George Henry Calvert American Literary Pioneer 9780231882934

Table of contents :
Preface
Introduction
Table of Contents
I. Old World Backgrounds
II. Mount Airy
III. A Plantation Home
IV. School and Romance
V. The Amiable Egotists
VI. Antwerp
VII. Student Years in Europe
VIII. Pioneering in Baltimore
IX. New Horizons
X. The Newport Scholar
XI. Politics and Poetry
XII. “Three Score”
XIII. Scholar Turns Humanist
XIV. Last Decade
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

George Henry Calvert AMERICAN LITERARY

PIONEER

XA T^jumber 160 of the Qolumbia University Studies in English and Comparative literature

George Henry Calvert AMERICAN

LITERARY

PIONEER

XA Ida Gertrude Everson ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, WAGNER COLLEGE

New York : Morningside Heights

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 1944

A WARTIME BOOK m com r u m o m o * • r i o o u c a at r v i x courLUNci with tkx c o v u h MOTT I MCUIATIONS ro« COKWIVM« 9ATt* AM» OTVU HUKTUL M i l U U U

COPYRIGHT 1944 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS, NEW YORK Foreign agent: O X F O R D U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S , Humphrey Milford, Amen House, London, E.C., 4, England, AND B. I. Building, Nicol Road, Bombay, India M A N U F A C T U R E D

IN

T H E

U N I T E D

S T A T E S

O F

A M E R I C A

To the 0Memory

of my

Mother

0

PREFACE

ft* HIS research was suggested by Professor Clarence L . F . Gohdes, and was carried on under the scholarly supervision of Professor Ralph L . Rusk, at Columbia University. I owe a great deal to Professor Rusk for his patient reading of many revisions of the manuscript and for his generous counsel at every step. I am also extremely grateful to Professors Adriaan J. Barnouw and Suzanne Howe Nobbe for careful criticism of the manuscript; and to Professors Jean-Albert Bédé, Oscar James Campbell, Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie, Robert Herndon Fife, Roger Sherman Loomis, Emery Neff, and Allan Nevins for making helpful suggestions. I owe a special debt of gratitude to D r . Marion Osborn and Miss Anne Lincoln for painstaking criticism of the manuscript and for generous encouragement; to Mlle Germaine Lorin for valuable comment on my transcriptions of the originals of French letters reproduced in my notes; and to my colleague, Professor Harold H . Dunham, for careful scrutiny of the galley proofs. I also wish to thank Professor Margaret M. Bryant and Miss Marie BufTa for helpful comment on certain portions of the manuscript. Mrs. George Calvert, Mrs. Henry Walter Lilly, Mrs. Thomas Henry Spence, Mrs. William D . N . Thomas, Mr. C. Baltimore Calvert, Mr. George Henry Calvert, Jr., and Mr. Richard C. M. Calvert, grandnieces and grandnephews of George Henry Calvert, have been most courteous in permitting me to use manuscripts and books in their possession. T o the Hon. John Ridgely Carter, I am especially grateful for the photograph used as frontispiece, and for the French originals of some of the letters written in Maryland (1797-1819) by his great-grandmother Rosalie Stier Calvert to her brother Charles Jean Stier, in Antwerp. Of these originals and others written by various members of the Stier family, Mr. Carter has generously provided twenty-six for use in this biography. Unfortunately he has been unable to locate the originals of all the letters of Rosalie Calvert. About 1905, however, he had a number of them, including some now lost, turned into English by a professional translator; and typescript

PREFACE copies of these translations were kindly furnished to me by Mr. Richard C. M. Calvert in 1932, when I began my research. Since the completion of this book, several months ago, Mr. William D. Hoyt, Jr., has published in The Maryland Historical Magazine (June, September, and December, 1943) a series of articles called "The Calvert-Stier Correspondence." The text upon which Mr. Hoyt's extracts from the letters are based is apparently another copy of the same English translation which Mr. Calvert furnished for use in this biography. My extracts from the correspondence contain much, however, which is not to be found in Mr. Hoyt's articles, and I have had the advantage of access to the French manuscripts described above, some of which have apparently never before been available either in the original or in translation. Translations from the extant originals are my own. The originals themselves arc referred to in the notes as Carter MS. Letters which I have seen only in translation are labeled Carter Tr. Additional comment on these MSS and translations is given in Chapter I, note 49, and in Chapter III, note 7, below. I am further indebted to Mr. Carter for the original MSS of seven letters written by George Henry Calvert from Germany in 1825. Mrs. Francis W. Belknap, Miss Caroline Stuart Hunter, Mrs. Stewart Edward White, Mr. James E. Steuart, and Dr. Augustus Thorndike have also kindly provided manuscripts, reminiscences, and photographs. I am extremely grateful to Mr. Steuart for a typescript copy of a letter written by Elizabeth Steuart Calvert, but I regret that since this was the only one of her letters made available to me, I have not been able to present as clear a picture of Calvert's wife as I have of his mother. For permission to use Calvert MSS in their collections, I wish to thank the libraries of Harvard, Yale, Brown, and Duke Universities, the Peabody Institute, the Historical, Memorial and Art Department of Iowa, the New York Public Library, and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. For the use of the Tayloe Papers, I am indebted to the Alderman Library of the University of Virginia. The Houghton Mifflin Company have granted me permission to quote from one of their publications, Letters to Washington and Accompanying Papers, 1902; Dr. Kenneth Murdock, President of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts has given me permission to quote from Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, and Professor Harry Pfund has permitted me to quote from his essay, "George Henry Calvert, Admirer of Goethe," in Studies in Honor of John Albrecht Walz, Lancaster, 1942.

ix

PREFACE

I should like to thank here individually all of the people who have answered my letters of inquiry, or rendered other assistance, but their names would make a very long list. I shall therefore thank them collectively, mentioning only a few whose courtesy deserves a special word of appreciation. I am peculiarly indebted to Miss Helen H . Yerkes and other members of the staff of Columbia University Library for many kindnesses during a period of more than ten years; to Professor S. Foster Damon, Curator of the Harris Collection of American Poetry and Plays, Brown University, for permission to use 106 M S letters of George Henry Calvert, contained in that collection; to Dr. Haven Emerson, for permission to quote from photostatic copies (in Columbia University Library) of the letters of William Emerson; to Mr. James W . Foster and Miss Florence J. Kennedy, of the Maryland Historical Society, Mr. Louis H. Dielman, of the Peabody Institute, Miss Frances Hubbert, of the Redwood Library, Mr. Herbert O. Brigham, of the Newport Historical Society, Mr. Clifford K . Shipton, of the American Antiquarian Society, Mr. Robert H . Haynes, of Harvard College Library, and Miss Belle da Costa Greene, of the Pierpont Morgan Library, for courteous attention to my requests. My greatest indebtedness is to my mother, whose unfailing sympathy gave me the courage to see this through. IDA GERTRUDE EVERSON

Wagner College Staten Island, N e w York March, 1944

INTRODUCTION

H

EIR to the name, lands, and traditions of the founder of the Colony of Maryland, George Henry Calvert grew up in an atmosphere of European culture. His mother, a fugitive from "Napoleonic tyranny in Belgium, brought with her to America an Old World gentility which softened the rugged simplicity of her plantation home. But she had also that independence and buoyant courage which are associated with the American frontier. These contrasting characteristics seem to have been inherited by her son and help to explain the curious combination in his writings of the conservative and formal with the radical and new.

Fortunate in having received the best education that this country and Europe had to offer, Calvert was well equipped for a career in politics or in one of the recognized professions. But despite the hopes of his parents, he determined to make letters the means of earning a living. This choice, unconventional in 1829, revealed the pioneering spirit which was his throughout a long life and which gives his work its first claim on the attention of readers today. His student days at Gottingen and his visit to Goethe, when the great German poet was little known in America, stimulated his imagination and set him to exploring German literature with a zeal which later made that field peculiarly his own. His translation in an obscure Baltimore magazine of the "Hymn of the Archangels" from Faust was probably the first version of Goethe's famous chorus written in this country. He was the first American to complete a translation of a drama by Schiller, the first to translate a volume of the Schiller-Goethe Correspondence into English, the first to write a biography of Goethe. But his literary explorations were by no means limited to German themes. As he grew older, he turned to England and France and Italy, both past and contemporary; to Dekker and Wordsworth, to Joubert and Sainte-Beuve, to Dante and Garibaldi. He wrote the first American biography of Wordsworth and the first American translation of the "Thoughts" of Joseph Joubert. His essays on Dante and Sainte-Beuve in Putnam's

Xtl

INTRODUCTION

Magazine were among the earliest studies of those writers in this country. Nor did he confine himself to literary subjects. His biography of his own ancestor, Peter Paul Rubens, was the first American life of the great Flemish artist. These books were not, however, mere literary curiosities; many of them had intrinsic worth. Calvert's inquiring mind also led him into phrenology and later into spiritualism at a time when each of these cults was getting its first wave of attention on this side of the Atlantic. The same experimental tendency made him a devotee of hydropathy before its practice was known in America. Calvert was also a prolific writer of works not distinguished by their pioneer quality. Among these were his books on travel, and his historical dramas, which attracted a certain reading public, although they were never produced. His poetic aspirations found expression in a steady, though uninspired, flow of poems, both lyric and narrative, which continued throughout his life. His father's concern with politics, and his mother's experiences as a refugee brought to young Calvert at an early age an awareness of the differing forms of government and their effects upon the governed. This awareness, strengthened at Harvard, was intensified by a trip to Europe in 1840 and brought to a focus in a second journey of 1849-1851, when Europe itself was struggling vainly to gain some measure of the freedom enjoyed by the American Republic. Charles Fourier, whose doctrines Calvert later expounded in his books and from the lecture platform, had few more ardent supporters in America. In the choice of friends, Calvert showed almost as wide a variety of tastes as in the choice of subjects for his writings. His four most intimate companions were John Pendleton Kennedy, novelist and "gentleman of the old school"; Henry T . Tuckerman, art critic and author of travel books; "Shepherd Tom" Hazard, sheep breeder, spiritualist, and reformer; and John Swinton, chief of staff of The New York\ Times, later a radical Socialist. Other friends were George Bancroft, George H. Boker, Anne Lynch Botta, Charles Timothy Brooks, Charlotte Cushman, William Emerson, Ferdinand Freiligrath, Margaret Fuller, Horatio Greenough, Paul Hamilton Hayne, Julia Ward Howe, William Morris Hunt, Washington Irving, Hugh Swinton Legare, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Hiram Powers. He knew also John Quincy Adams, Albert Brisbane, William Cullen Bryant, Henry Clay, Joseph Green Cogswell, James Fenimore Cooper, Edward Everett, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edwin Forrest, Parke Godwin, George W. Greene, Fitz-Greene Halleck, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles

INTRODUCTION

xii't

Eliot Norton, Harrison Gray Otis, George Ripley, and William Edward West. He was particularly proud of having called upon Wordsworth and Carlyle. Other English acquaintances included Mrs. Gillman, Samuel Laurence, Harriet Martineau, and Fanny Wright. He also met Michel Chevalier and Tocqueville, and became a close friend of Joseph Nicolas Nicollet. Among critics who noticed Calvert's works were C. A. Dana, Edward Dowden, John Sullivan Dwight, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, and Edgar Allan Poe. This biography has grown out of an abundance and variety of material. Aside from the diaries and letters and reminiscences of the distinguished friends of Calvert, much of his own correspondence still remains, and there is a volume of unpublished memoirs. Perhaps even more stimulating than these sources arc the intimate and vivid letters of his Belgian mother. They cover his formative years and make possible an adequate understanding of his qualities of mind and character. Finally, his own published writings are themselves often autobiographical. In view of the comparatively large amount of material available, it is strange that so little has been written about George Henry Calvert. The best study is that by Harry Pfund, "George Henry Calvert, Admirer of Goethe," in Studies in Honor of John Albrecht Walz (1941), but this essay is devoted almost entirely to Calvert's contributions to German-American scholarship. E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck's Cyclopedia of American Literature (1885) has an article on Calvert, and Allan Westcott wrote an account of him for The Dictionary of American Biography (1929). Edwin Harold Eby devoted a few pages to Calvert's aesthetic and literary criticism in his unpublished doctoral dissertation, "American Romantic Criticism (18151860)," University of Washington, 1927. Karl Knortz, in his Geschichte der nordamerikanischen Literatur (1891), Orie W. Long, in Literary Pioneers (1935), Walter Wadepuhl, in Goethe's Interest in the New World (1934) and Bayard Quincy Morgan, A Critical Bibliography of German Literature in English Translation (1938), noticed his works, and there have been other brief accounts and references, but for the most part, Calvert has been all but forgotten. Much of his writing belongs to the "genteel tradition," which drew its inspiration from Old World sources. But, unlike Irving and Longfellow, who are better-known exemplars of the same cultural ideal, Calvert had as his heritage all of the Old World gentility that could be made a part of

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INTRODUCTION

the life of a Maryland plantation. His earliest education was planned with the thought that he would some day complete it abroad. When that day came he was prepared to see Europe not as a storybook world of romance and legend but as it actually was. He was more interested in living conditions and forms of government than in literature and art. This social interest colors much of his literary output, giving it freshness and vigor, and providing at least one example of a "genteel" writer who looked to the future as well as to the past and was able to glimpse something of a new era of economic reform.

TABLE

OF

CONTENTS

XA George Henry Calvert

frontispiece

After the painting by William E d w a r d West, Baltimore, c. 1839. See p. 265, note 104.

I II

Old World Backgrounds Mount Airy

1 15 22

III

A Plantation Home

IV

School and Romance

V

The Amiable Egotists

3« 48

Antwerp

65

VI VII

Student Years in Europe

VIII

Pioneering in Baltimore

73 103

New Horizons

126

The Newport Scholar

143 156

IX X XI XII

Politics and Poetry "Three Score"

XIII

Scholar Turns Humanist

174 197

XIV

Last Decade

219

Notes Bibliography

239 299

Index

317

Chapter One OLD

WORLD

ft*

BACKGROUNDS

I

N his London mail Benedict Calvert found a letter from the fifth Lord Baltimore, dated February 18, 1745/46. Calvert was a natural son and had been sent to America in early childhood. He knew little of his father. But he read with interest: "Dr. Child " I send you herewith an Order to take Immediate Possession of Some Lands and Negroes, w t h all y c Stocks of What kind so Ever, which Mr. Sam. Hyde Has Transfer'd to me this Day, And are under the Care of Mr. Will. Mattingly, His Overseer at Patuxon, and as I Design this for You, I desire you will take Immediate Possession of them . . . "Pray do not think of Marrying till you hear from me haveing some things to Propose to you much for Your Advantage, And believe me I never will force Your Inclinations, Only Propose what I think will make you most Happy, Afterwards Leave it to Your own Determination . . . " 1 The lands in question were part of "the great Maryland grant," which the Crown had made to George, first Lord Baltimore, in 1632. They comprised 9,200 acres,2 later known as Mount Airy, 3 situated in the valley of the Patuxent, about twenty-five miles southwest of Annapolis. This was the Mount Airy destined to be the birthplace of Benedict Calvert's grandson, George Henry Calvert. When Benedict received his father's letter, he was established as Collector of Customs at Patuxent, 4 but this property settlement was most welcome. Just enough of his unusual past was known to make him the center of many a whispered story. This inheritance, however, would do much to dull the edge of gossip. He was born about 1724 5 and in early childhood was sent to Maryland on a British frigate, in charge of Captain Vernon 6 and Onorio Razolini, who later served as his tutor. His early years were spent in Annapolis under the care of Dr. George Steuart, where he was known for a time as Benedict Swingate. 7 Stories about his mysterious birth began to circulate among his companions and at length reached

OLD

2

WORLD

BACKGROUNDS

his ears. When he discovered that his father was Charles Calvert, the fifth Lord Baltimore, he wrote to ask about his mother. But his inquiries on that subject were in vain; her identity remains a secret. On April 21, 1748, 8 Benedict married Elizabeth, the daughter of Charles Calvert, formerly governor of Maryland (1720-1727). Onorio Razolini wrote to Benedict's father commending the bride as having "had the best offers in the county" and hoping that his Lordship would think that he had done right in encouraging the match. 9 Calvert replied: " I am favour'd w , h Your letter of 1 1 t h May, & am Extremely glad to hear

10

has made so good a Choice, & you need not Doubt but I

will Endeavour to make his fortune Agreable to the young Ladys."

11

Difficulty in surveying the Patuxent plantations which his father had intended for him had caused Benedict to write to L o r d Baltimore in the fall of 1746 Hyde.

13

12

for a copy of the original deed from Henry Darnall to John

On March 4, 1748/49, however, Charles Calvert showed a change

in his plans for disposing of the property. " D r Son ". . . if I find any thing can be done . . . to serve you, you may be Assur'd I shall use y e proper means, & every thing Else as it offers to me, I have therefore sign'd a Power of Attorney to you to Dispose of the Plantation and y e Different Stocks on y e same, w c b I desire may be done as soon as possible of w c b I should be glad to see amount to y e Appraisments, A n d to remitt me out of the Purchase Monies the sum of ,£300 & y e Remainder I desire you will Except for Y o u r own use, as part of what I propose for Y o u , my Compliments to y r wife & am " Y r Affectionate Father "Baltimore"

14

On June 29, 1750, at the direction of Lord Baltimore, who still owned them, these lands were sold at public auction to Ignatius Digges for ¿ 1 , 4 7 0 . L o r d Baltimore died April 24, 1751. On June 3, Benedict bought the Patuxent plantations from Digges for the same amount Digges had paid for them. 1 5 In this way the property came into the possession of the one for w h o m Charles Calvert had long intended it. Perhaps it would have been difficult to establish legal ownership in any other way, since Frederick Calvert, Charles's only legitimate male heir, 1 6 might have put in a claim had the transaction not been sealed by a deed of purchase. 1 7 Benedict now began to think about building a house on his lands. There could hardly be a better site than the one already occupied by a two-story

OLD WORLD

BACKGROUNDS

3

stone hunting lodge which crested one of the wooded hills. The lodge had been built about 1660 by the third Lord Baltimore. 18 With its tall chimneys and great fireplaces facing each other at opposite ends of the room it was not unattractive, and it commanded a far-reaching view of distant ridges and of the narrow silver river meandering through the valley. The building was substantial and could be used to advantage as part of the new house, for, according to the tradition, the immense old English bricks of which it was composed were laid with the ends out so that the resulting walls were two feet thick. 19 Construction soon began at the top of Mount Airy; cartloads of brick and other building materials, all paid for in hogsheads of black tobacco, were hauled up the long incline from the valley, and for the first time in the history of those broad acres a home was erected upon them. Although the house was completed at a time when the formality of Georgian influence was making itself felt in America, its simplicity belonged to an earlier era. Like those planters who lived more simply than their well-to-do successors, Benedict Calvert thought more of comfort than of style, and his home soon began to reflect something of his quiet tastes and unassuming manners. T h e house was invisible from the road; it was reached by a driveway that wound uphill for about three quarters of a mile, passing through a grove of linden trees, and coming out upon a circle of box in front of the door. It was an unpretentious but dignified structure. The gambrel roof, with hips on each wing, and the tall brick chimneys gave a hint of the commodious interior, where a broad central hallway separated the drawing rooms in the new wing from the hunting lodge, which now served as dining room and pantries. T w o large staircases, one at either end of the hallway, led to bedrooms on the floor above. From windows in the rear of the house, one might look out upon an old-fashioned garden and an orchard on slopes facing the distant hills. 20 Mount Airy now became a center for the gathering of family traditions and culture, a homestead where future generations were to be born. Many of the Calverts had already brought distinction to the pages of Maryland history: George, the founder of the Colony, recipient of two degrees from Oxford and author of works in Latin and English; his son, Cecil, a man of broad tolerance; Benedict Leonard, fourth Lord Baltimore, poetaster and owner of thirty-five editions of his favorite writer, Horace. But more important for the encouragement of art and letters in the Colony

4

OLD

WORLD

BACKGROUNDS

was this fourth Lord's second son, Benedict Leonard the younger, Governor of Maryland from 1727 to 1731. Thomas Hearne, the English antiquary, characterized him as "my ingenious friend," 2 1 an epithet which suggested at least one reason for the young governor's popularity in the Colony. By the magnetic force of his personality he drew together a few scattered sparks of literary activity in Annapolis and helped to form the first significant literary circle in the South—perhaps the first in the New World to devote itself chiefly to imaginative writings. The group included three men whose fame has somewhat eclipsed his own: William Parks, printer; Ebenezer Cooke, author of The Sot-Weed Factor; and Richard Lewis, schoolmaster, who translated Edward Holdsworth's Muscipula into English and dedicated to Governor Calvert This FIRST ESSAY Of Latin Poetry, in English Dress, Which MARYLAND hath publish'd from the Press." Calvert himself subscribed for ten copies and sent one to Hearne soon after Parks published it. 23 Governor Calvert was also interested in education in the Colony and expressed some of the ideas later advanced in the movement for consolidated schools.24 Upon his death, in 1732, he left one third of his personal estate to the King William School in Annapolis. 25 Had he lived he would probably have written the first history of Maryland. 26 Benedict Calvert was only eight years old when his uncle died, but stories of the Maryland governor whose name was the same as his own must have reached him while he was growing up in Annapolis and must have been part of the literary heritage which he brought with him to Mount Airy. When he built his home there in 1751, he did not at once make it his permanent residence. He may still have been living there only during the summer when he wrote a letter from "Mount Airy June 24th 1765." 2 7 Its content indicated, however, that although he was still employed as Customs Collector, he was even then in the straitened circumstances which eventually led him to use his country estate as a year-round home: "As for my affair with My Lord 2 8 its very hard that he will not give me any satisfaction for my Right. I have now Eight Children and very probably shall have many more such an addition as the Manor 2 9 would be considerable towards their future well fare and its very certain my fortune is such that I am not able to contend with his Lordship, as the expense of a L a w Sute would be more than I could well spare without throwing my family

OLD WORLD

BACKGROUNDS

5

into the greatest distresses. I can't at present go to England as I have not got leave from the Commissioners of the Customs. . . . I hope it will not be thought intruding upon your good nature in desiring when ever opportunity offers you will still continue your good offices to me in recommending me to his Lordships favour, and I cant help flattering myself from his Lordships generosity & good nature when he comes to consider the largeness of my family but he will make it up to me. He has two Manors in Frederick County at present but of little value to him If he would give me a grant of them I should be thankfull as I have three Boys it would be something for them, the youngest of which I have taken the Liberty to call after you. . . ." There is no indication that Benedict Calvert ever received the additional manor for which he was contending, and matters grew worse for him when, during the troubled years before the Revolution, he lost his position as Collector of Customs. Certainly by this time, if not earlier, he had changed his permanent residence from Annapolis to Mount Airy. The home which Benedict and Elizabeth established on that lonely hilltbp was by no means isolated from society. Many distinguished visitors rode along its driveway, but none came with greater zeal and spirit than young Jack Custis, stepson of George Washington. Eleanor Calvert, Benedict's second daughter, probably first became acquainted with fifteen-year-old Jack Custis when he was in Annapolis in the care of the Reverend Jonathan Boucher, the picturesque Tory rector of old St. Anne's, who, it is said, preached during his last six months in Maryland with a brace of loaded pistols in the pulpit.30 Eleanor's brother, Charles Calvert, a year younger than Custis, was another of Boucher's charges at the time, and undoubtedly the romantic attachment began under the tutor's very eyes, although he later protested that he had not the slightest intimation of what was going on. Boucher had ideas of his own concerning education, and whatever mistakes he may have made, he seems to have had the interest of his pupils at heart. "There is a Deal of Difference to be observed," he once wrote to George Washington, "in yf Educat? a Gentleman, & a mere Scholar." 31 Once when he was particularly exasperated with Jack Custis, he wrote candidly to the boy's guardian at Mount Vernon: "I must confess to You I never did in my Life know a Youth so exceedingly indolent, or so surprisingly voluptuous: one w 4 suppose Nature had intended Him for some Asiatic Prince. . . ." 32 When, at length, the news that Custis intended to marry Eleanor Calvert

6

OLD WORLD

BACKGROUNDS

reached Boucher's ears, he was deeply hurt because the boy had not mentioned his engagement to him. His only fear was for her happiness, but with somewhat blunt courtesy he wrote to Washington: "Miss Nelly Calvert has Merit enough to fix Him, if any Woman can: and I do, from the Fullness of a warm Heart most cordially congratulate his Mother & Yourself, as well as Him, on the Happiness of his having made this most pleasing of all Connexions, with this the most amiable young Woman I have almost ever known. I know Her well and can truly say, She is all that the Fondest Parent can wish for a darling Child." 3 3 In the meantime a polite exchange of letters was taking place between George Washington and Benedict Calvert. Washington made it clear that he had no objections to his stepson's marriage with Calvert's daughter but that he wished the wedding to be deferred until the boy had received a better education and had grown a little older. He was doubtless fully aware of his ward's shortcomings. " H o w far a union of this sort may be agreeable to you you best can tell," he wrote; "but I should think myself wanting in candor, were I not to confess, that Miss Nelly's amiable qualities arc acknowledged on all hands, and that an alliance with your family will be pleasing to his." 3 4 T o this Benedict replied with becoming deference on April 8, 1773. "Dear Sir "I Received the favour of yours of the 3 d Instant by M r Custis which I feel myself highly honoured by, and am truly happy in your Approbation of that young Gentlemans future Union with my Second Daughter. I should be dead to Parental feelings, were I untouched with the polite manner in which you are pleased to compliment Nelly's Qualifications . . . " M r Custis I must acknowledge, is, as a match for my Daughter, much superior to the sanguine hopes which a parents fondness may have at any time encouraged me to indulge; He is luckily so circumstanced in point of fortune, that the Inconsiderableness of the portions, I shall be able to bestow on my Daughters, is, in this Alliance, a mere matter of a very secondary consideration—And that circumstance seems to prognosticate great happiness to Nelly, being a clear proof of the young Gentlemans disinterested affection for her—I can only add, on this subject, that, from the largeness of my family (having ten Children) no very great fortune can be ex35 pected . . Custis was sent to King's College in the hope that this experience would divert his mind. But he remained in New York only three months, and

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BACKGROUNDS

7

on February 3, 1774,36 he married Eleanor Calvert, the ceremony being performed in one of the great drawing rooms at Mount Airy. Custis was nineteen and his bride, sixteen. Boucher's fears for their future happiness were never realized. The marriage strengthened an intimacy already existing between Washington and his Tory friend—a friendship which remained unbroken even during the years before and after the Revolution. Sometimes they played cards together to while away the long evenings of fall and winter. On September 9, 1772, Washington recorded in his cash memorandum book, "To Cash won at Cards at Mr. Calverts 10 s." 37 And, as good friends are wont to do, they generously borrowed supplies from each other and apologized for the quality of the goods they returned: "I am very much obliged to you," wrote Calvert to Washington, in the summer of 1773, "for the wheat you were so kind as to spare me—I wish mine in return had been better." 38 Washington's diaries of 1772-1775 record the exchange of several visits; Calvert often brought one or two of his children with him to Mount Vernon, and Washington frequently traveled on horseback to visit Mount Airy. It is recorded that he spent the first night after his retirement as commander-in-chief of the army with the Calverts and thus brought upon himself the censure of hyperpatriots.39 Less well known than Eleanor Calvert, but more important for this biography, was her brother George, born February 2, 1768.40 When this George Calvert, father of George Henry Calvert, was a boy of seventeen or eighteen he began to accompany his father on the visits to Mount Vernon. Washington invited his namesake to go fox hunting with him and they had many a run together in the sparkling days that followed summer; Washington even lent the boy his pedigreed hounds, descendants of the French dogs sent to America by the Marquis de Lafayette.41 Sometimes George Calvert stole out before daybreak to his father's stables and saddled a horse that carried him the twenty miles to the Potomac. Here a ferry brought him to the opposite shore just in time to join in the morning chase over the fields around Mount Vernon.42 When Benedict died, in 1788,43 Washington continued on intimate terms with this son, and it may have been Washington who guided young Calvert into a political career. The name of George Calvert first occurred in the roster of the state legislature at Annapolis in 1796.44 Of his experiences in the legislature we have no available record, but a fair amount of his time during these years seems to have been devoted to looking after his nephew,

8

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BACKGROUNDS

George Washington Parke Custis, whom Washington had adopted when the boy's father died in 1781. The boy, a chip off the old block, was in turn causing a good deal of trouble at Mount Vernon, when Washington in despair sent him to school in Annapolis. "I can manage men, I cannot manage boys," 4 5 he anounced to George Calvert as he placed young Custis in his charge. But the romantic atmosphere of old Annapolis was not conducive to study. In the course of a few months Calvert found it necessary to notify Washington that the lively lad of fifteen had fallen in love with a beautiful girl of his own age. Washington replied: " T h e moment you receive this, send George home." 46 The young legislator now found himself relieved of a responsibility which had become increasingly distasteful. More than once he must have questioned the wisdom of interfering with his nephew's plans; for his own sister Nelly had married in spite of all opposition and had never regretted the choice. N o w that the whole burden had been shifted back onto Washington's shoulders, Calvert felt a sense of relief. He could turn his whole attention to a matter of greater moment—a matter which had not, however, the slightest connection with his duties at the State House. For George Calvert had become a regular visitor at Strawberry Hill, 47 an estate which lay just outside the old city of Annapolis. He had fallen in love with Rosalie Eugenia Stier, a young Belgian girl whose family were living there temporarily; any day now her family might pick up their household goods and return to their native Antwerp as precipitately as they had left it three years before. The occupants of Strawberry Hill were newcomers to Maryland, and to America. Henri Joseph Stier was a well-to-do Fleming, of high social rank, 48 who had fled with his family from Antwerp just before the Napoleonic invasion of July, 1794, and had been living in Philadelphia and in Alexandria, Virginia, since October of that year. But finding something more in keeping with his Old World ideals of comfort in the spacious mansion surrounded by gardens and lawns, he had moved his massive Flemish furniture from Alexandria into the great brick house at Annapolis. On December 3,1797, 4 9 Rosalie Eugenia Stier wrote to her brother Charles: " A t last we are here—citizens of Annapolis and after two or three more wearisome days we shall be ready to welcome you to our new home. The room reserved for you is the most cheerful of all. Mama is sleeping there while her own is being put in order. I am busied with a Jungfrau for your

9

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benefit and she is much amused. T h e household is moving smoothly and we have a very fat cook who makes delicious tarts. . . . I am sorry that I cannot as yet describe in detail the fashions for the gentlemen for I have not seen enough to be able to judge, but when I am more familiar with them I shall write to you. T h e new hats have very high crowns a little smaller at the top than at the base. Please say to sister Mimi

50

that there

was only an ell left of that muslin, which is not enough for a mantle. I am sorry that she did not write me about it a little sooner. But, my dear brother, is it possible that you wished to come here on horseback ? T h a t is not practicable at this time of the year and besides you could not bring luggage with you! and you wished to journey to the North in this fashion! Reflect for a minute and you will see that it is impossible! Your wife would have to wear a cloak over a pelisse at the very least; your face and hands would freeze, and then what a strange way to travel in the winter. You would not be received in any boarding house. In your place I should buy a pretty phaeton with two little ponies. It is the best way to travel unless you go by the public stagecoach which is even better as it is only half filled in the winter. You could put Witcke somewhere to pasture until you return. My poor Brilliant has been sold to a tailor here but we still have the pet Bucephalus and the two carriage-horses—all at Strawberry Hill. "Goodbye, my dear brother, I must finish as it is very late and vigils will not help to cure my cold which is so in the way just now. It is better, but I speak like Madamoiselle Pafetrode. Adieu, then my 'big brother,' your little sister kisses you a thousand times and sends her love to everyone. "Rosalie Stier "P.S. You will find enclosed some notes Papa sends you to be discounted. H e bids me tell you that he has not time to write to you for this post but he will do it for the next one. These two lines from Papa are worth more than all mine it seems to me." Presently she wrote again, in one of her many letters which made commonplaces memorable: "At present we are growing used to our citizenship in Annapolis and we are to make the rounds in the coach tomorrow for the first time. They tell me you still have no house, but indeed why do you wish to take one when the departure for Europe is so certain ? You would do better to come and pass the winter here and if you must go from time to time to Alexandria you could go into lodgings there. As soon as spring comes on we are going from Bath to Niagara Falls in a phaeton with our two small ponies. Isn't that a good idea? Our new house is so

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BACKGROUNDS

enormously big, four rooms below, three large and two small ones on the second floor besides the staircases, and the finest garden in Annapolis in which there is a spring, a cold bath house well fitted up and a running stream! What more could I wish for ? . . . Adieu, my dear brother, with my love! Everyone here is well except Louise who neither eats nor drinks. The little one is much plumper already. 51 "R. S."52 George Calvert was probably serving his second year in the Maryland legislature when he made his first call at Strawberry Hill. He was a finelooking young man in the late twenties, with chestnut-brown hair, ruddy complexion, and a candid expression in his blue eyes which immediately inspired confidence. Just how he became acquainted with Rosalie Stier is not known. It may have been at one of the gala parties given now and then by the Scotts and Keys, Carrolls and Cookes; or at one of the formal balls given for members of the legislature, at which Democrat and Federalist alike gathered to pay homage to the belles of the city. By the end of December, 1797, he was included among the guests invited to tea parties in the drawing room at Strawberry Hill. On the day following one such occasion, Madame Stier wrote to her son in Virginia: "Your sister dances every day, but a quartan fever has been her partner for some time lately, which makes the others jealous as you can imagine. Yesterday we had a tea party with Mrs. Ogel who asked whether I could receive her, Miss [Shaaf?], 5 3 Miss Aienbottem, 51 the Doctor, Mr. Ogel, 5 5 the Frenchman and Mr. Calvert. As our drawing room is well arranged this was the easiest thing in the world. Moreover I am not the least bit embarrassed by American ladies and they are pleased with everything that Europeans do . . ." 8 6 Even more at ease than Madame Stier herself in the presence of American guests was her daughter, Rosalie Eugenia, whose use of English during the past three years had given her confidence to preside with serenity at her mother's tea table. She was now twenty years old, and although she could not be called beautiful, the broad high forehead and sensitive mouth indicated mental alertness and sweetness of character. Perhaps the charm of her Continental manners first attracted George Calvert to her. But in addition to her social graces, she possessed common sense and fortitude, qualities that appealed strongly to his own straightforward and honest mind. They soon discovered that they had much in common—pride in family

OLD

WORLD

BACKGROUNDS

II

history, a heritage of family portraits, love of flowers, fondness for horses. He told her of his fox-hunting days with George Washington, and she took him out to the stables to show him "Bucephalus," her pony, and the plated bridle which her brother had sent her from Virginia. The family had two carriage horses also, for driving about Annapolis. But when spring came they were all going in the phaeton to Niagara Falls. They wanted to sec something of America before going back to Antwerp, which they intended to do as soon as conditions were favorable. Gradually young Calvert heard the story of Rosalie's childhood and of her coming to America. She had been educated in a convent of English nuns in Liège, 57 where she had learned to speak their language. In June, 1794, just before the French occupation of Antwerp, her father had decided to flee with his family to America. 58 The small band of emigres had gone first to Amsterdam, where on August 2, 1794, Sylvanus Bourne, Consul of the United States, had granted them a passport which stated they were going to America to settle some commercial affairs and private interests. A few days later they had embarked for Philadelphia on the Adriana,59 Captain Keran Fitzpatrick commanding. The vessel carried seven cabin passengers and two servants.60 Stowed away in its hold was one of the most remarkable collections of Old World paintings that had yet been transported to the new land. 61 Rosalie's father was too loyal a descendant of Peter Paul Rubens 62 to think of parting with these treasures, which included some of the Flemish master's original canvases. Henri Stier had many of the pictures taken down from the walls of his home in Antwerp and carefully wrapped and packed for the long voyage. Others had been brought from Cleydael Castle, a summer residence some six miles distant on the Scheldt. When George Calvert began to call at the Stier home, not all of the paintings had yet been unpacked, but with each visit a few more were doubtless taken from their wrappings until he had at length seen the entire collection. Little by little during these visits with the Stiers in the winter of 1797-1798, George Calvert was able to piece together the story of their exile. The Adriana had landed at Philadelphia on October 13, 1794. Here the family had set up a temporary home, for America was only a convenient haven until they could return to Belgium. On July 23, the French army had occupied Antwerp, levying a war contribution of 10,000,000 francs upon the town, to be paid within five days. Although most of the patricians had left the city by that time they were taxed in proportion to

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the supposed amount of their fortunes. Henri Stier was required to pay 40,000 francs, and his son-in-law, Baron Van Havre, 63 18,000 francs. When news had reached Henri Stier in Philadelphia that a portion of his property had been sold to help meet this levy, he had executed, on July 7 and November 23, 1795, powers of attorney to one Louvrex in Antwerp to administer his affairs. In this way, he hoped to retain the remainder of his property without appearing in person to put in a claim. In the meantime he had been seeking a suitable place in which to settle, at least until he could return to his homeland. He had found it difficult to adapt himself to the ways of his temporary home. In Antwerp he had been accustomed to comfort and the aid of well-trained servants. In America all this was changed. Since he could not speak the language, he often found it difficult to make his wants known. His son Charles, who had adapted himself much more easily to American ways, was traveling in the South with his wife and could not be consulted except at infrequent intervals. His daughter Isabelle had taken unkindly to the country from the start and was of little assistance to him. Consequently the brunt of managing his financial affairs had fallen upon his younger daughter, who assisted him with his accounts and acted as his interpreter. In this way, Rosalie Eugenia had gained that poise and balance of judgment which George Calvert found so attractive. The family had left Philadelphia because Charles Stier wrote favorably of living conditions in Virginia and Maryland, and urged his parents to settle in one of the pleasant Southern towns. Alexandria or Annapolis, he had thought, would please his father. The suggestion had met with Henri Stier's approval, but he was at a loss to know just how to carry it out. There were many details to be considered—and the portraits to be looked after. It was difficult to get things done efficiently in America. H e wrote with faltering enthusiasm to " M r Stier, Poste restante a Alexandrie." This letter, dated "phil: lundi 5 Julliet 1795," in a delicate, closely written hand, is still clear and legible. In the French original, the spelling of American place names and other English words is not always correct or consistent, and even the French reveals that casual disregard for accuracy which characterized the language of many a well-educated gentleman in the eighteenth century: "Vessels leave Philadelphia only rarely for annapolis the voyage by sea is long for it is necessary to go by way of norfolk, and to go by steam-packet by way of baltimore it is necessary to travel 16 miles by coach one must load and unload the furniture which suffers much in the process, when we shall have arrived we shall need a carriage, a coachman, horses, a cook, a

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13

gardener, a garden—provisions of every kind—all that frightens us, get hold of all the information you can on all these things, above all whether there is a livery-man at anapolis, how much a negro gardener costs & a negress to do the cooking, or whether one may hire them, and whether there are white servants to be had, in a word all that you think might be useful to me, when you are in alexandrie find out the price of lands, awaiting the clarification of all this, present my compliments to your wife and accept those of the family I am "Your very affectionate father " H . J. Stier" 64 By December, 1795, the Stiers had moved to Alexandria, but they were not happy there. They had been troubled by the news from Antwerp. Their anxiety had increased when, on September 5, 1796, the municipal authorities of that city included their names on a roll of inhabitants who were accused of being emigrants and granted them fifty days in which to protest against this registration. Louvrex, however, had presented a petition to the city tactfully stating that "Mr. Stier, with his family, had gone to America to arrange his business affairs and also to escape the tyranny of the English. . . ." 88 It would not have been politic to state that they had left the country to escape the invading French, who were now in power. Accordingly, on June 13, 1797, Louvrex paid in Henri Stier's name the sum of 3,094 francs to complete (including interest) the total of the original tax of 40,000 francs. On June 23, he paid a further sum of 6,000 francs, which had been assessed in another forced loan of December 10,1795. Fortunately these details had been taken care of by the time the family moved to Strawberry Hill, and Henri Stier may have enjoyed peace of mind while preparing his garden for the spring. Meanwhile his younger daughter was also finding that life in Maryland was bringing quiet happiness. She had begun to look forward to the evenings with George Calvert. And he, sitting with her in the candlelight, felt strangely moved by her high, clear voice as she sang some of the simple French airs which she had learned in childhood. Presently Madame Stier would come in. Often in these informal gatherings she spoke the French which came naturally to her. More than once George Calvert was sure that he caught the words "le vaisseau pour l'Anvers." After a while, Henri Stier would enter and sit down in a brocaded chair at his side, mumbling something about "les peintures" and "le voyage par mer." The garden at Strawberry Hill had been planted by Henri Stier him-

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self, with bulbs sent from Belgium.

BACKGROUNDS 66

T h e flowers had been in his thoughts

during the winter months, and with the first sign of spring he was out of doors, kneeling for hours at a time, digging little holes, and adding more bulbs and seeds according to the pattern which unfolded in his mind. By the end of April his garden was a show place. 67 L i k e his daughter, Henri Stier laid no claim to the artistic talents of his great ancestor, but he had an eye for color, and the picture which he produced was not unworthy of the Flemish painter himself. Everywhere were gay daubs of color—pansies, tulips, magnolias, red dogwoods gleaming softly as though lighted f r o m within. A n d when the sun began to slant through the willows, great banks of hyacinths, in cloudlike masses of pink, purple, and tallow white, glowed on the distant terraces like a reflection of the sunset sky. A s he walked with Rosalie Stier in the spring of 1798 beside the little stream, George Calvert was faced with a difficult problem. Could he ask this young woman who had been accustomed to the cultured life of a Belgian metropolis to share with him the life of a Maryland plantation? F r o m the letters which Rosalie Stier subsequently wrote to her brother, it is clear that when she finally gave her consent to remain in America, it was with a strong conviction that the two families would not long be separated from each other. She and her husband would visit their relatives in Belgium at frequent intervals, and her family would visit her f r o m time to time; or, better still, her parents, who were daily growing more attached to America, might be led by some unforeseen twist of circumstances to make Maryland their permanent home. A notation in an old family Bible, still in the possession of the Calvert family, gives the date of her marriage to George Calvert as June 1 1 , 1799. 08

Chapter Two MOUNT

AIRY

took Rosalie to the Mount Airy mansion. It had recently passed into the possession of his brother Edward Henry, 1 who arranged for him to live there and cultivate the land. Some changes had been made in the house since Benedict Calvert left it; but there was still nothing in its architecture that did not serve a practical purpose. As if to make the most of the fine spring and fall weather of the Chesapeake region, a long narrow veranda had been built across the full width of the house at the second story. It added a touch of friendliness and sheltered the stone-paved floor beneath. The pitched roof, a characteristic of the first plantation homes, was now supported by tall white pillars, which lent graceful dignity to the simple doorway. T h e first months of married life were busy and happy. Among the most frequent visitors to Mount Airy was Ex-President Washington. On Washington's birthday in 1799, Calvert had dined at Mount Vernon on the occasion of the marriage of his niece, Nelly Custis, to Washington's nephew, Lawrence Lewis. 2 After Calvert's own marriage Washington invited him and his bride to dinner at Mount Vernon. Washington himself recorded the names of the guests of June 20, five of whom were Rosalie's relatives: "The following company dined here: Chief Justice of the U. S. Ellsworth, 3 Mr. and Mrs. Steer Senr., Mr. and Mrs. Steer, Junr., Mr. Van Havre, Mr. and Mrs. Ludwell Lee, Mrs. Corbin Washington, 4 Mr. and Mrs. Hodgson, and Miss Cora. Lee, 5 Mr. and Mrs. Geo. Calvert, and a Captn. Hamilton and Lady from the Bahama Islands." 6 But the happiness of those months did not last. Rosalie Calvert's first anxieties were for her own family. There was bad news from Antwerp. All seemed well when, by a resolution of April, 1797, the names of Henri Stier and his family were erased from the roll of Belgian emigres, leaving them free to remain in America, or to return to Antwerp as they pleased. But in November, 1799, five months after her marriage, the April resolution was revoked and word came to Maryland that their personal property EORGE CALVERT

i6

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AIRY

and real estate were to be sold for the benefit of the French Republic. This edict was followed by the appalling declaration that they themselves were now forbidden to return to their homes under pain of being treated as emigrants guilty of breach of banishment, a crime punishable by death.7 It was one thing to remain in America by choice, but quite another to be arbitrarily exiled from familiar scenes and faces. T h e gloom of those days was brightened, however, when Rosalie Calvert's father purchased an estate of several hundred acres lying about a mile north of Bladensburg and took a house in town, near enough to superintend the details of a home which he intended to build on his lands. T h e house was planned on the grand scale to which Henri Stier had been accustomed in Antwerp. It was made of solid brick, with an adjoining chapel for family worship. It was to be called "Riversdale" 8 from its location in the valley of the eastern branch of the Potomac. Rosalie Calvert came often to her parents' home in Bladensburg to watch the progress of the new building. Then, in the summer of 1800, her first child was born. Since her husband was not a Catholic, he had been asked to sign a prenuptial agreement 9 whereby their children would be brought up in the religion of their mother. Caroline Maria 1 0 was, therefore, baptized in infancy by Father Vergnes, a French priest. In the months which followed, Rosalie Calvert's interest centered largely in Mount Airy and the care of her little daughter. But she rejoiced with her family when, in October, 1801, word came of a reversal of the previous resolution. Wives and daughters of Belgian emigres were now authorized to take possession of their property, and by April, 1802, all had been included in a general amnesty, under the terms of which they must return to their native country before September 23 to take the oath of fidelity to the French Constitution. 11 Her brother, Charles Stier, and his wife had sailed for Antwerp, probably in the fall of 1801, intending to return to Maryland when their affairs were settled. Rosalie Calvert's first letters to him were buoyant with the expectation of seeing him soon again. She wrote from Bladensburg: " I am very curious to know how you liked everything, and I fear that my uncle and aunt Joseph 1 2 will be extremely disappointed not to see Papa and Mama. They are very well, especially Papa. The labour and employment of building seem to agree with him. What a pity, dear brother, it is that now Papa is on the point of being settled we are not all together; but I hope it will not be long before we have that pleasure again . . . " I came back today from the Federal City, where we spent several days

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17

with Mrs. L a w , 1 3 who is certainly almost the most charming woman I have met in this country. . . . Society will be very brilliant this winter. You asked me to write you all the society gossip, but the time at my disposal does not allow me to do so now. I am planning to begin my diary tomorrow. My husband asks me to say that he will write to you next. My little Caroline is very well and is growing rapidly. She runs around now and is beginning to talk. W e come very often to Bladensburg which seems to give Papa and Mama pleasure. The house is progressing well and though there are so many hardships and deprivations in this country I think they would be very happy now if you were here. Therefore, dear brother, fix your return as soon as possible. As for myself I wish for nothing but the pleasure of seeing you again, and how great would be the additional joy if my uncle and aunt Joseph S. could be persuaded to accompany you! . . . Adieu, dear brother! My tenderest love and think sometimes of your affectionate sister who never lets a day go by without prayers for the happiness and return of her 'Little Brother.'" 1 4 She wrote again, December 30, 1801: " I begin this letter by wishing you and Mimi a happy N e w Year, but hoping at the same time that it will be the last occasion when I shall have to do so in this way, and that next year will see us all re-united. Following this country's custom we are now with Papa. Do you remember how gay we were at the same season when you were here ? It is not so now. I cannot help thinking how far you are from us. Everything recalls the time we were together. Our horseback rides, our stay in your pretty home in Alexandria— Memory makes precious every moment spent with you and makes me regret how short they were. When you left, we both promised to keep a daily journal of every interesting happening, but the simple retired life I lead in the country gave me no material, so I have not yet begun. Indeed, dear brother, what should I have had to write every evening in my journal but renewed protestations of my attachment which are needless because you could not doubt it, or wishes for your return to be fulfilled perhaps sooner than I dare to hope. I often imagine myself near you and going out with you. . . . Papa is well but suffers a great deal with headaches and colds. Mama is not so well. She is often ill with the slightest cold she takes. This house they are living in causes a greater part of their indispositions, for neither the doors nor the windows close properly and when it is cold we freeze! " I must now tell you the great event of Annapolis society. Polly Lloyd is

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to be married next month to Frank Key 1 5 who has nothing and who has only practised two years. . . . They are going to live in Frederickton. 19 . . . My little Caroline grows charming! She has begun to prattle and is extremely merry and vivacious. Her father idolizes her. But do not be afraid! W e do not spoil her at all. My husband came back today from the 'Federal City' and bids me send his love to you and Mimi and to say that there is nothing new in politics which is at all interesting. H e witnessed the arrival of the celebrated mammoth coach presented to Jefferson by the Democrats. It was drawn by five beautiful horses. . . . " 1 7 There was a brief reunion of father and son before many months passed, for early in 1802, Henri Stier left for Belgium to attend to his property, and on May 31 he took the oath of fidelity to the French Constitution at Versailles, before the Prefect of the Department of the Seine. He soon returned to America, however, and on July 19,1802, was present at Georgetown, where his wife and two daughters took a similar oath before the Chancellor of the Legation of the French Republic in the United States. 18 Rosalie Calvert's parents had now become so much attached to America that the thought of leaving it permanently was painful to them. But her brother was still in Belgium, without sending any encouraging word of his return. In fact he was now urging that she and her husband make their home in Antwerp. She replied on July 3,1802: ". . . W e were very surprised to receive your pressing invitations to return. I did not expect that Mama and Papa would be so opposed to it. . . . As to us, my dear brother, I cannot imagine how you could have thought it feasible for my husband to leave in a month all his property consisting as it does entirely of real estate. . . . Y o u understand how hard it is to find a good tenant for good estates and how still more difficult it is to find an industrious, honest overseer. And no matter how well they were managed we could not derive nearly so much profit from them as if we remained on the spot. My husband did not intend to marry and so he has only begun to cultivate his estates during the last three or four years. Before he did not pay any attention to them and time is required for making profitable three plantations which consisted almost entirely of woodland. 19 It would therefore be impossible for us to sail before spring after next. If Papa and Mama leave next spring it will be very sad for me to remain here alone. D o you think, dear brother, my husband would grow used to our country ? I am very much afraid that he would not. Not that he is so much attached to America, for I believe he would like to live in

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England if our means allowed it, but that is very different from our country. However, from your descriptions, I think social life must have gained by the revolution since gayety and ease have taken the place of the cold formality which formerly threw a chill on every amusement; but I am surprised that an amateur des arts Uke yourself should not approve of the clinging dress which gives the painter and sculptor opportunity to contemplate and study beauties formerly left to their imagination. In this more virtuous land only the contours are perceived through filmy batiste —a subtler fashion. Several of your Annapolis acquaintances are married; among others, Polly Lloyd, whom I believe I mentioned in my last letter, and Betsey Cook 2 0 who married one of the most prominent Baltimore merchants, but it is believed that she will die from a cold she caught at a ball where she wore a Greek dress. Our nephew 2 1 . . . has left for England on business and also to see his brother, now Lord Chief Justice. H e does not intend to remain there more than four or five months, as he has left his wife and daughter here. "You probably know of the death of Mrs. Washington. 22 Young Custis offered to buy Mount Vernon but Bushrod Washington 2 3 did not want to sell it (or rather his wife did not agree). I am expecting her here in several days to spend the ortolan and blue wings season with us. . . ." 2 4 As the summer passed, Rosalie became increasingly aware of the difficulty of bringing about a complete reunion of her family. Her parents were reluctant to leave America, but her brother had found it necessary to remain in Belgium. He might, at length, succeed in convincing them that their return to Antwerp would be the best move after all. In that case she would be left behind on the isolated plantation where she was trying to make the best of things and conduct a home in conformity with Old World ideals. Then as autumn came with its warm soft days and the scarlet sumachs glowed on all the hillsides and smouldered in the valleys, she experienced for the first time in many months a strange sense of peace. Maryland was particularly beautiful at this time of year. Her parents had not spoken lately of returning to their home in Antwerp. She had Caroline, who was now two years old and a winsome child. Rosalie Calvert's first son was born at Mount Airy on the following January 2. The boy was named George Henry for his father and his Belgian grandfather. But the mother's happiness in the arrival of her son was soon clouded by anxiety over his health, as her sister Isabelle Van Havre revealed in a letter written from Bladensburg on March 1, 1803:

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"Rosalie is still here with her two children. Her husband is coming Saturday and returns home Monday. Her baby got ill when fifteen days or three weeks old and has not been well since. However, he has been better for the last few days. . . . Rosalie intended to be confined here the fifteenth of January, but on the second of January an express messenger came to tell us that this Dauphin had made his entry into this world at her home. Mama and I went there through a deep snow. I came back the next day. Mama stayed over a fortnight, then I went to relieve her, and after three or four weeks Rosalie came with me to Bladensburg where she has been ever since. . . ." 2 5 Father Vergnes was again summoned to perform the baptismal ceremony, but this was the last time that he came in an official capacity. For soon afterwards Rosalie left the church of Rome for the Protestant Episcopal faith of her husband. 28 The anxiety for her son would have been enough to darken the spring days for her, but there was again the thought of separation from her family. The news that the Stiers had decided to return to Belgium came as a shock to her, for the large house under construction at Bladensburg had seemed like a strong anchor to hold her parents. But she concealed her disappointment so well that her sister did not guess how deep it was. In the same letter which announced the birth of a nephew, Isabelle Van Havre wrote to her brother: "She [Rosalie] does not intend to come with us to Europe. I suppose she will get ready to visit us in a year or so to try the life in Belgium, of which she does not seem to have the good opinion with which you credit her. She affects to think the society and customs here infinitely preferable. It is true that she has caught the spirit of the land much more than we others, which is perhaps an advantage for her. In any event, I think she would be much more attractive if she were less American!" George Calvert presented the picture in another light: "You will readily suppose that Rosalie and myself had indulged the fond hope of Papa and Mama's remaining on this side of the Atlantic, after having done so much toward fixing a residence by the improvements made upon the farm, but if it cannot be so, we must yield to the necessity and, like good republicans, submit to the majority who are entitled to decide, and content ourselves with praying for their return accompanied by you and Mrs. Stier. My dear Rosalie seems prepared to meet the event with that fortitude and good sense for which I think she is pre-eminent, and it has not failed

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21

(if that were possible) to increase the high regard I have for her, when I consider she parts with all her friends for her husband." 2 7 Rosalie made hurried preparations for the departure of her parents and her sister in the spring or summer of 1803.28 It was not easy for Henri Stier to leave the home and garden which he had planned and had been supervising for months. Although Riversdale was still unfinished he and his wife were living in it and looking forward to years of happiness there. On April 10, Isabelle Van Havre wrote to her brother: "All the hyacinths are nearly in full bloom, which divert him [Henri Stier], and although they cause great loss of time they put him in good spirits. He has advertised them for public sale without reflecting how we should be overrun with people. Now we have to escape them by the door or window like very Harlequins. There is Mrs. Carroll of Baltimore who has written asking to see them before the sale. I am afraid we shall have to entertain her here. Doctor Scott is coming too and Heaven knows who else besides! The other day a whole carload of ladies and gentlemen came from Georgetown, but as we did not know them we were dispensed from very active politeness. Mother is all in a flurry about it but it prevents her from fretting about something else. Since she diverts herself with the flowers, she is in better spirits." 29 If for Isabelle Van Havre the departure was an escape from an unpleasant country, for her parents it was a necessity undertaken with the prospect of an eventual return. But for Rosalie it was little short of a tragedy. In spite of the brave front which she assumed for the sake of her husband, we know from her letters that she was not, and never would be, wholly reconciled to the separation. Although her sister may have been right in calling her "more American" than the others, she was still a Belgian at heart. Distances were long in those days, and the Old World seemed very far away. In the thought of seeing her family soon again, perhaps during the following spring, she found a slender hope that made the parting bearable.

Chapter Three A PLANTATION

HOME

>iA • Y R THEN Henri Stier returned to Belgium, he gave the Bladensburg V y

estate to his daughter, 1 "with all the lands, woods and buildings,

furniture etc., exactly as w e have inhabited it, and have left it. W e only except the pictures which we reserve for ourselves."

2

Since this was now

the Calverts' largest plantation, it seemed wise for them to make it their permanent home. Accordingly, in the summer or early fall of 1803 they moved from Mount Airy to Riversdale with their two children. In the new house Rosalie felt a certain nearness to her parents. " A l l surroundings remind me of them," she wrote, "and though this recollection is always fraught with sadness by the companion thought of how far they are from me, still it is pleasing. I like going with Caroline for the same walks we took with Papa and M a m a and I sit down on the tree trunks where we used to chat together. A h then, my dear, I feel how unhappy I am and indeed life is so filled with untoward incidents that I wonder how one can wish to prolong it! M y little Caroline takes me out of these melancholy reveries with her gay questions. I force myself to look on the best side of everything, and try to remember while with my children how many others have more to complain of than I. I try too to soothe my heart and to endure patiently the separation from my relatives. T h e hope of soon seeing them again gave me strength to endure their leave taking, which I believe otherwise would have been fatal to me at a time when my health was extremely poor. I am very well now, and take much exercise —chiefly on horseback. Mrs. Lewis comes here three or four times a week. W e ride together and several 'cavaliers' accompany us. I am sure you would think our habits pretty. I gave a description of them to Mama. Besides our 'beaux' we both have a servant in livery, a l'Anglaise, who follows us. I have a very fine equipage now with four beautiful brown horses. I go to the Federal City nearly every other day. T h e road has been made entirely of gravel. Bladensburg has become very brilliant indeed. People come from all directions to drink the waters on Sundays. A l l George-

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town in particular comes. Your friend Herbert has lost one of his sons, a youth of fifteen. So many people are dying at Alexandria that it is said 3 to be I do not know if it is true, but it has raged from New York to Philadelphia, and Baltimore to this place. The drought has been fearful this year which causes the epidemic. W e have never been so long without rains. I must finish now, dear brother, sending you my tenderest love. . . . I am writing to Papa and Mama by the same post and I am sending them some tulip bulbs. . . . " 4 At first it was mainly the interchange of letters with her brother that sustained her, for she seldom heard from her sister. Then as Charles Stier's attentions became absorbed in other things, and his letters came less often, Rosalie's loneliness increased. Her brother had lost his first wife and was now courting Eugenie Van Ertborn, one of the beauties of Antwerp. When he did write, the messages were disheartening to his sister, for they told of her mother's illness: "Your letter, dear brother," she wrote on June 13,1804, "is bitter-sweet. What you say of Mama's health opens before me a future so hopeless that I can hardly bear it, and yet I cannot yield to my desire to fly to her arms. . . . Nevertheless I am infinitely indebted to you for your frank account of her condition. It was a proof of your attachment and confidence. I trust that the country air and the diet prescribed by the physician of Ostend will restore her and that I shall have the joy of seeing her next spring. You understand better than anyone what our position is and how difficult it is to arrange so many different estates. I had hoped for a time to be able to come this summer, but after more mature reflection we found it impossible, it will be with great difficulty that we can put everything in order for the spring, but we are resolved to leave then unless unforeseen events intervene. The French are now treating flagrantly the American ships they meet, ill-using all on board and pillaging like pirates. . . . " 6 Word of her mother's death in Antwerp on April 22, 1804, did not reach Rosalie until several months later. It was a blow from which the daughter never fully recovered. This loss intensified her desire to see her father and brother again; but by the winter of 1805, her hopes of taking the trip across the ocean in the spring were beginning to fade. She wrote to her brother on January 25: " I have taken up the pen three different times to write to you, and, by some strange trick of fate, have not once succeeded in finishing my letter. . . . At last, today, I have armed myself with a good pen, and a little

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round tabic just large enough to hold my paper, and I have filled my inkwell, determined to break the spell which has so long prevented me from talking with my little brother (you have not forgotten that we used to call each other by that name 6 years ago). Let us do it again; it reminds me of interesting events. "I received your letter of August 12 the fifth of this month and it is with sincere pleasure that I learn that the amiable Eugenie Van Ertborn has become your wife. The description which you have given me of her leaves no doubt in my mind that with her you will enjoy that perfect happiness which few experience for any length of time. . . . But lest my little brother think that on his word I am going to believe that his Eugenie is pretty, pleasant, sensitiveficc—no,no, I am well aware that the little god is blind— I obtained my information from more reliable sources. It is from the testimony of the most disinterested people, those who are not under his influence at all, that I know she is all of that. I therefore congratulate you sincerely on the event which gave you a companion, and, at the same time, gave me such an interesting sister. "I am very sorry that I cannot foretell with certainty the moment which will re-unite us, but I am beginning to fear that it will not be next spring as I had hoped. You ask me what prevents me from a reunion. It is, my dear one, the four elements, which are all in a conspiracy against me—and that of water especially, not the water of the sea, but of the heavens, which we have had in such abundance during the past summer that Riversdale and Buck Lodge were almost carried away by it. Accordingly, instead of being surrounded by improvements as you seem to think we are by your letter, we are surrounded by ravines and desolation. "I see that you have passed the summer amidst pleasures, going from one fete to another, and finally to Paris. I cannot suppress a smile at the moment—going to see the coronation of the Emperor Bounaparte! I fear to find you wholly Frenchified. The light heads of France are easily turned by Puppet Shows, but my philosopher-brother! that I admit frightened me a little. Here in our family we are wholly English. The despicable conduct of his majesty's brother in our country helps to increase the contempt which the English have for that nation. You know that since my youth I have always had a penchant for the English. Their manners, ideas, feelings have always been to my liking, even before I knew them well enough to realize their superiority; in short, a Frenchman could not have pleased me. . . . "We are having a very hard winter here but delightful for sleighing.

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I took a drive to Washington yesterday. Society is not very brilliant this year. I expect my sister-in-law to come tomorrow with her daughters to spend a few days here. Apropos, I almost forgot to tell you that I have the prettiest little daughter 6 you ever saw. She is two months old now and she is charming. I hope that I shall soon receive your letters; vessels arrive at Philadelphia almost every week from Antwerp and few bring me news from you.—My husband asks me to give you his compliments—he wrote to you a long time ago but I suppose that you did not receive his letter— please give my regards to your wife and believe me, with the most tender attachment "Your affectionate sister "R. E. Calvert" 7 When once the spell had been broken that kept her from writing to her brother, words flowed from her inkwell, and during the ensuing years her correspondence was filled with vivid details of the life at Riversdale. Her children were growing up in an atmosphere that was almost more European than American. She often told them about Cleydael Castle, the home of their Belgian uncle, who was making improvements on his property, just as they were doing at Riversdale. Cleydael was very old, but the towers and turrets and winding staircases, where she had played as a little girl, would always remain the same to her, no matter what changes might be made on them. George and Caroline listened with wide-eyed interest while she told them about the time when she and their uncle, who was then a boy of about ten, had climbed a ladder onto the roof of one of those towers to get some baby screech owls from their nest, and one of them had pecked his hand; of the flatbottomed boat in which they used to row around the moat that encircled the castle; of the big doll that was always brought down from the attic for her to play with as soon as she arrived. In these moods of reminiscence she sometimes went on to tell of Antwerp Cathedral with its beautiful spire, which she once had climbed to view a far-oil battle. Not her side but the French had won that battle. If it had not turned out that way she would never have come to America, and they, the two children standing before her now, might never have been at all— or they might have been little Belgian children feeding the swans on that very moat and rowing a flatbottomed boat round and round on the polished surface of its waters. Even at the age of four, George Henry Calvert was not permitted to imagine that the boundaries of Riversdale were the boundaries of the world.

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His earliest recollections were associated with the gradual completion of the house that his grandfather Stier had begun. It was being finished according to the original plans, although the mansion was far larger than the Calverts needed. The bricks were made of clay dug from the ground less than eighty feet from the north portico. This construction provided excitement for the children, and one of the first of George Henry's memories was of being hit by a falling brick.8 He was stunned, not seriously injured, but a new scar was added to the collection which is the property of every normal boy. The turf and top soil that were removed to reach the clay were cast to one side, where they formed mounds. Between the mounds were hollows that filled with water whenever heavy rains fell. These ponds were especially attractive to George Henry, for here he could sail miniature boats made from odds and ends accumulated around the carpenters' woodpiles and build bridges from the larger planks. As he grew older, he seemed to catch something of his mother's moody reflectiveness. "I would at times be subject to involuntary upflaming of unaccustomed thoughts," he wrote many years later in his Autobiographic Study. "No bearing had they upon my daily childlike doings and thinkings; they seemed like heavenly visitations, so large, lustrous, and unboylike were they." 8 By December, 1808,10 the grounds at Riversdale began to show something of Henri Stier's love of landscaping, for Rosalie Calvert had planned them as she thought her father would have liked them. A pond designed to provide the family with fish and ice had just been completed on the south side of the house. As the old icehouse leaked, a new one, looking like a peasant hut, with its straw-thatched roof, was built in a little grove of pines beyond the stables. A Negro cabin had been finished, and another was being planned—this one to have white columns giving the effect of a temple when seen through the trees. The clear expanse north of the house had been seeded for a wide lawn and there was a terrace for flower gardens. Indoors, perhaps in large trays in the cellar, they were raising quantities of heliotrope for transplanting in the springtime with geraniums and jasmine and rosebushes. Rosalie was proud of her results. "Do you still paint?" she asked her brother the following October. "I would like to send you a copy of the fine view I see from my window while I am writing. There is such a variety of autumn foliage in one of the clumps of trees on the right. A very round maple tree seems gilded, beside it a hickory is entirely of deep red and a

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young magnolia of tender green, while a half dozen other trees of different tints are reflected in the water. It is the loveliest season in America. . . ." 1 1 There is more than one hint in Rosalie Calvert's letters that her husband sought with quiet attentions to make her life a full one, with no regrets that she had chosen his land as hers. Among other things he bought a horse for her to ride, as she used to do at Strawberry Hill. "A good lady's horse is difficult to find," she wrote to her brother, "so, as this one was perfect, my husband was induced to give two hundred dollars for him." And she took as much pleasure in "Savage," her husband's Texas pony, as if he had been her own. "He was caught quite young with his mother in Mexico and some time I shall send you his portrait. Black as ebony with a white stripe beginning at the head and continuing over its quarters, and two more on each side joining at the neck. It is the most beautiful animal I have ever seen." 1 2 George Calvert also purchased four carriage horses for her to drive to Georgetown and to the "Federal City," to call upon friends. Although he seldom could accompany her on these expeditions he urged her to make them, despite her reluctance. And there were other diversions such as on those rare occasions when William Warren's company from the Chestnut Street Theatre came to Washington or to Alexandria. Furnishing and decorating her home was another source of pleasure. She sent often to Antwerp for things which could not be found in America —for candelabra, and lustres, and a china tea service "of 18 tea cups and 18 coffee cups with 36 saucers and two plates for cakes." 1 3 In one of her letters she asked her brother to tell her what stuff the most fashionable curtains were made of, and a few months later commissioned him to purchase ornaments for the hall and drawing room: "You wrote that you could not find a statuette for such a small pedestal as the pillar of our staircase. I should be so annoyed, for I do not think a lamp would be so effective. If, however, you cannot find a statuette, will you please send one you think most suitable? The pillar is five feet three inches in height.14 I should like so much to have two plaster casts for our north drawing room. Papa writes that they were all too indecent, but they have changed on that subject here. I should like to have one of the Apollo Belvedere and my husband says he must have the Venus de Medici sent too. He bids me give you many messages from him and has so much to do that he cannot write today. At all events, if the statues are such that I cannot put them in the drawing room, I shall put them in my husband's study "15

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Even the service at the Riversdale dinner table was a reminder of Antwerp ways: " I see that the manner of serving your dinners has not changed and I prefer it greatly to the American mode of serving all the meats and vegetables together. One has not time to eat sufficiently before half the dishes are cold, so one must hurry to swallow everything as if one had not dined for a month; but though I approve so much of three courses, I should like to divide them differently. Nothing cold should come on for the first and the rotis before the stews. As in this country every one does as he likes I am going to introduce quite a new mode. I shall take the best fashions from the different countries."

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T h e collection of paintings which her father had left in her keeping was still in the coach house, on a platform built over the carriages. " Y o u ask if I often look at the pictures," she wrote to her brother. "It would be a great diversion for me undoubtedly . . . but if they were unpacked a number of curious, troublesome people would be drawn here, for the reputation of these pictures is extreme from one end of America to the other, and then I am afraid of their getting spoiled. One can never be sure that some time the door key might not be forgotten in the lock. So they are still in the cases in which you packed them, with the exception of a dozen packed separately. W e have hung them in the drawing room which is always shut up unless we give large dinners and that does not often happen. . . . Papa does not seem to want it [the collection], I believe, nor does any other member of the family apparently. Would it not then be better to send them to England, where you could sell them at a good price?"

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Quite in the European manner, she invited Gilbert Stuart to spend a fortnight at Riversdale to paint her husband's portrait and one of herself with Caroline. 18 Rosalie was proud to hear him say that her little girl resembled Mrs. Sheridan, the most beautiful woman in London. His admiration of the twelve paintings in the drawing room was so enthusiastic that she had another box taken from its storage place in the coach house and unpacked in his honor. Although Rosalie Calvert was more American than the others, she retained a certain aloofness suggestive of aristocracy. "Society in Washington is very inferior just n o w ! " she complained. "All the government officials, as well as the majority of members of Congress being Democrats and for the most part people of low extraction, so I do not go there often, and employ my leisure hours reading. Tell me how your ladies pass their days. They do not need, I suppose, to direct the most minor details in the

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care of their households and children as we must here. What is our brother Van Havre doing? Does he still get up at eleven o'clock? It is rarely the case that the rising sun finds me in bed. The morning is the best part of the day, the mind is more active and everything is done with more ease, and I believe that nothing contributes so much as early rising to the preservation of the youthful faculties. The habit is a little hard at the beginning, but once contracted, it is much more agreeable. . . . Are there any English people in Antwerp and do you meet them? Do you talk of America sometimes, and what do they think of this country? The greatest failing I perceive in Americans is their heartlessness. They do not seem to feel anything deeply and are too prudent and reasonable to be lovable. . . . You tell me one is less merry in luxurious apartments, but I think just contrary. A beautiful decorated salon filled with well-dressed people and musicians performing enlivens me and makes me happier. Then it is not the same here as at home. One must differentiate oneself a little from the mob in order to be respected by them. . . ." 19 Charles Stier's efforts to add a little gaiety to his sister's household brought only a disconsolate reply: "I thank you for the offer to send music, but I must confess to my confusion that I play very rarely and then choose the simplest airs for songs or other little pieces. . . . I hardly have time to read a little every day, which is more interesting and more amusing than music and restores me to good humor when the sordid household cares have irritated me. I never hear music, not even the old violin our servant plays, without a sigh for the pleasure of the theatre and balls that I have so long been denied. Music makes me more sociable, but good reading makes us happier and more content with our daily existence, at least that is the effect it has on me. When I am at a dance or at a theatre, music exhilarates me and enchants me—in short gives me keen pleasure, but alone in my home it recalls too vividly all the deprivations I undergo. . . ." 20 A hint from her brother that he had read provincialism between the lines of her last letter caused her to answer candidly: "You do not understand, dear brother, you write, how anyone could attach so much importance to the care of a tree, to an equipage or to a piece of furniture. But you are very fortunate to be able to pass your time with friends at will, while I am far removed from all those dear to me in whose society I could freely give way to my impulses. I must confess that a visit, above all, from women, seems often too long for me. There are so few really amusing people. W e

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have added a Mr. Stodert 2 1 to our set. H e is a very learned man who has ruined himself in speculations of all kinds. His two daughters are extremely attractive and better bred than young American girls generally II

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are. . . . — Her friends were few, and for the most part valued for their European background. Closest in the small circle with whom the Calverts met often and unceremoniously were the Lowndes family, of Bladensburg, and John C. Herbert, 2 3 who married Miss Snowden, an heiress. T h e Herberts were considered neighbors, for they built a home six miles from Riversdale. T h e Calverts also enjoyed the society of Anthony Merry, the British Ambassador, and Mrs. Merry, during their brief stay in Washington. W h e n Merry was recalled because of his connection with Burr's scheme for getting help from England and perhaps bringing about a separation of the Western States from the Union, 2 4 Rosalie Calvert's letter to her brother expressed only regret at the departure of her friends: " M r . and Mrs. Merry, whom we are going to lose, lived in European style. They were extremely courteous to us and I am so sorry that they are recalled. Mr. Erskine, who takes their place, will not live so well. . . ."

