Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis to John S. DwightAffly. yr friend,
G.W.C.
XL
ROME, _November 22d, 1846._
My dear Friend,--Italy is no fable, and the wonderful depth of purity in the air and blue in the sky constantly makes real all the hopes of our American imagination. Sometimes the sky is an intensely blue and distant arch, and sometimes it melts in the sunlight and lies pale and rare and delicate upon the eye, so that one feels that he is breathing the sky and moving in it. The memory of a week is full of pictures of this atmospheric beauty. I looked from a lofty balcony at the Vatican upon broad gardens l.u.s.trously green with evergreen and box and orange trees, in whose dusk gleamed the large planets of golden fruit. Palms, and the rich, rounding tuft of Italian pines, and the solemn shafts of cypresses, stood beside fountains which spouted rainbows into the air, which was silver-clear and transparent, and on which the outline of the landscape was drawn as vividly as a flame against the sky at night. Beside me rose floating into the air the dome of St. Peter's, which is not a nucleus of the city, like the Duomo of Florence, but a crown more majestic and imposing as the spectator is farther removed. I had come to this balcony and its realm of sunny silence through the proper palace of the "Apollo" and the "Laoc.o.o.n"
and Raphael's "Transfiguration" and "Stanze." The Vatican is a wilderness of art and a.s.sociation, and in the allotted three hours I could only wander through the stately labyrinth and arrange the rooms, but not their contents, in my mind, but could not escape the "Apollo," which stands alone in a small cabinet opening upon a garden and fountain. It was greater to me than the "Venus de Medici" at Florence, although it has taught me better to appreciate that when I see it again. It is cold and pure and vast, the imagination of a man in the Divine Mind, given to marble because flesh was too recreant a material. The air of the statue is proudly commanding, with disdain that is not human, and a quiet consciousness of power. It does not resemble any figure we see of a man who has drawn a bow, but the ideal of a man in action. Like the "Venus,"
it shows how entire was the possible abstraction of the old Sculptors into a region of pure form as an expression of what was beyond human pa.s.sion, with which color seems to correspond. Deities are properly the subject of sculpture because of color; colorless purity of marble accords with the divine superiority to human pa.s.sion, and although the mythology degraded the G.o.ds into the sphere and influence of men, to the mind of the artist they would still sit upon unstained thrones.
This was one day. Upon another I stepped from a lovely road upon the Aventine into an old garden where, at the end of a long, lofty, and narrow alley of trimmed evergreens, stood the Dome of St. Peter's filling the vista against an afternoon sky. In these mossy and silent old places, the trees and plants seem to have sucked their vigor from the sun and soil of many long-gone centuries, and to remain ghosts of themselves and h.o.a.ry reminiscences of their day in the soft splendor of modern light. Italy itself is that garden wherein everything hands you to the past, and stands dim-eyed towards the future. It is a vast university, endowed by the past with the choicest treasures of art, to which come crowds from all nations, as lovers and dreamers and students, who may be won to live among relics so dear, but who mostly return to stand as interpreters of the beauty they have seen. Therefore, Italy is a theme which cannot grow old, as love and beauty cannot. Every book should be a work of art, and Italy, like the Madonna, should have a fresh beauty in the hands of every new artist. It is no longer interesting, statistically, for the names and numbers have been told often enough; but the impression which it leaves upon the mind of men of character and taste is the picture which should be novel and interesting.
