NEAR VIEW OF KOSSUTH.
The eye has opinions of its own. Pour into the mind, by all its other avenues, the most minute and authentic knowledge of a man, and, when you see him, your opinion is more or less changed or modified. This is our apology for adding another to the numberless descriptions of Kossuth. Having been favored with an opportunity to stand near him during the delivery of one of his most stirring speeches, we found that our previous impression of him was altered, or, rather, perhaps, somewhat added to. Trifling as the difference of our view from that of others may be, Kossuth is a star about whom the astronomy can scarce be too minute; and our distant readers, who are in the habit of hearing of new planets from us, may be willing to see how also the Magyar looks, through the small telescope of our quill.
With our distant readers mainly in view, we shall be excused for describing Kossuth’s surroundings, as well as himself, with a particularity unnecessary for the city reader.
It has been difficult, without some official errand, to approach near enough to the Magyar to distinguish the finer lines of his face, and we were beginning to despair of this privilege when the Delegation arrived from Baltimore, and, from friends among them, we received an invitation to go in at the presentation of the silver book. This, we may anticipatorily explain, was the “freedom of the city” in a written address, of folio size, and bound between two leaves of massive silver; the whole enclosed in a case of red velvet. It was suitably and creditably magnificent; and its history would not all be told without mentioning that it received a kiss from Madame Kossuth—Mr. Brantz Mayer having mindfully and courteously presented it to that lady—the Governor’s Secretary insisting on taking charge of it—and she refusing to release it before pressing it to her lips. Baltimore’s blood will warm with the compliment.
On reaching the Irving House at the hour when the silver book was to be presented, we found the hotel in a state of siege, inside and out. Broadway was packed with people, and the staircases of the hotel were hardly passable. One Hungarian officer, in brilliant uniform, stood sentry at the drawing-room door, and here and there a Magyar hat, with its go-against-the-wind-looking black feather, wound through the crowd; but by the numerous “highly respectables” in body coats and important expressions of countenance, there were evidently uncounted Committees waiting to get audience within, while flags and bands of music indicated the more popular deputations whose hopes were on the balcony without.
There seemed little chance of any special reception by the Magyar, when Howard sent word that he could give the Baltimore Delegation his own private parlor, where Kossuth would presently come to them. We took advantage of the “presently” to get a look into the street, from one of the front windows. It was a sea of upturned faces, with hats all falling one way, like shadows—Kossuth the light. He stood on the balcony. The many colored flags of the “European Democracy” throbbed over the crowd—Italians, Germans, Frenchmen, Poles—the refugees of all nations standing gazing on the prophet of Liberty. It was a scene, and had a meaning, for history. Yet it was but the one hour’s event, in a day all occupied with such. A band of one hundred of the clergy had linked an imperishable testimonial to the hour before. The reply to the Baltimore Delegation contained truths that will radiate through all time from the hour after. Truly, a man’s life may be so high and so deep, that, to measure it by its length, is meaningless.
The Baltimoreans made their way to the room appointed, which was immediately crowded by privileged spectators, and reporters for the press, with a small party of ladies in the corner. We were kindly urged to take our place directly behind Judge Le Grand, who was the central figure of the Delegation group, and, as Kossuth stood but four or five feet distant, during his reply to the addresses, and with his eye upon the Judge almost unvaryingly, we were so fortunate as to see him with every advantage of the closest observation.
Madam Kossuth was presently introduced with Madam Pulzky, her companion, and seated a little in advance of the lady spectators. She is an invalid, pale and slightly bent—her figure fragile, and her expression of face a mingled imprint of bodily suffering and conscious belonging to greatness. Her countenance, we observed, though earnestly attentive, was profoundly tranquil, alike through the more even flow of her husband’s eloquence and its overwhelming and impassioned outbreaks.
The crowd near the door parted at last, and Kossuth entered. The gentleman on whose arm he leaned led him to the centre of the room, and presented him to the Delegation.
The reader must remember the tumultuous scene, of which Kossuth had been the centre a moment before, when we say that he entered and was presented to the Committee, with a face as calm as if he had just risen from his morning prayer. He bowed, with grave and deliberate deference, at each introduction. It had been communicated to the gentlemen in the room, that, from the injury of movement to his chest after the hemorrhage of the morning, he must be excused from shaking hands, and he bowed only—assuming the attitude of a listener, with an immediate earnestness which showed that he felt little strength for more than the main purpose of the interview. He stood in the centre of the room, motionless, and the reading of the Addresses proceeded.
