3/18/2016 Athena Holdings Information Need help locating a book? Guide to Cutter Books I Guide to Library of Congress Books Log in to your account ATHENA THE BOSTON ATHEN/EUM CATALOG Search My Searches My List My Account Help = = = New Search : Author Go Search History Titles 1 of 1 This item Ward family papers / Record View Staff View Main Author: Ward, Samuel Gray. Ward family papers / collected and written by Samuel Actions Title: Gray Ward. Make a Request Print Contributors, etc.: Angier, A.A. Merrymount Press, printer. Export Email Club Bindery, binder. Publishing Details: Boston : Merrymount Press, 1900. Add to My List Description: xii, [2], 209, [7] p., [13] leaves of plates : ports. ; 23 Google Books: cm. Notes: "Twelve copies of this book were printed December, "About This Book" 1900." "Privately printed." Binding of full green morocco signed [Grolier] Club Bindery, 1901. Ms. note on p. [215] : "The photographs in this volume are originals made by A. A. Angier." Local Notes: Athenaeum has copy no. 7 for George Cabot Ward. References: Smith & Bianchi. Merrymount Press (1975), 67. Subjects: Ward family. Provenance/Publisher/etc.: Bookbinding--United States--New York--New York--1901 Ward, George Cabot, former owner Call Number: Rare (Cutter) (Appointment required) $XD .M55 no. 67 Number of Items: 1 Status: Not Charged Reference URL: http://catalog.bostonathenaeum.org/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibld=27073 https://catalog.bostonathenaeum.org/vwebv/search?searchType=1&searchArg=ward+family+papers&searchCode=TALL&recCount=50&HIST=1 1/2 WARD FAMILY US42322.9.5, PAPERS COLLEGE is COLLECTED AND WRITTEN CARERIDGE, MASS BY SAMUEL GRAY WARD through Profeber December10,1976 Che Boston PRIVATELY PRINTED: MDCCCC [Merrymount Press tortracts TABLE OF CONTENTS INDEX TO PORTRAITS [*] PREFACE ix I. WILLIAM WARD. From a portrait by WILLIAM WARD: HIS STORY WRITTEN Stuart FACING PAGE 16 FOR HIS GRANDCHILDREN ABOUT 1825 I II. WILLIAM GRAY. From a portrait by APPENDIX TO THE STORY OF WILLIAM Stuart 28 WARD III. THOMAS WREN WARD. From a da- I. MEMORANDUM IN THE HANDWRITING OF guerreotype 44 WILLIAM WARD (CANDID), 1761 to 1824 51 IV. LYDIA GRAY WARD. From a daguer- II. MISTRS. ELIZABETH GARDNER'S LAST Re- reotype 74 QUEST TO HIM SHE LOVED BEST 54 V. JACOB BARKER. From a portrait by III. LETTER FROM RUTH PUTNAM WARD (BORN Inman 1740; DIED 1786) TO MY GRANDFATHER 90 WILLIAM WARD (CANDID) 59 VI. ELIZA HAZARD BARKER. From a por- IV. MEMORANDUM BY WILLIAM WARD (CAN- trait by Harding 106 DID) 62 VII. MARTHA ANN WARD. From a draw- V. LETTER FROM WILLIAM WARD (FATHER OF ing by Cheney 128 WILLIAM CANDID) 65 VIII. SAMUEL GRAY WARD. From a photo- SAMUEL GRAY WARD: A LONG LET- graph 140 TER TO MY GRANDCHILDREN 69 IX. ANNA HAZARD BARKER WARD. From APPENDIX TO THE LETTER OF SAM- a portrait by Hunt I 52 UEL GRAY WARD 213 X. SAMUEL GRAY WARD: . 23. From a portrait by Page 164 XI. ANNA HAZARD BARKER: . 17. From a portrait by Inman 176 XII. MARY GRAY WARD DORR. From a photograph 190 XIII. GEORGE CABOT WARD. From a photo- graph 204 * Removed PREFACE T' HE letter of my grandfather, William Ward, addressed to his grandchildren, and my own let- ter or memoir, addressed to mine three quarters of a century later, cover a space of one hundred and thirty- nine years. Two more such lives would go back of the first settlement of Massachusetts. We cannot remedy the want of the earlier record, but I must hope that some one of the grandchildren I address will, in the course of the present century, follow our example, and hand on the family traditions to later generations. I have given in my narrative such an account as I could of my grandfather (who in his memoir calls himself William Candid) as I remember him. He was the son of William Ward, born 1736, died 1767, and Ruth Putnam, born 1740, died 1786. This William is the one of whom my grandfather speaks as being known by the name of "the Peace and Goodwill of the family." Only one letter of his has been kept, which will be found in an appendix. His wife, Ruth Putnam, of whom frequent mention is made in my grandfather's ix memoir, to whom and to whose memory he was all his after his arrival in this country, died in Virginia on a life warmly attached, and whose last touching letter to trading voyage, as verified by the record, including an him is given in an appendix, was a very remarkable account of his property amounting to £1108 3s.6d. His woman for mind and character. The Elizabeth (Weld) son Foshua (the name erroneously given in my grand- Gardner, born 1682, whose equally affecting last father's memorandum as Joseph) was lost in 1677, letter to her husband is also given, was her grand- on a fishing vessel; and all of those named above whose mother. profession is known, down to and including myself, were The father and mother of the first William were in the mercantile profession. Certain family character- Ebenezer Ward, born 1710, and Rachel Pickman, istics, as exemplified in my grandfather (William Can- born 1717. did) and my father, appear to have been hereditary in The father of Ebenezer was Miles Ward, born 1672; the family; viz., an equally strong tendency, alter- married to Sarah Massey, daughter of John Massey, nately, towards a contemplative and towards an active and this John is said to have been the first town- and even adventurous life; great promptness in action born male child in the colony. Miles Ward, known as ("a Ward is always in a hurry," is a family proverb) Deacon Miles, was the son of Foshua Ward, who when a course is decided on; steadiness in friendship and married Hannah Flint, December 18, 1668. Foshua fidelity to trusts; an absence of any marked trading or was the son of the Miles Ward, the founder of our accumulating faculty, but a practical ability to bring family in New England, who came from the town of about results. Erith in the county of Kent, England, and had two On my mother's side, her father, Samuel Gray, and her grants of land in Salem in 1640. From him I am the uncle, William Gray, the great merchant, were sons of eighth in descent. Abraham Gray, a farmer of Lynn, and Lydia Bur- The Wards appear to have been ship captains, or mer- rill. He was the son of William Gray, also a farmer chants, or both, from the first. Miles Ward, ten years of Lynn. Samuel Gray's first wife was Annie Orne, xi my grandmother. The first Orne, 1602 to 1684, came to Salem among the early settlers. WILLIAM WARD I do not think it necessary to encumber this volume with genealogical details, which, if the time serves, I will BORN 1761; DIED 1827 HIS STORY WRITTEN FOR HIS GRAND- print separately. SAMUEL GRAY WARD. CHILDREN ABOUT 1825 January, 1900. xii WILLIAM WARD Y DEAR GRANDCHILDREN, M am told you wish me to write a letter that you may read when you grow up. I think you may now understand the reasons why I ought to decline. - My life commenced more than three score years since, when the advantages for youth to acquire knowledge were few indeed, compared with the present. Perhaps it would be just to say that there never was, by my parents or relations, ten dollars expended on my education. At the age of seven or eight years my whole stock of knowledge was repeating a few hymns, and say- ing the catechism. From nine to thirteen I partially attended the town schools; and, for a short time, a school of a higher class kept by Rev. Dr. Hopkins. From that time my life has been so various and un- settled, - SO filled up with labour,- - and no proper foundation laid in my youth to build upon as I advanced in life, that my knowledge, even at this time, is not such as to lead me to believe that, with your present advantages (which I presume will be increasing monthly till you grow to years of discretion and manhood, when your minds will be so enlarged, and you will be so much wiser than ever I have been,) what I now write could be I pleasing as matter of instruction, to young men so William Candid was born in 1761, the 28th of correct, SO wise, so learned as he expects you will December. He had one brother four years younger, then be,-although - you might be pleased with it and one sister two years younger than himself. as coming from your grandfather. - Yet I am so William's father died at the age of thirty-one, much pleased, and have so much pleasure in grati- when William was six years old. When William fying them in all their wishes, because they are was advanced in age, his satisfaction was great in generally so very reasonable, that I am tempted to hearing from his father's family, and from gentle- try to tell you a story of one of my constant play- men of much respectability, of his acquaintance, mates in my young days, and of whose life since that his father was a man of great urbanity, and I have some correct knowledge. highly esteemed by all who knew him. He was His name I will call William Candid. William called the peace and good-will of the family of his was the child of highly respectable parents. Colo- father, which was numerous. William's sister died nel Pickman, who died in Salem about fifty or the 25th of May, 1770,-and his brother three sixty years ago, was own uncle to William's father, days after, both of the throat distemper. Two days and Samuel Gardner, with whom your mother's after William's life was despaired of with the same uncle Gray served as a clerk, was own uncle to disease, but he was spared to his mother;-and William's mother. Those two gentlemen were the at the age of eight years he was left alone with first characters in the town and county where they her. William was then too young to be of use to lived, for knowledge and usefulness. I mention this her, but she was a woman of great energy of char- to encourage you to trace, as correctly as possible, acter. Your aunt Gray, who died last year, told your genealogy. You will find as you advance in William repeatedly of the great benefit she re- life much entertaining and useful knowledge in ceived from the advice of his mother. Indeed, tracing the descent of your father and mother,- she was a christian. She did for William all that a of their history &c., in imprinting on your minds good mother could. William and his mother lived all the virtues you may hear, from time to time, together till 1771, when she married again. Her ascribed to them - and it may lead you to care- second husband was at that time a respectable, fulness to imitate all the good and useful traits of well-meaning man, but of little strength of mind. their conduct. He could not grapple with adversity and when 2 3 that assailed him his timidity became evident, and the prisoners and wounded. Most of the militia increased. His spirits flagged - his family, his returned home, and William returned with them. He was not content; his wish was to be with the cares, his expenses increased, and he became de- pressed, and, at times intemperate. When the war soldiers, and to be engaged in the war. Liberty in 1775 commenced fear led him to flee, with his was the cry, and though William knew very little family, into the country. This act so deranged his of the merits of the dispute, yet he knew the Brit- business as finally to lead to poverty. At this time ish had killed many of his countrymen, some of William told his mother he was determined to whom he knew, and he thought they ought to be support himself,- - to be independent of his father- destroyed, or driven off. But William remained at home till the battle of Bunker Hill. He heard in-law [stepfather]. He was young and small for his age; had fixed on no plan to gain a livelihood. the roar of the cannon at that engagement, and The battle of Lexington took place. William the next morning he left home, and reached Pros- walked and ran between twenty and thirty miles pect Hill the same day. Night was approaching, that day; passed through Medford late in the after- he was in the midst of soldiers,--without food, noon; reached the entrance of Charlestown about or having where to lodge,-when he met Za- dusk. He saw a few flashes of guns; but when, dock Buffington, who commanded a company on near the heights in Charlestown, he was told the the hill. Him he knew. Captain Buffington told enemy had ascended them. The militia were scat- William it was not proper he should lie with the tered in different directions, to find quarters for the troops, and took him to a tent filled with sheets, night. William attached himself to a Mr. Warner to serve as bandages and dressings for the wounded. of Ipswich, whom he knew, and returned with him In this tent William slept on the sheets; and to Medford. William wished Mr. Warner to cross the next and two succeeding days he went to the fields, where they had seen the flashes of mus- Lechmere's Point, to the College, to Dorchester ketry, in hope to find some instrument of war, to Heights, and saw all the fortifications, cannon, carry home as a trophy: but Warner laughed, mortars &c. but being too young for a soldier, and they kept on to Medford. The houses were after seeing all that was to be seen, he returned home. crowded. They got some supper and slept on the floor.-The - next morning William saw some of 4 5 It now became a serious affair with William's ficient, and it was nine months after our arrival mother and friends what should be done with before we obtained our object, and were ready for him. While they were thinking about it, Will- sea. - On his arrival William walked and ran iam heard there was a continental vessel bound home to see his mother. She had not heard of his to France for a load of small arms and powder for arrival, and when he entered her room, she looked the Government. William entered on board of at him, and said, "Child, what do you want?" her. When William's friends knew it, they went She did not know him he had grown so much to the Captain, and he assented to release him but when William smiled she knew him and you but William told them he must go or go into the may be sure William and his mother were rejoiced army. His friends finally consented, and William to meet again. declared himself independent (a mighty word at While we lay in France the officers (except Mr. that day) of them all. He loved his mother, and Edmunds who was on shore in the city) had com- agreed to live with her when he was on shore, but pany on board one evening (for we had several insisted on paying his board the same as though officers, and mounted fourteen guns). When the he lived with a stranger which he always did company wanted to go away, the boat's crew were afterwards till he married, and had a family of called. On going down the side, one of them fell his own. into the river, and was drowned. Mr. Edmunds Early in 1776 he sailed for France. The chief and heard it was William, and came on board in a great only efficient officer on board was a Scotchman rage, scolding at the officers, and every one when named Edmunds. He was very much attached to William, hearing a great noise on deck, went up, William and made him such a passable sailor that and Mr. Edmunds, seeing him, was astonished, he was put before the mast in Bordeaux. A load of and inquired who it was that was drowned. He small arms and powder was procured for the ves- was told it was John Quince, a clever young man sel and she returned safe to Boston. On the pas- from Marblehead. He told them he rather they sage was chased into St. Andros in Spain by a frig- should all have been drowned than William, and ate. A Dutch nobleman went out in this vessel, he cried for joy that William was safe.- men- who had agreed with Congress to load her imme- tion this to show how much he loved William, diately; but his exertions and credit were not suf- and William will ever remember him with kind 6 affection. 7 William on his return from France, had clothed tor paid constant attention to William till he suc- himself very decently with the fruits of his own ceeded in filling the pock. His life was spared, labour, and had about forty crowns left. He tar- but there were left five running sores, which were ried with his mother a few weeks, when meeting lanced every day for a long while after their ar- Capt. Jon Haraden, who was then bound on a rival at Boston. William remained in Rainsford cruise in a vessel of war belonging to the State of Island till he finally recovered and went home. Massachusetts, he invited and urged William so He found his mother and friends well, and rejoic- strongly to go with him, and made him such offers, ing to see him. which were equal to any that were given at the time for able seamen, that William assented. This After a few weeks William sailed again in a Brig gentleman was one of the first commanders of that of War, with Capt. Samuel Ingersol. He was a day : his discipline, knowledge and manners were pleasant, agreeable man-of correct principles, exemplary. He knew William in France. Capt. cool, determined and brave. Capt. Ingersol cruised Haraden cruised about four months in sight and some time on the Bahamas, between Cuba and to windward of the English West India Islands: Florida-put into the Bay of Honduras, about came very near being captured twice, but took no sixty miles westward of Havannah. This is a very prizes went into Martinico and refitted. William pleasant bay, but was quite unsettled at that time. was appointed Coxswain of Capt. Haraden's barge; - William, with the Doctor and boat's crew were his station in the main top. After the ship left Mar- on shore gathering limes &c.-trying to catch tinico, the smallpox broke out on board. All were monkeys and wild hogs &c., when William, see- immediately inoculated: numbers died. William's ing some hogs approaching where he was, crouched inoculation did not take. The Doctor scolded and behind a bush, and as they passed, he sprang to told him he was always aloft, and never still. He catch one by his hind legs, when, at the instant, finally took it the natural way and had it very bad. the Doctor, not seeing William, threw a hatchet The pock flattened in, and he came near dying. at the hog. It missed the hog but hit William, William had seen all die, in a day's time after their the smooth flat part of it, on the temple, and pock had flattened in, but at that time, those who knocked him over. The Doctor was so confounded had not died, were generally recovering. The Doc- at what he had done that he stood to consider 8 9 whether, as no one was then in sight, it was not have known us. But his Lieutenant was soon on best to leave William dead, as he supposed he board us, and explained. He had a vessel follow- was, or to acknowledge that he had carelessly ing him in who had sailed from Jamaica, which killed him, (this the Doctor told William after- he wished to examine under English colours.- - wards), but he concluded to see if life was in him. When Capt. Anthony came to examine his prize, He did so, and William, by his aid, recovered. the Captain said, "I am an American my vessel Had the hatchet struck in any other manner than and cargo belong to E. H. Derby of Salem; Capt. it did, it must apparently have killed him. The Ingersol knows me very well." By our war regu- Monmouth, the name of the Brig, went into Ha- lations, we, being in sight, were entitled to one vannah and hove out, and refitted then sailed third of the prize, but Capt. Ingersol, knowing and passed the west end of Cuba, and beat up to Capt. Silsbee, would have nothing to do with her. windward towards Jamaica ; took two prizes of She had two sets of papers. Capt. Anthony took some value, and sent them to Charleston, S.C. charge of her, and sent her to Charleston, S.C. Off Cape Corinth came in contact with a vessel She was tried by the naval court and given up to of war of fourteen guns. The Monmouth fought Mr. Derby. fourteen guns. Owing to a misunderstanding, and Captains Ingersol and Anthony having agreed to supposing her to be an English man of war, we cruise in company, after a few days fell in with a gave her a broadside. The Captain immediately, fine frigate-built ship of twenty guns, from Ja- with his trumpet, said : "I will send my Lieuten- maica: he was ordered to surrender; he bid us ant on board I know you you are the Mon- defiance; told his force, his number of men &c. mouth, Ingersol. Follow me inside the Cape, into The engagement instantly began,-Anthony on smooth water, where I shall anchor, and then if his lee bow, and Ingersol on his lee quarter. After you are not satisfied, I have men and guns enough a short time orders were given, in a loud com- to satisfy you." -Still we had our doubts whether manding tone, that all in the three vessels could to trust him. He had English colours flying: the hear, for the two brigs to cease firing with their two prizes we had taken must have run down cannon, and every man to arm himself with pistols the island to double Cape St. Anthony he might and cutlasses, and Anthony to board on the bow, have captured one or both of them, and by them and Ingersol on the quarter, and put them all to IO II death. All were immediately ready to obey and who had not come into action. He gave as a rea- were ready to spring on board, when the enemy son that his officers and crew would not fight, in- cried for quarter, and hauled down their flag. sisting that the ship was too much for us, and the William went on board this ship, but, after sev- crew had no confidence in their surgeon. Capt. eral days, Anthony's brig proving very leaky, Ingersol said all he could to encourage them- which had increased much after the action, with promised that his Doctor should attend them &c., Capt. Ingersol's consent, he moved everything but without avail they were afraid. Capt. Inger- from her to the ship, and left the brig to sink in sol advised Capt. Gray to proceed home imme- the ocean - meaning to cruise in the ship and meet diately, and he left the Monmouth. Capt. Inger- the Monmouth in Charleston, S. C. sol proposed going alongside the ship again, but the crew thought the ship would be so much Being left to themselves, William still on board encouraged to see one run off, that they should the prize ship, they continued cruising in the en- not succeed. This ship put into New York very trance of the Bay of Honduras. In a few days they much damaged, with much loss of men, and very took a twenty gun ship bound into the bay to load valuable. In this engagement C. O., stationed in for England. She surrendered after two broadsides. the Monmouth's fore top, deserted his post in the They then cruised on the north side of Cuba, and midst of the action. William liked C. and pitied fell in with a vessel of war of fourteen guns com- him, and told the sailing master he would take C's manded by Capt. R. Gray of Salem. The comman- place and C. should take his but he was not al- ders of the two vessels agreed to keep company, lowed. Poor C. with many others were wounded, and falling in with a ship of twenty guns, frigate- but only one died. The Monmouth put into Charles- built, from Jamaica bound for London, they en- ton, made a short cruise from thence, and returned, gaged her one hour and a half, within pistol shot. and then proceeded to Salem. William found his The enemy's ship was very high and the Mon- mother well, and with his prize money, was able mouth very low, SO the shot from the ship passed to confer benefits on her and his friends. over the deck of the Monmouth, while the Mon- mouth shot did great damage. The Monmouth William's next cruise was in the Harlequin, a ship hauled off to refit, and to speak with Capt. Gray, of twenty guns, James Dennis commander. Cruis- 12 13 ing between Cape Race and Cape North, they tain and officers were the most deserving. Of those took a valuable ship, after a long action, though eight shares three were given to William on the with little loss - one killed and several wounded. arrival of the Harlequin and her prizes at Salem. In this action William was called from his station William's next cruise was in the brig Lion, J. (viz., Captain of the fore top with four men, two Carnes commander. It was an unfortunate cruise swivels and a chest of small arms,) to the quarter of six months and only one prize. Carnes was brave deck, by Capt. Dennis, who wished him to take but vain and foolish. The boatswain of the Lion his spy glass and give his opinion of a strange ship was a remarkable fellow of that day ; daringly just hove in sight, and to tell him that the wads brave, if judged by his boasting words, and his re- for the guns were expended. Such was the disci- markable profaneness. His name was Harry Poor. pline at that time on board of one of our twenty The Captain had given Poor's mess some fresh gun ships, that a lad was called to the quarter deck pork, which Harry made into a sea pie and swore to give advice. William gave his opinion of the that God Almighty should not prevent his mak- ship in sight, that she was an American cruiser, ing a good dinner of it in a few minutes after his who would soon be up, and take the ship they head, face and stomach were covered with red were engaging and put them to shame, and ad- blotches, with swelling and fever; he was greatly vised to press nearer to the ship and oblige her to frightened and could not eat. His messmates ate surrender before the strange ship could get up. the sea pie, and Harry recovered the next day. He William replaced the wads with junk and blan- was a gambler, and one night at Marblehead, hav- kets, and returned to his station, while the officers ing ill success, he wished the Devil might come generally were doing nothing but looking on. The and fly away with him. It was a dark night; Harry, ship soon struck her flag. A few days after they going home, fell, found himself taken up and run took another valuable ship after a short action, and off with. He screamed and hollo'd, thinking the a brig. Both were bound to Quebec, the one laden Devil had got him sure enough. The fact was, a with all kinds of provisions, the other with dry cow was laying in the road; he fell between her goods. In our vessels of war at that time there horns; the cow was frightened and rose with him were eight shares set aside to be distributed among and ran. He finally died in a consumption, a mis- those of the crew who in the judgment of the Cap- erable man. 14 15 The Lion in returning home, in doubling Cape the Experiment, and the following account was Cod, fell in with the Experiment, a fifty gun ship, from him. and the Unicorn of 20 guns. Those two drove her The ship they gave chase to was an American frig- ashore on the banks of the Cape the enemy came ate, the Raleigh, Capt. Berry. They chased her to an anchor, got spring on their cables and began from the Cape to the eastern shores. The Unicorn to fire away; the Lion was on shore head on and outsailed the Experiment, and Captain Berry think- could do nothing; her barge was ordered out; as ing he might capture the Unicorn before the Ex- soon as she took the water, so many in the fright periment came up, headed to; the action began, jumped in, that she sunk alongside. The situation when an unlucky shot from the Unicorn knocked of those remaining on board was serious; for the away the Raleigh's foretop mast. She was obliged enemy were manning their boats to come in and to put before the wind again and finally run ashore set fire to the Lion. It was necessary something on an Island laying a small distance from the main. should be done. William with six others jumped The Unicorn anchored, got spring upon their ca- into the sea, at a great risk; the sea was high and bles and began to fire. The Raleigh beat her off; rolled in with such force as to turn them head over the Experiment came up (it was night), hailed the heels, and fill eyes, nose and mouth full of sand; Unicorn, inquired, was told that it must be a French they reached the shore, got those on shore who 74, for he could not do anything with her; and was were swamped in the barge, all but one, alive; obliged to haul off; they then both placed them- launched the boat, went alongside, took in some selves as near as possible to the Unicorn and com- plank and guns, landed them, got hauling lines menced a heavy firing, but finding no return they from the shore to the vessel, landed the remain- boarded her and found only one drunken sailor, der of the crew, and were soon in a situation to re- the rest having landed on the main, and he swear- ceive the enemy's boats which were then rowing ing he would never strike. in; but at that moment the enemy from their ship William and his six friends went from Cape Cod saw a large ship in the offing, recalled their boats, to Boston in a small boat and shortly after with got under way and gave chase to the ship they thirty-nine others, bought a vessel, fitted her out had just discovered. The Lion's prize on board of as a cruiser with ten guns. These forty owned the which William had a cousin had been retaken by whole in equal shares, all performed equal duty 16 17 and they all sailed in her; they named her the the air very impure; some stifled and died in the Modesty and cruised off New York. One morn- night. The next day the Modesty's crew turned ing, it being William's turn at mast head, he told them all on deck, then made them wash, scrub them on deck that at leeward he saw a brig with and clean, bathed them at sunset, made more room; fore top mast gone and a fleet of twenty sail in the air became more pure and none stifled after- shore, all standing in for the Hook. The Brig ward they regulated the ship while they stayed might have been captured in a short time; she and had her cleaned every day. The Captain who was taken next day by an American and proved took them redeemed his pledge and they were very valuable, but the Modesty's crew thought exchanged in about three weeks, landed in Boston nothing less than five or six of the enemy's fleet and walked to Salem. would satisfy them. One ship in the fleet appeared to sail heavy and we gained on her fast, when she William's next voyage was to Hispaniola, to the tacked and stood for us. We were not deceived Cape and back, in a very fast sailing letter-of- long, she proved to be a 20 gun ship, and out- marque owned by Joseph White, commanded by sailed and captured the Modesty. Her crew being U. Stone. A French flour barrel of good sugar all strung along on her quarter deck, the stranger might then be bought there at four dollars, the Captain began asking questions, and when he was produce of the island being very cheap. informed of the name of the vessel he had taken William then engaged in the Harlequin, Putnam he laughed very heartily for the modesty they had Cleves commander; The ship he had been in once exhibited in chasing one of her Majesty's ships, before with Captain Dennis, cruising ground the but said their plan was a good one, and they were same, viz. Cape Race and Cape North. Cleves was such likely fellows he was sorry they had fallen clever and sprightly, but not much judgment, his in his way ; that he would interest himself in get- officers very much like him, not much firmness ting them exchanged soon, that they might try when it was most needed, and not much forecast. it again. They arrived in New York, were put on Took one brig came near being captured twice board the Hope, a prison ship; she was uncom- by a ship evidently cruising for her. One foggy monly large, had eleven hundred prisoners con- afternoon saw a fleet under convov; it was Will- fined between her decks; she was extremely dirty, iam's watch that evening from 8 to I2. Captain 18 19 Cleves ordered the course. William stated that winter there. There was