But it is the relics of the summer prime of the Rome of distant scholars and lovers, and the art which shines with an Indian-summer softness in the autumn of its decay, that rule here yet; for the imperial days have breathed a spirit into the air which broods over the city still. Although it is a modern capital, with noise and dirt and smells and n.o.bility and fashionable drives, and walks and shops, and the red splendor of lacquered cardinals, and the triple-crowned Pope, in the arches which rise over modern chapels and of which they are built, in the ruined forum and acqueducts and baths and walls, are the decayed features of what was once greatest in this world, and which rules it from its grave. My first view of old Rome was in the moonlight. We pa.s.sed through the silent Forum, not on the level of the ancient city, which recoils from modern footsteps and goes downward towards the dust of those who made it famous, but by the ruined temples and columns whose rent seams were shaped anew into graceful perfection by the magical light, by the wilderness of the ruined Caesar's palace, until we looked wonderingly into the intricacy of arch and corridor and column of which was built the arch-temple of Paganism, the Coliseum. The moonlight silvered the broad s.p.a.ces of scornful silence as if Fate mused mournfully upon the work it must needs do. Gra.s.s and flowers in their luxuriant prime waved where the heads of Roman beauties nodded in theirs; and yet how true to the instincts of their nature were the Romans, who nourished by their recreations the stern will which had won the world for them. And since literature and art and science depend in a certain measure for their development and perfection upon a strong government, the same Roman beauty, in dooming to a b.l.o.o.d.y death before her eyes the man upon whose life depended other and far-away beauties and loves, may have breathed a sweeter strain into the song of the poet. The Popes have not refrained from obtruding a cross and shrines upon this defenceless ruin.
They would not render unto Caesar the things which were his, and although they are shocking at first, the magnificence of silence and decay soon swallows them, and they appear no more except as emblems of modern Rome lost in the broad desolation of the imperial city.
One cannot see the present Pope without a hope for Italy. I first saw him at high ma.s.s, with the cardinals, in the Palace chapel. The college of cardinals resembled a political and not a religious body, which, although the council of government, it ought to resemble upon religious occasions.
When the Pope entered they kissed his hand through his mantle. He is a n.o.ble-looking man, of a dignified and graceful presence, and already very dear to the people for what he has done and what he has promised. I could not look at him without sadness as a man sequestered in splendor and removed from the small sympathies in which lies the ma.s.s of human happiness. The service seemed a worship of him, but no homage could recompense a man for what a Pope had lost. I have seen him often since, and his demeanor is always marked by the same air of lofty independence.
It is good to see him appear equal to a position so solitary and so commanding, and to indicate this vigor of life and the conscience which would prevent him from making his seclusion a bower for his own ease.
From one of these wonderful days pa.s.sed in the Villa Borghese, a s.p.a.cious estate near the city, equally charming for its nature and art, I went, a day or two since, to watch by the deathbed of a young American. Hicks (a young artist, whom I love and whom the MacDaniels will know) and myself stood by him and closed his eyes. He was without immediate friends, except a connection by marriage who has recently arrived, and who was with him at the last. I was glad that I was here to be with him and lay him decently in his coffin. The handful of Americans in Rome followed him last evening at dusk, close by twilight, and buried him in the Protestant graveyard, near the grave of Sh.e.l.ley's ashes and heart. The roses were in full blossom, as Sh.e.l.ley says they used to be in midwinter. It is a green and sequestered spot under the walls of old Rome, where the sunlight lingers long, and where in the sweet society of roses whose bloom does not wither, Sh.e.l.ley and Keats sleep always a summer sleep. Fate is no less delicate than stern, which has here united them after such lives and deaths. And yet here one feels also the grimness of the Fate which strikes such lips into silence.
I force myself to send you this letter, because I want to write you. It is a shadowy hint of what I think and feel, as all letters must be. Cranch and his wife are with me, and will stay the winter. There are not many Americans, but I look every day for Burrill. Hicks I have seen a good deal and like very much. He speaks to me of the MacDaniels. Give my love to all at Brook Farm, and forgive a letter which you will not believe was written in Italy. Cranch sends much love.
Always yr
G.W.C.
How I wish you were going with us this sweet sunny day (23 Nov.), on which I am writing this at my open window, without a fire, to see the "Gladiator" at the capitol. It is a great responsibility to be in Italy, one may justly demand so much of you afterwards. Once more, good-bye, and some day send me a ray from the beautiful past which Brook Farm is to me.
