Part 4 (1/2)

The boy who was first down in the morning had an apple given to him. This apple was greatly despised by the bolder spirits, who taunted those who arose promptly with a desire to obtain it.

Candour compels me to admit that, as a teacher of learning, Mr. Greene was not pre-eminent. He had two schoolrooms, and employed for each as good a teacher as he could hire. But we were not at all thoroughly well taught, although we were kept longer in the schoolroom than was really good for us; for in summer we had an hour's study before breakfast, then from nine till twelve, and again from two to five. In winter we had, instead of the early lesson, an hour in the evening. Something was wanting in the system, and I believe that after a year and a half I knew no more, as regards studies, than I did when I first entered.

When a boy's birthday came, he was allowed to have some special dainty for us all. I was very much disgusted with the Boston boys when they selected pork and beans, which I loathed. Some would choose plum-pudding, others apple-pies. There were always two or three dishes for breakfast, as, for instance, fried potatoes and b.u.t.ter, or cold meat, or pan-dowdy--a kind of coa.r.s.e and broken up apple-pie--with the tea and bread and coffee, but we could only eat of one. There was rather too much petty infant-schoolery in all this, but we got on very well. Pepper and mustard were forbidden, but I always had a great natural craving for these, and when I asked for them, Mr. Greene would shake his head, but always ended by handing them to me. He was a _bon vivant_ himself, and sympathised with me. There were one or two books also of a rather peppery or spicy nature in his library, such as a collection of rollicking London songs, at which he likewise shook his head when I asked for them--but I got them. There I read for the first time all of Walter Scott's novels, and the Percy Ballads, and some of Marryatt's romances, and Hood's Annual, and Dr. Holmes's first poems.

There was in Mr. Greene's library a very curious and now rare work in three volumes, published in Boston at some time in the twenties, called ”The Marvellous Depository.” It consisted of old legends of Boston, such as the story of ”Peter Rugg,” ”Tom Walker and the Devil,” ”The Golden Tooth,” ”Captain Kidd,” ”The Witch Flymaker,” and an admirable collection of unearthly German tales, such as ”The Devil's Elixir,” by Hoffmann (abridged), ”Jacob the Bowl,” ”Rubezahl,” ”Der Freyschutz,” and many more, but all of the unearthly blood-curdling kind. Singly, they were appalling enough to any one in those days when the supernatural still thrilled the strongest minds, but taken altogether for steady reading, the book was a perfect Sabbat of deviltry and dramatic horrors. The tales were well told, or translated in very simple but vigorous English, and I pored over the collection and got it by heart, and borrowed it, and took it to Dedham in the holidays, and into the woods, where I read it in suns.h.i.+ne or twilight shade by the rippling river, under wild rocks, and so steeped my soul in the supernatural, that I seemed to live a double life. As was natural, my schoolmates read and liked such tales, but they sunk into my very soul, and took root, and grew up into a great overshadowing forest, while with others they were only as dwarf bushes, if they grew at all. All of this--though I did not know it--was unconsciously educating my bewitched mind to a deep and very precocious pa.s.sion for mediaeval and black-letter literature and occult philosophy, which was destined to manifest itself within a few years.

There was another book which greatly influenced my mind and life. I have forgotten the t.i.tle, but it was a very remarkable collection of curiosities, such as accounts of a family of seven children who had every one some strange peculiarity, dwarfs and giants, and mysteriously-gifted mortals, and all kinds of odd beings and inventions. I obtained in a very mysterious way; for one day I found it in my desk, a blessed gift indeed from some unknown friend who had rightly judged of my tastes. This work I literally lived upon for a long time. Once a lady friend of my mother's came in winter and took me a-sleighing, but I had my dear book under my jacket, and contrived now and then to re-read some anecdote in it. In after years I found a copy of it in the Mercantile Library, Philadelphia, but I have never seen it elsewhere. {56} I had at Mr.

