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 IS 
 
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 B 3 125 73b 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Class 
 
ametfcatt iftien of 
 
 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 
 
American a?cn of Eettotf 
 
 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD GARY 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
Copyright, 1894, 
 Br EDWARD CAR?, 
 
 Ail rights reserved. 
 
PS 
 
 TO 
 
 MRS. FRANCIS GEORGE SHAW 
 
 THIS LIFE OF OUR DEAR FRIEND 
 IS WITH RESPECT AND AFFECTION 
 
 DEDICATED 
 BY THE AUTHOR 
 
 213360 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 FAMILY AND YOUTH 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 EMERSON AND BROOK FARM .15 
 
 CHAPTER IIL 
 EUROPEAN TRAVEL 39 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE LITERARY FIELD . 52 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 THE HOWADJI BOOKS . . 59 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 LECTURER AND MAGAZINE WRITER 74 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 " THE POTIPHAR PAPERS ; " " PRUE AND I " 91 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 BUSINESS EXPERIENCES 104 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 THE CAMPAIGN OF 1856 109 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 A NOVEL AND A LECTURE 118 
 
VU1 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 THE EVE OF THE WAR ..... e ... 5 ... 130 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 IN THE MIDST OF WAR 146 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 EDITOR OF "HARPER S WEEKLY" 168 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 THE END OF THE WAR 183 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 FOUR YEARS OF POLITICS 194 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 THE REFORM COMMISSION 216 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE GREELEY CANVASS . 227 
 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 THE REACTION 1874 TO 1876 239 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 THE PARTING OF THE WAYS 253 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE 262 
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 THE CANVASS OF 1884 279 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 THE LEADER OF REFORM 294 
 
CONTENTS. IX 
 
 CHAPTER XXHI. 
 THE TYPICAL INDEPENDENT 308 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY 317 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 CONCLUSION 322 
 
 NOTE. The portrait of Mr. CURTIS which forms the frontis 
 piece of this volume is reproduced by permission from a photo 
 graph made by the F. GUTEKUNST Co., of Philadelphia. 
 
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 FAMILY AND YOUTH. 
 
 THE " Elizabeth and Ann " sailed from the port 
 of London on the 6th of May, 1635, for New 
 England. In Hotten s " List of Emigrants to 
 America" 1 the names and ages of her seven 
 "passingers " are given, and it is stated that they 
 "brought certificates from the Ministers where 
 their abodes were, and from the Justices of Peace, 
 of their conformitie to the orders and discipline 
 of the Church of England, and y* they are no sub 
 sidy men." It is added that they had taken the 
 oaths of allegiance and supremacy. Of these 
 names the last is that of Henry Curtis, and his age 
 is given as twenty-seven. This was the founder of 
 
 1 " (Regi)ster of the names of all ye Passingers wch Passed 
 from ye Port of London for on whole year Endinge X mas 1635. 
 
 6 May 1635. 
 
 Theis under-written names are to be transported to New Eng 
 land, imbarqued in the Elizabeth and Ann, Roger Coop (Cooper) 
 Mr. the p-ties have brought Cert : from the Ministers where their 
 abodes were and from the Justices of Peace of their conformitie 
 to the orders and discipline of the Church of England and yt they 
 are no subsidy men. They have taken the oaths of alleg : and 
 Suprem : " 
 
2 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 the family l of which George William Curtis was a 
 descendant in the sixth generation. Henry Curtis 2 
 settled at Watertown, in Massachusetts, having had 
 five " lots " granted to him, and having bought two. 
 Later he removed to Sudbury, where his eldest 
 son, Ephraim, was born in 1642, he having mar 
 ried Mary Guy, the daughter of Nicholas Guy, a 
 carpenter who had emigrated from Upton Gray, 
 near Southampton, England. Ephraim appears 
 in the colonial history of his time as a man of en 
 ergy, courage, and a strong will. In 1675, when 
 he was thirty-three years old, it is recorded oi 
 him that, because he was " noted for his intimate 
 
 1 The genealogy of Mr. Curtis, as traced by his son, is as 
 follows : 
 
 CURTIS. BURRILL. 
 
 Henry-Mary Guy George 
 
 1608-1678 1630-1683 
 
 Ephraim John-Lois Ivory 
 
 1642-1734 1651-1703 
 
 John-Rebekah Waite Ebenezer-Martha Farrington 
 
 1707-1797 1676-1761 
 
 John-Elizabeth Hayward Ebenezer-Mary Mansfield 
 
 1731-1768 1701-1778 
 
 David-Susanna Stone James-Elizabeth Rawson 
 
 1763-1813 1743-1825 
 
 George-Mary Elizabeth Burrill James-Sally Arnold 
 17W-1856 1772-1820 
 
 George William Mary Elizabeth 
 
 1824-1892 1798-1826 
 
 2 James Savage, in his Genealogical Dictionary of the First Set 
 tlers of New England, showing Three Generations, notes (vol. i. 
 p. 485) : " Curtis, Henry, Watertown 1636, an orig. propr. of 
 Sudbury, m. Mary, d. of Nicholas Guy, had Ephraim, b. 31 Mar., 
 1643; John, 1644 ; & Joseph, 1647; nam. in their gr.mo s will 
 1666 ; & d. 8 May 1678." 
 
FAMILY AND YOUTH. 3 
 
 knowledge of the country, his quickness of compre 
 hension and cool courage, and his large acquaint 
 ance with the Indians, whose language he spoke flu 
 ently," the court sent him as an interpreter with 
 an embassy which started from Cambridge, July 
 28, with an escort of twenty men under Captains 
 Edward Hutchinson and Thomas Wheeler. On 
 the 2d of August they were attacked from am 
 bush. Eight of the little force were killed and 
 five were wounded. The remainder took refuge 
 in a house in Brookfield, and Ephraim Curtis, 
 with a companion, was sent toward the nearest 
 post to report their plight and secure relief. He 
 returned before leaving the town, having learned 
 that the Indians were in force and intended a 
 night attack. A second time he " readily as 
 sented to adventure forth again on that service * 
 alone, his companion having been killed meanwhile. 
 Again he was forced to return. " But towards 
 morning," says Captain Wheeler, " said Ephraim 
 adventured forth for the third time, and was fain 
 to creep on his hands and knees for some space 
 of ground, that he might not be discerned by the 
 enemy. But by God s mercy, he escaped their 
 hands and got safely to Marlborough, tho very 
 much spent and ready to faint by reason of 
 want of sleep before he left us, and his sore 
 travel night and day in the hot season till he got 
 thither." For his gallant services in this year he 
 was made a lieutenant, accredited as in the " direct 
 service " of the council, paid the sum of " 2X S " 
 
4 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 and given the right to gather the corn of "our 
 enemies, the Indians that are fled." Later in the 
 year the English were withdrawn from Worcester, 
 the place was burned, and Lieutenant Curtis re 
 turned to Sudbury. 
 
 He had been the first settler of Worcester. 
 Indeed, he was so emphatically the first, and was 
 so solidly settled, that when a committee of the 
 General Court visited the place to lay out a town 
 there, they found Ephraim Curtis established, and 
 so resolved to assert his rights that it took ex 
 tended legal proceedings, all of which are recorded 
 in the quaint language of the time, to dislodge him. 
 Nor was this finally accomplished until there had 
 been made over to him other lands, which seem, by 
 the description of them, to have been compensation 
 in ample measure for those which his enterprise 
 had laid hold upon. I have said this much of the 
 life of Ephraim Curtis, because he is the only one 
 of the earliest members of the family of whom 
 there is a clear record, and because it makes plain 
 the nature of the stock from which George Wil 
 liam Curtis was derived. It was not the usual 
 Puritan or Pilgrim type, but apparently that of 
 the smaller gentry of England, whose " conformitie 
 to the orders and discipline of the Church of Eng 
 land " was duly acknowledged, and who were " no 
 subsidy men." The men of this class had inde 
 pendence and self-reliance in plenty ; were full of 
 resource, quick of wit, eager to seize every oppor 
 tunity ; resolute, even daring ; faithful to duty, 
 
FAMILY AND YOUTH. 5 
 
 good as friends, formidable as foes. It was a good 
 stock. In the life of George William Curtis some 
 of these qualities will reappear ; and if they are not 
 generally associated with his name by his contem 
 poraries, it is because in part they were rendered 
 less prominent by the radiance of gentler and rarer 
 qualities ; but, as will I hope be seen, the better of 
 them were not absent, and in the phrase of the 
 physiologist " persisted," and were very strong. 
 
 One other figure in the Curtis family attracts 
 attention, that of John Curtis, the eldest son of 
 Ephraim. He was born (1707) in Worcester, and 
 up to the outbreak of the Revolution was an active 
 and noted citizen, selectman, surveyor of the 
 highways, captain in the French and Indian War. 
 He was also a tavern-keeper and a leading member 
 of the church, and his house was much frequented 
 by the clergymen of the day. But he was a sturdy 
 and open loyalist. In 1774 he signed a protest 
 against what he regarded as the revolutionary action 
 of the town, whereupon the town, premising that he 
 was one of those on whom it had " Conferred many 
 favours and Consequently might expect their Kind 
 est and best Services," resolved that he and his fel 
 low-signers be " Deemed unworthy of holding any 
 Town office of Profit or Honour until they have 
 made satisfaction for this offence to the acceptance 
 of the town which ought to be made as public as 
 their Protest was." He declined at this time to 
 make any retraction, and in the next year he was 
 declared a public enemy, disarmed, and forbidden 
 
6 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 to leave the town. But in 1777 he seems to have 
 made his peace, as it was voted to receive him and 
 others " into the Town s favour, and that further 
 prosecution against them as enemies of the United 
 States of America shall cease, they paying the 
 costs that has arisen already by means of their 
 being prosecuted as Enemies to the United States, 
 agreeable to their petition." Here was a strain of 
 practical independence in the Curtis blood not in 
 consistent with a disposition to make the best of 
 facts that could not be changed. 
 
 The great -grand son of this John Curtis was 
 George Curtis, the father of George William. He 
 was born in Worcester in 1796, but removed to 
 Providence, R. I. There he married Mary Eliza 
 beth Burrill, daughter of James Burrill, Jr., who 
 was Chief Justice of Rhode Island, and at one time 
 a member of the United States Senate from that 
 State, an opponent of the Missouri Compromise, 
 and a man of marked ability and high character. 
 Of this marriage were born James Burrill Curtis, 
 in 1822, and George William Curtis, February 24, 
 1824. Mrs. Curtis died in 1826 when George was 
 but two years old. In 1835 Mr. Curtis married, as 
 his second wife, a daughter of Samuel W. Bridg- 
 ham, of Providence. Of Mr. Curtis his eldest son 
 (now living in England) writes that he was of 
 44 high integrity, sound, practical judgment, and ex 
 cellent business talents, together with political arid 
 literary taste. He was popular among his associ 
 ates leading business and professional men 
 
FAMILY AND YOUTH. 1 
 
 in Providence and New York. He was most affec 
 tionate and beloved in his family, and extremely 
 kind and indulgent to his children, though sharp 
 and severe in his demands as to manners and 
 morals. He valued truthfulness and honesty above 
 all other qualities, and his example and influence 
 in these respects early impressed both George and 
 me very deeply. In a letter of 1860 George, reply 
 ing to a question of mine about his religious views, 
 writes thus (the italics are George s) : 4 1 believe 
 in God, who is love ; that all men are brothers ; 
 and that the only essential duty of every man is 
 to be honest, by which I understand his absolute 
 following of his conscience when duly enlightened. 
 I do not believe that God is anxious that men 
 should believe this or that theory of the Godhead, 
 or of the Divine Government, but that they should 
 live purely, justly, and lovingly. These, I take it, 
 were the essential articles of his creed to the end ; 
 and, whatever may be thought of them, at least 
 the paramount value, or his estimation, of honesty 
 and practical goodness, is conspicuous." 
 
 To this instructive glimpse of the influence of 
 the father I am happily able to add one equally in 
 structive, from the same source, as to the influence 
 of the second mother. Mr. J. B. Curtis writes 
 of her : " She was a woman of much good sense 
 and practical energy, of strong and generous sym 
 pathies, and of high public spirit and piety ; and 
 she added to these things literary cultivation de 
 cidedly above the average. She wrote with ease, 
 
8 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, 
 
 whether in letters or other compositions, a full, 
 graceful, flowing, delightful English style. She 
 once wrote to us in high girlish spirits that she be 
 lieved she loved her ready-made children the best. 
 Certainly she made herself to a very unusual de 
 gree our intimate friend and companion, becoming 
 mother and sister (we never had an actual sister) 
 in one ; and she was thus able to encourage in 
 George and me, in the most genial and natural 
 way, everything that was good." 
 
 From the age of six to that of eleven, George, 
 with his elder brother, attended the school of C. W. 
 Greene at Jamaica Plain, near Boston ; but on 
 his father s second marriage he was brought again 
 to Providence and placed in school there, until he 
 was fifteen, when (1839) his father removed to 
 New York. Of the school days at Jamaica Plain 
 I know nothing save that they left pleasant and 
 tender memories, and furnished some of the detail 
 for the earlier chapters of "Trumps." There is 
 in " Sea from Shore," one of the chapters of " Prue 
 and I," a picture of the Providence wharves that 
 is worth citing for its delightful local color, and 
 its suggestion of the influence of the seaside town 
 and of the sensitiveness of the boyish mind : 
 
 " My earliest remembrances are of a long range 
 of old, half -dilapidated stores ; red-brick stores with 
 steep wooden roofs and stone window-frames and 
 door-frames, which stood upon docks built as if 
 for immense trade with all quarters of the globe. 
 
 " Generally there were only a few sloops moored 
 
FAMILY AND YOUTH. 
 
 to the tremendous posts, which I fancied could 
 easily hold fast a Spanish Armada in a tropical 
 hurricane. But sometimes a great ship, an East 
 Indiaman, with rusty, seamed, blistered sides and 
 dingy sails, came slowly moving up the harbor, 
 with an air of indolent self-importance and con 
 sciousness of superiority, which inspired me with 
 profound respect. If the ship had ever chanced to 
 run down a row-boat, or a sloop, or any specimen 
 of smaller craft, I should only have wondered at 
 the temerity of any floating thing in crossing the 
 path of such supreme majesty. The ship was leis 
 urely chained and cabled to the old dock, and then 
 came the disemboweling. Long after the confu 
 sion of unloading was over, and the ship lay as 
 if all voyages were ended, I dared to creep timor 
 ously along the edge of the dock, and, at great risk 
 of falling in the black water of its huge shadow, I 
 placed my hand upon the hot hulk, and so estab 
 lished a mystic and exquisite connection with Pa 
 cific Islands ; with palm groves and all the passion 
 ate beauties they embower ; with jungles, Bengal 
 tigers, pepper, and the crushed feet of Chinese fair 
 ies. I touched Asia, the Cape of Good Hope, and 
 the Happy Islands. I would not believe that the 
 heat I felt was of our Northern sun ; to my finer 
 sympathy, it burned with equatorial fervor. 
 
 " The freight was piled in the old stores. I be 
 lieve that many of them remain, but they have 
 lost their character. When I knew them, not only 
 was I younger, but partial decay had overtaken 
 
10 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 the town ; at least the bulk of its India trade had 
 drifted to New York and Boston. But the appli 
 ances remained. There was no throng of busy 
 traffickers; and after school, in the afternoon, I 
 strolled by and gazed into the solemn interiors. 
 
 " Silence reigned within, silence, dimness, and 
 piles of foreign treasures. Vast coils of cable, like 
 tame boa-constrictors, served as seats for men with 
 large stomachs and heavy watch-seals, and nankeen 
 trousers, who sat looking out of the door toward 
 the ships, with little other sign of life than an 
 occasional low talking, as if in their sleep. Huge 
 hogsheads, perspiring brown sugar, and oozing slow 
 molasses, as if nothing tropical could keep within 
 bounds, but must continuously expand and exude 
 and overflow, stood against the walls, and had an 
 architectural significance, for they darkly reminded 
 me of Egyptian prints, and in the duskiness of 
 the low-vaulted store seemed cyclopean columns 
 incomplete. Strange festoons and heaps of bags ; 
 square piles of boxes cased in mats, bales of airy 
 summer stuffs which even in -winter scoffed at 
 cold, and shamed it by audacious assumption of 
 eternal sun ; little specimen boxes of precious dyes, 
 that even now shine through my memory like old 
 Venetian schools unpainted, these were all there 
 in rich confusion. 
 
 "The stores had a twilight of dimness; the air 
 was spicy with mingled odors. I liked to look 
 suddenly in from the glare of sunlight outside, and 
 then the cool sweet dimness was like the palpable 
 
FAMILY AND YOUTH. 11 
 
 breath of the far-off island groves ; and if only 
 some parrot or macaw hung within would flaunt 
 with glistening plumage in his cage, and, as the 
 gay hue flashed in a chance sunbeam, call in his 
 hard, shrill voice, as if thrusting sharp sounds upon 
 a glistening wire from out that grateful gloom, then 
 the enchantment was complete, and without mov 
 ing I was circumnavigating the globe. 
 
 "From the old stores and the docks slowly 
 crumbling, touched, I knew not why or how, by 
 the pensive air of past prosperity, I rambled out of 
 town on those well-remembered afternoons to the 
 fields that lay upon hillsides over the harbor, and 
 there sat looking out to sea, fancying some distant 
 sail, proceeding to the glorious ends of the earth, to 
 be my type and image, who would so sail, stately 
 and successful, to all the glorious ports of the Fu 
 ture." 
 
 These are passages both of memory and imagi 
 nation, and date fifteen years later than the life to 
 which they relate. But the memories of a man of 
 thirty are not dim, and the imagination owns the 
 spell of memory when it plays upon the time of 
 boyhood. I take the picture to be a true one. 
 
 In these early days, and until Curtis was twenty- 
 five years old, there was one person whose influence, 
 strong and continuous and intimate, was always re 
 membered as " a great debt," his brother Burrill. 
 During this quarter of a century, and for more than 
 a third of Mr. Curtis s life, they were constantly to 
 gether, occupying the same room at home, at school, 
 
12 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 at Brook Farm, at Concord, and during much of 
 the journeying abroad. He is the model from 
 which was drawn the portrait of " Our Cousin the 
 Curate " in " Prue and I." It does not concern me 
 or my readers to know how far the story embraced 
 in that sketch is based on the brothers experience, 
 but it will throw light on the springtime of Mr. 
 Curtis s life, when the sap coursed free and strong 
 and the force and direction of aftergrowth were 
 being determined, to cite here a few passages from 
 the sketch : 
 
 " There is no subject which does not seem to lead 
 naturally to our Cousin the Curate. As the soft 
 air steals in and envelops everything in the world, 
 so that the trees and the hills and the rivers, the 
 cities, the crops, and the sea, are made remote and 
 delicate and beautiful by its pure baptism, so over 
 all the events of our little lives, comforting, refin 
 ing, and elevating, falls like a benediction the re 
 membrance of our cousin the curate. 
 
 " He was my only early companion. He had no 
 brother, I had none, and we became brothers to 
 each other. He was always beautiful. His face 
 was symmetrical and delicate ; his figure was slight 
 and graceful. He looked as the sons of kings ought 
 to look, as I am sure Philip Sidney looked when 
 he was a boy. His eyes were blue, and as you looked 
 at them they seemed to let you gaze out into a 
 June heaven. The blood ran close to the skin, and 
 his complexion had the rich transparency of light. 
 There was nothing gross or heavy in his expression 
 
FAMILY AND YOUTH. 13 
 
 or texture ; his soul seemed to have mastered his 
 body. But he had strong passions, for his delicacy 
 was positive, not negative ; it was not weakness, 
 but intensity. 
 
 " Often, when I returned panting and restless 
 from some frolic which had wasted almost all the 
 night, I was rebuked as I entered the room in 
 which he lay peacefully sleeping. There was some 
 thing holy in the profound repose of his beauty ; 
 and as I stood looking at him, how many a time 
 the tears have dropped from my hot eyes upon his 
 face, while I vowed to make myself worthy of such 
 a companion ! for I felt my heart owning its alle 
 giance to that strong and imperial nature. 
 
 " My cousin was loved by the boys, but the girls 
 worshiped him. His mind, large in grasp and 
 subtle in perception, naturally commanded his com 
 panions, while the lustre of his character allured 
 those who could not understand him. The asceti 
 cism occasionally showed itself a vein of hardness, 
 or rather of severity, in his treatment of others. 
 He did what he thought it his duty to do, but he 
 forgot that few could see the right so closely as he, 
 and very few of those few could so calmly obey the 
 least command of conscience. I confess I was a 
 little afraid of him, for I think I never could be 
 severe. 
 
 " In the long winter evenings I often read to 
 Prue the story of some old father of the church, or 
 some quaint poem of George Herbert s ; and every 
 Christmas Eve I read to her Milton s 4 Hymn on the 
 
14 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 Nativity. Yet when the saint seems to us most 
 saintly, or the poem most pathetic or sublime, we 
 find ourselves talking of our cousin the curate. I 
 have not seen him for many years ; but when we 
 parted, his head had the intellectual symmetry of 
 Milton s, without the Puritanic stoop, and with the 
 stately grace of a cavalier." 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 EMERSON AND BROOK FARM. 
 
 WITH the evidence afforded in the passages 
 quoted in the last chapter, written some six years 
 after parting with his brother in Europe, of the 
 place that brother held in his heart and life, I ven 
 ture to give some notes by Mr. Burrill Curtis of 
 their life together from 1835, when they returned 
 from school to Providence, to 1846, when they 
 sailed for Europe : 
 
 "Not long after (1835), another powerful in 
 fluence reached us, which prevailed in our lives for 
 seven or eight years. This was the influence of 
 R. W. Emerson. It was then first beginning to 
 extend itself in New England, and not only the 
 United States, but Great Britain also, have since 
 become indebted to it. He was the sympathizing 
 leader and moderating patron, so to speak, of that 
 ferment and stir after all kinds of reform which, 
 according to his own account, had taken possession 
 of so many men and women around him from 
 about the year 1820 onward. His large endow 
 ment of cheerful humor, of intellectual acuteness, 
 and of sober common-sense did not prevent his 
 holding persistently aloft, in an exceptional degree, 
 the torch of the ideal in everything ; and though 
 
16 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 his thought was usually characterized by profun 
 dity, comprehensiveness, and severe balance, al 
 beit it was often too fine-spun and mystical, he 
 was so sanguine, and so optimistically enamored of 
 his ideals, as not unfrequently to overlook the ex 
 orbitancy and impracticability of some of them. 
 He was an ardent apostle of 4 liberty even to the 
 apparent obeying of one s whims ; but he was 
 an equally ardent and strenuous apostle of c law 
 in its highest or most stringent senses. Nature s 
 law (which includes the moral law) ordains lib 
 erty, it is true, but it ordains the regulation of 
 liberty also; and while Emerson stands on the 
 one hand stoutly for freedom, independence, self- 
 reliance, heroism, nay, even inconsistency and 
 nonconformity, he stands on the other hand as 
 piously and immovably, like a rapt saint, for obedi 
 ence to natural and moral law. Our coming into 
 contact with this New England 4 movement (called 
 in our time Transcendentalism ), and especially 
 with its leader and moderator, proved to be the 
 cardinal event of our youth ; and I cannot but 
 think that the seed then sown took such deep root 
 as to flower continuously in our later years, and 
 make us both the confirmed Independents that 
 we were and are, whilst fully conscious at the same 
 time of the obligation of living in all possible har 
 mony with our fellows, 
 
 " I still recall the impressions produced by Em 
 erson s delivery of his address on the 4 Over-Soul 
 in Mr. Hartshorn s semicircular school - room in 
 
EMERSON AND BROOK FARM. 17 
 
 Providence, our native town. He seemed to speak 
 as an inhabitant of heaven, and with the inspiration 
 and authority of a prophet. Although a large part 
 of the matter of that discourse, when reduced to its 
 lowest terms, does not greatly differ from the com 
 monplaces of piety and religion, yet its form and 
 its tone were so fresh and vivid that they made 
 the matter also seem to be uttered for the first 
 time, and to be a direct outcome from the inmost 
 source of the highest truth. We heard Emerson 
 lecture frequently, and made his personal acquaint 
 ance. My enthusiastic admiration of him and his 
 writings soon mounted to a high and intense hero- 
 worship, which, when it subsided, seems to have 
 left me ever since incapable of attaching myself as 
 a follower to any other man. How far George 
 shared such feelings, if at all, I cannot precisely 
 say ; but he so far shared my enthusiastic admira 
 tion as to be led a willing captive to Emerson s 
 attractions, and to the incidental attractions of the 
 movement of which he was the head ; and Emerson 
 always continued to command from us both the 
 sincerest reverence and homage. 
 
 " I do not remember that George ever commit 
 ted himself to any important extravagance of re 
 form. I, for my part, was at first carried away 
 into personal experiments of disusing money and 
 animal food ; but I was soon convinced of my 
 errors and abandoned them. Comparatively unim 
 portant vagaries about dress we both partook of. 
 The movement affected and modified our aims 
 
18 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 and ideas in various respects as individuals, but 
 did not enlist us as permanent and well-drilled 
 soldiers in social schemes and causes. It awakened 
 our interest in the reforming ideas of others around 
 us ; but neither the anti-slavery cause (which after 
 wards aroused in George an heroic zeal and devo 
 tion), nor the temperance cause, nor any other, 
 however apparently important, then secured from 
 us anything more than a reasonable speculative 
 consideration. We were intent mainly, not on re 
 forming others, or reforming society at large, but 
 on the ordering of our own individual lives. 
 
 In 1839, when George was fifteen, his father re 
 moved from Providence to New York, and became 
 connected with the Bank of Commerce, first as 
 cashier and afterwards as president. His home 
 was on the north side of Washington Place, then 
 the centre of the most desirable residence quarter 
 of the city. It is a pleasure to note that the fine 
 old house has remained for more than half a cen 
 tury in the Curtis family, and is one of the few in 
 which has been amassed a fund of those associa 
 tions, glad or sad, but with the lapse of time always 
 and uniquely sweet, which make a house, in a far 
 deeper than the technical sense, "real" estate. 
 Mr. George Curtis, by his personal qualities, tastes, 
 and attainments, as by his business relations and 
 ability, became naturally a member of what was in 
 truth, if not by its own claim, the best society of 
 the city of that time, and in this society both he 
 and his wife were fitted to get and to give the best. 
 
EMERSON AND BROOK FARM. 19 
 
 They were members, first, of Dr. Orville Dewey s 
 Unitarian congregation, and afterwards of that of 
 Dr. Bellows. Young Curtis was surrounded by 
 influences that awakened and developed in him the 
 remarkable social gifts which afterwards distin 
 guished him, and trained his active and adventur 
 ous mind in healthy ways. I do not learn much of 
 the details of his life at this time, further than that 
 he devoted a good deal of time to study at home, 
 partly under the guidance of tutors, partly under 
 that of his father and mother, and that there was a 
 brief experience in the counting-room of a German 
 importing and shipping house, which was abandoned, 
 for what reason I cannot say, but with happy result. 
 Mr. Burrill Curtis writes : " As I, while at col 
 lege, had fallen so much under the influence of 
 the New England c Transcendental Movement as 
 to have been led by it into a practical vagary about 
 money and its use, it was probably something of a 
 relief to our father that, a while after my having 
 come to my senses, George and I proposed nothing 
 worse than to become boarders, and boarders only, 
 with the Community at Brook Farm." This was in 
 1842, and about two years were passed by the bro 
 thers at West Roxbury, for George, the years from 
 eighteen to twenty. As he and his brother were 
 " boarders, and boarders only," it is hardly worth 
 while to describe here the purposes of the founders 
 of this peculiar home. Mr. Emerson, in his " His 
 toric Notes of Life and Letters in New England, 5 
 sums them up sufficiently : 
 
20 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 " The founders of Brook Farm should have this 
 praise, that they made what all people try to make, 
 an agreeable place to live in. All comers, even the 
 most fastidious, found it the pleasantest of resi 
 dences. It is certain that freedom from household 
 routine, variety of character and talent, variety of 
 work, variety of means of thought and instruction, 
 art, music, poetry, reading, masquerade, did not per 
 mit sluggishness or despondency, broke up routine. 
 There is agreement in the testimony that it was, to 
 most of the associates, education ; to many the most 
 important period of their life, the birth of valued 
 friendships, their first acquaintance with the riches 
 of conversation, their training in behavior. The 
 art of letter-writing, it is said, was immensely cul 
 tivated ; letters were always flying, not only from 
 house to house, but from room to room. It was a 
 perpetual picnic, a French Revolution in small, an 
 Age of Reason in a patty-pan." 
 
 Unfortunately, Mr. Emerson, like many smaller 
 men, was not wholly free from the temptation of 
 phrase-making, and the last sentence is more amus 
 ing than clear. So far as I can trace the influence 
 of the life at Brook Farm on young Curtis, he es 
 caped pretty well the element of the " French Revo 
 lution " and the " Age of Reason," unquestionably 
 made close and valuable friendships, and had (as 
 well as contributed) his full share of the " picnic." 
 I find that he studied, with apparently much appli 
 cation, German, agricultural chemistry, and music, 
 the last with great zest under the instruction of Mr. 
 
EMERSON AND BROOK FARM. 21 
 
 John D wight. In June, 1843, his second year, he 
 wrote to his father : 
 
 " My life is summery enough. We breakfast at 
 six and from seven to twelve I am at work. After 
 dinner, these fair days permit no homage but to 
 their beauty, and I am fain to woo their smiles in 
 the shades and sunlights of the woods. A festal life 
 for one before whom the great sea stretches which 
 must be sailed; yet this summer air teaches life- 
 navigation, and I listen to the flowing streams, and 
 to the cool rush of the winds among the trees, with 
 an increase of that hope which is the only pole-star 
 of life." 
 
 This expresses, I should say, the spirit of the 
 youth. It was essentially earnest in its main mo 
 tive, and was not inconsistent with the utmost de 
 light in the pleasures that presented themselves, or 
 that were to be had for the seeking. He had a 
 most pleasing voice, and a face and form of exqui 
 site beauty, and I read of his singing lingering in 
 the memory of his companions thirty years later, 
 and of equally vivid recollections of his personal 
 charm. One chronicler recalls a " masquerade pic 
 nic in the woods," " We were thrown into con 
 vulsions of laughter at the sight of G. W. C. 
 dressed as Fanny Elssler, making courtesies and 
 pirouetting down the path ; " and another occasion 
 when he " led the quadrille as Hamlet, and looked 
 4 the Dane to the life." 
 
 A lady who was a resident at Brook Farm, and 
 whose friendship then formed lasted through the 
 
22 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 life of Curtis, furnishes some notes as to that 
 time that confirm the impression I have indicated. 
 She recalls one " bright May morning " when, 
 going from the " Eyrie " to the " Hive " for break 
 fast, sne approached the "gate through which 
 George Bradford and the fascinating Hawthorne " 
 were wont to drive the cows. The gate was " held 
 wide open by our handsome young man, Charles A. 
 Dana, who did himself proud at such honors, not 
 having the certain reserve and diffidence that many 
 of our Brook Farm men had. . . . With C. A. D. 
 were two young men who, as I remember them, 
 looked like young Greek gods. These must be the 
 Curtises, I thought, two wonderfully charming 
 young men of whom Mr. Ripley had spoken. 
 
 " Burrill, the elder, with a typical Greek face and 
 long hair falling to his shoulders in irregular curls, 
 I remember as most unconscious of himself, inter 
 ested in all about him, talking of the Greek philoso 
 phers as if he had just come from one of Socrates 
 walks, carrying the high philosophy into his daily 
 life ; helping the young people with hard arithmetic 
 lessons; trimming the lamps daily at the Eyrie, 
 where the brothers came to live (my sister saw 
 George assisting him one day, and occasionally, she 
 says, he turned his face with a disgusted expression, 
 trying to puff away the disagreeable odor) ; never 
 losing control of himself, with the kindest man 
 ner to every person. He and George seemed very 
 companionable and fond of each other. 
 
 " George, though only eighteen, one year older 
 
EMERSON AND BROOK FARM. 23 
 
 than I, seemed much older, like a man of twenty- 
 five possibly, with a peculiar elegance, if I may 
 so express it; great and admirable attention, as I 
 recollect, when listening to any one ; courteous rec 
 ognition of others convictions and even prejudices ; 
 and never a personal animosity o any kind, 
 a certain remoteness of manner, however, that I 
 think prevented persons from becoming acquainted 
 with him as easily as with Burrill. 
 
 " George and Mr. Bradford, on cold, stormy wash 
 ing days in winter, used to wrap themselves as 
 warmly as possible, and insisted on hanging out 
 the clothes for the women, a chivalry equal to 
 that of Walter Raleigh throwing down his cloak 
 before the Queen Elizabeth." 
 
 This lady speaks also of the part taken by George 
 Curtis in the gayeties of the place, and the charm 
 he lent them. I find in one of his own letters, 
 written a few years after leaving Roxbury, a remi 
 niscence of Brook Farm that shows the impression 
 made by some of the characters there. He speaks 
 of "the solemn sphynx, Alcott, dispensing his 
 
 great discourse on one of his visitations with L , 
 
 his solemn shadow, to Brook Farm, when he held 
 a talk in the dreary Morton House one glorious 
 June evening. It was as stately and inhuman as 
 if there had been no stars shining, and Carrie S. 
 and I slipped out of one of the long windows and 
 \rent to walk. It is a great pity that Mr. Alcott 
 is too old to learn that the condition of the King 
 dom is, not the being a grave philosopher, but a 
 
24 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 little child. Yet he always has about him the 
 grandeur you would predict of his brow and eye, 
 the solitary old sphynx grandeur of the desert." 
 
 I add the following reference, in a letter to his 
 father, to Webster and his oration at Bunker Hill 
 in June, 1843-, partly because a good sign of what 
 a boy of nineteen has in him is what he finds in 
 others, and partly because these extracts show the 
 fine and fruitful sympathy between young Curtis 
 and his father : 
 
 "I was sorry not to see you on the day we 
 watched eagerly the coming of the Sons of New 
 England from New York, when they were inarch 
 ing to the Common to form. The day was a fine 
 one to me. Finest of all, that I saw <and heard 
 Daniel Webster. We struggled through the 
 crowd, and stood only a rod or two in front of 
 him, saw him plainly, heard him distinctly. It 
 was a noble spectacle. As far on one side as the 
 eye could reach up the hill was a silent multitude, 
 out of whose midst, solemnly and lonely against 
 the sky, rose the monument. On the other stood 
 this man solemn and lonely also, the strength of 
 Olympian Jove in his figure and mein, yet a wild, 
 lonely spectacle. Too great for party, not yet 
 great enough for quiet independence. Not the 
 calm dignity of a soul self-centred who rules the 
 world, but the restless grandeur of a Titan storm 
 ing heaven. His mouth curled, his eye flashed, as 
 if among that mass he was king, but the higher 
 crown could not be seen upon him. Though by 
 
EMERSON AND BROOK FARM. 25 
 
 no means satisfying my idea of a great man, he is 
 certainly a strong man, Hercules, if not Apollo." 
 
 Brook Farm was notoriously the home of re 
 formers. A lad as warm-hearted, eager, and imag 
 inative as Curtis might easily have been unsettled 
 and warped by them. That he was not is shown 
 in the following passages from still another letter 
 to his father, in which that keen guardian of san 
 ity, a sense of humor, shines lightly : 
 
 " DEAR FATHER, Will you send me $20 to pay 
 for a coat which I have had made in Boston ? You 
 will smile at such a request after my unmitigated 
 condemnation of coats and resolute tunic-wearing 
 in Providence last summer ; yet had you taken apart 
 ments in my mind since then, and closely observed 
 all changes and growths that occurred, you would 
 see how natural it is. The stern protest, which dis 
 tinguishes the birth of reform, against society, the 
 church, and all things but the sovereign /, gradually 
 gives way to that other better state of affirmation 
 and reception which, deserting the faith not a whit, 
 leads an outward life in beautiful harmony with all 
 men and things ! What was done before, says 
 Fenelon, to gratify the lusts and vanities of the 
 man is now done for the glory of God. No wise 
 man is long a reformer, for Wisdom sees plainly 
 that growth is steady, sure, and neither condemns 
 nor rejects what is, or has been. Reform is organ 
 ized distrust. It says to the universe fresh from 
 God s hand, 4 You are a miserable business ; lo ! 
 I will make you fairer 1 and so deputes some 
 
26 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 Fourier or Robert Owen to improve the bungling 
 work of the Creator." After a couple of pages of 
 this elaborate badinage, the youngster concludes : 
 " From such brief hints, possibly some time to be 
 expanded as more light flows in, you may get dim 
 glimpses at my position, and so perhaps not alto 
 gether smiling, send me $20." 
 
 The importance of the Brook Farm episode in 
 Curtis s life may very easily be exaggerated, and 
 I think has been so in the minds of some who 
 have written of him. The fame, not to say the 
 notoriety, of the place and the persons associated 
 with it made a strong impression, though a vague 
 one; and it is almost unavoidable that any one 
 even indirectly engaged in the " movement " should 
 have borne a more or less distinct mark of it in 
 the public mind, and not wholly to his advantage, 
 since it suggests a strain of " queerness." I very 
 well recall the conviction of a man of strong na 
 ture, in general sympathy with Mr. Curtis in his 
 mature years, who accounted for the views of the 
 latter on the rights of women by the theory that 
 " there must be a screw loose somewhere in a 
 man who graduated from that lunatic school at 
 Brook Farm." It is true that Mr. Ripley, the 
 very father of the scheme, became one of the 
 broadest, sanest, and most just of literary crit 
 ics ; that Mr. Dana, who was a very active coad 
 jutor of Mr. Ripley, became a famous journalist, 
 whose acute and trained scholarship was coupled 
 with qualities not at all suggestive of fanaticism, 
 
EMERSON AND BROOK FARM. 27 
 
 and whose aims were the opposite of visionary or 
 Utopian. Unquestionably Curtis was influenced 
 strongly by the experience of those two years ; he 
 must have been a very dull boy had he not been ; 
 and what that influence was, in part, is described 
 in the lines of Uhland s Song, of which he was 
 fond : 
 
 " What morning dreams reveal to me 
 The evening makes forever true." 
 
 There was much in the generous confidence, the 
 courageous hope, the high aspiration, and the fine 
 assertion of the right and duty of individuality 
 of the leaders at Brook Farm with which Curtis 
 remained in intimate sympathy all his life ; and 
 he had no less true appreciation of it, but one all 
 the more true, because he saw the comical side of 
 the experience and enjoyed it. 
 
 In one of the Easy Chair essays, Mr. Curtis 
 wrote of Brook Farm a propos of a passage in 
 Hawthorne s " Note-Book : " " The society at Brook 
 Farm was composed of every kind of person. 
 There were the ripest scholars, men and women 
 of the most aesthetic culture and accomplishment, 
 young farmers, seamstresses, mechanics, preachers, 
 the industrious, the lazy, the conceited, the senti 
 mental. But they associated in such a spirit, and 
 under such conditions, that, with some extrava 
 gance, the best of everybody appeared, and there 
 was a kind of high esprit de corps, at least in 
 the earlier or golden age of the colony. There 
 was plenty of steady, essential, hard work, for the 
 
28 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 founding of an earthly paradise upon a New 
 England farm is no pastime. But with the best 
 intention, and much practical knowledge and in 
 dustry and devotion, there was in the nature of the 
 case an inevitable lack of method, and economi 
 cal failure was almost a foregone conclusion. But 
 there were never such witty potato patches, and 
 such sparkling corn-fields before or since. The 
 weeds were scratched out of the ground to the 
 music of Tennyson or Browning, and the nooning 
 was an hour as gay and bright as any brilliant 
 midnight at Ambrose s. 
 
 " Compared with other efforts upon which time 
 and money and industry are lavished, measured 
 by Colorado and Nevada speculations, by Califor 
 nia gold - washing, by oil -boring and the stock 
 exchange, Brook Farm was certainly a very rea 
 sonable and practical enterprise, worthy of the 
 hope and aid of generous men and women. The 
 friendships that were formed there were enduring. 
 The devotion to noble endeavor, the sympathy 
 with what is most useful to men, the kind pa 
 tience and constant charity that were fostered 
 there, have been no more lost than grain dropped 
 upon the field. . . . The spirit that was concen 
 trated at Brook Farm is diffused, but not lost. 
 As an organized effort, after many downward 
 changes, it failed ; but those who remember the 
 Hive, the Eyrie, the Cottage, when Margaret 
 Fuller came and talked, radiant with bright 
 humor, when Emerson and Parker and Hedge 
 
EMERSON AND BROOK FARM. 29 
 
 joined the circle for a night or day; when those 
 who may not be named publicly brought beauty 
 and wit and social sympathy to the feast ; when 
 the practical possibilities of life seemed fairer, and 
 life and character were touched ineffaceably with 
 good influence, cherish a pleasant vision which 
 no fate can harm, and remember with ceaseless 
 gratitude the blithe days at Brook Farm." 
 
 After Brook Farm there was an interval at home 
 in New York which was crowded with work and 
 pleasure. The latter came chiefly from music 
 and the social circle in which the family moved. 
 In November, 1843, he writes from New York to a 
 very dear friend, with whom the relations formed 
 at Brook Farm continued through life : " I have 
 heard fine music since I have been here, Ole 
 Bull, Castillan, etc., etc." After describing some 
 of his social occupations, he adds : " My days I pass 
 in my room reading Goethe s 4 Wilhelm Meister 
 and Novalis. With Burrill I read Agricultural 
 Chemistry and Practical Agriculture. Next 
 week, with mother, we shall begin the Epistles and 
 Gospels. Apart from these, more strictly, studies, 
 I am reading Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, 
 Massinger, Ford, and smaller poets." 
 
 Thus the winter passed in the old home. In the 
 spring of 1844 the brothers, George being then 
 just passed twenty, went to Concord, " for the bet 
 ter furtherance," as the elder writes, " of our main 
 and original end, the desire to unite in our own 
 persons the freedom of a country life with moderate 
 
30 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 outdoor manual occupation, and with intellectual 
 cultivation and pursuits. 
 
 "At Concord we first took up our residence in 
 the family of an elderly farmer, recommended by 
 Mr. Emerson. We gave up half the day (except 
 in haytime, when we gave the whole day) to shar 
 ing the farm work indiscriminately with the farm 
 laborers. The rest of the day we devoted to other 
 pursuits, or to social intercourse or correspondence ; 
 and we had a flat-bottomed rowing-boat built for 
 us, in which we spent very many afternoons on the 
 pretty little river. For our second season we re 
 moved to another farm and farmer s house, nearer 
 Mr. Emerson and Walden Pond, where we occu 
 pied only a single room, making our own beds and 
 living in the very simplest and most primitive style. 
 A small piece of ground, which we hired of the 
 farmer, we cultivated for ourselves, raising vege 
 tables only and selling the superfluous produce, 
 and distributing our time much as before." 
 
 Here was a very different life from that of 
 Brook Farm. Both had in common healthy, out 
 door occupation which built up Curtis s constitu- 
 % tion, and helped make possible the arduous and in 
 cessant labor of later years, and both had the charm 
 and advantage of dwelling with nature in a lovely 
 land. But the " picnic " and the " masquerade " 
 of Brook Farm had given place to afternoons in 
 the woods or on the water ; and the social inter 
 course was simpler, graver, less exciting, though 
 not less stimulating, and more formative. " Have 
 
EMERSON AND BROOK FARM. 31 
 
 I told you of our club," he writes to his father, 
 " Mr. Alcott, Mr. Emerson, Mr. Hawthorne, El- 
 lery Channing, Henry Thoreau, George Bradford, 
 Burrill and I, some known to you ? We meet on 
 Monday eves in Mr. Emerson s library, and there 
 discuss 
 
 " Fate, freewill, foreknowledge absolute. " 
 
 Some half dozen years later, in an article on 
 Emerson written for the " Homes of American 
 Authors," Mr. Curtis gives a reminiscence of this 
 club : " I went, the first Monday evening, very 
 much as Ixion may have gone to his banquet. 
 The philosophers sat dignified and erect. There 
 was a constrained but very amiable silence, which 
 had the impertinence of a tacit inquiry, seeming to 
 ask, 4 Who will now proceed to say the finest thing 
 that has ever been said ? It was quite involuntary 
 and unavoidable, for the members lacked that 
 fluent social genius without which a club is im 
 possible. I vaguely remember that the Orphic 
 Alcott invaded the Sahara of silence with a solemn 
 saying, to which, after due pause, the honora 
 ble member for Blackberry Pastures 1 responded 
 by some keen and graphic observation, while 
 the Olympian host, 2 anxious that so much good 
 material should be spun into something, beamed 
 smiling encouragement upon all parties. But the 
 conversation became more and more staccato. 
 Miles Coverdale, 3 a statue of night and silence, sat, 
 a little removed, under a portrait of Dante, gazing 
 
 1 Thoreau. 2 Emerson. 8 Hawthorne. 
 
32 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 imperturbably upon the group ; and as he sat in 
 the shadow, his dark eyes and hair and suit of 
 sables made him, in that society, the black thread 
 of mystery which he weaved into his stories, while 
 the shifting presence of the Brook Farmer 1 played 
 like heat-lightning around the room." 
 
 Mr. Curtis s writings contain many references 
 to these happy, fruitful years at Concord : glimpses 
 of the temper and growth of his mind at the time 
 will be had from the following extracts from let 
 ters to his father in the autumn of 1844 : 
 
 "I have recently been reading J. Q. Adams s 
 address to his constituents in 1842, and Dr. Chan- 
 ning s tracts upon slavery. These and my own 
 observation of the course of the South, especially 
 within a year, indicate very plainly that at last the 
 country will divide upon Slavery. This will not 
 be the result of Northern agitation, but of the 
 perpetual attempt of the South to extend its limits 
 and thereby prolong the institution, and therefore 
 to continue the reserved power which now always 
 confirms its attitude towards the North. This at 
 tempt, which now is plainly seen, which now forms 
 one of the two great topics upon which the parties 
 indeed, upon which the North and the South 
 differ will not be tolerated in its success by the 
 conscience of Northern men. They must then 
 take the stand that will join the issue." 
 
 Then follows an ingenious argument as to the 
 clause in the Constitution giving representation to 
 
 1 Bradford. 
 
EMERSON AND BROOK FARM. 33 
 
 the South for its slaves as " persons," though held 
 by the masters as " property," and as to the inev 
 itable revolt of the North against the unfairness 
 of this agreement, and the arrogance and extrava 
 gance of the Southern claims regarding it. 
 
 " The conduct of the South outrages the moral 
 sentiments and the letter of the laws, and, to the 
 remonstrance of the North, at one time challenges 
 it with intent to dissolve the Union, and at an 
 other fiercely brandishes the threat against the 
 North. While the wise statesman calmly illus 
 trates its treachery and actual violation of the 
 compact, let him firmly say that we can submit 
 no longer to be accomplices in this angel-abhorred 
 guilt. We do not deny that the articles of Union 
 bind that community upon us, and therefore must 
 insist upon amendments. Quite willing not to in 
 terfere politically in the matter within your bor 
 ders, we cannot, we will not, aid you in so mon 
 strous a sin. 
 
 "How nobly might Mr. Webster, a man too 
 great that we should ever despair, crown his fame 
 in hearts which would fain welcome him, but can 
 not yet, by assuming this position ! 
 
 " But if the strongest statesmen will not advance 
 in this matter, there must come men from different 
 pursuits than politics to press the question on. It 
 is idle to think or to hope that it will not be asked. 
 Mr. Choate and Mr. Bates and the courtly Mr. 
 Winthrop and colleagues will be reserved at home 
 for graceful times of peace and public ease, while 
 
34 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 men that cannot speak fluently at mass meetings 
 will go and demand justice of the South. They 
 will say : We will unite with you as citizens, not 
 as robbers and unjust. Dear father, write me 
 how these things are. I trust all nobility and gen 
 erosity has not fled out of politics, and left them 
 bells and baubles for foolish men to wear." 
 
 The father seems to have pointed out in reply 
 the value of the Union, and the hope that slavery 
 would yet be abolished without disunion. To 
 which the son responded : 
 
 " I read your last letter with pleasure, dear 
 father, for I did not know if mine would touch 
 an interest that was very prominent in your mind. 
 It is most true that slavery will be abolished 
 finally by the force of public opinion. But the 
 North begins to groan already. While it recog 
 nizes the comity of nations and the solemn bond, 
 it begins to speak of the separation with plain 
 words. It may not be expedient just now, but 
 then when will it be ? The old conviction that 
 no law, no arrangement, no gain, can permit such 
 direct participation as is provided by the Constitu 
 tion, will at last distinctly demand some change, 
 and, even if the demand be postponed an hundred 
 years, the South will not be ready. What gains 
 the South by separation? It will take Texas to 
 its bosom and possibly conquer Mexico, but no 
 State can endure the unalterable disapprobation of 
 the world. It would yield to the heat of universal 
 censure like wax. It becomes a very grave ques- 
 
EMERSON AND BROOK FARM. 35 
 
 tion to every man. In the event of a disunion, 
 the North might enjoy less commerce and a thou 
 sand decreased political advantages, but, as unto 
 an individual who sacrifices to Justice, there would 
 be no real loss, but an eternal gain. Nor could it 
 tighten the bonds. Men complain that the anti- 
 slavery movement has had that effect upon the 
 slaves. But it is very transitory, if it be so. It 
 is the winking of eyes upon which light suddenly 
 flows, a moment and they will be strong and 
 clear in the sun. It is not credible that a stroke 
 for freedom ever served to perpetuate slavery, 
 because it is an indication of that spirit, alive 
 and in action, to which alone slavery will yield. I 
 nave not now the inclination to pursue the theme 
 further, though it has wide and inviting relations." 
 
 This is not a weak statement for a young man 
 of twenty. Disunion as a remedy became clearly 
 enough futile and unnecessary to his riper and 
 better informed judgment, but the conception of 
 the evil demanding a remedy was sound and firmly 
 defined, and remained through the gallant struggle 
 he was afterwards to make. 
 
 In another letter he discusses the question of 
 the tariff, then a very urgent one. Remembering 
 that his father was a protectionist, and had pub 
 licly defended protection, the letter is a pleasing 
 proof at once of the son s independence and of 
 his confidence in the fair-mindedness of his fa 
 ther, no slight element in the education of the 
 former : 
 
36 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 "Just now I am sad, as I close Webster s 
 speeches (the old), which have occupied me some 
 days, to reflect how narrow are our sympathies. 
 Born an American, I am by that fact heir to cer 
 tain responsibilities. But also I am born an in 
 habitant of the world. I owe to my country the 
 duty of a citizen, but I cannot surrender to that 
 my duty as a man. My obligations are impera 
 tive towards Englishmen and Frenchmen. If I am 
 bound, so far as lies in me, to see that my land is 
 well governed, I must not forget that no govern 
 ment is essentially good for that land which is 
 selfish and small. My country is well governed 
 when the world is. All my obligations as a man 
 include those of a citizen. I have no right to 
 protect American labor at the expense of foreign. 
 What does it matter to me or to God whether 
 Lowell or Manchester be ruined? Extend this 
 into politics and it places us upon a wide, universal 
 platform. It does not suffer any American feeling 
 or British feeling. While I confess that the British 
 laborers starve, I do not do very well to refuse to 
 take what they make ; I must pull down my restric 
 tive laws. I must say to the whole world, He who 
 makes the best cloth shall have the best pay. 
 Then come English and all manner of foreign 
 goods into the market and spoil our trade. But 
 there is plainly but one way of paying for all im 
 ports, and that is by exports. Sugar and rice, pota 
 toes and grain, must pay for all this, and there will 
 be no more goods than I give an equivalent for. 
 
EMERSON AND BROOK FARM. 37 
 
 Then if there be not enough, let our own manu 
 facturers turn to. Besides, commerce rests upon 
 natural laws and not upon human will. If Amer 
 ica is not a productive garden for some other land, 
 no tariff will make her so. But suppose that our 
 philanthropic, not national, government, is estab 
 lished, then the world becomes the subject of a won 
 derful organized moral power. Or, again, Amer 
 ica cannot stand upon such a basis of humanity, 
 and sinks, what then ? The nation who conquers 
 us has pressed a sharp thorn in the side of its 
 selfish ambition. Into the heart of selfish Europe 
 Russia, England, France or whatever nation 
 is transferred a body of men who are obeying eter 
 nal laws and not state laws, or state laws only 
 so far as they are eternal. 
 
 " We ask, in our political relations, Will it ben 
 efit the state ? very seldom, Is it right ? But 
 the state is not necessarily benefited because it has 
 a full treasury, and armies and navies, and com 
 merce and trade, any more than a man is benefited 
 by fine houses and parks. Let us make a maxim 
 in politics, that what is good for America is good 
 for the other nations, for all, because it is uni 
 versal and unselfish. I have a right to wear fine 
 linen, and use Paris handkerchiefs, if I choose to 
 pay for them at their prices, and you have no 
 right to make me buy yours by making theirs 
 dearer. I see no necessity that American manu 
 facturers should flourish if they cannot do so 
 without thrusting our neighbor out of the market 
 
38 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 I will have no fear that God has given us a land 
 that cannot support itself against the world in the 
 noblest, freest manner, or, if I see it cannot, I shall 
 also see that it is no proper home. 
 
 " Be not forced from your integrity so says 
 the wise statesman, who is then a student of the 
 divine government by the dishonesty of others. 
 The citizens of the republic, who are willing to be 
 men of the world also, will be content to sleep on 
 hard beds and forego luxuries if such means be 
 necessary to preserve the law they cherish. Now 
 we are arrayed against each other. The great aim 
 is, which state shall be highest, strongest, wealth 
 iest, which shall thrust down the other and rise 
 beyond it, not which shall lift the other and then 
 nobly rise beyond. The laws of nature are as sim 
 ple for the mass as for the man. The life of a 
 state should be as sound and unincumbered as of 
 the individual. If we are not ready for such a 
 state, let us at least say nothing of the older gov 
 ernments in their disparagement. We are not the 
 experimenters upon the free order of society that 
 the world has flattered us into the belief that we 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 EUROPEAN TRAVEL. 
 
 IN the autumn of 1845 Mr. Curtis returned to 
 his father s house in New York, and there passed 
 the winter. His thoughts were turning toward 
 Europe, though he spoke of them only as "bud 
 ding hopes." In a letter to one of his old friends 
 of the Brook Farm days, he describes his time as 
 given to " reading Italian three hours and German 
 about two, going to my room at nine, and coming 
 down to dinner at four." The evenings were 
 devoted to society, and very frequently to music, 
 at home and elsewhere. In the spring he returned 
 for a while to Concord, " the soft, sunny spring 
 in the silent Concord meadows, where I sat in the 
 great cool barn through the long, still golden after 
 noons and read the history of Rome." By sum 
 mer his plans were completed, and in a note to his 
 father in June, 1846, he submitted a proposition 
 that the latter should provide a letter of credit for 
 ten thousand francs, "not that I shall expect to 
 spend that sum in two years, but because it is well 
 to have a generous background to our picture." 
 
 He sailed from New York early in August on the 
 packet-ship Nebraska for Marseilles, the " magic 
 
40 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 voyage over the summer sea " lasting forty-six days. 
 The first winter was spent in Rome, the second 
 in Berlin, the third in Paris, the fourth on the Nile 
 and in Palestine. He kept a very full diary for 
 the first two years, which I have been permitted to 
 consult, and from which some extracts will serve to 
 show the manner of the impressions made by this 
 wholly new experience, which was in some ways 
 the richest of his life. 
 
 During his journeying in Europe, he wrote pretty 
 regularly to the " Courier and Enquirer," of which 
 Mr. Henry J. Raymond was then the managing 
 editor, and to the " Tribune." These letters were 
 devoted mostly to public affairs and public men. 
 They are good " newspaper work," with no rhetoric 
 or nonsense about them, clear, straightforward, 
 careful reporting of the higher sort. They show 
 keenness of observation, sound, shrewd judgment 
 of men and things, and a breadth and penetration 
 which were remarkable in so young and entirely 
 inexperienced a writer. It will be recalled that 
 when he reached Italy Pius IX. was the idol of the 
 Liberals, and was stirring all Europe with hope or 
 dismay, as the case might be, by professions and 
 by proofs of confidence in the people. His sojourn 
 in Germany covered the troublous times of 1847 
 and 1848, and his stay in Paris some of the most 
 trying experiences of the second French Republic, 
 so that there was much to excite the generous sym 
 pathy of a young American, which in his case was 
 certainly not lacking, and much also to test the 
 
EUROPEAN TRAVEL. 41 
 
 coolness of judgment and the practical sense of a 
 journalist, and these also were not wanting. Al 
 though these letters were necessarily ephemeral, I 
 think the writing of them was a fortunate thing for 
 Mr. Curtis. They imposed on him, with his stand 
 ard of duty, the discipline of regular and system- 
 atic observation and statement, and gave him the 
 opportunity of practice in writing, with just enough 
 responsibility to steady his energies, and without 
 the temptations which the attempt at "literature" 
 presents to a youthful author. The letters, of course, 
 vanished promptly; he never even kept a collec 
 tion of them, and they are not likely to be known 
 even to the few survivors among his friends of that 
 period. But it was with satisfaction that I hunted 
 down a considerable number of them in the yellow 
 files of the old journals, so strangely meagre 
 and limited as they now seem, and found them 
 distinctly better than most of the work of the same 
 sort, and showing evidence of the qualities that 
 were to make of the writer one of the strongest 
 journalists of his time, and one whose influence was 
 to be great, and in important directions decisive. 
 
 The first distinct impression of the strange life 
 about him came from the observances of the Catho 
 lic religion, so remote from anything with which he 
 had been familiar at home. 
 
