tbf I&atnfs of 
 (good Him and 
 
 MIRIAM EDITION 
 
 Written by Elbert Hubbard 
 and done into a Book by The 
 Roycrofters at their Shop, at 
 East Aurora, New York, mem x
 
 Copyright 1910 
 
 by 
 Elbert Hubbard
 
 HSf 
 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 GEORGE ELIOT . 
 THOMAS CARLYLE . 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 W. E. GLADSTONE 
 J. M. W. TURNER . 
 JONATHAN SWIFT . 
 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 9 
 29 
 
 49 
 67 
 
 . 87 
 
 107 
 
 . 127
 
 GEORGE ELIOT
 
 "May I reach 
 
 That purest heaven, be to other souls 
 The cup of strength in some great agony, 
 Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, 
 Beget the smiles that have no cruelty 
 Be the good presence of a good diffused, 
 And in diffusion ever more intense. 
 So shall I join the choir invisible 
 Whose music is the gladness of the world."
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 i ARWICKSHIRE gave to the world William 
 Shakespeare. It also gave Mary Ann 
 Evans. No one will question that Shakes- 
 peare's is the greatest name in English 
 literature; and among writers living or 
 dead, in England or out of it, no woman 
 has ever shown us power equal to that of 
 George Eliot, in the subtle clairvoyance 
 which divines the inmost play of passions, 
 the experience that shows human capacity 
 for contradiction, and the indulgence that 
 is merciful because it understands. 
 Shakespeare lived three hundred years ago. 
 According to the records, his father, in 
 Fifteen Hundred Sixty-three, owned a 
 certain house in Henley Street, Stratford- 
 on-Avon. Hence we infer that William 
 Shakespeare was born there. And in all 
 our knowledge of Shakespeare's early life 
 (or later) we prefix the words, "Hence 
 we infer." 
 
 That the man knew all the sciences of 
 his day, and had such a knowledge of each 
 of the learned professions that all have 
 claimed him as their own, we realize. 
 He evidently was acquainted with five 
 different languages, and the range of his 
 intellect was world-wide, but where did 
 he get this vast erudition? We do not
 
 IO 
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 know, and we excuse ourselves by saying that he lived three 
 hundred years ago. 
 
 George Eliot lived yesterday, and we know no more about 
 her youthful days than we do of that other child of War- 
 wickshire jfc jt 
 
 One biographer tells us that she was born in Eighteen 
 Hundred Nineteen, another in Eighteen Hundred Twenty, 
 and neither state the day; whereas a recent writer in the 
 "Pall Mali Budget" graciously bestows on us the useful 
 information that "William Shakespeare was born on the 
 Twenty-first day of April, Fifteen Hundred Sixty-three, at 
 fifteen minutes of two on a stormy morning." 
 Concise statements of facts are always valuable, but we 
 have none such concerning the early life of George Eliot. 
 There is even a shadow over her parentage, for no less an 
 authority than the "American Cyclopedia Annual" for 
 Eighteen Hundred Eighty, boldly proclaims that she was 
 not a foundling and, moreover, that she was not adopted 
 by a rich retired clergyman who gave her a splendid school- 
 ing. Then the writer dives into obscurity, but presently 
 reappears and adds that he does not know where she got 
 her education. For all of which we are very grateful. 
 Shakespeare left five signatures, each written in a different 
 way, and now there is a goodly crew who spell it "Bacon." 
 <I And likewise we do not know whether it is Mary Ann 
 Evans, Mary Anne Evans or Marian Evans, for she herself 
 is said to have used each form at various times. 
 William Winter gentle critic, poet, scholar tells us that 
 the Sonnets show a dark spot in Shakespeare's moral record.
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 11 
 
 And if I remember rightly, similar things have been hinted 
 at in sewing-circles concerning George Eliot. Then they 
 each found the dew and sunshine in London that caused 
 the flowers of genius to blossom. The early productions of 
 both were published anonymously, and lastly they both 
 knew how to transmute thought into gold, for they died rich. 
 <J Lady Godiva rode through the streets of Coventry, but I 
 walked walked all the way from Stratford, by way of 
 Warwick (call it Warrick, please) and Kenilworth Castle. 
 <J I stopped overnight at that quaint and curious little 
 inn just across from the castle entrance. The good landlady 
 gave me the same apartment that was occupied by Sir 
 Walter Scott when he came here and wrote the first chapter 
 of "Kenilworth." 
 
 The little room had pretty, white chintz curtains tied with 
 blue ribbon, and similar stuff draped the mirror. The bed 
 was a big canopy affair I had to stand on a chair in order 
 to dive off into its feathery depths everything was very 
 neat and clean, and the dainty linen had a sweet smell of 
 lavender. I took one parting look out through the open 
 window at the ivy-mantled towers of the old castle, which 
 were all sprinkled with silver by the rising moon, and then 
 I fell into gentlest sleep. 
 
 I dreamed of playing "I-spy" through Kenilworth Castle 
 with Shakespeare, Walter Scott, Mary Ann Evans and a 
 youth I used to know in boyhood by the name of Bill Hursey. 
 We chased each other across the drawbridge, through the 
 portcullis, down the slippery stones into the donjon-keep, 
 around the moat, and up the stone steps to the topmost
 
 12 GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 turret of the towers. Finally Shakespeare was "it," but he 
 got mad and refused to play. Walter Scott said it was "no 
 fair," and Bill Hursey thrust out the knuckle of one middle 
 finger in a very threatening way and offered to "do" the 
 boy from Stratford. Then Mary Ann rushed in to still the 
 tempest. There's no telling what would have happened had 
 not the landlady just then rapped at my door and asked if 
 I had called. I awoke with a start and with the guilty feeling 
 that I had been shouting in my sleep. I saw it was morning. 
 "No that is, yes; my shaving-water, please." 
 After breakfast the landlady's boy offered for five shillings 
 to take me in his donkey-cart to the birthplace of George 
 Eliot. He explained that the house was just seven miles 
 North ; but Baalam's express is always slow, so I concluded 
 to walk. At Coventry a cab-owner proposed to show me 
 the house, which he declared was near Kenilworth, for 
 twelve shillings. The advantages of seeing Kenilworth at 
 the same time were dwelt upon at great length by cabby, 
 but I hearkened not to the voice of the siren. I got a good 
 lunch at the hotel, and asked the innkeeper if he could tell 
 me where George Eliot was born. He did not know, but 
 said he could show me a house around the corner where a 
 family of Eliots lived. 
 
 Then I walked on to Nuneaton. A charming walk it was; 
 past quaint old houses, some with straw-thatched roofs, 
 others tiled roses clambering over the doors and flowering 
 hedgerows white with' hawthorn-flowers. Occasionally, I 
 met a farmer's cart drawn by one of those great, fat, gentle 
 Shire horses that George Eliot has described so well. All
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 13 
 
 spoke of peace and plenty, quiet and rest. The green fields 
 and the flowers, the lark-song and the sunshine, the dipping 
 willows by the stream and the arch of the old stone bridge 
 as I approached the village all these I had seen and known 
 and felt before from "Mill on the Floss." 
 I found the house where they say the novelist was born. 
 A plain, whitewashed, stone structure, built two hundred 
 years ago ; two stories, the upper chambers low, with gable- 
 windows; a little garden at the side bright with flowers, 
 where sweet majoram vied with onions and beets ; all spoke 
 of humble thrift and homely cares. In front was a great 
 chestnut-tree, and in the roadway near were two ancient 
 elms where saucy crows were building a nest. 
 Here, after her mother died, Mary Ann Evans was house- 
 keeper. Little more than a child tall, timid, and far from 
 strong she cooked and scrubbed and washed, and was 
 herself the mother to brothers and sisters. Her father was 
 a carpenter by trade and agent for a rich landowner. He 
 was a stern man orderly, earnest, industrious, studious. 
 On rides about the country he would take the tall, hollow- 
 eyed girl with him, and at such times he would talk to her 
 of the great outside world where wondrous things were done. 
 The child toiled hard, but found time to read and question 
 and there is always time to think. Soon she had outgrown 
 some of her good father's beliefs, and this grieved him 
 greatly; so much, indeed, that her extra loving attention 
 to his needs, in a hope to neutralize his displeasure, only 
 irritated him the more ^ And if there is soft, subdued 
 sadness in much of George Eliot's writing we can guess the
 
 14 GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 reason. The onward and upward march ever means sad 
 separation jfc Jt 
 
 When Mary Ann was blossoming into womanhood her 
 father moved over near Coventry, and here the ambitious 
 girl first found companionship in her intellectual desires. 
 Here she met men and women, older than herself, who were 
 animated, earnest thinkers. They read and then they dis- 
 cussed, and then they spoke the things that they felt were 
 true. Those eight years at Coventry transformed the awk- 
 ward country girl into a woman of intellect and purpose. 
 She knew somewhat of all sciences, all philosophies, and 
 she had become a proficient scholar in German and French. 
 How did she acquire this knowledge ? How is any education 
 acquired if not through effort prompted by desire? 
 She had already translated Strauss's "Life of Jesus" in"a 
 manner that was acceptable to the author. When Ralph 
 Waldo Emerson came to Coventry to lecture, he was enter- 
 tained at the same house where Miss Evans was stopping. 
 Her brilliant conversation pleased him, and when she 
 questioned the wisdom of a certain passage in one of his 
 essays the gentle philosopher turned, smiled, and said that 
 he had not seen it in that light before ; perhaps she was right. 
 <J "What is your favorite book?" asked Emerson. 1 
 "Rousseau's 'Confessions,'" answered Mary instantly jt 
 It was Emerson's favorite, too; but such honesty from a 
 young woman! It was queer. 
 
 Mr. Emerson never forgot Miss Evans of Coventry, and 
 ten years after, when a zealous reviewer proclaimed her 
 the greatest novelist in England, the sage of Concord said
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 15 
 
 something that sounded like "I told you so." ^ Miss Evans 
 had made visits to London from time to time with her 
 Coventry friends. When twenty-eight years old, after one 
 such visit to London, she came back to the country tired and 
 weary, and wrote this most womanly wish : "My only ardent 
 desire is to find some feminine task to discharge; some 
 possibility of devoting myself to some one and making that 
 one purely and calmly happy." 
 
 But now her father was dead and her income was very scanty. 
 She did translating, and tried the magazines with articles 
 that generally came back respectfully declined. 
 Then an offer came as sub-editor of the "Westminster 
 Review." It was steady work and plenty of it, and this was 
 what she desired jt She went to London and lived in the 
 household of her employer, Mr. Chapman. Here she had 
 the opportunity of meeting many brilliant people: Carlyle 
 and his "Jeannie Welsh," the Martineaus, Grote, Mr. and 
 Mrs. Mill, Huxley, Mazzini, Louis Blanc. Besides these were 
 two young men who must not be left out when we sum 
 up the influences that evolved this woman's genius. 
 She was attracted to Herbert Spencer at once. He was about 
 her age, and their admiration for each other was mutual. 
 Miss Evans, writing to a friend in Eighteen Hundred Fifty- 
 two, says, "Spencer is kind, he is delightful, and I always 
 feel better after being with him, and we have agreed together 
 that there is no reason why we should not see each other as 
 often as we wish." And then later she again writes: "The 
 bright side of my life, after the affection for my old friends, 
 is the new and delightful friendship which I have found in
 
 16 GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 Herbert Spencer. We see each other every day and in every- 
 thing we enjoy a delightful comradeship. If it were not for 
 him my life would be singularly arid." 
 But about this time another man appeared on the scene, 
 and were it not for this other man, who was introduced to 
 Miss Evans by Spencer, the author of "Synthetic Philosophy" 
 might not now be spoken of in the biographical dictionaries 
 as having been "wedded to science." 
 
 It was not love at first sight, for George Henry Lewes made 
 a decidedly unfavorable impression on Miss Evans at their 
 first meeting. He was small, his features were insignificant, 
 he had whiskers like an anarchist and a mouthful of crooked 
 teeth ; his personal habits were far from pleasant. It was this 
 sort of thing, Dickens said, that caused his first wife to desert 
 him and finally drove her into insanity. 
 But Lewes had a brilliant mind. He was a linguist, a scientist, 
 a novelist, a poet and a wit. He had written biography, 
 philosophy and a play. He had been a journalist, a lecturer 
 and even an actor. Thackeray declared that if he should see 
 Lewes perched on a white elephant in Piccadilly he should 
 not be in the least surprised. 
 
 After having met Miss Evans several times, Mr. Lewes saw 
 the calm depths of her mind and he asked her to correct 
 proofs for him. She did so and discovered that there was 
 merit in his work. She corrected more proofs, and when a 
 woman begins to assist a man the danger-line is being 
 approached jt Cloie observers noted that a change was 
 coming over the bohemian Lewes. He had his whiskers 
 trimmed, his hair was combed, and the bright yellow necktie
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 17 
 
 had been discarded for a clean one of modest brown, and, 
 sometimes, his boots were blacked & In July, Eighteen 
 Hundred Fifty-four, Mr. Chapman received a letter from his 
 sub-editor resigning her position, and Miss Evans notified 
 some of her closest friends that hereafter she wished to be 
 considered the wife of Mr. Lewes jft, She was then in her 
 thirty-sixth year. 
 
 The couple disappeared, having gone to Germany. 
 Many people were shocked. Some said, "We knew it all the 
 tune," and when Herbert Spencer was informed of the fact 
 he exclaimed, "Goodness me!" and said nothing. 
 After six months spent at Weimar and other literary centers, 
 Mr. and Mrs. Lewes returned to England and began house- 
 keeping at Richmond. Any one who views their old quarters 
 there will see how very plainly and economically they were 
 forced to live. But they worked hard, and at this time the 
 future novelist's desire seemed only to assist her husband. 
 That she developed the manly side of his nature none can 
 deny. They were very happy, these two, as they wrote, and 
 copied, and studied, and toiled. 
 
 Three years passed, and Mrs. Lewes wrote to a friend: "I 
 am very happy; happy with the greatest happiness that life 
 can give the complete sympathy and affection of a man 
 whose mind stimulates mine and keeps up in me a wholesome 
 activity." 
 
 Mr. Lewes knew the greatness of his helpmeet. She herself 
 did not. He urged her to write a story; she hesitated, and at 
 last attempted it. They read the first chapter together and 
 cried over it. Then she wrote more and always read her
 
 i8 GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 husband the chapters as they were turned off. He corrected, 
 encouraged, and found a publisher. But why should I tell 
 about it here? It's all in the "Britannica" how the gentle 
 beauty and sympathetic insight of her work touched the 
 hearts of great and lowly alike, and of how riches began 
 flowing in upon her. For one book she received forty thousand 
 dollars, and her income after fortune smiled upon her was 
 never less than ten thousand dollars a year. 
 Lewes was her secretary, her protector, her slave and her 
 inspiration. He kept at bay the public that would steal her 
 time, and put out of her reach, at her request, all reviews, 
 good or bad, and shielded her from the interviewer, the 
 curiosity-seeker, and the greedy financier. 
 The reason why she at first wrote under a nom de plume is 
 plain. To the great, wallowing world she was neither Miss 
 Evans nor Mrs. Lewes, so she dropped both names as far 
 as title-pages were concerned and used a man's name instead 
 hoping better to elude the pack. 
 
 When "Adam Bede" came out, a resident of Nuneaton 
 purchased a copy and at once discovered local earmarks. 
 The scenes described, the flowers, the stone walls, the 
 bridges, the barns, the people all was Nuneaton. Who 
 wrote it? No one knew, but it was surely some one in 
 Nuneaton. So they picked out a Mr. Liggins, a solemn- 
 faced preacher, who was always about to do something 
 great, and they said "Liggins." Soon all London said 
 "Liggins." As for Liggins, he looked wise and smiled 
 knowingly. Then articles began to appear in the periodicals 
 purporting to have been written by the author of "Adam
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 19 
 
 Bede." A book came out called "Adam Bede, Jr.," and to 
 protect her publisher, the public and herself, George Eliot 
 had to reveal her identity. 
 
 Many men have written good books and never tasted fame ; 
 but few, like Liggins of Nuneaton, have become famous 
 by doing nothing. It only proves that some things can be 
 done as well as others. This breed of men has long dwelt in 
 Warwickshire; Shakespeare had them in mind when he 
 wrote, "There be men who do a wilful stillness entertain 
 with purpose to be dressed in an opinion of wisdom, gravity 
 and profound conceit." 
 
 Lord Acton in an able article in the "Nineteenth Century" 
 makes this statement: 
 
 "George Eliot paid high for happiness with Lewes. She 
 forfeited freedom of speech, the first place among English 
 women, and a tomb in Westminster Abbey." 
 The original dedication in "Adam Bede" reads thus: "To 
 my dear husband, George Henry Lewes, I give the manu- 
 script of a work which would never have been written but 
 for the happiness which his love has conferred on my life." 
 CJ Lord Acton of course assumes that this book would have 
 been written, dedication and all, just the same had Miss 
 Evans never met Mr. Lewes. 
 
 Once there was a child called Romola. She said to her father 
 one day, as she sat on his knee: "Papa, who would take 
 care of me give me my bath and put me to bed nights 
 if you had never happened to meet Mamma?" 
 
 -........*** 
 
 The days I spent in Warwickshire were very pleasant jt
 
 20 GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 The serene beauty of the country and the kindly courtesy 
 
 of the people impressed me greatly. Having beheld the 
 
 scenes of George Eliot's childhood, I desired to view the 
 
 place where her last days were spent. It was a fine May 
 
 day when I took the little steamer from London Bridge 
 
 for Chelsea. 
 
 A bird-call from the dingy brick building where Turner 
 
 died, and two blocks from the old home of Carlyle, is 
 
 Cheyne Walk a broad avenue facing the river. The 
 
 houses are old, but they have a look of gracious gentility 
 
 that speaks of ease and plenty. High iron fences are in 
 
 front, but they do not shut off from view the climbing 
 
 clematis and clusters of roses that gather over the windows 
 
 and doors. 
 
 I stood at the gate of Number 4 Cheyne Walk and admired 
 
 the pretty flowers, planted in such artistic carelessness as 
 
 to beds and rows; then I rang the bell an old pull-out 
 
 affair with polished knob. 
 
 Presently a butler opened the door a pompous, tall and 
 
 awful butler, in serious black and with side- whiskers. He 
 
 approached; came down the walk swinging a bunch of 
 
 keys, looking me over as he came, to see what sort of wares 
 
 I had to sell. 
 
 "Did George Eliot live here?" I asked through the bars. 
 
 <J "Mrs. Cross lived 'ere and died 'ere, sir," came the 
 
 solemn and rebuking answer. 
 
 "I mean Mrs. Cross," I added meekly; "I only wished 
 
 to see the little garden where she worked." 
 
 Jeenies was softened. As he unlocked the gate he said:
 
 GEOR GE ELIOT 21 
 
 "We 'ave many wisiters, sir; a great bother, sir; still, I 
 always knows a gentleman when I sees one. P'r'aps you 
 would like to see the 'ouse, too, sir. The missus does not 
 like it much, but I will take 'er your card, sir." 
 I gave him the card and slipped a shilling into his hand 
 as he gave me a seat in the hallway. 
 He disappeared upstairs and soon returned with the pleasing 
 information that I was to be shown the whole house and 
 garden. So I pardoned him the myth about the missus, 
 happening to know that at that particular moment she was 
 at Brighton, sixty miles away. 
 
