas and garlic in I taly, everythingseems good in Germany. Remember me toall our friends. If you could give me anyhints about studying things which would beuseful to me when I go into business , I wouldbe very grateful . With many thanks I remain

,

Your affectionate son,

CHARLES G. LELAND.

CHARLES GODFREY LELAND TO WILLIAM TIFFANY

HEIDELBERG UNIVERS ITY,July 24, 1846.

DEAR TIFFANY, I ’

m down on you ! Outof your chair, you venerable reprobate startrun bolt ! Here is a letter for you from

Germany—out of the very heart and coreof it. And , at last, I am a German stua

’ent.


! The curious reader may consult the Heidelberg catalogue for the year 1 846 , p . 1 8 , whereit appears that Carl Lelana’ of America isa stua’iosus pnilosopniae, in said University]There ’s scnwein for you , or luck. A Germanuniversity is very much such a place as onesupposes it to be . Here , in a small town , are

932 students , differently arrayed in differentcoloured caps , Short coats , long hair (not socommon as formerly), pipes and corps bands.These young men fight about four duels ,more or less

,daily , and average each from 1 8

to 30 schoppens of beer daily. But, since Iwrote you last

,I have seen not a little of Ger

many and Germanism . I had my first tasteof it in Switzerland , and , while in Berne , wroteyou a long letter which I did not have timeto finish , and travell ing afterwards put i t quiteout of my head . Well , my dear fellow, I sleepon short beds or

,rather, in little boxes. I

wear a student ’s costume , and drink beer,smoke pipes , eat one o

’clock dinners andheavy suppers . I visit old castles and readawful stories of bloody daggers and all manner of neocerey . I have fully got hold of theidea of Germany. But never let me say ! a’eaagain . BEGRIFF, Begriff , that is the word .


cou ld not smoke . In this matter I modestlyhint that I am not small.But Where the mischief shall I begin ?

You know what a K ircnwei/ce is ? In somebeastly little a’otf , the poor and happy peasantry collect of a Sunday to buy things at thefair which , on such occasions , i s established .

Then “ the poor and happy ” go and dance inthe next Wirtnsnaus to the music which theyfind there . Occasional ly, the “ proud and vicions nobles ” ( I mean students) in trude onthose scenes of festive mirth , on which occasions the poor and happy behave in a veryvulgar and rustic manner unless the proudand vicious ” should happen to be in themaj ority. I patronise everything of the kindmyself, although in America these thingswould be shocking vulgar . However

,as I

have seen princes , dukes , barons , earls , counts ,etc. , dancing there , I presume that an American might. How well these Dutch waltzevery dirty blackguard and servant girl inGermany can dance well .Well, it is something to be a student here.

You need not know even French to becomeone. All you have to do is to pay down fivedollars, and S ign your name , and attend lec

HEIDELBERG 89

tures . Then you are a student, and of all theglorious

,starry l ives

,that of a German Bursch

is the fastest . A good-hearted , hard-headed ,

thirsty,bullet-proof

,loud-singing sort of a fel

low is the Bursch . I was mean t to go to aGerman university, I bel ieve , because I findmyse lf so exactly “ set here . Just right. Aman

,to be a real German student , need not

be a rowdy. He finds all sorts of people, andhe gets the B egrzf of student life j ust as wellin a quiet

,gentleman-l ike way, as I flatter

myself that I do , as if he got drunk and helda S cana’al every day. I find good , quiet, nicefellows here . I l ive quietly, read , write , smokemy pipe , and drink a little beer. You ask if Ihave got M innesa

'

ng ers. A grand collectionhave I of the old Deutsch poetry .

One singular thing in the German students is the singular way in which they contrive to combine deep reading and extensiveinformation , with their student ways . Thefact is, that the fun does not always stickto the man . H e nas mon tés toget/cer of nara

’

study , and during his long vacations he al

way s travels. I have known students to go toArabia, Egypt, and Asia Minor, and comeback to their studies ! ! One went lately to


America during vacation ! And they visi tevery part of the Continent. I think that Ihave never met a German student who hadnot travelled. I know two personally who aregoing to Italy, and as for Switzerland ,

’

t isnothing. One told me yesterday that if hehad 20 0 thalers (about he would go allover Switzerland and the north of I taly ! Hewants me to walk with him . I don ’t think Ishall . Real good fellows with knowledge ofevery sort, and ,

wh o contrive to throw something intellectual into all their hurrah ings,are common in German universities.

CHARLES GODFREY LELAND TO MRS . CHARLES LELAND

HEIDELBERG, Oct . 27, 1846.

DEAR MOTHER,I am still in the German

University of Heidelberg, and studying chemistry, even as you advised me in a previousletter. I sti ll enjoy good health , and sti llawait with as much eagerness as ever thearrival of certain letters from America, fromMessrs . Greene and Co . , Paris , directed toMonsieur Charles Leland , Poste Restante ,Heidelberg. And I am sure if you knewhow gladly I pounce upon them , you wouldthink I deserved as long ones as I send . I


death ! But I real ly cannot speak of it . SoMary Laurence is to be married ? I supposethat everybody will be matched and pairedoff before I get home . Remember me to her,and her mother, and Mrs . Hale and daughter, and Mrs . Stewart, and Mrs . Newman , andeverybody , very particularly, that I ever desired to be remembered to . If you can geta chance , tell Mr. Furness that I remainedthe first six months in a German universityas a student of philosophy, and have turnedoff into the “ exact sciences ,

” or natural philosophy i . e . chemistry. How ProfessorHenry’s heart will dance with j oy when hehears it ! That ever it should have happened !Get me letters for Berl in , for I must go

there before I leave Germany. You must readmy letter to Father. I had a talk with a greatGerman poetess a day or two ago—named

,

I think,Chezy. She had been very intimate

with Mad . de S ta'

el and told me about her.I t is said that she has been well acquaintedwith most of the great people in Europe , asshe is highly talented , and was lady of honour

'

to the Queen or Princess of Wurtemburg.

Through her I was introduced to the BaronHohenhausen , a real old aristocrat,who passes

HEIDELBERG 93

his life in raking up things relating to hisfamily

,which Ibelieve dates from Noah . Also

to an old German professor of antiquities , onwhose heart I made such a strong impressionby my knowledge of Middle Age things , thathe kept call ing me the Herr Baron , concluding of course that none but a nobleman ofat least twenty quarterings could know somuch about such things . And he concludedby begging me to come and see him , sothings go . But for all this , I want someletters of introduction to somebody, for ayoung man who depends solely upon running his face has after all no real claimupon anybody. I t i s strange , but I haveuniformly found most attention from thoseI least expected i t from . As in Florence ,where a Mr. Reynolds was very kind to me,while some , such as Waller, hardly noticedme. I find that it is a good way to do thehonours of Heidelberg, as much as I can , toall Americans . The great difference betweenAmericans and English travelling abroad liesin this ( I ought to confine it to the youngmen), that the Americans all get togetherand keep the run of one another in such amanner that, when they do meet, they are


acquainted at once . For example, there isone in Berlin , G whom I have neverseen

,yet we have heard of one another. And

so with many others .past 1 2 . I am just from laboratory and

lecture , and think that chemistry would be anicer study if all i ts unpleasant fumes couldbe taken away. The weather here is settled,cool and cloudy,—if i t can interest you toknow anything about the weather in a place

40 0 0 miles off. I regret extremely that thesteamer now sails only once a month

,and

,as

I before remarked , I trust that you will makeit up by extra letters. I t has always struck meas strange that the industrious ones in Philadelphia seldom or never write and neverknow any news , while I , with no particularclaims to industry, write letters long enoughto satisfy the most rapacious . But my patience will not last for ever, although I mustsay that I feel ashamed of the thought ofsending a short

,dull , flat letter across Ger

many,France

,England , and the Atlantic !

Give my best love to Father, Henry andS isters , and believe me to be

Your affectionate son ,CHARLES .


overtaken by the greatest surprise yet . Foras he listened to Beckers , he began to realisethat his old gods were tumbling. He beganto see that the psychological systems andtheories he had evolved from his readingat home and Princeton were all only veryingenious shufflings and combinations andphases of the same old cards of Pantheism ,

which could be made into Theism , Pietism ,

Atheism , or Material ism , to suit any taste .I was advancing rapidly to pure science ,though Evolution was as yet unknown bythe name , albeit the Okenites and otherswith then Natur-Philosophie were comingclosely to it .” D isil lusion was inevitable ,sooner or later, to him as to so many youngthinkers in the forties . At Princeton , i tmight have led to despair. But there was nodespair in the free air of Munich .

Marvels fil l h is description of student l ifeat Munich as at Heidelberg, and , again , interesting people figure in his reminiscences : ason-in-law of Jean Paul Richter with whomhe often dined ; Taglioni , who danced onthe Munich stage ; Lola Montez , the king

’sfavourite of the day, cordial ly hated by allMunich for an interference in public affairs

MUN ICH 97

hardly to be expected from the very small ,pale

,and thin orfréle l ittle person , with beau

tiful blue eyes and curly black hair,” who fl its

across the pages of the “ Memoirs .” “Andso

,with study and art and friends , and much

terrible drinking of beer and smoking ofVarinas-Kanaster

,and roaming at times in

gay greenwoods with pretty maids alway, andmusic and dancing, the Munich semester cameto an end .

” The remaining documents of hisstudent life in Munich are an amusing littlesilhouette of himself in student ’s cap , withlong hair, and the beginning of the later greatbeard , and also several letters .

CHARLES GODFREY LELAND To MRS . CHARLES LELAND

MUNICH, Apri l 1 , 1847.

DEAR, DEAR MOTHER, I beg any amountof pardons for neglecting you so much , butI really feel when I have written home that Ihave sent a letter to everybody . My healthis still good— and I arn as happy as ever.How fool ish it is to think that there is no realenjoyment in this world ! With health , enthusiasm , and youth , and some information , onecan be really content. In Heidelberg I was


never weary ; what between reading, and chemistry, and waltz ing, smoking and the thousandpecul iarities of German stua’en tism, I passedmy time very pleasantly. I am more attachedto Germany than ever. I really believe I ama German , although my French and I talianexperiences have left their traces on me .

For two weeks I have only spoken Englishtwo or three times . I l ive at present in a verydelightfu l c ity, fil led with picture galleriesand beautiful buildings . As a student, I haveacquaintances everywhere for German students are almost l ike Freemasons , and arealways together —I arrived here a perfectstranger, with one letter of introduction , to agentleman who desired me, through his servant , to call the next day, which polite requestI neglected of course . I looked round town ,found students , and thefore two days hadplenty of acquaintances .This city is Catholic to the last degree and

much more bigoted than Rome . Lent isnow drawing to a close and it is really painfulto see the effects of the fasting upon some ofthe poor creatures . I saw yesterday a younggirl who waits on us in the café, unable to doanything, nearly in a faint. I asked her if


other good things,but the gentlemen and

ladies stuck to that principally (and if they eatone ounce , they eat two pounds). There wasgood white wine , which the young studentengentlemen patronised largely. After we hadall waltzed ourselves to pieces , at a late hour,rum and hot water, for the gentlemen , was introduced , and they drank , the ladies lookingon . Some of the students did drink a l ittle .

Well , notwithstanding all this , I can assureyou that a more refined, respectable , decentassembly I never saw

,and a man not accus

tomed to a high tone of respectabil ity wouldcertainly not have found himself at homethere. The Germans are a very natural people, more so in Munich than in any otherplace . Everybody drinks beer here terribly.

I heard a beautiful young lady, the daughterof a King’s secretary

,say to-day that she had

had nothing all day long to eat or drink except a quart of i t. Beer is better than nothing,I suppose . Well

,I don ’t know how it is to

be done, but Iwould l ike to make you understand how all this can be united to true refinement . As for me , I smoke , eat, drink , andwaltz , j ust l ike any German . My health isgood but how I dread to return to our

MUN ICH 10 1

American summers and winters ! I am confident , that, had I remained in America, Ishould not have lived long. When I think ofsome of my sicknesses and con trast themwith my present Splendid healthiness , I think,Oh , you poor fellow !Do you find my letter badly written ? I

really find some difficulty in writing English ,not having had lately much practice . Let aperson not speak English more than twice intwo weeks , and it is astonishing how hard itcomes to speak it as he should . I did so lately ,and an English friend came to M unicn, thenI always kept speaking German to him ! Hewas a friend in Heidelberg.

There are some magnificent buildings here .Although I have seen Italy all through , andmuch of France and Germany, I still canadmire the beautiful wherever I find it. Suchmag nifi cen t churches are not to be seen inAmerica. Almost everything here is quitenew. All has been done by King Ludwig, whospends all h is money in buying fine picturesand bu ilding splendid edifices . I t is here thegreat source of German A rt ! Here in thisci ty are three thousand young artists ! Nearlyall devoted to the revival of the Middle Ages .


Good Friday . Everybody is getting readythe churches are full of lamps and ever

greens . Nobody would do any work tod ay,or to-morrow, on any account. I told a tailorthis morning that the Miinch en people weremore pious than the Romans. The shops arefull of pieces of meat, every piece ornamentedwith religious symbols . I saw tne Lama, donein sugar, on a ham with a banner of theChurch sticking out from i t. I wonder thepoor creatures can stand this starvation . Il ike to go into the Catholic churches . Youcan have no idea of the sublime magnifi

cence of a Catholic cathedral . One reallyfeels overcome by these beautiful , melancholy, old Gothic piles . And then , i t isbeautiful to see highborn , beautiful ladieskneeling down by poor beggar women , allin enthusiastic prayer . You can see a rough ,savage fellow often kneeling in tears beforethe Virgin . If they are wrong, they are atleast s incere . The Catholics in my humbleOpinion are much abused . I never saw inRome anything to disgust me with them . I tmay be , that in my passionate admiration ofthe Arts I only see in the Catholic Churcha protector of the Fine Arts . In our Ger


duelling nothing can induce me to do anysuch thing. I am to be introduced by him in afew days to a man whom I almost worsh ippedin America, the great German philosopherSchubert . Henry and Geo. Boker may re

member how I used to adore his philosophy .

He is a high-pressure transcendental ist, ofcourse . I copied ofl

'

much of his writings whenwe l ived in Cong. Hall. He is said to be avery friendly man . I t is amusing to find howentirely different these great German ph iloso

phers are from what we imagine . They writeworks too refined , too delicate for mere mortals

,in which there is nothing of this Earth ,high-pressure , transcendental , and they

may be found , any of them at any time , in akneip , drinking beer, smoking pipes, and playing billiards . All of which proves to me theirsincerity in their theories . If Henry will readHyperion over, he will find Schubert’sname there .N . B . The Frau Himmelauen , whom Long

fellow abuses in his novel , was his landlady !i n that place . He has not even Changed hername . She is a shocking old creature . Iwonder if that would be called a poeticalrevenge .

MUN ICH 10 5

There is an American here , a studiosus . Iam doing my best to keep out of his way. I t isshocking to think how much one must loseon account of this stupid clannish spirit whichinfluences men so much . If I had never metan American or Englishman in Heidelberg, Ishould have saved money and learnt more . Iam sorry to say that the Americans one meetsabroad are not , generally speaking, the most

creditable representatives of our country.

They are decent men , but seldom come abroadwith any intention of informing themselves,and are al l fearfully extravagant. Well , mywild days are over, I am living quietly andnicely here . I wish you were here to see tomy linen—my clothes are pretty well up.

My American Shirts , which have been washedin the Rhone and the Rhine , the yellow Tiber,and the Brenta, and Neckar, and forty otherstreams more or less clean , are beginning togive way. So , dear Mother, give my love toall . Kiss S isters and Father and Henry forme, and believe me to be your affectionateson,

CHARLES G. LELAND


CHARLES GODFREY LELAND To HENRY PERRY LELAND

MUNICH,Apri l 23, 1847.

DEAR HENRY, —I’ve just received your

letter of March 2 3 and never felt in all mylife so completely pleased or satisfied with ahuman being as with you . Dear brave fellow that you are ! I am , by Heavens , luckyto have a brother whom I see will , when Ireturn , be my most intimate friend , a thingwhich happens seldom enough among gentlemen so allied ! I am touched l grieved to hearthat you have been sick and I mean it ! Allmy letters , say you , have the appearance ofhaving been opened , and you fervently hopethat the individuals who performed that dutymay be very essentially damned ! Caro mio,don ’t suspect any American of i t. It ’s thoserascally, low-l ived , never-to-be-aroused-to-asense-of-decency police officials in Paris .Greene has twice sent me my letters cut

and rescaled with a short inscription , The letter Opened by mistake, but notread .

Well , I’ve been dining for 1 2 cents ; con

found it , why can’t I keep money ? Just when

I want to be economical , I have a thousand

1 0 8 CHARLES GODFREY LELAND

over my early compositions . How do theylook ? Poor boy that I was , who would everhave thought, three or four years ago , that

y ou ,bright li ttle active devil that you were ,

would ever have turned out the reader, andI tne D reamer have become t/z e C/z evalier.

My general beer name is “ the Chevalier ” inHeidelberg. And yet, after all , I prophesythat you will ultimately become the man ofthe world , and I , once more , the reclusethe student. Now I ’l l open a depth of myown soul to you. Wherever I go , in all sortsof gaiety

,I am always oppressed with a dim ,

mysterious feeling that this is , after all , butfor a time . There are times when I am rolledback , as if by a retreating surge , into thedepths of that mysterious Pantheistic philosophy which , when it has once touched thesoul , influences it for ever and ever ! Voicesseem to say, Thou art ours— thbu art ours ;and ever and anon I fall back on the philosophy of the Absolute stronger than ever !Now if I hope to give my life to l iteratureand philosophy, I must go into D ivinity. Thefirst impressions are not readily worn away

,

and I believe with Schiller, Keep true tothe dream of thy Youth !

MUN ICH 109

Really, I am pleased to hear good newsabout the war. There is a German who keepsa coffee house here . He was five years inAmerica. I am certain he has been there , forwhen he speaks English , every fifth word ishel l and every tenth damn . The Englishdon ’t swear much . I have shaken off myprej udices against every nation on the faceof the earth , except Jews and English . N . B .

I did a Jew twice in Heidelberg, and he didme twice. Sum total , I won . I bought tnemeerschaum of him

,and he afterwards offered

me the same sum for it. Read Longfellow’s“ Poets of Europe smack through . If youcan , read “Rabelais it did me more goodthan almost any book I ever read . Read , atleast twice , every line that S terne ever wrote .I am told that a French book called “ Le

Moyen de parvenir,” is worth reading. If you

can read Spanish as well as I believe you can,

you will have pleasure probably in reading

Quevedo.” Read all you can get hold of of J .

P . Richter. You ’l l find “A D ream ” of Richter

’

s in an old English magazine at homewhich , if you read very carefully, will repayreading ! If you expect to rise, you mustunderstand the combination of Plato , Dante,


and Schelling ! You need n ’

t wait for me totalk to . I can talk across the Atlantic. I hadnobody to assist me or enlighten me when ,in my sixteenth year, I dug into Spinoza andKant and Jacob B

'

ohme . Now I recommendyou to read carefully all you can of Cousin .

Begin with Henry’s Hist . of Phil . Andwhen you have got up a little enthusiasm

,

thank Heaven for it. I never met a manwho was up to Transcendentalism who was n’

t

up to almost anything literary !I read my letter over, and find much ad

vice and very l ittle description . . What shallI describe ? A student kneip a lot ofrowdy young gentlemen swilling beer andsmoking pipes—a coffee house with a fineband of music playing in an atmosphere soconfoundedly dense that you ’

d faint in it ( Imean smoke). I staid til l twelve o

’clock lastnight in such a place . My last hour was spentin listening to a student friend ’s descriptionof the beautiful way he ’

d arrange matters ifI Should happen to have a pistol duel . He ’

s

a nice youth , has a fight about once a week ,challenged a man in a coffee house threedays ago, got thrashed like the devil in a rowwith some Frenchmen , and broke his stick


and family, who passed through here . To-dayI am to meet Professor Beck , from Cambridge,at dinner. The German professors are queerfishes . The other evening a professor ofmathematics , a very nice man and generallyvery quiet man

,got as drunk as a fiddler in a

coffee house on about twenty tumblers of beer.He was rather proud of i t. I congratulatedhim afterwards on his abilities . In a Germanuniversity the principle of equali ty is wel ldeveloped

,and the professors are much more

respected by the students than in America,

although they are not in the least subj ectto them . The police part of the universityis entirely separated from the Faculty and ,for aught I know, the professors may be arrested as well as the young gentlemen . Thereis a feel ing of real respect for the professors,particularly when they are liberal in theirpol itical views . You see how I write, andI think I hear you say

,

“ Fine places yourGerman universities where the professors getdrunk ! ” Yes they are fine places for study

,

and for learnIng the world , and everythingelse. They are the best places for educationin the whole world , and if some of our American students could acquire as honourable,

MUNICH 1 13

gentleman-l ike a tone as I find among theGermans

,i t would be better for them . I am

busy this semester studying everything thatpleases me and I must say that I am perfectly contented. I am not yet so old that Ineed consider the loss of one year as much

,

since I am acquiring a fund of knowledgeworth more than two fortunes. I seem tomyself to be ten years older than I was whenI left my native land . I mean internally, for Ihave not changed much outwardly— not inthe least, I think. Well , dear Mother, I mustclose . Give my love to everybody, particularlyFather, and make him a thousand excusesthat I have not written to him this time, as Iintended . I hope that he has good health .

Kiss the girls all for me . How I want to seeEmily my dear little Em .


CHARLES GODFREY LELAND TO HENRY PERRY LELAND

MUNCHEN,May

,1847 .

DEAR HENRY For once I sit in cold bloodresolving to e te you a snort letter. Youdeserve a long one , but, without affectation


and upon my word , I have no time to writeone

,and if you expect me to write more tre

quently you can ’t of course get as much . J ustat present I am very much occupied . Morning lectures on history , aesth etik, philos . , thenstudy for five hours . I get up at half pastfive , but just at present am bedeviled withforty small matters which must be attendedto. The hard pull is lectures from seven toten . I get coffee before I go , and when theyare ou t feel j ust exactly in the humour for abig glass of Bavarian beer and a roll of bread .

S ince my last, nothing very particular hashappened. I had the pleasure of seeing Taglioni again night before last in the Sylphide ;cost

, 48 cents, third tier there are six altogether. Taglioni did not seem to me to danceas wel l as she did in Rome ; in fact I was al ittle aston ished when I recollected the fascination with which I first beheld her. But,ten to one, ! nave changed more than Taglioniin that time . Cerito comes here before long.

How people talk about these things ! Onewould suppose that E l lsler and Taglioni werelongpassées— don ’t believe it . The Germansare all yet of the opinion that Fanny Ellsleris the first l iving danseuse, and certainly Fanny


shoot him . Here one sees the real unwashedBursch in perfection . In Heidelberg the students all dressed very well . I do not recollectever to have seen a shabby one there , whilein Munich some students Show themselves Solost to decency as to affect the Tyrolese peasant ’s dress , i . e . a coat like a sack with greencollar ; and others wear the gendarme pantaloons, i . e . leather from the knee down . Anystudent who will make himself like a Philisterof the lower order is a disgrace to the name.I wear a hat now, a real Paris one with a looking glass inside

,a magnifying mirror i t

cost I would have seconded in thatrow, but I have not the remotest idea of being obligated to leave before the session isover. One must go to France , or Switzerland,directly. I am deep in books now. I would

recommend you by all means to go at I talian.

If you know Spanish,you wil l learn Italian

in three months,and then read the principal

authors through . An'

interesting topic a tpresent here is the B ock l ier. During themonth of May, in a certain brewery here astrong beer is brewed called the B ock or goatbeer. I t is the best beer in the whole worldand has for several centuries been annually

MUNICH 1 17

given out. I t costs twice as much as commonbeer

,that is , four cents a double tumbler full .

During the time a B oat newspaper is published and the whole population talk all thetime about B ock.

Your affectionate brother,CHARLES G. LELAND.


MUNICH, June 3 , 1847 .

DEAR HARRY, To-day is afesta , a regular lump of laziness . All the principal streetsare lined with green branches , every househas three or four young trees before it, andred and yellow flags , cloths , and carpets hangbefore all the houses . I have n ’t seen anything to compare with it since the Carnivalin Rome. A magnificent procession , including the rascal “ Louis the Kind ,

” and theArchbishop , and all sorts of banners , incense,and priests , soldiers , Virgins with palms , etc .,went through the said streets this morning.

I saw i t before the Cafe Hildebrand in theKaufinger Gasse , and was much pleased .

Then I saw it again in the Schrannen Platz ,and, finally for a last time , in the Ludwig:


strasse . In each place an altar was erectedand mass

,I believe ( I am not anfait in the

Catholic manoeuvres) , performed . And thecrowd

, o/z , mein lieéer H immel K ots élitz ,

donnerwetter, parap leu , H immels sapperlotBauers and Philisters , students and the Devil

(who could n’

t have been overpleased with somuch holy water and incense) only knowswhat all ! All of the people who fel t inclinedwent down on their knees in the streets andprayed , old women loafed around with littlegarlands for sale , and Roman Catholic Mu

nich had a real good holiday after its ownway. Out of Naples I know of no city wherevice, bigotry and superstition are so muchat home. Oh , how jol ly one does l ive here !The beer must have been awfully punished ,to j udge from the crowds standing aroundthe B ockgarten , for this is the last day of thefamous B ock bier, and they were waiting forit to open . Then I dined and went home tomy fourth storey in the Neuhausen Gasse .N ight before last I went to the Volkstheater,where only the real genuine German of themiddle and lower classes is to be seen . Herethe parterre costs from 4 to 8 cents, but, as Iwas rather shy of the canaille, I took a place


it is a delicious pipe ! never, never have Iseen a better.Now for a word over the MSS . ! Fusang]

I propose sending with this . Don’t delay and

fiddle with it, but take it to Belcher afterreading it over and correcting it. Show himwhat the German professor says in a note ofhis book, and get him to sell i t for us . I giveyou all you can get for it, and that certainlyought to be ten dollars . A work on such asubject, and at such a time, written by acelebrated German professor and translatedunder his revision , ought to be worth publish ing . If Belcher don ’t l ive in Philadelphia,take it to Chandler, get it printed withoutdelay, and get as much money as you can .

I had no English geography by me ; wherever you see a word lead-pencilled , correct itsspelling, for I am rather sl im in geography.

Some such words as Och tosk puzzle me, butyou can easily correct them , and if you can

’t,

let taem go, don’

t give it as an ex cuse for not

getting it publisltea’

, let it rather go, faults andall . Tell me what you think of the work inyour next. I think it is very good . Neumann

is a man who seems to know everything underthe sun . He Speaks and writes more languages

MUN ICH 12 1

than I should suppose poss ible , and hasgone to the bottom of metaphysics , history,mathematics

,and other matters , and has trav

clled the whole world over. Well , how doeseverything go with thee , dear brother ? Waitest thou for me ? Well , I

’

m a-coming. Somefine day you ’l l see me coming up WalnutS treet in a cab , with three or four carpetbags , looking as jol ly as a German before theKneip shuts up.

D id you ever hear of a book called Les

malheurs de Werther (Werther was a fool ,celebrated in Germany.) Don

’t play his rOle.

I am summoned I must appear beforethe police to-morrow— I don ’t know whatfor. Maybe I ’m to be ordered home as a sus

picious subj ect because I can’t eat liverwurst.

As for cheap living,I get, in a nice room

with good attendance, every day , soup, boiledbeef with sauce or salad, vegetables, with asausage or two , roas t meat and pie, for twelvecents , or eighteen kreutzers . I got last nighta beefsteak and salad, bread , and two mass,

or eight tumblers , of beer for thirty kreutzers .I heard a man say yesterday to another thathe went away early the fact is ,

” said he,


I can ’t stand beer.” “N or eitner, repliedHerr Braam , the landlord ;

“ when I havedrunk six mass I am satisfied . Now a Bavarian mass holds four good-sized tumblers.You are not by any means to suppose thata man gets drunk on less than six m . Myfavourite feat in Heidelberg was to drink amass without stopping to breathe , but a Badisch mass is smaller than a Bavarian .

Talking of waltz ing, you ought to haveseen me waltzing in the Prater the otherS unday. The Prater is to Munich what L a

Grande C/z aumiEre is to Paris , with the triflingdistinction that it is considerably too Pailistrisca for the students , and , to tell the truth ,is pretty d d low. I inveigled a youngBursch , with long ham and braided coat, intoshowing me there . In Heidelberg, where thestudents are a thousand times more nob leand decent than the Bavar. , a strident dancesin the lowest Kirchweihe and is stil l decent,but the men here never seek such placesand so lose lots of fun . I only went , indeed,out of curiosity. N . B. Without too muchvanity I must say that my waltzing is not considered oy any means had, even in Germany.


stand how very different Germany is from ourAmerigue I

I must sayaword about studying. I proposetheology, and I want to know if a man canstudy in~Germany and then enter upon hisduties immediately in America ? My moneyspending days I hope are over, and if youwere only here I ’

d Show you a few things . Idon ’t believe that man can lead a happier lifethan I can here .

I had almost forgotten to say that I wentbefore the police this morning, and was informed that I was to pay 36 kreutzers for mymonth ’s residence and for neglect in not forking over sooner. But, M ein H err, quoth I , “ Iam astudent , and students don

’t pay it .” ThenI showed my card of matriculat . 7 a ,j a ,

” saidhe , y ou are not oalzged t/cen to pay for resi

dence, but you must pay nine kreutzers for nothaving paid for it before .” At this awful ,dreadful piece of stupidity, I almost fainted .

The idea of not being liable to a fine , andyet be fined for not paying it when it cameclue

,is too rich for endurance . As it ’s very

unprofitable work arguing with a pol ice com

MUN ICH 1 25

missionaire on such subj ects , I passed out thefippeny bit (exactly S ix cents), and travelled .

The fines in Germany are very l ight. OneS ees about Heidelberg stuck Up : 36 Kr. (2 5cts .) fine for steal ing fruit ! and 40 cents forriding fast over a bridge , which costs five dollars in America. I once saw on the Neckar,by an old ruined castle

,boards stating that i t

was punishable by a fine of eight cents to enterthe court

,and

,I think , six cents for smok ing

when once in . I met the prof. math . in thestreet. He said that the police functionarieswere unverscna

'

mt in pumping money on anypretence whatever. In I taly, they

’ll cheatyou out of your change in the Post Office ,and a Roman douanier once tried i t over meto steal my hair brush when be searched

my carpet-bag and yet I had given theblackguard some change not to search toodeep . I did n ’

t know what the mischief thepolice could want with me when I went, forthe Government here works things

,as they

were worked in France , by spies and persec .

You dare not speak openly here as on theRhine I mean in Baden , where all is veryfree.Hurrah ! I have raised a couple of tickets


to a concert and a ball gratis— so we shallhave some good music and waltz after it.

Well , my brother, keep up a brave heart,and come out here in the fall , or before

'

if

you can .

Your truly and really affectionateCHARLES .

MUNICH, July 7 , 1 847 .

DEAR HENRY,—I’

ve already written youone letter, and , not feeling satisfied with i tand not considering it as an adequate returnfor your mammoth , have begun another whichI trust to make an improved edition of. I amas well pleased with the style of your last asi ts size . So you ’

re in a store , but don’t cal l

yourself a Philister. No man is a Philister,unless he has a miserable small soul , which ,as the Germans say, “makes smal l great andgreat small .” Lola Montez was near beingassassinated three days ago don ’t know theparticulars . A gnost has been busy in a housenot very farfrom here , and about a thousandDutch were lying in wait for it two nightsago ; to-morrow is the Queen

’s bi rthday, andwe have n’

t got any lectures , and I’m going


I ’ve been pretty considerably deep into theDutch

,old fellow, and can expatiate . His pre

valent idea is gentleman , gentleman , gentleman .

”S o is mine, but not in his way. I ’

m

convinced , after all my European experiences ,that no man can do the nil admirari, unlesshe ’s born to do it, and he must be born partlyfool then . I could give you examples whichwould make your blood run cold . Oh , whatpuppies I have seen on the Continent ! Iverily think that many of them have no ideaof a future state or of anything beyond horseand mistress .The more I see of Munich the more I

admire it.

