UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES
 
 y 
 
 
 1
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS.
 
 HOME LIFE 
 
 OF 
 
 GREAT AUTHORS 
 
 BY 
 
 HATTIE TYNG GRISWOLD 
 
 
 u:^ 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 A. C McCLURG AND COMPANY
 
 Copyright 
 By a. C. McClurg and Co. 
 
 A.D. lSS6.
 
 ■:5 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 
 The author of these sketches desires to say- 
 that they were written, not for the special student 
 of Hterary biography, who is already familiar with 
 the facts here given, but rather for those busy- 
 people who have little time for reading, yet wish 
 to know something of the private life and personal 
 history of their favorite authors. The sketches are 
 not intended to be critical, or to present anything 
 like complete biographies. They are devoted chiefly 
 to the home life of the various authors, — which, 
 though an instructive and fascinating study, seems 
 commonly neglected in popular biographies. 
 
 It should be added that a few of these sketches 
 have already appeared in print, but they have been 
 rewritten to adapt them to their present purpose. 
 
 H. T. G. 
 
 Columbus, Wis., October, i8S6. 
 
 ;0?'1S5
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 pac;e 
 
 Goethe o 
 
 Robert Burns 24 
 
 Madame de Stael 34 
 
 William Wordsworth . 43 
 
 Thomas De Quixcey 54 
 
 Walter Scott 64 
 
 Charles Lamb 75 
 
 Christopher North ■ 85 
 
 Lord Byron .... 94 
 
 Shelley 102 
 
 Washington Irving . ......... 112 
 
 William Cullen Bryant . 122 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson 133 
 
 Thomas Carlyle 142 
 
 Victor Hugo 150 
 
 George Sand . . 164 
 
 Thomas Babingtox Macaulay 177 
 
 Edward Bulwer Lytton iS3
 
 8 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Alfred Tennyson 197 
 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne 207 
 
 Henry W. Longfellow 220 
 
 John G. Whittiek 238 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes 251 
 
 James Russell Lowell 262 
 
 Robert and Elizabeth Browning 274 
 
 Charlotte Bronte 286 
 
 Margaret Fuller 302 
 
 Edgar Allen Poe 312 
 
 William Makepeace Thackeray 322 
 
 Charles Dickens . 335 
 
 George Eliot • ■ • • ■ 35i 
 
 Charles Kingsley . . 363 
 
 John Ruskin 372
 
 ^ome ?Ltfe of (great auti)orQ\ 
 
 GOETHE. 
 
 IN an old, many-cornered, and gloomy house at Frank- 
 fort-on-the-Main, upon the 28th of August, 1749, 
 was born the greatest German of his day, Wolfgang 
 Goethe. The back of the house, from the second story, 
 commanded a very pleasant prospect over an almost im- 
 measurable extent of gardens stretching to the walls of 
 the city, but the house itself was gloomy, being shut in 
 by a high wall. Over these gardens beyond the walls 
 and ramparts of the city, stretched a long plain, where 
 the young Wolfgang, serious and thoughtful, was wont to 
 wander and to learn his lesson?. He had the sort of 
 superstitious dread which is usually the inheritance of 
 children with a poetic nature, and suffered greatly in child- 
 hood from fear. He was obliged by his father, who was a 
 stern and somewhat opinionated old man, to sleep alone, 
 as a means of overcoming this fear ; and if he tried to 
 steal from his own bed to that of his brothers, he was 
 frightened back by his father, who watched for him and 
 chased him in some fantastic disguise. That this did not 
 tend to quiet his nerves may well be imagined, and it 
 was only through time and much suffering that he over- 
 came his childish terrors. His mother was a gay, cheer-
 
 lo HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 fill woman, much younger than his father, and as she 
 was only eighteen years old when Wolfgang was born, 
 always said that they were young together. She had 
 married with little affection for her elderly husband, and 
 it was in her favorite son that she found all the romance 
 and beauty of her life. She was a woman of strong 
 character, and presents one of the pleasantest pictures 
 in German literature. With a warm, genial nature, full 
 of spirit and enthusiasm, she retained to the last days 
 of her life an ardent interest in all the things which de- 
 lighted her in youth. She read much, thought much, 
 and observed much, for one in her sphere of life, and 
 many great people who came to know her through her 
 son learned to value her very highly for herself alone. 
 She corresponded long with the Duchess Amalia, and 
 her letters were much enjoyed at the Court of Weimar. 
 Princes and poets delighted to honor her in later life, and 
 her son was enthusiastic in his devotion to her till the 
 last. She comforted him through his rather fanciful and 
 fantastic childhood as much as she could without directly 
 interfering with the discipline of the didactic father. 
 Goethe and his mother were both taught by this father, 
 who considered her almost as much of a child as the 
 boy himself. She was kept busy with writing, playing the 
 clavichord, and singing, as well as with the study of 
 Italian, in which the father much delighted ; and the boy 
 had grammar, and the Latin classics, and a geography in 
 memory-verses. The boy soon got beyond his teacher, 
 but without being well-grounded in anything, and learned, 
 as such children are apt to do, much more from his own 
 desultory reading than from any instruction which was 
 given him. In the library were the beautiful Dutch edi- 
 tions of the Latin classics and many works relating to 
 Roman antiquities and jurisprudence. There were also 
 the Italian poets, and many books of travel, and many 
 dictionaries of various languages, and enc3'clopffidias of 
 science and art. Through all these the boy searched for 
 himself, and took what was suited to his taste, astonishing
 
 GOETHE. J J 
 
 the slow father very much by his readmess, and soon 
 becoming famous in the neighborhood for his acquire- 
 ments. Of course he wrote poetry from the earhest age, 
 and of course many people predicted his future great- 
 ness. Most of all, his mother beheved in him, and 
 watched him with adoring solicitude. His love for art 
 showed itself very early, and he made friends with artists, 
 and visited their studios frequently when a mere boy- 
 His father had a fondness for pictures, and had some 
 good views of Italian scenery and art in his own house ; 
 and it was probably from him that the boy derived his 
 earliest liking for such things. His passion for the theatre 
 also made itself known at the earliest age, and gave him 
 his most intense youthful pleasures. 
 
 His taste for natural science was also very strong in 
 early childhood, and he analyzed flowers, to see how the 
 leaves were inserted into the calyx, and plucked birds to 
 see how the feathers were inserted in the wings, when a 
 mere infant, as it appeared to his mother. Indeed, all 
 the strong tastes of the man showed themselves in a 
 decided manner in this precocious child, and his hap- 
 hazard training allowed his genius to develop along its 
 own natural lines in a healthy manner. 
 
 He even exhibited at a very youthful period his fatal 
 facility for falling in love, and naturally enough, with a 
 girl older than himself, named Gretchen. He was cured 
 of his first passion only by finding out that the girl 
 regarded him as a child, which filled him with great 
 indignation. He says : — 
 
 " My judgment was convinced, and I thought I must cast 
 her away ; but her image ! — her image gave me the lie as 
 often as it again hovered before me, which indeed happened 
 often enough. 
 
 " Nevertheless, this arrow with its barbed hooks was torn 
 out of my heart ; and the question then was, how the inward 
 sanative power of youth could be brought to one's aid. I 
 really put on the man ; and the first thing instantly laid 
 aside was the weeping and raving, which I now regarded
 
 12 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 as childish in the highest degree. A great stride for the 
 better ! For I had often, half the night through, given my- 
 self up to this grief with the greatest violence ; so that at 
 last, from my tears and sobbing, I came to such a point that 
 I could scarcely swallow any longer ; eating and drinking 
 become painful to me ; and my chest, which was so nearly 
 concerned, seemed to suffer. The vexation I had constantly 
 felt since the discovery made me banish every weakness. 
 
 " It seemed to me something frightful that I had sacrificed 
 sleep, repose, and health for the sake of a girl who was 
 pleased to consider me a babe, and to imagine herself, with 
 respect to me, something very like a nurse." 
 
 Poor Goethe ! but many a man since has fallen in love 
 with a woman older than himself, and has afterward felt 
 himself fortunate if he has been treated as Goethe was. 
 The real unfortunates are the ones who have been for 
 some reason encouraged in their passion, and married 
 by these mature women Avhile mere boys. Taking into 
 consideration the w^elfare of both parties, there is scaroely 
 a more unfortunate occurrence in life than such a mar- 
 riage. Soon after this first love episode Goethe went up 
 to Leipsic to enter the University. He was sixteen years 
 old, well-favored by nature, even handsome, and full of 
 sensibility and enthusiasm. But he appeared to the in- 
 habitants of Leipsic like a being from another world, on 
 account of the grotesqueness of his costume. His father, 
 who w-as of an economical turn of mind, always bought 
 his own cloth, and had his servants make the clothing for 
 the family. He usually bought good but old-fashioned 
 materials, and trimmings from some forgotten epoch in 
 the world's histor}'. These trimmings, of the Paleozoic 
 period or some still remoter date, together with the un- 
 professional and antiquated cut of the garments, made 
 up such a grotesque appearance that Goethe was re- 
 ceived W'ith undisguised mirth w-herever he went in Leip- 
 sic, until he discovered what was the matter with his 
 dress. He had not been noticed at home on this ac- 
 count, and he thought himself very well dressed when 
 he first arrived in the city; but his chagrin and morti-
 
 GOETHE. 
 
 fication knew no bounds when he discovered how he 
 had been laughed at. It was not until he had visited the 
 theatre and seen a favorite actor throw the audience into 
 convulsions of laughter by appearing in a costume almost 
 identical with his own, that he begun to suspect that he 
 was ill-dressed. He went out and sacrificed his entire 
 wardrobe, in the first tumult of his feelings, remorselessly 
 leaving no vestige of it remaining, and supplying himself 
 with a complete new outfit, not so ample as the old but 
 much more satisfactory. In this act also he will find 
 many sympathizers. Few things are recalled with more 
 acute mortification than the outfit in which people leave 
 their early homes, if they are in the country, and make 
 their first visit to the city. Hundreds of men groan in 
 spirit as they bring up before themselves the appearance 
 they presented upon that momentous day. Compara- 
 tively few are able to do as Goethe did, and get rid of 
 the whole vile accoutrement at one stroke. The majority 
 are obliged, suffer as they may, to wear the obnoxious 
 garments long after they have discovered their true char- 
 acter. When Goethe had clothed himself anew he was 
 received with more favor at his boarding-house, and pro- 
 ceeded immediately to fall in love with the landlady's 
 daughter. The thought of Gretchen was buried away 
 out of sight, and the thought of Annette filled his whole 
 heart. This Annette was young, handsome, sprightly, 
 loving, and agreeable ; and he saw her daily in the most 
 unrestrained manner. 
 He says of her : — 
 
 "But since such connections, the more innocent they are, 
 afford the less variety in the long run, I was seized with that 
 wicked distemper which seduces us to derive amusement 
 from the torment of a beloved one, and to domineer over a 
 girl's devotedness with wanton and tyrannical caprice. By 
 unfounded and absurd fits of jealousy I destroyed our most 
 delightful days, both for myself and her. She endured it 
 for a time with incredible patience, which I was cruel enough 
 to try to its utmost. But to my shame and despair, I was
 
 H 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 at last forced to remark that her heart was alienated from 
 me, and that I mij^ht now have good ground for the madness 
 in which I had indulged without necessity and without cause. 
 There were terrible scenes between us, in which I gained 
 nothing ; and I then first felt that I had truly loved her, and 
 could not bear to lose her. My passion grew and assumed 
 all the forms of which it is capable under the circumstances ; 
 nay, I at last took up the role which the girl had hitherto 
 played. I sought everything possible in order to be agree- 
 able to her, even to procure her pleasure by means of others ; 
 for I could not renounce the hope of winning her again. 
 But it was too late. I had lost her really ; and the frenzy 
 with which I revenged my fault upon myself, by assaulting 
 in various frantic ways my physical nature, in order to inflict 
 some hurt on my m.oral nature, contributed very much to the 
 bodily maladies under w^hich I lost some of the best years 
 of my life : indeed, I should perchance have been completely 
 ruined by this loss, had not my poetic talent here shown 
 itself particularly helpful with its heahng power." 
 
