Chapter X. New York.

  How then does America seem to you after Italy? Is it dull, stupid, prosaic and boastful, or does it seem to have compensations for this utter unpicturesqueness of life? Are the sunsets on the Hudson finer—I think they are—than those we saw at Sorrento last year? But the breath of orange flowers, dear Pearse, the Loggia where we used to sit,—old Vesuvius’ perturbed spirit—Capri, the dim, purple, island Sphinx. These you have not. These I have not, except in memory. And Rome, my dear friend, Rome, does not that seem to you ideal now? It does to me. Good Heavens, when I was last there, I grew to it as to a mistress! There seemed an inspiration in its air. I could not but weep to leave it.

  Pray, write, and encourage me about home—for now I begin to fear that I shall not be contented at home. Yes indeed, I begin seriously to consider whether Rome is not the true home for me. Were it not for its climate I should not hesitate. Yet home is a clinging prejudice.

  I stayed in Florence a week—it was intensely hot and filled with Austrian soldiers, and them I could not bear to see. From Florence we went to Milan. In Parma I saw Correggio in his glory. I had no idea of his magnificence before. Such color,—clear, delicate yet strong, and luminous; light and yet warm, rich and yet soft and tender, never in the least gaudy, yet full-toned and powerful,—I never saw. His frescoes are wonderful, and though injured, are worth crossing the Atlantic to see. I had expected sweetness and delicacy, but I was unprepared for the grandeur of him, the largeness of form, the breadth and power of his works. His Madonna della Scodella and St. Gerome are quite unequalled by anything I ever saw. The young Christ in the former is divine. He is one of those blossoms of truth and innocence, which in rarest moments and under happiest auspices, we see for a moment on the tree of humanity, a child angel, with a smile that realizes heaven on earth. Basta! I could write a quire on the subject!

  From Milan to Vevay and Geneva, then to Interlaken, where we fixed ourselves for the summer, and had George Curtis with us, and an agreeable company. From here Curtis, Bliss and I, went over the Oberland Bernese, on foot with our knapsacks on our backs. I will not rush into raptures,—you can imagine all better than I can tell. It was more than I had dared hope, and after the luxuries of art in Italy it was a striking change, to come at once into the wild sublimity of nature. What themes for pencil and brush are here! How many times I wished I could summon you to my side, as I looked over these Alpine heights, where beauty and grandeur live so strangely together. George was an admirable companion, always sympathizing, ready to admire, indefatigable – ever good natured, ever interesting. It was a real joy to meet him and know him, and see him three months together. At Geneva, George left me, to go with Quincy Shaw towards the East, and I returned to Interlaken. From Interlaken, when the summer was ended, E. and I and the children took our course down the Rhine to Baden-Baden and Heidelberg, then struck across to Munich, and thence down the Danube to Vienna, where we are now. . . .

  I found the Germans very polite, social and agreeable. Travelling here is wondrous easy after the toiling vettura and the cheating Italian mob. But one’s money here eats dreadful holes in the pockets. Everything is expensive. The prices are at least double what they are in Italy. Of music, we have concerts nearly every evening by Straus’s band and others. . . . Never was there a people for eating like this. The restaurateur is an essential portion of every festival meeting. Eating, smoking, drinking of beer and wine seems an absolutely necessary accompaniment of music, and oftentimes the smoke of cigars in the concert or ball rooms is suffocating. They shut up every window, heat up the room, light their cigars,—off goes the band in a whisking waltz, and the Vienner is a happy man. Here is there an immense deal to see in the way of art. The picture galleries are numerous and very rich. The finest Murillos I have ever seen are here, and some fine Correggios and Raffaelles, and some pictures by Rubens which astonished me by their magnificence of color and tremendous energy. But despite all the objects of interest, and the social gaiety, and amusements of the people, I pine for Italy. I do not like the subserviency here to the sword and gilt-lace uniform. The streets swarm with officers and soldiers, and I think often of poor, oppressed Italy. Radetsky is here,—a little red-eyed man—and Jellachich is in the same house with us. The Emperor, a youth of nineteen, we see constantly at the theatre and on the streets.

  At Munich I was delighted. It is most grateful to one’s eyes to see what the late King has done here for art. The whole city has been renewed and built in the best taste, and here is the centre of the new German School of Painting. . . . Art here is at least alive, and struggling for existence, and the patronage is enormous and unbigoted. Every artist has had his chance. . . .

  In a day or two we are off to Venice, which after so long waiting for, I shall at last see!

