An Epistle to Posterity/Chapter VII
CHAPTER VII
Although we did not leave home as much in those days as residents of New York do now — we had nowhere to go, unless we made a long, wearisome journey to Florida for a cough — we still found time for visits to Washington and to Boston.
I, being a New England woman, was true to my Boston, and went to Nahant in summer as well as to Cambridge in winter. There I saw Prescott and Agassiz, and Lowell and Longfellow, and, much later on, the youthful Howells, just beginning his successful career; and Mr. and Mrs. James T. Fields, and Dr. Holmes, and Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, most witty of women. It was "the Illuminati"; it was most delightful, and Mr. Prescott was one of its distinguished members.
Mr. Prescott was a true son of Boston; well-born, well-bred, of extremely dignified and agreeable manners, and with a delicate and nobly chiselled face. He was a perfect man of the world, fond of society, and with not the slightest touch of the pedant about him. I saw him frequently and intimately at his Nahant house and at the neighboring villa of his daughter, Mrs. Lawrence, who was an admirable hostess as well as a beautiful woman. Although he was past sixty when I first met him, he was still as attractive as a man of thirty in dress and manner, and with the added delight of his extremely cultivated mind. His infirmity of sight did not prevent his getting about alone and eating his dinner with the grace of a diplomatist. If he asked any one for the toast or the cream at one of his daughter's delicious country teas, it was really a pleasantry and a compliment, and he could make his infirmity of sight a joke. If the cream-pitcher turned up under his hand, he would thank the finder and say, "If it had been a bear it would have bit me." He asked my husband and myself to his "workshop," as he called his library, and showed us the apparatus which is used by the blind — a wire-ruled machine for guiding the hand.
His library was filled with Spanish books, and with documents (acquired at great expense) from the archives of Spain; these were lying all about, arranged in that order which is Heaven's first law. He told us that his sight would come back curiously at times. He took immense care of his health, and walked every day around a great tree until he had worn a path. Mr. Prescott's home relations were delightful. He had married the love of his youth, a beautiful Miss Amory. He told me he used to look through a window where he could see her dance. Surrounded by his family, and with his charming daughter next door, this distinguished man passed his summer at Lynn, working every day for several hours, and then emerging from his library, with none of the dust of the old folios adhering, bringing with him only the aroma of learning. When I travelled in Spain some years since I used as my guide-book Ferdinand and Isabella, his masterpiece; nor do I want a more delightful set of books with which to cheat Time of his dulness than his entertaining histories. I have an autograph of his, "written through the bars," as he called his wire net:
"I am happy to welcome my dear Mrs. Sherwood in my little study, and wish she would always come and never go.
This is more precious than rubies, as testifying to the amiable character of this most amiable of men. He had enjoyed a great triumph in England on his first visit there, and told us much about it. He said Sydney Smith had sent him word before he went, saying, "Send Prescott over here and we'll drown him in turtle-soup."
"I sent him back word," said this genial-tempered man, "that I could swim in those seas." And indeed he could. As an elegant American he was a good specimen to send to London, as indeed were Everett and Motley, who seemed fitted to rub out the caricatures of Uncle Sam with which Punch and other papers have amused themselves.
Mr. Prescott was most fortunate in his biographer, for George Ticknor was one of the ripest of scholars and Prescott's friend of a lifetime. These men were as far off as possible from the Concord School and the transcendentalists, who were making themselves worldfamous at the same time. Tom Appleton's witty explanation that "the reason there were so many Unitarians in Boston was because a man born in Boston did not think that he needed to be born again" did not apply to Mr. Prescott or to Mr. Ticknor.
I dare say they looked upon Theodore Parker with horror, as he was a "come-outer" even among the Unitarians.
Emerson was "the consummate flower which the sturdy root and thorny stem of Puritanism existed to produce." He was a poet, a genius, and had the face of an angel. He had gone early to England, and knew Carlyle, Wordsworth, Landor, Coleridge, and that fine group of literary men. He grew too liberal for the Unitarians, and left the parish over which be was settled to become a lecturer and literary man. He seems to have been the first man in America to recognize Carlyle, and he spoke of "Craigenputtock," with its desolate, feathery hills, as "the spot where the lonely scholar nourished his mighty heart." He became the Sage of Concord; around him were Thoreau, Curtis, Hawthorne, Ripley, W. H. Channing, Parker, Phillips, Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. The little agricultural village began to put forth germs and growths. The author of the Humble Bee gave it a tropical climate. The prophet was most honored in his own country, and pilgrimages were made to this modern Mecca.
