SOMEWHAT OERSHADOWED BY GREAT NAMES r RVTTHKfoRms O WM f U)s/ ctXD THQT O^H^rRltNDS EOKU9EDDEK A.D. MDCCCCX SIW-dV3i H3fJWifl G30^3gl3A«iWIVJV3yD Mm YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY The Digressions of "V JSohiewhal" o*ersn.cxclowecl Inj ^rea.t'M.txm.es* CtJ"eeble blcm-V jxe t>ies h> reft»*; i$V isyypt'Tumvisk.ecl ovf c(reat" ciivn.s J^ov^jelTre^'clecL W muck|ear; t)~Cis aims ty cu-yi$ ctre octlr mese,-' 3© l>e remembeved ctrtcl lo Jolectse . V" AT HOME 385 (Ready to be interviewed) THE SOUL BETWEEN FAITH AND DOUBT 393 STUDY FOR HEAD OF LAZARUS 396 LAZARUS 397 WINTER 401 THE GOLDEN NET 405 "THE PARDON-GIVING AND IMPLORING HANDS" 409 (From a photograph of the artist' s hands) THE GHOST OF A FLEA 411 (After William Blake) THE GREAT HILL OF ASSISI 413 (From Villa Ansidei, Perugia) PORTRAIT OF A MODEL 419 BELFRY AT VOLTERRA 421 THE ANXIOUS PIG AND THE WEEPING WILLOW 423 BY THE WORLD FORGOT 427 ORTE 435 MARIETTA 439 "V" IN HIS STUDIO 449 (Via Flaminia) xvi ILLUSTRATIONS ON THE BANKS OF THE NILE 452 "TAMAM," FROM THE RUBAIYAT 455 THE MUSE OF AMERICAN HISTORY 461 (Design in plaster for a monument) LION-HEADED CUP 467 BRONZE HEAD 469 BOX MADE OF CANNA 478 THE BOY 499 (Statue fountain) CARICATURE 503 TAILPIECE 5°7 INTRODUCTION "Every Man his own Boswell" Ihave been asked so often by my friends this question — "Why don't you write all these things?" — that I have finally concluded to satisfy that which on their part is only good old-fashioned curiosity, by an exhibition on my part of good old-fashioned vanity; and so, not to keep them waiting, I will say at once that I have always deplored my lack of a Boswell, my experience being that full many a spark of wit is struck to flash unseen, and waste its brilliance on the family air. And this in spite of my having repeatedly called the family's atten tion to its negligence in this respect. But suppose the Boswell, had I a Boswell, should slowly absorb me, as good old Dr. John son was absorbed by the original Boswell ! Or suppose I should be like the block of marble in Michelangelo's sonnet, — "The more the marble wastes, the more the statue grows," — and the statue should turn out to be the Boswell ! ! What then ! The moral is clear — be your own Boswell, so that if anything is to be absorbed it will remain on the premises. Now I have noticed, and indeed it has been pointed out to me, that when I am talking, and especially when I am anxious to make an impressive conclusion, I outline so broad a plan — dig a foundation so deep — that I have been known to forget what I was driving at. Of course it all comes back to me in a moment, but things are not the same, the conversation has drifted xviii INTRODUCTION on and my sails drop. As this evil does not admit of a remedy, I have determined to make of it my good, — call my discourses prattling, and my excursions digressions, and digress as much as I please. Thus, having drifted into something like an introduction, I will say that I started out with a plan. It was the alphabetical plan. Let any one try it and he will be astonished at the number of things brought to mind as he runs over the letters ; but I found that things fell into groups, and did not occur naturally as they do in real life ; and as this is to be somewhat of a life — I gave that plan up. Fearing that I may be led into telling stories, — it may even be expected of me, — I should like to point out that there is a great difference between the written and the told story, which may be likened to the fixing of flies in amber, and reminds me of what my friend, Frank Tracy, used to say about life-insurance, namely, that he never played a game in which he had to die to win ; for that is the price the fly pays for his questionable immor tality, — immortal but lifeless, like the written story. As an instance : we all know, because it came out in a magazine lately, the story of how the grandchildren of Victor Hugo made him tell over and over again the story of " the good flea and the wicked King." " But not with motions ? " he would always say. "Yes, — yes, — with motions, with motions!" What are stories without the motions — the brightening eye, the expressive hands — but flies, once buzzing with life, fixed for ever in amber ? Ah, how I miss those good talks at the Club, where it was noticed I did most of the talking! But as that cannot be, I will INTRODUCTION xix try, without the great advantage of the brightening eye or the expressive hand, to give at once a specimen of a digression, so that my friends will know just what to expect, and will also see that no matter how far afield I go, I always get back to where I started, and the thing turns out little better than a digression after all. It is going to look very like the ending of a preface. While writing these things I have been reminded of the man who, bringing his fist down on the table with a Bang! said, " That sounds like a gun, — and speaking of guns, let me nar rate an incident that happened to me during the late War," — and on he goes indefinitely. The "Bang" in this case is the word Boswell. Attempt at an ending. If a man wishes to leave a pic ture of himself (as I have said before), let him be his own Bos well. He need have no fear but that he will leave a true picture, for no matter how skilfully he may seek to hide something he does not wish seen, the modern scientific method of criticism will find it out, and thus his very attempt will but add another characteristic touch to the portrait. But when a man is his own Boswell, the affair becomes very personal indeed, and that is just what I intend to make it. I want to recall myself to my old friends for the little time remaining, and to set myself vividly before my new ones, or at least leave a vivid picture of the man. Dates count for nothing with- me, but impressions are indelible, so that in giving a history of my impressions a sort of chrono logical order is established for those who cannot do without it. " Ah, how I envy you your profession, — your surroundings, — your cheerfulness ! " is often said to me. Well, let it be so. By only showing my cheerful moods, I imitate the Japanese, xx INTRODUCTION who, thinking there is enough of sadness in the world, give it their smiles and keep their sorrows to themselves. There are two sides to everything, and I should not be surprised if behind this cheerful picture there lurked a very sad Boswell indeed, for whom there now remains nothing but to bid himself good-bye, with best wishes for the success of this — his last fad, and a part ing word to the effect that, as he was born, he remains, "Come nato, rimango," — and his autograph. Affectionately yours, V. Now you think that the foregoing makes a very neat ending to a beginning, — but you would be mistaken. The mistake would arise from your not having grasped the meaning I attach to the words prattling and digressing. Why, the very mention of an end ing suggests a beginning; in fact, it is like the serpent symbol of eternity, — the tail in the mouth and no ending in sight. This seems to be the case with these digressions, and I seem like the man saying grace, going on and on simply because I don't know how to wind the darned thing up. All this leads me to think, and may lead the reader to think, that of the making of many prefaces there is no end, and that it might well be, a man making a number of prefaces and proper endings should find that he had already made a book. And why not ? I will here confess that I have made a number of prefaces, and that in turning these gem-like things over in my mind, some new facet has sent out from time to time a gleam of light or strange colour which, like an ignis fatuus, had led me on to an equally fatuous digression. And so I have concluded to give the reader the whole batch of beginnings, hoping that they will lead to an approximate end. INTRODUCTION xxi At one time I thought it would be not only honest but advis able to warn the reader of what he was not to expect, such as, when travelling, extracts from Murray, or, on mentioning a great man, an account of his period, or estimates of the compara tive merit of dead or living artists ; but I found that the plan was impracticable; it is too much on the order of, "What you don't know would fill a large volume" ; and I gave it up. I then, some what chastened, turned to giving an honest and short account of what the book really did contain, and was at once appalled at the meagreness of the result. A few impressions, — a few moods, — a few doings and happenings, — a few reflections of doubtful value, — and a few stories, equally of doubtful value, — and a great deal of self. However, as this last is what I aim at, I now give it to my friends. And as there may be in this great big world some who are not friendly, to avoid the evil eye, I use an old incantation — I spit three times and say garlick — with a k. That looked like an ending to a beginning, but it was not, for I must again tell of some of my little plans in the laying out of this book, to the end that "good old-fashioned curiosity" may be fully satisfied. Here is a plan that I thought of trying, but it seemed so sad that I gave it up also. Some one said that the play of "Hamlet" is a comedy punctu ated by tragedy. As this pretty well describes life as I have found it, I at one time thought to enliven these pages by putting in a little tombstone wherever Death had claimed a victim from among those known to me. But the idea was so lugubrious, and the victims so numerous, that, fearing to make a graveyard rather than a gratification, I gave up that plan. One plan I have decided on, however : I shall commence with the quaint legends of my infancy, go on through the different xxii INTRODUCTION periods of my life, keeping — as I have in real life — some faint semblance of order, and letting the rest be a go-as-you-please, — as it has been in the real life. As I am started on the subject of plans for the book, 1 find I have given some thought as to what should go in and what should be left out of it. You can see this from my having written the following digression, which I call — Drink. The early introduction of this subject may not be so startling to some as it may be to others. Drink. Among my old books I have a Plutarch with title- page by Holbein, signed with his initials, — a rare thing with him. It is copiously annotated by Erasmus Rotterdamus and Willibald Perkheimer, the friend of Diirer ; and whenever these names occur, — the book having passed through the hands of the " Qualificatores " of the Congregation of the Inquisition, — these names have been very carefully obliterated. But Time, in this case not the destroyer, has faded the ink so thoroughly that the names stand out as clear as ever. I am sorry that I have occasion to mention drink so often in these pages, for there seems something almost immoral about it ; but there was a great deal of drink in the old days. As publishers now take the place of the "Qualificatores" and do frequently obliterate, eliminate, and otherwise spoil things generally, 1 have decided to let the "twenty flasks" stand, — well knowing that their absence would only make their underlying presence more evident, and that in the course of time the murder would out. Apropos, I once met Lang at the Club and said : — "Lang, how about drinking now-a-days ?" "Ah, as for trinking, I have quvite giffen it up; dat is to say, except ven I am in gompany or ven I feel lonesome." INTRODUCTION xxiii As for myself, I am still unrepentant and drink just as much as nephritis will allow. But perhaps I am bragging. I think Lang covers the ground better than I do. There is another thing I must allude to. In stories there are many things "of great pith and moment" which cannot be told in our common language. These the learned put into Latin, — and seem to be all the more respected for so doing. Let some of the straight-laced translate the Latin in our friend Story's book, " Roba di Roma " and watch the result. I hope it will be the same with my Roman "Roba," for although not one of the learned, I can and do sail very close to the wind, thus in a manner replacing their Latin. Expurgation is a fine word and perhaps a good thing, but I hope the book may not need it. In any case, I have followed the advice of Bacon and taken care that it may not happen as it "fareth in ill purging, the good be taken away with the bad." I once had the pleasure of being at a dinner where we became mighty merry (drink again) ; many stories were told and there was great laughter. In the midst of it, a Spaniard who could talk English well enough, but not well enough to tell stories, leaned over to me and said, " I also can tell funny stories — in Spanish." So could I — in Latin. Finally. And now it is time to write "A -Little Preface," which even including its inevitable digressions, will come to a conclusion. And I begin by remarking that in one thing I am fortunate in my writing : I can express myself fully without dan ger of redundancy, — which I take to be stuffing. What I have to fear, on the contrary, is paucity; so that if by chance this book should turn out a pinguid one, it will be by reason of the stuff in it, and not of the stuffing. xxiv INTRODUCTION I venture to use the word "pinguid" because I like the word for its own sake and from association, my brother having endowed me with it years ago; and also because, singularly enough, no one seems to have come across it, — not even professors. It means — fat. De Amicis uses it in his "Constantinople" where he is amazed at the Pinguidine of the Turkish women. By the time you have read this, you will all have been familiar with it for years. As it is better to be a little too early than too late, I think it as well to put a last word first, and say at once that my friends will be disappointed if they expect, in what follows, accounts of emi nent persons ; for while it is true that I have been asked once or twice, "Why don't you write all these things?" the remark has been made far oftener, since it transpired that I was a-writing, "How interesting it will be to hear about the eminent persons you have met!" As it is well to tell the truth, when not of the nature of dynamite, I will say at once that so far as I am con cerned, I would rather spend an evening in the Century Club than in the most brilliant court in Europe, and prefer a talk with an old friend to an interview with such a man as Gladstone. However, it is well not to antagonise the great, so I paddle my little earthenware jar out of the track of these great ironclads by admitting that I have found some of them very nice. There is a good reason for this caution on my part, for I see by my horoscope that I must be prepared for trouble, about the time this book comes out. "You have little to fear from ene mies; though Neptune and Mars on the mid-heaven mean a good deal of criticism, the criticism comes chiefly from jealous enemies; with you, however, there is nothing to fear from ene mies, it is from friends that you have to fear trouble." Now this INTRODUCTION xxv is truly deplorable for a man who counts on his friends as much as I do ; still, with Taurus in the ascendant, and being a " child of Venus," I will try to bear up. After all, these troubles merely come from "Lunar aspects," operative for a few months, whereas the "Solar aspects," are influential for many years. "Why" — adds the astrologer, "this is as propitious a horoscope as that of Mr. C. Arthur Pearson," — which seems in his eyes to settle the business. Wonderful ! Wonderful ! However did he find all this out ? V. ends his prefaces — but goes on. These things are written as I would talk to a friend over a glass of wine after dinner, or in the snug corner of some tavern. I sometimes come to the "Don't you remember," and sometimes show him how well I could talk — an I were so disposed — and sometimes come to the "strictly between ourselves," and "let this go no further." At first I intended to revise these digressions, but finding I could not revise the life from which they sprang I gave up the idea of revising these faint reflexes of it. So I give them just as they were written, and for what they are worth. It may well be that a man venturing into a realm unknown should feel some modest doubts as to the result of his venture, but I beg my friends not to be alarmed. 1 am like that Hindoo god who sat in placid con templation of his navel for just one thousand years. At the end of that period he raised his head and said gently: "I see no thing the matter with that navel; that navel is all right." I am the Indian god and the book is the navel ; the book is all right. Did I not say in another preface that I would give you an exhibi tion of good old-fashioned vanity ? Here you have it. I seem a trifle unfortunate in my reading at times. This very xxvi INTRODUCTION moment I found the following passage in a beautiful exposition of the Book of Job. Speaking of Elihu, the writer says : " He takes fifty-two lines to say he is going to speak; a curious, zig-zag metre admirably reflects his struggles between nervousness and a growing enthusiasm for his cause. At last he settles to his argu ment." This seems somewhat appropriate, but, considering the name, is very personal. In settling to my argument I frankly give up all pretence to style; for me to attempt it would be as useless as it would be ridiculous. This book is the work of an unpractised hand with unfamiliar tools ; but it has the great ad vantage of leaving the reader free from preoccupation regarding style, so he may browse undisturbed on such sense and salt as he may find. If these also be lacking, it will be sad indeed, and yet, even in that case, as the lesser misfortunes of others are seldom without a spice of satisfaction to us (witness the wild efforts of the man to catch his hat, in a high wind), the reader may enjoy my wild chase after words with which to embody my thought. Apropos of words, I frequently tell of the Frenchman who disliked tomatoes. He said he was glad of it, for if he liked them, he would eat them — whereas he detested them. It is the same with me in regard to hard words. I don't like them; luckily I know but few; if I knew many more I would use them, whereas I detest them, or at least regard them with apprehension. After the foregoing, I feel at last prepared to " settle to my ar gument." T» ree €X JOoysevas ioJ-H^Tostka^^Wi careless, free, C^ud. qlf the wof Icl seemed <«0kf Jtwxae for Aim., CXna e ach urjtgktttay seemed an. eternity I \weifem. the 3otj(* ki s doj, aixtl vtn(i cuvcl jio wer «wi -A\ctae f>u,ro»*e Jrtenctuf vtve&te co»^wjj| ; i Ken. came me etewy nVdkh, «kcI k» s 5 weeV areaT»\S -CotyhmvecL "Ko Hint tkat wR. by Jack, we talked for hours, and I must have learned much from him in that most pleasant of school-rooms. It is all gone now; yet in imagination I still see the old man sitting reading his Bible and waiting for the coming of his little friend. The woods bordered the plank-road up to the toll-gate. When I went to East New York for letters, Jack was duly admonished to stay at home, and would walk off to the barn as if he had some rats to attend to ; but no sooner was I well committed to the road than I could see in the depth of the forest a dim form stealing along, — and then at the toll-gate the inevitable fight with the toll-gate dog, Jack's great enemy. They were both properly beaten, Jack taking his as a necessary part of the fight — which was such an unalloyed delight to him that I could never break him of the habit. But there was one habit of which Grandpa broke him absolutely. It was found that the supply of eggs diminished in a mysterious way, and then it was discovered that Master Jack had a nest to which he conveyed eggs; but not to hatch, — for each egg had a nice hole in it and Master Jack was walking about, the happy possessor of its contents. Whereupon Grandpa prepared a hard-boiled egg, piping hot, which he clapped into Jack's mouth, holding his jaws together quite long enough to impress the lesson on his mind. It is needless to say Jack never looked an egg in the face again. Among the old friends of the family was a Mr. Simson. He owned the East Broadway line of stages. Now and then having an ailing horse, the animal was sent over to Grandpa's to see what a change of air and grass would do for him. On one side of the 58 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. house was a large field crossed by a rail fence ; into this field was turned out to grass an old white horse, who not only recovered his health but became so lively that he took to jumping this fence, lit erally soaring over it back and forth. It filled me with delight, and having a good saddle and bridle, I used to curry-comb and brush him up and go for the letters, feeling like a crusader. In fact I was so filled with the spirit of chivalry that one day, having tied him to the well-nibbled post in front of a tavern, I, on coming back with the letters, must needs, in emulation of the knights of old, vault into the saddle, — which I did with such agility that I went clean over it and came down on the other side "amid the jeering approval of the crowd." I did not then, but have since found a very apt quotation for this little show of vaulting ambi tion, in the pages of Shakespeare. But all sorts of things happened. Among the water-colours left by Caister was a piece of ivory, such as is used in painting miniatures, and I must needs paint a miniature, and so tried to copy the portrait of a lady with three little curls on each side of her face. At that time I had the bad habit of wetting and clean ing my brushes in my mouth. Now gamboge as a colour is good, but taken internally has a medicinal effect ; and a certain brown I used was so astringent that it might have served to prepare the lips for whistling; while the white, which was no other than white lead, gave me a fearful dryness of the throat, a symptom of white-lead poisoning, so that I might have entitled this incident, Death in the Paint-Box. Another curious thing: after working all morning on my picture, I found, on returning to it after dinner, nothing left on the sheet of ivory but little dots of colour; the lady had disappeared. It seemed the work of magic, but it was nothing but the work of the fly ; for the colours being ground up AT SCHOOL 59 with a certain amount of sugar, he had lifted it off with his little proboscis, — I dare say, as regards his health, with impunity ; but he did not visit my work after that with impunity, I can assure you. However, I gave up miniature-painting. Among the books in the garret, how can I leave out "Adven tures by Land and Sea," wherein is told the story of a shipwreck off the Falkland Islands, and of another wreck on the coast of Patagonia, and of the sufferings of Lieutenant Byron and his men as they worked their way, starving and on foot, along the coast up to Chili. The word " foot" brings to mind another story in this old book, of a man, the sole survivor on a wreck, who, although starving, would not become a cannibal, yet " thought it no dis grace" to use the foot of the dead cook as bait for sharks. He also made a retort, with a pistol-barrel and an iron tea-kettle, and distilled sea-water, and kept himself alive until rescued. This device I stored carefully away in my mind as being useful in case I should be caught in a similar predicament. This is an invaluable book and can be identified by a quotation on the title-page which I have never forgotten : — "I am now old, but were I young, I would again roam the seas, for my heart is always with the tight Ship and her jolly Crew." And now for school. The day came when, with my little trunk, a few bundles, and many parting injunctions, I was put on the stage which, leaving Fulton Ferry, went on past our house to Jamaica, Long Island. This stage passed my grand father's. The parting was hard, especially from Jack and Beese, my two dogs. Little did I realize what a paradise I was leaving, and to what a purgatory of three weary years I was hastening. 60 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. I was made welcome by the good principal of the school, Mr. Brinkerhoff, and his kind family, and soon became acquainted with the boys. Doubtless the Dutch name of the principal counted a great deal with my father, especially backed up by that of his partner, Mr. Onderdonk. There was also in the town a young ladies' seminary, kept by a Mrs. Adrian, another Dutch name. No one was to blame; it was a school of its time. Learn your lesson by memory and you stood at the head of your class ; failing in that, no matter how clever you were otherwise, you stood at the foot. I was clever otherwise, but was always being kept in, and always stood at the foot of the class. I cannot too strongly insist on it that no one was to blame. Mr. Brinkerhoff and his family were the best and kindest people imaginable ; the table was good and generous ; but it was the system. That herding together of little boys and older boys (some Spanish students from Cuba were no longer boys, but virtually men) was fraught with inconceivable evil. Fortunately the boys in general were good, but I saw — although I did not fully realize its import then — the harm one bad boy can do, the indelible impression he can leave on innocent, pure, and receptive minds. One rich and very extravagant and dissipated boy, who after wards ended badly, one absolutely bad boy, and one or two of the Spaniards, were more than enough. I say no more about this for fear I should say too much. Merely as a matter of fact I will say that I was, by general consent, the artist of the school, also the inventor of machines and of mechanical fun and deviltry in general. I made new fangled kites, a camera obscura, — a great wonder, — the fast est boats ; and as the heir of the mad inventor, brought with me AT SCHOOL 61 several things of his invention one of which was a pistol-barrel with the hammer underneath, — a good solid thing, — with which one of the boys, to whom I had lent it, peppered his face with gunpowder and burnt off his eyelashes and eyebrows. It was great fun extracting from time to time the grains of powder from his face, until he insisted on retaining some as a record. My unenvied throne was the foot of the class ; but school-hours over, I was as good as the rest, — indeed was a favourite with one gentle teacher, he of the hazel-coloured eyes with little specks in them. He used to take me with him in his walks and really taught me something. I remember him with pleasure and gratitude. There was in town an old painter whose studio I soon became familiar with. His studio was fairyland. He lent me Allan Cunningham's "Lives of English Artists," and as he was al ways chewing tobacco and had his mouth full of amber-coloured liquid, I thought it must be megilp or gumption, frequently men tioned in the "Life of Reynolds." In that wonderful book was an account of Nollekens — the name tickled me — going about amongst his statues at night with a candle on the brim of his hat; and a very good way it is to see defects in modelling. Also I read for the first time of Blake, the mad painter. Fancy the author of the illustrations of the Book of Job — mad ! ! ! This innocent old man gave a few lessons to the young ladies of the Seminary, and in his leisure used to construct beautiful landscapes, with rocks, and little branches of trees, moss, etc., etc., and made quiet pools of looking-glass in which all was re flected. He said he thus composed the landscapes he painted, and it never entered his head or mine but that they were far superior to Nature. He also lent me some engravings to copy, of hands and feet, said to be by Raffaello — but they were so 62 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. horribly ugly that I gave it up. But I did draw things, and drew them, as was said of the talented boy, "right out of my own head with a common lead-pencil." One drawing was the head of a girl, — which I used to show only as a great favour. It happened thus. There was a little boy, a very weak and delicate little fellow, whose protector I became. I was his cham pion, and he repaid it with gratitude and affection. Now his sister was at that time an inmate of the Seminary. She was a tall girl, older than I, and to me of a Madonna-like loveliness. Of course I was her worshipper, and I drew this little head. It chanced to turn out a likeness. There was an insolent young whelp of a boy with a broken front tooth, by the name of Hyde. He had tried to impose on my little friend and I had challenged him to settle the matter on "the green" beyond the railroad, a place where we played ball, flew kites, and settled affairs of hon our. This raised great expectations ; and although it never came off, it served to keep Hyde in order all the rest of my stay at school; for should the unfortunate Hyde ever put on airs or show his arrogance to boys smaller than himself, he was told that he had better first settle that affair with V. You see it was a standing challenge — "any time, on the green"; fortunately for my reputation, the gauntlet was never taken up. Even in this tranquil scene, tragedy and the ugly face of Death had to show themselves. On revisiting Jamaica long after, with a school-boy friend, he pointed to a railroad bridge and said: "Don't you remember that bridge ?" No, — I had forgotten it. "Why, that was where they hung the Negro." Then it all came back in a flash, — the outrage and the lynching. As the boys knew the victims, the event created a terrible impression at the time ; yet, strange to say, I had forgotten it utterly. VACATIONS AND PETS 63 Of course vacations and occasional visits home cheered me up; but, as I said, it was a weary purgatory, and that it was so is illustrated by a meeting held by the boys shortly before I left. We had heard older people extol the days of their boy hood in such songs as, "Make me a boy again!" or "Make me a boy again just for to-night." In this meeting it was pro posed that we should under no circumstances ever praise the days of our boyhood, — and this, put to the vote, was carried unanimously. I have said, in telling about my stay in Schenectady, how my voyage to Cuba had set me apart and above other boys. I should think so. A boy who can tell about cocoanut-trees, sugar-cane, Negroes, oysters growing on trees, flying-fish, — and especially of a fish with wings like a bat, eyes like an owl, four legs, and that can climb a tree, — ought to count for something in telling stories. No wonder I developed a talent for it. There was one story I was for ever telling, for it could be pro longed indefinitely and I was always prolonging it. It was told in bed, — which was against the rule, and therefore with added zest. The boys would gather about and beg to form part of the adventurous crew, for it was always an innocent pirate crew of boys who found a desert island and settled on it. This island was of course in the Tropics. Equally of course, we were armed to the teeth, and the selection of the arms and the costume and the provisions was matter of great moment and took many nights to settle. Also the selection of the crew. In this I was quite tyran nical, so that some had to beg almost with tears in their eyes before they were allowed to join the band. I cannot remember if I admitted Hyde into this glorious company ; but if I did it was with the intention of marooning him on the first opportunity, — 64 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. with plenty of arms and provisions, of course, for we were, above all, good pirates. Like all good things the story came to an end; for one night good Mr. Brinkerhoff, prowling about, yanked us from our beds, and flat sounds were heard in the dormitory. We all felt it to be a most untimely and painful end. Our morals were strictly seen to, for one of the regulations of the school was that each boy must go to church twice on Sundays, — once to a church selected by his parents, while the other was left to his discretion. My father must have been somewhat puzzled to decide which church I was to attend, but he settled on the Dutch Reformed: the "Dutch," corroborated by "re formed," must have decided him. We boys always went in the gallery, and in that of the Dutch Reformed, I had much pleasant sleep. Not so at the Episcopal church, which was unanimously selected by the outsiders as the second string to their bow; for there the varied ceremonial, the getting up and sitting down kept us from sleeping and afforded us much amusement, quite apart from the service. Sunday-School had its moments of relaxation. It was at this time that I propounded certain questions that have remained unanswered to this day. I started out by saying, "You tell me God knows everything that has been, is, and is to be." — "Yes." — "Well, then, if I should make a little cart with wheels which I could wind up and which would run along the ground when I let go of it, and I should wind it up and say to it — Tf you run when I let go, I will smash you,' — what would you think of me?" — "My child, you are too young to understand such things; when you get older, all that will be explained." I am still waiting for the explanation, — still too young, perhaps. It was once at Sunday-School that a boy — a very wicked VACATIONS AND PETS 65 boy indeed — had found in the Bible a most outrageous word, — you know there are such in the Bible, — and he asked the school mistress the meaning of it. With the utmost promptitude she said: "We will look it up in the dictionary." And, accordingly, we did and found at X, for that was the word, " See Y." — "We will have to look up Y." On doing so, to our perplexity we found "See X." Had she taken a preliminary canter? Why this about Sunday-Schools ? Why ? Because in them I was treated as if I were an imbecile. Why ? Because they, knowing all things, refused to share their knowledge with me, thus causing me to flounder through life without being able to grasp the scheme. It would have been so easy for them to have told me, they knowing all things. Truly school was purgatory, where, having been thoroughly purged for sins I had not committed, I always felt that I had a considerable sum to my credit on which I have drawn from time to time. But then, there was always the promise of paradise, — Grandpa's, — to which I now willingly return. While at school in Jamaica, my vacations, as I have already said, were passed at my grandfather's, where my dog Jack was ever ready to welcome me with delight and become again my darling companion. I think I knew every thought that passed through his dear old head, as well as he knew what was in store for him when I coaxed him towards me — intent on some fun at his expense. I think people must have time to burn when they waste it writing arti cles on the question, " Do animals think ? " I will not answer as to men, but I will answer as to Jack's thinking, and think it was as good thinking as ever passed through the noddle of a man. 66 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. The neighbourhood was sparsely settled with a few old Dutch families and with others. Some of the names were very suggestive. One was Gascoigne, another that I remember was Collet, — both strangely English and French at the same time. Now this Collet had a dog who fre quently visited Jack; they were friends. He was large enough, but a poor, half- starved creature, always look ing for something to eat. Jack was a wire-coated, big Scotch terrier, and in good condition. He was rich, — so rich that he had to have banks in which to deposit his bones, and he drew upon them when he was so disposed. Collet's dog would at once make for these deposits, but a warning growl from Jack showed him that they were taboo until a preliminary romp was had. This once over, Jack would lie down panting and placidly watch Collet's dog as he banqueted on the bones provided by Jack's prevision. If that was not thinking on the part of Jack, I should like to know what is ? There once flourished in the north of Italy — e precisamente, in the Veneto — a celebrated bone-setter by the name of Regina Del Cin. Cripples came to her from all parts of Europe. She was a good illustration of a person born to do a certain thing. They say that when little she never ate a chicken without exam ining the joints to see how they worked. She had the habit of lulling her patient into a comfortable state of mind by pretending a preliminary examination, merely to see what was the matter, \TouJ< DOMESTIC SURGERY 67 and taking advantage of the relaxed state of the muscles, a quick movement and — snap, back went the bone into its socket. My mothermusthave had thisgift, taking the form of curingcuts, sprains, bruises, and in fact all those ills which fall to the lot of childhood. Hermantle has fallen on me. But first, about the goose. Grandpa had, with his solid Dutch foot, stepped on the head of a little goose, and being a man hard to move, he did not move but stood for some time. When he did move, the little goose was found — perfectly scalped. You will find in all trades that hurts are healed by something standing about the shop. Grandpa had been glueing something, so my mother cut a patch just the size of the bare spot and glued it on ; then, putting the patient in a basket, and in a quiet corner, and thrusting pellets of food down its throat and pouring in spoonfuls of water, Nature was allowed to take her course. After days of piteous whimperings, the little goose came forth with such wits as he had about him, and as his health improved, the patch curled up and was clipped off at the edges till nothing of it remained, and he was cured and grew up to be the biggest goose of them all, — and then the usual end. Now comes my turn: this time a chicken, a big one. His leg had been broken, the shin part, about two inches below the joint. It was a hopeless case and he was about to fall under the axe, when I begged them to turn him over to my tender mercies — for I had an idea. I at once proceeded to cut off the injured part, then taking a piece of bamboo and also accurate measurements, I made a substitute for the lost foot, then wrapped up the stump, stuffed cotton inside the bamboo, and slipped it on. It was the right length and fitted perfectly, and off he went, — dot and carry one, — to the admiration of the family assembled. He became a fine fowl, — and then the usual apotheosis. 