 " Late in the evening," he wrote at Genoa, " a 
 funeral procession of priests glided swiftly, silently 
 by us, bearing flashing torches, but themselves 
 shrouded in their long, straight black robes, and a 
 
42 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 pointed black veil or bag hanging from their broad 
 sable hats to the breast, so that they seemed shapes 
 moulded of the darkness. It was dreary and 
 mournful, their rapid motion and entire black 
 ness. How is the sweeping black of the Christian 
 a more hopeful emblem than the inverted torch of 
 the splendid old Grecian Pagans ? The faint echo 
 of their tread had scarcely died before a loud sing 
 ing arrested us in one of the narrow by-streets, and, 
 turning up, we found a group of people of every 
 age kneeling and standing and singing before a 
 shrine of the Virgin at the street corner, dimly 
 lighted by a lantern, and a few withered flowers 
 lying before it. The vesper song was of a few 
 long-drawling notes sung in unison, and sounded so 
 forlorn and heartless and hopeless in the desolate 
 streets, which looked like caverns fit for midnight 
 assassinations, that it made my heart ache. It 
 seemed as if all elasticity must be gone from lives 
 which could be fed by such means and men as this 
 evening has shown us, and yet the people seem less 
 serious and more contented than similar classes in 
 America. As we returned to our hotel, the echo of 
 the vesper hymns came floating out of the desolate, 
 narrow streets on every side, wild and wailing 
 and foreign. To-night, more than ever, I felt how 
 far away I was from home." 
 
 In Florence, where he spent a month, the notes 
 in his diary disclose a similar vein of reflection. 
 " The old buildings, and the sense of pictures all 
 around, and the fine statues which meet your eye 
 
EUROPEAN TRAVEL. 43 
 
 as you walk in any quarter, make this southern 
 city and its inhabitants superficial motes upon the 
 antique grandeur. I have not met a man in the 
 street who did not look sharp and mean and stupid. 
 There is no fine air about them which could possi 
 bly suggest that their ancestry were once the kings 
 of the world ; the women have nothing romantic or 
 interesting in their faces or mien ; and one feels 
 very soon that these are the purveyors, and persons 
 of convenience, in places to which all that is best 
 and noblest must be sympathetically drawn. In 
 America there is the charm of universal harmony : 
 the people, in character and form and feature, cor 
 respond with the state of every art; the congre 
 gation and the worship are as impressive as the 
 temple ; the wise shrewdness of the merchants and 
 the general aspect of action harmonize with the 
 universal absence and postponement of art. Here 
 the churches seem withdrawn farther away into 
 the cold depths of antiquity, because the worship is 
 so tawdry and trivial, not in itself, but because the 
 men who lead it appear to feel it no more than 
 their gorgeous robes. One can imagine sometimes 
 a yearning in the broad, lofty spaces of these build 
 ings, which are themselves the stately children of 
 genius and religion, to feel their heights and depths 
 once thrill with the shock of an equal worship. 
 And yet, if one would be harmoniously satisfied, he 
 may well be so in one of them, where, with music and 
 incense and the dazzling splendor of robes of flow 
 ered gold, the Catholic service is performed. And 
 
44 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 that is the way it should be contemplated. The 
 forms which are used are of a birth as religious and 
 sincere as the temples themselves, and there is no 
 need of regarding the priests as men at all." 
 
 As he journeyed towards Rome, the charms of 
 Italy took closer possession of him. " Italy," he 
 writes after a week in that city, " is no fable, and 
 the wonderful depth of purity in the air and blue 
 in the sky has hung upon my eyes all this glorious 
 day. Sometimes the sky is an intensely blue and 
 distant arch, and sometimes it melts in the sunlight, 
 and lies pale and rare and delicate upon the eye, 
 so that one feels that he is breathing the sky and 
 moving through it. I looked from a lofty balcony 
 at the Vatican upon broad gardens, intensely green 
 with evergreen palms and orange-trees, in which 
 gleamed the golden fruit and the rich, rounding 
 tufts of Italian pines ; and the solemn shaft of cy 
 press stood over fountains which sported rainbows 
 into the air, which was silver-clear, transparent, and 
 on which the outline of the hills and foliage was 
 drawn like a flame against the sky at night. Into 
 the air rose floating the dome of St. Peter s, which 
 is not a nucleus of the city, like the Duomo at 
 Florence, but a crown more imposing as one is far 
 ther removed." 
 
 In Rome again, it was the church that first im 
 pressed him strongly. Of the music at St. Peter s, 
 he writes : 
 
 " Then from the high choir at the opposite side 
 of the church and far over our heads came swim- 
 
EUROPEAN TRAVEL. 45 
 
 ming down the tremulous delicacy of the nuns 
 chant, like voices from heaven. The sound per 
 vaded the dim air of the church like a radiance 
 too subtle to be seen, but warming and ennobling 
 the soul with a sense of celestial splendor. It was 
 also of the extremest melancholy a hymn so sad 
 that all the bright days and hopes of life seemed 
 then no more than the few keen stars at night and 
 as powerless as they upon the darkness. It was a 
 service all incense and music, upon which daylight 
 seemed not bold enough to obtrude, and exhaling 
 a worship like the delicatest fragrance of flowers." 
 
 He mentions the Pope, whom he saw quite fre 
 quently, always with sympathy, as in the follow 
 ing description of the festival of the Eve of St. 
 John s : 
 
 " Last night at the Pope s Palace upon the Pi 
 azza Cavallo upon the Quirintll Hill, we saw a rare 
 and beautiful spectacle. It was the Eve of St. 
 John s festival, whose name the Pope bears. There 
 fore at dusk crowds began to assemble upon the 
 hill, which in front of the palace is very spacious, 
 looking toward the west over the city and its crown 
 of St. Peter s dome, and surrounded only with 
 stately palaces. In the centre of the hill is a sim 
 ple, ample fountain whose water rises from a broad 
 vase into which it falls again, dripping enough over 
 the edge to girt the urn with a shining silver fringe. 
 Over this fountain an Egyptian obelisk points 
 steadily upward in the blue air, at whose base two 
 noble figures of Grecian youths restrain two rear- 
 
46 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 ing horses, the work, it is said, of Phidias and Prax 
 iteles. The spire, its centre, its sides and its pros 
 pect are all worthy, and here in the early evening 
 after the Ave Maria the people assembled. Col 
 ored fires flashed upon the palaces from an altar of 
 Liberty, emblematic of the spirit which rules the 
 country and which the people hail and celebrate on 
 every occasion. The clouds were heavy and a flash 
 of lightning swept at intervals a broad light over 
 all ; a slight shower passed, at which thousands of 
 umbrellas made a smooth billowy surface for the 
 human sea. But when the procession approached 
 with torches and music, the rain ceased, the um 
 brellas fell, the torches crowded into the crowd; 
 from the people rang a long, heaven-piercing shout, 
 from the balconies and palaces streamed fires of 
 various splendor until a new day shone steadily 
 over the multitude, touching the statues into life, 
 and in the midst of it, the doors of an upper bal 
 cony were thrown open and, preceded by the cross, 
 which always precedes him on public occasions, 
 and by four huge wax torches, the Pope came for 
 ward above the ringing shouts and in the steady 
 splendor and bowed his head to the railing of the 
 balcony. Then came a moment of stillness ; the 
 crowd was hushed as a sleeping child, and the Pope 
 raised his hands, breathed a short prayer, and 
 turning to the crowd gave his blessing and retired. 
 Then came the shouts again and the music and 
 new rockets and candles until in a few moments 
 all was still again, but it was a sight rare and im- 
 
EUROPEAN TRAVEL. 47 
 
 pressive. The vast crowd drawn alone by rever 
 ence and respect to their chief and he responding 
 to their call with no appeal to passion or pride, but 
 with a prayer and his blessing. In no other country 
 could that be seen. In no other country could the 
 vast sentiment inspired by a mass of people obey 
 ing a noble instinct be so sublimely crowned. It 
 was perfect. It was a scene for the Arcadia of a 
 poet or the paradise of a wise Christian." 
 Here is a trace of a different sentiment : 
 "Saturday, October 31, 1846. To-day I went 
 to the graves of Shelley and Keats, who lie in a 
 green, sequestered spot under the walls of old 
 Rome, where the sunlight lingers long and where 
 in the sweet society of roses whose bloom does not 
 wither, they sleep always a summer sleep. Shake 
 speare sang long ago Shelley s epitaph : 
 
 1 Nothing of him that doth fade, 
 But doth suffer a sea change 
 Into something rich and strange. 
 
 And Keats sighed his upon his death bed : 
 
 Here lies one whose name was writ in water. 
 
 Fate is no less delicate than stern, which brought 
 Keats from his cold north to lie in an Italian grave, 
 and which, sucking the sweet breath of Shelley in 
 a stormy night at sea, laid his ashes and unburned 
 heart in the spot whose beauty, he said, might 
 make one in love with death. Yet, by these graves 
 too, one feels the grimness of fate which strikes so 
 suddenly into silence the lips which heaven seems 
 
48 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 to yearn to pass in music. The sun was setting 
 as we came away, after one of the aerially soft days 
 with which our imaginations endow Italy. The 
 rich golden flood streamed through the arches of 
 the Coliseum, but could not unbend the stern grav 
 ity of its decay. It looked cold and still, the image 
 of the destiny which consumes it." 
 
 And here is a note made on the eve of his de 
 parture from Rome. 
 
 " Thus far I find that my European life has 
 taught me a cosmopolitanism which I could never 
 have learned at home. I have read very few books 
 this winter and have been very little at home, but 
 I have been unsphered in the society of so many 
 persons and I have begun to realize how good 
 every sphere is, although so different from my own. 
 When we are children we fancy the horizon is the 
 end of the world, but the man who lives just beyond 
 the edge sees grand mountains and seas of which 
 we do not dream, and if we are wedded to our 
 quiet groves and streams by long years of intimacy 
 and habit, when by chance we pass the boundary, 
 we shall not enjoy the magnificence, and so lose the 
 various splendor of the world." 
 
 Leaving Rome in mid-April, Curtis passed a 
 month or more in Naples and its neighborhood, an 
 other in Florence, a third in Venice, a few weeks 
 leisurely wandering in northern Italy, and crossing 
 the Alps from Como, settled in Berlin for the win 
 ter. The next spring opened at the close of April 
 with a week in " Saxon Switzerland " on foot, and 
 
EUROPEAN TRAVEL. 49 
 
 the summer was given to journeyings through 
 Austria and Hungary, back to the Rhine, again 
 crossing the Alps and recrossing to the Geneva 
 country ; then by a wide detour into Germany, Paris 
 was reached, where the winter of 1848-49 was 
 passed. I have, perhaps, given enough from the 
 diary to show the spirit of this experience. It was 
 a varied one, with much intense enjoyment, numer 
 ous interesting acquaintances, some valuable friends 
 won and to be kept, and a steady mental develop 
 ment of which the diary shows mostly the soberer 
 side. The record he made, and which, I think, he 
 had some intention of publishing, is singularly void 
 of personal allusions either to himself or to his 
 companions. It gives nothing as to the comfort or 
 discomfort of the inns, and little as to the convey 
 ances. A larger part is given to the scenery than 
 to any other one thing, and it is plain how much he 
 was gaining in that deep and rich knowledge of 
 nature that counted so greatly in his subsequent 
 work. He saw many pictures, knew many artists 
 of various races, and had obviously a keen enjoy 
 ment of their works. But though, in a very im 
 portant sense, Ke was by mental gift a true artist, 
 I do not think he ever got far, or ever cared to get 
 very far, into the mysteries of the craft. The sub 
 ject, the sentiment and the general impression of 
 the color and form remained with him, but of the 
 processes and their details, of the elements of the 
 war that was then raging still between the Roman 
 ticists and the Classicists, or the one on which the 
 
50 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 pre-Kaphaelites were entering, I find no hint. He 
 must have encountered these things in the society 
 with which he was intimate, but I imagine that 
 they left him indifferent. Nor is there much sign 
 of the studies in which he really engaged with en 
 ergy and must have pursued with some system. He 
 seems to have been at this time, as he was in later 
 life, the very reverse of what we usually understand 
 by a man of books, still more of a bookish man. 
 In his diary he very rarely quotes poetry, and in 
 the homes of Dante and Petrarch, of Goethe, of 
 Voltaire, their names come only incidentally to his 
 pen. The places as they were, the landscape in 
 which they were set, the life he found in them are 
 what he describes. The people did interest him 
 greatly as persons, as races, as political communi 
 ties. He was in Italy, in Germany, and in Austria 
 at the time when the ferments which reached their 
 height in 1848 were general. He saw the Milanese 
 " rise " and saw them again when their hopes were 
 crushed. He was in Hungary on the eve of the 
 outbreak that brought Kossuth, later, to the United 
 States. , All these events awakened interest of the 
 keenest, and sympathy, but it was a very calm 
 judgment that he passed upon them. He was al 
 ways struck by the contrast between the moods and 
 manners he saw and those to which he was used at 
 home. The theatrical element, and the rhetorical, 
 while they amused him, made him distrustful. In 
 Europe, as at Brook Farm, he never lacked the sav 
 ing sense of humor, and the sobriety, the saneness 
 
EUROPEAN TRAVEL. 51 
 
 of his general view were remarkable. There was 
 no cynical affectation in it, not a trace of indiffer 
 ence, nor any pride, personal or national, but al 
 ways the quiet appreciation of the extent and com 
 plexity of anything like a national movement, and 
 of the need of breadth and steadiness and common 
 sense. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE LITERARY FIELD. 
 
 MR. CURTIS S literary career began in 1851, on 
 his return from Europe and the East, with the 
 publication of the Howadji books. It was a period 
 of marked mental activity in the United States, 
 when reputations that were to become world-wide 
 were still making, and when only two or three 
 of the now widely famed writers had yet achieved 
 an established name at home, and only one, the 
 veteran Washington Irving, could be said to be 
 much known abroad. The habitat of what there 
 was of American literature was geographically 
 very limited. Nearly all the writers of the day 
 were New Englanders by residence, or, as was Mr. 
 Curtis, by descent. A smaller group of very 
 active minds centred in New York, and there 
 were scattered workers here and there along the 
 Atlantic Coast. But the intellectual life of the 
 country, so far as it was expressed in books, or 
 even in newspapers, was still east of the Allegha- 
 nies and on the eastern edge of the slope. The 
 magazine as we know it, the roomy and hospitable, 
 stimulating and nourishing home of writing of 
 every sort, inviting the writer who has anything 
 
THE LITERARY FIELD. 53 
 
 worth saying to address all the readers of the 
 land and of other lands worth having, did not 
 exist, though the " North American Review " in 
 Boston and the " Knickerbocker " and " Harper s " 
 in New York had made notable and valuable begin 
 nings. Within what now seems the restricted soci 
 ety of the opening of the second half of the century 
 there was, as I have said, marked mental activity 
 in a considerable variety of directions, much of it 
 wayward, eager, curious, some of it grotesque, 
 much of it shallow, affected, and of no importance, 
 but much of it also serious, pure, lofty, and, as 
 the event has proved, of. lasting influence. Curi 
 ously enough in this confused and unformed so 
 ciety of writers the most conspicuous and eminent, 
 though certainly not the most representative, was 
 Washington Irving, as completely a man of letters, 
 and yet distinctly of his own time, as Addison. 
 He was the Dean of the American literary body, 
 being, in 1851, sixty-eight, with the "Knicker 
 bocker s History of New York," one of the most 
 characteristic of his works, more than forty years 
 in the past and the " Sketch Book " and " Brace- 
 bridge Hall " but ten years nearer. Substantially 
 all his work was done, and the "Life of Wash 
 ington " and " Wolfert s Roost " alone awaited 
 publication. It is a pleasant thing to note that 
 nearly forty years later Mr. Curtis s Monograph on 
 Irving became one of the most valued publications 
 of the Grolier Club of New York, and remains 
 a graceful and affectionate tribute to qualities oi 
 
54 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 mind and character, some of which the writer richly 
 shared with the beloved subject of the Essay. It 
 may be added that Mr. Curtis s correspondence 
 discloses a personal intercourse with Irving of a 
 sympathetic if not intimate nature which must 
 have had its influence. 
 
 At this time, Hawthorne was in the prime of 
 manhood, forty-seven years of age, but was known 
 chiefly as a writer of sketches of singular and 
 subtle charm. The two volumes of " Twice-told 
 Tales " had been published in 1837 and 1845, and 
 the " Mosses from an Old Manse " in 1846. " The 
 Scarlet Letter " had appeared the year before, 
 but the author was still a self-distrustful, almost 
 gloomy half-recluse, hardly comprehending the po 
 sition which that most original of American books 
 has assured to him. With Hawthorne, Mr. Curtis 
 had had a certain degree of friendly relation at 
 Brook Farm and at Concord, and I like to think 
 that his remote and slightly cynical attitude of 
 mind was felt as a counterpoise to the "trans 
 cendental " tendencies of the other companions 
 of that period, and may have counted in main 
 taining the sanity of spirit with which the youth 
 came from those stimulating but not entirely whole 
 some associations. The purely literary influence 
 of Hawthorne it is not easy to trace, especially in 
 Mr. Curtis s earlier work. But I cannot doubt 
 that the sobriety, lucidity and restraint of expres 
 sion in a writer of such powerful and penetrating 
 imagination, united with the early personal inter- 
 
THE LITERARY FIELD. 55 
 
 course, aided in the development of that later 
 style which in the " Easy Chair " and in portions 
 of " Prue and I " was to become not less delight 
 ful than that of the tenant of the " Old Manse." 
 Of other novelists and essayists Fenimore Cooper^ 
 the most prolific and widely known, was just pass 
 ing away ; Miss Sedgwick and Mrs. Sigourney, 
 greatly read, though not destined to a lasting fame, 
 had closed their literary labors ; Herman Melville, 
 R. H. Dana, Jr., Donald G. Mitchell, Bayard 
 Taylor, were of Mr. Curtis s own age, or nearly so, 
 and some of them of his own circle. Nathaniel P. 
 Willis, in literature, as in life, claiming the func 
 tion of arbiter elegantiarum, and so far recognized 
 as such that I find a correspondent naively flatter 
 ing Curtis with the opinion that he may attain to 
 Willis s level, was then at the height of his vogue. 
 More brilliant, and with a larger number whose 
 fame was to be permanent among the writers of 
 that day, were the poets. Bryant at the age of 
 fifty-seven was the oldest, and had already achieved 
 the hold on the future which was sustained if not 
 strengthened by his later work. In 1851, he was 
 most prominent as a journalist of deep conviction 
 and of rare vigor and purity of style. Emerson s 
 poetry was accepted, with his prose, as an expres 
 sion of lofty and often mystical thought, and was 
 as yet more the object of a limited cult than the 
 general delight that it has since become. Whit- 
 tier s reputation also was high with a somewhat 
 limited class, but had not gained general recogni- 
 
56 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 tion. Longfellow was already the most read and 
 most widely loved of American poets. Lowell, but 
 five years the senior of Curtis, was at the height 
 of the peculiar popularity won by the " Fable for 
 Critics " and, in a different vein, " The Biglow 
 Papers." He had fairly thrown down the gauntlet 
 in the long fight with slavery, and, incredible as it 
 now seems, had perceptibly clouded his prospects 
 of advancement with those who were supposed to 
 distribute the prizes of literary effort. Curtis, 
 who was to become one of his closest friends, and 
 who was later to join him in the memorable con 
 test with slavery, was as yet but an admirer of his 
 varied but irregularly developed genius. Holmes, 
 who at twenty-two, had given the country one of 
 the most spirited of patriotic poems, " Old Iron 
 sides," was known chiefly as a Harvard profes 
 sor, with a rare gift for " occasional " verse. The 
 sisters, Alice and Phoebe Cary, published their 
 first volume of poems in the same year with the 
 " Nile Notes." Buchanan Read and Stoddard 
 had each one volume of poems to his credit. John 
 G. Saxe s little volume, revealing one of the bright 
 est and lightest of American humorists in verse, 
 was published in 1850. 
 
 It remains to mention that in history, Prescott 
 was the only writer who had achieved very much. 
 His "Ferdinand and Isabella," " Conquest of Mex 
 ico," and " Conquest of Peru," were, at that time, 
 the chief American histories, Bancroft had issued 
 but three volumes of his great work. Hildreth a 
 
THE LITERARY FIELD. 57 
 
 was in course of publication. Motley was hardly 
 decided as to his own course and was known only 
 as the author of " Morton s Hope," and " Merry 
 Mount," which one hardly thinks ol now in connec 
 tion with his name. 
 
 It is not easy in these closing days of the cen 
 tury, when Mr. Curtis s name is more or less 
 closely associated with the group of New England 
 writers whose names are so generally honored and 
 whose work has become an integral part and a 
 large part of the intellectual inheritance of edu 
 cated Americans, clearly to imagine how different 
 from that which we now recognize was the influ 
 ence they were able to exert upon him at the open 
 ing of his career. It is worth while to dwell with 
 some emphasis upon the fact that he was himself 
 one of the builders of American literature, and that 
 when he began to write, the conditions by which he 
 was surrounded were such as necessarily to throw 
 him upon his own resources. What he brought to 
 the structure was his own material, fashioned by 
 himself. It was not and could not be borrowed 
 from those who had gone before him, and if it was 
 a worthy and a substantial contribution, as, with 
 out exaggerating its importance, I believe that it 
 was, it must be remembered that what there was of 
 it was original. I think that it was so in style as 
 well as in matter, and it is in the hope of bringing 
 that fact more definitely to the minds of my readers 
 that I have given this brief, but I hope fairly accu 
 rate, review of the literary field in 1851. 
 
58 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 
 
 On the other hand, given a mind of native vigor 
 and of genuine sensitiveness, given healthy aspira 
 tions toward mental achievement, given a point of 
 view of rational independence and a character of 
 sound substance and of firm as well as fine texture, 
 and it was a good thing to begin near the begin 
 ning, to be of the pioneers, to share in youth the 
 common and powerful impulse of a young literary 
 society, to be more conscious of the immensity of 
 the future than of that of the past, and to feel that 
 what one shall succeed in accomplishing may have 
 a steadily widening influence upon the maturing 
 national mind. These were the advantages of one 
 whose work was begun in the middle of the nine 
 teenth century in our country. Mr. Curtis felt 
 them, and I think he made the most of them. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE HOWADJI BOOKS. 
 
 MR. CURTIS returned from Europe in 1850 with 
 a definite resolve to undertake the career of an 
 author. His first work, "Nile Notes of a How- 
 adji," was published the following spring, when he 
 had just entered his twenty-seventh year. " To 
 day," he wrote from Providence to a friend in 
 Cambridge, "will bring me the Nile Notes as a 
 book, I suppose, but I cannot have the proper 
 emotions. It seems all very natural, very much as 
 it seems to a young papa, who beholds a redness 
 in a white blanket, and is told that it is his heir ; 
 or perhaps even more as a sensible tree feels when 
 it sees one of its fruits fallen separate upon the 
 ground My hand trembles (as I speak of no 
 emotion) for this moment my book is placed in my 
 hand even as I wrote ground it arrived. You 
 will surely have received it before you read this, 
 Ah ! speak it fair ! my first born, my only child ! " 
 The book was very kindly received by the news 
 papers, though the notices of it which I have come 
 upon do not make that fact very conclusive as to 
 its merit, for most of them are curiously flat and 
 perfunctory. More significant was the sale of 
 
60 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 edition of twenty-five hundred copies within the 
 first half year. The author himself said, in April, 
 in his straightforward way : " The Nile Notes I 
 cannot hesitate to call successful, but not a great 
 hit." John Dwight, in the " Commonwealth " of 
 Boston, spoke in a tone at once flattering and dis 
 criminating. E. P. Whipple, one of the oracles 
 of the day, declares of it that he had " never be 
 fore felt the East." In referring to some pleasant 
 opinions he had heard, Mr. Curtis wrote : " In his 
 letter Mons. Aubepine (Hawthorne) tells another 
 twice-told tale. But how sweeter so ! How like 
 Fame, when a famous man applauds and says, 4 1 
 see now that you are forever an author ! " Bent- 
 ley of London published the book under the title 
 of "Nile Notes of a Traveler," apparently afraid 
 to trust the English reader with the Arabic equi 
 valent, Howadji. For this edition the publisher 
 paid the sum of five guineas, a curiously early 
 example of the necessity for international copy 
 right. It was explained that if the book " took " 
 it would immediately be printed for a shilling for 
 all the railway stations, while Bentley printed it 
 for ten shillings and sixpence. The English press 
 was extremely cordial. The London " Daily News," 
 the " Weekly News " (a wholly different paper) 
 the "Athenaeum," the " Literary Gazette " and the 
 " Spectator " all noticed the book, and nearly all 
 with praise. " Leigh Hunt," wrote Curtis, " speaks 
 of it in his 22d March number. He likes it and 
 praise? it, but in an amusing way. He says some- 
 
THE HOW AD J I BOOKS. 61 
 
 thing about the Author s meaning to outdo Long 
 fellow s Hyperion ! ! and of traces of D Israeli, Em 
 erson, Eothen, and I know not how many more. 
 But he so evidently likes it that the most morbidly 
 vain author would be more amused than annoyed 
 at his notice." 
 
 The book did not escape censure. "May an 
 immoral Howadji," wrote the author to a friend, 
 "dine with you on Wednesday?" This was the 
 smile that would hide pain. Mr. Curtis was deeply 
 wounded by some of the comments on his work. 
 His letters of this date, though full of expressions 
 of grateful surprise at the praise bestowed upon 
 him, and of simple-hearted, modest joy at his suc 
 cess, contain other expressions of hot and passion 
 ate indignation for those who had impugned the 
 purity of his purpose. The anger was natural; 
 with regard to some, it was just ; but on the whole, 
 it was undue. That Mr. Curtis s mind in youth as 
 in his riper age was pure, no one who knew him 
 could doubt. It did not necessarily follow that 
 those who did not and could not see as he saw, 
 were not pure. It was the forever-recurring dis 
 pute that art provokes from generation to genera 
 tion. Mr. Curtis was, in a great part of his na 
 ture, in some of the most attractive and engaging 
 manifestations of his nature, an artist. With 
 out offense and with immaculate devotion, he made 
 some of his studies from life. When his pictures 
 came from his easel, he did not find it requisite to 
 drape completely the beauty he had recognized and 
 
62 GEORGE WILL T AM CURTIS. 
 
 rejoiced in. One of his best loved artists in the 
 long, happy days in the Venetian galleries, before 
 he crossed the Mediterranean to Cairo, was Cor- 
 reggio. It never occurred to him, the boy fresh- 
 hearted from the cool walks of the Concord Aca 
 deme, that the women of Correggio were shocking 
 to look upon. If one cares to re-read, forty years 
 after, the chapters through which dance Kusheek 
 Arnem and the dove Xenobi, and remember that 
 they flowed from the pen, almost untried, of a youth 
 of twenty-six, he will find readily what lay open to 
 criticism on the score of taste and might honestly 
 be disapproved as the too vivid presentation of a 
 sensuous scene. But if he do not also find a grave 
 and noble feeling under the rich play of color, a 
 sense of the pathos and the tragedy that make 
 the sombre background of a scene at once so allur 
 ing and so disquieting, if there shall not remain 
 with him the impression of singular elevation and 
 breadth of view in this young writer, then, while 
 we may not dismiss him with the contempt the 
 young writer showed for some of his critics, we 
 may be permitted at least to differ from him. 
 
 On this particular point, I shall let Mr. Curtis 
 speak for himself, in the following manly letter to 
 his father written a few days after the publication 
 of the book : 
 
 PROVIDENCE, March 15, 51. 
 
 My DEAR FATHER, When I received s 
 
 first letter I was amused but not surprised. But 
 
THE HOWADJI BOOKS. 63 
 
 when he wrote that you were so shocked with my 
 book, I was extremely grieved, and so must always 
 be yet always with a conscience Void of offense. 
 My aim in the book was such that I was unwilling 
 you should see the manuscript because I knew that 
 we should differ so essentially that your displeas 
 ure might only be prolonged. But when I saw that 
 Mr. Raymond, whom you regard so highly and who 
 has no personal feeling for me, had selected the 
 exceptional chapter for the Magazine, I supposed 
 that I had overrated the nervousness of the gen 
 eral mind, and that the edict which cannot but 
 seem to me contemptible of immorality, or what 
 ever it is would not be passed. 
 
 I am sorry that I was not at home for two rea 
 sons, and glad for a good many that I was away 
 I was sorry that I had not ordered a copy sent 
 to you immediately, which, however, I had not done 
 for any one having only made a list of sundry 
 persons connected with journals and one or two 
 friends in distant parts of the country. Then I 
 was sorry that my absence seemed to indicate that 
 I had run away from a bad impression. However, 
 that is nothing, I want to say precisely how the 
 
 thing is and am very sorry that should talk 
 
 about obfuscated moral sense. 
 
 When I was in Egypt I felt that the picture 
 of impressions there had never been painted. 
 Travelers have been either theorists and philoso 
 phers or young men with more money than brains, 
 or professional travelers. In no book of any of 
 
64 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 them was the essentially sensuous, luxurious, lan 
 guid and sense-satisfied spirit of Eastern life as 
 it appears to the traveller represented. I aimed 
 to do that. Here and in every newspaper notice 
 (some dozen) that I have seen I find that I have 
 achieved that success, and I find the same thing 
 in all this outcry of immorality or indecency, or 
 whatever it is, and which comes from New York 
 alone. Now, the moral condemnation of ladies 
 and gentlemen who would sell any daughter to any 
 man, for a sufficient fortune, I do not very highly 
 esteem and that is the character of some, who, 
 I hear, are most eloquent against my book. The 
 moral sense of New York in general is so vitiated 
 that I care for it in general no more than for such 
 particular condemnations. My only sorrow is that 
 you should necessarily condemn the book, and I 
 am sorry, because it ought not to be condemned ! 
 The dancing girls occupy no more space in the 
 book than they occupied in the voyage, and they 
 must always occupy a large space because they are 
 the life and the most characteristically Eastern 
 life of the river. You of course will feel that the 
 whole thing might be omitted, but it would not be 
 the same book, it would not be my book, and it 
 would not in that case give the true picture of 
 the Egyptian life. 
 
 It is only the affected and self-conscious exagger^ 
 ation of the moral sense that could be so alarmed 
 I am angrier than I am vexed. The very brilliance 
 of the coloring shows that it is not prurient, but 
 poetic. 
 
THE HOWADJI BOOKS. 65 
 
 However, there is no end of such talk. I have 
 written, dear father, that you may know that I de 
 plore your disappointment, while I feel that it was 
 unavoidable. Had I written a book to please you, 
 I would not have published it because it would not 
 have pleased myself; and while I confess certain 
 expressions are too broad and might well be al 
 tered, the essential spirit of the book is precisely 
 what I wish it. I would not have it toned down, 
 for I toned it up intentionally. My objections are 
 not moral but literary. 
 
 The feeling that you have is, I am sure, more 
 personal to me than real to yourself. If the book 
 had been anybody s else, I doubt if you could 
 have been shocked. But with your natural inter 
 est in me and equally natural desire that I should 
 favorably impress every one, you were necessarily 
 grieved by what was suspicious to them, not re 
 garding if it ought to be, but simply if it was so 
 to them. 
 
 I never could regret having written the book. 
 If I should differ in my nature and character a 
 score of years hence, I shall be no more sorry than 
 I am that I once wore frocks, and I can say so ab 
 solutely because, as I began, my conscience is void 
 of offense. This outcry seems simply ludicrous. 
 Your affectionate son, 
 
 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 The "Nile Notes " and the " Howadji in Syria " 
 which followed in the next year, were the first 
 
66 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 product of a mind of extraordinary sensitiveness, 
 of much strength, released rather suddenly from 
 associations and habits of thought which, sustained 
 with entire sincerity, had exercised a restraint of 
 which the writer may have become aware only 
 when freed from it. There may be detected a 
 touch of half-humorous, half-deliberate defiance of 
 the men and the manners Mr. Curtis had left in 
 the little circle of New England transcendentalists. 
 " When the Persian Poet Hafiz," says the Preface 
 to the " Nile Notes," " was asked by the Philoso 
 pher Zenda what he was good for, he replied ; Of 
 what use is a flower ? 4 A flower is good to smell, 
 said the Philosopher. And I am good to smell 
 it, said the poet." The function of a poet, prom 
 enading a sensitive and irresponsible soul through 
 the lotus-fields of Egyptian experience and obser 
 vation, finding in the enjoyment of languorous 
 odors not merely the excuse but the justification 
 of his occupation, was certainly as far removed as 
 well could be from the lofty and severe ideals of 
 life in which Mr. Curtis had been nurtured. It is 
 not difficult to imagine the dismay it must have 
 caused some of his older companions to be asked 
 to take him at his word, and it is not surprising 
 that in the pages of the Howadji books they found 
 only too much evidence that his word was at once 
 sincere, and accurate, and that he had really de 
 scended from their cold heights to wander as long 
 as he could with Hafiz in the flower-carpeted vales. 
 As the role he had announced was novel, the 
 
THE HOW AD J I BOOKS. 67 
 
 style he assumed in it was novel also. It was 
 essentially artificial, the style of the stage he had 
 constructed for himself and had boldly furnished 
 with an elaborate set of conventions, which he sum 
 moned his readers to accept, if they cared to un 
 derstand the piece. The offer, indeed, was, with 
 gay haughtiness, a laisser ou a prendre. The 
 writer would abate no jot of his terms. From the 
 moment that "in a gold and purple December 
 sunset " he walked down to the boat bound for the 
 Nile to the moment when he reached Cairo again 
 "while the sun was wreaking all his glory upon 
 the West," the demand upon our imagination is 
 constant. We must read as we would watch and 
 listen to an opera, granting completely the as 
 sumptions of the composer. This done, there are 
 melody and harmony, passion and sensuous delight, 
 and to him who will take it aspiration toward 
 beauty and deep and varied beauty. But the con 
 ditions must be observed. 
 
 The note of invitation and of warning is sounded 
 on the first page. 
 
 " To our new eyes everything was picture. 
 Vainly the broad road was crowded with Muslim 
 artisans, home returning from their work. To the 
 mere Muslim observer they were carpenters, ma 
 sons, laborers and tradesmen of all kinds. We 
 passed many a meditating Cairene, to whom there 
 was nothing but the monotony of an old story in 
 that evening and on that road. But we saw all 
 the pageantry of oriental romance quietly donkey- 
 
68 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 ing into Cairo. Camels too, swaying and waving 
 like huge phantoms of the twilight, horses with 
 strange gay trappings, curbed by tawny, turbaned 
 equestrians, the peaked toe of the red slipper rest 
 ing in the shovel stirrup. It was a fair festal even 
 ing. The whole world was masquerading, and so 
 well that it seemed reality. 
 
 " I saw Fadladeen with a gorgeous turban and 
 a gay sash. His chibouque, wound with colored 
 silk and gold threads, was borne behind him by a 
 black slave. Fat and funny was Fadladeen as of 
 old, and though Fermorz was not by, it was clear 
 to see in the languid droop of his eye, that choice 
 Arabian verses were sung in the twilight of his 
 mind. 
 
 " Yet was Venus still the evening star ; for be 
 hind him, closely veiled, came Lalla Rookh. She 
 was wrapped in a vast black silken bag, that 
 bulged like a balloon over her donkey. But a star- 
 suffused evening cloud was that bulky blackness, 
 as her twin eyes shone forth liquidly lustrous." 
 
 No one, of course, will pretend that this is a 
 natural tone in which to write or talk, and the 
 young writer himself must have been free from 
 any such pretension, but if it was an artificial 
 style, it was not an empty one. The scenes he 
 had witnessed, the associations by which they were 
 surrounded, the thought they had aroused, were 
 intensely interesting, animating, absorbing. The 
 style was a sincere and faithful attempt to clothe 
 fitly what he had to say, to adapt the costumes and 
 
THE HOWADJI BOOKS. 69 
 
 the stage setting to the curious subject matter of 
 the piece. If what was to be said was of sufficient 
 substance, the plan of presentation was logical and 
 should justify itself, as in fact it does. One who 
 would seek a suggestive picture of travel on the 
 Nile and in Syria a half century since, before the 
 comforts of modern travel had opened the river 
 and the desert to those beneficiaries and victims 
 of Cook whose purpose is not strong enough to dis 
 pense with such comforts, can find none more truly 
 informing than in Curtis s books, delightfully free 
 as, for the most part, they are, of information. 
 The plan, it will be noted, was peculiarly elastic. 
 The writer sets out to tell you that which he saw 
 or experienced, and his thoughts, in the way that 
 seemed to him most suitable. He reserves to him 
 self the guidance of the way. He gives you no 
 clue. He promises no definite destination. He 
 lays out no task of which you shall have a right to 
 exact the completion ; you shall have what history 
 he may choose to give you, anil in such remote and 
 fanciful relations as may occur to him ; you may 
 see the people as he saw them, with the eye of the 
 poet and the artist, with flashes of philosophic in 
 sight and merry glances of humor, but you shall 
 not complain of the picture as lacking in detail or 
 in breadth, as too sober or too light. It is the pic 
 ture as it lies in his memory, as his imagination 
 and sympathy have developed and colored it. It 
 does not satisfy the reader ? Allans ! " Of what 
 use is a flower? " 
 
70 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 The result naturally is that while you get from 
 tltese books much, very much of Egypt and Syria, of 
 the Nile and the desert, of Damascus and Jerusalem 
 and Esne, of the land of the mighty past and of 
 the squalid and tragic present, of Cleopatra and of 
 Khadra and of the Ghazeeyah, you get still more 
 and constantly of the writer, and therein lies the 
 charm which still holds many readers. For now, 
 after the face of the land he visited is greatly 
 changed, and no one may again see, traversing his 
 itinerary, what was then to be seen ; though the 
 questions of that time, with which he occasionally 
 deals vigorously and acutely, are not the questions 
 of our day and will henceforth engage only the 
 historians, there remains, in the soft rich light of 
 these old volumes, a portrait of the young Curtis. 
 Those of us who knew him, if only by his work, in 
 his ripe and beautiful maturity, in that splendid 
 afternoon of his life when the sun so near its sud 
 den setting seemed still the sun of midday, will 
 always find in this portrait a mournful but deep 
 enjoyment. It is that of a noble youth, delighting 
 in life, in its novelty, its richness, and its oppor 
 tunities, not unmindful of its duties or of its trag- 
 ed}% of its infinite incitements and its relentless 
 limitations, but keenly sensitive to its beauty, and 
 mingling a genuinely earnest sense of its graver 
 side with the ready enjoyment of its lighter aspects 
 natural to the buoyancy of healthy spirits. 
 
 It is interesting also to trace in these volumes, 
 unique among Mr. Curtis s writings, as they are 
 
THE HOWADJI BOOKS. 71 
 
 in their subject matter, and written in a style that 
 was never afterward, save in brief portions of 
 " Prue and I " in any great degree maintained, 
 the qualities that proved lasting in his work. The 
 two that impress me most strongly were those that 
 contributed most to his extreme charm as an ora 
 tor, the picturesqueness of his impressions and the 
 rhythm of his expression. These are the more 
 noticeable because they had not yet been subdued 
 by study and reflection and labor. By picturesque- 
 ness of impression I would not suggest a view sen 
 sitive to " bits " and readily catching the subject 
 of a sketch, but rather the sensitiveness to effects, 
 a breadth of vision which took in what lay be 
 fore it, not in detail or by a continuous analytic 
 effort, but as a whole. Curtis was an ardent 
 lover of nature ; none of all our writers with whom 
 the love of nature is a characteristic trait was 
 more devoted or happier. His delight in it, from 
 his earliest to his latest years, was deep, unfailing, 
 as fresh and joyous in the latest as in the earliest. 
 But I find little trace of a minute knowledge of 
 nature in his writing and recall little in his talk. 
 He does not betray the intimate acquaintance with 
 facts or the acute interest in them that Lowell dis 
 closes on every one of so many pages. He easily 
 might have been, though I do not know that he 
 was, ignorant of the names or relations of the flow 
 ers and unable to tell more than the very general 
 characteristics of the trees that gave him such ex 
 quisite pleasure. There was little of the naturalist 
 
72 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 in him. It was, if I may venture to say so, the 
 generic beauty of nature that appealed to him 
 the landscape, not its features, the glory of the day 
 or night, the sweep of the horizon, the mood of 
 the sea, the sky, the valleys or hills or groves that 
 lay about him. " The palm-grove," he writes, " is 
 always enchanted. If it stretch inland too allur 
 ingly, and you run ashore to stand under the bend 
 ing boughs, to share the peace of the doves swing 
 ing in the golden twilight, yet you will never reach 
 the grove. You will gain the trees, but it is not 
 the grove you fancied that golden gloom will 
 never be gained it is an endless El Dorado 
 gleaming along the shores. The separate columnar 
 trunks ray out in foliage above, but there is no 
 shade of a grove, no privacy of a wood, except, in 
 deed, at sunset, A privacy of glorious light. v 
 It was the grove and not the trees that would sat 
 isfy him, and throughout his later work as in these 
 first books, the reader feels the curious charm of 
 the completeness and strength of his integral im 
 pressions. His vision disclosed pictures, not ob 
 jects, and with whatever care and skill and patient 
 workmanship he wrought them, it was not objects 
 but pictures that he presented. 
 
 The second quality that I have noted, the 
 rhythm of his expression, is clearly allied to the 
 first. Curtis seems to me to have been, in an im 
 portant sense, born an orator. Even the words of 
 these first pages read as if they had been thought 
 aloud, as if their cadence had been realized to the 
 
THE HOWADJI BOOKS. 73 
 
 ear in the sound of his own rare voice. Often 
 they come to the mind like the singing of the soli 
 tary and unconscious singer. His passionate and 
 constant delight in music shaped his phrases and 
 marshaled his sentences. There are plentiful in 
 stances of excess in this indulgence in the oriental 
 books, before his taste had been trained and his 
 judgment enlightened, but the excess is incidental 
 accidental even and the sense remains to the 
 reader of a pure, sincere and constant joy in the 
 music of his own expression. I merely remark 
 here these characteristics, which in more and more 
 highly developed form, are found in all his work, 
 and lent to it, in his maturity, much of the charm 
 that won his host of readers and hearers, and of 
 the completeness and force that held them. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 LECTURER AND MAGAZINE WRITER. 
 
 BEFORE he had completed " Nile Notes " Curtis 
 had made his venture in the lecturing field. The 
 first lecture seems to have been given in his na 
 tive city of Providence, whence I find him inquir 
 ing about the next "Assembly" not a Legisla 
 tive gathering at Boston, and announcing that 
 though he must " repeat " his " lecture " on the 
 "26th February" "he firmly intends to come back 
 for the Fancy Ball." In the spring, Horace Gree- 
 ley having gone to Europe, he went " on " the " Tri 
 bune " where, April 14th, he writes that he is " al 
 ready in labor with the critiques upon the Academy 
 Exhibition." His work was varied, what in news 
 paper parlance is known as " general utility," the 
 art notices, music, reading manuscript and foreign 
 papers, writing paragraphs and now and then a 
 " leader," described by one of his companions in 
 the office as " clever, agreeable, bright, never vio 
 lent or ugly." Some of the gentlemen on whose 
 work he passed judgment were not so lenient. 
 " The artists," he writes, in June 51, " are angry 
 
 with me, some of them. R thinks I am mali- 
 
 cioi/s Ye Gods ! and considers what I say of 
 
LECTURER AND MAGAZINE WRITER. 75 
 
 Hicks impolitic ! Well, I shall invite Dogberry to 
 comprehend these vagrom men, I give it up." 
 The companion quoted above thinks that Curtis was 
 " not a hard or very steady worker at that time. 
 He took the world easy and amused himself a good 
 deal." Curtis s own impression was quite differ 
 ent. When urged to buy a share in the Tribune 
 property and permanently unite himself with the 
 enterprise, he declined. " I shrink," he wrote, 
 " from the utter slavery of such a life. I have no 
 moment of day or night properly my own. If I 
 hear a concert, or a lecture, if I go, as to-night, to 
 the Cooper Commemoration, it is all to be written 
 out every bit of experience must be grist to this 
 imperious mill. I fear that every personal and 
 more interesting ambition or intent must be sacri 
 ficed to this incessant employment." And again, 
 
 "H is terribly lazy, which to me who await 
 
 foreign papers at the office until 2 A. M. and then 
 reel, drunk with sleep, homeward to correct Syrian 
 proofs, which startle me with the languid, sunny 
 repose they recall is the unpardonable sin." 
 
 In the summer of 1851 came a long respite. 
 " Soon," he writes in July, " I shall spread sheeny 
 vans for flight Niagara, Sharon, Berkshire, Na- 
 hant, Newport and general bliss ad infinitum" 
 These journeyings were the occasion of a series of 
 letters to the " Tribune," afterward published under 
 the title of " Lotus Eating," linking them thus to 
 the Howadji books. The little volume was illus 
 trated with pleasant woodcuts from sketches by his 
 
76 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 warm friend Kensett, and was quite as successful 
 as anything of the kind could be. There is much 
 still to enjoy in its notes of a life that has quite 
 passed away, and though the little volume was es 
 sentially ephemeral, in form and purpose, it gives 
 clear signs of the two tendencies of the writer 
 which were to be embodied in " The Potiphar 
 Papers " published the next year, and in " Prue 
 and I " four years later. It bears marks also of 
 the weariness with which Curtis s mind necessarily 
 reacted from the rather feverish social life in which 
 he had plunged, and which overtaxed his strength, 
 on which large demands were made by his really 
 laborious pursuit of his profession, and shows still 
 other marks of varied personal experiences, which 
 deeply affected him at the time and contributed to 
 the development of his character. 
 
 In the autumn he went to Providence to com 
 plete the preparation of the Howadji in Syria. 
 Among his letters from there, I find one to his 
 father, commenting on Judge Curtis s charge to 
 the grand jury of the United States Court on the 
 crime of treason ; the treason consisting in resisting 
 the return of fugitive slaves. It is so clear-cut 
 and firm in its reasoning that I quote it as showing 
 in what direction his mind moved on the question. 
 Referring to the Judge s declaration of the uniform 
 and absolute authority of law, Curtis writes : 
 
 "He forgot that the inherent human weakness 
 which makes laws necessary also affects the essen 
 tial character of those laws, and that there may be 
 
LECTURER AND MAGAZINE WRITER. 11 
 
 a legal organization of society -worse than social 
 chaos. The very oath by which we bind ourselves, 
 as officers of the human law, is the direct recogni 
 tion of a higher and more solemn obligation, and 
 the point where the citizen merges in the man he 
 did not consider, apparently, a point for his no 
 tice ; yet that is the essential point of the difficulty. 
 Nobody denies the obligations of the law, but laws 
 may be irretrievably bad, as in the case of the 
 Roman Emperors, as now in Italy under the 
 Austrian rule ; and by no obligation is a man 
 bound to regard them. In fact this pro-fugitive 
 slave law movement and the doctrine of law at all 
 hazards, is, in politics, the same damnation that 
 the infallibility of the Romish church is in re 
 ligion, and wherever, as with us, the tendency of 
 the times is to individual and private judgment, 
 the cause of the wrong is just as much lost in 
 politics as it is in Religion. 
 
 " All these things, which good order and com 
 mon sense and patriotism require to be discussed 
 publicly by our judges and legislators, they all 
 shirk, and, emphasizing the obvious, cry Victory ! 
 Thus William Goddard said to me : 4 What a fine 
 charge Yes, I said, but there is something 
 more. " 
 
 For the next few years Mr. Curtis led a varied 
 life. He formed a more or less close connection 
 with the house of Harper and Brothers, who had 
 published his books ; wrote sketches and social notes 
 for the Magazine, of which Henry J. Raymond 
 
78 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 was then the editor, and for the Weekly, in which 
 he started the department of the Lounger ; became 
 an associate, but subordinate editor of " Putnam s 
 Magazine," to which he was a regular contributor ; 
 gave a good many lectures, mostly on books, and 
 went often and much into society, the gayeties as 
 well as the richer fruits of which he enjoyed with 
 great zest. The work for the Harper periodicals 
 was of many sorts. In part it was slight comment 
 on the pictures, the plays, the players and singers 
 of the day, on the incidents of the life of New 
 York, more interesting in some ways than now and 
 much more easily grasped. Some of it was, how 
 ever, serious enough, and from time to time the 
 notes on men and events in Europe showed a firm 
 touch and a clear intelligent vision. In the social 
 articles, under the light and rather sentimental 
 surface treatment, there was a strong tone of mo 
 rality. In one of his longer paragraphs, he wrote 
 of Thackeray : " He seems to be the one of all 
 authors who takes life precisely as he finds it. If 
 he finds it sad, he makes it sad : if gay, gay. You 
 discover in him the flexible adaptability of Horace, 
 but with a deep and consuming sadness which the 
 Roman never knew, and which in the Englishman 
 seems to be almost sentimentality." This I im 
 agine describes pretty nearly the Thackeray that 
 Mr. Curtis deeply loved and admired, and to whom 
 he yielded the tribute of more or less conscious 
 imitation. The sadness in the younger man was 
 not so real, the seeming sentimentality was rather 
 
LECTURER AND MAGAZINE WRITER. 79 
 
 more obvious, but was a passing indulgence for a 
 mind not yet sufficiently settled to be as earnest and 
 genuine as it could and was to be, not yet having 
 found the object that could be pursued resolutely 
 enough to prevent the influence of Thackeray s 
 manner, rather than of Thackeray s purpose. 
 
 In these days Mr. Curtis wrote verse and a con 
 siderable amount of it. He even contemplated " a 
 volume of poems with Ticknor," and he delivered 
 a number of " poems " at college commencements. 
 These are not, so far as I have been able to find 
 them, of a high order. They were smooth enough, 
 and in passages they were what was then known as 
 "elegant," fashioned on the model of the Queen 
 Anne poets, but they seem so foreign to the char 
 acter of his mind as it afterward developed most 
 strongly, that I should never recognize one of 
 them as his from internal evidence. He had no 
 fondness for the work and no pride in it. " I m 
 not a poet," he wrote, " and I wish they would n t 
 ask. But as that is the worst excuse for not writ 
 ing verse, I consent." In this as in other directions, 
 he was trying his wings. If they did not sustain 
 him in long flights, he was distinctly successful in 
 short ones, and there are several songs l that are 
 
 1 Here are two selections : 
 
 THE REAPER. 
 
 I walked among- the golden grain 
 That bent and whispered to the plain, 
 " How gaily the sweet summer passes, 
 So gently treading o er us grasses." 
 
80 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 exquisite in form, and tender and touching in feel 
 ing. Had he devoted to this art the time and labor 
 necessary to the full unfolding of his powers, he 
 might easily have ranked high. I cannot regret 
 that he did not. He would at best have been one 
 of no small number, and he could hardly have 
 achieved the work he afterward performed. 
 
 A sad-eyed Reaper came that way, 
 But silent in the sing-ing day, 
 Laying the graceful grain along 
 That met the sickle with a song. 
 
 The sad-eyed Reaper said to me, 
 " Fair are the summer fields you see ; 
 Golden to-day to-morrow gray ; 
 So dies young love from life away." 
 
 " T is reaped, but it is garnered well," 
 
 I ventured the sad man to tell ; 
 " Though Love declines yet Heaven is kind, 
 
 God knows his sheaves of life to bind." 
 
 More sadly then he bowed his head, 
 And sadder were the words he said, 
 " Tho every summer green the plain, 
 This harvest cannot bloom again." 
 
 EGYPTIAN SERENADE. 
 
 Sing again the song you sung 
 When we were together young 
 When there were but you and I 
 Underneath the summer sky. 
 
 Sing the song, and o er and o er, 
 Though I know that nevermore 
 Will it seem the song you sung 
 When we were together young. 
 
LECTURER AND MAGAZINE WRITER. 81 
 
 Before he returned from Europe, he had formed 
 the project of a life of Mehemet Ali, to whom one 
 of the last chapters of the " Howadji in Syria " is 
 given. He pursued it with much seriousness for 
 several years, but finally gave it up. " Frankly," 
 he said, " the motive that held me loyal to it is not 
 the best : it was the desire to do something which, by 
 the orthodox and received standard, should be con 
 ceded to be a graver work than anything I have 
 done. But the reason is puerile, although the senti 
 ment is good." One thing which led him to drop 
 the task undoubtedly was the conviction, as he 
 wrote, that Mehemet Ali "was only a soldier of 
 fortune, a condottiere upon the splendid scale, 
 whose success was purely personal and therefore 
 transitory." Such a subject could not keep Mr. 
 Curtis up to his work. He was not a story-teller, 
 not an artist in historical painting. The litterateur 
 was already in bonds to the moralist. 
 
 His connection with " Putnam s Magazine " was 
 in some ways extremely fortunate. It gave him 
 work of a kind that he enjoyed and did well. It 
 extended his acquaintance 1 with the men of letters 
 
 1 The following is a note from Mr. Godwin s address upon Mr. 
 Curtis delivered to the Century Club : 
 
 " It may interest those who are curious as to our literary history 
 to add, that among our promised contributors the most of whom 
 complied with their promises were Irving, Bryant, Emerson, 
 Longfellow, Lowell, Hawthorne, Thoreau, George Ripley, Miss 
 Sedgwick, Mrs. Kirkland, author of A New Home : Who II fol 
 low ? J. P. Kennedy, author of Swallow Barn ; Fred S. Coz- 
 zens, of the Sparrowgrass Papers ; Richard Grant White, Shake 
 speare s scholar ; Edmund Quincy, author of Twice Married ; 
 
82 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 of the day. His intimate association with Charles 
 F. Briggs, the chief in the office, and with Parke 
 Godwin, his associate, was a healthful and fruitful 
 one, for both were men of fine fibre and strong pur 
 pose. Especially the connection gave him a fairly 
 defined objective for his activity, and one requiring 
 sustained and concentrated attention. 
 
 Parke Godwin, in his "Commemorative Address" 
 before the Century Association, gives some remi 
 niscences of the Putnam s days. Referring to 
 "The Potiphar Papers" and to " Prue and I," he 
 
 " It was evidence of the fecundity and versatility 
 of Mr. Curtis s gifts that while he was thus carry 
 ing forward two distinct lines of invention the one 
 full of broad comic effects, and the other of exqui 
 site ideals he was contributing to the entertain- 
 
 William Swinton, since the accomplished historian of The Army 
 .of the Potomac ; Richard Kimball, Herman Melville, of Ty- 
 pee and Omoo fame, Richard Henry Stoddard, E. C. Sted- 
 man, Ellsworth, Thomas Buchanan Read, Maria Lowell, Jer- 
 vis McEntee, and others. We had a strong backing from the 
 clergy, the Rev. Drs. Hawks, Vinton, Hanson, Bethune, Baird ; 
 also the occasional assistance of Arthur Hugh Clough, the friend 
 of Tom Hughes, Matthew Arnold, and other pupils of Dr. Arnold, 
 who was then in the country ; William Henry Herbert, reputed 
 grandson of the Earl of Pembroke, sportsman and naturalist, 
 known as Frank Forrester ; William North, a frank and brilliant 
 young Englishman ; Fitz James O Brien, who died in our War for 
 the Union ; and Thomas Francis Meagher, a gallant soldier in the 
 same war, and afterwards governor of Montana. Miss Delia Bacon, 
 whose unhappy history is told by Hawthorne in Our Old Home, 
 began her eccentric Shakespeare-Bacon controversy by a learned 
 and brilliant article in the Monthly." 
 
LECTURER AND MAGAZINE WRITER. 83 
 
 ment of our public in a half dozen other different 
 modes, monthly criticisms of music and the drama 
 that broadened the scope and raised the tone of 
 that form of writing ; rippling Venetian songs that 
 had the swing of the gondola in them ; crispy short 
 stories of humor or pathos ; reminiscences of the 
 Alps taken from his Swiss diaries ; elaborate re 
 views of books, like Dickens s ; Bleak House, the 
 Bronte novels, Dr. Veron s Memoires, 4 Hiawatha, 
 and recent English poetry, including that of Kings- 
 ley, Matthew Arnold, Thackeray, the Brownings 
 and Tennyson, which, written forty years ago, 
 have not been surpassed since by more appreciative, 
 discriminating, and sympathetic criticism, even in 
 that masterly and more elaborate book of our fel 
 low-member, The Victorian Poets. In addition 
 to these he gave us, from time to time, solid and 
 thoughtful discussions of Men of Character, of 
 Manners, of Fashion, of the 4 Minuet and the 
 Polka as social tide -marks, and of Rachel, 
 which may still be read with instruction and pleas 
 ure for their keen observation, their nice critical 
 discernment, their cheerful philosophy, and their 
 entrancing charms of style. 
 
 " Then, ever and anon, Mr. Curtis would be off 
 for a week or two, delivering lectures on 4 Sir 
 Philip Sidney, on 4 The Genius of Dickens, on 
 The Position of Women, and in one case a 
 course of lectures in Boston and in New York on 
 4 Contemporary Fiction. In a galaxy of lectur 
 ers which included Emerson, Phillips, Beecher, 
 
84 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 Chapin, Henry Giles, and others, he was a bright 
 particular star, and everywhere a favorite. A 
 harder-working literary man I never knew : he was 
 incessantly busy, a constant, careful, and wide 
 reader, yet never missing a great meeting or a 
 great address, or a grand night at the theatre. 
 From our little conclaves at No. 10 Park Place, 
 where, I fear, we remorselessly slaughtered the 
 hopes of many a bright spirit (chiefly female) he 
 was seldom absent, and when he came he took his 
 full share of the routine, unless Irving, Bryant, 
 Lowell, Thackeray, or Longfellow sauntered in, and 
 that day we worked no more. " 
 
 A few letters of this time from Curtis to Briggs 
 give glimpses of the various life to which Mr. God 
 win refers. He writes, December of 1853, from 
 Milwaukee : 
 
 MY DEAR DELUDED EASTERN, Why do you 
 
 stay in that dried-up, old-f ogyish East ? A man is 
 nothing if not a squatter upon the prairies ; for, my 
 
 dearest B , I have seen a prairie, I have darted 
 
 all day across a prairie, I have been near the Mis 
 sissippi, I have been invited to Iowa, which lies 
 somewhere over the western horizon. I feel as all 
 the people feel in novels, I confess the West ! 
 Great it is and greatly to be praised. 
 
