Part 8 (2/2)

Alexander was soon absorbed in the whirl of life, and to what purpose he worked I need not here detail. The story of the Calumet and Hecla Company is a kind of commercial romance which the harshest critics of American business life may read with pleasure. At the same time Aga.s.siz was only partially and transiently a business-man, returning always with haste from the mine and the counting-room to the protracted scientific researches in which his heart mainly lay. His voyages in the interest of science were many and long. He studied not so much the sh.o.r.es as the sea itself. Oceanographer is the term perhaps by which he may best be designated. By deep sea soundings he mapped the vast beds over which the waters roll and reached an intimacy with the life of its most profound abysses. Sitting next him at a cla.s.s dinner, an affair of dress-suits, baked meats, and cigars at the finish, I found his talk took one far away from the prose of the thing. He was charming in conversation, and he set forth at length his theory as to the work of the coral insects, formed after long study of the barrier reefs and atolls of remote seas. His ideas were subversive of those of Darwin, with whom he disputed the matter before Darwin died. They are now well-known and I think accepted, though unfortunately he died before setting them forth in due order. They are revolutionary in their character as to the origin of formations that enter largely into the crust of the earth. In this field he stood as originator and chief. He gave me glimpses of the wonderful indeed, as we cracked our almonds and sipped the sherbet, his rich voice and slightly foreign accent running at my ear as we sat under the banquet lights.

Though oceanography was his special field, his tastes and attainments were comprehensive and he was a man of repute in many ways. He was a trained and skilled engineer and mathematician, and an adept in the most various branches of natural science. At another cla.s.s dinner, when I was so fortunate as to sit beside him, his interest in botany came out as he spoke of the enjoyment he took in surveying from the roof of the Museum of Comparative Zoology the trees of Cambridge, the ma.s.ses of foliage here and there appearing from that point in special beauty. I spoke of the paper just read by Francis Darwin, the son of Charles, before the British a.s.sociation, emphasising the idea that the life of plants and animals differs not in kind but only in degree.

Plants may have memory, perhaps show pa.s.sion, predatory instincts, or rudimentary intelligence. The plant-world is therefore part and parcel of animated nature. Aga.s.siz announced with real fervour his adherence to that belief and cited interesting facts in its support. Subtle links binding plant and animal reveal themselves everywhere to investigation. In evolution from the primeval monads, or whatever starting-points there were, the fittest always survived as the outpoured life flowed abundantly along the million lines of development. There was a brotherhood between man and not only the zoophyte, but still further down, even with the ultimate cell in which organisation can first be traced, only faintly distinguishable from the azoic rock on which it hangs.

As he talked I thought of the ample s.p.a.ces of his Museum where the whole great scheme is made manifest to the eye, the structure of man, then the slow gradation downward, the immense series of flowers and plants counterfeited in gla.s.s continuing the line unbroken, down to the ultimate lichen, all but part and parcel of the ledge to which it clings.

My tastes were not in the direction of mathematics or natural science, and it was not until our later years that we came into close touch. In the hospice of the Grimsel, in the heart of the Alps, as I sat down to dinner after a day of hard walking, I saw my cla.s.smate in a remote part of the room with his wife and children and a group of Swiss friends. I determined not to intrude, but as the dinner ended, coming from his place he sought me out. ”I heard your voice,” he said, ”and knew you were here before I saw you.” We chatted genially. That day, he said, he had visited the site of his father's hut on the Aar glacier, where the observations were made on which was based the glacial theory. On that visit he had, as a small boy, been carried up in a basket on the back of a guide. He had not been there since until that day. He was that night in the environment into which he had been born, and a.s.sumed toward me the att.i.tude of a host making at home a stranger guest. To my question as to how a transient pa.s.ser like myself could best see a great ice river, he replied, ”Climb to-morrow the Aeggisch-horn, and look down from there upon the Aletsch glacier.

You will have under your eye all the more interesting and important phenomena relating to the matter.” We parted next morning. I had enjoyed a great privilege, for he was the man of all men to meet in such a place,--a feeling deepened a day or two later, when I looked down from the peak he had indicated upon this wide-stretching glacier below.

