In one way and another I imagine you must have become aware of me in England, although I believe I have never told you so directly. By the presence of a half-finished letter to you, dated March 29th, between Paris and Turin, Italy, I see that I cannot have written you since I left Germany just previous to the above-named date. This has all been very wrong, for I received your good and welcome letter here, via Berne, early in June. You know me as neither abundant nor graceful in apologies, although it never hurts my spirit to ask pardon, and your good intuition will perceive this rather extraordinary sheet of note-paper to signify contrition, confession, and serious effort at amendment. For all the interesting details contained in your letter I thank you very much. They constitute my only landmarks of the old coast for months; my explorers have been very silent and my scouts brought small tidings.
I remember that I wrote you when nearly blind. I had used my eyes too hard, and at night, which I ought to have known I could not do with impunity. I passed some very dull weeks, very green and shady, with exceedingly long nights; although after the greater pain and nervous excitement was over, I wrote a great deal with them closely bandaged. This helped to pass the time, but Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon, who were in London, became altogether dissatisfied with this state of things, and determined to put an end to some of it by coming after me and taking me, willing or not, to London. They had given me a short notice and ordered me to pack my knapsack, while they came down the Rhine. I obeyed, and, after a visit of a couple of days, we set out via Strassburg and Paris. I was infinitely better by this time; still must not put any close strain upon my eyes. I made my “good-byes” in Strassburg, which was not an easy thing for the “soul,” and, on reaching Paris, we met a family party of Americans, friends of the Sheldons, that had just left London for a trip of six weeks through Italy. There were four of them, Mr. and Mrs. Holmes and their only daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Taylor. Mr. Holmes was the American Commissioner to the Great International Exhibition in London in 1862 and in Paris in 1867, and with his family has resided in London and Paris since, as American representative of science, skill, invention, etc. They were fine travelers, Italy was a familiar route to them, and it entered their heads to attach me to their party. I felt it to be a great piece of temerity on my part to think of dropping “sans cérémonie” plump into the middle of an elegant family party arranged for a private travel, and I said so, and said all I could, but all was overruled, and even Mrs. Sheldon said “go.” It was “too good an opportunity to lose,” she said, and added at the end of her advice, “What a fool I am. I always did give up all that I wanted most”; and so we separated in the streets of Paris, March 28th, five o’clock in the afternoon, she for London and I for Italy. I had only a little hand satchel, having stored all my European luggage with my Paris bankers till my return. I have never written up my trip, so I cannot give it you, but if I can recall the days a little in order will try to account for some of them. I will draw hard upon my memory, which will probably help me accurately to whatever she will help me at all, she being, not so generally treacherous as repudiatory. I wonder if that is an English word—it ought to be; if not, I can only plead two years’ life in Germany, and surely out of all that I must have earned the right to manufacture one word.
As sightseers, it was not, of course, our policy to travel at night, and we did it only twice, of which the first night was one. The road between Paris and Macon, just above Lyons, being as familiar to each one of us, as that between New York and Washington, we could afford to miss it. Reaching Macon at sunrise, from there to Euloz and, passing the custom house, proving ourselves innocent of liquors and tobacco, we were ushered into Italy through the famous Mont Cenis Tunnel, eight miles under a mountain, which rises almost six thousand feet above the level of the sea. It is a well-laid track in the solid rock, well ventilated and lighted by powerful reflectors each half-mile. You remember that it was over Mont Cenis that Napoleon I constructed a road to march his armies into Italy. At ten o’clock at night we were at Turin. By this time I was conscious of being some tired; altogether I was not very strong, and, just for variety, I had a chill in the night, and, of course, decided to abandon my journey and return. But as Turin was one of the cities to be visited and naturally two or more days were to be given it, I could afford to wait and watch further developments. My chill did not recur, and, although I continued weak for some time, I kept on the journey.
Turin is a charming city, by far the most modern in appearance of anything in Italy, well laid out, fine broad streets, excellent markets, abounding in fruit, clean, and entirely free from beggary. It seems also to have no poor quarter, the general practice being for every wealthy family to take into its service and care one, two, or more entire families, lodging them in tenements fitted in the attic stories of their own residences, rather than below on the streets, thus at the same time holding surveillance and compelling respectability. I liked the plan. I don’t know if it is one of Victor Emmanuel’s ideas. You know that Turin was always his Capital residence, till a few years ago, when he established himself at Florence, which now is in turn abandoned for Rome. It has over one hundred churches, very rich in jewels and antiquities. I remember in the Metropolitan Church to have seen the marble figure, sitting, lifelike, of Marie Adelaide, the wife of Victor Emmanuel, and mother of Princess Clothilde of France. The private jewels of the church were shown us (for a consideration—everything in Italy is displayed for a consideration), but for no consideration could I undertake to describe them; images of solid silver, men and women, weighing hundreds of pounds and covered with jewels, where sometimes one was of greater value than the massive silver image it adorned. The Royal Palace was most magnificent; the rooms were all shown. Here, in this gilded salon where their busts stand, were married Princess Clothilde, and the Queen of Portugal. The plate-glass mirrors are twenty feet high, and everything accords with them. The armory contains an entire gallery of mounted knights in armor, full dress, horses like life, armed to the teeth, and among them lies the sword that Napoleon used at Marengo. Above the city is a fine old monastery to which we climbed for a view of Mont Blanc, Monte Rosa, and all the chain of southern Alps, snow-white and dazzling, stretching away into the eternal blue.
