Volume III Part 29 (1/2)
At last, more than three years after Marshall had decided to embark upon the uncertain sea of authors.h.i.+p, he finished the first of the five volumes. And such a ma.s.s of ma.n.u.script! ”It will make _at least_ Eight hundred pages!!!!” moaned the distraught publisher. At that rate, considering the small number of subscribers and the greatly increased cost of paper and labor,[626] Wayne would be ruined. No t.i.tle-page had been sent, and Marshall's son, who had brought the ma.n.u.script to Philadelphia, ”astonished” Wayne by telling him ”that his father's name was not to appear in the t.i.tle.”[627]
When Marshall learned that the publisher demanded a t.i.tle-page bearing his name, he insisted that this was unnecessary and not required by the copyright law. ”I am unwilling,” he hastened to write Wayne, ”to be named in the book or in the clerk's office as the author of it, if it be avoidable.” He cannot tell how many volumes there will be, or even examine, before some time in May, 1804, Was.h.i.+ngton's papers relating to the period of his two administrations. The first volume he wants ”denominated _an introduction_.” It is too long, he admits, and authorizes Wayne to split it, putting all after ”the peace of 1763” into the second volume.[628]
Marshall objects again to appearing as the author: ”My repugnance to permitting my name to appear in the t.i.tle still continues, but it shall yield to your right to make the best use you can of the copy.” He does not think that ”the name of the author being given or withheld can produce any difference in the number of subscribers”; but, since he does not wish to leave Wayne ”in the Opinion that a real injury has been sustained,” he would ”submit scruples” to Wayne and Was.h.i.+ngton, ”only requesting that [his] name may not be given but on mature consideration and conviction of its propriety.” In any case, Marshall declares: ”I wish not my t.i.tle in the judiciary of the United States to be annexed to it.”
He writes at great length about punctuation, paragraphing, capital letters, and spelling, giving minute directions, but leaves much to Wayne's judgment. As to spelling: ”In any doubtful case I wou^d decidedly prefer to follow Johnson.”[629] Two other long letters about details of printing the first volume followed. By the end of March, 1804, his second volume was ready.[630]
He now becomes worried about ”the inaccuracies ... the many and great defects in composition” of the first two volumes; but ”the hurried manner in which it is press^d forward renders this inevitable.” He begs Bushrod Was.h.i.+ngton to ”censure and alter freely.... You mistake me very much if you think I rank the corrections of a friend with the bitter sarcasms of a foe, or that I shou^d feel either wounded or chagrined at my inattentions being pointed out by another.”[631]
Once more the troubled author writes his a.s.sociate, this time about the spelling of ”Chesapeak” and ”enterprise,” the size of the second volume, and as to ”the prospects of subscribers.”[632] Not until June, 1804, did Marshall give the proof-sheets of the first volume even ”a hasty reading” because of ”the pressure of ... official business.”[633]
Totally forgotten was the agreed plan to publish maps in a separate volume, although it was thus ”stated in the prospectus.”[634] He blandly informs the exasperated publisher that he must wait a long time after publis.h.i.+ng the volumes describing the Revolution and those on the Presidency of Was.h.i.+ngton before the ma.n.u.script of the last volume can be sent to press--this when many subscribers were clamoring for the return of the money they had paid, and the public was fast losing interest in the book. Large events had meanwhile filled the heavens of popular interest, and George Was.h.i.+ngton's heroic figure was already becoming dim and indistinct.
The proof-sheets of the second volume were now in Marshall's hands; but the toil of writing, ”super-intending the copying,” and various other avocations ”absolutely disabled” him, he insists, from giving them any proper examination. He had no idea that he had been so careless in his writing and is anxious to revise the work for a second edition. He complains of his health and says he must spend the summer in the mountains, where, of course, he ”cannot take the papers with [him] to prosecute the work.” He will, however, read the pages of the first two volumes while on his vacation.
The ma.n.u.script of the third he had finished and sent to Bushrod Was.h.i.+ngton.[635] When Wayne saw the length of it, his Quaker blood was heated to wrath. Did Marshall's prolixity know no limit? The first two volumes had already cost the publisher far more than the estimate--would not Was.h.i.+ngton persuade Marshall to be more concise?[636]
By midsummer of 1804 the first two volumes appeared. They were a dismal performance. Nevertheless, one or two Federalist papers praised them, and Marshall was as pleased as any youthful writer by a first compliment. He thanks Wayne for sending the reviews and comments on one of them: ”The very handsome critique in the 'Political and Commercial Register' was new to me.” He modestly admits: ”I cou^d only regret that there was in it more of panuegyric than was merited. The editor ...
manifests himself to be master of a style of a very superior order and to be, of course, a very correct judge of the composition of Others.”
Marshall is somewhat mollified that his parentage of the biography has been revealed: ”Having, Heaven knows how reluctantly, consented against my judgement to be known as the author of the work in question I cannot be insensible to the opinions entertained of it. But, I am much more solicitous to hear the strictures upon it”--than commendation of it--because, he says, these would point out defects to be corrected. He asks Wayne, therefore, to send to him at Front Royal, Virginia, ”every condemnatory criticism.... I shall not attempt to polish every sentence; that wou^d require repeated readings & a long course of time; but I wish to correct obvious imperfections & the animadversions of others wou^d aid me very much in doing so.”[637]
[Ill.u.s.tration: A PART OF MARSHALL'S LIST OF CORRECTIONS FOR HIS LIFE OF WAs.h.i.+NGTON]
Within three weeks Marshall had read his first volume in the form in which it had been delivered to subscribers, and was ”mortified beyond measure to find that it [had] been so carelessly written.” He had not supposed that so many ”inelegancies ... cou^d have appeared in it,” and regrets that he must require Wayne to reset the matter ”so materially.” He informs his publisher, nevertheless, that he is starting on his vacation in the Alleghanies; and he promises that when he returns he ”will ... review the corrections” he has made in the first volume, although he would ”not have time to reperuse the whole volume.”[638]
Not for long was the soul of the perturbed author to be soothed with praise. He had asked for ”strictures”; he soon got them. Wayne promptly sent him a ”Magazine[639] containing a piece condemnatory of the work.”
