PARIS AGAIN THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA
I remained in Paris all that winter, and took a studio with an American friend,--Mr. Yewell,--but I could do no work; the headache never left me, and, though I could draw a little, my vision failed when it was strained, and I seemed to have lost my color sense. I was desperate, and, when Garibaldi set out on the Marsala expedition, I was just on the point of sailing to join him when I received a letter from the father of my fiancee, telling me that her perplexities and distress of mind over our marriage had so increased that they feared for her reason if she were not set at rest. I took the next steamer, and ended the vacillation by insisting on being married at once.
Nothing but a morbid self-depreciation had prevented her from coming to a decision in the matter long before, and there was no other solution than to a.s.sume command and impose my will. We were married two days after my landing, and returned to Paris a few days after.
When the spring opened we went down into Normandy, and there, returning to the study of nature and living in quiet and freedom from anxiety, I slowly and partially recovered my vision, and began to regain in a measure the power of drawing. The landscape of the quiet French country suited me perfectly, and I made two or three good studies, but without getting into a really efficient condition for painting, which I only did a year or two later at Rome.
Our winter in Paris had been greatly brightened by the acquaintance of the Brownings, the father and sister of the poet. We lived in the same section of Paris, near the Hotel des Invalides, and much of our time was pa.s.sed with them. "Old Mr. Browning" we have always called him, though the qualification of "old," by which we distinguished him from his son Robert, seemed a misnomer, for he had the perpetual juvenility of a blessed child. If to live in the world as if not of it indicates a saintly nature, then Robert Browning the elder was a saint: a serene, untroubled soul, conscious of no moral or theological problem to disturb his serenity, and as gentle as a gentle woman,--a man in whom, it seemed to me, no moral conflict could ever have arisen to cloud his frank acceptance of life as he found it come to him. He had, many years before we knew him, inherited an estate in Jamaica, but on learning that to work it to profit he must become a slave owner he renounced the heritage. And, knowing him as we knew him, it is easy to see that he would renounce it cheerfully and without any hesitation.
A man of a rougher and more energetic type might have tried the experiment, or questioned the judgment, at least have regretted his own integrity, but Browning could have done neither. The way was clear, and the decision must have been as quick as that of a child to reject a thing it abhorred. His unworldliness had not a flaw. So beautiful a life can never have become distinguished in the struggles and antagonisms which make the career of the man of the world, or even the man of letters, as letters are now written; for he was a man, and the only one I ever knew, of whom one would say that he applied in the divine sense the maxim of Christ, "Resist not evil,"--he simply, and by the necessity of his own nature, ignored it.
He had a curious facility in drawing heads of quaint and always varied character, which character he could not foresee when he began the drawing. They were always in profile, and he began at one extremity and ran his pencil round to the other, always bringing out an individuality, but without any intention as to what that should be; and he named it, when it was done, according to the type it offered, generally in character, with a trace of caricature, and, for the most part, subjects from the courts of law,--a judge or a puzzled juror, a disappointed or a triumphant client, etc., etc. He would draw a dozen or twenty in an evening, all different and all unforeseen, as much to him as to us, and he was as much amused as we were when it turned out more than usually funny. His chief amus.e.m.e.nt was hunting through the bookstalls along the quays, and I have, amongst my old books, an early life of Raphael, which he gave me, with his name on the fly leaf.
Of Miss Browning, who still lives, I will not speak; but what she told me of the poet"s mother may, I think, be told without indiscretion.
She had the extraordinary power over animals of which we hear sometimes, but of which I have never known a case so perfect as hers.
She would lure the b.u.t.terflies in the garden to her, and the domestic animals obeyed her as if they reasoned. Robert had been given a pure-blooded bulldog of a rare breed, which tolerated no interference from any person except him or his mother, and which would allow no familiarity with her on the part of strangers; so that when a neighbor came in he was not permitted to shake hands with her, for the dog at once showed his teeth. Not even her husband was allowed to take the slightest liberty with her in the dog"s presence, and when Robert was more familiar with her than the dog thought proper he showed his teeth to him. They one day put him to a severe test, Robert putting his arm around his mother"s neck as they sat side by side at the table. The dog went round behind them, and, putting his feet upon the chair, lifted Robert"s arm off her shoulder with his nose, giving an intimation that he would not permit any liberty of that kind even from him. They had a favorite cat, to which the dog had the usual antipathy of dogs, and one day he chased her under a cupboard, and, unable to reach her, kept her there besieged and unable to escape, till Mrs.