As age drew on he mellowed well. Perhaps sympathy with men and things outside his special walk was no stronger than in earlier years, but it had readier expression. I heard from him this good story. President Eliot was once showing about the university a multimillionaire and his wife who had the good purpose to endow a great school of learning in the West. Having made the survey, they stood in Memorial Hall, about to say good-bye. ”Well, Mr. Eliot,” said the wife, ”How much money have you invested?” Mr. Eliot stated to her the estimated value of the university a.s.sets. The lady turning to her husband, exclaimed, with a touch of the feeling that money will buy everything, ”Oh, husband, we can do better than that.” Said Mr. Eliot, with a wave of the hand toward the ancient portraits on the walls: ”Madame, we have one thing which money cannot buy,--nearly three centuries of devotedness!” There is fine appreciation of a precious possession in this remark. In other ways Harvard may be surpa.s.sed. Other inst.i.tutions may easily have more money, more students. As able men may be in other faculties possibly (I will admit even this) there may be elsewhere better football. But that through eight generations there has been in the hearts of the best men, a constant all-absorbing devotion to the inst.i.tution, is a thing for America unique, and which cannot be taken away. How stimulating is this to a n.o.ble loyalty in these later generations!

The old college is a thing to be watchfully and tenderly s.h.i.+elded. As Alexander told me the story, I felt in his manner and intonation that the three centuries of devotedness had had great influence with him.

As John Harvard had been the first of the liberal givers, so he was the last, and I suppose the greatest. The money value of his gifts is very large, but who will put a value upon the labour, the watchfulness, the expert guidance exercised by such a man, unrequited and almost without intermission throughout a long life! His fine nature, no doubt, prompted the consecration, but the old devotedness spurred him to emulation of those who had gone before.

In 1909 I enjoyed through Aga.s.siz a great pleasure. He invited me to his house where I found gathered a company of his friends, many of them men of eminence. He had just returned from his journey in East Africa, during which he had penetrated far into the interior, studying with his usual diligence the natural history of the regions. He entertained us with an informal talk beautifully and profusely ill.u.s.trated by photographs. I have said that he did not possess, or at any rate, never showed his father's power of kindling speech. So far as I know he never addressed large popular audiences. Nevertheless to a circle of scientific specialists, or people intelligent in a general way, he could present a subject charmingly, in clear, calm, fluent speech. On this occasion he was at his best, and it was a pleasure indeed to have the marvels of that freshly-opened land described to us by the man who of all men perhaps was best able to cope with the story. I listened with delight and awe. He was an old man crowned with the highest distinctions. I thought of the young handsome boy I had seen coming down in his grey suit into the Beacon Street mall, while the band played Fair Harvard. On the threshold I shook his hand and looked into his dark, kindly eyes. I turned away in the darkness and saw him no more.

CHAPTER X

AT HAPHAZARD

In 1887, in pleasant June weather I left St. Louis with my family on the capacious river-packet _Saint Paul_, for a trip up-stream to the city for which the boat was named. The flood was at the full as we ploughed on, stopping at landings on either side, the reaches between presenting long perspectives of summer beauty. We paused in due course at a little Iowa town, and among the pa.s.sengers who took the boat here were two men who excited our attention at the landing. One was a tall handsome fellow in early manhood, well-dressed and mannered, completely blind. The other was his companion, a rather dishevelled figure with neglected beard and hair setting off a face that looked out somewhat helplessly into a world strange to it, an attire of loose white wool, plainly made by some tailor who knew nothing of recent fas.h.i.+on-plates. A close-fitting cap of the same material surmounted his head. The attire was whole and neat, but the air of the man was slouchy and bespoke one who must have lately come from the outskirts into the life of America. The young blindman at once aroused earnest sympathy. Of the other some one remarked, ”Plainly a globe-trotting Englishman, who has lost his Baedeker and by chance got in here.”

Presently the boat was on its way, and as I sat facing the changing scene, I heard a shuffling, hesitating step behind, and a drawling somewhat uncertain voice asked me about the country. I replied that it was my first trip and I was ignorant. Turning full upon the querist, no other than the globe-trotter, I said: ”You are an Englishman I see.

I was in England last year. I have spent some time in London, and I know other parts of your country.” A conversation followed which soon became to me interesting. My companion had education and intelligence, and before the afternoon ended we were agreeably in touch. He handed me his card on which was engraved the name, ”Mr. William Grey.” I told him I was a Harvard man, a professor in Was.h.i.+ngton University, St.

Louis. He was of Exeter College, Oxford, and for some years had been a professor in Codrington College, Barbadoes, in the West Indies, whence he had lately come. To my natural surprise that he should be so far astray, he said he had been visiting a fellow Exeter man, a clergyman of the English Church, who was the rector of an Iowa parish. It further developed that his young blind companion belonged to a family in the parish, and that Mr. Grey had good-heartedly a.s.sumed the care of him during an outing on the river.

