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diff --git a/40898-0.txt b/40898-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a2b3b88 --- /dev/null +++ b/40898-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3702 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40898 *** + +_The_ FRIENDLY CLUB & OTHER PORTRAITS + +FRANCIS PARSONS + + + + +[Illustration: JOEL BARLOW + +From an Engraving by Durand + +After the Portrait by Robert Fulton] + + + + +The + +FRIENDLY CLUB + +And + +OTHER PORTRAITS + +_By_ Francis Parsons + + "_Whose yesterdays look backwards + with a smile._" + --YOUNG'S _Night Thoughts_ + +[Illustration] + + Edwin Valentine Mitchell + Hartford, Connecticut + 1922 + + + + + Copyright, 1922, + By Edwin Valentine Mitchell + + _First Edition_ + + + PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA + + + + + TO + THE MEMORY OF + MY FATHER + + + + +NOTE + + +THE thanks of the author are due to Mr. Charles Hopkins Clark, Editor of +"The Hartford Courant," in which most of the following essays originally +appeared anonymously, for permission to republish them in the revised, +enlarged and sometimes entirely re-written form in which they are here +presented. "The Friendly Club," "The Mystery of the Bell Tavern" and +"Our Battle Laureate" have not been previously printed. + +Citation of authorities, except so far as they appear in the text, has +been considered inappropriate in the case of such informal articles as +these. It would be ungracious, however, to omit mention of the writer's +indebtedness in connection with the second essay to Mr. Charles Knowles +Bolton's "The Elizabeth Whitman Mystery," which is the latest and most +comprehensive document on this baffling incident of New England social +history. + + F. P. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + I The Friendly Club 13 + II The Mystery of the Bell Tavern 47 + III The Hemans of America 69 + IV Whom the Gods Love 83 + V An Eccentric Visitor 95 + VI Who Was Peter Parley? 107 + VII A Preacher of the Gospel 121 + VIII A Friend of Lincoln 135 + IX Our Battle Laureate 147 + X The Temple of the Muses 161 + XI The Friend of Youth 181 + XII The Christmas Party 191 + XIII The Fabric of a Dream 201 + XIV The Quiet Life 213 + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + + JOEL BARLOW _Frontispiece_ + From the engraving by Durand after the portrait + by Robert Fulton + + LEXINGTON MONUMENT AND BELL TAVERN, DANVERS 64 + From Barber's "Massachusetts Historical Collections" + + THE SIGOURNEY MANSION 75 + From an old woodcut + + LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY 78 + From a miniature in the Colt Collection by + permission of the Wadsworth Atheneum + + INSCRIPTION TO DANIEL WADSWORTH IN J. G. C. + BRAINARD'S HAND 91 + + TITLE PAGE OF BRAINARD'S "OCCASIONAL PIECES OF POETRY" 92 + + THE WATKINSON LIBRARY 166 + Drawing by Seth Talcott + + SILHOUETTE OF DANIEL WADSWORTH 170 + By permission of The Connecticut Historical Society + + + + +_I: The Friendly Club_ + + +A HARVARD man, not exempt from the complacency sometimes attributed to +graduates of his university, once observed, according to Barrett +Wendell, that the group of forgotten litterateurs, who toward the close +of the eighteenth century attained a brief measure of fame as the +"Hartford Wits," represents the only considerable literary efflorescence +of Yale. The remark did not fail to provoke the rejoinder, doubtless +from a Yale source, that nevertheless at the time when the Hartford Wits +flourished no Harvard man had produced literature half so good as +theirs. + +How good this literature was considered in its day is not readily +understood by the modern reader, for from the Hudibrastic imitations and +heroic couplets of these writers, whose brilliance was dimmed so long +ago, the contemporary flavor has long since evaporated. Indeed there is +no modern reader in the general sense. It is only the antiquarian, the +literary researcher, the casual burrower among the shelves of some old +library who now opens these yellow pages and follows for a few moments +the stilted lines that seem to him a diluted imitation of Pope, +Goldsmith and Butler. Professor Beers of Yale ventures the surmise that +he may be the only living man who has read the whole of Joel Barlow's +"Columbiad." + +Yet in their time this coterie of poets, who gathered in the little +Connecticut town after the close of the war for independence, became +famous not only in their own land but abroad, and the community where +most of them lived and met at their "friendly club"--was it at the Black +Horse Tavern or the "Bunch of Grapes"?--shone in reflected glory as the +literary center of America. No Boswell was among them to record the +sparkling epigrams, the jovial give and take, the profound "political +and philosophical" debates of those weekly gatherings. Yet imagination +loves to linger on the old friendships, the patriotic aspirations, the +common passion for creative art, the wooing of the Muses of an older +world, thus dimly shadowed forth against the background of the raw +young country just embarking on its mysterious experiment. + +Do not doubt that these personages whose individualities are now so +effectually concealed behind the veil of their sounding and artificial +cantos were real young men who cherished their dreams and their hopes. +One can see them gathered around the great wood fire in the low ceiled +room redolent of tobacco, blazing hickory and hot Jamaica rum. + +Here is Trumbull, the lawyer, the author of "M'Fingal" which everybody +has read and which has been published in England and honored with the +criticism of the Quarterly and Edinburgh Reviews. He is a little man, +rather frail, rather nervous, not without impatience, with a ready wit +that sometimes bites deep. Here is Lemuel Hopkins, the physician, whose +lank body, long nose and prominent eyes are outward manifestations of +his eccentric genius. His presence lends a fillip to the gathering for +he is an odd fish and no one can tell what he will do or say next. +Threatened all his life with tuberculosis he is nevertheless a man of +great muscular strength and during his days as a soldier he used to +astonish his comrades by his ability to fire a heavy king's arm, held +in one hand at arm's length. In his verses he castigates shams and +humbugs of all kinds, whether the nostrums of medical quacks or the +irreverent vaporings of General Ethan Allen-- + + "Lo, Allen, 'scaped from British jails + His tushes broke by biting nails, + Appears in hyperborean skies, + To tell the world the Bible lies." + +Perhaps Colonel David Humphreys, full of war stories and anecdotes of +his intimacy with General Washington, on whose staff he served, is in +Hartford for the evening. A well dressed, hearty, sophisticated traveler +and man of the world is Colonel Humphreys, who would be recognized at +first glance as a soldier, though not as a poet. Nevertheless he is +addicted to the writing of verse which is apt to run in the vein of +comedy or burlesque when it is not earnestly patriotic. To look at him +one would know that he enjoys a good dinner, a good story and a bottle +of port. + +We may be sure that Joel Barlow is here, the vacillating, visionary +Barlow who has tried, or is to try his hand at many pursuits besides +epic poetry--the ministry, the law, bookselling, philosophy, journalism +and diplomacy--but who is pre-occupied now, as all his life, with his +magnum opus, "The Vision of Columbus," later elaborated into "The +Columbiad." He is a good looking, if somewhat self-centered young man, a +favorite in the days of his New Haven residence with the young ladies of +that town. Perhaps it was there that he first met the charming and +talented Elizabeth Whitman, the daughter of the Rev. Dr. Elnathan +Whitman, sometime pastor of the South Congregational Church in Hartford, +who often visited her friend Betty Stiles, the daughter of the president +of Yale College. A few of Elizabeth Whitman's letters that have +survived--the packet bearing an endorsement in Barlow's handwriting--are +evidence that he made her a confidante of his literary schemes and hopes +and welcomed her assistance with his great epic. A strong friendship and +entire harmony seem to have existed between her and Ruth Baldwin of New +Haven, whom Barlow married during the war, and who is said to have +"inspired in the poet's breast a remarkable passion, one that survived +all the mutations of a most adventurous career, and glowed as fervently +at fifty as at twenty-five." For nearly a year the marriage was kept a +secret, but parental forgiveness was at last secured and Barlow has now +brought his wife to Hartford where he is continuing his legal studies, +begun in his college town. But the law will not engross him long. Soon, +with his friend Elisha Babcock, he is to start a new journal, "The +American Mercury," of which his editorship, like all of Barlow's early +enterprises, is to be brief, though the paper is to continue till 1830. + +A tall, slender man, Noah Webster by name, a class-mate of Barlow at +Yale, though four years his junior, sits near him, relaxing for the +moment in the informality of these surroundings his strangely intense +powers of mental application, divided just now between the law and the +preparation of his "Grammatical Institute." To the "poetical effusions" +of his friends he contributes nothing, but he was an intimate of them +all and no doubt often attended their gatherings. + +Perhaps, now and later, something of the poet's license in the matter of +chronology may be granted. Let us assume, then, that young Dr. Mason +Cogswell is in town for a day or two, looking over the ground with a +view of settling here in the practice of medicine and surgery in which +he is now engaged at Stamford, after his training in New York where he +served with his brother James at the soldiers' hospital. It is true that +the fragments of his diary, which by a fortunate chance were rescued +from destruction, do not mention any visit to Hartford as early as this, +though his journal does describe a short sojourn here a few years later. +Still, his presence is by no means impossible. He is a companionable +youth, as popular with the young ladies as Barlow, but with an easier +manner, a readier humor. Delighted at this opportunity to sit for an +evening at the feet of the older celebrities, he is a welcome guest, for +already he has a reputation for versatility and culture and the fact +that he was valedictorian of the Yale Class of 1780--and its youngest +member--is not forgotten. + +Richard Alsop, book-worm, naturalist and linguist, who is beginning to +dip into verse, has locked up his book shop for the night and is here. +Near him sits a man who is, or is soon to be, his brother-in-law, a +tall, dark youth, Theodore Dwight, the brother of the more famous +Timothy, whose pastoral duties detain him at Greenfield Hill, but who is +sometimes numbered as one of this group. Theodore is now studying law, +but he has a flair for writing and makes an occasional adventure into +the gazettes. + +These more youthful aspirants have their spurs to win. A little later +they, with their friend Dr. Elihu Smith, who published the first +American poetic anthology, are to get into print in a vein of satirical +verse ridiculing the prevalent literary affectation and bombast. After +journalistic publication these satires will appear in book form under +the title of "The Echo," in the introduction to which the anonymous +authors state that the poems "owed their origin to the accidental +suggestion of a moment of literary sportiveness." "The Echo" was +"Printed at the Porcupine Press by Pasquin Petronius." + +That particular sportive moment is still in the future. Now it is +sufficient for these younger men to shine in the reflected luster of the +established luminaries. These greater lights are worthy indeed of the +worship of the lesser stars. Three of them have achieved, or are soon to +acquire, an international as well as a national reputation. That +"M'Fingal" had provoked discussion in England has been noted. +Humphreys's "Address to the Armies of America," written in camp at +Peekskill, and dedicated to the Duke de Rochefoucault, was issued with +an introductory letter by the poet's friend, the Marquis de Chastellux, +in a French translation in Paris, after its publication in England where +the Monthly and Critical Reviews gave it a fair amount of praise, though +they could not refrain from the statement that the poem was "not a very +pleasing one to a good Englishman." Barlow's "Vision of Columbus" was +published almost simultaneously in Hartford and London in 1787. + +In short these men had attained a genuine intellectual eminence in their +generation. They were the cognoscenti of their day. Like most young +intellectuals their gospel concerned itself with reform, with the +ridicule of shams, with the refusal to accept the popularity of new +doctrines as a final test of their value. Trumbull and Barlow, both Yale +graduates, had fought with their friend Timothy Dwight their first +reform campaign which was an effort to introduce into the somewhat +archaic and outworn body of the Yale curriculum the breath of the +humanities and of modern thought. Trumbull, according to Moses Coit +Tyler, was an example of a "new tone coming into American +letters--urbanity, perspective, moderation of emphasis, satire, +especially on its more playful side--that of irony." + +Their interests were not only literary. They were publicists, political +satirists, social philosophers, not without their religious theories. In +all these matters their search was for the true standards and as +champions of causes and enthusiasts of ideals they exhibited a variation +from type in that their warfare was waged, not against the recognized +conventions in government, religion and society, but in favor of them. +Priding themselves on untrammelled and direct thinking, their reasoning +led them to support the established, the orderly, the stable. +Temperamentally aristocrats, theoretically republicans--in the broad +sense of the term--they were practically federalists. "The Anarchiad," a +series of poems they were contributing anonymously about this time to +"The New Haven Gazette," dealt satirically with the dangers of national +unrest and instability, of selfish aggrandizement and of a fictitious +currency. In these verses Hesper addresses "the Sages and Counsellors at +Philadelphia" as follows: + + "But know, ye favor'd race, one potent head + Must rule your States, and strike your foes with dread." + +And in the same passage occur some lines, attributed to Hopkins, that +Daniel Webster may have read: + + "Through ruined realms the voice of UNION calls; + On you she calls! Attend the warning cry: + YE LIVE UNITED, OR DIVIDED, DIE!" + +They ridiculed unsparingly the dangers hidden under the cloak of +"Democracy"--dangers imminent and menacing in the days following the end +of the war in which most of them had served. In fighting these perils +they were sagacious in making use of the means frequently employed by +advocates of radicalism--invective, irony and ridicule. For these +methods secured, as they naturally would secure if cleverly managed, a +wide appeal. Yet the efficiency of such weapons depends very largely +upon the occasion. Their potency is contemporary with the events against +which they are directed and with the passing years their force weakens. +Who reads nowadays the political diatribes of Swift, the tracts of +Defoe, or the letters of Junius? Here perhaps is in part an explanation +of the great temporary influence of the Hartford Wits, as well as of +their complete modern obscuration. The brilliant blade they wielded had +a biting edge, but the rust of a century and a half has dulled it. + +This general leaning toward the established canons, this impatience with +the new doctrines that in the judgment of these men made for disunion +and disaster, should be qualified, at least in the religious aspect, in +two interesting particulars, each contradictory to the other. Hopkins +began adult life as a sceptic but became a defender of the Christian +philosophy. Barlow, on the other hand, deserted in later life the +orthodox ideals of his youth, never, perhaps, very enthusiastically +championed, and during his sojourn in France became a rationalist and +free-thinker. + +In general, however, the Hartford Wits fought for the established order +against the forces of innovation and disintegration and thus when they +sat down to unburden their minds of their visions of their country's +future greatness, or of their impatience with demagoguery and political +short-sightedness, it was natural that their sense of tradition and +order should lead their thoughts to seek expression in the verse forms +lifted into fame by the masters of an older and greater literature and +accepted as the conventional vehicle of poetic expression. Here is +another reason, if they must be catalogued, for the forgetfulness of the +Hartford Wits. These balanced, formal lines, so expressive of the +artificial modes and manners of the subjects of Queen Anne and her +successors, are to us prosy, old-fashioned and imitative. Their charm +has fled. Can you imagine Miss Amy Lowell reading Hudibras? And we must +admit that "M'Fingal," though it has given to literature some still +remembered aphorisms, such as-- + + "No man e'er felt the halter draw + With good opinion of the law"-- + +is, on the whole, poorer reading than its model. + + +ii + +It is significant that the distinction of the individuals united in the +"friendly club" was not confined to their literary activities. In an age +sometimes esteemed narrow and limited in its cultural aspects they are +refreshing in their versatility. Trumbull was a well-known lawyer and +served on the bench for eighteen years, part of his legal training +having been pursued in the office of John Adams. It was a strange +combination, not unprecedented but nevertheless arresting, of this +talent for the law associated with the artistic temperament. For with +all his practical attributes Trumbull was essentially an artist. His +early poem entitled "An Ode to Sleep," says Tyler, "is a composition +resonant of noble and sweet music and making, if one may say so, a +nearer approach to genuine poetry than had then [1773] been achieved by +any living American except Freneau." And in the following bit of +autobiography, quoted by Tyler, may be discerned the self-distrust and +depression to which no soul that longs and strives for the beautiful in +this imperfect world is entirely a stranger: "Formed with the keenest +sensibility and the most extravagantly romantic feelings . . . . I was +born the dupe of imagination. My satirical turn was not native. It was +produced by the keen spirit of critical observation, operating on +disappointed expectation, and revenging itself on real or fancied +wrongs." + +This is an extraordinary item of self-revelation to come from a man who +at various times held office as State's Attorney for Hartford County, +member of the General Assembly and Judge of the Superior and Supreme +Courts of his State. It may not be an entirely fanciful surmise to +attribute a partial cause of the delicate health that followed Trumbull +all his long life to the warring elements that strove to unite in his +brilliant mentality. + +With Dr. Hopkins poetizing was distinctly a by-product. His chief +concern was the practice of medicine and in his profession he won a +reputation that is not entirely forgotten today by members of the +faculty, for he was probably the first American physician to assert that +tuberculosis was curable and his success as a specialist in this field +was so marked that, says Dr. Walter R. Steiner in a monograph upon him, +"patients with this disease came to him for treatment from a great +distance--one being recorded to have made the trip all the way from New +Orleans." In his treatment he was unique in his day in very largely +discarding the use of drugs and relying more upon pure air, good diet +and moderate exercise when strength permitted. His theory that fresh air +was better for colds than the warm air of houses was revolutionary, but +so was almost everything he did--or so it seemed to his contemporaries. +At one time he evidently considered that New York City might offer a +wider field of practice than the Connecticut capital, for in December, +1789, Trumbull wrote to Oliver Wolcott, "Dr. Hopkins has an itch of +running away to New York, but I trust his indolence will prevent him. +However if you should catch him in your city, I desire you to take him +up or secure him so that we may have him again, for which you shall have +sixpence reward and all charges." In spite of his malady he lived till +almost fifty-one, dying in April, 1801, the head of the medical +profession in Connecticut. + +It is to be noted that though Dr. Cogswell was one of the chief +contributors to "The Echo" his main business in life was as a surgeon +rather than a poet, and he became one of the most skillful surgical +practitioners in the country, being the first to introduce into the +United States the operation for cataracts and the first to tie the +carotid artery. Closely associated with him is the pathetic memory of +his daughter Alice who became stone deaf in early childhood and whose +infirmity led to the establishment at Hartford of the first school in +this country for the education of the deaf. Of this institution Dr. +Cogswell was one of the founders and he was a leader in other +philanthropic enterprises. He lived till 1830. To the last he wore the +knee breeches and silk stockings customary in his youth and which he +considered the only proper dress for a gentleman. His death broke the +heart of his daughter Alice, to whom he had been a never-failing +protection and support, and she died within a fortnight after her +father. + +In contrast with the activities of their colleagues, the careers of +Theodore Dwight and Alsop are associated solely with the product of +their pens. Dwight, however, was more of a publicist and editor than a +creative literary worker. He had the brains with which nature had +endowed his family and his history of the unjustly maligned Hartford +Convention is a thoughtful and able piece of work--an original +historical document that is illuminating and suggestive. Such +distinction as Alsop attained was strictly literary, yet one gets the +impression that he worked at writing rather as an amateur than a +professional. He was really a student, a scholar, a research worker, and +seems to have sought his reward more in the pleasure of following his +interests than in the quest of public recognition. Much that he wrote +was never published. + +There was a great deal in life that Colonel Humphreys enjoyed besides +composing verses and a great many activities other than poetry for which +he may be remembered. Not the least hint of any paralyzing +self-distrust, no subtle questionings as to whether it was all worth +while, disturbed his equanimity. And fate rewarded his zest in life by +furnishing him with a variety of experiences. They began in the war from +which he emerged with a reputation for gallantry and daring and, what +was perhaps more valuable, with the firm friendship of George +Washington. He participated in the raid into Sag Harbor by Colonel Meigs +in '77 and the next year raided the Long Island shore on his own +account, burning three enemy ships and getting away without the loss of +a man. It was only a freak of the weather that perhaps withheld from him +a more glorious exploit for on Christmas night, 1780, he headed a +desperate venture that had for its object no less an achievement than +the capture of Sir Henry Clinton at his headquarters in New York. The +rising of the wintry northwest gale drove the boats of the little group +of adventurers away from the intended landing near the foot of Broadway +and swept them down through the British shipping in the harbor to Sandy +Hook. After Yorktown he was ordered by Washington to carry the captured +colors to Congress which in the enthusiasm of the moment voted him a +handsome sword. + + "See Humphreys, glorious from the field retire. + Sheathe the glad sword and string the sounding lyre," + +wrote Barlow in his "Vision of Columbus," The lyre accompanied songs in +praise of his country, tributes to his commander-in-chief, political +satires, and even love lyrics-- + + "Enough with war my lay has sung + A softer theme awakes my tongue + 'Tis beauty's force divine; + Can I resist that air, that grace, + The charms of motion, figure, face? + For ev'ry charm is thine." + +But this was by the way. Appointed secretary to the commission, +consisting of Franklin, John Adams and Jefferson, sent to negotiate +treaties of commerce and amity with European nations, he no doubt +thoroughly enjoyed his two years in London and Paris. In theory the +nobility of Europe may have been anathema to a patriotic citizen of a +republic, but practically there were many