Mary Elizabeth Wilson Sherwood

“ I retired with the Danish ladies, all of whom spoke English, and I asked them how they spent their lives.
"Oh, we rise early, go out on horseback, come back, take a siesta, and dress for an eleven-o'clock breakfast, then lounge and read or do embroidery; then we lunch at two, take another siesta, drive at five, to get the ocean breeze, and dine at eight — a busy, uninteresting, sleepy life," said Miss Sigenbrod, a pale Danish beauty. But she sat down at the piano and played with great vigor. The Danes, men and women, are consummate musicians — a great resource in that sleepy island. ”

“ A small, straggling city, with very muddy streets in winter; plain living and high thinking; rather uncomfortable quarters in the hotels and boarding-houses; here and there a grand house, but not many of them; the White House, serene and squalid; a few large public buildings; the Capitol, with its splendid dome, like an architect's dream, overhanging and dominating the scene, as it does to-day, one of the most splendid public buildings in the civilized world. Such was the early Washington to me. ”

“ A woman who could not be moved from her sublime pedestal of devotion to art, to duty, to religion; who could pass through all the temptations of youth, beauty, celebrity, and triumph utterly unscathed! She was nobly patriotic, true to her friend Cavour, kindhearted and philanthropic to a degree. It is hard to say which to admire the most: the talent of the actress, making famous the woman, or the character of the woman, giving depth, solidity, and enduring strength to the fame of the actress. ”

“ It is the only cathedral I have seen in England or on the Continent that can be seen. It has no ugly, unsightly, intrusive buildings between you and it. It stands majestically in its own green park, glorious, complete—a poem and a history in itself.
We could never become accustomed to the beauty of England—the finish, the perfection of the whole thing, all so agreeable to an eye used to our own incompleteness. We have not been touched up by time yet; and, indeed, where will be our old cathedrals, our Warwick Castles, to touch up? We can never have the green turf or the lovely flowers ”

“ I saw General McClellan with his two young aides, the French princes. Count de Paris and Duc de Chartres, ride into Washington so encrusted with mud that they looked like fossil monsters.
All about the city for thirty miles spread the tents, the camp-fires, the stockades of a citizen soldiery, apprentices to the great art of war. Every new condition of human life, every possible embarrassment of climate, food, and shelter, came to try men's souls. Suffering of the keenest dwelt in those tents, besides joviality and excitement ”

“ The demand for woman's emancipation of thought, her breadth of freedom of action, met with its first great interpreter in Margaret Fuller: she fed that first hunger.
From the glimmer of twilight's solitude through which Hawthorne's shrewd and curious eye dissected the movements of the human heart, Margaret Fuller might have seemed to be like Zenobia, but I did not think it a portrait. ”

“ New York had three great visitors within the two years after my wedding journey. They were Rachel, Thackeray, and Fanny Kemble. Each a memory for a lifetime.
It was after a tiresome journey from our country place, one October evening, that, making a hasty toilet, I went to the theatre to see Rachel in Phèdre. I did not know that I was to have this supreme pleasure so soon, although I knew I should see her sometime. So incoherent were my expectations that I thought my early memorizing of the great play would help me to understand her and to measure the greatness of her acting. ”

“ I leave that question for Posterity to answer, and I am rather glad that I shall not be responsible for the reply.
But I will answer Mallock's question, "Is life worth living?" in the affermative. I have found it eminently so. Life has been an enjoyable experiment, and amusing, in spite of its sorrows and disappointments. Life is a success if we can work and laugh. It has been a perpetual pleasure to me to see luxury march on with giant tread; to watch the great city of New York grow; to welcome art and beauty into our houses; to see the statues and the buildings improve in every decade. ”

“ I believe that a habit of respect is good for the human race — "It blesseth him that gives and him that takes," and it produces in England such manners in the trades-people, servants, innkeepers, and, in fact, in all who serve you, that I would fain become a student and a copyist of the better specimens, that I might become in my turn a teacher "of the same" to the dominant race who drive our carriages and rule our households. I do not wonder that American women like Europe and are happier there than here. ”

“ Holmes, now Professor of Law at Harvard, then a young lawyer, and the author of a book to prove that Shakespeare did not write Shakespeare; also some pretty, very agreeable women; but my heart was too heavy to allow me to notice much, and I was too young to be a philosophic observer. My father and I, after his recovery, started off up the Mississippi, that muddy, great, dark river, and I always felt the force of the subsequent witticism when the indignant Yankee answered the assuming Briton, "You could stir the whole of England into the Mississippi without making it a bit muddier." ”

