Three generations

[To my Mother.]

Rome, April 10, 1900. This will be, I believe, my last Eastertide in Rome. It is a restless time, floods and floods of people from home. Other kinds of floods too; the rainy season has been unspeakable. Great fear for the crops. The Tiber is higher than I ever saw it. J. says if it were not for the embankment, people would be rowing about in the Piazza del Popolo as he once saw them when the Tiber overflowed. Life is full and interesting, with more delightful strangers in town than we can do justice to. The Thomas Bailey Aldriches are here. I had one good talk with him; he is as enchanting as ever, though not looking very strong. Mrs. Aldrich came to my reception, bringing one of the twins with her. I met the Vernon Harcourts at lunch on Sunday at the Embassy. His talk about the political situation was illuminating. She asked about you and wished to be remembered.

May 30, 1900. J. sent off the drawings of General Wauchope, Marquis of Winchester and Duke of Cambridge in the British Embassy bag to Mrs. Hope. Villegas and the Signora called to take farewell. They are off for Seville day after to-morrow. Only two months more of our Roman palace; we begin to feel the tug of parting. The Easter lilies are all in bloom. Miss Kemp buys plants from the terrace for four hundred and twenty-one francs. This, with one hundred and fifty from Mr. Bagot, for the roses, is quite a sum to pull off our terrace.

May 31, 1900. J. wrote careful explanatory letters to Mrs. Hope (Lady Lansdowne’s secretary) and to Hamilton Aïdé about the drawings. A long visit to Miss Leigh Smith, who showed me a London paper with a report of your having spoken at some public meeting for the English. Miss L. S. pleased you should have come out strong for her people, I more pleased to learn you were stirring about and making speeches on your eighty-first birthday.

June 2, 1900. The plants sold Miss Kemp have been taken downstairs. It has been a dreadful day to me. The lovely things were ruthlessly torn from their home and carried down the long stairs—it has made me almost ill. Six tall spirea in full bloom, four boxes of pink ivy geranium, two large azaleas, two giant honeysuckles (one J. dug up at the Villa Madama in the face of an angry bull), four wistaria, thirty-six chrysanthemums, two rhododendrons, nine coral geraniums.

June 4, 1900. Saw Miss Kemp and our lovely plants in their new home. Terrace pulled together but much reduced; half its front teeth are missing. To see de Musset’s “Lorenzacchio”, with Zacconi. A slow dragging drama in five acts with great poetic quality but crudely put together. Only a first-rate actor could have made it “go” at all. Visit to the studio from Miss Wauchope, the sister of the General, and her friend Miss Tesiger, daughter of the Lord Chancellor. Miss Wauchope spoke in the warmest way of J.’s portrait of her brother. Said it was inspired and far the best thing ever made of him. Mr. Leech thought he might like to buy the remaining honeysuckles, but found them too big. Decide to give Miss Kemp the seventeen ivies, as they are hardly saleable in pots, but will do finely in the ground, and their future will be assured in a good garden. Have combined with Ignazio, our gardener, to take care of Miss K.’s garden for thirty francs a month. Quite a comfort; the dear plants will be well cared for by him, who more than any one else helped J. create our paradise. Sent to the auction room much roba,—better to sell it for a few francs than to pay for packing and shipping.

June 5, 1900. The de Stirums want plants from the terrace for thirty-four francs, Jessie Cochrane for one hundred; this brings up the plant sales to six hundred and seventy francs. The gardenias are astonishing, finer than ever before. J. has given the two big honeysuckles and the passion flower to Boni to set out in the Roman Forum. This is consoling.

June 9, 1900. Last evening at eight o’clock came a messenger from the Marchese Guiccioli, chamberlain of the Queen, with the news that the royal lady would come to the studio the next day at six in the afternoon. Great excitement in casa Elliott. Early in the morning we raided the Villegas villa for flowers and borrowed Lorenzo, their handy man, to come help put the studio to rights. I dreamed of a crimson carpet hired for the event and palms to redeem the grim entrance in the rear of the old Palazzo Giraud-Torlonia, but J. said:

“No. She is quite accustomed to going to artists’ studios and finding them as they are.”

Perhaps he was right, but I hankered for the crimson carpet. The little outer studio was made neat and a corner of the great barn itself looked brave with our big rug, the gold screens, a few good chairs and the Portuguese leather armchair you always sat in. J. asked Lord Currie to come and help do the honors. He was there promptly at half-past five. We were all three in waiting at the shabby old green door when the royal carriage with the scarlet liveries drew up. Lord Currie handed out the Queen, saying,

“It gives me great pleasure to present my compatriot to your Majesty.”

The Queen took the long flights of stairs easily, her lady-in-waiting, the Duchess Massimo, panting behind. The Queen was delighted with the work and looked at it from every point of view. She asked for the sketches, studied them and asked many questions about the building, the light, etc. She looked at every little drawing in the studio, laughing heartily at the portrait of the Duke of Cambridge, exclaiming:

“It is the old man to the very life.”

The visit lasted half an hour and was as friendly and easy as heart could desire. The visitors departed in a blaze of scarlet and gold lace, with congratulations and farewells. Lord Currie said that the Queen had been really interested in the work. She certainly said things to me that were pleasant to hear.