but one outer door to the with the course ordered we should be in the midst building, and when you entered that you entered of the fleet. He was not believed, and one after the guardroom. There were three rooms beside another left the deck, all but ten or twelve when with two windows in each looking into the yard, an hour after the fog scattering a little, the Har- inclosed with iron bars. In the first, next the lequin was actually in the midst of the fleet sails guardroom, were the Harlequin's people. In the reefed, top gallant mast housed, men asleep &c. second and third were American soldiers. William William ordered silence, without noise gave no- soon began to think of escaping. It required prepa- tice below, ordered the reefs out &c., but a frig- ration, and he and his shipmates saved every day, a ate was so near as immediately to discover them part of their allowance of beef; cured it and smoked and began to fire with them. By the great exer- it. They obtained a pocket compass, and then be- tions of a few she escaped. They still kept the same gan to break through the prison floor, in order to cruising ground, when one morning the same ship get below into the cellar. To do this much labour was discovered directly to windward of the Har- was necessary. The stones were placed under their lequin. She soon came in full chase, and soon berths and they piled wood against them that proved that, going large, she was the fastest sailer. they might not be perceived but by some means When she got within musket shot, the officers and the commissary was informed he came with the people dodging, Capt. Cleves ordered William to guard and examination was made. When he came haul down the colours. He with feelings of con- to the room where William was, having passed tempt and mortification, walked aft, and took the through and searched the others first, William flag in on deck. They were carried to Quebec, to was alone in the room, the other prisoners having prison. There were two stone prisons enclosed in followed him in his search. He told William to a large yard, with a stone wall, one of two stories, haul away the wood from under the berths. He the other of one. About forty of the Harlequin's did so and down came the stones. Then he began crew were put into the two story one, and the re- to threaten and scold, and said he should prefer mainder into the other. Among the last was Will- having a whole regiment of soldiers to take care iam. There was no exchange of prisoners at that of than twenty sailors. "You are treated well, have time, and the probability was they would have to good provisions &c., and yet you behave in this 20 21 vile manner. What is it you want ?" William told enough for a man to crawl through would let him they wanted air and exercise. "Let us out into them all out at liberty. They kept their secret, the yard every day, as you do the soldiers, that we renewed their preparations for a long journey may play ball &c., and throw off this prison gloom." through the wilderness, and expected soon to be- The commissary said, " If I indulge you, will you gin their enterprise. At this time the commissary behave well? Answer, Yes." - Well ! you shall took William to his house, guarded by a soldier have the liberty of the yard." showed him his garden, and was kind in his con- The prisoners were let out the masons were let versation &c. William thought his conduct was in the damage was repaired, and the prison made strange and inexplicable but concluded that the stronger than before. Soon after William was in old gentleman thought that if he could get rid of the yard, he looked into one of the cellar lights William, he should get rid of trouble; the rest and immediately saw what had occasioned the of the prisoners would be quiet and that he took difficulty. The room was arched, and they had this plan in the hope that William would attempt ignorantly begun their hole on the side of the to run away, and then he could be intercepted arch, instead of the end. When they were locked and put by himself on board a man of war. A lit- in for the night, William began in the center, and tle while after this the commissary came into took up a large stone, with a few small ones, and the prison, and said there had a cartel arrived in made a hole large enough for a man to go down the river from Boston and all were to go on board he then placed some small pieces of wood across her next day and be sent home. William's ship- and replaced the stones; swept the dirt over and mates believed it and sat up all night rejoicing. no one could perceive what had been done. The William at that time was engaged to a lady whose next morning William was let down with a rope, brother, Thorndike Proctor, was one of his prison and he quickly examined the place, its width and mates. William told Mr. Proctor privately that length he discovered a large drain &c., and was he did not believe a word of the commissary's hauled up again. When they were let out into story he believed they were all to be sent to the yard he found the drain led to the seaside-a England and there confined in prison, and that, long distance that from the back of the cellar to if it were possible, he should escape, and begged outside the wall was 28 feet; so that a hole large him to be near him that he might take his bag 22 23 of clothes &c. but Proctor did not think with sue the subject they left the brig and the pris- William. The next morning such a guard of oners were distributed on board the fleet. William soldiers surrounded them, and so many people was put with eight others on board a Transport assembled to see them let off, that it was impos- of 300 tons, and about thirty men, armed with sible to escape, and the instant they reached the six or eight cannon, and immediately all were river they were put into boats and from thence put in irons their feet above the ankles, on one on board an armed brig. The Captains of the two large bolt, a large head at one end the other end frigates came on board, and from the quarter deck through an oak plank bulkhead. In this manner told them that those who were willing to enlist they were kept under deck. The fleet sailed under on board his Majesty's ship should have good convoy of two frigates. In three or four days a treatment &c., and those who would not were violent storm sprang up, and lasted about twenty to be distributed on board the fleet of transports, hours. The transport William was in, suffered and sent to England, and there be confined in much, and she was separated from the fleet. The prison till the war ended. William's shipmates Captain came down and asked the prisoners if had been up all night talking of their homes, they were willing to help repair the injury done their wives and sweethearts, expecting to join by the storm. They assented they were let out of them in a few days. The disappointment was so irons, went on deck, worked all day very briskly, great and unexpected that the stoutest and brav- and got the ship in good order. The Captain est men among them fairly cried like children. scolded his crew, and told them the Yankees William was vexed; no answer was given to the they had laughed at had done more that day, British Captain. The proposals were again made. than they would have done in a week. He apol- William then stepped towards the quarter deck logized to William for the necessity he was under and said "I am a prisoner, and wherever you of putting them in irons again, saying he knew choose to place me I must remain a prisoner till what it was to be a prisoner, and in their case, he I am exchanged, but I will never contend against should try to get his liberty again, therefore he my brethren in arms and join my country's ene- must confine them. William told him he sup- mies. I believe, gentlemen, I speak the sentiments posed it was his duty to make them as secure as of my fellow prisoners." The Captain did not pur- possible, and that if opportunity offered he should 24 25 endeavor to regain his liberty. They were put in his shipmates and had told the Captain. William, irons, the next morning were again let out to aid finding all was discovered, reminded the Captain in refitting the ship. The Captain appeared fond of their former conversation, that he had not de- of William. ceived him, and frankly told him to do his duty, About IO A. M. William observed that his ship- and that he, if a chance offered should and would mates were the only people on deck excepting the improve it, to regain his liberty. A great deal was man at the helm and the cook he found the Cap- said, but it ended in putting them all into heavy tain, officers and crew were in the holds betwixt irons, and being treated with great neglect. The decks putting things in order: that there was only next day the ship joined the fleet. Several days one hatchway for them to come on deck, and that passed before the ship got outside the capes. In if that was secured, the ship was in possession of this interval he found from two of the ship's crew the prisoners. William immediately represented that if an opportunity offered the sailors would not this to his shipmates, told them only to assist him resist; they would like to go to Salem or Boston. in putting on the hatch and they might be home He found the Captain lay in the state-room, a key in ten days, instead of going to England he made always in the door on the outside; he had a pair use of every argument he could think of, but they of pistols and an old hanger, and that there were were afraid; the proposition was sudden, they had no other arms below which he or any other per- not nerve. In a very little while the Captain, of- son could suddenly get at that the second mate, ficers and part of the crew came on deck. William sailmaker and carpenter lay under the steerage with a biscuit for a plate, and a piece of salt beef deck, and a small scuttle at the foot of the cabin on it, which he cut with his knife, began his break- stairs would secure them. Having provided a good fast and jcined the Captain, who was walking on file and having satisfied himself that in half an the quarter deck, and he began to converse. The hour he could let himself and his friends out of Captain then burst forth, called William many irons, he then talked with his fellow prisoners and bad names. William inquired what he meant. explained everything to them They all solemnly Mean, sir," said he, "You were going to take agreed to be true to William and to each other, my ship from me this very morning !" The cook and each one to perform his part in good faith. had overheard part of what William had said to An easterly gale was blowing,-the fleet under 26 27 very short sail about ten at night, the mate's held on with both hands, his body hanging down watch on deck, the boatswain on the main deck. the steerage hatchway; he must have soon dropped, William engaged to be first on main deck, to seize for he could not long sustain the blows he was re- the mate and confine him till they got the ship ceiving. out of the fleet. Davis of Marblehead had a seizing of spun yarn for that purpose and was to follow At this critical moment the Captain came up and William and keep by him. William Chapel of fired one of his pistols at William. The truth was Marblehead was to follow next and go into the that all the rest, as fast as they came on deck, were cabin, lock the state-room door, to secure the frightened at their undertaking, and instead of do- Captain. Jo. Shillaber and one other was to follow ing what they had engaged to do, went immedi- Chapel and put on the scuttle and fasten it to keep ately forward, and left William to fight it out as the second mate, sailmaker and carpenter fast; he could. William being abaft the hatch, and his then those three were to come on deck and obey face being aft, he did not perceive their conduct, William's directions the remainder to go on the and expected every minute to be assisted by some main deck, order the crew below, and put on the of them: but the mate, whose face was towards hatches. William was confident, if he could once them, and saw them all go forward, found it would obtain possession, he could soon trim what little not do to give up to William alone. The Captain, sail was out, so as to leave the fleet; or he could pos- hearing the noise over his head, was alarmed and sess himself of the Captain's instructions and signals came up. He fired and showed his signal lights; and by that means, even keep company with them the frigate was soon within hail, when the inquiry for several days without being discovered. All were was made, "What is the matter? The Captain armed with good clubs William led the way and answered that the prisoners had risen upon the seized the mate, and told him if he would go be- ship. "How many prisoners have you? Answer, low, without noise or resistance, he should fare "Nine." - " How many in your ship's company?" well, otherwise he must abide the consequences. Answer," Thirty." will have your commander But he parlied and resisted a contest between flogged. Can you secure them till the morning them began, and William beat him from aft to Answer, "Yes." - Very well ! I will send my the main mast, where he seized the rigging and boat alongside at sunrise." - The log line was cut 28 29 and William's hands and feet were tied. The Cap- lose his life if he did not do all he could to re- tain then came to William and began cutting at sist; that if William had made a confidant of him him with his hanger, and wounded him in several all might have been well, for he wished to go places. William expostulated and told the Captain to America; he regretted that William would how very improper his conduct was; that he was a be obliged to leave the ship in the morning, and prisoner; he could not make any resistance; neither be sent on board the frigate, where he would be could he fear that he could do any further harm. treated very ill, &c. William told him it was best All this time the Captain was beating him. The he should leave the ship; he could not live in mate, finally, made him desist, and persuaded him peace and good will with those who had so basely to go below. The night was wet and cold. Will- deserted him; and as to being treated very ill, he iam entreated the mate to loosen the line that con- did not fear it, he was a prisoner and expected to fined his wrists, and told the mate it would be no be treated like one. satisfaction to him for William to lose forever the use of his arms; that the circulation was stopped; In the morning William was taken on board the that he had nosensation in them; and could not tell frigate. When he reached the quarter deck the whether he had any arms or not. The mate said Captain asked him what countryman he was. He he was astonished that William should ask any fa- answered, an American. You are a rascal then, of vour of him, after beating him over the head as he course" and he struck William with a bell trum- had done. William told him how he had planned pet in his face. The sailing master of the frigate, everything, and if his mates had done what they who had talked with the boat's crew who had had promised to do, there would have been no OC- been to fetch William on board, told the Captain casion for any beating. The mate then loosed the that William ought to be praised for his conduct line, and sent for William's great coat to lay over on board the transport, and the rascals that were him, and told him he could not help observing left behind were those who deserved punishment. how his friends deserted him; for he hoped every It will answer no good to tell minutely how badly minute, some of them would come that he might William was treated by this brutish Captain. surrender and have some apology; for the man at When William told him he had never been ac- the helm must see all that passed, and he should customed to such treatment, he cursed him, and 30 31 said he wished he had his General Washington on said, "Here must be some mistake ; you are not board, he would treat him in the same manner. to go; the Captain has a particular liking for you, Handcuffs were made out of iron hoops on pur- and has sworn that you shall never leave the ship." pose for him. The hoop went through edgeways William begged him to let him pass in the crowd, on his wrists. He was kept on very short prison- and no one would notice it, and he would do an er's allowance,-and one day when they were ex- act of kindness and humanity. He turned away pecting to come into action, William was called and William passed on and was landed a prisoner to the quarter deck, and the Captain told at what in Portsmouth the next day. gun was his station, and if he did not go there as soon as the action commenced, he should be spread William was taken before the Admiralty court to out and tied to the mizzen shrouds for the enemy be examined. The judge appeared kind to Will- to fire at. William told him he would as soon be iam and told him he might be a free man in a there as anywhere else, but he never would fight few minutes, if he would declare that he was not on board his ship. taken in an armed ship fighting against his Maj- The frigate put into Ireland, and the women who esty but if, when the question was put to him, came on board to sell articles to the crew, cried he should say that he was captured in a ship of over William's hands and wrists, which were raw war, then he must sign his own condemnation, he and swollen. Every night while he was on board would never have another trial, and when his he was put into the lower hold, in the kentling of country was subdued, he must suffer with the the water casks. After leaving Ireland and going rest. The judge inquired of William if he under- up the English Channel, the frigate passed a fleet. stood him. William answered yes. He then put The Admiral sent word that the frigate should the question. William thanked him for his kind- proceed immediately to Guernsey, and if he had ness, but told him he was taken in a 20 gun ship, any prisoners on board he must put them on with a commission from Congress, fighting against board the Britany store ship, which would be the enemies of his country. "Well sir, you must near to take them. William on passing over the sign your own condemnation." William signed side with the other prisoners, to go on board that his name. He had no doubt that the judge was ship, was stopped by a young midshipman, who telling him the truth, but with an evident inten- 32 33 tion to deceive him. Had he answered as the parts of the United States, generally young and judge advised, he would have been told "You middle aged, some old. Their characters and habits are free, and you may leave the office" but as were various, in general pretty correct, some very soon as he got out of the office, he would have bad. But little attention was paid to cleansing been treated as a British subject, immediately vermin everywhere, in their beds, their bodies, pressed, and sent on board one of his Majesty's their heads, in the walls and in the yard, crawl- ships. The judge said he was surprised that Will- ing on the palings. There was no general obser- iam could write so well it was not common vation of the Sabbath, which was mostly employed he said among their sea-faring people. William in making boats, ships, snuff boxes, and various told him that every town and village were obliged toys; shoemaking and anything to obtain money by laws, (of their own framing,) to keep free to buy bread, milk, coffee &c. schools. William was then sent, under a guard, to Gosport prison. Dutch, French and American William had been treated so ill and suffered so prisoners were within its enclosures, each sepa- much, that when he got to the prison, and his rated by high walls and palings, with a strong excitement began to decrease, he was taken down guard, relieved every morning. The government with a fever; put into the hospital recovered allowed each prisoner a pound of beef and a pound slowly ; then relapsed was out of his senses and of bread per day. The allowance for banyan days given over. was peas and oatmeal. The government allowance At this time Captain Ives of Beverly made his passed first from the commissary, who made the escape, and reaching home by way of France, he best bargain he could for himself, with a con- reported William's situation to his friends. Will- tractor,- contractor with the butcher then iam finally recovered and made up his mind to the cook, and a host of stewards, nurses &c., so turn his sufferings to some good account. To do that when the prisoner received his daily allow- this it was necessary that his person, his clothes, ance he could eat it all at one meal, and then he his bedding, should all be clean, and to fix on was hungry till the next day. There were about some place where he could keep so. The prison two hundred and fifty American prisoners at this was three stories in height, with a gable roof, the place, many of them of good families in various end facing Portsmouth, Spithead and the Isle of 34 35 Wight. Air pumps reached from the lower story week to each prisoner. William made out with to the roof. The upper chambers were not lathed his allowance to eat his meat and a part of his nor plastered. William climbed up by the air bread at dinner, and for his breakfast the remain- pump, walked on the joists to the end, and tak- der of his bread boiled in water and seasoned with ing out two or three tiles from the roof, he re- salt. Supper he had none, but he knew that if he placed them with oiled paper he braced a wide lived he should want knowledge, and, hungry as canvas bed from the side joists, made him a little he generally was, he kept to his study. writing table just under his window, which was partly secured to the end of the building, with You have, or will read, of the famous philanthro- two lines to hang and steady the other part. He pist Mr. Howard. Dr. Wren was another How- then made a hanging seat facing the table and the ard. He was a Scotchman, a dissenting minister in window. In fair weather he could remove the win- Portsmouth, highly respectable and very much es- dow, and have a good prospect before him. He teemed. He traveled for the prisoners; he begged then cleaned all his things, ironed them. with flat for them ; and but for his exertions their sufferings irons which he borrowed, placed them away, and would have been extreme. Always once, and gen- dropped a screen behind him. erally twice a week, he came into the American prison yard, followed by two porters laden with He now had a clean berth to himself, which he supplies for the prisoners. Fancy to yourselves an climbed to by the air pump and very seldom did elderly gentleman, with a fair complexion, and a any one take the trouble to climb up to molest fine loveable countenance; dressed in a shirt of him. Here he studied hard to prepare himself dark blue, with a white wig, standing in the mid- for usefulness amid brighter prospects, when he dle of the yard dealing out all kinds of clothing, should once more reach his own happy land. He pens, ink, paper, books &c., and when the porters' exercised in the morning and before sunset with bags were empty, hear the cry all round him Dr. ball, broadsword, &c. He was in this prison nearly Wren I want this, and I want that," from numerous a year. A part of the time the American govern- voices. All their voices he knew,-he wrote in ment made out to obtain credit, to allow through characters, seldom looking up while writing. His their agent, the Rev. Dr. Wren, one shilling a dispatch was surprising, and his accuracy astonish- 36 37 ing, for amidst all this cry and tumult of voices, but he must have opened it first, as he appeared which a bystander would have thought impossi- afterwards to be very partial to him and this pre- ble for him to have understood, or noticed at the caution was necessary for his own safety. time, - -yet, when he again came, each man re- A friend of William's father called to see him, a ceived, as his name was called over by him, what Mr. Sparhawk. He talked much of William's fa- he had asked for. When he first began his atten- ther and made many professions. Pickman tion to the prisoners, it was at the risk of his life was, at that time, in England, but William did not from the rabble; a guard of soldiers always at- know where to direct to him. William requested tended him whenever he was in the yard, to watch Dr. Wren to find out by Mr. Sparhawk. Dr. Wren all he did. Many of the prisoners wished to send soon after wrote to William that he had met Mr. letters home to their friends; many of their friends Sparhawk in London; he found him a dispirited, found means to send letters to the care of Dr. gloomy man, much averse to his countrymen, and Wren. He found it necessary to have a confidant, the cause they were engaged in, herding, chiefly, as his fame and living, and even his life, depended with refugees; but he told him where Col. Pick- upon his holding no correspondence with the pris- man was. William corresponded with Col. Pick- oners,-beyond what has been related. He chose man, who sent him two guineas. William, secretly, for his confidant, and William always, when he was in the yard, placed himself Dr. Wren had received special directions to care directly behind him, apparently looking over his for and attend to John Higginson of Boston. He shoulder, and would take from hisright coat pocket was wild and the Doctor could do nothing with whatever papers were there, and put in others. him. William took him in hand, and he improved This was done weekly. Much caution was neces- much and behaved well, to the surprise of Dr. sary, but the crowd around him was great, and Wren and every one.- One evening word was the soldiers had no mistrust. He became acquainted passed for William-an officer wanted him. He with William by means of a letter William had went down and saw a fine looking young man in written, soon after his arrival at the prison, to his British regimentals. He inquired of William if he mother and friends, and which he requested Dr. knew him. William told him no. 'What! do you Wren, in writing, to forward. He did forward it, not know your old playmate William Browne?" 38 39 Browne got liberty of the officer on guard for manly man, when he was told the reason for the William to spend the evening with him, in the of- ficers' room. Gen. Gage had given William Browne illumination, viz., to rejoice for the victory their a commission, and he was on his way to join his countrymen had gained, merely advised good or- der &c. and took no further notice. regiment in Gibralter. Before the war Browne's fa- ther lived directly opposite the house where Will- Shortly after the Duke of Richmond, Lord Lennox, iam's mother lived, and was highly esteemed by Gen. Conway &c. came into the prison and con- all classes; but he joined the British, and fied his versed with the prisoners and examined their pro- visions. After this the allowance was increased. country. Browne was very agreeable, and William An American sailor defrauded an old woman who spent a pleasant evening with him and the officer on guard. An officer came into the yard one day sold sundry small articles to the prisoners : Will- to see the prisoners; he had a large fine dog with iam had him flogged at the lantern post. After- him; the prisoners contrived, while the officer wards an officer, a Virginian of respectable family, was looking about, to steal the dog, and secrete stole from a young lad William had him flogged him. The guard was turned out and great search the same as the sailor had been.