Part 2 (1/2)
It may be here remarked, that, though not ”professionals,” all of our family, without a break in the record, have successively taken turns at fighting, and earned our pay as soldiers, since time lost in oblivion; for I and my brother tried it on during the Rebellion, wherein he indeed, standing by my side, got the wound from a sh.e.l.l of which he eventually died; while there were none who were not in the old Indian wars or the English troubles of Charles the Second and First, and so on back, I dare say, to the days of Bussli de Leland, who laid all Yorks.h.i.+re waste.
My grandfather, though not wealthy, owned a great deal of land, and I can remember that he one afternoon showed me a road, saying that he owned the land on each side for a mile. I myself, in after years, however, came to own in fee-simple a square mile of extremely rich land in Kansas, which I sold for sixteen hundred dollars, while my grandfather's was rather of that kind by which men's poverty was measured in Virginia--that is to say, the more land a man had the poorer he was considered to be. It is related of one of these that he once held great rejoicing at having got rid of a vast property by the ingenious process of giving some person one half of it to induce him to take the other. However, as there is now a large town or small city on my grandfather's whilom estate, I wish that it could have been kept. _Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan_, or the ducats of Panurge?
There was a ”home-pasture,” a great field behind my grandfather's house, where I loved to sit alone, and which has left a deep impression on my memory, as though it were a fairy-haunted or imagined place. It was very rocky, the stones being covered with clean, crisp, dry lichens, and in one spot there was the gurgling deep down in some crevice of a mysterious unseen spring or rivulet. Young as I was, I had met with a line which bore on it--
”Deep from their vaults the Loxian murmurs flow.”
And there was something very voice-like or human in this murmur or chattering of the unseen brook. This I distinctly remember, that the place gave me not only a feeling, but a faith that it was haunted by something gentle and merry. I went there many a time for company, being much alone. An Indian would have told me that it was the _Un a games- suk_--the spirit-fairies of the rock and stream. These beings enter far more largely, deeply, and socially into their life or faith than elves or fairies ever did into those of the Aryan races, and I might well have been their _protege_, for there could have been few little boys living, so fond as I was of sitting all alone by rock and river, hill and greenwood tree. There are yet in existence on some of this land which was once ours certain mysterious walls or relics of heavy stone-work, which my friend Eben C. Horsford thinks were made by the Nors.e.m.e.n. I hope that they were, for I have read many a saga in Icelandic, old Swedish, and Latin, and the romance thereof is deep in my soul; and as my own name is G.o.dfrey, it is no wonder that the G.o.d Frey and his Freya are dear to me. In my boyhood--and it may be still the case--the ”Injuns”
got the credit of having built these mysterious works.
Not far from Holliston is Mendon, where I had an uncle, Seth Davenport, who had a large, pleasant, old-fas.h.i.+oned New England farm, which was more productive than my grandfather's, since there were employed on it sixteen men, three of whom were Natick Indians of the old local stock. There were many of them when my mother was young, but I suppose that the last of the tribe has long since died. One of these Indians, Rufus Pease, I can recall as looking like a dark-ruddy gypsy, with a pleasant smile. He very was fond of me. He belonged to a well-known family, and had a brother--and thereby hangs a tale, or, in this case, a scalp-lock.
”Marm” Pease, the mother of Rufus, had on one occasion been confined, and old Doctor--I forget his name--who officiated at the birth, had been asked to give the infant a name. Now he was a dry wag, of the kind so dear to Dr. Holmes, and expressed much gratification and grat.i.tude at such a compliment being paid to him. ”He had long been desirous,” he said, ”of naming a child after his dear old friend, Dr. Green.” So the name was bestowed, the simple Indians not realising for some time after the christening that their youngest bore the name of Green Pease. Whether he was ever called a duck, I know not.