July 4, 1900. Left Naples where we have been having a little outing and returned to Rome, arriving at two o’clock. I tried to find some Americans to foregather with, but there was no reception anywhere. Left cards at the Iddings, out of town for the day at Frascati. If I had not been away from Rome, I should myself have given a Glorious Fourth tea. Saw the dear flag over Iddings’ door and had a little drive with Mr. Richard Greenough.

The Chinese horror (the Boxer Rebellion) hangs heavy on us all. I doubt if a single European escapes from Pekin, or indeed from China. Their doom is sealed,—the opium traders seem to be responsible for it all.

July 6, 1900. The Chinese horror confirmed. Last night came news that all the Legations and the men, women and children had been destroyed, the Empress Dowager and the Emperor forced to take poison. There are said to be one hundred thousand Christian converts. If true, I look with intense interest to see if Christianity retains its leaven. Strange if our religion should spread and conquer this stubborn old race. It will certainly count for something in the coming struggle.—Mr. and Mrs. Iddings and Mimo (Mrs. Hugh Fraser) to dine. She is very fascinating. She told us much of Pekin. She has lived at the Embassy and knew many of the people butchered there. I can think of little else.

July 13, 1900. Yesterday came Miss Mason of the Castle School at Tarry town with six or seven jolly American girls from Texas, Missouri, etc. They spent an hour at the studio. Miss Mason told me that she had heard Bishop Potter describe J.’s “Triumph of Time” in a sermon and that she could not leave Rome without seeing the picture.

July 14, 1900. While we sat at dinner a messenger from the Casa Reale was announced. We had a guest dining with us. J. went out and stayed for some time. He came back with a letter in his hand from the Marchesa Villamarina, who wrote “in the name of her august Majesty” asking him to accept the accompanying jewel for his wife in memory of her visit to the studio. He handed me a box wrapped in soft white paper, saying, “I fancy this is for you.”

I opened it and found a medallion of blue enamel with M, the Queen’s initial, set in diamonds on one side, on the reverse the royal coat of arms, the whole encircled with diamonds and set swinging from a bar pin of platinum and brilliants. A very beautiful jewel.

July 27, 1900. A vast American pilgrimage is now in possession of the city. The pilgrims brought a great sum of money as their present to the Pope. They drive about the city all day in cabs and landaus, four and five inside and a female on the box beside the coachman. The Romans stare; such a sight as a woman on the box they never saw. Seeing the American Roman Catholics in such large numbers one recognizes a composite type, very unlike the typical clean-cut New Englander.

Rome, August 2, 1900. The King is dead, long live the King! The little new King, Victor Emmanuel III, has made so far a favorable impression by the deep feeling he has shown. He got the news of his father’s murder on his yacht, cruising with his young wife, the Montenegrin Princess, in southern waters below Brindisi, and hurried directly to Monza in Piedmont. Both the young people are reported as having cried themselves sick. The King refused to see all officials and ministers and rushed through Naples and Rome on his special train. At Naples, when he heard that Crispi was waiting in the station, he sent for him. The old man, very feeble, was brought into the carriage and the two sobbed together. A letter was handed him from the Queen directed simply “A mio figlio”; I suppose she could not so soon give him his new title. She sent word to the lady to whom poor Umberto had been attached for many years that she might come and see the body at Monza. The bearing and behavior of the Romans is admirable. I had looked for excess and hysteria. The contrary has prevailed. The people are deeply moved; there is a sombre hush everywhere, a decent, reserved mourning, more what one would expect in England than Italy. Great indignation is felt about the impunity with which two Italian newspapers, published in Paterson, New Jersey, where the murderer had lived, have advocated the murder of all rulers, especially the King of Italy. Surely such sheets should not be allowed and the authorities should have knowledge of what is printed in the papers, whether in Italian, Yiddish or English. Nothing yet announced of the funeral ceremonies or for the installation of the new king. I shall see all I can of these events. Strange, I saw the great Victor Emmanuel alive, I saw him dead and lying in state in the capella ardente, at the Quirinal; I saw Umberto when the troops took the oath of allegiance twenty-two years ago, and now I shall probably see him dead and his son take the oath to support the Constitution. The anarchist programme does seem to be having a measure of success. It looks as if the plan to make the thrones of Europe so hot that no royalty will sit upon them was succeeding.

Both the Prefect of Monza and his own court entourage had objected to Umberto’s going to the festa at Monza, where he was killed, as there was a general sense of uneasiness, but he was one of those mortals who seem to be absolutely without fear, as brave a man as ever lived. Courage, honesty, simplicity were his chief characteristics. Whenever there was a serious fire, a bad accident, a public disaster of any sort, he was sure to be on the spot among the first. The Chief of Police told me that once,

when there was a terrible fire, he found the King among the vigiles (firemen), giving orders and helping generally in a most dangerous place, where a wall was on the point of crumbling that might have fallen and crushed him. The Capo remonstrated with the King and begged him to go away. The King refused; he liked the active stir and rush and being able to do something besides planning and thinking, which were not in his line. Then the Capo said:

“Majesty, perhaps you have a right to risk your life, but have you the right to risk ruining me?” The King saw the justice of the plea and sadly retired to his palace. He has looked old and worried lately and above all puzzled. He wanted so much to do the right thing, but did not seem to know how to do it. I believe now he has gone that account will be taken of the giant strides Italy has made during his reign and that he will be found to have been a more significant figure than his critics have realized.