 His next adventure was with the daughters of his dan- 
 cing-master, both of whom seemed inclined to draw un- 
 warranted conclusions from the freedom of his intercourse 
 with them. The closing scene of this httle drama must 
 be given in Goethe's own words : — 
 
 " Emilia was silent, and had sat down by her sister, who 
 became constantly more and more excited in her discourse, 
 and let certain private matters slip out which it was not 
 exactly proper for me to know. Emilia, on the other hand, 
 who was trying to pacify her sister, made me a sign from 
 behind to withdraw ; but as jealousy and suspicion see with 
 a thousand eyes, Lucinda seemed to have noticed this also. 
 She sprang up and advanced to me, but not with vehemence. 
 She stood before me and seemed to be thinking of some- 
 thing. Then she said, ' I know that I have lost you ; I 
 make no further pretensions to you. But neither shall you 
 have him, sister.' So saying, she took a thorough hold of 
 my head, thrusting both her hands into my locks and press- 
 ing my face to hers, and kissed me repeatedly on the mouth. 
 ' Now,' cried she, 'fear my curse ! Woe upon woe. for ever 
 and ever, to her who kisses these lips for the first time
 
 GOETHE. jr 
 
 after me ! Dare to have anything more to do with him! I 
 know Heaven hears me this time. And you, sir, hasten 
 now, hasten away as fast as you can,' I flew down the 
 stairs, with a firm determination never again to enter the 
 house." 
 
 This conclusion, though doubtless very trying to an 
 ardent young man who enjoyed the adoration of women, 
 seems to have been an eminently wise one under the cir- 
 cumstances, and we believe the resolve was faithfully 
 kept. The dramatic Lucinda appears no more in his 
 reminiscences. 
 
 Quite different was the next occupant of his heart. 
 Frederika was the daughter of a country clergyman whom 
 Goethe was taken to visit by his friend Weyland. The hos- 
 pitality and agreeableness of the family had been highly 
 praised by this friend, also the beauty and charms of the 
 daughters. And indeed this Frederika does seem to have 
 been a most beautiful and charming girl. Goethe con- 
 stantly compares the family to that of the Vicar of Wake- 
 field, and the daughters to Olivia and Sophia. The 
 affection which Goethe conceived for this beautiful and 
 innocent maiden was one of the strongest and most en- 
 during of his life, and even on into old age he was fond 
 of talking of her and their youthful romance. Why he 
 ever left Frederika at all has never been made clear, for 
 it is plain that at last he truly loved, — the other pas- 
 sions being mere boyish episodes, soon forgotten, while 
 this one exerted a lasting influence upon his life. He 
 writes ; — 
 
 " Frederika's answer to my farewell letter rent my heart. 
 It was the same hand, the same tone of thought, the same 
 feeling, which had formed itself for me and by me. I now 
 for the first time felt the loss which she suffered, and saw no 
 means to supply it, or even to alleviate it. She was com- 
 pletely present to me ; I always felt that she was wanting to 
 me ; and what was worst of all, I could not forgive myself 
 for my own misfortune. Gretchen had been taken away 
 from me, Annette had left me; now for the first time I was
 
 1 6 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 guilty. I had wounded the most lovely heart to its very 
 depths ; and the period of a gloomy repentance, with the 
 absence of a refreshing love to which I had grown accus- 
 tomed, was most agonizing, nay, insupportable." 
 
 Even after eight years he revisits Frederika, with much 
 of the old feeling still alive, although he had in the mean 
 time had at least two new loves. One of these was the 
 Charlotte immortalized in " Werther." She was already 
 engaged when he made her acquaintance, but this did 
 not preclude the possibility of his devoting himself assidu- 
 ously to her, and her betrothed seems to have laid no 
 obstacles in the w-ay. She was married in due time, and 
 read " Werther " after its pubhcation, not seeming to ob- 
 ject to the part she is there made to play. She retain<3d 
 her friendship for Goethe throughout life ; and to her 
 husband the poet wrote many, many years after : " God 
 bless you, dear Kustner, and tell Lottie that I often be- 
 lieve I can forget her, but then I have a relapse, and it is 
 worse with me than ever." 
 
 Immediately following his infatuation with Lottie came 
 the connection with Lili, which reconciled him to Lottie's 
 marriage. It w^as of Lottie that he said, in the language 
 of " The New Heloise," " And sitting at the feet of his 
 beloved, he will break hemp ; and he will wish to break 
 hemp to-day, to-morrow, and the day after, — nay, for 
 his whole life." Whether he would have been as willing 
 to break hemp with Lili we are not told ; but he wrote a 
 great deal of poetry addressed to her, — more perhaps 
 than to any of his other loves, — much of which he re- 
 produces in the "Autobiography." 
 
 " Heart, my heart, oh, what hath changed thee ? 
 
 What doth weigh on thee so sore ? 
 What hath thus from me estranged thee. 
 
 That I know thee now no more ? 
 Gone is all which once seemed dearest, 
 Gone the care which once was nearest. 
 Gone thy toils and tranquil bliss ! 
 Ah ! how could'st thou come to this ?
 
 GOETHE. jy 
 
 " Does that bloom, so fresh and youthful, 
 
 That divine and lovely form, 
 That sweet look, so good and truthful, 
 
 Bind thee with unbounded charm ? 
 If I swear no more to see her, 
 If I man myself to flee her. 
 Soon I find my efforts vain. 
 Back to her I 'm led again." 
 
 But even this love affair, which went as far as a be- 
 trothal, came to nothing, — Goethe drawing back at the 
 last through a pretended or real fear that he could, not 
 support the lady in the style she had been accustomed 
 to ; though it is more reasonable to believe that his usual 
 repugnance to marriage overcame all the fervor of his love, 
 and made him feel a real relief when the whole affair was 
 over. This was just previous to his removal to Weimar 
 at the invitation of Carl August, and it was there that the 
 remainder of his life-drama was enacted. 
 
 Soon after his arrival there he made the acquaintance 
 of the Frau Von Stein. She was the wife of the Master 
 of Horse at Weimar, and Goethe, who had now passed 
 thirty years of age, for the first time loved a mature 
 woman. She was the mother of seven children and was 
 thirty-three years old. With moral deficiencies which 
 were securely covered up, she was a thoroughly charming 
 woman, and retained her charm even to old age. She 
 was said to have remarked when asked if she would be 
 presented to Goethe, " With all my heart. I have heard 
 as much about him as I ever did about Heaven, and I 
 feel a deal more curiosity about him." She completely 
 ensnared his heart, and held it in undisputed sway for 
 more than ten years ; which, considering his proverbial 
 inconstancy, speaks very highly for her charms. 
 
 The connection was well known and perfectly under- 
 stood at Weimar, and appears to have caused no scandal. 
 The love on Goethe's part seemed to have begun even 
 before seeing her ; as it is recorded that at Pyrmont he 
 first saw her portrait, and was three nights sleepless in 
 consequence. And when he came to see her, instead of
 
 iS HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 a raw girl such as he had hitherto fancied, he found an 
 elegant woman of tiie world, whose culture and experi- 
 ence had a singular fascination for him, tired as he was 
 of immaturity and overfondness. She sang well, played 
 well, sketched well, talked well, and showed her appre- 
 ciation of the poet, not like a gushing girl, but with the 
 delicate tact of a woman of the world. Some years after 
 her first acquaintance with Goethe, Schiller thus writes to 
 his friend Korner : — 
 
 " She is really a genuinely interesting person, and I quite 
 understand what has attached Goethe to her. Beautiful she 
 can never have been, but her countenance has a soft earnest- 
 ness and a quite peculiar openness. A healthy understand- 
 ing, truth, and feeling lie in her nature. She has more 
 than a thousand letters from Goethe, and from Italy he 
 writes her every week. They say the connection is perfectly 
 pure and blameless." 
 
 Even before he went away from Weimar at all, the 
 letters were incessant, often trivial, and sometimes made 
 up of homely details of eating and drinking, but loving 
 always. The reader who remembers Charlotte cutting 
 bread and butter will not be shocked at the poet elo- 
 quently begging his true love to send him a sausage. All 
 the years of his life in the Gartenhaus are intimately 
 associated with her. The whole spot speaks of her. She 
 was doubtless the grand passion of his hfe. But even 
 this wore itself out, and after his absence in Italy he 
 never seemed to feel the full ardor of his former love. 
 He returned to Weimar still grateful to her for the 
 happiness she had given, still feeling for her a sincere 
 affection, but retaining little of the passion which for ten 
 years she had inspired. The feeling seemed to have died 
 a natural death. It is not recorded that she had ever 
 really shared his fervor, but she greatly resented his 
 defection, and considered him ungrateful and disloyal to 
 the end. 
 
 It was about this time that he first made the acquain- 
 tance of Christine Vulpius, who afterwards became his
 
 GOETHE. IQ 
 
 wife. She was the daughter of one of those men whose 
 drunkenness slowl}' but surely brings a whole family to 
 want. She was at this time very young. He thought 
 her beautiful, and, although uneducated, she had a quick 
 wit, a lively spirit, a loving heart, and great aptitude for 
 domestic duties. She had no social position, and is 
 often spoken of as his servant. Although never really 
 occupying that position, her standing was not much 
 above that plane. She fascinated Goethe as so many 
 young faces had done before, and it seemed to be a 
 thraldom of the mind as well as of the senses. There 
 are few poems in any language which approach the 
 passionate gratitude of those in which he recalls the 
 happiness she gave him. 
 
 George Henry Lewes in his life of the poet has this 
 passage, which will be read with peculiar interest, con- 
 sidering his own relations with the highest genius of her 
 day, George Eliot. He says : — 
 
 " Why did he not marry her at once ? His dread of mar- 
 riage has already been shown ; and to this abstract dread 
 must be added the great disparity of station, — a disparity so 
 great that it not only made the liaison scandalous, but made 
 Christine herself reject the offer of marriage. There are 
 persons now living who have heard her declare that it was 
 her own fault that the marriage was so long delayed. And 
 certain it is that when she bore him a child, he took her, 
 with her mother and sister, to live in his house, and always 
 regarded the connection as marriage. But, however he may 
 have regarded it, public opinion has not forgiven this defi- 
 ance of its social laws. The world blamed him loudly ; even 
 his admirers cannot think of the connection without pain. 
 But let us be just. While no one can refrain from deploring 
 that Goethe, so eminendy needing a pure domestic life, 
 should not have found a wife whom he could avow, no one 
 who knows the circumstances can refrain from confessing 
 that there is also a bright light to this dark episode." 
 