persons among them whose +acquaintance was agreeable to an amiable and gallant gentleman of +sensibility like Colonel Humphreys and there was, no doubt, a certain +gratification in dedicating one's poems to a duke and in having them +reviewed by a marquis who incidentally disclosed the fact that he was an +old companion in arms. Also it was pleasant to be elected a fellow of +the Royal Society. + +On Colonel Humphreys's return he spent some time as a member of the +family at Mount Vernon where Washington encouraged him in his project of +writing a history of the war which, however, never got any further in +print than a memorial of his old general, Putnam. At Mount Vernon he +wrote an ode celebrating his great and good friend whose friendship we +may reasonably infer constituted one of his chief conversational assets: + + "Let others sing his deeds in arms, + A nation sav'd, and conquest's charms: + Posterity shall hear, + 'Twas mine, return'd from Europe's courts + To share his thoughts, partake his sports + And sooth his partial ear." + +It is clear that European life had its attractions for Colonel +Humphreys. At all events he returned to it, serving as minister to +Portugal and later to Spain whence he imported his famous merino sheep +to his acres at Humphreysville, now Seymour. Here, and in the adjoining +town of Derby, he projected and to a creditable extent realized, an +ideal patriarchal manufacturing and farming community, instructing his +operatives and husbandmen in improved industrial methods, in scientific +agriculture and stock raising, athletics, poetry and the drama in which +one of his productions was actually presented on the stage. At least he +accomplished his wish, voiced in his poem "On the Industry of the United +States of America"-- + + "Oh, might my guidance from the downs of Spain + Lead a white flock across the western main, + + . . . . . + + Clad in the raiment my merinos yield, + Like Cincinnatus, fed from my own field: + + . . . . . + + There would I pass, with friends, beneath my trees, + What rests from public life, in letter'd ease." + + +iii + +Though the friends grouped around the tavern fire are united in two +sympathetic qualities--devotion to the Muses and a proud conviction, +singularly justified by events, of the destiny of their country--it is +manifest that the membership of the little club furnishes only another +illustration of the truism that human personality is the most varying +thing in the world and that life has different lessons for each of us. +The most baffling individuality of them all, the man whose story seems +to have been a quest for some mysterious, unattained goal, was Joel +Barlow. + +In early life everything he attempted went to pieces. His chaplaincy in +the army was a _tour de force_ which he dropped as soon as possible. The +law proved a mistake almost as soon as begun and his editorship of "The +American Mercury" was abandoned after less than a year. Perhaps it was +with renewed hope, perhaps it was with something of desperation, that he +persuaded himself to embark on an entirely new undertaking and to accept +a proposal to journey overseas to procure settlers for the Ohio lands +which the Scioto Land Company desired to sell to unsuspecting Frenchmen. +It is an established fact that Barlow was unsuspecting himself, but +after he had procured the settlers and shipped them off with golden +promises the project turned out to be a gigantic fraud. Personal +humiliation was added to general discouragement. Yet somehow he survived +the mortification. It may be that at this particular time mundane +affairs did not seem to be of the utmost importance. He was dwelling +somewhat in the clouds, in a vision--the "Vision of Columbus," which he +proposed to amplify and republish in a form more fitting the great theme +than the first modest edition of the original poem. He was pre-occupied +with the millenium he foresaw. + +To the present day reader it is of the highest interest to note that the +"Vision" foretold the Panama Canal, and that the climax of the poem is a +congress of the nations. + + "Hither the delegated sires ascend, + And all the cares of every clime attend. + + . . . . . . + + To give each realm its limits and its laws + Bid the last breath of dire contention cease, + And bind all regions in the leagues of peace." + +Indeed with the break-down of his career as a promoter the tide began to +turn. Barlow's friends knew he was innocent of complicity in the land +swindle. In Paris he found himself at last in an environment where +freedom of thought was encouraged, where the ambitions of a poet were +regarded with respect and admiration. He was always an idealist and he +caught the contagion in the mental atmosphere of Paris as the revolution +came on. Perhaps it seemed to him that his dream of the millenium was +coming true. He became a Girondist and a political writer, supporting +himself mainly by his pen, with the re-writing of the "Vision" always in +the back of his mind. Was this the real Barlow--or was it a phase, a +manifestation of a kind of philosophic idealism, fostered by the air of +Paris, so favorable to the blossoming of this new flower of liberty and +universal human brotherhood which centered on France the minds of all +the dreamers of the world? + +What did he now think, we wonder, of his dedication of the first edition +of his epic, published the year before he sailed for France, to Louis +the Sixteenth whom, as one commentator has noted, he soon indirectly +assisted in sending to the guillotine? He had gone a long way from the +militant conservatism of the brilliant companions of his youth--from the +days when he had preached the gospel to American soldiers and had +collaborated with Timothy Dwight, at the request of the General +Association of the Connecticut Clergy, in getting out an edition of +Isaac Watts's metrical versions of the Psalms--to which he had added a +few poetical renderings of his own. + +For the following years his residence alternated between Paris and +London where he found congenial souls among the artists and poets who +were members of the Constitutional Society. His "Advice to the +Privileged Orders" was attacked by Burke, praised by Fox, proscribed by +the British government and translated into French and German. In 1792 he +presented to the National Convention of France a treatise on government +which was in fact a remarkable state paper, combining profound +philosophic theories of government with practical administrative and +executive suggestions. As a result he was made a citizen of France--an +honor he shared among Americans with only Washington and Hamilton. + +Defeat for election as a deputy from Savoy and his repugnance to the +excesses of the Revolution appear to have thrown him out of practical +politics for a time. And then a strange thing happened. This visionary +poet and idealist attempted to retrieve his fortunes in commerce and +speculation and actually succeeded. During his consulship at Algiers, +from which he anticipated he might never return, he left a letter for +his wife in which he stated that his estate might amount to one hundred +and twenty thousand dollars if French funds rose to par. + +This appointment came to him in a pleasant way. One day in the summer of +1795 he returned from a business trip to the Low Countries to find an +old friend waiting for him. Colonel Humphreys, now minister at Lisbon, +had arrived at the request of the administration to ask Barlow to accept +this mission to Algiers where for a year and a half he was to labor, +succeeding in the end in liberating imprisoned countrymen and in +effecting a treaty that composed troublesome difficulties. + +It must have been an interesting reunion. Humphreys was too much of a +cosmopolitan, too generous in spirit, to make Barlow's growing +liberalism of thought a personal grievance. Here for the exiled American +was first-hand news of the old Connecticut friends--that Trumbull, +between ill health and the pressure of public affairs, was neglecting +the Muses; that Noah Webster was said to be working on a great lexicon; +that Dr. Cogswell had settled in Hartford and married a daughter of +Colonel William Ledyard who was killed at Fort Griswold with his own +sword in the act of surrender; that a play by Dr. Elihu Smith had been +acted at the John Street Theatre in New York; that Timothy Dwight would +probably succeed Dr. Stiles as President of Yale--and much besides. Very +likely Humphreys confided to his friend his growing interest in Miss Ann +Bulkley, an English heiress, whom he had met in Lisbon and who soon +afterward was to become his wife, and Barlow no doubt found a +sympathetic listener to his great project of enlarging and re-publishing +the "Vision." + +His return from Algiers found French consols rising with the Napoleonic +successes and Barlow lived as became a man of wealth and distinction. +Robert Fulton, who made his home with him, painted his portrait in the +intervals of experimenting with submarine boats and torpedoes in the +Seine and the harbor at Brest. Indeed Barlow had now acquired so strong +an influence with the Directory and the French people that his +biographer attributes to him the chief part in averting war between +France and the United States in the tense days after 1798. + +Then followed a return to his own country where he had an ambition to +found a national institution for education and the advancement of +science. He built a beautiful home, not in New England, be it noted, but +near Washington--the "Holland House of America"--and began, but never +finished, a history of the United States. He did, however, at last +complete "The Columbiad," which was published in Philadelphia in +1807--"the finest specimen of book-making ever produced in America." + +Did the great moment hold something of disillusion and disappointment, +when, amid the somewhat perfunctory adulation, came the bitter criticism +of the Federalists and the expressed conviction of some of his old Yale +and Hartford friends that he was an apostate in politics and religion? +To him it was clear that they did not understand. How could it be +expected that Timothy Dwight, for example, the grandson of Jonathan +Edwards, with all of New England's conservatism and provincialism in his +blood, could understand? Yet Barlow's ancestral background was the +same--but who can fathom the depths of personality, or solve the +complexity of motive and aspiration? + +Perhaps there were times when the returned wanderer grew homesick for +Paris. At last the chance to return to the land that had adopted him +came--a chance for notable service in an honorable capacity. War was +again in the air and in 1811 Barlow went back to France as minister +plenipotentiary, charged with the duty of again averting conflict and +negotiating a treaty embodying a settlement of the differences. + +In the French capital he took his old house. His old servants came back +to him with tears of joy. Old friends gathered about him. It was not +easy, however, to clinch the treaty. The Emperor was involved in +momentous affairs. The Russian expedition was on foot. The ministers +procrastinated. There is an intimation in the record that the poet and +political theorist was out-maneuvered in the negotiations by players of +a game that had nothing to do with poetry or abstract questions but that +concerned itself, persistently and relentlessly, with very definite but +not entirely obvious purposes. Yet it does not seem that this inference +is conclusively supported by the evidence. However that may be, it was +given out that Barlow had secured, and he unquestionably believed that +he had secured, an agreement as to the provisions of the proposed +treaty. At any rate the Emperor consented to meet the American envoy if +he would come to Vilna in West Russia. + +So in that dreary winter he set out with a high hope of achieving his +greatest service to his country, but what would have happened at Vilna +we shall never know, for on Barlow's approach to that town an incredible +and stupendous piece of news awaited him. The invincible Grand Army was +retreating, apparently in some demoralization. Everything was in +confusion. Where the Emperor was, no one knew. Obviously nothing could +now be done and the American minister started to return. + +Somewhere on those frozen roads the Emperor passed him, racing for Paris +to save his dynasty and himself. In the exposure and hardship Barlow +fell ill. At the little village of Zarnovich, near Cracow, it became +evident that he could travel no further and there, in the midst of that +historic cataclysm, he died. + +It was a strange ending for one of the old Hartford coterie. In the +clairvoyance said sometimes to accompany the supreme moment did he +realize that if his great epic might not live forever he had at least +given form in his day to a dream of which civilization would never let +go? Did any intimation come to him that his "Ode to Hasty Pudding," +written off-hand at a Savoyard inn, held more real emotion than all the +balanced cadences of his monumental work? No doubt his delirious fancies +sometimes went back to the old days. Perhaps he saw once more the faces +of his old companions of the friendly club, not clouded now with +misunderstanding or disapproval. From beyond the frosted panes came +intermittently the confused noises of the great retreat, with all their +implications of selfish ambition, human suffering and the continual +warfare of the world. Was his belief in the final triumph of the +fraternity of mankind shaken by that sinister monotone? It is idle to +conjecture, but let us hope that he was comforted by a lingering faith, +revived in this hour of his extremity from the days of his youth, that +he would soon learn as to the truth of his vision and that he would find +as well the answers to the other riddles that had puzzled him all his +life. + + + + +_II: The Mystery of the Bell Tavern_ + + +THE investigator of early American fiction will find that a peculiar +interest attaches to two novels, both published in the last decade of +the eighteenth century, both following Richardson in their epistolary +form and both founded on fact. + +One of these was called "Charlotte Temple, or a Tale of Truth." In the +graveyard of Trinity Church in New York, at the head of Wall Street, is +a large stone, flush with the ground, bearing the name of the heroine of +this now forgotten story which in its day attained an astonishing +popularity. The tale is of a young girl who during the War of the +American Revolution eloped from an English school with a British officer +who abandoned her in New York where she died soon after the birth of a +daughter. The tradition runs that more than a century ago the daughter, +grown to womanhood, caused her mother's body to be removed to an +English churchyard, but the stone still marks the first resting place +and when the writer last saw it two wreaths lay upon it. + +In 1797--seven years after the date of the first edition of "Charlotte +Temple"--the second of our two novels appeared. It was called "The +Coquette" and was written by Mrs. Hannah Foster, the wife of a Brighton, +Massachusetts, minister. For many years it was read and re-read +throughout the country, the latest edition appearing in 1866. Like +"Charlotte Temple" its theme was the tragedy of abandonment. It seems, +indeed, that the writer who wished to intrigue the interest of our +ancestors of this period was compelled to hang his plot on the +judiciously interwoven threads of sentiment and gloom. Perhaps no +further proof of this is needed than the example of Charles Brockden +Brown's portentous and sinister romances, with their undeniable flashes +of genius. But it is well to remember, too, that these were the days +when "The Castle of Otranto," "Clarissa Harlowe," and "The Vicar of +Wakefield" were all popular, and all exhibited varying phases of the +literary vogue of the day. In other words, though the prevailing mode +of thought found expression in different forms, the imaginative impulses +beneath the various manifestations were the same. + +Therefore it is not surprising to find little relief from the tragic +note in "The Coquette." It is true that the author endeavors to present +the heroine, Eliza Wharton, as a worldly and volatile young woman, but +these touches of lightness have lost with the passing years whatever +approaches to polite comedy they may have once implied. One must confess +that regarded strictly as a piece of fiction the book makes rather hard +reading today. But examined with some knowledge of the mystery upon +which it is founded, the old novel becomes a genuine human document. + +Mrs. Foster was a family connection of Elizabeth Whitman, the original +of "Eliza Wharton," and may have known her. Whatever the shortcomings of +her portrayal may be, it is clear that the authoress was endeavoring to +set forth in her book the character, as she estimated it, of the +charming and gifted girl, the tragedy of whose death is still +unexplained. It is true that the accuracy of the portrait in all +respects may be doubted. For example, the few letters of Elizabeth +Whitman that have been preserved are far more spontaneous and delightful +than any of Eliza Wharton's epistles which constitute so large a part of +the story. + +Evidently they are the letters of a different person, as well as a more +attractive one, than Mrs. Foster's heroine. Then, too, Mrs. Foster's +tale has something of the effect of a tract, of a moral effort. She is +driving home an ethical lesson and Eliza is the example to be shunned, +whereas modern speculation, grown more tolerant, is apt to question the +pre-judgment which guided the novelist's pen. He who today seeks to +penetrate the old secret realizes that he is furnished with only half of +the evidence. On that incomplete data how can a verdict of condemnation +be fairly based? Elizabeth's own story has never been told. + +Nevertheless, here, for what it is worth, is Mrs. Foster's notion, +adapted to her fictional purposes, of the kind of person the real +Elizabeth was, and from this reflection, faint and clouded though it may +be, of a genuine and appealing character, the old novel today gathers +its greatest interest. For against the somewhat somber background of +her New England period this Hartford girl stands forth with a flash of +brilliancy and charm. In the midst of a somewhat limited and narrow +social life, she was an individualist, an exotic. In contrast with her +Puritan environment she seems almost Hellenic--yet one fancies that +there is something about her more Gallic than Greek. + +She was the eldest of the three daughters of the Rev. Elnathan Whitman, +D.D., a Fellow of Yale College, and pastor from 1732 till his death in +1777 of the Second Church in Hartford. It is a singular coincidence that +through her mother, born Abigail Stanley, she traced kinship to the +Charlotte Stanley who was the original of "Charlotte Temple." Her father +was a grandson of that noted divine, Solomon Stoddard of Northampton, +who, it will be remembered, was the grandfather of Jonathan Edwards. +John Trumbull, the poet and judge, was a cousin and so was Aaron Burr. +Besides these, the Pierreponts, the Whitneys, the Ogdens, the Russells, +the Wadsworths, were all kin or connected by marriage. + +Fairly early in life Elizabeth became engaged to be married to the Rev. +Joseph Howe, a Yale graduate, and for a while a tutor at the college, +whose chief pastorate was at the New South Church in Boston. During the +siege he was compelled to flee from the city and, his health failing, he +died at Hartford, probably in 1776. + +In that rare volume, "American Poems, Selected and Original," published +at Litchfield, 1793, is "An Ode, Addressed to Miss--. By the late Rev. +Joseph Howe, of Boston." Its occasion was the departure, by sea, of the +young woman to whom it was addressed. + + "Nor less to heaven did I prefer, + For thy dear sake, my pious prayer. + O winds, O waves, agree! + Winds gently blow, waves softly flow, + Ship move with care, for thou dost bear + The better part of me." + +It is possible, indeed probable, that Elizabeth Whitman, who visited +occasionally in Boston, inspired these lines, but it appears that on her +part this love affair was of only moderate intensity and that her +father's death, which occurred in the year following the death of her +betrothed, affected her far more than that of the young minister she was +to have married. Not long after Mr. Whitman died, while Elizabeth was +visiting in New Haven at the home of Dr. Ezra Stiles, President of Yale +College, whose daughter Betsy was her intimate friend, her second love +affair developed. + +The Rev. Joseph Buckminster was also a Yale graduate and tutor, later +settling at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in Dr. Stiles's old parish, where +his life was spent. He was considered an exceptionally brilliant and +promising young man and he seems to have loved and wooed Elizabeth +ardently. It appears that she had a deep affection for him, but also an +intense dread of the harrowing melancholia from which he at times +suffered. There is an intimation, too, as to her own growing doubts of +future happiness in the somewhat limited rôle of a New England +minister's wife. Would her free and eager spirit find satisfaction in a +lifetime of parochial routine? She was discussing her final decision in +this matter with her cousin Jeremiah Wadsworth in the arbor of her +mother's garden when Buckminster, who did not like Colonel Wadsworth, +suddenly appeared and, misunderstanding the situation, went away in +great anger. + +Are the following lines from a letter of Elizabeth to Joel Barlow, +written at Hartford, February 19, 1779, references to this affair? + + ". . . . to find yourself quite out of Ambition's way, + and in the very bosom of content,--this certainly is + agreeable, and never more than when one has met with + trouble in a busier place. I felt myself no longer + afraid when a certain subject was started. I neither + trembled nor turned pale, but sat at my ease and felt + as if nobody would hurt me. I know you will laugh at + me for a pusillanimous creature for being ever so + afraid as you have seen me; but I cannot help it. . . . + + "As to Mr. Baldwin, if he were at the door, I would + not run into the cupboard to avoid him. He may mean + well, in writing all to Buckminster and nothing to me; + but I do not think it." + +After the encounter in the garden Elizabeth wrote Buckminster explaining +the matter, and, we may infer, telling him that her decision would have +been unfavorable. His reply was the announcement of his approaching +marriage, but in spite of this rapid _volte face_ he is said to have +cherished Elizabeth's memory during all of his life. Mrs. Dall in her +"Romance of the Association" tells the story of his burning the first +copy of "The Coquette" he read, which he found on a parishioner's table. +"It ought never to have been written," he said, "and shall never be +read--at least, not in my parish. Bid the ladies take notice, wherever I +find a copy I shall treat it in the same way." + +Familiar letters are always a fairly clear indication of character, and +it is from these letters of Elizabeth Whitman, printed in part in her +little book by Mrs. Dall, that we may obtain our most direct knowledge +of her personality. After reading them one closes the book with the +conviction that here was a rare and lovely woman. Here is wit, +originality, sympathy--one is almost tempted to say a certain +tenderness--encouragement, good sense and good advice. The writer +obviously had that quality that will forever be wholly captivating to +the masculine mind--the ability to enter whole-heartedly into the +aspirations and ambitions of a friend, to make them her own, and to +supply the comforting assurance and admiration that the male sex so +frequently craves and that is so often the spur to high endeavor. There +is something very winning about this affectionate sympathy as displayed +in these old letters, all, with one exception, written to Joel Barlow at +the time when he was striving for accomplishment and recognition as a +poet. Yet the writer's praise is not blind or overdone, for she does +not hesitate to criticise adversely, though in a most engaging way, some +of Barlow's verses that he sends to her for her comment: + + "There are so many beauties in your elegies, that it + looks like envy or ill-nature to pass them and dwell + upon the few faults; but you know that I do not leave + them unnoticed or unadmired. If you will have me find + fault, I can do it in a few instances with the + expression. The sentiments are everywhere beautiful, + just and above all criticism. . . . Why are you gloomy? + You must not be. Expect everything, hope everything, + and do everything to make your circumstances + agreeable." + +Perhaps Elizabeth did not feel incompetent to assume the rôle of a +critic and literary adviser, for she herself had the true artist's +desire for