Three generations

Glancing back over my life, certain years stand out clearly like signposts, while others loom nebulous and vague. The centennial year of 1876 is one of the vivid ones, for it brought my first meeting with the veiled figure, Grief, with whom all of us must walk part of the journey. Early in the year my father died. The date of his death, January 9th, is one of the few anniversaries I never forget; each year brings me a better understanding of his great heart, his chivalric nature. At first it seemed impossible that he was really gone, that I should never again see his face or hear his voice. After the first forlorn sense of loss came the strange process of readjustment. Life did go on without that dominant figure to shape its course, and certain new responsibilities came upon me. My mother had always left to my father the practical matters of our family life, and these to a large degree devolved upon me. Had I been of an introspective turn I might have shrunk from the part I was now to play. Instead, I seized the reins as he dropped them, eager as Phaeton to drive the steeds of Apollo.

If there were a horse to buy, I did not hesitate, but promptly bought the best horse I could find, only to learn that the dear animal—we called him Ha’pence—was afflicted with quarter-cracks cleverly patched up by the jockey who sold him to us. When there was a new house to buy, I went to a house agent I had met in society and was ignorant enough to ask him what his commission was. The agent took advantage of my simplicity and charged us two hundred dollars. Years after I learned that in Boston he who sells a house pays the agent’s commission; to collect from both buyer and seller was sharp practice, as the agent, Mr. M., knew perfectly well. It was at this time that my mother gave me the nickname “Boss.” I did not like it as well as my other nickname “Duchess”, but I had not the courage to rebel.

In the early summer of 1876 I made a long visit to my friends, Ida and Alice Cushman, who lived with their aunt, Miss Rebecca Wetherell, in the fine old Wetherell house on the corner of Broad and Chestnut streets, in Philadelphia. Mr. Cushman, their father, a miniature painter of distinction, took us often to the Art Gallery of the Centennial Exhibition, and with him I studied the fine collections that the European nations sent to this, our first World’s Fair. The Centennial did much to stimulate every phase of the growing art life of our country. With me, as with thousands of others, art became from this time forward one of the absorbing interests of life; for several years I hoped to be an artist.

The winter after my father’s death my mother decided to go to Europe. I know now that the trip was made entirely for my sake, and that she was loth to leave the many interests of her Boston life. President of the New England Woman’s Club and the Association for the Advancement of Women, she held important positions in half a dozen other organizations for public service. She made the great sacrifice for my sake, and I, like other young people, accepted the maternal devotion as a matter of course! Before sailing for Europe she determined that I must know something more of my own country. Massachusetts I knew pretty thoroughly, Rhode Island a little. I had a bowing acquaintance with New York, knew Washington by sight. That was all, and in her judgment not enough. She arranged a lecture trip to the Middle West to meet the expenses of our journey. This gave me my first realizing sense that lack of money is one of those minor obstacles in life that require only a little courage to overcome. Of this trip I remember only the wonder of Niagara, the bustle of Chicago, the pleasant yellow brick city of Milwaukee, where we stayed at the luxurious house of my mother’s friend, Mrs. Doggett; last and best, how I ran the express from Milwaukee to Chicago! We were to make the journey with one of the directors of the road, who, finding how much I longed for this experience, escorted me to the locomotive cab and gave me into the hands of the engineer, with the words:

“This young lady thinks she would like to be an engine driver. Let her have a chance to try it out!”

It was a thrilling experience. I was allowed to handle the levers, ring the bell, and blow the whistle. The engineer and firemen were two new types of men; that in itself would have made the journey more interesting than the stereotyped company of the Pullman. Oh! the joy of flying across the level prairie on a glorious autumn afternoon, with straight shining rails stretching before me, my hand on the bounding pulse of the iron horse,—this was a ride to remember all my life! We made schedule time. When we arrived at Chicago the director told me my only mistake had been to hold open the throttle of the whistle-valve so long that an old lady in the Pullman thought there was an accident. The engineer gallantly explained that the whistle had been to frighten a cow off the track.

These are all the details I remember of this journey with my mother; nevertheless I believe it did for me all she hoped. I date from this time the beginning of my better understanding of my own country and my evolution from a New Englander into an American.

One other experience my mother was careful to plan; that I should hear Mr. Emerson lecture before we sailed. If I have forgotten the subject of the address, it does not matter, for later on I was to become a devoted Emersonian. What I retain is a strong impression of his personality. I felt that I was in the presence of a very wonderful being. I remember the wisdom and sweetness of his face, the tones of his voice, by turns like a silver trumpet and the soughing of the breeze. His diction, like that of some polished actor of the Comédie Française, was such an art that it seemed like nature. After the lecture my mother spoke with Mr. Emerson and his daughter, Miss Ellen. His smile as he turned to speak to me, the touch of his hand on mine, were as a benediction whose influence remained with me through life.

