The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I

by William James Stillman

And Antonelli was the very impersonation of unscrupulous and malignant intellect, subtle with all the Italian subtlety, and unscrupulous as any of the brigands from the community in which he had his origin. He was in those days a cardinal of the order of deacons, and only in his later career a priest, which fact is sometimes made the excuse for his frank and notorious disregard of the rule of chastity, nor did he seem to be concerned that his amours were the common gossip of Rome. I was one day in his anteroom waiting for an audience when a lady came to visit him, and when she was announced he flew to receive her with the ardor of a boy in love, and with such open and passionate expressions of affection as could be seen only in a southern nature. But he had none of the slowness of action or decision which we attribute sometimes to the languor of tropical natures. In business, as in love, he lost no time, and never was at a loss for his expedient, but came at once to a decision, and gave it on the spot. When the cruise of the Alabama gave rise to diplomatic correspondence, and our government protested against her receiving such treatment from neutrals as would facilitate her career, I was, amongst my colleagues under similar obligations, charged to protest against her being admitted to the privileges of a national man-of-war in the port of Civita Vecchia. Antonelli replied to my communication of the protest that she would be admitted to the port with the same privileges as a man-of-war of any other nation, and the reply was given with almost explosive promptness and vivacity. But until a request for relaxation of the passport regulations in favor of Southerners was made by some one professing to speak on behalf of our own government, which was in my second year, he never permitted the least bending of them, and only in important cases, where strong personal influence was brought to bear, issued passports of the Foreign Office for Southern Americans to leave the city.

Antonelli had a face which gave one an idea of the expression "beauté du Diable," for a more perfect type of Satanic intelligence and malignity than it showed at times I cannot conceive. If I had been a figure painter, I should certainly have painted him as Mephistopheles, as he appeared in the audience room in his close-fitting purple costume with scarlet trimmings, his long coat-tails flying behind him when he moved like the fringe of a flame. He was the most curious contrast to the Pope, with his humorous and kindly manner, that it is possible to conceive, for the Cardinal was nothing if not sardonic and serious. The very slightest trace of humor would have transformed him completely.

Unique as was the government, so was the position of a consul. It had something of the exterritoriality of the same position in the Turkish empire. The arms of my government over my door were a protection against legal process, and I imagine that my predecessor had so employed it, for when I had my first clothes made the tailor refused to send them to the consulate till they were paid for. I had a right to carry arms and shoot anywhere in the territory of the Pope, and I had an absolute control over the passports, i.e. over the movements of my fellow citizens, for no one who had come to Rome with the passport of the United States of America could leave it without my visa, and I could sequestrate the passport whenever I saw fit. But on the part of my own government the consideration afforded was the minimum of its kind. I had no salary, and my compensation was in fees, viz. those on passports and the few invoices of goods sent to America, with such notarial business as might arise. The late consul had resigned, and gone home to fight for the Confederate cause, leaving the consulate in the hands of a French secretary, an old and needy teacher of his native language whenever he could find a pupil. He was satisfied with the pittance my own means allowed me to give him, and he wrote, in a much better French than mine would have been, the dispatches to the Vatican. I could talk French fluently if not correctly, and that sufficed. Before leaving Washington, I had received a hint from a friend in the Department of State that the fewer dispatches I troubled them with the higher would be my favor in the department, so that, with the exception of my quarterly accounts, I had little official writing to do; but when I came to Rome again in 1882, I was told by my successor of that date that my file of dispatches to the department was the only one which existed in the consular archives of the Papal occupation of Rome.

Rome was in those days the Lotophagitis of our century, whose population lived in an artificial peace, a sort of dreamland—artists who, whether German, French, English, Americans, or Russians, were more or less imbued with the feeling of the old art, and who found their clientéle in people who believed, as I have heard some say, that any picture painted in Rome was better than any picture painted elsewhere! There was, therefore, a continual exportation of copies, good and bad, of the old masters and a few landscapes for the remembering of localities, but the quality of the art was of trifling importance to the buyers—it was "done in Rome," and that sufficed as merit. The Café Greco, haunt of the race of artists since Salvator Rosa, was in its original and charming, if rude, simplicity, and there came all the artists to take their after-dinner cup. Old John Gibson, though not the oldest of the habitués, was the chief of our Anglo-American community; Randolph Rogers, Mosier, Reinhart, Story, and two or three other sculptors, whose names I have forgotten, and two or three American landscape painters, of whom Tilton was chief at the time of my arrival, had the monopoly of American patronage, and every wealthy American who came conceived it his duty to patronize American art, while our government had the tradition of always sending an artist to Rome as consul.