CHAPTER V

PAR I S IN ’

48

APPRENTICESHIP was not at an end whenMunich was deserted . I count as part of it theRye ’s wanderings to Vienna, then all brill iant foam and sunshine and laughing sirens ,where what new thing S trauss would play inthe evening was the great event of the day,

”

— to Prague , and Nuremberg, and D resden ,and Berlin , to the towns of Holland and Belgium ; I count, too , the start for Cracow, theencounter with Russian customs officials onthe frontier, the necktie concealing suspiciouspapers , how like a student ’s necktie ; andwhat were those papers , I wonder ? and theexperiences at the Leipzig yearly fair, and ,above all , the gaiety and good comradeshipthat was the best part of the j ourney. Overits every incident

,big or little, was the gla

mour of youth , and its climax was Paris .In Paris he returned to the more serious

business of the student. His chief end was tomake what he could of the lectures at the Col


lege LouIs le Grand and the Sorbonne . Onecourse was the “ very dull series on GermanL iterature by Ph ilaréte Chasles ,

” and I do notwonder he found it dull , if I can j udge bythe MemoIrs of the lecturer, and my ovVnamazement to discover that a Frenchmanof letters , who had lived through the sti rringdays of the Romantic Revolt, could write thedullest autobiography it has ever been mymisfortune to read .

But towards the end of 1 847 !and beginning of 1 848 , there was more for the wideawake youth to learn from Paris itself thanfrom the most accomplished lecturer. Shortlyafter his arrival , the young student tookrooms in the old HOtel du Luxembourg inthe Rue de la Harpe, described by Washington Irving in that story of the girl with theblack ribbon round her throat, brought homeby the youth , before whose ho rrified eyes herhead fell , once the ribbon was removed . Herswould have been an appropriate ghost tomeet on the fine old Renaissance stairway

,

the glory of the house , for Sh e had been thevictim of the first Revolution , and the menof flesh and blood now hurrying up and downthe same stairs, were busy plotters of a second .


Sunrise . From America, too , knight-errantsof liberty set forth on similar adventures

,

the young Poe bent upon fighting the heathenin Turkey, and now the young Leland helping to uncrown kings in France . The bloodof his fighting ancestors and of his own youthran in his veins , and , throwing in his lot withthe Revolutionists , he became one of the innercircle at the HOtel du Luxembourg.

Revolution does not break out in a day,

and Paris was delightful even in its discontent . The duty of students was to be gayat all seasons , under all circumstances . TheVie de B oneme had not become petrified intoa legend ; Murger, its prophet, was just beginning to be heard of. The Rye was neverreduced to the expedients of Rodolphe andthe others , for he was not without money.

But a student’s money is sure to fall shortsometime . When his did , he dined for afranc in the l ittle places of the R ive Gaucne,or outside the Barrier, finishing the eveningat Bobino ’

s . When money was plentiful , hedined at Magny

’

s and went to the Tne’

atre

Francais. There came a time , after years asa dramatic critic , when he lost interest in thetheatre . But in Paris , in 1 848 , the stage was

PARIS IN ’

48 1 33

a marvellous part of the marvellous new lifehe was l iving. A letter, written as recently as1 90 0 , to his nephew my brother— EdwardRobins , wh o had j ust published “ TwelveGreat Actresses ,

” shows how seriously he had ,in his student days, studied the drama as anart. He had begun his letter by praising mybrother, saying the kind things he knew sowell how to say, that a young author l ikes tohear, and he went on , drawing largely uponthe old memories , to question whether sufficient distinction had been made in the bookbetween “mere art and pure sympathetic genius . Sometimes there is so much art that themultitude believe it is genius . Both Racheland Bernhardt were , like all J ews , immenselytalented and quick to feel what took with thepublic ; but though great as actresses, theybelonged to the second class . Read whatHeine says of Rachel, h ow severely he blamesher want of all soul , and yet as a Jew hewould fain praise her.

“ I saw Rachel for the first time in 1 847.

I was then twenty-four,and I never shall

forget how, while I appreciated her merest ill and cleverness

,I was, I may say, dis

gusted at her tricks of the stage and utter


want of soul. Her great dodge was to workherself into a spasm of passion and excitement

,and then in a second cast herself into

a statuesque attitude of utter calm and exclaim in an icy voice

,

‘Monsieur,’ or Mon

Seigneur.’ And then all Paris , from Dumasdown , went mad with applause ; but it wasso transparently tricky that I could onlylaugh .

“ Rachel was so illi terate that she did notunderstand her characters ; she only had amarvellous in tuition as to what would be agreat hit or coup . So she served them all upin the same sauce , unlike Janausch ek, whocaught the true character of every separateheroine .

“ The story is true of‘

Rachel that,having

to die at the end of the fourth act of a play,

she never read the fifth act. Sarah Bernhardtis of her type . If acting be only imita tingand carrying out conventional tricks , they areboth great. If it be expressing higher truthand nature by genius , then they were or aremerely second-rate cleverists. The vast ma

jority of mankind do not rise above admiringmere acting.

”

As time went on , that memorable year of


bound to be asked , charging the soldiers,

building barricades in the Rue de la Harpe,

i n the Faubourg S t. Antoine , distributingammunition , going and coming through theday’s drama.He saw it all ,—saw the stones pulled up

in the streets and built into barricades , “ ingrim earnest, without talking ; saw soldierssuddenly fl inging down their arms and fall inginto the arms of the people ; saw the Tui leriesin smoke and flame , be one of the first torush to the rescue and write the noticesRespect Property ” in the rooms the fire hadnot reached , touching (how like him !) theinkstand for luck as he wrote ; saw the mobpouring out from the royal kitchens and cellars , fowls and joints borne aloft on the pointof the bayonet, wine drunk by the pailful ;saw the descent upon the HOtel Cluny andthe sortie, knights in mediaeval armour bearing down upon the Parisian crowd ; saw bonfires kindled with the royal carriages alongthe quays ; saw men dying like dogs at streetcorners ; saw, for all the horror of it, thedrollery too, when a fellow-student set tobuilding barricades in white kid gloves

,or a

pretty girl took a kiss as answer to her chal

PARIS IN ’

48 1 37

lenge ; in a word , saw all the tragedy andcomedy , all the tears and laughter, that goto the making of a revolution .

I have been content to give this bare outl ineof his l ife , from the time he left Munich unti lthe Revolution in Paris , for the simple reasonthat the details are so well fil led in by the fewof his letters relating to the period now in mypossession . How few they are , in proportionto the many he wrote , I know. I t was hishabit to number those to his brother ;

“ thirty ”

is written at the top of the last I have toquote ; and of these thirty, not a third haveso far been discovered . The loss would havebeen

.

greater had he not sent long and fullaccounts of himself to other members of hisfamily. Passages in his letters to his fatherand mother often strike me as a trifle sti ltedand self-conscious , but this was because heknew they would eventually make their way toAunty Hale ,

” Mrs . Sarah Hale of Godey ’sLady’s Book,

” and other editors . Last Thursday night I Sat up till two in the morning,

”

Henry reports in April , 1848 ,“ copying your

Revolutionary letter in order to have it lnserted in the Saturday ‘North American andUnited S tates Gazette it appeared and was


liked by every one , Miss Leslie adding hermite of laudation .

” When writing to hisbrother

,the Rye was troubled by no fear of

the editorial blue pencil . Moreover, he didhis best to let the younger brother he hadleft behind profit by his experiences and seethe world through his eyes . The letters toHenryL eland are a mirror of student l ife inParis during the forties , seen entirely fromthe student’s standpoint, and they have afreshness and spontaneity that could not belooked for in the “ Memoirs , written aftersuch a long interval without their help . Thereis not more local colour in Murger than inthe description of the students on the Hill ofSainte GenevIeve , with all their absurd fashions and gay follies , their cafés and balls, theirstudies and songs , their would-be cynicisms .To Henry, also , the Rye wrote more freely ofthe “adventures and “ strange coincidences ,

”

for which , already , he had developed“ an ex

traordinary talent ; to Henry he was lavishwith advice on the subject both of study andconduct ; advice that, Henry assured him inanswers so amusing I wish I could includethem

,had been “ the formation and salvation of

myself, your younger brother— therefore just


has by this time doubtless informed you) overa very respectable portion of Europe , and Inow sit down with the firm determination ofdepicturing some of th e scenes through whichI have passed . My unfortunate attempt toenter Poland has doubtless awakened all yourl ivel iest sympathies— if I nad succeeded Imight have been there during the cholera

,

which made its appearance about a week afterI left . After the Polish business I went toVienna. If I could describe that ci ty, or giveyou any idea of its attractions

,you would

wonder that I could leave it . I have now beentwo weeks in Paris , but must say that, as faras an agreeable life is concerned , I infinitelyprefer Vienna. Imagine a people whose everyemotion seems to spring from good natureand innate politeness , not the artificial

,cold

hearted polish of the French , a people devotedto pleasure , inhabiting a beautiful ci ty whereevery attraction presented by music and theother fine arts is perpetually brought beforeyou . Music is the life of the Viennese . Yougo in the evening to a beautiful garden andhear S trauss’s band , the finest in the world

,

playing like one man . In all Paris I cannotpersuade myself that I have as yet heard good

PARIS IN ’

48 14 1

mus ic. They want the exquisite harmony andunity of execution which characterises themeanest little band in Germany. On theway to Vienna from Prague , at every stationwhere the cars stopped stood a band of musicians, who played until we started ! ButVienna ! i ts beautiful streets , gardens , palaces , the fine picture galleries and dancingsaloons , the varied crowds in the streets , thegay Hungarian costume which you meet withat every corner, and the opera, all remain inmy mind l ike a bright dream . In Viennaeverything is gay, no word expresses it sowell. All of the principal stores have beautifully painted S igns , such as “ the Bride ,

” “ theS uabian peasant girl ,

” “ the Queen of Naples ,the Magyar,

” and some of them historicalpictures , which form a distinctive feature inthe city. At the hotels there is no taole d ’

lcéte,

every one dines a la carte, that is , pays pieceby piece for everything. I n Vienna you payextra for mustard and of course for bread . Iam often amused at travellers who have topay as much again as I do at the hotels , etc . ,not knowing the language or the people .Vienna is one of the cheapest cities in Europe , and yet travellers say that it is as dear


as London ! We— I and my English friendhad a very beautifully furnished , handsome

room for 45 cents a day, wi th two beds , at adecent hotel . All our furniture was new andred-velveted . Curtains first class . But wemade a bargain for it. Eating is cheap andgood (when you know where to look for it) .In Paris you can almost always get a theatreticket for half price , when there is no extraattraction , at a store ! In Vienna I called onMr . Norris , and afterwards on Mr. S tiles , ourC/cargé. At the latter

’s , I had an opportunityof verifying an eccentric hypothesis of myEnglishman ’s. He asserts that he never in hisl ife called once on an Ambassador or Cnargéwithout seeing a pretty girl . At Mr. S tiles ’

I saw two, one the servant or some poor relation— the other I took to be his daughter.Vienna is the place for a man with the blues .All is gaiety and all is open -hearted sincerity !At some of the public balls , however, thegood-natured young gentlemen and ladiescarry this want of reserve a fraction too far,but, to their praise be i t said , not a thousandthpart of the excess to which it would be carried in England or America in similar places .In Germany , the most improper characters


of wares for sale,from horses and cows down

to a penny pipe , including silk , velvets , andgingerbread . Behind many of the stands S itpretty Tyrolese girls , with hats such as theirancestresses wore in the 9 th century, of greenfelt

,or handsome Tyrolese men looking with

the girls as if they had j ust walked off thestage of a theatre . I feel , for my part, in suchscenes as if a play were really being performed , and always entertain a half conviction that I am a supernumerary gent ” hiredto walk up and down . Then the fancy dressesof various German peasants ! Students strolling along with that indescribable gait whichis the same in Princeton , in Rome , in Heidelberg, or Paris . Way are students al ike thewhole world over ? Then there is one part ofthe fair where much is to be seen gratis

,and

much more for money. E lephants and monkeys cannot of course fail , any more thanfried buns or sugar-plums , but the great attraction is Hans Wurst. Do you ask wh oHans Wurst is ? His name being translatedmeans Jack Pudding or Jack Sausage . Hefigures everywhere . He danceth on a ropeand throweth summersaults. He preaches tothe people on patent black ing, lectures to

PARIS IN’

48 145

them on wax figures , and gravely reprovesthem for not going to see the celebrated mechamical figures . Anon , he rides the elephantor is seen under another form dealing outpatent si lver wash . Hans Wurst is the Funch inello of Germany. Punch is here too , asin Naples

,and still preserves all his ancient

popularity . I really believe that Punch willoutlast any government on the face of theworld . Well , I fly about in my letter as if Ihad wings . How do you fancy a taste of Holland ? I have visited Amsterdam , Rotterdam ,

and been through Schie-dam—Holland isthe country of dams , you know. I have beenin the Hague

,and Haarlem , have visited Ant

werp and seen its cathedral and pictures byRubens , have cl imbed to the top of the helfry of Bruges and was there while the bellsrung (my ears ache when I think of it). InBrussels I saw the wonders ; in Ghent, do.

In Mechlin I only ate dinner. Really whenI run over this catalogue and think of thethings to be described , I turn frightenedsuch a lot of curiosities ! Well , here in Parisone has very remarkably fine opportunitiesof wri ting up travels

,for, at every ten steps ,

you see something which reminds you of


something you have seen or heard of before .Bless me , with all my list of cities I forgotHalle

,Magdeburg, Nuremberg, and Augs

burg. With which shall I begin ? Nurem

berg is the finest in the number,and he who

has not felt himself in another world in i t ( Ishould say in another age) has no poetry inhis soul or reading in his head . In Nuremberg I met with some Norwegian artistsWho took me to a celebrated German students ’ beer kneip called the Jammerthal

,or

Vale of Misery, which has been a students’

kneip for 40 0 years— and always had goodbeer. Berlin remains undescribed , withits palaces and gardens , and the Americanfriends I met there , and the Ital ian operaoh , man D ieu

In Paris I have discovered an old GermanUniversity friend . Yesterday was a greatParis festival , the féte of all the dead , and allParis turned out and went to Pére la Chaiseto throw garlands on the tombs of their lovedfriends . S o we went together , and talkedGerman , and talked about old times in theUniversity, and agreed that there was afterall no land in the world like old Germanyfor comfort or agreeableness . He . was an

PAR IS IN’

48 147

Engl ishman,however. I don ’t like my own

countrymen much . I must say that theyquarrel too much among one another, thoseabroad

,and are fearfully extravagant. Mr. P.

was informing me, In a good-natured way, thatI could l ive very cheap in Paris .

“A good quiets ingle room

,

” quoth be ,“ such a one as you ’d

want for you need n ’

t be extravagant—canbe got for a hundred francs a month in the

Quartier Latin !”! pay 35 francs , and that

is five too much . Last night I saw Mademoi

selle Rachel act in Pnaedra . Such actingand such a proud deep voice the very soundof it moved your soul Sometimes that voicerolled like distant thunder, and then changedin to soft music . Fanny Kemble , in her bestdays , might give some idea of her. Poor woman ! I came on with her from Marseilles ,and from the little I saw of her, was verymuch pleased . I am sure that I should havebeen good friends with her if I had an opportunity of knowing her. But Mlle . Rachel ,though rather too F rencn in her style , is astriking illustration of my theory that womenhave naturally as much talent as men , butcircumstances, alas , repress it. I know of nospectacle really so sublime as a woman who


has, by force of talent, overcome even theobstacle of circumstances . Poor ladies ! We“ lords of creation ,

” in my humble opinion,

have usurped altogether too much authority.

N . B . Tlt is is not a German notion on

tne con trary .

” A gentleman once fell downin the street ; a lady asked him if he had hurthimself ; he , aching with pain and smilingwith pol iteness , hurriedly rep l ied , Oh , no ,not at all , on the con trary .

Nov. 3d. Do you want news? The cholerahas arrived . May God preserve us from it !I hardly know what to write . Yesterday andto-day we have had a fog— such a fogone degree thicker and we must have all beendrowned . And under this curtain Paris wenton as lively as ever, and skipped , and curvetted , and made bows , and lorgnetted theladies , and went to the spectacle and drankcoffee , etc . , etc. What an animal a Frenchman is , halfpolitesse (not politeness ) and halfinsolence

,and altogether interested . Oh , my

poor Germans ! I wonder how they get alongsince I left them . A consolation for my vainsoul , in my café, is to have the garcon alwaysbring me journals in three or four languages .No Frenchman (unless he be from A lsatia)


escaped , but i t hit a glazier’s boy just behind

me , who was carrying a great pane of glassin a box on his back . He jumped backwardsto avoid the collis ion , and in so doing drovehis pane of glass into a shop window, breaking both . Out jumped the Shopman andraised a lovely row. I , Carlos , walked off,

fervently blessing my lucky star. S treet collisions are frequent here . N ight before last,walking home with my A nguz is, we saw twocarriages lock wheel and hub, and drive ontogether to the imminent danger of the livesof all concerned . F inally they stopped anda great swearing ensued . How they dotalk ,

” said I to my Englishman .

“ Yes,but

,

”

added he with a feeling of real amazemen t,wnere tae misc/z ief did all tnose soldiers come

from ? For, upon my word , the wheelshad hardly touched before I distinctly sawthree mounted cuirassiers , besides some gendarmes

,and a man with a long pole and a

lantern about them . So it goes in Parisas in Germany

You cannot eat—you cannot drink,Nor have a row—nor hardly think,For fear you should create a charmTo conjure up th e fiend John Darm l l

PARIS IN ’

48 1 5 1

One of the great complaints of strangers inParis is the way the pretty girls in the storeshumbug them into buying anything andeverything. They will get a gentleman , oldor young, into a corner, and causer and com

pliment him , and Show this and that, andflatter till the poor man , l ike Dr. Frankl inat W h itefield

’

s preaching, fairly empties hispockets . Now 1 ( I say it modestly) amrather proof against this sort of thing, quitea barbarian in fact. Well , Mamma, I wasgoing along the other day, and , wanting apair of suspenders , entered a shop. Well ,Mademoiselle led me into a snug l ittle room ,

and after sell ing the suspenders,began to

causer— to talk. I let her run on , and atthe first pause gravely asked , “ Can youtalk German ?” “N on , monsieur .

” “ Or anything except French ? ” “Non , monsieur .

”

And I replied , “ I disl ike speaking Frenchvery much .

” With this piece of studiedincivil i ty, I escaped . How I hate to haveShop people try to make you buy thingsyou don ’t want ! A pretty face is no safeguard against me

,for in damp weather my

German phlegm aggravates itself into Russian bearishness against any sort of humbug,


feminine or otherwise . I rather admire Russians myself. I wonder how you will l ikethis letter. I have tried to make it interesting, and really not attained my mark (without fishing for My last story willdisplease you— but even an angel can ’tbe without blemish , let alone a poor devil ofa student who has no earthly check on hishumours and caprices . I taly, oh Italy !This is the weather to think of Naples , orHeidelberg. In the first

,I should have sun

shine and oranges— in the second,a hot

stove'

and beer ! How delightful it was inI taly ; life glided by like a dream , a summerdream . German life was a solemn , sombretwilight meditation among gray ruins andunder the rustling boughs . Oh thou mysoul

,say whither art thou fleeting ! To fields

of l ight where fairy brooklets flow. What aqueer thing it is to live alone in Paris ! Lastnight I met with two Americans at Frank ’s .One of them rather pleased me , he did not

seem , l ike almost every American traveller,to be divided solely between feverish maddening dissipation and contempt for everything foreign . I forget his name . I wishthat everybody who comes abroad were like


contents are shared among the waiters . Ihave read that the landlord takes the lion ’sshare . All around , at l ittle tables , s it people ,reading, smoking, drinking coffee , and playing different games, of which dominoes in areal French nest is the principal . YesterdayI sat l istening to two Germans talking andfinally joined them , when the conversationturned on Munich and beer. One had studiedtwo years in Heidelberg. Sometimes Imeet

with a good-natured Danish friend wh o hastwo other very gentleman-l ike countrymen ,and we exchange our views on Paris andParis ways and manners . How differentlydifferent things appear to an American , aGerman

,or a Dane ! As for my English

man , he is perfectly happy. He has a j ovialmercurial disposition , and thinks that, afterGermany (nothing of course can be equal toGermany) , France is the finest land in theworld . He likes to do an occasional oddthing, and gave away his theatre

“

check theother evening to a man who offered him afranc and a half for it, because the man askedin German . What a mighty fascination Germanism has over one who has once beenunder its influence ! I t is the opium of the

PARIS IN ’

48 1 55

mind. I have been reading an I tal ian paperthis morning, and have got some new ideas .I taly is mak ing wonderful progress ; the Italians

,poor devils , want noth ing but good gov

ernment . Pius the N inth is a glorious character

,that fearless cool energy of his , his

common sense and stern resolution to dowhat is right

,fairly awe me . E viva il Pio

Nono/

When I left Bruges , I j oined on the waya worthy German gentleman from Bremen ,who was on a trip to Paris . We went together al l day, and at night were startled bythe announcement “We are in Paris . Ireally felt a shudder of awe steal over me .PARIS ! And now, I run about the town , gointo the Palais Royal and Louvre , l ive in the

Quartier des E tudian ts, and feel as muchat home as if I were in Heidelberg. And so ,Mamma, my little note is nearly finished .

Give my best love to Father, Henry, and thegirls. My next letter to you shall be morestudied and reserved , more cold if you like ,and , if any ideas come into my brain , moreinteresting. Tell me what you like to haveme write about and I ’

ll spin you as long aletter as you like . If Henry wants a letter,


he must help himself to a p iece of this . Hecan warm it up himself. I shall call Henryth e Admiral in future . I read of a Chineseadmiral a day or two ago who flew at hisenemy and tore his hair out, and to j udgefrom the explosion with which his last letterconcluded , I fear that your furniture musthave been smashed . S uch a burst of indignation against the world and fate was neverheard. I would have loved clearly to havewritten him a ten-page letter. My wishywashy epistle might have cooled him . Well ,forgive all sl ips of imagination , and remember with love your dear son

CHARLEY.


PARIS , LATIN QUARTER ( cheap and fly ! )le 18 Nov. cold and clear.

MY OWN BRAVE HARRY,— God bless youa th ousand times for your letter, dated nothing at all , which came by the last steamer.I feel warmed to the soul to think what agood friend I have at ~home in thee . Oh , athousand blessings on thy warm , true heart !

As for my Polish business , i t was awild

,adventurous , nightmare piece of busi


and then Don Giovanni with Lablache

and Grisi . Don ’t you (and don’t I wish you

were with me ?Paris, N ov. 2 0 , 1 847 . I once read a piecetaken from an English magaz ine— I forget how they called it— but i t was a sortof Petites miséres de la vie bumaine. Well ,the concluding misfortune the climax, infact - was that, after going to the Opera inorder to forget the troubles of the day

,he

found a notice on the door, “ Madame Grz s zis S ick and won ’t sing. Such was preciselymy case yesterday, with the addition of Lablache , who was also And we hadLa Sonnambula and Persiani . Was n ’t i t ado ? F iacre to and fro 2 fr. 1 8 sous . Ticket

(pit) 4 francs . And is n’

t th e whole thing aqueer coincidence ? Even the truth won ’t godown unless you draw it mild

,and though

we can ’t see without sunlight, y et a man may

be blinded witait . Moderation ModerationMODERATION. I will give you an instance

Yesterday I was talking with my invaluableEnglishman , wh o always turns up whereverI want him , in Heidelberg, Munich , or Paris .He is not Pottinger. Well , he was telling thefollowing story.

“When in Brussels I was in

PARIS IN ’

48 1 59

the church , a commissionnaire came bothering me ; I told him to go to the Devil ! Hewas really Shocked at the awful profanity,and said , ‘S ir

,you are in a church .

’ Now,

”

said I,I had nearly the same thing happen

to me in Padua ; when there a fellow cametroubling us , and ! told b im , Go to the Devil ,

’

when he replied , What ! go to the Devil , andthat in the Holy Week ! Now my Engl ishman knows me , but if some man hadtrumped your story with such a card , would n

’

t

you have doubted By Jupiter,if one half of

the travellers I meet had told me so , I wouldhave believed that the Holy Week story wasa pure fabrication . Some of the sentences inyour letter are really beautiful one or twothri l l me l ike a church bell heard far

,far

away in the summer woods . I will not tell youwhich they are , or you

’

ll try to reproduce andimitate . Men often kill themselves in writingby doing a good thing and then overdoing it.I wrote a fantasie lately, and then four like i t,but only the first was worth a damn . Unlesswe work and study and play the devil withBlair and Campbell , and make years

’ hardwork on B elles L ettres (hardly worth the time)we can ’t make a sty le. Better take Nature as


she comes . A melancholy remark ofyours , “ Oh , if I had your advantages of travel ,bow I ’d surpass you .

” Beware , my friend , ofsuch thoughts . If you can ’t become a man inAmerica, you never would anywhere . Of allthe young men that I have met abroad , I donot think that I have seen one who could nothave got as much savoirfa ire anywherezf be bad taken t/ce same pains. Here areyoung men , learning hard to fence , to dance ,passing brilliant evenings in sp irituel conver

Sation with lorettes and milliners over cheapwine punch , looking at the Cancan at theS alle Valentino or Prado . Why, man , you cando all this sort of thing in NewYork. But here

,

in Paris , the consciousness that they musttake something home with them impels themto take all these noble exertion s . A fool always remains a fool . The Continent ’s a humbug in some things . If you don ’t worb here ,you ’l l go to the ground ! Oh , don

’t believethat you ’re always t he innocent one , that ifdestiny had only done this or that, everythingwould have gone so smooth . Va t

’

en Ioften begin to think , Oh , zf and bringi t up with a short turn . How many a man oflesser talen t with fewer advantages has done


I verily bel ieve that they enjoy life as nohuman beings do . The great amusement ofthe students is to go to the balls , Valentinoor Prado , etc ., etc . , in summer, Mabille andChateau Rouge in winter. Here you havesplendid saloons , and everybody keeps on hishat and smokes , and picks up partners forthe evening. Here the Cancan is in al l i tsglory . I have danced at Chateau Rouge

,and

went once to the Valentino . Prefer lookingother ways for adventures . Money is the

g reat th ing in Paris, but in Germany peopleonly regard the man himself. And in Pariscommon sense will help as much as money.

One can do more here with money and common sense than anywhere else . I t is S undaybut if any human being could find it out by

what the people are at,he would be a keen

one . Here comes my English friend singing“Es war einmals ein Madchen (There wasonce a maiden), an affecting German ballad ,how the devil came riding on a snow-whitehorse , and carried her off.M onday . I went to the Hbtel Cluny yes

terday, a Gothic building of the Middle Ages ,fil led with arms and mediaeval antiquities . Apart of the same building is the ruins of a

PARIS IN ’

48 163

Roman Tbermae, or bathing establishment.Very recently they have discovered , j ust before the door oi Notre Dame , Roman ruinsonly a few feet below the level of the earth .

I have seen them . As the paper says , twelveworkmen are employed in disinterring thatwhich four and twenty savans will disputeover. Roman coins and lots of “

as havebeen discovered

,among the latter a crooked

backbone,sagely supposed to be that of

Quasimodo . The theatres and operas do notmuch frighten me by their S ize and richness

( I have been in Italy), and as for their instrumental music , though good , it wants the soulof the Germans ’ music . One had l i ttle German band always seems to me better thana large French one

,j ust as a l ittle violet is

worth more than a shopful of artificial flowersto a true lover of the beautiful . That strangefeeling of God in all , of the Infinite , is everywhere in Germany. I t works and weaves itself everywhere and among all things . Oh ,my good , honest , spiritual smokers ! Germanism

,that mysterious wonderful spirit,

impresses itself on every one who l ives unprejudiced in that country. Here am I , andmy A ng lais, who , as dry and unenthusIastic a


man as ever lived , is nevertheless moved tothe very soul when anything German turnsup , and his spirit seems vibrated with dreamymusic when I speak to him of Heidelberg,the rushing Neckar, i ts old castles , and ourBurschen life with all its lights and shadows .“ Oh , were I in my Fatherland ! What awild , reckless , careless , cap-on-one-side sortof a l ife ! At 2 2 I became a boy again , and asmuch again a man , and all was bright andbeautiful . I counted six women in the theatre ,the other day, weeping at the sorrows of aheroine ! Oh ye French ! I went into LaMorgue the other morning, two drowned onesthere . Frank Fisher has predicted a speedydeath for me , 1 st, because I loaf at midnightthrough the Quartier S t . Antoine and Quartier Latin ; 2dly, because I drink beer ; 3dly ,

because my room has no carpet ; 4th ly, general imprudence . He is , as a me

’

decin , verycareful of himself. I only feel unwell when Ihave the blues. Ennui would kill me in S ix

months . As long as I can find excitementand pleasure , my health will be good . I Shall ,in company with you , work my few witskeenly when I return to America . Remember—nofaine’an t spiri t none of your old


as an English ha’penny. To him who hathShall be given is a deep mystery, capable ofinfinite application . What do you think on thesubject, young brother ? What do you everthink about my advice at all ? Demd foine ,pawn h on ’

r ! E ither pride or profit (Rochefoucauld , Maxim 1 73) i s at the bottom of ouractions , and in writing you these letters ,though possibly vanity may inspire me morethan a little , my principal obj ect is to formu

late my own thoughts, discipline my ownmind , and teach my self what I know. Therenow

,there ’s a lick . Maybe you are like a

woman , treat you cavalierly and you’

ll beginto be more attentive . The very disagreeablething in Paris is the brou illard ,

or fog . Wehave them here so thick that at n ight youare always , despite the numerous gas lights ,in darkness, and for a stranger they are morethan annoying

,l i terally distressing. Streets

are miserably muddy in Paris . The Frenchare a damned dirty people . Germans very

clean in their houses , much more so thanAmericans

,and not less so , on the whole , in

their persons . Dr. Waagen , whose work onRubens you read , is Professor in the Un . ofBerl in . Last semester, his lectures were only

PARIS IN’

48 167

paid for by S ix Americans , among them my

go’

bd friend Ward , and one German. He isa very talented man .

If you would l ike to know anything aboutmy looks

,I can tell you I have grown rather

large , am still utterly incapable of always looking dressed up , am very far from a dandy.

Oh,Jupiter

,my boy, what can I branch

off on next ? I want very much to tel l aboutParis and adventure , etc . Memory spreadethnot her broad wing over my soul ; Fantasie ,the si lver-winged , swims not from her home,in the gold and purple East, to breathe intothe spiri t of her adorer that inspiration whichhe longs for to please his little brother Henrywith . I wrote the last sentence to the tuneof a hand-organ under my window. See ifthere be music in it. There , that

’s a witty,

overstrained fantasie in the transition style ,a litt le in your own manner. I t ’s growingnebulous , about 4 P. M ., and in a few secondsI ougb t to light my candle . Well , Henry, Iwant you really to be industrious . If youwon ’t be so in books , study industriously thegreat volume of human life ! which is thehardest of the two , for you must do what isfor you very hard control yourself. Learn


all my maxims , get rid of all boyish Philisterl ike ideas you ever had , particularly theseabout me , and consider me as a man , a newacquaintance , and we

’

11be good friends .

H6TEL DU LU ! EMBOURG, Dec . 20 ,

Vis avis au Palais de Cluny , Rue de la Harpe,Quartier Latin .

DEAR HENRY, There you have it, grandand magnificent, and every word true . Butah ! how werry deceitfu l is them appearances !One would really think that your brother wasthe chosen one of princes from the magnifi

cent heading of h is letter. But princes don’

t

l ive in the Latin Quarter,and the whole thing

is “ calculated to deceive .

