Reminiscences, 1819-1899 Part 11

But to return to matters purely personal. As the Christmas of 1850 drew near, my sister L., ever intent on hospitality, determined to have a party and a Christmas tree at Villa Negroni. This last was then a novelty unheard of in Rome. I was to dine with her, and had offered to furnish the music for an informal dance.

On Christmas Eve I went with a party of friends to the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, where the Pope, according to the custom of those days, was to appear in state, bearing in his arms the cradle supposed to be that of the infant Jesus, which was usually kept at St. Peter's. We were a little late in starting, and were soon obliged to retire from the highway, as the whole papal _cortege_ came sweeping by,--the state coaches of crimson and gold, and the _Guardia n.o.bile_ with their glittering helmets, white cloaks, and high boots. Their course was illuminated by pans of burning oil, supported by iron staves, the spiked ends of which were stuck in the ground. When the rapid procession had pa.s.sed on we hastened to overtake it, but arrived too late to witness either the arrival of the Pope or his progress to the high altar with the cradle in his arms.

On Christmas Day I attended high ma.s.s at St. Peter's. Although the weather was of the pleasantest, an aguish chill disturbed my enjoyment of the service. This discomfort so increased in the course of the day that, as I sat at dinner, I could with difficulty carry a morsel from my plate to my lips.

"This is a chill," said my sister. "You ought to go to bed at once."

I insisted upon remaining to play for the promised dance, and argued that the fever would presently succeed the chill, and that I should then be warm enough. I pa.s.sed the evening in great bodily discomfort, but managed to play quadrilles, waltzes, and the endless Virginia Reel. When at last I reached home and my bed, the fever did come with a will. I was fortunate enough to recover very quickly from this indisposition, and did not forget the warning which it gave me of the dangers of the Roman climate. The shivering evening left me a happier recollection. Among my sister's guests was Horace Binney Wallace, of Philadelphia, whom I had once met in his own city. He had angered me at that time by his ridicule of Boston society, of which he really knew little or nothing. He was now in a less aggressive frame of mind, and this second meeting with him was the beginning of a much-valued friendship. We visited together many points of historic interest in the city,--the Pantheon, the Tarpeian Rock, the bridge of Horatius Cocles. He had some fanciful theories about the traits of character usually found in conjunction with red hair. As he and I were both distinguished by this feature, I was much pleased to learn from him that "the highest effort of nature is to produce a _rosso_." He was a devoted student of the works of Auguste Comte, and had recently held some conversation with that remarkable man. In the course of this, he told me, he asked the great Positivist how he could account for the general religious instinct of the human race, so contrary to the doctrines of his philosophy. Comte replied, "Que voulez-vous, monsieur? Anormalite cerebrale." My new friend was good enough to interest himself in my literary pursuits. He advised me to study the most important of Comte's works, but by no means to become a convert to his doctrines. In due time I availed myself of his counsel, and read with great interest the volumes prescribed by him.

Horace Wallace was an exhilarating companion. I have never forgotten the silvery _timbre_ of his rather high voice, nor the glee with which he would occasionally inform me that he had discovered a new and most remarkable _rosso_. This was sometimes a picture, but oftener a living individual. If he found himself disappointed in the latter case, he would account for it by saying that he had at first sight mistaken the color of the hair, which shaded too much upon the yellow. Despite his vivacity of temperament, he was subject to fits of severe depression.

Some years after this time, finding himself in Paris, he happened to visit a friend whose mental powers had been impaired by severe illness.

He himself had been haunted for some time by the fear of becoming insane, and the sad condition of his friend so impressed him with the fear of suffering a similar disaster that he made haste to avoid the dreaded fate by taking his own life.

The following lines, written not long after this melancholy event, bear witness to my grateful and tender remembrance of him:--

VIA FELICE

'Twas in the Via Felice My friend his dwelling made, The Roman Via Felice, Half sunshine, half in shade.

But I lodged near the convent Whose bells did hallow noon, And all the lesser hours, With sweet recurrent tune.

They lent their solemn cadence To all the thoughtless day; The heart, so oft it heard them, Was lifted up to pray.

And where the lamp was lighted At twilight, on the wall, Serenely sat Madonna, And smiled to bless us all.

I see him from the window That ne'er my heart forgets; He buys from yonder maiden My morning violets.

Not ill he chose these flowers With mild, reproving eyes, Emblems of tender chiding, And love divinely wise.

For his were generous learning And reconciling art; Oh, not with fleeting presence My friend and I could part.

Oh, not where he is lying With dear ancestral dust, Not where his household traces Grow sad and dim with rust;

But in the ancient city And from the quaint old door, I'm watching, at my window, His coming evermore.

For Death's eternal city Has yet some happy street; 'Tis in the Via Felice My friend and I shall meet.