I had heard this great thinker lecture, but had never known him personally until about 1858, when I met him at a party at Mr. Bancroft's. To my amazement, he showed a curiosity to know "who people were."
James Russell Lowell, who had the discernment to read Emerson's character, regarded his head as a well-balanced sphere. "One pole on Olympus and t'other on 'change" is his witty line describing this prince of dreamers, this "simple child and worldly wise, who so largely raised the value of real estate in Concord." I remember asking Mr. Emerson if Hawthorne (whom, with other young novel-readers, I was then adoring) ever went into society. "Oh no," said Emerson. "It would take a forty-dowager power to drag him to such a party as this."
His great friend, the devout idealist Alcott, I never saw, although I read many of his Orphic Sayings. Mr. Emerson brought nothing of this Concord atmosphere into society, but a great deal of good Yankee curiosity. "When I asked for a Massachusetts lady whom he knew he looked at me with those penetrating eyes that seemed too far off to have recognized anything lower than the rings of Saturn.
"Well, marm, how did you happen to have known her?" said he. I had to give him my whole lineage before he was satisfied. I remember that he quoted Alcott. We were speaking of a certain President, whom we did not love, and his large majority.
"Oh!" said he, "Beelzebub marshals majorities, and multitudes ever lie." A famous Orphic utterance.
Mr. Emerson was very learned. He could have been the "instructor of academies." Agassiz preferred his conversation on natural science to that of any other man in America, and the young poets went to him to hear about Beaumont and Fletcher, Plato and Bœhme, Bhavagadgita, Hafiz and Goethe; he could talk of them all. He said on one occasion, "When nature wants an artist she makes Tennyson or Robert Browning." And again, "Paracelsus" is the wail of the nineteenth century."
When I saw Emerson again the mighty intellect was in ruins. The memory so deeply stored was wiped out. The inductive philosopher was no more; but "that mystic past, that miracle sense," which had been present in his essays and poems will last forever. He is to many people the seer and the prophet still.
After seeing Ralph Waldo Emerson I spent one glorious day at Nahant with Agassiz. He took us to his laboratory, where we saw jelly-fishes galore and heard his wise, witty talk, which instructed the American people — North, South, East, and West. If ever a man made nature give up her secrets, that man was Agassiz. He was large, hearty, and most agreeable. His sympathy amounted to enthusiasm. He had polite French manners, and left you with the impression that you had contributed very largely to his stock of information. I have known several great men who had this kind of flattery. One was Judge Story and another was General Dix. You always felt rather an awe of yourself after these supremely celebrated men had humbled themselves before you. It is a characteristic of a great heart and a supreme tact.
Agassiz spent happy days at Cambridge and at Nahant. The nation was listening with hand behind her ear, and Nature threw her sea-urchins and starfish and every fish suspected of any eccentricity at his feet. He gave lectures all over the country, and told me that he could invoke sleep when he needed it, even to sleeping when standing up. His health seemed to be perfect. He gave one the idea of an immense and very agreeable boy who somehow had come to know everything, not by the usual hard penance of learning it at a school, but by intuition. He told me that he had once brought a bunch of wild flowers to his mother instead of his appointed task, and asked her to tell him all about them. As she could not do so, he said, " One day, dear mamma, I will tell you all about them." How nobly he kept his promise! Agassiz did not believe in the Darwinian theory, which was a great comfort to me.
But to return to New York for a moment. Imagine the delight of Darley, the artist, when called upon to paint "Washington Irving and his Friends": Prescott, with his handsome face; Longfellow, thoughtfully attentive; Fenimore Cooper, conscious of his own worldwide fame, yet cordially mindful of the higher eminence of Irving; behind Irving the happy, smiling face of Ralph Waldo Emerson, hopeful of all good things; and again the strong, decisive profile of Bancroft in the attitude of an attentive listener. This picture of representative writers in America, in history, philosophy, romance, and poetry, was also enriched by Bryant's noble head, Hawthorne's dreamy face, H. T. Tuckerman's scholarly look, and Willis, the Count d'Orsay of the literary college, jotting down his impressions.