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T h e mood of one of her letters was perceptibly brightened by another visitor from England, one with whom she could talk of the things that interested her most: "Although I very seldom leave our grounds and we receive very little, you know that a visit in the country is different from town calls and takes up the whole day. I thought I should be able to write to you yesterday without an interruption. My husband had gone to Mount Albion, there was nothing to disturb me, the day should be dedicated to friendship, and hardly had I opened my desk before I was obliged to defer writing again on account of the arrival of M r . Foster, a very attractive and cultured Englishman who has travelled all over Europe and Greece. He stayed to dinner with me. W h a t do you say to your little sister passing the day tete-a-tete with one of the most charming young men she had ever s e e n ? " 2 0 In their early years Rosalie's children saw little of their exceedingly busy father. For in addition to the management of the plantations that he owned, one of which was eighteen miles away and took up a day and a half of his time each fortnight, he was principal agent for the Bladensburg-Washington road

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devoted a day each week to his duties as director of the Bank of Washington. 2 9 H e also looked after the American investments of his Belgian rela-

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tivcs, sending them financial statements regularly. Besides discharging all these duties, he took an active part in politics whenever his party needed him. His children were aware of his importance in the community, and their affection and regard for him increased as they grew older. "Honesty and straightforwardness were characteristics of my father," wrote G . H . Calvert many years later; "his features bore their impress. Once in Philadelphia, there being some informality in a draft, a cashier, an utter stranger, said to him, 'I will trust your countenance, sir.' Dissimulation he reprobated as especially hateful." Uprightness, truthfulness in speech and conduct, were ever held before his children as "first and best." But along with these qualities was also a "sprightly and impulsive mind" which upon one occasion led him to indulge in corporal punishment of his eldest son, then about nine years old. It is significant that this particular form of chastisement was never again used, for, as the victim wrote, "the first blow wrought on me so gravely that he instantly desisted. . . . I felt myself unspeakably outraged. My whole being roused itself in indignant protest. My tone and manner and expression almost terrified my father." 3 0 Disgusted with the large number of women whom she saw "making themselves ridiculous by discussing politics at random without understanding the subject," 3 1 Rosalie Calvert vowed never to meddle in politics herself. But her letters often betrayed an active interest in them. She distrusted the Democrats, especially "that wretched Jefferson," and gloomily prophesied disruption if things continued as they were: " W e are alarmed from time to time about the national bonds. People dare to speak openly of the dissolution of the union of the states. I am often anxious on this subject. You are all so far away that you cannot be warned of the danger till too late. Perhaps I am a false prophet (and I hope so indeed) but it appears very certain that a government such as this can last only a short time. Every year they change something, the Eastern states become daily more bitter against the Southern states, and the latter instead of conciliating them do all they can to widen the breach. In short that cannot go on and what will be the result. N o one dares to face the issue, but if Madison continues the same system as Jefferson we shall be on the brink of a civil war." 3 2 A few years later, concerned about her father's financial interests in America, she wrote that she feared to invest in public funds, "which can be reduced to nothing in the wink of an eye." "It all depends on the government," she told her brother. "If they make peace, we are saved, if not! I tremble at the consequences.—

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Madison has just appointed as secretary of the treasury Mr. Campbell, 88 a violent democrat, a man who is no more capable of that office than I am, he married one of my best friends, the daughter of the late Mr. Stoddert." 3 4 When her husband's brother Edward ran for the state legislature she gave orders for a whole ox to be roasted in support of the Federalist cause. "My husband took an active part in this election," she wrote. "It becomes more and more important for landowners. It is absolutely necessary that we should smother party feuds which are formed here, or they would destroy us in the end." 3 5 But human longings are stronger than politics, and two years later she could not forbear trying to arrange to have her family meet Joel Barlow, who was soon to take up his duties as Minister to France. He would be able to give them long accounts of conditions in America, especially of financial matters, but since he was one of the "party in power," 8 6 she warned her family not to mention politics.87 As time passed, Rosalie's interest and vitality were centered more and more in the activities and education of her growing family. Besides Marie Louise, whose birth was mentioned in the letter of January 25, 1805, others joined the family group: Rosalie Eugenia, on October 19,1806, and Charles Benedict, on August 23, 1808. By December 3, 1808, she, who had taken such keen delight in letter writing, was giving reasons for not writing oftener to her brother: "One time Charles has to be soothed, which takes a half-hour. Then they come to ask for mustard for a ragout or sugar for a pastry, for you are aware that we American ladies are, alas! our own housekeepers! Then Caroline must have a reading lesson and George must write. A new coat is brought from the tailor which must be tried on. N o , it is not right and a note has to go back with it. T h e man goes to Georgetown and a long list of details for the household must be remembered. All these occupations seem trifling, and still they prevent me from chatting with you. At present I can hardly hold a pen as I have a violent rheumatism in my shoulder, and a packet sails in three days. . . ." 3 8 In this busy, secluded life books were welcome companions whenever she could steal a few moments from routine household duties. She sometimes discussed her reading with her brother. " I am reading just now Gessner's works, which are very well translated from German into English. I never admired him so much. What a fine style, so simple and touching!" 3 9 "Have you read 'Corinne' by Madame de Stael-Holstein, an extremely interesting romance? I should like to be able to send it to you. In such a retired life reading is a relaxation after my domestic cares. It is

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nevertheless only rarely that I read romances. The better they are written the less they contribute to my happiness. Poems, books on travel and lives of our contemporaries (formerly not obtainable until after their death) are my favorites. You know how books travel in this country from place to place (much to the detriment of their covers), but it is an excellent idea. T h e expense of a complete library would be too great, so every one purchases every year several new volumes and they are loaned around and their merits discussed which clears up the estimates on both sides." 4 0 Upon one occasion she sent her brother four volumes of the poems of T o m Moore, and in an accompanying letter, she praised her favorite British author: "Mr. Moore is a young man who is as agreeable in his manners and conversation as he is talented as a poet, and that is saying a great dealt H e is much admired in England. He made a tour through America two years ago and wrote several very scathing articles on this country and its government. I hear my sister-in-law is learning English. A perfect knowledge of the language is needed to appreciate the delicacies of Moore's style. If you care for these volumes, I will send you the rest of his works. T h e name of 'Little' under which his first essays were published is fictitious. You will observe that he does not spare this country, but what he says refers to the Democrats and is not exaggerated. I do not know what is thought in Belgium but perhaps you will find some of these poems too freely expressed. I acknowledge that they would not be good for a young girl, he has been accused of the tendency to pervert public morals in his writings, but if you have continued to read English since your return to Europe, you must be fascinated by the simplicity and elegance of his style and language. I have turned down the corners of several leaves in the book of odes and epistles—these I admire most. Write me what you think of them. T h e 'Fragments of a Journal,' page 111,gives a charming description of a journey in a public stage-coach. . . ." 4 1 But a subsequent letter modified her high opinion of the Irish poet: " I was sure you would like Moore. Was there ever anything sweeter than his 'Love and Reason' or 'The Dismal Swamp' or the Anacreon's description of his mistress Ode X V L . 4 2 Moore is not liked here, as he is rather severe about the people of this country, but what he says is true enough, which, I suppose, makes it still more offensive. But though he is my favorite I cannot pardon him for the way he speaks of the Immortal Washington. It was not Apollo but Midas who inspired him when he attempted to portray that great man." 4 3 Thus Rosalie's children grew up in the quiet home at Riversdale amid

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aristocratic cultural traditions. The formal education of her two eldest children had begun when Caroline was seven and George Henry only four. Their lessons took place in the spacious drawing room on cushioned sofas and easy chairs, with their mother as private tutor. Here they were taught the rudiments of English and arithmetic. Even at an early age they had shown great aptitude for learning. When only five, George Henry was described as a "remarkably clever fellow," 4 4 who seemed to have a great deal of talent and application. In fact, his mother already talked of college for him. When he was six, Princeton or Cambridge (Massachusetts) had been picked out, and his Belgian uncle had even offered to introduce him to his social world as soon as the boy was old enough to benefit by the experience. Rosalie Calvert had definite ideas about education. She did not approve of current educational systems at home or abroad. Of the plan then in vogue in Europe and praised by her brother, who had no children of his own, she wrote: "But are you not a little romantic, cher ami, in your ideas on the education of children ? You would like to carry out Rousseau's plan, but I hope that you would have the foresight to steal a mate for each one of your children to be educated in the same way as their future companions. Else after all your trouble, they might be the most unhappy of mortals all their life because of their greater degree of perfection! Believe me, these private educations which have been followed out with so much care and method often miss their purposes. Even here there are several examples of it. . . . Do we not also often see the greatest care and attention only produce imbeciles ? What was Lord Chesterfield's son ? The Duke of Hamilton educated by Doctor Moore. The Duke of Tuscany by I forget whom, while we see the greatest men having risen without any particular trouble having been taken with their education." 4 5 The mother kept a close watch over her brood, studying their habits and planning their careers with them, for she well knew the folly of forcing them into professions for which they had no natural bent. "Chance has undoubtedly much influence over their inclinations," she wrote to Charles Stier in April, 1809, "and a clear-sighted and watchful mother can be most useful to them in keeping her eye on all their actions, and without antagonizing them, she can imperceptibly instruct them how to think and act rightly. Observing and studying their inclinations she may choose the career most likely to make them most happy, for one lad brought up to be a lawyer might have been a second Linnaeus, while another following the

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plow murmurs over to himself dreamily the verse he read in the last almanac." 4 ® Although when these words were written George Henry was hardly old enough to have displayed antipathy for the plow, his mother seems to have realized even then, that her eldest son would never be of much use on the farm. T h e strain of tutoring her children and attending to the routine duties of her household presently began to tell on Rosalie. " I am so giddy from a continual procession of different occupations," she wrote, in the fall of 1809, "that I often want to take flight and leave everything to go as it will. . . . H o w I envy you who are able to divert yourself so and turn your attention to your friends, while I am absorbed in business, in household squabblings, the worry of teaching children etc. etc. All these vexations arc doubled by the commerical obstacles which prevent our selling our harvests and consequently leave us without income. I was just about to engage a tutor who was quite what I wanted for my children but I must put it off still for these reasons and continue to teach them myself, which not only bores me insufferably but by confining me still more closely to the house is injurious to my health, and confuses my brain so that I reason falsely often and have not good common sense. Have you not remarked that schoolmasters are always stupid people, like wanderers from another world or from a dead and gone century?" 4 7 Possibly because the tutoring became so irksome to her, the children were sent for a short time to the village school in Bladensburg. Their experience was very different from the hardships encountered by many New England schoolboys of the same generation. T h e Calvert children rode to the edge of the village on gentle horses with a servant walking by their side. The path wound through the woods along the eastern branch of the Potomac, in that locality not more than thirty feet wide, and shallow, deepening here and there into pools by which the children liked to loiter. T o augment the rather meager curriculum offered by the schoolhouse, they were given dancing lessons by M. Generee, 48 a typical French dancing master of that day—"courteous, patient, straight, graceful, with a calf like the Borghese gladiator." 4 9 The experiment of public education did not last very long, and in keeping with the European tradition, a private tutor was engaged, an Englishman, 50 who proved unsatisfactory and was soon dismissed. He was followed by another Englishman, one Bradley, who, among other things, taught George Henry how to swim, and made a lasting impression on the

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small boy by lying on his back in the water—a most amazing performance. But Bradley gave even less satisfaction than his predecessor, and the children were soon taken in hand again by their mother. Of more importance in the shaping of their character, however, than the formal training which the children received from their mother was the quiet influence which her close companionship had upon them during their formative years. Against the background of her isolation the home which she provided for her family was essentially European; the children's bestloved toys had come from Europe; there was a wonderful magic lantern, showing giants and monsters, that made even the youngest forget about bedtime; 5 1 the earrings152 which Caroline received from her uncle Charles, perhaps the first that she had ever worn, were made by an Antwerp jeweler. Most of the books which they found lying around the house were in French, for Charles Stier kept his sister well supplied with works then popular in Belgium. A letter thanking her brother for a number of volumes which had arrived by a vessel from Antwerp has been preserved: "Please accept again my thanks for the pretty books which I have received by The Oscar.—Chateaubriand has a very eloquent style. I have re-read with much pleasure the fine tragedies of Racine, whom I admire more than all others. Corneille and Molière as well as Delille are new to me. . . ." 6 3 In her rare moments of leisure she read Madame de Staël, as well as Chateaubriand, Corneille, Molière, and Racine. Racine charmed her especially; she was almost afraid to pick him up, she said, because when she had once begun to read him she never could put him down. And besides the books in this plantation home there were always foreign periodicals to be consulted, if not carefully studied; the most anxiously scanned news of political operations abroad were in the same language. George Henry Calvert's imagination was early kindled by the absorbing stories his mother told him of distant lands. The books from which some of these stories were taken were printed in a different language from that which was taught in the village school. This language his mother read easily, and wrote fluently in a fine, neat, legible hand. She had not spoken it often in their home, except for a word now and then, but she frequently read from those books fascinating tales of love and adventure, of tragedy and war, translating easily as he stood at her side following her finger as it moved across the page. Out of these experiences he made the discovery that there were countries where people actually spoke the strange language of those books. His own cousin Eugène in Antwerp spoke it; and if he ever

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went to Belgium to visit him, he would have to speak it too. The world across the seas, to which his mother had introduced him, became more real than the world of the Bladensburg copybooks, and in later years he could no longer remember who his grammar school teacher was—whether a man or a woman. The influence on young Calvert of the village school was very slight, but he acknowledged that his mother's training had been of paramount importance. He owed to her "the finer proprieties in the intercourse of the drawing-room and dining-room," and "personal carriage in the contacts and superficial relations of life, culture of the graces and amenities of social commerce, the movements and demeanor involved in what is termed good breeding." 8 4 There were times when even the effort to establish a home which would be as near like the one she had known in Belgium failed to bring solace to Rosalie Calvert, and she looked expectantly for a visit from her relatives. In 1812, when her brother and his wife were travelling on the Continent she held a frail hope that they might extend their tour and visit her in America. "There is no more danger crossing the Atlantic than crossing the Alps," she argued, "and you would not be away from home any longer. Some ships cross in thirty and even in twenty-one days from England. What a joy it would be to see you here, for I have no longer any hopes of coming to you. . . . My position here is so isolated that I would willingly sacrifice half of my allotted years in this world to be able to pass the other half with my family." 5 5 She now consoled herself with the thought that, some day, at least her eldest son would be fortunate enough to make the journey which she had had to forgo.

Chapter Four SCHOOL

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Y the time George Henry Calvert had outgrown the village school and was ready for the training which his mother felt could be acquired only in a private academy, the income at Riversdale had so diminished that it was scarcely able to meet any new demand. The war with England had curtailed the sale of tobacco, and the unsold harvests of several seasons had accumulated in the barns. Yet Rosalie Calvert was determined that her children should have the best education the country had to offer. She thought, as she wrote to her brother in 1813, that "one can give nothing better to one's children than a good education, and I would rather economize on everything else but that." 1 In 1812-1813, Maryland had little to offer to a boy of Calvert's social background. Priestly's excellent academy in Baltimore, attended by J. P. Kennedy as a boy, had been closed in 1808, when Priestly left for the West. T h e era was marked by an enthusiasm for better neighborhood elementary schools, and the academies suffered in consequence.2 This mediocrity in secondary education, which dated back to Colonial days, was undoubtedly due in large part to the fact that families of wealth continued to send their sons abroad. 3 Nothing would have given Rosalie Calvert greater satisfaction than to be able to educate her children in England or Europe, but the war put that out of the question. The next best thing was to place them in French schools * in or near Philadelphia. But even this was expensive—over a thousand dollars a year, if she sent the two eldest—and would mean exercising the strictest economy. She would make the sacrifice gladly, but there was another difficulty that she found even harder to surmount—a feeling of bitterness toward France, the country which had made her people suffer. Yet finally even this obstacle was overcome, though not without a struggle. The matter of a school for Caroline was easily settled, once Rosalie Calvert was able to make up her mind to overlook the prejudice which she felt for the French. But that she could never quite eliminate that prejudice

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is obvious in a letter which she wrote to Charles Stier after Caroline had been attending Madame Grelaud's in Philadelphia for a number of years and had begun to enter into social affairs: . . I observe you note with regret that Caroline's first dancing-partner was the secretary to the French minister. Is it possible, dear brother, that you have forgotten the strong prejudices which M r . Calvert and I have against that nation, prejudices which our children inherit and which it would be impossible to efface? W e had to send our eldest children to pensions conducted by French teachers, but since all of the boys and girls in these schools are Americans, I have not feared that George or Caroline could acquire a partiality for that nation, from which luckily they are estranged as much as we are. T h e n do not fear that your niece could ever become attached to a Frenchman. T h e minister, M r . H y d e D e Neuville, and his wife, are, however, very pleasant. T h e y see more people and give more dances than anyone else in Washington. In short, one goes as gladly to their home as to that of Mr. Bagot the English minister. . . ."

5

But it was not a simple matter to find a suitable school for her eldest son. Discussions were long when the family lingered around the table after the evening meal. Finally George Calvert consulted M c E w e n , 6 head of the Philadelphia banking house which handled his accounts, w h o had a son at Clermont Seminary in Frankford, four miles from Philadelphia. McEwen recommended the Seminary highly, and thought it would be pleasant for the two boys to be there together. Robert Walsh, 7 however, one of Maryland's few literary men of that early day, favored Mt. A i r y , at Germantown, conducted by Benjamin Constant. Clermont was finally selected. It was conducted by the brothers Carre, two refugees from the island of San D o m i n g o . Here, according to the advertisement, the pupils were taught English grammar and composition, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, mathematics, geography, history, philosophy, and sufficient Latin to enable them to understand any of the classics "without feeling the necessity of a dictionary." T h e y were also taught "to read, pronounce, to speak and write the French language with accuracy, purity and elegance; to compose in that language, on any subject taken within the circle of knowledge, already acquired. 8 F o r this instruction, and for lodging, boarding, washing, fire and candles, the fee was $300 a year. Dancing and drawing were taught "by the most eminent masters" at an additional charge of $5 at entrance and $10 a quarter. When the day of departure finally arrived, there was a great bustle of

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servants with boxes and other luggage which they loaded into a carriage in charge of a Negro driver. In one of the bundles were the "eight shirts and a dessert spoon"—part of the outfit required of each of their pupils by the brothers Carre. A cot was fastened securely across the back, while blankets, sheets, and a mattress, together with fluffy pillows, were stored away under the seats. In another carriage were the three passengers, George Calvert, McEwen, who was going to Philadelphia with them, and, most important, George Henry, who could hardly contain his excitement as he started out on his first adventure. Near by, ready to accompany them on horseback, was Robert Walsh, who still felt that they would have done better had they chosen Mt. Airy. When the little caravan was ready to start, Rosalie Calvert waved a last farewell and called a last-minute admonition to her son: "Remember in your drawing-lessons that you are descended from Rubens." 9 On that bright autumn morning, the horses carried George Henry Calvert down the driveway and out upon a road that was to lead him farther and farther from his old environment. Henceforth he was destined to return to his home only for short visits. During the eleven years of school and college life which lay before him, he spent the vacations at home, but he was never again to remain there for more than a few months at a time. But behind the slow-jogging horses, the two days' journey from Bladensburg to Philadelphia seemed long and wearisome to the little boy of nine, and when, on their arrival at Clermont at the end of the second day, his father left him in charge of M. Carre, he was too tired to know that he was homesick. He may, however, have found a little consolation in the admonition of his father to the headmaster to spare the rod. When he awakened the next morning and began dressing in the unfamiliar surroundings, the prospect looked dismal, and only grew more so, when, in the classroom, he found himself among some thirty boys, ranging in age from ten up to "young men with whiskers." 1 0 All were strangers to him except Tom McEwen, who was several years older than he and was not to be looked upon as a congenial playmate. The building was an ugly boxlike affair, cheerless, gray, and forbidding. It offered nothing to take the place of the warm affection which he had enjoyed at home. The young descendant of Rubens felt no shame when he sat down and cried as if his heart would break. The impression made upon him during those first few weeks remained vivid for many years. In the Autobiographic Study, he still recalled that "there were hours when the wound of the

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affections would not be staunched, when I would quit the play-ground and go off to the southwest corner of the limited lot, the point nearest to my home, and there weep alone, looking wistfully down the road from Philadelphia for relief, as though my child tears could work a miracle." 1 1 T h e president of the school, John Thomas Carre, was a man of kindly, intellectual countenance, who wore a black wig under a high-crowned hat which he did not remove when he visited the classroom taught by his younger brother. Charles Carre, nicknamed "Uncle," had charge of the younger boys in the school. From him Calvert received a thorough grounding in French, and learned the rudiments of the other subjects listed in the school announcement. His drawing master came from Philadelphia two or three times a week for an hour or two. " I made little progress with M. Volaison," wrote Calvert. And he added by way of explanation, "As I had some aptitude for drawing, the small progress may have been in part due to the fact that the time for these lessons was taken from playhours." 1 2 T h e physical exercises prescribed, to be taken in the open air whenever the weather permitted, were of slight account during the winter months. A n d the small portion of ground assigned to each pupil for a private garden in the springtime was a poor antidote for nostalgia in November. As time went on, however, George Henry was more contented with his surroundings and even came to like some of the by-paths of old Philadelphia. Thomas McEwen, probably at parental invitation, often took him home to spend the week end at the big house on Arch Street above Seventh, and here he struck up a close friendship with Charles, the younger brother nearer his own age. The two boys explored the city together, wandered about the wharves, and one day spelled out with especial curiosity the name "Voltaire" written in large gold letters on the prow of an East India merchant ship, owned by Stephen Girard, Philadelphia's only millionaire. More than sixty years later Calvert recalled the compactness of the town, when its population was only sixty thousand and Vine Street was almost the northern limit; the Schuylkill was far away, Camden a small Jersey village, and there were no steamboats on the Delaware. "Paul Beck's shot-tower stretched squarely high up into the air of the western wilderness, and Watson (Chestnut Street, just below Third) was the great tailor, not only of Philadelphia, but of the Union . . . " 1 3 He stayed at Clermont for nearly two years. When he returned home for the fall vacation of 1814, there had been many changes at Riversdale.

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Little Julia 1 4 had taken the place o£ Marie Louise (1812-1813), who had been the youngest of the family when he left. His mother had purchased an additional 600 acres of fertile land, "une superbe ferme," situated between Riversdale and Mount Albion. 1 5 Eighty acres were covered with timber; the rest were suitable for raising grain. No improvements had been made on the grounds at Riversdale, for the tobacco harvests were still unsold. The Battle of Bladensburg, the most important event of all, had occurred just a week before his return. It was a disappointment to a boy of eleven to have missed the excitement of such a stirring experience. Many a time in later years he envied the good fortune of his friend J. P. Kennedy, 1 8 who had been present on the field of action. There was still a note of wistfulness in his account of the little drama when he came to write it down toward the close of his life. 1 7 He had found the village alive with British officers and men, for all who had been too badly hurt to be removed with the retiring army were cared for in Bladensburg. T h e day after the battle his father had taken all his field hands to the battleground to bury the dead; when his son arrived from Philadelphia George Calvert was still busy taking care of the wounded. George Henry went the rounds with his father, deeply impressed, especially on his visits to Colonel Thornton, Colonel Wood, and Major Brown, who had taken part in the battle. Perhaps the experience remained in his memory with such vividness because in playing with some British gunpowder at the home of his playmate, Edward Lowndes, he was temporarily almost blinded by an accidental explosion. This misadventure did not prolong his vacation, for he returned promptly to Clermont. Before March 10, 1815, however, he entered Mt. Airy, at Germantown, the school which Robert Walsh had recommended. Attractively situated on a hillside, the building overlooked the road to Philadelphia, along which stagecoaches rumbled several times a day. Benjamin Constant, a more competent headmaster than Carre, employed a larger and more able staff of teachers. This was a better school in every way. Yet it was by no means ideal. Constant had "scholarly tastes," and some scholarly knowledge, and he taught well for his time. The oldest boys learned French, history, geography, Spanish, "little Latin and less Greek," but the only teacher whom Calvert remembered with gratitude was Merino, who taught Spanish, a genuine Castilian. "When I think of what I might have learnt in these four or five years at Mt. Airy," Calvert wrote; "when I recall . . . the incompetence of nearly all my teachers and

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the insufficiency of their methods, I seem to have lost much precious 18 time . . But the fault was not wholly on the side of the school. On October 28, 1815, his mother wrote that he had "much talent but I wish he had a little more application. H e does not like that which gives him trouble, and he is a little inconstant." 1 9 A n d a year later she repeated that " H e is talented in every direction but lacks a little perseverance and application, and does not like irksome tasks." 2 0 Calvert found few changes at Riversdale when he went home for the fall vacation of 1816. His mother would have liked to beautify the grounds, but George Calvert could not spare the time. "My husband is a splendid farmer and planter, and has fine animals, cows, sheep etc., but our place is only an American farm," 2 1 she admitted to her brother some years later. Caroline, who was sixteen, would remain in school for another year; then she would be introduced to "society." Her mother described her as "very petite in figure but has an interesting face; she is a little too timid and succeeds better with drawings than with music, which she does not like so well, and I have difficulty in making her dance." 2 2 Charles Stier had sent a charming picture of his Eugenie, and there were some new statues about the house. 23 The "Olympian Victor" was especially good. T h e greatest change had taken place in the drawing room. Grandfather Stier had sent for his paintings. T h e walls looked strangely bare without the twelve familiar canvases which had hung there as long as young Calvert could remember. His mother told him that his grandfather's request had come as a great surprise to everyone at Riversdale. Henri Stier had begun to buy more paintings as soon as he had returned to Belgium; he had already acquired a fairly substantial new collection,24 and it had not seemed likely that he would send for the pictures which he had left in Maryland. When word came that he wanted them, George and Rosalie Calvert worked day and night to get them ready. At length they were all packed in heavy cases, which were covered with tarpaulin to keep out the dampness; then they were loaded into carts and taken to Baltimore, whence they were shipped to Antwerp. 2 5 Before the paintings left Riversdale, however, George Calvert had exhibited them at his home, and had invited "all connoisseurs and amateurs" 2 6 to come and see them. The exhibition was an event in Washington society. Only vaguely aware of the significance of that event, young Calvert doubtless went back to Mt. Airy satisfied that this time, at least, his being

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away at school had not deprived him of anything of real importance. To have missed an exhibition of old masters, even though it included the pictures which were kept in mysterious wrappings in the carriage house, was nothing compared to having missed the Battle of Bladensburg! Benjamin Constant conducted his school in keeping with the theory that all work and no play makes Jacques a dull boy. The following spring a military company was formed, consisting of about twenty members wearing uniforms and carrying wooden guns. Calvert, who was just learning to play the flute, served as fifer for the company, while his friend, Tom Capers,27 of South Carolina, played the drum. The organization was shortlived bccausc proper discipline was lacking. "We played just when we pleased," wrote Calvert, "not holding ourselves subject even to the captain's orders." 2 8 There were, however, other extracurricular activities to take the place of the training corps. In winter there were skating parties on the Wissahickon and in summer bathing in a secluded millpond. The year around, on Sundays, the boys made the pilgrimage down the one street of Germantown to attend a half-empty church, where three or four pews were "reserved" for the little procession from the hill. Constant's curriculum stressed the study of French, not English. At Clermont the emphasis had been on the language; here at Mt. Airy in the more advanced grades, it was on literature. In the five years spent under the "scholarly" supervision of Benjamin Constant, Calvert became familiar with a large number of French writers, especially those of the classical period. But English literature was neglected, and he later doubted whether a copy of Shakespeare's plays had ever appeared on the premises. The name of Shakespeare was first called to his attention during holidays spent with friends in Philadelphia, and then only casually through talk about actors. Hamlet, Macbeth, and The Merchant of Venice were not popular in the days of the old Chestnut Street Theatre. It was the era of Joe Jefferson and his side-splitting comedies, and of The Dog of Montarges, a melodrama which had recently brought about a quarrel between Goethe and the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar. These plays were sufficient to inspire Calvert and his friends to rig up a small theatre of their own in the garret during their last year at school. Jeremy Diddler and Bombastes Furioso were conspicuous in a limited repertory. Here Calvert first tried his hand at playwriting. The result was

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a very short farce about a Quaker, who in the course of events was the center of a scene in which he was to be lathered and shaved in full view of the audience. Some of Calvert's schoolmates intimated that the play was not worthy of presentation on their garret-stage, but when the playwright volunteered to take the unpopular leading part himself, they reluctantly accepted his offer. H e surmised that his comrades were, in reality, a little jealous of his ability as a creative artist and that they were not above a practical joke. Seated in the barber's chair, the leading man would be at their mercy. An accidental slip of the razor, if carefully administered, might serve to deflate the disagreeable ego. H e went ahead with his plans, but at the very last moment changed the script. " T h e shaving I escaped," he wrote, "for just as the lathering was completed the denoument was ingeniously brought about, so that the curtain dropped upon the little group with the central figure lathered up to the eyes."

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If he had felt that one side of his education was being neglected, he was learning self-reliance and developing a little of that Continental poise which his mother valued. Mt. Airy was a much larger school than Clermont and he was brought into daily contact not only with boys from many sections of the United States but with boys from foreign countries as well. Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and of course, Pennsylvania, were represented. From the island of Java came the two Van Ysseldykes, sons of "a high Dutch functionary" in Batavia; from Smyrna, the two Offleys, whose father was American consul; from France the two Pageots, 30 sons of the French consul general to the United States. From South America came "a runt of a boy," 3 1 with dark complexion and straight black hair whose father was captain of a patriot privateer, fighting for the independence of Spain. Calvert had forgotten the boy's name by the time he wrote his memoirs but not the wonderful tales this boy told of adventures on the high seas: "Through stories of his father's conflicts and escapes, and of the cruelties of his foes, we got a dash of real history, more telling upon our fresh curiosity than many printed pages about Greeks and Romans."

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Romance first came into his experience when he went home with a schoolmate, George Brinton, and was presented to the latter's three sisters. At the same time he became aware that the two sisters of his old friend Charles McEwen were very attractive young ladies—Elizabeth, tall and graceful, "with beaming intellectual countenance," and Mary, somewhat younger.

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a beautiful blonde. And when he went to call upon his own sister Caroline at Madame Grelaud's, he began to "behold with timid enchantment her loveliest companions." 3 3 When he returned to Riversdale for the fall vacation of 1817, his mother noted once more the tendencies which he had shown earlier. On November 8 she wrote to her brother: "You ask me what George is doing. He passed the vacation month of September here. We spare nothing that can give him an education distinguée. He is perfect master of the French language and is learning Spanish. He draws well and is studying music, he is far advanced in all the branches of mathematics, astronomy, mensuration, besides making the usual progress in Latin and Greek. In short he has the ability to succeed in all that he undertakes, but he is a little lazy and lacks perseverance. If he overcomes these faults as he grows older, he will be a very distinguished man, but it all depends upon that. . . ." 34 At the boarding school, events occurred which deepened experience and widened mental horizons. Soon after Calvert's return in the fall of 1817, the town shoemaker died. He was only thirty-one, and he had been popular with all the boys from the hill because of his genial disposition and the useful services he had rendered. Some of them had grown very fond of him and of his wife and children. His sudden passing from them, when they had talked with him only a few days before, was puzzling. What was death ? When Calvert called at the grief-stricken home, the sight of the open coffin impressed itself upon his mind with enduring vividness, and the scene became one of the central episodes in his first original work, A Volume from the Life of Herbert Barclay, in 1833. Of this deepest lesson of life the schoolboys felt that Benjamin Constant could teach them nothing. Nor could the pastor of the little church in Germantown give them anything but words. "He was only a sectarian, theological Christian," wrote Calvert in retrospect. "Of the mighty significance of Christ's resurrection, he had but a glimmer." 3 5 Thus, in early youth, the boy whose mother had turned away from Catholicism, began to follow the path that led away from organized religion and formal creed. It was a more serious youth who came to Riversdale for the fall vacation of 1818. If he spoke of his problems at home, he has left no record of the fact, but he was already aware of a tendency to try to think things through for himself. He kept silent about the questions which were uppermost in his mind, and assumed a somewhat superior attitude toward his brothers

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and sisters, pointing out their faults and making suggestions for their correction. Caroline was a little too quiet and spent too much time on her drawing, which kept her too much by herself. She would do better to give more hours to dancing and music. Charles 3 6 was a little queer to care so much about the horses and the routine affairs of the plantation. Henry, he had to admit, was not "half bad" as a musician; his tones on the flute were perfect, but he should certainly learn some new airs. Eugenia, home from Madame Grelaud's, and Julia, not yet old enough to go away to school, were both very pretty as sisters go. Amelia Isabella, the baby, was now a youngster of two; she would have been much more interesting if she had been a boy. H e now had only one more year at Mt. Airy. The question which his mother had so hopefully discussed when he was five must soon be seriously considered. Ever since Isabelle Van Havre had written that her son was attending an English college, Rosalie Calvert had hoped to send George Henry to England. But as her family increased and the expenses at Riversdale were proportionately augmented, that idea had to be given up. "The University of Cambridge," in Massachusetts, now seemed preferable. Upon the high recommendation of three members of Congress from Boston—Harrison Gray Otis, Josiah Quincy, and Jonathan Mason—whom George Calvert met in Washington, the New England college was finally chosen. It would be expensive, of course, and the income at Riversdale was not large, but the parents were willing to make the sacrifice needed to give their eldest son the best possible education. When the vacation of 1818 drew to a close, George Henry went back to Germantown with high hopes of entering Harvard in the fall of the following year.

Chapter Five THE

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in September, 1819, George Calvert went to Boston with his son.

Arriving late on Saturday evening, they engaged rooms at the Province

House, yet unhallowed by the pen of Hawthorne. T h e following morning soon after breakfast they set out in search of Harrison Gray Otis in Beacon Street, to advise him of young Calvert's intention of trying the Harvard entrance examinations. Otis joined them in taking a turn about the historic old town, but it was not the Old North Church nor the house of Paul Revere nor the stretch of Boston Common that made the most lasting impression on the youngest member of the group. It was a casual conversation between his father and the Massachusetts Senator, which George Henry Calvert recorded more than sixty years later: " I n 1819 f e w private equipages were seen in the streets of Boston. In our walk about the town we came upon one of these, returning f r o m church, and Mr. Otis, in a condemnatory tone, drew my father's attention to the plain coat of the coachman, commenting upon the independence of that class, who, willing to drive a richer man's carriage, were unwilling to wear his livery. Mr. Otis spoke out his dissatisfaction, quite sure that the utterance would find sympathy in a brother federalist of the Hamiltonian school

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Otis turned expectantly toward the former Representative f r o m Maryland, and received a sympathetic reply. T h e young boy standing quietly by and taking no part in the conversation was thinking along different lines. Yet without fully realizing the significance of his elders' remarks, he felt something in the tone which he did not like. Almost unconsciously he began silently to take sides with the coachmen. A n d there in the heart of the "gigman world," he became dimly aware that he could never be a stanch Federalist like his father, and that without the democracy which the coachman symbolized, America could find no "enduring political prosperity."

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The little incident on the street corner was soon pushed into the background by a more important matter. When the results of the Harvard entrance examination came, he found he had failed in Greek and Latin. He could speak French fluently and write it with precision; he had a certain proficiency in Spanish; he could swim and dance, and could even draw well when he was in the mood for it; but all of these accomplishments together were not sufficient to open to him the portals of Harvard College. Benjamin Constant, meticulous though he had been with the French, had neglected the classics, and his pupil suffered the consequences. According to the MS Records of the Faculty,3 young Calvert was refused admission to the freshman class because of "Not having studied the Gr Testament except John, nor the seven last Books of the .¿Eneid." He was disappointed, but it was not in his nature to feel humiliated. Perhaps he thought of himself as in much the same situation as the Boston coachman, bending beneath the scourge of authority, cringing under the lash of uniformity. Everyone who wanted to enter Harvard had to wear the same mental uniform; everyone had to don the same livery of classical erudition. His first reaction was to rebel against the whole business—to go home and render silent protest against so ridiculous a system. But his father's disappointment, much keener than his own, soon brought him to his senses. He realized that his father had set his heart on "my son at Harvard." He had been staying in Boston all this time to be on hand to congratulate him on passing the entrance examination. The failure was a severe blow. When he began to think about it more calmly, even George Henry became aware that it would not be easy to return to Riversdale, admitting defeat. If the authorities were willing to let him have another try he was sure that he could satisfy their requirements. There was something about this proposition that appealed to his sporting spirit, too. After all, the examination was a good democratic institution in its way, a kind of leveling process whereby an Adams, a Peabody—or a Calvert—was liable to find himself outstripped by some obscure lad from a backwoods town in Maine or Kentucky. As he started off in the direction of the President's office to make inquiries, he must have hoped that they would let him try it again. There was long deliberation, then the decision rendered verbally perhaps, that with studious application, under the supervision of competent tutors, he would doubtless be able to qualify later in the term. The results "being satisfactory as far as he had proceeded," he was to be examined only

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in Vergil, when he should offer himself again.4 His deficiency being one of quantity, not quality, the faculty evidently decided to let the responsibility of making up the Greek rest with the candidate, subject to the approval of his tutor. With determination young Calvert went back to his well-worn iEneid; with a sense of relief his father went back to his plantations. During the fall of 1819 the prospective freshman read Latin with Samuel Webber 5 and Greek with the Reverend John Snelling Popkin, D. D.® Of these weeks of preparation Calvert has left a brief account in his Autobiographic Study. He went every day to a room in the south end of Holworthy, where the doctor always met him with an encouraging smile. Calvert later described this time spent in reading the New Testament in the original Greek as "one of the pleasantest half-hours in my cheerful day." T He learned so quickly from Professor Popkin and from Mr. Webber that at the end of only eight or nine weeks he became a member of the freshman class. Instead of being left to study alone at Mrs. Gilman's through the long midwinter vacation, he was now free to go home. He and his roommate, Edward Thornton Tayloe,8 a studious, sociable boy from Washington,® whose parents had long been acquainted with the Calvert family, journeyed southward together. When he returned to Cambridge after the first vacation at Riversdale, Calvert entered into the life of the college with keen enthusiasm and soon came to know some of the younger men who were serving on the faculty under President Kirkland. Among them were George Ticknor, Professor of French and Spanish, and Edward Everett, Professor of Greek and Latin; but Edward Tyrrel Channing, newly appointed Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, did not take up his duties until the following year. Calvert later studied under both Everett and Channing, yet it was old Dr. Popkin who made the most lasting impression: "For Greek I was taken in hand by the professor of Greek himself, Dr. Popkin, taciturn, reserved, timid, gentle Dr. Popkin, whose tall, square, straight figure showed well in a never-varied black suit, with smallclothes and black stockings. The doctor's sole function in life seemed to be, passively to hear recitations in Greek. In the class-room the only evidence given of life in his brain was the brief rectification of the reciter's words where he erred in putting Greek into English. Within him the currents of ordinary mental life seemed to be stagnant, only set a-running in momentary jets when his cherished Greek was wronged by English words. But it

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were to wrong the good doctor to believe that he was nothing but a machine to register mistakes in Greek. Proofs were not wanting that within him were springs of kindness. Myself occasioned the exhibition of a delicate courtesy and consideration. One day, on dismissing the class, he asked me to stay in; and then, with a smiling embarrassment, with a kind o£ blushing bashfulness,—as of a timid lover popping the question,—he inquired how I liked my name pronounced." 1 0 That it was properly pronounced with the Continental "a," as it still is today by members of the Mount Airy branch of the family, is attested by the fact that it is sometimes phonetically spelled "Colvert" in the Harvard MS Records As far as his academic work was concerned, Calvert did not find the sophomore year interesting. The curriculum included Latin, Greek, and mathematics. Classics played such an important part in the program that we find him still trying to make up his deficiency in Latin, even in his junior year. But there was another side of college life which he enjoyed immensely. Expenses at Harvard 1 2 were not so great as at Constant's, and he seems to have been given a fairly large allowance, which permitted him to enter into extracurricular activities. He roomed and boarded outside the college buildings during the whole four years at Cambridge, removing at the end of the freshman year from Mrs. Gilman's to Mr. Warland's. Off-campus living was less expensive than that in the dormitories and it permitted greater freedom. During August, 1820, there were the first rumbles of the "Great Rebellion," 1 3 a widespread protest from the class of 1823 against too strict rulings on the part of the "Immediate Government" 1 4 against student parties and celebrations. Some of the class took sides with the Government; others opposed it, and by November of their sophomore year, the class was divided into two conflicting parties. The chief source of information concerning the upheaval is the private diary written in his senior year by Pickering Dodge, 15 a member of the "Rebellion Class." It agrees, except in minor details, with the faculty records, which, however, have amazingly little to say on the subject. A number of disturbances took place during the sophomore year; mass meetings at midnight, bonfires in the Yard, in which old newspapers that had been "nicely filed up in Harvard" roared up in a triumphal blaze. The names of fifteen sophomores who sided with the Government were placed on a black list and were also woven ingloriously into a convention song. Intervals of comparative calm followed these

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demonstrations, while the rebels awaited some retaliatory measure by the Government. As soon as a few students were dismissed or suspended, the vengeful fires flamed up anew. Such was the atmosphere in which Calvert lived and studied during his second year at Harvard. He and his most intimate friends were on the side opposed to the Government; but this did not mean that they were hottempered, unmanageable young men. They were, in reality, just the opposite. Thomas Capers, Calvert's chum at Mt. Airy, who was now a junior at Harvard, later entered the ministry. George Peabody, of Salem, came from an old New England family. Edward Tayloe was characterized by his roommate as steady, trustworthy, and amiable. And the delicate-featured William Amory, of Boston, who was later to grace the social circles of his native city with a charm which won the heart of Oliver Wendell Holmes, 10 could scarcely have been a troublemaker. They were simply fun-loving, sociable boys of rather well-to-do families that did not inculcate in their offspring a deep regard for the serious side of life. It was natural, then, that early in their university careers, the youths should have joined the side which staged the bonfires and did the shouting, a side supported also by such "amiable" young men as John Adams, son of John Quincy Adams; Charles Carroll of Carrollton; Martin Gay, once the admiration of Emerson; and Charles Pickering, later an eminent naturalist. In their first two years Calvert and his circle were swept along by the strength of the tide. With the exception of Tayloe, who took a prominent part against the Government, none of them was active except in general demonstrations. Oddly enough, two radical reformers of the future stood conservatively with the Government during the great Rebellion of 1820-1823. George Ripley, founder of Brook Farm, and his friend Thomas W . Dorr, leader of the "Dorr W a r " for extension of the franchise in Rhode Island, were excellent students. Ripley, in a letter to his mother dated May 15 [1820?] referred to Dorr as "decidedly the first scholar" and gave an account of the situation as it then existed: "The division has been so deeply rooted, and animosities are so malignant and inveterate, as effectually to prevent much of the social intercourse for which, when Freshmen, we were particularly distinguished. The competition for scholarship has been zealous and energetic, and each party jealous of the other strives to win the prize. "It has been reported by our enemies that the only object of those who opposed the rebellion was to secure the favor of the government, and

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thereby obtain higher college honors. Now it happens that most of our number are good scholars, and they have endeavored to prove, and have probably succeeded, that if they do receive high honors it will be due to their literary merit, and not to their conduct in this affair. . . ." 1 7 Calvert and his quartet of gay friends provided much copy for the MS Records of 1820-1823. The gentle Amory was "consigned" December 11, 1820, 18 for a minor offense. Peabody was suspended July 2, 1821, for negligence and restored October 5,1821, having "passed a satisfactory examination." 1 0 Capers was censured on August 25, 1820, and cautioned by the president on December n . 2 0 The studious Tayloe was dismissed on November 5, 1820, for joining with others in "a disorder in the Commons Hall to express resentment at a punishment inflicted on two of their fellow students." After making three applications for permission to return, on October 3, and 22, and November 5, 1821, he was finally restored conditionally on November 8. 21 During the winter vacation of 1821 Calvert and Tayloe traveled together by coach to their respective homes, taking with them Amory and Peabody, whom Tayloe had invited to spend the holidays at his Washington home. Peabody took along, as valet, Ben Skinner, a tall, good-humored Negro who tended the fires in the college boardinghouses. Where the roads were passable, they went by coach; where the snow was too deep for wheels to make easy progress, they took to a sleigh. The journey was a merry one, and pleasantly perilous when the cutter upset in a snowdrift. The boys traveled only in the daytime, covering six or seven miles an hour, and put up at the best inns along the way. This was the best method of travel in the winter, they had learned, for the through trip from Boston to New York, unbroken except for meals and change of horses, was known to take as long as forty-one hours when the roads were bad.22 They stopped over for a few days in New York and in Philadelphia and went skating by moonlight across the Susquehanna at Havre de Grace. 23 Calvert says little of the reunion with his family at Riversdale, and one surmises that a good share of his time was spent in Washington with his friends. Home ties were broken, and the boy who rode away from the plantation nine years earlier had learned to adapt himself to other ways of life. His mother, in the meantime, had learned to get along without her children as one after another had left. Four of them had died in infancy. She seldom heard from her brother now, and her own hopes of crossing the ocean to visit him had long since been given up. The distance between

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Maryland and Belgium seemed very great, and the friends w h o had once been so dear had almost passed from her circle. She wrote wearily to her brother on May 24, 1820: " A h , dear brother, do not regret that you have never had any children. Doubtless they contribute much to our happiness, but think what inexpressible grief w e suffer when w e have the misfortune to lose them. A n d I have, of nine, lost four. Y o u can well imagine that nothing can ever console me for such a loss."

24

A n d on June 1 , 1820, she

begged to be remembered to "all in the family w h o still remember me."

25

Not long after Calvert's return to Harvard in the winter of 1821, he received word from Caroline that their mother had died. She had been in poor health for six years, and under medical care much of the time. 2 8 T h e loss of little Henry and the baby Amelia, both in 1820, had left her despondent. Although she had been obliged to keep to her bed almost constantly since the first of the year, she had been busy until the last days, giving directions to the gardener and had even separated a quantity of seeds herself and told how and where she wished them planted. T h e end had come on March 13, and she was buried, in her forty-fourth year, on a quiet knoll near the house, beside her four children. 2 7 Calvert probably did not go home for the funeral. H e could scarcely have reached Riversdale in time. 28 H e did not realize until much later in life what the loss of his mother meant. Y o u t h f u l thought, he said, could not estimate moral potencies: " N o r did I feel the blow with the force that I should have felt it had I not been—except in vacations—separated for seven or eight years f r o m home at boarding-school or college. . . . Sociable and companionable, I was peculiarly reserved . . . Especially in early manhood would her judgment and sympathy have been encouraging and helpful. I needed just such a mother to help me to know myself."

29

Unfortunately the church proved inadequate to answer the questions of the bereaved student. Like others whose parents feared infection from Unitarianism, Calvert had worshiped at the little Episcopalian Church near the C o m m o n , but for the privilege they had to pay fifty cents for each visit. H e attended at least three times during junior year, and, if the records are accurate, once in his senior year. 3 0 There seems to have been a reaching out for spiritual comfort in those months following the loss of his mother, but as at Germantown, the church did not satisfy his needs. H e recalled later that he and his friends carried copies of Byron's poems to read surreptitiously behind the tall pews while the sermon was being delivered. " T h e Giaour," " T h e Corsair," " T h e Siege of Corinth," " T h e Bride

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of Abydos," those strange verse-narratives so popular elsewhere in the 1820s, were their favorites. Calvert's picture of those services is not attractive: "The performance had at no time any soul in it . . . and for a while the desk was occupied by one so desirous of getting to the end of his routine, that, laying his watch before him when he began to read a printed sermon, so soon as the minute-hand had passed over one quarter of the dial he stopped, and the service was abruptly ended . . . "The pews of the little church were of the old fashion, like those of Trinity in Newport, square, with tall divisions. The worshippers being so few, we students had wide choice of seats, a whole pew to one or two of us. We took those that were remote from the reading-desk, so as not to be disturbed in our own reading . . ." 3 1 But if the student did not find spiritual inspiration in the perfunctory services at the small church, warm human sympathy came to him from another source. On May 15, 1821, his uncle in Antwerp enclosed a letter for him with those sent to his father and Caroline. "Give some part of your affection, my dear George, to your relatives in Europe, too," he wrote, "who, never having had the satisfaction of knowing you personally, love you as the child of a dearly beloved sister. Some day, perhaps when you have finished your studies, you and your father would like to visit the birthplace of your family. I cannot express to you the pleasure which such a visit would give to all of us, and especially to me, whose feelings are all for my sisters and their families." 3 2 The invitation which had often been extended to his mother during the long years of her exile in America came now with poignant tenderness to her son. The thought of meeting his mother's people, whom he had never seen, appealed to young Calvert. It was reassuring to know that this home in Antwerp was open to him whenever he chose to go there. But he had to complete his college course before he could consider traveling abroad. He turned naturally for immediate consolation to the lighthearted companionship of his classmates. During the summer of 1821 he entered more zealously than ever into the social life of the college. On July 2 he was "consigned" 3 3 for a minor offense which incurred the censure of the Government. "Consignment" was for a slightly more serious misdemeanor than that which incurred "admonition," the first step in punishment. Meanwhile he had become a member of the Porcellian Club, which had been founded in 1791 as the "Gentlemen's Society." Its purpose was social enjoyment, of which "that kind of enjoyment to be derived from eating &

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drinking was the principal." 34 This conncction brought him further censure when a number of students from the three upper classes met on July 20 for a convivial evening at Smith's Tavern. The faculty Records of July 23, 24, and 30 carry this entry: "It appeared y* ye Porcellian Club had a Festive Entertainment at Smith's Tavern on Friday evening July 20th attended with music at a late hour.— voted, That the members of the P. Club who were present be admonished and informed, that they will not be admonished again for such an offence, but will be exposed to higher punishment . . . that the President be requested to inform the Porcellian Club, explicitly, that they will not be permitted to have any meeting for the purpose of eating or drinking at College or elsewhere." 3 5 When George Calvert and his daughter Caroline visited Cambridge in the fall of 1821, they reported that George Henry had the reputation at Harvard of being a very clever fellow, though "a little spoilt by the ladies as he is thought by them very handsome." 3 6 By this time he had become seriously interested in Elizabeth Steuart of Baltimore, who later became his wife. His junior year was comparatively happy. Class disturbances were less frequent; the courses offered were more interesting. He was especially proud of his compliment from Professor Edward Tyrrel Channing for work in composition, and he took a prize for declamation. He "dashed" in political economy, but the deficiency in Latin still loomed large. His efforts to correct this shortcoming met a rebuff which rankled for many years. He had accepted an offer of his Latin professor for extra instruction, but when he went to the professor's room he realized that he was an intruder, and one in whom his instructor took no interest. The only lasting impression of this work in Lucan's Pharsalia was the great line, "Victrix causa Deis placuit, sed victa Catoni." 3 7 On October 15, 1821, Calvert appeared on the faculty Records among those who were "found subject to censure for neglect of duties and exercises at the quarterly reckoning," 3 8 and he was again admonished on December 14, 1821. The occasion of the second admonition is discussed in some detail in his memoirs, where it forms a basis for one of his chief criticisms of the methods of the Harvard of his day: "I had a foolish way of occasionally counterfeiting with my organs of speech the notes of a trumpet. Going up the inner steps of University Hall to a recitation I gave vent to one of these mimic blasts, which certainly

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had in it none of the brazen sonorousness of the original instrument. Two days later I was called up to receive an admonition. I was thunderstruck! What had I done? When told, my indignation was equal to my astonishment. I instantly felt that injustice was done me. A simple outflow of youthful good spirits was treated as though it had been a designed insult to the college government. The proceeding was hard, and unfeeling, and injudicious. It wounded and alienated me. It smacked of the old gloomy puritanic usurpations, prompting the suppression of innocent spontaneity. It had in it some of the cold rigidity of Calvinistic formalism. Had one of the professors said to me, in a friendly tone, that I had committed an indecorum, I should have cordially apologized, and should have been drawn to him as to one who took some interest in me. Much mistaken were the faculty if they thought by such a rebuke to uphold their dignity and authority. The effect on me was to weaken my respect for its members, and to beget in me rebellious dispositions." 3 9 If indignation, roused sixty years before, was still simmering when these lines were penned in 1883, no doubt it would have reached far greater intensity if he could have read the faculty account of the affair, in which those musical notes were called by another name: "It appeared that Calvert, Amory 1, Carter, Peabody were concerned in making a disturbance yesterday P.M. in going to recitation, by singing, and one of them imitating loudly a fish-horn, all after the exercise had begun, voted, That they be admonished." 40 Calvert's name appeared once more on the faculty records of his junior year when, under the entry of July 8, 1822, he and his friend George Peabody were "fined one dollar each for unnecessary riding on the Lords Day." 4 1 Harvard students were expected to observe all the proprieties of the New England Sabbath. It is possible that this riding was not merely for pleasure, and that while Calvert was cantering through the woods around Cambridge on summer Sundays, he was perhaps trying to make some decision about the future. One bit of evidence, although somewhat trivial in itself, is suggestive. It is the charge books of the library, which, although not complete for all the four years 42 of Calvert's college career, indicate a new interest that apparently occupied his mind for a time in 1823. On March 19, he took out a book listed as "Ani Tracts on Husbandry," 43 and on March 24, "Duhamels Agriculture." 44 The "Farmers Letters," 4 5 borrowed on the same date may have been Crevecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer. On

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April 2, he withdrew "Shenstone Works vol. 3." 4 6 Such reading suggests that he may have been meditating on the possibility of settling down as a "gentleman farmer" on some portion of the Riversdale estate, but it is certain that he never considered farming seriously as a lifework. Indeed, he later observed that at no time during his stay at Germantown or at Cambridge had it occurred to him that he was ever to do any kind of work for a living. 47 Calvert's friendship with Tayloe, his freshman roommate, had continued unbroken, despite the fact that the latter, in obedience to his father's wishes, had remained outwardly loyal to the Government. The difficulty which his son had had in getting himself reinstated after dismissal in his sophomore year made Colonel Tayloe extremely anxious to prevent a recurrence of such complications. In the spring of their senior year, Tayloe came often to Calvert's room for help with his French, 48 and it seems likely that their hours of study were broken by long, earnest conversations about the defects of the college Government. T h e influence of Bancroft, Cogswell, Everett, and Ticknor, all of whom had studied in Germany, was beginning to make itself felt in Cambridge. " T h e longer I remain here, the more fully I am convinced of the superficial acquaintance one gets of everything, & the more I wish we had some institution on a footing with Gottingen or the English Universities," Tayloe wrote to his brother on March 28, 1823. 49 The incompetency and partiality of some of the tutors, who were "intoxicated with authority," and were rarely respected, was another cause for complaint. "Yet these [tutors] are as influential in the punishment of students whom they happen to dislike, as any of the Proffessors," Tayloe wrote to his father some weeks later. "This is an important error & should be remedied." 5 0 Despite his growing discontent with the Government, Calvert accepted a part in the exhibition of April 29, 1823, when, with Robert Dunbar and Isaac P. Hearsey, he spoke in " A Conference on the comparative effects of Argument, Declamation, and Ridicule upon popular assemblies." 81 A part in the commencement exercises was also assigned to him, but the "rebellion" in May, affecting the majority of his class, deprived him of this honor. The result of the disturbance was far-reaching. Some degrees were never granted; others were conferred from eighteen to fifty-seven years later. T h e upheaval of the summer of 1823 was a dramatic climax ending the series of minor climaxes of the three preceding years. Senior year had be-

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gun with a disturbance at chapel—a protest against the undue length of the prayers. On March 10 a large shower bath, belonging to T. W. Dorr, of black-list fame, was taken into the College Yard, "filled with wood" and "burnt at midnight" in commemoration of the second anniversary of the black list. Other fires were kindled during the following month. One student participator was caught by a tutor who disguised himself as a laborer. Finally, when the parts were assigned for the annual exhibition, James Trask Woodbury,52 of New Hampshire, who had figured in the convention song as . . . Woodbury, the same who was driven from College, Whence he carried some kicks, if he carried no knowledge,53 decided that his part in the exhibition was not so important as it should be. He devised a scheme for having the oration to be delivered by John Paul Robinson assigned to himself. "John P. Robinson, he" who was to be made famous by Lowell's Biglow Papers of 1848, had opposed the Government and had thereby aroused the jealousy and prejudice of Woodbury. In an underhanded manner Woodbury told an acquaintance in Boston that Robinson was an immoral, dissipated character and hinted that the president of Harvard should be informed of this. The president was informed; Robinson was questioned, but since he was able to defend himself satisfactorily, he was allowed to go without punishment. Woodbury repeated his attack. This time Robinson, an excellent student, who was dependent upon charitable funds and the contributions of fellow students to meet his college expenses, was deprived of the money allotted to him by the Government, and of his part in the exhibition as well. Robinson was "in the view of the Government, too independent for one in such a situation," Edward Tayloe wrote to his father. "Their dislike & prejudices magnified into heinous crime all his actions in the least degree suspicious, or only suspicious to those who seek to injure—they were, therefore, willing to listen to the charges of Woodbury, & to confide in the truth of them "54 Incensed at what they felt was a great injustice, the opposing faction held a meeting at which a plan was presented to hiss Woodbury when he came forward on exhibition day. Calvert, a stanch rebel, spoke out against his own side. Pickering Dodge's diary gives the fullest contemporary account of the meeting: "Calvert requested to be heard for a few moments, when he proceeded

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to state that he had heard that the students generally intended to hiss Woodbury ['s] part on Exhibition Day, &c. He spoke of the impropriety and rashness of such a measure; that it would not only injure the feelings of the person himself, but injure the feelings of his friends who might be present, besides being an open insult against the company assembled in the Chapel & against the Govt. He finished by saying, 'I move therefore that we discountenance such proceedings'—when Sturgis the moderator of the meeting put it to vote and it was universally assented to 'that both time and place were very improper to testify our disapprobation of Woodbury's conduct & that we would exert ourselves to discountenance any disturbance on Exhibition Day'—nothing more was said upon the subject, and the meeting was immediately dissolved." 6 5 In spite of these precautions, when Woodbury rose to take his part in the exhibition angry hissing threw the chapel into an uproar that lasted nearly five minutes. Robinson was summoned to the office the following day and charged with responsibility for the tumult. Russell Sturgis was then sent for and, as moderator of the meeting which the Government believed had been called to frame a resolution to hiss Woodbury, explained that the meeting had, on the contrary, resolved not to countenance such action; he repeated Calvert's exact words in framing the motion. Although Sturgis was honorably acquitted, Robinson was dismissed. The whole class was irate. In the afternoon, at public declamation in the chapel, they arose almost to a man as Woodbury entered, while cries of "out with him," "out with the rascal" came from different parts of the auditorium. Woodbury refused to leave; someone struck him in the face; he was hurled headlong downstairs; the exercises were closed and the students returned to their rooms. Without any ado, four students were summarily expelled as ringleaders, and the resentment of the class reached a new level. At evening prayers Woodbury was again thrust out of chapel. The president refused to finish the services. But the excitement continued. After tea, according to Dodge, "the bugle was sounded under the Rebellion Tree, 56 when forty one out of seventy, bound themselves by an oath that they wld not return to order till the four expelled members were recalled & Woodbury sent from College. . . . Various resolutions were taken, among the rest that, 'they would attend prayers the next morning for the last time and if Woodbury again made his appearance they would put him out, and thrash him severely, if he did not come in they would leave the Chapel themselves, &c.' "

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Soon after the action had been taken against Robinson, Edward Tayloe sent his father an account of the events which followed. Ostensibly still loyal to the Government, he nevertheless warmly defended the rebels, among whom were his closest friends: " T h e y swore they would never let Woodbury be with them—that they would insist on his immediate dismission, & the recal of their punished classmates—that if they suffered they would suffer together—& would go to any measures to effect their purposes—to discourage informers was the noble motive on which they rebelled against a Government who identified themselves with such a villain as Woodbury . . . I have made you a candid statement of facts . . . every one must acknowledge they were actuated by the most honourable motives, & I assure you, never was an opposition to Government marked by more determined coolness, by more sincere feeling. While all regret the consequences, they more lament the causes which led to them. Each one is conscious that he has acted right—& in addition to this, public sentiment in Boston, is on the side of the class— . . ."

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T h e rebels were strengthened in their conviction of the righteousness of their cause by a statement from Calvert. Tayloe, who must have had the story at first hand from his friend, wrote to his brother that Woodbury, incensed because his windows had been broken, appeared before the Government prepared to answer whatever questions they proposed. Among other things, "they asked him relative to Robinson, against whom some of the gov( had been prejudiced—& thus gained information, by which they were able to act against Robinson. T h i s was told to M r Otis by some of the govt—& M r O mentioned it to Calvert, as the true statement of the case." T h e Government, however, "finding they stood on unsafe ground,— that public feeling was against them—now say that Woodbury never gave information to them—how this accords with their declaration to M r Otis, they can best explain— . . ."

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T o Calvert, the affair did not seem serious at the time. Nor did any of the rebels who defied the Government by taking part in a fantastic dance around the "rebellion tree" seem to be worried about the outcome of such a procedure. W h e n warned by D r . Popkin that the result of their demonstration might be detrimental to them, one of the rebels replied with a pleasantry which Calvert preserved in his reminiscences: "Descending from his room, not a hundred yards distant, he [ D r . Popkin] walked towards the assemblage of excited, semi-hilarious rebels, with an alarmed, reluctant gait and expression. W h e n within a dozen paces of

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us, he halted and spoke: 'Ah! young gentlemen, we can injure you more than you can injure us.' He was met by one of the class, one of those idle, pleasant fellows . . . who preferred anything to hard work; one who belonged to the tribe of amiable egotists. He had no especial fondness for Greek, but was, nevertheless, a favorite with Dr. Popkin . . . This momentary champion of the rebels faced the tall, dark embodiment of College Greek, crying to him: 'Oh! doctor, you can only injure us in a degree.' This sally put the doctor to flight. He turned round and retreated faster than he had advanced, vainly trying to keep a smile, almost a laugh, below the surface of his features." 69 After breakfast more than thirty students, Calvert among them, were dismissed. Three more were added to the list later, so that in all, fortythree members of the senior class left Cambridge in the summer of 1823 without a degree.60 We can only surmise what Calvert's thoughts were when he left, for even in his Autobiographic Study, where early grievances are frequently recalled with emotion, he dismissed the "rebellion" with one brief perfunctory statement and a few anecdotes. Perhaps, in retrospect, he felt that the whole affair was hardly worth recording. But gazing disconsolately out of his coach window on the morning of May 13, 1823,61 he could scarcely have treated the matter so impersonally. It takes more than the warm winds of spring to soothe an outraged sense of justice, and hurt pride can make wounds too deep for even the blossoming countryside to heal. There was Tayloe's father to be considered, too.62 He must hear the whole dismal story again, although Ed had written repeatedly to try to get his father's permission to leave Cambridge with his friends. Calvert realized that young Tayloe was in a difficult position now, that he was, perhaps, suffering more deeply than his dismissed comrades. For, although Woodbury had decamped, the men who had sided with him were still in Cambridge, and many of them would be honored with parts on the commencement program. Ed had begged his father to let him come home without his degree, had urged him to write soon and relieve him of his "delicate situation." Nearly fifty students had been dismissed, he argued, "among them, all my friends, all my associates—left without companions is lamentable enough, but when my feelings have been the same with my suffering friends, when I am compelled to submit to the degradation of remaining with the scum of a class, so honorable & when I feel it my duty to suffer too, can I any longer remain?" 63

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But his pleadings had been in vain. Colonel Tayloe was determined that his son should remain in Cambridge and receive his degree. He even wanted him to accept a part in the commencement exercises, but at this young Tayloe had balked. H e would, he said, "perform no part at Commencement, nor should I be willing to ascend the stage with men whom I despise . . ." 84 It would not be easy for Calvert to talk to the elder Tayloe without a show of resentment. All of the rebels had respected E d for his obvious sympathy for their cause, but some of them had been provoked at his father's refusal to let him openly join their ranks and leave Cambridge before commencement. Calvert's friendship for Ed Tayloe had stood the strain of these recent disturbances, had perhaps been strengthened by them. 65 It was hard to know just what to say to the Colonel. The thought of meeting Tayloe's father was unpleasant enough, but as the coach slowly wound its way southward, on the second day of his journey, Calvert must have become increasingly aware of the difficulty of encountering his own father with the story of his dismissal. The look of disappointment on his father's face, a few years earlier, on learning that his son had failed the Harvard entrance examination; his subsequent pride in each honor that had come to the boy; his eagerness to see him take an important part at commencement—these things, doubtless, were vivid in young Calvert's mind when at length the coach clattered onto the old familiar road leading into Bladensburg. What the elder Calvert's feelings were upon hearing his son's story has not been recorded. But he had the consolation of not being alone in his disappointment. One father, at least, protested vigorously against the action of the University. John Quincy Adams, then Secretary of State under President Monroe, wrote to President Kirkland on May 19, 1823, 60 asking that his son and the other young men who had been abruptly dismissed be restored to good standing and that their degrees be granted to them. He felt that "a degraded class" would bring dishonor upon the Government and Commonwealth and that the minority who were to receive their degrees would, under the circumstances, be as much in disgrace as their classmates who had been dismissed. As a result of Adams's letter President Kirkland and Professor Everett were appointed as a committee to draft a letter of explanation. It expressed regret that such action had been found necessary, but it gave no indication that the Government would retreat from its position. 87 A copy of this letter was sent to the parents of each of

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the boys involved, assuring them that the Government recognized among those dismissed "young gentlemen of great worth and promise, who will ever be remembered by them with affection, and are now dismissed under censure with deepest regret." Upon receipt of this document John Quincy Adams wrote once again, on July 15, 1823, but he was informed that nothing could be done by way of mitigation. 68 Injured they certainly were, those forty-three "amiable egotists" who left Cambridge in the summer of 1823 without a sheepskin. But, after all, the injury proved to be "only in a degree" as the gay young rebel had said, for most of them went about their business in the world as if nothing had happened; many of them filled positions of trust and responsibility; a large number of them, having in some measure overcome the egotism while retaining the amiability, applied for their degrees and received them much later in life. Calvert received his degree "out of course" in 1855. 09

Chapter Six ANTWERP

ALVERT was surprised and a little disappointed by his sudden enforced departure f r o m college, but he was no more humiliated than he had been at his failure to pass the entrance examination. Beyond the little world of Cambridge lay a greater world. H i s uncle's invitation to visit him in A n t w e r p was an incitement to travel. H i s father, piqued by Harvard's rebuff, urged him to g o abroad for a number of years, meet his Belgian relatives, travel about a little, and perhaps enroll at a foreign university. T h i s experience would give him polish and help to efface the opprobrium of his untimely dismissal. Then just before he was ready to come home, perhaps his father would join him on the Continent, and together they would visit Antwerp. Y o u n g Calvert favored this plan. H e wanted to see what educational facilities other countries had to offer. France, where his knowledge of the language would have been a valuable asset, did not appeal to him. T h e University of Paris was not a popular rendezvous for American students in those days. Besides, it would have been difficult to overcome his inherited prejudice against the country which had caused so much trouble in Belgium. Germany, on the other hand, had taken a strong hold on his imagination. Some of the men w h o had studied there—Edward Everett, George Ticknor, Joseph Green Cogswell, and George Bancroft—had been his instructors at Harvard. H e had heard the lectures on Greek orators given by E d w a r d Everett, the popular young teacher who had made a deep but not lasting impression on Emerson. Cogswell and Bancroft, he recalled, had made themselves very unpopular with the college Government by their newfangled library catalogues and lecture courses, and had left Harvard to start an educational project of their own at Northampton. These men had attended the University of Göttingen, a fashionable study resort for young Englishmen ever since its opening in 1737, by Baron Münchhausen, 1 under the auspices of George II. F r o m what Calvert knew of these American

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scholars who had gone pioneering in Germany, he decided that he would like to explore Gottingen for himself. He talked over this scheme with his father, who approved of the Hanoverian university because it was liked by the English. Young Calvert doubtless discussed it also with Augustus Thorndike,2 whose wife was an elder sister of Elizabeth Steuart. Entering Harvard with advanced standing from the University of Edinburgh,3 Thorndike had graduated in the class of 1816, and then had gone to Gottingen under the tutelage of Cogswell. It was, perhaps, largely upon Thorndike's recommendation that Calvert began to consider a term at Edinburgh also. He secured passage on board the Francis Freeling, a ship which had been chartered by Stratford Canning,4 British Minister in the United States, for the return journey for himself and family. Canning, a friend of the elder Calvert, had invited the son to accompany him as far as London. The Francis Freeling sailed from New York on August 9, stopped at Halifax for three days and reached Falmouth on September 8, 1823. After several days of sightseeing with the British Minister, Calvert started out alone for Belgium, going down the Thames by steamboat and reaching Ostend at midnight on September 20. The diligence, drawn by three horses abreast, which he took the next morning for Ghent, traveled at the steady pace of five miles an hour over a "straight, paved, trembling, clattering road," 6 and reached its destination at four in the afternoon. He saw some urchins by the roadside standing on their heads, not in playful mood, but intent only on extracting coppers from the pockets of passers-by. A wave of homesickness swept over him, a feeling of despair which almost made him physically ill. The speech of the peasants sounded strange to his ears. It was not the French he had expected to hear. He longed for a companion in his misery, someone who could understand his language. He felt that he was in an unwalled prison, under the open sky. The boy made one brief entry in his diary: "The inhabitants have a sad look." 6 The next morning he was up at four o'clock, ready for the five hours' journey to Antwerp. As he climbed into a seat at the back of the diligence, high up on the outside, he found a Swedish merchant who knew a little English, "a cleanly, civil pig, of about forty, well-grown, with a fresh, healthy complexion . . . " 7 Their lofty seat commanded an unobstructed view over Flemish fields—a monotonous scene, no fences, no hedges, no stone walls, just earth and sky and a straight, broad, tree-flanked road stretching endlessly ahead and disappearing over the horizon. The Swede was not an

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entertaining companion, but he was responsive when questioned, and his laconic answers made the journey bearable. Toward eight o'clock, Calvert noticed that the long vista of the road was dimly closed in the distance. As the vague outline gradually took definite shape, he nudged his companion and pointed down the road: "What is that?" he asked. "The Cathedral of Antwerp." The words of the Swede knocked familiarly at Calvert's heart, and the sight was like the sudden appearance of an old friend. Years ago his mother had told him a story about the Cathedral—a story which had filled his heart with vague, romantic fancies. As a child she had climbed far up into the spire to witness a distant battle. The French were victorious; and, as a result, her family had fled from Belgium to America. H e watched the spire grow taller and more distinct as they neared the city. His traveling companion could not share his emotions, but that did not matter now. T h e great spire was in front of him and he seemed to see his mother in it, gazing down upon him with mild and loving eyes. At length the diligence entered the city and halted on the banks of the Scheldt. The Cathedral now towered so close and palpable that it seemed only a stone's throw away. It was a more serious Calvert who clambered down from his seat and took abrupt leave of his companion. He says little about his arrival. He went at once to the Hotel d'Angleterre and at ten o'clock that morning "went out to find" 8 his uncle. He does not tell us whether Charles Stier came down to his town house to welcome him, or whether he had to find his way alone to Cleydael Castle, where his aunt and uncle were still occupying their summer residence, six miles from the city. Even in the bright September sunshine, Cleydael must have presented a somewhat gloomy, mysterious aspect to the American traveler. Encircled by a moat filled by the tide of the distant Scheldt, the ancestral chateau preserved much of the atmosphere of medieval days. Although the bridge no longer had a draw, it had a heavy iron-clamped door at one end that led to an open quadrangular court enclosed by massive walls. Within this court was a large structure, somewhat ornate, after the manner of the great chateaux of Normandy, with a small chapel in one of its towers. T h e outer grounds were beautified by trees and a spacious garden. 9 Calvert had doubtless written to his uncle from London when to expect him, but it was difficult to make accurate calculations, and it seems likely that the servants at Cleydael received orders days in advance to be on the

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outlook for "notre neveu américain," a visitor who was to receive the most courteous attention. Perhaps a watchman on the bridge was the first to catch sight of the unfamiliar figure approaching along the garden paths. "Le neveu américain?" he asks eagerly, as the stranger steps onto the bridge. "Oui." "Bien." The heavy door swings slowly open, permitting the traveler to enter the inner court, and closes austerely behind him. "Par ici, monsieur." The watchman takes Calvert's bags and starts with them across the quadrangle. "Le neveu américain!" "Il est arrivé. Le neveu américain!" Reverberations of excitement must have gone echoing from one servant to another through the great halls of the chateau, until they finally reached Charles Stier in a remote room in one of the towers. At this point, however, Calvert's account is disappointingly silent. Of the meeting with his uncle, the "dear brother" of his mother's letters, he has not a word. Perhaps it was a scene which he could not share with his readers, not even with that intimate circle who would read his unpublished Autobiographic Study. But it is not difficult to imagine the warmth with which he was welcomed into the childless home of his aunt and uncle Stier. Calvert led a gay social life at Cleydael, for everyone was eager to meet the American stranger. His aunt gave dinner parties in his honor, and a ball was given at another château to introduce him to large numbers of relatives, "running into the dilutions of fourth and fifth cousinship." 1 0 Nor were religious activities neglected. Before the close of his second week at Cleydael he had gone with his uncle to mass in the great Cathedral of Antwerp. Calvert had not mentioned the subject of religion since his arrival and his uncle had begun to wonder about the rumors which had come to him regarding his sister's change of faith. The awkwardness of the boy's bearing during the service confirmed his suspicions that this was his nephew's first entrance into a Catholic church. A few weeks later the Stiers moved back to their town house on the rue de l'Hôpital, where they continued to entertain in Calvert's honor. Soon, however, it was whispered about that the young American was not a Catholic, and before long Calvert himself became vaguely aware that a

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shadow had fallen upon him. The circle in which his uncle moved was exclusively Catholic; its members looked askance upon adherents to other faiths. But they had taken a fancy to the affable young man from the States, and to be assured of his heresy would be a real disappointment to them. Finally one of his admiring acquaintances could stand it no longer; heresy or not, she must know the truth. Coming upon him in a shop one day, she bluntly asked him his church affiliation. He answered as directly that he was a Protestant, whereupon the matter was settled.11 The verification of these suspicions did not lessen the uncle's affection for the boy, nor did it disturb him very much. He did not wish to stir up trouble, particularly as he had never felt called upon to think very deeply on theological matters. His priest was his spiritual tailor, and Charles Stier was not exacting about his spiritual clothing. The fit need not be too close. Thus the matter was dropped and outward harmony prevailed. Calvert went frequently to the Cathedral, and after Mass, he and his uncle often lingered in the south end of the transept before "The Descent from the Cross," the work of their own famous ancestor. The strength and grace and the simple tenderness of the group gathered about the body, the repose in the midst of action, the balanced splendor of the coloring, the spiritual quality which unified the whole, were all pointed out by Charles Stier and absorbed by his young nephew. The painting and the architecture which surrounded it grew upon him, filling him with a religious emotion which the services could never have inspired.12 This firsthand contact with the art treasures of an older civilization must have made an immediate impression, for after the first rush of social activities was over, and the household had settled down to a normal routine, Charles Stier engaged a teacher to give his nephew private instructions in architecture. But Calvert apparently did not learn very much from him about the appreciation of good architecture. He had lessons in the mechanism of the Greek columnar styles, he wrote. "I became acquainted with the external characteristics of the three orders. I learned the shapes and names of dentils and modillions and mouldings, and all about the entablature and its division into architrave, frieze and cornice. But of the life and growth of these members and constituents, and of the column itself, and how it came to be, I learned nothing." The professor taught facts and details without pointing out their basic principles and unifying laws. "The Laws which govern buildings in all their purposes and proportions—how use and beauty may be harmonized, how the idea controls the work, and

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how only idea can give life to work—of all this there was no word; nor of the relation between the architecture of a people and its mind,—its wants and its aspirations." 1 3 Calvert seems to have learned more about art and architecture from his uncle than from the professional instructor. Charles Stier was himself a collector, whose judgment was valued in the community. He had been sent to the Louvre in 1815 as one of the commissioners to reclaim for Antwerp the art treasures which had been taken from the country by Napoleon, 14 and his father's fine collection of paintings had been internationally known. Although this famous collection, once stored in the carriage house at Riversdale, had been returned to Belgium and sold at auction upon the death of Henri Stier in 1821, his son still owned two fulllength portraits by Van Dyck, the "Chevalier Le Roy," and "Madame Le Roy," which he had purchased rather than see them go at a sacrifice. It was young Calvert's fortune to be present on the day, in 1823, when they were finally sold to the Prince of Orange, who had long been negotiating for them. Charles Stier, knowing his Prince to be a lavish spender, but seldom able to pay his debts, refused to let him have the portraits except upon full and immediate payment. The scene that took place when the Prince came to close the bargain is told with delicate humor in Calvert's First Years in Europe. Charles Stier, standing tall and straight, received his royal visitor with the ease and deference of the old regime. The Prince, a blond of florid complexion and "sprightly^ amiable countenance," gazed for some moments in open admiration at the graceful canvas figures, then turned to their owner and asked his price. With "a little heightened cordiality and deference in his manner, as if to efface the offense of questioning the solvability of his sovereign's first-born," Stier "handed him a slip of paper on which were written, he told him, the final terms. . . . The Prince cast his eye on the paper, put it into his pocket, bowed, and retired. In a few days the cash came, and these masterpieces were borne off to Brussels." 1 6 Events such as this were exciting, but as autumn wore into winter, Calvert began to find life in his uncle's household monotonous. The entire family did a daily battle with time. Meals were purposely prolonged; there was a good deal of dressing, distant supervision of financial interests, minor social duties, mild exercise, visiting, games, and small talk. Smoking and cards were prohibited. Reading was out of the question. There was only a small collection of books, and these were hidden away in a closet.