 He goes on to say : — 
 
 " The judgments of men are curious. No action in 
 Goethe's life has excited more scandal than his final mar-
 
 20 HOME LIFE OF GREA T A UTHORS. 
 
 riage with Christine. It is thought disgraceful enough for 
 him to have taken her into his home, but for the great poet 
 to actually complete such an enormity as to crown his con- 
 nection with her by marriage was, indeed, more than society 
 could tolerate. I have already expressed my opinion of 
 this unfortunate connection, but I most emphatically declare 
 my behef that the redeeming point in it is precisely this 
 which caused the scandal. Better far had there been no 
 connection at all ; but if it was to be, the nearer it ap- 
 proached real marriage, and the further it was removed 
 from a fugitive indulgence, the more moral and healthy it 
 became." 
 
 He was in his fifty- eighth year when he married her. 
 She had changed much in the passing years. From the 
 bright, lively, pleasure-loving girl, she had grown into a 
 coarse and almost repulsive woman. Her father, as we 
 know, had ruined himself by intemperance, her brother 
 also, and she herself had not escaped the fatal appetite. 
 She was not restrained by the checks which refined society 
 imposes, for in Weimar she had no society, and as the 
 years went by she became openly and shamelessly given 
 over to intemperance. This tragedy in Goethe's Ufe 
 would have been little suspected by those who saw how 
 calmly he bore himself in public. The mere mention of 
 the fact, however, tells its own tale of humiliation and 
 woe. It is often asked why Goethe did not part from 
 her at once. In answer we might ask, Why do not 
 all the noble and right-principled women who wear out 
 wretched lives as drunkards' wives part at once from their 
 debauched husbands? The answer would no doubt 
 be similar in the two cases. He was too weak to 
 alter his position, he was strong enough to bear it. And 
 he did bear it to the bitter end. And when that end 
 came he mourned for her with sincere affection. Says 
 Lewes : — 
 
 " She who had for twenty-eight years loved and aided him ; 
 who, whatever her faults, had been to him what no other 
 woman had been, could not be taken from him without his
 
 GOETHE. 
 
 21 
 
 feeling her loss. His self-mastery was utterly shaken. 
 He knelt by her bedside, taking her cold hands in his, 
 and exclaiming, ' Thou wilt not forsake me, thou must 
 not forsake me,' and sobbing aloud. He had been to her 
 the most tender of devoted husbands throughout all those 
 weary years." 
 
 Many accounts of her vulgarity and repulsiveness have 
 been circulated ; but in making up our estimate of her, 
 the fact that she held Goethe in loyal bonds for eight and 
 twenty years must not be passed over lightly. Fickle as 
 he was in youth, and admiring as he did brilliant women 
 in his manhood, Christine Vulpius must have had charms, 
 and not of a light order, to have held him thus her will- 
 ing slave. No mere fat and vulgar Frau without mind or 
 sensibility could have done this. It is not in the nature 
 of things. We often see men of brilliant minds in our 
 own day choosing to marry women who are not intellec- 
 tual or cultured, — women who have only beauty, or style 
 and social elegance ; but they are women who have 
 some charm, and if the charm remains, the attraction 
 holds indefinitely. But sad indeed is the case of the man 
 of mind who has married a mere doll, and who, when 
 youth has flown, finds he has a wife who is not capable 
 of being companion or friend to him. Many a man 
 holds himself steadfast to duty under these circumstances 
 through a long life, but if the woman whom his maturity 
 would have chosen — the sweet, companionable woman, 
 with a mind that can sympathize with and appreciate his 
 own — chances to dawn upon him, too late, there is apt 
 to be a struggle which is long and hard. 
 
 Indeed, it is never the part of wisdom for the intellec- 
 tual man or woman to marry one who is consciously an 
 inferior. He or she who does this makes a high bid for 
 an unhappy life. As regards Christine Vulpius, it is cer- 
 tain that, although not an intellectual woman, she was not 
 without some taste for pursuits in consonance with those 
 of Goethe. It was for her that he wrote the " Metamorpho- 
 ses of Plants," and in her company he pursued his optical
 
 22 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 and botanical researches. Had she shown no compre- 
 hension of these things, assuredly Goethe would never 
 have persisted in instructing her in them. It was for her, 
 too, that he wTOte the " Roman Elegies," which shows 
 that he did not esteem her a mere drudge. 
 
 Whatever may be our general estimate of Goethe's 
 character, it will certainly be conceded that he showed 
 great capacity for domestic love and domestic happiness 
 in continuing loyal for so many years to one who degraded 
 herself as did Christine. He certainly cannot be counted 
 among the sons of genius with whom it is found difficult, 
 almost impossible even, to live. Rather must we rank 
 him high among those genial and warm-hearted men w-ho 
 love too much, rather than too little, and who are easily 
 led by the women to whom they give their devotion. 
 Irregular and faulty, even immoral as he was, he yet 
 possessed the redeeming domestic virtues in a large de- 
 gree. Away beyond his seventieth year we find women 
 still madly loving him, and him capable of reciprocating 
 their affections. And well was it that this should be so, 
 for otherwise he would have stood alone and friendless. 
 One by one the companions of his youth and his manhood 
 were taken from him, until, upon the death of Carl August, 
 he could truthfully exclaim, " Nothing now remains." It 
 was well that the end drew near. 
 
 When one can say, " Nothing now remains," it is surely 
 time for the angel with the brazen trumpet to proclaim, 
 " For him let time be no more." 
 
 Lighdy let the silver cord be loosed and the golden 
 bowl broken, rather than that the lonely life linger on, 
 with its eyes fixed only on the past, which has become 
 but a dim mirage where ghostly figures are seen walking 
 but from which all warmth and light have fled. Happy 
 indeed is he who, when the allotted years have been 
 passed, and he lingers waiting on the stage for the signal 
 which shall cause the curtain to fall forever on his little 
 life drama, has something which to him is real and tangi- 
 ble to look forward to in the near future. The bitterness
 
 GOETHE. 23 
 
 of a lingering death must be in all old age without this 
 hope. 
 
 Let us trust that after that last low cry of Goethe for 
 "more light," the morning dawned upon the great in- 
 tellect and great heart which had been watching for it so 
 long. Let us hope, also, that the world may yet learn 
 to see him as did Emerson, who found him " a piece of 
 pure nature, like an oak or an apple, large as morning 
 or night, and virtuous as a brier-rose."
 
 ROBERT BURNS. 
 
 " Oh, ye wha are sae guid yoursel', 
 
 Sae pious and sae holy, 
 Ye 've nought to do but mark and tell 
 
 Your neebors' fauts and folly, — 
 Whase life is like a weel-gaun mill, 
 
 Supplied wi' store o' water. 
 The heaped happer 's ebbing still, 
 
 And still the clap plays clatter, — 
 
 " Hear me, ye venerable core. 
 
 As counsel for poor mortals. 
 That frequent pass douce Wisdom's door 
 
 For glaikit Folly's portals ! 
 I, for their thoughtless, careless sakes, 
 
 Would here propone defences. 
 Their donsie tricks, their black mistakes. 
 
 Their failings and mischances." 
 
 ALAS for it ! we must all say, in dwelling upon the life 
 of poor Burns, that he so frequently needed to 
 appear as counsel for poor mortals — in his own behoof; 
 and that " their donsie tricks, their black mistakes, 
 their failings and mischances" should form so large- a 
 portion of the record of that life, which under other 
 circumstances might have been one of the most brilliant 
 and beautiful of all in the annals of genius. For Bums, 
 although bom to such a lowly life, and havang in his 
 youth so few advantages of education or general culture, 
 might by sheer force of genius have attained as proud a 
 position as any man of his time, had he but learned to
 
 ROBERT BURNS. 25 
 
 rule over himself in his youth, and not given full rein to 
 those passions which his "veins convulsed," and which 
 " still eternal galloped." 
 
 Could he but have governed himself — 
 
 " When social life and glee sat down 
 All joyous and unthinking, 
 Till, quite transmogrify' d, they've grown 
 Debauchery and drinking," — 
 
 there would have been a far different story to have told 
 of the life of Robert Burns. 
 
 What ripe fruits of his genius we might have had, 
 had he not burned out the torch of that brilliant in- 
 tellect at the early age of thirty-eight. What poems 
 he might have written — he who did immortal work 
 with all his drawbacks — had he kept his brain clear 
 and his life sweet even for the short span of life allotted 
 him ! How high might he have soared in the years 
 which he might have hoped from life, had he but moved 
 at a slower pace, in those reckless years, the record 
 of which is so painful to the great world of admiring 
 and pitying friends, who cherish his memory so ten- 
 derly. Yet there is in his case everything to mitigate 
 a severe judgment upon his youthful foUies ; and the 
 great world has always judged him leniently, knowing 
 the story of his early life, and the temptations which at 
 that day must have surrounded a youth of his tempera- 
 ment among the peasants of Scotland. Of the strength 
 of those temptations we probably can form but a slight 
 idea. 
 
 " What 's done we partly may compute. 
 But know not what 's resisted." 
 
 And surely, there must have been much that was 
 worthy of honor and esteem, even of reverence, in the 
 heart of the man, to have brought the whole world to his 
 feet, in spite of the faults and follies to which we allude 
 in passing, but upon which we have no disposition to
 
 26 HOME LIFE OF GREA T A UTHORS. 
 
 dwell. As a friendly hand long ago wrote, after visiting his 
 poor, mean home and his unhonored burial place : — 
 
 " We listened readily enough to this paltry gossip, but 
 found that it robbed the poet's memory of some of the rever- 
 ence that was its due. Indeed, this talk over his grave had 
 very much the same effect as the home-scene of his life, 
 which we had been visiting just previously. Beholding his 
 poor, mean dwelling and its surroundings, and picturing his 
 outward life and earthly manifestations from these, one does 
 not so much wonder that the people of that day should have 
 failed to recognize all that was admirable and immortal in a 
 disreputable, drunken, shabbily-clothed, and shabbily-housed 
 man, consorting with associates of damaged character, and 
 as his only ostensible occupation gauging the whiskey which 
 he too often tasted. Siding with Burns, as we needs must, 
 in his plea against the world, let us try to do the world a 
 little justice too. It is far easier to know and honor a poet 
 when his fame has taken shape in the spotlessness of 
 marble, than when the actual man comes staggering before 
 you, besmeared with the sordid stains of his daily life. For 
 my part, I chiefly wonder that his recognition dawned as 
 brightly as it did while he was still living. There must 
 have been something very grand in his immediate pres- 
 ence, some strangely impressive characteristic in his nat- 
 ural behavior, to have caused him to seem like a demigod 
 so soon." 
 
 To do even faintest justice to the memory of the poet, 
 we must go to Ayr, and look upon the humble cottage 
 which was his birthplace. It consisted of but two small 
 rooms paved with flag-stones, and with but one window 
 of four small panes, while the thatched roof formed the 
 only ceiling. The whole place is inconceivably small for 
 the dwelHng of a family, for there is not even an attic- 
 room, or any other spot where children could have been 
 hidden away. In such a hut as this it is hard to con- 
 ceive of a family being reared in purity and delicacy, 
 even though the parents should have done their best by 
 their children, and been, like the father of Bums, prudent 
 and well-disposed.
 
 ROBERT BURNS. 2 7 
 
 This housing of the poor is of immense moral signifi- 
 cance in all cases ; and it is growing to be a recognized 
 fact that no help which can be rendered them is of much 
 avail, when they are left in these little, one or two room 
 dwellings. 
 
