Part 5 (1/2)

He was off duty for a few hours and had never visited the shrines of Weimar, and if I had no objection he would like to go with me on my tour of inspection, so together we walked through those shadowed streets, which seemed to be haunted even in that bright suns.h.i.+ne by the ghosts of the great men who have walked in them. We saw the homes of Goethe and Schiller, the n.o.ble statues of the _Dichter-Paar_, and the old theatre behind it in which were first performed the masterpieces of the German drama. We went together to the cemetery and descending into the crypt of the mausoleum stood by the coffins of Goethe and Schiller, the men most ill.u.s.trious in German letters.

It was a memorable day of my life, the outward conditions perfect, the June suns.h.i.+ne, the wealth of lovely foliage, the bird songs, and right at hand the homes and haunts of the inspired singers whom I especially reverenced. I was most fortunate in my companions.h.i.+p, the bearing of the youth was marked by no flippancy, he venerated as I did the lofty spirits into whose retreats we had penetrated. He was familiar with their masterpieces and we felt for them a like appreciation. His soldierly garb accorded perhaps ill with the peaceful suggestions of the hour and place, but in his mind plainly the sentiment lay deep, a warm recognition of what gave his country its best t.i.tle to greatness.

We took thought too of Wieland and looked in silence at the fine statue of Herder standing before the church in which he long ministered; but the supreme personages for us were Goethe and Schiller. What became of my sympathetic young soldier I have never known. If he escaped from Mars-la-Tour and Gravelotte and Sedan I am sure that he must have matured into a high-souled man.

I had an opportunity, during a visit to Stra.s.sburg in the spring, to see the soldiery of France. At the time the prestige of the Second Empire was at its height, Magenta and Solferino were considerable battles and the French had won them. Turcos and Zouaves had long pa.s.sed in the world as soldiers of the best type and in our Civil War we had copied zealously their fantastic apparel and drill. When the Franco-Prussian War broke out the world felt that Germany had the hardest of nuts to crack and in many a mind the forecast was that France would be the victor, but even to my limited judgment the shortcomings of the French troops were plain. They were inferior in physique, lacking in trimness and even in cleanliness, and imperfectly disciplined. I wondered if the rather slovenly ill-trained battalions of small pale men could stand up against the prompt rigid alignment of the broad-shouldered six-footers I had seen manoeuvring on the other side of the Rhine.

I had received word in the spring from my bankers in Paris that my letter of credit was not in regular shape and they advised me to draw at Berlin a sum of money sufficient for present needs and transmit the letter to them, promising to adjust the matter in such a way that both they and I would be relieved of some inconvenience. In June I drew a small sum and sent my letter to Paris in accordance with their instructions, the agreement being that I was to call a month or so later on the correspondents at Munich of the Paris bankers and receive from them the corrected letter. I then travelled as far as Vienna where all unforeseen the news startled me of the outbreak of the war.

