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diff --git a/4201-0.txt b/4201-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6347b35 --- /dev/null +++ b/4201-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11729 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Literary Friends And Acquaintances, by +William Dean Howells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Literary Friends And Acquaintances + +Author: William Dean Howells + +Release Date: October 28, 2006 [EBook #4201] +Last Updated: August 21, 2016 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERARY FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES *** + + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + +LITERARY FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES + +by William Dean Howells + + + +CONTENTS: + + Biographical + My First Visit to New England + First Impressions of Literary New York + Roundabout to Boston + Literary Boston As I Knew It + Oliver Wendell Holmes + The White Mr. Longfellow + Studies of Lowell + Cambridge Neighbors + A Belated Guest + My Mark Twain + + + + + +LITERARY FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES + + + + +BIBLIOGRAPHICAL + +Long before I began the papers which make up this volume, I had meant to +write of literary history in New England as I had known it in the lives +of its great exemplars during the twenty-five years I lived near them. In +fact, I had meant to do this from the time I came among them; but I let +the days in which I almost constantly saw them go by without record save +such as I carried in a memory retentive, indeed, beyond the common, but +not so full as I could have wished when I began to invoke it for my work. +Still, upon insistent appeal, it responded in sufficient abundance; and, +though I now wish I could have remembered more instances, I think my +impressions were accurate enough. I am sure of having tried honestly to +impart them in the ten years or more when I was desultorily endeavoring +to share them with the reader. + +The papers were written pretty much in the order they have here, +beginning with My First Visit to New England, which dates from the +earliest eighteen-nineties, if I may trust my recollection of reading it +from the manuscript to the editor of Harper’s Magazine, where we lay +under the willows of Magnolia one pleasant summer morning in the first +years of that decade. It was printed no great while after in that +periodical; but I was so long in finishing the study of Lowell that it +had been anticipated in Harper’s by other reminiscences of him, and it +was therefore first printed in Scribner’s Magazine. It was the paper +with which I took the most pains, and when it was completed I still felt +it so incomplete that I referred it to his closest and my best friend, +the late Charles Eliot Norton, for his criticism. He thought it wanting +in unity; it was a group of studies instead of one study, he said; I must +do something to draw the different sketches together in a single effect +of portraiture; and this I did my best to do. + +It was the latest written of the three articles which give the volume +substance, and it represents mare finally and fully than the others my +sense of the literary importance of the men whose like we shall not look +upon again. Longfellow was easily the greatest poet of the three, Holmes +often the most brilliant and felicitous, but Lowell, in spite of his +forays in politics, was the finest scholar and the most profoundly +literary, as he was above the others most deeply and thoroughly New +England in quality. + +While I was doing these sketches, sometimes slighter and sometimes less +slight, of all those poets and essayists and novelists I had known in +Cambridge and Boston and Concord and New York, I was doing many other +things: half a dozen novels, as many more novelettes and shorter stories, +with essays and criticisms and verses; so that in January, 1900, I had +not yet done the paper on Lowell, which, with another, was to complete my +reminiscences of American literary life as I had witnessed it. When they +were all done at last they were republished in a volume which found +instant favor beyond my deserts if not its own. + +There was a good deal of trouble with the name, but Literary Friends and +Acquaintance was an endeavor for modest accuracy with which I remained +satisfied until I thought, long too late, of Literary Friends and +Neighbors. Then I perceived that this would have been still more +accurate and quite as modest, and I gladly give any reader leave to call +the book by that name who likes. + +Since the collection was first made, I have written little else quite of +the kind, except the paper on Bret Harte, which was first printed shortly +after his death; and the study of Mark Twain, which I had been preparing +to make for forty years and more, and wrote in two weeks of the spring of +1910. Others of my time and place have now passed whither there is +neither time nor place, and there are moments when I feel that I must try +to call them back and pay them such honor as my sense of their worth may +give; but the impulse has as yet failed to effect itself, and I do not +know how long I shall spare myself the supreme pleasure-pain, the “hochst +angenehmer Schmerz,” of seeking to live here with those who live here no +more. + +W. D. H. + + + + +MY FIRST VISIT TO NEW ENGLAND + + + + +I. + +If there was any one in the world who had his being more wholly in +literature than I had in 1860, I am sure I should not have known where to +find him, and I doubt if he could have been found nearer the centres of +literary activity than I then was, or among those more purely devoted to +literature than myself. I had been for three years a writer of news +paragraphs, book notices, and political leaders on a daily paper in an +inland city, and I do not know that my life differed outwardly from that +of any other young journalist, who had begun as I had in a country +printing-office, and might be supposed to be looking forward to +advancement in his profession or in public affairs. But inwardly it was +altogether different with me. Inwardly I was a poet, with no wish to be +anything else, unless in a moment of careless affluence I might so far +forget myself as to be a novelist. I was, with my friend J. J. Piatt, +the half-author of a little volume of very unknown verse, and Mr. Lowell +had lately accepted and had begun to print in the Atlantic Monthly five +or six poems of mine. Besides this I had written poems, and sketches, +and criticisms for the Saturday Press of New York, a long-forgotten but +once very lively expression of literary intention in an extinct bohemia +of that city; and I was always writing poems, and sketches, and +criticisms in our own paper. These, as well as my feats in the renowned +periodicals of the East, met with kindness, if not honor, in my own city +which ought to have given me grave doubts whether I was any real prophet. +But it only intensified my literary ambition, already so strong that my +veins might well have run ink rather than blood, and gave me a higher +opinion of my fellow-citizens, if such a thing could be. They were +indeed very charming people, and such of them as I mostly saw were +readers and lovers of books. Society in Columbus at that day had a +pleasant refinement which I think I do not exaggerate in the fond +retrospect. It had the finality which it seems to have had nowhere since +the war; it had certain fixed ideals, which were none the less graceful +and becoming because they were the simple old American ideals, now +vanished, or fast vanishing, before the knowledge of good and evil as +they have it in Europe, and as it has imparted itself to American travel +and sojourn. There was a mixture of many strains in the capital of Ohio, +as there was throughout the State. Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, New +York, and New England all joined to characterize the manners and customs. +I suppose it was the South which gave the social tone; the intellectual +taste among the elders was the Southern taste for the classic and the +standard in literature; but we who were younger preferred the modern +authors: we read Thackeray, and George Eliot, and Hawthorne, and Charles +Reade, and De Quincey, and Tennyson, and Browning, and Emerson, and +Longfellow, and I--I read Heine, and evermore Heine, when there was not +some new thing from the others. Now and then an immediate French book +penetrated to us: we read Michelet and About, I remember. We looked to +England and the East largely for our literary opinions; we accepted the +Saturday Review as law if we could not quite receive it as gospel. One +of us took the Cornhill Magazine, because Thackeray was the editor; the +Atlantic Monthly counted many readers among us; and a visiting young lady +from New England, who screamed at sight of the periodical in one of our +houses, “Why, have you got the Atlantic Monthly out here?” could be +answered, with cold superiority, “There are several contributors to the +Atlantic in Columbus.” There were in fact two: my room-mate, who wrote +Browning for it, while I wrote Heine and Longfellow. But I suppose two +are as rightfully several as twenty are. + + + + +II. + +That was the heyday of lecturing, and now and then a literary light from +the East swam into our skies. I heard and saw Emerson, and I once met +Bayard Taylor socially, at the hospitable house where he was a guest +after his lecture. Heaven knows how I got through the evening. I do not +think I opened my mouth to address him a word; it was as much as I could +do to sit and look at him, while he tranquilly smoked, and chatted with +our host, and quaffed the beer which we had very good in the Nest. All +the while I did him homage as the first author by calling whom I had met. +I longed to tell him how much I liked his poems, which we used to get by +heart in those days, and I longed (how much more I longed!) to have him +know that: + + “Auch ich war in Arkadien geboren,” + +that I had printed poems in the Atlantic Monthly and the Saturday Press, +and was the potential author of things destined to eclipse all literature +hitherto attempted. But I could not tell him; and there was no one else +who thought to tell him. Perhaps it was as well so; I might have +perished of his recognition, for my modesty was equal to my merit. + +In fact I think we were all rather modest young fellows, we who formed +the group wont to spend some part of every evening at that house, where +there was always music, or whist, or gay talk, or all three. We had our +opinions of literary matters, but (perhaps because we had mostly accepted +them from England or New England, as I have said) we were not vain of +them; and we would by no means have urged them before a living literary +man like that. I believe none of us ventured to speak, except the poet, +my roommate, who said, He believed so and so was the original of so and +so; and was promptly told, He had no right to say such a thing. +Naturally, we came away rather critical of our host’s guest, whom I +afterwards knew as the kindliest heart in the world. But we had not +shone in his presence, and that galled us; and we chose to think that he +had not shone in ours. + + + + +III + +At that time he was filling a large space in the thoughts of the young +people who had any thoughts about literature. He had come to his full +repute as an agreeable and intelligent traveller, and he still wore the +halo of his early adventures afoot in foreign lands when they were yet +really foreign. He had not written his novels of American life, once so +welcomed, and now so forgotten; it was very long before he had achieved +that incomparable translation of Faust which must always remain the +finest and best, and which would keep his name alive with Goethe’s, if he +had done nothing else worthy of remembrance. But what then most +commended him to the regard of us star-eyed youth (now blinking sadly +toward our seventies) was the poetry which he printed in the magazines +from time to time: in the first Putnam’s (where there was a dashing +picture of him in an Arab burnoose and, a turban), and in Harper’s, and +in the Atlantic. It was often very lovely poetry, I thought, and I still +think so; and it was rightfully his, though it paid the inevitable +allegiance to the manner of the great masters of the day. It was graced +for us by the pathetic romance of his early love, which some of its +sweetest and saddest numbers confessed, for the young girl he married +almost in her death hour; and we who were hoping to have our hearts +broken, or already had them so, would have been glad of something more of +the obvious poet in the popular lecturer we had seen refreshing himself +after his hour on the platform. + +He remained for nearly a year the only author I had seen, and I met him +once again before I saw any other. Our second meeting was far from +Columbus, as far as remote Quebec, when I was on my way to New England by +way of Niagara and the Canadian rivers and cities. I stopped in Toronto, +and realized myself abroad without any signal adventures; but at Montreal +something very pretty happened to me. I came into the hotel office, the +evening of a first day’s lonely sight-seeing, and vainly explored the +register for the name of some acquaintance; as I turned from it two +smartly dressed young fellows embraced it, and I heard one of them say, +to my great amaze and happiness, “Hello, here’s Howells!” + +“Oh,” I broke out upon him, “I was just looking for some one I knew. I +hope you are some one who knows me!” + +“Only through your contributions to the Saturday Press,” said the young +fellow, and with these golden words, the precious first personal +recognition of my authorship I had ever received from a stranger, and the +rich reward of all my literary endeavor, he introduced himself and his +friend. I do not know what became of this friend, or where or how he +eliminated himself; but we two others were inseparable from that moment. +He was a young lawyer from New York, and when I came back from Italy, +four or five years later, I used to see his sign in Wall Street, with a +never-fulfilled intention of going in to see him. In whatever world he +happens now to be, I should like to send him my greetings, and confess to +him that my art has never since brought me so sweet a recompense, and +nothing a thousandth part so much like Fame, as that outcry of his over +the hotel register in Montreal. We were comrades for four or five rich +days, and shared our pleasures and expenses in viewing the monuments of +those ancient Canadian capitals, which I think we valued at all their +picturesque worth. We made jokes to mask our emotions; we giggled and +made giggle, in the right way; we fell in and out of love with all the +pretty faces and dresses we saw; and we talked evermore about literature +and literary people. He had more acquaintance with the one, and more +passion for the other, but he could tell me of Pfaff’s lager-beer cellar +on Broadway, where the Saturday Press fellows and the other Bohemians +met; and this, for the time, was enough: I resolved to visit it as soon +as I reached New York, in spite of the tobacco and beer (which I was +given to understand were de rigueur), though they both, so far as I had +known them, were apt to make me sick. + +I was very desolate after I parted from this good fellow, who returned to +Montreal on his way to New York, while I remained in Quebec to continue +later on mine to New England. When I came in from seeing him off in a +calash for the boat, I discovered Bayard Taylor in the reading-room, where +he sat sunken in what seemed a somewhat weary muse. He did not know me, +or even notice me, though I made several errands in and out of the +reading-room in the vain hope that he might do so: doubly vain, for I am +aware now that I was still flown with the pride of that pretty experience +in Montreal, and trusted in a repetition of something like it. At last, +as no chance volunteered to help me, I mustered courage to go up to him +and name myself, and say I had once had the pleasure of meeting him at +Doctor-------‘s in Columbus. The poet gave no sign of consciousness at +the sound of a name which I had fondly begun to think might not be so all +unknown. He looked up with an unkindling eye, and asked, Ah, how was the +Doctor? and when I had reported favorably of the Doctor, our +conversation ended. + +He was probably as tired as he looked, and he must have classed me with +that multitude all over the country who had shared the pleasure I +professed in meeting him before; it was surely my fault that I did not +speak my name loud enough to be recognized, if I spoke it at all; but the +courage I had mustered did not quite suffice for that. In after years he +assured me, first by letter and then by word, of his grief for an +incident which I can only recall now as the untoward beginning of a +cordial friendship. It was often my privilege, in those days, as +reviewer and editor, to testify my sense of the beautiful things he did +in so many kinds of literature, but I never liked any of them better than +I liked him. He had a fervent devotion to his art, and he was always +going to do the greatest things in it, with an expectation of effect that +never failed him. The things he actually did were none of them mean, or +wanting in quality, and some of them are of a lasting charm that any one +may feel who will turn to his poems; but no doubt many of them fell short +of his hopes of them with the reader. It was fine to meet him when he +was full of a new scheme; he talked of it with a single-hearted joy, and +tried to make you see it of the same colors and proportions it wore to +his eyes. He spared no toil to make it the perfect thing he dreamed it, +and he was not discouraged by any disappointment he suffered with the +critic or the public. + +He was a tireless worker, and at last his health failed under his labors +at the newspaper desk, beneath the midnight gas, when he should long have +rested from such labors. I believe he was obliged to do them through one +of those business fortuities which deform and embitter all our lives; but +he was not the man to spare himself in any case. He was always +attempting new things, and he never ceased endeavoring to make his +scholarship reparation for the want of earlier opportunity and training. +I remember that I met him once in a Cambridge street with a book in his +hand which he let me take in mine. It was a Greek author, and he said he +was just beginning to read the language at fifty: a patriarchal age to me +of the early thirties! + +I suppose I intimated the surprise I felt at his taking it up so late in +the day, for he said, with charming seriousness, “Oh, but you know, I +expect to use it in the other world.” Yea, that made it worth while, I +consented; but was he sure of the other world? “As sure as I am of +this,” he said; and I have always kept the impression of the young faith +which spoke in his voice and was more than his words. + +I saw him last in the hour of those tremendous adieux which were paid him +in New York before he sailed to be minister in Germany. It was one of +the most graceful things done by President Hayes, who, most of all our +Presidents after Lincoln, honored himself in honoring literature by his +appointments, to give that place to Bayard Taylor. There was no one more +fit for it, and it was peculiarly fit that he should be so distinguished +to a people who knew and valued his scholarship and the service he had +done German letters. He was as happy in it, apparently, as a man could +be in anything here below, and he enjoyed to the last drop the many cups +of kindness pressed to his lips in parting; though I believe these +farewells, at a time when he was already fagged with work and excitement, +were notably harmful to him, and helped to hasten his end. Some of us +who were near of friendship went down to see him off when he sailed, as +the dismal and futile wont of friends is; and I recall the kind, great +fellow standing in the cabin, amid those sad flowers that heaped the +tables, saying good-by to one after another, and smiling fondly, smiling +wearily, upon all. There was champagne, of course, and an odious +hilarity, without meaning and without remission, till the warning bell +chased us ashore, and our brave poet escaped with what was left of his +life. + + + + +IV + +I have followed him far from the moment of our first meeting; but even on +my way to venerate those New England luminaries, which chiefly drew my +eyes, I could not pay a less devoir to an author who, if Curtis was not, +was chief of the New York group of authors in that day. I distinguished +between the New-Englanders and the New-Yorkers, and I suppose there is no +question but our literary centre was then in Boston, wherever it is, or +is not, at present. But I thought Taylor then, and I think him now, one +of the first in our whole American province of the republic of letters, +in a day when it was in a recognizably flourishing state, whether we +regard quantity or quality in the names that gave it lustre. Lowell was +then in perfect command of those varied forces which will long, if not +lastingly, keep him in memory as first among our literary men, and master +in more kinds than any other American. Longfellow was in the fulness of +his world-wide fame, and in the ripeness of the beautiful genius which +was not to know decay while life endured. Emerson had emerged from the +popular darkness which had so long held him a hopeless mystic, and was +shining a lambent star of poesy and prophecy at the zenith. Hawthorne, +the exquisite artist, the unrivalled dreamer, whom we still always liken +this one and that one to, whenever this one or that one promises greatly +to please us, and still leave without a rival, without a companion, had +lately returned from his long sojourn abroad, and had given us the last +of the incomparable romances which the world was to have perfect from his +hand. Doctor Holmes had surpassed all expectations in those who most +admired his brilliant humor and charming poetry by the invention of a new +attitude if not a new sort in literature. The turn that civic affairs +had taken was favorable to the widest recognition of Whittier’s splendid +lyrical gift; and that heart of fire, doubly snow-bound by Quaker +tradition and Puritan environment; was penetrating every generous breast +with its flamy impulses, and fusing all wills in its noble purpose. Mrs. +Stowe, who far outfamed the rest as the author of the most renowned novel +ever written, was proving it no accident or miracle by the fiction she +was still writing. + +This great New England group might be enlarged perhaps without loss of +quality by the inclusion of Thoreau, who came somewhat before his time, +and whose drastic criticism of our expediential and mainly futile +civilization would find more intelligent acceptance now than it did then, +when all resentment of its defects was specialized in enmity to Southern +slavery. Doctor Edward Everett Hale belonged in this group too, by +virtue of that humor, the most inventive and the most fantastic, the +sanest, the sweetest, the truest, which had begun to find expression in +the Atlantic Monthly; and there a wonderful young girl had written a +series of vivid sketches and taken the heart of youth everywhere with +amaze and joy, so that I thought it would be no less an event to meet +Harriet Prescott than to meet any of those I have named. + +I expected somehow to meet them all, and I imagined them all easily +accessible in the office of the Atlantic Monthly, which had lately +adventured in the fine air of high literature where so many other +periodicals had gasped and died before it. The best of these, hitherto, +and better even than the Atlantic for some reasons, the lamented Putnam’s +Magazine, had perished of inanition at New York, and the claim of the +commercial capital to the literary primacy had passed with that brilliant +venture. New York had nothing distinctive to show for American +literature but the decrepit and doting Knickerbocker Magazine. Harper’s +New Monthly, though Curtis had already come to it from the wreck of +Putnam’s, and it had long ceased to be eclectic in material, and had +begun to stand for native work in the allied arts which it has since so +magnificently advanced, was not distinctively literary, and the Weekly +had just begun to make itself known. The Century, Scribner’s, the +Cosmopolitan, McClure’s, and I know not what others, were still +unimagined by five, and ten, and twenty years, and the Galaxy was to +flash and fade before any of them should kindle its more effectual fires. +The Nation, which was destined to chastise rather than nurture our young +literature, had still six years of dreamless potentiality before it; and +the Nation was always more Bostonian than New-Yorkish by nature, whatever +it was by nativity. + +Philadelphia had long counted for nothing in the literary field. Graham’s +Magazine at one time showed a certain critical force, but it seemed to +perish of this expression of vitality; and there remained Godey’s Lady’s +Book and Peterson’s Magazine, publications really incredible in their +insipidity. In the South there was nothing but a mistaken social ideal, +with the moral principles all standing on their heads in defence of +slavery; and in the West there was a feeble and foolish notion that +Western talent was repressed by Eastern jealousy. At Boston chiefly, if +not at Boston alone, was there a vigorous intellectual life among such +authors as I have named. Every young writer was ambitious to join his +name with theirs in the Atlantic Monthly, and in the lists of Ticknor & +Fields, who were literary publishers in a sense such as the business +world has known nowhere else before or since. Their imprint was a +warrant of quality to the reader and of immortality to the author, so +that if I could have had a book issued by them at that day I should now +be in the full enjoyment of an undying fame. + + + + +V. + +Such was the literary situation as the passionate pilgrim from the West +approached his holy land at Boston, by way of the Grand Trunk Railway +from Quebec to Portland. I have no recollection of a sleeping-car, and I +suppose I waked and watched during the whole of that long, rough journey; +but I should hardly have slept if there had been a car for the purpose. I +was too eager to see what New England was like, and too anxious not to +lose the least glimpse of it, to close my eyes after I crossed the border +at Island Pond. I found that in the elm-dotted levels of Maine it was +very like the Western Reserve in northern Ohio, which is, indeed, a +portion of New England transferred with all its characteristic features, +and flattened out along the lake shore. It was not till I began to run +southward into the older regions of the country that it lost this look, +and became gratefully strange to me. It never had the effect of hoary +antiquity which I had expected of a country settled more than two +centuries; with its wood-built farms and villages it looked newer than +the coal-smoked brick of southern Ohio. I had prefigured the New England +landscape bare of forests, relieved here and there with the tees of +orchards or plantations; but I found apparently as much woodland as at +home. + +At Portland I first saw the ocean, and this was a sort of disappointment. +Tides and salt water I had already had at Quebec, so that I was no longer +on the alert for them; but the color and the vastness of the sea I was +still to try upon my vision. When I stood on the Promenade at Portland +with the kind young Unitarian minister whom I had brought a letter to, +and who led me there for a most impressive first view of the ocean, I +could not make more of it than there was of Lake Erie; and I have never +thought the color of the sea comparable to the tender blue of the lake. I +did not hint my disappointment to my friend; I had too much regard for +the feelings of an Eastern man to decry his ocean to his face, and I felt +besides that it would be vulgar and provincial to make comparisons. I am +glad now that I held my tongue, for that kind soul is no longer in this +world, and I should not like to think he knew how far short of my +expectations the sea he was so proud of had fallen. I went up with him +into a tower or belvedere there was at hand; and when he pointed to the +eastern horizon and said, Now there was nothing but sea between us and +Africa, I pretended to expand with the thought, and began to sound myself +for the emotions which I ought to have felt at such a sight. But in my +heart I was empty, and Heaven knows whether I saw the steamer which the +ancient mariner in charge of that tower invited me to look at through his +telescope. I never could see anything but a vitreous glare through a +telescope, which has a vicious habit of dodging about through space, and +failing to bring down anything of less than planetary magnitude. + +But there was something at Portland vastly more to me than seas or +continents, and that was the house where Longfellow was born. I believe, +now, I did not get the right house, but only the house he went to live in +later; but it served, and I rejoiced in it with a rapture that could not +have been more genuine if it had been the real birthplace of the poet. I +got my friend to show me + + “----the breezy dome of groves, + The shadows of Deering’s woods,” + +because they were in one of Longfellow’s loveliest and tenderest poems; +and I made an errand to the docks, for the sake of the + + “---black wharves and the slips, + And the sea-tides tossing free, + And Spanish sailors with bearded lips, + And the beauty and mystery of the ships, + And the magic of the sea,” + +mainly for the reason that these were colors and shapes of the fond +vision of the poet’s past. I am in doubt whether it was at this time or +a later time that I went to revere + + “--the dead captains as they lay + In their graves o’erlooking the tranquil bay, + where they in battle died,” + +but I am quite sure it was now that I wandered under + + “--the trees which shadow each well-known street, + As they balance up and down,” + +for when I was next in Portland the great fire had swept the city avenues +bare of most of those beautiful elms, whose Gothic arches and traceries I +well remember. + +The fact is that in those days I was bursting with the most romantic +expectations of life in every way, and I looked at the whole world as +material that might be turned into literature, or that might be +associated with it somehow. I do not know how I managed to keep these +preposterous hopes within me, but perhaps the trick of satirizing them, +which I had early learnt, helped me to do it. I was at that particular +moment resolved above all things to see things as Heinrich Heine saw +them, or at least to report them as he did, no matter how I saw them; and +I went about framing phrases to this end, and trying to match the objects +of interest to them whenever there was the least chance of getting them +together. + + + + +VI. + +I do not know how I first arrived in Boston, or whether it was before or +after I had passed a day or two in Salem. As Salem is on the way from +Portland, I will suppose that I stopped there first, and explored the +quaint old town (quainter then than now, but still quaint enough) for the +memorials of Hawthorne and of the witches which united to form the Salem +I cared for. I went and looked up the House of Seven Gables, and +suffered an unreasonable disappointment that it had not a great many more +of them; but there was no loss in the death-warrant of Bridget Bishop, +with the sheriff’s return of execution upon it, which I found at the +Court-house; if anything, the pathos of that witness of one of the +cruelest delusions in the world was rather in excess of my needs; I could +have got on with less. I saw the pins which the witches were sworn to +have thrust into the afflicted children, and I saw Gallows Hill, where +the hapless victims of the perjury were hanged. But that death-warrant +remained the most vivid color of my experience of the tragedy; I had no +need to invite myself to a sense of it, and it is still like a stain of +red in my memory. + +The kind old ship’s captain whose guest I was, and who was transfigured +to poetry in my sense by the fact that he used to voyage to the African +coast for palm-oil in former days, led me all about the town, and showed +me the Custom-house, which I desired to see because it was in the preface +to the Scarlet Letter. But I perceived that he did not share my +enthusiasm for the author, and I became more and more sensible that in +Salem air there was a cool undercurrent of feeling about him. No doubt +the place was not altogether grateful for the celebrity his romance had +given it, and would have valued more the uninterrupted quiet of its own +flattering thoughts of itself; but when it came to hearing a young lady +say she knew a girl who said she would like to poison Hawthorne, it +seemed to the devout young pilgrim from the West that something more of +love for the great romancer would not have been too much for him. +Hawthorne had already had his say, however, and he had not used his +native town with any great tenderness. Indeed, the advantages to any +place of having a great genius born and reared in its midst are so +doubtful that it might be well for localities designing to become the +birthplaces of distinguished authors to think twice about it. Perhaps +only the largest capitals, like London and Paris, and New York and +Chicago, ought to risk it. But the authors have an unaccountable +perversity, and will seldom come into the world in the large cities, +which are alone without the sense of neighborhood, and the personal +susceptibilities so unfavorable to the practice of the literary art. I +dare say that it was owing to the local indifference to her greatest +name, or her reluctance from it, that I got a clearer impression of Salem +in some other respects than I should have had if I had been invited there +to devote myself solely to the associations of Hawthorne. For the first +time I saw an old New England town, I do not know, but the most +characteristic, and took into my young Western consciousness the fact of +a more complex civilization than I had yet known. My whole life had been +passed in a region where men were just beginning ancestors, and the +conception of family was very imperfect. Literature, of course, was full +of it, and it was not for a devotee of Thackeray to be theoretically +ignorant of its manifestations; but I had hitherto carelessly supposed +that family was nowhere regarded seriously in America except in Virginia, +where it furnished a joke for the rest of the nation. But now I found +myself confronted with it in its ancient houses, and heard its names +pronounced with a certain consideration, which I dare say was as much +their due in Salem as it could be anywhere. The names were all strange, +and all indifferent to me, but those fine square wooden mansions, of a +tasteful architecture, and a pale buff-color, withdrawing themselves in +quiet reserve from the quiet street, gave me an impression of family as +an actuality and a force which I had never had before, but which no +Westerner can yet understand the East without taking into account. I do +not suppose that I conceived of family as a fact of vital import then; I +think I rather regarded it as a color to be used in any aesthetic study +of the local conditions. I am not sure that I valued it more even for +literary purposes, than the steeple which the captain pointed out as the +first and last thing he saw when he came and went on his long voyages, or +than the great palm-oil casks, which he showed me, and which I related to +the tree that stood + + “Auf brennender Felsenwand.” + +Whether that was the kind of palm that gives the oil, or was a sort only +suitable to be the dream of a lonely fir-tree in the North on a cold +height, I am in doubt to this day. + +I heard, not without concern, that the neighboring industry of Lynn was +penetrating Salem, and that the ancient haunt of the witches and the +birthplace of our subtlest and somberest wizard was becoming a great +shoe-town; but my concern was less for its memories and sensibilities +than for an odious duty which I owed that industry, together with all the +others in New England. Before I left home I had promised my earliest +publisher that I would undertake to edit, or compile, or do something +literary to, a work on the operation of the more distinctive mechanical +inventions of our country, which he had conceived the notion of +publishing by subscription. He had furnished me, the most immechanical +of humankind, with a letter addressed generally to the great mills and +factories of the East, entreating their managers to unfold their +mysteries to me for the purposes of this volume. His letter had the +effect of shutting up some of them like clams, and others it put upon +their guard against my researches, lest I should seize the secret of +their special inventions and publish it to the world. I could not tell +the managers that I was both morally and mentally incapable of this; that +they might have explained and demonstrated the properties and functions +of their most recondite machinery, and upon examination afterwards found +me guiltless of having anything but a few verses of Heine or Tennyson or +Longfellow in my head. So I had to suffer in several places from their +unjust anxieties, and from my own weariness of their ingenious engines, +or else endure the pangs of a bad conscience from ignoring them. As long +as I was in Canada I was happy, for there was no industry in Canada that +I saw, except that of the peasant girls, in their Evangeline hats and +kirtles, tossing the hay in the way-side fields; but when I reached +Portland my troubles began. I went with that young minister of whom I +have spoken to a large foundry, where they were casting some sort of +ironmongery, and inspected the process from a distance beyond any chance +spurt of the molten metal, and came away sadly uncertain of putting the +rather fine spectacle to any practical use. A manufactory where they did +something with coal-oil (which I now heard for the first time called +kerosene) refused itself to me, and I said to myself that probably all +the other industries of Portland were as reserved, and I would not seek +to explore them; but when I got to Salem, my conscience stirred again. +If I knew that there were shoe-shops in Salem, ought not I to go and +inspect their processes? This was a question which would not answer +itself to my satisfaction, and I had no peace till I learned that I could +see shoemaking much better at Lynn, and that Lynn was such a little way +from Boston that I could readily run up there, if I did not wish to +examine the shoe machinery at once. I promised myself that I would run up +from Boston, but in order to do this I must first go to Boston. + + + + +VII. + +I am supposing still that I saw Salem before I saw Boston, but however +the fact may be, I am sure that I decided it would be better to see +shoemaking in Lynn, where I really did see it, thirty years later. For +the purposes of the present visit, I contented myself with looking at a +machine in Haverhill, which chewed a shoe sole full of pegs, and dropped +it out of its iron jaws with an indifference as great as my own, and +probably as little sense of how it had done its work. I may be unjust to +that machine; Heaven knows I would not wrong it; and I must confess that +my head had no room in it for the conception of any machinery but the +mythological, which also I despised, in my revulsion from the +eighteenth-century poets to those of my own day. + +I cannot quite make out after the lapse of so many years just how or when +I got to Haverhill, or whether it was before or after I had been in +Salem. There is an apparitional quality in my presences, at this point +or that, in the dim past; but I hope that, for the credit of their order, +ghosts are not commonly taken with such trivial things as I was. For +instance, in Haverhill I was much interested by the sight of a young man, +coming gayly down the steps of the hotel where I lodged, in peg-top +trousers so much more peg top than my own that I seemed to be wearing +mere spring-bottoms in comparison; and in a day when every one who +respected himself had a necktie as narrow as he could get, this youth had +one no wider than a shoestring, and red at that, while mine measured +almost an inch, and was black. To be sure, he was one of a band of negro +minstrels, who were to give a concert that night, and he had a light to +excel in fashion. + +I will suppose, for convenience’ sake, that I visited Haverhill, too, +before I reached Boston: somehow that shoe-pegging machine must come in, +and it may as well come in here. When I actually found myself in Boston, +there were perhaps industries which it would have been well for me to +celebrate, but I either made believe there were none, or else I honestly +forgot all about them. In either case I released myself altogether to +the literary and historical associations of the place. I need not say +that I gave myself first to the first, and it rather surprised me to find +that the literary associations of Boston referred so largely to +Cambridge. I did not know much about Cambridge, except that it was the +seat of the university where Lowell was, and Longfellow had been, +professor; and somehow I had not realized it as the home of these poets. +That was rather stupid of me, but it is best to own the truth, and +afterward I came to know the place so well that I may safely confess my +earlier ignorance. + +I had stopped in Boston at the Tremont House, which was still one of the +first hostelries of the country, and I must have inquired my way to +Cambridge there; but I was sceptical of the direction the Cambridge +horse-car took when I found it, and I hinted to the driver my anxieties +as to why he should be starting east when I had been told that Cambridge +was west of Boston. He reassured me in the laconic and sarcastic manner +of his kind, and we really reached Cambridge by the route he had taken. + +The beautiful elms that shaded great part of the way massed themselves in +the “groves of academe” at the Square, and showed pleasant glimpses of +“Old Harvard’s scholar factories red,” then far fewer than now. It must +have been in vacation, for I met no one as I wandered through the college +yard, trying to make up my mind as to how I should learn where Lowell +lived; for it was he whom I had come to find. He had not only taken the +poems I sent him, but he had printed two of them in a single number of +the Atlantic, and had even written me a little note about them, which I +wore next my heart in my breast pocket till I almost wore it out; and so +I thought I might fitly report myself to him. But I have always been +helpless in finding my way, and I was still depressed by my failure to +convince the horse-car driver that he had taken the wrong road. I let +several people go by without questioning them, and those I did ask +abashed me farther by not knowing what I wanted to know. When I had +remitted my search for the moment, an ancient man, with an open mouth and +an inquiring eye, whom I never afterwards made out in Cambridge, +addressed me with a hospitable offer to show me the Washington Elm. I +thought this would give me time to embolden myself for the meeting with +the editor of the Atlantic if I should ever find him, and I went with +that kind old man, who when he had shown me the tree, and the spot where +Washington stood when he took command of the Continental forces, said +that he had a branch of it, and that if I would come to his house with +him he would give me a piece. In the end, I meant merely to flatter him +into telling me where I could find Lowell, but I dissembled my purpose +and pretended a passion for a piece of the historic elm, and the old man +led me not only to his house but his wood-house, where he sawed me off a +block so generous that I could not get it into my pocket. I feigned the +gratitude which I could see that he expected, and then I took courage to +put my question to him. Perhaps that patriarch lived only in the past, +and cared for history and not literature. He confessed that he could not +tell me where to find Lowell; but he did not forsake me; he set forth +with me upon the street again, and let no man pass without asking him. In +the end we met one who was able to say where Mr. Lowell was, and I found +him at last in a little study at the rear of a pleasant, old-fashioned +house near the Delta. + +Lowell was not then at the height of his fame; he had just reached this +thirty years after, when he died; but I doubt if he was ever after a +greater power in his own country, or more completely embodied the +literary aspiration which would not and could not part itself from the +love of freedom and the hope of justice. For the sake of these he had +been willing to suffer the reproach which followed their friends in the +earlier days of the anti-slavery struggle: He had outlived the reproach +long before; but the fear of his strength remained with those who had +felt it, and he had not made himself more generally loved by the ‘Fable +for Critics’ than by the ‘Biglow Papers’, probably. But in the ‘Vision +of Sir Launfal’ and the ‘Legend of Brittany’ he had won a liking if not a +listening far wider than his humor and his wit had got him; and in his +lectures on the English poets, given not many years before he came to the +charge of the Atlantic, he had proved himself easily the wisest and +finest critic in our language. He was already, more than any American +poet, + + “Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, + The love of love,” + +and he held a place in the public sense which no other author among us +has held. I had myself never been a great reader of his poetry, when I +met him, though when I was a boy of ten years I had heard my father +repeat passages from the Biglow Papers against war and slavery and the +war for slavery upon Mexico, and later I had read those criticisms of +English poetry, and I knew Sir Launfal must be Lowell in some sort; but +my love for him as a poet was chiefly centred in my love for his tender +rhyme, ‘Auf Wiedersehen’, which I can not yet read without something of +the young pathos it first stirred in me. I knew and felt his greatness +some how apart from the literary proofs of it; he ruled my fancy and held +my allegiance as a character, as a man; and I am neither sorry nor +ashamed that I was abashed when I first came into his presence; and that +in spite of his words of welcome I sat inwardly quaking before him. He +was then forty-one years old, and nineteen my senior, and if there had +been nothing else to awe me, I might well have been quelled by the +disparity of our ages. But I have always been willing and even eager to +do homage to men who have done something, and notably to men who have +done something in the sort I wished to do something in, myself. I +could never recognize any other sort of superiority; but that I am proud +to recognize; and I had before Lowell some such feeling as an obscure +subaltern might have before his general. He was by nature a bit of a +disciplinarian, and the effect was from him as well as in me; I dare say +he let me feel whatever difference there was as helplessly as I felt it. +At the first encounter with people he always was apt to have a certain +frosty shyness, a smiling cold, as from the long, high-sunned winters of +his Puritan race; he was not quite himself till he had made you aware of +his quality: then no one could be sweeter, tenderer, warmer than he; then +he made you free of his whole heart; but you must be his captive before +he could do that. His whole personality had now an instant charm for me; +I could not keep my eyes from those beautiful eyes of his, which had a +certain starry serenity, and looked out so purely from under his white +forehead, shadowed with auburn hair untouched by age; or from the smile +that shaped the auburn beard, and gave the face in its form and color the +Christ-look which Page’s portrait has flattered in it. + +His voice had as great a fascination for me as his face. The vibrant +tenderness and the crisp clearness of the tones, the perfect modulation, +the clear enunciation, the exquisite accent, the elect diction--I did not +know enough then to know that these were the gifts, these were the +graces, of one from whose tongue our rough English came music such as I +should never hear from any other. In this speech there was nothing of +our slipshod American slovenliness, but a truly Italian conscience and an +artistic sense of beauty in the instrument. + +I saw, before he sat down across his writing-table from me, that he was +not far from the medium height; but his erect carriage made the most of +his five feet and odd inches. He had been smoking the pipe he loved, and +he put it back in his mouth, presently, as if he found himself at greater +ease with it, when he began to chat, or rather to let me show what manner +of young man I was by giving me the first word. I told him of the +trouble I had in finding him, and I could not help dragging in something +about Heine’s search for Borne, when he went to see him in Frankfort; but +I felt at once this was a false start, for Lowell was such an impassioned +lover of Cambridge, which was truly his patria, in the Italian sense, +that it must have hurt him to be unknown to any one in it; he said, a +little dryly, that he should not have thought I would have so much +difficulty; but he added, forgivingly, that this was not his own house, +which he was out of for the time. Then he spoke to me of Heine, and when +I showed my ardor for him, he sought to temper it with some judicious +criticisms, and told me that he had kept the first poem I sent him, for +the long time it had been unacknowledged, to make sure that it was not a +translation. He asked me about myself, and my name, and its Welsh +origin, and seemed to find the vanity I had in this harmless enough. When +I said I had tried hard to believe that I was at least the literary +descendant of Sir James Howels, he corrected me gently with “James +Howel,” and took down a volume of the ‘Familiar Letters’ from the shelves +behind him to prove me wrong. This was always his habit, as I found +afterwards when he quoted anything from a book he liked to get it and +read the passage over, as if he tasted a kind of hoarded sweetness in the +words. It visibly vexed him if they showed him in the least mistaken; +but + + “The love he bore to learning was at fault” + +for this foible, and that other of setting people right if he thought +them wrong. I could not assert myself against his version of Howels’s +name, for my edition of his letters was far away in Ohio, and I was +obliged to own that the name was spelt in several different ways in it. +He perceived, no doubt, why I had chosen the form liked my own, with the +title which the pleasant old turncoat ought to have had from the many +masters he served according to their many minds, but never had except +from that erring edition. He did not afflict me for it, though; probably +it amused him too much; he asked me about the West, and when he found +that I was as proud of the West as I was of Wales, he seemed even better +pleased, and said he had always fancied that human nature was laid out on +rather a larger scale there than in the East, but he had seen very little +of the West. In my heart I did not think this then, and I do not think +it now; human nature has had more ground to spread over in the West; that +is all; but “it was not for me to bandy words with my sovereign.” He +said he liked to hear of the differences between the different sections, +for what we had most to fear in our country was a wearisome sameness of +type. + +He did not say now, or at any other time during the many years I knew +him, any of those slighting things of the West which I had so often to +suffer from Eastern people, but suffered me to praise it all I would. He +asked me what way I had taken in coming to New England, and when I told +him, and began to rave of the beauty and quaintness of French Canada, and +to pour out my joy in Quebec, he said, with a smile that had now lost all +its frost, Yes, Quebec was a bit of the seventeenth century; it was in +many ways more French than France, and its people spoke the language of +Voltaire, with the accent of Voltaire’s time. + +I do not remember what else he talked of, though once I remembered it +with what I believed an ineffaceable distinctness. I set nothing of it +down at the time; I was too busy with the letters I was writing for a +Cincinnati paper; and I was severely bent upon keeping all personalities +out of them. This was very well, but I could wish now that I had +transgressed at least so far as to report some of the things that Lowell +said; for the paper did not print my letters, and it would have been +perfectly safe, and very useful for the present purpose. But perhaps he +did not say anything very memorable; to do that you must have something +positive in your listener; and I was the mere response, the hollow echo, +that youth must be in like circumstances. I was all the time afraid of +wearing my welcome out, and I hurried to go when I would so gladly have +staid. I do not remember where I meant to go, or why he should have +undertaken to show me the way across-lots, but this was what he did; and +when we came to a fence, which I clambered gracelessly over, he put his +hands on the top, and tried to take it at a bound. He tried twice, and +then laughed at his failure, but not with any great pleasure, and he was +not content till a third trial carried him across. Then he said, “I +commonly do that the first time,” as if it were a frequent habit with +him, while I remained discreetly silent, and for that moment at least +felt myself the elder of the man who had so much of the boy in him. He +had, indeed, much of the boy in him to the last, and he parted with each +hour of his youth reluctantly, pathetically. + + + + +VIII. + +We walked across what must have been Jarvis Field to what must have been +North Avenue, and there he left me. But before he let me go he held my +hand while he could say that he wished me to dine with him; only, he was +not in his own house, and he would ask me to dine with him at the Parker +House in Boston, and would send me word of the time later. + +I suppose I may have spent part of the intervening time in viewing the +wonders of Boston, and visiting the historic scenes and places in it and +about it. I certainly went over to Charleston, and ascended Bunker Hill +monument, and explored the navy-yard, where the immemorial man-of-war +begun in Jackson’s time was then silently stretching itself under its +long shed in a poetic arrest, as if the failure of the appropriation for +its completion had been some kind of enchantment. In Boston, I early +presented my letter of credit to the publisher it was drawn upon, not +that I needed money at the moment, but from a young eagerness to see if +it would be honored; and a literary attache of the house kindly went +about with me, and showed me the life of the city. A great city it +seemed to me then, and a seething vortex of business as well as a whirl +of gaiety, as I saw it in Washington Street, and in a promenade concert +at Copeland’s restaurant in Tremont Row. Probably I brought some +idealizing force to bear upon it, for I was not all so strange to the +world as I must seem; perhaps I accounted for quality as well as quantity +in my impressions of the New England metropolis, and aggrandized it in +the ratio of its literary importance. It seemed to me old, even after +Quebec, and very likely I credited the actual town with all the dead and +gone Bostonians in my sentimental census. If I did not, it was no fault +of my cicerone, who thought even more of the city he showed me than I +did. I do not know now who he was, and I never saw him after I came to +live there, with any certainty that it was he, though I was often +tormented with the vision of a spectacled face like his, but not like +enough to warrant me in addressing him. + +He became part of that ghostly Boston of my first visit, which would +sometimes return and possess again the city I came to know so familiarly +in later years, and to be so passionately interested in. Some color of +my prime impressions has tinged the fictitious experiences of people in +my books, but I find very little of it in my memory. This is like a web +of frayed old lace, which I have to take carefully into my hold for fear +of its fragility, and make out as best I can the figure once so distinct +in it. There are the narrow streets, stretching saltworks to the docks, +which I haunted for their quaintness, and there is Faunal Hall, which I +cared to see so much more because Wendell Phillips had spoken in it than +because Otis and Adams had. There is the old Colonial House, and there +is the State House, which I dare say I explored, with the Common sloping +before it. There is Beacon Street, with the Hancock House where it is +incredibly no more, and there are the beginnings of Commonwealth Avenue, +and the other streets of the Back Bay, laid out with their basements left +hollowed in the made land, which the gravel trains were yet making out of +the westward hills. There is the Public Garden, newly planned and +planted, but without the massive bridge destined to make so ungratefully +little of the lake that occasioned it. But it is all very vague, and I +could easily believe now that it was some one else who saw it then in my +place. + +I think that I did not try to see Cambridge the same day that I saw +Lowell, but wisely came back to my hotel in Boston, and tried to realize +the fact. I went out another day, with an acquaintance from Ohio; whom I +ran upon in the street. We went to Mount Auburn together, and I viewed +its monuments with a reverence which I dare say their artistic quality +did not merit. But I am, not sorry for this, for perhaps they are not +quite so bad as some people pretend. The Gothic chapel of the cemetery, +unsorted as it was, gave me, with its half-dozen statues standing or +sitting about, an emotion such as I am afraid I could not receive now +from the Acropolis, Westminster Abbey, and Santa Crocea in one. I tried +hard for some aesthetic sense of it, and I made believe that I thought +this thing and that thing in the place moved me with its fitness or +beauty; but the truth is that I had no taste in anything but literature, +and did not feel the effect I would so willingly have experienced. + +I did genuinely love the elmy quiet of the dear old Cambridge streets, +though, and I had a real and instant pleasure in the yellow colonial +houses, with their white corners and casements and their green blinds, +that lurked behind the shrubbery of the avenue I passed through to Mount +Auburn. The most beautiful among them was the most interesting for me, +for it was the house of Longfellow; my companion, who had seen it before, +pointed it out to me with an air of custom, and I would not let him see +that I valued the first sight of it as I did. I had hoped that somehow I +might be so favored as to see Longfellow himself, but when I asked about +him of those who knew, they said, “Oh, he is at Nahant,” and I thought +that Nahant must be a great way off, and at any rate I did not feel +authorized to go to him there. Neither did I go to see the author of +‘The Amber Gods’ who lived at Newburyport, I was told, as if I should +know where Newburyport was; I did not know, and I hated to ask. Besides, +it did not seem so simple as it had seemed in Ohio, to go and see a young +lady simply because I was infatuated with her literature; even as the +envoy of all the infatuated young people of Columbus, I could not quite +do this; and when I got home, I had to account for my failure as best I +could. Another failure of mine was the sight of Whittier, which I then +very much longed to have. They said, “Oh, Whittier lives at Amesbury,” + but that put him at an indefinite distance, and without the introduction +I never would ask for, I found it impossible to set out in quest of him. +In the end, I saw no one in New England whom I was not presented to in +the regular way, except Lowell, whom I thought I had a right to call upon +in my quality of contributor, and from the acquaintance I had with him by +letter. I neither praise nor blame myself for this; it was my shyness +that with held me rather than my merit. There is really no harm in +seeking the presence of a famous man, and I doubt if the famous man +resents the wish of people to look upon him without some measure, great +or little, of affectation. There are bores everywhere, but he is +likelier to find them in the wonted figures of society than in those +young people, or old people, who come to him in the love of what he has +done. I am well aware how furiously Tennyson sometimes met his +worshippers, and how insolently Carlyle, but I think these facts are +little specks in their sincerity. Our own gentler and honester +celebrities did not forbid approach, and I have known some of them caress +adorers who seemed hardly worthy of their kindness; but that was better +than to have hurt any sensitive spirit who had ventured too far, by the +rules that govern us with common men. + + + + +IX. + +My business relations were with the house that so promptly honored my +letter of credit. This house had published in the East the campaign life +of Lincoln which I had lately written, and I dare say would have +published the volume of poems I had written earlier with my friend Piatt, +if there had been any public for it; at least, I saw large numbers of the +book on the counters. But all my literary affiliations were with Ticknor +& Fields, and it was the Old Corner Book-Store on Washington Street that +drew my heart as soon as I had replenished my pocket in Cornhill. After +verifying the editor of the Atlantic Monthly I wised to verify its +publishers, and it very fitly happened that when I was shown into Mr. +Fields’s little room at the back of the store, with its window looking +upon School Street, and its scholarly keeping in books and prints, he had +just got the magazine sheets of a poem of mine from the Cambridge +printers. He was then lately from abroad, and he had the zest for +American things which a foreign sojourn is apt to renew in us, though I +did not know this then, and could not account for it in the kindness he +expressed for my poem. He introduced me to Mr. Ticknor, who I fancied +had not read my poem; but he seemed to know what it was from the junior +partner, and he asked me whether I had been paid for it. I confessed +that I had not, and then he got out a chamois-leather bag, and took from +it five half-eagles in gold and laid them on the green cloth top of the +desk, in much the shape and of much the size of the Great Bear. I have +never since felt myself paid so lavishly for any literary work, though I +have had more for a single piece than the twenty-five dollars that +dazzled me in this constellation. The publisher seemed aware of the +poetic character of the transaction; he let the pieces lie a moment, +before he gathered them up and put them into my hand, and said, “I always +think it is pleasant to have it in gold.” + +But a terrible experience with the poem awaited me, and quenched for the +moment all my pleasure and pride. It was ‘The Pilot’s Story,’ which I +suppose has had as much acceptance as anything of mine in verse (I do not +boast of a vast acceptance for it), and I had attempted to treat in it a +phase of the national tragedy of slavery, as I had imagined it on a +Mississippi steamboat. A young planter has gambled away the slave-girl +who is the mother of his child, and when he tells her, she breaks out +upon him with the demand: + + “What will you say to our boy when he cries for me, there in Saint + Louis?” + +I had thought this very well, and natural and simple, but a fatal +proof-reader had not thought it well enough, or simple and natural +enough, and he had made the line read: + + “What will you say to our boy when he cries for ‘Ma,’ there in Saint + Louis?” + +He had even had the inspiration to quote the word he preferred to the one +I had written, so that there was no merciful possibility of mistaking it +for a misprint, and my blood froze in my veins at sight of it. Mr. +Fields had given me the sheets to read while he looked over some letters, +and he either felt the chill of my horror, or I made some sign or sound +of dismay that caught his notice, for he looked round at me. I could +only show him the passage with a gasp. I dare say he might have liked to +laugh, for it was cruelly funny, but he did not; he was concerned for the +magazine as well as for me. He declared that when he first read the line +he had thought I could not have written it so, and he agreed with me that +it would kill the poem if it came out in that shape. He instantly set +about repairing the mischief, so far as could be. He found that the +whole edition of that sheet had been printed, and the air blackened round +me again, lighted up here and there with baleful flashes of the newspaper +wit at my cost, which I previsioned in my misery; I knew what I should +have said of such a thing myself, if it had been another’s. But the +publisher at once decided that the sheet must be reprinted, and I went +away weak as if in the escape from some deadly peril. Afterwards it +appeared that the line had passed the first proof-reader as I wrote it, +but that the final reader had entered so sympathetically into the +realistic intention of my poem as to contribute the modification which +had nearly been my end. + + + + +X. + +As it fell out, I lived without farther difficulty to the day and hour of +the dinner Lowell made for me; and I really think, looking at myself +impersonally, and remembering the sort of young fellow I was, that it +would have been a great pity if I had not. The dinner was at the +old-fashioned Boston hour of two, and the table was laid for four people +in some little upper room at Parker’s, which I was never afterwards able +to make sure of. Lowell was already, there when I came, and he presented +me, to my inexpressible delight and surprise, to Dr. Holmes, who was +there with him. + +Holmes was in the most brilliant hour of that wonderful second youth +which his fame flowered into long after the world thought he had +completed the cycle of his literary life. He had already received full +recognition as a poet of delicate wit, nimble humor, airy imagination, +and exquisite grace, when the Autocrat papers advanced his name +indefinitely beyond the bounds which most immortals would have found +range enough. The marvel of his invention was still fresh in the minds +of men, and time had not dulled in any measure the sense of its novelty. +His readers all fondly identified him with his work; and I fully expected +to find myself in the Autocrat’s presence when I met Dr. Holmes. But +the fascination was none the less for that reason; and the winning smile, +the wise and humorous glance, the whole genial manner was as important to +me as if I had foreboded something altogether different. I found him +physically of the Napoleonic height which spiritually overtops the Alps, +and I could look into his face without that unpleasant effort which +giants of inferior mind so often cost the man of five feet four. + +A little while after, Fields came in, and then our number and my pleasure +were complete. + +Nothing else so richly satisfactory, indeed, as the whole affair could +have happened to a like youth at such a point in his career; and when I +sat down with Doctor Holmes and Mr. Fields, on Lowell’s right, I felt +through and through the dramatic perfection of the event. The kindly +Autocrat recognized some such quality of it in terms which were not the +less precious and gracious for their humorous excess. I have no reason +to think that he had yet read any of my poor verses, or had me otherwise +than wholly on trust from Lowell; but he leaned over towards his host, +and said, with a laughing look at me, “Well, James, this is something +like the apostolic succession; this is the laying on of hands.” I took +his sweet and caressing irony as he meant it; but the charm of it went to +my head long before any drop of wine, together with the charm of hearing +him and Lowell calling each other James and Wendell, and of finding them +still cordially boys together. + +I would gladly have glimmered before those great lights in the talk that +followed, if I could have thought of anything brilliant to say, but I +could not, and so I let them shine without a ray of reflected splendor +from me. It was such talk as I had, of course, never heard before, and +it is not saying enough to say that I have never heard such talk since +except from these two men. It was as light and kind as it was deep and +true, and it ranged over a hundred things, with a perpetual sparkle of +Doctor Holmes’s wit, and the constant glow of Lowell’s incandescent +sense. From time to time Fields came in with one of his delightful +stories (sketches of character they were, which he sometimes did not mind +caricaturing), or with some criticism of the literary situation from his +stand-point of both lover and publisher of books. I heard fames that I +had accepted as proofs of power treated as factitious, and witnessed a +frankness concerning authorship, far and near, that I had not dreamed of +authors using. When Doctor Holmes understood that I wrote for the +‘Saturday Press’, which was running amuck among some Bostonian +immortalities of the day, he seemed willing that I should know they were +not thought so very undying in Boston, and that I should not take the +notion of a Mutual Admiration Society too seriously, or accept the New +York Bohemian view of Boston as true. For the most part the talk did not +address itself to me, but became an exchange of thoughts and fancies +between himself and Lowell. They touched, I remember, on certain matters +of technique, and the doctor confessed that he had a prejudice against +some words that he could not overcome; for instance, he said, nothing +could induce him to use ‘neath for beneath, no exigency of versification +or stress of rhyme. Lowell contended that he would use any word that +carried his meaning; and I think he did this to the hurt of some of his +earlier things. He was then probably in the revolt against too much +literature in literature, which every one is destined sooner or later to +share; there was a certain roughness, very like crudeness, which he +indulged before his thought and phrase mellowed to one music in his later +work. I tacitly agreed rather with the doctor, though I did not swerve +from my allegiance to Lowell, and if I had spoken I should have sided +with him: I would have given that or any other proof of my devotion. +Fields casually mentioned that he thought “The Dandelion” was the most +popularly liked of Lowell’s briefer poems, and I made haste to say that I +thought so too, though I did not really think anything about it; and then +I was sorry, for I could see that the poet did not like it, quite; and I +felt that I was duly punished for my dishonesty. + +Hawthorne was named among other authors, probably by Fields, whose house +had just published his “Marble Faun,” and who had recently come home on +the same steamer with him. Doctor Holmes asked if I had met Hawthorne +yet, and when I confessed that I had hardly yet even hoped for such a +thing, he smiled his winning smile, and said: “Ah, well! I don’t know +that you will ever feel you have really met him. He is like a dim room +with a little taper of personality burning on the corner of the mantel.” + +They all spoke of Hawthorne, and with the same affection, but the same +sense of something mystical and remote in him; and every word was +priceless to me. But these masters of the craft I was ‘prentice to +probably could not have said anything that I should not have found wise +and well, and I am sure now I should have been the loser if the talk had +shunned any of the phases of human nature which it touched. It is best +to find that all men are of the same make, and that there are certain +universal things which interest them as much as the supernal things, and +amuse them even more. There was a saying of Lowell’s which he was fond +of repeating at the menace of any form of the transcendental, and he +liked to warn himself and others with his homely, “Remember the +dinner-bell.” What I recall of the whole effect of a time so happy for +me is that in all that was said, however high, however fine, we were +never out of hearing of the dinner-bell; and perhaps this is the best +effect I can leave with the reader. It was the first dinner served in +courses that I had sat down to, and I felt that this service gave it a +romantic importance which the older fashion of the West still wanted. +Even at Governor Chase’s table in Columbus the Governor carved; I knew of +the dinner ‘a la Russe’, as it was then called, only from books; and it +was a sort of literary flavor that I tasted in the successive dishes. +When it came to the black coffee, and then to the ‘petits verres’ of +cognac, with lumps of sugar set fire to atop, it was something that so +far transcended my home-kept experience that it began to seem altogether +visionary. + +Neither Fields nor Doctor Holmes smoked, and I had to confess that I did +not; but Lowell smoked enough for all three, and the spark of his cigar +began to show in the waning light before we rose from the table. The +time that never had, nor can ever have, its fellow for me, had to come to +an end, as all times must, and when I shook hands with Lowell in parting, +he overwhelmed me by saying that if I thought of going to Concord he +would send me a letter to Hawthorne. I was not to see Lowell again +during my stay in Boston; but Doctor Holmes asked me to tea for the next +evening, and Fields said I must come to breakfast with him in the +morning. + + + + +XI. + +I recall with the affection due to his friendly nature, and to the +kindness afterwards to pass between us for many years, the whole aspect +of the publisher when I first saw him. His abundant hair, and his full +“beard as broad as ony spade,” that flowed from his throat in Homeric +curls, were touched with the first frost. He had a fine color, and his +eyes, as keen as they were kind, twinkled restlessly above the wholesome +russet-red of his cheeks. His portly frame was clad in those Scotch +tweeds which had not yet displaced the traditional broadcloth with us in +the West, though I had sent to New York for a rough suit, and so felt +myself not quite unworthy to meet a man fresh from the hands of the +London tailor. + +Otherwise I stood as much in awe of him as his jovial soul would let me; +and if I might I should like to suggest to the literary youth of this day +some notion of the importance of his name to the literary youth of my +day. He gave aesthetic character to the house of Ticknor & Fields, but +he was by no means a silent partner on the economic side. No one can +forecast the fortune of a new book, but he knew as well as any publisher +can know not only whether a book was good, but whether the reader would +think so; and I suppose that his house made as few bad guesses, along +with their good ones, as any house that ever tried the uncertain temper +of the public with its ventures. In the minds of all who loved the plain +brown cloth and tasteful print of its issues he was more or less +intimately associated with their literature; and those who were not +mistaken in thinking De Quincey one of the delightfulest authors in the +world, were especially grateful to the man who first edited his writings +in book form, and proud that this edition was the effect of American +sympathy with them. At that day, I believed authorship the noblest +calling in the world, and I should still be at a loss to name any nobler. +The great authors I had met were to me the sum of greatness, and if I +could not rank their publisher with them by virtue of equal achievement, +I handsomely brevetted him worthy of their friendship, and honored him in +the visible measure of it. + +In his house beside the Charles, and in the close neighborhood of Doctor +Holmes, I found an odor and an air of books such as I fancied might +belong to the famous literary houses of London. It is still there, that +friendly home of lettered refinement, and the gracious spirit which knew +how to welcome me, and make the least of my shyness and strangeness, and +the most of the little else there was in me, illumines it still, though +my host of that rapturous moment has many years been of those who are +only with us unseen and unheard. I remember his burlesque pretence that +morning of an inextinguishable grief when I owned that I had never eaten +blueberry cake before, and how he kept returning to the pathos of the +fact that there should be a region of the earth where blueberry cake was +unknown. We breakfasted in the pretty room whose windows look out +through leaves and flowers upon the river’s coming and going tides, and +whose walls were covered with the faces and the autographs of all the +contemporary poets and novelists. The Fieldses had spent some days with +Tennyson in their recent English sojourn, and Mrs. Fields had much to +tell of him, how he looked, how he smoked, how he read aloud, and how he +said, when he asked her to go with him to the tower of his house, “Come +up and see the sad English sunset!” which had an instant value to me such +as some rich verse of his might have had. I was very new to it all, how +new I could not very well say, but I flattered myself that I breathed in +that atmosphere as if in the return from life-long exile. Still I +patriotically bragged of the West a little, and I told them proudly that +in Columbus no book since Uncle Tom’s Cabin had sold so well as ‘The +Marble Faun’. This made the effect that I wished, but whether it was +true or not, Heaven knows; I only know that I heard it from our leading +bookseller, and I made no question of it myself. + +After breakfast, Fields went away to the office, and I lingered, while +Mrs. Fields showed me from shelf to shelf in the library, and dazzled me +with the sight of authors’ copies, and volumes invaluable with the +autographs and the pencilled notes of the men whose names were dear to me +from my love of their work. Everywhere was some souvenir of the living +celebrities my hosts had met; and whom had they not met in that English +sojourn in days before England embittered herself to us during our civil +war? Not Tennyson only, but Thackeray, but Dickens, but Charles Reade, +but Carlyle, but many a minor fame was in my ears from converse so recent +with them that it was as if I heard their voices in their echoed words. + +I do not remember how long I stayed; I remember I was afraid of staying +too long, and so I am sure I did not stay as long as I should have liked. +But I have not the least notion how I got away, and I am not certain +where I spent the rest of a day that began in the clouds, but had to be +ended on the common earth. I suppose I gave it mostly to wandering about +the city, and partly to recording my impressions of it for that newspaper +which never published them. The summer weather in Boston, with its sunny +heat struck through and through with the coolness of the sea, and its +clear air untainted with a breath of smoke, I have always loved, but it +had then a zest unknown before; and I should have thought it enough +simply to be alive in it. But everywhere I came upon something that fed +my famine for the old, the quaint, the picturesque, and however the day +passed it was a banquet, a festival. I can only recall my breathless +first sight of the Public Library and of the Athenaeum Gallery: great +sights then, which the Vatican and the Pitti hardly afterwards eclipsed +for mere emotion. In fact I did not see these elder treasuries of +literature and art between breakfasting with the Autocrat’s publisher in +the morning, and taking tea with the Autocrat himself in the evening, and +that made a whole world’s difference. + + + + +XII. + +The tea of that simpler time is wholly inconceivable to this generation, +which knows the thing only as a mild form of afternoon reception; but I +suppose that in 1860 very few dined late in our whole pastoral republic. +Tea was the meal people asked people to when they wished to sit at long +leisure and large ease; it came at the end of the day, at six o’clock, or +seven; and one went to it in morning dress. It had an unceremonied +domesticity in the abundance of its light dishes, and I fancy these did +not vary much from East to West, except that we had a Southern touch in +our fried chicken and corn bread; but at the Autocrat’s tea table the +cheering cup had a flavor unknown to me before that day. He asked me if +I knew it, and I said it was English breakfast tea; for I had drunk it at +the publisher’s in the morning, and was willing not to seem strange to +it. “Ah, yes,” he said; “but this is the flower of the souchong; it is +the blossom, the poetry of tea,” and then he told me how it had been +given him by a friend, a merchant in the China trade, which used to +flourish in Boston, and was the poetry of commerce, as this delicate +beverage was of tea. That commerce is long past, and I fancy that the +plant ceased to bloom when the traffic fell into decay. + +The Autocrat’s windows had the same outlook upon the Charles as the +publisher’s, and after tea we went up into a back parlor of the same +orientation, and saw the sunset die over the water, and the westering +flats and hills. Nowhere else in the world has the day a lovelier close, +and our talk took something of the mystic coloring that the heavens gave +those mantling expanses. It was chiefly his talk, but I have always +found the best talkers are willing that you should talk if you like, and +a quick sympathy and a subtle sense met all that I had to say from him +and from the unbroken circle of kindred intelligences about him. I saw +him then in the midst of his family, and perhaps never afterwards to +better advantage, or in a finer mood. We spoke of the things that people +perhaps once liked to deal with more than they do now; of the intimations +of immortality, of the experiences of morbid youth, and of all those +messages from the tremulous nerves which we take for prophecies. I was +not ashamed, before his tolerant wisdom, to acknowledge the effects that +had lingered so long with me in fancy and even in conduct, from a time of +broken health and troubled spirit; and I remember the exquisite tact in +him which recognized them as things common to all, however peculiar in +each, which left them mine for whatever obscure vanity I might have in +them, and yet gave me the companionship of the whole race in their +experience. We spoke of forebodings and presentiments; we approached the +mystic confines of the world from which no traveller has yet returned +with a passport ‘en regle’ and properly ‘vise’; and he held his light +course through these filmy impalpabilities with a charming sincerity, +with the scientific conscience that refuses either to deny the substance +of things unseen, or to affirm it. In the gathering dusk, so weird did +my fortune of being there and listening to him seem, that I might well +have been a blessed ghost, for all the reality I felt in myself. + +I tried to tell him how much I had read him from my boyhood, and with +what joy and gain; and he was patient of these futilities, and I have no +doubt imagined the love that inspired them, and accepted that instead of +the poor praise. When the sunset passed, and the lamps were lighted, and +we all came back to our dear little firm-set earth, he began to question +me about my native region of it. From many forgotten inquiries I recall +his asking me what was the fashionable religion in Columbus, or the +Church that socially corresponded to the Unitarian Church in Boston. He +had first to clarify my intelligence as to-what Unitarianism was; we had +Universalists but not Unitarians; but when I understood, I answered from +such vantage as my own wholly outside Swedenborgianism gave me, that I +thought most of the most respectable people with us were of the +Presbyterian Church; some were certainly Episcopalians, but upon the +whole the largest number were Presbyterians. He found that very strange +indeed; and said that he did not believe there was a Presbyterian Church +in Boston; that the New England Calvinists were all of the Orthodox +Church. He had to explain Oxthodoxy to me, and then I could confess to +one Congregational Church in Columbus. + +Probably I failed to give the Autocrat any very clear image of our social +frame in the West, but the fault was altogether mine, if I did. Such +lecturing tours as he had made had not taken him among us, as those of +Emerson and other New-Englanders had, and my report was positive rather +than comparative. I was full of pride in journalism at that day, and I +dare say that I vaunted the brilliancy and power of our newspapers more +than they merited; I should not have been likely to wrong them otherwise. +It is strange that in all the talk I had with him and Lowell, or rather +heard from them, I can recall nothing said of political affairs, though +Lincoln had then been nominated by the Republicans, and the Civil War had +practically begun. But we did not imagine such a thing in the North; we +rested secure in the belief that if Lincoln were elected the South would +eat all its fiery words, perhaps from the mere love and inveterate habit +of fire-eating. + +I rent myself away from the Autocrat’s presence as early as I could, and +as my evening had been too full of happiness to sleep upon at once, I +spent the rest of the night till two in the morning wandering about the +streets and in the Common with a Harvard Senior whom I had met. He was a +youth of like literary passions with myself, but of such different +traditions in every possible way that his deeply schooled and definitely +regulated life seemed as anomalous to me as my own desultory and +self-found way must have seemed to him. We passed the time in the +delight of trying to make ourselves known to each other, and in a promise +to continue by letter the effort, which duly lapsed into silent patience +with the necessarily insoluble problem. + + + + +XIII. + +I must have lingered in Boston for the introduction to Hawthorne which +Lowell had offered me, for when it came, with a little note of kindness +and counsel for myself such as only Lowell had the gift of writing, it +was already so near Sunday that I stayed over till Monday before I +started. I do not recall what I did with the time, except keep myself +from making it a burden to the people I knew, and wandering about the +city alone. Nothing of it remains to me except the fortune that favored +me that Sunday night with a view of the old Granary Burying-ground on +Tremont Street. I found the gates open, and