” Another phase inArthur O’

Leary is realized . In the Rue dela Harpe (described in the Almanach desGrisettes ” as the street of the real Paris student), you see the Quartier Latin in al l itsglory and filth ! The houses are older, thestones rougher (for the narrowness of thestreet precludes trottoirs, or sidewalks, inmost places) , the mud deeper, the restaurantscheaper

,th e estaminets and cafe

’

s more irequent than in any other part of Paris . Andjust exactly in that part of the street where


pet, and a bed which looks l ike the marqueeof a major. Well now, I

’

m down to write, andI ’l l begin ! I ’ve got much , and yet verylittle , to relate or spin out. I

’m hard onthe fEsth etic studies , and amusing myselfblessed little . I have ceased amusing myself,and am now desperately determined to getup a good work on fEsth etics. As for writing, you have lost two letters from me . Youspeak of my letters giving me en trée into society. I would like to know what letters youmean . I had one to a M . Morlot from a M .

Bujac . Well , I called on him , delivered it,and , after talking with him ,

went , and havenever heard of him . That is genuine Frenchthey never care a curse for a man who

does n ’

t come the g rande figure. I have oneleft to Prof. Pouillet, a great man here , fromProf . Henry . A great deal of fuss was madeabout this letter. Well , Henry introduces meas a young gentleman who intends attendinghis lectures . I ’

d see him damned first . Nowthere remain two to Mr. a sneak whoinsults people gratuitously, expects you tobow before him , and prove your aristocracy.

I ’l l rest In the society of students and mill iners first. A ll the Americans abroad are

PARIS IN ’

48 17 1

bus ied with “getting into society, gettingpresented to the King,

” and raising all hellin order to do something to brag about whenthey get home . Before I ’l l put up with theairs of a set of people I have no sympathywith

,I ’l l l ive alone . I know perfectly wel l

that I can walk into their astonishment kneedeep when I try, for if ever man had brassand experience the Cbevalier has , and nofear in any society. The only evening partyI ’ve been to in Paris consisted of six keptmistresses and two men , where they playedving t

-et-un for sons, and I went to sleep onthe sofa, and afterwards waltzed to the pianoforte , and tried to learn that foolish dance ,the cancan . Just now I ’m living quiet . I ’mblase, without affectation . I ’m hard up fortin also . I life to meet with an Americanwho has never travelled . I don ’t care who orwhat he is . If I can ’t put my thumb on him ,

then I ’m an idle boaster.Shall I describe ? The lorettes in Paris at

present wear their hair down over thei r eyes .They all smoke cigars . In a great ball yousee many pretty, but still as many interesting, or piquant looking girls . Let me introduce you to my Engl ish friend

,Mr. Field.


He is sitting by me . We have studied together in Heidelberg, drunk beer in Munich ,and “ gone it in Paris . He studies “droit

”

or law, speaks German like a native , etc .

What days we have seen together !I must close abruptly. A long letter from

Germany and the arrival of Pottinger,with

divers business , hinder me from continuing.

But I must first narrate a li ttle incident. Iam much loved by dogs . Last n ight, as Iwas coming home at about over thePont Neuf, up the Rue Dauphine, a beautiful l ittle terrier dog followed me . He cameafter me up into my room , and when I tooka good look at him

,went down on his knees ,

or rather up on his legs , in a good attitude .S o I gave him a room and a bed , and thismorning

,after paying his respects to me on

his hind legs,bolted . All well , write soon .

CHARLES .

PARIS , Jan . 2,1848 .

DEAR HENRv,—The red wine punch is

on the fire , Pottinger is blowing away withthe bellows and quoting from Ausonius .Your letter was received yesterday evening.

Many hearty thanks . If I have anything to


Rigolette . They are not pretty, but dancewell . The Odéon ball began at 1 2 o ’clock ,and an immense crowd , masked and un

masked , surrounded the theatre . The menare generally dressed as Pierrots

,in full white

cotton trousers , and a sort of blouse do. withred ribbons , and buttons as large as an or

ange . The women , with full velvet trousers ,man ’s shirt and neckcloth , and a sash roundthe waist.I ’m very quiet now, working on fEsthetics.

Paris is not half as j olly as Germany, al

though it produces wonderful impressions onfreshly arrived Americans. What I told youlong ago in a letter about the superiority ofthe quiet German cities to Paris is true . Ex

perience confirms me in it. The greatsong in Paris now is the chorus of the Gi

rondins,a play which has had 1 39 repre

sentations. The Latin Quarter rings with it,and when I awoke at five this morning, adrunken crowd of students passed my houseS inging it. I wish I could take you intomy café de la Rotonde, corner of the Rue del’Ecole de Médecine and the Rue de Hautefeuille . There you see the world , and if youdrop in at six P . M .

, may behold ME drinking

PARIS IN’

48 1 75

coffee and can sucrée, and reading the Corsaire

,

” Charivari ,” Deutsche Zeitung,

”

“ Daily News.” The “ Corsaire ” is the fly,

spicy paper of Paris . The café de MilleColonnes in the Palais Royal is all very well ,but there are no cafés in Paris to be compared with those I have seen elsewhere . TheCafé de Danemark is a favourite hole of“ ours . In the second storey of my café

(Rotonde) is a bill iard room frequented bystudents and their girls . S tudents’ womenall smoke . I like to see a regular drag onpuffing away.

C’est ma N ini

,c’est ma N ini ,

D ieu ! qu’elle est gentille .

C’est ma N ini dragon fini,

D ieu, quelle bonne fille !Au so ir au bal vous la voyezChahutant, le po ing sur la hanche,Les coti llons, tous voltigeans ,E lle est encore la plus char-man-te !

The tune of this c/cansonette i s real ly veryfine . S tudents are very different boys fromthe j eunesse doree, who promenade the Boulevards. Germany, thank God , has a verysmall proportion of the latter article out ofAustria.The Seine is a very mean l ittle river, and


only has the good quality of having goodwater. And now I have seen many rivers ,the Rhone, the Rhine, the Oder, the Weser,the E lbe , the Mos

’

elle , the Main , the Neckar,the Danube , the Iser rolling rapidly, theInn , the Meuse , the lazy Skelt ,

” or E scaul t

(French), the S omme , the O ise . In theSchweiz , the Rhine and Rhone again ! I nItaly, the Po, the Adige , the Brenta, thePiave

,the Arno , the Tiber. There is a string

foryou , and yet Iforgot the Moldau by Prague .

And I would fain be by the Iser strandB ei der ! sar strand , dort ist mein Vater

land. Pottinger thinks that Munich is “ thefinest old nest in Europe ,

” and I coincide.There is a wholesale heartiness in Bavarianlife in Munich , in Fine Arts and Beer andTobacco .

I t seems rather queer that you said nothingto me about George Boker’s poems beyondputting, or pasting, in the advertisement.You do hate to take pains in writing a letter.Tell me at least the titles of his poems andif they are good . Don ’t try so awfully hardto be brillian t in your letters , and do stoppunning. I l ike to find amusement in quaintness , i n fantais ie , but hate any attempt at


would be the receipt of such a one as yourlast, which really comforted and warmed myheart for two entire frosty days . I am gladthat I gave you some account of the beautifulE lbe that truly enchanted river with itswild cl iffs, green forests , and robber castles .And stil l more comforting is the idea that Ican never write again as well as I did in thosewretched letters of mine , which Aunty Halehas been publishing for the benefit and instruction of mankind . If I don ’

t write betterbreak my meerschaum that ’s all ! The

cholera, I suppose , will give me the go-by .

Don ’t be alarmed about it ; nobody is here .We have j ust heard that in Poland and S ilesiait is extremely mild . As for the res t, the onlycases of cholera that have appeared in Pariswere in reality nothing but cbolera morbus, orsomething of the sort . Paris is a pleasanttown enough , but not to be named in thesame day with Vienna or Berlin as a pleasantplace of residence . I shall never recover Germany

,nor do I know a single person who has

lived in Germany who does not prefer it toany other country. There is the most singular unaccountable fascination about Germanythat man can imagine , and my English travel

PARIS IN ’

48 1 79

l ing friend , who had come to Paris to spendhis Christmas vacation , wants to go to Germany instead . The weather in Paris , frombeing foggy, has become clear and cold , verycold sometimes . My health continues verygood indeed , and I am quite comfortable .

All Paris is crazy now with the masked balls .I have seen them in Italy and Germany, andprefer the German to the French . The Parismasked balls are altogether too blackguard

,

whereas the Germans , though bad enough ,always behave quietly and decently. I am gladalso to hear so much about sisters in yourpresent letters . Poor little Charlotte seemsto keep quite in the background

,but never

mind , I shall soon see them ,and it will be

delightful . If you want to entice me home,

you can do it best by telling me about Henryand the girls .When I take to letter writing in Paris

,I

always feel more like going over some of thescenes of my past travels than describing thelions here . The Tui leries , and Luxembourg,and Place VendOme , and so on , are all surpassed by other buildings in other places ,j ust as the men who dwell around them

are by almost any other civilized people.


Whether a Frenchman be more monkey ordevil is a problem as diffic

’

ult as ever to solve .

The most astonish ing thing in their character is the fondness for rushing into cafés andspending the whole day In drinking sugarwater, reading papers , playing chess anddominoes, etc . I t is strange enough whenwe consider, after all , how much a man

’s nature depends upon the society he is broughtup in , and how very happy people would bein this world if they did not trouble themselves about the l ittle mean restrictions ofsociety and fear of ridicule and so on . Thegreat advantage of travelling is

,that it teaches

a man , better than anything, the true valueof people ’s notions on different subjects , andkeeps him from attaching undue importanceto anything ( except indeed MONEY) . I t Is

terribly apt, indeed , to induce a sort of goodhumoured Epicureanism—not indeed bymaking him fond of pleasure—rather theother way but in making him feel the real ity of tb is world more than ever. The mostdisgusting thing in France ( in a small way) i sthe way you are obliged to dress . The pooresthere must and will be wretched without fineclothes , and we Americans are not one whit


such splendid pictures . I have seen thegreater part of al l the fine pictures in theworld

,and have studied and read much on

the subj ect so as not to speak ignorantly. Ifyou want to know the finest picture in theworld , i t is the Madonna del S isto in Dresden

,and not the Transfiguration in Rome ;

both are by Raphael . ! How the standardshave changed since ’

48 l ] I remember of oldyour l iking for pictures , and wish you couldvisi t the Louvre and Luxembourg gallerieshere . I don ’t l ike the pictures of David andthe French school . After the Italian beautyand German soul , they come like ice andstone . But some of the Raphaels here aresuperb . I saw in Holland and Belgium somevery fine pictures . When I undertake towrite a letter, my m ind seems always changedinto a sort of panorama. All the scenes andcities that I have passed through run throughmy mind , and produce an e ffect strikinglylike that of trying to remember a melodramathe day after. I can always recall the del ightful impressions myself, but can nevertransfer them . Then there is always such adelicious blending, such a fusion of recollections and ideas

,such an embrace of memory

PARIS IN ’

48 183

and imagination , that I really sometimes begin to believe that I have been in Turkey orChina

,and asked Pottinger the other day if

we had n’t touched on the river Vistula some

where in our wanderings . Now, for instance ,I can imagine myself high up in the oldcathedral of S trasburg, looking down on thestrange old city, with its high gable roofsand quaint chimneys , with hundreds ofstorks flying over them . In all old Germantowns the storks build their nests in thechimney. The people believe that they bringgood luck (and the young German childrenall believe that i t was the good stork whotried to pull the nails out of Christ’s handsand feet, when crucified). Well , I never forget that view, any more than I can the blueAlsatian hills which stretch far away beyond .

You can see this cathedral for at least sixtyor seventy miles . I have seen it from Baden ,and from its summit you can count hundredsof cities , towns and villages . I t is the tallest,and , to my taste , the finest Gothic church inthe world . Then I th ink . of Venice , of thecanals, moonlight and gondolas , Paolo Veronese, and the S t. Mark

’s Church,and Doge ’s

Palace , with its semi-oriental splendour. Of


all my travels , no one part seems so thoroughly dreamlike fairylike or beautiful

,

as the two weeks I spent in Venice . I shouldnever have tired of it, and even now I canhardly realize that I have dwelt in the “ Ci tyof the Sea.” The never-ceasing “ wash ofthe water in the canals , the delightful sl ideof the gondola through the water, the palacesand galleries and the delightful fun of walking about the S t. Mark ’s place , were all aspecul i ar as pleasant. I remember once (profane Yankee that I was ) being shown thestone chair of S t. Mark and sitting down init

,in order to find if its holiness would have

any effect. Alas , it j ust did n’t ! And then

there were the smugglers who sold Maltesecigars , etc . Now my mind j umps to Bologna,with its sausages , and port ico houses , allj oining one another,

‘

and its S ta. Cecilia ofRaphael , and Ferrara, as solitary and forlornas an empty stable , and Rome , the desolateQueen of Cities , the proud , the imperial , thebeautiful , and Florence the delightful , for Icertainly was there, what I always have beeneverywhere in Europe , happy , contented andsatisfied . When I was alone I reflected , andwhen in company I ran round and talked .

186 CHARLES GODFREY”

LELAND

fl icts were j ust taking place and sharp firinggoing on in the Faubourg S t . Antoine . Onthe 2 2d , gunsmiths

’

Shops had been plundered , a few individuals killed and woundedby the cavalry, and several barricades begun .

After sending my letter, I went to the Faub .

S t . Antoine , saw the people, who were veryind ifferently armed , sang and cried Vive laréforme ! with them . Just as we turned acorner, several platoons were fired by thetroops into the street we left

,and many

people were killed . We had to run twiceinto houses to escape a charge of cavalry.

Fusillades were going on everywhere, and thepeople seemed to gather fresh determinationand energy every minute . Everywhere weheard and joined in the deeply exci ting choruses of “ La Marseillaise and Girondins .”

Very few of the Natidnal Guards were as yetto be seen . At this time (noon) , people werekilled in different parts of the city by theM un icipal Guards , who were always verymuch hated . As the people were at this houralmost l iterally unarmed , these dischargeswere nothing more nor less than murder.S everal individuals in upper stories of houseswere singled out and shot by theM unicipaux .

PARIS IN’

48 1 87

At two o ’clock the Nat . Guards (who arecitizen soldiers) began to interfere with andprevent this unreasonable slaughter

,and

cried with the people 24 bas Guiz ot ! and Vivela réforme At five o ’clock some policeprisons were broken open , and those whohad been arrested for “ rioting del ivered .

About this hour I witnessed , with Rosengarten

,the fusil lade of the Rue S t . Denis by

the bridge . At this instant the bridges wereclosed

,and I supposed , as the soldiers told

us , that it would not be possible to cross theriver . We went, however, to the Pont Neuf.Already we had heard a rumour that the ministry was to be changed , and , on entering theRue de la Monnaye , saw an officer on horseback who announced to the very great joy ofthe people that Guizot had resigned . Thebridge was free and every one imagined thatorder would be restored as soon as the retiralof the hated minister should be general lyknown . Such n b t indeed have been thecase , had not precisely at this time an eventtaken place which , trifling as i t seems , wasi n reality the turning point of the entireRevolution and the French government. I twas at nine o ’clock in the evening, while the


streets were being illuminated in honour ofthe change in the cabinet , at an instant whenall Paris was becoming joyful and happy

,that

the soldiers stationed to guard the house ofM . Guizot fired on the people in the streetand killed or wounded sixty persons .From one end of the city to the other thecry of A ux armes was heard , the tocsin wassounded at several churches . An American

,

who has only heard bells of a smaller calibre,

can have no idea of the awful unearthly effectwhich the sound of these “ storm bells

,

” asthe Germans call them , produces . As theyare only sounded for fire (which is of veryrare occurrence in Paris) and insurrection ,you may well imagine that the rarity of thealarm roar adds greatly to its effect. Supposeit mingled with discharges of musketry

,the

gal loping of cavalry, the Shouts of the infuriated crowd and the sc1eams of the wounded

,

and“

you can form some idea of the “ streetmusic ” of Paris on that eventful n ight.Every one slept lightly and anxiously

,for

the King had troops in the city,and

the people were hardly armed at all .Next morning, when I rose , I found the en

ti re Quarter in an uproar. Bands of students


gloves. I remember perfectly well once , whena boy at school in America, wondering howthe French people contrived to get up thesemysterious barricades . As L ’

art dc constru ire

les barricades remains as yet unwritten , I willgo a little into detail . Paris is paved withlarge square stones , varying from six to twelveinches in length . One man roots them upwith a crowbar

,and six or eight form a l ine

and pass them along. I started one barricadein a side street with some half a dozen ac

complices ,” and I verily believe that in six

minutes it was nearly six feet high . Never didI see human beings work with such desperateenergy. A great many well-dressed gentlemenwere mingled with the others . One large barrier on the other side was constructed almostexclusively by young gentlemen . On theBoulevards and Quais , trees were cut downto form barricades . Near the Bourse theyemployed its spiked rail ings to form cbevaux

defrise. I n theFaubourg S t . Antoine I sawbarricades constructed exclusively of chairs ,beds , tables , etc . Generally speaking, a cart ,diligence , omnibus , orfiacre was taken to forma nucleus , around which the stones were piled .

The barricade once formed , nothing remained

PARIS IN’

48 19 1

to be done but stand by and guard it, for noone knew in what quarter, or from what side ,we might be first attacked . Twice, at our largebarrIer, the cry of LesMunicipaux was raised ,and while the women rushed into the houses

(all of which were left expressly open in com

pliance with a placard posted on all the walls) ,we ran with our arms to the barricade . Ourquarter, however, remained safe .

While I was at our barricades , matters wereprogressing with fearful rapidity in other partsof the ci ty. Early in the morning, anothercabinet had been formed . The hotel ofM . Guizot was taken , on one side the peopleimmediately wrote H btel du Peuple, on theother Propriété N ationale, also two placardsbearing the inscriptions “ Shop to let,

” andA large apartment to let. Immediately after,the prison in the Rue de Cl ichy was brokenopen , and the prisoners (confined for debt)l iberated . At the same time ( 1 0 A M) , severefiring took place in the Place de la Concorde ,and also in the Rue Anj ou S t. Honoré, wheremany were ki lled . At half past twelve a verybrisk engagement took place between theNat. Guards and citizens on the one side ,and the troops of the line on the other, in the


P lace du Palais Royal . As a curious fact, Iwould mention that I have heard it stated thata son of Mehemet Ali ’s , now being educatedhere in Paris , armed with a musket, fought inthis place with great bravery on the sidd ofthe people . In our University Quarter, Iremained at a barricade until a tremendous uproar heard near the bridges, shouting mingledwith numerous discharges of guns , inducedus for an instant to believe that an attack wastaking place . It was , however, only a regiment of the line come to render up their armsto the people ; in token of amity and j oy theykept continually discharging their pieces inthe air and exchanged with the crowd , whowere fairly crazy with j oy, cordial grasps ofthe hand , embraces , and kind salutations.The uproar was deafening, and had I not witnessed, immediately after, at the Tuileries , ascene which infinitely surpassed it, Should saythat the excitement was as intense as any thatI had ever seen .

From this scene,I hurried to the Tuileries

and arrived there j ust after the struggle hadceased . Our first intimation of the event wasseeing a Royal carriage on fire ,which a crowdof delighted gamins were roll ing along the


lier who has “ s teed to ride and weapon towear,

” they formed a spectacle which no citysave Paris could present . On entering theTuileries I was even more struck . A greatdeal of small pilfering of course at once tookplace , but it struck me , even at the time , thatit was rather for the sake of retaining somesmall souvenir of their visit than to actuallybenefit themselves. Jewelry, to the amountof fr. , was spared , and all the worksof art, with the exception of the King

’s portrait (which was torn in pieces) and his bust

(which was hung up by the neck) , left untouched . Placards were at once placed onevery valuable object declarIng It to be National property,

” and others , proclaimingDeath to thieves and friendship to Polandand I taly, were placed here and there . Theextraordinary assertions of the French paperswith regard to the extreme moderation andhonesty of the captors are to be taken witha certain degree of allowance

,yet I am stil l

quite inclined to believe it to be almost unprecedented . With the taking of the Tuileriesthe Revolution was accomplished .

‘Very l ittle of the slang and machinery ofthe old French Revolution has been brought

PAR IS IN ’

48 195

into play. To be sure, we all cal l one anothercitoy en and citoy enne, but, as has been justlyremarked , i t is more in joke than otherwise . The red flag and cockade has given

place to the less Jacobinical tri-color, and theold cry of Vive les sans-culottes ,

” which afew voices raised on the Boulevards , has beenuniversally re

'

echoed by the more respectable and popular shout of “ No more sans,

culottes. In Short, tbis revolution is doingits best to be honest and decent.One effect which it had in a small way was

to make all Paris acquainted , intimate even ,and ten times as l ively and affable as ever.Introductions were voted bores , and thegaminin the street walked along with the welldressed gentleman , exchanging with himinformation and theory with regard to theRépublique. The streets have been very handsomely i lluminated for several nights .I t is really delightful to be an American herein Paris at present ; they consider us as , i nfact, doubly distilled Republicans . E b bien ,

I must close . I have left hundreds of thingsuntold , which you must get at either in thepapers or from my future letters.


I t is amusing to insert, after this letter tohis father, a little printed ci rcular, yellow andstained , addressed to “ Monsieur C . G . Le

land, 6 2 Rue de la Harpe ,

” which,without

exaggeration ,may be described as an historicaldocument

S IR, A meeting of citizens of the UnitedS tates of America will take place at No . 9

Rue Richer to-morrow, March 2d , at 1 2

o ’clock , to make arrangements for a properexpression of feel ing to the Provisional Government of France in respect of the recentrevolution .

You are respectfully invited to attend, andparticularly requested to notify your American friends of said meeting.

PARIS , Ist March, 1848.


PARIS,March 20 , 1848 .

CARo ENRICO,— Punch ’s account of M .

Alex . Dumas ’ two letters from Spain shallapply to mine from Paris . The first was al lroses and gas light, champagne foam andhurrahs , but the second , which went, not to


After dinner, café, billiards (not very often),or loaf, or a visi t, or a spectacle , or home toread and write and smoke, or anything youplease . That is my present life , and it is , atall events , agreeable . The mail Oh a

’onner

wetler fin a le-million I ’m afraid that this istoo late .Thy true friend and ever dear brother,

CARL.

P . S . Don ’t know Grammont . D id youever hear of Abraham a Santa Clara— see ifhis works are in Philade lphia. I want themawfully. Is W incklemann,

or Winkelmann ,i n the B ibliotheca ? Stick it into the librarybox to subscribe to “ Le Moyen Age et laRenaissance .”

CHARLES GODFREY LELAND TO FRANK FISHER

PARIS , Apri l 28, 1848 .

DEAR FRANK,- Accuse me of negligence

in writing, if you will , but of all negligencewith regard to attending to your affairs I aminnocent. One, feces ener mny ci cousin . Ev

eryth ing in Paris has gone c? tort et c? tracersfrom the affairs of Louis Filent

'

e or LouisFi lon and the Government Proo z

'

soz'

re down

PARIS IN ’

48 199

to mine and thine. The fall of the oak killsthe squirrels , and the Revolution of 1 848 hasplayed enfer

” with our personal arrangements . I have already written a longish letterto you—it “went lost,

” and now I hit himagain . I ’ve been in all sorts of adventures ,and all sorts of luck since I saw you . I turnedout in the Grande Re

’

oolnlion , armed l ike asmuggler with dirk and pistols , saw some fusillades, helped build several barricades, was

capitaine at one nice little one in our Quarcier, and distributed percussion caps and consolation to the heroic canaille, not to mentionbeing at the plunder of the Tuileries— notthat I plundered anything. I t was great funwhile it lasted—was that said same Revolution . Whack , hurrah , guns and drums , fusillades and barricades We dined under a Monarchy, supped under a Regency, went to sleepunder a Provisional Government, and wokeunder a Republic— not to mention about twohours when we had just no Government at all .Well , ami cousin , I

’m coming home soon .

The Boulevards look forlorn without treesDéjaz et is playing in Mlle . de Choisy at theVariétés—a very pretty l ittle comedy. Wehad a Review with nearly soldiers the

20 0 CHARLES GODFREY . LELAND

other day, and all Paris is overrun with pennypapers , newsboys , and newswomen ,wh o makesuch a row night and day that the city hasbecome insufferable . Field 15 in England . Asfor me , I made a speech in German the othernight to the audience at Bobino ’

s l ittle Theatre , at the top of my voice . I t ! went downlike Greek at Tammany Hall— nobody understood a word , the audience were completelymystified , but stil l very much delighted .

Whenever a man who looks a little more respectable than common goes to Bobino

’

s, heis sure to be called out to by some student,more oratorical than the rest, - and musteither display his talent at repartee and slanging

,or else sit sti ll and be slanged . Well

I was the selected one the other night , andas I did not understand half their arg oi

though by this time I speak French decentlyenough —I gave it back to them in a regular stump speech in German not caring tospeak English and be called a “ Goddem anda “ biftek.

” All of these things have comeon since the Revolution—now the entirepopulace has become acquainted , nobody is

gene“ every night at all the theatres the entire audience sing the songs of the revolu

PARIS IN’

48'

20 1

tion and amuse themselves in a free and easyway which would do honour to the Boweryso that even I— quiet and sober citizenhave been inspired with their enthusiasm . Ireally begin to think of addressing the operaaudience on the American Constitutionthe price of provisions —electromagnetism— and matters and things in general . Youwill find the report of the speech the next dayafter never in the columns of the “Constitu

tionnel Viz/e la oaga z‘elle don ’t shew this

epistle to anybody and believe me to be ,Yours truly,

I meant to have given you another treat.Remember me particularly to Mary Lizzie,I owe her a letter, and very k indly to yourFather and Mother and all . You wil l probably see me this summer. H elm ! les oecz nx

j anns do la vie ! I have eaten at Janodet’

s

ever since you left—do you know the place ?— White ’s compliments to you , etc . , and so

The result of the Revolution King S torkcoming to replace King Log ,

as he describedit—the Rye did not wait to see . His timeabroad was almost up, and he set out on the


journey homeward almost immediately. Buthis pulse always beat faster at the thought ofthose momentous days . In the Memoranda,

”

under the date 24th of February, I890 , I finda reference to them , sad enough in the contrast suggested :

On Feb . 24th , 1848 , 42 years ago , at thishour, I was in the thick of the French Revolution—at the Tuileries. Even now thememory inspires me . What a day it was forme ! I felt and knew its greatness at the time .I felt that everything in which I took partwas history.

‘ Shot and smoke and sabrestroke and death shots followed fast.’

Now I am high and dry on the beach . But Iremember when I rolled in the wave .”

There is an old , battered , l ittle Journal belonging to 1 848 , where , from blurred , rubbed ,and faded pages of impressions in picturegalleries

,extracts copied from books , odds and

ends of rhyme,all written in pencil , a few

entries stand out in the legibility of pen-andink ; these cover the journey from Paris andthe arrival in London . Were they of to day,or even yesterday, no one would think ofquoting them . But the date 1848 whata difference !


to see Taglioni dance , as he had already inMunich . He was carried off to Thames regattas , he was asked to eat Soyer

’s dinners atthe Reform C lub . He had ceased to be thestudent,— h e was the young man about town .

At the end of the summer,he sailed from

Portsmouth for New York , on the ship Mediator as I make out from the same little notebook . Mr. and Mrs . John Gilbert were fellowpassengers , and they were not, l ike FannyKemble , too great to be friendly. The famousRavel family were rescued in mid-ocean froma famine of fuel on a ship of their own chartering ; whales and water-spouts and icebergswere encountered by the way and not one ofthe thirty-five days of a crossing we think un

endurable if prolonged beyond six ,was for himtroubled by a more depressing considerationthan that, whatever problems the immediatefuture was to torment him with , youth at thepassing moment was not without amusement.From the time of his leaving New York , threeyears before , until his landing there one autumn day in 1 848 , his lines had been cast inpleasant places pleasant because of his ownchoosing.

CHAPTER VI

YEARS OF S TORM AND STRE S S

THE young traveller coming home foundPhiladelphia unchanged . If he no longer feltits charm in the old fashion , the differencewas in him . The spirit of the place , everin memory so strangely quiet, sunny, andquaint

,

” had helped him to lose in dreams theunpleasant reality of school and college . Butit was now a time for action , and in this provincial valley of self-sufficientness and contentment,

” to borrow Lowell ’s description ofPhiladelphia in the Forties , he missed thebrisker, more liberal atmosphere of Heidelberg and Munich and Paris. When , in theMemoirs ,

” he wrote of the years followinghis return , his native town lay under theshadow of his disappointment. I t seemed asif there could not then have been anothercity “ of which so little evil was to be said

,or

so much good , yet of which so few ever spokewith enthusiasm ,

- though he managedeventual ly to speak of it with enthusiasm him


self, as , for that matter,most Philadelphians do,Philadelphia somehow inspiring the loyalty iti s seldom at pains to return . I ts people , al lwell bathed ,well clad , well behaved ,

” appeared,

in his scornful young eyes , to have all “ exactlythe same ideas and the same ideals , — people who loved flowers more than books , wh o ,

when they gave their always excellent dinners,

prized what was on the table above whatwas around it ; people , i n fact, not l ikely tointerest a young man with a fancy for the society of smugglers and slavers , with standardsborrowed from German student-l ife

,and with

the mus ic of the Marseillaise sti ll tingling inhis veins .I am afraid the Rye must often have said

what he thought of Philadelphia In thosedays , to say what he thought, and to say itemphatically and pict uresquely, was a wayhe had ; I know Philadelphia never altogether forgave him for it . But his impatiencewas due to nothing more serious than theintolerance of youth . In Boston , even in NewYork

,he might have fallen straight into more

congenial surroundings and so have lost whatever was most original in him . Indeed, anywhere save in Phi ladelph ia, he might, l ike


Charles G. Leland , j ust back from Germany,full of German life , and German mysticism ,

and European ideas of l ife . He was not cutout for a lawyer .” And Mr. Samuel adds , asif to praise the strength of this German influence ,

“ I t was Mr. Leland who first introduced to his fellow students , and I think Imay say to the Philadelphia public

,the use

of lager beer in place of the strong malt potations to which we had been accustomed .

”

The decorations of the office Mr. Samuel recalls : with its anthracite stove , one long table ,and hard wooden or straw-seated chairs forfurni ture , and for company, its group of youngmen struggling with Blackstone , copyingdeeds and leases , i t must have been a trifle depressing after the lecture halls and oieneel/amof Munich and Heidelberg. And it may bethat the German mysticism and German wayswere not precisely calculated to make thenew student popular in the office . For thereseems to have been a prej udice in those daysagainst the American who showed signs ofbeing “ Germanized .

” I t was one of Poe ’sgrievances that a charge of “ Germanismhad been brought against him by his critics ,—a charge which he protested was in “ bad

YEARS OF STORM AND STRESS 209

taste,—and the Rye often declared to me

that his knowledge of German in his youthhad been treated as if i t were a weakness inhim

,or a vice.

Business could have been scarcely less tohis liking than the law. But he made thebest of things for his father ’s sake. He workedhard ; though the harder

‘he worked the further he was driven for his real l ife into hisown dreams and the romance of art andphilosophy. I cannot think of him at Mr.Cadwalader’s , poring over musty law books,lost in legal fogs , without seeing as a companion figure in misery the young Borrowshut up in the Norwich office , while outsidethe road was calling. However, the RomanyRye in Philadelphia persevered so well that ,at the end of three years he passed hisexamination , took an office in Third S treet,and hung up his s ign as Attorney-at-Law.