 A goodly, comfortable house, four stories, well kept, and 
 much fine old carved oak in the dining-room and hallways ; 
 fantastic ancient balusters, and a peculiar bay window in 
 the second-story rear that looked out over the little garden. 
 Off to the North could be seen the green of Kensington 
 Gardens and wavy suggestions of Hyde Park. This was 
 George Eliot's workshop. There was a table in the center 
 of the room and three low bookcases with pretty ornaments 
 above. In the bay window was the most conspicuous object 
 in the room a fine marble bust of Goethe jt This, I was 
 assured, had been the property of Mrs. Cross, as well as 
 all the books and furniture in the room. In one corner was 
 a revolving case containing a set of the "Century Dictionary" 
 which Jeemes assured me had been purchased by Mr. Cross 
 as a present for his wife a short time before she died. This 
 caused my faith to waver a trifle and put to flight a fine bit 
 of literary frenzy that might have found form soon in a 
 sonnet & jt
 
 22 GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 In the front parlor, I saw a portrait of the former occupant 
 that showed u the face that looked like a horse." But that 
 is better than to have the face of any other animal of which 
 I know. Surely one would not want to look like a dog! 
 Shakespeare hated dogs, but spoke forty-eight times in his 
 plays in terms of respect and affection for a horse. Who 
 would not resent the imputation that one's face was like 
 that of a sheep or a goat or an ox, and much gore has been 
 shed because men have referred to other men as asses 
 but a horse! God bless you, yes! 
 
 No one has ever accused George Eliot of being handsome, 
 but this portrait tells of a woman of fifty : calm, gentle, and 
 the strong features speak of a soul in which to confide. 
 At Highgate, by the side of the grave of Lewes, rests the 
 dust of this great and loving woman. As the pilgrim enters 
 that famous old cemetery the first imposing monument seen 
 is a pyramid of rare, costly porphyry. As you draw near, 
 you read this inscription : 
 
 To the memory of 
 
 ANN JEWSON CRISP 
 
 Who departed this life 
 
 Deeply lamented, Jan. 20, 1889. 
 
 Also, 
 Her dog, Emperor. 
 
 Beneath these tender lines is a bas-relief of as vicious- 
 looking a cur as ever evaded the dog-tax. 
 Continuing up the avenue, past this monument just noted,
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 23 
 
 the kind old gardener will show you another that stands 
 amid others much more pretentious a small gray-granite 
 column, and on it, carved in small letters, you read : 
 
 "Of those immortal dead who live again in minds made 
 better by their presence." 
 
 Here rests the body of 
 
 "GEORGE ELIOT" 
 
 (MARY ANN CROSS) 
 Born 22 November, 1819. 
 Died 22 December, 1880.
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE
 
 NE comfort is that great men taken up in any way are profitable 
 company. We can not look, however imperfectly, upon a great 
 man without gaining something by it. He is the living fountain of 
 life, which it is pleasant to be near. On any terms whatsoever you 
 will not grudge to wander in his neighborhood for a while. 
 
 Heroes and Hero- Worship
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 N my way to Dumfries I stopped overnight 
 at Gretna Green, which, as all fair maidens 
 know, is in Scotland just over the border 
 from England. 
 
 To my delight I found that the coming of 
 runaway couples to Gretna Green was not 
 entirely a matter of the past, for the very 
 evening I arrived a blushing pair came to 
 the inn and inquired for a "meenister." 
 The ladye faire was a little stout and the 
 worthy swain several years older than my 
 fancy might have wished, but still I did 
 not complain. 
 
 The landlord's boy was despatched to the 
 rectory around the corner and soon returned 
 with the reverend gentleman. 
 I was an uninvited guest in the little parlor, 
 but no one observed that my wedding- 
 garment was only a cycling costume, and 
 I was not challenged. 
 After the ceremony, the several other wit- 
 nesses filed past the happy couple, congrat- 
 ulating them and kissing the bride. 
 I did likewise, and was greeted with a 
 resounding smack which surprised me a 
 bit, but I managed to ask, "Did you run 
 away?" 
 
 "Noo," said the groom; "noo, her was a 
 widdie we just coom over fram Eccle-
 
 30 THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 f echan " ; then, lowering his voice to a confidential whisper, 
 
 "We 're goin' baack on the morrow. It 's cheaper thaan 
 
 to ha' a big, spread weddin'." 
 
 This answer banished all tender sentiment from me and 
 
 made useless my plans for a dainty love-story, but I seized 
 
 upon the name of the place whence they came : 
 
 " Ecclef echan ! Ecclef echan! why that 's where Carlyle was 
 
 born I" 
 
 "Aye, sir, and he's buried there; a great mon he was 
 
 but an infideel." 
 
 Ten miles beyond Gretna Green is Ecclefechan a little 
 
 village of stucco houses all stretched out on one street. Plain, 
 
 homely, rocky and unromantic is the country round about, 
 
 and plain, homely and unromantic is the little house where 
 
 Carlyle was bora. The place is shown the visitor by a good 
 
 old dame who takes one from room to room, giving a little 
 
 lecture meanwhile in a mixture of Gaelic and English which 
 
 was quite beyond my ken. Several relics of interest are shown, 
 
 and although the house is almost precisely like all others 
 
 in the vicinity, imagination throws round it all a roseate 
 
 wreath of fancies. 
 
 It has been left on record that up to the year when Carlyle 
 
 was married, his "most pleasurable times were those when 
 
 he enjoyed a quiet pipe with his mother." 
 
 To few men indeed is this felicity vouchsafed. But for those 
 
 who have eaten oatmeal porridge in the wayside cottages 
 
 of bonny Scotland, or "who love to linger over "The Cotter's 
 
 Saturday Night," there is a touch of tender pathos in the 
 
 picture. The stone floor, the bare, whitewashed walls, the
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 31 
 
 peat smoldering on the hearth, sending out long, fitful 
 streaks that dance among the rafters overhead, and the 
 mother and son sitting there watching the coal silent. The 
 woman takes a small twig from a bundle of sticks, reaches 
 over, lights it, applies it to her pipe, takes a few whiffs and 
 passes the light to her son. Then they talk in low, earnest 
 tones of man's duty to man and man's duty to God. 
 And it was this mother who first applied the spark that 
 fired Carlyle's ambition ; it was from her that he got the germ 
 of those talents which have made his name illustrious. 
 Yet this woman could barely read and did not learn to write 
 until her firstborn had gone away from the home nest. Then 
 it was that she sharpened a gray goose-quill and labored 
 long and patiently, practising with this instrument (said to 
 be mightier than the sword) and with ink she herself had 
 mixed all that she might write a letter to her boy ; and how 
 sweetly, tenderly homely, and loving are these letters as we 
 read them today! 
 
 James Carlyle with his own hands built, in Seventeen Hundred 
 Ninety, this house at Ecclefechan ^ The same year he 
 married an excellent woman, a second cousin, by name 
 Janet Carlyle. She lived but a year. The poor husband was 
 heartbroken, and declared, as many men under like conditions 
 had done before and have done since, that his sorrow was 
 inconsolable. And he vowed that he would walk through 
 life and down to his death alone. 
 
 But it is a matter for congratulation that he broke his vow. 
 <]j In two years he married Margaret Aitken a serving- 
 woman. She bore nine children. Thomas was the eldest and
 
 32 THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 the only one who proved recreant to the religious faith of his 
 fathers Jt> Jt> 
 
 One of the brothers moved to Shiawassee County, Michigan, 
 where I had the pleasure of calling on bun, some years ago. 
 A hard-headed man, he was: sensible, earnest, honest, 
 with a stubby beard and a rich brogue. He held the office of 
 school trustee, also that of poundmaster, and I was told that 
 he served his township loyally and well. 
 This worthy man looked with small favor on the literary 
 pretensions of his brother Tammas, and twice wrote him 
 long letters expostulating with him on his religious vagaries. 
 "I knew no good could come of it," sorrowfully said he, 
 and so I left him. 
 
 But I inquired of several of the neighbors what they thought 
 of Thomas Carlyle, and I found that they did not think of 
 him at all. And I mounted my beast and rode away. 
 Thomas Carlyle was educated for the Kirk, and it was a 
 cause of much sorrow to his parents that he could not accept 
 its beliefs. He has been spoken of as England's chief philoso- 
 pher, yet he subscribed to no creed, nor did he formulate 
 one. However, in "Latter-Day Pamphlets" he partially 
 prepares a catechism for a part of the brute creation. 
 He supposes that all swine of superior logical powers have 
 a "belief," and as they are unable to express it he essays 
 the task for them. 
 
 The following are a few of the postulates in this creed of 
 The Brotherhood of batter-Day Swine: 
 "Question. Who made the Pig? 
 "Answer. The Pork-Butcher.
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 33 
 
 "Question. What is the Whole Duty of Pigs? 
 
 "Answer. It is the mission of Universal Pighood; and the 
 
 duty of all Pigs, at all times, 'is to diminish the quantity of 
 
 attainable swill and increase the unattainable. This is the 
 
 Whole Duty of Pigs. 
 
 "Question. What is Pig Poetry? 
 
 "Answer. It is the universal recognition of Pig's wash and 
 
 ground barley, and the felicity of Pigs whose trough has been 
 
 set in order and who have enough. 
 
 "Question. What is justice in Pig-dom? 
 
 "Answer. It is the sentiment in Pig nature sometimes 
 
 called revenge, indignation, etc., which if one Pig provoke, 
 
 another comes out in more or less destructive manner ; hence 
 
 laws are necessary amazing quantities of laws defining 
 
 what Pigs shall not do. 
 
 "Question. What do you mean by equity ? 
 
 "Answer. Equity consists in getting your share from the 
 
 Universal Swine-Trough, and part of another's. 
 
 "Question. What is meant by 'your share' ? 
 
 "Answer. My share is getting whatever I can contrive 
 
 to seize without being made up into Side-meat. " 
 
 I have slightly abridged this little extract and inserted it here 
 
 to show the sympathy which Mr. Cariyle had for the dumb 
 
 brute jt jt 
 
 One of America's great men, in a speech delivered not long 
 
 ago, said, "From Scotch manners, Scotch religion and 
 
 Scotch whisky, good Lord deliver us!" 
 
 My experience with these three articles has been somewhat 
 
 limited ; but Scotch manners remind me of chestnut-burrs
 
 34 THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 not handsome without, but good within. For when you have 
 gotten beyond the rough exterior of Sandy you generally 
 find a heart warm, tender and generous. 
 Scotch religion is only another chestnut-burr, but then you 
 need not eat the shuck if you fear it will not agree with your 
 inward state. Nevertheless, if the example of royalty is of 
 value, the fact can be stated that Victoria, Queen of Great 
 Britain and Empress of India, is a Presbyterian. That is, she 
 is a Presbyterian about one-half the time when she is in 
 Scotland, for she is the head of the Scottish Kirk. When in 
 England, of course she is an Episcopalian. We have often 
 been told that religion is largely a matter of geography, and 
 here is a bit of something that looks like proof. 
 Of Scotch whisky I am not competent to speak, so that 
 subject must be left to the experts. But a Kentucky colonel 
 at my elbow declares that it can not be compared with the 
 Blue-Grass article ; though I trust that no one will be preju- 
 diced against it on that account. 
 
 Scotch intellect, however, is worthy of our serious considera- 
 tion. It is a bold, rocky headland, standing out into the 
 tossing sea of the Unknown. Assertive? Yes. Stubborn? Most 
 surely. Proud? By all means. Twice as many pilgrims visit 
 the grave of Burns as that of Shakespeare. Buckle declares 
 Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" has had a greater 
 influence on civilization than any other book ever writ 
 save none; and the average Scotchman knows his Carlyle 
 a deal better than the average American does his Emerson: 
 in fact, four times as many of Carlyle's books have been 
 printed jt jt
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 35 
 
 When Carlyle took time to bring the ponderous machinery 
 of his intellect to bear on a theme, he saw it through and 
 through. The vividness of his imagination gives us a true 
 insight into times long since gone by ; it shows virtue her 
 own feature, vice her own image, and the very age and body 
 of the time his form and pressure. In history he goes beyond 
 the political and conventional showing us the thought, 
 the hope, the fear, the passion of the soul. 
 His was the masculine mind. The divination and subtle 
 intuitions which are to be found scattered through his pages, 
 like violets growing among the rank swale of the prairies, 
 all these sweet, odorous things came from his wife. She gave 
 him of her best thought and he greedily absorbed it and 
 unconsciously wrote it down as his own. 
 There are those who blame and berate: volumes have been 
 written to show the inconsiderateness of this man toward 
 the gentle lady who was his intellectual comrade. But they 
 know not life who do this thing. 
 
 It is a fact that Carlyle never rushed to pick up Jeannie's 
 handkerchief. I admit that he could not bow gracefully ; that 
 he could not sing tenor, nor waltz, nor tell funny stories, 
 nor play the mandolin; and if I had been his neighbor I 
 would not have attempted to teach him any of these accom- 
 plishments Jt Jt> 
 
 Once he took his wife to the theater; and after the per- 
 formance he accidentally became separated from her in the 
 crowd and trudged off home alone and went to bed forgetting 
 all about her but even for this I do not indict him. Mrs. 
 Carlyle never upbraided him for this forgetfulness, neither
 
 36 THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 did she relate the incident to any one, and for these things I 
 to her now reverently lift my hat. 
 
 Jeannie Welsh Carlyle had capacity for pain, as it seems all 
 great souls have. She suffered but then suffering is not all 
 suffering and pain is not all pain. 
 
 Life is often dark, but then there are rifts in the clouds when 
 we behold the glorious deep blue of the sky. Not a day passes 
 but that the birds sing in the branches, and the tree-tops 
 poise backward and forward in restful, rhythmic harmony, 
 and never an hour goes by but that hope bears us up on her 
 wings as the eagle does her young. And ever just before the 
 year dies and the frost comes, the leaves take on a gorgeous 
 hue and the color of the flowers then puts to shame for 
 brilliancy all the plainer petals of springtime. 
 And I know Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle were happy, so happy, at 
 times, that they laughed and cried for joy. Jeannie gave 
 all and she saw her best thought used carried further, 
 written out and given to the world as that of another but 
 she uttered no protest. 
 
 Xantippe lives in history only because she sought to worry 
 a great philosopher; we remember the daughter of Herodias 
 because she demanded the head (not the heart) of a good 
 man ; Goneril and Regan because they trod upon the withered 
 soul of their sire; Lady Macbeth because she lured her 
 liege to murder; Charlotte Corday for her dagger-thrust; 
 Lucrezia Bofgia for her poison; Sapphira for her untruth; 
 Jael because she pierced the brain of Sisera with a rusty nail 
 (instead of an idea) ; Delilah for the reason that she deprived 
 Samson of his source of strength ; and in the " Westminster
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 37 
 
 Review" for May, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-four, Ouida 
 makes the flat statement that for every man of genius who 
 has been helped by a woman, ten have been dragged down. 
 <J But Jeannie Welsh Carlyle lives in the hearts of all who 
 reverence the sweet, the gentle, the patient, the earnest, the 
 loving spirit of the womanly woman: lives because she 
 ministered to the needs of a great man. 
 She was ever a frail body. Several long illnesses kept her to 
 her bed for weeks, but she recovered from these, even in 
 spite of the doctors, who thoroughly impressed both herself 
 and her husband with the thought of her frailty. 
 On April the Twenty-first, Eighteen Hundred Sixty-six, she 
 called her carriage, as was her custom, and directed the 
 driver to go through the park. She carried a book in her 
 hands, and smiled a greeting to a friend as the brougham 
 moved away from the little street where they lived. The 
 driver drove slowly drove for an hour two. He got down 
 from his box to receive the orders of his mistress, touched 
 his hat as he opened the carriage-door, but no kindly eyes 
 looked into his. She sat back in the corner as if resting ; the 
 shapely head a little thrown forward, the book held gently 
 in the delicate hands, but the fingers were cold and stiff 
 Jeannie Welsh was dead and Thomas Carlyle was alone.
 
 38 THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 the Thames, at Chelsea, opposite the rows of 
 quiet and well-kept houses of Cheyne Walk, is the 
 "Embankment." A parkway it is of narrow green, 
 with graveled walks, bushes and trees, that here and there 
 grow lush and lusty as if to hide the unsightly river from 
 the good people who live across the street. 
 Following this pleasant bit of breathing space, with its walks 
 that wind in and out among the bushes, one comes unexpect- 
 edly upon a bronze statue. You need not read the inscription : 
 a glance at that shaggy head, the grave, sober, earnest look, 
 and you exclaim under your breath, "Carlyle!" 
 In this statue the artist has caught with rare skill the look 
 of reverie and repose. One can imagine that on a certain 
 night, as the mists and shadows of evening were gathering 
 along the dark river, the gaunt form, wrapped in its 
 accustomed cloak, came stalking down the little street to the 
 park, just as he did thousands of times, and taking his seat 
 in the big chair fell asleep. In the morning the children that 
 came to play along the river found the form in cold, enduring 
 bronze jfc ^t 
 
 At the play we have seen the marble transformed by love 
 into beauteous life. How much easier the reverse here 
 where souls stay only a day! 
 
 Cheyne Row is a little, alley-like street, running only a block, 
 with fifteen houses on one side, and twelve on the other. 
 Cf These houses are all brick and built right up to the side- 
 walk. On the North side they are all hi one block, and one at 
 first sees no touch of individuality in any of them. 
 They are old, and solid, and plain built for revenue only. On
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 39 
 
 closer view I thought one or two had been painted, and on 
 one there was a cornice that set it off from the rest. As I 
 stood on the opposite side and looked at this row of houses, I 
 observed that Number Five was the dingiest and plainest of 
 them all. For there were dark shutters instead of blinds, and 
 these shutters were closed, all save one rebel that swung and 
 creaked in the breeze. Over the doorway, sparrows had made 
 their nests and were fighting and scolding. Swallows hovered 
 above the chimney; dust, cobwebs, neglect were all about. 
 <J And as I looked there came to me the words of Ursa 
 Thomas : 
 
 "Brief, brawling day, with its noisy phantoms, its paper 
 crowns, tinsel-gilt, is gone; and divine, everlasting night, 
 with her star diadems, with her silences and her verities, is 
 come. " 
 
 Here walked Thomas and Jeannie one fair May morning in 
 Eighteen Hundred Thirty-four jfc Thomas was thirty-nine, 
 tall and swarthy, strong ; with set mouth and three wrinkles 
 on his forehead that told of care and dyspepsia. Jeannie was 
 younger; her face winsome, just a trifle anxious, with 
 luminous, gentle eyes, suggestive of patience, truth and 
 loyalty. They looked like country folks, did these two. They 
 examined the surroundings, consulted together the sixty 
 pounds rent a year seemed very high! But they took the 
 house, and T. Carlyle, son of James Carlyle, stone-mason, 
 paid rent for it every month for half a century, lacking three 
 years & Jt> 
 
 I walked across the street and read the inscription on the 
 marble tablet inserted in the front of the house above the
 
 40 THOMAS CARJLYLE 
 
 lower windows. It informs the stranger that Thomas Carlyle 
 
 lived here from Eighteen Hundred Thirty-four to Eighteen 
 
 Hundred Eighty-one, and that the tablet was erected by 
 
 the Carlyle Society of London. 
 
 I ascended the stone steps and scraped my boots on the 
 
 well-worn scraper, made long, long ago by a blacksmith who 
 
 is now dust, and who must have been a very awkward 
 
 mechanic, for I saw where he made a misstroke with his 
 
 hammer, probably as he discussed theology with a caller. 
 
 Then I rang the bell and plied the knocker and waited there 
 
 on the steps for Jeannie Welsh to come bid me welcome, just 
 
 as she did Emerson when he, too, used the scraper and plied 
 
 the knocker and stood where I did then. 
 
 And my knock was answered answered by a very sour and 
 
 peevish woman next door, who thrust her head out of the 
 
 window, and exclaimed in a shrill voice: 
 
 "Look 'ere, sir, you might as well go rap on the curbstone, 
 
 don't you know ; there 's nobody iivin' there, sir, don't you 
 
 knowl" 
 
 "Yes, madam, that is why I knocked!" 
 
 "Beggin' your pardon, sir, if you use your heyes you '11 
 
 see there 's nobody Iivin' there, don't you know ! " 
 
 "I knocked lest offense be given. How can I get in ?" 
 