self-expression and this found relief in her own poetry which +usually took the form of the heroic couplet. + +It is inevitable that the reader of these letters should ask himself: +Was there anything more than friendship between Barlow and Elizabeth? +Doubtless the answer is in the negative. When Elizabeth Whitman first +met the poet he was engaged to be married to Ruth Baldwin who always +remained one of Elizabeth's closest friends and who through all of +Barlow's strange career was his faithful and beloved wife. Yet it is +evident that in his correspondent Barlow's wavering and self-centered +spirit found a steadying and assuring solace that he could never have +forgotten. Is it possible that he knew the secret of the final mystery? + +Of love affairs, other than those here indicated, that may have +transpired in Elizabeth's experience before the catastrophe, we know +little or nothing. No doubt certain emotional adventures occurred as the +years passed. She was exceptionally cultivated and entertaining and all +accounts agree that she was beautiful, though her exact type of beauty +is a matter of speculation, for her portrait which for years after her +death hung in her old home was destroyed in 1831, when the house was +burned--perhaps with much memoranda which would have given us a clue to +her secret. + +The following well-rounded sentence from Mrs. Locke's historically +inaccurate but emotionally true preface to the edition of 1866 of "The +Coquette" is not without its character-illuminating quality. "By her +exceeding personal beauty and accomplishments," wrote Mrs. Locke of +Elizabeth, of whose personality she seems to have had some reliable +evidence, "added to the wealth of her mind, she attracted to her sphere +the grave and the gay, the learned and the witty, the worshippers of the +beautiful, with those who reverently bend before all inner graces." + +For a young woman of the period her life was reasonably varied and her +acquaintance extensive. At President Stiles's home, and elsewhere in New +Haven, where she often visited, she met many men of distinction. She and +Betsy Stiles both spoke French fluently and it is said that Elizabeth +was greatly admired by several of the French officers who had known Dr. +Stiles at Newport and who called upon him from time to time at New +Haven. Certain, it must be confessed rather indefinite, "foreign +secretaries" are alleged to have fallen victims to her charms. + +There is an intimation that after her father's death she did not always +find life at home congenial. This is an inference--though not entirely +an inference--that one may readily accept. There was an irony in the +fate that placed this vivid creature in a New England parsonage in the +last half of the eighteenth century. Paris or Florence in the days of +the Renaissance--in such a setting one can visualize her. But, alas! +there was little in common between the New England of 1780 and the +France or Italy of three hundred years before. + +And yet one thing was common--as it is common wherever individuals of +the human race abide. When the great passion overwhelmed her and swept +her away from all that she had known to a mysterious end, Elizabeth +Whitman was no longer a young girl. She was a woman of experience, +knowing the ways of her world as well as any one of her day and time. +The love that broke down all restraints, that surrendered everything, +that threw the world away, was no ordinary affair of the heart. It was, +in truth, the irresistible, the incredible, the historic passion. It was +of a piece with the substance of which the great dramas of the world are +made and against the New England scene it now became the motif of a +tragedy. + +On a day late in May, 1788, Elizabeth took the stage at Hartford for +Boston where she was to visit her friend, Mrs. Henry Hill. No doubt her +family knew that something was wrong. They knew, among other things, +that she had spent all the preceding night alone in the starlight on +the roof of William Lawrence's house on the north side of the old State +House square. It was a strange proceeding, but their daughter and sister +was, after all, a strange, temperamental creature whose impulses and +mental processes they seldom understood and frequently disapproved. Of +how much more they were aware we do not know--they must have had their +suspicions--but at least they were ignorant of her purpose in her +journey. From the moment when she drove away in the stage neither they +nor any one of her Hartford friends saw her again--nor did she reach her +destination. + +On Tuesday, July 29, 1788, the Salem "Mercury" printed the following +notice: + + "Last Friday, a female stranger died at the Bell + Tavern, in Danvers; and on Sunday her remains were + decently interred. The circumstances relative to this + woman are such as to excite curiosity, and interest + our feelings. She was brought to the Bell in a chaise, + from Watertown, as she said, by a young man whom she + had engaged for that purpose. After she had alighted, + and taken a trunk with her into the house, the chaise + immediately drove off. She remained at this inn till + her death, in expectation of the arrival of her + husband, whom she expected to come for her, and + appeared anxious at his delay. She was averse to + being interrogated concerning herself or connections; + and kept much retired to her chamber, employed in + needlework, writing, etc. She said, however, that she + came from Westfield [Wethersfield?], in Connecticut; + that her parents lived in that state; that she had + been married only a few months; and that her husband's + name was Thomas Walker,--but always carefully + concealed her family name. Her linen was all marked E. + W. About a fortnight before her death, she was brought + to bed of a lifeless child. When those who attended + her apprehended her fate, they asked her, whether she + did not wish to see her friends. She answered, that + she was very desirous of seeing them. It was proposed + that she should send for them; to which she objected, + hoping in a short time to be able to go to them. From + what she said, and from other circumstances, it + appeared probable to those who attended her, that she + belonged to some country town in Connecticut. Her + conversation, her writings, and her manners, bespoke + the advantage of a respectable family and good + education. Her person was agreeable; her deportment, + amiable and engaging; and, though in a state of + anxiety, and suspense, she preserved a cheerfulness + which seemed to be not the effect of insensibility, + but of a firm and patient temper. She was supposed to + be about 35 years old. Copies of letters, of her + writing, dated at Hartford, Springfield, and other + places, were left among her things. This account is + given by the family in which she resided; and it is + hoped that the publication of it will be a means of + ascertaining her friends of her fate." + +The hope of the editor of the "Mercury" was realized. This notice, +coming to the attention of Mrs. Hill, finally resulted in the +identification of the mysterious lady of the Belt Tavern as Elizabeth +Whitman. + +[Illustration: Monument and Bell Tavern, Danvers.] + +And that, really, is the whole story. The succinct newspaper statement, +with its contemporary note and its effect of reality, furnishes a more +effective climax than the phrases of any modern chronicler. + +Yet one cannot quite close the record without mention of a few incidents +of the last days. + +The copies of letters mentioned as found among Elizabeth's belongings +evidently escaped her, for, fearful of the outcome of her illness, she +burned, as she supposed, all her papers. A poem and part of a letter, +both clearly addressed to her lover or husband, though no name was +given, escaped her. + + "Must I die alone?" she wrote in those final days. + "Shall I never see you more? I know that you will + come, but you will come too late: This is, I fear, my + last ability. Tears fall so, I know not how to write. + Why did you leave me in so much distress? But I will + not reproach you: All that was dear I left for you: + but do not regret it.--May God forgive in both what + was amiss:--When I go from hence, I will leave you + some way to find me:--if I die, will you come and drop + a tear over my grave?" + +There is a legend, perhaps apocryphal, that one afternoon she wrote in +chalk on the inn door, or on the flagging before it, her initials or +other sign, which a small boy rubbed out without her knowledge. That +evening, the legend runs, an officer in uniform rode into the town on +horseback looking carefully at all the doors and walks, but speaking to +no one. Not finding what he evidently sought, he is said to have ridden +despondently away. + +During all her stay at Danvers, Elizabeth wore a wedding ring and at her +request it was buried with her. + +As to the identity of the man whom Elizabeth loved there have been many +speculations. A cousin of hers, an able man, distinguished in the +history of his time, has often been assumed to have been the cause of +her tragedy, but it is fair to his memory to say that he denied this +assumption vehemently. The late Charles Hoadly, State Librarian of +Connecticut, had a theory that the man was a prominent member of the +Yale class of 1776, but no evidence for this belief is given. Another +supposition is that Elizabeth, against the wishes of her family, had +contracted a marriage with a French Romanist who, had he acknowledged +this union, would have forfeited his inheritance. Probably Jeremiah +Wadsworth, who was her friend and adviser, knew the secret, but if so it +perished with him. + +Her brother William, who was eight years younger than she, long survived +her, dying in Hartford on Christmas Day, 1846, at the age of eighty-six. +In the old man, who was one of the last in his city to wear the knee +breeches of the preceding century, it would have been difficult to +recognize Elizabeth's "little rogue of a brother" whom she frequently +commended to Joel Barlow's care while at Yale. Through a slight +knowledge of medicine he acquired the title of "Doctor," but he was also +admitted to the bar and for some time was Town Clerk, and Clerk of the +City Court. In his later years he became something of an antiquary and +after the Wadsworth Atheneum was built he found in that castellated home +of the humanities, particularly in the library, a grateful refuge from +the world, where he was always ready to converse with other visitors +upon incidents of days long gone by. One subject, however, was +universally accepted as unapproachable. With his son, who died unmarried +in Philadelphia in 1875, the line of the Rev. Elnathan Whitman became +extinct. + +After Elizabeth's death her brother is not known to have mentioned her +name outside of the family, but for many years he made an annual +pilgrimage to her grave with his sister Abigail. The letter of an old +resident tells us that after Elizabeth died the door of her room in the +Whitman home was kept locked and nothing disturbed till fire destroyed +the building. + + + + +_III: The Hemans of America_ + + +IN 1866, the year after her death, Timothy Dwight, later beloved +president of Yale University, contributed to "The New Englander" an +article on Mrs. Sigourney in the form of a review of her posthumous +autobiography, entitled "Letters of Life." This article deserves to be +remembered because, for one thing, it reflects from its author's mind a +sense of humor which Mrs. Sigourney never, even in her most inspired +moments, displayed. + +We all recall the old story of the Hartford personage who achieved a +certain measure of fame by remarking that Mrs. Sigourney's personal +obituary poems had added a new terror to death. Dr. Dwight's paper +begins with a reference to this same phase of the poetess. + +"Whenever any person has died in our country," he says, "during the last +score of years, who was of public reputation sufficient to justify it +. . . a kind of calm and peaceful confidence has rested in our minds, +that, within a brief season, a poetical obituary would appear in the +public prints from the well-known pen of Mrs. Sigourney. Indeed so +general has been this confidence among the people of Connecticut, that +some persons, who, from peculiar modesty or from some other reason, have +desired to escape the notice of the great world after death, have been +beset by a kind of perpetual fear that she might survive them, and thus, +having them at a great disadvantage, might send out their names unto all +the earth." + +And later on in the essay he mentions the reported story of the man who +was unwilling to travel from New Haven to Hartford on the same train +with the distinguished Hartford lady lest in case of a railroad accident +she might put him into rhyme. + +Though it is doubtful if the author of "The Anthology of Spoon River" +ever heard of these obituary poems, they form a strange precedent for +that original collection of verse. Some of them were gathered by their +authoress in a volume entitled "The Man of Uz, and Other Poems," +published at Hartford in 1862, where the literary antiquarian may still +peruse them. If they originally possessed any poetry it is now extinct, +and the only interest remaining is the personal one. To those for whom +the older Hartford still has its appeal such names as those of Colonel +Samuel Colt, Samuel Tudor, "The Brothers Buell," Harvey Seymour, D. F. +Robinson, Judge Thomas S. Williams, Deacon Normand Smith, Governor +Joseph Trumbull, and Mary Shipman Deming--to mention only a few--have +their memories and possibly their family associations. + +Perhaps it is not strange that such a considerable part of Mrs. +Sigourney's facile effusions related to the tomb for hers was the age of +pensive sentiment. It was the time when the weeping willow was popular +in all forms of art, from the tombstone to the mezzotint illustration, +when young ladies sang captivatingly, to the harp, of an early death, +when funeral sermons were printed, widely circulated and even read, and +when everybody was wondering whether they were numbered among the +"elect" or--not. + +Yet it would be a mistake to give the impression that all the sentiment +of the time, or all of Mrs. Sigourney's poetry, partook of gloom. Far +from it. Though there was, to be sure, a kind of background of agreeable +melancholy, and such alluring titles of her books as "Whisper to a +Bride" and "Water Drops" (a plea for temperance) were doubtless not +intentionally humorous, Mrs. Sigourney could be playful at times and she +invariably painted the immediate scene in colors of the rose. She was, +in fact, an idealist. She so far idealized her early surroundings in +Norwich, where she was born, that Dr. Dwight, who also knew Norwich in +his boyhood, finds difficulty in identifying places and people. She even +idealized the Park River, sometimes known in her day, as in ours, by a +less euphonious title, alluding to it as "the fair river that girdled +the domain [her home on what is now known as Asylum Hill] from which it +was protected by a mural parapet." Who other than Mrs. Sigourney could +have transformed an ordinary stone wall into a "mural parapet"? + +[Illustration: THE SIGOURNEY MANSION] + +Speaking of the Park River, Mrs. Sigourney, in the course of describing +the pastoral surroundings of what was then her country home, confesses +that she could never understand why pigs were unmentionable in polite +society--though we think she herself refrained from referring to them +by their ordinary term. "Such treatment," she asserts "is peculiarly +ungrateful in a people who allow this scorned creature to furnish a +large part of their subsistence, to swell the gains of commerce and to +share with the monarch of ocean the honor of lighting the evening lamp." + +Here are two other references, quoted by Dr. Dwight, to this rural +"domain" of which the dwelling house, it will be remembered, is still +standing: + +"Two fair cows, with coats brushed to a satin sleekness, ruminated at +will, and filled large pails with creamy nectar." + +And again, the poultry "munificently gave us their eggs, their offspring +and themselves." + +But even this idealized Sabine farm was not exempt from the troubles +that lie in wait for all of us, and we must be chivalrous enough to +admit that Mrs. Sigourney bore the sorrows that came to her with grace +and dignity. Soon after the poetess and her husband took up their +residence here Mr. Sigourney was overtaken by business troubles, which +his wife translates into "obstructions in the course of mercantile +prosperity," and she cheerfully undertook various economies, among +which was "prolonging the existence of garments by transmigration." +Later the family moved to a less pretentious home on High street where +the latter part of the life of Mrs. Sigourney, who survived her husband, +was spent. + +Later still this house became a kind of shrine, and a distinguished Yale +teacher and poet, whose people, back in his undergraduate days of the +sixties, dwelt for a time in the poetess's old home, has told the writer +how nice old ladies from the country used to make pilgrimages thither to +pluck a spray of lilac from the garden where the poetess was wont to +walk and to see the room where she "mused." + +The fact is that she appears to have dwelt in a world of the mind that, +however real to her, was in reality distinctly artificial, like most of +her poetic writings. In these faded verses there now appears to be +little real thought, still less real poetry. The only stanzas about +which any flavor of poetic eloquence still clings are those entitled +"The Return of Napoleon from St. Helena" and "Indian Names." Compare her +"Niagara" and "The Indian Summer" with the poems on the same subjects by +J. G. C. Brainard, another now almost forgotten Hartford poet of her +time, whose early death prevented the flowering of a fame that was just +beginning to unfold, and the reader grasps at once the difference +between a certain graceful turn of thought and facility of phrase on the +one hand, and genuine poetic genius on the other. + +[Illustration: LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY + +FROM A MINIATURE IN THE COLT COLLECTION + +BY PERMISSION OF THE WADSWORTH ATHENEUM] + +And yet in her day she had a prodigious vogue and the reference to her +as "The Hemans of America," while now holding a certain facetious +implication, was gravely accepted at the time. Her journey abroad after +her husband's death was in its way a sort of mild ovation. She met Queen +Victoria and it is significant as well as amusing to find that our +Hartford citizeness alluded to the Queen as "a sister woman." Her verses +were translated into several languages and she received presents and +letters of commendation from the King of Prussia, the Empress of Russia +and the Queen of France. + +The explanation of her contemporary popularity must lie in the state of +mind of the period. In that era "sensibility" was the passport to +literary success and Mrs. Sigourney certainly possessed sensibility, if +nothing else, to a high degree. Those sentimental, yearly gift books +known as "annuals" were a phenomenon of the time, and no "annual" was +complete without one or more of her poems. It is time that some +qualified person gave to the world a study of this old "annual" +literature, so sentimental, so romantic, and so generally languishing. +The most delightful appreciation that comes to mind at the moment, of +the "annual" as a literary curio is contained in Professor Beers's life +of Willis in the American Men of Letters series--or in his essay on +Percival in "The Ways of Yale." + +There is a certain pathos in the fact that the years have denied this +Hartford poetess's gentle claim to immortality, because the +impossibility of granting this claim has led the world to neglect two +very definite and admirable characteristics she possessed. + +One is that she was a remarkably good woman. She carried her Christian +precepts into her daily practice in a way that few of us seem to succeed +in doing. In spite of a little harmless vanity, everyone who came in +contact with her appears to have admired and loved her. + +In the social life of the old city she was a leading and popular figure. +Samuel G. Goodrich in his "Recollections of a Life Time" describing +Hartford in the second decade of the nineteenth century says of Mrs. +Sigourney, then Miss Huntley: "Noiselessly and gracefully she glided +into our social circle and ere long was its presiding genius. . . . +Mingling in the gayeties of our social gatherings and in no respect +clouding their festivity, she led us all toward intellectual pursuits +and amusements. We had even a literary cotery under her inspiration, its +first meetings being held at Mr. Wadsworth's." Before the writer lie a +half dozen of Mrs. Sigourney's letters written in her distinct and +regular handwriting. They relate to business matters, to social +engagements, and a few are letters of consolation. Perhaps they seem a +little stilted and formal, but in all the personal notes there is +evident a very genuine and very charming spirit of sympathy and +kindliness. + +The other trait that has been largely forgotten is that she was a +natural teacher of youth. In her early days in Hartford she conducted a +school for girls on singularly successful and somewhat original lines. +This she relinquished on her marriage, but for nearly half a century +those of her old pupils who lived never failed to meet annually with her +in remembrance of their early association. Clearly, she inspired in +them all an ardent and lasting affection. + +On the writer's desk, among her letters, lies an ancient school +copy-book containing the transcript of an address she made to her old +scholars August 17, 1822, "on their meeting to form a Charitable and +Literary Society." It is characteristic that the greater part of this +composition is concerned with affectionate and what now seem rather +pathetic sketches of the five young girls of her flock who had died. The +address confirms what we know from other sources--that her school was +started in 1814, soon after she came from Norwich to Hartford. + +The old manuscript abounds in unimpeachable moral aphorisms. One may, +perhaps, smile at the carefully balanced phraseology of this: "Some +sciences are more attractive to ambition, more congenial with fame, more +omnipotent over wealth, but I know of none so closely connected with +happiness as the science of doing good." Yet most of us would be better +men and women if we applied that maxim in our lives as constantly as did +this gentle "lady of old years." In her teaching "the science of doing +good" was not a theoretical matter alone. It was directed to practical +ends. "During a period of somewhat less than two years and a half," she +says, "you completed for the poor 160 garments of different +descriptions, many of which were carefully altered and repaired from +your own--among them 35 pairs of stockings, knit without sacrifice of +time during the afternoon reading and recitation of history. You +likewise contributed ten dollars to the Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb, +five dollars to the schools then established among the Cherokees, and +distributed religious books to an amount exceeding ten dollars, among +the children of poverty and ignorance. . . . Some of you were accustomed +to gain time for these extra employments by rising an hour earlier in +the morning." + +Had Mrs. Sigourney continued her school it is not by any means +preposterous to believe that her fame as an educator might have +outlasted her reputation in literature, and that she might have shared +with Miss Beecher of the old Hartford Female Seminary a certain degree +of distinction in connection with the early education of women in this +country. + + + + +_IV: Whom the Gods Love_ + + +IN the year 1822 there drifted into the friendly social life of the old +town a short, odd looking young man who, it developed, had come to take +editorial charge of "The Connecticut Mirror," a weekly newspaper, +strongly federal in politics, which had been established in 1809 by +Charles Hosmer and which, at this time, had just been bought by Messrs. +Goodsell and Wells, whose place of business was at the corner of Main +and Asylum streets. + +The name of this young man was John Gardiner Calkins Brainard and he was +twenty-six years old. Those who inquired about him learned that he was a +native of New London and the son of Judge Jeremiah G. Brainard of the +Superior Court. In 1815 he had been graduated at Yale--a classmate of +that strange genius James Gates Percival, poet, physician, geologist. +After studying law in his brother's office he had practiced for a time +in Middletown, but it was rumored that his tastes were literary rather +than legal, and that the law had not proved very successful. + +In spite of his rather uncouth appearance this newcomer soon became a +favorite among the young people. He was clever--any one could see that. +His frequent witty and amusing sayings gathered an arresting emphasis +from their contrast with intervals of quietness and even of apparent +depression. Perhaps this hint of an underlying seriousness had its +especial charm for the young ladies. Remember that in those days Byron +was in fashion. But there was something about this young man that +attracted also friends of his own sex. "The first time I ever saw him," +says a writer in the "Boston Statesman," quoted by Whittier in his +memoir of Brainard, "I met him in a gay and fashionable circle. He was +pointed out to me as the poet Brainard--a plain, ordinary looking +individual, careless in his dress, and apparently without the least +claim to the attention of those who value such advantages(?). But there +was no person there so much or so flatteringly attended to. . . . He +was evidently the idol, not only of the poetry-loving and gentler +sex--but also of the young men who were about him. . . ." + +We can picture young Mr. Brainard as one of the leading figures in that +"literary cotery," which Goodrich describes and which was presided over +by Mrs. Sigourney. It was in a room adjoining Goodrich's at Ripley's +Tavern that Brainard soon took up his abode and the two became fast +friends. + +The discovery was soon made that young Mr. Brainard was by way of being +a poet--if, indeed, the fact was not already known. Verses, obviously +from his pen, appeared constantly in his newspaper. Indeed some of the +paper's readers may have recognized the new editor's hand through their +familiarity with the verse he had sometimes written for the "Mirror" +before his official connection with that journal. His first contribution +to the paper in his new capacity appeared in the issue for February 25, +1822, in which the change of ownership and the new editor were +announced. This contribution was in the form of a poem "On the Birthday +of Washington."