CHAPTER IX
1873
LETTER FROM GENERAL SHERMAN-LOSS OF THE “ATLANTIC”-THE BOYHOOD HOME OF NAPOLEON III. AND OF HIS MOTHER, QUEEN HORTENSE-A COMPANION TELLS OF THE PRINCE’S PRANKS AND STUDIES-JOSEPHINE’S HARP-ARENABERG FULL OF NAPOLEON RELICS-WE HAVE A LONG INTERVIEW WITH THE EX-EMPRESS EUGENIE-LETTER FROM GENERAL SHERMAN-SPEAKS OF THIERS.
May Day, 1873.-The terrible wreck of the White Star Liner “Atlantic,” took place two weeks since. Five hundred souls lost. I had secured passage for our young friend, Hirzel. He writes how he clung to the rigging that cold morning, and witnessed poor human beings gradually freezing, letting loose their hold, and dropping from the rigging down into the sea. He was almost the last one taken off on to the rocks.
General Sherman speaks of this disaster, as well as of the Modoc war:
“Washington, D. C., April 24, 1873.
“Dear Byers: Your last letter came promptly, and I have sent it out to Mrs. Sherman, who is on a visit to Ohio, and, of course, demands prompt notice of everything concerning Minnie. We get from her letters regularly and promptly, the last being dated at Castellamare, near Naples. She seemed unusually well, and said she would soon return to Rome, and then begin her northward progress. The Grahams will probably move slower than she wants to, and she will probably catch a favorable opportunity to reach you in Switzerland. I advise her to take this course; get near you, and then maneuver from that as her base for the summer. She does not seem very anxious to go to Vienna, though I advise it for no other reason than to see the Fair and the city, and also to see the family of our Minister, Mr. Jay. I want her to come home in September or October, and to arrange for her passage as early as possible, for there will be a rush in the autumn westward. Notwithstanding the loss of the ‘Atlantic,’ I have not lost faith in the White Star Line. It was not the fault of the ship that she was foundered on the rock at a twelve-mile speed. No ship could stand that; still, if she is afraid, then the Cunard Line will be preferable.
“Our spring has been very backward, indeed, but the trees are trying now to blossom and to leaf. The grass is very green, and I hope that winter is past. The President is away at the West and the Secretary of War in Texas, so times here are dull, although we find the Indians are trying their annual spring business; not very peaceful. You will have heard of the killing of General Canby, and the treacherous conduct of the Modocs. I hope the last one of them will be hunted out of their rocks and killed. I have not heard of the actual coming of Mr. Rublee, but notice that Consul Upton of Geneva has been named as chargé during his (Rublee’s) absence. If I hear of his resignation, I will endeavor to remind the President of your claims, but must warn you that against political combinations I find my influence very weak.
“Present me kindly to Mrs. Byers, and, believe me, truly your friend,
W. T. Sherman.”
The home of Queen Hortense, Napoleon’s stepdaughter, is on the Rhine, only a couple of hours’ ride from Zurich. One of our delightful excursions was to go and see the falls at Schaffhausen, and then take a little steamer up the river to “Arenaberg,” the beautiful chateau where the Queen lived for twenty years, and where she died. Here, too, her son, Napoleon III., lived, as a youth. In the stable building, close to the chateau, were his sleeping-rooms and study. Louis Napoleon once said he would rather be a fine country gentleman than Emperor of France. He got his tastes for the beautiful in nature in this boyhood home. The chateau sits above the Rhine, with beautiful hills behind it, and the historic lake of Constance close by. It is on Swiss territory, and is a spot of perfect loveliness. It is the one spot where Napoleon’s days were all happy days, and the one spot where Queen Hortense led a happy life. The scene is so perfectly enchanting, any one, not burdened with a crown, should find delight in just existing there. The Queen’s room, in the upper corner of the villa and overlooking the river and the lake, and with ravishing vistas beyond, is just as she left it at her death. There are her harp and her paint-brushes and her table. In this room she wrote the famous song of “Partant Pour la Syrie,” that moved all France. Walter Scott translated it into exquisite English.