Furthermore, the books were not going well; not a copy could the publisher sell that had not been ordered before publication. ”I have all those on hand which I printed over the number of subscribers,” Wayne sourly informs the author.
In response to Marshall's request for time for revision, Wayne is now willing that he shall take all he wishes, since ”present prospects would not induce [him] to republish,” but he cautions Marshall to ”let the idea of a 2^d edit. revised and corrected remain a secret”; if the public should get wind of such a purpose the stacks of volumes in Wayne's printing house would never be sold. He must have the ma.n.u.script of the ”_fourth_ vol. by the last of September at furthest.... Can I have it?--or must I dismiss my people.”
At the same time he begs Marshall to control his redundancy: ”The first and second vols. have cost me (1500) fifteen hundred dollars more than calculated!”[640]
It was small wonder that Marshall's first two bulky books, published in the early summer of 1804, were not hailed with enthusiasm. In volume one the name of Was.h.i.+ngton was mentioned on only two minor occasions described toward the end.[641] The reader had to make his way through more than one hundred thousand words without arriving even at the cradle of the hero. The voyages of discovery, the settlements and explorations of America, and the history of the Colonies until the Treaty of Paris in 1763, two years before the Stamp Act of 1765, were treated in dull and heavy fas.h.i.+on.
The author defends his plan in the preface: No one connected narrative tells the story of all the Colonies and ”few would ... search through the minute details”; yet this he held to be necessary to an understanding of the great events of Was.h.i.+ngton's life. So Marshall had gathered the accounts of the various authorities[642] in parts of the country and in England, and from them made a continuous history. If there were defects in the book it was due to ”the impatience ... of subscribers” which had so hastened him.
The volume is poorly done; parts are inaccurate.[643] To Bacon's Rebellion are given only four pages.[644] The story of the Pilgrims is fairly well told.[645] A page is devoted to Roger Williams and six sympathetic lines tell of his principles of liberty and toleration.[646]
The Salem witchcraft madness is well treated.[647] The descriptions of military movements const.i.tute the least disappointing parts of the volume. The beginnings of colonial opposition to British rule are tiresomely set out; and thus at last, the reader arrives within twelve years of Bunker Hill.
Marshall admits that every event of the Revolutionary War has been told by others who had examined Was.h.i.+ngton's ”immensely voluminous correspondence,” and that he had copied these authors, sometimes using their very language. Still, he promises the reader ”a particular account of his [Was.h.i.+ngton's] own life.”[648]
One page and three lines at the beginning of the second volume are all that Marshall gives of the ancestry, birth, environment, upbringing, education, and experiences of George Was.h.i.+ngton, up to the nineteenth year of his age. On the second page the hero, fully uniformed and accoutred, is plunged into the French and Indian Wars. Braddock's defeat, already described in the first volume, is repeated and elaborated.[649] Six lines, closing the first chapter, disposes of Was.h.i.+ngton in marriage and describes the bride.[650]
About three pages are devoted to the Stamp Act speeches in the British Parliament; while but one short paragraph is given to the immortal resolutions of Patrick Henry and the pa.s.sage of them by the Virginia House of Burgesses. Not a word describes the ”most b.l.o.o.d.y” debate over them, and Henry's time-surviving speech is not even referred to.[651]
All mention of the fact that Was.h.i.+ngton was a fellow member with Henry and voted for the resolutions is omitted. Henry's second epoch-making speech at the outbreak of the Revolution is not so much as hinted at, nor is any place found for the Virginia Resolutions for Arming and Defense, which his unrivaled eloquence carried.
The name of the supreme orator of the Revolution is mentioned for the second time in describing the uprising against Lord Dunmore,[652] and then Marshall adds this footnote: ”The same gentleman who had introduced into the a.s.sembly of Virginia the original resolution against the stamp act.”[653]
Marshall's account of the development of the idea of independence is scattered.[654] He gives with unnecessary completeness certain local resolutions favoring it,[655] while to the great Declaration less than two pages[656] are a.s.signed. It is termed ”this important paper”; and a footnote disposes of the fact that ”Mr. Jefferson, Mr. John Adams, Mr.
Franklin, Mr. Sherman, and Mr. R. R. Livingston, were appointed to prepare this declaration; and the draft reported by the committee has been generally attributed to Mr. Jefferson.”[657] A report of the talk between Was.h.i.+ngton and Colonel Paterson of the British Army, concerning the t.i.tle by which Was.h.i.+ngton insisted upon being addressed,[658] is given one and one third times the s.p.a.ce that is bestowed upon the Declaration of Independence.
Marshall is satisfactory only when dealing with military operations. He draws a faithful picture of the condition of the army;[659] quotes Was.h.i.+ngton's remorseless condemnations of the militia,[660] short enlistments, and the democratic spirit among men and officers.[661] When writing upon such topics, Marshall is spirited; his pages are those of the soldier that, by nature, he was.