 Yesterday the almanac said December, but the 
 sun said May, as we rolled out of Chicago to 
 wards the Mississippi. There was a boundless sky 
 and a boundless earth. It was the old feeling of 
 
LECTURER AND MAGAZINE WRITER. 85 
 
 the desert minus the romance of association, minus 
 history and the Arabian Nights. But if you could 
 fancy the sun relenting, and blessing instead of 
 blasting the wide level of the earth, then, having 
 seen the desert, you would know the prairie. 
 
 I feel that I am on my travels once more. De 
 troit (where I delivered two lectures, had an ova 
 tion, was requested to stay and deliver more, and 
 was magnificently lionized, and roared in my most 
 dulcet tones) has drifted into the East. 
 
 In the East the note is equally gay : 
 
 BOSTON, January 20, 54. 
 
 A being who whirls in a round of routs, din 
 ners, and visits, who, as his friend Tom Appleton 
 says, " nightly vomits fire and ribbons for the satis 
 faction of gaping multitudes, who is taken to balls, 
 and rushes into small fishing towns to fascinate 
 the alewives who betakes himself with his rush 
 light to illuminate small villages whereunto gas has 
 never been previously brought," has little time 
 for sublunary pursuits. Don t dream of a line 
 from me until I fly these syren east winds and 
 heavy rains, these beautiful women and hospitable 
 men. To-morrow I go to the Longfellows, and I 
 will write you a line soon again, that you may know 
 that the rose-leaf has not been utterly fatal. 
 
 My lecture ? Oh, yes, it was fine. The hall 
 was crammed ; see the " Transcript " of last night. 
 I was immediately asked to deliver another, in the 
 Monday evening course, but was too wise to accept. 
 
86 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 From Cambridge, whither he had gone to pre 
 pare one of his articles for the " Homes of Ameri 
 can Authors," he writes : 
 
 CBAIGIE HOUSE, June 8, 54. 
 
 I am staying now with the poet and his wife. 
 What though it rains, or shines ? It is quite the 
 same to me. I sit and look over the melancholy 
 meadows at the winding Charles, and quote my host, 
 or, which is better, I contemplate my hostess, and 
 thank God for the gracious and beautiful woman 
 for whom, clearly, the woods, flowers, the stars, 
 suns, and men were created. 
 
 Lowell, the neighboring poet (the P s prevail 
 in Cambridge, Poets, Philosophers, and Profes 
 sors of religion and other things), is busy with a 
 sketch of Keats, which must be done to-morrow. 
 
 It is for Professor , of Boston, editor of the 
 
 "English Poets." Professor is one of the 
 
 cleverest and best of the Cambridge men. He has 
 just been to Holyoke, and brought home a worm 
 more brilliant than Herrick s glow-worm or the 
 Cuban curculio. 
 
 I write you in Washington s chamber. The tiles 
 adorn my fireplace. But I am lazy and thick 
 headed. 
 
 He spent three months of 1854 at Newport, which 
 he calls " my country, where my airiest castles are 
 built and my fairest estates lie." I give, as they 
 ?un, a half dozen of letters to Mr. Briggs from 
 there : 
 
LECTURER AND MAGAZINE WRITER. 87. 
 
 NEWPORT, June 29, 54. 
 
 I have left the poets behind, and awake amidst 
 great historians and by the Poluphloisboio Tha- 
 lasses. Lowell sends as much love as one man can 
 send to another. Longfellow and his wife accom 
 panied me even to the cars, and I came slipping 
 along in the most gorgeous of summer sunsets, and 
 found myself in the most perfect of climates, with 
 a lofty compassion for those who celebrate the 
 savage shores of Staten Island. Lowell is coming 
 here in July to visit the Nortons, who arrive to-day. 
 Your particular friends Evert and George D. were 
 going out of the historian s house as I came in. I 
 see their figures fluttering upon the edge of the 
 cliff over the sea. They will be restored to your 
 longing heart to-morrow, for they leave to-night. 
 
 NEWPORT, July 7, 54. 
 
 My young friend Curtis is here, immensely tick 
 led to see his sentimental phiz in Putnam, and 
 struggling with a poem! All the fools are not 
 dead yet, it seems. But I, who have lived a lie for 
 thirty years, I, whose life was a riper romance 
 than the most imaginative of these idiots can invent, 
 must laugh at that simple ass, Curtis, who is actu 
 ally screwing out a poem in the regular old heroic 
 style. It is a great pity that young men should 
 waste themselves on literature and what not, in 
 stead of building steamers and laying up riches, 
 like my best of friends, or speculating on the great 
 scale, like my worst enemy. Curtis tells me he has 
 
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 written to Kensett to come here and stop, and give 
 up that silly Saguenay business for the present. 
 
 If he does I will let you know, for your friend 
 and chaplain, Dr. Choules, tells me that you are the 
 friend of all loafers and give them passages, and I 
 know not what else. 
 
 AQUIDNECK, July 12, 54. 
 
 For newspapers and editorial discrimination I 
 have acquired the profoundest reverence, from hav 
 ing been half a year " upon " the " Tribune " and by 
 having dined semi-occasionally with the Press Club. 
 That editors are wise as well as witty, sagacious as 
 well as sonorous, and as full of feeling as of fancy, 
 are three alliterative facts of which I consider my 
 self amply assured. And yet, spite of their witty 
 wisdom, I love the loafers, the scapegraces, the sin 
 ners. I, too, am a Bohemian. 
 
 NEWPORT, July 23, 54. 
 
 That a man who did n t like Lawrence s head of 
 Lowell and of Longfellow should admire the print 
 of a beatified barber and irreproachable steam 
 boat captain, which Hueston meant to publish as 
 my likeness, was perfectly natural, only in future I 
 am sure you will permit me to laugh out loud at 
 your artistic admirations and censures. It is also 
 entirely rational and to be naturally expected that 
 you should be supported in your commendation of 
 a melancholy libel by such eminent connoisseurs as 
 were quoted to me by name in connection with your 
 
LECTURER AND MAGAZINE WRITER. 89 
 
 own. I am sorry that you will be deprived of the 
 pleasure of having me in my favorite character of 
 reformed George Barnwell, set in gold, with a cir 
 clet of Clark s hair worn in your cherishing bosom ; 
 for I have written Mr. Knickerbocker Hueston 
 that, rather than make my bow to the world in such 
 an unexceptionable coiffure, etc., I would snatch up 
 my story and decamp from the " gallery." 
 You are a high old humbug. 
 
 AQUIDNECK (Isle of Peace and Plenty), 
 August 10, 54. 
 
 MY DEAR FRIEND ZACCHEUS, Please climb 
 a tree and consider the denizens of Newport, how 
 they loaf ; they write not, neither do they read ; and 
 yet I say unto you that Solomon with all his 
 concubines had not a better time. Time goes I 
 know not where, I care not how. Upon cool morn 
 ing piazzas I sit talking with the Muses, in warm 
 evening parlors I rush dancing with the Graces. 
 Two hundred carriages with the dust of eight hun 
 dred wheels throng to Bateman s in the afternoon, 
 or, dustless and delicious, prance along the hard 
 bottom of the sea, or far out upon the island, driv 
 ing the genial Kensett. We look back across woods, 
 and meadows white to the harvest, and see the pic 
 ture of peace and plenty framed in the soft sapphire 
 of the sea. There are no end of pretty women. 
 At the Bellevue dance on Monday I saw more really 
 lovely girls than often fall to the lot of anybody s 
 less than a sultan s eyes. Baltimore is especially 
 
90 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 brilliant. There are Southern women also, all 
 wrong upon the great Question ! ! ! wronger and 
 more unreasonable, but more courteous, than the 
 
 men. Bob J is here dancing with all the 
 
 girls, and sometimes so drunk that he cannot move 
 across the floor. / dance and people say, " I 
 thought you hated it." " I love it, madam ! " " Yes, 
 like other men, you say one thing and do another." 
 " Pardon, most lovely of women, I write and say 
 what I think. I have never been treacherous to 
 my love of the dance." 
 
 AQUIDNECK (Isle of Peace), October 9, 54. 
 
 Where are you this bland Sunday morning? 
 These great, gorgeous days chase each other through 
 these spacious skies and die in unspeakable splen 
 dor along the sea. I am going to church, because 
 I shall hear a man of earnest and solemn feeling 
 chant a kind of religious reverie which his congre 
 gation love, but I am sure do not understand. 
 The people, also, look calm and pious. There is 
 not too strong a sense of millinery. Now that the 
 flood-tide has fallen away from these shores of 
 fashion, the pearls glisten in the sunshine. 
 
 I shall come home about the 23d of October, 
 write a lecture, be away at the West in December, 
 home in January, away at the East in February, 
 and home in March. I mean to lecture during two 
 months and make two thousand dollars. I have 
 put my price up to fifty dollars. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 " THE POTIPHAR PAPERS ; " 
 
 FROM Mr. Curtis s work for " Putnam s Maga 
 zine " came two volumes by which he is, perhaps, 
 even better known in American letters than by the 
 Howadji books, " The Potiphar Papers " and " Prue 
 and I." " It was while providing entertainment for 
 our readers in a second number," says Mr. Parke 
 Godwin, " that the vivacious Harry Franco (Charles 
 F. Briggs, the editor-in-chief) exclaimed, I have 
 it ! Let us each write an article on the state of 
 parties. You, Howadji, who hang a little candle 
 in the naughty world of fashion, will show it up 
 in that light. Mr. Curtis ... at once wrote a 
 paper on the state of parties, which he called 4 Our 
 Best Society. It was a severe criticism of the fol 
 lies, foibles, and affectations of those circles which 
 got their guests, as they did their edibles and car 
 riages, from Brown, Sexton and Caterer, and which 
 thought unlimited supplies of terrapin and cham 
 pagne the test and summit of hospitality. Tren 
 chant as it was, it was yet received with applause. 
 Some thought the name of the leading lady more 
 suggestive than facts warranted, and that in such 
 phrases as rampant vulgarity in Brussels lace, 
 
92 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 4 the orgies of rotten Corinth/ and the frenzied 
 festival of Borne in her decadence, the brush was 
 overloaded. None the less, the satire delighted the 
 public, and was soon followed by other papers in 
 the same vein, since collected as The Potiphar 
 Papers. The older folks acknowledged them to 
 be the best things of the kind since Irving and his 
 friends had taken the town with the whim-whams 
 and conceits of Evergreen Wizard and the Cock 
 loft family. They were to some extent exaggera 
 tions, in which occasional incidents were given as 
 permanent features; but their high and earnest 
 purpose, their genuine humor, their amusing de 
 tails, their hits at characters, and their sarcasms 
 deodorized of offensive personality by constant 
 drippings from the springs of fancy, won them 
 great favor. If we behind the screen sometimes 
 felt that we shook hands with Kurz Pacha and the 
 Reverend Cream Cheese, they were, like sweet bully 
 Bottom, marvelously translated. " 
 
 I suppose that this summary of the impressions 
 of a contemporary and a companion gives a fair 
 view of the way in which " The Potiphar Papers," 
 at the time of their appearance, affected intelligent 
 minds familiar with the society of the day. There 
 is plenty of evidence of the interest they excited. 
 They had great vogue, and greatly helped the 
 young magazine, while they brought to their writer 
 much notoriety and some fame. As was natural, 
 they made " hard feelings " among those who were, 
 or thought they were, satirized in these pages ; but 
 
THE POTIPHAR PAPERS; PRUE AND I. 93 
 
 on the whole they were greatly enjoyed, and their 
 healthy purpose was recognized. Taken up now 
 after forty years, a reader must be well through 
 middle age to recognize their substantial basis of 
 fact, and, so far as they survive, it is as satire on 
 the one hand and a picture of the author s mind 
 on the other, rather than as- a description of society. 
 Yet a description of society they really were, with 
 a sadly substantial basis of fact. Mr. Curtis s own 
 letters and those of his contemporaries, and the re 
 collections of men who moved in the same circles, 
 are not lacking in evidence that the brush was not 
 very heavily overloaded. It was a period of swift 
 money-making, when a great and increasing crowd 
 of men and women were rapidly gaining the means 
 for a life without work, and for the luxuries and in 
 dulgences that had previously been within the reach 
 only of inherited wealth. To get money was rela 
 tively easy. It was a matter of energy and shrewd 
 ness amid abounding opportunities. To spend 
 money rationally or with refinement was something 
 far different, for which neither nature nor training 
 had fitted the possessors, and for which the con 
 ditions of success in getting it had particularly un 
 fitted them. The spending, like the getting, became 
 an affair of competition, and in both it was quan 
 tity that told. But the latter competition was largely 
 intrusted to the women, and they were, far less than 
 their husbands, subjected to strong conventions, 
 and wrought their wayward purpose with irrespon 
 sible, unenlightened, feverish energy. In such con 
 
94 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 ditions Mesdames Potiphar and Croesus and Gnu, 
 Mr. Gauche Boosey and Miss Caroline Petitoes be 
 came not only possible or probable, but actual, so 
 far as their conception of life goes, or their mode 
 of acting. While, therefore, " The Potiphar Pa 
 pers " are not pleasant reading for the children and 
 grandchildren of the class represented in their 
 pages, I should advise no one to put the 4>ook aside 
 with the notion that it is a greatly exaggerated 
 or even a particularly strongly colored account of 
 what went on under the eyes of the writer. 
 
 If the book is to be considered independently of 
 its accuracy, it must appear very uneven. The best 
 parts of it by far are the serious parts, the com 
 ment of the artist rather than the figures he draws. 
 The spirit of the author is of one intense indignation, 
 of anger and revolt and sorrow, at the un worthiness 
 of what he depicts. Nurtured himself in the pure 
 idealism of intellectual and moral New England, 
 yet with a keen and warm delight in the joys 
 the sensuous as well as the spiritual and emotional 
 joys of life, bringing from wide travel and varied 
 society an eager zest for the happiest and the best, 
 a patriot moreover in every fibre of his being, with 
 a sensitive pride in his native land and high hopes 
 of what it might be, a high standard of what it 
 should be, all doors flung wide open to his budding 
 fame and his charming personality, Curtis was 
 deeply moved by what he saw of greed and vulgar 
 ity and coarse display, and the unseemly strife in 
 money-spending. The opening chapter, " Our Best 
 
THE POTIPHAR PAPERS; PRUE AND L 95 
 
 Society," expresses this feeling, and on some ac< 
 counts it might have been better had he stopped 
 with that. On some accounts, but not on the whole ; 
 for there is so much of good sense, so much fair 
 ness, humor, wit, philosophy in the other papers that 
 it would have been a pity to lose them. As satire, 
 however, they cannot be called highly successful. 
 They fall distinctly below that of Thackeray, on 
 which they are more or less consciously fashioned. 
 Their bitterness is not caustic enough ; the under 
 tone of gravity is not deep enough ; the fancy, 
 though subtle and delicate, is not sustained or con 
 sistent, and the light dramatic machinery adopted 
 does not work smoothly. Particularly the charac 
 ters are not alive with any sense of reality. The 
 reader is now and then puzzled and even annoyed 
 by their variation from the types for which they are 
 intended to stand. They frequently excite pity, 
 but not sympathy. All of which means only that 
 Curtis was not a creative writer, and, considering 
 how small a part of his writing was in this direc 
 tion, that is not a very important criticism. It 
 would be, indeed, hardly worth making, were it 
 not that in this instance the choice of a form not 
 giving free scope to his strongest qualities, but 
 cramping and slightly distorting their effect, ob 
 scures somewhat the real value of the work, which 
 is substantial. That value comes from the force 
 and elevation of the writer s purpose. It was 
 no small thing in those days that a man of his 
 knowledge and insight, wielding a pen of such sin- 
 
96 GEORGE WILLIAM &URTIS. 
 
 gular charm, reaching so wide a class of intelligent 
 readers, should have worked out that purpose in 
 the way in which he worked it out, should have 
 set in the pillory by the wayside the vices of a soci 
 ety unquestionably fascinating to many, and, with 
 every word of scorn or ridicule or irony that he 
 cast at them, should have made plainer and more 
 respected the high ideals which they violated. As 
 the satirist is not always the moralist, but is some 
 times the hopeless cynic, wearying and discourag 
 ing and depressing the manhood and womanhood 
 of his readers, I do not take it to be a serious qual 
 ification of Mr. Curtis s position in literature that 
 he was not eminently a satirist. And as the sound 
 moralist, however he may elect or be impelled to do 
 his work, does work that lasts and blesses while it 
 lasts, I find in this volume a service for which we 
 may well be thankful, for which I feel deeply thank 
 ful, knowing that its influence was not only whole 
 some but strong and wide. Many a young man, 
 reading the papers from month to month, found 
 erected between him and the temptation of a frivo 
 lous and essentially low life the light but not easily 
 disregarded barrier of the scorn of a guide who was 
 at once a moralist, a philosopher, and an accom 
 plished gentleman. 
 
 The second of the books issuing from the pages 
 of Putnam s was " Prue and I." I am glad again 
 to cite the words of Mr. Godwin, who says that 
 " Mr. Franco and his colleague of the triumvirate 
 used to look forward to these delightful papers as 
 
THE POT IP EAR PAPERS; PRUE AND I. 97 
 
 one does to a romance to be continued ; and when 
 we received one of them, we chirruped over it, as if 
 by some strange merit of our own we had entrapped 
 a sunbeam." Sunbeams unfading they are, and I 
 believe will be for long years yet to come, ten 
 der, gay, rich, sweet, life-giving, touching the clouds 
 that gather at evening with hues as lovely as those 
 that ushered in the dawn. It is well-nigh forty years 
 since " Prue and I " came to me, one of the innum- 
 erous books of my boyhood, and was my frequent 
 companion in long strolls over the autumn hills or 
 among the woods of spring. No year of the two- 
 score has passed, I think, that the book has not been 
 read again, and every year its subtle charm has 
 grown more charming and more subtle. Had Curtis 
 written only this, had this alone represented to 
 the world the character and gifts, the aspirations and 
 the attainments, of the man, his fame in one sense 
 would rather have gained than suffered, because he 
 would always have been associated with this singu 
 larly perfect production. I can imagine how we 
 might then have mourned the fate that deprived us 
 of further fruit of so rare a sort, and might have 
 set ourselves to fancy how he would have developed, 
 what sound wisdom, what serene dignity, what beau 
 tiful loyalty to the best and purest, what fine and 
 delicate range of a warm and chaste imagination 
 would have unfolded in the riper and wider work of 
 the author of "Prue and I." It is one of the curious 
 effects of the limits nature sets to even our mental 
 appetites, that when what would have been but the 
 
98 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 imagined achievements of this author have become 
 realities, and have multiplied through a long and 
 fertile life, the fame that these have won for him is 
 less distinct than the. one book would have given 
 him. Not less firm, certainly, nor less admirable, 
 but less distinct ; so that I find the book, with very 
 many, an incidental association with Curtis s mem 
 ory, and not, as it has grown to be with me, largely 
 the embodiment, the type of all associations. I 
 like to think that it was with this book in his mind 
 that Lowell wrote : " Had letters kept you, every 
 wreath were yours." For it seems to me that in 
 this book there is more of the man, of the thinker, 
 dreamer, artist, and moralist, than anywhere else 
 in the great mass of his writings. And indeed, it 
 could not but be very genuine. Here is no elab 
 oration of years, no polished and repolished gem, 
 slowly and carefully wrought with critical reflec 
 tion and matured art. Here are a scant half dozen 
 magazine articles, filling a couple of hundred of 
 small pages, written with rushing pen, amid varied 
 and pressing occupations, at times in the stolen mo 
 ments of hurried journeys, and never in the calm of 
 deliberate industry. What was put on paper was 
 what sprang from the unforced mind. From the 
 conditions of their writing the papers were a species 
 of improvisation, and I think that in great part to 
 that is due their unity and strength amid such rich 
 variety, such bold and unreined fancy. What we 
 get is the man, everywhere and always, nothing less 
 or other. 
 
THE POTIPHAR PAPERS; PRUE AND I. 99 
 
 In " Prue and I " the dramatic machinery, un 
 like that of " The Potiphar Papers," runs with en 
 tire ease. It is very slight and the persons are few 
 the old book-keeper and his immortal wife, Tit- 
 bottom, and Bourne the millionaire. The motive 
 is by no means very novel. The reflections of a 
 philosopher of moderate or scant means upon the 
 fortunes, successes, failures, realities, and shams 
 of his fellow-beings have been written for ages in 
 many tongues. The compensations for the deficien 
 cies of life to be got from a lively imagination, the 
 advantages of fancied adventure over the uncertain 
 and trying reality, the riches of the world of books 
 to him whose only possession save a contented 
 mind they are, have been sung and painted ever 
 since the favors of fortune began to vary the 
 conditions of men. So far from being novel, the 
 general theme of the book may be called danger 
 ously hackneyed, and has spread pitfalls of com 
 monplace in the way of numberless writers old 
 and young. The world of readers yawns at the 
 memory of the weary platitudes with which it has 
 strewn the pages of books since before the inven 
 tion of printing. But if the theme be not novel it 
 is because the contrasts of life are as old as the 
 race, and men who think at all are forced in one 
 vein or another to think of them. It is the dis 
 tinction of Curtis that his thought of them is so 
 sweet, so sound, so subtle in its insight, broadly 
 wise, gracious and luminous in its expression, es 
 sentially noble in spirit. It is not merely or chiefly 
 
100 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 the delight of the artist in the harmony brought 
 out of variety that the author feels as he works in 
 with rich fancy the different characters and scenes. 
 It is deep and tranquil joy in the substance of pur 
 ity, kindness, justice, and love which these vari 
 ations illustrate. The modest and faithful and 
 unimaginative Prue is the real inspiration of the 
 piece. One feels that her love of poetry, her pleas 
 ure in the fine things of the finest books which her 
 husband reads to her with glowing or tear-dimmed 
 eyes, her enjoyment of the sunsets so magical, 
 so infinitely suggestive to him, are almost purely 
 sympathetic, are born of her love for him, and in 
 the quaint humor, with which her husband admits 
 this to himself and to his readers, one feels also that 
 the love of this pure and gentle woman is the real 
 thing before whose gracious radiance the splendors 
 of nature and literature and imagination pale their 
 ineffectual fire. 
 
 If the writer peoples the world of wealth and 
 fashion, which he assumes to watch from afar off, 
 with beautiful women whose " beauty is heaven s 
 stamp upon virtue ;" if he makes of his own fancy 
 the ideal cavalier whose perfect reverence and grace 
 and manly purity match the qualities of the woman, 
 he never permits the suspicion that the reality is 
 not possible : he only insists that, unless the reality 
 is there, luxury is no better than poverty, and that 
 true manliness and womanliness are common to all 
 conditions. There is no suggestion of a sneer in 
 the smile with which he greets the carriage of An- 
 
THE POTIPHAR PAPERS; PRUE AND I. 101 
 
 Telia, and describes his own misadventure with the 
 " wrinkled Eve" whose apple-stand tempted him to 
 his fall. The smile suggests, indeed, the ephemeral 
 nature of Aurelia s social advantages, and even of 
 her youthful beauty, and implies that the accidents 
 of poverty are not of any more permanent serious 
 ness than those of riches ; but that is not because 
 the old book-keeper holds with the preacher that all 
 is vanity, but because he holds that the only really 
 important thing is virtue, and that virtue bears 
 imperial sway wherever its throne may be set up. 
 This it is that gives to the book its perennial charm. 
 Its charm as literature I think very great, it 
 grows with every reading. There is a wide range 
 of delightful literary suggestion in the little volume. 
 It teems with rich and varied allusion. One feels 
 in reading it that he is in intimate intercourse with 
 the best minds, and every literary association it 
 awakens is touched with a new light. The fantas 
 tic characters that swarm unresting on the deck 
 of the Flying Dutchman, beneath the spectral 
 shrouds, and in the mystery of smoke and haze, 
 have been called from pages known to all the world ; 
 but whenever the reader again sees them they will 
 be different, and more than they had been, for the 
 illumination bestowed by the pen of Curtis. Nor 
 has Curtis anywhere else, I think, sounded such 
 solemn depths. There are suggestions of them in 
 the Howadji books, but hardly more. The under 
 tone of " Titbottom s Spectacles " is of pure tragedy, 
 and that of " A Cruise in the Flying Dutchman " 
 
102 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 is only less so. But nowhere is it more than an 
 undertone, and the last page leaves us again under 
 the glance of Prue s pure eyes, safe from the ques 
 tions that vex us with thoughts beyond the reaches 
 of our souls. 
 
 In " Prue and I " Curtis s style, though not yet 
 fully developed, was determined, and nearly every 
 quality to be found in " The Easy Chair," in the 
 great orations, and even in the editorial writings 
 of after years, is here. The style of the Howadji 
 is far in the past. There is no more opera, no 
 more array of conventions splendid but artificial, 
 no longer the gay and haughty demand on the assent 
 of the reader. There is instead the most engaging 
 candor, and, amid a wealth of fancy and imagery 
 and glowing sentiment, there is the essential sim 
 plicity of sincerity. The book from first to last 
 breathes integrity. It amuses, it delights, it stirs 
 the imagination, it thrills delicately the most sensi 
 tive chords, but above all it inspires affection and 
 respect. The writer, though he should be forever 
 unknown, is henceforth forever a friend, to be loved 
 and always to be trusted. 
 
 In December, 1855, at the close of the year in 
 which " Prue and I " was begun, Mr. Curtis became 
 engaged to Miss Anna Shaw, daughter of Francis 
 G. Shaw, of Staten Island. On Thanksgiving Day, 
 1856, they were married. It was in every way a 
 most happy union, and the marriage marked, if not 
 a turning point, a distinct and important stage in 
 the career of Mr. Curtis. Among the guests at 
 
THE POTIPHAR PAPERS; PRUE AND I. 103 
 
 the quiet wedding was Major John C. Fremont. 
 I shall have occasion later to refer to the part Mr. 
 Curtis took in the great campaign in which the 
 " Pathfinder " led the first gallant and splendid 
 charge of the Republican party against slavery, 
 and to the influence of Mr. Curtis s connection 
 with the Shaw family in stimulating and sustain 
 ing, if not in arousing, his zeal in the cause of 
 freedom. That influence pure, strong, inspir 
 ing, and in the highest sense moral was to con 
 tinue through life. I am sure that I violate no 
 essential reserve in stating that, in the long and ar 
 duous years of Mr. Curtis s varied work, his home 
 was always a haven where he constantly sought 
 refuge and repose, and from which, refitted, re 
 inforced, inspired with renewed confidence and cour 
 age, he set out to the "good wars" that invited 
 him, and that to the gracious and noble lady who 
 made that home is due no small share in his many 
 and rich achievements. 
 
CHAPTER 
 
 BUSINESS EXPERIENCES. 
 
 THE seven years following Mr. Curtis s return 
 from Europe in 1850 were very busy, and generally 
 very laborious, particularly after the establishment 
 of " Putnam s Magazine." While still engaged on 
 that, he had begun the series of weekly contribu 
 tions to " Harper s Weekly " by " The Lounger," to 
 which I have already referred ; had written a num 
 ber of social essays for " Harper s Monthly ; " and 
 finally, in 1854, had undertaken the sole charge of 
 the " Easy-Chair." Meanwhile he kept up his lec 
 turing, with what energy the extracts from his let 
 ters already given show. For the most part he 
 took his task lightly enough, and found " no end " 
 of amusement, as well as much satisfaction, in his 
 treatment by the local press of the cities he visited. 
 He wrote January 15, 1853, to his father : 
 
 " A Utica paper makes a rather amusing notice 
 of the lecture. It is to the effect that whoever has 
 read Mr. C. s books must have known what kind of 
 a lecture to expect, that it was full of gorgeous 
 imagery, and that, although it had humor, beauty 
 was its characteristic, but was full of sudden and 
 quaint contrasts that presented an endless series of 
 
BUSINESS EXPERIENCES. 105 
 
 grave and gay imagery. Yet an almost feminine 
 perception of beauty, an unlimited command of 
 language, an imagination chastened but rich, and 
 evidently moulded by the most soothing influences 
 of the Orient, resulted in a work which the hearer 
 could not forget, a series of pictures that would 
 linger long in the memory of every one present. 
 That is about the pith of it, which has the invalu 
 able merit of praising the lecture for just what ifc 
 was not ! So, what with commendation for what 
 it is and for what it is not, it will go hard with it 
 if it does not secure all suffrages." 
 
 The few letters to his father that have come into 
 my hands are extremely interesting, and some of 
 them very touching. There was a very sound and 
 wholesome relation between father and son. The 
 early essential independence of mind shown by the 
 latter, always accompanied by and indeed resting 
 on a strong affection and sincere respect, together 
 with the gayety of many of the letters, show the 
 intimacy that existed. Mr. Curtis was not yet 
 thirty-two when his father died. Shortly after 
 that loss he wrote to his mother (January 21, 
 1856): 
 
 " You may imagine how sad and strange it is not 
 to feel father s interest and anxiety in my success. 
 I used to read everything that was said about me 
 with his eyes, and so gladly sent him all the praise. 
 But I do not feel at all removed from his real sym 
 pathy and interest even now. He is lost to the eye, 
 but not at all, even as a father, to the heart. I 
 
106 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 shall always live as if in his eye. In every act 1 
 shall always feel his judgment. . . . To children, 
 parents are matters of course, like trees and stones. 
 But when we become men and women, we reverence 
 their individual excellence, and when we lose them 
 we know that we have lost friends. How just and 
 calm and generous a friend my father was to me ! 
 He was so candid and simple in his love that I 
 never ceased to feel myself a boy when I was 
 with him." 
 
 He was soon to gather some of that harvest of 
 experience which tells us beyond all question that 
 the springtime of life has passed forever. In the 
 spring of 1856 he had put some money into the 
 publishing firm of Dix, Edwards & Co., to whom 
 had passed the ownership of " Putnam s Monthly." 
 They failed the next year in April, and in August 
 Curtis, in a letter to Mr. Charles Eliot Norton, de 
 scribes his experience in business : " I was respon 
 sible as a general partner. To save the creditors 
 (for I would willingly have called quits myself), I 
 threw in more money, which was already forfeited, 
 and undertook the business with Mr. Miller, the 
 printer, who wanted to save himself. Presently 
 Mr. Shaw put in some money as special partner. 
 But what was confessed to be difficult, when we re 
 lied upon the statements given us, became impossi 
 ble when those statements turned against us, and 
 last week we suspended. In the very moment of ar 
 rangement, it appeared that by an informality Mr. 
 Shaw was held as a general partner : the creditors 
 
BUSINESS EXPERIENCES. 107 
 
 swarmed in to avail themselves of the slip, and we 
 are now wallowing in the law. Of course I lose 
 everything and expected to, but there is now, in 
 addition, this ugly chance of Mr. S. s losing sixty 
 or seventy thousand dollars, and all by an accident 
 which the creditors fully comprehend." 
 
 Without going into the details of the arrange 
 ment by which this trouble was finally settled, it is 
 sufficient to say that Mr. Curtis assumed a large 
 indebtedness for which he was not legally bound, 
 and for nearly a score of years labored incessantly 
 to pay it, devoting to that purpose the money 
 earned by lecturing. It was an arduous task, in 
 volving not merely the work of preparation and 
 the time spent in traveling, but much hardship 
 and exposure, much sacrifice of the joys of a home 
 peculiarly dear, and the almost complete abandon 
 ment of sustained scholarly pursuits to which he 
 had looked with longing. It was not, however, 
 without compensations, and some of high value. 
 Of these, necessarily, the greatest was the one he 
 rarely if ever mentioned, the satisfaction of his 
 conscience. Besides this, however, there was the 
 close acquaintance he formed in every part of the 
 Union with the many of those who were to march 
 with him in the field of the better politics. When 
 he took up the work of an editor a few years later, 
 this acquaintance was continued and extended, and 
 was of inestimable value to him and to the country. 
 It gave him the sureness of aim which made his writ 
 ing more effective, perhaps, than that of any other 
 
108 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 man in his generation ; and it helped to give him 
 also the sense of confidence in the final triumph of 
 the causes in which he successively engaged, which 
 was at once a source of strength to himself and an 
 inspiration to others. This experience, moreover, 
 was a constant training in the art of public speak 
 ing, of which he became easily, I think, the greatest 
 master of his country in his time. But of these 
 compensations there was, of course, no thought 
 when Mr. Curtis calmly took up the heavy burden 
 which he knew would not be discharged for many 
 years, if ever. That was done in the quiet and un 
 questioning obedience to the law of simple, manly 
 fidelity that was a law of his nature, and as inte 
 gral a part of it as his kindness of heart and gen 
 tleness of manners. So modestly was it done that 
 I have almost a sense of offending his proud and 
 delicate self-respect in thus speaking of it, as if it 
 were a thing he could have helped doing. But we 
 all know that it was a thing of a sort rarely done : 
 any account of Mr. Curtis s life would be deficient 
 were it omitted. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE CAMPAIGN OF 1856. 
 
 IN 1846, ten years before the first candidate of 
 the Republican party had been named, James Rus 
 sell Lowell had written, apropos of the movement 
 for the annexation of Texas : 
 
 "Slavery, the Earth-born Cyclops, 
 
 Fellest of the giant brood, 
 Sons of brutish Force and Darkness 
 
 That have drenched the Earth with blood, 
 Famished in his self-made desert, 
 
 Blinded by our purer day, 
 Seeks in yet unblasted regions 
 
 For his miserable prey. 
 Shall we guide his gory fingers 
 
 Where our helpless children play ? " 
 
 For ten years devoted men and women, with 
 the utmost energy and courage and persistence, if 
 not always with discretion, had been pressing this 
 question upon the American people. The people 
 would hardly listen when only the almost unknown 
 territory involved in the annexation of Texas and 
 in the Mexican War was concerned, but when the 
 sHave power forced the same question upon their 
 reluctant ears with reference to Kansas and Ne 
 braska, the land toward which the restless children 
 
110 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 of the free States had begun to push forward, there 
 was no stilling it. And then it was that Mr. 
 Curtis seems first earnestly to have considered it. 
 He could not long have resisted it, we may be 
 sure, but it is to be remarked that the connection 
 he had formed with the Shaw family undoubtedly 
 quickened his sympathies, and aroused him to a 
 sense of what it was possible, and therefore impera 
 tive, for him to do. The father and mother of the 
 woman who was to be his wife were of the early 
 school of intensely earnest, unflinching, uncompro 
 mising, unwearying foes of slavery. It was a part 
 of their religion to fight the evil at all times and in 
 all ways that offered or could be found, and it is 
 certain that, if the flame of his zeal was not kin 
 dled, it was nursed and fanned by theirs. 
 
 As the extracts given from his letters to his 
 father from Brook Farm and from Concord, and 
 later after his return from Europe, clearly show, 
 Mr. Curtis s mind was never closed to the essen 
 tial nature of slavery, never misled as to the spe 
 cious claims made for it founded on the Consti 
 tution, and especially never dull to the moral 
 question involved. It was the latter that most 
 deeply moved him, and aroused him to a series of 
 appeals to young men of the Union which had 
 a deep and lasting effect. In the spring of 1856 
 had occurred the assault upon Charles Sumner in 
 the Senate Chamber by Preston Brooks, of South 
 Carolina. In that year also culminated the strug 
 gle in Kansas between the free-state immigrants 
 
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1856. Ill 
 
 and settlers, largely from New England, and the 
 pro-slavery men from the South, chiefly from Mis 
 souri, the latter aided by the force and author 
 ity of the Federal government under President 
 Pierce. This is not the place to trace even in 
 outline the features of the tremendous conflict of 
 which these were incidents. It was in these that 
 the tendencies of the slave power, which gave to 
 the presidential canvass of that year its distinctive 
 character, were most strikingly exposed. 
 
 The first speech of importance by Mr. Curtis 
 was delivered August 5, 1856, before the Liter 
 ary Societies of Wesley an University, at Middle- 
 town, Conn. Its title was, "The Duty of the 
 American Scholar to Politics and the Times." 
 lie was thirty-two years old. " Too young," he 
 told the college boys, " to be your guide and phi 
 losopher, I am yet old enough to be your friend. 
 Too little in advance of you in the great battle of 
 life to teach you from experience, I am yet old 
 enough to share with you the experience of other 
 men and of history. I would gladly speak to 
 you," he went on, " of the charms of pure scholar 
 ship ; of the dignity and worth of the scholar ; of 
 the abstract relation of the scholar to the state. 
 The sweet air we breathe and the repose of mid 
 summer invite a calm ethical or intellectual dis 
 course. But would you have counted him a friend 
 of Greece, who quietly discussed the abstract 
 nature of patriotism on that Greek summer day 
 through whose hopeless and immortal hours Leon- 
 
112 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 idas and his three hundred stood at Thermopylae 
 for liberty ? And to-day, as the scholar meditates 
 that deed, the air that steals in at his window 
 darkens his study and suffocates him as he reads. 
 Drifting across a continent, and blighting the har 
 vests that gild it with plenty from the Atlantic to 
 the Mississippi, a black cloud obscures the page 
 that records an old crime, and compels him to 
 know that freedom always has its Thermopylae, 
 and that his Thermopylae is called Kansas." 
 
 Of Sumner he said : " In a republic of freemen 
 this scholar speaks for freedom, and his blood 
 stains the Senate floor. There it will blush 
 through all our history. That damned spot will 
 never out from memory, from tradition, or from 
 noble hearts." 
 
 Of the function of the scholar class : 
 " The very material success for which nations, 
 like individuals, strive, is full of the gravest dan 
 ger to the best life of the state as of the individ 
 ual. But as in human nature itself are found the 
 qualities which best resist the proclivities of an in 
 dividual to meanness and moral cowardice, as 
 each man has a conscience, a moral mentor which 
 assures him what is truly best for him to do, so 
 has every state a class which by its very charac 
 ter is dedicated to eternal and not to temporary 
 interests ; whose members are priests of the mind, 
 not of the body ; and who are necessarily the con 
 servative body of intellectual and moral freedom. 
 This is the class of scholars. The elevation and 
 
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1856. 113 
 
 correction of public sentiment is the scholar s 
 office in the state. 
 
 " If, then, such be the scholar and the scholar s 
 office, if he be truly the conscience of the state, 
 the fundamental law of his life is liberty. At 
 every cost, the true scholar asserts, defends, lib 
 erty of thought and liberty of speech. Of what 
 use to a man is a thought that will help the world, 
 if he cannot tell it to the world ? Such a thought 
 comes to him as Jupiter came to Semele. He is 
 consumed by the splendor that secretly possesses 
 him. The Inquisition condemns Galileo s creed: 
 * Pur muove still it moves replies Galileo 
 in his dungeon. Tyranny poisons the cup of Soc 
 rates: he smilingly drains it to the health of the 
 world. The church, towering vast in the midst 
 of universal superstition, lays its withering finger 
 upon the freedom of the human mind, and its own 
 child, leaping from its bosom, denounces to the 
 world his mother s madness." 
 
 After tracing the character of Milton as most 
 nearly fulfilling the conditions of- the ideal scholar, 
 Mr. Curtis made a concise but careful and strong 
 statement of the advance of the slave power, from 
 the framing of the Constitution to the passage of 
 the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. He drew a pathetic 
 and impressive picture of the men of Connecticut 
 who answered the call to Lexington and Boston. 
 
 " Through these very streets they marched who 
 never returned. They fell and were buried, but 
 they can never die. Not sweeter are the flowers 
 
114 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 that make your valley fair, not greener are the 
 pines that give your valley its name, than the 
 memory of the brave men who died for freedom. 
 And yet no victim of those days, sleeping under 
 the green sod of Connecticut, is more truly a 
 martyr of Liberty than every murdered man 
 whose bones lie bleaching in this summer sun 
 upon the silent plains of Kansas. And so long 
 as Liberty has one martyr, so long as one drop 
 of blood is poured out for her, so long from that 
 single drop of bloody sweat of the agony of hu 
 manity shall spring hosts as countless as the forest 
 leaves and mighty as the sea. 
 
 " Brothers ! the call has come to us," he con 
 cluded ; " I bring it to you in these calm retreats. 
 I summon you to the great fight of Freedom. I 
 call upon you to say with your voices whenever the 
 occasion offers, and with your votes when the day 
 comes, that upon the fertile fields of Kansas, in 
 the very heart of the continent, the Upas-tree of 
 slavery, dripping death-dews upon national pros 
 perity and upon free labor, shall never be planted. 
 I call upon you to plant there the palm of peace, 
 the vine and olive of a Christian civilization. I 
 call upon you to determine whether this great 
 experiment of human freedom, which has been the 
 scorn of despotism, shall by its failure be also our 
 sin and shame. I call upon you to defend the 
 hope of the world. The voice of our brothers who 
 are bleeding, no less than of our fathers who bled, 
 summons us to this battle. Shall the children of 
 
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1856. 115 
 
 unborn generations clustering over that vast West 
 ern Empire rise up and call us blessed or cursed ? 
 Here are our Marathon and Lexington. Here are 
 our heroic fields. The hearts of good men beat 
 with us. The fight is fierce ; the issue is with 
 God, but God is good." 
 
 In this, the first serious address on public affairs 
 that Curtis made, there are indications of some of 
 the most distinctive and the finest traits of his ora 
 tory at its best. The happy expression of the in 
 fluence of the season and the place with which he 
 frequently began, the vivid and inspiring use of 
 historic associations fitted with aptness to the pur 
 pose of the discourse, very jewels upon its thread, 
 but beaming a steady light upon its object; the 
 stately march of broad recital; the solemn and 
 simple, tender and stirring appeal; and through 
 all the sense of the high level of principle and con 
 viction from which the speaker surveyed the field 
 of fact and argument, all these are here. There 
 are points in the discourse where the fine restraint 
 of the rhetoric which was the characteristic of his 
 riper years was not attained, and there are signs 
 that his subject had not been so severely studied, 
 its details not so closely subordinated and mar 
 shaled, as was his later habit. The logic does not 
 fail, but it is not so sustained, and the view of the 
 hostile critic had not been so clearly imagined as 
 became his wont. Experience and observation had 
 not done their whole work at thirty -two, but 
 they had begun it, and were well advanced. With 
 
116 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 this speech the party of resistance to the extension 
 of slavery, the party of freedom, knew that a cham 
 pion had taken up its cause, who brought to it not 
 only the dashing courage of the cavalier, but the 
 unyielding firmness of the Puritan ; a bright and 
 tempered sword flashed upon the combat in the 
 hand of one who could not turn back if he would, 
 so high he felt to be the behest that summoned 
 him. "The fight is fierce," he cried; "the issue is 
 with God, but God is good." 
 
 In the autumn Curtis was fairly enlisted in 
 the " campaign." He made an extended tour of 
 Pennsylvania for the state election, which was then 
 held in October, and which made the State one of 
 the most hotly contested in every presidential year. 
 Returning, he spoke frequently in Connecticut and 
 New York. Mr. Rhodes, in his recently published 
 history, says : " N. P. Willis, one of the best known 
 litterateurs of his day, relates how he drove five 
 miles one night to hear Curtis deliver a stump 
 speech. He at first thought the author of the 
 Howadji too handsome and well dressed for a 
 political orator, but as he listened his mistake was 
 apparent. He heard a logical and rational address, 
 and now and then the speaker burst into the full 
 tide of eloquence unrestrained. Willis declared 
 that, though fifty-four years old, he should this 
 year cast his virgin vote, and it would be for 
 Fremont." 
 
 Writing October 31, on the eve of the election, 
 Curtis said to a near friend : " I shall not tell you 
 
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1856. 
 
 117 
 
 of the great struggle which is advancing. The 
 election is but an event. God is still God, how 
 ever the election goes and whoever is elected. 
 The movement which is now fairly begun will not 
 relapse into apathy or death." 
 
 ^ x> 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 A NOVEL AND A LECTURE. 
 
 ME. CURTIS, as I have said, was married in No 
 vember, 1856, and went to live on Staten Island, 
 where his wife s father had a spacious home with 
 large grounds. His first child, a son, was born 
 there in December, 1857. His home life, though 
 constantly broken in upon by his lecturing tours 
 and by his journeyings for the delivery of political 
 speeches, was always happy, peaceful, the source of 
 incalculable comfort and delight. The following 
 extracts from letters to his intimate friend, Charles 
 Eliot Norton, of Cambridge, will give the reader a 
 glance at his life during the few years preceding 
 the great campaign of 1860 and the Civil War : 
 
 NEW YORK, June 17, 58. 
 
 Your kind note floats into my hand just as I 
 am " stepping westward," for a fortnight. I go to 
 the University of Michigan and Antioch College 
 with an oration upon * The Democratic Principle, 
 and its Prospects in our Country," with every word 
 of which I think you would agree, and not find a 
 single thing which you would be sorry to have a 
 friend of yours say. When I come to you T will 
 
A NOVEL AND A LECTURE. 119 
 
 bring it, and take the taste of some other things of 
 mine out of your mouth. 
 
 NORTH SHORE, September 25, 58. 
 
 I have promised to deliver my " Democracy and 
 Education " before a teachers institute in Newport 
 on the 8th October, and I shall put off coming to 
 you till then. 
 
 " For tho on pleasure he was bent, 
 He had a frugal mind." 
 
 What else could you expect of a seditious Sepoy, - 
 a Chairman of the Republican County Committee, 
 an agricultural orator, and your most affectionate 
 
 G. W. C. 
 
 On his return from this trip he describes his 
 
 home-coming : 
 
 10th October, 58. 
 
 I saw the receding tower of Trinity, and pres 
 ently beheld the camp of the army of occupation 
 upon the wharf who but she ? and along the 
 Kills we drove, while I talked of Newport friends 
 and fields, and watched the autumn waiting for me 
 in the woods and on the flowery hills. All were 
 well. The boy of boys the man-child shouted 
 and jumped into my arms, and in an hour he was 
 riding behind his goat with his mamma and papa 
 
 in waiting." 
 
 8th November, 58. 
 
 We have finished our fight and elected our 
 governor. He is a merchant, an average merchant, 
 
120 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 but our congressional majority, which shows by dis 
 tricts the complexion of the State, is nearly seventy 
 thousand. That shows a change of heart. 
 
 And yet, while we have won, the one thing clear 
 seems to be that Douglas is the next President, 
 unless the Slave party offers us some new issue. 
 We cannot beat them upon that of Popular Sover 
 eignty, upon which D. will make his stand and his 
 battle. . 
 
 Next week I begin my lecturing, and have al 
 ready engaged sixty evenings. 
 
 January 30, 59. 
 
 At the Burns festival in Troy I led off Auld 
 Lang Syne at four in the morning and hoarsened 
 my voice. 
 
 March 2, 59. 
 
 I am glad you succeeded in amusing your little 
 sister. I have often wished she were here to join 
 Master Frank s class in Little Bo-Peep. Don t 
 stimulate her mind with too much House-that-Jack- 
 Built at once, but lead her gradually on from Cock 
 Robin to Mother Hubbard. 
 
 In September, 1859, he writes : 
 
 " The Weekly now circulates 93,000, and is very 
 thoroughly read. I make my Lounger a sort of lay 
 pulpit, and the readers have a chance of hearing 
 things suggested that otherwise there would be no 
 hint of in the paper. And, after all, an author has 
 something besides his own fame to look after." 
 
 It was in this year that Mr. Curtis, tempted, I 
 
A NOVEL AND A LECTURE. 121 
 
 imagine, by what the publishers could offer not 
 only in money, but in the security of a very wide 
 circle of readers, began the novel of " Trumps " as 
 a serial in " Harper s Weekly." It was not an un 
 natural venture. He was a lover of good fiction, 
 and an intelligent critic of it. He was in the very 
 prime of his manhood. He had won notable suc 
 cess in varied directions. He had seen much of 
 the world, not only of society, but of affairs and 
 of politics. He had traveled widely abroad and 
 in his own land. He was a welcome intimate in 
 the houses of gifted men and women. He was 
 conscious of the possession of the literary faculty. 
 Expression fitting the thought was not difficult to 
 him. He had quick and sensitive sympathies, a 
 sound and trustworthy judgment, and his fellow- 
 beings, of all sorts and on all levels, interested him 
 much. He could not but know that when he talked 
 of them, of their character, their doings, their oddi 
 ties, adventures, aims, humors, his talk charmed 
 his hearers. Why should he not write a novel? 
 Why should he not group in a well-connected story 
 the acts and words that should reveal men and 
 women as he saw and knew them, not forgetting 
 the lesson of the supreme value of goodness which 
 every life, good or evil, disclosed to him, and of 
 which his own was a half -unconscious reading? 
 Why cannot the eagle swim ? 
 
 I think it is not to be denied that "Trumps" is 
 depressing reading, despite its many excellences. 
 It is the fruit of an author s mistake as to his 
 
122 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 powers. It is Thackeray s pictures, George Eliot s 
 poetry, Dickens s portrayal of aristocracy. It shows 
 how many and how great gifts the author had, and 
 how little he had of the rare art of sustained story 
 telling. Five years before, Lowell had written 
 to Briggs (he had just said of the " Chateaux in 
 Spain," " I think it one of the best essays I ever 
 read, I don t care by what author ") : " The fault 
 of The Potiphar Papers seems to me that in them 
 there are dialogizing and monologizing thoughts, 
 but not flesh and blood enough." And it is with 
 "dialogizing and monologizing thoughts" that the 
 pages of "Trumps" fairly swarm. The title, the 
 intention of which is emphasized in the last sen 
 tence, shows that the real purpose of the writer 
 was not to write a novel, but to point a moral. 
 " Patient and gentle reader," he says, as he closes 
 his work, " it is for you to say who, among all the 
 players we have been watching, held Trumps," and 
 the reader is expected to answer that Trumps were 
 held by the benevolent and beneficent Lawrence 
 Newt, and by that heaven-born vision of earthly 
 beauty and unspotted soul, Hope Wayne, and, as 
 the proportions of the pack allow, by the lesser 
 embodiments of kindness and purity and rectitude, 
 and that all the low cards fell to those who were 
 playing for self. It is a gracious view of life, and 
 one that cheers the good in adverse conditions, 
 even if it escapes the attention and leaves uncor- 
 rected the wayward will of the mean and wicked. 
 But this naive indiscretion as to the title of the 
 
A NOVEL AND A LECTURE. 123 
 
 book seems to me to show the peculiar failure of 
 the writer to grasp the cardinal principle of his 
 art, that the moral, if moral there must be, should 
 point itself. And, worse than this, the title does 
 not fit the avowed purpose. Trumps are the gift 
 of the gods. It is the duty of a skillful player not 
 to waste them on his partner s trick, and to make 
 and take all the chances of the game in order to get 
 the most good of them, and it is the duty of an 
 honest player not to supply them when wanting 
 from up his sleeve. But to find them in his hand 
 when the deal is made is no merit of his, and to 
 miss them is not his fault. Now the lesson of 
 Curtis s novel is clearly that the reward of virtue 
 is in great part earned, and not a matter of chance. 
 The joy of honorable self-denial, the peace that 
 comes from generous sympathy with the good for 
 tune of others, through one s own loss, these are 
 urged, and with winning earnestness. They are 
 not the fruit of chance. Indeed, the life that Cur 
 tis tries to depict and does very clearly suggest, 
 and of which he gives us most engaging chapters, 
 is not in reality a game at all, neither a game of 
 hazard nor of sport. Nor, on the other hand, 
 that is the shortcoming of the writer, is it a 
 drama. It is a modern version of the mediaeval 
 "morality," a long and elaborate lesson, without, 
 indeed, the tediousness of its ancient prototype, 
 and also without the picturesqueness gained by 
 that from the very concrete notions of the Devil and 
 his conqueror then prevailing. I may say, I hope 
 
124 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 without offense, that it is in its general effect a 
 Sunday - school story, written by *a man of rare 
 gifts, some of which betray the elusive charm of 
 genius, but still essentially of that class, producing, 
 and apparently intended to produce, the impression 
 that in the end virtue triumphs and vice comes to a 
 miserable end. 
 
 Yet there are the materials, the raw materials, of 
 a strong story in " Trumps," and the writer s con- 
 ception of their significance is vigorous. The bril 
 liant viciousness of Abel Newt, started at school 
 and developed in society, in dissipation, in politics, 
 in the corruption of the capital, in the desperation 
 of the culminating crime ; the wasted and misdi 
 rected loves of the two sisters whose lives are shad 
 owed and nearly wrecked by one man ; the un 
 disclosed experiences by which the character of 
 Lawrence Newt is moulded ; contrasted with these, 
 the simple and sunny life of Amy Waring, the more 
 delicate and remote nature of Hope Wayne, the 
 hopeless final kindling of real affection in the heart 
 of Abel s mistress, here is the stuff of which ro 
 mance and tragedy are woven, and with it are plen 
 tiful minor threads of comedy and sentiment. Nor 
 can I resist the impression that, had Curtis taken 
 up the study and practice of the story-telling art 
 earlier, or with a firmer purpose, the product would 
 have been, if not perfect, not only far more satis 
 factory than this single fruit, but of a marked dis 
 tinction and value. There are few more real fig 
 ures than " Prue " and her husband, and Titbottom 
 
A NOVEL AND A LECTURE. 125 
 
 is only slightly less real. But I cannot regret that 
 his energies, great and efficient as they were (" his 
 mind works so easily," wrote Lowell), were not 
 turned in this direction. He might possibly have 
 won a more lasting fame; and perhaps a wider one. 
 I cannot think he would have done wider or more 
 lasting service. He could not seriously have 
 changed his aim. He might have attained the art 
 that makes the moral point itself ; he could never 
 have really forgotten or wished to forget the moral. 
 The highest achievement, I take it, in fiction, cer 
 tainly in the more modern fiction, is the impressive 
 unfolding of the complexity, the contradiction, the 
 pathetic or amusing or baffling conflict, in human 
 nature. Perhaps Curtis saw these. I doubt if he 
 felt them with the intensity and depth that are req 
 uisite to embody them. Life does not seem to me 
 to have been to him a supremely complex problem, 
 but rather, simple with the simplicity of his own 
 rare and beautiful nature. It is delicate ground to 
 traverse, but I think that, as his own conscience 
 was in no wise a Delphic oracle, but spoke to him 
 with the directness of Sinai, " thou shalt" or 
 " thou shalt not " he may easily not have under 
 stood the infinite difficulties that men less morally 
 gifted meet and so seldom conquer, not always be 
 cause they will not do what is right, but because 
 they cannot decide. And again, as conscience hav 
 ing once answered his questioning, his obedience, 
 if not easy, was singularly certain and prompt and 
 steadfast, he may not quite have been able to see 
 
126 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 or to portray those impulses of evil before which a 
 fine nature becomes the helpless victim of passion, 
 the clearest aspiration toward the best vanishes, 
 and the soul lies weak, weary, defeated in the tan 
 gled meshes of a life it loathes. He might have 
 trained himself to imagine, but I believe it would 
 not have been easy for him, the multiform effects 
 of circumstance, of heredity, of all that sways the 
 will, which are so important and so fascinating a 
 part of the creations of such writers as George 
 Eliot, and, with less betrayal of conscious philoso 
 phy, of such a writer as Thackeray. And since, if 
 he had worked through fiction, his aim must still 
 have been what it practically was in everything he 
 wrote after the Howadji books, it is surely best 
 that he pursued it in his own way. This, I be 
 lieve, he felt strongly himself. He did not regard 
 " Trumps " with any great satisfaction, and he 
 never renewed an attempt which, relatively at least 
 to others of his own, was a failure. 
 
 Mr. Curtis s lectures were generally received with 
 great admiration, and his welcome was almost always 
 cordial, even though he went, as he did frequently 
 after 1856, with an incendiary address in his bag. 
 But there were experiences of a different sort. 
 
 In the summer of 1859 Mr. Curtis accepted a 
 proposition to deliver a lecture in Philadelphia on 
 the 15th of December. It came from two young 
 men who had planned the course purely as a busi 
 ness enterprise ; and though Mr. Curtis chose as his 
 subject " The Present Aspect of the Slavery Ques- 
 
A NOVEL AND A LECTURE. 127 
 
 tion," it was a mere coincidence that the Anti-Sla 
 very Society of Pennsylvania was to hold a fair at 
 the same time. In October came the raid of John 
 Brown npon Harper s Ferry, and on the 2d of 
 December Brown was hanged. The excitement 
 roused by these events over all the country ran very 
 high in Philadelphia, much of the richest trade of 
 that city being with the South. On the day before 
 the lecture was to be given, handbills summoned a 
 mass meeting at National Hall, where Curtis was 
 to speak, with the avowed purpose of preventing 
 him from speaking. This hall was in the upper 
 part of a building the lower part of which was used 
 as a warehouse, into which railroad cars were run 
 to be unloaded. Mayor Henry, though not in fa 
 vor of the views Mr. Curtis was known to hold, did 
 not oppose the delivery of the lecture ; and Mr. 
 Ruggles, the chief of police, though a firm Demo 
 crat in politics, declared that free speech must be 
 defended at any cost. Mr. Curtis went to the hall 
 accompanied by Dr. Furness and Mrs. Furness, by 
 Lucretia Mott, and the Hon. William D. Kelley, 
 who introduced him. Approach to the stage was 
 had from the floor by a narrow, winding stairway on 
 either side, which also descended to the warehouse 
 below. These were blocked, so soon as Mr. Curtis 
 and his party reached the stage, by benches thrown 
 one on another, and by a couple of members of 
 the junior Anti-Slavery Society armed with heavy 
 sticks. In the hall a policeman was stationed at 
 the end of each seat, and several hundred below 
 
128 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 guarded the entrances and the warehouse. Mr. 
 Kelley was allowed to introduce the lecturer, but 
 the latter had hardly risen when rioting began. 
 Repeated attempts were made to storm the stage, 
 but were repulsed. Stones were thrown through 
 the windows, and bottles of vitriol, and one of the 
 auditors was terribly burned. Meanwhile there 
 was in the warehouse below a series of determined 
 and furious attempts by the mob to get to the hall 
 from that point. The police repelled them, making 
 many arrests. At first Chief Ruggles sent the 
 prisoners to the police station ; but soon seeing that 
 this weakened his force too much, he had offenders 
 locked in empty cars standing on the tracks in the 
 warehouse. Two attempts were made to set fire to 
 the building. Then Chief Ruggles mounted a car 
 and announced that if this were again tried every 
 effort would be made to save the persons in the 
 hall, but that the prison-cars and their human freight 
 would be left to the flames. The attempt was not 
 renewed. 
 