  I intend this as simply a leaf torn from the volume of my present life. I have not really the patience to post up past accounts. It is sufficient to say that I am here, family and all, boarding in this, greatest of little Sunday go-to-meeting villages, amid very nice scenery, and here have been, over a month. I first came alone, and made a visit to the Deweys, who live here; then came Lizzie, the children, and maid, and took board in a quiet, nice family, where we shall continue till about September first. Then I shall go to Catskill Clove with Mr. Durand. I have been working out of doors, as steadily as circumstances will permit. Whenever it does not rain, I am usually out painting. I have improved, I think, in painting from nature, since I saw you. My pictures in the Academy Exhibition last spring were favorably noticed, and one of them bought by the Art Union. It was on the strength of them, most probably, that I was elected an associate of the Academy.

  I should like to hear from you, how you are getting on. Are you driven as much as ever? Do you get time for anything but work? Write me, but don’t write in the vein of your letter of last winter. I don’t like to think that your theory, or your life, should be all sacrificed, made up of nothing but duty. Or at least I want to hear some time that your duty and your inclinations both point in the same direction. O, why were you not an artist; or a literary man, or an editor, or a farmer; or anything for which God and nature fitted you, rather than a lawyer? Somewhere in those vocations lies your proper sphere. But fate has driven you from the lines of intellectual attraction, and made your life that of a mill wheel and a cart horse. Will it not be some time or other that you will burst from that chrysalis state, of court-room pen-drudgery and law books, and spread your wings, never to fold them again in the old cocoon prison? Such talents, such a nature, intellectual and moral, and affectional, and humorsome, every way rare, as yours, should find its sphere, and there should be, now, people who would so appreciate them, that they could create such a sphere for you. I, for one, hope to live to see your emancipation. I pray Heaven it may come quickly.

  I examined and cross-examined Dwight about all you boys, and especially about Lizzie and you and the children. He gave good accounts of you, but all that he said only increased my appetite for you. I want to ask you truly how you get along, and whether the wheels turn easily or not, and whether I can do anything for you. You know, or ought to know, that you ought never to need when I can help you. My purse, my dear friend, is ever at your service. Let us spend together and make life as happy as we can. You will not be vexed at this suggestion, I feel. I don’t know why there should ever be any shamefacedness about such matters. H fortune has been better friends with me than you, she makes me her agent to give to those whom I love. . . .

  Lizzie’s very pleasant note reached Emelyn the other day, and we both were delighted to hear from her. I hope she still keeps us in green remembrance, which being interpreted means, that she remembers all the good and forgets all the bad. Perhaps Emelyn may go with me to New York, if the weather looks more subdued and gentle. I do not at all stand this climate. I break all to pieces, before these sharp winds. There seems to be no atmosphere, and the sunshine is so white and glittering and ghastly, that it seems as if it had lost its soul. The shadows are all so thin and weak and grey; the light so colorless; the lines of architecture so sharp and hard; all things so liney and wanting in tone, that it seems to me as if America had been bewitched during my absence. There is nothing which has come up to my recollections except the conflagrations in the clouds and sky at sunset, and the autumn hectic in the forests. Tone to a landscape, is what sentiment is to a mistress, and it is just this lack of tone that I find in our nature.

  The cold winds and the tense atmosphere, have been chiselling me down and channelling out the old furrows, which when I returned were somewhat blended. I grow older here in a month than in a year abroad.

  As to outward events they are unimportant. In November we were settled in the great-city, where we have remained ever since. My health and that of my wife and children has been uninterrupted by any sickness, and on the whole I have had quite a good time—grow younger, if anything, in my feelings and habits of life, work at my studio, and just scratch along, poor and economical, still surrounded with blessings innumerable. In painting I am improving, have several pictures in the Exhibition, and now and then, like angels’ visits, fall in with a purchaser. In this country Art just lives—it is far from flourishing. The artist has need of all his courage and patience to stick to his vocation. I am confident there would be better success in Italy, and had I means, I should go there again. Here, surrounded by a selfish, commercial, money making, rushing, driving, and wholly conventional community, what can an artist do? People when they do find time amid their eternal driving and hurry-scurry to come into a studio, only admire and go away to their eternal and sempiternal driving. People of fashion and so called taste are contented to do this, and go home to their palaces and sit down among their luxurious easy chairs and mirrors and curtains, with never a picture to screen the nakedness of their walls—not so much as one picture even in the way of furniture- that would be something. Or if they have a taste this way, they expend it on snuffy, dingy, old copies of mediocre old Masters. So it goes!

