From: The Life and Letters of Christopher Pearse Cranch (1917)
Author: Leonora Cranch Scott
Published: Houghton Mifflin Company 1917 Boston
TEN YEARS IN EUROPE.
THE Autobiography goes on:—
In October, 1858, we sailed for Europe from New York in the sailing ship Germania. W. H. Huntington1 was a fellow-passenger. He became intimately acquainted with us, and during our long residence in Paris we were often together. He was a true friend, a man of sterling character, of a most lovable nature, and great mental originality. He was for many years a correspondent of the “New York Tribune.”
We settled down in Paris, where we remained for nearly ten years. We found life very pleasant here, and a good many friends and acquaintances. Among my artist friends were Story, Babcock, William Tiffany, Richard Greenough, Edward May, William Dana, Hamilton Wild, Paul Duggan, Emile Du Pont; among other friends-all Americans-were Mrs. Ogden Haggerty and her two daughters, Mr. and Mrs. Turner Sargent, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Shaw, Mrs. Sarah Russell, Mr. and Mrs. William B. Greene, Frank Boott, James Russell Lowell, Henry James, Sr., and his clever and attractive family, Thomas G. Appleton, and Peter Porter.
In the summer of 1855 we had in Paris a great Universal Exhibition in an immense building erected for the occasion on the Champs Elysées. The Department of Fine Arts contained works from most of the countries of Europe, and from the United States. My contribution was two pictures of Niagara, which were afterwards purchased by Mr. Russell Sturgis, of London. England was largely represented, and there was ample opportunity to compare the English pictures with those of the Continent, and especially with the French and Belgian; showing how far inferior they were to the latter.
And here I may as well say that during our stay in Paris I exhibited two or three times at the Salon. At one exhibition my picture, an “American Sunset,” was hung on the line, though I knew no one on the Jury of Admittance. It was purchased by an American gentleman residing in Paris.
This summer was made memorable by many things.
My first acquaintance began with James Russell Lowell. We were together a good deal, and soon became friends. In the latter part of July, as he was going to England, he urged my accompanying him. The Storys were in London, and for a time I was their guest, and afterward Lowell’s at his rooms. I saw something of London and the environs.
While in London I saw Mr. and Mrs. Browning again. Thackeray I also saw. I had met him at the Century Club in New York. One evening at Russell Sturgis’s, he invited Lowell, Story, and myself to dine with him at the Garrick Club. After dinner we adjourned to some rooms he called the “Cider-Cellar,” which was not a cellar, but a quiet, comfortable parlor, somewhere in the neighborhood, where he ordered cigars and punch. Thackeray was then publishing “The Newcomes” in numbers. He asked us if we had seen the last number. We said we had not. “I should like,” he said, “to read you a part of it.” To which, of course, we eagerly assented. So he called the waiter and sent him out with a shilling, to get the last number.
When it arrived, he read to us for at least an hour. It was the last part where Colonel Newcome dies. His tones were very pathetic, and we were much interested. After we had expressed our pleasure, Lowell begged him for the number, as a souvenir. He had scarcely finished reading when a party of Bohemian fellows, artists and authors, I believe, came bounding in, and their loud talk and merriment grated harshly on the mood in which the reading had left us . . . . Tennyson’s “Maud” was just out, and I remember one very pleasant morning with Story and Lowell, passed in reading it aloud. James Russell Lowell had just lost his wife and his voice trembled as he read “Maud” aloud to us.
For about two years I was correspondent of the “New York Evening Post.”
In the autumn of 1857 we heard the sad news of the burning of the old De Windt homestead in Fishkill Landing. Hardly anything was saved. All our books, manuscripts, letters, and many things of value left in the garret for safe-keeping were consumed. Copley’s beautiful portrait of Mrs. Colonel Smith, Mrs. De Windt’s mother and the only daughter of John Adams, was destroyed.
Mr. Cranch describes the old De Windt homestead in the opening of his fairy story, “Burlybones.”
On one of the most beautiful and fertile farms that slopes up from the banks of our noble Hudson River, stood an old house in the old Dutch style,—a long, low building with steep gables and a piazza running nearly entirely around it, covered with creepers, roses, and honeysuckles. The house was surrounded and almost hid by tall, venerable locusts and large horse-chestnuts and a few weeping willows. Back of it was a large garden filled with flowers, vegetables, and fruit trees.
A magnificent double row of locusts, very old, formed an entrance to the place. The interlacing boughs were so close, and the stateliness of the trees so striking, that this was called “The Cathedral.” “Locust Grove” was the name of the De Windt estate. This avenue gave it great distinction; and the Hudson River gliding by, and fine mountains on either side made a beautiful setting to the picturesque old house.
I made several visits of a few weeks at a time to Barbizon and the Forest of Fontainebleau, where I worked steadily at my brush out of doors. And delightful days they were, though I had little company besides Nature.
I also visited Switzerland in the summer of 1857 and 1858, but did not make very extensive tours in that region. I saw the Lake of Geneva and Mount Blanc from St. Martens. And on my second visit went to Interlachen, where I staid a week to get a clear view of the Jungfrau. It was in September. With two companions I walked across to Lake Lucerne, up the valley of the Lauterbrunnen, up the Wengern Alp and the Glacier of Grindelwald, making pencil sketches on the road. It was a charming tramp. But I had no time nor much inclination to ascend any of the slippery places of the Alps. I took such material as I could turn into pictures. I was but a poor painter going off to work, and hoping to bring back something fresh from Nature upon canvas. I was not bound for St. Gothard, or the Rigi, but only the Lake of Geneva and Vevay. I was prepared to deny myself. My prospectus was work, not fun. I had no scale like that of my friend Dives. I was like a man invited to hear the overture of a great opera or to view the façade of St. Peter’s. . . .
Well, I will hear and see what I can. I will imagine how the great men and women sing, or how the wondrous golden dome looks to the devotees.
So here I am en route for the overture to “William Tell” and the vestibule of the great church whose aisles are the grand, dim, precipitous gorges, whose altars are the green glaciers, and whose mountain columns are capitalled with snow and domed over with the divine frescoes of clouds, sunshine, stars, and moonlight.
The following are extracts from the Journal:—
It is six o’clock in the morning. I am leaving the streets of Paris behind, Monsieur Chiffonier, and you are so busy there looking over that dust-pile of cabbage leaves and scraps of paper and ends of cigars, that you don’t seem aware that I am passing by in a sumptuous voiture de place with a big trunk a-top and my passport in my pocket and money in my purse: and pretty soon your dusty Paris, with all its crowds, from ragpicker to Emperor, who bake and sizzle along the bitumen pavements, will be far behind, and the snow-capped Alps in sight.