I went often to Constance, and among my acquaintances was one who had been a boyhood friend of the Emperor. It was Dr. J. Marmor, a retired linen merchant in the town. He still corresponded with France’s ex-ruler, for Sedan’s day was over, as was the terrible scene in that little farmhouse by Donghery. Dr. Marmor showed me his letters from Napoleon, and gave me the wax impress of his private seal from one, together with some writing of the Emperor’s.
No one in Constance will forget the day when Napoleon, at the height of his power, came from Paris, to visit the home of his childhood. What grand preparations there were, what decorations, banners, bands, cannon; what a gilded equipage, for the Emperor to head the procession in! Suddenly the train whistle shrieks. “The Emperor! The Emperor!” cries the crowd, as he descends to the carpeted platform. The big, gilded carriage and the flunkies wait. “Where is my friend, Dr. Marmor?” asks the Emperor. He is sitting out there, in his old, one-horse buggy, looking at the scene, hoping for just a glance at Napoleon, as he will pass among the self-appointed bigwigs and flunkies. Suddenly the Emperor sees him, grasps him by the hand, and, springing into the old buggy, cries: “Drive on. To-day I ride with Marmor.” Then Marmor’s one-horse chaise, with nobody in it but the Emperor and himself, heads the procession through the city. At first, everybody stared, and then everybody cheered. Marmor, in five minutes, had become the first man in Constance. That incident has been his pride ever since.
When I called on him, and told him I wanted to write for a magazine something about Napoleon’s boyhood, he gave himself wholly to my service, went with me everywhere, and told of a hundred frolics he and the young prince had had in the neighborhood. Prince Napoleon would have been a poor secretary for the Y. M. C. A. He was an awfully fast boy, according to one who “had been there” and knew all about it. Some other old folks whom I met in Constance, knew things also peppery to relate, were they more than big pranks, or worth the writing down.
Hortense’s chateau is two miles or so outside the town. “Many a time,” said Marmor, “after half a night’s frolic with a few of us here in town, have I galloped with him out home, yelling half the way. It must have been the beer. When we got there, I slept till morning with him in the barn, the place where he had his study. He studied, too, spite of his fastness,” said the doctor. “How he read books! just as people nowadays read newspapers. He read everything, and he remembered it all. He was a generous soul, too; everybody said that. He was a famous youth for his kindness to the poor, just like his mother; only she was better. What a swimmer he was, what a wrestler, what a horseman, what a rake! As to horses,” the doctor went on, “why it was a common habit of his to mount, not by the stirrup, but by a single bound over the crupper and into the saddle.” It is curious now to know that Louis Napoleon once was a captain of militia here, and also a member of the school board. “Bismarck never hatched out more schemes in Berlin, than the young prince did out there in the barn, over the horses. In his mind’s eye, he was Emperor of France a dozen times out there. I guess all men do that, who have ambition,” continued the doctor, “and he was the most ambitious boy I ever knew. But nobody thought he had any chance for anything.”
The attendants showed us all the rooms in the Queen’s villa. Here, in the upper east corner, is the one she died in, in 1837. The sun comes into it, and it has enchanting views. At the end of the room stands, not only her harp, but, near by it, the harp of Josephine. The villa is full of souvenirs of the great Napoleon, too; the clock that stood still the night he died at St. Helena; swords, banners, presents from kings, etc. In the garden, in a chapel, is a white marble figure of Hortense, kneeling before the altar. It is one of the beautiful things of Europe.
The Empress Eugenie comes here summers. No wonder; all is so enchanting. All except the memories. Right over there, almost in sight, on an island in the lake, is a castle, the summer home of the old German Emperor, who crushed out her husband’s life. Greatness must all be paid for.
*****
What we had seen, made us now the more anxious to see the ex-Empress herself. Sometimes she was here at the chateau; oftener, at the little watering place of Baden, half an hour from Zurich.