68 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. I have just come across a drawing of my boyhood, — it is the old well at my grandfather's. In it hung a veritable "moss- covered," aye, an "iron-bound bucket." How dear to my heart THE WELL are the scenes of my childhood when fond recollection does, or doth, bring them to view, I need not say. It was the end of a summer afternoon, — long cool shadows stretching over the grass, etc., etc. Between the old pear-tree and a neighbour apple-tree hung a Cuban hammock. My pet THE MOSS-COVERED BUCKET 69 goat was lying on the grass, offering a soft and warm southern exposure of which her great friend, my pet cat, had availed her self. The cat was sleeping, but not so the pretty, well-set-up lit tle girl swinging gently in the hammock. She was wide awake, and like Vivian, was weaving a spell to catch a youthful Merlin in. I was the youthful Merlin. The spell ran thus : — If a body meet a body, comin' through the rye, If a body kiss a body — need a body cry ? This she sang over and over again, until it got so on my nerves that I told her to shut up, and that put an end to the incanta tion. But I have since wondered if my Guardian Angel induced me to make that rude remark. The little girl was older than I, and youthful affections are sometimes kept up which lead to matrimony, and the angel may have foreseen trouble. I have always thought I had a guardian angel, and have also thought that, while always good, he or she was sometimes rather officious ; else why should I, later in life, have written these verses, which are so obviously home-made that it would be useless for me to try to foist them off on any one else: — oh, jimminy! I took but one kiss, when I might have had twenty, For the sweet lips I kissed had kisses in plenty, But I let my chance go, and am standing in snow — Saying, Oh, Jimminy! The sweetest of kisses are those we have missed, And the ones most regretted are those never kissed; So — don't let your chance go, or you'll stand in the snow, Saying, Oh, Jimminy! About this time came along one day a little tramp. I call him that now ; in those days the modern tramp was unknown. If this 7o THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. little fellow did not become a modern tramp, it must be that he was beloved of the gods and died young. My mother, like the good Samaritan she was, took him in, fed him, and washed his poor little tired legs and feet. But he was as bright and as perky as you please, for during the process he stuck out a leg and said, " Look at that leg ; that 's a real Paris leg ; my father was a French man." And seeing some rag carpet in the kitchen he said: "In our house we have Brussels carpets, — way up to the garret." Here our mother tried a little finessing with him by telling him that in the country where we were, we had great trouble with our washerwoman. She was sick, — not likely to get well, — and did he not think his mother would like to do some washing for us ? He said it was just what she was looking for, and that he would tell her the moment he got home. Having no fears but that the boy would get home, we sent him off rejoicing. But my mother was seldom at the North, so that I passed my vacations with the old folks at home — a most blessed relief from the carking care of school, for which I retained a profound hatred. In the long summer afternoons, in the shaded room, with Grand ma and Aunt Eveline quietly talking while the grasshoppers were singing and the bees humming outside, I used to hear many long stories of the doings of the great people over in the city or living up on the Hudson. "You say he left New York?" "Yes, he did n't seem to succeed in anything and he went up to Peekskill." "Well, what did he do there?" "Why, he did the same as he did in New York — pottered about trying a lot of things, and then he thought he'd go West, and he went, and that's the last we heard of him." BEN 71 "Well, what became of the children ?" "Oh, the uncle took the children"; and so on for hours. One story I remember which might be called "The Inflation of Mr. and Mrs. McSoarley." It was the story of an Irishman and his wife who settled on the Hudson atTarrytown. When they came, they came barefoot, and she used to do washing and he used to saw wood and split it. By staying in one place and sav ing up money, they finally bought land, and by waiting the land became valuable and they became rich. Then, dressed in a fine gown and sipping her good tea out of a China tea-cup, she would remark, "I never could git my lip over anything but China." To wind up the Quaint Legends of my Infancy and Boyhood, and omit Ben Day, would be to leave out the big drum indeed. Ben was my best and earliest chum. His mother was also the best and earliest friend my mother had, and she loved me as much as if I had been her own child. It was in the elder Ben's house that I was taken care of after the accident which finished my youthful career on the South Side, and it was from there the pair of us, mere boys, set sail for Europe the first time we crossed the Atlantic. I remember Ben's toys as being so much superior to mine. This was when they lived in Lispenard Street. Just fancy living there now ! Ben had better toys, but he did not get any better fun out of them than I did out of mine, and I doubt if he got so much. I am reminded of what was told of the great Ericsson : itwas said that in making his drawings for the Monitor he used a few old, defective instruments dating from the time of his youth, but used them with consummate skill. There is some thing in that. Long after, Ben called to mind how at my grandfather's — 72 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. for he was always coming over to see me — we used to play the Indian and the settler; and he said I was always the Indian springing from ambush and scalping the early white settler, and that he was always the settler. It turned out later that Ben with all his foolishness became a settler in earnest, for he settled down and stuck to his settlement to such good purpose that he must be a millionaire by this time. Yet I doubt if he has gotten as much fun out of his money and life as I have out of my art and friends. He may think differently, but somehow I seem to remember the last time we met that he said something about his having no friends. In any case, he remains one of my best and warmest friends. I shall have much to say about Ben before I get through with the stories of my youth and the wartime in New York. CHAPTER III Big Boyhood I GO TO CUBA AGAIN — I START A NEW RELIGION — I GO NORTH — AGAIN AT GRANDPA'S — WE BUILD A HOUSE — MY MOTHER'S DEATH — AN ARCHITECTURAL INTERLUDE — THE END OF HOME — MORICHES — WASPS AND EQUILIBRIUM RE STORED—MOSQUITOES AND FLIRTING. Ihave seen in an old letter of my grandfather's that he saw me off for Cuba, paid my school-bill, and so forth; but I find his letters so full of the need of money, and trouble about land-taxes, potato-bugs, and rats, that I cannot go on, and thus I remain all mixed up about this period. These trips to Cuba are constantly interrupting the flow of my narrative, and are like painting, which is such a fearful interruption to smoking. One thing is clear: I was wild to get to Matanzas to ride my brother's horse. Things turned out better than I expected, for I was soon given a horse, and — what went beyond all my hopes — a pure white one with tortoise-shell spots like a circus horse. I was in ecsta sies. How we groomed those horses, and how bright we kept their bits, stirrups, and spurs ! They were stallions and perfect little devils, and my arms were always aching with holding mine in. One day, down by the fish-market at the wharf, my pony got the bit in his mouth and dashed under one of the arches, and I heard the buttons on my gimp-trimmed jacket rattle as I lay back 74 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. as flat as I could. But, bless you ! that was a minor attempt on my life by that dastardly old truepenny always lurking about. It must have been on this visit that I invented that new re ligion and made the head of the Scotchman I will tell about — but I cannot be sure. One thing about riding: I rode with knees up, heels drooping, and toes turned in, — a real cavalry seat; and I thought I looked like a real soldier. By the way, my daugh ter, who was born in Rome, looking up from her book one day when a child said, "Mother, what is a sol die er?" — "Why, what do you mean ? " — " In this book I have been reading about a tin sol die er, — what is it ? " " Pronounce it soleger and you will know." The word makes funny spelling anyway, but I am not the person to throw the first stone in the matter of spelling. Art in Matanzas was chiefly noted as being absent. There were indeed some old pictures owned by French families, — refugees from Santo Domingo, — which only served to accentu ate their pathetic condition. The sons in Paris; the fair sisters withering on the stalk in Cuba. The sons writing for money, which was earned by a few old and decrepit slaves they had managed to save from the wreck of their fortunes, and which barely served to sustain the family at home. One of these pictures was given to my father for services rendered, for under pretext of having forgotten to do so he had never sent in a bill. This picture I have by me now. It represents that classic nymph who was wounded by the huntsman, her lover. She leaves the arrow in her side, the better to illustrate the story, and seems mildly accusing him ; while he, in spite of some difficulty about the legs, owing to a bad attack of perspective, gazes on her with an equally mild surprise. This picture is in a beautiful state of preserva- CUBA AGAIN 75 tion. I am not the first to remark how wonderfully preserved are colour and surface in bad pictures. Bad painters are not infrequently good workmen. And now comes in Doctor Pina, an old Spaniard, who had an office in our house, and was a good example of how fine a Spaniard can be: an upright, hon ourable man. He had a wonderful carved ivory breast-pin which filled me with admiration, so I borrowed it, and getting a piece of ivory, attempted to make a copy. But the hardness of the material foiled me and I gave it up. But I did get a piece of soft limestone, which could be carved easily, and made a head about the size of my fist as it was then. This was proclaimed a wonder, and all said it was the head of a Scotchman, — although it might have turned out the head of a Patagonian, for all I knew when I started it. This a black boy about the house let fall and it was broken beyond all hope of repair. You may be sure, if living, he remembers that head far better than I do. But the spirit of Art was strong within me, only it now took on one of its most primitive forms. I had been struck with the gorgeous ceremonials of the Church, and in the Spanish school I went to had been duly taught the legends of the Saints ; so that, collecting all the tinsel and most gaudy materials I could, and little highly coloured prints of Saints and gods and god desses, and fashionable beauties, I erected an altar in a large unused room, and fitted it up beautifully with flowers and little candles, and then was ready for business. I formed my congre gation by getting together all the little darkies of the neighbour hood, who came willingly enough to see the splendid sight. I then taught them how to worship on bended knee, and no doubt should have arrived at passing the plate, had not a recalcitrant boy, larger and stronger than I was, held my hands when I at- 76 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. tempted to make him kneel. This threw me into a great rage. Ah, how willingly I would have made an early martyr of him right there in the courtyard, and added him to the calendar! This happened when the candles were all alight and the altar was a dream of beauty and magnificence. It lasted but a mo ment — it was too fair to endure, and went up in a general blaze quite as amusing to the congregation as the worshipping. Had it not been for that beast of a boy-Luther, or Calvin, or Savon arola, I might have founded a cult of the beautiful, a religion of Art for Art's sake. Who knows ? I never tried it again. My brother's skin used to burn, mine to tan, and as my hair was as white as an Albino's, I must have looked like a magpie. Be that as it may, I began to look sallow, and was packed off North. But I left one broken heart behind me, — that of poor Cottorita, my parrot. She had been given me very young, and loved as only a parrot or dog can love. I have always been sorry that I did not take the dear thing with me, for she went about for three days after my departure, calling, "Nino Elijio! Nino Eli- jio ! " and then flew away and was never seen again. When I went to the Spanish school she would station herself at the house-door and wait patiently until I came back, and then, climbing up, never quitted my shoulder. When I remember that a parrot can live a hundred years, there is no reason why she should not be rub bing a dear old head against my cheek at this present moment. Grandpa's old parrot, who had passed his youth among sailors and who used to ask, "What o'clock ?" and when told the time, would reply, "You be damned!" amused me, but never consoled me for the loss of poor Cottorita. I was now sent to take lessons of a regular old-fashioned draw ing-master, and in all weathers walked down the road, now Di- I GO NORTH 77 vision Avenue, to his place. There I sat copying a few poor, old pencil drawings. I almost at once rebelled, and would have no thing more to do with him. Then, seeing advertisements of beau tiful work to be done at home in black lacquer and mother-of- pearl, I must perforce try it, driven to it by the American idea that money must be at the root of all professions. These people supplied all the material and no doubt waxed rich, while their poor dupes waxed poor through their failures; or, if they suc ceeded, then their work was bought from them for a mere song. This attempt filled the house with dirt and evil odours, and must have gone over the land like a pest. The iridescence of the mother-of-pearl was as beautiful as the result was hideous, — so I gave it up. Now come my mother and brother back from Cuba, and the fatal hour draws near predicted by the fortune-teller in Grand Street. But no one then remembered the prediction, and we were happy, and those days now seem all the fairer by contrast with the gloom that was so soon to follow. I never lose my sor rows, but fold them up and put them away under lock and key ; but they are there all the same, and there I leave them while good, old-fashioned and somewhat heartless life goes on. The house was one door removed from the northeast corner of Clinton Avenue where it crosses Fulton Street, and was a very pretty one of wood lined with brick and ornamented with Gothic jig-sawing. While it was going up, we lived near by, and of course I went to school; but we had great fun nevertheless, and my mother was in all our amusements. She helped us build a tele scope, an affair about four feet long. We had a fine time with the tube, which was made of innumerable layers of paper pasted over 78 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. a wooden cylinder. When dry, we could n't get it off; but mother cut it down its entire length, got it off, and pasted it up again, and we saw the mountains of the moon, the phases of Venus, the satellites of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, and our neighbour's windows at night upside down, — that was about all. The school-teacher was a reasonable man. He said: "I find you can reason, — now let us reason." And he went on reason ing with me until he' asked me if I knew what I had been doing ? On my answering that I did not, he said, "You have been doing algebra." You might have knocked me down with a feather. In arithmetic I had a cumbersome method of my own, but man aged to make it work; like all weak animals I protected myself by little devices. Had I then had a typewriter and a calculating- machine, I would now be standing with the proudest in the land, at the top of the ladder, instead of at the foot with aching neck, looking up. Finally we moved into the new house and were delighted with it. But poor mother was taken ill almost at once ; and, as I have told elsewhere, when the crisis was passed, instead of being given a strengthening treatment, by the absolute neglect and forget- fulness of an old doctor she was allowed to die of weakness. I had been sent out to call the doctor, and when I came back my brother met me at the door and told me she was dead. For the only time in my life I fainted away. She lies in the beautiful Cemetery of the Evergreens near East New York. An Architectural Interlude. — It had always been my mother's wish that I should be an artist, a great artist, and for her sake I wish it could have been so. For my own part, I am MY MOTHER WE BUILD A HOUSE 81 perfectly content to be just what I am, and finally to occupy that little niche posterity may assign to me ; although I beg leave to have my doubts about posterity, having felt but little need of its kind offices, yet nourishing at the same time a little hope that it will think kindly of me. I think it wise to assume that it will, and so get all the comfort that idea gives during my lifetime. My mother's wish, then, that I should be an artist, and my father's wanting me to make money, led to a compromise and I was put with an architect. I don't wish it understood that I consider architecture a compromise, for I have always held it to be one of the noblest of the arts. In Chambers Street, nearly opposite our old home, there hung out from a house a small sign. It was black, with the facade of a Grecian temple in white and in high relief projecting from its dusty surface. This marked the business abode of Shugg and Beers, Architects. It was just like Dickens, and I remember that Mr. Beers's nose was a little red. All became very fond of me, and I kept the office lively with my pranks ; but they all decided that I ought to be an artist, for it never entered their innocent heads that an architect could be both. They merely made the drawings for builders, — just as afterwards I found that artists merely made drawings for'the engravers, the engraver being then the better man. I inadvertently used the word "home," — it leads to a digres sion on the strange American use of this sacred word. A lady friend whose husband is an architect once told me that she had seven homes in the important city in which she lives. Her hus band prospering and building many houses, I dare say she may have seventeen by this time. Fancy how the old folks at home must have to fly about, and how many affections you must have, 82 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. to cling about seventeen fireplaces, and how many stockings at Christmas ! Let her ponder and sin no more. My brother must have been at Mons. Pugnet's Academy at this time. But before, I remember, we lived for a while with an old clergyman, a lively one, a regular Pepys as to doors, for I saw him myself behind a door with Becky, and so to prayers, "mighty merry." On one of my trips to the old place I saw Jack for the last time. He came to me limping, having slipped his shoulder in some midnight foray long before, and could only lie at my feet, licking them and looking up at me. I gath ered his grey head in my arms, and a look of perfect happiness came into his eyes. He had had his wish, he had seen his master once more, — and then he passed away. And then Grandpa went. He saw that the clock was wound up ; he wound up his watch and said he would die about three o'clock in the morning, and I believe he would have been very much put out had he not died at that hour. And then Grandma. The sit ting up and constant attention needed was hard on Aunt Ewy and myself; but then my task was lightened by the presence of a very pleasing young person from Ireland ; thus it happens that there are always compensations. And then the old home was let, and Aunt Ewy was received into the ever-hospitable house of Ben's father, and so ended the home of the Quaint Legends. I fear those fond of chronology will here get mixed up a bit, but they cannot become more so than I am myself. I know that when the friendly architects had found out how unsuited I was to their profession, — which in their hands was far from a noble one, — Ben's father was consulted ; and as Mr. Matteson had THE END OF HOME 83 been very successful in his drawings for "Brother Jonathan," he advised sending me to that artist. But I am sure that before that event I passed some of my happiest days on the south side of Long Island with good Mr. Parsons. That is, days as happy as were consistent with constant interruptions from lessons; for the well-meant but misdirected efforts of my father to give me an education were persistent. Perhaps he really did not know what else to do with me, — a thing which explains much schooling. There I was joined by my brother, for a short time, who then thought of preparing himself for college, but subsequently drifted into medicine, — for you see we were both getting our bearings. I have a theory that he gave up college from a fear that he would not be given funds enough to make that appearance he was so fond of; for he, being a gentleman by nature, had always dressed like one, and he feared when put to the test, father's staying powers in the way of money might give out. One of the hardest things to resist is the tendency to prattle, which I take to be — telling people what they already know. Yet how can one write without it ? Ideas cannot be administered like pills. A man with only the necessary bones and muscles would cut but a "magra figura"; a little fat is needed to round it out. The memory of what the Boys used to call the " Idiot's Play ground" in one of the old magazines, fills me with apprehension and checks the genial current. The story of good old Judge So- and-So riding a circuit — "a noted wit" — and the earnest assurance of the truth of the tale, which on dissection frequently turned out to have neither idea, bone, nor muscle, and even the fat none of the freshest, is to me a warning. I therefore proceed with caution, but shall take heed that the caution is not apparent. In the course of the attempt to give us an education — which 84 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. succeeded in the case of my brother — we were now placed under the tuition of a clergyman, the Mr. Parsons I have already men tioned. This was in Moriches on the south side of Long Island. Now, to be a novelist in those days, although not quite so bad as being an Abolitionist, yet carried with it a certain tinge of frivol ity. At least, good Mr. Parsons must have thought so, for — the religious microbe entering his mind about this time — he gave it up as a profession and became a clergyman instead. This microbe may be beneficent or malignant. In his case it turned out to be of the former type, and he also turned out to be a most excellent man. Another thing may have influenced him. At a party of young people, it was proposed in sport to go through the marriage ceremony (a thing not always attended to on the South Side), and it appears that this was done so thoroughly that the young woman, holding to her side of the bargain, gave him no end of trouble. Heedless of this warning, or wishing to place himself out of danger, or both, or really being in love, — which I think was the case, — he, shortly after this make-believe mar riage, got married in earnest, and that to a most lovely and loving little woman. Parsons was wise as well as good. I must say first, that I was a permanent boarder, my brother staying but a short time, and that there were some six other lads coming as day-scholars. I said he was wise, for he came to a wise conclusion with regard to me : half work and half play he thought indicated in my case, with a fair amount of gallivanting in the evening after dinner. Short lessons, well learned, during the morning; gun or boat all the afternoon ; girl in the evening. I enjoyed this programme immensely, and happenings began to happen, and I made good progress in both studies and amusements. WASPS AND EQUILIBRIUM 85 I make no comments, yet cannot help noticing the strange predicament in which the humane person finds himself in this world of ours, when it comes to his relations with the animals, and reconciUng his theories of humanity with the stern laws of Nature. My father, for instance, would never kill even a scor pion, for he said they were so useful in killing flies and cock roaches in their prowlings at night ; but he took care to cut off their stings. But there it is, — you save the scorpion and yet permit him to kill the fly, or you save yourself by mutilating the scorpion. One day my study-room was invaded by wasps. Wishing to save both myself and the wasps, I remembered the humanity of my father and tried to snip off their stings with a pair of scissors. Wasps are impatient, so in my attempts I sometimes cut off more than I intended; — their equilibrium being altered, they fell to the ground and buzzed round in circles. Thus rendered harmless, I could examine them with safety, and saw that, where the spoon-shaped tail had been cut in two, was left a cup-like portion. The thought then struck me that by restoring the proper weight their power of flight would likewise be restored, and I at once hit on a good expedient. I had some red sealing- wax, and lighting a candle, I made me certain little pellets of the proper size and weight, and softening them, defdy placed them in the little sockets before mentioned. To my delight I saw them fly off as well as ever with their bright new red tails. They were now rendered harmless and seemingly proud. If proud, their pride was of short duration, for the wax, cooled by that flight, adhered but slighdy, and on their striking the glass in the windows would drop off, and they were reduced once more to impotent buzzings on the floor. Of course I shouted for 86 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. Mr. Parsons to come and witness the success of my experi ment. He could not help laughing heartily, but thought that one demonstration was sufficient to satisfy the claims of science, and more would be cruelty. I have since come to the conclusion that Science is a heartless jade. I believe I said something about girls — ah, yes, the girls ! Parties were given. They commenced very meekly indeed. The girls all ranged themselves on one side of the room, while the young fellows hung about the door. There was then the ques tion of music. "Let's have Jim the fiddler." — "But she is a Church member." — "Might have an accordion." — "Non sense, —let's have the fiddler, and it will be all right"; and it was. The music struck up. Then the question — who first? Now I was the city chap and much was expected of me ; so putting on a bold front I walked across the room and selected Hannah. She was the belle of Moriches ; no one was keeping company with her; she awed them, and my boldness pleasing her, we got on famously. The party, at first like a Quaker meeting, ended in no such matter, for some wags, blowing out all the candles, left us to our own devices. Then we streamed out into the moonlight and each one of the boys escorted his fair partner to her home. Hannah's home was on the Point — S.'s Point. Mr. Parsons used to say: "V., you had better make up to H. Her father has the finest potato-patch in town." To get there we passed the swing in the woods — the scene of all our junketings. I think my hatred of mosquitoes dates from that night. A friend once told of a man in Maine hoeing with one hand and keeping off mosquitoes with the other. We found that, with both hands free, all attempts at practical flirting in the woods were vain ; so we repaired to the dark and quiet parlour, — dark, for lights MOSQUITOES AND FLIRTING 89 were worse than useless on account of attracting the pests. And the parents? On the South Side, the parents of those days were the most considerate people in the world; they always retired and left the coast clear — and so we young ones coasted. From the time I first sat on the fence and watched my grand father hoe potatoes, with such placidity, I have remained there. If in another part I say the opposite while writing this, that does not count. For the present, consider me as having always sat on the fence. My brother, on the contrary, was always either on one side or the other. At first he was on the side where you will find Voltaire, Volney, Rousseau, Paine and his "Age of Rea son," and a vast number of others unknown to fame ; and on the other side was the usual crowd. Have you ever seen the placid cat on some secure height watching with serious humour the "braggart bark and noisy stir" of her enemy the dog? Thus sat I, when my brother for the first time experienced religion. This happened in Moriches. He was fervent, and, as becomes a lately converted, sought at once to convert me, and he prayed most beautiful prayers, while I tried to sleep. You see, he was not quite sure. He wanted a direct answer from the Lord — and no answer came. Once there was an old Dutchman who contributed so largely to building a church that it might be said he had built it himself. When, however, extra funds were needed to erect a lightning- rod, he refused flatly, and said that if the Lord wanted to "dun- der down His own house, He might dunder it down and be tam't." One night my brother stopped short in the midst of a beautiful prayer, and using almost the Dutchman's expression, jumped into bed and went to sleep. The placid cat then shut 90 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. its eyes and did the same. Some years after, he writes from Yokohama: "I have now made my peace with God and man. I trust implicidy in my Saviour, follow His teachings, and enjoy a peace which I have not