USA > New York > Onondaga County > Syracuse > Sixty-odd, a personal history > Part 17
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The words brought a glow into her listener's face. Here was a person who was seeing lands and people as parts of the world, not just as nations and nationalities. There was something about her that suggested an unusual background and great experience. Mr. Conway was announced presently, and the new acquaintance went off, calling "Goodnight, Oscar; don't sit up too late." Oscar was called Mr. Laighton by the Yardley girls. Oscar Laighton: we could not think where we had heard the name before, but it was
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familiar. We were hurrying off ourselves, however, having just learned that Mendelssohn's oratorio, St. Paul, was to be sung at St. Paul's Cathedral that evening in honor of St. Paul's day, Jan- uary twenty-fifth. Our London visit was beginning gloriously.
When we reached home later, Miss May Yardley was sitting up for us.
"It's not so very late," she said. "Mrs. Thaxter has not come in yet."
Thaxter-Thaxter-and Oscar Laighton! Memory supplied a sudden realization.
"Not Celia Thaxter," I cried. "It can't be she! Why, I've wanted all my life to meet her!"
"It certainly is, her very self. She's been travelling about Europe on her brother's account; he's had rather a hard experience and been very blue."
Yes, we knew about that, curiously enough.His sister had taken him abroad in order to distract him from an unhappy romance, it was said. One never knew how true such rumors were, but I had the popular sympathy for parted lovers, and was of course con- cerned. From that evening on I took every opportunity of talking to Mrs. Thaxter and casting surreptitious glances at the sphinx- like brother. I was asked to the poet's room, and allowed to help her dress for festivities, even to choose the brooch she wore when with Browning and other celebrities.
"Pick out the jewel you think prettiest," Celia Thaxter said, pushing a little tray toward me. Uppermost was a boat of silver filigree-a gondola in fact, but significant as a symbol-with a great green aquamarine crystal hanging from it.
"Oh, that is the thing!" I cried, "the boat and the crystallized seawater. It just suits you, in that dress!" And when Mrs. Thaxter let me fasten it on, and stood up to be admired, my satisfaction was complete.
That week in London passed all too quickly. The glimpses of English life and the people we constantly encountered delighted us both.
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We have seen, one of us wrote, Cheapside, Piccadilly, Paternoster Row, the palaces, the Temple, the parks and parades . ... and all the appropriate characters which fit into those backgrounds; seen Oliver Twist holding out his hand, whether for more or not one does not know -Sam Weller, Noah Claypole, Smike, Major Pendennis, Lady Glencora, Mr. Casaubon-we met him in the British Museum! As a matter of fact, Cruikshank's pictures themselves don't really exaggerate-it's all in the way you look. But books give no idea of the effect of deep stone archways, queer alleys, mounted motionless guards with bright uniforms and the most eccentric little round caps set on the side of their heads. We've poked all over London and seen a thousand and one things that are not even portrayed in fiction. Imagine milkwomen with poles across their shoulders and pails at the ends, like our early imaginings of Mary Epes! And forlorn wisps of crossing-sweepers who hold out one hand and pull their forelocks with the other!
More of these ravings appear in the correspondence, and serve to show that the London of sixty-odd years ago had not lost its flavor of antiquity. As for us, we nearly lost ourselves in a genuine fog; got indigestion from a late supper of cold roast pork and bread and cheese and porter; had a pleasant interview with Mr. Lowell, then our Ambassador, at the American Legation, and a talk about old Cambridge days when he knew Arria as a school-girl and saw me in my cradle. That same evening we saw Ellen Terry and Henry Irving in Much Ado, a performance to be remembered all our lives. When the celebrated pair came to the United States their acting did not eclipse that first hearing. We could not decide whether it was more wonderful to play Benedict to Terry's Beatrice, or Bea- trice to Irving's Benedict.
I spent every spare moment at the National Gallery, determined to understand Turner because of a devotion to Ruskin. The Tém- éraire did begin to creep out of the fog, but I preferred the tradi- tional painters. I explained in letters that I hadn't got to Alma Tadema and Burne-Jones and the others yet.