I explored every path in the +place, wreaking myself in such meagre emotion as I could get from the +tomb of the Franklin family, and rejoicing with the whole soul of my +Western modernity in the evidence of a remote antiquity which so many of +the dim inscriptions afforded. I do not think that I have ever known +anything practically older than these monuments, though I have since +supped so full of classic and mediaeval ruin. I am sure that I was more +deeply touched by the epitaph of a poor little Puritan maiden who died at +sixteen in the early sixteen-thirties than afterwards by the tomb of +Caecilia Metella, and that the heartache which I tried to put into verse +when I got back to my room in the hotel was none the less genuine because +it would not lend itself to my literary purpose, and remains nothing but +pathos to this day. + + + + +XIV. + +I am not able to say how I reached the town of Lowell, where I went +before going to Concord, that I might ease the unhappy conscience I had +about those factories which I hated so much to see, and have it clean for +the pleasure of meeting the fabricator of visions whom I was authorized +to molest in any air-castle where I might find him. I only know that I +went to Lowell, and visited one of the great mills, which with their +whirring spools, the ceaseless flight of their shuttles, and the +bewildering sight and sound of all their mechanism have since seemed to +me the death of the joy that ought to come from work, if not the +captivity of those who tended them. But then I thought it right and well +for me to be standing by, + + “With sick and scornful looks averse,” + +while these others toiled; I did not see the tragedy in it, and I got my +pitiful literary antipathy away as soon as I could, no wiser for the +sight of the ingenious contrivances I inspected, and I am sorry to say no +sadder. In the cool of the evening I sat at the door of my hotel, and +watched the long files of the work-worn factory-girls stream by, with no +concern for them but to see which was pretty and which was plain, and +with no dream of a truer order than that which gave them ten hours’ work +a day in those hideous mills and lodged them in the barracks where they +rested from their toil. + +I wonder if there is a stage that still runs between Lowell and Concord, +past meadow walls, and under the caressing boughs of way-side elms, and +through the bird-haunted gloom of woodland roads, in the freshness of the +summer morning? By a blessed chance I found that there was such a stage +in 1860, and I took it from my hotel, instead of going back to Boston and +up to Concord as I must have had to do by train. The journey gave me the +intimacy of the New England country as I could have had it in no other +fashion, and for the first time I saw it in all the summer sweetness +which I have often steeped my soul in since. The meadows were newly +mown, and the air was fragrant with the grass, stretching in long winrows +among the brown bowlders, or capped with canvas in the little haycocks it +had been gathered into the day before. I was fresh from the affluent +farms of the Western Reserve, and this care of the grass touched me with +a rude pity, which I also bestowed on the meagre fields of corn and +wheat; but still the land was lovelier than any I had ever seen, with its +old farmhouses, and brambled gray stone walls, its stony hillsides, its +staggering orchards, its wooded tops, and its thick-brackened valleys. +From West to East the difference was as great as I afterwards found it +from America to Europe, and my impression of something quaint and strange +was no keener when I saw Old England the next year than when I saw New +England now. I had imagined the landscape bare of trees, and I was +astonished to find it almost as full of them as at home, though they all +looked very little, as they well might to eyes used to the primeval +forests of Ohio. The road ran through them from time to time, and took +their coolness on its smooth hard reaches, and then issued again in the +glisten of the open fields. + +I made phrases to myself about the scenery as we drove along; and yes, I +suppose I made phrases about the young girl who was one of the inside +passengers, and who, when the common strangeness had somewhat worn off, +began to sing, and sang most of the way to Concord. Perhaps she was not +very sage, and I am sure she was not of the caste of Vere de Vere, but +she was pretty enough, and she had a voice of a bird-like tunableness, so +that I would not have her out of the memory of that pleasant journey if I +could. She was long ago an elderly woman, if she lives, and I suppose +she would not now point out her fellow-passenger if he strolled in the +evening by the house where she had dismounted, upon her arrival in +Concord, and laugh and pull another girl away from the window, in the +high excitement of the prodigious adventure. + + + + +XV. + +Her fellow-passenger was in far other excitement; he was to see +Hawthorne, and in a manner to meet Priscilla and Zenobia, and Hester +Prynne and little Pearl, and Miriam and Hilda, and Hollingsworth and +Coverdale, and Chillingworth and Dimmesdale, and Donatello and Kenyon; +and he had no heart for any such poor little reality as that, who could +not have been got into any story that one could respect, and must have +been difficult even in a Heinesque poem. + +I wasted that whole evening and the next morning in fond delaying, and it +was not until after the indifferent dinner I got at the tavern where I +stopped, that I found courage to go and present Lowell’s letter to +Hawthorne. I would almost have foregone meeting the weird genius only to +have kept that letter, for it said certain infinitely precious things of +me with such a sweetness, such a grace, as Lowell alone could give his +praise. Years afterwards, when Hawthorne was dead, I met Mrs. Hawthorne, +and told her of the pang I had in parting with it, and she sent it me, +doubly enriched by Hawthorne’s keeping. But now if I were to see him at +all I must give up my letter, and I carried it in my hand to the door of +the cottage he called The Wayside. It was never otherwise than a very +modest place, but the modesty was greater then than to-day, and there was +already some preliminary carpentry at one end of the cottage, which I saw +was to result in an addition to it. I recall pleasant fields across the +road before it; behind rose a hill wooded with low pines, such as is made +in Septimius Felton the scene of the involuntary duel between Septimius +and the young British officer. I have a sense of the woods coming quite +down to the house, but if this was so I do not know what to do with a +grassy slope which seems to have stretched part way up the hill. As I +approached, I looked for the tower which the author was fabled to climb +into at sight of the coming guest, and pull the ladder up after him; and +I wondered whether he would fly before me in that sort, or imagine some +easier means of escaping me. + +The door was opened to my ring by a tall handsome boy whom I suppose to +have been Mr. Julian Hawthorne; and the next moment I found myself in the +presence of the romancer, who entered from some room beyond. He advanced +carrying his head with a heavy forward droop, and with a pace for which I +decided that the word would be pondering. It was the pace of a bulky man +of fifty, and his head was that beautiful head we all know from the many +pictures of it. But Hawthorne’s look was different from that of any +picture of him that I have seen. It was sombre and brooding, as the look +of such a poet should have been; it was the look of a man who had dealt +faithfully and therefore sorrowfully with that problem of evil which +forever attracted, forever evaded Hawthorne. It was by no means +troubled; it was full of a dark repose. Others who knew him better and +saw him oftener were familiar with other aspects, and I remember that one +night at Longfellow’s table, when one of the guests happened to speak of +the photograph of Hawthorne which hung in a corner of the room, Lowell +said, after a glance at it, “Yes, it’s good; but it hasn’t his fine +‘accipitral’ [pertaining to the look of a bird of prey; hawklike. D.W.] +look.” + +In the face that confronted me, however, there was nothing of keen +alertness; but only a sort of quiet, patient intelligence, for which I +seek the right word in vain. It was a very regular face, with beautiful +eyes; the mustache, still entirely dark, was dense over the fine mouth. +Hawthorne was dressed in black, and he had a certain effect which I +remember, of seeming to have on a black cravat with no visible collar. He +was such a man that if I had ignorantly met him anywhere I should have +instantly felt him to be a personage. + +I must have given him the letter myself, for I have no recollection of +parting with it before, but I only remember his offering me his hand, and +making me shyly and tentatively welcome. After a few moments of the +demoralization which followed his hospitable attempts in me, he asked if +I would not like to go up on his hill with him and sit there, where he +smoked in the afternoon. He offered me a cigar, and when I said that I +did not smoke, he lighted it for himself, and we climbed the hill +together. At the top, where there was an outlook in the pines over the +Concord meadows, we found a log, and he invited me to a place on it +beside him, and at intervals of a minute or so he talked while he smoked. +Heaven preserved me from the folly of trying to tell him how much his +books had been to me, and though we got on rapidly at no time, I think we +got on better for this interposition. He asked me about Lowell, I dare +say, for I told him of my joy in meeting him and Doctor Holmes, and this +seemed greatly to interest him. Perhaps because he was so lately from +Europe, where our great men are always seen through the wrong end of the +telescope, he appeared surprised at my devotion, and asked me whether I +cared as much for meeting them as I should care for meeting the famous +English authors. I professed that I cared much more, though whether this +was true, I now have my doubts, and I think Hawthorne doubted it at the +time. But he said nothing in comment, and went on to speak generally of +Europe and America. He was curious about the West, which he seemed to +fancy much more purely American, and said he would like to see some part +of the country on which the shadow (or, if I must be precise, the damned +shadow) of Europe had not fallen. I told him I thought the West must +finally be characterized by the Germans, whom we had in great numbers, +and, purely from my zeal for German poetry, I tried to allege some proofs +of their present influence, though I could think of none outside of +politics, which I thought they affected wholesomely. I knew Hawthorne +was a Democrat, and I felt it well to touch politics lightly, but he had +no more to say about the fateful election then pending than Holmes or +Lowell had. + +With the abrupt transition of his talk throughout, he began somehow to +speak of women, and said he had never seen a woman whom he thought quite +beautiful. In the same way he spoke of the New England temperament, and +suggested that the apparent coldness in it was also real, and that the +suppression of emotion for generations would extinguish it at last. Then +he questioned me as to my knowledge of Concord, and whether I had seen +any of the notable people. I answered that I had met no one but himself, +as yet, but I very much wished to see Emerson and Thoreau. I did not +think it needful to say that I wished to see Thoreau quite as much +because he had suffered in the cause of John Brown as because he had +written the books which had taken me; and when he said that Thoreau +prided himself on coming nearer the heart of a pine-tree than any other +human being, I could say honestly enough that I would rather come near +the heart of a man. This visibly pleased him, and I saw that it did not +displease him, when he asked whether I was not going to see his next +neighbor, Mr. Alcott, and I confessed that I had never heard of him. That +surprised as well as pleased him; he remarked, with whatever intention, +that there was nothing like recognition to make a man modest; and he +entered into some account of the philosopher, whom I suppose I need not +be much ashamed of not knowing then, since his influence was of the +immediate sort that makes a man important to his townsmen while he is +still strange to his countrymen. + +Hawthorne descanted a little upon the landscape, and said certain of the +pleasant fields below us be longed to him; but he preferred his hill-top, +and if he could have his way those arable fields should be grown up to +pines too. He smoked fitfully, and slowly, and in the hour that we spent +together, his whiffs were of the desultory and unfinal character of his +words. When we went down, he asked me into his house again, and would +have me stay to tea, for which we found the table laid. But there was a +great deal of silence in it all, and at times, in spite of his shadowy +kindness, I felt my spirits sink. After tea, he showed me a book case, +where there were a few books toppling about on the half-filled shelves, +and said, coldly, “This is my library.” I knew that men were his books, +and though I myself cared for books so much, I found it fit and fine that +he should care so little, or seem to care so little. Some of his own +romances were among the volumes on these shelves, and when I put my +finger on the ‘Blithedale Romance’ and said that I preferred that to the +others, his face lighted up, and he said that he believed the Germans +liked that best too. + +Upon the whole we parted such good friends that when I offered to take +leave he asked me how long I was to be in Concord, and not only bade me +come to see him again, but said he would give me a card to Emerson, if I +liked. I answered, of course, that I should like it beyond all things; +and he wrote on the back of his card something which I found, when I got +away, to be, “I find this young man worthy.” The quaintness, the little +stiffness of it, if one pleases to call it so, was amusing to one who was +not without his sense of humor, but the kindness filled me to the throat +with joy. In fact, I entirely liked Hawthorne. He had been as cordial +as so shy a man could show himself; and I perceived, with the repose that +nothing else can give, the entire sincerity of his soul. + +Nothing could have been further from the behavior of this very great man +than any sort of posing, apparently, or a wish to affect me with a sense +of his greatness. I saw that he was as much abashed by our encounter as +I was; he was visibly shy to the point of discomfort, but in no ignoble +sense was he conscious, and as nearly as he could with one so much his +younger he made an absolute equality between us. My memory of him is +without alloy one of the finest pleasures of my life: In my heart I paid +him the same glad homage that I paid Lowell and Holmes, and he did +nothing to make me think that I had overpaid him. This seems perhaps +very little to say in his praise, but to my mind it is saying everything, +for I have known but few great men, especially of those I met in early +life, when I wished to lavish my admiration upon them, whom I have not +the impression of having left in my debt. Then, a defect of the Puritan +quality, which I have found in many New-Englanders, is that, wittingly or +unwittingly, they propose themselves to you as an example, or if not +quite this, that they surround themselves with a subtle ether of +potential disapprobation, in which, at the first sign of unworthiness in +you, they helplessly suffer you to gasp and perish; they have good +hearts, and they would probably come to your succor out of humanity, if +they knew how, but they do not know how. Hawthorne had nothing of this +about him; he was no more tacitly than he was explicitly didactic. I +thought him as thoroughly in keeping with his romances as Doctor Holmes +had seemed with his essays and poems, and I met him as I had met the +Autocrat in the supreme hour of his fame. He had just given the world +the last of those incomparable works which it was to have finished from +his hand; the ‘Marble Faun’ had worthily followed, at a somewhat longer +interval than usual, the ‘Blithedale Romance’, and the ‘House of Seven +Gables’, and the ‘Scarlet Letter’, and had, perhaps carried his name +higher than all the rest, and certainly farther. Everybody was reading +it, and more or less bewailing its indefinite close, but yielding him +that full honor and praise which a writer can hope for but once in his +life. Nobody dreamed that thereafter only precious fragments, sketches +more or less faltering, though all with the divine touch in them, were +further to enrich a legacy which in its kind is the finest the race has +received from any mind. As I have said, we are always finding new +Hawthornes, but the illusion soon wears away, and then we perceive that +they were not Hawthornes at all; that he had some peculiar difference +from them, which, by and-by, we shall no doubt consent must be his +difference from all men evermore. + +I am painfully aware that I have not summoned before the reader the image +of the man as it has always stood in my memory, and I feel a sort of +shame for my failure. He was so altogether simple that it seems as if it +would be easy to do so; but perhaps a spirit from the other world would +be simple too, and yet would no more stand at parle, or consent to be +sketched, than Hawthorne. In fact, he was always more or less merging +into the shadow, which was in a few years wholly to close over him; there +was nothing uncanny in his presence, there was nothing even unwilling, +but he had that apparitional quality of some great minds which kept +Shakespeare largely unknown to those who thought themselves his +intimates, and has at last left him a sort of doubt. There was nothing +teasing or wilfully elusive in Hawthorne’s impalpability, such as I +afterwards felt in Thoreau; if he was not there to your touch, it was no +fault of his; it was because your touch was dull, and wanted the use of +contact with such natures. The hand passes through the veridical phantom +without a sense of its presence, but the phantom is none the less +veridical for all that. + + + + +XVI. + +I kept the evening of the day I met Hawthorne wholly for the thoughts of +him, or rather for that reverberation which continues in the young +sensibilities after some important encounter. It must have been the next +morning that I went to find Thoreau, and I am dimly aware of making one +or two failures to find him, if I ever really found him at all. + +He is an author who has fallen into that abeyance, awaiting all authors, +great or small, at some time or another; but I think that with him, at +least in regard to his most important book, it can be only transitory. I +have not read the story of his hermitage beside Walden Pond since the +year 1858, but I have a fancy that if I should take it up now, I should +think it a wiser and truer conception of the world than I thought it +then. It is no solution of the problem; men are not going to answer the +riddle of the painful earth by building themselves shanties and living +upon beans and watching ant-fights; but I do not believe Tolstoy himself +has more clearly shown the hollowness, the hopelessness, the unworthiness +of the life of the world than Thoreau did in that book. If it were newly +written it could not fail of a far vaster acceptance than it had then, +when to those who thought and felt seriously it seemed that if slavery +could only be controlled, all things else would come right of themselves +with us. Slavery has not only been controlled, but it has been +destroyed, and yet things have not begun to come right with us; but it +was in the order of Providence that chattel slavery should cease before +industrial slavery, and the infinitely crueler and stupider vanity and +luxury bred of it, should be attacked. If there was then any prevision +of the struggle now at hand, the seers averted their eyes, and strove +only to cope with the less evil. Thoreau himself, who had so clear a +vision of the falsity and folly of society as we still have it, threw +himself into the tide that was already, in Kansas and Virginia, reddened +with war; he aided and abetted the John Brown raid, I do not recall how +much or in what sort; and he had suffered in prison for his opinions and +actions. It was this inevitable heroism of his that, more than his +literature even, made me wish to see him and revere him; and I do not +believe that I should have found the veneration difficult, when at last I +met him in his insufficient person, if he had otherwise been present to +my glowing expectation. He came into the room a quaint, stump figure of +a man, whose effect of long trunk and short limbs was heightened by his +fashionless trousers being let down too low. He had a noble face, with +tossed hair, a distraught eye, and a fine aquilinity of profile, which +made me think at once of Don Quixote and of Cervantes; but his nose +failed to add that foot to his stature which Lamb says a nose of that +shape will always give a man. He tried to place me geographically after +he had given me a chair not quite so far off as Ohio, though still across +the whole room, for he sat against one wall, and I against the other; but +apparently he failed to pull himself out of his revery by the effort, for +he remained in a dreamy muse, which all my attempts to say something fit +about John Brown and Walden Pond seemed only to deepen upon him. I have +not the least doubt that I was needless and valueless about both, and +that what I said could not well have prompted an important response; but +I did my poor best, and I was terribly disappointed in the result. The +truth is that in those days I was a helplessly concrete young person, and +all forms of the abstract, the air-drawn, afflicted me like physical +discomforts. I do not remember that Thoreau spoke of his books or of +himself at all, and when he began to speak of John Brown, it was not the +warm, palpable, loving, fearful old man of my conception, but a sort of +John Brown type, a John Brown ideal, a John Brown principle, which we +were somehow (with long pauses between the vague, orphic phrases) to +cherish, and to nourish ourselves upon. + +It was not merely a defeat of my hopes, it was a rout, and I felt myself +so scattered over the field of thought that I could hardly bring my +forces together for retreat. I must have made some effort, vain and +foolish enough, to rematerialize my old demigod, but when I came away it +was with the feeling that there was very little more left of John Brown +than there was of me. His body was not mouldering in the grave, neither +was his soul marching on; his ideal, his type, his principle alone +existed, and I did not know what to do with it. I am not blaming +Thoreau; his words were addressed to a far other understanding than mine, +and it was my misfortune if I could not profit by them. I think, or I +venture to hope, that I could profit better by them now; but in this +record I am trying honestly to report their effect with the sort of youth +I was then. + + + + +XVII. + +Such as I was, I rather wonder that I had the courage, after this +experiment of Thoreau, to present the card Hawthorne had given me to +Emerson. I must have gone to him at once, however, for I cannot make out +any interval of time between my visit to the disciple and my visit to the +master. I think it was Emerson himself who opened his door to me, for I +have a vision of the fine old man standing tall on his threshold, with +the card in his hand, and looking from it to me with a vague serenity, +while I waited a moment on the door-step below him. He must then have +been about sixty, but I remember nothing of age in his aspect, though I +have called him an old man. His hair, I am sure, was still entirely +dark, and his face had a kind of marble youthfulness, chiselled to a +delicate intelligence by the highest and noblest thinking that any man +has done. There was a strange charm in Emerson’s eyes, which I felt then +and always, something like that I saw in Lincoln’s, but shyer, but +sweeter and less sad. His smile was the very sweetest I have ever +beheld, and the contour of the mask and the line of the profile were in +keeping with this incomparable sweetness of the mouth, at once grave and +quaint, though quaint is not quite the word for it either, but subtly, +not unkindly arch, which again is not the word. + +It was his great fortune to have been mostly misunderstood, and to have +reached the dense intelligence of his fellow-men after a whole lifetime +of perfectly simple and lucid appeal, and his countenance expressed the +patience and forbearance of a wise man content to bide his time. It +would be hard to persuade people now that Emerson once represented to the +popular mind all that was most hopelessly impossible, and that in a +certain sort he was a national joke, the type of the incomprehensible, +the byword of the poor paragrapher. He had perhaps disabused the +community somewhat by presenting himself here and there as a lecturer, +and talking face to face with men in terms which they could not refuse to +find as clear as they were wise; he was more and more read, by certain +persons, here and there; but we are still so far behind him in the reach +of his far-thinking that it need not be matter of wonder that twenty +years before his death he was the most misunderstood man in America. Yet +in that twilight where he dwelt he loomed large upon the imagination; the +minds that could not conceive him were still aware of his greatness. I +myself had not read much of him, but I knew the essays he was printing in +the Atlantic, and I knew certain of his poems, though by no means many; +yet I had this sense of him, that he was somehow, beyond and above my +ken, a presence of force and beauty and wisdom, uncompanioned in our +literature. He had lately stooped from his ethereal heights to take part +in the battle of humanity, and I suppose that if the truth were told he +was more to my young fervor because he had said that John Brown had made +the gallows glorious like the cross, than because he had uttered all +those truer and wiser things which will still a hundred years hence be +leading the thought of the world. + +I do not know in just what sort he made me welcome, but I am aware of +sitting with him in his study or library, and of his presently speaking +of Hawthorne, whom I probably celebrated as I best could, and whom he +praised for his personal excellence, and for his fine qualities as a +neighbor. “But his last book,” he added, reflectively, “is a mere mush,” + and I perceived that this great man was no better equipped to judge an +artistic fiction than the groundlings who were then crying out upon the +indefinite close of the Marble Faun. Apparently he had read it, as they +had, for the story, but it seems to me now, if it did not seem to me +then, that as far as the problem of evil was involved, the book must +leave it where it found it. That is forever insoluble, and it was rather +with that than with his more or less shadowy people that the romancer was +concerned. Emerson had, in fact, a defective sense as to specific pieces +of literature; he praised extravagantly, and in the wrong place, +especially among the new things, and he failed to see the worth of much +that was fine and precious beside the line of his fancy. + +He began to ask me about the West, and about some unknown man in +Michigan; who had been sending him poems, and whom he seemed to think +very promising, though he has not apparently kept his word to do great +things. I did not find what Emerson had to say of my section very +accurate or important, though it was kindly enough, and just enough as to +what the West ought to do in literature. He thought it a pity that a +literary periodical which had lately been started in Cincinnati should be +appealing to the East for contributions, instead of relying upon the +writers nearer home; and he listened with what patience he could to my +modest opinion that we had not the writers nearer home. I never was of +those Westerners who believed that the West was kept out of literature by +the jealousy of the East, and I tried to explain why we had not the men +to write that magazine full in Ohio. He alleged the man in Michigan as +one who alone could do much to fill it worthily, and again I had to say +that I had never heard of him. + +I felt rather guilty in my ignorance, and I had a notion that it did not +commend me, but happily at this moment Mr. Emerson was called to dinner, +and he asked me to come with him. After dinner we walked about in his +“pleached garden” a little, and then we came again into his library, +where I meant to linger only till I could fitly get away. He questioned +me about what I had seen of Concord, and whom besides Hawthorne I had +met, and when I told him only Thoreau, he asked me if I knew the poems of +Mr. William Ellery Channing. I have known them since, and felt their +quality, which I have gladly owned a genuine and original poetry; but I +answered then truly that I knew them only from Poe’s criticisms: cruel +and spiteful things which I should be ashamed of enjoying as I once did. + +“Whose criticisms?” asked Emerson. + +“Poe’s,” I said again. + +“Oh,” he cried out, after a moment, as if he had returned from a far +search for my meaning, “you mean the jingle-man!” + +I do not know why this should have put me to such confusion, but if I had +written the criticisms myself I do not think I could have been more +abashed. Perhaps I felt an edge of reproof, of admonition, in a +characterization of Poe which the world will hardly agree with; though I +do not agree with the world about him, myself, in its admiration. At any +rate, it made an end of me for the time, and I remained as if already +absent, while Emerson questioned me as to what I had written in the +Atlantic Monthly. He had evidently read none of my contributions, for he +looked at them, in the bound volume of the magazine which he got down, +with the effect of being wholly strange to them, and then gravely affixed +my initials to each. He followed me to the door, still speaking of +poetry, and as he took a kindly enough leave of me, he said one might +very well give a pleasant hour to it now and then. + +A pleasant hour to poetry! I was meaning to give all time and all +eternity to poetry, and I should by no means have wished to find pleasure +in it; I should have thought that a proof of inferior quality in the +work; I should have preferred anxiety, anguish even, to pleasure. But if +Emerson thought from the glance he gave my verses that I had better not +lavish myself upon that kind of thing, unless there was a great deal more +of me than I could have made apparent in our meeting, no doubt he was +right. I was only too painfully aware of my shortcoming, but I felt that +it was shorter-coming than it need have been. I had somehow not +prospered in my visit to Emerson as I had with Hawthorne, and I came away +wondering in what sort I had gone wrong. I was not a forth-putting +youth, and I could not blame myself for anything in my approaches that +merited withholding; indeed, I made no approaches; but as I must needs +blame myself for something, I fell upon the fact that in my confused +retreat from Emerson’s presence I had failed in a certain slight point of +ceremony, and I magnified this into an offence of capital importance. I +went home to my hotel, and passed the afternoon in pure misery. I had +moments of wild question when I debated whether it would be better to go +back and own my error, or whether it would be better to write him a note, +and try to set myself right in that way. But in the end I did neither, +and I have since survived my mortal shame some forty years or more. But +at the time it did not seem possible that I should live through the day +with it, and I thought that I ought at least to go and confess it to +Hawthorne, and let him disown the wretch who had so poorly repaid the +kindness of his introduction by such misbehavior. I did indeed walk down +by the Wayside, in the cool of the evening, and there I saw Hawthorne for +the last time. He was sitting on one of the timbers beside his cottage, +and smoking with an air of friendly calm. I had got on very well with +him, and I longed to go in, and tell him how ill I had got on with +Emerson; I believed that though he cast me off, he would understand me, +and would perhaps see some hope for me in another world, though there +could be none in this. + +But I had not the courage to speak of the affair to any one but Fields, +to whom I unpacked my heart when I got back to Boston, and he asked me +about my adventures in Concord. By this time I could see it in a +humorous light, and I did not much mind his lying back in his chair and +laughing and laughing, till I thought he would roll out of it. He +perfectly conceived the situation, and got an amusement from it that I +could get only through sympathy with him. But I thought it a favorable +moment to propose myself as the assistant editor of the Atlantic Monthly, +which I had the belief I could very well become, with advantage to myself +if not to the magazine. He seemed to think so too; he said that if the +place had not just been filled, I should certainly have had it; and it +was to his recollection of this prompt ambition of mine that I suppose I +may have owed my succession to a like vacancy some four years later. He +was charmingly kind; he entered with the sweetest interest into the story +of my economic life, which had been full of changes and chances already. +But when I said very seriously that now I was tired of these fortuities, +and would like to be settled in something, he asked, with dancing eyes, + +“Why, how old are you?” + +“I am twenty-three,” I answered, and then the laughing fit took him +again. + +“Well,” he said, “you begin young, out there!” + +In my heart I did not think that twenty-three was so very young, but +perhaps it was; and if any one were to say that I had been portraying +here a youth whose aims were certainly beyond his achievements, who was +morbidly sensitive, and if not conceited was intolerably conscious, who +had met with incredible kindness, and had suffered no more than was good +for him, though he might not have merited his pain any more than his joy, +I do not know that I should gainsay him, for I am not at all sure that I +was not just that kind of youth when I paid my first visit to New +England. + + + + + +FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF LITERARY NEW YORK + +It was by boat that I arrived from Boston, on an August morning of 1860, +which was probably of the same quality as an August morning of 1900. I +used not to mind the weather much in those days; it was hot or it was +cold, it was wet or it was dry, but it was not my affair; and I suppose +that I sweltered about the strange city, with no sense of anything very +personal in the temperature, until nightfall. What I remember is being +high up in a hotel long since laid low, listening in the summer dark, +after the long day was done, to the Niagara roar of the omnibuses whose +tide then swept Broadway from curb to curb, for all the miles of its +length. At that hour the other city noises were stilled, or lost in this +vaster volume of sound, which seemed to fill the whole night. It had a +solemnity which the modern comer to New York will hardly imagine, for +that tide of omnibuses has long since ebbed away, and has left the air to +the strident discords of the elevated trains and the irregular alarum of +the grip-car gongs, which blend to no such harmonious thunder as rose +from the procession of those ponderous and innumerable vans. There was a +sort of inner quiet in the sound, and when I chose I slept off to it, and +woke to it in the morning refreshed and strengthened to explore the +literary situation in the metropolis. + + + + +I. + +Not that I think I left this to the second day. Very probably I lost no +time in going to the office of the Saturday Press, as soon as I had my +breakfast after arriving, and I have a dim impression of anticipating the +earliest of the Bohemians, whose gay theory of life obliged them to a +good many hardships in lying down early in the morning, and rising up +late in the day. If it was the office-boy who bore me company during the +first hour of my visit, by-and-by the editors and contributors actually +began to come in. I would not be very specific about them if I could, +for since that Bohemia has faded from the map of the republic of letters, +it has grown more and more difficult to trace its citizenship to any +certain writer. There are some living who knew the Bohemians and even +loved them, but there are increasingly few who were of them, even in the +fond retrospect of youthful follies and errors. It was in fact but a +sickly colony, transplanted from the mother asphalt of Paris, and never +really striking root in the pavements of New York; it was a colony of +ideas, of theories, which had perhaps never had any deep root anywhere. +What these ideas, these theories, were in art and in life, it would not +be very easy to say; but in the Saturday Press they came to violent +expression, not to say explosion, against all existing forms of +respectability. If respectability was your ‘bete noire’, then you were a +Bohemian; and if you were in the habit of rendering yourself in prose, +then you necessarily shredded your prose into very fine paragraphs of a +sentence each, or of a very few words, or even of one word. I believe +this fashion prevailed till very lately with some of the dramatic +critics, who thought that it gave a quality of epigram to the style; and +I suppose it was borrowed from the more spasmodic moments of Victor Hugo +by the editor of the Press. He brought it back with him when he came +home from one of those sojourns in Paris which possess one of the French +accent rather than the French language; I long desired to write in that +fashion myself, but I had not the courage. + +This editor was a man of such open and avowed cynicism that he may have +been, for all I know, a kindly optimist at heart; some say, however, that +he had really talked himself into being what he seemed. I only know that +his talk, the first day I saw him, was of such a sort that if he was half +as bad, he would have been too bad to be. He walked up and down his room +saying what lurid things he would directly do if any one accused him of +respectability, so that he might disabuse the minds of all witnesses. +There were four or five of his assistants and contributors listening to +the dreadful threats, which did not deceive even so great innocence as +mine, but I do not know whether they found it the sorry farce that I did. +They probably felt the fascination for him which I could not disown, in +spite of my inner disgust; and were watchful at the same time for the +effect of his words with one who was confessedly fresh from Boston, and +was full of delight in the people he had seen there. It appeared, with +him, to be proof of the inferiority of Boston that if you passed down +Washington Street, half a dozen men in the crowd would know you were +Holmes, or Lowell, or Longfellow, or Wendell Phillips; but in Broadway no +one would know who you were, or care to the measure of his smallest +blasphemy. I have since heard this more than once urged as a signal +advantage of New York for the aesthetic inhabitant, but I am not sure, +yet, that it is so. The unrecognized celebrity probably has his mind +quite as much upon himself as if some one pointed him out, and otherwise +I cannot think that the sense of neighborhood is such a bad thing for the +artist in any sort. It involves the sense of responsibility, which +cannot be too constant or too keen. If it narrows, it deepens; and this +may be the secret of Boston. + + + + +II. + +It would not be easy to say just why the Bohemian group represented New +York literature to my imagination; for I certainly associated other names +with its best work, but perhaps it was because I had written for the +Saturday Press myself, and had my pride in it, and perhaps it was because +that paper really embodied the new literary life of the city. It was +clever, and full of the wit that tries its teeth upon everything. It +attacked all literary shams but its own, and it made itself felt and +feared. The young writers throughout the country were ambitious to be +seen in it, and they gave their best to it; they gave literally, for the +Saturday Press never paid in anything but hopes of paying, vaguer even +than promises. It is not too much to say that it was very nearly as well +for one to be accepted by the Press as to be accepted by the Atlantic, +and for the time there was no other literary comparison. To be in it was +to be in the company of Fitz James O’Brien, Fitzhugh Ludlow, Mr. Aldrich, +Mr. Stedman, and whoever else was liveliest in prose or loveliest in +verse at that day in New York. It was a power, and although it is true +that, as Henry Giles said of it, “Man cannot live by snapping-turtle +alone,” the Press was very good snapping-turtle. Or, it seemed so then; +I should be almost afraid to test it now, for I do not like +snapping-turtle so much as I once did, and I have grown nicer in my +taste, and want my snapping-turtle of the very best. What is certain is +that I went to the office of the Saturday Press in New York with much the +same sort of feeling I had in going to the office of the Atlantic Monthly +in Boston, but I came away with a very different feeling. I had found +there a bitterness against Boston as great as the bitterness against +respectability, and as Boston was then rapidly becoming my second +country, I could not join in the scorn thought of her and said of her by +the Bohemians. I fancied a conspiracy among them to shock the literary +pilgrim, and to minify the precious emotions he had experienced in +visiting other shrines; but I found no harm in that, for I knew just how +much to be shocked, and I thought I knew better how to value certain +things of the soul than they. Yet when their chief asked me how I got on +with Hawthorne, and I began to say that he was very shy and I was rather +shy, and the king of Bohemia took his pipe out to break in upon me with +“Oh, a couple of shysters!” and the rest laughed, I was abashed all they +could have wished, and was not restored to myself till one of them said +that the thought of Boston made him as ugly as sin; then I began to hope +again that men who took themselves so seriously as that need not be taken +very seriously by me. + +In fact I had heard things almost as desperately cynical in other +newspaper offices before that, and I could not see what was so +distinctively Bohemian in these ‘anime prave’, these souls so baleful by +their own showing. But apparently Bohemia was not a state that you could +well imagine from one encounter, and since my stay in New York was to be +very short, I lost no time in acquainting myself further with it. That +very night I went to the beer-cellar, once very far up Broadway, where I +was given to know that the Bohemian nights were smoked and quaffed away. +It was said, so far West as Ohio, that the queen of Bohemia sometimes +came to Pfaff’s: a young girl of a sprightly gift in letters, whose name +or pseudonym had made itself pretty well known at that day, and whose +fate, pathetic at all times, out-tragedies almost any other in the +history of letters. She was seized with hydrophobia from the bite of her +dog, on a railroad train; and made a long journey home in the paroxysms +of that agonizing disease, which ended in her death after she reached New +York. But this was after her reign had ended, and no such black shadow +was cast forward upon Pfaff’s, whose name often figured in the verse and +the epigrammatically paragraphed prose of the ‘Saturday Press’. I felt +that as a contributor and at least a brevet Bohemian I ought not to go +home without visiting the famous place, and witnessing if I could not +share the revels of my comrades. As I neither drank beer nor smoked, my +part in the carousal was limited to a German pancake, which I found they +had very good at Pfaff’s, and to listening to the whirling words of my +commensals, at the long board spread for the Bohemians in a cavernous +space under the pavement. There were writers for the ‘Saturday Press’ and +for Vanity Fair (a hopefully comic paper of that day), and some of the +artists who drew for the illustrated periodicals. Nothing of their talk +remains with me, but the impression remains that it was not so good talk +as I had heard in Boston. At one moment of the orgy, which went but +slowly for an orgy, we were joined by some belated Bohemians whom the +others made a great clamor over; I was given to understand they were just +recovered from a fearful debauch; their locks were still damp from the +wet towels used to restore them, and their eyes were very frenzied. I was +presented to these types, who neither said nor did anything worthy of +their awful appearance, but dropped into seats at the table, and ate of +the supper with an appetite that seemed poor. I stayed hoping vainly for +worse things till eleven o’clock, and then I rose and took my leave of a +literary condition that had distinctly disappointed me. I do not say +that it may not have been wickeder and wittier than I found it; I only +report what I saw and heard in Bohemia on my first visit to New York, and +I know that my acquaintance with it was not exhaustive. When I came the +next year the Saturday Press was no more, and the editor and his +contributors had no longer a common centre. The best of the young +fellows whom I met there confessed, in a pleasant exchange of letters +which we had afterwards, that he thought the pose a vain and unprofitable +one; and when the Press was revived, after the war, it was without any of +the old Bohemian characteristics except that of not paying for material. +It could not last long upon these terms, and again it passed away, and +still waits its second palingenesis. + +The editor passed away too, not long after, and the thing that he had +inspired altogether ceased to be. He was a man of a certain sardonic +power, and used it rather fiercely and freely, with a joy probably more +apparent than real in the pain it gave. In my last knowledge of him he +was much milder than when I first knew him, and I have the feeling that +he too came to own before he died that man cannot live by snapping-turtle +alone. He was kind to some neglected talents, and befriended them with a +vigor and a zeal which he would have been the last to let you call +generous. The chief of these was Walt Whitman, who, when the Saturday +Press took it up, had as hopeless a cause with the critics on either side +of the ocean as any man could have. It was not till long afterwards that +his English admirers began to discover him, and to make his countrymen +some noisy reproaches for ignoring him; they were wholly in the dark +concerning him when the Saturday Press, which first stood his friend, and +the young men whom the Press gathered about it, made him their cult. No +doubt he was more valued because he was so offensive in some ways than he +would have been if he had been in no way offensive, but it remains a fact +that they celebrated him quite as much as was good for them. He was +often at Pfaff’s with them, and the night of my visit he was the chief +fact of my experience. I did not know he was there till I was on my way +out, for he did not sit at the table under the pavement, but at the head +of one farther into the room. There, as I passed, some friendly fellow +stopped me and named me to him, and I remember how he leaned back in his +chair, and reached out his great hand to me, as if he were going to give +it me for good and all. He had a fine head, with a cloud of Jovian hair +upon it, and a branching beard and mustache, and gentle eyes that looked +most kindly into mine, and seemed to wish the liking which I instantly +gave him, though we hardly passed a word, and our acquaintance was summed +up in that glance and the grasp of his mighty fist upon my hand. I doubt +if he had any notion who or what I was beyond the fact that I was a young +poet of some sort, but he may possibly have remembered seeing my name +printed after some very Heinesque verses in the Press. I did not meet +him again for twenty years, and then I had only a moment with him when he +was reading the proofs of his poems in Boston. Some years later I saw +him for the last time, one day after his lecture on Lincoln, in that +city, when he came down from the platform to speak with some handshaking +friends who gathered about him. Then and always he gave me the sense of +a sweet and true soul, and I felt in him a spiritual dignity which I will +not try to reconcile with his printing in the forefront of his book a +passage from a private letter of Emerson’s, though I believe he would not +have seen such a thing as most other men would, or thought ill of it in +another. The spiritual purity which I felt in him no less than the +dignity is something that I will no more try to reconcile with what +denies it in his page; but such things we may well leave to the +adjustment of finer balances than we have at hand. I will make sure only +of the greatest benignity in the presence of the man. The apostle of the +rough, the uncouth, was the gentlest person; his barbaric yawp, +translated into the terms of social encounter, was an address of singular +quiet, delivered in a voice of winning and endearing friendliness. + +As to his work itself, I suppose that I do not think it so valuable in +effect as in intention. He was a liberating force, a very “imperial +anarch” in literature; but liberty is never anything but a means, and +what Whitman achieved was a means and not an end, in what must be called +his verse. I like his prose, if there is a difference, much better; +there he is of a genial and comforting quality, very rich and cordial, +such as I felt him to be when I met him in person. His verse seems to me +not poetry, but the materials of poetry, like one’s emotions; yet I would +not misprize it, and I am glad to own that I have had moments of great +pleasure in it. Some French critic quoted in the Saturday Press (I +cannot think of his name) said the best thing of him when he said that he +made you a partner of the enterprise, for that is precisely what he does, +and that is what alienates and what endears in him, as you like or +dislike the partnership. It is still something neighborly, brotherly, +fatherly, and so I felt him to be when the benign old man looked on me +and spoke to me. + + + + +III. + +That night at Pfaff’s must have been the last of the Bohemians for me, +and it was the last of New York authorship too, for the time. I do not +know why I should not have imagined trying to see Curtis, whom I knew so +much by heart, and whom I adored, but I may not have had the courage, or +I may have heard that he was out of town; Bryant, I believe, was then out +of the country; but at any rate I did not attempt him either. The +Bohemians were the beginning and the end of the story for me, and to tell +the truth I did not like the story. I remember that as I sat at that +table under the pavement, in Pfaff’s beer-cellar, and listened to the +wit that did not seem very funny, I thought of the dinner with Lowell, +the breakfast with Fields, the supper at the Autocrat’s, and felt that I +had fallen very far. In fact it can do no harm at this distance of time +to confess that it seemed to me then, and for a good while afterwards, +that a person who had seen the men and had the things said before him +that I had in Boston, could not keep himself too carefully in cotton; and +this was what I did all the following winter, though of course it was a +secret between me and me. I dare say it was not the worst thing I could +have done, in some respects. + +My sojourn in New York could not have been very long, and the rest of it +was mainly given to viewing the monuments of the city from the windows of +omnibuses and the platforms of horse-cars. The world was so simple then +that there were perhaps only a half-dozen cities that had horse-cars in +them, and I travelled in those conveyances at New York with an unfaded +zest, even after my journeys back and forth between Boston and Cambridge. +I have not the least notion where I went or what I saw, but I suppose +that it was up and down the ugly east and west avenues, then lying open +to the eye in all the hideousness now partly concealed by the elevated +roads, and that I found them very stately and handsome. Indeed, New York +was really handsomer then than it is now, when it has so many more pieces +of beautiful architecture, for at that day the skyscrapers were not yet, +and there was a fine regularity in the streets that these brute bulks +have robbed of all shapeliness. Dirt and squalor there were a plenty, +but there was infinitely more comfort. The long succession of cross +streets was yet mostly secure from business, after you passed Clinton +Place; commerce was just beginning to show itself in Union Square, and +Madison Square was still the home of the McFlimsies, whose kin and kind +dwelt unmolested in the brownstone stretches of Fifth Avenue. I tried +hard to imagine them from the acquaintance Mr. Butler’s poem had given +me, and from the knowledge the gentle satire of The ‘Potiphar Papers’ had +spread broadcast through a community shocked by the excesses of our best +society; it was not half so bad then as the best now, probably. But I do +not think I made very much of it, perhaps because most of the people who +ought to have been in those fine mansions were away at the seaside and +the mountains. + +The mountains I had seen on my way down from Canada, but the sea-side +not, and it would never do to go home without visiting some famous summer +resort. I must have fixed upon Long Branch because I must have heard of +it as then the most fashionable; and one afternoon I took the boat for +that place. By this means I not only saw sea-bathing for the first time, +but I saw a storm at sea: a squall struck us so suddenly that it blew +away all the camp-stools of the forward promenade; it was very exciting, +and I long meant to use in literature the black wall of cloud that +settled on the water before us like a sort of portable midnight; I now +throw it away upon the reader, as it were; it never would come in +anywhere. I stayed all night at Long Branch, and I had a bath the next +morning before breakfast: an extremely cold one, with a life-line to keep +me against the undertow. In this rite I had the company of a young +New-Yorker, whom I had met on the boat coming down, and who was of the +light, hopeful, adventurous business type which seems peculiar to the +city, and which has always attracted me. He told me much about his life, +and how he lived, and what it cost him to live. He had a large room at a +fashionable boardinghouse, and he paid fourteen dollars a week. In +Columbus I had such a room at such a house, and paid three and a half, +and I thought it a good deal. But those were the days before the war, +when America was the cheapest country in the world, and the West was +incredibly inexpensive. + +After a day of lonely splendor at this scene of fashion and gaiety, I +went back to New York, and took the boat for Albany on my way home. I +noted that I had no longer the vivid interest in nature and human nature +which I had felt in setting out upon my travels, and I said to myself +that this was from having a mind so crowded with experiences and +impressions that it could receive no more; and I really suppose that if +the happiest phrase had offered itself to me at some moments, I should +scarcely have looked about me for a landscape or a figure to fit it to. I +was very glad to get back to my dear little city in the West (I found it +seething in an August sun that was hot enough to have calcined the +limestone State House), and to all the friends I was so fond of. + + + + +IV. + +I did what I could to prove myself unworthy of them by refusing their +invitations, and giving myself wholly to literature, during the early +part of the winter that followed; and I did not realize my error till the +invitations ceased to come, and I found myself in an unbroken +intellectual solitude. The worst of it was that an ungrateful Muse did +little in return for the sacrifices I made her, and the things I now +wrote were not liked by the editors I sent them to. The editorial taste +is not always the test of merit, but it is the only one we have, and I am +not saying the editors were wrong in my case. There were then such a +very few places where you could market your work: the Atlantic in Boston +and Harper’s in New York were the magazines that paid, though the +Independent newspaper bought literary material; the Saturday Press +printed it without buying, and so did the old Knickerbocker Magazine, +though there was pecuniary good-will in both these cases. I toiled much +that winter over a story I had long been writing, and at last sent it to +the Atlantic, which had published five poems for me the year before. +After some weeks, or it may have been months, I got it back with a note +saying that the editors had the less regret in returning it because they +saw that in the May number of the Knickerbocker the first chapter of the +story had appeared. Then I remembered that, years before, I had sent +this chapter to that magazine, as a sketch to be printed by itself, and +afterwards had continued the story from it. I had never heard of its +acceptance, and supposed of course that it was rejected; but on my second +visit to New York I called at the Knickerbocker office, and a new editor, +of those that the magazine was always having in the days of its failing +fortunes, told me that he had found my sketch in rummaging about in a +barrel of his predecessors manuscripts, and had liked it, and printed +it. He said that there were fifteen dollars coming to me for that +sketch, and might he send the money to me? I said that he might, though +I do not see, to this day, why he did not give it me on the spot; and he +made a very small minute in a very large sheet of paper (really like Dick +Swiveller), and promised I should have it that night; but I sailed the +next day for Liverpool without it. I sailed without the money for some +verses that Vanity Fair bought of me, but I hardly expected that, for the +editor, who was then Artemus Ward, had frankly told me in taking my +address that ducats were few at that moment with Vanity Fair. I was then +on my way to be consul at Venice, where I spent the next four years in a +vigilance for Confederate privateers which none of them ever surprised. +I had asked for the consulate at Munich, where I hoped to steep myself +yet longer in German poetry, but when my appointment came, I found it was +for Rome. I was very glad to get Rome even; but the income of the office +was in fees, and I thought I had better go on to Washington and find out +how much the fees amounted to. People in Columbus who had been abroad +said that on five hundred dollars you could live in Rome like a prince, +but I doubted this; and when I learned at the State Department that the +fees of the Roman consulate came to only three hundred, I perceived that +I could not live better than a baron, probably, and I despaired. The +kindly chief of the consular bureau said that the President’s +secretaries, Mr. John Nicolay and Mr. John Hay, were interested in my +appointment, and he advised my going over to the White House and seeing +them. I lost no time in doing that, and I learned that as young Western +men they were interested in me because I was a young Western man who had +done something in literature, and they were willing to help me for that +reason, and for no other that I ever knew. They proposed my going to +Venice; the salary was then seven hundred and fifty, but they thought +they could get it put up to a thousand. In the end they got it put up to +fifteen hundred, and so I went to Venice, where if I did not live like a +prince on that income, I lived a good deal more like a prince than I +could have done at Rome on a fifth of it. + +If the appointment was not present fortune, it was the beginning of the +best luck I have had in the world, and I am glad to owe it all to those +friends of my verse, who could have been no otherwise friends of me. They +were then beginning very early careers of distinction which have not been +wholly divided. Mr. Nicolay could have been about twenty-five, and Mr. +Hay nineteen or twenty. No one dreamed as yet of the opportunity opening +to them in being so constantly near the man whose life they have written, +and with whose fame they have imperishably interwrought their names. I +remember the sobered dignity of the one, and the humorous gaiety of the +other, and how we had some young men’s joking and laughing together, in +the anteroom where they received me, with the great soul entering upon +its travail beyond the closed door. They asked me if I had ever seen the +President, and I said that I had seen him at Columbus, the year before; +but I could not say how much I should like to see him again, and thank +him for the favor which I had no claim to at his hands, except such as +the slight campaign biography I had written could be thought to have +given me. That day or another, as I left my friends, I met him in the +corridor without, and he looked at the space I was part of with his +ineffably melancholy eyes, without knowing that I was the +indistinguishable person in whose “integrity and abilities he had reposed +such special confidence” as to have appointed him consul for Venice and +the ports of the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom, though he might have +recognized the terms of my commission if I had reminded him of them. I +faltered a moment in my longing to address him, and then I decided that +every one who forebore to speak needlessly to him, or to shake his hand, +did him a kindness; and I wish I could be as sure of the wisdom of all my +past behavior as I am of that piece of it. He walked up to the +water-cooler that stood in the corner, and drew himself a full goblet from +it, which he poured down his throat with a backward tilt of his head, and +then went wearily within doors. The whole affair, so simple, has always +remained one of a certain pathos in my memory, and I would rather have +seen Lincoln in that unconscious moment than on some statelier occasion. + + + + +V. + +I went home to Ohio; and sent on the bond I was to file in the Treasury +Department; but it was mislaid there, and to prevent another chance of +that kind I carried on the duplicate myself. It was on my second visit +that I met the generous young Irishman William D. O’Connor, at the house +of my friend Piatt, and heard his ardent talk. He was one of the +promising men of that day, and he had written an anti-slavery novel in +the heroic mood of Victor Hugo, which greatly took my fancy; and I +believe he wrote poems too. He had not yet risen to be the chief of Walt +Whitman’s champions outside of the Saturday Press, but he had already +espoused the theory of Bacon’s authorship of Shakespeare, then newly +exploited by the poor lady of Bacon’s name, who died constant to it in an +insane asylum. He used to speak of the reputed dramatist as “the fat +peasant of Stratford,” and he was otherwise picturesque of speech in a +measure that consoled, if it did not convince. The great war was then +full upon us, and when in the silences of our literary talk its awful +breath was heard, and its shadow fell upon the hearth where we gathered +round the first fires of autumn, O’Connor would lift his beautiful head +with a fine effect of prophecy, and say, “Friends, I feel a sense of +victory in the air.” He was not wrong; only the victory was for the +other aide. + +Who beside O’Connor shared in these saddened symposiums I cannot tell +now; but probably other young journalists and office-holders, intending +litterateurs, since more or less extinct. I make certain only of the +young Boston publisher who issued a very handsome edition of ‘Leaves of +Grass’, and then failed promptly if not consequently. But I had already +met, in my first sojourn at the capital, a young journalist who had given +hostages to poetry, and whom I was very glad to see and proud to know. +Mr. Stedman and I were talking over that meeting the other day, and I can +be surer than I might have been without his memory, that I found him at a +friend’s house, where he was nursing himself for some slight sickness, +and that I sat by his bed while our souls launched together into the +joyful realms of hope and praise. In him I found the quality of Boston, +the honor and passion of literature, and not a mere pose of the literary +life; and the world knows without my telling how true he has been to his +ideal of it. His earthly mission then was to write letters from +Washington for the New York World, which started in life as a good young +evening paper, with a decided religious tone, so that the Saturday Press +could call it the Night-blooming Serious. I think Mr. Stedman wrote for +its editorial page at times, and his relation to it as a Washington +correspondent had an authority which is wanting to the function in these +days of perfected telegraphing. He had not yet achieved that seat in the +Stock Exchange whose possession has justified his recourse to business, +and has helped him to mean something more single in literature than many +more singly devoted to it. I used sometimes to speak about that with +another eager young author in certain middle years when we were chafing +in editorial harness, and we always decided that Stedman had the best of +it in being able to earn his living in a sort so alien to literature that +he could come to it unjaded, and with a gust unspoiled by kindred savors. +But no man shapes his own life, and I dare say that Stedman may have been +all the time envying us our tripods from his high place in the Stock +Exchange. What is certain is that he has come to stand for literature +and to embody New York in it as no one else does. In a community which +seems never to have had a conscious relation to letters, he has kept the +faith with dignity and fought the fight with constant courage. Scholar +and poet at once, he has spoken to his generation with authority which we +can forget only in the charm which makes us forget everything else. + +But his fame was still before him when we met, and I could bring to him +an admiration for work which had not yet made itself known to so many; +but any admirer was welcome. We talked of what we had done, and each +said how much he liked certain thing of the other’s; I even seized my +advantage of his helplessness to read him a poem of mine which I had in +my pocket; he advised me where to place it; and if the reader will not +think it an unfair digression, I will tell here what became of that poem, +for I think its varied fortunes were amusing, and I hope my own +sufferings and final triumph with it will not be without encouragement to +the young literary endeavorer. It was a poem called, with no prophetic +sense of fitness, “Forlorn,” and I tried it first with the ‘Atlantic +Monthly’, which would not have it. Then I offered it in person to a +former editor of ‘Harper’s Monthly’, but he could not see his advantage +in it, and I carried it overseas to Venice with me. From that point I +sent it to all the English magazines as steadily as the post could carry +it away and bring it back. On my way home, four years later, I took it +to London with me, where a friend who knew Lewes, then just beginning +with the ‘Fortnightly Review’, sent it to him for me. It was promptly +returned, with a letter wholly reserved as to its quality, but full of a +poetic gratitude for my wish to contribute to the Fortnightly. Then I +heard that a certain Mr. Lucas was about to start a magazine, and I +offered the poem to him. The kindest letter of acceptance followed me to +America, and I counted upon fame and fortune as usual, when the news of +Mr. Lucas’s death came. I will not poorly joke an effect from my poem in +the fact; but the fact remains. By this time I was a writer in the +office of the ‘Nation’ newspaper, and after I left this place to be Mr. +Fields’s assistant on the Atlantic, I sent my poem to the Nation, where +it was printed at last. In such scant measure as my verses have pleased +it has found rather unusual favor, and I need not say that its +misfortunes endeared it to its author. + +But all this is rather far away from my first meeting with Stedman in +Washington. Of course I liked him, and I thought him very handsome and +fine, with a full beard cut in the fashion he has always worn it, and +with poet’s eyes lighting an aquiline profile. Afterwards, when I saw +him afoot, I found him of a worldly splendor in dress, and envied him, as +much as I could envy him anything, the New York tailor whose art had +clothed him: I had a New York tailor too, but with a difference. He had +a worldly dash along with his supermundane gifts, which took me almost as +much, and all the more because I could see that he valued himself nothing +upon it. He was all for literature, and for literary men as the +superiors of every one. I must have opened my heart to him a good deal, +for when I told him how the newspaper I had written for from Canada and +New England had ceased to print my letters, he said, “Think of a man like +sitting in judgment on a man like you!” I thought of it, and was avenged +if not comforted; and at any rate I liked Stedman’s standing up so +stiffly for the honor of a craft that is rather too limp in some of its +votaries. + +I suppose it was he who introduced me to the Stoddards, whom I met in New +York just before I sailed, and who were then in the glow of their early +fame as poets. They knew about my poor beginnings, and they were very, +very good to me. Stoddard went with me to Franklin Square, and gave the +sanction of his presence to the ineffectual offer of my poem there. But +what I relished most was the long talks I had with them both about +authorship in all its phases, and the exchange of delight in this poem +and that, this novel and that, with gay, wilful runs away to make some +wholly irrelevant joke, or fire puns into the air at no mark whatever. +Stoddard had then a fame, with the sweetness of personal affection in it, +from the lyrics and the odes that will perhaps best keep him known, and +Mrs. Stoddard was beginning to make her distinct and special quality felt +in the magazines, in verse and fiction. In both it seems to me that she +has failed of the recognition which her work merits. Her tales and +novels have in them a foretaste of realism, which was too strange for the +palate of their day, and is now too familiar, perhaps. It is a peculiar +fate, and would form the scheme of a pretty study in the history of +literature. But in whatever she did she left the stamp of a talent like +no other, and of a personality disdainful of literary environment. In a +time when most of us had to write like Tennyson, or Longfellow, or +Browning, she never would write like any one but herself. + +I remember very well the lodging over a corner of Fourth Avenue and some +downtown street where I visited these winning and gifted people, and +tasted the pleasure of their racy talk, and the hospitality of their +good-will toward all literature, which certainly did not leave me out. We +sat before their grate in the chill of the last October days, and they +set each other on to one wild flight of wit after another, and again I +bathed my delighted spirit in the atmosphere of a realm where for the +time at least no + + “----rumor of oppression or defeat, + Of unsuccessful or successful war,” + +could penetrate. I liked the Stoddards because they were frankly not of +that Bohemia which I disliked so much, and thought it of no promise or +validity; and because I was fond of their poetry and found them in it. I +liked the absolutely literary keeping of their lives. He had then, and +for long after, a place in the Custom house, but he was no more of that +than Lamb was of India House. He belonged to that better world where +there is no interest but letters, and which was as much like heaven for +me as anything I could think of. + +The meetings with the Stoddards repeated themselves when I came back to +sail from New York, early in November. Mixed up with the cordial +pleasure of them in my memory is a sense of the cold and wet outdoors, +and the misery of being in those infamous New York streets, then as for +long afterwards the squalidest in the world. The last night I saw my +friends they told me of the tragedy which had just happened at the camp +in the City Hall Park. Fitz James O’Brien, the brilliant young Irishman +who had dazzled us with his story of “The Diamond Lens,” and frozen our +blood with his ingenious tale of a ghost--“What was It”--a ghost that +could be felt and heard, but not seen--had enlisted for the war, and +risen to be an officer with the swift process of the first days of it. In +that camp he had just then shot and killed a man for some infraction of +discipline, and it was uncertain what the end would be. He was +acquitted, however, and it is known how he afterwards died of lockjaw +from a wound received in battle. + + + + +VI. + +Before this last visit in New York there was a second visit to Boston, +which I need not dwell upon, because it was chiefly a revival of the +impressions of the first. Again I saw the Fieldses in their home; again +the Autocrat in his, and Lowell now beneath his own roof, beside the +study fire where I was so often to sit with him in coming years. At +dinner (which we had at two o’clock) the talk turned upon my appointment, +and he said of me to his wife: “Think of his having got Stillman’s place! +We ought to put poison in his wine,” and he told me of the wish the +painter had to go to Venice and follow up Ruskin’s work there in a book +of his own. But he would not let me feel very guilty, and I will not +pretend that I had any personal regret for my good fortune. + +The place was given me perhaps because I had not nearly so many other +gifts as he who lost it, and who was at once artist, critic, journalist, +traveller, and eminently each. I met him afterwards in Rome, which the +powers bestowed upon him instead of Venice, and he forgave me, though I +do not know whether he forgave the powers. We walked far and long over +the Campagna, and I felt the charm of a most uncommon mind in talk which +came out richest and fullest in the presence of the wild nature which he +loved and knew so much better than most other men. I think that the book +he would have written about Venice is forever to be regretted, and I do +not at all console myself for its loss with the book I have written +myself. + +At Lowell’s table that day they spoke of what sort of winter I should +find in Venice, and he inclined to the belief that I should want a fire +there. On his study hearth a very brisk one burned when we went back to +it, and kept out the chill of a cold easterly storm. We looked through +one of the windows at the rain, and he said he could remember standing +and looking out of that window at such a storm when he was a child; for +he was born in that house, and his life had kept coming back to it. He +died in it, at last. + +In a lifting of the rain he walked with me down to the village, as he +always called the denser part of the town about Harvard Square, and saw +me aboard a horse-car for Boston. Before we parted he gave me two +charges: to open my mouth when I began to speak Italian, and to think +well of women. He said that our race spoke its own tongue with its teeth +shut, and so failed to master the languages that wanted freer utterance. +As to women, he said there were unworthy ones, but a good woman was the +best thing in the world, and a man was always the better for honoring +women. + + + + +ROUNDABOUT TO BOSTON + +During the four years of my life in Venice the literary intention was +present with me at all times and in all places. I wrote many things in +verse, which I sent to the magazines in every part of the +English-speaking world, but they came unerringly back to me, except in +three instances only, when they were kept by the editors who finally +printed them. One of these pieces was published in the Atlantic Monthly; +another in Harpers Magazine; the third was got into the New York Ledger +through the kindness of Doctor Edward Everett Hale, who used I know not +what mighty magic to that end. I had not yet met him; but he interested +himself in my ballad as if it had been his own. His brother, Charles +Hale, later Consul-General for Egypt, whom I saw almost every moment of +the two visits he paid Venice in my time, had sent it to him, after +copying it in his own large, fair hand, so that it could be read. He was +not quite of that literary Boston which I so fondly remembered my +glimpses of; he was rather of a journalistic and literary Boston which I +had never known; but he was of Boston, after all. He had been in +Lowell’s classes at Harvard; he had often met Longfellow in Cambridge; he +knew Doctor Holmes, of course; and he let me talk of my idols to my +heart’s content. I think he must have been amused by my raptures; most +people would have been; but he was kind and patient, and he listened to +me with a sweet intelligence which I shall always gratefully remember. He +died too young, with his life’s possibilities mainly unfulfilled; but +none who knew him could fail to imagine them, or to love him for what he +was. + + + + +I. + +Besides those few pitiful successes, I had nothing but defeats in the +sort of literature which I supposed was to be my calling, and the defeats +threw me upon prose; for some sort of literary thing, if not one, then +another, I must do if I lived; and I began to write those studies of +Venetian life which afterwards became a book, and which I contributed as +letters to the ‘Boston Advertiser’, after vainly offering them to more +aesthetic periodicals. However, I do not imagine that it was a very +smiling time for any literary endeavorer at home in the life-and-death +civil war then waging. Some few young men arose who made themselves +heard amid the din of arms even as far as Venice, but most of these were +hushed long ago. I fancy Theodore Winthrop, who began to speak, as it +were, from his soldier’s grave, so soon did his death follow the earliest +recognition by the public, and so many were his posthumous works, was +chief of these; but there were others whom the present readers must make +greater effort to remember. Forceythe Willson, who wrote The Old +Sergeant, became known for the rare quality of his poetry; and now and +then there came a poem from Aldrich, or Stedman, or Stoddard. The great +new series of the ‘Biglow Papers’ gathered volume with the force they had +from the beginning. The Autocrat was often in the pages of the Atlantic, +where one often found Whittier and Emerson, with many a fresh name now +faded. In Washington the Piatts were writing some of the most beautiful +verse of the war, and Brownell was sounding his battle lyrics like so +many trumpet blasts. The fiction which followed the war was yet all to +come. Whatever was done in any kind had some hint of the war in it, +inevitably; though in the very heart of it Longfellow was setting about +his great version of Dante peacefully, prayerfully, as he has told in the +noble sonnets which register the mood of his undertaking. + +At Venice, if I was beyond the range of literary recognition I was in +direct relations with one of our greatest literary men, who was again of +that literary Boston which mainly represented American literature to me. +The official chief of the consul at Venice was the United States Minister +at Vienna, and in my time this minister was John Lothrop Motley, the +historian. He was removed, later, by that Johnson administration which +followed Lincoln’s so forgottenly that I name it with a sense of +something almost prehistoric. Among its worst errors was the attempted +discredit of a man who had given lustre to our name by his work, and who +was an ardent patriot as well as accomplished scholar. He visited Venice +during my first year, which was the darkest period of the civil war, and +I remember with what instant security, not to say severity, he rebuked my +scarcely whispered misgivings of the end, when I ventured to ask him what +he thought it would be. Austria had never recognized the Secessionists +as belligerents, and in the complications with France and England there +was little for our minister but to share the home indignation at the +sympathy of those powers with the South. In Motley this was heightened +by that feeling of astonishment, of wounded faith, which all Americans +with English friendships experienced in those days, and which he, whose +English friendships were many, experienced in peculiar degree. + +I drifted about with him in his gondola, and refreshed myself, long +a-hungered for such talk, with his talk of literary life in London. +Through some acquaintance I had made in Venice I was able to be of use to +him in getting documents copied for him in the Venetian Archives, +especially the Relations of the Venetian Ambassadors at different courts +during the period and events he was studying. All such papers passed +through my hands in transmission to the historian, though now I do not +quite know why they need have done so; but perhaps he was willing to give +me the pleasure of being a partner, however humble, in the enterprise. My +recollection of him is of courtesy to a far younger man unqualified by +patronage, and of a presence of singular dignity and grace. He was one +of the handsomest men I ever saw, with beautiful eyes, a fine blond beard +of modish cut, and a sensitive nose, straight and fine. He was +altogether a figure of worldly splendor; and I had reason to know that he +did not let the credit of our nation suffer at the most aristocratic +court in Europe for want of a fit diplomatic costume, when some of our +ministers were trying to make their office do its full effect upon all +occasions in “the dress of an American gentleman.” The morning after his +arrival Mr. Motley came to me with a handful of newspapers which, +according to the Austrian custom at that day, had been opened in the +Venetian post-office. He wished me to protest against this on his behalf +as an infringement of his diplomatic extra-territoriality, and I proposed +to go at once to the director of the post: I had myself suffered in the +same way, and though I knew that a mere consul was helpless, I was +willing to see the double-headed eagle trodden under foot by a Minister +Plenipotentiary. Mr. Motley said that he would go with me, and we put +off in his gondola to the post-office. The director received us with the +utmost deference. He admitted the irregularity which the minister +complained of, and declared that he had no choice but to open every +foreign newspaper, to whomsoever addressed. He suggested, however, that +if the minister made his appeal to the Lieutenant-Governor of Venice, +Count Toggenburg would no doubt instantly order the exemption of his +newspapers from the general rule. + +Mr. Motley said he would give himself the pleasure of calling upon the +Lieutenant-Governor, and “How fortunate,” he added, when we were got back +into the gondola, “that I should have happened to bring my court dress +with me!” I did not see the encounter of the high contending powers, but +I know that it ended in a complete victory for our minister. + +I had no further active relations of an official kind with Mr. Motley, +except in the case of a naturalized American citizen, whose property was +slowly but surely wasting away in the keeping of the Venetian courts. An +order had at last been given for the surrender of the remnant to the +owner; but the Lombardo-Venetian authorities insisted that this should be +done through the United States Minister at Vienna, and Mr. Motley held as +firmly that it must be done through the United States Consul at Venice. I +could only report to him from time to time the unyielding attitude of the +Civil Tribunal, and at last he consented, as he wrote, “to act +officiously, not officially, in the matter,” and the hapless claimant got +what was left of his estate. + +I had a glimpse of the historian afterwards in Boston, but it was only +for a moment, just before his appointment to England, where he was made +to suffer for Sumner in his quarrel with Grant. That injustice crowned +the injuries his country had done a most faithful patriot and +high-spirited gentleman, whose fame as an historian once filled the ear +of the English-speaking world. His books seemed to have been written in +a spirit already no longer modern; and I did not find the greatest of +them so moving as I expected when I came to it with all the ardor of my +admiration for the historian. William the Silent seemed to me, by his +worshipper’s own showing, scarcely level with the popular movement which +he did not so much direct as follow; but it is a good deal for a prince +to be able even to follow his people; and it cannot be said that Motley +does not fully recognize the greatness of the Dutch people, though he may +see the Prince of Orange too large. The study of their character made at +least a theoretical democrat of a scholar whose instincts were not +perhaps democratic, and his sympathy with that brave little republic +between the dikes strengthened him in his fealty to the great +commonwealth between the oceans. I believe that so far as he was of any +political tradition, he was of the old Boston Whig tradition; but when I +met him at Venice he was in the glow of a generous pride in our war as a +war against slavery. He spoke of the negroes and their simple-hearted, +single-minded devotion to the Union cause in terms that an original +abolitionist might have used, at a time when original abolitionists were +not so many as they have since become. + +For the rest, I fancy it was very well for us to be represented at Vienna +in those days by an ideal democrat who was also a real swell, and who was +not likely to discredit us socially when we so much needed to be well +thought of in every way. + +At a court where the family of Count Schmerling, the Prime Minister, +could not be received for want of the requisite descents, it was well to +have a minister who would not commit the mistake of inviting the First +Society to meet the Second Society, as a former Envoy Extraordinary had +done, with the effect of finding himself left entirely to the Second +Society during the rest of his stay in Vienna. + + + + +II. + +One of my consular colleagues under Motley was another historian, of no +such popularity, indeed, nor even of such success, but perhaps not of +inferior powers. This was Richard Hildreth, at Trieste, the author of +one of the sincerest if not the truest histories of the United