G.W.C.
XLI
NAPLES, _April 27th, 1847._
My dear Friend,--If it would be hopeless and dispiriting to paint the constantly shifting lights and beauties of a summer day, it is no less so to write now and then a letter from Italy to one who would so warmly enjoy all that I see and hear. Every omitted day makes the case worse, a month makes it hopeless; and so I lived in Rome for five months and wrote you only one letter at the beginning. Yet is the magnetism of friendship not yet fine enough for you to know how constantly you were remembered, how I lingered in the moonlit Coliseum, how I felt the commanding beauty of the "Apollo" thrill through me, and the "Laoc.o.o.n" and the proud heads of Antinous, and the pictures which are what our imaginations demand for Raphael and Leonardo and Michel Angelo, how I stood in the flood of the "Miserere," which was and was not what I knew it must be, how I plucked roses from the graves of Sh.e.l.ley and Keats, and led a Roman life for a winter, not for myself only, but for you!
I have written quite regularly to my family, and described some of the many matters which were new and picturesque, but have scarcely s.n.a.t.c.hed a line to a friend except to Lizzie Curson and two letters to Geo. Bradford, who had some intention of coming out to join us in this enchanted land. In my last letter to him, which I wrote at the end of the Holy Week, I mentioned the "Miserere" and the news of that time. He will show you the letter, I suppose, if you wish to see it. But from Rome I broke suddenly off and came to Naples.
Is it not fine when things are beautifully different, when you part from one as if you were leaving everything, and find satisfaction in another--not a superiority, but equal difference? So is Naples after Rome.
There is nothing solemn or grand in it. It rises in solid banks of cheerful houses from the s.p.a.cious streets upon the water to the grim castle of St. Elmo, which hovers almost perpendicularly over it. These houses are white and bright, and turn themselves into the sunlight, and stretch in long lines around the bay, blending with the neighboring towns so that the base of Vesuvius is marked with a line of white houses, which go on undistinguishably from Naples. Farther round is Castellamare and Sorrento, whose promontory beyond is one corner of the bay, of which Capri seems like a portion sailed away into the sea. And the bay of Naples is so s.p.a.cious and stately, so broad and deep, its lines those of mountains and the sea, its gem the sunny city, and the islands of Capri, Ischia, and Procida, so large and high and springing so proudly from the water, that it satisfies the expectation; and sometimes this broad water dashes and rolls like the ocean, then subsides into sunny ripples and gleams like gla.s.s in the moonlight. Two or three old castles stand out upon the bay from the city, picturesque objects for artists and lookers on, and in the hazy moonlight black and sharp ma.s.ses reflected in the water. Sails and steamers and boats of all sorts are constantly dotting this s.p.a.ce, and I am never weary of wandering along the sh.o.r.e on which lie the fishermen among their boats, with mournful looking women and black, matted-haired, gypsy-like children.