known for years" — and in this frame of mind he remained until he entered the peace which passeth understanding. I don't think I did much in the way of Art at Moriches. From my not finding it among my things, I think a meagre little picture I made of Mr. Parsons's house must have been given to him. It was a square wooden house, — square, from the lazy American habitof those days of putting a try-square on every timber and sawing it off, which dictated the pitch of every roof from Maine to Florida, no matter what the climate or rainfall. It had a new picket-fence painted white, stretching along the straight board sidewalk. In the picture I painted every picket. This picket-fence and side walk were the pride of the town and an indication of progress, and great things were predicted of the future of Moriches. Back of the house, a field of stumps overgrown with bushes, closed in by the particularly meagre trees left by the improvers of the country. It was simply ugly. Yet in the solemn twilight, keeping still and watchings things, I used to see the whip-poor-wills mount in the air with two or three complaining cries, and then come diving down and mount again, so close to me that I could hear the buzz made by their wings, and see their feathers vibrat ing as the air rushed through them. Then in the winter, in the interminable pine woods of little pines, — all the fine ones having been cut down, as is our custom, — I used to make long fences with openings, and used to snare the pretty quails, — for which the Lord forgive me. Not only that, but sell them, and be inor dinately proud of the blood-money. But that was it: if you could MOSQUITOES AND FLIRTING 91 only make money, no matter how, you were considered a tall fellow in those days. In the upper part of the mill-pond, a perfect tangle of water logged stumps and bushes and swamp, I caught the speckled trout. I never wasted bait, but used to nourish certain pools with it; so when I judged the time was ripe, my string was never lacking. Just think, if I still remember this ugly spot with pleas ure, what my memories would now be if the house had been thatched and covered with honeysuckle, and the woods of noble oaks or pines. It was different on the bay and on the great beach by the sea, and in the grove near the abode of Hannah. CHAPTER IV "Youth and Art" A LINK — ANOTHER LITTLE TRAMP— THE DEFLATION OF RAFFAELLO — IKEY AND IKEY'S FATHER — RAFFAELLO QUITS SHERBOURNE — GUANAHAI — IN THE SHADE OF THE SOM BRERO—TOM—BACK IN NEW YORK — MY LAST VISIT TO MATANZAS— VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH — TWO DREAMS — BEN'S LETTER. I suppose I could, by looking over letters, get the dates of this period all right ; but old letters are such sad things that I hate to undertake it; and, after all, dates are not so in teresting as happenings, and particularly the happenings which now happened. So I will at once say that the advice of Ben's father was taken, and I was sent to Sherbourne and entered the studio of T. H. Matteson. What followed offers asgood an example of the pranks of Providence as you will find outside of a museum, — but I suppose that is the way the Tangled Skein is made up. Matteson was remarkable for being a self-made man who had made a good job of it. Somewhat stately and precise in manner, but kindly and with a fine sense of humour, he had turned out a gentleman in spite of very adverse circumstances. His good wife — he had married young — inevitably as seedtime and harvest presented him with the yearly child, — one, no more, no less. Even when I left, the future was full of promise. He wore a steeple-crowned hat and a short mantle, and was not averse to being called the pilgrim-painter. P'or one of his favourite A LINK 93 subjects was the pilgrim, either departing or arriving, which last was invariably on a different part of the coast, and always in wretched weather. In spite of which, prayers of thankfulness were always ascending, — thus giving a vivid idea of what they must have left behind. I once tried a little good-natured badinage, apropos of the steeple-crowned hat. It was not taken in good part, although I thought I had been very funny. He had made something out of his illustrations for " Brother Jonathan," and was now painting portraits, and must have been, with his large family, in very straitened circumstances; yet he never complained nor allowed it to be seen. He also made some thing out of the lessons he gave us, for we amounted to five or six pupils. I tell all this, to leave a little record of a man I loved, re spected and admired. He was a man of talent ruined by circum stances and his surroundings. Had he gone to Paris and stayed there, he would most undoubtedly have made his mark; and it was very sad to hear him say years after at the old Athenaeum Club, in his somewhat stately manner: "My dear V., it gives me great pleasure, mingled, I confess, with some pain, to welcome the scholar who has so far surpassed the master." Dear old boy ! Had he had the advantages I so shamefully neglected, there would have been another story to tell. It is strange how the same characters come up at intervals in one's life. I have told in " Quaint Legends " of the little tramp and his French leg. Here at Sherbourne dawned on us one day another little tramp — one of those who are always going some where, and whom kind-hearted people are always forwarding. His stories were great, and seemingly endless, and in the bar-room of the Tavern, where the legal talent of the town was always in evidence, he "kept the table on a roar." One day, before he was 94 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. forwarded, he was telling of how he had passed himself off as deaf and dumb, in an asylum for those thus afflicted, for an entire month, without being found out. "I never spoke but once in all that time. That was when playing tag I caught a boy and said, 'Now I've got you!'" — "Ah! then that let the cat out of the bag," put in a smart lawyer. — "No, it didn't, he was deaf; he couldn't hear me." When I went sketching in Sherbourne I sought for lofty granite peaks catching the last rays of the sun ; for hills convent-crowned, or castles on abrupt cliffs frowning down on peaceful abbeys be low, reflected in the tranquil stream ; for the picturesque mill and its mossy wheel, thatched cottages and the simple milkmaid, or the peasant playing on his rustic pipe. When more seriously in clined, I sought the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault, to hear the tones of the organ ; or, if on speculation or contemplation bent, the quiet cloister. Did I find these things? Not much! The rocks were of a disintegrating slate, hills rounded, and covered with monotonous green, no convents, no castles, no abbeys, no mills. The cottages were shingled ; the milkmaid wore a sunbonnet and chewed gum ; the peasant played on a tobacco-pipe ; the fretted vault was of pine ; the organ, a melodeon ; the cloister — a pig pen. One who ought to have been a rustic addressed me thus : " Say, do you know what they take you for raound here ? I was talking with Mis' Jenks daown to the bridge an' she says, < There 's been a young chap raound lately, with a tin box, perch- in' on fences and things, — hain't been to the house yet, but dare say he'll come; I kinder think he must be a pill-peddler.'" Would it be considering the thing "too curiously" — Raffaello, dead and turned to clay, Might make a pill to keep the wind away. THE DEFLATION OF RAFFAELLO 95 It was all my own fault. I was looking for things with a tinge of romance in them. Light had not been decomposed and there was no spectrum analysis in those days. A milkmaid was a good, solid, rosy proposition, fancy-free or with thoughts of a lover in the background ; and I should have painted her as sich. Now, I would try to paint the decomposed rays of light emanating from her, with an X-ray or two thrown in, — in fact, try to be in the swim. The difference between the two states of mind, then and now, is shown in this story: — They were seated by the seashore near a bathing establishment. Boys were disporting themselves in the fresh waves, and a sign announced that baths were twenty-five cents each. The father was reading his newspaper, when Ikey remarked wistfully: "Fader, I would like to take a bath." The father, first glanc ing at the signs, turned and said: "O Ikey, I was yuste so romantic ven I vass of your age ! " and resumed his paper. Poor Ikey! While in Sherbourne, I made with Rhodes and Warren, a sometime student of Matteson's, a visit to Warren's parents, and found them fine specimens of our good, intelligent, pious farmer- folk. The ride, partly by night, over the high and barren hills in the keen, frosty air, the rattling wheels on the frozen road, the young silver moon and a star or two besides, made the trip memorable. It, however, was made more so by a happening of a tragic nature. I had painted a dead squirrel, and all said that the softness of the fur was rendered marvellously ; I dare say it was and is still treasured. We were seated around the fire discussing the paint ing, and cider and doughnuts, when a neighbour broke in and breathlessly told us of how that returned Californian up the road 96 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. had gone crazy, and had shot at his father-in-law and at his sister, and had really shot his wife, and ended by shooting himself. At once we harnessed up and were on our way to the place. The moon shone brightly ; a line of switch-tailed country horses were tied to the fence in front of the house, and on the stone steps leading into it at the back were to be seen a few drops of blood. This lean-to was crowded with men ; on some boards upheld by barrels was stretched a man ; the white bosom of his shirt bore a small, but slowly spreading, spot of blood; his face, with shaven upper lip, was hard but peaceful. On a shelf above his head was a tin pan filled with cobs of Indian corn, and the butt of the revolver projected over its edge. An old fellow was holding forth: "She said she first see him lookin' in at the winder, white as a sheet, his eyes a-glarin', and then he commenced firin' at 'em." — "Well, you knowed him as a boy; what fur a man was he?"— "You see him there." This was said most impressively and seemed to be regarded as most eloquent, but I could not see that it advanced matters much. In the living-room a crowd of people, a smell of opium, and a hushed murmur of voices, with now and then a groan. The hus band, a picture of troubled grief, was talking to the doctor, who was not very hopeful ; he seemed bothered about something aside from the tragedy of the event ; he was hunting in his pockets for something ; finally, a large, oval metal tobacco-box came forth. Carefully, but still talking sadly to the doctor, he opened it, and carefully rolled up a huge quid, and as carefully, but quite uncon sciously, placed it in his mouth. Then over his countenance, as the acrid taste diffused itself on his palate, came a look of perfect RAFFAELLO QUITS SHERBOURNE 97 bliss. Rhodes and I, indefatigable observers of the comic, did not dare to look at each other ; it would have been awful under the circumstances. Perhaps this is not worth telling, but if told, it ought to be "with motions." The winding-up of Raff aello's career at Sherbourne was almost disastrous. I must make one rushing sentence of it. Sitting up late with the girls ; sitting up later at the tavern ; skating on the canal; or dragging melodeons on sleighs through the snow to serenade the said girls; breaking the ice in my pitcher in the morning and pouring the ice-water over myself to harden my muscles ; — and this after working all day in a close, over-heated studio, gave me a fearful cold. This was only added to by the long ride on the stage-coach. To be sure, one of the girls went part of the way with me, but it took the united warmth of both to prevent freezing. Then, on arriving in New York, at the boarding-house of Isaacs, who lodged and fed the medical students, not being far from the College and the old Crosby Street Gymnasium, a fool friend of my brother persuaded me to continue the hardening pro cess by stripping and running around that barn-like structure, ending the performance by a cold shower-bath and a rub-down, — this latter without a reaction. My brother finally came to the conclusion that I was a pretty sick boy, and took me to his professor, who, after examining me carefully, said: "See here, V., you tell me your father lives in Havana ? Now I don't want to alarm you, but I have seen so much of this sort of thing that I most strongly urge you to pack the boy off to his father at once." This was done, and I am persuaded that my brother again saved my life. And so again — Ho, for Cuba ! Q8 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. The hardening process having turned out so disastrously up North, I was now to try the softening process down South, and it worked like a charm, and soon restored me to perfect health. My father sent me to his old friend, Dr. Fulano. In this town of Guanahai no one ever seemed to die — any more than I can avoid such poetic pit-falls when they come in my way. Don Fulano is the Cuban equivalent of our "Mr. What's-his-name." The doctor was a little, active, tough old boy, with a heart as large as his principles were broad. His real name was so common that one wondered why he wished to make it more so, — for he not only had a most numerous family in Havana, but had started another in Guanahai which bid fair to rival it. This was most "naturale," as the Italians say, for fancy what an upheaval it would have been to transfer a large family back and forth be tween these places. Much better start another, — which he did, and it was well under way when I arrived on the scene. He was on horseback all day, going his rounds, admonishing, admin istering, and helping everybody, and was the best-loved man in all those parts. It was an easy-going place both in manners and customs. My bed was of rawhide, as smooth and hard and hollow as a Japan ese lacquered bowl. You simply slid down to the middle of it, — the sheet became a rope under you and was discarded. A sheet, a pillow, and a mosquito-net formed the outfit. My dress was equally simple : a pair of trousers, a shirt worn outside, a pair of low canvas shoes, a sombrero. Add to these a pair of spurs, a handkerchief around the waist, another about the neck, another tied on the head, and the sombrero on top, and I w as dressed for the day. I must not omit the long practical knife, thrust into the handkerchief at the waist. And the dav consisted of a visit to DOLORES 99 a coffee or sugar plantation, and the evening of sitting with chair tipped against the wall of my friend the apothecary his shop. That is — when I did not go a few houses beyond to sit and gaze into the eyes of Dolores. Dolores was a little girl, but she had large dark eyes, — eyes that one could sit and wander and wonder and dream in. Yet through the most fantastic forms of the smoke through which I gazed, never did Dolores appear to me as she might appear in the years to come. For these little Cuban girls do some times get — very stout. No; my dream was a most per fect lollypop of a dream while it lasted. And now, gentle reader, do you think I don't think of Dolores with the most tender regret ? I do. All was tender then, a tender green. And yet, I cling to this memory and "hover over it as the butterfly hovers over the perfume of a flower." Of course these dreams happily came to naught. Had it been otherwise, — what with the healthfulness of the climate and the easy-going habits of the place, I might now have been surrounded by a cloud of descendants, with not a drop to drink or a crust to eat. It was not a case of worm and damask cheek either, for there was no concealment about that little girl. She gazed back for all her heart was worth, and when I left, two hearts were wrung as one. It may be noticed in these memories that girls frequently DOLORES ioo THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. happened. Let my reader skip such passages; / would not have skipped them for worlds. At the apothecary's we used to sit of evenings with our chairs tipped against the wall ; and I, being a rank Republican, some times preached freedom and rebellion, — to his great delight. But when I did that we had to retire indoors, where, after the good man had carefully looked up and down the street, he would come back, rub his hands, and tell me to go on. You see we lived in a country where a man might be thrown into prison for having a Bible in his possession, and there he would remain until most of his money was gone, — for that was what the prison was made for. I noticed that all the chair-legs were worn off at the bottom, both front and back : the back legs were easily explained by this constant tipping against the wall, but how the front legs became worn I could not make out, until I noticed that a chair was never lifted, but simply dragged from place to place. The language was also archaic. At a certain hour in the evening, my friend would remark: "For the love of God, bring me something to warm my tripe"; and the inevitable coffee, freshly made, was brought to us. Yes, in a palm-thatched hut backed by banana trees, with a neatly swept space in front where the tethered game-cocks could crow defiance, — but not get at each other ; with a few swinging hammocks and the eyes of Dolores to gaze into, I felt I might carry out the traditions of the place and live and not die, but grad ually dry up and be blown away. From the hills back of the town one gazed over the vast stretch of the Vuelta Abajo, dotted with the royal palm, to Havana, glimmering bright and warm on its extreme edge. And from Havana, I was soon to be blown away North, with ever freshening and colder winds, again to enter that GUANAHAI 101 mixture of pain and pleasure called Life ; for Guanahai had been, and remains, but a dream. Unfortunately we cannot have light without shade, in spite of dear old Fra Angelico's painting his heavenly abodes with as little shade as possible. Nor did Rembrandt exhaust all the possibil ities of light and shade ; for in the bright tropics there are many curious lights and shadows he never dreamed of, and no picture Pmm »» V*W^"-s kVkU. FROM GUANAHAI would be true of that clime if they were left out. So under the sombrero, no matter what the complexion of the wearer, at times could be seen many a dark and anxious look. Things on the out side were mostly bright and pleasant. Owing to the temperament of the people and the tempera ture of the climate, families were interminable, and these would troop to the Plaza at night to hear the music — father and mother, eldest sons and daughters, down to little chaps, even the smallest in tail-coats and silk hats. Father and mother last of all, the rest in front — for they always kept an eye on the family. Even in 102 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. the house it was the same arrangement. From the high and grated windows the chairs went from the large rocking-chairs of the grandparents down through arm-chairs, chairs, and little chairs, in which they sat and smoked and talked, while the eldest daughter of the house stood in the angle of the win dow and talked with the permitted or engaged one — never alone with him, owing to the high temperature of the climate. And then — the dancing ; the yearning, passionate music of the habaneros, and the perfect time shuffled out by feet never taken from the floor, and seemingly never weary. No wonder I waltz to this day. But, given a jealous and vindictive mistress and a fair mulatto maid, and Hell had nothing worse to offer. The relation of mas ter and slave in the town was pleasant. When some one of the family came North, a present had to be provided for each one at home — all the relatives and the family had to be remembered, down to the last little pickaninny. In the country the blacks were mere cattle, and the American, Scotch or English overseer saw to it that every bit of work they were capable of was duly extracted, from men and women alike. And then the Government ! For instance : no Cuban could be a fisherman — only old sailors of the Spanish Navy had that privilege. The Spaniard was not rewarded in his native country or given a pension, but was sent to Cuba, where, like a leech, he filled himself full and dropped off, or was gently removed, and another put in his stead.' If you rebelled, you were sent to a place where the climate settled the business between you and the Government — inevitably in favour of the Government. In Havana, in the time of the filibusters, in a cafe under the Tacon Theatre, they drank confusion to the Americanos out of a cup made from the skull of one of the poor devils they had killed. GUANAHAI 103 These were Spaniards ; but I dare say the Cubans would have been as bad. Now this about Americans : to them we are the Americans ; they are Cubanos, Mexicanos, or Brazilianos, etc. Now when they come to Europe they call themselves Americans, in speaking to the Europeans, but remain among themselves as they were before, and will, I think, remain so for a long time to come. HUTS AT GUANAHAI Tom, my brother's boy, was a splendid fellow, and loved us with all his heart. He used to row on the launches, after my father sold him, and was so strong that he could break the heavy oars, when he pleased, by a sudden pull. In Matanzas, the ships lie in the offing and everything is brought in or taken out over the shallow bar in these launches. He finally became a skilful cooper, and was much loved by his master, and made lots of money. Once, with his earnings, he escaped to an American ship, when the captain, after taking all his money, threatened to give him up ; he jumped overboard and swam ashore, and was for- 104 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. given by his master. When he had made enough money to buy his freedom, he fell in love with a yellow girl, and she, after spend ing it all, bestowed her favours on another. Poor Tom did not avenge himself; he simply drooped, fell sick, and died of a broken heart. His master closed the establishment that day and gave Tom a fine funeral at his own expense, and all the workmen attended. I saw him often before that, and made him learn my sure address in New York, and he promised to do his best to escape and come to me. You see how he failed. Had he suc ceeded, I might have had him with me now, and with him the most affectionate heart in the world, and have done something to take the curse off of that blood-money. My father used to tell me of a time when the Negroes had be come so rich as to excite the cupidity of the Spaniards, and a ficti tious rumour of an insurrection of the slaves was started. Now nothing in a slave country is so much dreaded as that, and under pretext of stamping it out, they shot and whipped the money out of them. When you heard a volley of musketry from over the river, you knew that a line of poor wretches fell and were hurried into a long trench and covered up, alive or dead ; and the sound of the whip was so incessant that my father had to close all the doors and windows to keep it out. Light and shade are very marked in the Tropics. It would be somewhat embarrassing to explain the action of my Guardian Angel or angels about this time, for there may have been two — a good one and a bad one. If so, the bad one egged me on to do things which the good one thought necessary to cor rect by the most drastic measures. In fact, the good one was a most strenuous being, and applied remedies out of all proportion to the disease. And all this is on the supposition that there are BACK IN NEW YORK 105 such beings. Perhaps I bother more about them than they do about me. At any rate, I returned to New York, not only re stored to health, but in such lively health that I felt a strong propensity to flirt, for (as I have said about drink) there was much flirting in those days. This must have been in 1856, for I find in my list of sales that my copy of Wilkie's Blind Fiddler, made from an engraving at Matteson's, had been sent on to Matanzas and sold at a raffle — I imagine the only way of disposing of it. By the way, some one said that the colours were the same as in the original picture. This person must have had a good memory for colour, or per haps he only said so. At this time I painted a picture of a ship, -a splendid " clipper," taken from one of those pictures that used to hang on the walls of the offices down-town. My first order was from my old school-master, Brinkerhoff, and I find that this sale swelled my income until it amounted for the year to the sum of fifty dollars. Thus encouraged, my father kept on with my artistic education. I also painted a portrait of my friend Ben, in which I thought I had succeeded in the shadow cast by a broad-brimmed hat on his honest features. And, in my way, I studied hard, and also commenced a diary, in which I gave a long account of how my work was interrupted by a stye on my eyelid. It is lucky that I discontinued it, for commencing so young, it would not only have rivalled Pepys's, but gone him several volumes better — or worse. But be that as it may, in pursuance of my scheme of study I frequented the old Dusseldorf Gallery in Broadway, and then noticed how peculiarly well adapted it was to the carrying-out of a combined scheme of flirtation and study. The Gallery had been named the "Lovers' Tryst," from the fact that an indifferent 106 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. public left "the banquet-hall deserted," or almost so, and that the pictures on projecting screens made secluded spots of which fond lovers soon availed themselves. Thus when I took to tryst- ing there, as the consequence of making the acquaintance of a very pretty girl opposite Ben's, I found that I was not a Colum bus, or the "first who ever burst into that silent sea." I may note that this trysting serves to explain why I was not more influenced by the Dusseldorf School, and also shows how I neg lected my opportunities — I mean artistic opportunities. How I made the acquaintance of the pretty girl is only another in stance of Love laughing at Blacksmiths — but the main thing is that I did meet her, and that all things were slowly drawing to a head when the Angel stepped in, and administered what I have always considered an overdose, as you shall judge. In justice to the Angel I will say that there had lately happened in our vicinity the case of a boy who, while yet going to school, married a girl much older than himself. When it was found out, there was the deuce to pay — in view of which perhaps the Angel was right ; but he or she need not have been quite so rude. And so it came about that I went shooting, and got shot. By particular request I give the story. It happened in this way. Wishing to revisit the scene of many happy days, I went to Moriches ; but Mr. Parsons having passed away, and alas ! also the fair Hannah, I found I could not go to that part of the town after all, but stopped in West Moriches, and, it being the season of snipe, went snipe-shooting. I have always thought that, being fated to be shot, it would have some how been nobler had the game been the surly bear, or the ant- lered deer ; but no — it had to be the inoffensive and slender- legged snipe. This is humiliating, but it is the fact. BACK IN NEW YORK 107 We went over to the land side of the beach, and on the edge of the salt "mash" put out the wooden decoys. We were in a skiff and a scow, the one a sail-boat, the other was rowed or paddled. Now it so happened that there was a man with us from Philadelphia who wore spectacles. This in itself is nothing against him, as our President, at the time I write, a mighty hunter, wears them ; but one is so particular about being shot — I wish he had n't. We noticed his way was to leave the hammers of his gun down ; when game came up, he half-cocked the gun, and at the last moment fully cocked it. The danger of this habit was pointed out to him ; that anything might lift the hammer a little, which falling back on the cap the gun would be discharged. The others being old sportsmen, he was persuaded, and half-cocked his double-barrelled gun. The boats were close together — I alone in the scow. The snipe were coming up through the fog, and we were whistling for them. It was then he must have, from habit, half-cocked his gun, as he thought, and then it was fully cocked, his fingers on the triggers, and he mooning about through his spectacles. I was crouched down ready for the birds, when he turned his gun full on me and — bang ! — off it went. My gun was knocked clean out of my hands, and my left arm, stunned, as if by the blow of a sledge-hammer, hung powerless by my side. Well, what was done was done, and I had to see to doing what was next to do. I made them take a handkerchief, and with a thole-pin from the scow made a tourniquet. Some one felt faint at the sight of so much blood, but I, feeling no great pain and always being a "city-chap," put on airs, and directed everything with the utmost coolness. The great thing was to get to a doctor. Having used a thole-pin for the tourniquet, the scow had to be paddled, the boat being too heavy, and so two of the fellows got 108 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. in and paddled for dear life towards shore. The funny always comes in. I felt that I might be bleeding to death, and while sorry for the poor fellows, knowing how important it was to get to the doctor as soon as possible, feeling faint yet in no great pain, I would now and then fetch a heavy groan, when, without turn ing, the good boys would renew their efforts and cause me to giggle under the coat thrown over me. Of course I was a sight: the bloody arm, — trousers torn and bloody from a wound in the leg, — two little touches just under my nose, — and a lot of shot in my right hand, which are there to this day, made me an inter esting sight. But the airs I put on ! On nearing the shore I asked : "Who is that man loading that waggon with seaweed" ? — "Deacon So- and-So." — "Now, boys, you see if he has n't some excuse for not helping me." And sure enough: "Wall, you see I've just loaded up, and there's Smith over there's got a team; he can hitch up in no time." I told him to go to the Devil and let me bleed to death — that I might have known he was one of those pious chaps. You see I was a young reprobate then and knew no better. He was shamed and hustled out the seaweed, and on the springless cart I was jogged off to the doctor's, and never thought to give the deacon that quarter which would enable him to look back to the incident with resignation. The doctor was off on his rounds, but the kind wife and pretty daughter were filled with pity. Feeling yet no pain, the airs continued. So, begging pardon for making my first call in such a condition, I had them bring me the doctor's books and found out the first treatment for gunshot wounds, and then was taken to the inn where I was stopping. I ought to say boarding-house, store, and gun-shop, for it was all these. Then I sent off for my brother in New York. The wife LAST VISIT TO MATANZAS 109 of the Philadelphian who shot me was a perfect litde angel as a nurse, while he must have suffered more than I did, for was not I a hero, while he was a person held in little esteem just then. The old doctor was for cutting off my arm, but I did not en courage him and used bad language. But when the pain set in, a great many of my airs departed, and things getting worse instead of better, with arm on a pillow, I was gotten to New York and to the house of the ever kind D's. Here my wise medical brother concluded he did not know as much as he supposed he did, and brought his professor to see me — Dr. Parker, the father of my friend Mrs. D. Stimson, whose husband the doctor is one of my very best remaining friends. The Professor found that the main artery had been touched and an aneurism formed, and said it must be seen to at once, and so the next morning it was tied. The recovery was slow and I am not free from pain in my left arm to this day. It has always been, after a pause — " How lucky it was your left arm ! " In the case of my friend Butler, they did not say that, on seeing his empty right-arm sleeve, but thought it — not knowing he had always been left-handed. I would not have written this long, tiresome account, had it not been by particular request, and I am glad it is off my mind once and for all. After this I made a visit to my father in Matanzas, and on coming North, Ben and I left for Europe, my arm yet in a sling. I have said I made a visit to Matanzas ; this giving me a chance to digress, I may as well do so and get that, like the shooting, off my mind also. While in Matanzas I went fishing, but found that was the one thing I could not do with only one hand. I could dress myself, and even tie my cravat by the aid of my teeth — but not fish. no THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. I tried holding the slack of the line in my mouth as I hauled it in, but it did not work. Yet I did make with one hand a little amulet in silver. It was to enshrine some little token, — some remembrance of my mother ; but finding my heart made a better shrine, I never used the little amulet for that purpose. I give an illustration of it to show what can be done with one hand, and will also tell of a little incident in re gard to it. I found that I could not make more than the body, so had the handles and other things I had designed made for me in Rome. This was done so clumsily that it is perfectly evident those things are of a different date, as was proved on my showing the amulet to two of the best old antiquarians in Rome at that time — Odelli and De- polletti — who both declared that the body was of old Arab workmanship, but that the "finimenti" were modern restorations. As I find this is going to be a famous batch of digressions, I may as well interpolate a little one apropos of amulets. In the old days we used to play innocent games of cards in AMULET A VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH in which all could join, and when I was unsuccessful I used always to get one of my Japanese nitchkas, which I called an amulet, and it did indeed seem to give me luck; so much so that Stillman, the famous correspondent, one evening as he joined the game said, "I'll play, but I won't have any of those damulets " — a neat way of indicating in one word the object, and his opinion of it. I will now try to go fishing again, and if I do not interrupt myself, may succeed. In fact I did go fishing, but it was like the man's fishing who said the fishing was good, but he did n't catch any fish. In going to the fishing-grounds we drifted along the coast in the dark, warm tropic night, kept from going ashore by the land breeze, which came off to us laden with the strong smell of earth, and the odour of the flowers, the air tremulous with the thrilling of thousands of tree-toads, sounding like innumerable silver sheep-bells. The starry sky was mirrored in the sea below, so we seemed between two skies, except when below the wave a phos phorescent track, like a shooting star, marked where some big fish was chasing a smaller one ; for while all seemed peace, and in the mind of a lone boy thoughts akin to worship arose, in Nature all about him it was pitiless war ; and death kept pace with life. This was impressed on me one day by a vision of sud den death which I have never forgotten. I was following the padron, who was casting his net. We were wading in the clear water waist-deep, when I saw something on the bottom and called him back to look at it. It seemed a vigor ous mass of vitality, of a rich velvet brown, and had large eyes. The padron at once tore it up from off the rocks, and it as quickly enlaced his arm with its tentacles. This did not seem to concern / 112 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. him, for he managed to get at the under side of the animal and fumbling at its very vitals brought it to his mouth and gave it a quick, sharp bite. At once over this rich brown live thing, spread ing to the end of its arms, passed an ashy pallor ; the arms fell limp ly off, and he threw the dead thing into the basket at his back. All was peaceful on the little island of Mono Grande. The shore was strewn with broken conch-shells, where the fishermen had feasted. A few black crosses marked where the consump tives of Cardenas mouldered away — the result of their last try for life. From a point near by the pelicans rose in clouds, or streamed off in long lines to fish. Yes, all was peaceful. I know of nothing in Art that more perfectly gives the feeling of these scenes than a sketch by La Fargeof some island in the South Seas. It represents a little island, a mere patch of green ; a man with a spear is wading out from it through the tranquil shallow water — and that is all, except that it is all light and floats in the very shimmer of a tropic day. We, in a like shimmer, could look down through the clear water and see on the bottom the blackened ribs of the burnt slaving schooners, burnt after landing theirwretched cargoes. This was a discordant note, but not to the eye — to the eye all was God's peace. While in Matanzas I had two dreams which I think are worth recording. I do so diffidently, as I know that the dreams of one person are not very interesting to another — in fact, tiresome. There is such a thing as skipping, however, which might here come in very well. How such dreams are affected by the state of the body when they take place is shown by the following one which I had just after returning from my excursion with the fisherman, and while my wounded arm was yet in a sling. TWO DREAMS 113 I dreamed that I was floating in a light skiff on a southern summer sea among little green coral islands. Stretched out on the bottom of the skiff I floated peacefully, lulled by the rippling water and fanned by a gentle breeze. All was in a golden haze ; but this thickened gradually, the wind increased, and when at last the boat grounded on a beach all was dark and grey. There stood in the dim light a girlish figure. She was beautiful but sad, and as I gazed into her eyes and kissed the passive mouth, two great tears coursed down her cheeks. It became darker; the waves washed over my feet ; the wind began to howl ; I knew not where I was, but the girl took my hand and commenced leading me through the now invading waves. Soon the hand became hard and grasped me so firmly that I was in pain ; and the wind became a tempest. The waves rose higher, and the hand became of iron and dragged me through the storm, and the nails of it seemed growing into my flesh as I was whirled along. It became too horrible to stand, and I awoke and found I was lying on my wounded arm and my hand was burning like a coal. Again I found myself in a kind of cell or tomb, under a moun tain of granite which must have been at least five miles high, and I thought, "This is the end; there is no hope; escape is impos sible ; compose yourself and die decently. But what is the use of howyou die ? God himself cannot find you here. The sound of the last trump cannot reach you here." And tne roof was descending, I could feel it within a few inches of my face. " I am lost! What can I do ? — Fool! there is only one way of escape — you must wake up and save yourself! " And with all the strength of my being I made a last desperate effort and burst through one seem ing awakening after another, until I awoke and was saved. Had n4 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. I not made that last great effort, I believe I should have been found dead in my bed. Was that granite mountain a Welsh Rabbit ? They usually think so, but do you know, I am constantly meeting men and women who come and go and are more vague to me than that dream. Thinner than dreams — quite unsubstantial — the mere stuffing of life — saw-dust. Perhaps I am that to them. I now go North again, and have always wondered if the Angel did not hasten my departure somewhat — for there was a girl! This girl, or maid, or lady's companion, had been left stranded in Matanzas, and father had taken her and was waiting for an opportunity to ship her back to the North. She was a young, weak, lachrymose thing, always weeping over her separation from a young man somewhere in Maine. Of course it was my duty to comfort her, which I did so effectually that soon I began to find little bits of poetry under my pillow on retiring — and such poetry ! This was more than I bargained for, especially as the weeping was kept up, the cause now being unrequited affection — hopeless love — disparity of position — all set forth in verse into which she dropped as naturally as she did into tears. It was high time I left, and I did leave. Pity is akin to love — yes, it was time I left — fortunately alone. Here is richness ! Here is a letter from my old friend Ben — Ben of the Quaint Legends — Benjamin Day. Here is one who also can open a little window into the Past; he cometh at the eleventh hour, to be sure, but he bringeth his little harvest, and what I forget, he remembers, and vice versa. I am glad to see he has no better memory for dates than I have. He belongs to the Quaint Legends, Paris the First Time, and to the Struggle — War-Time — and his letter hops all over the place, so that BEN'S LETTER "5 like Brian O'Lin, I shall have to put him in the middle, and while the reader can yet remember something of the Legends. In fact, so far as legends go, I might turn them over to Ben with no great loss to the reader and a saving of trouble to myself. But I cannot resist putting my oar in occasionally in the form of BENJAMIN DAY notes ; this I hesitate the less in doing as I have seen it done lately by a very great man whose business it is to make books. And, by the way, I have remarked a singular thing in these books about great people, — people who once lived in Boston, London, and Rome, — that none of them when young ever flirted; now we did; however, "I make no comment." Ben, after telling of his sorrows, — and he has had fearful ones, 116 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. dear old boy ! — says that he is now like an old tree with tender clinging vines to cheer and enliven it, and that his last eleven years have been most happy; and then proceeds: — "My earliest recollections of our boyhood days hike back to the old Dutch-roofed home in East New York, adjoining Bedford. Regularly every Friday, after school, I was on my way to spend Saturday and Sunday with you. How well I remember those halcyon days ; the walk up the lane of trees, the welcome of Cot torita the parrot, with her ' Quien tai es ? ' (is that right ?) the beautiful old tree from which her cage hung, then the joyous bark of Jack, the welcome of Grandpa and Grandma Vedder, and of Aunt Caister, with the usual enquiries about Aunt Eve line, my mother. How quickly you and I got busy with our pro jects for a day's tramp in the adjoining woods, where you were the wild Indian and I the early settler. Then our search for Indian relics in what we supposed were Indian mounds, the dig ging we did, and our return home after a hard day's work, to go to bed under the low, sheltering roof of the attic and be lulled to sleep by the patter of the raindrops on the shingles. Ah me ! was there ever such joy as you and I felt in the very act of living! — Such schemes for future wealth as were conceived in those boy hood days, for you may remember that I earned my pocket- money by painting show-cards, and that you were absorbed in a japanning process ; cutting out slices of mother-of-pearl, embed ding them on a thick surface of Japan varnish, baking them in Grandma's oven, much to her disgust, and afterwards rubbing them to a smooth surface with pumice-stone and water, to be subsequently painted and gilded into dreams of beauty. I shall never forget the trouble we had with the real gold-leaf, for you did allow me to help you. ben's Letter n7 " Marshall Ibbotson had a shop in his father's barn at Bedford ; he had tools. You and I there learned how to make trap-cages, for Marshall let us have a try at it. Shortly afterwards you se cured a prize in an old spring clock, and we built a steamboat (or clock-boat) and launched her in a pond near by. She had a toy cannon and fired a salute that nearly swamped her. [Here Ben forgets the attack on a fort by the fleet of which I was the Admiral, and how he was shot in the leg by the cannon, thus making it like a real fight ; and the fun of getting out the shot with a penknife.] "We then turned our attention to a skate-boat. It was finally built of three boards, and a bean-pole for a mast. Our greatest trouble was in securing an old sheet for a sail, and I remember we could not wait for the ice to get firm enough to hold our weight and so in our first venture, as I sat in the front holding up the mast, you saw the ice getting humpy and yelled to me to jump, at the same time jumping yourself and leaving the boat to steer itself, which it did, circling in various directions, and finally lowered me gently up to my neck in ice-water, and then went pirouetting out of our reach, leaving me incased in an armour of ice, and you wildly anxious about the recovery of Grandma's sheet. " It was about this time, in '53, that Alexander and you and I went on a fishing venture to Canarsie and got stuck in the middle of Rockaway Bay, and only got loose at eleven p. m., when we made for the beach and secured a night's lodging in a fisherman's inn built on piles. You will recall the fish-stories we heard during the balance of the night, the long rooms with the beds on the floor, where the weary sailors lay stretched, our bath in the ocean next morning, our bill — 18 cents each: supper, 6; lodging, 6; breakfast, 6 — which I like to recall in contrast with the cost 118 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. of present outings. I was never good on remembering dates, never kept a journal, hence the kaleidoscopic impressions I am giving you ; but I think it was about this time that the home in Clinton Avenue was on the tapis, and your architectural ideas first developed, and the quasi-Gothic cottage was in vogue ; we were both full of it, and plan after plan was drawn and dis- | cussed, but whether your plans were approved and carried out, I don't remember. It was probably this effort that led to your going into an architect's office — was n't Snooks the name ? [Here he forgets the great part my dear mother took in the v \ planning of the house. The architects were Shugg and Beers — although I admit that Snooks is good.] "Then you went to Sherbourne, to Matteson, where you met Purdy and Joe Rhodes ; Joseph Lemuel with the religious father, whom the son silenced with his clipping album about minister. I made you a visit there of some weeks and was stung with the artistic microbe which finally led to my trip to Paris with you in 1856. That I will always remember, as well as the fun we all had in Sherbourne with the canal-boat, and old stage-coach, and the dear lassies, the Sherbourne band, etc., etc. Have you for gotten the forty-mile walk to Utica to hear Ole Bull play, and the arrival dead tired an hour after the concert was over ? The habit of exaggerating recollections to cater to the lovers of the marvel lous sometimes interferes with their exactitude ; perhaps we never got there ; I am in doubt about it. [We did get there in time, although I had forgotten that he was along. It must have been so, for I remember the flashing of a diamond in the butt of Ole Bull's bow.] " Put this down as a fact ; we sailed from N. Y. to Havre in June, 1856, on the Barcelona, with a screw-propeller, and a BEN'S LETTER 119 tendency to roll that was exasperating to a weak stomach. An eighteen days' trip on a sea as smooth as glass, with no ice at the end of the sixth day, after which it required the finest skill of the French cook to disguise the tainted flavour of the food. Here we met Janin, pere, with his two sons whom he was taking to Paris for their studies, the little English Captain, with his joke about the Countess who was ill, etc., etc. [The little English Captain's name was Mortalman, and the seasick Countess was represented by an orange, a bottle, and a napkin. This after-dinner trick I improved on by substituting a seltzer syphon for the bottle, which comes in magnificently at the psychological moment. Jules Janin was always receiving the letters of the great Jules Janin, to the latter's disgust.] "The game of Lansquenet that went on in the cabin with the expert French officers and the rich( ?) Young Americans ; our ar rival in Paris ; our rooms ; yours and mine a long narrow room, with our rich friend Joe in a swell room adjoining, in the Rue Neuve Pigalle, Montmartre. Your discovery at two o'clock in the morning of Rhodes' middle name, and our calling him at Seven a. m. in unison, — ' Joseph Lemuel ! Wake up ! ' That reminds me that later, when you came on for the Fair, while at my home in Hoboken we were talking about quite other matters, when you suddenly said, 'Ben! I know what caused those mounds.' — 'What?' I asked, knowing at once what you meant. — 'Why, trees that had been blown over and have left only their rotted stumps.' [It was also the great mass of earth lifted out of the ground by the roots — leaving always an unexplained fosse on one side of the mysterious mound. Rooms at first in Notre Dame de Lorette, afterwards Rue Pigalle.] 120 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V "Here is a synopsis of what is to come if of use to you. Cut ting out Hal, Jule Very, Hen Brown and your brother, by means of an arrow and spool of thread, and sending messages by means thereof to the girls across the way in St. Mark's Place. Imitation silk stockings were painted on our bare feet encased in patent-leather pumps rivalling our wealthy seniors." The sequel of establishing communications with the girls opposite I tell under the heading of the " Lover's Tryst," but there is another sequel ; it is that Ben and I, who thought we were so clever, found a piece of music in the girls' parlour from one of the big boys, showing that they also had not been idle. How did we get into the house on the footing of callers ? Nothing more simple. The girls brought a friend to the Dusseldorf Gallery, and after introducing him, he in turn introduced us to the family in due form. As to the wonderful painted stockings, they were a great suc cess, but were only worn one evening, and the colours fortunately did not run. THE DEMON OF NOTRE DAME CHAPTER V Europe — First Time 1856 INTRODUCTION — THE VOYAGE — PARIS — ATELIER PICOT — WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN— THE FIGHT — ON THE WAY TO ROME — A LINK. And now before the boy starts out with his nice watch and his new trunk (I have it yet) for Europe the first time, the Old Man would say that there are two lives we lead ; in one, we may be thrashing cannibals or be eaten by them in our efforts to convert them to Christianity ; we may be frizzling in the Tropics, or freezing in the Arctic Circle and eating up the poor dogs who have helped us to the last; but wherever we are, there is another life, the life of thought, which goes on incessantly and which may have — even in a tranquil studio — its adventures, its successes, its burdens, or its humiliat ing failures. And it is rather this last life the Old Man dwells on, perhaps to the exclusion of much that would interest those who want to know more about that lively and heated period called Youth. I think a little careful reading between the lines will discover traces enough of that time all through these Digressions, — at least a proper proportion of it. In fact, if I keep on I may come to a period which might properly be called that of Old Boy hood ; it sounds well and I may use it as a heading. But some- 124 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. how, in the foregoing I have not said what I started out to say. A friend has just remarked that he wants to see more detail, more about everything. What am I to do, with a memory like mine ? And then what am I to do about my fear of degenerating into mere prattle ? It is a fear I cannot overcome. " But V., what do you call prattle ?" "Just what I've been writing." With a new gold watch, a new trunk, and a pocket well sup plied with money, Ben and I started for Havre, en route for Paris. Rhodes, a former student with me at Matteson's, left by the same steamer and we three became inseparable. My good father saw me off — told me to be careful and particularly to avoid duels. Now the first thing which occurred was an offer at one. Some Cubans were at the same table, and one next me made a pellet of bread, and throwing it at a companion who sat opposite, struck him on the side of the nose. His friend was looking away at the time, but turning suddenly, his eye fell on me, and seeing that I was laughing, he thought that I had thrown it, and picking up a loaf of bread would have thrown it at me, had I not seized a bottle with which I would inevitably have returned the compli ment. However, the thing stopped there, and the Cuban who began it having explained all, his friend felt rather cheap, while all thought I had shown a proper spirit. As usual, I did not think anything. Had he thrown the bread I would have thrown the bottle, and that was all there was to it. It is needless to say how interested I was as we drew near shore, or how I compared the little stout dumpy pilot-boat with our own trim schooners, little thinking how misleading first im pressions are. I could see the dumpy, but I could not see how / PARIS SKETCHES PARIS 127 perfectly adapted they were to the choppy sea of the British Chan nel. Pity that a dumpy stomach is not also adapted to that beastly bit of water. This as to the first impressions. Please remember that I am seeing the Then with the eyes of Now all through these reminiscences. At Rouen I saw my first cathedral. It was twilight and I gazed with hushed awe at the real thing and not a picture. That impression has never needed revision. A friend yesterday went to Tivoli. "Well," I said, "you will see the lovely little temple and also that quintessence of romance, the Villa d'Este, but I don't think you can crowd in the Villa Hadrian with profit." — "Oh, yes, starting early. I am only seeking impressions." That may be all very well about things, but about people and manners and customs it is quite another matter. I don't know that I look back on that eight months' stay in Paris with unmingled satisfaction, nor do I remember its moral effects, — at least I did not get an impression of much morality, but well remember that I cut a wisdom-tooth there which I have to this day. Strange how we change both in body and mind, and yet how a wisdom-tooth will linger in the system unchanged. The first thing I did was to lose all my money. This happened on a trip to Versailles. On coming back we went the rounds searching for it, and I wrote to the Mayor of Versailles without much hope, but received a prompt reply saying that my pocket- book was awaiting my orders. I went there and after generously feeing the waiter in the restaurant who had found it, came back, right glad to escape so cheaply. We took an entresol in the Rue Notre Dame de Lorette and 128 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. set up housekeeping, from motives of economy. We found that the dear little old woman we had hired to take care of the rooms was an excellent cook and we had dinners "mighty merry," and even invited guests. One of them was a young fellow study ing mathematics. He was a water-drinker. Once, when he dined with us, late in the dinner we found his place vacant. He had modestly slipped under the table. By his place was found one of those tall earthenware Curacoa bottles, empty. When he came to, he said that, finding a sweet syrup much to his taste, he had continued tasting until the inevitable result took place. Here the pace became too fast for our funds, and I then re membered my father's injunction as to taking care ; and think ing it unsafe to go about with such a nice new gold watch, I ATELIER PICOT 129 placed it for safe-keeping in the hands of my aunt, as they say in Paris. We then moved up to Montmartre near by, up by the windmills, and afterwards to the Latin Quarter. From thence I left for Italy. But while water was running under the bridges of Paris, in the meantime grass was not growing under our feet, for we at once found out that in the Atelier Picot more grands prix de Rome had been won than in any other, so we went there and were ad mitted. The instruction consisted in a little old man with a decora tion coming twice a week and saying to each one of us, " Pasmal! Pas mal! " and going away again. But we got instruction from the older students, got it hot and heavy and administered in the most sarcastic way. Who can tell of the workings of Fate or foretell anything? Had I fallen in with some of the American students of Couture, I might have gone there and gotten over a faithful but fid dling little way of drawing which hangs around me yet, "un beknownst," or I might have said in later years with a most talented friend of mine, " I wish to God I could get rid of that cut-and-dried Beaux-Arts style." All that is past remedy. I was only in Paris eight months, drawing from plaster casts, and left because Rhodes left, — and I wanted to see Italy. Yes, but about the Atelier and the Latin Quarter ? Why in the Atelier I had the great fight, and in the Latin Quarter — but first about the fight, and before that the milieu. Picot's Atelier was an old and renowned one. As to the man-" ners and customs they were like the savages — " they had no manners and the customs were beastly." When some gentlemen called asking an interview with M. Picot, he was received with the most exquisite politeness, told to be seated, and after a great 130 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. amount of consultation was invited to follow the massier into the presence, and was shown into anything but the presence of the master. In the meantime a dab of Prussian blue was placed in his hat where it would come in contact with his forehead. Of course the victim left amid howls of derision, and the Prussian blue then kept up the merry tale. This Prussian blue is the most subtle and invading colour on the palette. It is like those articles marked "made in Germany," and goes everywhere. It was the cause of the ruder manifesta tions of French "esprit" being abandoned in the Atelier Picot. This was the tradition. A nouveau one day was stripped, tied to a ladder, painted all over with Prussian blue, and then set out in the street, leaning against a wall. One can easily imagine how the police went into the matter, and one acquainted with Prus sian blue can imagine how they came out. The whole quarter must have been tinged with it. In all the mischief of the studio there were three leading spirits. One, Le Roux, was about as handsome a figure of a man as I have ever seen. He, as a treat, used now and then to strip and show us how fine the human form can be. Another was De Cour- cy. He was the mischief-maker, and Cousin was an able third. Now on Saturday afternoon, late, there took place the main shindy of the week. All the chairs and stools were piled up into as high a pyramid as could be constructed, and then all retiring to the door a stool was hurled at the pile and the door shut and we stood listening to hear the awful row as everything came down with a crash. It was also the custom just before this to roll up our blouses into hard balls, and commence pelting each other, seeking to catch the unwary. I was drawing from a cast of the torso of THE FIGHT 131 the Laocobn, all encumbered with drawing-board, chair and stool in front, when I got a hard ball on the back of my neck. I looked around and there was Cousin scowling at me. Of course I sent back the ball, when he jumped at me and com menced kicking at me and going on "real ridiculous." I freed myself from the hampering chairs and my arm from its sling, and watching a good chance amid his wild and inefficient blows, planted a good one on his nose. The blood spurted like a fount ain and seemed to bring things to a standstill. My blood also, though not out was up, and so walking to the stove I picked up the poker and said to the assembly : " See here, play is play. I will do just what you do, but if any fellow kicks at me I will kill him with this ! Now translate that, will you, damn you ! " This very polite request was addressed to Benasses, who un derstood English. De Courcy explained that he had told Cousin that I intended to thrash him. Now Cousin was the most quarrelsome man there, but was also a first-rate fellow. After the explanation, we made up, and all repairing to a neighbour ing cafe, we sealed a bond of eternal friendship in a bowl of punch. Years afterwards Cousin came to my studio in the Via Margut- ta, and after an affectionate embrace he asked me if I did not want to buy all his sketching outfit, for he said no Frenchman ought to be painting while a Prussian was on the soil of France, and off he went to the war. He had just come up from Capri, and I was told that there also he had received his usual blow on the nose in some row at Pagano's. The handsome Le Roux had both legs shot off in the war and I have lost sight of the third of the trio. I found the other day a drawing with dark stains on it. Those stains were the dry gore of poor Cousin. 132 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. But the Latin Quarter ? The grisette was still alive in my day, and I believe (much as things have changed) is now as lively as ever. You will find all about her in Trilby. This litde drawing may have been Trilby, only her name was Clara, and perhaps Ben may have been Little Billee. You "must ask Ben, — or perhaps you had better not. It is long ago ; a dream which I will leave "undeveloped." Rhodes was a kind of Svengali. He CLARA ATELIER PICOT 133 was also the rich one of the party. I have forgotten to say that Ben, having a few words more of French than the rest of us, did the translating and became at once a proficient in French — Latin-Quarter French. Here I may as well conclude my account of this short period by quoting from Ben's letter. Ben writes : — "There is no need of my referring to Picot and Couture and our life in the studio in the Rue Blanche ; you must have all that pat. Perhaps you have forgotten Joe's Venus of Milo drawing and the skilful flitting of a palette full of paint across it by Jer- vais, and the interrupted battle that ensued." [Joe's drawing may have been stained with paint, but my drawing of the Laocoon was stained with the blood of Cousin, and the fight was my fight. Had it been Ben's fight he would have remembered it better.] "Do you remember Le Roux, Denassit, Uhlman, Jonciere, Levy, Couturier, De Courcy, Henner from Marseilles, Michel, and the other boys in the Rue Blanche, with the Barriere wall opposite the studio, where recalcitrant nouveaux were tied to ladders set up against this wall?" [Of course I can't remember much about all this, as I was only there eight months and was drawing from casts when I left. Contrast this with my friend Will Low's four or five years. For my part, I did not meet with those paragons of all the Christian virtues told of by some writers — I dare say my stay was too short; and my luck has been equally bad in Italy, where I have met only human beings.] " I cannot remember when and how I was left alone in Paris, but I think you went from there to Italy. I have met W.'s daugh ter in Hague, N. Y. You must remember W., who used to brush i34 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. both your clothes and mine alternately when we all kept house in the Rue Notre Dame de Lorette; he was near-sighted and mistook ours for his own clothes. You cannot have forgotten our cook and our lost family cat, with the subsequent piece de resist ance in the shape of a rabbit ; nor the solid apple-dumplings that I think I inflicted on the family. But I must shut down, I am tired, so tired trying to pump up fading memories." [I had forgotten the French culinary miracle of the translation of the cat, and its apotheosis in the form of a rabbit.] Fate, the stupidity of drawing from casts, the roving instinct and the opportunity, and Rhodes's need of a companion combined — drew me to Italy. It is impossible not to ask what would have happened had I stayed in Paris — and it remains always a ques tion without an answer. Before I forget it, I must say here that Rhodes told me of a great picture he was going to paint and showed me a pencil- sketch of it. And so I said good-bye to Ben, and to many others. Poor old good-byes ! How old they are ! And to think that most of them were for ever ! Here I must cut out a lot of things. We were going to walk from Nice to Genoa. Our trunks were sent to Rome, and we felt that gypsy-like freedom of the knapsack and the stout staff. From Nice commences the happy hunting-ground of Murray, and I leave him in possession, — only we had the chance of see ing Nature when she seemed least to expect us, at all hours of the day and night, and it was delightful ; and so was Rome: the long hours in the Colosseum by moonlight, and especially the twilight passed on the great piers of the Baths of Caracalla. The fallen masonry formed such great heaps that the door of the ON THE WAY TO ROME i35 THE BATHS OF CARACALLA staircase by which we ascended is now halfway up one of these piers. The levels above were one mass of flowers, and the mosaic pavement up there could have been gathered by the bushel. But ever was this feeling — see all you can, for you will never see it again ! And now to think of the long years I have spent here. It just shows what puppets we are, and yet I don't deny the Guardian Angel. I sometimes seem to hear wings and feel a faint stirring of the air and an odour of flowers. Are these only things of the past ? P.S. I like postscripts: what would a parting be without its parting injunctions, or a Lady's letter without its P.S. ? And by the way, there is a Lady in this one, for it was precisely along this road from Nice to Genoa that I took (on my second coming to Europe) a preliminary canter ending in matrimony — but that was strictly my affair. However, see "Paris and propinquity" and you will know all about it. A Link uniting many things. Writing these things as I made the drawings for the Omar, — all over the book at one time, as it were, — writing narrative, anecdote, or prattling as ( 136 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. the spirit moves, I find I come to gaps which must be bridged over, or links inserted to give some slight semblance of continuity ; and thus the narrative portion — at times swelling up from the pressure of the divine afflatus or subsiding when the spirit of duty has the cry — resembles an undulating country over which I trust we may stroll pleasantly, especially if the fair goddess Fun deigns to be our company. This looks like one of those pro logues written for the "well-trod stage," only I fear in this case Jonson's learned sock is not on, but only common white canvas shoes with rope soles, — yet well adapted to the wearer, the rocky soil of Capri, and the Theme. Butabout the Link? Here it is. From Rome I went to Florence, stayed there about a month, then on to Venice, where I remained about the same length of time, and returned to Florence where I lived four years, with the exception of excursions to Pisa, Lucca, Volterra, San Gemignano, and Siena. I well remember when I went to Venice, for it was in the time of a great Comet, which I first saw as I was leaving. In Venice it was over the bronze men who strike the hours in the Piazza, and seemed about a yard long. At Bologna it stretched across the end of the street, and at Flor ence filled a quarter of the horizon. It was a most impressive sight and has served me as a date ever since — only I have for gotten in what year it occurred. At Venice I absorbed colour like a sponge, for I started as a colourist, strange as it may seem to some. Yet I wondered at a talented young French artist making a splendid copy of