August 5, 1900. It was lumbago. How did you hear about it? Who do you suppose cured me? Henry James. He came to lunch one day early in July. I managed to struggle into an armchair and sit at table. Before he left he told me he had suffered much from this devil and that he had found the only cure for it “perspiration!” only he didn’t use that vulgar word of course; this is what he did say:

“Believe me, dear lady, there is but one cure for lumbago,—transpiration, transpiration. Only transpire freely enough, and it disappears, but alas! it is a malady that returns.”

After he had left with J. I managed to crawl up to the terrace at four o’clock of a broiling July afternoon, found an old broom, and while the heat was positively grilling, swept the terrace from end to end. I got into a perfect bath of “transpiration”, rolled into bed where I gradually cooled off, slept like a top and awoke next day cured.

August 6, 1900. Grave news. The two big canvases have been taken off the stretchers and rolled up. The engineer of the palace forbade J. remaining longer in his studio. The cracks in the walls have been growing wider and wider. The engineer said, and Boni bore him out, that there was danger the roof might fall in any day and destroy both artist and pictures.

August 14, 1900. The packers come to-morrow at nine for the big pictures. They will be shipped August 21st on the Anchor Line steamer Bolivia and will be three weeks reaching Boston. To dine with the Dutch Secretary, de Stirum, who has taken John Loudon’s place. Met the Danish minister who told me that there really are grounds for hoping the Legations (at Pekin) are safe. If this is true, the newspaper correspondents who sent the despatches with the horrid details of the supposed murders ought to have some of the tortures they invented practiced on themselves. Mme. de Lucca (she was Miss Kennedy of New Orleans) the mother of one of the Italian secretaries at Pekin, met me in the street the other day. I suppose my face showed the sympathy I felt for her, as the morning papers stated that all the people at the Legations had been killed.

“Why do you look at me like that?” she asked. “Don’t you suppose I should know if my son were dead? He is perfectly well and safe!”

August 20, 1900. J. decides he wants to go to Oberammergau for the Passion Play. We got right to work at closing up, and shall work like Indians till the last minute. The real hot weather began about mid-July and has kept up steadily. No terrible days like those in Seville where the mercury this month goes up to 110, but a dead level of 85, rising to 90. Nights always cool with a sea breeze coming up about ten o’clock. We dine on the terrace; at night the loss of the flowers does not trouble us. There is always a jug of iced lemonade for callers; as our terrace is voted the coolest place in Rome, we are popular and keep late hours, making up for it next day by the inevitable siesta from one to three. In the shadow of St. Peter’s Dome we watch the constellations march across the sky and think of you at home, looking at the same old Cassiopeia from the piazza at Oak Glen.

Lamb House,
Rye.

August 2d, 1901.

My dear Maud Elliott.

Your beautiful Newport (if Newport I may call it) letter greatly touches and interests me, and the effect of it is enhanced or confirmed by the arrival almost at the same moment of the pale photographic reminder and pale, though not wholly ineffectual, of the monumental composition. All thanks for everything, and most of all for the friendly remembrance that has dictated them. It is a great pleasure, a great pride, for me to possess the dim shadows of the picture, and, shadows though they be, I shall suspend the most substantial on one of my little room-walls, where it will keep constantly in memory for me those too few weeks in Rome, more than two years ago, when I assisted a little at the glorious but difficult birth and since I am afraid I shall never see the great canvas itself in place. And your letter is full of other echoes too and of a further-away past and a prior state, almost, of being; so extremely does your description of your soft grey day in that unforgotten Clime bring the whole place and air and feeling back to me, and transport me to my long-vanished youth, or put it again before me. I am delighted you have so mildly-melancholy a refuge from the rather screwed-up American summer. We read awful things of heat-waves over here, but I hope you successfully oppose them with the waves of the sea, since you suggest that you lead more or less an amphibious life. We have moreover our own heat-waves here, overwhelming enough (the globe surely is being resolved again into its primal ball-of-fire condition), and without any sea-change for me, whom salt-water afflicts and distance (the shining sands are 3 miles off) discourages. I greatly regret to hear of your mother’s failure of health; it must be a comfort for you—as such comforts go—to be able to be with her. She must indeed be grand, and above all strongly fortified. May she long, may she subtly, and not too painfully, resist! I venture to send her the benediction of my sincerity. Your best news is that of your possible appearance here at no distant date. Of course Elliott must go back to Rome and of course the chance will come and the situation reconstitute itself. Tell him, please, with my kind regards, that I put up for you both that friendliest prayer. And don’t wait too long; I want to see you there again; and my sands are running low. But I want to see you here too, and I should warmly welcome you.[4] Keep up your heart, dear Maud Elliott, and believe in the extreme constancy of your affectionate old friend

Henry James.