On the second of April, Tuesday, we took train for Milan, riding for hours in the bright spring sunshine of northern Italy, the Alps behind us, and the Apennines before, the wheat waving in all the freshness of early green, and the vines just bursting into leaf. Here at Milan, we were met by a young lady protégée of Mr. Holmes, a young American girl who is to come out soon as a prima donna. She is finishing her musical studies in Milan, and, while we were installed at an excellent hotel, our dinners were always with Mademoiselle Katrina.
The great sight of Milan is its cathedral, the second in size and magnificence in Europe; this also I could not justly describe. It is built entirely of marble, commenced in the thirteenth or fourteenth century and, like all these old massive structures, never finished. It covers many acres, and seems to be one sea of turrets rising at irregular heights toward the clouds. Although the comparison would be most inelegant, I will say that it reminded me of a shipping-yard, where the marble turrets and statues take the place of thousands of masts; indeed, if my memory serve me well, it has 135 spires, and 1923 statues on the outside from the ground to the top and 700 inside. There is on one of the roofs, which you pass as you ascend (far above to the top), an entire flower garden in marble, hundreds of flowers forming minarets, and no two flowers carved alike or representing the same flower. It was a long way to the top, which at length was gained after many times of sitting, and (for me) even lying down to rest on the various roofs passed in leading from one flight of stairs to another, roofs of pure white marble polished and glistening in the sunshine like the crust of the snowbanks on the New England hills on bright winter days. (I wonder if I ever will see them again.) Here again we saw marvelous jewels, “gold, silver, and precious stones.” The tomb of Carlo, who “stayed the plague,” is in a chapel beneath; the coffin and even the roof of the chapel are of solid silver; mass is held here each morning, and on certain days of the year miracles are wrought. There are many sacred relics in the cathedral, as several nails from the Cross, the Virgin’s shroud, and a seamless coat of the Lord Jesus Christ, etc., etc. The picture galleries were especially fine, many celebrated originals, among which is Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper of the Master and Disciples” in the original fresco. And the celebrated “Ambrosian Library,” so old and rare its volumes were indeed a curiosity—illustrated volumes of the fourth century. And the Royal Palace erected on the site of the old palace of the early Dukes of Lombardy, where Attila thundered about in his destruction. Later this Palace, like nearly all in Italy, had been at some time or another occupied by Napoleon I. Here was his bedchamber, unchanged, decorated in scarlet and gold, heavy velvet curtains richly wrought in flowers of pure fine gold thread. Then the celebrated theater “La Scala,” the largest in the world, its stage one hundred feet in depth, and wide in proportion, and this, not including the recesses. The pit alone holds eleven hundred people, and there are six rows of galleries; one hundred musicians in the orchestra; the principal boxes are purchased by the nobility for the season, a single box from four hundred to five hundred dollars (the season). I name all these particulars for Vester’s benefit; he may be interested in the facts. Our young prima donna stepped upon the stage (as our visit was in the daytime) and sang to us; she had sung there before to an audience of five thousand, but I think she took just as much pains for us, and I am sure we were not less enthusiastic. I expect some day to hear her sing when she is famous, but it will never afford me greater pleasure than when she sang to her audience of five in the great “Scala” of Milan.
One little incident, happening not long before, was so pretty that I am tempted to tell it you. “Katrina” (who is of German parents, but born and always lived in New York) had only been led before the public once,—i.e., last winter she was the “leading lady” of the first opera in Turin,—and on the evening of the close of the engagement she was “called out” to sing a little national air, in which she had been exceedingly popular. When she stepped before the curtain she found the entire house a blaze of light, which at first nearly “upset” her, but, gathering up, she went through her air, to the last strain, when four men entered and placed at her feet an enormous bouquet of the choicest flowers, nearly four feet across. She managed to accept it, but attached to it was a note which requested her, when it should be faded, before throwing it away to open it with care, and at the end of a week this was done, and hidden among the flowers were found a magnificent gold watch and chain, pins, necklaces of coral, turquoises and pearls, bracelets and rings, which I could not enumerate. It had been ordered and arranged in Geneva, and sent all the way through the mountain passes to her. I thought this was a pretty success for the début of a little American girl, studying in a strange land with little money. As a child she used to sing in New York with Patti.