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And, as the story of his "heresy" spread from one member of his uncle's circle to another, Calvert soon found himself as much at home "as an eel among crabs." When he spoke of moving on to Protestant Gottingen, his aunt and uncle tried to influence him to return to the religion of his mother's girlhood by urging him to go to the University of Paris instead.16 But Calvert persisted in his plans for Gottingen. He made the excuse that his father wished him to go there, although he knew well that if he had desired it, his father would have consented to the change. The young American had matured during these months in Belgium, and his appreciation and knowledge of art had grown. But as his journey into Germany progressed, the lessons of his immediate past seemed unimportant beside those which he still had to learn if this country were to yield the knowledge he sought. At Coblenz he first realized that he was among people who spoke an unknown tongue. The theatre being next door to his hotel, he went into it for relaxation, but he found only disappointment. The words which the actors hurled at him from the stage were alive to his ears, dead to his understanding. His neighbors' obvious enjoyment of the play was almost insulting. Realizing the seriousness of the task which lay before him, he grew oppressed and lonely; before the play was half over he went out to try to find someone at his hotel who could speak English or French. 17 The following morning he set out at eight by post chaise for Mainz. The day was cloudy and cold, but he enjoyed the drive up the smooth Rhine road through Boppard and St. Goar and Bingen. There was always at least one ruin crowning the towering hills, those grave, mysterious companions to the traveler, seeming to summon him on from stage to stage in his journey. He came into Frankfurt am Main unmoved by emotion at being in the birthplace of Goethe. For, at this point in Calvert's career, Goethe was no more than a name. He had not yet read The Sorrows of Werther, the most popular of Goethe's works then accessible in English. The diary entries for Frankfurt record only that the inn and the opera were good, that he saw the Golden Bull in the Town-House and copied out its Latin inscription, because years before Benjamin Constant had impressed its importance upon his mind. "Walked . . . to the Library," the jottings read, "just put up—Corinthian order with six pillars, not very remarkable . . . took half a bottle of Burgundy—very good. Smoked a Spanish cigar. Made acquaintance of a Mr. Tuck—lively youth. . . . Walked out to see pictures—

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one very fine of Teniers and one Italian. . . . Dined at one at table d'hote; sat next to an Englishman, Mr. Maude, on his way home from walking over Switzerland. Went to Cassino. Supper, and to bed at nine. Ennui." 1 8 He remained in Frankfurt through the week, driving into the country, and attending the opera. On Monday, January 19, he obtained a letter of credit on Gottingen, his real reason for coming to Frankfurt. With a hundred silver florins in his pocket he set out at noon for Cassel in the public coach. After a wearying journey with several fellow passengers who could not speak a word of English, he reached Cassel on Wednesday morning. In the afternoon, he left in the same coach for Gottingen.

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HE public coach from Cassel that blustery day in January carried few passengers and only one American. It reached the outer gate of

Göttingen about nine o'clock the same evening. A guard, swinging a dingy lantern, stepped out into the road to signal the driver to stop. After a short conversation in which he satisfied himself that this was his honest old friend, the coach from Cassel, he gave the command "Vorwärts!" and the stage rattled into the city. Alone on a cold winter night in a strange country, and understanding scarcely a word of the language, Calvert felt depressed. It must have been

with some difficulty that he inquired his way to the Hotel zur Krone. 1 T h e warmly lighted lobby of the little hotel brought him temporary cheer as he entered and engaged accommodations for the night. But the room to which he was shown was cold and bare. His arrival in the famous university town contrasted sharply with that of Longfellow a few years later. At the Krone there were no crossed broadswords on the wall, nor did the management provide the new guest with a guitar and a long-stemmed porcelain pipe. A wave of homesickness swept over him and he decided to retire early. H e may have fallen asleep wondering what Cogswell and Thorndike could possibly have found in Göttingen to make them praise it so highly. In spite of a good night's rest, he awoke feeling more lonely than ever; when he glanced out of his window the view was cheerless, the landscape gray and forbidding. A more serious matter, however, was the lack of friends and even of any conversation. As he began to unpack one of his bags, the prospect of spending long months in this place brought back with sickening vividness the evening before. But his gloomy reflections were soon cut short by the familiar smell of coffee. H e began to dress hurriedly, preparing to track the pleasant aroma to its source. After breakfast he left the inn in much better spirits and sauntered along the streets. T h e city was surrounded by a high wall, which had once

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been used as a fortification. T h e houses were ugly, the yards dirty and unattractive. Even the university buildings, consisting only of a library and a hospital, were plain and uninviting in the dismal light of that January morning. But Calvert had not exhausted his resources. He remembered the letter of credit in his pocket and the notes of introduction from friends in Antwerp. His first move was to call upon his banker, "a palmy tradesman," who, anticipating friendly relations with the newcomer, offered profuse advice in broken English and even sallied forth to help him find more comfortable and less expensive lodgings. Next he delivered the letters of introduction. H e got quick results. In an hour's time he received an invitation to attend Professor Blumenbach's ball, 2 to be held that evening at the Hotel zur Krone. From his own room, which he had not yet relinquished, he had but to cross the corridor to enter the ballroom. T h e evening was a great success. Thanks to the instructions of M. Generee 3 and M. Guillou, of Philadelphia and Washington, he was able to dance his way into the hearts of these strangers, with the aid of a few of the less than twenty German words he knew. His buoyant spirits and graceful manners soon made him popular, and when the evening was over he had made the acquaintance of the three daughters of Herr von Laflert, supervisor of the high officials of the town. His friendship with these ladies was of value, for the Lafferts were one of the most influential families in the town. The eldest daughter, Frau von Vedemeyer, was the wife of the chief judge of the southern district of Hanover. The morning following the ball he moved into less pretentious quarters at the noisy old Birkenbusch Haus, 4 Weender Strasse, 37. His homesickness had vanished overnight and he was now ready to look upon Gottingen with a friendly eye. As he walked along the Weender Strasse, the sun came out for the first time in many days, and the long line of foothills of the Harz began to look less ominous. The Hainberg, to the east, seemed like a benevolent guardian; the atmosphere of the whole town was changed to one of gaiety. Calvert soon found himself in a motley throng of students. There were more than fifteen hundred of them in Gottingen, from Germany and from foreign countries as well. It seemed to the curious American that at least half of the total number of students were on the streets, for he met scores of them wherever he went. They were lounging on the street corners and along the sidewalks, or outside the public gardens and billiard houses. They were a picturesque lot. Those wearing the old national costume of Germany swaggered along with their shirt collars turned

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back over ill-fashioned coats, necks bare and hair hanging loose over ears and shoulders. The dandies were dressed in long-skirted coats, heavily spurred boots, and pantaloons that looked like Turkish trousers. Many were smoking pipes four or five feet in length; nearly everyone wore a pair of mustachios curling defiantly from the upper lip. Calvert had not gone far before he noticed that several of these students were deeply scarred. It has been estimated that, in 1825, students fought more than two hundred duels at Gottingen during a single semester (a period of about four and a half months).5 The government winked at all but the fatal encounters. But Gottingen had its more serious side, which was symbolized by the large number of its teachers—nearly a hundred—in the four faculties of theology, l«iw, medicine, and philosophy, and by its library. Calvert had to choose. One visit to the library, locally reputed to be the most complete in Europe at the time, and his mind was made up. He would keep clear of the carnival of student life and fit himself as quickly as possible to read some of the rare volumes which lined the library shelves. Without waiting for the new semester to begin, he enrolled in February, 1824, in the Department of Philosophy, the tenth American recorded on the University register, and the first from the state of Maryland.8 To begin with, of course, he had to learn the language. Dr. Benecke,7 most popular of the language teachers, had no free hour for him. Consequently he was obliged to enroll with another "Dr. B.," whose name has not been revealed.8 This teacher's Brunswick pronunciation was superior to the Swabian accents of Benecke, especially his eu, rendered "with such oily rotundity" that it sounded like awee in English. But further praise for him could not be mustered. "The Doctor was, what is rare among the teachers of a German university, ignorant as well as dull. He was a man of about thirty, with a round face, glossy with health, and a continuous smile of contentment, and blessed with a patience that went hand in hand with his obtuseness." 9 Not an auspicious beginning, but Calvert had already caught the more serious spirit of Gottingen, and not even the dullness of "Dr. B." or the frivolity of many of the students could discourage him from working with dogged industry. He began reading Lessing's Fabeln with the uninspiring Doctor. Progress was slow and beset with difficulties, but his perseverance was at length rewarded: "At the portal of the majestic golden palace of German thought, I beat for weeks, ere I could see any signs of the life within. Then, as if on a sudden, the doors swung open, and I had at first

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rapid glimpses, and then, in the shifting growing lights that filled the interior, broad sweeps and deep, tempting vistas." 10 Calvert worked through the spring vacation on his studies seven or eight hours a day, and with the opening of a new semester at Easter, he was able to exchange his dull "Dr. B." for the dynamic Benecke, professor, librarian, and Hofrath, a tall man, broad, deep-chested, yet moving at sixty "with the easy spring of inward vigor." 1 1 In the meantime he had been thoroughly trained in the proper German pronunciation by his Brunswick tutor. "Dr. B.'s" well-rounded syllables had been supplemented by the musical intonations of the LafEerts sisters, with whom Calvert had frequent social contacts. Fortunately, their influence persisted after he had begun his work with Benecke, and they gently helped him to acquire a purer pronunciation whenever they noticed faint traces of Swabian dissonance creeping into his speech. Except for this one fault, Benecke was a better teacher than "Dr. B." H e was an energetic man of the world, whose ability to speak good English had been admired by William Emerson. 12 One of the older men on the faculty, Benecke was well known outside of Germany. Indeed, he may be called the father of the German language in America, for he was the teacher of Everett, Ticknor, Cogswell, and Bancroft, our earliest pilgrims to the University of Gôttingen. He was still teaching at Gôttingen when Longfellow and Motley studied there. Although he was never able to come into close personal contact with Benecke, Calvert gained a clear insight into German literature while attending his classes. Every morning before breakfast, he walked the long distance to Benecke's house near the Groner Gate, arriving at six in the summer and at seven in the winter. The professor never failed to come in fully dressed, brushed, and shaved, "with his capacious black frock-coat tightly buttoned over his abdomen . . . and his large, handsome, pulpy hand as well soignée as that of a Parisian élégant."13 With Benecke, Calvert studied Nathan der Weise, a favorite of the professor, and began another work which was to influence his own writings to a marked degree : "With him I first opened the magic book of Faust,1,1 to wonder forever at the fantastic, weird scenes played on a ground of solid, burning reality; in their terrible power and beauty like the frenzied flames that shoot through the windows of an indestructible edifice, consuming in and about it whatever is perishable. Of course, by the strange novelty and material blaze was I first impressed; for only ripeness of experience in

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life and literature can pierce the subtlest irony that ever shone through words . . ." Growing more and more discontented with the noise and confusion of Birkenbusch Haus, Calvert began to look for living quarters more in keeping with the needs of a serious student. With Municipal Senator Berg, who had just built a new house on a quiet side street,15 he found lodgings which were comfortable and attractively furnished. Moreover, as the Senator's only lodger, he would not often be disturbed. For a nominal sum, 18 he was able to live here amid homelike surroundings. Breakfast and tea were served at the house; for dinner he sent a servant to one of the traiteurs or went to a hotel. Attendance, boots, and washing were usually very cheap, but upon one occasion he had a lawsuit with his washerwoman, whose bill was so "impudently extortionate" that he refused to pay it. A few days later he was summoned to the university court. The judge pronounced the sum very high, but the plaintiff, who had brought with her a number of witnesses "in petticoats," protested that the gentleman's bundle always contained, besides endless other articles, seven shirts. The judge looked up, expecting an indignant denial, but Calvert's silence proved him guilty before the court. The laundress, however, had to make a reduction in her bill. Except for minor disturbances of this kind, life flowed along peacefully at the home of Senator Berg, and, after three months in Göttingen, about as long as it had taken Ticknor to accomplish the same thing, Calvert felt that he knew enough German to be able to attend lectures with some profit. Accordingly, on May 4,1824, he started off with his mappe, or portfolio for pen and paper, under his arm, bound for the Pauliner Strasse and Professor Heeren, teacher of ethnography and modern history, two subjects which Calvert felt he could digest most easily. As was customary at Göttingen the lectures were given in an auditorium at the professor's home. Heeren's lecture hall accommodated about 120 students. Upon payment of a double fee, students with the title of count were seated at the table nearest the lecturer. Those who came from long distances were seated just back of the counts' table. From his place in the second row, Calvert had a clear view of the white-haired professor whose scholarly attainments had brought so much distinction to Göttingen. Heeren was about sixty, with kindly light blue eyes and florid complexion. He entered the lecture room precisely at ten, "with a shrinking mien and rapid gait, as of a very shy man about to make his maiden effort at public

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speaking. . . . The moment he began, his words were accompanied by the sibilation of a hundred pens galloping over coarse paper. . . . At ten minutes before eleven, Heeren ceased speaking, and hastily gathering up his notes, hurried out of the room in the same crouching way that he had entered it. . . ." 1 7 Heeren followed the same procedure each morning during the course, always entering on the stroke of ten and leaving promptly at ten minutes before eleven. He delivered his lectures slowly, almost like dictation, pausing frequendy to allow the students' pens to catch up with him. By using some abbreviation, the fastest writers put down nearly every word he uttered. In this small community it was natural that the English-speaking students should be thrown together in close companionship. The opening of the new semester at Easter had brought another American, to whom Calvert was immediately drawn through similarity of tastes and interests. William Emerson, 18 a brother of Ralph Waldo Emerson, had come to Germany to study for the ministry. He was twenty-three and had been out of Harvard five years. On April i, 1824, he wrote to his brother: " . . . I can't possibly describe the pleasure I felt in finding Calvert here. We were of course immediately well acquainted. He is very much of a gentleman in his manners, and studies with great diligence." 1 9 In the same letter he reported that Calvert had introduced him to Dr. Hume, of Charleston, South Carolina, another American student, "an intelligent and cultivated man . . . who has since gone to Berlin." 20 Calvert and Emerson, staying on at Gottingen, soon became intimate friends. They must have had many a heart-to-heart talk as they sauntered along the favorite rambling place of all Gottingen students, the wall of the old fortification, planted with trees, which surrounded the city. Viewed from this vantage point in the softening light of springtime, the houses and dooryards which had seemed so ugly the preceding winter were not unpleasing. From the top of the fortification, nearly on a level with the redtiled roofs of the houses, they could look down upon trim little flower gardens, shining in squares of red and lavender and gold, like brightcolored quilts spread out on the grass to dry. On either side of the city gleamed the river Leine, so narrow that, as Emerson said, "a spry Harlequin might with no difficulty leap over it." 2 1 Beyond the river, on the side that looked toward Saxony, were rolling fields, with here and there a slim white spire indicating the location of a tiny village.

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The two young men, isolated in Göttingen, far from their countrymen, had much in common.-2 Emerson, who had been in the town for several weeks without a word from home, living "in a solitude Aunt Mary might envy," 23 found it almost as good as receiving news from home to have his friend stop in nearly every day to chat about America. Calvert sometimes read extracts from his Maryland and Boston mail, and they laughed together over humorous incidents. For a while Emerson was content with these vicarious experiences, but, as the weeks lengthened into months with still no message from his family, he grew anxious. "Must Calvert get letters every few weeks, even from Boston, and I none?" 24 he wrote to his brother Edward, on June 27. It was about this time that Calvert offered to have Emerson's mail sent with his own by the Van Necks, his London agents, to Charles Stier, in Antwerp, who would forward them to Göttingen.25 Although Emerson wrote home that he had no intercourse with any of the students except Calvert, and from what he saw of them he was not desirous of any, Calvert seems to have been more sociable, and his circle of English friends was fairly wide. There was Edward Pusey,28 of slight figure and "thin face, exhausted by study." 27 Pusey, it was said, worked sixteen hours a day at German and carried away a large collection of German books on theology to be digested in England, the gist of which was incorporated in "The Oxford Tracts." The vivacious talker J. W. Semple, who was to translate Kant's Metaphysic of Ethics,26 was the first man who ever mentioned the name of Kant to Calvert. Semple introduced the great Königsberg philosopher enthusiastically. "He told me," wrote Calvert, "that while studying Kant he became so absorbed, that once he did not breathe out-door air for three weeks; and that when he came again upon external nature, the whole aspect was changed . . ." 29 Seth B. Watson, the friend and pupil of Coleridge, came occasionally to spend a few weeks at the University of Göttingen, which Coleridge himself had once attended. Calvert described Watson as a man of great purity and probity of character, in physique tall, well built, with "a fine head thickly topped with strong, half-curly, black hair, and a countenance, in shape and feature Roman, uniting sweetness with intelligence. . . ." 30 Friendships with these English and American students were stimulating, but for Calvert the most striking thing about Göttingen was the cordial relations which students and faculty enjoyed. Here he found what he had so deeply missed at Cambridge. Blumenbach threw open the doors of his

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study to all his students and was especially cordial to those of English descent. Nearing seventy, he delighted in his young pupils, whom he entertained with an apparendy inexhaustible fund of anecdote and his almost childlike love of a practical joke. His anecdotes often found their way into the classroom. Sometimes the coming joke announced itself by a roguish smile; sometimes, Blumenbach's shrewd, wrinkled face was marked by the utmost gravity as he poked fun at a colleague in another department.31 A crabbed old count, staying in the university town for the benefit of his sons, remarked that if Gottingen had no theatre it had at least a capital comedy. "Where?" "Blumenbach's lectures on natural history." 3 2 The professors at Gottingen were friendly and hospitable even to students not enrolled in their own courses. Calvert did not attend the lectures on Old Testament exegesis given by Johann Gottfried Eichhorn, but he frequently called at the home of this distinguished professor of philosophy on Sunday mornings (Sunday was the proper day for morning visits in Gottingen), and was occasionally a guest at his supper table. Some years later he made a striking sketch of his famous host: "The elder Eichhorn . . . was in figure inclined to rotundity; as though in the excessive sedentariness of his life—sitting fifteen or sixteen hours a day at his desk—his flesh stagnated about his bones. His face, in its expression, but not in its mould, intellectual, was sallow and fleshy, and lighted by a dark eye full of life, which contrasted well with his thick white hair, combed up and back from his not high forehead. . . . It would not be easy to forget the kind, almost affectionate greeting this venerable scholar would rise to give me on my visits. . . ." 3 3 Friedrich Bouterwek, only a few years younger than Eichhorn, taught logic, ethics, aesthetics, and literature. "I still see the rather small head and face of the gentle old man," wrote Calvert, "bent over his notes, from which he looked up now and then to say his best things." 3 4 The men of the Gottingen faculty did not constitute a mutual admiration society. Some of them were not above rivalry and petty jealousies. Calvert, drawn from the beginning by a close personal friendship to Friedrich Saalfeld, "one of the hardest workers in a numerous company of fourteen-hour men," 3 5 did not take any courses with Saalfeld's famous rival, the liberal-minded Georg Sartorius, praised in Heine's Die Harzreise,38 It was not until Calvert was some distance away from Gottingen that he was able to see these men in their proper perspective, and hear the full music of their praise.37

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Saalfeld, a bachelor, was an excitable young man, more Gallic than German in temperament, with "a good expanse of forehead, a restless eye that shone through spectacles, and a countenance whose expression, by aid of a wide, intellectual mouth, shifted with singular rapidity from grave to gay." 3 8 During his three semesters in Gottingen, Calvert attended this professor's daily lectures on politics and political economy and on the history of Europe from the French Revolution, his triweekly lectures on the law of nations, and his Saturday class on public law. Calvert spent many pleasant evenings with Saalfeld, who frequently entertained students in his rooms. To each newcomer the professor would hand a fresh clay pipe, marked with the student's name on the bowl. When the smoking and conversation were over and the party about to disperse, he would collect all the pipes and carefully put them away on a triangular shelf in one corner of the room, to be taken out again and distributed at the next meeting. Calvert was always included in these evening gatherings, but on other occasions he was the professor's only guest. Once, when no one else was present, Saalfeld gave him his first and perhaps only lesson at Gottingen in the technique of writing. Although Calvert had not thought at the time of becoming a professional writer, he remarked casually to his versatile friend that now since he was so saturated with learning, he supposed that he would have to write a book. Saalfeld offered to let him into the mysteries of authorship: "Books are now written by machinery. . . . Yes; the important thing is, to get the right machine, which I will describe to you. It consists of eight or ten narrow shelves, three or four feet long, movably hung round a circular skeleton four feet in diameter, so as always to preserve the perpendicular position when the frame to which they are attached is turned by a crank. This shelf-armed machine, loaded with books, on the proposed subject, selected from the library, is placed beside the author's table. Without stirring, he brings to his eye row after row of the most choice material methodically arranged, and, with his pen in one hand and the crank in the other, he sets vigorously to his task, and the crank does the best of the work. Beside his desk every one of us has a machine of this structure. . . ." 3 9 In the meantime Calvert had been progressing in his study of German. Benecke was one of the pioneer scholars to defend the power of the old German literature. He introduced his American student to the charm of the Nibelungenlied.40 "After I had become intimate with modern German," Calvert wrote, "Benecke persuaded me to make acquaintance with

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the ancient, and we went through together the shadowy, grand old Nibelungenlied. In the naif poetry—fragrant with morning's breath—of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries he so delighted, that he edited one of its long poems, 'Wigalois,' from the manuscript." Benecke was also a master of effective anecdote, possessing that ability to tell a story which in Blumenbach was almost a fault but which Benecke used with masterly restraint. He never ceased to derive pleasure from telling about Coleridge and his experiments with the German language. Although a quarter of a century had passed since the English poet paid a brief visit to Gottingen, the professor's impressions were still fresh. He told Calvert that Coleridge had been an idler at Gottingen, and had not learned the language thoroughly. He memorized a long ode of Klopstock and "declaimed without understanding it, playfully mystifying his countrymen with the apparent rapidity of his progress." 4 1 This story, which was told to warn English-speaking students against a superficial knowledge of German, seems to have had a salutary effect on the generations that succeeded Coleridge. Incidentally, when The Confessions of an English Opium Eater was published, Benecke immediately attributed it to Coleridge because he knew Coleridge had taken opium when at Gottingen. Calvert applied himself diligently during the summer of 1824. His program was broad, opening vistas of thought which he could not have glimpsed in his college days. His social contact with the professors added to the lectures a stimulus and vitality that had been notably lacking at Harvard. His first semester at Gottingen was successful, and by early autumn he was ready for a month's vacation. Since he had acquired a working knowledge of the language, he felt he could now benefit from a trip through the surrounding country. It seems likely that if he had not already made other arrangements, Calvert would have been one of the little group of students, who, with William Emerson, left Gottingen on September 16 for a walking tour to Dresden. But Calvert had been corresponding for some weeks with his relatives in Antwerp about a tour which he hoped they might make with him. Charles Stier and his wife arrived in Gottingen on September 12, the last day of the term, and he set out with them in gay holiday mood on the thirteenth, for Gotha, Weimar, Leipzig, Dresden, and Berlin. They traveled in a large barouche, which easily accommodated the three passengers, a servant, and all the luggage. Passing through the vineyards and flax fields which lay to the south of

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Gottingen, they entered Miihlhausen by a wooded valley road that wound among the hills to Gotha. At Gotha there was little to interest the sightseers except the museum and the picture gallery, but at Weimar they visited the theatre and passed beneath the windows of Goethe's house. At Leipzig, which was busy with preparations for a fair, they paused long enough to permit Calvert to attend a few lectures at the University. Fresh from Heeren's lectures on The Seven Years' War, he scanned the University catalogue for the hours of history courses. One morning he heard Professor Wieland on The Seven Years' War, and was well satisfied with his ability to understand German spoken outside the province of Hanover. In the afternoon he visited another history course, given by Professor Beck. Here again he followed the lecture readily. He was beginning to feel very much pleased with himself and his mastery of the German language, when he suddenly realized that Beck, too, was discoursing on the same subject, The Seven Years' War. 42 Toward the end of September, Calvert reached Dresden, where he may have joined William Emerson in some of his rambles about the city, though neither has left a record of such a meeting. Emerson, however, in his MS Journal of a Tour from Gottingen to Dresden. 1824, notes under the date of September 28, that he went with M. and Mme Stier to the collection of antiques in the Japanese palace.43 Seth B. Watson was in Dresden also at the time, perhaps as a member of the walking tour group. In one of his letters, Calvert mentions having introduced Watson to his uncle.44 Charles Stier had several friends in these German cities, and the hospitality extended to him nearly always included his nephew.45 At tea one afternoon with the Countess Eude, Calvert happened to mention the possibility of his going from Gottingen to Edinburgh to continue his studies. The Countess wrote out for him the address of a small private boardinghouse where her son was staying in Edinburgh, and where she felt Calvert would be comfortably cared for. She read extracts from the young man's letters which were "as from one living in an Elysium." 46 Calvert, always glad to have the path to a strange city smoothed out for him in advance, gratefully tucked the address away for future use. He enjoyed such social functions as tea with the Countess, but the frequent visits to art galleries had grown a little tiresome. "The picturegallery," he tells us in his memoirs, "was to my uncle a pasture glistening every morning with the dew of fresh beauties. By his side I walked a some-

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what wilful colt." He found the streets of Dresden interesting, with their booths and little shops and sunny market places where white-capped women sold fruits from large baskets, but the city was particularly memorable for the opera Der Freischiitz conducted by Karl Maria von Weber, and a glimpse of Augustus III, King of Saxony, "a fine, respectable-looking man," then in his seventy-second year. According to the custom of the time, when the royal family was in residence at their summer palace in Pilnitz, they dined on certain days in a public dining room which had a gallery for visitors. Charles Stier got tickets and took his party in. A list of the names of all the spectators with their country, profession, and age was placed by the King's plate. "When the King came to Américain his Majesty ejaculated, Mon Dieu! and cast his royal eyes up to the gallery, expecting doubtless to recognize the American by his skin." 4 8 This was not Calvert's only glimpse of the King. From Dresden he traveled some seven or eight miles to take part in a boar hunt held for His Majesty at Moritzberg. Having been provided with a stout sword, he had been riding at the rear of the King's company for a very short time when "a yell as of a hundred hounds swept up from the valley." He saw the horses break into a gallop and come to a sudden halt. "The hunt is about to begin?" he asked excitedly. "Begin?" answered a groom. "It is ended!" He heard a loud shout and saw the bleeding boar being dragged along by four men, who presented it to the King. With a hunting sword, which was handed to him, His Majesty then pierced the animal to the heart. It was later explained to the American visitor that boars were kept in a pen near the inn, and whenever the King wished to hunt, one of them was caught and his tusks sawed off before he was allowed to go free. The farcical aspect of the scene impressed Calvert: "I had gone out to hunt the wild boar in company with a King: I had witnessed a most unkingly hogkilling." 49 In Potsdam Calvert and his relatives saw the King of Prussia. The nine days in Berlin were filled with an eager round of sight-seeing; few good statues or pictures or monuments escaped their scrutiny. They visited palaces and theatres, and even devoted a morning to an institution for the deaf and dumb. The principal sight at Wittenberg, apart from the Duke of Cumberland and his suite at the inn, was the bronze statue of Luther near the church on which the historic theses had been posted. The return trip was made through Kôthen, so that Calvert's uncle might consult Dr. Samuel Christian Hahnemann, founder of homeopathy, who had

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recently attained a European reputation. But the doctor was out of town and Charles Stier had to return to Antwerp without seeing him. On Saturday evening, October 23, Calvert was back in Gottingen ready for his classes. T h e winter months were full, broken only by the Christmas vacation spent somewhat quietly in a trip to Hanover with Professor Saalfeld. During the early months of 1825, a severe academic routine to which Calvert had subjected himself began to grow irksome and his second spring vacation came as a welcome relief. Ever since he had passed beneath Goethe's windows the previous September, he had felt a strong desire to go back to Weimar and call upon the great German poet. H e must have heard much about Goethe from his professors, especially from Blumenbach and Eichhorn. Other American students had succeeded in gaining admission to Goethe's home; this seemed an opportune time for carrying out his halfformulated plan to follow in their footsteps. With a fellow student named Weir, Calvert set out from Gottingen on March 19. Weir was good company, "a manly Scotsman" 8 0 of buoyant spirits, who spoke modestly of his friendship with Sir James Mackintosh. He and Calvert journeyed together as far as Gotha, where Weir started off alone on a walking tour. Calvert stayed in Gotha for two or three days and then left to visit Luther's cell in Erfurt. He arrived in Weimar about noon on Sunday, March 27, and engaged a room at the Erbprinz, the old posthouse which in 1749 had been made into an inn suitable for guests of the Ducal Court. It would not have been difficult for Calvert to get letters of introduction to Goethe from Professor Eichhorn, 5 1 as Cogswell and Thorndike had done in 1817, but he apparently preferred to make his own way although he knew that Goethe did not receive "unlabeled" visitors. After dinner at the inn, Calvert probably went out through the garden, a short cut to the Parkstrasse, and turned left to the Frauenplan. A few minutes' walk would bring him to Goethe's house, but he stepped rather briskly along the pavements, for it was already a quarter past three. When with some trepidation he rang the doorbell, a servant told him that the Herr Geheimrat had not yet risen from the dinner table. Disappointed, and a little chagrined at having called at an inconvenient hour, he walked slowly away to wait in the neighboring park. A few turns about the sunny paths would give him an opportunity to brush up on the introductory remarks in German which he had sketched out and had doubtless been rehearsing

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at intervals all the morning. Shortly before four o'clock he again stood on Goethe's doorstep. This time the servant asked his name, and Calvert handed him a small visiting card on which he had scribbled, "aus Washington, America," in the hope that his home near Bladensburg was close enough to the Federal City to warrant the slight inaccuracy. The servant returned quickly and ushered him in. Calvert followed him up the wide Italian staircase to the door of Goethe's room, which was closed. He had time to glance down and read the friendly SALVE, inlaid in large mosaic letters on the threshold. 52 But before he could reflect upon the significance of the meeting which was about to take place, the servant threw open the door and Calvert found himself face to face with Goethe. There in the center of the room, "tall, large, erect, majestic, Goethe stood, slightly borne forward by the intentness of his look, out of those large luminous eyes, fixed on the entrance." 5 3 Goethe was now in his seventy-sixth year. It was fifteen years since Aaron Burr, his first visitor from America, had called upon him in the hope of gaining support for his scheme of developing silver mines in Mexico. 84 T h e other Americans, apparently only seven in all, 55 who had visited him at irregular intervals since then, had come with scholarly intent. T h e most recent had been William Emerson, in September, 1824. 56 Perhaps when Calvert recorded his impressions years later, he did not greatly exaggerate the look of curiosity on Goethe's face: "His attitude and expression, as I entered, were those of an expectant naturalist, eagerly awaiting the transatlantic phenomenon." 5 7 It was a proud moment for the young American when he stepped forward to grasp Goethe's hand. And Goethe, to all outward appearances, was not less pleased himself. H e received the handsome visitor with gracious courtesy, asked him to be seated on the sofa, and sat down beside him. In a few minutes Calvert was completely at ease. They talked first of Gottingen and its professors, then of John Quincy Adams, whose election as President of the United States had just been noted in Germany. Calvert had read about it three days before in a Frankfort newspaper. When Goethe asked about the method of conducting presidential elections Calvert explained the system to him with a sense of pride that he was able to add to the illustrious poet's vast storehouse of knowledge. H e told him that the people did not directly choose their President, but voted for a group of electors, who then voted for one of the candidates. In describing ho\V the

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popular will was sifted through the electoral colleges, Calvert used the word "gereinigt" (cleansed). The term pleased Goethe very much. After less than half an hour, the young visitor took his leave. He had been sufficiently impressed. As he strolled back through the park to his hotel, he carried with him a mental image of Goethe's impressive figure, the harmonious lines of his oval face, the high forehead and gray hair, "the lightness and airiness" of his countenance. He had not intended to stay longer than a day or two in Weimar, just long enough to call upon Goethe. But by the time he had reached the steps of the Erbprinz, he felt strangely reluctant to leave. After the little party which gathered in the public room at the supper hour had dispersed, Calvert went upstairs to his room. He recalled a copy of The North American Review for October, 1824, which he had slipped into one of his bags at the last moment before leaving Gottingen. It contained an unsigned article by Bancroft, the first important notice of Goethe by an American. Calvert had intended mentioning it during his visit, but somehow the opportunity had not been offered. Now he dallied with the idea of sending it to Goethe, but the article was not wholly favorable to the German poet, and he went to bed without having reached a decision. The next morning he awoke with such pleasant recollections of the previous afternoon that he resolved to put his half-laid plan into effect at once. After asking the hotel clerk to extend his reservations for a day or two, he wrapped the magazine for mailing and addressed it to Goethe. Then he sat down at his desk and wrote a short, somewhat diffident letter explaining that he thought it would "not be without Interest to him if his Excellency has not yet seen it." 58 After delivering the parcel and letter at the post office he returned to his hotel to do some packing. He spent the afternoon in sight-seeing. In the evening he was making some inquiries about the routes to Leipzig when a package was handed to him. Goethe had returned the magazine with a note explaining that he had received a copy just a few hours before from a friend in Berlin.59 But he added an invitation to come to his home the following evening. Calvert postponed his departure and accepted the invitation. He was disappointed, however, when he entered the drawing room on the evening of March 29 60 to find that Goethe was not among the twelve orfifteenpeople assembled there. Nor did he appear during the entire evening. Calvert's account states that his host was absent because of illness, but Goethe's diary tells a different story. An entry of March 29 reads: "Ottilie 6 1

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had a tea-party in the front rooms, the von Froriep family, the North American, and a few Englishmen. I busied myself with Helena." 8 2 Ottilie, Goethe's daughter-in-law, proved herself a capable hostess, and once again Calvert postponed his departure from Weimar: "Frau von Goethe, sprightly, intelligent, and graceful, did the honors with tact and cordiality. In five minutes I felt myself at home. Before the close of the evening it was determined that I should go to court—my new English friends taking on themselves to prepare me for the initiation." 8 3 It \yas largely through the efforts of these friends that after only three days in Weimar, Calvert found himself a part of its gay social life. His hours were crowded with engagements. There was scarcely time to jot them down: "My brief journal—alas! too brief—" he wrote, "sparkles with entries like these: 'Wednesday: evening, at President Schwendler's; games.— Thursday: evening, at Frau von Spiegel's.—Friday: concert in the evening; Mozart's Requiem. . . " 04 H e was obliged to engage a dancing master, for the stately quadrille, danced in Bladensburg and Philadelphia and suitable for Blumenbach's ball, was not appropriate for the fashionable gatherings of Weimar. His friends were determined that he should not lose the opportunity of appearing at court. They shook their heads gloomily over the prospects of securing the proper attire. But their ingenuity was as great as their determination. After much borrowing they assembled a kind of Feathertop creation, which they sent to the chamberlain for approval. This functionary gave a favorable verdict on the costume, and an Oxford friend, with the aid of a professional tailor, wrought a last-minute miracle in haberdashery. Calvert was ready for the adventure. In 1825 a European court was apt to appear glamorous in the eyes of American democrats. "It was a something gorgeous," he wrote, "glittering, remote, unapproachable; invested by history and poetry, and especially by romance, with elevation, splendor, and dignity. Kings, queens, dukes, lords, and ladies, were ideal, almost supermundane figures robed in Tyrian tissues. . . . " 8 5 He was about to enter into this charmed circle. T o be sure, his plight was a little ridiculous. The borrowed chapeau bras rested clumsily on his curly black locks and made him look top-heavy; the knee breeches were not a perfect fit; and the sword hanging stiffly at his side was very much in the way. But he was exceedingly happy. T h e black Stultz dress coat, the white vest and stockings from his own wardrobe gave

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him confidence. With an approach to a swagger, he descended the steps of the Erbprinz to enter the sedan chair in which he was to be carried to the palace. He felt like an actor in an Arabian Nights pageant as he disappeared behind the flapping curtains. When his vehicle was set down within the walls of the palace, he emerged slowly from his dreams into a world of reality. A single liveried servant met him at the foot of the grand-ducal stairway and conducted him up into one of the receiving rooms. Several of his new German acquaintances had already gathered there. The company assembled rapidly and soon passed into a larger room, where Calvert was presented to the Grand Duchess. The Grand Duke was absent because of illness, but the Grand Duchess talked affably of her son, Duke Bernhard,86 who was then traveling in the United States. "The introduction and conversation were as unceremonious as they would have been in the drawing-room of a well-bred lady in Boston or Baltimore." 67 At three o'clock the Grand Duchess led the way into the dining room, where some fifty guests were shown to seats at a long table. Dinner lasted about two hours and was followed by a half hour in the reception room, from which the company withdrew to return at seven for tea, conversation, and cards. In order to keep a supper engagement with Herr von Froriep, of Weimar, whom he had previously met at Goethe's, Calvert left the palace early in the evening. Froriep's modest home was as much a center of culture and intellect as the ducal palace, and Calvert enjoyed to the fullest the conversation, brilliant with witty epigrams, many of which turned on the foibles of the aristocracy. On April 4, he attended a ball at Herr von Heldorf's. In First Years in Europe he gives a humorous account of difficulties with the waltz step: "Never did dancer stand up with a more resolute will to dance. I had misgivings. Four or five lessons are a short apprenticeship to a new business. To legs thoroughly indoctrinated in the pas de quatre, the pas de trois is as steep up-hill work as the Kantean metaphysics to a Cartesian. . . . While my head and heart were intent on waltzing, my obstinate, undutiful legs would be thinking of the quadrille. I made lame work of it." Many of his partners were, however, "surprisingly fair," and he stayed until two o'clock, "finding this the most instructive and the most delightful dancinglesson" he had ever had.68 In spite of social distractions, he found time in Weimar for reading Washington Irving and Fenimore Cooper, then in the bloom of their

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European reputation. He found a London edition of the Tales of a Traveller in the circulating library, but he had to read The Pilot in a German translation. One Sunday he was presented to the Grand Duke, Karl August, who, in 1775, had invited Goethe to Weimar for a few weeks' stay and had persuaded him to remain as counselor and friend. Calvert later recalled the fact that although pale from recent illness, the Duke's well-composed face was expressive of intellect and energy. Their brief conversation was carried on with difficulty, since the Duke was hard of hearing, and Calvert "thought his Highness somewhat grumpy." 69 In a letter of April n , 1825, to his uncle in Antwerp, written shortly after his meeting with the Grand Duke, Calvert gave some sidelights on his visit to Weimar. He had been in the city two weeks and was looking forward with eagerness to another week. "There are an unusual number of handsome unmarried ladies for the size of the place and from the deficiency of native beaus, foreign ones are received with peculiar favour — In so small a town, as in all small towns there is great sociability. . . ." But there were drawbacks even in this Paradise. He complained "of the same custom here, which you recollect I found so unnatural in Antwerp viz. that a young gentleman is never allowed to say any thing to an unmarried lady without witnesses to the conversation—now as we Americans don't allow ourselves to be taken at one blow by the ladies, are not given to falling in love at first sight, nor indeed after repeated sights, but only when more than the eyes are captivated, I must . . . 70 remain, where this custom prevails, a general admirer; and as a general admiration of the ladies is not sufficient to alter previous plans, the beauty of Weimar shall not be able to break my resolution of returning to Gottingen before the end of the vacation. . . ." 7 1 On the last Friday of his stay Calvert was a guest at a party in the rooms of the Countess Julie von Eglofstein, an unmarried woman of about thirty, distinguished for culture and "a rare Juno-like beauty." Here he saw for the only time "the dark, large, Italian features of Goethe's son," who took part in a tableau vivant. On Sunday he dined for the last time at court, where he again met the Countess von Eglofstein. Failing to get the seat he had coveted beside her at dinner, he asked a young Englishman named Shelley, a relative of the poet, to change places with him. Young Shelley rose and gave him his seat with a ready courtesy.72 The next morning, the eighteenth of April, he left Goethe's town in

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order to arrive in Göttingen on the twenty-first, two weeks before the beginning of the new semester. After the gay vacation interval he took up the life of a scholar with renewed energy. By May 27 he had got back into his academic groove, and he wrote with enthusiasm to his uncle: "I have now only 2 regular courses per day, the one Blumenbach's natural History, the other the History of the Arts with a professor Müller—besides these I have twice a week the History of German Literature.—I have a private instructor (and an excellent one) in Latin and continue my private lessons in German with Mr. Benecke—you thus see that I have enough to keep me fully occupied.—I have sold my horse and taken again to walking, and enjoy perfect health in spite of the bad weather. . . . I am trying to profit as much as possible from my last 3 months in Germany— Time passes with unaccountable rapidity . . . " 7 3 The decision to leave Germany at the end of the semester had been reached in spite of Professor Saalfeld's efforts to the contrary. Calvert had discussed with him the possibility of staying on and obtaining the degree of doctor of philosophy. "Nothing easier," Saalfeld had told him with characteristic frankness. "You have only to choose one of the subjects on which you have heard lectures with me—public law, for instance—and I will prepare you in three weeks to pass the examination. I guarantee your honorable passage through. The most puzzling question that will be asked you will be: 'Have you, sir, in your pocket, thirteen louis d'ors74 for the University treasurer?"' 75 Calvert gave the subject some consideration but the idea of the degree daily lost its chârm for him. He might have remained longer if there had been a literary department at Göttingen, but Bouterwek's was the only course in literature and aesthetics, and his was "a mind without insight or original reach." 76 To stay just for the sake of acquiring the degree did not appeal to Calvert. There were already many doctors of philosophy in that part of the world. He did not so much object to the three weeks of intensive preparation, but the thought of parting with the thirteen louis dors for the sake of a parchment irked him. In July, however, he was still preoccupied with his studies, and apparently anxious to make the most of the remaining time. He seems to have been particularly eager to concentrate on the Latin which had been his bête noire at Harvard. "I am now very much occupied with Latin & German," he wrote to his uncle on July 1. "My latin teacher is remarkably good.—" 77 He was enjoying his work in archaeology with Ottfried Müller, a young professor who had made a

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thorough study of the excellent prints in the Gôttingen Library and who showed and explained them to his students in the course of his lectures. All this was of much concern to Calvert, whose earlier training in Antwerp had sharpened his interest in art and architecture, but he found that even Miiller's course was "more learned and historical than «esthetical." 78 Notwithstanding the new zest with which he approached his studies, Calvert was looking forward to leaving Gôttingen by the twentieth of September. He had made tentative plans for a visit to Frankfort and Heidelberg, and a trip down the Rhine to Cologne, after which he would spend some time with his relatives in Belgium. He hoped to reach Antwerp by the tenth of October. The summer months were pleasantly crowded with social engagements. Heeren entertained him occasionally at supper. He made two excursions to the Plesse with the Lafferts, 79 and he was always welcome at their tea table. Another American, Henry Dwight, youngest son of the president of Yale, had arrived in Gôttingen from Paris, and was able to give him firsthand information about their friends in Europe. Dwight was sprightly and sociable, and there was a ready understanding between the two men. Calvert, however, found the manners of the Connecticut man a little blunt, as a humorous passage in his reminiscences shows: "Dwight would not purposely have hurt the feelings of a fly, and nevertheless one evening, when French, as usual, had been freely spoken round the room, he managed to announce, with animated emphasis, that never had he known a German who did not pronounce French abominably. His own French was transparently Connecticutian." 80 By the middle of August, Calvert had extended his plans. He would stay in Gôttingen until the first of October, go down the Rhine in the vintage season, stop at Antwerp for a visit and then go on to London. After London he would settle down in Edinburgh to continue the study of Latin. His father had written that he and Eugenia might meet him the following year in Liverpool and go with him to Antwerp. Delighted to hear of his father's plans but scarcely daring to hope that they would be carried out, Calvert wrote his uncle on August 15: "I am glad that I have but a few weeks more to stay at Gôttingen for I have got or rather am getting tired of it— This I may safely acknowledge now having shown so much perseverance in continuing it thus long.—I look forward with great pleasure to my getting into the active world of England and shall benefit much more from it for having remained so long as it were in retirement. . . . My aunt I trust will not find me so sérieux as when I first arrived from Amer-

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ica— It will be very interesting to me to see so many old friends and acquaintances but I dare say I shall have forgotten the names of some of them— I must look over my list of cousins which you gave me. . . . I shall be several hundred miles nearer home in Edinburg than in Gottingen." 8 1 T h e touch of nostalgia betrayed by this calculation of distances was forgotten early in September when his father wrote more positively of meeting him in Liverpool the following spring. 82 On September 13, Calvert wrote to his uncle that he had already sent off to Antwerp a box of books and one of his trunks, and that he would leave Gottingen about the twenty-second.83 As the time for his departure drew nearer, he began to take stock of what the experience at a German university had been worth to him. At times he had been annoyed by what seemed to him to be a stupid system of fact-hunting. But as he reflected now on the months of academic discipline to which he had been subjected, he decided that on the whole his time had not been wasted. He had made some lasting friendships among the students and had grown very fond of several of the professors. From those wise men of the faculty he had learned the spirit and methodical thoroughness of German intellectual activity, and he had come to value the "wise impartiality, the manly search for truth." 84 He had come to Gottingen for a better knowledge of history, politics, public law, aesthetics, and natural history. This he had acquired through stimulating lectures and conversations. But the most valuable treasure which he would carry away with him, he did not then realize. It was a command of the German tongue, which would enable him to dip into the great German writers and acquire a taste for "the thought and beauty and wisdom that lie within the pages of Lessing, and Schiller, and Richter, and Goethe." 8 5 He shipped the last of his boxes and trunks to Antwerp on the 24th of September and made his last round of calls. That night, he and Weir, who was to go with him as far as Cassel, were at the station in time for the train that left at midnight. 86 A group of students had come down to see them off. Calvert, standing on the steps of the Eilwagen, and waving goodbye as the train pulled out of the station, was sorry to part from the good friends smiling up at him, but even at this last moment he felt no other regret at leaving Gottingen. As the train picked up speed and moved steadily through the darkness, Calvert found a seat in the compartment beside Weir. Soon the little town

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in the Leine valley was left far behind. Calvert's imagination was already racing ahead toward new adventures. The two friends parted the following day at Cassel, and Calvert set out alone for the Rhine and Antwerp. As he looked back over the months spent in Gottingen he felt no regret that he had not made a final spurt in pursuit of the degree of doctor of philosophy. A man of different temperament would, in all probability, have felt that there was something to be gained from a German doctorate, especially after he had been deprived of his bachelor's degree at Harvard. But Calvert had not been ashamed of his enforced departure from Cambridge. Now, after a year and a half had elapsed, and the higher degree had been within easy reach, he was still of the same opinion. He had done nothing which needed to be covered up by a degree from another institution. "I kept the louts d'ors in my pocket, to be less dryly spent," he said, "and left Germany without a title." 87 He arrived in Frankfort eager for adventure. Here he met Seth Watson, who was on his way to Paris. The meeting delighted both of them. Paris was quickly forgotten and they soon had their heads together, making plans for a trip by packet to Mainz and a walking tour down the Rhine. When they reached the vineyards below Coblenz in the last week of September, the vines were heavy with purple clusters just ready to be gathered into winetubs. Taking to a hillside trail that overlooked the river, they set out slowly in the direction of Bonn, some thirty miles to the north. Calvert, just released from the routine of Gottingen, was in no hurry to reach another university town. He wanted to go leisurely through this picturesque region of quiet villages and ancient ruins. Each day he and Watson were on their way along the river bank in the early morning stillness. At noon they stopped at small villages for lunch, and then scrambled down the side of some steep incline to a skiff moored along the shore, for there were as yet no steamboats on the Rhine. 88 As their little craft edged its way northward, the warm autumn sunshine gleamed on the river and touched with gold the crags and ruins along its banks. A pupil of Coleridge, and later the editor of one of his essays,89 Watson liked to talk about his teacher. One evening, in order to rouse Calvert's interest, he took from his trunk a copy of The Friend and read a sentence from it aloud. The words did not impress Calvert at the time, for Coleridge was then but "a shimmering name" 90 to him. Yet later he looked back upon that brief reading as the seed of his interest in the English author.

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At Bonn, where the river leaves the highlands and opens out into a wide flat valley, they stopped to call upon two professors whose reputation extended far beyond their own university. A. W. von Schlegel kept them waiting for some time in the drawing room and when he entered he was still hurriedly adjusting his cravat. "He was affable and lively," Calvert wrote, "and in his dress, bearing and conversation, seemed anxious to sink the Professor and appear the man of the world." 9 1 Barthold Niebuhr, who spoke English perfectly, apparently enjoyed meeting an American, for, like Goethe, he plied Calvert with questions about the institutions and customs of his homeland, and showed a genuine, if somewhat puzzled, interest in the American way of life. The two friends parted at Cologne. Calvert, traveling the rest of the way by diligence,92 reached Cleydael Castle on October 8.93 His relatives welcomed him and asked only a few perfunctory questions about Gottingen. His experiences in Protestant Germany failed to arouse curiosity anywhere in Antwerp. Although he had not been enthusiastic himself about the university, he was disappointed that others did not clamor for anecdotes. Still excited by his intellectual adventures, he was not content to descend at once to the humdrum routine of his uncle's home. Although he could have spent his time to advantage writing accounts of his travels for American publishers, as Longfellow did a few years later, nothing so practical entered his head. He had yet no idea of following any career but that of a country gentleman. The sketchy notes in his diary were not turned to account in a travel book until twenty years later. Charles Stier, noting his nephew's restlessness, suggested that he take up Flemish. Calvert was glad to do anything to change the monotony of small talk and dressing for dinner, but his uncle's suggestion also offered an opportunity to test his own theory that Flemish was so much like German that it could easily be learned in a few weeks. His uncle engaged a tutor, but the lessons were short-lived. The pupil did not like his teacher. "As behind him and his provincial vocabulary," Calvert wrote, "there sounded no Goethes and Schillers summoning me to a festival, we soon parted, the kindly woodeny man and I." 94 The parting brought mutual satisfaction. In spite of his restlessness at Cleydael, Calvert had grown very fond of his uncle, who warmly returned the affection. He took the boy's part on many occasions, often with more kindness than wisdom. When the elder Calvert wrote that he was coming to Europe and that he would terminate his son's studies as soon as he arrived, Charles Stier begged him to postpone

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the trip for a year. He knew that George Henry had set his heart on a long stay at the University of Edinburgh, and he did not wish to see that plan frustrated. His letter ended with the assurance that "George is dearer to us every day." 95 After a month in Antwerp, and without waiting to learn what his father's decision was, Calvert left for Edinburgh, by way of Ostend.96 The morning after his arrival in the Belgian seaport he walked down to the lighthouse in a biting gale to have a view of his "old friend the ocean," 97 which he had not seen since crossing from Antwerp on his way to Gottingen two years earlier. Delayed in Ostend for several days by stormy weather and the loading of cargo, he knocked about in the role of gentleman vagabond, apparently enjoying the experience. He knew that all would be well as soon as he could reach Van Neck, the family's financial agent in London. His steamboat, scheduled to leave Ostend for London in the middle of the week, finally got under way on Saturday at noon. The North Sea was unusually rough and the vessel small. He had scarcely regained his land legs and good temper when he wrote to his uncle in a moment of depression: "I arrived this afternoon at 2 o'clock. . . . I cannot get my baggage out of the Custom House until tomorrow. I had a sic\ passage contrary to my expectation. I will write to you again in 10 days." 98 He took a room at the New Hummums, facing Covent Garden, to be near London's two great theatres. He saw the one outstanding performance of the season, "Julius Caesar," with Charles Kemble as Mark Antony, but he wrote to his uncle on December 4: "I have not visited the Theatre so much as I supposed I should do. The English themselves acknowledge that acting never was at so low an ebb as at the present moment." 99 Although his visits to Drury Lane and Covent Garden were made at . a time when Charles Lamb was frequenting these playhouses, since he had no one to point Lamb out to him, he missed seeing the author whose published letters were to bring him enjoyment years later in the quiet of his study.100 And when The Friend came to mean much to him, Calvert regretted that Watson had not been in London with him in the fall of 1825, for then he would almost certainly have seen Coleridge. Forty years later, in his reminiscences, he still regretted that he had not made an attempt to study aesthetics and criticism with Coleridge, two subjects which were not to be had at Gottingen.101 But Calvert had preoccupations other than the theatre to hold his at-

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tention. Charles Stier must have been gratified to learn that his nephew's training in Antwerp was standing him in good stead in London. "I have seen Sir T. Lawrence's 1 0 2 portraits again," Calvert wrote. "You cannot conceive my dear Uncle how much I am indebted to you for your instructions in paintings and in judging of them. I find I can distinguish good ones almost at first sight among a crowd of bad ones." 1 0 3 He also met William Edward West, 104 an American artist known in London for his portraits of Byron and Shelley, and he wrote enthusiastically of West's work. "His portrait of Byron is remarkably fine. As soon as I saw his pictures I perceived that he was not of the mixture school." 1 0 5 Some years later West painted Calvert's portrait in Baltimore. After a few days with William Amory, a Harvard classmate whom he met unexpectedly in London, Calvert wrote to his uncle that he had sent by wagon his box and one of his trunks to Edinburgh and that he would leave the following day himself. "I find that sovereigns disappear out of one's pocket in London almost as rapidly as gute groschen do in Germany," he complained, "and have been obliged to make a hole in £100 intended for Edinburg. However, it makes no difference as to the roundness of the sum, for Van Neck has given me poste notes instead of a Bill on a Banker." 1 0 6 This was not the first time that he had hinted of financial difficulties to his uncle. Indeed the theme had been repeated so often that it formed a familiar pattern, which Charles Stier must have associated with the entrance of envelopes bearing his nephew's firm and graceful handwriting. Calvert arrived in Edinburgh with several letters of introduction to families socially prominent. It was humiliating to have to give up his room at the hotel after one night and go in search of Madame Rymer's boardinghouse, but the flatness of his wallet dictated this course. Inquiring his way from street to street without getting a clear picture of the city, for a heavy mist hid all but faint outlines of the buildings, he came at length upon the house, down a little slope in a new and not unfashionable quarter. Learning that Madame Rymer could accommodate him with a pleasant room, he had his trunk sent from the hotel 107 and prepared to make the best of things. He soon discovered that he was following in the path of romance. Recalling the Countess Eude's glowing account of Madame Rymer's the year before in Dresden, Calvert was amused to learn who it was that had "lighted up Edinburgh into an Elysium" 1 0 8 and had filled the Baron's

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letters with so much tender eloquence. The Baron had fallen in love with his landlady's daughter. At the first hint of the possibility of his marriage with one so far beneath him, Madame Eude had whisked her son away to London. Calvert was now occupying the room which the Baron had suddenly vacated. From his contemporary letters to his uncle it is clear that Madame Rymer's daughter did not make a very deep impression upon him. In later years, he still recalled her beauty with some fervor, 109 her dark hair, soft black eyes, and Grecian features; but he wrote casually, perhaps a little too casually to Charles Stier some weeks after his arrival in Edinburgh: "I assure you that there is no danger of my following his [the Baron's] example. I have engaged my room for three months and am very well satisfied. I board in the house and have very good company." 1 1 0 Beside himself there were only two other guests, one, a lawyer, "a quiet, sensible Scotsman . . . a man of few words"; the other, "a wine-merchant . . . a restless, somewhat pretentious German . . . who was always ready to talk without having much to say." 1 1 1 "I have been several times to the Theatre on the fashionable nights, Saturday and Monday," the letter confided. "I have however seen no beautiful women although a great many good looking ones. I hope in my next letter to be able to tell you more about them." In Gottingen, Calvert had heard a good deal about the University of Edinburgh; his original motive in coming to the Scottish capital had been to continue his Latin at the famous center of learning. But now he was in no hurry to enroll. Here in Edinburgh he wanted to have a good fling before settling down to a regular routine. The people of Edinburgh were attracted to the young stranger who moved among them with so much grace and urbanity, and he soon found himself as popular in Scottish drawing rooms as he had been in those of Gottingen and Weimar. Among his new friends he scarcely ever heard the University mentioned,112 and as the winter wore into spring, he discarded his studious intentions. He decided not to enroll as a matriculated student, but he made a compromise with his conscience by attending a popular course of lectures on chemistry given at the University by Dr. Hope. 113 "His numerous audience," Calvert confessed in his memoirs, "was made up chiefly of ladies, to whom was due the presence of most of the other sex. . . ." 114 His social contacts had, of course, increased his obligations, and he had to ask for additional funds. Some of his requests were addressed to his

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father, but most of them went to his uncle in Antwerp, who could be reached more quickly. By spring, his letters had begun to cause great concern on the part of both his father and his uncle. In reply to a letter of March 27 from Charles Stier, who had broached the subject of his expenses, Calvert wrote haughtily : "You really seem to think that my principal occupation in Edinburg has been to make an ostentatious display of wealth and that I have been spending twice as much money as was necessary. . . . My dear father thinks that I am a little inclined that way, and on that account talks economy so often, wishing to check this supposed propensity; however I trust that I shall be able to convince him when we meet at Liverpool that although I shall have spent in the last 7 months ¿300 I have not been unreasonable as you appear to think I have. Of the ¿285 25 must be subtracted, being the amount of my tailor's bill whilst at Gôttingen, leaving 260 which with the 40, which in my last letter I begged you to have the goodness to send me, make up 300. Now when you consider that London is an expensive place even to a miser, that I was obliged also to get there a new outfit of clothes (and I am somewhat particular in dress) that getting fixed in a new place of abode is always attended with certain expenses and that a person going out into Society is subject to a variety of unavoidable little expenditures, that boarding and lodging are so unreasonably dear in Edinburg—when all this is taken into consideration, I declare I think that I should be acquitted even of being unreasonable "115 Six weeks later, Calvert acknowledged receipt of a remittance of ¿ 5 0 from his uncle. 116 About this time his engagements began to drop off. Trying to live within his means, he had to forgo some of his former pleasures but he consoled himself with the thought that Edinburgh was no longer the bright social center that it had been during the winter. He confided in his uncle on April 27 that the gaiety was at an end in Edinburgh and just commencing in London; that he had "not been out a great deal but quite sufficient to form a judgment (as far as my young experience in judging will admit) of Edinburg society. Upon the whole, it is unfavourable, and I shall no longer be quite so much shocked as I used to be before coming to Scotland, when I hear Englishmen abuse the Scotch. But we'll talk of them at Cleydael in July. . . . We shall have a little Babel at Cleydael with French, Flemish, English and Italian, to say nothing of my German with François and Spanish with the coachman." n T

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George Calvert had decided against Charles Stier's suggestion that he postpone his trip to Europe for another year and had announced that he and his daughter Eugenia would arrive in Liverpool in the early summer. Steadied by the prospect of seeing his father, young Calvert began to take an inventory of his accomplishments. Even he had to admit that he had squandered the winter. Although only vaguely realizing it himself, the truth was that his heart was still in Germany and he could not settle himself to serious work elsewhere. He had done a little reading in Scottish history, but his imagination had not been fired; he had thought of taking up Italian, a useful language if Eugenia wanted him to go with her to Rome, but he had postponed the effort until he should reach Antwerp. He regretted not having attended the university lectures of John Wilson, the Christopher North of Blackwood's. He had seen Francis Jeffrey once near the law courts, and then only in passing, when he was pointed out to him. If he had made an effort, he could have met both of these men. He had attempted to meet Sir Walter Scott, but when he called at the court where Scott was employed as a clerk, the novelist had gone to the bedside of his dying wife. Still in Edinburgh on May 20, he sent his uncle a proposed itinerary of a trip through northern Scotland. 118 Two days later he left for Aberdeen to spend ten days with Colonel Wood 1 1 9 at Banchory on the Dee. Years earlier, at the Battle of Bladensburg, the Colonel had been cared for by Calvert's father. While visiting Colonel Wood, Calvert was taken across the Dee to dine with General Burnet, formerly an ensign with Burgoyne at Saratoga. He spent a Sunday at Perth on the Tay with Dr. McFarlane, whose grandfather had employed James MacPherson of Ossian fame as a tutor in his household. Calvert's opinion of the Scotch began to rise again. These well-appointed Scottish country houses were reminiscent of Riversdale and he began to feel genuine regret at leaving Scotland. A gig from Stirling 1 2 0 brought him through beautiful country to Loch Achray. Toward evening he walked to Loch Katrine, rowed out to pick a wild hyacinth on Ellen's Isle, and tramped five miles farther to Loch Lomond, where he boarded a steamer that carried him well on his way to Glasgow. On June 14 he met his father and Eugenia at Liverpool. 121 A few days later the family set out by stage for Stratford. Their visit to London was cut short because the elder Calvert was anxious to reach his tobacco market in Rotterdam as soon as possible. But they doubtless stopped long enough

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to locate the "Chapeau de Paille," which Charles Stier had taken pains to write was to be found "at Mr. Peel's Minister of the Interior." 1 2 2 After several days in Holland and a long stay in Antwerp, the Calverts, accompanied by their Belgian relatives, left for the Rhine and Switzerland, reaching Paris in the early autumn. There is no record of the proposed trip to Rome mentioned in an Edinburgh letter, and it seems likely that the completion of the grand tour was abandoned for a more thorough inspection of Paris, which was familiar ground to Charles Stier. The two families spent the winter of 1826-1827 in and around Paris, doing a good deal of perfunctory sight-seeing in art galleries, museums, and churches. In Dresden, the year before, Charles Stier had made it possible for his nephew to see the King of Saxony. Now, in Paris, he pointed out to him Charles X, last of the elder Bourbons. The old king, Calvert wrote, "had an oval face, with forehead and chin somewhat retreating, and a flushed complexion— a countenance without any sparkle in it." 1 2 3 Calvert tried to make the long sojourn in Paris seem interesting in his memoirs, but, compared to the pages on Weimar and Gôttingen, his account, like the face of the old king, had no sparkle in it. The months in an old-fashioned hotel with his relatives seem to have come as an anticlimax after the nomadic freedom of the Rhine and Scotland. The highlight of the Paris season was the meeting with James Fenimore Cooper at a dinner at the home of James Brown of Louisiana, United States Minister to France. 124 But Calvert was not aware of the significance of even this occasion until years later, although it left him with a pleasant memory of the novelist's lively talk. For the most part, Calvert seems to have gone about the city dejectedly. Perhaps as the time of his departure drew near, he became a little homesick, and nothing that Paris had to offer seemed quite as attractive to him as the Maryland countryside. He had been away from home for four years. In those years he had accomplished much, but he had missed much that was of particular interest to a potential man of letters. He had talked with Goethe without being aware of the importance of the great German poet, who later influenced his own writings profoundly; he had left Edinburgh without seeing Scott or "Christopher North"; he was now about to leave Paris without visiting Fourier, who was employed at the time as clerk in the American firm of Curtis and Lamb and was at work upon his Nouveau monde industriel et sociétaire. In later years when he came to have a deep admiration for the

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French reformer, Calvert felt that this was the greatest omission of his early travels. Leaving their Belgian relatives in Paris, the three Americans crossed the Channel early in the spring of 1827 to catch the Philadelphia packet that sailed from Liverpool. 1 2 5

Chapter Eight PIONEERING

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ALVERT did not remain long at Rivcrsdale. He was eager for new adventures: marriage, the establishment of a home, a professional career. With characteristic orderliness he set out to achieve these three aims. H e renewed his acquaintance with Elizabeth Steuart of Baltimore and found himself still much in love with her. She had rejected him outright on one occasion, before he left for Gottingen, but his feeling for her had remained unchanged. The marriage, however, was stubbornly opposed by the elder Calvert. Since the Calverts and Steuarts had been friends for generations, 1 this incomprehensible stand seemed to call for more than a casual explanation. But George Calvert could give no satisfactory reason. His son's first impulse was to open his heart in a long letter to his uncle in Antwerp, who more than once had shown a sympathetic understanding. But he decided first to make a clean break from Riversdale. By the first week in November, 1827, he had established himself in Baltimore, resolved to make his way without assistance from the ancestral acres. The seriousness of the letter to Charles Stier made all earlier requests seem like schoolboy efforts to gain a little extra spending money. This time he was in earnest: "You recollect my dear Uncle," he wrote, "the disappointment I mentioned having received from a lady residing here. I am sure I shall never forget the affectionate sympathy which you showed at my distress. She is still unmarried, more fascinating and more interesting than ever. I love her more devotedly than I did when I went to Europe. My father has told me that he will withdraw from me the means of his support if I renew my attentions to her, and has expressed his immovable opposition to my wishes to marry her. Her character and family are such that he can have no objection to her and indeed (with the exception of her want of fortune) he does not even pretend to have any. She is [most?] universally beloved and esteemed and is distinguished for her intelligence, her dis-

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position, her manners and her loveliness. This is not the exaggerated estimation of a lover but it is the opinion of all who know her. I have not yet ascertained what her feelings toward me are and have no particular reason to suppose them favourable. However, whether I succeed with her or not, the effect of the declaration of my father is the same upon me. I have told him that as he was determined to oppose my marriage with any but a rich woman, I should leave him and endeavor to engage myself in some occupation which would maintain me; my hope is that my acquaintance with modern languages will enable me to obtain a situation as correspondent to some mercantile house. "You recollect, my dear Uncle, my asking you at Paris to inform me whether there was any portion of Grandpapa's fortune to which I was entitled. I asked father there the same question. His answer to me was 'None that I know of.' 3 I now repeat to you, my dear Uncle, the same question, and apply to yourself and Uncle Van Havre as guardians of me and executors of Grandpapa's will to inform me if there is any portion of it mine, how much it is and by what right I am entitled to it. I beg that you will send me this information as soon as possible. You will readily understand, my dear Uncle, what my situation is. Had I known four or five years ago that wealth in the lady was an indispensable requisite to obtain my father's consent and that my feelings were not to be a consideration, I should have commenced a profession which would have given me independent maintenance. 1 now find myself unexpectedly thrown upon my own resources after having been brought up in the expectation that I should have at least a sufficiency independent of my own exertions. I don't know what may be the legal construction of Grandpapa's will, but I can never suppose that it was his intention to leave the children of his daughter at the mercy of so mercenary a consideration. I urge you, my dear Uncle, to give me prompt and explicit information. My resolution is irrevocably taken. I have left my father's house. . . . " 4 There is some evidence that Calvert's letter to his uncle brought a favorable reply in regard to the terms of his grandfather's will, and it may have produced other results. By the following spring, perhaps through Charles Stier's sympathetic intervention, the estrangement between Calvert and his father had been healed, and a small "competency" 5 had been settled upon him from his mother's estate. H e was now free to marry as he liked, and his bride would doubtless have been welcomed at Riversdale. But he

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was too high-spirited to think of taking her into the home from which she once would have been barred. Moreover, he had not yet got her. By the spring of 1828 he had sufficient confidence in his writing ability to decide upon a literary career as a means of earning a living. At that time, such a plan was almost unheard of in the South. Even in N e w England, where conditions were more favorable, Longfellow had found it difficult to convince his father of the feasibility of a similar undertaking. 8 In the South, there was no indication that Calvert could reasonably hope to make a financial success of writing. T h e pursuit of letters had long been associated with the professions and with the leisure class. Literature was one of the polite arts to be indulged in by gentlemen in their spare time. The letter to his uncle in 1828 was therefore as defiant of established custom as Longfellow's had been in 1824. In it Calvert evaluated his own aptitudes and training shrewdly: "In this country where the freedom of the press and our popular institutions give so much influence to journals and periodical publications of all kinds, a career is open to those who have received a liberal education without having directed their studies to any particular profession. I am at this moment endeavouring to form a connection with some established journal; an establishment of this kind is capable of being made quite productive, and my acquaintance with French and German will enable me to give to such a one some advantage over most others. T h e produce of the land is so very low in price that there is no inducement to become a farmer; and besides my education and tastes make an occupation of a literary character more desirable to me." 7 Although he probably did not succeed in establishing a connection with a Southern journal at once, as he had hoped to do, he was able to earn a modest living in Baltimore to supplement his family settlement. Moreover, his perseverance in regard to Miss Steuart was soon rewarded. On May 1 1 , 1829, they were married at the bride's home by the Reverend W . E. Wyatt, Rector of St. Paul's Protestant Episcopal Church. 8 After a honeymoon at West River, in Anne Arundel County, 9 they went to Boston to visit Henrietta Thorndike, sister of the bride and wife of Augustus Thorndike. Calvert was particularly pleased to renew his friendship with Thorndike, and recall memories of Góttingen, which were already beginning to fade. During the summer of 1829, the two families rented Armstrong's farmhouse on the cliffs at Newport, near the Forty

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Steps. Here the Calverts became acquainted with the town which was later to be their home for over forty years. In that day, the gentle, graceful slopes of Aquidneck resembled those of the islands off the coast of England; its towns were almost as tiny and isolated as the villages on the Isle of Wight. 10 Newport presented a curious blending of the unusual and the commonplace. The Redwood Library, gift of Abraham Redwood in the eighteenth century, occupied a small graceful building. The Jews' Burying Ground was surrounded by a high brick wall, and there still were three old ropewalks; one at the end of Bull's Lane, another on Catherine Street where it sloped to the beaches, and the third opposite the burying ground on Farewell Street. A row of shabby, ill-lighted stores lined the Long Wharf, their back rooms hanging directly over the water. The Liberty Tree, a sycamore bearing a copper plate with the names of the burners of the Gaspee, stood in front of the house of William Ellery, signer of the Declaration of Independence. The old stone mill was "almost on the outskirts of the town with hardly anything except a farm-house or two to break the sweep of open fields"11 between it and the ocean. The visitors who did not take cottages as the Calverts were doing stayed with private families or at small boardinghouses, some of which had the cosy charm of English inns. In the autumn the young couple returned to Baltimore, living with Dr. Steuart for about a year, and in 1830 moved into their own home on Pleasant Street, between Courtland and Calvert Streets, in the heart of the old city. 12 The decision to follow literature as a career was far easier to make than to carry out. In Baltimore there was no established literary group ready to welcome the unknown author; neither were there many periodicals through which he could become known. Baltimore in 1830 was no longer the literary center it had been in the days of The Red Boof^ and the Delphian Club. 13 The Delphians who remained there had turned from humble beginnings to more lucrative concerns. John H. B. Latrobe was a practicing lawyer and one of the founders of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad; John Pendleton Kennedy, a teacher of history at the University of Maryland, had probably not yet even thought of writing Swallow Barn. Although between 1815 and 1833 Baltimore announced seventy-two new periodicals for publication,14 in 1830 it was almost the center of a literary desert. Throughout the South there was scarcely a journal worthy of