Everything about Uncle Seth and Aunt Betsy was, as I remember, delightfully comfortable, old-fas.h.i.+oned, and in a way beautiful. There was their daughter Rebecca, who was pretty and gentle, so that several wild birds came every morning to feed from her hand and perch on her fingers. Uncle Seth himself wore a scarlet waistcoat, and, as I recall him, seemed altogether in figure to belong to the time of Cromwell, or to earlier days. There was a hall, hung round with many old family portraits in antique dresses, and an immense dairy--the pride of Aunt Betsy's heart--and a garden, in which I was once shown a humming-bird's nest; and cousin Rebecca's mantelpiece, over a vast old fireplace, heaped with mosses, birds' nests, sh.e.l.ls, and such curiosities as a young girl would gather in the woods and fields; and the cider-press, in which Uncle Seth ground up the sixteen hundred bushels of apples which he had at one crop, and the new cider gus.h.i.+ng in a stream, whereof I had a taste. It was a charming, quiet old homestead, in which books and culture were not wanting, and it has all to me now something of the chiaroscuro and Rembrandt colour and charm of the _Mahrchen_ or fairy-tale. The reality of this charm is apt to go out of life as that of literature or culture comes in. To this day I draw the deepest impression or sentiment of the _pantheism_ or subtle spiritual charm of Nature far more from these early experiences of rural life than from all the books, poetry included, which I have ever perused. Note this well, ye whose best feelings are only a _rechauffe_ of Ruskin and Browning--_secundem ordinem_--for I observe that those who do not think at second hand are growing rare.
In the town of Milford lived my uncle, William G.o.dfrey, with my aunt Nancy, and of them and their home I have many pleasant memories. The very first of them all was not so pleasant to me at the time. My parents had just arrived, and had not been ten minutes in the house ere a tremendous squall was heard, and my mother, looking from the window, beheld me standing in the open barn-door holding a tiny chicken in my right hand, while an old hen sat on my head flapping her wings and pecking me in wrath. I, seeing the brood, had forthwith captured one, and for that was undergoing penance. It was a beautiful tableau, which was never forgotten! We went there on visits for many summers. Uncle William was a kind-hearted, ”sportive” man, who took _Bell's Life_, and I can remember that there was a good supply of English reading in the house. My uncle had three sons, all much older than I. The eldest, Stearns, was said to have first popularised the phrase ”posted up,” to signify well-informed. The second, Benjamin, became in after years a great manufacturer and somewhat noted politician, and owner of a famous racehorse. The third, Samuel, went into business in Philadelphia, and crossed the Atlantic with me. He died quite young. All of them, like their father and grandfather, were very good-natured or gentle, and men of perfect integrity. The Lelands, however, were rather _dour_ and grim in their honesty, or more Northern than the G.o.dfreys. This was accounted for by the fact, that while my father's family was Puritan of the purest, and only intermarried with Puritan stock, the G.o.dfreys had in Rhode Island received an infusion of French Huguenot blood, which was indeed very perceptible in their faces and lively pleasant manner.
There was a strange tradition, to which my mother sometimes jestingly referred, that there had been among her Rhode Island ancestors a High German (_i.e._, not a Hollander) doctor, who had a reputation as a sorcerer or wizard. He was a man of learning, but that is all I ever heard about him. My mother's opinion was that this was a very strong case of atavism, and that the mysterious ancestor had through the ages cropped out again in me. Something tells me that this was the High German doctor who, according to Was.h.i.+ngton Irving, laid the mystic spell on Sleepy Hollow, which made of it such a pleasant, ancient, dreamy fairy- land. Whether his friendly spirit still watches over me, or whether I am the man himself, is a problem which I leave to my friend Francis Galton, who indeed personally often reminds me of Irving. High German sorcerers were not common in those days north of Pennsylvania, so that I trow mine was the very man referred to by Geoffrey Crayon. And it is true beyond all doubt that even in infancy, as I have often heard, there was a quaint uncanniness, as of something unknown, in my nature, and that I differed in the main totally from every relative, and indeed from any other little boy, known to anybody; though I was a perfect G.o.dfrey in face when very young, as I am now a typical Leland. I was always given to loneliness in gardens and woods when I could get into them, and to hearing words in birds' songs and running or falling water; and I once appalled a visitor by professing seriously that I could determine for him some question as to what would happen to him by divination with a bullet in an Indian moccasin. We had two servants who spoke old Irish; one was an inexhaustible mine of legends, which she related to me--she surpa.s.sed Croker; the other, less versed, still knew a great deal, and told me how her own father, Jackey Mooney, had seen the fairies with his own eyes.
Both of these sincerely and seriously regarded me as ”gifted” or elfin- favoured, and the latter said in proof thereof, ”Only listen to his voice; sure whin he spakes he'd while a burred aff a tree.” For my uncanny ways made a deep impression on them, as also on the darkies.
Once I had a wonderful dream. I thought that I was in Dr. Furness's chapel, but that, instead of the gentle reverend clergyman, the devil himself was in the pulpit preaching. Feeling myself inspired, I went up into the pulpit, threw the Evil One out, and preached myself in his place. Now our nurse had a dream-book, and made some pretence to mystic fairy knowledge learned in Kilkenny, and she interpreted this dream as signifying that I would greatly rise in this world, and do strange things. But she was greatly struck with such a vision in such an infant.
