One morning when in London, I was invited to breakfast with Minnie Walton, the actress. She was at the “Hay-market,” playing with Byron, I think. She was noted then as the most beautiful actress in London. At the appointed hour I was at her house, but she was still in bed. I entertained myself in the drawing room for half an hour with her two pretty children. Then she herself came in, and I certainly saw a brilliantly beautiful woman. Her features were smooth and perfect, her complexion very fair, and her manners most captivating. She wore a white morning dress with network bodice that outlined a form as beautiful as her face. She had no wonderful reputation as an actress, but her beauty attracted many Londoners to the theater. Everywhere in the shop windows, one saw pictures of “The pretty Minnie Walton.” She had a power in London, all her own. It was “the fatal gift of beauty,” but a gift more attractive to women than birthrights and coronets.
November, 1875.--Upon my return from London, we went back into town for the winter. House rent has doubled here in four years. We now pay 2,500 francs for a centrally located apartment of seven rooms. Everything has grown dearer. The pension where we used to live for four francs a day now charges seven and eight and nine francs.
Zurich too is becoming a fine, modern, commercial city. The railway station is almost the finest in the world, and big, granite business blocks are building, that would do credit to New York or London. Where the city moat and a graveyard used to be, is now one of the finest short streets in Europe.
Almost the only house on this street, left of the olden time, is the “Ringmauer,” the home of our friend, Prof. Fick. Its front is an absolute wall of ivy, from the pavement to the gables. The whole front wall of the house is a part of the ancient city wall itself, built possibly by the Romans. The rooms are low, and the windows used to be ironed like a prison. Near by, still stands one of the old wall towers. Inside this ivy-covered old domicile, we have spent many happy hours. Many a time, over the walnuts and the wine, with the genial Professor and his family, we have sat far into the night and conjured up the people who were wining and dining here in this same room, may be a thousand years ago. Fick, a brother-in-law of Frankland, the English scientist, was a distinguished law professor in the University. He originated the Swiss railroad law, and knew more of American affairs than any German I met abroad.
In late years, he suffered horribly with rheumatism, and he had a queer habit, when severe attacks came on, of sitting down and comparing the severity of each attack with one in some previous month. He kept his watch lying open before him, and carefully recorded each twang and pain in a diary.
Spite of my sympathy for his suffering, I could at times hardly refrain from smiling, on hearing him exclaim: “Ah! that was a whacker, that catch was--must write that down. Let me see--lasted two minutes, pulse 80; this day, last year, minute and a half, pulse 100.” So for an hour he would sit, his feet wrapped in flannel, and his mind occupied in measuring and timing his pains.
“What do you do that for, Professor?” I asked him once. “My God!” he replied, “it helps busy my mind. I would die without this watch and diary.”
In the afternoon the attack would cease, and in the evening the students would see the loved Professor delivering his lecture as smilingly as if he had never had a pain in his life.
December, 1875.--Through Fick, Kinkel, Scherr and others of our friends among the University professors, we had free entrée to lectures when we pleased; could come or go. Scherr’s on France, and Kinkel’s on art, we heard throughout, as also Henne’s on Swiss history. There were numbers of American students too in the Polytechnic and University, so that our relations with teachers and taught were very friendly. The American students were always at our home on all American holidays, when the Consulate and our apartment were opened up together and decorated with our national colors. Speeches were made, toasts drunk, and a general good American time had. We ourselves greatly enjoyed these reunions on a foreign soil, and the students and American residents gave many proofs that they enjoyed them too.
I recall how just before one Christmas, Mrs. Kelley, wife of Congressman Kelley, of Philadelphia, who was then living in Zurich, asked me to go with her to help select a picture for an American friend. I felt honored that she should consult my taste. A very fine and expensive engraving of Dante at Florence was selected.