An Epistle to Posterity/Chapter I
AN EPISTLE TO POSTERITY
CHAPTER I
My recollections of childhood are very vivid, especially of my father, a tall and most picturesque man, with blue eyes and fine curling black hair, with a great laughing mouth full of white teeth and of eloquent voice, and a laugh which filled the whole county of Cheshire; a man who liked to dance and to march, who never heard music but to keep step to it; a man, in fact, who had the veriest charm for children — a tremendous vitality.
In those days my father, still a boy himself, and a very boyish boy, was the best hand of us all at snowballing in the winter, teaching us to slide and to skate, and reading aloud to us in the evening the immortal stories of Walter Scott, with a mingled joy and pathos which the author himself would have enjoyed; a kind and loving and generous man, full of genius and eccentricity, who dressed in furs and moccasins in January, when he would go up to the White Mountains to hunt the moose with Anans, an Indian of the St. François tribe, who had been educated at Hanover, at Dartmouth College — that venerable institution founded by an English Earl for the education of the Indians, which, according to Anans, "spoiled a great many good Indians and made very poor white men."
Years after, in Rome, I met the Earl's great-grand-daughter. Lady Louisa Legge, and as she asked me with great naïveté about this bequest I had to tell her it had been relegated to the humble prosaic education of white boys.
But perhaps it had made Anans a better companion for my father, who had a real friendship for this son of the forest. I remember the camp in the wilderness, Anans and his Indian wife and their pappoose swung in a birch-bark cradle under a spreading tree, and a little pair of moccasins which Mrs. Anans wrought with beads for my little feet when as a child I was taken to the White Mountains. Perhaps to that I owe my love of wandering, for I have never been able to keep them still since.
My father must have been a very good housekeeper, for I remember always a most hospitable table, and a larder full of succulent delicacies — venison and moose tongue, wild turkey and quail (shot with his own unerring gun), besides all the excellent provision of the domestic farm-yard, and the yearly pig-killing, which frightful, bloody scene I used to peep at surreptitiously from my nursery window. A fine series of cellars underlined our large house, dark, wandering, limitless, like the mysteries of Udolpho, and filled with binns, where vegetables kept all winter without freezing, together with the hams of the late slaughtered pig, and his bequest of wreaths of sausages. A great barrel of Madeira from John and Charles March, New York, was rolled in every fall, and my father and my uncle Robert, another son of Anak (for they were both six feet four), used to attend to the bottling of this, then daily used, fine wine. I never drank any of it, but I have the ichor of it in my veins to-day, innocent as I am, in the shape of rheumatism. "My grandfather left me the gout, without any cellar of wine to keep it up on," said James Russell Lowell, and I might say the same. My father was lawyer, politician, and military man. I never heard him addressed by any lesser title than Captain, and he was a captain of thousands for fifty years; after that he was called General, as his father was called the "old Squire" all his life, a tribute to the customs of the Old World which I have always remembered with pleasure.
James "Wilson, my grandfather, I remember as a handsome and distinguished figure. He was exceedingly fond of dress, and never walked up the street but in a full-dress suit, with a ruffled shirt and white cravat. In the ruffle was placed a topaz pin surrounded by pearls. In his fine, well-kept hand was a gold-headed cane, and his feet were in polished shoes; he looked the rich and respected citizen.
"There goes the old Squire, as vain as a peacock," I overheard a working-man say one day. But I was very much afraid of this vision of old-time elegance, for he did not like to see me romping along the street, and once addressed me in this terrible manner: "Mary Elizabeth, I am very sorry to see a pupil of Miss Fiske's school, and my granddaughter, dancing on the public highway." I did stop dancing until after his dear back was turned, but hypocrisy is the tribute which vice pays to virtue. I kept on dancing for many years, street or no street, but I took good care not to let him see me.
This splendid old person had been a classmate of John Quincy Adams at Harvard, and Mr. Adams told me afterwards that he remembered my grandfather as "the best-dressed man in college." "He used to wear a scarlet coat and knee - breeches, and was the strongest and best wrestler in college," says my authority. I imagine this coat had cost his mother many a hard bout of spinning and weaving, for this brave woman went to Boston twice a year on horseback with the products of her loom, that she might educate her oldest son, and proudly she dressed him well.
She and her husband, Robert Wilson, had come over from Ireland together, as children, in that first great emigration of the Scotch-Irish to America — those undismayed Presbyterians, who brought such noble gifts with them, and who became such important settlers for the new colonies. Robert Wilson, a relative of General Stark, fought in the Revolutionary war, and settled down, an impoverished man, in Peterboro, N. H.; but his brave wife, full of good blood, kept up the traditions of her English and Scotch ancestry. The eldest son must be educated — indeed, she educated two sons at Harvard, a feat of extraordinary valor in those days.