He had done all in his power to satisfy hisfather ; the rest lay with the people of Philadelphia.In the meanwhile, for his own amusement,

he had been writing. He had long had thehabit. At Princeton , he had contributed tothe college magazine ; from abroad , he had


sent occasional letters to the newspapersat home . And now, by a piece of luck, hefell in with R ichard B . Kimball , a New Yorklawyer, who , as the author of several forgottennovels

,probably understood how irritating it

was to want to give the world literature , andto be asked instead for law . And Kimballwho in 1 849 bade me , in a letter, to go downon my knees and thank Rabelais for havingpreserved me from Longfellow ” “ openedthe door ” of the “ Knickerbocker Magazine

,

and of happiness , to the young Philadelphianoppressed with the emptiness of a legal lifewithout clients ; only two , at a profit of fifteendol lars , had Philadelphia found for him in thefirst six months . The “ Knickerbocker

,

” tothe youth with literary aspirations

,as to the

l iterary man who had arrived , was what the“A tlantic ” became in later years . “ By allmeans , cultivate the Knickerbocker, Hawthorne ’s friend

,Horace Bridge, wrote to him

when Hawthorne was first trying to make aposition in print

,and he and Longfellow and

Lowell and all distinguished and popularAmerican authors , as well as many English ,were among its contributors . For one ’s nameto appear in its table of contents was an in


lawyer and the world gained Hans Breitmann .

I do not want to give the impression thatthe Rye , all this time , was steeping himself insorrow like a melodramatic young Werther,or shocking the Philistine like a self-consciousyoung Romanticist. If there was no chance tobuild barricades or to fal l in with smugglers

,

he got what pleasure he could out of thesocial l ife of Philadelphia. He was young,he was handsome , a trifle over six feet two ,straight, with a complexion so p ink and whitethat the Philadelphia girls whispered of rougeand powder, is his own description a few yearsearlier

,—and to be young and handsome is a

pleasure in itself. Hewas clever too ,and cleveryoung men were then , as always , socially indemand .

It was the period when Mrs . James Rushwas holding the weekly receptions to whicheverybody flocked ; not only everybody whowas anybody in Philadelphia, but every distinguish ed stranger who visited or passedthrough the town

,and a varied assortment

of celebrities was the result ; for instance,Sontag and Prince Jerome Buonaparte weretwo lions the Rye remembered having met

YEARS OF STORM AND STRESS 2 13

there on the same evening. Her invitations—on horrible shiny cards to bal ls and onlegal-l ike paper to concerts— are preservedin the Rye ’s archives. I cannot resist pointing out, though Mrs . Rush is a celebri typrobably only in Philadelphia, that she hadrisen above the Philadelphia social standardand interested herself in interesting people even when they could give no satisfactory answer to the Philadelphia question“Who was your grandfather ?” The Rye’smother wrote to him , while he was stil li n Paris, “ Mrs . Rush has returned fromEurope with quite democratic feelingsinvites al l who are genteel and respectableto her evening parties , says she wishes to doaway with the foolish exclusiveness of Philadelphians ; a wish that to me seems morerevolutionary than the Declaration of 1 776 .

Not merely Mrs . Rush , but all Philadelphiacould wake up to its social respons ibili tieswhen the moment required it. The Rye alsoremembered having seen Kossuth at a publ ic reception , Kossuth being then on the triumphal j ourney through the country thatother good Americans were to remember noless vividly : among them Longfel low, who,


from a balcony in Beacon S treet, saw the“ great Magyar,

” a “ handsome bearded Hun,

with a black plume in his hat,and clad in

black velvet,” and also Hawthorne

,to whom

and his family the glimpse of the train,with

gaily decorated locomotive carrying the patriot to Boston , was the great event of thei rlife at West Newton . At John S artain

’

s

house, the pupil of Thiersch could countupon a talk with the rare artist who came orbelonged to Philadelphia. At the Unitarianchurch , the student of Beckers could be sure ,as of old , of a sermon from Dr. Furness thatwas a challenge to thought . And it wasduring the fifties , I believe , that Mr. Carey,who was always glad to welcome the Rye ,started the S unday afternoons , long famous inPhiladelphia as the Carey Vespers ,

” whereeverything was discussed and nothing decided . Then there were the few closer friends—his brother Henry, George Boker, JosephPaxton ; there were the few houses with amore intimate charm . To one above all , Rodney Fisher’s , he was to look back with specialtenderness .Rodney Fisher was the grand-nephew of

Caesar Rodney , who signed the Declaration


there in the sixties , and the Rye never losthis pleasure in the compliment. For, to quotehis own s imply told story of these visits toRodney Fisher’s house : I fell in love withhis daugh ter Belle, to whom I became , afterabout a year, engaged .

”

Journalism , paid for largely in theatretickets , did not mean as much as the modest competency upon which young Ph iladel

ph ians were then not afraid to marry. Anengagement was one thing, marriage quiteanother, and , as i t turned out, marriage inhis case was to be postponed for five years .In waiting, work, profitable work , was moreeagerly sought than ever. It is in keepingwith Philadelphia’s policy that, while onlyshortly before it had provided the literaryinducement to bring Lowell from Boston andPoe from New York, both of whom werewriting for a l iving, i t left its own cleveryoung citizen to go and seek a profitablepost elsewhere . No Philadelphian ever yetwas a genius in Philadelphia. The first promising offer came from New York, and fromthe most unexpected quarter. For it wasBarnum who made it, as i t always pleasedthe Rye

,with his love of the “queer, to re

YEARS OF STORM AND STRESS 2 1 7

member. Of Barnum ’s extraordinary performances, surely the most extraordinary wasthe launching of Hans Breitmann as an independent journalist .There are odds and ends of the Rye ’s cor

respondence,during the four years between

his return from Europe and his departure forNew York , to supplement the account of thisperiod in the Memoirs .” They consist, withone exception

,of letters to h im , and they are

the best possible evidence of the astonishingrapidity with which he gained his reputationas a writer . I gather from them that, beforethe first year ( 1 849) was at an end , he wascontributing to every leading magaz ine inNew York and Philadelphia ; that as prominent a man as Charles A . Dana of the Tribune was writing to him for work from NewYork , and his services were being begged forby the forgotten editors of forgotten papersall over the country ; that he was made amember of the Art Union in Philadelphiaand was being complimented , right and left,for his articles on art. “ If you should reallysucceed in domesticating art in America,

” hisHeidelberg friend, George Ward , wrote fromBoston (January, you would do what


thousands are at this moment striving after,and it is a career which , honestly pursued ,opens the road to the highest fame : I think

,

after a long European experience , one gets aposition and consideration at home superiorto that which home-bred meri t can aspireto . I gather, with equal certainty, that hewas in active correspondence with l iterarymen then as influential as Kimball , GaylordC lark , R. H . S toddard , D r. Griswold .

“Cometo New York , Kimball kept urging ;

“ several amateurs , a

’ilettanci, etc . etc . , are ready

to show you the ‘elephants,

’ the things whichyou Germanized fellows ought to know.

An elephant of which Kimball himself wasprepared to do the honours was the CenturyClub . I t is amusing to read his descriptionof that now very successful institution whenit was in its early infan cy : “We have a Cl ubhere not quite two years old , to which Ibelong, called ‘The Century.

’ I t is composedsoleiy of authors , artists , and ( real) amateurs .I t consists , as the name indicates , of onehundred members , and it is l imited to thatnumber. The Club embraces the leadingauthors and artists of our city, and throughits members I shall be able to give you very


to abuse and call names , accepts an articlefor the International ” from the new authorwith the pleasant assurance that he will bepleased to have as many such as your leisurewil l permit,

” and proceeds to pronounce theRye

,in that periodical , “ by all odds the most

promising young literary man in Ph iladelphia

,the most finished scholar.” Gaylord

Clark at once Invites the young Ph iladelphian to his place on the Hudson , his inducement being the fact that “ Mr. I rving isdirectly opposite ; I can send to him threetimes a day.

”

There were discouragements to counteract the success . Meister Karl , after goingthrough the Knickerbocker,

”was making

the rounds of the publishers and being persistently refused . Too many editors , clamorousfor the Rye ’s articles , had to regret with Cole ,of the “ Musical T imes in New York, that“ the income of the paper will not warrantpaying for communications ;

” others offeredno better terms than Sartain , who could giveonly fifty dollars a month for a story, a Summary ” six pages long of the month ’s art

,

l iterature , and music , and the editing of aspecial department called “ Puck ’s Portfol io .

”


Gossip,at times , bred trouble between the

Rye and Griswold , and Bayard Taylor, andBoker

,and Kimball ; trouble which , i n the

disjointed condition of the correspondence , i twould be more than useless to try to understand . However, I do not think the discouragements were very serious for a beginnerwith all life before him , and in the one letter I have of the Rye ’s written during thisperiod, his account of himself is far frommelancholy .

CHARLES GODFREY LELAND TO E. P . COLQUHOUN

306 WALNUT ST., PHILADELPHIA .

(No Date.)

DEAR DOCTOR, I received your inspiringand old-time-recall ing document by the laststeamer. A S i t did me good in the fullestsense of the word , I should be an ungratefuloutsider, not to return due thanks . As foryour letter of last summer, foi o

’e Cnew lier ,

Inever so much as heard of it ; not a line haveI ever received from you before this last.Great improvements have taken place in ourrascally Quakerdelph ia s ince I last wrote.S o many éneifis c

‘

c la H eicz’eloerg have been


established that you might fancy yourself

(where you now probably are) in Deutschland .

German has become popular and fashionableamong the élic‘e and times are improving. I amstill hammering away at law, and still recalling Old times , old pleasures , and old familiarfaces . Europe seems sti ll only like yesterday , and I would give ten years of l ife tobring back Heidelberg, London , and you . Ihave been doing much small potato literature , and am just now speculating in my ownmind whether I shall give a volume ofsketches of “ Continental Life and Li terature to the “Knickerbocker

,

” our first American magazine . Many Old scenes famil iar tous both are described in them . A pe

/ 0150 5 a’e

oolrefrére, I shall be only too happy to usemy small influence in making his workknown . If newspaper notices, etc .,

can do anygood , I am thine . I called this morningon an eminent Yankee Opersc

'

ing erinn anddid my amiablest, but the reception was cool .Mademoiselle had recently sung a song ofmine at a New York theatre and , as she inform ed me

,

“ had not received a single handof applause . To which I replied that Ithought the affair myself to be very poor


York alors nons verrons. If I were inEurope now

,i t strikes me that a B onénz ien

sort of a l ife would be j ust the thing, such asyou have recently tried—a sort of respectable courier. E n pea sant , let me remark thatmy work purports to be written by a Courierwho takes his people over Earth , and throughHeaven and Fairyland , including Vienna.As for love, I have been captivated withabout 1 76 beautiful-faced, languid , youngAméricaines. Doctor, there is no country inthe world which can begin to compete withours for female beauty, as far as face goes .I shall visi t one this evening who , in thisrespect

,is almost peerless in beauty. But

but—at 30 , a/Zes ist weg .’ Phila. bears the

palm among cities in this respect, for NewYork can make no great show in oelles.

Dec. I I , 1850 .

DEAR DOCTOR,I t is now several months

since the above was penned and mislaid . Ioften intended writing you , and as often re

solved to postpone it, until I should be settledin New York , and find something for you .

S ince then , I have determined to remain inmy native city of Penn . We Americans are


notoriously unpunctual and but indifferentcorrespondents , while the bold Britons , totheir credit be it said , have the reputation offailing in neither respect. Know, oh my friend ,that since writing I too have become betrothed , to one unanimously admitted to bethe a

’es oelles of our city . How pretty she

is ! I am getting up a literary name andpushing at law. The publishers give me fivedollars a page ! not invariably, he was soonto find] when they want me , and I am sti llstudying law. I am director in an Art Union ,and co-editor of a weekly. Am to del iver alecture on the 7th of January. I saw Porterof Heidelberg a few evenings since at JennyL ind ’s concert, but have had no Opportunityas yet of speaking with him .

This is about the most unsatisfactory country to travel in I ever met with . Railroadsand new C i ties , tearing table ci

’

no’

tes, brandycock-tails , mint smashes, and prime Havannabs , form about the sum total of the ag re

mens— a fearful contrast to the quiet,com

fortable , old-fashioned travel in the cities ofEurope , with their churches of the MiddleAges , and silent familiar-looking anoerg es .

Well —would that we were both in Germany


once more (with our ladies) . Would that wewere walking on the terrace of the old Castlein Heidelberg by moonlight ! O ld Castle !How long it is since I have seen an old castle ,o r an old church , or an old tower ! In thiscountry of bran -newness , i t is almost a comfort to see even an old woman , of which thereare very few, save among the dark ies , for thewhite American is by no means a long-l ivedanimal . Our inferna l red-hot summers , whichlast from the beginning of May to the endof October, with their iced-brandy drinks , andour kill ing cold winters , which occupy therest of the year, are perfect “ death to longliving. I saw an article lately in a paper saying that we were the palest and most melancholy race of men in the world , and I believethat we are (with the exception of the sal lowBohemian gipsies) . Do you know that, as faras taste and education go

,I do most atro

C lOll Sly envy an European . I could l ike , byJove , myself to l ive within the sound ofold Cathedral be lls and lead my life for thesake of enjoying i t and not for the mere sakeof work and progress . A distant relative ofours

,who recently made a large fortune , in

one year,as an editor in California, was so


ally to me while in London . My none oleplume is the C/ceocz lier.

Your friend ,CHARLES G. LELAND.

I t will be seen from this letter that, as earlyas 1 8 50 , before his law studies were finished ,the Rye had some idea of trying his fortunesin New York . I t was natural that he should ,for Kimball , the indefatigable , never stoppedurging it. “ You are, in Philadelphia, getting too much mixed up in petty cliqueism ,

or would that you were here with me in Gotham

,we would certainly perfect some plan

for setting the Hudson on fire ;” is the refrain

to all his letters . There was the drawback,however

,that something definite in the form

of paying work very seldom turned up . Kimball usually had to add that he might have towork there “ a year absolutely for nothing,

”

and to assure him that it is better, if you areyoung and energetic , to have the influencewith a periodical which gratuitous contributions will bring, rather than the money whichyou might receive for them . These passagesI quote as suggestive documents in the historynot merely of the Rye ’s career

,but of that of


almost all American men of letters sixty yearsago. Kimball grew more and more insistent,not realising, perhaps , how indispensable i twas that the Rye should earn money. Final ly,i n the late autumn of 1 8 52 , he returned to thecharge . “You know I have but one opinion , hewrote on November 1 3 , i t is that you shouldcome to New York now, put down your stakes,and go to work. L ive economically, be industrions and determined , and leave the rest toProvidence . I know you can ’

t fail if you follow this advice . You know I will do all 1 can.

But you must come here and 52 here in orderto bring anyth ing to pass. Do you rememberthe fable where the foolish one declared henever would go in the water till he had learnedto swim ? I leave you to apply it.” Whetheri t was on the strength of this argument ornot , I cannot say, but I learn from the datesof Henry Leland ’s letters that, by the 20 th ofthe same month , the Rye was in New York,and , very shortly after, installed in the officeof Barnum ’s paper at the not very munificentsalary of 50 0 a year. I could present, to anyone whom it might concern

,the note, dated

January 6 , 1 8 53 , and signed Rufus W. Griswold , certifying that the bearer, Mr. Charles


G. Leland , is Associate Editor of‘The Il lus

trated News ,’ and desiring that he “ may be

admitted to all places open to the representatives of this J ournal .

”

Barnum was then in the first flush of notoriety , prepared to run all creation whennecessary, and, in the meanwhile and in partnersh ip with the brothers Beech , to run a bigillustrated weekly. Barnum had asked D r.Rufus Griswold to be the editor of the Il

lustrated News , and Griswold journalist,l iterary critic , discoverer, and monitor ofpoets and poetesses had accepted , partlyin order to propose the post of assistant tothe “young Leland ,

” who had been introducedto him by Kimball , and in whom he foresawlarge possibi li ties . “ I rritable and vindictive”

as Griswold was , the“young Leland ” was

with him a privileged character to the end ofhis life . Successful men are not, as a rule ,troubled with gratitude to those who firsthelped them toward success. But the Ryenever forgot that i t was Griswold who placedhis foot on the first rung of the ladder, andto the end he spoke with genuine affectionof Barnum . Some of his friends might beshocked at the very idea of even speaking to


the Showman , to say nothing of workingfor him . The Rye appreciated Barnum

’skindness . “ Uncle Barnum ,

” he says in oneplace

,

“ was always good as gold to me .”

Moreover,in Barnum there was the oddness,

the picturesqueness,that, never failed to at

tract him in people , as in art and literature .

His recollections of this first New York periodare dominated by the flamboyant personali tyof the great showman , though most peoplewould have thought that, in dominating anything in American journalism

,Griswold could

have had no rival .A man of “ a general presence rather thereverse of prepossessing, yet strangely distinct,

” is the impression Mr. Henry James ,from vague meetings in early boyhood , hascarried of Griswold through the years ; aman with a lurid complexion , long, lank,damp-looking hair, and the tone of conciliation , unless I do him wrong, — but , howeverunprepossessing

,a man who , by dint of much

compiling and editing of collections Of l i terary specimens

,rarer half a century ago, be

came a power among the men and womenthe young Philadelphian now began to meet.New York, as well as Boston , had its “ l iterary


set,and into this “ set the Rye was intro

duced by Griswold, and by it was well received , for he had , as further credentials , goodlooks , a striking individuality, and variousarticles in the Knickerbocker.” In the hotelat the corner of Park Place and Broadway,where he l ived, he met many literary people ,for i t was kept by a certain Dan Bixby, whohad been a publ isher, and who now, as hotelkeeper, was apt to gather authors about h imNathaniel Hawthorne , for one , rememberedas

“ a moody man who sat by the stove andspoke to no one .” N . P . Willis , pointed outto the boy years before as a celebrity,—“

a

young gentleman then with curly hair andvery foppish air,

”— was still a shining lightin New York , still by Sheer swagger and dan

gerous Hurry-Graphs ” forcing the publicto accept him at his own estimation , evenwhile the few laughed at “ N iminy—PiminyWillis ” and his own sister slanged him as“ Jenny Jessamy.” Bryant, the popular poethe will never be again ; the Misses Warner,scarcely known by name now, but classics tothe generations brought up on Queechy ”

and “ The Wide, Wide World ; Alice andPhoebe Cary, gentle and ladylike as their


of the gossip Griswold had collected , or invented

,and so saved the world a little, any

way,of the unsavoury scandal the scavengers

of l iterature love to rake up about the namesof the great. I t is to Griswold

’s credit thathe took this h igh-handed interference veryamiably, and it should also be rememberedin his favour that the man who worked so longwith and under h im as his assistant held that

,

as regards Poe ,“ he was not so much to

blame as a score of writers have made out.Entertain ing as this “ literary set ” was

,

most of the people in it pass as shadowsacross the pages of the “ Memoirs that arefilled with Barnum ’s substantial presence .For them the Rye had the sympathy interests in common create ; Barnum stirred hisimagination in New York , as the S laver hadin Marseilles and Navone in Rome ; Barnum

’

s“ fifty million unparalleled moral won

ders ” appealed to the passion for the marvellous of the overworked journalist, evenas the book of Curiosities for the Ingenious ”

had enraptured the schoolboy at JamaicaPlain . What he found in Barnum showsreally what there was in himself. Barnumpassed for an unusually clever Yankee , and


nothing more , to the majority of men . Tothe Rye , the Lover of the Odd , he was “ agenius like Rabelais , but one who employedbusiness and humanity for material , insteadof literature , j ust as Abraham L incoln , wh owas a brother of the same band , employedpatriotism and politics . All three of themexpressed vast problems , financial , intellectual

,or natural , by the brief arithmetic of a

joke .” This was a sort of “ arithmetic ” hissense of humour helped him to tackle . Hehas left a pleasant picture of proprietor andassistant editor preparing together the humorous column which was a feature of thepaper

,the proprietor deferring to the assist

ant “ as a small schoolboy defers to an elderon the question of a game of marbles or hopscotch

,the two editing their puns , reading

their good things to each other, as happyas boys at play. A book of jokes “ By Barnum and Hans Breitmann would

,the Rye

adds ,“ have been a very nice book indeed .

One humorous column could not make thefortunes of the paper. Whatever Barnummay have wanted

,the Rye refused to use it

as an advertisement for freaks or shows ,even if they were the biggest on earth , and


even if American j ournalism , out of his office,was the slough of corruption i t had seemedto Poe ; and unless the paper was run as anadvertising medium , no man , single-handed ,could have ensured its success . From thefirst, everything had been done solely bythe editor and his assistant in the Li teraryDepartment, with Frank Leslie as chief engraver. After a while, Griswold , busy aboutmany things , a divorce among others , left theoffice altogether. The pay of the assistantwas doubled by Uncle Barnum

,but the

work was hard , the proprietors were not inaccord , and he wearied of struggling againstthe impossible . He resigned , to be replacedby a clergyman , which may have been part ofBarnum ’s fun . I t was a joke , however, that didnot pay, and the weekly promptly perished .

The Rye went back to Philadelphia, notmuch better Off, except in knowledge of editing

,than when he had left . There was no

temptation to return to the law ; he couldnot l ive on literature alone ; he could notlook to his father for an income . Journalismwas stil l his one resource, a resource , letme say at once, that he never held lightly.

At its worst, i t amused him with its endless


had so well established his l i terary reputationthat, j ust as things were at the ir blackest inthat unfortunate year of 1 854 , he found himself included among Griswold ’s Prose Writers . He kept up his courage , however ; hetried his luck with articles , he collected poemsof dreams for an anthology, and , at last, in theSpring of 1 855 , the outlook suddenly brightened with an offer that came to him throughhis Old friend , George Boker. The letterbringing it lies before me .

GEORGE H . BOKER TO CHARLES GODFREY LELAND

May 1 7, 1853.

MY DEAR CHARLEY, —Would you like toassume the duti es of first Assistant Editor ofthe “Evening Bulletin ”? If you wou ld , answerat once ; but say nothing about the matter toany one else , for the present at least.

Thine ,GEO. H . BOKER.

Naturally, the Rye did l ike to assume theduties . Alexander Cummings was the pro

prietor of the“ Bulletin ,

” and Gibson Bannister Peacock the editor. Peacock was goingaway for a holiday, and the new assistan t had


to act as his unders tudy. His work was acolumn leader every day, book reviews , andparagraphs .That the Rye enj oyed this new life to the

utmost, as he says in his “ Memoirs,

” I canwell believe, though it was anything but play.

To learn to write leaders for a weekly hehad found a dreadful ordeal , which is hard forme to real ise , remembering as I do the facili ty with which he wrote everything in the lastpart of his l ife. On a daily, the ordeal wasmore severe , though , at least, there was notthe difficulty of “ rattl ing up a good subj ect

,

”

as he calls i t. Motives for editorials were onlytoo plentiful . There were , to begin with ,plenty of evils at home to be fought . In theC ity founded by Penn that people might befree to go to Heaven their own way

,rel igious

intolerance just then raged un til,more than

once , its sky was as blood-red , as FannyKemble described it, with the light of burning churches . And this was the period whenvolunteer fire companies , the “ brigand firemen ” of Mr. S idney F isher’s phrase

,were as

deadly enemies as the rival factions of amediaeval town , and every fire alarm was thesignal for a fight in streets made for peace .


A state of terrorism prevailed , the necessityfor strong action was great

,and the risk to

any one who ventured to take i t was serious .But the danger was an incentive to a struggleas fierce, though there were no barricades tobe built, though it was the people , not therulers , who must be overthrown , as that inwhich le citoy en Cncz rles had led in Paris .Now an editor, armed with other weapons ,he threw himself, heart and soul , into therevolt against disorder . He wrote editorialafter editorial . In print , that all might see , heurged the mayor—Richard Vaux held theoflice— to immediate and severe measures .He did all that could be done through anewspaper

,and the reform that followed

owed much to his initiative .More absorbing stil l were the national

problems fast approaching a crisis . Thesewere the years immediately preceding theCivil War, when the question of abolitionhad kindled national emotion to white heat .That it was one over which Penn ’s C i ty Shouldhesitate , would seem impossible , if i t werenot true . Years before, there had been antiabolition riots ,— one ever memorable fromwhich Whittier had escaped , disguised in


had come down to him from the old sorcererand the many antiquaries among his ancestors lay quiescent for the time , and the grimness of the grandfather Leland was uppermost

,as he wrote the articles which he hoped

would help to save his country from disaster .He wrote what he thought the truth , boldly,with an eloquence his opponents mistook forbitterness , and some Southern editors protesting, and the war not yet being proclaimed ,the proprietor was frightened and put a stopto them .

His work for the “ Bulletin would haveexhausted most journalists . But it was notenough for him . He was also editing Graham ’s Magazine, which , like the “Knickerbocker,

” had a great tradition to keep up . Poe

had edited i t, almost all the l iterary men ofAmerica had contributed to i t. He was translating Heine the Pictures of Travel andthe Book of Songs . He was writing articlesand books of his own . All this , of course ,brought him a larger income than he had everyet earned for h imself, even if Graham

’s ” onlypaid him fifty dollars a month , his Heinetranslations only seven ty-five cents a page.His father added a l iberal allowance . I t was


when he was making most, it seemed to himafterwards in looking back , that his fathersuddenly grew liberal

,j ust as it was when

his own bank account dwindled that a checkwas put upon h is father’s l iberality . However, he was quick to profit by the first combination between his own financial successand his father’s generosity, and in 1856 , afterfive long years of waiting, he was married .

The marriage took place on the 1 7th of January at the Tenth S treet house , where theRodney Fishers were then living, and I l iketo think that the idols and the strange beastswere looking on from the dim walls , that thegreat jars and the rare porcelain were fil l ingthe quiet Philadelphia parlour with the colourand the mystery of the East, for there couldnot have been a more appropriate background .

And I wonder if another American of thisgeneration would have remembered acrossthe years , as the two Chief incidents of hiswedding, a private explanation given beforehand Of the symbolism Of the wedding ringby Bishop Wilbur, who performed the ceremony, with his own happy consciousness ofknowing a good deal more about it than theBishop ; and his friends

’ prediction of good


luck because only one'

clergyman was present,

with his own joyful proving that they werewrong, because there was a second among thecoloured waiters !After his marriage , he went to l ive at the

La Pierre House . I t was then the centre ofa good deal of social l ife . Most people ofnote who came to Philadelphia stopped there ,and he found time— how, only he could sayto see many of them , O le Bull , Thalberg,

Thackeray the most notable in his memory.

T ime he found , too , for the adventure ofSpeech so dear to him , as when he astoundedthe passing Magyar almost to tears with anunexpected B assanuz Teremlele or for joy inone of the “ strange coincidences ” he loved ,as when an Unknown , playing Berserker inPhiladelphia taverns , asked for his name ,shouted “ Charles Leland , and then vanishedinto the Ewigéeil . Here was a ray of romance

- Of mystery— in the daily routine of hardwork .

But “ I began to weary of Philadelphia,

the Rye says in his “ Memoirs . Probably itwas not so much weariness

,as a sudden re

volt when the hour of disenchantmen t came,

and he , as Poe before h im , learned that news


an expression in it suggestive of a smile .When the coffin was laid in the grave on thehillside overlooking the Hudson , the sky wassuddenly illum

’

ined by the most magnificentand marvellous sunset which I can remember. I t inspired me with a deep awe as if theheavens would illuminate the scene , and as ifit were indeed true that, when the body isfirst committed to earth , the soul is first admitted to the Land of L ight above .”

When he was busiest, the storm broke .L incoln was elected . Fort S umter was firedon . The war was begun . I t was a momentof financial depression in the North

,and many

j ournalists felt i t, though already journalismwas beginning to thrive on war. One by one ,the Rye ’s engagements failed . He left the“Times ” owing to Hurlbut ’s return ; VanityFair came to an end ; Frank Leslie no longerneeded his servi ces. There remained only theKnickerbocker ,

” which had been taken overby Gilmore , who was trying his best to giveit a new lease of life . Of a sudden , as thequiet gray cover blazed Into orange , thetone of the articles became violently political

,

and the Rye , who had accepted the post ofeditor, wi th half-ownership as pay, turned it


i nto a strong Republican monthly. Heworkedfor it

,as he had for the “ Bulletin , with fer

vour,almost with exaltation . He strove , as

so many others were striving, to stem the tideof pessimism sweeping over the North ; hepredicted such a period of prosperity, close athand ,

“ as no one ever dreamt of he wrotearticle after article in “ a wild enthusiasticstyle of triumph .

” To “ the outpourings of afanatical Puritan in the time of Cromwell ,

”

they were compared . But i t was a crisis thatcalled for fanaticism , and the articles had theireffect. Unfortunately, before this change inits programme , the Knickerbocker

” had lostits hold upon the public. To use i t as amouthpiece for the Rye ’s plea of Emanei

pation for the sake of the white man ,” was

to pour “ the wildest of new wine into theweakest of old bottles .” Gilmore decided toestablish an entirely new political monthlywith a new name,

“ The Continental ,” vir

tually the only pol itical magazine devotedto the Republican cause issued during thewar. I t was published in Boston , and to thattown , early in December, 1 86 1 , the Rye followed it .Those were the great days of literary


Boston , the greatest, perhaps, of the C lub ,and the young editor, with a fine record Of

work , and many letters , was introduced to“ all that brilliant circle which shone whenBoston was at its brightest in He metevery one ,— Emerson , Holmes , Longfellow,

Lowell , Agassiz. He was asked to the C lub .

He figured at the Saturday dinner. AfterPhiladelphia and New York , he seemed livingagain in the atmosphere of Heidelberg andMunich . And he had not outgrown the ageof hero-worship , for which his capacity wasunlimited . Even when he wrote his “Memoirs

,

” he had not recovered from the oldsurprise to find that he could pass successfully the grand ordeal ” of the famous Saturdays ; that he was given the place of honourbetween Emerson and Holmes ; that Holmesapproved of him , commending his modesty,which he had not known to be among hisvirtues ; that Lowell asked him to supper inCambridge in order to consult him about thenew Biglow Papers

,

” then going throughthe press , though that there should have beenany new Biglow Papers ” at all was againstthe “ critical j udgment of Lowell , who did n

’

t

believe in ‘resuscitations . ’ “We hearno good


uncalled for, that Heine was a quack andcharlatan in literature ,

’ which , consideringthat I had translated the two principal worksof Heine, I thought very unkind . And thiswas at an ‘Atlantic ’ Saturday dinner beforeHolmes and Lowell and Palfrey and manymore , i n 1 86 2 , and it hurts me to this day.

”

The one note— that is, the only one belonging to this period from Lowell revealsas much of another kind , and in another way,slight though it be compared to the endlesspages Lowell wrote to his intimate friends .In its careful preservation , enclosed in thel i ttle old-fashioned envelope , with the longsuperseded stamp , and securely fastened in avolume of Poems ,

” the l iterary relic in itsshrine , - I can see how it was prized by theRye , and his attitude towards Lowell wasdoubtless that of the \

youngermen of his gencration . I t is pleasant to add, asa sort of parenthesis , that this attitude in his case was notweakened by years . When Lowell was sentfrom Madrid to London in 1 88 1 , Dr. Holmeswrote to him :

“ Leland (Hans Breitmann) ,who has been living in London some years ,says you will be the most popular Americanminister we have ever sent, a prophecy ad


mirably fulfil led . Our'

Club,” referred to in

Lowell ’s letter, is, of course , the SaturdayC lub ; the society he met there , on the wholebetter than any England provided , was hisestimate of i t even in 1 883 , when he had hada fair chance for comparison . The notice ,whether of the Poems ” or of “ The BiglowPapers ” it is impossible now to tell , has vanished , as the most flattering notices will , oncethey have served their turn in review orpaper. The letter is dated 1 86 1 , and is fromElmwood , “ the place I love best

,Lowell

described it to his Old friend , Charles F.

Briggs , that very same year.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL TO CHARLES GODFREY LELAND

I t is only too flattering ! is the abruptbeginning] . I thought our C lub did notmeet Christmas week , or I should have beenthere and claimed you as my guest. Let meengage you now for the last Saturday in themonth . I shall call upon you the first time Icome to Boston , which will be next S aturday.

I have a vacation before long,and then I

shall hope to see more of you .

I was infin itely diverted by your extracts


from the Ballad and shall be greatly obligedfor a copy of the whole .

With many thanks ,Cordially yours

,

J . R . LOWELL.

P . S . I mean it is the notice of J . R. L .

that is too flattering. I know not what elseto say, except that I am pleased for all that .I send my oeso la memo to the author withmany thanks .

