Memoirs of Jeremiah Curtin
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Library of Congress Memoirs of Jeremiah Curtin PUBLICATION OF THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN EDITED BY JOSEPH SCHAFER SUPERINTENDENT OF THE SOCIETY MEMOIR OF JEREMIAH CURTIN WISCONSIN HISTORICAL PUBLICATIONS BIOGRAPHY SERIES VOLUME II JEREMIAH CURTIN AND ALMA CARDELL CURTIN Courtesy of Mrs. A. M. Norton WISCONSIN BIOGRAPHY SERIES VOLUME II Memoirs of Jeremiah Curtin EDITED WITH NOTES AND INTRODUCTION BY JOSEPH SCHAFER SUPERINTENDENT OF THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN Wisconsin historical Society Founded 1849 PUBLISHED BY THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN MADISON, 1940 COPYRIGHT, 1940, BY THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN F576 .W818 PAID FOR OUT OF THE INCOME OF THE GEORGE B. BURROW FUND DEPOSIT RECEIVED MAR 11 1941 COPYRIGHT OFFICE THE ANTES PRESS EVANSVILLE, WISCONSIN Preface This publication, as hereafter indicated, is made possible through the presentation of the Curtin manuscript to the State historical society of Wisconsin by Mrs. Walter Seifert, niece of Jeremiah Curtin. To her are due the thanks of he society and of all who derive pleasure Memoirs of Jeremiah Curtin http://www.loc.gov/resource/lhbum.52353 Library of Congress and profit from the reading of the book. The cost of printing has been paid for out of the income of the George B. Burrows fund. Professor Alexander A. Vasiliev, the famous Russian scholar and historian, aided in justifying the spelling of Russian words and phrases. Except as to spelling, and to some extent punctuation and paragraphing, the text is left precisely as the Curtins, husband and wife, wrote it. The editor acknowledges his indebtedness to Lillian Krueger, the society's assistant editor, who prepared the text for the printer, saw it through the press, and made the index. Joseph Schafer Madison, March, 1939. vii Contents Chapter Page Introduction 1 I Early Years 31 II College Life 52 III A New York Interlude 69 IV Introduction to Russia 78 V A Moscow Banquet 93 VI Fox's Visit to Russia 101 VII Adventures in the Caucasus 129 Memoirs of Jeremiah Curtin http://www.loc.gov/resource/lhbum.52353 Library of Congress VIII Trouble with Clay 174 IX A Secretary on Vacation 185 X Business and Travel 207 XI Marriage and Return to Russia 220 XII The Caucasus Again 232 XIII With John Fiske in London 242 XIV Caucasian Timber and Scenery 255 XV A Letter from Fiske 294 XVI War Forces Changes 301 XVII Ethnology—Seneca Studies 311 XVIII In the Indian Territory 324 XIX California—Wintu Myths 338 XX A Winter in Oregon (1884-85) 351 XXI Modocs and Klamaths—Wintu 362 XXII A Quiet Interval 381 XXIII First Visit to Ireland (1887) 385 XXIV Discovers Sienkiewicz 407 Memoirs of Jeremiah Curtin http://www.loc.gov/resource/lhbum.52353 Library of Congress XXV California Again (1888) 412 XXVI Study and Sickness 442 XXVII The Second Irish Period (1891-93) 447 XXVIII Scotch Gaelic 473 XXIX A Tour of Italy (1894) 477 XXX With Charles A. Dana 485 XXXI The Hebrides 493 XXXII Mexico—A Bullfight 498 XXXIII Aztec Monuments 514 XXXIV The Guatemala Adventure Begun (1896) 532 XXXV Delays and Difficulties 546 XXXVI Hunting for the Modern Mayas 553 XXXVII Multiplied Distractions 582 viii XXXVIII The Elusive Lacandones 611 XXXIX The Expedition Fails 628 XL Europe and Sienkiewicz 639 XLI Excursion in Poland and Russia 662 Memoirs of Jeremiah Curtin http://www.loc.gov/resource/lhbum.52353 Library of Congress XLII An American Interlude 683 XLIII A New European Travelogue 687 XLIV Egypt and Nile (1899) 699 XLV Visit to the Holy Land 729 XLVI Sojourn in Wales and Ireland 758 XLVII An Interview with Tolstoi 767 XLVIII A World Tour Begun 789 XLIX Siberia, Japan, and China 800 L Home and Away (1901) 834 LI Seeing Northern America 854 LII Sojourn with Sienkiewicz 870 LIII The Balkans Visited (1903-04) 876 LIV All Voyaging Concluded 895 ix Illustrations Page Jeremiah Curtin and Alma Cardell Curtin Frontispiece Jeremiah Curtin 62 Memoirs of Jeremiah Curtin http://www.loc.gov/resource/lhbum.52353 Library of Congress Jeremiah Curtin and Henryk Sienkiewicz 772 Memoirs of Jeremiah Curtin 1 Introduction The Curtin Memoirs came to the State historical society of Wisconsin from the hand of Mr. Curtin's niece, Mrs. Walter J. Seifert, who is a daughter of Curtin's younger brother and, with one exception, the only living relative of the great linguist. Mrs. Seifert lives at Evanston, Illinois. She brought the box of manuscript to the library personally and in conversation with the editor explained how it had been produced. The manuscript is not in Curtin's handwriting but in that of his wife, Alma Cardell Curtin, who outlived her husband more than thirty-one years, passing away at Bristol, Vermont, April 14, 1938. But Mrs. Seifert assured