Both lived to honor her, and she lived to see them both in Congress, a fact which delighted her much. Her son James, my grandfather, saw the Capitol burned by the British. My father was a veritable Irishman, more Irish than Scotch, and he always reminded me, after I grew older, of the sketches of Grattan. His eloquence, which was marvellous, could make even a New Hampshire jury laugh and cry, and he became the leading advocate of his State. He was impulsive and lavish, imprudent and always in hot water, although, like the clever Bishop Wilberforce, "he always came out cleaner than he went in." He was philanthropic, and wise (for other people). New Hampshire enjoys to-day, in her fine roads, the result of his wise forecast, for he helped to legislate for them, and her blind and lunatic asylums owe much to his great heart and brilliant brain. He was a lovely, dear, big playmate to his little children. We kept on admiring him until we were no longer little; but I can never forget that sense of protection and security with which I crept into those huge arms, or the love and warmth of that grand, magnificent embrace, when I was cold, unhappy, or misunderstood.
He was amusing too, with his guns and game, the prodigious glory of his military uniforms, blue with gold facings, and a long yellow plume in his chapeau bras, which I found delightfully picturesque. He was a Mason as well, and I often wickedly opened a secret drawer in his closet where I saw strange jewels and insignia which it was not expected that I should behold. On all occasions when a speech was permissible he made one, and his voice was superb; he could be heard "across the Atlantic," and later on, when he vowed to elect the first General Harrison, in 1840, "Tippecanoe and Tyler too," I often heard him address five thousand people, all hanging on his every word. Mr, Webster called him the "first of the stump speakers," and the Hon. Henry Wilson, born a Colbaith, told me that he changed his name to Wilson from admiration of my father's eloquence.
He was a strange, romantic outcrop of Irish blood and Puritan surroundings, singularly unlike his prudent, reserved father. As a man of genius is unlike his race and is often misunderstood, my father was misunderstood, and I fear he became unhappy and disappointed. His political idol was Mr. Webster, and when Mr. Webster made the 7th-of-March speech my father's political heart broke.
A good patriot and a fine, unselfish character, always ready to work for any good cause. General James Wilson lived to be eighty-four years old, and died in the house where he had made us all so happy. The State offered him a public funeral, for who had served it so well? The town of Keene, where he was loved and honored, suspended business, as the soldiers of his own "Keene Light Infantry" escorted him to his last home. It was a beautiful day in May, and Monadnock, his neighboring giant, looked down upon him in a full-dress uniform of blue and gold. The children of the public schools stood in line as he was carried along. In the church his much-loved pastor said: "To whom are these great honors paid? To the silver-tongued orator, to the soldier, to the learned lawyer, to the politician? No, to the man of heart;" and that he was.
As I looked my last on his peaceful face I noticed that his black curls were scarcely streaked with gray. They lay in still infantile luxuriance as he had always worn them around his massive brow. The strange contradiction, which had pervaded his nature — the child and the giant — it was all there — noble, lovable, and youthful to the last.
My mother, a beautiful and quiet person, was the antipodes of her husband. Hers was a soul made for renunciation, and the Puritan element was strong in her. She never allowed herself to lavish caresses upon her children, but she was their faithful friend in illness, and always stood ready — the very genius of hospitality — to feed the hungry and to clothe the poor. When I reflect on all that a housewife had to meet in cold New Hampshire winters, with the thermometer at 28° below zero and no furnace, I can but wonder at and admire her pluck and her ingenuity, for her parlor windows were full of hot-house plants all winter; and I think I never went to a party for thirty years in after-life that I did not seem to breathe the scent of the little bouquet which she always had ready for me in those early days — a white rose, a sprig of geranium, and a clove pink, with some sweet-scented verbena. I can see her almost statuesque dignity still, and the rich, red lips, which rarely parted in a smile; but when they did, what a perfect set of teeth! A slice of fresh cocoanut was not more deliciously white and fresh, and her complexion of lilies and roses remained with her to the last. How could such wonderful beauty have survived that cold climate? Years after, at Washington, these charms of hers excited national admiration. She received it with the calmness of the mother of the Gracchi; indeed, she was a study after the antique.
Perhaps the early death of her boys — victims to those cruel winters, victims of croup and scarlet-fever — had saddened her; but I do not remember my mother as enjoying her beauty or as ever seeming frivolous or vain. She was apt to be well dressed — that seemed to crop out of her inner consciousness — and she had "love, honor, obedience, troops of friends"; but she died at fifty, looking only twenty, and I often wish that I could go back and make her smile that too rare smile, too often interrupted by tears.
Her large, populous, and busy household was presided over below-stairs by Roxana, the last of a noble race — an American servant, the best cook that ever suggested the Physiologie du Goût. "When I forget, O Roxana! thy clear soups, light bread, and delicate desserts, thy coffee, better than any I have drunk in Paris; when I am ungrateful for thy broiled birds and thy superb treatment of venison —
"The haunch was a picture for painters to study;
The fat was so white and the lean was so ruddy" —
when I forget thy cookery, O Roxana! may I be condemned to eat sawdust all my days!