 "You might go in through the keyhole, sir, or down the 
 
 chimney. You seem to be a little daft, sir, don't you know ! 
 
 But if you raust get in, perhaps it would be as well to go 
 
 over to Mrs. Brown's and brang the key, " and she slammed 
 
 down the window. 
 
 Across the street Mrs. Brown's sign smiled at me.
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 41 
 
 Mrs. Brown keeps a little grocery and bakeshop and was 
 very willing to show me the house. She fumbled in a black 
 bag for the keys, all the time telling me of three Americans 
 who came last week to see Carlyle's house, and "as how" 
 they each gave her a shilling. I took the hint. 
 "Only Americans care now for Mr. Carlyle," plaintively 
 added the old lady as she fished out the keys; "soon we will 
 all be forgot." 
 
 We walked across the street and after several ineffectual 
 attempts the rusty lock was made to turn. I entered. Cold, 
 bare and bleak was the sight of those empty rooms. The old 
 lady had a touch of rheumatism, so she waited for me on the 
 doorstep as I climbed the stairs to the third floor. The 
 noise-proof back room where " The French Revolution" was 
 writ, twice over, was so dark that I had to grope my way 
 across to the window. The sash stuck and seemed to have 
 a will of its own, like him who so often had raised it. But 
 at last it gave way and I flung wide the shutter and looked 
 down at the little arbor where Teufelsdrockh sat so often 
 and wooed wisdom with the weed brought from Virginia. 
 Then I stood before the fireplace, where he of the Eternities 
 had so often sat and watched the flickering embers. Here he 
 lived in his loneliness and cursed curses that were prayers, 
 and here for near five decades he read and thought and 
 dreamed and wrote. Here the spirits of Cromwell and 
 Frederick hovered; here that pitiful and pitiable long line 
 of ghostly partakers in the Revolution answered to his 
 roll-call. 
 The wind whistled down the chimney gruesomely as my
 
 42 THOMAS CARLYJLE 
 
 footfalls echoed through the silent chambers, and I thought 
 I heard a sepulchral voice say: 
 
 "Thy future life! Thy fate is it, indeed! Whilst thou makest 
 that thy chief question, thy life to me and to thyself and to 
 thy God is worthless. What is incredible to thee thou shalt 
 not, at thy soul's peril, pretend to believe. Elsewhither for a 
 refuge ! Away I Go to perdition if thou wilt, but not with a lie 
 in thy mouth by the Eternal Maker, No ! ! " 
 I was startled at first, but stood still listening ; then I thought 
 I saw a fault blue cloud of mist curling up in the fireplace. 
 Watching this smoke and sitting before it in gloomy 
 abstraction was the form of an old man. I swept my hand 
 through the apparition, but still it stayed. My lips moved in 
 spite of myself and I said: 
 
 "Hail! hardheaded man of granite outcrop and heather, of 
 fen and crag, of moor and mountain, and of bleak East wind, 
 hail! Eighty-six years didst thou live. One hundred years 
 lacking fourteen didst thou suffer, enjoy, weep, dream, groan, 
 pray and strike thy rugged breast i And yet methinks that in 
 those years there was much quiet peace and sweet content ; 
 for constant pain benumbs, and worry destroys, and vain 
 unrest summons the grim messenger of death. But thou 
 didst live and work and love; howbeit, thy touch was not 
 always gentle, nor thy voice low ; but on thy lips was no lie, 
 in thy thought no concealment, in thy heart no pollution. 
 <J "But m*ark! thou didst come out of poverty and obscurity: 
 on thy battered shield there was no crest and thou didst 
 leave all to follow truth. And verily she did lead thee a 
 merry chase!
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 43 
 
 "Thou hadst no Past, but them hast a Future. Thou didst 
 say: 'Bury me in Westminster, never! where the mob surges, 
 cursed with idle curiosity to see the graves of kings and 
 nobodies? No ! Take me back to rugged Scotland and lay my 
 tired form to rest by the side of an honest man my father. ' 
 "Thou didst refuse the Knighthood offered thee by royalty, 
 saying 'I am not the founder of the house of Carlyle and I 
 have no sons to be pauperized by a title.' 
 "True, thou didst leave no sons after the flesh to mourn thy 
 loss, nor fair daughters to bedeck thy grave with garlands, 
 but thou didst reproduce thyself in thought, and on the minds 
 of men thou didst leave thy impress. And thy ten thousand 
 sons will keep thy memory green so long as men shall work, 
 and toil, and strive, and hope. " 
 
 The wind still howled. I looked out and saw watery clouds 
 scudding athwart the face of the murky sky. The shutters 
 banged, and shut me in the dark. I made haste to find the 
 door, reached the stairway slid down the banisters to where 
 Mrs. Brown was waiting for me at the threshold. 
 We locked the door. She went across to her little bakeshop 
 and I stopped a passing policeman to ask the way to West- 
 minster. He told me. 
 
 "Did you visit Carlyle's 'ouse?" he asked. 
 "Yes." 
 
 "With old Mrs. Brown?" 
 
 "Yes, she waited for me in the doorway she had the 
 rheumatism so she could not climb the stairs. " 
 "Rheumatism? Huh! you couldn't 'ire 'er to go inside. 
 Why, don't you know? They say the 'ouse is 'aunted!"
 
 JOHN RUSKIN
 
 PUT roses in their hair, put precious stones on their breasts ; see 
 that they are clothed in purple and scarlet, with other delights ; 
 that they also learn to read the gilded heraldry of the sky; and upon 
 the earth be taught not only the labors of it but the loveliness. 
 
 Deucalion
 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 |T Windermere a good friend told me that 
 I must abandon all hope of seeing Mr. 
 Ruskin; for I had no special business with 
 him, no letters of introduction, and then 
 the fact that I am an American made it 
 final. Americans in England are supposed 
 to pick flowers in private gardens, cut their 
 names on trees, laugh boisterously at trifles, 
 and often to make invidious comparisons. 
 Very properly, Mr. Ruskin does not admire 
 these things. 
 
 Then Mr. Ruskin is a very busy man. Occa- 
 sionally he issues a printed manifesto to his 
 friends requesting them to give him peace. 
 A copy of one such circular was shown to 
 me. It runs, "Mr. J. Ruskin is about to 
 begin a work of great importance, and 
 therefore begs that in reference to calls and 
 correspondence you will consider bun dead 
 for the next two months. " A similar notice 
 is reproduced in "Arrows of the Chace," 
 and this one thing, I think, illustrates as 
 forcibly as anything hi Mr. Ruskin's work 
 the self-contained characteristics of the 
 man himself. 
 
 Surely if a man is pleased to be considered 
 "dead" occasionally, even to his kinsmen 
 and friends, he should not be expected to 
 receive with open arms an enemy to steal
 
 So JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 away his time. This is assuming, of course, that all individuals 
 who pick flowers in other folks' gardens, cut their names on 
 trees, and laugh boisterously at trifles, are enemies. I there- 
 fore decided that I would simply|walk over to Brantwood, 
 view it from a distance, tramp over its hills, row across the 
 lake, and at nightfall take a swim in its waters. Then I 
 would rest at the Inn for a space and go my way. 
 Lake Coniston is ten miles from Grasmere, and even alone the 
 walk is not long. If, however, you are delightfully attended 
 by "King's Daughters" with whom you sit and commune 
 now and then on the bankside, the distance will seem to 
 be much less. Then there is a pleasant little break in the 
 journey at Hawkshead. Here one may see the quaint old 
 schoolhouse where Wordsworth when a boy dangled his feet 
 from a bench and proved his humanity by carving his initials 
 on the seat. 
 
 The Inn at the head of Coniston Water appeared very inviting 
 and restful when I saw it that afternoon. Built in sections 
 from generation to generation, half-covered with ivy and 
 embowered in climbing roses, it is an institution entirely 
 different from the "Grand Palace Hotel" at Oshkosh. In 
 America we have gongs that are fiercely beaten at stated 
 times by gentlemen of color, just as they are supposed to do 
 in their native Congo jungles. This din proclaims to the 
 "guests" and to the public at large that it is time to come in 
 and be fed. But this refinement of civilization is not yet in 
 Coniston, and the Inn is quiet and homelike. You may go to 
 bed when you are tired, get up when you choose and eat 
 when you are hungry.
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 51 
 
 There were no visitors about when I arrived and I thought I 
 
 would have the coff eeroom all to myself at luncheon-time ; 
 
 but presently there came in a pleasant-faced old gentleman 
 
 in knickerbockers. He bowed to me and then took a place at 
 
 the table. He said that it was a fine day and I agreed with 
 
 him, adding that the mountains were very beautiful. He 
 
 assented, putting in a codicil to the effect that the lake was 
 
 very pretty. 
 
 Then the waiter came for our orders. 
 
 "Together, I s'pose?" remarked Thomas, inquiringly, as he 
 
 halted at the door and balanced the tray on his finger-tips. 
 
 <J"Yes, serve lunch for us together," said the ruddy old 
 
 gentleman as he looked at me and smiled; "to eat alone is 
 
 bad for the digestion. " 
 
 I nodded assent. 
 
 "Can you tell me how far it is to Brantwood? " I asked. 
 
 "Oh, not far just across the lake." 
 
 He arose and flung the shutter open so I could see the old, 
 
 yellow house about a mile across the water, nestling in its 
 
 wealth of green on the hillside. Soon the waiter brought our 
 
 lunch, and while we discussed the chops and new potatoes 
 
 we talked Ruskiniana. 
 
 The old gentleman knew a deal more of "Stones of Venice" 
 
 and "Modern Painters" than I; but I told him how Thoreau 
 
 introduced Ruskin to America and how Concord was the 
 
 first place in the New World to recognize this star in the 
 
 East. And upon my saying this, the old gentleman brought 
 
 his knife-handle down on^the table, declaring that Thoreau 
 
 and Whitman were the only two men of genius that America
 
 52 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 had produced. I begged him to make it three and include 
 
 Emerson, which he finally consented to do. 
 
 By and by the waiter cleared the table preparatory to bringing 
 
 in the coffee. The old gentleman pushed his chair back, took 
 
 the napkin from under his double chin, brushed the crumbs 
 
 from his goodly front, and remarked : 
 
 "I 'm going over to Brantwood this afternoon to call on 
 
 Mr. Ruskin just to pay my respects to him, as I always do 
 
 when I come here. Can't you go with me?" 
 
 I think this was about the most pleasing question I ever had 
 
 asked me. I was going to request him to "come again" just 
 
 for the joy of hearing the words, but I pulled my dignity 
 
 together, straightened up, swallowed my coffee red-hot, 
 
 pushed my chair back, flourished my napkin, and said: "I 
 
 shall be very pleased to go." 
 
 So we went we two he in his knickerbockers and I in my 
 
 checks and outing-shirt. I congratulated myself on looking 
 
 no worse than he, and as for him, he never seemed to think 
 
 that our costumes were not exactly what they should be ; and 
 
 after all it matters little how you dress when you call on one 
 
 of Nature's noblemen they demand no livery. 
 
 We walked around the Northern end of Coniston Water, 
 
 along the Eastern edge, past Tent House, where Tennyson 
 
 once lived (and found it "outrageous quiet"), and a mile 
 
 farther on we came to Brantwood. 
 
 The road curves in to the back of the house which, by the 
 
 way, is the front and the driveway is lined with great trees 
 
 that form a complete archway. There is no lodge-keeper, no 
 
 flower-beds laid out with square and compass, no trees
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 53 
 
 trimmed to appear like elephants, no cast-iron dogs, nor 
 terra-cotta deer, and, strangest of all, no sign of the lawn- 
 mower. There is nothing, in fact, to give forth a sign that the 
 great Apostle of Beauty lives in this very old-fashioned spot. 
 Big boulders are to be seen here and there where Nature 
 left them, tangles of vines running over old stumps, part of 
 the meadow cut close with a scythe, and part growing up as 
 if the owner knew the price of hay. Then there are flower- 
 beds, where grow clusters of poppies and hollyhocks (purple, 
 and scarlet, and white), prosaic gooseberry-bushes, plain 
 Yankee pieplant (from which the English make tarts), rue 
 and sweet marjoram, with patches of fennel, sage, thyme 
 and catnip, all lined off with boxwood, making me think of 
 my grandmother's garden at Roxbury. 
 On the hillside above the garden we saw the entrance to the 
 cave that Mr. Ruskin once filled with ice, just to show the 
 world how to keep its head cool at small expense. He even 
 wrote a letter to the papers giving the bright idea to humanity 
 that the way to utilize caves was to fill them with ice. Then 
 he forgot all about the matter. But the following June, when 
 the cook, wishing to make some ice-cream as a glad surprise 
 for the Sunday dinner, opened the natural ice-chest, she 
 found only a pool of muddy water, and exclaimed, "Bothera- 
 tion!" Then they had custard instead of ice-cream. 
 We walked up the steps, and my friend let the brass knocker 
 drop just once, for only Americans give a rat-a-tat-tat, and 
 the door was opened by a white-whiskered butler, who took 
 our cards and ushered us into the library. My heart beat a 
 trifle fast as I took inventory of the room ; for I never before
 
 54 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 had called on a man who was believed to have refused the 
 poet-laureateship. A dimly lighted room was this library 
 walls painted brown, running up to mellow yellow at the 
 ceiling, high bookshelves, with a stepladder, and only five 
 pictures on the walls, and of these three were etchings, and 
 two water-colors of a very simple sort; leather-covered 
 chairs; a long table in the center, on which were strewn 
 sundry magazines and papers, also several photographs ; and 
 at one end of the room a big fireplace, where a yew log 
 smoldered. Here my inventory was cut short by a cheery 
 voice behind: 
 
 "Ah! now, gentlemen, I am glad to see you." 
 There was no time nor necessity for a formal introduction. 
 The great man took my hand as if he had always known me, 
 as perhaps he thought he had. Then he greeted my friend in 
 the same way, stirred up the fire, for it was a North of Eng- 
 land summer day, and took a seat by the table. We were all 
 silent for a space a silence without embarrassment. 
 "You were looking at the etching over the fireplace it was 
 sent to me by a young lady in America, " said Mr. Ruskin, 
 "and I placed it there to get acquainted with it. I like it 
 more and more. Do you know the scene? " I knew the scene 
 and explained somewhat about it. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin has the faculty of making his interviewer do 
 most of the talking. He is a rare listener, and leans forward, 
 putting a hand behind his right ear to get each word you 
 say. He was particularly interested in the industrial condi- 
 tions of America, and I soon found myself "occupying the 
 time," while an occasional word of interrogation from
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 55 
 
 Mr. Ruskin gave me no chance to stop. I came to hear him, 
 not to defend our " republican experiment, " as he was pleased 
 to call the United States of America. Yet Mr. Ruskin was so 
 gentle and respectful in his manner, and so complimentary in 
 his attitude of listener, that my impatience at his want of 
 sympathy for our "experiment" only caused me to feel a 
 little heated. 
 
 "The fact of women being elected to mayoralties in Kansas 
 makes me think of certain African tribes that exalt their 
 women into warriors you want your women to fight your 
 political battles!" 
 
 "You evidently hold the same opinion on the subject of 
 equal rights that you expressed some years ago, " interposed 
 my companion. 
 
 "What did I say really I have forgotten?" 
 "You replied to a correspondent, saying: 'You are certainly 
 right as to my views respecting the female franchise. So far 
 from wishing to give votes to women, I would fain take 
 them away from most men. ' " 
 
 "Surely that was a sensible answer. My respect for woman 
 is too great to force on her increased responsibilities. Then 
 as for restricting the franchise with men, I am of the firm 
 conviction that no man should be allowed to vote who does 
 not own property, or who can not do considerably more than 
 read and write. The voter makes the laws, and why should 
 the laws regulating the holding of property be made by a man 
 who has no interest in property beyond a covetous desire ; or 
 why should he legislate on education when he possesses none ! 
 Then again, women do not bear arms to protect the State. "
 
 56 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 "But what do you say to Mrs. Carlock, who answers that 
 inasmuch as men do not bear children they have no right to 
 vote: going to war possibly being necessary and possibly 
 not, but the perpetuity of the State demanding that some 
 one bear children?" 
 
 "The lady's argument is ingenious, but lacks force when we 
 consider that the bearing of arms is a matter relating to 
 statecraft, while the baby question is Dame Nature's own, 
 and is not to be regulated even by the sovereign. " 
 Then Mr. Ruskin talked for nearly fifteen minutes on the 
 duty of the State to the individual talked very deliberately, 
 but with the clearness and force of a man who believes what 
 he says and says what he believes. 
 
 Thus, my friend, by a gentle thrust under the fifth rib of 
 Mr, Ruskin's logic, caused him to come to the rescue of his 
 previously expressed opinions, and we had the satisfaction 
 of hearing him discourse earnestly and eloquently. 
 Maiden ladies usually have an opinion ready on the subject 
 of masculine methods, and, conversely, much of the world's 
 logic on the "woman question" has come from the bachelor 
 brain ,$t ^t 
 
 Mr. Ruskin went quite out of his way on several occasions 
 in times past to attack John Stuart Mill for heresy "in 
 opening up careers for women other than that of wife and 
 mother. " When Mill did not answer Mr. Ruskin's newspaper 
 letters, the author of "Sesame and Lilies" called him a 
 "cretinous wretch" and referred to him as u the man of no 
 imagination." Mr. Mill may have been a cretinous wretch 
 (I do not exactly understand the phrase), but the preface to
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 57 
 
 "On Liberty" is at once the tenderest, highest and most 
 sincere compliment paid to a woman, of which I know. 
 The life of Mr. and Mrs. John Stuart Mill shows that 
 perfect mating is possible; yet Mr. Ruskin has only scorn 
 for the opinions of Mr. Mill on a subject which Mill came as 
 near personally solving in a matrimonial "experiment" as 
 any other public man of modern times, not excepting even 
 Robert Browning. Therefore we might suppose Mr. Mill 
 entitled to speak on the woman question, and I intimated 
 as much to Mr. Ruskin. 
 
 "He might know all about one woman, and if he should 
 regard her as a sample of all womankind, would he not 
 make a great mistake?" 
 I was silenced. 
 
 In "Fors Clavigera," Letter LIX, the author says: "I 
 never wrote a letter in my life which all the world is not 
 welcome to read." From this one might imagine that Mr. 
 Ruskin never loved no pressed flowers in books ; no passages 
 of poetry double marked and scored; no bundles of letters 
 faded and yellow, sacred for his own eye, tied with white 
 or dainty blue ribbon ; no little nothings hidden away in the 
 bottom of a trunk. And yet Mr. Ruskin has his ideas on the 
 woman question and very positive ideas they are too often 
 sweetly sympathetic and wisely helpful. 
 I see that one of the encyclopedias mentions Ruskin as a 
 bachelor, which is giving rather an extended meaning 
 to the word, for although Mr. Ruskin married, he was not 
 mated. According to Collingwood's account, this marriage 
 was a quiet arrangement between parents. Anyway the genius
 
 58 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 is like the profligate in this: when he marries he generally 
 makes a woman miserable. And misery is reactionary as 
 well as infectious. Ruskin is a genius. 
 Genius is unique. No satisfactory analysis of it has yet been 
 given. We know a few of its indications that 's all. First 
 among these is ability to concentrate. 
 
 No seed can sow genius; no soil can grow it: its quality is 
 inborn and defies both cultivation and extermination. 
 To be surpassed is never pleasant ; to feel your inferiority is 
 to feel a pang. Seldom is there a person great enough to find 
 satisfaction in the success of a friend. The pleasure that 
 excellence gives is oft tainted by resentment; and so the 
 woman who marries a genius is usually unhappy. 
 Genius is excess : it is obstructive to little plans. It is difficult 
 to warm yourself at a conflagration ; the tempest may blow 
 you away ; the sun dazzles ; lightning seldom strikes gently ; 
 the Nile overflows. Genius has its times of straying off into 
 the infinite and then what is the good wife to do for com- 
 panionship? Does she protest, and find fault? It could not be 
 otherwise, for genius is dictatorial without knowing it, 
 obstructive without wishing to be, intolerant unawares, and 
 unsocial because it can not help it. 
 