  No matter, they can’t magnetize us out of our proprium, our essential character. They can’t keep us from having a good time with those with whom we sympathize, and there are not a few of those here, and we can at least laugh at their ridiculous position, when their backs are turned, even if they do tie up their money bags. The sun will shine spite of all the clouds.

  And you may suppose it fares pretty much with poetry as with painting.

  As for music, I have but little time to practise. I do little beside “voluntaries.” As I cannot play very difficult accompaniments, I sit down and make chords, and extemporize, or sing such things as I can accompany, when the spirit moves. Neither have I much time for books. Had I entire leisure I think I should devote myself much more to verse than anything else. I have a poem on this theme, which some day you will see.

  I have been making a little visit to Washington, where I had not been for nearly six years. I went on in the Steamer Baltic and returned in her, as correspondent of the” New York Express.” The trip was a novel thing, and very pleasant. All the passengers fared sumptuously, free of expense, and the magnificent steamer was praised by all as the model steamship of the nineteenth century. In my “Express” letter, I called her one of the modern Collins’s odes. She went on to show herself, and to interest Congress in getting an appropriation, but was suddenly called back to go to England, etc. All which, is it not written in newspapers, and why should I repeat it?

  I found my father very little changed in appearance, but exceedingly feeble, and much more deaf than when I saw him last. He does not even walk from his easy chair to his bed without help, and has not left his room, I think for a year. He reads, however, all day. His mind is clear, and he is altogether in a beautiful, tranquil state. It was a great blessing to me to see him once more.

  I have been making verses somewhat of late. Have just been doing something meditative and metaphysical. Another sort of poem will appear soon in the “Tribune” called “Land Owner and Brain Owner.” I cannot say when it will come out. They have had it this month on their file. Another little thing I have just thrown off, which I will send you on another page. I have had no chance to read it to any one yet, not even Lizzie, who has gone away. It is a sort of Goethian-Emersonian sentiment perhaps, with a truth at the bottom of it.

  Lent is passing gaily away; four Cardinals have been newly created and during the whole of this week are receiving at the palaces, where the Roman Princesses gleam and flash with tiaras and necklaces of diamonds that dazzle the eye with their splendor. The night before last we were at the Sciarra, the Colonna, the Santa Croce, and the display of jewels was such as I never saw before. . . . Curious enough was it to see in the ante-room the cloven foot of this splendor, in the shape of a scrivano taking down all the names as they were announced, in order to call for a buona mano to-morrow. At the Colonna Palace the French Ambassador received, a French Cardinal having been created. The scene was splendid in those towering rooms, but I experienced a revulsion of rage and disgust, when on passing to the last salon, I found displayed on the table, pictures representing the battles of the Roman Revolution; after so gratuitous an insult to the sensibilities of every true lover of liberty. and especially of every Italian, I could remain no longer. . . .

  The other evening, and without our desire or request, came a summons to the Pope, and accordingly we had an audience at the Vatican. He was very affable and pleasant, and has an attractiveness of face and manner which shows a good heart. Poor Pio Nono! He took snuff constantly, dropping it on his white dress, and after informing me that steamers could go from New York to Liverpool in fifteen days, inquired whether they stopped for coal on their passage. He also announced to me that Boston was the greatest city in America, therefore you see that that question is settled forever. . . .

  Of my own doings in art, a little will suffice. I have made my last study for the large statue of my father, and my friends like it; at all events, it is far the best thing I have done. I am now waiting to procure a fitting studio to execute it in large. I have also made a statuette of the Lorelei, for which I have a commission. Orders have been plenty in Rome this winter as I understand, and Americans particularly are purchasing works by modem artists. This is as it should be. . . .

  We are here full of theatricals, and the “Midsummer-Night’s Dream” having succeeded so perfectly, are at work in bringing out the “Merchant of Venice.” Emelyn is Jessica; Black, Bassanio; Lowell, Lorenzo; Mrs. Raikes, Portia; and I, Shylock. Black is stage struck. He eats, drinks and sleeps on theatricals. The day before yesterday we were at the Villa Borghese, which was as lovely as ever, with its lofty umbrella pines, its dark green ilexes, its fountains and shadowy woods. To-day we are planning for the Villa Albani, and what a day it is, the air all music and perfume with birds and flowers, and a cloudless sky! Boott says good-bye to us and is off to-day for Florence, which he still persists in preferring to Rome, with his cast-steel determination. We had a grand musical soirée here in our rooms the other day, with Puggi’s oboe, Ramacciotti’s violin, Wichmann on the pianoforte, and Rhienthaler’s songs, and among other things we had a stringed quartette of Boott’s admirably performed. It was certainly a triumph for him, and I am delighted to say to you, that it was full of science and freshness of fancy. The themes were original and naïve, and the condotta clear and unconfused. It quite surprised me by its merit, and its piquancy and spirit gained for it an unanimous applause. Just where young composers fail, he succeeded, in the management of its partition and the development of his theme. . . .

