Journal of Richard Austin Rice, 1878 - 1887

1880

January 2. Keppel showed me proofs of Marcucci's engraving of Agricola's drawing of Michelangelo's bas-relief of the Madonna with two children, Jesus and John. He asked one hundred and twelve dollars for each "proof before letters." I have found one of Goupil's and bought it for twenty dollars. It has been in the market only when a copy was sold by an owner to whom it had been given by the Pope who had ordered the plate to be engraved and presented proofs to various persons. Before it began to show serious wear he had the lines filled with gold, and it is kept in the Vatican library. I bought of Keppel a good proof of Woolett's engraving after Claude's painting of the "Temple of Apollo."

January 4. Too much dining, late hours, and other factors have put Marion out of sorts so that she feels unable to carry out her plan of a visit to her mother in Geneva. She will go home with me as soon as she feels a bit stronger.

January 7. We reached Burlington about four o'clock this morning, a dismal hour and depressing temperature. It was a cheering sight to find the house lighted and Smyth at the door. He had made a huge blaze in my study which set the chimney on fire as we entered. This caused some anxiety for a half-hour, but the danger was then overcome. Dick had not made a sound all the way. He was glad to get into his "ikkle crib" and asleep again in a moment.

January 29. Dick's second anniversary. Mrs. Loomis sent beautiful flowers. Ware came to dinner and brought him a copy of Kate Greenaway's book "Under the Window." His mother takes great pride in his hair which curls naturally and is a glistening golden color. He does not find its unshorn length comfortable in his play.

February 16. Madam Wheeler gave the final one of her receptions this evening. They have been most agreeably informal occasions varied by music and reading. Constance and I sang tonight a duet from Mozart's opera "Cosi fan tutti." It has been a bitter disappointment to me that ever since our marriage Marion has refused to devote any time to music. Soon after we came into this house Sallie sent us her old Steinway square piano which has still fine qualities, and I hoped this might revive her interests. She had already declared she had not enough to make it worth her while "to bother with it." She had been studying vocal music when we were first engaged. We often sang together, and in the traditional ignorance of pre-marital acquaintance I was led to suppose this signified a vital interest in music; but it is evident this was only an artificial flower, not one that had its root in real life. The duet Constance and I sang at Madam Wheeler's reception is one of many we have practiced together (this winter) during the last two winters, and we have had much pleasure in the process. Music is, however, not cultivated in this community. It is at best an exotic foreign to its life. No art flourishes here, and while it is in narrow limits, an intellectual literary interest among the men at least languishes.. The women have a reading circle that shows some vitality. Miss Constance Wheeler and Miss Austin practice the arts of music and painting without effecting sensibly the sympathies of their acquaintance. The latter is a Roman Catholic and this affiliation has brought her commissions to decorate a church here and there. Both these ladies are my warm friends for a state that is not "misery" still "loves company" and we cherish a common feeling in regard to the indifference manifested toward their absorbing pursuits.

The interest in art existing here is an attachment, not a devotion. It shows itself in the occasional purchase of a painting by a well-to-do man like Phelps or an engraving by a few others. Ware gathers a considerable audience to listen to his talks on Michelangelo, but it is his personality that attracts rather than the subject. I know well how he feels on this matter, though he says little. There is still a puritanical stringency in the atmosphere which became darkly apparent in the surprise that I should venture to invite friends to meet an actor at my house on Sunday evening. There is a small theater in the business section of the town and Joe Jefferson had given Saturday night his immutable "Rip Van Winkle" to a fair audience. I called at his hotel after the play and invited him to dinner the next day, since there being no train on Sunday he could not get away until Monday morning. It seemed to me simply human to tender him a little hospitality even if it were on Sunday. He accepted most cordially and we had a delightful evening. Ware and Phelps were with us. Mr. Jefferson was easily led to talk about his art and as he has recently been in Europe he had much to say of actors and theaters there. I asked him what plays he saw in Berlin. He mentioned among a few "Hamlet", "and do you know the actor who played that part is the greatest Hamlet I ever saw," he said. "How about Edwin Booth," said Ware. Mr. Jefferson replied; "Booth and I are good friends, we have no jealousies to nurse for he plays tragedy and I play melodrama, but as Hamlet he is not in it with that German actor Birndal." This emphatic statement gave me no little satisfaction, for both Ware and Phelps had been quite contemptous of my enthusiasm for Birndal's rendering of Hamlet, which was now so strikingly confirmed by Mr. Jefferson. When he took his seat I remarked; "Mr. Jefferson, you sat down in that chair just as if you were Rip Van Winkle." He laughed and said; "Do you know, Mr. Rice, sometimes I can't tell whether I am Rip or Jefferson." Little Dick came in at the beginning of the dinner to greet our guests. His white dress and golden hair made a picture that evidently delighted Mr. Jefferson. I asked him if he had seen Flacke as King Lear in the Leipzig Theater. "No," he replied, "I did not go to Leipzig but I heard much talk of Flacke and I think he is coming to America soon, so that I shall see him in New York." Late in the evening I walked with Mr. Jefferson to his hotel and bade him goodnight. He said he had rather dreaded the Sunday and now it would be a delightful memory to him. It can only be a common incident; its infrequency in Burlington society shows how little any art, drama, or painting counts in the life of the average American community. Yet the day must come for them unless materialism is to prevail.