And to my surprise they were in sight much sooner than I expected. That is, as I was flying along on the railroad (Chemin-de-fer de Lyon) nearing Macon, if I had not known in which direction to look for my snowcapped grandees, and if the atmosphere had not been particularly clear, I might have mistaken what I saw, far off on the dim horizon, for a bank of luminous cloud. And indeed for some time I had my doubts. I prayed inwardly that they might not crumble into air. The sun was nearly setting. I watched this rosy, distant vision with straining eyes. Only stay, dear Alps, do not fade away, don’t let my first glimpse of your distant glories prove an unsubstantial pageant! I turned to a young Frenchwoman in the car, and said, “Voilà Mont Blanc!” She took it rather stupidly. If I had said, “There is your stopping-place,” some lonely little station where she was to get out, she would have been ten times more excited.
To me the distant, dreamy vision was a delicious glimpse of the Delectable Mountains. I could see now, they did not melt away. I could trace the solid mountain forms. And as they disappeared in the lowering gray, I was content to bid them good-night, for I should soon see them more nearly.
The railroad ride was long and hot, and I was glad to put up for the night at a cool, quiet inn at Macon. My windows opened to the east on the Saône, and I left them open. It was a warm night. Early in the morning,—it couldn’t have been more than four o’clock,—I was gratified and somewhat surprised to see on the extreme horizon for the second time His Majesty the Monarch of Mountains. But now he was dark against the red morning sky.
Before the sun rose he had withdrawn. I have had a third view of his head and shoulders, and a very near view, at Geneva. Since that I have lost sight of him. He was one of the Cremonas in my overture, in fact he led the orchestra, as he should have done.
On the 16th a railroad took me as far as a place called Seyssel on the frontier of Savoy. At a place called Amberieu the mountains commence, and from here all the way to Seyssel I and my two car-companions, a bearded, silent Frenchman and a social Sister of Charity, were rushing from one side of the car to the other, breaking our necks to look up at the craggy and savage mountains overhead. It was a wild, lonely, uninhabited-looking region through which we passed. The villages were few, and all looked as if the inhabitants had deserted for fear of the toppling crags overhead.
I went to Geneva, Morge, Lausanne, Vevay, and was several days at St. Martens, near Mont Blanc. Here I had uninterrupted views of the magnificent snow-peaks, of which I made accurate drawings and some attempt at the wondrous colors at sunset . . . .
September 11. Sent off baggage to the Post for Lucerne, and with two companions, both Americans, set off on our foot-journey over the mountains—up Lauterbrunnen Valley. Made a sketch of the approach to the valley, a very fine scene. Enormous cliffs overhead waterfalls and mountain-streams in abundance. Saw the Staubbach, a wonderful fall, a veil or scarf of water fringed with spray, falling some eight hundred feet, and spilling itself in the air. Heard for the second time the Alpine horn and the echoes. Started for the Wengern Alp. Luckily a stout boy named Ulrich offered to carry our packs all the way up the mountain to the Jungfrau Hotel for two francs. It was fortunate we did not attempt to carry them ourselves, for the climbing was difficult. We had three hours of it, and a hot afternoon sun. Slept at the Jungfrau Hotel, a quiet, clean Bauernhaus. A pretty daughter of the host waited on the table. Saw a fine avalanche, and heard avalanches thundering in the night. Awfully grand was the gigantic Jungfrau opposite, with its neighbors the Mönch and Eiger, filling one half the horizon and looming up in solitary grandeur with their eternal snows: the sky perfectly cloudless: and those inaccessible heights seemed so near, as if we could almost touch them. Far below the Lauterbrunnen Valley lay dusky and mysterious. Not a sound to be heard, save now and then the thunders of the avalanches from the mountains.
September 13. Walked over the Scheideck and down to Meyringen. The Alpine horn near the Wetterhorn was wonderful. The echoes sent back from the steep precipices were unearthly. Sometimes there came three distinct echoes, that kept up a blended harmony, like an organ or band of instruments. The boy who blew the horn had two small cannon to discharge. He fired off one for eight sous. It was like a tremendous clap of thunder. All the Alps seemed to reverberate in one long peal. We slept at Meyringen, a lovely valley, abounding in waterfalls.
September 14. A long day’s walk to Alpnacht on Lake Lucerne. After climbing the Brunig, and descending a very steep path, our way lay over a very level country with a good carriage-road by the lakes of Lungern and Sarnen. At Gyswil we lunched at a pleasant auberge, where I saw in the hotel book the name of Calame. . . .Sketched on Lake Samen. Got to Alpnacht in time for the boat to Lucerne. The sunset and clouds were glorious . . . .—I think I prefer Lucerne to all the Swiss towns I have seen.
Again, from the Autobiography:—
The winter of 1868-69 I spent in Rome, alone. I took a room with a studio in the Via Sistina and was pretty busy through the winter. I saw a good deal of the Storys, and found a good many pleasant American acquaintances. Hawthorne and his family were there and the Motleys, and the Brownings. I enjoyed the winter, except that I was separated from my family. I returned to Paris in the spring.
In 1860 I visited Venice and made the most of my time by sketching busily, gaining material for a good many pictures afterwards painted. It is needless to say how fascinated I was with the place.
Before leaving Paris I called with Lizzie at the studio of M. Felix Ziem, an artist celebrated for his seaports and especially his Venetian views, which we greatly admired. He kindly gave me the address of the person in whose house he had rooms in Venice. In this house I secured lodgings. It was on the Riva dei Schiavoni, fronting the harbor, where I could sketch directly from my window. . . .
An extract from a sad and beautiful letter from W.W. Story telling of the loss of his little son, and the long, dangerous illness of his daughter.
Dear little Joe was well, gay, full of spirits, scurrying around me in play on Monday, and on Wednesday the peace of death was on his little face. How serene it looked. As I gazed on it, I envied that exquisite repose. I did not dare to wish him back. No one can know what he was to us. A purer, more spotless soul, I do not believe was ever on this earth. I always owned him with trembling. I always felt that he did not belong to us, for there was something strange about him which never belonged to Earth’s children. Dear little boy! I know no thought ever bubbled up into his mind that was not divine, and this earth never brushed the spirit dust from off his soul. He used to go with Emelyn to the English cemetery to strew flowers over the green grave of little Walter Lowell,2 and one day, returning, he looked up with those large, sweet eyes and said: “Mamma when shall you bring me here to lie down with little Walter and be an angel, for you know you must some day?” Well! Well! He at least is spared from what we suffer, and I often think of the words of Jeremy Taylor (I think the words are Taylor’s),—“He who has lost a child has cast an anchor in Heaven.” . . .
To his brother Edward
. . . It hardly seems possible that nearly six months have passed since we arrived at Paris. Well, I have had my ups and downs, my “glees and my glooms.” The winter has not been altogether couleur de rose, but on the whole a happy and pleasant one. Life is a curious mixture of gladness and sadness; of sufferings and anxieties, with a family of young children, and very little to spend—sometimes forced to borrow money—and no orders, and little hopes of any. One must be of good stuff to be always merry.
