Twenty Years in Europe

CHAPTER V

1872

LOUIS BLANC, THE STATESMAN-HIS NOVEL COURTSHIP-HIS APPEARANCE-INVITES US TO PARIS-JUST MISS VICTOR HUGO-HIS SPEECH AT MADAME BLANC’S GRAVE-LETTER FROM LOUIS BLANC-ALABAMA ARBITRATORS-SEE GAMBETTA AND JULES FAVRE.

May 9, 1872.-On this day Louis Blanc, the French statesman and historian, called. It was to thank me for a favor I had done on a time for his nephew, but the visit resulted in a friendship that lasted till his death, ten years later.

Louis Blanc had been to the old French Republic (1848) what Brentano had been to the revolution of South Germany. At one time he was the most powerful member of the French Assembly. His writings, more than all things else, brought about the revolution that for a time made him President. In this 1872, he is again in the Assembly of a new republic.

While he stayed at Zurich, we came to know his friend, the vivacious English writer and traveler, Hepworth Dixon. We met often. Once Louis Blanc gave us all a dinner in the Neptun, and Dixon kept the table in a roar, telling of his ridiculous experiences in American overland coaches, in Texas and elsewhere. Of Texas, he had views alarmingly like those of Sheridan. If he owned hell and Texas, he certainly would rent out Texas and live in hell. “And do you tell us that is manners down South in the United States?” queried Mr. Louis Blanc, in the naivest manner. “Indeed I do; surely, surely,” said the traveler, glancing at Mrs. Blanc, “I saw it a hundred times. Pistols, bowie-knives and swearing. Nothing else in Texas.” The kind Frenchman believed it all, for he believed all men honest as himself; only at the close of the dinner did Mr. Dixon let him know that part of his talk was good-natured champagne chaff.

Louis Blanc was the smallest big man I ever saw. He was only five feet high. His head was big enough for Alexander the Great. He was only fifty-nine years old now, but it seemed to me his life and actions went back to the Revolution. His hair was long and black and straight as an Indian’s. He had no beard. His face was rosy as a girl’s. His little hands were white as his white cravat; his feet were like a boy’s; his eyes brown, large, and full of kindness; his voice sweet as a woman’s. He dressed in full black broadcloth and wore a tall silk hat. He looked, when walking in the street, like a rosy-faced boy in man’s clothes.

His little stature and apparent innocence of half that was going on about him, kept Madame Blanc in a constant worry for fear he would be run over by passing wagons when we were out walking together. “Now run over here quick,” she would say to him at a crossing. “Do, my dear, be careful. See the horses coming.” Out of doors, or on our little excursions to the mountains, he was perpetually and literally under her wing. She knew the treasure she had in him.

I constantly thought of the story of his past; for was not this little, low-voiced man, walking with us, he who had written “The Ten Years” that had helped destroy Louis Philippe; was not this the same voice that had enchained assemblies, and led France?

Once in a little log schoolhouse in the backwoods of the West, where, as a young fellow, I was teaching, I had read some of his books. Poor as I was, I would have given a month’s salary then, to have taken Louis Blanc by the hand. How little I dreamed that some day I should not only take him by the hand, but have his warm friendship.

Louis Blanc’s head was all there was to him-that and a great heart.

His marriage to Madame Blanc was a marvel. They met in London. She was German and could speak no French. He was French and could speak no German. He courted her in broken English; and he did well, for a better woman never lived.

Victor Hugo, standing at her grave years later, pronounced one of his noblest eulogies to womanhood. It was an outburst of remembered oratory.

We were glad of the friendship of such a man as Louis Blanc. He wrote me many letters and invited us to Paris, where we spent some delightful days. His brother Charles was the director of Fine Arts and Theaters there. We had invitations to the best operas and plays. One night I had the pleasure of hearing Gounod lead the Grand Opera House orchestra in his own “Faust.” Monsieur Blanc also took us out to see the National Assembly sitting at Versailles, where he was a senator. By good luck we saw and heard Gambetta and Jules Favre. There was no disorder that day, at least, and the speaking was moderate in tone. It was no noisier than our own senate. Louis Blanc also spoke a few words in a quiet way. He wished them to move the Assembly into Paris. “It is all nonsense,” he said to me, “this pretense of fearing a Paris mob. ‘Do right,’ I might have said to them, ‘and the mob will let you alone. Do wrong, and-well, it is not far from Paris to Versailles, and there was a time when a mob could escort a king even, from the one place to the other.’” He meant Louis XVI. and his queen, whom the mob led from this same palace to the Paris scaffold.