I hurried to Munich, my little store of money being by that time much depleted. At the banking house I learned to my consternation that they had heard nothing of me or my letter of credit. Still worse, there was no prospect of hearing, communication with Paris was completely broken off. The rumour was that McMahon had crossed the Rhine at Stra.s.sburg with one hundred and fifty thousand men on the march to interpose between Southern and Northern Germany. The house had not heard from Paris and could not expect to hear. Acting on their advice I sent a distressful telegram roundabout through Switzerland to Paris. There was a possibility that such a message might go through; otherwise there was no hope. I then spent at Munich one of the most anxious weeks of my life. I was nearer the pavement than I have ever been before or since. There was a charming German family at the inn at which I stopped, gentle, courteous people, father, mother, and a little blue-eyed daughter. When the little girl found I was from America I can now see her innocent wide-open eyes as she asked me if I had ever seen an Indian. I could tell her some good stories of Indians for in boyhood I had lived near a reservation of Senecas, at that time to a large extent, in their primitive state. When I ventured one day to tell the polite father of my present embarra.s.sment I at once noticed a sudden cooling off. The little girl no longer came to talk with me and the family held aloof. Plainly I had become an object of suspicion, I was now penniless, my story might be true or perhaps I was paving the way for asking a loan. How could he tell that I was not a dead-beat? I was really in a strait. The Americans had very generally left the city in consequence of the turmoil. I could hear of no one excepting our Consul who was still at his post. Calling upon him and telling my story, I found him cool to the point of rudeness. I had excellent letters from Bancroft and others which I showed him and which ought to have secured me a respectful hearing. I asked only for sympathy and counsel but I received neither, and could not have been treated worse if I had been a proved swindler. The Consul afterwards wrote a book in which he told of experiences with inconvenient countrymen who had recourse to him in their straits, and possibly I myself may have figured as one of his examples. My feeling is that he was a man not fit for his place, for in the circ.u.mstances he might certainly have shown some kindness. My few pieces of silver jingled drearily in my pocket; perhaps my best course would be to enlist in the German army. I thought the cause a just one for the atmosphere had made me a good German, and as a soldier I might at least earn my bread. To my joy, however, in one of my daily visits to the banking house the courteous young partner told me that a telegram had come in some roundabout way from Paris and they were prepared to pay me the full amount on my letter of credit. I clutched the money, two pretty cylinders of gold coin done up in white paper, which I sewed securely into the waist-band of my trousers and felt an instant strengthening of nerve and self-respect.

I departed then for Switzerland where I enjoyed a delightful fortnight. The rebound from my depression imparted a fine _morale_. Switzerland was practically deserted, no French or Germans were there for they had enough to do with the war; the English for the most part stayed at home, for Europe could only be crossed with difficulty, and the crowd from America too was deterred by the danger. Instead of the throngs at the great points of interest, the visitors counted by twos and threes. The guides and landlords were obsequious. We few strangers had the Alps to ourselves and they were as lavish of their splendours to the handful as to the mult.i.tude. At Geneva at last I found letters from home which caused me anxiety; I was referred for later news to letters which were to be sent to Paris; so there was nothing for it but for me to cross France, though by that time France had become a camp. Fortunately I had met in Switzerland an American friend who was proficient in French as I was not and who likewise found it necessary to go to Paris, and we two started together. After crossing the frontier we found no regular trains; those that ran were taken up for the most part by the mult.i.tudes of conscripts hurrying into armies that were undergoing disaster in the neighbourhood of Metz. The case of two American strangers was a precarious one involved in such a ma.s.s, with food even very uncertain and the likelihood of being side-tracked at any station, but we were both strong and light-hearted and I felt at my waist-band the comfortable contact of my bright yellow Napoleons which would pull us through. Constantly we beheld scenes of the greatest interest. The August landscape smiled its best about us, we pa.s.sed Dijon and many another old storied city famous in former wars, and now again humming with the military life with which they had been so many times familiar. The _Mobiles_ came thronging to every depot from the vineyards and fields and the remoter villages. As yet they were usually in picturesque peasant attire, young farmers in blouses or with _bretelles_ crossing in odd fas.h.i.+on the queer s.h.i.+rts they wore. Careless happy-go-lucky boys chattering in the excitement of the new life which they were entering, only half-informed as to the catastrophes which were taking place, but the mothers and sisters, plain country women in short skirts, quaint bodices and caps, looked upon their departure with anxious faces. I was familiar enough with such scenes in our own Civil War; thousands of those boys were never to return.

Reaching Paris we found an atmosphere of depression. A week or two before the streets had resounded with the _Ma.r.s.eillaise_ and echoed with the fierce cry, ”A Berlin! A Berlin!” That confidence had all pa.s.sed, I heard the _Ma.r.s.eillaise_ sung only once, and that in disheartened perfunctory fas.h.i.+on, perhaps by order of the authorities in a futile attempt to stimulate courage that was waning.