From the amount of sawdust and bad cookery which I have eaten I might consider myself punished for ingratitude; but no! there was never such a cook as Roxana!
The physical conditions of my bringing-up were eminently healthy. The good and plentiful table, the splendid, exhilarating air, the exercise on horseback, the line sleigh-rides in an immense gilded structure called "The Sleigh," which my father had had built for his own long limbs, and to accommodate a large family and all the neighbors — a sleigh which reminded one of St. Petersburg — the fascinating summers and autumns, with the picnics and the walks and excursions in that prettiest and most finished valley which surrounds Iveene (worthy of its English-named county, Cheshire); with Monadnock, a stone mountain, shaped like Vesuvius, which Nature dropped from her apron as she was going up to make the White Mountains; those pine woods, as ample as the Pineta of Ravenna; the soft hills wooded to the top; the wide, fertile, and picturesque meadows; the slow and sluggish current of the Ashuelot, winding among the drooping willows and stately elms — afforded days for the pleasures of budding girlhood which were unrivalled. Then Keene was an agreeable, sociable place, full of scholarly men and handsome matrons, who had homes to which any one would like to be invited. We had parties and balls, and occasionally a military ball, and I never imagined that there was such a thing as ennui. We read prodigiously, and that atmosphere of culture for which Boston has been so much, perhaps, laughed at penetrated to our very midst. We were intimate with the Sage of Weimar and with Thomas Carlyle. Emerson came up to lecture to us, and we welcomed the first little green books which emanated from Boz and the yellow-colored Thackerays. The first yellow cover I ever saw held Becky Sharp in its embrace. It was the purest and best society I have seen. No unclean thing came near it. But — alas that there is always a but! — my mother's clear blue eyes, sharp as a Damascus blade, cut through the dignified pretensions of Miss F——— 's school. She found out that I was individually learning nothing, and I was surprised one night reading Miss Edgeworth's Helen at the hour of two in the morning.
I have always illogically wished that Miss Edgeworth, now sunk into undeserved oblivion, could have lived to hear that anybody sat up all night to read her decorous Helen. What fin-de-siècle girl will do it now?
But I hurt nothing but my eyes in this nocturnal impropriety. The one candle was blown out, and I was rebuked. My mother told me that Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Selden had called on her the day before to say that they feared Mary Elizabeth was reading too many novels; that Mr. Tilden, the head of the circulating library, said that the same offending M. E. took out two novels every week, while Lucretia Brown took out Mrs. Chaporee's Letters and The Serious Call; and Mrs. Selden said she thought it very bad for a girl's future to be reading novels all the time. Alas! when I was put through a severe examination I stood A No. 1 in Scott, Bulwer, Edgeworth, and Miss Austen, but I did not know much geography nor the least arithmetic, so I was marched into my father's office, where he was at work upon a complicated law-case. My mother, as beautiful and quite as severe as Dante's avenging angel, stood pale and terrible, addressing the busy man (who found it quite inconvenient to receive us at that time) with these words, which are burned into my heart: "Colonel Wilson, here is our daughter, whom we have sent to Miss Fiske's school, and of whose abilities and studious habits we had hoped so much. She was reading a novel at two o'clock last night, and she cannot parse a word of Paradise Lost. She cannot bound Pennsylvania, she does not know where Jerusalem is, and she thinks six times six may be forty."
My father's sense of humor was so strong that he burst into a fit of laughter which shook the house, and I burst into tears. He took me to that ample breast of his, and said, "Never mind, we will send you to Boston to school. Don't cry. Don't read so many novels, and obey your mother. But how does it happen that you do not know the multiplication-table?"
"Father, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it! — so I write Matilda Slocum's compositions, and she does my sums."
"Well," said he, "you have been cheating yourself most bravely. Let Matilda's compositions alone, and do you tell me the 'nines and sixes' to-morrow night at dinner."
So a very delightful dinner of turkey was spoiled for me the next day at four o'clock, and I was put on a short commons of novels. Bulwer was entirely forbidden, and I read Napoleon at St. Helena. I was allowed Walter Scott (God bless him!) and Miss Austen. God bless her a thousand times! She lighted the weary way of a poor little girl for a very dreary winter.
I think the Reverend Mr. Livermore came in about this time to teach me a little German, to soften the asperities of Mrs. Selden and Mrs. Brown, and even to give me a lift up the ladder of literature, for he accepted my first story, sent anonymously to the Social Gazette, a periodical read in his dear clerical parlor, where I first experienced the exhilarating thrill of hearing my own writings read to an appreciative circle. Mr. Prentiss said, "That is a capital story." I, the unknown author, sat burning in the background. My mother (O rapture!) applauded it. Dear woman, it was the only time!
When I got home I told her I had written it. "Go to bed, my dear; it was a very poor story indeed," said she, sternly.
