January 27, 1864.
My Dearest Mother:
Since I last wrote I have had the pleasure of receiving your kind letter of
28th December. Although I regret to find that you are still so much a sufferer
from neuralgia and rheumatism, it is a great satisfaction that your eyesight is
so much improved, and that you are able to read as much as you like.
Fortunately you have it in your power to see all the new
books, whereas we are obliged very much to do without them. Vienna is probably
the city in the world where the least reading is done in proportion to the
population, and the most dancing. Yet, strange to say, in the upper society
there are but very few balls this carnival. Lily wrote you an account of ours,
and on the following week there was a ball at the French ambassador's, the Duc
de Gramont.
The society is so small that this seems to suffice. I shall
add but little concerning our festivity. It was a tremendous undertaking in the
prospect, and Mary excited my special wonder by the energy and completeness
with which she superintended the arrangements. Our head servant, being an
incapable donkey, was an obstruction rather than a help, and the only real
lieutenant that she had was ———, who was all energy and intelligence. Lily, who
thoroughly understands the society of Vienna, was, of course, all in all in
regard to the actual business of the ball, and we had an excellent and amiable
ally in young Prince Metternich, who was the managing director. Well, at least
we are rewarded for the trouble and expense by success, for I cannot doubt, so
much we have heard about it, that it gave very great satisfaction to the said
upper three hundred, that noble Spartan band who so heroically defend the
sacred precincts of fashion against the million outsiders who in vail assail
it. I have said more about this trifling matter than you may think interesting.
But to say the truth, I preferred that exactly in this state of our affairs the
house of the American minister should be one whose doors were occasionally
open, rather than to be known as a transatlantic family who went everywhere but
who were never known to invite a soul within their walls. For me personally it
is harder work than writing a dozen despatches.
There is, I think, but little of stirring intelligence to be
expected from the United States before March or April, but I have settled down
into a comfortable faith that this current year 1864 is to be the last of
military operations on a large scale. To judge from the history of the past two
and a half years, it will not take another twelvemonth for our forces to get
possession of what remains of rebel cities and territory, or, at any rate, to
vanquish the armed resistance to such an extent that what remains of the
insurrection will be reduced to narrow and manageable compass. In another year
or two, I am now convinced, there will be neither slaveholders nor rebels — which
terms are synonymous. The future will be more really prosperous than the past
has ever been, for the volcano above which we have been living in a fool's
paradise of forty years, dancing and singing, and imagining ourselves going
ahead, will have done its worst, and spent itself, I trust forever. In Europe
affairs are looking very squally. The war has almost begun, and the first can non-shot,
I suppose, will be heard on the Eider before the middle of February. At least,
from the best information I can gather from German, Danish, and other sources,
the conflict has become inevitable. If diplomacy does succeed in patching up
matters in the next fortnight, it will show better skill in joiner's work than
it has manifested of late years on any other occasion. We have at least the
advantage of being comparatively secure from interference.
SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The
Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley,
Volume III, p. 2-4
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