Adolph Mailliard, the husband of my youngest sister, had been an intimate friend of Joseph Bonaparte, Prince of Musignano. My sister was in consequence invited more than once to the Bonaparte palace. The father of the family was Prince Charles Bonaparte, who married his cousin, Princess Zenade. She had pa.s.sed some years at the Bonaparte villa in Bordentown, N. J., the American residence of her father, Joseph Bonaparte, ex-king of Spain. This princess, who was _tant soit peu gourmande_ said one day to my sister, "What good things they have for breakfast in America! I still remember those hot cakes." The conversation was reported to me, and I managed, with the a.s.sistance of the helper brought from home, to send the princess a very excellent bannock of Indian meal, of which she afterwards said, "It was so good that we ate what was left of it on the second day." This reminds me of a familiar couplet:--

"And what they could not eat that night The queen next morning fried."

Among the friends of that winter were Sarah and William Clarke, sister and brother of the Rev. James Freeman Clarke. It was in their company that Margaret Fuller made the journey recorded in her "Summer on the Lakes." Both were devoted to her memory. I afterwards learned that William Clarke considered her the good genius of his life, her counsel and encouragement having come to his aid in a season of melancholy depression and self-depreciation. Miss Clarke was characterized by an exquisite refinement of feeling and of manner. She was also an artist of considerable merit. This was the first of many winters pa.s.sed by her in Rome.

I will further mention only a dinner given by American residents in Rome on Washington's birthday, at which I was present. Mrs. Ann S. Stephens, the well-known writer, was also one of the guests. She had composed for the occasion a poem, of which I recall the opening line,--

"We are met in the clime where the wild flowers abound,"

and the closing ones,--

"To the halo that circles our Washington's head Let us pour a libation the G.o.ds never knew."

Among many toasts, my sister Annie proposed this one, "Washington's clay in Crawford's hand," which was appropriate, as Thomas Crawford was known at the time to be engaged in modeling the equestrian statue of Washington which crowns his Richmond monument.

My Roman holiday came to an end in the summer of the year 1851, and my return to my home and friends became imperative. As the time of my departure approached, I felt how deeply the subtle fascination of Roman life had entered into my very being. Pain, amounting almost to anguish, seized me at the thought that I might never again behold those ancient monuments, those stately churches, or take part in the society which had charmed me princ.i.p.ally through its unlikeness to any that I had known elsewhere. I have indeed seen Rome and its wonders more than once since that time, but never as I saw them then.

I made the homeward voyage with my sister Annie and her husband in an old-fashioned Havre packet. We were a month at sea, and after the first days of discomfort I managed to fill the hours of the long summer days with systematic occupation. In the mornings I perused Swedenborg's "Divine Love and Wisdom." In the afternoon I read, for the first and only time, Eugene Sue's "Mysteres de Paris," which the ship's surgeon borrowed for me from a steerage pa.s.senger. In the evening we played whist; and when others had retired for the night, I often sat alone in the cabin, meditating upon the events and lessons of the last six months. These lucubrations took form in a number of poems, which were written with no thought of publication, but which saw the light a year or two later.

CHAPTER X

A CHAPTER ABOUT MYSELF

If I may sum up in one term the leading bent of my life, I will simply call myself a student. Dr. Howe used to say of me: "Mrs. Howe is not a great reader, but she always studies."

Albeit my intellectual pursuits have always been such as to task my mind, I cannot boast that I have acquired much in the way of technical erudition. I have only drawn from history and philosophy some understanding of human life, some lessons in the value of thought for thought's sake, and, above all, a sense of the dignity of character above every other dignity. Goethe chose well for his motto the words:--

"Die Zeit ist mein Vermachtniss, mein Acker ist die Zeit." "Time is my inheritance; time is my estate."

But I may choose this for mine:--

"I have followed the great masters with my heart."

The first writer of importance with whom I made acquaintance after leaving school was Gibbon, whose "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"

occupied me during one entire winter. I have already mentioned my early familiarity with the French and Italian languages. In these respective literatures I read the works which in those days were usually commended to young women. These were, in French, Lamartine's poems and travels, Chateaubriand's "Atala" and "Rene," Racine's tragedies, Moliere's comedies; in Italian, Metastasio, Ta.s.so, Alfieri's dramas and autobiography. Under dear Dr. Cogswell's tuition, I read Schiller's plays and prose writings with delight. In later years, Goethe, Herder, Jean Paul Richter, were added to my repertory. I read Dante with Felice Foresti, and such works of Sand and Balzac as were allowed within my reach. I had early acquired some knowledge of Latin, and in later life found great pleasure in reading the essays and Tusculan dissertations of Cicero. The view of ethics represented in these writings sometimes appeared to me of higher tone than the current morality of Christendom, and I rejoiced in the thought that, even in the Rome of the pre-Christian Caesars, G.o.d had not left himself without a witness.

This enlarged notion of the ethical history of mankind might easily lead one in life's novitiate to underestimate the comparative value of the usually accepted traditions. I confess that I, personally, did not escape this error, which I have seen largely prevalent among studious people of my own time.