 The wife of a genius sometimes takes his fits of abstraction 
 for stupidity, and having the man's interests at heart she 
 endeavors to arouse him from his lethargy by chiding him. 
 Occasionally he arouses enough to chide back ; and so it has 
 become an axiom that genius is not domestic. 
 A short period of mismated life told the wife of Ruskin their 
 mistake, and she told him. But Mrs. Grundy was at the
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 59 
 
 keyhole, ready to tell the world, and so Mr. and Mrs. Ruskin 
 sought to deceive society by pretending to live together. 
 They kept up this appearance for six sorrowful years, and 
 then the lady simplified the situation by packing her trunks 
 and deliberately leaving her genius to his chimeras ; her soul 
 doubtless softened by the knowledge that she was bestowing 
 a benefit on him by going away. The lady afterwards became 
 the happy wife and helpmeet of a great artist. 
 Ruskin's father was a prosperous importer of wines. He 
 left his son a fortune equal to a little more than one million 
 dollars. But that vast fortune has gone principal and 
 interest gone in bequests, gifts and experiments; and 
 today Mr. Ruskin has no income save that derived from 
 the sale of his books. Talk about "Distribution of Wealth"! 
 Here we have it. 
 
 The bread-and-butter question has never troubled John 
 Ruskin except in his ever-ardent desire that others should be 
 fed jt His days have been given to study and writing from 
 his very boyhood; he has made money, but he has had no 
 time to save it. 
 
 He has expressed himself on every theme that interests 
 mankind, excepting "housemaid's knee." He has written 
 more letters to the newspapers than "Old Subscriber," 
 "Fiat Justitia," "Indignant Reader" and "Veritas" com- 
 bined. His opinions have carried much weight and directed 
 attention into necessary lines ; but perhaps his success as an 
 inspirer of thought lies in the fact that his sense of humor 
 exists only in a trace, as the chemist might say. Men who 
 perceive the ridiculous would never have voiced many of
 
 6o JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 the things which he has said. <jf Surely those Sioux Indians 
 who stretched a hay lariat across the Union Pacific Railroad 
 in order to stop the running of trains had small sense of 
 the ridiculous. But it looks as if they were apostles of 
 Ruskin, every one. 
 
 Some one has said that no man can appreciate the beautiful 
 who has not a keen sense of humor. For the beautiful is the 
 harmonious, and the laughable is the absence of fit adjust- 
 ment ^t ^t 
 
 Mr. Ruskin disproves the maxim. 
 
 But let no hasty soul imagine that John Ruskin's opinions 
 on practical themes are not useful. He brings to bear an 
 energy on every subject he touches (and what subject has he 
 not touched?) that is sure to make the sparks of thought fly. 
 His independent and fearless attitude awakens from slumber 
 a deal of dozing intellect, and out of this strife of opinion 
 comes truth. 
 
 On account of Mr. Ruskin's refusing at times to see visitors, 
 reports have gone abroad that his mind was giving way. 
 Not so, for although he is seventy-four he is as serenely 
 stubborn as he ever was. His opposition to new inventions 
 in machinery has not relaxed a single pulley's turn. You 
 grant his premises and in his conclusions you will find that 
 his belt never slips, and that his logic never jumps a cog ^ 
 His life is as regular and exact as the trains on the. Great 
 Western, and his days are more peaceful than ever before. 
 He has regular hours for writing, study, walking, reading, 
 eating, and working out-of-doors, superintending the culti- 
 vation of his hundred acres. He told me that he had not
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 61 
 
 varied a half -hour in two years from a certain time of going 
 to bed or getting up in the morning. Although his form is 
 bowed, this regularity of life has borne fruit in the rich russet 
 of his complexion, the mild, clear eye, and the pleasure in 
 living in spite of occasional pain, which you know the man 
 feels. His hair is thick and nearly white ; the beard is now 
 worn quite long and gives a patriarchal appearance to the 
 fine face. 
 
 When we arose to take our leave, Mr. Ruskin took a white 
 felt hat from the elk-antlers in the hallway and a stout stick 
 from the corner, and offered to show us a nearer way back 
 to the village. We walked down a footpath through the tall 
 grass to the lake, where he called our attention to various 
 varieties of ferns that he had transplanted there. 
 We shook hands with the old gentleman and thanked him 
 for the pleasure he had given us. He was still examining 
 the ferns when we lifted our hats and bade him good-day jfc 
 He evidently did not hear us, for I heard him mutter: "I 
 verily believe those miserable Cook's tourists that were 
 down here yesterday picked some of my ferns. "
 
 WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE
 
 WM. E. GLADSTONE
 
 AS the aloe is said to flower only once in a hundred years, so it 
 seems to be but once in a thousand years that Nature blossoms 
 into this unrivaled product and produces such a man as we have here. 
 
 GLADSTONE, "Lecture on Homer."
 
 WM. E. GLADSTONE 
 
 MERICAN travelers in England are said to 
 accumulate sometimes large and unique 
 assortments of lisps, drawls and other very 
 peculiar things, jffc Of the value of these 
 acquirements as regards their use and 
 beauty, I have not room here to speak. But 
 there is one adjunct which England has 
 that we positively need, and that is ' ' Boots. " 
 It may be that Boots is indigenous to Eng- 
 land's soil, and that when transplanted he 
 withers and dies ; perhaps there is a quality 
 in our atmosphere that kills Him T Anyway, 
 we have no Boots. 
 
 When trouble, adversity or bewilderment 
 comes to the homesick traveler in an Ameri- 
 can hotel, to whom can he turn for con- 
 solation? Alas, the porter is afraid of the 
 "guest," and all guests are afraid of the 
 clerk, and the proprietor is never seen, and 
 the Afro-Americans in the dining-room are 
 stupid, and the chambermaid does not 
 answer the ring, and at last the weary 
 wanderer hies him to the barroom and soon 
 discovers that the worthy "barkeep" has 
 nothing to recommend him but his dia- 
 mond-pin. How different, yes, how different, 
 this would all be if Boots were only here! 
 At the quaint old city of Chester I was 
 met at the "sti-shun" by the Boots of
 
 68 WM. E. GLADSTONE 
 
 that excellent though modest hotel which stands only a 
 block away. Boots picked out my baggage without my 
 looking for it, took me across to the Inn, and showed me 
 to the daintiest, most homelike little room I had seen for 
 weeks. On the table was a tastefully decorated "jug," evi- 
 dently just placed there in anticipation of my arrival, and 
 in this jug was a large bunch of gorgeous roses, the morning 
 dew still on them. 
 
 When Boots had brought me hot water for shaving he dis- 
 appeared and did not come back until, by the use of telepathy 
 (for Boots is always psychic), I had sent him a message that 
 he was needed. In the afternoon he went with me to get a 
 draft cashed, then he identified me at the Post-office, and 
 introduced me to a dignitary at the cathedral whose courtesy 
 added greatly to my enjoyment of the visit. 
 The next morning after breakfast, when I returned to my 
 room, everything was put to rights and a fresh bouquet of 
 cut flowers was on the mantel. A good breakfast adds much 
 to one's inward peace: I sat down before the open window 
 and looked out at the great oaks dotting the green meadows 
 that stretched away to the North, and listened to the drowsy 
 tinkle of sheep-bells as the sound came floating in on the 
 perfumed breeze. I was thinking how good it was to be here, 
 when the step of Boots was heard hi the doorway. I turned 
 and saw that mine own familiar friend had lost a little of his 
 calm self-reliance in fact, he was a bit agitated, but he 
 soon recovered his breath: 
 
 "Mr. Gladstone and 'is Lady *ave just arrived, sir they will 
 be 'ere for an hour before taking the train for Lunnon, sir.
 
 WM. E. GLADSTONE 69 
 
 I told 'is dark there was a party of Americans 'ere that were 
 very anxious to meet 'im and he will receive you in the parlor 
 in fifteen minutes, sir. " 
 
 Then it was my turn to be agitated. But Boots reassured me 
 by explaining that the Grand Old Man was just the plainest, 
 most unpretentious gentleman one could imagine; that it 
 was not at all necessary that I should change my suit; that I 
 should pronounce it Gladstun, not Glad-stone, and that it 
 was Harden, not Ha- war-den. Then he stood me up, looked 
 me over, and declared that I was all right. 
 On going downstairs I found that Boots had gotten together 
 five Americans who happened to be in the hotel. He intro- 
 duced us to a bright little man who seemed to be the com- 
 panion or secretary of the Prime Minister; he, in turn, took 
 us into the parlor where Mr. Gladstone sat reading the 
 morning paper and presented us one by one to the great man. 
 We were each greeted with a pleasant word and a firm grasp 
 of the hand, and then the old gentleman turned and with 
 a courtly flourish said: " Gentlemen, allow me to present 
 you to Mrs. Gladstone." 
 
 Mr. Gladstone was wise: he remained standing; this was 
 sure to shorten the interview. A clergyman in our party who 
 had an impressive cough and bushy whiskers, acted as 
 spokesman, and said several pleasant things, closing his 
 little speech by informing Mr. Gladstone that Americans 
 held him in great esteem, and that we only regretted that 
 Fate had not decreed that he should have been born in the 
 United States. 
 Mr. Gladstone replied, "Fate is often unkind." Then he
 
 TO WM. E. GLADSTONE 
 
 asked if we were going to London. On being told that we 
 were, he spoke for five minutes about the things we should 
 see in the Metropolis. His style was not conversational, but 
 after the manner of a man who was much used to speaking 
 in public or to receiving delegations. The sentences were 
 stately, the voice rather loud and declamatory. His closing 
 words were: "Yes, gentlemen, the way to see London is 
 from the top of a 'bus from the top of a 'bus, gentlemen. " 
 Then there was an almost imperceptible wave of the hand, 
 and we knew that the interview was ended. In a moment we 
 were outside and the door was closed. 
 The five Americans who made up our little company had 
 never met before, but now we were as brothers ; we adjourned 
 to a side room to talk it over and tell of the things we intended 
 to say but did n't. We all talked and talked at once, just as 
 people do who have recently preserved an enforced silence. 
 <J"How ill-fitting was that gray suit!" 
 "Yes, the sleeves too long. " 
 
 "Did you notice the absence of the forefinger of his left 
 hand shot off in Eighteen Hundred Forty-five while hunt- 
 ing, they say." 
 
 "But how strong his voice is!" 
 "He looks like a farmer." 
 
 "Eighty-five years of age! Think of it, and how vigorous I" 
 <j[ Then the preacher spoke and his voice was sorrowful : 
 "Oh, but I made a botch of it was it sarcasm or was it not? " 
 <J "Was what sarcasm ?" 
 
 "When Mr. Gladstone said that Fate was unkind in not 
 having him born in the United States!"
 
 WM. E. GLADSTONE 71 
 
 And we were all silent. Then Boots came in, and we put the 
 question to Boots, who decided it was not sarcasm. The next 
 day, when we went away, we rewarded Boots bountifully. 
 
 LADSTONE is England's glory. Yet there is no English 
 blood hi his veins; his parents were Scotch. Aside 
 from Lord Brougham, he is the only Scotchman who 
 has ever taken a prominent part in British statecraft. The 
 name as we first find it is Gled-Stane, "gled" being a hawk 
 literally, a hawk that lives among the stones. Surely the 
 hawk is fully as respectable a bird as the eagle, and a 
 goodly amount of granite in the clay that is used to make 
 a man is no disadvantage. The name fits. 
 There are deep-rooted theories in the minds of many men 
 (and still more women) that bad boys make good men, and 
 that a dash of the pirate, even in a prelate, does not disqualify. 
 But I wish to come to the defense of the Sunday-school 
 story-books and show that their very prominent moral is 
 right after all: it pays to be "good." 
 William Ewart Gladstone was sent to Eton when twelve 
 years of age. From the first, his conduct was a model of 
 propriety. He attended every chapel service, and said his 
 prayers in the morning and before going to bed at night; he 
 could repeat the catechism backwards or forwards, and 
 recite more verses of Scripture than any boy in school. 
 He always spoke the truth. He never played "hookey"; nor, 
 as he grew older, would he tell stories of doubtful flavor, or 
 allow others to relate such in his presence. His influence was 
 for good, and Cardinal Manning has said that there was less
 
 72 WM. E. GLADSTONE 
 
 wine drunk at Oxford during the Forties than would have 
 been the case if Gladstone had not been there in the Thirties. 
 tf He graduated from Christchurch with the highest possible 
 honors the college could bestow, and at twenty-two he 
 seemed like one who had sprung into life full-armed. 
 At that time he had magnificent health, a fine form, vast and 
 varied knowledge, and a command of language so great 
 that he was a master of forensics. His speeches were fully 
 equal to his later splendid efforts. In feature he was hand- 
 some: the face bold and masculine; eyes of piercing luster; 
 and hair, which he tossed when in debate, like a lion's mane. 
 He could speak five languages, sing tenor, dance gracefully, 
 and was on more than speaking terms with many of the 
 best and greatest men in England. Besides all this he was 
 rich in British gold. 
 
 Now, here is a combination of good things that would send 
 most young men straight to perdition not so Gladstone. He 
 took the best care of his health, systematized his time as a 
 miser might, listened not to the flatterers, and used his money 
 only for good purposes. His intention was to enter the Church, 
 but his father said, "Not yet," and half forced him into 
 politics. So, at this early age of twenty-two, he ran for 
 Parliament, was elected, and has practically never been out 
 of the shadow of Westminster Palace during these sixty-odd 
 years jt jt 
 
 At thirty-three, he was a member of the Cabinet. At thirty- 
 six, his absolute honesty compelled him for conscience 1 sake 
 to resign from the Ministry. His opponents then said, "Glad- 
 stone is an extinct volcano," and they have said this again
 
 WM. E. GLADSTONE 73 
 
 and again, but somehow the volcano always breaks out in a 
 new place, stronger and brighter than ever. It is difficult to 
 subdue a volcano. 
 
 When twenty-nine, he married Catherine Glynne, sister and 
 heir of Sir Stephen Glynne, Baronet. The marriage was most 
 fortunate in every way. For over fifty years this most 
 excellent woman has been his comrade, counselor, consola- 
 tion, friend his wife. "How can any adversity come to him 
 who hath a wife?" said Chaucer. 
 
 If this splendid woman had died, then his opponents might 
 truthfully have said, "Gladstone is an extinct volcano"; but 
 she is still with him, and a short time ago, when he had to 
 undergo an operation for cataract, this woman of eighty 
 was his only nurse. 
 
 The influence of Gladstone has been of untold value to 
 England. His ideals for national action have been high. To 
 the material prosperity of the country he has added millions 
 upon millions ; he has made education popular, and schooling 
 easy; his policy in the main has been such as to command 
 the admiration of the good and great. But there are spots on 
 the sun jfc Jt 
 
 On reading Mr. Gladstone's books I find he has vigorously 
 defended certain measures that seem unworthy of his 
 genius. He has palliated human slavery as a "necessary 
 evil"; has maintained the visibility and divine authority of 
 the Church; has asserted the mathematical certainty of the 
 historic episcopate, the mystical efficacy of the sacraments; 
 and has vindicated the Church of England as the God- 
 appointed guardian of truth. J He has fought bitterly any
 
 74 WM. E. GLADSTONE 
 
 attempt to improve the divorce-laws of England. Much has 
 been done in this line, even in spite of his earnest opposition, 
 but we now owe it to Mr. Gladstone that there is on England's 
 law-books a statute providing that if a wife leaves her hus- 
 band he can invoke a magistrate, whose duty it will then 
 be to issue a writ and give it to an officer, who will bring her 
 back. More than this, when the officer has returned the 
 woman, the loving husband has the legal right to "reprove" 
 her. Just what reprove means the courts have not yet 
 determined; for, in a recent decision, when a costermonger 
 admitted having given his lady "a taste of the cat," the 
 prisoner was discharged on the ground that it was only 
 needed reproof. 
 
 I would not complain of this law if it worked both ways ; but 
 no wife can demand that the State shall return her "man" 
 willy-nilly, And if she administers reproof to her mate, she 
 does it without the sanction of the Sovereign. 
 However, in justice to Englishmen, it should be stated that 
 while this unique law still stands on the statute-books, it is 
 very seldom that a man in recent years has stooped to invoke 
 it jt dH 
 
 On all the questions I have named, from slavery to divorce, 
 Mr. Gladstone has used the "Bible argument." But as the 
 years have gone by, his mind has become liberalized, and on 
 many points where h$ was before zealous he is now silent. 
 In Eighteen Hundred Forty-one, he argued with much skill 
 and ingenuity that Jews were not entitled to full rights of 
 citizenship, but in Eighteen Hundred Forty-seven, acknowl- 
 edging his error, he took the other side.
 
 WM. E. GLADSTONE 75 
 
 During the War of Secession the sympathies of England's 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer were with the South. Speaking 
 at Newcastle on October Ninth, Eighteen Hundred Sixty-two, 
 he said, "Jefferson Davis has undoubtedly founded a new 
 nation." But five years passed, and he publicly confessed 
 that he was wrong. 
 
 Here is a man who, if he should err deeply, is yet so great 
 that, like Cotton Mather, he might not hesitate to stand 
 uncovered on the street-corners and ask the forgiveness of 
 mankind. Such men are saved by their enemies. Their own 
 good and the good of humanity require that their balance of 
 power shall not be too great. Had the North gone down, 
 Gladstone might never have seen his mistake. In this instance 
 and in many others, he has not been the leader of progress, 
 but its echo : truth has been forced upon him. His passionate 
 earnestness, his intense volition, his insensibility to moral 
 perspective, his blindness to the sense of proportion, might 
 have led him into dangerous excess and frightful fanatical 
 error, if it were not for the fact that such men create an 
 opposition that is their salvation. 
 
 To analyze a character so complex as Mr. Gladstone's 
 requires the grasp of genius. We speak of "the duality of 
 the human mind," but here are half a dozen spirits in one. 
 They rule in turn, and occasionally several of them struggle 
 for the mastery. 
 
 When the Fisk Jubilee Singers visited England, we find 
 Gladstone dropping the affairs of State to hear their music. He 
 invited them to Hawarden, where he sang with them. So 
 impressed was he with the negro melodies that he anticipated
 
 76 WM. E. GLADSTONE 
 
 that idea which has since been materialized: the founding 
 of a national school of music that would seek to perfect in a 
 scientific way these soul-stirring strains. 
 He might have made a poet of no mean order; for his 
 devotion to spiritual and physical beauty has made him a 
 lifelong admirer of Homer and Dante. Those who have met 
 him when the mood was upon him have heard him recite 
 by the hour from the "Iliad" in the original. And yet the 
 theology of Homer belongs to the realm of natural religion 
 with which Mr. Gladstone has little patience. 
 A prominent member of the House of Commons once said : 
 "The only two things that the Prime Minister really cares 
 for are religion and finance." The statement comes near 
 truth; for the chief element in Mr. Gladstone's character is 
 his devotion to religion; and his signal successes have been 
 in the line of economics. He believes in Free Trade as the 
 gospel of social salvation. He revels in figures; he has price, 
 value, consumption, distribution, import, export, fluctuation, 
 all at his tongue's end, ready to hurl at any one who ventures 
 on a hasty generalization. <| And it is a significant fact that in 
 his strong appeal for the disestablishment of the Irish Church, 
 the stress of his argument was put on the point that the Irish 
 Church was not in the line of the apostolic succession. 
 Mr. Gladstone is grave, sober, earnest, proud, passionate, and 
 at times romantic to a rare degree. He rebukes, refutes, 
 contradicts, defies, and has a magnificent capacity for 
 indignation. He will roar you like a lion, his eyes will flash, 
 and his clenched fist will shake as he denounces that which 
 he believes to be error. And yet among inferiors he will
 
 WM. E. GLADSTONE 77 
 
 consult, defer, inquire, and show a humility, a forced 
 suavity, that has given the caricaturist excuse. 
 In his home he is gentle, amiable, always kind, social and 
 hospitable. He loves deeply, and his friends revere him to a 
 point that is but little this side of idolatry. And surely their 
 affection is not misplaced. 
 