Now, I was a great reader of Scripture; in fact, I learned a great deal too much of it, believing now that for babes and sucklings about one-third of it had better be expurgated. The Apocrypha was a favourite work, but above all I loved the Revelations, a work which, I may say by the way, is still a treasure to be investigated as regards the marvellous mixture of Neo-Platonic, later Egyptian (or Gnostic), and even Indian Buddhistic ideas therein. Well, I had learned from it a word which St.
John applies (to my mind very vulgarly and much too frequently) to the Scarlet Lady of Babylon or Rome. What this word meant I did not know, but this I understood, that it was ”sa.s.s” of some kind, as negroes term it, and so one day I applied it experimentally to my nurse. Though the word was not correctly p.r.o.nounced, for I had never heard it from anybody, its success was immediate, but not agreeable. The pa.s.sionate Irish woman flew into a great rage and declared that she would ”lave the house.” My mother, called in, investigated the circ.u.mstances, and found that I really had no idea whatever of the meaning of what I had said. Peace was restored, but Annie declared that only the divil or the fairies could have inspired such an infant to use such language.
I was very fond of asking my nurse to sing in old Irish or to teach me Irish words. This she did, but agreed with her sister Biddy that it was all very uncanny, and that there must have been a time when I was perfectly familiar with the owld language, as I had such unearthly fondness for it.
I must have been about seven years old when my parents took a house in Arch Street, above Ninth Street, Philadelphia. Here my life begins to be more marked and distinct. I was at first sent, _i.e._, walked daily to the school of Jacob Pierce, a worthy Quaker, who made us call him Jacob, and who carefully taught us all the ordinary branches, and gave us excellent lectures on natural philosophy and chemistry with experiments, and encouraged us to form mineralogical collections, but who objected to our reading history, ”because there were so many battles in it.” In which system of education all that is good and bad, or rather _weak_, in Quakerism is fully summed up. Like the Roman Catholic, it is utterly unfit for _all_ the world, and incapable of grappling with or adapting itself to the natural expansion of science and the human mind. Thus the Quaker garb, which was originally intended by its simplicity to avoid the appearance of eccentricity or peculiarity (most dress in the time of the Stuarts being extravagant), has now become, by merely sticking to old custom, the most eccentric dress known. The school was in a very large garden, in which was a gymnasium, and in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the main building there was a carpenter's shop with a turning-lathe, where boys were allowed to work as a reward for good conduct.
I could never learn the multiplication table. There are things which the mind, like the stomach, spasmodically rejects without the least perceptible cause or reason. So I have found it to be with certain words which _will_ not be remembered. There was one Arab word which I verily believe I looked out one hundred times in the dictionary, and repeated a thousand, yet never could keep it. Every teacher should be keen to detect these antipathies, and cure them by gentle and persuasive means.
Unfortunately no one in my youth knew any better way to overcome them than by ”keeping me in” after school to study, when I was utterly weary and worn--a very foolish punishment, as is depriving a boy of his meals, or anything else levelled at Nature. I think there must have been many months of time, and of as much vain and desperate effort on my part to remember, wasted on my early arithmetic. Now I can see that by _rewards_ or inducements, and by the very simple process of only learning ”one time one is one” for the first lesson, and that and one line more for the second, I could have mastered the whole book in time. But oh! the weary, dreary days, and the sad waste of time, and the anxious nervous suffering, which arithmetic cost me in my youth, and mathematics in after years!
But there was one cla.s.s at Jacob's in which I was _facile-princeps_ and habitual past-grand-master. This was the cla.s.s which was, like the professors.h.i.+p of Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, for Matters and Things in General. That is to say, we read aloud from some book--it may have been selections from English writers--and then Jacob, picking out the hard words or facts or phrases, required of them definition or explanation.
One day there arose in these questions a sum in arithmetic, when I shot down to the tail of the cla.s.s as a plummet drops to the bottom of the well. I shall never forget the proud fierce impatience which I felt, like an imprisoned chieftain who knows that he will speedily be delivered and take dire vengeance on his foes. I had not long to wait.
”'Refectory,' what is a 'refectory'? Hillburn Jones, does thee know?