Carpaccio, now one of my favourites. I loved the colour but thought the treatment so odd. The same at Pisa when I passed through it the first time. I laughed when Mr. Murray called my attention to the "Modest look of the Virgin" in some old ¦tt" ,U %*" »>. \ 1 i> W.I-evvOt. , acter of both maid and ivy. I think as far as the titles go, it was a toss-up. The good Cabianca was the one who long after in Rome said to me, " How I envy you your friends! Now here is a friend of mine who has been writing to me for years and it has always been, ' Don't you remember this, and don't you remember that ? And if you are ever hard up, don't you ever go to any one but your old friend.' Now it has come to that pass that I can't send my child ren to school for want of shoes, and we live on bread and water, and I get to-day, in answer to a request for a little help, an eight- page letter telling me that I have not painted the right kind of 156 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. things and that just at present his funds are so invested that he is sorry he cannot send me anything." I had two intimate English friends: the bright, talented, ill- fated Green, and the studious and refined Yeames, — he of the rich gouty uncle who had the best cook and the worst digestion of any one in Florence. Yeames tried to instil into me a love of poetry. The seed then planted has grown, but I confess it has been a plant of very slow growth. Not to be tiresome, it will be noticed that I never mention a person unless I can say something either good or bad of him — by bad I only mean interesting. Surely you do not find fault with Stevenson for introducing you to John Silver, or with Howard Pyle for his innocent picaroons. Time and my poor memory have merged these people I write about into a kind of haze through which they appear to me like beings of another period, — like Rip Van Winkle, for instance, — and it would be as ab surd for a person to find fault with me for alluding to a relative of his, as it would be for me to find fault with Irving for repre senting Nick Vedder as a being addicted to the smoke-habit, and unable to give his opinions in anything else than in that un substantial product. It is strange how, when I paint landscapes, I don't seem to care for the figures : that is, I feel as if I ought to put them in, but don't most of the time. Yet in wandering through this hazy past I am always writing about the figures and not about the land scape. Is it because I have been so awfully bored by long de scriptions of beautiful scenes and health-giving air which only the writer can afford to either see or breathe ? Or is it that moun tains and lakes are never funny ? Or that Nature is always in dead earnest, except in kittens and puppies ? As I am only writing SOME FLORENTINE CHARACTERS 157 for people like myself, boon-companions as it were, people who want to be interested and amused, I leave out descriptions except when I have something particularly tidy to describe. Having digressed, I proceed. Among the Americans was for a time the ever cheerful and buoyant Rinehart, the sculptor, who on one occasion was any thing but buoyant and might have stopped my digressing and his cheerfulness in a tragic manner. At that time, near the bridge of La Carraja were moored a lot of old mills on great scows, forming one of the most picturesque features of the river ; and just below them, in the boiling water from the mills, were baths. I was standing on a spring-board, about to jump in, when I saw Rinehart being whirled about the eddies and calling out ; he was red in the face, and I suddenly realised that something was the matter, so without more ado I jumped in, swam to him, and said: "What! — you're not drowning, are you?" He at once wrapt his legs and arms about me, and had it not been for a rope hanging down just within my reach, it would have been all up with us, for he had rendered me utterly powerless either to save him or myself. A boat was shoved toward us and we got him out. A glass of cognac brought him to ; he could never remember any thing about it ; but it was a good lesson to me, for in after years in Naples, when I managed to get a Jew to a place of safety, under almost the same circumstances, I did it with the utmost safety to myself. Neither Rinehart nor the Jew ever thanked me, but I do think some prize student of the Rinehart Fund in the American Academy here in Rome might offer me a cigar occasionally. And there was old Hart — he of the crude manners, who used to write poems and try to pass them off as Byron or Beatty and deceived no one : only the boys used to fool him to the top 158 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. of his bent. He had a nephew who had come out to him to work a portrait-machine he had invented, and he had promised to teach the nephew sculpture in return for his services, but became jealous of him and treated him like a brute. In this machine, after you had assumed a natural pose and look, you were ren dered immoveable by screws and other appliances, and long steel points were driven at you until they touched, and then with drawn. It was like that horrible chair of the Middle Ages, called " the Virgin," wherein you were invited to sit, and were caught and finally murdered. The machine remained idle for want of victims; to look at it was enough. The nephew was a man of great promise. Having nothing, he married a very poor but refined and intelligent lady who copied in the galleries, and they became, of course, twice as poor, but — to make up — were very happy. And then he died. Rinehart took sides with old Hart, as being his oldest friend. I sided with young Hart ; but it made no difference between us, for no one ever quarrelled with Rine hart. He belongs to the Roman period and formed one of its best features. But — dear me ! — how many words are used in writ ing ! I find that in spite of my leaving out fully two thirds of the things I have to write about, I am getting tired — and fearing to tire the reader also, I stop. It has been a long flight for me, only before I alight I will add this one touch more and call it the accent — it has quite the look of an "anecdote." In Florence there lived a painter who had never gotten over the accent of his native land. One day while showing me his latest production, he remarked : — " By Jove ! that is a good picture, if I do say it myself. I feel that I have a right to say with Giotto, ' Yankee to sono pittore."' I agreed with him as to the "Yankee." INCHBOLD 159 I must not forget to mention the English painter, Inchbold, a full-blown Pre-Raphaeliteist — one of whom Ruskin is reported/ to have said that a square inch by Inchbold was worth a square yard of almost any other painter's work. This, it may well be imagined, did not tend to lower the angle at which his nose was set. Of course we regarded all his doings with great interest and I became very well acquainted with him and in fact counted him among my friends. He must have liked me, for years after wards he sent my wife a pretty little card painted evidently expressly for her. Having mentioned his nose, I may as well go on and say that his face seemed permanently pervaded by a flush or blush which conveyed the impression that he was on the verge of getting angry ; he never did, however, to my knowledge. William Rossetti describes this perfectly: "He was a nervous, impressionable man, with a ruddy complexion, a rather blunt address in which a certain uneasy modesty contended with a certain still uneasier self-value." As I say, we watched his pro ceedings with great interest. He certainly did, as Bunthorn says, " by hook or crook contrive to [make things] look both angular and flat." He was conscientious to a degree, but his conscience had an elastic quality; the fact is that the P.-R. B. did not so much aim at representing Nature faithfully as they did to give their work the look or stamp of the "movement" they represented. For instance, in one of his pictures there was what appeared to be a very small girl standing among very large leaves. Now in reality it was a very large girl on a terrace below, seen through the leaves in the foreground. She must have been some ten yards distant ; this fact was ignored, but all the ravages of insects were shown in these leaves with the utmost faithfulness. He simply left out the air and represented things as seen with 160 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. one eye. In the same picture there was a cypress tree cutting across a field and merging with a wood on the other side about a mile off. It confused the mind, and I asked him why he did not leave it out. He replied, " It was there." " But," I said, " I don't want you to change the form of the mountains or anything essential, but to cut down that tree." — But it was of no use. Shortly after, he was painting a view of Florence from his window across the Arno. It was winter ; the great hills covered with snow gave a bleakness to the scene only too well known to those who also know Florence well. The point was that he had moved the Campanile of Santa Croce most outrageously far from its real position — about a quarter of a mile. " But," said I, " how about this ? " — " It composes better that way." — " But then how about that tree you would not cut down ? " I don't know how he got out of it ; he certainly got redder. The same in the night-school. A florid Venetian-like model he made into a sharp-nosed thing with so much green in her complexion that she looked more like a vegetable than a Venetian human being — but he gave her the real P.-R. look. At this time Hotchkiss was trying to break away from this influence of Ruskin. With me it worked well, as can be seen by my studies at that time, and badly in that I went on filling my studio with careful studies I have never used. I am sorry to see in William Rossetti's account of Inchbold that he was unsuccessful and died "at a not very advanced age." I always thought that Ruskin's approval had spelled success for him. It seemed to me that in his art he had ceased improving and could only go on making the same kind of thing indefinitely ; — but as that applies to so many near and dear, I hasten to drop the subject. Also I shall guard against reading up about people INCHBOLD 161 — of which I have done very little : for that only leads to com pilation and a mere running over a list of names of people no longer interesting to me and certainly not to the reader. Inch- bold, however, I shall hold in affectionate remembrance, per haps because there was something forlorn about him and his spirit needs comforting. One thing more, — I never could get from Inchbold a clear definition of what constituted P.-R. -ism. Going back to the art previous to Raphael ? Not quite that. In fact put it as I would there was always a something in which the P.-R.'s differed from other men — and I have not been able to settle the point yet, except that in their art they must differ from all others and their pictures must have " the look." But dear me, how all all this is of the past ! Putting up one notice to keep off the grass, at the entrance of a park, would be found, I imagine, insufficient to effect the object in view ; they must be put up everywhere, and I feel it will be the same with the notice I have somewhere put up — that my opin ions of people and things only give my opinion at the time of which I am writing. And so about the P.-R. B. I first came across their work in New York in the pictures of Farrar, and it seemed, of course, to me then needlessly hard and crude when representing things in their nature soft and harmonious, and therefore I looked on it as an affectation. In Florence, Hotchkiss and myself were painting as faithfully as we knew how ; and particularly that Pointeau — he who used to come in from his painting from Nat ure about the time the rest of us were taking our breakfast, bringing back with him drawings, veritable photographs from Nature, only better. Therefore the works of Inchbold, needlessly 1 62 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. insisting upon unessential details at the expense of the general effect, and what appeared an exaggeration of colour, led us to think, not unnaturally, that his object was dictated more by a desire to give the style of the P.-R. B. than by a love of Truth or Nature. Now I see, however, from Holman Hunt's account of the movement, how sincere they were ; and most undoubtedly, had I been brought up in England at that time and more imme diately under their influence, I should have been of them. I also in his pages am made to realise how strong was the almost uni versal opposition to them. I also see how large a book may be made by telling of each time you open your box of colours and pack it up, and of flies and fleas and headaches, and generally of all those little ills that flesh is heir to — - especially the flesh of him who paints from Nature. It is about time to use the expres sion, I now find. And what I find is that, if I am going to write a review of every book I read, these digressions will become end less ; and that out of consideration for myself and others I had better stop, with this little quotation from Hunt's book: "All his [Whistler's] wit that I heard of was not of that nature which transfixes truth by a subtile shaft, but only of a kind which amuses for the moment ; like a conjurer's trick, confusing common sense." Alas, poor Falstaff ! And yet Hunt is a very great man. Amongst the dispensations of Providence it seems that some men are permitted to become great writers without having much knowledge of Art — even when they write about it. Among these was Walter Savage Landor. I never knew him, but my friend Kate Field became a favourite of his and through her my friend Coleman painted his portrait. It was during the sittings he gave Coleman that the ignorance of Art on his part trans- LANDOR AND THE NIMBUS 163 pired. You will remember that Richard Grant White in his "Words and their Uses" says that to transpire means to leak out. And that was just what happened. Coleman, wishing to spare his eyes, posed him with his back to the window. Landor's hair, being white, the light shining through it formed a luminous fringe about his head. Landor, getting up to see the progress of the work, at once saw my friend's attempt to reproduce this effect and cried out : — "Why, you have given me a nimbus. I won't have a nimbus ! " In vain Coleman tried to explain to him this effect of light ; it was always : — " I won't have a nimbus — ¦ no nimbus ! " The Savage in his name was very appropriate. They used to tell of his going into court, during some law trouble he was having, with a bag of gold which he banged down before the Judge, saying : — " I hear that this is the place where justice is bought and sold, and I have come to buy some." I believe it cost him a pretty penny, for contempt of court. Speaking of words and their uses, Kate Field used to tell of a man who, rushing into some country town, asked "where he would be liable to get a ham ? " This irresistibly reminds me of what used to happen in the Villa Landor. If a dish offended him, Landor would "chuck it out of winder," so that a passer-by might have been liable to get a ham — without his looking for it. The banks of the Mugnone torrent, which runs around a part of Florence past the Porta San Gallo, used to be a favourite walk of the frequenters of the Caffe Michelangelo. There also 164 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. was the ground of the game of Pallone, a noble game, almost gladiatorial in character, of which I was a passionate admirer. On the high banks of this stream, overlooking the country bounded by the great bare hills from which in winter came those icy blasts that gave us all sore eyes (the eyes having been pre viously prepared in the acrid tobacco-smoke of the caffe during the long winter evenings, or strained, painting by the little smoky, dim oil-lamps of the Accademia Galli), we walked and settled hi j "- ¦«<*&$¦ '.^ fivt-M Jo *»- Qti Na - £*/© r*-it te — * all the great questions of the day. Following up the stream, you finally reached the spot where it passes under a bridge at the foot of the long ascent which leads to Fiesole. It was here I painted two of my best studies, and also a little picture I always thought highly of. These things show that originally I was a landscape painter and that now I am only the lively remains of one. The little picture was really a sketch I made on a dark stormy day, of Fiesole with the road and cypresses coming down from it, into the foreground of which I had painted three Dominican friars, whose black and white garments carried out the feeling UNDER FIESOLE 165 seen in hillside and sky. This little picture must have perished in a Loan Exhibition held in Madison Square Garden, when part of the building collapsed. The memory of its loss is one of my pet griefs to this day. In a house near the bridge, three of us lived and worked. One was a Mrs. Hay, a strong Pre-Raphaelite and a woman of great talent. She told me her husband in London was a man who smoked and painted all night by gaslight, while she was a lover of the clear dawn and the bright day, and of Fra Angelico. One might have supposed that such an arrangement would have been advantageous to both, but such was not the case ; hence Florence, for her part. The other was Altamura, a wonderfully clever man, whose style changed with every passing whim of the artistic world, and whose facile hand often ran away with his head. Mrs. Hay's little boy was pure Anglo-Saxon with long blond hair, and Altamura's was a dark Oriental with dreaming eyes and curling raven locks. In the summer evenings while the moon rose over Fiesole, stretched on the warm dry grass under the olives, we used to have our evening meal, and there the little boys told strange stories of their thoughts and dreams. Of the ingenious fairy-tales of the Blond, I remember little, but a story which the dark one said was true, impressed me. He said: "I went up a mountain — up — up — up, ever so high, and there was a man with ever so many sheep — thousands ; and the sky got so black — and then thunder and then a lightning came and killed the man and killed all the sheep — and then — all dead and all blood. Tutti morti — tutto sangue! " All these people are now in a dim past, like those happy days. I have since heard that the dark romantic boy went to Paris, became an artist, and was known as le beau Altamura. Should his life happen to 166 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. end in a tragedy — "tutti morti, tutto sangue!" — how this story or dream of his would come to mind and be quoted as a premonition! Happy days! How happy are those first days of the artist's life, passed in some solitary spot, with no thought of exhibitions or sales or ambition, painting from the pure love of it and his delight in Nature. Such work, Costa used to say, was religion. The little picture of the monks was MONK bought by Mrs. Laura Curtis Bullard. She also bought the "Lost Mind." She was from the beginning, and always remained, my good friend. I have told how my friend Cabianca envied me my friends, and how his friend treated him. That was a bad Italian ; I now tell of a good one, for bad and good are pretty evenly distributed in all countries. It was at a time when, owing to some stoppage in my remit tances, my funds were so low as to be imperceptible, and I found the large, roasted Italian chestnut was warm to the hand and filling to the stomach, thus serving both as food and fuel. I did not like to ask my Florentine banker for an advance, for while he was one of the most generous of souls, his partner in Rome held him to so strict an account that he usually could not oblige me. Now strange to say, when in Rome afterwards I went to his part ner, I heard the same state of affairs : it was always that closefisted and stingy Florentine partner that checked his naturally generous impulses ; although I will say the Roman was the noblest of them all and would lend — on compound interest. I fear I digress. MY LANDLADY 167 My sleeping-apartment in Florence was then in the Via dei Maccheroni. To be a "maccheroni" was, in the old London days, to be a great dandy ; I only lived in a street of that name, and my modest tailor's bill proved me to be no maccheroni, although well content at that time to get enough of that excellent food. I told my landlady that I must move into cheaper quarters, although I did not see how I could well do that ; and she asked at once, what could they have done to displease me ? After much trouble I made her believe the true state of the case, and she begged me to wait until she could consult her husband. The hus band was an honest man, much trusted in the pharmacy where he was employed, and was paid good wages. Then the good Caterina, after much beating about the bush, told me with emo tion that they had become very fond of me, they had no son or child, and that they had enough, with her husband's earnings, not to feel it in the least ; but would I only stay with them until better times or as long as I pleased and was pleased with them, but not to break their hearts by going away. So I stayed on until one day the poor man was taken sick, and in spite of our most affectionate care, after days of watching died in my arms. In the meantime I had painted a little Madonna for her, with Santa Caterina and Sant' Eligio at the sides, and so, after I had left and she was in need, through a friend's buying this picture I was enabled to help her a little. In the Florence of my Florentine days, there was a man who, while resembling Bacon in one respect, differed from him in another ; for while this man was one of the meanest, he was not one of the wisest of mankind. I was so simple in those days that I was astonished on learning 168 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. of the existence of beings called " Conversationalists " ! I laughed at the idea, but unlike Foote, reserved my guinea, and noticed that my friend did not join in the laugh. He talked with great care, and selecting his words and making emendations as he proceeded, and could not abide having his sentences disarranged by interruptions ; indeed he was so fond of carrying them out that I heard him on one occasion, when I had bidden him good bye, finishing a particularly fine one after I had turned the corner. He was timid also. He pondered long on whether he should pre fix Ap to his Welsh name, but refrained for fear of being ridi culed. He was the European correspondent of some newspaper at home ; but while calling himself my friend, never gave me a little send-off, so useful to a rising young artist, but kept all his notices for established reputations ; he was afraid of making a mistake. One day, while walking in the Cascine, he found a little breast pin set with four beautifully white diamonds, and asked me what he should do about it. I said that as it seemed an old-fashioned trinket, it might possibly be very dear to some one, perhaps an heirloom, and that I would advertise it in some paper. I fear that heirloom idea must have acted as a malevolent microbe in his mind, for shortly after, he borrowed a file of me, and shortly after that, came out with a set of diamond shirt-studs. I happened to be present when he was asked where he had found such fine little diamonds, and heard him reply that they were old family jewels. I dare say they were, but the family did n't happen to be his family. He posed as a great free-thinker with a jolly old priest who gave him lessons in Italian, but when he fell ill and thought he was dying, feeling sure on the Protestant side, yet wishing to TWO DREAMS 169 make assurance doubly sure, he had the same old priest make him over into a sound Catholic. On his recovery, however, he became just as bad as before. By the way, his Italian at that time was so entirely book Italian that while he corrected my grammar in that tongue, I had to order his dinner for him at the trattoria in an Italian more easily understood. He lived a long while, but I have wondered if, when he came to die, he had made up his mind on which side of the fence he had concluded to end his days. Perhaps subsequent events were decided for him. In any case, in that little affair of the diamonds, though he may not have been able to explain it away, I am sure the explanation was made with very select words and in most carefully composed sentences. A prattling postscript : The beasts of the field talk ; we may believe a dog's growl clearly says, " Don't touch that bone ! " — and I dare say Charles Lamb's serious family, sitting in a par lour, " all silent and all damned," could talk ; but I doubt if they could converse — or had they tried to do so, I am sure it would have been in growls. Therefore — beasts are not conversation alists, although some conversationalists are beasts — mostly boars. In "The Garden of Neglected Opportunities," — a title which might serve for the book, my life, and the life of many another man, — I had several memorable dreams. I here give two of them. Dreams are the memory of unconscious cerebration. I am not good at such subtleties, but what I mean is that memory, when awake, retains some glimpses of the unconscious mind while at play, or resting, or springing back from some too-great tension, 170 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. or painfully going on from some too-great impetus given it, or some absorbing preoccupation. The foregoing is a good speci men of Prattling, and quite long enough to serve as introduction for two such short dreams. I had been reading Tennyson, and my mind was full of the gleaming Excalibur, as that good sword whirled over the water and was "drawn down in under the mere by an arm clad in white samite, mystic, wonderful." And in my dream I saw a sword with a crimson and gem-bedight scabbard whirling against a blue-black sky over a seething, phosphorescent sea. It was grand, and I at once determined to paint it. But, alas! the sword at once ceased to whirl and seemed glued to a black background; the flaming scabbard was vermilion glazed with lake, and the raging sea stood stock-still and I could no longer hear it seethe. I concluded that what one reads is not always what one can paint — and so a long farewell to the good blade, Excalibur. The other dream was that I had made a pun. Now this pun was the funniest pun ever made and my laughter was so uproari ous that I was broad awake at once and remembered it perfectly, and discovered that it was not a pun at all, and that by no amount of ingenuity could I make it into a pun. What was this ? Was it the pun-mood strong on me ? If there be a pun-mood, then there must be a youth-mood. I remember we once made an excursion to Camaldoli from Florence, — our friend Waugh, the ex-clown, was along, — and his turning a flip-flap before the astonished eyes of the passing contadini and his walking on as if nothing had occurred. How good the sour wine and the coarse bread and the ham and eggs tasted, and how bright and delightful everything was, and how funny the jokes. Years after, I took the same walk. DRIVEN FROM THE GARDEN 171 But it was all changed, for I am sorry to say I had to take my last walk in the Age-mood. If all this is true, and " I think it be " — if some old friend or some new one will but walk with me through these Digressions in the Youth-mood, I think he will be able to see things as I once saw them, and enjoy them as much as I now do, in my Age- mood ; for life is nothing but a succession of moods. Moral : Let us cling to the pleasant mood and banish all the others — if we can. Affairs in America, both public and private, had been going from bad to worse. The future looked dark. My last remittance had come, and my last francesconi had been drawn from the Bank; this little sum, together with the few dollars from my painting, just served to see me through, and I got home without a cent — the only remaining dollar being given to the good old steward on board the ship, when I quitted her in Havana. As I went home from the Caffe Michelangelo that last evening, Banti, my fat friend, begged me to stop a moment while he went into his studio. It was then dark night, but he returned, having managed to find a little cinquecento iron box which he gave me as keepsake. This is the only present I remember to have re ceived during my four years stay — except good advice. I cher ish the gift ; but the good advice I have long since forgotten. It seemed to me then that could my father have managed to keep up that six hundred dollars a year, I would never have left. But leave I did. From my studio, where I had packed my pictures and small belongings, the last thing I remember was wafting a kiss to a pretty girl at a window opposite and seeing the wave of a handkerchief with perhaps a tear on it. 172 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. And thus I left Eden. The world was all before me, but as to the where — I had no choice ; so I followed the Arno to where it is lost in the sunset, and at Leghorn embarked for Home. There is nothing to tell of the voy age on a Dutch steamer to Mar seilles, except that the Captain's little nephew, who possessed a small stock of English words when we started, was able to get on quite well before we reached port, and so enabled the Captain and me to exchange a few ideas, which up to that had been done by sitting and drinking schnaps at each other. At Marseilles I took a little coasting steamer which went to Cadiz, stopping at every port where she could find anchorage. Thus I saw Barce lona, Alicante, Cartagena, and other places, but ever I kept close to the steamer for fear of being left behind, which would have spelled disaster. Spain was beautiful and I longed to stay ; but that glimpse is all I have ever seen of Spain, in spite of my having reared so many lordly castles in that country. But I must hasten and get on the track of Columbus. At Cadiz I was fc*r -f-<^'5_ T^-'i A i j s~**\c±**- 1^i\ a*-— , 0£k_ 'At y<^ ykcn± YT ON THE TRACK OF COLUMBUS *73 homesick for Italy, and in that mood I drew all the designs in little for "The Miller, his Son and the Donkey," as a sort of in memoriam farewell testimonial. A fearful storm raged con stantly, and the salt spray could be tasted on the lips blocks away from the high sea-wall. The monthly steamer had just left as I arrived, and thinking that this storm could not keep on for ever, I took passage in a fast- sailing clipper ship as per adver tisement. May God forgive the owners ! I never can. I calculated that the ship would get to Havana before the next steamer could ; but the storm kept on and the steamer came and went again. I had spent a month in Cadiz. My funds were at their last gasp when I boarded that moss-covered turtle and we set sail, and behold me at last on the famous track of Columbus! And now things began to happen. I was on that track forty days and forty nights ; I was weary — and came to the conclusion that it is not what it has been cracked up to be. And it was also, Westward Ho ! I know what westward means, but have my doubts about the Ho. How we do like to tidy up disagreeable things. But it was awful. The passengers were a company of bull fighters — torreros, they used to be called before Carmen's day ; and in addition, all the most adventurous barbers in Spain. We i74 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. were complete — if not perfect. The Captain was a fine old fel low and a good navigator and sailor. The first mate was a nice man, but the second mate was a corker. He was an ex-slaver and used to tell me long stories of the palmy days of the slave- trade : how with their smart sailing schooners they would make a quick run back, even when forced to throw half the cargo over board ; how well it paid, and the merry times on shore afterwards. I often wonder if our Philadelphia friend who is so fond of de picting and discoursing of pirates and picaroons, and who does it so well and has so evidently an admiration for them, has ever met them face to face. And whether if he had ever seen a gang of newly-arrived emigrants from Africa, as I have, he would have the stomach to go on. However, — as my Aunt Eveline used to say, — "I make no comment." Now as the ordinary Spaniard in travelling hides all signs of wealth and puts on his worst clothes, you may imagine — or rather you can't imagine, what that ship's company looked like. They were a motley crew and motley was their wear ; signals of distress fluttered from many a rent; in fact the ship presented such a disreputable appearance that one day a tight little British cruiser brought us to, by a shot across the bows. However, being satisfied that it was not a mutiny on board or an uprising of slaves, she turned her saucy nose and steamed away. We had to put in at Santa Cruz di Teneriffe owing to some irregularity in the papers of a passenger, and I went on shore. The peak looks flat and tame enough from the land, barely show ing itself over the broad hills ; but we sailed for days without losing sight of it ; on the contrary, it seemed to get higher and higher as the distance increased. Then we passed the ever-revolving and eddying Sargasso Sea, THE BULL-FIGHTER 175 but we did not find those meadows of seaweed and that gloomy fleet of ancient wrecks so well described by my friend Janvier. How often I have wished he would write another " Robinson Crusoe" for me, but not put in the dog as an afterthought, as Defoe has done — and above all, supply the island amply with cocoanut trees. We saw no wrecks, but did come across the re sults of one, and it formed the great event of the voyage. But before I tell that story, however, I must add a few touches to the picture of the brave ship's company. In addition to the Villain — the slaver with his gold earrings — there were two very interesting passengers. One was an Italian miner ; we became friends and we had many a long talk in Italian. I used to describe to him the beauties of Italy, of which he had seen but few, as most of his life had been passed underground. His face was literally tattooed with gunpowder, from explosions, and