Another note from Lowell IS preservedwith equal care in the same volume

,where

both have lain undisturbed now almost halfa century. The second is not to the Rye,however

,but to give his address to Professor

Child,—a business-l ike , hasty little scribble

of a few lines , the one personal touch the“ dear Ciarli,

” with which it opens . Thiswould mean a great deal , I fancy, to al lwho are left of a certain group of Bostonscholars .These were the pleasures Boston provided ,

—great pleasures , intense pleasures . But overthem , as over everything in those days , hungthe war cloud . The battlefield was far away,but men marched from Boston , and the news


This work the “ Continental did well .But Gilmore eventually shared the ownershipwith Robert J . Walker, and the conditionswere no longer the same . Financially, thereturns were not satisfactory, the circulationof the magazine slowly went down until itsend was inevitable , and by the autumn of1 86 2 ,

the Rye ,who had never received a centfrom it

,was back in Philadelphia.

Here his work did not cease , though nowhe was a free lance . He wrote a pamphlet onCentralisation versus S tate Rightsa plea for the still greater power to be givento the central government . He wrote , with hisbrother, “ The Book of Copperheads ,

” andillustrated it, and was always pleased to knowthat it had been found

,well thumbed and

used,on the table by President L incoln ’s

bed after the assassination . The amount ofpurely literary work he accomplished also wasextraordinary

,but of this I shall wait to

speak in another Chapter.I have passed somewhat lightly over the

journalistic work of these years , for manyothe r men have been good journalists , whilethere are some things which he alone hasdone

,which he alone could do, and I prefer


to devote more space to his original work .

But during the war days , no one renderedstronger newspaper support than he to thecause of the North . To the bold course of the“ Continental ,

” many attributed the hastening by several months of the emancipation ,and it was entirely “ for literary service rendered to the country during the War ” thathe was given the degree of A . M . by Harvard .

Business fil ls almost entirely what littlecorrespondence of these seven full years ofwork remains to be consulted. George R ipley writes about the Cyclopaedia,

” Gilmoreabout the “ Continental ,

” Saxe and S toddardabout poems they have consented , after muchpersuasion , to contribute to “ Vanity Fair,

”

various publishers about various books eitherin preparation or in the press . There is notmuch else, except here and there an amusingreference to the literary events and the literary excitements of the day. This day seemsvery far away as I read an unknown correspondent , who fills pages with praise of FitzHugh Ludlow,

“ formerly a very pecul iaryoung pedagogue at Watertown and Poughkeepsie,

” and now author of “ The HasheeshEater,

”a book forgotten , but of great vogue


within my memory ; or, as I Chance uponGriswold , in an expansive humour, pronouncing Alice Cary ’s new book of poems ( 18 55)to be incomparably the best volume of verseany woman has ever published , here or anywhere . Taylor and S toddard do not thinkso ; Halleck and Herbert do.

” After this , Ican take more interest than ever in a letter

,

in del icate , ladylike writing, of course un

dated , beginning My most missed ,mournedand married Friend ,

” signed “ Phoebe Cary,and reporting that “ our firm friend Dr . Griswold is very low now indeed ; I do not thinkit possible he will l ive but a few days .” Howthe l iterary lights of the fifties have flickeredand burnt out altogether ! Another letterfrom a very different correspondent is to bequoted as i t is

,for reasons that i t will explain

better than I could .

‘

GEORGE H . BOKER TO CHARLES GODFREY LELAND

BATEMAN’S POINT, July 28, 1855.

MY DEAR CHARLEY,—I deferred writing

to you until after a dinner to which Longfel low invited me ; so that I might be able togive you his opinion Of Heine . That event


however, for which you should blow up theforeman , the paper abounds in typographical errors ; and I am sorry to say thatthere seems to me to be a daily increase in thequantity of cases . I think that it would t be

well for you to look after this with a severe eye .My eyes are still in a bad way. I have no

hope of redeeming my half promise to correspond with the paper during my absence .Even the notes which duty compels me towrite , try me more than is well for me . Withthe exception of Heine, I have not openeda book since my arrival here , and my wholetime has been past in the apostol ic pursuit offishing. At the “ gentle art ” I have becomean adept, much to the wonder of the literati,who are amazed at my waste of time and eu

ergy, and also at the blackness of my hands.I shall get back to Philadelphia as soon as

possible , for I am tired of the desolation ofthis place and long to resume our Sundays .When a man is separated from his usual pursui ts

,he looks back upon them as the only

goods of his l ife . I t is so with me , at leastthe common has risen into the sublime .

Thine ever,GEO. H . BOKER.


The “ efforts with Trubner, alluded to byBoker

,were fruitful enough in notices and

announcements to please him , and they werenot the only efforts . The Rye had been incorrespondence since 1 855 with N icholasTriibner, who was to become his intimatefriend , the translation of Heine having beenthe beginning of it. All of Triibner

’

s lettersof this period have something in them aboutBoker. So also have the Rye’s . In one ofhis I find also a reference to himself thatshould be preserved as additional proof ofthe way his own reputation was spreading.

“ I am really at a loss for words to expressmy sense of your great kindness and manycourtesies to me , he writes on March 26 ,

1 859 .

“ Before I have recovered from thefeeling of obligation for the one , I am overwhelmed by another. The last comes in theform of that very handsome slice of Europeanreputation conferred upon me in your Guideto American L iterature . ’ I was never somuch gratified before by any event in myliterary career— and no wonder. Such a

mention in such a book is indeed an European reputation of i tself, and a handsomeone . Excuse me if I recur to my friend


Boker’

s poem . If you could get it into theAthenaeum ’—faule a

’e mieux —we would

al l be grateful .The few other letters in this bundle are to

his wife , written on the rare occasions whenthey were separated. I t is clear that heusually wrote in a hurry, as he did everythingelse at the time . But the letters are charming in their tenderness , and they are not toohurried to have for us now a value as clues,if slight, to the l i terary life of that remoteperiod .

CHARLES GODFREY LELAND TO MRS . CHARLES GODFREYLELAND

NEW YORK, April 14, 1860 .

I wish I could see you tod ay and havea real good talk , for

”

i t really seems as if itwere quite time to just tell you everythingabout all the New York folks and have yougoing about. Last night I got a carriage andwent to Dana’s and found that Mr. and Mrs .D . were not going to the Opera, so I tookBetty , who declaimed against the ex trava

gance of driving. We had the choice of thetwo opera companies , and chose the Acad


ton Transcript, describing the N Galleryopening the other evening, says that “ scattered among the company were Bryant , Willis , Bayard Taylor, Bancroft, Boker, Leland ,and S toddard .

” You see that I ’m one abovetail in that C lass though I don ’t deserveit. Give my love to everybody.

NEW YORK, Apri l 1 2, 1862 .

I am real ly ashamed of not writingsooner, but could n

’

t help it . Sunday , Monday and Tuesday I suffered awfully withneuralgia. Yesterday I was better and re-ap

peared at the Cyclopaedia. Last night I wentround to Mrs . Dana’s and was received withgreat joy. Mrs . Dana wanted to go round tothe opening night of the National Academypictures and had no beau . She and Bettyhad thought of sending me a note as Bettyproposed , but Mrs . D . was afraid to. I t wasl ike a reception , crowded with fashionablepeople and literary, and you might haveseen , conversing together at the end of oneroom

,Bayard Taylor, N . P . Willis , Geo .

Boker and Chisel ! a name for him as familiar to the family as Le Chevalier was to the


public]— and , I forgot, Stoddard . I sawMrs. Hicks, who inquired , as everybody did ,anxiously about you . Bryant was there , D ickWillis , and heaps of people. I am going tothe opera with either Betty or Mrs . Dana tomorrow.

I do miss you , and only Wish you couldhave been at the Exhibition last night.All are well. I am in an awful hurry.

Thine eververy hungry

(and bound to Delmonico’s)

CHARLEY.

NEW YORK,Monday Afternoon , Jan . 13, 1863 .

I may stay a little longer since Maryseems desirous of having me . I have a greatmind to apply for a Custom House placemyself, and certainly have strong influenceto aid me . I hear that Dana is AssistantSecretary of War ! and S tanton ’s closefriend strange the family told me nothingof it. He is the right man in the right place .

I must see S imon ! Stevens] to find out whatCustom House offices are With in my narrowcapacity. I ’m not sure that I should declinebeing tide-waiter. I want work so badly .


D ieu sait that office-begging is my las t resort, and that I have tried hard enough to'

get something else to do. I certainly deserveas much as Clark , S toddard , Ludlow, or anyother of the literati there—and L incolnknows it.In haste , and very anxious to see you ,

CHARLEY.

P lease tel l Henry I got him half a dozencutty (English) pipes , j ust the thing, thenicest ones I ever saw, meerschaum washed ,at s ix cents apiece . There is a new k ind “allthe fashion ” here .


countermarched, they starved and foraged ,they worked l ike navvies . They were at Gettysburg , but, being raw recruits , were kept asreserves . And there was one of the numberto whom , through this campaign as throughlife , the picturesque , the strange , the odd , wasthe most engrossing part of it all . Hardwork and genuine suffering could not makehim indifferent to the Gypsy, the mysteriousside of the adventure . The incidents uponwhich he lingers in the “ Memoirs ” arethose with a touch of the extraordinary beyond even what there was of extraordinaryfor the civilian in soldiering, the performance of the young lieutenant of his regimentwho , blown into the air by the explosion ofa caisson and coming down whole by somemiracle , at once asked his commander, “ Thecaisson ’

s blown to hell ; what am I to donow ? the looting, and swearing, and drinking of the bummer

” who stood as model forBreitmann ; the sword blade he saw fly thirtyfeet in the air, when one of the men in hisbattery had four fingers cut off ; the campfires studding “ the vast landscapes like countless reflections of the lights above ,

” on thenight before Gettysburg ; the sudden meet


ing with friends of his brother, in a lonelyfarmhouse in the forest , summoned there , asif by magic , to provide him with a meal onone desperately hungry day, his brother,the Rye adds , “ never sought for mysteries ,and he despised dramatic effects , but his lifewas full of them . The extraordinary passedinto tragedy that dreadful moment when thetwo on duty, side by side , Henry rece ivedthe wound from the effects of which he wasto die in a very few years . For the Rye the“ picnic ” of the Emergency thenceforwardhad its horrors , the strange vagaries of hisbrother tormenting him by day and nightuntil the mystery, the drama of war lost forhim its Charm .

A fragmentary, but eloquent, story of thewar days is told in about a dozen letters of amore personal nature than the great bulk ofthe correspondence of the sixties . I can onlywish the exceptions were more numerous.First come the letters written by HenryLeland , while the Rye was stil l in Boston ,giving an account of his progress as soldierand , incidentally, chronicling many little incidents that seemed trifling at the time

,but

that few Philadelphians now can recall un

268 CHARLES GODFR’EY LELAND

moved. The earl iest is dated June 1 6 , 186 1 .

Henry had been fishing through the last daysin New Jersey, but, he wrote , the ‘

solger’

has duties , and I have hurried back to dri l land parade. A caricature of the Home GuardRegimental Hat that I made met with anembarrassment of success , and now hangs upframed (size 1 2 x 8 inches) in the armoury.

Yesterday, the Cappen desired me to obligethe company by a design for a flag, so my

petits talents are on hand . I made anothercaricature of the H . Guard Hat for ‘VanityFair ’ as long ago as you were editor, and itwas published in June 8 th number. Everycopy of that edi tion sold in Philadelphia.

The Home Guards were in ecstas1es aboutit. I begin dancing like a skinned inj unin the squad drills to-morrow, having to makeup for lost time . We have our muskets andhave taken some horrible oath alout

’em , aswe probably shall a t them when we go outtarget-shooting and have them hang fire ; yes ,for they are 1 8 25 guns altered from fl intlocks .

” Three weeks later " “ I have beenTarget-Shooting, Drill ing, and through aS ix Hours’ Parade on the 4th of July. Andam fast work ing myself into a first -rate sol


S eptember 1 is the date of his writing ourcompany of the Grey Reserves , to the tuneof about 50 , volunteered for 3 months for thewar

,but were refused . The Lieutenant put

me down as one of the 50 , swearing that Private Le

‘

land , he knew, wanted to fight somebody (There

’s a amiable character for you .)I am now trying to get enough men out of thecompany to go in for the 3 years

’ business , andh ope to succeed .

” The more cheerful side toall this was

“

in the tribute Philadelphia paid'

to its defenders. “ On Saturday afternoon,at

3 P. M . , we have a company drill at Mr. Lambert’s place near Girard College , by specialinvitation , and we will have a jolly good timethere , as he gives us punch , etc . etc. So yousee fortune favours the brave militia manand the Company Scribe is doing well .And again , Our Company went to Atlanticlast Friday by invitation of Juo .

’

Broadheadwe presented arms to Mrs . Broadhead , then abouquet, then an air from the band , and sosquared the account.”

The letters are interrupted here because,by the 6 th of S eptember, the Rye , in Ph il adelphia for a short visit, was in his turn takingup the story, and sending news to his wife ,

s


not solely of Henry Le land as soldier, butof Rodney Fisher, her only brother, who waskil led not very long afterwards. The letteris gay— too tenderly gay in places to beprinted at length . There was so much atstake for both of them that soldiering ” hadto be faced with all the gaiety at his command .

CHARLES GODFREY LELAND TO MRS . CHARLES GODFREYLELAND

Yesterday afternoon , went first to theConcert Hall Armoury and then over the VineS t . ferry to the parade ground , and saw theWhole regiment drill . On the way I met Mr.Bell , I suppose he was coming from Atlantic

,and had a talk with him . Henry is a fine

looking soldier. I thought, of course , the mostsoldierly-looking in his company. They firedvery Well indeed . While I was standing onthe edge , there came by a guard , a fiercez oooy man in fatigue uniform , andit was brother Rodney . I had a long talkwith him . He looks like a regular recruitand has g ot it in em 3 222257 it began torain , and I put up my umbrella, and Rodneyand two other guards got under i t. One of


them wounded me dreadful with his gun , andmade a triangular hole in my umbrella withhis bayonet. Two of the guards had littlebottles with brandy in them and I had sumsen to drink . Emily is well , and the baby.

Yesterday, too , I went to see George Boker.He has got little Georgey an appointmentto enter West Point . George was at Washington during the Bull Run defeat . JuliaIs staying with Mrs . Butler 1n Germantown .

They are going soon to pass a fortnight atColgate ’s on the North R iver. I don ’t thinkI shall return before Monday. I t is very niceand quiet here , and Father is very glad tohave me at home . To-day John and Henryhave gone gunning. I never knew even Philadelphia to be so quiet as i t is now, up townyou hardly see a soul

After this there is nothing until J une ,'

1863,

when the Rye had also become soldier, andthe letter then is from his publisher, Carleton .

“ I t appears you are off taking care of yourcountry

,

” Carleton writes , but, all the same ,pursues him with proof sheets . Another document of the time is a letter from Peacock ofthe Bulletin ” to a Mr. Worrell of Harris


ers,boys like little del icate Fassitt and B iddle

have to dig for hours with pickaxes . However

,we are not required to work hard— or,

i n fact,the offi cers make it very easy. I am

in tent with Hazeltine , Lamb (a Boston boy) ,Walton and Letchworth , all nice men . Thel ife is the very severest kind—no washingexcept from canteens— no Change of clothes

,

but very exciting. I have a thousand thingsto tel l you of the camp here— everything isbrought down to first principles .I t i s very hard to write and to find time .

TO-day we drill cannons . My muscleseems to be coming out very well

,and I bid

fair to become one of the heavy lifters . I wishFather would send me a very large black indiarubber blanket. Mine is too small for guardduty in the rain . Wait a day or two and Iwi l l tel l you where to send i t.

With the retreat of Lee across the Potomac , the Emergency was ended . Officers andprivates returned to their homes .

“ At lastwe were marched and railroaded back toPhiladelphia. I need not say that we werewelcome

,or that I enj oyed baths

,clean clothes ,

and the blest sensation of feel ing decent once


more . Everything in life seemed to be luxurious as it had never been before . Foryears after

,I had but to think of the Emer

gency to realise that I wasactually in all thechief conditions of happiness .” There was ashort rest ; j ust time to pull himself togetherphysically, j ust time to do what he could forhis country in more peaceful fashion at theSanitary Fair, for which he helped to produce the paper which was called Our Dai lyFare .

Some of the correspondence in connectionwith it has drifted down through the yearsinto my hands . I t is rich in the names of menand women prominent in Philadelphia,names as familiar as George W . Childs , Mrs .Gillesp ie , writing in despair over some misadventure in the post-offi ce of which shehad charge ; Horace Howard Furness , secretary of the executive committee ; Mrs. LucyH . Hooper, one of the first Philadelphiawomen to make a name as journalist ; MissAnna M . Lea, now Mrs . Merritt . The merel ist of their names is crowded with memoriesPhiladelphians would not want to lose. Thereare as many letters from sympath isers in othertowns : Buchanan Read , a personage in his


day, who writes to say he cannot get at hispictures

,but offers the gift of verses in their

place ; E lizabeth S tuart Phelps , not yet Mrs .Ward , who sends a story and is honouredby the request for it ; Messrs . Roberts BrOthers

,who announce Miss Ingelow’s donation

of twenty-five of her poems ; Mrs . M . E . W .

S herwood , j ust emerging from the rush andworry of the Metropoli tan Fair in New York

,

who fears that it will be surpassed in Philadelphia, but who has the generosity to presentGaribaldi ’s dagger, his personal contribution ,which eventually, I think it worth noting, became , by well-paid-for votes , the property ofGeneral Grant . Most important of my relicsof the Sanitary Fair, however rare or chargedwith sentiment they all may be , is one ofthe fifty duplicate copies of the Proclamation of Emancipation , which , at the requestof George Boker, L incoln and Seward bothsigned .

“ I perfectly knew and understood atthe time , the Rye says in his Memoirs , asdid all concerned , that this was a recognitionand a very graceful and appropriate one

of what I had done for Emancipation .

The copies I presented to the Sanitary Fairto be sold for its benefit, but there was not


was rougher and freer than any he had everknown or was to know The country throughwhich he had to travel was wild , the peoplewere unruly, the vendetta was an 1nstitution ,

brigandage a profession, and , to make mattersworse , the S tate was now overrun with Federal soldiers and Southern guerillas . Of al lthese facts he was perfectly aware. But, onthe other hand, “ after so many years of workI was as poor as ever, and the seven years ofharvest which I had prophesied had Come ,2001 I was not gathering .a single g oldengrain . My father regarded me as a failure in

as a literary ne’er- do-weel

,destined

never to achieve fortune or gain an éta t, and

h e was quite right. My war. experience hadmademe reckless of l ife, and speculation was

firing every heart.And so, buying a pair of long, strong,over-all boots and blanket , borrowing a re

volver, providing himself with military passesand introductions from

’

h is . fr1ends C. A .

Dana , then Assistant.

Secretary of War, andColonel Henry O lcott, upon whom theoSOph ic fame had not dawned , the Rye packedhis carpet-bag, started for Venango County,Pennsylvania, “where , until the past few


Federal soldiers on their way to the front,

and who stil l held Mammoth Cave , past whichthe engineer thought i t at least a usefulstrategy to put on full speed . As to Nashville , the Federal troops had marched innot long before , and it was no better thana huge camp . I t was dismal and dirty, and ,at the hotel , so cold that water froze twoinches thick i n the pitchers . These things theRye could have borne— he had come outto bear them . But it was less easy to facethe disappointment of not finding his twofriends , the young officers who had seen oilon the road near Murfreesboro . They wereto have met h im there , but had been unex

pectedly despatched to Alabama . However,

he fell in by chance with another Philadelphiafriend , Joseph R. Paxton , now a Musteringin and D isbursing Ofli cer,

” captain by rank,

and,more important at this j uncture , brother

in-law of General Whipple , who was in command at Nashville . With Paxton the Ryestayed during the month of waiting beforehis expedition could be organised ; immersedthere

,as everywhere , in the marvellous. For

that he should be in Tennessee at this specialmoment in itself was a “ strange coinc idence ,

”


he having specified Tennessee as the S tateof all others he would like to watch throughits transition from Confederacy to Unionism . Again , i t was a “ strange coincidence ”

that he should be quartered with Paxton ina house where there was “ a very good , oldfashioned library,

” and , strangest of all , thatthe darkies should give him the freedom ofa church , to which no other whites were admitted during certain secret rites , as if theydivined in him “ the mystery ” of the futureMaster of the Black S tone of the Voodoo .

Upon “ strange coincidences ” he could al

ways thrive,and these were worth to him all

the oil he did not find .

For when , at the end of the month , he wentwith Paxton to Murfreesboro and was at lastj oined by his two friends , and given an escortof four or five men , and got to work prospecting in earnest, there was no oil . The onlywealth the journey yielded was adventure

,and

evermore adventure,— alarms of bushwhack

ers ,” dinners in isolated farmhouses with guer

illa murderers concealed in the cellar, ridesacross dismal cedar barrens

,where the only

l iving creatures visible were “ swarms of il lomened turkey-buzzards,

” —adventures wi ld


and grim for Breitmann to pass through inhis turn .

Then the Rye went on the same missionto Indiana, a military escort no longer re

quired , the j ourney, now by stage and wagon ,and on horseback , across vast marshy fieldsand through endless mud . Again there wasno oil ; again there were marvels , storiesof mysterious lights wandering on lonely Indiana hills , only to mislead the seeker of thetreasure buried there during the Revolution ;a hurried glimpse at S t. Louis of the tombof the Kentucky Giant who might have figured in the beloved book of Curiosities

,

” orwith Barnum ’s freaks : ample payment

,these

things, for a second expedition as profitless ,otherwise

,as the first. From S t. Louis he jour

neyed on to C incinnati , and from C incinnati ,now in company with Mr . Joseph Lea ofPhiladelphia

,to the coal country of West Vir

ginia in the interest of some syndicate inProvidence . All the while , he says , he was“developing rapidly awild reckless spirit.L iterature was dead in me . Only once did I ,in a railway train , compose the Maiden withNodings on .

’ I bore it in my memory for yearsbefore I wrote it ou t, —a richer return that


duties were prosaic, the methods of performing them were far from it. His business tookhim into districts where “ a Union man ’s lifewas worth about a chinquapin ,

” but where hewent free because of his l iking “ for Indians ,Gypsies

,and all such folk ,

” which the halfwild people felt and so liked him in return .

Business took him on horseback across desolate regions , with narrow escapes for the rider ;one narrower than most, when his horse falling backward , he made the tremendous flyingleap Off its back which was good as an Inj un , by God , his friend Robert Hunt swore .Business took him in his dug-out, far up theElk R iver, through storms , over rapids ; andthere was one awful night when death staredhim in the face , and all the time the dangerthreatened , he lay smoking, s inging incantations to himself, his paddle at his side , hisblanket round him , conscious only of hisdull confidence in fate ” because , in a moment of inspiration , he had prophesied to hismen that all would go well . “When the OldInjun and my High Dutch ancestor are uponme , I reason not at all , and then I see visionsand dream dreams , and it always comes truewithout the least self-deception or delus ion .

”


I t was a land of excitement, great and small .There were bears in the swamps , game in thewoods

,freshets in the spring when the river

rose fifty feet above its ordinary level . Andthere was poker-playing in Goshorn ’

s hotelwhere he had put up , and revolver shots wereeveryday occurrences , and , altogether, I amas astonished as Hunt professed himself, tofind how natural ly the Rye took to it all . Inbut one place do I see the Rye I knew, andthat is in his own room at the primitive littlehotel , where he had put up crossed canoepaddles , and hunches of locust thorn , anddeer ’s horns on the walls . He never had aroom anywhere , if only for a day, that he didnot promptly decorate i t.Before the end of 1865 , he was back inPhiladelphia . There was another year of discouragement . However, he was too good aworker not to be wanted somewhere , and inthe autumn of 1 866 , learning through GeorgeBoker that a managing editor was needed onthe “ Philadelphia Press he applied for thepost and Obtained it . The proprietor, ColonelJohn Forney, was a prominent and influential politician in his day

,though , l ike most

politicians and newspaper proprietors , he was


forgotten outs ide of his own town , as soonas his public career came to an end . Politicswere almost as exciting as before the war, andfor a managing editor there was not muchpeace . In addition to his political work , theRye was long dramatic and musical critic

,and

altogether must have been about as hardworked a man as could be found in Ph iladelphia.He was ready for anything, a news para

graph , a sketch of some foreign celebrity , ora ponderous leader on the political questionsthen agitating the public mind ,

” is the ac

count Mr. John E . Norcross, then also onthe staff of the Press ” gives of the Rye asj ournal ist.

“Those nights in the editorial rooms of thePress ’ are an enduring memory. Mr. Lelandwas of an impos ing physical presence ; he wasS ix feet four inches in height , but so well proportioned that his stature did not seem sogreat save when he stood by a man of ordinarysize . He always was kind in manner theeveryth ing that a gentleman should be . Onen ight, never to be forgotten , or rather it wasi n the small hours of the morning, after thelast proof had been read , and the turtles had


Those were the days of great railroad enterprise

,and when railroad men went on a tour

of inspection , they did it in style , and werecareful to have journalists with them wh o

would let the public know it . To report oneof these tours the Rye went to Fort Ri ley andLeavenworth ; another journalistic j ourneywas to Duluth on Lake S uperior. The resultof the first was a pamphlet, “ Three Thousand Miles in a Railroad Car AtLeavenworth he was initiated into the tribeof the Kaws , with mad singing of the madsong of the Muscolgee

Hoo ! h oo ! h oo,th e Muscolgee !

Wah , wah , wah , th e blasted tree !

with mad dancing and mad drumming . NOWyou good Kaw— Good Injun you be— al lsame me

,

’’ the Chief told him at the end ofi t all . And there were buffalo hunts on theplains

,and meetings with Apaches , and a

visit to General and Mrs . Custer at FortHarker

,

“ there was a bright and joyouschivalry in that man

,and a noble refinement

mingled with constant gaiety in the wife , suchas I fear is passmg from the earth .

” The journey to Lake S uperior led to more Indians


and to more excursions , “ all through thegrene wode wilds

,and I enj oyed it. I had

Indian society,and learned Indian talk , and

bathed in rushing waters , and saw enormouspine trees 30 0 feet high , and slept a lfrescoand ate aa’ lioiturn . To this day its remembrance inspires in me a feeling of deep, truepoetry .

” And so,l i ttle as he then knew it, his

wild adventures in the open came to an end .

Many and more marvellous adventureswere tofollow

,but they were of a very different kind .

Another pleasure , greater if less wild , -that1 86 7 brought him was the honour bestowedupon him by Harvard . The first intimationhad come as far back as the October of 1 866i n a letter from Lowell . I t is a charmingletter, and I give i t now because of this intimation , though the reference to the Breitmann Ballads ,

” equally long,might make

it seem more appropriate to the chapter onBreitmann.


ELMWOOD, 16th Oct ,1866 .

MY DEAR S IR,— I am hearti ly ashamed of

myself for not answering your letter sooner.


I am always committing the same sin andfeeling the same remorse , ti ll at last lettershave become as unanswerable to me as ifthey were bad conundrums . I t was not thatI forgot y ou — on the contrary, Mr. Childand I are resolved to get you made a Masterof Arts here , so that you may be one of usand that we may have the Chance , now andthen , of seeing you at our college festivals .We have very (great) fun at them sometimes ,a better kind of fun than the common civic

feast affords .Mr. Bristed was good enough to send me

your Breitmann’

s .

” I do not know when Ihave enjoyed anything more highly. Theparody on the H ildebrandlied was wonderfully good , and in all of them the ingenuitywith which you have managed the Germanpronunciation (especial ly in choosing wordswhere the transposition of p and b , d and t,18 comic) adds a new chord to the lyre of humour. The one in which he is taken prisonerand rejoins Sherman thoroughly tickled me .I read it aloud at breakfast , so well as laughing would let me— for I would not trust theaccent to less ski lful l ips , and it made us alllaugh till we cried . Why do you not collect


Having given Lowell ’s letter, I might aswell add to it one from D r . Holmes , onlythree months later in date, which is as s incerea tribute to Breitmann, and as disinterestedtestimony to the position to which the Philadelphia j ournalist had climbed in the worldof letters .

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES TO CHARLES GODFREY LELAND

BOSTON,Jan. 26, 1867 .

MY DEAR MR . LELAND, - I received andread with huge delectation the travels andadventures Of Hans Breitmann and his goodlycompany. The whole is good as i t can be ,but “ Hans Breitmann went to Kansas ,

” l ikeall I have seen of Hans

,is too good . I hope

that is yours too , for the fun of it is delicious.

You write in such spirits I know you arewell and happy, which pleases me to thinkupon . We put poor W i ll is to bed in MountAuburn on Thursday and tucked him up inas fleecy a white blanket as the careful oldmother would weave for him with her loomOf cloud and wind . I t was on his sixty-firstbirthday that he died , and it is as it were this


morning that I was reading those lines of his ,j ust out :

I ’m twenty-two, I ’m twenty-two,They idly give me joy ,

As if I should be glad to knowThat I was but a boy .

Wh ether I first read them this morning,or

almost forty years ago , they have been alwaysin my memory since the time .I am busy as usual at this season

,lecturing

,

and in addition writing a serial for the A t

lantic .

”

We have our Saturday Club to-day,and I

wish we were going to have you with us .Very truly yours ,

O . W . HOLMES .

This is a digression . More to the point isthe closing paragraph in a second letter fromLowell , which is too good to cut.


ELMWOOD, 91h July, 1867 .

MY DEAR S IR, The kind of collectionyou think of making

,apart from its interest

,

will have a real value . I think it would be


very curious to see how far and in what respects the original German legends have beenmodified by transplantation , - for that mostof them will be found to have been importedI have no doubt. To my mind this facultyof adaptation in man is almost as interestingas that of invention , and it is always touchingto see how soon the settlers of our wildernessfelt the bleakness at their backs and triedto get up a screen of legend and traditionbehind them . They would have Indian onesif they could get no better, and at any ratewould have our bare landscape draped withsome kind of memory. If I were you , I wouldpick up everything, no matter how trifling,and invent nothing. I have always supposedthat Irving transferred his legendary storiesfrom the O ld World to the New ; if not, thenR ip Van Winkle is vastly more interesting tome as a New World vulgarisation of KaiserRothbort . Any kind Of rhymes , nursery orother, would also be worth having , and youcould give your own fancy a loose in the setting, as in the specimen you sent me , whichI found very interesting. I th ink S ouvestre’

s

Foyer Breton and the others , models inthat kind Of writing.


Commencement (the 1 7th), for on the eighteenth Emerson is to deliver an oration before the !ID. B . K. Society , whereof I am president , and we wish t o make the occasion asbrill iant as we can . At the dinner (to whichno reporters are admitted) we have songs ,speeches , etc . If Hans Breitmann would giveus a few of his verses , he would find a mostcongenial audience . I am very sorry that Icannot ask you to stay Wi th me , as I hadhoped to do , but my house is and wil l be full .Mr. Child , however, will more than make upfor that.Your Mastership will make you to all intents and purposes an alumnus with right ofvoting at elections of Overseers , eating Commencement dinners and the like .Hoping you will take pains to come ,

I remain,my dear S ir,

Cordially yours ,J . R . LOWELL.

The invitation from Mr. Child came by thesame mail

,and it lacked nothing in warmth

and heartiness . “ I want you to come nere,to this h ouse of mine .

” I have no documentsto explain why, but the Rye did not go , and ,


on the 2 3d of July, Mr. Child was writingagain , “You have probably seen in the newspapers that you and Howells were madeM . A .

’s on Wednesday .