Our chance came. Miss Sherman, the daughter of General Sherman, was visiting for a month at our home by the lake (July and August, 1873). She was a good Catholic, and her mother was the only American woman on whom the Pope had conferred the order of the “Golden Rose.” Eugenie, also, was a zealous Catholic. Would she receive the daughter of General Sherman, and the Consul and his wife? The Duke Bassano arranged it all. “Her majesty will receive you on Tuesday morning, at ten o’clock,” said a little perfumed note in French. We were not so sure of our Gallic verbs and pronouns; still, we could speak some French, and would risk the visit. Tuesday morning found us in our best toilettes, waiting in a little anteroom, at the annex of the Hotel in Baden. It was a simple enough old stone house, half of it built by the Romans, in the times when they, too, came to these springs for their aches and pains. In a few minutes, the friendly old Duke Bassano came in to announce that all was ready. Major Cunningham and his wife were with us. “And how shall we address her,” we innocently inquired of the Duke, remembering that the Emperor was dead, and France a republic. “Oh, as her majesty, of course, only as her majesty.” He opened the door to a small, simply furnished sitting-room, and we entered. Almost at the same moment, Eugenie entered from an adjoining apartment. She walked to the center of the room, took each of us by the hand, and bade us a cordial welcome. She was dressed in full black, partly décolleté and trimmed with some white lace. She motioned us to some chairs arranged in a semi-circle, in front of a little divan. On this sofa she seated herself, and possibly never looked more beautiful on the throne of France.
“And now what language shall we speak in?” she smilingly asked in the most perfect English. “Your majesty’s perfect accomplishment in our own tongue, settles that,” one of our party answered. “Good. Oh, yes, I learned English in school, you know, after I left Madrid as a girl; and my master was Scotch; and then I lived a time in London, too. I like the English, and I like the English people; but I like the American people just as well, only I never knew why your country kept slaves, and had no respect for black people. I am sure color makes no difference, if it is only a good man. Would you not invite a black man to your table? I am sure I would, and did; and once, when a diplomat who was dining with me also, objected a little to my courtesy to a ‘negro,’ as he called him, I gave him quickly to understand that possibly the negro was better than he was.”
Then she talked to Miss Sherman (now Mrs. Fitch) about her mother, of whose Catholic zeal and perpetual charity to the poor she had heard so much.
To each one in turn she addressed some pertinent word, and then, laughing, turned to me as a representative of my country, and exclaimed numerous things not very complimentary to our system of high tariff.
“Why, we make the most beautiful things in the world in Paris; you Americans all say so, and yet you won’t let your people buy them without paying twice what they are worth, by your fearful custom-house rules.
“Americans are so clever; they ought to know they hurt their own people, and they hurt us in Paris, too. Our poor work for such small wages, and would always be happy, if you would only let them sell to you; and, after all, your rich importers just add your tariff fees on to the price of our goods, and who has the benefit?”
I answered: “Ours is a prosperous country, with our protective tariff system.” “Yes, I know, in spite of your tariff. I have heard that, a hundred times. Some day, you will be just like us, and get where you can get the cheapest. You don’t think making things dear helps anybody, do you?” Politeness prevented much discussion. It was all one way. Besides, was it not to hear her talk, not ourselves, that we were there?
She went back to the black man, or the black woman rather. “I had a good laugh on my dear husband, the Emperor, once. He lived in your country awhile, you know, and he was always fancying your pretty women. One day at New Orleans he saw a beautiful female form ahead of him in the street. It was all grace of movement, and elegance of apparel. He was struck by the figure. I think he was half in love. ‘I must see her face,’ he exclaimed to his companion. ‘I must see her. She is my divinity, running away.’ He hurried his pace, passed her, and the moment politeness would permit, glanced back. It was a ‘mulatto.’ I don’t think he always regarded black people quite in the light I did.”
Shortly we proposed to go, though she made no sign that the interview was at an end. “No,” she said. “Wait; I have leisure, nothing but leisure and rheumatism.” But she had no rheumatic look; a more charming-looking woman of fifty, I never saw. Her bright eyes were as blue as the sky, her complexion exceeding fair, her hair still golden, her vivacity of manner and cleverness of speech surprising beyond measure; and then her kindness made us feel that we were talking with a friend. All of us were led on to say much, and the visit lasted for two hours. Much of the talk was about Switzerland and health resorts, and so much at random as not to be remembered or noted down.