- - An exchange of was made, but he was not found. Half of the dog prisoners was at this time agreed upon, and Dr. Wren, supposing William might soon return to was roasted the next day, and half boiled and soup made of it. William tasted part of each, as a mat- America, wrote to him, and requested him, if he ever had a son, to name him for him. ter of curiosity,-for he had received the two guineas from Col. Pickman about that time, and he did not eat it from hunger. Finally, the cartel being ready, two hundred and thirty prisoners embarked in one ship for home. A bladder was picked up in the yard one day, and Once more William felt himself at liberty. He in it a newspaper, containing an account of the cap- now experienced the benefit of his studies while ture of Lord Cornwallis. The prisoners, as soon as in prison he could impart information and use- they were locked in for the night, illuminated the ful knowledge to those who had wasted their time. prison the officer on guard was alarmed and the - The passage home was long-sixty days. They guard was turned out. The officer, being a gentle- arrived in Marblehead on Sunday forenoon. Will- iam was the first on shore; he ran through the 40 41 town, the people-women and girls - -following, He was examined before the governor with many and asking if A or B or C or D had come. Will- other prisoners. After the examination the Gov- iam kept on running, answering yes, - and crossed ernor ordered the prisoners to be put on board the the fields and was soon seated on the hill to rest prison ships; but, advancing to William, he said, himself, where the powder magazine now stands taking him by the hand, "This young man must near the turnpike. Here he could look down on tarry with me." He then said, "My wife must the house where his mother was, if living. It was know you are here; she is unwell, but I will speak about one 'clock-between meetings- - no one to her." She came and said "Oh, you rogue, I am stirring. He mustered courage - descended the glad you have been taken you used to steal my hill - went into the house, and found his mother cherries with my son William." The British gov- living and in good health. It was a time of over- ernment had made Col. Browne, father of the flowing gratitude and love. William's friends were William Browne who visited William in prison, all overjoyed to see him. at Gosport, Governor of Bermuda. The Governor and his lady treated William with great kindness William had left some property at home, but it and attention. The gentlemen of the place were was all gone. His old friend Mr. Edmunds, who very attentive; the commissary of prisoners gave was so much attached to him on his first voyage, him two dollars per day for his services and he had while William was absent, taken charge of was offered the command of a vessel by a mer- a fine ship for Spain. The prospect of profit was chant, for a voyage to St. Thomas, but it was great and Edmunds told William's uncle and against the orders of the general government. mother he would take an adventure for William There was a flag to be fitted out for Virginia. The free of expense. Edmunds was taken on his home- Governor and commissary advised William to go ward passage, carried to Halifax, and he there died first officer in her, and promised him, when he re- in prison, and with him what property William turned, the Rhode Island flag ship as long as the had was lost. war lasted. This flag service was profitable and safe. William went to Virginia and returned to He next went mate of a brig to Granada. Coming Bermuda. He then took charge of the Rhode home, he was captured and carried to Bermuda. Island flag ship, and was busy in fitting her out, 42 43 when the news of peace came. William's friends him never to neglect him, nor any of the children, in Bermuda urged him to tarry with them, and to watch over them, to advise them, and to do them offered him every encouragement, but when they all the good he could, while he and they lived. found they could not prevail on him, and the flag William promised her, and, in some good degree, was ready, they fitted him out with every neces- faithfully redeemed the pledge he gave her. The sary, the Governor putting on board a hogshead of family cost him thousands of dollars, with great pure cistern water for him. They were landed in affliction and trouble, but the wishes of his mother Providence, and went home from there by land. sweetened all ; he was doing what she desired, and she lived long enough to take William's son to The war was ended, and William was twenty-two her dying bed pray over and for him, and years old, and pennyless, and had to begin the to leave him her blessing. world anew. - He was soon established as a re- William's wife died in 1788. In person and mind spectable shipmaster, and one of his first voyages, she was of superior excellence. to Europe, was to England. When he arrived there he found his friend Dr. Wren was dead. While in Bermuda William again met John Hig- ginson-he was a prisoner, poor and destitute. William married at twenty-three, and was blessed William clothed him and gave him half his little with a son, who was named after his revered and fund, and introduced him to the Governor and his beloved friend, Thomas Wren. William's mother family. William had it in his power to be, and died in 1786 at the age of forty-six years and eight was of much service to many American prisoners months. Her unwearied patience with William, there. Many of them wished William to take ad- her constant perseverance in the performance of vantage of the trust reposed in him and aid them all the duties of a kind, affectionate, and christian in escaping, with a vessel. William told them that mother, towards him, were uniform. The day be- the Governor had confidence in him, and he would fore she died, she told William, that his father- not forfeit it. William's friend, William Browne, in-law [stepfather] was fearful that William would, though holding a British commission, was SO much at her death, forsake him; that he confessed he had of an American as to be often fighting their cause, not treated him kindly, &c. His mother begged in duels with his brother officers. His mortifica- 44 45 tion was great that his father had forfeited so great class, yet his own family needed all they could an estate by joining the enemies of his country. obtain, and the opportunities of increasing their He died in early life. means were extremely limited, as compared to what they have been since. In giving you this hasty sketch of William's life, William had understanding sufficient to perceive you will notice that his errors are not noticed. If all the disadvantages under which he laboured, you hear of them from others, let them be beacons and while his most intimate associates were fitting to you, and avoid them in yourselves. Your father by education to take a stand of honour and use- can give you William's history up to this day, and fulness, he with firmness and hope, which never en- you will notice how varied his life has been. tirely forsook him, though oft-times discouraged, You now begin to observe the diversity of char- determined, trusting in a kind Providence, to work acter, situation and circumstances, capacities and his own way through life; to rely on his own exer- powers among mankind. A wise and good Provi- tions, to receive no favours but what his labours dence has committed to every one talents, which, would afford him; and even then, he did believe if rightly improved, will lead them to peace and he should succeed in the race with his young hope in this life, and to a state of exalted and en- friends,--an in a few years, be enabled to lead during happiness in a brighter and better world. instead of follow. William, when he started in life had no father to care for him ; his mother was a widow and poor, This hope was realized from year to year, his path and when she married a second time, her husband, was always progressive, notwithstanding the occa- from a variety of causes, was unable to guide or sional trials he met with. By his own exertions even to assist William to commence life with he could afford himself rational enjoyments, and advantage. There were different grades in society had reason to be grateful that he so far succeeded then, as there are now. Two or three families in as to be able, through life, to meet all the reason- a large town were esteemed rich the remainder, able expectations of a mother whom he loved ex- by labour and deprivation, existed, but literally ceedingly. He was thankful to the author of all with fear and trembling and many discourage- good gifts for blessing him with a heart and hand ments. William's connexions were among the first ever open to the destitute and afflicted. You will 46 47 perceive how constantly he was preserved in his sicknesses, and in imminent and various dangers; APPENDIX that in every situation a kind Providence gave him good and warm-hearted friends, and ever disposed TO THE STORY OF WILLIAM WARD him to be useful to others, and blessed him with CONTAINING MEMORANDA the means. AND LETTERS After the war William made many voyages to the West Indies, mostly to Martinico, where he had a large acquaintance and was at home with fami- lies of many of the first characters in the island. He afterwards made several voyages to India, and his last voyage was to China. Circa 1825. 48 I MEMORANDUM IN THE HANDWRITING OF WILLIAM WARD (CANDID), 1761 TO 1824 M Y grandfather Putnam was married in Nov. 1734 to my grandmother, whose maiden name was Ruth Gardner. She was 19 years of age the May preceding her marriage. They had issue- Mary born Aug. 1735 - Bartholomew, 2nd Feby. 1737 Nathaniel, 19th Oct. 1738 - Ruth, 15th April 1740 - Sarah, 17th Jan'y, 1743 - William, 25th Feb'y 1745-John 2nd Dec'r, 1748 - Will- iam, 7th April, 1751. My grandmother Putnam's Father was born in 1681, & her mother in 1682. They were married in 1705 & had issue-John in 1707, Ebenezer 1708, Daniel 1709, Hannah in 1711, Samuel, 17 December1712, (he was the first merchant in Sa- lem when he died, Hon. William Gray served his time with him) / Bethia, in 1714- - Ruth, 12th May, 1716-Lydia, - 1718-George, - in 1721. My grandmother Putnam married Mr. Benja- min Goodhue (father of the Honorable Benjamin Goodhue) in the year - : & he died the 20th Jan'y, 1783. She died 19th March 1808, aged 9I years and IO months. Old and young were fond of, and played with Grandmother Goodhue, and she was a Christian. 51 Ward family. Joseph Ward was born in the town 1761, and Ruth, born Sept. 7th, 1763 & died 25th of Hurz¹ in the county of Kent (Eng.); came to May 1770, & Caleb, born Jan'y 1766 & died 28 this country soon after the first settlement; ob- May 1770. Thus I lost my father in Oct'r 1767, tained a lot, & settled in Salem. He was lost in a & my brother & sister, within 3 days of each other, fishing vessel in 1677; and he left 2 sons & 3 in 1770. My mother married the 24th of May daughters : Joseph, who died at 12 years old; a 1771 Joseph Clough. They had issue: 5 sons & daughter, who married a Mr. Pitman of Marble- 3 daughters ; 3 only lived to grow up Joseph, head and one who married a Mr. Collins, one a who is a farmer in Danville, Vermont, John a Mr. Moses; and Miles, born 1672; he married printer in New York, & Susan, who married a a Massey, daughter of a Mr. Massey the first male Mr. Chase at Lowden ; he is a respectable far- child born in the Massachusetts Colony. They me Mr. J. Clough, Esq. married a 3rd wife (his had 4 sons: Joshua, Miles, John and Eben; he IST was Lydia Gray, sister to the Honorable W. then married a second wife, Sarah Ropes; she died Gray,) a Miss Foster, & he had by his Ist wife, 7th Feb'y, 1768 aged 86; he died 20th Aug. 1764, one daughter Lydia, born 17 Sept. 1767. She aged 921/4. His son Ebenezer (my grandfather) married Captain John Very. I was 5 years and was born 10th April 1710 and died 4th March IO months when my father died, and I was 9 years 1791, aged 81. He married Rachel Pickman, & 7 months when my Mother married a 2nd time. sister to Col. Pickman the father of the present I went to sea at I 31/2 & followed it 25 years. My Col. B. Pickman. They had issue, 5 sons and 5 Mother remained a widow 3 years & 7 months. I daughters : William Ward (my father) born 9th have had Thomas, Lucy, & William born 10th Jan. August 1736 and died 9th Oct. 1767, aged 31. 1799. He died on his passage from Jamaica. He married It is now 1/2 past II. Good night I Ruth Putnam ; she was born 15th April 1740 & died 7th Dec'r 1786, aged 46 years and 8 months. They had issue: William Ward, born 28th Dec'r 1 The town of Hurz (probably misspelled) has not been iden- tified, and was probably some neighbourhood or farm or place in the vicinity of Erith. 52 53 deare father, which god has now beter disposed of, II but yet my request is that thou show ciness to the MISTRS. ELIZABETH GARDNER'S LAST RE- dissolate stok of our [family] for my sake and the QUEST TO HIM SHE LOVED BEST sake of those that did so early [die] and for my M Y DEARE LOVE and the chife of all my pour children thay being thy one. It may be that worldly enjoyments, [for] The Love I bear is needless to desire the to have a tender care of to the and the smol number of our children That them, but yet thay will find the want of a mo- it has pleased the Lord to lend to us I am conted to ther's tender care of them, not onley while thay Live if the Lord be good to spare my life Tho by be young but while thay live. I have experienced reason of the indwelling of sin and my being be- it yet I dow not mean that thay should be In- reved of my relations and friends with the ilness dulged as not to be well educated, but my heart's of body that I labor under wich non but god and desire is that thay may fear god and be obedient to myself can be sensable of, I say theas things macks her that shall be In plas over them but my dear me many times so weary of the world that I long defend them from injurius dealings and perswade to be at rest and to enjoy the full of that which her that shall cum in my rume to Love them for the Lord in his abounding mercy has I trust given they sake, for thay be thine And seing god has me a tast of, And I have for many years thought given the an estate if he continue it let they chil- that my chang will be sudden and unexpected o dren injoy part of it in thy life time if god spare that it may not find me unprepared I mean in A the and them. For non knows what shall be dun gospel sense not having on christ's righteousness when they be deade. If thou art willing to give for my weding garment. My dear, I did from theas them the plate and Linnin that we have and git thoughts sum years sins wish for sum thinghs that more for thyself that may give better content for ware thy [consarn] but god by his providence both it may be thay will esteem them beter becase thay of mercy and care has made a chang to me and were mine and my mother's gift to me the most thayrefore I shall [grieve] less for the furst thing part of them. Thare is maney things that I have then was consarning thy soul's consarns, wich the given Hannah Gardner posesion of already as my Lord has been mersiful to me in granting me the works and my smol chist, and cabinet and chayns desire of my hart; the next was the care of my and such like and a silver [illegible] that my 54 55 mother gave hur and a spune that my father gave hope that is not to be sold but to have her fredum her and you may find Georges and Johns in my if she desires it : and my request is that thou wilt desk. I would have Hannah to have the silver dish give her suns fredum also in convenant time, and the spunes that belong to it I mean the sweet- though thy sarvis has bin better to her and them meat spunes; the babes porriger and spune The thin thare fredum, yet thos that know not what basen and great wine case to George the 2 large such fredum is do not think so. silver porringers and the taster to John and the As to the disposing of my bons my desire is that trunk of Linnen that I brought to the divide thou wilt lay me by my father and mother and among them for the [reason] before mentioned our two babes and that thou wilt purchas thar with what a division thou shalt se fit. My blankets a poseson for a burying plas, ither of the town or and child-bed lining give to Hannah, which she the widdo Pitman that thou also when thy sol hath in keeping. shall assend to us in heavin that they body may Sum rings and [illegible] if thou wilt keepe any have rume in this pease of earth but for expence for a remembrance of me do so or if not give them in it for me my deare I desire of the not to do it to our children as before mentioned : if any of my by any means for thou wilt not pleas every body. cloths ithir wolen or linning be worth ower sis- Therefore pleas god by giving to the pore. My ters exceptanc let them have something for a re- deare let not this my request be grevious to the, membrance. Let Hannah have sumthing for her for I dow not intend a binding but a perswation of linnin at least till she grow to it, for dead folks power in them and do not wonder at my fansy, cloths are dispised by them that cum in thare for I have sean more of the [illegible] of the world rumes; and more vallued by them that would re- upon such chances as I speak of then ever thou member the oner of them give sum to nan that didst: on request more and that is : be not angry may be sutable, the rest to the pour, it will be the at my tediousness the contrary to thy temper; for last they will have of mine but I hope thou wilt it is the last and I hope the Lord will provide continue to be kind to them for thou art not the one mor sutibel for the in my rume to the com- porear for that thou and thin has givin to the pore fort of thy life and hur with home thou shall be I do believe; becase the Lord has sade he will re- consarned, and I can say this thou wilt never pay : and thou wilt not forgit that nan indin I have on that loves the beter, therefor I subscribe 56 57 myself thy very loving wife as long as I have live. E. G. III LETTER FROM RUTH PUTNAM WARD A tru copey (BORN 1740; DIED 1786) TO MY GRAND- Taken out by me. JOHN GARDNER. FATHER WILLIAM WARD (CANDID) M Y DEAR CHILD: You are going on an- 1703. other voyage and I think you will never see me again in this world. I can say now in the close of life that you have been a child very near & dear to me. Your im- mortal interest has always lay'd near my heart. I think I can appeal to the searcher of hearts when I say, I have in the main (allowing for human in- firmities) sought your everlasting well being- have strove to discharge the duty of a parent to you as far as was in my power. My prayers have been constant at the throne of grace for you-& blessed be God who has heard and answered me. O my child it gives me the greatest satisfaction when I think of parting from you that though you will be left an orphan, yet you will not be friend- less. I shall die believing that the ever blessed God is your friend & will guide you through life & the loss you will sustain in me is my prayer for you, but let this consideration prompt you to be more incessant in prayer for yourself-for your Brothers & Sisters & friends they will be without a tender mother's care & prayers for them. My 58 59 dear child, you do not know the satisfaction I grow in grace & in the knowledge of our Lord have taken in your conduct for some years past, & Saviour Jesus Christ. When you are reviewing it has truly sweetened my bitter cup and cheered the past & should recollect anything of my con- my spirits, and now at the last gives me inward duct that you may think was contrary to the com- support and comfort such as you will never know mands of God, throw the mantle of love over it untill you can exercise the parental feelings. I have & follow Christ as your leader wherever he may the greatest comfort in your dear wife- & I pray direct you at all times-keep God's Sabbaths- you may be long a blessing to each other. I have a reverence his sanctuary, that you may be entitled charge to give you and beg that it may be obeayd. to his blessings and his promises. Your Sir thinks that from recolecting some part Your affectionat MOTHER. of his former conduct to you that you may neg- lect him when I am gone, but I pray you to con- tinue your attention to him, comfort him endeavor to treat him with care & kindness support him under tryals which await him. Your Brothers and Sisters will relie on you in a great measure do all you can for them, advise them, instruct them- & every way you may have in your power I pray you to help them. To animate you, remember that in fulfilling my request you will show your regard for the memory of your tender & affec- tionate mother-a - show your love to her mem- ory by your kindness to her nearest connections. Your Sir thinks if I should be taken away soon, & you should neglect him - he shall sink under his tryals, treat him as my bereaved Husband live in peace and love & may the God of peace & good will be with you. Strive to live near to God, to 60 61 taken the originals. I received them with thank- IV fulness and when I read them I felt as tho my MEMORANDUM BY WILLIAM WARD (CAN- Mother was present and many endearing recol- DID) lections rushed fresh to my mind. It is now 35 TH preceding letter was written by my years since my wife died-& when I think of my mother. She died 7 Dec. 1786, aged 46 y. Mother or my wife I think of both they loved 8 m. I was with her when she died & was sent each other-and I have a hope-indeed a firm for about IO o'c. in the morning-she - said I have persuasion-that they are blessed. My Mother sent for you for I believe I am dieing. I had hold suffered much, her complaints which were pul- of her hand & told her that I believed she Was. monary, commenced three years previous to her She expressed her thankfulness that she was about death. My wife's complaints were the same & to be released & said-0 my child, my hopes are were seriously alarming more than a year. She was in the mediation of Jesus Christ, My only hope is aware of her situation, conversed freely and often in his merits, that through him I shall find par- on the subject. She wished to live, she had en- don and mercy. If this fails me I am lost, I have joyed so much happiness she said, & thought she no righteousness of my own to plead in myself, I had so much in prospect, & now blessed with a am vile, but thanks be to God for Jesus Christ. son she could not in truth say but that she wished She requested me to pray for her. When I had to live if it was God's will. She found that while finished praying she pressed my hand, essayed to the child was with her, her attachment to life speak, but her strength was fast failing & she soon was inconsistent with her submission to God, & breathed her last. some time before her death she took her last look My wife died 17 Jan. 1788. I was absent at sea. of her son & sent him from her to her father's- At my return I found that some of my things were & from that hour she was resigned-patient- missing-& with them all my mother's letters to tranquil-waiting - with humble hope and trust- me & my wife. In Oct. 1822 I received copies ing in the mercy of God through Jesus Christ, for of the preceding from my Brother-in-law Joseph consolation while she lived, & for a blessed im- Clough, from Danville, Vermont, in the hand- mortality after her decease. Doctor Barnard told writing of his deceased father, who must have me at my return that he was with her in her last 62 63. moments & that he never witnessed a more happy & calm departure. In her last sickness she said to me you will marry again & I believe you will marry LETTER FROM WILLIAM WARD (FATHER Miss Chipman, & spoke highly of her. She was OF WILLIAM CANDID) acquainted with Miss Chipman but I hardly knew there was such a person at that time, but I thought St. Eustatia, March 23rd. 1760. of herself & of her only & felt certain that I never should be united again in marriage. LOVING LIVE FRIENDS- - These to inform you that I am in health & I hope you are both with all other of our friends and acquaintances. thanks be to God that I have not had one hour sickness since I left you. we have had an unac- countable Voyage till this & are now at St. Eust. Discharging our Cargo. If the Vessel is not sold we shall go to the northward soon, but whether it be Salem, New York or Philadelphia, I dont know, it is not determined, but hoping in good time to meet you all again I have wrote several times of coming home soon, but minds change like the times & for myself I live as I can desire & the Voyage lingering will get the hurry of the Expe- dition well over I hope, which makes me more easy. P. S. though you have missed a great many op- ortunities I have received some of your letters, some that informed me that Barry sailed for St. Thos. but I cant here he is their. I expect that my brother Ebers go at home. If not taken & de- 64 65 siring to be remembered to all without calling names I remain with Duty & Due Respect to all your friend SAMUEL GRAY WARD WILLIAM WARD. A LONG LETTER To Ruth Putnam Funr. TO MY GRANDCHILDREN & Benj. Ward Fr. 3rd. "GLEICH EINER ALTEN, HALBVERKLUNGNEN SAGE, KOMMT ERSTE LIER', UNDFREUNDSCHAFT MIT, HERAUF." 66 INTRODUCTION A M I about to begin a history of my life? Why should I, and why should I not ? First, why should I? The idea came to me yesterday when, in arranging old letters, I came upon one of my old friend John Forbes, urging me to write out an account of that portion of my life most familiar to him, viz., my business career in connection with the house of Barings, the Ameri- can agency of which was in my family for sixty years. There were good reasons why I should not do that, especially at the time he wrote; but it set me to thinking in what a wonderful period of the world's history my eighty-two years had been passed, and that the true history of any life, however uneventful, from 1817 to 1899, could not fail to be a "document" of value, or, if noth- ing more and never printed, an interesting piece of family history. There is another reason I had not thought of be- fore. My grandfather, William Ward, had done this very thing for his grandchildren seventy-five years ago when I was five or six years old, giving a most interesting account of his early life, espe- cially the years from 1775, when he was fourteen years old, till his marriage with my grandmother, 69 eight years later. This has never been printed and pages a day would be sixty pages a month, and it should be the first part of the family volume, of is worth the experiment, which what I write will be the second, and per- haps my son and grandson will add new chapters of the story in their turn. West End, August 20, 1899. Second, why should I not ? I retired finally from business in 1887, pretty well tired out. I had thought myself retired ten years earlier, when I left the business in my brother's hands, with the understanding that I would re- turn at any time if the state of affairs made it seem best for me to do so. I travelled in Europe with my family for three years, when certain large interests of the Barings, and the generally unsat- isfactory conditions of the business world, caused my friends to remind me of my promise, and I returned to America and had seven years more to work. The result was that when my brother died in 1887 I found I had overtaxed my strength, and a state of prostration of the nervous system came on from which I have never entirely recov- ered. More than this, I have had one or two very severe illnesses in the last decade, so that now have to use extreme care to avoid fatigue, mental or physical ; and though I go out on most days, the greater part of my time is spent on my bed, and perhaps a couple of pages a day would be all I could count on accomplishing. But two 70 71. CHAPTER I I WAS born October 3, 1817, at Number 3 Park Street, Boston. The first Ward, Miles, who came with his family from the county of Kent in England in 1640, settled in Salem, where he took up two lots of land, and where the family continued to live till my grandfather, Will- iam Ward, moved to Medford, near Boston, in 1817. William Ward was born in 1761. He married, first, Martha Ann Proctor, by whom he had one son, my father, Thomas Wren Ward, born in 1786. My father's mother died early, leaving no other child, and my grandfather married for his second wife, Joanna Chipman of Marblehead, who was a sister of Mrs. William Gray. Judge Chipman, the brother of Mrs. Ward and Mrs. Gray, being a Tory, left the United States in the exodus after the Revolution, and removed to Nova Scotia, where he became chief justice. I remember him in my childhood as a guest of my grandfather at Medford. My maternal grandfather was Samuel Gray, who married for his first wife, Anne Orne, by whom he had several children, of whom my mother was the oldest. His second wife was Mary Brooks, 73 sister of Peter C. Brooks of Medford, and by her member anything, and I recall noting with wonder also he had several children. in my childhood how exactly Stuart's portrait was William Gray, the brother of my grandfather, was the man himself. He was of middle height, very well known as a great merchant and ship-owner. strongly built, and celebrated for his activity in his He was a Democrat, which fact in the days of early life. He was a fine old gentleman, of great sin- President Jefferson and the Embargo, and in a com- cerity, honesty, and vigour, and still erect though munity where all the principal men were ardent somewhat broken by age, though he was only Federalists, was made the subject of so much an- sixty-six when he died, his hair perfectly white; noyance to him that, for that reason, and because and to me he was the image of venerableness and Boston was growing in commercial importance antiquity. No one ever questioned his authority, and offered great facilities for his business, he though he was always most kindly. He was presi- moved to that city early in the century. His re- dent of the State Bank in Boston, and drove to town moval was no doubt the cause that led my two every day, rain or shine, stopping always at Num- grandfathers, William Ward and Samuel Gray, his ber 3 Park Street for a morning greeting. From brother and brother-in-law, to move to Medford, there he often took us boys-my brother William where they built houses nearly opposite each other and myself-in his chaise, or sleigh, according to on the main street, whence they went to Boston the season, to the bank, where our silver fourpenny daily for their business. bit was changed into bright new cents which looked My grandfather Ward died in 1827, when I was like gold, and which were duly expended at the ten years old, and as a large part of my childhood confectioner's as we were driven home by the bank in summer was passed in Medford with one or porter. But one day by accident my father, whose other of my grandparents, who were all devoted authority was admitted even by his father, discov- to me and my brother William, a year or two ered the illicit trade, and having a wholesome fear younger than I, my recollections of him are most of candy for children's stomachs, he put an end to vivid. Although both our grandmothers were step- that joy, the first I remember of a long series, grandmothers, that made no difference in their continuing through the years, in like manner kindness to me. summarily disposed of. Grandfather Ward I remember as early as I can re- My grandfather's home in Medford was a charm- 74 75 : ing house, built for himself before the colonial made him his private secretary, and there he passed style had faded out, in the midst of what seemed the rest of his years, dying in middle life. to me a vast garden. I learned only lately from my Aunt Lucy was as good as gold, and always a sure cousin, Mary Porter, who was born and has always friend, but with a touch of the vague and senti- lived in Medford, that house and garden comprised mental in her character, which my father's exact- only one acre ! A fact to me still incredible. ness, and her mother's satirical disposition, never Grandmother Ward (Chipman) was an interesting could quite allow for, so that she was always, in figure a bright, clever old lady, a true fairy grand- her youth, placed at some disadvantage. She mar- mother, as she sat upright in her arm-chair and ried Charles Lawrence, a most worthy man of a told us stories from her childhood or her books, to good Salem family, and passed her life happily on which, and to her garden, she was devoted. She a farm in Danvers, which was always delightful had a true literary sense. Shakespeare was a house- to us children to visit, and which my children hold word with her, and from her I first heard still remember. Kind Aunt Lucy ! the story of Mignon (pronounced Mig-non), or as The Medford garden was skilfully laid out by Car- much of it as I could understand. She left all the ter, the old Scotch gardener,- who was afterwards housekeeping to "Aunt Lucy" as soon as the lat- at the Harvard College Botanic Garden,-and the ter, her only daughter, was old enough she was most was made in the way of giving variety to the a wit, and not wanting in humour and sarcasm, land, which sloped down by terraces to the salt which she did not spare on Aunt Lucy, but which marsh of the river Mystic which flowed beyond, Uncle William, her younger and only brother, al- and from which it was divided by a sort of canal. ways escaped, no matter what were his shortcom- Next to it was the still finer garden of the Hon- ings; for, as often happens, the naughty boy was ourable Timothy Bigelow, separated by a high the prime favourite. These were the only two chil- brick wall, and with a door between always open, dren, and I may say here that William, the inex- which made them one. Mr. Bigelow's walls were act, after causing infinite worry to his father and covered with peach and plum trees, a marvel of my father, by constant debts for champagne sup- perfection to our eyes (peaches at that time in pers and the like, took himself off to Washing- Massachusetts were still unappreciated by the cur- ton and became a favourite with General Cass, who culio) ; but the crowning glory was the greenhouse, 76 77 then a rare adjunct to a country-place, for most people who had country-houses preferred homes CHAPTER II in Boston in winter, and left the country-house shut up. M Y father, as I have said, was born in TWW. 1786, and his mother dying when he was a mere child, he lived with rela- tions during his father's absences. One day, his father returning from sea, as the family story goes, not finding Tommy at home, sought him at the wharf, the playground of all Salem boys, where he was pointed out perched on the truck of a ship's mast, perfectly happy. I never heard him tell the story, but it may well be true for he was always remarkably active. He must have been a most at- tractive child, with his black curly hair and white skin and bright eyes, and constant desire to make himself useful. But that sort of happiness did not appeal to his father's sense of the fitness of things, so the next day he took him in the chaise, and drove twenty miles to Andover and deposited him with Master Foster, who kept a famous school in those days. It must have been a very good school, for my father had the three R's in perfection, and a taste for books which was inherited from his father, and must have been well