I will now answer some of the questions which you would put to me, if you were with me. How do you like Paris? I like it much; that is, we find here everything we need for comfort and convenience in living, and everything, with a few exceptions, cheaper than in New York; often very much cheaper. Those who talk of the expensiveness of Paris, have spoken from their experience at hotels and furnished apartments, as well as a too brief acquaintance of the shops, and a too limited knowledge of the French language. Foreigners are always imposed upon, but when one gets into the way of things, and takes some pains to find out the just prices, one is treated better. Had we known as much as we do now, during the first month we were here, we might have saved a good deal of money. After six months’ experience we are finding out the savoir-faire.
For an artist, Paris is the very place, at least for study; that I am convinced of. In the first place, all artist’s materials are much cheaper and better than with us. I include in this everything that an artist needs, from a studio down to engravings, colors, and drawing pencils. Then he has the Louvre, which he can enter at any time, and if he chooses study and copy in. Then he sees all around him, as good specimens of contemporaneous art as can anywhere be found, to say nothing of architecture, gardens, fountains, statues, engravings, lithographs, photographs, casts from life and the antique, etc., etc.
The general effect of Paris, taken through an artist’s eye, and into an artist’s brain, is to educate that eye and brain, as our American life cannot. I don’t mean that an artist, or anyone else who is American, should pass his days here. But a year or two of study here, must be vastly beneficial to a man whose sphere is to be art, and whose aim is improvement.
W. W. Story to Mr. Cranch
The streets look dark and smoky, after Paris, and it seems as if the houses had been moved down of their tops, they are so low and uncorniced. The parks are grand lungs. The people are a funny, canty set of shaven, pious people, but honest and conscientious. The women are far prettier than I had remembered them, perhaps from contrast with the Parisians. All of them are fresh in color and blooming. A good many fine beasts and a band at the Theological Gardens, as Edie used to call them. . . . Lord Palmerston savage and in the impotence of age, Dizzy shooting Parthian arrows that sting, and Sir Edward Lytton making elaborate speeches after his ground has been knocked from under him, are really worth seeing. It is very interesting and very admirably arranged. I saw your “Nahant” at Sturgis’s the other day. It looked very well and they are delighted with it. The rocks, as I said, looked really rocky. . . . We eat and drink with numbers of people, despite the lateness of the season.
From a letter describing the writer’s first sight of London, whither his friend, James Russell Lowell, had taken him:—
To Mr. Cranch
We came directly to Bulstrode Street, where we found a cordial welcome from the Storys. It is a very quiet part of the city, looking very like Boston, except the aforesaid blackness of the houses. I have a little room of Story’s on the fourth floor, which they insisted on my occupying, and on my being their guest. I remonstrated, but in vain.
About eight o’clock we all went to dine at Russell Sturgis’s. Everything was in grand style. We were received in the entry (you must know the houses are all arranged precisely like American houses), by five or six magnificent serving-men in livery. Then we were ushered up a great carpeted stairway into the large drawing-room, where a dozen other guests were assembled. Mr. and Mrs. Sturgis were very agreeable and looked very handsome. No less than sixteen persons sat down to dinner, and were served, course after course, by the resplendent servants, headed by the most gentlemanly of black-coated and white-chokered butlers. Beside Mrs. Sturgis there were three other ladies. All seemed to be English except our party. . . .
This morning after breakfast, Greenough, the sculptor, came in, much to the surprise of the Storys and of Lowell. He is going soon to Paris where he intends residing, for a time at least. . . . The Storys are laying out a programme of places to be visited—even Stonehenge and Stratford are talked of. . . .
James Russell Lowell to Mr. Cranch
Tuesday. (August. 1855.)
I am astounded to find myself writing to you–but God bless you! Good-bye.
JACOPO BARBABOSSA.
To Mrs. Stearns
In London I saw Browning several times, and Thackeray, with whom I dined, with Story and Lowell, at the Garrick Club . . . . Browning is about publishing a new volume—or rather two volumes—of poems. I look for them very eagerly. He is, in my opinion, the great poet of the day. I don’t know any one teeming with such rich life and thought as Browning.
Tennyson has a new volume out, called “Maud.” It contains beautiful things.
As for my humble self,—not that I put myself beside these high singers,—I write scarcely anything. But I live in hopes of doing something worth publishing some day. If I publish, I shall make a severe selection of my poems probably, for the older I grow, the more rigorous a critic I become.
Last winter I wrote a child’s story called “The Last of the Huggermuggers,” about a good giant, which, if it is ever published, will, I think, amuse you and your children. I illustrated it, and drew the designs on wood for the engraver. It is now in the hands of G. W. Curtis, who is trying to get a publisher for it. I should like you to see it. It is amusing, with some pathos at the end. Poor Georgie always cried at the last part of it. . . .
Mr. Cranch had the sorrow of losing his father at this time. He was deeply grieved to learn of the death of Judge Cranch, at Washington, September 1, 1855.
James Russell Lowell to Mr. Cranch
I am very well off here, indeed, in a very kind family and with a uomo distinto, as they say in Italy, that is, a very distinct man—learned, simple, and queer. It is delightful to see him and his wife together after a marriage of thirty-six years,—she so proud of him and calling him her liebsts August, as if they were betrothed lovers still, and he whimsically and abstractedly affectionate like a great, tender-hearted bear who has acquired a mechanical habit of endearing manners. I have a pleasant room on the ground floor qui donne sur un petit jardin by a large glass door. I think I shall stay here till March. I like Dresden well enough. There are very pleasant walks, the theatre is excellent, and the gallery a fine one. The famous Correggios as usual disappointed me, except the Magdalen which is a charming little picture. The others are confusion and bosh. The “Tribute Money” of Titian is wonderful—and—what I was not prepared for, the head of Christ is the noblest by far I have ever seen,—tender with a kind of foreboding sorrow, and strong at the same time with subdued self-reliance. In the great Madonna, the expression of the mother and the child is truly divine—otherwise, the picture is meagre in color, and the secondary figures are comparatively poor, merely subserving the pyramidal design of the picture and the distribution of color and not to be looked at more than as a frame of a concordant shape would be. There is also the finest Claude I have ever seen, and a truly beautiful Madonna of Holbein. The Gallery is strong also in the Dutch school—a set of fellows who had admirable powers of expression with nothing to express.
One of my pleasantest experiences has been a visit to old Retzsch who showed us his portfolio with the delight of a child and quite as if it were the work of somebody else. There were some charming things in it, and it was very sweet to me that I could press the hand that had given me so much delight when I was younger and happier. R. has quite lost his mind, but there is nothing painful in his condition which is rather childlike than childish.
The little landscape you gave me stands opposite as I write on the top of my writing table and looks as brilliant as ever. I like to see it and to be reminded of you and of our London days together. I shall see you again in the spring, I hope, on my return from Spain. I do nothing but study German and Spanish, and have to use French as my dragoman, so that English will before long be a strange tongue to me . . . .