Rage and mortification over the fast-acc.u.mulating German successes possessed the hearts of men. In the squares companies of civilians were industriously drilling, often in the public places men wearing hospital badges extended salvers to the pa.s.sers-by asking for contributions, ”Pour les blesses, monsieur, pour les blesses!” Now and then well-disciplined divisions crossed the Place de la Concorde, the regiments stacking arms for a brief halt. I studied them close at hand; these at least looked as might have looked the soldiers of the First Empire, strong and resolute, with an evident capacity for taking care of themselves even in the small matter of cooking their soup, and providing for their needs there on the asphalt. Their officers were soldierly figures on horseback, dressed for rough work, and the gaitered legs, with the stout shoes below dusty already from long marching, were plainly capable of much more. There was a pathos about it all, however, a marked absence of _elan_ and enthusiasm, the faces under the _kepis_ were firm and strong enough but they had little hope. Nothing so paralyses a soldier as want of confidence in the leaders.h.i.+p and these poor fellows had lost that. The regiments pa.s.sed on in turn, the sunlight glittering on their arms. Through the vista of the boulevard the eagles of the Second Empire rose above, the grave colonels were conspicuous at the head, and the drum-beats, choked by the towering buildings, sounded a melancholy m.u.f.fled march that was befitting. It was the scene pictured by Detaille in _Le Regiment qu Pa.s.se_. Could he have been with us on the curbstone making his studies? It was indeed for them a funeral march, for they were on they way to Sedan. The Prussians, it was said, were within four days' march of the city, and the barrier at Metz had been completely broken down.

In most minds Paris is a.s.sociated with gayety, my Paris, on the other hand, is a solemn spot darkened by an impending shadow of calamity.

The theatres were closed. No one was admitted to the Invalides, so that I could not see the tomb of Napoleon. The Madeleine was open for service, but deep silence prevailed. In the great s.p.a.ces of the temple the robed priests bowed before the altar and noiseless groups of wors.h.i.+ppers knelt on the pavement. It was a time for earnest prayers.

The Louvre was still open and I was fortunate enough to see the Venus of Milo, though a day or two after I believe it was taken from its pedestal and carefully concealed. The expectation was of something dreadful and still the city did not take in the sorrow which lay before it. ”Do you think the Prussians will bombard Paris?” I heard a man exclaim, his voice and manner indicating that such a thing was incredible, but the Prussian cannon were close at hand. For our part, my companion and I thought we were in no especial danger. We quartered ourselves comfortably at a pension, walked freely about the streets, and saw what could be seen with the usual zest of healthy young travellers. The little steamboats were still plying on the Seine and we took one at last for the trip that opens to one so much that is beautiful and interesting in architecture and history. It was a lovely afternoon even for summer and we pa.s.sed in and out under the superb arches of the bridges, beholding the n.o.ble apse of Notre Dame with the twin towers rising beyond, structures a.s.sociated with grim events of the Revolution, the masonry of the quays and the master work of Haussmann who was then putting a new face upon the old city. Now all was bright and no thought of danger entered our minds as we revelled in the pleasures of such an excursion. At length as we stood on the deck we became aware that we were undergoing careful scrutiny from a considerable group who for the most part made up our fellow-pa.s.sengers. We had had no thought of ourselves as especially marked. My clothes, however, had been made in Germany and had peculiarities no doubt which indicated as much. I was fairly well grounded in French but had no practice in speaking. In trying to talk French, my tongue in spite of me ran into German, which I had been speaking constantly for six months. This was particularly the case if I was at all embarra.s.sed; my face and figure, moreover, were plainly Teutonic and not Latin. The French ascribed their disasters largely to the fact that German spies were everywhere prying into the conditions, and reporting every a.s.sailable point and element of weakness. This belief was well grounded; the Germans probably knew France better than the French themselves and skilfully adapted their attacks to the lacks and negligences which the swarming spies laid bare. The group, of whose scrutiny we had become aware, was made up of _ouvriers_ and _ouvrieres_, the men in the invariable blouse, with dark matted hair and black eyes, sometimes with a ratlike keenness of glance as they surveyed us. The women were roughly dressed, sometimes in sabots, with heads bare or surmounted by conical caps. They belonged to the proletariat, the cla.s.s out of which had come in the Reign of Terror the sans-culottes of evil memory and the _tricoteuses_ who had sat knitting about the _guillotine_, the cla.s.s which, within a few months, was again to set the world aghast as the mob of _La Commune_. As we stood disconcerted by their intent gaze, they put their heads together and talked in low and rapid tones; then their spokesman approached us, a man of polite bearing but ominously stern.