Alcott's carefully studied all the Percy Anecdotes, and could repeat most of them when recalled by some a.s.sociation; also Goldsmith's ”Animated Nature,” the perusal of which latter work was to me as the waving of a forest and the sighing of deep waters. Then, too, I had read--in fact I owned--the famous Peter Parley books, which gave me, as they have to thousands of boys, a desire to travel and see the world. I marvelled greatly at finding that Peter Parley himself, or Mr. S. G. Goodrich, had a beautiful country-house very near our school, and his son Frank, who was a very pleasant and wonderfully polite and suns.h.i.+ny boy, sat by me in school. Frank Goodrich in after life wrote a novel ent.i.tled ”Flirtation and its Consequences,” of which my brother said, ”What are its consequences, Frank; good rich husbands? By no means.” I can remember being invited to a perfectly heavenly garden-party at the Goodrichs', and evening visits there with my mother. And I may note by the way, that Frank himself lived abroad in after years; that his father became the American Consul in Paris, and that in 1848 he introduced to the _Gouvernement Provisoire_ the American delegation, of which I was one, and how we were caricatured in the _Charivari_, in which caricature I was specially depicted, the likeness being at once recognised by everybody, and how I knew nothing of it all till I was told about it by the beautiful Miss Goodrich, Frank's younger sister, on a Staten Island steamboat, many, many years after. And as a postscript I may add, that it is literally true that before I was quite twenty-three years of age I had been twice caricatured or pictorially jested on in the Munich _Fliegende Blatter_ and twice in the Paris _Charivari_, which may show that I was to a certain degree about town in those days, as I indeed was.

While I am about it, I may as well tell the Munich tale. There was a pretty governess, a great friend of mine, who had charge of two children.

Meeting her one day in the park, at a sign from me she pressed the children's hats down over their eyes with ”Kinder, setzt eure Hute fester auf!” and in that blessed instant cast up her beautiful lips and was kissed. I don't know whether we were overseen; certain it is that in the next number of the _Fliegende Blatter_ the scene was well depicted, with the words. The other instance was this. One evening I met in a _Bierhalle_ a sergeant of police with whom I fraternised. I remember that he could talk modern Greek, having learned it in Greece. This was very _infra dig._ indeed for a student, and one of my comrades said to me that, as I was a foreigner, I was probably not aware of what a fault I had committed, but that in future I must not be seen talking to a soldier. To which I, with a terrible wink, replied, ”Mum's the word; that soldier is _lieutenant of police in my ward_, and I have squared it with him all right, so that if there should be a _Bierkrawall_ (a drunken row) in our quarter he will let me go.” This, which appeared as a grand flight of genial genius to a German, speedily went through all the students' _kneipe_, and soon appeared, very well ill.u.s.trated, in the ”_F.

B_.”

We were allowed sixpence a week spending-money at Mr. Greene's, two cents, or a penny, being deducted for a bad mark. Sometimes I actually got a full week's income; once I let it run on up to 25 cents, but this was forbidden, it not being considered advisable that the boys should acc.u.mulate fortunes. A great deal of my money went for cheap comic literature, which I carefully preserved. In those days there were Crockett's almanacs (now a great fund of folk-lore), and negro songs and stories were beginning to be popular. It is very commonly a.s.serted that the first regular negro minstrel troupe appeared in 1842. This is quite an error. While I was at Mr. Greene's, in 1835, there came to Dedham a circus with as regularly-appointed a negro minstrel troupe of a dozen as I ever saw. I often beheld the pictures of them on the bill. Nor do I think that this was any novelty even then. The Crockett almanacs greatly stimulated my sense of American humour (they do indeed form collectively a very characteristic work), and this, with some similar reading, awoke in me a pa.s.sion for wild Western life and frontier experiences, which was fully and strangely gratified in after years, but which would certainly have never happened had it not been for this boyish reading.

For I beg the reader to observe that it is a very deeply-seated characteristic that whatever once takes root in my mind invariably grows.