 Some day a Plutarch without a Plutarch's prejudice will 
 arise, and with malice toward none, but with charity for all, 
 he will write the life of the statesman, Gladstone. Over 
 against this he will write the life of an American statesman. 
 The name he will choose will be that of one born in a log hut 
 in the forest; who was rocked by the foot of a mother whose 
 hands meanwhile were busy at her wheel; who had no 
 schooling, no wise and influential friends; who had few 
 books and little time to read; who knew no formal religion; 
 who never traveled out of his own country; who had no 
 helpmeet, but who walked solitary alone, a man of sorrows ; 
 down whose homely, furrowed face the tears of pity often 
 ran, and yet whose name, strange paradox! stands in many 
 minds as a symbol of mirth. 
 
 And when the master comes, who has the power to portray 
 with absolute fidelity the greatness of these two men, will it 
 be to the disadvantage of the American? 
 
 f HE village of Hawarden is in Flintshire, North Wales. 
 It is seven miles from Chester. I walked the distance 
 one fine June morning out across the battlefield 
 
 where Cromwell's army crushed that of Charles; and on 
 
 past old stone walls and stately elms.
 
 78 WM. E. GLADSTONE 
 
 There had been a shower the night before, but the morning 
 sun came out bright and warm and made the raindrops 
 glisten like beads as they clung to each leaf and flower. 
 Larks sang and soared, and great flocks of crows called 
 and cawed as they flew lazily across the sky. It was a time 
 for silent peace, and quiet joy, and serene thankfulness for 
 life and health. 
 
 I walked leisurely, and in a little over two hours reached 
 Hawarden a cluster of plain stone houses with climbing 
 vines and flowers and gardens, which told of homely thrift 
 and simple tastes. I went straight to the old stone church, 
 which is always open, and rested for half an hour, listening 
 to the organ on which a young girl was practising, instructed 
 by a white-haired old gentleman. 
 
 The church is dingy and stained inside and out by time. The 
 pews are irregular, some curiously carved, and all stiff and 
 uncomfortable. I walked around and read the inscriptions on 
 the walls, and all the time the young girl played and the old 
 gentleman beat time, and neither noticed my presence. One 
 brass tablet I saw was to a woman "who for long years was 
 a faithful servant at Hawarden Castle erected in gratitude 
 by W. E. G. " Near this was a memorial to W. H. Gladstone, 
 son of the Premier, who died in Eighteen Hundred Ninety- 
 one. Then there were inscriptions to various Glynnes and 
 several others whose names appear in English history. I 
 stood at the reading-desk, where the great man has so often 
 read, and marked the spot where William Ewart Gladstone 
 and Catherine Glynne knelt when they were married here 
 in July, Eighteen Hundred Thirty-nine.
 
 WM. E. GLADSTONE 79 
 
 A short distance from the church is the entrance to Hawarden 
 Park. This fine property was the inheritance of Mrs. Glad- 
 stone; the park itself seems to belong to the public. If 
 Mr. Gladstone were a plain citizen, people, of course, would not 
 come by hundreds and picnic on his preserve, but serving the 
 State, he and his possessions belong to the people, and this 
 democratic familiarity is rather pleasing than otherwise. So 
 great has been the throng in times past, that an iron fence 
 had to be placed about the ivy-covered ruins of the ancient 
 castle, to protect it from those who threatened to carry it 
 away by the pocketful. A wall has also been put around the 
 present "castle" (more properly, house). This was done some 
 years ago, I was told by the butler, after a torchlight proces- 
 sion of a thousand enthusiastic admirers had come down 
 from Liverpool and trampled Mrs. Gladstone's flowers into 
 "smithereens." 
 
 The park contains many hundred acres, and is as beautiful 
 as an English park can be, and this is praise superlative. 
 Flocks of sheep wander over the soft, green turf, and beneath 
 the spreading trees are sleek cows which seem used to 
 visitors, and with big, open eyes come up to be petted. 
 <J Occasional signs are seen: "Please spare the trees." Some 
 people suppose that this is an injunction which Mr. Gladstone 
 himself has never observed. But when in his tree-cutting 
 days, no monarch of the forest was ever felled without its 
 case being fully tried by the entire household. Ruskin, once, 
 visiting at Hawarden, sat as judge, and after listening to the 
 evidence gave sentence against several trees that were rotten 
 at the core or overshadowing their betters. Then the Prime
 
 8o WM. E. GLADSTONE 
 
 Minister shouldered his faithful "snickersnee" and went 
 
 forth as executioner. 
 
 I looked in vain for stumps, and on inquiry was told that 
 
 they were all dug out and the ground leveled so no trace was 
 
 left of the offender. 
 
 The "lady of the house" at Hawarden is the second daughter 
 
 of Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone. All accounts agree that she is a 
 
 most capable and excellent woman. She is her father's 
 
 "home secretary" and confidante, and in his absence takes 
 
 full charge of the mail and looks after important business 
 
 affairs. Her husband, the Reverend Harry Drew, is rector of 
 
 Hawarden Church. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Drew 
 
 and found him very cordial and perfectly willing to talk about 
 
 the great man who is grandfather to his baby. We also talked 
 
 of America, and I soon surmised that Mr. Drew's ideas of 
 
 "The States" were largely derived from a visit to the Wild 
 
 West Show. So I put the question to him direct: 
 
 "Did you see Buffalo Bill?" 
 
 "Oh, yes." 
 
 "And did Mr. Gladstone go?" 
 
 "Not only once, but three times, and he cheered as loudly 
 
 as any boy. " CJ The Gladstone residence is a great, rambling, 
 
 stone structure to which additions have been made from one 
 
 generation to another. The towers and battlements are merely 
 
 architectural appendiculae, but the effect of the whole, when 
 
 viewed from a distance, rising out of its wealth of green and 
 
 backed by the forest, is very imposing. 
 
 I entered only the spacious front hallway and one room 
 
 the library. Bookshelves and books and more books were
 
 WM. E. GLADSTONE 
 
 81 
 
 everywhere ; several desks of different designs (one an Ameri- 
 can roll-top), as if the owner transacted business at one, 
 translated Homer at another, and wrote social letters from 
 a third. Then there were several large Japanese vases, a tiger 
 skin, beautiful rugs, a few large paintings, and in a rack a 
 full dozen axes and twice as many "sticks. " <J The whole place 
 has an air of easy luxury that speaks of peace and plenty, 
 of quiet and rest, of gentle thoughts and calm desires. 
 As I walked across toward the village, the church bell slowly 
 pealed the hour; over the distant valley, night hovered; a 
 streak of white mist, trailing like a thin veil, marked the 
 passage of the murmuring brook. I thought of the grand old 
 man over whose domain I was now treading, and my wonder 
 was, not that one should live so long and still be vigorous, 
 but that a man should live in such an idyllic spot, with love 
 and books to keep him company, and yet grow old.
 
 J. M. W. TURNER
 
 J. M. W. TURNER
 
 1 BELIEVE that these works of Turner's are at their first appear- 
 ing as perfect as those of Phidias or Leonardo, that is to say, 
 incapable of any improvement conceivable by human mind. 
 
 John Ruskin
 
 W. TURNER 
 
 'HE beauty of the upper Thames with its 
 fairy house-boats and green banks has 
 been sung by poets, but rash is the minstrel 
 who tunes his lyre to sound the praises of 
 this muddy stream in the vicinity of Chel- 
 sea. As yellow as the Tiber and thick as the 
 Missouri after a flood, it comes twice a day 
 bearing upon its tossing tide a unique 
 assortment of uncanny sights and sicken- 
 ing smells from the swarming city of men 
 below jt jt 
 
 Chelsea was once a country village six 
 miles from London Bridge. Now the far- 
 reaching arms of the metropolis have taken 
 it as her own. 
 
 Chelsea may be likened to some rare 
 spinster, grown old with years and good 
 works, and now having a safe home with 
 a rich and powerful benefactress. Yet Chel- 
 sea is not handsome in her old age, and 
 Chelsea was not pretty hi youth, nor fair 
 to view in middle life; but Chelsea has been 
 the foster-mother of several of the rarest 
 and fairest souls who have ever made the 
 earth pilgrimage. 
 
 And the greatness of genius still rests upon 
 Chelsea. As we walk slowly through its wind- 
 ing ways, by the edge of its troubled waters, 
 among dark and crooked turns, through
 
 88 J. M. W. TURNER 
 
 curious courts, by old gateways and piles of steepled stone, 
 where flocks of pigeons wheel, and bells chime, and organs 
 peal, and winds sigh, we know that all has been sanctified 
 by their presence. And their spirits abide with us, and the 
 splendid beauty of their visions is about us. For the stones 
 beneath our feet have been hallowed by their tread, and the 
 walls have borne their shadows; so all mean things are 
 transfigured and over all these plain and narrow streets their 
 glory gleams. 
 
 And it is the great men and they alone that can render a 
 place sacred. Chelsea is now to the lovers of the Beautiful a 
 sacred name, a sacred soil; a place of pilgrimage where 
 certain gods of Art once lived, and loved, and worked, and 
 died j* jt 
 
 Sir Thomas More lived here and had for a frequent guest 
 Erasmus. Hans Sloane began in Chelsea the collection of 
 curiosities which has now developed into the British Museum. 
 Bishop Atterbury (who claimed that Dryden was a greater 
 poet than Shakespeare), Dean Swift and Doctor Arbuthnot, 
 all lived in Church Street; Richard Steele just around the 
 corner and Leigh Hunt in Cheyne Row; but it was from 
 another name that the little street was to be immortalized. 
 <j[ If France constantly has forty Immortals in the flesh, 
 surely it is a modest claim to say that Chelsea has three for 
 all time: Thomas Carlyle, George Eliot and Joseph Mallord 
 William Turner. 
 
 Turner's father was a barber. His youth was passed in poverty 
 and his advantages for education were very slight. And all 
 this in the crowded city of London, where merit may knock
 
 J. M. W. TURNER 89 
 
 long and still not be heard, and in a country where wealth 
 and title count for much. 
 
 When a boy, barefoot and ragged, he would wander away 
 alone on the banks of the river and dream dreams about 
 wonderful palaces and beautiful scenes; and then he would 
 trace with a stick in the sands, endeavoring, with mud, to 
 make plain to the eye the things that his soul saw. 
 His mother was quite sure that no good could come from 
 this vagabondish nature, and she did not spare the rod, for 
 she feared that the desire to scrawl and daub would spoil 
 the child. But he was a stubborn lad, with a pugnose and 
 big, dreamy, wondering eyes, and a heavy jaw; and when 
 parents see that they have such a son, they had better hang 
 up the rod behind the kitchen-door and lay aside force and 
 cease scolding. For love is better than a cat-o'-nine-tails, and 
 sympathy saves more souls than threats. 
 The elder Turner considered that the proper use of a brush 
 was to lather chins. But the boy thought differently, and once 
 surreptitiously took one of his father's brushes to paint a 
 picture; the brush on being returned to its cup was used the 
 next day upon a worthy haberdasher, whose cheeks were 
 shortly colored a vermilion that matched his nose. This lost 
 the barber a customer and secured the boy a thrashing. 
 Young Turner did not always wash his father's shop-windows 
 well, nor sweep off the sidewalk properly. Like all boys he 
 would rather work for some one else than for "his folks." 
 <I He used to run errands for an engraver by the name of 
 Smith John Raphael Smith. Once, when Smith sent the 
 barber's boy with a letter to a certain art-gallery with orders
 
 go J. M. W. TURNER 
 
 to "get the answer and hurry back, mind you!" the boy 
 forgot to get the answer and to hurry back. Then another 
 boy was despatched after the first, and boy Number Two 
 found boy Number One sitting, with staring eyes and open 
 mouth, in the art-gallery before a painting of Claude Lor- 
 raine's. When boy Number One was at last forcibly dragged 
 away, and reached the shop of his master, he got his ears 
 well cuffed for his forgetfulness. But from that day forth he 
 was not the same being that he had been before his eyes fell 
 on that Claude Lorraine. 
 
 He was transformed, as much so as was Lazarus after he 
 was called from beyond the portals of death and had come 
 back to earth, bearing in his heart the secrets of the grave. 
 J From that time Turner thought of Claude Lorraine during 
 the day and dreamed of him at night, and he stole his way 
 into every exhibition where a Claude was to be seen. And 
 now I wish that Claude Lorraine was the subject of this 
 sketch, as well as Turner, for his life is a picture full of 
 sweetest poetry, framed in a world of dullest prose. 
 The eyes of this boy, whom they had thought dreamy, dull 
 and listless, now shone with a different light. He thirsted to 
 achieve, to do, to become yes, to become a greater painter 
 than Claude Lorraine. His employer saw the change and 
 smiled at it, but he allowed the lad to put in backgrounds and 
 add the skies to cheap prints, just because the youngster 
 teased to do it. 
 
 Then one day a certain patron of the shop came and looked 
 over the shoulder of the Turner boy, and he said, "He has 
 skill perhaps talent."
 
 J. M. W. TURNER 91 
 
 And I think that the recording angel should give this man a 
 separate page on the Book of Remembrance and write his 
 name in illuminated colors, for he gave young Turner access 
 to his own collection and to his library, and he never cuffed 
 hun nor kicked him nor called him dunce whereat the boy 
 was much surprised. But he encouraged the youth to sketch 
 a picture hi water-colors and then he bought the picture and 
 paid hun ten shillings for it; and the name of this man was 
 Doctor Munro. 
 
 The next year, when young Turner was fourteen, Doctor 
 Munro had hun admitted to the Royal Academy as a student, 
 and hi Seventeen Hundred Ninety he exhibited a water-color 
 of the Archbishop's palace at Lambeth. 
 The picture took no prize, and doubtless was not worthy of 
 one, but from now on Joseph M. W. Turner was an artist, 
 and other hands had to sweep the barber-shop. 
 But he sold few pictures they were not popular. Other 
 artists scorned him, possibly intuitively fearing him, for 
 mediocrity always fears when the ghost of genius does not 
 down at its bidding. 
 
 Then Turner was accounted unsociable; besides he was 
 ragged, uncouth, independent, and did not conform to the 
 ways of society; so the select circle cast hun out more 
 properly speaking, did not let hun in. 
 Still he worked on, and exhibited at every Academy Exhi- 
 bition, yet he was often hungry, and the London fog crept 
 cold and damp through his threadbare clothes. But he toiled 
 on, for Claude Lorraine was ever before him. 
 In Eighteen Hundred Two, when twenty-seven years of age,
 
 92 J. M. W. TURNER 
 
 he visited France and made a tour through Switzerland, 
 tramping over many long miles with his painting-kit on his 
 back, and he brought back rich treasures in way of sketches 
 and quickened imagination. C[ In the years following he took 
 many such trips, and came to know Venice, Rome, Florence 
 and Paris as perfectly as his own London. 
 When thirty-three years of age he was still worshiping at the 
 shrine of Claude Lorraine. His pictures painted at this time 
 are evidence of his ideal, and his book, "Liber Studiorum," 
 issued in Eighteen Hundred Eight, is modeled after the 
 "Liber Veritatis." But the book surpasses Claude's, and 
 Turner knew it, and this may have led him to burst his 
 shackles and cast loose from his idol. For in Eighteen 
 Hundred Fifteen we find him working according to his own 
 ideas, showing an originality and audacity in conception and 
 execution that made him the butt of the critics, and caused 
 consternation to rage through the studios of competitors. 
 Gradually, it dawned upon a few scattered collectors that 
 things so strongly condemned must have merit, for why 
 should the pack bay so loudly if there were no quarry! So to 
 have a Turner was at least something for your friends to 
 discuss jt jt 
 
 Then carriages began to stop before the dingy building at 
 Forty-seven Queen Anne Street, and broadcloth and satin 
 mounted the creaking stairs to the studio. It happened about 
 this time that Turner's prices began to increase. Like the 
 sibyl of old, if a customer said, "I do not want it, " the painter 
 put an extra ten pounds on the price. For "Dido Building 
 Carthage, " Turner's original price was five hundred pounds.
 
 J. M. W. TURNER 93 
 
 People came to see the picture and they said, "The price is 
 too high." Next day Turner's price for the "Carthage" was 
 one thousand pounds. Finally, Sir Robert Peel offered the 
 painter five thousand pounds for the picture, but Turner said 
 he had decided to keep it for himself, and he did. 
 In the fore part of his career he sold few pictures for the 
 simple reason that no one wanted them. And he sold few 
 pictures during the latter years of his life, for the reason that 
 his prices were so high that none but the very rich could buy. 
 First, the public scorned Turner. Next, Turner scorned the 
 public. In the beginning it would not buy his pictures, and 
 later it could not. 
 
 A frivolous public and a shallow press, from his first exhi- 
 bition, when fifteen years of age, to his last, when seventy, 
 made sport of his originalities. But for merit there is a 
 recompense in sneers, and a benefit in sarcasms, and a 
 compensation in hate; for when these things get too pro- 
 nounced a champion appears. And so it was with Turner. 
 Next to having a Boswell write one's life, what is better than 
 a Ruskin to uphold one's cause! 
 
 Success came slowly; his wants were few, but his ambition 
 never slackened, and finally the dreams of his youth became 
 the realities of his manhood. 
 
 At twenty, Turner loved a beautiful girl they became 
 engaged. He went away on a tramp sketching-tour and wrote 
 his ladylove just one short letter each month. He believed 
 that "absence only makes the heart grow fonder," not 
 knowing that this statement is only the vagary of a poet. 
 When he returned the lady was betrothed to another. He
 
 94 J. M. W. TURNER 
 
 gave the pair his blessing, and remained a bachelor a very 
 confirmed bachelor. 
 
 Perhaps, however, the reason his fiancee proved untrue was 
 not through lack of the epistles he wrote her, but on account 
 of them. In the British Museum I examined several letters 
 written by Turner. They appeared very much like copy for a 
 Josh Billings Almanac. Such originality in spelling, punc- 
 tuation and use of capitals 1 It was admirable in its unique- 
 ness. Turner did not think in words he could only think in 
 paint. But the young lady did not know this, and when a 
 letter came from her homely little lover she was shocked, 
 then she laughed, then she showed these letters to a nice 
 young man who was clerk to a fishmonger and he laughed, 
 then they both laughed. Then this nice young man and this 
 beautiful young lady became engaged, and they were married 
 at Saint Andrew's on a lovely May morning. And they lived 
 happily ever afterward. 
 
 Turner was small, and in appearance plain. Yet he was big 
 enough to paint a big picture, and he was not so homely as 
 to frighten away all beautiful women. But Philip Gilbert 
 Hamerton tells us, "Fortunate in many things, Turner was 
 lamentably unfortunate in this: that throughout his whole 
 life he never came under the ennobling and refining influence 
 of a good woman. " 
 
 Like Plato, Michelangelo, Sir Isaac Newton and his own 
 Claude Lorraine, he was wedded to his art. But at sixty-five 
 his genius suddenly burst forth afresh, and his work, 
 Mr. Ruskin says, at that time exceeded in daring brilliancy 
 and in the rich flowering of imagination, anything that he
 
 J. M. W. TURNER 95 
 
 had previously done. Mr. Ruskin could give no reason, but 
 rumor says, "A woman." 
 