January 2. Last evening to an original festivity arranged by the Saturday Morning Club. All the dresses were of the styles worn between 1800 and 1880. The prettiest was a tulle ball dress of 1859 worn over a large crinoline; the ugliest one a magenta silk of about 1870 with a ruffled train and an enormous bustle.

The papers are full of stories of old people who have lived in three centuries; we who were born in the fifties haven’t that chance.

January 7. Gave a talk upon my Roman experiences before the New England Woman’s Club. I sounded a blast for the American School for Classical Study in Rome and for Richard Norton, who made it the vital place it now is. The school was dead-alive till he took it, breathed upon it and made it alive with his life. A greater transformation I never saw, nor a more striking illustration of how a man can work his vitality into a stodgy institution like yeast into heavy dough, and see it rise, almost overnight.

[To my Mother.]

Athens, March 29. We arrived yesterday at Piraeus, more dead than alive, on the Prince Abbas, a cockleshell that brought us from Alexandria. Things are no better to-day on the Mediterranean boats than when Lord Byron made his memorable trip on board the Lisbon packet! Mr. Cook, or his agent, plucked us and our baggage out of that dark hold where we had languished many days and seated us, a demoralized party, in a comfortable landau. We each drooped languidly in our corner, our spines damp macaroni. Gradually limp vertebrae stiffened up, heads lifted, eyes opened. We were restored by the elixir of the air, the color of the sky and fields. At a turn in the road, before we were quite prepared for it, came the first view of the Acropolis. Half a lifetime had passed since I had left it, and it has only grown in beauty. Athens is much improved. The roads are better, the streets cleaner, the whole city better kept than I remembered it. The people look prosperous; there is a general air of well-being in all classes.

We hurried to the Acropolis, where we found the old immortal glories and much that was new and interesting in the small museum behind the Parthenon. The two most precious objects of Greek art which the last twenty years’ research has brought to light, you are familiar with,—the Victory untying her sandal and the Hermes of Olympia. The museum contains curious archaic statues discovered buried in a deep trench. The theory is that in the age of Pericles and the consummate art of the sculptors of that time, these earlier sacred statues of earthenware and painted stone were dethroned and decorously interred in the sacred soil of the Acropolis. It does seem a little shabby to unearth these poor discarded gods and tuck them away as curiosities in a little shed behind the temple of Athena Parthena, where they once reigned supreme! We sat on the steps of the Parthenon and watched the sky change from blue to purple and gold, waiting for the moment when the violet mist rose up out of the sea and draped Mount Hymettus with a veil.

My audience with Queen Olga was rather sad. The palace was positively shabby and badly in need of fresh paint. The Queen was kind and gracious. She had been well coached for the visit and spoke of what Greece owes to Papa. In spite of all this, I took away a melancholy impression, the Queen seemed so grave and preoccupied. She was tastefully dressed in heliotrope serge with amethyst ornaments of the same color. I learned afterwards that she has lately had a trying experience. As an act of devotion she had a new translation of the Greek Scriptures made at her own expense by eminent scholars, inspired doubtless by the English revised edition of the Bible. This act of grace was taken very ill by the people, and she was made to feel their displeasure bitterly. The Crown Princess, the Kaiser’s sister, is more popular.

The Richardsons at the American School of Archaeology were most kind and told us of the latest amazing discoveries. Dr. Evans, an Englishman, has found in Crete the palace of the Minotaur, that must have been four stories in height. We saw at the Museum some of the small gold double axes and the beautiful gold Vappie cups found there. Miss Boyd, an American girl, has discovered and excavated a prehistoric village in Crete. It was cruel we could only stay a matter of days in Greece when there is so much of absorbing interest to see and learn!

Ye Miller of Manchester, Goring, England, June 30, 1902. The disappointment of the postponement of the Coronation fêtes on account of King Edward’s illness was so dire that to compensate I brought my young people to this lovely spot. The inn is like one on the stage, with tiny diamond-paned windows, climbing roses and honeysuckles. The life is of the waterside; all the hours when we are not asleep are passed in boats, canoes or punts. ’Tis the most beautiful bit of the Thames I have seen. To-day is gloriously filled by the joyous vitality of the two young creatures, who are drinking deep from the cup of life. It is very stimulating to go about with them; my bones are being well rattled and I hope I am getting very much up to date. If you haven’t young people of your own, you must borrow them from time to time or fall hopelessly out of the running.

Cornish, New Hampshire, August 15, 1903. In spite of the untold tedium of rainy days, doubtless no more here than elsewhere, we are in an ecstasy over the beauty of this place. I never could describe the world I see from this hilltop. The mountain opposite is a sort of Fujiyama; people become magnetized by its beauty. Every morning we watch for the moment when the veil of mist is dropped and the dark-blue beauty of Mount Ascutney shines out on us. I am reading with deep interest William James’ “Varieties of Religious Experience.” Very illuminating and coördinating to my mixed and scattered thoughts. Nothing new yet, even to me, but the orderliness of the ideas is useful. Yesterday Clara Potter Davidge (one of the Bishop’s twins) called; we are to have supper with her to-night, and to-morrow with St. Gaudens. The people here are all painters, sculptors or “literary fellers.” Lucia Fuller comes back to-morrow. Her house is picturesque, her children ditto.