Browning intervened and gave the dog a lecture, in which she told him of their attachment for the cat, and charged him never to molest her more. If the creature had understood speech he could not have obeyed better; for from that time he was never known to molest the cat, and she, taking her revenge for past tyranny, bore herself most insolently with him, and when she scratched him over the head he only whimpered and turned away, as if to avoid temptation. An injury to one of his feet made an operation necessary, and the family surgeon was called in to perform it, but found him so savage that he could not touch the foot or approach him. Mrs. Browning came and talked to him in her way, and the dog submitted at once, without a whimper, to the painful operation. She had been long dead when I knew the family.
We had planned to go together--the elder Browning, Robert and Mrs.
Browning, Miss Browning, my wife, and myself--to pa.s.s the summer at Fontainebleau, and we were awaiting the arrival of Robert and his wife from Florence when the news came of Mrs. Browning"s illness, followed not much later by that of her death. The intrusion even of a friend was too much for this catastrophe, and we saw little more of the Brownings until years after, when other and many changes of fortune had come over us, and we met again in Italy.
Out of a quiet and happy life in Normandy I was aroused by the complications of our Civil War. An intimate friend living in Paris, the late Colonel W.B. Greene, a graduate of West Point, had applied for the command of a regiment of Ma.s.sachusetts troops, and offered me a position on his staff if he got it and I would come. We agreed to go together, but his impatience carried him away, and he sailed without giving me notice. I followed by the next steamer, and, leaving my wife with my parents, I went on to Washington and to Greene"s headquarters.
I was too late for Greene, and I could not pa.s.s the medical examination, which was then very rigid, for all the North was volunteering. "Go home," said Greene; "we have already buried all the men like you. We have not seen the enemy yet, and we have buried six per cent. of the regiment. It is no place for you." But I had no choice; there were 800,000 men enlisted, and further enlistments were countermanded. I tried to get some position with Burnside,--who was fitting out an expedition to North Carolina,--even as cook; for I could not pa.s.s for the rank and file, and Burnside, as a friend of my friends in Rhode Island, might, I thought, help me. He replied that he had already nine applications for every post at his disposal. As a last resource, I went up into the Adirondacks to raise a company of sharpshooters. My backwoodsmen were all ready to go, but they wanted special rifles and special organization, for they meant to go to "shoot secesh," not to be regular infantry. Their ambition was not reconcilable with the plans of the military authorities, so that the company was never raised, and I then turned to my plan for the consulate.
I suppose that there are few now living who knew by personal investigation and remember clearly the condition of the country at that epoch. We had suffered the defeat of Bull Run, and the country at large was in a state of flaming patriotism; but sober people had many doubts whether the government was strong enough to carry through the plans of the President, and he also had, I was told by some one who knew him, been very uncertain whether the population at large would respond, even when he made the first call for 75,000 volunteers.
Persons in positions of great influence were of the opinion that the North had no right to coerce the South. General Scott, the commander-in-chief, urged separation peacefully, and Horace Greeley, the most influential member of the press in the country, opposed coercion, while the ma.s.s of the Democratic party were either on the fence or openly in favor of the South, and this opposition of the Democrats was probably what gave Lincoln the most serious consideration. Some of the most earnest and patriotic people I knew had grave doubts if the Northern people had any conception of the work they had undertaken, and if they would be constant when they came to realize it.
While I was in Washington I saw Lincoln and some of those around him, and my opinion is that, but for his faith in the Supreme Providence and in the destiny of our Republic, his courage, and with it the whole scheme of defense, would have broken down. Future generations will not understand the difficulties before him,--perhaps he himself did not.