 Mr. Henry C. Davis, of New York, then a resi 
 dent of Philadelphia, a grandson of Lucre tia Mott 
 and one of the young guards on the stage, from 
 whom the above recounted facts are obtained, says 
 that " there were only brief intervals in which Mr. 
 Curtis could be heard, but that he delivered his ad 
 dress in full." " When I could hear him," says Mr. 
 Davis, " his voice was firm and clear and resonant, 
 and his delivery sustained and self-possessed." " It 
 was, says Mr. Isaac II. Clothier, who was Mr. 
 
A NOVEL AND A LECTURE. 129 
 
 Davis s companion, "an eventful and dangerous 
 evening, but the meeting did not break up until the 
 lecture was fully delivered, and until free speech 
 had been triumphantly vindicated in Philadelphia. 
 Mr. Curtis, with all his well-known gentleness and 
 sweetness of spirit, proved himself on that occasion 
 to be a man of mettle and undaunted courage." 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE EVE OF THE WAR. 
 
 ONCE entered on politics, Mr. Curtis gave to it 
 most careful study as well as much hard and de 
 tailed work. He was very active in the Republican 
 party organization in the county of Richmond, 
 N. Y., formed by Staten Island, and was early 
 chosen chairman of the County Republican Com 
 mittee, a post he held, with the greatest assiduity 
 in its duties, almost uninterruptedly for many 
 years. Evidence of the clear fashion in which he 
 reasoned on the practical as well as the theoretic 
 side of politics is found in a letter to Mr. John J. 
 Pinkerton, of West Chester, Pennsylvania, then a 
 young man, who had made Mr. Curtis s acquain 
 tance at Union College, on the delivery of the ad 
 dress on " Patriotism " in 1857. This acquaintance 
 ripened into a warm friendship which lasted un 
 shaken to the time of Mr. Curtis s death. The 
 letter followed an answer to Mr. Curtis s inquiry 
 as to the state of opinion in Pennsylvania with ref 
 erence to the approaching presidential contest. 
 
 NORTH SHORE, 13th April, 1860. 
 
 MY DEAR PINKERTON, Thanks for your kind 
 response. I have had the same suspicion of Penn- 
 
THE EVE OF THE WAR. 131 
 
 sylvania, but my general feeling is this : that the 
 nomination of Mr. Bates would so chill and para 
 lyze the youth and ardor which are the strength 
 of the Republican party ; would so cheer the Demo 
 crats as a merely available move, showing distrust 
 of our own position and power ; would so alienate 
 the German Northwest, and so endanger a bolt 
 from the straight Republicans of New England, 
 that the possible gain of Pennsylvania and New Jer- 
 , .ey, and even Indiana, might be balanced. Add to 
 this that defeat with Bates is the utter destruction 
 of our party organization, and that success with 
 him is very doubtful victory, and I cannot but feel 
 that upon the whole his nomination is an act of 
 very uncertain wisdom. 
 
 It is very true that there is no old Republican, 
 because the party is young, and it will not do to 
 ask too sharply when a man became a Republican. 
 Moreover, a man like Mr. Bates may very properly 
 have been a Fillmore man in 56, because. he might 
 not have believed that the Slavery party was as 
 resolved and desperate as it immediately showed 
 itself in the Dred Scott business ; this is all true, 
 but human nature cries out against the friends of 
 Fremont in 56 working for a Fillmore man in 60, 
 and there is a good deal of human nature in the 
 public. The nomination of Mr. Bates will plunge 
 the really Republican States into a syncope. If 
 they are strong enough to remain Republican while 
 they are apathetic, then in the border States you 
 may decide the battle. 
 
132 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 I think New York is very sure for the Chicago 
 man, whoever he is ; but if Bates is the man, we 
 shall have to travel upon our muscle ! ! 
 
 Individually believing, as I do, in the necessary 
 triumph of our cause by causes superior to the 
 merely political, I should prefer a fair fight upon 
 the merits of the case between Douglas and Seward, 
 or Hunter or Guthrie and Seward. I think Doug 
 las will be the Charleston man. 
 
 Thank you once more. 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 Mr. Curtis went as a delegate to the Republican 
 National Convention at Chicago in May, 1860. It 
 was his first experience in those vast representative 
 assemblies so peculiar to American political life, 
 and yet so firmly established in it that it is not 
 easy for an American to realize that they are 
 without a counterpart in any other nation. It 
 was a field calculated to bring out the political 
 capacity of any man of ability entering it with a 
 definite purpose and willing to face its difficulties. 
 In theory the convention is absolutely free. It is a 
 gathering of delegates chosen in congressional dis 
 tricts to discuss and announce the policy and name 
 the candidates of their party. In practice very im 
 portant limitations have grown up. Some of these 
 are almost purely physical, and spring from the 
 nature of the organization necessary to the perform 
 ance of complex functions by a body of numerous 
 
THE EVE OF THE WAR. 133 
 
 members. Others, however, have their source in 
 the inevitable desire of men intrusted with repre 
 sentative power to use it to advance their own views 
 or their own interests. Though the Republican 
 party was then young and its spirit was more free, 
 unselfish, and more nearly purely moral than that 
 of any other great party that had preceded it in 
 our history, it was not without leaders actuated by 
 ambition, by appetite, and by jealousy. Mr. Sew- 
 ard, then United States Senator from New York, 
 was the " logical candidate " of the party for the 
 Presidency. His eminent ability, his long and 
 honorable service in the Senate, his breadth of view, 
 his courageous and enlightened advocacy of the es 
 sential principles of his party, his political sagacity, 
 were claims that could not be ignored. Mr. Wil 
 liam M. Evarts was the chairman of the New 
 York delegation, and presented Mr. Seward s name 
 to the convention in a speech of great force and 
 noble enthusiasm. Mr. Curtis, as the letter just 
 cited shows, believed the nomination of Mr. Seward 
 to be both just and wise. But he was to distin 
 guish himself in the convention by a most bril 
 liant and unexpected assault on the lines of Mr. 
 Seward s supporters. These were led by Mr. 
 Thurlow Weed, of New York, a politician whose 
 rare qualities as a manager rested largely on his 
 instinctive and acquired knowledge of the weak 
 nesses of his fellow-men, of their prejudices and 
 personal desires, and who was not fond of leaving 
 much to the unguided impulses of a convention. 
 
134 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 It had been determined that the declaration 
 of principles the platform of the convention 
 should be so shaped that the more timid and less 
 convinced of the opponents of the rival party 
 should not be scared from its acceptance by too 
 radical utterances. Among the more advanced of 
 the Republican leaders at Chicago was Mr. Joshua 
 R. Giddings, of Ohio, who hoped to make of the 
 party an instrument not only for checking the ex 
 tension of slavery, but for its ultimate extinction. 
 To serve this purpose, he proposed to add to the 
 platform the words of the preamble of the Declar 
 ation of Independence : " That the maintenance of 
 the principle promulgated in the Declaration of 
 Independence and embodied in the Federal Con 
 stitution, that all men are created equal ; that they 
 are endowed by their Creator with certain inalien 
 able rights ; that among these are life, liberty, and 
 the pursuit of happiness ; that, to secure these 
 rights, governments are instituted among men, de 
 riving their just powers from the consent of the 
 governed, is essential to the preservation of our 
 republican institutions." The amendment was re 
 jected, and Mr. Giddings in despair turned to 
 leave the hall. "It seemed to me," Mr. Curtis 
 afterwards said, " that the spirits of all the mar 
 tyrs to freedom were marching out of the conven 
 tion behind the venerable form of that indignant 
 and outraged old man." He rose to renew the mo 
 tion of Mr. Giddings. A writer in the " Boston 
 Herald " of January 10, 1880, gives the best ao 
 
THE EVE OF THE WAR. 135 
 
 count of the scene that followed that I have been 
 able to find. Mr. Curtis s voice was at first drowned 
 in the clamor of the followers of the managers : 
 
 " Folding his arms, he calmly faced the uproari 
 ous mass and waited*. The spectacle of a man who 
 would n t be put down at length so far amused the 
 delegates that they stopped to look at him. Gen 
 tlemen, rang out that musical voice in tones of 
 calm intensity, this is the convention of free 
 speech, and I have been given the floor. I have 
 only a few words to say to you, but I shall say 
 them if I stand here until to-morrow morning. 
 Again the tumult threatened the roof of the Wig 
 wam, and again the speaker waited. His pluck 
 and the chairman s gavel soon gave him another 
 chance. Skillfully changing the amendment to 
 the second resolution, to make it in order, he spoke 
 as with a tongue of fire in its support, daring the 
 representatives of the party of freedom, meeting on 
 the borders of the free prairies in a hall dedicated 
 to the advancement of liberty, to reject the doc 
 trine of the Declaration of Independence affirming 
 the equality and defining the rights of man. The 
 speech fell like a spark upon tinder, and the amend 
 ment was adopted with a shout of enthusiasm more 
 unanimous and deafening than the yell with which 
 it had been previously rejected." 
 
 The following extracts from letters to his friend, 
 Mr. Norton, indicate Curtis s occupation and the 
 tenor of his thoughts during the remainder of the 
 year 1860, marked by the triumph of the contest 
 
136 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 against slavery in the political field. In response 
 to a request to address a meeting in behalf of the 
 Italian cause he wrote : 
 
 June 12, 1860. 
 
 Your note reached me at sunset this evening as 
 I stood upon the lawn, in the midst of green trees, 
 blooming flowers, and the fairest fair. It was the 
 moment to be asked to speak for Italy, but I 
 must stay at home. I have made several engage 
 ments, near at hand, to say something for Abra 
 ham. I have also promised to deliver a Fourth of 
 July oration upon the Island. I am putting my 
 hand of " Trumps " into order for the printer. I 
 have my little jobs at Franklin Square, and I have 
 been away so much, and my home, my wife, and my 
 boy are so dear and lovely ! You will not think 
 that I love Italy and you less if I cannot say yes 
 to you just now. How grandly Garibaldi stalks 
 through that magnificent, moribund Italy, each 
 step giving her life and hope ! When I speak of 
 liberty on the Fourth, I shall not forget the soap 
 boiler of Staten Island ! 
 
 Under the elms and the sassafras, and among the 
 thick flowering shrubs, I think of you girdled with 
 your sapphire sea ! Then Nanny and I jump on 
 the horses, and gallop through the woods until we 
 can see it, too. I wish you could come and see us 
 here. If you want to run off and be entirely alone, 
 won t you let me know ? Have you seen how uni 
 versally your book is commended ? I have. 
 
THE EVE OF THE WAR. 
 
 3d August, 1860. 
 
 Have you read Olmsted s new book ? It is the 
 fchird of the series, and completes his view of the 
 slave States. It is a curious confirmation of Sum- 
 ner s "Barbarism," and seems to me about the 
 heaviest blow (being true and moderate) that has 
 yet been dealt at the system. It shows conclusively 
 what a blight it is, but at the same time how diffi 
 cult and distant the remedy seems to be. It is the 
 most timely of books, for no man who believes 
 that the picture is faithful would be in any manner 
 accessory to planting such a curse in the territo 
 ries. 
 
 How bravely the battle goes on ! I am speak 
 ing a good deal here upon the Island and in our 
 [first] district, and, although I shall never again 
 have the sanguine hope of my first campaign, yet 
 I can see how every sign promises. 
 
 I find myself looking over the sea sometimes 
 and thinking of Italy, but I know that it is not 
 Italy I look at, but the old days in Italy. 
 
 NOBTH SHORE, 14th October, 1860. 
 MY DEAR CHARLES, I have been scribbling 
 and scrabbling at such a rate that I have recently 
 cut all my friends for my country* We are having 
 a glorious fight. This State, I think, will astonish 
 itself and the country by its majority. The signifi 
 cance of the result in Pennsylvania is, that the 
 conscience and common sense of the country are 
 fully aroused. The apostle of disunion spoke here 
 
138 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 last week, and, if there had been any doubt of New 
 York before, there could have been none after he 
 spake. Even Fletcher Harper, after hearing it, 
 said to me, " I shall have hard work not to vote 
 for Lincoln." 
 
 I have been at work in nay own county and dis 
 trict, and the other day I went to the convention to 
 make sure that I was not nominated for Congress ! 
 
 I have been writing a new lecture, " The Policy 
 of Honesty," and am going as far as Milwaukee in 
 November. Here s a lot about myself, but we 
 country philosophers grow dreadfully egotistical. 
 I did cherish a sweet hope (it was like trying to 
 raise figs in our open January !) that I should slip 
 over and see you, and displace my photograph for 
 a day or two, but I can only send the same old love 
 as new as ever. The ball for little Kenfrew l was 
 a failure, though I was one of the 400, and his 
 reception was the most imposing pageant, from the 
 mass of human beings, that I ever saw. 
 
 19th December, 60. 
 
 No, I did not speak in Philadelphia, because the 
 mayor thought he could not keep [the peace] , and 
 feared a desperate personal attack upon me. The 
 invitation has been renewed, but I have declined 
 it, and have recalled another acceptance to speak 
 there. It would be foolhardy just now. I am very 
 sorry for the Mayor. 
 
 There must be necessarily trouble of some kind 
 
 The Prince of Wales. 
 
THE EVE OF THE WAR. 139 
 
 from this Southern movement. But I think the 
 North will stand firmly and kindly to its position. 
 If the point shall be persistently made by the 
 South, as it has been made so far, the nationaliza 
 tion of slavery or disunion, the North will say, and 
 I think calmly, Disunion, and God for the right. 
 The Southerners are lunatics, but what can we do ? 
 We cannot let them do as they will, for then we 
 should all perish together. 
 
 The political fight was over. The party of 
 slavery limitation it would not be exact to call it 
 even the anti-slavery party had elected its Pres 
 ident, and held a safe majority in the House of 
 Representatives. The men who had brought the 
 fight thus far were called to face a wholly new sit 
 uation, one that they had not clearly foreseen, and 
 had not consciously produced, and yet one which 
 was inevitable. It is true that both Mr. Lincoln 
 and his chief rival for the Republican nomina 
 tion, Mr. Seward, had declared in general terms 
 the irrepressible, irreconcilable conflict between sla 
 very and freedom ; but there is little probability 
 and less evidence that they had formed a distinct 
 idea of what the direction or force of such a con 
 flict would be, or how they should meet it if the 
 people gave them the power and imposed the duty 
 of meeting it. Moreover, the victory they had won 
 was not so complete as to force the problem upon 
 them, or even to enable them to take up its solu 
 tion in the ordinary progress of public affairs. 
 
140 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 The Democratic party still held the Senate and 
 the Supreme Court. No affirmative legislation was 
 possible. The Republicans had elected their Presi 
 dent through the division of their opponents, and 
 had cast less than two fifths of the popular vote. 
 Their leaders, therefore, were not to be blamed 
 that they had no plan, nor any very clear principle 
 on which to frame one, for the complete conduct of 
 the government. The threats of secession, which 
 had multiplied and become constantly fiercer dur 
 ing the presidential canvass, were not taken to be 
 so serious as they proved to be, and were perhaps 
 not intended to be carried so far as afterwards they 
 were carried. The few words last quoted from 
 Mr. Curtis expressed a feeling very general at the 
 time they were uttered and for some months later. 
 When South Carolina passed its ordinance of se 
 cession, and one after another of the Southern 
 States followed her example, the Federal govern 
 ment was still under the guidance of Mr. Buchanan, 
 who, whatever his motives, and they are not now 
 judged with such severity or such certainty as they 
 once were, took no decisive step. The public 
 mind was startled, puzzled, and could not know its 
 own real purpose. The first impulse and it was 
 a sound one was toward the avoidance of civil 
 war. Rather than that, " Disunion, and God for 
 the right." 
 
 Early in January came Mr. Seward s famous 
 speech in the Senate, a speech intended to bring 
 the minds of men together, but which appealed 
 
THE EVE OF THE WAR. 141 
 
 only to the calm judgment when calm judgment 
 had already become almost impossible. Mr. Cur 
 tis received it with eagerness. " I hope," he wrote 
 to Mr. Norton on the 16th of January from Rox- 
 bury, Mass., "I hope you like Se ward s speech 
 as I do. I see by the New York papers that 
 people are beginning to see how great a speech 
 it is. Webster had his 7th of March and went 
 wrong ; Seward his, and went right. If you don t 
 agree, load your guns, for mine are charged to the 
 muzzle." Nearly a month later he wrote to his 
 friend Mr. Pinkerton more fully : 
 
 NORTH SHORE, llth February, 1861. 
 
 MY DEAR PINKERTON, Your letter of the 
 18th of January reached me in Boston while I was 
 upon the wing, where I have been ever since. I 
 wanted to reply at once, but I was to come to 
 Philadelphia this evening, and I hoped to see you 
 and say what was too long to write. But it seems 
 that I am so dangerous a fellow that no hall-owner 
 in Philadelphia will risk the result of my explosive 
 words, and not a place can be had for my fanat 
 ical and incendiary criticism of Thackeray ; so I 
 shall not see you. Four words in Se ward s speech 
 explain it, and especially " justify " it, as you use 
 the word, " Concession short of principle." Do 
 you ask what and why we should concede ? Mr. 
 Adams answers ; he has learned from history and 
 common sense that no government does wisely 
 which, however lawful, moderate, honest, and con 
 
142 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 stitutional, treats any popular complaint, however 
 foolish, unnecessary, and unjustifiable, with haughty 
 disdain. 
 
 Those sentences of Seward and Adams furnish 
 the key to our position, and the wise triumphant 
 policy of the new administration. You have no 
 fear of Lincoln, of course. Well, do you suppose 
 that his secretary of state makes such a speech 
 at such a time without the fullest understanding 
 with his chief ? Does any man think that the plan 
 of the new government could wisely be exposed 
 in advance while the traitors had yet nearly two 
 months of legal power ? Seward s speech indicates 
 the spirit of the new government, a kindly spirit. 
 Special measures he does not mention, saying only 
 no measure will compromise the principle of the 
 late victory. In his career of thirty-seven years 
 you will find that under every party name he has 
 had but one central principle, that all our diffi 
 culties, including the greatest, are solvable under 
 our Constitution and within the Union. And the 
 Union is not what slavery chooses to decree. It is 
 a word which has hitherto been the cry of a party 
 which sought to rule or ruin the government, with 
 out the slightest regard to its fundamental idea. 
 Now the people have pronounced for that idea, and 
 now therefore, when a Republican says Union, he 
 means just what the fathers meant, not union 
 for union, but union for the purpose of the union. 
 But you say he subordinates his party to the union. 
 Yes, again, but why? Because (as he said two 
 
THE EVE OF THE WAR. 143 
 
 years ago, when, thanks to Hickinan and the rest, 
 the Lecompton crime was prevented), because 
 " the victory is won," the peculiar purpose of the 
 party has been achieved, the territories are free. 
 Even South Carolina concedes that. The South 
 allows that we have beaten them in the territories, 
 and they secede because they think we must go on 
 and emancipate in the District and navy yards, and 
 then, from the same necessity of progress to retain 
 power, emancipate in the States. Remember that 
 by the bargain of 1850 New Mexico has a right to 
 come in slave or free. Mr. Adams proposes that 
 she shall come now, if she wants to ; that is all. 
 And he and Seward, and I suppose you and I, 
 know perfectly well that she will come free. Yet 
 even Seward says that, while he would have no ob 
 jection to voting for such an enabling act, he is not 
 quite sure that it could be constitutionally done. 
 
 I shall not tire your soul out by going on, but if 
 we could sit for an evening in MacVeagh s office 
 and smoke the calumet of explanation and consid 
 eration, I am perfectly sure that I could make you 
 feel that Seward is greater at this moment than 
 ever before. At least wait, wait until something 
 is done, before you believe that a man who is a 
 Democrat in the only decent sense, who believes 
 fully and faithfully in a popular government, who 
 for nearly forty years, under the stinging stress of 
 obloquy and slander and the doubt of timid friends, 
 has stood cheerfully loyal to the great idea of lib 
 erty, and has seen his country gradually light up 
 
144 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 and break into the day of the same conviction, with 
 the tragedies of Clay and Webster before him per- 
 fectly comprehended by him, with a calmness and 
 clearness of insight and a radical political faith 
 which they never had, wait, I say, and do not 
 think that such a man has forsworn himself, his 
 career, and his eternal fame in history, until you 
 have some other reason for believing it than that, 
 when his country is threatened with civil war, he 
 says he will do all that he can to avoid it except 
 betray his principles. 
 
 All things are possible. Great men have often 
 fallen in the very hour of triumph. But my faith 
 in great men survives every wreck, and I will not 
 believe that our great man is going until I see that 
 he is gone. Indeed, as I feel now, I should as soon 
 distrust my own loyalty as Seward s, and what can 
 any individual say more ? 
 
 Believe me, full of faith, your friend, 
 
 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 In one of the crowded days of that eventful 
 April, Curtis wrote to Mr. Norton : 
 
 HOME, 17th April, 1861. 
 
 MY DEAR CHARLEY, Night before last, at 
 eleven o clock, the loveliest of girls. By midnight 
 I was wondering to think how glad and thankful a 
 man may be even in the midst of civil war. Frank 
 is perfectly fascinated, and laughs with shy delight 
 as he calls me to look at the baby s nose, and puts 
 
THE EVE OF THE WAR. 145 
 
 his finger carefully upon the little soft red cheek. 
 If it were not for the bitter days before us, I should 
 feel that I was having more than my share of hap 
 piness. 
 
 Three days later to the same friend : 
 
 20th April, 1861. 
 
 Anna and the baby are perfectly well. Her 
 brother Bob and my brother Sam marched yester 
 day with their regiment, the 7th, both the Win- 
 throps, Philip Schuyler, and the flower of the youth 
 of the city. 
 
 This day in New York has been beyond descrip 
 tion, and remember, if we lose Washington to-night 
 or to-morrow, as we probably shall, we have taken 
 New York. The grand hope of this rebellion has 
 been the armed and moneyed support of New York, 
 and New York is wild for the flag and the coun 
 try, and our bitterest foes of yesterday are in good 
 faith our nearest friends. The meeting to-day was 
 a city in council. The statue of Washington held 
 in its right hand the flagstaff and flag of Sumter. 
 The only cry is, " Give us arms ! " and this before 
 a drop of New York blood has been shed. What 
 will it be after ? 
 
 I think of the Massachusetts boys dead. " Send 
 them home tenderly," says your governor. Yes, 
 " tenderly, tenderly ; but for every hair of their 
 bright young heads brought low, God, by our right 
 arms, shall enter into judgment with traitors ! " 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 IN THE MIDST OF WAR. 
 
 THE next two or three years of Curtis s life may, 
 I think, be told, so far as falls within the scope of 
 this work, in the extracts from his letters that fol 
 low. There was no marked change in his occupa 
 tions, except such as the war and its interests and 
 duties brought. He continued " The Lounger " in 
 " Harper s Weekly " and the " Easy-Chair " in the 
 magazine, and his lecturing, with the object that 
 we know, and the further one which the times im 
 posed. 
 
 TO CHARLES ELIOT NORTON. 
 
 July 30, 61. 
 
 What a summer it is and has been ! That no. 
 thing shall be wanting, we have a comet, too ; a 
 comet seen last when Charles Fifth was abdicating 
 and Calais was falling, and Elizabeth was coming 
 to the throne, and Ben Jonson and Spenser and 
 the Dutch William were alive, and Philip Sidney 
 was a gray-eyed boy of two. Can you see all that 
 in the bushy swash of the comet s tail ? 
 
 Winthrop s death makes a great void in our 
 little neighborhood. We all knew him so well and 
 loved him so warmly, and he was so much and inti- 
 
IN THE MIDST OF WAR. 147 
 
 mately with us, that he seems to have fallen out of 
 our arms dead. 
 
 Thank Jane for her most welcome letter. Give 
 our dear loves to your dear mother, to Jane and 
 Grace ; and may God have us all and our country 
 in his holy keeping. 
 
 TO JOHN J. PINKERTON. 
 
 NORTH SHORE, RICHMOND Co., N. Y., 
 July 9, 61. 
 
 MY DEAR PINKERTON, I have been long 
 meaning to say how d ye do, and now your note is 
 most welcome. No, I stayed at home, resisting 
 several very tempting calls, nor shall I be lured to 
 any college halls this year. 
 
 I have two brothers at the war, and my wife 
 has one. My neighbor and friend, Theodore Win- 
 throp, died, at Great Bethel, as he had lived. Many 
 other warm friends are in arms, and I hold myself 
 ready when the call comes. I envy no other age. 
 I believe with all my heart in the cause, and in Abe 
 Lincoln. His message is the most truly American 
 message ever delivered. Think upon what a millen 
 nial year we have fallen when the President of 
 the United States declares officially that this gov 
 ernment is founded upon the rights of man ! Won 
 derfully acute, simple, sagacious, and of antique 
 honesty ! I can forgive the jokes and the big hands, 
 and the inability to make bows. Some of us who 
 doubted were wrong. This people is not rotten. 
 What the young men dream, the old men shall see. 
 
148 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 Well, I will not discuss Seward just now. I do 
 not believe him to be a coward or traitor. Chase 
 said to a friend s friend of mine last week, " Mr. 
 Seward stands by my strongest measures." 
 
 I should like greatly to sit with you and the 
 P. M. and the D. A., and talk the night away, even 
 if the newspaper did find us out and tattle ! But 
 I can only shake your hand and theirs, which I do 
 with all my heart. 
 
 My wife sends her kind remembrance. We 
 have a little girl, born on the day of the Proclama 
 tion. Yours always, 
 
 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 TO CHARLES ELIOT NORTON. 
 
 July 29, 1861. 
 
 My DEAR CHARLES, I have your notes and 
 the good news of Longfellow. A week ago Tom 
 
 Appleton wrote me about himself and L . It 
 
 was a very manly, touching letter. How glad 
 
 I am that L is not crushed by the heavy 
 
 blow! 
 
 No, nor am I nor the country by our blow. It 
 is very bitter, but we had made a false start, and 
 we should have suffered more dreadfully in the end 
 had we succeeded now. 
 
 The " Tribune," as you see, has changed. There 
 was a terrible time there. Its course was quite ex 
 clusively controlled by my friend, Charles Dana. 
 The stockholders and Greeley himself at last re 
 belled and Dana was overthrown. It may lead to 
 
IN THE MIDST OF WAR. 149 
 
 his leaving the " Tribune ; " but for his sake I hope 
 not. 
 
 As for blame and causes (for the defeat at Bull 
 Run), they are in our condition and character. We 
 have undertaken to make war without in the least 
 knowing how. It is as if I should be put to run 
 a locomotive. I am a decent citizen, and (let us 
 suppose) a respectable man, but if the train were 
 destroyed, who would be responsible? We have 
 made a false start and we have discovered it. It 
 remains only to start afresh. 
 
 The only difficulty now will be just that of 
 which Mr. Cox s resolutions are an evidence, the 
 disposition to ask, " Will it pay ? " And the duty is 
 to destroy that difficulty by showing that peace is 
 impossible without an emphatic conquest upon one 
 side or the other. If we could suppose peace made 
 as we stand now, we could not reduce our army by 
 a single soldier. The sword must decide this radi 
 cal quarrel. Why not within as well as without 
 the Union ? Then, if we win, we save all. If we 
 lose, we lose no more. 
 
 August 19, 61. 
 
 I say these things looking squarely at what is 
 possible, looking at what we shall be willing to do, 
 not what we ought to do. There is very little moral 
 mixture in the " anti-slavery " feeling of this coun 
 try. A great deal is abstract philanthropy ; part 
 is hatred of slave-holders ; a great part is jealousy 
 for white labor ; very little is a consciousness of 
 wrong done, and the wish to right it. How we 
 
150 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 hate those whom we have injured. I, too, " trem 
 ble when I reflect that God is just." 
 
 If the people think the government worth sav 
 ing they will save it. If they do not, it is not worth 
 saving. And when it is gone, he will be a foolish 
 fellow who sees in its fall the end of the popular 
 experiment. All that can truly be seen in it will 
 be the fact that principles will wrestle for the abso 
 lute control of the system. That is my consolation 
 in any fatal disaster. Meanwhile I hope that the 
 spirit of liberty is strong enough in our system to 
 conquer. 
 
 I am elected a delegate to our State Convention 
 on the llth September. There was a strong effort 
 to defeat me, but it was vain. In the reorganiza 
 tion of the County Committee, the opposition tri 
 umphed, though I and my friends were unques 
 tionably strongest. But none of us moved a finger, 
 and the enemy had been busy for a fortnight. We 
 were displaced in the Committee by a conspiracy 
 based upon personal jealousy of me as the " one- 
 man power " in the distribution of political patron 
 age in the county. I am not sorry at the result, 
 for the post of chairman was very irksome, but I 
 am sorry for the method, for it is an illustration of 
 the way in which we are governed. 
 
 Don t think I am lugubrious about the country, 
 for I am really very cheerful. The " old cause " is 
 safe, however in our day it may be checked and 
 grieved. The heart of New England is true. So 
 I believe, is the heart of its child, the West. We 
 
IN THE MIDST OF WAR. 151 
 
 go out alone to fight Old England s battle, and 
 she scoffs and sneers. " The Lord is very tedious," 
 said the old nurse, " but he is very sure." 
 
 23d August, 61. 
 
 I am very firm in the faith that there can be 
 but the government and anti-government parties, 
 and then that the Republican party, though strictly 
 loyal, does not by any means include all loyal men, 
 and that recent political opponents have a right to 
 demand, as a condition of concerted action, that 
 some of the candidates shall be taken from among 
 them. Is n t this exactly right ? 
 
 7th October, 61. 
 
 Well, and how goes the day in your heart? 
 Mrs. Shaw had a few lines from Mrs. Fremont the 
 other day. It is fine to see her faith in her hus 
 band. Can there be any who do not wish him well 
 and hope for his success ? 
 
 I am putting down some of my thoughts about 
 the war in a lecture upon " National Honor." It is 
 really a speech upon the times. The Fraternity 
 wanted me to open their course upon the 15th, but 
 I cannot be ready before the 29th October. Then 
 I shall come ; and I shall see you, I hope, though I 
 do not know that I can do more than front, fire, 
 and fall back. 
 
 2d December, 1861. 
 
 At the Astor we saw General and Mrs. Fre 
 mont. She seems bitter, I think, but he is the 
 
152 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 same old simple, winning soul that he always was. 
 He is perfectly calm and sweet. He evidently 
 thinks the administration do not yet understand 
 that there is a war. 
 
 HOME, 28th December, 1861. 
 
 The New London business was utterly dreary. 
 The audience was fair, the best they had had, as 
 they kindly say to every lecturer, but the course is 
 a failure. I came away at twelve, midnight, and 
 slept and waked, cold, back to New York. The 
 wind had blown the water out of the Connecticut 
 (high old Yankee river !) so that we lay for three 
 hours upon the shore. I was not very sorry, for it 
 prevented our arriving before dawn, and I came in 
 upon mother and E. and N. at nine o clock to 
 breakfast. 
 
 I have just read the correspondence of Seward. 
 It seems to me admirable and honorable. He 
 puts it upon a true ground, that we, in like cir 
 cumstances, should demand reparation and apology. 
 It is calmly and well argued, and the conclusion is 
 ingenious and masterly. We have nothing to be 
 ashamed of. Our pride may be wounded, but our 
 honor is untouched. The third and last trump 
 card of the rebellion has failed. 
 
 24th February, 1862. 
 
 MY DEAREST CHARLES, The heart of thirty- 
 eight, although of course frosted with extreme age, 
 is yet sensible of the glow of friendly emotion. 
 When Nannie gave me the book this morning, I 
 
IN THE MIDST OF WAR. 153 
 
 felt, with Coleridge, " And dearer was the mother 
 for the child," the wife for the friend. Or, as Emer 
 son has it in his poem of Etienne : - 
 
 " The traveler and the road seem one 
 With the errand to be done." 
 
 So it seemed this morning. You are always 
 thoughtful, always generous. How have I deserved 
 such a friend ? 
 
 March 6, 62. 
 
 I think I am a little more cheerful in the 
 [Washington] matter than you, because I have 
 rather more faith in the President s common sense 
 and practical wisdom. His policy has been to hold 
 the border States. He has held them ; now he 
 makes his next step and invites emancipation. I 
 think he has the instinct of the statesman, the 
 knowledge of how much is practicable without 
 recoil. From the first he has steadily advanced, 
 and there has been no protest against anything he 
 has said or done. It is easy to say he has done 
 nothing until you compare March 6, 61 and 62. 
 
 As other signs of the current, I observe these 
 things in the papers of to-day: 1st, Mr. Adams 
 speech distinctly saying that Slavery is the root of 
 all evil ; 2d, Cyrus Field, a stiff old Democrat, re 
 peating it. 3d, Prosper Wetmore introducing into 
 our Chamber of Commerce, he an old Commercial 
 Democrat, a resolution of thanks to John Bright, 
 the eloquent defender, etc., of freedom, a word 
 that your true-blue pro-slavery modern Democrat 
 shies as a bat shies the sun. 
 
154 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 All the omens are happy, it seems to me. 
 For what is it but a question of our national com 
 mon sense ? and if that, as the year has proved, was 
 strong enough to smother so furious a party spirit 
 as ours in this country, why should we suppose it 
 will fail us suddenly ? 
 
 25th March. 
 
 Fletcher Harper has asked me to take into con 
 sideration the writing of a history, a chronicle of 
 the war, to be illustrated by the war pictures of the 
 " Weekly," a huge (in size) book for popular read 
 ing, and to be especially a Northern book, to show 
 what the Rebellion came from, and what its end 
 would probably be ! That is not bad for Mr. Har 
 per. I told him that if I wrote about the Rebellion 
 I should want to write a proper history ; that his 
 work, though admirable in intention, could be but a 
 4 job for me ; that the study would be useful to any 
 subsequent work upon the subject, but that the 
 public never could believe that the later was more 
 than a hash of the earlier. He said that I could 
 easily do it in three months, and he would pay me 
 well, and begged me to think it over. 1 
 
 TO MISS NORTON. 
 
 June 11, 62. 
 
 Everything is so soft and ample and rich in 
 form and color during this month ! Yet I regret 
 the rain that makes the freshness, on account of 
 Mac and his boys before Richmond. What a pity 
 
 1 The hook was not undertaken. 
 
IN THE MIDST OF WAR. 155 
 
 that we have not a hundred thousand more men, 
 so that everything might be as sure as speedy! 
 And what a tremendous contest! I go back to 
 Persia and Greece and Carthage and Rome to find 
 its parallels. The Rebels are as united and sullen 
 and desperate as I always knew they must be. 
 They hate us with ferocity. The task before us is 
 greater than any people ever was called upon to 
 accomplish. Great nations have conquered and 
 subjugated others, but we have to conquer and as 
 similate half of ourselves. 
 
 TO CHARLES ELIOT NORTON. 
 
 18th June, 62. 
 
 What a resplendent summer! How densely 
 rich and blooming ! I am out all I can be. This 
 moment A. darts in and out again, asking, " What s 
 your hat on for?" I ve just been pruning and 
 quiddling, and feeling of the ground with the roots 
 of the Virginia creeper (no allusion to McClellan), 
 and of the air with the white blossom sprays of the 
 deutzia. I am grand in my square foot principal 
 ity ! My patch to me a kingdom is, and that elm- 
 tree ! (do you remember it ?) my prime minister. 
 
 Colonel Raasloff waits to see what Congress will 
 do about his St. Croix proposition. I have written 
 to him that it seems to me we want our Southern 
 laborers where the} r are, but we want them free, and, 
 until they are so, I should cry godspeed to any 
 man who wanted to escape as a free man to another 
 country. Consequently I shall work all the harder 
 
156 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 upon public opinion to hasten the day of their 
 freedom. It is better they should be a " free rural 
 population " in their native land, which wants their 
 labor, than in another country, is n t it ? 
 
 Colonel Raasloff says, and this is entre nous, 
 that he saw Sumner the day before ; and when the 
 colonel said that the war would be long, the Sen 
 ator was evidently " delighted," which R. says he 
 was sorry to observe. He says that Speaker Grow 
 told him that Congress would not adjourn before 
 the middle of July, or certainly until Richmond 
 was taken, adding, " The army is encamped before 
 Richmond, and we are encamped behind the army." 
 
 Fortunately for us all, Mr. Lincoln is wiser than 
 Mr. Sumner. He is very wise. 
 
 26th June, 62. 
 
 What an extraordinary paper by Hawthorne in 
 the " Atlantic " ! It is pure intellect, without emo 
 tion, without sympathy, without principle. I was 
 fascinated, laughed and wondered. It is as un- 
 human and passionless as a disembodied intelli 
 gence. 
 
 NORTH SHORE, Sunday, 3d August, 62. 
 
 It is not easy to say who is responsible for this 
 extremity. I do not blame any one man ; the diffi 
 culty is ultimately in the nation, but a good deal 
 must be shouldered by those who so attacked Mc- 
 Clellan that he became the centre of party combi 
 nations. I think that he must soon retire from his 
 command, for the faith of his own army is leaving 
 
IN THE MIDST OF WAR. 157 
 
 him. Yet I think that history will record that he 
 was a faithful and devoted citizen and soldier, and 
 that, if he was unequal to his task and did not 
 know it, it was an ignorance he shared with the 
 most accomplished of our military men, and with 
 the mass of the people. 
 
 The country seems to me to be making up its 
 mind whether it will own itself beaten. But I do 
 not lose heart, although in events there is little to 
 encourage. I cannot believe that a people which 
 has shown itself so singularly ready to learn what 
 to do and how to think will fail in this crisis. If 
 the government continues to move as fast as the na 
 tion, all is saved. I don t know whether I think it 
 will or not. 
 
 NAUSHON ISLAND,* llth August, 1862. 
 
 MY DEAR CHARLES, Here we have been for a 
 week to-morrow, and in the salt sea air we all seem 
 to be perfectly well. It is only about thirty miles 
 from the southern point of Rhode Island, so I 
 breathe my native Narragansett air and am electri 
 fied. The island is about eight miles long and one 
 or two broad. It is beautifully broken, with superb 
 beech woods rising and opening into bare uplands, 
 from which you see the cean or Vineyard Sound, 
 and again opening into sunny, grassy nooks and 
 spaces with clusters of shrubs in which the deer lie 
 or feed. Day before yesterday we started a pair 
 of magnificent bucks. The paths and dells are end 
 less. From the house you have a sea horizon and 
 
 1 The summer residence of Mr. John M. Forbes. 
 
158 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 the entire sky, with woods almost to the horizon, 
 and holding azure crescents of sea (as in " Maud ") 
 in their tops. The house is immense, the life sim 
 ple, the hospitality unbounded. To-day the gover 
 nor and three of his suite are here, beside ourselves 
 and three or four other visitors. There are riding, 
 driving, rowing, sailing, shooting, fishing, billiards, 
 dancing, what you will. You join the doers, or 
 you go apart and do nothing or mind your own 
 business. Mrs. Forbes is incessantly working on 
 preserves and comforts for the soldiers, and we all 
 pull lint at intervals. I have been reading here 
 Tocqueville s " Ancien Regime." It is very calm 
 and wise. 
 
 NORTH SHORE, 25th September, 62. 
 
 MY DEAR CHARLES, I hoped to hear from 
 you, for I knew you would say what I felt. 
 
 Coming at this moment, when we were in the 
 gravest peril from Northern treachery, the proclam 
 ation clears the air like a northwest wind. We 
 know now exactly where we are. There are now 
 none but slavery and anti-slavery men in the coun 
 try. The fence is knocked over, and straddling is 
 impossible. 
 
 Now, if my friends nominate me for Congress, 
 I shall accept. Success I should like, but I don t 
 count upon it. I should stump the district and 
 sow the seed. 
 
 When I think of Wilder Dwight and the brave 
 victims, my joy is very sober. How the country 
 will be filled with mourning as our victory goes on I 
 
IN THE MIDST OF WAR. 159 
 
 For victory it must be now. We heard of Bob l 
 through Dr. Stone. They were both in the thick 
 of the fight and escaped unhurt. You saw the ac 
 count of our brave Joe. Think of the service these 
 soldiers of less than two years have seen ! I saw a 
 banner of Sickles s brigade. It has been in ten 
 battles ! 
 
 NORTH SHORE, 6th October, 1862. 
 
 As for me and my chances, and the peace of the 
 estimable Jane, which is the only peace I care 
 for just now, they are in great peril ! The 
 " outs " in the county here have worked like bea 
 vers against me, who represent the " ins." The 
 free and native citizens of the island (especially 
 those born trans mare) are resolved that a foreigner 
 shall no longer carry the county in his fob. They 
 beat me in going to Syracuse, and they have elected 
 an anti-Curtis delegation to the Congressional Con 
 vention. There will be an unofficial delegation 
 from this county which will urge me upon the Con 
 vention, and will say that I have n t the delegation 
 because I refused to work for it. They will also 
 say that I shall accept if nominated, although I do 
 not think that the nominee will be elected. If they 
 say what I have said to them that for the right 
 kind of a man I shall do exactly as I should for 
 myself, they will probably secure another nomina 
 tion, because the convention will say : " Let us, 
 then, have a candidate who will unite Richmond." 
 I should be very glad to be nominated, and gladder 
 1 Robert Gould Shaw. 
 
160 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 to be elected, but I have not taken the necessary 
 steps. 1 
 
 I am going up to town this evening to dine with 
 Colonel Kaasloff and Count Piper and two or three 
 more. The colonel goes to China immediately. I 
 shall have to espouse the proclamation and make 
 them like it, which they do not yet. 
 
 LOWELL, December 10, 62. 
 
 I had a very large audience this evening, and 
 the lecture was admirably received. One man 
 said, in the Cambridge vein, " He is a very dan 
 gerous man, he puts it so plausibly ! " An Ameri 
 can says so of the doctrine of the Declaration! 
 You see there is work before us. 
 
 NEW YORK, December 15, 62. 
 
 I am at my mother s, a house of mourning. 
 On Saturday afternoon my brother Joe fell dead 
 at the head of his regiment, ending at twenty-six 
 years a stainless life in the holiest cause and in 
 the most heroic manner. God rest his noble soul, 
 and grant us all the same fidelity ! My mother, 
 who has felt the extreme probability of the event 
 from the beginning, is as brave as she can be ; but 
 it is a fearful blow. She does not regret his going, 
 and she knew the risk, but who can know the pang 
 until it comes ? 2 
 
 1 He was not nominated. 
 
 2 Joseph Bridgham Curtis was born in Providence, R. I., Oc 
 tober 25, 1836. Educated as a civil engineer at the Lawrence 
 
IN THE MIDST OF WAR. 161 
 
 December 28, 62. 
 
 This will be a crucial week. The counter pro 
 clamation, the edict of emancipation, the opposi 
 tion of Seymour & Co., and the mad desperation 
 of the reaction, all will not avail. The war must 
 proceed, and to its natural result. Even Joseph 
 Harper, the most Southern of the firm, said to 
 me yesterday, " The negroes must be armed, and if 
 Seymour does not support the war he will have no 
 support." Perhaps, if any possible way of settle 
 ment could be devised, there might be a strong 
 party for it, but in deep water we must swim or 
 drown. All our reverses, our despondence, our 
 despairs, bring us to the inevitable issue : shall 
 not the blacks strike for their freedom ? 
 
 February 6, 1863. 
 
 Why should Dr. Holmes trouble himself about 
 the base of McClellan s brain? McClellan has 
 
 Scientific School, Cambridge, Mass., he entered the Union ser 
 vice at the outbreak of the war in 1861 as engineer on the staff 
 of the Ninth Regiment of the New York State National Guard. 
 On the organization of the Fourth Rhode Island Regiment, he was 
 appointed Adjutant. He served with Burnside at Roanoke and 
 in the Army of the Potomac. The regiment was cut to pieces 
 at Antietam, and fell back in disorder. Lieutenant Curtis seized 
 the colors, shouting, " I go back no further ! What is left of 
 the Fourth Rhode Island, form here ! " But there was not enough 
 left to form, and Curtis, for the rest of the day, fought as a pri 
 vate in an adjoining command. He was made Lieutenant-Colonel 
 on the reorganization of the regiment, and was in command at 
 Fredericksburg. He was instantly killed at the head of his men 
 on the evening of the battle of December 13, 1862. 
 
162 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 nothing to do with all this McClellanization of tlio 
 public mind. The reaction requires a small Demo 
 crat with great military prestige for its presiden 
 tial candidate. The new programme, you know, is 
 a new conservative party of Republicans and Dem 
 ocrats, and all mankind except Abolitionists. It 
 will work, I think, for as a party we have broken 
 down. I blame nobody. It was inevitable. The 
 " Tribune," through the well-meaning mistakes of 
 Greeley, has been forced to take (in the public 
 mind, which is the point) the position of W. Phil 
 lips, the Union if possible, emancipation anyhow. 
 As a practical political position that is not ten 
 able. If, by any hocus-pocus, the war order of 
 emancipation should be withdrawn, we should be 
 lost forever, beyond McClellan s power, assisted 
 by John Van Buren, the " Boston Courier " and 
 "Post" and the "New York Herald," to save us. 
 There s nothing for us but to go forward and save 
 all we can. 
 
 February 14, 63. 
 
 General Burnside came to see mother a day or 
 two since. He spoke with utmost respect and love 
 of Joe. He said that he was one of the few officers 
 that " rose " in the fight ; that his coolness, valor, 
 and sagacity kept pace ; and that he would have 
 been necessarily a distinguished officer. Dear 
 boy ! I see his calm, sweet, dead face, and I think 
 of his lovely life, " wrapped sweet in his shroud, 
 the hope of humanity not yet extinguished in 
 him." 
 
IN THE MIDST OF WAR. 163 
 
 TO JOHN J. PINKERTON. 
 
 February 17, 1863. 
 
 The fate of the country is being settled in this 
 lull. If it awakes divided, we have a long, sharp 
 fight before us all. The instinct of union, if not 
 stronger than that of liberty, in this people, as 
 Mr. Seward once said, is yet too strong to be 
 squelched like a tallow dip. There was never 
 but one government that merely tumbled down 
 and died, and that was Louis Philippe s! We 
 are too young, and the government has been too 
 long consciously a general benefit, to allow such 
 a result here. Even Vallandigham, braying to 
 Copperheads in New Jersey, is obliged to say that 
 he is for union. John Van Crow has jumped to 
 the dominant tune, and the wayward sisters are 
 rebels to be put down. The " Herald " is afraid 
 of the " Express " and " World " for rushing reac 
 tion into absurdity, and plants itself square upon 
 war. Bennett told Mahoney, when he asked him 
 to print his letter, that he was a damned fool. 
 
 When the question is fairly put, " Shall we 
 whittle this great sovereign power down to a Vene 
 zuela or Guatemala?" if the soul of the people 
 does not snort scorn and defiance, then good-night 
 to Marmion. 
 
 I feel steadily cheerful, and yet, as you know, 
 I am a traveler, not a recluse. 
 
 Do you mean that you have evacuated West 
 Chester finally? What says MacVeagh? My 
 friendly regards to him if ever you write. 
 
 Faithfully yours, GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
164 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 TO CHARLES ELIOT NORTON. 
 
 llth March, 1863. 
 
 Not only has the reaction consumed itself, but 
 it is of the greatest significance that the result is 
 not due to a victory, but is a purely intellectual and 
 moral recuperation. I have been very sure that, 
 when the Democratic party found that they could 
 not operate on the base of peace, they would hurry 
 over to war, as McClellan from the Pamunkey to 
 the James. But the movement shows that the 
 strongest and most sagacious men of the party are 
 its old Southern leaders. Jeff and his friends have 
 known from the beginning that it was a war of 
 ideas, which had exhausted compromise and had to 
 fight. The Northern Democrats refuse to acknow 
 ledge the truth, but they are forced to act upon it, 
 which comes practically to the same thing. 
 
 The following letter refers to incidents following 
 the draft riots in New York in July, 1863, by far 
 the most exciting experience of any Northern com 
 munity during the war. The disturbance was started 
 by an attack upon a building in which the provost- 
 marshal was conducting the draft. Most of the 
 militia were absent in Pennsylvania ; there was but 
 a small number of Federal troops available ; the 
 police, taken by surprise, were for two days able to 
 do but little in restraining, and nothing in repressing 
 the mob, which, with the usual rage for plunder 
 and destruction, showed especial fury against the ne 
 groes, on whom atrocious outrages were committed. 
 
IN THE MIDST OF WAR. 165 
 
 NEW YORK, Juiy 19th, 63. 
 
 On Tuesday evening, upon an intimation from 
 a man who had heard the plot arranged in the city 
 to come down and visit me that night, and find 
 Horace Greeley and Wendell Phillips, " who were 
 concealed in my house," I took the babies out of 
 bed and departed to an unsuspected neighbor s. 
 On Wednesday a dozen persons informed me and 
 Mr. Shaw that our houses were to be burned ; and 
 as there was no police or military force upon the 
 island, and my only defensive weapon was a large 
 family umbrella, I carried Anna and the two babies 
 to James Sturgis s in Koxbury. Frank was with 
 Mrs. Shaw at Susie Minturn s up the river. To 
 day I am going with him to Roxbury, but shall re 
 turn immediately, so that I cannot see you. We 
 have now organized ourselves in the neighborhood 
 for mutual defense, and I do not fear any serious 
 trouble. 
 
 The good cause gains greatly by all this trouble. 
 The government is strong enough to hold New 
 York, if necessary, as it holds New Orleans, Balti 
 more, and St. Louis. There must be a great deal 
 more excitement, and if Seymour can bring the 
 State, under a form of law, against the national 
 government, he will do it. It will be done by a 
 state decision of the unconstitutionally of the con- 
 scription act. But as a riot it has been suppressed, 
 as an insurrection it has failed. No Northern con 
 spiracy for the rebellion can ever have so fair a 
 chance again as it had in this city last week, with- 
 
166 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 out soldiers, with a governor friendly to the mob, 
 and with only a splendid police which did its duty 
 as well as Grant s army. 
 
 TO JOHN J. PINKERTON. 
 
 NORTH SHORE, STATEN ISLAND, 
 2d October, 1863. 
 
 MY DEAR PINKERTON, I wish you joy with 
 all my heart, and the voice of -a married man of 
 seven years ought to have some weight in felicita 
 tion. It has always seemed that my fancy was fleet 
 enough to outrun the fact, and yet I have been 
 always distanced. As a lover you think marriage 
 is a very Paradise, but as a husband you will feel 
 that it was the beginning of life. But I leave the 
 sermon to the good clergyman who will breathe 
 upon you the heavenly benediction for your voyage. 
 I only stand on the shore and fling after you my 
 well-worn marriage slipper, and believe all that you 
 know of your companion, and whistle for the soft 
 est and most favorable gales. God bless you and 
 yours always. 
 
 Your friend, 
 
 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 TO CHARLES ELIOT NORTON. 
 
 15th October, 1863. 
 
 Whatever is happening to Meade, let us rejoice 
 over Pennsylvannia and Ohio. It is the great vin 
 dication of the President, and the popular verdict 
 upon the policy of the war. It gives one greater 
 
IN THE MIDST OF WAR. 167 
 
 joy than any event which has lately happened. Is 
 it not the sign of the final disintegration of that 
 rotten mass known as the Democratic party? In 
 this State we have sloughed off the name Republi 
 can and are known as the Union party. How glad 
 I am that we can gladly bear that name, and that 
 the Union at last means what it was intended by 
 the wisest and the best of our fathers Iko mean ! 
 
 24th October, 1863. 
 
 What a splendid succession to the editorship of 
 the ancient quarterly ! The great literary question 
 of this epoch in my mind has always been, who pays 
 for the " North American " ? (I do not mean the 
 writers, dear Mr. Editor, but the running expenses 
 of the institution). I am sincerely glad that you 
 and Lowell have taken it in hand, but my own 
 are so full that I cannot promise you anything, now 
 at least. I am at another lecture, and rewriting 
 my oration of September 1, and am speaking here 
 abouts in the canvass, and go to a Loyal League on 
 Monday evening in Bridgeport and keep the mill 
 going pretty steadily. I have a busy winter of 
 lecturing before me." 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 EDITOR OF "HARPER S WEEKLY." 
 
 IN 1863 I have not been able to fix the exact 
 Mr. Curtis became the political editor of 
 " Harper s Weekly." His relations with Harper 
 & Brothers had always been intimate and cordial. 
 They had published his books ; he had for nearly 
 ten years been a regular writer for the Monthly, 
 and later for the Weekly. Fletcher Harper, in 
 whose charge were the periodicals, had long been a 
 trusted and beloved friend and adviser. The Weekly 
 was then, as it is still, the most important illustrated 
 paper of the country, and had a very large num 
 ber of readers. Before the outbreak of the war, its 
 tone in politics had been conservative and mild, so 
 that it was the habit of the " Tribune " in its more 
 radical moods the moods of that journal were by 
 no means consistently radical to speak of Har 
 per s as a " Journal of Weakly Civilization," a mot 
 which in those hot times had much vogue. When, 
 however, slavery led to secession, and secession to 
 rebellion, the Weekly gave to the government of 
 Mr. Lincoln and to the Union Republican party 
 hearty support. Mr. Curtis took control as editor 
 with a perfectly clear understanding, equally hon- 
 
EDITOR OF HARPER S WEEKLY. 169 
 
 orable to him and to the publishers, that he was to 
 have entire independence. He could not otherwise 
 have taken it at all, nor could he have made of the 
 journal the power that it became. At first and for 
 some time he did only a part of the writing for the 
 editorial page, but gradually did more and more 
 until, for some years before his death, except in 
 rare instances (chiefly when he was ill), the entire 
 page was from his pen. He retained his home on 
 Staten Island, and could never be persuaded, though 
 often urged, to remove to the city. Doubtless it was 
 the better plan. He lost something in absence from 
 the daily intercourse with men, and the daily parti 
 cipation in affairs, but he gained more in the dispo 
 sition of his time, which was always urgently occu 
 pied, leaving him but very little that could be called 
 leisure. His semi-rural life also gave him two 
 privileges of the greatest value to him, a certain 
 amount of seclusion with his family, safe from the 
 incessant and consuming interruptions almost inevi 
 table in the city, and a certain amount of unforced 
 intercourse with nature, and these counted for much 
 in that fine serenity of character, that calmness 
 wedded to vigor in his spirit, which marked him 
 as a man apart in the strenuous times in which his 
 part was so large, so important, and so exacting. 
 
 In one sense, the taking of the editorship of the 
 Weekly was a decisive step in the life of Mr. Cur 
 tis. He did not and could not cease to be a man 
 of letters, a student, and in certain broad fields a 
 scholar. His writing in the " Easy-Chair," which 
 
GEORGE r// / /.i.i/ crxris. 
 
 of itself sutneed to till a volume each year, contin 
 ued and was purely literary. Some of his editorial 
 writing was almost equally so, ami all of it was ex 
 ecuted with sustained fidelity to his literary stand 
 ard, so far as conditions permitted : and his stand 
 ard was hin h. He was still to produce that series of 
 orations, some of which that on Bryant, that on 
 Lowell, that on the unveiling- of the statue of Wash 
 ington, that at (iettysburg have a very high 
 value, and must always have, wholly apart from the 
 charm or impressiveuess of their delivery. But 
 from this time on, his chief interest and occupation 
 were to be with the public affairs of the time, and, 
 indeed, of the day ; he was in the movement of his 
 eouutrv, shared it, was swayed by it, and in no small 
 decree contributed to its direction. 
 
 The readers he addressed were far more numer 
 ous than books could reach, but what he said to 
 them was necessarily briefly said, generally for a 
 specific purpose, often a temporary one, on matters 
 of supreme moment at the time, often also of endur 
 ing interest, but demanding instant action which 
 he sought to influence. The editor of even a weekly 
 journal is rather a talker than a writer. He keeps 
 up a continual one-sided conversation on whatever 
 he deems of greatest immediate concern, and his 
 subjects may be of infinite variety, but none of 
 them can at any one time be treated completely, or 
 with any detailed preparation. 
 
 Mr. Curtis, moreover, was active in the affairs 
 he discussed, and his action and his writing, witi 
 
KI)IT(Ht 01 //.1A / AA",S II /;/; A A) . 171 
 
 a common object of the most absorbing nature, 
 left liim scant time for purely scholarly pursuits. 
 From time to time, as after the death of Mr. Lin 
 coln, there came, to him pressing suggestions and 
 solicitations for historical and biographical work 
 that would have given scope for the more sustained 
 exercise of his literary powers; but lie put them 
 aside, not without reluctance, and even something 
 of the despairing pang that the strong man must 
 feel in the presence of the relentless limitations of 
 time, but with firmness. He had chosen his path 
 way with the conscientious care and deliberation 
 that in him were both native and cultivated, and 
 no considerations less strong or worthy than those* 
 that had determined his choice could swerve him 
 from it. 
 