Joseph Widdifield, does thee?” But none of them knew till it came to me ”down tail,” when I cried ”An oyster-cellar.” ”That is quite right, Charley; thee can go up head,” said Jacob, and as I pa.s.sed Hillburn Jones he whispered, half in fun, half enviously, the ”Kemble Refectory.” This was an oyster-cellar which had been recently opened under the Arch Street Theatre, and whence Hillburn and I had derived our knowledge of the word, the difference being that I remembered more promptly and risked more boldly. But I missed it one day when I defined a _peasant_ as ”a nest full of young birds;” the fact being that I recalled a picture in AEsop's fables, and confused _peasant_ with _pheasant_. One day Jacob rebuked the cla.s.s for letting me always be at their head, when Hillburn Jones, who was a very honest little boy, said, ”Indeed, Jacob, thee must know that all that we do know, Charley tells us.” For I was already an insatiable reader, and always recalling what I read, and always communicating my knowledge to others in the form of small lectures. I had a book of Scripture stories, with a picture of Pharaoh in his chariot, with the t.i.tle, ”Pharaoh's host sunk in the Red Sea.” Hence I concluded that a _host_ was a vehicle of a very superior description. A carriage-builder in our neighbourhood had executed a chaise of very unusual magnificence, and as I stood admiring it I informed Hillburn that this was what was called by the learned a _host_, and that it was in such a host that Pharaoh perished. I remember elevating my voice somewhat for the benefit of a bystander, being somewhat proud of this bit of knowledge.
Unfortunately, not only my father, but also my teacher, and with them the entire population of North America, in those days regarded a good knowledge of arithmetic as forming nine-tenths of all that was most needful in education, while indulgence in a taste for general information, and ”literature” especially, was glared at with a very evil eye indeed, as tending to injure a ”practical business man.” That there could be any kind of profitable or respectable calling not based upon arithmetic did not enter into the heart of man to conceive, while among the bankers and merchants of Boston, New York, or Philadelphia there was a deeply-seated conviction that even a wealthy and successful editor, literary man, or artist, was really an inferior as compared to themselves. As this sublime truth was severely rubbed into me several times daily during the greater portion of my youthful life, and as in its earlier stage I rarely met with a man grown who did not look down on me as an unfortunate non-arithmetical, unbusinesslike creature, and let me know it too, I very naturally grew up with a low estimate of my own capacities; and as I was proud and sensitive, this was to me a source of much suffering, which often became terrible as I advanced in years. But at that time the position of the literary man or scholar, with the exception of a very few brilliant magnates who had ”made money,” was in the United States not an enviable one. Serious interest in art and letters was not understood, or so generally sympathised with, as it now is in ”Quakerdelphia.” There was a gentleman in Philadelphia who was a scholar, and who having lived long abroad, had acc.u.mulated a very curious black-letter and _rariora_ library. For a long time I observed that this library was never mentioned in polite circles without significant smiles.
One day I heard a lady say very meaningly, ”I suppose that you know what kind of books he has _and how he obtained them_?” So I inquired very naturally if he had come by them dishonestly. To which the reply, half- whispered in my ear lest it should be overheard, was, ”They say his books are all _old_ things, which he did not buy at any first-cla.s.s stores, but picked up at old stalls and in second-hand shops at less than their value; in fact, _they did not cost him much_.”
Yet these remarks must not be regarded as too sweeping or general.
Firstly, I am speaking of sixty years since. Secondly, there were many people of literary tastes in Philadelphia--a little isolated, it is true; and finally, there was a great culture of science, founded by Franklin, and fostered by the medical schools. I could cite a brilliant array of names of men distinguished in these matters. What I am writing is simply a sincere record of my own--somewhat peculiar--or personal experiences.
There are doubtless many who would write very differently. And now times are _very_ greatly changed.
I have again a quaint early reminiscence. It would happen that now and then a new carriage, always of the same sober description, with two very good, but seldom showy, horses would appear in the streets. Then its owner would be greeted on Market Street with the remark, ”Well, Sammy, I see thee's got thee fifty thousand dollars.” This sum--ten thousand pounds--const.i.tuted the millionaireism or moneyed aristocracy of those days. On it, with a thriving business, Samuel could maintain a family in good fas.h.i.+on, and above all, in great comfort, which was sensibly regarded as better than fas.h.i.+on or style. Fifty thousand dollars ent.i.tled a man to keep a carriage and be cla.s.sed as ”quality” by the negroes.
It may be worth noting that although the Quakers did not allow the piano in their families, as being too worldly, they compromised by having musical boxes. And I have heard that in the country, where still older fas.h.i.+oned ideas prevailed, the one bit of finery allowed to a Quaker damsel was a red ribbon; but it must be red, not of any other colour.