CHAPTER X

England

The answer was always the same, whether beaten out by the screw or whispered by the wind:

“Because I was not afraid!”

On the Liverpool dock a tiny donkey in a costermonger’s cart and a burly policeman walked right out of Punch to meet us! I knew the whole series by heart, and to-day can imagine no better preparation for a visit to England.

We spent a few days in Liverpool, made a stop in Chester, and then pushed on to London, where we found rooms in Bedford Place. Our lodgings were gay with chintz hangings and window boxes of scarlet geraniums. A sprite of a maid in white cap and apron served us; a friendly ogress, the lodging-house keeper, supplied breakfast—bacon and eggs, marmalade, tea and toast—for eighteen pence. There was a lacquered box, with a canister for tea and a bowl for sugar, whose key the ogress formally handed my mother.

London in May, when the white thorn is in bloom and even the smoky city squares are lovely with the spring, when life is at the flood and every hour holds more delights than the keenest pleasure-seeker can grasp, was then the social center of the world. The year 1877 was the fortieth of Queen Victoria’s reign: to celebrate the anniversary she was proclaimed Empress of India, an honor people said she owed to Disraeli, who had lately accepted the title of Earl of Beaconsfield. The Queen was not in London, the Prince and Princess of Wales representing her at all the great functions.

We were soon deep in social engagements. My mother’s old friends and the new ones made on my account were very hospitable; our days passed in a bewildering round of dinners, dances, garden parties, races of boats, of horses; matches of cricket, of football; “shows” of pictures, flowers, vegetables, dogs!

Henry James was often my mother’s escort; I rather avoided talking with him, fancying that he was “studying” me for copy; later in life we became fast friends.

Charles Stewart Parnell was one of our earliest visitors. My mother being out when he first called, I received the visit. He seemed at a loss to begin the conversation, and sat looking at me with a puzzled expression. It finally came out that he was under the impression he was talking with Mrs. Howe. He was tall, slender, distinguished, with blue eyes and sandy hair. He was full of nervous “drive”, with something chivalric in his make-up which should have saved him from the political persecution that shortened his life. He took us to the House of Commons to hear Mr. Gladstone. I remember well the great Commoner’s eloquence, the sort of insistent magnetism he exerted over his hearers. His followers were loyal as schoolboys to their leader. Lord Rosebery, at that time Gladstone’s secretary, always spoke of him as of some superior being. Sir Stafford Northcote had something to say to the Commons that day about the strength of the Russian fleet and its close proximity to New York and San Francisco.

At this time the Russian bogey was much in evidence, the Eastern question was the burning issue, and Disraeli’s coquetting with Turkey much criticized. Most of our friends were Gladstonians, though we knew some of the leading Tories who supported Disraeli. These two famous statesmen were more in evidence in the political arena than any others.

Mr. Biggar was pointed out as “the biggest Parliamentary bore on record” and Sir Charles Dilke as having set all England by the ears by his advocacy of cremation and his attitude on the Deceased Wife’s Sister bill. I remember there was some talk about the Suez Canal and discussion of what constituted contraband of war. The ladies’ gallery where we sat was hot, crowded, uncomfortable, and screened like the musharabeah window of an Egyptian harem. I disliked it so much that I never went there again.

People who live in London must inevitably find the circle where they belong, and remain more or less fixed therein. The charm of that first London season was that we were made welcome in a dozen different circles and counted among our friends extreme conservatives and arrant radicals.

After all these years the people I remember best are the literary men and the artists. My first meeting with Robert Browning was at the home of Mrs. Lehmann. The son of the house, Rudolph Lehmann, the writer and athlete, was an interesting boy with a mop of dark curls and large, expressive eyes.

“As Mr. Browning often dines with us,” the hostess said, “I always show him the list of guests and let him choose who shall sit beside him: to-night you are to have the honor.”

I felt it a very great honor indeed, and awaited his coming with beating heart.

In conventional evening dress Browning, then about sixty-five years old, looked less the traditional poet than his portraits. He was spruce, with waxed mustache and a man-of-the-world air, not at all like the pictures of Byron or Shelley, our own Walt Whitman, or the silvery Longfellow. When we were seated at table he adjusted his monocle and glanced at the menu.

“I know this cook’s best dishes,” he said, “I will advise you in choosing the plats.”

It was unreasonable, but I was shocked! To come trembling into the presence of the adored poet and find him only a man and an epicure was a cruel disillusionment. What did I expect? Quien sabe?