When at last we arose to go, she again came to the middle of the room and took us each by the hand. And then I asked her a word about her future plans. “There are none,” she said. “All is over. I have only my son, and he and I will spend our lives in quiet and peace.” Alas! only a few years went by and that son was lying dead in an African cornfield, his body pierced by Zulu lances.
*****
In June General Sherman has written again about Miss S.’s travels, and also something about the French Republic, and the Modoc War:
“Washington, D. C., June 9, 1873.
“Dear Byers: I am just in receipt of your letter of May 20. Mr. Rublee was here not long since en route for Rome, and from what he said I think he has made no business arrangements, and that he will stay there his full term.
“We have letters from Minnie up to May 20, at Rome, at which time she had joined the Healys, and will accompany them to Venice, Milan, Nice and Pau, France, a route that takes her well away from Zurich, but she begs to be allowed to remain abroad longer, say till next spring, so as to enable her to have more time to stay with you and to visit England and Ireland. I suppose she ought to reach Switzerland in July or August and stay with you a month or more. I have given her my consent, and hope before she reaches you you will have all our letters on the subject. If she stays beyond October, she had better not attempt a winter passage, but wait till April or May. This will make a long visit, but I suppose it will be the only chance she will ever have, and she might as well profit by it.
“Mrs. Sherman did intend to take the family to Carlisle for the summer, but the season is so pleasant here that she has almost concluded to remain at home and make short excursions. So that we will be here in Washington all summer.
“I rather like the change in France, and I think General McMahon will make a better president than Thiers, for he can keep out of the corps legislatif, which Thiers could not do. If France can stand a republic she must endure such presidents as time offers. It is easier to get a good president than a good dynasty.
“Our Modoc war is over, and soon the principal chiefs will be hung by due course of law (military), and the balance of the tribe will be dispersed among other tribes easily watched. We always have something of this sort every spring. Give my best love to Mrs. Byers, and believe me always your friend,
W. T. Sherman.”
CHAPTER X
1873
THE SOURCE OF THE RHINE-STRANGE VILLAGES THERE-A REPUBLIC FOUR HUNDRED YEARS OLD-THE “GRAY LEAGUE”-“THE LEAGUE OF THE HOUSE OF GOD”-LOUIS PHILIPPE’S HIDING PLACE-A TOUR IN THE VALLEY OF THE INN-LETTER FROM GENERAL SHERMAN-REGRETS HIS CAREER SEEMS OVER.
This summer we determined to see the source of the River Rhine. For all that tourists seemed to know, it was only a mist among the clouds. It was far away in the upper and unfrequented Alps. We went on foot, and found all the upper Rhine scenery ten times as grand as anything below Schaffhausen and the Falls. Except the classic scenery from Bingen to Coblenz no scene there is to be at all compared with a hundred places on the Rhine, among the Swiss Alps. What is called the German Rhine, is far less striking. It is the Swiss Rhine, far above where it flows through Lake Constance, that is truly picturesque. At Chur, we turned to the right, into the mountains, and followed up the branch known as the “Vorder Rhine.”
Every morning at the sunrise, we were trudging along the way with our knapsacks and staffs, with the wildest mountain scenery all about us. We passed many ruins of castles, and numerous picturesque little villages-Reichenau, Ilianz, Trois, Disentis.
We always rested a few hours in the middle of the day, slept awhile, and had simple dinners of trout and bread, with honey and wine.
Right and left the scenery is gorgeous, certainly, but this grand nature is also man’s enemy in these higher Alps. Flood and avalanche are forever threatening; the fields produce little, the villages are poor and wretched, and we ask ourselves, why do people seek such places to live in?
The answer is, they can’t get away; they are too poor. Besides, here is where their ancestors lived always; why should they not live here, too, they answer. Years later, a girl from one of these places came and lived in our home as a domestic; but she was forever lamenting her mountains and her wretched village, spite of the fact that it had been three times overwhelmed by avalanches. That was the town of Selva.
Near to this Selva, is the hamlet of Gesten, and there eighty-four souls were lost by an avalanche in a single night. The big grave containing them all was shown to us, outside of the village.
