In the spring of 1864, the battery to which I belonged mutinied—in an entirely proper and soldierlike way. Longstreet had returned, and the Army of Northern Virginia was about to encounter Grant in the most stupendous campaign of the war. We were old soldiers, and we knew what was coming. But as we had no horses to draw our guns, and as the quartermaster's department seemed unable to find horses for us, we were omitted from the orders for the advance into the region of the Wilderness, where the fighting was obviously to begin. We were ordered to Cobham Station, a charming region of verdure-clad hills and brawling streams, where there was no soldiers' work to do and no prospect of anything less ignoble than provost duty.
Against this we revolted, respectfully and loyally. We sent in a protest and petition asking that if horses could not be furnished for our guns, we should be armed with Enfield rifles and permitted to march with our battalion as a sharpshooting support.
The request was granted and from the Wilderness toPetersburg we marched and fought and starved right gallantly, usually managing to have a place between the guns at the points of hottest contest in every action of the campaign.
At Petersburg we found artillery work of a new kind to do. No sooner were the conditions of siege established than our battery, because of its irregularly armed condition, was chosen to work the mortars which then for the first time became a part of the offensive and defensive equipment of the Army of Northern Virginia.
All the fragments of batteries whose ranks had been broken up and whose officers had been killed, wounded, or captured during that campaign of tremendous fighting, were assigned to us for mortar service, so that our numbers were swelled to 250 or 300 men. The number was fluctuating from day to day, as the monotonous murder of siege operations daily depleted our ranks on the one hand while almost daily there were additions made of men from disintegrated commands.
I have no purpose here to write a history of that eight months of siege, during which we were never for one moment out of fire by night or by day, but there is one story that arose out of it which I have a mind to tell.
I had been placed in command of an independent mortar fort, taking my orders directly from General E. P. Alexander—Longstreet's chief of artillery—and reporting to nobody else.
Infantry officers from the lines in front—colonels and such—used sometimes to come to my little row of gun-pits and give me orders in utter ignorance of the conditions and limitations of mortar firing. The orders were not binding upon me and, under General Alexander's instructions, I paid no heed to them, wherefore I was often in a state of friction with the intermeddlers. After alittle I discovered a short and easy method of dealing with them. There was a Federal fort known to us as the Railroad Iron Battery, whose commanding officer seemed a person very fond of using his guns in an offensive way. He had both mortars and rifled field guns, and with all of them he soon got my range so accurately that all his rifle shells cut my parapet at the moment of exploding, and all his mortar shells fell among my pits with extraordinary precision. In order to preserve the lives of my men I had to take my stand on top of the mound over my magazine whenever he began bombarding me. From that point I watched the course of his mortar shells, and when one of them seemed destined to fall into one of my little gun-pits, I called out the number of the pit and the men in it ran into their bomb-proof till the explosion was over.
In dealing with the annoyance of intruding infantry officers, I took advantage of the Railroad Iron Battery's extraordinary readiness to respond to the smallest attention at my hands. A shell or two hurled in that direction always brought on a condition of things which prompted all visitors to my pits to retreat to a covered way and hasten to keep suddenly remembered engagements on their own lines.
Gloaming Visitors
Once my little ruse did not produce the intended effect. It was after sunset of a day late in August. Two officers came out of the gloaming and saluted me politely. They were in fatigue uniforms. That is to say, they wore the light blue trousers that were common to both armies, and white duck fatigue jackets that bore no insignia of rank upon their collars.
At the moment I was slowly bombarding something—I forget what or why—but I remember that I was getting no response. Presently one of my visitors said:
"You seem to be having the shelling all to yourself."
I resented the remark, thinking it a criticism.
"We'll see," I said. Then turning to my brother, who was my second in command, I quietly gave the order:
"Touch up the Railroad Iron Battery, Joe."
Thirty seconds later the storm was in full fury about us, but my visitors did not seem to mind it. Instead of retiring to the covered way, they nonchalantly stood there by my side on the mound of the magazine. Every now and then, between explosions, one of them would ask a question as to the geography of the lines to our right and left.
"What battery is that over there?"
"What is the Federal work that lies in front of it?"
"What is the lay of the land," etc., etc.
Obviously they were officers new to this part of our line and as they offered no criticism upon the work of my guns, and gave me no orders, I put aside the antagonism I had felt, and in all good-fellowship explained the military geography of the region round about.
Meanwhile, Joe had quietly stopped the fire on the Railroad Iron Battery, and little by little that work ceased its activity. Finally my visitors politely bade me good evening and took their leave.
I asked Joe who they were, but he did not know. I inquired of others, but nobody knew. Next morning I asked at General Gracie's headquarters what new troops had been brought to that part of the line, and learned that there had been no changes. There and at General Bushrod Johnson's headquarters I minutely described my visitors, but nobody knew anything about them, and after a few days of futile conjecture I ceased to think of them or their visit.
In July, 1865, the war being over, I took passage on the steamer "Lady Gay," bound from Cairo to New Orleans. There were no women on board, but there wasa passenger list of thirty men or so. Some of us were ex-Confederates and some had been Federal soldiers.
The Outcome of a Strange Story
The two groups did not mingle. The members of each were polite upon accidental occasion to the members of the other, but they did not fraternize, at least for a time—till something happened.
I was talking one morning with some of my party when suddenly a man from the other group approached as if listening to my voice. Presently he asked:
"Didn't you command a mortar fort at Petersburg?"
I answered that I did, whereupon he asked:
"Do you remember——" and proceeded to outline the incident related above.
"Yes," I answered in astonishment, "but how do you happen to know anything about it?"
"I was one of your visitors on that occasion. I thought I couldn't be mistaken in the voice that commanded, 'Touch up the Railroad Iron Battery, Joe.'"
"But I don't understand. You were a Federal officer, were you not?"
"Yes."
"Then what were you doing there?"
"That is precisely what my friend and I were trying to find out, while you kept us for two hours under a fire of hell from our own batteries."
Then he explained:
"You remember that to the left of your position, half a mile or so away, there lay a swamp. It was utterly impassable when the lines were drawn, and both sides neglected it in throwing up the breastworks. Well, that swamp slowly dried up during the summer, and it left something like a gap in both lines, but the gap was so well covered by the batteries on both sides that neither bothered to extend earthworks across it. My friend and I were in charge of pickets and rifle-pits that day, andwe went out to inspect them. Somehow—I don't know how—we got lost on the swamplands, and, losing our bearings, we found ourselves presently within the Confederate lines. To say that we were embarrassed is to put it mildly. We were scared. We didn't know how to get back, and we couldn't even surrender for the reason that we were not in uniform but in fatigue dress, and therefore technically, at least, in disguise. There was nothing about us to show to which army we belonged. As an old soldier, you know what that meant. If we had given ourselves up we should have been hanged as spies caught in disguise within your lines. In our desperate strait we went to you and stood there for an hour or two under the worst fire we ever endured, while we extracted from you the geographical information that enabled us to make our way back to our own lines under cover of darkness."
At that point he grasped my hand warmly and said:
"Tell me, how is Joe? I hope he is 'touching up' something that responds as readily as the Railroad Iron Battery did that evening."
From that hour until we reached New Orleans, four days later, there was no barrier between the two groups of passengers. We fraternized completely. We told stories of our several war experiences that had no touch or trace of antagonism in them.
Incidentally, we exhausted the steamer "Lady Gay's" supplies of champagne and cigars, and when we reached New Orleans we had a dinner together at the St. Charles hotel, no observer of which would have suspected that a few months before we had been doing our best to slaughter each other.
The Beginning of Newspaper Life
Let me pass hurriedly over the years that immediately followed the end of the war. I went West in search of a living. In Cairo, Illinois, I became counsel and attorney "at law and in fact," for a great banking, mining, steamboating, and mercantile firm, whose widely extending interests covered the whole West and South.
The work was uncongenial and by way of escaping from it, after I had married, I removed to Mississippi and undertook the practice of law there.
That work proved still less to my liking and in the summer of 1870 I abandoned it in the profoundest disgust.
With a wife, one child, a little household furniture, and no money at all, I removed to New York and secured work as a reporter on the BrooklynUnion, an afternoon newspaper.
I knew nothing of the business, art, or mystery of newspaper making, and I knew nothing of the city. I find it difficult to imagine a man less well equipped for my new undertaking than I was. But I had an abounding confidence in my ability to learn anything I wanted to learn, and I thought I knew how to express myself lucidly in writing. For the rest I had tireless energy and a good deal of courage of the kind that is sometimes slangily called "cheek." This was made manifest on the first day of my service by the fact that while waiting for a petty news assignment I wrote an editorial article and sent it in to Theodore Tilton, the editor, for use. I had an impulse of general helpfulness which was left unrestrained by my utter ignorance of the distinctions and dignities of a newspaper office. I had a thought which seemed to me to deserve editorial utterance, and with themistaken idea that I was expected to render all the aid I could in the making of the newspaper, I wrote what I had to say.
Theodore Tilton was a man of very hospitable mind, and he cared little for traditions. He read my article, approved it, and printed it as a leader. Better still, he sent for me and asked me what experience I had had as a newspaper man. I told him I had had none, whereupon he said encouragingly:
"Oh well, it doesn't matter much. I'll have you on the editorial staff soon. In the meantime, learn all you can about the city, and especially about the shams and falsities of its 'Society' with a big 'S.' Study state politics, and equip yourself to comment critically upon such things. And whenever you have an editorial in your mind write it and send it to me."
TheUnionhad been purchased by Mr. Henry C. Bowen, the owner of the New YorkIndependent, then the most widely influential periodical of its class in America. Theodore Tilton was the editor of both.
An Old School Man of Letters
Theodore Tilton was at the crest of the wave of success at that time, and he took himself and his genius very seriously. Concerning him I shall write more fully a little later on. At present I wish to say only that with all his self-appreciation he had a keen appreciation of other men's abilities, and he sought in every way he could to make them tributary to his own success in whatever he undertook. To that end he had engaged some strong men and women as members of his staff on theUnion, and among these the most interesting to me was Charles F. Briggs, the "Harry Franco" of an earlier literary time, the associate and partner of Edgar Allan Poe on theBroadway Journal, the personal friend or enemy of every literary man of consequence in his time, the associate of George William Curtis and Parke Godwin in the conductofPutnam's Monthly; the coadjutor of Henry J. Raymond on theTimes, the novelist to whom Lowell dedicated "The Fable for Critics," and whose personal and literary characteristics Lowell set forth with singular aptitude in that poem. In brief, he was in his own person a representative and embodiment of the literary life of what I had always regarded as the golden age of American letters. He talked familiarly of writers who had been to me cloud-haloed demigods, and made men of them to my apprehension.
Let me add that though the literary life of which he had been a part was a turbulent one, beset by jealousies and vexed by quarrels of a bitter personal character, such as would be impossible among men of letters in our time of more gracious manners, I never knew him to say an unjust thing about any of the men he had known, or to withhold a just measure of appreciation from the work of those with whom he had most bitterly quarreled.
Perhaps no man among Poe's contemporaries had juster reason to feel bitterness toward the poet's memory than had Mr. Briggs. Yet during my intimacy with him, extending over many years, I never heard him say an unkind word of Poe. On the other hand, I never knew him to fail to contradict upon occasion and in his dogmatic fashion—which was somehow very convincing—any of the prevalent misapprehensions as to Poe's character and life which might be mentioned in his presence.
It was not that he was a meekly forgiving person, for he was, on the contrary, pugnacious in an unusual degree. But the dominant quality of his character was a love of truth and justice. Concerning Poe and the supposed immorality of his life, he once said to me, in words that I am sure I remember accurately because of the impression they made on my mind:
"He was not immoral at all in his personal life or in his work. He was merelyunmoral. He had no perception of the difference between right and wrong in the moral sense of those words. His conscience was altogether artistic. If you had told him you had killed a man who stood annoyingly in the way of your purposes, he would have thought none the worse of you for it. He would have reflected that the man ought not to have put himself in your way. But if you had been guilty of putting forth a false quantity in verse, he would have held you to be a monster for whom no conceivable punishment could be adequate."
Often Mr. Briggs's brusquerie and pugnacity were exaggerated, or even altogether assumed by way of hiding a sentiment too tender to be exhibited. Still more frequently the harshest things he said to his friends—and they were sometimes very bitter—were prompted, not by his displeasure with those who were their victims, but by some other cause of "disgruntlement." On such occasions he would repent him of his fault, and would make amends, but never in any ordinary way or after a fashion that anybody else would have chosen.
One morning he came into the editorial room which he and I jointly occupied. I bade him good-morning as usual, but he made no reply. After a little while he turned upon me with some bitter, stinging utterance which, if it had come from a younger man, I should have hotly resented. Coming from a man of his age and distinction, I resented it only by turning to my desk and maintaining silence during the entire morning. When his work was done, he left the office without a word, leaving me to feel that he meant the break between us—the cause of which I did not at all understand—to be permanent, as I certainly intended that it should. But when he entered the room next morning he stood still in the middle of thefloor, facing my back, for I had not turned my face away from my desk.
Mr. Briggs Explains
"Good-morning!" he said. "Are you ready to apologize to me?"
I turned toward him with an involuntary smile at the absurdity of the suggestion, and answered:
"I don't know what I should apologize for, Mr. Briggs."
"Neither do I," he answered. "My question was prompted by curiosity. It usually happens that apologies come from the person offended, you know. Are you going to write on this affair in the Senate, or shall I take it up?"
From that moment his manner was what it always had been during our association. Beyond what he had said he made no reference to the matter, but after our work was finished he, in fact, explained his temper of the day before, while carefully avoiding every suggestion that he meant to explain it or that there was any connection between the explanation and the thing explained.
"What do you think of servants?" he asked abruptly. I made some answer, though I did not understand the reason for his question or its occasion.
"When I was in the Custom House," he resumed, "I had an opportunity to buy, far below the usual price, some of the finest wines and brandies ever imported. I bought some Madeira, some sherry, and some brandy—ten gallons of each, in five-gallon demijohns—and laid them away in my cellar, thinking the stock sufficient to last me as long as I lived. I rejoiced in the certainty that however poor I might become, I should always be able to offer a friend a glass of something really worthy of a gentleman's attention. Night before last I asked my daughter to replenish a decanter of sherry which had run low. She went to the cellar and presently returned with a look onher face that made me think she had seen a burglar. She reported that there wasn't a drop of anything left in any of the demijohns. I sent for some detectives, and before morning they solved the riddle. A servant girl who had resigned from our service a week or two before had carried all the wine and brandy—two bottlefuls at a time—to a miserable, disreputable gin mill, and sold it for what the thievish proprietor saw fit to give. When I learned the facts I lost my temper, which was a very unprofitable thing to do. I'm late," looking at his watch, "and must be off."
Mr. Briggs had a keen sense of humor, which he tried hard to disguise with a shaggy seeming of dogmatic positiveness. He would say his most humorous things in the tone and with the manner of a man determined to make himself as disagreeable as possible.
I sat with him at a public dinner one evening. He took the wines with the successive courses, but when later some one, on the other side of the table, lifted his glass of champagne and asked Mr. Briggs to drink with him, he excused himself for taking carbonic water instead of the wine, by saying:
"I'm a rigid 'temperance' man."
When we all smiled and glanced at the red and white wine glasses he had emptied in the course of the meal, he turned upon us savagely, saying:
"You smile derisively, but I repeat my assertion that I'm a strict 'temperance' man; I never take a drink unless I want it."
He paused, and then added:
"Temperance consists solely in never taking a drink unless you want it. Intemperance consists in taking drinks when some other fellow wants them."
Mr. Briggs's Generosity
He was peculiarly generous of encouragement to younger men, when he thought they deserved it. I mayadd that he was equally generous of rebuke under circumstances of an opposite kind. I had entered journalism without knowing the least thing about the profession, or trade—if that be the fitter name for it, as I sometimes think it is—and I had not been engaged in the work long enough to get over my modesty, when one day I wrote a paragraph of a score or two lines to correct an error into which the New YorkTribunehad that morning fallen. Not long before that time a certain swashbuckler, E. M. Yerger, of Jackson, Mississippi, had committed a homicide in the nature of a political assassination. The crime and the assassin's acquittal by reason of political influence had greatly excited the indignation of the entire North.
There lived at the same time in Memphis another and a very different E. M. Yerger, a judge whose learning, uprightness, and high personal character had made him deservedly one of the best loved and most honored jurists in the Southwest. At the time of which I now write, this Judge E. M. Yerger had died, and his funeral had been an extraordinary manifestation of popular esteem, affection, and profound sorrow.
TheTribune, misled by the identity of their names, had confounded the two men, and had that morning "improved the occasion" to hurl a deal of editorial thunder at the Southern people for thus honoring a fire-eating assassin.
By way of correcting the error I wrote and printed an editorial paragraph, setting forth the facts simply, and making no comments.
When Mr. Briggs next entered the office he took my hand warmly in both his own, and said:
"I congratulate you. That paragraph of yours was the best editorial theUnionhas printed since I've been on the paper."
"Why, Mr. Briggs," I protested, "it was only a paragraph——"
"What of that?" he demanded in his most quarrelsome tone. "The Lord's Prayer is only a paragraph in comparison with some of the 'graces' I've heard distinguished clergymen get off at banquets by way of impressing their eloquence upon the oysters that were growing warm under the gaslights, while they solemnly prated."
"But there was nothing in the paragraph," I argued; "it only corrected an error."
"Why, sir, do you presume to tell me what is and what isn't in an article that I've read for myself? You're a novice, a greenhorn in this business. Don't undertake to instruct my judgment, sir. That paragraph was excellent editorial writing, because it corrected an error that did a great injustice; because it gave important and interesting information; because it set forth facts of public import not known to our readers generally, and finally, because you put that final period just where it belonged. Don't contradict me. Don't presume to argue the matter. I won't stand it."
With that he left the room as abruptly as he had entered it, and with the manner of a man who has quarreled and has put his antagonist down. I smilingly recalled the lines in which Lowell so aptly described and characterized him in "A Fable for Critics":
"There comes Harry Franco, and as he draws near,You find that's a smile which you took for a sneer;One half of him contradicts t'other; his wontIs to say very sharp things and do very blunt;His manner's as hard as his feelings are tender,And asortiehe'll make when he means to surrender;He's in joke half the time when he seems to be sternest,When he seems to be joking be sure he's in earnest;He has common sense in a way that's uncommon,Hates humbug and cant, loves his friends like a woman,Builds his dislikes of cards and his friendships of oak,Loves a prejudice better than aught but a joke;Is half upright Quaker, half downright Come-Outer,Loves Freedom too well to go stark mad about her;Quite artless himself, is a lover of Art,Shuts you out of his secrets and into his heart,And though not a poet, yet all must admireIn his letters of Pinto his skill on the liar."
"There comes Harry Franco, and as he draws near,You find that's a smile which you took for a sneer;One half of him contradicts t'other; his wontIs to say very sharp things and do very blunt;His manner's as hard as his feelings are tender,And asortiehe'll make when he means to surrender;He's in joke half the time when he seems to be sternest,When he seems to be joking be sure he's in earnest;
"There comes Harry Franco, and as he draws near,
You find that's a smile which you took for a sneer;
One half of him contradicts t'other; his wont
Is to say very sharp things and do very blunt;
His manner's as hard as his feelings are tender,
And asortiehe'll make when he means to surrender;
He's in joke half the time when he seems to be sternest,
When he seems to be joking be sure he's in earnest;
He has common sense in a way that's uncommon,Hates humbug and cant, loves his friends like a woman,Builds his dislikes of cards and his friendships of oak,Loves a prejudice better than aught but a joke;Is half upright Quaker, half downright Come-Outer,Loves Freedom too well to go stark mad about her;Quite artless himself, is a lover of Art,Shuts you out of his secrets and into his heart,And though not a poet, yet all must admireIn his letters of Pinto his skill on the liar."
He has common sense in a way that's uncommon,
Hates humbug and cant, loves his friends like a woman,
Builds his dislikes of cards and his friendships of oak,
Loves a prejudice better than aught but a joke;
Is half upright Quaker, half downright Come-Outer,
Loves Freedom too well to go stark mad about her;
Quite artless himself, is a lover of Art,
Shuts you out of his secrets and into his heart,
And though not a poet, yet all must admire
In his letters of Pinto his skill on the liar."