--"Behold the moss'd cornerstone dropp'd from the wall," +ran the first line. It was not a great poem, but it sounded a sincere, +patriotic note, had a genuine poetic touch and far excelled most +newspaper verse of the day. + +And so this original young man, with his light brown hair, rather pale +face, large eyes and obvious "temperament" began to acquire the +character and reputation of a poet. We fancy that this reputation was +somewhat limited until on a sudden impulse he wrote "The Fall of +Niagara." This piece of blank verse, though now largely forgotten in the +lapse of years, had in its time a tremendous vogue. It was copied far +and wide, took its place in school readers and for years was declaimed +by youthful orators before committees and admiring parents at school +exhibitions. + +We do not know the exact date of its composition, but it must have been +before 1825, for it appeared in the author's first collection of verse +published in that year. It was written one raw March evening in an +emergency, to make copy for the next morning's paper. Goodrich tells the +story. Brainard was half ill with a cold and Goodrich went over with him +to the "Mirror" office and started a fire in the Franklin stove, while +his companion, miserable and depressed, talked at random, abhorring the +compulsion that made writing a necessity and his procrastination that +had postponed his work, till the last moment. + + "Some time passed," says Goodrich, "in similar talk, + when at last Brainard turned suddenly, took up his pen + and began to write. I sat apart and left him to his + work. Some twenty minutes passed, when, with a radiant + smile on his face, he got up, approached the fire, and, + taking the candle to light his paper, he read as + follows: + + + THE FALL OF NIAGARA. + + 'The thoughts are strange that crowd into my brain, + While I look upward to thee. It would seem + As if God pour'd thee from his 'hollow hand.' + And hung his bow upon thy awful front; + And spoke in that loud voice, which seem'd to him + Who dwelt in Patmos for his Saviour's sake, + 'The sound of many waters'; and had bade + Thy flood to chronicle the ages back. + And notch his cent'ries in the eternal rocks.' + + "He had hardly done reading when the [printer's] boy + came. Brainard handed him the lines--on a small scrap + of rather coarse paper--and told him to come again in + half an hour. Before this time had elapsed, he had + finished, read me the following stanza: + + 'Deep calleth unto deep. And what are we, + That hear the question of that voice sublime? + Oh, what are all the notes that ever rung + From war's vain trumpet by thy thundering side? + Yea, what is all the riot man can make, + In his short life, to thy unceasing roar? + And yet, bold babbler, what art thou to Him + Who drown'd a world, and heap'd the waters far + Above its loftiest mountains?--a light wave, + That breathes and whispers of its Maker's might.' + + "These lines having been furnished, Brainard left his + office and we returned to Miss Lucy's parlor. He seemed + utterly unconscious of what he had done. . . . The + lines went forth and produced a sensation of delight + over the whole country." + +It is not too much to say that Niagara brought Brainard fame. To the +modern ear inured to free verse its lines may sound perhaps a trifle +over sonorous and formal. But it has real poetic eloquence and +inspiration. Brainard had never been within less than five hundred miles +of the great falls. + +The Niagara is the first poem in that collection of the poet's verses +published in 1825, alluded to above. Before the writer at the moment +lies a copy of this rather rare volume. Goodrich arranged for its +publication with Bliss and White of New York and with difficulty +persuaded Brainard to do the necessary work of collection and revision. +It was the only collection of his verses that was published during the +poet's life. Two others were issued after his death--one in 1832, with a +memoir by Whittier, and one, with a prefatory sketch by the Rev. Dr. +Robbins, in 1842. The copy of the first collection, now on the writer's +desk, bears on the fly-leaf this inscription in the author's +handwriting: + +[Illustration: Handwritten: + +Will you allow this a place in your Library and oblige + + Yours very respectfully + JGCBrainard + +To/D Wadsworth Esq] + +The thin little book has the title, "Occasional Pieces of Poetry," which +is peculiarly appropriate, for most of Brainard's poems were suggested +by incidents of daily life that came to his attention. For example, the +stage coach from Hartford to New Haven falls through a bridge and two +lives are lost--the occurrence prompts him to write the "Lines on a +Melancholy Accident;" the visit of Lafayette to this country in 1824 +occasions some verses to "the only surviving general of the Revolution;" +the death of two persons who were struck by lightning during a religious +service in Montville suggests "The Thunder Storm;" the humorous verses +entitled "The Captain" result from the genuinely amusing situation that +arose in New London harbor when the wreck of the Norwich Methodist +meeting house, that had come down the river in a freshet, collided with +an anchored schooner. + +[Illustration: + + OCCASIONAL + + PIECES OF POETRY. + + BY JOHN G. C. BRAINARD. + + + Some said, "John, print it;" others said, "Not so,"-- + Some said, "It might do good;" others said, "No." + + _Bunyan's Apology_ + + + NEW-YORK: + PRINTED FOR K. BLISS AND E. WHITE + _Clayton & Van Norden, Printers._ + 1825.] + +The fact that the poet took many every-day affairs as the immediate +occasion for his versifying accounts for the trivial character of some +of his work. On the other hand it illustrates the theory he held of the +need of a genuine American literature. Though he read eagerly Byron and +Scott, he deprecated in the columns of the "Mirror" the imitation of +foreign writers by American men of letters, holding that our own +history, traditions and environment gave inspiration enough. + +He welcomed the appearance of Cooper with enthusiasm, and a story which +ran in the "Mirror" under the title of "Letters from Fort Braddock" +and which was largely in the Cooper manner was written by him though +published anonymously. Indeed a great part of his work dealt with local +matters. "Matchit Moodus" expresses a fantastic legend of the "Moodus +noises." "The Black Fox of Salmon River" embodies in verse another grim +local tradition. "The Shad Spirit" and "Lines to the Connecticut River" +are other similar examples of his use of the folk-lore of the +Connecticut valley. + +Professor Beers of Yale cites the exquisite little lyric beginning "The +dead leaves strew the forest walk," as about the best example of his +work. Goodrich says it was written after the departure from Hartford of +a young lady from Savannah to whom the poet had been devoted during her +visit. Very attractive, too, are the lines on "Indian Summer." The blank +verse entitled "The Invalid on the East End of Long Island," has a +melancholy note but deserves remembrance. It was there that Brainard +spent the few weeks just before the end. + +He was too sensitive and unaggressive a soul both for the law and for +the political wrangling which attended the newspaper controversies of +the day. In the practical life of his country and his time, which had +small place for artistic aspiration or expression, he was an anomaly +simply because he was a real poet. To this situation may be attributed +no doubt in large measure the sense of failure, unquestionably +exaggerated, which he often expressed. "Don't expect too much of me," he +said to Goodrich at their first meeting, "I never succeeded in anything +yet. I could never draw a mug of cider without spilling more than half +of it." + +His frequent depression, however, was not all temperament--it had a +physical basis. In the spring of 1827 incipient tuberculosis compelled +him to give up his work on the "Mirror," and on September 26, 1828, a +month before his thirty-second birthday, he died at his home in New +London. + +His death called forth the customary poetic obituary from his friend +Mrs. Sigourney--one of the best she ever wrote--voicing a sincere and +generous appreciation. Whittier, with other poets of the day, added his +word of memory and praise. Perhaps a line from Snelling best expresses +in a few words the whole story-- + + "The falchion's temper ate the scabbard through." + + + + +_V: An Eccentric Visitor_ + + +WE may be permitted to take a certain pride in the fact that most +strangers who sojourn for a time among us express admiration and liking +for the town. There has been, however, one historic and notable +exception. A young man named Percival who visited us in 1815, the year +of his graduation from Yale College, did not care for Hartford at all +and, moreover, did not hesitate to proclaim his distaste in some of the +verses he was then engaged in writing. However, poor Percival did not +like any spot very well. It is with a sense of faint amusement or, when +we know his history, of compassion, rather than with any shade of +resentment, that we now read the stanzas in which he published his +sentiments to an unappreciative world: + + "Ismir! Fare thee well forever! + From thy walls with joy I go, + Every tie I freely sever, + Flying from thy den of woe. + + * * * * + + Ismir! Land of cursed deceivers, + Where the sons of darkness dwell + Hope, the cherub's base bereavers,-- + Hateful city! Fare thee well." + +When he wrote this James Gates Percival was twenty years old. Some of +the emotion of these lines arose simply from uncurbed youthful reaction +from disappointment. Most of it, however, was individual and +characteristic temperament--the same uncomfortable mental constitution +that seemed to make it impossible for him to withhold the vitriolic +verses he wrote and printed on the character of a clergyman who had +objected to Percival's suit for his daughter's hand. + +The young poet had come to Hartford on the invitation of his classmate, +Horace Hooker, who later entered the ministry and whose wife wrote for +the young a number of very instructive and very pious stories which in +their day attained a considerable popularity. It was hoped that in the +literary atmosphere which at that time existed in Hartford this odd +young man, with his undoubted poetic strain and his dreamy and +contemplative nature, would find a congenial milieu. + +The visit, however, was a failure. Young Percival was not popular. "He +was too shy and modest," says his biographer, "to adapt himself to +different circles. He wanted confidence, and at social gatherings [in +Hartford] he talked at great length on single subjects, but in so low a +tone that people could not hear him. He was not treated as he expected +to be; it seemed to him that he was not appreciated, and he came away in +disgust." + +This charge against us of lack of appreciation finds some mitigation in +the fact that the poet departed from many places in the same frame of +mind and for the same reason. Percival was one of those pathetic spirits +who find the world an unhappy abiding place. His constitutional +wretchedness was in fact so extreme that he is said in early life to +have attempted self-destruction and one of his best poems, as well as +one of the gloomiest in the language, reflects his moods at this period +under the title of "The Suicide." + +Fortune aggravated the disadvantage of one unfitted at the best to cope +with the world by allotting to him a life of penury. For many years he +lived as a recluse in the State Hospital Building in New Haven where he +was allowed the use of three rooms which he never permitted visitors to +enter--on one occasion even refusing to admit Henry Wadsworth +Longfellow. It is related that at another time a somewhat pompous +gentleman, accompanied by two ladies, was visiting the building and, +learning that the poet lived there, rapped at his door and then stood +waiting, a lady on each side of him. The door opened a crack and +Percival's face appeared. "I am extremely happy and rejoiced," began the +visitor, with a great deal of manner, "that I have the honor of +addressing the poet Percival--" But he got no further, for Percival +instantly ejaculated "Boo!" and slammed the door. This seems to have +been his customary manner of excusing himself to callers. + +Percival's lack of means was in a way his own fault--or at least it was +the result of his peculiar disposition which, in its sensitiveness to +purely imaginary slights and its impossibility of concession or +adaptation, worked constantly against his prosperity. His friends were +faithful and long-suffering and often came to the rescue. In spite of +his oddities there seems to have been a singular charm about the man +like the charm of an unexpectedly original child. When the bane of an +intense bashfulness was removed and he was alone with one or two +intimates, his talk is said to have been delightful. He became +absolutely absorbed in any topic in which he was interested and brought +to bear upon it a wealth of allusion and comment of which few minds were +capable. + +As a poet he is now forgotten, yet it is a suggestive and significant +fact that in 1828, when a project was in hand to publish a group picture +of nine living American poets, Percival was to occupy the center of the +stage, while such minor lights as Bryant, Irving and Halleck, with +others, were to surround him. + +But the fame he longed for and, with an almost childlike naïveté, +claimed as his due, was short-lived. It barely touched him and passed +him by. Yet he deserves remembrance, if only for his versatility. While +it is chiefly as a poet that mention is made of him in encyclopedias and +other books of reference, he was capable, but for his temperamental +disabilities, of shining in many lines and in one pursuit other than +poetry he has left a lasting memorial. He studied law, was admitted to +the bar and never practiced. He served his medical apprenticeship under +his good friend Dr. Eli Ives of New Haven, took his degree, practiced a +little and, though he was always afterward known as "Doctor," abandoned +the profession--except that later in life he was post surgeon at Boston +till his abhorrence of examining recruits compelled him to relinquish +the work. At one time he thought of entering the ministry and he was +always an authority on theology and dogma. He gave up his appointment as +a professor of chemistry at the Military Academy at West Point because +in going to his quarters he had to use the same hallway with other +officers. He was a learned botanist and a linguist of rare attainments. +In 1827 he carried through successfully the immense task of correcting +the proofs and supervising the publication of Webster's unabridged +dictionary--and seems to have been happier in this work of enormous +detail than at any other time of his life. + +But it was as a geologist that his most valuable practical work was +done. His "Report on the Geology of Connecticut," published in 1842, was +the result of five years of arduous labor and is a sufficient monument +for any man. + +"While engaged in this survey," he wrote, "I can confidently say that I +have been laborious and diligent. While traveling, it was my practice +to rise early, in the longer days generally at dawn; in the shorter +generally I got my breakfast and was on my way by daybreak, I continued, +scarcely with any relaxation, as long as I had daylight and then was +generally obliged to sit up till midnight, not unfrequently till one +o'clock A. M. in order to complete my notes and arrange my specimens. +This was continued, not only week after week, but month after month, +almost without cessation." + +Under the law Percival could not be paid till his report had been +approved by the governor. It is characteristic of the whimsical +geologist that he refused to submit to this approval by one whom he +considered incompetent to pass upon his labors and it was only by the +ruse of a friend who got possession of the report and presented it to +the governor, who at once approved it, that Percival secured his pay. + +This work brought Percival a high reputation as a geologist. He was +engaged by the American Mining Company to investigate the lead deposits +in Wisconsin and this in turn resulted in his employment by that state +to make a geological survey similar to that of Connecticut. He had made +his first report and was engaged upon his second when he became ill and +in May, 1856, he died and was buried in Hazel Green, Wisconsin. "Eminent +as a Poet," runs his epitaph, "rarely accomplished as a Linguist, +learned and acute in Science, a Man without Guile." + +During his employment in Wisconsin his friends had bought a lot and +built a house for him in New Haven. It was a queer structure, built +after the poet's own plans, with the entrance at the rear, blind windows +at the front, and of only one story in height. He was looking forward to +spending here his last years, close to his college, with his few +intimate friends, surrounded by his books. During an interval in his +Wisconsin employment he came to New Haven to inspect his future home and +is said to have broken down completely as he was compelled to leave by +the duty that called him westward. + +He was a strange creature, impossible to get along with, handicapped by +an over-sensitiveness that led him into resentments that often held the +implication of ingratitude, and with a constant grudge against the +world. He should have been endowed and relieved of all the detail of +life. Even then it is doubtful if he would have produced great poetry, +unless he had been rigorously trained by some dominant master to +condense, revise and work over again and again his diffuse, sentimental +and dreamy verses. A few of them retained for a time a certain vogue and +then gradually passed into oblivion. Perhaps the two that were longest +remembered were "To Seneca Lake" and "The Coral Grove." It is an odd +thing, but some selections from a boyish effort entitled "Seasons of New +England," hitherto generally cited as evidence of his youthful +absurdities, would make excellent examples of the free verse that +nowadays is taken so seriously. In this respect, at least, he was ahead +of his time. + +In his review of the "Life and Letters" Lowell seems rather dogmatic and +intolerant, but with his inevitable insight and art of statement he +crystalizes into one sentence the whole trouble with Percival. "He +appears," writes Lowell, "as striking an example as could be found of +the poetic temperament unballasted with those less obvious qualities +which make the poetic faculty." + +It should be recorded that children loved this old bachelor in spite of +his eccentricities and that with them he seemed to feel unrestrained +and free, forgetting the shyness that formed an insuperable barrier to +ready friendship with adults. In our Connecticut history he should not +be forgotten and if any of the spirits of the departed revisit the +glimpses of the moon this strange apparition ought sometimes to be met, +driving his phantom buggy through forgotten lanes of the state he loved, +or with his hammer and bag of specimens, climbing on foot the hills and +ledges he knew so well. + + + + +_VI: Who Was Peter Parley?_ + + +IF your great-grandmother were living, dear reader, she would be +appalled at your ignorance in propounding this question. Everybody knew +the identity of "Peter Parley." In his day his name was as familiar a +_nom de plume_ as Mark Twain. He was, of course, Samuel G. Goodrich. And +who--alas for the question!