 There were seven children in the Burns household, 
 and during the childhood of Robert the family were very 
 poor ; and he and his brother were expected to do the 
 work of men, at the age of thirteen. He had some school- 
 ing before that age, and must have improved his time, for 
 he could read and spell well, and had some knowledge 
 of English grammar. 
 
 Near by the cottage flows the beautiful Bonny Doon, 
 through deep wooded banks, and across it is an ancient 
 ivy-covered bridge with a high arch, making a very pict- 
 uresque object in the landscape, which is one of great 
 loveliness. Kirk Alloway is not far away, — the smallest 
 church that ever filled so large a place in the imagination 
 of the world. The one-mullioned window in the eastern 
 gable might have been seen by Tam O'Shanter blaz- 
 ing with devilish light as he approached it along the road 
 from Ayr, and there is a small square one on the side 
 next the road ; there is also an odd kind of belfry, almost 
 the smallest ever made, with a little bell in it, — and 
 this is all. But no grand and storied cathedral pile in 
 all Europe is better known, and to no shrine of famous 
 minster do more pilgrims journey than to this wee kirk 
 immortalized by the pen of Burns. 
 
 The father of Bums has been thus described by one 
 who knew him well : — 
 
 " He was a tender and afTectionate father ; he took pleasure 
 in leading his children in the path of virtue, not in driving 
 them as some parents do to the performance of duties to 
 which they are themselves averse. He took care to find 
 fault but seldom ; and therefore when he did rebuke, he was 
 listened to with a kind of reverential awe. A look of disap- 
 probation was felt ; a reproof was severely so ; and a stripe 
 even on the skirt of the coat, gave heartfelt pain."
 
 28 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 He was, indeed, a frugal, industrious, and good man, 
 and his wife seems to have been a woman of good re- 
 port ; so that the httle group of children, in spite of 
 their poverty, were really happily situated in life, com- 
 pared with many of their neighbors. There was always 
 a tinge of melancholy in Robert's disposition, however, 
 and in his earliest youth he used to embody it in verse. 
 The sensibility of genius was his by birthright, and the 
 depressions and exaltations of spirit which marked his 
 later life began at a very early day. He himself de- 
 scribes his earhest years thus : — 
 
 " I was by no means a favorite with anybody. I was a 
 good deal noted for a retentive memory, a stubborn, sturdy 
 something in my disposition, and an enthusiastic, idiot 
 piety." 
 
 Again he says : — 
 
 " This kind of life — the cheerless gloom of a hermit, with 
 the unceasing toil of a galley-slave — brought me to my six- 
 teenth year ; a little before which period I first committed 
 the sin of rhyme." 
 
 It was at this time that he first fell in love, and it may 
 be added that after this he was never out of that interest- 
 ing state. He says : — 
 
 " My scarcity of English denies me the power of doing 
 her justice in that language ; but you know the Scottish 
 idiom, — she was a bonnie, sweet, sonsie lass. In short, she, 
 altogether unwittingly to herself, initiated me into that de- 
 licious passion, which in spite of acid disappointment, gin- 
 horse prudence, and book-worm philosophy, I hold to be the 
 first of human joys, our dearest blessing here below ! I did 
 not know myself why I liked so much to loiter behind 
 with her when returning in the evening from our labors ; 
 why the tones of her voice made my heartstrings thrill like 
 an ^olian harp ; and particularly, why my pulse beat such a 
 furious rattan, when I looked and fingered over her little 
 hand to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. Thus 
 with me began love and poetry, which at times have been
 
 ROBERT BURNS. 29 
 
 my only, and till within the last twelve months, have been 
 my highest enjoyment." 
 
 To a later period than this belongs the episode of 
 Highland Mary, of which the 
 
 " Banks and braes and streams around 
 The castle of Montgomery " 
 
 Still whisper to the lovers of Burns, as they keep a solemn 
 tryst with old-time recollections there. 
 
 " How sweetly bloomed the gay green birk, 
 
 How rich the hawthorn's blossom, 
 As underneath their fragrant shade 
 
 I clasped her to my bosom 1 
 The golden hours on angel wings 
 
 Flew o'er me and my dearie ; 
 For dear to me as light and life 
 
 Was my sweet Highland Mary." 
 
 It was the sweetest and tenderest romance of his life ; 
 and it is with unbidden tears that the world still remem- 
 bers that there 
 
 " fell death's untimely frost, 
 That nipt my flower sae early I 
 Now green 's the sod and cauld 's the clay 
 That wraps my Highland Mary." 
 
 After a hundred years there are still hearts that take a 
 tender interest in poor Mary's fate, and that feel for poor 
 Robbie as he wrote : — 
 
 " Oh, pale, pale now those rosy lips 
 
 I aft hae kissed sae fondly. 
 And closed for aye the sparkling glance 
 
 That dwelt on me sae kindly 1 
 And mouldering now in silent dust 
 
 That heart that lo'ed me dearly ! 
 But still within my bosom's core 
 
 Shall live my Highland Mary." 
 
 In the monument to Burns, near his old home, are 
 deposited the two volumes of the little pocket Bible 
 which Bums gave to Mary when they pledged their faith 
 to one another. It is poorly printed on coarse paper.
 
 ^O HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 A verse of Scripture is \vritten within each cover by the 
 poet's hand, and fastened within is a lock of Mary's golden 
 hair. It is fitting that some memorial of her should find 
 a place in that splendid monument which the Scottish 
 people erected to his memory, after his life of poverty 
 and sorrow had been brought to an untimely end. 
 
 Burns in his twenty-third year took the farm at Moss- 
 giel, where he first became acquainted with Jane Armour. 
 This lady was the daughter of a respectable mason in the 
 village of Mauchline, where she was the reigning beauty 
 and belle. It was almost love at first sight upon the part 
 of both, and a close intimacy soon sprung up between 
 them. Burns was very handsome at this time, gay and 
 fascinating in manners, and a more experienced and high- 
 ly-placed woman than Jane Armour might have been 
 excused for loving the wild young poet. For wild he 
 undoubtedly was, even at this time, — so much so that her 
 parents objected to the friendship. He was nearly six 
 feet high, with a robust yet agile frame, a finely formed 
 head, and an uncommonly interesting countenance. His 
 eyes were large, dark, and full of ardor and animation. 
 His conversation was full of wit and humor. He was 
 very proud, and would be under pecuniary obligation to 
 no one. He was also very generous with his own money. 
 Of the first five hundred pounds which he received for 
 his poems, he immediately gave two hundred to his 
 brother Gilbert to help toward the support of their mother ; 
 and he was always as ready to share whatever sum he had 
 with those he loved. 
 
 The consequences of the intimacy between the poet 
 and Jane Armour were soon such as could not be con- 
 cealed, and the farm having been a disastrous speculation 
 in the hands of Burns, he was not in a situation to marry, 
 although extremely anxious to do so. It was therefore 
 agreed upon between them that he should give her a yfa\\.- 
 ten acknowledgment of marriage, and then sail for Jamaica, 
 and push his fortunes there. This arrangement, however, 
 did not suit the lady's father, who had a very poor opinion
 
 ROBERT BURNS. - j 
 
 of Burns's general character, and he prevailed upon Jane 
 to destroy this document. Under these circumstances 
 she became the mother of twins, and great scandal fol- 
 lowed Burns even to Edinburgh, where he had been in- 
 duced to stop instead of sailing for Jamaica. But his 
 poems, which he succeeded in publishing at this time, 
 gave him a name and some money, and he returned to 
 Mossgiel, and getting her father to consent, married Jane, 
 and moved on to a farm six miles from Dumfries. He 
 had become a lion, and the tables of the neighboring 
 gentry were soon open to him, as the houses of the great 
 had been in Edinburgh. Those were the days of con- 
 viviality, and Burns took his part in the hilarity of the 
 table, soon with very direful consequences to himself and 
 his family. He made many resolutions of amendment ; 
 but temperance was a very rare virtue in those days, and 
 Burns, who could not bear it, was expected to drink just as 
 much as those who could bear it, and who could afford it. 
 His genius suffered from this irregular life, and in a little 
 while he was not capable of doing justice to himself in 
 his writings ; but he continued to be good company at table, 
 and to be invited with the local magnates, long after he had 
 become a confirmed drunkard. The farm was given up, and 
 he soon depended entirely upon his seventy pounds a year, 
 the pay of an exciseman. He felt his degradation very 
 deeply, and had fearful struggles with his temptation, but 
 was always overborne. The horrible sufferings of genius 
 in such thraldom have never been adequately represented, 
 nor indeed can they ever be. When the will has become so 
 enfeebled that no real resistance can be made, while yet 
 pride and kind-heartedness survive, the agony of such a 
 man is appalling. He loves his family, he knows better 
 than any other all they suffer for his sake ; he determines 
 a thousand times to reform, only to find himself power- 
 less to do so. He strives with more than the heroism 
 of a martyr many times, but he is beaten. We often 
 blame him for his defeat, but there comes a time to 
 such a man when defeat is inevitable. Happy he who
 
 3* 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 makes his manful struggle while there is yet time. Poor 
 Burns, alas, did not. He went from bad to worse, while 
 his wife and five small children suffered as the families 
 of such men always suffer. From October, 1795, to the 
 January following, an accident confined him to his house. 
 A few days after he began to go out, he dined at a tav- 
 ern, and returned home about three o'clock of a very 
 cold morning, benumbed and intoxicated. This was fol- 
 lowed by rheumatism. He was never well again, though 
 he lived until the end of June. His mind during all this 
 time was wrung with the most poignant agony in regard 
 to the family he must leave, — for he knew he should not 
 recover. It is heart-rending to read of his sufferings and re- 
 morse, and to know that on the morning of her husband's 
 funeral Mrs. Burns gave birth to another child. It is 
 pleasant to learn that a subscription was immediately 
 taken up for the destitute family, which placed them in 
 comparative comfort. 
 
 " Fight who will," says Byron, " about words and forms, 
 Burns's rank is in the first class of his art ;"' and this has 
 long been the deliberate judgment of the world. No 
 finer flower of genius than that of Robert Burns has 
 ever blossomed, and it will be long before the world will 
 see another as fair. But, as Mr. Lockhart observes, " To 
 accumulate all that has been said of Burns, even by men 
 like himself, of the first order, would fill a volume." Not 
 even the most carping critic has ever questioned his 
 genius. The " Cotter's Saturday Night," and " Tam 
 O'Shanter," and " Highland Mary," would stand before 
 the world to refute such a critic ; and it would be a ven- 
 turesome man indeed who would care to contend for 
 such a proposition as that Robert Burns was not a great 
 poet. That he was a great wit is also as well established, 
 and that he might have been a great master of prose is 
 equally unquestionable. That he was great in his hfe we 
 dare not affirm, but that his life has a great claim upon 
 our charity we will gladly allow. Few writers have been 
 better loved than he. There is a personal warmth in all
 
 ROBERT BURNS. 32 
 
 hat he wrote, and we feel that we knew him in a sort of 
 personal way, as if we had shaken hands with him, and 
 leard his voice ; and we always have a feeling that he is 
 iddressing us in our own person. All of the many pil- 
 grims who visit the places he made immortal have some- 
 :hing of this feeling, and the banks of Doon are as classic 
 low as the lovely Avon. And whenever we are tempted 
 ;o look upon the darker sides of his life-picture, we may 
 yell refrain, and repeat his words : — 
 
 " Then gently scan your brother man, 
 
 Still gentler, sister woman ; 
 Though they may gang a kennin' wrang, 
 
 To step aside is human ; 
 One point must still be greatly dark, — 
 
 The moving why they do it ; 
 And just as lamely can ye mark 
 
 How far perhaps they rue it."
 