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mention. The Southern Review, edited by the Stephen Elliotts and Hugh Swinton Legaré at Charleston, had begun publication in February, 1828, but it was already feeling the dry winds of indifference that were to bring

it to an end in February, 1832. The Southern Literary Gazette, published in the same city in September, 1828, had flickered out in October, 1829. In working out his literary ambitions, Calvert was also limited by his training and immediate interest. H e did not possess a highly imaginative talent which impelled him to find expression in creative writing. His years in Europe, especially those in Germany, had filled his mind with the books of Goethe and Schiller, writers who, he soon found, were practically unknown in this country. His ability as a linguist, he thought, might enable him to interpret and critically appraise these authors for his countrymen. His knowledge of German metaphysics, though rudimentary, might lead to additional useful service in letters. But he realized that he lacked background in English literature and contemporary criticism. H e set about laying the necessary foundations. Unaided by guidance which has helped many another literary man from obscurity to recognition, Calvert began to do some desultory independent reading. H e dipped

eagerly into The Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, into Blackwood's and Fraser's. H e read the novels of Scott, Bulwer, James Fenimore Cooper; Shelley's Queen Mab; the poems of Scott and Moore. Shakespeare he reread assiduously. He looked into the works of Marlowe and Greene and Webster, and was disappointed. Hume, Rollin, and Robertson he found more agreeable, but Coleridge's The Friend was the greatest inspiration of all. This book, which he had dismissed with a cursory glance when Watson showed it to him in Germany some four or five years earlier, now took the place of the living mentor whom he had hoped to find in Baltimore. Through it he was introduced to Plato and to an ever widening circle of literary influences; through it he first became aware of the value of Wordsworth. " T h e volume opened to me worlds of thought," he wrote later, "stimulated, enkindled me, put me upon right tracks." 1 5 Except for the stimulus from his reading and from the unfailing patience and reassurance of his wife, Calvert had little else during his first year in Baltimore to encourage him in his dreams of a literary career. On one occasion he turned to the Baltimore City Library for intellectual nourishment, but he only stored away impressions for later caustic comment. The Library was under the control of half a dozen "dinner-givers"

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who were more apt at discerning the difference between Spanish mackerel and sheepshead, between Chateau Margaux and Chateau Lafitte than that between a volume of Swift and one of Sterne.16 Finding no literary companionship in Baltimore, Calvert turned naturally for social contacts to the doctors and scientists who were the associates of his brother-in-law, Dr. Richard Steuart. These men drew him into the Baltimore Phrenological Society, lately formed under the leadership of Julius T. Ducatel.17 Calvert's work in natural science with Professor Blumenbach at Gottingen had prepared him to take an interest in the pseudo science which was gaining many devotees throughout the country. In Ducatel, who had studied in Paris under G a l l 1 8 and had known GayLussac, Calvert found a congenial companion with whom he could converse in French. The Baltimore of the 1830s, like several other American communities of the same period, took its phrenology seriously. Dr. J. C. Spurzheim's visit to the United States in 1832 gave to this new field of research its first great impetus in America; enthusiasm reached its height between 1838 and 1840, the years of George Combe's American visit. Phrenologists of that decade were not, as is sometimes believed, all quacks and swindlers, but had among their number some of the best medical men of the country.19 The study made its strongest appeal to Ducatel and his group through what seemed to them to be the revelation of a divine order in the structure of the human mind. The Baltimore Society subscribed to The Phrenological Journal published in Edinburgh, and met regularly to discuss findings. Calvert, recalling Blumenbach's large collection of crania in Gottingen, was particularly interested in the importation of illustrative casts. J. P. Kennedy, who had been brought into the society by his friend Ducatel, noted in his manuscript journal: "Wrote to E.—Also to D r James Pendleton, New York, requesting him to endeavour to procure Gibbes' head (the pirate lately hung) for George Calvert, to be added to the Phrenological cabinet in Bait. . . ." 2 0 Although meeting with this society gave Calvert some of the intellectual stimulus he desired, it did not help to defray the expenses of his home on Pleasant Street. Consequently, in the fall of 1830, he accepted the Chair of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy at the newly opened College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Maryland. In his journal of September 28,21 J. P. Kennedy, already established as Professor of History, listed the new appointees, among them Julius T. Ducatel, Professor of Chemistry as

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Applied to the Arts. Since the nucleus of the college faculty was made up of members of the Phrenological Society,22 Calvert's new duties brought him into close contact with a congenial group and soon led to a publishing adventure with Professor Ducatel. On October 2, 1830, Ducatel issued the first number of a weekly journal, Chronicle of the Times.23 With the fourth issue, October 23, Calvert appeared as joint editor with Ducatel. The Chronicle of the Times differed from other miscellanies of the day in its appeal to two classes of readers: to the general reader, through historical sketches of arts and sciences and light pieces of poetry; and to the scientific and more cosmopolitan reader, through a kind of readers' digest of information gleaned from European and American journals regarding the worlds of science, invention, and politics. As editor of the literary and political articles, Calvert at last found an opportunity to exercise his critical judgment and to utilize some of the material he had been preparing since his marriage. Hitherto the name of Goethe had been known in America chiefly through reviews in the English magazines.24 The first important article on German literature in an American publication had been Edward Everett's long review of Dichtung und Wahrheit in The North-American Review, January, 1817, which consisted mainly of extracts linked together in such a way as to "make the narrative intelligible." Although Everett had been somewhat startled at the German title, not knowing what meaning to attach to "Dichtung" in the tide of a biography, which one would expect to be all "Wahrheit," he praised Goethe's style and called attention to the "admirable dramatic invention and flight of poetry of truest sublimity" in Faust. In October, 1824, the same journal had published the article by Bancroft on Goethe's writings that Calvert had sent to Goethe. But the reception in America of the German poet had not on the whole been cordial. In the last decade English translations of Goethe's ballads far outnumbered those of the lyrics. "The Erlking," "The Fisher," and "The King of Thule" were best known to English readers on both sides of the water. In 1828 an anonymous article had appeared in The Museum of Foreign Literature and Science,25 published in Philadelphia, which praised Goethe's lyrics and suggested that English translators employ their time on these instead of on "tales of ghosts, goblins, robbers, and boisterous knights." Calvert may have been acting upon this suggestion when he translated for the Chronicle of the Times "The Hymn of the Archangels" from the Prologue to Goethe's Faust. The rendering which was printed in his little

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journal on November 13, 1830, appears to be the first American version of the famous hymn. In England it had been preceded by Lord Gower's inaccurate translation of 1823, and by Shelley's beautiful but very free version of 1824. In America, Faust was known chiefly through excerpts reprinted in reviews of Gower's work. Calvert prefaces his translation with an unassuming statement: "The following lines are an attempt we have made to convey in English some idea of the celebrated Chorus, in the Faust of Goethe. They do so but feebly, for the original is finer than any of the 'heaven,' or 'Angel' scenes in Milton." His work had not the lyrical beauty of Charles T. Brooks's version in 1856, nor the polished symmetry of Bayard Taylor's in 1871. Nevertheless Calvert's sympathetic translation suggested something of the power and noble rhythm of the original. One stanza will illustrate these qualities. Michael is speaking: And storms in contest wild are pouring From land to sea, from sea to land, And form, while raging fierce and roaring, Of deepest action one close band. There lightning's vivid flash is glaring Before the coming thunder hoarse. But these O! Lord thy orders bearing Revere the universe's course.28 When Calvert wrote these lines in 1830, he had not yet formulated a definite theory of translation, but he was practicing some of the precepts which he later laid down for himself. The translator, he felt, should be literal, faithful to the text, except when such fidelity would detract from the more important end of preserving the general impression and spirit of the original. For the sake of maintaining the spirit, Calvert was often lenient in his interpretation of the term "literal." In metrics, he advocated the use of the single rhyme, unless the feminine rhyme characteristic of the German text could be reproduced in English without awkwardness. In the hymn, however, he managed the feminine rhymes (pouring, roaring, glaring, bearing) with some felicity. Vocabulary, he believed; especially in the translation of Goethe, should be largely of Anglo-Saxon derivation, since Goethe's own vocabulary is made up of simple words. With the second volume of the Chronicle, beginning October 1, 1831, the editors changed the title to The Baltimore Times. To this issue, Cal-

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vert almost certainly contributed "To Adelaide in Absence," an imitation of Matthisson's "Adelaide," and, to that of October 29, a translation of Schiller's "Die deutsche Muse." By the spring of 1832 the joint editors of The Baltimore Times were forced to admit that financially their experiment was a failure. Reluctantly they dissolved their partnership; but Calvert, rather than abandon the paper altogether, attempted to carry it on alone, omitting the scientific articles which had been Ducatel's special province. With the issue of March 31, Calvert appeared as sole editor. A feature of the new management was the occasional book reviews. A criticism of Bulwer's Eugene Aram came out on March 31, and a sympathetic review of Kennedy's Swallow Barn on June 2, interesting because of its recognition of the social significance of the background of the novel. Especially interesting is the review of June 16, of Irving's The Alhambra,27 for it indicates the popular contemporary attitude toward Irving. At the same time, it reveals the reviewer's easy command of English, his ideas on literary style, and a tendency toward a wordy enthusiasm which was again and again to mar his critical writings: "The Alhambra displays the characteristic excellencies of Mr. Irving— the easy, natural narrative—the smooth and elegant diction—the pithy humour . . . A too high value cannot, certainly, be put upon these qualities in a book; the want of them sinks many an otherwise good one. . . . But still, they are secondary. . . . You cannot give a high polish to a common substance; an intrinsic fineness of grain is indispensable to this; and hence, the existence of a high degree of polish on the exterior, denotes internal excellence of material. Gracefulness, too, is inseparably connected with something internal: it is not an addition, but rather an emanation. . . . "Under the light, and sometimes fantastic, sketches of the Alhambra, these capabilities are all manifested. Like the slight and airy fabric of a gothic spire, the volumes have a solid basis: their most marvellous fictions rest on a shrewd observation of real life. Beneath the naif narration of the wildest dreams of oriental imagination, there flows a current of good sense: behind some of the most comic and grotesque scenes there lurks a latent wisdom." Even from this brief excerpt it is evident that Calvert readily discerned the aims of the author and reproduced the tone of his work in a few descriptive paragraphs. This perception was particularly opportune, because

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there was next to no critical writing in the South during this period. E v e n in Baltimore there were few who cared to learn what was going on in the literary world. Three months later the little journal came to an end. Perhaps in order to mitigate the disappointment which he felt in this sudden close of his first publishing adventure, Calvert began to make more friends. His wife shared his enthusiasm for society, and before long their house on Pleasant Street was almost as well known for hospitality as Kennedy's more spacious quarters on Mount Vernon Place. Elizabeth Calvert, with her tiny, graceful figure, soft, dark hair, and hazel eyes, soon came to be a popular hostess. Dinner-giving on a small scale became something of an art in their home. When he and Elizabeth were making plans for bringing congenial people together at their table, Calvert used to say that the diners should be composed as well as the dinner, and recalled that in Góttingen the students had a humorous name for the motley crowd which their professors sometimes invited with more good will than wisdom. H e was determined that a gathering at his home should never become "eine allgemeine abfuetterung." 2 8 H e always welcomed " m e n of letters," for in spite of the fact that his journal had been a failure he was never tempted to give up literature as a career. By men of letters he meant not necessarily writers but men of scholarly interests in any walk of life; "men in w h o m culture is enriched by geniality."

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Fanny Wright, w h o m

he had known in England, Henry Clay, an old friend of the family, 3 0 H u g h Swinton Legare, lately returned from his post in Belgium as American Charge d'Affaires, the actors Forrest and Vandenhoff, George Combe, the Scottish phrenologist, and Baron Roenne, Prussian Charge d'Affaires in Washington—these were the guests who met from time to time at Calvert's table, in company with the doctors and scientists who formed his more intimate circle of friends. Soon after Irving's return in 1833 from his long sojourn abroad, he became a frequent visitor at Calvert's house, where he enjoyed the charm and literary interests of his host. "Of him [Irving] I have none but the most agreeable

memories,"

Calvert wrote, "as a sprightly talker, a cultivated man of the world, and refined, amiable gentleman. Irving's beat was not among the higher ranges of literature. H e was not a student of Plato or Kant. His talk was of Scott and Moore, whom he had known personally (the latter intimately), not of Wordsworth and Coleridge, whom he had not known and

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did not appreciate. Once at an evening party, I had a friendly disputation with him in which he endeavored to maintain the equality of Scott with Shakespeare." 3 1 A less happy "disputation," however, appears to have taken place with James Fenimore Cooper when Calvert eagerly accepted his invitation to dine with him and Commodore Shubrick at the Eutaw House in Baltimore; he anticipated an hour of pleasant reminiscence, for the novelist had visited many places which Calvert knew well. But it is possible that there was some condescension in Cooper's treatment of his guest, for years later, Calvert wrote: "He was full of life, in the best humor, and talked fluently and well in his large, positive way. I have sometimes thought that Cooper, with his robust understanding, strong will, and self-confidence, would have found his right sphere in politics, as competitor of the Marcys and Sewards, rather than in literature . . ." 3 2 In point of fact, at the time of their meeting, Cooper had long been recognized as an outstanding literary figure, a writer of stirring novels of adventure and romance. His fame had extended to Europe, and Calvert recollected reading The Pilot in a German translation while he was in Weimar in 1825. With one or two exceptions Cooper's books all had the "story interest" which Calvert was coming more and more to feel was the first essential to American popularity. Calvert, on the other hand, was still struggling to gain recognition in the less popular fields of criticism and metaphysics. It is not improbable that Cooper's attitude to Calvert unconsciously and unintentionally reflected this rather sharp contrast in their positions in the literary world. Disappointed also in his meeting with Harriet Martineau, who was seated next to him at a dinner given by Kennedy, Calvert wrote: "But we did not take to one another, and an ear-trumpet is not a stimulant to conversation." 3 3 Experiences of this kind were the exception, however, and the Baltimore years brought many pleasant social contacts. Ducatel took pains to have Calvert meet any Frenchmen of distinction who came to the city. In this way he came to know Tocqueville, Michel Chevalier, and Joseph Nicolas Nicollet, a celebrated savant who had been called to the faculty of St. Mary's College in Baltimore from the Collège Louis-leGrand in France. In a modest way the home on Pleasant Street gradually became something of a center of European culture, as Riversdale once had

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been. Rosalie Calvert would have enjoyed the quiet evenings when Nicollet dropped in to tell, in eager, fluent French, stories of his adventures with John C. Fremont, tales of the great prairies and of buffaloes in herds so huge that it took them seventy-two hours to pass a given point. Besides being a superb storyteller, Nicollet was also a good musician. Living in the Northwest among strange Indian tribes, he had studied their language and customs and music. He had even been able to take down the melody and the words of an Indian maiden's love song, which he sang one evening, accorfipanying himself on Calvert's piano.34 He was also a voluminous writer of papers and diaries. One day he showed Calvert a small trunk full of manuscript bundles.35 Association with men who, like Nicollet, had come from the Old World with ideals and interests similar to his own, provided Calvert with many moments of quiet contentment. But it was his contact with the Baltimore Phrenological Society that led to the fulfillment of one of his dearest hopes —the publication of his first book. To a teacher of moral science the interest in phrenology was not so far afield as it might at first appear. Calvert's questionings at Harvard, the emotional stir he had felt at Antwerp, the stimulus toward scientific investigation he had found at Gottingen now merged, and phrenology became all important to him. It became a symbol of emancipation from orthodox faith and of his pioneering in the field of speculative thought. He had no sympathy for the doctrine of man's total depravity as taught by the established church. Phrenology offered a more comprehensive doctrine than this; man was shown to be a law unto himself. The members of the phrenological society prided themselves on their independent thinking; in the churches of the day, Protestant and Catholic alike, they found only a hampering priesthood.38 In his enthusiasm for the new "science" he had offered to spread the gospel through a course of ten lectures in Baltimore, charging no admission in order that he might be sure of gaining an audience.37 Until this time he had found in his study of phrenology a social and intellectual avocation. But in the eleventh issue of the Chronicle of the Times, he began to print a series of articles on phrenology, which were favorably noticed in The Phrenological Journal. Calvert's first book, published in Baltimore, in 1832, bore the title: Illustrations of Phrenology. It contained seven articles reprinted from The Phrenological Journal,38 but Calvert wrote the Introduction and made the drawings for twenty-six woodcuts with which the book was illustrated. In the following year, he published anonymously a

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little pamphlet, printed at Cambridge by Charles Folsom, entitled, A Summary of Phrenology to Accompany the Bust of Spurzheim.3® In 1833, Calvert also published anonymously in Baltimore A Volume from the Life of Herbert Barclay,*0 his only attempt at prose fiction. In the manner of Diedrich Knickerbocker, it purported to be transcribed from a manuscript without the alteration of a sentence or a word. Although the book is not a story of Calvert's life, it is autobiographical in spirit. Herbert Barclay, an orphan, is brought up in the home of a sympathetic uncle, amidst surroundings which are reminiscent of Charles Stier's home in Belgium. He receives a good education in school and college, falls in love, is rejected, and attempts to forget his disappointment by helping an impoverished family through a difficult time. Several incidents from Calvert's own experiences are described; the boar hunt at Moritzberg, and, slightly disguised, the death of Soley, the shoemaker, in Germantown. Such incidents show promise of descriptive power, but on the whole, if one is looking for narrative interest, the book is dull reading. There is no attempt at plot construction. If this was an attempt on Calvert's part to bow to public demand for "story interest," he failed, for the incidents which comprise the "story" are loosely held together by long passages of dialogue in which the speakers deliver stilted essays on such subjects as education, the choice of a career, the benefits of foreign travel, and the value of travel books. It is, however, of significance to the student of German-American literary influences, because of translations interspersed in the text.41 Such a practice was by no means common at this time. Calvert may have taken his idea from Longfellow's "Schoolmaster," in The New England Magazine (1831-1833), 42 in which the poet had introduced translations from French and Spanish. Longfellow, however, did not use translations from German poems until his Hyperion, which appeared six years after Calvert's work. 43 In 1834, Calvert made two important contributions to German-American literary relationships. Edward Everett gave Calvert his first opportunity for bringing Schiller to the attention of American readers by asking him to review Carlyle's The Life of Friedrich Schiller for The North American.4* This criticism, the leading article in the issue of July, 1834,45 was his first contribution to an important magazine, and brought him his first recognition in the North. In later years he was not proud of this early effort, but the review shows that he had already formulated a theory of criticism. An unbiased evaluation of any literary work, he maintained, could

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be given only if one were in sympathy with the work itself and considered it in the light of the author's life. The critic did not necessarily have to look for a moral in a "work of art." It was not possible to apply the biographical test in the case of The Life of Schiller, for Carlyle's authorship was not generally known at the time. Calvert referred to it as "a work lately published in England." He commended it highly to the American public, but the major portion of his review was devoted to a discussion of the Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Schiller, consisting of nearly a thousand letters, exchanged between 1795 and 1805, published in Tübingen and Stuttgart, but not mentioned in The Life. Concluding correctly that the correspondence had probably not been published when the life was originally written,40 he gave a readable translation of several of the letters.47 Eleven years later he made available for the first time to English readers about one half of the correspondence. The review which he wrote for Edward Everett must have interrupted his reading of the proofs of another piece of work which had been occupying his attention for months. This was his metrical translation of Schiller's Don Carlos, which he dedicated to Coleridge, April, 1834, and published anonymously before August of that year. Calvert had read the drama in the original in Germany during the vacation of 1825. His was the first translation of any of Schiller's dramas to be made in America.48 Lieder, who edited a text of Don Carlos, lists four English translations which preceded Calvert's 49 but it is not likely that the American translator was familiar with any of them.50 In later years, Calvert regretted the choice of the lengthy Don Carlos for an apprenticeship task. Goethe's Iphigenie or Tasso would have been shorter and more difficult, but more rewarding. For he came to see that Don Carlos was rhetorical rather than poetical and that its interest depended more on the story and the appeal of freedom to the spirit of youth than on depth of thought. Although Schiller's shifting of the interest in the last two acts makes the play unsuitable for stage production, the theme, essentially one of political liberty, provides lines so stirring that its presentation was prohibited at the Civic Theatre in Bremen in 1934.51 It is not difficult to sense the strong appeal to Calvert, a young American of Flemish ancestry, of those often quoted lines of the Marquis of Posa to his sovereign —"Ich kann nicht Fürstendiener sein—" and of Posa's dramatic plea for leniency toward the rebels in Flanders. 52

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Calvert translated the entire play into blank verse, with the exception of a few pages which he thought would not produce upon English readers the effect intended in the original. He tried to adhere strictly to the German text, in accordance with his principles of translation, deviating from the literal only to preserve the sense and spirit. In preserving the sense he was unquestionably successful. But he had not sufficient command of English verse forms to sustain smooth iambic pentameters through a work of such great length. He often tried to force his words into the pattern by using unnatural word order and harsh, awkward contractions. Examples of these defects are found on nearly every page of his book. These, however, were the faults of a beginner; with practice, they might have been overcome. A more serious difficulty, one which could not so easily be remedied, was a lack of dramatic sense, or at least an inability to find the right combination of English words to reproduce the eloquence of Schiller's lines. But excellence in this direction requires a creative talent almost equal to that of the original author. In fairness to Calvert it should be noted that of the four translations which preceded his, three were in prose and could have been of little aid to him if he had had access to them. The fourth, an anonymous one in 1795, which may have been in rhyme, is mentioned in Biographia Dramatical but since no copies of this version are available, it is difficult to say whether it was a translation or merely an adaptation. The prose translation attributed to Symonds (Richardson, London, 1798) and the one by B. Thompson (London, 1801) are crude attempts; the prose version by G. H. Noehden and J. Stoddart (London, 1798), the combined work of a German and an Englishman, is better than either of the other two prose translations, but it is not distinguished. We may take as fairly representative of the comparative merits of these three prose translations the famous passage in Act II, Scene 2. Philip, refusing his son's request for a responsible position in the kingdom, argues that Carlos's desire is only the reckless enthusiasm of youth. Carlos, in the course of his pleading, utters the now famous line: "Dreiundzwanzig Jahre, und nichts fur die Unsterblichkeit gethan!" Symonds renders this: "Three-and-twenty years have I been King Philip's son, and nothing has been entrusted to me either to build or to destroy." 54 Noehden and Stoddart write: "I have seen three-and-twenty years. I am the son of Philip, and my arm has neither raised nor overthrown aught in the universe." 55 Thompson's translation is still more insipid: " . . . I am Philip's son— I am three and twenty years of age, and hitherto have been inactive." 56 Cal-

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vert's version, "Three and twenty years, and nothing done for immortality!" 67 is at once more literal, and more dramatic. Harry Pfund, who has devoted several pages to Don Carlos in his recent study, "G. H. Calvert, Admirer of Goethe," 58 gives considerable credit to this first American translation of a Schiller drama: "It is faithful and at the same time concise. To dwell upon a rare minor slip in translating would be petty and ungenerous. Calvert compresses rather than dilates. The number of lines in each scene is fewer than in the German original. Since there are but few willful omissions, this is in itself a good sign. . . . There is with Calvert no attempt at elaboration or embellishment of Schiller's thought. Intricate, even elusive, passages are not lacking in Don Carlos, and these are invariably reproduced with accuracy and often with skill and felicity." Calvert's translation attracted the attention of several contemporary critics, none of whom appears to have seen the earlier prose translations. The American Monthly Magazine, December i, 1834,69 thought the tragedy exceedingly dull, not worth translating, and characterized Calvert's translation as "abounding in involutions . . . unidiomatic and obscure." The writer advised the translator "in all good feeling to quit the muse, and confine himself to prose." The New-England Magazine, August, 1834,60 was more sympathetic, though it noted the distortions and harsh contractions, and pointed to the important fact that the translator of lines as "sounding and harmonious" as those of Schiller needed to use the "most magnificent materials our language affords." Herein Calvert had failed, although he understood Schiller thoroughly. After giving nearly a page of quotations illustrating Calvert's weak points, the critic closed his review on a note of encouragement: "We think, if the author of this work would subject it to a careful revision, it would be an honor to his talents, and an ornament to the literature of the country." Nevertheless, whatever its shortcomings, as soon as its authorship was revealed this translation did much to establish Calvert's literary reputation.61 The undertaking had been long, and it is quite possible that he had already resigned his teaching position in order to complete the volume.62 In the autumn of 1834 he was doing work that must have fully occupied his time. On September 9, the American, one of the leading newspapers of Baltimore, carried the announcement that "The editorial connection of S. F. Wilson, Esq. with this office having terminated yester-

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day, we have the pleasure to announce to our readers the valuable and efficient aid of George H. Calvert, Esq. in that department." The new editor of the American had to furnish articles on subjects of general interest, make comments on foreign news and politics, summarize governors' messages and other public documents, and write book reviews and "theatrical critiques, when there were performances of the better kind"63—in short, produce readable paragraphs every day on a wide variety of subjects about which there was no religious or political controversy. But he was permitted very little freedom in the choice of material, and all that he wrote was subject to the approval of Dobbin, Murphy, and Bose, proprietors of the paper. His salary was one thousand dollars a year. Soon realizing that although ostensibly "editing" the American, he was only a proofreader and general hack writer for it, the spirited young author gave up the job before the close of his second year. He pointed out that "the necessity—be my mood what it might—of writing paragraphs every day on subjects which had for me, most of them, only a pecuniary attraction . . . took much of the sunshine out of my life." 64 During these two years of trying work Calvert found occasional patches of "sunshine" in deepening friendships. The friendship with J. P. Kennedy was especially congenial, for Kennedy, although not yet generally accepted as a man of letters, had turned to literature as a career, and he and Calvert had many interests in common. Kennedy's diary of Thursday, April 9, 1833, records his efforts to initiate weekly meetings of his friends: "On Wednesday the 18th of March last I invited a number of gendemen to my house on Mount Vernon Place with a view to the formation of a periodical weekly reunion. The weather was very stormy, and out of forty invited not more than eight were present.—I had Calvert, Brooks, Hayden, Pennington, Charles Howard and my brother Pendleton & Skinner—we passed the evening in conversation with a little refreshment of stewed oysters served from a tureen—some lemonade, wine &c. "Since that it has been regularly kept up. . . ." 65 Edgar Allan Poe was in Baltimore at the time but would not have been present at any of these gatherings. On March 15, just three days before the party at Mount Vernon Place, Poe had declined an invitation to take dinner with Kennedy "for reasons of the most humiliating nature in my personal appearance." 66 By June, 1833, Calvert was known, by name at least, to Poe, but it is not likely that they knew each other personally. If

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he had met the winner of The Baltimore Saturday Visiter prize, Calvert would doubtless have mentioned the fact in his memoirs. Kennedy may have shown Poe some of Calvert's work, or he may simply have mentioned him as a promising writer. In a letter to Thomas Willis White, editor of The Southern Literary Messenger, dated "Baltimore, June 12, 1835," Poe wrote, "I suppose you have received Mr. Calvert's communication. He will prove a valuable correspondent." 87 Within a year two contributions from Calvert appeared in this periodical, his "Scene from Arnold and Andre" (Act I, Sc. 2), in June, 1835,68 and "A Lecture on German Literature," in May, 1836. Calvert's address on German literature had been delivered on February i i , 1836, before the Athenaeum Society of Baltimore, and after its publication in the Messenger 89 it was issued by John D. Toy as a pamphlet. The lecture was divided into three sections: the first was on the epoch of the Nibelungenlied, the second on Luther and the Reformation, and the last on Schiller and Goethe. The treatment was, of necessity, general; the diction was pretentious and often obscure. But here again, as in the Volume from the Life of Herbert Barclay, the student of German-American literary relations will find much of interest. In mentioning The Sorrows of Werther, Calvert hints that he may have considered translating it himself: "This work has never been directly translated into English 70 (and a good translation of it were no easy achievement), the book called 'The Sorrows of Werter' being a translation of a French version. . . ." But the "Lecture on German Literature" is notable chiefly for its estimate of Jean Paul Richter, as surpassing Coleridge in "the union of learning with genius," and of Wilhelm Meister as not only "the highest exhibition of Goethe's manifold powers," but also "the greatest prose fiction ever produced." From its study, he wrote, "we rise with strength freshened and feelings purified, and our vision of all earthly things brightened." Wilhelm Meister had not yet been accepted in America as a book that could purify the emotions; years of patient labor in literary criticism were necessary before Calvert could hope to share that bright vision with his fellow Americans. The closing years of this decade, which Calvert looked upon as a period of apprenticeship and experiment, brought several changes into his life. In 1837 he gave up the editorship of the Baltimore American to devote his full time to his special literary interests. On January 28, 1838, his father died at Riversdale. By the terms of the will, 71 the estate was divided

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equally between George Henry and his brother Charles Benedict, 72 the only surviving sons. George Henry's share of the legacy did not make him a wealthy man, but it enabled him to follow his literary interests without regard to the remuneration. T h e years 1838 and 1839 mark the beginning of two important literary friendships, with Margaret Fuller and Ralph Waldo Emerson. The Calverts may have come to know Margaret Fuller through the Thorndikes. A hitherto unpublished letter by Margaret Fuller, addressed to Mrs. Calvert from Providence, November 16, 1838, 73 reveals the interest which her Baltimore friends had taken in her welfare, and indicates that her acquaintance with the Calverts began about this time. It is characteristically hopeful, despondent, nervously energetic: "My dear Mrs Calvert. . . . I sincerely thank you for, your kind interest in my behalf, but my health is so much improved that I think it will be quite safe for me to stay in N e w England this winter. " I heard with unspeakable pain Dr Channing's 7 4 opinion that I must go away. I was so wearied out with this public life I have led two years, and had so ardent a desire to return at least for a short time to the quiet of home, and the care of my mother, that no change of the sort could have been agreeable to me. I shall not feel so long. I am by nature energetick and fearless; if I should recover my natural tone of health and spirits, I shall not dread hard labor nor shrink from meeting a circle of strangers as I do now. Should it then be necessary for me to recommence my exertions, I may perhaps again appeal to your kindness.—If I had come to Baltimore this winter, I should have had not only to meet a class, but to prepare a course for it, as nothing that I had arranged for Boston would have suited your city according to your own acct. I have a half sketched plan which, if it ripen in solitude, I may perhaps state to you by and by, and you will judge whether it be suited to your meridian. " A t present I hope to go home the 1st Jan y and pass three months with my own family. Then 1st April my mother gives up her place in the country and I do not know what we shall do. But I do not look beyond. These three months of peace and seclusion after three years of toil, restraint and perpetual excitement, which my very bad health has made so hard to bear, wear to my fancy an Elysian brightness, of which you who have been more happily situated can scarce form an idea. "While I release you, dear Madam, from all present trouble on this account I would fain impose one of another kind. A letter from you would

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give mc much pleasure; May I not hope that you will write to me in the course of the winter ? My brief acquaintance with yourself and Mr Calvert is very sweet to my memory. It turned my thoughts from painful subjects at a period of great anxiety, and antedated (I would hope) a more peaceful season. I would not be forgotten. Yet do not write, if other engagements and interests so absorb you as to make it a task. Mr Calvert, I suppose, is engaged in some turret chamber of the baronial castle, now you have finished furnishing your own drawing room. In the hope, however, that I shall not beg in vain, I would say that I shall remain here till the 20th Decr, then make a short visit to Boston. Any time after the 1 " Jan 7 a letter directed to me at Groton, Mass would reach me and 'make a sunshine in the shady place.' "With renewed thanks for your remembrance of my wishes (and in especial of my desire for a pleasant home) and with best respects to Mr Calvert I am "very truly yours "S. M. FullerThere was, perhaps, more than a grain of truth in Margaret Fuller's hint that intellectual fare suited to Boston would go unappreciated in Baltimore, and that the Calverts had not kept silence on the subject of their wish to change from Baltimore. They had been in Boston often enough to appreciate the difference between its prevailing atmosphere and that of their home city, and they could not remain unresponsive to the friendly interest of a letter such as this. It is not surprising then that Calvert was already beginning in 1838 to look to New England as a locality more suited to the furtherance of a literary career. An incident which he related humorously in his memoirs symbolized the attitude of fellow townsmen to his books: "One of my elderly rich acquaintances entered the bookstore where they were published with the generous purpose of buying a copy of 'Don Carlos.' When told the price he exclaimed, 'What! a dollar for a play!' threw the volume upon the counter and hurried away. For a canvas-back duck (consumed in a few moments) he had always a dollar ready; but for the winged creations of poetry there was no season, and for an intellectual delicacy, like a drama of Schiller, my digester of terrapin and turkey had no appetite. Baltimore was not a reading community." 7 5 Elizabeth Calvert undoubtedly began a cordial correspondence with Margaret Fuller. And it was probably Margaret Fuller who was chiefly

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responsible for the first meeting between Calvert and Ralph Waldo Emerson. But apparently Emerson's brother William, who had known Calvert at Gottingen, had suggested such a meeting, for on August 17, 1839, Emerson had written to his brother: "I shall be very glad to see Mr Calvert if he comes to Massachusetts."

76

On September 26, Emerson wrote

again: " A t a party at Miss Fuller's I met Mr Calvert the other evening & invited him to Concord, but he declined this time with good promises for the future. He has a drama, he told me, nearly written. . . ."

77

The later 1830s were for Calvert a period of rather prolific composition and publication. In the October, 1837, issue of The New-Yorl^

Review, he

reviewed Wahrheit aus Jean Pauls Leben, and in that of January, 1838, The Literary Remains of S. T. Coleridge. This article was made up largely of extracts from the works of Coleridge, chosen with a view to introducing him favorably to American readers. In the same number, he had also a brief critical notice of Bulwer's Ernest Maltravers. T o The American

Mu-

seum of Literature and the Arts (June, 1839) he contributed a review of The Select Minor Poems of Goethe and Schiller, a volume edited by John Sullivan Dwight. T o this period belong also his unfinished translations of Jean Paul Richter's Levana and Klueber's Volf{crrecht, two books which he had brought back with him from Germany. In 1840 he published three books: Count Julian,78 the drama he had mentioned to Emerson; Miscellany of Verse and Prose, and Cabiro, Cantos I and II. Count Julian was a tragedy, the scene of which was laid in fifteenth-century Bavaria. The Miscellany of Verse and Prose contained a number of pieces which had been published earlier. T h e only new material in the book was "Italy's Echo," a poem inspired by the echoes of French liberty that were reverberating throughout Italy; a sonnet on the fifty-fifth sonnet of Shakespeare; and a section of "Sentences," suggested, perhaps, by Coleridge's "Aphorisms" or by Goethe's "Epigrams." Cabiro was an attempt to express in ottava rima the joys of the creative imagination and the sorrows of an author who will not cater to the public taste. Like many another pioneer Calvert had to wait for time to give his work its proper perspective and to fit it into a newer literary genre. America found much more delight in romance than in the kind of work which he offered. During the Baltimore period, 1829-1840, all his writing had been dominated by European (and especially by German) influence, unfamiliar to American readers; as such it received little notice and but scant applause. Here and there a critic caught a glimpse of what Calvert was try-

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ing to do, but the country as a whole and Baltimore in particular remained indifferent to his efforts. Ralph Waldo Emerson mentioned him in a letter to Margaret Fuller concerning The Dial, in April, 1840, 79 possibly with some notion of getting a contribution from him. But he merely asked the whereabouts of Calvert, who, so far as is known, never published anything in the journal of the Transcendentalists. In 1840 Calvert decided that he needed a change. For two or three years neither he nor his wife had been in very good health. T h e humdrum work on the Baltimore American had so depressed him that even after he had resigned, he found it impossible to keep continuously at his own writing. With his financial independence, another trip abroad was a natural step to take next. In the early summer of 1840, he began to make his plans. From Ralph Waldo Emerson he got a letter of introduction to Carlyle. Emerson begged Calvert to be kind enough to carry to Carlyle two lithograph prints of Concord field and village, and to buy in Florence or Rome some good engravings suitable to give to Sophia Peabody. 80 Emerson's desire for the engravings was kindled by some prints which he had seen in the collection of Samuel Gray Ward; he was very anxious that the purchases made by Calvert should be as much like Ward's as possible. "Is this charge likely to be disagreeable to Mr Calvert ?" he asked William. "As to sending them [the engravings] home—how long is he to be absent? If only a year, they w'd come soon enough with him. If longer, he m't send them by the best private or public opp y to you at N . Y.— If you choose to propose this commission to him, can you also give him $20.00 ? . . . If Mr C. reads Twice Told Tales, you shall tell him that the fair artist whom we wish to please is engaged to Mr Hawthorne the talewriter. You may, if you choose, tear of? the first half sheet of this letter & give it to Mr C." 8 1 Emerson tore of? the first half of his brother's letter and gave it to Calvert, who undertook the commission. 82 On July 4, Emerson wrote again to his brother with a last-minute request to Calvert to carry still another token to Carlyle: "Within is a copy of the Dial for Carlyle. I hope it is not too late for Mr Calvert." 8 3 This letter would indicate that the Calverts were planning to sail early in July from N e w York, although available documents do not give the date of their departure. They did, however, stop in that city for a few days before they embarked and were entertained at dinner at the home of Edwin Forrest, where William Cullen Bryant 84 and Fitz-Greene Halleck were

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among the guests. Calvert felt that at last he was coming into his own. If Baltimore preferred terrapin and turkey to the winged creatures of the poetic imagination it did not matter; he had been recognized by New England and New York.

Chapter Nine NEW

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**

EVENTEEN years had passed since Calvert sailed from Halifax on his first trip to Europe, a somewhat disillusioned young man who had just been deprived of his college degree. He had had no responsibilities then, and no well-defined aims. He was leaving America now, more disillusioned with the Baltimore of 1840 than he had been with the Cambridge of 1823. But his outlook was a little brighter. He at least had definite plans for the future. Although poor health had been the immediate reason for this second journey, he believed that the change of scene would be beneficial to him in other ways. His hopes for the future centered largely in a literary career—hopes which he felt Baltimore had done its best to stifle. Three or four years abroad would enrich his interests and widen his mental horizons. Upon his return he would be able to write with greater confidence and for a larger public. On his first trip he had taken only random notes, not intended for publication, and he had neglected to visit several people and places of special interest to him later on. This time he would carry a notebook with him wherever he went, to jot down first impressions. These he would later revise and offer to a publisher. H e would call upon Wordsworth and Carlyle, the two literary figures whom he most admired in England; he would visit Paris and Antwerp again, and above all he would go to Rome. Three travel books of the kind which Calvert projected had already met with success in America in 1835, and the public was asking for more. The popularity which such works enjoyed from 1830 to 1870 is understood when one considers how meager were the sources of foreign news during that period. Professional foreign correspondents like those attached to our great daily newspapers were scarcely thought of. The transatlantic cable had not yet been laid. T o be sure, many American periodicals printed extracts from foreign magazines and newspapers but such secondhand information bore little resemblance to the brilliant news despatches of a

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later era. American readers depended largely on the return of travelers with a flair for journalistic material to give them detailed accounts of doings in foreign countries. Such writers constituted the "Associated Press" of their day. Occasionally a writer with more than ordinary ability produced a book that lent distinction to the whole group. Books like Longfellow's Outre-Mer, H. T. Tuckerman's Italian Sketch-Book^, and N. P. Willis's Pencillings by the Way, written by "eager souls to whom Europe was a wonderland and a dream," 1 were being read everywhere in America. When Calvert's steamer docked at Liverpool, he made inquiries at once about Ambleside. It was only ninety miles away, he was told, and could be reached in an afternoon by railroad and coach. As soon as he and Elizabeth were settled at the clean little Ambleside inn, he started out alone for Rydal Mount. Lake Windermere had been lying in purple shadows when his carriage had rounded its northern end an hour earlier, but here the sky was still light in the west and the air was fragrant with honeysuckle. He could easily have walked a mile that evening, but he felt that the morning would be a more appropriate time for the call he had to make. "How far is it to Mr. Wordsworth's?" he asked the first man he met along the road. "Only a quarter of a mile." For a moment Calvert hesitated; he was tempted to make the pilgrimage that evening after all. But as it was already past eight o'clock, he turned and fell into step beside the man, who turned out to be a laborer on Wordsworth's farm. They had not gone far toward the village before they met a young woman, who nodded pleasantly. "That is Mr. Wordsworth's daughter," 2 the workman explained. This unexpected glimpse of Dora Wordsworth was enough to send Calvert eagerly to his notebooks for the rest of the evening. The next morning at ten o'clock he set out again on the road to Rydal Mount. When he left his inn, Nabscar was still wearing a "nightcap of mist," 3 but when he reached its southern slopes the sun was shining. As he opened the wicket gate and stepped onto the gravel path that led to Wordsworth's long two-story house, he must have felt grateful. Ever since he had been effectively introduced to it in The Friend, in 1833, Wordsworth's poetry had been a quiet influence in his life. During the restless Baltimore years, "The world is too much with us," had become a part of his own thinking, and "Tintern Abbey" had brought moments of tranquility which he had not known before. The author of those poems

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seemed almost as close as a personal friend, and Calvert felt instinctively that there would be kindness in his greeting. Slowly mounting the well-worn steps, among shrubbery and ferns and flower beds,4 he had time to look about him at the surrounding countryside. Each step afforded a wider view of hills and valleys and grainfields shimmering in the hot July sun. T h e air was filled with the musky scent of wild geraniums

5

in clumps along the garden wall. H e paused a mo-

ment at the threshold before reaching for the knocker. Its clang interrupted a peaceful home scene and the door swung open. As Calvert stepped inside the house he caught a glimpse of Wordsworth lying on a sofa in the library. T h e poet was wearing dark trousers and a short morning coat of green tartan. Dora was seated beside him reading aloud. Taken unawares by his early morning visitor, Wordsworth rose quickly and came forward to greet him. 6 At thirty-seven Calvert was less impetuous than when as a youth he had presented himself unannounced at Goethe's door. He now carried a letter of introduction. 7 But it is not likely that this precaution was necessary, since Wordsworth always welcomed visitors warmly, especially those who came from America. Calvert's name alone would doubtless have been a sufficient passport to the poet's affections, for although Wordsworth was now nearly seventy he still held Raisley Calvert in grateful remembrance. T h e poet invited his guest into the low-ceiled drawing room and offered him a chair near windows overlooking the lawn. As they talked together Calvert noted Wordsworth's simple manner, his noble head and large Roman nose, the depth and earnestness of his voice. And when his host invited him to walk out into the grounds, Calvert was impressed, as many other visitors had been, with the remarkable physical vigor of the tall spare figure that led the way. Passing one of his hayfields, the poet said that he had overheated himself at work there that morning. But he showed no sign of fatigue and seemed eager to continue his walk. As they strolled about the grounds, he talked of simple things in an unaffected manner. When they were on their way back to the house, a blackbird crossed their path in the garden. "I like birds better than fruit," he said. " T h e y eat up my fruit but repay me with their songs."

8

In the dining room Wordsworth showed his guest a large walnut press, black as ebony from age, beautifully carved, and bearing on its front in high relief the name of William Wordsworth, a remote ancestor. 9 It was

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more than three hundred years old and had only recently come into his possession. Although Calvert declined to join in the lunch to which Mary Wordsworth cordially invited him, he remained in the room while she and her husband ate their simple meal. Pouring out a glass of porter for his host, he noted that the poet drank it with reluctance although Mary Wordsworth recommended it for his health. 1 0 At the close of the meal, when Calvert rose to go, the Wordsworths urged him to come again the following evening and bring his wife with him. T h e month had been unusually busy at Rydal Mount. So many visitors had come and gone, including the Dowager Queen, that Wordsworth had written to his nephew that they were "rather overpowered just at this time with strangers."

11

But when Calvert came to tea late the next after-

noon, he was cordially welcomed, and Elizabeth could not have been more graciously received had she been one of the royal family. After his guests had rested a little while, Wordsworth invited them to walk with him to Rydal Fall. "Just five weeks ago, we stood before Niagara," Calvert said, as the three started out together along a grassy path. This was an appropriate time for the poet to mention Henry Reed, his American editor, who had written him in the early spring about the "sublime" spectacle of Niagara, and had wished that Wordsworth might some day visit and make immortal in song the beautiful falls where Britain and America meet. 1 2 But Calvert recorded only that Wordsworth hesitated for a moment at this point in the conversation, and then beckoned his visitors forward with a "But come, I am not afraid to show you Rydal Fall though you have so lately seen Niagara." Calvert was intent upon observing every detail in his host's appearance as Wordsworth led the way to a little summerhouse at the end of the upper terrace: "As for part of the way he walked before us in his thick shoes, his large head somewhat inclined forward, occasionally calling our looks to tree or shrub, I had him, as he doubtless is in his solitary rambles for hours daily, in habitual meditation, greeting as he passes many a flower and sounding bough, and pausing at times from self-communion, to bare his mind to the glories of sky and earth. . . ."

13

A large window in the summerhouse formed a kind of natural frame for the scenery beyond. From this window the Calverts caught their first glimpse of Rydal Fall, gleaming in the evening sunlight against a dark

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background of wet rocks and foliage. It was a scene of unforgettable beauty, and one which Wordsworth never wearied of sharing with visitors. Upon their return to the house, their hostess welcomed them in the drawing room, where other guests had assembled. Wordsworth invited Calvert into the library to show him some paintings and rare books, among them a first edition of Paradise Lost, given him by Charles Lamb. When they rejoined the rest of the company, the poet talked enthusiastically of Washington Allston, 14 whom he had known well, and spoke of his "friend Coleridge." He was on the point of adding some reminiscences when one of the guests gave another turn to the conversation. Wordsworth was in a fine humor all the evening, and told several lively anecdotes. The little company sat in the long English twilight until after nine o'clock. The Calverts spent Saturday at Coniston Lake, 15 but on Sunday they were again with Wordsworth. They walked from their inn at Ambleside to Rydal Chapel, only a stone's throw from the poet's house. "Through a cloudless sky and the Sabbath stillness, the green landscape looked like a corner of Eden," 1 0 Calvert wrote. But he did not mention the curate or his sermon. Perhaps, like Crabb Robinson, he found the Rev. Mr. H i l l 1 7 an extremely dull preacher and "grudged the lost morning." 1 8 All we know of the simple service is that Calvert sat in the pew with Wordsworth, among a congregation of some sixty people, representatives of the fourteen families who worshiped there. At the end of the service he was repaid when the poet took his guests, "one under each arm," in friendly fashion, and led them up to his house.19 He wanted them to see one thing more before they left—the lawns about a neighbor's cottage, "a sward so fine and close . . . that you had to stoop to verify with fingers that it was grass. The ground partly undulated, the rock cropping out in places, and the whole shone in a deep green satin. . . ." 20 This experience may have marked the beginning of Calvert's delight in landscaping which later found fulfillment in his singularly beautiful grounds at Newport. During Calvert's three visits to Rydal Mount on July 29 and 30, and August 1, 1840, the name of Goethe apparently did not come up for discussion. If the German poet had been mentioned, an argument might have followed, for both men felt positively on the subject. Emerson later recorded that on his visit to Wordsworth in 1833, Wordsworth had abused Wilhelm Meister and called its author insane.21 Since Calvert had given Meister high praise in his "Lecture on German Literature," he would doubtless have stuck to his guns, even at the risk of offending his host. But in his account

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of these visits, there is no hint of the slightest disagreement. Apparently Calvert left Rydal Mount in complete sympathy with all that he had heard there. He had walked with the poet on his terraces, had listened to the soft music of Rydal Fall, and had watched the mountains melt into the sunset beyond the garden—simple experiences in themselves, but in Wordsworth's presence they had taken on new meaning. The idea of nature as a symbol was not new to Calvert. H e had met it in "Tintern Abbey" and in some of the early sonnets. It was the living soul of much of Wordsworth's poetry. But here at Rydal Mount the idea struck him with new force. Nature as a symbol was more than an intellectual concept to be accepted or rejected at will. It was an overpowering spiritual truth that could not be doubted and that flooded the mind with light. A n emotional experience such as this was not easy to put into words. H e did not attempt to describe it in 1846, nor yet in the " N e w Edition" of his travel book in 1863. It was not until 1882, when he was preparing his memoirs for private printing that he wrote: " I remember walking about Ambleside, one August afternoon, in 1840, when flying shadows from fleecy clouds enlivened the shining surface of the lakes, or momentarily dimmed meadow or mountain; the stillness and beauty and mystery of the scene shot into me with new emphasis and significance, the lordship and omnipresence of the invisible, making all this outward splendor symbolical and secondary, transfiguring the whole scene into more than earthly beauty. . . ." 2 2 Other visitors to Rydal Mount have been similarly affected. Ellis Yarnall, in 1849, noted the "moral elevation," the "strange feeling almost of awe," which he experienced in Wordsworth's company, and he described the poet as "a man living as in the presence of God by habitual recollection." 2 3 Although Calvert knew that Coleridge was no longer alive, he was anxious to visit Highgate Hill to renew the acquaintance begun in Gottingen days with Seth B. Watson. 24 T o his great disappointment, however, he learned that Watson was dead, that he had died before Coleridge. But the visit was not without compensation. Mrs. Gillman, now widowed and living by herself in the home which had sheltered Coleridge in his last years, poured out a flood of memories as she displayed books and pictures and manuscripts. Coleridge had received Calvert's anonymous translation of Schiller's Don Carlos shortly before he died, she said. H e had been touched by the dedication and wondered who his American admirer might be. She showed him an original painting which Allston had given to

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Coleridge, and let him read the artist's manuscript sonnet on Coleridge's death, beginning, "And thou art gone, most loved, most honored friend." Then, leading the way to the third story, she threw open the door of Coleridge's room and pointed out the four-poster in which he had died. The ceiling of the room had been raised to accommodate his books, many of which were still on shelves along the wall. As Calvert crossed to the window and looked out over the valley to Caen Wood, he reflected that this quiet scene must often have brought peace and consolation to Coleridge during his long years of confinement.25 Calvert presented his letter of introduction from Emerson to Carlyle in September, 1840. In view of the common interest which Calvert and Carlyle had in German writers, the account of this visit to Cheyne Row is surprisingly meager: "On the way from Leamington to France we were again two days in London, where I then saw at his house one of the master spirits of the age, Mr. Carlyle. His countenance is fresh, his bearing simple, and his frequent laugh most hearty. He has a wealth of talk, and is shrewd in speech as in print in detecting the truth in spite of concealments, and letting the air out of a windbeutel." 28 Calvert had long been under intellectual obligations to Carlyle and he felt that this meeting was one of the "heartiest moments" of his travels, but he did not record a word of their conversation. In later years his regard for Wordsworth grew steadily stronger, while that for Carlyle decreased. Perhaps even as early as 1846, when he wrote his first travel book, his high opinion of Carlyle had begun to lessen. Passing from Havre to Rouen, where he stayed for a day, Calvert arrived in Paris on September 14, with the winter before him to be spent as he pleased. Although he had grown weary of galleries when he visited them with his uncle fourteen years earlier, he now retraced his steps down the wide corridors of the Louvre with satisfaction. Old masterpieces, which he had merely glanced at with his uncle, took on new interest since he could now discuss them with Elizabeth. Together they went the rounds of museums and churches and historic monuments. Almost every evening they attended the theatre. Calvert was moved by the superb acting of Rachel as Camille in Comeille's Horace and as Hermione in Racine's Andromaque, but for the French drama itself he had no praise. The tragedies of the classical period, which his mother had read with so much pleasure on the Maryland plantation, seemed to

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him to lack character and force when presented on the stage. The years in Gottingen had taught him to look for other qualities in the drama than those which the French had to offer. He was, in short, a child of his own time—the era of Romanticism. The drama that Calvert witnessed in Paris, however, was not all on the stage of the Théâtre Français or the Odéon. He saw it in real life as he witnessed the funeral procession of Napoleon passing along the Champs Elysees to the Hôtel des Invalides, nineteen years after the emperor's death. Echoes of Rosalie Calvert's bitter words against this dictator possibly spanned the decades to give a significant background to the scene before him. This was the final act in the puppet show which Charles Stier had witnessed in 1804 and of which he had sent back a vivid account to Riversdale. Calvert's comment on the futility of Napoleonic greatness is in much the same vein as that of Emerson, some years later, in Representative Men : "Those bones, let out of their ocean prison, brought with them no hope for the nation. When they are buried, there will be an end of Napoleon. His name will hereafter be but a gorgeous emptiness . . . His plans were all for himself, and hence with himself they fell, and left scarce a trace behind. . . . His thoughts were not in harmony with the counsels of God, and so they perished with himself. . . . For the most potent king of the Earth, what is he, if he be a false man ? . . ." 2 7 The Calverts' long sojourn in Paris came to an end as the formal gardens about the Louvre were taking on their soft spring green. By May, 1841, they were in Antwerp. Of life at Cleydael Castle, of the social affairs planned in his honor, Calvert makes no mention. But it is not difficult to picture the genuine welcome which Charles Stier must have extended to the young couple, and especially to Elizabeth, whom he was now meeting for the first time. The Cathedral and the paintings of Rubens are the highlights of Calvert's pages on Antwerp. The beautiful tower of the Cathedral had the same emotional appeal for him that it had had when, as a student, he had seen it for the first time gleaming in the autumn sunshine, at the end of the road from Ghent. Now, seeming to touch the ground "no more heavily than a swan about to take flight," it was "an unfading beauty shining daily on the hearts of the people." 28 The paintings of his great ancestor stirred him deeply. Viewing them now with Elizabeth, he found a flood of beauty in their coloring, as if Rubens had "gathered into his brain the hues of a

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gorgeous sunset, and poured them upon the canvas." 29 He had a word also for the popular contemporary artists, Jacobs, Keyser, and Wappers, whose paintings were selling at high prices. But his interest in contemporary affairs was not limited to the field of art. He showed considerable concern for political and social conditions. He noted the vast difference between Holland and Belgium in language, religion, and customs. Belgium, unable to throw off the yoke of the Duke of Alba, had remained under the dominion of Spain a century longer than had Holland, which meanwhile had progressed independently along such different lines that it was now impossible for the two countries to unite. He predicted that the two small monarchies existing separately side by side would some day "fall victims of greedy neighbors." 3 0 Observing the progress of democratic ideas in Europe, he prophesied that eventually birth would no longer be the passport into highest circles, that the term "good society" would become as flexible in the Old World as in the New, and that although money was too often the accepted passport on both sides of the Adantic, it would retain its power only during the years of transition to a true aristocracy of worth, when culture and taste would again come into their own. 31 When, after six weeks in Antwerp, Calvert left for Germany, he had stored up many impressions that he could use in his Scenes and Thoughts in Europe. He may have been aware that some of these impressions would be valuable as background for later essays on Coleridge and Carlyle, but he could scarcely have guessed how many books the journey of 1840 would eventually help to shape. Nor could he have realized that an interest in social, religious, and political questions, awakened by his concern for the Belgian peasants, would color much of his later writing. At his uncle's home he had come across some pamphlets on the water cure. While reading them, he became convinced, almost at once, that Dr. Priessnitz's sanatorium near Boppard on the Rhine was just what he needed for his health, which had not improved during the long winter in Paris. Consequently he and Elizabeth decided to go to Germany for a six weeks' trial. Just before reaching Aix-la-Chapelle, on the way to Cologne, they passed the German frontier, a tonic experience, almost as exhilarating as the baths of Marienberg. After fifteen years, the German language sounded familiar in Calvert's ears, bringing memories of student days. "My re-entrance into Germany was one of the happiest hours of the journey," he wrote. "It is

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one of the important events in a traveller's career, the crossing of a boundary. . . . Another people, another language, another look to the land and everything on it. . . . History unrolls another leaf of her illuminated testament, and we tell over again another treasure she has bequeathed us." 82 As he drove from Cologne to Coblenz on a bright day in midsummer with the blue Rhine shining before him, he must have felt some inclination to return to Gôttingen to share familiar haunts with his wife. But it is significant that he did not do so. His student days in Germany had come to mean so much to him that he could not bear to go back and see the change that had taken place. To linger in Gôttingen would, he realized, have been a "melancholy pleasure," for none of the old professors whom he had known were there now; the student body was reduced from fifteen hundred to seven hundred. The new regime was less "noble" than that of 1825. In short, Gôttingen had dwindled into provincialism, and was no longer what Napoleon had once called "l'Université de l'Europe." 3 3 The Gôttingen which Calvert had known, the Gôttingen of Blumenbach and Saalfeld and old Professor Eichhorn, of William Emerson and Dwight and Watson and Weir, was one of his most precious memories. Nor did he make a pilgrimage to Weimar or to Dresden. A two hours' drive from Coblenz brought him to the famous sanatorium at Marienberg. In both theory and practice Calvert seems to have taken to the water cure as seriously as he did to phrenology. Indeed, he was so enthusiastic over the results that he sent back a letter to the Baltimore American, containing one of the first accounts of the water cure printed in America, and describing the treatment and its effects.34 The strenuous routine, once exceedingly popular both in Germany and in America, is too well known to warrant detailed description here. But many of the patients felt that they were greatly benefited by the long periods of forced perspiration, cold water dousing, uphill walks, and regulated diet. As for Calvert, his faith in the restorative power of water grew to such an extent that he almost lost his faith in drugs and surgery. After obeying for a few weeks the doctor's requirement of several glasses of water a day, he felt so much better that he decided to give up alcohol altogether, which had always been served with dinner at his father's home. He does not say whether or not he stayed long enough to experience a "crisis," but when he left toward the end of July for Switzerland, he gave the sanatorium high praise. For more than fifteen years Calvert had been anticipating the journey to Florence and Rome. It is little wonder, then, that he and his wife spent

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in Italy the greater part of their three years' sojourn abroad. They could linger in the Pitti Palace and the Uffizzi Gallery and return again and again to sit before their favorite paintings, sometimes for an hour at a time; or they could afford to let days go by without stepping inside a picture gallery or a church. But Florence had other attractions to offer beside those of art. T w o revolutionary forces were at work there. Mazzinism advocated open insurrection against Austria, the Pope, and the petty tyrants; Moderate Reform hoped to accomplish a gradual change through public discussion and the constant stirring of public opinion by means of the press. Among the most powerful aids to the Moderate Reformists were the Congressi degli Scienziati (Scientific Congresses). The first of these gatherings, held in Pisa, in 1839, was of great political importance; it had solemnly affirmed, for the first time, the unity of the fatherland. 35 On September 16, a fortnight after Calvert's arrival in Florence, the third Scientific Congress opened there under the patronage of Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany. It brought together in the great center of Italian culture, men of learning from isolated cities throughout the country, and united them for a time in one community of thought and study. Not only scientists, but all cultivated Italians were welcomed.36 Calvert was among the guests at a dinner given by the Grand Duke to members of the Congress at one of his villas, the Poggio Imperiale, a mile beyond the Roman Gate. 37 But he was more deeply impressed by the sight of "seven or eight hundred" 3 8 noble looking Italians, "educated men, numbers of them men of thought," 3 9 who convened at the final gathering of the Congress at the old Palace. 40 The very fact that such a meeting could be held in the lofty mirrored halls of aristocracy was in itself significant. He, like others, was aware that a movement for liberation was gathering strength, a movement that culminated in the revolution of 1849. Autumn in Florence reminded Calvert of the same season in Maryland, "cheerful, clear, and calm, holding on till Christmas." 4 1 He. spent much time outdoors in the sunshine, walking beside the Arno among the groves and hedges of pine and holly that skirted the river's edge for more than a mile. 42 It was a companionable city, far more friendly than Baltimore. Everywhere one could feel the presence of Dante; there was scarcely a shop that did not have its silent reminder of the poet and his Beatrice—a carved wooden plaque, a tiny silver statue, a gilt profile on tooled leather. Its streets were filled with melody, especially on mild autumn evenings when

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young laborers, home from their day's work, sang buoyant airs from the operas, their fresh, untrained voices blending with the high treble of sisters and sweethearts; and everywhere there was the companionship of fine old paintings and noble architecture. "Genuine works of Art speak to you more clearly than most tongue-wagging speakers," 43 Calvert wrote. In Antwerp he had never walked on the ramparts without feeling the companionship of the Cathedral spire. Here in Florence he soon made friends with the Duomo and Giotto's tower; churches and little chapels greeted him on his daily rounds, and the wide portals of the Pitti Palace always extended a cordial welcome. He noted with gratitude a simple gesture of courtesy on the part of the Grand Duke who had opened his home to art lovers from all parts of the world: " T h e servant at the door, who takes charge of your cane or umbrella, is not permitted even to accept anything for the service. A noble hospitality is this, to which strangers are so accustomed that they do not always duly value it." 4 4 In his frequent visits to the Ducal Palace, Calvert soon became so familiar with its paintings that they seemed like a long reception line of old friends—Raphael, Titian, Claude, Leonardo da Vinci, Guido, Rubens —he recognized them all with a feeling of satisfaction, almost of possession, as he passed from one room to another down the long corridors. But these were not his only friends in Florence. As soon as he learned that several of his countrymen were at work there—Powers, Greenough, Clevenger, 45 George Loring Brown 46 —he was off to their studios. They were soon friends, with whom he spent some of his happiest hours in Florence. The winter months passed quickly and Calvert would gladly have stayed longer had he not been anxious to return to Boppard for the summer. He and Elizabeth left Florence early in June, and after a tour of northern Italy and Switzerland, they reached Marienberg about the middle of July. Longfellow, still trying to forget his unfortunate love affair with Fanny Appleton, was already established at the water cure when they arrived. On June 24 4 7 he wrote to his sister, Anne Longfellow Pierce, that these two countrymen were "exceedingly agreeable." Calvert and Longfellow must have found much to talk about. Newport, Gottingen, Florence, Antwerp were common ground. There must have been discussions of Goethe and Dante when they were in a serious mood, and for lighter moments hilarious caricatures of some of the patients—the old Dutch Admiral, perhaps, with his thunderous cane, the gouty English surgeon who rode into his bedroom on a donkey and tumbled from its

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back into bed, the Russian colonel who roared like a maniac under the cold douche.** Longfellow did not keep his American friends entirely to himself. Almost as soon as they had arrived, he wrote to Ferdinand Freiligrath at St. Goar: " A countryman of mine, Mr. Calvert, of Baltimore, arrived here yesterday, with his wife. I want them to know you and Mrs. Freiligrath, and you to know them. He is a man of fortune, and an author, having published a translation of Schiller's 'Don Carlos.' " 49 Upon an invitation, Longfellow took Calvert to St. Goar and introduced him to the longhaired, romantic poet who was one of the most promising of the younger writers of the day. Calvert and the scholar-politician took to each other at once. On August 4, Calvert sent him a copy of his Count Julian?0 and before long they became close friends. The Calverts and Freiligraths and Longfellow exchanged visits and made excursions together until September, when Longfellow left for a trip in the South of Germany. For many years, however, the German poet corresponded with these American friends. 61 While Calvert was still in Marienberg he was joined by his uncle, Charles Stier, on a visit to the Freiligraths at St. Goar. Calvert always looked back with tenderness to that autumn day in St. Goar. It was the last time that he saw his Belgian uncle. On October 4, he wrote to Longfellow in London and mentioned Stier's visit. The letter reflected an end-of-the-season loneliness, but its author had lost none of his early enthusiasm for the water cure: "Our number here is reduced to forty, and we have been obliged to make fires in the Dining and drawing rooms. Things go on in the old way. . . . I think we shall leave this on the 23d and go through Wiirzburg, Nurenberg, Munich & Inspruk to Venice. I cordially hope we shall meet in Rome." 5 2 At Pisa, where he spent the winter, Calvert studied the history of philosophy with young Professor Silvestro Centofanti. In a critical introduction to Alfieri's autobiography and works, Centofanti had stated that the dramatist first wrote his tragedies in prose and then translated them into verse. Calvert, who disapproved of this method, asked his professor one day at the end of the lecture, "Is that the way to write poetry?" He contended that what was worthy of the rhythm of verse, could never have been expressed in prose. The writing of poetry required a "visionary mood," a mood which could never produce prose.83 We have no record of Centofanti's answer, but Calvert's question was significant. Already he

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was beginning to formulate a theory of poetics which he was later to elaborate in an extended essay. It would have been pleasant for him to linger in Pisa, attending classes at the University in the morning, passing daily the palace of Byron, and strolling at sunset along the Lungarno, where the old clock on the bridge shimmered its reflection in the water. But the call of Rome was growing insistent. He and Elizabeth arrived in the city toward evening on February 24. The next morning, before breakfast, Calvert walked from his hotel on the Piazza di Spagna up the broad stairway to the Pincian Hill. The air was hazy, and there was no view from the hill. Disappointed, he walked past the palaces of the Corso; great gilded prisons, he called them. The spectacle of a scarlet and gold coach rolling by with "gorgeous trappings and three footmen in flaunting liveries crowded together on the footboard behind," called forth some scornful passages in the notebooks. " Twas the coach of a Cardinal! of one who assumes to be the pre-elect interpreter of the invisible Godi" 54 Such words scarcely augured well for Calvert's stay in the Italian capital, but fortunately he restrained his prejudices and was able to enjoy what he saw of Rome. Although Longfellow, whom he had hoped to meet there, had returned to America in October without visiting Rome, Calvert did not lack companionship. He sought out George W. Greene, the American consul, called on Crawford and other sculptors, visited churches and galleries, and spent long hours over his notebooks. Some of the litde sketches which he now produced and revised later for Scenes and Thoughts in Europe were very much better than anything he had done in Baltimore. They were written with a precise and delicate touch, as if the windows of Florentine jewelers had inspired him with a feeling for nice detail. On a visit to the Santissima Trinità de' Monti (a convent of the nuns of the Sacred Heart), described also by Hawthorne in his Notebooks,56 and by N. P. Willis in Pencillings by the Way,60 Calvert wrote with artistic sensitiveness: "This afternoon [Sunday March 12] we returned to the chapel of the Sacre Coeur, to hear the music at the evening benediction. Twas a hymn from the sisterhood, accompanied by the organ. The service commenced silently at the altar, round which curled profuse incense, that glowed before the lighted candles like silver dust. The few persons present were kneeling, when the stillness was broken by a gentle gush of sound from the invisible choir up behind us. It came like a heavenly salutation. The

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soft tones seemed messengers out of the Infinite, that led the spirit up to whence they had come. At the end of each verse, a brief response issued from deep male voices at the opposite end of the church, near the altar, sounding like an earthly answer to the heavenly call. T h e n again were the ears possessed by the feminine harmony, that poured itself down upon the dim chapel like an unasked blessing."

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His description of a Jesuit priest shows an appreciation of simplicity and sincerity, besides keen observation of physical details. T h e Calverts had just returned from St. Martin's on the H i l l : "Thence towards sunset, we went to the church of the Jesuits . . . On one side . . . a thin sallow Jesuit in a dark robe and cap was preaching to about a hundred persons, chiefly of the poorer class. I regretted that I had not come in time to hear more of his sermon, for a purer pronunciation and sweeter voice I never listened to. His elocution too was good and his gesticulation graceful, and his matter and manner were naif and unjesuitlike. H e told his auditors that what the holy Virgin required of them, especially now during Lent, was to examine their souls, and if they found them spotted with sins to free themselves therefrom by a full confession, and if not, to betake themselves more and more to the zealous cultivation of the virtues. T h e r e was a sincerity, simplicity and sweetness in the feeling and utterance of this young man, that were most fascinating. W h e n he had finished, he glided away into the recesses of the dim church like an apparition."

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A few days later, while trying to listen to an uninspired English Lenten sermon in one of the Roman churches, Calvert noticed an amusing little pantomime going on during the Italian service in a side chapel, where "a very aged ecclesiastic, in a white satin embroidered robe, was saying mass, which to us, in the outskirts of the English Company, was quite audible. H e was entirely alone, having no assistant at the altar and not a single worshipper; until just before he concluded, a bright-faced boy, ten or twelve years of age, came in with a long staff, to put out the tall candle. Ere the venerable father had ceased praying, the little fellow had the extinguisher up, thrusting it now and then half over the flame with playful impatience. T h e instant the old man had finished, out went the candle, and the boy, taking the large missal in his arms, walked off, looking over towards us for notice, and restraining with difficulty his steps to the pace of the aged priest, who tottered after him."

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T h e crowded weeks in Rome were passing all too swiftly now for

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Calvert. He visited again and again the paintings and statues that had impressed him most profoundly—Guercino's "Head of Christ Bound by Thorns," Guido's "Aurora" and "Beatrice Cenci," the "Laocoon," the "Apollo," and Thorwaldsen's great sculptured groups. H e and Elizabeth returned many times to the Gregorian Gardens; they never wearied of visiting the Colosseum in the bright sun of noonday, or in the evening when patches of moonlight gleamed among its mysterious arches. They enjoyed most of all the walk to the Pincian Hill, with its changing panorama. N o section of Rome has been more often described than this one, and yet its variable beauty lends a freshness to each attempt. Calvert's description, written toward the end of March, is effusive, but in it he has been able to suggest something of the clear radiance of the Italian sky after a spring downpour: "The whole Heaven was strewn with fragments of a thunderstorm. Through them the hue of the sky was unusually brilliant, and along the clear western horizon of a pearly green. Standing at the northern extremity of the Hill, we had, to the south, the maze of pinnacles, cupolas, towers, columns, obelisks, that strike up out of the wide expanse of mellow building; to the right, the sun and St. Peter's; and, to the left, a rural view into the grounds of the Borghese Villa, where, over a clump of lofty pines, lay the darkest remnants of the storm, seemingly resting on their broad flat summits. The gorgeous scene grew richer each moment that we gazed, till the whole city and its fleecy canopy glowed in purple. W e walked slowly towards the great stairway, and paused on its top as the sun was sinking below the horizon. . . ." Characteristically, the description does not end here, but melts into an afterglow of reflection on the feelings which the scene had aroused. It was this alternation between scenes and thoughts which gave the title to the book in which these sketches later were published: "As, after returning to our lodging, I sat in the bland twilight, full of the feeling produced by such a spectacle, in such a spot and atmosphere, from the ante-room came the sound of a harp from fingers that were moved by the soul for music, which is almost as common here as speech. After playing two sweet airs, it ceased: it had come unbidden and unannounced, and so it went. This was wanted to complete the day, although before it began I did not feel the want of anything. There are rare moments of Heaven on Earth, which, but for our perversity, might be frequent hours, and sanctify and lighten each day, so full is Nature of gifts and blessings,

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were the heart but kept open to them. But we dose our hearts with pride and ambition, and all kinds of greeds and selfishness, and try to be content with postponing Heaven to beyond the grave." 6 0 Such thoughts as these had become an integral part of Calvert's philosophy. St. Peter's had a great fascination for him; its vastness awed him. On frequent visits during March, he had paced the nave and the transept for length and width, and had counted the twenty-six altars. On the first Sunday in April he had sat down on the marble floor and leaned back against a huge pilaster. Notebook in hand, he was ready to take down what was going on around him. His notes were the unfinished sketches of an artist working with rapid pencil to catch first fleeting impressions. They describe a circle of worshipers kneeling by the brazen lamps near the tomb of St. Peter; across the great nave, a small crowd, one after another stooping to kiss the bronze toe of St. Peter's statue; a priest on his knees, taking snuff, his lips moving in prayer; a procession of boys, young acolytes, passing beneath one of the great arches to kiss the bronze toe; a broad band of illuminated dust, shining across the transept, marking the height of the western window; gigantic mosaic figures on the dome, dwarfed like fir trees on a distant mountain. 61 H e was back again the next morning. With only a few days left in Rome, he seemed, like Faust, to crave a more than mortal view of things. H e mounted to the roof and then to the dome. Here he made a final notation in his diary: "What a pulpit whence to preach a sermon on the lusts of power and gold!" 6 2 He paid a last farewell that afternoon to the "Apollo" in the Vatican. T w o days later, April 5, 1843, he and Elizabeth left Rome for Civiti Vecchia and started the journey home.