Cornish, September 5. We are working away on our hilltop. I have finished another Roman paper. At last J. has found a place in America where he can work. He is doing a good many landscapes. The beauty of Cornish is not believable. It is like Italy. I look out upon a scene I call the Val d’Arno, it is so like the part of the Arno one sees from above Florence. The atmosphere of work counts for something too. We don’t see people much, for they all, like ourselves, are “grind-stoning” away. All are kind as kind, however, willing and anxious to be friendly. Newport has given me such a horror of summer society—not the dear Papeterie, nor our cronies, but the big Newport—that it is stimulating to be among people of our own sort who observe as a sacred commandment the rule that nobody goes to anybody else’s house till four or five in the afternoon. Sherman Jordan, the stone mason, is a slow giant who only works when he feels like it, an enormous Hercules of a man who could fell an ox with his fist. He speaks in a high silly voice that is enough to make you scream with laughter.

“Why didn’t you come to finish laying that wall to-day?” J. asked him.

“Because I did not feel very well,” he said. Speaking of Winston Churchill, who is much in the public eye, Jordan said:

“Mr. Churchill is very tony; he has an automobile that scares the hosses to death and he drives tantrums (tandem) besides.”

I remember the early years of the new century as a time of inspiration; the spirit of hope was abroad, the whole world seemed to have received a new impulse; good resolutions blossomed into good works. Men felt their strength to be as the strength of ten, and women that the twentieth century was theirs as no other had ever been. Like everybody else, I felt the impetus and finally finished, in collaboration with my sister Florence Hall, our long-delayed book, “Dr. Howe and his Famous Pupil, Laura Bridgman.”

[To my Mother.]

January 9, 1904. Twenty-eight years ago to-day Papa died. For the first time since I began to work on the Laura Bridgman book, I can think of the day without smiting myself. Now another stunt will be to see that a statue, or some appropriate monument, is set up to his memory. I suppose one might trust his grandchildren, but I remember your old slogan:

“If you want a thing done you must do it yourself.”

I am tearing away at my Roman papers; they are acting like the devil. I may have to go to Margaret Deland to consult about them. I seemed to get a fine start; now the work grows stodgy, dull, soulless! Have had a letter from the Century, accepting my “St. John’s Eve in Rome” and offering me $100 for it. I have finished another paper for the Lippincotts; that will make five.

[From Henry James.]

Lamb House, Rye, Sussex,
November 9th, 1903.

My dear Maud Howe.

There is a process known as heaping coals of fire, of which you are past mistress, and I uncover my poor old bald head to it, and kneel before you abjectly and take all you will give me. This A.M. comes to me your book and your sister’s, about your illustrious father and Laura Bridgman, and the generosity of it leaves me so touched and confused that I scarce know where to look or what to do. I daresay you are generous enough perhaps not to remember that you sent me months and months ago another book, a book of verse (by some hand not known to me, or apparently much known to you) and that this offering was basely never acknowledged, though it was accompanied by the kindest of notes, and though I have been helplessly meaning to until this hour. It is the thought of my baseness that makes me beat my breast and bless your charity now. The source of evil was the embarrassing little book of verse. I couldn’t read it and by no fault, doubtless of its own, and I was shy of telling you I couldn’t, and I thought that by waiting I might be able to say, brazenly, I had; and then with this, waited so long that I was ashamed to say anything, there seemed so much to explain and such a mountain to lift, and it all came from my not writing the very day with the wisdom of the serpent to say I was going, as soon as possible to devour the graceful volume; which I didn’t do really, because that is what one does to the importunate and the intruder, and you were such millions of miles from either. Now, somehow, you cheer me up, and I don’t mind being brazen about anything. I have already been looking into Laura B., of whom you make a wondrous tale and who shines out as pathetically human through her strange prison bars. It is among other things a most curious and characteristic American document. I like immensely your aunt’s story of the girl’s feeling for her rings, bracelets, etc. and finding none, and saying luminously, “Poor?” and then, when she did find her earrings, exclaiming promptly, “Vain!” “Poor but vain!” is a delightful verdict from such a source. I wish your solid book a large success.—For the rest, I am afraid that I have done nothing more distinct or definite (for the page of history) since that evening of so long ago at the Henry Harlands, but hope and pray that the chance might be given me of meeting you again. But you haven’t come, and though I think I have vaguely heard of your being again in Europe, I have fully lost track of you and the waters have closed over the question. I am a very rusty country cousin now, as far as the terrible London of the early summer is concerned. I put in each year 3 or 4 winter months, but I flee when the season begins, like some great dangerous beast, ominously to growl.

November 3rd. I blush to confess to this length of interval. I was obliged to break off this unfinished apology for something better and before I could resume it again I was obliged to go for several days up to town. Hence endless complications and further interruptions and delays. But meanwhile I have been reading further your Laura Bridgman, which has not only brought back a hundred old recollections and reverberations to me, things of the past, images and persons, which I more or less perceivingly knew about then, but has freshly reconstituted for me your father’s high distinction and the greatness of his beneficent career. When you last wrote me you told me of your mother and of her continued triumph over time. I hope it is even yet not seriously menaced, and I beg to be recalled to her indulgent remembrance. Your husband has my best wishes for whatever of beautiful and slow he may have in hand. To which I must add my goodnight before I am again interrupted and despoiled of the last tatters of what has tried to be the reparatory promptness of yours very constantly,

Henry James.