My mother thought flattery of any kind was wicked, and so had the early teaching of her Puritan, Calvinistic parents steeled her tender heart that she allowed my youth to pass without a caress and without praise. The word love was never mentioned. I wonder we did not all grow up Shakeresses. In fact, the fault of all New England education was a certain hardness. Our minds were cultivated more than our hearts.
There was a blue lookout for my dreamy shirkmg of the boundaries of Pennsylvania. Never, however, did so slight a fault lead to so useful a punishment. To go to Mr. Emerson's school, to be a "Boston girl" — even in name — was a vision of majesty. I determmed that I would learn how to study, and after a fashion I did. Female education was at a very low ebb in what were called "Ladies' Schools" in those days. "We learned to be ladies, I hope, for we certainly learned very little else. Had it not been for cultivated people about me — had it not been for my dear Reverend Mr. Livermore, I should have had most arid oases in my youthful mind. My parents were both too busy to criticise me; there were younger children, always having the croup and the scarlet-fever. I often sat up all night, not reading Miss Edgeworth, but holding in my arms a poor little struggling brother. Alas! I saw three of them die, and how deeply did I sympathize with my poor mother! Perhaps this ploughshare of agony which went through my girlish heart kept me from being cold, indifferent, merciless, thoughtless. I hope so, but I still believe praises and smiles and a little approbation would have made of me a more amiable character.
My father and mother had followed that wave of Unitarianism which was started by Channing and Martineau, and all my ideas of religion were hopeful, inspiring, and beautiful. I never knew that horror of "a jealous God," which doctrine had been assiduously preached in New England just before I came on the scene, and which had gone far to fill the insane asylums. Indeed, one of my own schoolmates had gone raving in a religious mania under my own eyes. But I can remember the soothing words of Mr. Livermore, who came in as I was holding one little dear, dying brother in my arms — how he took him from me and said, with such hopeful, peaceful assurance, that "death was swallowed up in victory." I never had a doubt. My God has always been a loving God.
I wish I could repay here my indebtness to that admirable, loving man, Abbot Livermore. He belonged to that ministerial family whom Dr. Bellows called "the Abbots with one t."
Would that any convent had enjoyed such an abhot! Keene, under that Christ-like influence, and that of his follower, the Rev. William O. White, was a community to be envied. Spiritualism, Second-Adventism, and Mormonism devastated our neighboring towns, but no such delusions troubled the peace of those congregations comitted to their charge — these enlightened men; and they brought to us that wonderful body of thinkers, Waterston, Dr. Lowell, Dr. Parkman, James Freeman Clarke, Rev. C. A. Bartol, the saintly W. B. O. Peabody of Springfield, Dr. Gannett, Dr. Bellows (destined to be one of the best friends of my later life); later on, Edward Everett Hale, several Channings, and Dr. Lothrop, the polished Wilberforce of the Unitarian Church. These men were scholars and elegant men of the world. Dr. Huntington, now Bishop of Central New York, was one of them, and, like him, many of the Unitarians of that day became Episcopalians of this day. It was perhaps a halting-place for the soul, freed from the terrible chains of Calvinism, upward and on to a more "reasonable faith." It needed, perhaps, for its ultimate development, the liberal creed and the wonderful prayer-book of the Episcopal Church.
Some letters written about this time have turned up in an old desk and have helped my recollections. As they may amuse the reader, I print them, mistakes and all:
"Dear Mother, — I am finding my place in Mr. Emerson's school. I thought I never should, and I cried three nights pretty hard. He made me take up the Latin grammar and learn it all by heart from beginning to end. I recite sometimes to his daughter, Lucy Emerson, a very pretty girl, with the brightest eyes and little dancing black curls, but the sharpest thing you ever saw. She won't let me make a mistake, her eyes go right through me. I told Mr. Emerson I would rather recite to him or to Miss Monroe. He laughed and said he was glad Lucy was so correct. I think he and she mean to be kind — but oh! duty and pleasure have to be kept seperate. I miss home and Keene very much, but Mrs. P is very kind and gives me rather too good a breakfast. I have to walk up a steep hill, and then go up four flights of stairs, and I suffer a pain in my chest after all that. I trust your tic doloureaux is better.
"Ever your loving
"M. E."_____
(From my mother to me.)
"Dear Mary Elizabeth, — Seperate is not correct. Separate would be nearer right. Are you not to study the English branches at Mr. Emerson's school? I am sure I knew how to spell Separate at your age. Now, my dear child, exercise all your talents and all your principles. This is your first absence from home. Try to lay the foundations of a useful character. Remember, life is not all play. I miss your sympathy, and sometimes think I have thrown my own sorrows and cares on you too early. "We are already counting the days until you come home at Christmas.
