Genteel Pagan: The Double Life of Charles Warren Stoddard (27 page)

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Authors: Roger Austen

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #General, #Literary Criticism, #Gay & Lesbian, #test

BOOK: Genteel Pagan: The Double Life of Charles Warren Stoddard
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Page 81
ical of tourists and tourist attractions, Stoddard found much to bewail about the biblical landmarks. At the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, he was disappointed to find "no grotto, no semblance of a tombnothing, in fact, but gaudy sculpture and a blaze of golden lamps." While kneeling in the church, he was "rudely" jostled by two American tourists''noticeably non-Catholic"
(CUC
166). The crypt at the Church of Saint Mary in Bethlehem was "gaudily decorated in the worst possible taste"
(CUC
85). But Stoddard, who sometimes wept when he thought of the cross he had to bear in life, felt quite at home in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Stoddard shook the dust of the Holy Land from his feet and sailed up to Syria, where he also shook off the role of pious pilgrim and reverted to his sybaritic self. In Damascus, orange water thickened with snow was served to him by the deposed Emir, who gave him a beautiful autograph in "arabesque"
(CUC
199-201). Beirut had its pleasures as well, although the belly dancers there were no more appealing to Stoddard than they had been in Egypt. The last cities on his itinerary were Athens and Stamboul. In Athens, he lamented the ruins of the Acropolis: "It is not unlikely that in the flight of the gods mankind lost his reverence for the purely beautiful; they took with them that finer facultythe sentiment is called feminine to-day, it may be considered infantile tomorrowfor the want of which the world is now suffering sorely"
(CUC
254). Stamboul seemed a lively combination of East and West. The baths were especially pleasant, and for once Stoddard did not pretend otherwise: "They are one and all forbidding when viewed from the street, but within they offer the chief delights of the Levantdelicious waters that cleanse you and babble to you, pipes that tranquilize you and couches that invite you to repose"
(CUC
286).
When Stoddard arrived back in Venice in July 1876, he was cheered by the sight of his old American friends (minus Millet), but all was not well. He had little money, and he worried about the future. Should he stay in Europe or go home? Could he find a publisher for a book of his recent travel essays? The news from America was not encouraging. Millet had written that money was so tight that people had no ready cash to pay for his paintings. Not only was there economic depression, but the prevailing philistine atmosphere was oppressive to the creative artist. Millet advised Stoddard to stay in Europe if at all possible: "You do quite wrong to come home. I have a good constitution, a mercurial temperament and a naturally hopeful disposition. Yet I can tell you that
 
Page 82
I have never suffered so much, mentally, as in this place. Kick, kick against the pricks of popular ignorance, conceit and worst of all politics."
46
The news was no better from Mark Twain, who had tried to interest his own subscription-book publisher in bringing out Stoddard's travel sketches. He had gone to Elisha Bliss, Jr., he reported, "to see if he could do anything, but he shook his headsays he has got more books than customers, & doesn't want any more of the former." In fact, Bliss was postponing the publication of
Tom Sawyer
in hopes of a "livelier market" after the fall presidential election. But Twain had another idea: ''Hayes will be elected; Hayes has strong literary taste & appreciation; Howells has written Hayes's biography for campaign purposes; Mrs. Howells is Hayes's own cousin. Suppose you write to me or to Howells & say you want a consulship somewhere, & let us try & see if we can't manage it."
47
Although Twain and Howells joked to each other in private about Stoddard's hapless career, the latter did try to obtain him a consulshipto no avail.
48
In any case, what Stoddard needed was immediate income; and he finally decided that if he were to pad his
Chronicle
columns with ancient history and guidebook data, he could make them last long enough to subsidize his stay in Italy. Meanwhile, perhaps, he could seek new material. In fact, the
Chronicle
continued to run his columns until July
1877.
Meanwhile Stoddard lived as cheaply as he could.
Most of 1876 he spent in the vicinity of Naples, making several excursions to Sicily and Capri, sometimes in the company of that ubiquitous and indefatigable traveler, Mrs. Preston Moore. In the fall he toured Sicily with Mrs. Moore, who was called "M. M." in his
Chronicle
letters and later transformed into "Pythias" when he wrote of Sicily for the
Ave Maria.
He was delighted with the "heavenly" town of Taormina, where Baron von Gloeden was later to snap the nude photographs that would gladden Stoddard's heart in the 1890s.
Stoddard was keeping in touch with Joe Strong and Reggie Birch, who were continuing to study art in Munich. Strong had to disagree with Stoddard's assertion, in a letter, "that girls are well enough in their way, but not to go to bed with." At the risk of seeming "absurd," Joe retorted, "I think that is the place where they are
perfectly charming."
49
Frank Millet, who tended to agree with Charles, was back in Paris,
 
Page 83
urging Stoddard to join him, his cousin, and her three children: "The most I can find time to write you in the hurry of apartment hunting is that 'I want you.'. . . You can live very cheaply here in this quarter and I am sure you would work hard. You know I think you don't do half as much as you ought to."
50
Millet was not the only friend to twit Stoddard for his lackadaisical attitude toward serious writing. After visiting him in Rome, Charles Webb wrote, "It seems to me that you are undergoing a process of growth just now, of which you are not yourself aware. Full of a man's ambitions and aspirations, you've not as yet gathered yourself together for the jump. Lotus eating has still too strong a charm for you."
51
In a peculiar and perverse mood throughout the spring of 1877, Stoddard was not sure when or where he would leap. He toyed with the idea of living in the monastery at Monte Casino, but he was told there would be no room for him until summer. A. A. Anderson was in Parisbut with his new wife in towand he was not sure he wanted to see Frank just yet. It was in this state of indecision that he wrote to a California friend in March:
As for myself, I have torn up my roots so often that they do not strike into any soil with much vigor. The warmer and the softer it be, the better my chancebut I was ever an airplant. . . .
You will find me changed, I fear, and most likely not for the better. My enthusiasm has boiled down; man delights me not, nor woman either . . . but there is more grit in me than of old and I feel my ribs bracing themselves against the day when I shall come breast to breast with the world.
52
Later in the spring he decided that he was ready to come breast to breast at least with Frank Millet, and he went up to Paris. In the middle of this visit, however, Millet left for Romania to cover the Russo-Turkish war for the London
Daily News
and the London
Graphic.
Writing in June from the front, Frank told Stoddard that he was "spooning frightfully with a young Greek."
53
It was Millet's turn, finally, to be "inconstant."
By the time Stoddard read this letter, he had already decided to go home, if there was still such a thing as "home" waiting for him in San Francisco. For one thing, he was tired. He felt like a leaf that had been "whirled hither and thither" for the past four years, and he hoped to find some stability, repose, and security in the United States. For another, he was out of money. In July he began a farewell tour of Europe:
 
Page 84
first to Venice and northern Italy, then to Naples and Marseilles, and finally to Paris, by way of Lourdes, where he hoped that the Blessed Virgin might heal his crippled left arm in a way the Italian surgeons could not. (She did not, but Stoddard left Lourdes with his belief unshaken.) Then it was off to London and Liverpool and the steamship home. Stoddard reached Philadelphia on 26 August 1877.
 
The Bungalow Boys and the Strongs, Hawaii, 1883. Joe Strong
 (far left), 
Charlies Deering (front left), Austin Whiting (center), William Sproull 
(standing), Belle Strong. Charles Warren Stoddard (far right).

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