Charlotte Cushman, a famous actress of her day, was the nucleus of a little clique of women sculptors, Miss Stebbins, Harriet Hosmer, and one or two others of lesser fame. Accordingly, she made war on sculptors of the other sex in all the curious ways of womanly malice, in order to the exclusive reaping by her protégées of the golden harvest. I had known her years before, when she was still on the stage and I the dramatic and art critic of the New York "Evening Post," and, as our relations had then been cordial, it was natural that she should "take me up" on my arrival. Her hospitality was large—dinners, musical evenings, etc., and she had a "salon," to all which I was a welcome guest, and the cordiality lasted until she thought it time to make use of me. She then proposed to me to undertake the demolition of the fictitious reputations of the leading American sculptors, especially Story, Mosier, and Rogers, and, when I replied that I had then the intention of returning to the occupation of a landscape painter, and that in that position, as well as in that of consul and in a manner the protector of all my countrymen, it would be inconsistent with the position to publish criticisms on my fellow artists, the thermometer of her regard fell at once, and I had instant evidence that I was out of her list of friends.

Her coolness was changed to active hostility by another case of conflicting interests. The recognition of passports issued before the rebellion having been interdicted by the government, the consuls received an order to cancel all such as had been issued prior to the order, and to issue new ones only on the oath of allegiance being taken by the recipient. There was also a charge of five dollars for the passport, which was to be renewed after a year. Charlotte was, amongst her other qualities, avaricious, and though wealthy and ostentatious she rebelled at expenditure which did not show, and when it came time for her to leave Rome for the summer, and her passport came for visa, I stopped it and notified her to take out a new one. She refused, and confiding in the friendly personal relations which had existed between her and Seward, she wrote to the department protesting against my action and making formal complaint of my discourtesy. Seward replied that I was obeying my orders and that the passport must be taken and paid for. From that day war was open and malignant. Of course I was interdicted from responding in any way to her attacks, but I found them of no great importance; though when I was sent to Crete, four years later, she had influence enough to get her nephew appointed consul in succession.

In the years when Miss Cushman was on the stage I had understood her pretty well, and, though she had done what was possible to give me a good impression of her, I do not think I was ever much persuaded of her goodness or surprised at the enmity she showed when I came into collision with her interests. I think she possessed an utterly selfish nature, was not at all scrupulous in the attainment of her purposes, and was, in effect, that most dangerous member of society, a strong-willed and large-brained woman without a vestige of principle. She had a diabolical magnetism which in her best part, Meg Merrilies, had a sensuous attraction I have never known so powerful in another woman. Her Queen Katherine was a failure, and she could not play the part of a refined woman, but into that of Meg Merrilies, an adaptation of her own of Sir Walter Scott's novel, she put her whole nature—it was her very self as far as she would let herself be seen.

When I had a studio in New York I had as next-door neighbor an artist who was scene painter to the company in which Charlotte used to play at the old Park Theatre, and the stories he told me of her in that connection were terrible. My friend had never dared to speak of her openly, and only did so to me with a caution that if what he told me got to Miss Cushman's ears she was quite capable of silencing him in the most effective manner. I am of opinion that he judged her correctly, for she must have been a tiger when her passions were aroused, capable of anything, and I was careful never to give her more serious cause of offense than the doing of my official duty. Over those whom she chose to fascinate, she had an extraordinary power, and I have known young women who were so completely under her control as to be unable to escape from it when they found out her real nature except by flight.

If she had been beautiful she might have set the social world topsy-turvy. I think she was the cleverest woman I ever knew. Her tact was extraordinary, and she never failed to impress the visitors to Rome with her sincerity and benevolence, though she really possessed neither of those qualities. She was an immense illustration of a maxim of Dante Rossetti to the effect that artists had nothing to do with morality. She was always on the stage—in the most familiar act and in the presence of strangers she never lost sight of the footlights, and the best acting I ever saw her in was in private and in the representation of some comedy or tragedy of her own interests. She played with a marvelous power one part, and all others were but variations of that or failures—it was not art which dominated her, but the simulation of nature, and that her own, which is not the same thing as art, as we all ought to know.

Between herself and the sculptor Rogers, who was, in his way, as clever as she, there was an implacable war, veiled by the ordinary forms of civility, which both were careful never to break over. Miss Cushman had begun her career as a singer, but, her voice failing, she had to be content to remain on the stage of the theatre; but she always retained a certain dramatic quality of voice, and, within a very limited register, she sang with great power and pathos. Two of her favorite songs were Kingsley's "The Sands of Dee" and the "Three Fishermen," which, as she sang them, rarely failed to affect those who heard them for the first time to tears. Rogers was an admirable mimic and sang those songs with such a close rendering of the voice and manner (for Miss Cushman's voice was rather that of a man than one belonging to her own sex), with just a touch of burlesque, that he brought out roars of laughter; and when the two cordial enemies met in society somebody was sure to ask Rogers to sing "The Sands of Dee," which he did with good will, and Miss Cushman was obliged, to her intense anger, to applaud the caricature of her best performance. It was cruel, but he was merciless, and spared no exaggeration of her voice, her dramatic manner, and a way she had of sprawling over the piano, producing an ensemble which made it impossible to hear her again in the same songs without a disposition to laugh.