trained so far as there was opportunity. Some twenty-five or thirty years later, being much attached to his old master, he took my brother and me to see Mr. Foster, and we 79 found a very pleasing old gentleman, in a com- the Embargo days, and before long he decided to fortable house, who warmly received us. move to New York, where he established, with At thirteen my father was taken from school and his cousin, Jonathan Goodhue, the house of Good- was placed to learn to be a sailor with a Captain hue and Ward, afterwards Goodhue and Company, Darling, who had been his father's first officer which held the highest rank among New York and who, though a strict disciplinarian and not merchants for two generations, when it came to without his faults, was always spoken of by my an end by the death of my good friend, Robert father with great respect. Captain Darling gave Goodhue. My father must have thriven well in him, on parting some years later, a set of the En- New York; for when he returned to Boston in cyclopedia Britannica, which my father always 1817 he thought himself rich enough to buy one kept, and which I knew well and often referred of the best situated houses in Boston, Number 3 to. Such a gift shows the class of men, partly sea- Park Street, where, as I have said, I was born on men and partly merchants, often owning an in- the third of October in the same year, and where terest in the ship they sailed, or taking ventures he lived till his death in 1858. which were mostly profitable, in those times. My father was so capable and had made such good use of his opportunities that at sixteen or seven- teen, the first mate having died, and the captain being ill, he brought the ship home from Calcutta, and was in full command before he was twenty. After he was placed with Captain Darling, he used to say that he never cost his father a penny, and in fact he throve so well that at twenty-three he was in condition to propose for Mr. Samuel Gray's daughter, my mother. My father and mother went to housekeeping in Pearl Street, then one of the best residence streets in Boston. It was a hard time for merchants in 80 81 though not knowing any language but Englis , CHAPTER III he supplied the want by the best translations he could procure, and it was through them that I A T the time I was born my father was thirty- first made acquaintance not only with Molière, one years old, my mother one or two years Montaigne, and Voltaire, but with Plato in Tay- younger. I had one older sister, named lor's translation and enough of Aristotle to swear for my father's mother, Martha. by, as well as with Marcus Aurelius and Epicte- My father was a man of marked character and tus, to whom he was devoted. Indeed, SO much abilities, one whom it was impossible to live near was he attached to his books and his ideal of a without being influenced by them. He was at quiet life that when I was five or six years old, once intensely practical, and an unconscious ideal- say 1823 or 1824, he actually retired from busi- ist ; and as I partook of this double nature, though ness (which, by the way, had become unprofit- in a different way (indeed, I should say it is a fam- able), and each summer took a farm-house on the ily characteristic), we were always great friends. seashore and passed all his time with his family. All his early experience had, indeed, tended to He believed firmly in Doctor Johnson, and he read make him practical and to keep the ideal in the continually in Boswell, Addison too, and the Es- background, while with me it was exactly the re- sayists, but Shakespeare was his chief delight, and verse. All my early life I was a dreamer, and it was he read Shakespeare aloud remarkably well ; I still only when, by a great and rare chance, that an op- catch myself repeating his cadences. Milton, too, portunity was offered me of which I was bound to So too he read aloud extremely well. A love of books was take advantage, that my practical quality came to GBD always a family characteristic. My grandfather's the fore. favourite seat was in his little well-filled "book As he was thirty-one when I was born, my first room" looking over the Mystic valley and it was recollections of him would date to about histhirty- related of him that in the long East India voy- fourth year, or somewhat earlier. He was always ages, sailing with the trade winds, he would rarely carefully dressed, and wore silk socks and ruffled show himself out of his cabin, where he occu- shirts, white cravat and dress coat, as was the fash- pied himself with reading and writing in writ- ion in those days. He was very fond of books, and ing what, does not appear, but I strongly suspect it 82 83 was sermons ! Theology much occupied him, and my good uncle Porter once told me (he was a Har- CHAPTER IV vard man and a good classic, and a great ally of mine though twenty years older) how carefully he always studied an excuse for not accepting my I FORESEE, if my undertaking goes on, I shall linger so long over things and people grandfather's hospitable invitation to come in that would be of no interest to the public, that with him, when they met in the street near his I might as well start with the understanding that house, for fear of having one of the old gentle- this is a family document only; even my descend- man's sermons read to him and submitted to his ants may think I impose upon them, but they can- judgment. But he was a man of strong mind and not help themselves had brought himself round to the Unitarian point Boston, New England, Salem, Medford, as I re- of view from the extreme orthodoxy in which he member them in those days, presented a quite had been nurtured. To return to the ship, this advanced civilization, which had been maturing state of things would go on for days, when he for two hundred years, with great vicissitudes. In would suddenly make his appearance on deck, and my early days it had reached a completeness of its woe be to the mates and crew if anything amiss own and was not yet absorbed in the vast expan- could be discovered for his wrath was like the sion of later days. It flowered in the literary move- thunder-storm while it lasted. ment beginning in the thirties, and by the impulse it gave, played the largest part in the literary de- velopment of this country. I know no other way to present my subject than by an unstudied account of what interested me, as the years, especially the early ones, passed. The Medford of my childhood presents itself to me under an idyllic aspect, which might surprise one who only knows the present Medford, which I do not. I only hear of it generally as a great suburb of Boston, very much built over, so that it would be 84 85 difficult to detect under it the Medford that I used to know. looked as if they had grown where they stood. All In those days it was no suburb. The five miles of was peaceful, leisurely, and self-respecting. This was the aspect of well-to-do New England distance, with no railroad dreamt of, was equal to houses of that time; it was the sunset of the co- twenty-five now. The daily stage-coach, leaving lonial period, and the time was not yet when, as at eight o'clock and returning in the afternoon, an artist declared, there was not a building in the took six or eight passengers, and except my grand- father, and uncles from the two houses, and a few country that would not ruin a picture. In every town, according to its size, there were one or two others, this half-dozen measured the regular daily or many "colonial mansions," whose detail, now intercourse with Boston. It was a thriving town, so appreciated, was a type of the refinement of their living by its own independent industries, espe- occupants, while the smaller habitations, not yet cially ship-building. There were several shipyards, built to pattern, seemed dropped down without one directly across the river from my grandfather's house, far enough off to soften the sound of the much regard to their angle to the street, and always with some individuality. hammer that drove the treenails. The big ships Being named for my grandfather Gray, I was na- were built in the open air, without houses, and the yards, as we watched the vessels growing day turally adopted by the Gray household, as my brother William, not two years my junior, was by day, were a great interest. Medford ships were of the first class. Medford Rum, too, was famous by the Wards. His death, some years later, by a fall from his horse, a few minutes after he and I (this was long before temperance was heard of), had left our grandparents, was a terrible blow, and Medford crackers (the invention of Mr. Fran- especially to my father and mother, to whom this cis, father of the Reverend Convers Francis and was the first real misfortune. William was blue- Mrs. Child), which went all over the country. It eyed and light-haired ; my grandmother always was a picturesque town. From the bridge on the called him her little Sir Walter, from a fancied Boston road the main treet turned off up hill to the resemblance to the portraits of Scott, whose books, north the houses all on the east side looking over the river, pleasing and well painted and neat (the still coming out, were her daily reading. box and scroll-saw period had not come in), all 86 87 dant (they have since almost deserted our shores CHAPTER V to save their lives) - when by the bursting of his gun his left wrist was almost shot away, leaving a F ROM my childhood I had a passion, which ghastly wound. Doctor Warren was promptly sum- I did not recognize till long after, for nature moned from Boston. He looked grave; the first and landscape and art, so that our changes of thing was to remove the patient to Boston. The surroundings each summer were great events to me. doctor said, "Your hand may be saved, but it will One of the very earliest of our resorts was Swamp- require many months' treatment, and the result scott, then a mere fishing village on the fringe is uncertain ; if I amputate it you will be well in of the beach, and here I made my first acquaint- six weeks." My father chose the former alterna- ance with the ocean. Every man was a fisherman tive, but it was as the doctor said the cure took all summer, out in his dory from morning till night. the best part of a year, and when he was able to The fleet, sailing leisurely out in the morning and hold a fork to carve at dinner, it was a cause of coming in with its loads of cod and haddock every great rejoicing. afternoon, made one picture while the beach, with its museum of shells and seaweeds and its breakers, affording a perfect playground for children, made another. Then for two or three years after my father's presumed retirement we had the Phillips house, a couple of miles farther on - a roomy farm- house half a mile from the sea, with the large farm between, and a beach a milelong, bounded by rocks at either end, forming the east side of the farm; again a paradise for idle boys and philosophical $ fathers. Here happened an accident, from which dated a change in the future of the family. My father was out shooting one day with my brother on the beach - shore birds were then abun- 88 89 Sturgis, he happened to make a journey to Paris. In the diligence he found himself tête-a-tête with CHAPTER VI a gentleman who fell into conversation with him, YEAR or two before this, my father had vis- each finding the other so well informed in com- A ited England. While there he had stayed mercial matters that they talked all the way to with his old friend Joshua Bates, of Baring Paris, and on parting the stranger gave his card to Brothers and Company. Mr. Bates played so large Mr. Bates-" Peter Caesar Labouchère." The great a part in his history and mine that I must pause to Dutch house of Labouchère were special friends paint his picture. He was born, if I remember of the Barings, and thus it happened that when rightly, at Weymouth, Massachusetts, and had the they wanted to establish the Honourable John Bar- good fortune to be placed early in Mr. William ing in business, and consulted Mr. Labouchère, he Gray's counting house, where my father, who was said, "I have the man for you," and told them of some years his senior, first met him. He there his conversation with Mr. Bates. The new firm showed so much ability and balance, that Mr. Gray went into business under the style of "J. Bates and made him his agent, with full powers to live in I. Baring," and soon afterwards, being satisfied as Europe during the War of 1812, and take the en- to his abilities, the house of Baring Brothers and tire management of his fleet of ships, some twenty Company took in the junior firm, of which, from or more (I have heard my father say) scattered all that time forward, Mr. Bates and Mr. Thomas Bar- over the world. In this place of trust he gave entire ing, son of Sir Thomas Baring, were the active satisfaction to Mr. Gray, but when the war came partners during their lives. They were warmly at- to an end in 1815, there was no more need of his tached to each other each had the greatest respect services, and seeing no prospect of profitable em- for the other's qualities, which were strikingly dif- ployment at home, he remained in England, ferent, Mr. Baring being a man cf brilliant and ac- where in company with a Mr. Bickford he set up tive mind and keen perceptions, while Mr. Bates the house of Bickford and Bates. This not answer- the thoroughly trained merchant, with a steadi- ing his expectations, the partnership was dissolved ness of mind that made him the balance wheel of and he was for some time without employment. the concern ; both were men of large views and About this time, as the story was told me by Russell the highest notions of honour; both, men of large 90 91 heart, so that they made a perfect team to work was ten years old. From that time till 1887, when together, always acting up to the best they knew. I retired, sixty years, the business of the firm in I never received a letter from either, or from this country remained in our family. the firm, that would not do them honour if pub- lished. Mr. Bates married Miss Lucretia Sturgis of Bos- ton ; Mr. Baring was never married. In talk with Mr. Bates, during his stay in England, my father confessed that, though he had enjoyed 1826 his holiday, he began to feel that he was too young to retire from active life (he was then forty), and though his friends had praised his wisdom in retir- ing just at the moment bad times were coming on, now that the times were good again, and his friends were having their innings, he felt uneasy to be out of the game. At the same time, he wished to avoid taking up with such anxieties as he had already ex- perience of. Mr. Bates said, "How would you like the office of our agent in the United States (the Barings had then no representative in America) and see what you could make of it ?" It is amusing to think how little of repose or freedom from anx- iety my dear father actually found in that place. The suggestion did not take shape at that time, but a year or two later, Mr. Thomas Baring came out to this country while my father was still con- fined to his room, during the long cure after his accident, This was about 1827 or 1828, when I 92 93 or a few years earlier, the State House was built and most of the houses about the Common. Our block CHAPTER VII in Park Street, I have heard, was built by Bulfinch 1820's T HE city of Boston in the twenties was, as (the architect of the State House and the Capitol remember it, a most dignified, attractive, at Washington) about 1807. The crowded streets, and picturesque city of about fifty thou- the fringe of wharves stretching far round the city, sand inhabitants, all New Englanders, with the ex- the Common, the State House, Copp's Hill, and ception of the few Irish who were then beginning Fort Hill furnished endless happy strolling grounds to come, but who were still so few that they were to an idle boy. accommodated in one short street, Broad Street, I remember vaguely, as though it were something where their crowded tenements, unknown before, mediaval, the whitewashed wooden jail on Court were an amazement to the townsfolk. There were Street (could it be ?) with the prisoners occasion- no Jews, no Germans, or other foreigners. The ally showing themselves. The COWS of dwellers fashionable streets were Beacon, Park, and Com- about the Common pastured peaceably on the pub- mon (now Tremont), looking on the Common, and lic domain the wooden ropewalk extended the Winter and Summer Streets, Chauncy Place, and whole length of what is now the Public Garden, the streets and places across from these to Franklin and far off at the end were the Hay Scales. The Street. The Perkins House and the Harris House, "Neck" was the only street leading to Roxbury two of the largest mansions, were on the corners of with only a single row, and that not continuous, Pearl and High Streets, and "Uncle" Brooks' town of low houses, and with the water at high tides house was below High Street towards the water. coming close to the street. Mr. Webster built on the corner of Summer Street These details would interest only Bostonians, but and High Street. Summer Street was a beautiful are necessary to complete the picture. street with its large houses standing well apart, Why do I dwell on them ? Partly to please myself, some of them dating from colonial times, some in and partly to emphasize the fact that Boston and gardens, the whole street shaded with trees. Ap- its surroundings and New England at that time parently there had been little new building since had attained, on a comparatively small scale, a com- the first ten years of the century, about which time, plete and original civilization which flowered in 94 95 the early half of this century, which exerted an an ideal school in its inception, a boon to the coun- extraordinary influence over the settlement and try, and a vast advance in liberal education, which direction of the whole Western country, by reason failed chiefly because its celebrity caused it to be of the growth of which last, though the New Eng- so sought for as a resort for boys from the Slave land influence remained great, it ceased to control. Relatively the little city of my youth was greater States, among whom were many fine specimens, and others very much the reverse, that these pupils than the Boston of to-day, which is so wonderfully transformed and beautified. formed an exclusive clan, thus creating for them- selves a false position, which became so marked My schooling began at Mr. Thayer's private school, in a characteristic alley back of the old Province that the Northerners" by degrees fell off and left the school to them. House between Bromfield "lane" and School Street, afterwards moved to Chauncy Place as I soon understood the state of things and induced Road Chauncy Hall School. Before long I was entered my father to remove me, though I had become warmly attached to Doctor Cogswell, the princi- Hill at the Public Latin School, where I made that acquaintance, thanks to the faithful drilling of my pal, a highly educated and most interesting man, dear mother and older sister, with the Latin Gram- the friend of Ticknor and the Boston literary set, mar which I still regard as the corner-stone of all and afterwards librarian of the Astor Library. Mr. liberal education. That was one of the points on Bancroft, the historian, originally with Mr. Cogs- which the omniscient Doctor Franklin was colour- well, had retired before I went there, but we be- blind. He had found himself more than a match came good friends afterwards in New York and for so many scholars ! One cannot have mastered Newport. At the school there was a complete staff the Latin Grammar at an early age without a of teachers : a (German) Latin teacher, a French speaking acquaintance, at least, with Virgil and teacher, a mathematical tutor (Benjamin Peirce, Horace and Cicero, a single line of one of whom whom I first knew there), an English teacher, and makes all educated men kin, and establishes a free- others. Every afternoon half a dozen of us rode out masonry like no other. My schooling was varied with Mr. Cogswell, who was a good rider. There by changes, the first of which was to Round Hill, was a farm and vegetable garden, half a dozen large the famous boarding school at Northampton- houses with comfortable and independent rooms, and, above all, such an atmosphere of good scholar- 96 97 ship and good society emanating from Mr. Cogs- well and his sister, with such home care from the CHAPTER VIII latter, that it is sad to think the school came to grief, chiefly from the above cause, but partly, I fear, because Mr. Cogswell had every qualifica- O NE of the good things I enjoyed in Boston in my school days, grew out of my father's tion but the business faculty, and because he looked being treasurer of the Atheneum, then OC- TWW more to the perfection of the school than to mak- cupying the old Perkins mansion on the corner of ing a profit of it. There was no sectarian bias in Pearl and High Streets, which, I believe, had been the school whatever. I always counted it a loss given by Colonel T. H. Perkins for the purpose. that my days there had not fallen in the earlier It was a very large house and had ample space in period, when there was a first-rate set, among them the lofty rooms on the second floor, for the col- Attagreem my old friends J. M. Forbes and Tom Appleton. lection of books, some twenty-five thousand vol- bury umes, which made up the best library in the country after the Harvard Library. On the lower floor was an ample and comfortable reading room. It was and is a private library owned in shares. It was a very quiet place, the more so that it was tapt. quite away from the usual walks of those who used it. Of all this I had the fullest range as though it was my own, - a perfect paradise for a bookish So too boy,-and here I made, at an early age, that ac- quaintance with the world of books that can only be acquired in such an atmosphere. On the upper story was a large room devoted to "Fine Arts." It would not be thought much of a collection now, but I found in it some treasures that gave me in- valuable leadings into the world of art. I never met any one there except the wood engraver, who 98 99 there plied his art and acted as a sort of curator. Professor Farrar, a good if not a great mathema- Amongst other books was a copy of Claude's tician, was an excellent instructor, and a man of "Liber Veritatis," which, with my passion for land- great uprightness, purity, and refinement. scape, I soon got by heart Stuart and Revett's Mrs. Farrar was a daughter of Benjamin Rotch, Antiquities of Attica," the French "Musée," the formerly of New Bedford, brother of Old" Will- Antiquities of Herculaneum and Pompeii," and iam Rotch who had gone to England with Mrs. many others; so that when I went to Europe the Rotch for a visit shortly after his marriage, and it year I graduated from college I knew just what I was said had remained there, never returning to wanted to look up. America, for the reason that his wife had been so When I had passed my examinations the question ill from sea-sickness that her life was despaired of, was, where I should live while at Harvard. As and he would not risk another voyage. On account my health had not been robust, it was thought of his ability and knowledge of the subject he was best I should have a home in Cambridge, and, as employed by the British government to superin- it proved, fortunately for much of the happiness tend the introduction of the Whale Fishery, to do of my later life turned upon the choice. which a great effort was made. Milford Haven was TWU One day my father took me with him to Cam- selected as a favourable port for the trial. Mr. Rotch bridge to call on Professor and Mrs. Farrar, whom took up his residence there, and it was there that I had not known previously. He was too wise to Mrs. Farrar had passed all her early years. break his errand to them beforehand, for they had Mr. Rotch was a hospitable man and generous never had any one to live with them, but took me liver, and his family became a part of the best with him, hoping I might make friends, and so it society in the neighbourhood. Mrs. Farrar was a proved. After some hesitation I was accepted as woman of great sense and natural capacity, with an inmate and remained with them during my three a warm heart and strong feelings ; well educated, years of college life. I have omitted to say that my with much knowledge of the world, and thorough father was treasurer of Harvard, which made him social training after the English fashion a com- a member of the Corporation and brought him bination of the best New English and old English into relations with the professors, and thus led to qualities. She was the most faithful of friends and this arrangement. hospitable of hostesses. 100 IOI It was at the Farrars' that I made the acquaint- distinctly set its face against her. How far was this Foller. ance of Margaret Fuller, to whom I owed, and Boston's fault, and how far her own ? still owe, a great debt for an introduction to the She had passed most of her life away from Boston. new world of literature and thought, and an in- Her father, an unpopular but able and honest law- tellectual impulse that was of immense value to yer, retired early to Groton. He was a good scholar, me. At first I was so far deterred by her formid- quite able to give a thorough classical training to able reputation both for scholarship and sarcasm his daughter, of whose abilities he was proud. Her that I did not venture to attempt any intimacy. excessive application, stimulated by his praise and But in my second summer at Cambridge we were her own passion for study, impaired her health, both invited by my kind hosts to make part of a and brought on weakness of the spine, from which summer vacation party to Trenton Falls in New she never entirely recovered. Hereyes, which were York. In our first walks together the barrier of remarkably short-sighted, so that she could not rec- reserve on both sides vanished. I found the defen- ognize her friends readily, gave her a strained and sive outside, which had been unconsciously as- distant look and awkward air so that she was fa- sumed as a protection by a proud and sensitive tally handicapped at the start. Fuller nature, placed by circumstances at great disadvan- Being a reformer, and almost the first audible ad- tage, melted away, revealing a personality of rare vocate of woman's rights, she found Boston, both gifts and solid acquirements, a noble character and social and literary, intensely conservative. Having unfailing intellectual sympathy. This was the tes- few relations there, she was only taken on hear- timony of all her intimate friends, among whom, say as a typical blue-stocking (still word of fear besides many excellent women, were many men at that time), pretentious and arrogant, and Boston of about her own age, who afterwards became simply would none of her. Had she been born eminent (she was then about twenty-five), such thirty years later, she would have come to a gen- as William Henry Channing, Professor Henry eration that would have appreciated her and re- Hedge, T. Wentworth Higginson, who wrote the ceived her with open arms. best memoir of her, R. W. Emerson, James Free- Another point against her was that she produced man Clarke, and others. no marked impression as a writer. Her gift was But society in Boston, including the literary circle, speech, which in her was full of inspiration. I 102 103 soon found that whatever I knew of Latin or Greek or French or Italian or German literature, CHAPTER IX she knew thoroughly, and all from the most mod- ern standpoint. There is a time in every one's development who I T was at Mrs. Farrar's that I first met your Re Bonne-maman, who was her cousin, has any intellectual leanings, when all our acqui- My class (1836) was not a strong one. It had sitions seem to crystallize and take a permanent been discouraged and put back by a suspension en direction. I was most fortunate that that moment masse- - a mistake, I think, of the authorities, who arrived with me under such an influence. took too seriously a harmless sophomore prank. The great German literature of the preceding half- My college rank was not high, not through idle- century, the Goethe and Schiller period, was al- ness or neglect, but because I was too much ab- most a sealed book here and in England. Margaret sorbed in my own studies outside of class require- Fuller was perfectly familiar with it and could even ments, and partly, no doubt, because mathematics give a clear account of the metaphysical move- never came easily to me, nor I to them. I graduated ment, which Coleridge had first made known in without difficulty with my degree of A. B. and in England so vaguely. She first spoke to me of Car- due course became an A. M. My father feared to lyle, and sent me his "Characteristics" and other press me, on account of my not too strong health. articles in the reviews, before "Sartor" was pub- I never became robust, though I gradually grew lished which last I read at the Athenzum in stronger, especially during my five years of coun- Fraser" as it came out. try life at Lenox, between 1844 and 1850; so that Lenox I have said enough to show how much I owed to when I did go to work in earnest my health was her, and how much of tragedy there was in the so confirmed that I was never off my work from position of one so gifted bound in on every side illness during my thirty-five years of attention to by impassable fences. It did not need the final.ca- business. tastrophe by the shipwreck of the whole family, It was on account of this delicacy of constitution herself, her husband and child, to mark the sad- that, on my graduation, being invited by my friends ness of her fate. the Farrars, who were going to pass a year in Eu- rope, to join them, my father readily consented and 104 105 gave me carte blanche for my expenses, which I am ment and point of view than on the subject. As to 1836-38 happy to say I did not abuse. I remained abroad treatment, I may fail entirely. I never wrote for eighteen months, from June, 1836, to January, the press, and I am too old and too easily fatigued intent 1838. to fash myself about what, after all, is only my con- here I feel profoundly, on looking back, that I have tribution to the family tradition for my grandchil- throughout my life, but especially when I was dren and those that come after them. young, been the object of kindnesses from my Amongst other treasures at the Harvard Library friends, so great that I could only by degrees and I found a complete set of the works of Piranesi. with greater experience realize how great they On the walls of our house in Park Street were Park were. I have often wished I could go back to thank pasted several of the finest of his large etchings, street my benefactors, and make them feel that I appre- the great Rome, and the interior and exterior of ciated it all - as in this case. Such a visit to Europe St. Peter's: so when I saw the books themselves then was a very different thing from the modern I was en pays de connaissance. Anything like a pic- tour, which is made to many people so much more ture or engraving drew me like a magnet. Soon easy than staying at home. My first voyage to Eng- I knew all that the great illustrator of the old 1836 land, in 1836, took twenty-five days; it was, of and new Rome could teach me. I had his designs course, before the steamer age; my