 The one weakness of our hero, that hung to him for life, was 
 the idea that he could write poetry. The tragedian always 
 thinks he can succeed in comedy, the comedian spends hours 
 in his garret rehearsing tragedy; most preachers have an 
 idea that they could have made a quick fortune in business, 
 and many business men are very sure that if they had taken 
 to the pulpit there would now be fewer empty pews. So the 
 greatest landscape-painter of recent times imagined himself 
 a poet. Hamerton says that for remarkable specimens of 
 grammar, spelling and construction Turner's verse would 
 serve well to be given to little boys to correct. 
 One spot in Turner's life over which I like to linger is his 
 friendship with Sir Walter Scott. They collaborated in the 
 production of "Provincial Antiquities," and spent many 
 happy hours together tramping over Scottish moors and 
 mountains. Sir Walter lived out his days in happy ignorance 
 concerning the art of painting, and although he liked the 
 society of Turner, he confessed that it was quite beyond his 
 ken why people bought his pictures. "And as for your 
 books," said Turner, "the covers of some are certainly 
 very pretty." 
 
 Yet these men took a satisfaction in each other's society, 
 such as brothers might enjoy, but without either man 
 appreciating the greatness of the other. 
 Turner's temperament was audacious, self-centered, self- 
 reliant, eager for success and fame, yet at the same time 
 scorning public opinion a paradox often found in the
 
 96 J. M. W. TURNER 
 
 artistic mind of the first class; silent always with a bitter 
 silence, disdaining to tell his meaning when the critics could 
 not perceive it. 
 
 He was above all things always the artist, never the realist. 
 The realist pictures the things he sees; the artist expresses 
 that which he feels. Children, and all simple folk who use 
 pen, pencil or brush, describe the things they behold. As 
 intellect develops and goes more in partnership with hand, 
 imagination soars, and things are outlined that no man can 
 see except he be able to perceive the invisible. To appreciate 
 a work of art you must feel as the artist felt. 
 Now, it is very plain that the vast majority of people are not 
 capable of this high sense of sublimity which the creative 
 artist feels; and therefore they do not understand, and not 
 understanding, they wax merry, or cynical, or sarcastic, or 
 wrathful, or envious; or they pass by unmoved. And I 
 maintain that those who pass by unmoved are more righteous 
 than they who scoff. 
 
 If I should attempt to explain to my little girl the awe I feel 
 when I contemplate the miracle of maternity, she would 
 probably change the subject by prattling to me about a kitten 
 she saw lapping milk from a blue saucer. If I should attempt 
 to explain to some men what I feel when I contemplate the 
 miracle of maternity, they would smile and turn it all into 
 an unspeakable jest. Is not the child nearer to God than the 
 man? & jt 
 
 We thus see why to many Browning is only a joke, Whitman 
 an eccentric, Dante insane and Turner a pretender. These 
 have all sought to express things which the many can not
 
 J. M. W. TURNER 97 
 
 feel, and consequently they have been, and are, the butt of 
 
 jokes and jibes innumerable. "Except ye become as little 
 
 children," etc. and yet the scoffers are often people of 
 
 worth. Nothing so shows the limitation of humanity as this : 
 
 genius often does not appreciate genius. The inspired, 
 
 strangely enough, are like the fools, they do not recognize 
 
 inspiration jt j* 
 
 An Englishman called on Voltaire and found him in bed 
 
 reading Shakespeare. 
 
 "What are you reading?" asked the visitor. 
 
 "Your Shakespeare!" said the philosopher; and as he 
 
 answered he flung the book across the room. 
 
 "He 's not my Shakespeare," said the Englishman. 
 
 Greene, Rymer, Dryden, Warburton and Doctor Johnson 
 
 used collectively or individually the following expressions 
 
 in describing the work of the author of "Hamlet": conceit, 
 
 overreach, word-play, extravagance, overdone, absurdity, 
 
 obscurity, puerility, bombast, idiocy, untruth, improbability, 
 
 drivel jfc j* 
 
 Byron wrote from Florence to Murray: 
 
 "I know nothing of painting, and I abhor and spit upon all 
 
 saints and so-called spiritual subjects that I see portrayed in 
 
 these churches." 
 
 But the past is so crowded with vituperation that it is 
 
 difficult to select besides that, we do not wish to but let 
 
 us take a sample of arrogance from yesterday to prove our 
 
 point, and then drop the theme for something pleasanter jt 
 
 Pew and pulpit have fallen over each other for the privilege 
 
 of hitting Darwin; a Bishop warns his congregation that
 
 98 J. M. W. TURNER 
 
 Emerson is "dangerous " ; Spurgeon calls Shelley a sensualist ; 
 Doctor Buckley speaks of Susan B. Anthony as the leader of 
 "the short-haired"; Talmage cracks jokes about evolution, 
 referring feelingly to "monkey ancestry"; and a prominent 
 divine of England writes the World's Congress of Religions 
 down as "pious waxworks." These things being true, and all 
 the sentiments quoted coming from "good" but blindly 
 zealous men, is it a wonder that the Artist is not understood? 
 <I A brilliant picture, called "Cologne Evening," attracted 
 much attention at the Academy Exhibition of Eighteen 
 Hundred Twenty-six. One day the people who so often 
 collected around Turner's work were shocked to see that the 
 beautiful canvas had lost its brilliancy, and evidently had 
 been tampered with by some miscreant. A friend ran to inform 
 Turner of the bad news : "Don't say anything. I only smirched 
 it with lampblack. It was spoiling the effect of Laurence's 
 picture that hung next to it. The black will all wash off after 
 the Exhibition." 
 
 And his tender treatment of his aged father shows the 
 gentle side of his nature. The old barber, whose trembling 
 hand could no longer hold a razor, wished to remain under 
 his son's roof in guise of a servant, but the son said, "No; we 
 fought the world together, and now that it seeks to do me 
 honor, you shall share all the benefits." And Turner never 
 smiled when the little, wizened, old man would whisper to 
 some visitor, "Yes, yes; Joseph is the greatest artist in 
 England, and I am his father. " 
 
 Turner had a way of sending ten-pound notes in blank enve- 
 lopes to artists in distress, and he did this so frequently that
 
 J. M. W. TURNER 99 
 
 the news got out finally, but never through Turner's telling, 
 and then he had to adopt other methods of doing good by 
 stealth Jt jt 
 
 I do not contend that Turner's character was immaculate, 
 but still it is very probable that worldlings do not appreciate 
 what a small part of this great genius touched the mire. 
 To prove the sordidness of the man, one critic tells, with 
 visage awfully solemn, how Turner once gave an engraving 
 to a friend and then, after a year, sent demanding it back. 
 But to a person with a groat's worth of wit the matter is 
 plain: the dreamy, abstracted artist, who bumped into his 
 next-door neighbors on the street and never knew them, 
 furgot he had given the picture and believed he had only 
 loaned it. This is made still more apparent by the fact that, 
 when he sent for the engraving in question, he administered a 
 rebuke to the man for keeping it so long. The poor dullard 
 who received the note flew into a rage returned the picture 
 sent his compliments and begged the great artist to "take 
 your picture and go to the devil. " 
 
 Then certain scribblers, who through mental disease had 
 lost the capacity for mirth, dipped their pen in aqua fortis 
 and wrote of the "innate meanness," the "malice prepense" 
 and the " Old Adam" which dwelt hi the heart of Turner. No 
 one laughed except a few Irishmen, and an American or two, 
 who chanced to hear of the story. 
 
 Of Turner's many pictures I will mention hi detail but two, 
 both of which are to be seen on the walls of the National 
 Gallery. First, "The Old Temeraire." This warship had been 
 sold out of service and was being towed away to be broken
 
 ioo J. M. W. TURNER 
 
 up. The scene was photographed on Turner's brain, and he 
 immortalized it on canvas. We can not do better than 
 borrow the words of Mr. Ruskin : 
 
 "Of all pictures not visibly involving human pain, this is 
 the most pathetic ever painted. 
 
 "The utmost pensiveness which can ordinarily be given to a 
 landscape depends on adjuncts of ruin, but no ruin was ever 
 so affecting as the gliding of this ship to her grave. This 
 particular ship, crowned in the Trafalgar hour of trial with 
 chief victory surely, if ever anything without a soul 
 deserved honor or affection we owe them here. Surely, some 
 sacred care might have been left in our thoughts for her; 
 some quiet space amid the lapse of English waters! Nay, 
 not so. We have stern keepers to trust her glory to the fire 
 and the worm. Nevermore shall sunset lay golden robe upon 
 her, nor starlight tremble on the waves that part at her 
 gliding. Perhaps where the low gate opens to some cottage 
 garden, the tired traveler may ask, idly, why the moss grows 
 so green on the rugged wood ; and even the sailor's child niay 
 not know that the night dew lies deep in the war-rents of 
 the old Temeraire. " 
 
 "The Burial of Sir David WilMe at Sea" has brought tears 
 to many eyes. Yet there is no burial. The ship is far away in 
 the gloom of the offing; you can not distinguish a single 
 figure on her decks; but you behold her great sails standing 
 out against the leaden blackness of the night and you feel 
 that out there a certain scene is being enacted. And if you 
 listen closely you can hear the solemn voice of the 
 captain as he reads the burial service. Then there is
 
 J. M. W. TURNER 101 
 
 a pause a swift, sliding sound a splash, and all is over. 
 C Turner left to the British Nation by his will nineteen thou- 
 sand pencil and water-color sketches and one hundred large 
 canvases. These pictures are now to be seen in the National 
 Gallery in rooms set apart and sacred to Turner's work. For 
 fear it may be thought that the number of sketches mentioned 
 above is a misprint, let us say that if he had produced one 
 picture a day for fifty years it would not equal the number 
 of pieces bestowed by his will on the Nation. 
 This of course takes no account of the pictures sold during 
 his lif etime, and, as he left a fortune of one hundred forty-four 
 thousand pounds ^seven hundred twenty thousand dollars), 
 we may infer that not all his pictures were given away. 
 At Chelsea I stood in the little room where he breathed his 
 last, that bleak day in Eighteen Hundred Fifty-one. The 
 unlettered but motherly old woman who took care of him in 
 those last days never guessed his greatness; none in the 
 house or the neighborhood knew. 
 
 To them he was only Mr. Booth, an eccentric old man of 
 moderate means who liked to muse, read, and play with 
 children. He had no callers, no friends; he went to the city 
 every day and came back at night. He talked but little, he 
 was absent-minded, he smoked and thought and smiled and 
 muttered to himself. He never went to church; but once one 
 of the lodgers asked him what he thought of God. 
 "God, God what do I know of God, what does any one! He 
 is our life He is the All, but we need not fear Him 
 all we can do is to speak the truth and do our work. Tomorrow 
 we go where? I know not, but I am not afraid."
 
 102 J. M. W. TURNER 
 
 Of art, to these strangers he would never speak. Once they 
 urged him to go with them to an exhibition at Kensington, 
 but he smiled feebly as he lit his pipe and said, "An Art 
 Exhibition? No, no ; a man can show on a canvas so little of 
 what he feels, it is not worth the while. " 
 At last he died passed peacefully away and his attorney 
 came and took charge of his remains. 
 Many are the hard words that have been flung off by heedless 
 tongues about Turner's taking an assumed name and living 
 in obscurity, but "what you call fault I call accent." Surely, 
 if a great man and world-famous desires to escape the 
 flatterers and the silken mesh of so-called society and live 
 the life of simplicity, he has a right to do so. Again, Turner 
 was a very rich man in his old age ; he did much for strug- 
 gling artists and assisted aspiring merit in many ways. So it 
 came about that his mail was burdened with begging letters, 
 and his life made miserable by appeals from impecunious 
 persons, good and bad, and from churches, societies and 
 associations without number. He decided to flee them all; 
 and he did. <J The "Carthage " already mentioned is one of his 
 finest works, and he esteemed it so highly that he requested 
 that when death came, his body should be buried, wrapped 
 in its magnificent folds. But the wish was disregarded. 
 His remains rest in the crypt of Saint Paul's, beside the dust of 
 Reynolds. His statue, in marble, adorns a niche in the great 
 cathedral, and his name is secure high on the roll of honor. 
 <f And if for no other reason, the name and fame of Chelsea 
 should be deathless as the home of Turner.
 
 JONATHAN SWIFT
 
 THEY are but few and meanspirited that live in peace with all 
 men. "Tale of a Tub."
 
 JONATHAN SWIFT 
 
 <* 
 
 1 F writing books about Dean Swift there is 
 no end," quoth Mr. Birrell. The reason is 
 plain: of no other prominent writer who 
 has lived during the past two hundred years 
 do we know so much. His life lies open to 
 us in many books. Boswell did not write 
 his biography, but Johnson did. Then fol- 
 lowed whole schools of little fishes, some 
 of whom wrote like whales jt But among 
 the works of genuine worth and merit, with 
 Swift for a subject, we have Sir Walter 
 Scott's nineteen volumes, and lives by Craik, 
 Mitford, Forster, Collins and Leslie Stephen. 
 <I The positive elements in Swift's character 
 make him a most interesting subject to men 
 and women who are yet on earth for he was 
 essentially of the earth, earthy. And until 
 we are shown that the earth is wholly bad, 
 we shall find much to amuse, much to 
 instruct, much to admire aye, much to 
 pity in the life of Jonathan Swift. 
 His father married at twenty. His income 
 matched his years it was just twenty 
 pounds per annum. His wife was a young 
 girl, bright, animated, intelligent. 
 In a few short months this girl carried in 
 her arms a baby. This baby was wrapped 
 in a tattered shawl and cried piteously from 
 hunger, for the mother had not enough to
 
 io8 JONATHAN SWIFT 
 
 eat. She was cold, and sick, and in disgrace. Her husband, 
 too, was ill and sorely in debt. It was Midwinter. 
 When Spring came, and the flowers blossomed, and the birds 
 mated, and warm breezes came whispering softly from the 
 South, and all the earth was glad, the husband of this child- 
 wife was in his grave, and she was alone. Alone? No; she 
 carried in her tired arms the hungry babe, and beneath her 
 heart she felt the faint flutter of another life. 
 But to be in trouble and in Ireland is not so bad after all, 
 for the Irish people have great and tender hearts ; and even 
 if they have not much to bestow in a material way, they can 
 give sympathy, and they do. 
 
 So the girl was cared for by kind kindred, and on November 
 Thirtieth, Sixteen Hundred Sixty-seven, at Number Seven, 
 Hoey's Court, Dublin, the second baby was born. 
 Only a little way from Hoey's Court is Saint Patrick's 
 Cathedral. On that November day, as the tones from the 
 clanging chimes fell on the weary senses of the young mother, 
 there in her darkened room, little did she think that the puny 
 bantling she held to her breast would yet be the Dean of the 
 great church whose bells she heard; and how could she 
 anticipate a whisper coming to her from the far-off future : 
 "Of writing books about your babe there is no end!" 
 
 >HE man-child was given to an old woman to care for, 
 and he had the ability, even then, it seems, to win 
 affection. The foster-mother loved him and she stole 
 
 him away, carrying him off to England. 
 
 Charity ministered to his needs; charity gave him his educa-
 
 JONATHAN SWIFT 109 
 
 tion. When Swift was twenty-one years old he went to see 
 his mother. Her means were scanty to the point of hardship, 
 but so buoyant was her mind that she used to declare that 
 she was both rich and happy and being happy she was 
 certainly rich. She was a rare woman. Her spirit was inde- 
 pendent, her mind cultivated, her manner gentle and refined, 
 and she was endowed with a keen sense of humor. 
 From her, the son derived those qualities which have made 
 bun famous. No man is greater than his mother; but the 
 sons of brave women do not always make brave men. In 
 one quality Swift was lamentably inferior to his mother 
 he did not have her capacity for happiness. He had wit; she 
 had humor. 
 
 We have seen how Swift's father sickened and died. The 
 world was too severe for him, its buffets too abrupt, its 
 burden too heavy, and he gave up the fight before the battle 
 had really begun. This lack of courage and extreme sensitive- 
 ness are seen in the son. But so peculiar, complex and 
 wonderful is this web of life, that our very blunders, weak- 
 nesses and mistakes are woven in and make the fabric 
 stronger. If Swift had possessed only his mother's merits, 
 without his father's faults, he would never have shaken 
 the world with laughter, and we should never have heard 
 of him. 
 
 In her lowliness and simplicity the mother of Swift was 
 cpntent. She did her work in her own little way. She smiled 
 at folly, and each day she thanked Heaven that her lot was 
 no worse. Not so her son. He brooded in sullen silence; he 
 cursed Fate for making him a dependent, and even in his
 
 iio JONATHAN SWIFT 
 
 youth he scorned those who benefited him. This was a very 
 human proceeding. 
 
 Many hate, but few have a fine capacity for scorn. Their 
 hate is so vehement that when hurled it falls short. Swift's 
 scorn was a beautifully winged arrow, with a poisoned tip. 
 Some who were struck did not at the time know it. 
 His misanthropy defeated his purpose, thwarted his ambition, 
 ruined his aims, and made his name illustrious. 
 Swift wished for churchly preferment, but he had not the 
 patience to wait. He imagined that others were standing in 
 his way, and of course they were ; for under the calm exterior 
 of things ecclesiastic, there is often a strife, a jealousy and 
 a competition more rabid than in commerce. To succeed in 
 winning a bishopric requires a sagacity as keen as that 
 required to become a Senator of Massachusetts or the Governor 
 of New York. The man bides his time, makes himself popular, 
 secures advocates, lubricates the way, pulls the wires, and 
 slides noiselessly into place. 
 
 Swift lacked diplomacy. When matters did not seem to 
 progress he grew wrathful, seized his pen and stabbed with 
 it. But as he wrote, the ludicrousness of the whole situation 
 came over him and, instead of cursing plain curses, he held 
 his adversary up to ridicule! And this ridicule is so active, 
 the scorn so mixed with wit, the shafts so finely feathered 
 with truth, that it is the admiration of mankind. Vitriol 
 mixed with ink is volatile. Then what? We just run Swift 
 through a coarse sieve to take out the lumps of Seventeenth 
 Century refuse, and then we give him to children to make 
 them laugh. Surely no better use can be made of pessimists.
 
 JONATHAN SWIFT 111 
 
 Verily, the author of Gulliver wrote for one purpose, and 
 we use his work for another. He wished for office, he got 
 contempt; he tried to subdue his enemies, they subdued him; 
 he worked for the present, and he won immortality. 
 Said Heinrich Heine, prone on his bed in Paris: "The 
 wittiest sarcasms of mortals are only an attempt at jesting 
 when compared with those of the great Author of the 
 Universe the Aristophanes of Heaven!" 
 Wise men over and over have wasted good ink and paper 
 in bewailing Swift's malice and coarseness. But without 
 these very elements which the wise men bemoan, Swift 
 would be for us a cipher. Yet love is life and hate is death, 
 so how can spite benefit? The answer is that, in certain 
 forms of germination, frost is as necessary as sunshine: 
 so some men have qualities that lie dormant until the 
 coldness of hate bursts the coarse husk of indifference. 
 Cf But while hate may animate, only love inspires. Swift 
 might have stood at the head of the Church of England; 
 but even so, he would be only a unit in a long list of names, 
 and as it is, there is only one Swift. Mr. Talmage averred 
 that not ten men in America knew the name of the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury until his son wrote a certain book 
 entitled "Dodo." In putting out this volume, young Mr. 
 Benson not only gave us the strongest possible argument 
 favoring the celibacy of the clergy, but at the same time, 
 if Talmage's statement is correct, he made known his 
 father's name. 
 
 In all Swift's work, save "The Journal to Stella," the anima- 
 ting motive seems to have been to confound his enemies ; and
 
 ii2 JONATHAN SWIFT 
 
 according to the well-known line in that hymn sung wherever 
 the Union Jack flies, we must believe this to be a perfectly 
 justifiable ambition. But occasionally on his pages we find 
 gentle words of wisdom that were meant evidently for love's 
 eyes alone. There is much that is pure boyish frolic, and 
 again and again there are clever strokes directed at folly. 
 He has shot certain superstitions through with doubt, and 
 in his manner of dealing with error he has proved to us a 
 thing it were well not to forget: that pleasantry is more 
 efficacious than vehemence. 
 