He was not a clumsy fellow, but darkly forceful and direct, a man capable of a quick, desperate deed. At the moment there was the grim tiger in their eyes and from the soft paw the swift protrusion of the cruel claw. One thought of the wild revolutionary song, ”ca ca, ca ira, les aristocrats a la lanterne!” They were the children of the mob that had sung that song. With a bow, the spokesman said: ”Messieurs, we think you are Germans and we wish to know if we are right.” We protested that we were Americans, but the spokesman said he was unconvinced, and as he pressed for further evidence I gave way to my companion whose readier French could deal better with the situation.

He demanded to see our pa.s.sports with which fortunately we were both provided; I had not thought of a pa.s.sport as a necessity, and almost by chance had procured one the week before from our Minister in Switzerland, a careful description, vouching for my American citizens.h.i.+p, signed and sealed by the United States official.

This perhaps saved my life. We surrendered our pa.s.sports to our interrogator; he carried them back to the throng behind him who were now glowering angrily at us, as they chattered among themselves.

Half-amused and half-alarmed, we waited while the doc.u.ments were pa.s.sed from hand to hand, carefully conned and inspected. We could not believe that we were in danger, here in the bright day in beautiful Paris, with the sacred towers of Notre Dame soaring close at hand.

There were no _gendarmes_ on the boat or on the quays, but how could it he that we needed protection? After a quarter of an hour's suspense, during which there had been a voluble counselling among the group, the spokesman came forth again with our pa.s.sports in hand carefully folded, these he returned to us, touching his hat with a stiff and formal bow. ”We have persuaded ourselves,” said he, ”that you are what you claim to be, Americans, and it is fortunate for you that it is so, for we had intended to throw you into the Seine as Prussian spies.” Here was a surprise indeed! The group then dispersed about the boat apparently satisfied. Still rather amused than alarmed we pocketed our pa.s.sports. Under the arch of one of the stately bridges close by, the Seine flowed in heavy shadows on its way, and we looked down upon the dark waters. Throbbing with life as we were, could it be possible that we had just escaped a grave in its watery embrace? Presently we landed light-hearted, and were again in the streets, but in days that followed immediately my heart was often in my throat, as I read in the papers of the corpses of men taken out of the river who undoubtedly had been thrown in under suspicion of being German spies. After a sojourn of not quite a week in Paris we made up our minds it was no place for us. My plans for study were quite broken up, it was scarcely possible to get back to Germany and nothing could be done in France. I had letters which in a time of peace would have opened the way for me to many a pleasant circle. My intention had been to study for some time in France, but under the circ.u.mstances it would be a comfortable thing to have the Atlantic rolling between me and Europe, and therefore, I prepared to depart for home. At the _pension_, on the day I had fixed for departure, while coming down the staircase waxed and highly polished, I slipped and fell heavily, so bruising my knee that I was nearly crippled. Fortunately no bones were broken and with much pain I managed to hobble to the official from whom I must obtain a pa.s.s to leave the city. I set out for the North, on almost the last train that left the city, at the end of August. The sights were gloomy, the towns which we pa.s.sed seemed a.s.sociated with ancient bloodshed. We touched St. Quentin and crossed the field of Malplaquet, and finally near Mons pa.s.sed the Belgian frontier. Marlborough and the names a.s.sociated with former wars were suggested to my thoughts by these historic spots. I was heartily glad when at length in cheerful Brussels I was beyond danger. On the fateful day when the Second Empire went down at Sedan, I was on the field of Waterloo where half a century before the First Empire had perished. The news of the morning made it plain that on that day the great _debacle_ was to culminate. We listened all day for cannon thunder; under certain conditions of the atmosphere the sound of heavy guns may reverberate as far perhaps, as from Sedan to Waterloo. That day, however, there was no ominous grumble from the eastward, the sky was cloudless, the flowers bloomed about the Chateau d'Hougomont, and the birds twittered in peace at the point before La Haie-Sainte to which the First Napoleon advanced in the evening and where for the last time he heard the shout then so long familiar but forever after unheard, ”Vive l'Empereur!” Humiliation now after half a century had overwhelmed in turn his unhappy successor.