return, in 1838, by heart and they contributed much to the pas- took forty-one, including all December. Of pas- sion for Rome which was to be so singularly grati- sengers on the outward passage we had forty or fied many years after, when a villa on the Calian fifty on my return in winter, in a first-rate ship, Hill came to be owned by one of my family, an only five. As the packets sailed only four times a improbability so wild that I never could think of month, it may be imagined how small the move- it without amazement. ment of passengers was. If my father, when I left Cambridge, had placed I find myself continually getting ahead of my sub- me alongside of some able and active man of busi- ject. I do not wish at present to go beyond these ness, with whom I might have been in sympathy, early years, which are so interesting to me, and to learn to be a merchant, that would have been to trace how my future grew out of them. The my natural destination, and all my life would have value of a picture depends vastly more on the treat- been different. But my father, though a wise man, 106 107 was so self-made that he, like other Americans of from Congregational Orthodoxy to Unitarianism, TWW those days, did not appreciate the value of training, the two families simply kept their places and the did not know even what a thorough training he had change was almost insensible. One of my earliest himself gone through to make him what he was; recollections was the church hung with black, on and thought that with a good education and given the occasion of Doctor Osgood's funeral. He was stock of ability and industry a man could do what always referred to with the greatest respect. came to his hand. As things turned out, all came It was a misfortune that this great movement, right, even to the fulfilling of his wishes but the which comprised so large a part of the most in- GBP. chances were that I should never do anything, so telligent and leading minds in New England, bore little promise had I given of any practical quality. the name of Unitarian. It was in reality a great Unitarians As it was, I made him happy in his later years step in liberal Christianity, and anticipated that by carrying on successfully the family business, tendency of all Protestant sects away from mate- of which he was so proud, without losing my rial dogma and towards the freedom of private judg- hold on that intellectual life which still keeps me ment which has gone on all through the century. young, Its name of Unitarianism tended to make it a sect, Unitarians My family on both sides were Unitarians. My and threw its teachers and preachers upon a barren father was a great friend of Doctor Channing, who, system of attack on the Trinity and preaching the of course, was our pastor. Both families of grand- Unity, which put the "Unbelieving Church" out mespud parents lived in Medford and belonged to Doctor of the sympathy of other Christians who were fast Osgood's congregation. I find amongst my grand- becoming almost as liberal. Still the body of Uni- father's memoranda evidence how much his mind tarian preachers who were coming forward at that had been occupied by the subject and how natu- time were an admirable body of men, most of whom rally he came out of the orthodox fold by reaction knew. from the doctrines which had been so strongly In my childhood I never heard religious points held by his ancestors. Though I have never heard discussed. The Unitarians were above persecution, how it came about, I take it for granted that when by their numbers, standing, intelligence, and the Medford congregation under their leader, Doc- wealth. There was no littleness towards the "or- tor Osgood, came out in a body (or the majority) thodox" that I ever perceived. They were preached 108 109 against, but that was all. Our religious education Allston, who rarely painted a picture, and Stuart, did not go beyond a regular Sunday morning at- whom I remember seeing as a child with my fa- tendance at church (less constant in the afternoon), ther at his studio; he was wonderful for a port- being taught to say our prayers (and at our grand- wine nose, which I gazed at with astonishment. mother's the Ten Commandments), and on Sun- The first "Athenaum Exhibition," perhaps the days the reading of a chapter of the New Testa- first in the country, I remember well, and the de- ment or the Psalms. Being permitted to relieve the light it gave me. There were many good portraits ennui of the sermon by reading the Bible, I came in Boston by Copley and Stuart and others; and to know it from end to end. Of the historical Chris- other painters, though not their equals, came to tian church I remained in profound ignorance. fill their places, and there were one or two land- Thus I grew up, my mind a white sheet as to re- scape painters, whose pictures were the first con- ligious controversy, as to Jew or Gentile (there temporary work of the kind that I ever saw but were no Jews in Boston then), and taking myself I do not remember seeing a water colour of any to be as good a Christian as anybody. Yet there note until I crossed the water in 1836; in fact, were certain fundamental principles I had so early nothing of the sort but the drawing copies of Mr. imbibed that they seemed part of myself. Omni- Vautin, an Englishman, from whom I took some science, Omnipresence, Immortality, were ideas lessons. always with me. But although religion, as well as In music we had the Handel and Haydn Society metaphysics and the scientific progress of the age, with its oratorios. The first opera I ever saw was occupied my mind greatly during my life, what "La Sonnambula" in English, given by a Mr. and belongs to them relates to a later period. Mrs. Wood, good musicians, which made a deep I inherited a strong feeling for nature and pictures impression and gave an appetite for more. from my mother, in whom the tendency wasstrong, though quite untrained. Indeed, although the feel- ing for nature was widely spread, as it was every- where else, through the poets of the early part of the century, the knowledge of art was simply nil, except so far as the traditions were kept alive by 110 III One American literature. W ashington Irving's' Sketch CHAPTER X Book" and "Bracebridge Hall," and one or two of later eat Cooper's early novels, were all I can recall. It B UT it is time for me to fare forth into the followed-that all my reading of English had been for world, to begin the account of my wander- of English authors. Miss Edgeworth, Sir Walter CBD. ings there, reserving to myself to come Scott, Wordsworth, Southey, Shelley, Keats, By- see back to fill up gaps in the account of my early ron, we knew all about. I was at home, too, in the days, as time serves. magazine literature (the London Times" came to PS. Our party-Mr. and Mrs. Farrar and myself- us regularly and the "Literary Gazette") and had 122 embarked on the good ship Orpheus (a packet read all within reach about art and artists. I already liner), of eight hundred tons. We had, as I have appreciated all of Turner that could be learned from said, perhaps forty or fifty passengers, amongst engravings so in England, in the month of June, them Miss Martineau, who was a friend of the 1836, I found the country of my dreams. England Farrars and Commodore Wilkes, who conducted was still hardly touched by railroads, only one or the United States expedition around the world, two besides the Liverpool and Manchester. It was and later became celebrated in connection with still the England of Bracebridge Hall" and the Mason and Slidell. My first voyage was full of novelists of the first half of the century. How my interest to me, for I had a great love of the sea, eyes drank it all in ! Everything, even the trees in the and always regretted that my father, who, like so fields, seemed marked and numbered and cared for. many old sailors of ships, did not believe in sail- It was landscape everywhere the atmosphere itself boats, had discouraged this part of my education. seemed made for water colour. The country looked But I must be grateful to him that he did not so old fashioned, too, and well preserved ; no air of allow my brother's unfortunate death by a fall newness or rawness anywhere- the smoke and from his horse to interrupt my habit of riding, damp prevented that-or of pretension. No angu- which I continued as long as I had strength to lar wooden houses, no unsightly fences, from which sit a horse. an American's eyes suffered so much in his own From our landing in Liverpool began a new life land, and suffer still. I seemed to have come home, for me. When I was a child there was almost no after an absence of two hundred years. 112 113 Our first journey, before going to London, was into I grieve to say that the volume in which I had North Wales, whence we crossed the Channel many of my sketches carefully bound disappeared from Holyhead to Dublin. From Dublin we were many years ago and not a trace of them remains. invited to Edgeworthstown. Mr. Farrar had let- I did not take my drawing up again for many ters to Miss Edgeworth. On returning to Dublin years-over forty years. If I seem to dwell on the we went north to the Giant's Causeway, from subject more than any performance of mine war- there to Belfast, then crossed to Scotland, and rants, it is because drawing was a passion with me, passed our time in the Highlands till the end and in later life, both at home and abroad, gave of autumn. me a living interest ; and it was always a great We had a party of four to fill our jaunting car help to me by enabling me to know what I was for Mr. and Mrs. Farrar had invited the daughter looking at in pictures and nature. When I was of friends who had been our kind hosts at Liver- young there was no good instructor to be had and pool to accompany us. Miss R. was about my age, no examples to see, so that I could only feel my so that I never wanted a sympathetic companion way. when our tramps extended too far for the elders To sketch in Europe, in England especially, was she was much amused at my enthusiasm though easy, because all the English landscape painters, full of enthusiasm herself. especially the water-colourists, had shown the way; North Wales gave me the keenest enjoyment of the pictures, the tools and materials, and the way landscape nature I had ever had. American land- to attack the subjects were plain before you. The scape was then, and is still to a great extent, not elements of landscape (a great point) were simple: good material for sketching or pictures, for want three or four sorts of trees, all telling and pictu- of that variety and human impress on its natural resque, all growing where they should be; wild features that only ancient habitation can give. heaths; a rocky shore everywhere; rivers, just I had never been inclined to put pencil to paper large enough and not too wild, instead of the sand at home for the sake of sketching, but my first beaches without a rock that occupy all our shores afternoon in Wales, at Conway Castle, brought south of Newport, with slight exceptions ; an at- out my sketch-book, and it remained in use till I mosphere that softened and generalized all ; clouds went back to America-more than a year later. that your water-colour brush made of itself; a rural 114 115 architecture of stone or brick, always ready to find ter. Painters' mountains must be varied with peaks its place in the landscape and above all and every- and hollow curves and associated with human habi- where the traces of the immemorial possession of tation or occupation to relieve their austerity. Scot- man and history of the soil, the hand of man, even land, Switzerland, Tyrol, the mountains of Italy, all when his visible presence is not there; these ele- soon became familiar, but nothing ever made me ments of English landscape all entranced me. In forget the delightful surprises of North Wales. America there was not (is there yet?) a building possible to be put in a landscape. Our great pic- turesque interior and West were yet unknown. None of the elements I have enumerated were existent, and no great genius had arisen to show us how to coordinate those we have. It is true that, when I was older, I found that I had un- consciously been making pictures in my mind of what we have, but nothing can replace the 'old poetic mountains" and rocky shores of Europe. North Wales was my first encounter with real mountain shapes, grand in their form, however small the scale, to which the purple heather, the emerald sward, and constantly changing cloud ef- fects, gave a new and individual charm. Our White Mountains, then my only standard of comparison, though they are fine in their own way, are not pictorial. They are mostly rounded hillocks, cov- ered, when not burnt or gashed with the axe, with a mantle of uniform forest, beautiful in itself, espe- cially in autumn, but obliterating all details of form, and affording but little indication of rocky charac- 116 117 Scott. To me, in those late summer days, it was CHAPTER XI a continued enchantment. To dwell upon what has become so much a matter of course as a jour- UR visit to Edgeworthstown proved a ney in Wales and Scotland seems now an exaggera- most interesting experience. Miss Edge- tion of sentiment ; but it was then to an American worth's books for children had been my a voyage of discovery. He was like a Greek from a first reading. If they erred by their too obvious distant colony visiting Athens and Olympus. moral, the stories were good, and children always skip the moral. They were the work of a lady and a woman of genius. The most of what I knew of Ireland I knew through "Irish Bulls" and "Castle Rackrent" and her Irish novels. Our welcome by the two ladies, Maria and the latest of her three successive stepmothers, was most cordial, and it was like a visit to old friends. When, forty years after, I read Miss Thackeray's Four Sibyls," I felt how truly she had divined the character of her sub- ject and surroundings. The love of things Irish and Irish people, im- bibed from Miss Edgeworth's stories, has always remained with me, and survived the triste and grotesque experience of American cities conquered and ridden over rough-shod by such specimens of the race as we allow to rule them. We did not visit the picturesque parts of Ireland, for want of time, except the Giant's Causeway. From Belfast we crossed over to Scotland. The Scotland that I knew was the creation of 118 119 only beginning to be recognized, and the great French School of landscape was not dreamt of. The CHAPTER XII works of the English painters, Turner and others that Ruskin later made famous, I knew only by La ONDON in late autumn was not attractive. Mr. and Mrs. Farrar went to stay with her engravings. At that season there were no exhibi- father and mother, and after I had exhausted tions, so I could not get at them. what works of art were accessible I was ready to When I was about ready to leave London, tired move southward. There were, however, some of the fog and darkness of November, I found that things of the greatest interest to me: the marbles my old friend and schoolmaster, Mr. Cogswell, and and the prints and old drawings in the British my cousin (of the older generation), Francis Cal- Museum, and the nucleus of what became the Na- ley Gray, son of William Gray, my great-uncle, tional Gallery, then consisting, I think, only of the had arrived on their way to Paris and Italy, and Sheepshanks collection, which had been left to the they kindly asked me to join their party. Gray was nation, and was to be seen (I can hardly call it an aman of real superiority, thoroughly educated, who exhibition, so few were the visitors) in a private had seen much of the world, beginning with his house in Pall Mall. Here were the great Claudes, secretaryship of legation under Mr. Adams at St. F.C.Gray the Ariadne of Titian, and others, the first pic- Petersburg, if I remember rightly. Being well off, re tures of any worth that I had ever laid eyes on. there was no need for him to enter a profession ; 6BP At the British Museum my first call was for the as an idle man there was no class of intelligent drawings of Michael Angelo, Raphael, Claude, the idlers for him to fall into, and lacking the impulse overday? works of Albert Dürer, and Rembrandt's etchings. of temperament and the active social sympathy In a certain way I thus got nearer to the artists that made Tom Appleton such a success, suffer- than in the finished work, or, at least, it was well ing also perhaps from some private disappointment, to see the sketches before seeing the pictures. he led a somewhat desultory and aimless but still a Claude, for instance, seemed to me far nearer to refined and useful life withal an interesting man nature in them than in his more elaborate works, from his wide knowledge and experience, and per- splendid as they were. It must be remembered that haps the more so from the sense of his vain efforts at that time the English landscape painters were to get free of conditions that imprisoned him. Mr. 121 120 Cogswell was as good for company, and for incon- sequence, as though he was no older than I. As we hunted together at Paris, he had a spirit of perpetual CHAPTER XIII youth. Horatio Greenough accompanied us on the journey to Paris, the first of the two sculptors of T HE idea that constantly comes back to me as I put down these early recollec- his family. He was almost a genius, but he had the tions in themselves so unimportant, is misfortune that he came too soon and found no that in my long life, with my early developed public which had got beyond a likeness bust, and habits of observation and comparison, I have been he did not possess the force that Crawford had to an intelligent witness of vast changes, to give an break through the circle of indifference of an un- idea of which is my great object, and that my ex- trained community. The time was not yet for ar- perience makes a complete arch between old and tistic development, and when it came there was new, in ways not usually recorded. little outlet for it in the United States but the The main interest of my Parisian recollections is literary one, which began with Emerson, Long- that I was familiar with old Paris, in the days of fellow, Lowell, Holmes, and the rest. Louis Philippe, before the first sacrilegious hand of "improvement" had been laid upon it-the Paris of Victor Hugo and Dumas, the Paris of the Revolution. I had not read history enough then to know well what I was looking at, but the air was full of history and of foreboding. So in art the days I describe were almost before the dawn of the great critical and historic move- ment of the age. Almost all values have been re- vised, some almost to the extinction of artists then in repute, while others then hardly recognized have been advanced to the first places. So in an- tiquity. Yet I am still faithful to my early faith in the great gods. I knew that the Elgin marbles 122 123 were beyond all we knew of sculpture. I knew anything to be seen, we arrived too late to see it, that Turner marked a new stage in landscape art; after dark, chilled and hungry, and left in the I felt that Michael Angelo and Raphael could not morning immediately after breakfast. Such is a be dethroned, and that Rembrandt and Dürer picture of all the winter journeyings we read of were too individual ever to be repeated. in books, before the age of railways. But it was also the dawn of so much else. The sci- At Lyons we embarked on a boat to go down the ences have all but been recreated. I knew enough Rhone, a great relief from the pavements; but to see that with Lyell in geology, with the new the wintry aspect of the landscape offered little to lights in astronomy, chemistry, physiology, me- charm the eye. At Avignon we made a little stay chanics, a new earth, if not a new heaven, was to visit Aix and Arles as well as the old papal coming in sight that the whole frame of thought city, whose numerous square towers typified the was changing, and the chief aim of my intellectual irresistible pressure of the Church. We took a life has been and is to keep up with it. long drive to Vaucluse. But though the chiare After a month or two in Paris, my friends, Mr. fresche e dolce acque were there, they were no Cogswell and Mr. Gray, were ready for the jour- better than any other clear, fresh, and sweet wa- ney south, where my desires all pointed and we ters under that wintry sky, and it was impossible proceeded to make preparations for our winter in greatcoats and with cold fingers to connect journey. How different from now ! The first thing them with Petrarch and Laura; all the more so, was to hire a carriage for Lyons, for we must post perhaps, because I was a fairly good Petrarchian. so far at least. There was not a railway in France. I have often had the same experience in going to Oh the dreariness of that journey ! though it see celebrated places or celebrated people it is was relieved by a party of friends in another car- hard to get them under the proper light. Merely riage, who kept step with us and met us every to see a celebrated man, unless you come into real night. The road was paved with "cobble-stones" personal relations with him, is nothing, or worse all the way, over which our carriage jolted day than nothing and I always thought it great good after day in the rain, between the everlasting fortune that the three great names in literature- rows of tall trimmed poplar trees, leafless, intol- Homer, Dante, Shakespeare - so shrouded in erable. If the town we stopped in overnight had obscurity that even in Dante's case we do not 124 125 know whether there was a Beatrice or not. As to places, I think we always prefer to make our own CHAPTER XIV discoveries. T last we took the steamer from Marseilles A to Genoa. At last I really stepped upon the enchanted ground, with Salve magna parens in my heart. Genoa is not the most Italian of cities ; we do not feel at home there as in Flor- ence or Rome ; but how I delighted in the fact that there were only two streets in which carriages could pass, for narrowness. This was really medi- aval. How magnificent was our apartment, with its vaulted and painted ceilings, in the inn which had been of old a palace and we were always treated like princes in those days. How I won- dered what the actual inhabitants of those palaces were like, what possible relations I could hold with people who passed their lives in such surroundings! Many years after I learned in detail about these dwellings and how the human grandeur of which they were the expression had faded out of them. Old countries are full of glamour, especially to the comers from a new country actual life in them is weighed down by the memories of a tremendous past. From Genoa we took the steamer again to Cività Vecchia, I was disappointed that this approach to Rome gave no view of the dome of St. Peter's, the 126 127 lighthouse from afar that so many travellers have their dilapidation. What with decay and restora- beheld with a thrill. But at least we were within tion, what was real about them ? Day after day I the walls, and the rummaging of our luggage for studied till it all came back to me. Their condi- forbidden books assured us satisfactorily that we tion was such that the painter had to be studied were in a place so far free from change for centu- anew, with little reference to the Madonnas and ries. It was then Papal Rome under Pope Gregory engravings I had seen. These vast, roomy pictures XVI.; still the Rome of Piranesi, with the Cam- in which magnificent forms of men moved so freely pagna of Claude. It seemed as if time stood still. and with such dignity, not in frames, but in the It is better as it is, but it is a lesson that there is no very rooms, gradually became familiar. Mr. Tick- great gain without a loss to balance it. At Rome we norand I employed an excellent German draughts- found the Ticknors and a few other friends, and im- man named Temmel to make drawings of many mediately were at home, as though we had always heads, in red and black chalk, an excellent mode been there. of study which Braun's Photographs have super- There was more than one Rome in Rome for me. seded. We learned how individual was every per- It would be pedantic to divide it into its various sonage, like Shakespeare's, and not only every head, aspects. I must take it as it came to me. What but every picture: the Disputà; the Apotheosis of these various aspects were to me is the question, the Church; the School of Athens, the ideal acad- not what it was in itself. emy of all the ages; the Miracle of Bolsena; the Our first objects were the Vatican and St. Peter's, Parnassus, and the rest. It must be impossible now, and the Vatican meant to me then the Sistine in this age of reproductions, for any one to come Chapel and the Loggie and Stanze of Raphael. All to them with the fresh eyes I brought: and Ra- these were a revelation to me, for I had seen no phael's Bible in the miniatures of the Loggie, that engravings even of any of the frescoes of Raphael pastoral and homely patriarchical presentation of and Michael Angelo, except The Last Judgment. the Bible story, the interest of all so purely in- At that time Raphael stood unquestioned as the tellectual, so little colour remaining that it can price of painters through his charm, as Michael hardly be divined what it was; but to my mind, Angelo did for superhuman power. even when fresh, any Titianesque wealth of colour My first impression of Raphael's frescoes was of would have disturbed their impression. Tintoretto's 128 129 motto, "the drawing of Michael Angelo united to the colouring of Titian," always seemed to me a false one. For some time past these works have CHAPTER XV been under a partial eclipse, but my belief is that still point to Raphael as the greatest name in Paint- T HE Vatican sculpture galleries were the if an old Greek artist should come back he would next great sensation not that the mas- 1837 terpieces it contained- - the Apollo, La- ing. I have outgrown many enthusiasms, but not ocoon, the Torso, the Antinous, etc.- were new to this. I admit at the same time that the great pres- me, on the contrary, very fair casts of them had ent painter or musician, whoever he may be, and been before my eyes at the Boston Athenxum all of whatever school, by right of perspective, over- my childhood, but from the total impression of shadows for the time being any interest in past such a population of human forms in marble. Far achievement. from being, for the most part, originals or even I have faith that Leonardo, if he had not done so good copies of masterpieces, in their mass they many other things, might have accomplished as opened a vista into an unknown antique world. great things but neither he nor many others in It is the multiplicity, inevitable, of modern life, any art have approached the solitary grandeur of our sensibility to so many forms of beauty, that Michael Angelo, of whom I will only say here is fatal to simplicity and grandeur. A Greek or that, great as he seemed to me then, it has taken Gothic architecture, or anything analogous to a lifetime to appreciate him; not in The Last Judg- them, can never be repeated for this reason, nor ment, however, which had always vaguely been Grecian sculpture not for the want of admirable pronounced his greatest work, but is now recog- genius in our artists, but that, like the simplicity nized as the work of his decline. of childhood, that phase is gone forever. The greatest of all steps in art was that discovery of the Greeks, that the most beautiful, as well as the most interesting, subject of art was the hu- man figure in its ideal perfection. Before the Greeks the Egyptians came nearest to it in the earliest dynasties; but their hieratic and prescrip- 130 131 tive forms soon became stereotyped and went no St. Peter's and the Vatican, naturally came to- farther. The archaic Greek figures on the meto- gether. I remember saying to Emerson that my pes, vases, and pediments were grotesque, and this impression of its interior was that it seemed to continued to a very late period, considering how me like the vast parlour of the church so beau- long poetry had been emancipated in Homer, tiful, so comfortable, so soigné, so exclusive of all until at a point of time which can be approxi- discord, with a climate of its own, so friendly to mately determined, the envelope fell from the the true believer. I don't think (having never chrysalis and the perfect human form was re- seen it) he quite appreciated my idea. My north- vealed. The step from the Aginetan pediment to ern nature, that received so deep a religious im- the Parthenon was enormous, like the step from pression from the Gothic, could get none such the Old Testament to the New. Was it in like from the Renaissance architecture. manner finally the work of one mind, one will, one The galleries in Rome I became perfectly familiar nature, so pure and strong as to stamp itself for with. I need not discuss them. As I wandered in all time For it seems to me that all great ideas the streets I felt how truly we must know before- are born in individual men; this is the true reve- hand in travelling what to look for. The pictu- lation. resque and artistic I was well at home with; but Sculpture is to us the most bewildering of the the archaological, the Rome of the different ages, arts, the hardest to know what we are looking at, I had yet to learn. because its subject is not, as with the Greeks, ever With the Campagna it was different. It was the before us. It would have been impossible for it to Campagna of the painters, and to me then, with be perfected in any people but one accustomed to its surroundings, the very ideal of landscape, as I see the human form unclad, in its perfect action. had learned it from Claude and Poussin, of which For this reason the art in Greece appealed to a much had to be unlearned, and much remains. nation of connoisseurs. The artist and the public, One day in the early spring, Mr. Cogswell, my 1837 their poetry and their religion, all worked to- old young friend, proposed a tour of some days gether. With us, it is only those who by natural on horseback among the hills, first to Tivoli, then aptitude, by study, and by seeing all the remains to Subiaco, then through and over the hills, com- of the art can fully appreciate it. ing out finally at Albano. This was what I had 132 133 come so far for this fairy land of cascades, woods, and mountains all beautiful, none too large ; these CHAPTER XVI places fatigués par Thistoire, ; these old caves of early monks; these peasants, except in their clothes as A S spring advanced all eyes and plans turned 1837 primeval amongst the secluded parts of the hills to the North. The Ticknors were so kind as in Roman times. as to invite me to join them. How could Lever thank them enough ! Mr. Ticknor, then about forty-five, and so of the Tichnor elder generation, I had only known as a friend of my father's in Boston, and my professor of modern languages at Harvard, where he gave his course of lectures on Spanish literature. Educated in Ger- many, he was, undoubtedly, the best general stu- dent of literature we had, public spirited, anxious to improve the methods of university education and to promote the advance of literature-not a man of genius, but a scholar. His work on Span- ish literature - which is, I believe, the standard authority - had not then been published, but his knowledge of European languages, several of which hespoke perfectly, his genial disposition, histrained manners, and his interest in literature made him welcome in all cultivated circles. I had occasion in my visits with him, meeting distinguished people, to mark this, in contrast to the rather grudging tolerance he met with at home. Perhaps he knew too well the defects of our own educational work, and urged changes too pointedly for which pub- 134 135 lic opinion was not prepared. Perhaps there was Mrs. Ticknor, then about thirty-five, of one of the some jealousy of the fact that all Europeans of note best Boston families, the Eliots, and their daughter came commended to him as a matter of course; Anna, then a girl of fifteen or sixteen, so well known perhaps, as it was aid,-though I never saw any- in later life as the author of the "Bureau of Literary thing of it, - there was something too positive Correspondence," which supplied literary informa- in his manner amongst older men in presenting tion and advice to readers at a time when public li- his views, that gave offence. Be that as it may, I brarians and libraries, except in two or three great saw him as completely ostracised in later years at centres, did not exist, made up our party. a semi-public meeting connected with the ques- Mr. Ticknor's travelling outfit was the exact dupli- tion of the Public Library, for making in all in- cate of that of Mr. Ruskin's father, described in nocence a proposal which he thought would be "Praterita," which must have caused envy in so generally accepted, as ever Aristides was at Athens. many modern railway travellers, who have to see It was in its way as curious an example of the everything between their starting-point and ter- prejudices of my beloved native city at the con- minus from the windows of their train : a vast servative end of the scale, as the non-acceptance of London "berlin" stuffed and padded to perfec- Margaret Fuller and Emerson at the other. tion, so large that it required four horses always, He was of unusually dark complexion, with large and when we came to a hill, like Perugia, the dark eyes and black hair, and might readily have posting tariff called for two yoke of oxen addi- passed for a Spaniard. One day in the Corsini Gal- tional. The springs were reenforced by an arrange- lery at Rome, I was standing lost in thought be- ment of strong ropes under the carriage, while fore the portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici, whose well- boxes fitted to various parts of the carriage, called known profile became so familiar on the cover of according to their position imperials, on the top, Hamerton's "Art Journal" in after years I heard caves, sword case, etc., held all the luggage and him say behind me "Iknow what you are studying were unbuckled and brought in at night. The vet- in that picture." waked up and said " What " To turino rode postilion fashion; the front outside seat see how exactly he has my nose!" In fact, there was was the favourite, while the rumbler behind held a strong likeness, and Lorenzo was not a beauty. the portly courier and Mrs. Ticknor's maid. To me his manners were perfect, and he was an in- Naturally with this train and the interested help valuable friend. 