W.W. Story to Mr. Cranch
. . . We have had charming weather thus far, and although we are all parched up and absolutely kiln-dried with the furnaces which abound, we get along well enough—when we can get an ounce of air to breathe. No snow to speak of as yet. Thackeray has been delivering his lectures, which are easy, light, genial pictures of manners and men in the reign of the Georges. But the public don’t find them sad and hard and heavy enough. Ha light easy curricle comes to the door of the American mind to take it on an airing and give it a glimpse at the landscape and a breath of fresh air, the American mind snuffs up its nose and considers itself insulted. It says, Why not cart me in a load of the stones which are on your landscape or of coals which are underground, or of the forest after it is cut down and well sawed, and dump it at my door; that would be worth something. So although there are who like these lectures of Thackeray, because they are so genial and pleasant and satiric,—there is sour enough to make good punch,—Ticknorville aghast somewhat at the lightness says, “Does Thackeray think it worth while to come over the ocean to talk such light talk to us? What different lectures were those of Sir Charles Lyell on Geology! He gave us information of value.” Yes, dearest Cranchibus, it is information of value we seek; we scorn to be pleased. However, go not away with the idea that Thackeray has not succeeded. He has filled his pockets, for people had to go in order to criticise. . . .
You would laugh or weep, as the case might be, to behold me here, in the little back room of Little & Brown, hard at work all day, and up to my ears in the law. Think of this—within the last nine months I have written some four hundred printed pages of law to be added to the fourth edition of my book on “Contracts.” Did you say “Pegasus im poche”—for I thought I heard you whisper, “Law flourishes, but art is dead.” Are the vines dying all over the world? If Pegasus kicks up in harness, and free for a moment in letters, cuts Didos,—as pious Æneas, or any ass may,—forgive him. He has to go back to the plough, and have a hard pull of it too. The subject upon which I enter to-day is “Legal tender” which I shall find sufficiently tough, doubtless.
No poetry for me yet, but I have vague ideas of publishing a book of verses yet; ma chè sa? Life is so gritty and the wheels jar and squeak so here, that there is little music in them. Speaking of music, there is good music here in the way of quartette and orchestra, and with allowances all goes well; only there is the greatest bigotry in respect of the German school, and there are two cliques—one Italian and one German, who fight all day long, and one American headed by Fry and Bristow who pitch generally into every one and strike out right and left, every fight being a free fight. Oh, little Peddlington, how charming are thy ways!
W. W. Story to Mr. Cranch
Now I am going to advise you. Take it kindly, for it is so meant. Your “Huggermugger” was a considerable success in certain quarters, but your friends did not think it up to your mark. We all know that you can do much better if you choose to put your energies to work; and now you must do so. You must invent a new story, and tell it in a livelier and sharper way. Make the sentences tingle. Don’t get lazy over it, and think it will do itself. Brace up your faculties, and think you touch gold thereby. Here is a chance and a field for you. “Take the instant way” and don’t let the golden apple slip through your hands. I pray you on my knees, oh! Cranch, wake up to this and do it well. Put as much fun as possible into it. Be gay! You have got humor and we know it. Now dig it up and send it over to us in lumps. Be lively at least in your story, and set about it to-morrow. Don’t begin till you have settled all your plot in your mind; and if you can, let it hold a double story, an internal one and an external one, as Andersen’s do, so that the wiseacres shall like it as well as the children. Read “The Little Tin Soldier” of Andersen’s, “The Ugly Duckling,” “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” You can do this and you must. Your “Huggermugger” is a little too lachrymose and it isn’t new enough. Still, it has had success . . . . Now, having made an entering wedge, split open the log. You see the thing is worth while. Had the book been given to Phillips, Sampson & Co. six weeks earlier, all the edition would have been sold at once during the holidays. So you must be beforehand with this new work, and the publishers must have it by the end of July, certainly. You must make the illustrations, and be sure to draw them carefully. There is my advice. I have only your good at heart. You have made your pedestal—now put your statue on it.
I shall probably see you in the latter part of June. We have taken our passages for the 18th to Liverpool by the Arabia. But your work must be done, or nearly done then. Now don’t delay.
Your Fontainebleau picture, which Shaw has, was liked very much by Kensett and Tom Appleton. They think you have made a great push ahead. Study, you rascal, and do yourself justice!
To his brother Edward
. . . Last June I sent over another story, a continuation of the “Huggermuggers,” which is much better in subject, style, and in the designs. Phillips & Sampson are much delighted with it, and say no expense will be spared to make it the most splendid book ever published in Boston. This is pleasant and encouraging . . . .
The following are extracts from the Journal.
Barbizon is a little village situated on the verge of the Forest of Fontainebleau. It consists of one single street, about half a mile long, on the right and left of which are little one or two story, stone houses, inhabited chiefly by peasants. Some of them are picturesque, the straw being covered with rich green moss. They are of the rudest construction, and mostly old, and the court yards in front of them are beautifully ornamented with dung hills, straw, wood piles, carts, barrows, and other farming apparatus. Where the gravel walk should be conducting from the outer gate to the cottage, is usually a domestic lake, or puddle, through which you are expected to walk, as the geese do, to the door, if you have anything to say to the occupant, unless you prefer the soft carpeting of straw and manure on either side, where the chickens, turkeys, and all manner of poultry pick and scratch for a living. One or two little flower gardens I have seen and some attempt at neatness and ornament, for there are two or three artists of some reputation who live in Barbizon; but I think these innovators on dirt, disorder, and ignorance must be looked upon as the aristocrats of the village.
Barbizon has been for some time the resort of artists, who come down here to study and paint in the magnificent Forest of Fontainebleau. There are two hotels or taverns in the place: Gauve’s and Vannier’s. The former seems to be the most popular at present with the brothers of the brush. Formerly Vannier’s had the preference, and the salle-à-manger is handsomely adorned with paintings on the walls by various artists who have been guests there. I cannot say anything about Gauve’s tavern, as I have never stayed there.
Of my life here, I shall give a sketch. I arrive after sundown, a chilly October evening. I am welcomed by Madame Vannier, a good-looking young peasant woman dressed in the costume of the country, the first peculiarity of which, though it is a costume, common I believe, to all the country towns around Paris, is a handkerchief wrapped all around the head and entirely concealing the hair. Madame Vannier would be better looking still if her hair could be seen. But it seems as if all the country women, and even the little girls, are forbidden to show their hair—as if it were something to be ashamed of.