Soon after I had an opportunity to visit Tennyson in the Isle of Wight. I promptly refused the invitation. I had heard of the Laureate’s being rude to some Americans and would not risk another disappointment in poets.

Edmund Gosse proved a stanch friend to us as he has to many other Americans made welcome at his Sunday afternoons. He was a man of charm and simplicity: my memories of him are in harmony with his enchanting autobiography, “Father and Son.” Mrs. Gosse was both aesthetic and good looking. We met at her house her two sisters, Mrs. Alma-Tadema and another whose name I have forgotten. These three charmers were the daughters of Mr. Epps, and were known by the adjectives in his famous cocoa advertisement, “Grateful, Comforting, Delicious.” All were pretty women. Mrs. Tadema, the handsomest, was I think “Delicious.” She painted extremely well, and her husband was proud of her pictures. I once heard him say:

“Take notice that I wish to have it put on my tombstone, ‘Here lies the husband of Mrs. Alma-Tadema’!”

The Alma-Tadema house had certain classical features,—an atrium like those at Pompeii with marble columns and seats, a fountain playing in a marble basin filled with rose leaves; the floors were strewn with panther and tiger skins. Tadema often painted this interior in his pictures of Roman and Greek life, which were much admired and brought enormous sums.

Edmund Yates of the London World was one of the prominent men about town. His witticisms at the expense of his rival, Labouchère, editor of London Truth, were much quoted. The two editors chaffed each other in a weekly paragraph. People looked in Truth for Labouchère’s screed beginning, “My dear Edmund”, and in the World for a corresponding paragraph opening with, “My dear Labbie”! The jesting was good-humoured, neither hitting below the belt.

Mr. Yates was kind to us, first for Uncle Sam’s sake, then for our own. He was unwearied in arranging entertainments where we might meet the literary lights of the day. A dinner at the Star and Garter, at Richmond, where for the first time I tasted whitebait, is a clear memory. We drove down from London on a coach and four through beautiful Richmond Park, whose noble oaks are among the finest I have ever seen. We had a private dining room opening on the terrace, with the famous view over the Thames. Mallock, author of the “New Republic”, one of the books of the year, was the most brilliant of the witty party, and the lovely Violet Fane kept pace with him. William Black, who was among the guests, was very silent that night, but looked interesting.

“I wish to propose the health of the United States!” said the host, bowing to my mother. The company rose to drink the toast.

“Yates ought to like your country,” said Louis Jennings, my neighbor at table; “he earned the thirty thousand pounds with which he bought the World, on a lecture tour in the States!”

Mr. Yates had made some success as a novelist, but his real talent was journalistic. As long as he lived the World was sent to us, and my mother never failed to read it, sometimes crying out as she laid the paper down, “It makes me homesick for London!”

Among the friends of other days was Lord Houghton (Monckton Milnes), whom my mother had known on her first visit to England in 1844. He then ranked as one of the notable minor poets, though I do not often hear his poetry spoken of to-day. I have a volume of his, published in 1838. It has a certain old-fashioned charm and brings back the marked personality of the old gentleman whom we met frequently at dinners and even balls, though he was past eighty years old.

Mr. George Howard, the late Lord Carlisle, was tireless in helping us see the best ancient and modern art. He was at that time devoting himself to painting, exhibiting with the rebels of the Grosvenor Gallery. He was a man of exquisite refinement and great reserve, ill fitted, it appeared, to take part in political life. He had married Rosamond, daughter of Lord Stanley of Alderley, who inherited the family gift for politics and was already prominent as a reformer, though still very young, with a nursery full of children. I date my lifelong passion for sight-seeing from those hours spent with Mr. Howard at the British Museum, the National Gallery, and other picture galleries and studios. He introduced us to his friend Burne-Jones, who asked me to sit for him. I remember those mornings at Burne-Jones’s house very clearly. The walls of the passage leading to the studio were hung with the cartoons of the artist’s beautiful decoration, “The Briar Rose.” Burne-Jones was one of the most sensitive and interesting artists I have known. He complimented me on being a good sitter,—“You can hold the pose as well as many professional models.” He did not show me the canvas for which I sat, but told me later that my portrait appeared in a group of nymphs in the decoration he was then working upon. One day William Morris came in during the sitting and said a few words to his friend. Morris, in his plain, rough blue linen shirt and picturesque homespun clothes, looked the poet and the artist he was. Most of the men and women of this artistic group were very individual in dress. Mrs. Burne-Jones and her daughter looked like the ladies in Walter Crane’s lovely illustrations. It was from them that I first learned of the charming Liberty fabrics to which I have remained faithful all these years.