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leaving on his second journey to Europe, Calvert had begun to look to New England as a possible home. When he returned in the spring of 1843, his mind filled with the cultural riches of Florence and Rome, Baltimore seemed more barren than ever, and its inhabitants more hostile to literary aspirations. He was certain now that he could never be contented there. Newport, where he and Elizabeth spent the happy summer of 1829, seemed to be an ideal spot. It was a town with artistic and literary traditions. Malbone had been born at Newport; and Smibert and Allston had had studios there. North Kingstown, in a neighboring county, was the birthplace of Gilbert Stuart. The quiet dignity of mid-eighteenth-century culture lingered still in the alcoves of the Redwood Library. Bishop Berkeley had composed his Alciphron in a favorite retreat among jagged rocks along the coast. There was a cosmopolitan quality about the town whose harbor had once been a haven for the dashing Count Rochambeau. But perhaps the most appealing of all its attractions to Calvert was its location, near enough to Boston to catch the distant rumblings of transcendental thunder, but far enough away to be protected from the storms of violent discussion. In September, 1844, he purchased for sixteen hundred dollars 1 the John P. Mann estate and adjoining property. Newport was to be his permanent home. The scenery of the island was still as attractive as it had been when the Calverts had come to know it during their honeymoon. But the spirit of the community was changing. The town now had several means of communication with the mainland. The steamer "Iolas" plied between Boston, Providence, and Newport three times a week; and a new horseboat operated at Bristol Ferry.2 A mail stage ran from Providence every morning except Sunday, via Warren and Bristol, and other stages ran from Providence to Woonsocket and Coventry. Steam cars from Boston and EFORE

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New York made connections with the Providence mail stage; passengers by the accommodation train which left Boston at 7:34 in the morning could reach Newport the same day.3 The Atlantic House, first of the great summer hotels which were soon to transform the whole atmosphere of Newport, was completed in 1840,4 the Ocean House in 1844.5 The opening of the new hotels increased noticeably the number of summer boarders. The Newport Mercury, July 20, 1844, recorded that "upwards of 170 were landed from the Steamers yesterday."® On August 10 the paper estimated "that there are now at the different Houses in the town and vicinity, upwards of a thousand strangers." 7 The famous Newport Reading Room, which is still in existence, was incorporated in 1854 as an exclusive club for men, and other clubs sprang up. Many private cottages and villas were also being built, yet even in 1844 Calvert was still one of the pioneers in this "villa movement," which had begun in the early thirties.8 The home built by Calvert on Kay Street was plain in comparison with the pretentious dwellings around it. Edward King's classic Italian mansion 9 and William S. Wetmore's 1 0 large granite villa, which gave a Beacon Street stateliness to the neighborhood, were soon followed by many another beautiful residence on Bellevue Avenue, which had been opened as far as Spouting Rock Beach. If Calvert had come to Newport anticipating an atmosphere of rural simplicity, such as he had found twenty-five years earlier at Armstrong's near the Forty Steps, he must have been disappointed. But the opportunity for congenial companionship afforded by the "summer colony" would have more than compensated for such disappointment. Many of the "strangers" who came to Newport in the 1840s and 1850s were men and women of scholarly and artistic interests. Graciously welcomed in Calvert's comfortable drawing room they found an atmosphere in which they were immediately at home. Here were the tufted sofas, the plush chairs and antimacassars of the usual Victorian drawing room, but here also were fine old paintings which once had hung on the walls at Riversdale. The "Romulus and Remus with the Wolf" by Rubens and Huysmans 11 received the best light from the long French windows; and Gilbert Stuart's portrait of George Calvert 12 occupied a place on the opposite wall. The high mantelpiece, adorned with a gilt-framed mirror, was filled with ornaments and bric-a-brac, among which were George Washington's spy glass and three pieces of china that once had belonged to Louis Philippe.13 The fireplace was shielded by a screen

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bright with painted daisies, which may have been Elizabeth Calvert's handiwork.14 In all these years he and Elizabeth had had no children, but nowhere in his available writings has Calvert expressed regret (or his childlessness. Nieces and nephews came on long visits; gatherings of summer colonists, far larger and more frequent than he had ever pictured in the lonely Baltimore days, brightened the Kay Street drawing room from June to September. So many "strangers" from the hotels became his intimate friends that his desire for long periods of writing in a quiet study was never fully realized during the summer months. But this contact with people of similar tastes was stimulating; and when he settled down for a winter of old-fashioned rural solitude, broken only by occasional visits from "Shepard Tom" Hazard or the Reverend Charles Timothy Brooks, year-rounders like himself, he was ready to take up his pen with zest. In this seclusion he produced some thirty volumes on subjects which interested him: translations from the German; travel books, essays on literature, art, ethics, and social science; romantic comedies and "historical dramas"; poems, religious and patriotic; biographies of Shakespeare, Rubens, Goethe, Charlotte von Stein, and Wordsworth. The first book which Calvert published after purchasing land in Newport was his translation of Volume I of the Correspondence between Schiller and Goethe, from 1794 to 1805. The preface was dated "Baltimore, 1845." 1 5 It was not the kind of book to make a stir in Baltimore. "The many cheerful, honest little domestic touches," which Carlyle had noted in the original letters, "with no worse censure than wishing that there had been more," 1 8 are, perhaps, all that appeal to the casual reader of these letters even today. But for the student who enjoys the musings of "highly poetic minds" they are a running comment on the literary and aesthetic views of Goethe and Schiller. While they were being penned, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre was in the making, and Schiller was writing Wallenstein and "Das Lied von der Glocke" and others of his songs and ballads. In his preface,17 the translator stated that he sought to be as direct and literal as our idiom permitted, and to preserve the "laxness" of style appropriate to the mood of the personal letter. He omitted letters dealing with minor business transactions, or with the editing of the Horen and Almanach. Those which he included dealt with literature, philosophy, travel, art, music, and the drama, subjects which presented a cross-section of his own interests.

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As translation, this correspondence is better than his earlier Don Carlos.16 For the most part the letters offer no great difficulty to a translator familiar with the vocabulary of German philosophical idealism. Calvert was well equipped for the task; even Schiller's long, abstract letter dated Jena, August 23, 1794, containing the famous analysis of Goethe's mind, seems to have been turned rather easily by him into lucid English prose. Few Americans were more than mildly interested to learn that the first volume of this famous correspondence had been translated into English for the first time. It was his fiery defense of Goethe in the Preface, and not the letters themselves, that brought Calvert's work to the attention of the American public in 1845. In the previous year the Reverend George Putnam had sharply criticized Goethe in his Harvard Phi Beta Kappa oration. Like Andrews Norton and Henry Ware, Putnam violently attacked Goethe the man, as "remarkably destitute of moral sympathies . . . cold, selfish, false," and added that "Throughout Germany his name is almost a synonyme for dissoluteness." Goethe, Putnam contended, inflicted emotional suffering because he wanted to enrich his poetic material and because he was a "false man." But he had not succeeded as a poet. Great artist though he was, posterity should not, would not put him "foremost among the true and noble poets." He was rightly yielding to Schiller as the idol of the German people.19 A small group of scholars in America had attempted to interpret Goethe to their countrymen. Everett and Bancroft had praised his works. Theodore Parker and Margaret Fuller had presented him favorably in The Dial. Calvert, sympathizing with the judgment of these scholars, felt that, in view of Putnam's attack, the time had now come to defend not only Goethe's works, but his character as well. Not only had Calvert met Goethe, but he had also spent ten years in translating his correspondence, which recorded the inner working of the poet's mind more accurately than did his fiction. This mind, Calvert was convinced, was upright. Much of Calvert's argument was aimed directly at Putnam: "If of Goethe we knew no more than can be learnt from his works, in them there is that will convert the gall of such abusive generalities into a mere nauseating insipidity. When a bad man's brain shall give birth to an Iphigenia, a Clara, a Mignon, a Macaria, you may pluck pomegranates from Plymouth rock, and reap corn on the sands of Sahara. . . . "Of himself, as a writer, he somewhere says 'when I must cease to be moral I have no power more,' and if he had been one who 'inwardly felici-

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tatcd himself upon the rich accession to his artistic domain, furnished from sufferings he had himself wantonly caused,' palsied would have been his hand ere he had written a verse, and the spring of poetry within him . . . would have shrivelled to a putrid puddle. . . . "Goethe is the most complete man of his time. . . . And yet, this man, so wondrously gifted, and so nobly using his gifts . . . whom the fervent aspiring Schiller loved and looked up to . . . has been the object of all sorts of detraction, to which in this address a new accusation has been added, Goethe being here upbraided, for the first time surely, with being— an Artist!" 2 0 Opposition to Goethe the man continued for many a decade, but the outbursts of his American detractors were never again so heated. There were unfavorable contemporary reviews written by critics who, resenting Calvert's attack on Putnam, could see nothing of value in the original correspondence. Typical of this kind of criticism was an unsigned article in The Harbinger: 2 1 "We think this volume will not advance the reputation of either poet in America. It will make silly young men and maidens all the more silly to read this correspondence." The book met with its most fair-minded critic in The Southern and Western Magazine, edited by William Gilmore Simms. The reviewer discerned the true value of the correspondence as the story not of a love at first sight, but of a slow yielding, after much watchfulness and thought, of the majestic, analytic spirit of Goethe to the "frank and almost child-like simplicity" of Schiller. Viewing it in this light, he was able to follow the gradual coalescing of their spirits with much interest. But he felt that Calvert's admiration for Goethe and Schiller had made him somewhat too imitative of them, when he might have been more native and original. "He owes it to his own genius—which is considerable—to his own tastes, which, if not symmetrical, are pure and delicate, and may be rendered quite as perfect and fine, as they are elevated and faithful." 2 2 Calvert's next work, Scenes and Thoughts in Europe. By an American, published anonymously in 1846 by Wiley and Putnam, was written in the form of letters, the first of which was dated Ambleside, July 29, 1840, the last, April 5,1843. Nathaniel Hawthorne reviewed the book in The Salem Advertiser,23 noting the similarity in form between this work and Dickens's Travelling Letters Written on the Road, also published by Wiley and Putnam in 1846. His review is largely a comparison of the two books. Although Dickens's objective writing, delighting the reader with "sunny

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fancy" and "genial heart," was more akin to Hawthorne's own literary gifts, Calvert's Scenes and Thoughts do not suffer by being compared with the work of the English novelist. Hawthorne liked Calvert's subjectivity—the "scenes, beheld through an atmosphere of thought," "the somewhat misty medium, through which objects assume the prevalent tint of the writer's mind," but he warned the reader not to look for clear-cut studies from real life. He derived considerably more, he said, from Calvert's discussion of art and architecture than he did from his descriptions of people and he noted the sensibility and deep appreciation with which Calvert wrote of American artists and sculptors, especially of Hiram Powers.24 Hawthorne seems to have missed some of the character sketches in which Calvert showed genuine literary talent, such as the description of the Jesuit priest, or of the little altar boy with his candle-extinguisher,25 noted in the preceding chapter. He may have been so much displeased with the occasional pompous sentimentality that he had no eye for the rather good things. Another phase of the book which Hawthorne seems to have missed was its concern for social conditions. Although the pages which Calvert devoted to the social problems of the countries through which he passed were covered with platitudes, they showed a developing trend in his interests, and they sometimes rose far enough above the commonplace even to arouse adverse criticism. "He occasionally betrays a philosophy too exclusively democratic and protestant, and a judgment not sufficiently balanced . . ." C. A. Dana wrote in The Harbinger26 of Brook Farm. He was evidently challenging some of Calvert's statements on government, which echoed Emerson's essay on "Politics," 2 7 published in 1844. On the whole, however, the anonymous Scenes and Thoughts was well liked. On May 4, 1846, its author was able to write to his publishers from Newport: "Here in this little town more than twenty copies have been sold." 28 A second edition was published by George P. Putnam in 1851. In the meantime, encouraged perhaps by the advice of The Southern and Western Magazine, Calvert published in The Harbinger a few poems dealing with transcendental subjects: "Dream No More" (December 26, 1846), "Aspiration" and "The Lost, Found" (February 6, 1847), but at the same time he continued his interest in the translation of German literature. The same issue of The Harbinger that contained his "Burns" (March 20, 1847) carried his translation of Goethe's "Wandrers Nachtlied" and "Wonne

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dcr Wehmut." These were followed by "Proverbs from Goethe" (March 27, 1847) and a translation of "Der Gott und die Bajadere" (April 15, 1848). All these contributions were made over the signature "E. Y. T.," 29 which may have stood for "Ever yours truly," the complimentary close he used frequently in personal letters. Goethe's first "Wandrers Nachtlied," perhaps the most perfect poetical expression of the desire for peace after sorrow, has tempted many a translator. Longfellow, still unhappy over his rejection by Frances Appleton, perhaps found solace in turning the song into English in the fall of 1841, and sending it to his friend Samuel G. Ward. A year later at Marienberg, he may have shown a copy to Calvert during their long intimate talks and it is just possible that the two writers had the lyric before them when they discussed the finer points of translation. Longfellow's version, written soon after his unfortunate love affair, had the advantage of coming from a full heart. Calvert's is not only less literal but has less emotional appeal: Thou who dost in Heaven bide, Every pain and sorrow stillest, Him whom twofold woes betide, With a twofold solace fillest, O! this tossing, let it cease! What means all this pain, unrest? Soothing Peace! Come! O, come into my breast. It is interesting to note, however, that when Longfellow revised his translation to send it to The Atlantic Monthly (September, 1870), he changed his second line from "All our care and sorrow stillest," to read exactly like Calvert's. In 1847 Calvert added some new translations and original verse to the early Harbinger contributions and published the whole collection as Poems. In his introduction to the translations, which comprise about one third of the book, he paid tribute to the work of John Sullivan Dwight, whose Select Minor Poems Translated from the German of Goethe and Schiller he had reviewed in 1839.30 Dwight reciprocated with a review of Calvert's Poems in The Harbinger, June 19, 1847,31 in which he said that Calvert had "hived a few drops of poetic honey himself," and added that "These little poems, unpretending, few in number, are neat, brief, delicate expressions, and at the same time terse and strong ones . . ." He had equal

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praise for the translations. "These," he wrote, "arc gracefully or smartly rendered, as the case requires, and show not a little of that reproductive power which alone can translate poems out of their first form into another which shall still be poetry. Very pretty and very true is the first of these: 'A Confession.'" Calvert must have been pleased with this recognition of his ability as a translator of German lyrics, for Dwight was a musician as well as a student of German literature, and he was in a position to give reliable criticism of both sound and sense. One of the most discerning and straightforward comments on the Poems of 1847 did not appear in print, but may be found under the date of June 13, 1847,32 in the manuscript diary of Evert A. Duyckinck, who at the time was making notes for his projected Cyclopeedia. Duyckinck found in these poems a ruggedness, "brightening up to fire and movement," when they dealt with patriotic subjects. "To Little Mary Griffin," "Reuben James," and "Scene before Tripoli" were as strong as Calvert's favorite translations from the German. In "Give, give," and the spirit of "Agnes" and "Christel" he saw "gleams of a genial philosophy," but he pointed out some defects in the translation of "Christel." "The simplicity and exquisite grace of the original are equalled only by such poems, if any body else has written them, as the finest of Beranger." 3 3 Calvert's first two lines, rendered with "the gravity of a psalm," were "good, if intended to give piquancy to the remainder and illuminate his waltz," but they were not as effective as Goethe's change of mood "from grave to gay": Hab' oft einen dumpfern dinstern Sinn, Ein gar so schweres Blut! Wenn ich bei meiner Christel bin, 1st alles wieder gut. Calvert lost the rhymes "blood" and "good," which were better than those which he used.34 In the second stanza, his description of the cheek as "a rosy hill" was too far from Goethe's adjective, "liebrunde"; and, above all, when he rendered "Die Seele geht mir auf" as "It lights my heart with love," he lost the spontaneity of the balladlike line of the original. In the "genial philosophy" of "Give, give," with its sentiment "to live is to give," which both Dwight and Duyckinck liked, they seem to have overlooked such tongue-twisting combinations as "God's love hath in us wealth upheaped." This lyric, as well as most of the other original poems, is characterized by a piling up of abstract terms to the exclusion of concrete

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imagery—a tendency in much of the transcendental verse of his time— and the use of awkward compounds to suit the metrical scheme. Although a complex syntax obscures the meaning, it echoes the German sentence structure. But the poems were straightforward and independent. Dwight found in them "a hopeful spirit of humanity . . . which nourishes itself in secret far more than it indulges in expression." A note of thanks came from Ferdinand Freiligrath,36 who had been pleased with a poem addressed to him in the little volume. Longfellow must also have written appreciatively, for in a letter of September 25,1847, Calvert expressed gratitude for his approval. In the same letter Longfellow sent also a bit of information which he thought would be of interest to one connected with the family of Lord Baltimore. While engaged in research on Dante's Divina Commedia, he had come across a notice of an Italian edition of Frederick Calvert's Latin poem, Coelestcs et Injeri (1771). Calvert, only mildly curious, asked Henry T. Tuckerman to try to obtain a copy for him, but stipulated the price. What was of greater concern to him was to let Longfellow know exactly what his relationship was to the rascally author, and in so doing Calvert's reply brought out an old family skeleton: "Newport R. I. Sepbr 25^ 1847 "My dear Longfellow; "If 'Gli Abitatori del cielo e dell' Inferno' can be had for one dollar, I shall probably get it; as, immediately on receiving your note, I wrote to a friend in N. York, inclosing to him that sum for the purchase. You will perhaps be surprised at the smallness of the maximum offered; but the binding is, I'm sure, the most valuable part of the volume, and my purse is in no state just now to be even so lightly lightened for a personal fancy. On my table is a list of genuine books that are waiting to be bought. I have a hope of getting my namesake's poem for fifty cents, as there is not likely to be much competition; unless some fanatical member of the Maryland Historical Society, with more zeal than knowledge, shall offer five dollars for it. "The author was more famous for his animal than for his intellectual achievements, having been tried for a rape. He published also a volume of travels; but his pocket did more than his brains to make his books acceptable, he having furnished their insides very meagerly, and their outsides very richly. Dying without legitimate male issue, he was the last of the Lords Baltimore.

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"After this hint at his history, I will mention that he was not an ancestor of mine. Frederick's father, Charles, Lord Baltimore, had, besides him, a natural son, who was sent an infant to Maryland; and he was my grandfather. A wagish professor at Gottingen once told me, that if any member of a European Royal family turned out to be a man of talent, you might be sure that he was the result of a happy cross with a footman or some other stout plebeian stock. If it should be, that my books (likewise Travels and Poems) are at all better furnished internally than those of my legitimate cousin, the improvements in the breed thus implied, may therefore be owing to the "lusty stealth of nature" that gave birth to my grandfather. Who my great-grandmother was is a mystery. Charles, on his son's writing to him from Maryland to learn who was his mother, sent back for answer, that it was a secret which he could neither confide to a letter nor to a third person, but that he would tell him when they met. They never did meet, and the secret remains undivulged. When, in addition, it is mentioned, that the infant was sent out to Maryland in a British frigate, there is circumstantial evidence enough to justify the most ambitious inferences, and send a bold republican imagination even into royal bed-rooms. To countenance this audacity are the beauty and captivating qualities of Charles, who moreover was much about the court. Only, in that case, my books would be deprived of the Professor's theory. "Take my warmest thanks, my dear Longfellow, for your hearty words about myself: it is my belief in their heartiness that makes them so valuable to me. The sympathy and approval of the susceptive and the cultivated are what is to be prized in such a case. Of the little poems, this much may be said, that they were, each one of them, a free spontaneous growth. "I have not been in Boston since they were published, and as I have heard nothing about them from Ticknor & C 9 , 1 infer that they have no success to report. . . . "very truly yours "G. H. Calvert." 36 The Poems of 1847 marked a turning-point in Calvert's career. Up to this time he had been primarily the scholar and gentleman, translating Goethe and Schiller for the edification of American readers, writing of his European travels with dignity and humor, often giving special attention to art and music, composing delicate little poems, in light or somber vein, to suit his mood. All of them were works which, he surmised, would never

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be popular in the accepted sense of the word, for they were indeed intended for "the susceptive and the cultivated." After 1847 a new element was to find increasing expression in Calvert's writing. The interest in political and economic conditions noticeable in Scenes and Thoughts in Europe and more evident in such poems as "Echoes from Italy in 1830" may have been focused by a concern for his friend Freiligrath, vigorously recounted in verses to him. Longfellow and Carl Beck, instructor in German at Harvard, were even then raising a fund to bring the political exile to America. On February II, 1848, replying to Longfellow's request for a contribution, Calvert promised to send fifty dollars in two or three weeks and offered to give a lecture on art for Freiligrath's benefit. "Advertised with a flourish of newspaper trumpets about F," he added, "such a lecture might in Boston draw an audience of several hundred dollars." 3 7 The lecture was apparently never given, nor did Freiligrath come to America from England. But the Revolution of 1848 which took Freiligrath back to Germany turned Calvert's thoughts more searchingly to the means by which social progress was achieved, and the notes taken on his third trip to Europe reveal a wider humanitarianism, a deeper concern with social and political affairs. When Calvert promised his contribution to Longfellow for the Freiligrath fund, he said that for the past two years he had been living "in the simplest manner possible," denying himself some comforts and enjoyments, because of a temporary claim on the Riversdale estate, which he and his brother had to pay at fixed periods. He hoped to make a larger contribution as soon as this matter was adjusted. In the spring of 1848, however, he came into an inheritance which made it possible for him not only to give more generously to charitable funds, but also to enjoy the unexpected pleasure of a third tour of Europe. His uncle died at Grammont, Belgium, on June 25.38 Since Charles Stier had no children, the estate was divided among the descendants of his two sisters, Isabelle Van Havre and Rosalie Calvert, both of whom had died previously. Castle Cleydael, allotted to the American cousins, was sold, and the proceeds were divided among the various heirs.89 On this third journey (1849-1851) the Calverts visited the same countries through which they had passed in 1840-1843, with the exception of Italy. They found a changed Europe. Old landmarks had disappeared; there

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was an undercurrent of revolutionary unrest everywhere. Most depressing of all to Calvert was the change that had taken place in some of his old friends. At Malvern he met Wordsworth, now in his eightieth year, strolling about with one of the village physicians. T h e poet had walked across the Malvern hills from his lodgings on the northern side, and looked tired and "drooping." Calvert recalled to Wordsworth the happy hours they had spent together at Rydal Mount in the summer of 1840. But Wordsworth seemed to have forgotten. Perhaps in an attempt to bring the conversation back to the present, the doctor called his attention to the "freshened look" of a butcher's shop across the way. " T h e butcher seems to be doing well," said Wordsworth, and Calvert thought that he detected "a slight tincture of satire in his voice and manner." 4 0 Ten years earlier Calvert could not bring himself to visit Weimar, but now with the melancholy picture of Wordsworth still in his mind, he seemed almost anxious to return to the scene of his student days. Most of the journey of 1849-1851, in fact, was an attempt to recapture the past. In Schiller's study he dipped his pen into Goethe's inkstand and took notes on a cast of Schiller's head. He reveled in the wild, natural beauty surrounding Weimar cemetery; he stood between the coffins of Goethe and Schiller, resting one hand on each, with a sense of gratitude for the stimulus which these two authors had given to his early writings. A t Eisenach he visited the Wartburg and looked out of the same window through which Martin Luther had viewed the Thuringian countryside. At Düsseldorf and Rolandseck he called on Freiligrath and talked of happier days. Only in Belgium was Calvert chiefly concerned with the present. N o w that his uncle was no longer alive, Calvert's notes on Antwerp were silent on art and architecture and the brilliant social affairs which had given so much color to his earlier accounts. But he was keenly aware of the wretched conditions among the poor and he struck vigorous blows at a political economy which neither met their needs nor realized the dangers inherent in glaring social inequalities. Conditions in America were almost Utopian, he reflected, as he thought with pride of the American way of life. In Paris, his pages were momentarily lighted by faint gleams of the old love for art, but it was always the familiar that he sought: " I always go straight through to the Gladiator," he wrote of his visit to the Louvre. "For two thousand years those marble limbs have glowed with the splendor

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of the perfect manly form." 41 And in the Rubens gallery, standing before the long-loved works of his ancestor, he exclaimed, "You may gather a rainbow out of one of Rubens's great pictures."42 But there were other attractions in Paris which had more living interest now for Calvert than those which the Louvre had to offer. Charles Fourier, the great social reformer, had been buried in a simple tomb at Montmartre, but his disciples were carrying on at No. i rue de Beaune. Calvert went there to try to find the inspiration which the past could no longer sustain.43 There was nothing remarkable about the headquarters of Fourier's followers; a spacious room where clerks were at work behind a wire netting; a second room with an open fireplace, and tall windows looking out upon a garden—a room furnished simply with a sofa, a large center table, and plain but comfortable chairs; on the mantelpiece a bust of Fourier. Nor was there anything remarkable about the bearded men, writers for the Démocratie Pacifique, who sat about the table reading newspapers and smoking long clay pipes. But this visit colored all of Calvert's future thought. It is not easy to trace his original contact with the ideas of the liberal French socialist, but the Brook Farm experiment and The Harbinger are obvious clues. George Ripley, who had thrown himself with enthusiasm into the experiment in community living, had been a Harvard classmate. The Harbinger, to which Calvert contributed, had announced in its prospectus that the policy of its editors would be to discuss and defend the "principles of universal unity as taught by Charles Fourier, in their application to society." 44 This third trip to Europe—a Europe in which the recent struggle for political freedom had been ruthlessly crushed—vitalized the "principles of universal unity" for Calvert and sent him back to Newport filled with the old pioneering spirit, henceforth to be directed, with increasing diligence, toward social reform.

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to America when the lyceum was in the heyday of its popuJarity, Calvert appeared frequently on the public platforms of Newport. Even when he read his lectures, as he sometimes did when called upon to speak at short notice, his delivery was described as "eloquent" and his language as "pure and musical as it was deep and earnest." 1 In the political campaign of 1852 he spoke twice in support of Franklin Pierce for President of the United States. The second of these speeches, on October 28,® was praised by The Providence Post3 and printed in full in The Newport Advertiser of November io.4 On the 16th of November Martin Van Buren sent Calvert a message of congratulation from Lindenwald: "The Democracy have reason to rejoice in the acquisition of the intelligence & integrity you have brought to its support; & as I know the purity of your motives I am very sure you will never regret the course you have taken." 5 Calvert's immediate interest, however, was in spreading the doctrines of Charles Fourier. On December 23 he delivered before the Mechanics' Association of Newport a lecture on "Newness and New Truths," the first in a series on socialism. His audience were a little apprehensive of some of his ideas, but they were attracted by his rhetoric. In the words of The Newport Mercury: "If his hearers did not accept all his theories, they acknowledged the force of his argument; and if they disclaimed doctrines socialistic in their tendencies, they were no less willing to ascribe to him powers of rhetoric only attained by the few." 6 In the meantime Calvert had been gaining a local reputation as a writer. The lecture on "Protestantism," January 15, 1852,7 a reading of two fiery chapters8 of his Scenes and Thoughts in Europe, Second Series (1852), 9 had brought a certain amount of publicity for the book, and his review of Emerson's Representative Men, the leading article in The New Yor\ Quarterly of January, 1853, must have added to his reputation as a critic, as soon as its authorship was known. The following summer the Democratic Party entered him as delegate ETURNING

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at large to the Constitutional Convention. Since he was easily defeated by the Whig candidate,10 his party might have hesitated to nominate him for mayor a few months later had it not been for his stirring address at the celebration of the fortieth anniversary of the Battle of Lake Erie. This address came just long enough before the October election to bring him before the public again as good campaign timber. When he stepped into the pulpit of North Church, Newport, on September 10, 1853, he was quite aware of the dramatic circumstances under which he was about to speak, and enough of a literary artist to make the most of them. Rhode Island had been well represented at the Battle of Lake Erie in 1813. Oliver Hazard Perry, hero of the battle, was a native of South Kingston; many of the men were from Newport. Six of the survivors were in his audience. Turning occasionally to address these survivors directly, Calvert gave a rapid and vivid account of the action which had taken place forty years earlier. Although this speech had been prepared at short notice, he spoke easily, without notes, encouraged perhaps by the enthusiasm of his listeners. At the end of his address the audience was on its feet cheering loudly. 11 George William Curtis, then a young man of twenty-nine, was deeply stirred, and writing of the event in Harper's Magazine12 the following August, praised the address as "remarkable among such performances for its clearness of narration . . . which comprises by far the best account of the battle." After the Lake Erie oration, Calvert began to plan with satisfaction a return to literary work during the quiet autumn days. For, although he had been willing to give his support to Franklin Pierce, he had no political ambitions of his own, and had been pleased rather than disappointed by his defeat as Delegate to the Constitutional Convention. But his party was not willing to have him hide his light for long behind the great cedars which shaded the windows of his Kay Street cottage, On June 7, 1853, Newport was incorporated as a city for the second time.13 Three successive attempts to elect a mayor were made on July 2 and 20 and September 14 of that year, but no candidate received sufficient votes for election. The situation was complicated by a split in the Whig Party and by the withdrawal of the Hon. Henry H. Bull, the original Democratic nominee, after the first vote. Toward the end of September Calvert's name was placed on the Democratic ticket and a fourth election was set for October 4. Calvert entered the lists reluctantly. There was so little time before elec-

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tion that it hardly seemed worth while to make an effort to win. His strongest rival, William H . Cranston, 14 the Whig caucus candidate, had had his hat in the ring since June, and it seemed likely that he would be elected. Cranston, as co-editor of The Newport Daily News, was quick to use the columns of his paper to warn the people against "this stranger within their gates." A News editorial of September 29 stressed the aloofness of the new Democratic nominee: "Mr. Calvert is a gentleman of wealth, intelligence and learning; he is a Democrat in politics, of the most ultra school, fearfully progressive and unyielding in his professions to radical Democracy; but at heart and in the social relations of life, he is eminently and to the last degree, an aristocrat.—He lives quite exclusively within himself; a close student, he devotes himself almost entirely to reading and to thought; he knows not the people and the great mass of the people do not know him." The article also pointed out that Calvert was a native of Maryland, who had resided temporarily in Newport "for the last ten years or so"; that he had spent a good deal of his time in Europe, especially in Germany and had "a marked admiration for the mysticism of the mysterious land." 1 5 Cranston was a son of Newport. This skirmish was only a preliminary. Cranston's real attack came on October 3, the day before the election, in an editorial entitled "Facts for Voters." 1 6 The writer of this article rejoiced that his adversary had written a book—the Scenes and Thoughts in Europe, Second Series. Seizing upon passages which, he said, showed that Calvert was prejudiced against the Negro and against the great abolition movement already gathering force, the News reporter interpreted this prejudice against the Negro as indifference toward the problems of the common man. He also quoted tirades against hypocrisy in religion and bitter criticism of the clergy. Such polemics were not vote-getters, as the News writer well knew: "It [Protestantism] has no Pope," Calvert had written, "but it has creeds; it has no monasteries, but it has theological seminaries; it has no independent hierarchy (cxcept in England), but it has dogmatic priesthoods. In its churches ecclesiastical abuses are vastly mitigated, by no means fully abated." 1 7 This paragraph was boldly interpreted to mean that, according to Calvert, "the forms and ceremonies of all denominations are humbugs in the extreme, and that German Socialism is destined to do more, and has al-

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ready done more than anything else, to develope the great and grand ideas of Truth and Liberty I" Were the people of Newport going to elect to office a man whose religious views were so alarming? However much Calvert may have been disturbed by such misrepresentation, he did not answer his opponents through the columns of The Newport Mercury; he apparently became involved in no unpleasant political arguments; and he made no fiery speeches. On Sundays he continued as usual to attend religious services in historic old Trinity Church, where his wife was a communicant.18 On week days he watched the newspaper accounts of the campaign with interest, although he did not care to take an active part in it himself. When he finished the papers he usually read a few pages of Greek, 19 and then settled himself for an hour or two on the manuscript of a poetic drama which he had begun in Baltimore. In this way the time passed quietly until October 4. On that morning he may have begun to regret that he had not worked harder to win the election. He had grown weary of Cranston's monotonous editorials. The split in the Whig Party gave the Democrats a fighting chance, and it would be a satisfaction to be able to prove to Cranston and the Whigs that an "ultra-Democratic stranger" could win the people's confidence. Moreover, he had already outlined a modest program of reform which he would like to put into operation. For all its rapid growth, Newport was still without street lights or adequate protection against fire; his friend Tom Hazard had pointed out more than once the lamentable condition of the poor and insane; the city's system of taxation could be improved; and above all, the public schools needed a thorough overhauling. A glance at The Daily News of October 4 must have nettled him. The same old arguments. Cranston seemed to be a man of few ideas. His paper warned its readers for the last time against the religious ideals and doctrines of this "stranger." "Entertaining such extraordinary and most subversive doctrines as Mr. Calvert does in regard to churches, clergymen and religious faiths, creeds, forms and ceremonies, if elected Mayor, would he feel it his duty to interfere with a mob who might attack a place of religious worship? Having publicly and strongly denounced them all, would he consider them worthy of protection?" In spite of Calvert's indignation at such fantastic imaginings, he must have found it difficult to suppress a smile when he tried to visualize a Newport church actually being attacked by a mob. He continued to read with growing displeasure:

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"While wc are glad to have these gentlemen reside among us during such portions of the year as may suit them, still we do not wish to see their ambition to rule, so soon gratified." 2 0 Ambition to rule, indeed. His party had practically drafted him into the race, but it was too late to refute The News arguments now. He opened the Democratic paper. All that he could find was a last minute attempt to free him from whatever opprobrium may have been attached to the words "aristocrat" and "dreamer" used earlier by The News: "George H. Calvert an aristocrat!" scoffed The Mercury, as if the idea were preposterous. "Why! his very appearance and manner to a casual observer would be anything rather than this. George H. Calvert a dreamer and a Mystic! Let him who uttered this, beware of the sledge hammer blows of his argument and logic, which descend in a manner that betokens aught but sleep or visionary romancing." 2 1 The writer of that article had meant well, of course; but why shouldn't a dreamer make a good mayor, if his dreams were of civic improvement ? The Mercury had given no constructive arguments. It had merely refused to acknowledge that he was an aristocrat and a dreamer, as The News had charged. Why not admit both charges and maintain that the city needed just such qualities as he possessed? He closed the paper with misgivings. Cranston would probably be elected. Perhaps to conform with established custom Calvert did not vote on the first ballot cast on October 4. When the returns came in showing that none of the candidates had received sufficient votes for election, he decided to vote on the second ballot. The final count showed he had won by a single vote. A majority of all the votes cast was necessary for election. Calvert received 388, Cranston 351, and 36 were "scattering." 2 2 Newport, whose name was to become a symbol of American wealth and aristocracy, had called to its highest office under the new charter a Fourieristic Socialist, who was willing to serve his community on a salary of a little less than $350 a year.23 But the results were so close that Whig newspapers in Newport, Providence, and Boston contested the election for months. The Whigs gave a number of reasons for their contention that Calvert's election was illegal. A Negro, whose name could not be found on the official list of voters, had cast a ballot in the second ward. When asked which candidate he had voted for, he replied, "The Whig candidate." The Board of Aldermen then threw out a Cranston vote. Two other votes were discarded because they bore the names of the candidates without being marked, "For

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mayor." The discarding of these votes was illegal, the News contended, because the mayor was the only officer on the ticket. In the third ward both the warden and the clerk certified that 121 voters had cast their ballots for Calvert but when the votes were counted they found 122 for Calvert. This was evidence, said The Daily News,2* that someone had put two votes in the box, either by accident or by design. After his election had been conceded by a Whig Board of Aldermen, he took the oath of office on October 7, 25 in spite of repeated warnings from The Daily News that all of his acts would be considered illegal. Since his term in office, from October to June, was so short, he had time to do little more than set the wheels in motion for his successor. A good share of his time was devoted to the Newport School Committee to which he was elected as soon as the city became aware of its mayor's concern for the public schools.26 His work on the School Committee was efficiently done.27 His own unusual educational advantages—and disadvantages—had made him critical of temporary methods. The teachers of his childhood had jogged along too trustfully "in the old memoriter groove." 28 Methods which emphasized memorization to the neglect of observation were seriously deficient, and he strongly advocated "dynamic" teaching which would call forth original, creative thinking on the part of the pupils. He was most emphatic in his recommendation that French be introduced into the two high schools of Newport and that the first classes be taught by a native of France. He inspected the schools himself and advocated progressive methods of instruction and a discipline which would not be achieved by corporal punishment. Calvert believed that children were too often treated "not like little angels, but like little devils,—and this makes some of them devils." 2 8 His success was evident, for a letter to the editor of The Mercury, March 4, 1854,30 emphasized the influence which he was exerting, and spoke favorably of the school system which had nearly discarded the rod as a means of discipline. By 1855 French had been introduced into both high schools and was taught by "a highly educated, competent native of France, Mr. Levilloux." 3 1 Calvert continued to appear on the public platform during his term at City Hall. On January 19, he gave a talk on "Socialism," 3 2 which was a continuation of "Newness and New Truths," delivered the preceding winter. The response was much the same as on the earlier occasion. The audience were attracted by his personality, but they were not convinced of the validity of his arguments. The Newport Evening Mercury 3 3 summed up

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public reaction to the lecture when it pointed out that the principles of Fourier, though ably expounded by Mr. Calvert, were conducive to "restlessness" among the laboring classes and "a resentful spirit towards their alleged oppressors"; Mr. Calvert's habit of alluding to Christ as we would speak of Solon or Columbus was a serious mistake and might have a "baneful influence with the young and inexperienced," coming as it did from "one of eminent talents, and high social and official position." Even the Democratic press was growing a little skeptical about Calvert's "ultraDemocratic principles." Meanwhile Cranston was still busy contesting the legality of the election. The case was finally carried to the Supreme Court of the State. The Newport Mercury, March n , 1854,34 recorded the petition of William H . Cranston for writ of quo warranto to George H. Calvert to "show cause why he exercises the office of Mayor of Newport. Rule Granted." The respondent left his civil duties only long enough to appear in court, and exhibit the certificate of his election as mayor, signed by B. B. Howland, City Clerk. On the fifth day of the trial the court adjourned until March 17, when it again postponed its decision. Then the matter seems to have been dropped, since within a few months a new mayor was to be elected, and the Supreme Court doubtless concluded that it was unnecessary to take definite action. On April 18,1854, 35 with his brief term drawing to a close, Calvert made a report to the City Council. This report is a dry document, but it is significant of the kind of things his mind was working on. He placed the school system first. He had written to the mayors of New Bedford, Massachusetts, and of Portland, Maine, for information. His figures show that Newport was contributing comparatively little to her public schools, and he recommended that another school be built and provided with two principal teachers and two assistants. Since property was now worth ten times as much as in 1851, Newport should make larger appropriations for streets and highways. He was concerned with improving conditions of the poor, but he did not overlook the problems of the small landholder. He strongly urged that assessors equalize the rate among the small proprietors and the holders of large estates. "For," Calvert said, "it is easier for a proprietor worth $20,000 to pay $60 in taxes than for one worth $2000 to pay $6 . . . such inequality is a gross injustice." With some financial shrewdness, he advocated that the island on which the asylum was located be sold as a desirable site for summer mansions. The money acquired in this transac-

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tion could be used to build in another locality separate buildings for the poor, the drunken, the insane, and the dissolute, who, in the old asylum, were all housed in the same building. He advocated further that the city have always ready a large supply of water in case of fire. Perhaps with amused satisfaction, he recommended new reservoirs in addition to the existing supply: "one to be fed from the roof of Trinity Church, another from that of the Spring street Congregational, and a third from that of the Roman Catholic." Surely The Daily News could no longer accuse him of having no use for the churches. There was irony in his conclusion also, which recommended that his successor to the office of mayor should receive a salary of $400 36 a year, the maximum authorized by the City Charter. On June 5,1854, 37 he addressed the City Council for the last time and administered the oath of office to William C. Cozzens. Thanks to Cranston's repeated attacks in The Daily News, when Calvert retired from his official duties, he was better known as a literary man than when he had entered upon them. It was gratifying to him to return to his study desk and his books, and renew friendships with living authors. Among the latter was the German poet, Ferdinand Freiligrath, with whom he had exchanged a few letters since their last meeting in Germany in 1850.38 On September 25, 1853,39 Freiligrath, now in London, had asked Calvert about the publication of The Rose, Thistle, and Shamroc\ in America, and Calvert had promised to see what could be done about it.40 Although their earlier plans had fallen through, Calvert and Longfellow were now working again to bring their friend to America. In 1854, Longfellow expressed the hope that Freiligrath would be appointed to succeed him on the faculty at Harvard, and Calvert wrote a letter to George Ripley, doubtless with a view to gaining an editorial connection for Freiligrath on The New Yor\ Tribune. The Longfellow-Freiligrath correspondence, edited by Professor James Taft Hatfield, 41 records this phase of an interesting literary friendship. Only one of these letters, however, has direct bearing on the present story. This letter, written to Freiligrath, May 3, 1854, disclosed in one brief paragraph Longfellow's version of the secret of the extra ballot cast for George H. Calvert in the Newport election of October 4, 1853: "Calvert is 'Lord Mayor' of Newport; and Newport is one of the pleasantest towns in the whole land. On the first ballot at the election there was no choice. Calvert refrained from voting. On the second he voted for himself, and was elected

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by a majority of one! He is a thoroughly good fellow, and a good 'Lord Mayor of N e w p o r t . ' " 4 2 Calvert retired to private life with a warmth of affection for Newport which he had never felt for Baltimore. He was proud to have had a hand in shaping its government. Newport had changed considerably during his years of residence there; he had watched with interest the various stages of its progress. From a small rural community in 1843, it had become a city with a population of about 10,000. He had seen the great hotels give placc to the "villas," and a new suburb spring up to the south of the town. He had seen buildings go up on " T h e Hill" and property values fabulously soar. In 1850 the tax on the two hundred acres comprising the Bailey and Olyphant farms had been $85.00. In his report to the City Council in 1854, Calvert had estimated that the same land, with the dwellings on it, would be taxed $3,300 at the end of the year and assessed at one million dollars. 43 Elsewhere in the town the value of property had risen proportionately. Artists, actors, men of letters had come to Newport in larger numbers each succeeding summer, until it was now a "realm" 4 4 in itself as one writer had said. But Calvert noted with satisfaction that for all its rapid growth, the leisurely atmosphere had not been destroyed. A town crier still went through the streets telling of bargains at the market place—a load of fish or calves brought in for sale. The favorite amusements were fishing from the long wharf or sailing on the bay. The stagecoach still made its daily trip from Providence, but there were few other vehicles in the town except an occasional barouche with its liveried coachman brought by the wealthier summer visitors. Since Calvert had taken office in October, his duties had not deprived him of the social contacts of the summer season of 1853; released from those duties in June, 1854, he was free to entertain just as the next season was beginning. Soon the Kay Street drawing room was the scene of an intellectual gaiety reminiscent of the eighteenth-century French salons. 45 Artists, attracted to Newport by the quaintness of the town and the beauty of its seacoast, were especially welcome at Calvert's home, for he was never happier than when "talking shop" with an artist or watching him at work. In 1854, he sat for Samuel Laurence, the English portrait painter, who came to Newport in July and opened a studio on Thames Street, opposite the Custom House. 46 A crayon profile of Calvert by Laurence was presented to the Maryland Historical Society in 1928. 47 This portrait was doubtless the one referred to in a letter which the artist wrote to Calvert

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in December, 1854, from New York, where he was "fairly at work," though he did not work "as pleasantly in this city as at Newport. The noise & haste of it," he complained, "is too disturbing, tho' in time I shall get used to the roar of Broadway (how mild a one compared with that our poor fellows are acquainted with at Sebastopol). . . ." 48 La Farge and Richard Staigg were also in Newport in the summer of 1854. An oil portrait of Calvert, probably belonging to this period, painted by Staigg 49 is owned by Dr. Augustus Thorndike, of Boston. Not all of the artists came with brush and palette, however. Many appreciative visitors at Newport wrote vivid if brief impressions, though in some cases these were not published until years later—Longfellow, for instance, in his journal jottings, and T . W. Higginson in some of his letters. Calvert must have been particularly pleased with an artistic interpretation of the sea at Newport written by George S. Hillard, 50 in The Newport Mercury, for it included a sketch of his own small Kay Street estate, "The Cedars": "Nowhere is the sea more seductive and less formidable . . . nowhere does it wave a whiter arm or sing with a sweeter voice than at Newport. . . . Nowhere is the air more purely winnowed; nowhere does the sky wear a richer blue, or is dappled with finer clouds; nowhere do lovelier sunsets throw their gold and purple splendors over land and sea. . . . The trees on Mr. Calvert's grounds, which are only two or three acres in extent, and in the very heart of the town . . . are really things to go and see, so beautiful and healthy are they, and so entirely do they produce, moderate as is the extent of the space they occupy, some of the finest effects of forest scenery. They are all of his own planting, and all the growth of some twelve or fifteen years; and he has a right as he looks round upon his beautiful domain, to feel an author's pleasure in his works. . . ." The trees, many of which had been sent from England, included the tall dark cedars for which the place was named, elms, maples, beeches, and in the southern shelter of his house, the first magnolia glauca ever raised in Newport. 51 As Calvert sat on his veranda during the long summer afternoons, viewing his wide lawns and the graceful massing of evergreens on distant slopes, he must often have recalled a Sunday long ago at Rydal Mount—with Wordsworth stooping to feel the velvet smoothness of grass around a neighbor's cottage door. But these periods of reminiscence were interrupted by callers who liked to stop on the way to or from the village. Charlotte Cushman, perhaps, or

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George H. Boker, 82 to chat about the theatre; the "saintly" Mr. Brooks,53 to discuss a new translation of Faust, which he was writing, or to read a few delicate lyrics which he had just composed for The Mercury; "Shepherd Tom," of Vaucluse, to talk at length of spiritualism; Bancroft . . . Laurence . . . Tuckerman. Calvert found the almost steady coming and going of visitors a stimulus rather than a hindrance to creative writing. In the mornings, when interruptions were few, he set to work eagerly on The Will and the Way, a romantic comedy, begun in Baltimore, which he had had to put aside during the busy months in City Hall. Without a great deal of effort, he now completed the five acts of iambic pentameter and by August, 1854," he handed the play to Tuckerman to see what could be done about a stage production.56 Duyckinck, who was gathering material on the less widely known authors of America for his projected Cyclopaedia, was glad to know about Calvert. He urged Tuckerman to send him biographical data about his Newport friend, together with extracts from his other writings. At first Tuckerman despaired of obtaining any facts. Calvert did not want to be "chronicled" or "glorified" as a writer. But Tuckerman, believing that Maryland had produced no finer specimen of the scholar and thinker, persisted, and at length Calvert agreed to jot down a few leading dates and to collect copies of his writings. Tuckerman sent these samples to Duyckinck with a letter describing their author: "He worked literally alone at Baltimore & the little brochures herewith sent, you will find contain excellent things. It was before the days of Kennedy & the popular magazines. Mr Calvert deserves great credit for independence & originality: he has set agoing many ideas now popular but once proscribed; his prose style is remarkably vigorous & his writings are full of thought. He has alluded to his pioneer character humorously in the notes I send. I think he is precisely one of those who have not had justice & whom your work will first properly memorialize. I have got a daguerretype from his bust by Powers—which I send." 68 In the meantime Tuckerman's entreaties had brought Duyckinck a letter from Calvert, accompanied by an incomplete list of his writings, with passages marked to indicate those which the author deemed "among the best, and (excuse the modesty) most characteristic." 57 The letter is valuable as a portrait and self-estimation of the writer, then just past middle life. But it emphasized with more pride than accuracy his achievements as a

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pioneer. "Were it not for this troublesome modesty," Calvert said, "I would mention as a prominent quality of the above writer an eagerness to welcome and advocate new truth. In exemplification hereof I state, that the first book published in America on Phrenology was by him in 1832. . . . The first printed mention ever made in America of the water-cure was by him in a letter from Boppart on the Rhine, Aug. 1843, published in the 'Baltimore American.'" On these two points, at least, he was wrong in his claims to priority. Charles Caldwell had first published his Elements of Phrenology at Lexington, Kentucky, in 1824, and Dr. F. Leisering, Die Tugenden des Wassers fur Gesunde und Kranhe, in Philadelphia, in December, 1842.58 "He was among the first practical supporters of the 'beard movement' in this country," the letter continued, "having braved the contempt of men and the titter of women (the latter a hard martyrdom to some temperaments) from Baltimore to Boston as early as 1843 and ever since.—In a note on page 145 Second Series of Scenes and Thoughts . . . you will see the beginning of the diplomatic 'black coat' affair, which note was extracted in the literary notice of the volume in the Tribune months before that journal advocated so cleverly the principle, and six months before M"™' Pierce and Marcy came into office." "Now Phrenology, Hydropathy, beards and the *black coat,' though not yet established in public favor, are causes in which it is worth while to have been a pioneer.—For the writer's hatred of old lies see passim Scenes & Thoughts both series, on false Aristocracy, and on that most monstrous of lies, past present and to come, the Romish hierarchy." Impressions received in his uncle's household in Antwerp in 1823 had deepened with the years, until in 1854 "the Romish hierarchy" had become a kind of obsession. But Calvert's fiery prose invective was by no means confined to attacks on the Catholic Church. The blows of which The Mercury had warned its readers in the mayoralty campaign of 1853 were aimed at sham, hypocrisy, and intolerance wherever he found them. The next victim to feel the weight of his rhetorical axe was the First Baptist Church of Newport. When he was invited by the Mechanics' Association on December 21, 1854, to speak that evening in the place of Mr. Burlingame, who had been detained by an accident on the "Boston and Providence train of cars," 59 Calvert thought of his comedy, The Will and the Way. Nothing had come of Tuckerman's effort to have it produced; here was a good opportunity to bring it before the public. With his usual good grace—this was not the

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first time he had been asked to fill another's place at the last moment— Calvert accepted the invitation. Surely there could be no objections to his play since the Association had hired the church for their course of lectures and The Will and the Way was a pleasant little comedy in the vein of the early English plays, with more than one hint of Elizabethan imagery. It deals with complications and hindrances to the fortunes of two pairs of lovers; a masked ball, a Count disguised as a clown, a banishment and recall, leading up to the denouement and happy ending, wherein the Count becomes a Duke and wins the lady of his choice, thus proving once more that "Where there's a will there's a way." Calvert read it with spirit from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church. The applause was prolonged. This was not quite so good as having his drama produced behind the footlights, but very nearly so. Once before he had brought an audience to their feet in a house of worship. He now left the building with the same sense of satisfaction with work well done that he had felt upon leaving the North Church after the Lake Erie Celebration. But the next day a storm of indignation broke. The Committee of the First Baptist Church, who had not been consulted, were incensed to hear that the evening's entertainment had been a dramatic reading. They decreed that Calvert, who was scheduled to give a lecture later in the series, should not be permitted to deliver it from their pulpit, nor was he ever to lecture again in their church. On December 30, The Mercury printed a spirited letter from Calvert addressed "To My Fellow-Citizens of Newport," which came as a kind of declaration of independence for the American drama. Its irony is not so much a defense of self as an expression of esteem for the high office of dramatist to which he felt himself called: "In the poem which I read there is not a thought or a sentiment that can wound the purest, the most delicate, moral, or religious sensibility. Nevertheless, habitually regardful of the feelings of others, I would not have read it, had I conceived, that when the week before two comic poems had been read from the same pulpit,60 without offence to any one, another comic poem . . . would, simply by being in dialogue become offensive to the majority of the proprietors of that Church. Although a condemnation founded on such a distinction is entitled to no intellectual respect, the feelings of the proprietors would have received from me a practical respect,— the respect which is due to the right of property in the church, and to the sentiment with which the church is by them regarded, however unsound that sentiment might seem to me. And after I had offended them by reading

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the poem, holding myself ever bound, under all circumstances, to repair even an unintentional wrong, I should have offered them a public apology. "But now I offer them no apology. T h e Committee of the Church have, by their intemperate and unworthy course, forfeited all right to respectful treatment from me. The vote whereby they have decreed that the Lecture engaged from me by the Committee of the Mechanics' Association, shall not be delivered in their church, is an act discreditable to the common sense as well as to the liberality of this community. It is an act springing from the limitations of ignorance, from the presumption of phairsaism,—an act intolerant, unamerican, unchristian. " I will add (what these gentlemen will not understand) that, for the man of letters, who values his high calling,—the highest on earth,—and who, working under the sacred responsibilities which that calling imposes, elaborates thoughts and sentiments for the refinement and instruction of his fellow men,—for the conscientious man of letters, writing in such a spirit and with such aims, there is not on earth an edifice, church or other, however consecrated, wherein he may not, without violating any essential proprieties, read or recite what he has written." 8 1 T h e Mechanics' Association immediately rented Bellevue Hall for Calvert's second lecture, " T h e Organization of Labor," on January 19, 1855, 62 the third in the series on socialism begun two years before. This lecture, which showed the speaker's increasing interest in Fourier, was well attended perhaps because of the unpleasantness which had preceded it. With genuine concern for the proper spreading of Fourier's doctrines in America, Calvert sought a meeting a few months later with Albert Brisbane, and on April 15, he sent [John S.?] Dwight an interesting account of the interview: "When in N . York, I saw for the first time, Brisbane. He is busy getting the 'Quatre Mouvements' translated. Hearing this, I expressed, to a common acquaintance, a strong opinion against such a publication. This being reported to him, he made an appointment to meet me, and he and his translator ( M r Clapp) 8 3 talked me into acquiescence in their project. They are to leave out much and add some notes. Still I have misgivings. Brisbane made on me the impression of a clever, ruthless, discontented . . . man. His eye looks unhappy, and wants light, and his mouth does not contradict the eye. Notwithstanding his full acquaintance with Fourier's imaginating [imaginative?] and arithmetical mysteries (he told me he had devoted years to the study of his M. S. S. never

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published) I doubt whether he has clutched the roots of the sublime discovery." 64 In 1856 Calvert brought out a book of his own on Fourier, the Introduction to Social Science,86 which comprised the three lectures on socialism delivered at Newport in 1853, 1854, and 1855. In the same year The Will and the Way and Like unto Like, a less successful three-act comedy, set in sixteenth-century Florence, were published as Comedies by Phillips, Sampson. About 1859 he tried his hand at a native comedy in a satire on hotel life, called The Gatch, or, Three Days at Newport. Although it was never published and the manuscript seems to have been lost, he later referred to it when writing to John Swinton, on January 23, 1869: "I raked out of the bottom of my tin M.S. Box, a few days ago, a comedy written a dozen years ago, and which I did not, I think, appreciate; for on reading it over I find it full of fun, good hits, variety, rapidity, a good plot, a thoroughly American character. . . . The dialogue is spirited and quickly progressive." 66 In " A National Drama," published in Putnam's Magazine, February, 1857, Calvert gives further evidence of his preoccupation with the drama. Success of the theatre depends less on native material than on universality of theme, his article maintained, and such themes could be developed only when there was intellectual and political freedom. Consequently he prophesied a great future for the American and English theatre. Meanwhile his skirmish with the First Baptist Church had not interfered with his popularity as a lecturer. On September 4, 1854, he delivered an address at the opening of the Rhode Island Art Association at Providence, which was later published as "Usefulness of Art," in Essays SEsthetical87 On July 4,1855, 88 he spoke to the children of the public schools of Newport, and on August 18, 1857,89 he addressed the American Institute of Instruction at Manchester, New Hampshire, on "Moral Education." On December 6, 1858, he spoke on "Beauty" before the Musical Institute of Newport. Owing perhaps to his frequent appearances on the lecture platforms of Newport and Providence, he was invited to deliver an original poem at the i860 Commencement Day exercises at Brown University. "Our King," 7 0 a tribute to Shakespeare, written for the occasion, was an ambitious poem of twenty-three stanzas, stiffened by awkward expressions and unusual words coined to fit the metrical pattern. Joan of Arc, a Poem in Four Books, privately printed the same year 7 1 (published in 1883), was, like the Brown Commencement poem, marked by stilted, highly artificial

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language and marred by unwieldy compounds and inappropriate diction. On July 28, i860, Calvert, as Chairman of the Committee, spoke at a meeting addressed also by Charles Eliot Norton, 72 to solicit funds to aid the patriot Garibaldi in his effort to establish Italian unity and independence. On September 3 the proceeds, a draft for $1,221, were sent to the Italian Committee of New York. 7 3 With war clouds ominously threatening his own country, Calvert, like many other speakers, now retired from the lecture platform until after the close of the conflict. Although he was publicly silent on the political issues and policies before and during the war, this silence was not the result of the scholar's detachment from events of the moment. He was profoundly stirred as he watched his native Maryland being drawn into the tide of secession. At fifty-eight he would have no place in the military service, but if he had chosen to take up his pen on its behalf, the Union cause might have gained a fairly vigorous writer. Calvert's correspondence with his old friend, J. P. Kennedy, also a Union man, reveals his high concern for the welfare of Maryland. Kennedy, who was active in a movement to save that state for the Union, had sent him a pamphlet giving information about a meeting to be held in Baltimore on January 10, 1861. Calvert's impetuous reply is dated January 5, 1861: "Nothing shows the wicked madness of the times more clearly than that there should be numbers of Maryland men ready to back and even join S. Carolina and the other Cotton-State Conspirators. That amorphous, ephemeral embryo confederacy should have a tricolor flag,—black, white and brown, the white in the middle, significative of the Empire they aim to establish on and around the gulf of Mexico, an empire of oligarchs over black slavery and brown serfs. . . . Into the mind of lunatic never entered a wilder, more baseless vision than that of prosperity and power with such material and on such a foundation. . . . For this, Maryland is to discard and trample on a Government . . . whose glory-flaming flag, consecrated by the lives and deaths of hosts of heroes and patriots, is honored and cheered in every port where a ship can enter . . . Maryland to end such a Union for amalgamation with reckless fool-hardy filibusters and African slave-traders, plunging from the top of prosperity into the abyss of ruin, from law to anarchy, and finally from freedom to despotism. . . ." Calvert felt strongly that the mind of the South had been poisoned as to the aims and designs of the Republican Party "by artful demagogues, by ambitious aspirants and sour malcontents." The progenitor of the

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poison campaign, he said, had been Franklin Pierce, and it had been "tenderly nursed by Jemima Buchanan." Calvert, a Democrat, would have taken the stump the previous October against the Republicans had he not felt that all hope of success had been averted by the state election in Pennsylvania. But he had voted for John Bell of Tennessee, candidate of the Constitutional Union Party, and was now supporting Lincoln because he felt that the Democratic federal administration had failed miserably. "But it is nonsense to call the Republicans abolitionists," he wrote. "They are, for the nonce, simply anti-democrats, and drew into their ranks tens of thousands of democrats, disgusted with misrule at Washington. The success of Republicanism is not owing to anti-slavery: it is owing to the failure of the democratic federal administration,—failure caused by corruption, and one-sidedness and an ultra pro-slavery policy. The strength of Republicanism is negative, not positive. Had the administration of Buchanan been honest and able, the Republicans would have been badly beaten. Coming in as they do, a new party in a minority, they must be conservative and temperate. To obstruct the inauguration of Lincoln would be the greatest political crime that could be committed, a breach of faith, a falling from honor, a suicidal iniquity without parallel in the annals of the Anglo-Saxon race." 74 These were strong words, but Calvert was not averse to having them published in the Baltimore American, as from a native and former resident of Maryland, if Kennedy thought that they would help the cause of the Union. A few days later he began to regret that he had given this permission and he was relieved to hear that his friend had decided not to publish any of the letter. On January 23, when the political situation began to look brighter, he wrote again to Kennedy, referring to his earlier letter: "A few days after it was despatched I began to hope you would do as you have done; for besides the good reasons you give for not publishing it, it was written hastily, under excitement and was too slashy in its tone and some of its expressions." He had read reports of Kennedy's Union meeting held in Baltimore on January 10 and felt that Maryland had recovered her senses since that meeting. "In case of a division of North & South, Maryland must be with the North," Calvert insisted, "with or without her will." 75 After Maryland made its decision, Calvert seems to have been silent on the issue. He had many old friends in the South who sympathized with the Confederacy; it was not easy for him to make public utterances on the subject. Able lecturer though he was, he spoke no flaming words for or

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against slavery; despite his excursion into politics he remained silent during the political campaign which carried the Republican Party into power. With a sense of relief, he turned once more to poetry and to the writing of prose untouched by the disturbing question of the time.

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was now sixty years old and had done "nothing yet for immortality." Public recognition was still, as it always had been, his dearest ambition.1 Consequently, he worked in the early 1860s with a vigor that surpassed that of his earlier efforts. The Newport summer season, once so entertaining and stimulating for him, became less attractive during the Civil War, and gradually lost its appeal altogether. Withdrawing from the larger gatherings, he saw only a small circle of friends. He was thus able to work almost uninterruptedly during both summer and winter. In the ten years from 1863 to 1873, he published a larger number of books and articles, covering a wider range of subjects, than in any previous decade. The German influence, which had predominated in the earlier period, fell oil for several years, while he wrote The Gentleman, a leisurely, philosophical essay in the tradition of Lamb; Arnold and André, a poetical drama which had been started in Baltimore years before; several volumes of poetry containing only faint echoes of the German inspiration, and a number of translations and criticisms of French and Italian literature. At the close of the decade he returned to Goethe with vigorous interest. In spite, however, of the increased volume of Calvert's work, these years did not bring the full recognition which he desired; he was always out of joint with his time. When pioneering in Baltimore, he had been too far ahead of his contemporaries to win their sympathy and approval; and later, when a new voice like Whitman's sounded, Calvert, still clinging to the German romanticism which he had labored so long to popularize, was too old-fashioned to appreciate Whitman's worth as a spokesman for the new America. It was Calvert's misfortune that although in his youth he had plunged bravely into the churning waters of New England transcendentalism, in his later years, he was reluctant to touch the outermost ripples of the new literary tide which was breaking over America in the 1860s. Frequently at odds with the critics, often suspecting ALVERT

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that they did not take the trouble to try to understand him, he withdrew more and more to the sanctuary of his Newport study to pamper a grudge, or to spend proud, lonely hours with the idea that his tastes were a little too erudite and refined for his contemporaries to appreciate. The Gentleman (1863), his first publication during the Civil War, was obviously formulated much earlier. The terms "gentlemanhood" and "ladyhood" (reminiscent of Carlyle's criticism of Goethe's Sammtliche Wer\e in 1828) 2 suggest that the work may have had its inception in the Baltimore period; the Scenes and Thoughts in Europe (1846) had dealt with manners and aristocracy, but a more immediate stimulus may have been the lecture given at Newport by Theodore Parker, January 22, 1852,3 on the "False and True Idea of a Gentleman." Far removed from the issue of the Civil War, The Gentleman seems to have been written as an escape from that conflict. During Calvert's lifetime it was one of the most widely read of his works, the only one which achieved any degree of popularity.4 Although discursive, it is a spirited and readable treatment of the idea of "gentleman." A history of the word itself passes easily into a discussion of the characteristics of the true gentleman, his moral and aesthetic qualities, with examples from fact and fiction, and concludes with chapters bearing such subheadings as "Manners," "Honor," "Vulgarity," and "Fashion." Its pages show that the author had been reading Shakespeare, Sidney, Goethe, Lamb, and "the learned, invaluable Richardson," whose Dictionary, under the heading gent gave "more than eighty citations out of English authors, from Robert of Glocester and Piers Plowman to Gray and Gibbon." Nor are the Ancients—Plato and Socrates and Marcus Aurelius—neglected, but Calvert's ideal gentleman is portrayed as essentially a Christian product. The high exemplar of the gentleman is "He, who . . . poured a love so warm and divine, that it became for mankind a consecration; who . . . carried a humility so noble, a sympathy so fraternal, that he looked down upon no man, not even a malefactor . . . in whose look and word and action were supreme dignity and beauty and charity, and infinite consolation; of whom 'old honest Deckar' says,— " 'The best of men That ere wore earth about him was a sufferer, A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit The first true gentleman that ever breathed.' " 5 The Christian Examiner 8 reviewed The Gentleman favorably, and praise came from other sources also.7 But the most highly appreciated comment

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was that of a personal friend, J. P. Kennedy. Calvert wrote to him on July 20, 1863: " A thousand thanks for your cordial words about 'The Gentleman.'—It is worth while writing a book, when one receives such testimonials of its value. I have received many warm acknowledgements from literary friends and others to whom I sent the volume, but not one that is more gratifying to me than your hearty note." 8 In 1864 the third and fourth cantos of Cabiro were published, a continuation of the satirical poem in ottava rima begun in Baltimore in 1840. The new cantos aimed their satire chiefly at shallow religion, but the book contains much in a lighter vein. A stanza to Dante showed an interest in Italian literature which Calvert was to develop later; the lines to Joseph Green Cogswell and the Astor Library paid tribute to a profession seldom celebrated in verse; an occasional bit of imagery, such as that depicting a horseback ride on a spring morning, indicated that the author had not lost his skill in delicate, cameolike detail; T h e blue air, So full of prime and daylight, breathed about His head with a mild vigor, as it were T h e playmate of far summits, and the shout H a d helped of billows, from their ocean-lair Upon the shore with sunny laughter breaking, A n d shook the grass where violets are a-making. 9

Arnold and André: an Historical Drama 1 0 was published in the same year with Cabiro. A fragment of this work, Calvert's only historical drama using the American scene, had appeared in The Southern Literary Messenger11 and had been reprinted with one hundred new lines in the Miscellany of Verse and Prose, in 1840. Despairing at that time of ever bringing the subject to completion because of its "dramatic barrenness," he had laid it away for many years. Then he took it up again, finished it, and on November 17, 1863, wrote to Henry Tuckerman: "I have just been writing an Aesthetic preface to Arnold and André and will publish it soon, if on consultation with Little Brown & 00 we think it might circulate. . . . I think these times are favorable to A & A.—" 1 2 Although the period of the Civil War might seem a suitable and profitable time for bringing Arnold and André before the public, the historical story which at first glance appears to be highly dramatic, has defects that are fatal to stage presentation. It not only has two equally important characters, a traitor and a spy, but it also raises the question of poetic justice if the actual facts are followed. Arnold dies a peaceful death in England, while

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Andre, who wins the sympathy of the audience, is hanged. And yet, in spite of these hindrances to effective dramatic treatment, the story of young Major André, bearing himself so nobly in adversity, has again and again tempted the playwright to undertake the impossible. William Dunlap's André, of 1789, the first complete play on the André theme, 13 and probably unknown to Calvert, contrasts sharply with Arnold and André. Perhaps because Dunlap was a veteran stage manager his version is superior to Calvert's for stage presentation. Since he knew what audiences looked for he began the story where Calvert ended it. In the earlier version, Arnold's treason has already been discovered and André has been taken prisoner as a spy when the play opens. Dunlap also invents the character of young Bland, devoted friend of André, to bring out the latter's noble qualities and adds a human touch in Mrs. Bland's efforts to set her husband free. And there is a final stroke of craftsmanship in the love episode with Honora, Andre's sweetheart, who, contrary to the historical record, comes to him from across the seas to plead for his release. Calvert, with truer poetic feeling, ends the play with the signing of the death sentence; Mrs. Arnold is left in ignorance of her husband's intentions; and there is no morbid dwelling on the degradation of the gallows. Dunlap's André was objectively conceived; Calvert's was subjective, analytic, symbolic. Dunlap's lines are stirring, but the older playwright has nowhere the character analysis which Calvert achieved in his portrayal of Arnold's argument with his conscience (Act II, Scenes 1 and 3). The soliloquy in Scene 3 not only contrasts effectively with the encounter between Arnold and André which immediately follows, but also gives one of the finest passages in the poem. The setting is the base of Long Clove Mountain on the western shore of the river, several miles below Stony Point. With true artistic touch, Calvert uses light and dark to heighten the contrast. Arnold is alone on the shore. It is the twenty-second of September, the time, an hour and a half after midnight. Arnold begins his long Byronesque meditation : I like to be alone and in the night. Darkness and my deep purpose are attuned. . . He is interrupted by the entrance of Smith with André, who does not see Arnold, but starts his soliloquy, which is full of the imagery of light : Moments there are when thought is so ablaze With all the fires that have inflamed a life,

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That memory is one great grasping light, Flashed on the present from the total past. . . . My mind's aglow with happiest light, possessed As by illuminated memories. There, they are fading, fading fast, like to th' ebb From blissful clouds of golden beams at evening. What a vast waking dream! so strangely true,— A sudden blossomy limning of my life By beauty's cleansing brush. . . . 1E This and other passages show that Calvert's long familiarity with Schiller's romantic dramas had begun to bear fruit. His writing was now not merely interpretative or imitative, as in the adaptations and translations of an earlier period, but somewhat original and imaginative, the result of a long process of assimilation. As Brander Matthews points out in his introduction to Dunlap's André™ Calvert's version "has only the outward semblance of a play, and is dramatic only in its presentation of character. It lacks both the unity and the rapidity of action needed for stage success." When reading it as a poem, however, Matthews found "strength of diction and elevation of style" in many passages, and "simple dignity" in the work as a whole. 17 When Arnold and André appeared in 1864, the Civil War had a full year to run, but in that interval, Calvert's thoughts turned not toward the events then coming to their climax, but to rather obscure metaphysical contemplation—a withdrawing inward, seeking for a satisfying solution to questions which such a struggle always poses for the thoughtful mind. This period of literary quiescence lasted until 1866, when a thin volume of poetry appeared, and First Years in Europe, a book of travel which attempted to recapture from journal jottings some of the charmed moments of youth. Anyta and Other Poems, published by E. P. Dutton in 1866, comprises three sections: "Anyta," a sequence of lyrics inspired by Henrietta Marin,18 one of Mrs. Calvert's grandnieces; twenty-one "Other Poems," strongly flavored with transcendentalism; and fourteen sonnets. In the second section, themes of life, death, the soul, love, nature, art, emotion, and thought are treated mystically, often didactically. In leafing through the 170 pages of this volume the reader today is aware of the metrical facility, but the not infrequent lines of genuine beauty often go unnoticed among the more conscious poetic efforts which are over-refined in their stilted phrases. Concrete images are too few, although there is evidence that Calvert was a

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careful observer of nature as he looked out from his window on summer days or watched the fury of the storm that swept his island's coast in winter. " T h e hot earth pulses silently," "fragrant flakes, which are the rose," "the moon's long path across the sea," perhaps have some felicity, and there is strong pictorial quality in such expressions as Gigantic playmates of the storms, Hoar oaks, that help the tempest shout, "tempests that through foundering cordage blow," and "Revenge" toothed "in a long, sinewy, jagged jaw." 1 9 Many of the lyrics included in the volume had undoubtedly been written and laid aside during the Civil War. "Previsions" touched the war theme, but these lines had been written in 1857: Yet shall be waked the slumbering years By the quick tramp of guilty war, And blameless eyes be scorched by tears Wrung from new depths of old despair.20 The mystical element is stronger in "Veils," which depicts the struggle of the soul to push beyond the limits of finite conceptions to new horizons where God may be seen face to face. In "Love," nature is treated as a symbol, in the manner of the transcendentalists: The starry mazes peopling heaven are gifts Of Love, and by their mystic light we read The cipher of the eternal hand. . . . 2 1 Back in 1852, when he had written " A Monody on the Death of Horatio Greenough," 2 2 Calvert began to give serious thought to the possibility of using the sonnet form. H e had written in his Scenes and Thoughts in Europe: " A sonnet should be like a spring, in being clear and deep in proportion to its surface; and like a whirlpool, in a certain self-involved movement." 2 3 The names which attracted him as the subjects for sonnets were great names of all time: Homer, Dante, Luther, Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Goethe. True, there was a sonnet to Winfield Scott, and one to Major Robert Anderson, but they were "great" in the limited perspective of the Civil War. Calvert never lost himself in the jungle of minor contemporaries. Like Carlyle he was concerned with greatness of soul, not with the "clothes" wherewith the man was girded. The universality of his themes shows that his taste was sound. Of the

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sonnets in the 1866 volume, the one to Dante is perhaps the best; it is particularly interesting as a tribute when America was just becoming aware of Italian literature. The Gentleman strengthened slightly the literary reputation which he was so eager to establish, but Cabiro and Arnold and André passed almost unnoticed. And Anyta, for all its delicate imagery, attracted scarcely more attention. There was one critic, however, who understood and admired it. As soon as Calvert read this notice in The Boudoir, he felt certain that at last one of his books had fallen into the hands of a sensitive, fair-minded critic, presumably outside the circle of his own personal acquaintance. He wrote at once to thank John Swinton, the editor, and to ask who the reviewer was. 24 Calvert was pleased to learn that the editor had written the review himself. He knew of John Swinton as the brother of William Swinton, popular author of American textbooks whom he had met in Newport some years before; he knew of him also as an associate of Henry J. Raymond on The New Yorf{ Times, and he realized with satisfaction that Swinton was in a position to do a great deal for him as a press agent if his interest could be sufficiently aroused. The next move was to write thanks to the editor of The Boudoir, with a promise to call upon him in New York as soon as the opportunity offered. The meeting did not take place for many months, but a literary correspondence was begun which led to a permanent friendship. Edward P. Mitchell of The Sun has left a vivid portrait of the persevering Scot who came to Montreal as a printer's apprentice in 1842 and by i860, at the age of thirty-one, had worked his way to the post of chief of the editorial staff of The New Yor^ Times. Mitchell described Swinton as "a soft-spoken, softly stepping combination of truculence and amiability. H e had a bristling mustache, a likable though rather impudent facial expression, and eyes that protruded so much when he was excited that he could almost see behind him, like a giraffe." 2 5 Yet so direct and straightforward was he in all his dealings that Henry J. Raymond once said he was the only man he knew who had no axes to grind. 26 What it was that Swinton liked in Anyta and Other Poems it is difficult to say. 27 Perhaps it was a note of sincerity which struck a harmonizing chord in his own blunt nature; perhaps a stanza from "The Demon," a long didactic poem in which man frees his soul in the service of his fellow men, had appealed to his growing interest in socialism:

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O! the deep pious ecstasy, When, from the smaller self upflown, We firmly sail on currents blown Love-lifted towards humanity.28 Or perhaps Swinton had merely seen in Calvert's book another opportunity for championing an obscure author who had had the audacity to write about "Love" and "Veils" and " A Star" when what America wanted was humor to help it forget the tragic past, or romantic tales of the Far West to strengthen its hopes of a glorious future. Constantly defending unpopular men and causes, Swinton must have filled his letters with a passionate gusto. Even before they met, and in spite of the twenty-six years' difference in their ages, Calvert found in his correspondence with the fiery Scot a companionship more stimulating than that which many of his older friendships had brought. As chief of staff of a great daily newspaper, Swinton symbolized for Calvert much of what he himself had hoped to achieve before he was forty—public recognition, the opportunity to form opinion, wide contacts with men and affairs. At first he may have been a little flattered that one in such an imporant position should admire his poems, but he soon came to have the highest regard for Swinton's judgment in other matters as well,—his independence of thought, his broad humanitarianism. Their correspondence had scarcely passed the polite introductory stages before Calvert realized that he valued this man's friendship even more than his critical judgment. A postscript to his third letter indicates that he had already assumed a paternal attitude toward his young correspondent, who was indeed young enough to have been his son: "The late writing is bad," Calvert warned, "but the help you try to get from a cigar is like the help that Mephistopheles gave to Faust— Your life is valuable, more so than most lives; waste it not in late night work." a 9 Swinton, perhaps touched by the novelty and genuineness of such solicitude, continued the correspondence—and the smoking—with fervor. In November, First Years in Europe came from the press of William V . Spencer in Boston. It contains the story of Calvert's early travels and comprises our chief source of information about his life from 1823 to 1826. In writing it he had before him old diaries and letters which had been written on the spot. Passages quoted directly from these sources, or changed slightly, retain the charm and buoyancy of youthful enthusiasm. An increasing

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interest in social questions expressed itself in the regret over his failure to call upon Fourier in Paris, and there were fiery outbursts against the hypocrisies of organized religion. Many of its pages are so heavily inlaid with the abstract metaphysical speculations in which Calvert later became involved that their style is noticeably stiffer than that of the contemporary letters written to his uncle from Bonn, Weimar, and Edinburgh. This curious mixture of platitudinous reflection with youthful exuberance accounts for such widely differing critical appraisals as John R. Dennett's 3 0 in The Nation (February 21, 1867) and Bliss Perry's in The American Scholar (May, 1932). 31 Dennett called it "twaddle," and accused its author of being a "morbidly epexegetical person," while Perry found Calvert's description of Weimar "as delightful as the pictures of Weimar drawn later by Thackeray and George Eliot." Henry T . Tuckerman who doubtless received a presentation copy as soon as First Years in Europe came from the press, promptly wrote a review of it which occupied more than a column in The Times.32 He gave it high praise among works of its kind, commending especially the portraits of German professors and other personalities that belonged to the era "before the days of the railroads and Prussian annexation," when Weimar was at its palmiest and Edinburgh boasted her choicest literary circle. Much of the review warned against "aimless wandering" abroad, where hundreds of Americans are already "devoured with ennui." Stressing the wealth of American resources and urging American travelers to beware of vulgar extravagance while abroad, it recommended Calvert's work as an excellent preparation for sane and serviceable travel. Unfortunately Calvert was not sufficiently critical of his own work to realize that the two styles represented in First Years were incompatible. If the entire book had been written with the spontaneity of the best passages it would doubtless be read today as one of the most spirited of travel books. As it is, the chapters on Gottingen and Weimar 38 glow with youthful eagerness, while the pages on Antwerp recreate scenes scarcely to be found elsewhere in American writing and depict a phase of Old World culture which has since passed away. In spite of its merits, First Years in Europe did not cause as much stir as Calvert had anticipated. Disappointed, but still hopeful, he wrote to Swinton in February, 1867, to ask his opinion of an unpublished poem of seven hundred lines in ottava rima which he had called "An Episode: A poem for the times." Although they had not yet met, he felt that their

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friendship was on a footing firm enough to warrant taking the busy editor's time. With his friend Tom Hazard, Calvert had been dabbling in spiritualism, and the new poem reflected this interest. He later explained to Swinton that he hoped the interweaving of the "demi-monde" element in it with that of spiritualism would make it read widely enough to bring out under its "matronage" the Joan of Arc, who was "too single-minded to make her way unbacked by something modern and stirring." He was now openly seeking public acclaim, but he protested that although he called it " A poem for the times," he had not been thinking of the times or of pleasing them when he wrote it. It was "only when I began to copy it finally that it occurred to me that this addition to the title . . . would be temporarily helpful." 34 The correspondence of 1867-1868 is concerned mostly with the publication of Ellen: a Poem for the Times. This change of title was suggested by Swinton as an improvement over the colorless "Episode." In many other ways the generous editor came to the author's assistance; since Calvert disliked the mechanics of publishing, Swinton relieved him of the details of printing, helped him to find a publisher and shared the burden of proofreading. In the almost regular exchange of letters, personal reflections on philosophy and literature often mingled with business details. When the book was finally printed and the correspondence began to lapse, Calvert felt that there was something missing in his routine. The sight of Swinton's familiar handwriting every few days had come to mean a great deal to him when he made his daily trip to the Newport Reading Room for his mail. He wrote on April 26: "Even a good thing should not be allowed to get a too tight hold on us, especially if it be one which, from the nature of things, must be temporary. I had got so into the habit of receiving a note from you every five or six days, and of counting upon it as an enjoyment (which I dont think was entirely selfish), that for the past ten days there has been a void which daily craved filling." 3 5 But Calvert soon had much to occupy his mind. The first edition of Ellen, printed anonymously, reached him on April 29. The printer's errors were numerous. Some of them were exceedingly stupid, especially those which attempted to improve upon the wording, which Calvert had labored meticulously to perfect. There would certainly have to be a second edition. The correspondence flourished again. The reviews of the first Ellen were not complimentary. Swinton himself,

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writing for The New Yorf^ Times, pointed out its most serious error, an obscurity arising not from the thought, but from long and involved sentences, elaborate imagery, and a peculiarity in the use of words and phrases. Swinton here put his finger on the secret of the mediocrity of much of Calvert's writing. The peculiarity of diction which had marked his earlier efforts produced in Ellen an effect which was at times almost absurd. Archaisms are partly responsible, but there are also inappropriate metaphors, awkward compounds, inverted word order, dull Latinisms, and above all, the inability to find, or perhaps to recognize, the right word to express the meaning. Any who have the courage to follow the author through the tangled thicket as far as stanza LXXII will find this: Beneath the quiet roof a household dwelt, In home's sweet troth intwined with triple ties: Grandparents with grandchildren were a belt That smooth embraced in common smiles or sighs What father and dear mother keenly felt. And now, warm sorrow surging in all eyes, On them, the centres, heaviest hung the gloom Of all, that followed each from room to room. Despite all this, Swinton felt that Ellen would "at once be recognized by the finer order of minds as one of the purest, clearest and sweetest of poems . . . wrought out by a hand whose texture is as exquisite, and whose touch as chaste, as the ethereal elements it deals with." 36 Obviously Swinton was not being facetious. Some of the stanzas contained picturesque details and were not unpleasing to the ear. Ellen, like the poems in Anyta, is strongest in imagery of the sea; the contrasting moods of storm and sunlight portrayed are doubtless inspired by the coast at Newport. The passages Calvert chose for the advertisements of the poem contain some of the best poetical images. Horatio, who has been tricked into visiting a house of ill-fame, is talking to Ellen, whom he is to rescue. The cadence of a song comes to their ears, through an open window, a lonely refrain, which Calvert likens to the rocking of waves on the beach: As if one heeded, on a silent shore, After a season of dismasting storms, A corpse, white, beautiful,—from the sea's core Singly upthrown of all its swallowed swarms,— And saw it rocked, and gently more and more As the waves calmed, and they, now stilled of harms,

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Licked it all tenderly, the heaving sea Softly uplifting it repentantly.37 "Blissful" craft, "subjacent" lair, and "unsavory" death, in Stanza II, are just a few instances of Calvert's inability to select the right word; the figure of the "belt" in Stanza L X X I I is a conspicuous example of his many unsuitable metaphors; "swarms," though not objectionable in its context in LII, is curiously inappropriate when compounded with "angel" in L X I V : Oh, 'tis a sight to summon angel-swarms Down from their purged home, through threatened earth . . . Throughout the poem, the delicate and precise imagery, perhaps due to the poet's early acquaintance with French, the "exquisite texture," which seemed so promising, is overshadowed by a Germanic heaviness and obscurity from which Calvert was never able to free himself. That he realized the obscurity of Ellen is evidenced by the fact that before the second edition was published he advocated sending to "some well-disposed critic" a kind of "argument" to explain it.38 Besides the Ellen one other work came from Calvert's pen in 1867. Some of the Thoughts of Joseph ]oubert contained fragmentary translations from the French philosopher, preceded by a biographical sketch. Although the translator was as well equipped for this task as he had been for his German translations, and his work was carefully executed, the book made little stir. An author who had not been widely read in France or in England had little chance of becoming popular in America; Calvert's hopes of winning public recognition were again deferred. Directly below Swinton's criticism of the anonymous Ellen, in The New Yorf^ Times, another review, probably from the pen of the same critic, praised the wisdom and high idealism of Joubert and commended Calvert as "one of our finest American scholars and idealists." "The translator," he wrote, "has done his work in a way which was only possible to an intellect similar in structure and scope to that of Joubert; and in the preliminary notice of the author he has furnished some admirable hints upon the character of his genius. He deserves the thanks of American scholars." Despite this praise, neither Ellen nor Joubert was a financial success. The loss in the case of Ellen was, however, of slight concern to Calvert. On May 3, 1867, he wrote cheerfully to Swinton, who had been anxious about it: "Dont think of it. In 5th Avenue I should be a poor man; but for an author I am almost rich, that is, I have income from capital sufficient to

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make mc entire master of my time, and to be able to write, or read, or think (so called) all day as the mood takes me—if I content myself with modest expenditures, which I do most heartily." 3 9 T w o weeks later, Calvert called on Swinton in New York. Although they had been corresponding for nearly a year, this was their first meeting. Having once felt the force of Swinton's personality, Calvert was no longer content to let the friendship develop wholly through correspondence. Toward the end of May, when his strawberry beds were white with blossoms that promised "berries 2 to 3 inches in circumference," he sent Swinton a cordial invitation to come to Newport. "I shall count on your younger back to help me to pick them," he wrote; "for strange as it may sound a long experience convinces me that strawberries are picked with the back." 40 Swinton, who left soon after for a trip to the West, could not accept, but on June 20, Calvert jogged his memory about the Newport visit. Pink tints were already peeping through the leaves of his strawberry plants, and in a fortnight he would have quarts of large, ripe berries.41 Early in July Calvert made the travel arrangements more definite by inviting his friend to breakfast and warning him to bring an overcoat for protection against winds of the Sound. He tempted him further with a bit of philosophical musing to be continued on the Newport veranda. Calvert had been studying Malherbe instead of mingling with the crowds of summer visitors, and had been experiencing after-effects which to him were more precious than anything the gay drawing rooms had to offer. An account of Malherbe by the Marquis of Landsdowne had particularly attracted his attention: "I have seen what I did not believe could exist," the Marquis had written; "a man whose soul is absolutely free from fear and hope, and who is nevertheless full of life and warmth. Nothing can disturb his tranquility; nothing is necessary to him, and he takes a lively interest in all that is good." "The picture riveted me the more closely," Calvert wrote, "because some time since I found myself, for a few days, in a state of feeling akin to this. Not only was my daily burden of anxious thoughts lifted off, but I felt as if it could not be re-imposed. It lasted only a little while this state, which is a heaven on earth. I am convinced that for myself, I do of myself and out of myself make my heaven or my hell.—But we will I trust talk{ this in a few days." 4 2 Swinton, unable to resist the unusually tempting blend of strawberries and French philosophy, spent a week end at Newport toward the close of July. He and Calvert went swimming together, but Swinton did not take

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kindly to the surf; he preferred to sit on the beach, watching the waves lapping the sand, or breaking in spray at the base of cliffs, the wet mica on rocks and boulders catching the sun and sending up a thousand little points of dancing light. He planned to write a description of it for The Times when he went home. After Swinton had gone back to New York, Calvert looked for a copy of the paper containing the Newport sketch. When it did not come, he concluded that the notice had not been written; then he invited his friend to come for "a second survey of our little world by the sea," so that the projected article would surely be completed. Obviously, he was glad of an excuse to repeat the invitation so soon: "Start tomorrow evening if it suits you," he urged. "If you dont come down (or up) to morrow, let me have a few lines within two or three days, just to say how you are." 43 The frequency with which Calvert invited Swinton to come to his home during the fall of 1867 indicates how much this friendship meant to him. The impulsive young editor was almost like a son, kind and dependable, but never afraid to speak his mind. Watching the course of events with some apprehension in those days of reconstruction after the Civil War, Calvert relied heavily on Swinton's judgment for reassurance. It would be comforting to talk with him often about the perplexing questions which affected the New South and his own native State. A letter from Elizabeth Calvert to her brother, General George Hume Steuart, of Baltimore, September 20, reflects the uncertainty with which she and her husband had been contemplating this future: "We are feeling in better spirits about public affairs. In so many places radical influence seems to be peeling off a little, which signifies that all is not 'rotten in the state.' "My confidence in the people is reviving. If the President is only firm things must mend, but alas for good and sound men such as existed in our revolution! Websters friends say if he was here now 'the radicals would hang him'—Our Saviour was crucified . . . "Hurra for old Maryland! No niggar government there. We have got the news of 20,000 majority for the conservatives. Poor creatures! I pity them but they are doomed. It can not last long their reign . . . and nothing indicates more decidedly their insecurity than the howlings of their so-called friends, who only want power thro' the negro votes to subvert the government, supreme court and all. Their days are numbered I trust, too." 44

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On October 14, Calvert urged Swinton to come and share a magnificent autumn. 45 When he finally arrived in November, the foliage had probably lost some of its flaming glory but it was always a pleasure to Calvert to take his friends around the town when "the season" was over and Newport was free of the temporary glitter of the summer colony. As soon as his guest had breakfasted, Calvert hitched up the old black horse for a drive along the sunny, windblown coast. Autumn clouds scurrying across the sky mottled the beaches with their long shadows, and breakers rising out of the sea like walls of transparent jade rolled slowly in to break in creamy ripples over the hard-packed sand. The afternoons were spent in the study, a small square room, its walls lined from floor to ceiling with books brought back from Europe. Here sitting by the open hearth they talked of Joubert and Malherbe and Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, who was "better even than family prayers." 4 6 When the conversation drifted to more personal matters, he may have brought out a manuscript essay on "Dante and his Latest Translators," and read it aloud to Swinton, to get his criticism. On such occasions, Calvert again experienced something of that pure tranquility of soul which he had earlier described as "a heaven on earth." On the return voyage Swinton missed his cane. Calvert made him a present of a new one "of tough grape-vine of Newport growth . . . a peaceful support and a weapon formidable and unbreakable." A four-page letter included a minute description of the cane then on its way by express, a reference to the last Edinburgh Review, with its fine paper on the "revelations" of the fifteen volumes of Napoleon's published letters, "a clencher for the cut-throat Corsican," and a paragraph on his own doings: He had "gone con amore into an article on Sainte-Beuve," he said, "not so long as the one on Dante, but sprightly and variegated. S-B. is a rich subject, so full of life, thought, vivacity, variety, good sense, enthusiasm, clear criticism and broad tolerance." 47 Encouraged by Swinton's approval, Calvert had sent the article on Dante to Putnam's Magazine. E. A . Duyckinck had also read it, and largely through his influence Putnam had accepted it. "Dante and his Latest Translators," which appeared in the issue of February, 1868, was a pioneer work in Dante criticism in America. 48 In 1868 critical writings on Dante were rare in this country. There had been earlier attempts to make the Florentine poet better known, such as the lecture which Longfellow gave in New York before he left to try the water cure, but with his translation of the Divina Commedia in 1867 and the publication of T . W. Par-

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sons's translation of the Inferno,*9 the same year, Italian scholarship in America received its first great impetus. To readers today the interest of Calvert's article lies not so much in the evaluation of the Italian poet—Calvert ranked him below Milton or Goethe, because of "southern sensuousness"—as in the exposition of the author's theory of translation and its application as the criterion to the three translators on whose works he now passed judgment. It was his first written statement on the subject since the scattered remarks in the prefaces to Don Carlos and the Schiller-Goethe Correspondence. Several new points in the theory of translation were now set down: the translation of a poem must be poetry but the translator need not preserve the rhyme form of the original; a prose translation of a poem is "an aesthetic impertinence"; the translator must transport himself into the mental altitude of the poet; then, if possible, he should utter the thoughts of the original in a still higher key. As to the relative merits of the three translations discussed, Calvert felt that J. D. Dayman's, in terza rima, 50 was more successful than Longfellow's, not because it followed the original rhyme pattern, but because it did not attempt to preserve a line-for-line allegiance to Dante as did Longfellow's unrhymed groups of three. He felt that T . W. Parsons's version in quatrains was also superior to a line-for-line reading. Calvert was applying the same criteria as he did to his own translations of German poetry, and included a few passages, in English, from his own pen, by way of illustration—the inscription over the gate of Hell at the beginning of Canto III of The Inferno, the Francesca story, and the last thirty lines of the Ugolino incident; from The Paradiso, the figure of the lark from Canto X X and the opening of the last Canto. He cut the number of syllables in the line to eight to duplicate more faithfully the rhythmic pattern of the eleven short syllables in Dante's line. All of Calvert's excerpts are in rhymed octosyllabic verse, except the Ugolino story, of which he said: "It is unrhymed; for that terrible tale can dispense in English with soft echoes at the end of the line." Meanwhile Calvert's essay on "The Beautiful" had been accepted, probably by Putnam's Magazine, but the editors had changed the title to "Utility of Beauty," a change to which the author objected strongly in a letter to E. A. Duyckinck. "This is a letting down of the title, so that prosaic people may be taken by it. . . . 'The Beautiful' is, I conceive, the highest title a literary essay can have, and I dont wish it altered. Is it too much to ask you to have the original title restored, on the announcing

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cover, as well as the head of the paper when printed?" 6 1 The article on "The Beautiful" was published later in Calvert's Essays JEsthetical, in 1875. This experience may have resulted in a temporarily strained relationship with Putnam's, but the definite break did not come until some years later. In September, 1868, Putnam's published Calvert's poem, "Threescore," written in 1865, an interesting contrast to Emerson's "Terminus" which had appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, January, 1867. Both poets were born in the same year, but Calvert's "Threescore," gave no hint of "taking in sail," no thought of economizing "the failing river": AH earthly time is fagot smoke; The soul is an upspringing flame, That, kindled, mounts to whence it came, And frees itself from yearly yoke.

And never in those earlier days, When joy was bold and hopes were new, Were rainbows of such heavenly hue, The future so with life ablaze.

The following month, October, 1868, Putnam's published Calvert's "Sainte-Beuve, the Critic," one of the earliest articles on the subject to appear in an American periodical. The essay attempted to make the French author better known by including translations from his writings, as well as by setting forth his theory of criticism and giving "a just evaluation of the man." Calvert was drawn naturally to this writer, whose verse had been called "Wordsworth's poetry in French dress," and who was also a strong admirer of Goethe. Then, too, Calvert heartily approved the biographical method of the French critic, who held it was almost impossible to form a judgment of a literary production apart from the man. But Sainte-Beuve had his faults, chief among them, Calvert thought, being a French love of glory. Dazzled by the military triumphs of Napoleon, Sainte-Beuve was blind to his weaknesses. The old hatred for Napoleon, inbred since childhood, was to crop out more than once in Calvert's later years; yet, on the whole, he had only praise for Sainte-Beuve, and this, too, when the great French author had scarcely been heard of in America. Calvert sent Sainte-Beuve a copy of Putnam's containing his essay and received a grateful reply dated "Paris, Dec bre 1868, No. 11, Rue Mont Parnasse." This reply was printed in Calvert's Essays Msthetical;52 in 1875,

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but, so far as I know, it appears here, for the first time, in English translation: "Oh! This time I did, indeed, receive the very kind and very discriminating portrait of the critic.85 How shall I express the gratitude which I feel for so much care, such understanding consideration, such concern for being at the same time both pleasing and juste. You could surely have been more insistent on the variations, the incongruities, and the momentary faltering of thought and of judgment through the series of volumes. It is always a matter of astonishment to me, and this time as much as ever, to see how a friendly reader and a judge of taste succeeds in drawing a picture, unified and consistent, of what appears to me, in memory only, as the course of a long stream which runs, spreading a little at random as it flows, and continually deserting its banks. Such portraits as this one which you have been kind enough to present to me give me a point of support and make me truly believe in myself. And when I think of the great number of minds to whom you present me in such a favorable magisterial light in the new world, so full of youth and future, I take on a sort of pride and courageous confidence, as if already in the presence of posterity. . . ." 54 To Calvert, now in the middle sixties, the letter from Sainte-Beuve brought deep satisfaction. During the past decade he had seen a gradual widening of the gulf between himself and his American critics. He had been nettled time and again by what seemed to him to be their negligence and hostility and obtuseness; Swinton alone had remained faithful. To be told now by one whom he considered the greatest critic of all time that he had given him a "courageous confidence, as if already in the presence of posterity" was just what he needed to give him new confidence in himself. Sainte-Beuve's letter was a signal of hope from across the seas. And when, in November of the following year, Swinton sent him the Tribune's notice of Sainte-Beuve's death, Calvert replied with genuine sorrow and disappointment: "From Paris I received 'Le Gaulois' with their notice of him, and on the very day he died a friend here gave me an admirable photograph of him. One of the anticipated possibilities in a dream I occasionally indulge in of revisiting Europe, was to see and shake hands with SainteBeuve." 5 5 Stimulated by Sainte-Beuve's letter, Calvert took up his pen with new zeal. His friendship with John Swinton afforded an opportunity of publishing some short pieces in The Galaxy in 1869 and 1870. These "Nebulae," written to lighten Swinton's burden as editor of that periodical, were

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anonymous articles on such varied subjects as "Gurowski," "Brougham," "Sainte-Beuve," and "Ventilation." 5 8 Comprising a department which was a predecessor of "The Easy Chair" and "The Lion's Mouth" of a later day, they possessed both felicity of phrasing and the informality of random jottings. Calvert composed them so easily and sent them so frequently that they often piled up on the desk of the editor far beyond his ability to use them. The Galaxy also printed some of his poems, "Mid-Night StreetScene," in May, and "Without the Stars," in September, 1869, but most of his contributions were in prose. On September 15, he thanked Swinton for "the nebulous check of $50," adding, "Nebulae pay better than poems in the 'Galaxy.'" 5 7 Lippincott's Magazine, April, 1869, published his essay on "College Education," which emphasized faults in higher education noticed in his undergraduate days at Harvard and apparently not yet corrected by 1869. They included intensive memorization, a too strict division between science and literature, and a coldness of relationship between teacher and pupil. Meanwhile Calvert had been trying to induce Wallack, the New York theatre manager, to produce "The Gatch," his satire on Newport hotel life, but had failed. A letter to Swinton revealed a momentary querulousness in regard to this incident: "It is a sprightly, poetic, play in five acts, with good characterization and a good plot. Dont mind my speaking well of it myself; there is no body else at hand to do it." 5 8 Nor had he forgotten the second edition of Ellen 011 which he had set his heart. The task of bringing out the new Ellen reopened a regular correspondence with Swinton. Reading galley proofs and writing whimsical letters to Swinton passed the spring months, "the season for the blues," pleasantly enough, but the sight of the familiar handwriting made him anxious for a glimpse of his old friend. There was disappointment in the letter which he sent on May 6, 1869, when Swinton did not appear at "The Cedars" according to tentative plans: "About an hour ago, that is, at eight o'clock, I went out on the pavement to sun myself, and possibly gratify a faint expectation, growing out of a very strong hope, that I might see you coming round the corner; but instead of you came my grocer's boy, who brings up my letters on Sunday morning. I went back into the house and had to console myself with some white rolls,—a luxury which my wife very dutifully deems my stomach unworthy of,—and which had been ordered for you. At dinner I shall have

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similar shadows of consolation in the shape of fresh tomatoes and Bermuda potatoes. The old Madeira I shall be wise enough to leave in the sideboard." 59 Two weeks later he repeated the invitation. By this time Calvert had added vegetarianism to the list of his practices. "I will give you some of my own spinach for dinner," he promised, "(and some meat although I dont eat any myself) a glass of good old Madeira, and a good bed at night, and a hearty welcome." 60 Swinton was too busy at the time to come. Early in June Calvert again attempted to entice his friend with good food and old vintage: "Bermuda potatoes & good old Madeira, I promise, and a slice of such meat as our butchers here make us pay for. Our trees are just culminating, still with spring freshness on them." 8 1 The second edition of Ellen, with some new stanzas and several minor textual changes, which did not materially affect the quality of the poetry, brought reviews which soon made Calvert forget, temporarily at least, his disappointment at not seeing his friend. The Nation 62 pointed out "force and delicacy of feeling" in the poem, and "a depth of spiritual insight," but it emphasized mechanical faults "and others worse than merely mechanical" in stanzas which read "like the work . . . of a young man enamored of Keats's early manner" and which were marked by "mystical, vague theorizing, and other defects." As usual, Calvert relieved his mind in a letter to Swinton: "It is better than I hoped for. But the man who wrote it is not honest; he likes 'Ellen' better than he says. He blunders from carelessness or obtuseness . . . Think of the author of 'Ellen' being 'less careful of finish than of ornament.'—But we poor poets must take such comments as the Devil sends." 63 In Putnam's Monthly, for October,84 Calvert found further evidence of the devil's workmanship. But this review, instead of being "dishonest" was brutally frank; " A much worse poet than Mr. [Henry] Abbey is Mr. George H. Calvert, whose pamphlet poem, 'Ellen' . . . is the cloudiest, murkiest, muddiest performance that we have ever read. . . . Mr. Calvert is a skilful writer in prose, but his skill deserts him the moment he essays to write in verse, or else he abandons it, and his taste with it, from some singular notion or other in regard to the requirements of verse. It would appear, indeed, as if he thought that the farther he could get from prose the nearer he would

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get to poetry, but the result does not justify him in any such belief, if he entertains it, for as far as 'Ellen' is from prose, it is still farther from poetry." Swinton apparently did not review the new Ellen, having written a careful criticism of the first edition, and being restrained perhaps by the fact that the second edition was dedicated to himself. But he soon had a letter which voiced Calvert's emotional response to Putnam's attack. On September 15, Calvert wrote that his "affectionate, generous, disinterested, tender friend, P.," had "allowed one of his versifiers (probably B. Taylor) to insert a base blackguard notice of 'Ellen,' written apparently under the eunuch-seeing-a-stallion-cover-a-mare feeling." 8 5 His suspicions of Bayard Taylor were unfounded, however, and on November 6, he explained to Swinton: "The man who wrote the dirty notice of Ellen for Putnam's Mag. was not B. Taylor, but a verse-writer by the name of [Stodthard?].69 This P. sent me word with an apology. P. was laid up with an accident, which was the cause of this dirt getting into the Mag.—" 67 Eight months later he wrote, "I have nothing more to do with 'Putnam.'" 68 Nothing daunted by the unsympathetic reception given to Ellen, Calvert still hoped to make his books a commercial success. "If one volume could make a strong mark," he wrote to Swinton in 1869, "something might be done. 'Ellen' does not seem to be the one to make it. I have in M. S. (written years ago) a poem of 1500 lines in six books, satirical, fantastical, philosophical, spiritual, and poetical, which might be better suited. But this is only a very questionable might. Our generation is given over to false admiration." 69 This poem was evidently the Cabiro, four cantos of which had been published. Two more were in manuscript, but, perhaps meeting with no response from Swinton, they were not brought out. At the end of the 1860s Calvert renewed his interest in Goethe. "Glimpses into a Portrait Gallery," in The Galaxy, March, 1870, devoted one stanza to the German poet, and the old love flamed up anew when two distinctive works fell into Calvert's hands during the summer of 1870, Hermann and Dorothea, translated by Ellen Frothingham, and a new edition of G. H. Lewes's Life of Goethe, published in London. Calvert had read the American reprint of the earlier edition years before, but now found stimulus in the new. "The nearer I get to 70," he wrote to Swinton on July 28, 1870, "the more I feel the need of quiet. Did you ever read Lewes Life of Goethe? . . . Taking the subject and the treatment it is one of the most valuable books I know, and certainly the most instructive biography." 70

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During the remaining months of 1870 there were, apparently, no publications over Calvert's signature. In December, however, he received an invitation to attend a meeting on January 12 at the New York Academy of Music to celebrate the emancipation of Rome, and he accepted in a cordial letter of January 3, with which he sent a note addressed to Theodore Roosevelt, 94 Maiden Lane, New York, 71 who was heading the committee. Calvert's interest in Goethe was again aroused when Bayard Taylor's translation of the complete Faust appeared early in 1871, and C. T. Brooks, reluctant to criticize it himself because of his translation of Part I in 1856, asked Calvert to write a review of it. Calvert's article 72 made no detailed study of the translation but stated simply that the two best English translations of Faust were "by Americans, Mr. C. T. Brooks, and Mr. Bayard Taylor." The essay concerned itself chiefly with a general view of translations and stressed the need for English translations of all great works. The quiet for which Calvert had longed during the preceding summer was to be by no means the quiet which comes of laying aside the pen. His next contribution was "Work," in The Golden Age (July 22,1871), a weekly edited in New York by Theodore Tilton. This short prose composition was followed by a number of pieces of a similar nature in the same magazine, all showing the socialistic viewpoint.73 On September 10, Calvert wrote to Swinton that he and his wife had had "the happiness of exchanging the vulgar month of August in Newport for a quiet month in Lenox. We are getting too old for excitement even of the more refined kind." 74 In September, The Golden Age printed his sketch on "Ladyhood," 75 revised from The Gentleman, and in December published "Free," a poem which may have been composed during the restful days in the Berkshires. Later reprinted in Threescore, "Free" is interesting as a garnering in brief compass of some of the concerns that were occupying Calvert's thoughts at the time—aspiration, freedom, service. Its theme, the ordered character of liberty, is illustrated by concrete examples from nature. The maple, the deer, the eagle, the rainbow, all are subject to nature's laws, but they are not "Hindered, hampered, shrunken slaves. Each is whole with nature's gifts." So man wins freedom, not by transgressing the laws of nature, but by living in obedience to them. And the highest freedom is gained by selfforgetfulness in a life of service to one's fellow men: Diamond's worth is what it throws From its core to others' eyes: Man is precious as he glows

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With the large humanities; And 'tis they whose winged might Lifts him into freedom's light. From cold mineral up to man Aspiration is the law Whereby each accomplish can, Each his life unstained by flaw. When all wishes upward strive, Then will life be full alive: Only is the soul then free, When it freer aims to be. Onward, upward; higher, higher: See! there beckons angel-fire.70

Obviously, "Free," like much of Calvert's other verse, is not great poetry; not even very good poetry. Although the "winged might" and the "angelfire" of poetic inspiration may have beckoned to him from the distance, Calvert was never quite able to answer their call. He could not free himself from the fetters of heavy Germanic sentence structure, but he did break away from the slavish imitation of ideas. To be sure, some of Goethe's ideas echo through the poem "Free." The "Immer hoher muss ich steigen" of Faust, Part I, blends with the evolution motif of Thales in Part II and the promise of the Angels in Act V : "Whoe'er aspires unweariedly is not beyond redeeming." But through it are heard undertones of Calvert's own experiences. Transcendentalism, Fourierism, socialism, the leading movements of nineteenth-century humanitarianism, are crystallized in a poem, which, though it is far from being a distinguished piece of writing, is Calvert's own in definiteness and forward vision.

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1H& ~TER the quiet weeks in Lenox, Calvert returned to Newport, eager to begin work on a new book. His recent reading of George Henry Lewes's Life and Wor\s of Goethe, the first biography of the great German poet in English, had suggested that he might produce a similar but less pretentious work. There had been several biographies in German; in America, however, despite all the Goethe criticism and the number of creditable translations of his work, no life of Goethe had appeared. In fact there had been very little biographical writing of this kind in the country. Lives of political figures—John Marshall's Life of George Washington, William Wirt's Patrick Henry, William Tudor's James Otis—had been published early in the century, but even such limited literary biographies as Holmes's Ralph Waldo Emerson and Higginson's Margaret Fuller Ossoli belong to a later era. Of the many Americans who might have written the first life of Goethe in this country, Calvert was perhaps the best equipped to produce a fairminded study. At the time of his death in 1878, Bayard Taylor 1 was collecting material for a life of Goethe, which doubdess would have been less prejudiced than the work of any of the New England critics, but Taylor had not had the advantage of meeting Goethe. F. H. Hedge,2 George Bancroft, Edward Everett, George Ticknor, each had at some time contributed to Goethe criticism; but besides having professional duties to occupy them, these writers all disapproved of the moral laxity which they felt characterized Goethe's private life—Longfellow and Charles Timothy Brooks might have approached the subject with an open mind, but their natural talents lay in the field of poetry. Calvert had no other profession than that of literature; he had no bias to overcome, and he had already made a number of translations from Goethe's Faust. It would not be difficult for him, after the recent inspiration of Lewes's Life, Taylor's Faust, and Ellen Frothingham's Hermann and Dorothea, to put together what he already knew and add some translations and recent reflections. Not content with

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this information at hand, however, he made use of contemporary German materials as well, such as Doring's biography, Chancellor von Muller's Conversations, the works of Merck and Stahr, and the published correspondence of several of Goethe's friends, including the six volumes of Goethe-Zelter correspondence and the three volumes of Goethe's letters to Charlotte von Stein. While leafing through old diaries and notebooks to gather firsthand material for his life, Calvert may have recalled with considerable satisfaction the stages through which his preparatory work had passed—the struggle to learn German in Gottingen, the fruitless Baltimore years, when the magazine containing his earliest translations of German lyrics had gone on the rocks, and with it some of his youthful enthusiasm. There had been also the Don Carlos, bringing from one critic the advice to "desert the Muse," and the Schiller-Goethe Correspondence, which would "make silly young men and maidens all the more silly." Twenty-five years had passed since he had translated those letters and written for them the fiery preface which had brought so much comment from the press. He had gone through the storms of controversy and prejudice which had long surrounded his subject and was now ready to bring forth the results of mature judgment. The task which lay before him now was more congenial than anything he had yet attempted. When his Goethe was finally published in the spring of 1872,3 Calvert must have glanced sorrowfully back over the last few years, for the two friends who had so warmly received his Gentleman in 1863 were no longer there to send encouragement and thanks. J. P. Kennedy had died at Newport in August, 1870; Henry Tuckerman, in New York in December, 1871. 4 Drawing more heavily now on the vitality of John Swinton, Calvert had written him on May 15 about his Goethe: "The book will be out I hope on Saturday, and I will send you a copy so soon as I get some to distribute.— Excuse the briefness of this note; but I have been cropping large dead branches off of some evergreens, and the exertion makes my old hand tremble." 8 The little roan-covered volume which reached Swinton toward the end of May was a warm human document. In writing it Calvert may not have thought of it as a biography at all, and certainly not as a pioneer work in that field, for he modestly called it "An Essay." It is, in fact, a series of essays unified by a central theme, the rich humanity of Goethe. For although the critics had begun to admire Goethe the writer, they were still hurling epithets at Goethe the man.

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Although presenting Goethe as administrator, businessman, theatre director, scientist, soldier, traveler, lover, and friend, and as a genius whose many-sided career was crowned by a rare literary gift, Calvert does not permit the genius to overshadow the man. Nor does one meet "the sage of Weimar" in his pages. Goethe, starting up from bed and hurrying to a neighboring town to help put out a fire; composing a long letter of condolence to his friend Zelter, who is grieving over the suicide of his stepson; writing tenderly to Christiane, ten years after their first meeting, that he regrets not having taken something of hers with him on his journey, if only a slipper, to keep him from feeling so lonely—this is the Goethe whom Calvert had known in Weimar, whom he had learned to love and respect more deeply with each year of study and reflection; this is the Goethe of the first American biography, an unselfish, sympathetic, human man. Although Calvert was indebted to Lewes for inspiration, for several long quotations which he freely acknowledged, and for the tenor of many passages, especially in regard to Christiane, his basic approach of tolerance and admiration goes back to his Preface to the Schiller-Goethe Correspondence, written in 1845, ten years before the first edition of the English biography. Calvert's Goethe is his own in the freshness, enthusiasm, and affection which he put into it, and in the admonition to "Judge not" of Goethe's frequent amours. It is his also in the simple, faithful translations of lyrics and letters; in the critical appraisals; in the long moralizing passages, which, however, occur less frequently than in First Years in Europe. The chapter on "Loves" is delicately touched with sympathy for the mysterious demands of genius, for its author saw in Goethe a fundamental rectitude, which, "through all the extravagances and seeming lawlessness of his youth . . . held him to a forward and upward course." 9 Goethe had much to overcome; that he rose manfully above native inclinations was cause for praise, not censure. But what of the middle-aged Goethe, in love again, and with a girl so much beneath him that marriage was unthinkable? To the frequent question, "Why did not Goethe marry Christiane at once?" Calvert answered that it was not only because Goethe dreaded marriage, with its limitations and responsibilities, but also because he was aware of the disparity in station, a disparity so great that it not only made the liaison scandalous but caused Christiane herself to reject the offer of marriage. That he took her into his home was a proof of his honesty: "Suppose that Goethe had sent Christiane and her infant to a remote town with a small stipend, he would have done what in such cases is mostly

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done by men of his worldly elevation, and what the world tacitly sanctions. In taking Christiane to his house to cherish her there as though she were his legal wife, he obeyed the dictates of a truer manliness, a nobler selfrespect, a higher dutifulness, than if, with a worldling's cold and virtually immoral regard for the convenances, he had hidden her away out of sight, and thus seemingly broken (for essentially it never can be broken) the sacred bonds which bind together the parents of a child. Had he married her at once,—considering where he was and what he was,—he would have done an act of heroism. He did the next best thing to that. What he did he has told in one of his short, exquisite lyrics, which I attempt to regive in the charming simplicity of its verse and phrase." T The translation of "Gefunden" which followed, is one of the many English versions of Goethe's lyrics scattered throughout the book.8 In making these and other metrical translations Calvert tried to use words of AngloSaxon origin, especially for the lyrics in Faust, as being better suited than words of Latin-English to reproduce the spirit and meaning of Goethe. He kept as closely as possible to the thought and meter of the original, but he did not attempt to preserve the feminine rhymes of the German, except where they came naturally. T o use the rhymes name and proclaim for nennen and \ennen was being faithful to the idiom and habits of the English language. On this point he differed with Bayard Taylor, who maintained that the difficulty of finding English feminine rhymes had been greatly overestimated.9 Calvert attempted no comprehensive criticism of Goethe's works, but made some generalizations about his genius, finding it essentially lyrical, though not lacking dramatic and epic qualities. He emphasized the beauty and variety of the lyrics, tender, pathetic, religious, rustic, jovial, weird, according to the prevailing mood of the scenes in which they occurred. He made some fragmentary remarks about Götz, Werther, Die W ahlverwandschaften, Dichtung und Wahrheit, and Wilhelm Meister, and wrote at greater length about Tasso and Egmont and Iphigenie. He devoted several pages to Hermann und Dorothea, "the most exquisite of Idyls," commended the Oriental splendor of the West-östlicher Divan, and gave high praise to the classic paganism of the Römische Elegien, which were inspired by Christiane. In a separate chapter devoted to Faust he pointed out as evidence of Goethe's humanity the simplicity and tenderness of Gretchen, a poetic creation unsurpassed even among Shakespeare's heroines. H e called attention to the subtle satire in Part I. "In Faust," he wrote,

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"is only presented with the ingenuity and the richness of invention, and the breadth, beauty, and power of a great poet, what we are all of us doing in a greater or less degree, namely, selling ourselves to the Devil." 1 0 But in recounting the events of the story, Calvert does not tell too much, nor stress the moral too pointedly. The sheer force of his enthusiasm for Part I must have impelled many unacquainted with Faust to read the story for themselves. Part II, however, is not so attractively presented. Unlike Carlyle and Bayard Taylor, Calvert was disappointed with the Helena material. 11 Notices of the Goethe appeared in many of the leading American periodicals and were for the most part favorable. The reaction to the chapter on "Loves," however, showed that the old prejudice against Goethe the man had not been overcome in 1872. The Overland Monthly}2 while praising Calvert's careful interpretation of Faust, censured "the degrading experiences of intensified passion, which the essayist has dignified by the title of 'Loves.'" Although The Chautauquan 1 3 had a good word for the study of Goethe's works, it pointed out that the author had passed "lightly over even the most glaring faults in the great man" of whom he wrote. The most sympathetic of all the comments, that of the English Westminster Review, October, 1872, on the London edition,14 admitted that the book might be a little dangerous for the view it took of the "Loves," but generously praised the study as a whole, and emphasized its value for one audience which Calvert had scarcely hoped to reach: "'Goethe: His Life and Works' is an unpretending little book, which performs a great deal more than it promises. . . . Mr. Calvert as a rule treads firm ground. His criticisms on Goethe's writings are especially what are needed for the young. He is careful to point out for them what a hard, indefatigable worker he was. Of course this may all seem commonplace enough, but it cannot be repeated too often for the young. And Mr. Calvert, if he does teach commonplaces, does not teach them in a commonplace way. His style is cultivated and graceful. One of the charms of the book is the way in which he illustrates his remarks by quotations taken from Goethe's own writings." Unpretentious though the volume was, and suited to the needs of the young as the Westminster critic had said, its fame nevertheless reached even to the inner circle of Weimar. In his Critical Essays and Literary Notes (1880) Bayard Taylor, in the chapter, "Autumn Days in Weimar," recounted his visit to the Grand Duke, then about fifty years old, who

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distinctly remembered Goethe, and who "spoke in enthusiastic terms of Hawthorne's works, and seemed also to be greatly pleased with Mr. Calvert's recent volume on Goethe." 1 5 Stimulated by the success of his Goethe, and eager to make the most of the publicity which it had brought, Calvert set to work with a will that in the next six years resulted in a literary output exceeding that of the prolific sixties. From 1872 to 1878, he produced at least one book each year, sometimes as many as two or three, besides magazine articles and lectures. Some of these books, like his earlier Ellen, may have been printed at his own expense,18 but this does not seem likely. They all bore the imprint of Lee and Shepard or G. P. Putnam's, two of the leading publishing houses of the day. In the same year with his Goethe he finished two poetical dramas, The Maid of Orleans: an Historical Tragedy,11 and Mirabeau: a Historical Drama in Three Acts,16 both of which were privately printed. The following year (1873) the revised Maid of Orleans was published by G. P. Putnam's. In utilizing the famous French story for a play Calvert was returning to a theme which had long interested him. 19 Although he was doubtless led to appreciate the beauty of the theme through reading Schiller's poetic treatment in Die Jungfrau von Orleans, Calvert's version shows a difference in approach suggested by the titles themselves. Schiller's was a "romantische Tragödie," an eloquent human drama, Calvert's "An Historical Tragedy," keeping closely to historical fact. But in it we miss the familiar episodes invented by Schiller, who made them seem more real than the historical facts themselves. Although Calvert's play is historically correct, and has lines that are poetically conceived (as in the speech of Sir Bertrand who has escorted Joan to Chinon for an audience with the King), it seems cold when compared to that of Schiller. The chief historical source for the American play was undoubtedly the Histoire de Jeanne d'Arc by Amable G. P. B. (baron de) Barante,20 a little book which is found in the private collection which Calvert bequeathed to the Redwood Library. But he naturally used his own interpretations of those scenes which gave an opportunity for exploiting one of his favorite themes—the hypocrisy and the worldliness of a priesthood which was deaf to the spiritual message. Although The Maid of Orleans showed marked improvement over the Joan of Arc of i860, it was, because of its lack of fervor and human emotion, unsuited to stage production. As in the case of the Comedies, however, the

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author hoped to have it produced. On May 21, 1874, he wrote to John Swinton: "The notice, you were so kind as to send me, is the most gratifying I have seen. The hint to the managers, I hope some of them will be able to take.—The difficulty is to get a woman with both the soul and the body needed for the Maid. If any actress would take up the part with zeal I would go some distance to introduce her to the intimacy of the Maid. Is there such a woman in New York?" 2 1 Apparently the thrill of having one of his creations produced on an improvised stage in a Philadelphia boarding school had not yet worn off. Again and again it tempted him to try to find a producer for works which were not adaptable to the stage. There is no indication that The Maid of Orleans was produced. Even if Swinton had thought favorably of such a venture his attention was soon turned into other channels. He had left The Times in 1870 and had subsequently been engaged in various occupations of an editorial nature. In the spring of 1874 he took part in a great labor demonstration in Tompkins Square, which was broken up by the police, and in the same year he ran for mayor of New York on the ticket of the Industrial Political Party, but was defeated.22 In Mirabeau (1874), companion drama to The Maid of Orleans, Calvert again revealed an interest in the "soul" of those leaders who turned political events to the slow progress of human liberties. Mirabeau, like Joan, saw tyranny blighting the people, and took action in their behalf. Calvert's interest in the subject may have reached as far back as Carlyle's article in The London and Westminster Review of January, 1837.23 His Mirabeau so closely resembles Carlyle's that it would almost seem as if the playwright had taken a passage from the early essay and had dramatized its hero. But it was doubtless Calvert's recent reading of the French Revolution that led him to attempt a dramatic interpretation of Mirabeau's life. The incidents of the play are chosen with a view to portraying its hero in the role of "The People's Friend," the potential savior of a helpless France, the only man who might have averted the Revolution. The action covers the last two years of Mirabeau's life, in which he won the admiration of Marie Antoinette and gained an audience with the Marquis de Lafayette. The historical facts are covered, but as in The Maid of Orleans, the play becomes a vehicle for the expression of the author's sentiments. The closing scenes are striking in their portrayal of Mirabeau as a man of balance and restraint. A basic philosophy, constantly drawn upon in Calvert's interpretation of Goethe, shows itself again. The early private life of the

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Frcnch statesman is excused, even disregarded, because of his fine gifts and noble service to a country which was not ready to accept his teachings. In the death of Mirabeau, the closing scene of the play, Calvert saw the death of hope itself for France. T h i s interpretation was the only right one, he felt, and he was very anxious that it should not be misunderstood. " B y this post," he wrote to Swinton on March 6, 1874, " I send the Mirabeau. It is not published, only a f e w printed for private circulation. But I have found so many little emendations to make that I have distributed very f e w , not wishing to send one out uncorrected, and putting in so many pencilmarks is tedious. This I believe to be the genuine Mirabeau."

24

Later historical judgments seem to justify Calvert's estimate, although there were of course many of his contemporaries who did not agree with his sympathetic treatment of the hero. Henri V a n Havre, to w h o m Calvert sent a copy of the limited edition of 1873, together with The Maid Orleans,

of

was one of these. V a n H a v r e wrote f r o m Antwerp on June 12,

1874: " I have received with a great deal of pleasure your last work Joan of A r c and have read it with much interest. I think it will suit the stage better than your Mirabeau. . . . perhaps I am a little prejudiced against the hero who I think was a low, passionate and debauched individual."

23

Calvert had evidently hoped to have this play produced and had asked the advice of others. His nephew, Captain Matthias C . Marin, 2 6 had received a letter dated March 5, 1873, from William Warren, 2 7 obviously a reply to a request for his opinion of the stage value of Mirabeau.

T h e actor

was not encouraging: " W i t h a very weak faith in my judgment in literary matters," he wrote, "it is my humble opinion, that 'Mirabeau' would not prove successful on the stage. It lacks dramatic action—I mean the absolute presentment of striking events, to the eye of the spectator." Brief speare

Essays and Brevities 29

28

(1874) contained a short essay on Shake-

and one on each of five of his plays. It also contained six articles

on social topics which had appeared earlier in The Golden

Age;

a tribute

to F . W . Robertson, an English clergyman whose published sermons had been an inspiration; and an article on Shelley, which was later developed into a longer essay. Essays JEsthetical,

a second prose miscellany, brought out in 1875, in-

cluded the articles on Dante and Sainte-Beuve from Putnam's,

and, as its

title indicated, several excursions into more speculative topics. T h e "aesthetical" essays are valuable in showing one aspect of the culture which had

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been accumulating in the many years of the author's literary and scholarly leisure. "Have something to say, and say it in the best and fewest words," 3 0 was Calvert's counsel—if not always his accomplishment—for writing in good style. "Style issues from within," he wrote, "and if it does not, it is not style, but manner. Words get all their force from the thoughts and feelings behind them." 3 1 Such was the fundamental message of "Style," but there were many other considerations as well, for Calvert was a painstaking seeker for polished expression in his own writing. The essay, "What is Poetry?" showed wide reading in the theory of poetics. Aristotle, Joubert, Schiller, Wordsworth, and Coleridge had been his teachers. With Aristotle he believed that poetry was the highest truth; with Joubert, that poetry consists "above all, in the spirituality of ideas"; with Schiller, that its aim is "no other than to give to humanity its fullest possible expression." 8 2 This last point was particularly stressed. Poetry is poetry in the highest sense of the word only when it comes from the heart and helps man to better himself. Hence the somewhat startling conclusion was reached that the greatest French poetic mind was that of Charles Fourier. The essay on "The Beautiful," 3 3 displayed the transcendentalisms regard for Reason, or a kind of glorified Intuition, superior to Understanding as a reliable basis for information. "But beauty is felt," Calvert wrote, "not intellectually apprehended or logically deduced. Its presence is acknowledged by a gush from the soul, by a joyous sentimental recognition, not by a discernment of the understanding. When he exclaims, 'How beautiful!' there is always emotion." 34 It is not difficult to find the source of these sentiments. Back in the Baltimore days their author had been introduced to Plato by reading Coleridge; more recently he had been rereading Coleridge and looking into Keats, Benjamin Robert Haydon, D. R. Hay, Hegel, Schelling, and Jean Paul Richter. An essay on Carlyle 35 which the volume contained showed an ability to reevaluate earlier critical opinions and to modify them in the light of more mature consideration. Carlyle had been a stimulating influence in the Baltimore days when Calvert looked forward to each month's Fraser's for another instalment of Sartor Resartus. He had called upon Carlyle in Cheyne Row and had come away not unfavorably impressed. He had found The French Revolution "the masterpiece of English prose literature," and yet for all this, Carlyle had not worn well. Calvert could not

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return to him again and again for fresh inspiration as he did to Wordsworth. Carlyle was too "impatient, fervid, willful, nay, despotic"; 3 8 he had praised Goethe's "Helena"; he had neglected the English romantic poets and had written about "Corn Law Rhymes"; but above all he had accepted and promulgated the great moral fallacy that might makes right.37 The Essays JEsthetical caught the attention of Henry James, then a young critic of thirty-two, who wrote a review of it for The Nation, June 3, 1875: "Mr. Calvert occasionally puts forth a modest volume of prose or verse which attracts no general attention, but which, we imagine, finds adequate appreciation among scattered readers. We prefer his prose to his verse, and we can frankly recommend this little collection of essays on subjects connected with art and letters. The author's fault, as a general thing, is in his vagueness, and in a tendency to judgments a trifle too ethereal and to a style considerably too florid. We prefer him, therefore, when he is treating of concrete rather than abstract matters, and we have found more edification in the volume before us in the papers on the translators of Dante, on Sainte-Beuve, and on Carlyle, than in the accompanying disquisitions on the Beautiful, on the Nature of Poetry, and on Style. To offer us off-hand, at the present hour, an article on the Beautiful, implies an almost heroic indifference to the tyranny of fashion. Mr. Calvert cares for letters for their own sake, he is a disinterested scholar, and his writing has the aroma of genuine culture. Even the occasional awkwardness and amateurishness of his manner are an indication of that union, so rare in this country, of taste and leisure which allows culture an opportunity to accumulate. The best thing in the volume is the article on Sainte-Beuve, in which the author shows that he had studied the great critic to very good purpose. It is very intelligent and, much of it, very felicitous, and it is filled, moreover, with excellent brief citations." If, as Henry James had pointed out, Calvert was better at writing prose than poetry, he was not unaware of good poetry when he saw it, even though its author had not yet won general acclaim. Attracted by the beauty of form and depth of thought in Sidney Lanier's "Corn" and "The Symphony" (which had appeared, respectively, in Lippincott's Magazine for February and June, 1875), Calvert wrote a sympathetic review and sent it to The Golden Age.3* Published in the issue of June 12, 1875, it is significant not only as one of the first notices of Lanier's poetry but also as an indication of the breadth of Calvert's own turn for social thought. It was filled with encouragement for the little-known Georgia poet, whose

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soul was "aglow with music," and it called attention to the ability of this new poetry to present fresh aspects of old things. The fineness of Lanier's sensuous sight, it insisted, came from spiritual insight, and "a sympathetic humanity" warmed his whole thought. In Lanier's work was the fulfillment of the very requirements which Calvert had recently laid down in his essays on poetry and style—a kind of object lesson whereby he might illustrate his own aesthetical theories. To the modern biographer the review is also suggestive because it indicates that Calvert, like Lanier, was interested in the technical and musical side of metrics. Moreover, he saw and appreciated in this poetry the very thing that his own verse lacked, or which came only in flashes—"the sensuous insight." Lanier, heartened by Calvert's criticism, wrote to Gibson Peacock on July 31, 1875: "I will write also to Mr. Calvert to-morrow; his insight into a poet's internal working, as developed in his kind notice of me in the 'Golden Age,' is at once wonderful and delightful." 39 The gaiety of the Newport season which had driven the Calverts to Lenox in the summer of 1871 had been steadily increasing. Out of the informal gatherings of the summer colony finally came the famous Town and Country Club,40 presided over by Julia Ward Howe, and numbering among its members Professor Alexander Agassiz, George Bancroft, the Rev. Charles Timothy Brooks, and Colonel T . W. Higginson. Another change in the atmosphere of Newport was gradually making itself felt. The hotels were decreasing in number, the cottages and villas were increasing, and the hanging gardens of the ultrarich were spreading along the coast. The older residents eyed these changes with apprehension and the Mercury vainly denied the popular rumor that Newport was "going to be the China of watering-places, built around with a great wall of exclusiveness." 41 Although brief notes, still extant, from Julia Ward Howe,42 inviting the Calverts to tea at Oak Glen "to meet Miss Carpenter of England," and from Oliver Wendell Holmes 4 3 begging to be remembered to Charlotte Cushman, indicate a continuance of private friendships, Calvert seems for the most part to have held himself aloof from society, preferring to pursue his own life of quiet scholarship. In a passage in his Goethe relative to that fashionable smartness which flings irony at "any pretense to purity and innocence beyond the age of childhood" and jeers at "all plans for the betterment of human conditions," one reads between the lines an indictment of

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the sophistication which was creeping into Newport drawing rooms in the 1870s. "Mephisto has the benefit of modern culture," Calvert wrote, "especially that of the eighteenth century. He is a polished, well-bred man of the world. Lord Chesterfield might have invited him to dinner. . . ." And then he asked pointedly whether it was necessary to go back "to Chesterfield and European courts of a hundred years since, to find social gatherings where such is the tone, where an invisible Mephistopheles is the sprightliest guest?" 44 A brief excursion into politics in 1876, when he permitted the Democrats to use his name as candidate for State Senator, did not interrupt the steady flow of his literary production. The Democrats, having no hope of success, gave their ticket very little support and Calvert was easily defeated by the Republican James M. Drake. 45 To the spread-eagleism of the centennial year Calvert made two contributions: a new edition of Arnold and André, and A Nation's Birth and Other National Poems. "Somers, Wadsworth, Israel," and "Reuben James" had been praised in Duyckinck's manuscript diary when they first appeared in the Poems of 1847; the remaining pages of A Nations Birth consisted, for the most part, of mediocre patriotic verse. A third book carried Calvert's name in 1877, the first American biography of Peter Paul Rubens. As in the case of his Goethe Calvert was well equipped for his task. To aid him in his research his Belgian relatives went to some lengths to get authentic works to send to America. It was especially difficult to find anything on Rubens's diplomatic career, but the Spanish Rubens, diplomático español; sus viajes á España y noticia de sus cuadros by G. Cruzada Villaamil finally found its way to Newport, along with Charles Potvin's drama, La Mère de Rubens, and á genealogy of the Rubens family, including names of persons then living. Calvert examined a large number of source materials, both primary and secondary, many of which are now in the Redwood Library in Newport, and he utilized the latest critical works on the subject to an even greater extent than he had done for his Goethe49 Rubens was such an attractive subject that Calvert might have lingered over it indefinitely had he not learned that Antwerp would celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of Rubens's birth in 1877. The beautiful story of Marie Pepylincx, the mother of Rubens, would make this a particularly appropriate book to dedicate to the memory of his own mother and have translated into French to be sold in the bookstores of Antwerp during the

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festival. Consequently Calvert set himself assiduously to complete his manuscript as soon as possible to allow time for the translating. During the preparations for the Antwerp celebration the renewal of an old controversy over Rubens's birthplace set a stumbling block in the way of the American biographer. Cologne and Siegen both claimed the artist. Henri Van Havre, as a member of the committee of arrangements for the Antwerp festival, was anxious to prove Antwerp was Rubens's birthplace and he may have come too hastily to such a conclusion. But it is obvious that he did a good deal of research on the highly controversial subject before sending the results to America. Camilla Van Havre wrote to Calvert a long letter on February 20,1876, urging him to proceed with the greatest caution, since it was so hard to obtain authentic accounts: "All these documents are in old Flemish," she said, "consequently very difficult to read. Henri intends having them copied or translated but you can well understand that he can only give them to a responsible person as they are almost worth their weight in gold. Pierre-Paul-Rubbens's autograph is worth three hundred francs any day. "We are now passing through an epidemic called Reubens fever, every book about him is sold at triple its value and many are not to be had at all; this makes me think to ask you to send back the genealogy showing how the Van Havres are descendants of Rubens as my husband cannot procure himself another copy. They wrote their name in three different ways—Rubens, Rubbens and Reubens. " . . . I perceive that I have scribbled nearly seven pages only about the Rubbens family, but my desire to oblige you, and the reigning epidemic are my only excuses, my scrawl almost smells musty from contact with all these dirty time-eaten parchments."47 Calvert, relying on the Van Havres for the facts, gives the place and date of Rubens's birth as Antwerp, June 29, 1577. Later scholarship has proved both to be incorrect. Max Rooses's Rubens (London and Philadelphia, 1904), states, "We conclude, therefore, without hesitation that Peter Paul Rubens was born at Siegen on the 28th of June, 1577." 48 One can detect in Calvert's Rubens many points of similarity to his Goethe. In the first chapters, the artist emerges as a captivating personality with a "brilliance, a breadth, a sunshine" of character that recalls the young Goethe. Calvert describes the artist's well-known self-portrait, "with the low, broad-brimmed hat worn on one side . . . a picturesque portrait, whose strong, roomy brow and head, large tranquilly shining eyes, expres-

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sive mouth, regular, but animated contour and features, present an impressive, most attractive countenance . . ." 49 Like his Goethe, Calvert's Rubens is a many-sided genius, who is also a clear-headed businessman, a trusted advisor to his sovereign, a graceful courtier, a captivating talker, a welcome guest. Calvert was not unaware of the similarity between his two heroes; in fact, in the concluding chapters of Rubens he developed the theme to the extent of several pages, with an enthusiasm which hints at pride in finding so many of Goethe's characteristics present in his own ancestor. Yet Calvert's Rubens is not merely a Flemish Goethe. The book is written with sympathy for and insight into Rubens's art, and affords a simple and informative introduction to the study of his works. Coarseness, glare, and sensuality, characteristics which many critics had attributed to Rubens's art, Calvert denied as vehemently as he had denied the charge of baseness in Goethe's character. Rubens was primarily a painter of the things of this world, one who "took possession of the earth as no other has." 50 He was the artist of rapid movement and action, delighting in the terrible grandeur of lions, finding it restful to paint them after long concentration on religious subjects; but coarse and sensual he was not. Like Goethe, he had his faults, but like Goethe, he was a versatile genius whose art was rounded and complete. He was not a religious painter in the sense that Fra Angelico was a religious painter. Fra Angelico was that and nothing more. "Had Leonardo and Michelangelo and Raphael been like him, born saints, there would have been no broad bloom of Art in the sixteenth century. For its unfoldment Art has need of all humanity, not merely one side of it . . ." 6 1 Rubens painted religious scenes, just as the great Italians did, because there was a demand for them. His art, like theirs, was comprehensive, including all humanity. In answer to the charge of the German critic Waagen that "Old Silenus naked, and in a state of complete drunkenness" was representative of the Flemish artist's productions, Calvert emphasized Rubens's breadth: "He had a love for all subjects that illustrate the passions and activities of human nature. He was not a puritan, to reject a subject because it presented the grosser, lower side of life. In the fullness of his human endowment, he, like Shakespeare, could bear with, nay, sympathize with, weakness and excess. . . . A drunken man reeling in the street is a pitiable, offensive and most unpictorial spectacle, a sight hateful to Gods and men; but old Silenus in his rubicund, rotund nudity! Why he was one of the

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demigods! And the little fauns, getting drunk on their mother's milk: with the movement and spirit of Rubens in it, it is the very poetry of drunkenness." 6 2 T h e same favoring tolerance characteristic of the Goethe answers the criticism that Rubens with his more than a thousand pictures had painted too much: "Does any one exclaim, Would that Leonardo had painted more and Rubens fewer ? Beware of laying hands on men of exalted genius: such hands are profane. Accept with silent thanks what they bequeath that is good and noble . . . This of seizing hold of the infinite with our finite wishes is a very silly, sad proceeding." 6 3 The American edition of Rubens was published in 1876 and enjoyed a fair amount of publicity.84 The Newport Mercury 8 5 and The Literary World56 praised it. Karl Knortz, who was less kindly disposed toward some of Calvert's other writings, evaluated it in the second volume of his Geschichte der n ordam erihanischen Literatur57 as one of Calvert's best works. Leaving his Belgian relatives to care for the details of translation and the publishing of a French edition, Calvert now turned to a matter which had long been pigeonholed. Since the biography of 1872, he had not produced anything which concerned itself wholly with Goethe. His recent reflections on the German poet, turned to good use in his Rubens, and his personal interest in the subject of German literature made him anxious to follow up a letter which he had received in September from Dr. Antoine Ruppaner, asking him to address the Goethe Club of New York. 5 8 After writing a negative reply, Calvert filed the letter away, but, unable to forget its contents, he planned the address even before his Rubens was off the press. Before broaching the matter to Dr. Ruppaner again, however, he wanted to make sure that the aims of the club were worthy. On November 6, 1876, he wrote to John Swinton a letter marked "Confidential!": "Do you know anything about the Goethe Club of the City of N . York ? About 6 weeks ago I received . . . an invitation to deliver in N . Y . a discourse on Goethe. Being at the time unfit to write, and having other things waiting for my pen whenever it should be gracious enough to set itself a going, greedy for the inkstand, I declined the invitation, which I should really have liked to accept. I felt, too, that accepting would further unfit me for doing the duty acceptance imposed. But the presentation of the subject moved me, like the trumpet-sound the old war-horse, and I set to work very soon, and have nearly finished a discourse on Goethe.—Before writing

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to D r Ruppaner, offering to perform the part I felt honored by being invited to, I have thought it would be well to make enquiries as to whose invitation I am about to accept.—Can you within a few days tell me what and who the Goethe Club is?" 59 As soon as he learned that the club had been organized in May, 1875, to spread the knowledge of Goethe's works, and that it numbered several distinguished writers among its honorary members,60 Calvert accepted the invitation and hurriedly put the final touches on his speech. His chief sources were Lewes's Life and his own biography of Goethe, to which he had added recent reflections and a few of his English translations of distichs and quatrains, "brilliants," as he called them, to give freshness and interest to the reading. A distinguished group of New York literati, including George and Sophia Ripley, William Rounseville Alger, 61 Edmund C. Stedman, Dr. S. Osgood, Parke Godwin, and Octavius Brooks Frothingham, gathered to greet him at a reception on the evening of January 10, 1877, in the rooms of the Goethe Club at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Dr. Ruppaner could scarcely have found words more pleasing to Calvert than those he used when he introduced him as "one who, strange as it may seem in these days of easy intercourse, has visited this City but rarely within the last 20 years. Yet still does he not come among us a stranger, but through his letters of Goethe and Schiller, as well as through his admirable critique on the life and works of Goethe, is as familiar to most of us as if it were our privilege to meet him daily face to face. . . . " 8 2 Although Calvert was now seventy-four there was no trace of advancing years in his voice or manner as he stepped onto the platform to read his address. Warming to his subject as he always did when speaking of Goethe, he presented his hero as the complex, many-sided, sympathetic man of the biography, vigorous to the last in mind and body. But his emphasis.was now on Goethe's spirituality. In the biography of 1872 he had called Goethe "a man of boundless faith," but he had stressed his personal charm and rich humanity. Growing more aware of spiritual values himself, Calvert now portrayed his Goethe as "a God-fearing man" who had an "absolute faith in the 'Almighty Love,'" one who in spite of his sensuous nature, "had within, in his higher consciousness, a deep, strong feeling for the invisible spiritual, the far and yet near supernal, the vast, celestial, inscrutable Might." 6 3 It was as if, in the last few years, his Goethe, like Calvert himself, had deepened and mellowed, but had not grown old.

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Of Goethe's faults he had nothing to say. A gentleness, which made the German poet almost incapable of hatred, was the nearest approach to a defect in his character that Calvert could discover. "And his other defects?" he asked, as if aware that some, even in that sympathetic audience, might be putting the time-worn question, "Have you nothing to say of his faults?" "Nothing," he answered. "A man's faults—save in people of one-sided selfishness—are mostly perversions of useful qualities . . . In a full, rounded, active nature defects are interwoven with" excellences . . ." 64 After this address, later printed in Coleridge, Shelley, Goethe (1880), he returned to Newport filled with enthusiasm for a biography which he had long been intending to write, one which would take him back to the bypaths of Weimar, grown more familiar to him perhaps than those of Newport, through long and affectionate associations. The reading of the three volumes of Goethe's letters to Frau von Stein, published by A. Schôll (1848-1851) had first stirred his curiosity about Charlotte von Stein, but as she had asked Goethe to return her letters and had destroyed them, it had been difficult to get authentic information about her. His journey to New York to speak to the Goethe Club, and the recent publication of Diintzer's Charlotte von Stein, Goethe's Freundin (1874) based on family letters and papers, had once again awakened the old love for Goethe and his circle. Relying on Diintzer's work for the facts of his story, Calvert wrote not so much a study of Frau von Stein as of Goethe and his relations with her. Indeed it might be considered another chapter in his Life of Goethe. In a letter of November 4, 1877, to John Swinton, he wrote: "C. v. Stein, besides involving a love-story, contains a rare variety, and introduces the reader to a circle of most illustrious people. Seldom has an author the opportunity of bringing together in one volume a group of such interesting superior personages . . . as Goethe, Karl August, Amalia, Louise, Wieland, Herder, Charlotte, Schiller & his wife, besides the Emperors Napoleon & Alexander and Madame de Staël." 65 But among all the characters in the book, Goethe is predominant—the magnetic young Goethe "of infinite instincts," settling in Weimar largely through the influence of Charlotte von Stein; the mature man, his love elevated by her to heights it had not known before, writing his Iphigenie as a result of the calm she had brought into his life. Then there is the middle-aged Goethe, in love now with Christiane and estranged from Charlotte because of her pride and willfulness; and the elderly Goethe, restored to Charlotte's affection through his frankness and truth of soul. These are the chief scenes in Calvert's drama

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of Weimar society of which Goethe is the hero, and for whom Charlotte creates an attractive role. Only in the closing paragraph are our sympathies drawn to her, and then by the tribute which she pays to the great man whose tenderness had brightened her life for more than fifty years. Her last request, a few days before she died, was that her funeral procession might not pass beneath Goethe's windows, for she feared that the sight of it would cause him pain. Charlotte von Stein (1877) is not so satisfactory as the Goethe. It contains more dull moralizing and superlatives than does the earlier book. Not only is Goethe "the most active, the most earnest, the most genial of men," he is also "one of the most moral, most religious men that ever lived." 6 8 A n d it is difficult for the reader to accept Calvert's explanation of Goethe's reluctance to marry Christiane at once as due to the unhappy married life which he had observed in the homes of the Steins, the Imhoffs, the DeKalbs, and the Duke and Duchess. The humanity of Goethe, in the earlier biography, gives to that book a freshness only hinted at in Charlotte von Stein. A n d yet the later work is not without its virtues. The subject was a novel one in America; Calvert's evident enthusiasm for it is contagious; passages, which he translated from Goethe's letters, are well chosen and illuminating; the story of Christiane's bravery during the sack of Weimar is vividly and sympathetically told; Schiller and his Lottchen, as well as other members of the Weimar group, are admirably drawn. Yet for all this the book passed almost unnoticed in its day. The Literary World, December 1,1877, called it "a valuable contribution to biographical literature," but censured its unduly enthusiastic admiration for Goethe. A highly favorable appreciation came from " M . W . H . " (Mayo Williamson Hazeltine) in The New Yor\ Sun (Sunday, November 4, 1877), 8 7 with which Swinton was now connected. Calvert, obviously disappointed in most of his critics, wrote gratefully of this review to Swinton on November 6: "It shows insight and genuine sympathy, is so different in its modesty from some of the notices we poor book-writers have to read, when after having been fifty years preparing to write a book, an ignorant beginner in criticism dogmatically passes sentence upon it, and strives to disguise from his readers the want of knowledge and culture, of which himself is conscious, by a bold face and a tone of impertinence. In this exposition of 'C. v. Stein' M. W . H—exhibits what is even rarer than the culture he gives token of, and that is, a remarkably refined & gentlemanly spirit. I beg you to present him my compliments and thanks, and beg him

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to accept a copy of my 'Gcothc* which I send by this post to your care." 68 Meanwhile Calvert had been corresponding with the Van Havres about the French translation of his Rubens, which he hoped to have ready for the bookstands in the railway stations of Antwerp in 1877. At first Henri Van Havre had thought of translating it himself, thus paying a double tribute to their ancestor: but since it was impossible for him to devote the time which a careful translation required, he employed a professional translator in Belgium. The price of publication in book form, however, was so ridiculously high that Calvert had to follow the advice of his cousin. Henri Van Havre wrote on July 27 from Ostend: "As I saw by one of your last letters that your main object was to have your work published in the home of your mother, I offered the publication gratis to the leading liberal paper of Antwerp, 'Le Precurseur.'69 In that way I am confident your -work will be extensively read by all the Antwerp people. More so even than it would have been through the publication of a book. I was going to forget to tell you that I offered your 'Life of Rubens' to the 'Revue de Belgique.' I got a very polite answer from Baron von Bemmel,™ professor of French literature, at the University of Brussels, telling me that as I wished to have the work published during August, it would be impossible for them to undertake it, as the work was too long to be printed in two of their numbers, & that they were full already.—I am sorry to have failed in my endeavors, but if your main object is reached by your book being read by a great number of the best and most intelligent people of Antwerp, viz: the merchants who are nearly all liberals, your aim will be attained by the publication in the 'Precurseur.' I will of course send you the numbers of the 'Precurseur' newspaper containing your life of Rubens." Calvert's next publication, Wordsworth, a Biographic, Aesthetic Study (1878), was, like the Goethe, Rubens, and Charlotte von Stein, a pioneer biography in America.71 Although magazine articles on Wordsworth had appeared in this country and editions of his poems had been published rather frequently, before 1878 no one had devoted an entire book to the study of his life and writings. Calvert had read Coleridge's The Friend in 1833. Seven years later he had made a pilgrimage to Rydal Mount, and in 1849 he had met the poet a second time. The description of both these visits,72 adding somewhat to the account given in Scenes and Thoughts in Europe (1846), after his first meeting, gives a personal touch to the volume. Calvert's pages on Goethe in his Wordsworth come as a kind of epilogue

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to Goethe and Charlotte von Stein. Here was an opportunity for setting right an injustice which had been done to the German poet by one of his most distinguished critics. According to Lady Richardson's account of a conversation of August 26, 1841, Wordsworth had divided all poets into two classes, placing universal poets, such as Homer and Shakespeare, in the first class, and all others beneath them in the second class. T o a not very high place in the lower class, he assigned Goethe, whom he had never met. "I consider him a very artificial writer," Wordsworth had told Lady Richardson, "aiming to be universal, and yet constantly exposing his individuality, which his character was not of a kind to dignify. He had not sufficiently clear moral perceptions to make him anything but an artificial writer." 7 3 In refutation Calvert accused Wordsworth of "puritanic pharisaism," and "insularity." Goethe, he contended, was no more transparent through Faust than Shakespeare through Hamlet; Goethe's many-sidedness and the "Homeric objectivity" of Hermann und Dorothea were sufficient cause for placing him in Wordsworth's first class of universal poets. In style both poets were simple, but Wordsworth, though grand, was never rich. Goethe was a wider naturalist, for he had both a scientific and a poetic love for nature. Goethe's warmth of temperament was shown especially in his women characters, "healthy female creations." Wordsworth's on the other hand were but "the idealizations of reality." "In the eight thousand lines of 'The Prelude,'" Calvert pointed out, "there is no woman, except the 'Dame' with whom he lodged in his school-days, and a brief allusion to his sister, and a briefer to his future wife." 74 His final estimation placed Wordsworth below Goethe; although Wordsworth's aim was to "lift his reader towards holier things," he lacked the depth and humanity of his German contemporary. In the closing pages of this biography, he phrased his aim: to make Wordsworth "more deeply valued in America." Unfortunately he did not choose the most tactful approach to carry out this purpose. The tone of the book is one of reproof to his contemporaries. In the "cruel and vain world" described in Wordsv/orth's "Prelude," Calvert saw an alarming likeness to the corruptions and perversions of American politics of his own day, and he did not hesitate to point it out: In style, though not as florid as some of his earlier prose, the book is still effusive and artificial. The use of such stilted compounds as "bodeful," "regardful," and "sapful"—a habit which grew upon him with the years—adds crinoline stiffness to his pages. The piling up of adjectives in his description of Sara Coleridge as "refined,

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cultivated, clear-sighted, true-hearted, high-spoken," 78 in an effort to be what he might himself have termed "mildly praiseful," is tiresome and unconvincing. Some of the paragraphs are difficult to follow because of involved syntax. In extolling Wordsworth's writing, he is often extravagant, for instance, in his characterization of "The Idiot Boy," as "an incomparable artistic feat." 76 Wordsworth attracted more attention than Charlotte von Stein, but The Nation, November 21, 1878,77 pointed to the diminishing vogue of the poet: "The reaction against him is violent enough to need all the countervailing influences his admirers can bring together." From Dublin Edward Dowden wrote for The Academy™ a London weekly, a review which devoted more than half its space to a plea for the use of the Haydon portrait instead of the "bland inanity" of the Pickersgill as a frontispiece, but spoke kindly of Calvert and his aims. One of the most interesting of the American criticisms was in The Literary World, January 18,1879, 79 over the signature of "W. M. F. Round": "Wordsworth lies open before me. I have not yet come to the end of it, but from the first chapter, what has struck me most forcibly, is an ineffable sweetness, a brooding charity, a something not quite definable, but most like what one good friend writes or says of another. And yet he neither over-praises, or sets down aught in extenuation of faults. . . . But Mr. Calvert, while he recognizes Wordsworth's complacency in his own work, passes it over with such a tender word, that we love both poet and biographer the better for it." The critic, who had also read and liked the Goethe, was able to compare the two: "To have known 'deeply in soul-knowledge,' two such widely differing men as Goethe and Wordsworth, shows us a many-sided and deeply philosophical mind . . . Though Mr. Calvert is evidently a great admirer, aye, a warm personal friend, of both these everliving poets, he makes one feel after reading the two biographies that Goethe's work was better than his life, and Wordsworth's life better than his work; and that both in life and works, they, Goethe and Wordsworth, are giants among men, and poets among the poets of eternal ages, past and to come." Such recognition was gratifying, and despite the censure of contemporary critics and his sensitiveness to their thrusts, in his happier moods Calvert must have been able to look back over the years since the publication of his Goethe as a period rich in accomplishments. Although many of his books had been appreciated only by a limited audience, a few—Goethe, The Maid of Orleans, Rubens, Wordsworth—had had more than one edition.