States, +according to the testimony both of his liking and his misliking critics. +I have never read his history, and I speak of it only at second hand; but +I had read, before I met him, his novel of ‘Archy Moore, or The White +Slave’, which left an indelible impression of his imaginative verity upon +me. The impression is still so deep that after the lapse of nearly forty +years since I saw the book, I have no misgiving in speaking of it as a +powerful piece of realism. It treated passionately, intensely, though +with a superficial coldness, of wrongs now so remote from us in the +abolition of slavery that it is useless to hope it will ever beg +generally read hereafter, but it can safely be praised to any one who +wishes to study that bygone condition, and the literature which grew out +of it. I fancy it did not lack recognition in its time, altogether, for +I used to see it in Italian and French translations on the bookstalls. I +believe neither his history nor his novel brought the author more gain +than fame. He had worn himself out on a newspaper when he got his +appointment at Trieste, and I saw him in the shadow of the cloud that was +wholly to darken him before he died. He was a tall thin man, absent, +silent: already a phantom of himself, but with a scholarly serenity and +dignity amidst the ruin, when the worst came. + +I first saw him at the pretty villa where he lived in the suburbs of +Trieste, and where I passed several days, and I remember him always +reading, reading, reading. He could with difficulty be roused from his +book by some strenuous appeal from his family to his conscience as a +host. The last night he sat with Paradise Lost in his hand, and nothing +could win him from it till he had finished it. Then he rose to go to +bed. Would not he bid his parting guest good-bye? The idea of farewell +perhaps dimly penetrated to him. He responded without looking round, + + “They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, + Through Eden took their solitary way,” + +and so left the room. + +I had earlier had some dealings with him as a fellow-consul concerning a +deserter from an American ship whom I inherited from my predecessor at +Venice. The man had already been four or five months in prison, and he +was in a fair way to end his life there; for it is our law that a +deserting sailor must be kept in the consul’s custody till some vessel of +our flag arrives, when the consul can oblige the master to take the +deserter and let him work his passage home. Such a vessel rarely came to +Venice even in times of peace, and in times of war there was no hope of +any. So I got leave of the consul at Trieste to transfer my captive to +that port, where now and then an American ship did touch. The flag +determines the nationality of the sailor, and this unhappy wretch was +theoretically our fellow-citizen; but when he got to Trieste he made a +clean breast of it to the consul. He confessed that when he shipped +under our flag he was a deserter from a British regiment at Malta; and he +begged piteously not to be sent home to America, where he had never been +in his life, nor ever wished to be. He wished to be sent back to his +regiment at Malta, and to whatever fate awaited him there. The case +certainly had its embarrassments; but the American consul contrived to +let our presumptive compatriot slip into the keeping of the British +consul, who promptly shipped him to Malta. In view of the strained +relations between England and America at that time this was a piece of +masterly diplomacy. + +Besides my old Ohio-time friend Moncure D. Conway, who paid us a visit, +and in his immediate relations with literary Boston seemed to bring the +mountain to Mahomet, I saw no one else more literary than Henry Ward +Beecher. He was passing through Venice on his way to those efforts in +England in behalf of the Union which had a certain great effect at the +time; and in the tiny parlor of our apartment on the Grand Canal, I can +still see him sitting athletic, almost pugilistic, of presence, with his +strong face, but kind, framed in long hair that swept above his massive +forehead, and fell to the level of his humorously smiling mouth. His +eyes quaintly gleamed at the things we told him of our life in the +strange place; but he only partly relaxed from his strenuous pose, and +the hands that lay upon his knees were clinched. Afterwards, as he +passed our balcony in a gondola, he lifted the brave red fez he was +wearing (many people wore the fez for one caprice or another) and saluted +our eagle and us: we were often on the balcony behind the shield to +attest the authenticity of the American eagle. + + + + +III. + +Before I left Venice, however, there came a turn in my literary luck, and +from the hand I could most have wished to reverse the adverse wheel of +fortune. I had labored out with great pains a paper on recent Italian +comedy, which I sent to Lowell, then with his friend Professor Norton +jointly editor of the North American Review; and he took it and wrote me +one of his loveliest letters about it, consoling me in an instant for all +the defeat I had undergone, and making it sweet and worthy to have lived +through that misery. It is one of the hard conditions of this state that +while we can mostly make out to let people taste the last drop of +bitterness and ill-will that is in us, our love and gratitude are only +semi-articulate at the best, and usually altogether tongue-tied. As +often as I tried afterwards to tell Lowell of the benediction, the +salvation, his letter was to me, I failed. But perhaps he would not have +understood, if I had spoken out all that was in me with the fulness I +could have given a resentment. His message came after years of thwarted +endeavor, and reinstated me in the belief that I could still do something +in literature. To be sure, the letters in the Advertiser had begun to +make their impression; among the first great pleasures they brought me +was a recognition from my diplomatic chief at Vienna; but I valued my +admission to the North American peculiarly because it was Lowell let me +in, and because I felt that in his charge it must be the place of highest +honor. He spoke of the pay for my article, in his letter, and asked me +where he should send it, and I answered, to my father-in-law, who put it +in his savings-bank, where he lived, in Brattleboro, Vermont. There it +remained, and I forgot all about it, so that when his affairs were +settled some years later and I was notified that there was a sum to my +credit in the bank, I said, with the confidence I have nearly always felt +when wrong, that I had no money there. The proof of my error was sent me +in a check, and then I bethought me of the pay for “Recent Italian +Comedy.” + +It was not a day when I could really afford to forget money due me, but +then it was not a great deal of money. The Review was as poor as it was +proud, and I had two dollars a printed page for my paper. But this was +more than I got from the Advertiser, which gave me five dollars a column +for my letters, printed in a type so fine that the money, when translated +from greenbacks into gold at a discount of $2.80, must have been about a +dollar a thousand words. However, I was richly content with that, and +would gladly have let them have the letters for nothing. + +Before I left Venice I had made my sketches into a book, which I sent on +to Messrs. Trubner & Co., in London. They had consented to look at it to +oblige my friend Conway, who during his sojourn with us in Venice, before +his settlement in London, had been forced to listen to some of it. They +answered me in due time that they would publish an edition of a thousand, +at half profits, if I could get some American house to take five hundred +copies. When I stopped in London I had so little hope of being able to +do this that I asked the Trubners if I might, without losing their offer, +try to get some other London house to publish my book. They said Yes, +almost joyously; and I began to take my manuscript about. At most places +they would not look at me or it, and they nowhere consented to read it. +The house promptest in refusing to consider it afterwards pirated one of +my novels, and with some expressions of good intention in that direction, +never paid me anything for it; though I believe the English still think +that this sort of behavior was peculiar to the American publisher in the +old buccaneering times. I was glad to go back to the Trubners with my +book, and on my way across the Atlantic I met a publisher who finally +agreed to take those five hundred copies. This was Mr. M. M. Hurd, of +Hurd & Houghton, a house then newly established in New York and +Cambridge. We played ring-toss and shuffleboard together, and became of +a friendship which lasts to this day. But it was not till some months +later, when I saw him in New York, that he consented to publish my book. +I remember how he said, with an air of vague misgiving, and an effect of +trying to justify himself in an imprudence, that it was not a great +matter anyway. I perceived that he had no faith in it, and to tell the +truth I had not much myself. But the book had an instant success, and it +has gone on from edition to edition ever since. There was just then the +interest of a not wholly generous surprise at American things among the +English. Our success in putting down the great Confederate rebellion had +caught the fancy of our cousins, and I think it was to this mood of +theirs that I owed largely the kindness they showed my book. There were +long and cordial reviews in all the great London journals, which I used +to carry about with me like love-letters; when I tried to show them to +other people, I could not understand their coldness concerning them. + +At Boston, where we landed on our return home, there was a moment when it +seemed as if my small destiny might be linked at once with that of the +city which later became my home. I ran into the office of the Advertiser +to ask what had become of some sketches of Italian travel I had sent the +paper, and the managing editor made me promise not to take a place +anywhere before I had heard from him. I gladly promised, but I did not +hear from him, and when I returned to Boston a fortnight later, I found +that a fatal partner had refused to agree with him in engaging me upon +the paper. They even gave me back half a dozen unprinted letters of +mine, and I published them in the Nation, of New York, and afterwards in +the book called Italian Journeys. + +But after I had encountered fortune in this frowning disguise, I had a +most joyful little visit with Lowell, which made me forget there was +anything in the world but the delight and glory of sitting with him in +his study at Elmwood and hearing him talk. It must have been my +freshness from Italy which made him talk chiefly of his own happy days in +the land which so sympathetically brevets all its lovers fellow-citizens. +At any rate he would talk of hardly anything else, and he talked late +into the night, and early into the morning. About two o’clock, when all +the house was still, he lighted a candle, and went down into the cellar, +and came back with certain bottles under his arms. I had not a very +learned palate in those days (or in these, for that matter), but I knew +enough of wine to understand that these bottles had been chosen upon that +principle which Longfellow put in verse, and used to repeat with a +humorous lifting of the eyebrows and hollowing of the voice: + + “If you have a friend to dine, + Give him your best wine; + If you have two, + The second-best will do.” + +As we sat in their mellow afterglow, Lowell spoke to me of my own life +and prospects, wisely and truly, as he always spoke. He said that it was +enough for a man who had stuff in him to be known to two or three people, +for they would not suffer him to be forgotten, and it would rest with +himself to get on. I told him that though I had not given up my place at +Venice, I was not going back, if I could find anything to do at home, and +I was now on my way to Ohio, where I should try my best to find +something; at the worst, I could turn to my trade of printer. He did not +think it need ever come to that; and he said that he believed I should +have an advantage with readers, if not with editors, in hailing from the +West; I should be more of a novelty. I knew very well that even in my +own West I should not have this advantage unless I appeared there with an +Eastern imprint, but I could not wish to urge my misgiving against his +faith. Was I not already richly successful? What better thing +personally could befall me, if I lived forever after on milk and honey, +than to be sitting there with my hero, my master, and having him talk to +me as if we were equal in deed and in fame? + +The cat-bird called in the syringa thicket at his door, before we said +the good-night which was good morning, using the sweet Italian words, and +bidding each other the ‘Dorma bene’ which has the quality of a +benediction. He held my hand, and looked into my eyes with the sunny +kindness which never failed me, worthy or unworthy; and I went away to +bed. But not to sleep; only to dream such dreams as fill the heart of +youth when the recognition of its endeavor has come from the achievement +it holds highest and best. + + + + +IV. + +I found nothing to do in Ohio; some places that I heard of proved +impossible one way or another, in Columbus and Cleveland, and Cincinnati; +there was always the fatal partner; and after three weeks I was again in +the East. I came to New York, resolved to fight my way in, somewhere, +and I did not rest a moment before I began the fight. + +My notion was that which afterwards became Bartley Hubbard’s. “Get a +basis,” said the softening cynic of the Saturday Press, when I advised +with him, among other acquaintances. “Get a salaried place, something +regular on some paper, and then you can easily make up the rest.” But it +was a month before I achieved this vantage, and then I got it in a +quarter where I had not looked for it. I wrote editorials on European +and literary topics for different papers, but mostly for the Times, and +they paid me well and more than well; but I was nowhere offered a basis, +though once I got so far towards it as to secure a personal interview +with the editor-in-chief, who made me feel that I had seldom met so busy +a man. He praised some work of mine that he had read in his paper, but I +was never recalled to his presence; and now I think he judged rightly +that I should not be a lastingly good journalist. My point of view was +artistic; I wanted time to prepare my effects. + +There was another and clearer prospect opened to me on a literary paper, +then newly come to the light, but long since gone out in the dark. Here +again my work was taken, and liked so much that I was offered the basis +(at twenty dollars a week) that I desired; I was even assigned to a desk +where I should write in the office; and the next morning I came joyfully +down to Spruce Street to occupy it. But I was met at the door by one of +the editors, who said lightly, as if it were a trifling affair, “Well, +we’ve concluded to waive the idea of an engagement,” and once more my +bright hopes of a basis dispersed themselves. I said, with what calm I +could, that they must do what they thought best, and I went on +skirmishing baselessly about for this and the other papers which had been +buying my material. + +I had begun printing in the ‘Nation’ those letters about my Italian +journeys left over from the Boston Advertiser; they had been liked in the +office, and one day the editor astonished and delighted me by asking how +I would fancy giving up outside work to come there and write only for the +‘Nation’. We averaged my gains from all sources at forty dollars a week, +and I had my basis as unexpectedly as if I had dropped upon it from the +skies. + +This must have been some time in November, and the next three or four +months were as happy a time for me as I have ever known. I kept on +printing my Italian material in the Nation; I wrote criticisms for it +(not very good criticisms, I think now), and I amused myself very much +with the treatment of social phases and events in a department which grew +up under my hand. My associations personally were of the most agreeable +kind. I worked with joy, with ardor, and I liked so much to be there, in +that place and in that company, that I hated to have each day come to an +end. + +I believed that my lines were cast in New York for good and all; and I +renewed my relations with the literary friends I had made before going +abroad. I often stopped, on my way up town, at an apartment the +Stoddards had in Lafayette Place, or near it; I saw Stedman, and reasoned +high, to my heart’s content, of literary things with them and him. + +With the winter Bayard Taylor came on from his home in Kennett and took +an apartment in East Twelfth Street, and once a week Mrs. Taylor and he +received all their friends there, with a simple and charming hospitality. +There was another house which we much resorted to--the house of James +Lorrimer Graham, afterwards Consul-General at Florence, where he died. I +had made his acquaintance at Venice three years before, and I came in for +my share of that love for literary men which all their perversities could +not extinguish in him. It was a veritable passion, which I used to think +he could not have felt so deeply if he had been a literary man himself. +There were delightful dinners at his house, where the wit of the +Stoddards shone, and Taylor beamed with joyous good-fellowship and +overflowed with invention; and Huntington, long Paris correspondent of +the Tribune, humorously tried to talk himself into the resolution of +spending the rest of his life in his own country. There was one evening +when C. P. Cranch, always of a most pensive presence and aspect, sang the +most killingly comic songs; and there was another evening when, after we +all went into the library, something tragical happened. Edwin Booth was +of our number, a gentle, rather silent person in company, or with at +least little social initiative, who, as his fate would, went up to the +cast of a huge hand that lay upon one of the shelves. “Whose hand is +this, Lorry?” he asked our host, as he took it up and turned it over in +both his own hands. Graham feigned not to hear, and Booth asked again, +“whose hand is this?” Then there was nothing for Graham but to say, +“It’s Lincoln’s hand,” and the man for whom it meant such unspeakable +things put it softly down without a word. + + + + +V. + +It was one of the disappointments of a time which was nearly all joy that +I did not then meet a man who meant hardly less than Lowell himself for +me. George William Curtis was during my first winter in New York away on +one of the long lecturing rounds to which he gave so many of his winters, +and I did not see him till seven years afterwards, at Mr. Norton’s in +Cambridge. He then characteristically spent most of the evening in +discussing an obscure point in Browning’s poem of ‘My Last Duchess’. I +have long forgotten what the point was, but not the charm of Curtis’s +personality, his fine presence, his benign politeness, his almost +deferential tolerance of difference in opinion. Afterwards I saw him +again and again in Boston and New York, but always with a sense of +something elusive in his graciousness, for which something in me must +have been to blame. Cold, he was not, even to the youth that in those +days was apt to shiver in any but the higher temperatures, and yet I felt +that I made no advance in his kindness towards anything like the +friendship I knew in the Cambridge men. Perhaps I was so thoroughly +attuned to their mood that I could not be put in unison with another; and +perhaps in Curtis there was really not the material of much intimacy. + +He had the potentiality of publicity in the sort of welcome he gave +equally to all men; and if I asked more I was not reasonable. Yet he was +never far from any man of good-will, and he was the intimate of +multitudes whose several existence he never dreamt of. In this sort he +had become my friend when he made his first great speech on the Kansas +question in 1855, which will seen as remote to the young men of this day +as the Thermopylae question to which he likened it. I was his admirer, +his lover, his worshipper before that for the things he had done in +literature, for the ‘Howadji’ books, and for the lovely fantasies of +‘Prue and I’, and for the sound-hearted satire of the ‘Potiphar Papers’, +and now suddenly I learnt that this brilliant and graceful talent, this +travelled and accomplished gentleman, this star of society who had +dazzled me with his splendor far off in my Western village obscurity, was +a man with the heart to feel the wrongs of men so little friended then as +to be denied all the rights of men. I do not remember any passage of the +speech, or any word of it, but I remember the joy, the pride with which +the soul of youth recognizes in the greatness it has honored the goodness +it may love. Mere politicians might be pro-slavery or anti-slavery +without touching me very much, but here was the citizen of a world far +greater than theirs, a light of the universal republic of letters, who +was willing and eager to stand or fall with the just cause, and that was +all in all to me. His country was my country, and his kindred my +kindred, and nothing could have kept me from following after him. + +His whole life taught the lesson that the world is well lost whenever the +world is wrong; but never, I think, did any life teach this so sweetly, +so winningly. The wrong world itself might have been entreated by him to +be right, for he was one of the few reformers who have not in some +measure mixed their love of man with hate of men; his quarrel was with +error, and not with the persons who were in it. He was so gently +steadfast in his opinions that no one ever thought of him as a fanatic, +though many who held his opinions were assailed as fanatics, and suffered +the shame if they did not win the palm of martyrdom. In early life he +was a communist, and then when he came out of Brook Farm into the world +which he was so well fitted to adorn, and which would so gladly have kept +him all its own, he became an abolitionist in the very teeth of the world +which abhorred abolitionists. He was a believer in the cause of women’s +rights, which has no picturesqueness, and which chiefly appeals to the +sense of humor in the men who never dreamt of laughing at him. The man +who was in the last degree amiable was to the last degree unyielding +where conscience was concerned; the soul which was so tender had no +weakness in it; his lenity was the divination of a finer justice. His +honesty made all men trust him when they doubted his opinions; his good +sense made them doubt their own opinions, when they had as little +question of their own honesty. + +I should not find it easy to speak of him as a man of letters only, for +humanity was above the humanities with him, and we all know how he turned +from the fairest career in literature to tread the thorny path of +politics because he believed that duty led the way, and that good +citizens were needed more than good romancers. No doubt they are, and +yet it must always be a keen regret with the men of my generation who +witnessed with such rapture the early proofs of his talent, that he could +not have devoted it wholly to the beautiful, and let others look after +the true. Now that I have said this I am half ashamed of it, for I know +well enough that what he did was best; but if my regret is mean, I will +let it remain, for it is faithful to the mood which many have been in +concerning him. + +There can be no dispute, I am sure, as to the value of some of the +results he achieved in that other path. He did indeed create anew for us +the type of good-citizenship, well-nigh effaced in a sordid and selfish +time, and of an honest politician and a pure-minded journalist. He never +really forsook literature, and the world of actual interests and +experiences afforded him outlooks and perspectives, without which +aesthetic endeavor is self-limited and purblind. He was a great man of +letters, he was a great orator, he was a great political journalist, he +was a great citizen, he was a great philanthropist. But that last word +with its conventional application scarcely describes the brave and gentle +friend of men that he was. He was one that helped others by all that he +did, and said, and was, and the circle of his use was as wide as his +fame. There are other great men, plenty of them, common great men, whom +we know as names and powers, and whom we willingly let the ages have when +they die, for, living or dead, they are alike remote from us. They have +never been with us where we live; but this great man was the neighbor, +the contemporary, and the friend of all who read him or heard him; and +even in the swift forgetting of this electrical age the stamp of his +personality will not be effaced from their minds or hearts. + + + + +VI. + +Of those evenings at the Taylors’ in New York, I can recall best the one +which was most significant for me, and even fatefully significant. Mr. +and Mrs. Fields were there, from Boston, and I renewed all the pleasure +of my earlier meetings with them. At the end Fields said, mockingly, +“Don’t despise Boston!” and I answered, as we shook hands, “Few are +worthy to live in Boston.” It was New-Year’s eve, and that night it came +on to snow so heavily that my horse-car could hardly plough its way up to +Forty-seventh Street through the drifts. The next day, and the next, I +wrote at home, because it was so hard to get down-town. The third day I +reached the office and found a letter on my desk from Fields, asking how +I should like to come to Boston and be his assistant on the ‘Atlantic +Monthly’. I submitted the matter at once to my chief on the ‘Nation’, +and with his frank goodwill I talked it over with Mr. Osgood, of Ticknor +& Fields, who was to see me further about it if I wished, when he came to +New York; and then I went to Boston to see Mr. Fields concerning details. +I was to sift all the manuscripts and correspond with contributors; I was +to do the literary proof-reading of the magazine; and I was to write the +four or five pages of book-notices, which were then printed at the end of +the periodical in finer type; and I was to have forty dollars a week. I +said that I was getting that already for less work, and then Mr. Fields +offered me ten dollars more. Upon these terms we closed, and on the 1st +of March, which was my twenty-ninth birthday, I went to Boston and began +my work. I had not decided to accept the place without advising with +Lowell; he counselled the step, and gave me some shrewd and useful +suggestions. The whole affair was conducted by Fields with his unfailing +tact and kindness, but it could not be kept from me that the +qualification I had as practical printer for the work was most valued, if +not the most valued, and that as proof-reader I was expected to make it +avail on the side of economy. Somewhere in life’s feast the course of +humble-pie must always come in; and if I did not wholly relish this, bit +of it, I dare say it was good for me, and I digested it perfectly. + + + + +LITERARY BOSTON AS I KNEW IT + +Among my fellow-passengers on the train from New York to Boston, when I +went to begin my work there in 1866, as the assistant editor of the +Atlantic Monthly, was the late Samuel Bowles, of the Springfield +Republican, who created in a subordinate city a journal of metropolitan +importance. I had met him in Venice several years earlier, when he was +suffering from the cruel insomnia which had followed his overwork on that +newspaper, and when he told me that he was sleeping scarcely more than +one hour out of the twenty-four. His worn face attested the misery which +this must have been, and which lasted in some measure while he lived, +though I believe that rest and travel relieved him in his later years. He +was always a man of cordial friendliness, and he now expressed a most +gratifying interest when I told him what I was going to do in Boston. He +gave himself the pleasure of descanting upon the dramatic quality of the +fact that a young newspaper man from Ohio was about to share in the +destinies of the great literary periodical of New England. + + + + +I. + +I do not think that such a fact would now move the fancy of the liveliest +newspaper man, so much has the West since returned upon the East in a +refluent wave of authorship. But then the West was almost an unknown +quality in our literary problem; and in fact there was scarcely any +literature outside of New England. Even this was of New England origin, +for it was almost wholly the work of New England men and women in the +“splendid exile” of New York. The Atlantic Monthly, which was +distinctively literary, was distinctively a New England magazine, though +from the first it had been characterized by what was more national, what +was more universal, in the New England temperament. Its chief +contributors for nearly twenty years were Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, +Whittier, Emerson, Doctor Hale, Colonel Higginson, Mrs. Stowe, Whipple, +Rose Terry Cooke, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Mrs. Prescott Spofford, Mrs. +Phelps Ward, and other New England writers who still lived in New +England, and largely in the region of Boston. Occasionally there came a +poem from Bryant, at New York, from Mr. Stedman, from Mr. Stoddard and +Mrs. Stoddard, from Mr. Aldrich, and from Bayard Taylor. But all these, +except the last, were not only of New England race, but of New England +birth. I think there was no contributor from the South but Mr. M. D. +Conway, and as yet the West scarcely counted, though four young poets +from Ohio, who were not immediately or remotely of Puritan origin, had +appeared in early numbers; Alice Cary, living with her sister in New +York, had written now and then from the beginning. Mr. John Hay solely +represented Illinois by a single paper, and he was of Rhode Island stock. +It was after my settlement at Boston that Mark Twain, of Missouri, became +a figure of world-wide fame at Hartford; and longer after, that Mr. Bret +Harte made that progress Eastward from California which was telegraphed +almost from hour to hour, as if it were the progress of a prince. Miss +Constance F. Woolson had not yet begun to write. Mr. James Whitcomb +Riley, Mr. Maurice Thompson, Miss Edith Thomas, Octave Thanet, Mr. +Charles Warren Stoddard, Mr. H. B. Fuller, Mrs. Catherwood, Mr. Hamlin +Garland, all whom I name at random among other Western writers, were then +as unknown as Mr. Cable, Miss Murfree, Mrs. Rives Chanler, Miss Grace +King, Mr. Joel Chandler Harris, Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, in the South, +which they by no means fully represent. + +The editors of the Atlantic had been eager from the beginning to discover +any outlying literature; but, as I have said, there was in those days +very little good writing done beyond the borders of New England. If the +case is now different, and the best known among living American writers +are no longer New-Englanders, still I do not think the South and West +have yet trimmed the balance; and though perhaps the news writers now +more commonly appear in those quarters, I should not be so very sure that +they are not still characterized by New England ideals and examples. On +the other hand, I am very sure that in my early day we were characterized +by them, and wished to be so; we even felt that we failed in so far as we +expressed something native quite in our own way. The literary theories we +accepted were New England theories, the criticism we valued was New +England criticism, or, more strictly speaking, Boston theories, Boston +criticism. + +Of those more constant contributors to the Atlantic whom I have +mentioned, it is of course known that Longfellow and Lowell lived in +Cambridge, Emerson at Concord, and Whittier at Amesbury. Colonel +Higginson was still and for many years afterwards at Newport; Mrs. Stowe +was then at Andover; Miss Prescott of Newburyport had become Mrs. +Spofford, and was presently in Boston, where her husband was a member of +the General Court; Mrs. Phelps Ward, as Miss Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, +dwelt in her father’s house at Andover. The chief of the Bostonians were +Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Doctor Holmes, and Doctor Hale. Yet Boston stood +for the whole Massachusetts group, and Massachusetts, in the literary +impulse, meant New England. I suppose we must all allow, whether we like +to do so or not, that the impulse seems now to have pretty well spent +itself. Certainly the city of Boston has distinctly waned in literature, +though it has waxed in wealth and population. I do not think there are +in Boston to-day even so many talents with a literary coloring in law, +science, theology, and journalism as there were formerly; though I have +no belief that the Boston talents are fewer or feebler than before. I +arrived in Boston, however, when all talents had more or less a literary +coloring, and when the greatest talents were literary. These expressed +with ripened fulness a civilization conceived in faith and brought forth +in good works; but that moment of maturity was the beginning of a +decadence which could only show itself much later. New England has +ceased to be a nation in itself, and it will perhaps never again have +anything like a national literature; but that was something like a +national literature; and it will probably be centuries yet before the +life of the whole country, the American life as distinguished from the +New England life, shall have anything so like a national literature. It +will be long before our larger life interprets itself in such imagination +as Hawthorne’s, such wisdom as Emerson’s, such poetry as Longfellow’s, +such prophecy as Whittier’s, such wit and grace as Holmes’s, such humor +and humanity as Lowell’s. + + + + +II. + +The literature of those great men was, if I may suffer myself the figure, +the Socinian graft of a Calvinist stock. Their faith, in its varied +shades, was Unitarian, but their art was Puritan. So far as it was +imperfect--and great and beautiful as it was, I think it had its +imperfections--it was marred by the intense ethicism that pervaded the +New England mind for two hundred years, and that still characterizes it. +They or their fathers had broken away from orthodoxy in the great schism +at the beginning of the century, but, as if their heterodoxy were +conscience-stricken, they still helplessly pointed the moral in all they +did; some pointed it more directly, some less directly; but they all +pointed it. I should be far from blaming them for their ethical +intention, though I think they felt their vocation as prophets too much +for their good as poets. Sometimes they sacrificed the song to the +sermon, though not always, nor nearly always. It was in poetry and in +romance that they excelled; in the novel, so far as they attempted it, +they failed. I say this with the names of all the Bostonian group, and +those they influenced, in mind, and with a full sense of their greatness. +It may be ungracious to say that they have left no heirs to their +peculiar greatness; but it would be foolish to say that they left an +estate where they had none to bequeath. One cannot take account of such +a fantasy as Judd’s Margaret. The only New-Englander who has attempted +the novel on a scale proportioned to the work of the New-Englanders in +philosophy, in poetry, in romance, is Mr. De Forest, who is of New Haven, +and not of Boston. I do not forget the fictions of Doctor Holmes, or the +vivid inventions of Doctor Hale, but I do not call them novels; and I do +not forget the exquisitely realistic art of Miss Jewett or Miss Wilkins, +which is free from the ethicism of the great New England group, but which +has hardly the novelists’s scope. New England, in Hawthorne’s work, +achieved supremacy in romance; but the romance is always an allegory, and +the novel is a picture in which the truth to life is suffered to do its +unsermonized office for conduct; and New England yet lacks her novelist, +because it was her instinct and her conscience in fiction to be true to +an ideal of life rather than to life itself. + +Even when we come to the exception that proves the rule, even to such a +signal exception as ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’, I think that what I say holds +true. That is almost the greatest work of imagination that we have +produced in prose, and it is the work of a New England woman, writing +from all the inspirations and traditions of New England. It is like +begging the question to say that I do not call it a novel, however; but +really, is it a novel, in the sense that ‘War and Peace’ is a novel, or +‘Madame Flaubert’, or ‘L’Assommoir’, or ‘Phineas Finn’, or ‘Dona +Perfecta’, or ‘Esther Waters’, or ‘Marta y Maria’, or ‘The Return of the +Native’, or ‘Virgin Soil’, or ‘David Grieve’? In a certain way it is +greater than any of these except the first; but its chief virtue, or its +prime virtue, is in its address to the conscience, and not its address to +the taste; to the ethical sense, not the aesthetical sense. + +This does not quite say the thing, but it suggests it, and I should be +sorry if it conveyed to any reader a sense of slight; for I believe no +one has felt more deeply than myself the value of New England in +literature. The comparison of the literary situation at Boston to the +literary situation at Edinburgh in the times of the reviewers has never +seemed to me accurate or adequate, and it holds chiefly in the fact that +both seem to be of the past. Certainly New York is yet no London in +literature, and I think Boston was once vastly more than Edinburgh ever +was, at least in quality. The Scotch literature of the palmy days was +not wholly Scotch, and even when it was rooted in Scotch soil it flowered +in the air of an alien speech. But the New England literature of the +great day was the blossom of a New England root; and the language which +the Bostonians wrote was the native English of scholars fitly the heirs +of those who had brought the learning of the universities to +Massachusetts Bay two hundred years before, and was of as pure a lineage +as the English of the mother-country. + + + + +III. + +The literary situation which confronted me when I came to Boston was, +then, as native as could well be; and whatever value I may be able to +give a personal study of it will be from the effect it made upon me as +one strange in everything but sympathy. I will not pretend that I saw it +in its entirety, and I have no hope of presenting anything like a +kinetoscopic impression of it. What I can do is to give here and there a +glimpse of it; and I shall wish the reader to keep in mind the fact that +it was in a “state of transition,” as everything is always and +everywhere. It was no sooner recognizably native than it ceased to be +fully so; and I became a witness of it after the change had begun. The +publishing house which so long embodied New England literature was +already attempting enterprises out of the line of its traditions, and one +of these had brought Mr. T. B. Aldrich from New York, a few weeks before +I arrived upon the scene in that dramatic quality which I think never +impressed any one but Mr. Bowles. Mr. Aldrich was the editor of ‘Every +Saturday’ when I came to be assistant editor of the Atlantic Monthly. We +were of nearly the same age, but he had a distinct and distinguished +priority of reputation, insomuch that in my Western remoteness I had +always ranged him with such elders and betters of mine as Holmes and +Lowell, and never imagined him the blond, slight youth I found him, with +every imaginable charm of contemporaneity. It is no part of the office +which I have intended for these slight and sufficiently wandering +glimpses of the past to show any writer in his final place; and above all +I do not presume to assign any living man his rank or station. But I +should be false to my own grateful sense of beauty in the work of this +poet if I did not at all times recognize his constancy to an ideal which +his name stands for. He is known in several kinds, but to my thinking he +is best in a certain nobler kind of poetry; a serious sort in which the +thought holds him above the scrupulosities of the art he loves and honors +so much. Sometimes the file slips in his hold, as the file must and +will; it is but an instrument at the best; but there is no mistouch in +the hand that lays itself upon the reader’s heart with the pulse of the +poet’s heart quick and true in it. There are sonnets of his, grave, and +simple, and lofty, which I think of with the glow and thrill possible +only from very beautiful poetry, and which impart such an emotion as we +can feel only + + “When a great thought strikes along the brain + And flushes all the cheek.” + +When I had the fortune to meet him first, I suppose that in the employ of +the kindly house we were both so eager to serve, our dignities were about +the same; for if the ‘Atlantic Monthly’ was a somewhat prouder affair +than an eclectic weekly like ‘Every Saturday’, he was supreme in his +place, and I was subordinate in mine. The house was careful, in the +attitude of its senior partner, not to distinguish between us, and we +were not slow to perceive the tact used in managing us; we had our own +joke of it; we compared notes to find whether we were equally used in +this thing or that; and we promptly shared the fun of our discovery with +Fields himself. + +We had another impartial friend (no less a friend of joy in the life +which seems to have been pretty nearly all joy, as I look back upon it) +in the partner who became afterwards the head of the house, and who +forecast in his bold enterprises the change from a New England to an +American literary situation. In the end James R. Osgood failed, though +all his enterprises succeeded. The anomaly is sad, but it is not +infrequent. They were greater than his powers and his means, and before +they could reach their full fruition, they had to be enlarged to men of +longer purse and longer patience. He was singularly fitted both by +instinct and by education to become a great publisher; and he early +perceived that if a leading American house were to continue at Boston, it +must be hospitable to the talents of the whole country. He founded his +future upon those generous lines; but he wanted the qualities as well as +the resources for rearing the superstructure. Changes began to follow +each other rapidly after he came into control of the house. Misfortune +reduced the size and number of its periodicals. ‘The Young Folks’ was +sold outright, and the ‘North American Review’ (long before Mr. Rice +bought it and carried it to New York) was cut down one-half, so that +Aldrich said, it looked as if Destiny had sat upon it. His own +periodical, ‘Every Saturday’, was first enlarged to a stately quarto and +illustrated; and then, under stress of the calamities following the great +Boston fire, It collapsed to its former size. Then both the ‘Atlantic +Monthly’ and ‘Every Saturday’ were sold away from their old ownership, +and ‘Every Saturday’ was suppressed altogether, and we two ceased to be +of the same employ. There was some sort of evening rite (more funereal +than festive) the day after they were sold, and we followed Osgood away +from it, under the lamps. We all knew that it was his necessity that had +caused him to part with the periodicals; but he professed that it was his +pleasure, and he said he had not felt so light-hearted since he was a +boy. We asked him, How could he feel gay when he was no longer paying us +our salaries, and how could he justify it to his conscience? He liked +our mocking, and limped away from us with a rheumatic easing of his +weight from one foot to another: a figure pathetic now that it has gone +the way to dusty death, and dear to memory through benefactions unalloyed +by one unkindness. + + + + +IV. + +But when I came to Boston early in 1866, the ‘Atlantic Monthly’ and +‘Harper’s’ then divided our magazine world between them; the ‘North +American Review’, in the control of Lowell and Professor Norton, had +entered upon a new life; ‘Every Saturday’ was an instant success in the +charge of Mr. Aldrich, who was by taste and training one of the best +editors; and ‘Our Young Folks’ had the field of juvenile periodical +literature to itself. + +It was under the direction of Miss Lucy Larcom and of Mr. J. T. +Trowbridge, who had come from western New York, where he was born, and +must be noted as one of the first returners from the setting to the +rising sun. He naturalized himself in Boston in his later boyhood, and +he still breathes Boston air, where he dwells in the street called +Pleasant, on the shore of Spy Pond, at Arlington, and still weaves the +magic web of his satisfying stories for boys. He merges in their +popularity the fame of a poet which I do not think will always suffer +that eclipse, for his poems show him to have looked deeply into the heart +of common humanity, with a true and tender sense of it. + +Miss Larcom scarcely seemed to change from date to date in the generation +that elapsed between the time I first saw her and the time I saw her +last, a year or two before her death. A goodness looked out of her +comely face, which made me think of the Madonna’s in Titian’s +“Assumption,” and her whole aspect expressed a mild and friendly spirit +which I find it hard to put in words. She was never of the fine world of +literature; she dwelt where she was born, in that unfashionable Beverly +which is not Beverly Farms, and was of a simple, sea-faring, God-fearing +race, as she has told in one of the loveliest autobiographies I know, “A +New England Girlhood.” She was the author of many poems, whose number +she constantly enlarged, but she was chiefly, and will be most lastingly, +famed for the one poem, ‘Hannah Binding Shoes’, which years before my +days in Boston had made her so widely known. She never again struck so +deep or so true a note; but if one has lodged such a note in the ear of +time, it is enough; and if we are to speak of eternity, one might very +well hold up one’s head in the fields of asphodel, if one could say to +the great others there, “I wrote Hannah Binding Shoes.” Her poem is +very, very sad, as all who have read it will remember; but Miss Larcom +herself was above everything cheerful, and she had a laugh of mellow +richness which willingly made itself heard. She was not only of true New +England stock, and a Boston author by right of race, but she came up to +that city every winter from her native town. + +By the same right and on the same terms, another New England poetess, +whom I met those first days in Boston, was a Boston author. When I saw +Celia Thaxter she was just beginning to make her effect with those poems +and sketches which the sea sings and flashes through as it sings and +flashes around the Isles of Shoals, her summer home, where her girlhood +had been passed in a freedom as wild as the curlew’s. She was a most +beautiful creature, still very young, with a slender figure, and an +exquisite perfection of feature; she was in presence what her work was: +fine, frank, finished. I do not know whether other witnesses of our +literary history feel that the public has failed to keep her as fully in +mind as her work merited; but I do not think there can be any doubt but +our literature would be sensibly the poorer without her work. It is +interesting to remember how closely she kept to her native field, and it +is wonderful to consider how richly she made those sea-beaten rocks to +blossom. Something strangely full and bright came to her verse from the +mystical environment of the ocean, like the luxury of leaf and tint that +it gave the narrower flower-plots of her native isles. Her gift, indeed, +could not satisfy itself with the terms of one art alone, however varied, +and she learned to express in color the thoughts and feelings impatient +of the pallor of words. + +She remains in my memories of that far Boston a distinct and vivid +personality; as the authoress of ‘Amber Gods’, and ‘In a Cellar’, and +‘Circumstance’, and those other wild romantic tales, remains the gentle +and somewhat evanescent presence I found her. Miss Prescott was now Mrs. +Spofford, and her husband was a rising young politician of the day. It +was his duties as member of the General Court that had brought them up +from Newburyport to Boston for that first winter; and I remember that the +evening when we met he was talking of their some time going to Italy that +she might study for imaginative literature certain Italian cities he +named. I have long since ceased to own those cities, but at the moment I +felt a pang of expropriation which I concealed as well as I could; and +now I heartily wish she could have fulfilled that purpose if it was a +purpose, or realized that dream if it was only a dream. Perhaps, +however, that sumptuous and glowing fancy of hers, which had taken the +fancy of the young readers of that day, needed the cold New England +background to bring out all its intensities of tint, all its splendors of +light. Its effects were such as could not last, or could not be farther +evolved; they were the expression of youth musing away from its +environment and smitten with the glories of a world afar and beyond, the +great world, the fine world, the impurpled world of romantic motives and +passions. But for what they were, I can never think them other than what +they appeared: the emanations of a rarely gifted and singularly poetic +mind. I feel better than I can say how necessarily they were the +emanations of a New England mind, and how to the subtler sense they must +impart the pathos of revolt from the colorless rigidities which are the +long result of puritanism in the physiognomy of New England life. + +Their author afterwards gave herself to the stricter study of this life +in many tales and sketches which showed an increasing mastery; but they +could not have the flush, the surprise, the delight of a young talent +trying itself in a kind native and, so far as I know, peculiar to it. +From time to time I still come upon a poem of hers which recalls that +earlier strain of music, of color, and I am content to trust it for my +abiding faith in the charm of things I have not read for thirty years. + + + + +V. + +I speak of this one and that, as it happens, and with no thought of +giving a complete prospect of literary Boston thirty years ago. I am +aware that it will seem sparsely peopled in the effect I impart, and I +would have the reader always keep in mind the great fames at Cambridge +and at Concord, which formed so large a part of the celebrity of Boston. +I would also like him to think of it as still a great town, merely, where +every one knew every one else, and whose metropolitan liberation from +neighborhood was just begun. + +Most distinctly of that yet uncitified Boston was the critic Edwin P. +Whipple, whose sympathies were indefinitely wider than his traditions. He +was a most generous lover of all that was excellent in literature; and +though I suppose we should call him an old-fashioned critic now, I +suspect it would be with no distinct sense of what is newer fashioned. He +was certainly as friendly to what promised well in the younger men as he +was to what was done well in their elders; and there was no one writing +in his day whose virtues failed of his recognition, though it might +happen that his foibles would escape Whipple’s censure. He wrote +strenuously and of course conscientiously; his point of view was solely +and always that which enabled him best to discern qualities. I doubt if +he had any theory of criticism except to find out what was good in an +author and praise it; and he rather blamed what was ethically bad than +what was aesthetically bad. In this he was strictly of New England, and +he was of New England in a certain general intelligence, which constantly +grew with an interrogative habit of mind. + +He liked to talk to you of what he had found characteristic in your work, +to analyze you to yourself; and the very modesty of the man, which made +such a study impersonal as far as he was concerned, sometimes rendered +him insensible to the sufferings of his subject. He had a keen +perception of humor in others, but he had very little humor; he had a +love of the beautiful in literature which was perhaps sometimes greater +than his sense of it. + +I write from a cursory acquaintance with his work, not recently renewed. +Of the presence of the man I have a vivider remembrance: a slight, short, +ecclesiasticized figure in black; with a white neckcloth and a silk hat +of strict decorum, and between the two a square face with square +features, intensified in their regard by a pair of very large glasses, +and the prominent, myopic eyes staring through them. He was a type of +out-dated New England scholarship in these aspects, but in the hospitable +qualities of his mind and heart, the sort of man to be kept fondly in the +memory of all who ever knew him. + + + + +VI. + +Out of the vague of that far-off time another face and figure, as +essentially New En&land as this, and yet so different, relieve +themselves. Charles F. Browne, whose drollery wafted his pseudonym as +far as the English speech could carry laughter, was a Westernized Yankee. +He added an Ohio way of talking to the Maine way of thinking, and he so +became a literary product of a rarer and stranger sort than our +literature had otherwise known. He had gone from Cleveland to London, +with intervals of New York and the lecture platform, four or five years +before I saw him in Boston, shortly after I went there. We had met in +Ohio, and he had personally explained to me the ducatless well-meaning of +Vanity Fair in New York; but many men had since shaken the weary hand of +Artemus Ward when I grasped it one day in front of the Tremont Temple. He +did not recognize me, but he gave me at once a greeting of great +impersonal cordiality, with “How do you do? When did you come?” and +other questions that had no concern in them, till I began to dawn upon +him through a cloud of other half remembered faces. Then he seized my +hand and wrung it all over again, and repeated his friendly demands with +an intonation that was now “Why, how are you; how are you?” for me alone. +It was a bit of comedy, which had the fit pathetic relief of his +impending doom: this was already stamped upon his wasted face, and his +gay eyes had the death-look. His large, loose mouth was drawn, for all +its laughter at the fact which he owned; his profile, which burlesqued. +an eagle’s, was the profile of a drooping eagle; his lank length of limb +trembled away with him when we parted. I did not see him again; I +scarcely heard of him till I heard of his death, and this sad image +remains with me of the humorist who first gave the world a taste of the +humor which characterizes the whole American people. + +I was meeting all kinds of distinguished persons, in my relation to the +magazine, and early that winter I met one who remains in my mind above +all others a person of distinction. He was scarcely a celebrity, but he +embodied certain social traits which were so characteristic of literary +Boston that it could not be approached without their recognition. The +Muses have often been acknowledged to be very nice young persons, but in +Boston they were really ladies; in Boston literature was of good family +and good society in a measure it has never been elsewhere. It might be +said even that reform was of good family in Boston; and literature and +reform equally shared the regard of Edmund Quincy, whose race was one of +the most aristocratic in New England. I had known him by his novel of +‘Wensley’ (it came so near being a first-rate novel), and by his Life of +Josiah Quincy, then a new book, but still better by his Boston letters to +the New York Tribune. These dealt frankly, in the old anti-slavery days +between 1850 and 1860, with other persons of distinction in Boston, who +did not see the right so clearly as Quincy did, or who at least let their +interests darken them to the ugliness of slavery. Their fault was all +the more comical because it was the error of men otherwise so correct, of +characters so stainless, of natures so upright; and the Quincy letters +got out of it all the fun there was in it. Quincy himself affected me as +the finest patrician type I had ever met. He was charmingly handsome, +with a nose of most fit aquilinity, smooth-shaven lips, “educated +whiskers,” and perfect glasses; his manner was beautiful, his voice +delightful, when at our first meeting he made me his reproaches in terms +of lovely kindness for having used in my ‘Venetian Life’ the Briticism +‘directly’ for ‘as soon as.’ + +Lowell once told me that Quincy had never had any calling or profession, +because when he found himself in the enjoyment of a moderate income on +leaving college, he decided to be simply a gentleman. He was too much of +a man to be merely that, and he was an abolitionist, a journalist, and +for conscience’ sake a satirist. Of that political mood of society which +he satirized was an eminent man whom it was also my good fortune to meet +in my early days in Boston; and if his great sweetness and kindness had +not instantly won my liking, I should still have been glad of the glimpse +of the older and statelier Boston which my slight acquaintance with +George Ticknor gave me. The historian of Spanish literature, the friend +and biographer of Prescott, and a leading figure of the intellectual +society of an epoch already closed, dwelt in the fine old square brick +mansion which yet stands at the corner of Park Street and Beacon, though +sunk now to a variety of business uses, and lamentably changed in aspect. +The interior was noble, and there was an air of scholarly quiet and of +lettered elegance in the library, where the host received his guests, +which seemed to pervade the whole house, and which made its appeal to the +imagination of one of them most potently. It seemed to me that to be +master of such circumstance and keeping would be enough of life in a +certain way; and it all lingers in my memory yet, as if it were one with +the gentle courtesy which welcomed me. + +Among my fellow-guests one night was George S. Hillard, now a faded +reputation, and even then a life defeated of the high expectation of its +youth. I do not know whether his ‘Six Months in Italy’ still keeps +itself in print; but it was a book once very well known; and he was +perhaps the more gracious to me, as our host was, because of our common +Italian background. He was of the old Silver-gray Whig society too, and +I suppose that order of things imparted its tone to what I felt and saw +in that place. The civil war had come and gone, and that order accepted +the result if not with faith, then with patience. There were two young +English noblemen there that night, who had been travelling in the South, +and whose stories of the wretched conditions they had seen moved our host +to some open misgiving. But the Englishmen had no question; in spite of +all, they defended the accomplished fact, and when I ventured to say that +now at least there could be a hope of better things, while the old order +was only the perpetuation of despair, he mildly assented, with a gesture +of the hand that waived the point, and a deeply sighed, “Perhaps; +perhaps.” + +He was a presence of great dignity, which seemed to recall the past with +a steadfast allegiance, and yet to relax itself towards the present in +the wisdom of the accumulated years. His whole life had been passed in +devotion to polite literature and in the society of the polite world; and +he was a type of scholar such as only the circumstances of Boston could +form. Those circumstances could alone form such another type as Quincy; +and I wish I could have felt then as I do now the advantage of meeting +them so contemporaneously. + + + + +VII. + +The historian of Spanish literature was an old man nearer eighty than +seventy when I saw him, and I recall of him personally his dark tint, and +the scholarly refinement of his clean-shaven face, which seemed to me +rather English than American in character. He was quite exterior to the +Atlantic group of writers, and had no interest in me as one of it. +Literary Boston of that day was not a solidarity, as I soon perceived; +and I understood that it was only in my quality of stranger that I saw +the different phases of it. I should not be just to a vivid phase if I +failed to speak of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe and the impulse of reform which +she personified. I did not sympathize with this then so much as I do +now, but I could appreciate it on the intellectual side. Once, many +years later, I heard Mrs. Howe speak in public, and it seemed to me that +she made one of the best speeches I had ever heard. It gave me for the +first time a notion of what women might do in that sort if they entered +public life; but when we met in those earlier days I was interested in +her as perhaps our chief poetess. I believe she did not care much to +speak of literature; she was alert for other meanings in life, and I +remember how she once brought to book a youthful matron who had perhaps +unduly lamented the hardships of housekeeping, with the sharp demand, +“Child, where is your religion?” After the many years of an acquaintance +which had not nearly so many meetings as years, it was pleasant to find +her, at the latest, as strenuous as ever for the faith of works, and as +eager to aid Stepniak as John Brown. In her beautiful old age she +survives a certain literary impulse of Boston, but a still higher impulse +of Boston she will not survive, for that will last while the city +endures. + + + + +VIII. + +The Cambridge men were curiously apart from others that formed the great +New England group, and with whom in my earlier ignorance I had always +fancied them mingling. Now and then I met Doctor Holmes at Longfellow’s +table, but not oftener than now and then, and I never saw Emerson in +Cambridge at all except at Longfellow’s funeral. In my first years on +the Atlantic I sometimes saw him, when he would address me some grave, +rather retrorsive civilities, after I had been newly introduced to him, +as I had always to be on these occasions. I formed the belief that he +did not care for me, either in my being or doing, and I am far from +blaming him for that: on such points there might easily be two opinions, +and I was myself often of the mind I imagined in him. + +If Emerson forgot me, it was perhaps because I was not of those qualities +of things which even then, it was said, he could remember so much better +than things themselves. In his later years I sometimes saw him in the +Boston streets with his beautiful face dreamily set, as he moved like one +to whose vision + + “Heaven opens inward, chasms yawn, + Vast images in glimmering dawn, + Half shown, are broken and withdrawn.” + +It is known how before the end the eclipse became total and from moment +to moment the record inscribed upon his mind was erased. Some years +before he died I sat between him and Mrs. Rose Terry Cooke, at an +‘Atlantic Breakfast’ where it was part of my editorial function to +preside. When he was not asking me who she was, I could hear him asking +her who I was. His great soul worked so independently of memory as we +conceive it, and so powerfully and essentially, that one could not help +wondering if; after all, our personal continuity, our identity hereafter, +was necessarily trammeled up with our enduring knowledge of what happens +here. His remembrance absolutely ceased with an event, and yet his +character, his personality, his identity fully persisted. + +I do not know, whether the things that we printed for Emerson after his +memory began to fail so utterly were the work of earlier years or not, +but I know that they were of his best. There were certain poems which +could not have been more electly, more exquisitely his, or fashioned with +a keener and juster self-criticism. His vision transcended his time so +far that some who have tired themselves out in trying to catch up with +him have now begun to say that he was no seer at all; but I doubt if +these form the last court of appeal in his case. In manner, he was very +gentle, like all those great New England men, but he was cold, like many +of them, to the new-comer, or to the old-comer who came newly. As I have +elsewhere recorded, I once heard him speak critically of Hawthorne, and +once he expressed his surprise at the late flowering brilliancy of +Holmes’s gift in the Autocrat papers after all his friends supposed it +had borne its best fruit. But I recall no mention of Longfellow, or +Lowell, or Whittier from him. At a dinner where the talk glanced upon +Walt Whitman he turned to me as perhaps representing the interest +posterity might take in the matter, and referred to Whitman’s public use +of his privately written praise as something altogether unexpected. He +did not disown it or withdraw it, but seemed to feel (not indignantly) +that there had been an abuse of it. + + + + +IX. + +The first time I saw Whittier was in Fields’s room at the publishing +office, where I had come upon some editorial errand to my chief. He +introduced me to the poet: a tall, spare figure in black of Quaker cut, +with a keen, clean-shaven face, black hair, and vivid black eyes. It was +just after his poem, ‘Snow Bound’, had made its great success, in the +modest fashion of those days, and had sold not two hundred thousand but +twenty thousand, and I tried to make him my compliment. I contrived to +say that I could not tell him how much I liked it; and he received the +inadequate expression of my feeling with doubtless as much effusion as he +would have met something more explicit and abundant. If he had judged +fit to take my contract off my hands in any way, I think he would have +been less able to do so than any of his New England contemporaries. In +him, as I have suggested, the Quaker calm was bound by the frosty +Puritanic air, and he was doubly cold to the touch of the stranger, +though he would thaw out to old friends, and sparkle in laugh and joke. I +myself never got so far with him as to experience this geniality, though +afterwards we became such friends as an old man and a young man could be +who rarely met. Our better acquaintance began with some talk, at a second +meeting, about Bayard Taylor’s ‘Story of Kennett’, which had then lately +appeared, and which he praised for its fidelity to Quaker character in +its less amiable aspects. No doubt I had made much of my own Quaker +descent (which I felt was one of the few things I had to be proud of), +and he therefore spoke the more frankly of those traits of brutality into +which the primitive sincerity of the sect sometimes degenerated. He +thought the habit of plain-speaking had to be jealously guarded to keep +it from becoming rude-speaking, and he matched with stories of his own +some things I had heard my father tell of Friends in the backwoods who +were Foes to good manners. + +Whittier was one of the most generous of men towards the work of others, +especially the work of a new man, and if I did anything that he liked, I +could count upon him for cordial recognition. In the quiet of his +country home at Danvers he apparently read all the magazines, and kept +himself fully abreast of the literary movement, but I doubt if he so +fully appreciated the importance of the social movement. Like some +others of the great anti-slavery men, he seemed to imagine that mankind +had won itself a clear field by destroying chattel slavery, and he had. +no sympathy with those who think that the man who may any moment be out +of work is industrially a slave. This is not strange; so few men last +over from one reform to another that the wonder is that any should, not +that one should not. Whittier was prophet for one great need of the +divine to man, and he spoke his message with a fervor that at times was +like the trembling of a flame, or the quivering of midsummer sunshine. It +was hard to associate with the man as one saw him, still, shy, stiff, the +passion of his verse. This imbued not only his antislavery utterances, +but equally his ballads of the old witch and Quaker persecution, and +flashed a far light into the dimness where his interrogations of Mystery +pierced. Whatever doubt there can be of the fate of other New England +poets in the great and final account, it seems to me that certain of +these pieces make his place secure. + +There is great inequality in his work, and I felt this so strongly that +when I came to have full charge of the Magazine, I ventured once to +distinguish. He sent me a poem, and I had the temerity to return it, and +beg him for something else. He magnanimously refrained from all show of +offence, and after a while, when he had printed the poem elsewhere, he +gave me another. By this time, I perceived that I had been wrong, not as +to the poem returned, but as to my function regarding him and such as he. +I had made my reflections, and never again did I venture to pass upon +what contributors of his quality sent me. I took it and printed it, and +praised the gods; and even now I think that with such men it was not my +duty to play the censor in the periodical which they had made what it +was. They had set it in authority over American literature, and it was +not for me to put myself in authority over them. Their fame was in their +own keeping, and it was not my part to guard it against them. + +After that experience I not only practised an eager acquiescence in their +wish to reach the public through the Atlantic, but I used all the +delicacy I was master of in bowing the way to them. Sometimes my utmost +did not avail, or more strictly speaking it did not avail in one instance +with Emerson. He had given me upon much entreaty a poem which was one of +his greatest and best, but the proof-reader found a nominative at odds +with its verb. We had some trouble in reconciling them, and some other +delays, and meanwhile Doctor Holmes offered me a poem for the same +number. I now doubted whether I should get Emerson’s poem back in time +for it, but unluckily the proof did come back in time, and then I had to +choose between my poets, or acquaint them with the state of the case, and +let them choose what I should do. I really felt that Doctor Holmes had +the right to precedence, since Emerson had withheld his proof so long +that I could not count upon it; but I wrote to Emerson, and asked (as +nearly as I can remember) whether he would consent to let me put his poem +over to the next number, or would prefer to have it appear in the same +number with Doctor Holmes’s; the subjects were cognate, and I had my +misgivings. He wrote me back to “return the proofs and break up the +forms.” I could not go to this iconoclastic extreme with the +electrotypes of the magazine, but I could return the proofs. I did so, +feeling that I had done my possible, and silently grieving that there +could be such ire in heavenly minds. + + + + +X. + +Emerson, as I say, I had once met in Cambridge, but Whittier never; and I +have a feeling that poet as Cambridge felt him to be, she had her +reservations concerning him. I cannot put these into words which would +not oversay them, but they were akin to those she might have refined upon +in regard to Mrs. Stowe. Neither of these great writers would have +appeared to Cambridge of the last literary quality; their fame was with a +world too vast to be the test that her own + + “One entire and perfect crysolite” + +would have formed. Whittier in fact had not arrived at the clear +splendor of his later work without some earlier turbidity; he was still +from time to time capable of a false rhyme, like morn and dawn. As for +the author of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ her syntax was such a snare to her that +it sometimes needed the combined skill of all the proof-readers and the +assistant editor to extricate her. Of course, nothing was ever written +into her work, but in changes of diction, in correction of solecisms, in +transposition of phrases, the text was largely rewritten on the margin of +her proofs. The soul of her art was present, but the form was so often +absent, that when it was clothed on anew, it would have been hard to say +whose cut the garment was of in many places. In fact, the proof-reading +of the ‘Atlantic Monthly’ was something almost fearfully scrupulous and +perfect. The proofs were first read by the under proof-reader in the +printing-office; then the head reader passed them to me perfectly clean +as to typography, with his own abundant and most intelligent comments on +the literature; and then I read them, making what changes I chose, and +verifying every quotation, every date, every geographical and +biographical name, every foreign word to the last accent, every technical +and scientific term. Where it was possible or at all desirable the proof +was next submitted to the author. When it came back to me, I revised it, +accepting or rejecting the author’s judgment according as he was entitled +by his ability and knowledge or not to have them. The proof now went to +the printers for correction; they sent it again to the head reader, who +carefully revised it and returned it again to me. I read it a second +time, and it was again corrected. After this it was revised in the +office and sent to the stereotyper, from whom it came to the head reader +for a last revision in the plates. + +It would not do to say how many of the first American writers owed their +correctness in print to the zeal of our proof-reading, but I may say that +there were very few who did not owe something. The wisest and ablest +were the most patient and grateful, like Mrs. Stowe, under correction; it +was only the beginners and the more ignorant who were angry; and almost +always the proof-reading editor had his way on disputed points. I look +back now, with respectful amazement at my proficiency in detecting the +errors of the great as well as the little. I was able to discover +mistakes even in the classical quotations of the deeply lettered Sumner, +and I remember, in the earliest years of my service on the Atlantic, +waiting in this statesman’s study amidst the prints and engravings that +attested his personal resemblance to Edmund Burke, with his proofs in my +hand and my heart in my mouth, to submit my doubts of his Latinity. I +forget how he received them; but he was not a very gracious person. + +Mrs. Stowe was a gracious person, and carried into age the inalienable +charm of a woman who must have been very, charming earlier. I met her +only at the Fieldses’ in Boston, where one night I witnessed a +controversy between her and Doctor Holmes concerning homoeopathy and +allopathy which lasted well through dinner. After this lapse of time, I +cannot tell how the affair ended, but I feel sure of the liking with +which Mrs. Stowe inspired me. There was something very simple, very +motherly in her, and something divinely sincere. She was quite the +person to take ‘au grand serieux’ the monstrous imaginations of Lady +Byron’s jealousy and to feel it on her conscience to make public report +of them when she conceived that the time had come to do so. + +In Francis Parkman I knew much later than in some others a +differentiation of the New England type which was not less +characteristic. He, like so many other Boston men of letters, was of +patrician family, and of those easy fortunes which Clio prefers her sons +to be of; but he paid for these advantages by the suffering in which he +wrought at what is, I suppose, our greatest history. He wrought at it +piecemeal, and sometimes only by moments, when the terrible head aches +which tormented him, and the disorder of the heart which threatened his +life, allowed him a brief respite for the task which was dear to him. He +must have been more than a quarter of a century in completing it, and in +this time, as he once told me, it had given him a day-laborer’s wages; +but of course money was the least return he wished from it. I read the +regularly successive volumes of ‘The Jesuits in North America, The Old +Regime in Canada’, the ‘Wolfe and Montcalm’, and the others that went to +make up the whole history with a sufficiently noisy enthusiasm, and our +acquaintance began by his expressing his gratification with the praises +of them that I had put in print. We entered into relations as +contributor and editor, and I know that he was pleased with my eagerness +to get as many detachable chapters from the book in hand as he could give +me for the magazine, but he was of too fine a politeness to make this the +occasion of his first coming to see me. He had walked out to Cambridge, +where I then lived, in pursuance of a regimen which, I believe, finally +built up his health; that it was unsparing, I can testify from my own +share in one of his constitutionals in Boston, many years later. + +His experience in laying the groundwork for his history, and his +researches in making it thorough, were such as to have liberated him to +the knowledge of other manners and ideals, but he remained strictly a +Bostonian, and as immutably of the Boston social and literary faith as +any I knew in that capital of accomplished facts. He had lived like an +Indian among the wild Western tribes; he consorted with the Canadian +archaeologists in their mousings among the colonial archives of their +fallen state; every year he went to Quebec or Paris to study the history +of New France in the original documents; European society was open to him +everywhere; but he had those limitations which I nearly always found in +the Boston men, I remember his talking to me of ‘The Rise of Silas +Lapham’, in a somewhat troubled and uncertain strain, and interpreting +his rise as the achievement of social recognition, without much or at all +liking it or me for it. I did not think it my part to point out that I +had supposed the rise to be a moral one; and later I fell under his +condemnation for certain high crimes and misdemeanors I had been guilty +of against a well-known ideal in fiction. These in fact constituted +lese-majesty of romanticism, which seemed to be disproportionately dear +to a man who was in his own way trying to tell the truth of human nature +as I was in mine. His displeasures passed, however, and my last meeting +with our greatest historian, as I think him, was of unalloyed +friendliness. He came to me during my final year in Boston for nothing +apparently but to tell me of his liking for a book of mine describing +boy-life in Southern Ohio a half-century ago. He wished to talk about +many points of this, which he found the same as his own boylife in the +neighborhood of Boston; and we could agree that the life of the +Anglo-Saxon boy was pretty much the same everywhere. He had helped +himself into my apartment with a crutch, but I do not remember how he had +fallen lame. It was the end of his long walks, I believe, and not long +afterwards I had the grief to read of his death. I noticed that perhaps +through his enforced quiet, he had put on weight; his fine face was full; +whereas when I first knew him he was almost delicately thin of figure and +feature. He was always of a distinguished presence, and his face had a +great distinction. + +It had not the appealing charm I found in the face of James Parton, +another historian I knew earlier in my Boston days. I cannot say how +much his books, once so worthily popular, are now known but I have an +abiding sense of their excellence. I have not read the ‘Life of +Voltaire’, which was the last, but all the rest, from the first, I have +read, and if there are better American biographies than those of Franklin +or of Jefferson, I could not say where to find them. The Greeley and the +Burr were younger books, and so was the Jackson, and they were not nearly +so good; but to all the author had imparted the valuable humanity in +which he abounded. He was never of the fine world of literature, the +world that sniffs and sneers, and abashes the simpler-hearted reader. But +he was a true artist, and English born as he was, he divined American +character as few Americans have done. He was a man of eminent courage, +and in the days when to be an agnostic was to be almost an outcast, he +had the heart to say of the Mysteries, that he did not know. He outlived +the condemnation that this brought, and I think that no man ever came +near him without in some measure loving him. To me he was of a most +winning personality, which his strong, gentle face expressed, and a cast +in the eye which he could not bring to bear directly upon his vis-a-vis, +endeared. I never met him without wishing more of his company, for he +seldom failed to say something to whatever was most humane and most +modern in me. Our last meeting was at Newburyport, whither he had long +before removed from New York, and where in the serene atmosphere of the +ancient Puritan town he found leisure and inspiration for his work. He +was not then engaged upon any considerable task, and he had aged and +broken somewhat. But the old geniality, the old warmth glowed in him, +and made a summer amidst the storm of snow that blinded the wintry air +without. A new light had then lately come into my life, by which I saw +all things that did not somehow tell for human brotherhood dwarfish and +ugly, and he listened, as I imagined, to what I had to say with the +tolerant sympathy of a man who has been a long time thinking those +things, and views with a certain amusement the zeal of the fresh +discoverer. + +There was yet another historian in Boston, whose acquaintance I made +later than either Parkman’s or Parton’s, and whose very recent death +leaves me with the grief of a friend. No ones indeed, could meet John +Codman Ropes without wishing to be his friend, or without finding a +friend in him. He had his likes and his dislikes, but he could have had +no enmities except for evil and meanness. I never knew a man of higher +soul, of sweeter nature, and his whole life was a monument of character. +It cannot wound him now to speak of the cruel deformity which came upon +him in his boyhood, and haunted all his after days with suffering. His +gentle face showed the pain which is always the part of the hunchback, +but nothing else in him confessed a sense of his affliction, and the +resolute activity of his mind denied it in every way. He was, as is well +known, a very able lawyer, in full practice, while he was making his +studies of military history, and winning recognition for almost unique +insight and thoroughness in that direction, though I believe that when he +came to embody the results in those extraordinary volumes recording the +battles of our civil war, he retired from the law in some measure. He +knew these battles more accurately than the generals who fought them, and +he was of a like proficiency in the European wars from the time of +Napoleon down to our own time. I have heard a story, which I cannot +vouch for, that when foreknowledge of his affliction, at the outbreak of +our civil war, forbade him to be a soldier, he became a student of +soldiership, and wreaked in that sort the passion of his most gallant +spirit. But whether this was true or not, it is certain that he pursued +the study with a devotion which never blinded him to the atrocity of war. +Some wars he could excuse and even justify, but for any war that seemed +wanton or aggressive, he had only abhorrence. + +The last summer of a score that I had known him, we sat on the veranda of +his cottage at York Harbor, and looked out over the moonlit sea, and he +talked of the high and true things, with the inextinguishable zest for +the inquiry which I always found in him, though he was then feeling the +approaches of the malady which was so soon to end all groping in these +shadows for him. He must have faced the fact with the same courage and +the same trust with which he faced all facts. From the first I found him +a deeply religious man, not only in the ecclesiastical sense, but in the +more mystical meanings of the word, and he kept his faith as he kept his +youth to the last. Every one who knew him, knows how young he was in +heart, and how he liked to have those that were young in years about him. +He wished to have his house in Boston, as well as his cottage at York, +full of young men and young girls, whose joy of life he made his own, and +whose society he preferred to his contemporaries’. One could not blame +him for that, or for seeking the sun, wherever he could, but it would be +a false notion of him to suppose that his sympathies were solely or +chiefly with the happy. In every sort, as I knew him, he was fine and +good. The word is not worthy of him, after some of its uses and +associations, but if it were unsmutched by these, and whitened to its +primitive significance, I should say he was one of the most perfect +gentlemen I ever knew. + + + + +OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES + + + + +I. + +Elsewhere we literary folk are apt to be such a common lot, with +tendencies here and there to be a shabby lot; we arrive from all sorts of +unexpected holes and corners of the earth, remote, obscure; and at the +best we do so often come up out of the ground; but at Boston we were of +ascertained and noted origin, and good part of us dropped from the skies. +Instead of holding horses before the doors of theatres; or capping verses +at the plough-tail; or tramping over Europe with nothing but a flute in +the pocket; or walking up to the metropolis with no luggage but the MS. +of a tragedy; or sleeping in doorways or under the arches of bridges; or +serving as apothecaries’ ‘prentices--we were good society from the +beginning. I think this was none the worse for us, and it was vastly the +better for good society. + +Literature in Boston, indeed, was so respectable, and often of so high a +lineage, that to be a poet was not only to be good society, but almost to +be good family. If one names over the men who gave Boston her supremacy +in literature during that Unitarian harvest-time of the old Puritanic +seed-time which was her Augustan age, one names the people who were and +who had been socially first in the city ever since the self-exile of the +Tories at the time of the Revolution. To say Prescott, Motley, Parkman, +Lowell, Norton, Higginson, Dana, Emerson, Channing, was to say patrician, +in the truest and often the best sense, if not the largest. Boston was +small, but these were of her first citizens, and their primacy, in its +way, was of the same quality as that, say, of the chief families of +Venice. But these names can never have the effect for the stranger that +they had for one to the manner born. I say had, for I doubt whether in +Boston they still mean all that they once meant, and that their +equivalents meant in science, in law, in politics. The most famous, if +not the greatest of all the literary men