I should l ike to keep on quoting the letters he received in the late sixties

,but there

are far too many. Kimball and Stoddard , andMr. Child too , continued for long to be his correspondents. William H . Herndon , L incoln

’sold law-partner in Indiana,was contributingassiduously to a collection of stories of Lincoln which the Rye had begun , but which henever publ ished . Of Charles Astor Bristed ’

s

letters alone a big book might be made ; andan amusing book it would be , with vivid littlepictures of New York literary life. I cannotresist referring to just one , of an

“ afternoon ”

at which Lowell produced a tremendous sensation by appearlng In straw-colored kids .Editors were asking the Rye for work , nonefrom whom it was more Of a compliment thanE . L . Godkin , who would be “ glad to haveanything from Mr. Leland , whether prose orverse ,

” but preferably prose,for “ The Na

tion ,” recently launched on its distinguished

career. Younger men,whose names were all

in the future , were turning to him for advice ,


one of the later letters of this decade comingfrom Dr. B . E . Martin , at the time a mereyouth starting out in life . I t would be aninvaluable collection to any one writing thehistory of l iterary America in the second halfof the nineteenth century, but there is nospace for it in the life of one man

,one

who did so much to give that history itsdistinction .

In November, 1 86 7, the Rye’s father died .

I t was some comfort to the son that, at theend , the father, who had so often regrettedhis want of a fixed career or position , had thesatisfaction of seeing him well established onthe paper of a man who ,

however audaciousaccording to Puritan standards , could be re

spected for his power and success .Shortly after his father’s death

,on the I st

of January, 1 868 , the Rye began the firstsystematic j ournal that has outlived theChances of time . I t is an almost daily recordof his work and occupations during fourmonths . Many entries refer solely to personal matters , for it was in the course of thesemonths that his father’s estate was settled ,and that his brother Henry died

,after a long

and cruel illness . O ther entries are the barest


turitus mons— the Hill brought forth a pairOf India soles , and sol icited an extended notice . At eleven o ’clock called on Mrs . Forneyand encountered D . D . ( ! Dan] Docherty)and Mr. E . ,premier intriguan t at the Arch .

At night suffered till 2 A . M. with a horribleneuralgia.6 . M onday . Schott gave me a curiouslycarved cherry stone with a portrait of JohannesBishop of Mayence on it and coat of armsand inscription . D ickens ’ agent in the Offi ceGreat excitement, D ickens

’ tickets .

7 . Tuesday . Nothing very remarkable .Offi ce work as usual . S cene. E lderly dame

wit/fM S S This is for Mr . Forney.

”

S elf :

“Well,ma’am , if you leave i t I will give it to

him .

”E . L ady :

“\It

’

s quite right to leaveit here for him , is i t ?

”

S elf :“ Quite right.”

E lderly Lady disappears— but raps again ,and puts her head in at the door, inquiringThere was notning

r improper in my comingup here

,was there ?” An old maid, I

’ll bet afip . In the evening I went to the Opera, “DonGiovanni . ” Ronconi was as good as of oldwhen I heard him in Europe . Miss Hauck

'

acted and sang with spiri t and exuberantgaiety . Supper at Green ’s .


8 . Wednesday . Evening, took Mrs . Forneyand Mary Forney to the Opera

“La Favorita.Gazzaniga had the same face— not sympathetic to me— and the same tolerable sort ofvoice as of old . Balthazar scolding Fernanwhile La Favorita knelt ; He is down on nisnep/cew, z onile sne is down on ner knees.

”

! TheRye was just then writing burlesque librettosof the more popular operas , and this probablywas a hint for one of them] The cross onBalthazar’s breast exactly resembled four largered Euphorbia leaves , or a great flower. MissMary Forney said he must be an Englishman—he wore such a large flower at his buttonhole. Which concluded the entertainment.

9 . Tnursday . Blitz in the Office ventriloquising at the door . ! How many generations Of Philadelphia children thri lled tothe ventriloquising of “ S ignor Blitz

,

” andhung breathless on those wonderful talks ofhis with the incomparable

,squeaky-voiced

Bobby Evening, with M . R . Fisher to theOpera . The house was splendid . Fi rst, oneact of Il Barbiere

,

” then a concert thenmore Barber. In the middle of the secondact, at 1 1 o

’clock,the whole

'

house was yawning and we went home . Of course , Mme .


Rosa was taken sick and withdrew, and mynotice of the of . which was in type before ithad operated , contained no elusion to thatomission . Which is my third blissful blunder.

1 0 . F riday . Inquired where I could takelessons in Chasing silver. In the evening tothe Carnival of Venice very l ight music

,

very little , apparently, in it to remember, butpretty ; the plot is old-fashioned Italian , thehumbugging a watchful father by two gallants , a stupid servan t, a Carnival scene , anda reconcil iation very much like a thousandother things of the kind

,but made very funny

by Ronconi and excellent by MIS S Hauck .

L ike a Chapter from Casanova with souvenirsof Canaletto .

1 1 . S aturday . Went to Penington’

s bookstore. Mr. B . P . Hunt ! his old Schoolmaster]and Ed . Buckley there . Gossip , that MissHauck of the Opera was originally a girl ina lager beer Saloon in New York, and thatthe rich Jerome had her educated . Wonderful genius . If she ever goes to Europe she willbe a second Patti . - In the evening, therewas a grand concert at the Academy. Selections from Rossin i ’s “ Stabat Mater,

” etc ., withBaragli, Mmes. Behrens and Testa, Anton


Schott to Academy of Music . The operawas

“ Linda.” After the opera I went downto the office . Great excitement among thebrokers in consequence of Grant and Stanton .

Gold at 4 1 . Supper at Green ’s and heard thatBlack Charley, who used to open oystersthere , had died very suddenly the night before of heart complaint caused by grief forthe loss of his wife .

1 6 . Tnursday . In the afternoon to S ent z ’

s

concert . Fel ix Bernh ert played the piano .

Felix is a name of happy omen since it contains the letters I! L . And as I—! L maymean 40 save 1 , these may apply to the l ixwhich those got who were whipped accordingto the law of Moses . Blitz was in the offi ceyesterday and told a good story, how oncein a New England town , he had no place tosleep , and was courteously invited by an oldfellow to a bed , and received the next morning a good breakfast. On asking what he hadto pay, he was told “ nothing ” “ But I mustpay you ,

” answered Blitz , I cannot think oftaxing your hospitality gratis .” There ain ’tnothin ’ to pay here

,

” was the reply .

“ This isthe town poorhouse , and we never Chargenobody a cent.”


1 9 . S unday . In the afternoon I went tosee G. H. Boker ; talked on literary appre

ciation by the publicand the more cultivatedC lasses . George read me several MSS . sonnetswhich he had recently written ; two or threeon this very subj ect. He seemed disposed totake a melancholy view of the subject, anddwelt en passant on the very S lender amountof sympathy or applause generally extendedto poets not absolutely of the first class , asregards popularity. Men look at nothing butthe very first . I t is shoulder-straps or nicnts.

I remarked that a vast Change had takenplace during the past three centuries . Inthose days , poetry, like embroidered garments ,fine dwellings , great jewelry (via

’e Cellini

’

s

L ife) , or pictures , was a matter of public andgeneral interest. Nowadays there are more“ educated ” people, but the main interest andadmiration of l ife is turned towards the“ resultsof genius as shown in “practical ” matters andindustrial achievements . George seems inclined to bear down on this practical , soulless ,Gradgrind age. Mr. Young of the “Albion ”

has spoken of him sincerely and warmly asone of the first poets in America. I t seemsto me that it is a great thing to be even


only one of the first among some . thirty-fivemill ions of people . D r. O . W. Holmes once ,in conversation or in a letter, said that Boker

’

s

D i rge ” was the best poem of the kind everwritten . I believe he meant during the war.

In his article on H . H . Browne l l ’s poems , hedeclared these latte r to be the only lyrics ofvalue Which the war had brought forth . R.

W . Emerson , in Boston in 1 86 2 , told me hethought that “ Let us alone ” was the best bitof humour the war had produced . He did notknow the name of the author, and I onlyknew the initials and address . I wrote toMr. Brownell and informed him of what Emerson had said , thinking it would gratify him ,

and sent a note to Emerson informing himas to Brownel l ’s name , hoping it might benefit the latter. There are times when suchmeddling IS not out of place. In the eveningI read the L ife of Benvenuto Cellini .” Hewas the Ulrich von Hutten of art. What astonishes me is the enormous vitality of theman and his restless desire to acquire knowledge and excel . He had the faculty of takingInterest to a great degree , as had also Leonardo da Vinci . I t is deligh tful to catch inCellini

’

s work so many “ l iving gl impses ” of


De S ade, reduced to facts and logic , is asmoral as Paley . All his arguments in favourof athe ism and unnatural crime amount to thedestruction of all social harmony and t he rightof strength and accident to subdue weaknessand settled organisation . As for Swinburne ’smelancholy P leasure should be joyous .

30 . Téursday . In the evening I went withBelle to hear Chas . D ickens , at Concert Hall ,read Doctor Marigold and Bob Sawyer’sParty . His hair is gray and scanty, but isbrushed up on ei ther side in expansive locksin a very swel l manner which has provedan irresist ible temptation to the negro minstrels . He had on rather large shirt studs , alarge showy ring, S leeve buttons , and a heavygold Chain fastened by a locket in the middleand leading in double festoons to either watchpocket, as if he wore two watches . In hiscoat button-hole were two flowers of differentcolours , according to his invariable custom .

There was not a yout h in the whole housewh o was “ got up so loudly . I t ‘gave me frequently a very melancholy and disagreeablefeeling to see an author of so much ability,who has touched the tenderest feelings ofhundreds of thousands , grimacing and play


ing the mime as D ickens did last night, andacting funny .

” His gold Chain bore a largelocket

,and at intervals of three inches on it

were red coral balls . His ring was a large diamond , and between the readings he changedthe flowers at his button-hole.

3 1 . Friday . Evening, went to D ickensagain with Belle . Geo . W . Childs on thestairway as usual , showing himself. D ickensread his abridgement of “ David Copperfield and “ Boots at the Holly Tree Inn .

”

F eoruary 1 , S a turday . Went to E . Robinsto buy U . S . bond . Philadelphia Library. SawMrs . Hooper and Mr. Hart. Inquired of Mr.Smith for a writer for some locals. Penington

’

s bookstore . Looked over divers oldbooks , such as Anne Marie S churmann

’

s

Opuscula, S almasius and Milton ’s Defences , S elden

’

s“ De Diis S yriis,

”Pathelin ,

”

the Ars Conservandi,” etc . (

“Schola Salerand S caliger

’

s“ De S ubtilitate ad

Hier. Cardan . Saw Charles S tille and Mr. B .

P . Hunt. Evening, took tea at Mr. Colton’s .

Had fried scallops for supper,which are like

fried oysters . Went over Meister Karl ”

with Miss D . to select chapters for publication . Not an easy business. Trop de veau


too much self-consciousness in the book , andnot freshness and vigour.

2 . S unday . Morning, office translatedfrom French journals . Afternoon , G . H .

Boker’

s. He read aloud Swinburne ’s new

poem to Baudelaire , which suggests Milton ’s Lycidas .” This poem is characteristicof Swinburne and shows more of the strengthof poison than of muscle. He also readTennyson ’s last poem , a very l ight l ittle thing,ending without point, though there is a versein i t which would have made a capital ending .

For this little poem Tennyson received if50 0

(no shil lings or pence) . George told a storyhow the day before , seeing a big fel low amongothers strike a boy, he interposed . Whereupon one cried , “

D i t, if the old man

has n ’t got his fists doubled ! ” He had beento hear D ickens , liked his reading, and commented on the pure obj ectivity of all hischaracters . Said D ickens wrote without selfconsciousness .

4. Tuesday . Worked on the new editionof Meister Karl .

” Evening, went to Academy of Music . Lewis’s Gymnastic E x h ibition . Colton boys sat by me , and were muchpleased . When the sparring began , the


method , which he did not , however, i ndicateby that name . I was introduced to him inBoston , in the winter of 1 86 1—6 2 .

1 0 . M onday . C lear and slippery . Got myhair cut at Gray’s . Wrote to Mr. Pooley inNew York as to Meister Karl . His addressis No . 33 1 Pearl S t . Went round to Colton

’sto go to Professor Rogers’ lecture , but foundi t was to be to-morrow. Evening, Dr. S chottin our room . Made some Glu

'

lcwein of claret .1 1 . Tuesday . Fine day, very cold . Saw T .

B . Peterson and Ringwalt as to publish ing the“ Breitmann Ballads ” Sent Colonel Forneya statement as to “Weekly Press ,

” showinga clear profit of $ 1 35 for the pas t week .

S tory of the crows which , during the w1nter,fly in large numbers from New Jersey toPennsylvania every morning and return inthe afternoon . A Jersey man being askedwhy they did th is , replied that the food inN . J . was too rich for them . In the eveningI went with Miss Julia Colton to see “ La

Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein ” at the opera.

I t was extremely amusing, oouf'

e, rian te,folle,.

Went down to the Office afterward and wrotean article on the opera.

1 2 . Wednesday . Morning papers all ful l of


La Grande Duchesse . Nothing particularduring the day. I n the evening, I went againto see the GrandeDe with Belle , who enj oyed it very much . The performers enteredwith great spiri t into the play. Saw EdwardRobins and wife there .

1 5 . S aturday . Duchesse matinee . OldFrench stage associations rise l ike manyghosts from the Latin Quarter days , and Icould write a book out of them .

1 8 . Tuesday . In at tailor’s . Zaceby toldsome Hungarian stories with good effect.

2 1 . F riday . News of S tanton ’s difl‘icultywith the President. Trouble at Washington .

24. Monday . Evening, I went alone tothe Chestnut S t. Theatre . Bateman ’s FrenchDramatic Company. They played La Joiefait Peur. After this they played “ Les

Amours de Cleopatre ,” a very l ively and jolly

comedy in three acts , in which Mlle. Reillezplayed a part which seemed like old times andthe Quartier Latin .

“ My daughter,

” saysthe father, “ when you shall have been thirtyyears in the cork business

,you will not be

astonished at anything dans la nature.

” I amalmost certain this old fellow used to playtwenty years ago at Bobino ’

s.


28 . Friday . First cleari

day since MondayGovernor Curtin came up into the office to

secure the nomination for Vice-Presidency .

Evening went with Belle to see “Les D iablesRouges —music by Offenbach .

8 Marc/c, S unday . Morning, Office, Press .Afternoon , John Harrison

’s . Evening, staidat home . I lluminated my copy of Swinburne ’spoems . S ingular fascination in all such smallfancy work . Perhaps women find it in sewing.

1 3 . Friday . At Pening ton’

s, where I or

dered some books . Evening at O le Bull ’sagain with Belle . Pollak sang and O le Bul lplayed immediately after a Polac-ca. Whereis Pollak mentioned in Shakespeare ?

I smote th e sledded Polak on the ice —(eyes

The audience made asses of themselves asbefore with noisy and excessive encoring.

14. S a turday . Met Miss Sally Pettit andwalked with her. A charming and beautifulpetite. Went to O le Bull ’s matinée . Wentbehind the scenes and had a Short but veryinteresting conversation with the great violinist . He said that he had so much improvedhis method of playing since ten years , that it


Much Ado about Nothing some 34 yearsago , and can remember distinctly her impetuous manner and “ fiery eyes .” I heard herread also— it seems to me in 1 849 or 1850 .

S he did not, as I thought, excel in the lighterand Characteristically humorous parts , and ,with the best will in the world to admire , Ithought her talents extremely exaggerated .

Last night in reading “Antony and C leopatra,

” she cut out a great part of the play,and , in fact, confined herself principally tothe two chief Characters . I suppose she didthis from a consciousness of her inabilityto do justice to the other parts . In plainer,humorous reading she has a disagreeableYankee-l ike

,almost nasal twang. Her voice

is good,but her natural sty le is sensational ,

”

and old-fashioned intense— inclining to rant,

and as she is conscious of this and endeavoursto subdue it

, we are conscious in turn ofsomething unnatural . I t is the art which , l ikeGaz z aniga

’

s singing, is much admired byfash ionable and dilletan ti people who thinkthemselves highly cultivated and think a greatdeal about it. I once went from Marseillesto Civita Vecchia on the same boat as Mrs .Butler, 1 845 .


20 . F riday . Bought l ittle fans , and threebooks at Pening ton

’

s ,“ De la Caricature

dans l’Antiquité,”Caresme-Prenant et Gaus

tier-Garguille,” and a Charming old black-let~

ter tract reprint. Evening went with Belle toOpera Ernani S tates, the new singer,has a fine figure and a good voice .

2 1 . S aturday . A tremendous snowstormlast night and this morning—nothing likei t since 1 856 . I went to the Matinée at theAcademy ;

“ 11Barbiere. Ronconi very good .

Evening, ope ra again ; Faust.” Miss Haucksang in German , I talian , and French , Habelmann in German , and Antonucci and therest in Italian . After 2d act went round toHarrisons ’, where I saw the Wight girls .Curious and mossy loads of snow on eve rytree and on the slightest objects . I saw it atleast 14 inches high on the top of a gardenfence.

2 2 . S unday . Called at G. H . Boker’

s,Mrs .

Boker better. Hopes entertained of her re

covery. I lluminated from the work on oldMerov1ng1an graves. Evening, Colton

’s . Neuralgia and sore throat .

24 . Tuesday . Afternoon , Levi , Janauschek

’

s agent, c ame in and gave a glowing


recital of her success i n the West. He seemedrather astonished when I told him he wouldhave a great success in Boston , saying therewere not many Germans there . Evening wentwith Belle and Miss Colton to the GazzanigaConcert at Concert Hall. De Meyer playedon the piano , Ardavani the baritone , verygood .

30 . M onday . Worked at “Meister Karlslow work .

3 1 . Tuesday . Evening at Laura Hooper’s .Three gentlemen there , three-card monte , andstories .

1 April. Janauschek in“ Marie S tuart

S chiller ’s very fine performance .

3 . Friday . Evening at Janausch ek’

s,Academy. Leah the Forsaken .

” A poor houseas usual and magnificent acting. Crelinger

was more than Jew in his part.

5 . S unday . Morning, Office . Afternoon ,G. H . Boker

’

s . Evening, Colton’s .

8 . Wednesday . S tarted at 8 o ’clock fromWalnut S t. Ferry ! for New York] ; saw Mr.Horace Greeley absorbed in a mass of newspapers in a corner of the cabin . Re-introducedmyself. He said very little at first

,read his

papers , asked me if I l ived in Boston , and


1 8 . S aturday . F inished Breitmann— sawMr. Lindy Smith of the Union League andagreed to let h im have the Weekly Pressas a campaign paper at 2 cents apiece.

1 9 . S unday . Office in the morning. Occu

pied with Hans Breitmann placard . G. H .

Boker gone to New York , Mrs . Harrison’s .

The entries were getting shorter andshorter— a mere j otting down Of operasseen and noticed , sometimes the notice itself cut out and pasted in the journal , forfuture reference no doubt. By the second ofMay, they ceased altogether 2 . S a turdayC inderella ’

Matinee English operaEvening at Colton ’s ” i s the last, abruptlycompleting the diary for that and manyyears to come . April had been a dreadfulmonth for h im , for it was i n April thatHenry Le land ’s i l lness reached its crisis . Notlong after this concluding entry he died , atan age when much good work, the com

plete fulfilment of the great promise he hadgiven , might stil l be hoped to lie before him .

The Rye kept on with his journalism for ayear longer. He guided the policy of thePress ” through the Pres idential campaign .


But he was tired . He had worked withoutceasing for twenty-one years. The illness ofhis father and of the brother whom he lovedas a friend had meant a severe strain ; thefrequent notes of neuralgia in the j ournal arewarnings to the reader of the nervous breakdown he had every reason to fear. And now,

if he wanted , he could be Independent ofnewspapers forevermore . His father had lefth im ample means, to which had been addedthe fourth part of his brother’s share in

'

theestate. In the spring of 1 869 he was inducedto res ign his position on the “ Press ,

”— temporarily, anyway, he may have thought,let the house he had j ust bought and furnished in Locust S treet, pack his trunks , andstart the second time for Europe .

CHAPTER VI I I

HAN S BRE ITMANN

THE first time the Rye sailed for Europe,all

h is work lay before him . But now, the secondtime , an important part of i t was done : theBreitmann Ballads ” had been written , hisreputation was made .I could only wonder how he managed to

publ ish any books during his years of activejournalism , if I had not seen for myself, lateron

,the great facility he had in writing, and

his un l imited talent for industry.

“ I hopethat you and Joe are well ,

” he wrote to meonce in his later l ife . That you are alwaysbusy l ike me means that the chief conditionfor earthly happiness i s fulfil led , for thoughmany other things are needed , all are as nothing if we do not work .

” There were times ,indeed , when , to restore my own self-respect,I should have welcomed a shadow of idlenessin him as a virtue . Any one else in his position would have left of the fifties and sixtiesmerely a record of j ournal ism , more or less


to journalism , to oil-prospecting , to rent-collecting in the wilds . I do not say he got nopleasure out of these th ings he got a greatdeal . He would not have done them so well ,if he had not. And besides , to one who couldimagine romance where most people only seecommonplace, the newspaper office reekedwith it ; to the lover of the odd , there wasa Gypsy side to the horrors of the camp inC ivil War time to a man of his fine physicaldevelopment in his prime , the wild j oys ofl iving not to speak of the j oys of adventure with Indians and strange people werethe reward for months Of roughing it in thebackwoods of Tennessee and West V irgin ia .

There is an undercurrent of savage exultationthroughout his account of these experiences ;as if they ran always to the refrain of thatmad Indian song

Hoo ! hoo ! h oo ! th e Muscolgee !

W ah l wah ! wah ! the blasted tree !

But, though he enj oyed them at the time ,though he was thankful for them afterwards

,

they were not the experiences he would havechosen , had he been free to Choose ; and theproof is that when he was free

,when he was

master of an independent income , he did not

HANS BREITMANN 325

attempt to repeat or rival them . He devotedhimself to l iterature : in literature he reallyl ived ; in literature he sought and foundhis romance , his adventure , his mystery. Aswith every dreamer

,i t was the idea, the sen

timent of a thing, rather than the thing itself,that inspired him . One of Borrow’s worshippers , once , had his moment of disillusion ,when he saw his hero armed with a big greenumbrella for a country walk on a gray day.

But Borrow’s feeling for Nature was no lessbecause he sometimes objected to risk herdiscomforts : he could hear the wind on theheath in the respectable Brompton Square ,as well as on the Open moorland . And so ,the Rye is a splendidly picturesque figure ashe sits in his canoe , chanting incantations inthe face of death , on S outhern waters ; orastride his horse , riding boldly through agueri lla- swept land ; or dancing a war dancewith Red Indians on Western plains . But heis no less picturesque , and far more what hemeant and wanted to make of himself, in hiswritings. His books are the true record ofhis life .

By dil igent searching,I might unearth

many articles , long forgotten, from old files


of the “ Bulletin and the Press , of Graham ’s ,

”the Knickerbocker, and the Con

tinental. And I probably should recognisethe slightest he wrote as his work , for neitherjournalistic haste nor uncongenial subj ectscould destroy or suppress his individualityas a writer. He had his tricks of style , assome men have their tricks of speech or manner by which you may know them . He couldnot keep out of his manuscripts the rhymesand proverbs , the old legends and trad itions ,the quotations and allusions

,with which his

memory was stored , and they could havecome from no other l iterary man or j ournalist of his generation . But the fate of authorsl ike Thackeray, at the zealous hands of themodern literary ghoul ,makes it seem kinder tolet forgotten articles l ie forgotten . The manwho writes to time , for a living, occasionallyturns out “ copy ” he would as lief forgeth imself . Besides , the Rye did what mostl iterary men in his position do ; he collectedmany of his magazine articles into books , heexpanded many of his newspaper articles intopamphlets , and it may be taken for grantedthat he preserved all he wished preserved , andpassed over all he wished passed over.


youth breathes through every line . The opening paragraph alone would betray the age ofthe authorWell ,my friends —arewe all in our places?

I s the last packet thrown in ? are your hatstied up ?

—your travelling caps On —coatand gown settled down ? Is the baggagesnugly stowed away ?— have the trunks goneto sleep in loving unison with the band-boxesupon the carpet-bags ?

‘

Major, is your flaskwithin reach ?—you may wish to refer to i t.And are they all there , the gentle ones , including the pretty waiting-maid outside ? (Areyou comfortable, ma

’

nz selle .

2) And 10 ! heream I , your courier, your friend , your guidethat is to be , wi th my everlasting green bag,portfolio , and pipe . What

’s all that row withthe horses ? Lay on the leather, driver ! Allright—dem that beggar l go a-head—heyup there g’lang l Clic, clac, petit postillon !

And then away goes the courier, MeisterKarl ,” rambling as only a very young mancould , through the books he has read and thecountries he has visited : j otting down his impressions of anything and everything as theyoccurred to him , spring in his heart,—the

HANS BREITMANN 329

Carnival in Rome , the picturesqueness ofNuremberg

,the Charm of the “ beautiful

C i ties of the Past ; tell ing again the oldstories of Flemish Art, Miraculous Madonnas , Ghosts , Fairies , whatever came into hishead as much at home meeting the devil ona church steeple at midnight as calling forbeer in the breweries of Munich always readyfor a laugh

,never afraid of a quotation . The

personal appeals to the reader and the rhetorical fl ights were literary fashions then invogue . But the quotations and allusions andthe use he made of them , the excursions intothe grotesque and the mystical , were all h isown , and , in his phrase , caviare to the public .” I t might be as natural for MeisterKarl to meet fairies and spirits in his travelsas for Mr. Howells to meet men and womenof solid fl esh , as natural to lose himselfin legend as for Baedeker to hold fast tofact. I t was anything but natural

,however

,

to the public, and the book had no specialsuccess.One pleasure it brought the author was a

letter from Washington Irving,to whom he

had sent a copy. A letter from WashingtonI rving was to the young American author of


the fifties much what the post-cards Of Gladstone became to the young English author atthe end of the century, I am afraid , withno better reason . I trust your work has metwith a wide circulation ,

” I rving wrote fromSunnyside , on May 3 1 , 1 8 56 ,

“ for such itmerits by its raciness , i ts quaint erudition , itsgraphic del ineations , its veins of genuinepoetry and true Rabelais humour. To me itis a choice book to have at hand for a relishing morsel occasionally

,l ike a S tilton ch eese

or a pété-de foie g ras.

” But he had writtenthe same pretty compliment to George Ticknor a few years before about Ticknor’s bookOn Spain , so that he must also have liked tokeep by him a stock of ready-made phrasesfor distribution among admiring correspondents . Fortunately, the Rye, who never gotover the youthful hero-worship for the greatman of the Older generation , was spared thedisenchantment of discovery, and cherishedthe illusion that the compliment was personaluntil the end .

Seventeen years after his first appearance ,Meister Karl ” suddenly found himself famous in the reflected light of Hans Breitmann ,

and a second edition of the Sketch-Book


A translation could not better preserve theSpirit of the original . There is none Of thehurry of the professional translator, measur

ing his time and care by the price'

paid . Hadthe work not been done for someth ing besidespayment in money, i t would have led to nothing but disappointment, since the meagreseventy-five t cents a _ page agreed upon , theRye says in :h is Memoirs ,

” was never paidhim in full ; “ I was obliged to take part ofthe mOney in engravings and books , and thepublisher fai led . The book '

passed into otherhands , a

'

nd ~m'

any thousands of Copies weresold , from .all of Which I ,

'

of course , got nothing,

” nothing ex cept h is pleasure in acongeniak task . And i t was congenial , for hehad in . himself someth ing of the same combination Of

'

seriOusness and humour, of tenderness and drollery,

” that attracted him towas

'

as'

fa’

r‘

nilia'

rw ith German aswith Engl ish; as entirely master of i ts fineshades ,

” having been Germanised ” to hisfellow-citizens ’ disgust, even before he setfoot in Heidelberg or Munich and he hadthe deep respect for the original text thatprevented h is altering or omitting a line oran incident, though , at a more mature period ,

PROFES SOR E H PALMER


gave me , when Schaefer and Koradi of Philadelphia were the publishers .After Meister Karl ” and the Pictures ofTravel ,

” for some few years there were nobooks. Rumours of war, and , finally, waritself

,left him less leisure than ever. But al l

the while he was ful l of schemes that gradually took definite shape . One was to publishto the world the “ Gospel of Joyousness ,

” ashe called it, in which his faith was strong .

At no period of his l ife would he permit theluxury of woe to himself or to anybody else ,and the moment when things looked blackestduring the C ivi l War seemed to him the one,of all others , when a protest against pessimismneeded to be made . But i t was a moment ofhurry and interruption , and this one of hisschemes suffered from the haste with whichi t was carried out. His protest, with the titleS unshine in Thought,

” was published inbook form by the Putnams in New York ,1 863. I t was all directed ,

” is the explanationin the Memoirs

,

” against the namby-pamhypessimism ,

‘ lost Edens and buried Lenores ,’

and similar weak rubbish , which had thenbegun to manifest i tself in literature, andwhich I foresaw was in future to become

HANS BREITMANN 335

a great curse , as it has indeed done . Hisargument was based on his belief, that grewwith the years, in science and the future ofgreater happiness to come with its development. But in waiting, the present evils ofdespair demanded heroic remedies , and heallowed no compromise , including even Poein his sweeping denunciation . In calmer moments he would have seen reason to qualifymany of his criticisms . The book, however,never went into a second edition , though thefirst was l imited to five hundred copies . TOme it is the least satisfactory of his works .The indefiniteness of plan weakens the argument . He was too eager to say what he hadto say, to consider how he said it. But nobody interested in the l iterature of the C ivi lWar should pass it over.To this l i terature he made more direct

political contributions ,— two pamphlets ofwidespread influence in their day : Centraliz ation versus S tate Rights and thesame year, in collaboration with his brotherHenry, “The Book of Copperheads

,found

in L incoln’s desk after his assassination , together with the “ Letters Of Petroleum V .

Nasby,” by D . R. Locke . L incoln ’s copy of


the Book of Copperheads, the Rye writes ,i n the Memoirs ,

” “was sent to me to see andreturn . I t was much thumbed , Showing thati t had been thoroughly read by Father Abraham .

Then , l iterature leading the American wholooked to i t for support into all sorts of queerby

-paths , he wrote for Carleton , a New Yorkpublisher, a l ittle volume on The Art of Conversation ( 1 86 which might have a placeon the collector ’s shelves , as a l iterary curiosity, alongside of Poe

’s “ Manual of Conchology ” and Hawthorne ’s “ Universal History .

I have a copy, a thin green-bound book , asuninviting in its get-up as if i t were a pill thatneeded no sugar-coating, but abounding inadvice by which , let it be hoped , the nervousyouth of half a century ago profited . He translated from the German Of Baron J . Von E ichendorff the Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing ”

and the “ German Mother Goose .

He made a volume , partially i llustrating it, ofhis own nursery rhymes , “Mother Pitcher ”

(Philadelph ia, Frederick Leypoldt ,

The verses . written for the amusement of hisyoungest sister, Emily, now Mrs . John Harrison , have a very personal touch in his se


ensured his success from the start, though tous , looking back , the moment of his appearance seems one when Americans could haveh ad least time or inclination to try what Dr.Holmes once described as the Breitmann

cure .

” For the first Ballad was written in1 856 , the first complete collection was published i n 1 8 70 . Therefore , the earl iest andgayest verses cover the period when thenational self-consciousness , always alert, hadreached its most acute stage , when the country was engrossed in its own affairs as it hadnever been before

,as pray Heaven it may

never be again . Hans Breitmann reflectednothingAmerican , he satirised nothing American. Anything mo

‘

re unlike that long, th in ,lank , nervous , almost ascetic Uncle Sam America has evolved as its national type , could notwell be imagined than the big, fat , easy-going,beer-drinking, pleasure-loving German whowas the hero of the Ballads .” He was not ofthe soil, as were Parson Wilbur, and HoseaB iglow, and the others who roused the laughter of over-wrought patriotism. He was noteven Pennsylvania Dutch , as critics who hadnever set foot in Pennsylvania were so readyto assert. He was in every sense an alien ; by

HANS BREITMANN 339

bi rth , in his language , which was not Pennsylvania Dutch either, whatever the cri ticsmight call it, in his thoughts, his habits,his ideals . No figure could have been moreunlooked for in American l iterature , up til lthen so intensely national in character—or

“ provincial ,” I can fancy Mr. Henry James

correcting me . Only now and then had a rarepoet like Poe evaded this national respon

sibility, and concerned himself with beautyalone . But Poe had been the exception . Thetypical American of letters— if genius canbe typical— was Hawthorne, in whose prose,as in Lowell ’s verse, the American , the NewEngland inspiration cannot be forgotten fora minute.Were it known of the author of the Bal

lads ” only that he was a Philadelphian who ,during those even tful years , worked as hardfor his country as a man whose business i twas to write could , the fact of his havingcreated Breitmann then , or indeed at anyother period , might seem as extraordinary.

