An incident occurred at this time which made Miss Cushman’s position in regard to the quarrel with the consulate still more difficult.  It was not long after the advent of the famous horse-tamer John S. Rarey, of whom she had been a pupil in America when he first came out.  A person professing to be Rarey was touring Europe and teaching his manner of breaking horses, beginning at Copenhagen and following the seashore to Naples, whence he came to Rome and was received with great enthusiasm by Miss Cushman, for at that time, and while the war was in its critical stage, American lions were very rare in Rome.  The horse-tamer was, on her authority, made the guest of the American community, breakfasted, dined, and feted, and a large subscription was made for a class in horse-breaking.  At this juncture I heard of a performance of the soi-disant Rarey at Naples, in which he had nearly killed a beautiful young mare, and, knowing that the system of Rarey did not include cruelty, I began to doubt the identity of the tamer.  I called for the passport with which he had come, and which was, as usual, deposited at the police office, and discovered that it was issued by a “vice-consul pro tempore” at Dresden, an officer not recognized by our regulations, bad and loose as they were, and a man whose name, moreover, was not on the consular list, though the passport was on a regular form.  I at once wrote to the police, requesting them to cause the said John S. Rarey to prove his identity.

The summons to the police office brought him to the consulate the next morning before I was out of bed (the office and my bedroom constituted the headquarters of the government of the United States of America at Rome), with a petition to me to request the police to delay the examination until the next day, as he had two friends who would identify him, but who were that day (it was Sunday) at Tivoli for the day.  As an escape was impossible, and he was in a nervous trepidation which, it was clear to see, was awful funk, I wrote the note desired; and, before the day was out, he had gone to my English colleague, the amiable Severn, and confessed that he was an impostor, a Canadian, and asked for English protection.  Severn replied that without my consent he could do nothing for him; he had come with an American passport and must abide by it, unless I gave him up.  He was wilted, in such a fright as I never saw a man in before or since, and he had good reason, for the penalty of coming to Rome with a false passport was imprisonment in St. Angelo.  Meanwhile Miss Cushman had gone into heroics over the insult I was offering so distinguished a man as to suspect his identity, and all her clique were united in abusing me; but on Monday the impostor slipped out of Rome by the connivance of Severn, the police, and myself, after I had attached the amount of the subscriptions for his class, which were still lying at the bankers’, and pledged him to abstain in future from any similar impersonation.  As Miss Cushman had stood sponsor for him, she having been a pupil of the real Rarey, his confession was a mortification which she visited on my head, but as it disarmed her I was tranquil over the consequences.