March 1. Smyth had been during the winter very assiduous in his attentions to Miss Blodgett and now that they are engaged we see less of him than before. She is a pretty girl, but our acquaintance with her is slight, too slight to form a basis for prediction.

Ware and I have suspended our reading of Dante, as the work on a course of lectures in Greek History occupies me too closely. I have tried a few readings of Shakespeare's Hamlet combined with talks on the play to the Junior class, but few cared to attend. Such students as come to this college are too untrained to appreciate the beauty of form or of style in a poem. They are sometimes interested in an idea. To know where the beauty of style lies, to seize it in the drama or a lyric requires the artist-faculty, and this cannot be expected in the class room.

March 23. The winter term is ended and the strain of college work will be less for the rest of the year. Ware and I now resume our Dante evenings.

Smyth has an offer from Professor Pumpelly to take charge of the chemical work at his laboratory at Newport, R.I.. As it promises greater emolument and frees him from teaching, which is not at all his forte, he will doubtless accept it.

April 5. Smyth left us this morning for his new position. Our pleasant joint housekeeping has come to an end after nearly two years. In looking back over this period, I can recall nothing that occurred to mar the harmony of our relations. This seems remarkable for his intercourse with his students and with the faculty in the conduct of his department has not been agreeable to him or them. With us and our friends his kindness and geniality have been constant and marked. He has been devoted to Marion and Dickie. I shall miss him greatly in walking and in our after-dinner talks, though since his engagement to Miss B. was announced his chief interest has been outside of our little circle and we have seen little of him except at meals.

April 12. I am at work on a lecture to be given this term in the college chapel as the faculty have about decided that a course shall be given on alternate Wednesdays to which the public may be admitted. It has required a deal of effort on the part of the President to get them to stir in the matter.

For the first time since our marriage, with the exception at the outset in the college rooms, we are really by ourselves. The relief from restraint, from a sense of vague responsibility for another person is delightful. We are trying to get on for awhile with fewer servants, though this has its inconveniences and cannot be continued long. It is certainly uncomfortable to have anyone in the house, even a servant, who will take no interest in the family life, on whom all efforts for kindly associations are wasted, and therefore in spite of the inconveniences we were not sorry to have Mary the cook find another place though she has been with us for two years.

April 14. Dodds, a college student, died at the hospital quite suddenly this afternoon, the first death in the college for the last ten years.

April 15. This morning a brief service was held in the hospital, then we marched down to the boat on which he was carried home.

April 20. One evening in the winter I gave a talk in Ware's lecture room as part of his annual course on "engraving and etching." Three print sellers in New York sent up a lot of illustrations for it that were hung on the walls and excited great interest. A few were sold, and then the print sellers proposed that I should receive a consignment and dispose of it for them. I had no place in which to show the prints properly nor time to devote to such an enterprise but recognizing its value for the community I turned the matter over to Rogers, the librarian in the new "Mary Fletcher" library, who had a room in the building with adequate wall space as well as a large table in the center. He took it up with eagerness and has already sold a large number of good prints to the townspeople. This ought in time to make an artistic atmosphere felt in the city and at least a change for the better apparent in the look of the average living room of a citizen.

April 28. As certain objections have been made to the proposed course of lectures at a faculty meeting this afternoon, a final vote was taken in favor of the plan.

May 4. Dickie is delighted to be out of doors and is very unwilling to come into the house for his nap or his dinner.

May 9. Ex-president Hill of Harvard College arrived this afternoon to give an address and as he was to stay with us, I met him at the station. He said he would prefer to walk up to the house if I had no objection. I gave his bag to a hackman and we started up the hill. On the way we were talking of the power of vision and I said; "A man sees what his eye has been trained to see," that I had often looked for a four-leafed clover and seldom if ever found one. After we had reached the upper half of the ascent where grass was growing by the side of the path he found thirteen before we arrived at my gate. I did not see a single one. As President Hill is a botanist the result was an immediate illustration of our talk.

