[73]
He read to us, for a couple of hours, curious extracts from different parts, and proposes to come again and read more.1 . . . .
February 16.—. . . . The evening I passed with the Trevelyans, who had asked Dr. Wiseman,2 the head of the English College here, and an eloquent preacher, to meet me. He seemed a genuine priest, not without talent, very good looking and able-bodied, and with much apparent practice in the world.
He talked well, but not so well as I expected. . . . .
February 17.—Mr. Kestner came again this evening and read the rest of what I wanted to hear from his letters about Goethe, Werther, etc. It was very curious and interesting.
The fact seems to be that, in the first book of Werther's letters, Werther is undoubtedly Goethe himself, Charlotte is Charlotte Buff, and Albert is Kestner, and much of what is described there really passed.
In the second book Werther is undoubtedly the young Jerusalem,3 who was a Secretary of Legation, and met the affronts there described, and whose death and last days are described, often word for word, in Werther, from a letter sent by Kestner to Goethe . . . .
February 25.—We took a ride on horseback this morning out at the Porta Pia . . . . Afterwards I made a long visit to Cardinal Giustiniani, whom I knew formerly in Spain, and whom I have been intending to visit ever since I have been in Rome . . . . . He was a great man in Madrid when I first knew him, for he was Nuncio; he is a greater man now, being one of the principal ministers of the Pope, and the person who receives all memorials; and he was near being greatest of all, for nothing but the veto of the King of Spain prevented his being made pope in 1831, when Gregory XVI.
was chosen.
He is now sixty-eight years old, and quite stout and well preserved, though lame from a fall he suffered some years ago; and he has the reputation of being second to none of the Sacred College in talent and business habits.
He talked with me naturally about Spain, his adventures there, and his exile during the reign of the Cortes; and finally his return to Rome, and his nomination as Cardinal in 1826.
After this,—somewhat to my surprise,—he talked about the conclave of 1831 and his own rejection.
He said it was owing to the influence of Colomardes, who was then Minister of
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1 This correspondence was published under the title, ‘Goethe and Werther’ (Stuttgardt, 1854). The story is also told by Mrs. F. Kemble in her ‘Year of Consolation.’
2 Later Cardinal Wiseman, Archbishop of Westminster.
3 Wilhelm Jerusalem, son of a German theologian.
Boston, J. R. Osgood and company, 1876.
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