of Boston, I have not mentioned +with them, for Longfellow was not of the place, though by his sympathies +and relations he became of it; and I have not mentioned Oliver Wendell +Holmes, because I think his name would come first into the reader’s +thought with the suggestion of social quality in the humanities. + +Holmes was of the Brahminical caste which his humorous recognition +invited from its subjectivity in the New England consciousness into the +light where all could know it and own it, and like Longfellow he was +allied to the patriciate of Boston by the most intimate ties of life. For +a long time, for the whole first period of his work, he stood for that +alone, its tastes, its prejudices, its foibles even, and when he came to +stand in his ‘second period, for vastly, for infinitely more, and to make +friends with the whole race, as few men have ever done, it was always, I +think, with a secret shiver of doubt, a backward look of longing, and an +eye askance. He was himself perfectly aware of this at times, and would +mark his several misgivings with a humorous sense of the situation. He +was essentially too kind to be of a narrow world, too human to be finally +of less than humanity, too gentle to be of the finest gentility. But +such limitations as he had were in the direction I have hinted, or +perhaps more than hinted; and I am by no means ready to make a mock of +them, as it would be so easy to do for some reasons that he has himself +suggested. To value aright the affection which the old Bostonian had for +Boston one must conceive of something like the patriotism of men in the +times when a man’s city was a man’s country, something Athenian, +something Florentine. The war that nationalized us liberated this love +to the whole country, but its first tenderness remained still for Boston, +and I suppose a Bostonian still thinks of himself first as a Bostonian +and then as an American, in a way that no New-Yorker could deal with +himself. The rich historical background dignifies and ennobles the +intense public spirit of the place, and gives it a kind of personality. + + + + +II. + +In literature Doctor Holmes survived all the Bostonians who had given the +city her primacy in letters, but when I first knew him there was no +apparent ground for questioning it. I do not mean now the time when I +visited New England, but when I came to live near Boston, and to begin +the many happy years which I spent in her fine, intellectual air. I found +time to run in upon him, while I was there arranging to take my place on +the Atlantic Monthly, and I remember that in this brief moment with him +he brought me to book about some vaunting paragraph in the ‘Nation’ +claiming the literary primacy for New York. He asked me if I knew who +wrote it, and I was obliged to own that I had written it myself, when +with the kindness he always showed me he protested against my position. +To tell the truth, I do not think now I had any very good reasons for it, +and I certainly could urge none that would stand against his. I could +only fall back upon the saving clause that this primacy was claimed +mainly if not wholly for New York in the future. He was willing to leave +me the connotations of prophecy, but I think he did even this out of +politeness rather than conviction, and I believe he had always a +sensitiveness where Boston was concerned, which could not seem ungenerous +to any generous mind. Whatever lingering doubt of me he may have had, +with reference to Boston, seemed to satisfy itself when several years +afterwards he happened to speak of a certain character in an early novel +of mine, who was not quite the kind of Bostonian one could wish to be. +The thing came up in talk with another person, who had referred to my +Bostonian, and the doctor had apparently made his acquaintance in the +book, and not liked him. “I understood, of course,” he said, “that he +was a Bostonian, not the Bostonian,” and I could truthfully answer that +this was by all means my own understanding too. + +His fondness for his city, which no one could appreciate better than +myself, I hope, often found expression in a burlesque excess in his +writings, and in his talk perhaps oftener still. Hard upon my return +from Venice I had a half-hour with him in his old study on Charles +Street, where he still lived in 1865, and while I was there a young man +came in for the doctor’s help as a physician, though he looked so very +well, and was so lively and cheerful, that I have since had my doubts +whether he had not made a pretext for a glimpse of him as the Autocrat. +The doctor took him upon his word, however, and said he had been so long +out of practice that he could not do anything for him, but he gave him +the address of another physician, somewhere near Washington Street. “And +if you don’t know where Washington Street is,” he said, with a gay burst +at a certain vagueness which had come into the young man’s face, “you +don’t know anything.” + +We had been talking of Venice, and what life was like there, and he made +me tell him in some detail. He was especially interested in what I had +to say of the minute subdivision and distribution of the necessaries, the +small coins, and the small values adapted to their purchase, the +intensely retail character, in fact, of household provisioning; and I +could see how he pleased himself in formulating the theory that the +higher a civilization the finer the apportionment of the demands and +supplies. The ideal, he said, was a civilization in which you could buy +two cents’ worth of beef, and a divergence from this standard was towards +barbarism. + +The secret of the man who is universally interesting is that he is +universally interested, and this was, above all, the secret of the charm +that Doctor Holmes had for every one. No doubt he knew it, for what that +most alert intelligence did not know of itself was scarcely worth +knowing. This knowledge was one of his chief pleasures, I fancy; he +rejoiced in the consciousness which is one of the highest attributes of +the highly organized man, and he did not care for the consequences in +your mind, if you were so stupid as not to take him aright. I remember +the delight Henry James, the father of the novelist, had in reporting to +me the frankness of the doctor, when he had said to him, “Holmes, you are +intellectually the most alive man I ever knew.” “I am, I am,” said the +doctor. “From the crown of my head to the sole of my foot, I’m alive, +I’m alive!” Any one who ever saw him will imagine the vivid relish he +had in recognizing the fact. He could not be with you a moment without +shedding upon you the light of his flashing wit, his radiant humor, and +he shone equally upon the rich and poor in mind. His gaiety of heart +could not withhold itself from any chance of response, but he did wish +always to be fully understood, and to be liked by those he liked. He +gave his liking cautiously, though, for the affluence of his sympathies +left him without the reserves of colder natures, and he had to make up +for these with careful circumspection. He wished to know the character +of the person who made overtures to his acquaintance, for he was aware +that his friendship lay close to it; he wanted to be sure that he was a +nice person, and though I think he preferred social quality in his +fellow-man, he did not refuse himself to those who had merely a sweet and +wholesome humanity. He did not like anything that tasted or smelt of +Bohemianism in the personnel of literature, but he did not mind the scent +of the new-ploughed earth, or even of the barn-yard. I recall his +telling me once that after two younger brothers-in-letters had called +upon him in the odor of an habitual beeriness and smokiness, he opened +the window; and the very last time I saw him he remembered at eighty-five +the offence he had found on his first visit to New York, when a +metropolitan poet had asked him to lunch in a basement restaurant. + + + + +III. + +He seemed not to mind, however, climbing to the little apartment we had +in Boston when we came there in 1866, and he made this call upon us in +due form, bringing Mrs. Holmes with him as if to accent the recognition +socially. We were then incredibly young, much younger than I find people +ever are nowadays, and in the consciousness of our youth we felt, to the +last exquisite value of the fact, what it was to have the Autocrat come +to see us; and I believe he was not displeased to perceive this; he liked +to know that you felt his quality in every way. That first winter, +however, I did not see him often, and in the spring we went to live in +Cambridge, and thereafter I met him chiefly at Longfellow’s, or when I +came in to dine at the Fieldses’, in Boston. It was at certain meetings +of the Dante Club, when Longfellow read aloud his translation for +criticism, and there was supper later, that one saw the doctor; and his +voice was heard at the supper rather than at the criticism, for he was no +Italianate. He always seemed to like a certain turn of the talk toward +the mystical, but with space for the feet on a firm ground of fact this +side of the shadows; when it came to going over among them, and laying +hold of them with the band of faith, as if they were substance, he was +not of the excursion. It is well known how fervent, I cannot say devout, +a spiritualist Longfellow’s brother-in-law, Appleton, was; and when he +was at the table too, it took all the poet’s delicate skill to keep him +and the Autocrat from involving themselves in a cataclysmal controversy +upon the matter of manifestations. With Doctor Holmes the inquiry was +inquiry, to the last, I believe, and the burden of proof was left to the +ghosts and their friends. His attitude was strictly scientific; he +denied nothing, but he expected the supernatural to be at least as +convincing as the natural. + +There was a time in his history when the popular ignorance classed him +with those who were once rudely called infidels; but the world has since +gone so fast and so far that the mind he was of concerning religious +belief would now be thought religious by a good half of the religious +world. It is true that he had and always kept a grudge against the +ancestral Calvinism which afflicted his youth; and he was through all +rises and lapses of opinion essentially Unitarian; but of the honest +belief of any one, I am sure he never felt or spoke otherwise than most +tolerantly, most tenderly. As often as he spoke of religion, and his +talk tended to it very often, I never heard an irreligious word from him, +far less a scoff or sneer at religion; and I am certain that this was not +merely because he would have thought it bad taste, though undoubtedly he +would have thought it bad taste; I think it annoyed, it hurt him, to be +counted among the iconoclasts, and he would have been profoundly grieved +if he could have known how widely this false notion of him once +prevailed. It can do no harm at this late day to impart from the secrets +of the publishing house the fact that a supposed infidelity in the tone +of his story The Guardian Angel cost the Atlantic Monthly many +subscribers. Now the tone of that story would not be thought even mildly +agnostic, I fancy; and long before his death the author had outlived the +error concerning him. + +It was not the best of his stories, by any means, and it would not be too +harsh to say that it was the poorest. His novels all belonged to an +order of romance which was as distinctly his own as the form of +dramatized essay which he invented in the Autocrat. If he did not think +poorly of them, he certainly did not think too proudly, and I heard him +quote with relish the phrase of a lady who had spoken of them to him as +his “medicated novels.” That, indeed, was perhaps what they were; a +faint, faint odor of the pharmacopoeia clung to their pages; their magic +was scientific. He knew this better than any one else, of course, and if +any one had said it in his turn he would hardly have minded it. But what +he did mind was the persistent misinterpretation of his intention in +certain quarters where he thought he had the right to respectful +criticism in stead of the succession of sneers that greeted the +successive numbers of his story; and it was no secret that he felt the +persecution keenly. Perhaps he thought that he had already reached that +time in his literary life when he was a fact rather than a question, and +when reasons and not feelings must have to do with his acceptance or +rejection. But he had to live many years yet before he reached this +state. When he did reach it, happily a good while before his death, I do +not believe any man ever enjoyed the like condition more. He loved to +feel himself out of the fight, with much work before him still, but with +nothing that could provoke ill-will in his activities. He loved at all +times to take himself objectively, if I may so express my sense of a +mental attitude that misled many. As I have said before, he was +universally interested, and he studied the universe from himself. I do +not know how one is to study it otherwise; the impersonal has really no +existence; but with all his subtlety and depth he was of a make so +simple, of a spirit so naive, that he could not practise the feints some +use to conceal that interest in self which, after all, every one knows is +only concealed. He frankly and joyously made himself the starting-point +in all his inquest of the hearts and minds of other men, but so far from +singling himself out in this, and standing apart in it, there never was +any one who was more eagerly and gladly your fellow-being in the things +of the soul. + + + + +IV. + +In the things of the world, he had fences, and looked at some people +through palings and even over the broken bottles on the tops of walls; +and I think he was the loser by this, as well as they. But then I think +all fences are bad, and that God has made enough differences between men; +we need not trouble ourselves to multiply them. Even behind his fences, +however, Holmes had a heart kind for the outsiders, and I do not believe +any one came into personal relations with him who did not experience this +kindness. In that long and delightful talk I had with him on my return +from Venice (I can praise the talk because it was mainly his), we spoke +of the status of domestics in the Old World, and how fraternal the +relation of high and low was in Italy, while in England, between master +and man, it seemed without acknowledgment of their common humanity. +“Yes,” he said, “I always felt as if English servants expected to be +trampled on; but I can’t do that. If they want to be trampled on, they +must get some one else.” He thought that our American way was infinitely +better; and I believe that in spite of the fences there was always an +instinctive impulse with him to get upon common ground with his +fellow-man. I used to notice in the neighborhood cabman who served our +block on Beacon Street a sort of affectionate reverence for the Autocrat, +which could have come from nothing but the kindly terms between them; if +you went to him when he was engaged to Doctor Holmes, he told you so with +a sort of implication in his manner that the thought of anything else for +the time was profanation. The good fellow who took him his drives about +the Beverly and Manchester shores seemed to be quite in the joke of the +doctor’s humor, and within the bounds of his personal modesty and his +functional dignity permitted himself a smile at the doctor’s sallies, +when you stood talking with him, or listening to him at the +carriage-side. + +The civic and social circumstance that a man values himself on is +commonly no part of his value, and certainly no part of his greatness. +Rather, it is the very thing that limits him, and I think that Doctor +Holmes appeared in the full measure of his generous personality to those +who did not and could not appreciate his circumstance, and not to those +who formed it, and who from life-long association were so dear and +comfortable to him. Those who best knew how great a man he was were +those who came from far to pay him their duty, or to thank him for some +help they had got from his books, or to ask his counsel or seek his +sympathy. With all such he was most winningly tender, most intelligently +patient. I suppose no great author was ever more visited by letter and +in person than he, or kept a faithfuler conscience for his guests. With +those who appeared to him in the flesh he used a miraculous tact, and I +fancy in his treatment of all the physician native in him bore a +characteristic part. No one seemed to be denied access to him, but it +was after a moment of preparation that one was admitted, and any one who +was at all sensitive must have felt from the first moment in his presence +that there could be no trespassing in point of time. If now and then +some insensitive began to trespass, there was a sliding-scale of +dismissal that never failed of its work, and that really saved the author +from the effect of intrusion. He was not bored because he would not be. + +I transfer at random the impressions of many years to my page, and I +shall not try to observe a chronological order in these memories. Vivid +among them is that of a visit which I paid him with Osgood the publisher, +then newly the owner of the Atlantic Monthly, when I had newly become the +sole editor. We wished to signalize our accession to the control of the +magazine by a stroke that should tell most in the public eye, and we +thought of asking Doctor Holmes to do something again in the manner of +the Autocrat and the Professor at the Breakfast Table. Some letters had +passed between him and the management concerning our wish, and then +Osgood thought that it would be right and fit for us to go to him in +person. He proposed the visit, and Doctor Holmes received us with a mind +in which he had evidently formulated all his thoughts upon the matter. +His main question was whether at his age of sixty years a man was +justified in seeking to recall a public of the past, or to create a new +public in the present. He seemed to have looked the ground over not only +with a personal interest in the question, but with a keen scientific zest +for it as something which it was delightful to consider in its generic +relations; and I fancy that the pleasure of this inquiry more than +consoled him for such pangs of misgiving as he must have had in the +personal question. As commonly happens in the solution of such problems, +it was not solved; he was very willing to take our minds upon it, and to +incur the risk, if we thought it well and were willing to share it. + +We came away rejoicing, and the new series began with the new year +following. It was by no means the popular success that we had hoped; not +because the author had not a thousand new things to say, or failed to say +them with the gust and freshness of his immortal youth, but because it +was not well to disturb a form associated in the public mind with an +achievement which had become classic. It is of the Autocrat of the +Breakfast Table that people think, when they think of the peculiar +species of dramatic essay which the author invented, and they think also +of the Professor at the Breakfast Table, because he followed so soon; but +the Poet at the Breakfast Table came so long after that his advent +alienated rather than conciliated liking. Very likely, if the Poet had +come first he would have had no second place in the affections of his +readers, for his talk was full of delightful matter; and at least one of +the poems which graced each instalment was one of the finest and greatest +that Doctor Holmes ever wrote. I mean “Homesick in Heaven,” which seems +to me not only what I have said, but one of the most important, the most +profoundly pathetic in the language. Indeed, I do not know any other +that in the same direction goes so far with suggestion so penetrating. +The other poems were mainly of a cast which did not win; the metaphysics +in them were too much for the human interest, and again there rose a +foolish clamor of the creeds against him on account of them. The great +talent, the beautiful and graceful fancy, the eager imagination of the +Autocrat could not avail in this third attempt, and I suppose the Poet at +the Breakfast Table must be confessed as near a failure as Doctor Holmes +could come. It certainly was so in the magazine which the brilliant +success of the first had availed to establish in the high place the +periodical must always hold in the history of American literature. Lowell +was never tired of saying, when he recurred to the first days of his +editorship, that the magazine could never have gone at all without the +Autocrat papers. He was proud of having insisted upon Holmes’s doing +something for the new venture, and he was fond of recalling the author’s +misgivings concerning his contributions, which later repeated themselves +with too much reason, though not with the reason that was in his own +mind. + + + + +V. + +He lived twenty-five years after that self-question at sixty, and after +eighty he continued to prove that threescore was not the limit of a man’s +intellectual activity or literary charm. During all that time the work +he did in mere quantity was the work that a man in the prime of life +might well have been vain of doing, and it was of a quality not less +surprising. If I asked him with any sort of fair notice I could rely +upon him always for something for the January number, and throughout the +year I could count upon him for those occasional pieces in which he so +easily excelled all former writers of occasional verse, and which he +liked to keep from the newspapers for the magazine. He had a pride in +his promptness with copy, and you could always trust his promise. The +printer’s toe never galled the author’s kibe in his case; he wished to +have an early proof, which he corrected fastidiously, but not overmuch, +and he did not keep it long. He had really done all his work in the +manuscript, which came print-perfect and beautifully clear from his pen, +in that flowing, graceful hand which to the last kept a suggestion of the +pleasure he must have had in it. Like all wise contributors, he was not +only patient, but very glad of all the queries and challenges that +proof-reader and editor could accumulate on the margin of his proofs, and +when they were both altogether wrong he was still grateful. In one of +his poems there was some Latin-Quarter French, which our collective +purism questioned, and I remember how tender of us he was in maintaining +that in his Parisian time, at least, some ladies beyond the Seine said +“Eh, b’en,” instead of “Eh, bien.” He knew that we must be always on the +lookout for such little matters, and he would not wound our ignorance. I +do not think any one enjoyed praise more than he. Of course he would not +provoke it, but if it came of itself, he would not deny himself the +pleasure, as long as a relish of it remained. He used humorously to +recognize his delight in it, and to say of the lecture audiences which in +earlier times hesitated applause, “Why don’t they give me three times +three? I can stand it!” He himself gave in the generous fulness he +desired. He did not praise foolishly or dishonestly, though he would +spare an open dislike; but when a thing pleased him he knew how to say so +cordially and skilfully, so that it might help as well as delight. I +suppose no great author has tried more sincerely and faithfully to +befriend the beginner than he; and from time to time he would commend +something to me that he thought worth looking at, but never insistently. +In certain cases, where he had simply to ease a burden, from his own to +the editorial shoulders, he would ask that the aspirant might be +delicately treated. There might be personal reasons for this, but +usually his kindness of heart moved him. His tastes had their +geographical limit, but his sympathies were boundless, and the hopeless +creature for whom he interceded was oftener remote from Boston and New +England than otherwise. + +It seems to me that he had a nature singularly affectionate, and that it +was this which was at fault if he gave somewhat too much of himself to +the celebration of the Class of ‘29, and all the multitude of Boston +occasions, large and little, embalmed in the clear amber of his verse, +somewhat to the disadvantage of the amber. If he were asked he could not +deny the many friendships and fellowships which united in the asking; the +immediate reclame from these things was sweet to him; but he loved to +comply as much as he loved to be praised. In the pleasure he got he +could feel himself a prophet in his own country, but the country which +owned him prophet began perhaps to feel rather too much as if it owned +him, and did not prize his vaticinations at all their worth. Some polite +Bostonians knew him chiefly on this side, and judged him to their own +detriment from it. + + + + +VI. + +After we went to live in Cambridge, my life and the delight in it were so +wholly there that in ten years I had hardly been in as many Boston +houses. As I have said, I met Doctor Holmes at the Fieldses’, and at +Longfellow’s, when he came out to a Dante supper, which was not often, +and somewhat later at the Saturday Club dinners. One parlous time at the +publisher’s I have already recalled, when Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe and +the Autocrat clashed upon homeopathy, and it required all the tact of the +host to lure them away from the dangerous theme. As it was, a battle +waged in the courteous forms of Fontenoy, went on pretty well through the +dinner, and it was only over the coffee that a truce was called. I need +not say which was heterodox, or that each had a deep and strenuous +conscience in the matter. I have always felt it a proof of his extreme +leniency to me, unworthy, that the doctor was able to tolerate my own +defection from the elder faith in medicine; and I could not feel his +kindness less caressing because I knew it a concession to an infirmity. +He said something like, After all a good physician was the great matter; +and I eagerly turned his clemency to praise of our family doctor. + +He was very constant at the Saturday Club, as long as his strength +permitted, and few of its members missed fewer of its meetings. He +continued to sit at its table until the ghosts of Hawthorne, of Agassiz, +of Emerson, of Longfellow, of Lowell, out of others less famous, bore him +company there among the younger men in the flesh. It must have been very +melancholy, but nothing could deeply cloud his most cheerful spirit. His +strenuous interest in life kept him alive to all the things of it, after +so many of his friends were dead. The questions which he was wont to +deal with so fondly, so wisely, the great problems of the soul, were all +the more vital, perhaps, because the personal concern in them was +increased by the translation to some other being of the men who had so +often tried with him to fathom them here. The last time I was at that +table he sat alone there among those great memories; but he was as gay as +ever I saw him; his wit sparkled, his humor gleamed; the poetic touch was +deft and firm as of old; the serious curiosity, the instant sympathy +remained. To the witness he was pathetic, but to himself he could only +have been interesting, as the figure of a man surviving, in an alien but +not unfriendly present, the past which held so vast a part of all that +had constituted him. If he had thought of himself in this way, it would +have been without one emotion of self-pity, such as more maudlin souls +indulge, but with a love of knowledge and wisdom as keenly alert as in +his prime. + +For three privileged years I lived all but next-door neighbor of Doctor +Holmes in that part of Beacon Street whither he removed after he left his +old home in Charles Street, and during these years I saw him rather +often. We were both on the water side, which means so much more than the +words say, and our library windows commanded the same general view of the +Charles rippling out into the Cambridge marshes and the sunsets, and +curving eastward under Long Bridge, through shipping that increased +onward to the sea. He said that you could count fourteen towns and +villages in the compass of that view, with the three conspicuous +monuments accenting the different attractions of it: the tower of +Memorial Hall at Harvard; the obelisk on Bunker Hill; and in the centre +of the picture that bulk of Tufts College which he said he expected to +greet his eyes the first thing when he opened them in the other world. +But the prospect, though generally the same, had certain precious +differences for each of us, which I have no doubt he valued himself as +much upon as I did. I have a notion that he fancied these were to be +enjoyed best in his library through two oval panes let into the bay there +apart from the windows, for he was apt to make you come and look out of +them if you got to talking of the view before you left. In this pleasant +study he lived among the books, which seemed to multiply from case to +case and shelf to shelf, and climb from floor to ceiling. Everything was +in exquisite order, and the desk where he wrote was as scrupulously neat +as if the sloven disarray of most authors’ desks were impossible to him. +He had a number of ingenious little contrivances for helping his work, +which he liked to show you; for a time a revolving book-case at the +corner of his desk seemed to be his pet; and after that came his +fountain-pen, which he used with due observance of its fountain +principle, though he was tolerant of me when I said I always dipped mine +in the inkstand; it was a merit in his eyes to use a fountain pen in +anywise. After you had gone over these objects with him, and perhaps +taken a peep at something he was examining through his microscope, he sat +down at one corner of his hearth, and invited you to an easy chair at the +other. His talk was always considerate of your wish to be heard, but the +person who wished to talk when he could listen to Doctor Holmes was his +own victim, and always the loser. If you were well advised you kept +yourself to the question and response which manifested your interest in +what he was saying, and let him talk on, with his sweet smile, and that +husky laugh he broke softly into at times. Perhaps he was not very well +when you came in upon him; then he would name his trouble, with a +scientific zest and accuracy, and pass quickly to other matters. As I +have noted, he was interested in himself only on the universal side; and +he liked to find his peculiarity in you better than to keep it his own; +he suffered a visible disappointment if he could not make you think or +say you were so and so too. The querulous note was not in his most +cheerful register; he would not dwell upon a specialized grief; though +sometimes I have known him touch very lightly and currently upon a slight +annoyance, or disrelish for this or that. As he grew older, he must have +had, of course, an old man’s disposition to speak of his infirmities; but +it was fine to see him catch himself up in this, when he became conscious +of it, and stop short with an abrupt turn to something else. With a real +interest, which he gave humorous excess, he would celebrate some little +ingenious thing that had fallen in his way, and I have heard him +expatiate with childlike delight upon the merits of a new razor he had +got: a sort of mower, which he could sweep recklessly over cheek and chin +without the least danger of cutting himself. The last time I saw him he +asked me if he had ever shown me that miraculous razor; and I doubt if he +quite liked my saying I had seen one of the same kind. + +It seemed to me that he enjoyed sitting at his chimney-corner rather as +the type of a person having a good time than as such a person; he would +rather be up and about something, taking down a book, making a note, +going again to his little windows, and asking you if you had seen the +crows yet that sometimes alighted on the shoals left bare by the ebb-tide +behind the house. The reader will recall his lovely poem, “My Aviary,” + which deals with the winged life of that pleasant prospect. I shared +with him in the flock of wild-ducks which used to come into our neighbor +waters in spring, when the ice broke up, and stayed as long as the +smallest space of brine remained unfrozen in the fall. He was graciously +willing I should share in them, and in the cloud of gulls which drifted +about in the currents of the sea and sky there, almost the whole year +round. I did not pretend an original right to them, coming so late as I +did to the place, and I think my deference pleased him. + + + + +VII. + +As I have said, he liked his fences, or at least liked you to respect +them, or to be sensible of them. As often as I went to see him I was +made to wait in the little reception-room below, and never shown at once +to his study. My name would be carried up, and I would hear him +verifying my presence from the maid through the opened door; then there +came a cheery cry of wellcome: “Is that you? Come up, come up!” and I +found him sometimes half-way down the stairs to meet me. He would make +an excuse for having kept me below a moment, and say something about the +rule he had to observe in all cases, as if he would not have me feel his +fence a personal thing. I was aware how thoroughly his gentle spirit +pervaded the whole house; the Irish maid who opened the door had the +effect of being a neighbor too, and of being in the joke of the little +formality; she apologized in her turn for the reception-room; there was +certainly nothing trampled upon in her manner, but affection and +reverence for him whose gate she guarded, with something like the +sentiment she would have cherished for a dignitary of the Church, but +nicely differenced and adjusted to the Autocrat’s peculiar merits. + +The last time I was in that place, a visitant who had lately knocked at +my own door was about to enter. I met the master of the house on the +landing of the stairs outside his study, and he led me in for the few +moments we could spend together. He spoke of the shadow so near, and +said he supposed there could be no hope, but he did not refuse the cheer +I offered him from my ignorance against his knowledge, and at something +that was thought or said he smiled, with even a breath of laughter, so +potent is the wont of a lifetime, though his eyes were full of tears, and +his voice broke with his words. Those who have sorrowed deepest will +understand this best. + +It was during the few years of our Beacon Street neighborhood that he +spent those hundred days abroad in his last visit to England and France. +He was full of their delight when he came back, and my propinquity gave +me the advantage of hearing him speak of them at first hand. He +whimsically pleased himself most with his Derby-day experiences, and +enjoyed contrasting the crowd and occasion with that of forty or fifty +years earlier, when he had seen some famous race of the Derby won; +nothing else in England seemed to have moved him so much, though all that +royalties, dignities, and celebrities could well do for him had been +done. Of certain things that happened to him, characteristic of the +English, and interesting to him in their relation to himself through his +character of universally interested man, he spoke freely; but he has said +what he chose to the public about them, and I have no right to say more. +The thing that most vexed him during his sojourn apparently was to have +been described in one of the London papers as quite deaf; and I could +truly say to him that I had never imagined him at all deaf, or heard him +accused of it before. “Oh, yes,” he said, “I am a little hard of hearing +on one side. But it isn’t deafness.” + +He had, indeed, few or none of the infirmities of age that make +themselves painfully or inconveniently evident. He carried his slight +figure erect, and until his latest years his step was quick and sure. +Once he spoke of the lessened height of old people, apropos of something +that was said, and “They will shrink, you know,” he added, as if he were +not at all concerned in the fact himself. If you met him in the street, +you encountered a spare, carefully dressed old gentleman, with a +clean-shaven face and a friendly smile, qualified by the involuntary +frown of his thick, senile brows; well coated, lustrously shod, well +gloved, in a silk hat, latterly wound with a mourning-weed. Sometimes he +did not know you when he knew you quite well, and at such times I think +it was kind to spare his years the fatigue of recalling your identity; at +any rate, I am glad of the times when I did so. In society he had the +same vagueness, the same dimness; but after the moment he needed to make +sure of you, he was as vivid as ever in his life. He made me think of a +bed of embers on which the ashes have thinly gathered, and which, when +these are breathed away, sparkles and tinkles keenly up with all the +freshness of a newly kindled fire. He did not mind talking about his +age, and I fancied rather enjoyed doing so. Its approaches interested +him; if he was going, he liked to know just how and when he was going. +Once he spoke of his lasting strength in terms of imaginative humor: he +was still so intensely interested in nature, the universe, that it seemed +to him he was not like an old man so much as a lusty infant which +struggles against having the breast snatched from it. He laughed at the +notion of this, with that impersonal relish which seemed to me singularly +characteristic of the self-consciousness so marked in him. I never heard +one lugubrious word from him in regard to his years. He liked your +sympathy on all grounds where he could have it self-respectfully, but he +was a most manly spirit, and he would not have had it even as a type of +the universal decay. Possibly he would have been interested to have you +share in that analysis of himself which he was always making, if such a +thing could have been. + +He had not much patience with the unmanly craving for sympathy in others, +and chiefly in our literary craft, which is somewhat ignobly given to it, +though he was patient, after all. He used to say, and I believe he has +said it in print,--[Holmes said it in print many times, in his three +novels and scattered through the “Breakfast Table” series. D.W.]--that +unless a man could show a good reason for writing verse, it was rather +against him, and a proof of weakness. I suppose this severe conclusion +was something he had reached after dealing with innumerable small poets +who sought the light in him with verses that no editor would admit to +print. Yet of morbidness he was often very tender; he knew it to be +disease, something that must be scientifically rather than ethically +treated. He was in the same degree kind to any sensitiveness, for he was +himself as sensitive as he was manly, and he was most delicately +sensitive to any rightful social claim upon him. I was once at a dinner +with him, where he was in some sort my host, in a company of people whom +he had not seen me with before, and he made a point of acquainting me +with each of them. It did not matter that I knew most of them already; +the proof of his thoughtfulness was precious, and I was sorry when I had +to disappoint it by confessing a previous knowledge. + + + + +VIII. + +I had three memorable meetings with him not very long before he died: one +a year before, and the other two within a few months of the end. The +first of these was at luncheon in the summer-house of a friend whose +hospitality made it summer the year round, and we all went out to meet +him, when he drove up in his open carriage, with the little sunshade in +his hand, which he took with him for protection against the heat, and +also, a little, I think, for the whim of it. He sat a moment after he +arrived, as if to orient himself in respect to each of us. Beside the +gifted hostess, there was the most charming of all the American +essayists, and the Autocrat seemed at once to find himself singularly at +home with the people who greeted him. There was no interval needed for +fanning away the ashes; he tinkled up before he entered the house, and at +the table he was as vivid and scintillant as I ever saw him, if indeed I +ever saw him as much so. The talk began at once, and we had made him +believe that there was nothing egotistic in his taking the word, or +turning it in illustration from himself upon universal matters. I spoke +among other things of some humble ruins on the road to Gloucester, which +gave the way-side a very aged look; the tumbled foundation-stones of poor +bits of houses, and “Ah,” he said, “the cellar and the well?” He added, +to the company generally, “Do you know what I think are the two lines of +mine that go as deep as any others, in a certain direction?” and he began +to repeat stragglingly certain verses from one of his earlier poems, +until he came to the closing couplet. But I will give them in full, +because in going to look them up I have found them so lovely, and because +I can hear his voice again in every fondly accented syllable: + + “Who sees unmoved, a ruin at his feet, + The lowliest home where human hearts have beat? + Its hearth-stone, shaded with the bistre stain, + A century’s showery torrents wash in vain; + Its starving orchard where the thistle blows, + And mossy trunks still mark the broken rows; + Its chimney-loving poplar, oftenest seen + Next an old roof, or where a roof has been; + Its knot-grass, plantain,--all the social weeds, + Man’s mute companions following where he leads; + Its dwarfed pale flowers, that show their straggling heads, + Sown by the wind from grass-choked garden-beds; + Its woodbine creeping where it used to climb; + Its roses breathing of the olden time; + All the poor shows the curious idler sees, + As life’s thin shadows waste by slow degrees, + Till naught remains, the saddening tale to tell, + Save home’s last wrecks--the CELLAR AND THE WELL!” + +The poet’s chanting voice rose with a triumphant swell in the climax, and +“There,” he said, “isn’t it so? The cellar and the well--they can’t be +thrown down or burnt up; they are the human monuments that last longest +and defy decay.” He rejoiced openly in the sympathy that recognized with +him the divination of a most pathetic, most signal fact, and he repeated +the last couplet again at our entreaty, glad to be entreated for it. I do +not know whether all will agree with him concerning the relative +importance of the lines, but I think all must feel the exquisite beauty +of the picture to which they give the final touch. + +He said a thousand witty and brilliant things that day, but his pleasure +in this gave me the most pleasure, and I recall the passage distinctly +out of the dimness that covers the rest. He chose to figure us younger +men, in touching upon the literary circumstance of the past and present, +as representative of modern feeling and thinking, and himself as no +longer contemporary. We knew he did this to be contradicted, and we +protested, affectionately, fervently, with all our hearts and minds; and +indeed there were none of his generation who had lived more widely into +ours. He was not a prophet like Emerson, nor ever a voice crying in the +wilderness like Whittier or Lowell. His note was heard rather amid the +sweet security of streets, but it was always for a finer and gentler +civility. He imagined no new rule of life, and no philosophy or theory +of life will be known by his name. He was not constructive; he was +essentially observant, and in this he showed the scientific nature. He +made his reader known to himself, first in the little, and then in the +larger things. From first to last he was a censor, but a most winning +and delightful censor, who could make us feel that our faults were other +people’s, and who was not wont + + “To bait his homilies with his brother worms.” + +At one period he sat in the seat of the scorner, as far as Reform was +concerned, or perhaps reformers, who are so often tedious and ridiculous; +but he seemed to get a new heart with the new mind which came to him when +he began to write the Autocrat papers, and the light mocker of former +days became the serious and compassionate thinker, to whom most truly +nothing that was human was alien. His readers trusted and loved him; few +men have ever written so intimately with so much dignity, and perhaps +none has so endeared himself by saying just the thing for his reader that +his reader could not say for himself. He sought the universal through +himself in others, and he found to his delight and theirs that the most +universal thing was often, if not always, the most personal thing. + +In my later meetings with him I was struck more and more by his +gentleness. I believe that men are apt to grow gentler as they grow +older, unless they are of the curmudgeon type, which rusts and crusts +with age, but with Doctor Holmes the gentleness was peculiarly marked. He +seemed to shrink from all things that could provoke controversy, or even +difference; he waived what might be a matter of dispute, and rather +sought the things that he could agree with you upon. In the last talk I +had with him he appeared to have no grudge left, except for the puritanic +orthodoxy in which he had been bred as a child. This he was not able to +forgive, though its tradition was interwoven with what was tenderest and +dearest in his recollections of childhood. We spoke of puritanism, and I +said I sometimes wondered what could be the mind of a man towards life +who had not been reared in its awful shadow, say an English Churchman, or +a Continental Catholic; and he said he could not imagine, and that he did +not believe such a man could at all enter into our feelings; puritanism, +he seemed to think, made an essential and ineradicable difference. I do +not believe he had any of that false sentiment which attributes virtue of +character to severity of creed, while it owns the creed to be wrong. + +He differed from Longfellow in often speaking of his contemporaries. He +spoke of them frankly, but with an appreciative rather than a censorious +criticism. Of Longfellow himself he said that day, when I told him I had +been writing about him, and he seemed to me a man without error, that he +could think of but one error in him, and that was an error of taste, of +almost merely literary taste. It was at an earlier time that he talked +of Lowell, after his death, and told me that Lowell once in the fever of +his anti-slavery apostolate had written him, urging him strongly, as a +matter of duty, to come out for the cause he had himself so much at +heart. Afterwards Lowell wrote again, owning himself wrong in his +appeal, which he had come to recognize as invasive. “He was ten years +younger than I,” said the doctor. + +I found him that day I speak of in his house at Beverly Farms, where he +had a pleasant study in a corner by the porch, and he met me with all the +cheeriness of old. But he confessed that he had been greatly broken up +by the labor of preparing something that might be read at some +commemorative meeting, and had suffered from finding first that he could +not write something specially for it. Even the copying and adapting an +old poem had overtaxed him, and in this he showed the failing powers of +age. But otherwise he was still young, intellectually; that is, there +was no failure of interest in intellectual things, especially literary +things. Some new book lay on the table at his elbow, and he asked me if +I had seen it, and made some joke about his having had the good luck to +read it, and have it lying by him a few days before when the author +called. I do not know whether he schooled himself against an old man’s +tendency to revert to the past or not, but I know that he seldom did so. +That morning, however, he made several excursions into it, and told me +that his youthful satire of the ‘Spectre Pig’ had been provoked by a poem +of the elder Dana’s, where a phantom horse had been seriously employed, +with an effect of anticlimax which he had found irresistible. Another +foray was to recall the oppression and depression of his early religious +associations, and to speak with moving tenderness of his father, whose +hard doctrine as a minister was without effect upon his own kindly +nature. + +In a letter written to me a few weeks after this time, upon an occasion +when he divined that some word from him would be more than commonly dear, +he recurred to the feeling he then expressed: “Fifty-six years ago--more +than half a century--I lost my own father, his age being seventy-three +years. As I have reached that period of life, passed it, and now left it +far behind, my recollections seem to brighten and bring back my boyhood +and early manhood in a clearer and fairer light than it came to me in my +middle decades. I have often wished of late years that I could tell him +how I cherished his memory; perhaps I may have the happiness of saying +all I long to tell him on the other side of that thin partition which I +love to think is all that divides us.” + +Men are never long together without speaking of women, and I said how +inevitably men’s lives ended where they began, in the keeping of women, +and their strength failed at last and surrendered itself to their care. I +had not finished before I was made to feel that I was poaching, and +“Yes,” said the owner of the preserve, “I have spoken of that,” and he +went on to tell me just where. He was not going to have me suppose I had +invented those notions, and I could not do less than own that I must have +found them in his book, and forgotten it. + +He spoke of his pleasant summer life in the air, at once soft and fresh, +of that lovely coast, and of his drives up and down the country roads. +Sometimes this lady and sometimes that came for him, and one or two +habitually, but he always had his own carriage ordered, if they failed, +that he might not fail of his drive in any fair weather. His cottage was +not immediately on the sea, but in full sight of it, and there was a +sense of the sea about it, as there is in all that incomparable region, +and I do not think he could have been at home anywhere beyond the reach +of its salt breath. + +I was anxious not to outstay his strength, and I kept my eye on the clock +in frequent glances. I saw that he followed me in one of these, and I +said that I knew what his hours were, and I was watching so that I might +go away in time, and then he sweetly protested. Did I like that chair I +was sitting in? It was a gift to him, and he said who gave it, with a +pleasure in the fact that was very charming, as if he liked the +association of the thing with his friend. He was disposed to excuse the +formal look of his bookcases, which were filled with sets, and presented +some phalanxes of fiction in rather severe array. + +When I rose to go, he was concerned about my being able to find my way +readily to the station, and he told me how to go, and what turns to take, +as if he liked realizing the way to himself. I believe he did not walk +much of late years, and I fancy he found much the same pleasure in +letting his imagination make this excursion to the station with me that +he would have found in actually going. + +I saw him once more, but only once, when a day or two later he drove up +by our hotel in Magnolia toward the cottage where his secretary was +lodging. He saw us from his carriage, and called us gayly to him, to +make us rejoice with him at having finally got that commemorative poem +off his mind. He made a jest of the trouble it had cost him, even some +sleeplessness, and said he felt now like a convalescent. He was all +brightness, and friendliness, and eagerness to make us feel his mood, +through what was common to us all; and I am glad that this last +impression of him is so one with the first I ever had, and with that +which every reader receives from his work. + +That is bright, and friendly and eager too, for it is throughout the very +expression of himself. I think it is a pity if an author disappoints +even the unreasonable expectation of the reader, whom his art has invited +to love him; but I do not believe that Doctor Holmes could inflict this +disappointment. Certainly he could disappoint no reasonable expectation, +no intelligent expectation. What he wrote, that he was, and every one +felt this who met him. He has therefore not died, as some men die, the +remote impersonal sort, but he is yet thrillingly alive in every page of +his books. The quantity of his literature is not great, but the quality +is very surprising, and surprising first of all as equality. From the +beginning to the end he wrote one man, of course in his successive +consciousnesses. Perhaps every one does this, but his work gives the +impression of an uncommon continuity, in spite of its being the effect of +a later and an earlier impulse so very marked as to have made the later +an astonishing revelation to those who thought they knew him. + + + + +IX. + +It is not for me in such a paper as this to attempt any judgment of his +work. I have loved it, as I loved him, with a sense of its limitations +which is by no means a censure of its excellences. He was not a man who +cared to transcend; he liked bounds, he liked horizons, the constancy of +shores. If he put to sea, he kept in sight of land, like the ancient +navigators. He did not discover new continents; and I will own that I, +for my part, should not have liked to sail with Columbus. I think one +can safely affirm that as great and as useful men stayed behind, and +found an America of the mind without stirring from their thresholds. + + + + +THE WHITE MR. LONGFELLOW + +We had expected to stay in Boston only until we could find a house in Old +Cambridge. This was not so simple a matter as it might seem; for the +ancient town had not yet quickened its scholarly pace to the modern step. +Indeed, in the spring of 1866 the impulse of expansion was not yet +visibly felt anywhere; the enormous material growth that followed the +civil war had not yet begun. In Cambridge the houses to be let were few, +and such as there were fell either below our pride or rose above our +purse. I wish I might tell how at last we bought a house; we had no +money, but we were rich in friends, who are still alive to shrink from +the story of their constant faith in a financial future which we +sometimes doubted, and who backed their credulity with their credit. It +is sufficient for the present record, which professes to be strictly +literary, to notify the fact that on the first day of May, 1866, we went +out to Cambridge and began to live in a house which we owned in fee if +not in deed, and which was none the less valuable for being covered with +mortgages. Physically, it was a carpenter’s box, of a sort which is +readily imagined by the Anglo-American genius for ugliness, but which it +is not so easy to impart a just conception of. A trim hedge of +arbor-vita; tried to hide it from the world in front, and a tall board +fence behind; the little lot was well planted (perhaps too well planted) +with pears, grapes, and currants, and there was a small open space which +I lost no time in digging up for a kitchen-garden. On one side of us +were the open fields; on the other a brief line of neighbor-houses; +across the street before us was a grove of stately oaks, which I never +could persuade Aldrich had painted leaves on them in the fall. We were +really in a poor suburb of a suburb; but such is the fascination of +ownership, even the ownership of a fully mortgaged property, that we +calculated the latitude and longitude of the whole earth from the spot we +called ours. In our walks about Cambridge we saw other places where we +might have been willing to live; only, we said, they were too far off: We +even prized the architecture of our little box, though we had but so +lately lived in a Gothic palace on the Grand Canal in Venice, and were +not uncritical of beauty in the possessions of others. Positive beauty +we could not have honestly said we thought our cottage had as a whole, +though we might have held out for something of the kind in the brackets +of turned wood under its eaves. But we were richly content with it; and +with life in Cambridge, as it began to open itself to us, we were +infinitely more than content. This life, so refined, so intelligent, so +gracefully simple, I do not suppose has anywhere else had its parallel. + + + + +I. + +It was the moment before the old American customs had been changed by +European influences among people of easier circumstances; and in +Cambridge society kept what was best of its village traditions, and chose +to keep them in the full knowledge of different things. Nearly every one +had been abroad; and nearly every one had acquired the taste for olives +without losing a relish for native sauces; through the intellectual life +there was an entire democracy, and I do not believe that since the +capitalistic era began there was ever a community in which money counted +for less. There was little show of what money could buy; I remember but +one private carriage (naturally, a publisher’s); and there was not one +livery, except a livery in the larger sense kept by the stableman Pike, +who made us pay now a quarter and now a half dollar for a seat in his +carriages, according as he lost or gathered courage for the charge. We +thought him extortionate, and we mostly walked through snow and mud of +amazing depth and thickness. + +The reader will imagine how acceptable this circumstance was to a young +literary man beginning life with a fully mortgaged house and a salary of +untried elasticity. If there were distinctions made in Cambridge they +were not against literature, and we found ourselves in the midst of a +charming society, indifferent, apparently, to all questions but those of +the higher education which comes so largely by nature. That is to say, +in the Cambridge of that day (and, I dare say, of this) a mind cultivated +in some sort was essential, and after that came civil manners, and the +willingness and ability to be agreeable and interesting; but the question +of riches or poverty did not enter. Even the question of family, which +is of so great concern in New England, was in abeyance. Perhaps it was +taken for granted that every one in Old Cambridge society must be of good +family, or he could not be there; perhaps his mere residence tacitly +ennobled him; certainly his acceptance was an informal patent of +gentility. To my mind, the structure of society was almost ideal, and +until we have a perfectly socialized condition of things I do not believe +we shall ever have a more perfect society. The instincts which governed +it were not such as can arise from the sordid competition of interests; +they flowed from a devotion to letters, and from a self-sacrifice in +material things which I can give no better notion of than by saying that +the outlay of the richest college magnate seemed to be graduated to the +income of the poorest. + +In those days, the men whose names have given splendor to Cambridge were +still living there. I shall forget some of them in the alphabetical +enumeration of Louis Agassiz, Francis J. Child, Richard Henry Dana, Jun., +John Fiske, Dr. Asa Gray, the family of the Jameses, father and sons, +Lowell, Longfellow, Charles Eliot Norton, Dr. John G. Palfrey, James +Pierce, Dr. Peabody, Professor Parsons, Professor Sophocles. The variety +of talents and of achievements was indeed so great that Mr. Bret Harte, +when fresh from his Pacific slope, justly said, after listening to a +partial rehearsal of them, “Why, you couldn’t fire a revolver from your +front porch anywhere without bringing down a two-volumer!” Everybody had +written a book, or an article, or a poem; or was in the process or +expectation of doing it, and doubtless those whose names escape me will +have greater difficulty in eluding fame. These kindly, these gifted folk +each came to see us and to make us at home among them; and my home is +still among them, on this side and on that side of the line between the +living and the dead which invisibly passes through all the streets of the +cities of men. + + + + +II. + +We had the whole summer for the exploration of Cambridge before society +returned from the mountains and the sea-shore, and it was not till +October that I saw Longfellow. I heard again, as I heard when I first +came to Boston, that he was at Nahant, and though Nahant was no longer so +far away, now, as it was then, I did not think of seeking him out even +when we went for a day to explore that coast during the summer. It seems +strange that I cannot recall just when and where I saw him, but early +after his return to Cambridge I had a message from him asking me to come +to a meeting of the Dante Club at Craigie House. + +Longfellow was that winter (1866-7) revising his translation of the +‘Paradiso’, and the Dante Club was the circle of Italianate friends and +scholars whom he invited to follow him and criticise his work from the +original, while he read his version aloud. Those who were most +constantly present were Lowell and Professor Norton, but from time to +time others came in, and we seldom sat down at the nine-o’clock supper +that followed the reading of the canto in less number than ten or twelve. + +The criticism, especially from the accomplished Danteists I have named, +was frank and frequent. I believe they neither of them quite agreed with +Longfellow as to the form of version he had chosen, but, waiving that, +the question was how perfectly he had done his work upon the given lines: +I myself, with whatever right, great or little, I may have to an opinion, +believe thoroughly in Longfellow’s plan. When I read his version my +sense aches for the rhyme which he rejected, but my admiration for his +fidelity to Dante otherwise is immeasurable. I remember with equal +admiration the subtle and sympathetic scholarship of his critics, who +scrutinized every shade of meaning in a word or phrase that gave them +pause, and did not let it pass till all the reasons and facts had been +considered. Sometimes, and even often, Longfellow yielded to their +censure, but for the most part, when he was of another mind, he held to +his mind, and the passage had to go as he said. I make a little haste to +say that in all the meetings of the Club, during a whole winter of +Wednesday evenings, I myself, though I faithfully followed in an Italian +Dante with the rest, ventured upon one suggestion only. This was kindly, +even seriously, considered by the poet, and gently rejected. He could +not do anything otherwise than gently, and I was not suffered to feel +that I had done a presumptuous thing. I can see him now, as he looked up +from the proof-sheets on the round table before him, and over at me, +growing consciously smaller and smaller, like something through a +reversed opera-glass. He had a shaded drop-light in front of him, and in +its glow his beautiful and benignly noble head had a dignity peculiar to +him. + +All the portraits of Longfellow are likenesses more or less bad and good, +for there was something as simple in the physiognomy as in the nature of +the man. His head, after he allowed his beard to grow and wore his hair +long in the manner of elderly men, was leonine, but mildly leonine, as +the old painters conceived the lion of St. Mark. Once Sophocles, the +ex-monk of Mount Athos, so long a Greek professor at Harvard, came in for +supper, after the reading was over, and he was leonine too, but of a +fierceness that contrasted finely with Longfellow’s mildness. I remember +the poet’s asking him something about the punishment of impaling, in +Turkey, and his answering, with an ironical gleam of his fiery eyes, +“Unhappily, it is obsolete.” I dare say he was not so leonine, either, +as he looked. + +When Longfellow read verse, it was with a hollow, with a mellow resonant +murmur, like the note of some deep-throated horn. His voice was very +lulling in quality, and at the Dante Club it used to have early effect +with an old scholar who sat in a cavernous armchair at the corner of the +fire, and who drowsed audibly in the soft tone and the gentle heat. The +poet had a fat terrier who wished always to be present at the meetings of +the Club, and he commonly fell asleep at the same moment with that dear +old scholar, so that when they began to make themselves heard in concert, +one could not tell which it was that most took our thoughts from the text +of the Paradiso. When the duet opened, Longfellow would look up with an +arch recognition of the fact, and then go gravely on to the end of the +canto. At the close he would speak to his friend and lead him out to +supper as if he had not seen or heard anything amiss. + + + + +III. + +In that elect company I was silent, partly because I was conscious of my +youthful inadequacy, and partly because I preferred to listen. But +Longfellow always behaved as if I were saying a succession of edifying +and delightful things, and from time to time he addressed himself to me, +so that I should not feel left out. He did not talk much himself, and I +recall nothing that he said. But he always spoke both wisely and simply, +without the least touch of pose, and with no intention of effect, but +with something that I must call quality for want of a better word; so +that at a table where Holmes sparkled, and Lowell glowed, and Agassiz +beamed, he cast the light of a gentle gaiety, which seemed to dim all +these vivider luminaries. While he spoke you did not miss Fields’s story +or Tom Appleton’s wit, or even the gracious amity of Mr. Norton, with his +unequalled intuitions. + +The supper was very plain: a cold turkey, which the host carved, or a +haunch of venison, or some braces of grouse, or a platter of quails, with +a deep bowl of salad, and the sympathetic companionship of those elect +vintages which Longfellow loved, and which he chose with the inspiration +of affection. We usually began with oysters, and when some one who was +expected did not come promptly, Longfellow invited us to raid his plate, +as a just punishment of his delay. One evening Lowell remarked, with the +cayenne poised above his bluepoints, “It’s astonishing how fond these +fellows are of pepper.” + +The old friend of the cavernous arm-chair was perhaps not wide enough +awake to repress an “Ah?” of deep interest in this fact of natural +history, and Lowell was provoked to go on. “Yes, I’ve dropped a red +pepper pod into a barrel of them, before now, and then taken them out in +a solid mass, clinging to it like a swarm of bees to their queen.” + +“Is it possible?” cried the old friend; and then Longfellow intervened to +save him from worse, and turned the talk. + +I reproach myself that I made no record of the talk, for I find that only +a few fragments of it have caught in my memory, and that the sieve which +should have kept the gold has let it wash away with the gravel. I +remember once Doctor Holmes’s talking of the physician as the true seer, +whose awful gift it was to behold with the fatal second sight of science +the shroud gathering to the throat of many a doomed man apparently in +perfect health, and happy in the promise of unnumbered days. The thought +may have been suggested by some of the toys of superstition which +intellectual people like to play with. + +I never could be quite sure at first that Longfellow’s brother-in-law, +Appleton, was seriously a spiritualist, even when he disputed the most +strenuously with the unbelieving Autocrat. But he really was in earnest +about it, though he relished a joke at the expense of his doctrine, like +some clerics when they are in the safe company of other clerics. He told +me once of having recounted to Agassiz the facts of a very remarkable +seance, where the souls of the departed outdid themselves in the +athletics and acrobatics they seem so fond of over there, throwing large +stones across the room, moving pianos, and lifting dinner-tables and +setting them a-twirl under the chandelier. “And now,” he demanded, “what +do you say to that?” “Well, Mr. Appleton,” Agassiz answered, to +Appleton’s infinite delight, “I say that it did not happen.” + +One night they began to speak at the Dante supper of the unhappy man +whose crime is a red stain in the Cambridge annals, and one and another +recalled their impressions of Professor Webster. It was possibly with a +retroactive sense that they had all felt something uncanny in him, but, +apropos of the deep salad-bowl in the centre of the table, Longfellow +remembered a supper Webster was at, where he lighted some chemical in +such a dish and held his head over it, with a handkerchief noosed about +his throat and lifted above it with one hand, while his face, in the pale +light, took on the livid ghastliness of that of a man hanged by the neck. + +Another night the talk wandered to the visit which an English author (now +with God) paid America at the height of a popularity long since toppled +to the ground, with many another. He was in very good humor with our +whole continent, and at Longfellow’s table he found the champagne even +surprisingly fine. “But,” he said to his host, who now told the story, +“it cawn’t be genuine, you know!” + +Many years afterwards this author revisited our shores, and I dined with +him at Longfellow’s, where he was anxious to constitute himself a guest +during his sojourn in our neighborhood. Longfellow was equally anxious +that he should not do so, and he took a harmless pleasure in +out-manoeuvring him. He seized a chance to speak with me alone, and +plotted to deliver him over to me without apparent unkindness, when the +latest horse-car should be going in to Boston, and begged me to walk him +to Harvard Square and put him aboard. “Put him aboard, and don’t leave +him till the car starts, and then watch that he doesn’t get off.” + +These instructions he accompanied with a lifting of the eyebrows, and a +pursing of the mouth, in an anxiety not altogether burlesque. He knew +himself the prey of any one who chose to batten on him, and his +hospitality was subject to frightful abuse. Perhaps Mr. Norton has +somewhere told how, when he asked if a certain person who had been +outstaying his time was not a dreadful bore, Longfellow answered, with +angelic patience, “Yes; but then you know I have been bored so often!” + +There was one fatal Englishman whom I shared with him during the great +part of a season: a poor soul, not without gifts, but always ready for +more, especially if they took the form of meat and drink. He had brought +letters from one of the best English men alive, who withdrew them too +late to save his American friends from the sad consequences of welcoming +him. So he established himself impregnably in a Boston club, and came +out every day to dine with Longfellow in Cambridge, beginning with his +return from Nahant in October and continuing far into December. That was +the year of the great horse-distemper, when the plague disabled the +transportation in Boston, and cut off all intercourse between the suburb +and the city on the street railways. “I did think,” Longfellow +pathetically lamented, “that when the horse-cars stopped running, I +should have a little respite from L., but he walks out.” + +In the midst of his own suffering he was willing to advise with me +concerning some poems L. had offered to the Atlantic Monthly, and after +we had desperately read them together he said, with inspiration, “I think +these things are more adapted to music than the magazine,” and this +seemed so good a notion that when L. came to know their fate from me, I +answered, confidently, “I think they are rather more adapted to music.” + He calmly asked, “Why?” and as this was an exigency which Longfellow had +not forecast for me, I was caught in it without hope of escape. I really +do not know what I said, but I know that I did not take the poems, such +was my literary conscience in those days; I am afraid I should be weaker +now. + + + + +IV. + +The suppers of the Dante Club were a relaxation from the severity of +their toils on criticism, and I will not pretend that their table-talk +was of that seriousness which duller wits might have given themselves up +to. The passing stranger, especially if a light or jovial person, was +always welcome, and I never knew of the enforcement of the rule I heard +of, that if you came in without question on the Club nights, you were a +guest; but if you rang or knocked, you could not get in. + +Any sort of diversion was hailed, and once Appleton proposed that +Longfellow should show us his wine-cellar. He took up the candle burning +on the table for the cigars, and led the way into the basement of the +beautiful old Colonial mansion, doubly memorable as Washington’s +headquarters while he was in Cambridge, and as the home of Longfellow for +so many years. The taper cast just the right gleams on the darkness, +bringing into relief the massive piers of brick, and the solid walls of +stone, which gave the cellar the effect of a casemate in some fortress, +and leaving the corners and distances to a romantic gloom. This basement +was a work of the days when men built more heavily if not more +substantially than now, but I forget, if I ever knew, what date the +wine-cellar was of. It was well stored with precious vintages, aptly +cobwebbed and dusty; but I could not find that it had any more charm than +the shelves of a library: it is the inside of bottles and of books that +makes its appeal. The whole place witnessed a bygone state and luxury, +which otherwise lingered in a dim legend or two. Longfellow once spoke +of certain old love-letters which dropped down on the basement stairs +from some place overhead; and there was the fable or the fact of a +subterranean passage under the street from Craigie House to the old +Batchelder House, which I relate to these letters with no authority I can +allege. But in Craigie House dwelt the proud fair lady who was buried in +the Cambridge church-yard with a slave at her head and a slave at her +feet. + + “Dust is in her beautiful eyes,” + +and whether it was they that smiled or wept in their time over those +love-letters, I will leave the reader to say. The fortunes of her Tory +family fell with those of their party, and the last Vassal ended his days +a prisoner from his creditors in his own house, with a weekly enlargement +on Sundays, when the law could not reach him. It is known how the place +took Longfellow’s fancy when he first came to be professor in Harvard, +and how he was a lodger of the last Mistress Craigie there, long before +he became its owner. The house is square, with Longfellow’s study where +he read and wrote on the right of the door, and a statelier library +behind it; on the left is the drawing-room, with the dining-room in its +rear; from its square hall climbs a beautiful stairway with twisted +banisters, and a tall clock in their angle. + +The study where the Dante Club met, and where I mostly saw Longfellow, +was a plain, pleasant room, with broad panelling in white painted pine; +in the centre before the fireplace stood his round table, laden with +books, papers, and proofs; in the farthest corner by the window was a +high desk which he sometimes stood at to write. In this room Washington +held his councils and transacted his business with all comers; in the +chamber overhead he slept. I do not think Longfellow associated the +place much with him, and I never heard him speak of Washington in +relation to it except once, when he told me with peculiar relish what he +called the true version of a pious story concerning the aide-de-camp who +blundered in upon him while he knelt in prayer. The father of his +country rose and rebuked the young man severely, and then resumed his +devotions. “He rebuked him,” said Longfellow, lifting his brows and +making rings round the pupils of his eyes, “by throwing his scabbard at +his head.” + +All the front windows of Craigie House look, out over the open fields +across the Charles, which is now the Longfellow Memorial Garden. The +poet used to be amused with the popular superstition that he was holding +this vacant ground with a view to a rise in the price of lots, while all +he wanted was to keep a feature of his beloved landscape unchanged. Lofty +elms drooped at the corners of the house; on the lawn billowed clumps of +the lilac, which formed a thick hedge along the fence. There was a +terrace part way down this lawn, and when a white-painted balustrade was +set some fifteen years ago upon its brink, it seemed always to have been +there. Long verandas stretched on either side of the mansion; and behind +was an old-fashioned garden with beds primly edged with box after a +design of the poet’s own. Longfellow had a ghost story of this quaint +plaisance, which he used to tell with an artful reserve of the +catastrophe. He was coming home one winter night, and as he crossed the +garden he was startled by a white figure swaying before him. But he knew +that the only way was to advance upon it. He pushed boldly forward, and +was suddenly caught under the throat-by the clothes-line with a long +night-gown on it. + +Perhaps it was at the end of a long night of the Dante Club that I heard +him tell this story. The evenings were sometimes mornings before the +reluctant break-up came, but they were never half long enough for me. I +have given no idea of the high reasoning of vital things which I must +often have heard at that table, and that I have forgotten it is no proof +that I did not hear it. The memory will not be ruled as to what it shall +bind and what it shall loose, and I should entreat mine in vain for +record of those meetings other than what I have given. Perhaps it would +be well, in the interest of some popular conceptions of what the social +intercourse of great wits must be, for me to invent some ennobling and +elevating passages of conversation at Longfellow’s; perhaps I ought to do +it for the sake of my own repute as a serious and adequate witness. But +I am rather helpless in the matter; I must set down what I remember, and +surely if I can remember no phrase from Holmes that a reader could live +or die by, it is something to recall how, when a certain potent cheese +was passing, he leaned over to gaze at it, and asked: “Does it kick? Does +it kick?” No strain of high poetic thinking remains to me from Lowell, +but he made me laugh unforgettably with his passive adventure one night +going home late, when a man suddenly leaped from the top of a high fence +upon the sidewalk at his feet, and after giving him the worst fright of +his life, disappeared peaceably into the darkness. To be sure, there was +one most memorable supper, when he read the “Bigelow Paper” he had +finished that day, and enriched the meaning of his verse with the beauty +of his voice. There lingers yet in my sense his very tone in giving the +last line of the passage lamenting the waste of the heroic lives which in +those dark hours of Johnson’s time seemed to have been + + “Butchered to make a blind man’s holiday.” + +The hush that followed upon his ceasing was of that finest quality which +spoken praise always lacks; and I suppose that I could not give a just +notion of these Dante Club evenings without imparting the effect of such +silences. This I could not hopefully undertake to do; but I am tempted +to some effort of the kind by my remembrance of Longfellow’s old friend +George Washington Greene, who often came up from his home in Rhode +Island, to be at those sessions, and who was a most interesting and +amiable fact of those delicate silences. A full half of his earlier life +had been passed in Italy, where he and Longfellow met and loved each +other in their youth with an affection which the poet was constant to in +his age, after many vicissitudes, with the beautiful fidelity of his +nature. Greene was like an old Italian house-priest in manner, gentle, +suave, very suave, smooth as creamy curds, cultivated in the elegancies +of literary taste, and with a certain meek abeyance. I think I never +heard him speak, in all those evenings, except when Longfellow addressed +him, though he must have had the Dante scholarship for an occasional +criticism. It was at more recent dinners, where I met him with the +Longfellow family alone, that he broke now and then into a quotation from +some of the modern Italian poets he knew by heart (preferably Giusti), +and syllabled their verse with an exquisite Roman accent and a bewitching +Florentine rhythm. Now and then at these times he brought out a faded +Italian anecdote, faintly smelling of civet, and threadbare in its +ancient texture. He liked to speak of Goldoni and of Nota, of Niccolini +and Manzoni, of Monti and Leopardi; and if you came to America, of the +Revolution and his grandfather, the Quaker General Nathaniel Greene, +whose life he wrote (and I read) in three volumes: He worshipped +Longfellow, and their friendship continued while they lived, but towards +the last of his visits at Craigie House it had a pathos for the witness +which I should grieve to wrong. Greene was then a quivering paralytic, +and he clung tremulously to Longfellow’s arm in going out to dinner, +where even the modern Italian poets were silent upon his lips. When we +rose from table, Longfellow lifted him out of his chair, and took him +upon his arm again for their return to the study. + +He was of lighter metal than most other members of the Dante Club, and he +was not of their immediate intimacy, living away from Cambridge, as he +did, and I shared his silence in their presence with full sympathy. I was +by far the youngest of their number, and I cannot yet quite make out why +I was of it at all. But at every moment I was as sensible of my good +fortune as of my ill desert. They were the men whom of all men living I +most honored, and it seemed to be impossible that I at my age should be +so perfectly fulfilling the dream of my life in their company. Often, the +nights were very cold, and as I returned home from Craigie House to the +carpenter’s box on Sacramento Street, a mile or two away, I was as if +soul-borne through the air by my pride and joy, while the frozen blocks +of snow clinked and tinkled before my feet stumbling along the middle of +the road. I still think that was the richest moment of my life, and I +look back at it as the moment, in a life not unblessed by chance, which I +would most like to live over again--if I must live any. The next winter +the sessions of the Dante Club were transferred to the house of Mr. +Norton, who was then completing his version of the ‘Vita Nuova’. This +has always seemed to me a work of not less graceful art than Longfellow’s +translation of the ‘Commedia’. In fact, it joins the effect of a +sympathy almost mounting to divination with a patient scholarship and a +delicate skill unknown to me elsewhere in such work. I do not know +whether Mr. Norton has satisfied himself better in his prose version of +the ‘Commedia’ than in this of the ‘Vita Nuova’, but I do not believe he +could have satisfied Dante better, unless he had rhymed his sonnets and +canzonets. I am sure he might have done this if he had chosen. He has +always pretended that it was impossible, but miracles are never +impossible in the right hands. + + + + +V. + +After three or four years we sold the carpenter’s box on Sacramento +Street, and removed to a larger house near Harvard Square, and in the +immediate neighborhood of Longfellow. He gave me an easement across that +old garden behind his house, through an opening in the high board fence +which enclosed it, and I saw him oftener than ever, though the meetings +of the Dante Club had come to an end. At the last of them, Lowell had +asked him, with fond regret in his jest, “Longfellow, why don’t you do +that Indian poem in forty thousand verses?” The demand but feebly +expressed the reluctance in us all, though I suspect the Indian poem +existed only by the challenger’s invention. Before I leave my faint and +unworthy record of these great times I am tempted to mention an incident +poignant with tragical associations. The first night after Christmas the +holly and the pine wreathed about the chandelier above the supper-table +took fire from the gas, just as we came out from the reading, and +Longfellow ran forward and caught the burning garlands down and bore them +out. No one could speak for thinking what he must be thinking of when +the ineffable calamity of his home befell it. Curtis once told me that a +little while before Mrs. Longfellow’s death he was driving by Craigie +House with Holmes, who said be trembled to look at it, for those who +lived there had their happiness so perfect that no change, of all the +changes which must come to them, could fail to be for the worse. I did +not know Longfellow before that fatal time, and I shall not say that his +presence bore record of it except in my fancy. He may always have had +that look of one who had experienced the utmost harm that fate can do, +and henceforth could possess himself of what was left of life in peace. +He could never have been a man of the flowing ease that makes all comers +at home; some people complained of a certain ‘gene’ in him; and he had a +reserve with strangers, which never quite lost itself in the abandon of +friendship, as Lowell’s did. He was the most perfectly modest man I ever +saw, ever imagined, but he had a gentle dignity which I do not believe +any one, the coarsest, the obtusest, could trespass upon. In the years +when I began to know him, his long hair and the beautiful beard which +mixed with it were of one iron-gray, which I saw blanch to a perfect +silver, while that pearly tone of his complexion, which Appleton so +admired, lost itself in the wanness of age and pain. When he walked, he +had a kind of spring in his gait, as if now and again a buoyant thought +lifted him from the ground. It was fine to meet him coming down a +Cambridge street; you felt that the encounter made you a part of literary +history, and set you apart with him for the moment from the poor and +mean. When he appeared in Harvard Square, he beatified if not beautified +the ugliest and vulgarest looking spot on the planet outside of New York. +You could meet him sometimes at the market, if you were of the same +provision-man as he; and Longfellow remained as constant to his +tradespeople as to any other friends. He rather liked to bring his +proofs back to the printer’s himself, and we often found ourselves +together at the University Press, where the Atlantic Monthly used to be +printed. But outside of his own house Longfellow seemed to want a fit +atmosphere, and I love best to think of him in his study, where he +wrought at his lovely art with a serenity expressed in his smooth, +regular, and scrupulously perfect handwriting. It was quite vertical, +and rounded, with a slope neither to the right nor left, and at the time +I knew him first, he was fond of using a soft pencil on printing paper, +though commonly he wrote with a quill. Each letter was distinct in +shape, and between the verses was always the exact space of half an inch. +I have a good many of his poems written in this fashion, but whether