This I believe was the first year of the Grosvenor Gallery, whose exhibitions represented a revolt of some of the leading artists against the formal traditions of the Royal Academy. There was a battle royal as to the relative merits of the two exhibitions and the rights and wrongs of the quarrel. The leading lights of the Grosvenor Gallery were Burne-Jones, George Watts, and Whistler. Like most such defections the movement proved useful; all the bitter words written and spoken had the happy effect of giving a fresh impulse to British art.

Sir Frederick Leighton was then president of the Royal Academy. On the night of the opening reception at Burlington House, all London flocked to the Academy. The guests were received by Sir Frederick, standing at the head of the main stairway. He was a commanding figure in his silk robes of office, his orders, and decorations. We had for our escorts the Greek Minister, M. Gennadius, and a young artist named John Elliott. The servant who announced the guests mixed the cards and read the Ambassador’s name as the artist advanced. He was received with great cordiality, while the Ambassador got the curtest imaginable nod.

The pictures most noticed that year were by Millais, Leighton, Poynter, Frith, Leslie, Alma-Tadema, and George Boughton, the American, whose pictures had a great vogue. Millais was then the most popular of the London painters, judging by the price his pictures brought. The Pre-Raphaelite group were rather bitter about him. He had been with them in their revolt against the conventional school, but after a few years had deserted them and gone back to the Philistines. I heard much discussion of all these currents in the art world, for we were often at the houses of Alma-Tadema, Burne-Jones, and other artists, where the vital topic of conversation was art with a big A. It gave me a peculiar satisfaction to remind one of my new artist friends that London owed its Royal Academy largely to an American painter, Benjamin West, who induced the King to grant the charter to the Association of which he was president twenty-eight years.

The styles in dress that year were rather extravagant. In the morning the leaders of fashion wore plain, close-fitting silk jerseys, which gave great offense to the prudish, mannish ulsters and derby hats. For afternoon and evening wear trains were de rigueur. At the balls these absurdly long trains made dancing very difficult. I found the average English woman neither so handsome nor so elegant as the average American. When it came to the exceptional ones, it was quite the other way. I have never seen any women who compare, either in beauty or bearing, to the fine fleur of English girlhood.

Our London life was kaleidoscopic, brilliant, shifting, little bits of fashion, art, sport, philanthropy, politics all jostling each other and making a brilliant whole. I remember one grand banquet where General Grant, then on his triumphal progress around the world, was the guest of honor, and was seated at table between Mrs. Langtry and myself. At this time the Jersey Lily was the reigning toast. She was very young, hardly more than twenty, and was without question the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. There was something disarming about her smile, which began in the eyes (like calm blue lakes) and ended in the parting of the perfect lips, the dimpling of the cheek. Watts’ portrait of her in a close little bonnet is very like, but does not quite convey the impression of dazzling loveliness she produced. Among the other reigning beauties were Lady Dudley, a little cold in type compared to the Lily, but looking like “the daughter of a hundred earls”, and Mrs. Cornwallis West, diminutive and charming as a Dresden china figure.

The cult for beauty was unlike anything I have ever known before or since. The aesthetic movement was at its height, and the “short-haired women and long-haired men”, familiar figures at all the great routs and public fêtes, waited to see the entrance of one of the “beauties”, as people wait to see Royalty pass. The photographs of the professional beauties were on sale in the shops with those of the royal family, leading statesmen, and popular actors.

We owed our glimpses of the world of sport largely to Lord Dunraven, owner of the famous yacht Thistle, who was attentive to us for Uncle Sam’s sake. He drove us down to the Derby, where we were his guests in the royal inclosure, and had a close view of the Prince and Princess of Wales. The Prince, later Edward VII, was not far from forty, and looked rather like Holbein’s portrait of Henry the Eighth. The Princess was much beloved, though the people of the court and the diplomats found her hard to talk with on account of her deafness. She was elegant in dress, and for good looks held her own with the professional beauties. Like the Queen, she was devoted to her family, but during the season could not have had much time for her children. Every waking hour of her day seemed filled with official engagements. She was forever opening hospitals, presiding at fêtes, charity bazaars, and graduating exercises.

We went to Ascot with Lord Dunraven, and I remember dimly some yachting excursion with him. This was ten years before the race between the Thistle and the Mayflower for the America’s cup. There was some dispute about this race, and many people felt that Dunraven had not been well treated by our American judges. Feeling ran high in yachting circles and I overheard one sporting character say to another:

“Dunraven they call him,—Done racin’, I call him!”

Lady Dunraven was very unlike her husband in tastes and interests. I remember her as one of the most perfectly bred women I ever met, gentle, domestic, and devoted to her children.