Theodore Tilton
When I first knew Theodore Tilton as my editor-in-chief, on theUnion, he was in his thirty-fifth year. His extraordinary gifts as an effective writer and speaker had won for him, even at that early age, a country-wide reputation. He was a recognized force in the thought and life of the time, and he had full possession of the tools he needed for his work. TheIndependentexercised an influence upon the thought and life of the American people such as no periodical publication of its class exercises in this later time of cheap paper, cheap illustrations, and multitudinous magazines. Its circulation of more than three hundred thousand exceeded that of all the other publications of its class combined, and, more important still, it was spread all over the country, from Maine to California. The utterances of theIndependentwere determinative of popular thought and conviction in an extraordinary degree.
Theodore Tilton had absolute control of that great engine of influence, with an editorial staff of unusually able men for his assistants, and with a corps of contributors that included practically all the most desirable men and women writers of the time.
In addition to all this, it was the golden age of the lecture system, and next to Mr. Beecher, Tilton was perhaps the most widely popular of the lecturers.
In the midst of such a career, and possessed of such influence over the minds of men, at the age of thirty-five, it is no wonder that he had a good conceit of himself, and it was to his credit that he manifested that conceit only in inoffensive ways. He was never arrogant, dogmatic, or overbearing in conversation. His courtesy was unfailing, except in strenuous personal controversy, and even there his manner was polite almost to deference, however deadly the thrusts of his sarcastic wit might be. He fought with a rapier always, never with a bludgeon. His refinement of mind determined that.
It was an era of "gush," of phrase making, of superlatives, and in such arts Tilton was peculiarly gifted. In his thinking he was bold to the limit of audacity, and his aptness in clothing his thought in captivating forms of speech added greatly to its effectiveness and his influence.
Radicalism was rampant at that time when the passions aroused by the recent Civil War had not yet begun to cool, and Tilton was a radical of radicals. So extreme was he in his views that during and after the orgies of the Commune and the petroleuses in Paris, he openly espoused their cause, justified their resistance to everything like orderly government, and glorified those of them who suffered death for their crimes, as martyrs to human liberty.
He and I were talking of these things one day, when something that was said prompted me to ask him his views of the great French revolution at the end of the eighteenth century. He quickly replied:
"It was a notable movement in behalf of human liberty; it was overborne by military force at last onlybecause the French people were unworthy of it. Robespierre was an irresolute weakling who didn't cut off heads enough."
Tilton's Characteristics
Added to his other gifts, Tilton had an impressive and attractive personality. Tall, well formed, graceful in every motion, he had a head and face so handsome and so unlike the common as to make him a man to be looked at more than once in every company. His manner accorded with his appearance and emphasized it. It was a gracious combination of deference for others with an exalted self-esteem. There was a certain joyousness in it that was very winning, combined with an insistent but unobtrusive self-assertion which impressed without offending.
His wit was always at his command, for offense or for defense, or for mere entertainment. I remember that in my first association with him I had a sort of fear at each moment that he would knock me down the next with an epigram. I have seen him do that repeatedly with men with whom he was at the time in deadly controversy, but in my own case the fear of it was soon banished by the uniform kindliness with which he treated me, and the personal affection with which he seemed to regard me.
I have often wondered over his attitude toward me. I was an ex-rebel soldier, and in 1870 he was still mercilessly at war with Southern men and Southern ideas. My opinions on many subjects were the exact opposite of his own, and I was young enough then to be insistent in the expression of my opinions, especially in conversation with one to whom I knew my views to beAnathema Maranatha.
Yet from the first hour of our meeting Theodore Tilton was always courteous and genial toward me, and after our acquaintance had ripened a bit, he became cordial and even enthusiastic in his friendship.
It was his habit to rise very early, drink a small cup of coffee and, without other breakfast, walk down to the office of theUnion. There he wrote his editorials, marked out the day's work for his subordinates, and received such callers as might come, after which he would walk home and take his breakfast at noon. His afternoons were spent in the doing of another day's work in theIndependentoffice. After our acquaintance ripened into friendship, he used to insist upon my going with him to his midday breakfast, whenever my own work in any wise permitted. As I also was apt to be early at the office, I was usually able to accept his breakfast invitations, so that we had an hour's uninterrupted intercourse almost every day. And unlike other editorial chiefs with whom I have had intimate social relations in their own homes, Mr. Tilton never thrust editorial or other business matters into the conversation on these occasions. Indeed, he did not permit the smallest reference to such subjects. If by accident such things obtruded, he put them aside as impertinent to the time and place. It was not that he thought less or cared less for matters of such import than other great editors do, but rather that he had a well-ordered mind that instinctively shrank from confusion. When engaged with editorial problems, he gave his whole attention to their careful consideration and wise solution. When engaged in social intercourse he put all else utterly out of his mind.