The picturesqueness of cities and life in Italy is more striking to me than anything else. The people are so poetic that, although lazy and dirty and mean, what they do and wear is like an animated picture. The gay costumes of the women--ribbons and bodices and trinkets--with their deep olive skins and bare heads, with hair that is most luxuriantly black, and beautifully twisted and folded in heavy, graceful braids, the broad-browed and outlined Roman women, majestic and handsome, not lovely or interesting, but showing as the remains of an imperial beauty; and in Naples the little figures and arch eyes and Oriental mien of the girls--these persons living in quaint old cities where the brightest flowers bloom amid hanging green over windows far and far above the street and walking in high-walled narrow lanes over which hang the sun-sucking leaves of the indolent aloe, and in which gleam the rich orange and lemon trees, or, as now, the keen l.u.s.trous green of just-budding fig-trees, and vines, or entering with quiet enthusiasm into festivals of saints, sprinkling the churches and streets with glossy, fragrant bay-leaves, hanging garlands upon the altars while a troop of virgins, clad in white and crowned, pa.s.s with lighted tapers to the Bishop's feet for a blessing, or more grandly drawing St. Peter's in fire upon the wild gloom of a March night, and in vast procession of two or three thousand marching down the narrow Corso singing a national song to the Pope--all this, if you can unravel it, paints for the eye what can never be seen at home. "I pack my trunk and wake up in Naples," and find myself, for which I am grateful; but I also find Italian beauty, which is like American as oranges are like apples. Such deep pa.s.sionate eyes, such proud, queenly motions, such groups of peasants and girls in gardens listening to music, and lying asleep in the shade of trees, all this material of poetry is also material of life here. This is the true Lotos Eaters' island, this the grateful land of leisure; here people walk slowly and eat slowly and ride slowly, and, I must say, think slowly. But that also is corn to my mill. I find some sympathy with the happy Guy of Emerson's book, for there is no public opinion in Italy. A man feels that he stands alone and enjoys all the joys and sorrows of that consciousness and that position. Your room is your castle. If a man knows where it is he comes to see you, but whatever you do or say (of course excepting what is political) is your own business and not that of infernal society, which at home is grand arbiter of men's destinies. Except you care to do so, you have no state to keep up. The card for a royal ball finds you as readily in your fourth story as in the neighboring palace it finds My Lord; and so you are released from that thraldom which one cannot explain, but which one feels at home whether he consents to it or not.
And it is a broad and catholic teacher, this travelling. I have been quite unsphered since I have been here, in various ways, and have discovered how good every man's business is and how wide his horizon. There is a shabby Americanism which prowls proselyting through Europe, defying its spirit or its beauty or its difference to swerve it from what it calls its patriotism. Because America is contented and tolerably peaceful with a Republic, it prophesies that Europe shall see no happy days until all kings are prostrated; and belches that peculiar eloquence which prevails in small debating-clubs in retired villages at home. This is like taunting the bay of Naples with the bay of New York, or apples with oranges, or the dark l.u.s.trous beauty of Italian women with the blond fairness of Americans. Why should all men be governed alike rather than all look alike; the north is cold and the south is warm. These monarchies which are decried have been the fostering arms of genius and art; and in Italy and the rest of the countries here lie the grand achievements of all time, which draw the n.o.blest and best from America to contemplate them and suck the heart of their beauty for the refining and adorning their own land.
And why fear imitation! Men imitate when they stay at home more preposterously than when they see what is really beautiful and grand in other places; and a fine work of art repels imitation as the virgin beauty of a girl repels licentiousness. And we are elevated by art and mingling with men to know what is n.o.ble and best in attainment. We fancy a thousand things fine at home because we do not know how much finer the same may be, perhaps because we do not know that they are copies. Indeed, I feel as if it would be a good fruit of long travel to recover the knowledge of the fact which we so early lose--that we are born into the world with relations to men as men before we are citizens of a country with limited duties. A n.o.ble cosmopolitanism is the brightest jewel in a man's crown.
I have heard very little music in Italy--never so little in a winter. In Rome the opera was nothing, and there were only two or three concerts.
That of a young Pole pianiste whom I knew was good, Maurice Strakosch (perhaps he will come to America). But the great gem of music was the singer Adelaide Kemble. You know she has left the stage and the public, but this was an amateur concert for the Irish. Her singing of "Casta Diva"
was by far the finest gem heard. Such richness and volume, such possession and depth and pa.s.sion, such purity and firmness and ease, I did not believe possible. Although a single song in a concert it seemed to embrace the whole spirit of the opera. She sang also the moon song from "Der Freischutz" simply and exquisitely, also in a trio of Mozart's and a Barcarolle, all of which showed the same genius. I do not see that she lacks anything, for although not beautiful, her face is flexible and really grand when she is excited. Cranch thought her voice not quite sweet in some parts. The "Miserere" was exquisitely beautiful, but not entirely what I expected to hear. In Naples I have heard the "Barber of Seville"
and an opera of Mercadanti's. The last is refined street music, and reminds me of the mien and manners of a gentleman. The bands play every day, which is much better than at Rome. But it is unhappy for me that Verdi is the musical G.o.d of Italy at present, because the bands play entirely from his operas, which remind me of a diluted Donizetti. He has brought out a new opera, "Macbeth," within the month, at Florence. On the third evening he was called out thirty-eight times; the young men escorted him home in triumph, and the next night various princes and n.o.bles presented him with a golden crown!