--was Samuel G. Goodrich? + + "Ah, pensive scholar, what is fame? + A fitful tongue of leaping flame; + A giddy whirlwind's fickle gust, + That lifts a pinch of mortal dust; + A few swift years, and who can show + Which dust was Bill, and which was Joe?" + +He does not deserve to be forgotten. Born at Ridgefield, Connecticut, in +1793, he died at New York City in 1860. For twenty-four hours his body +lay in state in St. Bartholomew's Church where crowds passed his bier +and at Southbury, Connecticut, where he was buried, groups of children +preceded the coffin and strewed flowers in its path. + +It was a fitting and touching ceremony, for all his life he had been the +friend of children. It was almost entirely for them that he wrote his +two hundred books, of which he estimated, five years before his death, +that seven million copies had then been sold, including, we assume, +those editions that had been translated into nearly every modern +language, even Greek and Persian. + +Rummage among the top shelves of any old library and you will be pretty +sure to discover some of these almost forgotten volumes--Parley's "Tales +of the Sea," "Tales About the Sun, Moon and Stars," tales about New +York, about ancient Rome, about Great Britain, about animals, about +almost everything in this interesting world and outside of it. Of his +"Natural History" George Du Maurier says--"Last, but not least of our +library, was Peter Parley's 'Natural History,' of which we knew every +word by heart," and a writer in the "Congregationalist" a quarter of a +century ago ventured the opinion, "We have no doubt, were it needed, +that 1,000 aged people could rise and repeat the widely famous lines, +'The world is round and, like a ball, seems swinging in the air.'" + +You will find as a frontispiece for some of these well worn books a +picture of a kindly old gentleman in a cocked hat, with a crutch and a +gouty foot, his pockets bulging with good things for children. This was +the mythical "Peter Parley", and Goodrich tells an amusing story of how, +during a visit in the South, his host's little grandson, after +cautiously inspecting the visitor who had been introduced to him as +Peter Parley, took his grandfather aside and warned him that the guest +must be an impostor, for his foot wasn't bound up and he didn't walk +with a crutch. + +Perhaps in your search on the dusty shelves you will be fortunate enough +to find a copy of Goodrich's verses entitled "The Outcast, and Other +Poems," printed in 1841, or an odd number of "The Token," an "annual," +which Goodrich published from 1828 till 1842 and in which were first +given to the world some of the early productions of such young literary +sparks as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Henry Wadsworth +Longfellow. + +During the course of an eventful life Goodrich came into relations more +or less intimate with many famous people. A few of them, beside those +just mentioned, were Daniel Webster (who had a great admiration for his +writings), James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, Whittier, Jeffery, +founder and editor of the Edinburgh Review, Sir Walter Scott and +Lockhart his son-in-law and biographer. Goodrich was an eye-witness in +Paris of the Revolution of '48 and he draws a vivid portrait of the +third Napoleon on the eve of the Coup d'Etat. His daughter tells of an +informal celebration in Florence, planned in his honor by Charles Lever, +at which there were present the Brownings, the Tennysons, (she liked +Frederic the best) the Storys, Gibson and Powers the sculptors, Lowell, +Lamartine, Longfellow, Trollope, Buchanan Read and others--surely a +brilliant company of which to be the center. + +In London he was present at the ceremonies attendant upon the return of +Byron's body from Greece. He heard Clay, Calhoun, John Randolph and +other celebrities of the day speak in the Senate. He was a guest at +levees at the White House and gives a dramatic account of a meeting +there between Jackson and John Quincy Adams on the night of the former's +defeat for the presidency by the latter. He saw John Marshall presiding +over the Supreme Court. He presents a minute description of President +Monroe whom he encountered both at Washington and also at Hartford +during a ceremony at the School for the Deaf, and whose personal +appearance he thought far from prepossessing. In fact, there are few +persons who attained distinction during the first half of the nineteenth +century of whom the reader will not find an entertaining and graphic +sketch in Goodrich's "Recollections of a Life Time." + +It is a book well worth reading for not only is it written in an amusing +and racy style and enlivened by anecdote and delightful comment, but it +is a historic review of the politics, literature, international +relations and social life of the time, put together by a writer +eminently qualified for the task. We are chiefly concerned, however, +with Goodrich's picture of life in the old town a century ago. + +He came here as a youth of seventeen in 1811 and Hartford was his home, +though he was frequently absent in Europe and elsewhere, till 1826 when +he moved to Boston. + +The city when he arrived was, he says, "a small commercial town, of four +thousand inhabitants, dealing in lumber and smelling of molasses and Old +Jamaica--for it had still some trade with the West Indies. . . . There +was a high tone of general intelligence and social respectability about +the place, but it had not a single institution, a single monument that +marked it as even a provincial metropolis of taste, in literature, art, +or refinement." In this latter respect things were changed before he +left. Trinity (then Washington) College, the American School for the +Deaf, the Retreat for the Insane and other philanthropic and educational +institutions were established during his residence in the provincial +capital. + +On his arrival he worked as a clerk in a dry goods store and his +intimate friend was George Sheldon, "favored clerk" in the "ancient and +honored firm" of Hudson & Goodwin, publishers of the "Connecticut +Courant," Webster's Spelling Book, and much besides. Mr. Goodwin, of +this firm, he describes as "a large, hale, comely old gentleman, of +lively mind and cheerful manners. There was always sunshine in his bosom +and wit upon his lip. He turned his hand to various things, though +chiefly to the newspaper, which was his pet. His heaven was the upper +loft in the composition room; setting type had for him the sedative +charms of knitting work to a country dame." + +At the home of his uncle, Senator Chauncey Goodrich, he met all the +prominent members of the famous "Hartford Convention," which finds in +him a vigorous defender against the charge of unpatriotism. + +During the War of 1812 he served at New London as a member of a Hartford +artillery battery, a sort of _corps d'élite_, under the command of +Captain Nathan Johnson, a well known lawyer who afterward became general +of militia. Though he was for a few brief moments under the bombardment +of the British ships that were blockading Decatur, Biddle and Jones in +the Thames, his service was bloodless and he narrates it with humor and +gusto. + +He began his career as a publisher in partnership with Sheldon whose +early death terminated that enterprise. Goodrich himself, however, here +published by subscription the poems of John Trumbull, whom he knew well, +eight volumes of the Waverly novels, then arousing intense interest, +and several school books and "toy books," as he calls them, for +children. He was a leading member of a literary club which included +Bishop J. M. Wainwright, Isaac Toucey, William M. Stone, Jonathan Law +and S. H. Huntington. + +Another literary "cotery," of which Mrs. Sigourney was the presiding +genius, met generally at Daniel Wadsworth's home. Some of the poems and +papers read at the first of these clubs were published by Goodrich in a +short-lived periodical called "The Round Table." + +We find gossipy sketches of Jeremiah Wadsworth, Dr. Cogswell and his +deaf and dumb daughter Alice, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, Theodore Dwight, +the poets Brainard and Percival, Dr. Strong, pastor of the "Middle +Brick" (the Center) Church, Colonel John Trumbull, the artist and his +beautiful wife, who was supposed to be the daughter of an English earl +but about whose lineage there was an impenetrable mystery. Many others +of the old Hartford characters live again in these pages which furnish +us what is doubtless a very accurate, as well as a very charming +impression of the social life of the old town one hundred years ago. + +But the great world called the future "Peter Parley" and his ambitions +and love of variety drew him away from the place of his earliest +literary experience to foreign residence and travel and to the little +brown house that he afterward built at Jamaica Plain. Later in life he +returned again to Europe and for two years was American Consul at Paris. + +He had his failures as well as his successes, his days of financial +losses, as well as of affluence. He experienced, too, his periods of +feeble health. But he possessed the courage that ancestry like his often +seems to breed and one cannot fail to accord a hearty tribute to the +resolution with which, in an impaired physical condition, he set +himself, like Mr. Clemens, to overcome adversity with hard work, with +his pen. + +His Parley books were the outgrowth of two impulses or +characteristics--his innate love of children and his personal rebellion +on the one hand against the dull school books of his boyhood and on the +other against what he considered such ridiculous and deleterious old +fairy stories as "Little Red Riding Hood" and "Jack the Giant Killer." +He did not think the climax of "Little Red Riding Hood" was healthy +reading for children and he did not at all approve of Jack the Giant +Killer's morals. In his opinion there was no particular sense in the +Mother Goose jingles. + +And so he tried to give children, in the guise of perfectly proper but +at the same time interesting stories and verses, the information and a +good deal of the education they required. He may have carried his theory +to some extremes, but he was one of the first among us to realize that +with children effective educational methods must take into consideration +the securing at the outset of interest and attention. + +What extraordinary success he achieved has already been intimated. Yet +it is pathetic to note that he himself was the first to acknowledge the +fact that his fame would be temporary. "I have written too much," he +says at the height of his reputation, "and have done nothing really +well. You need not whisper it to the public, at least until I am gone; +but I know, better than anyone can tell me, that there is nothing in +this long catalogue [of his books] that will give me a permanent place +in literature." + +Yet it is safe to say that as long as the human mind loves to dip into +the past and to re-create in familiar surroundings the scenes and +people of long ago his "Recollections of a Life Time" will have its +readers. And many of us would cheerfully relinquish any hope of immortal +memory could we be assured of the love of the countless children to whom +"Peter Parley" was a dear friend and companion. + + + + +_VII: A Preacher of the Gospel_ + + +IT is not often claimed that the small city or country town produces +proportionately more of the human phenomena popularly denominated +"characters" than does the larger municipality. Whether this is indeed a +fact, or whether the truth is that in the small group variations from +type are more conspicuous, is perhaps immaterial. At all events the +memories and traditions of pronounced personalities seem to be +frequently associated with the less populous communities, especially in +New England. + +In any review of the personages that lived in the capital of Connecticut +in the last century the individuality of one of the life-long pastors of +its oldest church stands forth as a shining example of the capricious +and at the same time engaging forms in which humanity may be clothed. +Above all else the Rev. Doctor Joel Hawes was a "character." + +To begin with, his personal appearance was sufficiently extraordinary. +Tall, gaunt, awkward, with large hands and feet, he would have attracted +attention--and did attract attention--anywhere. His face was homely and +in repose unprepossessing, but when he became interested in talk his +expression gathered from the play of thought an animation which caused +his listeners to forget the essential unattractiveness of his features. + +In many respects there was something Lincoln-like about him, though he +lacked the fine eyes, the wistful, haunting look, that distinguish the +later portraits of his great contemporary. Like Lincoln, too, he came +from the common stock and was trained in a rough school. The story of +his tacking loose leaves from the Bible on the walls of the store, where +in his youth he worked, and memorizing verses between visits of +customers recalls somewhat similar methods of self-education employed by +the boy who became president. With no money, with no friends except of +his own making, with no "advantages" or "background," with not even a +fair start, he early developed a tremendous courage and determination; +when to this was added a sense that the hand of God was upon him +nothing could stop him. That in his day he should become one of the +foremost divines in the country was inevitable. + +It was his earnestness and force that made him what he was and not, it +must be confessed, any outstanding brilliancy of mind. His +fellow-citizen, Doctor Bushnell, far excelled him in mental power, in +breadth and originality of thought, in versatility and imagination. In +Horace Bushnell was always something of the poet, much of the mystic. +His books are bought today and his name remembered, while Dr. Hawes, +except in his old church and city, is forgotten. Yet it is to be doubted +whether, considering Joel Hawes's early difficulties and his moderate +mental equipment, one could find a better example than his life +furnished of what may be accomplished by a man who cherishes a +conviction of personal destiny. He became assured that God intended him +to preach the gospel and he proceeded to do just exactly that with +confidence, single-mindedness and consequent success during a long life. +His last sermon was delivered three days before his death. + +Here is his theory of the preacher's mission: "Truth, God's truth +especially, is _eternally_, and _must_ be, interesting to the mind of +man; and, if I can succeed in getting that truth before the minds of my +people, I shall not fail to interest and instruct all classes of them, +be their cultivation and tastes and habits ever so dissimilar. This, +then, shall be the great, leading object of my preaching: I will get as +much of God's truth into my sermons as I can" . . . . + +Might not this principle be adopted to advantage by many a modern +clergyman? + +It was in a rough-shod manner, regardless of obstacles, that Doctor +Hawes plowed his way through life. He did not know how to compromise. +Tact, adaptability, adjustment, finesse,--these words were not included +in his vocabulary. He paid little attention to the amenities of +existence, but went directly to his object, as on the occasion when in +prayer meeting, after lamenting the fact that ordinarily only a few +persons took active part in these gatherings, he suddenly called upon +one diffident attendant, whose voice had never been heard, with the +peremptory request, "Brother Jones, will you lead us in prayer--and we +won't take any excuse." + +He spoke the plain truth as he saw it, regardless of whether it was +appropriate, or sometimes whether it hurt. A distinguished lawyer, no +longer living, once told the writer that when he was a small boy the +doctor met him one day in the street, stopped him, put his hand on his +head, and, after gazing intently at him for so long that the child +became rather frightened, at last ejaculated, "Charles, you remind me so +much of your grandfather--_he_ was a hard-featur'd man!" + +This absolute sincerity, this disdain of any pretense or artificiality, +this almost childlike naïveté, while they furnished many amusing and +sometimes embarrassing incidents, had no small part in endearing the +good man in the hearts of his people. Indeed the significant thing about +the numerous anecdotes of him that are still occasionally quoted is that +while so many of them turn on his peculiarities and eccentricities, none +of them seems to detract from the affection and esteem in which the man +and his memory are held in the traditions of his church. Doubtless the +reason is that these stories essentially serve to delineate and illumine +the portrait of an intensely earnest, able and vigorous servant of God +and his fellow men. + +His humor was not all unconscious. He had his own notions of the +incongruous and diverting. On one of his journeys abroad he wrote of +the tombs in Westminster Abby--"There lie in promiscuous assemblage +kings, queens, statesmen, warriors, poets, scholars, prostitutes, and +villains, each, by his epitaph, now in heaven, but all awaiting the +decisions of the last day, which, in a great majority of cases, will, it +cannot be doubted, reverse forever the judgment of man." + +There was, too, another side to him. Hidden in the uncouth body was a +kindly and sympathetic heart. Children, at first awed and possibly +repelled by his appearance and manners, soon grew to love him. His +biographer quotes him as saying that he could never go past a hand-organ +in the street without stopping to listen with the children and see the +monkey. + +Sorrow and suffering found in him an instant response and the +instinctive impulse to comfort and help. Generally these traits, while +partly inherent, are emphasized and made of value to others, as well as +to one's self, by experience. Doctor Hawes's life had its tragic sorrows +and these were translated into a singular ability to comfort and help. +Then, too, while he would never compromise for an instant with +temptation, weakness and sin, he could understand. As in the case of +most forceful, passionate natures, his early days, before he discovered +the Bible, had their period of wildness, brief though it was. In the +practical conduct of life he was no theorist, no amateur. He had +struggled against poverty and loneliness, as he had fought and conquered +the devil in his own life, and he recognized his old adversary and knew +how to deal with him when he saw the fight going on in the experience of +others. + +Perhaps it was all this as much as anything that constituted the +foundation for his interest in the youth of his church and city. In 1827 +this interest resulted in a series of "Lectures to Young Men" delivered +on successive Sunday evenings to crowded and enthusiastic assemblies in +his own church, and later repeated at Yale College where subsequently he +became a member of the corporation. The following year the lectures were +published "at the united request" of his hearers and instantly became +famous. "Few books," says Doctor Walker in his history of the First +Church, "attained a like circulation." Nearly a hundred thousand copies, +in various editions, were issued in this country and more in Great +Britain. One Scotch publisher alone, asserts Doctor Walker, printed +fifty thousand copies. + +Reading these lectures today, nearly a century after their composition, +one is impressed by the fact that here is a compendium, as valuable now +as at the time of delivery, of practical rules for a good and useful +life. The titles of the five original addresses indicate the subject +matter--"Claims of Society on Young Men;" "Dangers of Young Men;" +"Importance of Established Principles;" "Formation and Importance of +Character;" "Religion the Chief Concern." + +The lectures deal with plain, fundamental truths, in a straightforward +business-like way. There is as little ornament as imagination about +them; they have more vigor than originality, but they are bristling with +common sense and set forth with tremendous earnestness the principles of +a practical Christian philosopher. Epigrammatic touches, indeed, are not +wanting. "A lover of good books," says the lecturer, "can never be in +want of good society;" and again, "He who cares not for others will soon +find that others will not care for him." "The Gospel may be neglected," +he asserts, "but it cannot be understandingly disbelieved." "Character +is power; character is influence," he says, "and he who has character, +though he may have nothing else, has the means of being eminently +useful, not only to his immediate friends, but to society, to the church +of God, and to the world." + +Today the mind of youth is questioning. It is seeking not only rules for +the conduct of life but a rational interpretation of religious creed and +aspiration that will prove a guide in explorations on ground that +perhaps Doctor Hawes would have considered forbidden. He was not a +meta-physician. To him the way was plain. The fundamental truths, the +orthodox acceptances, were good enough for him. The questions that for +long troubled Doctor Bushnell not only did not worry Doctor Hawes--he +did not understand why one should ask them. Doctor Bushnell was ahead of +his time. He began where Doctor Hawes left off, and soon about the +younger man gathered a school of disciples who shared in sympathy, if +not with equality of intellectual penetration, the tenets of the +religious philosopher, the visions of the seer and poet. + +It was inevitable that two such divergent personalities as Hawes and +Bushnell, laborers in the same field, living in the same city, should +come into conflict. The story of that famous difference, of the +struggles to find common ground and of the final reconciliation, have +today a note of pathos. For the lay reader it is not easy at first +glance to see what it is all about, and yet what feeling and bitterness +were aroused! + +There is no space here to go into the details of that old dispute. The +letters the two ministers exchanged, like all sincere letters, are +typical of their respective characters and a memorialist of Doctor Hawes +finds nothing for which to apologize in his side of the correspondence. +His letters, indeed, evidence what a modern theologian might consider +his speculative limitations, but they show, too, beneath his +determination to adhere to his principles, a genuine grief at the +separation and a hope that the two churches might be "rooted and +grounded in the truth, and their pastors as happily united in fellowship +and love." + +The church of which Doctor Hawes was minister was, and still is, +something more than an ecclesiastical organization. It is a civic +institution. It founded the town. Its minister takes rank as a public +personage. In this character Dr. Hawes was interested in many local +activities. An example of this was his connection with the famous +Hartford Female Seminary--and this may serve also as another +illustration of his interest in young people. On the Seminary's +organization he was chosen a trustee--an office he held till his death. +For many years he was its president. At the reunion of its graduates in +1892, a speaker who had been one of his "boys," and who was the executor +of his will, gave a little address on his old pastor which is one of the +best portraits of him that remains. + +". . . the Hartford Female Seminary," said this speaker, "was his especial +delight. To its principals he was a devoted friend; its teachers were +his protegés and assistants; the pupils his spiritual garden. It was to +him the nursery of all that was best in womanhood. I do not know how his +sober judgment would have ranked, in relative importance, Yale College, +the A. B. C. F. M., and the Seminary; but I know that in his affection +this school had the warmest place. How regularly on Monday morning he +opened its sessions with fervent prayer; how benignantly his benediction +fell on the school as he took his departure, you all know who were in +attendance in his time. And although you may have smiled at his +peculiarities, I do not believe a doubt ever crossed one of your minds +that Joel Hawes was a loving, faithful friend, and truly a man of God." + + + + +_VIII: A Friend of Lincoln_ + + +IN the Spring of 1869 Gideon Welles, who had been appointed Secretary of +the Navy by Lincoln and had served to the end of the Johnson +administration, returned to Hartford where he lived till his death in +1878. His diary for May 2, 1869, contains the following entry: + + "We left New York at 3 P. M. and reached Hartford at + seven, stopping at the Allyn House. Nearly four years + have passed since I have been here, more than eight + since I left and took up my residence in Washington. . . . + Hartford itself has greatly altered--I might say + improved--for it has been beautified and adorned by + many magnificent buildings, and the population has + increased. These I see and appreciate; but I feel more + sensibly than these, other changes which come home to + my heart. A new and different people seem to move in + the streets. Few, comparatively, are known to me. A new + generation which knows not Joseph is here." + + +Perhaps it was natural that the retiring secretary of the navy, +returning quietly and unannounced and with possibly a trace of the +depression that comes with the relinquishment of great affairs, should +fancy a certain lack of enthusiasm in his welcome. But a little later, +when he had bought the house, now No. 11 Charter Oak Place, which was to +be his future home, and his presence was more widely known, he found his +friends more appreciative. + + "During the week," he writes some days later, "old + friends have called and welcomed me back. . . . My old + friend, Calvin Day, was absent from the city when I + arrived and did not get home till midnight on + Saturday. As soon as he knew I was here, on Monday + morning, he called. H. A. Perkins, Mrs. Colt, Beach, + Seymour, etc., etc., called. Mark Howard is absent. + Governor Hawley saw me at breakfast on Wednesday last + and immediately came and greeted me." + +It is not without interest to note that the servant question was at the +time a great problem. This, and the confusion of getting settled, of +unpacking loads of furniture, of arranging the contents of two hundred +and twenty-four boxes that arrived from Washington, while Mrs. Welles +was confined to her room as the result of a fall, "have made me," he +writes, "unused as I am to these matters, exceedingly uncomfortable." +Nevertheless, there is some mitigation, as this entry shows: + + "Met Mr. Hamersley--who invited me to his store, where + we had an hour, on political subjects chiefly. It is + somewhere about fifteen years since we have had such + and so long a conversation. So far as I have met and + seen old friends, I have had every reason to be + satisfied. Though not very demonstrative or forward in + calling, they have without exception been cordial and + apparently sincere." + +During the nine remaining years of his life Mr. Welles lived quietly, +devoting most of his time to writing, his chief pieces of work being an +elaborate article claiming for the navy, which he felt had never +received its proper share of the credit, the most important part in the +capture of New Orleans, and a little volume entitled "Lincoln and +Seward." + +The career which he looked back upon in these last years was one which +should have brought to any man the satisfactions that come from +important work well done. There were, of course, elements that would +naturally interfere with such satisfactions--and these a man like Gideon +Welles took to heart more seriously than another might have done. No one +could have served as he did in high administration during those eight +eventful years without a sense of the blundering, the waste, the +cross-purposes, the petty motives, and even the treachery that were +exhibited in such a disheartening fashion to those behind the scenes. +But through all this he pursued steadfastly his honest and able way, not +exempt from bitter criticism, like all his colleagues, nor from spiteful +intrigue. He seems such a unique and stalwart figure that one is led to +inquire, as one reads his history and his personal record, why he was +not more famous in his day and time. + +Perhaps one reason is that while he had a remarkable gift of common +sense, he lacked a sense of humor and the sense of proportion that +accompanies it. His diary, it is quite true, is at times what one would +call humorous reading, but the humor is either unconscious or partakes +of sarcasm. He took life pretty seriously--and indeed he had occasion to +do so. + +Then one infers another characteristic which is so difficult to define +and in its way so subtle that one hesitates to be dogmatic about it. Yet +reading between the lines of the diary, which is one of the frankest +human documents in the world, one reader at least gains the impression +that the author, perhaps realizing the innate tendency, which the diary +shows, to pronounce judgment, felt before the world the necessity of +putting a curb upon this propensity. In public he never seems to have +asserted himself in the Rooseveltian manner. He had decided opinions of +his own and was altogether an independent, fearless person, but he +appears to have been one of the rather reticent members of the cabinet. +A friend tells him on one occasion that he should have been more forward +in expressing his views and the diary has many references to times when +he judged silence the better course--as very likely it was--for with him +silence never went so far as to constitute consent to anything he +disapproved. Far more single-minded and straightforward than some of the +other cabinet ministers, he apparently lacked the art, which many men of +smaller caliber possessed, of getting his personality in a large way +before the country. + +One feels that here was a capable and high-minded public servant, with +many qualities which in another personality would have produced a great +leader of men. But there was always this reticence. Was it possibly the +inheritance of a New England ancestry? + +However, if in his life-time Gideon Welles lacked the gift for +individual prominence that with some of his contemporaries seemed to be +the main object of life, the publication of his remarkable "Diary" has, +long after his death, immortalized him. In this journal we have both a +revelation of personal character that is illuminating and a historic +document that is invaluable. + +It is fortunate for us that when Gideon Welles sat down to his diary all +restraint and repression disappeared. His clarity of vision, his +firmness in his belief of what was just and right, his devotion to duty, +his singular ability to estimate men and to portray character--all this +gives even a casual reader a very clear conception of what manner of man +he himself was. As for others, the figures that live forever in these +pages are real people, wrestling in their various characteristic ways +with portentous problems, the solutions of which we now look back upon +as historic matters long since worked out, but which in many instances +presented very different aspects at the time from those which now are +obvious to us. It is remarkable how the judgment of posterity as to +individuals has confirmed Welles's contemporary estimate. + +To cite these portraits in detail would be to give a catalogue of the +prominent characters of the day. At once the greatest and, to the modern +reader the most interesting, is that of Abraham Lincoln. His personality +does not appear complete and finished in any one description, but is a +composite of comment, conversation and action recounted from time to +time in the pages covering the period that elapsed before his death. +Thus we see the gradual growing appreciation of his character from that +early day when Welles noted that "much had been said and was then +uttered by partisans of the incompetency of Mr. Lincoln and his +unfitness," to that later cloudy morning when, by the bed on which the +murdered President had to be laid diagonally because of his great +height, Welles "witnessed the wasting life of the good and great man who +was expiring before me." Any reader of the diary who is also familiar +with the latest study of the war President--that by Lord Charnwood--and +who has read or seen Drinkwater's "Lincoln," is instantly aware of the +value of this journal to the historian and the dramatist. + +Perhaps the ability to depict personality is the most conspicuous trait +of Gideon Welles as a writer. In this respect he adds to his ability to +gauge character the expressive qualities of the literary artist. While +his estimates of men are startlingly frank and definite, he is always +fair, even toward those whom he disliked. Even in those biting, incisive +phrases relating to his _bête noir_, Senator John P. Hale, there is +something of the inevitable, impersonal condemnation of a court. + +The suggestions of a certain reserve in public must not be interpreted +as implying any hesitation to express the diarist's convictions when he +considered that the occasion called for them. Far otherwise. Read, for +example, the careful recitals of those deliberate, overwhelming, +sledgehammer conversational blows the secretary inflicted on the head of +Senator Hale when the opportunity at last came of loosing long pent-up +emotions. The senator must have emerged from that interview a stunned, +if wiser, man. + +And very early in their mutual official connection the Secretary of +State discovered that Mr. Welles, and only Mr. Welles, was going to run +the Navy Department. When Seward attempted to interfere surreptitiously +with the naval expedition to relieve Sumter he found himself in a great +deal of trouble, the net result of which may be summarized in the +following quotation from the diary: + + "On our way thither [to see the President] Mr. Seward + remarked that, old as he was, he had learned a lesson + from this affair, and that was, he had better attend + to his own business and confine his labors to his own + department. To this I cordially assented." + +The return of the Secretary to Hartford brought many memories of old +times--days, when as editor of the "Hartford Times" he had worked for +Jackson's election, later days when, slavery being injected as a moral +issue into politics, he had abandoned the democratic creed and adopted +the republican. Then there were the years when he had served as +postmaster, as member of the general assembly, as state +comptroller--and, again, that searching period when for the sake of his +convictions he was willing to face sure defeat as republican candidate +for governor. For eight years he had served as a member of the +republican national committee and he was chairman of his state +delegation to the convention that nominated for the presidency the man +who was to be afterward his chief and his staunch friend--Abraham +Lincoln. We have Lincoln's own word for it, as reported verbatim in the +diary, that there was no wire-pulling in connection with Gideon Welles's +appointment. The fact that he was a New England man may have had +something to do with it, but the real consideration was his record. + +It was a life full of service for his country and of devotion to the +faith that was in him, that the old man looked back upon in the closing +years. + + + + +_IX: Our Battle Laureate_ + + +ABOUT six months before Gideon Welles returned to his old home, an +ensign in that navy of which Mr. Welles was, under the President, +commander-in-chief, landed in the port of New York on the U. S. steam +frigate "Franklin". The "Franklin" bore the flag of Admiral Farragut, +who was returning from a two-year command of our European Squadron, and +the ensign, Henry Howard Brownell, of East Hartford, was a member of the +great sailor's personal staff on which he had served during the war. + +It was the end of Brownell's service and travels. Four years later, on +October 31, 1872, at the height of the Grant-Greeley campaign, he died +at the family homestead after a long and distressing illness. He had +been born in 1820. Seven years before his death Dr. Holmes, in a review +in the "Atlantic" of one of his slim volumes of verse, had called him +"Our Battle Laureate." + +Uneven as his verse was, he was a true poet. A spark of the divine fire +had fallen upon him. Other activities had been attempted, but for him +there clearly was in them no satisfaction. As a youth he tried +mercantile life in New York, but abandoned it after less than a year. +Teaching seems to have been the practical--if poetry is not +"practical"--pursuit which proved most congenial and it is singular that +his first work as a teacher was in Mobile near which the great +experience of his life later occurred. This short sojourn in the South +came after his graduation in 1841 from Trinity College and was followed +by study of the law in Hartford where he was admitted to the bar and for +a short time practiced in partnership with his brother Charles. + +But the law was not for him. The poetic muse was always whispering in +his ear. He saw visions and dreamed dreams--witness his "Song of the +Archangels." Yet he was rather a direct and rugged sort of poet. +Subtlety and indirection, fine shadings, carefully wrought lines, had +little place in his methods. He appears to have been impatient of +revision. He felt deeply and the need of expression was instant. Often +he wrote, as he states in the preface to "Lyrics of a Day," _currente +calamo_, and most of his verses were seen first in the pages of the +Hartford newspapers. In the light of modern technique many of them seem +already a little old-fashioned. Perhaps the present-day undergraduate +would call some of them "simple." Yet any of our young intellectuals +might be proud of having written "In Articulo Mortis"; surely there is +nothing very simple about "The Sphinx." And one is occasionally startled +by lines that have the perfect, the inevitable phrase--as in these from +"The Tomb of Columbus"-- + + ". . . . the fragrant breath + Of unknown tropic flowers came o'er my path, + Wafted--how pleasantly! for I had been + Long on the seas, and their soft, waveless glare + Had made green fields a longing." + +It would be difficult to improve on that last line. Again--to most +readers there will come a swift and dramatic vision from the two stanzas +of "Qu'il Mourut"-- + + "Not a sob, not a tear be spent + For those who fell at his side-- + But a moan and a long lament + For him--who might have died! + + "Who might have lain, as Harold lay, + A King, and in state enow-- + Or slept with his peers, like Roland + In the Straits of Roncesvaux." + +In all his early verse there is much that is haunting and memorable, +together with much that is trivial and even flippant, It was the coming +of the Civil War that made Henry Brownell known as a poet. Indeed he +published little before that time. + +In our own day we have had great moral issues in war and we have known +what the response to them could be. These issues were, however, involved +with many other peoples, their application was, in a way, diffused; to +different races they presented different aspects. But the Civil War was +our _own_ war, its issues were concentrated; it not only involved +national honor, it concerned, and vitally concerned, the question +whether the nation should live. + +To these portentous messages and alarms, borne on every breath of the +wandering breezes of those tense days, the spirit of Henry Brownell +responded with an intuitive instinct, a poetic eloquence, akin to that +of the seers and the prophets. + + "World, art thou 'ware of a storm? + Hark to the ominous sound, + How the far-off gales their battle form, + And the great sea swells feel ground!" + +In 1860, the Hartford papers were full of his "fiery lyrics" and the +writer--was it Hawley or Warner?--of an appreciation of Brownell in the +"Courant" shortly after his death tells how well he remembered the day +in the anxious winter of 1860-61 when Brownell brought into the office +of the old "Evening Press" the manuscript of "Annus Memorabilis"--verses +breathing a resolution and exaltation of courage that brought a generous +measure of fame. There is something about "Annus Memorabilis"--not only +the meter which is the same--that suggests Macaulay's "Naseby," +something, too, remotely suggestive of Kipling. Into this mood of +exaltation there ran occasionally a vein of humor that only deserves +mention in the case of the verses "Let Us Alone," inspired by Jefferson +Davis's statement in his inaugural address, "All we want is to be left +alone." Though of little poetic merit these lines caught the popular +fancy and were long remembered and quoted. + +And so the war came on, and the poet's vision, which had been laughed at +by some readers, was justified by events. There came defeats, almost +countless deaths, occasional victories, doubts of final victory--all the +ebb and flow and waste of war--and to it all the sensitive but vigorous +spirit responded in many chords. Of the gentler lays, the most winning +to the writer are the verses called "The Battle Summers." Here are a few +of the stanzas-- + + "All vain--Fair Oaks and Seven Pines! + A deeper hue than dying Fall + May lend, is yours!--yet over all + The mild Virginian autumn smiles, + + . . . . . + + "We pass--we sink like summer's snow-- + Yet on the mighty Cause shall move, + Though every field a Cannae prove, + And every pass a Roncesvaux. + + "Through every summer burn anew + A battle summer,--though each day + We name a new Aceldema, + Or some dry Golgotha re-dew." + +On the whole, however, it was the magnificence, the drama, of the +struggle that possessed him--sometimes the realization of the +tremendous stakes for which the game was played, sometimes the actual, +objective romance of events, as in the beginning of the famous "River +Fight"-- + + "Would you hear of the River Fight? + It was two of a soft spring night-- + God's stars looked down on all, + And all was clear and bright. + But the low fog's chilling breath-- + Up the River of Death + Sailed the Great Admiral." + +His own participation in the fighting came about in a strange way. He +paraphrased in verse, first published in the "Evening Press," the rather +dramatic general orders preparatory to the "River Fight." Poetically it +was not a great performance, but in some way it came to the attention of +Farragut who was greatly impressed. The acquaintance thus begun resulted +in the unusual appointment of Brownell as master's mate on Farragut's +staff and, shortly thereafter, as ensign, with the duties of secretary. + +One can fancy the lift and glory in the heart of this rather retiring +poet and teacher, with a hitherto unsatisfied thirst for action and +drama, as he stood on the quarter-deck of the "Hartford" fighting her +way up Mobile Bay on that early August morning in 1864. At last he was +in the midst of great events. This was his crowded hour--and the gods +gave him full measure. Even in plain prose it is a gallant story. What a +life-time must have been lived in those moments when Craven's monitor +"Tecumseh", off to port, making for the Confederate ram "Tennessee", +struck a torpedo and went down; when the "Brooklyn", leading the column, +just ahead of the "Hartford", backed down upon the flag-ship, in fear of +more torpedoes; when Farragut, lashed in the rigging, saw his line +doubling up in confusion close under the Confederate batteries! It was +then occurred the famous colloquy and order. "What is the trouble?" was +asked of the "Brooklyn" by the flag-ship and the answer--"Torpedoes." +"Damn the torpedoes!" shouted the Admiral. "Captain Drayton, go ahead! +Jouett, full speed!" And the "Hartford," increasing speed rapidly, +passed under the stern of the "Brooklyn" and took the lead, firing her +starboard batteries as fast as the men could work. One did not need to +be a poet to secure a thrill from such a situation, but what must it +have meant to the creative imagination that till then had pictured such +scenes only in fancy! + +And this was only the early part of the fight. Through it all Brownell +took notes, as he had been ordered, of the progress of the action and +literally wrote at least one stanza of "The Bay Fight." During the +battle he dropped one of his papers which was later found and returned +to him with an expression of admiration that he could write so legibly +in the midst of such excitement. "If I were killed," he replied, "I +didn't want any of you to think I'd been afraid." + +Probably "The Bay Fight" was Brownell's most famous poem, though "The +River Fight" is generally classed with it. The ballad has its faults. It +is too long and too detailed for modern taste. It is ragged in +places--the poet made his own versification much of the time. But it has +vigor, vividness and sincere emotion, and through it all runs the +turmoil and thunder of the battle. "The Bay Fight" has been compared to +the work of Campbell, Drayton and Tennyson--yet no one has suggested a +special likeness in temper and methods, in its narrative portions, to +"The Ballad of the Revenge" of which it reminded one reader. At the +close, where the meter changes to a quieter rhythm, there are a +tenderness and aspiration and felicity of phrasing that arrest even the +casual reader-- + + "To-day the Dahlgren and the drum + Are dread Apostles of his name; + His Kingdom here can only come + By chrism of blood and flame. + + "Be strong; already slants the gold + Athwart these wild and stormy skies; + From out this blackened waste, behold, + What happy homes shall rise! + + . . . . . . + + "And never fear a victor foe-- + Thy children's hearts are strong and high, + Nor mourn too fondly--well they know + On deck or field to die." + +The verse of the Great War and that of the Civil War show one marked +contrast. The best poetry of the recent titanic struggle is +individualistic. It reflects the re-actions of personality to the stress +and tension, the long-drawn, desperate drudgery, the tragedy, and +sometimes the humor, of the strange experience. It pictures the dreams +of home and peace. Most of the best of it has been written by young +soldiers, many of whom were novices in the poetic rôle. On the whole +the well-known poets did not come up to expectations. There were of +course exceptions, but most of this recent verse, appealing and +beautiful as it is, misses the higher vision, perhaps because the +immediate scene and the personal experience were so overwhelming. The +poets of our Civil War, however, were obsessed with the meaning of it +all, with the hopes and fears for the country's future. Have we as yet +anything in American verse about the Great War that we can place beside +the best war poetry of Holmes and Whittier? Can we find sustained poetic +inspiration that compares with Lowell's "Commemoration Ode"? Whereas to +this recent conflict is the lyric power of the "The Battle Hymn of the +Republic"? And, coming down to mere narrative and descriptive verse, +what incident of this modern Armageddon has found among us its immortal +ballad, as the battle of Mobile Bay found its eloquent poetic record in +"The Bay Fight"? + + + + +_X: The Temple of the Muses_ + + +TO older citizens the Wadsworth Atheneum has an especial and peculiar +charm. Doubtless more recent residents also feel this attraction, but it +is natural that to those who as children lived in its shadow, as it +were, the appeal should be strongest. + +Here we were wont to go on rainy afternoons to look at the illustrated +papers in the reading room. In the historical society's quarters +upstairs it used to give one a peculiar thrill to sit on the link of the +chain which during the Revolution was stretched across the Hudson at +West Point, and which we had read about in the "Boys of 'Seventy-Six." +There was, too, a certain ghastly emotional experience to be derived +from an inspection of the sword holes, just over the heart, in the +waistcoat and shirt of Colonel Ledyard. Then there were those Saturday +mornings spent with the good friend of all children in the weekly +proceedings at the Atheneum of the old "Agassiz Association." + +In those days we were reading "Kenilworth" and "Woodstock" and the +castellated structure acquired in our minds a quality of mystery and +romance. Certain precincts of the building were denied us and an +impression gained credence that somewhere in the edifice, the plan of +which we never fathomed, were secret rooms, passages and staircases. +Certainly if ghosts walked anywhere the place where you would be most +likely to find them was on some Hallowe'en midnight among these relics +of the past. But we never got in at midnight--in fact nothing could have +persuaded us to attempt such an entry. + +More mature experience removed something of the mystery, but the charm +never entirely vanished. It came, however, to be exercised in different +ways. Perhaps it was necessary during vacations to supplement college +reading by the use of the historical society's library, then installed +in the delightful quarters that had been the first home of the Watkinson +collection. In many ways it seems a pity that this old library, with its +oak bookshelves, arranged in alcoves, its galleries and delightful +little staircases, has been abandoned for modern, but less atmospheric +quarters. It was a charming room and the only place of its kind in the +state, except the old library at Yale, the proposed alteration of which +recently created such a storm of opposition. + +It was discovered, however, that the newer and larger Watkinson Library +also offered a quiet refuge when one wanted to study or read without +interruption. Here, too, were and still are alcoves, galleries and +staircases, but loftier, more imposing and triumphant than in the +intimate and friendly and older library. The main room of the Watkinson +is, however, an alluring spot where one may escape from the financial +implications of the immediate environment into a world with which money +and business have little to do. + +Increasing years brought an interest in the old portraits. Our childhood +acquaintance with the pictorial features of the Atheneum was chiefly +confined to Trumbull's paintings of the Revolutionary battles. These +seemed to us at the time perfect representations of what really happened +at Bunker Hill, Princeton and Quebec. But the inevitable development of +a more catholic artistic sense led us to dwell with a growing interest +on the work of some of the great masters displayed in the art gallery. +With these the portraits of state and local worthies in the historical +society's rooms could not compete very successfully from the standpoint +of workmanship, but these local portraits acquired a new importance as +the story of the state and the old town took its place in our enlarging +appreciation of relative values. At least we could gather from them some +idea of what the people looked like who had walked the streets where we +had played as children and who had taken their parts in the building of +the city, the state and the nation. + +We heard the story of Elizabeth Whitman and the portraits of her father +and mother became something more than merely faded old pictures. Oliver +Ellsworth was no longer only a name--there he was, sitting at a table +with his wife, his familiar house visible in the distance. And when +curiosity grew as to Daniel Wadsworth, the founder of the Atheneum, we +were able to satisfy this in some degree by hunting up the two portraits +of him--one as a boy, leaning on his father's shoulder, the other +Ingham's painting of him in middle life. + +[Illustration: THE WATKINSON LIBRARY] + + +ii + +It is strange that so little has been written about Daniel Wadsworth. He +was the original Maecenas of Hartford. But he had no Horace to celebrate +him and he would have abhorred the publicity which the Roman patron of +the arts and letters seems rather to have enjoyed. His modesty is well +illustrated by the fact that he requested that Dr. Hawes should at his +funeral services attempt no formal eulogy, in the fashion of the day. He +died at ten minutes past one on the morning of July 28, 1848, a few days +before his seventy-seventh birthday. Though he lived to this advanced +age his health was always frail and this fact may account, in part, for +his rather retiring disposition. + +He was, however, by no means a recluse. His home, altered, but still +standing at the southwest corner of Prospect Street and Atheneum +Street--formerly "Wadsworth's Alley,"--now laboring under the +alliterative title of "Atheneum Annex," was the center of a simple and +delightful social life. In its notice of Mr. Wadsworth after his death +the "Courant" said of this home that it "has remained for half a century +a scene of cheerful hospitality, where persons of humble worth as well +as those of distinction, have been received with kindness and courtesy, +and cheered by the unclouded sunshine of Mrs. Wadsworth's benevolence +and lovely manners." + +Mrs. Wadsworth was the daughter of the second Governor Trumbull. "Her +mind," says Dr. Hawes, in the funeral sermon which in his wife's case +Mr. Wadsworth did not prohibit, "was sprightly, inquisitive, +well-balanced and excellently cultivated; her temper was uncommonly +mild, affectionate and cheerful, often exhibiting