they +were the first drafts or not I cannot say; very likely not. Towards the +last he no longer sent his poems to the magazines in his own hand; but +they were always signed in autograph. + +I once asked him if he were not a great deal interrupted, and he said, +with a faint sigh, Not more than was good for him, he fancied; if it were +not for the interruptions, he might overwork. He was not a friend to +stated exercise, I believe, nor fond of walking, as Lowell was; he had +not, indeed, the childish associations of the younger poet with the +Cambridge neighborhoods; and I never saw him walking for pleasure except +on the east veranda of his house, though I was told he loved walking in +his youth. In this and in some other things Longfellow was more European +than American, more Latin than Saxon. He once said quaintly that one got +a great deal of exercise in putting on and off one’s overcoat and +overshoes. + +I suppose no one who asked decently at his door was denied access to him, +and there must have been times when he was overrun with volunteer +visitors; but I never heard him complain of them. He was very charitable +in the immediate sort which Christ seems to have meant; but he had his +preferences; humorously owned, among beggars. He liked the German +beggars least, and the Italian beggars most, as having most savair-faire; +in fact, we all loved the Italians in Cambridge. He was pleased with the +accounts I could give him of the love and honor I had known for him in +Italy, and one day there came a letter from an Italian admirer, addressed +to “Mr. Greatest Poet Longfellow,” which he said was the very most +amusing superscription he had ever seen. + +It is known that the King of Italy offered Longfellow the cross of San +Lazzaro, which is the Italian literary decoration. It came through the +good offices of my old acquaintance Professor Messadaglia, then a deputy +in the Italian Parliament, whom, for some reason I cannot remember, I had +put in correspondence with Longfellow. The honor was wholly unexpected, +and it brought Longfellow a distress which was chiefly for the gentleman +who had procured him the impossible distinction. He showed me the pretty +collar and cross, not, I think, without a natural pleasure in it. No man +was ever less a bigot in things civil or religious than he, but he said, +firmly, “Of course, as a republican and a Protestant, I can’t accept a +decoration from a Catholic prince.” His decision was from his +conscience, and I think that all Americans who think duly about it will +approve his decision. + + + + +VI. + +Such honors as he could fitly permit himself he did not refuse, and I +recall what zest he had in his election to the Arcadian Academy, which +had made him a shepherd of its Roman Fold, with the title, as he said, of +“Olimipico something.” But I fancy his sweetest pleasure in his vast +renown came from his popular recognition everywhere. Few were the lands, +few the languages he was unknown to: he showed me a version of the “Psalm +of Life” in Chinese. Apparently even the poor lost autograph-seeker was +not denied by his universal kindness; I know that he kept a store of +autographs ready written on small squares of paper for all who applied by +letter or in person; he said it was no trouble; but perhaps he was to be +excused for refusing the request of a lady for fifty autographs, which +she wished to offer as a novel attraction to her guests at a lunch party. + +Foreigners of all kinds thronged upon him at their pleasure, apparently, +and with perfect impunity. Sometimes he got a little fun, very, very +kindly, out of their excuses and reasons; and the Englishman who came to +see him because there were no ruins to visit in America was no fable, as +I can testify from the poet himself. But he had no prejudice against +Englishmen, and even at a certain time when the coarse-handed British +criticism began to blame his delicate art for the universal acceptance of +his verse, and to try to sneer him into the rank of inferior poets, he +was without rancor for the clumsy misliking that he felt. He could not +understand rudeness; he was too finely framed for that; he could know it +only as Swedenborg’s most celestial angels perceived evil, as something +distressful, angular. The ill-will that seemed nearly always to go with +adverse criticism made him distrust criticism, and the discomfort which +mistaken or blundering praise gives probably made him shy of all +criticism. He said that in his early life as an author he used to seek +out and save all the notices of his poems, but in his latter days he read +only those that happened to fall in his way; these he cut out and amused +his leisure by putting together in scrapbooks. He was reluctant to make +any criticism of other poets; I do not remember ever to have heard him +make one; and his writings show no trace of the literary dislikes or +contempts which we so often mistake in ourselves for righteous judgments. +No doubt he had his resentments, but he hushed them in his heart, which +he did not suffer them to embitter. While Poe was writing of “Longfellow +and other Plagiarists,” Longfellow was helping to keep Poe alive by the +loans which always made themselves gifts in Poe’s case. He very, very +rarely spoke of himself at all, and almost never of the grievances which +he did not fail to share with all who live. + +He was patient, as I said, of all things, and gentle beyond all mere +gentlemanliness. But it would have been a great mistake to mistake his +mildness for softness. It was most manly and firm; and of course it was +braced with the New England conscience he was born to. If he did not +find it well to assert himself, he was prompt in behalf of his friends, +and one of the fine things told of him was his resenting some censures of +Sumner at a dinner in Boston during the old pro-slavery times: he said to +the gentlemen present that Sumner was his friend, and he must leave their +company if they continued to assail him. + +But he spoke almost as rarely of his friends as of himself. He liked the +large, impersonal topics which could be dealt with on their human side, +and involved characters rather than individuals. This was rather strange +in Cambridge, where we were apt to take our instances from the +environment. It was not the only thing he was strange in there; he was +not to that manner born; he lacked the final intimacies which can come +only of birth and lifelong association, and which make the men of the +Boston breed seem exclusive when they least feel so; he was Longfellow to +the friends who were James, and Charles, and Wendell to one another. He +and Hawthorne were classmates at college, but I never heard him mention +Hawthorne; I never heard him mention Whittier or Emerson. I think his +reticence about his contemporaries was largely due to his reluctance from +criticism: he was the finest artist of them all, and if he praised he +must have praised with the reservations of an honest man. Of younger +writers he was willing enough to speak. No new contributor made his mark +in the magazine unnoted by him, and sometimes I showed him verse in +manuscript which gave me peculiar pleasure. I remember his liking for +the first piece that Mr. Maurice Thompson sent me, and how he tasted the +fresh flavor of it, and inhaled its wild new fragrance. He admired the +skill of some of the young story-tellers; he praised the subtlety of one +in working out an intricate character, and said modestly that he could +never have done that sort of thing himself. It was entirely safe to +invite his judgment when in doubt, for he never suffered it to become +aggressive, or used it to urge upon me the manuscripts that must often +have been urged upon him. + +Longfellow had a house at Nahant where he went every summer for more than +a quarter of a century. He found the slight transition change enough +from Cambridge, and liked it perhaps because it did not take him beyond +the range of the friends and strangers whose company he liked. Agassiz +was there, and Appleton; Sumner came to sojourn with him; and the +tourists of all nations found him there in half an hour after they +reached Boston. His cottage was very plain and simple, but was rich in +the sight of the illimitable, sea, and it had a luxury of rocks at the +foot of its garden, draped with sea-weed, and washed with the +indefatigable tides. As he grew older and feebler he ceased to go to +Nahant; he remained the whole year round at Cambridge; he professed to +like the summer which he said warmed him through there, better than the +cold spectacle of summer which had no such effect at Nahant. + +The hospitality which was constant at either house was not merely of the +worldly sort. Longfellow loved good cheer; he tasted history and poetry +in a precious wine; and he liked people who were acquainted with manners +and men, and brought the air of capitals with them. But often the man +who dined with Longfellow was the man who needed a dinner; and from what +I have seen of the sweet courtesy that governed at that board, I am sure +that such a man could never have felt himself the least honored guest. +The poet’s heart was open to all the homelessness of the world; and I +remember how once when we sat at his table and I spoke of his poem of +“The Challenge,” then a new poem, and said how I had been touched by the +fancy of + + “The poverty-stricken millions + Who challenge our wine and bread, + And impeach us all as traitors, + Both the living and the dead,” + +his voice sank in grave humility as he answered, “Yes, I often think of +those things.” He had thought of them in the days of the slave, when he +had taken his place with the friends of the hopeless and hapless, and as +long as he lived he continued of the party which had freed the slave. He +did not often speak of politics, but when the movement of some of the +best Republicans away from their party began, he said that he could not +see the wisdom of their course. But this was said without censure or +criticism of them, and so far as I know he never permitted himself +anything like denunciation of those who in any wise differed from him. On +a matter of yet deeper interest, I do not feel authorized to speak for +him, but I think that as he grew older, his hold upon anything like a +creed weakened, though he remained of the Unitarian philosophy concerning +Christ. He did not latterly go to church, I believe; but then, very few +of his circle were church-goers. Once he said something very vague and +uncertain concerning the doctrine of another life when I affirmed my hope +of it, to the effect that he wished he could be sure, with the sigh that +so often clothed the expression of a misgiving with him. + + + + +VII. + +When my acquaintance with Longfellow began he had written the things that +made his fame, and that it will probably rest upon: “Evangeline,” + “Hiawatha,” and the “Courtship of Miles Standish” were by that time old +stories. But during the eighteen years that I knew him he produced the +best of his minor poems, the greatest of his sonnets, the sweetest of his +lyrics. His art ripened to the last, it grew richer and finer, and it +never knew decay. He rarely read anything of his own aloud, but in three +or four cases he read to me poems he had just finished, as if to give +himself the pleasure of hearing them with the sympathetic sense of +another. The hexameter piece, “Elizabeth,” in the third part of “Tales +of a Wayside Inn,” was one of these, and he liked my liking its +rhythmical form, which I believed one of the measures best adapted to the +English speech, and which he had used himself with so much pleasure and +success. + +About this time he was greatly interested in the slight experiments I was +beginning to make in dramatic form, and he said that if he were himself a +young man he should write altogether for the stage; he thought the drama +had a greater future with us. He was pleased when a popular singer +wished to produce his “Masque of Pandora,” with music, and he was patient +when it failed of the effect hoped for it as an opera. When the late +Lawrence Barrett, in the enthusiasm which was one of the fine traits of +his generous character, had taken my play of “A Counterfeit Presentment,” + and came to the Boston Museum with it, Longfellow could not apparently +have been more zealous for its popular acceptance if it had been his own +work. He invited himself to one of the rehearsals with me, and he sat +with me on the stage through the four acts with a fortitude which I still +wonder at, and with the keenest zest for all the details of the +performance. No finer testimony to the love and honor which all kinds of +people had for him could have been given than that shown by the actors +and employees of the theatre, high and low. They thronged the scenery, +those who were not upon the stage, and at the edge of every wing were +faces peering round at the poet, who sat unconscious of their adoration, +intent upon the play. He was intercepted at every step in going out, and +made to put his name to the photographs of himself which his worshippers +produced from their persons. + +He came to the first night of the piece, and when it seemed to be finding +favor with the public, he leaned forward out of his line to nod and smile +at the author; when they, had the author up, it was the sweetest flattery +of the applause which abused his fondness that Longfellow clapped first +and loudest. + +Where once he had given his kindness he could not again withhold it, and +he was anxious no fact should be interpreted as withdrawal. When the +Emperor Dom Pedro of Brazil, who was so great a lover of Longfellow, came +to Boston, he asked himself out to dine with the poet, who had expected +to offer him some such hospitality. Soon after, Longfellow met me, and +as if eager to forestall a possible feeling in me, said, “I wanted to ask +you to dinner with the Emperor, but he not only sent word he was coming, +he named his fellow-guests!” I answered that though I should probably +never come so near dining with an emperor again, I prized his wish to ask +me much more than the chance I had missed; and with this my great and +good friend seemed a little consoled. I believe that I do not speak too +confidently of our relation. He was truly the friend of all men, but I +had certainly the advantage of my propinquity. We were near neighbors, as +the pleonasm has it, both when I lived on Berkeley Street and after I had +built my own house on Concord Avenue; and I suppose he found my youthful +informality convenient. He always asked me to dinner when his old friend +Greene came to visit him, and then we had an Italian time together, with +more or less repetition in our talk, of what we had said before of +Italian poetry and Italian character. One day there came a note from him +saying, in effect, “Salvini is coming out to dine with me tomorrow night, +and I want you to come too. There will be no one else but Greene and +myself, and we will have an Italian dinner.” + +Unhappily I had accepted a dinner in Boston for that night, and this +invitation put me in great misery. I must keep my engagement, but how +could I bear to miss meeting Salvini at Longfellow’s table on terms like +these? We consulted at home together and questioned whether I might not +rush into Boston, seek out my host there, possess him of the facts, and +frankly throw myself on his mercy. Then a sudden thought struck us: Go +to Longfellow, and submit the case to him! I went, and he entered with +delicate sympathy into the affair. But he decided that, taking the large +view of it, I must keep my engagement, lest I should run even a remote +risk of wounding my friend’s susceptibilities. I obeyed, and I had a +very good time, but I still feel that I missed the best time of my life, +and that I ought to be rewarded for my sacrifice, somewhere. + +Longfellow so rarely spoke of himself in any way that one heard from him +few of those experiences of the distinguished man in contact with the +undistinguished, which he must have had so abundantly. But he told, +while it was fresh in his mind, an incident that happened to him one day +in Boston at a tobacconist’s, where a certain brand of cigars was +recommended to him as the kind Longfellow smoked. “Ah, then I must have +some of them; and I will ask you to send me a box,” said Longfellow, and +he wrote down his name and address. The cigar-dealer read it with the +smile of a worsted champion, and said, “Well, I guess you had me, that +time.” At a funeral a mourner wished to open conversation, and by way of +suggesting a theme of common interest, began, “You’ve buried, I believe?” + +Sometimes people were shown by the poet through Craigie House who had no +knowledge of it except that it had been Washington’s headquarters. Of +course Longfellow was known by sight to every one in Cambridge. He was +daily in the streets, while his health endured, and as he kept no +carriage, he was often to be met in the horse-cars, which were such +common ground in Cambridge that they were often like small invited +parties of friends when they left Harvard Square, so that you expected +the gentlemen to jump up and ask the ladies whether they would have +chicken salad. In civic and political matters he mingled so far as to +vote regularly, and he voted with his party, trusting it for a general +regard to the public welfare. + +I fancy he was somewhat shy of his fellow-men, as the scholar seems +always to be, from the sequestered habit of his life; but I think +Longfellow was incapable of marking any difference between himself and +them. I never heard from him anything that was ‘de haut en bas’, when he +spoke of people, and in Cambridge, where there was a good deal of +contempt for the less lettered, and we liked to smile though we did not +like to sneer, and to analyze if we did not censure, Longfellow and +Longfellow’s house were free of all that. Whatever his feeling may have +been towards other sorts and conditions of men, his effect was of an +entire democracy. He was always the most unassuming person in any +company, and at some large public dinners where I saw him I found him +patient of the greater attention that more public men paid themselves and +one another. He was not a speaker, and I never saw him on his feet at +dinner, except once, when he read a poem for Whittier, who was absent. He +disliked after-dinner speaking, and made conditions for his own exemption +from it. + + + + +VIII. + +Once your friend, Longfellow was always your friend; he would not think +evil of you, and if he knew evil of you, he would be the last of all that +knew it to judge you for it. This may have been from the impersonal +habit of his mind, but I believe it was also the effect of principle, for +he would do what he could to arrest the delivery of judgment from others, +and would soften the sentences passed in his presence. Naturally this +brought him under some condemnation with those of a severer cast; and I +have heard him criticised for his benevolence towards all, and his +constancy to some who were not quite so true to themselves, perhaps. But +this leniency of Longfellow’s was what constituted him great as well as +good, for it is not our wisdom that censures others. As for his +goodness, I never saw a fault in him. I do not mean to say that he had +no faults, or that there were no better men, but only to give the witness +of my knowledge concerning him. I claim in no wise to have been his +intimate; such a thing was not possible in my case for quite apparent +reasons; and I doubt if Longfellow was capable of intimacy in the sense +we mostly attach to the word. Something more of egotism than I ever +found in him must go to the making of any intimacy which did not come +from the tenderest affections of his heart. But as a man shows himself +to those often with him, and in his noted relations with other men, he +showed himself without blame. All men that I have known, besides, have +had some foible (it often endeared them the more), or some meanness, or +pettiness, or bitterness; but Longfellow had none, nor the suggestion of +any. No breath of evil ever touched his name; he went in and out among +his fellow-men without the reproach that follows wrong; the worst thing I +ever heard said of him was that he had ‘gene’, and this was said by one +of those difficult Cambridge men who would have found ‘gene’ in a +celestial angel. Something that Bjornstjerne Bjornson wrote to me when +he was leaving America after a winter in Cambridge, comes nearer +suggesting Longfellow than all my talk. The Norsemen, in the days of +their stormy and reluctant conversion, used always to speak of Christ as +the White Christ, and Bjornson said in his letter, “Give my love to the +White Mr. Longfellow.” + +A good many, years before Longfellow’s death he began to be sleepless, +and he suffered greatly. He said to me once that he felt as if he were +going about with his heart in a kind of mist. The whole night through he +would not be aware of having slept. “But,” he would add, with his +heavenly patience, “I always get a good deal of rest from lying down so +long.” I cannot say whether these conditions persisted, or how much his +insomnia had to do with his breaking health; three or four years before +the end came, we left Cambridge for a house farther in the country, and I +saw him less frequently than before. He did not allow our meetings to +cease; he asked me to dinner from time to time, as if to keep them up, +but it could not be with the old frequency. Once he made a point of +coming to see us in our cottage on the hill west of Cambridge, but it was +with an effort not visible in the days when he could end one of his brief +walks at our house on Concord Avenue; he never came but he left our house +more luminous for his having been there. Once he came to supper there to +meet Garfield (an old family friend of mine in Ohio), and though he was +suffering from a heavy cold, he would not scant us in his stay. I had +some very bad sherry which he drank with the serenity of a martyr, and I +shudder to this day to think what his kindness must have cost him. He +told his story of the clothes-line ghost, and Garfield matched it with +the story of an umbrella ghost who sheltered a friend of his through a +midnight storm, but was not cheerful company to his beneficiary, who +passed his hand through him at one point in the effort to take his arm. + +After the end of four years I came to Cambridge to be treated for a long +sickness, which had nearly been my last, and when I could get about I +returned the visit Longfellow had not failed to pay me. But I did not +find him, and I never saw him again in life. I went into Boston to +finish the winter of 1881-2, and from time to time I heard that the poet +was failing in health. As soon as I felt able to bear the horse-car +journey I went out to Cambridge to see him. I had knocked once at his +door, the friendly door that had so often opened to his welcome, and +stood with the knocker in my hand when the door was suddenly set ajar, +and a maid showed her face wet with tears. “How is Mr. Longfellow?” I +palpitated, and with a burst of grief she answered, “Oh, the poor +gentleman has just departed!” I turned away as if from a helpless +intrusion at a death-bed. + +At the services held in the house before the obsequies at the cemetery, I +saw the poet for the last time, where + + “Dead he lay among his books,” + +in the library behind his study. Death seldom fails to bring serenity to +all, and I will not pretend that there was a peculiar peacefulness in +Longfellow’s noble mask, as I saw it then. It was calm and benign as it +had been in life; he could not have worn a gentler aspect in going out of +the world than he had always worn in it; he had not to wait for death to +dignify it with “the peace of God.” All who were left of his old +Cambridge were present, and among those who had come farther was Emerson. +He went up to the bier, and with his arms crossed on his breast, and his +elbows held in either hand, stood with his head pathetically fallen +forward, looking down at the dead face. Those who knew how his memory +was a mere blank, with faint gleams of recognition capriciously coming +and going in it, must have felt that he was struggling to remember who it +was lay there before him; and for me the electly simple words confessing +his failure will always be pathetic with his remembered aspect: “The +gentleman we have just been burying,” he said, to the friend who had come +with him, “was a sweet and beautiful soul; but I forget his name.” + +I had the privilege and honor of looking over the unprinted poems +Longfellow left behind him, and of helping to decide which of them should +be published. + +There were not many of them, and some of these few were quite +fragmentary. I gave my voice for the publication of all that had any +sort of completeness, for in every one there was a touch of his exquisite +art, the grace of his most lovely spirit. We have so far had two men +only who felt the claim of their gift to the very best that the most +patient skill could give its utterance: one was Hawthorne and the other +was Longfellow. I shall not undertake to say which was the greater +artist of these two; but I am sure that every one who has studied it must +feel with me that the art of Longfellow held out to the end with no touch +of decay in it, and that it equalled the art of any other poet of his +time. It knew when to give itself, and more and more it knew when to +withhold itself. + +What Longfellow’s place in literature will be, I shall not offer to say; +that is Time’s affair, not mine; but I am sure that with Tennyson and +Browning he fully shared in the expression of an age which more +completely than any former age got itself said by its poets. + + + + +STUDIES OF LOWELL + +I have already spoken of my earliest meetings with Lowell at Cambridge +when I came to New England on a literary pilgrimage from the West in +1860. I saw him more and more after I went to live in Cambridge in 1866; +and I now wish to record what I knew of him during the years that passed +between this date and that of his death. If the portrait I shall try to +paint does not seem a faithful likeness to others who knew him, I shall +only claim that so he looked to me, at this moment and at that. If I do +not keep myself quite out of the picture, what painter ever did? + + + + +I. + +It was in the summer of 1865 that I came home from my consular post at +Venice; and two weeks after I landed in Boston, I went out to see Lowell +at Elmwood, and give him an inkstand that I had brought him from Italy. +The bronze lobster whose back opened and disclosed an inkpot and a +sand-box was quite ugly; but I thought it beautiful then, and if Lowell +thought otherwise he never did anything to let me know it. He put the +thing in the middle of his writing-table (he nearly always wrote on a +pasteboard pad resting upon his knees), and there it remained as long as +I knew the place--a matter of twenty-five years; but in all that time I +suppose the inkpot continued as dry as the sand-box. + +My visit was in the heat of August, which is as fervid in Cambridge as it +can well be anywhere, and I still have a sense of his study windows +lifted to the summer night, and the crickets and grasshoppers crying in +at them from the lawns and the gardens outside. Other people went away +from Cambridge in the summer to the sea and to the mountains, but Lowell +always stayed at Elmwood, in an impassioned love for his home and for his +town. I must have found him there in the afternoon, and he must have +made me sup with him (dinner was at two o’clock) and then go with him for +a long night of talk in his study. He liked to have some one help him +idle the time away, and keep him as long as possible from his work; and +no doubt I was impersonally serving his turn in this way, aside from any +pleasure he might have had in my company as some one he had always been +kind to, and as a fresh arrival from the Italy dear to us both. + +He lighted his pipe, and from the depths of his easychair, invited my shy +youth to all the ease it was capable of in his presence. It was not +much; I loved him, and he gave me reason to think that he was fond of me, +but in Lowell I was always conscious of an older and closer and stricter +civilization than my own, an unbroken tradition, a more authoritative +status. His democracy was more of the head and mine more of the heart, +and his denied the equality which mine affirmed. But his nature was so +noble and his reason so tolerant that whenever in our long acquaintance I +found it well to come to open rebellion, as I more than once did, he +admitted my right of insurrection, and never resented the outbreak. I +disliked to differ with him, and perhaps he subtly felt this so much that +he would not dislike me for doing it. He even suffered being taxed with +inconsistency, and where he saw that he had not been quite just, he would +take punishment for his error, with a contrition that was sometimes +humorous and always touching. + +Just then it was the dark hour before the dawn with Italy, and he was +interested but not much encouraged by what I could tell him of the +feeling in Venice against the Austrians. He seemed to reserve a like +scepticism concerning the fine things I was hoping for the Italians in +literature, and he confessed an interest in the facts treated which in +the retrospect, I am aware, was more tolerant than participant of my +enthusiasm. That was always Lowell’s attitude towards the opinions of +people he liked, when he could not go their lengths with them, and +nothing was more characteristic of his affectionate nature and his just +intelligence. He was a man of the most strenuous convictions, but he +loved many sorts of people whose convictions he disagreed with, and he +suffered even prejudices counter to his own if they were not ignoble. In +the whimsicalities of others he delighted as much as in his own. + + + + +II. + +Our associations with Italy held over until the next day, when after +breakfast he went with me towards Boston as far as “the village”: for so +he liked to speak of Cambridge in the custom of his younger days when +wide tracts of meadow separated Harvard Square from his life-long home at +Elmwood. We stood on the platform of the horsecar together, and when I +objected to his paying my fare in the American fashion, he allowed that +the Italian usage of each paying for himself was the politer way. He +would not commit himself about my returning to Venice (for I had not +given up my place, yet, and was away on leave), but he intimated his +distrust of the flattering conditions of life abroad. He said it was +charming to be treated ‘da signore’, but he seemed to doubt whether it +was well; and in this as in all other things he showed his final fealty +to the American ideal. + +It was that serious and great moment after the successful close of the +civil war when the republican consciousness was more robust in us than +ever before or since; but I cannot recall any reference to the historical +interest of the time in Lowell’s talk. It had been all about literature +and about travel; and now with the suggestion of the word village it +began to be a little about his youth. I have said before how reluctant +he was to let his youth go from him; and perhaps the touch with my +juniority had made him realize how near he was to fifty, and set him +thinking of the past which had sorrows in it to age him beyond his years. +He would never speak of these, though he often spoke of the past. He +told once of having been on a brief journey when he was six years old, +with his father, and of driving up to the gate of Elmwood in the evening, +and his father saying, “Ah, this is a pleasant place! I wonder who lives +here--what little boy?” At another time he pointed out a certain window +in his study, and said he could see himself standing by it when he could +only get his chin on the window-sill. His memories of the house, and of +everything belonging to it, were very tender; but he could laugh over an +escapade of his youth when he helped his fellow-students pull down his +father’s fences, in the pure zeal of good-comradeship. + + + + +III. + +My fortunes took me to New York, and I spent most of the winter of 1865-6 +writing in the office of ‘The Nation’. I contributed several sketches of +Italian travel to that paper; and one of these brought me a precious +letter from Lowell. He praised my sketch, which he said he had read +without the least notion who had written it, and he wanted me to feel the +full value of such an impersonal pleasure in it. At the same time he did +not fail to tell me that he disliked some pseudo-cynical verses of mine +which he had read in another place; and I believe it was then that he +bade me “sweat the Heine out of” me, “as men sweat the mercury out of +their bones.” + +When I was asked to be assistant editor of the Atlantic Monthly, and came +on to Boston to talk the matter over with the publishers, I went out to +Cambridge and consulted Lowell. He strongly urged me to take the +position (I thought myself hopefully placed in New York on The Nation); +and at the same time he seemed to have it on his heart to say that he had +recommended some one else for it, never, he owned, having thought of me. + +He was most cordial, but after I came to live in Cambridge (where the +magazine was printed, and I could more conveniently look over the +proofs), he did not call on me for more than a month, and seemed quite to +have forgotten me. We met one night at Mr. Norton’s, for one of the +Dante readings, and he took no special notice of me till I happened to +say something that offered him a chance to give me a little humorous +snub. I was speaking of a paper in the Magazine on the “Claudian +Emissary,” and I demanded (no doubt a little too airily) something like +“Who in the world ever heard of the Claudian Emissary?” “You are in +Cambridge, Mr. Howells,” Lowell answered, and laughed at my confusion. +Having put me down, he seemed to soften towards me, and at parting he +said, with a light of half-mocking tenderness in his beautiful eyes, +“Goodnight, fellow-townsman.” “I hardly knew we were fellow-townsmen,” I +returned. He liked that, apparently, and said he had been meaning to +call upon me; and that he was coming very soon. + +He was as good as his word, and after that hardly a week of any kind of +weather passed but he mounted the steps to the door of the ugly little +house in which I lived, two miles away from him, and asked me to walk. +These walks continued, I suppose, until Lowell went abroad for a winter +in the early seventies. They took us all over Cambridge, which he knew +and loved every inch of, and led us afield through the straggling, +unhandsome outskirts, bedrabbled with squalid Irish neighborhoods, and +fraying off into marshes and salt meadows. He liked to indulge an excess +of admiration for the local landscape, and though I never heard him +profess a preference for the Charles River flats to the finest Alpine +scenery, I could well believe he would do so under provocation of a fit +listener’s surprise. He had always so much of the boy in him that he +liked to tease the over-serious or over-sincere. He liked to tease and +he liked to mock, especially his juniors, if any touch of affectation, or +any little exuberance of manner gave him the chance; when he once came to +fetch me, and the young mistress of the house entered with a certain +excessive elasticity, he sprang from his seat, and minced towards her, +with a burlesque of her buoyant carriage which made her laugh. When he +had given us his heart in trust of ours, he used us like a younger +brother and sister; or like his own children. He included our children +in his affection, and he enjoyed our fondness for them as if it were +something that had come back to him from his own youth. I think he had +also a sort of artistic, a sort of ethical pleasure in it, as being of +the good tradition, of the old honest, simple material, from which +pleasing effects in literature and civilization were wrought. He liked +giving the children books, and writing tricksy fancies in these, where he +masked as a fairy prince; and as long as he lived he remembered his early +kindness for them. + + + + +IV. + +In those walks of ours I believe he did most of the talking, and from his +talk then and at other times there remains to me an impression of his +growing conservatism. I had in fact come into his life when it had spent +its impulse towards positive reform, and I was to be witness of its +increasing tendency towards the negative sort. He was quite past the +storm and stress of his anti-slavery age; with the close of the war which +had broken for him all his ideals of inviolable peace, he had reached the +age of misgiving. I do not mean that I ever heard him express doubt of +what he had helped to do, or regret for what he had done; but I know that +he viewed with critical anxiety what other men were doing with the +accomplished facts. His anxiety gave a cast of what one may call +reluctance from the political situation, and turned him back towards +those civic and social defences which he had once seemed willing to +abandon. I do not mean that he lost faith in democracy; this faith he +constantly then and signally afterwards affirmed; but he certainly had no +longer any faith in insubordination as a means of grace. He preached a +quite Socratic reverence for law, as law, and I remember that once when I +had got back from Canada in the usual disgust for the American +custom-house, and spoke lightly of smuggling as not an evil in itself, +and perhaps even a right under our vexatious tariff, he would not have +it, but held that the illegality of the act made it a moral of fence. +This was not the logic that would have justified the attitude of the +anti-slavery men towards the fugitive slave act; but it was in accord +with Lowell’s feeling about John Brown, whom he honored while always +condemning his violation of law; and it was in the line of all his later +thinking. In this, he wished you to agree with him, or at least he +wished to make you; but he did not wish you to be more of his mind than +he was himself. In one of those squalid Irish neighborhoods I confessed +a grudge (a mean and cruel grudge, I now think it) for the increasing +presence of that race among us, but this did not please him; and I am +sure that whatever misgiving he had as to the future of America, he would +not have had it less than it had been the refuge and opportunity of the +poor of any race or color. Yet he would not have had it this alone. +There was a line in his poem on Agassiz which he left out of the printed +version, at the fervent entreaty of his friends, as saying too bitterly +his disappointment with his country. Writing at the distance of Europe, +and with America in the perspective which the alien environment clouded, +he spoke of her as “The Land of Broken Promise.” It was a splendid +reproach, but perhaps too dramatic to bear the full test of analysis, and +yet it had the truth in it, and might, I think, have usefully stood, to +the end of making people think. Undoubtedly it expressed his sense of +the case, and in the same measure it would now express that of many who +love their country most among us. It is well to hold one’s country to +her promises, and if there are any who think she is forgetting them it is +their duty to say so, even to the point of bitter accusation. I do not +suppose it was the “common man” of Lincoln’s dream that Lowell thought +America was unfaithful to, though as I have suggested he could be tender +of the common man’s hopes in her; but he was impeaching in that blotted +line her sincerity with the uncommon man: the man who had expected of her +a constancy to the ideals of her youth end to the high martyr-moods of +the war which had given an unguarded and bewildering freedom to a race of +slaves. He was thinking of the shame of our municipal corruptions, the +debased quality of our national statesmanship, the decadence of our whole +civic tone, rather than of the increasing disabilities of the +hard-working poor, though his heart when he thought of them was with +them, too, as it was in “the time when the slave would not let him +sleep.” + +He spoke very rarely of those times, perhaps because their political and +social associations were so knit up with the saddest and tenderest +personal memories, which it was still anguish to touch. Not only was he + + “--not of the race + That hawk, their sorrows in the market place,” + +but so far as my witness went he shrank from mention of them. I do not +remember hearing him speak of the young wife who influenced him so +potently at the most vital moment, and turned him from his whole +scholarly and aristocratic tradition to an impassioned championship of +the oppressed; and he never spoke of the children he had lost. I recall +but one allusion to the days when he was fighting the anti-slavery battle +along the whole line, and this was with a humorous relish of his Irish +servant’s disgust in having to wait upon a negro whom he had asked to his +table. + +He was rather severe in his notions of the subordination his domestics +owed him. They were “to do as they were bid,” and yet he had a +tenderness for such as had been any time with him, which was wounded when +once a hired man long in his employ greedily overreached him in a certain +transaction. He complained of that with a simple grief for the man’s +indelicacy after so many favors from him, rather than with any +resentment. His hauteur towards his dependents was theoretic; his actual +behavior was of the gentle consideration common among Americans of good +breeding, and that recreant hired man had no doubt never been suffered to +exceed him in shows of mutual politeness. Often when the maid was about +weightier matters, he came and opened his door to me himself, welcoming +me with the smile that was like no other. Sometimes he said, “Siete il +benvenuto,” or used some other Italian phrase, which put me at ease with +him in the region where we were most at home together. + +Looking back I must confess that I do not see what it was he found to +make him wish for my company, which he presently insisted upon having +once a week at dinner. After the meal we turned into his study where we +sat before a wood fire in winter, and he smoked and talked. He smoked a +pipe which was always needing tobacco, or going out, so that I have the +figure of him before my eyes constantly getting out of his deep chair to +rekindle it from the fire with a paper lighter. He was often out of his +chair to get a book from the shelves that lined the walls, either for a +passage which he wished to read, or for some disputed point which he +wished to settle. If I had caused the dispute, he enjoyed putting me in +the wrong; if he could not, he sometimes whimsically persisted in his +error, in defiance of all authority; but mostly he had such reverence for +the truth that he would not question it even in jest. + +If I dropped in upon him in the afternoon I was apt to find him reading +the old French poets, or the plays of Calderon, or the ‘Divina Commedia’, +which he magnanimously supposed me much better acquainted with than I was +because I knew some passages of it by heart. One day I came in quoting + + “Io son, cantava, io son dolce Sirena, + Che i marinai in mezzo al mar dismago.” + +He stared at me in a rapture with the matchless music, and then uttered +all his adoration and despair in one word. “Damn!” he said, and no more. +I believe he instantly proposed a walk that day, as if his study walls +with all their vistas into the great literatures cramped his soul +liberated to a sense of ineffable beauty of the verse of the ‘somma +poeta’. But commonly be preferred to have me sit down with him there +among the mute witnesses of the larger part of his life. As I have +suggested in my own case, it did not matter much whether you brought +anything to the feast or not. If he liked you he liked being with you, +not for what he got, but for what he gave. He was fond of one man whom I +recall as the most silent man I ever met. I never heard him say +anything, not even a dull thing, but Lowell delighted in him, and would +have you believe that he was full of quaint humor. + + + + +V. + +While Lowell lived there was a superstition, which has perhaps survived +him, that he was an indolent man, wasting himself in barren studies and +minor efforts instead of devoting his great powers to some monumental +work worthy of them. If the robust body of literature, both poetry and +prose, which lives after him does not yet correct this vain delusion, the +time will come when it must; and in the meantime the delusion cannot vex +him now. I think it did vex him, then, and that he even shared it, and +tried at times to meet such shadowy claim as it had. One of the things +that people urged upon him was to write some sort of story, and it is +known how he attempted this in verse. It is less known that he attempted +it in prose, and that he went so far as to write the first chapter of a +novel. He read this to me, and though I praised it then, I have a +feeling now that if he had finished the novel it would have been a +failure. “But I shall never finish it,” he sighed, as if he felt +irremediable defects in it, and laid the manuscript away, to turn and +light his pipe. It was a rather old-fashioned study of a whimsical +character, and it did not arrive anywhere, so far as it went; but I +believe that it might have been different with a Yankee story in verse +such as we have fragmentarily in ‘The Nooning’ and ‘FitzAdam’s Story’. +Still, his gift was essentially lyrical and meditative, with the +universal New England tendency to allegory. He was wholly undramatic in +the actuation of the characters which he imagined so dramatically. He +liked to deal with his subject at first hand, to indulge through himself +all the whim and fancy which the more dramatic talent indulges through +its personages. + +He enjoyed writing such a poem as “The Cathedral,” which is not of his +best, but which is more immediately himself, in all his moods, than some +better poems. He read it to me soon after it was written, and in the +long walk which we went hard upon the reading (our way led us through the +Port far towards East Cambridge, where he wished to show me a tupelo-tree +of his acquaintance, because I said I had never seen one), his talk was +still of the poem which he was greatly in conceit of. Later his +satisfaction with it received a check from the reserves of other friends +concerning some whimsical lines which seemed to them too great a drop +from the higher moods of the piece. Their reluctance nettled him; +perhaps he agreed with them; but he would not change the lines, and they +stand as he first wrote them. In fact, most of his lines stand as he +first wrote them; he would often change them in revision, and then, in a +second revision go back to the first version. + +He was very sensitive to criticism, especially from those he valued +through his head or heart. He would try to hide his hurt, and he would +not let you speak of it, as though your sympathy unmanned him, but you +could see that he suffered. This notably happened in my remembrance from +a review in a journal which he greatly esteemed; and once when in a +notice of my own I had put one little thorny point among the flowers, he +confessed a puncture from it. He praised the criticism hardily, but I +knew that he winced under my recognition of the didactic quality which he +had not quite guarded himself against in the poetry otherwise praised. He +liked your liking, and he openly rejoiced in it; and I suppose he made +himself believe that in trying his verse with his friends he was testing +it; but I do not believe that he was, and I do not think he ever +corrected his judgment by theirs, however he suffered from it. + +In any matter that concerned literary morals he was more than eager to +profit by another eye. One summer he sent me for the Magazine a poem +which, when I read it, I trembled to find in motive almost exactly like +one we had lately printed by another contributor. There was nothing for +it but to call his attention to the resemblance, and I went over to +Elmwood with the two poems. He was not at home, and I was obliged to +leave the poems, I suppose with some sort of note, for the next morning’s +post brought me a delicious letter from him, all one cry of confession, +the most complete, the most ample. He did not trouble himself to say +that his poem was an unconscious reproduction of the other; that was for +every reason unnecessary, but he had at once rewritten it upon wholly +different lines; and I do not think any reader was reminded of Mrs. +Akers’s “Among the Laurels” by Lowell’s “Foot-path.” He was not only +much more sensitive of others’ rights than his own, but in spite of a +certain severity in him, he was most tenderly regardful of their +sensibilities when he had imagined them: he did not always imagine them. + + + + +VI. + +At this period, between the years 1866 and 1874, when he unwillingly went +abroad for a twelvemonth, Lowell was seen in very few Cambridge houses, +and in still fewer Boston houses. He was not an unsocial man, but he was +most distinctly not a society man. He loved chiefly the companionship of +books, and of men who loved books; but of women generally he had an +amusing diffidence; he revered them and honored them, but he would rather +not have had them about. This is over-saying it, of course, but the +truth is in what I say. There was never a more devoted husband, and he +was content to let his devotion to the sex end with that. He especially +could not abide difference of opinion in women; he valued their taste, +their wit, their humor, but he would have none of their reason. I was by +one day when he was arguing a point with one of his nieces, and after it +had gone on for some time, and the impartial witness must have owned that +she was getting the better of him he closed the controversy by giving her +a great kiss, with the words, “You are a very good girl, my dear,” and +practically putting her out of the room. As to women of the flirtatious +type, he did not dislike them; no man, perhaps, does; but he feared them, +and he said that with them there was but one way, and that was to run. + +I have a notion that at this period Lowell was more freely and fully +himself than at any other. The passions and impulses of his younger +manhood had mellowed, the sorrows of that time had softened; he could +blamelessly live to himself in his affections and his sobered ideals. His +was always a duteous life; but he had pretty well given up making man +over in his own image, as we all wish some time to do, and then no longer +wish it. He fulfilled his obligations to his fellow-men as these sought +him out, but he had ceased to seek them. He loved his friends and their +love, but he had apparently no desire to enlarge their circle. It was +that hour of civic suspense, in which public men seemed still actuated by +unselfish aims, and one not essentially a politician might contentedly +wait to see what would come of their doing their best. At any rate, +without occasionally withholding open criticism or acclaim Lowell waited +among his books for the wounds of the war to heal themselves, and the +nation to begin her healthfuller and nobler life. With slavery gone, +what might not one expect of American democracy! + +His life at Elmwood was of an entire simplicity. In the old colonial +mansion in which he was born, he dwelt in the embowering leafage, amid +the quiet of lawns and garden-plots broken by few noises ruder than those +from the elms and the syringas where + + “The oriole clattered and the cat-bird sang.” + +From the tracks on Brattle Street, came the drowsy tinkle of horse-car +bells; and sometimes a funeral trailed its black length past the corner +of his grounds, and lost itself from sight under the shadows of the +willows that hid Mount Auburn from his study windows. In the winter the +deep New England snows kept their purity in the stretch of meadow behind +the house, which a double row of pines guarded in a domestic privacy. All +was of a modest dignity within and without the house, which Lowell loved +but did not imagine of a manorial presence; and he could not conceal his +annoyance with an over-enthusiastic account of his home in which the +simple chiselling of some panels was vaunted as rich wood-carving. There +was a graceful staircase, and a good wide hall, from which the +dining-room and drawing-room opened by opposite doors; behind the last, +in the southwest corner of the house, was his study. + +There, literally, he lived during the six or seven years in which I knew +him after my coming to Cambridge. Summer and winter he sat there among +his books, seldom stirring abroad by day except for a walk, and by night +yet more rarely. He went to the monthly mid-day dinner of the Saturday +Club in Boston; he was very constant at the fortnightly meetings of his +whist-club, because he loved the old friends who formed it; he came +always to the Dante suppers at Longfellow’s, and he was familiarly in and +out at Mr. Norton’s, of course. But, otherwise, he kept to his study, +except for some rare and almost unwilling absences upon university +lecturing at Johns Hopkins or at Cornell. + +For four years I did not take any summer outing from Cambridge myself, +and my associations with Elmwood and with Lowell are more of summer than +of winter weather meetings. But often we went our walks through the +snows, trudging along between the horsecar tracks which enclosed the only +well-broken-out paths in that simple old Cambridge. I date one memorable +expression of his from such a walk, when, as we were passing Longfellow’s +house, in mid-street, he came as near the declaration of his religious +faith as he ever did in my presence. He was speaking of the New +Testament, and he said, The truth was in it; but they had covered it up +with their hagiology. Though he had been bred a Unitarian, and had more +and more liberated himself from all creeds, he humorously affected an +abiding belief in hell, and similarly contended for the eternal +punishment of the wicked. He was of a religious nature, and he was very +reverent of other people’s religious feelings. He expressed a special +tolerance for my own inherited faith, no doubt because Mrs. Lowell was +also a Swedenborgian; but I do not think he was interested in it, and I +suspect that all religious formulations bored him. In his earlier poems +are many intimations and affirmations of belief in an overruling +providence, and especially in the God who declares vengeance His and will +repay men for their evil deeds, and will right the weak against the +strong. I think he never quite lost this, though when, in the last years +of his life, I asked him if he believed there was a moral government of +the universe, he answered gravely and with a sort of pain, The scale was +so vast, and we saw such a little part of it. + +As to tine notion of a life after death, I never had any direct or +indirect expression from him; but I incline to the opinion that his hold +upon this weakened with his years, as it is sadly apt to do with men who +have read much and thought much: they have apparently exhausted their +potentialities of psychological life. Mystical Lowell was, as every poet +must be, but I do not think he liked mystery. One morning he told me +that when he came home the night before he had seen the Doppelganger of +one of his household: though, as he joked, he was not in a state to see +double. + +He then said he used often to see people’s Doppelganger; at another time, +as to ghosts, he said, He was like Coleridge: he had seen too many of +‘em. Lest any weaker brethren should be caused to offend by the +restricted oath which I have reported him using in a moment of transport +it may be best to note here that I never heard him use any other +imprecation, and this one seldom. + +Any grossness of speech was inconceivable of him; now and then, but only +very rarely, the human nature of some story “unmeet for ladies” was too +much for his sense of humor, and overcame him with amusement which he was +willing to impart, and did impart, but so that mainly the human nature of +it reached you. In this he was like the other great Cambridge men, +though he was opener than the others to contact with the commoner life. +He keenly delighted in every native and novel turn of phrase, and he +would not undervalue a vital word or a notion picked up out of the road +even if it had some dirt sticking to it. + +He kept as close to the common life as a man of his patrician instincts +and cloistered habits could. I could go to him with any new find about +it and be sure of delighting him; after I began making my involuntary and +all but unconscious studies of Yankee character, especially in the +country, he was always glad to talk them over with me. Still, when I had +discovered a new accent or turn of speech in the fields he had +cultivated, I was aware of a subtle grudge mingling with his pleasure; +but this was after all less envy than a fine regret. + +At the time I speak of there was certainly nothing in Lowell’s dress or +bearing that would have kept the common life aloof from him, if that life +were not always too proud to make advances to any one. In this +retrospect, I see him in the sack coat and rough suit which he wore upon +all out-door occasions, with heavy shoes, and a round hat. I never saw +him with a high hat on till he came home after his diplomatic stay in +London; then he had become rather rigorously correct in his costume, and +as conventional as he had formerly been indifferent. In both epochs he +was apt to be gloved, and the strong, broad hands, which left the +sensation of their vigor for some time after they had clasped yours, were +notably white. At the earlier period, he still wore his auburn hair +somewhat long; it was darker than his beard, which was branching and +full, and more straw-colored than auburn, as were his thick eyebrows; +neither hair nor beard was then touched with gray, as I now remember. +When he uncovered, his straight, wide, white forehead showed itself one +of the most beautiful that could be; his eyes were gay with humor, and +alert with all intelligence. He had an enchanting smile, a laugh that +was full of friendly joyousness, and a voice that was exquisite music. +Everything about him expressed his strenuous physical condition: he would +not wear an overcoat in the coldest Cambridge weather; at all times he +moved vigorously, and walked with a quick step, lifting his feet well +from the ground. + + + + +VII. + +It gives me a pleasure which I am afraid I cannot impart, to linger in +this effort to materialize his presence from the fading memories of the +past. I am afraid I can as little impart a due sense of what he +spiritually was to my knowledge. It avails nothing for me to say that I +think no man of my years and desert had ever so true and constant a +friend. He was both younger and older than I by insomuch as he was a +poet through and through, and had been out of college before I was born. +But he had already come to the age of self-distrust when a man likes to +take counsel with his juniors as with his elders, and fancies he can +correct his perspective by the test of their fresher vision. Besides, +Lowell was most simply and pathetically reluctant to part with youth, and +was willing to cling to it wherever he found it. He could not in any +wise bear to be left-out. When Mr. Bret Harte came to Cambridge, and the +talk was all of the brilliant character-poems with which he had then +first dazzled the world, Lowell casually said, with a most touching, +however ungrounded sense of obsolescence, He could remember when the +‘Biglow Papers’ were all the talk. I need not declare that there was +nothing ungenerous in that. He was only too ready to hand down his +laurels to a younger man; but he wished to do it himself. Through the +modesty that is always a quality of such a nature, he was magnanimously +sensitive to the appearance of fading interest; he could not take it +otherwise than as a proof of his fading power. I had a curious hint of +this when one year in making up the prospectus of the Magazine for the +next, I omitted his name because I had nothing special to promise from +him, and because I was half ashamed to be always flourishing it in the +eyes of the public. “I see that you have dropped me this year,” he +wrote, and I could see that it had hurt, and I knew that he was glad to +believe the truth when I told him. + +He did not care so much for popularity as for the praise of his friends. +If he liked you he wished you not only to like what he wrote, but to say +so. He was himself most cordial in his recognition of the things that +pleased him. What happened to me from him, happened to others, and I am +only describing his common habit when I say that nothing I did to his +liking failed to bring me a spoken or oftener a written acknowledgment. +This continued to the latest years of his life when the effort even to +give such pleasure must have cost him a physical pang. + +He was of a very catholic taste; and he was apt to be carried away by a +little touch of life or humor, and to overvalue the piece in which he +found it; but, mainly his judgments of letters and men were just. One of +the dangers of scholarship was a peculiar danger in the Cambridge +keeping, but Lowell was almost as averse as Longfellow from contempt. He +could snub, and pitilessly, where he thought there was presumption and +apparently sometimes merely because he was in the mood; but I cannot +remember ever to have heard him sneer. He was often wonderfully patient +of tiresome people, and sometimes celestially insensible to vulgarity. In +spite of his reserve, he really wished people to like him; he was keenly +alive to neighborly good-will or ill-will; and when there was a question +of widening Elmwood avenue by taking part of his grounds, he was keenly +hurt by hearing that some one who lived near him had said he hoped the +city would cut down Lowell’s elms: his English elms, which his father had +planted, and with which he was himself almost one blood! + + + + +VIII. + +In the period of which I am speaking, Lowell was constantly writing and +pretty constantly printing, though still the superstition held that he +was an idle man. To this time belongs the publication of some of his +finest poems, if not their inception: there were cases in which their +inception dated far back, even to ten or twenty years. He wrote his +poems at a heat, and the manuscript which came to me for the magazine was +usually the first draft, very little corrected. But if the cold fit took +him quickly it might hold him so fast that he would leave the poem in +abeyance till he could slowly live back to a liking for it. + +The most of his best prose belongs to the time between 1866 and 1874, and +to this time we owe the several volumes of essays and criticisms called +‘Among My Books’ and ‘My Study Windows’. He wished to name these more +soberly, but at the urgence of his publishers he gave them titles which +they thought would be attractive to the public, though he felt that they +took from the dignity of his work. He was not a good business man in a +literary way, he submitted to others’ judgment in all such matters. I +doubt if he ever put a price upon anything he sold, and I dare say he was +usually surprised at the largeness of the price paid him; but sometimes +if his need was for a larger sum, he thought it too little, without +reference to former payments. This happened with a long poem in the +Atlantic, which I had urged the counting-room authorities to deal +handsomely with him for. I did not know how many hundred they gave him, +and when I met him I ventured to express the hope that the publishers had +done their part. He held up four fingers, “Quattro,” he said in Italian, +and then added with a disappointment which he tried to smile away, “I +thought they might have made it cinque.” + +Between me and me I thought quattro very well, but probably Lowell had in +mind some end which cinque would have fitted better. It was pretty sure +to be an unselfish end, a pleasure to some one dear to him, a gift that +he had wished to make. Long afterwards when I had been the means of +getting him cinque for a poem one-tenth the length, he spoke of the +payment to me. “It came very handily; I had been wanting to give a +watch.” + +I do not believe at any time Lowell was able to deal with money + + “Like wealthy men, not knowing what they give.” + +more probably he felt a sacredness in the money got by literature, which +the literary man never quite rids him self of, even when he is not a +poet, and which made him wish to dedicate it to something finer than the +every day uses. He lived very quietly, but he had by no means more than +he needed to live upon, and at that time he had pecuniary losses. He was +writing hard, and was doing full work in his Harvard professorship, and +he was so far dependent upon his salary, that he felt its absence for the +year he went abroad. I do not know quite how to express my sense of +something unworldly, of something almost womanlike in his relation to +money. + +He was not only generous of money, but he was generous of himself, when +he thought he could be of use, or merely of encouragement. He came all +the way into Boston to hear certain lectures of mine on the Italian +poets, which he could not have found either edifying or amusing, that he +might testify his interest in me, and show other people that they were +worth coming to. He would go carefully over a poem with me, word by +word, and criticise every turn of phrase, and after all be magnanimously +tolerant of my sticking to phrasings that he disliked. In a certain line + + “The silvern chords of the piano trembled,” + +he objected to silvern. Why not silver? I alleged leathern, golden, and +like adjectives in defence of my word; but still he found an affectation +in it, and suffered it to stand with extreme reluctance. Another line of +another piece: + + “And what she would, would rather that she would not” + +he would by no means suffer. He said that the stress falling on the last +word made it “public-school English,” and he mocked it with the answer a +maid had lately given him when he asked if the master of the house was at +home. She said, “No, sir, he is not,” when she ought to have said “No, +sir, he isn’t.” He was appeased when I came back the next day with the +stanza amended so that the verse could read: + + “And what she would, would rather she would not so” + +but I fancy he never quite forgave my word silvern. Yet, he professed +not to have prejudices in such matters, but to use any word that would +serve his turn, without wincing; and he certainly did use and defend +words, as undisprivacied and disnatured, that made others wince. + +He was otherwise such a stickler for the best diction that he would not +have had me use slovenly vernacular even in the dialogue in my stories: +my characters must not say they wanted to do so and so, but wished, and +the like. In a copy of one of my books which I found him reading, I saw +he had corrected my erring Western woulds and shoulds; as he grew old he +was less and less able to restrain himself from setting people right to +their faces. Once, in the vast area of my ignorance, he specified my +small acquaintance with a certain period of English poetry, saying, +“You’re rather shady, there, old fellow.” But he would not have had me +too learned, holding that he had himself been hurt for literature by his +scholarship. + +His patience in analyzing my work with me might have been the easy effort +of his habit of teaching; and his willingness to give himself and his own +was no doubt more signally attested in his asking a brother man of +letters who wished to work up a subject in the college library, to stay a +fortnight in his house, and to share his study, his beloved study, with +him. This must truly have cost him dear, as any author of fixed habits +will understand. Happily the man of letters was a good fellow, and knew +how to prize the favor-done him, but if he had been otherwise, it would +have been the same to Lowell. He not only endured, but did many things +for the weaker brethren, which were amusing enough to one in the secret +of his inward revolt. Yet in these things he was considerate also of the +editor whom he might have made the sharer of his self-sacrifice, and he +seldom offered me manuscripts for others. The only real burden of the +kind that he put upon me was the diary of a Virginian who had travelled +in New England during the early thirties, and had set down his +impressions of men and manners there. It began charmingly, and went on +very well under Lowell’s discreet pruning, but after a while he seemed to +fall in love with the character of the diarist so much that he could not +bear to cut anything. + + + +IX. + +He had a great tenderness for the broken and ruined South, whose sins he +felt that he had had his share in visiting upon her, and he was willing +to do what he could to ease her sorrows in the case of any particular +Southerner. He could not help looking askance upon the dramatic shows of +retribution which some of the Northern politicians were working, but with +all his misgivings he continued to act with the Republican party until +after the election of Hayes; he was away from the country during the +Garfield campaign. He was in fact one of the Massachusetts electors +chosen by the Republican majority in 1816, and in that most painful hour +when there was question of the policy and justice of counting Hayes in +for the presidency, it was suggested by some of Lowell’s friends that he +should use the original right of the electors under the constitution, and +vote for Tilden, whom one vote would have chosen president over Hayes. +After he had cast his vote for Hayes, he quietly referred to the matter +one day, in the moment of lighting his pipe, with perhaps the faintest +trace of indignation in his tone. He said that whatever the first intent +of the constitution was, usage had made the presidential electors +strictly the instruments of the party which chose them, and that for him +to have voted for Tilden when he had been chosen to vote for Hayes would +have-been an act of bad faith. + +He would have resumed for me all the old kindness of our relations before +the recent year of his absence, but this had inevitably worked a little +estrangement. He had at least lost the habit of me, and that says much +in such matters. He was not so perfectly at rest in the Cambridge +environment; in certain indefinable ways it did not so entirely suffice +him, though he would have been then and always the last to allow this. I +imagine his friends realized more than he, that certain delicate but +vital filaments of attachment had frayed and parted in alien air, and +left him heart-loose as he had not been before. + +I do not know whether it crossed his mind after the election of Hayes +that he might be offered some place abroad, but it certainly crossed the +minds of some of his friends, and I could not feel that I was acting for +myself alone when I used a family connection with the President, very +early in his term, to let him know that I believed Lowell would accept a +diplomatic mission. I could assure him that I was writing wholly without +Lowell’s privity or authority, and I got back such a letter as I could +wish in its delicate sense of the situation. The President said that he +had already thought of offering Lowell something, and he gave me the +pleasure, a pleasure beyond any other I could imagine, of asking Lowell +whether he would accept the mission to Austria. I lost no time carrying +his letter to Elmwood, where I found Lowell over his coffee at dinner. He +saw me at the threshold, and called to me through the open door to come +in, and I handed him the letter, and sat down at table while he ran it +through. When he had read it, he gave a quick “Ah!” and threw it over +the length of the table to Mrs. Lowell. She read it in a smiling and +loyal reticence, as if she would not say one word of all she might wish +to say in urging his acceptance, though I could see that she was +intensely eager for it. The whole situation was of a perfect New England +character in its tacit significance; after Lowell had taken his coffee we +turned into his study without further allusion to the matter. + +A day or two later he came to my house to say that he could not accept +the Austrian mission, and to ask me to tell the President so for him, and +make his acknowledgments, which he would also write himself. He remained +talking a little while of other things, and when he rose to go, he said +with a sigh of vague reluctance, “I should like to see a play of +Calderon,” as if it had nothing to do with any wish of his that could +still be fulfilled. “Upon this hint I acted,” and in due time it was +found in Washington, that the gentleman who had been offered the Spanish +mission would as lief go to Austria, and Lowell was sent to Madrid. + + + + +X. + +When we met in London, some years later, he came almost every afternoon +to my lodging, and the story of our old-time Cambridge walks began again +in London phrases. There were not the vacant lots and outlying fields of +his native place, but we made shift with the vast, simple parks, and we +walked on the grass as we could not have done in an American park, and +were glad to feel the earth under our feet. I said how much it was like +those earlier tramps; and that pleased him, for he wished, whenever a +thing delighted him, to find a Cambridge quality in it. + +But he was in love with everything English, and was determined I should +be so too, beginning with the English weather, which in summer cannot be +overpraised. He carried, of course, an umbrella, but he would not put it +up in the light showers that caught us at times, saying that the English +rain never wetted you. The thick short turf delighted him; he would +scarcely allow that the trees were the worse for foliage blighted by a +vile easterly storm in the spring of that year. The tender air, the +delicate veils that the moisture in it cast about all objects at the +least remove, the soft colors of the flowers, the dull blue of the low +sky showing through the rifts of the dirty white clouds, the hovering +pall of London smoke, were all dear to him, and he was anxious that I +should not lose anything of their charm. + +He was anxious that I should not miss the value of anything in England, +and while he volunteered that the aristocracy had the corruptions of +aristocracies everywhere, he insisted upon my respectful interest in it +because it was so historical. Perhaps there was a touch of irony in this +demand, but it is certain that he was very happy in England. He had come +of the age when a man likes smooth, warm keeping, in which he need make +no struggle for his comfort; disciplined and obsequious service; society, +perfectly ascertained within the larger society which we call +civilization; and in an alien environment, for which he was in no wise +responsible, he could have these without a pang of the self-reproach +which at home makes a man unhappy amidst his luxuries, when he considers +their cost to others. He had a position which forbade thought of +unfairness in the conditions; he must not wake because of the slave, it +was his duty to sleep. Besides, at that time Lowell needed all the rest +he could get, for he had lately passed through trials such as break the +strength of men, and how them with premature age. He was living alone in +his little house in Lowndes Square, and Mrs. Lowell was in the country, +slowly recovering from the effects of the terrible typhus which she had +barely survived in Madrid. He was yet so near the anguish of that +experience that he told me he had still in his nerves the expectation of +a certain agonized cry from her which used to rend them. But he said he +had adjusted himself to this, and he went on to speak with a patience +which was more affecting in him than in men of more phlegmatic +temperament, of how we were able to adjust ourselves to all our trials +and to the constant presence of pain. He said he was never free of a +certain distress, which was often a sharp pang, in one of his shoulders, +but his physique had established such relations with it that, though he +was never unconscious of it, he was able to endure it without a +recognition of it as suffering. + +He seemed to me, however, very well, and at his age of sixty-three, I +could not see that he was less alert and vigorous than he was when I +first knew him in Cambridge. He had the same brisk, light step, and +though his beard was well whitened and his auburn hair had grown ashen +through the red, his face had the freshness and his eyes the clearness of +a young man’s. I suppose the novelty of his life kept him from thinking +about his years; or perhaps in contact with those great, insenescent +Englishmen, he could not feel himself old. At any rate he did not once +speak of age, as he used to do ten years earlier, and I, then half +through my forties, was still “You young dog” to him. It was a bright +and cheerful renewal of the early kindliness between us, on which indeed +there had never been a shadow, except such as distance throws. He wished +apparently to do everything he could to assure us of his personal +interest; and we were amused to find him nervously apprehensive of any +purpose, such as was far from us, to profit by him officially. He +betrayed a distinct relief when he found we were not going to come upon +him even for admissions to the houses of parliament, which we were to see +by means of an English acquaintance. He had not perhaps found some other +fellow-citizens so considerate; he dreaded the half-duties of his place, +like presentations to the queen, and complained of the cheap ambitions he +had to gratify in that way. + +He was so eager to have me like England in every way, and seemed so fond +of the English, that I thought it best to ask him whether he minded my +quoting, in a paper about Lexington, which I was just then going to print +in a London magazine, some humorous lines of his expressing the mounting +satisfaction of an imaginary Yankee story-teller who has the old fight +terminate in Lord Percy’s coming + + “To hammer stone for life in Concord jail.” + +It had occurred to me that it might possibly embarrass him to have this +patriotic picture presented to a public which could not take our Fourth +of July pleasure in it, and I offered to suppress it, as I did afterwards +quite for literary reasons. He said, No, let it stand, and let them make +the worst of it; and I fancy that much of his success with a people who +are not gingerly with other people’s sensibilities came from the +frankness with which he trampled on their prejudice when he chose. He +said he always told them, when there was question of such things, that +the best society he had ever known was in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He +contended that the best English was spoken there; and so it was, when he +spoke it. + +We were in London out of the season, and he was sorry that he could not +have me meet some titles who he declared had found pleasure in my books; +when we returned from Italy in the following June, he was prompt to do me +this honor. I dare say he wished me to feel it to its last implication, +and I did my best, but there was nothing in the evening I enjoyed so much +as his coming up to Mrs. Lowell, at the close, when there was only a +title or two left, and saying to her as he would have said to her at +Elmwood, where she would have personally planned it, “Fanny, that was a +fine dinner you gave us.” Of course, this was in a tender burlesque; but +it remains the supreme impression of what seemed to me a cloudlessly +happy period for Lowell. His wife was quite recovered of her long +suffering, and was again at the head of his house, sharing in his +pleasures, and enjoying his successes for his sake; successes so great +that people spoke of him seriously, as “an addition to society” in +London, where one man more or less seemed like a drop in the sea. She was +a woman perfectly of the New England type and tradition: almost +repellantly shy at first, and almost glacially cold with new +acquaintance, but afterwards very sweet and cordial. She was of a dark +beauty with a regular face of the Spanish outline; Lowell was of an ideal +manner towards her, and of an admiration which delicately travestied +itself and which she knew how to receive with smiling irony. After her +death, which occurred while he was still in England, he never spoke of +her to me, though before that he used to be always bringing her name in, +with a young lover-like fondness. + + + + +XI. + +In the hurry of the London season I did not see so much of Lowell on our +second sojourn as on our first, but once when we were alone in his study +there was a return to the terms of the old meetings in Cambridge. He +smoked his pipe, and sat by his fire and philosophized; and but for the +great London sea swirling outside and bursting through our shelter, and +dashing him with notes that must be instantly answered, it was a very +fair image of the past. He wanted to tell me about his coachman whom he +had got at on his human side with great liking and amusement, and there +was a patient gentleness in his manner with the footman who had to keep +coming in upon him with those notes which was like the echo of his young +faith in the equality of men. But he always distinguished between the +simple unconscious equality of the ordinary American and its assumption +by a foreigner. He said he did not mind such an American’s coming into +his house with his hat on; but if a German or Englishman did it, he +wanted to knock it off. He was apt to be rather punctilious in his shows +of deference towards others, and at one time he practised removing his +own hat when he went into shops in Cambridge. It must have mystified the +Cambridge salesmen, and I doubt if he kept it up. + +With reference to the doctrine of his young poetry, the fierce and the +tender humanity of his storm and stress period, I fancy a kind of baffle +in Lowell, which I should not perhaps find it easy to prove. I never +knew him by word or hint to renounce this doctrine, but he could not come +to seventy years without having seen many high hopes fade, and known many +inspired prophecies fail. When we have done our best to make the world +over, we are apt to be dismayed by finding it in much the old shape. As +he said of the moral government of the universe, the scale is so vast, +and a little difference, a little change for the better, is scarcely +perceptible to the eager consciousness of the wholesale reformer. But +with whatever sense of disappointment, of doubt as to his own deeds for +truer freedom and for better conditions I believe his sympathy was still +with those who had some heart for hoping and striving. I am sure that +though he did not agree with me in some of my own later notions for the +redemption of the race, he did not like me the less but rather the more +because (to my own great surprise I confess) I had now and then the +courage of my convictions, both literary and social. + +He was probably most at odds with me in regard to my theories of fiction, +though he persisted in declaring his pleasure in my own fiction. He was +in fact, by nature and tradition, thoroughly romantic, and he could not +or would not suffer realism in any but a friend. He steadfastly refused +even to read the Russian masters, to his immense loss, as I tried to +persuade him, and even among the modern Spaniards, for whom he might have +had a sort of personal kindness from his love of Cervantes, he chose one +for his praise the least worthy, of it, and bore me down with his heavier +metal in argument when I opposed to Alarcon’s factitiousness the +delightful genuineness of Valdes. Ibsen, with all the Norwegians, he put +far from him; he would no more know them than the Russians; the French +naturalists he abhorred. I thought him all wrong, but you do not try +improving your elders when they have come to three score and ten years, +and I would rather have had his affection unbroken by our difference of +opinion than a perfect agreement. Where he even imagined that this +difference could work me harm, he was anxious to have me know that he +meant me none; and he was at the trouble to write me a letter when a +Boston paper had perverted its report of what he said in a public lecture +to my disadvantage, and to assure me that he had not me in mind. When +once he had given his liking, he could not bear that any shadow of change +should seem to have come upon him. He had a most beautiful and endearing +ideal of friendship; he desired to affirm it and to reaffirm it as often +as occasion offered, and if occasion did not offer, he made occasion. It +did not matter what you said or did that contraried him; if he thought he +had essentially divined you, you were still the same: and on his part he +was by no means exacting of equal demonstration, but seemed not even to +wish it. + + + + +XII. + +After he was replaced at London by a minister more immediately +representative of the Democratic administration, he came home. He made a +brave show of not caring to have remained away, but in truth he had +become very fond of England, where he had made so many friends, and where +the distinction he had, in that comfortably padded environment, was so +agreeable to him. + +It would have been like him to have secretly hoped that the new President +might keep him in London, but he never betrayed any ignoble +disappointment, and he would not join in any blame of him. At our first +meeting after he came home he spoke of the movement which had made Mr. +Cleveland president, and said he supposed that if he had been here, he +should have been in it. All his friends were, he added, a little +helplessly; but he seemed not to dislike my saying I knew one of his +friends who was not: in fact, as I have told, he never disliked a plump +difference--unless he disliked the differer. + +For several years he went back to England every summer, and it was not +until he took up his abode at Elmwood again that he spent a whole year at +home. One winter he passed at his sister’s home in Boston, but mostly he +lived with his daughter at Southborough. I have heard a story of his +going to Elmwood soon after his return in 1885, and sitting down in his +old study, where he declared with tears that the place was full of +ghosts. But four or five years later it was well for family reasons that +he should live there; and about the same time it happened that I had +taken a house for the summer in his neighborhood. He came to see me, and +to assure me, in all tacit forms of his sympathy in a sorrow for which +there could be no help; but it was not possible that the old intimate +relations should be resumed. The affection was there, as much on his +side as on mine, I believe; but he was now an old man and I was an +elderly man, and