A trip from St. Louis to St. Paul by river is longer now than a trip across the Atlantic. I was nearly a week in my new companions.h.i.+p, and acquaintance grew and deepened fast. The young blindman, whose manners were agreeable, became a general favourite, and Mr. Grey and I found we had much in common. I mentioned to him that my errand in England the year before had been to find material for a life of Young Sir Henry Vane, the statesman and martyr of the English Commonwealth, and in his young days a governor of the province of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay.

This touched in him a responsive chord. He was familiar with the period and the character. He was a friend of Shorthouse whose novel, _John Inglesant_ was a widely-read book of those days. He had helped Shorthouse in his researches for the book, and knew well the story of Charles I., and his friends and foes. He was himself a staunch Churchman, but mentioned with some pleasure that his name appeared among the Non-conformists. A st.u.r.dy n.o.ble of those days was Lord Grey of Groby, who opposed the King to the last, standing at the right hand of the redoubtable Colonel Pride at the famous ”Pride's Purge,” pointing out to him the Presbyterians whom the Ironside was to turn out of Parliament, in the thick of the crisis. To my inquiry as to whether Lord Grey of Groby was an ancestor, he was reticent, merely saying that the name was the same. I had begun to surmise that my new friend was allied with the Greys who in so many periods of English history have borne a famous part. Some years before, while sojourning in a little town on the Ohio River, a stroll carried me to a coal-mine in the neighbourhood. As I peered down two hundred feet into the dark shaft, a bluff, peremptory voice called to me to look out for my head.

I drew back in time to escape the cage as it descended with a group of miners from a higher plane to the lower deeps. I thanked my bluff friend, who had saved my head from a b.u.mp. A pleasant acquaintance followed which led to his taking me down into the mine, a thrilling experience. He was an adventurous Englishman who had put money into a far-away enterprise, and come with his wife and children to take care of it. His wife was a lady well-born, a sister of Sir George Grey, twice governor of New Zealand, and at the time High Commissioner and governor of Cape Colony, one of the most interesting of the great English nation-makers of the South Seas. I came to know the lady, and naturally followed the career of her brother, who earned a n.o.ble reputation. Later I corresponded with him, and received from him his portrait and books. Referring to Sir George Grey in my talk with Mr.

William Grey, I found that he knew him well and not long before, in a voyage of which he had made many into many seas, had visited New Zealand, and been a guest of Sir George Grey at his island-home in the harbour of Auckland. Was he related to Sir George? was my natural query. Again there was reticence. The name was the same, but the Greys were numerous.

The journey wore on. The resource of the steamer's company was to sit on the upper deck, watch the swollen river with its waifs of uprooted trees and the banks green with the summer, chatting ourselves into intimacy. The young blindman made good and very good, and his guardian, while keeping a lookout on his charge from under his well-worn traveller's cap, which I now knew had sheltered its owner in tropic hurricanes and icy Arctic blasts, discussed with me matters various and widely related. Nearing our journey's end, we sat in the moonlight, the Mississippi opening placidly before us between hazy hills. We had grown to be chums, and next morning we were to part. It was a time for confidences. ”Well,” said Mr. Grey, ”I am going to get a good look at America, then I mean to return home and go into Parliament.” I suggested there might be difficulties about that.

English elections were uncertain, and how could he be at all sure that any const.i.tuency would want him. ”Ah,” said he, this time no longer reticent. ”I am going into the House of Lords.” ”Indeed,” said I in surprise, ”and who are you really, Mr. William Grey?” At last he was outspoken. He was heir to the earldom of Stamford, his uncle the present earl, a man past eighty, childless, and in infirm health, must soon lay down the t.i.tle. He was preparing himself for the responsibilities of the high position and believed it well to make a study of America. His father, a younger son, had been a clergyman in Canada, and he, though with an Oxford training, knew the world outside of England better than the old home. His direct ancestor was Lord Grey of Groby, whose father, an earl of Stamford, had been a Parliamentary commander in the years of the Civil War, and in the century before that, a flower of the house had been the Lady Jane Grey, who had perished in her youth on the scaffold, a possible heir to the English crown. So this _outre_ personage, good-heartedly helping the blindman to an outing, and in a shy apologetic way getting into touch with an environment strange to him, was a high-born n.o.bleman fitting himself for his dignities.

I had before invited Mr. Grey to visit me in St. Louis, for his seeming helplessness appealed to me from the first. He had met some hard rebuffs in his American contacts. I thought I might aid him in making his way. Returning in the autumn to my home, I heard from Mr.

Grey that he was coming to be my guest, and in due time he arrived. I missed him at the station, but he presently appeared at our door in an express-waggon, sitting on the seat with the driver, in the midst of his belongings. He spent a week with us in the first American home he had known, and we found him an amiable and un.o.btrusive gentleman.