I think it was through Lord Rosebery that we made the acquaintance of Constance, daughter of Sir Anthony de Rothschild. She was the finest type of the English Hebrew, a woman of great power and character. She was a devoted follower of Frances Power Cobbe, whom I met at her house. I spent ten days at Aston Clinton, the Rothschild country seat in Buckinghamshire. At this time Cyril Flower was paying court to Miss Rothschild, and I was aware of the struggle that shook my friend’s nature to its depths. The whole Jewish community had been outraged by the recent marriage of her sister to a Christian gentleman named Yorke and the union of her cousin, Hannah Rothschild, with Lord Rosebery. Both these ladies had been cursed in the synagogue with the dreadful Jewish curse reserved for women who marry outside the faith. My friend was too clear a thinker to fear the curse of Israel, but she dreaded the feeling that she had betrayed her dear Jews, should she marry a Christian. Cyril Flower was a superb, gold-bearded Viking of a man whose wooing was impetuous and ardent. Meeting them on their wedding journey, I asked the bridegroom if the curse had been pronounced. He told me no; his bride (who had written an admirable history of the Israelites) was so deeply beloved by her people that her defection had been passed over in silence. Mr. Flower entered political life to represent the Rothschild interests: he later became Lord Battersea.

M. Alphonse, the Rothschilds’ famous French chef, was quite a character. Poor Sir Anthony was much out of health and obliged to live on rice and gruel, but he sat at the head of his table at dinner and, like Mr. Browning, helped me to choose the cook’s best plats. I remember his pointing out a particularly fat truffle as a dish was handed me:

“Take that one, and tell me if it is not good.”

He watched me intently as I ate the truffle, then with a sigh went back to his boiled rice.

Lady Rothschild was a lovely woman with delicate pink cheeks and silver hair. Her hand was the only one I have ever touched that was as soft as my mother’s. Finding me much interested in the household arrangements of the establishment, she herself took me through the perfectly appointed lower regions of Aston Clinton. Here I saw M. Alphonse in white linen suit and cap. At the end of the long kitchen was an open fire before which stood a mighty rack with a series of slowly revolving spits. On the upper one were a row of quail, on the next pheasants, then ducks, chickens, turkeys, legs of mutton, and on the lowest spit huge roasts of beef, all slowly going round and round while M. Alphonse basted them with his long ladle.

On parting, Lady Rothschild gave me a small volume. It proved to be a series of short religious lessons she had prepared. I read it carefully and found nothing that any Christian Sunday-school teacher would not have used in her class.

I was struck by the part the leading statesmen took in London’s social life. At home men of great affairs have little time for society: in London the cabinet minister or prominent statesman who does not dine out constantly is the exception. They consider it part of the relaxation all intellectual workers must find in one direction or another. A skillful London hostess tries to secure some leading political light for her dinners and takes as much care in her choice of the company as a good chef in mixing a salad. I felt the same care in the make-up of the house parties, where the right people always seemed to be brought together. In my own Boston at this time there prevailed a primitive custom of social segregation of persons of the same age. Boys and girls consorted together, the middle-aged, the elderly, the old. In London I found no trace of this tiresome restriction; in social life as in the family life the different generations were allowed to mix. This was much to my liking. I care less for people of my own age than for any others, because I have less to learn from them. We have all been rolled like pebbles on the beach by the same world currents and taken more or less the same shape.

We found time for the opera and the theater. Richard Mansfield often sent us seats for the play, and sometimes went with us. He had already made his first hit in “Prince Karl.” Albani was the favorite prima donna and Ellen Terry the most popular actress. Irving’s productions of Shakespeare were among the notable dramatic events of the season. His acting both as Hamlet and Benedick left me cold. It seemed to me he was not great enough to play Shakespeare either in tragedy or comedy. When it came to melodrama and farce, I have never seen a better actor. His acting of the “Lyons Mail” was admirable, and his impersonation of Alfred Jingle in a curtain raiser a matchless performance. We heard Patti several times in concert; she was not singing in opera that season. On one occasion at Albert Hall we heard the people’s idol, Sims Reeves, sing, “Farewell, my trim-built Wherry.” He was a very old man, and his voice a shadow of what it had been when my mother heard him in his prime. She called my attention to the rapturous applause that greeted him, saying:

“The faithfulness of English audiences to their old favorites is proverbial; it is part of the tenacity of their natures. An English friend is a friend for life.”

She went on to contrast the devotion of the English to their old favorites with the fickleness of the French, and told of the Parisian public that had so adored Rachel neglecting her for Ristori, the Italian tragedienne.