The administration of Buchanan had prepared for the secession, and Buchanan as minister to England had already established the opinion of the governing cla.s.s in that country in the certainty of impending separation,--a fact which should be remembered when we judge the att.i.tude of England; the fleet had been dispersed to the ends of the earth, and the officers of the army were mainly Southerners. The support of New York and Ma.s.sachusetts was of the gravest importance.
The former was largely under the influence of Seward, and he was inclined by nature to conciliation; in the latter State, General Butler, a Democrat, and of seriously questioned loyalty, had an influence which might easily become the dominant one and carry the State over to the Democratic opposition, which was in the country at large distinctly opposed to coercion. The government and the ruling cla.s.s in England were clearly hostile to the North, and the position on that side was menacing.
Had the South then been content with separation on the lines of "Mason and Dixon"s line," I am convinced that it would have taken place without a struggle, if the position could have been defined without bloodshed. But this was what the most sagacious of the Southern leaders did not desire. It became evident that the majority in the South did not desire separation, and the leaders knew that a peaceful separation would be followed by reconstruction on something like the old lines, for the South could not stand alone industrially; so that they had not concealed their determination to invade the Middle and Western States, and carry them forcibly over to the new Confederacy, "leaving out New England." It was generally known that Pennsylvania and New Jersey were Democratic and lukewarm for the old Union, and that Ohio and the West would not resist if there were a successful beginning of a movement and a military invasion. So far as the sentiments of the politicians were concerned, the South had a very correct idea of the probabilities of the situation; what they were utterly ignorant of was the spirit of the ma.s.ses in the North, which they thought to coerce easily. There they were mistaken, and there Lincoln saw his strength, and that saved the country; for, with the firing on Fort Sumter and the open insult to the flag, the Northern ma.s.ses took fire, and the conflagration burned out the roots of sympathy for the South. Butler was given a command in the field; others of the same cla.s.s were given commands, and the dangerous demagogue cla.s.s was enlisted for the war.
When I landed, the entire able-bodied population of the North was seeking to enlist, and the troops were pouring by thousands into Washington, and only the most uncertain and prudent of the Northern leaders doubted of victory, though no one dreamed what it would cost.
And, looking at the corruption of American politics to-day, the venality and the indifference to the true interests of the nation of most of the men who control the political life at its most important centres, and the general tendency of our politics, it needs a serene and far-reaching faith in human progress to enable a citizen of the United States, who believes in a political ideal, to regard the sacrifices then made as having been profitable. I see things dispa.s.sionately and as an old man removed from the chance of personal gains or losses, and, but for a faith in human progress being the result of an eternal and inevitable law, I should say that the blood of that war had been wasted. It is a painful conviction to die with,--but I expect to die with it,--that generations and unparalleled disasters must pa.s.s before my country reaches the goal its founders believed to be its destiny.
Having exhausted every appliance to open a way into the army, I made my appeal to Dr. Nott, and received by return of the Washington post my commission as consul at Rome, as I have told in a previous chapter.
I went on to Cambridge to get information and advice, and, at Lowell"s, met Howells for the first time. We could, each of us, offer condolence for the other"s disappointment; for Howells had asked for Dresden and was appointed to Venice, while I had asked for Venice, intending to write the history of Venetian art. But Rome had always been given to an artist; and, though there was no salary, but fees only, it seemed to have been a much-sought-for position, and I accepted.
Leaving my wife at home, for her confinement, I sailed for England, _en route_ for Italy, just when the capture of Mason and Slidell had thrown the country into a new agitation; for it was foreseen that England would not submit to this disrespect to her flag, though the step was in strict accordance with her own precedents. Seward and the more prudent part of the public were in favor of releasing the prisoners at once, and before any demand could be made by the English government; but it was said that Lincoln and the West were in favor of holding them, and letting England do her worst. It is possible that he thought that a foreign enemy would decide all the wavering minds, and possibly open the way to a pacification between the North and South.
I left New York before we had heard of the reception of the news in England, and found the agitation there intense. The consul at Liverpool told me that he could not go into the Exchange for the insults offered him there, and American merchants were insulted on the street. In London, at the restaurants where I dined, the conversation turned altogether on the incident, and the language was most violent.