I have heard various rumors of Brook Farm, none agreeable. I feel as if my letter might not find you there; but what can you be doing anywhere else?
I have received no letter from you, no direct news from Brook Farm, except through Lizzie Curzon and Geo. Bradford. But it floats on in my mind, a sort of Flying Dutchman in these unknown seas of life and experience, full of an old beauty and melody. I know how your time is used, and am not surprised at any length of silence. We go into the beautiful country about us for a fortnight, to Salerno, Sorrento, Pestum, and Capri, afterwards Rome again. Florence, the Apennines, Venice, Milan, Como, the Tyrol, Switzerland, and Germany lie before us. What a spring which promises such a summer! You will still go with me as silently as before.
At this moment I raise my eyes to Vesuvius, which is opposite my window, and the blue bay beneath. I can see the line of the Mediterranean blending with the sky, and remember that you are at the other side. I write as if Brook Farm still was there, and am more than ever
Yr friend
G.W.C.
LETTERS OF LATER DATE
I
PROVIDENCE, _Thursday, Oct. 10, '50._
My dear Dwight,--I was very very sorry not to find you the other day; but as I was only a few hours in Boston, I had no opportunity of renewing the attempt.
This morning I saw a letter, I suppose from you, in the _Tribune_, about Jenny's Sat.u.r.day concert in Boston. It reminded me to send you a most rapid criticism(?) of mine published here yesterday. I address the paper as I do this note.
This Jenny Lind singing is a matter of such lofty art in the sublimest sense, and we are so young and jejune in all art, that I cannot much wonder at the general impression. It is precisely what would be the fate of really fine pictures and poems. Huge wonder, childish delight, intoxication, delirium, and disappointment--but little of the apprehensive perception of the presence of an artist so profound and grand.
I knew, of course, that you must be realizing somewhere the greatness of this gift. Now I have heard you say so, I am glad to send you a kind of echo.
When shall I see you? I shall be here for a day or two more, then relapse into New York, for how long I know not. Let me have a line from you, saying that among all your virtues you yet count Memory, as does yours most rememberingly,
George W. Curtis.
II
PROVIDENCE, _March 17th, '51, Monday._
I believe, dear John, that I have not yet had the grace to congratulate you upon "the great change" that you have recently undergone. But, happily, I am equally sure that you have not ascribed my silence to anything but the habit of epistolary silence that has come upon me since my return from the other continent, mainly distinguished, if my memory may confirm universal remark, by the great number of letters written from it.
May I also add the satiety of writing, which a man who has just published a book may be supposed to be experiencing? For I have published a book, a copy of which, with the heart of the author, pressed but not dried between the blank leaves, you should have had immediately but for my absence from New York. It is called "Nile Notes of a Howadji," and has thus far, being only a week old, received as flattering notice as any tremulous young author could have wished. One or two chapters are considered somewhat _broad_, I hear; but the whole impression is precisely what I wished.
I am here because I was invited to repeat my lecture here; and, as I was not back in New York when the "Notes" were issued, I preferred to tarry in the "ambrosial retirement," as Rev. Osgood calls it, and not serve as foot-notes to my Readers.
I shall go home soon, and I trust by way of Boston. If so, I shall of course see you and--yours, I must now say. Will you present my warmest regards and pleasantest recollections to your wife, and believe still in your friend