I SHALL make a beginning, but have no idea when I shall reach the finis. But I thank you beforehand not to say, “and the longest yet,” if it should be. All equipped and waiting for the opera hour in Vienna; a pale sunlight dropping from “a lambent sky;” windows wide open,

an easy enough picture to make to the mind’s eye, if you are so “minded.” The opera hour is 6 o’clock. Isn’t that primitive for the “second Paris,” as this metropolis is fondly called by many? It strikes me it is absurdly so and bien incommode, as the French say. You see, dinner is the midday meal all over Germany. This places the supper hour at 7.30 or 8. So one has to eat too often or not often enough; “something” before going and a hearty supper afterwards, or only the latter, at 10 or 11. I do not like either way, but generally omit the first; and then!

Your letter was waiting for me here on Saturday. This is Wednesday. I was “ever so glad” to get it. The one pleasure you can never know in its supremacy till you are “a bronzed wanderer in a foreign land,” is that of getting letters. I wish—how I wish!—everybody was as good a correspondent as I am. No matter how often, how brilliant or how long their letters were, they would be “more than welcome,” as the happy father said on No. 12’s advent in the family circle. That is the right spirit, even for a letter. But some people—hm! I can’t express them.

Did you mean it? did you know it? your letter was so full of wise suggestions I put on my study-cap, “and Frank Hazeldean sat down to think.” To be sure, I am doing a great deal—all I can. If I do not now, I never shall. I did not make much out of the “brown study” beyond that; and this. If I were Goethe, or any one that was going to be anybody, I would do as thoroughly as he. But to think at my age of going to the heart and bottom of things—how in vain! What is left me but to skim over the surface like a bird over water, now and then dipping in? And anyway, is not a clear, graphic, comprehensive superficiality—I am not sure I can make you understand me—the next best thing to thoroughness? Have you not known people with that gift with whom it was a felicity to be thrown? Felicity may not be—is not—such an ultimatum as beatitude, which is found only in the highest heights and deepest depths; but think of the light, warmth, sparkle, enjoyment, of the middle realms of air? Is that an excuse for my busy idleness? Perhaps. Yet the deeper plunge of my wings comes oftener than you suspect, maybe. The wider knowledge of and the more intimate contact with the works of nature, and no less those of my fellow-men—these have been the gains I have most counted on. My brain “burned with great ideas” equally among the towering ice-peaks and awe-inspiring glaciers of Zermatt, and in the presence of the wrecks of Paestum’s sublime temples. To look on such wonders of creation, be the work of divine or human hands, is to be driven inward, far within yourself, in search of the creative motive. If for myself, and my power of accomplishing, I am driven thereby into the depths of “a profound despair,” my pride in and homage to the worthier workers are only the greater. But this is enormous egotism. You can have of me only what you take. You remember that complaint of Swedenborg to the angel: “I asked you for a fig, and you have given me a grape.” “I gave you a fig, but you took a grape,” was the angel’s reply.

I shall try to do your bidding in respect to Paris. I have not meant to do it in haste. Still, neither the lovely city nor “its unknowable, incomprehensible, original” arouse my interest to a very fervid degree. When I have come to know both better, I may change.

18th. Don’t you see you are in for a diary? My hostess came in with cake and fruit, plums, pears, peaches and grapes. I must take some before going. Of course Eve listened to the voice of the charmer. She always does, and always with the same result, doesn’t she?

The opera was one of Wagner’s, “Tristian and Isolde.” The story belongs to the dim, misty regions of English history, mixed up with Irish in a way quite baffling to one so ignorant of the latter as I am. I wonder if you know the story. Before telling, I shall wait to hear. I may remind you that Wagner as a composer always had an idea or ideas to embody. If you have seen or heard—oh! for a jolt to bring out the right word for witnessing an opera, which is both seen and heard—TannhÄuser, you will catch my meaning. It is a story of temptation, sin and repentance wrought out most powerfully in music of unfortunate love and its penalty. The heroine is a fine-looking woman, and a powerful actress, with a voice equal to Wagner’s requirements, which is saying a good deal; but she lacked magnetism! She did not once sweep me into forgetfulness, or impotency of criticism. Interpreting ideas through the highest science of music is a grand and glorious performance, but it is a fearful tax on the human voice. In Dresden, all the singers of his music but one sang as if their voices had been overstrained. Here they sing it as if they had mastered a difficult task, but, like liberty, the price is eternal vigilance. The orchestral music, though, always makes up for other deficiencies. I hardly see how it could be finer or more perfect. The house itself is faultlessly beautiful and comfortable. This last feature is worth making a note of, for the Grand Opera House in Paris is stifling, the most unbreathable atmosphere to which I was ever subjected.

