I saw also that year a picture by Rossetti and one by Millais, and the latter impressed me very strongly; in fact it determined me in the manner in which I should follow art on my return home. I did not and could not put it on the same plane as the "Llanthony Abbey," but the straight thrust for the truth was evidently the shortest way to a certain excellence, and this of the kind most akin to my own faculties, and I said to Delf, who was with me at the exhibition of the Academy, that if ever English figure painting rose out of mediocrity it would be through the work of the P.R.B. My impression is that the picture was the "Christ in the Carpenter's Shop," but of this I cannot be sure, though I am certain that it was in the exhibition of 1850. The Rossetti was in the old "National Society," and was either the "Childhood of the Virgin Mary" or the "White Lady." Beautiful as it was, it did not impress me as did the temper of Millais's work, the scrupulous conscientiousness of which chimed with my Puritan education. I left England with a fermentation of art ideas in my brain, in which the influence of Turner and Pyne, the teachings of Wehnert, and the work of the Pre-Raphaelites mingled with the influence of Ruskin, and especially the preconception of art work derived from the descriptions, often strangely misleading, of the "Modern Painters."
I received from my brother, as I had anticipated, the order for a passage on the Atlantic, one of the Collins line of steamers, and one of my fellow-passengers was Jenny Lind, on her way for her first visit to America under the guidance of Barnum. She gave a concert on board for the benefit of the firemen and sailors, and to this the half of Delf's sovereign contributed, the other half going for a bottle of Rhine wine, to return the compliment of my next neighbor at the table, who had invited me to take a glass of wine one day. Thus, as usual, I landed penniless from my venture, but fortunately found my brother on the wharf expecting the arrival of the steamer, her trips having been made with such precision that the hour of arrival was generally anticipated correctly. In those days the steamers were rarely driven, and a voyage of fourteen days was not considered a bad one. A day's run of 336 knots was a triumph of steaming and rarely attained. But we were at the beginning of the contest between the Collins and the Cunard steamers, and up to that time the American line had generally a little the better of it.
The rest of that year and the year following were given to hard and monotonous painting from nature while the weather permitted, and in the winter to working out clumsily the mysteries of picture-making, a work which, as I was without direction or any correct appreciation of what I had it in me to do, became a drudgery which I went through as an indispensable duty, but with no satisfaction. My larger studies from nature (25x30 inches) had attracted attention and had been hung on the line, getting for me the election to the Associateship of Design, and the appellation of the "American Pre-Raphaelite,"—all which for a man so lately embarked in the profession was considered a high honor, as it really was. But the success only confirmed me in my incorrect views of art and carried me farther from the true path. As studies from nature, the fidelity and completeness of them, even in comparison with Durand's, was something which the conventional landscape known then and there had never approached, and to the respectable amateurs of that day they were puzzles. In one of them, a study of a wood scene with a spring of water overshadowed by a beech-tree, all painted at close quarters, I had transplanted a violet which I wanted in the near foreground, so as to be sure that it was in correct light and proportion. This was in the spirit of the Ruskinian doctrine, of which I made myself the apostle. On that study I spent such hours of the day as the light served, for three months, and then the coming of autumn stopped me. Any difficulty in literal rendering of a subject was incomprehensible to me, and in fact in that kind of work there is little difference, for it is but copying, and requires only a correct eye and infinite patience, both of which I had; and it was a puzzle to me rather than a compliment when the veteran Durand said to me of one of my studies, that it was a subject he would not have dared attack on account of the difficulty of the effect of light, for to me it was simply a question of time and sticking to it. It was not art, but the public did not know it any more than I did, and I was admitted to a place which I believe was one of the highest amongst my contemporaries at home in a way that led to little even in its complete success. I influenced some of my contemporaries and gave a jog to the landscape painting of the day, and there it ended, through a diversion of my ambition to another sphere, but there it must have ended; even if I had never been so diverted.
CHAPTER VII
ON A MISSION FOR KOSSUTH
The arrival, in December, 1851, of Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot, on his mission for the redemption of Hungary, set all America in a flame of shallow enthusiasm, and I went to hear his appeals. What he asked for was money to arm his country, to renew the struggle with the House of Hapsburg. His eloquence carried away all deliberation in the Northern States, and even shook the government at Washington; but, in the end, the only practical result was his gain of the dollars which the hearers paid to hear him speak, and which no one regretted who heard him, for such oratory no one in the country ever had heard, even from men to whom the English language was native. Before making his discourse in any town, he took the pains to find out something of the local history, and thus touched the patriotism of his audience in the parish bounds, and the past glories of America were revived in terms of a new and strange flattery. We were like the Athenians after hearing the Philippics of Demosthenes,—all ready to march against the Austrian. Before he left New York I had volunteered to fight or conspire, or take any part in the struggle which might fall to me. I kept my counsel from my family, and when Kossuth went on his westward tour it was settled that, on or after his return to Europe, I was to follow.