 Let me name one incident by way of proof the well-known 
 one of Partridge, the almanac-maker. This worthy cobbler 
 was an astrologer of no mean repute. He foretold events 
 with much discretion. The ignorant bought his almanacs, 
 and many believed in them as a Bible in fact, astrology 
 was enjoying a "boom." 
 
 Swift came to London and found that Partridge's predictions 
 were the theme at the coffeehouses. He saw men argue 
 and wax wroth, grow red in the face as they talked loud 
 and long about nothing just nothing. The whole thing 
 struck Swift as being very funny ; and he wrote an announce- 
 ment of his intention to publish a rival almanac. He explained 
 that he, too, was an astrologer, but an honest one, while 
 Partridge was an impostor and a cheat; in fact, Partridge 
 foretold only things which every one knew would come true. 
 As for himself, he could discern the future with absolute 
 certainty, and to prove to the world his power he would now 
 make a prophecy. In substance, it was as follows: "My first 
 prediction is but a trifle; it relates to Partridge, the almanac-
 
 JONATHAN SWIFT 113 
 
 maker. I have consulted the star of his nativity, and find 
 that he will die on the Twenty-ninth day of March, next." 
 This was signed, "Isaac Bickerstaff," and duly issued in 
 pamphlet form. It had such an air of sincerity that both 
 the believers and the scoffers read it with interest. 
 The Thirtieth of March came, and another pamphlet from 
 "Isaac Bickerstaff" appeared, announcing the fulfilment of 
 the prophecy. It related how toward the end of March Par- 
 tridge began to languish; how he grew ill and at last took 
 to his bed, and, his conscience then smiting him, he confessed 
 to the world that he was a fraud and a rogue, that all his 
 prophecies were impositions: he then passed away. 
 Partridge was wild with rage, and immediately replied in a 
 manifesto declaring that he was alive and well and moreover 
 was alive on March Twenty-ninth. 
 
 To this "Bickerstaff" replied in a pamphlet more seriously 
 humorous than ever, reaffirming that Partridge was dead, 
 and closing with the statement that, "If an uninformed 
 carcass still walks about calling itself Partridge, I do 
 not in any way consider myself responsible for that." jt 
 The joke set all London on a grin. Wherever Partridge went 
 he was met with smiles and jeers, and astrology became 
 only a jest to a vast number of people who had formerly 
 believed in it seriously. 
 
 When Benjamin Franklin started his "Poor Richard's 
 Almanac," twenty-five years later, in the first issue he 
 prophesied the death of one Dart who set the pace at that 
 time as almanac-maker in America. The man was to 
 expire on the afternoon of October Seventeenth, Seven-
 
 ii4 JONATHAN SWIFT 
 
 teen Hundred Thirty-three, at three twenty-nine o'clock. 
 CJ Dart, being somewhat of a joker himself, came out with 
 an announcement that he, too, had consulted the oracle, 
 and found he would live until October Twenty-sixth, and 
 possibly longer. 
 
 On October Eighteenth, Franklin announced Dart's death, 
 and explained that it occurred promptly on time, all as 
 prophesied. 
 
 Yet Dart lived to publish many almanacs ; but Poor Richard 
 got his advertisement, and many staid, broad-brimmed 
 Philadelphians smiled who had never smiled before not 
 only smiled but subscribed. 
 
 Benjamin Franklin was a great and good man, as any man 
 must be who fathers another's jokes, introducing these 
 orphaned children to the world as his own. 
 Perhaps no one who has written of Swift knew him so well 
 as Delany. And this writer, who seems to have possessed a 
 judicial quality far beyond most men, has told us that Swift 
 was moral hi conduct to the point of asceticism. His deport- 
 ment was grave and dignified, and his duties as a priest were 
 always performed with exemplary diligence. He visited the 
 sick, regularly administered the sacraments, and was never 
 known to absent himself from morning prayers. 
 When Harley was Lord Treasurer, Swift seems to have been 
 on the topmost crest of the wave of popularity. Invitations 
 from nobility flowed in upon him, beautiful women deigned 
 to go in search of his society, royalty recognized him. And 
 yet all this time he was only a country priest with a liking 
 for literature.
 
 JONATHAN SWIFT 115 
 
 Collins tells us that the reason for his popularity is plain: 
 "Swift was one of the kings of the earth. Like Pope Innocent 
 the Third, like Chatham, he was one to whom the world 
 involuntarily pays tribute." 
 
 His will was a will of adamant; his intellect so keen that 
 it impressed every one who approached him; his temper 
 singularly stern, dauntless and haughty. But his wit was 
 never filled with gaiety: he was never known to laugh. 
 Amid the wildest uproar that his sallies caused, he would 
 sit with face austere unmoved. 
 
 Personally, Swift was a gentleman. When he was scurrilous, 
 abusive, ribald, malicious, it was anonymously. Is this to 
 his credit ? I should not say so, but if a man is indecent and 
 he hides behind a (< nom de plume," it is at least presumptive 
 proof that he is not dead to shame. 
 Leslie Stephen tells us that Swift was a Churchman to the 
 backbone. No man who is a "Churchman to the backbone" 
 is ever very pious: the spirit maketh alive, but the letter 
 killeth. One looks in vain for traces of spirituality in the 
 Dean. His sermons are models of churchly commonplace 
 and full of the stock phrases of a formal religion. He never 
 bursts into flame. Yet he most thoroughly and sincerely 
 believed in religion. "I believe in religion it keeps the 
 masses in check. And then I uphold Christianity because if it 
 is abolished the stability of the Church might be endangered," 
 he said t jt, 
 
 Philip asked the eunuch a needless question when he inquired, 
 "Understandest thou what thou readest?" No one so poorly 
 sexed as Swift can comprehend spiritual truth: spirituality
 
 ii6 JONATHAN SWIFT 
 
 and sexuality are elements that are never separated. Swift 
 was as incapable of spirituality as he was of the "grand 
 passion." 
 
 The Dean had affection; he was a warm friend; he was 
 capable even of a degree of love, but his sexual and spiritual 
 nature was so cold and calculating that he did not hesitate 
 to sacrifice love to churchly ambition. 
 He argued that the celibacy of the Catholic clergy is a wise 
 expediency. The bachelor physician and the unmarried 
 priest have an influence among gentle womankind, young 
 or old, married or single, that a benedict can never hope 
 for. Why this is so might be difficult to explain, but discerning 
 men know the fact. In truth, when a priest marries he should 
 at once take a new charge, for if he remains with his old 
 flock a goodly number of his "lady parishioners," in ages 
 varying from seventeen to seventy, will with fierce indigna- 
 tion rend his reputation. 
 
 Swift was as wise as a serpent, but not always as harmless 
 as a dove. He was making every effort to secure his miter 
 and crosier: he had many women friends in London and 
 elsewhere who had influence. Rather than run the risk of 
 losing this influence he never acknowledged Stella as his 
 wife. Choosing fame rather than love, he withered at the 
 heart, then died at the top. 
 
 The life of every man is a seamless garment its woof his 
 thoughts, its warp his deeds. When for him the roaring loom 
 of time stops and the thread is broken, foolish people some- 
 times point to certain spots in the robe and say, "Oh, why 
 did he not leave that out!" not knowing that every action
 
 JONATHAN SWIFT ITJ 
 
 of man is a sequence from off Fate's spindle. CJ Let us accept 
 the work of genius as we find it; not bemoaning because 
 it is not better, but giving thanks because it is so good. 
 
 WELL-FED, rollicking priest is Father O'Toole of 
 Dublin, with a big, round face, a double chin, and a 
 brogue that you can cut with a knife. 
 My letter of introduction from Monseigneur Satolli caused 
 him at once to bring in a large, suspicious, black bottle 
 and two glasses. Then we talked talked of Ireland's 
 wrongs and woman's rights, and of all the Irishmen in 
 America whom I was supposed to know. We spoke of the 
 illustrious Irishmen who had passed on, and I mentioned a 
 name that caused the holy father to spring from his chair 
 in indignation. 
 
 "Shwift is it! Shwift! No, me lad, don't go near him! He 
 was the divil's own, the very worsht that ever followed the 
 swish of a petticoat. No, no; if ye go to his grave it'll bring 
 ye bad luck for a year. It 's Tom Moore ye want Tom was 
 the bye. Arrah! now, and it's meself phat'll go wid ye." 
 <I And so the reverend father put on a long, black coat and 
 his Saint Patrick's Day hat, and we started. We were met 
 at the gate by a delegation of "shpalpeens" that had located 
 me on the inside of the house and were lying in wait. 
 All American travelers in Ireland are supposed to be million- 
 aires, and this may possibly explain the lavish attention that 
 is often tendered them. At any rate, various members of the 
 delegation wished "long life to the iligant 'Merican gintle- 
 man," and hinted in unmistakable terms that pence would
 
 ii8 JONATHAN SWIFT 
 
 be acceptable. The holy father applied his cane vigorously 
 to the ragged rears of the more presumptuous, and bade 
 them begone, but still they followed and pressed close about. 
 jf "Here, I'll show you how to get rid of the dirty gang," 
 said his holiness. "Have ye a penny, I don't know?" 
 I produced a handful of small change, which the father 
 immediately took and tossed into the street. Instantly there 
 was a heterogeneous mass of young Hibernians piled up 
 in the dirt in a grand struggle for spoils. It reminded me of 
 football incidents I had seen at fair Harvard. In the mean- 
 time, we escaped down a convenient alley and crossed the 
 River Liffey to Old Dublin; inside the walls of the old city, 
 through crooked lanes and winding streets that here and 
 there showed signs of departed gentility, where now was only 
 squalor, want and vice, until we came to Number Twelve Angier 
 Street, a quaint, three-story brick building now used as a 
 "public." In the wall above the door is a marble slab with 
 this inscription: "Here was born Thomas Moore, on the 
 Twenty-eighth day of May, Seventeen Hundred Seventy- 
 eight." Above this in a niche is a bust of the poet. 
 Tom's father was a worthy greengrocer who, according to 
 the author of "Lalla Rookh," always gave good measure 
 and full count. It was ever a cause of regret to the elder 
 Moore that his son did not show sufficient capacity to be 
 trusted safely with the business. < The upper rooms of the 
 house were shown to us by an obliging landlady. Father 
 O'Toole had been here before, and led the way to a snug 
 little chamber and explained that in this room the future 
 poet of Ireland was found under one of his father's cabbage-
 
 JONATHAN SWIFT 119 
 
 leaves. <I We descended to the neat little barroom with its 
 sanded floor and polished glassware and shining brass. The 
 holy father ordered 'arf-and-'arf at my expense and recited 
 one of Moore's ballads. The landlady then gave us Byron's 
 "Here's a Health to Thee, Tom Moore." A neighbor came 
 in. Then we had more ballads, more 'arf-and-'arf, a selection 
 from "Lalla Rookh" and various tales of the poet's early 
 life, which possibly would be hard to verify. 
 And as the tumult raged the smoke of battle gave me 
 opportunity to slip away. I crossed the street, turned down 
 one block, and entered Saint Patrick's Cathedral. 
 Great, roomy, gloomy, solemn temple, where the rumble 
 of city traffic is deadened to a faint hum: 
 
 " Without, the world's unceasing noises rise, 
 Turmoil, disquietude and busy fears ; 
 Within, there are the sounds of other years, 
 Thoughts full of prayer and solemn harmonies 
 Which imitate on earth the peaceful skies." 
 
 Other worshipers were there. Standing beside a great stone 
 pillar I could make them out kneeling on the tiled floor. 
 Gradually, my eyes became accustomed to the subdued 
 light, and right at my feet I saw a large brass plate set in 
 the floor and on it only this : 
 
 Swift 
 
 Died Oct. 19, 1745 
 Aged 78 
 
 On the wall near is a bronze tablet, the inscription of which, 
 in Latin, was dictated by Swift himself:
 
 120 JONATHAN SWIFT 
 
 " Here lies the body of Jonathan Swift, Dean of this Cathedral, 
 where fierce indignation can no longer rend his heart. Go! 
 wayfarer, and imitate, if thou canst, one who, as far as in 
 
 him lay, was an earnest champion of liberty " 
 
 Above this is a fine bust of the Bean, and to the right is 
 another tablet: 
 
 " Underneath lie interred the mortal remains of Mrs. Hester 
 Johnson, better known to the world as 'Stella,' under which 
 she is celebrated in the writings of Doctor Jonathan Swift, 
 Dean of this Cathedral. She was a person of extraordinary 
 endowments and accomplishments, in body, mind and 
 behavior; justly admired and respected by all who knew 
 her, on account of her eminent virtues as well as for her 
 great natural and acquired perfections." 
 These were suffering souls and great. Would they have been 
 so great had they not suffered? Who can tell? Were the 
 waters troubled in order that they might heal the people ? 
 <I Did Swift misuse this excellent woman, is a question that 
 has been asked and answered again and again. 
 A great author has written: 
 
 "A woman, a tender, noble, excellent woman, has a dog's 
 heart. She licks the hand that strikes her. And wrong nor 
 cruelty nor injustice nor disloyalty can cause her to turn." 
 Death in pity took Stella first; took her in the loyalty of 
 love and the fulness of faith from a world which for love 
 has little recompense, and for faith small fulfilment. 
 Stella was buried by torchlight, at midnight, on the Thirtieth 
 day of January, Seventeen Hundred Twenty-eight. Swift 
 was sick at the time, and wrote in his journal: "This is the
 
 JONATHAN SWIFT 
 
 121 
 
 night of her funeral, and I am removed to another apartment 
 
 that I may not see the light in the church which is just over 
 
 against my window." But hi his imagination he saw the 
 
 gleaming torches as their dull light shone through the colored 
 
 windows, and he said: "They will soon do as much for me." 
 
 tj But seventeen years came crawling by before the torches 
 
 flared, smoked and gleamed as the mourners chanted a 
 
 requiem, and the clods fell on the coffin, and their echoes 
 
 intermingled with the solemn voice of the priest as he said, 
 
 "Dust to dust, ashes to ashes." 
 
 In Eighteen Hundred Thirty-five, the graves were opened 
 
 and casts taken of the skulls. The top of Swift's skull had 
 
 been sawed off at the autopsy, and a bottle hi which was a 
 
 parchment setting forth the facts was inserted hi the head 
 
 that had conceived "Gulliver's Travels." 
 
 I examined the casts. The woman's head is square and 
 
 shapely. Swift's head is a refutation of phrenology, being 
 
 small, sloping and ordinary. 
 
 The bones of Swift and Stella were placed hi one coffin, 
 
 and now rest under three feet of concrete, beneath the 
 
 floor of Saint Patrick's. 
 
 So sleep the lovers joined in death.
 
 WALT WHITMAN
 
 WALT WHITMAN
 
 ALL seems beautiful to me. 
 I can repeat over to men and women, You have done inch 
 
 good to me I would do the same to you, 
 I will recruit for myself and you as I go. 
 I will scatter myself among men and women as I go, 
 I will toss a new gladness and roughnecs among them. 
 
 Song of the Open Road
 
 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 f AX NORDAU wrote a book wrote it with 
 his tongue in his cheek, a dash of vitriol 
 in the ink, and with a pen that scratched. 
 <j[ And the first critic who seemed to place 
 a just estimate on the work was Mr. Zang- 
 will (he who has no Christian name). 
 Mr. Zangwill made an attempt to swear out 
 a "writ de lunatico inquirendo" against 
 his Jewish brother, on the ground that the 
 first symptom of insanity is often the delu- 
 sion that others are insane; and this being 
 so, Doctor Nordau was not a safe subject 
 to be at large. But the Assize of Public 
 Opinion denied the petition, and the dear 
 people bought the book at from three to 
 five dollars a copy. Printed in several 
 languages, its sales have mounted to a 
 hundred thousand volumes, and the 
 author's net profit is full forty thousand 
 dollars. No wonder is it that, with pockets 
 full to bursting, Doctor Nordau goes out 
 behind the house and laughs uproariously 
 whenever he thinks of how he has worked 
 the world! 
 
 If Doctor Talmage is the Barnum of The- 
 ology, surely we may call Doctor Nordau 
 the Barnum of Science. His agility in 
 manipulating facts is equal to Hermann's 
 now-you-see-it and now-you-don't with
 
 128 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 pocket-handkerchiefs. Yet Hermann's exhibition is worth 
 the admittance fee, and Nordau's book (seemingly written 
 in collaboration with Jules Verne and Mark Twain) would 
 be cheap for a dollar <& But what I object to is Professor 
 Hermann's disciples posing as Sure-Enough Materializing 
 Mediums and Professor Lombroso's followers calling them- 
 selves Scientists, when each goes forth without scrip or purse 
 with no other purpose than to supply themselves with both. 
 <g Yet it was Barnum himself who said that the public 
 delights in being humbugged, and strange it is that we 
 will not allow ourselves to be thimblerigged without pay- 
 ing for the privilege. 
 
 Nordau's success hinged on his audacious assumption that 
 the public knew nothing of the Law of Antithesis. Yet Plato 
 explained that the opposites of things look alike, and some- 
 times are alike and that was quite a while ago. 
 The multitude answered, "Thou hast a devil." Many of them 
 said, "He hath a devil and is mad." Festus said with a loud 
 voice, "Paul, thou art beside thyself." And Nordau shouts 
 in a voice more heady than that of Pilate, more throaty than 
 that of Festus, "Mad Whitman was mad beyond the 
 cavil of a doubt 1" 
 
 In Eighteen Hundred Sixty-two, Lincoln, looking out of a 
 window (before lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed) on one 
 of the streets of Washington, saw a workingman in shirt- 
 sleeves go by. Turning to a friend, the President said, "There 
 goes a MAN!" The exclamation sounds singularly like that 
 of Napoleon on meeting Goethe. But the Corsican's remark 
 was intended for the poet's ear, while Lincoln did not know
 
 WALT WHITMAN 129 
 
 who his man was, although he came to know him afterward. 
 J Lincoln in his early days was a workingman and an 
 athlete, and he never quite got the idea out of his head 
 (and I am glad) that he was still a hewer of wood. He once 
 told George William Curtis that he more than half expected 
 yet to go back to the farm and earn his daily bread by the 
 work that his hands found to do; he dreamed of it nights, 
 and whenever he saw a splendid toiler, he felt like hailing 
 the man as brother and striking hands with him. When 
 Lincoln saw Whitman strolling majestically past, he took 
 him for a stevedore or possibly the foreman of a construction 
 gang & o* 
 
 Whitman was fifty-one years old then. His long, flowing 
 beard was snow-white, and the shock that covered his Jove- 
 like head was iron-gray. His form was that of an Apollo 
 who had arrived at years of discretion. He weighed an even 
 two hundred pounds and was just six feet high. His plain, 
 check, cotton shirt was open at the throat to the breast; 
 and he had an independence, a self-sufficiency, and withal a 
 cleanliness, a sweetness and a gentleness, that told that, 
 although he had a giant's strength, he did not use it like 
 a giant. Whitman used no tobacco, neither did he apply 
 hot and rebellious liquors to his blood and with unblushing 
 forehead woo the means of debility and disease. Up to his 
 fifty-third year he had never known a sick day, although at 
 thirty his hair had begun to whiten. He had the look of age 
 in his youth and the look of youth in his age that often 
 marks the exceptional man. 
 But at fifty-three his splendid health was crowded to the
 
 130 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 breaking strain. How? Through caring for wounded, sick 
 and dying men, hour after hour, day after day, through the 
 long, silent watches of the night. From Eighteen Hundred 
 Sixty-four to the day of his death in Eighteen Hundred 
 Ninety-two, he was, physically, a man in ruins. But he did 
 not wither at the top. Through it all he held the healthy 
 optimism of boyhood, carrying with him the perfume of 
 the morning and the lavish heart of youth. 
 Doctor Bucke, who was superintendent of a hospital for 
 the insane for fifteen years, and the intimate friend of 
 Whitman all the time, has said: "His build, his stature, 
 his exceptional health of mind and body, the size and form 
 of his features, his cleanliness of mind and body, the grace 
 of his movements and gestures, the grandeur, and especially 
 the magnetism, of his presence; the charm of his voice, his 
 genial, kindly humor; the simplicity of his habits and tastes, 
 his freedom from convention, the largeness and the beauty 
 of his manner; his calmness and majesty; his charity and 
 forbearance his entire unresentfulness under whatever 
 provocation; his liberality, his universal sympathy with 
 humanity in all ages and lands, his broad tolerance, his 
 catholic friendliness, and his unexampled faculty of attracting 
 affection, all prove his perfectly proportioned manliness." 
 CJ But Whitman differed from the disciple of Lombroso in 
 two notable particulars: He had no quarrel with the world, 
 and he did not wax rich. "One thing thou lackest, Walt 
 Whitman!" we might have said to the poet; "you are not 
 a financier." He died poor. But this is no proof of degeneracy, 
 save on 'Change & When the children of Count Tolstoy
 
 WALT WHITMAN 131 
 
 endeavored to have him adjudged insane, the Court denied 
 the application and voiced the wisest decision that ever 
 came out of Russia: A man who gives away his money is 
 not necessarily more foolish than he who saves it. 
 And with Horace L. Traubel I assert that Whitman was 
 the sanest man I ever saw. 
 