CHAPTER VI

AMERICAN HISTORIANS

As a Harvard undergraduate I roomed for a time in Hollis 8, a room occupied in turn by William H. Prescott and James Schouler, and perhaps I may attribute to some contagion caught as a _transmittendum_ in that apartment, an itch for writing history which has brought some trouble to me and to the rather limited circle of readers whom I have reached. I remember debating, as a boy, whether the more desirable fame fell to the hero in a conflict or to the scribe who told the story. Whose place would one rather have? That of Timoleon and Nicias or of Plutarch and Thucydides their celebrants?

But the celebrants, no doubt, seemed to their contemporaries very insignificant figures compared to the champions whose fame they perpetuated. The historians of America are a goodly company, scarcely less worthy than the champions whose deeds they have chronicled. With most men who, during the last seventy-five years, have written history in America, I have had contact, sometimes a mere glimpse, sometimes intimacy. Was.h.i.+ngton Irving and Prescott I never saw, though as to the latter I have just been making him responsible to some extent for my own little proclivity, Parkman, I only saw sitting with his handsome Grecian face relieved against a dignified background as he sat on the stage among the Corporation of Harvard University. Motley I have only seen as he stood with iron-grey curls over a ruddy, strenuous countenance topping a figure of vigorous symmetry as he spoke with animation at a scholars' dinner. But George Bancroft, Justin Winsor, and John Fiske I knew well, the last being in particular one of my best friends. I could tell stories too, of the living lights, but am concerned here with the ghosts and not with men still red-blooded.

I first saw George Bancroft when he was Minister at Berlin. He had read a little book of mine, The Color Guard, my diary as a Corporal of the Nineteenth Army Corps, scribbled off on my cap-top, my gun-stock, or indeed my shoe-sole, or whatever desk I could extemporise as we marched and fought. That book gave me some claim to his notice, but a better claim was that his wife was Elizabeth Davis, whom more than a hundred years ago my grandfather of the ancient First Parish in Plymouth had baptised and who as a girl had been my mother's playmate in gardens near Plymouth Rock. I did not presume upon such credentials as these to obtrude myself, and was pleasantly surprised one day by a note inviting me to the Emba.s.sy. It was a retired house near the Thiergarten. I found Mr. Bancroft embarra.s.sed with duties which in those days gave trouble. German emigrants returning after prosperous years to the Fatherland were often pounced upon, the validity of their American citizens.h.i.+p denied, and taxes and military service demanded.

It was tough work to straighten out such knots and the Minister was in the midst of such a tangle. But his high, broad forehead smoothed presently, and his grey eyes grew genial, while the vivacious features spoke with the very cordial impulse with which he greeted one who had heard the bullets of the Civil War whistle and was the son of his wife's old friend. Another tie was that his father, Dr. Aaron Bancroft of Worcester, and my grandfather, had stood shoulder to shoulder in the controversy of a century ago which rent apart New England Congregationalism. Presently we sat down to lunch, a party of three, for the board was graced by the presence of Mrs. Bancroft, a woman of fine accomplishments polished through contact with high society in many lands, and a gifted talker. Many readers have found her published letters charming. The talk was largely of the Civil War and Bancroft's words were in the best sense patriotic. During and before that period his course had been much disapproved. He had been Collector of Boston under Democratic auspices and had served under Polk as Secretary of the Navy, where he laid the country lastingly under debt by establis.h.i.+ng the Naval Academy at Annapolis. I do not approve or condemn, but I felt him wisely and warmly patriotic, deeply concerned that the outcome of our long national agony should be worthy of the sacrifice. The breath of a pleasant spring day pervaded the elegant apartment while the birds sang in the tall trees stretching out toward the forest of the Thiergarten. I especially a.s.sociate with the Bancrofts their beautiful outdoor environment. Another day I drove with the Minister, our companions in the carriage being the wife and the daughter of Ernst Curtius, to visit the rose gardens about Berlin.