But a great deal more is known,and in this

knowledge lies the explanation. To be toldwhat a man laughs at is to be told what thatman is, according to an Old saying , almost


too hackneyed to quote , certainly more hackneyed than it deserves to be . For it is quiteas true that to be told what a man is , is to betold what he will laugh at. Charles GodfreyLeland being what he was , Hans Breitmann

follows as a matter of course . Really, if forno better reason , I might recommend thestudy of Breitmann to the “ younger generation ” as a human document of uncommoninterest.As I have shown , when his country needed

him,the Rye was entirely at his country ’s ser

vice , though all the time his real l ife was ina world of thought far removed from thepractical affairs of America . I t was his ambition to C l imb the heights of mysticism andromance . Certainly, no sooner did freedomcome with his later years than he startedstraight away adventuring with Gypsies andwitches

,studying sorcery

,wrestl ing with prob

lems of will and sex . But for the time , Fatehad drawn him deep down into the whirlpoolof fact. To make up for it, however, Fate hadendowed him with a sense of humour

,and he

was the first to laugh at the absurd contrastbetween the philosopher that would be andthe man of practical affairs that was . When

342 . CHARLES GODFREY LELAND

paper inserted in the copy of the 18 7 1 editionopen before me , one season when a Germantroupe was playing at the Opera House inPhiladelphia. I t was first published in thePhiladelphia Evening Bul letin ,

’ —of whichpaper I was one of the editors . I subsequentlyrepublished it in Graham ’s Magazine,

’ witha smal l wood-cut, not larger than an Englishshi ll ing, before each verse . These cuts werevery clear and were executed by an engravernamed S cattergood .

‘Der Freisch iitz ’ wasone of several burlesque opera librettos whichI wrote. They al l had a great run throughthe newspapers. Der Freisch iitz

’

was especially popular, but when published in a workwith the rest of the Breitmann Ballads ,

’ thereviews declared it to be much inferior to anyof the others .”

And yet of all these burlesques, DerFreisch iitz alone has l ived . Only one besides have I found even among my uncle ’spapers

,

“La Sonnambula,” a l ittle pamph let

with a title designed by him . Of the re

maining numbers in the series , I doubt if atrace could be discovered by the most ardentcollector. “ Der Freisch iit z would probablyhave gone with the rest, if, to add to the

HANS BREITMANN 343

parody,it had not been put into the English

of the German unfamil iar with the grammarand construction of the language . To thehard-worked j ournalist, subj ect and languageboth must have brought some charm of theold Heidelberg and Munich days, for oncetried , i t pleased him so well that he tried i tagain before that same year had come to anend .

Hans Breitmann gife a barty ;Vhere ish dot barty now?

I do not be l ieve any l ines by an American—not the sayings of “ J ohn P. Robinson , he

” nor the “ Excelsior ” of Longfellow’smodel youth , nor the catchwords of theHeathen Chinee and L ittle Breecheswere ever so bandied about from mouth tomouth , so quoted , so used , so abused . In al ll ikel ihood, the younger generation thatnever heard of Breitmann has been loudestin asking, “Vhere i sh dot barty now ?

” Andyet, no lines were ever less premeditated , evermore wholly the result of chance . “Whileediting ‘Graham ’s Magazine ’ I had one daya space to fill ,

” their author says in his Memoirs,

” as he had already written in his copyof the 18 7 1 edition .

“ In a hurry I knocked


Off ‘Hans Breitmann’

s Barty ’ I gavei t no thought whatever. Soon after

,Clark

republished it in the Knickerbocker,

’ sayingthat it was evidently by me . I li ttle dreamedthat in days to come I should be asked inEgypt, and on the blue Mediterranean , and inevery country in Europe , if Iwas i ts author.

”

I t was written only to fil l up a page,the

note in the 1 889 edition says ,“ and I never

expected that any one would notice it .”

He thought so little of i t that in theBallads immediately following the “ Barty,Breitmann was left out as often as not. Thereal l ink at first was the language , thoughnothing was further from his intention thanthat there should be any link of any kind .

For, to quote again from the unpublishednotes , “The Love Song, O , vere mine lofea sugar-powl,

’ was composed , the first twoverses , one night in Philadelphia after goingto bed . I t was with a great e ffort that I roseand wrote them down . I l ived at the timeat Mrs . S andgren

’

s i n Spruce S treet .” Theballad of “De Maiden mit Nodings on wascomposed while sitt ing in a rai lway carriage,I think in Ohio , in 1 864 . I carried it for ayear or more in my memory before I wrote it


study and travel and experience . O therwisethey would never have developed into a great .

Breitmann myth . The language alone couldnot have ensured their survival . I t was cleveruncouth in itself, but pliant and rhythmical

as he wrote i t. And it was real,not an inven

tion . He had the sense to realise that notonly would no two Germans , new to English ,speak i t al ike , but that “ no one individual isinvariably consistent in his errors or inaccuracles . Every reader who knows any foreignlanguage imperfectly is aware that be speaks

it (Better at one time t/can anotner, and it wouldconsequently have been a grave error to reduce the broken and irregular j argon of thebook to a fixed and

”

regular language .” Tothe picturesqueness of Breitmann ’

s English ,h is experiments in other tongues contributedso flamboyantly that Octave Delapier, theauthority wh o had defined macaronics as“ the extravagance of poetry, pronouncedBreitmann

’

s“ Interview with the Pope ” to

be one of the finest examples . If ex trava

gance depends on recklessness or first-ratebadness , then , “ from this point of view,

theauthor honestly admits , “ i t is possible thatBreitmann

’

s Latin lyric is not devoid of

HANS BREITMANN 347

merit, since assuredly nobody ever wrote aworse.”

But macaronics are for the few. For themany, the cleverness of the German-Englishwould have been no attraction , would , on thecontrary, have been a drawback, the manyfinding it quite hard enough work to read atall

,without the additional labour of consult

ing a glossary. Even the down-east Yankeedialect would have made Hosea Biglow impossible , if Hosea Biglow had not had something to say that people wanted to hear. Breitmann , too , had something to say, somethingthat neither he nor his author could havesaid as expressively in any other way. Forthe language was absolutely a part of Breitmann . He did not talk his broken Englishjust because it was funny and to raise a laugh ,but because only the man who talked it couldh ave been What he was . Moreover, l ike allpopular types , from Macchus, through theinnumerable Pulcinellos and P ierrots , Harlequins and Pantaloons of centuries

,Breitmann

had in him the elements of human nature .Broad caricature there might be ; never wasthere a popular type without i t. But he wasa man , and a very real man—ii with an um


usual thirst and “ the heroic manner. Helived in the “ Ballads ; that is why the Ballads ” have lived .

What the author saw in him,as he grad

ually grew into a definite , substantial personality, is plainly stated in the author

’s Prefaceto the English edition

,1 8 7 1 . Breitmann is

one of the battered types of the men of ’

48

a person whose education more than his hearthas in every way led him to entire scepticismor indifference , and one whose Lutheranismdoes not go beyond Wein , Weiound Gesang .

Beneath his unlimited fai th in pleasure l ienatural shrewdness , an excel lent early education

,and certain principles of honesty and

good fellowship,which are all the more clearly

defined from his moral looseness in detailsidentified in the Anglo-Saxon mind with totaldepravity.

” But the rest of that descriptionis in the Preface for any one to read . I wouldrather give

,instead

,an extract from a letter

to me , that no one else has read , and thatsums up the Character not only of Breitmann ,

but of the whole Breitmann myth . The letterwas written from Brighton in 1 885 , when theRye was very keen to bring out an i llustratededition and have my husband do the illustra


that made it poss ible for one American inparticular

,wi th his German training and tra

ditions, to laugh a little at himself as helaughed with Breitmann. The native adventurer would have left sentimen t at home whenhe went looting ; he could not have drunkhis beer to the murmur of metaphysics, norsearched for contraband whiskey to the symphonies of Beethoven , nor played the gameof politics on the romantic stage . He might ,I do not deny, have got troonk ash bigs athis own or any other man ’s Barty. But onlythe German could have moralized at the endof the orgy,

Hans Breitmanng ife a bat tyVhere ish dot barty now ?

Vh ere ish de lofely go lden cloudDat float on de moundain’

s prow ?Vh ere ish de h immelstrahlende stern

De shtar of de shpirit ’s l ight ?All goned atay m it de lager

‘

beer

Afay in de ewigkeit !

An American in the rOle of Bummermay not be inconceivable , but no one couldbelieve in the American Bummer ” whoread Fichte , and speculated as to whether

De human souls of beoplesEx isdt in deir idees

HANS BREITMANN 35 1

or argued

.,if dis couldt, shouldt hafe peen

Dat vouldt , mighdt peen a ghosdt ;Boot if id pe nouomenonPhenomenoned indeed,

Or de soobyectif obyectified,

and so into deeper depths. But speculationand argument were as much a habit with theGerman Bummer ” as his beer and his pipe— that is what redeems him from animalism .

There is no humour in mere brutal ity. Breitmann , being a German , could drink himselfdrunk on the battlefield

Gotts ! vot a shpree der Breitmann hadVh ile yet h is hand was red ,

A trinkin’ lager from his poots

Among de repel tead,

but drunk, he could touch the sk ies . Hisinspiration might be S ennaps

De schmell voke oop de boetry

but inspired , he Could burst into lyrical song

Ash sommer prIng de rosesUnd roses pring de dew,

S o Deutschland gifes de maidensW ho fetch de bier for you.

Komm Maidelein ! rothe Waengelein !

M it wein-glass in your paw !Ve ’11 get troonk among de rosesUnd pe soper on de sh traw !


He might be the most inveterate looter inthe train Of a great army, but let the organpeal out

crate dings from Mozart,B eethoven und Méhul,

M it Chorals of S ebastian BachS ooplime und peaudiful,

and he was feeling “ l ike holy saints,and the

tears running down his face, while he andhis men ,

“ droonk as blitz ” on contrabandwhiskey,

singed ash if mi t s ingin’, dey

M igh t indo H immel win .

Whatever Breitmann did ,

H e dinked and dinked so h eafyA sh only Deutschers can .

Wherever he journeyed , he was sure

A vorkin’out l ife’s miss ion here

S oobyectifly und grand .

S ome beoblesh runs de beautiful,S ome vorks ph ilOSOph ie ;

D er Breitmann solfe de infinideAsh von eternal shpree .

A vagabond of vagabonds , rollicking fromadventure to adventure like the hero ofthe Old picaresque novel , he was a Germanthrough it al l ; the feeling of romance youngin his heart, his soul susceptible to the sound


might send him , whether to fight the battlesof the North , when a certain Jost in the Pennsylvania Cavalry served as prototype ,whetherOil-prospecting in guerilla-swept Tennessee

,

or rent-collecting in the wilds OfWest Virginia, or off on a great railroad-advertisingexcursion to Kansas and the then furthermostfrontier of civilisation , among Indians andbuffaloes. Many touches of autobiographyare in the “ Ballads ” for any one who canread between the lines .If Breitmann

’

s“ well-balanced mixture of

stoicism and epicurism was peculiarly Teutonic , he was so human , such a good fellow, so gay in his endurance as in his excesses ,that every American could understand theman himself, while his humourwas of a kindthat every American could enjoy, Wi thout thediscomfort there sometimes was in laughing at Hosea Biglow . And so , though Breitmann ’s creator thought little of him , otherpeople, fortunately, began to think a greatdeal . The public became conscious of theexistence of this big, j olly German with hisunquenchable thirst and irrepressible goodspirits

,and were on the look-out for his re

appearance . Letters containing the “Bal

HANS BREITMANN 355

lads were preserved by the friends luckyenough to have received them , especially byBristed, who , after sending h is to a sportingpaper, tried to surprise the author with a privately printed collection. The attempt failed .

The “ Ballads ” might never have appearedat all , their author says in his preface to the1 8 7 1 edition ,

“ had not Ringwalt , my collaborator on the Philadelphia Press ,

’ and alsoa printer, had such faith in the work as tohave it ‘ set up in his office, offering to tryan edition for me . This was transferred toPeterson Brothers. In a correspondence ofa much later date , I have come upon a letter,

(March 1 0 , from an old friend on the“ Press , who tells an amusing story, neveras yet published , of this printing . I recal l ,

”

he says , “ one curious incident that might beworth putting into your second volume ofMemoirs .’ I n the ‘Breitmann Ballads ’ thecompositors frequently made mistakes in setting up the German patois, and you wouldconsider with respect their e rrors , whetheror not to adopt them . I recol lect your frequently consulting me on such points , and wewould weigh the merits or demerits of theirslips— Or involuntary scholarship —very


much as the Rye had weighed the same question for Artemus Ward in the old New Yorkdays .Thus Breitmann was a creature of chance

in every sense . But when he achieved the digmi ty of publication in book form , he took theworld by storm . His success was immediateand enormous . The Petersons , uncertain , Isuppose , as to h is reception , had begun timidly by issuing the Ballads in Parts . Butthe Fi rst was quickly followed by Second ,Third , Fourth , Fifth . I have said that thepublishers , one of the old , highly respectable firms Of my native town , showed smallconsideration for future collectors and bibliograph ers. There is no date on the titlepages . Bu t from the year of the copyrightentry

,contemporary letters , and the date of

the first English edition , I know that the“ Ballads were publ ished in 1 869 , in thelittle paper-covered “ Parts , of which , to mysorrow , odd numbers only have survivedin the somewhat chaotic Breitmann colleetion I have been able to make from thebooks and papers left by my uncle to mycare . In 1 8 7 1 , the five Parts were collectedinto a fat

,solid , substantially bound volume .


language in America has become to someextent Germanised . Thus , all the familiarwords in German speech , the questions andanswers of every-day life and the names ofcommon Objects , are as well known and re

cognised among all classes throughout theUnion as the coins of Prussia and Austriaare current and acceptable tender ; and I

have no doubt the Engl ishman , upon whomit had not dawned that complete ignoranceof everything American might turn out abad investment, closed the book confirmedin his disdain of a country where peopletalked such barbarous English .

In England , then , as in America, Breitmann went into edition after edition

,in

“ Parts ” and “ Complete . When the Ryearrived in London , he was received as HansBreitmann ; the

“ one thorn in his cushion ,”

for he resented nothing so much as beingidentified with the disreputable old adven

turer who was no more like him than theHeathen Chinee was l ike Bret Harte . Breitmann has become my autocrat who rulesme with a rod of iron and has imposed hisaccursed name on me — and thou h elpesth im! ” he wrote as late as 1895 to Mr. Fisher

HANS BREITMANN 359

Unwin , who had published his photograph ,and labelled it “ Hans Breitmann ,

” in a littlevolume called Good Reading.

” And I re

member his disgust, at much the same period ,

when the editors of a magazine objected tohis choice of the photograph of himself forwhich they had asked him :

“ I suppose theywant a Hans Breitmann with a beer-mug !Other lesser drawbacks there were , too, in thefirst days of Breitmann

’

s English triumph . It

might be a compliment to have the name appear ou the popular stage , and the Balladsset to music and dedicated to popular clubs ,and the name given to cigars . But it was another matter when the flattery of imitation wascarried to such a point that name , language,and all were appropriated . I have a curiousl ittle pamphlet called De Gospel accordingto Saint Breitmann 18 7 1 the first numberin a series of Ramequins by Cullen Morfe

of whom and his “ Ramequins ” I knowno more , and, taking this number as a sample, I think it likely that more is not worthknowing. I have also the second and thirdnumbers of a paper called Hans Breitmann ,

a weekly after the pattern of Punch ,” started

in the same year poor stuff as I try to


read it now, but for the moment threateningserious consequences ,— critics of the time ,who were too obtuse to distinguish betweenthe real and the sham , declaring that the j okewas being carried beyond patience

,that the

Bri tish public was not going to stand a surfeit even of Hans Breitmann , and that “ Mr.Leland might as well know it ;

” and to Mr.Leland , Triibner, in a panic , sent one of thesecriticisms post haste .

“ I t is written in sucha nasty spiri t,

” the letter accompanying itsays , “ that I think you should not pass itover in '

silence. As the continued identification of your name with the Hans Breitmann

periodical,which , in its last number, i s ex

ceedingly weak and ‘

shallow, could possiblydamage you

,will you not publicly disclaim

all connection with i t,perhaps in a letter to

the AthenaeumI am not sure if the letter was written , but

Triibner’

s panic seems the less necessary inthe face Of other and worse things Breitmann

had to face ,— the indignation of Germany,for instance , and the praise of France . I tWashis exploit as Uhlan , included in the 1 8 7 1

complete edition of the “ Ballads ,” that roused

Germany’s indignation .

“ This poem ,

” says


a stranger as at his own Barty transformedinto a S oiree, and I quote the first and

'

lastverses to show how severe may sometimes bethe penalty of praise .

“ Hans Breitmann a donné une soirée ; ony a joué du piano. J

’

y tombai amoureux d’une

Américaine ; son nom était Mathilde Yane ;E l le avait des cheveux bruns cendrés commeun craquelin ; ses yeux étaient bleu de C iel ;Lorsqu

’

ils regardaient dans les miens ils fendaient mon coeur en deux.

”

“ Hans Breitmann a donné une soirée. Oil

est cette soirée maintenant ? Oil est l’aimablenuage d ’or qui flottait au front de la montagne ? Oil est l ’etoile qui brillai t au C iel ,lumiere de l’esprit ?

‘

Tous sont passés commela bonne biere , passés dans l

’

éternité.

”

Now that I am writing the history of Breitmann , I might as we ll finish it, though it onlycomes to an end with the death of Breitmann ’s creator. For Breitmann had the secretOf perennial youth , and he was a true cosmopolite . That was why the Rye could sendhis hero everywhere he went himself withoutrisk of repetition ,why Breitmann retained hisfreshness in every . fresh adventure found forhim , whether it was in s inging a Gypsy song,

HANS BREITMANN 303

in going back to .t h e Munich and Paris of1 848 , or in starting on new travels throughBelgium and Holland , down the Rhine , toRome . But Breitmann ’

s vitality never asserted itself so triumphantly as in 1882 , whenthe Rye was back in Philadelphia , and Philadelphia was celebrating its Bicentennial , witha Big Bicycle Meet among other ceremonies .To this Meet, or its dinner, or reception , orwhatever its very special function may havebeen , my husband (not yet my husband) invited the Rye , as the author of the first bicyclepoem ,

“ S chnit z erl’

s Ph ilosopede of fifteenyears earlier. The Rye , who socially was justthen living a hermit’s life , refused , but tomake up for it, wrote for the occasion twonew verses , practically a third poem ,

andmade a drawing of Breitmann on his “ crate

ph ilosopede.

” Whoever has read Breitmannremembers this philosopede,

” a copy ofS chnit z erl

’

s great original

Von of de pullyest kindI t vent mitout a vheel in front,And had n’

t none peh ind .

The Ballad is one of the best and gayest,one in which Breitmann surpassed even himself in philosophical flights and lyrical out


bursts . I t was therefore with delight that Ichanced upon the rough copy of the two new

verses , and , as they have never been printedbefore , I am glad to print them now. Schu itz erl on his “

ph ilosopede , i t will be recalled ,had

pounded onward till it ventGans tyfelwards afay,

new verses explain that

Joost now and den id makes a haltUnd cooms to 0 0 3 adown

To see how poys mit pysicklesOn eart

’are kitten on,

Und if h e pees mit us to-dayW e gifes him our abb lause,

De foorst crate martyr in de vorldWho berish ed in our cause.

Dere ’s lessons In de foamin’

sea

Und in de foamin’ bier,In every dings dots in our lifeUnd all dat is n ’

t here .

Und dis is vot der S ch nit z erl taughtOopon dis eardly ball ,I t ’

s petter to b e cut in dwoDan nefer cut at all .

The whole incident pleased the Rye .

When,in 1 885 , he wrote an Introduction in

verse for the account my husband and“

I

had made of a tricycle ride from Florence toRome , he boasted in it that he

RAWING TO ILLUSTR AT E TH E TWO ADDITIONAL VERS ES TOS C HN ITZERL ’S PH ILOSOPEDF

HANS BREITMANN

was th e first man of modern timeWho on th e bicycle e’er wrote a Rime.

And in the 1 889 edition of Breitmann , themarginal note to “ S chnit z erl

’

s Ph ilosopede

ends by saying,I believe i t is the first bicycle

poem ever written . I do not know why thesuccess of Breitmann

’

s prophecy should haveput him in the mood to write Breitmann ’

s

Last Ballad , but in 1885 , the year of theIntroduction , he wrote for Mrs . Alec Tweedie ,then Miss E thel B . Harley, what he callsBreitmann

’

s A llerle tz es L ied ,” which also

has never been printed before. Here it is :

I dink de sonn’ haf perish t in all dis winter rain ,I never dink der Breitmann vould efer sing again .

De sonne vant no candle nor any erdenlich t ;

Vot y ou vant mit a poem bist selber ganz Gedicht

For like a Paar of Ballads are de augen in your head,I pe tter call dem bulle ts vot shoo t de Herzen dead.

And ash like a ripplin’ rifer efery poem ought to pe,S o all your form is flowin’ in perfect harmony.

I hear de epigramme in your sehr piquant replies,I hear de sonnets soundin’

ven your accents fall und rise,And if I look upon you, vote’er I feel or see,D e vo ice and form and motion is all one melody.

Du b ist die Ideale of efery mortal ding,Ven poets reach de perfect dey need no longer sing,Das B este sei das Letzte—de last is pest indeed !B rich Herz und Laut ! zusammen—dies is t mein letztes Lied !


But it was by no means the last of Breitmann , though in his gallantry he might haveliked to think so. An adventurer Of his typedoes not go out with a compliment on hisl ips . There was other work to do . He wentto Turkey, he tried his luck in California, andhis hand at Gypsy and witch ballads, and hehad five new adventures , or poems, to add tothe 1889 edition . Memories of his old Barty ”

haunted him , and another verse for it is written ou the margin of the 1 8 7 1 annotated edition . I t should not be left unpublished, thoughthe Barty ”may “ reach de perfect without it.

H ans B reitmann gife a bat ty,Go tt’s blitz —vot foon we had !

Ve blayed at Kiiss im RingeD i ll de gals vos almost mad .

And ven indo de gornerPy T ilda I vos dook,

M ine eyes vos boost in thranenTo dink how schweet she look .

And Breitmann went to the Tyrol in themore peaceful occupation of courier or guide ,and wrote a whole book about it, in prose ,published by Mr. Fisher Unwin in 1 894 .

Beer flows freely in the Tyrol,and Breit

mann ’s spirits always flow as freely with it .But, somehow, this Breitmann book does not


fellow-worker on the Press , on the subjectof the early editions of Breitmann. In theJanuary Atlantic ’ page 79 , column 2 ,

you seem to think that the ‘Ballads ’ werenot published until he writes . “ Thismay be true if we take the title Ballads ,

’ butI have j ust found my copy of the first impression , I do not call it edition , and the titlepage reads : Hans Breitmann

’

s Party.

With other Ballads. I t was published bythe Petersons , but on the other side of theleaf is the copyright notice by Charles G.

Leland in 1868 . Of th is I suppose John Luther Ringwalt was the printer. My copy wassent to me by Mr. Leland while he was en

gaged on the Press ,’ and after I had left

that newspaper. My home was then in Montgomery , Alabama. This impression has thededication lacking in all the other editions :Dem Herrn “ Carl Benson (CharlesAstor Bristed) achtungsvoll gewidmetvom Verfasser, followed on the next pageby the invocation : Ad Musam IfMr . Bristed ’

s abortive attempt could be calledthe first edition , this is really the second ,and the issue under the title of the ‘Ballads ,

’

Fi rst Part, would properly be the third edi

HANS BREITMANN 309

tion . The word edition , you know, is exceedingly elastic . Mr. Norcross confirmswhat I have said as to the difficulties thefirst publishers of Breitmann put in the wayof collectors and bibliographers . S ince mybook was written , letters from Bristed to theRye have been put into my hands , and theyShow me that even in 1 866 Bristed was urging publication in book form . Do publish ,

”

he says in one . “ I will take a share of theexpense for the sake of that dedication andalso as being in some sense the ‘worshipfulbegetter ’ of the late In another letterof Bristed ’

s (without date), there is a passagethat shows how well he knew how to appreciate Breitmann :

“ You are wrong about theBreitmanns, they will hand you down to posterity. I recollect some remarks of I rving’swhich greatly impressed my (comparatively)tender mind when I was disgusted becausethe Upper Ten Thousand ’ had a run whenmy classical writings attracted little attention .

‘Don ’t you despise light writing,’ said

he , ‘ i t is like an elephant despising a birdfor flying up in the air. ’ I must at least refer to other letters that came too late to helpme with the text . They are from Triibner.


One , July 1 7 , 1 868 , asks that the Americanpublishers of Breitmann send him “

2 5 copiesto begin with . Another, a year later, is ful lOf the English pirated edition brought outby Hotten , and urges the Rye to come toLondon

’

and there prepare an edition withnew Ballads and a new Preface . I trust youwill not quarrel with me for having almostcommitted you to come to England , Triibner begs . This was one of the reasons , nodoubt, why the Rye dec ided to leave homein 1869 .

372 CHARLES GODFREY LEL'

AND

he lived much in the world he entertainedand was entertained he made many friends ;now and then he wandered from England tothe Continent as far as Russia, to the Eastas far as Egypt, countries not then exploitedby Cook or appropriated by Lunn ; and , allthe while , he worked , i t turning out that free ,as in harness , he could not get on withoutwork . Only now he was his own task-master. Of th is “ Jekyll ,

” or conventional,or

social side there is so much to be said thatI leave the Gypsies until I have said asmuch of it as I can . The two sides were keptas chapters apart in his life, and so theymust be in my story of i t. The documentspapers , MSS .

, letters— at my disposal arenow plentiful . There continue to be gaps .

I have not so many of his own letters as Ishould like . But in those he wrote to Mr.and Mrs . John Harrison , he can be aecom

panied step by step through almost all h istravels ; those he received help further toshow how his days were spent, how dayscould be spent by a man of letters in theseventies .When he left home in the April of 1 869 ,

he sailed for France . He landed at Brest

THE F IRST HOLIDAY 373

and went at once to Paris , where he stayeda couple of months . One letter he carriedwith him— a letter of introduction hassurvived

,probably because it was never de

livered. I t marks the end of his busy daysas dramatic and musical critic. For it i sfrom Max S trakosch , who , no doubt with aneye to the main chance , but out of sheergood-nature , too ,— the stock-in-trade of theprofession , introduced to his brother Maurice “Mr. Leland , a very wealthy man andvery highly educated , the defender ofMiss Kellogg from the stupid attacks of Bohemian papers ,

” a man to be brought intosociety,

” any favour to whom “will do megood .

” But the Paris society into whichMaurice S trakosch could bring him was j ustthe kind for which the Rye was no longereager. He says in his Memoirs ” that, afterhis arrival in Paris , “ a distaste for operas

,

theatres , dinners , society” suddenly came

over him , which is the reason why the letter now lies before me , the paper torn andcrumpled , and the memories i t awakens ofopera in the sixties as faint and faded asthe paper.The Rye ’s letters to Mrs . Harrison and


her husband did reach their destination , however, and were taken good care of, and "thefew I am able to prin t not only account forhis movements from the time he landed inFrance unti l he settled in England , and thegradual improvement of his health , but givemany a side-l ight into E uropean conditions forthe generation of Americans who came afterMr. Henry James ’s “ precursors .” Only oneother word is necessary . Mrs . Harrison wasmany years younger than he

,and his letters

to her never altogether lost the playful toneOf the grown-up brother to the small sister,—a grown-up brother, i t should be said , inwhom many duties and much hard workcould not destroy the boyish sense of fun .

As much is to be learned of a man in h isplayful as in his serious or adventurousmoods , and these letters are among the gayest he ever wrote .

CHARLES GODFREY LELAND TO MRS . JOHN HARR ISON

PARIS , le vingt Mai , 1869 , POINT ROUND,CHAMS EL IZA .

MA SHERE S UR,—j e su is in Paris and

am become a Parisite , being dreadfullycheated by my landlady, and having to eat


I wish John were here to enj oy the dinners. Belle and I recalled John at the TroisF réres the other day, where we had a sumptuous dinner ; they brought on one elegantthing after another, and we were overcomewith the luxuries . This cost 8 francs apieceand 3 fr. for the coffee . Next day we dinedfor 5 francs for both , and I enjoyed it justas much . The whole town consists of restyour-aunts and cafes. We live in a coupleof gingerbread gilt bird cages in the ChampsE l iza and have the greatest Old villain ofa landlady in Paris. But the place is very

clean and lodgings are mostly dirty here .Rond Point, Champs E lysees is the spot. I tis the most el ite-ful place in Paris and commands a fine view of the Palais d’

Industrie

and the Dome of the Inval ids . The best ofi t is they are a mile off, leaving open spaceand pure air. Paris is so much improvedthat I have as yet seen very little unchanged .

Yesterday we visited the Musée C luny.

The Leas lead a charming life and speakFrench like natives . They were de lighted tosee us and Nanny is devoted, doing everything for Belle and me. She is progressingwonderfully as a painter and engraver. My

THE FIRST HOLIDAY 377

book in England continues to be read . EvenPunch publishes Imitations of Breitmann

,

and there have been three or four of theBarty. Belle is getting on very well . Give akiss for me to clear l ittle Emmy. I miss thesweet child very much . Also Leland , andkindest remembrances to John , Betty, Fanny,William and the E lders and everybody .

Your affectionate brother,CHARLEY.

P . S .—Laura Hooper has written to me

asking us to take charge of her. I cannot

do it— it is out of the question . All myarrangements make it utterly impossible ,and my mind will not as yet admit of anyeven ordinary little cares. I have written toher explaining that I cannot arrange it .

CHARLES GODFREY LELAND TO MR. JOHN HARRISON

SPA , BELGIUM, July 3 1 , 1869.

DEAR JOHN , I received yesterday and acknowledge with thanks your letter containingdraft for 26 29 francs 55 centimes . I am sorrythat your business keeps you at home for Idon ’t know a man in America who would euj oy Europe as you would .

“ Them dinners ”


Those loafing places ! The dinners,

either at Paris or here , are exactly the articleswhich you have so long needed , they roastbeef so as to make you believe it used to fly

,

and the vol-au-vents , all full of truffles , forcemeat balls , roosters

’-combs , and cream sauce ,

would make any one weep who had not aheart of stone . To be sure , these 5 and 1 0

francs dinners are not such as the “ l ikes offins get every day reg’lar

,but still we have

our cut of salmon and bit of tenderloin , a twofranc bottle of Bordeaux , which tfie doctor

orders and which i s very good , and so theydo not charge us much , $20 a week in goldcovering our hotel board . This is not a firstclass house, of course , but i t is very clean ,and there is the hoigh th av good coompany, as we have frequent rows with a realRussian Prince and his company wh o areallowed to take their dinners after we havedone . Now Spa is about 70 0 0 feet above th elevel of the sea, and the Russians are hungrypups anyhow, so that we often are long eatingin our private dining-room , while the Rusherwants to be eating. However, all goes amiably enough . There are only three or fourAmericans here

,but any quanti ty of all k inds


ing Spa we went to Ostend , where three weeksof sea-bathing did me much good . OSte-nd

i s composed of a sea surf, a great dyke ontop of which is a promenade l ined with coffeehouses , hotels , and pavilions , l ittle boys clattering dreadfully in wooden Shoes (K lompers),and ten thousand German Jews and smallGerman shop-keepers , who walk by the seaand exclaim , A cli wie seneen es ist

lz inz nz lisc/c senen siej a wie nell der M ond

sc/ceen t ! From Ostend we repaired againto Spa, where we met Mr. Triibner and hiswife . They were very glad to see us as alsoour Walloon landlady, cook , and j eanette, wh operformed a wild Walloon dance of j oy in thestreet at seeing us return . They were alwaysvery nice people and immensely jolly. Well ,Mr. Triibner did everything to make us

feel obejoyful, if I spoke of a book which Iwanted to read , the first mail brought i t forme from L iege or London . And he also paidme a thousand francs in gold—or nearlyfor my share of profits in the Breitmann

Ballads .”