 Mr. Curtis entered on the editorship of the 
 Weekly at the crisis of the War for the I liion. 
 Gettysburg had been fought and won, Vicksburg 
 had fallen, Sherman in the West and (irant in the, 
 Batt Were about to enter on that tremendous series 
 of movements and battles between the slowly con 
 verging forc.es of which the rebellion was to be 
 crushed. The proclamation of emancipation had 
 determined the purpose of the final struggle on 
 both sides, and what the issue must be if the gov 
 ernment should succeed. Mr. Curtis, and those 
 who with him had felt that the war was in reality 
 resistance to the aggressions of slavery, felt now 
 that the enemy was unmasked, and pursued their 
 course with a deeper determination and more ex 
 
 
172 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 alted courage. On the other hand, the opposition 
 to the government, though on the whole much weak 
 ened, was intensified and embittered. The senti 
 ment of distrust and dislike of " radicalism," bred 
 of long party association with the South when it 
 dominated the government and controlled the hon 
 ors and profits of politics, became more sullen and 
 implacable. The burdens of the war were heavy. 
 The conscription for the army, harsh enough where 
 it was honestly made, and rendered often odious by 
 the corruption to which the provision for filling 
 state quotas by counties gave rise, spread an angry 
 suspicion throughout the country, especially in the 
 larger cities of the East, of which the politicians of 
 the opposition were quick to avail themselves. The 
 possibility of foreign complications, and the almost 
 hopeless difficulty of contending with them if they 
 should occur, were plain enough to the most san 
 guine. The confusion in the national councils, and 
 particularly in Congress, inseparable from the vast- 
 ness, the stress, and the novelty of the situation, was 
 obvious. Mr. Lincoln s term was drawing to a 
 close, and the occurrence of a presidential election 
 in the midst of civil war, with all its tremendous 
 possible consequences, was an ordeal which patriot 
 ism and faith could face, but as to which wisdom 
 and experience could give no ray of hope or guid 
 ance. 
 
 In this situation the work undertaken by Mr= 
 Curtis was of the highest importance. He proved 
 from the outset well fitted for it, and, though he 
 
EDITOR OF HARPERS WEEKLY. 173 
 
 felt profoundly the responsibility imposed by it, this 
 rather steadied and impelled than dismayed him. 
 The work was to be done ; the need of it was instant 
 and incessant. His general ideas of the purpose of 
 the war, the policy of the government, the duty of 
 the citizen, were well defined. In their application 
 to the questions of the hour, as they presented them 
 selves, he developed a soundness of judgment, and 
 a capacity for persuasive and convincing argument, 
 that nothing in his previous career had indicated. 
 His editorial style, though with time and practice 
 it was developed, was from the first peculiarly indi 
 vidual, and so entirely unlike any other that at any 
 time for thirty years a stray quotation from " Har 
 per s Weekly " could easily be recognized by an ha 
 bitual reader. And yet it was curiously unlike Mr. 
 Curtis s style in any other line. It rarely betrayed 
 the eloquence of the orator, the charm of the essay 
 ist, or the wit and grace and fancy of the humorist. 
 It was extremely simple, direct, clear, and some 
 times even homely. I have spoken of the editor as 
 a talker. Mr. Curtis s editorials are an admirable 
 example of the excellence to which talking of this 
 kind can attain. He seemed to have his reader as 
 clearly in his mind as if he were sitting before him, 
 and he reasoned with him, appealed to him, sug 
 gested to him, as he would have done had their eyes 
 met. And the editor did not make the mistake 
 <ji either overrating or underrating the person to 
 whom he addressed himself. I have sometimes 
 thought that this imaginary companion was con- 
 
174 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 ceived by him with a very serious reference to the 
 character of the Weekly as it was when he took 
 charge of it, and that his typical reader was one 
 who primarily liked to look at pictures, and whose 
 interest, thus attracted, was to be directed by the 
 writer. Then Mr. Curtis, with all his unusual gifts, 
 had at heart a deep and wholesome sympathy with 
 men. Separated from the great body of them as 
 he was, and, so far as these gifts were concerned, 
 raised above them, he never betrayed a sign that 
 he felt either separate or superior. The reason 
 and conscience, the patriotism, self-respect, fair 
 ness, common sense, to which he appealed, were 
 the qualities of which he was conscious in himself, 
 and which he wi^h perfect sincerity attributed to 
 others. 
 
 A familiar form of Mr. Curtis s way of putting 
 things in his editorials was by questions. These he 
 used with good effect. They were not artful, and 
 were not often sarcastic. They seemed to be the 
 natural development of the reasoning that had con 
 vinced him, and they served the double purpose of 
 awakening the reader s interest and guiding his 
 mental processes. Fromentin, the keenest and 
 clearest of analysts in his own domain, says of the 
 art of painting that it " is but the art of expressing 
 the invisible by the visible." This subtle defini 
 tion appears to me to apply to Mr. Curtis s edito 
 rial writing. The principles he sought to apply 
 were thought out by him with the utmost care. 
 The particular cases of their application were 
 
EDITOR OF HARPER S WEEKLY. 175 
 
 searchingly studied and maturely considered. He 
 had a sort of personal fondness for the opposite 
 side to his own, and was constantly making a 
 better statement of it than that of his opponents. 
 He brought to the discussion of the public affairs 
 of the hour a wealth of knowledge, historical, con 
 temporary, practical, and a thoroughness of reflec 
 tion, which are unusual even with writers of the 
 most deliberate and elaborate kind. One has but 
 to read his orations to find the evidence of these 
 qualities, and of the skill with which he could mar 
 shal a long array of facts in support of a logical 
 conclusion. In "Harper s Weekly" he gave us 
 the fruit of these capacities, but rarely any sign 
 of them in exercise. The simplest-minded reader 
 could feel the force of his reasoning ; only the 
 more highly trained could understand from what 
 deep and widely-fed sources that force was supplied. 
 It is a natural question whether the journal af 
 forded the best field for the use of such powers, 
 and whether they might not better have been di 
 rected where their possessor would have been more 
 conspicuously recognized and his achievements more 
 splendid. I shall not undertake to answer the 
 question. I am restrained, at the outset, by my 
 knowledge of the conscientiousness with which Mr. 
 Curtis decided his own course, and of the gen 
 eral soundness of his judgment. I can only say 
 that the influence he exerted in the direction of his 
 aims and we know how high these were must 
 have been very great. When from time to time 
 
176 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 on rare occasions his name came before the coun 
 try in a way to call out public sentiment, he was 
 overwhelmed with grateful surprise at the depth 
 and extent of the respect, the confidence and the 
 affection he had, all unconsciously, inspired. These 
 would have been a rich capital for him in public 
 life, and I have no doubt that that capital would 
 have increased and multiplied in any place of 
 power and responsibility that could have come to 
 him. But the public feeling toward him was but 
 a faint indication of the influence he really exerted 
 in "Harper s Weekly," for only a very small num 
 ber of the tens of thousands, often the hundreds 
 of thousands, to whom he spoke week by week 
 for almost thirty years, associated his name with 
 his writing, or had the dimmest knowledge of his 
 personality. The sentiment that at intervals, 
 sadly few they seem to one who cares to consider 
 fame as a reward for merit found expression was 
 instilled most largely in the minds of those who 
 knew the writer by the qualities his writing exhib 
 ited. But the qualities were the same for those 
 who did not know him. When I recall the his 
 tory of his country from the issue of the Emancipa 
 tion Proclamation to the close of Mr. Curtis s life, 
 with the long line of vital questions, which by the 
 growth and evolution of the American nation were 
 submitted to the arbitrament of public opinion, and 
 reflect with what wisdom and fidelity, what cour 
 age and unselfishness, he labored for what he be 
 lieved the right, and what experience has already 
 
EDITOR OF HARPER S WEEKLY. 177 
 
 shown was in the main the right, I cannot but 
 feel that the great share of the labor that was 
 given to the editor s work was richly rewarded, 
 as he would have rated reward. 
 
 In 1864 came the presidential election. There 
 was early shown a very pronounced and apparently 
 strong opposition to Mr. Lincoln s renomination. 
 It was manifested most distinctly by what was 
 known as the "radical" element of the Republican 
 party, whose leaders felt that the President had 
 advanced much too slowly toward the destruction 
 of slavery. With these men Mr. Curtis had sym 
 pathy so far as their hatred of slavery was involved, 
 and their feeling that it was the source of the re 
 bellion. With their distrust or disapproval of the 
 President he had no sympathy. He felt that Lin 
 coln was perfectly sound in purpose, that his judg 
 ment was on the whole safe, that he was entitled 
 to decide since his responsibility was so great, and 
 that he was in a position to know best what, for 
 the whole country, was best. Still more keenly 
 he felt that whatever were the President s possible 
 errors, the risk of any change was appalling. And 
 he had, moreover, a very just perception of the 
 actual condition and tendency of public opinion, 
 and it agreed with the President s estimate of it. 
 He wrote to Mr. Norton (April 7, 1864) : 
 
 " MY DEAR CHARLES, How grandly the coun 
 try is speaking for the war and the policy I Night 
 before last I dined with Colonel Raasloff 1 and 
 1 The Danish Minister. 
 
178 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 Count Piper and Habricht, and I claimed that thus 
 far we had proved that in a republic patriotism 
 was not necessarily subordinated to party spirit. 
 It seems just now as if our true victory were to be 
 greater than even we had supposed. 
 
 " I have seen Lincoln tete-a-tete since I saw you, 
 and my personal impression of him confirmed my 
 previous feeling. I am sorry that Fremont seems 
 to be placed in a position which can please no real 
 friend of his. Only to-day I have an invitation 
 from the office of The New Nation to meet 
 some friends of all the radical candidates to take 
 steps to form a radical national committee, and to 
 secure a radical platform, and a reliable radical 
 man for the presidential campaign about to open. 
 Last week I went to Baltimore, and supped at the 
 Union Club with a dozen of the most strenuous 
 men there. Every one, when the war began, was a 
 pro-slavery man ; now they will have nothing but 
 immediate, uncompensated emancipation. Charles, 
 you and I are superannuated fogies." 
 
 Mr. Curtis was chosen as a delegate to the Re 
 publican National Convention of 1864 held in Bal 
 timore. He was an ardent and effective supporter 
 of Mr. Lincoln s nomination. A glimpse of his 
 work there is afforded in a letter (June 16, 64), to 
 Mr. Norton : 
 
 " MY DEAR CHARLES, I hope you like our Bal 
 timore work. The unanimity and enthusiasm were 
 most imposing. I voted against the admission of 
 Tennessee, because I did not want the convention 
 
EDITOR OF HARPERS WEEKLY. 179 
 
 to meddle with the question ; and, since she only 
 wanted to come in to help do what we were sure to 
 do without her, I thought that, as the cause was ex 
 actly the same for both of us, she should give us 
 forbearance while we gave her sympathy. But it 
 was impossible to resist the torrent, and they all 
 came in. There is no harm done. I cannot but 
 
 rf 
 
 think Sumner wrong. If all New York rebels, I 
 am still a citizen of the United States. That is the 
 simple, obvious, necessary ground. 
 
 " The committee of one from each State appointed 
 me to write the official letter to the President, and 
 refused to instruct me. I sent it yesterday, having 
 read it to Mr. Bryant and to Raymond. They 
 were both entirely pleased with everything in it." 
 
 In the canvass that followed on the nomination 
 of Mr. Lincoln, and that of General George B. Mc- 
 Clellan by the Democrats, Mr. Curtis worked with 
 the utmost vigor, spirit, and patience. His part in 
 the Baltimore Convention had won for him a posi 
 tion of influence in the party, which for him car 
 ried with it a full corresponding responsibility. In 
 the columns of " Harper s Weekly," in his constant 
 and wide correspondence and in his speeches, he 
 did all that he could to guide and arouse public 
 opinion. His labors were incessant, and often amid 
 harassing events which, though they could not fail 
 to give him the utmost anxiety, he met with cheer 
 ful courage and often with humor. He wrote to 
 Mr. Norton, July 12, 1864, when General Grant s 
 movement toward Petersburg had left the capital 
 
180 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 and the Pennsylvania border exposed to possible 
 raids by Confederate cavalry : 
 
 " And how is Ashfield ? I should have written 
 you there before if I had supposed there was a 
 post-office at such a height. Do you have to eat 
 oil more than three times a day to keep warm in 
 this weather? We don t. But then we live upon 
 an island in the temperate zone. Or are you warmed 
 by the news of the isolation of Washington ? There 
 is something comical about it which I cannot escape, 
 with all the annoyance. The great Dutch Penn 
 sylvania annually sprawling on its back, and bel 
 lowing to mankind to come and help it out of the 
 scrape, is perfectly ludicrous. I hope that this year 
 all the States will learn that, while they have no 
 efficient and organized militia, they will be con 
 stantly harassed by raids to the end of the war. 
 We have all kinds of rumors here at every moment, 
 from which you are free. But the sense of absurd 
 ity and humiliation is very universal. These things 
 weaken the hold of the administration upon the 
 people ; and the only serious peril that I foresee is 
 the setting in of a reaction which may culminate 
 in November and defeat Lincoln, as it did Wads- 
 worth in this State. I wish we had a loyal governor, 
 and that New York city was virtuous." 
 
 In the stress of the deadly struggle for the life 
 of the nation Mr. Curtis s mind turned frequently 
 to the study of the hardly less difficult struggles 
 that attended the foundation of the government. 
 
 " Have you thought," he wrote to Mr. Norton, 
 
EDITOR OF HARPERS WEEKLY. 181 
 
 " what a vindication this war is of Alexander Ham 
 ilton? I wish somebody would write his life as it 
 ought to be written, for surely he was one of the 
 greatest of our great men, as Jefferson was the 
 least of the truly great ; or am I wrong ? Hamil 
 ton was generous and sincere. Was Jefferson 
 either ? In Franklin s life how the value of tem 
 perament shows itself ! It was as fortunate for 
 him and for us as his genius." 
 
 Another letter to the same friend (August 28th) 
 reports his first degree of LL. D., a title, by the 
 way, which he never used, or allowed, if he could 
 help it, to be attached to his name, even after he 
 had received the right to it from Harvard, and" 
 also shows the tone of public opinion at that 
 date : 
 
 NORTH SHORE, 28th August, 64. 
 
 Frank wrote me, or printed rather, in large and 
 remarkable capitals, a letter the other day. I en 
 livened the tranquil circle here by calling it a Cap 
 ital letter, a little work of mine which I dedicate 
 to Jane. Probably you are not aware that I am 
 myself the latest little work of Madison University. 
 Blushes forbid me to write that that discriminating 
 institution has done for the least of your friends 
 what Harvard did for that other celebrated scholar, 
 Andrew Jackson. Yesterday I received a letter 
 with a very large green seal, addressed " G. W. C., 
 LL. D. ! " Oh my prophetic soul ! I have long 
 called Frank and Zib Doctor. 
 
 I say not a word about the war, but did people 
 
182 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 ever deserve success at the polls less than the Union 
 party? Two years ago I was the only Lincoln 
 man I knew hereabouts, and I have come round to 
 the same position. Yet he will be elected, or we 
 are dreary humbugs. 
 
 Good-by, dear boy. I am more cheerful than 
 ever, for within two months we shall see the whole 
 force of treason North and South, and if we sink 
 t is to see what we shall see ! I shall not be able 
 to write on Peace luckily for you. It will be a 
 good text for J. R. L. Give him my love, if he is 
 with you, and to all the dear ones. 
 Your friend the doctor sends his benediction. 
 
 A week later is an allusion to General Burnside, 
 for whom he had the utmost affection and re 
 spect : 
 
 EAST GREENWICH, Monday, 5th September, 1864. 
 
 MY DEAR CHARLES, Burnside is staying with 
 me here at the house of my cousin, Mr. Goddard. 
 Yesterday we sat upon the rocks, and he told me 
 the whole story of the mine and of the Army of the 
 Potomac. It is intensely interesting and perfectly 
 clear. He is the noblest, most magnanimous man 
 I ever saw, and I shall tell you the tale with im 
 mense satisfaction some day. On Saturday morn 
 ing, when the news of Sherman s success came, he 
 was the most unaffectedly delighted man I ever saw. 
 His exultation wound up by his seizing his wife 
 and kissing her. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE END OF THE WAR. 
 
 IN October Mr. Curtis was nominated for Con 
 gress in his home district. Two years before, his 
 friends had pressed his nomination, but, curiously 
 enough, it had been defeated by a prejudice against 
 him as enjoying too much of the confidence of the 
 administration in the matter of appointments, and 
 by the independence and impartiality of his recom 
 mendations. The enthusiasm this time " was such," 
 he wrote, " that I quite lost my voice when I came 
 to thank the convention. I shall not be elected," 
 he added, " but the manner of the nomination was 
 better than the matter of the election." Though 
 convinced of the hopelessness of the canvass, Mr. 
 Curtis saw in it an opportunity for the advance 
 ment of the general cause, and he entered upon it 
 with the greatest energy. For the next six weeks 
 he spoke almost daily, and sometimes twice a day, 
 and always, as described by a friend, "more for 
 Lincoln than for himself." 
 
 The crowded days of those eventful months wore 
 siowly on. While Grant was painfully fighting 
 and forcing his way to cut off Lee s army from 
 the South, and Sheridan laid waste the valley of 
 
184 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 the Shenandoah from which Lee s supplies had 
 so largely cojne, Sherman, after the long series of 
 bloody and difficult battles that ended with the 
 capture of Atlanta, had begun the great " March to 
 the Sea," and Mobile had fallen before the fleet of 
 Farragut. The "reaction" was first checked, then 
 dissipated by victory, and on the morrow of the 
 election Mr. Curtis wrote to Mr. Norton : 
 
 HARPER S WEEKLY, NEW YORK, 
 9th November, 1864. 
 
 MY BEAU CHARLES, Let us thank God and 
 the people for this crowning mercy. I did not 
 know how my mind and heart were strained until 
 I felt myself sinking in the great waters of this 
 triumph. We knew it ought to be ; we knew that, 
 bad as we have been, we did not deserve to be 
 put out like a mean candle in its own refuse ; but 
 it is never day until the dawn. I do not yet know 
 whether Seymour is elected. I hope not, for while 
 he is in power this grand State is a base for rebel 
 operations; and he is put in power, if at all, by 
 those who would make any honorable government 
 impossible. My heart sank as I stood among 
 drunkards and the worst men, yesterday morning, 
 to vote; but it sank deeper when I saw Aaron L., 
 and others like him, voting to give those drunkards 
 the power of the government. I have prepared 
 a very small sermon upon Political Infidelity, for 
 what infidels such men are to themselves and to 
 mankind ! 
 
 I am defeated, of course, and by a very heavy 
 
THE END OF THE WAR. 185 
 
 majority. In my own county my vote would have 
 been largest of all the Union candidates if my 
 name could have been sent to the soldiers, as the 
 governor s was. As it is, he is some twenty before 
 me. But Fernando Wood and James Brooks are 
 defeated God be praised ! I have never been 
 deceived about myself, but I am forever glad that 
 my name was associated with this most memorable 
 day. Yours most affectionately, 
 
 G. W. C. 
 
 During the winter that followed, feeling that 
 the triumph of the national cause was now only 
 a question of time, and of brief time, Mr. Curtis 
 devoted the opportunities of the lyceum platform, 
 which no one commanded more completely than 
 he, to the education of the public mind in what he 
 believed to be the lesson of the war. The lecture 
 on "Political Infidelity," alluded to in the last 
 letter, was delivered some fifty times in the season 
 of 1864 and 1865. One has but to remember the 
 interest the addresses of a man like Mr. Curtis 
 aroused in every town, large or small, where he was 
 heard, the intense feeling of the people throughout 
 the North as to all questions related to the war, 
 the eager discussion that followed a lecture of this 
 sort in each community, to understand the scope 
 and the depth of the influence he exerted. The 
 lecture was in effect a fervent plea for perfect 
 freedom of discussion. Slavery had brought the 
 .country to civil war, because slavery was the sole 
 
186 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 question in our political history as to which discus 
 sion had been entirely suppressed in one part of 
 the land, and avoided, discouraged, and by every 
 device political, social, commercial repressed in 
 the other. In the darkness that was thus brought 
 about, the South, on the one hand, had formed a 
 mistaken notion both of its strength and of the 
 position assigned to its policy by the intelligent 
 opinion of the world, while on the other hand the 
 North mistook the spirit and purpose of the South 
 and its own rights and duties. The following 
 passage will indicate Mr. Curtis s treatment of 
 the first mentioned phase of his subject. Having 
 quoted Mr. Seward s description of the domination 
 of the slave power, he referred to Alexander H. 
 Stephens s retirement from public life in 1859 and 
 his farewell speech: "Listen to Mr. Stephens in 
 the summer sunshine six years ago : 4 As matters 
 now stand, so far as the sectional questions are 
 concerned, I see no cause of danger either to the 
 Union or to Southern security in it. The former 
 has been to me, and ought to be to you, subordi 
 nate to the latter. There is not now a spot of the 
 public territory of the United States over which 
 the national flag floats where slavery is excluded 
 by the law of Congress, and the highest tribunal of 
 the land has decided that Congress has no power 
 to make such a law. At this time there is not a 
 ripple upon the surface. The country was never 
 in a profounder quiet. Do you comprehend the 
 terrible significance of those words? He stops; 
 
THE END OF THE WAR. 187 
 
 he sits down. The summer sun sets over the fields 
 of Georgia. Good-night, Mr. Stephens a long 
 good-night. Look out from your window how 
 calm it is ! Upon Missionary Ridge, upon Look 
 out Mountain, upon the heights of Dalton, upon 
 the spires of Atlanta, silence and solitude ; the 
 peace of the Southern Policy of Slavery and Death. 
 But look! Hark! Through the great five years 
 before you a light is shining a sound is ringing, 
 It is the gleam of Sherman s bayonets, it is the 
 roar of Grant s guns, it is the red daybreak and 
 wild morning music of peace indeed, the peace of 
 National Life and Liberty." The application of 
 the lesson was plain : " Reconstruct, then, as you 
 will. But we are mad if the blood of the war has 
 not anointed our eyes to see that all reconstruc 
 tion is vain that leaves any question too brittle to 
 handle. Whatever in this country, in its normal 
 condition of peace, is too delicate to discuss is too 
 dangerous to tolerate. Any system, any policy, 
 any institution which may not be debated will 
 overthrow us, if we do not overthrow it." 
 
 With the opening days of April came the end of 
 Lee s obstinate resistance. On the 3d the news of 
 the occupation of Richmond by the advance guard 
 of the Army of the Potomac reached New York. 
 Mr. Curtis wrote to Mr. Norton : 
 
 HOME, 4th April, 1865. 
 
 MY DEAR CHARLES, I thought of you all the 
 day yesterday as the news of the crowning mercy 
 came rolling in. The merchants and brokers in 
 
188 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 Wall Street came out of their dens and sang Old 
 Hundred and John Brown. From the high win 
 dows at the Harpers where I sat the sky was bril 
 liant and festal with innumerable flags. Fletcher 
 Harper came to me, and said, " How glad I am we 
 did not beat at Bull Run, for then Slavery would 
 not have been abolished, and we should have been 
 worse off than before." My dear boy, who is equal 
 to these things? We hear that the Major Mills 
 who has fallen is your young cousin. Ah me ! 
 what heart-breaks salute our triumphs. You will 
 be very sober in your joy. 
 
 Almost on the morrow the whole nation was 
 made " sober in its joy," by the loss of Mr. Lin 
 coln. Mr. Curtis resisted, so far as I am aware, 
 all solicitations to address the public, save through 
 his paper, on this signal event. In the Weekly 
 his expressions were marked by deep feeling, but 
 wholly devoid of any tinge of that impulse toward 
 vengeance that was at the time so general. " To 
 night," he wrote to a friend, " in the misty spring 
 moonlight, as I think of the man we all loved and 
 honored, laid quietly to rest upon the prairie, I 
 feel that I cannot honor too much, or praise too 
 highly, the people that he so truly represented, and 
 which, like him, has been faithful to the end. So 
 spotless he was, so patient, so tender, it is a 
 selfish, sad delight to me now, as when I looked 
 upon his coffin, that his patience had made me 
 patient, and that I never doubted bis heart, or 
 
THE END OF THE WAR. 189 
 
 head, or hand. At the only interview I ever had 
 with him, he shook my hand paternally at parting, 
 and said, 4 Don t be troubled. I guess we shall 
 get through. We have got through, at least the 
 fighting, and still I cannot believe it. Here upon 
 the mantel are the portraits of the three boys 
 who went out of this room, my brother, Theo 
 dore Winthrop, and Robbie Shaw. They are all 
 dead the brave darlings and now I put the 
 head of the dear Chief among them, I feel that 
 every drop of my blood and thought of my mind 
 and affection of my heart is consecrated to secur 
 ing the work made holy and forever imperative 
 by so untold a sacrifice. May God keep us all as 
 true as they were ! " 
 
 Ah well ! to how many of us came this impulse 
 of consecration in that solemn hour. High, in 
 deed, is the fortune of any of us who have re 
 mained as steadfast to it as did Mr. Curtis. 
 
 In the spring of 1865 Mr. Curtis received, 
 through Mr. Norton, a proposition to take control 
 of a new paper, the purpose of which is sufficiently 
 indicated in the following letter, which I give as 
 disclosing Mr. Curtis s judgment in matters of this 
 sort, and, also, quite explicitly, the peculiar situa 
 tion he himself held in journalism : 
 
 NORTH SHORE, April 26, 1865. 
 
 MY DEAR CHARLES, Yours of the 24th reaches 
 me this evening. I cannot at once decide upon 
 
190 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 the proposition which you make, for I should 
 wish to ask several questions. 
 
 I doubt if $50,000 is capital enough to start 
 such a paper as you contemplate, and I am far 
 from sure that it is really needed. It seems to me 
 always best to use existing machinery if possible, 
 and I fear that the influence which would control 
 the new paper would constantly tend to make it 
 outrun the popular sympathy upon whose support 
 it must rely, so far as to defeat its purpose, by 
 limiting its circulation to those who need no con 
 version. Do not the " Atlantic," the " North 
 American," the "Evening Post," and "Harper s 
 Weekly " to go no further address the vari 
 ous parts of the audience that are counted upon 
 for a new paper, and are there not great advan 
 tages in having the questions presented in these 
 different forms ? The change in public sentiment 
 upon the true democratic idea is so wide and deep, 
 that an organ for special reform in the matter 
 does not seem to be required. It the reform 
 has now become the actual point of the political 
 movement of the country ; and the same reasoning 
 which justifies the abandonment of the abolition 
 societies and organs pleads against your project. 
 
 If I lay more stress upon the special object 
 of the paper than its projectors intend, then it 
 becomes merely a liberal Weekly of the most ad 
 vanced kind, and I can see no particular reason 
 for its success. 
 
 As for myself, I am perfectly free to say what 
 
THE END OF THE WAR. 191 
 
 I think upon all public questions in " Harper s 
 Weekly " without the least trouble or responsibil 
 ity for the details of the paper, and with no ne 
 cessity of even being at the office. The audience 
 is immense. The regular circulation is about one 
 hundred thousand, and on remarkable occasions, 
 as now, more than two hundred thousand. This 
 circulation is among that class which needs exactly 
 the enlightenment you propose, and access is se 
 cured to it by the character of the paper as an 
 illustrated sheet. I should want some very per 
 suasive inducement to relinquish the hold I al 
 ready have upon this audience, for I could not 
 hope to regain it in a paper of a different kind. 
 Of course, " Harper s Weekly " is not altogether 
 such a paper as I should prefer for my own taste ; 
 but it does seem to me as if I could do with it the 
 very work you propose, and upon a much greater 
 scale than in the form you suggest ; nor is the 
 pecuniary advantage of your offer such as to shake 
 this conviction. 
 
 Now from what I say you will see how I feel. 
 The offer you make is so handsome and honorable 
 that I do not decline it, unless you must have an 
 immediate answer. If the affair can still remain 
 open, will you tell me if the capital is secured 
 if the paper is to be started anyhow, if there 
 is any person selected for the business editor 
 whether it is to be a joint-stock association and 
 what the size, etc., of the paper is intended to be. 
 
 If you have the time to inform me upon these 
 
192 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 and such points, I will not delay long in giving 
 you a final answer. 
 
 Always your affectionate, 
 
 G. W. CURTIS. 
 
 Nothing came of the project. 
 The following note to Mr. James Russell Low 
 ell relates to the " Commemoration Ode : " 
 
 ASHFIELD, MASS., 12th September, 1865. 
 
 MY DEAR LOWELL, I thank you with all my 
 heart for the noble ode which with all my heart I 
 have read and enjoyed. Certainly you have done 
 nothing in a loftier strain, nor has anything more 
 truly worthy of the great theme been written. If 
 it be very "serious and very sad it is for the same 
 reason that the sky is blue and the corn yellow. 
 I have read it aloud to Anna, and read it and 
 re-read it to myself ; and I am sure it says what 
 the truest American heart feels and believes. And 
 if that is not a work worth doing, if a man can 
 do it, what is ? 
 
 The note is signed " Affectionately yours, and 
 more and more." 
 
 Mr. Curtis continued to take an active part, 
 as well as a strong interest, in politics, and in the 
 elections of 1866, he was chosen as a delegate-at- 
 large to the Convention for revising the Constitu 
 tion of the State of New York. The Legislature 
 of 1867 elected a Senator of the United States 
 from New York, and Mr. Curtis s name was pre 
 
THE END OF THE WAR. 193 
 
 sented in many of the papers of the Republican 
 party. How fitted he was to secure preferment by 
 ordinary political methods is shown in a letter to 
 Mr. Norton, who had written him on the subject. 
 
 " The only chance," he writes, " is a bitter dead 
 lock between the three, or two, chiefs. At present 
 (it is a profound secret) the friends of Harris, or 
 his chief managers, expect 42 votes in a caucus of 
 109, to begin with. The friends of Conkling count 
 upon 50 ; those of Davis upon 20. The friends of 
 the latter proposed to me to make a combination 
 against Conkling, the terms being the election of 
 whichever was stronger now, Davis or me, r 
 and the pledges of the successful man to support 
 the other two years hence. I declined absolutely." 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 FOUR YEARS OF POLITICS. 
 
 As the time approached for him to take up the 
 new duties of the Constitutional Convention he 
 wrote to Mr. Norton May 6, 1867 : 
 
 " You cannot imagine how I grieve over my lost 
 summer lost before the frosts are gone. But 
 when I was urged to let my name be used, I thought 
 it all over carefully, and concluded that I ought not 
 to decline. It will be a very long and very arduous 
 work, but I shall be deeply interested in much of 
 it, and in all the novelty of a deliberative assem 
 bly. I have been reading the debates of the con 
 vention of 46. They are endless and mortally 
 dull. All this in dog-days too." 
 
 Nor did actual experience cure him of his origi 
 nal distaste. He wrote in July : 
 
 " Ah, if I could run out of this business I think 
 I should feel as if I had had enough of it. I do 
 not perceive an attraction toward public life strong 
 enough to make the tremendous domestic sacrifice 
 which is necessary, and I think that I shall stay 
 at home next winter that I may become acquainted 
 with my family." 
 
 Yet Mr. Curtis worked faithfully and intelli- 
 
FOUR YEARS OF POLITICS. 195 
 
 gently in the convention, and held a prominent 
 place in a body which included many eminent men, 
 among them Mr. William M. Evarts, afterwards 
 Secretary of State and Senator, and at the time 
 the most brilliant and scholarly lawyer of the 
 State ; Mr. Charles J. Folger, afterwards Chief 
 Justice of the Court of Appeals and Secretary of 
 the Treasury; Mr. William A. Wheeler, subse 
 quently Yice-President ; Mr. Greeley and Mr. S. J. 
 Tilden. He was made Chairman of the Committee 
 on Education and Funds relating thereto, and 
 member of several other committees. His own 
 committee recommended the abolition of the Board 
 of Regents, of which he was a member, and which 
 was at the time almost a perfunctory body, and the 
 creation of the Board of Education, with a single 
 executive officer. This plan was not adopted. He 
 advocated the appointment of the attorney-general 
 and of other state officers, then and still elected, 
 and he maintained that in this way the authority 
 of the people was more rationally and effectu 
 ally maintained than by the numerous elections in 
 which the voters exercised no real choice. He op 
 posed the prohibition of the sale of liquor and took 
 a very earnest part in the debate on the government 
 of municipalities, supporting the authority of the 
 State over the general police system and condemn 
 ing the theory of local control. In general his 
 ideas were those that might have been expected 
 from a convinced Democrat with an intellectual 
 sympathy with Hamilton rather than with Jef 
 ferson. 
 
196 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 On one subject, however, lie was very radically 
 democratic. He was the most conspicuous and by 
 far the most competent of the advocates of the suf 
 frage for women, and on his own proposition for 
 an amendment in that sense, he made a speech 
 more elaborate and brilliant than any other of his 
 in the convention. His advocacy was wholly un 
 availing in affecting the action of the convention, 
 but one can hardly read the debates without feeling 
 that none of his opponents met him on his own 
 ground and that none were able to defend their 
 own ground against his logic, which was never 
 more penetrating and alert. In fact not since his 
 first assault on slavery and its consequences in 
 American politics had Mr. Curtis entered a fight 
 with more complete conviction, with greater ardor, 
 with more careful equipment or a bearing, always 
 within the limit of courtesy, more defiant. 
 
 The basis of his argument was the American 
 principle of equality of rights, the principle which 
 he had so ardently adopted in the anti-slavery con 
 flict, and his challenge was to those who with ref 
 erence to the rights of men held that principle as 
 openly and firmly as he held it, to show with what 
 justice women could be excluded from its advan- 
 tages. The vote he believed to be the natural and 
 necessary weapon by which the possessors of equal 
 rights could defend them, and the inevitable con 
 dition not only to their defense, but to their intelli 
 gent and wholesome and safe exercise. But while 
 lie maintained this fundamental principle as the 
 
FOUR YEARS OF POLITICS. 197 
 
 ground on which the representatives of all the 
 people of the State must stand in framing the Con 
 stitution, he did not shrink from the argument of 
 expediency. And in meeting this argument he 
 sustained a running debate with his opponents, the 
 record of which enlivens the reports of the conven 
 tion, otherwise u endless and mortally dull " as he 
 found those of 1846 to be. It was not difficult for 
 hini to match every objection of mere expediency 
 presented by the other side with instances of classes 
 of males to whom the objection was equally telling 
 if not more so. 
 
 The argument that when the great body of wo 
 men want to vote, as they have gradually come to 
 want the right to their own inherited or acquired 
 property, to an equal authority over their children, 
 and similar rights, they would get that right as they 
 had got these, inspired Mr. Curtis with indignation 
 and scorn, and he hotly resented delay on such a 
 pretext as a stupid wrong to the women who al 
 ready desired that right. But that argument, or the 
 disposition for which it gave a convenient excuse, 
 prevailed in the convention, as doubtless he ex 
 pected that it would. He had, however, the conso 
 lation of believing that his course in the convention 
 may have served to hasten the day when this to 
 him, absurdly unfair, illogical condition precedent 
 should be complied with. Certainly that consider 
 able body of educated and intelligent women who 
 feel, and who are acknowledged to be, entirely 
 fitted for a share in the political action of the com- 
 
198 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 munity of which they are honored and useful mem 
 bers must have recognized that no more gallant or 
 accomplished champion ever bore their colors. 
 
 The Constitutional Convention came to an end 
 early in 1868, and Mr. Curtis returned to his ordi 
 nary pursuits with a sense of profound relief as 
 to the past and with a new vigor, but not without 
 anxiety as to the immediate future. The Kepub- 
 lican party was going through its troubles with 
 President Johnson, whose impeachment trial closed 
 in that year. Mr. Curtis fully appreciated the 
 dangers and evils of the stubborn Tennesseean s 
 course, and warmly supported the authority of 
 Congress to determine the policy of the government 
 in the difficult matter of reconstruction, but he was 
 indignant at the wanton abuse visited on the Sena 
 tors who voted " not guilty," and firmly upheld their 
 fidelity to their oath as they understood it. "Of 
 course," he wrote to his friend Mr. Pinkerton, " if 
 a man thinks that an oath to decide in a specific 
 case according to the evidence is an oath to be 
 bound by party dictation, very well. I differ, but 
 I do not quarrel. So if a man thinks a Senator 
 bought, let him say so, provided he can bring his 
 proof. But to say that a Senator who thinks his 
 oath means what it states and who acts accordingly 
 is infamous, is not criticism ; it is an effort to de 
 stroy liberty of thought and speech by terrorism." 
 "I think," he added, "as it happens, although I 
 should have voted to convict, that the party is in 
 finitely stronger and surer of success since the fail- 
 
FOUR YEARS OF POLITICS. 199 
 
 ure of impeachment. I feared a few weeks ago 
 that we were to be saved by the folly of our foes. 
 But I see now that we have the conscience as well 
 as the ardor of youth." 
 
 The general action of the strong Republican ma 
 jority in the Senate during Johnson s term, even 
 the impeachment plan, had met with Mr. Curtis s 
 approval ; but he watched with the keenest solici 
 tude one phase of the contest, that relating to ap 
 pointments. The power of the Senate to give or 
 to refuse its " advice and consent " to nominations 
 was now used as a weapon against the President, 
 and in the heat and stress of the struggle, it was 
 inevitable that serious abuses of that power should 
 be overlooked, or excused, or even justified. As 
 a matter of fact the abuses were numerous and 
 flagrant, and it was during Johnson s term that the 
 mischievous rule known as the courtesy of the 
 Senate took a definite form, and by a series of pre 
 cedents gained an authority that it did not before 
 have. This rule in substance was that the action 
 of the Senate should practically be decided by the 
 Senators (of the majority party) from the State in 
 which the office to be filled was, or from which the 
 nominee was selected. At this time the majority 
 in the Senate gradually resolved themselves into a 
 compact and powerful party machine, the avowed 
 purpose of which was to protect the party from 
 disintegration through the appointment to Federal 
 offices of the friends or tools of a hostile President. 
 Since patronage was the chief weapon of the Presi- 
 
200 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 dent, it was natural that his opponents in the Sen 
 ate should seek to turn it aside, and so far as prac 
 ticable to wrest it from his hands. This they 
 sought to do by the exercise of the power of con 
 firmation. And since the majority had a common 
 party object, since they felt themselves to be, and 
 actually were, a sort of party executive committee, 
 it was logical for them to apply the methods of 
 such an organization, and give to the members 
 from each State the disposition of matters relating 
 to that State, and to hold them responsible. The 
 situation was novel. Party feeling ran very high. 
 The sentiment of the North as to questions grow 
 ing out of the war was intense and general, and 
 it was on the side of the Senators. The people 
 believed and most of the Senators themselves be 
 lieved, that they were fighting for the priceless 
 fruits of the victory won in war at " so untold a 
 sacrifice." For the first time in the history of the 
 party then in power, and for the first time in many 
 years, the Senate and the President were pursuing 
 opposite aims, and the contest necessarily was most 
 bitter, and raged most hotly about the offices, as to 
 which the contestants had joint rights. The tac 
 tics and strategy of the Senate were effective, and 
 the " courtesy of the Senate " helped greatly to 
 make them so. But the rule did not lapse with the 
 necessity for it. The power of the Senators of each 
 State under the rule was exercised at first, with a 
 certain sense of responsibility, because the attention 
 of the whole majority in the Senate and of the 
 
FOUR YEARS OF POLITICS.* 201 
 
 party was fixed upon them. But when the contest 
 ended with the retirement of Johnson and the 
 accession of General Grant, the Senators did not 
 lay aside their powers nor abandon the particular 
 rule by which these had been distributed. They 
 retained them, and the public attention being re 
 laxed they used them with less and less responsi 
 bility and therefore selfishly and to an increasing 
 degree corruptly. 
 
 This was an extensive and acute manifestation of 
 that malady of the body politic of the American 
 democracy which has since received the significant 
 and repulsive designation of the " spoils system." 
 Mr. Curtis, as I have said, regarded it with the 
 keenest solicitude, and found in his study of it the 
 first strong impulse toward that long struggle for 
 the purification of politics which was gradually to 
 become the absorbing interest and occupation of 
 his life. Unlike many reformers he was thoroughly 
 acquainted not only with the evil he contended 
 against, but with the system of which it formed a 
 part, and with the good as well as the bad in that 
 system. He was not a closet politician. He had 
 for years steadily and punctually performed the de 
 tailed duties of a party man in his own home ; had 
 attended all primary meetings, done duty on party 
 committees and in conventions, and had taken his 
 share of trouble and responsibility in the distribu 
 tion of offices. Of the party " workers " who in 
 sisted that a party organization could not be kept 
 up, or the labor of party contests be secured, were 
 
202 .GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 not the offices used as rewards and incentives, there 
 were very few who had given to their party the 
 time and effort given by him, and certainly there 
 was not one of them who had given more with no 
 reward whatever, and no desire for any, beyond the 
 sense of duty done. Nor was he in the least blind 
 to the need of parties or to their value, nor igno 
 rant that they were not composed of saints and could 
 not be. He was not even without strong party 
 spirit, that is to say, that intent sympathy with those 
 who are working to a common end, pride in achieve 
 ment, and the "delight of battle." If there was 
 ever a " loyal " Republican, as the phrase goes, he 
 was one. He was as far from being a mere theo 
 rist or fanatic in politics as he was from being 
 a self-seeker. He was in fact a party leader of 
 shrewdness and tact and knowledge of men, their 
 prejudices and weaknesses as well as their virtues. 
 He saw in the system that based party power on 
 patronage not only its vileness and its corrupting 
 tendency, but its stupidity. His faith in human 
 nature and his observation and experience proved 
 to him that this system was an unsound basis that 
 must crumble from the rottenness of its material. 
 
 In 1868 Mr. Curtis was an elector on the Repub 
 lican ticket, and cast his vote for General Grant, in 
 whom he had much confidence. During the next 
 spring and summer he delivered lectures at Cornell 
 University, in which he felt a keen interest. Of 
 one of these lectures he writes : 
 
 " I have written a lecture upon American Litera* 
 
FOUR YEARS OF POLITICS. 203 
 
 ture to the effect that what we have belongs to 
 the great English stock, as Ovid was a Roman, 
 though upon the Euxine, and Theocritus a Greek, 
 though a Sicilian. The undertone is friendliness 
 for England." 
 
 In 1869, on the death of Henry J. Eaymond, the 
 founder of the New York " Times," Mr. Curtis re 
 ceived a proposition to take Mr. Raymond s place. 
 He felt that the offer was " flattering," which it 
 was not exactly, since Mr. Curtis s reputation was 
 on a level, at least, as high as that of the paper, 
 and he felt also that it was an opportunity for a 
 more direct if not more extended influence on pub 
 lic opinion. But he declined, and wisely. The con 
 ditions of his work on " Harper s Weekly" were, 
 as I have said, peculiarly happy. It would have 
 been difficult, if not impracticable, to establish the 
 same in a paper like the " Times." 
 
 About this time, certain articles by Mr. Samuel 
 Bowles, in the Springfield " Republican," having ex 
 cited the sharp disapproval of the party press, Mr. 
 Curtis wrote, in the Weekly : " The more deeply 
 an independent journal sympathizes with the prin 
 ciples and purposes of a party, the more strenuously 
 will it censure its follies and errors, the more 
 bravely will it criticise its candidates and leaders 
 for the purpose of keeping the principle pure and 
 of making the success of the party a real blessing." 
 This was a doctrine which he had already had to 
 apply, and which he maintained to the end. 
 
 In September, 1869, Mr. Curtis was nominated 
 
204 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 for the office of Secretary of State by the Con 
 vention of the Republican party. He declined the 
 nomination. It does not come within the plan of 
 this Life to follow in detail the political course of 
 Mr. Curtis, but the following letter to Mr. Norton 
 seems to me to be of peculiar interest, and I give 
 it nearly entire : 
 
 " I have been nominated by acclamation for 
 Secretary of State of New York, by the Republi 
 can Convention, to which I did not know that my 
 name was to be presented. I opened the paper, 
 and I confess the tears were very near my eyes at 
 such a spontaneous summons from one of the best 
 conventions we have had, and whose platform was 
 without evasion, and noble. But upon every account 
 it was impossible for me to think of accepting. I 
 could not add the official duties to my present 
 without breaking down, and I could not reduce my 
 present duties without injustice to my family and to 
 myself ; and really I have no doubt I am of more 
 service as I am than I should be in that office. 
 So we hurried down to South Deerfield and I tele 
 graphed the inclosed note to the " Tribune " and the 
 " Times," and " Sun," in which for candidly read 
 cordially, a mistake of the telegraph. I was 
 for many reasons very sorry to decline. There is a 
 doubt of our success and I knew that I should be 
 said to fear a defeat. Then I knew that for any 
 candidate, and especially the head of the ticket to de 
 cline, would cloud the prospects of the party. And 
 I found that some of the others say Hillhouse, 
 
FOUR^YEARS OF POLITICS. 205 
 
 the best of the ticket had accepted upon condi 
 tion of my running. My position was very difficult, 
 but my duty was perfectly clear. It happened as 
 I apprehended. The reception of my name, even 
 as far as Illinois, was really enthusiastic ; I was 
 amazed; I think no man ever had so much favor 
 for so small desert. . . . The consequences of my 
 declining were in proportion. I have had most 
 powerful private and public remonstrances. The 
 Washington " Star " said that it is the most remark 
 able case of inconsistency ; that I have always in 
 sisted that every man should do his share, etc. The 
 Albany " Evening Journal " insisted that there were 
 imperative public reasons that demanded my recon 
 sidering my decision. The Boston " Advertiser" 
 said that I had not hitherto shown myself afraid of 
 leading a forlorn hope. The Democratic papers 
 said that I naturally did not wish to be slaughtered. 
 Dorsheimer of Buffalo, who had most warmly sup 
 ported me in the Convention, wrote me a truly pa 
 thetic appeal. But to all my correspondents I re 
 plied that I had not changed, that I had done and 
 was still doing my share of political duty, that while 
 a man ought to make many sacrifices, in the pres 
 ent condition of our politics, to accept so authori 
 tative and honorable a call, yet there were some 
 that he had no right to make, and that the con 
 fidence in his judgment which led his friends to 
 nominate him ought to justify to them his decision ; 
 that it is a mistake for an editor to take executive 
 office ; but as for the forlorn hope, if I had only 
 
206 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 been sure of being beaten I would gladly have ac 
 cepted, In the midst Hillhouse declined as I had 
 feared, and then General Robinson, the next in im 
 portance. The Democrats laughed at the rats run 
 ning from the sinking ship, and at length the new 
 nominations were made. General Sigel was put in 
 my place and Horace Greeley (!) in that of Hill- 
 house. Horace wrote a long letter in accepting, 
 and rapped me on the knuckles, in saying that 
 he hoped that it would be said of him that he 
 never asked his party for an office and never de 
 clined any honorable service to which it called him. 
 I should rather have it said of me that I never de 
 clined any such service that I could honorably per 
 form. Of course the party, as a party, must be 
 vexed with me in increasing the perils of the can 
 vass and unfortunately no future convention will 
 like to nominate the best of men without consulting 
 them previously. But still, much as I regret the 
 event, it was inevitable, and my conduct was right. 
 It spoils, probably, my political career in the ordi 
 nary sense. It seems to me not impossible from 
 the reception of my nomination that whether suc 
 cessful or not, I might have been nominated for 
 governor next year. But at the bottom of my 
 heart I don t want to be. I could n t enter upon 
 public official life, and devote myself to a political 
 career of that kind, with so much pleasure to myself 
 or profit to the country or to the cause, as in other 
 ways. So what seems the loss of a great oppor 
 tunity to many of my friends, and to all politicians, 
 is not a loss to me but a gain." 
 
FOUR YEARS OF POLITICS. 207 
 
 Mr. Curtis was to have his experience with con 
 ventions as to the governorship the next year, 
 which he also describes in a letter to Mr. Norton. 
 The reaction which he expected followed the deci 
 sive Republican successes of 1868, and the party 
 was defeated in New York in 1869. Meanwhile 
 there had grown up in the State and particularly 
 in the city of New York two powerful machines ; 
 one, the Republican, with the Federal offices as its 
 base of operations, and a hitherto unbroken hold 
 of the Legislature ; the other, the Democratic, 
 of which Tammany was in control, with its base 
 in the city offices. There was a certain ill-con 
 cealed connection between the two, growing out of 
 these common methods. It was not avowed, nor 
 did it extend to all the Republican leaders, but 
 there was already in existence the class of politi 
 cians known as " Tammany-Republicans," and they 
 largely controlled the organization of the party in 
 the city. 
 
 Mr. Curtis wrote to Mr. Norton from Ashfield, 
 September 17, 1870, a very full account of the con 
 vention of that year. He had declined to go to 
 the convention as a delegate, having special family 
 cares at that time which engrossed his attention. 
 While at Ashfield, he was urged by the " adminis 
 tration " leaders to attend and act as chairman. 
 Feeling that possibly the result in the presidential 
 election of 1872 might depend on the course of the 
 convention, and knowing that the party was torn 
 by the factional disputes of Senators Fenton and 
 
208 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 Conkling, and that he was personally wholly inde 
 pendent of both, in the hope that he might help to 
 unite and concentrate the party, he reluctantly 
 accepted. He was chosen chairman by a very 
 heavy majority, and his speech was received with 
 great enthusiasm. Thereupon one of the Conkling 
 managers came to him and asked him to accept 
 the nomination for governor. He replied that he 
 would not decline it, if the convention offered it, 
 though he did not wish it, and he insisted that his 
 name should be fairly and honorably presented, if 
 at all. His name was presented, but by a local 
 politician of New York city, a Tammany Kepublican 
 of very disagreeable associations. The Conkling 
 vote was not given him and General Woodford 
 was nominated, Mr. Greeley being the third can 
 didate. Apparently, the manager referred to had 
 simply used Mr. Curtis to defeat Mr. Greeley. 
 That gentleman believed that this purpose was 
 known to Mr. Curtis and was indignant accordingly. 
 Mr. Curtis was bitterly hurt, for he had consented 
 to the use of his name in good faith, not, certainly, 
 without legitimate ambition, but with the sincere 
 belief that his nomination would be the strongest 
 that could be made, and, therefore, the best for the 
 party and the cause to which he was devoted. It 
 was the first and last time that he trusted his name 
 to politicians for use in a convention. I doubt if 
 he ever quite understood the exact trick that had 
 had been played upon him. It was not easy for 
 him to believe others capable of what was morally 
 
FOUR YEARS OF POLITICS. 209 
 
 impossible for him. But the trick was not so hurt 
 ful to him as it was unworthy in its authors. It 
 left him more firmly established in his editorial 
 chair and free for the work of reform that was just 
 opening before him. Had he been nominated and 
 elected governor of New York, he would have 
 given up his editor s chair both the " Easy," 
 and the other and the current of his life 
 would have been turned, not, I think, more fortu 
 nately. 
 
 I turn back a little in my narrative to pick up a 
 few letters to James Russell Lowell. Here is one 
 apropos of an invitation to a dinner in his honor 
 conveyed by Lowell and Mr. Emerson and Dr. 
 Holmes as a " committee " and in a severely formal 
 manner : 
 
 NORTH SHORE, STATEN ISLAND, 15th April, 1869. 
 MY DEAR LOWELL, As I had received and an 
 swered Emerson s letter I treated yours as a strictly 
 private one, viewing you in the light of a friend 
 and not of a committee-man. In that view I confide 
 to you that the possibility of a speech, or remarks, 
 or a few observations, or a brief and pertinent 
 rejoinder, or a felicitous off-hand, etc. etc., fills 
 me with dismay, and already affects my appetite. 
 But you are too civilized for all that, I know. 
 What if I bring two or three old lectures to pre 
 pare for any contingency? 
 
 Yours always in speechless sympathy, 
 
 G. W. C. 
 
210 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 The following refers to a few days spent with 
 Lowell at Cornell University : 
 
 NORTH SHOKE, STATEN ISLAND, N. Y., 
 10th June, 1869. 
 
 MY DEAR JAMIE, Your note and book and that 
 masterly account current with its balance, came 
 safely yesterday ; and I have the photos of Ithaca 
 which I knew you would leave behind, and which 
 I will send to you by E. or by somebody going 
 your way. 
 
 After you left came also Mr. Spencer with a 
 dozen of those grim cards for you to autograph, 
 and with a view in the Enfield ravine for you. 
 I have been homesick for you ever since we parted, 
 for you were Ithaca to me ; and I am amused by 
 hearing people say, " O my ! I had no idea it was 
 such a pleasant place." Already I look back upon 
 it with the feeling that I have for the dearest old 
 Italian days. I was an unhappy wanderer after 
 you left, that Friday morning ; and when the cook 
 came to the surface to say " God bless you," and 
 the little Mary stood half crying, and the Reverend 
 Phoenix presented arms, as it were, at the door, 
 and they all said, " How good you and Mr. Lowell 
 are," I was so glad to have my name mingled 
 affectionately with yours, that I waved my lily 
 hand to them like a conqueror. 
 
 Good-by, my dearest Jamie, and with the sin< 
 cerest regards to your wife, I am 
 
 Affectionately yours, 
 
 G. W. C. 
 
FOUR YEARS OF POLITICS. 211 
 
 And here is one acknowledging a Christmas gift 
 of " The Cathedral " from its author. The " big 
 house " referred to was the residence of the Shaws 
 next to his own home on Staten Island : 
 
 NORTH SHORE, STATEN ISLAND, 
 29th December, 1869. 
 
 MY DEAR JAMES, It is a fortunate man who 
 can give to his friends as a Christmas box a 
 Cathedral of his own building, I had already 
 begun to know it. On the last night at the " big 
 house " we all passed through it, I leading, and it 
 left us all in the best and noblest of Christmas 
 tempers, as it will for many and for many, when 
 you and I hear Christmas bells no more. I had 
 just read Tennyson s " Holy Grail," and I said " it 
 is afternoon with him." But with you, my dear 
 James, it is a richer morning hour than ever. 
 
 They have left the big house. They have 
 laughingly cut the throat of one of the most beauti 
 ful homes, consecrated and endeared by all that 
 makes home precious, where the girls were all 
 married and their first children all born, from 
 which Rob l and Charlie 2 went to be killed in 
 which we have all been so happy and so sad, and 
 
 1 Robert Gould Shaw, brother of Mrs. Curtis, Colonel of the 
 Fifty-fourth Massachusetts (colored) Regiment, killed at the 
 assault on Fort Wagner, S. C., on July 18, 1863. 
 
 2 Charles Russell Lowell, Colonel of the Second Massachusetts 
 Cavalry Regiment, brother-in-law of Mrs. Curtis, and nephew of 
 Mr. Lowell, wounded October 19, 1864, at the battle of Cedar 
 Creek, died October 20. 
 
GEORGE WILLIAM 
 
 all this to have a little smaller house and to look 
 upon the water ! Of course it is wholly a matter of 
 temperament, of sentiment. But that is only to 
 say that it concerns what most enriches life. I look 
 over and pity the great, silent, gloomy, deserted 
 house. Why should it be treated so ? 
 
 We are all well and send you our truest love, 
 and I am always 
 
 Your most affectionate, 
 
 G. W. C. 
 
 In a note to Mr. Norton, he refers to the winter 
 of 1869 and 1870, the first one devoted to the ad 
 vocacy of civil service reform in the Lyceum : 
 
 NORTH SHORE, May 3, 70. 
 
 My winter was very busy indeed, but very pleas 
 ant. James Sturgis is in Mt. Vernon Street in 
 Boston and I began with a month with him. I had 
 only Saturday evening and Sunday for friendship. 
 I dined at the Club, at Sebastian Schlesinger s 
 (with Music), at Judge Gray s ; and Tom Apple- 
 ton gave me one of the most perfect conceivable 
 dinners, Agassiz, Longfellow, Lowell, and Richard 
 Dana, Jr., the guests. How I wanted you ! I 
 heard some of the good concerts, every day wagged 
 the pen and every night the tongue, going as far as 
 Portland. My lecture was the Civil Service paper 
 that I wrote for the Social Science meeting, and al 
 though a grave and earnest plea, was, I think, very 
 acceptable, although as half of the Lyceum audi 
 ence are women there could not be the universal 
 
FOUR YEARS OF POLITICS. 213 
 
 interest which is, after all, essential to a lecture. 
 I delivered it in Baltimore a city that I detest 
 ever since the slaughter of 1861, and to an immense 
 audience in the Philadelphia Academy of Music. 
 
 And here is a glimpse of his reception at Vassar 
 College, whither he went with some misgivings : 
 
 " Since my lectures ended, I have written an 
 address for the young women of Vassar College, 
 where I went on Friday last, and to one of the 
 most unique occasions of my whole life. The build 
 ing is like the Tuileries. There are about four 
 hundred students ; and an aspect of healthfulness, 
 intelligence and refinement, with the elegance and 
 comfort of the college appointments and accommo 
 dations, leaves the most delightful and cheerful im 
 pression. As you know, the spirit of the College 
 is far from that of the 4 Woman s Rights move 
 ment, at least among the trustees and many of the 
 professors, but I pleaded for perfect equality of 
 opportunity and liberty of choice, and I was never 
 so cordially thanked, even by those, like the Presi 
 dent, who I thought might regret my coming. 
 
 Maria Mitchell, the astronomer, was most ardent 
 in her expressions. Several noble looking girls, 
 who would not tell their names, came up to me 
 at the reception afterwards, and asked to take my 
 hand. I felt more than ever how deeply the best 
 women are becoming interested. Next week I am 
 to speak at the Anniversary of the Woman s Suf 
 frage Association, and that, I believe, is my last 
 public appearance for the present." 
 