"Your mother,
"M. L. W."_____
"Dear Mother, — I have bought my winter suit. It is of blue merino, with a spot of brown in it, like an autumn leaf, and a lovely blue silk cloak lined with a brown satin; a bonnet of blue, with Marabout feathers, and rosebuds — O, just the sweetest thing you ever saw ! Willlam says it is very becoming. I wore it all to Dr. Lowell's church last Sunday, and I could not help thinking of myself, all the time. There is a great pleasure in new clothes, isn't there? Do you think we attend to clothes quite enough, at Keene ? Here the girls talk and think of them, a great deal. I fear I have spent too much money, nearly one hundred dollars, since I left you, but I think I have got all I need get, for the winter. I am getting on pretty well at Mr. Emerson's, although it is as hard as a galley slave's life. I wish I could sit down and tell you all about C——— and M——— and Susan — nice girls all of them. M. P. sings as delightfully as ever, and is the belle of all our little parties. We go out to tea often. Father's friends treat me with a great deal of attention, and the Lawrences and Mrs. Page have asked me to tea. I am to see Washington Allston's picture to-morrow.
"Ever your loving
"M. E."_____
"My darling Daughter, — I hear you look very well in your new blue suit, and I think as you bought it all yourself, and not with my advice, you shall not be scolded for spending so much. We must try to make it do for two winters, but I am seriously sorry to hear you say you could not help thinking of yourself all church time! Try on that sacred day to dismiss all thoughts of yourself and your clothes. It is one reason I wish you to be well-dressed so you shall not think of yourself, for I know it is mortifying to a young person to be ill-dressed, but I trust you will rise above clothes. Thank Mrs. P. for her great kindness to you, and do not eat hot cakes for breakfast. Dr. Twitchell says that is the cause of the pain in your chest. Your little sisters both have severe sore throats. Take care and not get one, in Boston. Bathe yourself freely in cold water, even if you have to break the ice in the pitcher.
"Your Mother,
"M. L. W."_____
"Dear Mother, — I have been taken to hear Miss Margaret Fuller talk. She received me very kindly. I found her a very plain woman with almost a hump back, but the moment she began to talk I found her most fascinating; there was a sort of continuous long low stream of well-constructed sentences and that Boston pronunciation which you and I admire. She said: 'Talk about your friends' interests and not your own; always put the pronoun you for the pronoun I when you can.' (A lady near me pulled my skirt and said: 'She is a great egotist herself.') 'In Society to have unity one must have units, one cannot be unanimous alone.' She said: 'Never talk of your diseases, your domestics or your dresses.' She said: 'Think before you speak, and never speak unless you feel you cannot help speaking.'
"'But then I should never speak at all,' said S———.
"'Perhaps the world would be none the worse,' said she, rather cruelly, I thought.
"She is cruel. The girls all came away frightened. One said that she had been at a concert with her a few days before, and that Margaret Fuller turned round and scolded them all for talking during the music; but that was right, I think. They call her here 'the great, the intellectual Miss Fuller.'
"I think these great people do not know how frightened girls are; they would not be so severe. My teacher, Mr. George B. Emerson, does not believe in her. I told him about my visit to her the next morning. He said: 'Learn to think, young lady, and the talk will come of itself.'
"Mr. Emerson impresses me more and more every day. I see that he reads all our characters, and that, severe as he is, he does not mean to make machines of us; he is a real chivalrous gentleman as well, and most respected in Boston.
"I have been suffering again with that pain in the chest, on going upstairs. O, I wish there were no such things as stairs or hills in this world; but I am coming home for the Christmas holidays next week and that will cure me. Good-night, dear Mother.
_____
"Dearest Mother, — I had a sad coming to Boston through the snow storm; the gentlemen inside the stage coach threw their shawls around me, and one took off his overshoes, and put them on my feet outside of my own thin boots.
"'This little girl will freeze to death,' said he.
"But I would not come inside, it makes me so deathly sea-sick as you know. I have been very ill, with sore throat, but got up my lessons all the same.
"It is a pretty hard ride from Keene to Nashua, outside the coach when it snows.
"Ever yours with love
"M. E."
This fragment of a letter — and there were many like it — shows what we endured before rapid transit was accomplished, I have seen many inventions, the electric telegraph, postage-stamps, envelopes, chloroform, photographs, sewing-machines, parlor matches, canning of fruit and vegetables, but none of them equal the parlor car and the rapidity of steam travel; not even the steam furnace, which doubtless saves many a life in the cold Northern States. "When I remember that freezing child on the top of that dreary stage-coach with the thermometer at zero, I do not wonder that I have been a rheumatic all my later life. I only wonder that I lived a year.
My health gave way between these exposures and Mr. Emerson's stairs, and my kind father came home from the West to see to me and to take me back with him. He had accepted from General Harrison's administration the office of Surveyor-General of Iowa, then much farther off from New Hampshire than it now is. He had previously been made chairman of the great convention at Harrisburg which nominated General Harrison in 1840, and had received from Leslie Coombs, of Kentucky, this compliment:
"General Wilson, you were sent to New Hampshire, but you were misdirected: you were meant for Kentucky."
