GEORGE WILLIAM CURTISGEORGE WILLIAM CURTISAT WEST NEW BRIGHTON
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
It is not noticed that the most determined fighters, both in battle and on the field of public affairs, are often the gentlest, most peaceable men in private converse and at home. The public was for a long time accustomed to regardMr.Curtis as a combatant; but many who know of him in that character would have been surprised could they have met him in the quiet study on Staten Island, where his work was done.
A calm, solid figure, of fine height and impressive carriage, a moderately ruddy complexion, with snowy side-whiskers, and gray hair parted at the crown, gave him somewhat the appearance that we conventionally ascribe to English country gentlemen. There was an air of repose about the surroundings and the occupant of the room where he worked. Over the door hung a mellowed and rarely excellent copy of the Stratford portrait of Shakspeare; shelves filled with books—the dumb yet resistless artillery of literature—were placed in all the spaces between the three windows; andother books and pamphlets—the small arms and equipments—covered a part of the ample table. A soft-coal fire in the grate threw out intermittently its broad, genial flame, as if inspired to illumination by the gaze of Emerson, or Daniel Webster, or the presence of blind Homer, whose busts were in an opposite corner. Altogether, the spot seemed very remote from all loud conflicts of the time. There was none of that confusion, that tempestuous disarray of newspapers, common in the workshops of editors. Yet an examination of the new books and documents which lay before him would show thatMr.Curtis established here a sluice-way through which was drawn a current of our chief literature and politics; and some of the lines in his massive lower face indicated the resoluteness which underlay his natural urbanity and kindness. Although his father came from Massachusetts and he himself was born in Providence,Mr.Curtis was identified with New York. In 1839, at the age of fifteen, he moved with his father to this city. Three years later he enlisted with the Brook Farm enthusiasts, but in 1844 withdrew to Concord, as Hawthorne had done. There, with his brother, he worked at farming, and continued to study until 1846, when he came back to New York, still bent upon preparing himself for a literary life, though he chose not to go to college. He went, instead, to Europe, remaining there and in the East forfour years, six months of which he spent as a student at the University of Berlin.
Bringing home copious materials for the work, he wrote the “Nile Notes of a Howadji,” which the Harpers promptly accepted and published in 1851, the author being then twenty-seven. It is interesting to observe that he never went through that period of struggle to which most young writers must submit; a fact presaging the almost unbroken success of his later career. His other two books of travel appeared the next year, and at the same time he began to divide with Donald G. Mitchell the writing of the “Easy Chair” inHarper’s Monthly, which he afterward took wholly upon himself and continued until his death. His connection withHarper’s Weeklybegan in 1857, and for six years he supplied a series of papers entitled “The Lounger” to that periodical. In 1863 he became its political editor. Meanwhile he had published “The Potiphar Papers,” the one successful satire on social New York since Irving’s “Salmagundi”; also “Prue and I,” and “Trumps,” his only attempt at a novel. This, too, treats of New York life. Finally he married, in 1856, and settled on Staten Island, where he lived until he died in 1892, in a house only a few rods distant from that in which he was married.
Yet, New Yorker as he was by long association,residence and interest, he had a close relationship with Massachusetts; partly through his marriage into a Massachusetts family of note—the Shaws; partly, perhaps, through the ties formed in those idyllic days at Brook Farm and Concord. And in Massachusetts he had another home, at Ashfield, to which he repaired every summer. It is an old farm-house on the outskirts of the village, which lies among beautiful maple-clad hills, between the Berkshire valley and the picturesque neighborhood of the Deerfields and Northampton. A number of years ago, with his friend Charles Eliot Norton,Mr.Curtis aided in founding a library for Ashfield, and he was so much of a favorite with his neighbors there, that they were anxious to make him their representative in Congress. He, however, seemed to prefer their friendship, and the glorious colors of their autumn woods, to their votes. Throughout the greater part of the fierce presidential campaign of 1884Mr.Curtis conducted his voluminous work as editor and as independent chieftain in this quiet retreat. In 1875 it was to him that Concord turned when seeking an orator for the centenary of her famous “Fight”; and it was he again whom Boston, in the spring of 1883, invited to pronounce the eulogy upon Wendell Phillips. These are rather striking instances of Massachusetts dependence on a New York author and orator, discrepantfrom a theory which makes the dependence all the other way.
