In five centuries, Europe has played for Americans many roles, the point of departure, the home base, the mother country, the fountain of culture, the raging war god, the artist's haven, the wounded ally, the first line of defense. Through these many contacts with the Protean old world, the fledgling new has grown steadily in strength, size, vigor, and complexity. Always there has remained, however, a desire—sometimes merely a curiosity, often a passion—to visit, explore, and challenge the teeming parent beyond the seas. Today jet planes make Europe a weekend resort, but not until the advent of the steamship in the mid-nineteenth century did Europe lay within ready reach. A half-forgotten manuscript picked from Columbia's library shelves now gives us a candid picture of one such eastward pilgrimage made a hundred years ago when hundreds of affluent American families gained prestige, refinement, and knowledge by following the popular guide-book routes to the geographical and cultural monuments of England, France, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany.

That manuscript, a journal of James Brander Matthews from June through December, 1866, also puts flesh on a name once alive to thousands but now lingering in the shadowy corners of aging memories. Suddenly a new generation of Americans, born of an incredible political and social experiment, with ease could cross the ocean which was itself a symbol of their freedom. Brander Matthews, Professor of Dramatic Literature at Columbia for more than twenty-five years and member of the English faculty for ten earlier, made a literary career for himself, writing fiction, drama, and criticism before he joined the academic community. Class of '71 and law graduate of '73, he remembered Columbia College as a dilettante's club far more than as an educational seminary. He recounted in his autobiography the amazing change he found when he undertook his first teaching duties two decades later, in 1891, to fill the temporary void left by someone on a sabbatical year in Europe. That new serious purpose and intellectual character in the College grew many fold as he himself gained in stature, range, and reputation. One consequently opens the youthful journal of Brander Matthews, aged fourteen, aware that it offers a glimpse into the formative experience of a significant figure on the intellectual scene, as well as a canto of the American Odyssey.

His father, Edward Matthews, who was a merchant at Broad Street and Exchange Place, had made a great deal of money. He lived in an elegant house at 101 Fifth Avenue, and traveled in style with his wife, three children, a tutor, and two servants. Embarked on the Cunard steamer, Scotia, 27 June 1866, the Matthews family quickly encountered rough seas which, on the very first day out of port, sent the fourteen-year-old son and heir away from the dinner table. Brander Matthews soon recovered, however, for this was by no means his first trans-Atlantic crossing, and he noted in his journal the weather and the distance traveled each day, a practice on European voyages he continued in later life with his brief notations of day-to-day activities. After three days of fog and rolling seas, the weather appropriately cleared on 4 July for "a grand dinner in the after saloon," where the healths of the Queen and the President were drunk and cheered under American, English, and French flags. When the uneventful crossing on this his third visit abroad drew to its close at Queenstown on the following night, Brander Matthews stood once more on foreign soil after nine years.

His journal pictures a well-behaved youth seeking contact with the familiar landmarks, opening his eyes and mind to this foreign but not altogether unfamiliar world, and moving contentedly and affectionately in the bosom of his family. With Mr. Carroll, his tutor, he walked about a great deal, visiting monuments and observing city or town. Often the family rode together to see the sights and usually dined together at their lodgings or hotel. The "Armoury" in the Tower of London held his eye with a "very beautiful" arrangement of weapons in the shapes of flowers, and Hampton Court was "very beautiful." Madame Tussaud's Wax Works were interesting but the "Indian and Esquimana curiosities" in the British Museum drew special attention because they "called to my mind immediately the accounts I had read of the voyages and explorations of Parry, Kane and Hall." There was always something of interest to see, the Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, the Zoological Gardens in Regent Park, Leotard, "the celebrated gymnast." A week later the Matthews entourage reached Paris. The Vendôme monument gave the young traveler a disappointing view of the city after a long climb up a narrow stairway, and looking at pictures in the Louvre he found "rather dull" although "the building was very fine." But Paris offered the opera, the theatre, stamp collecting, the waterworks at St. Cloud.

At Basle diversion was natural, rather than man-made, and Brander Matthews rowed on the lake with his father and had his first swimming lesson, "being held up by a cord around my waist." The Matthews family spent nearly two months in Switzerland, visiting all cities of interest. In spite of predominantly rainy weather, they persisted in mountain climbing, occasionally being rewarded with "a magnificent view of the Alps, covered with snow," and enjoying a lake or a waterfall. Perhaps they reached the high point on a trip to the Jungfrau "after 3 hours hot and disagreeable ride." Standing before the mountain, we "heard four avalanches and saw one of them, which looked like a waterfall." From the grounds of Baron Rothschild's house near Geneva, open by card to visitors on Fridays, Mont Blanc and Lake Leman looked especially beautiful. In Geneva, of course, the Swiss watchmaker beckoned. At Pateks, after a tour of the establishment, "Papa bought two watches just alike, one for himself and one for me, and Mamma bought a very little one for herself. Papa also bought me a chain and a scarf-pin." With the purchases made of a Saturday, the following Monday Brander excitedly ran out after breakfast, bought a guide-book, and "went to the watchmakers to see about the watches." At Baden-Baden he paid his first visit to a gambling casino, only to be bewildered by both Trente-et-un and Roulette. "I could not understand either of them at first but I bought a little book in French which explains them, and after that I found it quite interesting to watch the playing, which appeared to me, in a good many cases, rather wild."