The Sunday afternoon at Windsor was all I had hoped for. We left behind the Sunday stillness of London. All along the way as the train made its stops at little stations, we could hear church bells ringing for afternoon services; chimes of eight bells playing
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the familiar Change. That chime rang itself vividly into my mem- ory: the forceful leap to the octave and the descending scale which followed; then another mounting and descending. A hymn of cer- titude in key-tones and dominants, like the security of an Estab- lished Church:
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I got as I listened an impression of universality, of faith and worship as the habit of the whole people. The footsteps of old and young on sidewalks, through churchyards, up flights of stone stairways; bent knees, clasped lands, all this made me feel one of the up-surgings of conviction which occasionally possessed me. Yes, the Church was a tremendous thing, not resting on the shoulders of the last genera- tion, but on the foundations of the centuries: immovable, though battered by dissensions; just, but less inexorable than other systems. It had made mistakes, had become de-spiritualized here and there, yet great minds and faithful souls had kept guard over its deposits of sacred truth. It stood behind the Church of America,-always had stood behind it. What place had dissenters, after all? I thought. What right had the Puritans to destroy its landmarks, to tear down its altars, to rob it of its beauty and symmetry? Did it still need to be cleared of old idolatries and superstitions and made an actual Via Media? (I had had a glimpse of Newman's Apologia since the days of my introduction to the Grammar of Assent, and had thought I understood why the latter argument had been presented to Archie.)
But the train stopped suddenly at Windsor and put an end to these reflections. There stood Lieutenant Bell and his attractive sister. Before we knew it we were all rambling along a narrow street,
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going through the gate of Henry the Eighth and feeling for the moment some of its sinister associations; then into a shady quad- rangle with ivy-covered walls, into which the windows of the mili- tary knight's apartments looked out. We knew about the knights by this time; we had learned from our friends that the honor was conferred by Her Majesty for distinguished acts of bravery which had resulted in permanent disablement. Some of them thought they could remember hearing that our friend the Lieutenant had rescued some men from the wreck of a burning collier, and that fatal damage had been done thereby to his lungs and heart; but we were never able to verify it. The young fellow who had been travel- ling with him had really been a doctor, then; and he joined our party that afternoon. A handsome older man was detailed as galant for Miss Hamilton, who was a woman of parts even if somewhat over-conscientious. Arria Huntington at once found common ground with the fine women.
It was a glorious day, and our wanderings about the castle and its grounds gave us something to remember vividly. I was more drawn to my companion since the story of his valor had been told me. We stopped once to lean against a wall, or gate, and look over toward Eton, on an opposite declivity. The buildings were digni- fied, and across the broad grounds we could see moving figures of boys, slim figures in black jackets and white collars.
We walked on through a door which he unlocked, into the Dean's Yard, and across to the knights' apartments. Miss Bell and another sister were waiting for us in the Lieutenant's drawing- room, where we had our first experience of afternoon tea. That had not then become a settled American custom, and it was fasci- nating to us. We relished the thin-bread-and-butter which only English slicing, it appeared, could achieve. and the plummy pound- cake and short-bread served on beautiful china like that of our own family.
Then came Evening Prayer at the Royal chapel, across the quadrangle, just at five o'clock. There we met Sir George Elvey, a "nice quiet old gentleman with a churchly air," I wrote. The pro- visions for royal worship were impressive: the Queen's stall done
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up in purple and gold, the beautiful carved backgrounds of the chairs where the ladies of the court, only two of them present that day, were already seated. Apparently the knights had their places opposite these; at all events we were in them, looking across at the ladies, one of them a very beautiful blonde in the deepest of mourn- ing, her golden curls set off by a heavy crepe veil. Her Majesty was not at Windsor nor in London. An accident to one foot had kept her out of town, but we gathered that her little phaeton was a fa- miliar object in the palace grounds. I took in, dreamily, the effect of the shaded chapel, the candles burning in great brass candle- sticks, the fair lady-in-waiting, the perfection of the organ-music and clear high voices of the choir, said to be the finest in England.