That evening we went late to dinner. The Blanc’s lived on an upper floor of house No. 96, on the Rue du Rivoli. It was rather far. “But why didn’t you come earlier?” said Mrs. Blanc, meeting us at the door. “You can’t guess who was here.” It was Victor Hugo. How sorry we were to have missed the opportunity of seeing the most famous man in France.

It happened later that I was in Paris the day after Victor Hugo’s funeral. Everybody said it was like the funeral of a great king. I went up to the “Arc de Triomphe.” The great monument built by Napoleon, in his own honor, was covered with wreaths in honor of Victor Hugo. Which man, I thought, does France, in her inmost heart, revere the most-the poet, or the conqueror?

I do not recall much that Louis Blanc said to me that first time in Paris, but something he said in reply to some words of Mr. Dixon’s, at the banquet, I wrote down. Dixon was chaffing, in an exaggerated way, about the patriot’s idea of liberty. “Ah!” replied Louis Blanc, quoting from another Frenchman, “there is but one thing only, which dreads not comparison with Glory; that is Liberty.”

The nephew whom I had obliged, and through whom our friendship with the statesman came about, fell ill in Paris, and Louis Blanc wrote me this:

“Dear Sir: It grieves me to the very heart to have to say that my nephew is most dangerously ill. He has now been in bed for about a month, and his precarious state keeps both my poor wife and myself in a state of unspeakable anxiety. This domestic affliction, added to the necessity I am under to spend the whole of my time at Versailles, where the Assembly is now residing and threatens to settle, has as yet prevented me from seeing Mr. Washburne. But I have not lost sight of my promise, which I hope I shall be able to fulfill before long. Many thanks for the photographs. That of Mrs. Byers is very far, indeed, from doing her justice. We wish we had a better one. I will write to you soon. In the meantime, accept, my dear sir, our most cordial thanks for the kindness you and your dear wife have shown to our nephew and to ourselves. With my wife’s best regards to Mrs. Byers and yourself, I remain, very truly yours,

The youth got well, but he did not take much to the Zurich schools after all. He had gone home again, and the uncle decided on letting him go to sea.

“My Dear Sir: Many thanks for your very kind letter. Our nephew is quite recovered, and more than ever determined to be a sailor; so much so, that we have made up our minds to let him go as a midshipman. He will probably start in a month or two.

“My wife and myself speak often of you both and of the friendly reception we met at your hands. May we indulge the hope of returning it soon, on your visit to Paris?

“I would have been glad to make General Sherman’s acquaintance, but, unfortunately, I found no opportunity to do so.

“Mrs. Louis Blanc and nephew unite with me in kindest regards to Mrs. Byers and yourself. Most sincerely yours,

September, 1872.-All this past summer the international arbitrators at Geneva have been trying to settle our difficulty with England over the Alabama pirate business. Our Mr. Evarts has won great honor in his management of our side of the matter. Still we have virtually lost the case. A few days ago, the 14th, the treaty was signed. True, it gives us fifteen millions, but we set out with claiming two hundred and fifty millions. What a bagatelle to have to accept after that. The testimony really tends to show that the Rebels never hurt the North with their cruisers a hundredth part as much as everybody supposed they had. It was only a little Captain Kidd sea robbery after all.

It is something, however, to make England come to time, if only a little, for only the other day a London paper declared England will never pay the Yankees a dollar, no matter what the arbitrators say. We shall see.

CHAPTER VI

1872

We spent this summer of 1872 at beautiful Bocken, an old castle-like chateau, sitting high above the lake, ten miles out from the city. It was once the home of the Zurich burgomasters, at the time when they exercised the authority of petty kings. The scene from Bocken is very grand. The chateau, with its big hall of knights, its old oak-paneled dining-room, its brick-paved corridors and leaded, round-paned windows, is very interesting. Paid 600 francs for the use of rooms all summer, and reserved the right to return other summers. The days were fair, and it seemed to me I had never seen so many clear, moonlight nights. The lake, shining in the clear moonlight, lay 1,000 feet below us, and, at times in the night, we could even faintly see the snow-covered mountains of Glarus. It was a delightful summer at Bocken, and our joy was doubled by the coming of our firstborn.