His great stature, his love of field sports, captivated the ardent soul of the Kentuckian, and I think my father had always sighed for a buffalo-hunt and a chase over the prairies.
He took up his temporary official residence in Dubuque, Iowa, and I was to accompany him thither. My mother did not relish the idea of so long a journey, but to me it was like a flight into Paradise. We were to go to Washington first, then, as now, the Mecca of the American girl.
"Dearest Mother, — We were a week getting here, but I have enjoyed every hour. Father took me to the Astor House, New York, where we met the whole Whig party I should say; Mr. Ashmun, Mr. Geo. T. Davis, and a sweet old gentleman, Judge Story. Mrs. Otis, and Mrs. Bates, were there and very nice to me. I went shopping, in a fine shop, and bought some gloves, and handkerchiefs, and some ribbons. The Astor House is very comfortable, and I saw all the fashion walk by. The Astor House parlor seems the centre of fashion. It is a very grand Hotel, and from the ladies who walk by in red velvet I get a picture of the great people of New York.
"Just think, next Tuesday I shall be in Washington, not to see old Tippecanoe, but only "Tyler too." Father is very cross on that subject.
"Ever your loving
"M. E."To go back a few months, my mother and I had gone through the campaign for "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" in emphatic fashion. We had accompanied my father, who was so favorite a "stump speaker" on the Whig side that wherever he went thousands of people and a military band accompanied us.
We had had the honor of receiving Mr. Webster as our guest in Keene, and he had asked us to visit him at Marshfield, his famous country-seat on the sea. To proceed thither to see our great hero, accompanied by a brass band, was rather exciting for a girl of thirteen, and to be met by Mrs. Webster in her carriage (all in white, a fine-looking, dark-eyed woman) seemed to me to be very distinguished. My mother and a friend were placed in the seat of honor, and I was asked to mount the box in which Mr. Webster was driving himself. To say that I was frightened as those big black eyes swept me up is to state it mildly; but I lived through it, and since I was young and small I was allowed the seat next to Mr. Webster on the driver's box. How elated I felt as my tall father put me up there, and he whispered in my ear, "Remember this, my daughter: you are to drive five miles with Daniel Webster as your coachman!"
It was the most impressive and attractive thing about Mr, Webster that all his friends called him always "Daniel Webster." My coachman, who was dressed in a plain suit of gray, with a wide-awake hat and a loosely tied neckerchief of red, began immediately to make himself agreeable.
"So this is your first visit to the sea, Miss Wilson?" said he.
I could have told him that he was the first person to address me as "Miss" Wilson. I was not old enough for titles then.
And so he went on smiling and showing me his splendid teeth, which were as white and regular as a string of pearls, looking down on me with his great black eyes, which were fabulously handsome. He pointed out to me Seth Peterson, who was walking along the road, and who stopped to take some orders from his fellow-fisherman.
"You will eat to-day some fish which Seth and I caught this morning," said Mr. Webster.
I was frightened to death, but I made a lucky hit by asking what sort of fish were the easiest to catch.
He launched off on his favorite subject, and told me of the gamey bass and the reluctant cod and so on; when I again said:
"I suppose you enjoy the fish which are the hardest to catch, don't you, Mr. Webster?"
He looked round at me and laughed. "You are beginning young, Miss Wilson," said he; "that is the remark of a coquette."
And at dinner he embarrassed me very much by repeating this conversation as a piece of youthful precocity.
Our drive was only too short, as we soon reached the long, low, pleasant white house known as Marshfield.
Mrs. Webster — a Miss Le Roy by birth — had very distinguished manners, and I felt awed as she received me every day with a lofty courtesy on the veranda.
The house was full of company. Judge Warren, a famous wit, was there. Mr. Webster laughed at everything he said. A great Whig demonstration had just taken place, and one man had put the flag in a sheaf of wheat as his part of the procession. "He didn't want things to go against the grain," said Judge Warren.
The dinner was profuse and excellent. Mr. Webster had dressed for it, and looked so grand in his blue coat and brass buttons that I was more and more afraid of him; but he grew more and more kind.
He offered a goose for the pièce de résistance, and carved it himself with great deftness. He afterwards whispered to me that he was afraid it would not go round.
Every day for a week he gave me the honor and pleasure of a drive, and every day the company changed. I liked him best in the mornings, when, with his soft hat on his head, he sat on the veranda with his dogs and his friends, talking, telling stories, and being the genial and magnetic host.
He of all men next to Wapoleon deserved the title of magnetic. His powerful face, so often described, so characterized by Carlyle, Macaulay, and Sydney Smith, was capable of the most lustrous and winning and beautiful smile I can remember. Had Mr. Webster been, like Charles James Fox, a professional lady-killer, he would have won every woman in the land. But I never heard that he went into the business of flirtation at all.
He could be as terrible as he was gentle, and we had a curious instance of his power. Mrs. Webster complained to him of the revolt of a kitchen-maid. "Send her to me," he said.