136 137 of Peter the courier, when we arrived at night we future and the present, and not in the past. Ours were led to the princes' apartments, the princes is a world of experiment, of substituting a new being mostly absent, and fared sumptuously. All order of things for the old, not only from choice, day we could be poets and artists, and aristocrats but from necessity and the progress of ideas. Every all night. It was too good to last. Year by year as American, so long as he lives at home, burns with the railways intruded, such arrangements became a determination that the new phase of civilization impossible, till now the prince can do no better shall be the best so far as he is concerned. This than his subject, unless indeed he has a private spirit is our warrant for the future. But a European car, and even that has ceased to be a distinction. residence for an American, once become habitual, Steam is a true democrat. inevitably declines into lotus-eating. An Ameri- Thus equipped, we wound slowly among the Ital- can living in Europe has no raison d être; he loses ian towns northward, first to Florence, old Flor- touch with home and the new, and gains no place ence, ducal Florence, unimproved Florence. It is in the old order. He magnifies by degrees the in- too hackneyed a subject to dwell upon, but it never evitable shortcomings of the new world, and does became hackneyed to me. One must know a great not see the compensations, or enjoy the magnifi- deal to know Florence, and then find there is a cent growth and life in the future, which Ameri- great deal more to know. Like Athens, it is a cen- cans have in their consciousness that they are a tral fact in the world's history, and one of the most part of it, while in Europe they are no part of that sympathetic facts to all cultivated men. past about them, the picturesqueness of which they Italy is a vast museum of the old world's history. enjoy. After a few years, perhaps, they return to try Every one of the towns and cities we visited- the experiment of living at home, but things have Rome, Florence, Pisa, Volterra, Assisi, Milan, moved so fast that they find themselves forgotten Verona, Perugia, Venice-is a separate museum and left out, and give up the attempt as a vain ef- of infinite, interesting, and beautiful details, good fort. It is too late. Yet what a valuable class would for Americans to visit and study, but not good for these men and women have made at home had they them to live in. With the apparent exception of returned before it was too late ! some artists, I have never known American men to make a success of it. Americans must live in the 138 139 I will not describe Venice. You have all been there CHAPTER XVII and knew it before you went, but to me it was a discovery. All that Ruskin and Turner and others I N the plain of Lombardy, I forget where, we have written and painted of it, if they have added met at our hotel with Wordsworth, travelling to what I saw in it, have not changed my early with his friend Crabb Robinson, who was impressions. As regards painting, the world will taking him on this journey over old ground to always be divided between those whose passion is relieve the poet's depression at the loss of his sis- colour impression, and those to whom the intel- ter, who was so important a part of his life. Know- lectual side of art speaks most. To me it seems ing Mr. Ticknor well, they welcomed the addi- that the intellectual side of art from the Greeks tion to their evening party as day after day we down through the Florentines has been the great travelled on, stopping at the same inns and ar- development, and opened the way to the colourists, riving at the same time at Venice. It was my first and that it still remains true that while colour is, experience of how much or little it may be worth and always has been, the instinctive passion of the simply to see a great poet, however closely, if one East and Asia, form, the glory of the Greeks and has not the key to open his heart. The true Words- Florentines, is the great idea of the European art. worth I knew by heart ; the apparent Wordsworth, From Venice, through Verona, up the Brenner a depressed old gentleman, almost pessimistic in road we went by Botzen and Meran, to the Stelvio his talk after having led the world to such great Pass, then the newest, and over it back into Italy hopes of the future, aided me nothing to under- and the Italian lakes and Milan, and made acquaint- stand the real Wordsworth better. I wish we had ance with Luini and the Northern painters. known aslittle of him, of Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, I was now among great mountains, no longer paint- Byron, as of Shakespeare. Crabb Robinson was an ers' mountains, as in Wales and Scotland and Italy. ideal friend to Wordsworth, so cheery, so full of It took some time to accommodate myself to the knowledge of men and things, and such a wonder- scale, to grow to it, to find that they were to be ful converser and story-teller as I had never seen thought of without reference to pictures. Turner, then nor until I knew Lowell, who added genius it is true, solved the problem after his fashion and to all the rest, and the incomparable Holmes. painted some great pictures of Swiss mountains and 140 141 lakes, and "views" of mountains became common; itinerary, but it does not need. At the end of a but the true landscape painters' paradise of our time month more or less of wandering, I found the has been Barbizon, a quiet country where nature Farrars awaiting me at Lucerne. They had been is not too vast for the artist to stamp himself upon joined by your dear Bonne-maman. whom I had his work, and make his conception of the scene seen only a few times before. It was at once as the point of interest. though we had always been friends, and then be- We wound in and out and made most of the great gan that life together which, though broken by carriage passes where roads had been built, walk- the interval till our marriage three years later, now ing more than driving : the Splügen with the Via counts more than sixty years, without our weary- Mala, the Simplon, the St. Gotthard, each more ing of each other or of life. wonderful than the other. At last the time came And so we went on through new mountains and for me to bid good-by to my kind friends. I had valleys while the summer lasted. appointed a time and place to meet Mr. and Mrs. Farrar, who were soon to come to Switzerland and expected me. Meantime I had to do some less luxu- rious travelling on my own account and to get nearer to the mountains than could be done in a carriage. Starting from Zurich with a knapsack and guide, crossing the lake, my first stage was to Einsiedeln, which I found crowded with pil- grims from the Catholic cantons in their local cos- tumes, which had not yet been laid aside- a new and unexpected sight to me. The devotions of the peasants seemed full of enthusiasm compared to the languid observances of Italy. I went on my twenty or thirty miles a day. It is pleasanter to have company, but one sees infinitely more by one's self. I could not now retrace my 142 143 my letters of introduction, when I received letters CHAPTER XVIII from home with sad accounts of the protracted and serious illness of my elder sister Martha; and al- M Y plan was, when their party turned though not a word was suggested of my return, I south to Italy, to settle myself in some felt that I was needed, and that my Wanderjahre German town and devote myself to were over. Within an hour I had made inquiries study. Mr. Ticknor had recommended Dresden, about the next steamer from Hamburg to London, and gave me introductions, chief among them one which I found sailed on the third night from then. to Tieck, whose aesthetic teas and readings were re- I ordered a posting carriage, bought a fur cloak and nowned. Dresden, where since they have been so fur boots, and started that evening. What a terrible much at home, was then an undiscovered country journey! The ground was covered with snow, the to Americans. To give an idea how unvisited: I was roads muddy, the carriage with no springs that wandering in the streets shortly after my arrival, and would spring, and I had plenty of leisure to think stopped to ask my way of a stout and kindly-looking again of all those winter journeys from one end of man, who listened patiently to my raw German, and Europe to the other I had read of in French mem- after giving me the information I wanted, inquired oirs. I forget the distance, but it took me three days if I was English, which he took for granted. I said, and nights, arriving at Hamburg, the only time I no. "French?". No! Spanish?" No, no!" Italian?" ever was there, at nine in the evening, only three No, no, no!" What are you then? Are you alone, is hours before the steamer sailed. your family with you?" When I answered, Ameri- After a rough voyage to London I go to report my- can, and that my family, was thousands of miles off, self and take up some money at Number 8 Bishops- the good man, overcome, opened his arms wide and gate Street, learn there that a packet ship was to sail embraced and hugged me. "Vom Amerika! Ist es from Portsmouth the next morning, go to Bohn's to möglich! und allein! und so jung!" and I could lay in a store of books, for I knew what was before hardly tear myself away. I should say that I was me, and take the evening coach for Portsmouth. slight in person, and looked years younger than my The Mediator, Captain Champlin, was a first-rate age, which fully accounts for his surprise. ship of twelve hundred tons, in perfect order, and I had not been many days in Dresden, nor delivered with her captain I became great friends. There 144 145 were only five passengers besides myself, but I found I brought my own news, there were no later dates no comradeship but with the captain and my books. from Europe than ours. I took my family by sur- I had long been without books or steady reading and prise, and their happiness in seeing me showed me had a voracious appetite for them, and I determined that I had done the right thing in coming. to make use of it for attacking some of the monu- ments of literature. I was perfectly well, not a sign of Does not this seem very primitive andold-fashioned seasickness; the weather was forbidding, and except now that everything that happens is known every- my walks on deck with the captain, I read all day, where, almost before it happens? and in the evening too. I had bought a Bible, a It seems to me that I have been describing so far Shakespeare, an "I Quattro Poeti Italiani," and the fortunate youth who met only good friends to other books I do not remember, and read many of help him to seven-league boots to reach the "Pays them through more completely than I have ever de Cockagne" where chickens ready roasted say done since, - a piece of work that stood me in good Come eat me ! and it is time that I should turn stead and gave me much to think of during the rest about and give an account of the other side, the of my life. amari aliquid, that, as everybody knows, whatever The weather was outrageous, constant storms, we pretend, arises medio de fonte leporum. But my ex- north-west veering to south-west and back. One perience is that if you live long enough to get upon day we were driven back forty miles. In one storm that windless height whence you can contemplate our storm sails were split to pieces, and we could the past and say, "Well, that is had!" the contra- not carry a rag. All this I enjoyed. It was just what rieties will have faded like shadows into the blue I wanted to see, and to see the ship handled in such distance, while the lights, though they do not cause weather. Our voyage lasted forty-one days! No the same shade, shine as bright as ever. Besides, we wonder few Americans were to be met with in realize, like the brook, that the more falls we get the Europe (and then there were so few to come). faster we move on, if we have pocketed their lesson. I landed, got lunch in New York, called at Good- I fear I am an optimist by temperament, as Scho- hue and Company's (my father's old firm), took the penhauer was a pessimist. He took his temperament afternoon boat for Providence, and arrived in Bos- for the absolute standard, and so, maybe, I take ton the following morning. mine. Nevertheless I can remember that I was un- 146 147 usually sensitive and suffered in many ways in course for me to pursue was to follow in my which I saw my stronger companions did not, and father's steps and take up his business in due I early adopted the theory that every man in the time; and here, as well as anywhere, I may as well course of his life has sooner or later to bear the full give some account of that business. burden of mortality or to endure the penalty for de- clining the common lot, and is happy if he escapes the Slough of Despond and Help comes to hisaid. Ifound my sister out of danger, but her prolonged illness had left a weakened mind that it took many months to restore completely. The following sum- mer my mother took her on a journey for a change, and to complete her restoration, through the State of Massachusetts, with a carriage and horses, as was the fashion in those days, making easy stages and always finding fairly comfortable apartments, before the railroads had spoiled the business of the taverns. In the course of the journey, on a mem- orable afternoon, going over Lebanon Mountain Lenoph from Lebanon, we had a look into the Lenox valley, which so charmed me that I said to my mother then and there, "If I ever go to live in the country, it will be here," little thinking how prophetic were my words and what a space Lenox would fill in my life and in that of others. I was now at home, and it was time that I should think seriously of my occupation in life. Was all my preparation to go for nothing? The natural 148 149 a vessel as the time could turn out. CHAPTER XIX But by the time the cargo or the specie to pur- chase the return cargo was on board and the ship I' N those days all the active capital of the coun- ready for sea, she had cost her owner a heavy sum, try was engaged in commerce. All the wealth with no prospect of the return of any part of it that was not in the soil was in a thin line of until she had made her voyage, say to China or cities and towns along the coast, with the greater the East Indies, and her return cargo had been sold, centres of Boston, New York, Baltimore, Phila- making altogether many months, OF a year, or more, delphia. All along the New England shore ships without counting the building of theship, To meet for foreign trade or coasting and fishing vessels such an outlay and wait so long for returns implied were built, for which the timber and the nau- a profitable business, as well as a large capital. And tical skill and knowledge were at hand, and, when SO it was. Such a business, too, called for the highest built, crews of the best mariners in the world qualities of courage, foresight, patience, and varied were always available to man them. We were information. It also gave ample spaces of leisure; building up a commercial marine second only to the result was a large class of merchants and ship- that of Great Britain, until the losses incurred owners in the New England towns and cities of during the War of the Rebellion, the increasing an unusually high character, so trustworthy that use of iron vessels in the second half of the cen- "their word was as good as their bond," literally. tury, and the shortsighted policy of discourage- It often happened that we had little or no exports ment fostered by the protective system which for- salable in the countries to which we traded, and bade the purchase of foreign ships, gradually put the right sort of dollars were scarce (the Orientals an end to that important industry, until we ceased were very critical on this point) and could only be to have any marine but the coasting fleet. had by paying cash. But there was one commodity The Boston or Salem merchant ordered his ship that commanded cash all over the world, that is to be built at Medford or elsewhere, a year be- Barings to say, bills on London, which were supplied by forehand. He had a voyage to China, or Calcutta London bankers, and especially by one great firm, or Manila in his mind. The months passed, and whose credit was good to a proverb in all foreign there was his ship loading at the wharf, as perfect ports, the house of the Barings. Mr. Joshua Bates, 150 151 a partner in the firm, born and bred in Massachu- 2/ Another point was never to open accounts where setts, and trained in Mr. Gray's counting house, it was thought necessary to take security. Theoreti- knew all about the subject, and it was suggested cally, and in most cases practically, with other between him and my father to organize the busi- bankers the bills of lading of cargoes were held ness in America, so as to supply this commodity to by them as securities for their acceptances, until this whole class of merchants on a broad basis of the arrival of the ships at their destination. But personal confidence. In carrying out this idea cer- the firms for whom the Barings once opened cred- tain features were introduced peculiar to the Bar- its were allowed to retain possession of the goods ings and illustrative of their large way of looking at as though bought with their own money, and se- things; one was to select their correspondents with curity was never required or called for. As the such care that they could trust them implicitly, and commission on all bills drawn in the East under to this end they laid down the rule that merchants the Letters of Credit was two per cent, and in no taking credit from them should take no other cred- part of the world less than one and a half, of course its, i.e., from other bankers. Their reasoning was the business was very profitable, and rapidly grew that in this way only could they have the entire with the growth of the country. confidence and insure the frankness of the mer- I can hardly think so great a commercial business chant, so that they would always know the state of was ever done in any community with so many his business, which he would have no interest to individuals on such simple terms of mutual con- conceal. This course implied their readiness to issue fidence, and almost absolutely without losses, as the largest amounts at all times that the merchant this grew to be. There was almost no machinery could risk with safety, and this was the main point to it, beyond that of record and correspondence; the to be considered. As Mr. Bates put it, "Whatever force in the American office consisted of three or the merchant can afford to take we can afford to four persons only. England was in the early days give, to this class of men." This, of course, led to a so distant that virtually everything was left in the business of very large amounts, for it was at once discretion of the agent except questions of policy perceived that a firm having Baring credits needed or rules of business. no other facilities. Single firms habitually took one, You will see that the merchants who could com- two, or three millions of dollars at risk at one time. mand such facilities had no need to lock up any of I52 53 theircapital except in their ships, for in the common the banking houses in London had extended their case, the bills from the East being drawn at long credits incautiously to meet the demand for such dates, the ship and cargo were at home by the time importation. The Barings had comparatively little the merchant had to pay for his purchases. The ef- of that class of business and that of the best, and the fect of this was that a large amount of funds became East India and China business was not a source of available to invest in the manufacturing business, anxiety, though from the great depreciation of then so rapidly extending, and later in the railways, values remittances might be delayed but the dry- both of which interests, which grew so enormously goods trade was for the time utterly prostrated in the sequel, found their first strong support in the three London bankers, "the three W's," as they accumulated profits of the great merchants. were called, Wiggin, Wilson, and Wilde, failed, During my absence in Europe the crisis of 1837 and although, by the removal of competition, and had taken place, more serious with reference to the the strength they had displayed throughout the scale of affairs than the protracted crises of the later crisis, the Barings were ultimately benefited, that decades, when so much larger losses were sustained. did not diminish my father's cares and labours at the One item I remember hearing which will give an time. Everything was so demoralized that it was idea of the prostration it brought about. In New no time to think of starting me in business then York the city was built up as far as Washington or for years after; there was no responsible place Square, and the block on Waverly Place, where I for me in his office, and the best thing I could do afterwards lived many years, the finest in the city seemed to be to go to New Orleans in the winter of 1838-39 at that time, was half built when the storm came 1838-39 with our agents, to learn something about on, and there the houses stood, unfinished, for years, the cotton business, in which Messrs. Baring were before enough prosperity was restored to call for largely interested. Edward Austin and John Eller- their completion. ton Lodge, who were also large buyers for the fac- My father, as agent for the Barings, had naturally tories, were the agents; Mr. Austin died only a year years of great anxiety. One of the immediate causes or two since at the age of ninety-two, a bachelor, of determining the crisis was the over-importation leaving magnificent bequests to Harvard and to from Europe of manufactured goods. This had the Institute of Technology. Mr. Lodge was the grown so rapidly and had been so profitable that father of the present Senator from Massachusetts, 154 155 proceeded to Natchez, taking a steamboat down CHAPTER XX the river, and meeting no further adventure than a collision at night, which cut us down to the T HE journey to New Orleans was then a water edge, and then stopped, or else it had been very serious affair. There were no rail- a serious matter. ways, beyond the few in Massachusetts and in New York. I decided to go by land for the At New Orleans I found a smiling and amiable, more than half creole, society with a thousand sake of seeing the country. Starting from Balti- more, three days and nights brought us to Pitts- characteristic South-of-Europe ways, fading out before the rough influx of American business life burg, over the "National Road." Thence I went in its more primitive shapes. to Cincinnati, then the largest and indeed the only important Western city except St. Louis, for Chi- I returned by sea, visiting Cuba on the way, in 1839 the spring of 1839. cago was not yet. Staging again to Nashville, there I bought a horse and rode through Tennessee, part On your Bonne-maman's return from Europe she of Alabama, and across Mississippi, a wilderness of joined her family in New Orleans. But I must go back to give an account of that family and how rich, dreary, sparsely cultivated land, with the best they came to be living in New Orleans. Her farms growing their crops under trees ringed yet father, Mr. Jacob Barker, was born at Nantucket; standing; for there was no time to spare from cot- both his father and mother were closely related ton planting to cut them, had such nicety ever been to the Folgers, of which family was Doctor Frank- thought of. Nothing else was raised. Meat was lin's mother, and when he grew old he bore so transported from the North on the hoof,-hogs remarkable a resemblance to Franklin in face and mainly, of which I would pass huge droves during figure at the same age, that, happening to be the day, and perhaps put up at night with an army present at the unveiling of the Franklin monu- of four or five thousand camping about the shanty ment in Boston, when he was introduced as a taverns. Of course I saw only the crudest aspect of relative of the family, the likeness caused a gen- everything, as my road was all through newly set- eral surprise. He was a man of extraordinary nat- tled country. ural gifts and instinctive capacity for business, At Jackson I sold my horse by "vendoo" and always having perfect health, courage, and con- I 56 157 fidence, with the result that he enjoyed the game rule, but she had a goodness and charm that were so much that he forgot the end in view, so that her own ; gifted and refined, SO great a favourite he lost more than one fortune with the same fa- was she with her father, Thomas Hazard, that after NYC cility with which he had made them. her marriage and removal to New York he found One of these eclipses happened a year or two be- he could not do without her, and followed, building fore I met your Bonne-maman in Switzerland. a large house opposite to the house Mr. Barker The removal to New Orleans took place just at had built on Beekman Street, which was then a Hazards the time she was beginning to go into New York street of residences, where she never failed to go to society, and was naturally a great disappointment see him and her mother daily. I never saw Mr. to her. The original Barkers belonged to the Ply- Hazard, but knew Mrs. Hazard well, a dignified, mouth colony, and the old Barker house still stands handsome old lady full of character and quaint ex- in Scituate, Massachusetts. When or how they pression of it. moved to Nantucket I have not heard. Mr. Bar- Mr. Barker was not only well enough off to marry ker's talent for business developed very early. At at twenty-one, but to sustain a loss- which he seventeen he was so well known and trusted at New learned only on his wedding day-of - fifty thou- Bedford that he moved to New York to attend to sand dollars, by the failure of his brother-in-law the business of his New Bedford relatives, and went and partner, or agent, Thomas Hazard, at Liver- into the counting house of Grinnell, Minturn and pool, through speculations. This does not seem, Company, who were from New Bedford. Hethrove however, to have put him back seriously; for be- so well that on his twenty-first birthday he married sides the house on Beekman Street, he had a coun- at Newport, Eliza Rodman, daughter of Thomas try place on the Hudson at Bloomingdale, between Hazard and Annie Rodman, then only seventeen, which and Beekman Street all Bonne-maman's your great-grandmother. Her father with his fam- early years were spent, except when she was at ily had removed from New Bedford to Newport school, first as a child at a "Friends" boarding during the War of the Revolution for greater se- school, where the ideas of education in practice, curity. The families on both sides were Quakers. and her experience, were too grotesque for words; The Rodmans were a very handsome family, and afterwards at Mrs. Smith's, the best school in New your great-grandmother was no exception to the York, and really a good one for those days. For 158 159 Redness instance, William Emerson. brother of Waldo, process under the Civil Code, and take him in as was the English teacher, and the other teachers a partner, and was able to retire at twenty-one with were the best to be had. forty thousand dollars, with which he started in It was just when she was beginning to go into so- business in Philadelphia, where he married your ciety in New York that her father's loss of prop- great-aunt, Sarah Wharton. Meantime Bonne- erty brought about the change of residence to maman, who had been promised that she should go New Orleans. A considerable amount of his wife's to Europe the following year to join Mrs. Farrar, property was invested in two insurance compa- did not care to go out in New Orleans society for nies which had got into trouble in New Orleans, SO short a time and begged her father to let her and the companies employed him to go there to pass the time at the school of the Sisters of the attend to their affairs. New Orleans also offered Sacred Heart at St. Michael's, ninety miles up the great opportunities for the exchange business, with river. which he was perfectly familiar. He found that Mr. Barker consented and went up with her to the insurance