More than one of this summer’s excursions was to the scene of the Tell legends on Lake Luzern. I knew the legends were already being doubted, even by some of the Swiss, but I hoped, by diligent searching among certain half-forgotten archives in the old arsenal at Altorf, to find something new. I was not wholly disappointed; I saw a musty document there that told of the building of the chapel to Tell on the “Axenstrasse.” That was in 1388, only thirty-one years after Tell’s death. The document gave the amount of wages paid to hands, the amount of wine furnished the workmen, and a statement that one hundred and fourteen persons who had known Tell were present at the dedication. On the supposed spot of Tell’s birth, another stone chapel was erected in 1522. There is also in this museum a copy of a proclamation of four hundred and ninety-four years ago, by the Council of Uri, ordering all good Christians and patriots to make yearly pilgrimages to Burglen, because it was the birthplace of William Tell. This document was discovered in 1759, but was burned up in a fire at Altorf, about 1779. The copy, however, is regarded as genuine. The question arises, why did a poor little village community ever go to the expense of building these chapels, if they had no certain knowledge of the existence of their hero, and why were the citizens making these excursions to Tell’s birthplace at that early time?

In this old arsenal at Altorf are preserved the battle flags borne by the Swiss at Morgarten in 1315, only eight years after the death of Tell. The genuineness of these flags historians have not doubted. Neither is the old Swiss story of that battle in dispute. If the ancient Swiss could know of this battle, and save their flags, why should they not also know the facts as to Tell, at the time they were building chapels to him? If they do not, these chapels remain as monuments to the utter foolishness of a people.

The tradition as to his shooting an apple from his boy’s head is of no earthly consequence; true or untrue, it has no more to do with the Swiss patriot’s having served his country than the story of the cherry tree has to do with the patriotism of Washington. Tyrants, compelling enemies to tests of archery under great risks, were nothing uncommon in even other lands than Switzerland, and even this little incident in Tell’s life may have been true. For myself, I am satisfied that a patriot named William Tell existed, and that his hot-headed love of freedom, and his recklessness, precipitated a revolution in the Alps. In these later days his killing even a tyrant would probably brand him as a common freak or an assassin. Time and history mollify many things.

The chapel at the Axenstrasse was about to fall into the lake, while I was in Switzerland. Its restoration was decided on. Knowing that I had interested myself in the Tell traditions, and at my request, the authorities allowed me to take away the stone step in front of the old altar, to place in the Washington monument. I secured official testimony as to the block, had a proper inscription put on it, and sent it to Washington as a souvenir of Switzerland’s greatest tradition. It is now in the Smithsonian Institution, being regarded too valuable a relic to hide away in the monument.

Now that we could speak the language, we made delightful excursions to the mountains. I had determined to write a book on Switzerland,1 and regarded it necessary to see, not only the Alps, but Alpine village life, and everything characteristic of the country. The result was that we went on foot to almost every valley and village, and climbed not a few of the famous mountains. I now became a member of the Alpine Club. The Rigi we climbed oftenest of all. There was no such thing as riding up, no easy railway carriages, then. People climbed mountains on foot, and the names burned on our Alpine stocks had a meaning. Many and many a Saturday noon we took the train at Luzern, climbed up the Rigi through the woods alone, on the Arth side, and stayed there till Monday morning. We usually got to the top in three hours. Daylight of Sunday saw us out on the high plateau, looking at that great sight, the rising of the sun in the Alps.

Living among the mountains was glorious then, and cheap. Many a time, in those days, we have had lodgings and meals at four francs a day, at the Rigi Staffell, where once the poet Wordsworth tarried. And at Michaels Kreutz, a height near by, two and one-half francs for pension was our usual expense. We traveled much in second-class cars. Everybody did this, and we were in the mode. Often when I was alone in the mountains, I went third-class even, and was as well off for sightseeing as I would have been in a Pullman palace car.