presented a singular grey appearance. Our discourses al ways ended in his saying that the surface of the earth might be very fine, but he preferred the inside ; there, he would say, you always had good things to eat and the best of company, and that it was neither too hot in summer nor too cold in winter; but above all, you escaped all sorts of worries and troubles which he had invariably met with on the surface. The other was a fine, strong, good-natured Bull-Fighter. He one day got out a torrero's costume which he thought would fit me, and I tried it and it went on like a glove. My! but I was a fine figure of a man, and deeply regretted I could not afford to buy it ; but what is one to do with but a single dollar ? He confided to me all the secrets of the trade, some of which are little to its credit ; but one of the main secrets I will disclose, and think I must be the first who has ever done so, at least as far 176 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. as I know. Now, he said, when you stand before a bull and he lowers his head to charge on you, you must look very carefully at his ears, for he always twitches slightly — sometimes more, sometimes less — the ear on the side he is going to make his toss ; for he always tosses his head to one side or the other. Then he lowers his head and makes his rush, and does not see clearly again until he raises it in making the toss ; then it is too late, for if you have already chosen the side away from the coming blow, you may affect all the calmness you please. But mind you, you have got to be sure of your affair, or it may be all up with you in more senses than one. And remember this — that "El Toro es un animal muy fino — a veces mas fino del Hombre que juega con tra el." The Captain was a good-natured man, and so he let many of the passengers, who by rights ought to have slept on deck, sleep on the cabin floor; that is, as many as it would hold, for they found it was not close enough for them on deck. I had my mat tress spread on deck, but kept my stateroom and kept it locked. Sitting by the skylight at night, the sounds from that cabin were awful ; it was a complete orchestra ; nothing was lacking from the loud bassoon to the feeble flageolet. And the variations ! all pass ages in music were represented except the rests, and I wondered how they could sleep through it all ; but they did. The fresh provisions ran out at once, and those left were not fresh at all and began to run out also. Where was the generous fare of the advertisement ? The answer was — gone with the speed of the "A Number One, fast-sailing, copper-bottomed clipper." I came to the conclusion that the owners were, as mild-spoken Horace Greeley used to put it, little better than wilful falsifiers. THE RESCUE 179 One day, when the turtle before a smart wind was slowly thrusting her barnacled nose through the water, there came towards us over the heaving waves a beautiful white boat with a snowy, Chinese-like sail spread out by bamboo slats like a fan. We slackened sail and she surged alongside. There were twenty- five people in her. I did the translating, and we took them on board, and mighty glad they were, for we were so far from Cuba, the nearest land, that it was a toss-up if all could have reached it alive. During this somewhat difficult business, my Italian friend, the miner, had the ball of a thumb pinched off by a rope, and my surgical skill was thus put to a severe test, for there was not a single clean rag on board — so I used paper. This convinced him the more of the soundness of his belief that there was no place like an underground home. We got them on board, and their boat, fastened to a strong hawser, was allowed to drift astern; and so, towing her, we bore off on our course again. The notable members of the rescued people were — the Cap tain, the second mate, a Bermuda Negro boatman, and, above all, a beautiful, dignified lady and her little boy. She was one of the finest women I have met in my life, and must have been also the first real lady the Captain had ever met ; and it is needless to say he simply worshipped her and would have willingly laid down his life for her sake. The rest of the crew were Germans, Irish, Scandinavians, etc., — men who had been shipped drunk in San Francisco, and awakening found themselves in a living hell. For the foundering ship from which they had put off was one of those splendid American clippers trying to beat the record to Liverpool, under the command of one of the greatest drivers of that day. Her name was the David Brown ; she was a sister 180 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. ship of the Great Republic I had seen burnt to the water's edge in New York before I left. The second mate told me it was simply awful — the way she came round the Horn in a gale, sails carried away and replaced, and the belaying-pin in constant use. The Captain was proud of his ship and her great flush snowy decks and her mahogany fittings, and it was worth a man's life to spot the one or scratch the other. The Captain and I became friends, and it was strange to see him beginning to think for the first time in his strenuous life, during this enforced idleness. He told me all about the disaster. The big ship was loaded with wheat in bulk, and the orders were to make the quickest passage ever made, and he had tried to do it; but she was strained coming round the Horn, and as there were no ports to put into on her route along the coasts of South America, where she could be overhauled, he had to keep on. Seeing that she held her own, when further north he had made up his mind to try a rush for Liverpool ; but a great gale coming on, she began to open with the swelling wheat and then began to sink. His first mate was a splendid sailor, but had lost all his posi tions one after the other through drunkenness ; he was a ruined man, no one would have him. The Captain met him one day in San Francisco and told him that he was just the man he needed, and that he would give him one more chance to retrieve his re putation. This the mate with tears of gratitude and by all that was most sacred swore he would do, and behaved splendidly up to the last day on the ship, when, worn out with the ten days' storm, he found a bottle of whiskey and drank it all. This set him wild, and yet he knew what he was about. They stove all the boats except those they got off in. The Captain's boat was well pro- THE RESCUE 181 visioned, but that of the mate had been nearly wrecked, and the last the Captain saw of him, he was diving under her, getting a sail placed to prevent her leaking. The understanding was that they should keep together, but when it was dark enough, the Captain deliberately altered his course, and the next morning the mate's boat was nowhere to be seen. He did reach land, how ever, as I heard long afterwards, but the crew were more dead than alive. There was a big Dutchman on board the Captain's boat, who, eating more than any one else, took up a great deal of room, and besides had stolen a bottle of beer which the Captain had put apart for the lady. It was well for him that we picked them up, for the next night the Captain had appointed to be his last. He was to have been called on to take his turn at the tiller between the Captain and the Negro ; then, the tiller affording a handy weapon, and all the rest sleeping the sleep of exhaustion, a blow on the head and a sudden splash over the stern, and the accident would have been over. This the Captain told me with the ut most coolness, and the Hercules of a Negro confirmed it. That bottle of beer, however, was the unpardonable sin. The Captain also said that the strength and skill of the Negro saved them from being lost in the gale then blowing. It was beautiful to see with what deference that Negro was treated ; even the ex-slaver tried no tricks on him. You may imagine that with the accession of twenty-five to our company, the food did not grow more abundant and we were re duced to galatas — hard tack ; and now the human nature came out. The lady had a maid with her. While she herself behaved always like the perfect lady she was, this maid soon commenced a most outrageous flirtation with our handsome mate, and the 182 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. rescued crew began to complain of the food. The Captain and I were disgusted — particularly when one day, a sudden squall coming up and we having to take in sail, the Spanish crew took the mainmast and the rescued crew the foremast. The Spanish crew were up the masts like cats, and had gotten all snug and were down again before the lubberly American crew had barely begun. The American Captain, with that arrogant scorn of foreigners which made the American of those days beloved from pole to pole, was taken down several pegs, and before the end of the voyage had to admit that the old Captain was a first-rate sailor and his crew a smart one. I had given up my mattress to the lady, and- the snorers had been turned out, so that, with the exception of the cockroaches, she was as comfortable as could be expected. She turned out to be the wife of an English officer — a Major Foster of British Co lumbia. Her little boy was a noble little fellow. Some one had found a bunch of raisins ; you may imagine what a treat it was to him, yet when I asked him for some, he at once held out the whole bunch to me. Before we parted, she gave me her address in Staffordshire, England, and assured me a warm welcome. I have said I gave her my mattress ; what that meant, no one but myself can know. The old steward, when he spread a single blanket on the deck, used to remark: "Es muy sensilio." Thin! I should think so. Long before arriving I had exhausted every available spot on which to lie, and my body was one universal soreness. My only comfort was in the bow, — as far from hu man nature as possible, — and I communed with Nature, without the human element. There I only had the sky and the waves, and the murmur of water as the moss-covered prow ploughed its way ever nearer land. IN HAVANA 183 At last came the morn of our arrival, and a magical change took place in the appearance of this ragamuffin ship's company. I have said the Spaniard hides his finery in travelling; now it blossomed out. The barbers first shaved all the bull-fighters, and then shaved each other and the crew ; and over the side went bundles of such vile rags that no self-respecting shark would ever dream of examining them. Now it was all spotless linen, bright cravats, patent-leather shoes, and silver-headed canes. Even I selected out the least dirty of my clothes ; but the poor Captain and the lady had to go as they were. . .*A, J The Morro Castle was saluted and we glided into the harbour of Havana and dropped anchor. Washing off the dirt of forty days and forty nights, and a generous meal, and a good night's sleep in a soft bed, made another man of me, and I began to think of the coming struggle and wonder what was in store for me — only too glad to quit for ever the track of Columbus. Our old Captain received a fine gold watch and a letter of thanks from the government. He might have had the beautiful boat, but the American Captain did not make it clear to him that he was welcome to it, so he tried to tow it. The spray half-filled her with water, which, running down to the bow, put it under and the hawser snapped and she was lost. The British Consul took charge of the lady and child and nurse, and I never saw 184 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. her again, but often felt like running down to Staffordshire — the address sounds so pleasant. The strenuous Captain and his romance, and the rest, have disappeared, so far as I am con cerned, as utterly as the fast-sailing clipper, David Brown. The " turtle " ought to be floating in the Sargossa Sea. I shall never try to find her. From lotus-eating Florence to the Havana of those days was a somewhat violent transition. The clouds were gathering, the Southerners were threatening and boasting, and no one could tell when the storm would burst forth. It soon became clear that if I were to go North, the quicker I left the better ; so I did not stand upon the order of my going but went at once, and that by the only chance I had. This happened to be a schooner leaving for Richmond, Vir ginia — almost out of the frying-pan into the fire. She was lying at Cardenas. One thing I have always regretted : that was, leav ing my old passport, a veritable history of my wanderings in Europe, dates and all, properly vised at all the little Duchies there were before the Italians came in. This schooner was in reality a big ship rigged as a schooner, the first of the kind, and a fine time we had with the big sails beating up through the storm which accompanied us the whole way. We left Cardenas at night ; it was pitch dark, but by the aid of lanterns the Spanish custom-house officer could see that we had a great pile of cigars — far more than the law allowed. He was scandalized, but had been there before, and although his honour did not permit his accepting the shining gold we offered, said that his subordinate was not so particular — and as he was n't, the cigars all went on board. IN HAVANA 185 I was sorry to bid good-bye to my dear father, for I did not know if I should ever see him again ; but in time I got used to this, as I periodically bade him good-bye until his ninety-sixth year — when the good-bye was final. We were three of us — the Captain, the supercargo, and my self. The mate ate with us but did n't count ; there were no plums in the side of the plum-duff served to him, or the Captain would have spoken to the cook. And the storm kept on. Soon there was no plum-duff — nor anything ; we had to eat biscuit and drink simple water. It was always tacking. In one of the lulls on a long tack, the conversation taking a theological turn, I ventured to air some of my theories. The Captain and supercargo were re ligious, and I at that time had not swept away a vast mass of stuff as useless rubbish, and theology then afforded my wits a pleasant playground. It soon came to the Captain saying that had he known such were my opinions, he would never have al lowed me to put my foot on board his ship. This was crisp ; but I had only to hand in something about infant damnation, when the supercargo whirled in, and I thought before they got through the Captain would have thrown the supercargo overboard. But they never got through — we had to tack, then we all hid our selves, and as the ship went about, the great blocks came across her deck like cannon-balls. They had little spats afterwards, but I do not believe that question of infant damnation was ever settled to their satisfaction. We were trying to get into the mouth of the James River. We would run in until we saw or heard the breakers and then stand off again. The weather was warm, and it looked like swimming, so my costume was appropriate to the occasion — a shirt and a pair of drawers. Words cannot describe the blissful sensation as 186 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. we slid into the peaceful waters of the river, leaving the howling sea astern. We went on shore, and as we entered a tavern, I heard a lanky individual talking to another : — " Ye don't say he got ten dollars fer that old horse ! — Well, I'll be darned!" Here they were, talking of horses when they ought to have been thanking God they were safe on dry land. We bought everything in the way of eatables, and, though the Captain and the supercargo were temperance, a bottle of whis key. In spite of the Captain's vigilance the crew got a bottle or two also, and after feeding and a nightcap, every soul on board was dead-asleep or something. During the night, the wind shift ing and blowing hard, the schooner dragged her anchor, and in the morning we found ourselves fast on shore. It took three months to get her off. So here the dream of my childhood was fulfilled and I was finally shipwrecked — and mighty glad was I that it was no worse. My father's friends received me warmly, like good Southerners, but were very anxious to see me safe off. The cigars came with us in the tug which took us from the schooner, and were mys teriously landed, and I sold my share. Now this was sheer smug gling, and I have thought of conscience-money since ; but things were very mixed then, and the money came in so handy on ar riving in New York that I have let it pass. I got through to New York, and the first gun was fired on Fort Sumter the very day of my arrival. ¦tfJH Jfour moiv^f sure wiyame^ouMsHttres ^k cross */xe iferrlf. j ilont cc«*e i*cW (£i£r^£&r i SJ^ ^ CCn^. mokes J\im. %nenw« ~Jyuk after «*M 7S Sctfrt «ncl <(c>te , V^al* is &?s life ^ilftou* iU JU«.?^ X. ^^Slr^ Cavj-f&r-- ll't «/ f.ViMAM., CHAPTER VII New York in Wartime— The Struggle INTRODUCTION — 48 BEEKMAN STREET — DIFFERENTIATED SAUSAGES — HITCHIE — I BUY A BABY — JOSEPHUS AND THE CLAIR VOYANT — ANTONIO — TAMPERINGS — NED MULLIN — C. AND HIS BROTHER — PFAFF'S — THE RIOTS — ARTEMUS WARD — MY FIRST FAINT GLIMPSE OF FAME — THE EVOLU TION OF JANE JACKSON — H. M. — A SLAVERY LECTURE — I RECEIVE A LETTER. I say Introduction, for that is what it is. I know all these backings and fillings on my part must be very annoying to my reader ; but they cannot annoy him so much as they do me, for they are nothing but gropings, on my part, in the dark of a memory which refuses to give up its secrets ; especially the pleasant ones, for, Lord knows, the disagreeable ones remain with fearful distinctness. But, confound it, what is one to do when he has to tell of events which must have shaped the future of a long life, always being shaped by such trivial things ; until the trivial takes the place of the important and the important sinks into triviality. Why, out of a comfortable home, without any great disaster, I should have had for my share one mattress, one pillow, three sheets, and a blanket, is more than I can ac count for. To be sure, there came to me afterwards a fine old- fashioned mahogany sofa ; but the old English portrait of Lord Coke, whose long row of buttons I used to count, the Wedg- iqo THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. wood vase, the iridescent Dutch tea-pot and saucers, and all the books, remain a family mystery which my father or my brother knew more about than I. My brother was by this time married and highly unsettled in life, while I was so unsettled that I should not have known where to store the things, — things brought back from Europe understood. The four years I spent abroad were spent by those who re mained at home in making friends and reputation ; I came on the scene without either. To be sure there was Kate Field, a most loyal friend, a host in herself; through her and her good Aunt Corda the doors of society were thrown open. Milton Sanford, Aunt Corda's husband, was a fine, generous fellow and disposed to help me, and he did so when I was discovered ; but being a fierce Copperhead, as they were called in those days, my out- and-out Union sentiments offended him past remedy. I had belongings, — all the little pictures I painted in Florence and all the drawings, to the most insignificant scrap, I had with me ; they formed a sort of carapace or turtle's shell in which I lived and in which I am living, to a certain extent, yet, — and really, I had, for a sort of a dreamer, been a pretty busy one. But it was just as Grandpa said, — always beginning things and never fin ishing. There was one thing I thought frequently of finishing, — and that was my life. The two noble rivers were near at hand, and had it not been for the fun going on around me, and the Boys, — who knows ? I had told my father I would earn my living and I did, but it was a struggle. Strange to think that by my father's first marriage I was brought into the world, and by his second was enabled to stay in it ; for my stepmother coming North and seeing for herself how I was situated, after a good cry got me a couple of nice rooms, gave me money for materials and "V." IN WARTIME FORTY-EIGHT BEEKMAN STREET 193 frames, and all the rest soon settled itself, and so no more of the noble rivers. Of course at first I sought Ben. I went to live with him in Hoboken. I don't know how it is now, but then it was far from being a promising field for an artist, and so I had to try my luck in the City, and through the kindness of his father was given a large room in the old house where he had his offices — 48 Beek man Street. At Ben's in Hoboken, the heights were very pleasant after all; the grand view over the river and the great city opposite I shall never forget, and the palace-like steam boats of a bright morning, on their way to Albany, when the notes of the calliopes or steam-organs came softened by the dis tance, as they played such beautiful airs as " Pop goes the Wea sel." And then there were some charming girls opposite, who helped materially to brighten my somewhat darkened young prospects. Ah, the girls! how good they were, and how one girl saved me from another all through the troublous period of the War, so that I was enabled to flee away at its conclusion without having spoken that hasty word which might have led to much unhappiness and a leisurely repentance. Forty-eight Beekman Street had once been a colonial man sion, and the room I worked and slept in might have served for one of the innumerable dining-rooms of General Washington then. It contained a fine mantelpiece and nothing else, except one table, two chairs, one mattress and a pillow, three sheets and a blanket. A small trunk served as night-stand, on which stood one bottle serving as a candlestick, and one glass mug. The view out of the large windows was fine but monotonous, — plain brick walls and iron shutters. The noises of the street were shut out of 194 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. my room, it being in the back of the house ; but to make up, it being wartime a saddler worked all night at warlike things, and whistled, with great vigour of accent but with no idea of time or tune, the warlike airs of the day. This gave me an uncomfortable sense of companionship. The boys, when they came, sat on the chairs, the table, the trunk, or stretched themselves luxuriously on the mattress, — for they were many ; and there you have my surroundings. And I made my living. Sometimes I earned a good deal of money ; sometimes next to nothing ; for I remember once having only crackers and sausage. I put them together, and the sausage going bad contaminated the crackers. I had to throw all away and content myself with a drink of water for breakfast, and so, mighty sad, to work — in sorrow and in debt, for owing to my father's remissness there were certain little bills yet un settled in Florence. Goya, the Spanish painter, says that the dreams of the imagin ation are demons, but one can see from the engravings for which that serves as title, that he means — devils. The ancients said that each man was accompanied by his demon, or familiar spirit, who might be good or bad. On the floor, huddling in my single blanket, I too had dreams, of angels and devils, and that mat tress became by turns a throne or a rack, according, I suppose, to the day's affairs or the day's fare. It was there I conceived "The Fisherman and the Genii," " The Roc's Egg," "The Ques tioner of the Sphinx," " The Lost Mind," " The Lair of the Sea- Serpent," etc. — but I lacked the means ; I could not carry out the ideas. You see poverty has its defects. It leaves something to be desired, such as — good clothes, good food, a studio, paints, can vas, and frames. When I was supplied with these things, I painted my pictures, was noticed, sold them, and have never been in MY DORE PERIOD £ FORTY-EIGHT BEEKMAN STREET 197 absolute want since, but have been fearfully hampered, with every prospect of remaining so until the unhampering takes place. It was in this bare room, kneeling at the window one night, that I made my great prayer — the last. I only asked for guid ance, not for anything else, and it was an honest prayer. The only answer was — the brick walls and iron shutters. Long after, I did indeed make one more prayer in my deepest distress, but that was for another — an innocent life ; but it was found that the great laws could not be disturbed for such a small matter, — in fact were not disturbed in the least, — and I have never prayed since. Lack of faith, perhaps ? Perhaps. To clear up things as I go along, and so get them out of the way, I will add that the Florentine debts were duly settled. The good tradesmen had never written or dunned me once, such was their faith in me. This shows that like the pirates of my school-days (who were all good pirates), I must have been a good Bohemian. 198 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. And I made a living, — looking back, I hardly know how I managed it, but I did. At first, trying to draw for "Vanity Fair" ; Idea, fifty cents ; Idea with suggestive sketch, one dollar and fifty cents ; drawn on block, five dollars. But I found that my train ing, such as it was, was too serious for the touch-and-go style then in vogue. I never aspired to draw the cartoons or full-page illustrations ; these the two Stevens brothers, who ran the paper, reserved for themselves. Then came the period of comic valen tines. These were horrible things, but drawn on graphotype blocks were cheap enough to suit the publisher ; but the funny thing about it was that he insisted on my making the verses — poetry, he called it — as well. He said : " You artists can make anything but money." Here I called on the Boys, and we set to work writing them and had great fun, for we instilled our stories and personal jokes into these things, which all passed undetected by the good publisher, who thought the "poems" fine. Poor Wood the playwright's only idea of fun consisted in pounding on the table with a big stick and yelling. This reminds me of a Neapolitan cab-driver: I scolded him for yelling at trav ellers to attract their attention, asking him what made him do it? He answered with a smile — "Hunger." That must have been it. And then a rosy-gilled, prosperous calisthenics man gave me much work in the way of illustrating a book he was getting up, the drawings consisting of figures showing the action by dotted lines until they looked like multitudinously armed Indian gods. This was the period of the wooden dumb-bell ; we had not arrived at the period of breathing deeply or chewing slowly yet. This person would go through his exercises whistling "Yankee Doodle," and looking the while like a great ape ; and I used to pre- FORTY-EIGHT BEEKMAN STREET 199 tend not to catch the idea until he was in a raging perspiration, thus making him take his own medicine. Then Kate Field's uncle bought several little pictures I brought with me from Flor ence (for painting in such surroundings was impossible) . But that did not help matters ; it was only a stop-gap, and the trouble went on. The four or five years of the War — now a dream — seemed a century, but was in fact an important period for me, in which I gradually drew out of the slough of despair in which so many remain all their lives, kept there by the Saturday night's salary, "fresh and fresh." Serious book-illustrations were un known in the beginning of that short period, — at least with us, — and were established before it was through. It com menced about the time I made those now forgotten illustrations for " Enoch Arden." I escaped all these dangers and got back to my painting: now, of course, illustration ranks with the best 200 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. work done. Yet it will be noticed that all illustrators long to paint and do so as soon as they can break away. There are some great fellows who do both ; no need of my troubling about them ; they can take care of themselves. It would seem that I, like business in New York, slowly worked my way up-town, — always on Broadway, the straight and nar row way not appealing to me then; and with a few "stands" in Boston I finally reach the time of my second Hegira, or flight to Europe. It is strange that I now know more about the distin guished people I then met than I did at that time, and that now I should enjoy meeting them more than I did then ; but it is a trifle too late. It is now a case of spilt milk, and was then, I fear a case of pearls, in which I was not — pearls. At the house of the ever-kind Mrs. Botta, aside from the mild Vincenzo, I met Ole Bull and his wife, who told me all about his wonderful violins. Apropos of Ole Bull, — while at Matteson's one of my student friends, Purdy, a wild lover of the violin, although he only fiddled himself, fired me with a desire to hear Ole Bull, who was to play in Utica, and we made a veritable pil grimage in most beastly weather, and sat with cold, wet feet and forgot all discomfort under the spell of his magic bow. Dear me! — and to think that since then I have heard at the Costanzi here in Rome a mere child do all he did, with infinitely fewer flour ishes. Yet his was a grand and impressive personality, — yet Kubelik. If he only had more warmth and colour! And so it goes, each new-comer more wonderful than the last ; and to think it is the same in painting ! Then there was a Dr. and Mrs. Dore- mus. The doctor lacked an arm, but seemingly made up for this by never appearing, at least in society, without his cornet-a- piston, on which he played beautifully. Also much music at FORTY-EIGHT BEEKMAN STREET 201 Aunt Corda's. Adelaide Phillips, fresh from her Cuban triumphs, was a charming woman. She liked dancing with me, I being a natural waltzer and proficient in the real Cuban style. Her father being with her on one occasion, I asked if he was fond of music ? That, she said, she had never been able to find out, but was inclined to think that he did not hate it. So much for hered ity! And long afterwards, to see this brilliant prima donna sing ing the part of Little Buttercup in "Pinafore"! "Wise is the man who knows when his work's done, or woman either." I joined the Athenaeum Club ; I believe I have somewhere said that I joined it to have some place to stay away from, being so homeless. There I saw that ruined tower, as he called himself, N. P. Willis. He had very small feet, of which he was duly con scious, and three curls " right down in the middle of his forrid," and I have since seen that he behaved quite " horrid," in his let ters from abroad. However he made up handsomely afterwards for all that, and was one of the greatest of small men. But what earthly use is there in making a list of the names of persons who are now — mostly — only names ? Besides, I was too near, saw too many defects. But I found out one thing, — that the world is not made up of the very good or very bad but of the great average crowd, of the neither all-good nor all-bad. That is why Dante will be amazed to learn that V. finds fault with him for having provided in his "Inferno" such a peculiarly acute place for those neither good nor bad. Confucius is better. While he does not hold out " hopes of heaven or threats of hell," he has given advice which if followed would make a large nation happy and prosperous, perhaps composed of the not all-bad or all-good, and I believe that "'twill make ,the blood of the unco' pious freeze to learn that God in China 202 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. talks Chinese." But this is a digression lugged in by the ears. All the artists of this time are well described in my friend Isham's book on "American Painters," where he treats the subject with wonderful tact. My first years abroad, however, were spent in Florence, and not in Rome, as he states. Differentiated Sausages. I have somewhere likened or intend to liken these Digressions to links in sausages — "linked monotony long drawn out" ; but in this Digression, for monotony read variety, for you will find I bring in Quaint Leg ends—The Boys, and Wartime, and my brother Alex, and Grandma, Ben, and much more besides ; and now — watch me. There was once in the Via Sistina a bald-headed mechanic. It happened that he was born without a smitch of hair on his head, and so I suppose he was not to blame, although he might have been somewhat reckless in a previous state of existence. He did some work for me very precisely and well, and seemed to be very intelligent. At that time, I was trying to make a self-winding clock, and hoped to effect that object by the expansion and con traction of some material by heat and cold, so I asked him about it, and he answered that that was physics and he had only studied mechanics. This reminds me of a man who when I said that the day was " devilish hot," remarked that there was indeed " unalto grado di calore." This man was only taking his two fine daugh ters about the studios and leaving them to pose nude and alone with any artist who paid the price. What about " la morale" ? This tendency to what seems to us " highfalutin " in the Ital ians is easily explained, for we have two languages, our own dear familiar speech and our scientific speech ; but they have but one and are not really going out of their way in using high-sound- DIFFERENTIATED SAUSAGES 203 ing words. For instance: my friend Crowninshield once in Peru gia interfered where a man was beating his wife. This interfer ence was not taken altogether in good part by the crowd, for one man remarked that " things had come to a pretty pass when a man had no longer the right to ' percuss ' his wife." My brother Alex and I used to try experiments on dear old Grandma, which covered both the ground of physics and mech anics. I once found a print with the glass broken ; removing the broken glass, I very skilfully painted a good imitation of it on the print, and taking it to Grandma, said : " See what I have done." — "What a pity! — how are you going to get another piece of glass to replace it ? " When she finally saw how she had been taken in, she only reiterated her oft-expressed opinion that I was a born genius. This was optics. She once told me, and I might have thought she was trying to get it back on me, how when Grandpa was young, they had in vented a thing they called