His tour of the Northern States was a triumph that caused him to entertain hopes which a man of more sobriety and common-sense would not have conceived. Against the indifference to liberty and the selfishness of the slave States, his flood of eloquence broke in vain. He knew that the North contained most of the capital and energy of America, and he supposed that they ruled, and was late in learning that the South ruled us. At Washington he came into contact with the statesmanship and the demagogy of the republic, and, while the former gave him a magnificent reception, the latter quietly and undemonstratively quenched his hopes. The South had no sympathy with Hungarian or any other liberty, and we felt the chill fall on Kossuth and his eloquence. But, for the politicians, there was something to be made out of him and the naturalized voters, mainly republicans and refugees from the various revolutions which had failed in Europe; so he was not denied the expectation of some private assistance, though the hope that the United States should openly declare Hungary a belligerent, and thus give its moral weight to Kossuth, the recognized governor, was soon seen to be an idle and fallacious one. "Something might be done," said the politicians. So Kossuth waited.
A presidential election was near, and negotiations were initiated between Kossuth and the party leaders for his influence on the foreign vote, and, pending these, he could decide nothing as to his future movements. I was in the habit of going to see him at night, and sometimes waited for the departure of the committees of the politicians who were in discussion with him. One night, when I went in, I found him in a state of nauseated irritation, and he broke out, saying, "Mr. Stillman, if your country does not get rid of these politicians it will be ruined in fifty years." He had just received a Democratic committee, which had formally promised him, in return for the influence he might exert in favor of their candidate, two ships of war ready for service, and a sum of money, the exact amount of which I cannot now remember, but I think it was half a million dollars. Naturally he did not tell me if he had closed with the proposition, but the making of it by the committee was a revelation as to the purity of American politics which he fully understood. This committee had presented itself with the authority of Franklin Pierce, Democratic candidate for the presidency.
The scheme in which he at first proposed to utilize my services was the formation of a deposit of arms and materials of war at a point in the Mediterranean from which he could descend promptly on the coast of Croatia, and this indicated that the two men-of-war of the committee entered into his plans. The desired point he found in the little island of Galita, south of Sardinia, unoccupied and apparently unclaimed by any power, but on which, he told me, the flag of the United States had been hoisted some years before by one of our cruisers; evidently as a joke on the part of some of our sailors. I was to visit it and report on its fitness for his purpose; but negotiations dragged, or there was some hitch, nothing was concluded until Kossuth's departure for Europe became necessary, and Pulzsky, his alter ego, was given full instructions concerning me. I was to follow when affairs were in a certain state of readiness; and, in fact, after a few weeks, I was summoned to London. I received from Pulzsky the clue to Kossuth's quarters, in a quiet street, Bayswater way, if I remember rightly, to which I was to go only late at night, and by some roundabout road, as the Austrian spies were always watching him.
I had a letter to a Madam Schmidt, a German refugee, and an advanced republican, at whose house I used to meet a little assembly of refugees,—German, French, Russian, etc. Every Sunday night we used to meet and discuss the politics of Europe. Of my friends of this circle I remember only one,—a Mr. Norich, a young Russian, with whom I contracted a close friendship, never since renewed. Nothing more was said of the Galita plan, which seems to have depended on the success of the political negotiations with the Americans, and it was finally decided that I should go to Milan and carry the proclamations which Kossuth was to issue to the Hungarian soldiers of the Italian garrison there, ordering them, in case of any revolt, not to fire on insurgent Italians. This was in prevision of the insurrection which Mazzini had determined for the spring of 1853, and with regard to which there were grave dissensions between the two chiefs. Kossuth was not ready for the Hungarian rising, and refused to order it till there was a prospect of success, while Mazzini believed that, even if unsuccessful, the rising was necessary to keep his influence on the Italian population, which was already shaken. Kossuth said to me that he disapproved Mazzini's plans, for he refused "to play with the blood of the nations;" but, if Mazzini persisted, he would give the order to the Hungarian troops not to fire on the people if any rising should take place; more than that he could not do.