May 12. M's birthday. Miss Loomis sent a box of flowers. Ware sent several photographs of drawings by J. T. Millet. Ware is in Boston so we shall miss him at the dinner. President Buchanan gave the first of a course of lectures in the chapel. His topic was "The Use and Choice of Books." It was fully as instructive as "The Use and Choice of English." In this he is a past master. His baccalaureate sermons are marvels of composition. A while since he was invited to preach at Cambridge in the college chapel. President Eliot's comment is said to have been: "Who is this? Why have we not heard him before?"

May 20. A drive to Mallet's Bay and Appletree Point with Ware. There were light showers on the way which only made the fresh young green of leaves and grass more exquisitely beautiful. No spring has been so delightful as this since I came to Burlington. The fields are full of bob-o-links, robins, finches, blackbirds, and song sparrows that make the air jubilant.

May 21. I think I never felt such content of mind as now in this wonderful springtime with my dear wife and boy in our own home. No doubt this content in them, their happiness in each other, help to make the spring seem the most beautiful one in my experience. I used to think I could never be so contented anywhere as I had been in Blankenburg, but this exceeds that in a way and to a degree not to be measured. A sparrow is building her nest in a shrub near my study window. As I sit at my table I see her at work. Other birds come and perch on the branches, humming birds often rest a moment in it, for the Missouri currant nearby is a great attraction to them. The goldfinches swing to and fro on the top-most twigs, picking at the leaves and buds, while the song sparrow works at nest building. I fear now, two hours later, that the sparrow has been frightened away by a heavy shower, for she does not come back to finish her nest. Two golden robins began to build in the [ ] tree east of the house, but I have not seen them for two days, and the red-breasts' nest in the garden has been robbed.

May 22. The song sparrow has returned and is at work on her nest.

May 26. Miss Loomis's birthday. Too hot for a garden party as her garden has little shade. We shall celebrate this evening. I gave my lecture this afternoon in the College Chapel - the mercury stood at 90 deg. My topic was prehistoric Greece and Italy. I wonder if one of the faculty should break out with a humorous lecture what the effect would be?

June 1st. Phelps invited us to drive with him and Mrs. Phelps around Shelburne Point. A perfect day, Marion had never taken so long a drive, and it was a great satisfaction to her. She sat on the front seat with Mrs. Phelps who knows the countryside by inch and is a most genial talker. The adjective that belongs to Mrs. Phelps is "gracious". No lady in Burlington rivals her in this quality of graciousness and it is so unmistakably genuine it does not become tiresome. She has not the special fund of talk that makes Mrs. Spencer Marsh and Miss Austin companionable to me, nor the spontaneous affectionate interest that pervades every talk with Mrs. Torrey. With Mrs. Phelps one is always more conscious of the charm of manner than of the significance of what may happen to be the topic of conversation.

June 9. Torrey gave his lecture on "Thomas Aquinas" and his philosophy this afternoon in the chapel. It was interesting from beginning to end and written in a style which made it fall on the ear like exquisite music.

June 27. Commencement week is not very gay in this town yet, but more of the younger alumni are coming back than was the practice a few years since. The event of the greatest distinction is always the delivery of the baccalaureate sermon by Mr. Buckham. I wonder if any college can rival its quality. I never read one in the papers of today that rivals it in purtinance of matter or approaches it in style of expression.