21-4 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 The following: notes from letters to Mr. Norton 
 
 O 
 
 give some of Mr. Curtis s personal impressions of 
 the current phases of politics : 
 
 June 26, 1870. 
 
 I think the warmest friends of Grant feel that 
 he has failed terribly as president not from 
 want of honesty or desire, but from want of tact ami 
 great ignorance. It is a political position, and he 
 knew nothing of politics and rather despised them. 
 Then the crisis was most compound. The special 
 ends of the party were achieved. The reaction was 
 inevitable and should have been expected and en 
 countered. But we have drifted into it without 
 care. Upon no single subject have we been agreed. 
 We have had no policy, have raised no issues. 
 Grant has been headstrong about San Domingo, and 
 the Cuban matter has been unskillfully managed, 
 although the position was correct. In losing Hoar 
 we lose by far the ablest man in the administration. 
 Nobody that I see knows why he went. The Senate 
 would not make him Judge of the Supreme Court, 
 as if such men were to be had for the asking, and 
 his place in the Cabinet is taken by an unknown 
 ex-rebel from Georgia. Is it " vindictive " not to 
 ask Mr. Toombs to be Secretary of War ? Why 
 is it that the good men haven t the courage of 
 their convictions. Perfunctory statesmanship is 
 my abhorrence. 
 
 July 20, 1870. 
 
 At the last moment Congress refused to allow 
 the American registry of foreign ships for carrying 
 
FOUR TEARS OF POLITICS. 215 
 
 during the (Franco-German) war as the President 
 requested. This is to me very significant, for it 
 shows that there is something stronger than party 
 cohesion, even under such circumstances as the war 
 and the pressing request of the party president. 
 Protection must now be considered a vital issue 
 and immediate, not merely possible and postpou 
 able. 
 
 There is a curious presentiment here of a force 
 that was ultimately to divide the Kepublican party, 
 and to produce a rearrangement of politics, in 
 which, though not upon that issue, Mr. Curtis was 
 to find himself acting with the Democrats. 
 
 NEW YORK, March 4, 71. 
 
 It is the very ebb tide upon our side, but Grant 
 will be renominated, if he makes no signal blunder 
 this year, and it is best that he should be. He in 
 tended for some time (as I knew) to send me to 
 England, but relinquished it because he did not 
 personally know me and I had been hostile to 
 San Domingo. I was greatly relieved, for I should 
 have been sorely perplexed. Oh ! for an hour of 
 hot sherry sangaree and you ! ! How our tongues 
 would rattle ! 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE KEFORM COMMISSION. 
 
 THE day that the last-cited letter was written, 
 Mr. Curtis received from President Grant a nomi 
 nation as to which he was in no wise " perplexed," 
 and from the acceptance of which he had no desire 
 to be "relieved." It was the nomination to the 
 commission which, under a clause of the Sundry 
 Civil Appropriation Act of March 3, 1871, the 
 President was authorized to appoint, to inquire 
 what rules and regulations for admission to the 
 public service, which the President could enforce 
 under existing laws, would best promote its effi 
 ciency. The commission, of which Mr. Curtis was 
 at once made chairman, consisted of seven mem 
 bers, of whom the others were Messrs. Alexander 
 G. Cattell, Joseph Medill, Dawson A. Walker, E. 
 B. Elliott, Joseph H. Blackfan, and David C. Cox. 
 Mr. Medill and Mr. Curtis were the only members 
 without experience in the service, the others being 
 actually or formerly connected with the various ex 
 ecutive departments. They were entirely agreed 
 as to the evils to be remedied, and substantially so 
 as to the remedy to be adopted ; but the heaviest 
 labor of the commission fell upon Mr. Curtis, who, 
 
THE REFORM COMMISSION. 217 
 
 however, received valuable assistance from the other 
 members. 
 
 The first report of the commission was submit 
 ted to the President December 18, 1871, after ten 
 months of most careful and systematic investiga 
 tion and study. The commissioners were greatly 
 indebted to the committee of which Hon. Thomas 
 A. Jenckes, of Rhode Island, had been chairman, 
 and which had made two very extended and well- 
 elaborated reports, the first January 31, 1867, and 
 the second May 14, 1868. Mr. Jenckes s com 
 mittee had embodied in these reports not only the 
 opinions and testimony of a large number of offi 
 cials in the service of the United States, but de 
 tailed descriptions and discussion of the systems 
 of Great Britain, Germany, Prussia, France, and 
 China. One of the reports of the English com 
 mission was included complete, with an historical 
 sketch, instructions to candidates, and specimen ex 
 amination papers. Edouard Laboulaye s exhaust 
 ive essay on " Education and the Administrative 
 System of Probation in Germany " was translated 
 for Mr. Jenckes s first report, and our accom 
 plished consul at Paris, Mr. John Bigelow, sup 
 plied an account of the French service. In the 
 two reports, therefore, covering some three hun 
 dred closely printed pages, the new commission 
 had ready at their hands a rich supply of material 
 for the comparative study of our own methods in 
 the civil service and those of other countries, vary 
 ing in their resemblance or contrast to our own. 
 
218 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 Mr. Jenckes had, moreover, made a considerable 
 study of both the views and the practice of the 
 early Presidents and their chief executive officers, 
 which was of great use as showing how widely 
 these had been departed from. 
 
 But the aim of Mr. Jenckes had been legislation, 
 and legislation of a very radical character. Two 
 features of the bill offered with his report were, 
 first, that the candidate standing highest in a com 
 petitive examination and probation must be selected, 
 and, second, that the Civil Service Commissioners 
 provided for in the bill should make rules for 
 suspension and dismissal from the service after 
 trial by themselves on charges. No such sweeping 
 legislation could be obtained, even had it been de 
 sirable, and the Curtis commission was limited to 
 such a system as could be enforced by the Presi 
 dent under existing laws. But while the work of 
 the commission was thus limited, and was osten 
 sibly only the promotion of the efficiency of the 
 civil administration, it is safe to say that Mr. Cur 
 tis would not have been called to undertake it, 
 and would not have undertaken it, had the need of 
 it not been much more urgent and its object much 
 wider than was indicated by the terms of the ap 
 propriation bill under which the commission acted. 
 The real purpose which enlisted him was the re 
 striction and ultimate abolition of the "spoils sys 
 tem," that is to say, the system by which offices 
 were given as the rewards or incentives for service 
 rendered to a party or to its leaders or managers. 
 
THE REFORM COMMISSION. 219 
 
 "In obedience to this system," he declared in 
 his report, "the whole machinery of the govern 
 ment is pulled to pieces every four years. Political 
 caucuses, primary meetings, and conventions are 
 controlled by the promise and expectation of pat 
 ronage. Political candidates for the lowest or 
 highest positions are directly or indirectly pledged. 
 The pledge is the price of the nomination, and, 
 when the election is determined, the pledges must 
 be redeemed. The business of the nation, the 
 legislation of Congress, the duties of the depart 
 ments, are all subordinated to the distribution of 
 what is well called the spoils. No one escapes. 
 President, secretaries, senators, representatives, 
 are pertinaciously dogged and besought on the one 
 hand to appoint and on the other to retain subordi 
 nates. The great officers of the government are 
 constrained to become mere office-brokers. Mean 
 time they may have their own hopes, ambitions, 
 and designs. They may strive to make their pat 
 ronage secure their private aims. The spectacle is 
 as familiar as it is painful and humiliating. We 
 accuse no individual. We appeal only to universal 
 and deplorable experience. 
 
 "The evil results of the practice may be seen, 
 first, in its perversion of the nature of the election 
 itself. In a free country an election is intended to 
 be, and of right should be, the choice of differing 
 policies of administration by the people at the 
 polls. It is properly the judgment of the popular 
 intelligence upon the case which has been sub- 
 
220 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 mitted to it during the canvass by the ablest and 
 most eloquent advocates. But the evil system un 
 der which the country suffers tends to change the 
 election from a choice of policies into a contest for 
 personal advantage. It is becoming a desperate 
 conflict to obtain all the offices, with all their law 
 ful salaries and all their unlawful chances. The 
 consequences are unavoidable. The moral tone of 
 the country is debased, the national character de 
 teriorates. No country or government can safely 
 tolerate such a surely increasing demoralization." 
 
 Here, then, was the real aim of Mr. Curtis s 
 work, to drive politics out of the civil service and 
 to drive patronage out of politics. It was a fight 
 for a new emancipation that he had taken up. 
 As has been said, the immediate scope of the com 
 mission s work was limited to what could be done 
 by the President under existing laws. The first 
 restriction imposed by these laws was defined by 
 the opinion of the then attorney-general, that, 
 while a class might be determined from whom an 
 appointee should be selected, appointment could 
 not be confined to the single person standing high 
 est in a competitive examination. This was in ef 
 fect exactly the ground taken by Mr. Curtis from 
 the start. The rules were framed to require the 
 appointment from the three persons standing high 
 est on the eligible list. The second point of im 
 portance presented was that of removals. Hers 
 the difficulty was^ not so much what the law al 
 lowed, though there was some difference of opin- 
 
THE REFORM COMMISSION. 221 
 
 ion as to that, but the best mode of exercising 
 the power of removal. Many advocates of reform 
 thought that tenure for good conduct should be 
 the rule and, to secure this, that removals should 
 be made only for cause ascertained by a trial and 
 declared by an independent tribunal. Mr. Cur- 
 tis s report recognized the evil for which this rem 
 edy was proposed, but, it declared, " such fixity of 
 tenure tends to great perplexity and inconvenience 
 in administration, and the responsible head of a 
 branch of the public service may justly complain 
 if he has no immediate control of his subordinates. 
 The details of official conduct which most perplex 
 a smooth and satisfactory administration are al 
 ways obvious to the competent and responsible 
 chief, but are not always, or indeed often, of a 
 kind to be proved in a court. A discretion of re 
 moval in such cases, if so guarded in its exercise 
 that it is not liable to be abused, is most desirable 
 in every office." The cause of the trouble was 
 political pressure, under which changes were con 
 stantly made simply to give a new band of political 
 workers their "turn." 
 
 " Nothing could be more fatal to a sound service. 
 Yet it is not unreasonable that, under a system 
 founded upon party patronage, such practices 
 should prevail. After Mr. Marcy had said that 
 4 to the victors belong the spoils of the enemy, he 
 remarked, but I never said that the victor should 
 plunder his own camp. Yet that was the logic of 
 his principle. The hardest fighter should have the 
 
222 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 most spoils. There is no logic in equal division 
 between him who merely wishes well to the cause 
 and him who fights the battle. If influence is to 
 appoint, the lesser influence must yield to the 
 greater ; and when a man has not been appointed 
 by reason of his fitness, he must not ask that he be 
 retained on account of his merit. The doctrine of 
 rotation in office implies that merit should not be 
 considered. It treats the public service as a huge 
 soup-house, in which needy citizens are to take 
 turns at the tables, and they must not grumble 
 when they are told to move on. Plainly, if this 
 political pressure for the appointment of a particu 
 lar person could be baffled, the present uncertainty 
 of tenure would be corrected. The head of a de 
 partment who should fill the various offices under 
 him not with the favorites of certain men, but with 
 those who are found qualified, would then have 
 none but legitimate reasons for the removal of a 
 faithful and efficient officer. Conspiracy and slan 
 der against any individual would then have no 
 especial inducement or opportunity, and capacity 
 character, and efficiency would secure the same 
 tenure as in all other spheres of duty. 
 
 "It seems to us, therefore, more desirable to 
 afford this reasonable security of permanence in 
 office, by depriving the head of illegitimate motives 
 for removal, rather than by providing a fixed ten 
 ure to be disturbed only upon conviction after for 
 mal accusation and trial. There is, indeed, no 
 reason for such a tenure, unless it can be shown 
 
THE REFORM COMMISSION. 223 
 
 from the nature of the system that the power of 
 removal is likely to be abused." 
 
 These two points being determined, the rules as 
 proposed to the President provided " for the com 
 petitive examination of all applicants, for the ap 
 pointment of those found to be best qualified, for 
 entrance at the lowest grade of offices in which 
 grading is practicable, for probation, and for pro 
 motion." Great importance was attached by Mr. 
 Curtis to the required probation of six months ; 
 and, as the most general objection to the reform 
 system came from those who said that capacity 
 could not be found out by questioning, it is worth 
 while to quote the report on this point : " A com 
 petitive examination in general and special know 
 ledge, although it would show certain attainments 
 which are indispensable to the proper discharge 
 of certain duties, would not necessarily prove the 
 faculty of skillfully adapting that knowledge to 
 the public service. It is a common remark, that 
 a man could answer all the book questions, as they 
 are called, and yet prove to be an inefficient officer, 
 while one who knew nothing of books might be 
 very serviceable. This may sometimes be true; 
 but there are intelligent persons enough who have 
 also swift, accurate, and thorough business aptitude. 
 In a general examination this can be little more 
 than inferred ; nothing but practice tests this kind 
 of efficiency ; and we therefore provide that, when 
 an applicant has satisfied all other examinations, 
 his skill in applying his knowledge to the duties of 
 
224 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 the office shall be proved by a practice of six 
 months, and that he shall finally be appointed only 
 when he has satisfied this test. Probation, indeed, 
 is nothing but the test of those essential qualities 
 of an officer which it is often asserted cannot be 
 ascertained by examination." 
 
 The rules thus framed were to be applied, it 
 may be said in a general way, to all subordinates 
 in the service above the grade of laborers, and 
 below those appointed with the advice and consent 
 of the Senate, excepting postmasters and certain 
 persons holding places of trust for whom the ap 
 pointing officer was especially responsible. " In 
 submitting these suggestions with the rules which 
 we have framed," said the report, "we feel that it 
 is not so much we who do it as the intelligent pub 
 lic opinion of the country. There has long been a 
 profound conviction that the system of appoint 
 ments to the civil service, upon political consider 
 ation only, is one which reason and experience 
 equally show to be fatal to economy of administra 
 tion and to republican institutions. All I claim 
 upon the subject of your resources, said Edmund 
 Burke a century ago, pleading for reform in 
 England, is this, that they are not likely to be 
 increased by wasting them. But our system of 
 the civil service courts waste. It violates the fun 
 damental principles of thrift and economy ; it fos 
 ters personal and political corruption ; it paralyzes 
 legislative honor and vigilance ; it weakens and 
 degrades official conduct ; it tempts dangerous am 
 
THE REFORM COMMISSION. 225 
 
 bition; and, by poisoning the springs of moral 
 action, it vitiates the character of the people, and 
 endangers the national prosperity and permanence. 
 
 "We would not exaggerate the importance of 
 the peril, but the constant exposure of official dis 
 honesty, the vast system of political corruption the 
 disclosure of which has produced a peaceful revo 
 lution in the city of New York, should suggest to 
 every good citizen the possibility of a similar revo 
 lution which might not be peaceful. If by that 
 great and organized corruption it had been possi 
 ble and such a contingency is not improbable 
 to decide a presidential election, and in a manner 
 universally believed to be fraudulent, the conse 
 quences would probably have been civil war. If 
 such corruption be not stayed, the result is only 
 postponed ; and nothing so surely fosters it as a 
 system which makes the civil service a party prize, 
 and convulses the country every four years with a 
 desperate strife for office." 
 
 The President approved the rules submitted in 
 December, 1871, and the commission, now known 
 as the "Advisory Board," took up the work of 
 preparing the detailed regulations, and the group 
 ing of places in the departments at Washington 
 and the federal offices at New York. This work 
 was completed, and the rules and regulations were 
 formally promulgated April 16, 1872. There was 
 some friction at first, but from that time until 
 March, 1875, the working of the system was con 
 stantly more satisfactory, and the official reports 
 
226 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 of all the departments successively recognized that 
 fact. For a long time under the old system the 
 work of the service had practically and necessarily 
 been done by a relatively small proportion of the 
 employees who had escaped the mischievous influ 
 ence of political pressure because their experience, 
 ability, knowledge, and fidelity were absolutely 
 indispensable. No responsible appointing officer 
 dared to include them in a "clean sweep," for out 
 raged public sentiment would have deprived his 
 party of the power to confer or continue political 
 patronage. This class took kindly to the new sys 
 tem so soon as it was well understood ; and it is a 
 proof both of the soundness of the merit system, 
 and of a certain curious virtue in the " average " 
 American, that, during the three years that the 
 Curtis rules were in force, a very large amount of 
 careful and arduous work in enforcing them was 
 done by men in the service who received no pay 
 and little credit therefor. I shall take up later 
 the fate of this first attempt at reform, and return 
 now to the current of Mr. Curtis s life apart from 
 this task. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE GREELEY CANVASS. 
 
 As President Grant s first term drew to a close, 
 the country began to show definite signs of the 
 breaking up of that strong and fervent party spirit 
 which had sustained the Republican candidate in 
 the election of 1868. "The party issues of the 
 last few years," Mr. Curtis had said in closing 
 the Civil Service Commission s report to President 
 Grant, " are gradually disappearing. The perilous 
 questions of fundamental policy have been deter 
 mined, and the paramount interests of the coun 
 try are now those of administration. Honesty 
 and efficiency of administration of the settled na 
 tional policy will now be the chief demand of every 
 party." This was true of public sentiment, but 
 far from true not only of " every party," but of 
 any. It cannot be said that the Republican party, 
 which had the power and therefore the responsi 
 bility, had met the demands of public opinion. 
 After the firm hand of the President had repressed 
 the violent reaction in the South manifested in 
 what were known as the " Ku-Klux " disorders, 
 the various state governments in that region had 
 fallen into the hands of Republicans, supported by 
 
228 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 the negro vote, and had, almost without exception, 
 been badly and corruptly conducted. It was plain 
 that the chief effort of the leaders of the majority 
 in Congress was, not to secure peace, order, and 
 prosperity in the South, but to strengthen the hold 
 of the party on the national government. With 
 this purpose General Grant had little sympathy, 
 and with the means employed to carry it out he 
 had none. But he was without experience, and 
 without trained capacity in civil affairs. His hands 
 were tied by the insidious and half -secret bonds 
 which the Senate had woven about the executive 
 during the term of Mr. Johnson. Within the 
 field where he possessed or asserted independence, 
 he was sadly at a loss. His judgment of men, so 
 swift and unerring in the choice of his subordi 
 nates in the army, was curiously defective in the 
 selection of civil appointees. His Cabinet, after he 
 had got rid of Judge Hoar, the attorney-general, 
 and General Cox, of the Interior Department, 
 was, with the exception of Mr. Hamilton Fish, the 
 secretary of state, singularly feeble. Then he had 
 given office to many of his military associates, who 
 had won his confidence and affection by courage, 
 energy, and soldierly loyalty, but who were not to 
 be trusted in civil life, and who almost openly held 
 that they had a right in peace to get as they could 
 a rich reward for service rendered in war. His 
 administration had given occasion for many small 
 and some serious scandals, and there was a well- 
 founded though not very definitely formulated 
 
THE G REE LEY CANVASS. 229 
 
 opinion that the political tone of the Federal gov 
 ernment was being steadily lowered. Besides all 
 this, the President s scheme for the annexation of 
 San Domingo, and his treatment of Mr. Motley 
 and of Senator Sumner, had produced a feeling 
 of deep resentment among some of the most able 
 leaders of the Republican party. 
 
 In this situation what was known as the Liberal 
 Republican movement was started. Mr. Curtis 
 was keenly sensitive to the unfortunate tendencies 
 against which this movement was ostensibly, and 
 for the most part sincerely, an organized protest ; 
 but he had a deep distrust of some who were en 
 gaged in it, and great doubt of the practical meas 
 ures to which it would or could lead. He had, 
 also, much confidence in the personal purity and 
 good faith of the President, and in the essential 
 honesty and soundness of the great body of vot 
 ers who made up the Republican party. He used 
 the agencies at his command and they were ex 
 tremely effective to expose what he was sure was 
 wrong in the conduct of public affairs, and to arouse 
 the conscience and intelligence of the country to 
 correct it. But he knew the power for good as well 
 as for ill of party organization and party sentiment ; 
 he despised and dreaded the most pronounced and 
 apparently the controlling tendencies of the Demo 
 cratic party of the day, which was still the party of 
 sympathy with secession, of hatred of the negro, of 
 financial repudiation, and, in his own State, the 
 party of Tammany and of Tweed ; and, though anx- 
 
230 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 ious and even disheartened at times, he could not 
 bring himself to cut adrift from the Republican 
 party. When the Liberal Republican Convention 
 in Cincinnati failed to name, as had been hoped, Mr. 
 Charles Francis Adams, who at the last moment 
 had scornfully repudiated a policy of " truck and 
 dicker," and had bid his friends " draw him out of 
 that crowd," and had nominated Horace Greeley 
 for the Presidency, he wrote to Mr. Norton, June 
 30, 1872 : - 
 
 " The political situation is described by saying 
 that the Democratic Convention will probably nom 
 inate Horace Greeley by acclamation ! ! The con 
 test will be Grant against the field ; Grant with all 
 his faults, and they are not great, against 
 every kind of Democratic, rebellious, Ku-Klux, dis 
 contented, hopeful, and unreasonable feeling. The 
 best sentiment of the opposition is, that both parties 
 must be destroyed, and Greeley s election is the 
 way to destroy them. This is Schurz s ground, who 
 likes Greeley as little as .any of us. The argument 
 seems to be, first chaos, then cosmos. The 4 Na 
 tion and the ; Evening Post in this dilemma 
 take Grant as the least of evils. He has been 
 foully slandered, and Sumner s speech was unpar 
 donable. He was bitterly indignant with me,- 
 said that my course was inexplicable and inconsis 
 tent, and that I was bringing unspeakable woe 
 upon my country. I could only reply, Sumner, 
 you must learn that other men are as honest as you/ 
 This election is the last hope of the Democratic 
 
THE GREELEY CANVASS. 231 
 
 party to recover power. The South is wild for 
 Greeley, but only because his name now means a 
 possible Democratic triumph. He excused seces 
 sion, he tried to negotiate at Niagara, he tried to 
 bully Mr. Lincoln into buying a peace, he bailed 
 Jeff Davis, and the worst Northern Copperheads 
 support him. That is enough for the South ; it 
 ought to be enough for the country," 
 
 Early in September he wrote again from Ash- 
 field (where he had now bought a house and land 
 separated by one field only from the house of Mr. 
 Norton) : 
 
 " The reaction against Greeley is already evident. 
 Poor Sumner has been forced to fly. I am not 
 surprised. I thought and said that the struggle 
 of joining the enemies of all that he has ever pur 
 sued or done might be overwhelming, and in Wash 
 ington he was old and sad and weary. It is to me 
 a very melancholy campaign ; but, like all others, it 
 is very important. I have for myself less and less 
 inclination to position. We shall reelect Grant, 
 and with the dissolution of the Democratic party 
 new combinations will arise." 
 
 The campaign practically culminated with the 
 decisive successes of the Republicans in the States 
 (Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana) which then had 
 elections in October, and closed with the overwhelm 
 ing defeat of the Democratic candidate in Novem 
 ber. In the last days of November Mr. Greeley 
 died. Mr. Curtis wrote to Mr. Norton Decem 
 ber 2d:~ 
 
232 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 "Now comes Greeley s death, one of the most 
 mournfully tragic of events, heart-break and in 
 sanity; and a great gush of sentimental twaddle 
 from all the newspapers ; and, that nothing may be 
 wanting to the grotesque pathos, the Tribune pro 
 poses that the Greeley electors shall vote for Grant ! 
 
 "You will have seen how nobly the President 
 stood fast against Cameron in the Philadelphia 
 post-office matter. I suppose that there must be 
 some fight upon the subject in Congress, and I 
 know nobody there, unless it be George Hoar, who 
 will conduct our side as it should be managed. 
 Garfield is timid, Willard is not strong, and no 
 one that I know upon the floor is master of the sub 
 ject. The Cabinet is not friendly, but fortunately 
 Grant is tenacious and resolved upon the spirit 
 which should govern appointments. I suppose, 
 however, that he may not see why good party men 
 should not be taken." 
 
 However " tenacious and resolved upon the spirit 
 which should govern appointments " the President 
 was in December, early in the next year a case 
 arose in the New York custom-house in which 
 Mr. Curtis thought that that spirit was so far vio 
 lated that he felt that he could not retain the part 
 of chairman of the commission. It was in no sense 
 a question of personal or official dignity. It was a 
 question of departing so seriously from the standard 
 which he had publicly adopted as to compromise the 
 cause of reform and impair if not destroy his abil 
 ity to promote it. He resigned from the commission 
 
TEE GREELEY CANVASS. 233 
 
 March 27, 1874. After he had reached this deci 
 sion, but before he had acted upon it, he was stricken 
 with a serious illness. Within the five previous 
 years he had added to Ms ordinary work, which 
 was by no means light, and to the very trying and 
 exposing lecturing tours, first the labors of the 
 Constitutional Convention, and then those of the 
 Civil Service Commission. He wrote to Mr. Nor 
 ton, then in Europe : 
 
 March 12, 1873. 
 
 MY DEAR CHARLES, Anna holds the pen for 
 me to thank you for your thoughtful and affection 
 ate letter. It comes from your sick-bed to mine, 
 for I have put the last feather on my patient cam 
 el s back, and he is broken down. About four 
 weeks ago I came home from a short, hard trip to 
 the West, worn out and ill. For a week I fought 
 a fever which threatened several bad things, but all 
 the bad symptoms have left me except a pudding- 
 head and general prostration. I lie on the couch 
 most all day, and am ordered to rest absolutely for 
 six months. So you will find me when you return 
 what you first knew me, a gentleman of elegant 
 and boundless leisure. It is a sorry story, and I 
 know you will be pained to hear it. I shall have 
 to work much more moderately hereafter, and am 
 profoundly mortified to have brought myself to 
 this pause. When I am able to move I shall per 
 haps go for a month to John Field s, at Newport, 
 who most affectionately urges me. 
 
234 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 It makes me better to think of your all coming 
 home again ; and with most unchanging love to all 
 of you, I am your always affectionate, 
 
 G. W. C. 
 
 The half year of rest, if not of absolute rest, 
 was taken, and restored him to nearly his usual 
 vigor and elasticity. The following winter he gave 
 up his lectures. He wrote : 
 
 28 December, 1873. 
 
 It is my first winter at home for nearly twenty 
 years, and, as I am not very busy, except with 
 reading, it is in every way delightful. It is pleas 
 ant to have my say upon public affairs with per 
 fect independence, and to feel, as I have occasion 
 to know, that it is not without result. I am often 
 very sorry for the P [resident,] seldom angry with 
 him, and must smile when I reflect that Keid, 
 Jennings, Marble, and young Bennett are the great 
 and awful "morning press " of New York! 
 
 The situation in public affairs was extremely 
 confused. u In 21," he remarked, " the next step 
 could be seen, but now it is wholly hidden." He 
 saw, however, what it might ultimately require, 
 and he wrote to a correspondent: "The right 
 and duty, upon proper occasion, to bolt, are the 
 right and duty of being honest. The way to secure 
 the nomination of honest men is to refuse to vote 
 for those who are not honest." 
 
 Commenting on the financial legislation in the 
 
THE GREELEY CANVASS. 235 
 
 direction of inflation of the currency, he re 
 marked : " The Republican party, in unquestioned 
 possession of the government, has no policy upon 
 any of the most pressing questions before the coun- 
 try." 
 
 He received the veto by President Grant of the 
 Inflation Bill as an act of the highest civic cour 
 age, and one which saved the country from the 
 utter demoralization with which the dominant 
 party threatened it, but he condemned with plain 
 ness the failure of the President to follow, in his 
 administration of the civil service outside of the 
 rules of the commission, the principle declared and 
 embodied in the rules. The election of a Demo 
 cratic majority in the House of Representatives 
 was not unexpected by him. He wrote to Mr. 
 Norton on the morrow of the election : 
 
 November 9, 74. 
 
 Well, my dearest Charles, I am no more sur 
 prised than you. For two years the storm has 
 been in the air. How I wish it could have been 
 averted ! The result is another of the constant 
 proofs of the impracticability of " political men," 
 and of the wisdom of babes and sucklings. It 
 was meant, and will be interpreted by many, as an 
 admonition. It is that, and will be of great service. 
 But I do not feel sure of the end. I am disposed 
 to think that a party which has been adjudged un 
 equal to the situation will hardly be called to deal 
 with it again until the other parfy has been tri( 
 
236 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 And as the other party has so great a proportion of 
 the dangerous elements of the country in it, I feel, 
 not surprised nor disappointed nor regretful, for 
 it was inevitable, but I do feel very sober. 
 
 Early in 1874 Charles Sumner died. It is evi 
 dence of the esteem in which Mr. Curtis was held 
 that, though a firm and convinced opponent of the 
 political movement of which Mr. Sumner was in 
 his last years one of the most prominent leaders, 
 he was invited by the Legislature of Massachusetts 
 to deliver a eulogy upon the Senator, which he did 
 (June 9, 1874). It was a very noble address, and 
 may be said to mark the opening of a new phase 
 of the career of Mr. Curtis as an orator. He had 
 now practically abandoned the lectures which he 
 had taken up nearly twenty years previous, and 
 pursued with a steadfast and self-denying energy, 
 upon an object that suggests the labors of Walter 
 Scott in his old age. By these, and by his politi 
 cal speeches, he was known and greatly esteemed. 
 He was now to undertake a much higher and more 
 difficult class of oratory, by which in the next 
 twenty years his reputation was greatly to be ex 
 tended, and, as I think, established on a lasting 
 foundation. I select from this address a few brief 
 passages fairly indicative of the tone of the whole, 
 but having an added interest from the light they 
 throw on Mr. Curtis s own character and his sub 
 sequent course : 
 
 " Mr. Sumner knew, as every intelligent man 
 
THE GREELEY CANVASS. 237 
 
 knows, that from the day when Themistocles led 
 the educated Athenians at Salamis to that when 
 Von Moltke marshaled the educated Germans 
 against France, the sure foundations of states are 
 laid in knowledge, not in ignorance, and that every 
 sneer at education, at culture, at book-learning, 
 which is the recorded wisdom of the experience of 
 mankind, is the demagogue s sneer at intelligent 
 liberty, inviting national degeneration and ruin. . . . 
 
 " While great political results are to be gained 
 by means of great parties, he knew that a party 
 which is too blind to see, or too cowardly to ac 
 knowledge, the real issue, which pursues its ends, 
 however noble, by ignoble means, which tolerates 
 corruption, which trusts unworthy men, which suf 
 fers the public service to be prostituted to personal 
 ends, defies reason and conscience, and summons 
 all honest men to oppose it. ... 
 
 " During all that tremendous time, on the one 
 hand enthusiastically trusted, on the other con 
 temptuously scorned and hated, his heart was that 
 of a little child. He said no unworthy word, he 
 did no unmanly deed ; dishonor fled his face ; and 
 to-day those who so long and so naturally, but so 
 wrongfully, believed him their enemy, strew rose 
 mary for remembrance upon his grave. . . . 
 
 " This is the great victory, the great lesson, the 
 great legacy of his life, that the fidelity of a public 
 man to conscience, not to party, is rewarded with 
 the sincerest popular love and confidence. What 
 an inspiration to every youth, longing with generous 
 
238 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 ambition to enter the great arena of the state, that 
 he must heed first and always the divine voice in 
 his own soul, if he would be sure of the liv 
 ing voices of good fame ! Living, how Sumner 
 served us ! and, dying at this moment, how he 
 serves us still ! In a time when politics seem 
 peculiarly mean and selfish and corrupt, when there 
 is a general vague apprehension that the very 
 moral foundations of the national character are 
 loosened, when good men are painfully anxious to 
 know whether the heart of the people is hardened, 
 Charles Sumner dies; and the universality and 
 sincerity of sorrow, such as the death of no man 
 left living among us could awaken, show how true, 
 how sound, how generous, is still the heart of the 
 American people. This is the dying service of 
 Charles Sumner, a revelation which inspires every 
 American to bind his shining example as a frontlet 
 between the eyes, and never again to despair of 
 the highest and more glorious destiny of his coun- 
 try." 
 
CHAPTER XVIH. 
 
 THE REACTION 1874 TO 1876. 
 
 IN the autumn of 1874 Mr. Curtis wrote to Mr. 
 Norton : " I am invited to deliver the Centennial 
 Oration at Concord on the 19th, and I shall ac 
 cept." The Concord celebration was the first of 
 the long series commemorating the events of the 
 Revolution, and it was Mr. Curtis s peculiar for 
 tune not only to open the series at Concord, but 
 to close it with the address at the unveiling of the 
 Washington Statue at New York in 1883. The 
 Concord oration is noteworthy for the spirited 
 review of the story of the day, for its masterly 
 tribute to Samuel Adams, and for the succinct and 
 impressive statement of the conditions surrounding 
 the birth of the Revolution. It was inevitable that 
 Mr. Curtis should close by applying the lesson of 
 the earlier day to the problems of the later. But 
 in doing this he could not conceal the grave anx 
 iety by which he was possessed. His spirit was 
 hopeful and courageous, but in the presence of the 
 President, whose iron determination and honest 
 purpose, sustained by a hold on the affections of 
 the people only surpassed by that of Lincoln and 
 Washington, had palpably failed to turn back or 
 
240 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 seriously to stem the tide of political demoraliza 
 tion with which Mr. Curtis was himself struggling, 
 the orator s native hope and courage could point to 
 no assurance of near progress. The closing words 
 of the address were of high and impassioned ex 
 hortation, but they were distinctly sad. 
 
 For in the spring of 1875 it had become plain 
 that General Grant had surrendered, and was not 
 prepared for the fight which must be made if the 
 reform of the civil service was even to be main 
 tained within the scope of the rules. He sub 
 mitted to Congress, at the opening of the short 
 session in December, a recommendation for the 
 continuance of the appropriation, but in a tone 
 that clearly implied that he would abandon the 
 plan if the appropriation were withheld. It was 
 refused, and on March 27th the rules were sus 
 pended, and the work of the commissioners came 
 to an end. It was, of course, a severe blow to the 
 hopes of Mr. Curtis, but it did not shake his in 
 domitable devotion. Very much had been gained. 
 The principle of appointment for proved merit had 
 been embodied in a definite, working system ; and 
 the system had stood admirably the test, not 
 merely of experience, but of experience with the 
 most bitter and unscrupulous opposition from men 
 of influence in public life, with inefficient and ill- 
 trained subordinate officers, and with all the diffi 
 culties growing from the looseness and low morals 
 of the service. No one could deny that it had 
 worked well in exact proportion to the fidelity 
 
THE REACTION. 241 
 
 with which it had been applied. It had been 
 proved beyond all cavil that it would secure for 
 the government competent persons of a high aver 
 age character. The provision for probation had 
 been an entire protection against the possible 
 defects of competitive examinations, and these 
 defects had been found to be insignificant. In 
 practice the appointees standing highest in the 
 examinations had, with very few and slight excep 
 tions, passed with equal success the test of proba 
 tion, and had steadily improved in efficiency after 
 entering the service. The testimony of the officers 
 in authority in the various departments was en 
 tirely favorable, and for the most part heartily 
 favorable, as to the effect of the system on the 
 service. On the other hand the immense advan 
 tage to them of the relief from worry and waste of 
 time in dealing with the office-seekers was gener 
 ally recognized. It was shown beyond all doubt 
 that the honest enforcement of the system ex 
 cluded party politics from the service to the great 
 gain of both. In short, the three years from 1872 
 to 1875 had established the entire soundness of 
 the reform, and its complete certainty, when honor 
 ably applied, to do all that its authors had pre 
 dicted, promised, or even hoped. 
 
 It is a natural question, why it was not persisted 
 in. The answer may be given in the words of 
 Mr. Curtis twelve years later : " It was once my 
 duty to say to President Grant that the adverse 
 pressure of the Republican party would overpower 
 
242 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 his purpose of reform. He replied with a smile 
 that he was used to pressure. He smiled incredu 
 lously, but he presently abandoned the reform." 
 The " adverse pressure of the Republican party " 
 was of a kind to which General Grant was in no 
 wise used. The pressure of a hostile force upon 
 the lines he could meet, for he could have no pos 
 sible desire to yield to it or escape from it. The 
 pressure of civilians, when he was in military 
 command, he could also resist, for his authority 
 was complete, his responsibility was definite and 
 exacting, and he knew perfectly what must be the 
 consequences if he gave way. He knew, too, that 
 if he did not give way the civilians must. But 
 the pressure of political friends high in the party 
 leadership was a wholly different force. It was at 
 once powerful, subtle, unceasing, and indirect. It 
 enveloped him like an atmosphere, and was often 
 most potent when he was not conscious of it. The 
 men who brought this pressure to bear were far 
 too shrewd to let him understand their real object, 
 or to arouse in him anything like antagonism. 
 They came to him as to the titular head of the 
 party ; they made him feel that the success of the 
 party depended on strong and prudent organiza 
 tion, that this could be effected only by a proper 
 distribution of the offices, and that distribution of 
 offices by " schoolmasters examinations " would 
 tend to weaken and demoralize the party. They 
 presented the party to him in the light of analogy 
 to an army, of which he was the chief, they were 
 
THE REACTION. 243 
 
 the generals, and the place-holders were the subor 
 dinate officers. At every step they showed him 
 ease, popularity, success, honor, on the one hand, 
 and on the other the barren results of a futile 
 effort to carry out a visionary scheme, the only 
 practical outcome of which would be to give aid 
 and comfort to the enemy. And I do not at all 
 deny that many of those through whom this pres 
 sure was exerted were entirely sincere in their 
 views, while some of them were unselfish and pa 
 triotic in their motives. They were veterans of 
 hard-won victories for the Republican cause in a 
 struggle where offices had been freely used to 
 build up and maintain the organization, and they 
 were convinced that to give up the offices was so 
 plainly injurious as to be party treason. The 
 questions of the war were settled. The people 
 were no longer sharply divided by distinct issues. 
 The opponents of the Republican party were stead 
 ily gaining strength. These men felt, and to some 
 extent they made President Grant feel, that in such 
 a strait, with a doubtful or at least a very diffi 
 cult national campaign coming on, it would be folly 
 jbo reject any resources within reach of the party. 
 They could not see, nor could he, that the use of 
 the Federal offices as "patronage" or "spoils," as 
 the reward and incentive of political effort, was in 
 reality throwing away that supreme resource, the 
 confidence of intelligent men in the honesty and 
 unselfishness of the purposes of a party. Mr. 
 Curtis s view was opposed to theirs, and a few 
 
244 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 brief months was to verify it. " History teaches," 
 he said, " no lesson more distinctly than that no 
 thing is so practical as principle, nothing so little 
 visionary as honesty. Political movements, like 
 all other good causes, are constantly betrayed by 
 the ignorance which thinks itself smartness, and 
 the contempt of ideas which is practical common 
 sense." 
 
 The next year was one of relative quiet for 
 Mr. Curtis. He turned to his work on " Harper s 
 Weekly " with a sense of relief, on the one hand, 
 from the pressure of official responsibility, and on 
 the other with renewed determination to educate, 
 arouse, and direct public opinion toward the reform 
 which had become the chief object of his life in 
 public affairs. He enjoyed his tranquil home and 
 the fairly settled round of professional duties with 
 a deep content. A glimpse of the family life is 
 afforded in the following note to Mr. Lowell, re 
 ferring to the ode read by the author at Concord 
 at the Centennial Celebration : 
 
 WEST NEW BRIGHTON, STATEN ISLAND, N. Y., 
 17th May, 1875. 
 
 MY DEAR JAMES, I read and then re-read 
 your ode last evening to the assembled family, and 
 I cannot tell you how fine, how superb, it seems to 
 all of us. It is full of the noblest thought, of 
 the loftiest melody. The dance of a thousand rills 
 is in it, and the murmur of old woods. If you 
 have ever done anything more satisfactory I don t 
 know it. 
 
THE REACTION". 245 
 
 This line is only to say that I can t say any 
 thing but to tell you that all who love liberty will 
 love it and you the more for this glorious strain. 
 We are all well, and all send you our love. 
 Your most affectionate 
 
 G. W. C. 
 
 In a letter to Mr. Norton, alluding to a week in 
 Washington, there is a note of the really moment 
 ous election that was approaching : 
 
 28th February, 1876. 
 
 I returned Friday from Washington, where I 
 had passed a week with the Bancrofts. Nothing 
 could surpass their kindness. From the moment I 
 came until that which saw me off, I was passed 
 along from one interest and pleasure to another, 
 seeing and hearing all that is most desirable in 
 Washington. I think the most extraordinary 
 thing I learned was that, a little while ago, Sam 
 Ward (California and lobby Sam) had the whole 
 Supreme Court of the United States Chief Jus 
 tice and all to dine with him at Welcker s on a 
 Sunday afternoon ! 
 
 / dined at the secretary of state s with Fer 
 nando Wood, handing out Mrs. Fish to dinner. 
 
 All that I saw and heard of Bristow, whom I 
 knew four years ago in Washington, was good and 
 satisfactory. I asked Jewell, at the attorney-gen 
 eral s table, whom the party not the managers 
 would make the candidate, #nd he answered in 
 stantly, " Bristow." 
 
246 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 Mr. Benjamin H. Bristow, as secretary of the 
 treasury, had won the esteem and confidence of the 
 best men of the Republican party by the energy 
 and simple fidelity with which he had undertaken 
 to prosecute extensive frauds on the internal rev 
 enue, known as the "whiskey frauds." He was a 
 native of Kentucky, had served honorably in the 
 Union army, and had taken an earnest interest in 
 the reform of the civil service. In the following 
 summer Mr. Curtis was elected a delegate to the 
 Republican National Convention, and supported 
 the nomination of Mr. Bristow, though he finally 
 voted for that of Mr. Rutherford B. Hayes, lead 
 ing the opposition to Senator Conkling, who then 
 represented the administration element in the 
 party in the State of New York. It is not neces 
 sary here to recite the situation in which the elec 
 tion left the country. It is sufficient to say that 
 the electoral votes of South Carolina, Florida, and 
 Louisiana, and a part of those of Oregon, were in 
 dispute ; that a single one of these votes given to 
 Mr. Tilden, the Democratic candidate, would have 
 been sufficient to elect him ; that there were two 
 sets of electoral votes from these States sent to 
 Washington ; that the House of Representatives 
 had a Democratic majority, the Senate a Repub 
 lican majority ; that the votes were to be opened 
 by the President of the Senate and counted in the 
 presence of both houses. The Republican claim 
 was, that the President of the Senate could decide 
 which votes should be opened and submitted ; the 
 
THE REACTION. 
 
 Democratic claim was, that all votes must 
 opened and submitted, and the choice made as to 
 disputed votes by each house, the assent of both 
 being necessary to an election. The former course 
 would have given the election to Mr. Hayes, the 
 latter to Mr. Tilden. The country was in a state 
 of the deepest confusion. Party feeling ran very 
 high. The passions of the war were reawakened, 
 and the dread possibility of civil strife was oppress 
 ing or exciting the minds of all. 
 
 At the very height of the struggle, and before 
 any peaceful solution of it had been even plausibly 
 argued, Mr. Curtis was called upon to speak at the 
 dinner of the New England Society of New York 
 on the 22d of December. He had chosen as his 
 toast " The Puritan Principle : Liberty under the 
 Law." His speech was a brief one, and it was 
 so complete an example of the spirit in which he 
 met every occasion, and plucked from its heart 
 the deepest meaning, that I shall quote (from the 
 society s report) the latter half of it : 
 
 "Do you ask me, then, what is this Puritan 
 principle ? Do you ask me whether it is as good 
 for to-day as for yesterday; whether it is good 
 for every national emergency ; whether it is good 
 for the situation of this hour? I think we need 
 neither doubt nor fear. The Puritan principle in 
 its essence is simply individual freedom. From 
 that spring religious liberty and political equality. 
 The free state, the free church, the free school, 
 these are the triple armor of American nationality, 
 
248 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 of American security. But the Pilgrims, while 
 they have stood above all men for this idea of lib 
 erty, have always asserted liberty under law, and 
 never -separated it from law. \ John Robinson, in 
 the letter that he wrote the Pilgrims when they 
 sailed, said these words, that well, sir, might be 
 written in gold around the cornice of that future 
 banqueting hall to which you have alluded : You 
 know that the image of the Lord s dignity and 
 authority which the magistry beareth is honor 
 able in how mean person soever. (Applause.) 
 This is the Puritan principle. Those men stood 
 for liberty under the law. They had tossed long 
 upon a wintry sea ; their minds were full of images 
 derived from their voyage ; they knew that the will 
 of the people alone is but a gale smiting a rudder 
 less and sailless ship, and hurling it, a mass of 
 wreck, upon the rocks. But the will of the people 
 subject to law is the same gale filling the trim 
 canvas of a ship that minds the helm, bearing it 
 over yawning and awful abysses of ocean safely to 
 port. (Loud applause.) 
 
 " Now, gentlemen, in this country the Puritan 
 principle has advanced to this point, that it pro 
 vides a lawful remedy for every emergency that 
 may arise. I stand here as a son of New Eng 
 land. In every fibre of my being, I am a child 
 of the Pilgrim. The most knightly of all the 
 gentlemen at Elizabeth s court said to the young 
 poet, when he would write an immortal song, 
 Look into thy heart and write. And I, sirs and 
 
THE REACTION. 249 
 
 brothers, if, looking into my own heart at this 
 moment, I might dare to think that what I find 
 written there is written also upon the heart of 
 my mother, clad in her snows at home, her voice 
 in this hour would be a message spoken from the 
 land of the Pilgrims to the capital of this na 
 tion, a message like that which Patrick Henry 
 sent from Virginia to Massachusetts when he heard 
 of Concord and Lexington : 4 1 am not a Virgin 
 ian, I am an American. (Great applause.) And 
 so, gentlemen, at this hour we are not Republicans, 
 we are not Democrats, we are Americans. (Tre 
 mendous applause.) 
 
 " The voice of New England, I believe, going to 
 the capital, would be this, that, neither is the Re 
 publican Senate to insist upon its exclusive parti 
 san* way, nor is the Democratic House to insist 
 upon its exclusive partisan way; but Senate and 
 House, representing the American people and the 
 American people only, in the light of the Constitu 
 tion and by the authority of the law, are to provide 
 a way over which a President, be he Republican 
 or be he Democrat, shall pass unchallenged to his 
 chair. (Vociferous applause, the company rising 
 to their feet.) Ah, gentlemen (renewed applause), 
 think not, Mr. President, that I am forgetting 
 the occasion or its amenities. (Cries of 4 No, no, 
 and Go on. ) I am remembering the Puritans ; I 
 am remembering Plymouth Rock and the virtues 
 that made it illustrious. (A voice Justice. ) 
 But we, gentlemen, are to imitate those virtues, as 
 
250 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 our toast says, only by being greater than the men 
 who stood upon that rock. As this gay and lux 
 urious banquet to their scant and severe fare, 
 so must our virtues, to be worthy of them, be 
 greater and richer than theirs. And as we are 
 three centuries older, so we should be three cen 
 turies wiser than they. Sons of the Pilgrims, you 
 are not to level forests, you are not to war with 
 savage men and savage beasts, you are not to tame 
 a continent nor even found a state. Our task is 
 nobler, is diviner. Our task, sir, is to reconcile 
 a nation. It is to curb the fury of party spirit. 
 It is to introduce a loftier and manlier spirit 
 everywhere into our political life. It is to edu 
 cate every boy and every girl, and then to leave 
 them perfectly free to go from any school to any 
 church. Above all, sir, it is to protect absolutely 
 the equal rights of the poorest and the richest, of 
 the most ignorant and most intelligent citizen ; and 
 it is to stand forth, brethren, as a triple wall of 
 brass around our native land against the mad 
 blows of violence or the fatal dry-rot of fraud. 
 (Loud applause.) And at this moment, sir, the 
 grave and austere shades of the forefathers whom 
 we invoke bend above us in benediction as they 
 call us to this sublime task. This, brothers and 
 friends, this is to imitate the virtues of our fore 
 fathers ; this is to make our day as glorious as 
 theirs." (Great applause, followed by three 
 cheers for the speaker.) 
 
 I have quoted this speech from the New Eng- 
 
THE REACTION. 251 
 
 land Society s report, and I have included notes of 
 the applause, because they give the reader an im 
 pression of the effect of the speech upon an audi 
 ence, which, even after dinner, as those familiar 
 with it will concede, is more easily amused than 
 stirred. There can be no doubt that the influ 
 ence of the speech was considerable in determining 
 the acceptance of the plan of a commission, and of 
 the decision of the commission, when reached on the 
 eve of the inauguration. It is not easy at this dis 
 tance to conceive the real peril of the situation. 
 As I have said, it was the passions of the war that 
 were reawakened and intensified. Many Repub 
 licans believed that Mr. Tilden s accession to the 
 Presidency meant the loss of all that had been 
 gained by the war. Many Democrats, especially 
 in the South, believed that Mr. Hayes s accession 
 meant the extension to the national government of 
 the corruption and greed of the "carpet-bag" re 
 gime in the South. In the absence of an arbitra 
 tion agreed to by both sides, either party would 
 have been furious at facing such dangers and 
 wrongs as they believed involved, and no President 
 with a title depending on a disputed and technical 
 interpretation of an obscure statute could have 
 faced such fury without grave risks. To have 
 contributed in an appreciable degree to the dissi 
 pation of the storm thus threatened is no slight 
 claim to the grateful admiration of the country. 
 This Mr. Curtis did in a speech of but a few minutes. 
 The speech is interesting also because, though it was 
 
252 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 not unpremeditated, it bears marks of being wholly 
 unprepared. In the quiet of his study Mr. Curtis 
 would not have written out the slightly confused 
 metaphors which, in the fervor of the occasion, 
 rushed one upon another, for he was singularly 
 careful in the construction of his periods when he 
 took time to construct them in advance. These 
 traits of the speech, however, only deepen the im 
 pression of the power of the speaker whose un- 
 marshaled utterances so deeply moved his hearers, 
 and, twenty years later, must still move the reader. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE PARTING OF THE WAYS. 
 
 AT the outset of Mr. Hayes s administration, 
 he sought diligently to connect with it men whose 
 names would give it the prestige which his own 
 modest career did not supply, and which the cir 
 cumstances of his election tended to make difficult. 
 Among others he turned to Mr. Curtis, who wrote 
 as follows to Mr. Norton : 
 
 19th May, 1877. 
 
 When the President was here during the last 
 week, Mr. Evarts offered me my choice of the 
 chief missions, evidently expecting that I would 
 choose the English. 
 
 Putting myself out of the question, would it not 
 be equally serviceable to the good cause and the 
 administration if it were openly offered to me, and 
 declined by me in a way to give the administration 
 the credit, and upon the ground, not of shirking 
 the public service, but of my preference for my 
 present public duty ? That is, could not all the 
 public advantage be gained by the offer, and would 
 not the advantage be greater than the injury to the 
 administration of turning to a second choice ? If 
 the administration are not willing to have the offer 
 known unless I accept, ought I to insist ? 
 
254 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 Tell me briefly what you think, and whether you 
 think, in any case, that a man absolutely without 
 legal training of any kind could be a proper min 
 ister. I know that you love me, but I confide in 
 your perfect candor. Please say nothing of it to 
 any one. 
 
 It will be seen that Mr. Curtis was not insensi 
 ble to the attractions of this offer, nor, -at first, 
 decided to put it aside. But finally he did so, and 
 unquestionably chiefly from the motive ascribed in 
 Lowell s lines : 
 
 " At courts, in senates, who so fit to serve ? 
 And both invited, but you would not swerve, 
 All meaner prizes waiving 1 that you might 
 In civic duty spend your heat and light, 
 Unpaid, untrammeled, with a sweet disdain 
 Refusing posts men grovel to attain." 
 
 This is the poet s way of putting it. I do not 
 think that there was in Mr. Curtis s mind a trace 
 of " disdain," even of " sweet disdain," for the 
 post of representative of his country at a foreign 
 court, and particularly at the court of St. James. 
 On the contrary, however he might regard the mo 
 tives of some who sought such places, he under 
 stood clearly enough the honor they brought to 
 those who honorably filled them. His doubt, as 
 his note to Mr. Norton shows, was as to his own 
 fitness. He might have dismissed that, had his 
 modesty permitted him to remember Irving in 
 Spain, Bancroft in Germany, Motley in England, 
 Marsh in Italy. And, since it is Lowell s view I 
 
THE PARTING OF THE WAYS. 255 
 
 am talking of, I cannot but picture to myself the 
 impression our English friends would have had 
 of the American representative, and particularly 
 of the American " occasional " speaker, had they 
 been permitted to hear and know first Curtis and 
 then Lowell. It is a pleasing fancy, but it is not 
 necessary to develop it. Mr. Curtis saw his " civic 
 duty " at home, and felt that here better than else 
 where he could do what was worth trying to do. 
 He wrote to Mr. Norton (May 28, 1877), who 
 had sought to change his decision : 
 
 " I am truly obliged to you for your letter. I 
 knew it would be hard to satisfy (fortify ?) myself 
 against it, but I have done so, and I shall show you 
 that I do wisely and therefore right in declining." 
 
 And in July he wrote to Mr. Lowell, just ap 
 pointed minister to Spain : 
 
 ASHFIELD, July 9, 1877. 
 
 MY DEAR JAMES, I must not let you go with- 
 out a word of love and farewell, although I have 
 meant to write you a letter. I told Charles that 
 on every ground, except that you go away, I am 
 delighted that you are going. With me the case 
 is very different. I happen to be just in the posi 
 tion where I can be of infinitely greater service to 
 the good old cause, and to the administration that 
 is meaning and trying to advance it, than I could 
 possibly be abroad. Evarts wrote me that he felt 
 just as I did about it. But, unless there was some 
 overpowering private reason, you could not escape 
 going, and nothing has done this administration 
 
256 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 more good, nor rejoiced so many hearts,~as your ap 
 pointment. You will be blown on to your castles 
 in Spain by a whirlwind of benedictions. 
 
 Anna sends her love, and I beg my most friendly 
 remembrance to your wife, and I am always most 
 Affectionately yours, 
 
 G. W. C. 
 
 Mr. Curtis recognized the sincere purpose of the 
 President to do all that he could to raise the level 
 of the civil service, and with it the level of Ameri 
 can politics. A new Civil Service Commission 
 was appointed, with Mr. Dorman B. Eaton at its 
 head ; and the rules formulated under Mr. Curtis 
 were applied with a measure of thoroughness at 
 Washington, especially in the Department of the 
 Interior under the Hon. Carl Schurz, in the cus 
 tom-house in New York, and in the post-office, 
 then placed in charge of Hon. Thomas L. James. 
 Mr. Curtis rejoiced at these evidences of progress 
 in the reform, and warmly supported Mr. Hayes. 
 The President needed support. He had deeply 
 offended the Kepublican leaders, who had been 
 in practically unrestrained power under President 
 Grant, by the very policy which won for him the 
 confidence and respect of Mr. Curtis. He had 
 made a definite stand, which, if it was not abso 
 lutely unyielding, was, in all the circumstances, a 
 very firm and honorable one, against the spoils 
 system, and necessarily against the claims of the 
 Senators, whose political influence was almost 
 
THE PARTING OF THE WAYS. 257 
 
 wholly due to their control of the distribution of 
 the spoils. Chief among these was Senator Roscoe 
 Conkling, of New York, with whom, as the politi 
 cal leader in his own State, Mr. Curtis had been 
 intimately, though by no means always amicably, 
 related. At the approach of the fall election, 
 Mr. Curtis was a delegate to the Republican State 
 Convention, which was in the control of the Conk- 
 ling faction. He supported in the convention a 
 resolution approving the course of the administra 
 tion, and particularly its course with reference to 
 the civil service. From the point of view of the 
 most ordinary political sagacity, the resolution was 
 not only just but proper. To refuse to adopt it 
 was to discredit the party in the approaching con 
 test, and to commit the most unpardonable sin in 
 the partisan decalogue, that of placing a weapon 
 in the hands of " the enemy." Had the resolution 
 been untruthful, had it approved efforts at reform 
 that had never been made, and " recognized " a 
 virtue in the national administration that did not 
 exist, it would have encountered no opposition from 
 the Conkling side. As it was, Mr. Conkling not 
 only opposed it, but he indulged in a curiously 
 bitter and vulgar attack on Mr. Curtis personally. 
 Replying to a note from Mr. Norton, regarding 
 this incident, Mr. Curtis wrote : 
 
 ASHFIELD, 30th September, 77. 
 
 MY DEAREST CHARLES, Your note is here, 
 and it is lucky that you are not, for I should do no 
 
258 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 work. It was the saddest sight I ever knew, that 
 man glaring at me in a fury of hate, and storming 
 out his foolish blackguardism. I was all pity. I 
 had not thought him great, but I had not suspected 
 how small he was. His friends, the best, were con 
 founded. One of them said to me next day, " It 
 was not amazement that I felt, but consternation." 
 I spoke offhand, and the report is horrible. The 
 agent of the Associated Press came to me and 
 apologized. Conkling s speech was carefully writ 
 ten out, and therefore you do not get all the venom, 
 and no one can imagine the Mephistophelean leer 
 and spite. I have many letters. Oh dear! how 
 much I prefer these quiet hills, and how I am 
 driven out on the stormy seas ! 
 