I have met few men readier or more agreeable in conversation. With a pleasant smile and intonation he touched gracefully on this and that, sometimes in reminiscence. I remember in particular a vivid setting forth of an interview with Goethe which he had enjoyed as a boy fifty years before. Sometimes his talk was of poetry in general and I was much struck with his frequent happy application of quotations to the little events of the drive and phases of feeling that came up as the day went on. The sun set gloriously, ”_So stirbt ein Held_,” said Bancroft, as he burst with feeling into the beautiful lyric of which these words are a line. The best German poetry seemed to be at his tongue's end and he recited it with sympathy and accuracy which called out much admiration from the cultivated German ladies with whom we were driving. Most interesting of all was Bancroft's evident pa.s.sion for roses. The gardeners, as we stopped, were plainly surprised at his knowledge of their varieties and the best methods of cultivation.

He was so well versed in the lore of the rose and so devoted to its cultivation one might well have thought it his horse and not his hobby. He possessed at Newport a rose garden far famed for the number of its varieties and the perfection of the flowers, and it was an interesting sight at Was.h.i.+ngton to see Bancroft, even when nearing ninety, busy in his garden in H Street, one attendant s.h.i.+elding his light figure with a sun umbrella, while another held at hand, hoe, shears, and twine, the implements to train and cull. Is there a subtle connection between roses and history? Parkman wrote an elaborate book upon rose culture which I believe is still of authority, and John Fiske had a conservatory opening out of his library and the rose of all flowers was the one he prized. Here is a neat turn of McMaster.

At a dinner given in his honour a big bunch of American Beauties was opposite to him as he sat. It fell to me to make a welcoming speech.

Catching at the occasion, I suggested a connection between roses and history and referred to McMaster close behind his American Beauties as an instance in point, at the same time expressing with earnestness my strong admiration of that good writer's work. McMaster rose, his face glowing in response to my emphatic compliment. His speech consisted of only one sentence, ”I have one bond with the rose, I blush.”

I owe many favours to Bancroft; the greatest perhaps that he allowed me to consult to my heart's content the papers of Samuel Adams, a priceless collection which he possessed. For this he gave me _carte blanche_ to use his library in Was.h.i.+ngton, though he himself was absent, a favour which he said he had never accorded to an investigator before. It was an inspiring place for a student, the shelves burdened with treasures in ma.n.u.script as well as print. The most interesting portrait of Bancroft presents him as a nonagenarian, against this impressive background, at work to the last. The critics of our day minimise Bancroft and his school. History in that time walked in garments quite too flowing, it is said, and with an overdisplay of the Horatian purple patch. Our grandsons may feel that the history of our time walks in garments too sad-coloured and scant.

Research and accuracy are, of course, primary requisites in this field, but there should be some employment of the picturesque. The world was beautiful in the old days and human life was vivid. Ought we to deny to all this a warm and graphic setting forth? If we do we shall do it to our cost. Is it the proper att.i.tude of the historian simply to write, without thought of anything so irrelevant as a reader? Bancroft was a pioneer, breaking the way ponderously perhaps, but he delved faithfully. If the orotund rolls too sonorously in his periods it was an excess in which his age upheld him. He was a good path-breaker and ought not to be lightly esteemed by those who now go to and fro with ease through the roads he opened.