[From Theodore Roosevelt.]

White House,
Washington.
October 29, 1903.

My dear Mrs. Elliott:

I shall read the book with the greatest interest and refresh my memory of the story. I have always felt peculiarly drawn to your family, and I appreciate the compliment of receiving such a book from your father’s daughter.

Sincerely yours,
Theodore Roosevelt.

September 3, 1905. How dreadful the news of the Russo-Japanese War. I seem to be the only person who is for Russia. Every one I meet says,

“Plucky little Japan!”

But Russia is Christian and her people are white, and Tolstoi is Russian. I suppose in the eternal verities it is all right, and that out of her humiliation a new life will spring for Russia. I am dreadfully sorry for both peoples; the loss of life is so inhuman that it makes the Boer War seem like child’s play.

Cordova, Spain, December 18, 1905. The great mosque of Cordova is one of the wonders of the world. It represents the finest religious architecture left by the Moors, as the Alhambra is the finest monument of their secular architecture. It was rather late and the light was not good, but the impression was one of surprising beauty. The forest of columns of alabaster and every kind of precious marble brought back your lines:

Columns that demurely paired guard the solemn aisles!

Spain seems two hundred years behind Italy. Already I feel I am getting some understanding of this strange race. The racial type, after the Egyptian, is the strongest I have seen; there are a few varieties often repeated. I fancy there has been little intermarriage with other races, for the dominant traits do not seem to have changed since the time of Philip II. I see him everywhere! The people all look like Velasquez portraits. The gravity, the politeness, the pride all weigh upon one like tangible atmospheric conditions. Such manners I have not seen, even in France; honesty, cleanliness, sobriety, seem common virtues.

In Seville I had a wonderful morning in the cathedral, where I heard High Mass with both organs pealing grandly and such a choir! It was very moving to stand beside the sarcophagus that it is claimed actually holds the ashes of Columbus and to remember that we had seen both in Santo Domingo and in Havana, the places where his bones formerly lay!—Found your letter here. What a gay time you have had lately. “First in fun, first in sport, first in the heart of her familee.”

Madrid, December 21, 1905. Our good friends, Villegas and Lucia, met us at the train and brought us to their house, bag and baggage, scrip and scrippage, typewriter too. We have an alcove room with an open fire where we burn olive wood. Lucia’s housekeeping is a fine art, the most perfect neatness imaginable. The cook they brought with them from Rome gives us the dear old Italian dishes; the Spanish cooking is good but deadly rich. Here’s the best recipe for “left-overs” I know. Take whatever scraps of meat, poultry and fish you have and bake them in a foundation of rice, olives and tomatoes, slightly flavoured with onion. It sounds incredible, it is delicious.

Christmas was a nice bright day. I wanted to go to Mass, but the English doctor, called in for a slight cold, forbade it. There is a lot of influenza and some smallpox in the city. In a family where there is illness the old women and the children are sent to church to pray for the sick person, and so the contagion is spread.

In the evening, Rosilio, the painter who followed Villegas from Spain to Italy and has now followed him back from Rome to Madrid, came to greet us. When J. first knew him in Rome he was a lad of twenty, with a divine tenor voice. Rosilio, like Villegas, is an Andalusian, the race that has inherited most of the art and feeling of the Moor. In Rome R. used to be pounced upon by the other artists of the Spanish colony and made to sing Spanish songs, Andalusian ballads, Zingari ditties. His listeners were torn by homesickness and moved to tears by his songs. Now a strange thing has happened. With the translation of Villegas, the leading spirit of the group, to Spain, the colony broke up and many of them followed Villegas to Madrid. Now the tables are turned; the homesickness is for Rome. Last night Rosilio was called upon for song after song in the soft Roman dialect; he is a nightingale and sang the tears into my eyes and the heart into my throat!

Among the habitués of the house is Don Antonio Weyler, son of General Weyler, once military governor of Cuba. Until recently the General has been the Secretary of War, but with the change of government is now out of office. Antonio has adopted us and we call him “the key” because he seems able to open all manner of locked doors to us. He intends to enter the Church,—the call seems to be more a political than a spiritual one, as he wishes to devote himself to diplomacy. His model seems to be our old friend, Monsignor Merry del Val, who is now Secretary of the State to the Pope.

December 30, 1905. J. is posing for the figure of the King of Spain in the wonderful portrait Villegas is making of Don Alfonso. He looks very nice in the court suit with the little dress sword and the order of the garter. This has only just been awarded to the King, and J. wore it to pose in, before Don Alfonso himself ever put it on. Yesterday his leg went to sleep—the King’s breeches are woefully tight for him—and nearly fell off the model table, spraining his finger. The King will hardly sit at all for the portrait and so J. sits or rather stands. The pose is a killing one, which accounts for the downfall.

“The King, the King,” Villegas kept grumbling, “he can go hunting and amusing himself all the time, and I must stay and work on his picture, about which he doesn’t care enough to give me a decent number of sittings!”