 Mr. Curtis was indeed constantly " driven out on 
 the stormy seas," but the force that drove him was 
 from within, not from without. He went where 
 there was danger to the cause of good government, 
 following Sidney s exhortation to a younger bro 
 ther: "Whenever you hear of a good war, go to 
 it." I quote here some passages from his address 
 in this same year to the students of Union College 
 on " The Public Duty of Educated Men." They 
 will show by what principles he believed himself 
 to be guided, and will throw light on his subsequent 
 course : 
 
 " By the words public duty I do not necessarily 
 mean official duty, though it may include that. I 
 mean simply that constant and active practical par- 
 
THE PARTING OF THE WAYS. 259 
 
 ticipation in the details of politics without which, 
 upon the part of the most intelligent citizens, the 
 conduct of public affairs falls under the control of 
 selfish and ignorant or crafty and venal men. I 
 mean that personal attention which, as it must be 
 incessant, is often wearisome and even repulsive, to 
 the details of politics attendance upon meetings, 
 service upon committees, care and trouble and ex 
 pense of many kinds, patient endurance of rebuffs, 
 chagrins, ridicules, disappointment^ defeats ; in a 
 word, all those duties and services which, when self 
 ishly and meanly performed, stigmatize a man as a 
 mere politician, but whose constant, honorable, in 
 telligent, and vigilant performance is the gradual 
 building, stone by stone and layer by layer, of that 
 great temple of self-restrained liberty which all 
 generous souls mean that our government shall 
 be. ... 
 
 " Undoubtedly a practical and active interest in 
 politics will lead you to party association and coop 
 eration. Great public results the repeal of the 
 corn laws in England, the abolition of slavery in 
 America are due to that organization of effort, 
 that concentration of aim, which arouse, instruct, 
 and inspire the popular heart and will. This is 
 the spring of party, and those who seek practical 
 results instinctively turn to this agency of united 
 action. But in this tendency, useful in the state 
 as the fire upon the household hearth, lurks, as in 
 that fire, the deadliest peril. Here is our re 
 public : it is a ship, with towering canvas spread, 
 
260 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 sweeping before a prosperous gale over a foaming 
 and sparkling sea ; it is a lightning train darting 
 with awful speed along the edges of dizzy abysses 
 and across bridges that quiver over unsounded 
 gulfs. Because we are Americans we have no 
 peculiar charm, no magic spell, to stay the eternal 
 laws. Our safety lies alone in cool self-possession, 
 directing the forces of wind and wave and fire. If 
 once the madness to which the excitement tends 
 escapes control, the catastrophe is inevitable. And 
 so deep is the conviction that sooner or later this 
 madness must seize every republic, that the most 
 plausible suspicion of the permanence of the Amer 
 ican government is founded in the belief that party 
 spirit cannot be restrained. It is, indeed, a master 
 passion, but its control is the true conservatism of 
 the republic, and of happy human progress ; and 
 it is men made familiar by education with the 
 history of its ghastly catastrophes, men with the 
 proud courage of independence, who are to temper, 
 by lofty action born of that knowledge, the fero 
 city of party spirit. 
 
 "This spirit adds moral coercion to sophistry. 
 It denounces as a traitor him who protests against 
 party tyranny, and it makes unflinching adherence 
 to what is called regular party action the condition 
 of the gratification of honorable political ambition. 
 Because a man who sympathizes with the party 
 aims refuses to vote for a thief, this spirit scorns 
 him as a rat and a renegade. Because he holds 
 to principle and law against party expediency and 
 
THE PARTING OF THE WAYS. 261 
 
 dictation, he is proclaimed as the betrayer of his 
 country, justice, and humanity. Because he tran 
 quilly insists upon deciding for himself when he 
 must dissent from his party, he is reviled as a pop 
 injay and a visionary fool. Seeking with honest 
 purpose only the welfare of his country, the hot air 
 around him teems with the cry of the 4 grand old 
 party, the traditions of the party, 4 loyalty to the 
 party, 4 future of the party, servant of the party ; 
 and he sees and hears the gorged and portly money 
 changers in the temple usurping the very divinity 
 of the God. Young hearts ! be not dismayed. If 
 ever one of you shall be the man so denounced, do 
 not forget that your own individual convictions are 
 the whip of small cords which God has put into 
 your hands to expel the blasphemers." 
 
 Mr. Curtis was approaching the parting of the 
 ways. There was no doubt, when the time came, as 
 to what guide he would follow. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 ON the 17th of October, 1877, Mr. Curtia 
 delivered the oration at Schuylerville, Saratoga 
 County, New York, on the hundredth anniversary 
 of the surrender of Burgoyne. As he said : " The 
 drama of the Revolution opened in New England, 
 culminated in New York, and closed in Virginia." 
 It was the culmination that was celebrated on the 
 battle-field where, for the first time in the long and 
 fluctuating struggle, the American forces met and 
 defeated in the open field the disciplined army of a 
 brave and capable English commander. The story 
 of the battle, and of the events that led up to it, is 
 julmirably told in Mr. Curtis s oration. I cite the 
 closing passages, as giving the spirit in which Mr. 
 Curtis was wont to apply to the present the les 
 sons of the past : 
 
 " It is the story of a hundred years ago. It 
 has been ceaselessly told by sire to son along this 
 valley and through this land. The later attempt 
 of the same foe, and the bright day of victory at 
 Plattsburg, renewed and confirmed the old hostil 
 ity. Alienation of feeling between the parent 
 country and the child became traditional, and on 
 
POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE. 263 
 
 both sides of the sea a narrow prejudice survives, 
 and still sometimes seeks to kindle the embers of 
 that wasted fire. But here and now we stand 
 upon the grave of old enmities. Hostile breast 
 work and redoubt are softly hidden under grass 
 and grain ; shot and shell and every deadly missile 
 are long since buried beneath our feet ; and from 
 the mouldering dust of mingled foemen springs all 
 the verdure that makes this scene so fair. While 
 nature tenderly and swiftly repairs the ravages of 
 war, we suffer no hostility to linger in our hearts. 
 Two months ago the British Governor-General of 
 Canada was invited to meet the President of the 
 United States at Bennington, in happy commem 
 oration, not of a British defeat, but of a triumph of 
 English liberty. So, upon this famous and deci 
 sive field, let every unworthy feeling perish ! Here 
 to the England that we fought let us now, grown 
 great and strong with a hundred years, hold out 
 the hand of fellowship and peace. Here, where 
 the English Burgoyne, in the very moment of his 
 bitter humiliation, generously pledged George 
 Washington, let us, in our high hour of triumph, 
 of power, of hope, pledge the Queen ! Here in the 
 grave of brave and unknown foemen may mutual 
 jealousies and doubts and animosities lie buried 
 forever ! Henceforth, revering their common glo 
 rious traditions, may England and America press 
 always forward side by side in noble and aspiring 
 rivalry to promote the welfare of man ! 
 
 "Fellow-citizens, with the glory of Burgoyne s 
 
264 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 surrender, the Kevolutionary glory of the State of 
 New York still fresh in our memories, amid these 
 thousands of her sons and daughters whose hearts 
 glow with lofty pride, I am glad that the hallowed 
 spot on which we stand compels us to remember 
 not only the imperial State, but the national com 
 monwealth whose young hands here together struck 
 the blow, and on whose older head descends the 
 ample benediction of the victory. On yonder 
 height, a hundred years ago, Virginia lay encamped. 
 Beyond, and further to the north, watched New 
 Hampshire and Vermont. Here in the wooded 
 uplands of the south stood New Jersey and New 
 York ; while across the river to the east, Connecti 
 cut and Massachusetts closed the triumphal line. 
 Here was the symbol of the Revolution, a common 
 cause, a common strife, a common triumph ; the 
 cause, not of a class, but of human nature : the 
 triumph, not of a colony, but of United America. 
 And we who stand here proudly remembering, we 
 who have seen Virginia and New York the 
 North and the South more bitterly hostile than 
 the armies whose battles shook this ground, we 
 who have mutually proved in deadlier conflict the 
 constancy and the courage of all the States, which, 
 proud to be peers, yet own no master but their 
 united selves, we renew our hearts in imperish 
 able devotion to the common American faith, the 
 common American pride, the common American 
 glory ! Here Americans stood and triumphed. 
 Here Americans stand and bless their memory. 
 
POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE. 265 
 
 And here, for a thousand years, may grateful gen 
 erations of Americans come to rehearse the glo 
 rious story, and to rejoice in a supreme and benig 
 nant American nationality ! " 
 
 When, in the summer of 1878, at the age of four 
 score years and four, William Cullen Byrant died, 
 Mr. Curtis was invited by the New York Histori 
 cal Society to deliver a commemorative address, 
 which he did on December 30 before an assem 
 bly of very unusual distinction, including the 
 President, Mr. Hayes, and members of his Cabi 
 net. The address is in curious harmony with the 
 subject and the author, and, with the exception of 
 that on Lowell, is perhaps the most notable of the 
 series delivered by Mr. Curtis. Its spirit is pecu 
 liarly calm, and its style quiet, sustained, and of 
 rare purity and simplicity. I think that it re 
 mains the most satisfactory tribute to the noble 
 and gifted and yet not popular character of Mr. 
 Bryant. It gives, moreover, very interesting in 
 dications of the scholar s nature in Mr. Curtis. 
 " Undoubtedly," he says, " the grandeur and so 
 lemnity of Wordsworth, as Bryant told Dana, had 
 stirred his soul with sympathy. But not the false 
 simplicity that sometimes betrays Wordsworth, 
 nor the lurid melodrama of Byron, nor the aerial 
 fervor of Shelley, nor the luxuriant beauty of 
 Keats, in whose line the Greek marble is some 
 times suffused with a splendor of Venetian color, 
 nor in his later years the felicity and richness 
 of Tennyson, who has revealed the flexibility and 
 
266 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 picturesqueness of the English language in lines 
 which a line of Keats describes, 
 
 " Like lucent sirups tinct with cinnamon, 
 
 not all these varying and entrancing strains, which 
 captivated the public of the hour, touched in the 
 least the verse of Bryant. His last considerable 
 poem, The Flood of Years, but echoes in its med 
 itative flow the solemn cadences of fc Thanatopsis. 
 The child was father of the man. The genius 
 of Bryant, not profuse and imperial, neither in 
 tense with dramatic passion nor throbbing with lyr 
 ical fervor, but calm, meditative, pure, has its true 
 symbol among his native hills, a mountain spring 
 untainted by mineral or slime of earth or reptile 
 venom, cool, limpid, and serene. His verse is the 
 virile expression of the healthy communion of a 
 strong, sound man with the familiar aspects of 
 nature, and its broad, clear, open-air quality has a 
 certain Homeric suggestiveness." 
 
 It was, however, Bryant the editor, the stead 
 fast and faithful worker in the field where right 
 opinion is cultivated, that elicited from Mr. Curtis 
 the most eloquent tribute. "It is the lesson of 
 this editorial life that public service the most re 
 splendent and the most justly renowned on sea or 
 shore, in Cabinet or Congress, however great, 
 however beneficent, is not a truer service than that 
 of the private citizen like Bryant, who for half 
 a century, with conscience and knowledge, with 
 power and unquailing courage, did his part in 
 holding the hand and heart of his country true to 
 
POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE. 267 
 
 her now glorious ideal." And again, in still more 
 emphatic strain : 
 
 " It is by no official title, by no mere literary 
 fame, by no signal or single service or work, no 
 marvelous Lear or Transfiguration, no stroke of 
 statecraft calling to political life a new world to 
 redress the balance of the old, no resounding Aus- 
 terlitz or triumphant Trafalgar, that Bryant is 
 commemorated. There may have been, in his long 
 lifetime, genius more affluent and creative, greater 
 renown, abilities more commanding, careers more 
 dazzling and romantic, but 110 man, no American, 
 living or dead, has more truly or amply illustrated 
 the scope and the fidelity of republican citizen 
 ship." 
 
 If in these brief quotations I seem to have 
 traced in Mr. Curtis s portrait of Bryant some of 
 the features of Mr. Curtis s character, it is because 
 of the sympathy of aim that inspired both. It is 
 not seldom that the literary artist, like the artist 
 in portraiture, reveals himself in what he sees in 
 his subject. 
 
 Shortly after the delivery of this address, Mr. 
 Curtis wrote to Mr. Norton (January 11, 1879): 
 
 " I think my view of Bryant is not unjust, per 
 haps a generous one, but true to the chief aspects 
 of the man. The occasion was magnificent, for it 
 was unquestionably the most distinguished audi 
 ence ever assembled in New York. The Presi 
 dent accepted, he said, solely to honor me, and 
 Evarts impressed the same truth upon me. After 
 
268 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 his return the President wrote me a warm little 
 note, offering me the German mission. I was 
 touched, for I saw his wish ; but I told him that I 
 had carefully considered the whole subject on a 
 former occasion, and, not without some surrender 
 of hopes and ambitions, I had decided that it was 
 not wise for me to change the order of my life. 
 I had had no misgivings and had none now. 
 
 " It does not seem to me at fifty-five probable 
 that I shall greatly vary the order of that life here 
 after." 
 
 The " order of his life " was, indeed, not to be 
 changed, but the principle that directed it was to 
 lead him into new and constantly more trying 
 contests. In the following year, the Republican 
 party in the State of New York nominated for 
 governor Mr. Alonzo B. Cornell, a former promi 
 nent office-holder in the Federal service, an ac 
 tive manager of the party machinery based on the 
 distribution of the patronage, and a conspicuous 
 representative of the group of politicians who had 
 set themselves again to nominate General Grant 
 for the Presidency in 1880, and to renew that 
 domination of the " spoils system " which had fol 
 lowed the breakdown of the first attempt at civil 
 service reform. The nomination was accomplished 
 by the extreme methods of party manipulation that 
 go with the spoils idea, and aroused an intense and 
 indignant opposition in the Republican party, which 
 took the form of refusal to vote for the candidate 
 for governor while voting for other candidates, 
 
POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE. 269 
 
 in the technical language of politics, " scratching " 
 the name of Mr. Cornell. An organization was 
 formed under the title of " Independent Republi- 
 cans," commonly referred to, however, as " Scratch- 
 ers," to promote this plan of protest. It was so 
 far successful that twenty thousand adherents were 
 enrolled throughout the State. Mr. Cornell was 
 elected by the opposition of Tammany Hall, in 
 New York city, to the Democratic candidate, but 
 the influence of the independent movement was 
 very great and lasting. 
 
 " Among the mortally wounded," wrote Mr. 
 Curtis, November 6, " is Conkling. Everybody 
 here feels that it is he who has engineered the 
 ridiculous result of a Republican governor elected 
 by Tammany Hall in pursuance of a plan to show 
 that New York will be a Republican State next 
 year. Tilden goes with him, and, it seems to me, 
 Sherman likewise. Evarts was, like Disraeli, un 
 speakable." 
 
 The organization of Independent Republicans, 
 with this distinct moral advantage to their credit, 
 was continued for the presidential year 1880. It 
 was plain that they held the " balance of power " 
 in the State of New York, and might easily de 
 cide not merely the Republican candidacy, but the 
 Presidency. On May 20, 1880, Mr. Curtis, who 
 had warmly supported the movement, addressed 
 the organization at a crowded meeting in Chicker- 
 ing Hall. 
 
 " I accepted your invitation," he said, " with 
 
270 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 great pleasure, as that of Republicans who know 
 that the Republican party was founded in freedom 
 and for freedom, and who are resolved to keep 
 yourselves free. Your action last autumn, as citi 
 zens interested in politics, but without personal or 
 mercenary ends, determined not to sacrifice party 
 principles to party organization, and quietly hold 
 ing your ground against every form of ridicule and 
 hostility, was a public service deserving the public 
 gratitude, and full of good augury for the future. 
 You were told that you were voting in the air, but 
 you knew that such air-guns as yours had done 
 great execution ; and if your twenty thousand airy 
 shots were noiseless, they hit the mark at which 
 they were aimed. The man who is proud never to 
 have voted anything but the whole regular party 
 ticket shows the servility of soul that makes despo 
 tism possible. 
 
 " It is true that party action becomes impossi 
 ble if every member insists upon having his own 
 way. There must be, undoubtedly, general con 
 cession and sacrifice of mere personal preference, 
 but every member must decide for himself how far 
 this may go and where it must end. No Republi 
 can has a right to appeal to me as a Republican to 
 stand by the party who does not do what he can 
 to make the party worth standing by. A party is 
 made efficient only through men. It is necessarily 
 judged by its candidates ; and if its members sup 
 port unworthy candidates to-day for the sake of 
 the party, they make it all the easier to support 
 
POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE. 271 
 
 unworthier candidates to-morrow. If I agree to 
 vote for Jeremy Diddler to-day because he is the 
 regularly selected standard-bearer of the grand old 
 party of honesty and reform, I cannot refuse to 
 vote for Benedict Arnold to-morrow because he is 
 the standard-bearer of the grand old party of inde 
 pendence and political glory. If the reply be that 
 no one pretends that we ought to vote for can 
 didates of bad character, I answer that a candi 
 date who for any reason discredits the party, and 
 thereby imperils its success and consequently its 
 object, is, from the party point of view, a bad 
 man, and fidelity to the party demands the rejec 
 tion of the candidate." 
 
 The address had for its subject " Machine Poli 
 tics and the Remedy." Mr. Curtis s conception of 
 machine politics was party management based on 
 the spoils of office. His remedy was for the in 
 dividual voter s " scratching " machine candidates ; 
 but the general and thorough and lasting remedy 
 was the reform of the civil service, and the aboli 
 tion of the use of the offices as spoils. More and 
 more this idea was forced upon him as the one of 
 chiefest and most urgent importance in the public 
 affairs of the nation. 
 
 The movement to nominate General Grant for a 
 third term was led by Senator Conkling, the gen 
 eral having become a resident of New York. It 
 was strongly resisted in that State and finally 
 failed, General James A. Garfield, of Ohio, receiv 
 ing the Republican nomination, and General W. S. 
 
272 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 Hancock that of the Democrats. Garfield was 
 elected, and the civil service reformers, as well as 
 the advocates of a more liberal tariff, took heart of 
 hope. 
 
 The President was undoubtedly in sympathy with 
 the idea of both classes. In his long congressional 
 experience he had learned the evils of the spoils 
 system, and had denounced them often in a manner 
 at once emphatic and intelligent. He had, how 
 ever, shown neither the firmness nor the courage 
 essential to carry out an effectual reform by the 
 use of the executive authority, adequate as that 
 would have been in the hands of a determined and 
 independent President. The reformers, however, 
 found an unexpected ally in Senator George H. 
 Pendleton, of Ohio, who introduced a radical 
 though ill-digested bill in Congress. Mr. Pendle 
 ton was a Democrat, of very pronounced party 
 feeling, and had immediately after the war been 
 associated with the extreme wing of his party, espe 
 cially on financial questions. But he was a man of 
 culture, of personal probity, of considerable ability, 
 and his accession to the cause of the reform was 
 valuable. In 1880 the " New York Civil Service 
 Reform Association " was formed, taking the place 
 of one that had dissolved early in the administra 
 tion of Mr. Hayes, and Mr. Curtis was elected its 
 president, a post which he held until his death. 
 The first work of the new association was directed 
 toward legislation, and the bill of Mr. Pendleton 
 was taken as the basis. Little progress was made, 
 
POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE. 273 
 
 however, at Washington, though kindred associa 
 tions were formed in various parts of the country, 
 until, in the summer of 1881, the murderous assault 
 upon President Garfield by a half-insane office- 
 seeker startled the country to an alarmed sense of 
 what the envenomed struggle for place might at any 
 time involve. In August the National Civil Ser 
 vice Eeform League was formed at Newport, R. I. 
 " Of the league," says Mr. William Potts, who be 
 came its secretary, and whose intelligent and untir 
 ing labors in that office were of the greatest value, 
 " Mr. Curtis was the inevitable president by com 
 mon consent, and none who heard his words at the 
 close of the meeting then doubted more than he 
 
 >,^^ 
 
 the end of the work thus entered upon : We have 
 laid our hands on the barbaric palace of patronage, 
 and begun to write on its walls Mene, mene ! 
 Nor, I believe, will the work end till they are laid 
 in the dust. " 
 
 The assassination of President Garfield in 1881 
 aroused a powerful public sentiment against the 
 spoils system, for the assassin was recognized as 
 an abnormal and yet logical product of that sys 
 tem. Craving for spoils, and hatred of the man 
 who failed to satisfy it, were the immediate motives 
 of his disordered mind. Mr. Chester A. Arthur, 
 who as Vice-President succeeded to the duties of 
 the President s office, brought the subject of reform 
 to the attention of Congress, and " urgently recom 
 mended " an appropriation of $25,000 to renew the 
 work of the United States Civil Service Commis- 
 
274 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 sion which had been dropped in 1873. Congress 
 was, however, as yet deaf to the voice of public 
 opinion, and only $15,000 was granted, and that 
 on the motion of an opposition member. 
 
 The refusal of President Garfield to " recognize " 
 the senators from New York, in the distribution of 
 Federal patronage in that State, had resulted in a 
 violent and open quarrel in the Republican party 
 in New York. The resignation of Mr. Elaine as 
 secretary of state had greatly embittered the fac 
 tion led by the senators. When, in the fall of 
 1882, Mr. Charles J. Folger, then secretary of the 
 treasury, had been nominated for governor by the 
 Republican party, he encountered determined oppo 
 sition. For the most part this was probably fac 
 tional. The leaders in the State who took part in 
 it, and who were in close relations with Mr. Elaine, 
 were politicians of much the same character and 
 methods as those who secured the nomination of 
 Mr. Folger. But, on the other hand, there was 
 a profound sentiment of disapproval and disgust 
 among those who saw in the nomination an instance 
 of the control of party action by the federal admin 
 istration through the abuse of the offices. This 
 sentiment was strong among the Independent Re 
 publicans, or " Scratchers," whose movement three 
 years previously had elicited the hearty support of 
 Mr. Curtis, and he was in complete sympathy with 
 them still. When the nomination was made, he 
 was at his country home in Ashfield. By one of 
 those curious blunders to which editorial offices 
 
POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE. 275 
 
 are liable in the absence of the responsible head, 
 an article by Mr. Curtis was modified to commit 
 the paper to the support of the candidate. On the 
 27th of September he wrote to Mr. Norton : 
 
 " MY DEAREST CHARLES, I have resigned 
 the editorship of Harper s Weekly. My article 
 upon Folger s nomination, despite my request, was 
 perverted and made to misrepresent my views, 
 and to make me absolutely ridiculous. The blow 
 to me and to the good cause is very great and 
 not exactly retrievable. To-day I am thought by 
 every reader of the paper to be a futile fool. The 
 thing is so atrocious as to be comical." 
 
 It is unnecessary here to trace the source of the 
 unfortunate mistake. It was promptly and in the 
 most manly manner disavowed by the house of 
 Harper & Bros. Mr. Curtis published a letter 
 setting himself right with those who had been as 
 tonished at the appearance of the article, and with 
 drew his resignation. The accidental interruption 
 of the relations of publishers and editor, which had 
 been maintained so honorably on both sides for 
 nearly twenty years, had no effect but to strengthen 
 mutual confidence and respect. 
 
 In the election of 1882 the Democratic candi 
 date, Grover Cleveland, was elected by a majority 
 of nearly two hundred thousand votes, and this 
 was accompanied by severe checks and reverses for 
 the Republicans in other States. The first effect 
 of these checks and reverses was to awaken in the 
 representatives of the Republican party at Wash- 
 
276 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 ington an entirely new conception of what civil 
 service reform was, and of popular opinion regard 
 ing it and themselves. The Pendleton bill was 
 referred to a committee of which Senator Hawley, 
 of Connecticut, was chairman, and under his zealous 
 and intelligent guidance, assisted by representa 
 tives of the National League, the bill was steadily 
 pressed. It received the signature of President 
 Arthur on the 16th of January, 1883, and went 
 into final operation on the 16th of July, after which 
 date no appointment to the civil service was legal 
 unless made in accordance with the provisions of the 
 law that is, in compliance with the rules promul 
 gated by the authority of the law, unless expressly 
 exempted from them. The system adopted was in 
 substance the same as that framed by the commis 
 sion of which* Mr. Curtis was chairman in 1871. 
 It aimed gradually to apply the principle of ap 
 pointments for fitness attested by competition and 
 probation. The essential control of the President 
 as the chief appointing officer of the government 
 was recognized. A commission was to frame the 
 rules which, when he approved them, he was to 
 promulgate, and which the commission was then to 
 administer. The law expressly forbade contribu 
 tions for political purposes by any person in the 
 service to be paid to any person in the service, and 
 prohibited all solicitation of such contributions 
 within the government offices. The rules were to 
 apply to the departmental service at Washington 
 above the grade of laborers, and below appoint- 
 
POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE. 277 
 
 ments made with the advice and consent of the 
 Senate, with certain exceptions, and they were to 
 apply also to any federal officer outside of Wash 
 ington having fifty or more employees. The heads 
 of departments were required to classify the em 
 ployees under them within six months, and thus 
 the part of the service to which the rules apply 
 came to be generally designated as the " classified 
 service." Examinations were to be held under the 
 direction of the commission, and those attaining 
 in these examinations a certain minimum standard 
 were placed on an eligible list in the order of their 
 standing for each department or office. When a 
 vacancy occurred, the three names highest on the 
 list were to be certified to the appointing officer, 
 who chose the appointee from these. There was 
 also provision for promotion by competition. 
 
 It will be seen that the rules, honestly and intel 
 ligently administered, practically excluded politics 
 from the service wherever they applied. The power 
 of removal from office was left untouched, and dis 
 missals for party reasons were not prohibited. It 
 was expected, however, by the friends and authors 
 of the law, that such dismissals would gradually 
 cease as the temptation to make them was destroyed. 
 The history of the service shows that removals from 
 office are almost uniformly made for one of two pur 
 poses, either to punish refusal of political as 
 sessments, or to make room for party appointments. 
 The law and the rules forbade the former, and 
 made the latter extremely difficult. The system 
 
278 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 as a whole was sound in principle, and capable of 
 great good, but it was far from radical. It was 
 set in operation by President Arthur in good faith, 
 under a commission of which Mr. Dorman B. Eaton 
 was the most active member, bringing to it a 
 thorough study of the work and marked ability 
 with untiring zeal. The provisions made by law 
 for the operation of the reform were, however, 
 ludicrously and shamefully inadequate, and repre 
 sented the half -concealed hostility of the legislators 
 toward it. The appropriation barely covered the 
 small salaries of the commission, traveling expenses, 
 and office expenses. The examinations had to be 
 made by clerks detailed from the service, who re 
 ceived no pay for their work, which was added to 
 their regular duties. But it was the happy quality 
 of the reform to excite the most generous devotion in 
 all honest persons who had to do with it, and it im 
 mediately entered upon a career of practical success 
 that has steadily gained with every passing year. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 THE CANVASS OF 1884. 
 
 " THE party issues of the last few years are grad 
 ually disappearing. The perilous questions of fun 
 damental policy have been determined, and the 
 paramount interests of the country are now those 
 of administration. Honesty and efficiency of ad 
 ministration of the settled national policy will now 
 be the chief demand of every party." These were 
 the words which, in the closing months of 1871, 
 Mr. Curtis had addressed to President Grant in 
 submitting his report on the reform of the civil ser 
 vice. Their general prediction was sound. It had 
 not come about that " every party " had demanded 
 " honesty and efficiency of administration," for the 
 demands of parties are often framed by men curi 
 ously ignorant either of the general requirements 
 of public opinion, or of the requirements of that 
 body of voters who are bound by no party, and who 
 from time to time dismiss one and call another to 
 the control of the government. But, during the 
 thirteen years that had passed since Mr. Curtis had 
 defined the situation in the words above quoted, 
 there had beyond any doubt grown up in the coun 
 try a sentiment steadily stronger and more definite 
 
280 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 that "honesty and efficiency of administration" 
 was the imperative and dominant need of the time. 
 The year 1884 was to see the Republican party, 
 after nearly a quarter of a century of unbroken 
 possession of the presidential office, displaced in 
 obedience to this sentiment. 
 
 The presidential contest of 1876 may be said to 
 be the last in which the Republican party had 
 made its stand almost exclusively on the issues 
 growing out of the war. Mr. Hayes, on taking 
 office, had made, if not a formal, an unmistakable 
 proclamation that these questions could never again 
 be controlling. He had withdrawn the Federal 
 hand from the States of Louisiana and South 
 Carolina, and he had invited a Southern man to a 
 prominent place in his Cabinet. During his term 
 of office he made every effort, with the approval of 
 a large number of his party leaders, to expel the 
 " Southern question " from politics, and his efforts 
 won general sympathy among the people. In the 
 canvass of 1880, Mr. Garfield, though he was a 
 veteran of the War for the Union, was opposed by 
 General Hancock, a much more conspicuous Union 
 veteran; and the chief issue of the contest, so 
 far as national policy was involved, was the tariff. 
 Mr. Arthur, to whom by the death of the Presi 
 dent it fell to send the first message to the Con 
 gress elected in 1880, for the first time since the 
 close of the Civil War transmitted one in which 
 no question arising out of the war received any 
 serious comment. The " gradual " disappearance 
 
THE CANVASS OF 188$. 281 
 
 of the party questions to which Mr. Curtis had 
 alluded in 1871 was now completed. 
 
 By the ordinary course of political development, 
 the issue of 1884 should have been the tariff, on 
 which parties, had been most clearly divided four 
 years before, and on which the policy of the oppo 
 sition had been most definitely shaped. And 
 though, by the tariff act of 1883, a certain measure 
 of reduction in protective duties had been made, in 
 pursuance of recommendations far more advanced 
 by the commission of 1882, a majority of whom 
 were of the Protectionist party, it is probable that 
 the tariff would have been the controlling question 
 had the party in power nominated almost any of 
 its prominent leaders other than Mr. James G. 
 Blaine. That nomination made the decisive fact 
 in the canvass the opinion of the country as to the 
 personal character of the candidate, and this opin 
 ion on the whole was adverse. The decisive fact 
 was not, of course, the only one, nor, in a sense, 
 was it the chief one. The great body of each party 
 was doubtless guided by that powerful and complex 
 and not clearly defined force which we know as 
 party feeling, and was not seriously affected by the 
 known or inferred character of either candidate. 
 And there was a certain influence exerted indepen 
 dent of party association by other causes, such as 
 the race sentiment elicited among voters of Irish 
 birth or descent in behalf of Mr. Blaine, and the 
 counteracting influence of the religious sentiment 
 aroused by the fact that the Catholic priesthood^ 
 
 OF 
 
282 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 was reported on no specific evidence - ^ to be en. 
 listed in his behalf. Again, there was the effect 
 of the association of a considerable number of men 
 formerly active in the Democratic party with the 
 highly protected interests dependent on the tariff. 
 But the outcome of the forces on either side was 
 so nearly equal to that of those on the other side, 
 that it remains probable that, had the question 
 of Mr. Elaine s character been eliminated from 
 the canvass, the decision would have been in his 
 favor. 
 
 But this decisive element was not a simple one. 
 If Mr. Blame failed in the election because of the 
 adverse opinion of a considerable body of voters 
 as to his character, it was because the defects at 
 tributed to him were of public interest and not of 
 a private nature, and he was regarded as a repre 
 sentative of a class whose power it was right and 
 necessary to curb. The particular fault that his 
 opponents dwelt most upon was the use of public 
 office for private advantage, and there was a deep- 
 seated conviction that that was the most serious, 
 general, and threatening evil of the times. Mr. 
 Curtis, in an address on Staten Island on the Cen 
 tennial Anniversary of Independence, eight years 
 previously, had invited his fellow-citizens to this 
 pledge : " That we will try public and private men 
 by precisely the same moral standard, and that 
 no man who directly or indirectly connives at cor 
 ruption or coercion to acquire office or retain it, 
 or who prostitutes any opportunity or position of 
 
THE CANVASS OF 188$. 283 
 
 public service to his own or another s advantage, 
 shall have our countenance or our vote." There 
 was evidence, which many of Mr. Elaine s fellow 
 Republicans found conclusive, that in one distinct 
 instance he had been willing to prostitute an op 
 portunity and position of public service to his own 
 advantage, and there was nothing in his public 
 career to contradict the inference. There was 
 much to confirm it. He had been in public life 
 for a quarter of a century, and had attained a po 
 sition of great influence and power in his party. 
 His ability as a political leader was eminent, while 
 his popularity was probably more extended than 
 that of any man since Clay. But his rare gifts 
 and great power had certainly not been devoted to 
 promoting the purity or raising the general level 
 of public life or of party action. He was inti 
 mately identified, on the contrary, with the ten 
 dency, so obvious since the close of the Civil War, 
 in the opposite direction. Republicans who had 
 faithfully, unselfishly, and from the sincerest con 
 viction, labored to construct and maintain their 
 party because it was to them the best instrument for 
 promoting the best interests of the country, sought 
 in vain in Mr. Elaine s record the evidence that 
 his real aims were theirs, and reluctantly came to 
 regard him as the typical opponent of those aims. 
 He had shown no efficient sympathy with the re 
 form movement which sought to exclude party 
 politics from the public service. On the contrary 
 he owed very much of his power in his own party 
 
284 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 to the unscrupulous use of offices, and the violent 
 disruption of his party in the State of New York 
 in 1882 had been promoted by his friends largely 
 because of resentment at their failure to receive 
 the share they wished in patronage. 
 
 There was another phase of Mr. Blame s career 
 which bore upon his willingness to prostitute the 
 opportunities of public service to his own advan 
 tage, and which furnished evidence not so clear 
 and conclusive, but indicating even more danger 
 ous proclivities. He had long been recognized as 
 the leader of the sentiment in favor of a " vigor 
 ous " foreign policy, and that recognition was a 
 potent element in the gratification of his ambition. 
 During the brief time that he had been in the 
 Cabinet of President Garfield, he had shown what 
 was his conception of a vigorous foreign policy. 
 He had in two cases undertaken to impose the 
 influence of the United States government upon 
 a friendly foreign government once upon Chili 
 and once upon Mexico in a manner unwarranted 
 by international law, and opposed to the tradi 
 tional impartiality of our policy in dealing with 
 other nations. In both instances his failure had 
 been complete and humiliating. In one he had in 
 curred serious peril of a quarrel ; in the other he 
 had been subjected to contemptuous neglect. His 
 course had produced a profound feeling of distrust 
 among intelligent and conservative observers, who 
 saw in it a reckless attempt to cultivate a dan- 
 gerous popularity at the cost of the interests and 
 honor of his country. 
 
THE CANVASS OF 1884. 285 
 
 On the anniversary of Washington s birthday 
 in 1884, a dinner was given by the Young Men s 
 Republican Club of Brooklyn, a very powerful 
 and intelligent organization with a large number 
 of very independent members, at which a num 
 ber of leading men spoke, all of them urging 
 strongly the need of the Republican party for a 
 candidate of sound character. Mr. Curtis did not 
 attend the dinner, but wrote a letter in full sym 
 pathy with the speakers. On the 24th of Febru 
 ary a conference of Republicans was held in the 
 city of New York, at which Mr. Curtis was pres 
 ent, with Republicans from many parts of the 
 country, and particularly from New England, at 
 which a resolution was adopted declaring the im 
 perative necessity of Republican candidates who 
 would " warrant confidence in their readiness to 
 defend the advance already made toward divor 
 cing the public service from party politics, and to 
 continue these advances till the separation has 
 been made final and complete." An organization 
 was formed to promote the purpose of the confer 
 ence and an " Independent Republican Commit 
 tee " named, of which General Francis C. Barlow 
 was president, and Mr. Joseph W. Harper treas 
 urer. 
 
 The Republican National Convention was held 
 early in June in the city of Chicago, where, 
 twenty-four years before, Mr. Lincoln, the first suc 
 cessful candidate of the Republican party, had been 
 nominated. Mr. Curtis was chosen as a delegate 
 
286 GEORGE WILLIAM QURTIS. 
 
 from the county of Kichmond (Staten Island), 
 where he resided. His first choice, like that of 
 most of the Republicans who were in sympathy 
 with him, for the nomination, was Senator George 
 F. Edmunds, of Vermont, a man of high character 
 and great ability, who had up to that time given 
 many evidences of his independence of party dic 
 tation. When the convention met, it was apparent 
 that it was unevenly divided between the support 
 ers of Elaine, Arthur, and Edmunds, the first- 
 named having the greatest number, but not a 
 majority of the convention. The very unusual sit 
 uation and the condition of party sentiment were 
 recognized when, on the 4th of June, before the 
 convention had decided to proceed to vote for 
 nominees, a resolution was introduced declaring 
 that every delegate who took part in the conven 
 tion was " bound in honor to support the nominee." 
 Mr. Curtis promptly protested against its adoption. 
 " A Republican and a free man," he declared, " I 
 came to this convention, and by the grace of God 
 a Republican and a free man will I go out of it." 
 The resolution was finally withdrawn. 
 
 When the balloting was begun, it was evident 
 that Mr. Elaine was to secure the nomination un 
 less the supporters of Arthur and Edmunds could 
 combine upon one or the other of these two. Such 
 a combination was impossible. The two men rep 
 resented in the convention totally different and 
 opposite ideas of the question which had divided 
 the party. That question had been clearly de- 
 
THE CANT ASS OF 1884. 287 
 
 fined by the Independent Eepublican conference 
 in February. It was the divorce of the public ser 
 vice from party politics. Mr. Arthur, though he 
 had enforced the civil service law within the nar 
 row limits of the rules, was not only a believer in 
 the spoils doctrine, but one of the most conspicu 
 ous and experienced and least scrupulous of the 
 leaders who had put it in practice and profited by 
 doing so. He owed very much of the strength he 
 was able to show in the convention to the use of 
 Federal patronage. He had won a certain degree 
 of confidence in the country by his dignified and 
 conservative management of foreign affairs, by his 
 liberal views as to the tariff, and his entire sound 
 ness on questions of finance ; but while, as to these 
 matters, he compared favorably with Mr. Elaine, 
 none of them was of controlling importance. The 
 supporters of Mr. Edmunds could not give their 
 votes to him without openly defeating their chief 
 purpose. His supporters could not give their 
 votes to Mr. Edmunds without abandoning the 
 hopes that animated most of them. The combina 
 tion could not be made, and Mr. Blaine was nomi 
 nated. The usual motion was offered to " make 
 the nomination unanimous," and was carried. Mr. 
 Curtis did not vote upon it, and refused the urgent 
 appeals to second it. He remained in the conven 
 tion, taking part in the subsequent proceedings, 
 until its close, this being what he understood to be 
 his duty as a representative. 
 
 "Harper s Weekly" promptly condemned the 
 
288 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 action of the Republican Convention. When the 
 Democratic National Convention placed in nomina 
 tion Mr. Cleveland, then governor of the State of 
 New York, Mr. Curtis, after careful deliberation, 
 decided to advocate his election. He was immedi 
 ately recognized as the representative of the Re 
 publican defection. With Mr. Carl Schurz, he 
 took the leadership of that movement ; his own 
 position differing from that of Mr. Schurz in this, 
 that, while their view of the duty of the hour was 
 the same, Mr. Schurz, by his support of Horace 
 Greeley in 1872, had broken that association with 
 his party which with Mr. Curtis had been uninter 
 rupted. 
 
 Mr. Curtis s decision, though painful, was inev 
 itable. The Republican party had, in his sober 
 judgment, ceased to pursue the aims which he 
 had so long sought through it. It had nominated 
 a candidate whose election he believed would de 
 feat those aims. The course of the party had been 
 taken in opposition to every possible effort on his 
 part to prevent it. He had labored with all his 
 energy and influence to convince his party of the 
 error and danger toward which it was tending. 
 Nor had he failed, repeatedly, definitely, and em 
 phatically, to declare the principles of party alle 
 giance by which he had consistently been guided. 
 He had openly advocated Republican effort to de 
 feat bad Republican candidates in his own State, 
 in Massachusetts, in Pennsylvania. He had done 
 so avowedly for the purpose of saving the party 
 
THE CANVASS OF 1884. 289 
 
 from the control of those who made bad candidates 
 possible; and he had never concealed his convic 
 tion that, if this purpose failed in the national or 
 ganization, the same principle would demand the 
 same action. 
 
 He wrote, immediately after the convention, to a 
 very old friend : 
 
 June 10, 1884. 
 
 MY DEAR S., I am very sorry indeed that our 
 sense of duty differs so widely. I cannot urge any 
 body to support for the presidency a man who has 
 trafficked in his official place for his private gain, 
 and still less upon the ground that the party that 
 nominated him is a better party than the other. 
 There would never be any better party, or indeed 
 any party but that to which we belong, if every 
 thing that it did and everybody that it nominated 
 should be sustained because it was not so bad as 
 another party. I did not support Cornell in 1879, 
 because of his ring associations and methods. I did 
 not support Folger in 1882, because of the forgery 
 and fraud which secured his nomination. But I 
 had no personal objection to the men. It is not 
 Elaine s " brilliancy," it is the low and venal sys 
 tem of his politics, of which we had the latest and 
 monstrous evidence at Chicago, that shall not mas 
 ter the Republican party if I can help it. When 
 the only argument is that we are not so bad as 
 the other fellows, it is time to call a halt. 
 
 My dear boy, I should be recreant to my con 
 science, and I should bitterly disappoint all those 
 
290 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 who are accustomed to look to me, if, after all that 
 I have said about political morality, I should now 
 support for the presidency the one man who is 
 most repugnant to the political conscience of young 
 Republicans. I am in hearty agreement with the 
 Harpers, who are unanimous upon the point that 
 such a course would be disastrous, and you can 
 hardly imagine how deep and strong the feeling of 
 outrage is. 
 
 I wish with all my heart that we agreed about 
 the matter, and with all the old affection I am al 
 ways yours. 
 
 Mr. Curtis felt keenly the accusation brought 
 against him of personal bad faith in taking part in 
 a convention and then refusing to accept its can 
 didate. His conscience was entirely clear, but he 
 knew that many who had long respected and trusted 
 him and followed his leadership, many whom he be 
 lieved to be as sincere as he was himself, and even 
 some old and cherished friends, thought his course 
 dishonorable, and the knowledge was exceedingly 
 hard to bear. Yet it is clear that no other course 
 was open to him. " No honorable man," he wrote 
 in an open letter to a critic of his action, June 25, 
 1884, " in a convention or out of it, would allow a 
 majority to bind him to a course which he morally 
 disapproved." In the autumn of 1885 he wrote 
 to a correspondent who had raised this question a 
 letter which I find so explicit and compact that I 
 give it as the best statement of his view : 
 
THE CANVASS OF 1884. 291 
 
 " I have received your note, and have time only 
 for a brief reply. The action of a convention 
 is merely a recommendation, and its authority is 
 merely that of a majority. Now, a majority can 
 not morally or honorably bind a participant in any 
 consultation to support its action if he morally 
 disapproves of it. The fact that he is there to pre 
 vent such action is certainly not a reason for him 
 to support it if taken, because that conclusion 
 would make the man who actively endeavors to 
 prevent it more bound by it than one who stays at 
 home and takes no part. As a delegate, the mem 
 ber of a convention votes and does his delegated 
 duty to the best of his ability. Having discharged 
 that special duty, his general duty as a citizen re 
 curs, and he is to weigh the action of the conven 
 tion like every other citizen, and vote only as his 
 conscience directs. 
 
 " There are perhaps five millions of party voters 
 on each side ; a convention is composed of about 
 800 members of the party. The majority would 
 be 401 ; and to say that the remaining 399 who 
 have opposed the decision are honorably bound by 
 it if they conscientiously disapprove, while all the 
 other millions and thousands of members are not 
 bound, is simply folly." 
 
 I have given this statement of Mr. Curtis s views 
 %n this matter because, at the time and long after, 
 though it did not disturb, it saddened him. For 
 my own part, it seems to me to have given occa 
 sion for much political casuistry, as to which preju- 
 
292 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 dice and interest and unreflecting sentiment have 
 wrought confusion, but as to which the verdict of 
 justice and common sense is beyond all mistake. 
 If the doctrine of Mr. Curtis s critics were to pre 
 vail, self-respecting men would not act as delegates 
 to political conventions, and party rule would 
 rapidly and inevitably become corrupt. The in 
 dependence he asserted is the indispensable con 
 dition precedent to rational and decent politics. 
 Unfortunately human nature does not always de 
 velop reason or decency under the influence of 
 strenuous party passion. Though the criticism to 
 which I have referred was that which affected Mr. 
 Curtis most, it was by no means all he had to bear. 
 It is simply impossible to give any idea of the 
 abuse, the insult, the scurrility, that were heaped 
 upon him in the public press, and in letters, usually 
 anonymous, addressed to him. It was a startling 
 revelation to him of the vulgarity and brutality of 
 a large number of the men with whom and for 
 whom he had so faithfully and unselfishly labored. 
 Necessarily it only confirmed him in the course he 
 had taken. It was conclusive proof, if any were 
 needed, of the extent to which the evil against 
 which he had revolted had spread in the Republi 
 can party. The vile spirit shown, because an hon 
 orable and conscientious leader had found himself 
 forced into opposition, was a spirit that would have 
 been no less vile, and infinitely more dangerous, 
 had he submitted to the party dictation and the 
 party had won. Mr. Curtis s service to his coun- 
 
THE CANVASS OF 1881*. 293 
 
 try while he acted with the Kepublican party was 
 in my judgment very great. It was completed and 
 exceeded by the service he rendered when he left 
 the party, and pursued through another party the 
 same high purpose. 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE LEADER OF REFORM. 
 
 DURING the remaining years of his life, Mr. Cur- 
 tis s relation to public affairs was strictly that of 
 an independent critic, and his chief object was the 
 promotion of civil service reform, of which he was 
 now the acknowledged leader and representative. 
 In "Harper s Weekly," of course, his criticism 
 embraced a wide field, and several important and 
 interesting questions the tariff, the currency, 
 foreign matters, the relation of the President to 
 Congress, which came up within this period re 
 ceived a fair share of attention, and were discussed 
 candidly, and in the main intelligently. But none 
 of them interested him as did the reform. To the 
 latter, also, he devoted a great deal of personal 
 labor and study. His offices as president of the 
 National Civil Service Reform League and of the 
 New York Civil Service Reform Association gave 
 him an opportunity for effective work which he 
 embraced with the utmost ardor, and pursued with 
 unwearied energy. No important step was taken 
 anywhere without his approval, and very much 
 that was done was due to his initiative. His cor 
 respondence was, on this subject alone, enough to 
 
THE LEADER OF REFORM. 295 
 
 tax the patience and strength of any man, but it 
 was never neglected and rarely deferred. His 
 attendance at all committees was faithful, and his 
 part in their work a marvel of patience, vigilance, 
 sound judgment, and inspiring zeal. It was my 
 fortune to be associated with him in a considerable 
 part of these labors, mostly in those of a relatively 
 routine nature, conducted quietly and with none of 
 the excitement of public efforts. He early made 
 upon me the impression of extraordinary practical 
 force. He was devoid of the vanity, the fussiness, 
 the obstinacy and narrowness, that are so unpleas 
 antly obvious in many able and sincere men de 
 voted to reform movements. With great single 
 ness of purpose, he was peculiarly open-minded, as 
 eager to learn as to teach, as ready to follow as to 
 lead. His tact was unfailing, because it was the 
 natural expression of his sympathetic and consider 
 ate nature. No one who came into active relations 
 with him in this peculiar work but was uncon 
 sciously encouraged to do his best. Even the 
 bores and Heaven knows that they were not 
 wanting forgot to betray their full tediousness 
 under the influence of his gentle and firm guid 
 ance. He seemed so unaffectedly to expect from 
 every one the fullest measure of unselfish and 
 modest service that it was impossible to refuse it. 
 
 The reform enlisted many able men from differ 
 ent parts of the Union. The lawyers naturally 
 were the most numerous, but there were represent 
 atives of all professions and occupations, many 
 
296 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 of them of national repute. I think it is not an 
 exaggeration to say that the leadership of Mr. Cur 
 tis, never asserted and equally never concealed, 
 was universally conceded. This, of course, was in 
 some degree due to the fact that no one else gave 
 to the work the same amount of time and study. 
 In his own mind, I should say that it was the op 
 portunity presented, and the responsibility imposed, 
 by this leadership that chiefly impressed him, and 
 these were met with a courage, assiduity, and mi 
 nute and constant care, such as few men give save 
 under the spur of interest or ambition. 
 
 The feature of greatest public interest in Mr. 
 Curtis s reform work was his annual address at the 
 meeting of the National League. This was deliv 
 ered each year on the first evening of the two-day 
 meeting, and consisted primarily of a review of the 
 course of the reform for the year just closed, a state 
 ment of what remained to be done, indications of 
 the next steps feasible, and always included an argu 
 ment and an appeal for the general cause. These 
 addresses, with some earlier ones and Mr. Curtis s 
 report as chairman of the Civil Service Commission 
 made to President Grant in 1871, form the second 
 volume of the " Orations and Addresses " pub 
 lished after his death. This volume is in some re 
 spects the most valuable of the published writings 
 of Mr. Curtis. In it will be found the substance 
 of what he had to say on the phase of public affairs 
 that engrossed the most of his thought, energy, 
 and time during the last twenty years of his life. 
 
THE LEADER OF REFORM. 297 
 
 Here is his explanation of what it was in our poli 
 tics that needed reform ; of what the consequences 
 would be if the reform were not brought about ; of 
 what would be the immediate and the progressive 
 benefits, should the reform succeed, of the general 
 principles and the specific aims and methods of re 
 form. It was by no means a simple or narrow 
 cause in which he had enlisted. Its most apparent 
 scope the improvement of the civil service, mak 
 ing it efficient, clean, reasonably economical, and 
 an honorable career for honorable men was cer 
 tainly not unimportant, and it was never ignored 
 or underestimated by Mr. Curtis, who in this as 
 in other matters was sensible and practical. But 
 in comparison with the wider and ultimate effect 
 sought upon the politics of the country, upon its 
 public life, the character of the government, and 
 the public conscience, this primary effect of the 
 reform was, in his mind, subordinate and inciden 
 tal. Had the reform been confined to its attain 
 ment, we may be sure that he would have given 
 to it, as he did to numberless movements of minor 
 and relatively passing interest, a cordial advocacy 
 proportioned to its real merit, but nothing more. 
 He never would have surrendered to it the days 
 and nights of steady labor, the deep and anxious 
 study, the patient attention to detail, that ho gave 
 gladly to civil service reform. Nor could it have 
 inspired him to any of the more important of tfiese 
 addresses, which are, in their kind, among the 
 best that remain from Mr. Curtis, and among* the 
 
398 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 best that the history of political life in the United 
 States affords. 
 
 The struggle for reform was in fact to Mr. Cur 
 tis, as I have already suggested, another struggle 
 for popular freedom, for the assertion of the na 
 tional conscience, for the gradual repression and 
 the final abolition of a tyranny not differing in es 
 sence from that of the slave power. He found this 
 tyranny and he had no difficulty in demonstrating 
 the fact as unjust and as debasing within its limits 
 as the one that fell with the triumph of the Union 
 armies. And in some regards it was more danger 
 ous, because less obvious, more insidious and ob 
 scure, and less easily arousing the indignant revolt 
 of the moral sense of the people. It was the con 
 sciousness of this truth that awakened and kept 
 alive in him for so many years that fervent and 
 unflagging zeal, that generous and firm devotion, of 
 which these addresses are the witness. 
 
 Any one who will read the volume will not fail 
 to be impressed by the development of Mr. Curtis s 
 conception of the range of the reform, and of his 
 manner of discussing it. The substance of all the 
 chief arguments is, indeed, to be found in the earli 
 est addresses, and in the report to President Grant 
 in 1871. But with the progress of the reform, 
 with the unfolding of the way in which it impressed 
 both its friends and its foes, with the changed con 
 ditions of politics and the varying policy of succes 
 sive administrations, there comes a very striking 
 extension of Mr. Curtis s treatment of the subject. 
 
THE LEADER OF REFORM. 299 
 
 Probably the address at the eleventh annual meet 
 ing of the National League in Baltimore in 1892, in 
 the spring of the year in which he died, may be ac 
 cepted as the fullest and most impressive statement 
 of the whole matter. I am not aware that Mr. Cur 
 tis had at that time any serious concern as to his 
 health ; but he was in his sixty-ninth year, he had 
 had some of the warnings which age brings of the 
 limit of human energy and endurance. Looking 
 over the large circle of his associates, many of them 
 affectionate friends, all of them admiring and trust 
 ing followers, he must have missed some who 
 twenty years before had stood by his side. He saw 
 very few who had reached his age, and, I think, 
 none that had given to the cause the long years of 
 wearing labor that he had given. Possibly there 
 was a half -recognized sense that he was nearing 
 the end. Assuredly the address was such as he 
 might have made had he known that it was the 
 final legacy to the beloved cause, the farewell 
 words of instruction and guidance and inspiration. 
 In this address he made the clearest and most 
 complete statement of the underlying principle of 
 the reform. When he came to publish it, he gave 
 it the title, " Party and Patronage." Its subject 
 was the need of curbing the encroachment of ex 
 ecutive power lodged in party and maintained by 
 patronage. He traced the resistance of the Eng 
 lish Parliament to the pretensions of the royal pre 
 rogative, and the resistance of the colonies to the 
 pretensions of the English Parliament, and he de- 
 
300 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 scribed the action of the framers of the Constitu 
 tion with the purpose of limiting the use of the ap 
 pointing power : 
 
 " The people had assumed their own government, 
 but, as they could not administer it directly, it was 
 administered by agents selected by party, or the 
 organized majority, but under such restrictions as 
 the whole body of the voters, or the people, might 
 impose. The crown had vanished. There was no 
 king or permanent executive. There were a Presi 
 dent and legislature elected by the people for lim 
 ited terms. But the practical agency of the gov 
 ernment was party, and, whoever might be elected 
 President, party remained in the administration 
 permanent as a king, and with the same control 
 of the executive power. But the executive power, 
 whether in the hands of a king or party, does not 
 change its nature. It seeks its own aggrandize 
 ment and cannot safely be trusted. Buckle says 
 that no man is wise enough and strong enough to be 
 vested with absolute authority. It fires his brain 
 and maddens him. But this, which is true of an 
 individual, is not less true of an aggregate of indi 
 viduals or of a party. A party or a majority needs 
 watching as much as a king. Indeed, that such 
 distrust is the safeguard of democracy against des 
 potism is a truth as old as Demosthenes. Like a 
 sleuth-hound, distrust must follow executive power, 
 however it may double and whatever form it may 
 assume. It is as much the safeguard of popular 
 right against the will of a party as against the pre- 
 
THE LEADER OF REFORM. 301 
 
 rogative of a king. Distrust is in fact the instinct 
 of enlightened political sagacity, which sees that 
 the peril of popular institutions lies in the abuse of 
 the forms of popular government. The great com 
 monplace of our political speech, 4 Eternal vigilance 
 is the price of liberty, is fundamentally true. It 
 is a scripture essential to political salvation. The 
 demand for civil service reform is the cry of that 
 eternal vigilance for still further restriction by the 
 people of the delegated executive power. 
 
 " Civil service reform, therefore, is but another 
 successive step in the development of liberty un 
 der law. It is not eccentric or revolutionary. It 
 is a logical measure of political progress. In the 
 light of a larger experience, and adjusted to the 
 exigencies of a republic in the nineteenth cen 
 tury instead of a monarchy in the thirteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries, in the spirit of the wise jeal 
 ousy of the Constitution, in the interest of free 
 institutions and of honest government, it proposes 
 still further to restrict the executive power as exer 
 cised by party. It is a measure based upon the 
 observation of a century, during which government 
 by party has developed conditions and tendencies 
 and perils which could not have been foreseen in 
 detail, although, at the beginning of party govern 
 ment under the Constitution, Washington said of 
 party spirit : 4 It exists under different shapes in 
 all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or 
 repressed ; but in those of popular form it is seen in 
 its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy. 
 
302 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 " What our fathers could not guess, we can see. 
 Party, which is properly simply the organization of 
 citizens who agree in their views of public policy 
 to secure the enactment of their views in law, has 
 become what is well called a machine, which con 
 trols the political action of millions of citizens who 
 vote for candidates that the machine selects, and 
 for measures that the machine dictates or approves. 
 Servility to party takes the place of individual in 
 dependence of action. So completely does it con 
 sume political manhood, that, like men suddenly 
 hurried from their warm beds into the night air, 
 shivering and chattering in the cold, even intelli 
 gent citizens who have protested against their 
 party machine as fraudulent and false, and an or 
 ganized misrepresentation of the party conviction 
 and will, declare that if their protest against the 
 power of fraud and corruption does not avail, and 
 the party commands them to yield, they will bow 
 the head and bend the knee in loyalty to fraud and 
 corruption. The despotism of the machine is so 
 absolute, and the triumph of the party so supersedes 
 the reason and purpose of the party, that we have 
 now reached a point in our political development 
 when, upon the most vital and pressing public 
 questions, parties do not even know their own 
 opinions, and factions of the same party wrangle 
 fiercely to determine by a majority what the party 
 thinks and proposes. Meanwhile, so completely 
 has the conception of a party as merely a conven 
 ient but clumsy agency to promote certain public ol> 
 
THE LEADER OF REFORM. 303 
 
 jects disappeared that one of the chief journals of 
 the country recently remarked with entire gravity 
 that it found no fault with conscientious independ 
 ence in politics, which was like announcing with 
 lofty forbearance that, as a philosophic moralist, it 
 found no fault with truth-telling or honest dealing. 
 "But it is by party action, nevertheless, that 
 reform must be secured. Why, then, do we an 
 ticipate success? Because party itself is finally 
 subject to public opinion, and, whatever the ma 
 chine may wish, it is at last obliged to conform 
 to public opinion, as a sailing-ship to the wind. 
 Party machines, truculent and defiant, resist, but 
 like kings they yield at last to, the people. The 
 king, whose arbitrary excesses produce the per 
 emptory popular demand for relief, ordains, how 
 ever reluctantly, a restriction that limits his power. 
 So the French Bourbon, Louis XVIII., signed the 
 Charter of 1814, and the Prussian Hohenzollern, 
 Frederic William IV., summoned the Constituent 
 Assembly of 1848. They call this surrender motu 
 proprio, an act of their sovereign will. But they 
 knew, and the world knows, that it is the will of a 
 greater sovereign than they, the will of the people. 
 Our appeal is now, as it has always been, not to 
 party, but to the people, who are masters of party. 
 As the English barons, in the phrase of an old 
 English writer, cut the claws of John , as the 
 English Parliament taught terribly the English 
 king that not he, but the English people, was the 
 sovereign ; as the American colonies taught the 
 
304 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 English Parliament in turn that the American 
 people would rule America, so, by every law and 
 custom demanded by public opinion* which re 
 strains the arbitrary abuse of executive power by 
 party, the American people are constantly teaching 
 American parties that not the parties but the peo 
 ple rule. We cannot expect the king nor the 
 Parliament nor the party to solicit the lesson or 
 to enjoy the discipline. We cannot expect their 
 supple courtiers, either in the palace or in the 
 saloon, to demand that the king or the party shall 
 be bound. But bound nevertheless they are, bound 
 by the people they have been, and bound by the 
 same power they will be. The record of this year, 
 as of the last year and of every year since the 
 League was formed; even the reiterated pledges 
 of platforms, although reiterated only to be largely 
 broken ; the most sweet voices of the stump, that 
 sink into barren silence ; the bills introduced that 
 gasp and die in committee on the one hand, and 
 on the other the constantly enlarged scope of the 
 reformed system in the public service, all reveal 
 the ever-stronger public purpose, and the con 
 stantly greater achievement of that purpose, to 
 add in civil service reform another golden link to 
 the shining chain of historical precedents which, 
 by wisely restraining executive power, promote the 
 public welfare." 
 