“ When Hawthorne had a sombre mystery he made a story out of it, and so got rid of it, possibly. We are very grateful to him for confiding his mysteries to us — that man of immense genius, that prince of all the romance writers who use our English speech, for his mastery of language was unique, and also his exquisite grace of comedy, which appears in his English Notes.
"The hunger of an age is alike a presentiment and a pledge of its own supply." ”

“ My interest in this world is bounded by what comes into these seas which lie under my eyes — by Nature, which lies all about me, and the heavens above me. I do not care for society, for politics, for the performance of man in the theatre of this world. So long as friends choose to come to me here, they are welcome; I go nowhere. It may be a selfish existence, but to me it is a happy one, and it hurts no one. ”

“ Buckingham Palace was in front of our windows, and shortly the well-appointed equipages, unsurpassed in the world, began to drive by. At one o'clock we went to Rotten Row to see the equestrians. It is a pretty sight, were it only for the horses. At first we were very much disappointed in English beauty, but after a while the pretty faces and majestic figures began to reach us. The men are magnificent — the young men tall, well formed, and admirably dressed; the old men positively beautiful, with their fresh complexions, white hair, and admirable neatness. ”

“ The affectionate tone of this delightful character, the simplicity mingled with greatness, made General Grant the idol of the people. His entrance into a city made a gala day. "Celebrity is the chastisement of talent and the punishment of genius." ”

“ Seaton, and when I was there later, in a snow-storm, I wondered if the once soft, Southern climate of Washington was one of the vanished pleasures of youth, like a good appetite and a love of balls. Washington is a garden of delight in spring. I think Proserpine sets her blessed foot here earlier and more charmingly than anywhere else; but even in winter she used to throw us out a rose or two. ”

“ Then Keene was an agreeable, sociable place, full of scholarly men and handsome matrons, who had homes to which any one would like to be invited. We had parties and balls, and occasionally a military ball, and I never imagined that there was such a thing as ennui. We read prodigiously, and that atmosphere of culture for which Boston has been so much, perhaps, laughed at penetrated to our very midst. ”

“ I think now, if I were to do it all over again, I should always devote the first season in London to sight-seeing, the second to society, the third to a judicious mixture of the two; for when doors are opened to one which never may be thrown open again it seems cruel and absurd to one's self to not seize the opportunity to know those who are eminent in that courtly world which so few have entered, but which is so well worth seeing. ”

“ Every one is glad to have touched his hand.
We all felt that the men about us were making history, and that we were looking at heroes, if we could only find them out. Mine was General McClellan, whom I always continued to admire. I remember now what a thrill ran through me as he was kind enough to come and talk to me. His style was very quiet and reserved, but his conversation had a charm, impressing one with the feeling that he could say a great deal more if he only would.
Washington was at that time full of illy regulated and discontented spirits. ”

“ Longfellow listened as if to music. When he had finished his reminiscences of Webster, Mr. Longfellow whispered behind his hand, "It is like hearing Atticus praise Cicero; he is the best talker in Boston." Mr. Tom Appleton was wildly funny, and kept us all laughing, including Mr. Longfellow, who greatly admired his brother-in-law. Mr. Appleton was amusing us by a witty account of how Mr, Longfellow had been bored and swindled by an adventurer and adventuress. To all of which Mr, Longfellow only said, smiling, "Tom is a poet, you know; also an artist and a romancer." ”

“ I think I laid the foundations of a life-long rheumatism in those dreadful drives during the New Hampshire winters.
This fragment of a letter — and there were many like it — shows what we endured before rapid transit was accomplished, I have seen many inventions, the electric telegraph, postage-stamps, envelopes, chloroform, photographs, sewing-machines, parlor matches, canning of fruit and vegetables, but none of them equal the parlor car and the rapidity of steam travel; not even the steam furnace, which doubtless saves many a life in the cold Northern States. ”

“ He had the canny Scot in him, as his grandmother had. It gave a unique flavor to his wit, and shone in and out behind his remarkable genius for affairs in that public service for which he was so essentially suited.
I went to see him in his last days in New York, where he was under treatment for some nervous malady, and he talked of Keene as if nothing had intervened. "My tall schoolmaster," he said, "was the most fascinating person I have ever met. I felt a great confidence that he would not drop me into the snow. I have not always felt that same confidence in men since." ”