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T h e Goethe Club had paid him the compliment of an invitation to speak at one of their meetings; his literary essays had brought him the recognition of Henry James as a "disinterested scholar" who wrote with "the aroma of genuine culture"; another critic had found in his Wordsworth "ineffable sweetness" and "a brooding charity," modest tribute, to be sure, but of a quality to touch his moments of tranquility with quiet satisfaction.

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HE moments of tranquility were more frequent in the last decade of Calvert's life. Sudden outbursts against sham and hypocrisy still came, but at long intervals. As he grew more introspective, Calvert was content to abide in that realm of spiritual contemplation which even in the active years had havened him from the storm of conflicting opinion. There was no lessening of mental alertness. His interest in spiritualism 1 had not disappeared, but it was being replaced by a deepening religious sentiment, noticeable in the lecture before the Goethe Club and in the Wordsworth. Especially in his poetry this new quality was discernible. T h e human companionship for which he had longed in Baltimore and had found so abundantly in Newport during the 1840s and 1850s had grown less satisfying with each successive year, as the old friends passed from view. Some of the closest friendships of his later years seem to have been among the children of the neighborhood, who used to watch for him each morning as he passed by from the Newport Reading Room with his mail. H e always wore a long flapping cape, which could be recognized at a great distance, and a slouch hat that made him look like Rubens. 2 Along with his own letters he used to bring the mail for at least one of his neighbors. A little girl who lived next door remembers that he would stop at her house and call out "letters" and she would run and stand on tiptoe and put her hand in his big pocket to draw out the mail for her family. "Strangely enough Uncle Calvert has remained always a personality in my mature years," she writes. "Something of his quality was always before me as an ideal. It was not altogether the distinction of his figure that appealed to my childish imagination; it was more like a vista of mind always there for me to look down. His beliefs in man's mental and spiritual possibilities were much in advance of the accepted knowledge of scholars of his day. I grew up hearing of them and believing in them." 3 A boy who lived across the street owned a bicycle which was several

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sizes too large for him. After struggling for some time to swing one short leg over the crossbar, he discovered that his neighbor's fence was a very convenient place from which to mount. Calvert admired the boy's ingenuity, and often strolled across the lawn to talk to him, always addressing him as "philosopher." 4 In the summertime, Calvert used to entertain some of his young friends on the side veranda, where he served lemonade made from Poland water brought in from the wood. 5 Gazing contentedly out over the lawns, they discussed such things as the possible difference between the heaven that was to come and life in Newport as it was in those days. Sometimes the conversation drifted to the technique of writing. Then Calvert would take them into the study to instruct them in the art of sentence construction "so as to preserve the phonic unison." Taking a book at random from his shelves he would pick out sentences that to him had an unpleasant sound and, by striking out a word here or substituting a word there, would show them how he could get a "phonic" expression without altering the meaning. T o illustrate this "phonic unison" he might well have chosen a passage from one of his own manuscripts, the next to the last paragraph of his Shakespeare, for instance, in which he describes the majesty and fullness of Shakespeare's literary endowment: "All the Loves were there, their tender eyes ready to be flooded by tears or to sparkle with smiles; all the passions, their eager glances softened by hope or fierce with defiance, some bounding through blossoms towards sunlit goals, others only visible by the glare of their tiger-eyes, as they crouch in the dark, watching to make a tragic spring. Wit stood ready, armed with his polished blades, and a greater than he, Humor . . . enclosing the whole work of the master in a buoyant atmosphere of divine tolerance." 6 As his young listeners heard him reading slowly, his deep musical voice lingering over each sonorous syllable, they could not have helped being impressed by his manner even though they were probably not fully aware of the meaning. But the critics who wrote for the current periodicals were not favorably impressed, and Calvert's last years were passed in a disappointment which he did not try to conceal. It may have been after some particularly crude thrust at his idealism that he wrote in his Shakespeare: "A thoughtful idealist . . . Hamlet is surrounded by shallow realists; and no one is so shallow as your thorough unimaginative realist. Such a man could not but be isolated: he is not quite so much so to-day as in the reign of Elizabeth." 7

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Calvert's literary output in the closing years of his life consisted of work which was less sustained than that in the major biographies. It seemed to come as a rummaging through old notebooks and mulling over old jottings, completing unpatterned thoughts and catching all together that he had been doing in the past in an attempt to give it a final shape. A few volumes, privately printed, were now published for the first time; new editions were brought out; one drama left unfinished was completed. But he produced little that was wholly new except some poetry and a book of memoirs. He remained active in the community, giving generously to charity whenever there was a special need,8 and consenting readily to lecture on local platforms. On March 9,1878, he read to the senior class of the Rogers High School a lecture on Goethe, presumably the same as that delivered in New York before the Goethe Club, altered slightly to suit the needs of the younger audience. The local press showed that the old prejudice against Goethe had by no means died out in Newport. "Mr. Calvert's strong admiration of the genius of Goethe," said The Newport Mercury, March 16, "caused him to speak but lightly of the faults which the great man possessed, and his explanation of their cause seemed hardly satisfactory." 9 But the following fall he was asked to return to the same platform to deliver a series of lectures on Wordsworth, which attracted many besides the school audience. Wordsworth's relations with Annette Vallon not being known at the time, the Mercury highly commended these lectures.10 In thanking Paul Hamilton Hayne of Georgia, on January 29, 1879, 11 for a criticism of the Wordsworth which Hayne had written for The Louisville Argus,12 Calvert mentioned a difficulty in making the pen obey his will: "As poet and author you will doubtless know from your own experience how gratifying it was to me to read so refined and sympathetic a comment upon my little volume. We poor authors have to put up with so much crudeness and ignorance in what is [called] criticism,—and now and then with impertinence. . . . "My old hand will not obey fluently my not so old brain, or I would write at more length." But this physical disability did not prevent him from writing a review of Matthew Arnold's edition of the Poems of Wordsworth (1879), which appeared over his signature in The Literary World, October 25, 13 and was hearty in its enthusiasm for Arnold's contribution to Wordsworth scholar-

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ship. In the late autumn his literary acquaintance with Hayne ripened into friendship. "My going over to M r Hazard's hospitable mansion to meet you and M r " Hayne," Calvert wrote on November 14, 14 "is a most agreeable section in one of the later chapters of my life." In the same letter he mentioned having sent Hayne a copy of his new volume, Shakespeare. It was fitting that this should have been the last of the five longer biographies which Calvert produced. Shakespeare had been the supreme literary influence on Calvert throughout his life. Beside Shakespeare even Goethe took second place. But coming as it did after the groundwork of American Shakespeare criticism had been done, the book did not add anything new. It was largely a piecing together of Calvert's earlier writings, with new reflections added, and falls directly in the school of romantic criticism already represented by Henry Norman Hudson and Richard Grant White. The fact that a copy of White's Shakespeare's Scholar (1854) is in Calvert's private library in Newport is perhaps significant. Calvert's Shakespeare, patterned after his earlier heroes, Goethe and Rubens, is portrayed as "a magnetic man, who drew other men to him by the fascination of his presence and his speech," a "many-sided, myriadminded man," whom we love as much for greatness of heart as for greatness of head.16 Calvert was aware of this likeness himself, for the similarity between Shakespeare and Rubens is developed to the extent of a page and a half. Both were men of warm, responsive nature, producing scenes of "beaming life, expression, sinuous movement"; 1 8 both were a compound of realist and idealist, the closeness of the union between the two natures being largely responsible for the grandeur and efficiency of the work of each. "Owing to the ever-present ideal in his [Shakespeare's] reality, his pages are overhung by a wide, high, pure, airy heaven, just as the pictures of Rubens are; and there is nothing smothery about the presentations of either; open to heaven, they have a boundless breadth of fresh air about them." 1 7 But Calvert's was not a creative gift, and even his "aesthetic studies" are sometimes marred by the discursiveness which made his Volume from the Life of Herbert Barclay so formless and dull. T o one familiar with Calvert's four earlier biographies, it seems a little strange to find so little discussion of Goethe in his Shakespeare. Except for a few passing references, Goethe is mentioned only twice in the book, and on one of these two occasions he is adversely criticized. Goethe, like Coleridge, had contended that in Hamlet Shakespeare depicted "a great deed laid upon a soul unequal to the performance of it." Calvert disagreed.

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"The defect is in the deed," he maintained, "not in the doer." 18 What Hamlet was required to do by his father's spirit was a vile deed. Not to do it, revealed strength, not weakness. The second mention of the great German poet is probably Calvert's last published thrust at those who condemned Goethe for being so often in love: "Don't you wish that you could be?" he asks, whereupon he points out that both Goethe's love poems and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet were the product of men of "large capability of love." 1 9 The Literary World, December 20,1879, conducting a column of "Shakespeariana," edited by W. J. Rolfe, found Calvert's book "in the main a good one," but went to some pains, with more spirit than tact, to expose its errors. Calvert's letter to Paul Hamilton Hayne, January 29,1880,20 reflects the accumulation of hurts which unfavorable criticism had inflicted: "I take the Literary World and had the pleasure of reading in it your fine sonnets to Swinburne, whom, however, I think you somewhat overrate. That piece of Rolfe was an impertinence to me, and an impertinence aggravated by the fact he was entirely unconscious that it was impertinent. This shoal of conceited would-be critics, I am tempted at times to become vulgar & unchristian and d the whole disgusting crew. However they answer the purpose of advertisers; they call attention to one's books.—By the by Swinburne has just issued a volume 'A Study of Shakespeare' in which he satirizes & ridicules the tribe of prosaic commentators on Shakespeare. The book has brilliant incisive passages and is vigorous and lively but too controversial." A tribute to Calvert's volume came, however, from Mary CowdenClarke, who was then living in Italy. It was a gift copy of Charles CowdenClarke's Carmina Minima (1859), bearing the inscription, "presented to George H. Calvert, Esq. in high admiration of his 'Shakespeare a biographic aesthetic study.' Mary Cowden Clarke Villa Novello, Genoa, Mar. 1880." 2 1 In 1880 Coleridge, Shelley, Goethe appeared, a volume of three essays dealing with themes not new to Calvert. The "Coleridge" had its inception in his review of The Literary Remains of S. T. Coleridge, edited by Henry Nelson Coleridge. The study shows a close familiarity with and appreciation of Coleridge's work and recourse to some of the standard commentaries on him, such as Carlyle's chapter in his Life of Sterling, and an article in The London Quarterly Review, July, 1863, "Coleridge as a Poet." The summary of Coleridge's life and the comparison of his friendship with

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Wordsworth to that of Goethe and Schiller are, perhaps, of less interest than the tolerance which the volume reveals in its treatment of Coleridge's failings. His handling of the opium incidents is as sympathetic as was his treatment of Goethe's shortcomings: "The great and good Coleridge is not a subject for shallow rebuke. . . . He was a giant with one arm paralyzed, a sun with deep spots in it that dimmed its radiance. Possibly, but for the crippling contradictions in him, but for his unmanning weaknesses, his many-sided splendor would have been too dazzling. . . . Whoever would reproach Coleridge, let him pause." 2 2 With the same indignation shown in his attack on George Putnam in the Preface to the Schiller-Goethe Correspondence, Calvert railed at the injustice done to Shelley, blaming not an individual critic this time but the kind of world in which Shelley lived—a dull, brutal world which did not understand him and made him rebel against society: "And he thus scowled upon was the most unselfish, the most generous, the most sympathetic of men, the purest, the truest, the kindest, the bravest, this rare pyramid of excellence being crowned by poetic genius and intellectual splendor." The critic's detestation of all falsity and sham colors the rest of the passage, with its denunciation of the hypocrisy of formal creeds. "In the insolence of their blind egoism they would scourge and crucify this divine man, and that chiefly because he does not go to their church,—and he does not go to their church because his religion is vital, of the soul, instead of being formal, of the tongue." 23 The essay on Goethe, which concluded the volume, was a reprint of the lecture delivered before the Goethe Club in New York, in 1877. Calvert was now seventy-seven, but a letter to Hayne 24 showed that he was vigorous in thought and expression, though somewhat handicapped by a slight physical infirmity: "Would that my pen could speed across the paper as yours does, so that I might suitably acknowledge and answer your long, interesting letter of the 3d. But, although 'I am not old and will not be' 2 5 my fingers, in spite of me, will shake under their 77 years. "My wife, to whom I read it, enjoyed and admired with me 'Love's Autumn.' I could not help feeling, as I passed from stanza to stanza, that it was M r " Hayne addressing you. . . ." It is a commentary on Calvert's own poetic gifts and critical theories that he found the conventional poetry of his friend Hayne more pleasing than

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that of Walt Whitman, which was so remote, both in its form and message from his own verse: "Walt Whitman," he continued, "is an enormous joke. Can a thousand people, by gazing at & praising a gaslight, turn it into a star? Or can five thousand, by smelling of a cabbage give it the fragrance of a rose ? All the critics [I must take to the pencil] in Christendom cant write Walt into a poet. Every man has some poetry in him. Whitman has probably more than the average man, but by no means enough to be a mouthpiece & interpreter for humanity of the spiritual and beautiful & divine. To me it seems that his admirers mistake coarseness for simplicity, grossness for naivete, impudence for independence, oddness for originality. There is in him none of the 'golden cadence of poesy,' to say nothing of its elegancy & facility. The taking of him up by Swinburne & Co. in England is a piece of ironic insolence towards our literature." Calvert's discontent with criticism in a changing world to which his own writings did not seem to belong may have been the reason for a somewhat weary note to Messrs. Harris & Company, on December 22, 1880: 26 "The term of my subscription to 'The Literary World' ends, I believe, in a few days. I do not wish it renewed." But this gesture was by no means a leavetaking of the world of letters to which he was still contributing, with an enthusiasm which received slight encouragement. On April 18, i88i, 2T he wrote to John Swinton that he had in manuscript several poems as good as the "Threescore," for which there was "no demand in the prosaic, hurrying, self-seeking public." Too definitely under the domination of Goethe's ballads, Schiller's romantic dramas, and the poetry of the English romanticists, Calvert's own verse continued to be conservative in form, romantic in feeling. However out of key he may have been with the judgment of his time, and unable to see ahead to the change in literary form exemplified by the poetry of Walt Whitman, he was ahead of his time and akin to Whitman in his social philosophy. In direct contrast to the conventional philosophy of his poetry is the forward-looking socialistic viewpoint expressed to this same friend, John Swinton, in an interesting letter of September 15, 1881, 28 mentioning another physical difficulty from which he was suffering, and showing the influence of Fourierism still fresh in his life: "My eyes never were strong, now are less so than ever. The next time you send me a 'Storm and Stress' Address you must make it common place . . . or, print it in larger type. Common place you cant make it: I defy you to

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do that : therefore out of kindness to me you must print it better. My poor eyes are straining through your rich eloquent paragraphs. "For many years I have been a thorough Socialist, that is one who demands justice for all. Fellow-feeling with my brother men makes me long to see them all doing well, and I deem myself happy that my mind has fallen under the supersolar light of that of Fourier, whose great heart, urging him to solve the vast social problem,—was enlightened by a most broad and penetrating intellect to discover that this immense problem could only be solved through the organization of wor\, and that work could only be truly organized through application of the law, the profound prolific law of groups and series. Guise in France is the brightest spot on our globe, for there a noble man who has risen from the rank & file of laborers to be a Capitalist, M. Godin,29 has begun the application of Fourier's principles, in what he calls a Familistère where already he has shown how Capital & Labor can be reconciled, and how justice & love can rule among 1200 men women & children, to their physical, intellectual and spiritual elevation. "While hoping much for the future I respect the past, the mother of the present. Out of the present is to be evolved the future. That a sound healthy future be produced the present must be respected, not bludgeoned. Festina lente is the law of social development. You lose time by attempting to go too fast. The wholesome process is by substitution, not by destruction. Liberty is a plant of slow growth, and cant be forced. Industrial development is manure to it, but it is watered by moral principles, and spiritual breezes are the breath of its life." Although he had dropped all interest in politics, Calvert's civic pride continued unabated, and there was an occasional opportunity to express it publicly. In October, 1881, when a French delegation to the Yorktown Centennial visited the Torpedo Station at Newport, Calvert was invited to make a formal address of welcome. M. Outrey, having replied in English to Governor Selfridge's welcome, Calvert returned the courtesy by addressing the visiting delegation in French.30 In the following year (1882) Life, Death, and Other Poems was published, made up largely of verses written in the summer of 1880, but some, such as "Aspiration" and "Garibaldi," were included from earlier volumes. The preoccupation with themes of life and death was natural. Calvert had lived to see the early Newport passing into the hands of wealthy aristocrats who

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were unmindful of her cultural traditions—traditions which wrapped her past like the softening mists that sometimes drenched her rocky coasts. And with the changing order had come the loss of personal friends. Kennedy and Tuckerman no longer walked the streets of Newport, bringing that firm and deep encouragement which comes only from long association with those of similar tastes. Soon after the publication of Life, Death, and Other Poems, he was to lose still another close friend, Charles Timothy Brooks, Newport pastor, whose scholarly interests had been so much like his own. Calvert and the now venerable George Bancroft were among the honorary pallbearers who carried him forth from the church he had served for thirty-five years.81 Threescore, and Other Poems (1883) reflects little of the sadness of these losses, however, for it was made up largely of earlier verse. "Life's Jubilees" began with a tribute to dawn and continued with a description of other joyous experiences—the sight of the first violets in spring, the sea in sun or storm, the glow-worm in its dell, children with their toys, young lovers, the mother with her child, the fearless hero, sacrificing for others. But the greatest of life's jubilees, the joy that comes of creative thought, was revealed in the closing lines—lines which show Calvert still communing with the Muse. Of this poem, offered to The Galaxy, in the spring of 1870, but apparently not accepted, Calvert had written to Swinton on June 29, 1870: 3 2 "I am disappointed that M r Church has not yet published a poem I sent him 2 or 3 months ago, called 'Life's Jubilee,' which is a poem, or I will drink out of my ink bottle the first time I am thirsty. Ask him to show it to you." The theme of spiritualism recurred in "Lisette. A Musical Ballad," in which Lisette's mother comes back to earth to speak to her friends and to warn them that her daughter will soon leave them too. The same concept is implied in "Her Little Boy," where a mother's grief over the loss of her child is healed when she is able to feel his presence near, as a more divine joy, "free from earth's decay." Metrical experimentation and Miltonic sonorousness are combined with a high theme in the "Ode to Greece." In "May-Spirit" Calvert again looked out upon the world of growing things with an observing eye. One is reminded of the concrete imagery of "Anyta" in the 1866 volume but the later poem is more deeply touched with religious sentiment. Its central theme, the hope of immortality promised by ever-returning spring, is expressed with some felicity and tenderness:

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What a resurrection's glory! Souls upwaking toward the Soul, One and many, young and hoary, That so raptureth the whole, Not the least, but it must be Each an immortality. See the foremost lilies, lancing With quick green their winter roof, Round ¿bout them timid glancing If the snow be all aloof; While above, fresh-orbed with flowers, Glows a maple through the showers. The book contained also a few short personal poems, 33 the best, "Love," inspired by Elizabeth Steuart Calvert: I have no fear of thee, That thou wilt swerve from me; My feeling is so closely wound About thy being, through, around, I cannot fancy how We two could part: canst thou? Joan of Arc: a Narrative Poem, privately printed in 1864, was published in 1883, and Brangonar, the last of Calvert's verse dramas, came out the same year. This play had been begun earlier, for the preface is dated 1868. It was an attempt to "reproduce dramatically Napoleon and his crowded vivid career, to give the essence of a momentous epoch, under a thin disguise to portray the features of the period . . . " 3 4 The theme had long interested Calvert—in fact, it was almost a part of his own family tradition. The action takes place chiefly in "the Capital." The character of Brangonar dominates the play—a tyrannical, bold, unscrupulous monarch bent on enlarging his dominions, with a complete disregard for the sufferings of others. A letter to Swinton, September 22, 1869,35 just after the completion of the preface, suggests that the playwright had hoped to bring it before the footlights: "In a pleasant paper in the Oct. Galaxy on the Astor Library, by F. H. Norton, it is stated, that John Kemble Mason, the actor, is 'probably the best representative of Napoleon on the stage.' 3 8 Does M r Mason live in New York? I have not seen his name lately, as connected with the stage. Can you find out about him for me?" But in The Literary World, February 9, 1884, the published drama met with a rebuff that termed it "unquestionably a masterpiece of chaotic ideas

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and distorted blank verse, which . . . might leave the same impression on the mind of a conscientious reader as would a dull, vague, oppressive nightmare, not vivid enough to be terrible and too palpably existent to be pleasant." Brangonar was not an inspired piece of writing, but to call it "a masterpiece of chaotic ideas," was, perhaps, to condemn it too completely. Now past eighty, Calvert was still smiting the rock whence came slender rills of mediocre verse. Toward the end of 1882 he had written 600 additional lines of Cabiro, making the sixth Canto, which apparently was never published. In 1883 appeared Angeline, Sibyl, and The Nazarene, three poems published separately. Angeline shows again the influence of spiritualism. At the deathbed of her father, the nine-year-old girl sees, as in a vision, both father and mother, living and joyful, in the realm where there is no death. Even at the age of four Angeline had been given to dreams and fancies and had surprised the family pastor with her prophecies. Sibyl37 is a narrative depicting the influence of a small child on the man who had stolen her from her mother, because of his resentment at her marriage to another. The child's beautiful nature gradually transforms him so that at last he writes to the mother, confessing his deed. As he dies, he returns the child to her mother. As poetry, the Angeline and Sibyl are negligible, but their themes show that the Wordsworthian doctrine "heaven lies about us in our infancy" was particularly attractive to Calvert in these later years. The Nazarene, a better poem than either of the other two, was mentioned kindly by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who wrote in The Nation, June 26, 1884: "Mr. Calvert's 'The Nazarene' (Boston: Lee and Shepard) has also a Scriptural theme, but is much briefer and is marked by some boldness as well as tenderness." From 1881 to 1885 Calvert was busy writing his memoirs, an accumulation of retrospection and recollection, bringing into a kind of pattern the episodes and thoughts, the disappointments and accomplishments of a long and full life. Although these memoirs were never published, they appeared in page proof as an Autobiographic Study?* printed by Lee and Shepard. The 267 pages give biographical facts only to 1840, when Calvert left America for his second trip to Europe. What Lewes said of Goethe's Dichtung und Wahrheit might well be applied to Calvert's autobiography —"the old man depicts the youth as the old man saw him, not as the youth felt and lived," and "the picture of youthful follies and youthful passions comes softened through the distant avenue of years." But the scattered and

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fragmentary memories of early childhood are valuable in helping to reconstruct something of life on the Maryland plantation, while the chapters on the Philadelphia boarding schools and on Harvard give illuminating glimpses of his later education. Recollections of early struggles in Baltimore, and of pleasant friendships, round out the picture of the middle years. The two concluding chapters are, however, more reflective than factual. The first of them, " A Great Teacher," is devoted entirely to the influence of Gall upon Calvert's thought, while the other on "Other Teachers" furnishes mature reflections on literature and religion. In these pages Calvert's casual jottings show that he was pioneering still. For he was proudly conscious of our literary heritage from England, of the cheering and expanding influences of Continental literature upon our own, and of the refreshing undercurrents flowing to us from the literature of classical Greece. He did not agree with those who believed that we could have an independent literature, "as though literature was a crop that grew out of the earth." "All high literature," he wrote, "is, must be, lighted from within by light from the beautiful, and the sphere of the beautiful is only reached by ascending to the plane of the generic and the eternal." 3 9 Prescott, writing of Spain, and Motley of Holland, were not less American literally than Bancroft, who wrote a history of the United States. Nor was Emerson's Representative Men less American because there was not a single American name among his six representative men. Irving was as much an American when he wrote The Sketch Boo\ as when he wrote Knickerbocker's History of New-Yor\; The Marble Faun was as native as The House of the Seven Gables, and Cooper's most American novel was not The Last of the Mohicans, but Home as Found, in which he satirized the social and aesthetic shortcomings of his countrymen. In fact, pages 237-247 of this chapter comprise a kind of essay on American literature. But the chapter ends with an evaluation of the Christian religion and the character of Jesus. Although there is no evidence that Calvert ever joined a church, the religious sentiment, strong in his writings throughout his life, became increasingly noticeable in the later works. The formative influences on his religious ideas were indeed varied. His early training was in the Episcopalian church; at Harvard he was exposed to Unitarianism; in Antwerp he learned to distrust Catholicism; in Baltimore phrenology blended with Wordsworth's nature worship. At Newport he had become interested in spiritualism, Fourierism, and transcendentalism. He was also influenced

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by Goethe's strong belief in immortality, Emerson's moral sentiment, the ethical ideals of Socrates, the high thoughts of Marcus Aurelius, Dante's firm and gentle faith, Kant's ideas of a spirit-world, Milton's vision of the "Millions of spiritual Creatures" that "walk the Earth unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep"—all these and many more went into the shaping of Calvert's moral and ethical views. No wonder he had no use for narrow sectarianism and shallow theological teachings, the worst of which he found to be the doctrine of the " 'Fall of Man' and all its theosophic corollaries." 40 But he had high regard for reverence, "that angel of the world," 41 and for rectitude and the underlying unity of life. Throughout the closing pages of his memoirs the moral law sounds and the spiritual vision shines. In those pages he seems to be intent upon expanding a statement made earlier in his Rubens: "Morality, or the supremacy in conduct of all our spiritual powers combined, is the human arch, wanting which the keystone religion cannot bind humanity. This supremacy is awaiting its consummation in a broader social order, when the interdependence of men shall be purer and deeper, and life on earth become more human and more heavenly." 42 In his Goethe, in 1872, Calvert had written: "The creative mind is lonely, courts solitude." 4 3 And he had called Shakespeare "isolated." 44 One cannot help feeling that Calvert was himself lonely and isolated many times in Newport, even though he had the companionship of his wife, the loyal friendship of John Swinton, and the good will of the neighbors' children. He had also the warmth and stimulus of the great literary figures who had been his lifelong friends—Dante, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Goethe, names that recur often in his later writings, as if he depended upon them to give buoyancy to his own work. But there were moments when even in this high company he could not find satisfying companionship, and he turned to the personality and teachings of Jesus for more enduring solace. In his memoirs Calvert upbraids Carlyle for never having written a life of Christ. "Carlyle," he wrote, "was individually too concentrated within himself, of too ambitious and despotic a nature, too grasping after fame and power, to discern that there are higher, holier gifts than those wielded by Mahomet, Cromwell, Frederick, and that among men have been actively realized loftier ideals than these three." 45 It is significant that among the longer biographies which Calvert wrote there is not one which portrays a temporal ruler of the type which Carlyle chose to depict. Goethe, Rubens, Charlotte von Stein, Wordsworth, Shake-

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spcare—each of these aspired to something higher than temporal power or fame. If Calvert had written another biography after his Shakespeare it might well have been a life of Christ. In his memoirs he mentions that in "these latter decades have been published many 'Lives of Christ.' " 4 6 Glancing back over Calvert's writings we find materials for such a life scattered throughout his pages. In his Shakespeare he wrote at some length about Jesus as the "archtype of the spiritual ideal," who proved by his appearance to his disciples after the crucifixion that "the bond between God and man, between heaven and earth, is not broken by the body's decrease." 4 7 In the memoirs, Jesus is described as "the greatest lover known among men." 4 8 In The Nazarene, a poetical treatment of the subject, Jesus is portrayed as brother and friend, who through his purity and goodness made himself the great examplar for the world. But men, fearing that the ethical standard which Jesus had set was too high, made of him a God, finding it easier to worship him than to imitate him in their daily lives: The spiritual law . . . Ruled all his moods, and this so raised his stature That some men, in their morbidness, Look upon Jesus as no true man, A something superhuman, Willing him into unnatural loneness, Which, with men's innate proneness To imaginative substitutes for fact, Is infinitely easier than To know him as a brother-man, Imitable in his every act.49 This poem reveals more directly than any of Calvert's other writings the influence of Unitarianism, but one cannot help feeling that it was not the eloquence of eminent Boston clergymen that inspired him to write it. It seems rather to have been penned under the influence of Charles Timothy Brooks, who for many years had lived in his humble Newport parish the essence of the Unitarian message. Calvert saw in such a way of life a sincerity and simplicity lacking in sects which emphasized the "Fall of Man." The tenderness which Higginson noted in his brief comment on the poem is contained largely in the stanza depicting the reappearance of Jesus before his disciples: After the Crucifixion came His deepest lesson; when, Disconsolate, with eyelids wet,

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His loved disciples met, Like children suddenly bereft, Desolate, motherless, all left Uncomforted; and then, While they were whispering his dear name, Jesus amid them stood, Apparendy of flesh and blood. (Creative spirit taketh leave Out of material elements A temporary form to weave, Accessible to earthly sense.) In wonder, love and awe, T h e y gazed, until he spoke: I LIVE. I A M ARISEN.50

Threescore, Angeline, Mirabeau (1883) were noticed in The Literary World by a critic who picked out the worst flaws in the three books, dipped his pen in irony, and attempted to annihilate all of them with a single stroke. To be sure, Angeline had some absurdly awkward lines; and Mirabeau was not an inspired drama, but Threescore contained a few poems, already discussed, of a quality high enough to prevent the book from deserving this critic's wholesale condemnation: "The third of Mr. Calvert's precious caskets we opened with some misapprehensions," he wrote, "misreading its title at first so as to think it might mean 'Threescore Poems and More Too.' But happily, Threescore is the title of the first poem, and there are only twenty-two in all. The print is large, and one gets through them for the most part easily . . . If a man can afford to pay the cost of manufacture, we do not know that anybody can dispute his right to publish books of poetry such as these; but, seriously, the public ought not to be asked to buy them, nor reviewers to read them; they should be given away to the author's friends, if he have any left." Calvert had discontinued his subscription to The Literary World two years earlier and may never have read the review. But it probably would not have deterred him from the purpose which he expressed in a letter to John Swinton on July 20,1883: 5 1 "Before starting for the club post office, after breakfast, I said to my wife, 'I have a presentiment of something cheering that awaited me,' and there I found your letter of the 19th. There are few who combine so much intellect and sensibility with so much generosity of feeling as you do; but still, from the witness you bear to their quality (and some other appreciative readers)

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I can hardly understand why my publishers make so poor a report, especially as to this volume and 'Life, Death and Other Poems' . . . " I purpose in September to resume issuing monthly a volume of poetry, and will send them to you as they appear. "Excuse pencil: my old hand shakes, and I am otherwise 'blasted with antiquity,' but I am always sincerely yours . . ." The correspondence with Swinton had not been carried on with anything like its old regularity, in fact it had lapsed for more than a year. Swinton had been in France, England, and Ireland; had noted the "hideous squalor" of London, had met Karl Marx at Ramsgate, a genial, grayhaired man, who in response to Swinton's earnest, "What is?" had replied with equal earnestness, "Struggle!" 6 2 Returning to America, Swinton had taken on additional responsibilities in connection with the cause of labor. East Side speeches in the evening, which were "violent enough to wake the snakes," 8 3 were followed by dispassionate editorials the next day in The Sun on the Central American Republics—a field especially assigned to him by C. A . Dana as a safety-first policy. For Swinton was a strong socialist outside the newspaper offices.64 He left The Sun in 1883 to put all his savings ($40,000) into John Swinton's Paper. T h e brilliant editorials which he wrote for this publication attracted rather wide attention during the short span of its existence and gained the ultimate evaluation of being "the best labor paper in the country's history." 5 5 Swinton, with his dark eyes, and shock of bushy hair, now gray, protruding from the little black skullcap which he always wore, was a familiar figure at most of the social reform meetings in N e w York in the 1880s.58 When Calvert resumed the correspondence with his old friend, he was probably unaware of the extent of Swinton's new responsibilities. But he was not disappointed in the reply. The socialist editor could find time to read critically the poems of a friend whose work had always interested him. The correspondence might have continued with something of its former vigor had it not become increasingly difficult for Calvert to hold a pen. On September 6,1883, 5 7 he wrote what appears to be his last letter 6 8 extant to John Swinton. There is still eagerness and humor in the sprawling, penciled lines: "By this post I send you another copy of Sibyl, believing that, with your generous opinion of my verse, you may wish to give one away. . . . " I hope to see Lord Coleridge 5 8 next week: I have never seen any of that illustrious name. The ecclesiastical self-seeker and polished sophist, Mon

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Signore Capel,60 has left us, and the empty idlers, the gilded mushrooms, the guzzlers, gormandizers, and gamblers are beginning to go." The monthly volumes of poetry continued only through 1883, for after this the public contributions of Calvert to letters were from the lecture platform where he dwelt with enthusiasm during the next two years on themes he now felt his own. On October 4,1884, he made a speech before the Cleveland and Hendricks Club, which was later printed as a broadside. During the winter of 1885 he delivered in Newport a series of lectures on Rubens 6 1 and on March 15, 1886, he made an address before the Shakespeare Club of the First Congregational Church, at the home of the Rev. F. F. Emerson, the pastor."2 On July 19,1886, in the rooms of the Newport Historical Society, Calvert delivered a lecture which was an appropriate close for his long platform career. He was now eighty-three. It was sixty-one years since he had met Goethe in Weimar, and fifty years since he had first mentioned Goethe's name on a lecture platform in Baltimore. But he still found in the German poet high inspiration and a stimulating theme. Stooping slightly, as he leaned against the back of a tall chair, he told his hour-long story to the crowd who had gathered. Speaking in an easy, conversational tone, without the use of notes,83 he again emphasized the "deep soul-force" of Goethe, who reflected in his works the tumultuous times in which he lived. As a boy, Goethe had been hungry to learn, "at ten years of age he was quite well versed in four languages, and studied Hebrew, which took him to the Jews quarter to see what he could learn; at fifteen he . . . had a love affair. . . . Goethe . . . became the confidant of and peace-maker in families. Everybody trusted him. . . . His chief characteristics were benevolence and sympathy and absolute integrity and truthfulness . . . he was a second to Shakespeare and the superior of Schiller, about whom there was a tendency to superficiality." 64 After this, his final evaluation, Calvert told the story of his visit to Goethe, and proudly related the conversation in which he, as a young Gottingen student, had been able to enlighten the sage of Weimar on methods of conducting elections in the United States. He spoke with tenderness of Goethe's death. "Seated upon the side of his bed, he died, but before he breathed his last he uttered words that were characteristic of the life which had been a pursuit of truth. 'More light' said the dying Goethe, and he passed to the realms of light where Dante and Shakespeare awaited him." One would like to be able to reconstruct in picturesque detail the whole

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scene of Calvert's last public lecture, and state with certainty, not merely hazard a guess, that the poem which he recited in the course of it, "one of his own translations of a ballad by Goethe," was "The God and the Bayadere," which had concluded the biography of 1872. "A sample of Goethe's best," he had called it then, "significant as few poems are, and through that significance binds us in beautiful, mysterious union to the spiritual world." But the reporters from The Mercury and The Daily News were meagre in their comments, giving only brief extracts from the lecture, and apparently it was never published. During these last years the Kay Street home was still a meeting place for occasional visitors of scholarly distinction. In the drawing room, Mrs. Calvert, wearing a black silk dress and a lace cap and side-puffs, used to welcome their friends.65 Those who knew the elderly Calverts remember them as a devoted couple, walking out almost always together along the gravel-covered sidewalk; she, very tiny and speaking in a low voice, he, tall and thin, and in winter usually wrapped in a long black cape and leaning toward her to catch her words.66 Although no longer active in community affairs in the last months of his life—illness prevented him from addressing the Unity Club on Wordsworth in January, 1887 67—he was not forgotten when important gatherings were held in Newport, and in 1888, when the Annual American Institute of Instruction was scheduled to meet there from July 9 to 13, he was elected to the advisory committee.68 There seems to be no record of the duration or hature of Calvert's final illness, but during those weeks Elizabeth was able to watch by his bedside. The record book of the Island Cemetery in Newport states that George H. Calvert died on May 24, 1889, "of old age." Today a simple gray stone marks the grave. Seen from the vantage point of our own day, the whole minor pageant of Calvert's accomplishments and disappointments, from his first efforts to make Goethe and Schiller better known in Baltimore, to his last lecture on Goethe before the Newport Historical Society, in 1886, may seem the somewhat spectral result of his will to do something worthy of the cultural achievements of his ancestors. But in the career of this scion of two aristocratic families, one sees the influence of democracy at work upon the cultural ideals of the aristocracy. Scholarly interests, self-conscious conventionality in much that he wrote, a large number of distinguished ac-

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quaintances and an inability to establish warm contacts with the masses— these are earmarks of his aristocratic heritage. Novelty, variety, and "humanism" in his themes, enthusiasm for new ideas, willingness to serve his community, perseverance in the face of obstacles—these are pioneer qualities, largely the result of environment. His mother, a generation nearer to the conservatism of the Old World, and a stanch Federalist in her adopted country, had not been unaffected by the liberalism which surrounded her in America. But while appreciating the good qualities of this liberalism, she saw also its weaknesses. As early as 1810 she had noted a tendency toward the superficial and worldly in American life, a tendency for which she blamed the new material prosperity of the country, and she commented significantly in a letter to her brother: " W e have all the luxury of Europe, and have lost that simplicity which was worth far more." 69 Despite his aristocratic background, Calvert might have passed for a good American Democrat, had it not been for his admiration of both the luxury and the simplicity which his mother had mentioned. He tried to put both richness and simplicity into his writings; and he wanted both richness and simplicity to be a part of the social structure of America. Turning frequently to Old World culture for inspiration, he wanted to share his enjoyment with his countrymen, but he attempted to democratize his findings too suddenly, perhaps, and without being enough of a democrat at heart to do a thorough job. H e thought that he could introduce the writings of Schiller and Goethe to American readers as easily as his grandfather Stier had imported bulbs and seeds from Antwerp and made them grow in his Annapolis garden. But Calvert soon learned that transplanting flowers and transplanting ideas are two very different processes. T h e one may be done in a season, the other is seldom accomplished in a lifetime. Indeed, the task which he set for himself, that of synthesizing the best of European cultural luxury with American simplicity and independence, is still unfinished and is as vital today, though in a different sense, as it was in 1842. Calvert failed in many respects to carry out his aims, as did countless others of his generation, but to have had even a small part in such a task was an honor to him. Elizabeth Steuart Calvert, who lived to be ninety-two, survived her husband eight years, 70 and with a faithful servant continued to occupy the Kay Street house. She must have been pleased when she learned of the vote of

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the Department of Public Instruction on August 12, 1889, that "the schoolhouse in the second ward be named 'The Calvert School* out of respect to the memory of the Hon. George H. Calvert . . . who has always been most highly respected as an eminent citizen and a man of letters." 7 1 Today a street passing by the old home also bears the family name.

NOTES Chapter One Background materials for this chapter which are not separately annotated below are drawn mainly from Calvert's Autobiographic Study and from Carter MSS and Translations. 1. R. Winder Johnson, The Ancestry of Rosalie Morris Johnson, Philadelphia, 1905-1908, I, 23-24; original MS owned by R. Winder Johnson. 2. The tract comprised "His Lordship's Kindness" and a smaller plantation (Johnson, I, 23-24, n. 63). 3. "Mount Airy," in Virginia, was the large plantation of John Tayloe. 4. Certificate dated Nov. 16, 1744, owned by R. Winder Johnson (Johnson, I, 22, and n. 61). 5. John B. C. Nicklin, "Notes and Queries," Maryland Historical Magazine, X X X V (Sept., 1940), 3 1 0 - 3 1 1 , points out that when, in 1728, the fifth Lord Baltimore made a will and left £2,000 to "a Naturall Son by the name of Benedict Swingate" {ibid., Ill, 323, and XVI, 314) the boy may have been anywhere between 4 and 10 years old. But if he were born about 1724, as conjectured in an earlier article {ibid., XVI, 313), why, asks Nicklin, did the Maryland Journal and Advertiser, Jan. 15, 1788, speak of his death as occurring "in an advanced Age"? Hence, Nicklin concludes that Benedict may have been born before 1724. Nicklin, in Maryland Historical Magazine, X X X V (Sept., 1940), 3 1 1 , points out that since an entry in the Anne Arundel County Court Proceedings, Judgments, 1734-1736 (folio 122), for March Court, 1736/37, states that "a Certain William Baily hath assaulted and Beaten a Certain Infant Child named Benj® Swingate," it would appear that Benedict Swingate was in Annapolis as early as the spring of 1737 (N. S.). If the conjecture that Benedict was born before 1724 is correct, however, the "Infant Child" referred to would have been about 14 or 15 years old. 6. Maryland Historical Magazine, XVI, 314. I have not been able to prove that this was Admiral Edward Vernon. 7. John B. C. Nicklin, in Maryland Historical Magazine, X X X V (Sept., 1940), 310, states that Will Book 24, p. 248, Annapolis, Feb. 22, 1742, records: "Benedict Swinket [«' mentions an article on Richter in The New-York Review "some years ago by the translator."

1838 T h e L i t e r a r y R e m a i n s of S a m u e l T a y l o r Coleridge. Collected and Edited by H e n r y N e l s o n Coleridge, E s q . , M . A . 2 vols. Pickering, L o n d o n , 1836. In The New-York Review, II (Jan., 1838), 96-111; an unsigned review. In Miscellany of Verse and Prose, 1840, p. [3], Calvert states that his brief notice of Coleridge's Literary Remains was first published in the third number of The New-York Review. E r n e s t Maltravers. B y the author of " P e l h a m , " " R i e n z i , " &c. N e w - Y o r k : H a r p e r & Brothers. 2 vols. 1 2 mo. In The New-York Review, II (Jan., 1838), 231-234; an unsigned review. In Miscellany of Verse and Prose, 1840, p. [3], Calvert states that his brief notice of Bulwer's Ernest Maltravers was first published in the third number of The New-York Review.

1839 Select M i n o r P o e m s , Translated f r o m the G e r m a n of Goethe and Schiller, w i t h Notes. B y J o h n S . D w i g h t . Boston: H i l l i a r d , G r a y , & C o . 1839. In The American Museum of Literature and the Arts (Baltimore), II (June, 1839), 495500; a review signed "G. H. C."

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1840 Count Julian; A Tragedy, By George H . Calvert, Translator of Schiller's 'Don Carlos.' Baltimore: N . Hickman, 86 Baltimore-St. 1840. 69 pp. NYPL. Reviewed in The New Yor\ Review, VI (Apr., 1840), 448-463; mentioned briefly in Ware's review of Cabiro in The Christian Examiner, XXVIII (July, 1840), 402-403. Cabiro: A Poem, By George H . Calvert, Author o£ 'Count Julian, A Tragedy,' A n d Translator of Schiller's 'Don Carlos.' Cantos I. and II. Baltimore: N . Hickman, 86 Baltimore-St. 1840. 36 pp. NYPL. Inscribed, in Calvert's hand: "Mr. Cogswell with the author's regards." Reviewed in The Knickerbocker, XVI (July, 1840), 87; The Christian Examiner, XXVIII (July, 1840), 402-403, by W. Ware. Miscellany of Verse and Prose: By George H . Calvert, Author of 'Count Julian,' 'Cabiro,' &c. Baltimore: N . Hickman, 86 Baltimore-St. 1840. 47 pp. NYPL. Briefly noticed in The Sun, Baltimore, June 9, 1840, p. 2, col. 4. 1845 Correspondence between Schiller and Goethe, from 1794 to 1805. Translated by George H . Calvert. Vol. I. N e w York and London: Wiley and Putnam. 1845. xi [xii], 1-392 pp. CU. Reviewed in The Biblical Repository, I, Scries III (April, 1845), 384-385; The Knickerbocker, XXV (May, 1845), 454-455; The United States Magazine, and Democratic Review, XVI (May, 1845), 512-513; The Christian Examiner, XXXVIII (May, 1845), 402, 408-410, by F. Cunningham; The Southern Literary Messenger, XI (June, 1845), 386-388, by B. B. Minor; The Harbinger, I (June 21, 1845), 25; The Southern atd Western Monthly Magazine and Review, I (1845, No. VI), 432-433.

1846 Scenes and Thoughts in Europe. By an American. N e w York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846. vi [vii], 1-160 pp. CU. Reviewed in The Harbinger, II (April 25, 1846), 314-315, by C. A. Dana; The Salem Advertiser, April 29, 1846, by Nathaniel Hawthorne (see Randall Stewart, "Hawthorne's Contributions to the Salem Advertiser," American Literature, V [Jan, 1934], 33-33i)The inclusion of "Scenes and Thoughts in Europe: By an American. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1845. 12 mo., pp. vi, 160" in Hamilton B. Tompkins, Bibliography of the Work.s of George Henry Calvert, Newport, R. I., 1900, p. 8, appears to be an error. I do not think that there was an edition of this book before 1846. The preface to all subsequent editions is dated 1846, and the reviews begin to appear in 1846. Dream N o More. In Tie Harbinger, IV (Dec. 26, 1846), 43; a poem signed "E. Y. T." Calvert's identity as author of poems in The Harbinger signed "E. Y. T." is established by Dwight's review of Calvert's Poems, 1847, in The Harbinger, V (June 19, 1847), 25, in which Dwight states that some of the poems in the volume first appeared in The Harbinger "over the signature of 'E. Y. T . ' " Additional proof of Calvert's authorship is given by the Index to Vol. VI of The Harbinger, where "E. Y. T." is identified as "George H. Calvert, Newport, R. I." 1847 Aspiration. In The Harbinger, IV (Feb. 6, 1847), 141; a poem signed "E. Y. T."

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T h e Lost, Found. In The Harbinger, IV (Feb. 6, 1847), 1 4 1 ; a poem signed "E. Y. T . " T h e Loved Departed. In The Harbinger, IV (Feb. 27, 1847), 188; a poem signed "E. Y. T." W h y are Poets Sad? In The Harbinger, IV (March 6, 1847), 205; a poem signed "E. Y. T . " Burns. In The Harbinger, IV (March 20, 1847), 236; a poem signed "E. Y. T." From Goethe. Wanderer's Night Song. In The Harbinger, IV (March 20, 1847), 236; a translation of Goethe's first "Wandrer» Nachtlied," signed "E. Y. T." Sweetness of Sorrow. In The Harbinger, IV (March 20, 1847), 236; a translation of Goethe's "Wonne der Wehmut," signed "E. Y. T." F r o m Goethe. Proverbial. In The Harbinger, IV (March 27, 1847), 252; translations from Goethe, signed "E. Y. T . " Poems. By George H . Calvert. Boston: William D . Ticknor & Co. 1847. 125 pp. NYPL. Reviewed in The Harbinger, V (June 19, 1847), 25, by John Sullivan Dwight; The Christian Examiner, XLI1I (Sept, 1847), 306, by "B." (A. Lamson, according to William Cushing, Index to the Christian Examiner. Volumes l.-LXXXVll. 18241869); Calvert's Poems, 1847, was also noted by E. A. Duyckinck, in his MS Diary, June 13, 1847 (MS owned by NYPL).

1848 T h e God and the Bayadere. A Legend of India.—From Goethe. In The Harbinger, VI (April 15, 1848), 184; a translation signed "E. Y. T." 1851 Scenes and Thoughts in Europe. By an American. N e w York: George P. Putnam. 1 5 5 Broadway. 1 8 5 1 . 160 pp. NYPL.

1852 Scenes and Thoughts in Europe. By George H . Calvert. Second Series. N e w Y o r k : George P. Putnam, 10 Park Place. 1852. 185 pp. NYPL. Reviewed in The Literary World (New York), XI (Aug. 7, 1852), 86-87; The New York, Quarterly, I (Jan., 1853), 577-596. [Speech of George H . Calvert] In The Newport Advertiser, Oct. 27, 1852, p. 1, col. 2; in support of Franklin Pierce for President. [Speech of George H . Calvert at Bellevue Hall, Newport, R. I . ] In The Newport Advertiser, Nov. 10, 1852, p. 1, cols. 5-7; p. 2, cols. 1 - 3 ; in support of Franklin Pierce for President. It received high praise from The Providence Post, Oct. 30, 1852. x853 Monody on the Death of Horatio Greenough. By George H . Calvert. In Henry T. Tuckerman, A Memorial 0/ Horatio Greenough, N. Y., 1853, pp. 244-245. This poem is reprinted in Anyta and Other Poems, 1866.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Etta. In . This is a poem of three stanzas, printed in an unidentified newspaper (clipping owned by Mrs. Francis W. Belknap). It appeared over the initials "G. H. C." and was dated 1853. It was reprinted as the first three stanzas of "Anyta," in Anyta and Other Poems, 1866, and evidendy refers to Henrietta Marin, a grandniece of Mrs. Calvert. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Essays.—Lectures and Orations.—Nature.—Poems.— Representative men. In The New York. Quarterly, I (Jan., 1853), 439-447. This is an unsigned review attributed to Calvert in A Bibliography of Ralph Waldo Emerson, compiled by George Willis Cooke, 1908, p. 109. Oration, on the Occasion of Celebrating the Fortieth Anniversary of the Battle of Lake Erie; Delivered on the Tenth of September, 1853, in Newport, R. I. By George H . Calvert. Cambridge: Metcalf and Company, Printers to the University. 1853. 40 pp. CU. Reviewed in The Newport Evening Mercury, Nov. 9, 1853. This review was reprinted from a notice in The Boston Transcript. Address of George H . Calvert, Mayor, Delivered before the City Council, Oct. 7» i 8 53In City Documents, 1853-54, No- I> PP- 3~4- NHS. This is Calvert's inaugural address as Mayor of Newport. 1854 Oration, on the Occasion of Celebrating the Fortieth Anniversary of the Battle of Lake Erie; Delivered on the Tenth of September, 1853, in Newport, R. I. By George H . Calvert. Second Edition. Providence: B. T . Albro—Printer. 1854. 32 pp. CU. Report to the City Council In The Newport Mercury, April 22, 1854, p. 2, cols. 2-3. NHS; a report made by Calvert toward the end of his term as Mayor of Newport. It was delivered before the City Council, Apr. 18, 1854. After its appearance in The Newport Mercury, it was revised and printed in City Documents Addresses of George H. Calvert . . . and Reports of Committees . . . for the Year 1833-54, Newport, R.I. Coggeshall & Pratt, City Printers, 1854, pp. 13-19. [Address before the City Council, Newport, June 5, 1854] In The Newport Mercury, June 10, 1854, p. 3, col. 1. This is Calvert's valedictory address before the City Council, June 5, 1854, at which time he administered the oath of office to his successor, William C. Cozzens. Address by George H . Calvert, before the Rhode Island Art Association, at Providence. In The Newport Mercury, Sept. 23, 1854; an address at the inauguration of the Rhode Island Art Association. It was reprinted as "Usefulness of Art," in Essays /Esthetical, 1875, pp. 254-264. T o My Fellow-Citizens of Newport. In The Newport Mercury, Dec. 30, 1854, p. 2, col. 3. This is an open letter, dated Dec. 27, 1854, defending Calvert's reading of The Will and the Way, in the First Baptist Church, Newport, R. I., Dec. 21, 1854. It is signed "G. H. Calvert." 1855 The Child that Sleeps. In Putnam's Monthly Magazine, V (Jan., 1855), 97; an unsigned poem of five stanzas. It

BIBLIOGRAPHY was reprinted in The Newport Mercury, Feb. 24, 1855, p. 1, col. 1, where it was signed "Geo. H. Calvert." Valedictory Address of G e o r g e H . Calvert as M a y o r of N e w p o r t . In City Ordinances, 1855, Appendix, pp. 1 2 6 - 1 2 7 . NHS. This is Calvert's address before the City Council, June 5, 1854, at which time he administered the oath of office to his successor William C. Cozzens. Scenes and T h o u g h t s in Europe. B y George H . Calvert. N e w Y o r k

G . P.

Putnam & Co., 10 Park Place. 1 8 5 5 . ill—vi [Title, Preface to First Series, 1846], iii-vi [Contents], 7 - 1 8 5 [186] [Second Series], 1 - 1 6 0 [First Series]. NYPL.

1856 Introduction to Social Science A Discourse in three Parts By George H . Calvert A u t h o r of "Scenes and T h o u g h t s in Europe," etc. Redfield 34 Beekman Street, N e w Y o r k 1856. 148 pp. [followed by ten pages of advertisements of Redfield's publications]. CU. Reviewed in Putnam's Monthly Magazine, VIII (July, 1856), 106; The Christian Examiner, LXI (Sept., 1856), 3>6-3i7Comedies. B y G e o r g e H . Calvert. Boston: Phillips, Sampson 6c C o . 1 8 5 6 . 125 pp. CU. W e i m a r in 1 8 2 5 . In Putnam's Monthly Magazine, VIII (Sept., 1856), 257-267; an unsigned account of Calvert's visit to Weimar; it is identified as his by the preface to First Years in Europe, 1866: "In 1856 were published in Putnam's Magazine, two papers entitled, 'Weimar in 1825,' and 'Goettingen in 1 8 2 4 . ' " Gottingen in 1824. In Putnam's Monthly Magazine, VIII (Dec., 1856), 595-607; an unsigned account of Calvert's experiences at Gottingen; it is identified as his by a statement in the preface to First Years in Europe, 1866 (see "Weimar in 1825" in this bibliography). 1857 A National D r a m a . In Putnam's Monthly Magazine, IX (Feb., 1857), 1 4 8 - 1 5 1 ; an unsigned essay, identified as Calvert's by a note in Essays /Esthetical, 1875, where it is reprinted, pp. 239-253. The note states that it was "From Putnam's Monthly, 1857."

1858 Lecture I. Moral Education. B y G e o r g e H . Calvert, of Newport, R . I. 21 pp. TC. In The Lectures Delivered before the American Institute of Instruction, at Manchester, N. H., August 18, i8;y Including the Journal of Proceedings and a List of the Officers. Published under the Direction of the Board of Censors. Boston; Ticknor and Fields. Corner of Washington and School Streets. 1858. This was the first of three lectures delivered by various persons before the American Institute. Proverbs—From Goethe. In The Newport Mercury, July 10, 1858, p. 1, col. 1 ; translations signed "G. H. C." F r o m Goethe Wanderer's N i g h t Song. In The Newport Mercury, July 10, 1858, p. 1, col. 1. This is essentially the same as the version in The Harbinger, March 20, 1847. There are a few minor changes in spelling and punctuation. The translation was reprinted in The Newport Mercury, Sept. 1 1 , 1858. On both occasions it was signed " G . H. C . "

BIBLIOGRAPHY From the German

The Lost Found.

In The Newport Mercury, Oct. 30, 1858, p. 1, col. 1; a poem signed " G . H . C . " It is essentially the same as "The Lost Found," in The Harbinger, Feb. 6, 1847, but the earlier version was not marked "From the German."

From Goethe

Proverbs.

In The Newport Mercury, Dec. 1 1 , 1858, p. 1, col. 2; translations of eight proverbs; unsigned. With the exception of the fourth and fifth proverbs, they had all appeared in The Harbinger, March 27, 1847, signed "E. Y. T."

i860 Travels in Europe: Its People and Scenery, Embracing Graphic Descriptions of the Principal Cities, Buildings, Scenery, and Most Notable People in England and the Continent. By George H . Calvert, Esq. T w o vols, in one. Boston: published by G . W . Cottrell, 36 Cornhill. i860, vi, iài—185, 160 pp. Frontispiece. PI.

Our King. In The Newport Mercury, Sept. 8, i860, p. 2, cols. 5-6; a poem, delivered at the commencement exercises of Brown University, on Sept. 5, i860. It is dated 1859; unsigned. The Mercury introduced it with a statement that Calvert was the poet of the occasion. It is reprinted, with minor changes, as "A King" in Anyta and Other Poems, 1866, pp. 114-123.

Joan of Arc: A Poem. In Four Books. Riverside Press: Printed by H . O. Houghton and Company. M D C C C L X . 108 pp. Privately printed. NYPL. Inscribed: "J. G. Cogswell Esq with kindest regards of the author—Newport R.I. June 14 t h i860".

1863 The Gendeman

By George H . Calvert

Boston

Ticknor and Fields

1863

'59 PP- c u . Reviewed in The Christian Examiner, L X X V (July, 1863), 150-152. L C has a copy of a "Third Edition" with the same date.

Scenes and Thoughts in Europe. By George H . Calvert, Author of " T h e Gentleman." First Series. A N e w Edition. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. 1863. 249 pp. NYPL.

Scenes and Thoughts in Europe. By George H . Calvert, Author of " T h e Gentleman." Second Series. A N e w Edition. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. 1863. 232 pp. NYPL. Inscribed in Calvert's hand: "Astor Library from the author—". In this edition, Chapter XX, "Fragments" (pp. 164-165 of the Second Series, 1852), is omitted.

1864 Arnold and André. An Historical Drama. By George H . Calvert, Author of "Scenes and Thoughts in Europe" and " T h e Gentleman." Boston: Little, Brown and Company. 1864. 95 pp. CU.

Cabiro. A Poem. By George H . Calvert. Cantos III. and I V . Boston: Little, Brawn and Company, M D C C C L X I V . 87 pp. NYPL.

308

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1866

A n y t a and Other Poems. B y George H . Calvert. Boston: E . P. Dutton and C o m p a n y . N e w Y o r k : H u r d and Houghton. 1866. 170 pp. CU. Reviewed in The Boudoir (Jan., 1866 ?), by John Swinton. Evidence of such a review is found in Calvert's letter to Swinton, Jan. 16, 1866 (MS in Harris Collection, BU), which states that he has received a number of The Boudoir, containing a sympathetic notice of Anyta and Other Poems. T h e Gentleman By George H . Calvert Boston: E . P. Dutton and C o m p a n y . N e w Y o r k : H u r d and Houghton, 1866. ' 5 9 PP- NYPL. Inscribed in Calvert's hand: "George Duyckinck with kindest regards of the author Newport R.I. Sep i i ' b 1868". First Y e a r s in Europe. By George H . Calvert Author of "Scenes and T h o u g h t s in E u r o p e , " " T h e Gentleman," etc. Boston: William V . Spencer. 1866. 303 pp. CU. Reviewed in The New York Times, Nov. 30, 1866, p. 2, cols. 1 - 2 , by H. T. Tuckerman (Calvert to John Swinton, Feb. 16, 1867 [MS in Harris Collection]); reviewed also in The Round Table, V (Jan. 12, 1867), 27; The Nation, IV (Feb. 21, 1867), 148149; this review is identified as the work of John R. Dennett, by the initials "J. R. D." in a copy in the office of The Nation; reviewed also in The Athenaum (London), No. 2065 (May 25, 1867), p. 690. There was evidently a London edition of the book; this review in The Athenteum is headed: "First Years in Europe. By George H. Calvert. (Boston, U. S., Spencer; London, Triibner & Co.)." 1867 Ellen: A Poem for the Times. N e w Y o r k : G . W . Carleton & C o . 1867. 48 pp. NYPL. Reviewed in The New York. Times, May 15, 1867, p. 2, col. 1, by John Swinton. Swinton's review is identified by Calvert's letter to Swinton, May 20, 1867 (MS in Harris Collection, BU). This edition of Ellen was printed anonymously, but it is identified as Calvert's by many letters in the Calvert-Swinton Correspondence, and by a note in the edition of 1869, p. [6]: "A small edition of this Poem was published anonymously in 1867." Joubert. Some of the " T h o u g h t s " of Joseph Joubert. Translated by George H . Calvert, Author of "First Years in E u r o p e , " " T h e G e n d e m a n , " etc. Preceded by a notice of Joubert by the Translator. Boston: W i l l i a m V . Spencer. 1867. 163 pp. NYPL. Reviewed in The New York Times, May 15, 1867, p. 2, col. 1. This review is unsigned, but its style indicates that it was written by John Swinton; Joubert was reviewed also in The Round Table, V (March 16, 1867), i 7 2 ; The Newport Mercury, Aug. 31, 1869, p. 2, col. 6; Lippincott's Magazine, IX (March, 1872), 367-368. W e B y George H . Calvert. In The Newport Mercury, Oct. 19, 1867, p. 1, col. 3; a poem of six stanzas.

1868 D a n t e and his Latest Translators. In Putnam's Magazine, New Series, I (Feb., 1868), 1 5 5 - 1 6 7 ; an unsigned essay. It is reprinted in Essays Aisthetical, 1875, pp. 114-157, with a note: "Putnam's Magazine, 1868." Threescore. In Putnam's Magazine, New Series, II (Sept., 1868), 341-342. This is an unsigned poem, attributed to Calvert in the index to Vol. II, New Series, Putnam's Magazine. It is reprinted over Calvert's signature, in The Newport Mercury, Dec. 5, 1868, and in Threescore, and Other Poems, 1883.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

309

Sainte-Beuve, the Critic.

In Putnam's Magazine, New Series, II (Oct., 1868), 4 0 1 - 4 1 1 ; an unsigned essay. It is reprinted in 'Essays ALsthetical, 1875, PP- 158-197, with a statement that it had appeared in Putnam's Magazine. In Essays /Esthetical it is followed by Sainte-Beuve's letter to Calvert, acknowledging receipt of a copy of the essay in Putnam's Magazine.

1869 Ellen: A Poem. By George H . Calvert. New York: Sheldon and Company, 498 & 500 Broadway. 1869. 57 pp. ChU. Reviewed in The Nation, VIII (June 24, 1869), 501; The Atlantic Monthly, XXIV (Sept. 1869), 386; Putnam's Magazine, New Series, IV (Oct., 1869), 505. In this edition of Ellen, eleven introductory stanzas, omitted from the edition of 1867, were restored, and the poem was divided into four parts; misprints were corrected, and a dedication to Swinton was added.

College Education. In Lippincott's Magazine, III (April, 1869), 377-388; an essay signed "George H. Calvert."

Nebulse.

In The Galaxy, VIII (July, 1869), 146; a short sketch about "Gurowski." It is without tide and unsigned, but is identified as Calvert's by his letter to John Swinton, Apr. 10, 1869 (MS in Harris Collection, BU). In The Galaxy, VIII (July, 1869), 147-148; a short sketch about "Broughham." It is without tide and unsigned, but is identified as Calvert's by his letter to John Swinton, Apr. 10, 1869 (MS in Harris Collection, BU). In The Galaxy, VIII (Aug., 1869), 290; a short sketch of D'Orsay, which includes a passage on Sainte-Beuve and the use of the term sub rosa. It is without tide and unsigned, but the passage about Sainte-Beuve appeared in substantially the same form in "Sainte Beuve, the Critic," in Putnam's Magazine, II (Oct., 1868), 401-411.

A Midnight Street-Scene.

In The Galaxy, VII (May, 1869), 732; a poem of eight stanzas signed "G. H. Calvert." It is reprinted in The Newport Mercury, May 15, 1869, p. 1, col. 3.

Without the Stars.

In The Galaxy, VIII (Sept., 1869), 383; a poem of five stanzas signed "George H. Calvert." It is reprinted in The Newport Mercury, Aug. 28, 1869.

Sleep

By George H . Calvert

In The Newport Mercury, Nov. 27, 1869, p. 1, col. 3; a poem of three stanzas, reprinted from Ellen, 1869. 1870

Errata In Lippincott's Magazine, VI (Sept., 1870), 327-331; an essay signed "George H. Calvert." It is reprinted in Essays Msthetical, 1875, pp. 211-238, where a note states that it is from Lippincott's Magazine, 1870.

Glimpses into a Portrait Gallery.

In The Galaxy, IX (Mar., 1870), 406-407; a poem of fifteen stanzas signed "George H. Calvert." It is mentioned briefly in The New Yor% Evening Post, Feb. 19, 1870, p. 1, col. 2, in a discussion of The Galaxy for March, 1870: "Mr. George H. Calvert brightens this number with a fine poem."

Nebulae. In The Galaxy, X (July, 1870), 143-144; a short sketch on "Ventilation." It is without tide and unsigned, but is identified as Calvert's by his letter to John Swinton, May 26, 1869 (MS in Harris Collection, BU).

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1871 W o r k . B y G e o r g e H . Calvert. In The Golden Age (New York), I, No. 21 (July 22, 1 8 7 1 ) , 2. This essay is reprinted in Brief Essays and Brevities, 1874, pp. 3 5 - 4 1 . S u m m e r Verses B y G e o r g e H . Calvert. In The Newport Mercury, Aug. 12, 1 8 7 1 , p. 1, col. 4; a poem of six stanzas. L a d y h o o d . B y G e o r g e H . Calvert. In The Golden Age (New York), I, No. 31 (Sept. 30, 1 8 7 1 ) , 2. This essay is reprinted in Brief Essays and Brevities, 1874, pp. 1 2 - 1 6 . F r e e . B y G e o r g e H . Calvert. In The Golden Age (New York), I, No. 41 (Dec. 9, 1 8 7 1 ) , 6. This poem is reprinted in Threescore, and Other Poems, 1883, pp. 25-30.

1872 Worldliness. B y G e o r g e H . Calvert. In The Golden Age (New York), II, No. 4 (Jan. 27, 1872), 2. This essay is reprinted in Brief Essays and Brevities, 1874, pp. 49-54. F r e e d o m . B y G e o r g e H . Calvert. In The Golden Age (New York), II, No. 17 (April 27, 1872), 2. This essay is reprinted in Brief Essays and Brevities, 1874, pp. 7 3 - 7 7 . Goethe: H i s L i f e and W o r k s . A n E s s a y . B y G e o r g e H . Calvert. Boston: L e e and Shepard, Publishers. N e w Y o r k : L e e , Shepard and Dillingham. 1 8 7 2 . 276 pp. CU. Reviewed in The Golden Age (New York), II, No. 24 (June 15, 1872), 6; The Nation, X V (July 1 1 , 1 8 7 2 ) , 30; The Atlantic Monthly, X X X (Oct., 1 8 7 2 ) , 493; The Overland Monthly, IX (Oct., 1 8 7 2 ) , 382-384; The Galaxy, XIV (Nov., 1872), 7 1 2 - 7 1 3 ; The National Quarterly Review, X X V I (Dec., 1 8 7 2 ) , 1 8 6 - 1 8 7 ; The Literary World (Boston), III (June 1 , 1872), 12. An English edition of Calvert's Goethe was apparently published by Triibner and Co. A review entitled: " 'Goethe; His Life and Works.' An Essay, by George H. Calvert. London: Triibner and Co. New York: Lee, Shepherd [tic] and Dillingham. 1872," appeared in The Westminster Review (London), New Series, XLII (Oct., 1 8 7 2 ) , 5 5 1 - 5 5 2 . In the American edition of The Westminster Review, XCVIII (Oct., 1 8 7 2 ) , this review appears on p. 267. T o Shelley. B y G e o r g e H . Calvert. In The Golden Age (New York), II, No. 43 (Oct. 26, 1872), 6. This poem is reprinted in Threescore, and Other Poems, 1883, pp. 3 1 - 3 2 . T h e Social Palace at Guise. B y G e o r g e H . Calvert. In The Golden Age (New York), II, No. 44 (Nov. 2, 1872), 4. This essay is reprinted in Brief Essays and Brevities, 1874, pp. 42-46.

1873 Materialism. B y G e o r g e H . Calvert. In The Golden Age (New York), III, No. 2 (Jan. 1 1 , 1873), 2. This essay is reprinted in Brief Essays and Brevities, 1874, pp. 90-95. Mirabeau A n Historical D r a m a B y G e o r g e H . Calvert C a m b r i d g e Printed at the Riverside Press 1873 103 pp. N Y P L . This copy is imperfect: p. 1 wanting. Printed for private circulation. See Calvert's letter to John Swinton, March 2, 1874 (MS in Harris Collection, BU).

BIBLIOGRAPHY The Maid of Orleans A n Historical Tragedy By George H. Calvert for private use Cambridge Printed at the Riverside Press 1 8 7 3 134 pp. LC-

Printed

1874 The Maid of Orleans A n Historical Tragedy By George H . Calvert N e w York G . P. Putnam's Sons 1874 134 pp. NYPL. Reviewed in The Literary World (Boston), IV (May 1, 1874), 188. Brief Essays and Brevities By George H . Calvert Boston: Lee and Shepard, Publishers. N e w York: Lee, Shepard and Dillingham. 1874. 282 pp. NYPL. Reviewed in The Literary World (Boston), V (June 1, 1874), 12. 1875 Goethe: His Life and Works. A n Essay. By George H . Calvert. Boston: Lee and Shepard, Publishers. N e w York: Lee, Shepard and Dillingham. 1875. 276 pp. HC. Sidney Lanier. In The Golden Age (New York), V (June 12, 1875), 4-5; a review of "Corn" and "The Symphony," signed "George H. Calvert." Essays iEsthetical By George H . Calvert Boston Lee and Shepard, Publishers N e w York Lee, Shepard, and Dillingham 1875 264 pp. NYPL. Reviewed in The Literary World (Boston), VI (June 1, 1875), 6; The Nation, XX (June 3, 1875), 383, by Henry James. This review in The Nation is not signed, but it is attributed to Henry James in LeRoy Phillips, A Bibliography of the Writings of Henry fames, New York, 1930, p. 162. Mr. Phillips wrote me, May 10, 1933, that he was able to identify the review by notes in the private diary of Wendell Phillips Garrison, formerly editor of The Nation.