This picture was drawn, I think, for the Knickerbocker Magazine. I would give a great deal for a copy of it, for I have lost the impression which I owed to the kindness of Lewis Gaylord Clark, then editor of the Knickerbocker Magazine, to whom I had taken a story called The Man in Armor — a story which grew out of my West Indian experience. I have the poor little dusty thing beside me now; but this accidental connection with that magazine led to the delightful privilege of knowing many of the writers, and to my admittance to the literary circle of Miss Anna C. Lynch, an American Rahel,[1] our first authoress to hold a salon, my friend for the rest of her life. It was a most agreeable circle. If there is anything so good now in New York I do not know it. Mrs. Botta, after her marriage — for Miss Lynch married the Italian physicist Botta early in the fifties — continued to be the Rahel, as I have said, of New York until her death. At her literary reunions I have met not only many of these most agreeable literary men and women of our own country, but the historians, authors, and artists of England, France, and Italy. Such a grand phalanx as would often gather in a single evening! — Christine Nilsson, Salvini, Ristori, Anthony Trollope, Sala, Thackeray, and George P. Marsh; Mr. W. W. Story, home from Rome, and General di Cesnola, fresh from Cyprus. This was a salon indeed! Everything that was fresh and new. Paul du Chaillu, from Africa and the land of the gorilla, and Charles Kingsley, with his gifted daughter Rose. From time to time a fresh arrival — N. P. Willis, General Morris, or Lewis Gaylord Clark — while in one corner would sit the authoress of Queechy and the poetesses Alice and Phœbe Cary, and Bryant, Bancroft, Everett, and Emerson. Then to know Mr. Bancroft and to have had the entree to his always hospitable house was like going behind the scenes with the stage-manager after having been taken to the play. He knew everything and everybody; had a most exhaustive habit of reading, and sometimes asked me to come and hear the last chapter of his History as he read the MS. to his wife and a few friends. He sent me books such as then only seemed to come to a great scholar. At Newport his knowledge would overflow in the most delightful manner, as, in talking of the old mill, he would tell us how he had waded through a swamp near Taunton River to read a runic inscription supposed to have been left by the Danes, which he thought would throw light on it. He waded his way through water, forced his way through scrub, and was often impeded by a lack of foothold, but still never lost his grip on the subject; and he was honest enough to say that he had gained no light on the subject of the origin of the old mill. He concluded that it is simply a windmill, built by an early settler of Newport.
Mr. Bancroft, unlike Varnhagen von Ense, whom he was fond of quoting, never lost his pleasure in society. He said that every ten years a man should move nearer the sun. He moved from Boston to New York, from New York to Washington; was Secretary of the Navy; afterwards American Minister to England. His party having gone out of power, he retreated to his books for the day, but spent his evenings in society. The energetic historian's lamp was lighted at five on winter mornings, and when called to breakfast he had already done a noble day's work. Later on Mr. Bancroft became our Minister to Germany, and was complimented by Bismarck on his perfect German.
He seemed never to forget anything, nor to need any other amusement than that which he could always provide for himself. He rode horseback daily, and never, until he was eighty, had he even been troubled with a headache. This was one evening at Washington, when I heard him complain, of a dizziness in the head. He was a very peculiar man, and had some stiff mannerisms. His career had been not unlike that of Everett. He went to Gottingen as a young man from his father's parsonage. He acquired his tendency for historical research from Heeren, Eichhorn, and Schlosser. For several years he was at the head of the Round Hill Academy for boys at Northampton, where he had for one of his pupils the witty Tom Appleton, and for his undermaster Dr. Cogswell, afterwards the learned first curator of the Astor Library. He must have been a severe master, for "Uncle Tom Appleton" used to tell stories of his school days and say, "Mr. Cogswell, whom I loved, and Mr. Bancroft, whom I didn't." But Mr. Bancroft grew exceedingly amiable in his old age, as men seldom do. He was always most charming to me and kind to every one.
It was an epoch in my life when I first heard Charles Sumner. This most honored man of Boston was delivering his bold and fiery invectives against slavery in the early fifties, and came nearer to Webster as an orator than any one I remember. He was fine-looking, and had an English manner. I came very near being in the Senate when he was felled by Preston Brooks, which assault laid him on a bed of sickness for months, and from which he did not recover for years. This undeserved misfortune evoked for him a cosmopolitan sympathy. The last time I remember seeing him was at a dinner of Governor Morgan's, given to General Grant after he was elected but before he was inaugurated. Roscoe Conkling was at that dinner, and I remember thinking how much Conkling resembled Coriolanus in Shakespeare's immortal sketch of that passionate hero, and again as he appears in Beethoven's Coriolan, where the music makes you think of the stamp of an armed heel. Conkling was impressive.