Tourists who travel by coach and railway in Switzerland, have little conception of what real, Swiss, Alpine scenery or Alpine life is like. It is just judging the moon by looking through a telescope. Life in these almost unknown valleys, differs from all the rest of Switzerland. Here the commune is the government. Of national laws, or presidents and parliaments, the people know nothing. The village mayor is the king. Not many years ago, these mayors and their village advisers in the Vorder Rhine countries, could hang men and women of their own accord.
The people are a species of Italian and speak an Italian dialect. Five hundred years ago, they had petty republics up here. Here were the “Gray League,” the “Ten Jurisdictions” and the “House of God.”
In 1396, the liberty-loving people of the high Rhine valleys fought for liberty, and founded a little nation called Rhaetia, that lasted four hundred years, when it became united to Switzerland. Ilanz, their old capital, stands here still, a novel picture of past ages. The snow-capped mountains, the fine forests, the picturesque river Rhine, are there as they were then, and the sons and daughters of these old liberty athletes have changed almost as little as the scene of their fathers.
We walked on to Selva and spent the night. I could have thought myself living among Roman peasants in the time of Julius Cæsar. Everything was antique, simple, different from the nineteenth century. Corn grows up there, but the people live mostly from their flocks. I noticed the men wore earrings, and men and women, with their ruddy, brown faces and black hair, look like a better class of Southern gipsies. They have almost no books, few schools, and only a single newspaper in the whole valley. No human being, outside of the Upper Rhine, would think of calling that journal a newspaper. The houses are built of hewn logs, turned brown as a Cincinnati ham, and the clapboard roofs are held on by big stones.
Spite of their surroundings, these peasants and villagers are happy, and sing and dance as did their ancestors on the plains of Tuscany.
They fear the avalanches every night. They call them “The White Death,” and look on them as sent by spirits.
They know little, and care less, about what is going on in the world, and would give more to wake up any morning, and find a new kid or lamb born, than to hear of the discovery of a new continent. Their only ambition is to get their cribs full for the winter, and at last to mix their bones with the dust of their fathers, beyond the village church.
Near to one of these villages, and farther down the valley, is the tiny lake of “Tama,” and there the river Rhine begins. The natives here call it “Running Water.” The stream is dark and green, and the lake is surrounded by dreary rocks and ice-clad mountains. It is 7,690 feet above the sea. Tourists on the palace steamers of the Rhine, down by the sands of Holland, should see the historic river at its cradle, if they would have memories to last forever.
We followed another branch of the Rhine that joins this one at Reichenau. It, too, is born among the grand mountain scenes, and sweeps through deep gorges, among them the famous Via Mala. Here at Reichenau, too, is the first bridge over the united Rhine. It is of wood, eighty feet high and 238 feet long, in a single arch.
Near it, we were shown a little, old castle that has become historic. There was a school kept there upon a time. One October evening of 1793, a wandering pilgrim, with a pack on his back, knocked at the door and begged the old schoolmaster to give him work. He could cipher and talk French, and write a decent hand. For many months, the humble stranger helped to teach the boys, and earned his daily bread. No one troubled himself to find out who he was. He signed his name Chabourd Latour. One evening, the boys saw the undermaster in tears. He was reading a newspaper, wherein was the account of his father’s being beheaded on a Paris scaffold. The secret of the poor teacher was soon out. It was not Latour, but Louis Philippe, a coming king of France. He had wandered everywhere in disguise, for after his escape from banishment, no nation had dared give him a resting place.
This little Rhine valley had no more romantic story.
*****
One evening after we were back at Zurich a kindly faced gentleman called at the consulate. The fatal card hung on the door, “Office closed till 9 to-morrow.” I was in the court below, with just ten minutes between me and train time. I was to hurry out home to a party by the lake. I saw the look of disappointment on the man’s face, and something told me I ought to stop. The gentleman was a traveling American. Some papers of importance had to be signed by him immediately before a consul. Of course I missed the party, but I made a friend. It was Mr. A. D. Jessup, a Philadelphia millionaire. He lingered about Zurich a few days, and we met and talked together often. Sometimes we had our lunch and beer together at the famous little café Orsini. Then Mr. Jessup said good-by and left on his travels. A month from then a telegram came from him at Paris. It was an invitation to be his guest on a ten days’ drive in the Austrian Tyrol, with a wind-up at the World’s Fair in Vienna. He was a friend of President Grant’s, the message continued, and he could arrange for my leave of absence.