  What a hard thing this is, and hard it is not to grumble at it all the time, that in nine cases out of ten a man must turn away his eyes from beholding the vanity and folly of the course for which nature fashions him, and to which all good angels seem to be urging him, if he wants to make a living, and dig at something else,—plunge into some ditch where he is muddied from top to toe. . . .

  I grow thoroughly discouraged sometimes, of late very much so, at the miserable prospects of landscape painting, among us. And yet, I don’t see anything better for me. I have strong twitches sometimes towards authorship, and even indulge occasionally in verse, but unless a man is sure of a great reputation as a writer, what stimulus is there, what reward? No, better keep on, hopefully. Painting is no worse than article writing, and does not rack the brain, but is always “attractive labor,” which is a great thing in its favor. And if a man can only live, with wife and children, why, let him have as good a time of it, I say, as he can in this brief lifetime. And in this way one keeps young.

  And so we Cranches are rejoicing in the abundance of our riches, having actually received legacies, not in dreams but good, tangible, bankable money; a thing as unlooked for by me as the Chinese or Viennese Revolution. Rest to his shade, the venerable uncle did some good to his deserving relatives, and we will not say grudgingly, that he might have done more. On these silver-tipped wings we will emerge, as long as we may, out of the brine and beyond the level of the sea of poverty, like flying fish, and say that we too have wings, though we are not birds of golden plumage. Providence surely takes care of us, for I don’t see what I should have done without this four hundred and odd dollars, any more than I know what I can do without just as much a year hence, which I see no prospect of getting, but which Providence, I dare say, will send.

  In the July number of the “Putnam’s” is an ode to Southern Italy, of mine. I shall have other poems, I presume, there from time to time. You see “Putnam’s,” I hope. I think it is the best American magazine we have, by a great deal. My friend G. W. Curtis is one of the editors and writes a great deal for it.

  I hope ere long to bring out my volume of poems. It has been ready for publication for some time, but I have been waiting till I can publish on good terms for myself, and perhaps to keep pruning at it, and perhaps omitting, and perhaps write better things. I often feel as if, give me the opportunity, and I have far better things in store to be written, than I have ever done. . . .

  And you, who were once a Christian minister, to forget the Christian rule of forgiveness—to stand away there on your dignity and rights and never write to me because I owed you a letter. You! to keep an account current with me and put me down in your memory with “a bill to debit one letter.” I actually blush for you—I have long ceased to perform that graceful action for myself, and reserve it entirely for my friends—when your friend “Chose” (I never remember names), presented me a rascally note of only four lines, and in those four lines nothing but” introduce,”“ friend,” “Century Club,” and such kind of words. I declare I thought you worthy to be put in the stocks for such an act. . . . If you had cause of complaint against me—I don’t deny that you had—why did you not pepper me with letters—heap coals of fire and all that Christian sort of thing—instead of sulking into silence and brooding over “bill to debit—one letter.” Fye upon you, Heathen! Pagan! American! Well, nevertheless, I forgive you; it’s as well to be magnanimous. I forgive you; there’s my hand to kiss.

  Here we all are in Lucca at the Bagni Caldi, halfway up the Chestnut mountains where the breeze blows cold and fresh, and where the summer sun basks on hillsides and hanging gardens of vines, where the big hurry chestnuts do not grow and drop their green porcupine fruit upon the earth, range the vineyards in terraces and give a granulated look to the mountain. We look down upon the red-tiled tops of the villages and villas below, and see the rushing river, the only discontented, hurried American-like thing near us, bubble and dash, winding through the valley. The contadini go to and fro and up and down the mountain paths, bearing on their heads great buckets heaped sometimes with charcoal, and sometimes with strawberries, apricots, raspberries. The little gray donkeys toil to and fro laden with pears, and the women bear on their head coppers of flashing water, that never spills or loses its even poise. Parties go to picnics or make excursions up the valley, or else up to the old mill with the one arch bridge, and the brownly dropping wheel where I saw, the other day, looking through one of its dark windows, the most exquisite living Madonna and Child. We live in the Casa Lena built on the site of an old feudal castle, hut no more like a castle now than I to Hercules. On our long balcony that shelters the full length of the house, we sit in the earliest morning; all the long evenings when the moon throws the shadow of the mountain across the valley, as it rises behind its fringed outline of chestnuts, or hanging full, above in the soft upper sky, fills it with misty light.

