Twenty Years in Europe: A Consul-General's Memories of Noted People with Letters From General W. T. Sherman

In the State Department at Washington, there is on file a plain little visiting card, signed by President U. S. Grant. That card was the Secretary’s authority for commissioning me Consul to Zurich. “I would much like to have that little card,” I said to an Assistant Secretary, long years afterward. “Most anybody would,” replied the official, smiling. “You may copy it, but it can not be taken from the files.”

That card, in its time, had been of consequence to me. It took me from a quiet little Western town to a beautiful Swiss city, where I was to spend many years of my life, and where I was to meet people, look on scenes and experience incidents worth telling about. And now it has led to my writing down the recollections of them in a book.

I had served four years, that were full of incident, in the Civil War. At its close the opportunity was mine to enter the regular army with a promotion; but many months in Southern prisons had nearly ruined my health and I declined the proffered commission.

“You did well,” wrote General Sherman to me, “to prefer civil to military pursuits; and I hope you will prosper in whatever you undertake. You now know that all things resulted quite as well as we had reason to expect” (referring to the Carolina campaign), “and now, all prisoners are free--the war over.”

The years immediately following the war were spent in efforts to get well, and now when this offer to go to Switzerland, with its glorious scenery and salubrious climate, came, I was overjoyed.

On the 23d of July, 1869, my newly wedded wife and I were standing on the deck of an ocean steamer in the harbor of New York. It was the “City of London.”

As the sun went down in the sea that night, many stood on the deck there with us, straining their eyes at a long, low strip of land bordering the horizon, now far behind them. It was America. Some were looking at it for the last time. My wife and I were not to see it again, except on flying visits, for sixteen years. The gentle breeze, the summer twilight, the vast and quiet ocean, the limitless expanse, the silence, save the panting of the engines, the white sails and the evening light of distant ships passing, gave us a feeling of far-offness from all that belonged to home.

Shortly the great broad moon, apparently twice its usual size, quietly slipped up out of the sea. At first we scarcely realized what it was, it was so great, so splendid, so unexpected. Moonlight everywhere is calming and impressive to the senses, but at sea, spread out over the limitless deep--with the great starlit tent of the heavens reaching all around and down to the waters, it touches the heart to its very depths. We scarcely slept that night--the sea and the moonlight were too beautiful. We walked the deck and built air castles.

August 3, 1869.--Yesterday our ship entered the Mersey and turned in among a wilderness of masts in front of Liverpool. We walked about some in the city of Gladstone’s birth, and that night had our first experience of the quiet comforts of a little English inn. The gentility, the welcome, the home snugness, the open fireplace, the teakettle, the high-posted, curtained beds, all contrasted strongly with a noisy, American tavern, with its loud talk and dirty tobacco-spitting accompaniments. The enormous feet of the Liverpool cart-horses also impressed us.