Awake! Awake! Put on thy strength, O Zion! I forgot that I had heard that stirring call sung by an American quartette; it was hardly recognizable. The choral chanting of the Psalms reminded us of Calvary chapel, and we wished its untrained singers might have listened with us. Elvey's dramatic accompaniments, the thun- ders of the organ intensifying "wind and storm fulfilling His Word," tones of trumpet and harp, brought out by the stops of that re- markable instrument lifted us to the Hebrew poet's own exaltation. And this was all just as beautiful every day in the year! What need to poke about in theological backgrounds when music itself echoed, reverberated, overwhelming certitude?
When we returned to the Yardleys' that night there was time for one last session with Celia Thaxter, who had been visiting at the studios of Millais and Sir Frederick Leighton, and had much to report. She was to leave next morning. We had got better ac- quainted with brother Oscar, and made him talk a bit; he had told me that he was the author of a "cunning," as we should have de- scribed it in those days, little love-song printed among Mrs. Thax- ter's own poems:
The clover-blossoms kiss her feet, She is so sweet; While I, who may not kiss her hand, Bless all the wildflowers in the land.
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This had an appeal of its own to one member of the Albany Street public, and naturally started the suggestion that it might have been written to the lost sweetheart. At any rate it did no harm to fancy that. But the poet's parting salute was characteristic; he merely put his head in at the door of the drawing-room where we were reading our letters, and called out, "Good-by, you nice girls."
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THE CHANNEL
The next night we sailed from Queensboro to cross the Chan- nel. We found on the deck of the steamer a pleasant-looking trio of voyagers; two of them young women in tailored suits, modish little bonnets with short black lace veils, and heavy coachmen's capes of dark fur. They were the princesses Victoria and Matilda of Schles- wig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg, daughters of Duke Fred- erick, the late defeated aspirant to the Duchy of Holstein. Accom- panying the pair, whose luggage was put on board by an uncon- scionable number of lackeys was an elderly man of impressive ap- pearance. We learned later from a garrulous stewardess who seemed to be in possession of many royal secrets that he was Prince Chris- tian of Sweden, younger brother of Frederick and husband of Queen Victoria's daughter Helena. We had seen his house, Cum- berland Lodge, at Windsor, and had been told that he was one of the most biddable and beloved of Her Majesty's sons-in-law.
As a tight little crowd packed the top of the hatchway, I was jostled against the Princess Victoria, and eagerly begged pardon for the sake of speaking to her. We did not see each other. "Not at all," was the courteous answer. Later the stewardess and a maid were gossiping below in the lavatory over a huge bridal bouquet of gardenias, lilies of the valley and white roses, which was being sprinkled. It appeared that the older girl was on her way to Berlin to marry William, son of the Crown Prince of Prussia, and grand- son of the German Emperor, as well as of Queen Victoria. The two had become secretly engaged at a countryhouse the sum- mer before; a real love-affair apparently, for there could be no dip- lomatic incentive to such a match. The wedding was supposed to
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be coming off immediately; as a matter of fact, however, it was post- poned for three or four weeks. I begged for a flower or leaf from the bouquet, and picked up a bit of maiden-hair from the floor to send home. Then I was accorded a tuberose, I believe, which had be- come detached from its wiring. I thrust it into my Baedeker; it proved to be one of the useless little mementoes which one carries about and makes into a fetish.
The two Danish sisters were gone next morning when we left the boat, but we thought about them on our journey over the mo- notonous stretches of snowy Dutch country, among the windmills and dykes and ponds with skating children. Already England and its joys had begun to seem like a dream; the Cathedral of Cologne replaced Westminster, and a strange tongue assailed our ears.
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LEIPZIG
Fräulein Isidora Herrnsdorf of Leipzig was a teacher of German to foreigners, largely Americans, who came to study at the Univer- sity or the Conservatorium. She imparted more than a mere knowl- edge of the language; she was a humanitarian and a philosopher. College professors and budding diplomats had entered her pre- cincts, and returned to their native land enriched. Pupils sought advice for the conduct of their lives from this shrewd, typically German yet internationally minded woman. Plain, unassuming, clear-eyed and discerning, she could kindle ambition or infuse a sense of justice into the mind of a partisan, and when there was need, evoke a wholesome shame without the use of sarcasm. Above all she could encourage self-confidence and perseverance.