Of all the theatrical performances, I enjoyed most “The Sorcerer”, the first of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. Gilbert was already a household word with us through our devotion to his “Bab Ballads.” His play, “Pygmalion and Galatea”, had already made a hit, but it was through his partnership with Arthur Sullivan that he won his great popularity. Those were the palmy days of light opera. Offenbach was still sung all over the world, and the vogue for the Gilbert and Sullivan operas in all the English-speaking countries was something phenomenal. These melodious operettas, bubbling over with clean, wholesome English fun, deserved all the popularity they enjoyed. To this day I never miss an opportunity of hearing the revivals that from time to time take place. The latest of these, a performance of “Pinafore” given at Newport, by the American sailors during the Great War, gave me hardly less pleasure than the original production I witnessed on my second visit to London in 1878.

Considering how much of fun there was during my first London season, I remember with some surprise how often we went to church. I heard some admirable sermons from Dean Vaughan at the church of the Temple, and have a confused memory of having stayed and dined with the Templars in a great hall, upon mighty roasts of beef under vast pewter covers, gooseberry fool, and enormous strawberries. We often went to service at Westminster Abbey to hear Dean Stanley preach. The beauty of his English was like the architecture of a Doric temple. He had a fine intellectual head and a face of great power and sweetness. We were at his house more than once: we met there Mr. Seeley, the author of “Ecce Homo”, a book published anonymously a few years before, which had made a deep impression. We also heard Moncure Conway and Stopford Brooke. Conway, who was an American, was then preaching for the South Place Religious Society. He was an old friend, and I remembered him well at Green Peace. Though he and my mother did not agree on matters theological, they were good friends, and we went several times to his house in Hammersmith. He was a large, striking-looking man, with a great head and an assertive personality: very aggressive both in and out of the pulpit, but warm-hearted and stimulating. He did not like to be classed with Christians, though he had started as a Methodist minister and later joined the Unitarians. His congregation were plain people, many of them working men of socialistic tendencies.

Stopford Brooke was at this time the most popular of the liberal Church of England preachers. To hear him it was necessary to go very early to secure a seat. The service was low church in character, and had a vested choir of girl choristers. Stopford Brooke’s English was more vigorous and not quite so silvery as Dean Stanley’s; his doctrine was warm, human, Christian. These three men, Dean Stanley, Stopford Brooke, and Moncure Conway, represented the three degrees of liberal religious thought in England. The Dean lived and died a dignitary of the established church. Of Stopford Brooke Unitarians said what they said about Phillips Brooks, “He belongs with us.” Shortly after Brooke himself realized where he belonged, left the Church of England and became a Unitarian.

We heard a service at the Greek Church, where the dark papa, in his gorgeous white satin robes embroidered with gold, reminded me of my brother-in-law, Anagnos. One Saturday morning we went to the Hebrew Synagogue, places being reserved for us in the women’s gallery. The men put on a sort of shawl as they entered the pews and kept their hats on through the service. Their opening prayer ran somewhat in this fashion:

“I thank thee, Oh, God, that thou hast not made me a woman!”

We met that remarkable old man, Sir Moses Montefiori, at the Rothschilds’. He talked a great deal with my mother of his plan for repatriating the Hebrews in Jerusalem. I was rather afraid of him and of Sir Anthony, who was, I think, his brother-in-law. While they were extremely courteous in their manner, I was aware of a certain mental attitude that I resented; it was so subtle that to-day I despair of analyzing it, but it seemed to me that as they spoke to me they were repeating silently that contemptuous prayer of the Synagogue.

One of the pleasantest houses where we were made to feel at home was that of the Lyulph Stanleys in Harley Street. Mr. Stanley had lately married Maisie, the beautiful daughter of Sir Lothian Bell, the great ironmaster. They had been at our house in America on their wedding journey, and Mr. Stanley at an earlier visit had foregathered with my mother, who had a great esteem and affection for him. The Stanleys, one of the great Liberal families, have always been considered exceptionally original and clever. Our friend Lyulph had already begun his lifelong fight for higher education, and was the leading member of the London School Board, on which he served for more than twenty laborious years. His sister, Lady Amberley, had very advanced views for those days: his elder brother had settled in Constantinople and taken so thoroughly to the ways of that place that it was said he had embraced the religion of Islam. A third brother, Algernon, soon after this became a priest of the Roman Church. He was handsome, with the typical Stanley beauty,—golden hair and beard, delicate rose and white skin, brilliant blue eyes. I admired Algernon’s appearance very much, and one day was startled at meeting him shorn of his golden beard and locks, wearing the dress of a Catholic priest.

“How did your mother feel about your conversion?” my mother asked him.