  We leave the gossip to the Cafe below where the little world of strangers meets and sits outside in the afternoon under an awning, and discusses the nothings of the day, while it takes ices and granite. Every evening we drive out, up and down the river, and follow up through its wild rocky overshadowed bed the tumultuous Lima. For society we have the Brownings, whom we find delightful, and with whom we interchange long evenings two or three times weekly, besides making excursions with them. We often speak of you together, for they remember you both with pleasure and interest—and Browning promised to give me a note to enclose herein for you, so that this husk may have a sweet kernel. They are both writing, he a new volume of lyrics, and she a tale or novel in verse, which will probably see the light of the public square next spring. What offer will Putnam make for the proof sheets of these hooks, and the good will of the authors, or has he any proposition to make? See, and write. . . .

  I have just sent to Browning and obtained a note from him and his wife. Now if in answer to this you don’t send me a long, well-packed, closely written letter, I shall believe that there is no virtue in man. . . . I slept at the Crawfords’ four weeks under your old picture of St. Peter’s, and thought of you every morning when I woke and saw it looking down upon me. Emelyn had left me in Rome to finish my statue, and I stayed with Crawford for several weeks.

  Since I saw you, we have known and parted with poor Margaret Fuller, so strangely and mournfully, but I won’t write of it here-and now there is poor Greenough gone. Let us hold to what we have the faster. You may think what a joy it was to have the Storys come over to us on the day after our arrival here. They are on the hill-top,—we house on the clefts of the rocks. We came in ignorance that they were in Tuscany. Now we see them daily, or nearly so, and our weeks go only too fleetly by, with them to speed them in this delightful place,—for such it is, spite of a clot of Dukes and Kings,—kinsmen who are sojourning here also. The beauty is more than they can spoil. You were never here, I think. Shall you never want to replenish your portfolio with fresh Italian studies, such as I remember to have filled it when I used to call on you in that old wrecked convent turned into the painters’ nursery,—your room with that ghastly model of a horse? I have been in it since, and missed you exceedingly.

  I shall let my wife finish this scrap,—all the limits of Story’s letter allow,—but do believe, as if I had sufficiently expressed it, or attempted to express it, my true and entire remembrance of you and Mrs. Cranch, your kindness and sympathy. Keep all you can of them, my dear Cranch,
for yours ever very faithfully,

  Try to believe that we have never forgotten any of you, nor are likely to forget you ever. The truth is, my husband is deep in the corruption of neglectful or procrastinating letter writing, and though I have cried in his ears as loud as conscience itself, he put off from one week to another, and from one month to another, writing the letter due to you, till he covered up his sin in the ashes of shame, and made up his mind never to dare to do it. Try to forgive him, for the sake of the regard to you and yours, under all offences.

  You see we are back again in Italy, after a year and a half in Paris and London. Will you come back? Do you ever think of it, dream of it, long for it? Or are you caught up in the great whirlpool of American life, and stunned deaf to the music called Italy? For my part, absent or present, the tune of it sings on in my head. I liked Paris much, but the love of my Florence would not go out.

  The Storys are looking in high force and as pleasant as ever. Indeed we grow closer, I think, and have to thank their affectionateness and agreeableness for much of our enjoyment here. Will you kiss your dear children for my child and me? And will you both remember us with the affectionate thoughts we hear you?

  I shall, of course, regret leaving America on many accounts, hut I presume there will be ample compensation for all loss. A kind of fate draws us to Europe which it is vain to resist, as well as unwise. I only wish there were a little more time for preparation, and that it were earlier in the season. It is uncertain how long we shall remain abroad, that will depend upon circumstances, but certainly for a year.

  I have just returned from a few weeks’ sojourn at Niagara, and have brought home some useful studies and sketches. I have not time to tell you how charmed I was with the Falls, and with all the surrounding scenery. I was there fifteen years ago, for a day and a half, so it was all nearly new to me. . . .

  I hope I may see you in New York before we sail; but I don’t know yet how we shall go, hut by steamer probably. I want, of course, to go as cheap as possible, consistently with comfort. Lizzie has the promise of an invaluable nurse to go with us, a woman who offered to go herself.

  I shall not have time to write to many of my friends before leaving. I cannot yet realize that we are going, the plan is such a sudden thing. But I shall not yet say good-bye to you.