The little apartment was dreary in its flat simplicity. Brown- ness and grayness had been absorbed into the threadbare carpets and the spare upholstery of chairs and sofa. Monotonous walls were hung with one or two stern engravings and a couple of family min- iatures; a bookcase of leather-bound volumes represented the en- tire library; the whole background gave an impression of arid and straitened living. There was a plump sister, Fräulein Fanny, who represented the practical end of the establishment, and was cumbered with much serving, since they had usually a male lodger- pupil who shared the boiled beef and sauerkraut.
Fräulein Doris, in a gown of a previous period, its texture thinned and like a late autumn leaf in color, had just finished cor- recting a pile of exercises on the afternoon of February 7, 1881. Twilight had set in at three o'clock, although there was a bright sky somewhere behind the chimney-pots. The sun never sent any
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direct rays into the apartment, wedged as it was between tall houses. But there was no more writing to do, for a letter of introduction had been sent that morning, signed by a Cambridge man, an erst- while pupil, commending a couple of American girls to her at- tention.
Just then the bell tinkled, and she went out into the dark hall. Two young women with eager manners and a sparing equipment of language, mounted the staircase somewhat breathlessly.
The older girl, she noticed, was handsome, with the face of a Teutonic heroine: blue eyes and dark lashes, calm brow, a more mature bearing than the average German girl at her age, for Fräulein Doris, like the rest of the world, believed her as youthful as the sister who accompanied her, a more animated, nervous per- son.
Over the Saxon coffee which she offered us, our errand was ex- plained in unpretentious accents by Arria who was leaving Leipzig presently and wanted to find lodging for me in some pleasant fam- ily w' ere "good" German was spoken, near the Conservatory and Gewandhaus.
The outlook was apparently discouraging; Fraulein Doris ex- plained in halting English that a perfect accent was difficult to find, except among some of the more aristocratic burgher families who did not take boarders. But she favored the acceptance of a plan proposed by the American Consul that for the remainder of the year I should go out to Plagwitz, a suburb within walking dis- tance of the city, and take a room in the house where he and his wife were living, a villa so-called, with a pleasant garden; the land- lord and his wife had lived in America and understood cooking for foreigners, and there was a family of attractive children, all ages. As I was arranging for music-lessons with Coccius, one of the Con- servatory men who could give me special instruction and fit me for entrance there in the course of a few months, she felt this ar- rangement would be convenient, and meantime I could devote myself to concentrated study of the language and gradually develop plans for a more complete experience of German life in the au- tumn. The consul's association with important personages and
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contacts would undoubtedly lead to some excellent arrangement by that time.
This plan was a bit disappointing, but offered some advantages which I could well understand. The dreary aspect of the Herrns- dorf flat discouraged me; average German family life took its color therefrom in my imagination, and the odors of cabbage and stale tobacco had assaulted my nostrils on the staircase. I decided rapidly in favor of the proposed settlement, and passed on more enthusias- tically to the plan for study.
Lessons were soon scheduled. I was supposed to purchase a copy of Otto's Grammar, and a book into which treasures of literature could be copied. An intensive study-course was mapped out with amazing rapidity and comprehensiveness; the teacher knew her subject. I must use every opportunity for conversation, even with Saxons, and remember that in the theatre one could hear a standard German accent, and that the exchange of simple phrases with young children promoted fluency while their incorrectness would be offset by the studies in construction. Did I want to devote my- self to a special practice of pronunciation? Some pupils had no in- terest in that, or perhaps no aptitude for it. But I was most anxious to become perfect in that very respect; Fraulein Doris would please be very strict with me. A good understanding was developed be- tween us, and as we walked back to our hotel in the Rossplatz, we agreed that a satisfactory contract was under way.
The next thing was to introduce ourselves to the Herr Doktor Erb, a mild, blonde gentleman whose modest office seemed hardly representative of his worldwide fame. He had received a special let- ter from Dr. Seguin, and asked very few questions of his prospective patient, but had a certain regimen all ready to put before me, its main recommendation being that I should have plenty of fresh air and motion. He approved of living two miles out of town, and when told that my future dwelling was probably to be in Plagwitz, suggested that I make it my business to walk into town each morn- ing for my lessons, returning by tram at noon. He peered into my eyes through a glass which produced the effect of boring into them, and made me hold one arm outstretched, seemingly for the purpose
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of testing its steadiness. His serious "Gut!" after these experiments, was heartening.