I dine very simply, smoke my pipe or cigar, and read a little over a few reluctant brands in the deep fire-place of the salle-à-manger and retire at 9 o’clock, the fashionable hour here for so doing. But as I am going to journalize I must begin with the day. I rise early then and breakfast on café-au-lait, toast and butter. Then I get my painting box in order, and strap it over my back; shoulder my bundle composed of painting umbrella and pique, stool and easel, and receive from Madame Vannier my pochon—a sack containing my lunch or second breakfast, which I hang on my shoulder. Thus accoutred I tramp to the fields. Arriving at the spot chosen for my day’s or morning’s work, I unpack umbrella, easel, stool, and pochon and set to work. At 12 or 1, I lunch. My second breakfast consists of a hunch of dry bread, a piece of meat, a scrap of cheese or sausage, salt, a pear, and a half bottle of sour wine. But what a glorious appetite one has working out of doors! The plainest fare has a relish unknown to the dweller at home. After lunch a cigar or pipe, and then work again, or else roam about in search of subjects, or to study the trees and rocks, till near sundown, when I return to my inn.
But now comes the prosaic, and by no means enlivening, part of the day. At present I happen to be alone here. So I have to fall upon my own resources, to lighten the slow dull hours till bed time. There is a considerable difference between life out of doors, and life in doors here. I come back to a cold room; a cold salle-à-manger, with cold brick floors, and dinner not ready. About six it comes on table. A huge loaf of dry bread, a bottle of sour wine, pewter spoons and forks. Then first, soup—poor enough—often a soupe maigre, or a soupe à l’oaeille, with lots of bread soaked in it; then boiled meat; then a roast, or a cutlet, some vegetable—either potatoes or cauliflower, and I remember twice having one artichoke. We are put on allowance—always enough to be sure, but never anything left over. For dessert always one bunch of grapes. Once, when there were four of us, we had each four bad walnuts apiece. O! I forgot the salad! We have that, and Chevon always dresses it, whether we want it or not, for he said, otherwise it would appear again, the same salad, to-morrow. After dinner comes the luxury of a fire to warm our shivering limbs. But what a fire! We always had to ask for it, and when it came, it was always two or three cat-sticks or twigs, and one chunk of asbestos; and the evening was divided between our pipes, and punching and blowing this unwilling and sulking fire. When the cat-sticks burned out, all was over with it. Never did I see such wood! It must have been artificially prepared and warranted not to ignite. Over and over the chunk was turned, like an uneasy sleeper, on its bed of ashes and dull coals; but no flame could be got out of it. Then the tallow candles gave us some occupation, as they required to be snuffed every five minutes. And so, with punching the asbestos chunk, and drinking the remainder of our sour wine, and lighting fresh pipes, the long evening wore away.
Now, being alone, it is longer than ever. The bedchamber is as cold and cheerless as below stairs; brick floor, and not a rag of a carpet or rug to stand on, before getting into bed. No furniture but a chair and a table. Cold, coarse linen sheets; sometimes dampish—but I blew up Madame about that—no woollen blankets, and the bed so short that I have to lie diagonally and dream transversely. In the morning I wash myself in a basin of the size of a breakfast plate, and I wipe myself on a cotton towel the size of a napkin, and tie my cravat at a glass six inches by three and one half, an aggravating glass too, which distorts my face horribly, and makes me look like four or five ugly men caricatured.
The country people here seem to be of the roughest sort: sordid, close, ignorant, superstitious, coarse, loud-tongued, unmusical and altogether of the earth earthy. When they converse, they scream at each other, like geese. The talk of the men is like the barking of dogs. That of the women like the screaming of peacocks, and such lungs! Madame Vannier is one of the most refined of them, I dare say. But Madame is a jeune avare, thinks of nothing but francs and sous, and how to save and scrimp. Two tallow candles for one person would horrify her; more than three cat-sticks and one asbestos, or gutta percha chunk on the fire, would greatly astound her. The other day she begged me to give notice the day before I went away, because otherwise the extra meat that was provided was wasted.
. . . Friday evening. The last day of October. I am still here, working hard all day in the Forest and spending my evenings alone. I am getting so that I cannot speak a sentence in French straight. I have forgotten how my own voice sounds. Moreover, I was so foolish as to bring hardly any books. I can’t write. The room is too cold, and my wits grow torpid for want of stimulus. I told Madame Vannier, this evening, that I thought I should leave to-morrow. She said she had bought a quantity of meat, and that I must stay to eat it, and not go till Monday . . . . The weather has been splendid: cold and frosty in the mornings, but under the shelter of the rocks I can work comfortably. The color of the trees is at its finest; not equal, of course, to our American October, but fine for Europe. My spot for studies is where I have been painting, on the rocky side of the Pavé or Grande Route, next the open space where the oaks are. Here you have a specimen of everything for which the Forest is characteristic. Fine oaks, beeches, and birches. Rocks covered with moss and lichens, interspersed with trees, and piled up on the hillside in wild and savage grandeur. And a pleasant, sheltered spot it is these cold days. Then it is near the great road where travellers and artists frequently pass, which prevents it from being too lonely. And the distance is about a pleasant walk from Barbizon. The trees are full of red squirrels; it is a pleasant sight to see them passing up and down the trunks, and from the boughs of one tree to another. Over the woods of the Bas Breau, on the other side the road, the crows scream themselves hoarse, and at night the owls hoot dismally.
This reminds me of the night of the eclipse a few weeks ago, when I heard three owls, as I walked through the Forest with some artists. It was a splendid moonlight when we started. None of us knew of the eclipse. Very soon I discovered that a piece of her ladyship was over-shadowed by the earth. We were on our way through the Gorge d’Apremont. As we descended the valley, a fog lay below, with precisely the appearance of a lake. We walked down to the Dormoir, and around through the woods to the Pavé. How solemn it was in the Forest! In some places almost pitch dark, and the faint eclipse light falling here and there in dim white patches—unearthly and mysterious. Beethoven’s moonlight sonata describes it better than anything I can write. We had a long walk of it and returned late to Barbizon.
I wonder if Madame Vannier’s meat will spoil, if I leave to-morrow.
In his usual unselfish way, Mr. Curtis writes a long letter regarding Mr. Cranch’s business affairs, in which the writer was untiringly helpful, before announcing the most important of personal news.
George William Curtis to Mr. Cranch
And of all things, use me. Let me contract and do the work. One man on the spot is worth twenty in Paris. And so, put another Christmas story on the stocks and go to work of evenings upon your acquaintance with Couture and the rest.4 And if you don’t know them, go and be introduced and see; for the point is to have the account a personal experience.
. . . Your last letter, November 10, came into my hands upon my wedding day, and even as I stood robed and ready for the happiness that was waiting. There had been a chilly storm all the day before and night, but about nine in the morning of the 26th of November, June came back again,—the windows and doors were open. There might have been roses upon the lawn, as there were in the cheeks of my bride, and in the softest summer sunshine and among a few of our nearest and dearest, your letter in my pocket all the time, to represent you and Lizzie,—we were married. Perhaps there was never a wedding with so little cloud, and if I can blow it off, there will never be any more in the married life than there was in the marrying.