The housekeeper told us that he simply looked at her, when she cried out, "Don't do that! don't do that! I will scrub the buttery!"
It was like a lash on sensitive flesh to have his black eyes flash their lightning at one.
Before I left Marshfield Mrs. Webster gave me a ring — a ruby circlet — which I wore for many years. Down in the West Indies, on my wedding journey, this ring was stolen from me, to my infinite sorrow; but the memory of it, and of her kindness in giving it to me, I have never lost.
One day Mr. Webster turned suddenly and asked me if I knew any of Watts's hymns; to my regret I did not, when he quoted two or three, and also some lines of Walter Scott. He talked of Burns, Shakespeare, and Milton, and after dinner some lady sang one of Burns's songs.
His daughter, Mrs. Sam Appleton Appleton, was staying in the house, a very interesting woman, whom he much loved; when he approached her he always kissed her hand, which amazed me, it was so stately. He told me much of his visit to England and of the delightful people he had met there, and often took me to drive, telling me about the sea grasses and the fish which he had caught in the morning. I can feel anew, as I write, the fragrant salt sea-breeze, forever refreshing that favored coast which outlined Marshfield, touching my youthful cheeks with its caressing fingers.
Mr. Webster's dinners in Washington, in Louisburg Square, were well ordered and well served — more elaborate than those of Marshfield. A good ochra soup; a fish, fresh and admirably gotten up; a turkey, roasted and basted as only Monica could do it; oysters, scalloped, fried, or broiled; sometimes terrapin, and often ducks, are the dishes I remember. He had a way of talking about each dish, and I remember his commenting on a salt-codfish salad, as a "dish 'fit' to eat." Then he went into a long discourse as to the meaning of the word "fit" — he knew his English very well. He laughed at the criticisms on his having said, "The nomination of Taylor was one not 'fit' to be made."
As I remembered him at Marshfield, Mr. Webster's conversation was like a great organ playing, and his smile was grandly beautiful. I had listened with an affectionate reverence akin to awe, and when I left he gave me a Drummond's Botany, with his valuable autograph:
"To Miss Mary Elizabeth Wilson:
"Taken from his own library at Marshfield for her, and offered by her friend,
It is unnecessary to say that I have that book still.
Thus my visit to Washington was to me chiefly valuable that I might see Mr. Webster again.
And at a Presidential levee I had that honor. He came in in full evening dress, very carefully groomed, his black hair brushed back from that extraordinary forehead; he was the observed of all observers. When my turn came and my father mentioned modestly, "Here is my little girl," he took my hand in both of his and said, with a splendid smile, "What, my little woman who likes sea-weed!"
The next day my father took me to Mrs. Webster's reception. The house of the Secretary of State was the great attraction; it was full of brilliant company. Mrs. Webster's nieces and some other fashionable ladies from New York were there, many of the diplomatic circle, and a number of literary women — Miss Sedgwick, Mrs. Sigourney, of Hartford, our New England poetess, "that woman," as Judge Wayne said, "who will die guiltless of anything but a false quantity." I was more pleased with them than with any other part of the show, for I had already written Mrs. Sigourney a letter (anonymously) admiring her poem, "On a Shred of Linen." How I wanted to ask her if she had ever received it, and whether she had enjoyed it! but I remembered just in time that the character of the anonymous admirer forbade that. Suddenly there was a stir in the room, and all these ladies rose.
A young Englishman, named Charles Dickens, entered the room. Then my heart stopped beating.
I had read Pickwick and several of his novels, and, like all the world, I admired and wondered how a genius looked. I can see him now, overdressed, with billows of green-satin necktie, long hair, a rather handsome face, and hanging on his arm a pretty little fat, rosy-cheeked wife.
I also remember (and I fear no one else does) what I wore on this momentous occasion: a black-velvet tight-fitting jacket with gold buttons down the front, and a skirt of deep blue, heavily flounced. I fear this fashion was stolen from Fanny Elssler, but the dress was "made in Boston." I saw that other ladies wore this tight jacket with tight sleeves, so I knew I was correct. We had bonnets on, and I remember thinking that Mrs. Dickens's bonnet was dowdy. When we got into the carriage I said to my father, "Oh! I am so glad that mother allowed me this pretty dress!"
Whereupon he addressed me severely. "My daughter, I am sorry that after such an afternoon, when you have met so many distinguished people, you should be thinking of your clothes."
However, he was soon propitiated, and took me to the Senate Chamber next day, where I looked down on the great of the earth and saw Charles Dickens sitting in a seat near the Chairman.
I remember Mr. Tyler, the President, as a man with a long nose and thin figure, but a courteous Virginia gentleman. It all made a great impression on me, particularly Mr. Webster, who loomed up more and more splendid. I think I remember him (and my velvet jacket) best of all.