affairs required close attention for make the arrangement. On their return by steam- years and a knowledge of the Civil Code exist- boat they were startled in the evening by a tre- ing in Louisiana, and as it would be too costly to mendous crash, which laid flat every one who was employ expensive counsel, he undertook, when standing. Every one rushed to the bow except Mr. over fifty, to master that system of laws, which Barker, who remained within, saying it was safest he did so effectually that he was admitted to the to keep out of the crowd. Presently a man rushed Bar, and not only managed his own cases, but past, saying they had run into another boat and could have had any amount of outside business were sinking (they had been on the wrong side of had he desired it. the river). This proved to be true. Meantime the exchange business flourished so Mr. Barker, who never knew fear, took his daugh- well that his son Abraham, a boy of sixteen when ter to the stern of the boat, and told her that it was he went to New Orleans, having more taste for probable, as they were near the city, the cries and business than for study, got his father to "eman- shouts of the passengers would bring boats to the cipate" him, i.e., to free him from the disquali- rescue; but if not, he was a good swimmer and fications of a minor, which could be done by a could support her by one hand in the water while 160 161 she rested another on a chair they would take with mate arrived with a long knife, swearing he would them, and instructed her how to let herself down have the negro's life. The delay allowed time for in the water when the moment came. While thus the latter to disappear, and the tumult brought the talking they heard the splash of oars, and a voice captain, who took possession of both men, whom out of the darkness asked if help was needed. It he landed forty miles apart, on different sides of the was a boat with two men, come to see what assist- river. ance they could render. Mr. Barker handed Bonne- Mr. Barker, though not an abolitionist technically, maman over the stern, where she was received in was a great friend of the blacks, whom he fre- the arms of a stranger. The men refused to go to quently defended in court from the hard usage of the rescue of those at the bow, for fear of being their masters, so that they came constantly to him sunk, but soon landed their two passengers, who for help in their troubles, and he was in conse- found their way home in a sadly bedraggled state. quence immensely popular with them without in- Fortunately, no lives were lost, the boat being run juring his position with their white masters; and ashore just as she was sinking. Such were the perils when a law was passed for the sale of all blacks who of river travel in those days. Yet the family yearly had not an owner they came in crowds to ask Massa made the journey to the North and back, and often Barker to allow them to call themselves his slaves. met with adventures, of which I must give another instance. On a later voyage down the Mississippi to New Or- leans Bonne-maman was sitting one hot afternoon in her state-room on the boat, with doors open, one into the saloon, the other on the outside, she sitting across the room leaving no space to pass; suddenly a negro rushed in with a knife in his hand, trying to pass her and escape, crying the mate was after him to kill him. She jumped up and put her arm through a large staple by the door through which he had entered; which was no sooner done than the 162 163 which you felt he dwelt continuously, but which CHAPTER XXI you could only bear while magnetized by him, too thin for you to breathe in common life. He himself B EFORE going farther I must refer to my said all men were to be divided into Aristotelians becoming acquainted with Emerson the or Platonists. There was no doubt to which he year of my return from Europe, in the sum- belonged, and of course he shared the reproach mer of 1838. of unintelligibility which has attached to all his I had been so fascinated- - it is hardly too strong a class in all times, a fact which Mr. Jeremiah: Mason, word to express the feeling that existed in his audi- the great lawyer, tersely expressed when he said ences-by hearing several of his lectures that I was that "he could not understand him, but his daugh- made very happy by receiving, through Margaret ters did." Fuller, an invitation to pass a night with him at In private life the singular purity and sincerity that Concord. were a part of him, his intellectual sympathy and In hearing his lectures I never asked myself what distinction, never failed to charm, but there were were the doctrines or opinions he supported. When always some, like my good friend Henry James he began to speak it was himself, Emerson, that was (Senior), who could not forgive him because he did the new fact he expressed. The effect of his speak- not, out of the reading desk, continue the inspira- ing was that you were placed irresistibly at his tion. But the truth was he adopted instinctively the point of view, and you had a vision of a higher life lecture or short essay as his true form of expression, so clear and absolute that, for the time being, all and left the lecturer behind when he descended meaner motives and lower views sunk out of sight. from the reading desk. Every new man was to him a new Adam, with a You may read in his letters to me how close our something in him differing from all other men, relation became, and though I saw him rarely after which was his individual genius, which if happily I removed to New York, how the friendship lasted developed was a new thing under the sun, a reve- as long as he lived, and you know how it continues lation, which it was each man's duty to guard jeal- in the second and third generations. ously and live up to. While you listened to him you In the spring of 1840 I made up my mind to go were living in the keen air of a mountain top, in again to New Orleans to see your Bonne-maman 164 165 (this has always been her pet name in the family). During my convalescence Bonne-maman, who had I made the journey this time by sea. I did not ad- come North for the summer, as the family always vance my cause; it was so different meeting on the did, on the way to Newport by the boat from New Alps day after day with all the world before us, York, with her mother youngest brother Abra- where to choose, and in Gravier Street, surrounded ham, then twenty years old, noticed an elderly gen- by all the limitations and conditions of actual life, tleman sitting near them at supper, who evidently while I was no nearer to having established myself eyed their party with curiosity. Presently he said in any business than I was two years before. I bade to Uncle Abraham, "Did I hear you addressed as good-by despondingly and took my weary way up Mr. Barker, and is that your sister Anna whom my the river to St. Louis, meeting on the way a tor- son knows so well? I am his father; pray, introduce nado, in the centre of which we were, which lifted me to your mother and to her." My father soon the smoke-stack out of the boat and carried away found himself engaged in so interesting a conver- the pilot's house from over his head. From St. Louis sation that he did not break it off till bedtime; and I crossed Illinois, partly on foot with gun and knap- from that hour I am sure it would have been the sack, and partly by various conveyances. The vast greatest of disappointments to him if she had not level or rolling prairies, then hardly broken by become his daughter. buildings or farms, were as impressive as another We were engaged on Midsummer day and mar- Niagara, but they must have been seen in their ried on my birthday, the third of October, 1840, virgin state to be truly felt. fifty-nine years ago. Chicago was hardly more than a village. Si la jeu- nesse savait has often occurred to me in thinking of what corner lots the hundred or two dollars in my pocket might have secured. The thing I really did secure was the seeds of a malarial fever, which developed on myjourney home by the Great Lakes, with the result that it was nearly my last journey, and, after a severe illness at home, I was months in recovering my former health. 166 167 tain Bowditch, whose close reckoning and obser- vations had enabled him to do safely what no one CHAPTER XXII else would have attempted. HAVE now arrived at a point from which I My father was so much attached to him that once, I must go back to gather the threads of a thou- in the early days before Doctor Bowditch removed sand recollections that crowd upon me as I to Boston, finding him alarmingly run down by his write, and first of Boston and its people. devotion to his studies, he took him in his one- One large class I have already spoken of, the Bos- horse chaise a long journey in the White Moun- ton merchants, but I must go more into detail. I tains, and brought him back a new man. This have no method; I must only jot down what comes service of friendship the doctor never forgot. into my head and in the order in which it presents While Doctor Bowditch still lived in Salem, my itself. father brought the doctor's son, Ingersoll, to One of my father's greatest friends was Nathaniel Boston, to be trained in his counting house and to Bowditch of Bowditch's Navigator," the transla- live in our family. This was when I was seven years tor of Laplace, and I suppose the most distinguished old, he perhaps ten years older. He became my man of science in the country at that time. lifelong friend and after my father's death in 1858 He was from Salem, and had himself been a cap- co-executor with me of his estate, an office which, tain in the East India trade. A story was told of as my co-trustee, his son still faithfully and kindly him, that one winter evening in a thick storm of fulfils as regards an important trust. snow, when his ship was due, he presented him- Doctor Bowditch-as we constantly saw him sit- self suddenly in the insurance office in Salem, ting of an evening in his library, a long room, one where Mr. Crowninshield, the owner of his ship, side of which was filled by the best mathematical was sitting. Mr. Crowninshield, whose mind was library in the country, by a wood fire, in a large with his ship, supposed to be driving blindly out- arm-chair, and with an astronomical globe of large side in the storm, was much amazed, and fancying size for background- was a very striking figure. she had been driven ashore, blurted out, "Well, I have never seen any one who in his appearance Captain, where have you left your ship ?" "At more fully filled the idea of a man of science. He Crowninshield's Wharf," quickly answered Cap- had fine features, thin white hair, a delicate skin 168 169 through which the changes of colour as he became animated with conversation were constantly going, almost breaking into a flame when his indignation CHAPTER XXIII was roused, as it easily was when his sense of right or scientific truth was invaded. A NOTHER of my father's most intimate friends was William Sturgis, who used to He was at the head of the Massachusetts Life In- tell of their meeting first in the Celestial surance and Trust Company, to manage which he Empire in the last century; a great character, with was invited to Boston and was one of the most ac- a strong sense of humour, a man of much influence, tive members of the Corporation of Harvard Col- a constant and warm friend. He had lost his only lege, where he exercised great influence, not always, son, a most promising boy of fourteen or fifteen, by I fancy, without provoking serious opposition such a sailing accident, and I never have forgotten the as Mr. Ticknor on a different side met with in the picture, when he cametoseemyf father on the occa- Faculty, their differences sometimes producing a sion of my younger brother's death, which I have collision of two strong wills, approaching the same already mentioned, of the two strong men sitting object in different ways. side by side on the sofa with tearsrunning in flood over their cheeks. On my father's return from New York, the year I was born, he and Mr. Sturgis, with several other friends, formed a club to sup at each other's houses fortnightly, which was a source of great happiness for many years, till death thinned their numbers so much that it became too painful for the survivors to meet. It was one of several clubs amongst the same class of men which formed a great feature in Boston life. I have before me a photograph, made from an early daguerreotype, which remarkably preserves their features, though the art was still in its infancy. To look at it reminds me how very 170 171 large a proportion of men of note and ability ex- Judge Shaw, Judge Story of the Supreme Court isted in the little city at that time, smaller than of the United States, who to his great reputation Springfield or Providence is now. There were: added a charming personality and power of con- Chief Justice Shaw, whose fame is still preserved versation that made him one of the most delight- as a born judge, who could not but judge rightly, ful of men; Webster, of whom I saw much in Wash- and whose hand was heavy on all who trifled with ington in the fifties, though I was too young for justice, lawyer as well as client; Nathan Appleton, intimacy with him; Rufus Choate, a man of genius father of Tom, and of Mrs. Mackintosh and Mrs. and of most varied and out-of-the-way knowledge Longfellow, a man of a natural distinction, which and quaint speech (I joined him one day on his way was inherited by his children, who, several years to court with a book under his arm that did not older than I, were my admiration in my youth look legal; following my eye he held it out, say- the three so-called wittiest men of their genera- ing "There is so much time to read in court,". it tion in Boston, T. B. Curtis, James K. Mills, and was a volume of Philo Judaus!); Jeremiah Ma- Judge Warren; Francis C. Gray, whom I have be- son, the only advocate supposed equal to cope with fore spoken of in telling of my European travels; Webster. Thomas Motley, the father of the historian; Na- Then, too, there were clans and families too well than Hale, editor of the "Daily Advertiser"; and, known and distinctly marked to be overlooked: the later, Ben. Curtis, Justice of the United States Su- Quincys, the Adamses, Otises, Lees, the Perkinses preme Court: these I chiefly remember. With such and their connections the Carys, Cabots, Gardiners, various gifts, what good times they had together, Forbeses, the Appletons, among whom, besides and how they brought out each other's qualities! Nathan mentioned above, was William, acutest What good Madeira they drank! and if I never of merchants and manufacturers, a good friend to heard of a member who could not find his way whom I was much indebted, and who bore hardly home, I remember that it was understood that the my defection when, on the breaking out of the Re- next morning my father was not to be disturbed, bellion, I voted against him for Congress because and that he came down very late and headachy, he cried Peace, when there was no peace. He said and with an air of being full of good resolutions. the last time I saw him, on his couch (it was his last At the Bar or on the Bench at this time were besides illness), "Am I not as good a man as Burlingame?" 172 173 - a remark which nearly broke my heart, as it was ter, Portsmouth, etc., were that they were distinctly intended to do; but it was not then a question of gentlefolk, people of high standards and ideals, as I men, but of measures. Most of the men of his age have shown in my account of the merchants; and, were unprepared for the tremendous plunge the na- as Charles Norton reminds me, every house had its tion was about to take. Another of the Appletons library. was "Uncle" Samuel, who was everybody's friend; All these people I have in mind were of my father's and besides the men I have already mentioned, generation. They had inherited from their fathers there were John A. Lowell and Francis C. Lowell, the traditions of the Revolution, and had them- cousins of the poet; the Lawrences, Abbott and selves seen and struggled through the Embargo and Amos, of whom it was said that the latter, so great the War of 1812, and had consequently a vital in- a giver was he, was afraid of growing rich, but Ab- terest in European affairs, which had been an ed- bott was not; this was said not by way of contrast, ucator to them in world-wide politics, and con- but of degree of giving ; these were great manufac- tributed to the interest of Boston society. turers, founders of Lowell and Lawrence. Then, too, there were the Higginsons, Channings, Danas, Phillipses, Prescotts, Dexters, Eliots, Lymans; the three Jacksons-" Uncle" Judge, "Uncle" Doc- tor, and "Uncle" Patrick, of whose daughters genuri Holmes, from his own experience, said the first thing for a right-minded young Bostonian to do was to marry a Jackson; the Sargents, the Shattucks, the Wigglesworths, and the great Salem contingent of the Putnams, Grays, Derbys, Peabodys, Gardners, Rogerses, Saltonstalls, Endicotts, Silsbees; and many more I could add, if my memory served me as faithfully as it should, the obvious characteristics of whom, as well as of a similar affiliated class in the large towns of New Bedford, Providence, Worces- 174 175 my income to me, I would go to the country and CHAPTER XXIV be a farmer. This was not an unwise decision if I had only had W HEN I found myself married at twen- 1840 experience, or could have been well advised as to ty-three, the question of going to work where to pitch my tent. My father felt that I had to support my wife and family became done my best and that there was indeed no open- pressing. My father's generosity did not fail. He ing at that time in the way of business, and con- had given me a fair capital to start with, and a sented. I did not wish to leave my native State, generous income for those days of modest living, and remembered that Lenox valley which had and shortly after our marriage he bought a house on so charmed me years before. I knew that the land Louisburg Square, which I had at a nominal rent. was good, and I did not think how long the win- When our two oldest children were born, com- ters were. merce or business in some form was the only way In the month of March, 1844, I went to Lenox open to me to earn a livelihood, and I thought of to take a preliminary look, and now came one of nothing else. I passed a year in my father's office, those great pieces of good fortune which at vari- keeping all the books, in order to learn bookkeeping ous times in my life have happened to me. Why thoroughly, a piece of work which stood me in stead have we ceased to talk of such things as provi- afterwards. Then I started for myself as a broker. dential I made some money and was fortunate enough not I had taken a letter of introduction from my friend to diminish my capital, but the times still con- and classmate William Minot, to his father-in-law, tinued to be bad for years after the earthquake of Charles Sedgwick, whom I knew to be living in 37. Boston was a small market; only local secu- Lenox. Of all the men I have known Charles rities were dealt in; there were more men of busi- Sedgwick was the most delightful companion, Sdywick ness than business. Transactions were desperately and never was a more faithful friend. He was the small ; in a word, I found myself in a false position, youngest son of Judge Sedgwick of Stockbridge, and not on the way to anything better. So after three who had been the most important man in West- 1844 years of trial I told my father of my discourage- ern Massachusetts, and who had several sons, Theo- ment, and said that if he was willing to continue dore, Robert, Henry, besides Charles, all well 176 177 known in New York. Charles, as the youngest and bridge as his home because he believed in free favourites son, remained with his father till his death, institutions. Unfortunately, he was lately dead, so on the understanding that he should be provided that I never saw him. Mrs. Fanny Kemble. a great for in return for sacrificing his professional pros- friend of Mrs. Sedgwick, was often their guest in pects. When Judge Sedgwick died it was found that summer and soon after bought a "perch," as she the provision consisted chiefly of the homestead in called it, near the village. Thus we were to fall Stockbridge, and meantime Charles was too old to at once into a charming and intimate circle. go to the city and start in the law like his brothers. Lenox on a second view did not disappoint me. Theodore, the oldest, took the place off his hands, It has since become celebrated, but then no "city and a position was found for him as Clerk of the people" had disturbed its solitudes. I hired a house Court at Lenox, then the county seat. Mrs. Sedg- next the Sedgwicks while I decided about my wick was a granddaughter of Jonathan Edwards, permanent arrangements. a woman of large heart and a most sympathetic It was with something of a sinking of the heart nature. During the summer his sister Catharine that I went home and confessed to my wife that Sedgwick, the authoress, lived with them, and their the die was cast and we were to leave our pleasant oldest daughter Bessie,-afterwards Mrs. Racke- Boston home for an unknown country. It could mann, - who, as well as her father and mother, be- hardly have seemed a wise step tojudicious friends; came a lifelong friend. At Stockbridge, six miles but the five or six years passed at Lenox are a golden away, dwelt other members of the family Mrs. time to look back on, and all happened for the Theodore, of the Livingston connection, a great best. The freedom and open-air life strengthened lady, with her daughter Maria Mrs. Harry and my delicate constitution, so that of the thirty-five her family (Mrs. Theodore and Mrs. Harry were years of work before me I had never a day when both widows); with Wattses, Pomeroys, and other I was disabled by illness, and all my family think relatives, and the two delightful Miss Ashburners, of the Lenox days with enthusiasm. I had an un- whose sister had married Theodore Sedgwick, satisfied passion for the country and the land ; I Jr., daughters of an old East Indian English gen- knew well enough that no money was to be made tleman, a man of equal quaintness, character, and by farming in Massachusetts, except by saving, intellect, who had chosen America and Stock- but the income in health and new experience was 178 179 great. City-bred people never understand country people, and are not admitted to the "freedom" of CHAPTER XXV the country. This barrier I wanted to break down, and succeeded so effectually that I was accepted O UR first year in Lenox was passed in the as one of themselves I need not say your Bonne- house I hired, next Mr. Sedgwick's, while maman conquered all hearts there, as everywhere looking about where to settle myself and else. To this good understanding Mr. Sedgwick planning my house. It would have been wiser to contributed greatly. He was the most naturally have bought a farm and house together and made sympathetic of men, and had known the whole the necessary improvements; but I wished to com- countryside from childhood ; with his quaint bine so many things that no place could be found speech and ready wit, everybody was prepared where house and land together suited my require- for a pleasant crack when "Squire Sedgwick" ments. Finally I secured a delightful home of my came in sight, and as we drove all over the coun- own. try together, stopping at every other farm-house, Although I was not robust enough for hard labour, I was admitted to their interior life with him. under such circumstances I had a great delight in There were only a few Irish or foreign labourers farming. I could do anything that was to be done there,- - a golden age, to which, for good or ill, we with horses, ploughing, harrowing, etc.; plough- can never return. ing, particularly, and driving at the same time, re- quired just enough attention and skill to help and not interrupt the flow of meditation, and my friends the farmers were greatly edified and amused at my beginnings. I gotup a farmers' club to meet at each other's houses at stated times in the evenings, and to measure and compare crops, etc., which brought me quite near to them. Then there was shooting enough to afford an excuse for long rambles with dog and gun. I had a home "where weariest feet found soft repose." Your Bonne-maman professed to 180 181 be, I hope she was, as happy as I was. With all this ter was concluded. It was all a matter of course and I had plenty of time for reading. In the late winter as I thought no way regarding me. I had not even and early spring, the only time when the thaws and gone to welcome my father's old friend for fear of deep mud made moving about a trial, we made a seeming to present myself as a candidate. flight to Boston with the children to the grand- I was busy in my garden one afternoon-I remem- parents for a month or two, and so kept up our re- ber just how everything looked in the landscape- lations with town. Early winter in that mountain when Iespied my father'sfactotum, Elias Goodnow, air, and until February or March, was always en- in the distance. As he had not caught sight of me chanting. I had time to go to the house and say to my wife, 1850 About 18 50 my father thought the time had come am sent for." 'What do you mean?" 'Elias is for him to retire. He was then only sixty-four; but in the garden. That means something serious. It he had begun life early, he had never spared him- may mean that our Lenox life has come to an end." self, and fatigue began to tell upon him. He had And so it did. Mr. had unexpectedly seen diffi- held the Baring agency for about twenty-two years. culties that caused him to decline the place offered, The question of a new agent was so important that so my father wrote, and he wished me to go to New Mr. Bates crossed the Atlantic to see to it. York and talk things over with Mr. Bates, who had I considered myself quite out of the running. I had gone there. deliberately cut myself off, and it had not occurred I had a pleasant talk with Mr. Bates, who wished to me to regret it. I had not yet found out that the to take a look at me and see what I was like, for life I was living, though good for a time, would it was many years since he had seen me. We did sooner or later come down to prose, and I should not talk much about business. He said in parting, wake up and find most of the sibylline books we I had better go and see my father, and if I liked all start in life with burnt. to go into his office for a year or two he thought Neither had my father thought of my being avail- "things would arrange themselves to my satisfac- able for a position for which I had made so little tion." preparation. A selection for a new agent had soon Some one asked him afterwards how he could feel been made, a tried man of business, of the best stand any confidence in intrusting such large affairs to ing in all respects, and I was advised that the mat- one so untried. He said very simply, "I knew the 182 183 stock and was sure it would be all right." In fact, for that special business I was better fitted than would have been thought. My father had always CHAPTER XXVI talked freely with me, and I had followed the his- I DO (not propose to give any history of the tory of the business and was familiar with its max- Baring firm or family, or of my connection ims and principles, and I knew personally a large with it beyond a few instances of their large portion of the clientele, so that within the time and liberal way of conducting their business and named he felt that he could leave me to myself. the perfect trust imposed in their American agent, of which the above is an instance. I am often tempted as I write to enlarge on the various matters which interested me as I went on, but I forbear in consideration of the state of my health, which admonishes me not to delay by the way, but first bring you up to my present point of view, from which we can look together over the past, not only as concerns me, but the country and the thought of the century, which, as the world at large, have seen such wonderful changes in my time. I had an interesting experience shortly after I re- turned to Boston and before my father had quitted the office. The Barings had contracted with the Government for the payment of three millions of dollars, I think it was, of "Mexican Indemnities." They had al- ready paid the money in Mexico, but by the neg- lect of Congress the appropriation bill to reim- burse them had not been passed. It was late in 184 185 the winter, and if not passed, they would have to a dead loss to the Government, a lesson in public be out of the money another year, waiting for an- business which I did not soon forget. other Congress. I went to Washington to help But the really interesting part of my month or "lobby" the bill; we had Mr. Corcoran on the more of stay in Washington, was the opportunity spot, who had an interest in the contract, and other I had in my daily visits to the Capitol to become friends so strong that it seemed incredible in so acquainted with the personalities who were a few plain a matter that Congress could not be brought years later to play such a part in the War of the to give the short space of time necessary to the sub- Rebellion. Jefferson Davis, Beauregard, Toombs, ject. Whenever it was brought up, some member Stevens, Mason, Benjamin, and the rest, were the from the South or the West would insist upon ar- consummate actors in the great drama whose pro- guing over for the newspapers the whole question logue and first scenes I went daily to follow with as to paying any indemnities at all. The favourite absorbing interest. Here were the two civilizations view was, "Why should the Government pay these face to face: the slave power at its best, represented bankers for doing the Government's business? Why by the picked men of the South, as shown by the fact not take the gold from the treasury vaults and send that these men, with eight or nine years more of it with a file of soldiers to the City of Mexico?" training for the fight, were the very same that were This made so strong an impression that it was hard the conspicuous leaders of the Rebellion. How sure to correct it, though I got one of our friends to state they were of themselves and their ground, how well that the boot was on the other leg, and that (such they hung together and supported each other ! But was the course of exchange) the bankers actually above all, what contempt for their adversaries! paid four per cent for the privilege of making the Here was their mistake. Because the Northern payment. We at last had got the bill through the members and senators kept on year after year bear- House, but it was then so late in the session, and ing this treatment, the Southern members thought there was such a rush of business, that on the night there was no fight in them. They really believed of the fourth of March Isat up till four in the morn- that because the Southern aristocracy had sent its ing in the Senate, only to find it was not reached. best men to Congress, the North had done the same, Of course no loss accrued to the bankers, who were and that they had before them no greater obstacle charging six per cent on their advance, which was than their experience in Congress had made them 186 familiar with. 187 The effect on me was electric. I saw clear'y that