we could not, without insincerity, approach each other +in the things that had drawn us together in earlier and happier years. +His course was run; my own, in which he had taken such a generous +pleasure, could scarcely move his jaded interest. His life, so far as it +remained to him, had renewed itself in other air; the later friendships +beyond seas sufficed him, and were without the pang, without the effort +that must attend the knitting up of frayed ties here. + +He could never have been anything but American, if he had tried, and he +certainly never tried; but he certainly did not return to the outward +simplicities of his life as I first knew it. There was no more +round-hat-and-sack-coat business for him; he wore a frock and a high hat, +and whatever else was rather like London than Cambridge; I do not know +but drab gaiters sometimes added to the effect of a gentleman of the old +school which he now produced upon the witness. Some fastidiousnesses +showed themselves in him, which were not so surprising. He complained of +the American lower class manner; the conductor and cabman would be kind +to you but they would not be respectful, and he could not see the fun of +this in the old way. Early in our acquaintance he rather stupified me by +saying, “I like you because you don’t put your hands on me,” and I heard +of his consenting to some sort of reception in those last years, “Yes, if +they won’t shake hands.” + +Ever since his visit to Rome in 1875 he had let his heavy mustache grow +long till it dropped below the corners of his beard, which was now almost +white; his face had lost the ruddy hue so characteristic of him. I fancy +he was then ailing with premonitions of the disorder which a few years +later proved mortal, but he still bore himself with sufficient vigor, and +he walked the distance between his house and mine, though once when I +missed his visit the family reported that after he came in he sat a long +time with scarcely a word, as if too weary to talk. That winter, I went +into Boston to live, and I saw him only at infrequent intervals, when I +could go out to Elmwood. At such times I found him sitting in the room +which was formerly the drawing-room, but which had been joined with his +study by taking away the partitions beside the heavy mass of the old +colonial chimney. He told me that when he was a newborn babe, the nurse +had carried him round this chimney, for luck, and now in front of the +same hearth, the white old man stretched himself in an easy-chair, with +his writing-pad on his knees and his books on the table at his elbow, and +was willing to be entreated not to rise. I remember the sun used to come +in at the eastern windows full pour, and bathe the air in its warmth. + +He always hailed me gayly, and if I found him with letters newly come +from England, as I sometimes did, he glowed and sparkled with fresh life. +He wanted to read passages from those letters, he wanted to talk about +their writers, and to make me feel their worth and charm as he did. He +still dreamed of going back to England the next summer, but that was not +to be. One day he received me not less gayly than usual, but with a +certain excitement, and began to tell me about an odd experience he had +had, not at all painful, but which had very much mystified him. He had +since seen the doctor, and the doctor had assured him that there was +nothing alarming in what had happened, and in recalling this assurance, +he began to look at the humorous aspects of the case, and to make some +jokes about it. He wished to talk of it, as men do of their maladies, +and very fully, and I gave him such proof of my interest as even inviting +him to talk of it would convey. In spite of the doctor’s assurance, and +his joyful acceptance of it, I doubt if at the bottom of his heart there +was not the stir of an uneasy misgiving; but he had not for a long time +shown himself so cheerful. + +It was the beginning of the end. He recovered and relapsed, and +recovered again; but never for long. Late in the spring I came out, and +he had me stay to dinner, which was somehow as it used to be at two +o’clock; and after dinner we went out on his lawn. He got a long-handled +spud, and tried to grub up some dandelions which he found in his turf, +but after a moment or two he threw it down, and put his hand upon his +back with a groan. I did not see him again till I came out to take leave +of him before going away for the summer, and then I found him sitting on +the little porch in a western corner of his house, with a volume of Scott +closed upon his finger. There were some other people, and our meeting +was with the constraint of their presence. It was natural in nothing so +much as his saying very significantly to me, as if he knew of my heresies +concerning Scott, and would have me know he did not approve of them, that +there was nothing he now found so much pleasure in as Scott’s novels. +Another friend, equally heretical, was by, but neither of us attempted to +gainsay him. Lowell talked very little, but he told of having been a +walk to Beaver Brook, and of having wished to jump from one stone to +another in the stream, and of having had to give it up. He said, without +completing the sentence, If it had come to that with him! Then he fell +silent again; and with some vain talk of seeing him when I came back in +the fall, I went away sick at heart. I was not to see him again, and I +shall not look upon his like. + +I am aware that I have here shown him from this point and from that in a +series of sketches which perhaps collectively impart, but do not assemble +his personality in one impression. He did not, indeed, make one +impression upon me, but a thousand impressions, which I should seek in +vain to embody in a single presentment. What I have cloudily before me +is the vision of a very lofty and simple soul, perplexed, and as it were +surprised and even dismayed at the complexity of the effects from motives +so single in it, but escaping always to a clear expression of what was +noblest and loveliest in itself at the supreme moments, in the divine +exigencies. I believe neither in heroes nor in saints; but I believe in +great and good men, for I have known them, and among such men Lowell was +of the richest nature I have known. His nature was not always serene or +pellucid; it was sometimes roiled by the currents that counter and cross +in all of us; but it was without the least alloy of insincerity, and it +was never darkened by the shadow of a selfish fear. His genius was an +instrument that responded in affluent harmony to the power that made him +a humorist and that made him a poet, and appointed him rarely to be quite +either alone. + + + + +CAMBRIDGE NEIGHBORS + +Being the wholly literary spirit I was when I went to make my home in +Cambridge, I do not see how I could well have been more content if I had +found myself in the Elysian Fields with an agreeable eternity before me. +At twenty-nine, indeed, one is practically immortal, and at that age, +time had for me the effect of an eternity in which I had nothing to do +but to read books and dream of writing them, in the overflow of endless +hours from my work with the manuscripts, critical notices, and proofs of +the Atlantic Monthly. As for the social environment I should have been +puzzled if given my choice among the elect of all the ages, to find poets +and scholars more to my mind than those still in the flesh at Cambridge +in the early afternoon of the nineteenth century. They are now nearly +all dead, and I can speak of them in the freedom which is death’s +doubtful favor to the survivor; but if they were still alive I could say +little to their offence, unless their modesty was hurt with my praise. + + + + +I. + +One of the first and truest of our Cambridge friends was that exquisite +intelligence, who, in a world where so many people are grotesquely +miscalled, was most fitly named; for no man ever kept here more perfectly +and purely the heart of such as the kingdom of heaven is of than Francis +J. Child. He was then in his prime, and I like to recall the outward +image which expressed the inner man as happily as his name. He was of +low stature and of an inclination which never became stoutness; but what +you most saw when you saw him was his face of consummate refinement: very +regular, with eyes always glassed by gold-rimmed spectacles, a straight, +short, most sensitive nose, and a beautiful mouth with the sweetest smile +mouth ever wore, and that was as wise and shrewd as it was sweet. In a +time when every other man was more or less bearded he was clean shaven, +and of a delightful freshness of coloring which his thick sunny hair, +clustering upon his head in close rings, admirably set off. I believe he +never became gray, and the last time I saw him, though he was broken then +with years and pain, his face had still the brightness of his +inextinguishable youth. + +It is well known how great was Professor Child’s scholarship in the +branches of his Harvard work; and how especially, how uniquely, effective +it was in the study of English and Scottish balladry to which he gave so +many years of his life. He was a poet in his nature, and he wrought with +passion as well as knowledge in the achievement of as monumental a task +as any American has performed. But he might have been indefinitely less +than he was in any intellectual wise, and yet been precious to those who +knew him for the gentleness and the goodness which in him were protected +from misconception by a final dignity as delicate and as inviolable as +that of Longfellow himself. + +We were still much less than a year from our life in Venice, when he came +to see us in Cambridge, and in the Italian interest which then commended +us to so many fine spirits among our neighbors we found ourselves at the +beginning of a life-long friendship with him. I was known to him only by +my letters from Venice, which afterwards became Venetian Life, and by a +bit of devotional verse which he had asked to include in a collection he +was making, but he immediately gave us the freedom of his heart, which +after wards was never withdrawn. In due time he imagined a home-school, +to which our little one was asked, and she had her first lessons with his +own daughter under his roof. These things drew us closer together, and +he was willing to be still nearer to me in any time of trouble. At one +such time when the shadow which must some time darken every door, hovered +at ours, he had the strength to make me face it and try to realize, while +it was still there, that it was not cruel and not evil. It passed, for +that time, but the sense of his help remained; and in my own case I can +testify of the potent tenderness which all who knew him must have known +in him. But in bearing my witness I feel accused, almost as if he were +present; by his fastidious reluctance from any recognition of his +helpfulness. When this came in the form of gratitude taking credit to +itself in a pose which reflected honor upon him as the architect of +greatness, he was delightfully impatient of it, and he was most amusingly +dramatic in reproducing the consciousness of certain ineffectual alumni +who used to overwhelm him at Commencement solemnities with some such +pompous acknowledgment as, “Professor Child, all that I have become, sir, +I owe to your influence in my college career.” He did, with delicious +mockery, the old-fashioned intellectual poseurs among the students, who +used to walk the groves of Harvard with bent head, and the left arm +crossing the back, while the other lodged its hand in the breast of the +high buttoned frock-coat; and I could fancy that his classes in college +did not form the sunniest exposure for young folly and vanity. I know +that he was intolerant of any manner of insincerity, and no flattery +could take him off his guard. I have seen him meet this with a cutting +phrase of rejection, and no man was more apt at snubbing the patronage +that offers itself at times to all men. But mostly he wished to do +people pleasure, and he seemed always to be studying how to do it; as for +need, I am sure that worthy and unworthy want had alike the way to his +heart. + +Children were always his friends, and they repaid with adoration the +affection which he divided with them and with his flowers. I recall him +in no moments so characteristic as those he spent in making the little +ones laugh out of their hearts at his drolling, some festive evening in +his house, and those he gave to sharing with you his joy in his +gardening. This, I believe, began with violets, and it went on to roses, +which he grew in a splendor and profusion impossible to any but a true +lover with a genuine gift for them. Like Lowell, he spent his summers in +Cambridge, and in the afternoon, you could find him digging or pruning +among his roses with an ardor which few caprices of the weather could +interrupt. He would lift himself from their ranks, which he scarcely +overtopped, as you came up the footway to his door, and peer purblindly +across at you. If he knew you at once, he traversed the nodding and +swaying bushes, to give you the hand free of the trowel or knife; or if +you got indoors unseen by him he would come in holding towards you some +exquisite blossom that weighed down the tip of its long stem with a +succession of hospitable obeisances. + +He graced with unaffected poetry a life of as hard study, of as hard +work, and as varied achievement as any I have known or read of; and he +played with gifts and acquirements such as in no great measure have made +reputations. He had a rare and lovely humor which could amuse itself +both in English and Italian with such an airy burletta as “Il Pesceballo” + (he wrote it in Metastasian Italian, and Lowell put it in libretto +English); he had a critical sense as sound as it was subtle in all +literature; and whatever he wrote he imbued with the charm of a style +finely personal to himself. His learning in the line of his Harvard +teaching included an early English scholarship unrivalled in his time, +and his researches in ballad literature left no corner of it untouched. I +fancy this part of his study was peculiarly pleasant to him; for he loved +simple and natural things, and the beauty which he found nearest life. +At least he scorned the pedantic affectations of literary superiority; +and he used to quote with joyous laughter the swelling exclamation of an +Italian critic who proposed to leave the summits of polite learning for a +moment, with the cry, “Scendiamo fra il popolo!” (Let us go down among +the people.) + + + + +II. + +Of course it was only so hard worked a man who could take thought and +trouble for another. He once took thought for me at a time when it was +very important to me, and when he took the trouble to secure for me an +engagement to deliver that course of Lowell lectures in Boston, which I +have said Lowell had the courage to go in town to hear. I do not +remember whether Professor Child was equal to so much, but he would have +been if it were necessary; and I rather rejoice now in the belief that he +did not seek quite that martyrdom. + +He had done more than enough for me, but he had done only what he was +always willing to do for others. In the form of a favor to himself he +brought into my fife the great happiness of intimately knowing Hjalmar +Hjorth Boyesen, whom he had found one summer day among the shelves in the +Harvard library, and found to be a poet and an intending novelist. I do +not remember now just how this fact imparted itself to the professor, but +literature is of easily cultivated confidence in youth, and possibly the +revelation was spontaneous. At any rate, as a susceptible young editor, +I was asked to meet my potential contributor at the professor’s two +o’clock dinner, and when we came to coffee in the study, Boyesen took +from the pocket nearest his heart a chapter of ‘Gunnar’, and read it to +us. + +Perhaps the good professor who brought us together had plotted to have +both novel and novelist make their impression at once upon the youthful +sub-editor; but at any rate they did not fail of an effect. I believe it +was that chapter where Gunnar and Ragnhild dance and sing a ‘stev’ +together, for I associate with that far happy time the rich mellow tones +of the poet’s voice in the poet’s verse. These were most characteristic +of him, and it is as if I might put my ear against the ethereal wall +beyond which he is rapt and hear them yet. + +Our meeting was on a lovely afternoon of summer, and the odor of the +professor’s roses stole in at the open windows, and became part of the +gentle event. Boyesen walked home with me, and for a fortnight after I +think we parted only to dream of the literature which we poured out upon +each other in every waking moment. I had just learned to know Bjornson’s +stories, and Boyesen told me of his poetry and of his drama, which in +even measure embodied the great Norse literary movement, and filled me +with the wonder and delight of that noble revolt against convention, that +brave return to nature and the springs of poetry in the heart and the +speech of the common people. Literature was Boyesen’s religion more than +the Swedenborgian philosophy in which we had both been spiritually +nurtured, and at every step of our mounting friendship we found ourselves +on common ground in our worship of it. I was a decade his senior, but at +thirty-five I was not yet so stricken in years as not to be able fully to +rejoice in the ardor which fused his whole being in an incandescent +poetic mass. I have known no man who loved poetry more generously and +passionately; and I think he was above all things a poet. His work took +the shape of scholarship, fiction, criticism, but poetry gave it all a +touch of grace and beauty. Some years after this first meeting of ours I +remember a pathetic moment with him, when I asked him why he had not +written any verse of late, and he answered, as if still in sad +astonishment at the fact, that he had found life was not all poetry. In +those earlier days I believe he really thought it was! + +Perhaps it really is, and certainly in the course of a life that +stretched almost to half a century Boyesen learned more and more to see +the poetry of the everyday world at least as the material of art. He did +battle valiantly for that belief in many polemics, which I suppose gave +people a sufficiently false notion of him; and he showed his faith by +works in fiction which better illustrated his motive. Gunnar stands at +the beginning of these works, and at the farthest remove from it in +matter and method stands ‘The Mammon of Unrighteousness’. The lovely +idyl won him fame and friendship, and the great novel added neither to +him, though he had put the experience and the observation of his ripened +life into it. Whether it is too late or too early for it to win the +place in literature which it merits I do not know; but it always seemed +to me the very spite of fate that it should have failed of popular +effect. Yet I must own that it has so failed, and I own this without +bitterness towards Gunnar, which embalmed the spirit of his youth as ‘The +Mammon of Unrighteousness’ embodied the thought of his manhood. + + + + +III. + +It was my pleasure, my privilege, to bring Gunnar before the public as +editor of the Atlantic Monthly, and to second the author in many a +struggle with the strange idiom he had cast the story in. The proofs +went back and forth between us till the author had profited by every hint +and suggestion of the editor. He was quick to profit by any hint, and he +never made the same mistake twice. He lived his English as fast as he +learned it; the right word became part of him; and he put away the wrong +word with instant and final rejection. He had not learned American +English without learning newspaper English, but if one touched a phrase +of it in his work, he felt in his nerves, which are the ultimate arbiters +in such matters, its difference from true American and true English. It +was wonderful how apt and how elect his diction was in those days; it +seemed as if his thought clothed itself in the fittest phrase without his +choosing. In his poetry he had extraordinary good fortune from the +first; his mind had an apparent affinity with what was most native, most +racy in our speech; and I have just been looking over Gunnar and +marvelling anew at the felicity and the beauty of his phrasing. + +I do not know whether those who read his books stop much to consider how +rare his achievement was in the mere means of expression. Our speech is +rather more hospitable than most, and yet I can remember but five other +writers born to different languages who have handled English with +anything like his mastery. Two Italians, Ruffini, the novelist, and +Gallenga, the journalist; two Germans, Carl Schurz and Carl Hillebrand, +and the Dutch novelist Maarten Maartens, have some of them equalled but +none of them surpassed him. Yet he was a man grown when he began to +speak and to write English, though I believe he studied it somewhat in +Norway before he came to America. What English he knew he learned the +use of here, and in the measure of its idiomatic vigor we may be proud of +it as Americans. + +He had least of his native grace, I think, in his criticism; and yet as a +critic he had qualities of rare temperance, acuteness, and knowledge. He +had very decided convictions in literary art; one kind of thing he +believed was good and all other kinds less good down to what was bad; but +he was not a bigot, and he made allowances for art-in-error. His hand +fell heavy only upon those heretics who not merely denied the faith but +pretended that artifice was better than nature, that decoration was more +than structure, that make-believe was something you could live by as you +live by truth. He was not strongest, however, in damnatory criticism. +His spirit was too large, too generous to dwell in that, and it rose +rather to its full height in his appreciations of the great authors whom +he loved, and whom he commented from the plenitude of his scholarship as +well as from his delighted sense of their grandeur. Here he was almost +as fine as in his poetry, and only less fine than in his more fortunate +essays in fiction. + +After Gunnar he was a long while in striking another note so true. He +did not strike it again till he wrote ‘The Mammon of Unrighteousness’, +and after that he was sometimes of a wandering and uncertain touch. There +are certain stories of his which I cannot read without a painful sense of +their inequality not only to his talent, but to his knowledge of human +nature, and of American character. He understood our character quite as +well as he understood our language, but at times he seemed not to do so. +I think these were the times when he was overworked, and ought to have +been resting instead of writing. In such fatigue one loses command of +alien words, alien situations; and in estimating Boyesen’s achievements +we must never forget that he was born strange to our language and to our +life. In ‘Gunnar’ he handled the one with grace and charm; in his great +novel he handled both with masterly strength. I call ‘The Mammon of +Unrighteousness’ a great novel, and I am quite willing to say that I know +few novels by born Americans that surpass it in dealing with American +types and conditions. It has the vast horizon of the masterpieces of +fictions; its meanings are not for its characters alone, but for every +reader of it; when you close the book the story is not at an end. + +I have a pang in praising it, for I remember that my praise cannot please +him any more. But it was a book worthy the powers which could have given +us yet greater things if they had not been spent on lesser things. +Boyesen could “toil terribly,” but for his fame he did not always toil +wisely, though he gave himself as utterly in his unwise work as in his +best; it was always the best he could do. Several years after our first +meeting in Cambridge, he went to live in New York, a city where money +counts for more and goes for less than in any other city of the world, +and he could not resist the temptation to write more and more when he +should have written less and less. He never wrote anything that was not +worth reading, but he wrote too much for one who was giving himself with +all his conscience to his academic work in the university honored by his +gifts and his attainments, and was lecturing far and near in the +vacations which should have been days and weeks and months of leisure. +The wonder is that even such a stock of health as his could stand the +strain so long, but he had no vices, and his only excesses were in the +direction of the work which he loved so well. When a man adds to his +achievements every year, we are apt to forget the things he has already +done; and I think it well to remind the reader that Boyesen, who died at +forty-eight, had written, besides articles, reviews, and lectures +unnumbered, four volumes of scholarly criticism on German and +Scandinavian literature, a volume of literary and social essays, a +popular history of Norway, a volume of poems, twelve volumes of fiction, +and four books for boys. + +Boyesen’s energies were inexhaustible. He was not content to be merely a +scholar, merely an author; he wished to be an active citizen, to take his +part in honest politics, and to live for his day in things that most men +of letters shun. His experience in them helped him to know American life +better and to appreciate it more justly, both in its good and its evil; +and as a matter of fact he knew us very well. His acquaintance with us +had been wide and varied beyond that of most of our literary men, and +touched many aspects of our civilization which remain unknown to most +Americans. When he died he had been a journalist in Chicago, and a +teacher in Ohio; he had been a professor in Cornell University and a +literary free lance in New York; and everywhere his eyes and ears had +kept themselves open. As a teacher he learned to know the more fortunate +or the more ambitious of our youth, and as a lecturer his knowledge was +continually extending itself among all ages and classes of Americans. + +He was through and through a Norseman, but he was none the less a very +American. Between Norsk and Yankee there is an affinity of spirit more +intimate than the ties of race. Both have the common-sense view of life; +both are unsentimental. When Boyesen told me that among the Norwegians +men never kissed each other, as the Germans, and the Frenchmen, and the +Italians do, I perceived that we stood upon common ground. When he +explained the democratic character of society in Norway, I could well +understand how he should find us a little behind his own countrymen in +the practice, if not the theory of equality, though they lived under a +king and we under a president. But he was proud of his American +citizenship; he knew all that it meant, at its best, for humanity. He +divined that the true expression of America was not civic, not social, +but domestic almost, and that the people in the simplest homes, or those +who remained in the tradition of a simple home life, were the true +Americans as yet, whatever the future Americans might be. + +When I first knew him he was chafing with the impatience of youth and +ambition at what he thought his exile in the West. There was, to be +sure, a difference between Urbana, Ohio, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, +and he realized the difference in the extreme and perhaps beyond it. I +tried to make him believe that if a man had one or two friends anywhere +who loved letters and sympathized with him in his literary attempts, it +was incentive enough; but of course he wished to be in the centres of +literature, as we all do; and he never was content until he had set his +face and his foot Eastward. It was a great step for him from the +Swedenborgian school at Urbana to the young university at Ithaca; and I +remember his exultation in making it. But he could not rest there, and +in a few years he resigned his professorship, and came to New York, where +he entered high-heartedly upon the struggle with fortune which ended in +his appointment in Columbia. + +New York is a mart and not a capital, in literature as well as in other +things, and doubtless he increasingly felt this. I know that there came +a time when he no longer thought the West must be exile for a literary +man; and his latest visits to its summer schools as a lecturer impressed +him with the genuineness of the interest felt there in culture of all +kinds. He spoke of this, with a due sense of what was pathetic as well +as what was grotesque in some of its manifestations; and I think that in +reconciling himself to our popular crudeness for the sake of our popular +earnestness, he completed his naturalization, in the only sense in which +our citizenship is worth having. + +I do not wish to imply that he forgot his native land, or ceased to love +it proudly and tenderly. He kept for Norway the fondness which the man +sitting at his own hearth feels for the home of his boyhood. He was of +good family; his people were people of substance and condition, and he +could have had an easier life there than here. He could have won even +wider fame, and doubtless if he had remained in Norway, he would have +been one of that group of great Norwegians who have given their little +land renown surpassed by that of no other in the modern republic of +letters. The name of Boyesen would have been set with the names of +Bjornson, of Ibsen, of Kielland, and of Lie. But when once he had seen +America (at the wish of his father, who had visited the United States +before him), he thought only of becoming an American. When I first knew +him he was full of the poetry of his mother-land; his talk was of fjords +and glaciers, of firs and birches, of hulders and nixies, of housemen and +gaardsmen; but he was glad to be here, and I think he never regretted +that he had cast his lot with us. Always, of course, he had the deepest +interest in his country and countrymen. He stood the friend of every +Norwegian who came to him in want or trouble, and they, came to him +freely and frequently. He sympathized strongly with Norway in her +quarrel with Sweden, and her wish for equality as well as autonomy; and +though he did not go all lengths with the national party, he was decided +in his feeling that Sweden was unjust to her sister kingdom, and +strenuous for the principles of the Norwegian leaders. + +But, as I have said, poetry, was what his ardent spirit mainly meditated +in that hour when I first knew him in Cambridge, before we had either of +us grown old and sad, if not wise. He overflowed with it, and he talked +as little as he dreamed of anything else in the vast half-summer we spent +together. He was constantly at my house, where in an absence of my +family I was living bachelor, and where we sat indoors and talked, or +sauntered outdoors and talked, with our heads in a cloud of fancies, not +unmixed with the mosquitoes of Cambridge: if I could have back the +fancies, I would be willing to have the mosquitoes with them. He looked +the poetry he lived: his eyes were the blue of sunlit fjords; his brown +silken hair was thick on the crown which it later abandoned to a +scholarly baldness; his soft, red lips half hid a boyish pout in the +youthful beard and mustache. He was short of stature, but of a stalwart +breadth of frame, and his voice was of a peculiar and endearing quality, +indescribably mellow and tender when he read his verse. + +I have hardly the right to dwell so long upon him here, for he was only a +sojourner in Cambridge, but the memory of that early intimacy is too much +for my sense of proportion. As I have hinted, our intimacy was renewed +afterwards, when I too came to live in New York, where as long as he was +in this ‘dolce lome’, he hardly let a week go by without passing a long +evening with me. Our talk was still of literature and life, but more of +life than of literature, and we seldom spoke of those old times. I still +found him true to the ideals which had clarified themselves to both of us +as the duty of unswerving fealty to the real thing in whatever we did. +This we felt, as we had felt it long before, to be the sole source of +beauty and of art, and we warmed ourselves at each other’s hearts in our +devotion to it, amidst a misunderstanding environment which we did not +characterize by so mild an epithet. Boyesen, indeed, out-realisted me, +in the polemics of our aesthetics, and sometimes when an unbeliever was +by, I willingly left to my friend the affirmation of our faith, not +without some quaking at his unsparing strenuousness in disciplining the +heretic. But now that ardent and active soul is Elsewhere, and I have +ceased even to expect the ring, which, making itself heard at the late +hour of his coming, I knew always to be his and not another’s. That +mechanical expectation of those who will come no more is something +terrible, but when even that ceases, we know the irreparability of our +loss, and begin to realize how much of ourselves they have taken with +them. + + + + +IV. + +It was some years before the Boyesen summer, which was the fourth or +fifth of our life in Cambridge, that I made the acquaintance of a man, +very much my senior, who remains one of the vividest personalities in my +recollection. I speak of him in this order perhaps because of an obscure +association with Boyesen through their religious faith, which was also +mine. But Henry James was incommensurably more Swedenborgian than either +of us: he lived and thought and felt Swedenborg with an entirety and +intensity far beyond the mere assent of other men. He did not do this in +any stupidly exclusive way, but in the most luminously inclusive way, +with a constant reference of these vain mundane shadows to the spiritual +realities from which they project. His piety, which sometimes expressed +itself in terms of alarming originality and freedom, was too large for +any ecclesiastical limits, and one may learn from the books which record +it, how absolutely individual his interpretations of Swedenborg were. +Clarifications they cannot be called, and in that other world whose +substantial verity was the inspiration of his life here, the two sages +may by this time have met and agreed to differ as to some points in the +doctrine of the Seer. In such a case, I cannot imagine the apostle +giving way; and I do not say he would be wrong to insist, but I think he +might now be willing to allow that the exegetic pages which sentence by +sentence were so brilliantly suggestive, had sometimes a collective +opacity which the most resolute vision could not penetrate. He put into +this dark wisdom the most brilliant intelligence ever brought to the +service of his mystical faith; he lighted it up with flashes of the +keenest wit and bathed it in the glow of a lambent humor, so that it is +truly wonderful to me how it should remain so unintelligible. But I have +only tried to read certain of his books, and perhaps if I had persisted +in the effort I might have found them all as clear at last as the one +which seems to me the clearest, and is certainly most encouragingly +suggestive: I mean the one called ‘Society the Redeemed Form of Man.’ + +He had his whole being in his belief; it had not only liberated him from +the bonds of the Calvinistic theology in which his youth was trammelled, +but it had secured him against the conscious ethicism of the prevailing +Unitarian doctrine which supremely worshipped Conduct; and it had colored +his vocabulary to such strange effects that he spoke of moral men with +abhorrence; as more hopelessly lost than sinners. Any one whose sphere +tempted him to recognition of the foibles of others, he called the Devil; +but in spite of his perception of such diabolism, he was rather fond of +yielding to it, for he had a most trenchant tongue. I myself once fell +under his condemnation as the Devil, by having too plainly shared his joy +in his characterization of certain fellow-men; perhaps a group of +Bostonians from whom he had just parted and whose reciprocal pleasure of +themselves he presented in the image of “simmering in their own fat and +putting a nice brown on each other.” + +Swedenborg himself he did not spare as a man. He thought that very +likely his life had those lapses in it which some of his followers deny; +and he regarded him on the aesthetical side as essentially commonplace, +and as probably chosen for his prophetic function just because of his +imaginative nullity: his tremendous revelations could be the more +distinctly and unmistakably inscribed upon an intelligence of that sort, +which alone could render again a strictly literal report of them. + +As to some other sorts of believers who thought they had a special +apprehension of the truth, he, had no mercy upon them if they betrayed, +however innocently, any self-complacency in their possession. I went one +evening to call upon him with a dear old Shaker elder, who had the +misfortune to say that his people believed themselves to be living the +angelic life. James fastened upon him with the suggestion that according +to Swedenborg the most celestial angels were unconscious of their own +perfection, and that if the Shakers felt they were of angelic condition +they were probably the sport of the hells. I was very glad to get my +poor old friend off alive, and to find that he was not even aware of +being cut asunder: I did not invite him to shake himself. + +With spiritualists James had little or no sympathy; he was not so +impatient of them as the Swedenborgians commonly are, and he probably +acknowledged a measure of verity in the spiritistic phenomena; but he +seemed rather incurious concerning them, and he must have regarded them +as superfluities of naughtiness, mostly; as emanations from the hells. +His powerful and penetrating intellect interested itself with all social +and civil facts through his religion. He was essentially religious, but +he was very consciously a citizen, with most decided opinions upon +political questions. My own darkness as to anything like social reform +was then so dense that I cannot now be clear as to his feeling in such +matters, but I have the impression that it was far more radical than I +could understand. He was of a very merciful mind regarding things often +held in pitiless condemnation, but of charity, as it is commonly +understood, he had misgivings. He would never have turned away from him +that asketh; but he spoke with regret of some of his benefactions in the +past, large gifts of money to individuals, which he now thought had done +more harm than good. + +I never knew him to judge men by the society scale. He was most human in +his relations with others, and was in correspondence with all sorts of +people seeking light and help; he answered their letters and tried to +instruct them, and no one was so low or weak but he or she could reach +him on his or her own level, though he had his humorous perception of +their foibles and disabilities; and he had that keen sense of the +grotesque which often goes with the kindliest nature. He told of his +dining, early in life, next a fellow-man from Cape Cod at the Astor +House, where such a man could seldom have found himself. When they were +served with meat this neighbor asked if he would mind his putting his fat +on James’s plate: he disliked fat. James said that he considered the +request, and seeing no good reason against it, consented. + +He could be cruel with his tongue when he fancied insincerity or +pretence, and then cruelly sorry for the hurt he gave. He was indeed +tremulously sensitive, not only for himself but for others, and would +offer atonement far beyond the measure of the offence he supposed himself +to have given. + +At all times he thought originally in words of delightful originality, +which painted a fact with the greatest vividness. Of a person who had a +nervous twitching of the face, and who wished to call up a friend to +them, he said, “He spasmed to the fellow across the room, and introduced +him.” His written style had traits of the same bold adventurousness, but +it was his speech which was most captivating. As I write of him I see +him before me: his white bearded face, with a kindly intensity which at +first glance seemed fierce, the mouth humorously shaping the mustache, +the eyes vague behind the glasses; his sensitive hand gripping the stick +on which he rested his weight to ease it from the artificial limb he +wore. + + + + +V. + +The Goethean face and figure of Louis Agassiz were in those days to be +seen in the shady walks of Cambridge to which for me they lent a +Weimarish quality, in the degree that in Weimar itself a few years ago, I +felt a quality of Cambridge. Agassiz, of course, was Swiss and Latin, +and not Teutonic, but he was of the Continental European civilization, +and was widely different from the other Cambridge men in everything but +love of the place. “He is always an Europaen,” said Lowell one day, in +distinguishing concerning him; and for any one who had tasted the flavor +of the life beyond the ocean and the channel, this had its charm. Yet he +was extremely fond of his adoptive compatriots, and no alien born had a +truer or tenderer sense of New England character. I have an idea that no +one else of his day could have got so much money for science out of the +General Court of Massachusetts; and I have heard him speak with the +wisest and warmest appreciation of the hard material from which he was +able to extract this treasure. The legislators who voted appropriations +for his Museum and his other scientific objects were not usually lawyers +or professional men, with the perspectives of a liberal education, but +were hard-fisted farmers, who had a grip of the State’s money as if it +were their own, and yet gave it with intelligent munificence. They +understood that he did not want it for himself, and had no interested aim +in getting it; they knew that, as he once said, he had no time to make +money, and wished to use it solely for the advancement of learning; and +with this understanding they were ready, to help him generously. He +compared their liberality with that of kings and princes, when these +patronized science, with a recognition of the superior plebeian +generosity. It was on the veranda of his summer house at Nahant, while +he lay in the hammock, talking of this, that I heard him refer also to +the offer which Napoleon III. had made him, inviting him upon certain +splendid conditions to come to Paris after he had established himself in +Cambridge. He said that he had not come to America without going over +every such possibility in his own mind, and deciding beforehand against +it. He was a republican, by nationality and by preference, and was +entirely satisfied with his position and environment in New England. + +Outside of his scientific circle in Cambridge he was more friends with +Longfellow than with any one else, I believe, and Longfellow told me how, +after the doctors had condemned Agassiz to inaction, on account of his +failing health he had broken down in his friend’s study, and wept like an +‘Europaer’, and lamented, “I shall never finish my work!” Some papers +which he had begun to write for the Magazine, in contravention of the +Darwinian theory, or part of it, which it is known Agassiz did not +accept, remained part of the work which he never finished. After his +death, I wished Professor Jeffries Wyman to write of him in the Atlantic, +but he excused himself on account of his many labors, and then he +voluntarily spoke of Agassiz’s methods, which he agreed with rather than +his theories, being himself thoroughly Darwinian. I think he said +Agassiz was the first to imagine establishing a fact not from a single +example, but from examples indefinitely repeated. If it was a question +of something about robins for instance, he would have a hundred robins +examined before he would receive an appearance as a fact. + +Of course no preconception or prepossession of his own was suffered to +bar his way to the final truth he was seeking, and he joyously renounced +even a conclusion if he found it mistaken. I do not know whether Mrs. +Agassiz has put into her interesting life of him, a delightful story +which she told me about him. He came to her beaming one day, and +demanded, “You know I have always held such and such an opinion about a +certain group of fossil fishes?” “Yes, yes!” “Well, I have just been +reading------‘s new book, and he has shown me that there isn’t the least +truth in my theory”; and he burst into a laugh of unalloyed pleasure in +relinquishing his error. + +I could touch science at Cambridge only on its literary and social side, +of course, and my meetings with Agassiz were not many. I recall a dinner +at his house to Mr. Bret Harte, when the poet came on from California, +and Agassiz approached him over the coffee through their mutual +scientific interest in the last meeting of the geological “Society upon +the Stanislow.” He quoted to the author some passages from the poem +recording the final proceedings of this body, which had particularly +pleased him, and I think Mr. Harte was as much amused at finding himself +thus in touch with the savant, as Agassiz could ever have been with that +delicious poem. + +Agassiz lived at one end of Quincy Street, and James almost at the other +end, with an interval between them which but poorly typified their +difference of temperament. The one was all philosophical and the other +all scientific, and yet towards the close of his life, Agassiz may be +said to have led that movement towards the new position of science in +matters of mystery which is now characteristic of it. He was ancestrally +of the Swiss “Brahminical caste,” as so many of his friends in Cambridge +were of the Brahminical caste of New England; and perhaps it was the line +of ancestral pasteurs which at last drew him back, or on, to the +affirmation of an unformulated faith of his own. At any rate, before +most other savants would say that they had souls of their own he became, +by opening a summer school of science with prayer, nearly as consolatory +to the unscientific who wished to believe they had souls, as Mr. John +Fiske himself, though Mr. Fiske, as the arch-apostle of Darwinism, had +arrived at nearly the same point by such a very different road. + + + + +VI. + +Mr. Fiske had been our neighbor in our first Cambridge home, and when we +went to live in Berkeley Street, he followed with his family and placed +himself across the way in a house which I already knew as the home of +Richard Henry Dana, the author of ‘Two Years Before the Mast.’ Like +nearly all the other Cambridge men of my acquaintance Dana was very much +my senior, and like the rest he welcomed my literary promise as cordially +as if it were performance, with no suggestion of the condescension which +was said to be his attitude towards many of his fellow-men. I never saw +anything of this, in fact, and I suppose he may have been a blend of +those patrician qualities and democratic principles which made Lowell +anomalous even to himself. He is part of the anti-slavery history of his +time, and he gave to the oppressed his strenuous help both as a man and a +politician; his gifts and learning in the law were freely at their +service. He never lost his interest in those white slaves, whose brutal +bondage he remembered as bound with them in his ‘Two Years Before the +Mast,’ and any luckless seaman with a case or cause might count upon his +friendship as surely as the black slaves of the South. He was able to +temper his indignation for their oppression with a humorous perception of +what was droll in its agents and circumstances; and I wish I could recall +all that he said once about sea-etiquette on merchant vessels, where the +chief mate might no more speak to the captain at table without being +addressed by him than a subject might put a question to his sovereign. He +was amusing in his stories of the Pacific trade in which he said it was +very noble to deal in furs from the Northwest, and very ignoble to deal +in hides along the Mexican and South American coasts. Every ship’s +master wished naturally to be in the fur-carrying trade, and in one of +Dana’s instances, two vessels encounter in mid-ocean, and exchange the +usual parley as to their respective ports of departure and destination. +The final demand comes through the trumpet, “What cargo?” and the captain +so challenged yields to temptation and roars back “Furs!” A moment of +hesitation elapses, and then the questioner pursues, “Here and there a +horn?” + +There were other distinctions, of which seafaring men of other days were +keenly sensible, and Dana dramatized the meeting of a great, swelling +East Indiaman, with a little Atlantic trader, which has hailed her. She +shouts back through her captain’s trumpet that she is from Calcutta, and +laden with silks, spices, and other orient treasures, and in her turn she +requires like answer from the sail which has presumed to enter into +parley with her. “What cargo?” The trader confesses to a mixed cargo for +Boston, and to the final question, her master replies in meek apology, +“Only from Liverpool, sir!” and scuttles down the horizon as swiftly as +possible. + +Dana was not of the Cambridge men whose calling was in Cambridge. He was +a lawyer in active practice, and he went every day to Boston. One was +apt to meet him in those horse-cars which formerly tinkled back and forth +between the two cities, and which were often so full of one’s +acquaintance that they had all the social elements of an afternoon tea. +They were abusively overcrowded at times, of course, and one might easily +see a prime literary celebrity swaying from, a strap, or hanging uneasily +by the hand-rail to the lower steps of the back platform. I do not mean +that I ever happened to see the author of Two Years Before the Mast in +either fact, but in his celebrity he had every qualification for the +illustration of my point. His book probably carried the American name +farther and wider than any American books except those of Irving and +Cooper at a day when our writers were very little known, and our +literature was the only infant industry not fostered against foreign +ravage, but expressly left to harden and strengthen itself as it best +might in a heartless neglect even at home. The book was delightful, and +I remember it from a reading of thirty years ago, as of the stuff that +classics are made of. I venture no conjecture as to its present +popularity, but of all books relating to the sea I think it, is the best. +The author when I knew him was still Richard Henry Dana, Jr., his father, +the aged poet, who first established the name in the public recognition, +being alive, though past literary activity. It was distinctively a +literary race, and in the actual generation it has given proofs of its +continued literary vitality in the romance of ‘Espiritu Santo’ by the +youngest daughter of the Dana I knew. + + + + +VII. + +There could be no stronger contrast to him in origin, education, and +character than a man who lived at the same time in Cambridge, and who +produced a book which in its final fidelity to life is not unworthy to be +named with ‘Two Years Before the Mast.’ Ralph Keeler wrote the ‘Vagabond +Adventures’ which he had lived. I have it on my heart to name him in the +presence of our great literary men not only because I had an affection +for him, tenderer than I then knew, but because I believe his book is +worthier of more remembrance than it seems to enjoy. I was reading it +only the other day, and I found it delightful, and much better than I +imagined when I accepted for the Atlantic the several papers which it is +made up of. I am not sure but it belongs to the great literature in that +fidelity to life which I have spoken of, and which the author brought +himself to practise with such difficulty, and under so much stress from +his editor. He really wanted to fake it at times, but he was docile at +last and did it so honestly that it tells the history of his strange +career in much better terms than it can be given again. He had been, as +he claimed, “a cruel uncle’s ward” in his early orphan-hood, and while +yet almost a child he had run away from home, to fulfil his heart’s +desire of becoming a clog-dancer in a troupe of negro minstrels. But it +was first his fate to be cabin-boy and bootblack on a lake steamboat, and +meet with many squalid adventures, scarcely to be matched outside of a +Spanish picaresque novel. When he did become a dancer (and even a +danseuse) of the sort he aspired to be, the fruition of his hopes was so +little what he imagined that he was very willing to leave the Floating +Palace on the Mississippi in which his troupe voyaged and exhibited, and +enter the college of the Jesuit Fathers at Cape Girardeau in Missouri. +They were very good to him, and in their charge he picked up a good deal +more Latin, if not less Greek than another strolling player who also took +to literature. From college Keeler went to Europe, and then to +California, whence he wrote me that he was coming on to Boston with the +manuscript of a novel which he wished me to read for the magazine. I +reported against it to my chief, but nothing could shake Keeler’s faith +in it, until he had printed it at his own cost, and known it fail +instantly and decisively. He had come to Cambridge to see it through the +press, and he remained there four or five years, with certain brief +absences. Then, during the Cuban insurrection of the early seventies, he +accepted the invitation of a New York paper to go to Cuba as its +correspondent. + +“Don’t go, Keeler,” I entreated him, when he came to tell me of his +intention. “They’ll garrote you down there.” + +“Well,” he said, with the air of being pleasantly interested by the +coincidence, as he stood on my study hearth with his feet wide apart in a +fashion he had, and gayly flirted his hand in the air, “that’s what +Aldrich says, and he’s agreed to write my biography, on condition that I +make a last dying speech when they bring me out on the plaza to do it, +‘If I had taken the advice of my friend T. B. Aldrich, author of +‘Marjorie Daw and Other People,’ I should not now be in this place.’” + +He went, and he did not come back. He was not indeed garroted as his +friends had promised, but he was probably assassinated on the steamer by +which he sailed from Santiago, for he never arrived in Havana, and was +never heard of again. + +I now realize that I loved him, though I did as little to show it as men +commonly do. If I am to meet somewhere else the friends who are no +longer here, I should like to meet Ralph Keeler, and I would take some +chances of meeting in a happy place a soul which had by no means kept +itself unspotted, but which in all its consciousness of error, cheerfully +trusted that “the Almighty was not going to scoop any of us.” The faith +worded so grotesquely could not have been more simply or humbly affirmed, +and no man I think could have been more helplessly sincere. He had +nothing of that false self-respect which forbids a man to own himself +wrong promptly and utterly when need is; and in fact he owned to some +things in his checkered past which would hardly allow him any sort of +self-respect. He had always an essential gaiety not to be damped by any +discipline, and a docility which expressed itself in cheerful compliance. +“Why do you use bias for opinion?” I demanded, in going over a proof with +him. “Oh, because I’m such an ass--such a bi-ass.” + +He had a philosophy which he liked to impress with a vivid touch on his +listener’s shoulder: “Put your finger on the present moment and enjoy it. +It’s the only one you’ve got, or ever will have.” This light and joyous +creature could not but be a Pariah among our Brahmins, and I need not say +that I never met him in any of the great Cambridge houses. I am not sure +that he was a persona grata to every one in my own, for Keeler was framed +rather for men’s liking, and Mr. Aldrich and I had our subtleties as to +whether his mind about women was not so Chinese as somewhat to infect his +manner. Keeler was too really modest to be of any rebellious mind +towards the society which ignored him, and of too sweet a cheerfulness to +be greatly vexed by it. He lived on in the house of a suave old actor, +who oddly made his home in Cambridge, and he continued of a harmless +Bohemianism in his daily walk, which included lunches at Boston +restaurants as often as he could get you to let him give them you, if you +were of his acquaintance. On a Sunday he would appear coming out of the +post-office usually at the hour when all cultivated Cambridge was coming +for its letters, and wave a glad hand in air, and shout a blithe +salutation to the friend he had marked for his companion in a morning +stroll. The stroll was commonly over the flats towards Brighton (I do +not know why, except perhaps that it was out of the beat of the better +element) and the talk was mainly of literature, in which he was doing +less than he meant to do, and which he seemed never able quite to feel +was not a branch of the Show Business, and might not be legitimately +worked by like advertising, though he truly loved and honored it. + +I suppose it was not altogether a happy life, and Keeler had his moments +of amusing depression, which showed their shadows in his smiling face. He +was of a slight figure and low stature, with hands and feet of almost +womanish littleness. He was very blonde, and his restless eyes were +blue; he wore his yellow beard in whiskers only, which he pulled +nervously but perhaps did not get to droop so much as he wished. + + + + +VIII. + +Keeler was a native of Ohio, and there lived at Cambridge when I first +came there an Indianian, more accepted by literary society, who was of +real quality as a poet. Forceythe Willson, whose poem of “The Old +Sergeant” Doctor Holmes used to read publicly in the closing year of the +civil war, was of a Western altitude of figure, and of an extraordinary +beauty of face in an oriental sort. He had large, dark eyes with clouded +whites; his full, silken beard was of a flashing Persian blackness. He +was excessively nervous, to such an extreme that when I first met him at +Longfellow’s, he could not hold himself still in his chair. I think this +was an effect of shyness in him, as well as physical, for afterwards when +I went to find him in his own house he was much more at ease. + +He preferred to receive me in the dim, large hall after opening his door +to me himself, and we sat down there and talked, I remember, of +supernatural things. He was much interested in spiritualism, and he had +several stories to tell of his own experience in such matters. But none +was so good as one which I had at second hand from Lowell, who thought it +almost the best ghost story he had ever heard. The spirit of Willson’s +father appeared to him, and stood before him. Willson was accustomed to +apparitions, and so he said simply, “Won’t you sit down, father?” The +phantom put out his hand to lay hold of a chair-back as some people do in +taking a seat, and his shadowy arm passed through the frame-work. “Ah!” + he said, “I forgot that I was not substance.” + +I do not know whether “The Old Sergeant” is ever read now; it has +probably passed with other great memories of the great war; and I am +afraid none of Willson’s other verse is remembered. But he was then a +distinct literary figure, and not to be left out of the count of our +poets. I did not see him again. Shortly afterwards I heard that he had +left Cambridge with signs of consumption, which must have run a rapid +course, for a very little later came the news of his death. + + + + +IX. + +The most devoted Cantabrigian, after Lowell, whom I knew, would perhaps +have contended that if he had stayed with us Willson might have lived; +for John Holmes affirmed a faith in the virtues of the place which +ascribed almost an aseptic character to its air, and when he once +listened to my own complaints of an obstinate cold, he cheered himself, +if not me, with the declaration, “Well, one thing, Mr. Howells, Cambridge +never let a man keep a cold yet!” + +If he had said it was better to live in Cambridge with a cold than +elsewhere without one I should have believed him; as it was, Cambridge +bore him out in his assertion, though she took her own time to do it. + +Lowell had talked to me of him before I met him, celebrating his peculiar +humor with that affection which was not always so discriminating, and +Holmes was one of the first Cambridge men I knew. I knew him first in +the charming old Colonial house in which his famous brother and he were +born. It was demolished long before I left Cambridge, but in memory it +still stands on the ground since occupied by the Hemenway Gymnasium, and +shows for me through that bulk a phantom frame of Continental buff in the +shadow of elms that are shadows themselves. The ‘genius loci’ was +limping about the pleasant mansion with the rheumatism which then +expressed itself to his friends in a resolute smile, but which now +insists upon being an essential trait of the full-length presence to my +mind: a short stout figure, helped out with a cane, and a grizzled head +with features formed to win the heart rather than the eye of the +beholder. + +In one of his own eyes there was a cast of such winning humor and +geniality that it took the liking more than any beauty could have done, +and the sweetest, shy laugh in the world went with this cast. + +I long wished to get him to write something for the Magazine, and at last +I prevailed with him to review a history of Cambridge which had come out. + +He did it charmingly of course, for he loved more to speak of Cambridge +than anything else. He held his native town in an idolatry which was not +blind, but which was none the less devoted because he was aware of her +droll points and her weak points. He always celebrated these as so many +virtues, and I think it was my own passion for her that first commended +me to him. I was not her son, but he felt that this was my misfortune +more than my fault, and he seemed more and more to forgive it. After we +had got upon the terms of editor and contributor, we met oftener than +before, though I do not now remember that I ever persuaded him to write +again for me. Once he gave me something, and then took it back, with a +self-distrust of it which I could not overcome. + +When the Holmes house was taken down, he went to live with an old +domestic in a small house on the street amusingly called Appian Way. He +had certain rooms of her, and his own table, but he would not allow that +he was ever anything but a lodger in the place, where he continued till +he died. In the process of time he came so far to trust his experience +of me, that he formed the habit of giving me an annual supper. Some days +before this event, he would appear in my study, and with divers delicate +and tentative approaches, nearly always of the same tenor, he would say +that he should like to ask my family to an oyster supper with him. “But +you know,” he would explain, “I haven’t a house of my own to ask you to, +and I should like to give you the supper here.” When I had agreed to +this suggestion with due gravity, he would inquire our engagements, and +then say, as if a great load were off his mind, “Well, then, I will send +up a few oysters to-morrow,” or whatever day we had fixed on; and after a +little more talk to take the strangeness out of the affair, would go his +way. On the day appointed the fish-man would come with several gallons +of oysters, which he reported Mr. Holmes had asked him to bring, and in +the evening the giver of the feast would reappear, with a lank oil-cloth +bag, sagged by some bottles of wine. There was always a bottle of red +wine, and sometimes a bottle of champagne, and he had taken the +precaution to send some crackers beforehand, so that the supper should be +as entirely of his own giving as possible. He was forced to let us do +the cooking and to supply the cold-slaw, and perhaps he indemnified +himself for putting us to these charges and for the use of our linen and +silver, by the vast superfluity of his oysters, with which we remained +inundated for days. He did not care to eat many himself, but seemed +content to fancy doing us a pleasure; and I have known few greater ones +in life, than in the hospitality that so oddly played the host to us at +our own table. + + + + +X. + +It must have seemed incomprehensible to such a Cantabrigian that we +should ever have been willing to leave Cambridge, and in fact I do not +well understand it myself. But if he resented it, he never showed his +resentment. As often as I happened to meet him after our defection he +used me with unabated kindness, and sparkled into some gaiety too +ethereal for remembrance. The last time I met him was at Lowell’s +funeral, when I drove home with him and Curtis and Child, and in the +revulsion from the stress of that saddest event, had our laugh, as people +do in the presence of death, at something droll we remembered of the +friend we mourned. + +My nearest literary neighbor, when we lived in Sacramento Street, was the +Rev. Dr. John G. Palfrey, the historian of New England, whose +chimney-tops amid the pine-tops I could see from my study window when the +leaves were off the little grove of oaks between us. He was one of the +first of my acquaintances, not suffering the great disparity of our ages +to count against me, but tactfully and sweetly adjusting himself to my +youth in the friendly intercourse which he invited. He was a most gentle +and kindly old man, with still an interest in liberal things which lasted +till the infirmities of age secluded him from the world and all its +interests. As is known, he had been in his prime one of the foremost of +the New England anti-slavery men, and he had fought the good fight with a +heavy heart for a brother long settled in Louisiana who sided with the +South, and who after the civil war found himself disfranchised. In this +temporary disability he came North to visit Doctor Palfrey upon the +doctor’s insistence, though at first he would have nothing to do with +him, and refused even to answer his letters. “Of course,” the doctor +said, “I was not going to stand that from my mother’s son, and I simply +kept on writing.” So he prevailed, but the fiery old gentleman from +Louisiana was reconciled to nothing in the North but his brother, and +when he came to return my visit, he quickly touched upon his cause of +quarrel with us. “I can’t vote,” he declared, “but my coachman can, and +I don’t know how I’m to get the suffrage, unless my physician paints me +all over with the iodine he’s using for my rheumatic side.” + +Doctor Palfrey was most distinctly of the Brahminical caste and was long +an eminent Unitarian minister, but at the time I began to know him he had +long quitted the pulpit. He was so far of civic or public character as +to be postmaster at Boston, when we were first neighbors, but this +officiality was probably so little in keeping with his nature that it was +like a return to his truer self when he ceased to hold the place, and +gave his time altogether to his history. It is a work which will hardly +be superseded in the interest of those who value thorough research and +temperate expression. It is very just, and without endeavor for picture +or drama it is to me very attractive. Much that has to be recorded of +New England lacks charm, but he gave form and dignity and presence to the +memories of the past, and the finer moments of that great story, he gave +with the simplicity that was their best setting. It seems to me such an +apology (in the old sense) as New England might have written for herself, +and in fact Doctor Palfrey was a personification of New England in one of +the best and truest kinds. He was refined in the essential gentleness of +his heart without being refined away; he kept the faith of her Puritan +tradition though he no longer kept the Puritan faith, and his defence of +the Puritan severity with the witches and Quakers was as impartial as it +was efficient in positing the Puritans as of their time, and rather +better and not worse than other people of the same time. He was himself +a most tolerant man, and his tolerance was never weak or fond; it stopped +well short of condoning error, which he condemned when he preferred to +leave it to its own punishment. Personally he was without any flavor of +harshness; his mind was as gentle as his manner, which was one of the +gentlest I have ever known. + +Of as gentle make but of more pensive temper, with unexpected bursts of +lyrical gaiety, was Christopher Pearse Cranch, the poet, whom I had known +in New York long before he came to live in Cambridge. He could not only +play and sing most amusing songs, but he wrote very good poems and +painted pictures perhaps not so good. I always liked his Venetian +pictures, for their poetic, unsentimentalized veracity, and I printed as +well as liked many of his poems. During the time that I knew him more +than his due share of troubles and sorrows accumulated themselves on his +fine head, which the years had whitened, and gave a droop to the +beautiful, white-bearded face. But he had the artist soul and the poet +heart, and no doubt he could take refuge in these from the cares that +shadowed his visage. My acquaintance with him in Cambridge renewed +itself upon the very terms of its beginning in New York. We met at +Longfellow’s table, where he lifted up his voice in the Yankee folk-song, +“On Springfield Mountain there did dwell,” which he gave with a perfectly +killing mock-gravity. + + + + +XI. + +At Cambridge the best society was better, it seems to me, than even that +of the neighboring capital. It would be rather hard to prove this, and I +must ask the reader to take my word for it, if he wishes to believe it. +The great interests in that pleasant world, which I think does not +present itself to my memory in a false iridiscence, were the intellectual +interests, and all other interests were lost in these to such as did not +seek them too insistently. + +People held themselves high; they held themselves personally aloof from +people not duly assayed; their civilization was still Puritan though +their belief had long ceased to be so. They had weights and measure, +stamped in an earlier time, a time surer of itself than ours, by which +they rated the merit of all comers, and rejected such as did not bear the +test. These standards were their own, and they were satisfied with them; +most Americans have no standards of their own, but these are not +satisfied even with other people’s, and so our society is in a state of +tolerant and tremulous misgiving. + +Family counted in Cambridge, without doubt, as it counts in New England +everywhere, but family alone did not mean position, and the want of +family did not mean the want of it. Money still less than family +commanded; one could be openly poor in Cambridge without open shame, or +shame at all, for no one was very rich there, and no one was proud of his +riches. + +I do not wonder that Turguenieff thought the conditions ideal, as Boyesen +portrayed them to him; and I look back at my own life there with wonder +at my good fortune. I was sensible, and I still am sensible this had its +alloys. I was young and unknown and was making my way, and I had to +suffer some of the penalties of these disadvantages; but I do not believe +that anywhere else in this ill-contrived economy, where it is vainly +imagined that the material struggle forms a high incentive and +inspiration, would my penalties have been so light. On the other hand, +the good that was done me I could never repay if I lived all over again +for others the life that I have so long lived for myself. At times, when +I had experienced from those elect spirits with whom I was associated, +some act of friendship, as signal as it was delicate, I used to ask +myself, how I could ever do anything unhandsome or ungenerous towards any +one again; and I had a bad conscience the next time I did it. + +The air of the Cambridge that I knew was sufficiently cool to be bracing, +but what was of good import in me flourished in it. The life of the +place had its lateral limitations; sometimes its lights failed to detect +excellent things that lay beyond it; but upward it opened illimitably. I +speak of it frankly because that life as I witnessed it is now almost +wholly of the past. Cambridge is still the home of much that is good and +fine in our literature: one realizes this if one names Colonel Thomas +Wentworth Higginson, Mr. John Fiske, Mr. William James, Mr. Horace E. +Scudder, not to name any others, but the first had not yet come back to +live in his birthplace at the time I have been writing of, and the rest +had not yet their actual prominence. One, in deed among so many absent, +is still present there, whom from time to time I have hitherto named +without offering him the recognition which I should have known an +infringement of his preferences. But the literary Cambridge of thirty +years ago could not be clearly imagined or justly estimated without +taking into account the creative sympathy of a man whose contributions to +our literature only partially represent what he has constantly done for +the humanities. I am sure that, after the easy heroes of the day are +long forgot, and the noisy fames of the strenuous life shall dwindle to +their essential insignificance before those of the gentle life, we shall +all see in Charles Eliot Norton the eminent scholar who left the quiet of +his books to become our chief citizen at the moment when he warned his +countrymen of the ignominy and disaster of doing wrong. + + + + +A BELATED GUEST + +It is doubtful whether the survivor of any order of things finds +compensation in the privilege, however undisputed by his contemporaries, +of recording his memories of it. This is, in the first two or three +instances, a pleasure. It is sweet to sit down, in the shade or by the +fire, and recall names, looks, and tones from the past; and if the +Absences thus entreated to become Presences are those of famous people, +they lend to the fond historian a little of their lustre, in which he +basks for the time with an agreeable sense of celebrity. But another +time comes, and comes very soon, when the pensive pleasure changes to the +pain of duty, and the precious privilege converts itself into a grievous +obligation. You are unable to choose your company among those immortal +shades; if one, why not another, where all seem to have a right to such +gleams of this ‘dolce lome’ as your reminiscences can shed upon them? +Then they gather so rapidly, as the years pass, in these pale realms, +that one, if one continues to survive, is in danger of wearing out such +welcome, great or small, as met ones recollections in the first two or +three instances, if one does one’s duty by each. People begin to say, +and not without reason, in a world so hurried and wearied as this: “Ah, +here he is again with his recollections!” Well, but if the recollections +by some magical good-fortune chance to concern such a contemporary of his +as, say, Bret Harte, shall not he be partially justified, or at least +excused? + + + + +I. + +My recollections of Bret Harte begin with the arrest, on the Atlantic +shore, of that progress of his from the Pacific Slope, which, in the +simple days of 1871, was like the progress of a prince, in the universal +attention and interest which met and followed it. He was indeed a +prince, a fairy prince in whom every lover of his novel and enchanting +art felt a patriotic property, for his promise and performance in those +earliest tales of ‘The Luck of Roaring Camp’, and ‘Tennessee’s Partner’, +and ‘Maggles’, and ‘The Outcasts of Poker Flat’, were the earnests of an +American literature to come. If it is still to come, in great measure, +that is not Harte’s fault, for he kept on writing those stories, in one +form or another, as long as he lived. He wrote them first and last in +the spirit of Dickens, which no man of his time could quite help doing, +but he wrote them from the life of Bret Harte, on the soil and in the air +of the newest kind of new world, and their freshness took the soul of his +fellow-countrymen not only with joy, but with pride such as the +Europeans, who adored him much longer, could never know in him. + +When the adventurous young editor who had proposed being his host for +Cambridge and the Boston neighborhood, while Harte was still in San +Francisco, and had not yet begun his princely progress eastward, read of +the honors that attended his coming from point to point, his courage +fell, as if he had perhaps, committed himself in too great an enterprise. +Who was he, indeed, that he should think of making this + + “Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,” + +his guest, especially when he heard that in Chicago Harte failed of +attending a banquet of honor because the givers of it had not sent a +carriage to fetch him to it, as the alleged use was in San Francisco? +Whether true or not, and it was probably not true in just that form, it +must have been this rumor which determined his host to drive into Boston +for him with the handsomest hack which the livery of Cambridge afforded, +and not trust to the horse-car and the local expressman to get him and +his baggage out, as he would have done with a less portentous guest. +However it was, he instantly lost all fear when they met at the station, +and Harte pressed forward with his cordial hand-clasp, as if he were not +even a fairy prince, and with that voice and laugh which were surely the +most winning in the world. He was then, as always, a child of extreme +fashion as to his clothes and the cut of his beard, which he wore in a +mustache and the drooping side-whiskers of the day, and his jovial +physiognomy was as winning as his voice, with its straight nose and +fascinating thrust of the under lip, its fine eyes, and good forehead, +then thickly crowned with the black hair which grew early white, while +his mustache remained dark the most enviable and consoling effect +possible in the universal mortal necessity of either aging or dying. He +was, as one could not help seeing, thickly pitted, but after the first +glance one forgot this, so that a lady who met him for the first time +could say to him, “Mr. Harte, aren’t you afraid to go about in the cars +so recklessly when there is this scare about smallpox?” “No, madam,” he +could answer in that rich note of his, with an irony touched by +pseudo-pathos, “I bear a charmed life.” + +The drive out from Boston was not too long for getting on terms of +personal friendship with the family which just filled the hack, the two +boys intensely interested in the novelties of a New England city and +suburb, and the father and mother continually exchanging admiration of +such aspects of nature as presented themselves in the leafless sidewalk +trees, and patches of park and lawn. They found everything so fine, so +refined, after the gigantic coarseness of California, where the natural +forms were so vast that one could not get on companionable terms with +them. Their host heard them without misgiving for the world of romance +which Harte had built up among those huge forms, and with a subtle +perception that this was no excursion of theirs to the East, but a +lifelong exodus from the exile which he presently understood they must +always have felt California to be. It is different now, when people are +every day being born in California, and must begin to feel it home from +the first breath, but it is notable that none of the Californians of that +great early day have gone back to live amid the scenes which inspired and +prospered them. + +Before they came in sight of the editor’s humble roof he had mocked +himself to his guest for his trepidations, and Harte with burlesque +magnanimity had consented to be for that occasion only something less +formidable than he had loomed afar. He accepted with joy the theory of +passing a week in the home of virtuous poverty, and the week began as +delightfully as it went on. From first to last Cambridge amused him as +much as it charmed him by that air of academic distinction which was +stranger to him even than the refined trees and grass. It has already +been told how, after a list of the local celebrities had been recited to +him, he said, “why, you couldn’t stand on your front porch and fire off +your revolver without bringing down a two volumer,” and no doubt the +pleasure he had in it was the effect of its contrast with the wild +California he had known, and perhaps, when he had not altogether known +it, had invented. + + + + +II. + +Cambridge began very promptly to show him those hospitalities which he +could value, and continued the fable of his fairy princeliness in the +curiosity of those humbler admirers who could not hope to be his hosts or +his fellow-guests at dinner or luncheon. Pretty presences in the +tie-backs of the period were seen to flit before the home of virtuous +poverty, hungering for any chance sight of him which his outgoings or +incomings might give. The chances were better with the outgoings than +with the incomings, for these were apt to be so hurried, in the final +result of his constitutional delays, as to have the rapidity of the +homing pigeon’s flight, and to afford hardly a glimpse to the quickest +eye. It cannot harm him, or any one now, to own that Harte was nearly +always late for those luncheons and dinners which he was always going out +to, and it needed the anxieties and energies of both families to get him +into his clothes, and then into the carriage where a good deal of final +buttoning must have been done, in order that he might not arrive so very +late. He was the only one concerned who was quite unconcerned; his +patience with his delays was inexhaustible; he arrived at the expected +houses smiling, serenely jovial, radiating a bland gaiety from his whole +person, and ready to ignore any discomfort he might have occasioned. + +Of course, people were glad to have him on his own terms, and it may be +truly said that it was worth while to have him on any terms. There never +was a more charming companion, an easier or more delightful guest. + +It was not from what he said, for he was not much of a talker, and almost +nothing of a story-teller; but he could now and then drop the fittest +word, and with a glance or smile of friendly intelligence express the +appreciation of another’s fit word which goes far to establish for a man +the character of boon humorist. It must be said of him that if he took +the honors easily that were paid him he took them modestly, and never by +word or look invited them, or implied that he expected them. It was fine +to see him humorously accepting the humorous attribution of scientific +sympathies from Agassiz, in compliment of his famous epic describing the +incidents that “broke up the society upon the Stanislow.” It was a +little fearsome to hear him frankly owning to Lowell his dislike for +something over-literary in the phrasing of certain verses of ‘The +Cathedral.’ But Lowell could stand that sort of thing from a man who +could say the sort of things that Harte said to him of that delicious +line picturing the bobolink as he + + “Runs down a brook of laughter in the air.” + +This, Harte told him, was the line he liked best of all his lines, and +Lowell smoked well content with the praise. Yet they were not men to get +on easily together, Lowell having limitations in directions where Harte +had none. Afterward in London they did not meet often or willingly. +Lowell owned the brilliancy and uncommonness of Harte’s gift, while he +sumptuously surfeited his passion of finding everybody more or less a Jew +by finding that Harte was at least half a Jew on his father’s side; he +had long contended for the Hebraicism of his name. + +With all his appreciation of the literary eminences whom Fields used to +class together as “the old saints,” Harte had a spice of irreverence that +enabled him to take them more ironically than they might have liked, and +to see the fun of a minor literary man’s relation to them. Emerson’s +smoking amused him, as a Jovian self-indulgence divinely out of character +with so supreme a god, and he shamelessly burlesqued it, telling how +Emerson at Concord had proposed having a “wet night” with him over a +glass of sherry, and had urged the scant wine upon his young friend with +a hospitable gesture of his cigar. But this was long after the Cambridge +episode, in which Longfellow alone escaped the corrosive touch of his +subtle irreverence, or, more strictly speaking, had only the effect of +his reverence. That gentle and exquisitely modest dignity, of +Longfellow’s he honored with as much veneration as it was in him to +bestow, and he had that sense of Longfellow’s beautiful and perfected art +which is almost a test of a critic’s own fineness. + + + + +III. + +As for Harte’s talk, it was mostly ironical, not to the extreme of +satire, but tempered to an agreeable coolness even for the things he +admired. He did not apparently care to hear himself praised, but he +could very accurately and perfectly mark his discernment of excellence in +others. He was at times a keen observer of nature and again not, +apparently. Something was said before him and Lowell of the beauty of +his description of a rabbit, startled with fear among the ferns, and +lifting its head with the pulsation of its frightened heart visibly +shaking it; then the talk turned on the graphic homeliness of Dante’s +noticing how the dog’s skin moves upon it, and Harte spoke of the +exquisite shudder with which a horse tries to rid itself of a fly. + +But once again, when an azalea was shown to him as the sort of bush that +Sandy drunkenly slept under in ‘The Idyl of Iced Gulch’, he asked, “Why, +is that an azalea?” To be sure, this might have been less from his +ignorance or indifference concerning the quality of the bush he had sent +Sandy to sleep under than from his willingness to make a mock of an +azalea in a very small pot, so disproportionate to uses which an azalea +of Californian size could easily lend itself to. + +You never could be sure of Harte; he could only by chance be caught in +earnest about anything or anybody. Except for those slight recognitions +of literary, traits in his talk with Lowell, nothing remained from his +conversation but the general criticism he passed upon his brilliant +fellow-Hebrew Heine, as “rather scorbutic.” He preferred to talk about +the little matters of common incident and experience. He amused himself +with such things as the mystification of the postman of whom he asked his +way to Phillips Avenue, where he adventurously supposed his host to be +living. “Why,” the postman said, “there is no Phillips Avenue in +Cambridge. There’s Phillips Place.” “Well,” Harte assented, “Phillips +Place will do; but there is a Phillips Avenue.” He entered eagerly into +the canvass of the distinctions and celebrities asked to meet him at the +reception made for him, but he had even a greater pleasure in +compassionating his host for the vast disparity between the caterer’s +china and plated ware and the simplicities and humilities of the home of +virtuous poverty; and he spluttered with delight at the sight of the +lofty ‘epergnes’ set up and down the supper-table when he was brought in +to note the preparations made in his honor. Those monumental structures +were an inexhaustible joy to him; he walked round and round the room, and +viewed them in different perspectives, so as to get the full effect of +the towering forms that dwarfed it so. + +He was a tease, as many a sweet and fine wit is apt to be, but his +teasing was of the quality of a caress, so much kindness went with it. He +lamented as an irreparable loss his having missed seeing that night an +absent-minded brother in literature, who came in rubber shoes, and +forgetfully wore them throughout the evening. That hospitable soul of +Ralph Keeler, who had known him in California, but had trembled for their +acquaintance when he read of all the honors that might well have spoiled +Harte for the friends of his simpler days, rejoiced in the unchanged +cordiality of his nature when they met, and presently gave him one of +those restaurant lunches in Boston, which he was always sumptuously +providing out of his destitution. Harte was the life of a time which was +perhaps less a feast of reason than a flow of soul. The truth is, there +was nothing but careless stories carelessly told, and jokes and laughing, +and a great deal of mere laughing without the jokes, the whole as unlike +the ideal of a literary symposium as well might be; but there was present +one who met with that pleasant Boston company for the first time, and to +whom Harte attributed a superstition of Boston seriousness not realized +then and there. “Look at him,” he said, from time to time. “This is the +dream of his life,” and then shouted and choked with fun at the +difference between the occasion and the expectation he would have +imagined in his commensal’s mind. At a dinner long after in London, +where several of the commensals of that time met again, with other +literary friends of a like age and stature, Harte laid his arms well +along their shoulders as they formed in a half-circle before him, and +screamed out in mocking mirth at the bulbous favor to which the slim +shapes of the earlier date had come. The sight was not less a rapture to +him that he was himself the prey of the same practical joke from the +passing years. The hair which the years had wholly swept from some of +those thoughtful brows, or left spindling autumnal spears, “or few or +none,” to “shake against the cold,” had whitened to a wintry snow on his, +while his mustache had kept its youthful black. “He looks,” one of his +friends said to another as they walked home together, “like a French +marquis of the ancien regime.” “Yes,” the other assented, thoughtfully, +“or like an American actor made up for the part.” + +The saying closely fitted the outward fact, but was of a subtle injustice +in its implication of anything histrionic in Harte’s nature. Never was +any man less a ‘poseur’; he made simply and helplessly known what he was +at any and every moment, and he would join the witness very cheerfully in +enjoying whatever was amusing in the disadvantage to himself. In the +course of events, which were in his case so very human, it came about on +a subsequent visit of his to Boston that an impatient creditor decided to +right himself out of the proceeds of the lecture which was to be given, +and had the law corporeally present at the house of the friend where +Harte dined, and in the anteroom at the lecture-hall, and on the +platform, where the lecture was delivered with beautiful aplomb and +untroubled charm. He was indeed the only one privy to the law’s presence +who was not the least affected by it, so that when his host of an earlier +time ventured to suggest, “Well, Harte, this is the old literary +tradition; this is the Fleet business over again,” he joyously smote his +thigh and crowed out, “Yes, the Fleet!” No doubt he tasted all the +delicate humor of the situation, and his pleasure in it was quite +unaffected. + +If his temperament was not adapted to the harsh conditions of the elder +American world, it might very well be that his temperament was not +altogether in the wrong. If it disabled him for certain experiences of +life, it was the source of what was most delightful in his personality, +and perhaps most beautiful in his talent. It enabled him to do such +things as he did without being at all anguished for the things he did not +do, and indeed could not. His talent was not a facile gift; he owned +that he often went day after day to his desk, and sat down before that +yellow post-office paper on which he liked to write his literature, in +that exquisitely refined script of his, without being able to inscribe a +line. It may be owned for him that though he came to the East at +thirty-four, which ought to have been the very prime of his powers, he +seemed to have arrived after the age of observation was past for him. He +saw nothing aright, either in Newport, where he went to live, or in New +York, where he sojourned, or on those lecturing tours which took him +about the whole country; or if he saw it aright, he could not report it +aright, or would not. After repeated and almost invariable failures to +deal with the novel characters and circumstances which he encountered he +left off trying, and frankly went back to the semi-mythical California he +had half discovered, half created, and wrote Bret Harte over and over as +long as he lived. This, whether he did it from instinct or from reason, +was the best thing he could do, and it went as nearly as might be to +satisfy the insatiable English fancy for the wild America no longer to be +found on our map. + +It is imaginable of Harte that this temperament defended him from any +bitterness in the disappointment he may have shared with that simple +American public which in the early eighteen-seventies expected any and +everything of him in fiction and drama. The long breath was not his; he +could not write a novel, though he produced the like of one or two, and +his plays were too bad for the stage, or else too good for it. At any +rate, they could not keep it, even when they got it, and they denoted the +fatigue or the indifference of their author in being dramatizations of +his longer or shorter fictions, and not originally dramatic efforts. The +direction in which his originality lasted longest, and most strikingly +affirmed his power, was in the direction of his verse. + +Whatever minds there may be about Harte’s fiction finally, there can +hardly be more than one mind about his poetry. He was indeed a poet; +whether he wrote what drolly called itself “dialect,” or wrote language, +he was a poet of a fine and fresh touch. It must be allowed him that in +prose as well he had the inventive gift, but he had it in verse far more +importantly. There are lines, phrases, turns in his poems, +characterizations, and pictures which will remain as enduringly as +anything American, if that is not saying altogether too little for them. +In poetry he rose to all the occasions he made for himself, though he +could not rise to the occasions made for him, and so far failed in the +demands he acceded to for a Phi Beta Kappa poem, as to come to that +august Harvard occasion with a jingle so trivial, so out of keeping, so +inadequate that his enemies, if he ever truly had any, must have suffered +from it almost as much as his friends. He himself did not suffer from +his failure, from having read before the most elect assembly of the +country a poem which would hardly have served the careless needs of an +informal dinner after the speaking had begun; he took the whole +disastrous business lightly, gayly, leniently, kindly, as that golden +temperament of his enabled him to take all the good or bad of life. + +The first year of his Eastern sojourn was salaried in a sum which took +the souls of all his young contemporaries with wonder, if no baser +passion, in the days when dollars were of so much farther flight than +now, but its net result in a literary return to his publishers was one +story and two or three poems. They had not profited much by his book, +which, it will doubtless amaze a time of fifty thousand editions selling +before their publication, to learn had sold only thirty-five hundred in +the sixth month of its career, as Harte himself, + + “With sick and scornful looks averse,” + +confided to his Cambridge host after his first interview with the Boston +counting-room. It was the volume which contained “The Luck of Roaring +Camp,” and the other early tales which made him a continental, and then +an all but a world-wide fame. Stories that had been talked over, and +laughed over, and cried over all up and down the land, that had been +received with acclaim by criticism almost as boisterous as their +popularity, and recognized as the promise of greater things than any done +before in their kind, came to no more than this pitiful figure over the +booksellers’ counters. It argued much for the publishers that in spite +of this stupefying result they were willing, they were eager, to pay him +ten thousand dollars for whatever, however much or little, he chose to +write in a year: Their offer was made in Boston, after some offers +mortifyingly mean, and others insultingly vague, had been made in New +York. + +It was not his fault that their venture proved of such slight return in +literary material. Harte was in the midst of new and alien +conditions,--[See a corollary in M. Froude who visited the U.S. for a few +months and then published a comprehensive analysis of the nation and its +people. Twain’s rebuttal (Mr. Froude’s Progress) would have been ‘a +propos’ for Harte in Cambridge. D.W.]--and he had always his temperament +against him, as well as the reluctant if not the niggard nature of his +muse. He would no doubt have been only too glad to do more than he did +for the money, but actually if not literally he could not do more. When +it came to literature, all the gay improvidence of life forsook him, and +he became a stern, rigorous, exacting self-master, who spared himself +nothing to achieve the perfection at which he aimed. He was of the order +of literary men like Goldsmith and De Quincey, and Sterne and Steele, in +his relations with the outer world, but in his relations with the inner +world he was one of the most duteous and exemplary citizens. There was +nothing of his easy-going hilarity in that world; there he was of a +Puritanic severity, and of a conscience that forgave him no pang. Other +California writers have testified to the fidelity with which he did his +work as editor. He made himself not merely the arbiter but the +inspiration of his contributors, and in a region where literature had +hardly yet replaced the wild sage-brush of frontier journalism, he made +the sand-lots of San Francisco to blossom as the rose, and created a +literary periodical of the first class on the borders of civilization. + +It is useless to wonder now what would have been his future if the +publisher of the Overland Monthly had been of imagination or capital +enough to meet the demand which Harte dimly intimated to his Cambridge +host as the condition of his remaining in California. Publishers, men +with sufficient capital, are of a greatly varying gift in the regions of +prophecy, and he of the Overland Monthly was not to be blamed if he could +not foresee his account in paying Harte ten thousand a year to continue +editing the magazine. He did according to his lights, and Harte came to +the East, and then went to England, where his last twenty-five years were +passed in cultivating the wild plant of his Pacific Slope discovery. It +was always the same plant, leaf and flower and fruit, but it perennially +pleased the constant English world, and thence the European world, though +it presently failed of much delighting these fastidious States. Probably +he would have done something else if he could; he did not keep on doing +the wild mining-camp thing because it was the easiest, but because it was +for him the only possible thing. Very likely he might have preferred not +doing anything. + + + + +IV. + +The joyous visit of a week, which has been here so poorly recovered from +the past, came to an end, and the host went with his guest to the station +in as much vehicular magnificence as had marked his going to meet him +there. Harte was no longer the alarming portent of the earlier time, but +an experience of unalloyed delight. You must love a person whose worst +trouble-giving was made somehow a favor by his own unconsciousness of the +trouble, and it was a most flattering triumph to have got him in time, or +only a little late, to so many luncheons and dinners. If only now he +could be got to the train in time the victory would be complete, the +happiness of the visit without a flaw. Success seemed to crown the +fondest hope in this respect. The train had not yet left the station; +there stood the parlor-car which Harte had seats in; and he was followed +aboard for those last words in which people try to linger out pleasures +they have known together. In this case the sweetest of the pleasures had +been sitting up late after those dinners, and talking them over, and then +degenerating from that talk into the mere giggle and making giggle which +Charles Lamb found the best thing in life. It had come to this as the +host and guest sat together for those parting moments, when Harte +suddenly started up in the discovery of having forgotten to get some +cigars. They rushed out of the train together, and after a wild descent +upon the cigar-counter of the restaurant, Harte rushed back to his car. +But by this time the train was already moving with that deceitful +slowness of the departing train, and Harte had to clamber up the steps of +the rearmost platform. His host clambered after, to make sure that he +was aboard, which done, he dropped to the ground, while Harte drew out of +the station, blandly smiling, and waving his hand with a cigar in it, in +picturesque farewell from the platform. + +Then his host realized that he had dropped to the ground barely in time +to escape being crushed against the side of the archway that sharply +descended beside the steps of the train, and he went and sat down in that +handsomest hack, and was for a moment deathly sick at the danger that had +not realized itself to him in season. To be sure, he was able, long +after, to adapt the incident to the exigencies of fiction, and to have a +character, not otherwise to be conveniently disposed of, actually crushed +to death between a moving train and such an archway. + +Besides, he had then and always afterward, the immense super-compensation +of the memories of that visit from one of the most charming personalities +in the world, + + “In life’s morning march when his bosom was young,” + +and when infinitely less would have sated him. Now death has come to +join its vague conjectures to the broken expectations of life, and that +blithe spirit is elsewhere. But nothing can take from him who remains +the witchery of that most winning presence. Still it looks smiling from +the platform of the car, and casts a farewell of mock heartbreak from it. +Still a gay laugh comes across the abysm of the years that are now +numbered, and out of somewhere the hearer’s sense is rapt with the mellow +cordial of a voice that was like no other. + +[This last paragraph reminds one again that, as with Holmes: a great poet +writes the best prose. D.W.] + + + + +MY MARK TWAIN + + + + +I. + +It was in the little office of James T. Fields, over the bookstore of +Ticknor & Fields, at 124 Tremont Street, Boston, that I first met my +friend of now forty-four years, Samuel L. Clemens. Mr. Fields was then +the editor of The Atlantic Monthly, and I was his proud and glad +assistant, with a pretty free hand as to manuscripts, and an unmanacled +command of the book-notices at the end of the magazine. I wrote nearly +all of them myself, and in 1869 I had written rather a long notice of a +book just winning its way to universal favor. In this review I had +intimated my reservations concerning the ‘Innocents Abroad’, but I had +the luck, if not the sense, to recognize that it was such fun as we had +not had before. I forget just what I said in praise of it, and it does +not matter; it is enough that I praised it enough to satisfy the author. +He now signified as much, and he stamped his gratitude into my memory +with a story wonderfully allegorizing the situation, which the mock +modesty of print forbids my repeating here. Throughout my long +acquaintance with him his graphic touch was always allowing itself a +freedom which I cannot bring my fainter pencil to illustrate. He had the +Southwestern, the Lincolnian, the Elizabethan breadth of parlance, which +I suppose one ought not to call coarse without calling one’s self +prudish; and I was often hiding away in discreet holes and corners the +letters in which he had loosed his bold fancy to stoop on rank +suggestion; I could not bear to burn them, and I could not, after the +first reading, quite bear to look at them. I shall best give my feeling +on this point by saying that in it he was Shakespearian, or if his ghost +will not suffer me the word, then he was Baconian. + +At the time of our first meeting, which must have been well toward the +winter, Clemens (as I must call him instead of Mark Twain, which seemed +always somehow to mask him from my personal sense) was wearing a sealskin +coat, with the fur out, in the satisfaction of a caprice, or the love of +strong effect which he was apt to indulge through life. I do not know +what droll comment was in Fields’s mind with respect to this garment, but +probably he felt that here was an original who was not to be brought to +any Bostonian book in the judgment of his vivid qualities. With his +crest of dense red hair, and the wide sweep of his flaming mustache, +Clemens was not discordantly clothed in that sealskin coat, which +afterward, in spite of his own warmth in it, sent the cold chills through +me when I once accompanied it down Broadway, and shared the immense +publicity it won him. He had always a relish for personal effect, which +expressed itself in the white suit of complete serge which he wore in his +last years, and in the Oxford gown which he put on for every possible +occasion, and said he would like to wear all the time. That was not +vanity in him, but a keen feeling for costume which the severity of our +modern tailoring forbids men, though it flatters women to every excess in +it; yet he also enjoyed the shock, the offence, the pang which it gave +the sensibilities of others. Then there were times he played these +pranks for pure fun, and for the pleasure of the witness. Once I +remember seeing him come into his drawing-room at Hartford in a pair of +white cowskin slippers, with the hair out, and do a crippled colored +uncle to the joy of all beholders. Or, I must not say all, for I +remember also the dismay of Mrs. Clemens, and her low, despairing cry of, +“Oh, Youth!” That was her name for him among their friends, and it +fitted him as no other would, though I fancied with her it was a +shrinking from his baptismal Samuel, or the vernacular Sam of his earlier +companionships. He was a youth to the end of his days, the heart of a +boy with the head of a sage; the heart of a good boy, or a bad boy, but +always a wilful boy, and wilfulest to show himself out at every time for +just the boy he was. + + + + +II. + +There is a gap in my recollections of Clemens, which I think is of a year +or two, for the next thing I remember of him is meeting him at a lunch in +Boston, given us by that genius of hospitality, the tragically destined +Ralph Keeler, author of one of the most unjustly forgotten books, +‘Vagabond Adventures’, a true bit of picaresque autobiography. Keeler +never had any money, to the general knowledge, and he never borrowed, and +he could not have had credit at the restaurant where he invited us to +feast at his expense. There was T. B. Aldrich, there was J. T. Fields, +much the oldest of our company, who had just freed himself from the +trammels of the publishing business, and was feeling his freedom in every +word; there was Bret Harte, who had lately come East in his princely +progress from California; and there was Clemens. Nothing remains to me +of the happy time but a sense of idle and aimless and joyful talk-play, +beginning and ending nowhere, of eager laughter, of countless good +stories from Fields, of a heat-lightning shimmer of wit from Aldrich, of +an occasional concentration of our joint mockeries upon our host, who +took it gladly; and amid the discourse, so little improving, but so full +of good fellowship, Bret Harte’s fleeting dramatization of Clemens’s +mental attitude toward a symposium of Boston illuminates. “Why, +fellows,” he spluttered, “this is the dream of Mark’s life,” and I +remember the glance from under Clemens’s feathery eyebrows which betrayed +his enjoyment of the fun. We had beefsteak with mushrooms, which in +recognition of their shape Aldrich hailed as shoe-pegs, and to crown the +feast we had an omelette souse, which the waiter brought in as flat as a +pancake, amid our shouts of congratulations to poor Keeler, who took them +with appreciative submission. It was in every way what a Boston literary +lunch ought not to have been in the popular ideal which Harte attributed +to Clemens. + +Our next meeting was at Hartford, or, rather, at Springfield, where +Clemens greeted us on the way to Hartford. Aldrich was going on to be +his guest, and I was going to be Charles Dudley Warner’s, but Clemens had +come part way to welcome us both. In the good fellowship of that cordial +neighborhood we had two such days as the aging sun no longer shines on in +his round. There was constant running in and out of friendly houses +where the lively hosts and guests called one another by their Christian +names or nicknames, and no such vain ceremony as knocking or ringing at +doors. Clemens was then building the stately mansion in which he +satisfied his love of magnificence as if it had been another sealskin +coat, and he was at the crest of the prosperity which enabled him to +humor every whim or extravagance. The house was the design of that most +original artist, Edward Potter, who once, when hard pressed by +incompetent curiosity for the name of his style in a certain church, +proposed that it should be called the English violet order of +architecture; and this house was so absolutely suited to the owner’s +humor that I suppose there never was another house like it; but its +character must be for recognition farther along in these reminiscences. +The vividest impression which Clemens gave us two ravenous young Boston +authors was of the satisfying, the surfeiting nature of subscription +publication. An army of agents was overrunning the country with the +prospectuses of his books, and delivering them by the scores of thousands +in completed sale. Of the ‘Innocents Abroad’ he said, “It sells right +along just like the Bible,” and ‘Roughing It’ was swiftly following, +without perhaps ever quite overtaking it in popularity. But he lectured +Aldrich and me on the folly of that mode of publication in the trade +which we had thought it the highest success to achieve a chance in. +“Anything but subscription publication is printing for private +circulation,” he maintained, and he so won upon our greed and hope that +on the way back to Boston we planned the joint authorship of a volume +adapted to subscription publication. We got a very good name for it, as +we believed, in Memorable Murders, and we never got farther with it, but +by the time we reached Boston we were rolling in wealth so deep that we +could hardly walk home in the frugal fashion by which we still thought it +best to spare car fare; carriage fare we did not dream of even in that +opulence. + + + + +III. + +The visits to Hartford which had begun with this affluence continued +without actual increase of riches for me, but now I went alone, and in +Warner’s European and Egyptian absences I formed the habit of going to +Clemens. By this time he was in his new house, where he used to give me +a royal chamber on the ground floor, and come in at night after I had +gone to bed to take off the burglar alarm so that the family should not +be roused if anybody tried to get in at my window. This would be after +we had sat up late, he smoking the last of his innumerable cigars, and +soothing his tense nerves with a mild hot Scotch, while we both talked +and talked and talked, of everything in the heavens and on the earth, and +the waters under the earth. After two days of this talk I would come +away hollow, realizing myself best in the image of one of those +locust-shells which you find sticking to the bark of trees at the end of +summer. Once, after some such bout of brains, we went down to New York +together, and sat facing each other in the Pullman smoker without passing +a syllable till we had occasion to say, “Well, we’re there.” Then, with +our installation in a now vanished hotel (the old Brunswick, to be +specific), the talk began again with the inspiration of the novel +environment, and went on and on. We wished to be asleep, but we could +not stop, and he lounged through the rooms in the long nightgown which he +always wore in preference to the pajamas which he despised, and told the +story of his life, the inexhaustible, the fairy, the Arabian Nights +story, which I could never tire of even when it began to be told over +again. Or at times he would reason high-- + + “Of Providence, foreknowledge, will and fate, + Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,” + +walking up and down, and halting now and then, with a fine toss and slant +of his shaggy head, as some bold thought or splendid joke struck him. + +He was in those days a constant attendant at the church of his great +friend, the Rev. Joseph H. Twichell, and at least tacitly far from the +entire negation he came to at last. I should say he had hardly yet +examined the grounds of his passive acceptance of his wife’s belief, for +it was hers and not his, and he held it unscanned in the beautiful and +tender loyalty to her which was the most moving quality of his most +faithful soul. I make bold to speak of the love between them, because +without it I could not make him known to others as he was known to me. It +was a greater part of him than the love of most men for their wives, and +she merited all the worship he could give her, all the devotion, all the +implicit obedience, by her surpassing force and beauty of character. She +was in a way the loveliest person I have ever seen, the gentlest, the +kindest, without a touch of weakness; she united wonderful tact with +wonderful truth; and Clemens not only accepted her rule implicitly, but +he rejoiced, he gloried in it. I am not sure that he noticed all her +goodness in the actions that made it a heavenly vision to others, he so +had the habit of her goodness; but if there was any forlorn and helpless +creature in the room Mrs. Clemens was somehow promptly at his side or +hers; she was always seeking occasion of kindness to those in her +household or out of it; she loved to let her heart go beyond the reach of +her hand, and imagined the whole hard and suffering world with compassion +for its structural as well as incidental wrongs. I suppose she had her +ladyhood limitations, her female fears of etiquette and convention, but +she did not let them hamper the wild and splendid generosity with which +Clemens rebelled against the social stupidities and cruelties. She had +been a lifelong invalid when he met her, and he liked to tell the +beautiful story of their courtship to each new friend whom he found +capable of feeling its beauty or worthy of hearing it. Naturally, her +father had hesitated to give her into the keeping of the young strange +Westerner, who had risen up out of the unknown with his giant reputation +of burlesque humorist, and demanded guaranties, demanded proofs. “He +asked me,” Clemens would say, “if I couldn’t give him the names of people +who knew me in California, and when it was time to hear from them I heard +from him. ‘Well, Mr. Clemens,’ he said, ‘nobody seems to have a very +good word for you.’ I hadn’t referred him to people that I thought were +going to whitewash me. I thought it was all up with me, but I was +disappointed. ‘So I guess I shall have to back you myself.’” + +Whether this made him faithfuler to the trust put in him I cannot say, +but probably not; it was always in him to be faithful to any trust, and +in proportion as a trust of his own was betrayed he was ruthlessly and +implacably resentful. But I wish now to speak of the happiness of that +household in Hartford which responded so perfectly to the ideals of the +mother when the three daughters, so lovely and so gifted, were yet little +children. There had been a boy, and “Yes, I killed him,” Clemens once +said, with the unsparing self-blame in which he would wreak an unavailing +regret. He meant that he had taken the child out imprudently, and the +child had taken the cold which he died of, but it was by no means certain +this was through its father’s imprudence. I never heard him speak of his +son except that once, but no doubt in his deep heart his loss was +irreparably present. He was a very tender father and delighted in the +minds of his children, but he was wise enough to leave their training +altogether to the wisdom of their mother. He left them to that in +everything, keeping for himself the pleasure of teaching them little +scenes of drama, learning languages with them, and leading them in +singing. They came to the table with their parents, and could have set +him an example in behavior when, in moments of intense excitement, he +used to leave his place and walk up and down the room, flying his napkin +and talking and talking. + +It was after his first English sojourn that I used to visit him, and he +was then full of praise of everything English: the English personal +independence and public spirit, and hospitality, and truth. He liked to +tell stories in proof of their virtues, but he was not blind to the +defects of their virtues: their submissive acceptance of caste, their +callousness with strangers; their bluntness with one another. Mrs. +Clemens had been in a way to suffer socially more than he, and she +praised the English less. She had sat after dinner with ladies who +snubbed and ignored one another, and left her to find her own amusement +in the absence of the attention with which Americans perhaps cloy their +guests, but which she could not help preferring. In their successive +sojourns among them I believe he came to like the English less and she +more; the fine delight of his first acceptance among them did not renew +itself till his Oxford degree was given him; then it made his cup run +over, and he was glad the whole world should see it. + +His wife would not chill the ardor of his early Anglomania, and in this, +as in everything, she wished to humor him to the utmost. No one could +have realized more than she his essential fineness, his innate nobleness. +Marriages are what the parties to them alone really know them to be, but +from the outside I should say that this marriage was one of the most +perfect. It lasted in his absolute devotion to the day of her death, +that delayed long in cruel suffering, and that left one side of him in +lasting night. From Florence there came to me heartbreaking letters from +him about the torture she was undergoing, and at last a letter saying she +was dead, with the simple-hearted cry, “I wish I was with Livy.” I do +not know why I have left saying till now that she was a very beautiful +woman, classically regular in features, with black hair smooth over her +forehead, and with tenderly peering, myopia eyes, always behind glasses, +and a smile of angelic kindness. But this kindness went with a sense of +humor which qualified her to appreciate the self-lawed genius of a man +who will be remembered with the great humorists of all time, with +Cervantes, with Swift, or with any others worthy his company; none of +them was his equal in humanity. + + + + +IV. + +Clemens had appointed himself, with the architect’s connivance, a +luxurious study over the library in his new house, but as his children +grew older this study, with its carved and cushioned arm-chairs, was +given over to them for a school-room, and he took the room above his +stable, which had been intended for his coachman. There we used to talk +together, when we were not walking and talking together, until he +discovered that he could make a more commodious use of the billiard-room +at the top of his house, for the purposes of literature and friendship. +It was pretty cold up there in the early spring and late fall weather +with which I chiefly associate the place, but by lighting up all the +gas-burners and kindling a reluctant fire on the hearth we could keep it +well above freezing. Clemens could also push the balls about, and, +without rivalry from me, who could no more play billiards than smoke, +could win endless games of pool, while he carried points of argument +against imaginable differers in opinion. Here he wrote many of his tales +and sketches, and for anything I know some of his books. I particularly +remember his reading me here his first rough sketch of Captain +Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven, with the real name of the captain, whom I +knew already from his many stories about him. + +We had a peculiar pleasure in looking off from the high windows on the +pretty Hartford landscape, and down from them into the tops of the trees +clothing the hillside by which his house stood. We agreed that there was +a novel charm in trees seen from such a vantage, far surpassing that of +the farther scenery. He had not been a country boy for nothing; rather +he had been a country boy, or, still better, a village boy, for +everything that Nature can offer the young of our species, and no aspect +of her was lost on him. We were natives of the same vast Mississippi +Valley; and Missouri was not so far from Ohio but that we were akin in +our first knowledges of woods and fields as we were in our early +parlance. I had outgrown the use of mine through my greater bookishness, +but I gladly recognized the phrases which he employed for their lasting +juiciness and the long-remembered savor they had on his mental palate. + +I have elsewhere sufficiently spoken of his unsophisticated use of words, +of the diction which forms the backbone of his manly style. If I mention +my own greater bookishness, by which I mean his less quantitative +reading, it is to give myself better occasion to note that he was always +reading some vital book. It might be some out-of-the-way book, but it +had the root of the human matter in it: a volume of great trials; one of +the supreme autobiographies; a signal passage of history, a narrative of +travel, a story of captivity, which gave him life at first-hand. As I +remember, he did not care much for fiction, and in that sort he had +certain distinct loathings; there were certain authors whose names he +seemed not so much to pronounce as to spew out of his mouth. Goldsmith +was one of these, but his prime abhorrence was my dear and honored prime +favorite, Jane Austen. He once said to me, I suppose after he had been +reading some of my unsparing praises of her--I am always praising her, +“You seem to think that woman could write,” and he forbore withering me +with his scorn, apparently because we had been friends so long, and he +more pitied than hated me for my bad taste. He seemed not to have any +preferences among novelists; or at least I never heard him express any. +He used to read the modern novels I praised, in or out of print; but I do +not think he much liked reading fiction. As for plays, he detested the +theatre, and said he would as lief do a sum as follow a plot on the +stage. He could not, or did not, give any reasons for his literary +abhorrences, and perhaps he really had none. But he could have said very +distinctly, if he had needed, why he liked the books he did. I was away +at the time of his great Browning passion, and I know of it chiefly from +hearsay; but at the time Tolstoy was doing what could be done to make me +over Clemens wrote, “That man seems to have been to you what Browning was +to me.” I do not know that he had other favorites among the poets, but +he had favorite poems which he liked to read to you, and he read, of +course, splendidly. I have forgotten what piece of John Hay’s it was +that he liked so much, but I remembered how he fiercely revelled in the +vengefulness of William Morris’s ‘Sir Guy of the Dolorous Blast,’ and how +he especially exalted in the lines which tell of the supposed speaker’s +joy in slaying the murderer of his brother: + + “I am threescore years and ten, + And my hair is ‘nigh turned gray, + But I am glad to think of the moment when + I took his life away.” + +Generally, I fancy his pleasure in poetry was not great, and I do not +believe he cared much for the conventionally accepted masterpieces of +literature. He liked to find out good things and great things for +himself; sometimes he would discover these in a masterpiece new to him +alone, and then, if you brought his ignorance home to him, he enjoyed it, +and enjoyed it the more the more you rubbed it in. + +Of all the literary men I have known he was the most unliterary in his +make and manner. I do not know whether he had any acquaintance with +Latin, but I believe not the least; German he knew pretty well, and +Italian enough late in life to have fun with it; but he used English in +all its alien derivations as if it were native to his own air, as if it +had come up out of American, out of Missourian ground. His style was +what we know, for good and for bad, but his manner, if I may difference +the two, was as entirely his own as if no one had ever written before. I +have noted before this how he was not enslaved to the consecutiveness in +writing which the rest of us try to keep chained to. That is, he wrote +as he thought, and as all men think, without sequence, without an eye to +what went before or should come after. If something beyond or beside +what he was saying occurred to him, he invited it into his page, and made +it as much at home there as the nature of it would suffer him. Then, when +he was through with the welcoming of this casual and unexpected guest, he +would go back to the company he was entertaining, and keep on with what +he had been talking about. He observed this manner in the construction +of his sentences, and the arrangement of his chapters, and the ordering +or disordering of his compilations.--[Nowhere is this characteristic +better found than in Twain’s ‘Autobiography,’ it was not a “style” it was +unselfconscious thought D.W.]--I helped him with a Library of Humor, +which he once edited, and when I had done my work according to tradition, +with authors, times, and topics carefully studied in due sequence, he +tore it all apart, and “chucked” the pieces in wherever the fancy, for +them took him at the moment. He was right: we were not making a +text-book, but a book for the pleasure rather than the instruction of the +reader, and he did not see why the principle on which he built his +travels and reminiscences and tales and novels should not apply to it; +and I do not now see, either, though at the time it confounded me. On +minor points he was, beyond any author I have known, without favorite +phrases or pet words. He utterly despised the avoidance of repetitions +out of fear of tautology. If a word served his turn better than a +substitute, he would use it as many times in a page as he chose. + + + + +V. + +At that time I had become editor of The Atlantic Monthly, and I had +allegiances belonging to the conduct of what was and still remains the +most scrupulously cultivated of our periodicals. When Clemens began to +write for it he came willingly under its rules, for with all his +wilfulness there never was a more biddable man in things you could show +him a reason for. He never made the least of that trouble which so +abounds for the hapless editor from narrower-minded contributors. If you +wanted a thing changed, very good, he changed it; if you suggested that a +word or a sentence or a paragraph had better be struck out, very good, he +struck it out. His proof-sheets came back each a veritable “mush of +concession,” as Emerson says. Now and then he would try a little +stronger language than ‘The Atlantic’ had stomach for, and once when I +sent him a proof I made him observe that I had left out the profanity. He +wrote back: “Mrs. Clemens opened that proof, and lit into the room with +danger in her eye. What profanity? You see, when I read the manuscript +to her I skipped that.” It was part of his joke to pretend a violence in +that gentlest creature which the more amusingly realized the situation to +their friends. + +I was always very glad of him and proud of him as a contributor, but I +must not claim the whole merit, or the first merit of having him write +for us. It was the publisher, the late H. O. Houghton, who felt the +incongruity of his absence from the leading periodical of the country, +and was always urging me to get him to write. I will take the credit of +being eager for him, but it is to the publisher’s credit that he tried, +so far as the modest traditions of ‘The Atlantic’ would permit, to meet +the expectations in pay which the colossal profits of Clemens’s books +might naturally have bred in him. Whether he was really able to do this +he never knew from Clemens himself, but probably twenty dollars a page +did not surfeit the author of books that “sold right along just like the +Bible.” + +We had several short contributions from Clemens first, all of capital +quality, and then we had the series of papers which went mainly to the +making of his great book, ‘Life on the Mississippi’. Upon the whole I +have the notion that Clemens thought this his greatest book, and he was +supported in his opinion by that of the ‘portier’ in his hotel at Vienna, +and that of the German Emperor, who, as he told me with equal respect for +the preference of each, united in thinking it his best; with such +far-sundered social poles approaching in its favor, he apparently found +himself without standing for opposition. At any rate, the papers won +instant appreciation from his editor and publisher, and from the readers +of their periodical, which they expected to prosper beyond precedent in +its circulation. But those were days of simpler acceptance of the +popular rights of newspapers than these are, when magazines strictly +guard their vested interests against them. ‘The New York Times’ and the +‘St. Louis Democrat’ profited by the advance copies of the magazine sent +them to reprint the papers month by month. Together they covered nearly +the whole reading territory of the Union, and the terms of their daily +publication enabled them to anticipate the magazine in its own restricted +field. Its subscription list was not enlarged in the slightest measure, +and The Atlantic Monthly languished on the news-stands as undesired as +ever. + + + + +VI. + +It was among my later visits to Hartford that we began to talk up the +notion of collaborating a play, but we did not arrive at any clear +intention, and it was a telegram out of the clear sky that one day +summoned me from Boston to help with a continuation of Colonel Sellers. I +had been a witness of the high joy of Clemens in the prodigious triumph +of the first Colonel Sellers, which had been dramatized from the novel of +‘The Gilded Age.’ This was the joint work of Clemens and Charles Dudley +Warner, and the story had been put upon the stage by some one in Utah, +whom Clemens first brought to book in the courts for violation of his +copyright, and then indemnified for such rights as his adaptation of the +book had given him. The structure of the play as John T. Raymond gave it +was substantially the work of this unknown dramatist. Clemens never +pretended, to me at any rate, that he had the least hand in it; he +frankly owned that he was incapable of dramatization; yet the vital part +was his, for the characters in the play were his as the book embodied +them, and the success which it won with the public was justly his. This +he shared equally with the actor, following the company with an agent, +who counted out the author’s share of the gate money, and sent him a note +of the amount every day by postal card. The postals used to come about +dinner-time, and Clemens would read them aloud to us in wild triumph. + +One hundred and fifty dollars--two hundred dollars--three hundred dollars +were the gay figures which they bore, and which he flaunted in the air +before he sat down at table, or rose from it to brandish, and then, +flinging his napkin into his chair, walked up and down to exult in. + +By-and-by the popularity, of the play waned, and the time came when he +sickened of the whole affair, and withdrew his agent, and took whatever +gain from it the actor apportioned him. He was apt to have these sudden +surceases, following upon the intensities of his earlier interest; though +he seemed always to have the notion of making something more of Colonel +Sellers. But when I arrived in Hartford in answer to his summons, I +found him with no definite idea of what he wanted to do with him. I +represented that we must have some sort of plan, and he agreed that we +should both jot down a scenario overnight and compare our respective +schemes the next morning. As the author of a large number of little +plays which have been privately presented throughout the United States +and in parts of the United Kingdom, without ever getting upon the public +stage except for the noble ends of charity, and then promptly getting off +it, I felt authorized to make him observe that his scheme was as nearly +nothing as chaos could be. He agreed hilariously with me, and was +willing to let it stand in proof of his entire dramatic inability. At the +same time he liked my plot very much, which ultimated Sellers, according +to Clemens’s intention, as a man crazed by his own inventions and by his +superstition that he was the rightful heir to an English earldom. The +exuberant nature of Sellers and the vast range of his imagination served +our purpose in other ways. Clemens made him a spiritualist, whose +specialty in the occult was materialization; he became on impulse an +ardent temperance reformer, and he headed a procession of temperance +ladies after disinterestedly testing the deleterious effects of liquor +upon himself until he could not walk straight; always he wore a +marvellous fire-extinguisher strapped on his back, to give proof in any +emergency of the effectiveness of his invention in that way. + +We had a jubilant fortnight in working the particulars of these things +out. It was not possible for Clemens to write like anybody else, but I +could very easily write like Clemens, and we took the play scene and +scene about, quite secure of coming out in temperamental agreement. The +characters remained for the most part his, and I varied them only to make +them more like his than, if possible, he could. Several years after, +when I looked over a copy of the play, I could not always tell my work +from his; I only knew that I had done certain scenes. We would work all +day long at our several tasks, and then at night, before dinner, read +them over to each other. No dramatists ever got greater joy out of their +creations, and when I reflect that the public never had the chance of +sharing our joy I pity the public from a full heart. I still believe +that the play was immensely funny; I still believe that if it could once +have got behind the footlights it would have continued to pack the house +before them for an indefinite succession of nights. But this may be my +fondness. + +At any rate, it was not to be. Raymond had identified himself with +Sellers in the play-going imagination, and whether consciously or +unconsciously we constantly worked with Raymond in our minds. But before +this time bitter displeasures had risen between Clemens and Raymond, and +Clemens was determined that Raymond should never have the play. He first +offered it to several other actors, who eagerly caught it, only to give +it back with the despairing renunciation, “That is a Raymond play.” We +tried managers with it, but their only question was whether they could +get Raymond to do it. In the mean time Raymond had provided himself with +a play for the winter--a very good play, by Demarest Lloyd; and he was in +no hurry for ours. Perhaps he did not really care for it perhaps he knew +when he heard of it that it must come to him in the end. In the end it +did, from my hand, for Clemens would not meet him. I found him in a mood +of sweet reasonableness, perhaps the more softened by one of those +lunches which our publisher, the hospitable James R. Osgood, was always +bringing people together over in Boston. He said that he could not do +the play that winter, but he was sure that he should like it, and he had +no doubt he would do it the next winter. So I gave him the manuscript, +in spite of Clemens’s charges, for his suspicions and rancors were such +that he would not have had me leave it for a moment in the actor’s hands. +But it seemed a conclusion that involved success and fortune for us. In +due time, but I do not remember how long after, Raymond declared himself +delighted with the piece; he entered into a satisfactory agreement for +it, and at the beginning of the next season he started with it to +Buffalo, where he was to give a first production. At Rochester he paused +long enough to return it, with the explanation that a friend had noted to +him the fact that Colonel Sellers in the play was a lunatic, and insanity +was so serious a thing that it could not be represented on the stage +without outraging the sensibilities of the audience; or words to that +effect. We were too far off to allege Hamlet to the contrary, or King +Lear, or to instance the delight which generations of readers throughout +the world had taken in the mad freaks of Don Quixote. Whatever were the +real reasons of Raymond for rejecting the play, we had to be content with +those he gave, and to set about getting it into other hands. In this +effort we failed even more signally than before, if that were possible. +At last a clever and charming elocutionist, who had long wished to get +himself on the stage, heard of it and asked to see it. We would have +shown it to any one by this time, and we very willingly showed it to him. +He came to Hartford and did some scenes from it for us. I must say he +did them very well, quite as well as Raymond could have done them, in +whose manner he did them. But now, late toward spring, the question was +where he could get an engagement with the play, and we ended by hiring a +theatre in New York for a week of trial performances. + +Clemens came on with me to Boston, where we were going to make some +changes in the piece, and where we made them to our satisfaction, but not +to the effect of that high rapture which we had in the first draft. He +went back to Hartford, and then the cold fit came upon me, and “in +visions of the night, in slumberings upon the bed,” ghastly forms of +failure appalled me, and when I rose in the morning I wrote him: “Here is +a play which every manager has put out-of-doors and which every actor +known to us has refused, and now we go and give it to an elocutioner. We +are fools.” Whether Clemens agreed with me or not in my conclusion, he +agreed with me in my premises, and we promptly bought our play off the +stage at a cost of seven hundred dollars, which we shared between us. But +Clemens was never a man to give up. I relinquished gratis all right and +title I had in the play, and he paid its entire expenses for a week of +one-night stands in the country. It never came to New York; and yet I +think now that if it had come, it would have succeeded. So hard does the +faith of the unsuccessful dramatist in his work die. + + + + +VII. + +There is an incident of this time so characteristic of both men that I +will yield to the temptation of giving it here. After I had gone to +Hartford in response to Clemens’s telegram, Matthew Arnold arrived in +Boston, and one of my family called on his, to explain why I was not at +home to receive his introduction: I had gone to see Mark Twain. “Oh, but +he doesn’t like that sort of thing, does he?” “He likes Mr. Clemens very +much,” my representative answered, “and he thinks him one of the greatest +men he ever knew.” I was still Clemens’s guest at Hartford when Arnold +came there to lecture, and one night we went to meet him at a reception. +While his hand laxly held mine in greeting, I saw his eyes fixed +intensely on the other side of the room. “Who-who in the world is that?” + I looked and said, “Oh, that is Mark Twain.” I do not remember just how +their instant encounter was contrived by Arnold’s wish, but I have the +impression that they were not parted for long during the evening, and the +next night Arnold, as if still under the glamour of that potent presence, +was at Clemens’s house. I cannot say how they got on, or what they made +of each other; if Clemens ever spoke of Arnold, I do not recall what he +said, but Arnold had shown a sense of him from which the incredulous +sniff of the polite world, now so universally exploded, had already +perished. It might well have done so with his first dramatic vision of +that prodigious head. Clemens was then hard upon fifty, and he had kept, +as he did to the end, the slender figure of his youth, but the ashes of +the burnt-out years were beginning to gray the fires of that splendid +shock of red hair which he held to the height of a stature apparently +greater than it was, and tilted from side to side in his undulating walk. +He glimmered at you from the narrow slits of fine blue-greenish eyes, +under branching brows, which with age grew more and more like a sort of +plumage, and he was apt to smile into your face with a subtle but amiable +perception, and yet with a sort of remote absence; you were all there for +him, but he was not all there for you. + + + + +VIII. + +I shall, not try to give chronological order to my recollections of him, +but since I am just now with him in Hartford I will speak of him in +association with the place. Once when I came on from Cambridge he +followed me to my room to see that the water was not frozen in my bath, +or something of the kind, for it was very cold weather, and then +hospitably lingered. Not to lose time in banalities I began at once from +the thread of thought in my mind. “I wonder why we hate the past so,” + and he responded from the depths of his own consciousness, “It’s so +damned humiliating,” which is what any man would say of his past if he +were honest; but honest men are few when it comes to themselves. Clemens +was one of the few, and the first of them among all the people I have +known. I have known, I suppose, men as truthful, but not so promptly, so +absolutely, so positively, so almost aggressively truthful. He could +lie, of course, and did to save others from grief or harm; he was, not +stupidly truthful; but his first impulse was to say out the thing and +everything that was in him. To those who can understand it will not be +contradictory of his sense of humiliation from the past, that he was not +ashamed for anything he ever did to the point of wishing to hide it. He +could be, and he was, bitterly sorry for his errors, which he had enough +of in his life, but he was not ashamed in that mean way. What he had +done he owned to, good, bad, or indifferent, and if it was bad he was +rather amused than troubled as to the effect in your mind. He would not +obtrude the fact upon you, but if it were in the way of personal history +he would not dream of withholding it, far less of hiding it. + +He was the readiest of men to allow an error if he were found in it. In +one of our walks about Hartford, when he was in the first fine flush of +his agnosticism, he declared that Christianity had done nothing to +improve morals and conditions, and that the world under the highest pagan +civilization was as well off as it was under the highest Christian +influences. I happened to be fresh from the reading of Charles Loring +Brace’s ‘Gesta Christi’; or, ‘History of Humane Progress’, and I could +offer him abundant proofs that he was wrong. He did not like that +evidently, but he instantly gave way, saying he had not known those +things. Later he was more tolerant in his denials of Christianity, but +just then he was feeling his freedom from it, and rejoicing in having +broken what he felt to have been the shackles of belief worn so long. He +greatly admired Robert Ingersoll, whom he called an angelic orator, and +regarded as an evangel of a new gospel--the gospel of free thought. He +took the warmest interest in the newspaper controversy raging at the time +as to the existence of a hell; when the noes carried the day, I suppose +that no enemy of perdition was more pleased. He still loved his old +friend and pastor, Mr. Twichell, but he no longer went to hear him preach +his sage and beautiful sermons, and was, I think, thereby the greater +loser. Long before that I had asked him if he went regularly to church, +and he groaned out: “Oh yes, I go. It ‘most kills me, but I go,” and I +did not need his telling me to understand that he went because his wife +wished it. He did tell me, after they both ceased to go, that it had +finally come to her saying, “Well, if you are to be lost, I want to be +lost with you.” He could accept that willingness for supreme sacrifice +and exult in it because of the supreme truth as he saw it. After they had +both ceased to be formal Christians, she was still grieved by his denial +of immortality, so grieved that he resolved upon one of those heroic +lies, which for love’s sake he held above even the truth, and he went to +her, saying that he had been thinking the whole matter over, and now he +was convinced that the soul did live after death. It was too late. Her +keen vision pierced through his ruse, as it did when he brought the +doctor who had diagnosticated her case as organic disease of the heart, +and, after making him go over the facts of it again with her, made him +declare it merely functional. + +To make an end of these records as to Clemens’s beliefs, so far as I knew +them, I should say that he never went back to anything like faith in the +Christian theology, or in the notion of life after death, or in a +conscious divinity. It is best to be honest in this matter; he would +have hated anything else, and I do not believe that the truth in it can +hurt any one. At one period he argued that there must have been a cause, +a conscious source of things; that the universe could not have come by +chance. I have heard also that in his last hours or moments he said, or +his dearest ones hoped he had said, something about meeting again. But +the expression, of which they could not be certain, was of the vaguest, +and it was perhaps addressed to their tenderness out of his tenderness. +All his expressions to me were of a courageous, renunciation of any hope +of living again, or elsewhere seeing those he had lost. He suffered +terribly in their loss, and he was not fool enough to try ignoring his +grief. He knew that for this there were but two medicines; that it would +wear itself out with the years, and that meanwhile there was nothing for +it but those respites in which the mourner forgets himself in slumber. I +remember that in a black hour of my own when I was called down to see +him, as he thought from sleep, he said with an infinite, an exquisite +compassion, “Oh, did I wake you, did I wake, you?” Nothing more, but the +look, the voice, were everything; and while I live they cannot pass from +my sense. + + + + +IX. + +He was the most caressing of men in his pity, but he had the fine +instinct, which would have pleased Lowell, of never putting his hands on +you--fine, delicate hands, with taper fingers, and pink nails, like a +girl’s, and sensitively quivering in moments of emotion; he did not paw +you with them to show his affection, as so many of us Americans are apt +to do. Among the half-dozen, or half-hundred, personalities that each of +us becomes, I should say that Clemens’s central and final personality was +something exquisite. His casual acquaintance might know him, perhaps, +from his fierce intensity, his wild pleasure in shocking people with his +ribaldries and profanities, or from the mere need of loosing his +rebellious spirit in that way, as anything but exquisite, and yet that +was what in the last analysis he was. They might come away loathing or +hating him, but one could not know him well without realizing him the +most serious, the most humane, the most conscientious of men. He was +Southwestern, and born amid the oppression of a race that had no rights +as against ours, but I never saw a man more regardful of negroes. He had +a yellow butler when I first began to know him, because he said he could +not bear to order a white man about, but the terms of his ordering George +were those of the softest entreaty which command ever wore. He loved to +rely upon George, who was such a broken reed in some things, though so +stanch in others, and the fervent Republican in politics that Clemens +then liked him to be. He could interpret Clemens’s meaning to the public +without conveying his mood, and could render his roughest answer smooth +to the person denied his presence. His general instructions were that +this presence was to be denied all but personal friends, but the soft +heart of George was sometimes touched by importunity, and once he came up +into the billiard-room saying that Mr. Smith wished to see Clemens. Upon +inquiry, Mr. Smith developed no ties of friendship, and Clemens said, +“You go and tell Mr. Smith that I wouldn’t come down to see the Twelve +Apostles.” George turned from the threshold where he had kept himself, +and framed a paraphrase of this message which apparently sent Mr. Smith +away content with himself and all the rest of the world. + +The part of him that was Western in his Southwestern origin Clemens kept +to the end, but he was the most desouthernized Southerner I ever knew. No +man more perfectly sensed and more entirely abhorred slavery, and no one +has ever poured such scorn upon the second-hand, Walter-Scotticized, +pseudo-chivalry of the Southern ideal. He held himself responsible for +the wrong which the white race had done the black race in slavery, and he +explained, in paying the way of a negro student through Yale, that he was +doing it as his part of the reparation due from every white to every +black man. He said he had never seen this student, nor ever wished to +see him or know his name; it was quite enough that he was a negro. About +that time a colored cadet was expelled from West Point for some point of +conduct “unbecoming an officer and gentleman,” and there was the usual +shabby philosophy in a portion of the press to the effect that a negro +could never feel the claim of honor. The man was fifteen parts white, +but, “Oh yes,” Clemens said, with bitter irony, “it was that one part +black that undid him.” It made him a “nigger” and incapable of being a +gentleman. It was to blame for the whole thing. The fifteen parts white +were guiltless. + +Clemens was entirely satisfied with the result of the Civil War, and he +was eager to have its facts and meanings brought out at once in history. +He ridiculed the notion, held by many, that “it was not yet time” to +philosophize the events of the great struggle; that we must “wait till +its passions had cooled,” and “the clouds of strife had cleared away.” He +maintained that the time would never come when we should see its motives +and men and deeds more clearly, and that now, now, was the hour to +ascertain them in lasting verity. Picturesquely and dramatically he +portrayed the imbecility of deferring the inquiry at any point to the +distance of future years when inevitably the facts would begin to put on +fable. + +He had powers of sarcasm and a relentless rancor in his contempt which +those who knew him best appreciated most. The late Noah Brooks, who had +been in California at the beginning of Clemens’s career, and had +witnessed the effect of his ridicule before he had learned to temper it, +once said to me that he would rather have any one else in the world down +on him than Mark Twain. But as Clemens grew older he grew more merciful, +not to the wrong, but to the men who were in it. The wrong was often the +source of his wildest drolling. He considered it in such hopelessness of +ever doing it justice that his despair broke in laughter. + + + + +X. + +I go back to that house in Hartford, where I was so often a happy guest, +with tenderness for each of its endearing aspects. Over the chimney in +the library which had been cured of smoking by so much art and science, +Clemens had written in perennial brass the words of Emerson, “The +ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it,” and he gave his +guests a welcome of the simplest and sweetest cordiality: but I must not +go aside to them from my recollections of him, which will be of +sufficient garrulity, if I give them as fully as I wish. The windows of +the library looked northward from the hillside above which the house +stood, and over the little valley with the stream in it, and they showed +the leaves of the trees that almost brushed them as in a Claude Lorraine +glass. To the eastward the dining-room opened amply, and to the south +there was a wide hall, where the voices of friends made themselves heard +as they entered without ceremony and answered his joyous hail. At the +west was a little semicircular conservatory of a pattern invented by Mrs. +Harriet Beecher Stowe, and adopted in most of the houses of her kindly +neighborhood. The plants were set in the ground, and the flowering vines +climbed up the sides and overhung the roof above the silent spray of a +fountain companied by callas and other water-loving lilies. There, while +we breakfasted, Patrick came in from the barn and sprinkled the pretty +bower, which poured out its responsive perfume in the delicate accents of +its varied blossoms. Breakfast was Clemens’s best meal, and he sat +longer at his steak and coffee than at the courses of his dinner; +luncheon was nothing to him, unless, as might happen, he made it his +dinner, and reserved the later repast as the occasion of walking up and +down the room, and discoursing at large on anything that came into his +head. Like most good talkers, he liked other people to have their say; +he did not talk them down; he stopped instantly at another’s remark and +gladly or politely heard him through; he even made believe to find +suggestion or inspiration in what was said. His children came to the +table, as I have told, and after dinner he was apt to join his fine tenor +to their trebles in singing. + +Fully half our meetings were at my house in Cambridge, where he made +himself as much at home as in Hartford. He would come ostensibly to stay +at the Parker House, in Boston, and take a room, where he would light the +gas and leave it burning, after dressing, while he drove out to Cambridge +and stayed two or three days with us. Once, I suppose it was after a +lecture, he came in evening dress and passed twenty-four hours with us in +that guise, wearing an overcoat to hide it when we went for a walk. +Sometimes he wore the slippers which he preferred to shoes at home, and +if it was muddy, as it was wont to be in Cambridge, he would put a pair +of rubbers over them for our rambles. He liked the lawlessness and our +delight in allowing it, and he rejoiced in the confession of his hostess, +after we had once almost worn ourselves out in our pleasure with the +intense talk, with the stories and the laughing, that his coming almost +killed her, but it was worth it. + +In those days he was troubled with sleeplessness, or, rather, with +reluctant sleepiness, and he had various specifics for promoting it. At +first it had been champagne just before going to bed, and we provided +that, but later he appeared from Boston with four bottles of lager-beer +under his arms; lager-beer, he said now, was the only thing to make you +go to sleep, and we provided that. Still later, on a visit I paid him at +Hartford, I learned that hot Scotch was the only soporific worth +considering, and Scotch-whiskey duly found its place on our sideboard. +One day, very long afterward, I asked him if he were still taking hot +Scotch to make him sleep. He said he was not taking anything. For a +while he had found going to bed on the bath-room floor a soporific; then +one night he went to rest in his own bed at ten o’clock, and had gone +promptly to sleep without anything. He had done the like with the like +effect ever since. Of course, it amused him; there were few experiences +of life, grave or gay, which did not amuse him, even when they wronged +him. + +He came on to Cambridge in April, 1875, to go with me to the centennial +ceremonies at Concord in celebration of the battle of the Minute Men with +the British troops a hundred years before. We both had special +invitations, including passage from Boston; but I said, Why bother to go +into Boston when we could just as well take the train for Concord at the +Cambridge station? He equally decided that it would be absurd; so we +breakfasted deliberately, and then walked to the station, reasoning of +many things as usual. When the train stopped, we found it packed inside +and out. People stood dense on the platforms of the cars; to our +startled eyes they seemed to project from the windows, and unless memory +betrays me they lay strewn upon the roofs like brakemen slain at the post +of duty. + +Whether this was really so or not, it is certain that the train presented +an impenetrable front even to our imagination, and we left it to go its +way without the slightest effort to board. We remounted the fame-worn +steps of Porter’s Station, and began exploring North Cambridge for some +means of transportation overland to Concord, for we were that far on the +road by which the British went and came on the day of the battle. The +liverymen whom we appealed to received us, some with compassion, some +with derision, but in either mood convinced us that we could not have +hired a cat to attempt our conveyance, much less a horse, or vehicle of +any description. It was a raw, windy day, very unlike the exceptionally +hot April day when the routed redcoats, pursued by the Colonials, fled +panting back to Boston, with “their tongues hanging out like dogs,” but +we could not take due comfort in the vision of their discomfiture; we +could almost envy them, for they had at least got to Concord. A swift +procession of coaches, carriages, and buggies, all going to Concord, +passed us, inert and helpless, on the sidewalk in the peculiarly cold mud +of North Cambridge. We began to wonder if we might not stop one of them +and bribe it to take us, but we had not the courage to try, and Clemens +seized the opportunity to begin suffering with an acute indigestion, +which gave his humor a very dismal cast. I felt keenly the shame of +defeat, and the guilt of responsibility for our failure, and when a gay +party of students came toward us on the top of a tally ho, luxuriously +empty inside, we felt that our chance had come, and our last chance. He +said that if I would stop them and tell them who I was they would gladly, +perhaps proudly, give us passage; I contended that if with his far vaster +renown he would approach them, our success would be assured. While we +stood, lost in this “contest of civilities,” the coach passed us, with +gay notes blown from the horns of the students, and then Clemens started +in pursuit, encouraged with shouts from the merry party who could not +imagine who was trying to run them down, to a rivalry in speed. The +unequal match could end only in one way, and I am glad I cannot recall +what he said when he came back to me. Since then I have often wondered +at the grief which would have wrung those blithe young hearts if they +could have known that they might have had the company of Mark Twain to +Concord that day and did not. + +We hung about, unavailingly, in the bitter wind a while longer, and then +slowly, very slowly, made our way home. We wished to pass as much time +as possible, in order to give probability to the deceit we intended to +practise, for we could not bear to own ourselves baffled in our boasted +wisdom of taking the train at Porter’s Station, and had agreed to say +that we had been to Concord and got back. Even after coming home to my +house, we felt that our statement would be wanting in verisimilitude +without further delay, and we crept quietly into my library, and made up +a roaring fire on the hearth, and thawed ourselves out in the heat of it +before we regained our courage for the undertaking. With all these +precautions we failed, for when our statement was imparted to the +proposed victim she instantly pronounced it unreliable, and we were left +with it on our hands intact. I think the humor of this situation was +finally a greater pleasure to Clemens than an actual visit to Concord +would have been; only a few weeks before his death he laughed our defeat +over with one of my family in Bermuda, and exulted in our prompt +detection. + + + + +XI. + +From our joint experience in failing I argue that Clemens’s affection for +me must have been great to enable him to condone in me the final +defection which was apt to be the end of our enterprises. I have fancied +that I presented to him a surface of such entire trustworthiness that he +could not imagine the depths of unreliability beneath it; and that never +realizing it, he always broke through with fresh surprise but unimpaired +faith. He liked, beyond all things, to push an affair to the bitter end, +and the end was never too bitter unless it brought grief or harm to +another. Once in a telegraph office at a railway station he was treated +with such insolent neglect by the young lady in charge, who was +preoccupied in a flirtation with a “gentleman friend,” that emulous of +the public spirit which he admired in the English, he told her he should +report her to her superiors, and (probably to her astonishment) he did +so. He went back to Hartford, and in due time the poor girl came to me +in, terror and in tears; for I had abetted Clemens in his action, and had +joined my name to his in his appeal to the authorities. She was +threatened with dismissal unless she made full apology to him and brought +back assurance of its acceptance. I felt able to give this, and, of +course, he eagerly approved; I think he telegraphed his approval. Another +time, some years afterward, we sat down together in places near the end +of a car, and a brakeman came in looking for his official note-book. +Clemens found that he had sat down upon it, and handed it to him; the man +scolded him very abusively, and came back again and again, still scolding +him for having no more sense than to sit down on a note-book. The +patience of Clemens in bearing it was so angelic that I saw fit to +comment, “I suppose you will report this fellow.” “Yes,” he answered, +slowly and sadly. “That’s what I should have done once. But now I +remember that he gets twenty dollars a month.” + +Nothing could have been wiser, nothing tenderer, and his humanity was not +for humanity alone. He abhorred the dull and savage joy of the sportsman +in a lucky shot, an unerring aim, and once when I met him in the country +he had just been sickened by the success of a gunner in bringing down a +blackbird, and he described the poor, stricken, glossy thing, how it lay +throbbing its life out on the grass, with such pity as he might have +given a wounded child. I find this a fit place to say that his mind and +soul were with those who do the hard work of the world, in fear of those +who give them a chance for their livelihoods and underpay them all they +can. He never went so far in socialism as I have gone, if he went that +way at all, but he was fascinated with Looking Backward and had Bellamy +to visit him; and from the first he had a luminous vision of organized +labor as the only present help for working-men. He would show that side +with such clearness and such force that you could not say anything in +hopeful contradiction; he saw with that relentless insight of his that +with Unions was the working-man’s only present hope of standing up like a +man against money and the power of it. There was a time when I was +afraid that his eyes were a little holden from the truth; but in the very +last talk I heard from him I found that I was wrong, and that this great +humorist was as great a humanist as ever. I wish that all the work-folk +could know this, and could know him their friend in life as he was in +literature; as he was in such a glorious gospel of equality as the +‘Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.’ + + + + +XII. + +Whether I will or no I must let things come into my story thoughtwise, as +he would have let them, for I cannot remember them in their order. One +night, while we were giving a party, he suddenly stormed in with a friend +of his and mine, Mr. Twichell, and immediately began to eat and drink of +our supper, for they had come straight to our house from walking to +Boston, or so great a part of the way as to be a-hungered and a-thirst. I +can see him now as he stood up in the midst of our friends, with his head +thrown back, and in his hand a dish of those escalloped oysters without +which no party in Cambridge was really a party, exulting in the tale of +his adventure, which had abounded in the most original characters and +amusing incidents at every mile of their progress. They had broken their +journey with a night’s rest, and they had helped themselves lavishly out +by rail in the last half; but still it had been a mighty walk to do in +two days. Clemens was a great walker, in those years, and was always +telling of his tramps with Mr. Twichell to Talcott’s Tower, ten miles out +of Hartford. As he walked of course he talked, and of course he smoked. +Whenever he had been a few days with us, the whole house had to be aired, +for he smoked all over it from breakfast to bedtime. He always went to +bed with a cigar in his mouth, and sometimes, mindful of my fire +insurance, I went up and took it away, still burning, after he had fallen +asleep. I do not know how much a man may smoke and live, but apparently +he smoked as much as a man could, for he smoked incessantly. + +He did not care much to meet people, as I fancied, and we were greedy of +him for ourselves; he was precious to us; and I would not have exposed +him to the critical edge of that Cambridge acquaintance which might not +have appreciated him at, say, his transatlantic value. In America his +popularity was as instant as it was vast. But it must be acknowledged +that for a much longer time here than in England polite learning +hesitated his praise. In England rank, fashion, and culture rejoiced in +him. Lord mayors, lord chief justices, and magnates of many kinds were +his hosts; he was desired in country houses, and his bold genius +captivated the favor of periodicals which spurned the rest of our nation. +But in his own country it was different. In proportion as people thought +themselves refined they questioned that quality which all recognize in +him now, but which was then the inspired knowledge of the simple-hearted +multitude. I went with him to see Longfellow, but I do not think +Longfellow made much of him, and Lowell made less. He stopped as if with +the long Semitic curve of Clemens’s nose, which in the indulgence of his +passion for finding every one more or less a Jew he pronounced +unmistakably racial. It was two of my most fastidious Cambridge friends +who accepted him with the English, the European entirety--namely, Charles +Eliot Norton and Professor Francis J. Child. Norton was then newly back +from a long sojourn abroad, and his judgments were delocalized. He met +Clemens as if they had both been in England, and rejoiced in his bold +freedom from environment, and in the rich variety and boundless reach of +his talk. Child was of a personal liberty as great in its fastidious way +as that of Clemens himself, and though he knew him only at second hand, +he exulted in the most audacious instance of his grotesquery, as I shall +have to tell by-and-by, almost solely. I cannot say just why Clemens +seemed not to hit the favor of our community of scribes and scholars, as +Bret Harte had done, when he came on from California, and swept them +before him, disrupting their dinners and delaying their lunches with +impunity; but it is certain he did not, and I had better say so. + +I am surprised to find from the bibliographical authorities that it was +so late as 1875 when he came with the manuscript of Tom Sawyer, and asked +me to read it, as a friend and critic, and not as an editor. I have an +impression that this was at Mrs. Clemens’s instance in his own +uncertainty about printing it. She trusted me, I can say with a +satisfaction few things now give me, to be her husband’s true and cordial +adviser, and I was so. I believe I never failed him in this part, though +in so many of our enterprises and projects I was false as water through +my temperamental love of backing out of any undertaking. I believe this +never ceased to astonish him, and it has always astonished me; it appears +to me quite out of character; though it is certain that an undertaking, +when I have entered upon it, holds me rather than I it. But however this +immaterial matter may be, I am glad to remember that I thoroughly liked +Tom Sawyer, and said so with every possible amplification. Very likely, +I also made my suggestions for its improvement; I could not have been a +real critic without that; and I have no doubt they were gratefully +accepted and, I hope, never acted upon. I went with him to the horse-car +station in Harvard Square, as my frequent wont was, and put him aboard a +car with his MS. in his hand, stayed and reassured, so far as I counted, +concerning it. I do not know what his misgivings were; perhaps they were +his wife’s misgivings, for she wished him to be known not only for the +wild and boundless humor that was in him, but for the beauty and +tenderness and “natural piety”; and she would not have had him judged by +a too close fidelity to the rude conditions of Tom Sawyer’s life. This +is the meaning that I read into the fact of his coming to me with those +doubts. + + + + +XIII. + +Clemens had then and for many years the habit of writing to me about what +he was doing, and still more of what he was experiencing. Nothing struck +his imagination, in or out of the daily routine, but he wished to write +me of it, and he wrote with the greatest fulness and a lavish +dramatization, sometimes to the length of twenty or forty pages, so that +I have now perhaps fifteen hundred pages of his letters. They will no +doubt some day be published, but I am not even referring to them in these +records, which I think had best come to the reader with an old man’s +falterings and uncertainties. With his frequent absences and my own +abroad, and the intrusion of calamitous cares, the rich tide of his +letters was more and more interrupted. At times it almost ceased, and +then it would come again, a torrent. In the very last weeks of his life +he burst forth, and, though too weak himself to write, he dictated his +rage with me for recommending to him a certain author whose truthfulness +he could not deny, but whom he hated for his truthfulness to sordid and +ugly conditions. At heart Clemens was romantic, and he would have had +the world of fiction stately and handsome and whatever the real world was +not; but he was not romanticistic, and he was too helplessly an artist +not to wish his own work to show life as he had seen it. I was preparing +to rap him back for these letters when I read that he had got home to +die; he would have liked the rapping back. + +He liked coming to Boston, especially for those luncheons and dinners in +which the fertile hospitality of our publisher, Osgood, abounded. He +dwelt equidistant from Boston and New York, and he had special friends in +New York, but he said he much preferred coming to Boston; of late years +he never went there, and he had lost the habit of it long before he came +home from Europe to live in New York. At these feasts, which were often +of after-dinner-speaking measure, he could always be trusted for +something of amazing delightfulness. Once, when Osgood could think of no +other occasion for a dinner, he gave himself a birthday dinner, and asked +his friends and authors. The beautiful and splendid trooper-like blaring +was there, and I recall how in the long, rambling speech in which Clemens +went round the table hitting every head at it, and especially visiting +Osgood with thanks for his ingenious pretext for our entertainment, he +congratulated blaring upon his engineering genius and his hypnotic +control of municipal governments. He said that if there was a plan for +draining a city at a cost of a million, by seeking the level of the water +in the down-hill course of the sewers, blaring would come with a plan to +drain that town up-hill at twice the cost and carry it through the Common +Council without opposition. It is hard to say whether the time was +gladder at these dinners, or at the small lunches at which Osgood and +Aldrich and I foregathered with him and talked the afternoon away till +well toward the winter twilight. + +He was a great figure, and the principal figure, at one of the first of +the now worn-out Authors’ Readings, which was held in the Boston Museum +to aid a Longfellow memorial. It was the late George Parsons Lathrop +(everybody seems to be late in these sad days) who imagined the reading, +but when it came to a price for seats I can always claim the glory of +fixing it at five dollars. The price if not the occasion proved +irresistible, and the museum was packed from the floor to the topmost +gallery. Norton presided, and when it came Clemens’s turn to read he +introduced him with such exquisite praises as he best knew how to give, +but before he closed he fell a prey to one of those lapses of tact which +are the peculiar peril of people of the greatest tact. He was reminded +of Darwin’s delight in Mark Twain, and how when he came from his long +day’s exhausting study, and sank into bed at midnight, he took up a +volume of Mark Twain, whose books he always kept on a table beside him, +and whatever had been his tormenting problem, or excess of toil, he felt +secure of a good night’s rest from it. A sort of blank ensued which +Clemens filled in the only possible way. He said he should always be +glad that he had contributed to the repose of that great man, whom +science owed so much, and then without waiting for the joy in every +breast to burst forth, he began to read. It was curious to watch his +triumph with the house. His carefully studied effects would reach the +first rows in the orchestra first, and ripple in laughter back to the +standees against the wall, and then with a fine resurgence come again to +the rear orchestra seats, and so rise from gallery to gallery till it +fell back, a cataract of applause from the topmost rows of seats. He was +such a practised speaker that he knew all the stops of that simple +instrument man, and there is no doubt that these results were accurately +intended from his unerring knowledge. He was the most consummate public +performer I ever saw, and it was an incomparable pleasure to hear him +lecture; on the platform he was the great and finished actor which he +probably would not have been on the stage. He was fond of private +theatricals, and liked to play in them with his children and their +friends, in dramatizations of such stories of his as ‘The Prince and the +Pauper;’ but I never saw him in any of these scenes. When he read his +manuscript to you, it was with a thorough, however involuntary, +recognition of its dramatic qualities; he held that an actor added fully +half to the character the author created. With my own hurried and +half-hearted reading of passages which I wished to try on him from +unprinted chapters (say, out of ‘The Undiscovered Country’ or ‘A Modern +Instance’) he said frankly that my reading could spoil anything. He was +realistic, but he was essentially histrionic, and he was rightly so. +What we have strongly conceived we ought to make others strongly imagine, +and we ought to use every genuine art to that end. + + + + +XIV. + +There came a time when the lecturing which had been the joy of his prime +became his loathing, loathing unutterable, and when he renounced it with +indescribable violence. Yet he was always hankering for those fleshpots +whose savor lingered on his palate and filled his nostrils after his +withdrawal from the platform. The Authors’ Readings when they had won +their brief popularity abounded in suggestion for him. Reading from +one’s book was not so bad as giving a lecture written for a lecture’s +purpose, and he was willing at last to compromise. He had a magnificent +scheme for touring the country with Aldrich and Mr. G. W. Cable and +myself, in a private car, with a cook of our own, and every facility for +living on the fat of the land. We should read only four times a week, in +an entertainment that should not last more than an hour and a half. He +would be the impresario, and would guarantee us others at least +seventy-five dollars a day, and pay every expense of the enterprise, +which he provisionally called the Circus, himself. But Aldrich and I +were now no longer in those earlier thirties when we so cheerfully +imagined ‘Memorable Murders’ for subscription publication; we both +abhorred public appearances, and, at any rate, I was going to Europe for +a year. So the plan fell through except as regarded Mr. Cable, who, in +his way, was as fine a performer as Clemens, and could both read and sing +the matter of his books. On a far less stupendous scale they two made +the rounds of the great lecturing circuit together. But I believe a +famous lecture-manager had charge of them and travelled with them. + +He was a most sanguine man, a most amiable person, and such a believer in +fortune that Clemens used to say of him, as he said of one of his early +publishers, that you could rely upon fifty per cent. of everything he +promised. I myself many years later became a follower of this hopeful +prophet, and I can testify that in my case at least he was able to keep +ninety-nine, and even a hundred, per cent. of his word. It was I who was +much nearer failing of mine, for I promptly began to lose sleep from the +nervous stress of my lecturing and from the gratifying but killing +receptions afterward, and I was truly in that state from insomnia which +Clemens recognized in the brief letter I got from him in the Western +city, after half a dozen wakeful nights. He sardonically congratulated +me on having gone into “the lecture field,” and then he said: “I know +where you are now. You are in hell.” + +It was this perdition which he re-entered when he undertook that +round-the-world lecturing tour for the payment of the debts left to him +by the bankruptcy of his firm in the publishing business. It was not +purely perdition for him, or, rather, it was perdition for only one-half +of him, the author-half; for the actor-half it was paradise. The author +who takes up lecturing without the ability to give histrionic support to +the literary reputation which he brings to the crude test of his reader’s +eyes and ears, invokes a peril and a misery unknown to the lecturer who +has made his first public from the platform. Clemens was victorious on +the platform from the beginning, and it would be folly to pretend that he +did not exult in his triumphs there. But I suppose, with the wearing +nerves of middle life, he hated more and more the personal swarming of +interest upon him, and all the inevitable clatter of the thing. Yet he +faced it, and he labored round our tiresome globe that he might pay the +uttermost farthing of debts which he had not knowingly contracted, the +debts of his partners who had meant well and done ill, not because they +were evil, but because they were unwise, and as unfit for their work as +he was. “Pay what thou owest.” That is right, even when thou owest it +by the error of others, and even when thou owest it to a bank, which had +not lent it from love of thee, but in the hard line of business and thy +need. + +Clemens’s behavior in this matter redounded to his glory among the +nations of the whole earth, and especially in this nation, so wrapped in +commerce and so little used to honor among its many thieves. He had +behaved like Walter Scott, as millions rejoiced to know, who had not +known how Walter Scott had behaved till they knew it was like Clemens. No +doubt it will be put to his credit in the books of the Recording Angel, +but what the Judge of all the Earth will say of it at the Last Day there +is no telling. I should not be surprised if He accounted it of less +merit than some other things that Clemens did and was: less than his +abhorrence of the Spanish War, and the destruction of the South-African +republics, and our deceit of the Filipinos, and his hate of slavery, and +his payment of his portion of our race’s debt to the race of the colored +student whom he saw through college, and his support of a poor artist for +three years in Paris, and his loan of opportunity to the youth who became +the most brilliant of our actor-dramatists, and his eager pardon of the +thoughtless girl who was near paying the penalty of her impertinence with +the loss of her place, and his remembering that the insolent brakeman got +so few dollars a month, and his sympathy for working-men standing up to +money in their Unions, and even his pity for the wounded bird throbbing +out its little life on the grass for the pleasure of the cruel fool who +shot it. These and the thousand other charities and beneficences in +which he abounded, openly or secretly, may avail him more than the +discharge of his firm’s liabilities with the Judge of all the Earth, who +surely will do right, but whose measures and criterions no man knows, and +I least of all men. + +He made no great show of sympathy with people in their anxieties, but it +never failed, and at a time when I lay sick for many weeks his letters +were of comfort to those who feared I might not rise again. His hand was +out in help for those who needed help, and in kindness for those who +needed kindness. There remains in my mind the dreary sense of a long, +long drive to the uttermost bounds of the South End at Boston, where he +went to call upon some obscure person whose claim stretched in a +lengthening chain from his early days in Missouri--a most inadequate +person, in whose vacuity the gloom of the dull day deepened till it was +almost too deep for tears. He bore the ordeal with grim heroism, and +silently smoked away the sense of it, as we drove back to Cambridge, in +his slippered feet, sombrely musing, sombrely swearing. But he knew he +had done the right, the kind thing, and he was content. He came the +whole way from Hartford to go with me to a friendless play of mine, which +Alessandro Salvini was giving in a series of matinees to houses never +enlarging themselves beyond the count of the brave two hundred who sat it +through, and he stayed my fainting spirit with a cheer beyond flagons, +joining me in my joke at the misery of it, and carrying the fun farther. + +Before that he had come to witness the aesthetic suicide of Anna +Dickinson, who had been a flaming light of the political platform in the +war days, and had been left by them consuming in a hapless ambition for +the theatre. The poor girl had had a play written especially for her, +and as Anne Boleyn she ranted and exhorted through the five acts, drawing +ever nearer the utter defeat of the anticlimax. We could hardly look at +each other for pity, Clemens sitting there in the box he had taken, with +his shaggy head out over the corner and his slippered feet curled under +him: he either went to a place in his slippers or he carried them with +him, and put them on as soon as he could put off his boots. When it was +so that we could not longer follow her failure and live, he began to talk +of the absolute close of her career which the thing was, and how probably +she had no conception that it was the end. He philosophized the +mercifulness of the fact, and of the ignorance of most of us, when +mortally sick or fatally wounded. We think it is not the end, because we +have never ended before, and we do not see how we can end. Some can push +by the awful hour and live again, but for Anna Dickinson there could be, +and was, no such palingenesis. Of course we got that solemn joy out of +reading her fate aright which is the compensation of the wise spectator +in witnessing the inexorable doom of others. + + + + +XV. + +When Messrs. Houghton & Mifflin became owners of The Atlantic Monthly, +Mr. Houghton fancied having some breakfasts and dinners, which should +bring the publisher and the editor face to face with the contributors, +who were bidden from far and near. Of course, the subtle fiend of +advertising, who has now grown so unblushing bold, lurked under the +covers at these banquets, and the junior partner and the young editor had +their joint and separate fine anguishes of misgiving as to the taste and +the principle of them; but they were really very simple-hearted and +honestly meant hospitalities, and they prospered as they ought, and gave +great pleasure and no pain. I forget some of the “emergent occasions,” + but I am sure of a birthday dinner most unexpectedly accepted by +Whittier, and a birthday luncheon to Mrs. Stowe, and I think a birthday +dinner to Longfellow; but the passing years have left me in the dark as +to the pretext of that supper at which Clemens made his awful speech, and +came so near being the death of us all. At the breakfasts and luncheons +we had the pleasure of our lady contributors’ company, but that night +there were only men, and because of our great strength we survived. + +I suppose the year was about 1879, but here the almanac is unimportant, +and I can only say that it was after Clemens had become a very valued +contributor of the magazine, where he found himself to his own great +explicit satisfaction. He had jubilantly accepted our invitation, and +had promised a speech, which it appeared afterward he had prepared with +unusual care and confidence. It was his custom always to think out his +speeches, mentally wording them, and then memorizing them by a peculiar +system of mnemonics which he had invented. On the dinner-table a certain +succession of knife, spoon, salt-cellar, and butter-plate symbolized a +train of ideas, and on the billiard-table a ball, a cue, and a piece of +chalk served the same purpose. With a diagram of these printed on the +brain he had full command of the phrases which his excogitation had +attached to them, and which embodied the ideas in perfect form. He +believed he had been particularly fortunate in his notion for the speech +of that evening, and he had worked it out in joyous self-reliance. It was +the notion of three tramps, three deadbeats, visiting a California +mining-camp, and imposing themselves upon the innocent miners as +respectively Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Oliver +Wendell, Holmes. The humor of the conception must prosper or must fail +according to the mood of the hearer, but Clemens felt sure of compelling +this to sympathy, and he looked forward to an unparalleled triumph. + +But there were two things that he had not taken into account. One was +the species of religious veneration in which these men were held by those +nearest them, a thing that I should not be able to realize to people +remote from them in time and place. They were men of extraordinary +dignity, of the thing called presence, for want of some clearer word, so +that no one could well approach them in a personally light or trifling +spirit. I do not suppose that anybody more truly valued them or more +piously loved them than Clemens himself, but the intoxication of his +fancy carried him beyond the bounds of that regard, and emboldened him to +the other thing which he had not taken into account-namely, the immense +hazard of working his fancy out before their faces, and expecting them to +enter into the delight of it. If neither Emerson, nor Longfellow, nor +Holmes had been there, the scheme might possibly have carried, but even +this is doubtful, for those who so devoutly honored them would have +overcome their horror with difficulty, and perhaps would not have +overcome it at all. + +The publisher, with a modesty very ungrateful to me, had abdicated his +office of host, and I was the hapless president, fulfilling the abhorred. +function of calling people to their feet and making them speak. When I +came to Clemens I introduced him with the cordial admiring I had for him +as one of my greatest contributors and dearest friends. Here, I said, in +sum, was a humorist who never left you hanging your head for having +enjoyed his joke; and then the amazing mistake, the bewildering blunder, +the cruel catastrophe was upon us. I believe that after the scope of the +burlesque made itself clear, there was no one there, including the +burlesquer himself, who was not smitten with a desolating dismay. There +fell a silence, weighing many tons to the square inch, which deepened +from moment to moment, and was broken only by the hysterical and +blood-curdling laughter of a single guest, whose name shall not be handed +down to infamy. Nobody knew whether to look at the speaker or down at +his plate. I chose my plate as the least affliction, and so I do not +know how Clemens looked, except when I stole a glance at him, and saw him +standing solitary amid his appalled and appalling listeners, with his +joke dead on his hands. From a first glance at the great three whom his +jest had made its theme, I was aware of Longfellow sitting upright, and +regarding the humorist with an air of pensive puzzle, of Holmes busily +writing on his menu, with a well-feigned effect of preoccupation, and of +Emerson, holding his elbows, and listening with a sort of Jovian oblivion +of this nether world in that lapse of memory which saved him in those +later years from so much bother. Clemens must have dragged his joke to +the climax and left it there, but I cannot say this from any sense of the +fact. Of what happened afterward at the table where the immense, the +wholly innocent, the truly unimagined affront was offered, I have no +longer the least remembrance. I next remember being in a room of the +hotel, where Clemens was not to sleep, but to toss in despair, and +Charles Dudley Warner’s saying, in the gloom, “Well, Mark, you’re a funny +fellow.” It was as well as anything else he could have said, but Clemens +seemed unable to accept the tribute. + +I stayed the night with him, and the next morning, after a haggard +breakfast, we drove about and he made some purchases of bric-a-brac for +his house in Hartford, with a soul as far away from bric-a-brac as ever +the soul of man was. He went home by an early train, and he lost no time +in writing back to the three divine personalities which he had so +involuntarily seemed to flout. They all wrote back to him, making it as +light for him as they could. I have heard that Emerson was a good deal +mystified, and in his sublime forgetfulness asked, Who was this gentleman +who appeared to think he had offered him some sort of annoyance! But I +am not sure that this is accurate. What I am sure of is that Longfellow, +a few days after, in my study, stopped before a photograph of Clemens and +said, “Ah, he is a wag!” and nothing more. Holmes told me, with deep +emotion, such as a brother humorist might well feel, that he had not lost +an instant in replying to Clemens’s letter, and assuring him that there +had not been the least offence, and entreating him never to think of the +matter again. “He said that he was a fool, but he was God’s fool,” + Holmes quoted from the letter, with a true sense of the pathos and the +humor of the self-abasement. + +To me Clemens wrote a week later, “It doesn’t get any better; it burns +like fire.” But now I understand that it was not shame that burnt, but +rage for a blunder which he had so incredibly committed. That to have +conceived of those men, the most dignified in our literature, our +civilization, as impersonable by three hoboes, and then to have imagined +that he could ask them personally to enjoy the monstrous travesty, was a +break, he saw too late, for which there was no repair. Yet the time +came, and not so very long afterward, when some mention was made of the +incident as a mistake, and he said, with all his fierceness, “But I don’t +admit that it was a mistake,” and it was not so in the minds of all +witnesses at second hand. The morning after the dreadful dinner there +came a glowing note from Professor Child, who had read the newspaper +report of it, praising Clemens’s burlesque as the richest piece of humor +in the world, and betraying no sense of incongruity in its perpetration +in the presence of its victims. I think it must always have ground in +Clemens’s soul, that he was the prey of circumstances, and that if he had +some more favoring occasion he could retrieve his loss in it by giving +the thing the right setting. Not more than two or three years ago, he +came to try me as to trying it again at a meeting of newspaper men in +Washington. I had to own my fears, while I alleged Child’s note on the +other hand, but in the end he did not try it with the newspaper men. I +do not know whether he has ever printed it or not, but since the thing +happened I have often wondered how much offence there really was in it. I +am not sure but the horror of the spectators read more indignation into +the subjects of the hapless drolling than they felt. But it must have +been difficult for them to bear it with equanimity. To be sure, they +were not themselves mocked; the joke was, of course, beside them; +nevertheless, their personality was trifled with, and I could only end by +reflecting that if I had been in their place I should not have liked it +myself. Clemens would have liked it himself, for he had the heart for +that sort of wild play, and he so loved a joke that even if it took the +form of a liberty, and was yet a good joke, he would have loved it. But +perhaps this burlesque was not a good joke. + + + + +XVI. + +Clemens was oftenest at my house in Cambridge, but he was also sometimes +at my house in Belmont; when, after a year in Europe, we went to live in +Boston, he was more rarely with us. We could never be long together +without something out of the common happening, and one day something far +out of the common happened, which fortunately refused the nature of +absolute tragedy, while remaining rather the saddest sort of comedy. We +were looking out of my library window on that view of the Charles which I +was so proud of sharing with my all-but-next-door neighbor, Doctor +Holmes, when another friend who was with us called out with curiously +impersonal interest, “Oh, see that woman getting into the water!” This +would have excited curiosity and alarmed anxiety far less lively than +ours, and Clemens and I rushed downstairs and out through my basement and +back gate. At the same time a coachman came out of a stable next door, +and grappled by the shoulders a woman who was somewhat deliberately +getting down the steps to the water over the face of the embankment. +Before we could reach them he had pulled her up to the driveway, and +stood holding her there while she crazily grieved at her rescue. As soon +as he saw us he went back into his stable, and left us with the poor wild +creature on our hands. She was not very young and not very pretty, and +we could not have flattered ourselves with the notion of anything +romantic in her suicidal mania, but we could take her on the broad human +level, and on this we proposed to escort her up Beacon Street till we +could give her into the keeping of one of those kindly policemen whom our +neighborhood knew. Naturally there was no policeman known to us or +unknown the whole way to the Public Garden. We had to circumvent our +charge in her present design of drowning herself, and walk her past the +streets crossing Beacon to the river. At these points it needed +considerable reasoning to overcome her wish and some active manoeuvring +in both of us to enforce our arguments. Nobody else appeared to be +interested, and though we did not court publicity in the performance of +the duty so strangely laid upon us, still it was rather disappointing to +be so entirely ignored. + +There are some four or five crossings to the river between 302 Beacon +Street and the Public Garden, and the suggestions at our command were +pretty well exhausted by the time we reached it. Still the expected +policeman was nowhere in sight; but a brilliant thought occurred to +Clemens. He asked me where the nearest police station was, and when I +told him, he started off at his highest speed, leaving me in sole charge +of our hapless ward. All my powers of suasion were now taxed to the +utmost, and I began attracting attention as a short, stout gentleman in +early middle life endeavoring to distrain a respectable female of her +personal liberty, when his accomplice had abandoned him to his wicked +design. After a much longer time than I thought I should have taken to +get a policeman from the station, Clemens reappeared in easy conversation +with an officer who had probably realized that he was in the company of +Mark Twain, and was in no hurry to end the interview. He took possession +of our captive, and we saw her no more. I now wonder that with our joint +instinct for failure we ever got rid of her; but I am sure we did, and +few things in life have given me greater relief. When we got back to my +house we found the friend we had left there quite unruffled and not much +concerned to know the facts of our adventure. My impression is that he +had been taking a nap on my lounge; he appeared refreshed and even gay; +but if I am inexact in these details he is alive to refute me. + + + + +XVII. + +A little after this Clemens went abroad with his family, and lived +several years in Germany. His letters still came, but at longer +intervals, and the thread of our intimate relations was inevitably +broken. He would write me when something I had written pleased him, or +when something signal occurred to him, or some political or social +outrage stirred him to wrath, and he wished to free his mind in pious +profanity. During this sojourn he came near dying of pneumonia in +Berlin, and he had slight relapses from it after coming home. In Berlin +also he had the honor of dining with the German Emperor at the table of a +cousin married to a high officer of the court. Clemens was a man to +enjoy such a distinction; he knew how to take it as a delegated +recognition from the German people; but as coming from a rather cockahoop +sovereign who had as yet only his sovereignty to value himself upon, he +was not very proud of it. He expressed a quiet disdain of the event as +between the imperiality and himself, on whom it was supposed to confer +such glory, crowning his life with the topmost leaf of laurel. He was in +the same mood in his account of an English dinner many years before, +where there was a “little Scotch lord” present, to whom the English +tacitly referred Clemens’s talk, and laughed when the lord laughed, and +were grave when he failed to smile. Of all the men I have known he was +the farthest from a snob, though he valued recognition, and liked the +flattery of the fashionable fair when it came in his way. He would not +go out of his way for it, but like most able and brilliant men he loved +the minds of women, their wit, their agile cleverness, their sensitive +perception, their humorous appreciation, the saucy things they would say, +and their pretty, temerarious defiances. He had, of course, the keenest +sense of what was truly dignified and truly undignified in people; but he +was not really interested in what we call society affairs; they scarcely +existed for him, though his books witness how he abhorred the dreadful +fools who through some chance of birth or wealth hold themselves +different from other men. + +Commonly he did not keep things to himself, especially dislikes and +condemnations. Upon most current events he had strong opinions, and he +uttered them strongly. After a while he was silent in them, but if you +tried him you found him in them still. He was tremendously worked up by +a certain famous trial, as most of us were who lived in the time of it. +He believed the accused guilty, but when we met some months after it was +over, and I tempted him to speak his mind upon it, he would only say. The +man had suffered enough; as if the man had expiated his wrong, and he was +not going to do anything to renew his penalty. I found that very +curious, very delicate. His continued blame could not come to the +sufferer’s knowledge, but he felt it his duty to forbear it. + +He was apt to wear himself out in the vehemence of his resentments; or, +he had so spent himself in uttering them that he had literally nothing +more to say. You could offer Clemens offences that would anger other men +and he did not mind; he would account for them from human nature; but if +he thought you had in any way played him false you were anathema and +maranatha forever. Yet not forever, perhaps, for by and-by, after years, +he would be silent. There were two men, half a generation apart in their +succession, whom he thought equally atrocious in their treason to him, +and of whom he used to talk terrifyingly, even after they were out of the +world. He went farther than Heine, who said that he forgave his enemies, +but not till they were dead. Clemens did not forgive his dead enemies; +their death seemed to deepen their crimes, like a base evasion, or a +cowardly attempt to escape; he pursued them to the grave; he would like +to dig them up and take vengeance upon their clay. So he said, but no +doubt he would not have hurt them if he had had them living before him. +He was generous without stint; he trusted without measure, but where his +generosity was abused, or his trust betrayed, he was a fire of vengeance, +a consuming flame of suspicion that no sprinkling of cool patience from +others could quench; it had to burn itself out. He was eagerly and +lavishly hospitable, but if a man seemed willing to batten on him, or in +any way to lie down upon him, Clemens despised him unutterably. In his +frenzies of resentment or suspicion he would not, and doubtless could +not, listen to reason. But if between the paroxysms he were confronted +with the facts he would own them, no matter how much they told against +him. At one period he fancied that a certain newspaper was hounding him +with biting censure and poisonous paragraphs, and he was filling himself +up with wrath to be duly discharged on the editor’s head. Later, he +wrote me with a humorous joy in his mistake that Warner had advised him +to have the paper watched for these injuries. He had done so, and how +many mentions of him did I reckon he had found in three months? Just +two, and they were rather indifferent than unfriendly. So the paper was +acquitted, and the editor’s life was spared. The wretch never knew how +near he was to losing it, with incredible preliminaries of obloquy, and a +subsequent devotion to lasting infamy. + +His memory for favors was as good as for injuries, and he liked to return +your friendliness with as loud a band of music as could be bought or +bribed for the occasion. All that you had to do was to signify that you +wanted his help. When my father was consul at Toronto during Arthur’s +administration, he fancied that his place was in danger, and he appealed +to me. In turn I appealed to Clemens, bethinking myself of his +friendship with Grant and Grant’s friendship with Arthur. I asked him to +write to Grant in my father’s behalf, but No, he answered me, I must come +to Hartford, and we would go on to New York together and see Grant +personally. This was before, and long before, Clemens became Grant’s +publisher and splendid benefactor, but the men liked each other as such +men could not help doing. Clemens made the appointment, and we went to +find Grant in his business office, that place where his business +innocence was afterward so betrayed. He was very simple and very +cordial, and I was instantly the more at home with him, because his voice +was the soft, rounded, Ohio River accent to which my years were earliest +used from my steamboating uncles, my earliest heroes. When I stated my +business he merely said, Oh no; that must not be; he would write to Mr. +Arthur; and he did so that day; and my father lived to lay down his +office, when he tired of it, with no urgence from above. + +It is not irrelevant to Clemens to say that Grant seemed to like finding +himself in company with two literary men, one of whom at least he could +make sure of, and unlike that silent man he was reputed, he talked +constantly, and so far as he might he talked literature. At least he +talked of John Phoenix, that delightfulest of the early Pacific Slope +humorists, whom he had known under his real name of George H. Derby, when +they were fellow-cadets at West Point. It was mighty pretty, as Pepys +would say, to see the delicate deference Clemens paid our plain hero, and +the manly respect with which he listened. While Grant talked, his +luncheon was brought in from some unassuming restaurant near by, and he +asked us to join him in the baked beans and coffee which were served us +in a little room out of the office with about the same circumstance as at +a railroad refreshment-counter. The baked beans and coffee were of about +the railroad-refreshment quality; but eating them with Grant was like +sitting down to baked beans and coffee with Julius Caesar, or Alexander, +or some other great Plutarchan captain. One of the highest satisfactions +of Clemens’s often supremely satisfactory life was his relation to Grant. +It was his proud joy to tell how he found Grant about to sign a contract +for his book on certainly very good terms, and said to him that he would +himself publish the book and give him a percentage three times as large. +He said Grant seemed to doubt whether he could honorably withdraw from +the negotiation at that point, but Clemens overbore his scruples, and it +was his unparalleled privilege, his princely pleasure, to pay the author +a far larger check for his work than had ever been paid to an author +before. He valued even more than this splendid opportunity the sacred +moments in which their business brought him into the presence of the +slowly dying, heroically living man whom he was so befriending; and he +told me in words which surely lost none of their simple pathos through +his report how Grant described his suffering. + +The prosperity, of this venture was the beginning of Clemens’s adversity, +for it led to excesses of enterprise which were forms of dissipation. The +young sculptor who had come back to him from Paris modelled a small bust +of Grant, which Clemens multiplied in great numbers to his great loss, +and the success of Grant’s book tempted him to launch on publishing seas +where his bark presently foundered. The first and greatest of his +disasters was the Life of Pope Leo XIII, which he came to tell me of, +when he had imagined it, in a sort of delirious exultation. He had no +words in which to paint the magnificence of the project, or to forecast +its colossal success. It would have a currency bounded only by the +number of Catholics in Christendom. It would be translated into every +language which was anywhere written or printed; it would be circulated +literally in every country of the globe, and Clemens’s book agents would +carry the prospectuses and then the bound copies of the work to the ends +of the whole earth. Not only would every Catholic buy it, but every +Catholic must, as he was a good Catholic, as he hoped to be saved. It +was a magnificent scheme, and it captivated me, as it had captivated +Clemens; it dazzled us both, and neither of us saw the fatal defect in +it. We did not consider how often Catholics could not read, how often +when they could, they might not wish to read. The event proved that +whether they could read or not the immeasurable majority did not wish to +read the life of the Pope, though it was written by a dignitary of the +Church and issued to the world with every sanction from the Vatican. The +failure was incredible to Clemens; his sanguine soul was utterly +confounded, and soon a silence fell upon it where it had been so +exuberantly jubilant. + + + + +XIX. + +The occasions which brought us to New York together were not nearly so +frequent as those which united us in Boston, but there was a dinner given +him by a friend which remains memorable from the fatuity of two men +present, so different in everything but their fatuity. One was the sweet +old comedian Billy Florence, who was urging the unsuccessful dramatist +across the table to write him a play about Oliver Cromwell, and giving +the reasons why he thought himself peculiarly fitted to portray the +character of Cromwell. The other was a modestly millioned rich man who +was then only beginning to amass the moneys afterward heaped so high, and +was still in the condition to be flattered by the condescension of a yet +greater millionaire. His contribution to our gaiety was the verbatim +report of a call he had made upon William H. Vanderbilt, whom he had +found just about starting out of town, with his trunks actually in the +front hall, but who had stayed to receive the narrator. He had, in fact, +sat down on one of the trunks, and talked with the easiest friendliness, +and quite, we were given to infer, like an ordinary human being. Clemens +often kept on with some thread of the talk when we came away from a +dinner, but now he was silent, as if “high sorrowful and cloyed”; and it +was not till well afterward that I found he had noted the facts from the +bitterness with which he mocked the rich man, and the pity he expressed +for the actor. + +He had begun before that to amass those evidences against mankind which +eventuated with him in his theory of what he called “the damned human +race.” This was not an expression of piety, but of the kind contempt to +which he was driven by our follies and iniquities as he had observed them +in himself as well as in others. It was as mild a misanthropy, probably, +as ever caressed the objects of its malediction. But I believe it was +about the year 1900 that his sense of our perdition became insupportable +and broke out in a mixed abhorrence and amusement which spared no +occasion, so that I could quite understand why Mrs. Clemens should have +found some compensation, when kept to her room by sickness, in the +reflection that now she should not hear so much about “the damned human +race.” He told of that with the same wild joy that he told of +overhearing her repetition of one of his most inclusive profanities, and +her explanation that she meant him to hear it so that he might know how +it sounded. The contrast of the lurid blasphemy with her heavenly +whiteness should have been enough to cure any one less grounded than he +in what must be owned was as fixed a habit as smoking with him. When I +first knew him he rarely vented his fury in that sort, and I fancy he was +under a promise to her which he kept sacred till the wear and tear of his +nerves with advancing years disabled him. Then it would be like him to +struggle with himself till he could struggle no longer and to ask his +promise back, and it would be like her to give it back. His profanity +was the heritage of his boyhood and young manhood in social conditions +and under the duress of exigencies in which everybody swore about as +impersonally as he smoked. It is best to recognize the fact of it, and I +do so the more readily because I cannot suppose the Recording Angel +really minded it much more than that Guardian. Angel of his. It +probably grieved them about equally, but they could equally forgive it. +Nothing came of his pose regarding “the damned human race” except his +invention of the Human Race Luncheon Club. This was confined to four +persons who were never all got together, and it soon perished of their +indifference. + +In the earlier days that I have more specially in mind one of the +questions that we used to debate a good deal was whether every human +motive was not selfish. We inquired as to every impulse, the noblest, +the holiest in effect, and he found them in the last analysis of selfish +origin. Pretty nearly the whole time of a certain railroad run from New +York to Hartford was taken up with the scrutiny of the self-sacrifice of +a mother for her child, of the abandon of the lover who dies in saving +his mistress from fire or flood, of the hero’s courage in the field and +the martyr’s at the stake. Each he found springing from the unconscious +love of self and the dread of the greater pain which the self-sacrificer +would suffer in-forbearing the sacrifice. If we had any time left from +this inquiry that day, he must have devoted it to a high regret that +Napoleon did not carry out his purpose of invading England, for then he +would have destroyed the feudal aristocracy, or “reformed the lords,” as +it might be called now. He thought that would have been an incalculable +blessing to the English people and the world. Clemens was always +beautifully and unfalteringly a republican. None of his occasional +misgivings for America implicated a return to monarchy. Yet he felt +passionately the splendor of the English monarchy, and there was a time +when he gloried in that figurative poetry by which the king was phrased +as “the Majesty of England.” He rolled the words deep-throatedly out, +and exulted in their beauty as if it were beyond any other glory of the +world. He read, or read at, English history a great deal, and one of the +by-products of his restless invention was a game of English Kings (like +the game of Authors) for children. I do not know whether he ever +perfected this, but I am quite sure it was not put upon the market. Very +likely he brought it to a practicable stage, and then tired of it, as he +was apt to do in the ultimation of his vehement undertakings. + + + + +XX. + +He satisfied the impassioned demand of his nature for incessant +activities of every kind by taking a personal as well as a pecuniary +interest in the inventions of others. At one moment “the damned human +race” was almost to be redeemed by a process of founding brass without +air bubbles in it; if this could once be accomplished, as I understood, +or misunderstood, brass could be used in art-printing to a degree +hitherto impossible. I dare say I have got it wrong, but I am not +mistaken as to Clemens’s enthusiasm for the process, and his heavy losses +in paying its way to ultimate failure. He was simultaneously absorbed in +the perfection of a type-setting machine, which he was paying the +inventor a salary to bring to a perfection so expensive that it was +practically impracticable. We were both printers by trade, and I could +take the same interest in this wonderful piece of mechanism that he +could; and it was so truly wonderful that it did everything but walk and +talk. Its ingenious creator was so bent upon realizing the highest ideal +in it that he produced a machine of quite unimpeachable efficiency. But +it was so costly, when finished, that it could not be made for less than +twenty thousand dollars, if the parts were made by hand. This sum was +prohibitive of its introduction, unless the requisite capital could be +found for making the parts by machinery, and Clemens spent many months in +vainly trying to get this money together. In the mean time simpler +machines had been invented and the market filled, and his investment of +three hundred thousand dollars in the beautiful miracle remained +permanent but not profitable. I once went with him to witness its +performance, and it did seem to me the last word in its way, but it had +been spoken too exquisitely, too fastidiously. I never heard him devote +the inventor to the infernal gods, as he was apt to do with the geniuses +he lost money by, and so I think he did not regard him as a traitor. + +In these things, and in his other schemes for the ‘subiti guadagni’ of +the speculator and the “sudden making of splendid names” for the +benefactors of our species, Clemens satisfied the Colonel Sellers nature +in himself (from which he drew the picture of that wild and lovable +figure), and perhaps made as good use of his money as he could. He did +not care much for money in itself, but he luxuriated in the lavish use of +it, and he was as generous with it as ever a man was. He liked giving it, +but he commonly wearied of giving it himself, and wherever he lived he +established an almoner, whom he fully trusted to keep his left hand +ignorant of what his right hand was doing. I believe he felt no finality +in charity, but did it because in its provisional way it was the only +thing a man could do. I never heard him go really into any sociological +inquiry, and I have a feeling that that sort of thing baffled and +dispirited him. No one can read The Connecticut Yankee and not be aware +of the length and breadth of his sympathies with poverty, but apparently +he had not thought out any scheme for righting the economic wrongs we +abound in. I cannot remember our ever getting quite down to a discussion +of the matter; we came very near it once in the day of the vast wave of +emotion sent over the world by ‘Looking Backward,’ and again when we were +all so troubled by the great coal strike in Pennsylvania; in considering +that he seemed to be for the time doubtful of the justice of the +workingman’s cause. At all other times he seemed to know that whatever +wrongs the workingman committed work was always in the right. + +When Clemens returned to America with his family, after lecturing round +the world, I again saw him in New York, where I so often saw him while he +was shaping himself for that heroic enterprise. He would come to me, and +talk sorrowfully over his financial ruin, and picture it to himself as +the stuff of some unhappy dream, which, after long prosperity, had +culminated the wrong way. It was very melancholy, very touching, but the +sorrow to which he had come home from his long journey had not that +forlorn bewilderment in it. He was looking wonderfully well, and when I +wanted the name of his elixir, he said it was plasmon. He was apt, for a +man who had put faith so decidedly away from him, to take it back and pin +it to some superstition, usually of a hygienic sort. Once, when he was +well on in years, he came to New York without glasses, and announced that +he and all his family, so astigmatic and myopic and old-sighted, had, so +to speak, burned their spectacles behind them upon the instruction of +some sage who had found out that they were a delusion. The next time he +came he wore spectacles freely, almost ostentatiously, and I heard from +others that the whole Clemens family had been near losing their eyesight +by the miracle worked in their behalf. Now, I was not surprised to learn +that “the damned human race” was to be saved by plasmon, if anything, and +that my first duty was to visit the plasmon agency with him, and procure +enough plasmon to secure my family against the ills it was heir to for +evermore. I did not immediately understand that plasmon was one of the +investments which he had made from “the substance of things hoped for,” + and in the destiny of a disastrous disappointment. But after paying off +the creditors of his late publishing firm, he had to do something with +his money, and it was not his fault if he did not make a fortune out of +plasmon. + + + + +XXI. + +For a time it was a question whether he should not go back with his +family to their old home in Hartford. Perhaps the father’s and mother’s +hearts drew them there all the more strongly because of the grief written +ineffaceably over it, but for the younger ones it was no longer the +measure of the world. It was easier for all to stay on indefinitely in +New York, which is a sojourn without circumstance, and equally the home +of exile and of indecision. The Clemenses took a pleasant, spacious +house at Riverdale, on the Hudson, and there I began to see them again on +something like the sweet old terms. They lived far more unpretentiously +than they used, and I think with a notion of economy, which they had +never very successfully practised. I recall that at the end of a certain +year in Hartford, when they had been saving and paying cash for +everything, Clemens wrote, reminding me of their avowed experiment, and +asking me to guess how many bills they had at New Year’s; he hastened to +say that a horse-car would not have held them. At Riverdale they kept no +carriage, and there was a snowy night when I drove up to their handsome +old mansion in the station carryall, which was crusted with mud as from +the going down of the Deluge after transporting Noah and his family from +the Ark to whatever point they decided to settle at provisionally. But +the good talk, the rich talk, the talk that could never suffer poverty of +mind or soul, was there, and we jubilantly found ourselves again in our +middle youth. It was the mighty moment when Clemens was building his +engines of war for the destruction of Christian Science, which +superstition nobody, and he least of all, expected to destroy. It would +not be easy to say whether in his talk of it his disgust for the +illiterate twaddle of Mrs. Eddy’s book, or his admiration of her genius +for organization was the greater. He believed that as a religious +machine the Christian Science Church was as perfect as the Roman Church +and destined to be, more formidable in its control of the minds of men. +He looked for its spread over the whole of Christendom, and throughout +the winter he spent at Riverdale he was ready to meet all listeners more +than half-way with his convictions of its powerful grasp of the average +human desire to get something for nothing. The vacuous vulgarity of its +texts was a perpetual joy to him, while he bowed with serious respect to +the sagacity which built so securely upon the everlasting rock of human +credulity and folly. + +An interesting phase of his psychology in this business was not only his +admiration for the masterly, policy of the Christian Science hierarchy, +but his willingness to allow the miracles of its healers to be tried on +his friends and family, if they wished it. He had a tender heart for the +whole generation of empirics, as well as the newer sorts of scientitians, +but he seemed to base his faith in them largely upon the failure of the +regulars rather than upon their own successes, which also he believed in. +He was recurrently, but not insistently, desirous that you should try +their strange magics when you were going to try the familiar medicines. + + + + +XXII. + +The order of my acquaintance, or call it intimacy, with Clemens was this: +our first meeting in Boston, my visits to him in Hartford, his visits to +me in Cambridge, in Belmont, and in Boston, our briefer and less frequent +meetings in Paris and New York, all with repeated interruptions through +my absences in Europe, and his sojourns in London, Berlin, Vienna, and +Florence, and his flights to the many ends, and odds and ends, of the +earth. I will not try to follow the events, if they were not rather the +subjective experiences, of those different periods and points of time +which I must not fail to make include his summer at York Harbor, and his +divers residences in New York, on Tenth Street and on Fifth Avenue, at +Riverdale, and at Stormfield, which his daughter has told me he loved +best of all his houses and hoped to make his home for long years. + +Not much remains to me of the week or so that we had together in Paris +early in the summer of 1904. The first thing I got at my bankers was a +cable message announcing that my father was stricken with paralysis, but +urging my stay for further intelligence, and I went about, till the final +summons came, with my head in a mist of care and dread. Clemens was very +kind and brotherly through it all. He was living greatly to his mind in +one of those arcaded little hotels in the Rue de Rivoli, and he was free +from all household duties to range with me. We drove together to make +calls of digestion at many houses where he had got indigestion through +his reluctance from their hospitality, for he hated dining out. But, as +he explained, his wife wanted him to make these visits, and he did it, as +he did everything she wanted. ‘At one place, some suburban villa, he +could get no answer to his ring, and he “hove” his cards over the gate +just as it opened, and he had the shame of explaining in his +unexplanatory French to the man picking them up. He was excruciatingly +helpless with his cabmen, but by very cordially smiling and casting +himself on the drivers’ mercy he always managed to get where he wanted. +The family was on the verge of their many moves, and he was doing some +small errands; he said that the others did the main things, and left him +to do what the cat might. + +It was with that return upon the buoyant billow of plasmon, renewed in +look and limb, that Clemens’s universally pervasive popularity began in +his own country. He had hitherto been more intelligently accepted or +more largely imagined in Europe, and I suppose it was my sense of this +that inspired the stupidity of my saying to him when we came to consider +“the state of polite learning” among us, “You mustn’t expect people to +keep it up here as they do in England.” But it appeared that his +countrymen were only wanting the chance, and they kept it up in honor of +him past all precedent. One does not go into a catalogue of dinners, +receptions, meetings, speeches, and the like, when there are more vital +things to speak of. He loved these obvious joys, and he eagerly strove +with the occasions they gave him for the brilliancy which seemed so +exhaustless and was so exhausting. His friends saw that he was wearing +himself out, and it was not because of Mrs. Clemens’s health alone that +they were glad to have him take refuge at Riverdale. The family lived +there two happy, hopeless years, and then it was ordered that they should +change for his wife’s sake to some less exacting climate. Clemens was +not eager to go to Florence, but his imagination was taken as it would +have been in the old-young days by the notion of packing his furniture +into flexible steel cages from his house in Hartford and unpacking it +from them untouched at his villa in Fiesole. He got what pleasure any +man could out of that triumph of mind over matter, but the shadow was +creeping up his life. One sunny afternoon we sat on the grass before the +mansion, after his wife had begun to get well enough for removal, and we +looked up toward a balcony where by-and-by that lovely presence made +itself visible, as if it had stooped there from a cloud. A hand frailly +waved a handkerchief; Clemens ran over the lawn toward it, calling +tenderly: “What? What?” as if it might be an asking for him instead of +the greeting it really was for me. It was the last time I saw her, if +indeed I can be said to have seen her then, and long afterward when I +said how beautiful we all thought her, how good, how wise, how +wonderfully perfect in every relation of life, he cried out in a breaking +voice: “Oh, why didn’t you ever tell her? She thought you didn’t like +her.” What a pang it was then not to have told her, but how could we +have told her? His unreason endeared him to me more than all his wisdom. + +To that Riverdale sojourn belong my impressions of his most violent +anti-Christian Science rages, which began with the postponement of his +book, and softened into acceptance of the delay till he had well-nigh +forgotten his wrath when it come out. There was also one of those joint +episodes of ours, which, strangely enough, did not eventuate in entire +failure, as most of our joint episodes did. He wrote furiously to me of +a wrong which had been done to one of the most helpless and one of the +most helped of our literary brethren, asking me to join with him in +recovering the money paid over by that brother’s publisher to a false +friend who had withheld it and would not give any account of it. Our +hapless brother had appealed to Clemens, as he had to me, with the facts, +but not asking our help, probably because he knew he need not ask; and +Clemens enclosed to me a very taking-by-the-throat message which he +proposed sending to the false friend. For once I had some sense, and +answered that this would never do, for we had really no power in the +matter, and I contrived a letter to the recreant so softly diplomatic +that I shall always think of it with pride when my honesties no longer +give me satisfaction, saying that this incident had come to our +knowledge, and suggesting that we felt sure he would not finally wish to +withhold the money. Nothing more, practically, than that, but that was +enough; there came promptly back a letter of justification, covering a +very substantial check, which we hilariously forwarded to our +beneficiary. But the helpless man who was so used to being helped did +not answer with the gladness I, at least, expected of him. He +acknowledged the check as he would any ordinary payment, and then he made +us observe that there was still a large sum due him out of the moneys +withheld. At this point I proposed to Clemens that we should let the +nonchalant victim collect the remnant himself. Clouds of sorrow had +gathered about the bowed head of the delinquent since we began on him, +and my fickle sympathies were turning his way from the victim who was +really to blame for leaving his affairs so unguardedly to him in the +first place. Clemens made some sort of grit assent, and we dropped the +matter. He was more used to ingratitude from those he helped than I was, +who found being lain down upon not so amusing as he found my revolt. He +reckoned I was right, he said, and after that I think we never recurred +to the incident. It was not ingratitude that he ever minded; it was +treachery, that really maddened him past forgiveness. + + + + +XXIII. + +During the summer he spent at York Harbor I was only forty minutes away +at Kittery Point, and we saw each other often; but this was before the +last time at Riverdale. He had a wide, low cottage in a pine grove +overlooking York River, and we used to sit at a corner of the veranda +farthest away from Mrs. Clemens’s window, where we could read our +manuscripts to each other, and tell our stories, and laugh our hearts out +without disturbing her. At first she had been about the house, and there +was one gentle afternoon when she made tea for us in the parlor, but that +was the last time I spoke with her. After that it was really a question +of how soonest and easiest she could be got back to Riverdale; but, of +course, there were specious delays in which she seemed no worse and +seemed a little better, and Clemens could work at a novel he had begun. +He had taken a room in the house of a friend and neighbor, a fisherman +and boatman; there was a table where he could write, and a bed where he +could lie down and read; and there, unless my memory has played me one of +those constructive tricks that people’s memories indulge in, he read me +the first chapters of an admirable story. The scene was laid in a +Missouri town, and the characters such as he had known in boyhood; but as +often as I tried to make him own it, he denied having written any such +story; it is possible that I dreamed it, but I hope the MS. will yet be +found. Upon reflection I cannot believe that I dreamed it, and I cannot +believe that it was an effect of that sort of pseudomnemonics which I +have mentioned. The characters in the novel are too clearly outlined in +my recollection, together with some critical reservations of my own +concerning them. Not only does he seem to have read me those first +chapters, but to have talked them over with me and outlined the whole +story. + +I cannot say whether or not he believed that his wife would recover; he +fought the fear of her death to the end; for her life was far more +largely his than the lives of most men’s wives are theirs. For his own +life I believe he would never have much cared, if I may trust a saying of +one who was so absolutely without pose as he was. He said that he never +saw a dead man whom he did not envy for having had it over and being done +with it. Life had always amused him, and in the resurgence of its +interests after his sorrow had ebbed away he was again deeply interested +in the world and in the human race, which, though damned, abounded in +subjects of curious inquiry. When the time came for his wife’s removal +from York Harbor I went with him to Boston, where he wished to look up +the best means of her conveyance to New York. The inquiry absorbed him: +the sort of invalid car he could get; how she could be carried to the +village station; how the car could be detached from the eastern train at +Boston and carried round to the southern train on the other side of the +city, and then how it could be attached to the Hudson River train at New +York and left at Riverdale. There was no particular of the business +which he did not scrutinize and master, not only with his poignant +concern for her welfare, but with his strong curiosity as to how these +unusual things were done with the usual means. With the inertness that +grows upon an aging man he had been used to delegating more and more +things, but of that thing I perceived that he would not delegate the +least detail. + +He had meant never to go abroad again, but when it came time to go he did +not look forward to returning; he expected to live in Florence always +after that; they were used to the life and they had been happy there some +years earlier before he went with his wife for the cure of Nauheim. But +when he came home again it was for good and all. It was natural that he +should wish to live in New York, where they had already had a pleasant +year in Tenth Street. I used to see him there in an upper room, looking +south over a quiet open space of back yards where we fought our battles +in behalf of the Filipinos and the Boers, and he carried on his campaign +against the missionaries in China. He had not yet formed his habit of +lying for whole days in bed and reading and writing there, yet he was a +good deal in bed, from weakness, I suppose, and for the mere comfort of +it. + +My perspectives are not very clear, and in the foreshortening of events +which always takes place in our review of the past I may not always time +things aright. But I believe it was not until he had taken his house at +21 Fifth Avenue that he began to talk to me of writing his autobiography. +He meant that it should be a perfectly veracious record of his life and +period; for the first time in literature there should be a true history +of a man and a true presentation of the men the man had known. As we +talked it over the scheme enlarged itself in our riotous fancy. We said +it should be not only a book, it should be a library, not only a library, +but a literature. It should make good the world’s loss through Omar’s +barbarity at Alexandria; there was no image so grotesque, so extravagant +that we did not play with it; and the work so far as he carried it was +really done on a colossal scale. But one day he said that as to veracity +it was a failure; he had begun to lie, and that if no man ever yet told +the truth about himself it was because no man ever could. How far he had +carried his autobiography I cannot say; he dictated the matter several +hours each day; and the public has already seen long passages from it, +and can judge, probably, of the make and matter of the whole from these. +It is immensely inclusive, and it observes no order or sequence. Whether +now, after his death, it will be published soon or late I have no means +of knowing. Once or twice he said in a vague way that it was not to be +published for twenty years, so that the discomfort of publicity might be +minimized for all the survivors. Suddenly he told me he was not working +at it; but I did not understand whether he had finished it or merely +dropped it; I never asked. + +We lived in the same city, but for old men rather far apart, he at Tenth +Street and I at Seventieth, and with our colds and other disabilities we +did not see each other often. He expected me to come to him, and I would +not without some return of my visits, but we never ceased to be friends, +and good friends, so far as I know. I joked him once as to how I was +going to come out in his autobiography, and he gave me some sort of +joking reassurance. There was one incident, however, that brought us +very frequently and actively together. He came one Sunday afternoon to +have me call with him on Maxim Gorky, who was staying at a hotel a few +streets above mine. We were both interested in Gorky, Clemens rather +more as a revolutionist and I as a realist, though I too wished the +Russian Tsar ill, and the novelist well in his mission to the Russian +sympathizers in this republic. But I had lived through the episode of +Kossuth’s visit to us and his vain endeavor to raise funds for the +Hungarian cause in 1851, when we were a younger and nobler nation than +now, with hearts if not hands, opener to the “oppressed of Europe”; the +oppressed of America, the four or five millions of slaves, we did not +count. I did not believe that Gorky could get the money for the cause of +freedom in Russia which he had come to get; as I told a valued friend of +his and mine, I did not believe he could get twenty-five hundred dollars, +and I think now I set the figure too high. I had already refused to sign +the sort of general appeal his friends were making to our principles and +pockets because I felt it so wholly idle, and when the paper was produced +in Gorky’s presence and Clemens put his name to it I still refused. The +next day Gorky was expelled from his hotel with the woman who was not his +wife, but who, I am bound to say, did not look as if she were not, at +least to me, who am, however, not versed in those aspects of human +nature. + +I might have escaped unnoted, but Clemens’s familiar head gave us away to +the reporters waiting at the elevator’s mouth for all who went to see +Gorky. As it was, a hunt of interviewers ensued for us severally and +jointly. I could remain aloof in my hotel apartment, returning answer to +such guardians of the public right to know everything that I had nothing +to say of Gorky’s domestic affairs; for the public interest had now +strayed far from the revolution, and centred entirely upon these. But +with Clemens it was different; he lived in a house with a street door +kept by a single butler, and he was constantly rung for. I forget how +long the siege lasted, but long enough for us to have fun with it. That +was the moment of the great Vesuvian eruption, and we figured ourselves +in easy reach of a volcano which was every now and then “blowing a cone +off,” as the telegraphic phrase was. The roof of the great market in +Naples had just broken in under its load of ashes and cinders, and +crashed hundreds of people; and we asked each other if we were not sorry +we had not been there, where the pressure would have been far less +terrific than it was with us in Fifth Avenue. The forbidden butler came +up with a message that there were some gentlemen below who wanted to see +Clemens. + +“How many?” he demanded. + +“Five,” the butler faltered. + +“Reporters?” + +The butler feigned uncertainty. + +“What would you do?” he asked me. + +“I wouldn’t see them,” I said, and then Clemens went directly down to +them. How or by what means he appeased their voracity I cannot say, but +I fancy it was by the confession of the exact truth, which was harmless +enough. They went away joyfully, and he came back in radiant +satisfaction with having seen them. Of course he was right and I wrong, +and he was right as to the point at issue between Gorky and those who had +helplessly treated him with such cruel ignominy. In America it is not +the convention for men to live openly in hotels with women who are not +their wives. Gorky had violated this convention and he had to pay the +penalty; and concerning the destruction of his efficiency as an emissary +of the revolution, his blunder was worse than a crime. + + + + +XXIV. + +To the period of Clemens’s residence in Fifth Avenue belongs his +efflorescence in white serge. He was always rather aggressively +indifferent about dress, and at a very early date in our acquaintance +Aldrich and I attempted his reform by clubbing to buy him a cravat. But +he would not put away his stiff little black bow, and until he imagined +the suit of white serge, he wore always a suit of black serge, truly +deplorable in the cut of the sagging frock. After his measure had once +been taken he refused to make his clothes the occasion of personal +interviews with his tailor; he sent the stuff by the kind elderly woman +who had been in the service of the family from the earliest days of his +marriage, and accepted the result without criticism. But the white serge +was an inspiration which few men would have had the courage to act upon. +The first time I saw him wear it was at the authors’ hearing before the +Congressional Committee on Copyright in Washington. Nothing could have +been more dramatic than the gesture with which he flung off his long +loose overcoat, and stood forth in white from his feet to the crown of +his silvery head. It was a magnificent coup, and he dearly loved a coup; +but the magnificent speech which he made, tearing to shreds the venerable +farrago of nonsense about nonproperty in ideas which had formed the basis +of all copyright legislation, made you forget even his spectacularity. + +It is well known how proud he was of his Oxford gown, not merely because +it symbolized the honor in which he was held by the highest literary body +in the world, but because it was so rich and so beautiful. The red and +the lavender of the cloth flattered his eyes as the silken black of the +same degree of Doctor of Letters, given him years before at Yale, could +not do. His frank, defiant happiness in it, mixed with a due sense of +burlesque, was something that those lacking his poet-soul could never +imagine; they accounted it vain, weak; but that would not have mattered +to him if he had known it. In his London sojourn he had formed the +top-hat habit, and for a while he lounged splendidly up and down Fifth +Avenue in that society emblem; but he seemed to tire of it, and to return +kindly to the soft hat of his Southwestern tradition. + +He disliked clubs; I don’t know whether he belonged to any in New York, +but I never met him in one. As I have told, he himself had formed the +Human Race Club, but as he never could get it together it hardly counted. +There was to have been a meeting of it the time of my only visit to +Stormfield in April of last year; but of three who were to have come I +alone came. We got on very well without the absentees, after finding +them in the wrong, as usual, and the visit was like those I used to have +with him so many years before in Hartford, but there was not the old +ferment of subjects. Many things had been discussed and put away for +good, but we had our old fondness for nature and for each other, who were +so differently parts of it. He showed his absolute content with his +house, and that was the greater pleasure for me because it was my son who +designed it. The architect had been so fortunate as to be able to plan +it where a natural avenue of savins, the closeknit, slender, cypress-like +cedars of New England, led away from the rear of the villa to the little +level of a pergola, meant some day to be wreathed and roofed with vines. +But in the early spring days all the landscape was in the beautiful +nakedness of the northern winter. It opened in the surpassing loveliness +of wooded and meadowed uplands, under skies that were the first days +blue, and the last gray over a rainy and then a snowy floor. We walked +up and down, up and down, between the villa terrace and the pergola, and +talked with the melancholy amusement, the sad tolerance of age for the +sort of men and things that used to excite us or enrage us; now we were +far past turbulence or anger. Once we took a walk together across the +yellow pastures to a chasmal creek on his grounds, where the ice still +knit the clayey banks together like crystal mosses; and the stream far +down clashed through and over the stones and the shards of ice. Clemens +pointed out the scenery he had bought to give himself elbow-room, and +showed me the lot he was going to have me build on. The next day we came +again with the geologist he had asked up to Stormfield to analyze its +rocks. Truly he loved the place, though he had been so weary of change +and so indifferent to it that he never saw it till he came to live in it. +He left it all to the architect whom he had known from a child in the +intimacy which bound our families together, though we bodily lived far +enough apart. I loved his little ones and he was sweet to mine and was +their delighted-in and wondered-at friend. Once and once again, and yet +again and again, the black shadow that shall never be lifted where it +falls, fell in his house and in mine, during the forty years and more +that we were friends, and endeared us the more to each other. + + + + +XXV. + +My visit at Stormfield came to an end with tender relucting on his part +and on mine. Every morning before I dressed I heard him sounding my name +through the house for the fun of it and I know for the fondness; and if I +looked out of my door, there he was in his long nightgown swaying up and +down the corridor, and wagging his great white head like a boy that +leaves his bed and comes out in the hope of frolic with some one. The +last morning a soft sugarsnow had fallen and was falling, and I drove +through it down to the station in the carriage which had been given him +by his wife’s father when they were first married, and been kept all +those intervening years in honorable retirement for this final use. Its +springs had not grown yielding with time; it had rather the stiffness and +severity of age; but for him it must have swung low like the sweet +chariot of the negro “spiritual” which I heard him sing with such fervor, +when those wonderful hymns of the slaves began to make their way +northward. ‘Go Down, Daniel’, was one in which I can hear his quavering +tenor now. He was a lover of the things he liked, and full of a passion +for them which satisfied itself in reading them matchlessly aloud. No +one could read ‘Uncle Remus’ like him; his voice echoed the voices of the +negro nurses who told his childhood the wonderful tales. I remember +especially his rapture with Mr. Cable’s ‘Old Creole Days,’ and the +thrilling force with which he gave the forbidding of the leper’s brother +when the city’s survey ran the course of an avenue through the cottage +where the leper lived in hiding: “Strit must not pass!” + +Out of a nature rich and fertile beyond any I have known, the material +given him by the Mystery that makes a man and then leaves him to make +himself over, he wrought a character of high nobility upon a foundation +of clear and solid truth. At the last day he will not have to confess +anything, for all his life was the free knowledge of any one who would +ask him of it. The Searcher of hearts will not bring him to shame at +that day, for he did not try to hide any of the things for which he was +often so bitterly sorry. He knew where the Responsibility lay, and he +took a man’s share of it bravely; but not the less fearlessly he left the +rest of the answer to the God who had imagined men. + +It is in vain that I try to give a notion of the intensity with which he +pierced to the heart of life, and the breadth of vision with which he +compassed the whole world, and tried for the reason of things, and then +left trying. We had other meetings, insignificantly sad and brief; but +the last time I saw him alive was made memorable to me by the kind, clear +judicial sense with which he explained and justified the labor-unions as +the sole present help of the weak against the strong. + +Next I saw him dead, lying in his coffin amid those flowers with which we +garland our despair in that pitiless hour. After the voice of his old +friend Twichell had been lifted in the prayer which it wailed through in +broken-hearted supplication, I looked a moment at the face I knew so +well; and it was patient with the patience I had so often seen in it: +something of puzzle, a great silent dignity, an assent to what must be +from the depths of a nature whose tragical seriousness broke in the +laughter which the unwise took for the whole of him. Emerson, +Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes--I knew them all and all the rest of our +sages, poets, seers, critics, humorists; they were like one another and +like other literary men; but Clemens was sole, incomparable, the Lincoln +of our literature. + +ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: + + + Absolute devotion to the day of her death, + Absolutely, so positively, so almost aggressively truthful + Addressed to their tenderness out of his tenderness + Amiable perception, and yet with a sort of remote absence + Amuse him, even when they wronged him + Amusingly realized the situation to their friends + But now I remember that he gets twenty dollars a month + Christianity had done nothing to improve morals and conditions + Church: “Oh yes, I go. It ‘most kills me, but I go,” + Clemens was sole, incomparable, the Lincoln of our literature + Despair broke in laughter + Despised the avoidance of repetitions out of fear of tautology + Everlasting rock of human credulity and folly + Flowers with which we garland our despair in that pitiless hour + He did not care much for fiction + He did not paw you with his hands to show his affection + He was a youth to the end of his days + Heroic lies + His coming almost killed her, but it was worth it + Honest men are few when it comes to themselves + It was mighty pretty, as Pepys would say + Jane Austen + Left him to do what the cat might + Lie, of course, and did to save others from grief or harm + Liked to find out good things and great things for himself + Livy Clemens: nthe loveliest person I have ever seen + Marriages are what the parties to them alone really know + Mind and soul were with those who do the hard work of the world + Mock modesty of print forbids my repeating here + Most desouthernized Southerner I ever knew + Most serious, the most humane, the most conscientious of men + Nearly nothing as chaos could be + Never saw a dead man whom he did not envy + Never saw a man more regardful of negroes + No man ever yet told the truth about himself + No man more perfectly sensed and more entirely abhorred slavery + Not possible for Clemens to write like anybody else + Ought not to call coarse without calling one’s self prudish + Polite learning hesitated his praise + Praised it enough to satisfy the author + Reparation due from every white to every black man + Shackles of belief worn so long + Some superstition, usually of a hygienic sort + Stupidly truthful + The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it + Truthful + Used to ingratitude from those he helped + Vacuous vulgarity of its texts + Walter-Scotticized, pseudo-chivalry of the Southern ideal + We have never ended before, and we do not see how we can end + Well, if you are to be lost, I want to be lost with you + What he had done he owned to, good, bad, or indifferent + Whether every human motive was not selfish + Wonder why we hate the past so--“It’s so damned humiliating!” + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS + + Absolute devotion to the day of her death, + Absolutely, so positively, so almost aggressively truthful + Abstract, the air-drawn, afflicted me like physical discomforts + Act officiously, not officially + Addressed to their tenderness out of his tenderness + Always sumptuously providing out of his destitution + Amiable perception, and yet with a sort of remote absence + Amuse him, even when they wronged him + Amusingly realized the situation to their friends + Anglo-American genius for ugliness + Appeal, which he had come to recognize as invasive + Appeared to have no grudge left + Backed their credulity with their credit + Bayard Taylor: incomparable translation of Faust + Became gratefully strange + Best talkers are willing that you should talk if you like + But now I remember that he gets twenty dollars a month” + Candle burning on the table for the cigars + Celia Thaxter + Charles Reade + Charles F. Browne + Christianity had done nothing to improve morals and conditions + Church: “Oh yes, I go It ‘most kills me, but I go,” + Clemens was sole, incomparable, the Lincoln of our literature + Cold-slaw + Collective opacity + Confidence I have nearly always felt when wrong + Could make us feel that our faults were other people’s + Could easily believe now that it was some one else who saw it + Could only by chance be caught in earnest about anything + Couldn’t fire your revolver without bringing down a two volumer + Dawn upon him through a cloud of other half remembered faces + Death of the joy that ought to come from work + Death’s vague conjectures to the broken expectations of life + Despair broke in laughter + Despised the avoidance of repetitions out of fear of tautology + Did not feel the effect I would so willingly have experienced + Dinner was at the old-fashioned Boston hour of two + Discomfort which mistaken or blundering praise + Dollars were of so much farther flight than now + Edmund Quincy + Edward Everett Hale + Either to deny the substance of things unseen, or to affirm it + Emerson + Enjoying whatever was amusing in the disadvantage to himself + Espoused the theory of Bacon’s authorship of Shakespeare + Ethical sense, not the aesthetical sense + Everlasting rock of human credulity and folly + Expectation of those who will come no more + Express the appreciation of another’s fit word + Feigned the gratitude which I could see that he expected + Fell either below our pride or rose above our purse + Felt that this was my misfortune more than my fault + Few men last over from one reform to another + First dinner served in courses that I had sat down to + Flowers with which we garland our despair in that pitiless hour + Forbearance of a wise man content to bide his time + Forebore to speak needlessly to him, or to shake his hand + Found life was not all poetry + Francis Parkman + Gay laugh comes across the abysm of the years + Generous lover of all that was excellent in literature + George William Curtis + Giggle which Charles Lamb found the best thing in life + Give him your best wine + Got out of it all the fun there was in it + Greeting of great impersonal cordiality + Grieving that there could be such ire in heavenly minds + Hard of hearing on one side. But it isn’t deafness + Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Autocrat clashed upon homeopathy + Hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, The love of love + He was not bored because he would not be + He did not care much for fiction + He was not constructive; he was essentially observant + He had no time to make money + He was a youth to the end of his days + He did not paw you with his hands to show his affection + Heine + Heroic lies + His remembrance absolutely ceased with an event + His readers trusted and loved him + His enemies suffered from it almost as much as his friends + His coming almost killed her, but it was worth it + His plays were too bad for the stage, or else too good for it + Hollowness, the hopelessness, the unworthiness of life + Honest men are few when it comes to themselves + I find this young man worthy + I believe neither in heroes nor in saints + I did not know, and I hated to ask + If he was half as bad, he would have been too bad to be + If he was not there to your touch, it was no fault of his + In the South there was nothing but a mistaken social ideal + Incredible in their insipidity + Industrial slavery + Insatiable English fancy for the wild America no longer there + Intellectual poseurs + It is well to hold one’s country to her promises + It was mighty pretty, as Pepys would say + Jane Austen + Julia Ward Howe + Left him to do what the cat might + Lie, of course, and did to save others from grief or harm + Liked being with you, not for what he got, but for what he gave + Liked to find out good things and great things for himself + Lincoln + Literary dislikes or contempts + Livy Clemens: nthe loveliest person I have ever seen + Long breath was not his; he could not write a novel + Longfellow + Looked as if Destiny had sat upon it + Love of freedom and the hope of justice + Love and gratitude are only semi-articulate at the best + Lowell + Made all men trust him when they doubted his opinions + Man who may any moment be out of work is industrially a slave + Man who had so much of the boy in him + Marriages are what the parties to them alone really know + Mellow cordial of a voice that was like no other + Memory will not be ruled + Men who took themselves so seriously as that need + Men’s lives ended where they began, in the keeping of women + Met with kindness, if not honor + Might so far forget myself as to be a novelist + Mind and soul were with those who do the hard work of the world + Mock modesty of print forbids my repeating here + Most desouthernized Southerner I ever knew + Most serious, the most humane, the most conscientious of men + Motley + Napoleonic height which spiritually overtops the Alps + Nearly nothing as chaos could be + Never saw a man more regardful of negroes + Never saw a dead man whom he did not envy + Never paid in anything but hopes of paying + No man ever yet told the truth about himself + No time to make money + No man more perfectly sensed and more entirely abhorred slavery + Not quite himself till he had made you aware of his quality + Not a man who cared to transcend; he liked bounds + Not much patience with the unmanly craving for sympathy + Not much of a talker, and almost nothing of a story-teller + Not possible for Clemens to write like anybody else + Now death has come to join its vague conjectures + NYC, a city where money counts for more and goes for less + Odious hilarity, without meaning and without remission + Offers mortifyingly mean, and others insultingly vague + Old man’s tendency to revert to the past + Old man’s disposition to speak of his infirmities + One could be openly poor in Cambridge without open shame + Only one concerned who was quite unconcerned + Ought not to call coarse without calling one’s self prudish + Pathos of revolt from the colorless rigidities + Person who wished to talk when he could listen + Plain-speaking or Rude Speaking + Pointed the moral in all they did + Polite learning hesitated his praise + Praised it enough to satisfy the author + Praised extravagantly, and in the wrong place + Put your finger on the present moment and enjoy it + Quarrel was with error, and not with the persons who were in it + Quebec was a bit of the seventeenth century + Reformers, who are so often tedious and ridiculous + Remember the dinner-bell + Reparation due from every white to every black man + Secret of the man who is universally interesting + Seen through the wrong end of the telescope + Shackles of belief worn so long + Shy of his fellow-men, as the scholar seems always to be + So refined, after the gigantic coarseness of California + Some superstition, usually of a hygienic sort + Sometimes they sacrificed the song to the sermon + Sought the things that he could agree with you upon + Spare his years the fatigue of recalling your identity + Standards were their own, and they were satisfied with them + Stoddard + Study in a corner by the porch + Stupidly truthful + The world is well lost whenever the world is wrong + The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it + Things common to all, however peculiar in each + Thoreau + Those who have sorrowed deepest will understand this best + Times when a man’s city was a man’s country + Tired themselves out in trying to catch up with him + True to an ideal of life rather than to life itself + Truthful + Turn of the talk toward the mystical + Used to ingratitude from those he helped + Vacuous vulgarity of its texts + Visited one of the great mills + Walter-Scotticized, pseudo-chivalry of the Southern ideal + Wasted face, and his gay eyes had the death-look + We have never ended before, and we do not see how we can end + Welcome me, and make the least of my shyness and strangeness + Well, if you are to be lost, I want to be lost with you + What he had done he owned to, good, bad, or indifferent + When to be an agnostic was to be almost an outcast + Whether every human motive was not selfish + Whitman’s public use of his privately written praise + Wit that tries its teeth upon everything + Women’s rights + Wonder why we hate the past so--“It’s so damned humiliating!” + Wonderful to me how it should remain so unintelligible + Work gives the impression of an uncommon continuity + Wrote them first and last in the spirit of Dickens + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Literary Friends And Acquaintances, by +William Dean Howells + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERARY FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES *** + +***** This file should be named 4201-0.txt or 4201-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/0/4201/ + +Produced by David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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