Who can say what joy there is in the rehabilitation of human nature, which is one essential condition of the liberal Christian faith? I had been trained to think that all mankind were by nature low, vile, and wicked. Only a chosen few, by a rare and difficult spiritual operation, could be rescued from the doom of a perpetual dwelling with the enemies of G.o.d, a perpetual partic.i.p.ation in the torments "prepared for them from the beginning of the world." The rapture of this new freedom, of this enlarged brotherhood, which made all men akin to the Divine Father of all, every religion, however ignorant, the expression of a sincere and availing worship, might well produce in a neophyte an exhilaration bordering upon ecstasy. The exclusive doctrine which had made Christianity, and special forms of it, the only way of spiritual redemption, now appeared to me to commend itself as little to human reason as to human affection. I felt that we could not rightly honor our dear Christ by immolating at his shrine the souls of myriads of our fellows born under the widely diverse influences which could not be thought of as existing unwilled by the supreme Providence.

Antichrist was once a term of consummate reproach, often applied by zealous Protestants to their arch enemy, the Pope of Rome. As will be imagined, I intend a different use of it, and have chosen the term to express the opposition which has sprung up within the Christian church, not only to the worship of the son as a divine being, but even to the notion of his long undisputed preeminence in wisdom, goodness, and power. And here, as I once said that I had taken German in the natural way, with no preconceived notion of the import and importance of German literature, so I may say that I first received Christianity in the way natural to one of my birth and education. I have since been called upon to confront the topic in many ways. Swedenborg's theory of the divine man, Parker's preaching, the Boston Radical Club, Frank Abbot's depreciating comparison of Jesus with Socrates,--after following unfoldings of this wonderful panorama, I must say that the earliest view is that which I hold to most, that, namely, of the heavenly Being whose presence was beneficence, whose word was judgment, whose brief career on earth ended in a sacrifice, whose purity and pathos have had much to do with the redemption of the human race from barbarism and the rule of the animal pa.s.sions.

During the first score of years of my married life, I resided for the most part at South Boston. This remoteness from city life insured to me a good deal of quiet leisure, much of which I devoted to my favorite pursuits. It was in these days that I turned to my almost forgotten Latin, and read the "Aeneid" and the histories of Livy and Tacitus. At a later date my brother gave me Orelli's edition of Horace, and I soon came to delight much in that quasi-h.e.l.lenic Roman. I remember especially the odes which my brother pointed out to me as his favorites. These were: "Maecenas atavis edite regibus;" "Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus;" "O fons Bandusiae;" and, above all, "Exegi monumentum aere perennius."

With no pretensions to correct scholarship, I yet enjoyed these Latin studies quite intensely. They were so much in my mind that, when we sat down to our two o'clock dinner, my husband would sometimes ask: "Have you got those elephants over the river yet?" alluding to Hannibal and the Punic war.

Prior to these Latin studies, I read a good deal in Swedenborg, and was much fascinated by his theories of spiritual life. I remember "Heaven and h.e.l.l," "Divine Love and Wisdom," and "Conjugal Love" as the writings which interested me most; but the c.u.mbrous symbolism of his Bible interpretation finally shut my mind against further entertainment of so fanciful a guest. Hegel was for some time my study among the German philosophers. After some severe struggling with his extraordinary diction, I became convinced that the obscurity of his style was intentional, and left him in some indignation. The deep things of philosophy are difficult enough when treated by one who desires to make them clear. Where the intention is rather to mask than to unfold the meaning which is in the master's mind, interpretation is difficult and hazardous. Hegel's own saying about his lectures is well known: "One only of my pupils understood me, and he misunderstood me."

George Bancroft, the historian, spoke of Hegel as a man of weak character, and Dr. Francis Lieber, who had been under his instruction, had the same opinion of him. In the days of the Napoleonic invasion of Germany, Lieber had gone into the field, with other young men of the university. When, recovered from a severe wound, he took his place again among the students of philosophy, Hegel before beginning the day's lecture cried: "Let all those fools who went out against the French depart from this cla.s.s."

I think that I must have had by nature an especial sensitiveness to language, as the following trifling narration will show. I was perhaps twelve years old when Rev. James Richmond, who had studied in Germany, dining at my father's house, spoke of one of his German professors who was wont, as the prelude to his exercise, to exclaim: "Aus, aus, ihr Fremden." These words meant nothing to me then, but when, eight years later, I mastered the German tongue, I recalled them perfectly, and understood their meaning.

One of my first efforts, after my return from Europe in 1851, was to acquaint myself with the "Philosophie Positive" of Auguste Comte. This was in accordance with the advice of my friend, Horace Wallace, who, indeed, lent me the first volume of the work. The synoptical view of the sciences therein presented revealed to me an entirely new aspect of thought.

I did not, for a moment, adopt Comte's views of religion, neither did I at all agree in his wholesale condemnation of metaphysics, which appeared to me self-contradictory, his own system involving metaphysical distinctions as much, perhaps, as any other. On the other hand, the objectivism of his point of view brought a new element into my too concentrated habit of thought. I deemed myself already too old, being about thirty years of age, to conquer the difficulties of the higher mathematics, and of the several sciences in which these play so important a part. But I had had a bird's-eye view of this wonderful region of the natural sciences, and this, I think, never pa.s.sed quite out of my mind. I used to talk about the books with Parker, who read everything worth reading. They had not greatly appealed to him. I also, at this time, read Hegel's "Aesthetik," and endeavored to read his "Logik," which I borrowed from Parker, and which he p.r.o.nounced "so crabbed as to be scarcely worth enucleating."