a velocipede, and that people used to go about on them. When I asked for a description, she said that it was a bar of wood with a wheel in front and one behind, and that you sat astride of it and made it go by shoving it with your feet. But, said I, " Dear Grandma, can't you see that it would fall over sideways ? " — " But it did n't, for I saw them myself." Having common sense on my side I kept at her with a hundred arguments, like a young Torquemada, until she made a sort of recantation and admitted finally that perhaps she was mistaken, although I thought I heard a Galileo-like murmur that they did go without falling all the same. This was "la meccanica." However, the worm will turn ; this happened when my brother Alex told her of the penurious carpenter who, by putting green spectacles on his cow, persuaded her to eat shavings instead of 204 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. grass. This she would not believe, yet believed enough to think the attempt heartless on the part of the carpenter. Optics again. How well I remember the velocipede furore which swept over the country, — bone-shakers, they called them, — and how we allowed it to die out, while the English kept on and made them a success. Then we merely took them up again and now make them as good as those of other nations — no better, although we think they are. The perseverance of the English is usually rewarded with success — usually, but not always. Graphotype, which we invented and gave up, the English went on tampering with, but I imagine it is dead enough now. As I assisted at the birth of this invention, and it happened during the War, I will give an account of it. There was a man — and he was an inventor — and his name was Larch. In making an invention and getting out a patent he was not concerned one little bit if it would work or not ; his aim was to sell the patent. A good invention was an invention that would sell ; invention for invention's sake, as it were. He conceived a machine in which water falling on revolving screens was cooled by its rapid evaporation. Now the boys averred that this did not take place; that the intense cold promised by the prospectus was a myth, that the water grew warmer the more you turned the handle, and so they christened it the "eggboiler." Larch made another — a formidable machine which he set up in the back yard of his house. It reached to the second floor and was made of sheet-iron. This he filled with beans carried up by an endless chain to the top, from whence they fell with a fearful clatter. He called it a grain-elevator and was indicted for keeping a nuisance, and he had to give up working it. This the boys called "Larch's Sheriff Escape." HITCHIE 205 Now my friend Hitchie was an engraver and illustrator, and used visiting-cards which he moistened and rubbed on his boxwood blocks to give a surface which would catch the pen cil — otherwise they were too smooth. Seeing that where the ink had hardened the chalky surface of the cards thus used, the words remained in relief after the chalk had been washed and rubbed away, he remarked to Larch, who was standing close at hand, "This is my idea of a process of engraving in relief." Larch's eyes glittered. "Give me that card." And taking it, off he went. A few days after, he burst in, a large piece of chalk in his hand, crying out, " I 've got it ! — I 've got it!" — And indeed he had, but it was only the germ, and it caused us no end of anxiety and excitement and hope before the sickly plant put in an appearance. It was in those days that Hitchie showed his wonderful talent for locking up all the trouble of the day and leaving it in his office when he turned the key in the door at night. Larch had indeed found it ! the lump of chalk was covered with writing in black ink; producing from his pocket a toothbrush (he was a dentist), Larch rubbed the chalk vigorously, and lo! all the written characters stood out in bold relief. "Now," said he, " take a flat plate of this chalk ; draw on it what you please with this liquid I have discovered, which hardens the chalk ; and when all the drawing is in relief, harden the entire block — cast it — stereotype it — and there you have your plate ready for printing." In his eyes it was a most beautiful thing — to sell. It would be heart-rending to tell of all our failures. When with hydraulic pressure the plates of chalk were hard enough to write on, the chalk would not brush away; when soft enough to brush, the drawing went also. It was then I stepped in, and suggesting that 206 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. a brush should be used instead of a pen, we were thus enabled to draw on chalk soft enough to brush away and yet leave the drawing. This limp plant of an invention then began to stand up without assistance, and without being watered constantly by wilful falsification or something resembling it. All this has now been long sunk in the dark sea beyond the Garden of Mem ory, from whose depths few things are rescued — the Sea of Oblivion. But why do I distinguish Larch as an inventor ? We were all inventors and all were trying to invent something which would make us suddenly rich. It had to be sudden, for the need of money was very pressing. Now Ben's father was rich, and while he was disposed to set up Ben's brothers in business, for which they showed a great inclination, he was parsimonious towards Ben, who was trying to be a designer. When Ben made his appearance in the old man's office, it was always, — "Now Ben, I know just what you are after — money, always money. I wish I was in Patagonia or Tierra del Fuego." — But Ben always got the money. But never enough ; and so he also took to inventing, striving to make something that would pay. And this he finally did ; but before that, he came out with a scheme which provoked roars of laughter. It was to provide a tugboat with a long boom, to the end of which a torpedo should be attached ; and then, going up to the enemy's vessel, run out the boom, explode the torpedo and sink her. We all thought this a most stupendous joke ; and yet before the War was over, Lieutenant Cushing blew up the Confederate Albemarle with just such an invention and probably saved the nation. But Ben hit it off finally. He invented a film to be used in pro cess engraving, a thing indispensable in some forms of print- HITCHIE 207 ing, and by this time has made a fortune. A short time ago I asked a publisher here on a visit if he knew Ben. He said, "I should think so; he costs us thousands of dollars for that film of his." Thus Ben turned the laugh on the Boys — but it took him a long time. For Ben was slow but sure. I find that an old letter of Ben's, yellow with time, dated January, 1866, enables me to drag out of the "Sea of Oblivion," as I somewhat highfalutingly call it, a notice of the graphotype, the invention of Hitchie and Larch. That the English kept at it is. shown by the appearance on the scene of a certain Roper, representing an English company, who brought over to New York a book — "Watts's Hymns" illustrated by Anelay, Hunt, Du Maurier, Claxton, H. K. Brown, Fitzcook, and others. This seems to have finally persuaded the elder Ben, who promised to back Ben up in a scheme whereby Ben was to come to Paris to work the process. Of course Ben was wild to see me and writes for me to get him an apartment, — " something dans les prix doux," — for Ben had become a famous Frenchman during his stay in Paris. It all came to naught; — but Ben in Paris might have kept me from coming to Italy. I forget, — I am not count ing on the girl in the case. Can I let Hitchie sink into the Sea of Oblivion ? Not if I can help it. Hitchie was short, stout, rosy, and had the most win ning ways of any one I ever saw. No one could be angry with Hitchie ; he was true pilgrim from the blarney-stone. No man, on turning the key in his office-door at the end of the day, could throw off more completely all care and trouble than could Hitchie. The rest of the evening was pure fun and pleasure. His good nature was so contagious that I have known him to 208 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. quit me in Broadway and steal up behind one of the most formidable of the Broadway squad, insinuate his arm under that of the policeman, and thus accompanied, reach the other side, where that officer of the law would, with a pat on the shoulder, and a warm handshake, bid him a most smiling farewell. I have never been able to decide whether he was a kleptomaniac or not. He would certainly take things. If he was one, I shall have to enlarge my circle of friends so as to include those thus afflicted — for I cannot exclude Hitchie. For instance: I have said he was an engraver and illustrator; now illustrators use India ink, and have to have certain little saucers to hold it. At a certain eating-house there were certain little butter-plates, admirably suited for this purpose. From time to time Hitchie would remove one, until he had removed six ; on that day the waiter, with a perfectly serious face, presented the bill : chops, so much ; green peas, so much ; beer, so much ; half-dozen butter-plates, so much. The bill was paid without a smile on either side, but Hitchie, concluding his outfit was complete, took no more. There was a barroom, and on the counter a porcelain match- safe of a fanciful pattern, which he fell deeply in love with. He would fondle it, take more drinks, so as to remain longer in its society ; but ever the good-natured but vigilant eye of the bar keeper was on him, for even when his back was turned, it gleamed from the mirrors behind the bottles. It was a tacit joke between them and the barkeeper won — but only by paying the price, ceaseless vigilance. In the evenings, when the gas was lit in the streets and we were returning to Hoboken, mighty merry, he would stoop, seizing the edge of some great mat in front of a shop-door, and dragging I BUY A BABY 209 it gravely behind him for half a block, set the sidewalk on a roar. Nothing daunted him, and there was a tradition that he had gotten away with a keg of herrings almost under the grocer's nose. This I did not see, but I did see him do a thing which filled me with dismay. He begged me to stop a moment at a furniture- dealer's not far from my lodgings. At the entrance was a little etagere prettily fitted out with silver-gilt pitcher, bottles, and goblets. In the most casual way he selected a goblet, and on the dealer com ing forward, actually stowed it away ostentatiously in his coat-tail pocket, con versing affably the while about his — Hitchie's — trouble in getting just the right bed for a certain room in his house. I looked at my watch, and telling Hitchie that I should miss my train if I did not hurry, rushed out of the shop, filled with fear and anxiety. I said he was an engraver ; late the next day a messenger brought me a neat packet, on opening which, reposing beautifully polished on cotton, was the goblet, with this inscription engraved by the not-unskilful hand of my friend: — "To V. with the best love of D. C. H." Alas, it has disappeared — but not the memory of that kind-hearted rogue. One does not buy a baby so often but what I may be par doned for going back to 48 Beekman Street, for it was while still in that cheerful place there came a gloomy day when Hitchie and I concluded something had to be done : this meant 210 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. that we were hard up. "Have you ever seen this advertise ment?" he said, showing me a newspaper. I took it and read: " Children wanted for adoption. Apply at number so-and-so, such a street," — and nothing more. "Well, what do you make of it?" — "Nothing," I replied, "I can't understand it at all." — "Well," said Hitchie, "lots of people are in the same way; let us find out for them. You write the account and I will make the drawings, for it is sure to be something funny, and that will just make a nice page for the Daily Gad-About." I really have forgotten what paper he mentioned and in which the ac count came out, but have never forgotten this peep behind the scenes. So we went to a neighbourhood once fashionable, and rang the bell of a shabby-genteel house. A poor little overworked girl answered the bell and asked us to step in and wait. The parlour had a shabby air of gentility, in harmony with the house and its situation. I can only remember that there was a plaster Cupid painted black in a corner, and some " Come to Jesuses " on the walls ; and when Mrs. Crookmorton came in she was in perfect harmony with her surroundings. There was also an odour of mackerel which did not seem to diminish as our interview pro gressed. I said : " Madam, perhaps we may be keeping you from your dinner; we can call another time" — for to tell the truth I wished I was well out of it. " Not at all — not at all ; no time like the present. What is it you wish to know ? " " I want to know the meaning of your advertisement, for per haps you can help me." She replied : "There's no mystery in it. The fact is that many I BUY A BABY 211 people have children they can't bring up, and many want to adopt children, so we try to help both parties. Do you want to dispose of a child or adopt one ?" "Of course not; that is, I will tell you just how the thing stands. I have a lady friend in Matanzas, Cuba " (I thought I would be on safe ground), "who wants a child, but she does not want to adopt a family; she wants all that finished when she takes the child." " Of course, of course ; when we take a child, they lose their father and mother for ever — that is understood. But we are kind people and become much attached to the dear little things and it is hard parting from them," — here the crocodile tried to produce a tear, — "and all the expense and care we lavish on them, and everything, forces us to — in fact, we are not rich people, so we have to ask a certain remuneration." " Of course, Madam, you can't do all this for nothing ; I under stand ; and while my friend is not rich she would be willing to pay a reasonable sum. Now what do you expect to receive ? " "You see, while we have found happy homes for so many, yet the expense of doctors and burying of others has to be taken into consideration, and we could n't let you have one for less than forty dollars." "That is all right, Madam ; could we see the children ? " " Oh certainly. — Jane, bring down Irish Molly and Brooklyn Heights ! You see we give them the first names that come to us ; we don't want to have anything to do with their real names, and some don't have any," — this was said with an attempt at play fulness. It was touching to see poor little Jane, with her good face and her evident love for these babies, and how she held them and 212 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. caressed them like a real little mother. Jane was the one bright spot in the gruesome picture. And Irish Molly — well, she was all right and would survive. But poor little Brooklyn Heights! He was evidently the scion of a noble house, but how fallen ; and his hair was all stuck up with dried pap, and Jane cuddled and petted him and a wan little smile came over his face as he laid his head against her cheek. I was not feeling well, but the spirit of the reporter drove me on ; so I said, " My friend wanted a little boy ; this one will do, but how can I send him on ? " "Why, just give him to the stewardess, and she can put him in a berth and give him some pap now and then ; there 's no trouble at all about that." "But," I interposed, "they only have stewards on the small vessels going to Matanzas and it takes a good many days to get there." "Don't you bother about that. You men don't know any thing about babies ; there 's no trouble. And besides, I will give you a bottle, and tell the steward to follow the directions and that will keep him quiet all the while." I had to get out ; the eyes of the little chap were too much for me. So, saying that I would be back the next day and that I would see about the ship in the mean while, — and being told that I could n't have the refusal of the baby for long, and that I must hurry up, — we left. I gave Jane some money to buy candy for the children, and she thanked me with tears in her eyes. Hitchie and I went and had a drink and the world rolled on. I suppose I ought to tell of the resulting article, and how they found only text enough to go down one side of the illustrations, and needed another column for the sake of symmetry, and JOSEPHUS AND THE CLAIRVOYANT 213 how the Clairvoyant inflated it for me to twice the original size, and how I got the money, and how I ate the food bought with it — in sorrow, and how that sorrow lasts to this day. Poor little chap! In the beginning of the War the Clairvoyant and Josephus caught the martial fever and set up a regiment. That is — they volunteered to do so, got their handsome uniforms, and ap pointed Staten Island as being both pleasant and healthy for the site of the camp. I never could get the facts of the story right; they seemed disinclined to give me the history ; but a malicious friend gave me an outline also. He said the officers had good quarters and lived like fighting cocks ; that the men — consisting of one — had a pretty hard time, as the officers took turns in drilling him ; that one day, attempting to form him into a hollow square, he collapsed and was sent off on sick-leave. Thus, having no men left, they did not even have to disband, but came up to town. I know that they continued to wear their uniforms for a while, as they were very becoming. I saw them and they looked fine. This must have happened about the first time I met these interesting young men. But Josephus told me that previously he had written a beautiful play entitled the "Esmerald Fay," which made its appearance under the name of the "Green Monkey." Its first was also its last night. I can only remember his murmuring sometimes this line, " Let us dance to the sound of rustical roundelays." He said it was a portion of the play. On one of my returns home with a venture of pictures, I ex hibited them in rooms I had taken in Union Square. Hitchie had been ill and unsuccessful ; he was getting a little better, but was not the Hitchie of old days. The delight of seeing me, the pleasure of helping me hang my pictures, seemed to make an- 214 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. other man of him. You see, he loved and admired me with all his heart, and most fully that love was returned. One day, just as he was leaving the house, — of course to come to me, — he was struck down. The poor old boy — for he was always a boy — seemed sleeping ; perhaps it was better so. The tears shed at that funeral came from the Heart. In the time of the Commune in Paris, a poor lady on the verge of perishing through starvation saved her life by sacrificing her pet dog. As she was mournfully assuaging the pangs of hunger on the remains, she remarked sadly, " Poor Fido — how he would have enjoyed these bones ! " And that is the way I feel while writing these reminiscences ; they were primarily written for those who can now no longer enjoy them. At long intervals I return to " the Club " with hopes high burning, but am warned by the flag at half-mast that some friend, "past-master" in my affection, may now be but a past-half-master. It may be foolish, but I cannot help believing that they will still be pleased by a mention — poor, dear ghosts. And so I read in the reports of the "Association" that my dear friend Antonio has also gone ; and looking over the long list I see that he is in good company. The gentle and lordly Antonio. The short obituaries are all that they should be, but our friends' little foibles and peculiarities are left out — things that the public has nothing to do with, but which endeared them all the more to us and made them more human. Antonio, although habitually frequenting the great, such as publishers, editors, and engravers, to us the important people of those days, was yet very much with us, and we all noticed that when he became merry he became all the more stately, until, when the merriment was at its height, it ANTONIO 215 got to be with him, " Yes, sir," or " Yes, madam," — which made his unbendings the more remarkable. And so it happened that when one Saturday night we all repaired in a body to some one's house in New Jersey, "mighty merry," the good wife of that some one had to fly about and get extra rations for the hilarious crowd. But bless you, they did n't mind — for were they not good Boys also ? Then it was that the servant brought in a great plate of samp, just as Antonio was at his primmest, whereupon he broke into a silly smile and sang the then popular song of the day with a slight variation : — " Samp, samp, samp, the Boys are marching, Cheer up, comrades, they will come ! " — and Andy had the honours of the evening. In Beekman Street and its vicinity the wood-engravers held high revel, and of course the boxwood men — those who pre pared the beautiful and far too smooth boxwood blocks on which the artists were condemned to draw — also abounded. One of these last-mentioned persons, a cheerful, clean-looking young fellow, asked me on one occasion when I had gone to him for my blocks: "What's become of X. Y. ? I hear he has been tampering with pictures." Now X. Y., whatever were his merits as an engraver, was a man of very refined tastes and really a good judge of pictures. He was a sort of artistic centre in himself, and always had the Boys in of an evening, and it was — as Hopkinson Smith would say — "Help yourself; the tobacco is in the yellow jar." He knew all the artists. These were the days of George Broughton's beautiful little winter twilights with people skating on ponds. Also by correspondence he kept the Boys posted of each other's 216 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. movements, so that if Britcher was painting in Valley Conway, you knew through X. Y. just where Britcher was. He was far from rich at first, but the artists were generous, and so, between pictures obtained at very moderate prices and those presented to him, he formed quite a collection of desirable little works. I remember a fine portrait of Elliot, by himself, a present to X. Y. One day he made a most successful sale of the whole lot — but unfortunately arrived too late to withdraw the portrait of his friend. With this money he went direct to Paris, bought with his good judgement all the best French pictures he could, came back, disposed of them, and went back to Paris and bought more pictures. And thus did Job all the days of his life and became a millionaire. Of course he made exceptions in favour of American artists whose works were sure to sell. And others followed his example and thus, by showing us the best French art, they so fostered and encouraged the growth of art " in our midst " that even some American artists began in a modest way to dispose of their works, and the dealers became powerful, and we always drank their respective healths at our meetings. There were good and bad ones among those dealers. I remem ber a talented young fellow standing like a whipped cur before one S. K. while the latter told him the kind of thing he ought to paint, and got the picture which the poor fellow had brought under his arm, for a mere song. Tampering ? I should say so. There was another tamperer — a certain H. He also had the foaming jug or spicy punch set out by the cheerful fire in winter, and also formed his collection pretty much as X. Y. had. Being an Englishman, he went to London, and here the likeness to X. Y. ceases, for H. did not return, but on the contrary remained in London where he set up a very successful pot-house ; for, strange TAMPERINGS 217 to say, on one of my rare visits to London the first person I met was H., who told me himself this about the pot-house and asked me to come and see him in his new surroundings. All this was long ago, and so, like my Aunt Eveline, "I make no comment." There once appeared in " Punch " a wood-cut representing two writers conversing affably as they walked along. One was a tragic, the other a comic author, and the point was — the con- dp _ trast presented by the two men ; for while Tragedy was repre sented by a stout, jolly little fellow, Comedy was embodied in a long, lank, and most melancholy individual — in fact just such a looking man as was our friend Frank Bellew. Old readers of "Vanity Fair" will remember seeing his name always written in a triangle. One day he came into my room much depressed: Saturday was near and he had nothing ready. However, he pulled out a scrap of drawing, saying, "I wonder if the fellows up at the office will take this." It was entitled "The Thoughtful Parent," — or something like it, — and represented an eagle returning to its nest with a lamb in one of its hooked hands and a cruet 218 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. of mint sauce in the other. The Boys were delighted, and he was told to get his money and treat the young ravens at home to precisely the same fare — spring lamb and mint sauce. Which, by the way, now that I remember, was the title of the sketch. I have always thought that Plutarch's way of putting his heroes in double harness, as it were, was a very arbitrary proceeding; yet in the case of two brothers I knew, that treatment seems in dicated. I allude to Sol and Carolus Corinthius. I call them so from a proud curl of the lip which had more to do with Palestine than with Holland, although in later historic times the family was known to have come from the latter country. The difference be tween the Turveydrops was that while one had port, the other had presence, and this well describes the difference between the two brothers ; for while Carolus was a model of deportment, Sol contented himself and friends with his presence. I can remember Cs cuffs and almost some of the things he said ; but of Sol I can not remember a thing he ever said, but remember his effulgence ; for while Walt Whitman used to sit with his beard and open collar and hairy breast and beam upon the Boys, his beams remained on the outside of you ; whereas Sol's radiance permeated you through and through, so that I have often thought that among the shades in Hades — where Sol is — it can never be quite dark. If I have put Sol and Carolus together, Mullin must stand alone, for Mullin was "a holy terror" — at least so he was described by good little Miss Van Dusen with whom he once boarded. She was contrasting him with Mr. Tom Placide the actor, who had occupied the same room — "a perfect gentleman, and so neat." Mullin was anything but neat, except in the matter of whiskey: he always took that neat. For one who treated himself so generously to that article, he was singularly abstemious NED MULLIN 219 with regard to his friends, for he never treated any one but once, and that happened in this way: Mullin, meeting that best of painters, Winslow Homer, was asked by the latter if he would have a drink. This jumping with Mullin's usual mood, he accepted at once. Homer then explained that he had tickets for drinks at Hanbury Smith's, which was then the very fountain-head of mineral waters in Broadway. Mullin, who never drank water, took Saratoga High Rock, as he told me himself, and it gave him the stomach-ache, but he said no thing and bided his time. It came. He met H., and inviting him to take a drink, led him to an apothecary's, where he said to the clerk: "My friend wants a drink. Will you please give him a drink of — castor oil." If Mullin treated himself well to whiskey, he treated himself badly enough in other respects, judging by his appearance when he turned up after an absence. He was frequently absent. Once Hitchie and I got him into a hospital and bought him under clothing, and in fact did the good Samaritan. I remember the Irish nurse saying as he stripped him to rub his back: "It's a fine back ye have, Mister Mullin, to wrastle with the fever, thanks be to God ! " He had been one of Walker's filibusters, and, strange to say, although he was ever on the verge of a fight, I never remember to have seen him in one. But speaking of the Irish nurse reminds me of an Irish waiter. Once when Mullin was eating (he never dined) with Fitz Hugh O'Brien, the latter called to the waiter, asking him to bring him a plate for his bones. This was too much for the democratic Mullin. "A plate for your bones, forsooth! — What frills be these ? — since when, I pray ? " As every Irish gentle man has another Irish gentleman to black his boots for him, 220 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. the waiter at once bristles up : "An' why not, Mr. Mullin ? — every Irish gentleman always has a plate for his bones." This was the same waiter who, on my going in very early in the morning, must have simply thrown some hot water on the coffee-grounds of the night before and brought the mixture to me as a cup of coffee. " By Jove ! " I said, " this is the worst coffee I 've ever tasted." — "Well, it is a little dilicate," he admitted. It may be imagined that Mullin's hand was unsteady, but by concentrating his will and taking good aim he managed to hit the spot every time ; and being a good artist this very unsteadi ness gave a delightful freedom and a style of his own to his draw ings, which were veritable little gems and offered the greatest contrast to the drawings of all about him. Very late one gloomy night I was going down the Bowery ; where I was going or what I was going to do when I got there, God only knows, but so it was. Standing on the rear platform of the car I saw Mullin, who was absolutely unconscious of the presence of any one known to him. He stood there in gloom. A boy was whistling sofdy beside him. Turning to the boy, Mullin said : " I wish you would n't whistle." — "Why?" said the boy.- — "It always makes me sad." — "Then I'll whistle you something cheerful." — "No, please; don't whistle any." How he died or when he died I never knew. He simply faded out of my life ; yet I would very much like to hunt up in the pages of "Vanity Fair" those forgotten gems of his. But what for ? He has n't been dead long enough yet. Somewhere in the South Sea a ship's carpenter had lost a saw and went about complaining and saying that that saw stuck in his gizzard ; whereupon a native sailor rushed to the captain "V." IN 1864 THE CLAIRVOYANT 223 with the news that the carpenter had found his saw. The captain asked him where he had found it, to which the native replied : "He say it stick in his gizzard." All this that follows I know I have written and lost, but it sticks in my crop, and the only way I can get it out is by rewriting the whole thing, which I hate to do, but will. It is about a set of false teeth. The Clairvoyant talked a great deal and talked well, so his teeth were always in evidence, and they being very bad and giving him no end of trouble, in his impulsive way he had all the upper front ones pulled out. This, causing his upper lip to fall in, gave him an appearance of age combined with youth. He increased the impression of age by imitating the chortling of an old man, to our great delight. He soon had a set made, but they would fall out, or oftener he would take them out, and then descant at great length on the comfort of being toothless, which he asserted amply made up for all the pain of having them drawn. This he did to the amuse ment of a crowd on a Hoboken ferryboat one evening. Of all the gloomy things on earth, give me the Hoboken ferry in win ter ; say the end of a cold day after a rain, when the boat is ploughing her way through the broken ice coming down the Hudson, and the pallor of twilight from the distant Jersey shore gleams along the wet deck. It was on such an evening, when all the passengers had drawn back under the roof among the wagons, thus leaving the broad deck free, that the Clairvoyant held forth on the subject of his false teeth. Suddenly stepping forward with the offending teeth in hand, he stooped and threw them skittling and glistening across the wet deck off into the swirling waves. It was a great success. I have a suspicion that I have said all these things before. 