“I really don’t know,” was the answer. “With one child an atheist and another a Mohammedan, she ought to be pleased to have at least one Christian in her family!”

Rosamond Stanley (Lady Carlisle) was the sister of Lyulph and Algernon Stanley. The last time I was in England our friend Lyulph had succeeded to the title of Lord Stanley, but I remember him best in those early days when we were all young.

Another house of which I have grateful memories was that of Sir Arthur Mills, my mother’s lifelong friend, the hero of her comic poem, “The Millsiad”, written when they crossed the ocean together long before I was born. Sir Arthur was, at the time I knew him, a strong conservative and felt, I believe, little sympathy with my mother’s work for suffrage and other reforms. This made no difference in their friendship, which descended to the next generation; his son, Major Dudley Mills, of the Engineer Corps, was my mother’s devoted friend and correspondent to the end of her life.

I am glad that I knew London in the days of the hansom, before that perfect vehicle gave place to the taxi. We were often taken to drive in the Park by our smart friends in their fine carriages, but for me there was nothing like the fun of driving about London in a hansom cab. Next to the London hansom I loved best the box seat of a coach tooling along over the fine hard roads to Hampton Court, Brighton, or Richmond, where the coach drew up at the historic pastry cook’s to let the passengers buy those perfect cheese cakes, the “maids of honor.”

Hardly less dear than hansom or coach was the top of the omnibus that took us down to Barings’ in Threadneedle Street to draw our money or to go sight-seeing in the city.

“Benk, benk, benk!” cried the guard, swinging on the back of the ’bus; “’Igh Holborn, ’Igh Holborn, Shepperd’s Bursh, Elephant and Castle!” An artist friend took us one Saturday night to see Edgeware Road. The long street was crammed with people buying their Sunday dinners. At the doors of the butchers’ shops stood men in white aprons with long glittering knives, chanting a peculiar monotonous cry:

“Buy, buy, buy! Beef, pork, mutton, will you buy, will you buy?”

On either side the way was lined with costermongers, whose barrows were lighted by flaring lamps. They, too, shouted their wares,—shrimps, periwinkles, oysters, fruit, vegetables, toys of all descriptions, cooking ware and clothing, for on Saturday night Edgeware Road was transformed into a nocturnal fair, where the poor of London bargained, haggled, and gossiped. It was an amazing spectacle, and a strange pendant for another picture that still remains with me,—Hyde Park, after church on a Sunday morning, with its beauties and “swells.”

Eight o’clock in the evening is the hour I remember best of these memorable London days. Then I would be driving through Hyde Park in a hansom beside my mother. The long twilight still held, and through the lilac haze the lamps glowed and shone as we passed an endless stream of vehicles coming from the opposite direction, filled with people going out to dine like ourselves. There were a few of the old-time coaches with two powdered, silk-stockinged footmen standing on the footboard behind, a vast number of smart broughams, but the majority like ourselves drove in hansom cabs. We caught glimpses of ladies of dazzling beauty, gentlemen immaculate in evening dress and opera hats: sometimes we recognized a friend in a swiftly passing hansom, or some celebrity. The possibilities suggested, the romances guessed, the scandals and dark secrets imagined, as hansom after hansom flashed by and eye met eye, set the heart beating, the imagination dancing. Vanity Fair! Vanity Fair! will the world ever again see anything like that London I remember?

CHAPTER XI

Rome

We reached Rome on Christmas Eve. The Corso was crowded with gaily dressed people. In a narrow side street a group of piffarari from the hills, clad like satyrs in shaggy goat skins, stood playing their pipes before a dimly lighted shrine of Mary and the Child. It was so cold in the streets that we were glad to lift the padded leathern curtain and enter the Church of St. Peter’s, sweet with the smell of incense, bright with its scores of golden lamps. The basilica was filled with people waiting for the midnight mass. A long line stood before the statue of St. Peter; each in his turn wiped the bronze toe of the saint, kissed it, wiped it again, and passed on. Just before twelve o’clock several couples came in together, the men in evening dress wearing orders, the women in ball gowns sparkling with jewels. As they passed the holy water basin, a young officer dipped his fingers and offered them to a girl in a scarlet cloak who lightly touched the gloved finger tips and crossed herself. I caught a word of their talk.

“You promised me that last dance.”

“I could not help it—Paulo was watching—you shall have the next.”

The gay company sweeps on and is lost in the vast throng of worshipers. The mass bell tinkles, all drop to their knees, heads are bowed, the silence almost hurts!

Christmas morning we lingered over the breakfast table till Marion Crawford routed us out, crying:

“Time to get ready for church—don’t be late! I am going to sing ‘The Trumpet Shall Sound’ before the sermon.”