Then we departed for a long, fatiguing journey from Harrisburg to Wheeling by stage-coach. Splendid scenery, but nothing decent to eat for three days and nights. I slept on my dear father's shoulder. He was so kind, so tender, so sweet to me, that I can never think of this journey without my eyes getting a little moist; for after we reached the Ohio River, all blushing with the redbud along its banks, and got on the comfortable steamboat, I found that he was ailing. He, however, did not allow me to be annoyed, and it was to me a cotillon party which lasted a week; for the colored waiters made a very good band, the saloon a nice ballroom, and we danced every evening. I remember being appalled by one very solemn partner, who led me off in a cotillon by the formidable remark, "Dancing, madame, is a great solvent of discontent.""Yes, sir," I said, not knowing what else to say. As I had never had any discontent, and did not very well remember what solvent meant, I was somewhat discouraged. However, the order came, "Ladies cross over," and I bounded off willingly. I learned afterwards that he was the governor of some Western State, and he made his peace by bringing me next day great bunches of the beautiful redbud from the shore.
We paused often to take on freight and passengers at places which Dickens was afterwards to make immortal in Martin Chuzzlewit; but although they did look rather forlorn, I never knew of the fact until long after. I suppose "dancing had been the solvent of my discontent," for I never was happier; and I remember that Ohio River steamboat, the good food, the music of that negro band, and the courtesy of the Western captain with great delight. The Ohio is a magnificent river. The season was spring. I kept on making mistakes, and blushing for fear that my father would call me "Mary Elizabeth," which was the beginning of a scolding; but I suppose the bloom of youth must have covered a multitude of sins, for I always seemed to come up smiling. In fact, "life was a joke which had just begun," and I had Pickwick and Oliver Twist to read. The guards of that boat, looking out on the moving panorama of the Ohio, was an ideal place to sit of a warm spring morning. I was travelling into the Unknown, and it was like the fabled stuff of Damascus — whichever way you turned it, it was scarlet and gold.
Sorrow was not far off, for when we got to St. Louis my father broke down with a severe illness, and we were there three weeks in the house of a dear set of cousins, who saved his life.
I saw things with sadly anxious eyes; the city, now so great and then so small, St. Louis, full of French people and Northern people and Southern people and negroes. It did not look as it does now. To my great horror and amazement, my cousins owned slaves, and their backyard was full of pickaninnies. I remember two great men — the Reverend Mr. Elliot, one of our Unitarian saints, and Mr. Holmes, now Professor of Law at Harvard, then a young lawyer, and the author of a book to prove that Shakespeare did not write Shakespeare; also some pretty, very agreeable women; but my heart was too heavy to allow me to notice much, and I was too young to be a philosophic observer. My father and I, after his recovery, started off up the Mississippi, that muddy, great, dark river, and I always felt the force of the subsequent witticism when the indignant Yankee answered the assuming Briton, "You could stir the whole of England into the Mississippi without making it a bit muddier."
We had the same cotillon party and most interesting companions. I suppose "Elijah Pogram" or his prototype was on board, but I do not remember him. Of all the ways of travel, I remember none which were so agreeable as these floating palaces, on which we lazily encompassed such vast distances.
One day we stopped at Nauvoo, the first settlement of the Mormons. My father knew Joe Smith, their first Prophet. He had been a bricklayer at Keene, and had not laid his bricks even and well. He and a man from Peterboro, where my father was born, Jesse Little, I think, came down and invited us up to see their great temple, resting on the shoulders of carved wooden oxen. It was impressive, but the general effect was more like the Eden of Charles Dickens, which was yet to be described, than any other place I remember. They were already in trouble, and I think made their exodus the next year. But here I may be mistaken. I remember hearing then the romantic story, now denied, that they had found Mr. Spaulding's book by accident, and made it their Bible.
This was perhaps the most small beginning of what has proved, after Mahomet, the most extraordinary story in the whole world of religious fanaticism and the one-man power. Even the Massanielo frenzy pales before it. At any rate, to have seen this their beginning is interesting now by the light of subsequent events. It is not the man who starts well in the race of whom we make a hero, but he who reaches the goal and ends well. These queer and dirty and disreputable Mormons became the most successful of colonists in their new home beyond the Rockies. They redeemed the dry land by irrigation, as the Moors enriched sandy Spain; and their religious tenets, absurd and abhorrent to the rest of us, have for them a power and a strong hold which would put to shame many a Protestant church.
I see it still, that ragged, dirty, uneven shore of the great Mississippi, the lazy steamboat-landing, the pigs of lead being discharged or loaded on — I forget which. The story used to run that the Mormons always dropped two or three in the river by accident, but fished them up and appropriated them afterwards. They had a bad name, but, unlike the dog, it did not hang them. The Mormons were destined to live down a great deal of bad name. I suppose that great wooden temple and the carved oxen had been built by some of their foreign converts who had a knowledge of wood-carving.
Joe Smith, the then head of the Church, the bad bricklayer, had "builded better than he knew," or, as they used to say in Keene, when I told them this story, "better than he knew how when he was here."