 MADAME DE STAEL. 
 
 THAT must indeed have been a thrilling life — a life 
 of startling dramatic interest — which covered the 
 period occupied by the career of Madame de Stael, even 
 had the person living the life been but an obscure ob- 
 server of passing events. For the time was big with the 
 most astounding things the world has known in these 
 later centuries. But to a person like the daughter of 
 Necker, with intellect to comprehend tlie prodigious 
 events, and with the power oftentimes to influence them 
 to a greater or less extent, the wonderful drama which 
 was then enacted upon the stage of France must have 
 appeared as of even overwhelming importance. It must 
 have dwarfed individual life, until one's own personal 
 afTairs, if they would press upon the attention, seemed 
 impertinence, to be disposed of as quickly as possible, 
 that one might give every thought and every emotion to 
 one's country. She saw the commencement and the 
 close of that great social earthquake which overthrew the 
 oldest dynasty in Europe ; she saw the rise, the culmi- 
 nation, and the setting of Napoleon's meteor-star ; she 
 witnessed the return of the Bourbons after their long 
 absence, and the final death in defeat and exile of her 
 dreaded enemy — the great soldier-Emperor — on the 
 rocky ocean isle. This series of events is not to be 
 paralleled for magnitude and meaning in any period of
 
 MADAME DE STAEL. -e 
 
 modern time, and Madame de Stael was something more 
 than a spectator during much of the great miracle-play. 
 
 Her father, Necker, was the Controller-General of 
 Finances under Louis XVI., and a man worthy of honor 
 and long remembrance, although he was called during 
 those perilous times to a work he was unable to do, and 
 which perhaps no man could have done. The corrupt 
 and meretricious court had brought France, financially 
 as well as morally, to a point where no one man, had he 
 been ever so great and so noble, could save her — could 
 even retard the period of her ruin. Necker made a noble 
 struggle, but was overborne by fate ; and had his genius 
 been even more commanding than it was, he would 
 doubtless have been thus overborne. History tells us of 
 many greater statesmen than he, but of few better men. 
 Disinterested almost to a fault, stainless in his private 
 character as well as unquestioned in his public integrity, 
 truly religious in a time given over to atheism and 
 impiety, conscientious even to the smallest matters in 
 public as well as private life, and moderate when every- 
 thing about him was in extremes, — well might Madame 
 de Stael be proud of her father, and fond to effusion of 
 his memory. 
 
 Her mother was a woman to be held in reverent re- 
 membrance. She was both beautiful and accomplished, 
 possessed of fine talents, as well as spotless character. 
 She had been engaged to Gibbon in her youth, and the 
 attachment between them was a strong one. But the 
 marriage was prevented by his father ; and, after a long 
 period of mournful constancy, she married M. Necker, 
 and took her place among the great ones of the earth. 
 The friendship between herself and Gibbon was afterwards 
 very tender and sacred, although she was a faithful and 
 devoted wife to Necker, and really warmly attached to 
 him. Necker, on his part, was her worshipping lover 
 to the end of his Hfe. 
 
 The daughter of such parents could scarcely fail to be 
 remarkable in some way. It is not from such sources that
 
 36 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 the mediocrities are recruited. But the child was utterly 
 unlike her parents, and never showed much likeness to 
 either in after life. Her genius was unquestioned even 
 from her precocious babyhood, and she was the wonder 
 and admiration of all the brilliant circle of her father's 
 friends. Her temperament was most vehement and im- 
 pulsive, and her vivacity a wonder even to the Parisians. 
 She seemed to know everything by intuition, and made 
 light of the hardest tasks which could be given her. 
 The streams of her childish eloquence seemed to flow 
 from some exhaustless fountain. The celebrated men 
 who were her father's guests were never weary of express- 
 ing their astonishment at her powers of conversation. 
 
 Gibbon, the Abbe Raynal, Baron Grimm, and Marmon- 
 tel were among these friends, and they undoubtedly did 
 much to stimulate the childish intellect, although Madame 
 Necker, troubled at the precocity of her darling, frowned 
 upon all attempts to unduly excite her mind. But great 
 themes were constantly discussed in her presence ; the 
 frivolity of the old regime was being rapidly displaced by 
 the intense earnestness of the men of the new era, and 
 the most momentous questions of life and death, of time 
 and eternity, were the subjects of the conversations to 
 which tlie young genius listened with such rapt attention. 
 Doubtless it was in listening to these profound discussions 
 in her earliest years that she acquired that confidence 
 which in after years never deserted her, but which always 
 led her to believe that she could save both her country 
 and the world, if people would only let her manage things 
 in her own way. Charles X. used to tell the story of her 
 calling upon him, after the return of the Bourbons to 
 France, and offering him a constitution ready-made, and 
 insisting upon his accepting it. He says : — 
 
 "It seemed like a thing resolved — an event decided 
 upon, — this proposal of inventing a constitution for us. I 
 kept as long as I could upon the defensive ; but Madame 
 de Stael, carried away by her zeal and enthusiasm, instead 
 of speaking of what presumably concerned herself, knocked
 
 MADAME DE STAEL. ,- 
 
 me about with arguments and crushed me with threats and 
 menaces ; so, tired to death of entertaining, instead of a 
 clever, humble woman, a roaring politician in petticoats, 
 I finished the audience, leaving her as little satisfied as my- 
 self with the interview." 
 
 Perhaps something of this kind may have influenced Na- 
 poleon in banishing her from the Empire. 
 
 Necker himself idolized his daughter, and was naturally 
 very proud of her youthful triumphs, while she in turn 
 made him her one hero among men. Throughout life 
 her devotion to him continued, and she wrote of him as 
 one might write of a god. She frequently lamented that 
 he had been her father and not one of her own gen- 
 eration, that there might have been a man of her time 
 worthy of the love which she could have lavished upon 
 him. The fervor of this devotion, although it seems 
 unnatural, belonged to her intensely impulsive tempera- 
 ment, and in her case we must make some allowance for 
 the excesses of her passionate expressions of affection. 
 Although she talked much and in the grandest manner 
 of love, even when young and unmarried, — which is a 
 very indelicate thing to do in the eye's of the French, — 
 she did not appear to have any youthful romance of a 
 serious sort. She had a great reputation as a wit and 
 a genius, but few admirers who could be classed as lovers. 
 Many men were her friends, and she was much sought 
 after ; but she was far from beautiful, which goes a great 
 way in matters of the heart, anci many disliked the man- 
 ner in which she trampled upon the conventionalities, 
 ivhile doubtless many others objected to her strong- 
 mindedness and the aggressiveness of her opinions. 
 
 She made a marriage de convenance at the age of 
 twenty, apparently without much thought of love upon 
 either side, and entered upon her new career with all 
 the confidence which characterized her. Baron de Steal 
 ivas a man of good character and nol)le birth, an attache 
 of the Swedish Embassy, and, as she had money enough 
 for both, the match was regarded favorably by her friends.
 
 38 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 Although the Baron was a handsome man and of pleas- 
 ing address, one, it seems, who might have touched a 
 maiden's heart, jMademoiselle Necker, it is said, never 
 made even a pretence of love, but took the whole affair 
 as a matter of business. It was necessary that she should 
 be married, — it is only thus that French women achieve 
 their independence, — and this man would do as well as 
 another ; that seemed to be all there was of this remark- 
 able occurrence. Remarkable in our eyes, but of the 
 usual sort in the eyes of the French. For domestic hap- 
 piness she seemed to care little. The excitement of 
 Parisian society was her heaven, and into this she entered 
 with all the ardor of her nature. Her marriage had given 
 her every freedom, although it does not appear that she 
 was much restrained before, — for a French girl ; and she 
 dashed into the whirlpool of the gayest society in the 
 world with a sort of intoxication. Her vivacity and en- 
 thusiasm knew no bounds, and she held her own little 
 court in every assembly, at which the envious and unno- 
 ticed looked askance. She was regarded as a dangerously 
 fascinating woman, although personally she was so entirely 
 unattractive. ' 
 
 For three years she enjoyed her triumphs to the ut- 
 most. Then came the earthquake which dissolved the 
 fair fabric of her dreams. The Reign of Terror began, 
 and Paris was in the wildest ferment. Of course, she 
 was in the very midst of those exciting events, and her 
 influence was of moment in the terrific crisis. Her posi- 
 tion gave her influence, and she worked with all the 
 strength and enthusiasm of her nature to aid the escape 
 of her friends and to succor the endangered. All the 
 powers of her remarkable mind were put into active ser- 
 vice, and she seems never to have thought of herself. 
 To be sure, she was as inviolable as any one could be 
 considered in that fearful time, but she had a rare courage 
 and unbounded fortitude, and would have worked as she 
 did even at personal hazard. She prevailed upon the 
 ferocious Revolutionists to show mercy in some cases
 
 MADAME DE STAEL. -.n 
 
 where they were bound to have blood. She concealed 
 her friends and even strangers in her house, and she used 
 all the powers of her marvellous eloquence to turn the 
 tide of revolution backward. But it was in vain. Her 
 father was deposed, her friends were murdered, her king 
 was slain, all of her society were under surv^eillance, she 
 herself everybody thought in danger, but she would not 
 leave her beloved Paris. Her husband was in Holland, 
 and thought she was subjecting her children to needless 
 peril ; but she still had hope that somehow she might be 
 useful to her country. The sublime confidence which 
 she had in her own powers did not desert her. She saw 
 the streets flow with blood, one might say, — for the mur- 
 ders of the Revolutionists were of daily occurrence, — 
 but it was not until all hope of being of use was gone 
 that she took her children to England. 
 
 Here a little colony of French exiles were already 
 established, and she became at once the centre of the 
 group. She pined in the exile and mourned with ever- 
 increasing sorrow for her country. Her interest in the 
 events of the time was cruelly intense, and burned out 
 her life. M. de Narbonne, whose life she had saved, was 
 one of her consolations in the dreadful exile, as was the 
 friendship of Talleyrand and of Benjamin Constant. 
 
 She returned to France after quiet was restored, and 
 lived in Paris something after the old way. Then came 
 Napoleon, whom she hated with all the ardor of her 
 nature, and who returned her hate with interest. He 
 banished her from France, and would not permit her 
 return during his entire reign. " She carries a quiver full 
 of arrows," he said, "which would hit a man were he seated 
 upon a rainbow." It was a purely personal dislike on his 
 part, and a piece of his most odious despotism to allow his 
 personal feelings to influence him in such a matter. There 
 are few things recorded of him more utterly inexcusable 
 than this. She passed fourteen years in exile, — the best 
 years of her life, — and exile to her had all the bitterness 
 of death ; she could never really live except in Paris. We
 
 40 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 hear little of her husband during all this time, but it is not 
 likely that she derived much consolation from domestic life. 
 She had no taste for it, and found it the supreme bore. 
 She consoled herself as much as she could with literature, 
 and wrote those books which, wonderful and brilliant as 
 they are, all who knew her personally unite in saying, never 
 did justice to her genius. The gloom of exile was over 
 them all. She suffered a great variety of petty persecu- 
 tions at the hands of Napoleon during all those years, 
 and these added to the inevitable miseries of her lot. 
 