Both Crawfords and Terrys were Protestants at this time; later Marion and two of his sisters “went over to Rome.”

At the American Church in the Via Nazionale we found a meager congregation and a colorless service, compared to midnight mass at St. Peter’s. Doctor Nevin, the Nimrod rector, did his best for his flock, but the odds against him were heavy.

“Did you notice,” Crawford murmured maliciously, “how the Reverend says, ‘Our Father who art in Nevin’?”

Palazzo Odescalchi stands on the Piazza SS. Apostoli, near the Palazzo Venezia, then the Austrian embassy. The Prince, my aunt’s landlord, occupied one floor of his palace, renting the other apartments. My room was part of a ballroom suite. It had a high vaulted ceiling and walls covered with Nile-green silk painted in arabesques with lunettes of fruit, flowers, and landscape. My aunt kept open house; one met many of the prominent people of the day in her salon. Looking back, I seem to see it like one of Paul Veronese’s pictures, crowded with vivid and elegant figures. Scraps of gossip forty years old drift back to me.

“Here comes the most beautiful woman in Rome,” some one whispers as both doors of the salon are thrown open and Giuseppe, the old majordomo, announces, “Marchesa Theodoli.”

“Yesterday a workman said to her in the street, ‘Are you the Madonna herself or one of the angels?’—An American? Oh, yes! Lily Conrad,—her face was her fortune, Theodoli married her without a dot.”

“No wonder!”

“The Theodoli” was tall and statuesque, her hair was a golden aureole about her head, her eyes fiery brown, her color ivory. It was the fashion to be in love with her. Even after she had children grown, an infatuated boy shot himself for her sake, standing before her portrait in a photographer’s studio.

“Monsignor Capel.”

Everybody turned to look at the celebrated English prelate, a fine man with “a good leg” very obvious in its long purple stocking, vigorous silver hair, and a silvery voice that somehow does not ring quite true. This was when he was at the height of his popularity, before the affair of the bracelet. Some one asked the conundrum of the hour, “Why is Monsignor Capel like Mme. Récamier?” (The proprietress of a London beauty parlor.)

“Because he makes Bute a fool (beautiful) forever.” Lord Bute was the Monsignor’s latest convert among the British aristocracy.

“The Minister of the United States.”

George Perkins Marsh, first American diplomatic representative to United Italy, was the most important American in Rome, though you would not have guessed it from his quiet manner. He looked the grave scholar he was and he talked with my mother and Crawford of matters philological, on which he was an authority. It was long after that I realized the great part he played in the history of United Italy. Years later Queen Margherita spoke of Mr. Marsh as having been the intimate friend of her father-in-law, Victor Emmanuel, and from others I have learned that he was frequently consulted and gave much help in framing the “Statuto” as the Italian Constitution is called.

One keen memory of my first winter in Rome is of a morning spent in the Forum with Crawford and Augustus Hare, who was at work on his incomparable “Hare’s Walks.” He had brought with him a copy of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”, and as we sat on the steps of the Basilica Julio, he read aloud Marc Antony’s oration.

“Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears!” How the words echoed in that place!

My last impression of Augustus Hare is of an evening in the red drawing-room of the Odescalchi, when he told ghost stories till my blood ran cold. He was a slender, sallow man, with a baleful face, and when, in the firelight of the darkened room, he ended a ghastly tale with “A ball of flame broke from his lips!” it seemed as if a ball of fire actually leaped from his! There was something intensely repellent to me about Hare, and of this he was instantly conscious.

“Your cousin cannot endure me,” he said to Crawford; “I make her flesh creep. She is telling your sister about it at this moment,”—and I was!

The Abbé Liszt, who was the guest of Cardinal Hohenlohe at the Villa D’Este, was much in evidence that winter and from time to time consented to play at some benefit concert. He was a commanding figure as he sat at the piano, very elegant in his clerical dress, playing his “Rhapsodic Hongroise” as I have never heard it played. After the concert a group of ladies surrounded him. The Abbé dropped a glove; a young Neapolitan princess picked it up and hid it in her muff.

“The ladies cost the Abbé a pretty penny in gloves,” whispered Crawford.

At this time Crawford was called Frank, or sometimes Fritz, a nickname given him in Germany, either at Heidelberg or at Lesnian, the home of his Junker brother-in-law, Eric von Rabé, an officer of the Franco-Prussian War. Crawford was twenty-four years old, a tall, strong, handsome young man, with no serious pursuit save the study of languages. He had plenty of time to devote to my mother and me; to him I owe my introduction to medieval and ancient Rome, with much else that has proved useful. In a letter of this time he writes to me: