We have been lovers now, my dear,It matters nothing to say how long,But still at the coming round o' th' yearI make for my pleasure a little song;And thus of my love I sing, my dear,—So much the more by a year, by a year.And still as I see the day depart,And hear the bat at my window flit,I sing the little song to my heart,With just a change at the close of it;And thus of my love I sing alway,—So much the more by a day, by a day.When in the morning I see the skiesBreaking into a gracious glow,I say you are not my sweetheart's eyes,Your brightness cannot mislead me so;And I sing of my love in the rising light,—So much the more by a night, by a night.Both at the year's sweet dawn and close,When the moon is filling, or fading away,Every day, as it comes and goes,And every hour of every day,My little song I repeat and repeat,—So much the more by an hour, my sweet!
We have been lovers now, my dear,It matters nothing to say how long,But still at the coming round o' th' yearI make for my pleasure a little song;And thus of my love I sing, my dear,—So much the more by a year, by a year.
And still as I see the day depart,And hear the bat at my window flit,I sing the little song to my heart,With just a change at the close of it;And thus of my love I sing alway,—So much the more by a day, by a day.
When in the morning I see the skiesBreaking into a gracious glow,I say you are not my sweetheart's eyes,Your brightness cannot mislead me so;And I sing of my love in the rising light,—So much the more by a night, by a night.
Both at the year's sweet dawn and close,When the moon is filling, or fading away,Every day, as it comes and goes,And every hour of every day,My little song I repeat and repeat,—So much the more by an hour, my sweet!
We entered gayly on our great contest. At the first sound from Sumter, enthusiasm blazed high and bright. Bells rang out, flags waved, the people rose as one man to cheer on our troops, and the practical American nation, surveying itself with astonishment, pronounced itself—finger on pulse—enthusiastic; and though, in the light of the present steadily burning determination, it has been the fashion gently to smile at that quick upspringing blaze, and at the times when it was gravely noted how the privates of our army took daily baths and wore Colt's revolvers, and pet regiments succumbed under showers of Havelocks, in contrast with the grim official reports of to-day, I cannot but think that enthusiasm healthful, and in itself a lesson, if only that it proves beyond question that our patriotism was not simply a dweller on the American tongue, but a thing of the American heart, so vitalizing us, so woven every day into the most minute ramifications of our living, so inner and recognized a part of our thinking, that there have been found some to doubt its existence, just as we half forget the gracious air, because no labored gasps, in place of our sure and even breathing, ever by any chance announce to us that somewhere there have been error and confusion in its vast workings.
Bitterer texts were ready all too soon. When we heard how one had fallen, bayoneted at the guns, and another was struck, charging on the foe, and a third had died after long lingering in hospital,—when we saw our brave boys, whom we had sent out with huzzas, coming back to us with the blood and grime of battle upon them, maimed, ghastly, dying, dead,—we knew that we, whom God had hitherto so blessed that we were compelled to look into the annals of other nations for misery and strife, had now commenced a record of our own. Henceforth there was for us a new literature, new grooves of thought, new interests. By all the love of father, brother, husband, and children, we must learn more of this tragic and tender lore; and our soldiers have been a thought not far from the heart and lips of any one of us, and what is done, or doing, or possible for them, held worthiest of our thought and time.
Respecting these, we have had all to learn. True, with us, satisfaction has at all times followed close upon the announcement of a need; but wisdom in planning and administering is not a marketable commodity, and so we are educating ourselves up to the emergency,—the whole mighty nation at school, and learning, we are bound to say, with Yankee quickness. Love has been for us, also, a marvellous brain-prompter. Some of our grandest charities—I mean charities in the broadest and sweetest sense, for it is we who owe, not our soldiers—have been the inspiration of a moment's need,—thoughts of the people, who, in crises and at instance of the heart, think well and swiftly. Take this one example.
When New England's sons seized their arms, the first to answer the trumpet-call that rang out over the land, and went in the spirit of their fathers to the battle,—when these men passed through Philadelphia, hungry and weary, the great heart of the city went out to meet them. Citizens brought them into their houses, the neighboring shops gave gladly what they could, women came running with food snatched from their own tables, and even little squalid children toddled out of by-lanes and alleys with loaves and half-loaves, all that they had to give, so did the whole people yearn over their defenders; and then it was seen how other regiments would come to them, ready for the fray, but dusty and way-worn, and how the ambulances would bring them back parched and fainting, and—it was hardly known how, only that, as in the old times, "the people were of one mind and one accord," and brought of such things as they had; but on that sad, yet proud day, that brought back to them those who fell in Baltimore on the memorable nineteenth of April,—the heroes in whom all claim a share, and the right to say, not only Massachusetts's dead and wounded, but ours—there was ready for them a shelter in the unpretending building famous since as the Cooper Shop. There the people crowded about them, weeping, blessing, consoling; and from that day there has no regiment from New England, New York, or any other State, been suffered to pass through Philadelphia unrefreshed. Water was supplied them, and tables ready spread, by the Volunteer Corps always in attendance, within five minutes after the firing of the gun that announced their arrival. There was shortly added, also, a volunteer hospital for the more dangerously wounded when first brought from the battle-field, and of it is told a story that Americans will like to hear.
It is of a Wisconsin soldier, who, taken prisoner, effected his escape from Richmond. Hiding by day, he forced his way at night through morass and forest, snatched such sleep as he dared on the damp and sodden earth, went without food whole days, reached our lines bruised, torn, shivering, starving, and his wounds, which had never been properly cared for, opened afresh. Let him tell the rest, straight from his heart.
"When I had my rubber blanket to wrap about me, I was comfortable, and, snug and warm in the cars, I thought myself happy; and when I heard them talk of the 'Cooper Shop,' I said to myself, 'A cooper's shop! that will be the very place of all the earth, for there I shall have a roof over me, and the shavings will be so warm and dry to lie upon!' but when they carried me in, and I opened my eyes and saw what was the Cooper Shop, and the long tables all loaded for the poor soldiers, and when they took me to the hospital up-stairs, and placed me in a bed, and real ladies and gentlemen, with tears in their eyes, came and waited on me, my manliness left me."
A want of manliness, O honest heart, for which there need be no shame! Precious tribute to our country's great love for her sons! For this is no sectional charity, only one example culled from thousands; for the land must, of a necessity, be overshadowed by the tree that has a root under almost every Northern hearth-stone; and then see how we are all bound together by the heart-strings!
Forty thousand men-at-arms are looking gravely at the height towering above the valley in which they stand. "Impregnable" military science pronounced it; but the men scaling it know nothing of this word "impregnable." They have heard nothing of an order for retreat,—they are filled with a divine wrath of battle, and each man is as mad as his neighbor, and the officers are powerless to hold them back, and catch the infection and are swept on with them, and climbing, jumping, slipping, toiling on hands and knees, swinging from tree and bush, any way, any how, but always onward, never backward, they surge up over the mountain-top, deadly volleys crashing right in among them, and set on the Rebels with a wild hurrah! and the hearts below beat faster, and rough lips curse the blinding smoke and fog that veil all the crest, and on a sudden a shout,—such a one as the children of Israel gave, when the high-piled walls of water bent and swayed and came waving and thundering down on Pharaoh's hopeless hosts,—for there, high up in heaven, streaming out through parting smoke, is the flag, torn, blood-stained, ball-riddled, but the dear old red, white, and blue, waving over the enemy's works; and then the telegraph flashed out the brave news over the exulting country, and the press took up the story, and women said, with kindling faces, "My son, or my brother, or my husband may be dead, but, oh, our boys have done glorious things at Lookout Mountain!"—and History will tell how a grander charge was never made, and calmly note the loss in dead and wounded,—so many thousands,—and pass on.
But we are not History, and our dead,—well, we will give them graves that shall be ever green with laurels, and their swords shall be our most precious legacy to our children, and their memories shall be a part of our household; but our wounded, for whom there is yet hope, who may yet live,—the cry goes up from Wisconsin, and Maine, and Iowa, and New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Massachusetts, Where are they, and how cared for? We are all, as I said, bound by the heartstrings in a common interest. The Boston woman with her boy in the Army of the Cumberland, and the Maine mother with one in New Orleans or Texas, and the Kansas father with a son in the Army of the Potomac, all clamor, "Is mine among the wounded, and do care and science for him all that care and science should?"
The Field Relief Corps of the Sanitary Commission are prompt on the battle-field, reaching the groaning sufferers even before their own surgeons. Said one man, lying there badly wounded,—
"And what do they pay yez for this? What do you get?"
"Pay! We ask nothing, only the soldier's 'God bless you.'"
"And is that all? Then sure here's plenty of the coin, fresh minted! God bless you! God bless you! and the good Lord be good to you, and remember yez as you have remembered us, and love yez and your children after you; and sure, if that is all, it's plenty of that sort of pay the poor soldier has for you!"
God bless such men! we echo; but after that, what then? Our beloved are taken to the hospitals, and we know, in a general way, that hospitals are buildings containing long rows of beds, and that science is doing its utmost in their behalf; but when our friends write us from across seas, they tell us, not only how they are, but where,—jotting down little pen-and-ink pictures to show us how stands the writing-table, and how hangs the picture, and where is thefauteuil, that we may see them as they are daily; so we crave something more, we feel shut out, we want to get at their daily living, to know something of hospital-life.
Hospitals have sprung up as if sown broadcast, and these, too, of no mean order. True, in our first haste and inexperience, viciously planned hospitals were erected; but these and the Crimean blunders have served us as beacons, and the anxious care of the Government has been untiring, the outlay of money and things more precious unbounded; and those who have had this weighty matter in charge have no reason to fear an account of their stewardship. The Boston Free Hospital in excellence of plan and beauty of design can be excelled by none. Philadelphia boasts the two largest military hospitals in the world. Of the twenty-three in and about Washington many are worthy of all praise. The general hospital at Fort Schuyler is admirable in plan andlocale, and this latter condition is found to be of vast importance. A Rebel battery, with an incurable habit of using the hospital as a target, would scarcely be so dangerous as a low, water-sogged, clayey soil, with its inevitable results of fever, rheumatism, and bowel-complaints.
Spotless cleanliness is another indispensable characteristic,—not only urged, but enforced; for there is no such notable housewife as the Government. The vast "Mower" Hospital at Chestnut Hill, the largest in the world, is as well kept as a lady's boudoir should be. It is built around a square of seven acres, in which stand the surgeon's lecture-room, the chapel, the platform for the band, etc. A long corridor goes about this square, rounded at the corners, and lighted on one side by numerous large windows, which, if removed in summer, must leave it almost wholly open. From the opposite side radiate the sick-wards, fifty in number, one story in height, one hundred and seventy-five feet in length, and twenty feet farther apart at the extremity than at the corridor, thus completely isolating them from each other. A railway runs the length of the corridor, on which small cars convey meals to the mess-rooms attached to each of the wards for those who are unable to leave them, stores, and even the sick themselves; and the corridor, closed in winter and warmed by stoves, forms a huge and airy exercise-hall for the convalescent patients. As for the cooking-facilities, they are something prodigious, at least in the sight of ordinary kitchens, leaving nothing to be desired, unless it were that discriminating kettle of the Erse king, that could cook for any given number of men and apportion the share of each to his rank and needs. Such a kettle might make the "extra-diet" kitchen unnecessary; otherwise, I can hardly tell where improvement would be possible.
But though, with the exception of the West Philadelphia, none can compare in hugeness with this Skrymir of hospitals, the hospital-buildings, as a rule, have everywhere a strong family-likeness. The pavilion-system, which isolates each of the sick-wards, allowing it free circulation of air about three of its sides, is conceded to be the only one worthy of attention, and is introduced in all such buildings of modern date. Ridge-ventilation, obtained by means of openings on either side of the ridge, is also very generally used, and advocated even in permanent hospitals of stone and brick. Science and Common Sense at last have fraternized, and work together hand in hand. The good old-fashioned plan of slowly stewing the patient to death, or at least to a fever, in confined air and stale odors, equal parts, is almost abandoned; and to speak after the manner of Charles Reade, "Nature gets now a pat on the back, instead of a kick under the bed." Proper ventilation begins, ends, and forms the gist of almost every chapter in our hospital-manuals; and I think they should be excellent summer-reading, for a pleasant breeze seems to rustle every page, so earnestly is, first, pure air, second, pure air, and third, pure air, impressed upon the student, "line upon line and precept upon precept."
The Mower Hospital, which employs ten hundred and fifty gas-burners, uses daily one hundred and fifty thousand gallons of water, and can receive between five and six thousand patients, is free even from a suspicion of the "hospital-smell." The Campbell and Harewood, at Washington, are models in this respect, and can rank with many a handsome drawing-room. The last-named institution is also delightfully situated on grounds once belonging to the Rebel Corcoran, comprising some two hundred acres, laid out with shaded walks, and adorned with rustic bridges and summer-houses,—a fashion of deriving aid and comfort from the enemy which doesn't come under the head of treason.
On hygienic grounds, all possible traps are set to catch sunbeams. One hospital has a theatre in the mess-room, of which the scenery is painted by a convalescent, and the stage, foot-lights, etc., are the work of the soldiers. The performers are amateurs, taken from among the patients; and the poor fellows who can be moved, but are unable to walk, are carried down in the dumb-waiter to share in the entertainment. Another has a library, reading-room, and a printing-press, which strikes off a weekly newspaper, in which are a serial story, poetry, and many profound and moral reflections. The men play cards and backgammon, read, write, smoke, and tell marvellous stories, commencing, "It wasn't fairly day, and we were hardly wide enough awake to tell a tree-stump from a gray coat,"—or, "When we saw them coming, we first formed in square, corner towards them you know, and waited till they were close on us, and then, Sir, we opened and gave them our cannon, grape-shot, right slap into them,"—or good-humoredly rally each other, as in the case of that unlucky regiment perfectly cut up in its first battle, and known as "six-weeks' soldiers and six-months' hospital-men."
But these are mere surface-facts. Hospital-life is woven in a different pattern from our own, the shades deeper, the gold brighter, and we find in it very much of heroism in plain colors, and self-sacrifice of rough texture.
One poor fellow, yet dim-eyed and faint from long battling for his ebbing life, will motion away the offered delicacy, pointing to some other bed:—"Give it to him; he needs it more than I"; or sometimes, if money is offered, "I have just been paid off; let that man have it; he has nothing." Then some of the convalescents furnish our best and tenderest nurses. A soldier was brought from Richmond badly wounded in the leg. While in the prison his wounds had received no attention, and he was in such enfeebled condition, that, when amputation became inevitable, it was feared he would die of the operation. Hardly breathing, made over apparently unto death, one of these soldier-nurses took him in charge, for five days and nights kept close by his bed, scarcely leaving him an instant, watching his faltering, flickering breath, as his mother might have done, wresting him by force of vigilance and tenderest care from the very clutch of the Destroyer, rejoicing over his recovery as for that of a dear and only brother. Another, likewise brought from Richmond, won the pity of a lady, a chance visitor. She came to him every day, a distance of five miles, washed his wounds, dressed them, nursed him back into the confines of life, obtained for him a furlough, took him to her own house to complete the cure, and sent him back to his regiment—well.
Over a third, a ruddy-faced New-England boy hardly yet into manhood, hung the shadow of death, and quivering lips and swimming eyes—for they come, there, to love our poor boys most tenderly—had spoken his death-warrant. He was silent a moment. Even a brave soul stops and catches breath, at the unexpected nearness of the Great Revelation; then he asked to be baptized,—"because his mother was a Christian, and he had promised her, if he died, and not on battle-field, to have this rite performed, that she might know that he shared this Holy Faith with her, and was not forgetful of her wishes"; and so he was baptized, and died.
There are cheerier phases. Side by side lay a New-Yorker, a Pennsylvanian, and a Scotch boy, all terribly wounded. By the by, it is a curious fact that there are few sabre-wounds, and almost literally none from the bayonet; the work of destruction being, in almost all cases, that of the rending Minié ball. The fathers of the New-Yorker and Pennsylvanian had just visited them, and they were chatting cheerily of their homes. The Scotch boy, who had lost a leg, looked up, brightly smiling also.
"My mother will be here on Wednesday, from Scotland. When she knew that I had enlisted, she sent me word that I had done well to take up arms for a country that had been so good to me; and when she heard that I was wounded, she wrote that she should take the next steamer for the United States."
And, as might have been expected from such a woman, on Wednesday shewasby his bedside, redeeming her word to the very day.
Sometimes the men grumble a little. One poor fellow, with a bullet through his lungs, took high and strong ground against the meat:—"Oh! God love ye! how could a body eat it, swimming in fat? but the eggs, they was beautiful; and the toast is good; ye'll send me some of that for me supper?" But as a rule they are cheery and contented, grow strongly attached to their nurses and the visitors, and, when back in camp, write letters of fond remembrance to their hospital-homes.
No one has ever suspected ledgers of a latent angelic principle,—and yet, if unpaid benevolence, consolation poured on wounded hearts, hope given to despair, and help to poverty and misery, have in them anything heavenly, then have our soldiers a guardian angel in the Hospital Directory. There has been a battle, and three or four days of maddening suspense, and then the cold, hopeless newspaper-list; and your son, mother, who played about your knee only a little time ago, and went out in his youthful pride to battle, is there, wounded,—or your lover, girl, who has taught you the deeper meaning of a woman's life,—or your husband, sad woman, whose children stand at your knee scared by your tears.
"The regiment stood like a rock against the enemy's furious onset, and its blood-stained colors are forever glorious"; but it went out nine hundred strong, and it comes back with two hundred, and what do you care now for laurel-wreaths? He is not with them. There are railroads,—you can near the battle-field, but you cannot reach it; you can inquire, but the officers must care for the living,—"let the dead bury their dead"; and while you are frantically asking and searching, he is dying, suffering, calling for you; and then you find that the Hospital Directory has trace of him, and the kindly, patient members of the Sanitary Commission are ready with time, and money, if needed, to put you on it; and if ever you have had that horror of uncertainty strong upon you, you will not think that I have strained the language, when I call this most pitiful and Christian charity a guardian angel. Hear the inquiries:—"By the love you bear your own mother, tell me where my boy is! only give me some tidings!" "I pray you, tell me of these two nephews for whom I am seeking: I have had fourteen nephews in the service, and these two are the only ones left." Words like these put soul and meaning into the following statistics, given by Mr. Brown, Superintendent of the Hospital Directory at Washington.
"The Washington Bureau of the Hospital Directory of the United States Sanitary Commission was opened to the public on the twenty-seventh of November, 1862. In the month of December following I was ordered to Louisville, Ky., to organize a Directory Bureau for the Western Department of the Sanitary Commission, and in January ended my labor in that department. Returning to Washington, and thence proceeding to Philadelphia and New York upon the same duty performed at the West, I completed the entire organization of the four bureaus by the fifth of March, 1863. Since the first of June, at these several bureaus, the returns from every United States General Hospital of the army, 233 in number, have been regularly received.
"The total number of names on record is 513,437. The total number of inquiries for information has been 12,884, and the number of successful answers rendered 9,203, being seventy-two per cent. on the number received. The remaining twenty-eight per cent., of whom no information could be obtained, are of those who perished in the Peninsula campaign, before Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, etc."
In the Sanitary Commission, mentioned here, our soldiers have yet another friend, for whom even our copious Anglo-Saxon can find no word of description at once strong, wise, tender, and far-reaching; but perhaps a simple story, taken from the Sanitary Commission Bulletin, will speak more clearly, and better to the heart, than pages of dry records.
"Away up in the fourth story of Hospital No. 3, and in a far corner of the ward, was seen, one day, an old lady sitting by the side of a mere lad, who was reduced to the verge of death by chronic diarrhœa. She was a plain, honest-hearted farmer's wife, her face all aglow with motherly love, and who, to judge from appearances, had likely never before travelled beyond the limits of her neighborhood, but now had come many a long mile to do what might be done for her boy. In the course of a conversation she informed her questioner, that, 'if she could only get something that tasted like home,—some good tea, for instance, which she could make herself, and which would be better than that of the hospital,—she thought it might save her son's life.' Of course it was sent to her, and on a subsequent visit she expressed her thanks in a simple, hearty way, quite in keeping with her appearance. Still she seemed sad; something was on her mind that evidently troubled her, and, like Banquo's ghost, 'would not down.' At length it came out in a confiding, innocent way,—more, evidently, because it was uppermost in her thoughts than for the purpose of receiving sympathy,—that her means were about exhausted. 'I didn't think that it would take so much money; it is so much farther away from home than I had thought, and board here is so very high, that I have hardly enough left to take me back; and by another week I will have to leave him. I have been around to the stores to buy some little things that he would eat,—for he can't eat this strong food,—but the prices are so high that I can't buy them, and I am afraid, that, if I go away, and if he doesn't get something different to eat, that maybe,' and the tears trickled down her cheeks, 'he won't—be so well.'
"Her listener thought that difficulty might be overcome, and, if she would put on her bonnet, they would go to a store where articles were cheap. Accordingly they arrived in front of the large three-story building which Government has assigned to the Commission, and the old lady was soon running her eyes over the long rows of boxes, bales, and barrels that stretched for a hundred feet down the room, but was most fascinated by the bottles and cans on the shelves. He ordered a supply of sugar, tea, soft crackers, and canned fruit, then chicken and oysters, then jelly and wine, brandy, milk, and under-clothing, till the basket was full. As the earlier articles nestled under its lids, her face was glowing with satisfaction; but as the later lots arrived, she would draw him aside to whisper that 'it was too much,'—'really she hadn't enough money'; and when the more expensive items came from the shelves, the shadow of earnestness which gloomed her countenance grew into one of perplexity, her soul vibrating between motherly yearning for the lad on his bed and the scant purse in her pocket, till, slowly, and with great reluctance, she began to return the costliest.
"'Hadn't you better ask the price?' said her guide.
"'How much is it?'
"'Nothing,' replied the store-keeper.
"'Sir!' queried she, in the utmost amazement, 'nothingfor all this?'
"'My good woman,' asked the guide, 'have you a Soldiers' Aid Society in your neighborhood?'
"Yes, they had; she belonged to it herself.
"'Well, what do you suppose becomes of the garments you make, and the fruit have you put up?'
"She hadn't thought,—she supposed they went to the army,—but was evidently bothered to know what connection there could be between their Aid Society and that basket.
"'These garments that you see came from your society, or other societies just like yours; so did these boxes and barrels; that milk came from New York; those fruits from Boston; that wine was likely purchased with gold from California; and it is all for sick soldiers, your son as much as for any one else. This is the United States Sanitary Commission storehouse; you must come here whenever you wish, and call for everything you want; and you must stay with your son until he is able to go home: never mind the money's giving out; you shall have more, which, when you get back, you can refund for the use of other mothers and sons; when you are ready to go, I will put him in a berth where he can lie down, and you shall save his life yet.'
"She did,—God bless her innocent, motherly heart!—when nothing but motherly care could have achieved it; and when last seen, on a dismal, drizzly morning, was, with her face beaming out the radiance of hope, making a cup of tea on the stove of a caboose-car for the convalescent, who was snugly tucked away in the caboose-berth, waiting the final whistle of the locomotive that would speed them both homeward."
But for many of our soldiers there is yet another phase in store,—that sad time when the clangor and fierce joy and wild, exulting hurrah of the battle are over forever; and so, too, is over tender hospital-nursing, and they are sent out by hundreds, cured of their wounds, but maimed, the sources of life half drained, vigor gone, hope all spent, to limp through the blind alleys and by-ways of life, dropped out of the remembrance of a country that has used and forgotten them. They have given for her, not life, but all that makes life pleasant, hopeful, or even possible. It seems to me, that, in common decency, if she has no laurels to spare, she should at least give them in return—a daily dinner. Already, however, has the idea been set forth, after a better fashion than I can hope to do,—in wood and stone, and by the aid of a charter.
In Philadelphia stands the first chartered "Home" for disabled soldiers, a cheery old house, dating back to the occupation of the city by the British army in 1777-8, founded and supported by private citizens, open to all, of whatever State, and fully looking its title, a "Home"; and as the want is more widely felt, and presses closer upon us, I cannot but think that everywhere we shall find such "Homes," and as we grow graver, sadder, and wiser, under the hard teaching of our war, and more awake to the thought that we have done with our splendid unclouded youth, and must now take upon us the sterner responsibilities of our manhood, that a new spirit will spring up among us,—the spirit of that woman who, with a bedridden mother, an ailing sister, and a shop to tend, as their only means of support, yet finds time to visit our sick soldiers, and carry to them the little that she can spare, and that which she has begged of her wealthier neighbors,—the spirit of that poor seamstress who snatches an hour daily from her exhausting toil to sew for the soldiers,—the spirit of that mechanic, who, having nothing to give, makes boxes in his evening leisure, and sells them for the soldiers,—the spirit of the brooks, that never hesitate between up-hill and down, because "all the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is never full,"—the spirit of all who do with love and zeal whatever their hands find to do, and sigh, not because it is so little, but because it is not better.
God grant that this spirit may obtain among us,—that our soldiers, and their helpless families, may be to us a national trust, for which we are bound individually, even the very humblest and meanest of us, to care. The field is vast, and white for the harvest. Now, for the love of Christ, in the name of honor, for very shame's sake, where we counted our laborers by tens, let us number them by fifties,—where there were hundreds, let there be thousands.
The great master of English prose has left us suddenly, but to himself not unexpectedly. In the maturity of his powers, with his enduring position in literature fairly won and recognized, with the provision which spurred him to constant work secured to those he loved, his death saddens us rather through the sense of our own loss than from the tragic regret which is associated with an unaccomplished destiny. More fortunate than Fielding, he was allowed to take the measure of his permanent fame. The niche wherein he shall henceforth stand was chiselled while he lived. One by one the doubters confessed their reluctant faith, unfriendly critics dropped their blunted steel, and no man dared to deny him the place which was his, and his only, by right of genius.
In one sense, however, he was misunderstood by the world, and he has died before that profounder recognition which he craved had time to mature. All the breadth and certainty of his fame failed to compensate him for the lack of this: the man's heart coveted that justice which was accorded only to the author's brain. Other pens may sum up the literary record he has left behind: I claim the right of a friend who knew and loved him to speak of him as a man. The testimony, which, while living, he was too proud to have desired, may now be laid reverently upon his grave.
There is a delicacy to be observed in describing one's intercourse with a departed great man, since death does not wholly remove that privacy which it is our duty to respect in life. Yet the veil which we charitably drop upon weakness or dishonor may surely be lifted to disclose the opposite qualities. I shall repeat no word of Thackeray's which he would have wished unsaid or suppressed: I shall say no more than he would himself have said of a contemporary to whom the world had not done full justice. During a friendship of nearly seven years, he permitted me to see that one true side of an author's nature which is never so far revealed to the public that the malignant may avail themselves of his candor to assail or the fools to annoy him. He is now beyond the reach of malice, obtrusive sentiment, or vain curiosity; and the "late remorse of love," which a better knowledge of the man may here and there provoke, can atone for past wrong only by that considerate, tender judgment of the living of which he was an example.
I made Thackeray's acquaintance in New York towards the close of the year 1855. With the first grasp of his broad hand, and the first look of his large, serious gray eyes, I received an impression of the essential manliness of his nature,—of his honesty, his proud, almost defiant candor, his ever-present, yet shrinking tenderness, and that sadness of the moral sentiment which the world persisted in regarding as cynicism. This impression deepened with my further acquaintance, and was never modified. Although he belonged to the sensitive, irritable genus, his only manifestations of impatience which I remember were when that which he had written with a sigh was interpreted as a sneer. When so misunderstood, he scorned to set himself right. "I have no brain above the eyes," he was accustomed to say; "I describe what I see." He was quick and unerring in detecting the weaknesses of his friends, and spoke of them with a tone of disappointment sometimes bordering on exasperation; but he was equally severe upon his own shortcomings. He allowed no friend to think him better than his own deliberate estimate made him. I have never known a man whose nature was so immovably based on truth.
In a conversation upon the United States, shortly after we first met, he said,—
"There is one thing in this country which astonishes me. You have a capacity for culture which contradicts all my experience. There are ----" (mentioning two or three names well known in New York) "who I know have arisen from nothing, yet they are fit for any society in the world. They would be just as self-possessed and entertaining in the presence of stars and garters as they are here to-night. Now, in England, a man who has made his way up, as they have, doesn't seem able to feel his social dignity. A little bit of the flunky sticks in him somewhere. I am, perhaps, as independent in this respect as any one I know, yet I'm not entirely sure of myself."
"Do you remember," I asked him, "what Goethe says of the boys in Venice? He explains their cleverness, grace, and self-possession as children by the possibility of any one of them becoming Doge."
"That may be the secret, after all," said Thackeray. "There is no country like yours for a young man who is obliged to work for his own place and fortune. If I had sons, I should send them here."
Afterwards, in London, I visited with him the studio of Baron Marochetti, the sculptor, who was then his next-door neighbor in Onslow Square, Brompton. The Baron, it appeared, had promised him an original wood-cut of Albert Dürer's, for whom Thackeray had a special admiration. Soon after our entrance, the sculptor took down a small engraving from the wall, saying,—
"Now you have it, at last."
The subject was St. George and the Dragon.
Thackeray inspected it with great delight for a few minutes: then, suddenly becoming grave, he turned to me and said,—
"I shall hang it near the head of my bed, where I can see it every morning. We all have our dragons to fight. Do you know yours? I know mine: I have not one, but two."
"What are they?" I asked.
"Indolence and Luxury!"
I could not help smiling, as I thought of the prodigious amount of literary labor he had performed, and at the same time remembered the simple comfort of his dwelling, next door.
"I am serious," he continued; "I never take up the pen without an effort; I work only from necessity. I never walk out without seeing some pretty, useless thing which I want to buy. Sometimes I pass the same shop-window every day for months, and resist the temptation, and think I'm safe; then comes the day of weakness, and I yield. My physician tells me I must live very simply, and not dine out so much; but I cannot break off the agreeable habit. I shall look at this picture and think of my dragons, though I don't expect ever to overcome them."
After his four lectures on the Georges had been delivered in New York, a storm of angry abuse was let loose upon him in Canada and the other British Provinces. The British-Americans, snubbed both by Government and society when they go to England, repay the slight, like true Christians, by a rampant loyalty unknown in the mother-country. Many of their newspapers accused Thackeray of pandering to the prejudices of the American public, affirming that he would not dare to repeat the same lectures in England, after his return. Of course, the papers containing the articles, duly marked to attract attention, were sent to him. He merely remarked, as he threw them contemptuously aside,—"These fellows will see that I shall not only repeat the lectures at home, but I shall make them more severe, just because the auditors will be Englishmen." He was true to his promise. The lecture on George IV. excited, not, indeed, the same amount of newspaper-abuse as he had received from Canada, but a very angry feeling in the English aristocracy, some members of which attempted to punish him by a social ostracism. When I visited him in London, in July, 1856, he related this to me, with great good-humor. "There, for instance," said he, "is Lord ——" (a prominent English statesman) "who has dropped me from his dinner-parties for three months past. Well, he will find that I can do without his society better than he can do without mine." A few days afterwards Lord —— resumed his invitations.
About the same time I witnessed an amusing interview, which explained to me the great personal respect in which Thackeray was held by the aristocratic class. He never hesitated to mention and comment upon the censure aimed against him in the presence of him who had uttered it. His fearless frankness must have seemed phenomenal. In the present instance, Lord ——, who had dabbled in literature, and held a position at Court, had expressed himself (I forget whether orally or in print) very energetically against Thackeray's picture of George IV. We had occasion to enter the shop of a fashionable tailor, and there found Lord ——. Thackeray immediately stepped up to him, bent his strong frame over the disconcerted champion of the Royal George, and said, in his full, clear, mellow voice,—"I know what you have said. Of course, you are quite right, and I am wrong. I only regret that I did not think of consulting you before my lecture was written." The person addressed evidently did not know whether to take this for irony or truth: he stammered out an incoherent reply, and seemed greatly relieved when the giant turned to leave the shop.
At other times, however, he was kind and considerate. Reaching London one day in June, 1857, I found him at home, grave and sad, having that moment returned from the funeral of Douglas Jerrold. He spoke of the periodical attacks by which his own life was threatened, and repeated what he had often said to me before,—"I shall go some day,—perhaps in a year or two. I am an old man already." He proposed visiting a lady whom we both knew, but whom he had not seen for some time. The lady reminded him of this fact, and expressed her dissatisfaction at some length. He heard her in silence, and then, taking hold of the crape on his left arm, said, in a grave, quiet voice,—"I must remove this,—I have just come from poor Jerrold's grave."
Although, from his experience of life, he was completelydésillusionné, the well of natural tenderness was never dried in his heart. He rejoiced, with a fresh, boyish delight, in every evidence of an unspoiled nature in others,—in every utterance which denoted what may have seemed to him over-faith in the good. The more he was saddened by his knowledge of human weakness and folly, the more gratefully he welcomed strength, virtue, sincerity. His eyes never unlearned the habit of that quick moisture which honors the true word and the noble deed.
His mind was always occupied with some scheme of quiet benevolence. Both in America and in England, I have known him to plan ways by which he could give pecuniary assistance to some needy acquaintance or countryman without wounding his sensitive pride. He made many attempts to procure a good situation in New York for a well-known English author, who was at that time in straitened circumstances. The latter, probably, never knew of this effort to help him. In November, 1857, when the financial crisis in America was at its height, I happened to say to him, playfully, that I hoped my remittances would not be stopped. He instantly picked up a note-book, ran over the leaves, and said to me, "I find I have three hundred pounds at my banker's. Take the money now, if you are in want of it; or shall I keep it for you, in case you may need it?" Fortunately, I had no occasion to avail myself of his generous offer; but I shall never forget the impulsive, open-hearted kindness with which it was made.
I have had personal experience of Thackeray's sense of justice, as well as his generosity. And here let me say that he was that rarest of men, a cosmopolitan Englishman,—loving his own land with a sturdy, enduring love, yet blind neither to its faults nor to the virtues of other lands. In fact, for the very reason that he was unsparing in dealing with his countrymen, he considered himself justified in freely criticizing other nations. Yet he never joined in the popular depreciation of everything American: his principal reason for not writing a book, as every other English author does who visits us, was that it would be superficial, and might be unjust. I have seen him, in America, indignantly resent an ill-natured sneer at "John Bull,"—and, on the other hand, I have known him to takeourpart, at home. Shortly after Emerson's "English Traits" appeared, I was one of a dinner-party at his house, and the book was the principal topic of conversation. A member of Parliament took the opportunity of expressing his views to the only American present.
"What does Emerson know of England?" he asked. "He spends a few weeks here, and thinks he understands us. His work is false and prejudiced and shallow."
Thackeray happening to pass at the moment, the member arrested him with—
"What doyouthink of the book, Mr. Thackeray?"
"I don't agree with Emerson."
"I was sure you would not!" the member triumphantly exclaimed; "I was sure you would think as I do."
"I think," said Thackeray, quietly, "that he is altogether too laudatory. He admires our best qualities so greatly that he does not scourge us for our faults as we deserve."
Towards the end of May, 1861, I saw Thackeray again in London. During our first interview, we talked of little but the war, which had then but just begun. His chief feeling on the subject was a profound regret, not only for the nation itself, whose fate seemed thus to be placed in jeopardy, but also, he said, because he had many dear friends, both North and South, who must now fight as enemies. I soon found that his ideas concerning the cause of the war were as incorrect as were those of most Englishmen at that time. He understood neither the real nature nor the extent of the conspiracy, supposing that Free Trade was the chief object of the South, and that the right of Secession was tacitly admitted by the Constitution. I thereupon endeavored to place the facts of the case before him in their true light, saying, in conclusion,—"Even if you should not believe this statement, you must admit, that, ifwebelieve it, we are justified in suppressing the Rebellion by force."
He said,—"Come, all this is exceedingly interesting. It is quite new to me, and I am sure it will be new to most of us. Take your pen and make an article out of what you have told me, and I will put it into the next number of the 'Cornhill Magazine.' It is just what we want."
I had made preparations to leave London for the Continent on the following day, but he was so urgent that I should stay two days longer and write the article that I finally consented to do so. I was the more desirous of complying, since Mr. Clay's ill-advised letter to the London "Times" had recently been published, and was accepted by Englishmen as the substance of all that could be said on the side of the Union. Thackeray appeared sincerely gratified by my compliance with his wishes, and immediately sent for a cab, saying,—"Now we will go down to the publishers, and have the matter settled at once. I am bound to consult them, but I am sure they will see the advantage of such an article."
We found the managing publisher in his office. He looked upon the matter, however, in a very different light. He admitted the interest which a statement of the character, growth, and extent of the Southern Conspiracy would possess for the readers of the "Cornhill," but objected to its publication, on the ground that it would call forth a counter-statement, which he could not justly exclude, and thus introduce a political controversy into the magazine. I insisted that my object was not to take notice of any statements published in England up to that time, but to represent the crisis as it was understood in the Loyal States and by the National Government; that I should do this simply to explain and justify the action of the latter; and that, having once placed the loyal view of the subject fairly before the English people, I should decline any controversy. The events of the war, I added, would soon draw the public attention away from its origin, and the "Cornhill," before the close of the struggle, would probably be obliged to admit articles of a more strongly partisan character than that which I proposed to write. The publisher, nevertheless, was firm in his refusal, not less to Thackeray's disappointment than my own. He decided upon what then seemed to him to be good business-reasons; and the same consideration, doubtless, has since led him to accept statements favorable to the side of the Rebellion.
As we were walking away, Thackeray said to me,—
"I am anxious that these things should be made public: suppose you write a brief article, and send it to the 'Times'?"
"I would do so," I answered, "if there were any probability that it would be published."
"I will try to arrange that," said he. "I know Mr. ——," (one of the editors,) "and will call upon him at once. I will ask for the publication of your letter as a personal favor to myself."
We parted at the door of a club-house, to meet again the same afternoon, when Thackeray hoped to have the matter settled as he desired. He did not, however, succeed in finding Mr. ——, but sent him a letter. I thereupon went to work the next day, and prepared a careful, cold, dispassionate statement, so condensed that it would have made less than half a column of the "Times." I sent it to the editor, referring him to Mr. Thackeray's letter in my behalf, and that is the last I ever heard of it.
All of Thackeray's American friends will remember the feelings of pain and regret with which they read his "Roundabout Paper" in the "Cornhill Magazine," in (February, I think) 1862,—wherein he reproaches our entire people as being willing to confiscate the stocks and other property owned in this country by Englishmen, out of spite for their disappointment in relation to the Trent affair, and directs his New-York bankers to sell out all his investments, and remit the proceeds to London, without delay. It was not his fierce denunciation of such national dishonesty that we deprecated, but his apparent belief in its possibility. We felt that he, of all Englishmen, should have understood us better. We regretted, for Thackeray's own sake, that he had permitted himself, in some spleenful moment, to commit an injustice, which would sooner or later be apparent to his own mind.
Three months afterwards, (in May, 1862,) I was again in London. I had not heard from Thackeray since the publication of the "Roundabout" letter to his bankers, and was uncertain how far his evident ill-temper on that occasion had subsided; but I owed him too much kindness, I honored him too profoundly, not to pardon him, unasked, my share of the offence. I found him installed in the new house he had built in Palace Gardens, Kensington. He received me with the frank welcome of old, and when we were alone, in the privacy of his library, made an opportunity (intentionally, I am sure) of approaching the subject, which, he knew, I could not have forgotten. I asked him why he wrote the article.
"I was unwell," he answered,—"you know what the moral effects of my attacks are,—and I was indignant that such a shameful proposition should be made in your American newspapers, and not a single voice be raised to rebuke it."
"But you certainly knew," said I, "that the —— —— does not represent American opinion. I assure you, that no honest, respectable man in the United States ever entertained the idea of cheating an English stockholder."
"I should hope so, too," he answered; "but when I saw the same thing in the —— ——, which, you will admit, is a paper of character and influence, I lost all confidence. I know how impulsive and excitable your people are, and I really feared that some such measure might be madly advocated and carried into effect. I see, now, that I made a blunder, and I am already punished for it. I was getting eight per cent. from my American investments, and now that I have the capital here it is lying idle. I shall probably not be able to invest it at a better rate than four per cent."
I said to him, playfully, that he must not expect me, as an American, to feel much sympathy with this loss: I, in common with his other friends beyond the Atlantic, expected from him a juster recognition of the national character.
"Well," said he, "let us say no more about it. I admit that I have made a mistake."
Those who knew the physical torments to which Thackeray was periodically subject—spasms which not only racked his strong frame, but temporarily darkened his views of men and things—must wonder, that, with the obligation to write permanently hanging over him, he was not more frequently betrayed into impatient or petulant expressions. In his clear brain, he judged himself no less severely, and watched his own nature no less warily, than he regarded other men. His strong sense of justice was always alert and active. He sometimes tore away the protecting drapery from the world's pet heroes and heroines, but, on the other hand, he desired no one to set him beside them. He never betrayed the least sensitiveness in regard to his place in literature. The comparisons which critics sometimes instituted between himself and other prominent authors simply amused him. In 1856, he told me that he had written a play which the managers had ignominiously rejected. "I thought I could write for the stage," said he; "but it seems I can't. I have a mind to have the piece privately performed, here at home. I'll take the big footman's part." This plan, however, was given up, and the material of the play was afterwards used, I believe, in "Lovel, the Widower."