I cannot help thinking that his method as to that was a wiser one than that of some others I have known, who carried the problems and perplexities of their editorial work with them into their parlors, to their dinner tables, and even to bed. Certainly it was a method more agreeable to his associates and guests.
The Swarm of Gadflies
At that time Tilton was "swimming on a sea of glory." His popularity was at its height, with an apparently assured prospect of lasting fame to follow. His work so far had necessarily been of an ephemeral sort—dealing with passing subjects in a passing way—but he had all the while been planning work of a more permanent character, and diligently preparing himself for its doing. One day, in more confidential mood than usual, he spoke to me of this and briefly outlined a part at least of what he had planned to do. But there was a note of the past tense in what he said, as if the hope and purpose he had cherished were passing away. It was the first intimation I had of the fact that those troubles were upon him which later made an end of his career and sent him into a saddened exile which endured till the end of his ruined life.
At that time I knew nothing and he told me nothing of the nature of his great trouble, and I regarded his despondency as nothing more than weariness over the petty annoyances inflicted upon him by some who were jealous of his success and popularity.
With some of these things I was familiar. His growing liberality of thought in religious matters, and the absence of asceticism from his life, had brought a swarm of gadflies round his head, whose stings annoyed him, even if they inflicted no serious hurt. He was constantly quizzed and criticised, orally, by personal letter, and in print, as to his beliefs, his conduct, his tastes, his habits, and even his employment of terms, quite as if he had been a woman or a clergyman responsible to his critics and subject to their censure. He maintained an appearance of good temper under all this carping—most of which was clearly inspired by "envy, malice, and alluncharitableness"—but, as I had reason to know, it stung him sorely. He said to me one day:
"It isn't the criticism that annoys me so much as the fact that I am supposed to be answerable in such small ways to the bellowings of Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart. I seem not to be regarded as a free man, as other men are."
I reminded him that something of that kind was the penalty that genius and popularity were usually required to pay for their privileges. I illustrated my thought by adding:
"If Byron had not waked up one morning and found himself famous, he would never have been hounded out of his native land by what Macaulay calls British morality in one of its periodic spasms of virtue, and if Poe had never written 'The Raven,' 'The Bells,' and 'Annabel Lee,' nobody would ever have bothered to inquire about his drinking habits."
I strongly urged him to ignore the criticism which was only encouraged by his replies to it. But in that he was not amenable to counsel, partly because his over-sensitive nature was more severely stung by such criticism than that of a better balanced man would have been, but still more, I think, because his passion for epigrammatic reply could not resist the temptation of opportunity which these things presented. Often his replies were effective for the moment, by reason of their wit or their sparkling audacity, but incidentally they enlarged the circle of persons offended.
Thus on one occasion, when he was challenged in print by an adversary, to say that he did not drink wine, he replied in print:
"Mr. Tilton does drink wine upon sacramental and other proper occasions."
His readers smiled at the smartness of the utterance,but many of the more sensitive among them were deeply aggrieved by what they regarded as its well-nigh blasphemous character.
The Fulton Controversy
I was myself present at one of his most perplexing conferences concerning these matters, not as a participant in the discussion, but as a friendly witness.
The quarrel—for it had developed into the proportions of a quarrel—was with the Rev. Dr. Fulton, who at that time occupied a large place in public attention—as a preacher of great eloquence, his friends said, as a reckless sensationalist and self-advertiser, his enemies contended.
He had accused Tilton of drinking wine, and had publicly criticised him for it, with great severity. Tilton had replied in an equally public way, with the statement that on a certain occasion which he named, he and Dr. Fulton had walked up street together after a public meeting; that at Dr. Fulton's suggestion they had gone into a saloon where between them they had drunk a considerable number of glasses of beer (he gave the number, but I forget what it was), adding: "Of which I did not drink the major part."