224 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. If my surmise proves correct, all is not lost, as an example of how a tale can be varied by the same person shows how much reliance can be placed on the testimony of witnesses. The Clairvoyant was so called from his assertion that the prominence of his eyes enabled him to see a fly on the back of his neck. His brother Carolus had a dark rolling eye which came in magnificently during his Shakespearean readings which he gave in his snug home up-town. These were always followed by a supper which the Boys called the reparation. And such is the ingratitude of human nature that even while he was pouring forth the ample volume of his sonorous voice and shooting off his snowy cuffs, whispers were heard, breathing the hope that he would make an end of his damnable faces and begin — the reparation understood. Am I having fun at the expense of my old friends ? Were I the funniest man in creation I could not begin to make the fun that this remarkable family made of each other. The invalid in his wheeled chair was always called "the Cripple," and "You idiot" was but the prelude of any communication between them; and yet they loved each other and admired and stuck by each other. Better I have seen, but none have I loved more. How the Clairvoyant with ever-renewed hope followed those constantly rising bubbles filled with fair schemes of sudden wealth, only to see them burst one after the other, was a marvel. He was a promoter without money, and his capitalists usually were as badly provided, but, being cautious, mostly retired in time. Companies were formed with a Board of Directors, prem ises hired and gorgeously fitted up ; studios for experiment, ex hibiting in the case of colour-printing the most prismatic displays of wasted colour ; but when the inaugural festivities were term- THE CLAIRVOYANT 225 inated, with the last glass of champagne disappeared the last of the funds, and the bubble burst and the company went into bankruptcy. But he was good, poor boy! I will first skirmish a bit with a few preliminaries and then tell how good he was. Long after the days of the struggle, — in that period of modified struggle which has lasted to this day, — on a visit home my wife and children camped out in the Gilsey Building opposite the Brevoort House, in a studio on the upper floor. It was a low building, surviving in Broadway, a veritable matchbox. The San Fran cisco Minstrels were on one side and the little Union Square Theatre on the other, and we lived always in fear of fire. One night previous to the family's coming, I think I must have saved the porter's life, for Mike, the Irish janitor, had been eating plen tifully of cucumbers, the first of the season, — things I could n't afford, — and was taken with a fearful congestive chill, and his wife came to me in a wild state of fear and tears, begging me to save him. I dressed and rushed for a doctor, and found a good young fellow. I told him through a speaking-tube which led up to his floor, what I thought must be the matter, and so he came with me provided with the necessary syringe for hypodermic injections, and we pulled Mike through, although I thought he was little better than a dead man when first I saw him. All this to show why his wife was grateful and how she helped us out of a little difficulty which occurred shortly after. One night we were out calling; the children were at a front window on Broadway looking at the crowded streets and the people leaving the theatre and the minstrel show, when one of them shoved off the window-ledge a siphon of seltzer fully charged, which on reaching the sidewalk exploded like a bomb. 226 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. By great good fortune no one was killed by its fall, but for a moment there was a panic and the crowd gathered and stood gazing up at the windows. The children were frightened, no doubt, and quitting the window hid under a bed. Soon the police came up and made the porter's wife open to them all the rooms on the front of the building. She delayed coming to our room until the last, then, opening the door, assured the officers that we were all out and that there was no one in the room. The terror-stricken children meanwhile kept in their hiding-place like frightened quails, and seeing the room empty, and over whelmed by the volubility of Biddy, the police left as wise as they came. A miss is as good as a mile. The rooms my good stepmother found for me were on the corner of Bond Street and Broadway, and therefore near Pfaff's. As every question started in the Studio ended with, "Let's go over to Pfaff's," I became for a time one of the Pfaff crowd of Bohemians, as they were then called. Pfaff's was situated in a basement, and the room under the sidewalk was the den where writers and artists — the latter mostly drawers on wood but not drinkers of water — met. There I saw Walt Whitman ; he had not become famous yet, and I then regarded many of the Boys as his superiors, as they did themselves. I really believe Pfaff himself loved the Boys. The time came when he retired to the country, well off; but then the time also came when he returned and started another place further up-town. I saw him in his new place and asked him about it. He said he was well off, but that he could not stand the country; he had to do something; but then he said, " It is n't the same thing ; dere 's no more poys left enny more." I have come to think that myself. PFAFF'S 227 I must have been maturing slowly, — very slowly, — and pranks continued to be the order of the day. For instance, one night Josephus — and it may have been Hitchie, it was so much in his line — made me get up in spite of its being very late, and let them in. After indicating the tobacco and the bottle, I re tired to my little bedroom, begging them to let me sleep in peace, which I did with a vague sense of much whispering and sup pressed laughter in the next room. They were gone in the morn ing, and had shut the door, although there was nothing to steal, for pictures were not stolen in those days. But they had left much for me to contemplate. Hanging from the gas-fixture in the middle of the room was a large coil of new rope with a fine slip-noose at the end. On the burners two nice tin hats and a large bill of fare from some eating-house. Below, a splendid milk-can with the owner's name in copper letters, and around its neck a varied assortment — a necklace, in fact — of brass door-knobs, bell- pulls and knockers. There may have been other objects, but these are all I can remember. It took me a week to get rid of the results of their midnight raid or foray. Night after night I would shy, wrapped in paper, the smaller objects up and down the street from my window; the tin hats made a fine rumpus ; the signs were burned ; and the Irish care taker was very grateful for the milk-can, so good to keep bread in, and the rope for a clothes-line. I did not like this lark at all, especially as I had been left out ; but — dear me, how differ ently I look on such things now, especially from the standpoint of the householder. And yet I was then engaged on the picture afterwards known as "The Questioner of the Sphinx." George Arnold was one of the Boys. He lived near me and used frequently to come and sit by me while I was painting. 228 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. I can recall his gentle, sad smile yet. Gentleness was his great charm. We both lived near Pfaff's, and it was there he read me his poem, shortly after it was written — "Here I sit drinking my beer." He died young ; I do not know of what he died, but he seemed to be worn out even when I first met him. All the Boys attended his funeral ; there was but one woman. Who she was and what she was made it all the more touching ; her grief was honest and sincere. I do not think there went into that early grave a great secret sorrow. He thought his life a wasted life ; it was with him a gorgeous romance of youthful despair ; but into that grave went a tender charm, great talent, and great weakness. God forgive me if I have misjudged him. While living in these rooms near Pfaff's, a kindling-wood man used to bring my kindling-wood, — very naturally, for that was his trade. One day when I was intent on a picture, he paused on his way out and stood watching me paint. Finally he asked : " How much do you get for such a little picture as that ? " In answering him I used diplomacy ; I did not say that I got what I could, which was the truth, but said : " For such a picture I ought to get about two hundred and fifty dollars." He drew in his breath with a gasp ; then he walked to the door, turned, and heaving a sigh, said : " Well ; every man to his trade." I could not help trying to imagine what must have passed through his mind as he went to that door. First, wild surprise at this vision of wealth; then a gleam of hope, and the thought — "Why should not I also ? " — at once checked by an overwhelming sense of his utter unfitness ; then the sigh and the additional thought — perhaps after all every man had better stick to his trade. That reiteration about the kindling-wood man bringing up THE QUESTIONER OF THE SPHINX DIFFERENTIATED SAUSAGES 231 kindling-wood makes me think of the loblolly hole on shipboard. Some one asked: "What is the loblolly hole?" — and was told it was the hole where the loblolly boy kept rns loblolly, — very naturally. But to return to this trade idea. I have been told by those in the trade that, as an illustrated book, the Omar Khayydm has had a longer lease of life than any other book of its kind. I happen to know that it yet sells, and have reason for being glad of it. But I wonder why the book should sell. I am not alluding to the poem — that will always sell ; but is there something wrong about the pictures — something Tupperish — that they should have been so popular ? A fearful thought. It cannot be the drawing in them, for plenty of men — I do not say can, but at least do, draw better; therefore that cannot be the attraction. They take the mind, perhaps ? — or do they "touch the heart ? Who knows ? The subject is too deep for me ; I give it up, — yet I wonder if that getting at the heart or mind is not my proper trade after all, and if I had not better stick to it. After wondering so much, even at the risk of having the spirit of Lamb fumbling at my bumps, I will say — How wonderful is the working of the mind ! How wonderfully one idea tacks on to another, like a string of sausages ! I once saw a man making sausages at Deerfoot Farm near Boston, and found that in reality they were nothing but one long sausage divided up by a skilful twist of the sausage-maker into separate sausages. So consider ing this thing a little more curiously, I have tiiought, — Why may not these Digressions be but one long idea divided by a clever twist into seemingly separate stories? — no real variety, only twisted monotony. By the way, although at the farm everything was sweet and delightful, the glib way those flaccid cases were 232 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. suddenly filled with minced meat made me desire to get away; I did n't feel safe. As I havc'saidTevtry one was spoken of as old in those days. It was always old Bonner, old Greeley, etc., and so a certain writer was spoken of as " old Clapp." He was the ugly one of the crowd, and his face was indeed a living attestation of the truth of Darwin's theory. At the same time we had in our midst a young fellow whose bright and handsome face offered as great a con trast to Clapp's as it did to his own conversation, which was uninteresting and flat to a degree. "But," said one, "just let old Clapp talk, and he will talk that face off in fifteen minutes." — "That," said I, " is precisely the case with our handsome friend." Whereupon the crowd laughed heartily, but did not give me a guinea, only more beer. It must not be thought that I was always frivolous during this period, because I recount so many frivolous incidents. A char acter in Dickens remarks that "when a man's affairs are at the lowest ebb, he has a strange temptation, which he does not resist, to indulge in oysters"; whereupon another keen observer puts in, "It is the same with pickled salmon." And then there is the thinly-clad man who says that " the weather is cold about the legs this morning." Well; we ate many oysters, and the weather was cold about the legs at times, and we always felt that any moment might be "our next." The theatres were never so full as during the War. And it was then that this strange tend ency in human nature, alluded to above, was developed. Yet during it all I never wavered in my hope of our ultimate success or in my hatred of slavery, or in my loyalty to the Nation. I had the honour and privilege of voting for Lincoln, and paid my tribute of honest tears when that much-loved man was slain. THE DRAFT RIOTS 233 There are some things I do not keep on show and "these are of them." Yes, indeed ; all was not beer and skittles, particularly during my Bond Street period, for then occurred the "Draft Riots" and things looked pretty dark. And to think it is now a dream and that my children know nothing about it ! I have frequently been asked, "Were you in the War ?" — and I have to answer, "No"; but there were reasons, and I think a certain lady was rather hasty, who once insulted every man in the room, because a forefather of hers once "fit in the Revolution," and she had a relative in the army. In my case I had already been shot once and could not have carried a gun a block in my left hand ; the family consisted of two, and half of it was in the navy at Hampton Roads or thereabouts, and the sight of the Irish corporals order ing men about in the Park was not encouraging. However, my name was down and I stood my chance with the others in the draft. All people who went into the army were not John Browns. A friend of mine told me he was going to school at this time, when, meeting a boy friend in the street, he was asked, "Well, what shall we do about this thing?" He answered, "I don't know: let's enlist" ; and they did, and he became a Libby Prison man, one of those who tunnelled their way out and was recap tured, and has been more or less of an invalid ever since. This he told me only the other day, adding that had he known they were going to free the Negroes, he would not have enlisted. Then my friend Coleman came back. He had been shot some where near the left corner of his mouth, the ball coming out of his neck under the ear, and suffered no end of pain and discom fort from pieces of jaw-bone coming out way down the neck. Another friend, George Butler, lost his left arm at Gettysburg, and 234 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. ever afterwards made a fine martial figure with his empty sleeve. Ned Forbes, who had been deprived of the use of his left arm from youth, went in as a special artist and war-correspondent, and managed to see everything and leave a series of drawings of the utmost historical value. Then there was A. Ward and his brother, special artist at the front. Those were the times when we made drawings of battles before they had taken place, for Frank Leslie — "old man Carter," as he was called. Longing eyes were cast on me by the newspaper people, but I said nay, and am glad I did. It is strange how little one sees of what is going on when one is in the midst of it. From the roof of the corner of Bond Street I saw a surging mass of rioters coming down Broadway. Below was a solid and orderly body of police. An American flag made its appearance from a shop-door and was passed from hand to hand until it reached the front rank: it then leaned forward and the dark mass of policemen swept on. The two masses — the orderly, and the drunk and disorderly — met opposite the old La Farge House and there came a sound as of chopping wood, the meeting of clubs and skulls. The riotous crowd seemed to melt away be fore the orderly one ; then coming back were seen limp figures supported on either side by policemen, with arms hanging out like the flippers of turtles ; and the blood from the broken heads running down and collecting round the collars, made it look as if an attempt had been made to decapitate each wretch. These people had been burning a negro orphan asylum and its inmates, and hanging Negroes to lamp-posts and burning them. An apothecary's shop was looted — and here a comic touch comes in. The proprietor of the shop, a German, was looking on ruefully ; of course the object of the mob was to get at the THE DRAFT RIOTS 235 brandy, gin, and whiskey which was kept in those days by apo thecaries; suddenly a professional thought came to him — "All right ! Let dem keep on ! — yust wait till dey come to dem brussic acids!" But they were a cowardly set. Josephus was standing before a stable, with the proprietor and some of his men, perhaps they were five in all, when a rabble came by with a wagon on which was stretched one of their dead, stripped to show the wounds. They seemed in a state of frenzy, but on one of the stablemen yelling out to them, "And served him jolly well right ! " the crowd slunk by without an answer. We were totally unprepared, and had they only been organized it would have been a very serious affair indeed ; as it was, the city was terrorized for three days. Hearing that they were going to break into the armories of the military regiments and arm themselves, a few of us went down to an armory next to the old Metropolitan Hotel. A friend had his studio in the same building at the top ; the armory rooms came next, and the rest of the building was a carriage-factory, a regular tinder-box. There was no one to guard it but a fright ened care-taker. After seeing that we could escape down a scuttle in the roof of the neighbouring hotel, we armed ourselves with rifles, and placed packing-boxes from behind which we could fire, or roll them down the staircase on the approaching foe — for the staircase went down straight from the upper floor to the front door on Broadway. We also loosened all the coping- stones, with which to regale the mob, and placed a great flagstaff so that we could also send it down to amuse them. And then we set a guard and retired to our friend Baker's studio, where he played to us beautifully on his fiddle, for he fiddled better than he painted. And so with crackers and beerwewhiled away the 236 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. peaceful hours. Luckily the approaching foe did not approach, and finally as usual we repaired to Pfaff's and talked things over. Bond Street must have been a lively place. Diagonally oppo site my rooms took place the celebrated murder of Dr. Burdell, in which Mrs. Cunningham and a weak young fellow by the name of Snodgrass were implicated. The papers were full of it. I believe their guilt was not proved, but it was one of those cases of "Don't do it again." The old La Farge House or Hotel was burned while I was there. Here I noticed a singular thing: the walls were left standing, but, threatening to fall at any moment, they were pulled down by ropes. The building was so high that one would have thought the walls would have fallen against the house opposite. Nothing of the sort happened, for no sooner were they inclined at a slight angle than the material commenced to crum ble at the top and then fell straight down, so that the street was scarcely rendered impassable. At the time I had my studio in the old Gibson Building on Broadway ; I used to pass frequently a near corner, where an old negro woman sold peanuts. Her meekly bowed head and a look of patient endurance and resignation touched my heart and we became friends. She had been a slave down South, and had at that time a son, a fine tall fellow, she said, fighting in the Union Army. I finally persuaded her to sit to me and made a drawing of her head and also had her photograph taken. Having been elected associate of the National Academy, according to custom I had to send in a painting to add to the permanent collection, so I sent in this study of her head and called it simply by her name — which was Jane Jackson. Time went on and I found myself in a mood. As I always try to embody my moods in some picture, this FIRST GLIMPSE OF FAME 239 From a Copley Print, copyright, IQO/-. by Curtis &f Cameron mood found its resting-place in the picture of " The Cumean Sibyl." Thus this fly — or rather this bee from my bonnet — was finally preserved in amber-varnish, and thus Jane Jackson became the Cumean Sibyl. The story of the Sibyl is well known, having been translated from Latin into English, but the story of the embodied mood has not been translated. In plain English it meant: If you don't buy my pictures now when they are cheap, you will have to pay dearer for them later on. Thus far the prediction has turned out true several times. I received for " The Lair of the Sea-Serpent " three hundred dollars in greenbacks — equivalent to one hundred fifty dollars now (but then it seemed to me a thousand). I should get more for a similar picture now, but I have n't the slightest doubt but what they will again be cheap enough. It has happened to many a tall fellow before this — and will happen again. The accompanying reproductions only relate to the head of 24o THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. the Sibyl, and not to the whole-length figure in the picture at Wellesley College. I should like to tell of a bit of cleverness on my part shown in the pedestal of a small head of the same subject in bronze. I wished to have the head on a pedestal and at the same time give an impression that she was seated, so I made the pedestal like the semi-circular back of a seat — and the effect is of her being seated very comfortably. I made the pedestal of one solid piece of Rosso Antico — in fact had two made, and the marble- man assured me he had exhausted the market in securing two blocks of such fine quality. We will here consider the subject of the Sibyl closed, but the marble-man must have his story. He was occupied in making a pedestal for an Egyptian Sphinx, which he had restored. "You see," he said, " the Sphinx is of grey granite and so I think I have done well to select for its base ' un Africano blando e serio ' " — a bland and serious African — marble understood ; which is only equalled by an advertisement of a trattoria in Turin which appeared regularly in a certain paper : " Cet etablissement est tres renomme pour son caraciere serieux et reserve." I translate this as meaning very advantageous terms in offered confidence to poor people who are keeping up an appearance. What cosy studio and tavern times I have had with Homer Martin. He was a Bohemian if you will. I remember once getting him ready for a wedding. He had been shaving, and being of a rugged countenance his wounds took a long time to stanch, and timewas precious. Tobe sure, the cuffs were ready, nicely trimmed, the scissors having been found, but the shirt and collar had not come home. However, I got him off in good style. M. was apt H. M. 241 to be late, but it was never too late for him ; he would sit drink ing his beer and sometimes not say much, but it always ended in his saying the best thing of the evening. It might be delayed but was sure to come. All remember his answer to the lady who asked him if he did n't think he drank too much beer: "Why, Madam, I don't think there is too much beer." Late one day he was found very busy painting some plants in the foreground of a picture: on being asked what plant it was, he said, "Why, don't you know that plant? — that's the foreground plant; I use lots of it." To my great delight I found years afterwards, at the sale of the effects of Tintoretto, an English book, where, after showing the proper stroke of the lead pencil for indicating the foliage of the oak, the willow, and other trees, there was a chapter devoted to "Foreground Plants." I always intended sending it to him, but as usual — unlike M. and his wit — I put it off until it was too late. You see every one has been written up : we know Who 's Who nowadays : so I only go around picking up old bits in odd corners. Some may be new, and some worth saving, even though they are old — they will be new to some one : think of the increase of the population. Let my friends have patience with me while I play this affec tation of Vanity, for I have never been vain — how could I be ? Just listen. Each year for three years I sent a picture to the Academy. On the first — "The Questioner of the Sphinx" — Ned Mullin perpetrated an outrageous play upon words; the second — "The Lost Mind" — was called by the Boys, "The Idiot and the Bath-Towel" ; in fact the drapery was a little thick about the neck. The third — "The Lair of the Sea-Serpent" — was simply called the "Big Eel." I have seen it seriously stated 242 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. that I painted it from a dead eel. Those were the days of dear Artemus Ward. Of course all the Boys were his friends and attended his lectures in full force. His lecture — "The Babes in the Wood " — was given at the time the Sea-Serpent was on ex hibition. The Babes were only mentioned on the Bill ; he never once alluded to them in the lecture. That was his joke, and so he brought in everything else except the Babes — and so, again, he brought in the Sea-Serpent by V. I am real sorry I cannot tell how the " Big Eel" wriggled in, but that is not the point any way: the point is that then I felt what Fame was, for the first time ; for apart from the applause of the Boys, some five or six of them, there was a laugh of recognition from perhaps three per sons in the audience. They had seen the picture, — they knew who I was, — they, the Public. This, I thought, was doing pretty well ; New York was a big city even then, and what was one Eel among so many ? Why — a most extraordinary Eel of course, and I was proud while this first glimmer of Fame lasted. It soon wore off and I have never been proud since. Artemus was most sympathetic. He looked so frail and delicate that he gave an impression of one doomed to die young. There was something comically pathetic as he patiently waited for the audience to catch on to his jokes ; no wonder, for it was often a case of pearls. It was to him the man said after a lecture, "I say, it was just as much as I could do to keep from laffin' right out two or three times." Kate Field, with the best intentions in the world, always seemed bent on improving my mind. So having received free tickets for a lecture at the Cooper Institute, she haled me to its gloomy halls. It was winter and the hall was gloomy indeed and half-lighted. A single lady and ourselves composed the KATE FIELD 242 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. that I painted it from a dead eel. Those were the days of dear Artemus Ward. Of course all the Boys were his friends and attended his lectures in full force. His lecture — "The Babes in the Wood " — was given at the time the Sea-Serpent was on ex hibition. The Babes were only mentioned on the Bill ; he never once alluded to them in the lecture. That was his joke, and so he brought in everything else except the Babes — and so, again, he brought in the Sea-Serpent by V. I am real sorry I cannot tell how the " Big Eel" wriggled in, but that is not the point any way : the point is that then I felt what Fame was, for the first time ; for apart from the applause of the Boys, some five or six of them, there was a laugh of recognition from perhaps three per sons in the audience. They had seen the picture, — they knew who I was, — they, the Public. This, I thought, was doing pretty well ; New York was a big city even then, and what was one Eel among so many ? Why — a most extraordinary Eel of course, and I was proud while this first glimmer of Fame lasted. It soon wore off and I have never been proud since. Artemus was most sympathetic. He looked so frail and delicate that he gave an impression of one doomed to die young. There was something comically pathetic as he patiently waited for the audience to catch on to his jokes ; no wonder, for it was often a case of pearls. It was to him the man said after a lecture, "I say, it was just as much as I could do to keep from laffin' right out two or three times." Kate Field, with the best intentions in the world, always seemed bent on improving my mind. So having received free tickets for a lecture at the Cooper Institute, she haled me to its gloomy halls. It was winter and the hall was gloomy indeed and half-lighted. A single lady and ourselves composed the A SLAVERY LECTURE 245 audience. Also it was cold. At first, as if by mutual consent to spare the feelings of the lecturer, we scattered ourselves about, trying, with very inadequate means, to give the semblance of a larger audience. Afterwards we sat close together for warmth. This reminded me of my friend Smetham's efforts with the single glove, trying to create a belief in the public mind that he could produce the other "an he would." So we sat together and the lecturer finally appeared. He seemed surprised at the small- ness of the gathering and remarked on it, but generously deter mining to give the lecture entire, drew from his breast-pocket the longest roll of manuscript I ever saw. My companion shuddered. We all have our favourite words ; his was the word purlieu. I never knew how extensive and low down the purlieus were. The whole of New York seemed to him one vast purlieu. Of the whole lecture I have only retained that one word. We applauded the end, — for he went on to the bitter end, — and the applause was in quantity just suited to the quality of the lecture. Kate Field was thorough ; she was also a woman of advanced views. She not only attempted to improve my mind but gave me some sound advice as to the body, assuring me most solemnly that if I did not leave off smoking there was little prospect of a long line of progeny, in case I got married. So now it was my health ; and she, going with her mother and a cousin to Sharon Springs, I must be of the party. Her mother, the most loveable of women, had endeared herself to the Boys in Florence as she did to all. She had been an actress of the old school, and still retained a certain stateliness. The cousin, a fine figure of a girl, reminded me of a wood-nymph as she ran about under the beech trees' shade. Of course the mother had to take the waters, but I resisted ; the consequences in her case A LETTER 247 going about with a snake coiled round his wrist as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I dare say his wife broke him of the habit when she became advanced enough. Kate Field thought the wife the better man ; I liked the gentle Morgan best. THE LAIR OF THE SEA-SERPENT Yesterday I received a letter from my old friend, James D. Smilie, dated Rome, in which he regrets not seeing me ; and I regret not seeing him, for he has a good memory as well as a good heart, and could have told me all about my studio days in Dodsworth's Building. As it is, he tells me in this letter that it was at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Twenty-sixth Street. He says — but I had better quote this portion of his letter at length, as it is a veritable bag of tricks in the way of information : "My sister and her two daughters have told me of your studio here, and I wished very much to see for myself and to know how it compares with that little, bare room on the upper floor 246 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V. were that her straight raven locks all fell off and when her hair did come in again, it was beautifully touched with grey and frizzled up into the most coquettish curls you ever saw, — so much so that I assured her it was most compromising to be seen in her company. Here I took my friend driving. Now I could get along with credit on horseback, but what is one to do in driving when a horse, good at climbing and on the level, takes, when it comes to a descent, to sitting down and tobogganing? That is the way we made an entrance to the village on our return from our drive. Yes, Kate Field was thorough and of advanced views. We were stopping with a couple by the name of Morgan ; she at once made a fervent convert of the wife, in the matter of Woman's Rights, until it came to such a pass that when the meek husband ven tured to give his views, his wife would say with great spirit, "Now, Morgan, you jest hold your jaw." Morgan would subside and take me out to the barn and show me his snakes, — for he was a snake-charmer. He kept them in barrels and told me how careful he had to be to keep only those of the same size together, from a habit they had of eating each other ; even a difference of a few inches would provoke these attempts. This Morgan was also a collector of natural curiosities and had quite a museum. Among other things he had found a stone which represented fairly well a leg with its foot, and the period is shown by his call ing it St. Anna's leg. This St. Anna, or Santa Anna, was the president and dictator of Mexico, and for the best of reasons wore a wooden leg; and the story goes that on one occasion, in our war with that country, we came very near capturing that hero, who was forced to decamp so suddenly that his leg was left behind and thus fell into our hands. Morgan had a habit of A LETTER 249 from a raft : perhaps he remembered our little Negro, Crispino, and the experiment of letting off Seidlitz powders in him. Any way, this marked the culminating point in my troubles, in that re spect, for I have suffered more since from indigestion than from hunger — with the exception that I still hunger for little-neck clams and soft-shell crabs, and in general for all things I cannot get. "Contrast!" I should say so. Dodsworth's was a dancing- academy, and the Cubans used to give balls there, and as they are fond of perfumes, great gusts of odour and strains of the throbbing habaneros used to come up to us as we lay on the floor under our buffalo-robe. I lie softer now, but not much happier ; yet happiness, as it did then, seems just within my reach. Still youthful? No: but still foolish. 248 THE DIGRESSIONS OF V of the Dodsworth Building . . . where in ages past we had studios. Memory goes back to those times lovingly, when Innes, James Hart, Samuel Coleman, Brevoort, J. Q. A. Ward, Rogers, and other lights of those days were there. I recall one day's work of yours — a success, a girl's head, beautiful in colour ; and in expressing your pleasure you said that old landscape studies, especially if painted in juicy, rich dark greens, were admirable foundations for colour schemes and flesh-painting. Often in painting over old canvasses I remember those expressions." See how leisurely my friend ambles along in his letter: that would never do in a book, and it's "God's mercy" that I have a poor memory, for at that pace I should never end. Contrast indeed, between the little, bare room and the spacious one in Via Flaminia, and the garden and ivy-clad walls and cypress trees and fountain. By the way, the fountain has gone to another old friend, L. C. Tiffany, and it is in consequence of the financial overflow from it that I am enabled to indulge in this present fad ; otherwise I might be better employed. " The little bare room " — but in Fifth Avenue and in the midst of well-known "lights" — was but a great bluff. I was trying to take Fortune by storm. Appearances were kept up, so that the simple mattress I and my friend Bill Cary slept on, and the buffalo-robe which served as our simple covering, were carefully hid behind the screen during the day. No visitors came but the Boys — lots of boys. One day my brother came and was received with mysterious glumness. On his asking me if I did not feel well, I told him that perhaps he would not feel particularly chipper if he had gone without his dinner the day before and without his breakfast and lunch that day. Poor fellow! he turned pale. He took me at once to a restaurant and fed me carefully, as you do starved people taken _/*"S te]>t<3.rtR«seHJnySu.n. J«»*ehane« t>ec«im«d} ojj- some ^alvw.- dotted. snore* i& dc sk jke anxious -m.cn*ine)r, fieAicmo' dan ae/bustu neet^ Jke sti-ieVcjT.tn.6f Cor<*t-rtj?w«a,ti*ect Vteaker& roaV.> ^BetKinks Kim of- kis cn