But you must be tired of Milan, and wish I would hasten on if I am going. Well, I will, and so imagine this to be Saturday the 6th of April, 9 o’clock A.M., and I just taking the train eastward. The day was so lovely, so full of the springtime, the grass and grain so green, the swinging vines swaying over all the fields, the birds literally bursting their little throats, the fields filled with peasants in gay dress working to merry tunes, and when you could draw the eyes away from these near scenes they fell to the northward, first upon a line of dim, hazy blue, but over this, skirting the horizon again, the whole chain, peak after peak, of ranging Alps, such an unbroken line of glittering snow—here on the south only four miles away the field of Solferino where France lost one thousand officers in a day.
At 4 P.M. we were at “Verona” wondering if we should see its “gentlemen” and giving certainly more than our usual interest to this subject, and at five we halted at a singular dépôt, with no rattle of cabs, or hacks, no tramping of horses, still as death all about us, and as we walked out there lay waiting us hundreds of gondolas, black as a pall, some covered, some open, all drawn up to the side of the Canal to take us weary travelers to our hotels. This was, indeed, novel, but we selected our carriage, stepped in with our luggage, sat down, and, leaning lazily back, left it to our gondolier to pick his way through the watery streets, some wide, some narrow, leading into and out of each other, like veritable city streets and lanes, the ways on each side lined perfectly thick with old palaces and majestic buildings of centuries ago, their fronts to the sea and their magnificent stone steps leading directly into the water, and when one would pay a call, the gondolier had only to bring his boat alongside and you stepped out as from another carriage to the steps of a mansion. We were taken to “Hotel Victoria,” made as comfortable as a first-class Italian hotel can make one, and after supper commenced upon the sights. Ah, but there was so much to see, not that it is a city of enterprise, a flourishing mart of trade or business. Oh, no, far from it. Venice only exists upon the record of its former greatness; take all this away and the travelers consequent upon it and I believe twelve months would find a famine there, but there is little danger of this while Byron and Shakespeare remain bright in English literature.
Here, as everywhere in Italy, one must commence with the cathedral, and having gone through this, and some scores of churches, the “Campo Santo” and the Bell Tower, one is at liberty to enter upon the palaces, gardens, and theaters. But Venice offers some deviations from this general rule; most cities have prisons, but they have not all the dungeons of Saint Marc. All have bridges, but all have not a “Rialto” nor a “Bridge of Sighs.” I suspect I do not need to remind you of many old or historical facts. You who are always digging into the past will have them all “papered and labeled” and stored away ready for use. But I might mention the seventy-two little islands upon which Venice was built, which were only a part of the Adriatic, and not reckoned as land at all. A set of not warlike people from here and there in the vicinity, having grown weary and afraid of their fighting and troublesome neighbors, mostly from Austria, determined to place themselves in a position more difficult to attack, came far over the sea to these little islands and commenced a city, and gave a general invitation to all war-pestered, peace-loving citizens of the world to come and join them; from time to time they united their islands, built their houses for dwelling and trade upon the streets laid down upon the piles, with one side opening upon the street of earth and the opposite upon the sea, as I have before described. But—the depravity of human nature!! No sooner were they a little strong and comfortable themselves than they sent out their ships to prey upon and plunder their neighbors, and well-nigh ravaged the cities of the earth. They decorated their palaces with the spoils of other nations, married the sea, and declared themselves Omnipotent and Divine. Among other things their religion and church must have a Hero, and they sent afar, and got (as they said) the body of Saint Mark, brought it, and great numbers of relics belonging to him, buried it with the divinest honors in their principal church, and named it Saint Mark, or “San Marco.” This was as early as the ninth century. It is a large but not handsome edifice, facing a paved court, a “piazza” some six hundred feet in length, surrounded by palaces, now used for public purposes, stores, etc. All the world of Venice walks in the “Piazza of San Marco.” The pigeon was esteemed a sacred bird with them, and he is still cherished here and treated with great honor. One of the curiosities to be seen are the “pigeons of San Marco.” I cannot at this moment recollect definitely enough to state to you how many hundreds are supposed to reside in the immediate vicinity, but their dinner hour is two o’clock in the afternoon. The great bell of the clock strikes three quarters past one and they commence wheeling and circling into the court, they cover the fronts of all the buildings, sit as thickly as possible upon every window seat, hang in all the cornices, and stand in full platoons in every foot of spare pavement for a number of rods around the especial corner where their dinner is served. A young man (it was formerly a young girl) is appointed by the Government as feeder of the pigeons. It is not necessary to say that he is punctual with his repast—he could not live with his tumultuous boarders if he were not. As the bell strikes two, he pours the grain from—