Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini | Page 6

dismal old city from my shoes, and prepare my toes for a freezing at St. Petersburg." He echoed his distaste in later years by writing: "I hate the East so profoundly that I should not return to it if there were no other land in which I could live." This promotion to the Russian court--it was a Russian, Ignatieff, who characterized him as "of true diplomatic stuff"--was made in 1875, and he remained there two years.
"While in Russia," we learn, "he was the only one of our Ministers at foreign courts who was able to checkmate Spain in her controversy with us about the Virginius. He baffled the Spanish Ambassador at St. Petersburg, and influenced Gortschakoff to send a despatch to Madrid, which caused Spain to apologize to the United States; thus averting serious complications."
Diplomatic life was not wholly distasteful to him; he possessed social distinction which made him popular at both courts, so much so, indeed, that the Czar cabled to Washington, when a change of administration brought Boker's tenure of office to a close, asking if it were not possible to have him retained. He had had his difficulties at the Porte, as Lowell had had at Madrid. But his artistic nature responded quickly to the picturesqueness of his surroundings. "Within a mile of me," he writes Leland from Turkey,--"for I am now living at Therapia upon the Bosphorus--there is a delicious encampment of the black tents of a tribe of Gypsies." While he was in Russia he was continually supplying Leland with information about gypsies.
He went to Egypt, at the invitation of the Sultan, and--as though recalling Taylor's longing, in 1852, when he was in Cairo, to have Boker with him--took a trip up the Nile, with Leland, whom he had invited to accompany him. Under the palm trees at Misraim, he had his first meeting with Emerson. The varied foreign travel had broadened his taste, and he was quickly responsive to what he saw. Writes Leland:
I have been with him many times in the Louvre, the great galleries of London and St. Petersburg, and studied with him the stupendous and strange remains of Egyptian art in the Boulak Museum and the Nile temples, but never knew anyone, however learned he might be in such matters, who had a more sincere enjoyment of their greatest results. I remember that he manifested much more interest and deeper feeling for what he saw in Egypt than did Emerson, who was there at the same time, and with whom I conversed daily.
On January 15, 1878, Boker withdrew from diplomatic life, returning to the United States, where he resumed literary work, his chief interest in the stage being revived by his association with Barrett. His home in Philadelphia--one of the literary centres of the time,--bore traces of his Turkish stay--carpets brought from Constantinople, Arabic designs on the draperies, and rich Eastern colours in the tapestried chairs. His experience was obliged to affect his writing, if not in feeling, at least in expression. I note in his "Monody," written at the time of the death of his friend, the poet, T. Buchanan Read (1822-1872), such lines as "the hilly Bosphorus," and "... For the hills of Ancient Asia through my trembling tears glimmer like fabrics...." As early as 1855, he had written for the _U.S. Gazette and North American_, an article on Read comparing his "New Pastoral" with the poetry of Cowper and Thompson. But Read to-day is familiar because of his "Sheridan's Ride." We are told that Boker had a work-room where he delighted in designing metal scrolls.
There was a slight revival of public interest in his poems, which necessitated the reprinting of several of his books.
"The last time when I saw him," Stoddard recalls in 1890, "was at the funeral of Taylor, at Cedarcroft, a little more than ten years ago. We rode to the grave, on a hillside, and we rode back to the house. And now he has gone to the great majority!" Boker died in Philadelphia, January 2, 1890. "He takes place with Motley on our roll of well-known authors," George Parsons Lathrop has written, "and it is even more remarkable that he should have cultivated poetry in Philadelphia, where the conditions were unfavourable, than that Motley should have taken up history in Boston, where the conditions were wholly propitious."
It is by "Francesca da Rimini" that Boker is best remembered. In a letter to Stoddard, March 3, 1853, he writes:
You will laugh at this, but the thing is so. "Francesca da Rimini" is the title. Of course you know the story,--everyone does; but you nor any one else, do not know it as I have treated it. I have great faith in the successful issue of this new attempt. I think all day, and write all night.