As I was in the service of the government I waited on Mr. Adams, the minister, and remained in London until the question was settled, in daily communication with him. He thought the danger of war still great, as Lincoln had not decided to accept the ultimatum, and the English ministry was, in Adams"s opinion, desirous of having a _casus belli_, or at least a justification for recognizing the Southern Confederacy. That war had not already become inevitable he considered due entirely to the att.i.tude of the Queen, who resisted any measure calculated to precipitate a hostile solution, and had refused her a.s.sent to a dispatch demanding the release of the envoys, and worded in such peremptory terms that Lincoln could not have hesitated to repel it at any cost,--an outcome which, in the opinion of Mr. Adams, was what Palmerston, Gladstone, and Lord John Russell wanted. But, on the insistence of the Queen, the offensive pa.s.sage was struck out, and peace was preserved, though at that moment the reply of our government had not been received, and Adams did not consider that, even in its modified form, the demand of the English ministry might not be rejected. As the crisis was still undecided, I waited until the solution was definite. The favorable reply came by the next steamer.
To the peace-loving heart of the Queen mainly, and next to the tact and diplomatic ability of Mr. Adams, the world owes that the war most disastrous possible for the civilization of the west was avoided. Put at rest with regard to this danger, I continued my journey and entered upon my functions as representative of my government at Rome.
I have since heard various versions of this crisis and its solution, but the above is, I believe, substantially the truth. I have heard that the English dispatch was referred to the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, and that he advised against it; but this is impossible. The Emperor of France was more determined even than Palmerston to destroy the United States, if possible, as his Mexican enterprise showed, and we knew from other sources that he was pressing the English government to recognize the belligerency of the South.
Day by day I heard from Mr. Adams of the position, and he said to me emphatically that he did not consider the declaration of war impossible until he received the reply of Lincoln to the English ultimatum; and it is impossible that such a transaction as that of the consultation with the French government should have taken place without Adams knowing of it, for his information from the surroundings of the Queen was minute and incessant. He said to me, without the slightest qualification, that the preservation of peace was due solely to the insistence of the Queen, strengthened by the advice of Prince Albert, on the demand for the release of the envoys being made in terms which should not offend the _amour propre_ of the North.
CHAPTER XIX
MY ROMAN CONSULATE
The convenient road from London to Rome, when I went there as consul, was via Paris to Ma.r.s.eilles, and thence by sea to Civita Vecchia.
It was December when I left London, and the journey from Paris to Ma.r.s.eilles, in a third-cla.s.s carriage, took twenty-six hours. The Mont Cenis tunnel had not been opened yet, and the voyage by diligence was tedious, costly, and at that season uncomfortable on account of the cold. I arrived at Rome shortly before Christmas, when the city was astir with the preparations for the great ceremonies which were then the princ.i.p.al attraction for foreigners there, but the number of visitors was very small compared with that which now gathers to their diminished religious and spectacular interest. The foreign quarter was limited to that immediately about the Piazza di Spagna, and only the artist folk lived in the remoter quarters, where they found cheap and commodious apartments in the palaces of fallen n.o.bility, glad to let their upper stories; and there were few or no new houses.
Rome was given up to art and religion; it was still decaying, picturesque, pathetic, and majestic. Where now we find the prosperous and hideous new quarters,--the Via n.a.z.ionale, and the expanse of structures to the east of it, the region between the Coliseum and the Lateran, the 20 Settembre, Via Veneto, and the vicinity where were the Ludovisi gardens, and now are long streets of ugly houses, with the entirely new quarter of the Prati, were then expanses of vineyards and gardens, and we used to cross the Tiber by a ferry to visit the farm of Cincinnatus, now buried under twenty feet of rubbish, on which are built the palaces of the Prati, huge, ugly barracks; and even the Campagna has lost much of its desolate beauty. Down the Tiber, where the ghastly embankment walls in the yellow stream, there was then a picturesque riverbank, with a delightful foreground in every rood of it. Where now is the Piazza delle Terme and the great railway station, we used to go to get studies of the ruins of the baths of Diocletian, one of the most picturesque objects of the region.