 After the fall of the Napoleonic empire she returned 
 to Paris, and there passed the remainder of her life. It 
 was at this time that she presented the constitution 
 to Charles X. She was never remarkable for her taste 
 in dress, and that Prince thus describes her on that 
 occasion : — 
 
 " She wore a red satin gown embroidered with flowers of 
 gold and silk, a profusion of diamonds, rings enough to stock 
 a pawnbroker's shop ; and I must add that I never before 
 saw so low cut a corsage display less inviting charms. Upon 
 her head was a large turban, constructed on the pattern of 
 that worn by the Cumean sybil, which put the finishing touch 
 to a costume so little in harmony with the style of her face. 
 I scarcely can understand how a woman of genius can have 
 such a false, vulgar taste." 
 
 It can be easily comprehended how she might have 
 bored the Prince by pressing upon him at such length 
 her ideas of the reconstruction of the empire, for she 
 often bored even those who really admired and appreci- 
 ated her by the torrents of her talk. She was not witty, 
 but full of rhetorical surprises, and had boundless stores 
 of information upon every subject. People do not like 
 to be instructed, nor do they like to be preached to, even 
 by eloquent lips, and her great conversational powers 
 often made her dreaded rather than admired in general 
 society. While she was in Germany Goethe, who must 
 be allowed the capability of appreciating her, was wont to
 
 MADAME DE STAEL. 41 
 
 run away from her whenever he could, and bore up under 
 her eloquence with rather an ill grace when he could not 
 escape it. Schiller also, in whom she much delighted, 
 was ungallant enough to dislike her extremely. On the 
 contrary, Talleyrand and many other famous Frenchmen 
 seemed never to weary of her, and have handed down 
 the tradition of her wonderful eloquence to a later gener- 
 ation. It is probable that her excessive vivacity was more 
 pleasing to the French mind than to that of the English 
 and Germans, and her lack of repose did not weary them 
 to the same extent. She retained her friends to the end 
 of her life, and they were the source of her greatest satis- 
 faction. She was loyal and devoted in the extreme to all 
 whom she favored with her friendsliip, and all such loved 
 her with deep affection. Indeed, it may be said that hu- 
 man nature was the only thing which much interested her. 
 She had no love for Nature, and would scarcely take the 
 trouble to see the Alps when in Switzerland, and said that 
 if she were left to her own feelings she would not open 
 her window to see the bay of Naples for the first time, 
 but that she would travel five hundred leagues at any 
 time to see a great man she had not met before. She 
 cared little for art, and not much for literature as such, 
 though she had a passion for ideas. Her ideal life was 
 a life of intellectual excitement, — constant intercourse 
 with minds of her own order. The improvisations of 
 Corinne give one a little idea what her conversation was 
 like. Still she has been quoted as saying that she would 
 have exchanged all her talent for the one gift of beauty 
 which was denied her. 
 
 In the life of William Cullen Bryant we find the follow- 
 ing passage relating to Madame de Stael, occurring in one 
 of his letters ; it gives the last glimpse that we get of the 
 close of her career, and is interesting also as showing his 
 estimate of a great but faulty woman. He says : — 
 
 " What a life ! Passionate, for slie was brought up not 
 to control her passions; almost always unhappy; marrying 
 an old man whom she did not care for, after being twice
 
 42 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 refused by young men whom she did love, and to whom she 
 offered herself, if not formally yet in a manner not to be mis- 
 understood ; forming, after her marriage, intimate relations 
 with Benjamin Constant, to her father's great grief; and 
 when he deserted her, marrying, after her husband's death, 
 a half-dead Italian named Rocca; and finally wearing out her 
 life by opium-eating." 
 
 This marriage witli Albert Jean-Michel de Rocca took 
 place at Geneva, and was for a time concealed from the 
 world, causing some scandal. But her children and inti- 
 mate friends knew of it, although much opposed to it. 
 Rocca was a young Italian officer, just returned from the 
 war in Spain, with a dangerous w-ound. Ke w'as of a 
 poetic temperament and exceedingly romantic, and fell 
 violently in love with Madame de Stael, although she was 
 forty-five years old and he but twenty-three. During the 
 years of her first marriage she used to say that she would 
 force her own daughter to marry for love if that were 
 necessary, and it is supposed that at last she herself made 
 a marriage of real affection. Despite the disparity of their 
 years, they seemed to be really happy in this marriage, 
 and her friends were at last reconciled to it. But her 
 new-found happiness was of short duration, — she being 
 but fifty years old at the time of her death. 
 
 jJLji t^'
 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 
 
 MR. SWINBURNE quotes the following passage 
 from a description given by one of the daily- 
 papers of a certain murderer who at the time was attract- 
 ing great attention in London : — 
 
 " He lias great taste for poetry, can recite long passages 
 from popular poets, — Byron's denunciations of the pleasures 
 of the world having for him great attraction as a description 
 of his own experiences. Wordsworth is his favorite poet. 
 He confesses himself a villain." 
 
 At this day the two latter facts will not necessarily be 
 supposed to have any logical connection ; but there was 
 a time when the violence of the opponents of Words- 
 worth's claim to be a poet might have suggested the most 
 intimate relation between these two statements. For 
 many years he was looked upon as an " inspired idiot " 
 by a large part of the reading world ; and his place in 
 literature has not been definitely settled to this day. 
 Such extravagant claims have always been made for him 
 by his friends that they have called forth just as ex- 
 travagant denunciations from those who do not admire 
 his works ; and violent controversies arise concerning his 
 merits among first-class scholars and critics. It is always 
 noticeable, however, in these discussions that his pane- 
 gyrists always quote his best efforts, those sublime pas- 
 sages to which no one denies transcendent merit, and 
 that his opponents never get much beyond " Peter Bell," 
 and other trivialities and absurdities, which his best friends 
 must admit that he wrote in great numbers. That his best
 
 44 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREA T A UTHORS. 
 
 work ranks next to Shakespeare, Milton, and Shelley, can 
 scarcely be doubted by any true lover of poetry ; and he 
 certainly has the right to be judged by his best, rather 
 than by his inferior work, 
 
 Wordsworth was born in 1770, in Cumberland, and 
 received his early education there, being noted for his ex- 
 cellence in classical studies and for his thoughtful disposi- 
 tion. He graduated from St. John's College, Cambridge, 
 and immediately after began his literary labors, which 
 were continued through a long and most industrious life. 
 
 In 1803 he married Miss Mary Hutchinson of Pen- 
 rith, and settled at Grasmere, in Westmoreland, where he 
 passed the remainder of his life, and where he lies buried 
 in the little churchyard where so many of his family had 
 preceded him. He helped to make the Lake district 
 famous the world over, and himself never wearied of its 
 charms. He was pre-eminendy the poet of Nature, and 
 it was from the unrivalled scenery of this part of England 
 that he caught much of his inspiration. Mrs. Words- 
 worth, w-ho was as fond of it as her husband, used to say 
 in extreme old age, that the worst of living in the Lake 
 region was that it made one unwilling to die when the 
 time came. The poet's marriage was an eminently happy 
 one, although Miss Martineau hints that it was not first 
 love on his part, but that the lines, " She was a phantom 
 of delight," so often quoted as relating to Mrs. Words- 
 worth, were really meant to indicate another person who 
 had occupied his thoughts at an early day. At any rate, 
 he did address the following lines to his wife after thirty- 
 six years of married life, which is certainly a far higher 
 compliment to her : — 
 
 " Mom into noon did pass, noon into eve, 
 And the old day was welcome as the young, 
 As welcome, and as beautiful, — in sooth, more beautiful, 
 As being a thing more holy." 
 
 The Other poems, " Let other bards of angels sing," 
 and " Oh, dearer far than life and light are dear," were 
 also addressed to her.
 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. .. 
 
 It was through her early friendship for Wordsworth's 
 sister that she first came to know the poet, and she was 
 not at that time a person whom a poet would be supposed 
 to fancy. She was the incarnation of good-sense as ap- 
 phed to the concerns of the every-day world, and in no 
 sense a dreamer, or a seeker after the ideal. Her intel- 
 lect, however, developed by contact with higher minds, 
 and her tastes after a time became more in accordance 
 with those of her husband. She learned to passionately 
 admire the outward world, in which he took such great 
 delight, and to admire his poetry and that of his friends. 
 She was of a kindly, cheery, generous nature, very un- 
 selfish in her dealings with her family, and highly beloved 
 by her friends. She was the finest example of thrift 
 and frugality to be found in her neighborhood, and is 
 said to have exerted a decidedly beneficial influence 
 upon all her poorer neighbors. She did not give them 
 as much in charity as many others did, but she taught 
 them how to take care of what they had, and to save 
 something for their days of need. Miss Martineau, 
 who was a neighbor, says : " The oldest residents have 
 long borne witness that the homes of the neighbors have 
 assumed a new character of order and comfort and 
 wholesome economy, since the poet's family lived at 
 Rydal Mount." She took the kindest and tenderest care 
 of Wordsworth's sister Dorothy, who was for many years 
 a helpless charge upon her hands. This sister had ruined 
 her health, and finally dethroned her reason, by trying to 
 accompany her brother on his long and tiresome rambles 
 among the lakes and up the mountains. She has been 
 known to walk with him forty miles in a single day. Many 
 English women are famous walkers, but her record is be- 
 yond them all. Such excessive exercise is bad for a man, 
 as was proved in the case of Dickens, who doubtless in- 
 jured himself much by such long pedestrian trips after 
 brain labor ; but no woman can endure such a strain as 
 this, and the adoring sister not only failed to be a com- 
 panion to her idolized brother, but became a care and
 
 46 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 burden for many years. She lies now by her brother's 
 side in the crowded Httle churchyard, and doubtless the 
 " sweet bells jangled " are in tune again. A lovely group 
 of children filled the Wordsworth home, some of whom 
 died in childhood ; but one daughter and two sons lived, 
 as loving companions for their parents, until near the 
 end of the poet's life, when the daughter Dora preceded 
 him a little into the silent land. \Vordsworth was utterly 
 inconsolable for her loss ; and used to spend the long 
 winter evenings in tears, week after week, and month 
 after month. Mrs. Wordsworth was much braver than he, 
 and bore her own burdens calmly, while trying to cheer 
 his exaggerated gloom. He was old and broken at this 
 time, and never recovered from the shock of his daughter's 
 death. Mrs. Wordsworth survived him for several years, 
 being over ninety at the time of her death, and having 
 long been deaf and blind. But she was very cheerful 
 and active to the last, and not unwilling to live on, even 
 with her darkened vision. The devotion of the old poet 
 to his wife was very touching, and she who had idolized 
 him in life was never weary of recounting his virtues when 
 he was gone. 
 
 The character of Wordsworth is getting to be understood 
 as we recede from the prejudices of the time in which he 
 lived, and begins to assume something like a consistent 
 whole, compared to the contradictions which at one time 
 seemed to be inherent in it. He says of his own child- 
 hood : — 
 
 " I was of a stiff, moody, and violent temper ; so much 
 so that I remember going once into the attic of my grand- 
 father's house at Penrith, upon some indignity having been 
 put upon me, with an intention of destroying myself with 
 one of the foils which I knew were kept there. I took the 
 foil in my hand, but my heart failed." 
 