a pleasant playfulness +of spirit, enlivening conversation and intercourse, but never light, +censorious or severe; her heart replete with tenderness, and alive to +every social and sympathetic feeling." She died two years before her +husband. Their married life extended over fifty-three years. + +After her death a Miss Sarah McClellan, who seems to have been a +connection of Mrs. Wadsworth, appeared in the character of secretary for +Mr. Wadsworth, who was very feeble during the last two years of his +life. She kept a diary, now in the possession of the Connecticut +Historical Society, through which we get contemporary glimpses of the +kindly life of the old street, though most of the references are in the +nature of a catalogue of visits paid and received, such as,-- + + "Jan. 1, 1848. Received a beautiful book as a New + Year's present from Mrs. Sigourney . . . Judge + Ellsworth, Doctor Grant, Mr. Clair [Clerc?] and Mr. + Barnard called in the morning. P. M. Judge Williams, + Mr. Smith [Alfred?], Mr. Roswell and John Parsons + called. Went down to see Mrs. Hudson--found her + better." + +On another occasion she records how Dr. Grant brought to the house four +children, aged from nine to thirteen, known as the "Apollonians," who +were to give a concert in the evening and who sang to Mr. Wadsworth at +his home as he was not well enough to attend the concert. After they had +left Miss McClellan went to Dr. Grant's "and took a galvanic shock for +my painful arm." + +The most valuable part of the diary historically, however, relates to +the last illness of Mr. Wadsworth and his death on a night of midsummer +thunderstorms, and this is rather long and rather intimate for +quotation. + +In fact most of our knowledge of the founder of the Atheneum comes more +from memories and traditions than from exact data. These legends picture +him as a fragile man with a stoop, fond of wearing even in the house, an +artist's cap and a cloak, partly to protect himself from drafts, of +which he had an exaggerated dread, partly, we fancy, to exemplify in his +person his artistic ideals. + +[Illustration: DANIEL WADSWORTH + +BY PERMISSION OF + +THE CONNECTICUT HISTORICAL SOCIETY] + +For art was his great interest in life and his wealth enabled him to +gratify his artistic inclinations and to perpetuate in the city he loved +a center for the humanities which to him seemed so far above riches. In +a way he was a cosmopolitan, for he had been educated in France and +England, accompanying his father, Jeremiah Wadsworth, there when he was +twelve years old. Many of the paintings and prints, of which he was an +inveterate collector, came from Europe--as most examples of good art +then did. + +He was himself an illustrator and painter. The illustrations of his +friend's--Professor Benjamin Silliman's--"Tour From Hartford to Quebec," +are by him and they include two views of his beautiful country seat, +"Monte Video," on Talcott Mountain. It is characteristic of Professor +Silliman's regard for what were doubtless his friend's wishes that Mr. +Wadsworth's name is not mentioned in his description of the spot. We +know of at least one home, and there are probably several, where +attractive and interesting sketches and paintings by Mr. Wadsworth +are still cherished. + +As the years increased upon him the care of his health seems to have +become something of a pre-occupation. It is related that he had a series +of capes of differing colors and sizes which he superimposed one upon +another, as the weather grew colder, attracting thus considerable +attention in his walks abroad. In his big yellow coach he installed a +stove in cold weather, and a smoke-stack, which may have caused our +fellow citizens of that day to wonder whether they were beholding a +steamboat on wheels--or even a motor vehicle of the period. Into his pew +in the southwest corner of the Center Church he invariably had a foot +stove carried when attending service in winter. + +Looking back through the years the life of his time seems to have had a +more friendly and neighborly element than our urgent affairs today +appear to permit. Perhaps there is something of fancy in this, but it is +not all fancy to believe that in the institution that bears his name +Daniel Wadsworth has transmitted to succeeding generations a flavor and +memory of this old life, as well as an opportunity to know the +refreshment of certain things that can not be measured in money--the +things of the mind and the spirit. + + +iii + +On the whole, the portion of the Atheneum that was the most popular with +the children of an older day, and became through familiarity the least +mysterious, was the reading room. In retrospect this room seems to have +had a distinct quality of its own. For one thing it appears, in memory, +to have been characterized by a pervading aroma of wet umbrellas, +rubbers and damp clothing. Probably this is due to the fact that one +generally frequented it on rainy days when out-of-door pursuits were +impossible. Somebody was always opening a window to let in a little air. + +At that time the room was in the northeast corner of the main building. +Its chief furnishings were the many rows of oak reading desks, shaped +like inverted V's, raised on standards to a convenient height. To these +slanting surfaces the papers were clamped by wooden contrivances which +materially interfered with a comprehensive view of all double page +pictures. + +Nevertheless one rather approved of these old oak reading desks. They +gave a studious air to the room and separated the floor space into +sections that contributed a certain effect of privacy. Also they +concealed the upper portions of readers on opposite sides, or in +different sections, from one another. It was rather diverting to peek +underneath and endeavor to construct mentally from the shoes, trousers +and skirts--they were long enough in those days--thus visible, the +respectively corresponding upper sections of anatomy. After a creative +effort of this kind it was interesting to move around to the other side +and see how nearly right you were. + +On the whole the English illustrated papers were the most popular of the +periodicals and sometimes in the attempt to secure exclusive possession +of these there was a good deal of squabbling which had to be terminated +by the young woman in charge, who, however, was reasonably tolerant and +far more popular than the dragon who guarded the historical museum +upstairs. + +The first real war any of us remembered was then in progress and the +"Illustrated London News" and the London "Graphic" were full of +pictures of British warships bombarding Alexandria and of charging +Highlanders at Tel-el-Kebir. Though soon supplanted by our own "Life," +"Punch," too, was something of a favorite, with its drawings by Du +Maurier of tall, wasp-waisted, beautiful ladies with remarkable +coiffures and trailing skirts, and of men with Dundreary whiskers, frock +coats, top hats and monocles--all engaged in what seemed to us +singularly inane conversation. Most of us had "St. Nicholas" at home and +of the other American publications "Harper's Young People" easily held +first place, with "Harper's Weekly" a close second. The girls were often +discovered poring over "Harper's Bazaar"--an inexplicable thing to the +masculine mind. That seemed to us a silly paper. + +In time certain habitués of the reading room became familiar to us--by +sight, that is. There was, of course, the nondescript crowd of persons +out of employment, or idlers, who came in to get warm or to pass an hour +or two. These were the floating population, as it were, and the +individuals varied with the seasons. Some of them seemed to be searching +the advertising columns of the dailies for a job. Others read strange +technical papers--engineering magazines or trade journals. One has +often wondered since what perennial hopes, what latent ambitions, what +undiscovered geniuses, were concealed amid this rather drab clientele of +the reading room. + +But that some definite purposes animated certain devotees could not be +doubted--though what the exact individual motives were was not always +apparent. There was, for example, the queer old man--short, stocky, with +gray beard and spectacles--whose specialty seemed to be the New York +papers and the political and economic magazines. He was generally +supposed to be a little "off" and he had Doctor Johnson's habit when +walking along the street of tapping with his stick every post and tree +he passed. If he abstractedly missed one he would go back and rap it. We +often noticed unkind urchins of our own age following him and reminding +him of any omissions, for the intense joy of seeing him invariably +return and perform this rite. Let us hope that none of us attempted +this, though it can not be asserted that the temptation was always +resisted, even if no memory of succumbing to it remains. + +Then there was another frequenter of the reading room who was generally +supposed to be not quite normal mentally. He was a kindly, gentle soul, +however, and it is pleasant to remember that he was never the subject of +ridicule. Indeed his deprecating manner, his invariable courtesy, even +to children, effectually disarmed any suggestion of the sort. We all +liked him and perhaps he did not dislike us. He would come softly in, +with bent head and humble air, put his umbrella in the rack, look about +to ascertain what favorite papers of his had not been pre-empted, slide +with the effect of an apology into some empty place, put on his +spectacles, get out his note book and pencil and begin to transcribe. +During each of his visits he was continually taking notes and the +imagination is appalled at any effort to compute the number of note +books he must have filled, for he was a constant visitor. The occupation +was of course an obsession, a phase, no doubt, of various mental +vagaries he harbored. Probably as children we missed something of the +pathos of the fine mind thus clouded, but it is a comfort to remember +that we did not altogether fail in appreciation of the spirit of the +gentleman. + +There comes dimly to memory the figure of a rather elderly woman who +wore an old-fashioned bonnet and rather odd clothing of a bygone style. +She was a busy person, flitting from paper to paper, forever in quest of +some apparently elusive data. It seemed to be necessary for her to hold +frequent consultations with the attendant. These were carried on, for +her part, in loud, hissing whispers that were far more penetrating and +distracting than ordinary conversation would have been and the +good-natured presiding genius of the room spent much of her time looking +up references for this curious and acquisitive visitor. What she was +seeking we never knew, but, though it was manifestly of the utmost +importance to her, one could not escape the impression of futility. +Surely a public reference or reading room is an excellent place in which +to study the caprices of the human mind. + +This person's audible conferences with the attendant bring to mind the +notice that was prominently posted in various parts of the room,-- + + LOUD TALKING OR PROLONGED + CONVERSATION WILL NOT BE + ALLOWED IN THIS ROOM + +Now that the statute of limitations has barred civil, if not criminal +proceedings, the writer will confess that some years later, when an +undergraduate of Yale College, he abstracted, after the unoriginal +fashion of his kind, one of these notices and took great pride in +displaying it in a prominent place on the wall of his room at college +where its apt and ironic message aroused great envy and admiration. + +But to return to our memories of the reading room's habitués--there was +Cousin George. This vicarious relative was an unattached Congregational +minister who sojourned in the city from time to time. The nomadic +character of his ministry was due partly to principle, partly to a kind +of wanderlust. In this old bachelor there was a wandering streak--he was +not happy for long in one place. But he had a strong social instinct and +a keen interest in and affection for his friends and was greatly beloved +by them. A great purveyor of news, he was an insatiable reader of the +papers and toward the middle of the morning he invariably came into the +reading room, as into a club, to look through the news of the day. His +soft, black hat, overcoat with short shoulder cape, eyeglasses with +black ribbon and mutton-chop whiskers gave a distinct individuality to +his appearance. About his looks there was an effect of oddity--and +indeed, like most of us, he had his whimseys and peculiarities. There +was little externally to indicate his kindly sympathy, his talent for +friendship, his thoughtfulness for others, particularly for the sick. +For that reason, doubtless, it was not until maturer years that that +side of his character fully dawned on one. There was nothing to denote +this in the picture of him, seated in a good reading light, in one +corner of the room, his cape-overcoat thrown back on his shoulders, his +thin legs crossed, absorbed in last night's "New York Evening Post." + +Like the others we have mentioned he will never come to the reading room +again. Did they, we wonder, surmise that certain small eyes were +observing them, that certain youthful personalities were conferring +about them, that certain immature minds were striving to grasp what +manner of men and women they were? Truly memories of us all may live +long in unsuspected places. + + + + +_XI: The Friend of Youth_ + + +IT was announced the other day in the public prints that the Private +Coachman's Benevolent Association had filed its certificate of +dissolution. Over this laconic statement in the morning paper one +reader, at least, paused and let his thoughts wander. To him there +seemed a significant and, indeed, a rather melancholy interest in the +announcement. The incident thus briefly mentioned not only marked the +end of an ancient brotherhood; it furnished a striking commentary on +changing social conditions. + +As a type the private coachman is disappearing, and with him vanish the +coaches, landeaus and victorias, the well-matched pairs of reliable +family horses with shining harnesses and jingling chains, the snappy +trotters, the buggy rides and the horse in general as a voucher of +social responsibility and standing. + +The possession of a motor car and the services of a chauffeur, though +generally involving more financial outlay than a stable and coachman +necessitated, somehow do not quite confer the reflected glory in which +the employer of a coachman used to shine. Everybody has a motor and the +very prevalence and numerousness of the chauffeur, capable and loyal +soul though he be, necessarily detract from the distinction which the +rarer coachman used to give. + +One usually stood rather in awe of the coachman--particularly in +boyhood, the period with which he is chiefly associated in the memories +of most of us. He was a person of strange and exalted attainments. He +held mysterious and telepathetic communication with his horses. He +understood them, and they him. He had theories about shoeing, he could +prescribe for most of their ailments, he hissed at them queerly as he +groomed them. Moreover, he had the real sporting spirit. He knew all +about the performances of Maud S. and John L. Sullivan. He called the +firemen and policemen by their first names and the fire bell would send +him running out of the stable at any hour. + +If the boy wanted to acquire a puppy he got the coachman to select it +and to clip its ears (without anæsthetic) behind the stable--or, if the +coachman was wise, he persuaded a friend to do this surgical work at +some livery stable, out of earshot of the family. Probably when the +puppy was grown the coachman surreptitiously staged fights with him +against rival dogs, chaperoned by brother coachmen, late at night after +the boy and his elders were asleep, thus occasionally providing a +precarious addition to his wages if the dog came up to expectation. To +tell the truth, it was generally selected for its fighting qualities. + +He had strange tales of adventure, many of them doubtless fictitious, +but showing the swift imagination of the race from which he generally +sprang. The great event of his life was his trip to Philadelphia at the +time of the Centennial when he was temporarily a soldier and had charge +of the major's horse. For years brilliant lithographs of the exhibition +buildings were tacked to the stable wall above the shelf where stood +bottles of horse liniment and harness dressing. He had seen men and +cities and out of his experience had grown a practical and homely +wisdom that was by no means lost upon his young admirers. He was the +friend of youth. + +And now it seems that the guild is officially extinct. Hail and +farewell, private coachman! Though legally dissolved you are not +forgotten, but remain ever enshrined in our memories of an older and +simpler day. + +In those memories the coachman assumes multiform incarnations. The +individuals varied as the years of childhood lengthened, but they all +conformed to type. + +At the end of one of those dim vistas of childish recollections, +illumined by the mellow light that always plays about our earliest +remembrances, stands the figure of Patrick, the first coachman of them +all. His first appearance was so very long ago--as a life-time is +measured--that the vision, emerging from the mists in which the first +consciousness of the world is enveloped, is painted somewhat vaguely on +the retina of the mind. How much of it is real, how much an idealized +memory, can not perhaps be definitely determined. After all, it is only +a picture and a feeling. + +One seems to remember being enthroned on a rug spread on the grass of +the garden, beneath the big apple tree, in the level sunlight of a late +afternoon in spring. It must have been spring for the apple tree was in +bloom. About one, seated on the grass, was grouped a circle of the maids +of the household and their visitors. No experience of later years has +ever given the slightest intimation that one could possibly be or became +such a center of interest and admiration as that microcosm of dawning +intelligence then consciously was to that laudatory audience. There was +a distinct sense of being the source of the happiness and laughter that +composed the mental atmosphere of that golden afternoon. Such an +assurance that the world was entirely good and beautiful has not since +been attained. + +Then, suddenly, Patrick was added to the circle--a smooth-shaven, +apple-cheeked, merry man--having doubtless strolled over from the +neighboring stable yard. Was it partly because a masculine note of +admiration was added to the feminine chorus that the effect of general +well-being and of mirth seemed, with his arrival, to be emphasized and +confirmed? At all events there was an instinctive perception between +Patrick and the center of interest that they understood each other, and +Patrick was welcomed from the rug with evidences of the recognition of +this bond which precipitated another wave of delightful worship. + +It was the beginning of a firm friendship. Patrick soon shared with the +nurse of those Elysian days the early confidences, the awakening and +absurd aspirations, of the childish mind. In the first cloud of trouble, +which after some years grew from the marriage and departure of the +nurse, he was a never failing solace. He received with serious +consideration a carefully thought-out plan to compel her return by +engaging one of the hook and ladder companies to pull down her new home, +thus presumably leaving her without any abiding place but the parental +roof. Seated on the front seat of the old carriage with his young +friend, taking the air about the city, he assisted in plotting the +details of this scheme. It was so subtly diluted by other interests, and +disappeared so gradually, that no particular disillusion resulted. + +Why Patrick left and when remain a mystery. He was succeeded by a +Scotchman with reddish whiskers and for long was lost to sight. Then, +unexpectedly, he re-appeared. + +One afternoon, years afterward, while calling at a friend's home and +talking over old days, it developed that Patrick was still alive--a very +old man now--that he was employed by these friends as gardener--that, as +a matter of fact, he was at the moment at work in the garden. It was, +indeed, possible to see him from the window. What was the meaning of +that instant sense of doubt as to whether it would be well to walk over +to the window? At least this hesitancy did not prevail and there, in a +far corner, raking among the shrubbery, could be discerned the figure of +a little, bowed old man in blue denim overalls and a weather-beaten felt +hat. One could not see his face--his back was toward the window. How +small he looked! Why, Patrick had been a fine figure of a young +Irishman, not tall, perhaps, but of a respectable height. + +The suggestion was inevitable that it would be interesting to go over +and talk to him. Indeed a start was made, but again came that impulse of +hesitation, stronger this time and not to be gainsaid. Was Patrick +well--was he happy? On the whole the answer was in the affirmative. He +had, it appeared, touches of rheumatism, but he could still do light +work, and he liked to putter about the lawns and the flower beds. At +home he was comfortable. Generally speaking, it seemed that life had +treated him not too harshly. It was clear that he was with kindly +people--and there one left him. + +After all, it is comforting to realize that the picture of Patrick that +is best remembered is not of a bent old man, leaning somewhat heavily +upon his rake, but of the figure that takes shape out of the mists of +childhood--a figure that somehow always personifies the attributes of +kindliness and sympathy--standing in a long vanished garden, beneath an +apple tree in bloom. + + + + +_XII: The Christmas Party_ + + +WE always stood rather in awe of Raymond's Uncle Horace because it was +said he had once taught Latin in a boys' school. Any one who had ever +wielded the power of a teacher was a person with a background of +authority and importance whom one could not approach too familiarly. +Indeed, it would have been difficult to be familiar with Raymond's Uncle +Horace under any conceivable circumstances, for he was essentially a +dignified and aloof person. + +It was understood that the abandonment of teaching had been caused by +failing health and to the same origin was perhaps due the reserve and +apparent preoccupation that militated against any real intimacy with his +nephew's young friends. There was some vague story of a young wife who +had died years before, but an experience of that sort was so far beyond +our comprehension that the rumor added but little to the isolation in +which Raymond's uncle seemed to dwell. He was never really an actor in +the drama of our young lives. Sometimes appearing in the wings, more +often in the critic's seat, he was an onlooker rather than a +participant. + +One remembers him chiefly as walking back and forth on the old street +between Raymond's grandfather's house and certain indefinite rooms he +dwelt in which were probably in the edifice then known as the Charter +Oak building. + +The impression that persists is of one very carefully wrapped up against +the weather. He wore a long ulster, a seal-skin cap, with a visor, and +about his neck, under his iron-gray beard, a muffler was efficiently +disposed. His large, gold-rimmed spectacles gave him the customary +owlish, peering expression, but in spite of them he could not seem to +recognize us, or any one else, except when close at hand. He carried a +stout walking stick, the point of which he never raised from the ground, +but dragged after him between alternate steps and he stood so straight +that he appeared to lean a little backward. It would seem that in the +warmer seasons this habitual manner of dress must have been modified, +but there is no recollection of any other costume. + +A tradition of immense learning clung about him. It was said that in his +mysterious rooms the walls were lined with books which he spent all his +time in reading. It was even whispered that he read Latin and Greek for +fun--and no higher intellectual achievement than this could be imagined. +There was something facile and careless, too, about the idea of reading +for pleasure dead languages with which we had as yet no acquaintance but +which loomed as educational obstacles in the not distant future. This +casual facility appealed to our youthful sporting spirit and compelled a +reluctant admiration. Whatever Raymond's uncle's shortcomings as an +intimate might be, he had at least reached the point where matters that +were soon to be weighty problems to us were to him merely a question of +amusement. + +Raymond's grandparents lived in an old house around the corner from the +old street. Their home was, in fact, one of the oldest houses in the +city. They were people