The mise-en-scene here and all over Europe leaves nothing to ask for. At home by half-past ten; let in by a concierge, who provided us with a small wax taper to light ourselves up to our apartments. There the post-opera collation was awaiting. Don’t you wish you had been one at it? Would not that have been provocation to immense brilliancy? Scintillant as Sirius—that would have been your rÔle.

Was it inexplicable that I did not want to get up this morning at all? Yet I had to. Why? I think I have not told you. The object of my pilgrimage here is to have the treatment of the finest aurist in Europe. I am not over-sanguine, but hope for some benefit. Deafness is a very trying deficiency. I dread any increase, so I thought I ought to give myself the chance of even partial “benefit.” The custom of “specialists” is to receive the patients at their offices and there treat them. My hour is half-past nine a. m. Hence the loss of that delicious morning dawdle and drowse.

Would you not like a peep into this magician’s quarters? They are what may be called “stunning,” I can tell you. Every time I go into them I finger my ducats pensively and sigh, “Needless to ask; we know who pays for the piper.” First, a square ante-chamber, with frescoed ceiling and pictures on the walls. I have not more than glanced at this. From this two doors, through which I have been passed; one leading to a private reception-room, the other to the public. I go to the former, as I have my hour and am not to be kept waiting. It is an oblong room with green hangings on the walls and very dark, old oak furniture. There is a large cabinet, the glass doors lined with green silk. I have not seen what is in it. In one corner is a beautiful pedestal, on which is a bronze copy of that famous head of Homer in the Naples Museum. Between it and a door leading into the examining office is a Venetian mirror surrounded by small, rare paintings. There is a woman’s head that would haunt you for many a day could you see it. There are two handsome glass cases with tier upon tier of the bony structure of the ear mounted beautifully for inspection. In the examination-room, dark, crimson hangings, its ceiling an oval fresco of a blue, summer sky, flecked with fleecy films of clouds; and in the oval border at the ends four medallion portraits of eminent physicians, there is a book-case filled with fine editions of Shakespeare, Byron, Humbolt, Lessing, Goethe, etc., a cabinet of ebony inlaid with ivory, on which stands a bronze head of Hippocrates, statuettes, curious little clocks, etc. Another cabinet has some dainty bits of china, a pair of candlesticks of tortoise shell inlaid with ivory, and more of such things than would fill several sheets. On the walls are most excellent copies of Rembrandt’s portraits of himself and that “wife Saskia” he was so proud of. The frames of these are simply “works of art” in wood carving. Two landscapes by Zimmerman, the first time I have encountered him out of the large and public galleries. The large public reception-room is fit for a palace; the walls from ceiling to floor covered with pictures; tables, cabinets and chairs in ebony inlaid with ivory; rare mirrors and china, etc. Now, I have not enumerated the half. What do you think of it? Is it any wonder I and my ducats have a private confab over it?

From that interview this morning, still not much more than half awake and alert, we went to the Palace to see the “cabinet of coins and antiques.” The “coins” always overwhelm me, so much time must be given to do anything with them, so I am disheartened. I passed soon to the “antiques.” How your eyes would snap to find themselves gazing at the seal ring of Alaric, a large sapphire with a head in intaglio and a heavy setting looking like hammered gold. What a giant he must have been if the size of the ring did no injustice to the finger. And a large vase of Cleopatra’s, gold-gilt with a wide border of exquisite cameos, carvings and precious gems, and the center a portrait of herself in “jewels, rich jewels of the mine.” Also, an agate vase of twenty-nine and one-half inches in diameter, from the bridal treasure of Mary of Burgundy. Nothing interested me more than a bronze tablet, with a prohibition of the Bacchanalia, 186 years before Christ. I made out a few words in the time I gave it.

Yesterday morning I was at the Imperial Library, in the same edifice; the right name is the Imperial Berg. There I saw fragments of the Gospel of the Sixth Century on purple parchment with silver and gold letters; of Genesis, of the Fourth; a map of the Roman roads, A. D. 160; Tasso’s own copy (manuscript) of “Jerusalem Delivered,” and the prayer-book of Charles V. The poet was not sparing of erasures, and the prayer-book was pretty well thumbed. “Men die but their works live after them—” and what tales they do tell on them.

I could write on and on, filling up the interval since the last letter, but, to quote from an old Cincinnati physician, “Enough is a plenty.”

L. G. C.

Vienna, October 17, 1883.