Mr. Cranch to his sister, Mrs. Eliot
But seriously, it is dreadful to think of, especially for the poor laborers and mechanics. Heaven only knows what the end is to be. As for ourselves, we have had nothing to lose. We have had no banker these three years, and couldn’t fail. “He that is down, need fear no fall.” At our most prosperous times, we never see ahead more than a few months; so we have been comparatively easy in this universal crash. But what the future is to be is always an uncertainty with me. The artist must suffer, because art is a luxury, and the day of luxuries is over. Still I hope for better times.
I don’t know what we should have done, had I not been so fortunate this summer and fall, as to sell about $600 worth of pictures; principally to some Chicago people. I was enabled to make a flying trip to Switzerland for the first time, and have painted several Swiss pictures . . . . Some day we shall all come back to America, but not yet. It costs too much to live in New York. Meanwhile, my dear sister, remember always your affectionate brother.
W. W. Story to Mr. Cranch
I saw by the outside cover of the “Atlantic Monthly” that “Kobboltozo” has at last appeared, and I hope that it will “put money in your purse.” The designs, which were all I ever saw, were very admirable, and if they have been done justice to, your book cannot fail to succeed.
What are you at now of new? Burrow and dig out of that brain of yours something else or “never more be officer of mine.” You see already by my two quotations that Othello is in my head, and how should it be otherwise since hearing Salvini the other night perform the Moor so as to leave nothing to be asked. His impersonation is magnificent, and if Salvini goes to Paris again, as he probably will, do not miss the opportunity of hearing him. You of course being in Paris will pay Parisian prices for that pleasure; but here we can listen to him any night for two pauls, and we have a box every fourth night of the whole season for eighteen dollars. So we all go . . . .
Here we have had a wonderful season—cold, but constant in sunniness. The day before yesterday, however, the pot cracked, and for forty-eight hours the rain has rivered the streets. Such a carnival as there has been for these two days. Mud and confetti in equal doses with masses of wet flowers to fling in the faces of friends. What inimitable good humor there is in the Corso, despite the rain! The black eyes laugh, and the merry voices ring from the contadini, drenched to the skin though they are, and their six months’ savings lost in their spoiled costumes. Ma pazienza! . . .
Hatty Hosmer is here,—and by the way, I nearly forgot my promise to her. She came to my studio the other day really exercised in mind upon a costume and head of Zenobia of whom she is intending to make a statue. I said, “Write to Paris—Bibliothèque Impériale – fine head and costume.” “No friend,” she said. I responded, “Cranch is an active, tremendously energetic fellow. Write to him and ask him to go to the Bibliothèque and get a sketch of costume and head for you.” “Don’t know him well enough,” she said. “I do, and I will write and ask him.” “Do,” she said, “and it will be sure to be done if he is as energetic as you say.”
There is a job for you. Don’t swear, but expend a sou in tracing paper, go to the Bibliothèque, trace a head and dress of Zenobia if you can find one, and send it to me. That’s a good fellow. Any information on Zenobia gratefully received by H. H . . . .
Remember me warmly to Greenough—he ought to be here. Rome is really the only place to live in. One only stays in Paris.
Mr. Cranch to his wife
There is material here for months and months, and I wish I could afford to stay . . . . Every moment is precious. We work often till 7 o’clock. If Mrs. H. pays me for the study, I may stay longer, except that I haven’t clothes enough, for I brought my old things as if I were going to rough Barbizon; here one must go more decent and respectable. I should like to have painted some open scenes; spring fields and distances, and may yet, but there is nothing like the Forest. One could paint here forever and always find something new. It is popular too; not a day passes that visitors do not come, searching out the noted trees and rocks, as they would chef d’ œuvre in a gallery.
If I begin to describe anything, I shan’t know where to begin or where to leave off. And we have to go up the Lake of Lucerne to-day and so have no time.
This journey over the Bernese Oberland is one of the finest in all Switzerland. Lauterbrunnen, the Staubbach, the Wengern Alps, the Jungfrau, the Mönch, the Eiger, the Welterhorn, the Wallhorn, Schreckhorn, Grindelwald, Meyringen, etc., etc., all have so completely filled my mind that I just want to pour out like these abundant torrents and waterfalls, which I have been seeing all along, but I can’t do it on paper and in a hurry. I shall thank Providence all my life that I came.
I have made some good sketches, but you must not judge of what I shall do, and of what I have in my memory and imagination, from the meager outlines which I bring back. If you see only these, you will be disappointed perhaps, but if you felt a., I do, how a whole new set of forms, and suggestions for pictures, has been stamped on my brain, how entirely this journey has filled me with images of grandeur and loveliness, of which I can give you no possible idea, even had I leisure, you would rejoice as I do that I came, and think it well worth the cost . . . .
After Paris, Rome looks old and dingy enough, but so natural. Yesterday morning I saw old Beppo with the withered legs at his post on the stairs. His head is quite white. He has got to be an old man, but his face is as jolly as ever, and the same wheedling voice, with his “Buon giorno, Signore.” I deliberately stopped, opened my purse, took out a heavy two baioccho piece and dropped it in his hat,—for the sake of old times. I told him it was ten years since I had seen him, whereupon he smiled sweetly and enquired after my family. I could as little have missed old Beppo in Rome, and on his old place, as I could have missed the boat fountain at the bottom of the Spanish Stairs . . . . The other day I saw a woman who was a servant of ours. I had forgotten her, but she remembered me, and asked after you and Georgino, and kissed my hand.
My “Lake of Lucerne” also is much praised. The sky is glowing with light. It is near sunset, the rays breaking through the clouds and flooding the distant mountain. The distance even you would think distant. The water reflects the light of the sky, and is warm and still and glowing,—a boat and figures on the right, and a reedy flat foreground,—a boat with pointed sails in the middle distance.
My studio is only a few doors nearer the Spanish Stairs than we lived ten years ago. It is quite large. Two windows open to the east with shutters to keep out the light when I paint, and to let in the Italian sunshine in the morning when I want it. One of the windows opens on a balcony and loggia, where I keep my wood. They have put me up the oddest-looking stove, of a decidedly monumental pattern, not unlike a tombstone, and of an indescribable grey color. The pipe goes out of the window with a sort of Roman twist, and both it and the stove are well smeared with mud to stop the cracks and keep smoke from coming out except at the right place. I have laid in my wood for the winter. And do you remember the bundles of cane we used to kindle the fires with? I had quite forgotten them. Now they revive old memories of the Quattro Fontane and of Michelina.
. . . I wish you could look in and see how comfortable I am here. All day long the sun lies in my chamber, which is large and airy. My tombstone stove in the studio is better than it looks. It takes very little wood to heat it, and the chunks have a marvellous vitality, for I always find something left when I return from dinner. Then if I spend the evening at home, I transfer my brands to the fireplace in my chamber, which with a good fire, such as is now burning before me, and the very comfortable arm chair, a poltrone as they call it, becomes as cheerful by night as it is by day.