He was a vigorous walker and explored the city well. His listless, seemingly inattentive eyes somehow scanned everything, and he judged well what he witnessed. He was an accomplished scholar and had a quiet humour. A little daughter half-playfully and half-wilfully, announced her intention to follow her own pleasure in a certain case. ”Milicent is a Hedonist,” said the guest, and the Oxford scholar brought Aristippus and Epicurus into odd conjunction with a Mississippi Valley breakfast-table. He laid aside his white woollen suit, but his attire remained unconventional, not to say _outre_. Even the wrinkled dress-suit in which he appeared at dinner, I think was the achievement of a tailor in the island of Barbadoes. His opera-hat was a wonder. He was, or was soon to be, a belted earl, but his belt only appeared on his pajamas, raiment of which I heard then for the first time. It had early appeared in our intercourse that the main interest of Mr. Grey lay in humane and religious work. He also was a devoted member of the Church of England. On Sunday morning we started early for the leading Episcopal Church but on the way he inquired as to the place of wors.h.i.+p of the negro congregation of that faith. I confessed my ignorance of it, but he had in some way ascertained it, and I presently found myself following his lead down a rather squalid street where at last we came to the humble temple. Instead of hearing the bishop, a famous and eloquent man, he preferred to sit on a bare bench in the obscure little meeting-house, where he fraternised cordially with the dusky company we found there. He was more interested in our charities than in our politics and business, and in his quiet way during the week learned the story well. I introduced him to Southern friends who gave him letters to persons in the South. Provided with these he bade us good-bye at last, and went far and wide through what had been the Confederacy. He visited Jefferson Davis and many soldiers and politicians of note, getting at first-hand their point of view. I also gave him letters to some eminent men in the East, which he presented, meeting with a good reception. He made a wide and shrewd study of the United States, and I am glad to think I helped him. When I met him he was unfriended and without credentials, and his singularities were exposing him to some inconvenient jostling in our rough world.

I opened some doors to him through which he pushed his way into much that was best worth seeing in American life. An old friend, a radical man of letters, wrote me afterwards that he enjoyed Mr. Grey, and he thought Mr. Grey enjoyed him although he believed that if he had been a pauper, a criminal, or even a bishop, Mr. Grey would have enjoyed him much more.

He returned to England and did not forget me, writing from time to time how his affairs progressed. Soon he entered into his own, the earldom of Stamford, finding about the same time his countess in an English vicarage. In the House of Lords he was not prominent, though the papers occasionally mentioned brief addresses by him. His main interest continued to be charitable work. He was a lay-preacher, and worked much in the east end of London, throwing the weight of his culture and high position into alleviating ignorance and poverty. He sent me interesting literature relating to the efforts of well-placed men and women to carry into slums and hovels sweetness and light.

In due time a daughter was born to him, whom he named Jane Grey; and later a son, Lord Grey of Groby. I saw once in the London Graphic, or perhaps in the Ill.u.s.trated News, charming pictures of these children with their interesting historic names. Though rigidly a Churchman he was not narrow. Lord Stamford sent me a handsome picture of himself, to which is affixed his signature as an earl and an elaborate seal. In an accompanying note he wrote that the seal was a careful facsimile of the one which an ancestor of his had affixed to the death-warrant of Charles I. He seemed to take pride in the fact that his forbear had borne a part in the ancient Non-conformist strivings. He came to America more than once afterward, as a delegate to charitable and peace Congresses. My dear friend Robert Treat Paine, President of the Peace Society and eminent philanthropist of Boston, knew him well and esteemed him highly--and he was the fellow of workers like him.

It is a picturesque moment in my life that I in this way came into a.s.sociation with a n.o.bleman of the bluest blood. To outward appearance as I stumbled upon him so unexpectedly, he seemed effete. His odd shuffle and limp whiskers were dundrearily suggestive of a personality a bit mildewed. But I felt that what inept.i.tude there was, was only superficial; good, strong manhood lay underneath. His death took place some years since.

Burke's _Peerage_ states that the family was enn.o.bled by Richard Coeur de Lion, and has maintained itself in a high place for eight centuries. Privilege is a bough of the social tree from which we expect mere dead sea-fruit rather than a wholesome yield, but now and then the product holds something better than ashes. As we trace this stock through the ages, apples of Sodom, no doubt, will be found in abundance, but now and then it flowers into heroic manhood and lovely womanhood. My chance comrade of the _St. Paul_ was a refined, high-purposed man, certainly a product of the worthier kind, and I am glad to count among my friends, William Grey, Ninth Earl of Stamford.

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