of wealth for that day and the house had been +brought up to date in the fashion of that time when the finer harmonies +of the antique were not as yet appreciated. Plate glass windows had +replaced the small panes, hard wood floors covered the fine oak planking +and varnished inside shutters had supplanted the dignified panelling of +the originals. But our aesthetic appreciations, like those of our +elders, noticed no incongruity. To us the old house was the acme of +contemporary good taste, as well as the abode of comfort and even +luxury. + +It was here that Raymond's grandparents gave their annual Christmas +party for their grandson and his friends. This was a festival famous in +the young life of that neighborhood. Its celebrity was chiefly due to +the Gargantuan amount of delightful food available. There was a tree, of +course, but the presents were of the edible, rather than the permanent +kind, and no less appreciated on that account. Nowhere else was there to +be found such an amount and variety of candy, fruit, ice cream, cake, +nuts, raisins, chicken salad, sandwiches, jellies, jams, _pâté de foies +gras_, and other pleasing forms of nourishment--to say nothing of +lemonade and various kinds of "shrub"--as at Raymond's Christmas party. +At the close of each of these events it did not seem that we could ever +eat again, yet there was a certain assurance of the continuance of the +fête in carrying home a paper bag containing an orange, an apple and a +generous selection of sweets. + +After the assembly had been fed there were games--"Drop the +Handkerchief," "Still Pond, No More Moving," that perennial juvenile +pastime where the participants chant the memorable chorus beginning +"Oats, peas, beans and barley grow," and sometimes, much against the +sentiments of the boys, that embarrassing game where the player who +became "It" was compelled to "Bow to the wittiest, kneel to the +prettiest and kiss the one you love best." The boys decided early in +their social experience that no self-respecting male ought to play this +game and it soon fell into disrepute, though the girls fought for its +continuance for a time. + +Youthful spirits rise with food as rapidly as does a thermometer under +the sun's rays and a good deal of noise and romping invariably +accompanied these games. Raymond's dear old grandfather and grandmother +enjoyed all these manifestations of young life as keenly, so far as we +could see, as did the children themselves, but Uncle Horace, it was +evident, did not like noise and confusion. Memory pictures him standing +in the background of the party, as in the background of life, a quiet +spectator, blinking shortsightedly but not unkindly, through his big +spectacles, and vanishing altogether as the excitement increased. + +Once one of the youthful guests, while the festivities were at their +height, wandered into a remote part of the house in search of some +accessory required for an approaching game and entered by a rear door a +room where Uncle Horace had been reading. He had put his book down in +his easy chair and was now discovered standing in the other doorway, his +back to the room. + +An intense curiosity to look at one of Uncle Horace's learned volumes +took possession of the interloper and at that age it did not occur to +him that delicacy might demand some hesitation. He tiptoed over to the +chair expecting to see on the cushion some calf-bound, ancient tome +written in characters that were hieroglyphics to him. But a complete +reversal of his ideas about Uncle Horace was at hand. The book that lay +there was in blue-and-gold cloth binding and was a copy of the first +edition of "Huckleberry Finn." + +The intruder looked in some astonishment at the spare figure of +Raymond's uncle and perceived that there was no danger of discovery for +the attitude was that of a man completely absorbed. He was listening +intently. At this distance the general hubbub was softened and there was +a rather wistful quality in the childish voices rising and falling with +the lilting old refrain: + + "Thus the farmer sows his seeds. + Thus he stands and takes his ease, + Stamps his foot (bang!) and claps his hand (smack!) + And looks around to view the land." + +After the lapse of a good many years it is this picture of Raymond's +Uncle Horace that is the most vivid. There was some implication in the +listening figure, with head slightly bowed, one hand resting on the +casing of the doorway, that carried, even to a childish mind, a +suggestion of hitherto unsuspected aspects of the rather lonely +widower's personality. At the time it was all very vague and +unformulated and later speculation has hesitated somewhat before the +privacy thus unwittingly invaded. Yet afterward one could not help at +least wondering what visions of his own childhood he saw as he listened +to the silly old lines of the ancient folk game, handed down through so +many generations and bearing their little testimony to the continuity of +experience. + +A tardy sense of eavesdropping awoke at last in the youthful visitor's +mind--an understanding that he did not belong there. He slipped out as +quietly as he had entered, but he took with him a dawning appreciation +of a new incarnation of Raymond's Uncle Horace. + + + + +_XIII: The Fabric of a Dream_ + + "_And that night . . . . a dream of that place came to + Florian, a dream which did for him the office of a + finer sort of memory, bringing its object to mind with + a great clearness, yet, as sometimes happens in dreams, + raised a little above itself, and above ordinary + retrospect. The true aspect of the place . . . . the + fashion of its doors, its hearths, its windows, the + very scent upon the air of it, was with him in sleep + for a season. . . ._" + + --THE CHILD IN THE HOUSE. + + +COUSIN MARY'S home was a little, old, brick house standing flush with +the street. A woodshed where the cat slept in summer extended easterly +from the house and in the angle thus formed was a diminutive garden +where such old-fashioned flowers as holly-hocks, bachelors' buttons, +sweet william and larkspur seemed to bloom earlier and last longer than +elsewhere. + +Everything about Cousin Mary's home was on a small scale. She herself +was a very small and slight old lady, but she had inherited from the +hardy New England race from which she sprang a certain tradition of +vitality and longevity which she lived long enough to exemplify in her +own person. Other family legends of uncomfortable eccentricity and +general worrisomeness she utterly disproved, for never was there a +kindlier or more placid soul than she. + +Of course she wore a cap with lavender ribbons and gowns of black +bombazine for every day and black silk with lace at the throat for great +occasions. She seldom ventured out of doors, except into her garden, or, +on such annual celebrations as Thanksgiving and Christmas, to a +neighboring relative's home where she was with difficulty persuaded to +take at dinner a glass of port or Madeira, though she always protested +that she did not really need it. Most of her life was spent in the +southeast downstairs sitting-room, where she used to sit in the +smallest, oldest rocking-chair ever seen. On memorable occasions she +would take possession of the kitchen, against the protests of Drusilla, +her companion, and make gingerbread that was famous in the neighborhood, +especially among the children. + +To childish imaginations there always seemed something mysterious about +the rooms in Cousin Mary's house--doubtless merely because we never +visited them,--except the sitting-room and the kitchen. The sitting-room +communicated with another room--I think it was called the "parlor"--by +folding doors. These were generally open, but in there the blinds were +always closed and the room was in a kind of perpetual dusky twilight. We +could dimly see within, but no recollection of entering remains, though +there is a faint memory of an obscure marble-topped center-table--were +there not wax flowers on it under a glass cover?--and ancient mahogany +chairs. + +We never reached the upper floors, at least till after Cousin Mary's +death, when it seems as if there was an expedition to the attic in +company with some older person of authority. It was a brief and somewhat +nervous experience. Those were the days when all ghost stories might +possibly be true and the attic, like the "parlor," was dark. The visit +was long enough to leave only a memory of dim corners, piles of old +horse-hide trunks, a remarkable collection of ancient cooking utensils +adapted for use over the open fires of colonial and Revolutionary +days--where, we wonder, has all this old kitchen equipage gone?--and +rafters from which hung dried roots and leaves of one kind and another. +It was a distinct relief to get out of doors again. + +But of course the mysterious qualities we attributed to certain +precincts of Cousin Mary's house existed entirely in our youthful minds. +No one could be imagined who had less to conceal than this serene old +lady. Yet it was natural that there should be romantic stories about +her. + +She had never married and it was not strange that speculations about her +past should concern themselves with early love affairs. These fancies +crystallized into the quite customary tradition that she had been +engaged in her early youth to a young man whose future was then so +uncertain that her parents objected to the match. The years have dimmed +recollection of the details of the story--there were other romantic +complications--but at all events the young man afterwards married +another and lived to disprove the early doubts of sceptical parents as +to his chance of success in life. But Cousin Mary remained true to her +early love. + +Many years after her death one of the children who used occasionally to +call upon her, and to whom even now the odor of certain old-fashioned +flowers will bring back a vivid picture of that little garden, had a +curious dream about her. + +He was again in that familiar sitting-room, but in some way he was +invisible to the other two occupants. One was of course Cousin Mary--but +quite a different Cousin Mary. Youth had come back to her. She was a +young girl again--and one of the prettiest young girls the dreamer had +ever seen. Her hair was dressed high at the back of her head. A great +comb was in it. Curls hung down over her cheeks, as sitting in the +familiar diminutive rocking-chair she bent her head forward listening to +the words of her visitor. Old lace was about her throat which was of a +singular whiteness and beauty. Her gown was of some shimmering stuff, +high-waisted, with many flounces. Her whole figure gave the beholder a +sense of delicate and rather fragile beauty. She was a creature of +race--a thoroughbred. + +Seated close before her and talking softly and eagerly was a +good-looking young man in the uniform of a naval officer of, I should +guess, the period of the second war with Great Britain. His sword and +cap lay on the floor beside his chair. + +Incongruities in dreams are generally accepted without surprise, but in +this case the sleeper afterward recalled a sense of astonishment at the +character of this stranger. Who was he? So far as was known no sailor +had ever been associated with Cousin Mary's life. + +Even in dreams a sense of the proprieties sometimes follows one and it +was evident to the dreamer that his presence was superfluous. He turned +to the dark "parlor" and for the first time entered. + +It was a queer place. All sorts of curios from the East were scattered +about it--yet "scattered" is not the right word for there was a method +in the arrangement, grotesque though it was. The dreamer, however, had +little opportunity to observe all this for he was drawn at once to a +corner where was a strange, spiral staircase, built of some light Indian +wood, and leading through the ceiling to the story above. He ascended +and emerged into the unknown region overhead. + +It was a wonderful place. The details are gone--one recalls only an +impression of happiness, sunshine, scents of exotic flowers, the singing +of innumerable birds, the tinkling sound of a hidden fountain. It was +no longer a room--it was a new country. Here, it seemed, dwelt peace, +content, beauty. A fragment of a familiar poem drifted into the +dreamer's fancies-- + + "It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles + And see the great Achilles whom we knew--" + +And there was more than a sense of well-being. There was, for a little +moment, a fantastic sensation of fulfillment in one's presence there. +There was a feeling of power. Here, one was somehow assured, ambitions +would be accomplished, hopes would come true. Here could be done the +things one always wanted to do. + +The dreamer wished to go on, to explore, to find the happy secret of +this region, but this, for some reason, was denied him. Some +all-powerful influence compelled him to go back, to descend the little +staircase into the darkened parlor. + +Standing there he looked through the open folding doors into the +well-known sitting-room and the picture he saw halted him. + +Cousin Mary and her sailor lover were standing in the middle of the +room. His arms were about her, her hands were on his shoulders, her face +raised to his. . . . + +Almost as soon as it was perceived the vision began to fade, receding +slowly into the formless, tenuous clouds of semi-consciousness. In a +moment the sleeper awoke. For an instant it was difficult to +disassociate from the spirit of his dream the golden light of the early +spring morning, the twittering of birds, the light drip from the eaves +of the brief rain left by the vanished April shower. + + * * * * * + +The later history of the spot where Cousin Mary dwelt offers its +commentary on a fast changing civilization. Soon after her death the +little brick house was pulled down and the cubic space it occupied was +filled with heavy machinery which daily filled with its reverberations +this place which was once the very epitome of quietude. Now, in their +turn, the huge presses have given way to one corner of a vast office +building where an army of busy clerks pursues the urgent and exacting +routine of a great corporation. + +The Latin poets liked to believe that every locality had its own +peculiar divinity--the "genius of the place." What has become of the +goddess who for so long dedicated to peacefulness this abode of a benign +old age? Is it that she was so closely identified with the one who +dwelt there that when that life ceased the guardian angel fled with the +departing spirit to some still fairer abode--or is the genius of the +place really called Memory, who, in the minds of those who cherish her, +effectually preserves against any merely material desecration the places +she once held dear? + + + + +_XIV: The Quiet Life_ + + "_More than half a century of life has taught me that + most of the wrong and folly which darkens earth is due + to those who cannot possess their souls in quiet; that + most of the good which saves mankind from destruction + comes of life that is led in thoughtful stillness._" + + --THE PRIVATE PAPERS OF HENRY RYECROFT. + + +WITH the thoughtless cruelty of childhood we used to call him +"Thermometer" Tatlock because he was forever watching the temperature. +The tradition was that whenever he went down cellar to look at the +furnace he arrayed himself in overcoat, fur cap, muffler and arctics. +Nicknames are not always brutal and the cruelty of this case lay only in +the peculiar features of the situation--the fact, in short, that the +subject of our joke was such a gentle, retiring, almost apologetic old +gentleman. He was deprecatory even toward us children. To adult +reflection it seems ruthless to have made any fun of him at all. + +Yet there was no doubt about the fact that he was an odd character. The +incarnation of bashfulness, he was, like most bashful persons, +persistent and consistent in doing just exactly as he liked so far as +the demands of a world, not primarily constituted for people of his +stripe, allowed. It must be confessed that, in modern parlance, he got +away with it pretty successfully. + +Probably this was because he was wise enough not to demand very much. It +did not seem that either the rise and fall of nations or of the stock +market gave him very much concern. Doubtless he did not disturb himself +greatly over the question of who was to be the next president. His chief +worry seemed to be the weather, though why he should have troubled +himself about this, when most of his life was spent indoors, remains a +mystery. Memory seems to recall some story of ill-health in early life +which perhaps inculcated a habit of consulting weather conditions that +lasted as long as life itself--and he lived to a green old age. + +The spacious brick mansion that was his home stood sideways, as it were, +to the street, behind a tall fence with panelled posts and blunt, +rounded pickets, like large broomsticks of alternating heights. Both +the main front door and what we should now call the service entrance +were reached by a gravelled driveway with a flag walk beside it that +terminated around in the rear of the house at the stable. Narrow flights +of steps with wrought-iron railings, topped here and there with brass +balls, led to the two doors. + +The entrance hall was almost square, a passage way running off toward +the kitchen from the left-hand farther corner and the staircase +ascending on one's left as one entered. At the landing, halfway up, was +a large window, opening to the north, which illumined the hall and +stair-well with an even, rather bare light. Somewhere in the wall was a +recess in which stood a bust of Cicero, of which the eyes, formed +without indication of the pupils after the fashion of its period of +sculpture, gave an effect of blindness fascinating to the childish +imagination. + +On the right was a little room where Mr. Tatlock's sister, a dear old +lady who always wore a little flat lace cap with a black bow, generally +sat knitting. Straight ahead was the parlor where occasionally, when Mr. +Tatlock's niece was visiting at the house, there were subdued children's +parties. On these occasions he was never visible. His own room was the +library, east of the parlor, with a southern exposure toward the garden. + +Here we never entered, but once or twice we caught a glimpse of the +interior through the door left unguardedly open by some momentary +oversight. The picture thus presented had as its background the south +wall of the room with its two windows between which stood the chimney +piece. Above the mantle, which was supported by miniature Ionic columns, +hung a portrait of a gentleman with a great deal of hair and shirt +frill, and below a bright fire burned, partly concealed by a fire +screen, beside which, reading in a large easy chair, was Mr. Tatlock. +Recollection is still vivid of the startled, rather furtive glance, the +look of a timid animal whose place of refuge had been discovered, +directed toward us as we peeked in. + +What was the old man reading as he sat there day after day and year +after year, while presidents were elected, national policies inaugurated +and abandoned, the maps of the world changed here and there, automobiles +invented, and the children grew up, went to college, got married and +left the old street? Probably no one knows for a certainty, but we +should be willing to guess that his favorites were Burke, the Spectator, +Boswell's Johnson, Pope, Charles Lamb, Leigh Hunt and perhaps Gibbon. +Did he, we wonder, ever read a novel? If so, it is doubtful whether he +got much beyond Jane Austen and Mrs. Gaskell. + +The house had a lovely old garden that stretched away to the east, down +a slope that was broken into two or three terraces. At the eastward end +was a level portion where the box-lined gravel walk from the house made +a circle around an old oak tree under which was a bench. There were a +good many old fashioned flowers and shrubs in the garden and some pear +trees, but who took care of the pruning and gardening, except Mr +Tatlock's sister who assuredly could not do it all, is still +unexplained. + +There was a hired man whom we called "Mister" O'Neil who sometimes went +to the post office and may have done other errands, but as his title +implies he seems to have been above gardening. At any rate there is no +recollection of seeing him at work in the garden. In spite of his name +there was nothing in his appearance that indicated Irish extraction. He +was not a hired man at all in the New England sense; he was more the +type of the confidential servant of the English novelists. He was dark, +wore a beard, dressed habitually in black and looked like a particularly +doleful undertaker. + +We never saw Mr. Tatlock and "Mister" O'Neil together and yet +imagination--perhaps it is only imagination--somehow groups them as a +pair of confidants. In a way their characteristics were similar. Both +were inscrutable, quiet persons, content to remain in the background. +For all of them the world might wag. In our imaginations at least, +"Mister" O'Neil knew all about Mr. Tatlock. He accepted the other's +peculiar reticences, so like his own, as a matter of course; he knew his +innocent secrets; he even could tell, if he wished, what books he read +there before the fire that burned from September to June. With this +taciturn individual we doubted if Mr. Tatlock was bashful. Possibly +their mutual congeniality of temperament centered about the furnace, for +they both watched it. + +"Mister" O'Neil could have revealed, we believe, what the shock was that +we all decided Mr. Tatlock must have received early in life. The girls +were convinced that this shock was emotional--an unhappy love affair, +or the death of some dear friend. The boys, on the other hand, were +inclined to talk about a purely physical catastrophe--a runaway +accident, perhaps, or a blow on the head from a highway robber. For all +of these surmises we had not the slightest foundation, except in fancy, +and mature reflection leads to the conclusion that probably we were +entirely in error. It seems now much more likely that this old +bachelor's oddities were due to life-long frail health. + +And yet one can never be sure and somehow one glimpse of Mr. Tatlock +which it was permitted one of the children to catch hinted, inexplicably +and without any particular warrant, at other possibilities. It was the +only out-of-door memory of him that is left. The boy, who still +remembers well that spring day, was in the next yard, hanging over the +fence looking into Mr. Tatlock's garden when he suddenly became aware +that Mr. Tatlock himself was sitting on the bench in the circle the path +made around the old tree. The old gentleman did not see the small +spectator who had been betrayed into an unaccustomed quietness by the +absence of companions and some subtle and unacknowledged influence of +the first warm afternoon of the year. + +Nothing whatever happened, Mr. Tatlock sat there, looking up from time +to time at the young leaves above him, tapping his stick on the soft +turf and smiling to himself. Of what long-gone springs was he dreaming? +It was clear that whatever his thoughts were, they were happy ones. + +Probably to most boys the ideal life is one that comprises "the joy of +eventful living." Here for the first time it dawned upon this youthful +interloper that one could be happy in quietness and seclusion. There +were, it appeared, certain satisfactions in other careers than those of +the cowboy and the soldier. Up to this time the boy had never been able +to understand why heaven was so often spoken of as a place of rest. He +did not understand wholly now, but a later comprehension had here its +inception. + +And so let us remember Mr. Tatlock sitting, lost in meditation, in his +garden. After all he was not without influence in his environment, +unobtrusive soul that he was. He made himself felt in his little world. +He counted. The boy who watched him over the fence that day thought of +him again when he read in a recent essay: "The truth is that a man's +life is the expression of his temperament and that what eventually +matters is his attitude and relation to life . . . . not only his +performance." + + * * * * * + +Transcriber's Notes: + +Repeated chapter titles were deleted. + +Obvious punctuation errors repaired. + +Page 31, "activites" changed to "activities" (activities of their +colleagues) + +Page 57, "orginality" changed to "originality" (wit, originality, +sympathy) + +Page 71, "Englandler" changed to "Englander" (contributed to "The New +Englander") + +Page 73, "Willaims" changed to "Williams" (S. Williams, Deacon Normand) + +Page 103, "geolological" changed to "geological" (to make a geological) + +Page 228, "abondoned" changed to "abandoned" (and abandoned, the maps) + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Friendly Club and Other Portraits, by +Francis Parsons + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40898 *** |