A few mornings later a four-horse carriage halted by the consulate and we started for the Engadine, that lofty Alpine valley that is coursed for a hundred miles by the river Inn. This is not a valley of desolation. It is broad and productive, and once had many people and a little government of its own. To-day there are pretty villages at long distances and Insbruck is a picturesque and historic town. But the Inn valley is sky high compared with other rich valleys of Europe. We had bright sunshine and a delicious mountain air all the way. The Inn is rapid and beautiful, and right and left, for twenty miles at a stretch, rise high green hills, or else abrupt and lofty mountains, with sometimes bold and almost perpendicular crags. If we saw a rock that looked extraordinarily picturesque, away up toward the blue sky, there were sure to be also there the romantic ruins of some old castle. It seemed that we passed a hundred of these lofty ruins, with broken towers and fallen walls, through whose tall arches we sometimes saw patches of blue sky. Eagles soared around many of these lofty and deserted ruins. As we two drove for miles and miles along the white winding road by the river we constantly looked up at the romantic heights, and in our minds re-peopled the gray old castles and thought of the time, a thousand years ago, when all the peasantry of the rich valley were the serfs of masters who reveled in these castles built with the toil of the poor. A time came when the enslaved rose and all these castles were overthrown or burned and left as they are to-day. There are ruins high up above this Inn valley that, doubtless, have not been visited by a human footstep in a hundred years. Most of them are inaccessible. The former roads cut up the rocky mountain sides to them, are gone and forgotten, and the heights with their awful ridges against the sky look as desolate as the desert.
We closed our delightful journey with a visit to the World’s Fair at Vienna. Barring the Swiss National Exhibition, I have never seen anything so fine.
On my return I found this letter from General Sherman waiting me. In it, he expresses regret that his active career seems over:
“Washington, D. C., July 14, 1873.
“Dear Byers: I received your letter some days ago and sent it from my office to the house, for the perusal of Mrs. Sherman, therefore it is not before me now. I take it for granted that Minnie is, or must be, at Zurich or near there. Since she has been traveling from Italy her letters have been less frequent, and I fear some of our letters to her have miscarried, or been delayed. It is now pretty well determined that she will remain over the winter, so that she will have plenty of time to see all things that can be of interest. I hope that she will give Switzerland a good long visit, and that from there she will make the excursions that are so convenient. We all write to her often, so she must feel perfectly easy on our behalf. Instead of going to Carlisle, as Mrs. S. first intended, the family have remained here in Washington, and I see no cause to regret it, for we have had but little oppressive weather, and our house is so large and airy that I doubt if any change would be for the better. Of course, all the fashionable people, including most of the officers, have gone to the seashore or mountains, so that Washington is comparatively dull, but the many changes here in the streets, and abundance of flowing water have added much to the comfort of those who remain and can’t get away.
“Elly and Rachel, the two smaller girls, who were at school when you were here, are now at home, and are busy all day with their companions, playing croquet in our yard. Tom is putting in his vacation by riding horseback with two of his companions up through Pennsylvania. At last date he was near Altoona, and will be gone all of July and part of August. I suppose the return of Minister Rublee to his post has disappointed you, but you must have patience and do well that which is appointed for you, leaving for time that advancement which all ambitious men should aim for. I sometimes regret that I am at the end of my rope, for it is an old saying that there is more real pleasure in the pursuit than in reaching the goal. Although you may hear of cholera in this country, I assure you that it is not serious. I suppose the same is true of Europe, though it is reported the Shah of Persia declined to visit Vienna on account of cholera. I think Minnie ought to visit Vienna, if only for a week, to see that really beautiful city, and to visit Mr. Jay’s family. My best love to Mrs. Byers. Truly your friend,
W. T. Sherman.”