The Alpine views from the Rigi in good weather are almost beyond description. One must see them to realize their splendor. Chains of snow mountains are in the distance, and thirteen blue lakes shining at the Rigi’s foot. It is only six thousand feet high, but unsurpassed as a point for seeing Swiss scenery.

Sometimes I went up Pilatus alone. It is higher than the Rigi, and near by. The climb was five hours, and I always slept in the little Senn hut, with the cowboys. The cattle, with their tinkling bells, occupied half the stone building. Cool autumn nights I have sat there till midnight, talking with the cowboys, before a big fire made of dried Alpine rose bushes. There were simply acres of roses on Pilatus then, and the Senns were glad to get rid of the shrubs by burning them. I never felt in such perfect health in my life, as in the bracing air on Pilatus Mountain, and the fact that tourists never knew the way up there made life among the goats and the roses immensely enjoyable. For years, ever since my imprisonment in the South, I had suffered horrors with headaches and migraine. These frequent stays in the air of the higher Alps were slowly curing them.

CHAPTER VII

1872

GENERAL SHERMAN VISITS US AT ZURICH-LETTERS FROM HIM-SWISS OFFICERS ENTERTAIN HIM-HIS LAKE EXCURSION-HE EXPLAINS HIS GREATEST CAMPAIGN TO THEM-HE IS ENTERTAINED AT THE SWISS CAPITAL-LETTER FROM GENERAL DUFOUR.

August, 1872.-General Sherman had written me late in the previous Autumn of his intention to visit Europe. Admiral Alden was appointed to the command of our squadron at Villa Franca, and invited the General to sail with him in his flagship, the “Wabash.” They left on Nov. 11, 1871. In his note he had said, “I am certainly hoping to arrange my route so as to pay you a visit.” This rejoiced us greatly. I heard nothing more till January 16th, when he sent me another little note from Marseilles:

“Dear Byers: You will have seen in the public journals that I am adrift. Of course, during my travels I intend to come to Zurich to see you, but the time when is uncertain. Now the season is not favorable, and I find it to my interest to stay near the Mediterranean till spring. I left my ship at Gibraltar near a month ago. Have been through Spain and the south of France, and am now on my way to rejoin the ship at Nice. We expect to spend all of February in Italy, March in Egypt and the East, April in Prussia, and I expect to swing round by Dresden, Vienna and Munich to Zurich in May. I hope then to find you in good health. Should you have occasion to write me, a letter to the care of the United States Consul at Nice will be forwarded. With great respect, your friend,

In a month he wrote again, this time from Italy. On Feb. 8th I had written him of an intended military demonstration on the part of the authorities, in his honor, when he should come to Zurich. This he was adverse to, as his note indicates:

“Dear Byers: I have received yours of Feb. 8th, and avail myself of about the last chance to write in reply. It will be some time before we can possibly approach Zurich from the direction of Vienna, and I suppose by that time I will be pretty well used up; yet, if I can do anything to please you, will do my best. Please say to the gentlemen of Zurich that when I reach Zurich, the less display of even a volunteer or militia force, the better; but I will leave it to your own good sense to do what is best for them, and for me. Maybe it would be better to postpone all preliminaries till you hear from me at Vienna. We embark to-morrow for Malta and Alexandria, Egypt, and it will be some time before we turn up again in the direction of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Our aim is to cross the Caucasus to the Caspian, to Astrachan by the Volga, to Nishni, and so on to Moscow; so, you see, I have a good, long journey yet before me. Meantime, I hope you will continue well. As ever, your friend,

Again there was a silence till spring. General Sherman did not carry a newspaper reporter around with him, to report his journeys and his doings. He was traveling as a private gentleman, seeing, and not being seen. At least, this was what he wished. He had gone to the far East, had come back to Constantinople and crossed the Caucasus Mountains. In May he wrote again from St. Petersburg:

“Dear Byers: My party is now reduced to myself and Colonel Audenried, Fred Grant having gone to Copenhagen to see his aunt, Mrs. Cramer, who is now on the point of going to America. I don’t now know whether Grant will rejoin me at Vienna or go direct to Paris, to see his sister Nellie, and await us there. At all events, Audenried and I start at noon to-day for Warsaw, then Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, etc., to Zurich, where we ought to arrive between the 15th and 20th of June. I prefer much not to be complicated with private engagements or displays of any kind, for it takes all my time to see the country, and it is awfully tiresome to be engaged day and night in receiving and returning calls. I hope you will appreciate this, and have no preparations made till we arrive, and then if I can do you any service by seeing your friends, I will do my best. Truly your friend,

Early in August he and Colonel Audenried were with us in Zurich. No public demonstration took place on his arrival. It was as he had wished. We took him out to Bocken, our home on the lake, and had a few delightful days with him there.

I recall that on the first day we had dinner spread underneath the trees, out on the terrace of Bocken. The blue lake lay a thousand feet below us, the white mountains shone in the distance, behind us were high hills covered with evergreen forests. About the chateau were bright meadows and rich vineyards. There is scarcely a scene more beautiful in this world. Yet, I was surprised how little it affected him. In the presence of such grandeur, he seemed at that moment unimpressionable. He was a man of moods. I called his attention to the glorious view. “Not more beautiful,” he said at last, “than the lakes near Madison. I think of them when I see this. I like American scenery better than any of it. It is the real, native thing in our country. Man has done nothing there. Here, in Europe, so much is artificial.” Yet there was nothing artificial around him here; unless it were the much-vaunted, little, red, wooden-looking Swiss strawberries on the table. He wondered how we could adopt the Swiss way of pouring wine on them, instead of cream and sugar. The big cake in the center of the table was decorated with preserved fruits. “How singular that is, isn’t it?” he said; “real Dutch.” But he liked it for all that. He liked, too, our simple table, though an American dish or two had been prepared in his honor; and he had a relish for good wine, but was moderate in its use. When we had the champagne, I proposed his health. “No,” said he, gallantly, rising to his feet, “we drink the health of Mrs. Byers.” “Both together then,” I said.

He was happy when I gave him a cigar. The scene began to have some interest for him. It was finer than Madison after all. I think the dinner increased his appreciation. The practical side of what he saw was always in his mind. He measured the near hills with his eye and guessed their height. “North must be right over there,” he said, pointing, though the sun was not shining. The snow mountains were twenty miles away-not thirty, as we had stated. He was sure he “never missed on distances.” But he did this time. He climbed up to the winemill in the barn loft, examined the presses below, took hold of the queer scythes of the mowers, and undertook to describe an American mowing machine to a peasant, who did not understand a word of English. In an hour or so he was acquainted with everything practical about the place.

At supper he ridiculed the American ways of traveling abroad. “‘Tourists’ is the right word for them,” he said. “They are not observing travelers at all. Their time and money is thrown away.” He told of an American girl who rode one hundred miles in a railroad car with him, through the most interesting part of Spain, and read a yellow-backed novel all the way. “I never go to a new place, but I know all about it,” he said; “its topography, geography, history. A thousand times my habit of observing has afterward been of use to me.” He told how, when he was a young lieutenant in the army, stationed in Georgia, his comrades spent their leisure Sundays reading novels, card playing, or sleeping, while he himself went riding or walking everywhere, exploring every creek, valley, hill, mountain, in the neighborhood. “Twenty years later the thing that most helped me to win battles in Georgia was my perfect knowledge of the country, picked up when I was there as a boy. I knew more of Georgia than the rebels themselves did.” He insisted on our acquiring a habit of observing everything, learning everything possible. “You don’t know how soon you will have use for the seemingly useless thing that you can pick up by mere habit.” He related how, when he captured a train and telegraph station down South once-[It happened that I had been present on the occasion] – he called for some one among the privates to try to take off messages. His own operator was not at hand. A young soldier, who had once picked up a little telegraphing as an amusement, stepped forward and took a rebel message from the wire that turned out to contain information of vast importance to the whole army.

August 4.-Yesterday, to make him more comfortable, Mrs. B. had had a bed placed for the General in our little front salon. “I won’t have it there at all,” he said. “There shall be no trouble for me. Back it goes into the bedroom. Give me a cot in the hall-that’s what soldiers like.” The bed went back.