The American is said to become full-flavored, and in time a most all-round man, through the polish which Europe can impart. Mr. Sumner had behind him all that Boston and Cambridge could give before he went to Europe. He had a great brain and a great soul, but he had no sense of humor. It may be because of this limitation that he was never a popular man. But he rescued us from a helpless state of degradation at a trying hour. His services should never be forgotten, particularly the noble speech delivered in 1869, which fitly rounded his great career.
Another genius whom I met at Mrs. Botta's was Fitz-James O'Brien, the young Irish poet, author of A Diamond Lens, which, next to the stories of Bret Harte (which came ten years later), was the most surprising short story that ever startled the reading American public. Fitz-James O'Brien followed up his successes by delightful poems, and his Monody on the Death of Kane was and is worthily remembered. He was a fascinating conversationalist, a rather handsome, dashing, well-dressed young Irish gentleman, very much courted in society for a brief hour. He went to the war, fought bravely, and surrendered his young life gracefully and well after the second battle of Bull Run.
It is a thousand pities that Mrs. Botta had not had the French autobiographical spirit, for she could have given us immortal sketches of the historical characters who for forty years went in and out of her hospitable door. She had sentimentalists and genuine thinkers among her guests. She could have given an unparalleled chronicle of that early dawn which led up to Harper's Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, and the thousand and one successors of those famous monthlies. She herself had been glad to write for the Democratic Magazine at ten dollars a page in her youth; and although she never cared much for society, she could have given a tolerably faithful chronicle of society from 1850 to 1880, before that respectable and conservative epoch had harnessed four horses to its carriage.
She wrote well herself, both prose and poetry, and with great industry compiled a book of the History of Literature.
But how much greater would her fame be now if she had had a Boswell or a Samuel Pepys in her disposition: we love the minor details. One would meet all the most distinguished men and women at Mrs. Botta's, perhaps four times during the winter, at some reception given to one great man or woman, the author of the last novel or poem. I remember T. Buchanan Read reciting his Sheridan's Ride at one of these, and I remember a charming breakfast with Booth, with Rostori, and with Salvini there. I also remember delightful interviews with Charles Kingsley, as he was twice her guest. She "kept house" admirably, and her little breakfasts and dinners were perfect.
She compiled during the war a very valuable book of autographs and prints, which was sold for the benefit of the Sanitary Commission — or, at least, she intended that it should be, but the sudden peace at Appomattox Court House and the overflow of money for the Sanitary Commission came before she had finished it, and she gave the money to France to establish an art scholarship.
As a woman she was a model character, ready to drop her own personality entirely, unselfish, agreeable, patient, sweet — the very person to hold a salon; with liberal opinions, but of a most respectable and modest character. She was an evangelical moralist in conduct, but would go to hear everybody preach — from archbishops of the Roman Church to Henry Ward Beecher. She was an "intelligent social being," but I do not think she ever asked herself what she did believe. She was determined to see and allow for both sides of the shield. She was interested in all the ultra views of the principal thinkers of her epoch. She liked to bring them all together. Everything that belonged to goodness, virtue, and humanity was dear to her. Everything she could do to advance the interests of art and literature, everything to help a friend in distress, to make the world happy and better, to promote sociability and the recognition of talent, this dear and distinguished woman did, during a long life. A thousand pities that she did not write herself down every day of her life!
There one would meet her early friend Mr. Charles Butler, the Hon. John Bigelow, Minister to France and biographer of Franklin, who had helped her to rise; there would come Charlotte Cushman and her faithful Emma Stebbins, the sculptor, and Harriet Hosmer, who gave us the "Puck" and many another lovely marble. It was a salon after the French fashion.
