Vienna, February 16, 1862.
My Darling Mary:
You complain of not getting letters often enough, and you think I might write
more than I do. But, my dear child, you must remember how little of interest we
have to speak to you about, and how many correspondents. I have this moment
counted the letters lying unanswered on my table. There are seventeen. And yet
I write letters all day long. I do not complain, for I am so greedy to receive
letters from America that I am very willing to do my part in the
correspondence. You are where all our interests and all our thoughts are. Here,
when I have told you that your mama and Lily and I are well, and that Susie was
jolly by the last accounts, I have said all. Our life is very humdrum. Once in
a while we dine out, not very often, and the dinner is not an institution as in
London. The hour is generally five, and it is all over by seven, for that is
the hour at which the theater begins, and everybody thinks it necessary to go,
or to make believe to go, either to the opera or the theater. Both these houses
are very small for a large town, and all the boxes are taken by the season, so
that it is only when some of our friends send us a box that we can go. In
self-defense, when the season for hiring arrives, we must take one.
The opera-house is tolerably good, the singing so-so. The
theater, the Burg Theater, as it is called, because it makes part of the
imperial castle or palace, is the funniest, shabbiest ramshackle old place you
can imagine. The chandelier would hardly give sufficient light for an ordinary
saloon. There are two little rows of about a dozen oil-lamps in it, and one
with a few more. Yon can hardly see across the house, although it is very narrow
and as straight as an omnibus. All your friends and acquaintances are in the
boxes, and you can just discern their noble features glimmering through the
darkness. En revanche, the acting is excellent. Every part is well
sustained in comedy and farce, and there are one or two rather remarkable
actors. I have not yet seen a tragedy; we are sufficiently dismal in the world
without weeping over fictitious woes. On the whole, there is something to my
mind rather aristocratic and imperial in this very shabby, dingy little
theater, with its admirable acting, with its boxes filled with archdukes and princes
and ambassadors. You can have gorgeously gilt, brand-new theaters anywhere in
Paris or Buffalo, but you would find it difficult to find so select a set of
actors and spectators.
Lily has been to a few balls, all that have been given; the
picnics, five of them — subscription assemblies, like Almack's or Papanti's.
The last one, the most brilliant of the season, at Marquis Pallavicini's, she
lost, because it was on a Sunday. To-morrow night we go to one at Prince
Schwarzenberg's, which will be very fine, I doubt not, and, as they say, the
last of the season. You see we do not lead very dissipated lives. We take the
deepest interest in American affairs. In truth, we never think or talk of
anything else.
Your loving
Papa.
SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The
Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition,
Volume 2, p. 237-9
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