The Clemens party wandered down into Italy—to the lakes, Venice, Florence, Rome—loitering through the galleries, gathering here and there beautiful furnishings—pictures, marbles, and the like—for the Hartford home.
In Venice they bought an old careen bed, a massive regal affair with serpentine columns surmounted by singularly graceful cupids, and with other cupids sporting on the headboard: the work of some artist who had been dust three centuries maybe, for this bed had come out of an old Venetian palace, dismantled and abandoned. It was a furniture with a long story, and the years would add mightily to its memories. It would become a stately institution in the Clemens household. The cupids on the posts were removable, and one of the highest privileges of childhood would be to occupy that bed and have down one of the cupids to play with. It was necessary to be ill to acquire that privilege—not violently and dangerously ill, but interestingly so—ill enough to be propped up with pillows and have one's meals served on a tray, with dolls and picture-books handy, and among them a beautiful rosewood cupid who had kept dimpled and dainty for so many, many years.
They spent three weeks in Venice: a dreamlike experience, especially for the children, who were on the water most of the time, and became fast friends with their gondolier, who taught them some Italian words; then a week in Florence and a fortnight in Rome.
—[From the note-book:
“BAY—When the waiter brought my breakfast this morning I spoke to him in Italian.
“MAMA—What did you say?
“B.—I said, 'Polly-vo fransay.'
“M.—What does it mean? “
B.—I don't know. What does it mean, Susy?
“S.—It means, 'Polly wants a cracker.'”]
Clemens discovered that in twelve years his attitude had changed somewhat concerning the old masters. He no longer found the bright, new copies an improvement on the originals, though the originals still failed to wake his enthusiasm. Mrs. Clemens and Miss Spaulding spent long hours wandering down avenues of art, accompanied by him on occasion, though not always willingly. He wrote his sorrow to Twichell:
I do wish you were in Rome to do my sight-seeing for me. Rome interests me as much as East Hartford could, and no more; that is, the Rome which the average tourist feels an interest in. There are other things here which stir me enough to make life worth living. Livy and Clara are having a royal time worshiping the old masters, and I as good a time gritting my ineffectual teeth over them.
Once when Sarah Orne Jewett was with the party he remarked that if the old masters had labeled their fruit one wouldn't be so likely to mistake pears for turnips.
“Youth,” said Mrs. Clemens, gravely, “if you do not care for these masterpieces yourself, you might at least consider the feelings of others”; and Miss Jewett, regarding him severely, added, in her quaint Yankee fashion:
“Now, you've been spoke to!”
He felt duly reprimanded, but his taste did not materially reform. He realized that he was no longer in a proper frame of mind to write of general sight-seeing. One must be eager, verdant, to write happily the story of travel. Replying to a letter from Howells on the subject he said:
I wish I could give those sharp satires on European life which you
mention, but of course a man can't write successful satire except he
be in a calm, judicial good-humor; whereas I hate travel, and I hate
hotels, and I hate the opera, and I hate the old masters. In truth
I don't ever seem to be in a good enough humor with anything to
satirize it. No, I want to stand up before it and curse it and foam
at the mouth, or take a club and pound it to rags and pulp. I have
got in two or three chapters about Wagner's operas, and managed to
do it without showing temper, but the strain of another such effort
would burst me.
Clemens became his own courier for a time in Italy, and would seem to have made more of a success of it than he did a good many years afterward, if we may believe the story he has left us of his later attempt:
“Am a shining success as a courier,” he records, “by the use of francs. Have learned how to handle the railway guide intelligently and with confidence.”
He declares that he will have no more couriers; but possibly he could have employed one to advantage on the trip out of Italy, for it was a desperately hard one, with bad connections and delayed telegrams. When, after thirty-six hours weary, continuous traveling, they arrived at last in Munich in a drizzle and fog, and were domiciled in their winter quarters, at No. 1a, Karlstrasse, they felt that they had reached the home of desolation itself, the very throne of human misery.
And the rooms were so small, the conveniences so meager, and the
porcelain stove was grim, ghastly, dismal, intolerable! So Livy and
Clara Spaulding sat down forlorn and cried, and I retired to a
private place to pray. By and by we all retired to our narrow
German beds, and when Livy and I had finished talking across the
room it was all decided that we should rest twenty-four hours, then
pay whatever damages were required and straightway fly to the south
of France.
The rooms had been engaged by letter, months before, of their proprietress, Fraulein Dahlweiner, who had met them at the door with a lantern in her hand, full of joy in their arrival and faith in her ability to make them happy. It was a faith that was justified. Next morning, when they all woke, rested, the weather had cleared, there were bright fires in the rooms, the world had taken on a new aspect. Fraulein Dahlweiner, the pathetic, hard-working little figure, became almost beautiful in their eyes in her efforts for their comfort. She arranged larger rooms and better conveniences for them. Their location was central and there was a near-by park. They had no wish to change. Clemens, in his letter to Howells, boasts that he brought the party through from Rome himself, and that they never had so little trouble before; but in looking over this letter, thirty years later, he commented, “Probably a lie.”
He secured a room some distance away for his work, but then could not find his Swiss note-book. He wrote Twichell that he had lost it, and that after all he might not be obliged to write a volume of travels. But the notebook turned up and the work on the new book proceeded. For a time it went badly. He wrote many chapters, only to throw them aside. He had the feeling that he had somehow lost the knack of descriptive narrative. He had become, as it seemed, too didactic. He thought his description was inclined to be too literal, his humor manufactured. These impressions passed, by and by; interest developed, and with it enthusiasm and confidence. In a letter to Twichell he reported his progress:
I was about to write to my publisher and propose some other book, when the confounded thing [the note-book] turned up, and down went my heart into my boots. But there was now no excuse, so I went solidly to work, tore up a great part of the MS. written in Heidelberg—wrote and tore up, continued to write and tear up—and at last, reward of patient and noble persistence, my pen got the old swing again! Since then I'm glad that Providence knew better what to do with the Swiss notebook than I did.
Further along in the same letter there breaks forth a true heart-answer to that voice of the Alps which, once heard, is never wholly silent:
O Switzerland! The further it recedes into the enriching haze of
time, the more intolerably delicious the charm of it and the cheer
of it and the glory and majesty, and solemnity and pathos of it
grow. Those mountains had a soul: they thought, they spoke. And
what a voice it was! And how real! Deep down in my memory it is
sounding yet. Alp calleth unto Alp! That stately old Scriptural
wording is the right one for God's Alps and God's ocean. How puny
we were in that awful Presence, and how painless it was to be so!
How fitting and right it seemed, and how stingless was the sense of
our unspeakable insignificance! And Lord, how pervading were the
repose and peace and blessedness that poured out of the heart of the
invisible Great Spirit of the mountains!
Now what is it? There are mountains and mountains and mountains in
this world, but only these take you by the heartstrings. I wonder
what the secret of it is. Well, time and time and again it has
seemed to me that I must drop everything and flee to Switzerland
once more. It is a longing, a deep, strong, tugging longing. That is
the word. We must go again, Joe.
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