 De Quincey says of his boyhood : — 
 
 " I do not conceive that Wordsworth could have been an 
 amiable boy ; he was austere and unsocial. I have reason to 
 think, in his habits ; not generous ; and above all. not self-
 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. .- 
 
 denying. Throughout his later life, with all the benefits of a 
 French discipline, in the lesser charities of social intercourse 
 he has always exhibited a marked impatience of those par- 
 ticular courtesies of life. . . . Freedom, — unlimited, care- 
 less, insolent freedom, — unoccupied possession of his own 
 arms, — absolute control over his own legs and motions, — 
 these have always been so essential to his comfort that in 
 any case where they were hkely to become questionable, he 
 would have declined to make one of the party." 
 
 Wordsworth has been accused of excessive penurious- 
 ness, of overwhelming conceit, and of being slovenly and 
 regardless of dress. For the first accusation there seems 
 little warrant, other than that he was prudent and thrifty, 
 and knew the value of money. His most intimate 
 friends exonerate him from meanness of any sort, and 
 often praise his kindness to the poor and dependent. As 
 regards conceit there can probably be no denial, though 
 doubdess the stories told of it are much exaggerated. He 
 is said never to have read any poetry but his own, and to 
 have been exceedingly ill-natured and contemptuous in 
 his estimate of his contemporaries. His estimate of 
 Dickens is well known : — 
 
 " I will candidly avow that I thought him a very talkative, 
 vulgar young person, — but I dare say he may be very clever. 
 Mind, I don't want to say a word against him, for I have 
 never read a word he has written." 
 
 He greeted Charles Mackay thus, when the latter called 
 upon him : — 
 
 " I am told you write poetry. I never read a line of your 
 poems and don't intend to. You must not be offended with 
 me ; the truth is, I never read anybody's poetry but my 
 own." 
 
 Even James T. Fields, whose opinion of the poet was 
 high, remarks : — 
 
 " I thought he did not praise easily those whose names 
 are indissolubly connected with his own in the history of
 
 48 HOME LIFE OF GREA T A UTHORS. 
 
 literature. It was languid praise, at least : and I observed 
 that he hesitated for mild terms which he could apply to 
 names almost»as great as his own." 
 
 Carlylc testifies on the same point : — 
 
 " One evening, probably about this time, I got him upon 
 the subject of great poets, who I thought might be admira- 
 ble equally to us both; but was rather mistaken, as I gradu- 
 ally found. Pope's partial failure I was prepared for; less 
 for the narrowish limits visible in Milton and others. I tried 
 him with Burns, of whom he had sung tender recognition; 
 but Burns also turned out to be a limited, inferior creature, 
 any genius he had a theme for one's pathos rather ; even 
 Shakespeare himself had his blind sides, his limitations. 
 Gradually it became apparent to me that of transcendent un- 
 limited, there was to this critic probably but one specimen 
 known, — Wordsworth." 
 
 As regards eccentricities of dress, we will give but a 
 single testimony. William Jordan says : — 
 
 " On his visits to town the recluse of Rydal Mount was 
 quite a different creature. To me it was demonstrated, by 
 his conduct under every circumstance, that De Quincey had 
 done him gross injustice in the character he loosely threw 
 upon him in public, namely, ' that he was not generous or 
 self-denying, . . . and that he was slovenly and regardless in 
 dress.' I must protest that there was no warrant for this 
 caricature; but on the contrary, that it bore no feature of 
 resemblance to the slight degree of eccentricity discoverable 
 in Cumberland, and was utterly contradicted by the life in 
 London. In the mixed society of the great Babylon, Mr. 
 Wordsworth was facile and courteous ; dressed like a gen- 
 tleman, and with his tall commanding figure no mean type 
 of the superior order, well-trained by education, and accus- 
 tomed to good manners. Shall I reveal that he was often 
 sportive, and could even go the length of strong expressions, 
 in the off-hand mirth of his observations and criticisms ? " 
 
 Wordsworth had the fondness of many poets for read- 
 ing his poetry to his friends, and even of reciting it like
 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 
 
 49 
 
 a schoolboy. When Emerson visited him he was already 
 an old man, and it struck the philosopher so oddly, as 
 he tells us in his " English Traits," to see " the old Words- 
 worth, standing apart, and reciting to me in a garden 
 walk, like a schoolboy declaiming, that I at lirst was near 
 to laugh ; but recollecting myself, that I had come thus 
 far to see a poet, and he was chanting poems to me, I 
 saw that he was right and 1 was wrong, and gladly gave 
 myself up to hear." 
 
 Another story is told of his being in a large company, 
 and seeing for the first time a new novel by Scott, with a 
 motto taken from his poems ; and of his going immedi- 
 ately and getting the poem, and reading it entire to the 
 assembled company, who were waiting for the reading of 
 the new novel. 
 
 Literary biography is full of such anecdotes as these, 
 going to show his absprption in himself, and his com- 
 parative indifference to the works of others ; but they 
 prove at most only a trifling weakness in a great man's 
 character ; such weaknesses being so common as to cause 
 no surprise to those familiar with the lives of men of 
 genius. He was a strong man, massive in his individu- 
 ality, full of profound feeling and deep spirituahty, and 
 dominated by a powerful will. He was no mere senti- 
 mentalist and versifier, but a student at first hand of 
 Nature and all her mysteries, — a man whose profound 
 meditations had pierced to the centre of things, and who 
 held great thoughts in keeping for a waiting and expect- 
 ant world. His outward life was full of proofs of the wide 
 and deep benevolence of his nature ; and it was only shallow 
 minds who dwelt upon some petty defects of his character. 
 The deep wisdom gained by contemplation comes forth 
 whenever he talks of childhood. This subject always 
 possesses inspiration for him, as when he says : — 
 
 " Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting ; 
 The soul that rises with us, our life's star, 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
 And Cometh from afar. 
 
 4
 
 50 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 Not in entire forgctfulness, 
 
 And not in utter nakedness, 
 But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
 
 From God who is our home. 
 Heaven lies about us in our infancy ! 
 Shades of the prison-house begin to close 
 
 Upon the growing boy, 
 But he beholds the light, and whence it flews, — 
 
 He sees it in his joy. 
 The youth, who daily farther from the east 
 Must travel, still is Nature's priest, 
 
 And by the vision splendid 
 
 Is on his way attended ; 
 At length the man perceives it die away. 
 And fade into the light of common day." 
 
 This conception of the nearness of the child to the 
 unseen made all children sacred in his eyes, and he 
 always felt that he learned more from them than he could 
 teach them. He expresses this thought often, as thus : — 
 
 " Oh dearest, dearest boy ; my heart 
 For better lore would seldom yearn. 
 Could I but teach the hundredth part 
 Of what from thee I learn." 
 
 And again : — 
 
 " Dear child ; dear girl ; thou walkest with me here ; 
 If thou appear untouched by solemn thought, 
 Thy nature is not therefore less divine ; 
 Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year ; 
 And worship'st at the Temple's inner shrine, 
 God being with thee when we know it not.'' 
 
 His own children he loved almost to idolatry, and after 
 the lapse of forty years, would speak with the deepest emo- 
 tion of the little ones who had died. Indeed, he was a 
 man of profound feeling, passionate and intense in his 
 loves, though outwardly calm and self-contained. He 
 himself says : — 
 
 " Had I been a writer of love-poetry, it would have been 
 natural for me to write it with a degree of warmth which 
 could hardly have been approved by my principles, and 
 which might have been undesirable for the reader."
 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. ci 
 
 His sister Dorothy frequently refers to the intensity 
 of his passionate affection for the members of his family, 
 and of the full and free expression he gave it. Greatly 
 indeed have they erred who have imagined liim as by 
 nature cold or even tranquil. " What strange workings," 
 writes one, " are there in his great mind ! how fearfully 
 strong are all his feelings and affections ! If his intellect 
 had been less powerful they would have destroyed him 
 long ago." Indeed, no one who had ever known him 
 well could doubt this intensity of nature, this smothered 
 fire. It leaped out in bursts of anger at the report of evil 
 doings ; in long and violent tramps over the mountains, 
 in exaggerated grief at the death of loved ones ; and in 
 almost unnatural intensity of devotion, to his sister first, 
 and his daughter Dora afterwards. It took the form of 
 passionate adoration of Nature in his poems, and of pas- 
 sionate patriotism as well, and it gave strength and fire to 
 the best of all his literary work. 
 
 Let us dwell for a moment more upon the married life 
 of the poet, — that calm and quiet and happy life which 
 made it possible that he should be the poet he was, un- 
 vexed by worldly cares or vanities. His late biographer, 
 Mr. Myers, tells us : — 
 
 " The life which the young couple led was one of primi- 
 tive simplicity. In some respects it was even less luxurious 
 than that of the peasants about them. They drank water, 
 and ate the simplest fare. Miss Wordsworth had long ren- 
 dered existence possible for her brother, on the narrowest of 
 means, by her unselfish energy and skill in household man- 
 agement ; and plain living and high thinking were equally 
 congenial to the new inmate of the frugal home. Words- 
 worth gardened ; and all together, or oftenest the poet and 
 his sister, wandered almost daily over the neighboring hills. 
 Narrow means did not prevent them from offering a gene- 
 rous welcome to their few friends, especially Coleridge and 
 his family, who repeatedly stayed for months under Words- 
 worth's roof. Miss Wordsworth's letters breathe the very 
 spirit of hospitality in their naive details of the little sacri- 
 fices gladly made for the sake of the presence of these
 
 5-^ 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 honored guests. But for the most part the life was solitary 
 and uneventful. Books they had few, neighbors none, and 
 their dependence was ahnost entirely upon external nature." 
 
 The cottage in which they lived was very small, but 
 they covered it with roses and honeysuckles, and had a 
 little garden around it. Inside, all was the perfection of 
 simplicity, but the soul of neatness and thrift pervaded 
 everything, and love glorified it all. They had a little 
 boat upon the lake, and rowing and walking were their 
 pleasures. 
 
 They lived in this simple fashion that the poet might 
 pursue his high vocation, and not be put into the tread- 
 mill of any steady work. In after years, through bequests 
 from friends and a pension from Government, they were 
 made more prosperous, and their declming years were 
 cheered by an assured abundance. Rydal Mount has 
 been described so often that it is familiar to most readers. 
 The house stands looking southward, on the rocky side of 
 Nab Scar above Rydal Lake. The garden is terraced, 
 and was full of flowering alleys in the poet's time. There 
 was a tall ash-tree in which the thrushes always sung, 
 and a laburnum in which the osier cage of the doves was 
 hung. There were stone steps, in which poppies and 
 wild geraniums filled the interstices ; and rustic seats here 
 and there, where they all sat all day during the pleasant 
 weather. The poet spent very little time in-doors. He 
 lived constantly in the open air, composing all his poems 
 there, and committing them to paper afterw^ards. Their 
 friends grew more numerous in later life, and Wordsworth 
 much enjoyed their companionship, being himself very 
 bright and delightful company when in the mood for talk. 
 Here that strange being, Thomas De Quincey, came and 
 lived, purposely to be near the poet. Coleridge was always 
 at call, genial Kit North paid loyal court to the great man 
 from the first, and loving and gentle Charles Lamb came 
 at times, sadly missing the town, and almost afraid of the 
 mountains. Here Dr. Arnold of Rugby came often from
 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 53 
 
 Fox How, his own house in the neighborhood ; hither 
 Harriet Martineau walked over from Ambleside, with 
 some new theory of the universe to expound ; and here 
 poor Hartley Coleridge passed the happiest hours of his 
 unfortunate life. Wordsworth's kindness and tenderness 
 to this poor son of his great friend were well known to 
 his little world, and show some of the most pleasing traits 
 of his character. This amiable and gifted man, Hartley 
 Coleridge, ruined himself through the weakness of his will, 
 finding it utterly impossible to leave wine alone, even when 
 he knew it was ruining his life, and so sorely afflicting his 
 friends. Wordsworth dealt with him like a father, recog- 
 nizing the weakness of his character, and perhaps being 
 able to trace it to inherited tendencies, — the elder Cole- 
 ridge's devotion to opium being well known. Poor Hartley 
 lies with Wordsworth's own family in the little churchyard 
 at Grasmere, and we trust in that quiet retreat sleeps well, 
 at the foot of his friend and master. 
 