The surprise of a man who had placed himself at a window to watch for the coming of a stranger, but discovers, after a while, that the stranger has been for some time enjoying the welcome of the household within, may vaguely express the feeling to which we awoke, after looking for five minutes at Kossuth. He had been, from the first instant, in full possession of our heart, and yet the eyes that we had set to scrutinize him had not noted a single feature. It was the strongest instance we had ever experienced, of what we knew to be true, by lesser examples, that the soul, with neighborhood only, makes recognitions of what could neither be painted nor sculptured, neither uttered nor written. His mere presence opened to him the door, told who he was, and set the heart, like Mary, to the washing of his feet. We loved and revered the man—why, or with what beginning or progress, we could not have explained. But—let us describe what we afterwards called upon the eye to take note of.
Kossuth is of medium height, with hollow chest and the forward-brought shoulders of a sedentary life. His head is set firmly, not proudly or aristocratically erect, upon his neck. He stood so long and so tranquilly immovable in single postures, that it raised a question in our mind whether he could be of the nervous construction which men of great intellect oftenest are; and, on looking at the hand, that tablet of nervous action, we saw that he was not. The broad smooth back of it was unwritten with needless suffering, and the thumb joint projected, like that of a man used to manual labor. It was a hand, had we seen its like elsewhere, from whose owner we should have expected nothing more poetical or heroic than a well-considered vote. We found a subsequent confirmation of this, we may mention, in the singular immovableness of the sockets, and lids of his eyes, during the eloquent outpourings of his heart which followed. When his lips were compressed, and a quivering movement in his chin showed that emotion was restrained with difficulty, his eye was immovably serene, and its largely spread lids were as tranquil as the sky around a moon unclouded. We were strongly impressed with these outer signs of the two natures of Kossuth. He has a heart like other men—his exquisitely moulded chin and lips of exceeding physical beauty and expression sufficiently show. But, from all that can reach these, his intellect is islanded away. The upper part of his face is calmly separate, not only from the movement, but from the look, of emotion. It is a mind unreachable by nerves—a brain that thinks on, as the sun pursues its way across the heavens, unhindered by the clouds that may gather beneath. A face, in the lower part of which, sensuous beauty is so remarkably complete—and, around the temples, and beneath the brow of which, is so stamped the divine impress of an intellect high above weakness and human by limit only—we had never before seen.
It was quite evident that Kossuth had entered the room, simply to fulfil a duty—feeling unequal to it, from his illness of the morning and the fatigues he had already undergone—and with no idea of making more than the briefest acknowledgment of courtesy for what he should hear from the Committee. Even his dress showed that he was not prepared for “an occasion.” He wore a brown cut-away coat, (which must have been selected for him by a waiter, sent to a ready made clothes shop with a verbal description of the gentleman to be fitted,) a black waistcoat buttoned to the throat, no shirt visible, and trousers of uninfluenceable salt-and-pepper. That the mien and bearing of an Oriental gentleman, as well as the dignity of a prophet, were as fully and impressively recognizable through these Edward-P.-Fox-ables, as through the braided cloak and under the black plume of the Magyar, is a standard, though a homely one, by which some may be helped to an estimate of the man.
We have seen repeated mention of the “perpetual smile” of Kossuth. This conveys a wrong impression. He may smile often and easily when receiving introductions or bowing to the cheers of a crowd; but it is a demonstration which, habitually, he keeps very much in reserve, and which, of all the visible weapons of his eloquence, is the most rarely and aptly introduced, the most captivating and effective. We are inclined to think his heavy mustache accidentally favors this, by aiding the unexpectedness of the smile, and by leaving its fading glow to the imagination—but, at moments when the lips of another orator would be cloud-wrapt in the darkest expression of solemnity, a gleam, like the breaking away for a transfiguration, comes suddenly over the lips of Kossuth—as beautiful and inspired a smile certainly as was ever seen on the face of a human being—and the effect is in the peculiar triumph that he achieves. Love irresistibly follows conviction.
As we said before, Kossuth had evidently no idea of making the speech which was drawn from him by the Baltimore Delegation—drawn from him, we think, by the superior cast of the gentlemen who formed it, and by the fitness, both of the manner and accompaniments of the honors they paid him. He spoke altogether extemporaneously, and with difficulty and hesitation, at first; but, with one or two brilliant and successful illustrations, his words grew more fluent, and, in the following passage, he became fully and gloriously aroused. It was the first mention he had yet made to the world of his intention to return to Hungary a soldier!