It was a somewhat melancholy parting, when I came to say good-by to my sister, after our congenial traveling and a greater measure of intimacy than we had ever known. The twelve years dividing our ages had been forgotten.
But I had already attained some fortitude and arrived coura- geously expectant at the Plagwitz villa. This was a large, country- like mansion, with a beautiful garden on a side-street at the end of the long two-or-three-mile turnpike stretching out from town. The top floor of the house, with pointed windows for all the world like Richter's pen-and-ink sketches, was inhabited by a blissful young married pair, of whom the other lodgers saw little. The second floor was given up to the consul and his wife and their young niece from New York, Annie Dexter. Colonel Montgomery was a hun- dred-per-cent American, intensely patriotic, and very scornful of the Germans, since he had been transferred to the Leipzig consulate from a much more congenial position in Brussels. His wife was very pretty, musical, and entertaining, but she, too, disliked the Leipzig environment. They were kind to me, however, and we dis- covered many friends in common.
On the ground floor of the house were the apartments of the Familie Poetsch, for such was the name of our corpulent-and in- dolent-landlord, whose hard-working wife carried on the menage with real talent. The man had lived in America for ten years, and as a baker had accumulated sufficient property to come back to his native land and live comfortably without labor, it was rumored, by the aid of certain successful German investments. He was also an American citizen, which gave him some privileges. He spent his days smoking and pacing the garden, guarded by a large mastiff called Pluto, and his evenings at a Kneipe where he consorted with a mysterious group of which I shall speak later. They had four en- chanting children; Gustav, a boy of thirteen, the prim, regimented product of the German educational system; Olga, a fanciful but housewifely little maid of ten; and two smaller ones, Fränzchen
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and 'Nando, who attached themselves at once to me and became my inseparable companions out of study-hours. They were the saving of me during some of the desperate accesses of homesickness which came upon me in those first weeks.
My room, when fitted with a piano and the various pictures and other penates brought from America, was extremely pleasant, but lonely; partly because of the fact that my meals were served to me in solitude. The Montgomerys had their own dining-room, barely large enough for themselves, and the Poetsch family slept and ate in a mysterious background which I did not penetrate. There was another lodger whose apartment was next door, but propriety for- bade one's eating in a gentleman's bedroom or entertaining him in one's own. He was an American student at the University, a long-legged, solemn-looking youth with eyeglasses, whose name, as I heard it, reminded me of a letter I had received just before sailing.
"If you are going to Leipzig," it had read, "maybe you will meet Dick N. He's studying there this winter and is really very nice, but a woman-hater-can't abide girls, they say. Maybe you can wake him up."
This was of course an interesting idea. He looked more indif- ferent than inimical. He happened to have had a letter also, it developed, whose contents he did not divulge till long after. It had said:
"Ruth H., your brother-in-law's friend, is going to Leipzig. Don't fall in love with her, or you may be sorry. She's not suscep- tible, but she's good fun."
The brother-in-law was much older than either of us, a clergy- man who had married the young man's sister. The effect of these communications, was naturally to make us interested, and also amused, at finding ourselves housemates. Nevertheless, I had plunged too deeply into my studies to take account of personalities at first. I concluded also that my fellow-lodger was lazy, and careless of his privileges, as he practised very little, and though he went to town each morning did not seem to have engagements at any special hour.
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I swallowed my lonesome meals with a lack of appetite and an occasional salty flavor from overflowing eyelids, and worked day and night at the intricacies of the German tongue. My music course had also begun. I was to have private lessons from Herr Coccius, one of the Conservatory professors, in order to be prepared for entrance there a few months later. Fräulein Herrnsdorf had recommended this arrangement as being the most satisfactory. Since his test of my piano performance, I had not ventured to play him anything more brilliant than a Schumann sketch. That had brought a verdict of good Vortrag, but much need of a carefully built-up technique. I knew it all too well; our beloved Ernst Held had not wanted to disturb the joy of an acquaintance with the great Masters and their works by over much drudgery, so the pipes of Pan had led the way and the pupil had followed at her will.
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