Vienna,
September 22, 1863.
My Dear Holmes: I am
perfectly aware that I do not deserve to receive any letters or anything else
from you. You heap coals on my head, and all I can say is that I hope you have
several chaldrons on hand for me of the same sort. Pour on. I will endure with
much gratitude and without shame. Your last letter was not to me, but to two
young women under my roof, and gave them infinite delight, as you may well
suppose, as well as to Mary and myself. I shall, however, leave the answering
of that letter to them. The youngest of the two is not the less welcome to us
after her long absence from the domestic hen-coop; she has so much to say of
you and yours, and of all the kindness you heaped upon her, and of all the
thousand matters belonging to you all. Your last letter to me bears date June
7. It is much occupied with Wendell's wound at Fredericksburg, and I thank you
for assuming so frankly that nothing could be more interesting to us than the
details which you send us. I trust sincerely that he has now fully recovered.
Colonel Holmes has most nobly won his spurs and his advancement. I am always
fond of citing and daguerreotyping him as a specimen of the mob of mercenaries
and outcasts of which the Union army is composed. You may be sure I do him full
justice, and even if I allow it to be supposed that there are within our ranks
five hundred as good as he, it is an inference which can do the idiots no harm
who suppose the slave-holding rebels to be all Sidneys and Bayards.
When you wrote me
last, you said on general matters this: “In a few days we shall get the news of
the success or failure of the attacks on Port Hudson and Vicksburg. If both are
successful, many will say that the whole matter is about settled.” You may
suppose that when I got the great news I shook hands warmly with you in the
spirit across the Atlantic. Day by day for so long we had been hoping to hear
the fall of Vicksburg. At last, when that little concentrated telegram came
announcing Vicksburg and Gettysburg on the same day and in two lines, I found
myself alone. Mary and Lily had gone to the baths of Schwalbach to pick up the
stray chicken with whom you are acquainted. There was nobody in the house to
join in my huzzas but my youngest infant. And my conduct very much resembled
that of the excellent Philip II. when he heard of the fall of Antwerp, for I
went to Susie's door, screeching through the keyhole, “Vicksburg is ours!”'
just as that other pere de famille, more potent, but I trust not more
respectable than I, conveyed the news to his Infanta (vide for the
incident an American work on the Netherlands, I., p. 329, and the authorities
there cited). It is contemptible on my part to speak thus frivolously of events
which stand out in such golden letters as long as America has a history. But I
wanted to illustrate the yearning for sympathy which I felt. You who were among
people grim and self-contained usually, who I trust were falling on
each other's necks in the public streets and shouting with tears in their eyes
and triumph in their hearts, can picture my isolation. I have never faltered in
my faith, and in the darkest hours, when misfortunes seemed thronging most
thickly upon us, I have never felt the want of anything to lean against; but I
own I did feel like shaking hands with a few hundred people when I heard of our
Fourth of July, 1863, work, and should like to have heard and joined in an American
cheer or two. Well, there is no need of my descanting longer on this
magnificent theme. Some things in this world may be better left unsaid. You and
I at least know how we both feel about Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Port Hudson, and
I shall at least not try to add to the eloquence of these three words, which
are destined to so eternal an echo. I wonder whether you or I half a dozen
years ago were sufficiently up in geography to find all the three places on the
map.
And now let me
thank you a thousand times for your oration. It would have been better for me
to write on the first impulse, perhaps, when I had first read it, but on the
whole I think not. I felt no doubt that I should like it better and better
after each reading, and so after devouring it in the very mistily printed
journal which you sent, and next day in the clearer type of the respectable
daily, I waited till the neat pamphlet which I knew was coming should arrive.
Well, I have read it carefully several times, and I am perfectly satisfied.
This I consider very high praise, because I had intense expectations both from
the hour and the man. If I had had the good luck to be among the hearers — for
I know how admirably you speak, and the gift you have of holding your audience
in hand by the grace and fervor of your elocution as apart from the substance
of your speech — I know how enthusiastic I should have been. There would have
been no louder applause than mine at all the many telling and touching points.
The whole strain of the address is one in which I entirely sympathize, and I
think it an honor to Boston that such noble and eloquent sentiments should have
resounded in ears into which so much venom has from time to time been
instilled, and met with appreciation and applause.
Unless I were to
write you a letter as long itself as an oration, I could not say half what I
would like to say, and this is exactly one of the unsatisfactory attributes of
letter-writing. It is no substitute for the loose, disjointed talk. I should
like nothing better than to discuss your address with you all day long, for,
like all effusions of genius, it is as rich in what it suggests as in what it
conveys. What I liked as well as anything was the hopeful, helpful way in which
you at starting lift your audience with you into the regions of faith, and
rebuke the “languid thinkers” for their forlorn belief, and the large general
views which after that ascent you take of the whole mighty controversy, than
which none in human history is more important to mankind. Then I especially
admire the whole passage referring to the Saracenic conflict in Christian
civilization. Will you allow me to say that I have often and often before
reading your oration fallen into the same view of moralizing, and that when the
news of the battle of Gettysburg reached me I instantly began to hope it might
prove more decisively our battle of Tours than I fear, magnificent victory as
it was, it has proved? Your paragraphs about the Moors are brilliant and
dashing sketches.
I must confess,
however, that you seem to me far too complimentary about the slaveholders.
Perhaps it may be my ignorance, but I have always been skeptical as to what you
call “the social elegances and personal graces of their best circles.” Is it
not a popular delusion to extend the external charms of a few individuals, or
possibly a very small number of families, over a whole class? I ask in
ignorance merely. It has been my lot to see a good deal of European
aristocracies, and, without abating a jot of my reverence for and belief in the
American people, I have never hesitated to say that a conservatory of tropical
fruit and flowers is a very brilliant, fragrant, and luxurious concern. Whether
it be worth while to turn a few million freehold farms into one such
conservatory is a question of political arithmetic which I hope will always be
answered in one way on our side of the water. Non equidem invideo, miror
magis. Another passage which especially delighted me was your showing up of
neutrals. Again you will pardon me if I have often thought of Dante's cattivo
coro in this connection. You will not object to this sympathetic
coincidence, I hope. But I must pause, because, as I said before, I could go on
talking of the oration for an hour. You can have no doubt whatever that it is
triumphantly successful and worthy to take its place among your collected
works. Do you wish higher praise? How is it, I often ask, that people, although
they may differ from you in opinion on such grave matters as you have thus
publicly discussed, can be otherwise than respectful to your sentiments?
I have not much to
say of matters here to interest you. We have had an intensely hot, historically
hot, and very long and very dry summer. I never knew before what a drought
meant. In Hungary the suffering is great, and the people are killing the sheep
to feed the pigs with the mutton. Here about Vienna the trees have been almost
stripped of foliage ever since the end of August. There is no glory in the
grass nor verdure in anything. In fact, we have nothing green here but the Archduke
Maximilian, who firmly believes that he is going forth to Mexico to establish
an American empire, and that it is his divine mission to destroy the dragon of
democracy and reestablish the true Church, the Right Divine, and all sorts of
games. Poor young man!
Ever sincerely yours,
J. L. M.
SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The
Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition,
Volume 2, p. 342-8
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