Samuel Byers - Twenty Years in Europe

Inside the hall, the banqueters stood with clubs in their hands till the grey of morning, waiting the attack. The women, alarmed and terrified, were hidden under the tables, or in corners.

Zurich seemed in the throes of a revolution. The bad elements of every kind joined in the mob, and the Socialists and Anarchists cried out: “This is the people, striking for their rights.”

Ten thousand troops were hurried into Zurich from other cantons. Cannon bristled at the street corners, and placards warned the people to stay in their houses. A battery was posted in the street in front of our door. Climbing up on to the terrace by the minster, I saw a terrible mob below, and watched a cavalry squadron ride through it with drawn sabers. The mob gave way, and the alarm was at an end. Murders had been committed, and many men were arrested and punished. The man who had kindly whispered to me to keep away from the banquet, fled. He was afterward condemned, and is to this day a fugitive in England.

THE PARIS HORRORS-SOME EXCURSIONS WITH LITERARY PEOPLE-BEER GARDENS-A CHARACTERISTIC FUNERAL-FUNERAL OF A POET’S CHILD-CAROLINE BAUER, THE ACTRESS-A POLISH PATRIOT-CELEBRATING THE FOURTH OF JULY AT CASTLE RAPPERSCHWYL-THE ST. BERNARD-THE MULES AND DOGS-ON A SWISS FARM-FOR BURNING CHICAGO.

June, 1871. -Horrible news continues to come of the atrocities of the “Communists” in Paris. The most beautiful city of the world is half burned up by its own children. Hundreds of innocent people have been slaughtered. Nobody here understands wholly what it is these Paris murderers want. It looks as if all the criminals and their ten thousand abettors were simply avenging themselves on civilization.

Europe looks on with horror. The world did not know that it contained a whole army of such wretches in one single city. Yet New York has just as many, if they were let loose. There are men right here in Switzerland, the kindliest governed state in the world, who are walking around the streets, quietly thanking God for all the indescribable things at Paris. There was a man in France once (Madame Roland’s husband), who killed himself, rather than live longer in a land so given over to dastards. The Paris anarchists will again, and soon enough, have made suicide sweeter than living there. That is what they want. Anarchists would rejoice if all the decent people in the world would kill themselves and get out of it.

This summer of 1871 we made many little foot excursions with the Brentanos, the Kinkels, or the Scherrs. The whole party was always more or less literary. Even Mrs. Scherr had written her book, much liked by German housewives. These afternoon walks have been to points along the beautiful lake or to some near valley, and often to the Uetliberg or to Rüssnacht. We always turned up at some simple country beer garden, with its quiet tables under shady bowers, where the beer and the pretzels were good, and the view fine of lake and mountain.

What delightful times we have had with our cheap lunches of black bread, beer and cheese and much talking! We walked home by dusk, always stopping at many a vantage point, to look in wonder at the sunset and the gorgeous glow on the Alps. I never saw these sunsets in the Alps without thinking of another world. They seemed to belong to something more beautiful, more lasting than our mere lives. If I spoke of it, however, Scherr would shrug his shoulders and say, “Ich glaub’ es nicht. Wir werden es nur hoffen,” and once he added: “The whole world is but a graveyard. Above the door is written The End .” Mrs. Scherr always smiled and said, “No, it is not so, what he says. What is all that grandeur that you see over there in the mountains for? Surely not only for a little party like us to gaze on, of an afternoon, and then say good-by to, forever. No, it is not true. I expect to see the beautiful mountains, and with these friends, too, a thousand years from now.”

Alas! sooner than we knew, she was to look beyond these Alps. A heart trouble, aggravated by the deeper heart trouble of a mother, through a wayward son, suddenly terminated her life. Just after leaving our home, one day, where she had been calling, she fell dead upon the steps of St. Peter’s church.

I was present at this friend’s funeral, conducted in accordance with German Swiss custom.

An old woman had carried the funeral notices to the friends. They were printed on large, full sheets of paper, with black edges an inch wide. The woman, in delivering these messages, was in full black, and carried with her an enormous bunch of flowers, apparently a symbol of her office. At the appointed hour I found all our male friends at the house of mourning. It was designated by a broad, black cloth stretched across the front of the building and running up the stairway. Here, in a room denuded of all carpet and furniture, I found Prof. Scherr, waiting to receive the condolence of the invited friends.

“To the left,” said the old messenger woman, who had brought the death notices. She stood in the hall, beside an urn, into which friends put their black-edged cards. Again she held a bunch of flowers. All, as they entered the room, turned to “the left,” where they silently grasped the Professor’s hand a moment, and then took their places, standing in a line along the four walls of the room. No one spoke. There was utter silence. All had tall hats and wore black gloves. Those who had not been invited by card, remained in the street, to join the procession as it left the house. There was not a woman in sight anywhere, save the old messenger. Just as the church bells were ringing the hour, the messenger called in at the open door: “Gentlemen, it is three o’clock,” and the little procession of friends followed the Professor down to the rear of the hearse. There had been no ceremony. The body, during the waiting, lay in a plain coffin in the lower hall. The day before, we had called to have a last look at our friend. To us, accustomed to American ostentation over the dead, the extreme simplicity seemed shocking. She was in a plain, white cotton robe. The coffin, or pine box, was not even painted. But it was not indifference nor littleness, this simplicity. It was a custom. A hundred years ago in Switzerland, people were buried in sheets, and without any coffins. Our friend was borne to the chapel in the graveyard, followed by many people, all on foot. There was no carriage, save the hearse. There was a short address in the chapel, no singing or prayers; then the body was carried out to the grave. Each of us threw a spray of evergreen, or a bit of earth, into the grave. When the friends had mostly gone, the Professor looked long and sadly into the grave, lifted his hat to her who had been his helpmeet, and silently and alone walked away. The funeral had been characteristic of the country; plain, and simple, and impressive. To the Swiss, the ostentation and the gorgeous casket at American funerals are not only unbecoming, but a sacrilege and sin. “What good can we do the poor dead bodies?” said Kinkel to me one night at the Round Table in the Orsini. “If you have something to do for a man, do it for him while he lives, and not to his poor, senseless dust.”

Kinkel carried out his theory when his beloved daughter died. They came first to my wife, to have her select them a little black crepe-that was all-and a plain board coffin, and some flowers. All her schoolmates must be invited to come and stand by her grave. When the coffin containing his most loved of earth was lowered, the good, gray-haired poet bared his head, stepped to the side of the grave, and, with eyes full of tears, made a touching speech. It was about the child’s goodness in life, its sweetness and sunshine, and its father’s and mother’s loss. Deep emotion filled all present. The children sang a song, and then strewed many flowers upon the grave.