1876 Arnold and André. A n Historical Drama. By George H . Calvert. Author of "Scenes and Thoughts in Europe" and " T h e Gentleman" A N e w Edition. Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1876. 95 pp. CU. Reviewed in The Literary World (Boston), VI! (June 1, 1877), 8. This edition of Arnold and André was reprinted in The Magazine of History, Vol. XLIV, No. 2, Extra Number—No. 174. Tarrytown, N. Y., 1931. A Nation's Birth and Other National Poems. By George H . Calvert. Boston: Lee and Shepard. 1876. 56 pp. CU. Reviewed in The Newport Mercury, June 17, 1876, p. 2, col. 6 (reprinted from The Providence Journal)-, The Literary World (Boston), VII (July 1, 1876), 23. The Life of Rubens: By George H . Calvert. Boston: Lee and Shepard. N e w York: Charles T . Dillingham, 1876. 219 pp. Frontispiece (portrait). LC. Reviewed in The Literary World (Boston), VII (Nov. I, 1876), 88; The Newport Mercury, Dec. 2, 1876, p. 2, col. 8. 1877 La Vie de Rubens In Le Précurseur, a leading liberal newspaper of Antwerp. It appeared serially, during (Aug. ?), 1877. This is a French translation of Calvert's Life of Rubens, written by Minna Round, "an English woman by birth, but who was educated in France, and is perfect

312

BIBLIOGRAPHY

master of the French language; writing French novels herself for the 'Étoile Belge' " (Henri Van Havre to George H. Calvert, Nov. 28, 1876). The proofs of the translation were sent to Calvert in the spring of 1877. Henri Van Havre wrote to Calvert, April 22, 1877: "When this reaches you you will probably have received the translation of your book on P. P. Rubens." The translation was rejected by the Re vue de Belgique, because it was impossible for that journal to print it during August, 1877, as Calvert had desired (Henri Van Havre to George H. Calvert, July 27, 1877). On Sept. 16, 1877, Camilla Van Havre wrote to Calvert that "immediately on his return from Ostend" her husband had sent him the number of Le Précurseur in which his Life of Rubens had appeared. (All of the quotations used above are from copies furnished by Mr. Richard C. M. Calvert, who owns the original letters. I have not been able to locate the numbers of Le Précurseur in which the translation appeared.) Joubert. Some of the " T h o u g h t s " of Joseph Joubert. Translated by George H . Calvert, Author of "First Years in Europe," " T h e Gentleman," etc. Preceded by a notice of Joubert B y the Translator. Boston: L e e and Shepard. N e w Y o r k : Charles T . Dillingham. 1 8 7 7 . 163 pp. NYPL. Charlotte von Stein: A Memoir. B y George H . Calvert. Boston: Lee and Shepard. Publishers. N e w Y o r k : Charles T . Dillingham. 1 8 7 7 280 pp. 2 portraits (including frontispiece). CU. Reviewed in The New York. Sun, Sunday, Nov. 4, 1877, p. 2, cols. 3 - 5 , over the initials "M. W. H . " The author of the review, Mayo Williamson Hazeltine, "a fine example of the scholar in newspaper work," is identified by Frank M. O'Brien in The Story oj the Sun, New York, 1928, pp. 232-233. O'Brien says that Hazeltine's book reviews "published in the Sun on Sundays, which made the initials M. W. H. familiar to the whole English reading world, were marvels of comprehension." Charlotte von Stein was also reviewed in The Literary World (Boston), VIII (Dec. I, 1877), 1 1 9 ; and in The Nation, XXVI (Dec. 1 3 , 1877), 3 2 0 - 3 2 1 .

1878 Wordsworth. A Biographic ¿Esthetic Study. By George H . Calvert. Boston: L e e and Shepard, Publishers. N e w Y o r k : Charles T . Dillingham. 1 8 7 8 . 232 pp. Frontispiece (portrait). CU. Reviewed in The Nation, XXVII (Nov. 2 1 , 1878), 323; The Literary World (Boston), IX (Dec. 1, 1878), 1 1 2 ; ibid., X (Jan. 18, 1879), 23, by W. M. F. Round; Harper's New Monthly Magazine, LV1II (Jan., 1879), 308; The National Quarterly Review, XXXVIII (Jan., 1879), 197-198; The Academy (London), X V (Feb. 1, 1879), 93, by Edward Dowden. Reviewed also by Paul Hamilton Hayne, in The Louisville Argus (see Calvert's letter to Hayne, Jan. 29, 1879 [MS owned by D U ] ) . I have not been able to locate a file of The Louisville Argus. T h e L i f e of Rubens. B y George H . Calvert. Boston: L e e and Shepard. N e w Y o r k : Charles T . Dillingham. 1 8 7 8 . 219 pp. Frontispiece (portrait). NYPL. In his Bibliography of the Works of George Henry Calvert, Newport, R. I., 1900, Hamilton B. Tompkins lists: "Shakespeare; A Biographic Aesthetic Study. By George H. Calvert. Boston: Lee and Shepard, Publishers. New York: Charles T. Dillingham, 1878." The date, 1878, appears to be an error. I do not think that Calvert's Shakespeare was published until 1879. The reviews of it begin to appear toward the end of 1879. On Nov. 14, 1879, Calvert wrote to Paul Hamilton Hayne (MS owned by DU): "You mention the receipt of 'The Gendeman.' About the same time I sent you a copy of my new volume, "Shakespeare.""

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1879 Matthew Arnold's Wordsworth. In The Literary World (Boston), X (Oct. 25, 1879), 339. This is a review of Poems of Wordsworth, Chosen and Edited by Matthew Arnold. Macmillan & Co., 1879. The review is signed "George H. Calvert." Shakespeare A Biographic ¿Esthetic Study By George H . Calvert Boston Lee and Shepard, Publishers N e w York Charles T . Dillingham 1879 212 pp. Frontispiece. CU. Inscribed in Calvert's hand: "A Da Costa with kind regards of G H Calvert Oct. 23, 1887." Reviewed in The Literary World (Boston), X (Dec. 20, • 879), 437, under "Shakespeariana," a department edited by "W. J. Rolfe, Cambridgeport, Mass."; ibid., XI (Jan. 31, 1880), 41, by "W. San Francisco," pointing out an editorial "slip" in the earlier review; ibid., X (Feb. 14, 1880), 60, admitting editor's error in the review of Dec. 20. Count Rudolf A Tragedy By George H . Calvert Cambridge Printed at the Riverside Press 1879 1 1 2 pp. ChU. Inscribed: "William Winter. January. 1880." Pp. 6-7 are blank. This is a revision of Calvert's Count Julian (see Autobiographic Study, p. 261). The envelope containing the ChU copy of Count Rudolf is inscribed: "A scarce item for only a few copies were printed."

1880 Coleridge, Shelley, Goethe. Biographic /Esthetic Studies. By George H . Calvert. Boston: Lee and Shepard, Publishers. N e w York: Charles T . Dillingham. 197 pp. Copyright, 1880. CU. Reviewed in The Literary World (Boston), XI (Dec. 4, 1880), 437; The Nation, XXXI (Dec. 23, 1880), 450.

l88l Address of George H . Calvert, to the French Delegation, on Their Visit to the Torpedo Station, October 3 1 , 1881. 2 pp. RIHS. This is a pamphlet containing the original text of Calvert's address, in French, before a delegation to the Yorktown Centennial, upon their visit to the Torpedo Station at Newport. Because of lack of time, Calvert omitted three paragraphs when he delivered it.

1882 Life, Death, and Other Poems. By George H . Calvert. Boston: Lee and Shepard, Publishers. N e w York: Charles T . Dillingham. 98 pp. Copyright, 1882. CU. Reviewed in The Newport Daily News, Dec. 13, 1882, p. 2, col. 5 (reprinted from The Boston Home Journal)-, The Newport Daily News, Jan. 8, 1883, p. 2, col. 2. 1883 Hope In a twelve-page booklet presented by the Carriers of The Newport Daily News, as a New Year's Greeting, January, 1883, to which poems were contributed by several residents of Newport (Charles Timothy Brooks contributed "The Things that Remain"). "Hope" is a poem of two stanzas signed "G. H. C."

BIBLIOGRAPHY

314

L i f e ' s Jubilees. In The Newport Daily Newt, Jan. i, 1883, p. 1, col. 6. Reprinted in Threescore, and Other Poems, pp. 17-20. Joan of A r c : A Narrative Poem. In Four Books. By George H . Calvert. Boston: L e e and Shepard, Publishers. N e w Y o r k : Charles T . Dillingham. 108 pp. Copyright, 1883. CU. "Advertisement" on p. 3, dated December, 1866, reads: "The transparency imparted to words by clear type on fine paper aids in the detection o£ that class of defects that are corrigible. So many such were thus discovered in the following poem (printed for private circulation in i860), that in now offering it to the public the Author deems it proper to state that the pages as here revised are the only ones that are amenable to criticism." Mirabeau

A n Historical D r a m a

By George H . Calvert

Boston: Lee and

Shepard, Publishers. N e w Y o r k : Charles T . Dillingham. 103 pp. Copyright, 1883. CU. Reviewed in The Literary World (Boston), XIV (June 16, 1883), 191. Angeline. A Poem. By George H . Calvert. Boston: Lee and Shepard, Publishers. N e w Y o r k : Charles T . Dillingham. 50 pp. Copyright, 1883. HC. Reviewed in The Literary World (Boston), XIV (June 16, 1883), 191. Threescore, and Other Poems. B y George H . Calvert. Boston: Lee and Shepard, Publishers. N e w Y o r k : Charles T . Dillingham. 90 pp. Copyright, 1883. CU. Reviewed in The Literary World (Boston), XIV (June 16, 1883), 1 9 1 . Sibyl A Poem By George H . Calvert Boston Lee and Shepard 55 pp. Copyright, 1883. NYPL. Reviewed in The Newport Daily News, Sept. 14, 1883, p. 2, col. 5; The Newport Mercury, Dec. 1, 1883, p. 3, col. 6. T h e Nazarene. A Poem. By George H . Calvert. Boston: Lee and Shepard, Publishers. N e w Y o r k : Charles T . Dillingham. 54 pp. Copyright, 1883. BU. Reviewed in The Newport Daily News, Dec. 29, 1883, p. 2, col. 5; The Uterary World (Boston), XV (Feb. 9, 1884), 44; The Nation, XXXVIII (June 26, 1884), 550, by Thomas Wentworth Higginson. This review in The Nation is unsigned, but Caroline Whiting, editorial secretary of The Nation, wrote mc, May 4, 1933, that it was written by Higginson. Brangonar A T r a g e d y By George H . Calvert Boston: Lee and Shepard, Publishers N e w Y o r k : Charles T . Dillingham n o pp. Copyright, 1883. CU. The prefacc is dated 1868. Reviewed in The Literary World (Boston), XV (Feb. 9, 1884), 44.

1884 Etta. In . This is a poem of five stanzas, printed in an unidentified newspaper (dipping owned by Mrs. Francis W. Belknap). It is signed "G. H. C." and dated June, 1884. The subject of the poem is the death, June 23, 1884, of Henrietta Marin, a grandniece of Mrs. Calvert. Speech of George H . Calvert Delivered at a Meeting of the Cleveland and Hendricks Club [Delivered in the Opera House of Newport, on the Fourth of October, 1884.] Broadside. RL.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1885? Autobiographic Study. By George H. Calvert. Boston: Lee and Shepard, Publishers. New York: Charles T. Dillingham. 267 pp.; photostatic copy in CU. This book seems to have been intended for private circulation. So far as I have been able to determine, it remained in page proof. A copy, bound by the family, is owned by Mrs. George Calvert, of Fayetteville, N. C. A note in this copy, signed "C. B. C " (probably Charles Baltimore Calvert, a nephew of George H. Calvert), states that a copy at Newport, R. I., is dedicated "by G H C " to Elizabeth Steuart Calvert, whom he describes as his "dear devoted wife and intelligent companion for fifty six years." The year 1885, which follows in " C . B. C " s note, is presumably part of the dedication.

1886 The Gentleman By George H. Calvert Boston New York Charles T. Dillingham 1886

Lee and Shepard, Publishers

159 PP- Fourth edition. Bound in light brown with gold tooling and gilt edges. This may have been a special gift edition. I have seen only the one copy which I purchased in a Newport bookstore in 1933.

Selections from the "Thoughts" of Joseph Joubert Translated from the French with A Sketch of the Author By George H. Calvert A New Edition. Boston Lee and Shepard, Publishers New York Charles T. Dillingham 1886 163 pp. N Y P L .

The Life of Rubens. By George H. Calvert. Boston: Lee and Shepard. New York: Charles T. Dillingham. 1886. 219 pp. CU.

Charlotte von Stein: A Memoir. By George H. Calvert. Boston: Lee and Shepard, Publishers. New York: Charles T. Dillingham. 1886. 280 pp. Frontispiece (portrait). CU.

Wordsworth—A Biographic .¿Esthetic Study By George H. Calvert. Boston: Lee and Shepard, Publishers New York: Charles T. Dillingham. 1886. 232 pp. Frontispiece (portrait). CU.

Goethe. His Life and Works. An Essay. By George H. Calvert Boston: Lee and Shepard, Publishers. New York: Lee, Shepard and Dillingham. 1886. 276 pp. BU. Reviewed in The Chautauquan, VI (June, 1886), 546-547.

To Grover Cleveland

President of the United States

In . This is a poem signed "George H. Calvert," and dated June 2, 1886. Written in honor of Grover Cleveland on his wedding day, it was printed in an unidentified newspaper (clipping owned by Mrs. Francis W. Belknap).

Talk about Shakespeare By George H. Calvert. Shakespeare Club, of the First Congregational Church of Newport, R. I. on the fifteenth of March, 1886, at the residence of the Rev. F. F. Emerson. Newport, R. I.: Davis & Pitman, Printers, 1886. 16 pp. CU.

1904 Calvert to Goethe, March 28, 1825 (MS in Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv, Weimar), accompanying The North American Review, XIX (Oct., 1824). This letter is printed in Leonard L. Mackall, "Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Amerikanern," Goethe-Jahrbuch, X X V (1904), 20.

3*6

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1922

[Calvert to James A l f r e d Pearce, Baltimore ( A p r i l ? ) , 1 8 4 6 ] In Bernard C. Steiner, "James Alfred Pearce," Maryland Historical Magazine, XVII (Sept., 1922), 276-277. This letter contains enthusiastic recommendation of Hiram Powers as the proper person to execute statuary for the Capitol. I93I Arnold and André, A new edition, 1 8 7 6 Reprinted William Abbatt 1931. In The Magazine of History, XLIV, No. 2, Extra Number—No. 174, Tarrytown, New York, 1931, pp. [59-68], 6 9 - 1 1 4 . This is the same as the 1876 edition, prefaced by a quotation on Calvert's Arnold and André from Brander Matthews's Introduction to Dunlap's André, New York, 1887. Mr. Abbatt wrote me, April 4, 1932, that he had reprinted Calvert's drama because of his interest in the story of Arnold and André.

1943 [George H . Calvert to Charles Jean Stier, Cambridge, Mass., A u g . 10, 1 8 2 1 ; Ostend, N o v . , 1 8 2 5 ; London, Dec. 4, 1 8 2 5 ; Edinburgh, Dec. 2 7 , 1 8 2 5 ; A p r . n and 2 7 , 1 8 2 6 ; M a y 20, 1 8 2 6 ; Philadelphia, M a y 30, 1 8 2 7 ; Baltimore, N o v . 8, 1 8 2 7 ; May 3 0 , 1 8 2 8 ] Extracts from the above letters are contained in William D. Hoyt, Jr., "The Calvert-Stier Correspondence (concluded)," The Maryland Historical Magazine, XXXVIII (Dec., 1943), 337-344-

INDEX XA BIBLIOGRAPHICAL references that are merely page citations have been omitted. Abbey, Henry. 193 Academy, The, 2 1 7 Adams, John, 52, 259 Adams, John Quincy, 52, 63, 64, 86 "Adelaide" (Matthisson), 1 1 1 Agassiz, Alexander, 207 "Agnes," 150 Aienbottem (Higginbotham?), Miss, 10 Alba, Duke of, 134 Alfieri, dramatist, 138 • AJger, William R., 2 1 2 Alhambra, The (Irving), i l l , 301 AJlston, Washington, 130, 1 3 1 , 1 4 3 , 275 American . . . , Baltimore, 1 1 8 f., 120, 124, 135. ' 6 7 , 172, 301 American Monthly Magazine, The, 118 American Museum of Literature and the Arts, The, 1 2 3 American Scholar, The, 182 Amory, William, 52, 53, 57, 97 Anderson, Robert, 179 Anderson Art Galleries, Freiligrath Sales, 277, 282, 291 André, Major, dramas on, 176 IT.; see Arnold and André Angeline, 229, 233, 3 1 3 Annapolis, literary circle, 4 Ann Arundel Manor, 241 Annual American Institute of Instruction, 236 Antwerp, Stier's Cleydael Casde, 1 1 , 25, 67, 1 5 3 ; Calvert's visits to, 66-71, 95 f., 1 3 3 , 154; political and social conditions, 134, 154; scenes from, recreated, 182; Rubens anniversary celebration, 208 Antwerp, Cathedral of, 67, 1 3 3 Anyta and Other Poems, 178, 180, 184, 227, 308 Appleton, Frances, 137, 149 Arnold, Matthew, 2 2 1 , 3 1 3 Arnold and André . . . Drama, 120, 174, 176-78, 180, 208, 3 0 1 , 307, 3 1 1 , 3 1 6 ; excerpts: Calvert's drama compared with Dunlap's, 177 f.

Art and architecture, appreciation of, 69, 7 1 , 92, 97, 1 3 2 , 133, 137, 1 4 1 , 154, 305 "Aspiration," 148, 226, 303 Atlantic House, Newport, 144 Atlantic Monthly, The, 149, 190 Augustus III, King of Saxony, 84 Autobiographic Study, 50, 62, 68, 3 1 4 ; excerpts, 26, 40, 286; appraised and summarized, 229 £.; purpose, dates, owners, dedication, 241 Bagot, minister, 39 Bailey farm, Newport, 164 Baltimore, Lord, title became extinct, 1 5 1 , 240 Baltimore, third Lord, 3 Baltimore, Benedict Leonard, fourth Lord, 3, 4 Baltimore, Charles Calvert, fifth Lord, letters to son about Maryland property, 1 , 2; death, 2; wife and heir, 152, 240 Baltimore, Frederick, sixth Lord, 2, 1 5 1 , 240 Baltimore, George Calvert, first Lord, 1, 3 Baltimore, Md., Calvert's career, marriage and social life in, 103-25; lack of literary atmosphere, 106, 1 2 2 Baltimore Phrenological Society, 108, 109, 114 Baltimore Times, The, n o , i n , 299 Bancroft, George, 58, 65, 76, 87, 109, 146, 197, 207, 227 Barante, Amable G. P. B., 202 Barlow, Joel, 32 "Beard movement," 167 "Beautiful, The," 189, 205 "Beauty," lecture, 170 Beck, Professor, 83 Beck, Carl, 153 Beck, Paul, 41 Belgium, political and social conditions, 134, 154; see also Antwerp Bell, John, 172 Bemmel, Eugène, Baron von, 2 1 ; Benecke, Georg Friedrich, 75, 76, 81, 91

3I8

INDEX

Beranger, P. J. de, 150 Berg, Senator, 77 Berkeley, Bishop, 143 Bernhard, Duke, 89 Bibliography, 299-316 Biglow Papers (Lowell), 59 Biographia Dramatica, 117 "Black coat," diplomatic, 167 Bloc ¡¡.wood's, 100, 107 Bladensburg estate, 16, 22, 26, 43 Bladensburg, Battle of, 42, 100 Blumenbach, Professor, 74, 79, 82, 85, 91, 108 Boar hunt, 84 Bodenburg, Dr., 261 Boker, George H., 166 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 24, 70, 133, 1 3 5 , 188, 190 Boppart, 167 Boucher, Jonathan, 5, 7; quoted, 6 Boudoir, The, 180, 308 Bourne, Sylvanus, 1 1 Bouterwek, Friedrich, 80, 91 Bradley, tutor, 35 Brangonar . . . , 228, 3 1 4 Brief Essays and Brevities, 204, 289, 3 1 1 Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Schiller, 1 1 6 ; Calvert's translation, 145 f., 198, 199, 224, 303 Brinton, George, 45 Brisbane, Albert, 169 Brook Farm, 148, 155 Brooks, Charles Timothy, n o , 14s, 166, 195, 197, 207, 227, 232 Brown, Major, 42 Brown, George Loring, 137 Brown, James, 101 Brown University Commencement poem, 170, 307 Bryant, William Cullen, 124 Buchanan, President, 172 Bull, Henry H., 157 Bulwer-Lytton, E. G. E. L., first Baron, i n , 1 2 3 , 302 Burlingame, 167 Burnet, General, 100 "Burns," 148, 304 Burr, Aaron, 30, 86 Byron, Lord, 97 Cabiro, 1 2 3 , 176, 180, 194, 229, 303, 307 Caldwell, Charles, 167 Calvert family, 1 ff., 152; Maryland estates, 1-4, 22, 26, 241; distinguished members, 3; spelling and pronunciation of name, 5 1 ; see also Baltimore, Lords

Calvert, Amelia Isabella, 47, 54, 256 Calvert, Benedict, letters from Lord Baltimore about Maryland property, 1, 2; early life: once known as Benedict Swingate, 1 ; parents, 2, 1 5 2 ; marriage to Elizabeth Calvert, 2; characteristics, 3; financial affairs, 4; children, 4, 5, 7; relations with George Washington, 5, 6, 7, 15; death, 7; burial place, 2 4 1 ; provision re estate in will, 241, 247 Calvert, Benedict Leonard, the younger, 4 Calvert, Caroline Maria, 18, 28, 34, 36, 47, 56; birth, 16; school years, 35, 38, 43; marriage to Thomas W. Morris, 247 Calvert, Cecil, 3 Calvert, Charles, Benedict's son, 5 Calvert, Charles, Governor, 2 Calvert, Charles, see Baltimore, Charles Calvert, fifth Lord Calvert, Charles Benedict, 32, 47, 1 2 1 , 255 Calvert, Edward Henry, 15, 32, 241 Calvert, Eleanor, 5, 2 4 1 ; marriage to Jack Custis, 7; children, 8, 247 Calvert, Elizabeth, marriage to Benedict Calvert, 2; children, 4, 5, 7, 267; death, 246 Calvert, Elizabeth, the second, 267 Calvert, Elizabeth Steuart (Mrs. George Henry), 56, 66, 103, 129, 1 3 3 , 145, 187, 228, 2 4 1 ; appearance, 1 1 2 , 236; gifts as hostess, 1 1 2 ; friendship with Margaret Fuller, 1 2 1 - 2 3 ; death, 237; birth, 266; ancestry, 267 Calvert, Frederick, sixth Lord Baltimore, 2, 1 5 1 , 240 Calvert, George, first Lord Baltimore, 1 , 3 Calvert, George, father of George Henry, 20, 42, 100, 247; political career, 7; courtship, 8, 10, 1 3 ; marriage to Rosalie Eugenia Stier, 14; life at Mount Airy, 15 ff.; children, 16, 19, 25, 32, 42, 47, 53, 256; financial status, 18, 38, 42, 1 2 1 ; character, 27, 3 1 ; portrait, 28; important responsibilities, 30; attitude and activities re son's education, 39, 48, 63, 65; trips to Cambridge, 48, 56; urges son to travel and study abroad, 65; European trip, 95, 100 f.; attitude toward son's marriage, 103, 104; death: will: division of estate, 120 Calvert, George Henry, background: ancestors, i f f . ; birth, 19; childhood, 25 ff.; mother's influence, 25, 34, 36; Autobiographic Study, 26, 40, 50, 62, 68, 229 f., 241, 286, 3 1 4 ; portraits and busts of, 28, 97, 144, 166, 283; early education, 34 ff., 38-47; first trial at playwriting, 44; religion,

INDEX 46, 54, 68 £., 1 1 4 , 158, 159, 162, 1 6 7 , 2 1 9 , 2 3 0 ff.; first stirrings of democracy, 48, 49; failure to enter college: determination to try again, 49; Harvard years, 50-64; on the loss of his mother, 54; happy relations with his uncle Stier, 5 ; , 69, 95; in love with Elizabeth Steuart, 56, 1 0 3 ; books drawn from library, 5 7 ; part taken in the "Great Rebellion" against the faculty Government, 59 ff.; resulting dismissal of students, 62; degree finally granted in 1 8 5 ; , 64; not humiliated by college experience: plans for travel and study abroad, 65; visits to uncle in Belgium, 6 6 - 7 1 , 95 f., 1 0 1 , 1 3 3 ; gay social life in Antwerp, 6 8 ; interest in art and architecture, 69, 7 1 , 92, 97, 1 3 2 , «33, 137, ' 4 1 , '54> 3 0 4 ; Germany's appeal to, 6 ; , 7 1 ; life and travels there: student days at Gottingen, 7 1 - 9 5 ; views of German nobility, 84, 88, 90; visit to Weimar: received by Goethe, 8 5 - 9 1 , 1 0 1 ; presentation at court, 88; ability as a linguist, 93, 1 0 7 ; Gottingen experience evaluated, 93; travels in Scotland, 96-100; University of Edinburgh, 98; with family in Paris, 101; father's attitude toward his marriage, 103, 104; literary, home, and social life in Baltimore, 1 0 3 - 2 5 ; legacies: sources of income, 104, 1 2 1 , 1 5 3 , 185, 267, 290, 2 9 1 ; decision to embark upon literary career: marriage to Elizabeth Steuart, 1 0 5 ; first acquaintance with Newport, 105 f.; literary talent evaluated, 1 0 7 , n o , 1 1 7 , 1 2 3 , 1 4 5 , 179, 184, 196, 205, 2 3 6 f., 2 9 1 ; contacts with doctors and scientists, 108; interest in, and writings on, phrenology, 108 f., 1 1 4 , 167; on University of Maryland faculty, jo8; editorial ventures, 109, i n , 1 1 9 ; theory of translation, n o , 189, 1 9 5 ; theory of, and interest in, poetics, n o , 1 3 8 f., 179, 205, 207; publication of first book, 1 1 4 ; only attempt at prose fiction, autobiographical in spirit: theory of criticism, 1 1 5 ; lack of dramatic sense, 1 1 7 ; wish to change to a more literary atmosphere than Baltimore's, 1 2 2 , 1 2 4 ; writing dominated by European influence: time needed to fit it into newer literary genre, 1 2 3 ; second European trip, 1 2 6 - 4 2 ; causes of, and preparations for, trip, 1 2 6 ; visits to, and influence of, Wordsworth, 1 2 7 ff.; delight in landscaping: grounds at Newport, 130, 1 6 5 ; impressions of Carlyle, 1 3 2 , 205; in Paris, 1 3 2 ; visit to uncle in Antwerp, 1 3 3 ; return to Germany, 134, 1 3 7 ; interest in water

cure, 134, 1 3 5 , 1 3 8 , 167, 284; concern for political and social conditions, 1 3 4 , 148, 1 5 3 - 5 8 passim, 1 6 1 , 169, 170, 195, 206, 2 2 5 ; years in Italy, 1 3 6 - 4 2 ; visit to the Freiligraths: last day with his uncle, 1 3 8 ; purchase of Newport home, 143; its drawing room, 144; life and friendships there, 144 f., 164, 166, 236, 2 8 3 ; extent and nature of literary output, 1 4 5 ; to 1847, primarily the scholar and gentleman, 1 5 2 ; new element in writings, 1 5 3 ; third trip to Europe, 1 5 3 - 5 5 ; political party and activities, 156, 1 7 1 f., 208; mayoralty race and administration, 156-63, 305, 306; interest in education, 1 6 1 , 1 9 2 ; letter to Duyckinck as portrait of, and self-estimation, 166 f.; reading of drama in a church, 1 6 7 ff., 304; article showing preoccupation with the drama, 1 7 0 ; Chairman of Committee to aid Garibaldi, 1 7 1 ; why always out of joint with his time, 1 7 4 , 2 2 5 ; falling off of earlier influences: time of quiet and resulting large output: public recognition his dearest ambition, 1 7 4 ; his treatment of the idea of "gendeman" the most popular of his works, 1 7 5 ; period of metaphysical contemplation, 1 7 8 ; concern with greatness of soul: taste was sound, 179; friendship and correspondence with Swinton, 180234 passim; interest in spiritualism, 1 8 3 , 2 1 9 , 227, 229; obscurity in style, the secret of his mediocrity, 184, 196; break with Putnam's, 190, 194; sensitiveness to thrusts of critics: resulting bitterness, 1 9 1 , 194, 2 1 7 , 220, 2 2 3 ; stimulated by SainteBeuve's appreciation, 1 9 1 ; vegetarianism, 193; continued hopes of making his books a commercial success, 194; withdrawal from gaiety of Newport, 195, 207; break away from imitation of ideas: poem " F r e e " his own in definiteness and forward vision, 196; prolific output of the seventies, 202 ff.; basic philosophy in overlooking private lives because of noble public service, 203 f.; on style, 205; appreciation of, and review of poems by, Sidney Lanier, 206 f.; period rich in accomplishments: gratifying recognition : volumes having more than one edition, 2 1 7 ; during last decade, 2 1 9 - 3 8 ; personal quality: appearance: friendships with children: belief in man's mental and spiritual possibilities, 2 1 9 ; deepening religious sentiment, 2 1 9 , 230; literary output during last years, 2 2 1 ff.; generous contributions to relief and other funds, 2 2 1 , 294;

320

INDEX

Calvert, George Henry (Continued) Shakespeare and Goethe his supreme literary influences, 222; significance of his failure to appreciate Whitman, 224 f.; ahead of his time in social philosophy, 225; formative influences on his religious and ethical views, 230 f.; turned to personality and teachings of Jesus, 2 3 1 - 3 3 ; characters depicted in biographies, 2 3 1 ; shows influence of democracy upon cultural ideals of the aristocracy, 236; death, 236; effort to put both richness and simplicity into writings: to introduce ideas of European writers to America, 237; Newport school and street named for, 238; Catalogue of the Calvert Collection of Boo^s in the Redwood Library, 283; Newport real estate, 290, 2 9 1 ; undisciplined emotionality his chief fault as critic, 291; correspondence with Charles J. Stier, 3 1 6 ; for translations of, and writings on, Goethe and Schiller, see Goethe: Schiller; also their works, e.g., Don Carlos lectures: on phrenology, 1 1 4 ; on German literature, 120, 130, 3 0 1 ; appearances on lecture platform: eloquence and delivery, 156; on socialism, 156, 1 6 1 , 169, 170; on "Protestantism," 156; " N e w ness and New Truths," 156, 1 6 1 ; "Oration . . . Anniversary of the Battle of Lake Erie," 157, 304; "The Organization of Labor," 169; "Beauty"; "Usefulness of Art," 170; "Moral Education," 170, 306; address before Goethe Club, 2 1 1 - 1 3 , 219, 224, 293; other lectures on Goethe, 2 2 1 , 235; on Wordsworth, 2 2 1 ; "Address . . . to French Delegation," 226, 3 1 2 ; during last years, 235 f.; on Shakespeare, 235, 297, 3 1 5 ; series on Rubens, 235; addresses and reports to City Council, and to citizens, of Newport, 303, 304, 305, 3 1 3 ; writings: see bibliography, 298-315, /or chronological list of writings and lectures, and also see titles, e.g. "Aspiration"; foan of Arc Calvert, Henry J. A.. 47, 54, 256 Calvert, Julia, 42, 47, 253 Calvert, Marie Louise, 25, 42, 256 Calvert, Raisley, 128 Calvert, Rosalie Eugenia Stier (Mrs. George), courtship, 8, 10, 1 3 ; correspondence with brother Charles, excerpts, 8, 16 ff., 23-34 passim, 39, 54, 242; character: personality, 10, 12, 28, 3 1 ; education, 1 1 , 243; emigration to America, 1 1 ; descent from Rubens, 1 1 , 245; marriage, 14; life at Mount Airy,

15 ff.; children, 16, 19, 25, 32, 42, 47, 53, 256; religion, 16, 20; distress over separation of Stier family, 18-22, 37; given Bladensburg estate, 22; deferred hope of trip to Antwerp, 23, 53; life there in "Riversdale," 22 ff.; prejudice against the French, 24, 38; portrait, 28; literary tastes, 32, 36; guides education and activities of children, 32, 34, 36, 38, 47; death, 54, 245; Stier legacies to children of, 104, 1 5 3 , 267; appraisal of liberalism and American life, 237 Calvert, Rosalie Eugenia, the younger, 32, 47, 100 "Calvert to Goethe," letter, 3 1 6 Campbell, George Washington, 32 Canning, Stratford, 66 Capel, Thomas John, 235 Capers, Thomas Farr, 44, 52, 53 Carlyle, Thomas, 1 1 5 , 1 1 6 , 124, 145, 175, 179, 201, 203, 223; visit to: impressions of, 1 3 2 , 205; temporal rulers depicted, 2 3 1 ; essay on, 205 Carmina Minima (Cowdcn-Clarke), 223 Carpenter, Miss, 207 Carre, Charles, 39, 41 Carre, John Thomas, 39, 4 1 , 42 Carroll, Mrs., 21 Carroll, Charles, 52 Carter, John Ridgely, 242 Catholic Church, see Roman Catholic Church Centofanti, Silvestra, 138 Charming, Edward Tyrrel, 50, 56 Channing, Walter, 1 2 1 Charles I of England, 267 Charles X of France, 101 Charlotte von Stein. A Memoir, 2 1 3 f., 3 1 2 , 315 Chautauquan, The, 201 Chevalier, Michel, 1 1 3 "Child that Sleeps, The," 305 Christ, see Jesus "Christel," 150; text, 279 Christiane, Goethe's, 199, 200, 2 1 3 f. Christian Examiner, The, 1 7 5 Chronicle of the Times, 109, n o , 1 1 4 , 299 Church, William C „ 227 Civil War, attitude toward, 1 7 1 f. Clapp, Otis, 169 Clay, Henry, 1 1 2 , 270 Clermont Seminary, 39-41, 44, 45 Cleveland and Hendricks Club, 2 3 ; , 3 1 3 Clevenger, Shobol Vail, 137 Cleydael Castle, Antwerp estate of Stiers, n , 25. 67. 153

INDEX Coelestes et Inferi (F. Calvert), 1 5 1 Cogswell, Joseph Green, 58, 65, 66, 85, 176 Coleridge, Lord, 234 Coleridge, Henry Nelson, 223 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 79, 82, 94, 96, 107, 120, 123, 127, 215, 222, 301; Calvert's writings on, 123, 213, 223 f., 301, 3 1 2 ; work dedicated to, 1 3 1 ; Allston's sonnet on death of, 132; source material on, 223; Allston's portrait of, 275 Coleridge, Sara, 216 Coleridge, Shelley, Goethe, 213, 223 f., 3 1 2 "College Education," 192, 309 Comedies, 170, 202, 305 Confederacy, the, 1 7 1 , 172 Congressi degli Scienziati, 136 Constant, Benjamin, school of, 39, 42, 44 ff., 49. 7 ' Constitutional Union Party, 172 Colosseum, 141 Combe, George, 108 Cooke, Ebenezer, 4 Cooke, Elizabeth Susanna (Mrs. Robert Gilmor), 19 Cooper, James Fenimore, 89, 1 0 1 , 1 1 3 "Corn" (Lanier), 206, 3 1 1 Correspondence between Schiller and Goethe . . . , 116, 14s f., 198, 199, 224, 303 Count Julian. A Tragedy, 123, 138, 303 Count Rudolf. A Tragedy, 3 1 2 Cowden-Clarke, Charles, 223 Cowden-Clarke, Mary, 223 Cozzens, William C., 163 Cranston, William H., election race between Calvert and, 158-63 passim Crawford, Thomas, 139 Critical Essays and Literary Notes (Taylor), 201 Criticism, literary: theory of, 1 1 5 Cruzada Villaamil, G., 208 Cumberland, Duke of, 84 Curtis, George William, 157 Cushman, Charlotte, 165, 207 Custis, Eleanor Calvert (Mrs. Jack), 5, 7, 241; children, 8, 247 Custis, Eliza Parke (Mrs. Thomas Law), 247 Custis, George Washington Parke, 8 Custis, Jack, 19; youth and courtship, 5 f.; marriage to Eleanor Calvert, 7; son, 8; daughter, 247 Custis, Nellie, 15 Customs, see Manners and customs Cyclopedia, Duyckinck's, 150, 166 Daily News, The, 236

321

Dana, C. A., 148, 234 Dante, 136, 176, 180, 188 "Dante and his latest Translators," 188, 204, 308 Darnall, Henry, 2 Dayman, J. D., 189 Delphian Club, 106 Dekker, Thomas, quoted, 1 7 ; Democratic Party, 18, 28, 3 1 , 33; membership in, and candidacies, 156 ff., 171 f., 208 Démocratie Pacifique, 155 "Demon, The," 180 Dennett, John R., 182 "Descent from the Cross, The" (Rubens), 69 "Deutsche Muse, Die" (Schiller), 1 1 1 , 300 Dial, The, 124, 146 Dichtung und Wahrheit (Goethe), 109, 229 Dickens, Charles, 147 Digges and Steuart families, 267 Digges, Ignatius, 2 Divina Commedia (Dante), 188 Dobbin, Murphy, and Bose, 1 1 9 Dodge, Pickering, diary cited, 51, 59, 60 Dog of Montarges, The, 44 Don Carlos (Schiller), 116-18, 1 3 1 , 146, 198, 301 Döring, Heinrich, 198 Dorr, Thomas W., 52, 59 Dowden, Edward, 217 Drake, James M., 208 "Dream No More," 148, 302 Ducatel, Julius T., 108, 109, i n , 1 1 3 Dudley, Elizabeth, 287 Dunbar, Robert, ;8 Dunlap, William, André drama compared with Calvert's, 177 f. Düntzer, Heinrich, 213 Dutton, E. P., 178 Duyckinck, Evert A., 188, 189, 208; Cyclopedia, 150, 166 Dwight, Henry, 92 Dwight, John Sullivan, 123, 149, 150, 1 5 1 , 302 Eby, Edwin H., quoted, 291 "Echoes from Italy in 1830," 153 Edinburgh, trip to, and study at the University, 97-100 Edinburgh Review, 107, 188 Education, Governor Calvert's interest in, 4; Maryland schools, 3 ; , 38 f., 42, 252; G. H. Calvert's interest, 161, 192, 309 Eglofstein, Julie von, Countess, 90 Eichhorn, Johann Gottfried, 80, 85 Elements of Phrenology (Caldwell), 167

3

22

INDEX

Ellen: a Poem for the Timet, 183, 185, 192, 193, 202. 307. 309; excerpts, 184 f. Ellcry, William, 106 Elliott, Stephen, 107 Ellsworth, Oliver, 15 Emerson, F. F., 235 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 52, 65, 78, 1 2 1 , 123, 130, 148, 190; gives Calvert letter to Carlyle and commission to buy engravings, 124; Representative Men, 133, 156, 304 Emerson, William, 76, 78, 79, 82, 83, 86, 123, 124 Ense, K. A. Varnhagen von, 263 Episcopalian Church, 54 "Episode, An," 182, 183 Ernett Maltravers (Bulwer), 123, 301 "Errata," 309 Erskine, Mr., 30 Essays /Usthetical, 170, 190, 204, 206, 3 1 1 Estates, in Maryland, 1-4, 8, 13, 15, 16, 22, 26, 240; in Antwerp, 11', 25, 67, 153 "Etta," 286, 296, 305, 314 Eude, Countess, 83, 97 Eugene Aram (Bulwer), i n , 300 Everett, Edward, 50, 58, 63, 65, 76, 109, 1 1 5 , 146, 197 "E. Y. T.," pseudonym, 149 Fall of Man doctrine, 231, 232 "False and True Idea of a Gentleman" (Parker), 175 Faust (Goethe), 76, 109 f., 195, 197, 200 f., 264 First Baptist Church of Newport, 167-69 First years in Europe, 178, 181 f., 199, 307; excerpts, 70, 89, 254 Fitzpatrick, Keran, 11 Florence, beauties of; revolutionary forces at work, 136 f. Folsom, Charles, 1 1 ; Foreign travel, books on, 126 Forrest, Edwin, 1 1 2 , 124 Foster, Mr., 30 Fourier, François Marie Charles, 1 0 1 , 156, 205, 226; followers, 155; influence, 155, 162, 22;, 226, 295; Calvert's concern for spreading doctrines of, 156, 169; his book on, 170 France and the French, antagonism toward, 24. 38, 133 Eraser's, 107 "Free," 195, 310 "Freedom," 310 Freiligrath, Ferdinand, 1 5 1 , 153, 154, 163; visit to, 138; Anderson Art Galleries' sales, 277, 282, 291

Frémont, lohn C., 1 1 4 "French Delegation, Address . . . to," 226, 3'3 French Revolution, The (Carlyle), 203, 205 French schools in Maryland, 38 f., 252 Frenz, Horst, 289 Friend, The (Coleridge), 94, 96, 107, 127, 215 Froriep, von, family, 88, 89 Frothingham, Ellen, 194, 197 Frothingham, Octavius B., 212 Fuller, Margaret, 121-23, I2 4> 146, 289 Galaxy, The, 191, 192, 194, 227, 228 Gall, Franz Joseph, :o8, 230 "Garibaldi," 226 Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 171 Catch, The, or, Three Days at Newport, 170, 192 Gay, Martin, 52 "Gefunden" (Goethe), 200 Generee, M., 35, 74 Gentlemen, The, 174, 175, 180, 195, 307, 308, 3 1 5 Gentlemanhood and ladyhood, 175 George II, 65 "German Literature, A Lecture on," 120, 130, 302 "German Muse, The," translated from Schiller, i n , 300 Germany, appeal to young Calvert, 65, 71, 182; his student years and travels there, 71-95; royalty and nobility, 84, 88 ff., 201; return visit to, 134, 137 Geschichte der nordamerikanischen Literatur (Knortz), 2 1 1 "G. H. Calvert, Admirer of Goethe" (Pfund), 118 Gillman, Mrs. (Coleridge's benefactress), 131 Gilman, Mrs., 50, 51 Girard, Stephen, 41 "Give, give," 150 "Glimpses into a Portrait Gallery," 194, 309 "God, The, and the Bayadere" (Goethe), 236, 304 Godin, Jean Baptiste, 226 Godwin, Parke, 212 Goethe: His Life and Worths, 198-202, 207, 212, 217, 310, 314; compared with Life of Rubens, 209-11 Goethe Club of New York, 2 1 1 ; address to, 212 f., 219, 224; honorary members, 293 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 7 1 , 85, 150, 154, 174, 175, 194, 195, 196, 213 f., 222, 229, 237; relations with Grand Duke, 44,

INDEX 90; young Calvert's visit to, 8;-88, 1 0 1 ; other American visitors, 85, 86; Bancroft's article on, 87, 109; son, 90, 263; little known in America, 107, 109; translations of, 109, 116, 120, 145, 148, 149, 194, 195, 197, 269, 304, 306, 307; Briefwechtel zwischen G. und Schiller, 1 1 6 (translation, 1 4 ; f., 198, 199, 224, 302); reviews of works by, 123, 302; Wordsworth's opinion of, 130, 216; American attacks on, and defense of, 146, 197, 201, 221, 223, 289; Lewes's life of, 194; Calvert's, 197-202, 207, 209-11, 2i2, 217, 3 1 1 , 3 1 5 ; published correspondence, 198; loves, 199 if.; relations with Christiane, 199, 200; with Charlotte von Stein, 213 f.; lectures on, 2 1 1 , 212 f., 219, 221, 224, 235, 293; humane qualities and majesty of character emphasized by Calvert, 214, 216, 289; references to, in Wordsworth, 215 Goethe, Ottiiie von Pogwisch, 87, 88 Golden Age, The, 195, 204, 206, 309 Goodnight, S. H., 269; quoted, 289 Gottingen, eminent Americans at, 58, 65, 76, 79; beginning of, 65; in 1824, 73 fi.; Calvert's student years, 74-93; evaluation of experience at, 93; dwindled into provincialism, 135; Calvert's glowing chapter on, 182 "Gottingen in 1824," 305 "Gott und die Bajadere, Der" (Goethe), 149, 304 Gower, Lord, n o "Great Rebellion" at Harvard, 51, 58 ff. Greene, George W., 139 Greenough, Horatio, 137, 179, 304 Grclaud, Madame, school of, 39 Guillou, M., 74 Guise familitlère, 226, 295, 310 Hahnemann, Samuel Christian, 84 Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 124 Hamilton, Captain and Mrs., 15 Hamlet (Shakespeare), 222 Harbinger, The, 147, 148, 149, 155, 303, 304 Harper's Magazine, 157 Harris St Company, 225 Harvard College, why chosen for Calvert's education, 47; his years there, 48-64; MS Records of the Faculty, 49 ff. passim, 255; uniformity: classical erudition, 49; faculty, 50, 58; fees, 51, 256; "Great Rebellion" against rulings of the Government, 51, 58 ff.; superficiality, 58; dismissal of seniors, 62; protests not effective, 63; degrees granted years later, 64

Hatfield, lames Taft, 163 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 124, 139, 147, 202, 3°3

Haydon, portrait of Wordsworth, 217 Hayne, Paul Hamilton, 221, 222, 223, 224 Hazard, George, 281 Hazard, "Shepard" Tom, 145, 159, 183, 222 Hazel tine, Mayo W., 214, 3 1 2 Hearne, Thomas, 4 Hearsey, Isaac P., 58 Hedge, F. H., 197 Heeren, Professor, 77, 83, 92 Heine, Heinrich, 80 Heldorf, Herr von, 89 Helena (Goethe), 88 Herbert, John C., 30 "Her Little Boy," 227 Hermann and Dorothea (Goethe), 194, 197, 216 Higginbotham, Ralph, 243 Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 165, 207, « 9 , 232,314 Hill, Edward, 130 Hillard, George S., 165 Histoire de Jeanne d'Arc (Barante), 202 Hodgson, Mr. and Mrs., 15 Holdsworth, Edward, 4 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 52, 207 "Hope," 3 1 2 Hope, Thomas C., 98 Howe, Julia Ward, 207 Howland, B. B., 162 Hudson, Henry Norman, 222 Hume, Dr., 78 Hunt, William Morris, 283 Hyde, John, 2 Hyde, Sam, 1 "Hymn of the Archangels, The" (Goethe), 109, 300; text of Calvert's translation, n o , 269 Hyperion (Longfellow), 1 1 5 "Idiot Boy, The" (Wordsworth), 217 Illustrations of Phrenology . . . , 114, 300 Inferno (Dante), 189 Introduction to Social Science, 170, 306 Iphigenie (Goethe), 213 Irving, Washington, 89, i n , 112, 263 Italian literature, Calvert's interest in, 176, 180; his "Dante" a pioneer work in America, 188 Italian S\etch-Book (Tuckerman), 127 Italy, Calvert's years in, 136-42; political forces and changes, 136, 1 7 1 , 195 "Italy's Echo," 123

INDEX Jacobs, Jacobus, artist, 134 James, Henry, review by, 2 1 8 ; text, 206, 3 1 1 Jansen, Mary, married Lord Baltimore: son, 240 Jefferson, Joseph, 44 Jefferson, Thomas, 18, 31 Jeffrey, Francis, 100 Jesus Christ, 230, 2 3 1 , 2 3 2 ; The Nazar ene, 229, 232, 314 Joan of Arc, a Poem . . . , 170, 183, 202, 228, 306, 314 John Swinton't Paper, 234 "Joubert. Some of the Thoughts of," 185, 308, 3 1 2 , 3 1 5 Jungfrau von Orleans, Die (Schiller), 202 Kant, Immanuel, 79 Karl August, Grand Duke, 90; see also SaxeWeimar, Grand Duke of Kemble, Charles, 96 Kennedy, John Pendleton, 38, 42, 106, 108, h i , 1 1 3 , 119, 1 7 1 , 172, 176, 198, 227 Key, Francis Scon, 18 Keyser, Nicaise de, artist, 134 King, Edward, 144 Kirkland, President of Harvard, 50, 63 Klueber, Johann, 123 Knortz, Karl, 2 1 1 Knox, Samuel, 2 ; 2 Labor, Calvert's lecture on, 169; Godin's application of Fourierism in efforts to reconcile capital and, 226; Swinton's aid to cause, 234 "Ladyhood," 195, 3 1 0 Ladyhood, term, 1 7 5 La Farge, John, 165 Lafayette, Marquis de, 7 Laffert, Herr von, daughters, 74, 76 Lake Erie, Battle of: oration, 157, 305 Lamb, Charles, 96, 130, 174 Lanier, Sidney, Calvert's appreciation of, and review of poems by, 206 f., 3 1 1 Lansdowne, Marquis of, 186 Latrobe, John H. B., 106 Laurence, Samuel, portrait of Calvert, 164 Law, Mrs. (Thomas?), 17 Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 97 "Lecture on German Literature, A," 120, 130 Lee, Cornelia, 15 Lee, Mrs. Lud well, 15 Lee and Shepard, 202, 229 Legaré, Hugh Swinton, 107, 1 1 2 Leisering, F., 167 Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, 136, 137 Levana (Richter), 123

Levilloux, French teacher, 161 Lewes, George Henry, 194, 197, 199, 212, 229 Lewis, Lawrence, 15 Lewis, Nellie Custis, 15, 22 Lewis, Richard, 4 Life, Death, and other Poems, 226, 234, 3 1 3 Life and Worlds of Goethe (Lewes), 194, 197, 212 Life of Friedrich Schiller, The (Carlylc), 115, 116, 301 Life of Rubens. The, 2 0 8 - 1 1 , 2 1 5 , 2 1 7 , 3 1 1 , 3 1 2 , 3 1 4 ; excerpt, 2 3 1 "Life's Jubilees," 2 2 7 , 3 1 4 Like unto Like, 170 Lincoln, Abraham, 1 7 2 Lippincott's Magazine, 192, 206, 309 "Lisette . . . , " 227 Literary Remains of S. T. Coleridge, The, 123, 302 Literary World, The, 2 1 1 , 214, 2 1 7 , 2 2 1 , 223, 225, 228, 2 3 3 ; excerpt, 281 Literature as a career in early America, 105 Little, Brown & Co., 176 Lloyd, Mary Tayloe (Polly), 17, 19 London and Westminster Review, The, 203 London Quarterly Review, The, 223 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 7 3 , 76, 95, 105, 1 1 5 , 127, 1 3 7 , 138, 139, 149, 1 5 1 , ' 5 3 . 163, 165, 197; love for Frances Appleton, 1 3 7 , 149; translation of Dante, 188, 189 "Lost, Found, T h e , " 148, 304, 307 Louis Philippe, 144 Louisville Argus, The, 221 Louvrex, Stiers' attorney, 12, 13 "Love," 1 7 9 ; text, 228 "Loved Departed, T h e , " 304 "Love's Autumn" (Hayne), 224 Lowell, James Russell, 59 Lowndes, Edward, 42 Lowndes family, 30 McEwen, banker, 39, 40 McEwen, Charles, 4 1 , 45 McEwen, Elizabeth, 45 McEwen, Mary, 45 McEwen, Thomas, 40, 41 McFarlane, Dr., 100 Mackintosh, Sir James, 85 MacPherson, James, 100 Madison, James, 31, 3 2 Maid of Orleans, The . . . , 202, 203, 204, 217, 3 1 1 Malbone, Edward G., 143 Malherbe, François de, 186

INDEX

3*5

Mann, John P., estate, 143 Manners and customs, early Maryland, 9, 27, 28; German court and nobility, 84, 88 f., 90; Calvert's book dealing with aristocracy and, 175 Marin, Henrietta, 178 Marin, Matthias C., 204, 286, 291 Marin, Rebecca Thorndike, 286, 291 Martineau, Harriet, 1 1 3 Maryland, Calvert and Stier estates, 1-4, 8, 1 3 , 15, 16, 22, 26, 43, 240, 2 4 1 ; Calvert governors, 2, 4; on eve of Civil War, 1 7 1 f. Maryland, University of, 108 Marx, Karl, 234 Mason, John Kemble, 228 Mason, Jonathan, 47 "Materialism," 309 "Matthew Arnold's Wordsworth," 2 2 1 , 3 1 3 Matthews, Brander, 178 Matthisson, Friedrich von, i n Mattingly, Will, 1 Maude, 72 "May-Spirit," 227, 228 Mazzinism, Italy, 136 Mechanics' Association, 156, 167, 169 Mercer, Margaret, 268 Merck, Johann, 198 Merino, Spanish teacher,'42 Merry, Mr. and Mrs. Anthony, 30 Metaphysic of Ethics (Kant), 79 Metrics, interest in, 1 1 0 , 207 "Mid-Night Street-Scene," 192, 308 Mirabeau . . . Drama, 202, 203, 233, 3 1 0 , 314 Miscellany of Verse and Prose, 1 2 3 , 176, 302 Mitchell, Edward P., 180 Moderate Reformists, Italy, 136 "Monody on the Death of Horatio Greenough," 179, 304 "Moral Education," lecture, 170, 305 Morris, Thomas Willing, marriage to Caroline M. Calvert, 247 Motley, John Lothrop, 76 Mount Airy estate, 1, 3, 240; life at, 1 5 ff. Mt. Airy school, 39, 42-47 passim Mouse-Trap, The . . . (tr. by Lewis), 240 Müller, Chancellor von, 198 Müller. Ottfried, 91 Münchhausen, Baron, 65 Muscipula (Holdsworth), 4 Museum of Foreign Literature and Science, The, 109

"National Drama, A , " 170, 306 Nation's Birth and Other National Poems, A, 208, 3 1 1 Nature as a symbol, 1 3 1 Nazarene, The, 229, 232, 3 1 4 " N e b u l i , " 1 9 : , 309 Negroes and slavery, 158, 173 Neuville, Hyde de, Mr. and Mrs., 39 New England Magazine, The, 1 1 5 , 1 1 8 , 301 "Newness and New Truths," lecture, 156, 161 Newport, in 1829, 105 f., 1 4 3 ; in the forties, 143 f.; the Calverts' home, 130, 143, 144, 165; life and friendships there, 144 f., 164, 166, 236, 283; incorporated as a city, 1 5 7 ; mayoralty contest and administration, 15763, 304, 305; mayor's salary, 160, 1 6 3 ; accomplishments of Calvert's administration, 161-63; changes and growth to 1854, 164; appreciative articles on, 165; "The Gatch" a satire on hotel life in, 170, 192; in the seventies: Town and Country Club, 207; changing order, 226; school and street named for Calvert, 238; his properties and their values, 290, 291 Newport Advertiser, The, 156 Newport Daily Neu/s, The, 158-63 passim Newport Mercury, The, 144, 156, 159, 160, 1 6 1 , 162, 165, 166, 167, 168, 207, 2 1 1 , 2 2 1 , 236 Newport Reading Room, 144 Newspapers edited by Calvert, 109, i n , 1 1 9 , 299, 300, 301 New York Academy of Music celebration, 195 New York. Quarterly, The, 156 New York. Review, The, 123 New York. Times, The, 180, 182, 184; Swinton's connection with, 180, 203 New York Tribune, The, 163, 167, 191 Nicollet, Joseph Nicolas, 1 1 3 , 1 1 4 Niebuhr, Barthold, 95 Noehden, G. H., and Stoddart, J., 1 1 7 Norris, Charlotte Augusta (Mrs. Charles B. Calvert), 255 "North, Christopher," 100 North American Review, The, 87, 109, 1 1 5 , 300, 301 Norton, Andrews, 146 Norton, Charles Eliot, 1 7 1 Norton, F. H., 228 Notebooks (Hawthorne), 139 Nouveau monde industriel et sociétaire (Fourier), 10 r

Napoleon I, 24, 70, 1 3 3 , 1 3 5 , 188, 190 Nation, The, 182, 193, 206, 2 1 7 , 229

Ocean House, Newport, 144 "Ode to Greece," 227

326

INDEX

Offley boys, 45 Ogel, Mr. and Mrs., 10 Olyphant farm, Newport, 164 Orange, Prince of, 70 Oration . . . Anniversary of the Battle of Lake Eric, 157, 305 "Organization of Labor, The," lecture, 169 Osgood, S., Dr., 2 1 2 Otis, Harrison Gray, 47, 48, 61 "Our King," 170, 307 Outre-Mer (Longfellow), 127 Outrey, M., 226 "Oxford Tracts, The," 79

Pagcol buys, 45 Paintings, Calvert's appreciation of, 69, 7 1 , 92, 97, 1 3 2 , 133, 1 3 7 . 1 4 1 . 154 Paintings by Rubens, 1 1 , 69, 1 3 3 , 144, 155, 209, 244 Paintings in Stier collection, 1 1 , 28; public exhibit: return to Belgium, 43; internationally known, 70; sales, 70, 144, 278; canvasses included in collection, 70, 244, 254 Parker, Theodore, 146, 175 Parks, William, 4 Parsons, T . W., 188, 189 Peabody, George, 52, 53, 57 Peabody, Sophia, 124 Peacock, Gibson, 207 Pearce, James Alfred, letter to, 3 1 5 Peel, Sir Robert, 101 Pencilling! by the Way (Willis), 127, 139 Pendleton, lames, 108 Pepylincx, Marie, 208 Periodicals, scarcity of, in South, 106; edited by Calvert, 109, 1 1 1 , 1 1 9 , 299, 300, 301 Perry, Bliss, 182 Perry, Oliver Hazard, 157 Pfund, Harry, 1 1 8 Phillips, Sampson Jc Co., 170 Phonic unison, 220 Phrenological Journal, The, 108, 1 1 4 Phrenological Society, 108, 109, 1 1 4 Phrenology, Calvert's interest in, and writings on, 108 f., 1 1 4 , 167, 300, 301 Pickering, Charles, 52 Pickersgill, portrait of Wordsworth, 2 1 7 Pierce, Anne Longfellow, 137 Pierce, Franklin, 156, 157, 172, 304 Pierce and Marcy, 167 Poe, Edgar Allan, 1 1 9 f. Poems, 149 ff., 208, 304 Poetics, theory of, 138 f., 205; interest in sonnet form, 179; in metrics, 207

Political and social conditions, see Social conditions; Socialism Political party and activities, 18, 28, 3 1 , 33, 156, 208 "Politics" (Emerson), 148 Popkin, John Snelling, 50, 61 Porcellian Club, Harvard, 55 Posa, Marquis of, quoted, 1 1 6 Potvin, Charles, 208 Powel, Mary J., 295 Powers, Hiram, 137, 148, 3 1 5 ; bust of Calvert, 166 Précurseur, Le, 2:5, 311 f . Prelude, The (Wordsworth), 216 "Previsions," 179 Pricssnilz, Dr., 134 Priestly's academy, 38 "Prologue in Heaven," 300 "Protestantism," lecture, 156 "Proverbs from Goethe," 149, 304, 306, 307 Providence Post, The, 156 Pusey, Edward B., 79 Putnam, Rev. George, 146, 147, 224 Putnam, George P., 148, 202 Putnam's Magazine, 170, 306 Putnam's Monthly, 188, 189, 190, 193, 194, 204, 308, 309 Quincy, Josiah, 47 Rachel, actress, 1 3 2 Raymond, Henry J., 180 Razolini, Onorio, 1, 2 Redwood, Abraham, 106 Redwood Library, 106, 143; Calvert Collection in, 283 Reed, Henry, 129 Representative Men (Emerson), 1 3 3 , 156, 305 Republican Party, 1 7 1 ff. "Reuben James," 150 Revue de Belgique, 2 1 5 Rhode Island Art Association address, 305 Richardson, Lady, 216 Richter, Jean Paul, 120, 123 Ripley, George, 52, 155, 163, 2 1 2 Ripley, Sophia, 2 1 2 "Riversdale," Stier's Bladensburg estate, 16, 22, 26, 43 Robertson, F. W., 204 Robinson, Crabb, 130 Robinson, John Paul, 59 ff. Rochambeau, Count, 143 Roenne, Baron, 1 1 2 Rolfc, W. J., 223 Roman Catholic Church, and Rosalie Calvert,

INDEX 16, 20; effect upon Belgians, of nonmembership in, 68; Calvert's distrust of, 167, 230 Rome, descriptions of, text, 139-42 Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare), 223 Rooses, Max, 209 Roosevelt, Theodore, 195 Rose, Thistle and Shamrock, The, 163 Round, W. M. F., 217 Rubens, Peter Paul. Stier family's descent from, 1 1 , 244 f.; paintings, 1 1 , 69, 133, 144, i55i 209, 244; anniversary celebration, 208; Calvert's biography of, 208-11, 215, 217, 231, 3 1 1 , 312, 3 1 5 ; source materials, 208, 209; facts about: appearance, 209; French edition of biography: publication in Antwerp, 215, 3 1 1 ; series of lectures on, 235 Ruppaner, Antoine, 2 1 1 , 212 Rydal Mount, visit to Wordsworth at, 127 S. Rymer, Madame, 97; daughter, 98 Saalfeld, Friedrich, 8o, 81, 85, 91 Sainte-Beuve, Charles A., letter, 190; text, 191 "Sainte-Beuve, the Critic," 188, 190, 204, 206, 309 St. Peter's, Rome, 142 Salem Advertiser, The, 147 Santissima Trinità de' Monti, 139 Sartorius, Georg, 80 Sartor Resartus (Carlyle), 205 Saxe-Weimar, Karl August, Grand Duke of, 44, 89, 90 Saxe-Weimar, Duchess of, 89 "Scene before Tripoli," 150 Scenes and Thoughts in Europe, 1 3 1 , 134, 148, 153, 156» »58, 167, 179, 303, 304, 306, 307; style, 139, 147; excerpts, 13942; Hawthorne's review, 147 f.; popularity, 148, 175; deals with manners and aristocracy, 175 Schiller, Johann C. F. von, 146, 147, 154, 178, 202, 214, 235, 237; little known in America, 107, 1 1 5 ; translations of, 1 1 1 , 116-18, 1 3 1 , 145, 149, 300, 301, 303; Carlyle's life of, 1 1 5 , 116, 301; Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und S., 1 1 6 (translation, 145 f., 198, 199, 224, 303); reviews of works by, 123, 302 Schlegel, A. W. von, 95 Schòll, A., 213 "Schoolmaster" (Longfellow), 1 1 5 Schools in Maryland, 35, 38 f., 42, 252 School system, Newport, 161, 162

527

Schwendler, President, 88 Scientific Congresses, Italy, 136 Scotland, travels and study in, 97-100 Scott, Doctor, 21 Scott, Sir Walter, 100 Scott, Winlield, 179 Selections from the "Thoughts" of Joseph Joubert, 3 1 5 Select Minor Poems . . . of Goethe and Schiller (translated by Dwight), 123, 149, 302 Selfridge, Governor, 226 Semple, J. W., 79 Shaaf[?], Miss, 10 Shakespeare, 44, 123, 222, 223; "Our King" a tribute to, 170; essay on, 204; lecture on, 235.297.3i5 Shakespeare. A Biographic Aesthetic Study, 222 f., 3 1 3 ; excerpts, 220, 232 Shakespeare's Scholar (White), 222 Shelley, relative of poet, 90 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 97, 1 1 0 , 204, 310; Calvert's essay on, 224 "Shepherd Tom" of Vaucluse, 166 Sheridan, Mrs., 28 Shubrick, Commodore, 1 1 3 Sibyl, 229, 234, 314 "Sidney Lanier," 206, 310 Simms, William Gilmore, 147 Skinner, Ben, 53 Slavery, 158, 173 "Sleep," 309 Smibert, John, 143 Snowden, Miss, 30 Social conditions, growing concern for, 134, 148, 153, 206 Socialism, Calvert's interest and activities, 156, 158, 161, 169, 170, 195, 225; Swinton's, 180, 234; see also Fourier, F. M. C. "Social Palace at Guise, The," 310 Soley, shoemaker: death, 46, 1 1 5 Some of the Thoughts of Joseph Joubert, 185, 308, 312, 315 Sonnet form, 179 Sorrows of Wert her, The (Goethe), 120 Sot-Weed Factor, The (Cooke), 4 Southern and Western Magazine, The, 147, 148 Southern Literary Gazette, The, 107 Southern Literary Messenger, The, 120, 176, 301, 302 Southern Review, The, 107 Spencer, William V., 181 Spiegel, Frau von, 88 Spiritualism, 183, 219, 227, 229

328

INDEX

Spurzhcim, J. C., 108, 301 Stahr, Adolf, 198 Staigg, Richard, 1 6 ; Stedman, Edmund C., 2 1 2 Stein, Charlotte von, 198; Calvert's book on, 2 1 3 f., 3 1 2 , 3 1 4 Steuart, Charles, marriage to Elizabeth Calvert, 267 Steuart, Elizabeth, courted, 56, 103; married, 105; birth, 266; ancestry, 267; see Calvert, Elizabeth Steuart Steuart, George, 1 Steuart, George Hume, 187 Steuart, lames, Dr., 106, 267 Steuart, M. Louisa, 283 Steuart, Richard, Dr., 108 Steuart and Digges families, 267 Stier family, exile from Belgium, 8, 1 1 , 1 5 , 16; Maryland estates, 8, 1 3 , 16, 22; Cleydael Castle in Antwerp, 1 1 , 25, 67, 1 5 3 ; ancestry, 1 1 , 242, 244 f.; return to Belgium, 21 Stier, Charles Jean, 1 2 , 16, 1 3 3 , 138, 278; correspondence with sister Rosalie Eugenia, 8, 16 ff.; 23-34 passim, 39, 54, 242; marriage to Eugénie Van Ertborn, 24 ; kindness to sister's family, 29, 36, 55; interest in, and relations with, Calvert, 55, 69, 95; Calvert's visits to, in Antwerp, 67-71, 95 f., 1 0 1 , 1 3 3 ; a collector and connoisseur: commissioner to the Louvre, 70; Calvert's holiday trips with, 82-85, 1 0 1 ! his appeal to, for funds, 99; and about legacy froin grandfather, 104; death: division of estate, 1 5 3 ; first wife, Marie, 243, 244, 248; correspondence with Calvert, 3 1 6 Stier, Eugène, 36 Stier, Eugénie Van E. (Mrs. Charles Jean), 23. 24. 43 Stier, Henri Joseph, background, 8; life in America, 8 ff., 1 5 ff.; collection of paintings, 1 1 (see under Paintings); financial affairs, 1 2 ; love of landscaping, 14, 2 1 , 26; oath of fidelity to French Constitution: return to America, 18; return to Belgium: disposition of Maryland home, 2 1 , 22; legacies to Rosalie's family, 104, 267; sometimes entitled baron, 242; children and their consorts, 244 Stier, Mrs. Henri Joseph, 10, 23, 244 Stier, Joseph, 16 Stier, Marie Van Havre (Mrs. Charles Jean), 243, 244, 248 Stier, Rosalie Eugenia, Calvert's courtship, 8, 10, 1 3 ; education, 1 1 , 243; emigration

from Belgium, 1 1 ; marriage, 14; see Calvert, Rosalie Eugenia Stier Stoddard, Charles Warren, 288 Stoddart, J., G. H. Noehden, and, 1 1 7 Stoddert, Benjamin, 30 Stoddert, Harriet, 32 Strawberry Hill estate, 8, 13 Stuart, Gilbert, 28, 1 4 3 ; Calvert portraits, 28, 144 Stuart, Richard Henry, 253 Study of Shakespeare, A (Swinburne), 223 Sturgis, Russell, 60 "Style," 205 Summary of Phrenology to Accompany the Bust of Spurzhcim, A, 1 1 5 , 301 "Summer Verses," 3 1 0 Sun, The, 180, 214, 234 Swallow Barn (Kennedy), 106, 1 1 1 , 301 "Sweetness of Sorrow," translation from Goethe, 304 Swinburne, Algernon C., 223, 225 Swingate, Benedict, 1 ; see Calvert, Benedict Swinton, John, 170, 180, 1 9 1 , 192; beginning of Calvert's friendship with, 180; their correspondence, 180-234 passim; newspaper connections, 180, 1 8 1 , 203, 2 1 4 , 234; interest in socialism, 180, 234; personality: character, 1 8 1 ; review of Ellen, 183 f., 194; meeting with, and visits to, Calvert, 186, 188; value of the friendship, 187; aids labor and social reform, 203, 234; trip abroad: establishes newspaper, 234 Swinton, William, 180 Symonds, 1 1 7 "Symphony, T h e " (Lanier), 206, 3 1 1 Talk, about Shakespeare, 235, 297, 3 1 5 Tayloe, Edward Thornton, 50, 52, 53, 58, 59 ff. passim Tayloe, John, 58, 63, 239 Taylor, Bayard, 1 1 0 , 194, 195, 197, 200, 201 "Terminus" (Emerson), 190 Theorie des quatre mouvements (Fourier), 169 Thompson, B., 1 1 7 Thorndike, Augustus, 66, 85, 105, 1 2 1 , 165, 291 Thorndike, Henrietta (Mrs. Augustus), 105, 1 2 1 , 291 Thorndike, Rebecca (Mrs. M. C. Marin), 286, 291 Thornton, Colonel, 42 Threescore, and Other Poems, 190, 195, 225, 227, 233, 308, 3 1 4 ; excerpt, 190

INDEX Ticknor, George, 50, 58, 65, 77, 197 Ticknor & Co., 152 Tilton, Theodore, 195 "Tintern Abbey" (Wordsworth), 127, 131 "To Adelaide, in Absence," m , 300 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 1 1 3 "To Etta," 286; see also "Etta" "To Grover Cleveland," 297, 315 "To Little Mary Griffin," 150 "To Shelley," 310 Town and Country Club, 207 Toy, John D., 120 Transcendentalism, 148, 174, 178, 205 Translation, theory of, 1 1 0 , 189, 195 Translations interspersed in texts, early practice of, 1 1 5 Travel books, popularity, 126 Travelling Letters . . . (Dickens), 147 Travels in Europe . . . , 306 Tuck, 71 Tuckerman, Henry T., 127, 1 5 1 , 166, 167, 176, 182, 198, 227, 304 Tugenden des Wassers für Gesunde und Kranke, Die (Leisering), 167 Unitarianism, 232 "Usefulness of Art," lecture, 170 "Utility of Beauty," 189 Vallon, Annette, 221 Van Buren, Martin, 156 Vandenhoff, actor, 1 1 2 Van Ertborn, Eugenie, 23, 24; see Stier, Eugenie Van Havre, Camilla, 209, 215 Van Havre, Henri, 204, 209, 215 Van Havre, Isabelle Stier, 12, 47, 153, 242, 243, 244; letters, 19, 20, 21 Van Havre, Jean, Baron, 12, 104, 244, 245 Van Necks, London agents, 79, 96, 97 Van Ysseldyke boys, 45 Vedemeycr, Frau von, 74 Vegetarianism, 193 "Veils," 179 Vergnes, Father, 16, 20 Vernon, Captain, 1 Vie de Rubens, La, 215, 3 1 1 Villaamil, G. Cruzada, 208 Volaison, M., 41 Völkerrecht (Klueber), 123 Volume from the Lije of Herbert Barclay, A, 46, 1 1 5 , 120, 222, 301 Waagen, Gustav, on Rubens, 210 Wahrheit aus Jean Pauls Leben Dwight), 123, 301

(tr. by

Wallack, Lester, 192 Walsh, Robert, 39, 40, 42 "Wandrers Nachdied" (Goethe), 148, 149, 304, 306 Wappers, Gustave, 134 Ward, Samuel G., 124, 149 Ware, Henry, 146 Warland, Mr., 51 Warren, William, 27, 204 Washington, Bushrod, 19 Washington, Mrs. Corbin, 1 ; Washington, George, n , 33, 144; relations with Calvert family, 5, 7, 15; consent to marriage of Jack Custis, 6; adopted son, 8 Washington, Martha, 19 Washington, D. C., 22, 25 Water cure, 134, 135, 137, 138, 167, 284 Watson, tailor, 41 Watson, Seth B., 79, 83, 94, 96, 131 "We," 308 Webber, Samuel, 50 Weber, Karl Maria von, 84 Weimar, Grand Duke, 201 Weimar, visits to, 85-91, 154; Calvert's descriptions of, 182, 306 "Weimar in 1825," 306 Weir, journeys with, 85, 93 West, William Edward, 97, 265 Westminster Review, 201, 310 Wetmore, William S., 144 "What is Poetry?" 205 Whig Party, 159, 160 White, Richard Grant, 222 White, Mrs. Stewart Edward, 294 White, Thomas Willis, 120 Whitman, Walt, 174, 225 "Why are Poets Sad?" 303 Wieland, Professor, 83 Wiley and Putnam, 147 Wilhelm Meister (Goethe), 120, 130 Will and the Way, The, 166, 167, 170 Willis, N. P., 127, 139 Wilson, John, 100 Wilson, S. F., 118 "Without the Stars," 192, 309 "Wonne der Wehmut" (Goethe), 149, 304 Wood, William, Colonel, 42, 100 Woodbury, James Trask, 59 ff. Wordsworth. A Biographic, ¿Esthetic Study, 215-17, 218, 219, 221, 3 1 1 , 314 Wordsworth, Dora, 127 Wordsworth, Mary, 129 Wordsworth, William, influence upon Calvert, J27, 132; visit to, at Rydal Mount, 127 ff.; hospitality: visitors, 128, 129; per-

330

INDEX

Wordsworth, William (Continued) sonality, 128; classification of poets: opinion of Goethe, 130, 216; moral elevation, 1 3 1 ; in old age, 154; biography of, 2 1 5 - 1 7 ; compared with Goethe, 216; portraits, 2 1 7 ; lecture on, 221 Wordsworth, Poems of ( A r n o l d ) , 221, 313 " W o r k , " 195, 310 " T h e world is too much with us" (Wordsw o r t h ) , 127

"Worldliness," 310 Wright, Fanny, 1 1 2 Wyatt, W . E., 105

Yarnall, Ellis, 131

Zelter, Goethe's correspondence 199

with,