“As for the future, I shall devote my life to the resurrection of my native land. I will endeavor to wrest Hungary from the power of tyrants and despots, to procure for her her sovereign rights, and the fundamental rights which belong to every nation. Should Providence assign me a place in the accomplishment of these great designs, I will take care that they shall receive no injury from me. I will here remark that I have always been extremely anxious not to assume or take upon my humble shoulders any duty which I had not a positive conviction would not answer me, or which I could not perform. Though I was never in actual military service, I was ready to help my country in every way I could. I was not able to be in every place at the same time, and I had not the boldness to take the practical direction of the military operations because I feared I was not sufficiently familiar with military tactics to do so. I thought that if it so happened that any thing should go amiss, and my people be defeated, that I should not only be condemned by my countrymen, but that my conscience would torture me with the feeling, that if I had not undertook to do a thing which I did not understand, the fall of my country would not have taken place. This was my conviction. I was not master of the practice and strategy of war, and I gave the cause of my country thus far into other hands. I have seen that cause destroyed, and become a failure, and I weep for my country, not for my own misfortunes. Since I have been in exile I have endeavored to improve my intellect from the movements of the past, and to prepare myself for the future, and I rely on my people, whose confidence in me is not shaken by my misfortunes, nor broken by my calumniators, who have misrepresented me. I have had all in my own hands once, and if I get in the same position again, I will act. I will not become a Napoleon nor an Alexander, and labor for the sake of my own ambition, but I will labor for freedom.”
These are not his words, though they embody the sentiments expressed. His own language was as much finer, and as different from this, as a poem is from its story told in prose. The reporters are not to blame, taking their notes standing amid a crowd as they do—but, (let us say here,) the public should give Kossuth credit for incomparably more eloquent speeches than they read. An admirable passage, left out in what we have quoted, for instance, followed the allusion he made to his disappointment in Gœrgey, the traitor, the shock it gave to his belief in the power of one man to read the soul of another, and the lonely trust in himself only, to which it had driven him. To the words and the manner with which he repeated the declaration that he believed in himself, we do not think we shall ever hear the parallel for impressive eloquence. Those who heard it would believe in Kossuth—against the testimony of angels.
Kossuth is too heroic a man to be over-cautious; and, from the kind of freshly impulsive and chivalric energy with which he spoke of holding the army in his own hand on his return, we were impressed with the idea that this evidently unpremeditated giving of shape to his thought for the future had another element in its momentum. It was the reading aloud of a newly turned over leaf of his nature. In prison, he says, he prepared himself for the next struggle of Hungary by making “the science and strategy of war” a study. Profound and careful, of course, must be the theory of war—but its practice is with trumpet and banner; and ever so abstruse though the tactics are, they are tried even for the holiest cause, with those accompaniments, of personal daring and danger, which have, to all lofty minds, a charm irresistible. Of the statesman and hero united in Kossuth, the statesman has been more wanted, hitherto—but there is a call, now, for the hero—and, if he betrays joy and eagerness long suppressed, (as we mean to say he did,) in answering that he is ready, what American will “wish he had been more careful?”
In farther illustration of what we are saying, the reader will permit us to change the scene of our sketch, and speak of Kossuth as we saw him more recently—addressing the five thousand of our soldiery in the amphitheatre of Castle Garden. It was not, there, the pale, carelessly dressed, and slightly bent invalid of the few days before. Oh no! Neither in mien nor in dress would he have been recognized by the picture we have drawn of him, above. The scene was enough to inspire him it is true. Five thousand brilliantly equipped men—with but one thought under every plume and belt, and that thought the cause whose highest altar was in his own bosom—were marshalled beneath his glance, waiting breathlessly to hear him. His look, that night, will never be forgot, by those who saw it. He wore a black velvet frock with standing collar, and buttons of jet—the single ornament being the slender belt of gold about his waist, holding a sword gracefully to his side. The marked simplicity of this elegant dress made his figure distinguished among the brilliant uniforms of the officers upon the stage; but his countenance, as he became animated, and walked to and fro before that magnificently arrayed audience, was the idealization of a look to inspire armies. When Captain French (to whom we make our admiring compliments) rose in the far gallery, and insisted on being heard, while he offered a thousand dollars from the Fusileers to the cause, would any one have doubted that the life’s blood of those fine fellows would have come as easy, with opportunity?
We stop with this mere description. The Kossuth questions are discussed sufficiently elsewhere. Our object has been to aid the distant reader in imagining the personal appearance of the man whose thoughts of lightning reach them, gleaming gloriously even through the clouds of impoverished language on which they travel. We close with a prayer—God keep Kossuth to take the field for Hungary!