Reviews of Books JOHN BIGELOW'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY Retrospections of an Active Life. By John Bigelow. Baker& Taylor (30., New York. V. 1, pp. xiv, 645; v. 2, pp. vii, 607; v 3, pp. viiI 666+ index 16. (812 not for the set.)
NE is deeply impressed by the merits of these three volumes covering the first fifty years of the life of this "grand old man" of New York State. An autobiography of the modest character of this one is unusual. The historical interest triumphs over the personal; the author views himself not as the centre of the drama of which he writes, but as the spectator of events in which'he has borne a by no means inconsiderable part. In place of garrulous play of the memory,
dwelling upon minute and uninteresting personal we haveprepared what is i details for theofmost parthistory, a laboriously record of great events, marked by so scrupu lous a regard for exactitude that nothing is left to conjecture, but practically every state ment is based upon some kind of evidence reduced to writing protected from the tooth of time.
There is no egotistical flavor;
the
author’s modesty offers a splendid example to writers of autobiographies. Mr. Bigelow has kept his own personality in the back ground, and because the experiences through
which he has passed have given him so much to write about, and his correspondence with
people of celebrity has been of such interest, his method does not result in tedium or pro lixity; on the contrary his pages are anim ted in style and pregnant with good material.
Mr. Bigelow was the son of a thrifty farmer and country storekeeper, whose character is suggested rather than described in casual references which show him to have been of sturdy Connecticut stock. Born and bred in the country town of Bristol, later Malden, N. Y., the son passed through no exceptional experiences that the author is disposed to regard as of importance, and was sent to what later became Trinity College, Hartford, after ward being graduated from Union College, Schenectady. There are interesting recollec tions of the mode of life of his parents, who cured their own hams and made their own candles, and of those who ministered to his education. The lad determined to take up the career of the law, and as his family was
not acquainted with any lawyers of promi nence he was thrown upon his own resources in selecting those to whom he should apply for the privilege of reading law. His choice was in the main fortunate, and eventually he found himself in a New York law ofiice, where he was admitted to the bar. His personal qualities seem to have won him desirable friendships while he was still not much past twenty-one, and procured his admission to a debating society known as the Column, where he enlarged an already ex cellent connection. His success at the bar, however, was not instantaneous or rapid, and we find him turning to literary work, for which he possessed a strong natural bent. The acceptance of a number of contributions led him to take up writing seriously, and he entered the firm of the Evening Post, then edited by William Cullen Bryant, with the help of a loan of $2,500 generously granted by Charles O’Conor, then one of the leaders of the New York bar. This proved a wise step. In a few years he had purchased a country estate of value, had enjoyed a certain amount of travel including an extended tour of Europe, and had come to be worth about $175,000. Meanwhile he was making himself so influential a factor in public affairs that his appointment as United States Consul at Paris came about not unnaturally, and his success at that post was so great that he was selected by Secretary Seward as Minister to France. His residence in France, at these two responsible posts, extended over an eventful not to say a troublous period, which covered our Civil War, the incidents preceding the downfall of Napoleon III, and the French invasion of Mexico, and the greater portion of the autobiography deals with these im portant historical developments of the period of foreign residence. He closely studied the progress of events on the American continent, and his correspondence with both American and European personages, extracts from which appear, deals largely with the significance of events both at home and abroad, and reveals a minute familiarity with
inner workings of state policy and close inter course with statesmen and diplomats. The narrative ends with the year 1867, the fiftieth year of the author's life. An intimation is