Last Wednesday evening the Storys gave a great ball in their palatial rooms. It was very brilliant-altogether the most brilliant party of the season. There was dancing all the evening, and some four or five rooms open. In many of the Roman houses dancing is not allowed—at Minister Stockton’s, for instance, for fear the ceiling would cave in. There were lots of English and a good many Italians,—some of them Contessas and Marchesas, and a sprinkling of Americans: some of the English women very handsome and a great show of dresses and diamonds. Mrs. Emelyn herself looked remarkably well.
. . . Wednesday was at a party at Miss Cushman’s, her first reception in her new apartment in the Via Gregoriana. I met her in the street in the afternoon, and she asked me to come to tea. I had no idea of meeting a party. However, I have learned by experience that a social evening tea means a dress coat and so was prepared. Miss Cushman is a nice cordial genuine woman. As people say, “No nonsense about her.” She has a lovely apartment newly furnished with the most exquisite taste, with old carved oak furniture, curtains, pictures, and statues . . . . Lots of Americans I knew were at Miss Cushman’s. Miss Cushman sang a ballad of Lockhart’s in a recitative style. Mrs. Tilten sang Schubert’s “Barcarolle,” and Rackeman played . . . .
To-night I am going to a party at the Sargents’. Everybody is to be there, I am told—and it is to be a white-glove party. I have found a French dégraisseur on the Corso and left five pairs of gloves to be cleaned. He and his wile complain bitterly of their being obliged to suspend work on the fête days. If the police find them working on fête days, they are fined a dollar—and these fete days are forever coming. I don’t wonder they complain. I told them I agreed with them, that it was a tyranny of the Church and Government, and that they ought to be paid by the Government for all the days they lose.
Yesterday I went to Story’s to get the address of a haircutter, when we had a discussion about my hair. It resulted in a capillary reform, by which I am assured I am at least five years younger. My hair is cut, and I wear it henceforth parted in the middle, and my beard trimmed close at the sides and long in front. You have no idea what an improvement it is. I wore it so last night, and two ladies complimented me upon the change.
I forgot to tell you that I saw Salvini in “Othello.” I never saw such wonderful acting in all my life. It was perfect. Such dignity, such ease, such nature,—the result of the most consummate art,—such a sympathetic and musical voice, such bursts of passion, with not the slightest rant. It left nothing to be desired. He looked the complete Moor of Venice. Every gesture, look, tone was so natural that I was completely carried away by my feelings. Miss Cushman, who saw him the same evening for the first time in this part, told me she had never seen anything so fine, and she is a most admirable judge.
George William Curtis to Mr. Cranch
July 6, 1859.
I see that you are blue. I wish I could do something to take out the indigo. When I think of your coming home and look round to study the chances, I see the old chaps scrabbling alone in the old way. Church is considered by the public, King. Then comes Kensett. They have plenty to do, and good pay. Tom Hicks paints away . . . . The others of the old line are at the old thing in the old way; among the new there is no very eminent name. Undoubtedly, there is a greater general respect for art and artists here. It is quite “the thing” to know them and to have them. Then Belmont and Aspinwall and Wright, at Hoboken, open their galleries as marquises do in London to ticketed people . . . . I should say that the chances are rather ·more favorable than they used to be. But it is in your art as in mine—a few draw the prizes. A great many of your friends wish you would try drawing on wood. There is more demand a good deal than there used to be, and a good many more workers. A man must be on the spot and have a certain chic, and then he has a chance.
My advice to literary aspirants always is “Punch’s” to those who would marry, “Don’t.” And I say it because I know if they have the thing in them, the “don’t” won’t prevent its coming out. So I feel about artists both here and abroad. I should think an artist would prefer to live in Rome, but I should also suppose that one who would succeed there would also succeed here. And if there must be a fight for it, why not fight in the midst of friends? Perhaps—and certainly more’s the pity!—you know it is pleasanter to be poor in foreign countries than at home.
How about your boy, my namesake? Is n’t he to be an American, and ought n’t he to be learning his own country? I feel strongly that a man who is to live here ought to begin as a boy.
In this weather it seems as if we might all be lazzaroni and live on air and sunshine. But we don’t. The carpenters are hard at work building me a house (Papa, paymaster!) close by, and I am hard at work coining money to keep it withal. I have to work methodically and industriously, but I am very well and so are my wife and boy, who runs about and begins to talk.
I wish I could clear up the perplexed music in your eyes as I see them in the photograph, and in yourself as you write it in the letter. We send our dearest loves to you and yours.
Mr. Cranch to Mrs. Brooks
My dear sister, I have so much to talk about, when I begin writing to you, that I could foam all over the paper, like an uncorked beer-bottle. But I must be brief this time, and write again. I am quite busy now copying a picture in the Luxembourg Gallery; a large view in Venice, by a distinguished colorist here, named Ziem. Copying is new to me, and I like the novelty, but should get very weary of it, if I were obliged to keep it up. . . . But what good times we shall have when you come!—what long talks about everybody and everything! You will come and sit in my studio and I will read my poems and show you my pictures, and the children will know their cousins, and teach them to talk French,—though I dare say Nannie speaks it, as you say. We will show you the French side of life, and all the lions and the monkeys, and we will have some merry times, and forget the sorrows of the past.7
To his wife
Think of Ziem while I am painting? Of course I do. I see Ziem everywhere. I understand things in his pictures, I did not before. I saw one of his twilights the other evening, from the public garden, the only place, by the way where there are trees, which it is refreshing to see, after so much water. And I have in petto a picture from that place. But Ziem takes poet’s liberties. It is his own mind’s-eye Venice that he paints.
John S. Dwight to Mr. Cranch
He says:—
“During one of the sad midnight vigils, as I was watching by the pillow of my little girl, there suddenly sounded on my inward ear that magnificent Norse hymn (you know it, Cranch, Haydn’s Canzonet ‘Spirit Song.) which your Mary used to chant with such inspiration: ‘My spirit wanders free, my spirit wanders free, and waits, and waits for thee,’ etc. I had, it is true, been thinking much of you; still, it seemed like the actual presence of your risen friend, and never have I heard a sound, outwardly, that soared so strongly in clear ether as that thrilling intonation ‘Free!’ It came over me like an experience by sympathy of the fluent, all-visiting, swiftly transient, bright glancing life of the spirits, which was full of joy. And I cannot doubt that, whencesoever originated, this midnight thought perfectly expresses the fact as to your Mary. It must be a source of exhaustless satisfaction, that the personal relation between you sprang out of, and was pervaded with, like the sap of its life,—the deepest unity in two immortal elements:—the art of music, and the ideal of social harmony. Meeting once at this centre of natural and spiritual beauty, you have an assurance of meeting there again and again, in ever deepening, ever purifying affinity. Music and social harmony must be two of the choicest, freshest, most exalting joys of the angels. And well may you respond to the grand tone ‘Free’; your friend is ‘waiting.’ How her generous, grand, aspiring nature is expanding itself, in congenial society! How fondly and faithfully she watches over the loved, left behind!”