 OME men make themselves homes; and others there 
 be who rent rooms. Walt Whitman was essentially 
 a citizen of the world: the world was his home and 
 mankind were his friends. There was a quality in the man 
 peculiarly universal: a strong, virile poise that asked for 
 nothing, but took what it needed. 
 
 He loved men as brothers, yet his brothers after the flesh 
 understood him not; he loved children they turned to him 
 instinctively but he had no children of his own; he loved 
 women, and yet this strongly sexed and manly man never 
 loved a woman j* And I might here say as Philip Gilbert 
 Hamerton said of Turner, "He was lamentably unfortunate 
 in this : throughout his whole life he never came under the 
 ennobling and refining influence of a good woman." 
 It requires two to make a home. The first home was made 
 when a woman, cradling in her loving arms a baby, crooned 
 a lullaby. All the tender sentimentality we throw around a 
 place is the result of the sacred thought that we live there 
 with some one else. It is "our" home. The home is a tryst 
 the place where we retire and shut the world out. Lovers 
 make a home, just as birds make a nest, and unless 
 a man knows the spell of the divine passion I hardly see
 
 13* WALT WHITMAN 
 
 how he can have a home at all. He only rents a room. 
 <J Camden is separated from the city of Philadelphia by the 
 Delaware River. Camden lies low and flat a great, sandy, 
 monotonous waste of straggling buildings. Here and there 
 are straight rows of cheap houses, evidently erected by 
 staid, broad-brimmed speculators from across the river, 
 with eyes on the main chance. But they reckoned ill, for 
 the town did not boom. Some of these houses have marble 
 steps and white, barn-door shutters, that might withstand 
 a siege. When a funeral takes place in one of these houses, 
 the shutters are tied with strips of mournful, black alpaca 
 for a year and a day. Engineers, dockmen, express-drivers 
 and mechanics largely make up the citizens of Camden. Of 
 course, Camden has its smug corner where prosperous 
 merchants most do congregate: where they play croquet 
 in the front yards, and have window-boxes, and a piano and 
 veranda-chairs and terra-cotta statuary; but for the most 
 part the houses of Camden are rented, and rented cheap jt 
 Many of the domiciles are frame and have the happy tumble- 
 down look of the back streets in Charleston or Richmond 
 those streets where the white trash merges off into pros- 
 perous colored aristocracy. Old hats do duty in keeping out 
 the fresh air where Providence has interfered and broken 
 out a pane; blinds hang by a single hinge; bricks on the 
 chimney-tops threaten the passers-by; stringers and posts 
 mark the place where proud picket fences once stood 
 the pickets having gone for kindling long ago. In the warm, 
 Summer evenings, men in shirt-sleeves sit on the front 
 steps and stolidly smoke, while children pile up sand in the
 
 WALT WHITMAN 133 
 
 streets and play in the gutters. <jj Parallel with Mickle 
 Street, a block away, are railway-tracks. There noisy 
 switch-engines that never keep Sabbath, puff back and 
 forth, day and night, sending showers of soot and smoke 
 when the wind is right (and it usually is) straight over 
 Number 328, where, according to John Addington Symonds 
 and William Michael Rossetti, lived the mightiest seer of 
 the century the man whom they rank with Socrates, 
 Epictetus, Saint Paul, Michelangelo and Dante. 
 It was in August of Eighteen Hundred Eighty-three that I 
 first walked up that little street a hot, sultry Summer 
 evening. There had been a shower that turned the dust of 
 the unpaved roadway to mud. The air was close and muggy. 
 The houses, built right up to the sidewalks, over which, in 
 little gutters, the steaming sewage ran, seemed to have 
 discharged their occupants into the street to enjoy the cool 
 of the day. Barefooted children by the score paddled in the 
 mud. All the steps were filled with loungers; some of the 
 men had discarded not only coats but shirts as well, and now 
 sat in flaming red underwear, holding babies. 
 They say that "woman's work is never done," but to the 
 women of Mickle Street this does not apply but stay! 
 perhaps their work IS never done. Anyway, I remember 
 that women sat on the curbs in calico dresses or leaned 
 out of the windows, and all seemed supremely free from care. 
 *I "Can you tell me where Mr. Whitman lives 1" I asked a 
 portly dame who was resting her elbows on a window-sill. 
 J"Who?" 
 "Mr. Whitman!'*
 
 134 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 "You mean Walt Whitman?" 
 "Yes."jt Jt 
 
 "Show the gentleman, Molly; he'll give you a nickel, I'm 
 surel"jfc jfc 
 
 I had not seen Molly. She stood behind me, but as her mother 
 spoke she seized tight hold of one of my fingers, claiming me 
 as her lawful prey, and all the other children looked on with 
 envious eyes as little Molly threw at them glances of scorn 
 and marched me off. Molly was five, going on six, she told 
 me. She had bright-red hair, a grimy face and little chapped 
 feet that made not a sound as we walked. She got her nickel 
 and carried it in her mouth, and this made conversation 
 difficult. After going one block she suddenly stopped, squared 
 me around and pointing said, "Them is he !" and disappeared. 
 fj In a wheeled rattan chair, in the hallway, a little back 
 from the door of a plain, weather-beaten house, sat the 
 coatless philosopher, his face and head wreathed in a tumult 
 of snow-white hair. 
 
 I had a little speech, all prepared weeks before and committed 
 to memory, that I intended to repeat, telling him how I had 
 read his poems and admired them. And further I had stored 
 away in my mind a few blades from "Leaves of Grass" that 
 I purposed to bring out at the right time as a sort of certificate 
 of character. But when that little girl jerked me right-about- 
 face and heartlessly deserted me, I stared dumbly at the man 
 whom I had come a hundred miles to see. I began angling 
 for my little speech, but could not fetch it. 
 "Hello!" called the philosopher, out of the white aureole; 
 "Hello! come here, boy!"
 
 WALT WHITMAN 135 
 
 He held out his hand and as I took it there was a grasp 
 with meaning in it. 
 
 "Don't go yet, Joe," he said to a man seated on the step 
 smoking a cob pipe. 
 
 "The old woman 's calling me," said the swarthy Joe. Joe 
 evidently held truth lightly. "So long, Walt!" 
 "Good-by, Joe. Sit down, lad; sit down!" 
 I sat in the doorway at his feet. 
 
 "Now is n't it queer that fellow is a regular philosopher 
 and works out some great problems, but he's ashamed to 
 express 'em. He could no more give you his best than he 
 could fly. Ashamed, I s'pose, ashamed of the best that is in 
 him. We are all a little that way all but me I try to write 
 my best, regardless of whether the thing sounds ridiculous 
 or not regardless of what others think or say or have said. 
 Ashamed of our holiest, truest and best! Is it not too bad? 
 CJ "You are twenty-five now? Well, boy, you may grow 
 until you are thirty and then you will be as wise as you ever 
 will be. Haven't you noticed that men of sixty have no 
 clearer vision than men of forty? One reason is that we have 
 been taught that we know all about life and death and the 
 mysteries of the grave. But the main reason is that we are 
 ashamed to shove out and be ourselves. Jesus expressed His 
 own individuality perhaps more than any man we know of, 
 and so He wields a wider influence than any other. And this 
 though we only have a record of just twenty-seven days of 
 His life. 
 
 "Now, that fellow that just left is an engineer, and he dreams 
 some beautiful dreams; but he never expresses them to any
 
 136 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 one only hints them to me, and this only at twilight. He is 
 like a weasel or a mink or a whippoorwill he comes out 
 only at night. 
 
 " 'If the weather was like this all the time, people would 
 never learn to read and write, 1 said Joe to me just as you 
 arrived. And is n't that so ? Here we can count a hundred 
 people up and down this street, and not one is reading, not 
 one but that is just lolling about, except the children and 
 they are only happy when playing in the dirt. Why, if this 
 tropical weather should continue we would all slip back 
 into South Sea Islanders 1 You can raise good men only in 
 a little strip around the North Temperate Zone when you 
 get out of the track of a glacier a tender-hearted, sympathetic 
 man of brains is an accident." 
 
 Then the old man suddenly ceased and I imagined that he 
 was following the thought out in his own mind. We sat 
 silent for a space. The twilight fell, and a lamplighter lit 
 the street lamp on the corner. He stopped an instant to 
 salute the poet cheerily as he passed. The man sitting on the 
 doorstep, across the street, smoking, knocked the ashes out 
 of his pipe on his boot-heel and went indoors. Women called 
 their children, who did not respond, but still played on. Then 
 the creepers were carried in, to be fed their bread-and-milk 
 and put to bed; and, shortly, shrill feminine voices ordered 
 the other children indoors, and some obeyed. 
 The night crept slowly on. <| I heard old Walt chuckle behind 
 me, talking incoherently to himself, and then he said, "You 
 are wondering why I live in such a place as this?" 
 "Yes; that is exactly what I was thinking of!"
 
 WALT WHITMAN 137 
 
 "You think I belong in the country, in some quiet, shady 
 place. But all I have to do is to shut my eyes and go there. 
 No man loves the woods more than I I was born within 
 sound of the sea down on Long Island, and I know all 
 the songs that the seashell sings. But this babble and babel 
 of voices pleases me better, especially since my legs went 
 on a strike, for although I can't walk, you see I still mix 
 with the throng, so I suffer no loss. In the woods, a man 
 must be all hands and feet. I like the folks, the plain, igno- 
 rant, unpretentious folks ; and the youngsters that come and 
 slide on my cellar-door do not disturb me a bit. I 'm different 
 from Carlyle you know he had a noise-proof room where 
 he locked himself in. Now, when a huckster goes by, crying 
 his wares, I open the blinds, and often wrangle with the 
 fellow over the price of things. But the rogues have got into 
 a way lately of leaving truck for me and refusing pay. Today 
 an Irishman passed in three quarts of berries and walked 
 off pretending to be mad because I offered to pay. When he 
 was gone, I beckoned to the babies over the way they came 
 over and we had a feast. <I "Yes, I like the folks around here ; 
 I like the women, and I like the men, and I like the babies, 
 and I like the youngsters that play in the alley and make 
 mud-pies on my steps. I expect to stay here until I die." 
 "You speak of death as a matter of course you are not 
 afraid to die?" 
 
 "Oh, no, my boy; death is as natural as life, and a deal 
 kinder. But it is all good I accept it all and give thanks 
 you have not forgotten my chant to death?" 
 "Not 1 1"
 
 138 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 I repeated a few lines from "Drum-Taps." ^f He followed 
 me, rapping gently with his cane on the floor, and with 
 little interjectory remarks of "That's so!" "Very true!" 
 "Good, good!" And when I faltered and lost the lines 
 he picked them up where "The voice of my spirit tallied 
 the song of the bird." In a strong, clear voice, but a voice 
 full of sublime feeling, he repeated: 
 
 "Come, lovely and soothing Death, 
 
 Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, 
 
 In the day, in the night, to all, to each, 
 
 Sooner or later, delicate Death. 
 
 Praised be the fathomless universe 
 
 For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious, 
 
 And for love, sweet love but praise! praise! praise 
 
 For the sure enwinding arms of cool, enfolding Death. 
 
 Dark Mother, always gliding near with soft feet, 
 
 Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome? 
 
 Then I chant for thee, I glorify thee above all, 
 
 I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfal- 
 teringly. 
 
 Approach, strong deliveress, 
 
 When it is so, when thou hast taken them 
 
 I joyously sing the death, 
 
 Lost in the loving, floating ocean of thee, 
 
 Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O Death. 
 
 From me to thee glad serenades, 
 
 Dances for thee I propose, saluting thee, adornments and feastings 
 for thee, 
 
 And the sights of the open landscape and the high spread sky are 
 fitting, 
 
 And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night. 
 
 The night in silence under many a star,
 
 WALT WHITMAN 139 
 
 The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I 
 
 know, 
 
 And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well-veil'd Death, 
 And the body gratefully nestling close to thee. 
 Over the tree-tops I float thee a song, 
 Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the 
 
 prairies wide, 
 Over the dense-packed cities all, and the teeming wharves, and 
 
 ways, 
 I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee, O Death." 
 
 The last playing youngster had silently disappeared from 
 the streets. The doorsteps were deserted save where across 
 the way a young man and maiden sat in the gloaming, con- 
 versing in low monotone. 
 The clouds had drifted away. 
 
 A great, yellow star shone out above the chimney-tops in 
 the East. 
 I arose to go. 
 
 "I wish you'd come oftener I see you so seldom, lad," 
 said the old man, half -plaintively. 
 
 I did not explain that we had never met before that I had 
 come from New York purposely to see him. He thought he 
 knew me. And so he did as much as I could impart. The 
 rest was irrelevant. As to my occupation or name, what 
 booted it! he had no curiosity concerning me. I grasped 
 his outstretched hand in both of my own. 
 He said not a word; neither did I. 
 
 I turned and made my way to the ferry past the whispering 
 lovers on the doorsteps, and over the railway-tracks where 
 the noisy engines puffed. As I walked on board the boat, the
 
 i4o WALT WHITMAN 
 
 wind blew up cool and fresh from the West. The star in the 
 East grew brighter, and other stars came out, reflecting 
 themselves like gems in the dark blue of the Delaware. 
 There was a soft sublimity in the sound of the bells that 
 came echoing over the waters. My heart was very full, 
 for I had felt the thrill of being in the presence of a great 
 and loving soul. 
 
 It was the first time and the last that I ever saw Walt 
 Whitman jt jt 
 
 fOST writers bear no message: they carry no torch. 
 Sometimes they excite wonder, or they amuse and 
 divert divert us from our work. To be diverted to 
 a certain degree may be well, but there is a point where 
 earth ends and cloudland begins, and even great poets 
 occasionally befog the things they would reveal. 
 Homer was seemingly blind to much simple truth; Virgil 
 carries you away from earth; Horace was undone without 
 his Maecenas; Dante makes you an exile; Shakespeare was 
 singularly silent concerning the doubts, difficulties and 
 common lives of common people; Byron's Corsair life does 
 not help you in your toil, and in his fight with English Bards 
 and Scotch Reviewers we crave neutrality; to be caught 
 in the meshes of Pope's "Dunciad" is not pleasant; and 
 Lowell's "Fable for Critics" is only another "Dunciad." 
 But above all other poets who have ever lived, the author 
 of "Leaves of Grass" was the poet of humanity. 
 Milton knew all about Heaven, and Dante conducts us 
 through Hell, but it was left for Whitman to show us Earth.
 
 WALT WHITMAN 141 
 
 His voice never goes so high that it breaks into an impotent 
 falsetto, neither does it growl and snarl at things it does 
 not understand and not understanding does not like. He 
 was so great that he had no envy, and his insight was so 
 sure that he had no prejudice. He never boasted that he 
 was higher, nor claimed to be less than any of the other sons 
 of men. He met all on terms of absolute equality, mixing 
 with the poor, the lowly, the fallen, the oppressed, the 
 cultured, the rich simply as brother with brother. And 
 when he said to an outcast, "Not till the sun excludes you 
 will I exclude you," he voiced a sentiment worthy of a god. 
 <j[ He was brother to the elements, the mountains, the seas, 
 the clouds, the sky. He loved them all and partook of them 
 all in his large, free, unselfish, untrammeled nature. His 
 heart knew no limits, and feeling his feet mortised in granite 
 and his footsteps tenoned in infinity he knew the amplitude 
 of time jt jt 
 
 Only the great are generous; only the strong are forgiving. 
 Like Lot's wife, most poets look back over their shoulders ; 
 and those who are not looking backward insist that we shall 
 look into the future, and the vast majority of the whole 
 scribbling rabble accept the precept, "Man never is, but 
 always to be blest." 
 
 We grieve for childhood's happy days, and long for sweet 
 rest in Heaven and sigh for mansions in the skies. And the 
 people about us seem so indifferent, and our friends so 
 lukewarm; and really no one understands us, and our 
 environment queers our budding spirituality and the frost 
 of jealousy nips our aspirations: "0 Paradise, Paradise,
 
 142 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 the world is growing old ; who would not be at rest and free 
 where love is never cold." So sing the fearsome dyspeptics 
 of the stylus. anemic he, you bloodless she, nipping at 
 crackers, sipping at tea, why not consider that although 
 evolutionists tell us where we came from, and theolo- 
 gians inform us where we are going to, yet the only thing 
 we are really sure of is that we are here! 
 The present is the perpetually moving spot where history 
 ends and prophecy begins. It is our only possession : the past 
 we reach through lapsing memory, halting recollection, 
 hearsay and belief; we pierce the future by wistful faith 
 or anxious hope, but the present is beneath our feet. 
 Whitman sings the beauty and the glory of the present. 
 He rebukes our groans and sighs bids us look about on 
 every side at the wonders of creation, and at the miracles 
 within our grasp. He lifts us up, restores us to our own, 
 introduces us to man and Nature, and thus infuses into us 
 courage, manly pride, self-reliance, and the strong faith 
 that comes when we feel our kinship with God. 
 He was so mixed with the universe that his voice took on 
 the sway of elemental integrity and candor. Absolutely 
 honest, this man was unafraid and unashamed, for Nature 
 has neither apprehension, shame nor vainglory. In "Leaves 
 of Grass," Whitman speaks as all men have ever spoken 
 who believe in God and in themselves oracular, without 
 apology, without abasement fearlessly. He tells of the 
 powers and mysteries that pervade and guide all life, all 
 death, all purpose. His work is masculine, as the sun is 
 masculine; for the Prophetic Voice is as surely masculine
 
 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 143 
 
 as the lullaby and lyric cry are feminine. <J Whitman brings 
 the warmth of the sun to the buds of the heart, so that they 
 open and bring forth form, color, perfume. He becomes for 
 them aliment and dew; so these buds become blossoms, 
 fruits, tall branches and stately trees that cast refreshing 
 shadows & Jt> 
 
 There are men who are to other men as the shadow of a 
 mighty rock in a weary land such is Walt Whitman.
 
 SO HERE ENDETH BOOK ONE OF GOOD MEN AND GREAT, 
 THE SAME BEING ONE OF THE SERIES OF LITTLE JOURNEYS, 
 AS WRITTEN BY ELBERT HUBBARD: THE BORDERS AND 
 INITIALS BEING DESIGNED BY ROYCROFT ARTISTS, AND 
 THE WHOLE DONE INTO A PRINTED VOLUME BY THE 
 ROYCROFTERS, AT THEIR SHOP, WHICH IS IN EAST 
 AURORA, ERIE COUNTY, NEW YORK, IN THE YEAR MCMX
 
 8 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 Santa Barbara 
 
 STACK COLLECTION 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW.
 
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