Political or social life there was none, and the foreign element, whether the regular or the transitory, was divided by its nationalities, and cut off absolutely from the Roman. Only the English and American mingled to any extent, the foreign Catholics finding their way, with such Protestants as gave hope of conversion, into the clerical world, which, from all that I could see of it, offered little attraction to the fugitive visitors. Wide-eyed, hurried Americans came, saw, and bought a picture, and went away again; English sightseers came for Christmas or Easter, and bought a few old masters; but the ma.s.s of those who stayed for long were invalids, who settled down and tried to keep as much in the sun as possible, for the universal belief then was that to live out of the sunshine was to contract mortal malaria. It was the most unreal world I have ever lived in, whether we use the word unreal in the sense of shadowy or poetical.
Rome was in fact at that time a spectacle never before or since seen in the world. Ruled by an absolute government, theocratic and therefore considering its authority beyond all human attack, but besieged on all sides by an invading liberalism, which had already captured all its outposts and undermined its position at the centre, it, still defiant, refused to make a single concession to the spirit of the epoch, and bade defiance to diplomacy and insurrection alike.
All its former allies from north and south were in refuge within the walls of the city, the King of Naples and all his court offering the daily spectacle of a parade of their downfall as they drove through the streets. Rome itself was a huge cloister in which the only animation was in the processions of priests and students of the theological seminaries, or the more melancholy funerals in which the hooded and gowned friars added gloom to the mystery of our common lot,--no industry except those of jewelry and art and that of ecclesiastical apparatus. The princ.i.p.al revenues were the charity of the outside world,--St. Peter"s pence. Government was not by law, but by the arbitrary decisions of the most incompetent of officials, enforced by the bayonets of a foreign army, the soldiers of which despised the population, and lived in the most complete separation from it. The Pope himself had little affection for his French protectorate, which urged, and sometimes effected, certain improvements which he regarded as innovations and invasions.
I had, soon after my arrival, a case before the lower tribunal which showed how the administration of justice was regarded. Having a relapse into the malady that had followed my breakdown in Switzerland, which was exaggerated by the heat of Rome, I was ordered by my physician to Ariccia to recruit, and I left my apartment, which was also the consulate, and took quarters at the little Ariccian inn which was the resort of the artists at that date.
As I could not absent myself from the office longer than ten days at a time without permission of the government at Washington, I had to return _pro forma_ at that term, when, to my surprise, I found my apartment in possession of a stranger. I intimated his dislodging, to which he replied that he had taken the rooms and paid his rent and would not go. At that time there was a temporary occupation--merely nominal, however--of the legation by ex-Governor Randall of Wisconsin.
The minister had taken an apartment where he could mount the arms of the Republic, and had then gone off on his European tour, leaving me in occupation of the post as charge d"affaires and in care of his rooms. As I had thus another place to sleep in, I evacuated the consular quarters not unwillingly, removing all my effects except a set of silver spoons which my mother had given me on my leaving home, and which were heirlooms. The spoons were being cleaned, the landlady said, and would be ready the next day. I called for them again, and was again deferred, when I went at once to the tribunal and made a claim for my spoons. On statement of the case, the judge gave an order for the immediate and unconditional delivery of the plate; but when I went to get them at the tribunal, he said it was lucky for me that I came when I did, as the landlady had come in the afternoon and applied for an order against me to pay another month"s rent (always paid in advance), and that if she had come first he should have been obliged to give it to her. I explained that I had been driven out of the apartment by another occupant; but that, he said, made no difference, the first applicant for justice would alone have been heard.
Not long after, a similar case called for my more or less official recognition. My colleague the consul at Florence had come for a visit to Rome, and had taken a cab to make the rounds of the sights, and, making his visit to the church of Ara Coeli, he of course left the cab at the foot of the stairs. He found little which interested him in the church, and, returning sooner than the cabman expected, he found no cab there. In the course of the day he went to the police court and asked for a punishment for the cabman for having deserted him on his round. The cabman was summoned and fined accordingly; but the magistrate remarked to my friend when he came to give evidence that it was fortunate for him that he complained first, for the cabman had come later in the day and asked for his fare for the night which he had pa.s.sed at the foot of the stairs waiting for the return of the _forestiero_; and he added that if the cabman had come first, my friend would have been obliged to pay the claim. It was simple and expeditious, first come being first served, but hardly good civil administration.
At the time of the expedition of Garibaldi which ended at Aspromonte, the excitement in the city was intense, and the panic on the part of the ecclesiastical population so great that they mainly took refuge in the convents and villages of the mountain country. I had occasion to see the Pope at that time, and found him in profound despondency, evidently persuaded that Garibaldi would come to Rome. He said to me that he was convinced that the great day of tribulation prophesied for the church had come, and it would have its fifty years of oppression, after which it would arise again more glorious than ever; but there was no question that in his mind the French garrison was not for the moment an efficient protection. The Italian party in the city was very small, but active, and in those days especially so. The priests were insulted and menaced whenever it was possible to reach them covertly, and finally one was stabbed in a crowd. Many arrests were made, and amongst those arrested was an exile who had ventured into the city to visit his friends. He was put on trial for the stabbing, and, though he proved an alibi, he was condemned to death, for "some example must be made," they said. There was not the slightest evidence against him except that he was an exile who had no right to be in the city, and he was executed. Every day the police had to obliterate rebellious inscriptions from the walls, and a constant correspondence was kept up with the patriots in Florence. To belong to the order of Freemasons was punishable by death, but a lodge was in full activity, and when Lincoln was a.s.sa.s.sinated it sent me, for his widow, a letter of condolence. It was given me by Castellani, who, not being initiated, had received it from a brother known to him. About the same time, the revolutionary committee decided to contribute a stone from the _agger_ of Servius Tullius to the Washington monument at Washington, and got out one of the largest, had it dressed and appropriately inscribed, and forwarded it to Leghorn for shipment to America, the bill of lading being sent to me for transmission.
The police regulations were extremely severe against heresy, but brigandage was common, and the darker streets were unsafe at night to strangers. People were not infrequently robbed in their own doorways, and there was a recognized system of violent robbery known as "doorway robbing." The streets were very badly lighted, and the entrance halls on the ground floor were scarcely ever lighted, so that we always carried wax tapers to light ourselves up to our rooms, or to visit our friends. Incautious foreigners, ignorant of this need for precaution, entering the dark pa.s.sages, were sometimes seized by robbers hidden behind the door, gagged, and stripped of all valuables without a possibility of a.s.sistance unless a friend happened to enter the house at the moment, for the police were never seen about the streets at night. I had, in the second year of my residence, a very narrow escape from capture by brigands, which might have been a serious matter.
I was making, with my wife and son, our _villeggiatura_ at Porto d"Anzio, then a miserable fishing village, but, except Civita Vecchia, the only convenient seaside locality in the States of the Church where one could find lodgings. With an American lady friend staying with us, we planned to make an excursion by boat to the Punta d"Astura, where are the ruins of a villa of Cicero; but when half way there we were driven back by a pa.s.sing shower. On the same day a party of Roman sportsmen, out quail shooting, were "held up" in the ruins and obliged to pay a ransom of five thousand scudi. The brigands of the kingdom of Naples were constantly given refuge and sustenance on our side the frontier, and on a visit to Olevano, in the Sabine hills, I was witness of a band of over two hundred taking refuge from the Italian troops in the Papal territory, and being furnished with provisions and refreshments as at a festa. Artists out sketching were never molested, not because the Papal influence protected us, but because the brigands knew their poverty, and had a tinge of sympathy with the arts.
The ecclesiastical authorities were so severe on heresy that a friend of mine, who had married an English lady who remained a Protestant, was brought before the Inquisition (the "Holy Office") and put under the severest pressure to compel his wife to abstain from attending the English church outside the Porta del Popolo. He escaped ulterior consequences only by appealing to the French authorities, he being a surgeon in the service of the French garrison. For common morality there was little care. The s.e.xual relations were flagrantly loose, and the scandal even of some of the great dignitaries was widespread.
Antonelli"s amours were the subject of common gossip, and most of the parish priests were in undisguised marital relations with their housekeepers; nor was this considered as at all to their discredit by the population at large. One of the leading Liberals, permitted to remain in the city on account of the importance of his industry, one of the great goldsmiths" works, told me that the Liberals never permitted the priests to frequent their houses, as they invariably conspired to corrupt the newly married women, unmarried girls being unmolested. In the lower circles of the bourgeoisie it was a matter of common knowledge that the husbands openly made a traffic of the virtue of their wives; and in my personal acquaintance amongst the artists, I knew of a number of cases in which the artist had the wife as a mistress for a fixed compensation to the husband.
For this kind of immorality the police had no eyes, and, admitting enormous exaggeration in the common report of the conduct of the younger priesthood and the students of the theological schools (and there is no smoke without some fire), the conditions of morality amongst the younger Italian clergy was a gross scandal. Houses of ill-fame were notorious, and it used to be said that when Pius IX. was urged by the French authorities to put them under control and license he replied that "every house was a brothel, and it was useless to license any." There was another saying which I heard often, that "if you wanted to go to a brothel you must go in the daytime, for at night they were full of priests." How far this was justified I do not know, but I remember that two American acquaintances went one night to one of the best recognized houses of the kind, a place of the most common notoriety on the Corso, and they were told at the door that there was no room,--"every place was occupied."
Let me not be charged with making of this state of things an accusation against the Catholic religion. The English, Irish, and American students, who were those with whom I princ.i.p.ally came in contact, were ardent and enthusiastic devotees, as earnest in their religious observances as any of the most devoted members of any other church I have known. Indeed, it is my personal experience that so far as regards the younger men, I have never found so many animated by the true apostolical spirit as amongst the students of theology of British and American birth whom I then knew at Rome. At the head of all the Catholics of all nations whom I have ever known are the English, in respect of sincere and ardent devotion to their church, with the minimum of animosity towards other creeds, and the most healthy morality. With the great majority of Italian ecclesiastics, on the contrary, religion is a mere formality, and its influence on the life is inconsiderable and unconsidered. It was, therefore, not because it was a Catholic city that the morality of Rome was so low, but because the energies of the hierarchy were so occupied with the difficulties of the position of a government of priests unused to civil administration and by their own education disqualified for it, that the ordinary functions of government were impossible to it. The situation was made still worse by the Italian const.i.tutional indifference to questions of common morality. As the government of the church lies in the hands of the Italian clergy, it will be forever impossible for a government organized on the principles of the Papal temporal power to be other than that which has been suppressed by Italy. To the majority of the higher Italian ecclesiastics, the church has become merely a political instrument, into the management of which the spiritual interests of the people do not enter, and the efforts of the Catholics of other countries to bring about a reform will never succeed while the power is in the hands of the Italian clergy, which it will be as long as the Papacy is an Italian inst.i.tution; and as the Pope is Pope merely because he is the Bishop of Rome, it is difficult to see how the situation can be made different.
Pius IX. was personally a most sincere and devout, though worldly, man, and it is difficult to believe that any other than a devotee could now be elected to the Holy See, for even the most corrupt civil or ecclesiastical intellect must see the importance of a reputation for sanct.i.ty in the Pontiff, while, as the influence of the Papacy is no longer of vital importance to the government of any country in the world (though doubtless of considerable utility to several), there is little political importance in the personality of the Pontiff, and slight motive for foreign governments to exercise influence on the election. If removed from Italy and established in a seat surrounded by a population like that of the ma.s.ses in France (out of Paris and the large cities), amenable to purely spiritual influences, the church would revert to its normal functions and abandon politics,--a result never to be hoped for while it remains Italian. I have no sympathy with its creed, or any other of the creeds, for I conceive no healthy conformity of belief possible to men and women differing in intellectual and spiritual capacities; but I have seen good work done by the Catholic church in many quarters, and I have many and admirable Catholic friends, and, to be frank, I do not believe that the creed makes much difference in the religion.
As to Pius IX., I am convinced that he was not only a devout man, but an excellent and admirable man, as men go, a genuine believer in the divine direction of his pontificate, and incapacitated for civil government simply because no one could carry on a civil government on ecclesiastical principles. He loved his people, and, personally and generally, was beloved by them; but the progress of liberalism and democracy had driven out of the Papal States, or into a mute and inflexible opposition, all the most active and potent intellects amongst them, and the clergy without them could not administer the government; so that, wishing to do good to his subjects, he could not improve their political condition without inviting those elements of liberalism which he considered the inexorable enemies of the church, which was to him the highest interest of humanity, He reposed his faith on the abilities of clerics who knew nothing of human nature or practical politics, but comprehended only a paternal control, absolute, and to be enforced by the rod, actual or figurative; or on those of civilian devotees and fanatics less intelligent even than the clerical functionaries.
As I was, for the greater part of my term, in charge of the legation interests and duties, I saw Pius IX. often and liked him much. One day when I was having an audience in his little room, the windows of which looked west, there came up a great thunder storm, with frequent flashes of lightning, at each of which he crossed himself and devoutly said a prayer. His conversation convinced me that he felt profoundly convinced of his divinely appointed function as the vicegerent of G.o.d on earth, and his sincerity inspired me with great respect for the man; but, naturally, with little for his intellect. His _bonhomie_ was remarkable, and he had a keen sense of humor, which led him to make sarcastic, and often telling remarks, on men and things, in which he was sometimes the reverse of diplomatic. He had, for my advantage, many jibes at our past ministers, of some of whom he had diverting memories, and especially of Major Ca.s.s,--of whom he always spoke as "quel Ca.s.s," who had curious habits of night wandering and adventure seeking, or, as Pius put it, "could not be quiet of nights." Either he or his predecessor, I forget which, had insisted on putting his horse through a ride round the parapet of the Pincian bal.u.s.trade, where a slip or a yielding stone meant death to the rider, which might have been of no importance, but to the horse also, which would have been a pity. And the old man liked a sly thrust at any of us who had made a blunder.
While thus in charge of the diplomatic relations of my government without its recognition, the Department sent out a chaplain, an ex-chaplain of the House of Representatives, who, having served his time in that capacity, was ent.i.tled to a vacation in Europe, and came with recommendations to me. Protestant worship was forbidden within the walls of Rome, but to induce the English Protestants to come to Rome and spend their money there, they were allowed to worship in a sort of warehouse outside the Porta del Popolo. This was repugnant to our democratic ways, and the new chaplain insisted on having his chapel inside the walls. So I "put on cheek" and hired in the name of the legation an apartment with a huge reception room close to the Piazza di Spagna, put up the arms of the United States of America, and opened the reception room for public worship as the chapel of the legation,--the first instance in recorded time of Protestant worship in the Papal city. The sequel was amusing, for as Sunday was my only holiday, and I always spent it on the Campagna, the chaplain cut me dead for not attending his services and keeping Sunday.
I expected some admonitory allusion to this achievement when next I saw the Pope, but no notice was ever taken of it either by the superior or the lower authorities, and so far as I know the church of my planting flourished as long as the city remained under the Papal rule, but with no more of my watering. The Pope was, I am persuaded, quite indifferent to it, for, devout and unquestioning believer in his own divine authority as he was, he was not a bigot, and not of a persecuting disposition, but he was only a part of an immense and intricate machine, over the movements of which neither he nor any other Pope could have much control. He had every possible disposition to be that ideal ruler, a benevolent despot, but even in that little realm the details of government were impossible of control by the most competent head of a government; they were necessarily left to the incompetent, bigoted, and zealous administrators chosen by the secondary chiefs of the departments, all the most conservative of men, with a reverence for the abuses and usages of the old regime. It was personal government down to the lowest grade of responsibility. The Pope presided and bore the responsibility of the proceedings, but Antonelli was the real ruler of the States of the Church.
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 chast.i.ty, 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 pa.s.sionate 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 pa.s.sport 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 pa.s.sports of the Foreign Office for Southern Americans to leave the city.
Antonelli had a face which gave one an idea of the expression "beaute 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 tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, 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 pa.s.sports, i.e. over the movements of my fellow citizens, for no one who had come to Rome with the pa.s.sport of the United States of America could leave it without my visa, and I could sequestrate the pa.s.sport 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 pa.s.sports 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.