The tour continued through Heidelberg, Frankfort, Hamburg, and Cologne. At Aix-la-Chapelle, the relics at the church drew from the young tourist a remark typical of his friend of later years, Mark Twain, in that eccentric travel book, Innocents Abroad. "They also showed us the vase used at Capernaum to hold the water, at the marriage feast, but as it was made of alabaster and the only vases then in use in Judaea were made of earthen ware, it can't be the real one!" At Brussels, there were churches, palaces, picture galleries and, of course, "Mamma went to some lace shops and bought some lace."

The Matthews family returned to Paris early in October and appear to have remained three months. After recounting sight-seeing and other activities for nearly two weeks, Brander Matthews neglected his journal between 16 October and 7 December. The brief glimpse he gives of his stay includes a good deal of walking, often in the company of a cousin who came over from London under the escort of their grandfather. There were rides to the Bois, "as they always call the 'Bois de Boulogne' here," stamp collecting, and Italian lessons. Theatre-going, however, provided the single greatest interest. On their second night in Paris, the family trouped to the "Gaieté," only to be disappointed, for "as we got there only ten or twelve minutes before it commenced we had no chance of getting seats, so we came home in despair." Eventually, however, their dramatic appetites were satisfied, for Brander Matthews recorded attendance at eight different performances, including opera, ballet, and drama, before the party left Paris for Marseille, 7 December, in a private railroad car.

The remainder of Brander Matthews's journal covers two additional weeks of touring the French Riviera, then following the Corniche Road through Italian villages, to Genoa and Florence. Only an occasional beautiful church or a pretty scene from the carriage relieved the fatigue of travel and the discomfort of poor accommodations and bad food. At Florence, however, the party halted to enjoy the riches of both art and nature. Nestling in the Tuscan hills, the ancient city offered "splendid" views of the surrounding countryside and fascinating sights of man's ingenuity like "the old Estruscan walk which is built of immense-sized stones, without any cement or mortar, their own weight keeping them together." Then there were the galleries, the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace, and the frescoes of Andrea del Sarto in the Church of the Annunciata. Dutifully appreciative, young Brander noted one picture of the Madonna and Child in which "the expression of the Virgin's face was very beautiful," and he remarked on the "splendid statuary including the Venus de Medici and the Knife-sharpener, both of which are very beautiful." The journal abruptly ends on 21 December with visits to studios of American sculptors in Florence, including Hiram Powers' where his "Greek Slave" drew notice.

As yet an unformed youth and scarcely able to articulate any serious reactions he may have had to works of art, people, or experiences, Brander Matthews could not flavor his journal with meaningful insights into the benefits he enjoyed as a scion of America's moneyed aristocracy. The account he left of these few months in Europe fits very convincingly, however, the picture one holds of him and his era. Here is the typical American pilgrimage to the Old World, with its sense of cultural inferiority, its energy, its impulse for exploration, its quest for identity, its self-consciousness. At the age of fourteen, to parade the Champs Elysées, climb the highest Alp, ogle the Venus de Medici meant to slip on the robes of cosmopolitan urbanity. The costume fit not only a fortunate youth but also a youthful nation. Still to come of age, America was scarcely a stripling in the family of nations.

In the ensuing decades, as the United States grew to manhood, Brander Matthews also gained his place in the world, a place far different than that expected for and by him in 1866. For Edward Matthews suffered disastrous reverses in the panic of '73. Taking up his pen for livelihood, Brander Matthews worked determinedly to compose a literary career, and he turned first to a youthful interest in the theatre. By 1876 he had had under consideration at least half a dozen plays. At the end of the same year, a number of magazines had printed nearly forty of his articles, mostly on dramatic subjects, and had paid him in the neighborhood of four hundred dollars. In 1880 appeared his first full-length book,The Theatres of Paris, clearly the product of an interest already formulated before this youthful grand tour. As Professor of Dramatic Literature, biographer of Molière, disciple of Sarcey, and intimate of Coquelin, Brander Matthews assuredly capitalized later on his youthful advantages.

Interest in Brander Matthews must go beyond the personal or biographical, however, for his career, active and extensive though it was, does not hold any major achievement. It is, rather, the breadth and variety of his work, with its dozens of books, thousands of essays and reviews, hundreds of students, endless correspondence, multiple clubs, amazing energy, and inexhaustible confidence that catch and hold the eye. Actors, playwrights, novelists, artists, critics, bankers, editors, statesmen, clergymen, publishers, all the figures of the cultural scene composed the dramatis personae of his life. That life came to have its focus in Columbia University where officers, faculty, students, and alumni alike delighted in his presence. The fruit of his work grew out of a soil nourished by the accidents of fortune as well as by his indefatigable labor and uncommon mind. Without formal academic training, he drew on other sources of knowledge and experience to tutor students, foster young playwrights, and issue critical judgments over half a century. In these roles he became an intellectual figure of representative, if not dominating, importance. The knowledge of the formulating elements of his personality, as reflected in this slight journal, helps to strengthen likewise an understanding of the American character.