I have made some very pleasant friends in Berlin, or rather, Thayer8 had already made them for me, and I have heard incredible quantities of the best sort of music. Mme. Clara Schumann lives here and has made me free to her rehearsals. I have heard several regular symphony concerts by the best orchestra; symphonies of Beethoven, Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Haydn; and even the Ninth Choral Symphony, in a coffee salon(!), people sitting round some hundred of little tables with coffee, beer, cigars, and knitting(!), all as still as mice! As opera I have already heard here “Don Juan,” Gluck’s “Orpheus,” with Joanna Wagner, “Fidelio,” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” capitally acted, so as to preserve the poetry of the fairies and the pure fun of Bottom, with Mendelssohn’s music. Also Beethoven’s “Ruins of Athens” music, which is every note inspired. In Dresden, too, I heard the “Zauberflöte” and Weber’s “Preciosa.” . . . Making the friendship of Joachim (ask Thayer about him) in Dresden, was a rich comfort to me. He is a true man, as well as great artist. In Leipzig too I had a rich week musically, and I mean to go there again now and then, and spend a week or two.
I knew you would like Thayer, and I am glad, both for his sake and for yours, that you see so much of him. But do pray add your counsel to that of all his friends here, and tell him to write his book upon his present knowledge and not wait until he shall know everything. I fear he already knows too much. It never was intended in God’s plan that any man should be too closely known. I doubt not God himself uses the divine faculty of not seeing, and of forgetting, as regards a thousand and one small particulars.
I was very glad that you realized your wish of going to Venice; and I hope some day to see some of the fruits of that. . . .
Thanks to the Swiss tramp, it gave me a fresh stock of physical strength; else I know not how I could have home the blow that has come upon me so well as I have. Thayer will tell you how I saw the Emperor and Empress at St. Martin in Savoy; and in what clouds of impenetrable fog I groped my way over into the Vale of Chamouni, and how the persistent rain drove me, after one glorious revelation of Mount Blanc, to abandon my North of Italy and Stelvio plan, and beat a retreat from Martigny, across lake Leman, to Munich, and exchange nature for art. Ah I just then it was, as I resolved on that retreat, amid that outward gloom, that the soul and sunshine of my home was passing away from earth forever!
Don’t let me forget to thank you for your trouble about the trunk. It came duly the day after your letter; and after infinite fuss and patience at the custom house I got it off to the hotel. These stupid, self-important, ceremonious, fussy little Prussian officials! It cost me about a whole day’s waiting and running about. After the trunk was found and I had paid the freight, the question was to find the Herr Inspector, and have it examined. There I stood, key in hand; but A sent me to B, and B to C, some fifteen in all; each took my papers and scribbled something on them, but nobody did anything. It was hours before I could get the trunk actually examined. Well it was a good study of Prussian life and Zoll-verein!
To John S. Dwight
I have often thought of you, dear friend, going back to your lonely house, and even now as I think of you, in the dim cold light of that great calamity which came upon you, and which you must have felt with tenfold poignancy in your return home. . . . Believe me, that though I have said little about your bereavement, there is no one who has more sympathized with you.
As for myself, I have little to say, worth writing. I jog on at about the usual pace, and with the usual ups and downs. The year has been rather smoother on the whole, pecuniarily, than usual, and I have had several sales and orders. But for some time, the good luck has ceased, and I fear, for a few years to come, the tide will be against us. At the rate things are going on in America, strict economy must be the programme for some time, for rich as well as poor. And “inter arma silent artes!” When the end is to be, of this greatest revolution and struggle the world has yet seen, is beyond my powers of conjecture. One thing, however, I do feel sure of- and that is worth years of bloody battle, and exhaustive expense—that the country is beginning to breathe a wholesomer air than ever it did. If we can get rid of slavery and its corruption, and brutalizing influences, North and South, it is worth all the terrible crises we are passing through. It is the valley of the shadow of death, and there are goblins and devils enough in our path, but there is light, and health, and peace beyond. . . .
. . . I am going to-day to Notre Dame to hear, if I can wedge my way through the crowd, Mozart’s “Requiem,” performed on the occasion of the burial of the Archbishop. But to me it will be a Requiem over our brave young dead on the battle-field three thousand miles away.
——————————
1 William H. Huntington was a quaint character all made up of oddities, kindnesses, and good taste in art, which a residence of many years in Paris, where he was correspondent of the New York Tribune for nearly half a century, accentuated. At least twice a week the year round would he come to our domicile with a huge packet of Tribunes. His little “at homes” at 8 Rue de Boursault were sought after for many years by Americans who visited Paris. He had a collection of rare books and pictures which were very well worth seeing. His manner of entertaining was charming, so simple and individual. Upon invitation, Mrs. Cranch would take some teaspoons and teacups in her pocket and pour the tea. He would meet friends at the door, saying all the servants had gone into the country.
He established a Frenchwoman, Madame Busque, in a little shop where American specialties were sold. Baked beans, griddle cakes, and pumpkin pies were much sought after by her American clientèle. An American man or woman coming home, who had not been to his teas, had lost something by not meeting this quaint personality in his charming rooms. There was one corner of Paris unvisited.
2 The youngest child of James Russell Lowell.
3 Quincy Adams Cranch.
4 Mr. Curtis had begged his friend to write a letter about the studios and the artists of Paris for Putnam’s Magazine.
5 Gardiner Hubbard Clarke.
6 Mrs. Rufus Dawes.
7 Among the many pleasant memories of our Parisian life are the Sunday visits the children and their father paid to the Jardin d’ Acclimatation and the Jardin des Plantes, or the hours spent in the unfrequented parts of the Bois, where Mr. Cranch painted trees or landscapes. Those were happy times, with balmy days in the open, George making a collection of butterflies, the little sister and brother playing about with all Nature for a playground.
8 Alexander W. Thayer. He was collecting information for a book on Beethoven.
9 Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Bridgham Curtis.
All Sub-Works of The Life and Letters of Christopher Pearse Cranch (1917):
PDF Sub-Works open in a new tab. Close the tab when done viewing to return here.
- Preface.
- Chapter I. Ancestry.
- Chapter II. Student and Preacher.
- Chapter III. Western Experiences.
- Chapter IV. Transcendentalism.
- Chapter V. Painting — Marriage.
- Chapter VI. First Visit to Europe — The Voyage — Rome.
- Chapter VII. Palestrina — Olevano — Second Roman Winter.
- Chapter VIII. Naples — Sorrento.
- Chapter IX. Florence and the Brownings.