I have just read a notice of Thackeray, which asserts, as an evidence of his weakness in certain respects, that he imagined himself to be an artist, and persisted in supplying bad illustrations to his own works. This statement does injustice to his self-knowledge. He delighted in the use of the pencil, and often spoke to me of his illustrations being a pleasant relief to hand and brain, after the fatigue of writing. He had a very imperfect sense of color, and confessed that his forte lay in caricature. Some of his sketches were charmingly drawn upon the block, but he was often unfortunate in his engraver. The original MS. of "The Rose and the Ring," with the illustrations, is admirable. He was fond of making groups of costumes and figures of the last century, and I have heard English artists speak of his talent in thisgenre: but he never professed to be more than an amateur, or to exercise the art for any other reason than the pleasure it gave him.
He enjoyed the popularity of his lectures, because they were out of his natural line of work. Although he made several very clever after-dinner speeches, he always assured me that it was accidental,—that he had no talent whatever for thinking on his feet.
"Even when I am reading my lectures," he said, "I often think to myself, 'What a humbug you are, and I wonder the people don't find it out!'"
When in New-York, he confessed to me that he should like immensely to find some town where the people imagined that all Englishmen transposed theirhs, and give one of his lectures in that style. He was very fond of relating an incident which occurred during his visit to St. Louis. He was dining one day in the hotel, when he overheard one Irish waiter say to another,—
"Do you know who that is?"
"No," was the answer.
"That," said the first, "is the celebrated Thacker!"
"What'shedone?"
"D——d if I know!"
Of Thackeray's private relations I would speak with a cautious reverence. An author's heart is a sanctuary into which, except so far as he voluntarily reveals it, the public has no right to enter. The shadow of a domestic affliction which darkened all his life seemed only to have increased his paternal care and tenderness. To his fond solicitude for his daughters we owe a part of the writings wherewith he has enriched our literature. While in America, he often said to me that his chief desire was to secure a certain sum for them, and I shall never forget the joyous satisfaction with which he afterwards informed me, in London, that the work was done. "Now," he said, "the dear girls are provided for. The great anxiety is taken from my life, and I can breathe freely for the little time that is left me to be with them." I knew that he had denied himself many "luxuries" (as he called them) to accomplish this object. For six years after he had redeemed the losses of a reckless youthful expenditure, he was allowed to live and to employ an income, princely for an author, in the gratification of tastes which had been so long repressed.
He thereupon commenced building a new house, after his own designs. It was of red brick, in the style of Queen Anne's time, but the internal arrangement was rather American than English. It was so much admired, that, although the cost much exceeded his estimate, he could have sold it for an advance of a thousand pounds. To me the most interesting feature was the library, which occupied the northern end of the first floor, with a triple window opening toward the street, and another upon a warm little garden-plot shut in by high walls.
"Here," he said to me, when I saw him for the last time, "here I am going to write my greatest work,—a History of the Reign of Queen Anne. There are my materials,"—pointing to a collection of volumes in various bindings which occupied a separate place on the shelves.
"When shall you begin it?" I asked.
"Probably as soon as I am done with 'Philip,'" was his answer; "but I am not sure. I may have to write another novel first. But the History will mature all the better for the delay. I want toabsorbthe authorities gradually, so that, when I come to write, I shall be filled with the subject, and can sit down to a continuous narrative, without jumping up every moment to consult somebody. The History has been a pet idea of mine for years past. I am slowly working up to the level of it, and know that when I once begin I shall do it well."
It is not likely that any part of this history was ever written. What it might have been we can only regretfully conjecture: it has perished with the uncompleted novel, and all the other dreams of that principle of the creative intellect which the world calls Ambition, but which the artist recognizes as Conscience.
That hour of the sunny May-day returns to memory as I write. The quiet of the library, a little withdrawn from the ceaseless roar of London; the soft grass of the bit of garden, moist from a recent shower, seen through the open window; the smoke-strained sunshine, stealing gently along the wall; and before me the square, massive head, the prematurely gray hair, the large, clear, sad eyes, the frank, winning mouth, with its smile of boyish sweetness, of the man whom I honored as a master, while he gave me the right to love him as a friend. I was to leave the next day for a temporary home on the Continent, and he was planning how he could visit me, with his daughters. The proper season, the time, and the expense were carefully calculated: he described the visit in advance, with a gay, excursive fancy; and his last words, as he gave me the warm, strong hand I was never again to press, were, "Auf wiedersehen!"
What little I have ventured to relate gives but a fragmentary image of the man whom I knew. I cannot describe him as the faithful son, the tender father, the true friend, the man of large humanity and lofty honesty he really was, without stepping too far within the sacred circle of his domestic life. To me, there was no inconsistency in his nature. Where the careless reader may see only the cynic and the relentless satirist, I recognize his unquenchable scorn of human meanness and duplicity,—the impatient wrath of a soul too frequently disappointed in its search for good. I have heard him lash the faults of others with an indignant sorrow which brought the tears to his eyes. For this reason he could not bear that ignorant homage should be given to men really unworthy of it. He said to me, once, speaking of a critic who blamed the scarcity of noble and lovable character in his novels,—"Other men can do that. I know what I can do best; and if I do good, it must be in my own way."
The fate which took him from us was one which he had anticipated. He often said that his time was short, that he could not certainly reckon on many more years of life, and that his end would probably be sudden. He once spoke of Irving's death as fortunate in its character. The subject was evidently familiar to his thoughts, and his voice had always a tone of solemn resignation which told that he had conquered its bitterness. He was ready at any moment to answer the call; and when, at last, it was given and answered,—when the dawn of the first Christmas holiday lighted his pale, moveless features, and the large heart throbbed no more forever in its grand scorn and still grander tenderness,—his released spirit could have chosen no fitter words of farewell than the gentle benediction his own lips have breathed:—