Dr. Fulton was furiously angry, of course, and demanded an interview. Tilton calmly invited him to call at his editorial room in theUnionoffice. He came at the appointed time, bringing with him the Rev. Dr. Armitage and two other persons of prominence. I do not now remember who they were. Tilton at once sent me a message asking me to come to his room. When I entered he introduced me to his visitors and then said:
"Mr. Eggleston, Dr. Fulton has called to discuss with me certain matters of personal import. The discussion may result in some issues of veracity—discussions with Dr. Fulton often do. It is in view of that possibility, I suppose," smiling and bowing to Dr. Fulton, who sat stiff in his chair making no response by word or act, "thatDr. Fulton has brought with him Dr. Armitage and these other gentlemen, as witnesses to whatever may be said between us. I have the profoundest respect, and even reverence for those gentlemen, but it seems to me proper that I should have at least one witness of my own selection present also. I have therefore sent for you."
Instantly Dr. Fulton was on his feet protesting. In a loud voice and with excited gesticulations, he declared that he would not be drawn into a trap—that he would abandon the purpose of his visit rather than discuss the matters at issue with one of Tilton's reporters present to misrepresent and ridicule him in print.
Tilton, who never lost his self-possession, waited calmly till the protest was fully made. Then he said:
"I have no reporter present. Mr. Eggleston was promoted a week ago to the editorial writing staff of the paper. He will report nothing. You, Dr. Fulton, have brought with you three friends who are of your own selection, to hear the discussion between us. I claim the right to have one friend of my own present also. It is solely in that capacity that I have asked Mr. Eggleston to be present."
"But I will not discuss confidential matters in the presence of any newspaper man," protested Dr. Fulton.
"Then in my turn," said Tilton, "I must decline to discuss the questions between us, in the presence of any clergyman."
At that point Dr. Armitage and his companions remonstrated with Dr. Fulton, declaring his position to be unreasonable and unfair, and telling him that if he persisted in it, they would at once withdraw.
Fulton yielded, and after an hour's angry sparring on his part and placidly self-possessed sword play of intellect on Tilton's side, Dr. Fulton submitted a proposal of arbitration, to which Tilton assented, with one qualification,namely, that if the finding of the arbitrators was to be published, in print, from the pulpit, or otherwise, he, Tilton, should be privileged to publish also a verbatim report of thetestimonyupon which it was founded.
Dr. Fulton rejected this absolutely, on the ground that he did not want his name to figure in "a newspaper sensation."
Still cool, self-possessed, and sarcastic, Tilton asked:
"Do I correctly understand you to mean, Dr. Fulton, that you shrink from sensationalism?"
"Yes, sir, that is exactly what I mean."
"Quite a new attitude of mind to you, isn't it, Doctor? I fear it will rob your preaching of much of its 'drawing' quality."
Dr. Fulton's advisers urged him to assent to Tilton's proposal as an entirely reasonable one, but he persistently refused, and the conference ended with nothing accomplished.
I know nothing to this day of the merits of the controversy. I have given this account of the meeting called to settle it solely because it serves the purpose of illustrating the methods of the two men.
Later Acquaintance with Tilton
About a year later, or a little less, my editorial connection with theUnionceased, and with it my official association with Mr. Tilton. But he and I lived not far apart in Brooklyn and from then until the great trouble broke—two or three years—I saw much of him, at his home and mine, on the street, and at many places in New York. With the first open manifestation of the great trouble he began consulting with me about it. I gave him a deal of good advice in response to his eagerdemands for counsel. He seemed to appreciate and value it, but as he never acted upon it in the smallest degree, I gradually ceased to give it even when requested.
I have every reason to believe that in the course of these consultations I learned, from him and from all the others directly connected with the terrible affair, the inner and true story of the events that culminated in the great and widely demoralizing scandal. It is a story that has never been told. At the time of the trial both sides were careful to prevent its revelation, and there were certainly most imperative reasons why they should.
I have no purpose to tell that story in these pages. I mention it only because otherwise the abrupt termination of my reminiscences of Mr. Tilton at this point might seem to lack explanation.