“A hundred years from now who will know or care that the King went hunting?” I said to Villegas; “and how many people will be glad that you stayed at home and worked on his picture?”

He went back to his work, comforted as a child who has been coaxed into good humor. Villegas has an itch for work as compelling as that of Brother Harry or any other over-nerved Yankee. He is never satisfied with what he paints, always falling short of his ideal and agonizing at the failure all the world applauds as a success. He greatly enjoys his position as Director of the Prado Museum and Court Painter.

Naples, June 16, 1906. Steamship Schleswig. The outline of Vesuvius is sadly altered; instead of the one great peak you remember there are two gentler ones, twins as it were. This startling change took place at the time of the late eruption, when ships in the Bay of Naples were covered with fine dust like that which destroyed Pompeii, and the splendid peak of the mountain simply crumpled up and disappeared.

Rome, August 24, 1906. Here is a petal of the great Egyptian lotus that has for days past bloomed in the salon and delighted our eyes. It grew in the lake of the Villa Doria and was brought to me by our old gardener, Ignazio. He is the same lean brown faun you remember. He welcomed us back to Rome so prettily and hoped we would have a terrace or a garden and that he might minister to it. He confessed that in all his days no terrace like the Rusticucci had he ever seen.

To-day J. had a great pleasure. Enrico Coleman has been doing some of his finest work this summer, but has had no luck, has not sold a picture for a long time and is in the worst way for money. J. got him to send us his summer sketches—a wonderful showing—twenty landscapes, each handsomer than the other. J. knew that the fellows at the British Embassy had just made up a purse to buy one of their colleagues a wedding gift. He got them over here, showed them the pictures, and it ended by settling the question of the wedding present,—it won’t be silver or furniture but a lovely painting of the Roman campagna with a bit of the aqueduct. Then one of the young secretaries wanted a picture for himself, and there were two sold. A third may be bought by a young spark named Paliaret, or as we call him, Pantelet! J. went to Coleman with the news. The old fellow was rather torn at hearing it, said there was no money in the house, and had not been for days. He felt insulted at the word “subscription”, thought there had been one to buy his picture, whereas it was made to buy the wedding present and, as one of the young men expressed it, “collared the bood” for him.

Yesterday to hear a lecture and see an amazing chart of the Italian telegraph system, prepared by an American company that is trying to induce the Government to accept its system of telegraphy, the quadruplex, the best yet, according to my friend who has the matter in hand. When he asked the Italian Government for a map of its wires, he was told such a thing did not exist and could not be made. My Yankee friend promptly made the map and presented it to the Government. The occasion was instructive though I found my friend’s lecture dry. It now looks as if the Italians would adopt this new American telegraph system. How pleasant it is to find every day the American genius reaching out farther and farther. Mr. Vickers, an English diplomat, told me a curious thing; in a remote Greek country town he found American dollar bills circulated as currency; all the inhabitants have relations in the United States who send them money!

I am rather cross with the President for sending the Harry Whites to Paris. They have gone to great trouble and expense to fit up an Embassy magnificently, and before they have time to turn round in it, they are whisked off to France. I hear the Whites are much put out by this treatment. The man who is coming as next Ambassador, young Lloyd Griscom, is a nice fellow, I believe, with a young handsome wife.

Rome, Via Maria Adelaide, October 27, 1906. You see a new address on this letter, did I tell you we had taken a nice little apartment with a terrace? Not a patch on the Rusticucci, of course, but with some improvements,—an elevator in the house, an up-to-date bathroom, tiled floors, instead of brick, consequently no fleas. I have but to turn my head to see out of the window my great friend, St. Peter’s dome, with a pink morning flush upon it. I have counted the wash, must see the cook, and be off to the Classical School where I am taking a course of lectures on Roman History, or rather the history of Rome—not quite the same thing.

Rome, November 16, 1907. The most important thing since our return has been the improvement of the terrace. The long summer had not hurt the beginnings of our roof garden and now we are much excited over our bulbs. The flowers “lap”, you know, in this blessed country. There are seven fine chrysanthemums in bloom and two cyclamens; we have high hopes of jonquils and hyacinths. The most interesting fact I have to tell you after the flower news is that the new American Ambassadress, Mrs. Lloyd Griscom, née Elsa Bronson, is a diamond of the first water. She is a lovely young woman full of ardor and charm.

Rome, November 28, 1907. To-day to Thanksgiving dinner at the American School. We sat down forty-one at table. Lloyd Griscom, the new Ambassador, was there, just back from a flying trip to America. It took him seven and one half days to get from Washington to Rome. He calls it the record trip. So we aren’t so far apart, are we?

In the apartment below us lives Mme. Rubinstein, widow of the Russian composer—do you remember our hearing him play when he came to Boston? To-night she has a man with a stupendous baritone voice singing Russian folk songs. After a Cecilia concert lately I told her how well Sgambati had played something of her husband’s. She wept with pleasure and exclaimed,

“They have forgotten him too much; it is long, long since they have given any of his glorious compositions.”

At twilight we sometimes hear her softly playing her husband’s music; as she never practices and only rarely plays, her piano is a pleasure not a pest.