“ The Whites lived in a grand house, of limitless capacity, at Watertown. This house seemed ever to be full, for each sister had a friend staying with her; and although there were five sisters at home, yet there was always room for one more. I remember that the beautiful, dark-eyed Misses Oilman, the daughters of the poetess Caroline Gilman, and the reverend doctor, their father, were there, and visitors for lunch and tea were always arriving. And here for the first time I saw that extraordinary genius, William Henry Hurlbert. ”

“ It was inevitable, perhaps, in a civil war, when father and daughter, and husband and wife, brother and sister, were armed against each other. It is a great wonder that the city of Washington was not betrayed, burned, destroyed a half-dozen times. ”

“ Thomas and Porto Rico — very dimly the last, but dreamy and delicious. The plantations looked, each with its negro huts about it, like little towns; and the long, smooth, white roads, planted with palm-trees like long zones of umbrellas, had a pretty effect. But palms are not half so beautiful as elms. In a landscape they are ineffective.
Mr. Randolph lived like an English nobleman, but he was no more cheerful than the rest of them. He knew how to give a dinner. London could not have given us a better one. People who live in quiet, remote places are apt to give good dinners. ”

“ London depends on the opening of a single door, and more than one such admirable friend opened the door for us. Where everybody is kindly disposed, your heart must be a bitter one if you are not pleased.
General Badeau had been in London long enough to realize our unexpected good fortune and to congratulate us on it. Mr. Motley Was, I fear, secretly pleased that we did not demand anything of him, the more so as he had just had bad luck at Vienna and some troublesome experiences in London. ”

“ Rome, like Washington, is small enough, quiet enough, for strong personal intimacies; Rome, like Washington, has its democratic court and its entourage of diplomatic circle; Rome, like Washington, gives you plenty of time and plenty of sunlight. In New York we have annihilated both.
So my early Washington recollections became crystallized. ”

“ We slept on the way at log-cabins of settlers as we drove along; and once our little carriage, with my absurdly big trunk in front, nearly tipped into a stream we were fording. My father's great form was in the stream instantly, and he held us all up out of the water — carriage, trunk, and daughter. Fortunately, we had to drive in a burning sun for two hours, so he got thoroughly dried. The sorrowful prairie wives and mothers, mostly emigrants from New England, used to move my soul to pity in this journey. ”

“ And yet how often the Presidency has simply meant that a man shall be abused, distrusted, and worked to death while he is filling the great office, and that he should drop into unmerited oblivion when he has left the White House (General Grant alone excepted) ! But, then, his fame was kept dear by the people. He could not travel through the remotest village that the farmer would not leave the plough in the furrow, and run for wife and children to come and see the man who had saved the nation. ”

“ It is impossible not to regret the plain beginnings and the sincere patriotism, the poor little homes which held such noble lives; and I can safely affirm that anything so delightful as Washington I have never seen elsewhere. There were a mingled simplicity and grandeur, a mingled state and quiet intimacy, a brilliancy of conversation — the proud prominence of intellect over material prosperity which does not exist in any other city of the Union. ”

“ I went to the great ball at the White House given by Mr. Lincoln to General McClellan. There were five thousand people at this ball, and ten thousand outside disappointed. All the upper grades of the army and navy, the diplomatic corps, the distinguished members of the two Houses, the Supreme Court, the cabinet, foreigners of rank, and that class of persons who, having none of these claims, are, by some subtle magnetism, among those who are always invited everywhere — all these were there.
The two French princes were, of course, most conspicuous and honored. ”

“ They can be more hospitable than we, these fortunate people. They have a far more highly organized system of domestic service; they have immense wealth; they have that regular, graduated society wherein every man and woman knows his or her place; and whatever we, as republicans, may say as to the so-called snobbery of English people, I have seen something like it at home. It is better to pay court to a queen (who to them is abstract England) or to a duke with a "long pedigree" than to worship, as we too often do, some unworthy person whose wealth is his sole passport into society. ”

“ The only explanation which friends of Lady Byron could give me as to this discrepancy was that Lady Byron was not at all times perfectly sane; but Lady Verney believed differently, and was not at all sparing in her criticisms of Mrs. Stowe.
We came home in November, to begin again that home life which was not to be disturbed for many years; but the education and delight of this first visit were not to be measured by words.
There are three things which astonish an American beyond the power of expression on a first visit to Europe. ”

“ Many suppers and dinners and theatre parties brought me to see the great man rather intimately, and I do not remember a more easy-going and genial person. His tall, commanding form and gray head, his nez retroussé and his eye-glasses, his firm tread and charming laugh, got to be as well known in Kew York as they were in London. ”