September 15. It is only in seasons of mental and bodily calm that I am inclined to put thoughts and experiences on paper. But the painful and disagreeable is as much a part of life as the agreeable or joyful. We prefer to remember the latter, the former we strive to forget. There is apparent justness or truthfulness in a record made up solely of the pleasant incidents of experience or there would be none, if one did not reflect that it is the experience, not the record of it, which is the actual part of life, and the experience with its effect can not be altered. In June there seemed to stretch before us weeks of increasing content in a new experience of homelife. Never had the garden been quite so beautiful and we had at considerable expense added to the house sundry things that would make it more attractive to visitors. Our peace was suddenly broken by a dismal plan followed by an utterly dismal experience of sharing in the lease of two cottages at Falmouth Heights on Cape Cod. This project was set going by Marion's friends, and as her mother was to spend the summer with them, Marion felt obliged to join them. I was not involved in the plan myself except to pay the share of expenses, and if I could have remained in our house here I should have been content. I was obliged, however, to go with Marion and Dickie, and I wished to see what the actual conditions were before leaving them. Marion had of course much satisfaction in the society of her mother and sisters, though this was lessened by the constant friction caused by the difficulties in housekeeping. The bathing was an agreeable diversion in which most of us shared. Marion made a pretty picture one day standing at the top of a stairway in her dark blue bathing dress as she had come out of the water dripping like a mermaid. There were crabs to be caught in nearby creeks, and this made good sport and furnished the only very satisfactory item on the bill of fare. The fatigue of the constant care of Dickie, there being no room for a nurse, the crowded quarters, the poor food, and the strain of the whole experience made Marion ill before the end of it was reached. I had no room for my work, so that the time I had to stay there was practically wasted. Now the name "Falmouth Heights" has become the family bugbear with which we ward off spirits less evil than the ones this terror actually conjured up. In the midst of it I escaped for a few days to Nantucket. I drove in a cart over the moor to the South shore, where the long rollers were pounding on the sand, filling the air with spray. There was no actual road but I went on for several miles along the bluff. Often it was necessary to descend to the shore and sometimes I turned off into the moor. The wild roar of the waves, the mist, and unbroken stretch of moorland made the whole scene vivid and strange. It harmonized well with my mood. The loneliness and driving wind were veritable balm to my mind. On my return to the mainland I did not find the situation in any way changed for the better. I proposed to carry off my contingent and thus furnish more space for the remainder, but Marion did not wish to forfeit the visit with her mother, and as there would be room for Sallie if I should get out, I started towards Connecticut in no little irritation of mind at the havoc Falmouth Heights was making in vacation profits.

I stopped in Newport a short time to pay Smyth a visit and then went on to Winthrop. Here in long walks and drives through the woods and by the river, in the utter stillness of the fields, in the quiet beauty of the landscape, in the restful charm of old associations, I found an antidote to the pain of recent impressions and regained in some measure my wonted calm and content. I could not, however, avoid the conviction that our homelife and the vacation had been sacrificed to schemes that for most of the partners had produced little enjoyment. Marion's mother would have preferred to come to us in Burlington, and the Falmouth Heights plan was devised so as to prevent her wishes from being fulfilled. After Winthrop, I made short visits in Madison and New Haven, and then returned to Burlington. Here, after opening the house, getting the servants into it, and all cleaned up, a visit of two days from Ned Rawson made such a delightful end to the summer vacation that I had almost forgotten the beginning. It was revived by Marion's pale face when she arrived with Dickie and Sallie on the 9th of September. I met them at Essex Junction at five o'clock in the morning. The College term began the same day. I had expected to teach Greek History, but the President had made no provision for the sophomores who clamored for a modern language, and I was asked to teach them in French.

Burnap took care of puppy Fritz while I was away. He has already grown to a considerable size, and his appetite also.

September 25. Jim came up from New York on the nineteenth quite worn out, but the mountain air of Stowe where he is with Sallie now will probably swet him up and he can rest here for a fortnight before he goes back to his work, and he ought to get out of the stuffy warehouse for a longer holiday. They are planning to go to Europe next Spring and return in October.

September 29. I have had during the year some correspondence with President Franklin Carter of Yale on points of German exigesis, particularly in Lessing's Loacoon and Schiller's Wallenstein. In the latter the word "Wellerstange" is used in a description of electric current, and the question involved was whether the use of the simile, put into the mouth of an officer in the 7th century, was justifiable; I.E. could anyone previous to Franklin's discoveries, (1746-53), have known that it was possible to conduct electricity from the clouds for a practical purpose, or was the speech in the play simply a rhetorical anachronism? I found in the library in an old book the story of such a "wetterstange", or weather pole made of iron and placed on a hill at the head of the Adriatic. A soldier was stationed there in the 10th century to warn fishermen of the approach of storms coming up from the south. He had found that often by touching the head of his spear to the pole a spark would be given if a storm were approaching, long before any signs were visible in the sky. By this means he was able to warn the boatmen in ample time to prevent disaster to their craft. So far the story, whether this fact or a similar one, was known in the 17th century and therefore legitimately used in describing Wallenstein's influence, I was not able to determine, but my research interested Mr. Carter and on his way home from the Adirondacks he stopped here to see what else our library might possess that was evidently not to be found in New Haven. He has a large house on York Square opposite to those of our friends the Wilcox and Southworth families. He was much impressed by the location of our house and the view of the lake and mountain it commanded, as also by our spacious garden so well kept by Louis.

October 7. Jim and Sallie went home yesterday. The rest here has done much for him.

November 28. Our wedding anniversary. Marion has not yet recovered from the mental and physical strain of the summer "holiday" and is still unequal to any social functions.

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