This comes from the great degree to which I have always gone over, reviewed, and _reflected on_, or nursed everything which ever once really interested me. And as I have thus far written, and shall probably conclude this work without referring to a note, the reader will have ample opportunity of observing how very strangely in all cases the phases of my life were predetermined long before by the literary education which I gave myself, aided very much by hereditary or other causes quite beyond my control. Now, as the object of a _Life_ is to understand every cause which created it, and as mine was to a very unusual degree created by reading and _reflecting_, even in infancy, I beg the reader not to be impatient with me for describing so much in detail the books which made my mind at different times. That is, I pray this much allowance and sympathy from possible readers and critics, that they will kindly not regard me as vain or thinking over-much of, or too much over, myself. For to get oneself forth as one really is requires deep investigation into _every_ cause, and the depicting all early characteristics, and the man never lived who ever did this truly and accurately without much egoism, or what the ill-disposed may treat as such. And I promise the possible reader that when this subjective a.n.a.lysis shall be fairly disposed of, there will be no lack of mere incident or event of objective nature and more general interest.

My first winter at Jamaica Plains was the terrible one of 1835, during which I myself saw the thermometer at 50 degrees Fahrenheit below zero, and there was a snow-bank in the play-ground from October till May. The greatest care possible was taken of us boys to keep us warm and well, but we still suffered very much from chilblains. Water thrown into the air froze while falling. Still there were some happy lights and few shadows in it all. The boys skated or slid on beautiful Jamaica Pond, which was near the school. There was a general giving of sleds to us all; mine broke to pieces at once. I never had luck with any plaything, never played ball or marbles, and hardly ever had even a top. Nor did I ever have much to do with any games, or even learn in later years to play cards, which was all a great pity. Sports should be as carefully looked to in early education as book-learning. I had also a pair of dear gazelle-skates given to me with the rest, but they also broke up on first trial, and I have never owned any since. Destiny was always against me in such matters.

The boys built two large snow-houses, roofed in or arched over with hard snow. One was ingeniously and appropriately like an Eskimo hut, with a rather long winding pa.s.sage leading into it. Of these I wrote in the spring, when the sun had begun to act, ”one is almost annihilated, and of the other not a _vestage_ remains.” I found the letter by chance many years later.

There lived in Boston some friends of my mother's named Gay. In the family was an old lady over eighty, who was a wonderfully lively spirited person. She still sang, as I thought, very beautifully, to the lute, old songs such as ”The merry days of good Queen Bess,” and remembered the old Colonial time as if it were of yesterday. One day Mr. Gay came out and took me to his house, where I remained from Sat.u.r.day until Monday; during which time I found among the books, and very nearly read through, all the poems of Peter Pindar or Doctor Wolcott. Precious reading it was for a boy of eleven, yet I enjoyed it immensely. While there, I found in the earth in the garden an oval, dark-green porphyry pebble, which I, moved by a strange feeling, preserved for many years as an amulet. It is very curious that exactly such pebbles are found as fetishes all over the world, and the famous conjuring stone of the Voodoos, which I possess, is only an ordinary black flint pebble of the same shape. Negroes have travelled a thousand miles to hold it in their hands and make a wish, which, if uttered with _faith_, is always granted. Its possession alone ent.i.tles any one to the first rank as master in the mysteries of Voodoo sorcery. Truly I began early in the business! I may here say that since I owned the Voodoo stone it has been held in several very famous and a few very beautiful hands.

While I was at Mr. Greene's I wrote my first poem. I certainly exhibited no great precocity of lyrical genius in it, but the reader must remember that I was only a foolish little boy of ten or eleven at the time, and that I showed it to no one. It was as follows:

”As a long-bearded Sultan, an infidel Turk, Who ne'er in his life had done any work, Rode along to the bath, he saw Ha.s.san the black, With two monstrous water-skins high on his back.

”'Ho, Ha.s.san, thou afreet! thou infidel dog!

Thou son of a Jewess and eater of hog!

This instant, this second, put down thy skin jugs, And for my sovereign pleasure remove both the plugs!'

”The negro obeyed him, put both on the ground, And opened the skins and the water flew round; The Sultan looked on till he laughed his fill; Then went on to the bath, feeling heated and ill.

”When arrived at the bath, 'Is all ready?' he cries.

'Indeed it is not, sire,' the bath-man replies; 'For to fetch the bath-water black Ha.s.san has gone, And your highness can't have it till he shall return.'”