the one civilization must destroy the other, and TWW I knew from my knowledge of my own people CHAPTER XXVII which it would be. It was not more the weak- M Y father died in 1858. After handing 1858 ness of the slave system that made me sure of over the business to me, he and my this, than the intolerance and arrogance of the mother made a short visit to Europe, slaveholders and their contempt of their oppo- and on their return he bought a place at Canton, nents which I felt must destroy them. "Quem deus fifteen miles out of Boston, where I had settled my- Canton vult perdere." self, in order to be near my business, and because I could not live away from the country in summer. Nothing makes me more happy than to think how much happiness he had out of those years, when we were living side by side, and everything going on as he would have it. What I owed him you will have seen from what I have written in these pages. He took great pleasure in making over his place, where my mother, who had been so devoted to him and her family, had a happy old age, outliving him by ten years, a passionate lover of her garden and of all country ways. Of course we all lived in Boston in winter. I had had to part with my Lenox place, it was too far off for me to be with my family in summer: happily it was taken by a friend, Mr. William Bullard, who lived there till his death, more than forty years after. I shall have more to say about Lenox by and by. About I 862 I went to live in New York, as themore 1862 188 NYC 189 important centre of business. It was about the be- large a class in America, our men of business are ginning of the war; indeed, before I left Boston materialists. On the contrary, Americans are dis- it had already broken out, and I had taken an ac- tinctly idealists, whatever idealism be, a fault or tive interest in it. The greater part of my old a virtue. friends, the wisest and best of men, had been made I knew that in my own case my success would de- very unhappy by it. My brother and I also took an pend on the devotion of my time and mind to my active part together in supporting the "Nation"; work, and to my having no personal interests to indeed, I believe that but for my brother's liberal serve. Of course I had a fair amount of execu- support, combined with other friends, that valuable tive ability to carry out whatever I undertook, and paper, which has ever since maintained such a I was thoroughly grounded in the principles on high standard in literature and criticism as well which the business was to be done. One faculty I as politics, could not have survived. I find also, can see in looking back that I possessed, that is, on going over my papers, that I was one of the the instinct of knowing what sort of people to trustees of the Loyal Publication Society, which trust, and of making a good choice of agents. did such good service, and of other societies. As an instance, one year in the fifties, I received, Before leaving Boston I must say a few words without any previous intimation to prepare me more about business, as the moving to New York for it, an order to make a very large shipment of marked a period in my active life. wheat and breadstuffs, so large that it would take I had never flattered myself that I had the busi- under any circumstances months to execute; in ness gift, which I admired in others when it did fact, I suppose the largest order for shipment ever not absorb their attention to the exclusion of other given even in these days of great operations. The faculties and interests. Indeed, this was the gen- only injunctions were that the matter must be eral character of the remarkable class of Boston kept private, and markets to be disturbed as little merchants I have described; they were not mere as possible. The Barings had not before been en- money-getters, far from it. The sordid money gaged in such business, and for my part I should maker and accumulator existed, but was the rare not have known how to go to work to ship a exception. It is a great mistake to suppose that, single cargo. But I knew how to choose my because "business" is so intensely followed by so agents. I had one in each of the great shipping 190 191 ports, who worked entirely without the know- ledge of the others. Chicago was perhaps the most important point. Under ordinary circumstances CHAPTER XXVIII the wheat and corn there would be months in coming to the seaboard. At one time we had a N OVEMBER I2, 1899. So far had I writ- fleet of one hundred vessels on the Lakes, small ten when I found myself more pros- trated than usual, and came to the con- vessels such as were in use at that time. The se- cret was perfectly kept. It was perceived that there clusion that even the little I had been doing was was a large export movement, prices slowly ad- too much for me to keep up continuously and that I must take a rest, and hereafter be content with vanced, but not much more than they would have done under normal conditions. There was no sus- adding an occasional chapter as subjects of interest suggested themselves. picion that a vast operation was going on, then or afterwards. Such a surmise would have rendered I will attempt only a brief outline of what remains, the carrying out of the order impossible of fulfil- for two reasons: first, this being only a personal narrative, and with no reference to public affairs, ment. the interest to those who come after me would I could give other equally striking illustrations in the course of my business life of the principles diminish in the details of my incomings and out- and practice and the confidential relations exist- goings of a later period; life, if its meaning be- ing, but this may suffice. The great credit busi- comes deeper, grows less outwardly dramatic, as it advances and secondly, because I should now ness I have previously spoken of doubled and tripled during the twenty years after I succeeded leave the region of those friends that live only in my father, amounting to many millions sterling memory, and come into that of living people, who are too near to me to be written about. When I annually. have brought my story down to the present time I hope to go back to fill up gaps, and refer to mat- ters that have interested me. When I moved to New York before the close of the Civil War, I was joined by my brother George, come my most faithful and devoted friend, and we re- Cabot 192 Ward. 193 1847 mained together until his death, twenty-five years in his frequent private letters and notes to me dur- after we joined forces; his death was the occasion ing the war which he did not long survive how of my own retirement from business.¹ good an American my friend Mr. Bates was; in- The crisis in the affairs of the London firm took deed, I think the peril of our country and his anx- place some years after my retirement, and arose ieties about it, and his distress at the unfriendly from causes which had no relation to the business position of England, helped to shorten his days. which had been under my control. You will find Mr. Baring, too, died in 1871. need not say how 1 Of my brother, the most modest as well as the most helpful great a loss they were to me. of men, Mr. E. L. Godkin speaks in his "Random Recollections" My brother's invaluable help. gave me some free- GCW in the "Evening Post," December 30, 1899, with reference to the establishment of the New York Nation." He says:- dom : indeed, without it I should have found the "In the early spring of 1865 two gentlemen, Messrs. Charles Eliot confinement of business too much for me. But in Norton and the late Miller McKim, called on me in New York, the early seventies, having been twenty years at and told me of a project in which they were much interested to Early work, which had begun to tell upon my health, I 1870s establish a weekly independent paper. I think they were led to come to me by the fact that I had spoken to Mr. Norton of a wished to withdraw, the business being in perfect somewhat similar project in 1863. Our talk over it ended in their order, and no apparent danger ahead; my friends in offering me the editorship, in case I could raise a fourth of the London wished me to take whatever vacation I capital in New York, which I agreed to do. The remainder was to come from Philadelphia and Boston, or, in fact, from any place. desired, but to hold myself ready to return in case My principal assistants in raising the money were two gentlemen, of need. This I could not decline, as my brother now both gone over to the majority, George Cabot Ward and was to take my place. So I went with my family Howard Potter, whose devotion to all good causes both with purse to live in Europe for three years, retaining only Rome GCW. and person I have never seen equalled." My brother was also one of the leaders in founding the Union League Club in New York, a nominal portion of my salary. as a centre of public opinion on the war, and was its first treasurer Rome possessed a new attraction for us. Your aunt in the important years following its foundation, and was finally Lily, who had married Uncle Richard von Hoff- elected its president, which office he held for but a year, owing to Lily mann a year or two before, was living in the Villa von the pressure of his business engagements. Mattei (now the Villa Celimontana), on the C- Hoffmann I may here add that the first of these Union clubs which were formed in several of our larger cities was that in Boston, the first lian Hill, which he had bought before his mar- meeting for the organization of which took place at my house riage. This was a most interesting place, covering on Commonwealth Avenue, before my removal to New York. twenty acres of ground on the highest part of that 194 195 In Every one of the seven hills of Rome, with vast views over with the country at that time, when the extrava- the Campagna, in a position full of associations not gance of the Khedive was at its height, and the only from the time of Servius Tullius, a corner of enormous debt and accompanying corruption made whose wall skirted the garden, but even from leg- it clear that a tremendous crisis could not be far off, endary times, for it was said that the great spring in the grounds might fairly be supposed from its posi- has given me a double interest in all the subsequent history. tion to be the true fountain of Egeria. To be living From Egypt we went in March to Palestine wPalestine on such a spot gave to an American, fresh from the had with us our Egyptian dragoman, Hassan Speke newest civilization under the sun, a singular reali- (his father had been dragoman to Captain Speke, zation of Ancient and Modern, and I could con- the discoverer of the sources of the Nile), who had gratulate myself that my early reading and studies all the arrangements ready on our arrival at Jaffa. I had been such as to enable me to make the land- had had a mule litter made for Bonne-maman, and scape and the ruins live again for me. But much had even been Yankee enough to provide a sheet- as I was penetrated with the spirit of the past, it iron stove to make her comfortable in her tent in only made me feel the more how much I belonged bad weather, an unheard-of innovation in the East, to my own country and the future. and thus we traversed the country from south to After some years it was decided that the climate north, winding up with Damascus, Baalbek, and of Rome did not suit Aunt Lily. You are familiar Beyrüt, visiting Constantinople and Athens on our with the new home Uncle Richard and she made return. for themselves in the Tyrol. Egypt To steep ourselves still more fully in the past our Business affairs had, however, become so threaten- next object was a winter in Egypt. Our party of ing in the United States that the London firm three, Bonne-maman, Aunt Bessie, and I, were claimed my promise to return and take the helm joined by our friends Mr. and Mrs. Blodgett, who while the pressure continued. Meantime Aunt Bessie shared with us a dahabieh, in which we spent two or three months on the Nile. This was a most in- berg; the marriage was arranged to take place in Bessie had become engaged to Uncle Ernst Schön- Schonberg teresting experience for me not only with reference Switzerland, and we were all in Lausar.ne waiting to the past, but also because the familiarity I gained for the necessary legal requirements to be fulfilled 196 197 in the case of a foreign marriage, which we found commissions were reduced. The great class of to be so obstructive and so surrounded with red East India and China merchants had found a more tape that we could not tell when the difficulties profitable investment in the railways; the day of might be overcome. From this dilemma we were wooden vessels, which we could build cheaper and relieved by the advice of Monsignor Schönborn, better than any other nation, was past; we could afterwards Primate of Austria, an intimate friend not build iron steamers in competition with Eng- of Ernst, whose older brother had married his sis- land ; the only way in which we could keep up ter, and who had come to Lausanne to visit us. He our commercial marine was the obvious one of said, "There need be no trouble; the east end of buying vessels abroad. But to do this it would have the Lake of Constance is in Austria. In Austria the been necessary to repeal the old law denying an civil marriage is not required. I am well acquainted American register to any but American-built ships. with the Church incumbent there, and will prepare Such an object lesson as to have allowed a free him to expect you." sooner said than done. Two trade in ships would have been to betray the weak- days after they were married, and we were at liberty ness of the protective system; legislators from the to proceed on our journey. interior and Eastern manufacturers could not be made to see that a great national industry, and not The result of my return to business was that I went only one affecting the seaboard States, was involved, to work not foreseeing that it was for seven years and thus this great and vital interest was so ham- more: the railway affairs which had called me pered, as to become almost extinct. back required some years'attention, but finally re- All these causes, together with the vast over- sulted in large profits. Meantime there had come building of railroads yet to be paid for, brought about, by degrees, a revolution in the modes of about difficult times, and I did not see the day doing business so complete that new problems had when I could with propriety withdraw, until Un- to be encountered. cle George's death, and the state of my health, im- Steamships and telegraphs, and the enormous in- paired by so long a strain, made it clear the time crease of capital, had made it easier to import goods had come. from Canton or Calcutta than it had formerly been After a summer or two at Rockaway, we made up to import from Europe. Competition had increased; our minds to return to Lenox, where I built Oak- 198 199 wood and where all the American grandchildren passed so much of their childhood; for our children CHAPTER XXIX were all now married and we had become grand- parents. I CANNOT remember the time when I did After my retirement, as you know, I had also built not speculate in my childish way on the re- the house in Washington, where we went to es- ligious questions I heard discussed, and many cape the severity of the Northern winters, and were the inquiries I made about them, and some of some years later we gave up Oakwood, when it was the answers still remain in my memory. One day no longer possible to have our family about us some clergyman was mentioned in conversation as there. But of these later years you know so much having said in his sermon that hell was paved with that there is no need to continue the story. infants' skulls. When we were by ourselves I asked my father how people could believe such things. "My dear," he said, "they don't believe them; TWW they only think they do." This idea that most people think they believe things which they have been told, but really never think about at all, has helped me to understand many things. I have mentioned elsewhere that I had become very familiar with my Bible by the permission to read it during the sermons. One day after church I consulted my mother on some difficulty I had met with in one of the parables. Her reply was, "There are a great many things there that must be understood in a spiritual sense." "What is a spiritual sense ?" " It is something different from what appears, an interior meaning." This was a new light to me, and I never forgot it in reading my Testament. 200 201 I can remember to this day just where I stood in Man," which opened a new era and made it neces- Medford Street and how the clouds looked in the sary to revise the whole framework of thought. sky when, after hearing an exposition of some What progress this revision had made in the minds point in the "Evidences," I looked up and said of the most advanced scientific men was shown by to myself, If God wants to have it known, how the startling dictum of Tyndall, as to the "promise easy for him to write it on the sky, when there and potency of matter," and the dogma of agnos- could be no mistake about it." And again, some ticism propounded by Huxley, the aim of which years later, I recall standing on the Common in was to supply an organum in which exact science Boston watching a game of baseball, with hun- was to be a sufficient basis for the whole realm of dreds of boys about on a dark afternoon, and ask- thought, leaving no room whatever for the super- ing myself, " What if this and all the rest of it natural and spiritual, which had heretofore played did n't exist at all, but was only a dream?' My the greater part in all former systems and life. first conception of appearance and reality. Agnosticism, it appeared, offered refuge to two I mention these things only to show that such classes of thinkers : first, to those who found in subjects and such considerations were never far off the name itself simply a confession of ignorance from my thought. Unconsciously I added many of all beyond demonstrable fact - these were the pithy sayings to my store, as for instance, from world at large, the passive recipients and sec- Emerson I suppose, "There are no values but spir- ondly, to those who, agreeing with Huxley that itual values." "it was of little moment whether we expressed I eagerly followed the developments of sciences, the phenomena of matter in the terms of spirit, and picked out what I could about Astronomy, or the phenomena of spirit in the terms of mat- Chemistry, Optics, Physiology, all which, I saw, ter," also agreed with him that "with a view to were only branches of one science. Then came the progress of science the materialistic termi- Comte and his positivism, Biblical criticism with nology was to be preferred." These were the sci- Strauss, the controversy as to the possibility of spontaneous generation, "Vestiges of Creation," entific world in general, who found in this saying a formula which fulfilled exactly the needs of Spencer and the development theory, and finally scientific thought, and purposed to cut down all Darwin's "Origin of Species" and the 'Descent of other departments of thought to fit it. 202 203 To me who had been in the habit, like all the rest of the lay world, of assuming that there were two With my conviction that all values were spirit- Emergen spheres of thought quite distinct; namely, that of ual values," I had to think out a new standing science, embracing all such facts of experience or ground for myself in this wreck of the old and ir- ruption of the new. inference as upon proper showing all men must What is meant by spiritual values? agree to as proved and, second, that of all other thought, all that world of ideas which are the After eliminating all those faculties that man property of individuals and on which no two men shares with the animal world, I found one thing necessarily agree, comprising religion, poetry, art, remaining,- - human relations. Myself I do not philosophy, the subjective as opposed to the objec- know, my friend I do not know, but the relations tive, all that the life of the world had been mainly between us I do know, and it is the only thing I know. nourished by in the past-to me, I say, holding this view of the two spheres of thought, this so- A man or child absolutely isolated from the begin- called scientific speculation came as simply an in- ning could have noideas beyond hisanimal nature. evitable reaction against the hidebound dogma- All our ideas, all our intellectual life, require rela- tism of the past, in which religion had assumed to tions with others for their development. dictate to science, but, so far as it was speculation, No two men are born exactly alike. Each man has a something that is his own, his individual I held it to have no more permanent validity than the system it superseded. genius: infinitesimally small in the average man; The progress of science had been so vast, at each almost infinitely great, by comparison, in the rare step it had so clearly demonstrated the futility of exception a great man. Take the life of a great old assumptions, that it is no wonder its followers man, his biography. What do we look for, what does it consist of? His relations with others. From hoped for the time when it should supply the basis for the intellectual and moral needs of man, and Plutarch's Lives" to Boswell's "Johnson," every assumed that any remaining ideal needs would be action related, every word reported, is the symbol or result or cause of a relation with some other man supplied in the process, as they proposed to substi- tute scientific training for the "human ideas" on or men. Livy's "Rome" is nothing but an account which the educated world had hitherto depended. of the relations of Roman with Roman, and Ro- man with the world. The visible act is nothing; 204 205 Caesar drawing his sword does not materially differ come into the most intimate relation with the from any man in his army doing the same, but strongest and purest will that ever has existed in Caesar's act with Caesar behind it means a new rela- human form, so perfect that the world accepted it tion between Casar and Rome, and Rome and the as its ideal divine, of which it became the symbol, world, and between every man and his neighbour. establishing a new relation between man and man. When Dante wrote "Nel mezzo del cammin di If there is an apparent exception to this rule, that nostra vita" they were common words, but Dante the only thing we know is human relations, it is in printed his will, his individuality, his genius, on the case of verified scientific fact, those things about the souls of men for all ages; he established a new which on adequate showing all men are bound to relation between himself and his race, and became agree; not scientific speculation, or working the- an interpreter between man and man. But if this ory, or dogma, for these again are subjective, but be true as between man and man, how does it apply strictly proved fact. Two and two make four with- to all the other things life is made up of, to poetry, out any reference to human relations, but agnos- to art, to religion, to nature, to the handicrafts ticism is no more science than is the dogma of the Poetry and the arts are so evidently only various Trinity. It is only a form of the forever insoluble modes of expression by the poet and artist of his question, the antinomy of free will and faith, be- individual genius which he is striving to impart tween which the human mind ever fluctuates. to his fellow-men and thus establish a relation with Abstract science resting on the uniformity of na- them, that I need not dwell on them. What I find ture needs no divine will, or one like Spencer's, in a picture is not simply the imitation of nature, so far off as not to be seen, and dispenses with a but the painter himself trying to tell me what that cause. On the other hand, the unsophisticated man nature is to him. In nature herself it is not the knows of no cause but will, and cannot imagine delight in form or colour that we find, but the re- a universe where will is absent. To him a law is flection of ourselves, our moods, joy, gloom, ter- not a cause, but implies a cause behind it. ror, content. Nature does not appeal to us till we In the early part of the century the tyranny of reli- establish a human relation with sea and forest and gious dogmatism in conflict with the spirit of free mountain. inquiry had to give way, and the reaction in many In the Christian religion rightly interpreted we honest minds left no standing ground short of ag- 206 207 nosticism and determinism. The pendulum could go no farther, and again reaction has set in and all historical accretions, in which its prestige was the signs are that the coming century will see as made to serve the purposes of all possible mo- full a development of Mr. Huxley's alternative tives and ambitions of men and nations, what do "the phenomena of matter in the terms of spirit," we find ? Not a geographical or geological story, as our age has in his hands, and those of the ag- such as Dante made the framework of his spiritual nostics, of the reverse. journey, nothing dependent on time and space, To me the Darwinian theory, which I welcomed but an account of the spiritual world in which as the discovery of a new planet, had no complete- every man may live if he will, now and always ; ness without a will behind it, any more than the a discovery in the spiritual and moral universe account in Genesis; the researches of physiology analogous to those of the great astronomer in the material, which have once and for all time dis- into the brain and nerves could by no possibility get beyond the fact that all mental action, so far closed the true relations between man and man, and between the divine and the human. as we know, is accompanied by brain action, but no conceivable analysis could possibly get further In the future as in the past, new men will be new than the motion of particles, or identify mind with revelations; this is what makes it absolutely im- matter. That religion could maintain no ground possible to predict the future from the past, why which verified science contradicted was evident. history does not repeat itself. The spirit bloweth where it listeth. What could have been more But religion purified of material dogma takes no such ground. No visible bridge exists between hopeless than to have foreseen one hundred years the material and the spiritual worlds. The spirit- ago the actual now-existing state of things, brought ual world is always open. about not so much by steam and electricity as by Supernaturalism is not an occasional event; it is the new wills and new ideals, the new revelations, with us all the time. Every new man is a new in fine, that have put themselves into action. creation, a revelation, the only one, if he is true to himself, and our intellectual universe is the sum of these revelations. If we take the Christian religion and strip it of 208 209 APPENDIX TO THE LETTER OF SAMUEL GRAY WARD CHILDREN OF THOMAS WREN WARD AND LYDIA GRAY WARD T HE children of Thomas Wren Ward and Lydia Gray Ward were as follows - 1. Martha Ann Ward, born August I2, 1812; died November 2, 1853; aged forty-one years, two months. 2 Mary Gray Ward, born June 3, 1816; died Feb- ruary 6, 1819; aged two years, eight months. 3. Samuel Gray Ward, born October 3, 1817. 4. William Ward, born February 6, 1819; died June 24, 1830; aged eleven years, four months. 5 Mary Gray Ward, born September 29, 1820. John Gallison Ward, born September 12, 1822; died January 5, 1856; aged thirty-three years, three months. of George Cabot Ward, born November 4, 1824; died May 4, 1887; aged sixty-two years, six months. 8 Thomas William Ward, born September 3, 1831; died December 3, 1859; aged twenty-eight years, three months. TWELVE COPIES OF THIS BOOK WERE PRINTED AT THE MERRYMOUNT PRESS, BOSTON, IN THE MONTH OF DECEMBER, 1900. THIS IS NUMBER This is an extra copy, printed by mistake and is, at the sug- gestion of Professor Charles Eliot Morton presented h Harvard College Library by Samuel Gray Hard H.C. 1836. December. 1901. Deposited in H. C. Library, by C. E. norton, Dec. 16, 1901. "Ward Family Papers." For (one of 13 copies) Died for 7.1907 Harvard College Library, from Jamuel Gray Ward, H.C. 1636. Think DRC 16 1801 To be kept unopened hill five years after the weath of Mr. Ward; then to be placed when the shelves, and the mass. Hist. Sock to be allowed to repoint 0 0 0 D Film 71. ive US42322.9.5 Ward, Samuel Gray (Compiler) Ward family papers Bostony Privately prented 1900 Falmed for Its university of Soulie Carolina C o° 8 The Work of the Merrymount Press and its Founder Daniel Berkeley Updike (1860- 1941). An Exhibit for: San Marino: Huntington Library, 1942. Note: "The remarkable collection of Merrymount Press imprints gathered over several years by Max Farrand, presented by him to the Huntington Library prior to his retirement as Director, June 1941. This includes almost 90% of the 762 imprints published in addition to hundreds of pamphlets and other ephemeral items.. Updike's death six months after Farrand's retirement led him to write a memorial essay as a tribute to his friend. Farrand says that Updike furnishes "an inspiring example of success through undeviating adherence to the highest standards of quality in production.," and Updike became known as the most scholarly printer known to the typographical world, perhaps for all time. Merrymount Press began in 1893 following Upodike's 12 years of experience with Houghton, Mifflin & Co. ands it was not until 1896 that the Press acquired type of its own and in 1903 installed its own printing presses. Many private presses have SO concentrated on the aesthetic quality of their work that they have been unable top sell it and others that have sold their products but failed to maintain high standards. Merrymount neither slighted quality or customer satisfaction. Updike's two-volume Printing Types (Harvard U.P., 1922) was only one of several works he authored. Discussion of his ecclestiastical printing, Updike a long standing member of the Episcopal Church. (see The Book of Common Prayer). Also trade publications Edith Wharton, a personal friend, recommended Merrymount for the printing of her books and business relations with Charles Scribner's evolved, as did work for T.Y. Crowell, Dodd, Mead, D. Appleton, Doubleday, etc. Little Stories by S. Weir Mitchell (1903) was also published. Privately printed books also were a mainstay; it is one produced foir distribution by the author or some other interested person who defrays the cost of printing; often these are of a personal nature such as family histories, works of little general interest and in this class is Lantern Slides by Mary Cadwalader Jones. Limited editions and book club publications constute yet another category. Finally, learned and instiutional printing, basically publications for academic instiutions, libraries, and museums make up what is perhaps the most important group. For 43 years the press proiduced annually the Report of the Carnegie Institute for the Advancement of Teaching. asset To Daniel Berkeley Updike and the Merrymount Press oif Boston Massachusetts. George Parker Winship Rochester: Printing House of Leo Hart, 1947. "There were other strictly limited issues. Of the Ward Family Papers collected or written by Samuel Gray Ward there were twelve copies in 1900 " (p. 49).