‘It has been my fortune to spend a day in company with the man who of all men has done the most to illustrate our manners and character; yet who, strange to say, is less known than ‘Professor’ Ingraham. As it was then my fortune to speak with him; I now consider it my duty to speak of him, and to do what little I am able, to extend his name among his compatriots.
‘In the spring of the year previous to this, or to be exact, in April, 1843, I found myself at Berlin. My friend, Mr. Carlyle, of London, had given me a letter to Theodore Mundt, and I had learned soon after my arrival that this distinguished man was in town. I had consequently looked over my letters, after dinner, and had selected the one addressed to Mundt, and laid it under a little plaster bust of Schiller that stood just over the stove, in the room where I dined. In the evening I walked into the Ermschlagg Buchzimmer.[2] Several students were making annotations from huge volumes, and many grave, pale gentlemen were turning over the reviews and periodicals of the day. Among these I recognized an Englishman whom I had fallen in with at Cologne but parted with at Heidelberg. He had been in Berlin three days before me, and I was truly glad to meet with an acquaintance even of so recent a date, to whom I could apply for information or advice as to the best way of seeing the lions. While I was whispering to him, a grim-visaged old Teuton looked up at us with a stern frown, and my friend observed, ‘We must retire into the Sprechensaale, or conversation-room.’ As soon as we had entered this adjoining apartment, to the evident satisfaction of the aforesaid grim Teuton, I observed a tall, thin man, of angular and wiry aspect, see-sawing his body in front of the stove, toward which he had turned his back, as he stood in apparently deep cogitation. ‘You don’t know who that is,’ quoth my friend; ‘there is one of the lions, to begin with. I found out his name this morning: that is Theodore Mundt.’ Struck as I was with the stranger’s aspect, which appeared to me altogether American, I stared at him till he suddenly raised his dark eyes, and fixed them on mine. To disembarrass myself from my seeming rudeness as politely as possible, I bowed to his gaze, and said inquiringly: ‘I have the honor to address Mr. Mundt?’
‘‘You have the luck,’ he said, ‘but the honor is his.’
‘‘Honors are even, then,’ said I, as brusquely as I dared; and of all animals a traveller is the most impudent. ‘I have in my pocket,’ I continued, ‘a letter for you from my friend Carlyle.’ At the name of Carlyle he raised his hands in surprise, then rubbed them with delight, and began to eulogise his friend.
‘All this while I was fumbling in my pocket for my letter, when suddenly it flashed over me that I had put it under the bust in the tavern. I grew confused for a moment, and then as Mynheer Mundt held out his hand for the letter, I burst into a laugh, and confessed that I had left my letter at home. Mundt looked very serious, and quoted from Othello, ‘That is a fault;’ and then from Macbeth, ‘To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow.’ I thought there was a little affectation in this; perhaps it was merely complimentary; but the immediate result of our imperfect acquaintance was, that I made bold to introduce my friend to Mundt, who invited us both to his rooms to supper. On our way thither, as we passed the Brunswik Gasthaus, where I lodged, I stepped in to procure my letter, and Mundt appeared rejoiced to hear directly from his ‘very fine friend’ Carlyle, as he queerly styled him.
‘I should feel that I was venturing on forbidden ground were I to reveal more of what passed between us that evening. There was some drawing of corks and some puffing of Hamburg-made Cheroots, which Mundt declared to be genuine Oriental; there was a ham of Westphalia, and a bit of La Gruyere. But with all this we have nothing to do. I fear that I have already made my preface too long. Enough be it then to say, that Mundt first revealed to me on this occasion (I am ashamed to own it) the name and talents of our countryman Seatsfield. How enthusiastic he was I will not describe; but his enthusiasm could only be equalled by his surprise that I was not familiar with his writings.
‘On the next day Mundt gave me a letter to Seatsfield, directed to him at Bâsle, in Switzerland, near which he owns a beautiful villa. I did not find him at Bâsle, however, and I proceeded to Milan without delivering my letter. On my return from Italy, I happened to learn that Seatsfield was at Graffenburg in Silesia; and although it was forty leagues from my purposed route I encountered the delay, out of mere curiosity of seeing so distinguished a man. This time I was not disappointed. One day only I spent at Graffenburg, but that day was sufficient to fill me with a truly German (I wish I could say American) admiration of my countryman. Graffenburg, it should be remarked, is the famous scene of Doctor Priessnitz’s wonderful hydropathic cures. Being there only for a single day, I did not think it best to submit in all points to the cold water treatment; neither did Seatsfield, for I noticed that he mixed two table-spoonfuls of gin with every gill of cold water. Seatsfield is a man of about middle-age, with a penetrating eye, and rather a good form, though not unusually muscular. His face bears a remarkable resemblance to the pictures of Numa Pompilius; the benign smile of each is the same. His chin is round and full, although partially concealed by a slight beard; his nose, which is of a truly German outline, is marked by the ‘dilated nostril of genius;’ and his whole aspect is that of a thorough man of the world. I will continue my reminiscence by extracting verbatim a page or so from my imperfect, though as far as it goes, authentic diary. I am convinced however that his remarks will lose much from the want of his pointed manner of enunciation. His English was faultless, and he spoke as well as if he had never been out of America. Very few Americans indeed, and no British-Islanders, talk so correct and chaste a dialect.
EXTRACT FROM MY JOURNAL.
Graffenburg, July 4, 1844.
‘I was very fortunate, they tell me, to find Seatsfield in so companionable a mood. He appeared in high spirits, and was exceedingly conversible. The glorious return of our national anniversary had a visible effect upon him. I presented my letter to him last evening, but he was weary, and retired early. When I first met him in the Upper Bath-room Walk, this morning, he congratulated me upon the brightness and brilliancy of the day. ‘You have much to be thankful for, Sir,’ he observed; ‘the day is perfectly American. Just such a sun as this is now dawning upon Broadway and the Battery. The sound of India-crackers and the pleasant smell of lobsters is already perceptible to the senses of the awakening Manhattanese.’