Rome, December 29, 1907. You will feel dear Minnie Pratt’s death very much. She was a fine soul, but she was one, I think, who would not have been very happy as an old person—we are not all “built that way.” I think of her as always young and sparkling. Bell and Pratt no longer. What will become of the twin who is left?

Marion Crawford had been very devoted lately—darling old fellow, for he seems very old. He comes up to Rome a good deal and always comes to see us. He wrote a nice Christmas letter and sent me a calendar, and for luck, a ball of red string with all sorts of warnings about it; you must not throw it away, you must keep every scrap not used or light a candle with it; he really is superstitious! He does not forgive A.; he told me the other day that he never forgot the way you “flew at her like a wildcat in his mother’s defence.” Curious what things stick; he adores you for that flash of the cold greys!

On Christmas Eve J. brought home vast branches of holly to put round your portrait by Villegas in the dining room. Just below we arranged and decorated a group of the family portraits on a table. This made our festa pleasant and ancestral. The custom of adorning the family effigies comes to us from the ancient Romans. In the early days before the Greek gods came into Italy, they had practically only ancestor worship, in a spirit quite like that of the Japanese to-day.

I read my Outlook faithfully. It does not give altogether an accurate view of things at home; what publication does? It is on the right side of enthusiastic optimism, however, and that is the best reading for American exiles.

Rome, January 6, 1908. The festas are not yet over. To-day is the feast of the Epiphany, Twelfth Night. I do hope and believe the last of the Christmas fêtes. It is a trying time; everybody you want to do any work for you is completely demoralized; the laborers will not labor, and the servants are forever gadding. It would be a good thing for Italy if these long holiday rites of junketing and idleness could be shortened. It isn’t that the people do anything disorderly or wrong, they just don’t do anything but amuse themselves. At home we keep adding new holidays—fatal policy! Last night being the eve of the Befana, we went over to the Piazza Navona to see the fun, and buy toys for the porter’s children. The piazza was lined with booths with toys and goodies for sale; the fun was fast and furious and I must confess quite innocent. Nobody gets drunk and there is no brawling, only bedlam of tin trumpets and other festive noises. Befana is to the children here what Christmas is at home. Christmas is little made of save as one of the great feasts of the Church. New Year is the day for the exchange of presents and felicitations among “grown ups”, and Befana for children. Befana is an old woman for whose coming the children hang up their stockings beside the kitchen fireplaces as we do for St. Nicholas.

March 4, 1908. Spring looked at us and then shook her head and took another nap. We are having the cold spell that always comes between the first and fifteenth of March.

Our friend, the Monsignor, comes to see us a great deal and is a real comfort. The other day I passed him in a cab. It had come on to rain furiously; as he had no umbrella and I was going past his door, I stopped and asked if I should give him a lift. He refused shortly and soon after came to see me and told me that it would have made a scandal if he had been seen driving about Rome in a cab with a lady.

The American pilgrims are teaching the Romans a thing or two. Among them are Bishop Ireland, his sister and a large group of “sisters”, traveling together. They take cabs every day and drive about with the Bishop, and nobody seems shocked!

Rome, Palm Sunday, 1908. Isn’t it wonderful that the winter is really over and that we are again going to have summer? It is a new mystery every year and how the things in nature go regularly on, and the acorns swell, the grain germinates, the coral insects toil and only this silly fool’s work does not grow and finish itself! Man’s a blur and a blot on the whole scheme, on account, I suppose, of his free will.

I hope to go down to Sorrento on Thursday for Eleanor Crawford’s wedding. I shall be better perhaps for a little sea air and change, as I have been pretty steadily at it since I returned to Rome nearly a year ago. I am by nature what the Arabs call “a son of the way”! If there are female tramps among them, I suppose it would be called a daughter of the way.

The first great Woman’s Congress will be held here soon at the new Palace of Justice. Etta de Viti and Cora Brazza (two American girls married to Italian noblemen) have worked so hard for it they are on the verge of breaking down. Last night we had an interesting man for dinner, Wilfranc Hubbard, the new correspondent of the London Times, who takes the place of Wickham Steed, who has been sent to Berlin. The position of the Times correspondent here is almost an official one, and ten times as important as most official appointments. Carl Federn came too, the man who, I am told, first gave Emerson to Germany through his translation. He is a little flame of a creature like zigzag lightning; he is a friend of Elizabeth Fairchild and the defender of Linda Murri, whom he believes was falsely accused of murdering her husband. Most interesting of all our guests was Cunninghame Graham. He is a writer and a lovely person of exquisite charm. Of an old Scotch family, he has inherited much from a Spanish grandfather. He is a liberal if not a socialist. He has comforted much, for I get so confused with the pressure on my mind of Rome’s conservatism. You see almost all artists are naturally conservatives. They say there has never been a great art without great art patrons. The argument that neither republicanism or socialism makes for art is hard to refute. “The greatest good of the greatest number may be a high ideal, for a state to strive for,” they say, “but it is leveling! Every man will be his own poet and painter.”

Rome, December 28, 1908. I reached home safely at six o’clock in the evening of Christmas Day. The great Christmas present was the fact that the picture (Diana of the Tides) was finished. Just as J. was signing his name to the big canvas the telegram announcing my arrival was slipped under his door. Rather a neat coincidence!