Before I leave the literati, let me record a most eventful day — an evening in 1864 — the celebration of the birthday of Mr. Bryant at the Century Club. He was seventy — a fine-looking, Homeric sage with a big white beard, a most venerable-looking personage, with brilliant eyes and a manner which, when he chose, could be smiling and agreeable, and which, when he did not choose, could be grave and repellent. The Century Club loved him to a man, and their elegant rooms in Fifteenth Street were wreathed with violets, immortelles, evergreens, and roses on that evening. Mr. Bryant and Mr. Bancroft entered together, and sat on a dais surrounded by such lights as Emerson, Holmes, Willis, Street, Tuckerman, Boker, Read, Stoddard, and Bayard Taylor. At the conclusion of some well-chosen music Mr. Bancroft addressed Mr. Bryant, and congratulated him and the world that the poet's eye was undimmed, his step as elastic as it was in his youth, his mind as strong, and his brain as prolific. Mr. Bryant answered in a very witty dissertation upon the folly of felicitating any one on being "seventy years old." He referred "to the beauty of youth, its quick senses, its perfect and pearly teeth, its flowing hair." He drew a graphic picture of what the world would be if it were made up of old men, and expressed his thankfulness that there were youths and maidens to laugh and be merry.
Yet those two wonderful old men were destined to live one of them to eighty-four, and the other to nearly ninety, while many a youth and maid who listened had gone to an early grave.Mr. Bryant spoke of Pierpont, Longfellow, Sprague, Holmes, Dana, Fitz-Greene Halleck, Lowell, and Willis, and wound up with a very charming compliment to Mr. Bancroft. Then followed letters and poems from Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Whittier, Lowell, Halleck, and one read by Oliver Wendell Holmes, which was full of fine points.
Then came the artists with a volume of sketches. I remember Cropsey, Stone, Huntington, Lang, Kensell, Hennessy, Benson, Durand, Leutze, Darley, Hays, McEntee, Vaux, Hicks, Launt Thompson, Church, Hazeltine, Coleman, Hall, and Cranch.
It was a delightful ovation, and calculated to give to every listener and spectator a love of literature and learning. It occurred in a gloomy moment of our civil war, but it was enlivening as taking our minds away for a moment from the horrors which were breaking our hearts. In the language of Bayard Taylor's noble hymn, written for the occasion:
"One hour be silent, sounds of war!
Delay the battle he foretold,
And let the Bard's triumphant star
Pour down from heaven its mildest gold!
Let Fame, that plucks but laurel now
For loyal heroes, turn away.
And mine to crown her poet's brow
"With the green garland of the bay."
My memories of Longfellow shall be confined to three interviews. One on the Rhine, when he was travelling with his daughters, and I could but remember The Pilgrims of the Rhine and his own pretty prose volume embodying his love affair. Again, at the house of George Abbot James, at Nahant, where, in the late seventies, I had the honor of meeting at lunch Longfellow, Mr. Tom Appleton, Mr, Story, Mr. William Amory, senior, and the late artist Hamilton Wilde.
Mr. Longfellow, already old, and always silent, was beautiful that day, and as charming as his gentle nature prompted him to be. Mr. William Amory told us the long, romantic story of the famous law trial on which he was associated with Webster. It concerned the murder of an old Mr. White by two nephews, one of whom killed himself in prison, and it was upon this occasion that Mr. Webster uttered the famous dictum, "Suicide is confession." I am ashamed to say that the rest of us did all the talking, while the venerable poet sat and mused. He was engaged on the great poem which appeared in Harper's soon after, in which he describes the process of making pottery. But what he did say was so much to the point that it seemed like nuggets of gold.
A part of Mr. Longfellow's charm was his way of listening; another charm was his beauty, which was remarkable. His kindness to young authors has passed into a proverb, and he was a natural-born gentleman. Another beautiful old man was Mr. William Amory.
While Mr. Amory talked, which he did wonderfully, Mr. Longfellow listened as if to music. When he had finished his reminiscences of Webster, Mr. Longfellow whispered behind his hand, "It is like hearing Atticus praise Cicero; he is the best talker in Boston." Mr. Tom Appleton was wildly funny, and kept us all laughing, including Mr. Longfellow, who greatly admired his brother-in-law. Mr. Appleton was amusing us by a witty account of how Mr, Longfellow had been bored and swindled by an adventurer and adventuress. To all of which Mr, Longfellow only said, smiling, "Tom is a poet, you know; also an artist and a romancer."Mr. Story dropped a few pearls. It was an exquisite day at one of the most lovely houses on the sea. Every one was cordial, and as Mrs. James put a shawl over Mr. Longfellow's shoulders he said, "The world is in tune." He helped to make it so.
The third interview was at his own house, where he thanked me for my translation of Carcassonne, which he said Bret Harte bad sent to him, and which he incorporated in his volume. Poems of Places. There was something in his praise which the heart does not willingly let die. Vale.
- ↑ Rahel was the wife of Varnhagen von Ense, and the Queen of the German salon.