us that both matter and form are to be credited to Curtin because it was uniform practice to dictate all of his composition to his wife who wrote it out for him. That fact also comes out clearly in the manuscript itself at various points where he speaks of working on his books and translations. Always Mrs. Curtin wrote at his dictation as rapidly as possible and later prepared a fair copy from those notes. Sometimes she rewrote his matter several times. The dictation was evidently made near the end of his life. There is one section, twenty- four pages, constituting a special political manuscript based on conversations Curtin held with Count Serge Witte and other prominent Russian officials about the time they were preparing for the Portsmouth peace conference with the Japanese. Since Witte asked Curtin to see Roosevelt in advance of the Russian delegation's call on the 2 president, and Curtin actually went to Oyster Bay for the purpose, it appeared at least possible that a copy of this paper had found its way into the Roosevelt collection now in the library of congress. A search there, however, made for me by a friend1 who was working with the Memoirs of Jeremiah Curtin http://www.loc.gov/resource/lhbum.52353 Library of Congress collection, proved disappointing. Of course, the entire section of the Memoirs covering the peace negotiations was written not earlier than 1904-05. This political chapter was not regarded by Mrs. Curtin as an organic part of the Memoirs, and it is not included in this book. 1 Dr. George E. Mowry. Also omitted are pages 574-628 of the manuscript describing Curtin's experience among the Buriats of the Lake Baikal region. The matter contained in these pages was printed, with but slight changes, in A Journey in Southern Siberia, published under Mrs. Curtin's editorship (Boston, 1909). Although the copyright has presumably expired, it is not deemed proper to reproduce in this book what the reader can find in the earlier publication. In character the Memoirs are a kind of moving panorama of Curtin's experiences. Compared with many self biographers, he indulges but little in philosophical speculations or in the abstract contemplation of self. He was obviously a man of tremendous motive power who was always engaged in doing something, and usually things at the same time. For example, while working for the bureau of ethnology, he faithfully put in the required hours at the Smithsonian. But his morning hours and his evening hours were devoted to his private works—to translations, to the compilation of his mythological books, etc. His translations, indeed, like that of Quo Vadis from the Polish of Sienkiewicz, were often carried on under the most adverse circumstances 3 as will be seen by readers of the Memoirs. They were important to him as constituting a principal source of his income. Much of the manuscript is in a form to suggest the existence of a diary in the background. Curtain gives so many and such minute details of occurrences, sometimes mentioning exact dates, and names of places which are often obscure, that it is certain he does not rely wholly on memory. He undoubtedly had before him in dictating the Memoirs contemporaneous notes, either in the form of diaries or of serial letters equivalent to diaries. Possibly, clippings of his own newspaper correspondence may have served also. Inquiry of the custodian of remaining papers of both Curtin and Mrs. Curtin elicited the Memoirs of Jeremiah Curtin http://www.loc.gov/resource/lhbum.52353 Library of Congress statement that no diaries are now in existence. Mrs. Curtin was in the habit of writing frequent letters to her mother, which are said to have been available to him and may have been the basis of much of the manuscript covering the period after their marriage July, 1872. These, also, have been lost. That would still leave unaccounted for the earlier years, and it seems quite impossible that he should have written the account of his journey through the Caucasus without the aid of notes. It is a reasonable supposition that he had manuscripts of one kind or another to support most of the narrative of events after his departure for St. Petersburg in 1864. Looked at from this point of view, and considering the diversity and strangeness of the countries and peoples he came to know as an inveterate seeker for new linguistic worlds to conquer, Curtin's Memoirs must be regarded as an important source of cultural information in regard to European, Asiatic, and native North American peoples. For example, even his observation on life in western Ireland are a revealing commentary 4 upon a state of affairs which produced the Home Rule controversy. The Guatemala he shows us can be profitably compared with the Guatemala of today, and so of Mongolia, Siberia, the Russian Caucasus, parts of Turkey, Egypt, and the Holy Land.