ButMr.Curtis long since gained national reputation as a lecturer. His first venture in that line was “Contemporary Art in Europe,” in 1851; then he fairly got under way with “The Age of Steam,” and soon became one of that remarkable group, including Starr King, Phillips and Beecher, who built up the lyceum into an important institution, and went all over the country lecturing.Mr.Curtis gave lectures every winter until 1872. I remember his saying, some time before that, “I have to write and deliver at least one sermon a year”; and indeed theyweresermons, of the most eloquent kind, rife with noble incitements to duty, patriotism, lofty thought, ideal conduct. In 1859, at Philadelphia, having long before engaged to speak on “The Present State of the Anti-Slavery Question,” he was told that it would not be allowed. Many people entreated him not to attempt it; but, while disclaiming any wish to create disturbance or to be martyred, he stated that he found himself forced to represent the principle of free speech, and that nothing could induce him to shrink from upholding it. Accordingly he began his lecture from a platform guarded by double rows of police. A tumult was raised in the hall, and a mob attacked the building simultaneously from without, intending to seizethe speaker and hang him. For twenty minutes he waited silently, while vitriol-bottles and brick-bats were showered through the windows, and the police fought the rioters in both hall and street. The disturbance quelled, he went on for an hour, saying all that he had to say, amid alternate hisses and applause, and with the added emphasis of missiles from lingering rioters smashing the window glass. Is it surprising that this man should have the courage to rise and shout out a solitary “No,” against the hundreds of a State convention, or that he should have dared to “bolt” the Presidential nomination of his party, in spite of jeers and sneers and cries of treachery?
Mr.Curtis’s adversaries, in whatever else they may have been right, were apt to make two serious mistakes about him. One was, that they considered him a dilettante in politics; the other, that they overlooked his “staying-power.” For over thirty-four years he not only closely studied and wrote upon our politics, but he also took an active share in them.
For twenty-five years he was the chairman of a local Republican committee; he made campaign speeches; he sat in conventions; he influenced thousands of votes. Moreover, his views triumphed. They did so in the anti-slavery cause; they did so in the Civil Service Reform movement, and in the Independent movement of 1884. Surely that is not the record of a dilettante. He neverpulled wires, nor did he seek office; that is all. Once he ran for Congress in a Democratic district, sure of defeat, but wishing to have a better chance, as candidate, for speech-making. He took the chairmanship of the Civil Service Advisory Board as an imperative duty, and resigned it as soon as he saw its futility under President Grant’s rule. Seward wanted to make him Consul-General in Egypt;Mr.Hayes offered him the mission to England, and again that to Germany; but he refused each one. His only political ambition was to instil sound principles, and to oppose practicalpatriotismto “practical politics.” Honorary distinctions he was willing to accept, in another field. He was an LL.D. of Harvard, Brown and Madison universities; and in 1864 he was appointed a Regent of the University of New York, in the line of succession to John Jay, Chancellor Kent and Gulian Verplanck. This, it seems to me, was a very fit association, forMr.Curtis was attached by his qualities of integrity and refinement to the best representatives of New York. The idea often occurs to one, that he, more than any one else, continued the example which Washington Irving set; an example of kindliness and good-nature blended with indestructible dignity, and of a delicately imaginative mind consecrating much of its energy to public service.
A teacher of a true State policy, rather than astatesman—an inspiring leader, more than he was an organizer or executant—he yet did much hard work in organizing, and tried to perpetuate the desirable tradition that culture should be joined to questions of right in Government, and of the popular weal. Twenty years a lecturer, without rest; twenty-five years a political editor; thirty-six years the suave and genial occupant of the “Easy Chair”; always steadfast to the highest aims, and ignoring unworthy slurs;—may we not say reasonably that he had “staying power”? One source of it was to be found in the serene cheer of his family life in that Staten Island cottage to which he clung so closely, and among the well-loved Ashfield hills, where he long continued to show that power.
George Parsons Lathrop.