In after years my friend, Professor E. H. Palmer, translated this into Arabic, and promised me that it should be sung in the East. It is not much of a poem, even for a boy, but there is one touch true to life in it--which is the _cursing_. This must have come to me by revelation; and in after years in Cairo I never heard a native address another as ”_Afrit_! _Ya-hinzeer_--_wa Yahud_--_yin uldeen ak_?”--”curse your religion!”--but I thought how marvellous it was that I, even in my infancy, had divined so well how they did it! However, now I come to think of it, I had the year before read Morier's ”Haji-Baba” with great admiration, and I doubt not that it was the influence of that remarkable book which produced this beautiful result. In after years I met with a lady who was a daughter of Morier. Apropos of the _book_, it reminds me that I specially recall my _reviewing_ it mentally many times.

I have reviewed my early life in quiet, old-fas.h.i.+oned, shaded Philadelphia and in rural New England so continually and carefully all the time ever since it pa.s.sed that I am sure its minutest detail on any day would now be accurately recalled at the least suggestion. As I shall almost certainly write this whole work without referring to a note or journal or other doc.u.ment, it will be seen that I remember the past pretty well. What is most remarkable in it all, if I _can_ make myself intelligible, is that what between the deep and indelible impression made on my mind by _books_, and that of scenery and characters now pa.s.sed away--the two being connected--it all seems to me now to be as it were vividly depicted, coloured, or _written_ in my mind, like pages in an illuminated or ill.u.s.trated romance. As some one has said that dreams are novels which we read when asleep, so bygone memories, when continually revived and a.s.sociated with the subtle and delicate influences of _reading_, really become fixed literature to us, glide into it, and are virtually turned to copy, which only awaits type. Thus a _scene_ to one highly cultivated in art is really a picture, to a degree which few actually realise, though they may fancy they do, because to actually master this harmony requires so many years of study and thought that I very rarely meet with perfect instances of it. De Quincey and Coleridge are two of the best ill.u.s.trations whom I can recall, while certain a.n.a.lytical character-sifters in modern novels seem the farthest remote from such genial naturalness.

At the end of the first year my brother returned to Philadelphia. I pa.s.sed the summer at Dr. Stimson's, in Dedham, wandering about in the woods with my bow, fis.h.i.+ng in the river, reading always whatever fate or a small circulating library provided--I remember that ”The Devil on Two Sticks” and the ”Narrative of Captain Boyle” were in it--and carving spoons and serpents from wood, which was a premonition of my later work in this line, and of my ”Manual of Wood-Carving.”

At this time something took place which deeply impressed me. This was the two hundredth anniversary of the building of the town of Dedham, which was celebrated with very great splendour: speeches, tents with pine- boughs, music-booths, ginger-beer, side-shows--in short, all the pomp and circ.u.mstance of a country fair allied to historic glory. I had made one or two rather fast and, I fear me, not over-reputable acquaintances of my own age, with whom I enjoyed the festival to the utmost. Then I returned to school, and autumn came, and then winter. At this time I felt fearfully lonely. I yearned for my mother with a longing beyond words, and was altogether home-sick.

I was seated one Sat.u.r.day afternoon, busily working in the drawing-cla.s.s under a little old Englishman named Dr. Hunt, when there came the startling news that a gentleman had come to take me home! I could hardly believe my senses. I went down, and was presented to a man of about thirty, of extremely pleasant and attractive appearance, who told me that his name was Carlisle, that he was a friend of my father's, and that I was at once to return with him to Philadelphia. I wonder that I did not faint with joy. Mr. Carlisle was a man of very remarkable intelligence, kindness, and refinement. Nearly sixty years have pa.s.sed since then, and yet the memory of the delightful impression which he made on me is as fresh as ever. My trunk was soon packed; we were whirled away to Boston, and went to a hotel, he treating me altogether like a young gentleman and an equal.

It had been the dream and hope and wild desire of my life to go to the Lion Theatre in Boston, where circus was combined with roaring maritime melodramas, of which I had heard heavenly accounts from a few of my schoolmates. And Mr. Carlisle took me there that evening, and I saw ”Hyder Ali.” Never, never in my life before did I dream that dramatic art, poetry, and _mimesis_ could attain to such ideal splendour. And then a sailor came on the stage and sang ”Harry Bluff,” and when he came to the last line--