Well , after 7 weeks of S pa, and 3 atOstend

,we went into Holland. O m zfn

euster, you ought to see Belle at a real Dutch

THE F IRST HOLIDAY 38 1

tea-party where four languages were spokenamong 5 or 6 folks ! Raw smoked salmon inflakes Dutchman ’s head-cheese , orood en

ooter, green pears, tongue and honey, toastedbread in sl ices with cinnamon on it, andwafels. (This is Dutch and English .) Well ,first we exhausted ’

s Gravenhage or La Haye ,with its museums . Here we went to see theHouse in the Wood , and were received withwonderful courtesy. I t is the Queen ’s summer palace , but we did not know that she wasthere , and the splendid lackeys , &c . , supposed we had come to call on Her Majesty.

When they found we only wanted to seethe house , they were quite as polite . The Oldhousekeeper woman showed us all aroundbut oh ! i t was too funny ! A perfect cordonof servants , my dear, kept telegraphing, andBelle and I were rushed from room to roomto evade the Queen as She went here andthere j ust as if she had been a great catand we two miserable little mice . Fortycents (American) perfectly satisfied the housekeeper, and four cents the stately gentleman who took care of our umbrellas . Threeimpious Jews wh o tried to get in were In

dignan tly repulsed . The stately gentleman


insisted on summoning our carriage and re

tainers, and persisted by a polite fiction innot believing me, when I said we had none .The way I do these things is by looking atthem .

We have seen almost every goodgallery i n Holland and Belgium and metwith some very intell igent people. TheDutch are very rich and l ive very comfortably, something in the Old PhiladelphiaQuaker style . They are strong OrthodoxPuritans ,—and at Haarlem we had a stiffold brimstone sermon in Low Dutch , whichwas divided in to 3 heads, and lasted an hourand a half with hymns in between . As Iwas just before the preacher and a stranger,he preached righ t at me . Now I have studied Dutch this summer with a teacher, andcan read it and talk it very badly indeed alittle , but I did n

’t understand his Dutch .

Belle says my conduct was perfect “ and asgood as could be ! ” Tnree collections werewrung out of us, two by means of a blackvelvet bag on a pole and another by a sternlook ing Dutch girl who would n ’

t let us outtil l we paid for our seats . She was , however,sternly honest and refused a loose grab of


view is very beautiful— wonderful . To theleft we see the blue outline of the SevenHills, including the spot where S iegfriedkilled the dragon— there are towers andchurches— and we are quite near the river— not two rods from it— it almost flowsunder our windows . Belle says I have grownfat and German s ince yesterday. We hadpheasants brought on entirely in their ownfeathers at dinner with si lver bodkins inthem . Salmon mayonnaise and other dailykisses. So good-night, dear, for I am tired .

Sometimes the past and the dead nearlymake me ill again , but I fight against i t.God give us all peace . Love to John .

CHARLES GODFREY LELAND TO MRS . JOHN HARRISON

DRESDEN,Nov. 1 7, 1869.

MINE TEAR SWISHTER EMILY Dere ishdwo l iddle togs all so plack as nefer vas , datl ifes here in dis Haus , und ven dey hearsPelle mit de sooper daple dey cooms undkratzen on de Th iire und ven I lets demcoom in dey kits soom loomps ov z iicker unddenn dey wedels mit deir dales und shmiles

l ike avery dings . ! Here follows a drawing ofthem]

THE F IRST HOLIDAY 385

I had got so far in my letter when Belleinterfered , dec laring that you would reallythink my wits had taken leave of me—whichis very ill iterate of her

,considering that the

Breitmann style was hailed so enthusiasticallyby so many great guns of literature . However, we must defer in such matters to thevulgar world (

“ saucy fellow,

” andthough Himmel weisst what choice flowersof Anglo-German have been lost by thechange, I will proceed in such English asis left me in this fair land of Sauerkraut andstewed celery roots—apropos of which latter,our landlady,Miss Roelin, serves up the rootsand throws away the tops !We are very comfortably I might almost

say elegantly situated here , with a parlorand bedroom in an easy third story (not étag e).But our elegance is very pecul iar. I t is a barepainted yellow floor with a Turkey carpet loosein the middle— a fashion I much admirepretty green chairs and sofa like those in yourdining-room— a j ardiniere Of course (whichBelle nearly slaughtered by not watering for aweek), a grand and stately iron monumentOf a stove , mirror, and lamp with a flat glassplate under the shade . Of course we are rele

380 CHARLES GODFREY LELAND”

gated each unto a separate bed , and 31111110 i s ,for a wonder, very long, it having been madefor a German count who must

’

have‘

been just

9 feet in length , if we are' to j udge by the

small se1dlitz-box ”

bedsteads usually'

allotted

to mere six-footers in Deutsch land . A u reste

( th is i s French for the"

rest of them), we havea nice daily dinner at which I si t by Mrs .Cochrane -

a‘

nd Oppos ite Bellé, while Belle s itsby Majoi' Coch

‘

rane ~and opposite me . TheMajorh

‘

as beeni25'

y'

ears in India is a livelyli ttle keen Englishman who has had no endof adventures . At the other ends sit Herrand Frau Roelin . They speak no English ,and the rest very l i ttle German , so that I amobliged to translate

‘

a great deal , and whatwith telling lot S

‘

Of American stories first inEnglish 21101110 11111 Dutch ‘I have no sinecure

. I am!

learning to on porcelainandfind i t very interesting. This is a greatcity for porcelain

,and the Shops fllll of old

Dresden ware '

My teacheris

’ ‘

a‘

very Tneat; gentlemanly'

l It tle bit of acurly and has lots of pupilsat‘a ; thaler for tv

’

vo sch‘

ol‘

ars for a lesson oftwo hours C

‘

Yes‘

terday I etch‘

e'

d'

~a copper


plate,so you see that I have plenty of play

things as Belle calls them when she bringsme my various implements for designing.

E vening . Belle has had it ou t with theW

'

ascherinn and , with the help of C lara, hasadded up thalers , groschen , and pfennige ,which last word Clara has proudly calledtennies (very explanatory considering that apfennig is about a third of a cent) , and wehave had Mrs. Cochrane , who explained thatthere is in India an enterpris ing Americannamed Dave Carson who has madeby singing nigger minstrel songs in brokenHindoo English in Oriental dress. Who butan American could have done such a thing !The other evening we called on Mrs . Irish ,wife of our consul , who receives—and whiletalking about Mrs . Govr. Ramsey, in cameMrs . R. herself. S h e told us that Miss Kochhad been out here with her daughter andgone back to America with another younglady. D ie Koch inn has really got aheadof us !We have heard through Mary that Mr.Biddle had asked you to have our housefixed up. We are very grateful , dear Emmy,for all the interest you have taken in the


house and the trouble i t has entailed onyou .

They give us dlishus pears and grapesevery morning for breakfast

,and it is wel l

they do , for we get Chops , chops , chops, sixdays in the week for that meal

,which ought

to be early and is n ’t, for we are lazy (especially Belle) . Mutting ,

weal , pork , and otherchops, choplets, and cotelettes. I have beerfor tea, reglar, and all things consideredmay say with truth that I have got so thatI can sit up and take a little nourishment.Tod ay they gave us rose-cordial with Our

after-dinner coffee and the maj or wentinto the kitchen and cooked a curry, whichBelle and I ate thrice of with great relish

,

but which drew tears to the eyes of the Germans , who are not accustomed to such tropical fruit. One of your soups would scorch aDutchman ’s throat out , l ike a red-hot pokerand rusty at that ! Mrs . Roelin gazed at Belleas if she had been a fiend devouring burningsulphur seasoned with aqua fortis, and exclaimed , K

'

o'

nnen S ie es wirélicn essen

Can‘ you really eat it ? - a very unnecessaryquestion as I thought, for it was a very mildcurry anyhow. If the house is not rented

,


pointrnent to me when she returned . I thinkso often of your dear little girl , and expectwith impatience a letter from Leland . Howproud I shal l be to have a letter from him ,

and how fine it is for a boy to be able towrite lette rs ! Methinks I can see him nowwith a pen in his hand writing to deer(Int el. Cnarles. I send you one of my photographs and will send one to S ister Mary inmy next letter. Give my k indest regards toBetty Harrison . There is a picture here in awindow, by the bankers , which I stop and lookat every day it is so much like her.The days are so short here now that we havealmost no afternoon . And with heartfelt love,bel ieve me ever your affectionate brother,

CHARLES .

CHARLES GODFREY LELAND TO MR. JOHN HARRISON

MUNICH, Feb . 2 1 , 1870 .

MY DEAR JOHN , This morning, whileon our way to the great picture gallery, westopped at the Bank and got your very welcome letter, enclosing draft on Drexel andHarjis for 1 2 1 francs , which was very acceptable

,since every franc tells in a country

where you ge t a cab ride for 9 cents . I also

THE FIRST HOLIDAY 39 1

acknowledge receipt of a very satisfactoryaccount of the estate, and rejoice to thinkthat next year may give us a lift upwards . Ihave not yet got so far that we can trave lwhen and where we please, as loose as swal

lows . When we can I shall have no care .As yet, we find long rests very advantageousto purse as well as health , and have just com

pleted one of three months and a half at Dresden , where , however, we were very comfortable and had many friends. From D resdenwe had a very hard winter day’s j ourney

(the winter has been terribly severe all overEurope) to Prague, though it was throughthe heart of the most romantic scenery inGermany, called the S ax on Switzerland . InPrague, we had to go through freezing galleries and go about town in a light, dustysnow-storm , and poor Be lle had a “ dreadful bad ” cold all the time . Then came an

other day’s very severe travel from 6 A . M.

ti l l P. M. to Munich , where we havetreated ourse lves to a few days’ residenceat the very best hotel in Germany. Th e

place (Four S easons Hotel) is delightfullycomfortable and very nobby. Prices high forGermany, but there is a reading-room with


the “ N . Y . Herald ” and “London Times ,for ladies .We are delighted with little Em ’s photo

graph - the best ever taken . You can haveno idea, dear John , h owwe enjoy letters fromhome , and how pleasant it is to be remembered so kindly and so often . We meet verynice people sometimes , especially Engl ish , andI may say, if i t be not too vain , that we havenever met with any who do not know me byname . I t is really wonderful . Yesterday evening at dinner we entered into conversationw i th an English family, very cultivated people . The gentleman head of the party hardlybelieved me when I told him who I was bothhe and his pretty niece had my book , and toldme that in England everyoody knew me. Weare invited to stay at Mr. Trilbner’s in London when we go there .We are sorry that Mr. Thomson and familyare coming abroad . We would like them tostay in our h ouse for another year. If youhear of anybody else who wants i t I know youwill secure them . We Spent this morning inthe great picture gallery , but though it is oneof the finest in the world it is not warmed , andthe thermometers were at freezing-point. I t


F11. Janauschek was her niece. S he was a realBohemian , but talked German and treated usto wine and bread . In Prague , Belle and Iwent to a ladies ’ club-room founded by awealthy man named Wojtech Naprstak, whowas for many years an editor in America.He looked ou t with great pleasure articles onme in the Cyclopaedia, &c ., and gave Bellephotographs of al l the ladies all Bohemiansand many of them noble— wi th pictures ofPrague . He also was very flush with wine ,&c . S o that we get along pretty sociablywi th the aborigines , as you see . In a few dayswe shall be at Venice . I have been rubbingup my Italian and shall do very well . As forGerman , the old Munich lingo is like an oldtune to my ears and I almost think in it now.

I am in good health generally speakEver truly,

CHARLES G . LELAND.

I give the two following letters becausethe first is a delightful example of the nonsense he could write when in the vein , andbecause the second records the manner of hisreception in London , with details he m ighthave hes itated to chronicle more seriously.


One word of warning : the reader, beforebeginning the first letter, had better takebreath as the writer did in finishing it .

CHARLES GODFREY LELAND TO MRS . JOHN HARRISON

HOTEL IMPERIAL, PARIS , May 1 1 , 1870 .

DEAR S ISTER EMILY, O we have seen somuch since I wrote to you , whereas we havebeen in Italy and beheld great multitudes offigs growing on the trees , also sundry orangesand many lemons, where Belle went down onher knees before the Pope , and the beggargirls and priests with little tin boxes demanded alms , and one day a republ ican inthe Via Condotti before our very windowtrod on a capucin’s shoe and he howled andcursed so that the row was quite delightful , and then sat down in the street and hadhis shoe blacked and kept on howling as hesat, at the top of his voice , for we l ived in theVia Condotti near the P iazza di Spagna

,only

it was not a piazza such as you have in America, but an open place with a fountain whereinwas Neptune and other idological beings , andthe Romans sat on the stairs in their nationaldress to be hired out as models

,and Spill

man ’s confectionery was just opposite , where


every fashionable lady went to get luncheonand they Charged ten cents for a little '

mite

of a glass of brandy and five cents for cakessuch as only cost 2 i n Florence ; but this

‘ isnot the Florence on the Delaware , but inItaly, where they called it Firen z e , and wherethe best of Cognac is only five francs a bottleat Melin i ’s , who has the best sponge-cakes inthe world , much better than the biscuite deRheims here which cost 10 cents a package ;also in I taly we went to Verona, which wascalled Bern in the dark ages when the Germans lived there , and I saw a part of the oldwall and churches with a bronze door a thousand years old , and Roland and O l iver andsuch beautiful poll parrots carved on theCathedral , with other mysterious beings suchas men and horses ; as also in Venice , wherewe went in gondolas and the gondol ier beggedfor more money than he was entitled to , andwe also went to the Carnival of Venice

,which

you have heard played on hand-organs , andthere was a man with a mask and a longbeard which looked just like me , and he car-1

ried a 3-leg stool and sat down opposite meand Belle , and stared at me while a crowdcollected around us ; i t was very remarkable ,


among Americans , most of whom are

quite impruden t and all worn and weariedwith s ight-seeing and constant gaiety, afterlong and trying travel , a few did not die . We

kept warm and dry and at home of evenings .Belle is hard at work sewing, as I write , withthe help of a pret ty sewing girl who talks 4languages , and who asked me if I did notfind Heine eas ier to translate than Goetheor S chiller. I do have the queerest luck inmeeting people. And now give my love toeverybody, John , Betty, Fanny, and all .

Ever your affectionate brother,CHARLES .

CHARLES GODFREY LELAND TO MRS . JOHN HARR ISON

ABBEY GARDENS , S T. JOHN’S WOOD,LONDON, June 27, 1870 .

DEER EMELY, Languidge can convey noidea of the wonderful caryin ons wee hav hadsense i rote my last : grate h evens ! we go topartys , and are as popular as strawbery shortcake , gettin wine and ice kreem, and conkerin prejudis by the bland plumidge of courtesy, as for instance yesterday wen lord littenbulwer told me to go before him downstares , an insted of mak in a fus i went ahed


and wen we got to the botom bulwer ses : “ Ihed quite a spite agin you wunst ; my frendlady coraline norten would persist in crackinyou up so always and a-praisin you, but ivequite got over it now.

” He is goin to cal onme and bel . This wus a dinner sort of a lunshen giv to me by W. Hepporth dixen , therewas only grate men there : 6 or 7 , i was theseventh . i went home with Jeoffreson thenoveliest and sir tomas hardy (nabers ofourn) . I n the evenin (sundy of corse) wewent to a recepshen party late in the eveninthey dansed and sung jermen student songs ,bel did n ’

t danse as She was to tired . S aterday we were at a grand fete shampeter, givenby a welthy merchent in a house bilt formaly by Gorge the Forth for Mrs fitshurbit ,the grounds were elegant and they danst i nthe open are , but this was meer trash to thewun we went 2 on friday at Mr Bohn ’

s ville rat twikenem grate goodness he has halfa milyen dolers worth of curiosities

,old

armer, faenza ware , ivery carvins, pictures ,si lver things of the middle ages ; a little wileago he offered 3 thousand pounds reward fora reliquary that was stole from him .

Heer were many distinguished peple ; old


Georg Gruikshank, 80 years old , danced acotillion and then , wen he was talkin to bel,danced a hilan fl ing Helen Faucit the grateactriss and many uthers. Peple crowdedaround to be interduced to me, numbers ofyung ladeys looked on as if imploaring to beacquanted , so I went around and shuk handsimpressively with them , one gal said thank youand severil bowed their beds with emotion ,there feelins was 2 mutch for them , i t was aseen never to be forgoten. Wun yung gentlemen fromOx fud , a son of my frend S ir Charleslancaster, h eerd that the orther of hans breitmann was there and he went prowlin overthe grounds asking everybody if they hadseen a gentleman who looked like an Ameriken . He informed me that breitmann was

very popular in Ox fud .

The uther mornin Jane Ingelo cum to seeus befoarwe were drest— she hed brought agrate boquait for bel—we are to dine at herhouse tomorow. Jane is awful nice i never herdtell of anybody so clever she thinks a gratedeel of bel . She and Lady Locker the cister ofthe url of E lgin boath promist to cum and seebel but only j ane hes cum as yet. I made thareakwaintance 1 day wen i called on Alf Teny


a plesent naburhood, near Mr Triibner’

s onpurpose to be near them . They are goodnatured nice people who hev a grate deel ofcompenny and pour out wine l ike water.Mrs Triibner can talk english french germanand Flemish all like a native . She is a neeseof lord Napier and her father is the distinguish riter Delepierre. To nite we are gointo see La Be lle S auvage . With grate afex

tion to all i am your loving deer bruth er :CHARLEY G. LELAND .

P . S . Bulwer has j ust sentme an noat invitinme to cum and live with him nex weak at hishowse in the country— ime a goin . i go aswun of the famaly. Good bye .

Without the personal interest of somebody, it is imposs ible to see anything in thiscountry,

” Dr. Holmes declared when England was stil l for him “ a nation of sulky suicides .” He was right. Present the desiredcredentials in England

,and every man ’s house

is your castle ; present none , and every dooris slammed in your face . No people are ashospitable as the English , none as inhospitable . But the Rye had come with the correctcredentials . I do not mean only the fame of


Hans Breitmann . He had also the right sortof introductions to the right sort of men , andthirty years ago the “ American Invasionhad not yet been heard of and an Americanwas still run after as a novelty, a crank , thesort of society curiosity men like LordHoughton were always wanting “ to bringolit.” And fairly launched , his personal itycould be left to do the rest— as it did verysuccessfully. I have been told by Englishmen ,who were then “ the younger men ,

” how muchit meant to them in those days , and how greatwas their excitement

,when asked to meet

Hans Breitmann. By this time his healthhad in a good measure returned

,and with its

return some little of that sudden distaste forsociety, felt i n Paris , had passed . He nevercared again for theatres and operas and balls,but the letters bear witness to the social pleasures into which he entered with zest. Clublife , too , as he found it at the Savile , wherethere was a group of literary men in sympathy with him

,he enjoyed .

During the nine years he now gave toEngland , he made no settled home untiltoward the very last

,when he took a house

in Park Square , - C lose to Regent ’s Park ,


where he and Mrs. Leland had wi th them thetwo young daughters and son of friends whohad recently died

,and to whose children they

kindly, from no other motive but sheer goodnature , undertook to act for a while as guardians . I t was in the Park Square house thathe and my aunt gave the brilliant Saturdayevenings to which all London crowded . Butuntil they established themselves there , whenthey were not staying with the Triibners,

their headquarters in London were either atthe Langham Hotel or in apartments in theneighbourhood . But there were winters spentat Brighton and Oatlands Park, summershere

,there

,and everywhere in the English

and Welsh country, a nd those wanderingscan be followed in the letters to, as well asfrom , him .

As in all this correspondence, my pleasure is greatest— because I think his wouldhave been in the letters from two oldfriends , I quote these first

,though they re

late less directly to h is own life than manyof the others . One friend was O l iver Wendell Holmes

,whom the Rye had got to know

well during th at year in Boston , and the otherwas George Boker, whom he had always


in any of his published correspondence . Oneof the first in my packet was written earlyin 1 8 72 . The allusions in it explain themselves . We might wonder that so muchfeeling is shown about Motley, when almosttwo years had passed since h is recall , if wedid not know how much longer this feeling lasted , not only with D r. Holmes , butwith all Motley’s friends . Even in 1 8 79 ,

Lowell , writing from Madrid , to announcehis intention of remain ing there , addedpromptly, “ if they don ’t Motleyiz e me .The reference to S umner is just what mightbe expected from the Autocrat, who alway“ l iked Sumner’s talk ” about things , as hetold another correspondent many years lateron , even while he smiled in that kindly wayof his at the exaggerated personality.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES TO CHARLES GODFREYLELAND

CHARLES S T. , 1872 .

I have for the last year l ived in ahouse which we have built and the addressof which you may see above . I t is a greatimprovement in position , and I think youwould say that my study,with its bay windows


looking out over the broad expanse of theriver, was too good for any but an honestman and brother author.

I have a great deal to tell you aboutyour friends of the Saturday C lub. Agassizhas gone off on an expedition he has founda fish ’s nest in certain masses of gulf-weedand seems to be supremely happy about it.Nobody is so rich as a naturalist. You comeacross something nasty and poke it with astick and say it stinks (good Engl ish wordsboth , are they not and he springs at it

,

calls it by a Latin name and bags it andcarries it off as if it were a nugget of virgingold . Agassiz has almost entirely recoveredfrom his very alarming attack of a year ortwo ago. The rest are as you left them . Wehave pretty full and very pleasant meetings .I think nobody is more constant at themthan I am . That and a dinner party nowand then make up my dissipations .Last summer I spent a week at a country

house with Charles Sumner, whom in spiteof the somewhat exaggerated personality ofwhich some complain I always find full ofknowledge such as I l ike to listen to . Motley has never returned to America since his


most unexpected recall as Minister. He andhis family are at the Hague , where the Queenof Holland makes much of them as I hear.I feel very sorry for his great disappointment, which I do not think he has deserved ,but which I am disposed to attribute to indirect and not very creditable influences . Icannot believe that if Mr. S umner and thePresident had not fallen out , our friend couldever have been subj ected to such an indignity.

The reference to the old house ‘

wh ich youspeak of was in the first number of a newseries of articles I am writing for the A t

lantic Monthly ” under the title “The Poet atthe Breakfast-Table .” I have long thoughtthat as I had spoken often of two charactersbesides the “Autocrat, namely the Profes

sor ” and the “ Poet,” I would finish the series

by a third volume , and my two instalments ofthis last have been very kindly received . Iam glad to hear that you have secured youraudience

,for I feel sure you can keep i t

when it has once taken hold . Don ’t breakyour neck or your legs hunting (as poorJerry Whipple— you did n’

t know him ?did at Pau—one of his legs , that is), for therewould be mourning in two worlds for Hans


especially if that man happens to be alonein a foreign land , his daily l ife hedged aboutwith the form and ceremonial of diplomacy.

When I recall my uncle ’s friends , Boker isalways the foremost figure , and a very splendid figure as I remember, still the Apollo hehad been called In his youth , though I onlyknew him in his middle age , when his hairwas already white . I can see him yet

,his

handsome head high above the crowd inChestnut S treet, where he , l ike Walt Whitman and my uncle too , was apt to take hisstroll at the end of the day’s work . Ph iladel

phia is supposed to yield only commonplace,

but I often wonder if three finer, more striking men were ever met anywhere than thosethree

,wh o , in the days of which I speak ,

wereto be passed almost every fine afternoon , asthey swaggered down from Broad S treet toSeventh , before Walt took the horse-car ; orstil l further down , past the

“Ledger ” oflice,with a smile and a shrug perhaps for thegreat man within dispensing cups and saucers ; or past the

“ Press ” office , where theRye and Boker, each in his different Way ,had been an influence and a power. I t will belong before Philadelphia can show three such

THE FIRST HOLIDAY 4 1 1

men again , though while they were alive , i ntrue Philadelphia fashion , Philadelphia madeas little of them as it conveniently could .

Good looks were not George Boker’s onlymerit. He was the truest and kindest offriends ,

“ the good and dear Boker ” evento Mr. John Morley, who knew him infinitelyless well . If his letters begin only with theseventies, it is easily understood , for the twofriends were always together, except duringthe Rye ’s first stay abroad . But it was earlyin the seventies that George Boker was sentas United S tates Minister to Constantinople,and what letters there are

,therefore

,were

written during the most interesting and ac

tive part of his career.The first is from Philadelphia, on Christ

mas Eve , 18 7 1 , and announces the TurkishMission , and also the progress of Meiste rKarl ,

” that Boker was seeing through thePress .

GEORGE H . BOKER To CHARLES GODFREY LELAND

PHILADELPHIA , Dec . 24, 187 1 .

MY DEAR CHARLEY The scarcest thingwith me just now is time . I might give youa shil l ing at a pinch , but a half hour is an


article which I do not happen to have aboutme . I am in a Whirl of preparation for mydeparture from America. My passageis taken in the Algeria for the 1 0 th ofJanuary, and I shall start then , provided theS tate Department do not detain me for somefoolish purpose of its own . I hope that youwill have taken up your abode in London bythe time I arrive .

“ Meister Karl is not yet out, which isqueer, for my patchwork was finished a monthago . Long-headed Fop ! he is waiting for something to turn up , I suppose. By the way,your rhapsody over the East in M. K . hadsomething to do with my acceptance of theTurkish Mission ; and if you have been lying,I Shall find you out, old boy : SO i t would bewe ll for you to add a note about the fleas , andthe cholera, and the plague, et id g enus omne

,

to save your reputation , for which I tremble.The next time I address you , it will be faceto face, laus Deo

The letters from Constantinople have morethan a personal interest. Boker knew—nonebetter— and could himself see the sort ofpicturesqueness that appealed most power


sort oi suspicious care which doubled thework . I shall not weary you with a history of my apprenticeship in diplomacy. Youmay fancy how difficult i t has been , what caution and exhaustive inquiry it needed , andwhat a sea of labours I struggled through unti l I reached my present position of security.

Now I do not feel myself to be deficient before my older diplomatic colleagues ; besidespossessing certain mental qualifiCations,whichyou know all about, and with which heavenhas not blessed all men equally, I am Sureof this : that if you saw me transacting mybusiness with the false , wily O rientals , at theSublime Porte, or with the foreign ministersat one of their scheming general meetings

,

you would not feel ashamed of the figure cuton these occas ions by the man who for manya long year has been almost your brotherwholly indeed your brother in spirit if not bythe ties of blood .

How often I think of you as I am makingmy way through the motley crowds of Constantinople, or surveying the strange , wildlandscape as I drive through the country !Talk of languages ! There is not a bootblackwho cannot speak half a dozen , and the at

THE F IRST HOL IDAY 4 1 5

tainments of some men , who have knockedabout a little , are to me wonderful . For example, we have a man in the consulate whospeaks eleven languages fluently, and yetwho cannot write his own name in any oneof them . All the natives here , almost without exception , speak Turkish , Greek , I talian ,French , and Armenian . Some Of them havea smattering Of English also . You wouldrevel in the “ Grande Rue de Pera ;

” youwould go wild with exci tement if you stoodupon the bridge which crosses the GoldenHorn , and saw the wonderfully costumedcrowd go by you , and listened to the various languages which the individuals uttered.Within a mile of me— for I am now livingat Therapia upon the Bosphorus— there isa delicious encampment of the black tents ofa tribe of Gypsies . How you would like toget among them ! Whenever one of the littleblack-skinned devils Of children runs out tome with his or her Cheeli, chelibi, cheeli !

I always think of you , and give the impudentbeggar a piastre for your sake .By the way , the Khedive is here at present,

and I like him much,and I l ike his prime

minister, Nubar Pacha, sti ll better. They


have invited me to go up the N ile next winter, and I am going, to be sure . Would younot l ike to come along with me ? If so, Ishall be glad to make room for you in ourparty. On the whole , why should you not go ?You ought to see the N i le before you die

,

and here is an excellent chance,and in such

company as will open all Egypt before you .

Think of this seriously. Of course, as Mrs.Boker will go , you will take Madame Bellewith you , and we shall be as happy as Heaventogether for two months at least.

The trip up the N i le was made, and underthe most favorable circumstances , the American minister’s friends being the guests Of theKhedive , of whom one of the party could butapprove . “ Extremes meet,

” I’

read in theMemoranda.

” “The Khedive Ishmael wasthe only man I ever met in Egypt wh o couldtel l me anything about the Gypsies of thatcountry.

” The chronicle of the journey theParadise Boker predicted— is the “Egyptian Sketch Book (Trhbner, that curious medley of knowledge and fun never atany time appreciated

,and now, I am afraid ,

neglected altogether. Innocents Abroad may


that can be raised by the Capitulations , theTreaties , or by O ttoman Law, and I havelicked them at the same ; but even the victorsuffers with the wear and the tear of suchstruggles . Besides these wordy fights

,I have

negotiated the treaties and signed a protocolwith the circumcised ; so that, in spite of mybad health , I have done my official duty sowell that my Government did that rare thing,i t condescended to thank me , and to congratulate me on my success —a thing whichmay not happen to the hoariest diplomatonce in a lifetime ! and I wonder to howmany of his already forgotten successors ithas happened] . For all that, I am not so setup as I might be . I still bend to salute theaverage man

,on Sundays

,and altogether I

am not so disagreeable as you might naturally suppose me to be, as I stil l , on logicalcompulsion

,admit my mortality and its mys

terious consequences .This

,truly

,was “ playing the fool , for

George Boker, the most natural , least affectedof men , with a head too strong to be turnedby any triumph of his own or any praise ofothers— which is more than can be said forthe heads of many American ministers and


ambassadors now-a-days . The N i le j ourneywas in 1 8 73. In March , 1 8 75 , thanks to theGovernment he had toiled for, he was “ ableto shake the dust of this dismal Old city ! Constantinople] from my shoes, and prepare mytoes for a freezing at S t. Petersburg.

” Picturesqueness is not the one essential to hap

piness in the place where one’s tent is pitched .

When years had softened the reality, he couldstill feel and write

,

“ I hate the East so profoundly that I should not return to it if therewere no other land in which I could live .

”

By October, 1 8 75 , i t was from the Legationat S t. Petersburg that the story of hard workand heavy responsibility was dated :I have been so bedevilled by business in

my particular line, SO thoroughly engaged in

putting things to rights between this country and our own , so forced to write , write ,write , write , whether I wished to do it or not,that I rely on your ancient friendship tospare the scolding which I deserve for nothaving written to you before now. If youlike Russia so much , why do you not pay mea visi t during the coming winter, say in January, when the season is at i ts heigh t ? I canboard , lodge , and take care of you generally,


and you know how glad I shall be to haveyou with me .

”

Perhaps it is because the Rye acceptedthis invitation , Spending the winter of 1 8 76

in S t. Petersburg, that two or three more letters , or rather notes , complete the series fromthe Legation . But then , there are the Rye

’sarticles on the Russian Gypsies ,

” more eloquent as chronicle than the “ Egyptian SketchBook ; in them , nothing of American diplomacy, but a great deal of Russian music , the“ plaintive song of the troika bells , the madsong of the Gypsy girls . Never did he listento music more to his liking, seldom did h egive to his writing so much of the swing, somuch of the sadness and the madness of it , asin these articles

,first printed in Macmillan ’s

Magazine ” (November and December, 1 8 79)and afterwards as a chapter in The Gypsies

(Houghton , Mitflin Co . ,

END OF VOLUME I

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