 It is plain, from the extracts that I have given 
 not only from his later speeches but from others, 
 that the standard of reform with Mr. Curtis was 
 
THE LEADER OF REFORM. 305 
 
 very high, that he regarded it as of national 
 importance, and had gradually, after his service 
 on the commission, come to place it above any ob 
 ject professed or pursued by either of the great 
 parties. During the eleven years that he presided 
 over the National Reform League, it was his duty 
 to judge the party in power by this standard. 
 This was not an easy task. In 1884 he spoke 
 in the very height of the bitter and heated contest 
 for the presidency between the party he had re 
 pudiated and the one to which he had brought 
 his support, qualified, indeed, and guarding his 
 perfect independence, but requiring the imme 
 diate and absolute choice between the candidate of 
 one and the candidate of the other. From 1885 
 to 1888 he spoke with Mr. Cleveland in the Presi 
 dent s office, and was obliged, applying to the 
 known acts of the administration the standard he 
 had denned, to describe wherein the administration 
 fell short, and how far the President for whom he 
 had voted was responsible for the shortcomings. 
 From 1889 to 1892 he was again forced to survey 
 the course of his old party, to apply to it with 
 equal sincerity and equal fairness the same search 
 ing tests. It will be seen that his peculiar and 
 trying function was exercised during each of two 
 national elections, in which, as an editor and a 
 leader of public opinion, he took an active and in 
 one of them a decisive part, and each of which was 
 followed by a change in the party in possession of 
 the presidency. It was practically impossible that 
 
306 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 what he said should not influence party action, 
 nor did he seek to avoid such an effect. It was 
 equally impossible that he should escape the accu 
 sation of partisan prejudice and exaggeration, how 
 ever anxious he was not to give either justification 
 or excuse for such accusation. I think it is a rea 
 sonable judgment on his work that he was singu 
 larly fair, not only in intention, but in the labor, 
 study, reflection, and consultation that he devoted 
 to ascertaining the facts, and to determining their 
 real significance and value. I thought so at the 
 time, weighing the addresses as they were delivered 
 from year to year, and I am strongly confirmed in 
 the opinion by a careful review of them. A very 
 significant piece of evidence upon this point is the 
 fact that, among the active workers for civil service 
 reform who were intimately associated with him in 
 the league, and who may be said to have felt a 
 pretty definite though indirect responsibility for 
 his utterances while their association with him 
 lasted, were a number of ardent and convinced 
 Republicans and equally convinced and ardent 
 Democrats, and, so far as I am aware, none of 
 them felt called upon in any degree to free them 
 selves from that responsibility. Friends and advo 
 cates of the reform who were supporters of Mr. 
 Elaine, and who condemned unqualifiedly Mr. Cur- 
 tis s choice in 1884, found his speech of that year 
 without any fault that they felt themselves re 
 quired to point out. The most resolute Democratic 
 reformers conceded his fairness to Mr. Cleveland, 
 
THE LEADER OF REFORM. 307 
 
 The most I cannot say enthusiastic, for I do 
 not recall any but the most friendly, supporters 
 of Mr. Harrison were ready to make a correspond 
 ing concession. Abuse there was, of course, from 
 both sides, and much honest and sincere but igno 
 rant misconception. But the men who followed 
 Mr. Curtis s course most closely, knew it most 
 completely, and could best pass upon its motives, 
 were entirely satisfied of his candor and loyalty. 
 
CHAPTEK XXIII. 
 
 THE TYPICAL INDEPENDENT. 
 
 THE year 1888 presented to those who had re 
 fused to support the Republican candidate four 
 years before, and had given their votes to Mr. 
 Cleveland, the not wholly simple question of 
 whether they would return to their former asso 
 ciation. The message of President Cleveland in 
 December, 1887, devoted chiefly to the question of 
 taxation forced upon the country by the enormous 
 surplus and accumulation of revenue, made the 
 tariff the chief issue of the presidential campaign. 
 The failure to nominate Mr. Blaine eliminated his 
 personal character as an obvious and unquestioned 
 element in the decision. The manifest tendency 
 of a very large part of the Democratic party to 
 wards unsound and dangerous financial legislation, 
 which appeared to command the assent of a ma 
 jority of that party and to be opposed by a majority 
 of the Republicans, was a matter not lightly to be 
 dismissed. The policy of Mr. Cleveland as to ad 
 ministrative reform had not been consistent, and 
 had been fairly though roughly described as for 
 reform or against it, according as the reform senti 
 ment did or did not control the decisive vote in any 
 
THE TYPICAL INDEPENDENT. 309 
 
 given State. In these circumstances a considerable 
 number of the Republicans, who with Mr. Curtis 
 had supported Mr. Cleveland in 1884, now gave 
 their support to the Republican candidate, Gen. 
 Benjamin Harrison. Mr. Curtis decided that his 
 duty was otherwise. His view of the question was 
 explained in some detail in a letter addressed to a 
 correspondent who had written him a letter of 
 friendly disapproval and criticism. I give it, in 
 preference to any public utterance, as being pecu 
 liarly characteristic : 
 
 TO A. C. TILDEN, SAN FRANCISCO. 
 
 NEW YORK, 12th September, 1888. 
 
 MY DEAR SIR, I am very much obliged to you 
 for your frank and friendly letter of the 4th, and I 
 am very glad to answer it in the same spirit. 
 
 My strong anti-slavery feeling made me a Repub 
 lican, and the original purpose and character and 
 membership of the party seem to me to have been 
 more humane, progressive, and truly American than 
 that of any other party. But as a Republican, after 
 the primary purpose of the party had been attained 
 by the result of the war, I was constantly engaged in 
 withstanding the party tendency to political abuse 
 and corruption. This culminated in 1884 by the 
 nomination to the presidency of a man who, in my 
 judgment, had trafficked in his official place for his 
 personal profit. The election of such a man would 
 have been disgraceful to the party and dishonorable 
 to the country, and this consideration was para 
 mount to all others. 
 
310 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 I therefore supported Mr. Cleveland, not because 
 I had renounced my Republican principles, but be 
 cause I held to them, and as the surest way of 
 securing the defeat of Mr. Blaine, and because I 
 believed Mr. Cleveland to be an honest and cour 
 ageous man who would resist any mischievous ten 
 dency of his party. During his term it has been 
 evident that the spirit of Mr. Blaine is that of the 
 Republican party, and that he is at present its true 
 representative. Mr. Cleveland has resisted much 
 in his party, but not as much as I had hoped. 
 But I still regard him as honest and courageous. 
 Now, as the chief issue of the campaign is the 
 method of reducing the revenue, and as I agree 
 with Mr. Cleveland s policy and look upon the Re 
 publican policy as very injurious, and as I see that 
 Mr. Blaine is the controlling genius of his party, 
 and that a vote for Mr. Harrison is really a vote 
 for Mr. Blaine, the same principles that made me 
 vote for the Republican candidate formerly induce 
 me to vote for Mr. Cleveland now. 
 
 But I am not a Democrat. I shall vote against 
 Mr. Hill, the Democratic candidate for governor 
 in New York, and I think Mr. Cleveland much 
 better than his party. I am an Independent, and 
 I am so for the same reasons that made me a Re 
 publican formerly. The purposes that I would 
 promote were then uniformly to be served by 
 supporting that party. But all the circumstances 
 are changed, and now I can serve them best by 
 voting independently of party names. 
 
THE TYPICAL INDEPENDENT. 311 
 
 If my principles had been changed for any un 
 worthy purpose, there would be truly a shade upon 
 my name. But they are the same now that they 
 were when I stumped for Fremont in 56, and sup 
 ported Lincoln, the greatest of modern Americans, 
 in 1860 and 64. In the sense in which you use 
 the words, I am not an adherent of Mr. Cleveland. 
 I have been disappointed in much that he has done, 
 and have said so plainly and publicly. I think 
 him honest, although often sophisticated, and in the 
 present situation support him as the better alter 
 native. Should Mr. Harrison be elected, I should 
 hope to be equally just in my estimate of his con 
 duct. 
 
 I write this long statement because I should be 
 very sorry that a young man, who from what he 
 has heard of me is inclined to wonder regretfully 
 at my course, should lack any explanation which I 
 can give him. 
 
 With all good wishes, I am 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 GEOKGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 The last literary work of Mr. Curtis, outside of 
 his regular tasks, was the editing of " The Corre 
 spondence of John Lothrop Motley." 1 It was a 
 work of much labor and some delicacy, owing to 
 the strong feeling aroused in Mr. Motley and his 
 friends by the circumstances of his resignation of 
 the mission to Austria, and of his retirement from 
 1 New York: Harper & Bros. 2 vols. 1889. 
 
312 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 the English mission. The brief statement made 
 by Mr. Curtis in the preface may well be pondered 
 by editors generally : " In preparing (the letters) 
 for publication, the editor has withheld whatever 
 he believed that the writer s good judgment and 
 thoughtful consideration for others would have 
 omitted. This rule excludes comments upon per 
 sons and affairs which, however innocent or play 
 ful, might cause needless pain or misapprehension. 
 It excludes, also, much of the repetition which natu 
 rally occurs in such letters, and a large part of the 
 domestic and friendly messages and allusions which, 
 although illustrating the writer s generous sympa 
 thy and affectionate disposition, are essentially 
 private. If much of such matter is still left, it is 
 because, with all his interest in literary pursuits 
 and in public affairs, Mr. Motley was essentially 
 a domestic man, and a more rigid exclusion could 
 not have been made without injustice to his char 
 acter. Otherwise the letters are printed as they 
 were written." 
 
 The last public address of Mr. Curtis was that 
 on James Russell Lowell, first delivered in Brook 
 lyn, February 22, 1892, and repeated in New York 
 in March. In it he said : 
 
 " Like all citizens of high public ideals, Lowell 
 was inevitably a public critic and censor, but he 
 was much too good a Yankee not to comprehend 
 the practical conditions of political life in this 
 country. No man understood better than he such 
 truth as lies in John Morley s remark : 4 Parties 
 
THE TYPICAL INDEPENDENT. 313 
 
 are a field where action is a long second best, and 
 where the choice constantly lies between two blun 
 ders. He did not therefore conclude that there is no 
 alternative, 4 that nought is everything and every 
 thing is nought. But he did see closely that, while 
 the government of a republic must be a government 
 by party, yet independence of party is much more 
 vitally essential in a republic than fidelity to party. 
 Party is a servant of the people, but a servant who 
 is foolishly permitted by his master to assume sov 
 ereign airs, like Christopher Sly, the tinker, whom 
 the lord s attendants obsequiously salute as mas 
 ter: 
 
 " Look how thy servants do attend on thee, 
 Each in his office ready at thy beck. 
 
 To a man of the highest public spirit like Lowell, 
 and of the supreme self-respect which always keeps 
 faith with itself, no spectacle is sadder than that 
 of intelligent, superior, honest public men prostrat 
 ing themselves before a party, professing what they 
 do not believe, affecting what they do not feel, 
 from abject fear of an invisible fetich, a chimera, a 
 name, to which they alone give reality and force, 
 as the terrified peasant himself made the spectre 
 of the Brocken before which he quailed. 
 
 " With his lofty patriotism and his extraordinary 
 public conscience, Lowell was distinctively the In 
 dependent in politics. He was an American and a 
 republican citizen. He acted with parties, as every 
 citizen must act if he actg at all. But the notion 
 that a voter is a traitor to one party when he votes 
 
314 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 with another was as ludicrous to him as the asser 
 tion that it is treason to the White Star Steamers 
 to take passage on a Cunarder. When he would 
 know his duty, Lowell turned within, not without. 
 He listened, not for the roar of the majority in the 
 street, but for the still small voice in his own 
 breast. For, while the method of republican gov 
 ernment is party, its basis is individual conscience 
 and common sense. This entire political independ 
 ence Lowell always illustrated. 
 
 " Whatever his party associations and political 
 sympathies, Lowell was at heart and by tempera 
 ment conservative, and his patriotic independence 
 in our politics is the quality which is always un 
 consciously recognized as the true conservative 
 element in the country. In the tumultuous excite 
 ment of our popular elections, the real appeal on 
 both sides is, not to the party, which is already 
 committed, but to those citizens who are still open 
 to reason, and may yet be persuaded. In the most 
 recent serious party appeal the orator said : 4 Above 
 all things, political fitness should lead us not to for 
 get that at the end of our plans we must meet face 
 to face at the polls the voters of the land, with bal 
 lots in their hands, demanding as a condition of the 
 support of our party, fidelity and undivided devotion 
 to the cause in which we have enlisted them. This 
 recognizes an independent tribunal which judges 
 party. It implies that, besides the host who inarch 
 under the party color and vote at the party com 
 mand, there are citizens who may or may not wear 
 
THE TYPICAL INDEPENDENT. 315 
 
 the party uniform, but who vote only at their own 
 individual command, and who give the victory. 
 They may be angrily classified as political Laodi- 
 ceans ; but it is to them that parties appeal, and 
 rightly, because, except for this body of citizens, the 
 despotism of party would be absolute, and the re 
 public would degenerate into a mere oligarchy of 
 bosses." 
 
 When, in the letter to the San Francisco corre 
 spondent above cited, Mr. Curtis wrote, " I am an 
 Independent," it was the standard of independence 
 described in his characterization of Lowell that 
 he had in mind. He was very faithful to that 
 standard, and the trials of his fidelity were more 
 severe, intimate, and lasting than those of Lowell. 
 " Literature," he said of the latter, " was his pur 
 suit, but patriotism was his passion." Of Curtis 
 it may be said that patriotism was both his passion 
 and his pursuit, to which literature was constantly 
 and with no small sacrifice, nor without pangs of 
 reluctance, but constantly, subordinated. He was 
 not only for thirty years a political journalist, but 
 he was a political speaker, and an active partici 
 pant in party effort. While his devotion to the 
 purposes of the Republican party was the main 
 spring of his work in and for that party, his long 
 years of unremitting and systematic activity in it 
 wove about him numberless strong ties of sym 
 pathy, association, and memory. These were not 
 easily severed nor severed without pain. He was 
 the most conspicuous instance of his time of the 
 
316 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 Independent who, without hope of reward or gain 
 and at such a cost, followed the orders of his con 
 science. This, as I have said, I regard as his 
 greatest service to his country, and as a service of 
 inestimable value. For the independence of Mr. 
 Curtis was not narrow, or obstinate, or ignorant, or 
 conceited. Of that kind there is no lack. It is, 
 to a certain order of mind, not merely easy but at 
 tractive. The conscience which Mr. Curtis obeyed 
 was enlightened and open. He was as careful, pains 
 taking, and critical in seeking to know the right as 
 he was firm and determined in support of what he 
 finally decided was for him the right. And he 
 was, so far as I have been able to see, singularly 
 respectful of the same sort of independence ill 
 others. His indignation at hypocrisy and self- 
 seeking in public life was a flame as steady as it 
 was hot ; but toward honest difference of judgment 
 honest in the formation as in the expression 
 he was not merely tolerant, he was frankly and 
 sincerely respectful. His great gifts, for which he 
 had or made great opportunity, made his career 
 an example of far-reaching and lasting influence ; 
 and I think it may with reason and justice be said 
 that the influence was, without qualification, pure 
 and good. 
 
CHAPTEK XXIY. 
 
 CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
 THE work of the Board of Regents of the Uni* 
 versity of the State of New York, to which Mr. 
 Curtis had been elected in 1864, and of which he 
 had thought so little when he was a member of the 
 Constitutional Convention that he had tried to 
 have the Board abolished, was greatly changed 
 when in 1888 Mr. Melville Dewey, of New York, 
 became its secretary and executive officer with a 
 residence at the state capital. The many and vari 
 ous and sometimes conflicting laws regulating the 
 authority and functions of the regents were codi 
 fied, rendered consistent, and in some degree modi 
 fied. The powers, which for the greater part had 
 been either misunderstood or neglected, were now 
 found to be considerable, and with the energetic 
 management of Mr. Dewey, the board became a 
 living organization, with possibilities of great 
 achievement, and with steady and rapid progress 
 in actual accomplishment. The original purpose 
 of the board, when created, was the establishment 
 and conduct of a university that should be the 
 crown of the system of education in the State, to 
 wards which all other institutions should be guided, 
 
318 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 and the standard of which should be at all stages 
 kept in mind. To serve .this end the regents 
 were given the right of inspection of all incorpo 
 rated institutions of learning, with power to issue 
 certificates based on their own examination. By 
 the firm and skillful use of these powers, by estab 
 lishing a carefully devised standard for the grant 
 ing of certificates, by an admirable plan of graded 
 and uniform examinations, by thorough, intelligent, 
 and systematic inspection and records, the regents 
 certificates were given so high a value as to be in 
 dispensable. Thus on the one hand all the edu 
 cators in the State were made to desire the ap 
 proval of the regents, and on the other hand 
 their active and beneficial cooperation was secured. 
 After a very great amount of labor, performed in 
 an exceedingly short time, the original purpose of 
 the board was in the direct way of being accom 
 plished, and its standard was recognized and con 
 trolling. In addition to this work of the regents, 
 its influence upon the professional schools of law 
 and medicine was steadily strengthened ; the State 
 Library, which had previously been little more 
 than a constantly growing heterogeneous mass of 
 books, was reduced to order, and so classified and 
 arranged as to admit of indefinite expansion and 
 of corresponding usefulness ; while, by various 
 means, its treasures were made available over the 
 whole State, and local school libraries were multi 
 plied. The scientific collections of the State were 
 reorganized, brought under one general control, 
 
CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY. 319 
 
 made mutually more useful, and their development 
 provided for. In all this work Mr. Curtis, who 
 became Chancellor of the University in 1890, took 
 not only the greatest interest, but a large part. 
 Recognizing the special knowledge and gifts of 
 Mr. Dewey, he gave to him the heartiest and most 
 appreciative support; but, while he felt the im 
 pulsion of " such a steam engine " (as, in one of 
 his letters, he called the secretary), he was not in 
 the habit of shifting responsibility, and sanctioned 
 only what he carefully understood in principle and 
 in all essential practical features. The tax of this 
 unpaid and inconspicuous though honorable work 
 upon his time and strength was considerable ; but 
 he was fortunate to see its results so far achieved, 
 and its methods so firmly established and so effec 
 tive, as to constitute a satisfying reward. The fol 
 lowing notes from Mr. Dewey explain the relation 
 of Mr. Curtis to their work, and to those associated 
 with it : 
 
 44 My admiration for Chancellor Curtis grew 
 with every occasion of personal contact. Of his 
 public and private life I can only say that I share 
 in the universal admiration. As chancellor of the 
 University, however, he was known to me as to no 
 one else. From the time he took office, January 
 30, 1890, his interest in our work, and his faith in 
 the splendid future before it, grew constantly. At 
 our last interview he emphasized this more strongly 
 than ever before, and was looking forward to our 
 immediate future with a confidence which, with all 
 
320 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 my enthusiasm, came to me as a new inspiration ; 
 for I felt, when one so careful and conservative as 
 Mr. Curtis had, after twenty-eight years of service 
 as a regent, looked through our plans and our re 
 cent development and felt so fully satisfied as did 
 he as to our future, that we, who were too much at 
 the heart of the work to see it with the perspec 
 tive of one at a little distance, ought to be well sat 
 isfied with the verdict. 
 
 " Mr. Curtis was exceedingly conscientious in re 
 gard to all his official duties, but was entirely free 
 from that spirit which often, in conscientious men 
 occupying supervisory positions, becomes so embar 
 rassing to administrative officers. He watched all 
 our work with great care, and criticised or made 
 suggestions with absolute freedom ; but he held 
 that those who were giving their lives to this office, 
 and night and day were in its atmosphere and 
 studying its interests, should be trusted as far as 
 practicable with all details of administration. His 
 course was a golden mean between that of those 
 perfunctory officials who sign their name to any 
 kind of a document placed before them by assist 
 ants or subordinates, and who take the honor with 
 out assuming the responsibility, and that of the 
 similar officials at the other extreme who so often 
 cripple the best work by insisting on projecting 
 their own personal equation into the work of sub 
 ordinate officers of a totally different type of mind. 
 He seemed always to deal with us as he would 
 like to be dealt with under like circumstances ; and 
 
CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY. 321 
 
 I can recall no case, in these happy years of official 
 association with him, in which he has not recog 
 nized to our entire satisfaction our right to shape 
 minor details as we found best in our daily work, 
 though he always faithfully and intelligently in 
 sisted on knowing that the general principles and 
 policy of the department were observed. Nothing 
 in my life has been so satisfactory to me as Mr. 
 Curtis s statement last January that Jie was per 
 fectly satisfied to have his name stand at the head 
 of our publications and stationery, as responsible to 
 the public for the character of the work that we 
 were doing in the University offices. He always 
 seemed to read between the lines, and to under 
 stand clearly the spirit in which our work was done, 
 without making it necessary to call his attention to 
 our devotion to duty, or to the unselfish interest in 
 the University work which is so marked a feature 
 of nearly every prominent member of our staff. I 
 need hardly say that in the office each one felt that 
 he had lost a personal friend ; and each one real 
 ized how great was the public loss when he was 
 gone who in so unusual a degree at once fully dis 
 charged his responsible supervisory duties, and yet 
 left to the working officers that sense of freedom 
 from every unnecessary interference without which 
 the highest and best work is never done." 
 
CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 IN writing the life of Mr. Curtis as an " Ameri 
 can Man of Letters," I have not forgotten his 
 claim to such a designation, though I have tried to 
 give, as nearly as possible within the limits of the 
 book, the materials for an estimate of his course as 
 a man of public affairs. As has been suggested, 
 had he devoted himself to letters only, or were he 
 known only by his literary work, his reputation in 
 that kind would have been more distinct and might 
 be more lasting. The extent of his writing was 
 great. The Easy Chair alone, were the monthly 
 papers continued for nearly forty years collected, 
 would form some thirty volumes of the size of the 
 present one. His addresses, from which three 
 large volumes have been selected, could easily have 
 supplied at least twice that number. All his work 
 was carefully and conscientiously done, most of it 
 with more trained critical discrimination than was 
 given to the half dozen volumes of essays and travel, 
 and the novels that are commonly accepted as his 
 " works." Of the Easy Chair especially it must be 
 remembered that it was the chief product of Mr. 
 Curtis s pen, was wrought in the pure literary spirit, 
 
CONCLUSION. 323 
 
 and was, as much as the work of any prose-writer of 
 his time, literature. It suffers now from the ephem 
 eral form of its publication. Even the collected 
 essays in their dainty form, and with the light 
 device from " The Tatler " with which the author 
 introduces them, " I shall from time to time Re 
 port and Consider all Matters of what Kind soever 
 that shall occur to me," still suggest the fleeting 
 interest of a monthly appearance and disappearance. 
 Nor can it be denied that Mr. Curtis himself had 
 little confidence in their permanent interest, and 
 was with difficulty persuaded by his publishers to 
 select those that were put into a volume before 
 his death. I doubt, indeed, whether he would have 
 done so, had he not had access to the collection of 
 his friend, Mr. Pinkerton, who had faithfully gath 
 ered and bound them all. But an author is not 
 the most trustworthy critic of his own work, and 
 it is not to be inferred that Mr. Curtis was not 
 from first to last scrupulously attentive, in these 
 essays, to a very high standard. The form in 
 which they were originally given to the public, so 
 far from relaxing his sense of responsibility, rather 
 kept it active. He had a constant and strong im 
 pression of the very great number of readers whom 
 he reached, and of the peculiar function performed 
 by the magazine in the American family. He knew 
 that to thousands of these families, with eager, in 
 terested, curious minds, with active intellectual im 
 pulses, but with scant opportunity or time for what 
 is generally known as culture, the magazine was 
 
324 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 what its name implied, their store of literature. 
 His wide and long-continued experience in lectur 
 ing, covering as it did all the free States and ex 
 tending over more than a quarter of a century, 
 brought him intimate knowledge of the classes 
 who composed the readers of the magazine. He 
 knew their needs, their mental appetites, their as 
 pirations ; he knew very well also their limitations, 
 and he regarded them as entitled in every way to 
 his best work. His best he certainly gave them. 
 There is something slightly pathetic and wholly 
 beautiful in the spirit of the Easy Chair toward 
 this curious clientele. It is absolutely free from 
 any taint or suspicion of condescension. Through 
 the hundreds of essays there is manifest a simple, 
 loyal, unaffected respect for the readers. There is 
 not even any invidious elimination of subjects that 
 might easily be supposed to be "caviare to the 
 general." Poetry, art, music, letters, the higher 
 politics, take their place freely and naturally be 
 side social satire and reminiscence and anecdote. 
 I have spoken of the writings of Mr. Curtis in 
 " Harper s Weekly " as a kind of talking in which 
 the editor had the air of speaking face to face with 
 his readers. From the Easy Chair there was 
 talking also, and the candor, the high courtesy, the 
 unfailing self-respect that expresses itself in re 
 spect for others, which are qualities of the best 
 talking, are manifest. Indeed, no other style could 
 so easily have borne so varied a burden. The 
 writer who sets out to produce a volume on philo- 
 
CONCLUSION. . 326 
 
 sophy, literature, morals, history, society, or any 
 defined phase of them, finds his hand subdued to 
 that he works in, and his writing, though satisfy 
 ing or delighting those interested in his particular 
 topic, may easily repel those who are not, or may 
 weary them, or leave them indifferent. But when 
 a man of /rich and highly-trained mind, a wide 
 reader, a vigorous and alert thinker, with a vivid 
 and sustained interest in a great range of differ 
 ently interesting subjects, permits you to listen as 
 he talks, ripely but with leisure, sometimes pro 
 foundly but always genially, you get from him 
 something of his best in whatever direction his 
 thought may turn. This is what one gets of Mr. 
 Curtis in the Easy Chair, and what has made that 
 series of essays, during the long years of their reg 
 ular production, a unique and charming and very 
 important contribution not only to American liter 
 ature, but to the development and formation of 
 national opinion and sentiment. 
 
 In Mr. Curtis the man of letters and the orator 
 were blended. The more important of the orations 
 were written out and read, though they did not 
 seem to the hearer to be read. Some of them 
 were committed to memory, but the memorizing 
 was complete and the delivery without hesitation^ 
 so that in each case the personal impression of 
 the orator was the same, and the impression 
 was very strong. The matter was prepared 
 with the audience constantly in mind, and no 
 thing was neglected which could arouse or hold 
 
326 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 
 them ; but the essential thing with the orator was 
 the substance, the thought, which the form must 
 serve. Mr. Curtis s conception of the function of 
 the orator can be gathered from the range of his 
 subjects as described in previous pages, and from 
 the extracts given. It is pleasantly illustrated by 
 the following notes of a conversation with him fur 
 nished me by one of his associates in " Harper s 
 Weekly : " - 
 
 " When I was in Washington," said Mr. Curtis, 
 " I used to see much of Senator Conkling, and we 
 spent many evenings together. Upon the whole I 
 liked him, in spite of the defects which no one who 
 came into communication with him could overlook. 
 I remember one talk with him about eloquence, in 
 which he naturally considered himself a connois 
 seur. After we had discussed it abstractly for a 
 while, he asked me for an example of what I called 
 true and high eloquence. I repeated to him the 
 peroration of Emerson s Dartmouth address^ which 
 you of course remember, Gentlemen, I have 
 ventured to offer you these considerations upon the 
 scholar s place and hope, because I thought that, 
 standing, as many of you now do, on the threshold 
 of this college, girt and ready to go and assume 
 tasks public and private in your country, you 
 would not be sorry to be admonished of those pri 
 mary duties of the intellect whereof you will seldom 
 hear from the lips of your new companions. You 
 will hear every day the maxims of a low prudence. 
 You will hear that the first duty is to get land and 
 
CONCLUSION. 327 
 
 money, place and name ! " What is this Truth you 
 seek? What is this Beauty?" men will ask with 
 derision. If nevertheless God have called any of 
 you to explore truth and beauty, be bold, be firm, 
 be true. When you shall say, " As others do, so 
 will I ; I renounce, I am sorry for it, my early vis 
 ions ; I must eat the good of the land, and let 
 learning and romantic expectations go until a more 
 convenient season ; " then dies the man in you ; 
 then once more perish the buds of art and poetry 
 and science, as they have died already in a thou 
 sand, thousand men. The hour of that choice is the 
 crisis of your history, and see that you hold your 
 self fast by the intellect. It did not impress the 
 senator much. He found it too tame and creeping 
 a style, and I naturally challenged him in his turn 
 for an example. He took an attitude, and in his 
 most oratorical manner gave me an exordium that 
 is in the school readers by an orator named 
 Sprague, I think. It begins : Not many years ago 
 where we now sit the rank thistle nodded in the 
 wind, and the wild fox dug his hole unscared. 
 The senator s manner, the evident fervency of his 
 belief in his masterpiece, and the contrast of it 
 with Emerson s, all together were too much for 
 me, and I broke out in a peal of laughter which I 
 could not restrain. I fear Senator Conkling never 
 quite forgave me that laughter." 
 
 It is not without significance that in 1870, a 
 quarter of a century after Mr. Curtis s life at 
 Concord and the club evenings in Mr. Emerson s 
 
328 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 library, the former should have quoted from the lat 
 ter an example of what he regarded as " true and 
 high eloquence." " We can have him once in three 
 or four seasons " is Mr. Curtis s report of the lec 
 turing committee s view of Emerson. " But really," 
 he adds, " they had him all the time without know 
 ing it. He was the philosopher Proteus, and he 
 spoke through all the more popular mouths." If 
 Mr. Emerson did not speak directly through the 
 mouth of Mr. Curtis, who had too much of his own 
 to say to permit of this, his influence was consider 
 able. Both were optimists, both idealists. That 
 is to say, they believed in the best, that it was pos 
 sible ultimately to attain it, and imperative always 
 to pursue it. Mr. Curtis brought this belief into 
 fields of work very different from those of Mr. 
 Emerson, who began his speaking in a pulpit, and 
 never quite lost the sense of remoteness that the 
 pulpit impressed upon his intense nature. But 
 Mr. Curtis, when he had fairly found his work, and 
 began to speak, not merely for what he had to say, 
 but for the effect of what he should say, kept an 
 idealism as lofty and an optimism as unflagging as 
 those of Mr. Emerson, and in circumstances that 
 tried them far more severely. From the time of 
 the delivery of the address at the Wesleyan Uni 
 versity in 1856 to that of the Lowell address in 
 New York in March, 1892, there was hardly a lec 
 ture or oration of Mr. Curtis that was not meant 
 to set forth a high ideal, to apply it to some duty 
 actually pressing, and to stir and strengthen the 
 
CONCL USION. 329 
 
 hearts of his hearers for the task the duty imposed. 
 With this dominant tendency it would have been 
 easy for a man with his unusual gifts as a speaker 
 to become an agitator, with the narrowness and mo 
 notony that incessant agitation often brings. From 
 this he was wholly exempt, not only through the 
 variety of his intellectual sympathies and the 
 thoroughness of his training, but by the constancy 
 of his moral impulse. It was the near duty that 
 enlisted him, and with the years ever new duties 
 approached and claimed and received his zealous 
 service. As to each of them the essential recti 
 tude of his nature imposed upon him not merely 
 zealous service, nor yet merely careful preparation 
 for such service, but deliberate judgment as to the 
 duty itself. Zealous he was in the noblest and 
 completest fashion, but never a zealot, not blind nor 
 rash, nor obstinate nor conceited. He was as anx 
 ious to be right as he was determined in what, with 
 an open mind, he had decided to be the right. The 
 prevailing characteristic of his oratory became 
 therefore not advocacy, though powerful and bril 
 liant advocacy there was throughout, but persuasion 
 with that foundation of reason and fairness and 
 candor which is essential to real and lasting per- 
 suasion. 
 
 In the immediate impression made by the oratory 
 of Mr. Curtis his personality counted for much. 
 Not the intellectual and haughty grace of WendeD 
 Phillips presence, nor the massive features and com. 
 manding figure of Charles Sumner, weighted with 
 
330 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 conscious dignity, corresponded more completely 
 to the style of their utterance than did Mr. Curtis s 
 peculiar beauty to his. His charm was felt the 
 moment he rose. His form was manly, powerfully 
 built, and exquisitely graceful. His head was of 
 noble cast and bearing; his features were well 
 marked, and in his later years almost rugged ; finely 
 cut, but of the type that is not blurred or effaced 
 within the range of an audience. His forehead 
 was square, broad, and of vigorous lines ; his eyes 
 of blue-gray, large, deep-set under strong and 
 slightly shaggy brows, lighted the shadow as with 
 a flame, now gentle and glancing, now profound 
 and burning. His voice was a most fortunate 
 organ, deep, musical, yielding without effort the 
 happy inflections suited to the thought, clear and 
 bright in the lighter passages, alternately tender 
 and flute-like, ringing like a bugle or vibrating in 
 solemn organ tones that hushed the intense emotion 
 it had aroused. His gestures were very few and 
 simple. There was nothing of the " action " that 
 the trained orator of the old school studied so care 
 fully; no effort to sustain the attention of the 
 audience, as Everett did, with a skill that an actor 
 might envy ; none of the restless and irrepressible 
 movement, which in Beecher responded to the rush 
 and torrent of his eloquence. The speaker seemed 
 absorbed by the expression of his thought, unheed 
 ing the eyes, seeking the judgment and the heart, 
 of his auditors. 
 
 " I see now," wrote Hawthorne in 1851 to Mr. 
 
CONCLUSION. 331 
 
 Curtis on the appearance of the " Nile Notes," 
 "that you are forever an author." And an au 
 thor Mr. Curtis was to the last. If he did not 
 cling to the usual forms of authorship, he was con 
 tinually under the spell of the literary spirit ; and 
 he gave to all his productions unstintingly and 
 almost unconsciously that which makes books lit 
 erature, absolute and loving fidelity to the best 
 thought. His addresses are full of his love of 
 scholarship and of the fruits of that love, and his 
 ideal of the citizen was the citizen who regarded 
 and performed his duties as a scholar should. He 
 was not insensible on the contrary, he was 
 keenly sensitive to the charm of form, studied 
 it, delighted in analyzing it, and strove for it with 
 unfailing zest. He was a most delicate and acute 
 critic of literary style, and, though he wrote rela 
 tively little on this subject, there was nothing more 
 enjoyable than his discussion of it in conversation^ 
 when his talk illustrated, in its rhythmical flow^/its 
 vivid and luminous play, some of the rarest attri 
 butes of style. But the style he admired, and which 
 he early formed and steadily developed, was that 
 which, according to the BufPon tradition, " is the 
 man." Literature was to him the record of the 
 best, and it was the best that he sought in it ; it was 
 the best also that he tried, modestly but with affec 
 
 i-6^ 
 
 tionate constancy, to contribute to it. 
 as a source of enjoyment he did not underestimate, 
 but his deepest enjoyment was in its substance and 
 in the inspiration it breathed into his life. For the 
 
332 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 mere daintinesses of letters he had little taste ; and 
 the over-refinement which is, as it always has been, 
 the ambition of small minds or the weakness of 
 larger minds, aroused in him only an amused pity. 
 
 His mind, even in its earliest and most fanciful 
 production, was essentially vigorous and sane, of a 
 fibre as firm as it was fine. And this quality was 
 developed by his education, as in a sense it de 
 termined it. He was not a college-bred man, but 
 he was severely trained in most that gives college 
 breeding its advantage. He was a careful student 
 in many directions, though an independent one. 
 His knowledge of German, of French, of Italian, 
 which he rarely betrayed in his writing, was not 
 only sound but delicate, and on his lips these lan 
 guages had the graceful ease and certainty of inti 
 mate acquaintance. The fact is significant of his 
 intellectual methods, of their thoroughness and sys 
 tem, of which there is no severer test than mastery 
 of tongues not habitually used. His reading was 
 wide, as any reader of his works can see, but he 
 was habitually chary of quotations. He had a 
 sound memory, though not a particularly ready one. 
 His mind was assimilative, and seemed more and 
 more so as time passed. It would not be difficult 
 to trace in literature the wide and varied springs of 
 his thought and style, but they would appear as 
 elements blended and incorporated and made his 
 own. 
 
 His place in American scholarship was formally 
 and amply recognized by the degrees conferred 
 
CONCLUSION. 333 
 
 upon him, which, seeing that he was not a college 
 graduate, and was enrolled in none of the well- 
 defined professions, and had no specialty in letters, 
 were remarkable in number and character. They 
 were as follows : Hon. A. M., Brown, 1854, Madi 
 son, 1861, Rochester, 1862 ; LL. D., Madison, 1864, 
 Harvard, 1881, Brown, 1882; L. H. D., Colum 
 bia, 1887. But with this quadruple right to the 
 highest official literary rank, he remained always, 
 save in the publications of the University of the 
 State of New York after he became its chancellor, 
 the plain editor and citizen. 
 
 Mr. Curtis was intimately connected with the 
 study and development of art in New York. He 
 began his newspaper work by reviews of the exhi 
 bitions, and, though these do not now rank high as 
 criticism, they were sound and helpful in their day, 
 and based on what was then a very unusual degree 
 of observation and knowledge. He always counted 
 many artists among his friends, and of the truest 
 as artists and as friends. He was one of the earli 
 est members of the Century Association, and used 
 playfully to say that the only office he really as 
 pired to was that of president of the Century. In 
 all gatherings of artists and lovers of art he was 
 welcome and honored. He was for many years a 
 trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a 
 trustee in fact as well as name. His taste in art 
 was refined and catholic, not coldly critical ; and if 
 he was not, and did not care to be, in the strict 
 sense, a connoisseur, he was in the best sense, as 
 
334 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 used in the charter of his beloved Century, an ama 
 teur. 
 
 Mr. Curtis was in his religious sentiments what, 
 for lack of a more definite term, is called a Unita 
 rian. For many years it was his habit, when the 
 Unitarian church on Staten Island was without a 
 pastor, to read of a Sunday, from the pulpit, a ser 
 mon to the congregation. He was the vice-presi 
 dent of the American Unitarian Association ; he 
 was, at the time of his death, President of the Uni 
 tarian National Conference, and he not infrequently 
 spoke, on questions involving the to him religious 
 duty of the citizen, in the church of his friend, the 
 Rev. John W. Chadwick, of Brooklyn. It is need 
 less to say that he was not a sectarian, and that 
 there was no taint in his mind of that narrowness 
 and bigotry which are the peril of a belief reject 
 ing much of what is most generally accepted. His 
 creed remained that expressed in the simple state 
 ment written to his brother in early manhood, and 
 quoted in the first chapter : " I believe in God, who 
 is love, that all men are brothers, and that the only 
 essential duty of every man is to be honest, by 
 which I understand his absolute following of his 
 conscience when duly enlightened. I do not be 
 lieve that God is anxious that men should believe 
 this or that theory of the Godhead, or of the divine 
 government, but that they should live purely, justly, 
 and lovingly." 
 
 A biography of Mr. Curtis, though it may con 
 vey to its readers some impression of what he did, 
 
CONCL USION. 335 
 
 and of the influence of his work and of his life, 
 must necessarily fail to give any adequate impres 
 sion of h is personality as it was known to those 
 who had the privilege of his intimacy, - - those to 
 whom love or friendship unlocked the treasures of 
 his delightful nature. The picture which, to use 
 a phrase frequently on his pen, " will be forever in 
 the memory " of his friends, was not that of the 
 orator, or of the leader in great causes, but that 
 of the companion and friend. 
 
 His tranquil and lovely home on Staten Island 
 and the home in Ashfield among the remote hills 
 of northern Massachusetts, bore to the busy and 
 struggling city something of the relation that their 
 master in his home bore to the man as he was 
 known in the world of affairs in which he took so 
 brave and strong a part. He was of a singularly 
 simple and consistent nature. He had not, as 
 some have, a different character at home and 
 abroad, but rather a different manifestation of it. 
 His talk was, on the whole, the best I have ever 
 known. It was at once free and measured. He had 
 great skill as a narrator, a natural skill, the fruit 
 of keen and sympathetic observation and of hearty 
 enjoyment of re-presentation. He had wit at times 
 caustic, but never cruel or unfair or conceited, and 
 always bright in itself and illuminating. He had 
 humor of a generous and suave sort ; and he was 
 capable, even in his latest years, of much of that 
 play with the topic or the feeling of the moment 
 which we recognize as "fun," though we cannot de 
 
336 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 fine it, and which was almost riotous in his early 
 letters. His love of music was constant, and, as a 
 close friend writes, "his touch on the piano, his 
 voice in singing, had a peculiar quality of sweet 
 ness." He smilingly adopted as to Wagner the 
 remark he often quoted as to Emerson, of the 
 Bostonian who " did not understand," but whose 
 " daughter did ; " and he took a half -sportive delight 
 in dwelling on the memory of the great singers of 
 the past, of whom Jenny Lind was to him the su 
 preme type ; but his tribute to Theodore Thomas, 
 at the farewell banquet to that apostle of Wagner, 
 was a very noble tribute to the master as well. He 
 had a gift in the nature of genius for hospitality 
 and for friendship ; and it was a curious evidence 
 of the richness and capacity of his nature that, 
 amid strenuous duties and labors that were crowd 
 ing, exacting, and must have been often exhausting, 
 he was able, not to find, but to make time for such 
 generous social intercourse. He had the precious 
 advantage of demanding and of giving in such in 
 tercourse only the substance and reality ; he did 
 not despise, he simply ignored, the artificial require 
 ments. He was at home in all circles, because in 
 all he was unaffectedly true to a nature constantly 
 sincere and kind and simple, but a nature also 
 opulent and varied, sensitive, sympathetic. Hi/ en 
 joyment of society, as of the outdoor world of art, 
 of music, and of books, was a sort of talent which 
 developed to the end, and did not wither or fail, 
 and which he delighted to cultivate. I think one 
 
CONCLUSION. . 337 
 
 essential condition of it was his extraordinary un 
 selfishness. The irritation that is bred of vanity, 
 jealousy, envy, the weariness and distrust that are 
 the revulsion from the f everishness of unworthy de 
 sires, seemed impossible to him. He invited and 
 won the best, because naturally and without con 
 straint he offered the best. It was due to this 
 quality of his nature that it was possible to say of 
 him, with reason and without exaggeration, that 
 he was "the man of all Americans, perhaps the 
 man in all the world, who was most widely held in 
 affectionate regard, the most lovable and the most 
 loved of all." The expressions of this sentiment 
 after his death, from all parts of the land, from 
 men of all parties and all classes, overbore even 
 the expressions of sorrow. " Our tears must fall," 
 said his friend, Mr. Norton, to those gathered in 
 the little church at Ashfield, " that we are to see 
 him no more ; but our hearts must be glad that his 
 memory belongs to us forever, is part of ourselves, 
 and will be to us a perpetual help and joy." And 
 in the sorrowful first meeting of the executive com 
 mittee of the New York Civil Service Reform 
 Association, Archdeacon Mackay-Smith closed a 
 simple review of the character and service of the 
 dead chief : " We must believe that he who did this 
 work and lived this life was very near to God." 
 
 His last public utterance was in March, 1892, 
 when he repeated in New York the Brooklyn ad 
 dress on- Lowell. Early in June he was taken 
 seriously ill, and after long and acute suffering, on 
 
338 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 the last day of the summer, in the quiet home on 
 Staten Island, he died. A few days before the 
 end, a younger brother on parting asked if there 
 was anything he could do for him. " Nothing," 
 was the answer, "but to continue to love me." 
 The words seem his last message to those who knew 
 him, and to the multitude of those who knew only 
 his work. It has been constantly in my mind. 
 
 " What is to be written," said a life-long friend 
 of his when his death brought under discussion 
 the preparation of a biography, " is the story of a 
 character." It is the sense of his character that 
 finally remains most distinctly, most firmly, with 
 the most vital influence, from the contemplation of 
 his life. Charm of many sorts he had, but the 
 supreme and pervading one was the completeness 
 with which he could render the charm of virtue, 
 and the spontaneous and constant proof he gave 
 that he was himself possessed by it. I have al 
 luded many times to this in the course of this vol 
 ume, because it was manifested in so many phases. 
 In public questions, from the early days when in 
 his boyish letters he anticipated Charles Sumner s 
 challenge to Webster to assume that leadership of 
 the cause of the right which alone could give his 
 genius its full scope, to the last noble and mournful 
 tribute to Lowell as a leader of the conscience as 
 well as the intellect of the nation ; in his brief but 
 splendid campaign against slavery ; in the trying 
 period of the Civil War ; in his long and patient 
 efforts first to keep his party true to its best and 
 
CONCL USION. 339 
 
 then to reclaim it ; in the years of advocacy of re 
 form in the civil service as the cause of honest 
 and pure public life ; in the unselfish and fruitful 
 championship of political independence to which so 
 much of his closing years was given, in all these 
 shone the high moral purpose of the man. In his 
 literary work after the books of travel which 
 were his sole venture in a realm where imagina 
 tion was sovereign under a thousand lights, in 
 greatly varying forms, and associated with peculiar 
 beauty of fancy, of construction and style, there 
 was the same moral purpose. His rare gifts he 
 brought, a rich and constant tribute, and laid them 
 at the feet of the conscience which was to him the 
 divinely appointed saviour of the world. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 ADDRESSES, Wesleyan University, 
 1856, 111 ; Philadelphia, " Present 
 Aspect of the Slavery Question," 
 126 ; Chicago Convention, 18CO, 134 ; 
 on Civil Service Reform, 212; on 
 Simmer, 236; at Concord, 239; 
 Chamber of Commerce banquet, 
 1876, 247; at Saratoga, 262; on 
 Bryant, 265; as president of the 
 National Civil Service Reform 
 League, 294-307 ; on Lowell, 309. 
 
 Alcott, at Brook Farm. 23 ; at Concord, 
 31. 
 
 Briggs, Charles F., editor of Putnam s 
 
 Magazine, 82. 
 Brook Farm, R. W. Emerson on, 19 ; 
 
 C. A. Dana, 22 ; influence on Curtis, 
 
 26 ; sketch by Curtis, 27. 
 Bryant, W. C., work before 1851, 55; 
 
 oration on, 265. 
 Bun-ill, Elizabeth (mother of G. W. 
 
 Curtis, b. 1798, d. 1826), 6. 
 Burrill genealogy, 2. 
 Burrill, James, Jr., Chief Justice 
 
 of Rhode Island, United States 
 
 Senator, 6. 
 
 Civil Service Reform, spoils system in 
 Senate, 199 ; first commission, 216 ; 
 abandonment by President Grant, 
 239-244; National League formed, 
 273 ; law of 1883, 275-278. 
 
 Curtis, Ephraim, b. 1642, 2 ; Indian ex 
 pedition, 2 ; first settler of Worces 
 ter, 4. 
 
 Curtis genealogy, 2, note. 
 
 Curtis, George (father of G. W., b. 
 1796, d. 1856), 6 ; married Elizabeth 
 Burrill, 6 ; second marriage, 6 ; 
 character, 6; president Bank of 
 Commerce, 18; death (1856), 105. 
 
 Curtis, George William, b. Feb. 24, 
 1824, 6 ; religious creed, 7 ; school 
 ing, 8 ; life in Providence, 8 ; re 
 moval to New York, 18 ; work in 
 counting room, 19 ; boarder at Brook 
 Farm, 19; studies there, 20; life 
 there, 20 ; described by a resident, 
 21 ; Alcott s address, 23 ; Webster 
 at Bunker Hill, 24 ; letter to father, 
 24, 25 ; sketch of Brook Farm, 27 ; 
 
 returns to New York, 29 ; studies, 29 ; 
 life at Concord, 30 ; club, 31 ; letter 
 on slavery, 1844, 32 ; sails for Europe, 
 1846, 39 ; newspaper letters, 40 ; 
 diary, 40-50 ; Genoa, 41 ; Florence, 
 42 ; Rome, 44 ; the Pope, 45 ; return 
 from Europe, 1850, 58; "NileNotes," 
 58 ; letter on, 62 ; estimate of, 65-73 ; 
 lectures, 74 ; on Tribune, 74; "Lotus- 
 Eating," 75; Fugitive Slave Law, 
 letter on, 76 ; connection with Har 
 per & Bros., 77; "The Lounger," 
 78 ; editor Putnam s Magazine, 78 ; 
 verses, 79 ; " Life of Mehemet Ali," 
 81 ; reminiscences by Parke Godwin, 
 
 1 Prue and I," Godwin on, 96 ; be 
 trothal, 102 ; marriage with Anna 
 Shaw, 102 ; "Easy Chair," 1854, 104 ; 
 death of his father, letter on, 105 ; 
 business losses, 106 ; debts assumed, 
 107 ; campaign of 1856, 109 ; address 
 at Wesleyan University, Middle- 
 town, Conn., Ill ; canvass of Penn 
 sylvania, 116 ; N. P. Willis first vote, 
 116; the home on Staten Island, 
 birth of his son, 118 ; work on Har 
 per s Weekly, 120 ; " Trumps," 1859, 
 121 ; mobbed in Philadelphia, 126 ; 
 chairman of Republican County 
 Committee, 130 ; discussion of can 
 didates for I860, 130 ; delegate to 
 Republican National Convention, 
 1860, 132; effective speech, 134; 
 " Disunion, and God for the Right " 
 (1860), 139; defense of Seward 
 (1861), 140; birth of a daughter 
 (1861), 144; New York "taken," 
 145 ; events of 1861 and 1862, in let 
 ters to Norton, 148-160; Congres 
 sional Convention, 159 ; death of his 
 brother, Col. Joseph B. Curtis, 1862, 
 160 ; draft riots, 1863, 164 ; editor 
 of Harper s Weekly, 169 ; estimate 
 of work and methods, 170-177 ; visit 
 to Lincoln, 178 ; Republican National 
 Convention of 1864, 178 ; degree of 
 LL. D., Madison University, 1864, 
 181 ; Burnside, 182 ; nominated to 
 Congress, 1864, 183 ; defeated, 184 ; 
 
342 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 reelection of Lincoln, 184 ; war lec 
 tures, 185 ; death of Lincoln, 188 ; 
 a new paper proposed, his views, 
 189 ; Lowell s Commemoration Ode, 
 192 ; delegate to Constitutional Con 
 vention, 192 ; Senatorship, 193 ; 
 course in convention, 195 ; women, 
 suffrage for, 196 ; impeachment of 
 Andrew Johnson, 198 ; spoils system 
 in Senate, 199 ; presidential elector, 
 1868, 202 ; offered editorship of New 
 York Times, 203 ; independent jour 
 nalism, 203; nominated for secre 
 tary of state and declined, 18G9, 204 ; 
 the nomination for governor, 207 ; 
 lectures onCivilService Reform, 212; 
 appointment to Civil Service Com 
 mission, 1S71, 216 ; report, 217-227 ; 
 Liberal Republican movement, 1872, 
 229; resignation from commission, 
 232 ; sickness, 233 ; " bolting," 234 ; 
 the reaction, 235 ; oration on Sum- 
 ner, 236 ; oration at Concord, 239 ; 
 Lowell s ode, 244 ; campaign of 1876, 
 245; the disputed election, speech 
 at Chamber of Commerce banquet, 
 247; offered choice of chief mis 
 sions, 253 ; Lowell, minister to 
 Spain, 255 ; attack by Roscoe Conk- 
 ling, 257 ; conception of political in 
 dependence, 258; oration at Sara 
 toga, 262 ; oration on Bryant, 265 ; 
 offer of German mission, 268 ; Inde- 
 pendentRepublicanmoveinent, 1879, 
 268 ; election of Garfield, 271 ; assas 
 sination, 273 ; Civil Service Reform 
 League, 273 ; the Folger campaign, 
 1882, 275 ; resignation from Harper s 
 Weekly and its withdrawal, 274; 
 Civil Service Reform law, 276 ; " The 
 Elaine Campaign," the situation, 
 279 ; action of Independent Repub 
 licans, 285; delegate to National 
 Convention, 285; Elaine s nomina 
 tion, 287 ; support of Cleveland, 
 288 ; letter on, 289 ; good faith, let 
 ter on, 290 ; abuse received, 292 ; ad 
 dresses and labors as president of the 
 Reform League, 294-307 ; canvass of 
 1888, 308; letter, on, 309; letters 
 of Motley, 311 ; address on Lowell, 
 312 ; Chancellor of the University 
 of New York, 317-321 ; ideal of elo 
 quence, 326 ; Curtis as orator, 329 ; 
 as writer, 330 ; honorary degrees, 
 333 ; the Century Club, 333 ; reli 
 gion, 334 ; death, 337. 
 
 Curtis, Henry, sailed from London, 
 1635, 1 ; settled at Watertown, 
 Mass., 1636, 2, note; children, 2, 
 note. 
 
 Curtis, James Burrill, b. 1822, 6 ; 
 "Our Cousin the Curate," 12; de 
 scribed, 22. 
 
 Curtis, John (b. 1707), 5 ; loyalist, 5; 
 
 reconciliation, 6. 
 Curtis, Joseph B., Col., 160, note. 
 
 Degrees: Hon. A. M., Brown, 1854, 
 Madison, 1864, Rochester, 1862; 
 LL. D., Madison University, 1864, 
 Harvard, 1881, Brown, 1882 ; 
 L. H. D., Columbia, 1887, 333. 
 
 " Egyptian Serenade " (poem), 80. 
 Emerson, R. W. , 15 ; on Brook Farm, 
 19. 
 
 Fugitive Slave Law, letter on, 76. 
 
 Godwin, Parke, Putnam s Magazine, 
 82 ; reminiscences of Curtis, 82 ; on 
 " Potiphar Papers," 91. 
 
 Harper & Bros., Curtie s connection 
 
 with, 77. 
 
 Harper s Weekly, Curtis s contribu 
 tions to, 78 ; " The Lounger," 78 ; 
 I circulation, 120; resignation from 
 ! and its withdrawal, 274. 
 : Hawthorne, at Concord Club, 31 ; work 
 
 before 1851, 54. . 
 [ Howadji in Syria, 1852, 65. 
 Howadji, Nile Notes of, 1851, 59 ; no 
 tices of, GO ; censured, 61 ; letter on, 
 62. 
 
 Irving, Washington, 53. 
 
 Lectures, first, 74 ; War, 185 ; Civil 
 Service Rsform, 212; "The Public 
 Duty of fc.tiiratpd Men," 1877, 258. 
 
 Literary field in 1851, 52. 
 
 " Lotus-Ep.tinr," 18. r >2, 75, 
 
 " Lounger," The, 78. 
 
 Lowell, J. R., in 1851, 56 ; on " Pruo 
 and I " and " Potiphar Papers," 122; 
 letters to, 192, 209-211, 244, 255; 
 address on, 312. 
 
 "Nile Notes of a Howadji," 1851, 
 59. 
 
 Norton, Charles Eliot, letters to, 59, 
 106, 116, 118-120, 136-138, 144, 145, 
 146, 148, 162, 164-167, 177-182, 184, 
 187, 189, 193, 194, 204, 207, 230, 231, 
 233, 235, 245, 253, 257, 267, 275. 
 
 " Potiphar Papers," Parke Godwin on, 
 
 91 ; estimate of, 92-96. 
 "Prue and I," Parke Godwin on, 
 
 96. 
 Putnam s Magazine, Curtis editor of, 
 
 78 ; contributors to, 81, note ; Charle 
 
 F. Briggs, editor of, 82 ; Paike God 
 
 win, editor of, 82. 
 
 "Reaper, "The (poem), 79. 
 
INDEX. 
 Slavery, letter on, 1844, 32 ; letter on Tariff, letter on, 1844, 35. 
 
 343 
 
 Fugitive Slave Law, 76 ; campaign of 
 1856, 109; first address, Wesleyan 
 University, Middletown, Conn., Ill; 
 canvass of Pennsylvania, 116 ; the 
 Philadelphia mob, 126; emancipa 
 tion proclamation, 158. 
 
 Spoils system in United States Senate, 
 199. 
 
 Suffrage for women, 196. 
 
 Thackeray, estimate of, 78. 
 
 Thoreau at Concord, 31. 
 
 Tribune, The New York, Curtis swork 
 
 on, 74 ; course changed, 148. 
 "Trumps," 1859, 121. 
 
 Webster, Daniel, at Bunker Hill, 24. 
 
 Winthrop, Theodore, marches with 
 
 the 7th regiment, 145 ; death, 146. 
 
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