 Wordsworth's last years were of great solemnity and 
 calm. He lived in retrospection, and dwelt much upon 
 the unseen world. The deep spirituality of his nature 
 was shown in all his later life. He was absorbed, as it 
 were, in thoughts of God, and of the ultimate destiny 
 of man. All worldly interests died out, and he was able 
 to write even of his fame : — 
 
 " It is indeed a deep satisfaction to hope and believe 
 that my poetry will be, while it lasts, a help to the cause of 
 virtue and truth, especially among the young. As for myself, 
 it seems now of little moment how long I may be remem- 
 bered. When a man pushes off in his little boat into the 
 great seas of Infinity and Eternity, it surely signifies little 
 how long he is kept in sight by watchers from the shore."
 
 
 THOMAS DE OUINCEY. 
 
 THE Florentines used to point Dante out to strangers 
 in these words : " There goes the man who has 
 been in hell." With much truth could these words have 
 been spoken of Thomas De Quincey, at any time after 
 he began to suffer from his excess in opium eating, which 
 was while he was still a young man, — and especially 
 would these words have been true of him, after he began 
 his struggles to free himself from the thraldom of that 
 most seductive vice. James Payn thus describes his 
 appearance : — 
 
 "Picture to yourself a very diminutive man, carelessly — 
 very carelessly — dressed; a face lined, care-worn, and so 
 expressionless that it reminded one of ' that dull, changeless 
 brow, where cold Obstruction's apathy appalls the gazing 
 mourner's heart,' — a face like death in life. The instant he 
 began to speak, however, it lit up as though by electric light : 
 this came from his marvellous eyes, brighter and more intel- 
 ligent (though by tits) than I have ever seen in any other 
 mortal." 
 
 Another writes : — 
 
 " Conceive a little, pale-faced, woe-begone, and attenuated 
 man, with short indescribables, no coat, check shirt, and a 
 neck-cloth twisted like a wisp of straw, opening his door, 
 and advancing toward you with hurried movement and half- 
 recognizing glance, saluting you in low and hesitating tones, 
 and without looking at you, beginning to pour into your will- 
 ing ear a stream of learning and wisdom, as long as you are 
 content to listen. . . . His head is small ; how can it carry all
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 he knows ? His brow is singular in shape, but not particu- 
 larly large or prominent ; where has nature expressed his 
 majestic intellect ? His eyes — they sparkle not, they shine 
 not, they are lustreless ; there is not even the glare which 
 lights up sometimes dull eyes into eloquence ; and yet, even 
 at first, the tout ensetuble strikes you as that of no common 
 man, and you say, ere he has opened his lips, ' He is either 
 mad or inspired.' " 
 
 In all literary history there is scarcely a man about 
 whose life and character hang so peculiar an interest and 
 fascination as about De Quincey. He has himself given 
 a most vivid account of his childhood, in his " Autobio- 
 graphic Sketches," and in the " Opium Eater." From these 
 we learn that he was born in Manchester, August 15,1 785. 
 His father was a very wealthy merchant of that city, who 
 was inclined to pulmonary consumption, and lived mostly 
 abroad, in the West Indies and other warm climates. 
 Thomas had several brothers and sisters, all of whom 
 seem to have been rather peculiar and remarkable children. 
 He was a very precocious child himself, sensitive, excitable, 
 and given to dreams and visions, — living largely in a world 
 of imagination, and for many years ruled over with absolute 
 despotism by an older brother. The loss of a favorite sis- 
 ter in very early childhood seems to have been a blow 
 from which it took him years to recover. He writes of it 
 thus : — 
 
 " Inevitable sometimes it is, in solitude, that this should 
 happen to minds morbidly meditative, — that when we stretch 
 out our arms in darkness, vainly striving to draw back the 
 sweet faces that have vanished, slowly arises a new stratagem 
 of grief, and we say, ' Be it that they no more come back 
 to us, yet what hinders but we should go to ihcm .?' Perilous 
 is that crisis for the young. In its effect perfectly the same 
 as the ignoble witchcraft of the poor African Obrrili, this sub- 
 limer witchcraft of grief will, if left to follow its own natural 
 course, terminate in the same catastrophe of death. Poetry, 
 which neglects no phenomena that are interesting to the 
 heart of man, has sometimes touched a little 
 
 ' On the sublime attractions of the grave.'
 
 56 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 But you tliink that these attractions, existing at times for 
 the adult, could not exist for the child. Understand that 
 you are wrong. Understand that these attractions do exist 
 for the child ; and perhaps as much more strongly than they 
 can exist for the adult by the whole difference between the 
 concentration of a childish love and the inevitable distrac- 
 tion upon multiplied objects of any love that can affect 
 any adult. . . . Could the Erl-king's Daughter have revealed 
 herself to me, and promised to lead me where my sister was, 
 she might have wiled me by the hand into the dimmest for- 
 ests upon earth." 
 
 But a beatific vision rose before him, one day in church, 
 and he saw the beautiful sister borne away in the clouds 
 of heaven on a bed of filmy whiteness, surrounded by 
 a celestial throng ; and he was somewhat comforted. 
 After twelve years, while he was a student at Oxford, the 
 vision returned to him, and he writes of it : — 
 
 " Once again, the nursery of my childhood expanded be- 
 fore me ; my sister was moaning in bed ; I was beginning to 
 be restless with fears not intelligible to myself. Once again 
 the nurse, but now dilated to colossal proportions, stood as 
 upon some Grecian stage with her uplifted hand, and, like 
 the superb Medea towering amongst her children in the 
 nursery at Corinth, smote me senseless to the ground. 
 Again I am in the chamber with my sister's corpse, again 
 the pomps of life rise up in silence, the glory of summer, the 
 Syrian sunlights, the frost of death. Dream forms itself 
 mysteriously within dream ; within these Oxford dreams re- 
 moulds itself continually the trance in my sister's chamber, — 
 the blue heavens, the everlasting vault, the soaring billows, 
 the throne steeped in the thought (but not the sight) of 
 ' Who might sit thereon ; ' the flight, the pursuit, the irre- 
 coverable steps of my return to earth. Once more the 
 funeral procession gathers ; the priest, in his white surplice, 
 stands waiting with a book by the side of an open grave; the 
 sacristan is waiting with his shovel; the coffin has sunk; the 
 dust to dust has descended. Again I was in the church on 
 a heavenly Sunday morning. The golden sunlight of God 
 slept amongst the heads of his apostles, his martyrs, his 
 saints ; the fragment from the litany, the fragment from the 
 clouds, awoke again the lawny beds that went up to scale
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. e- 
 
 the heavens, — awoke again the shadowy arms that moved 
 downward to meet them. Once again arose the swell of the 
 anthem, the burst of the Hallelujah chorus, the storm, the 
 tramphng movement of the choral passion, the agitation of 
 my own trembling sympathy, the tumult of the choir, the 
 wrath of the organ. Once more I, that wallowed in the dust, 
 became he that rose up to the clouds. And now all was 
 bound up into unity ; the first state and the last were melted 
 into each other as in some sunny, glorifying haze. For high 
 in heaven hovered a gleaming host of faces, veiled with 
 wings, around the pillows of the dying children. And such 
 beings sympathize equally with sorrow that grovels and with 
 sorrow that soars. Such beings pity alike the children that 
 are languishing in death, and the children that live only to 
 languish in tears." 
 
 This extract is important as showing that when a 
 mere child, knowing nothing of the fatal drug, he had vis- 
 ions siniilar to those which filled his after years. At Ox- 
 ford he had begun the use of opium — but his first vision 
 was a repetition of one of his childish years, and it leads 
 us to infer that his own vivid imagination bore an impor- 
 tant part in the brilliant dreams which followed his taking 
 of opium. No person of ordinary mind could induce 
 those gorgeous and bewildering dreams by its use. In 
 his case the drug acted upon a mind fitted to see 
 visions and dream dreams even without its use ; and the 
 result was that gorgeous and bewildering phantasmagoria 
 which he so eloquently describes. 
 
 The causes of his first indulging in opium may be 
 briefly glanced at here. At seventeen, he ran away from 
 the school at which he had been placed by his guardians, 
 his father now being dead. He wished to enter college 
 at once, and it appears was well prepared to do so, and 
 had made earnest representations to his guardians upon 
 the subject, as he was unhappy where he was, and under 
 a very unsuitable master. But they would not consent, 
 and, like one of his brothers who ran away from school 
 and went to sea, he borrowed a little money and stole 
 quietly away to Wales.
 
 58 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 Tlie brother had left school, it appears, with good reason, 
 being brutally treated ; but in the case of Thomas there 
 seems to have been no complaint of real ill-usage. It 
 was simply one of the wilful freaks of a precocious and 
 fantastic boy. He wandered in Wales for a few weeks, 
 until his money was nearly spent, and then contrived to 
 get to London, where he suffered the cruellest pangs of 
 poverty, although he was a young gendeman of indepen- 
 dent fortune. It is difficult for a matter-of-fact and well- 
 balanced mind to conceive of an experience just like that 
 of De Quincey. Why he should have allowed himself to 
 starve rather than communicate with his friends, we are 
 not told, — it could scarcely have been pride, for he 
 accepted help even from strangers when it was offered, — 
 and why he did not seek some of the friends of his family 
 in the city we are not informed, but such was the fact. 
 
 He tells the story thus : — 
 
 " And now began the later and fiercer stage of my long 
 sufferings ; without using a disproportionate expression, I 
 might say of my agony. For I now suffered for upwards of 
 sixteen weeks the physical anguish of hunger in various de- 
 grees of intensity, but as bitter, perhaps, as ever any human 
 being can have suffered who has survived it. I would not 
 needlessly harass my readers' feelings by a detail of all that 
 I endured ; for extremities such as these, under any circum- 
 stances of heaviest misconduct or guilt, cannot be contem- 
 plated, even in description, without a rueful pity that is 
 painful to the natural goodness of the human heart. Let it 
 suffice to say that a few fragments of bread from the break- 
 fast table of one individual, and these at uncertain intervals, 
 constituted my whole support. ... I was houseless, and 
 seldom slept under a roof." 
 
 After a time, however, he slept in an unoccupied house, 
 or unoccupied save by a child of ten years, — as forlorn as 
 himself. She slept here, and was much tormented by the 
 fear of ghosts. She hailed his advent with great pleasure 
 as a protection from supernatural visitants ; and when the 
 weather became cold, he used to hold her in his arms
 
 THOMAS DE QUIXCEY. eg 
 
 that she might gain the additional comfort of a httle 
 warmth. He says they lay upon the floor " with a bundle 
 of cursed law papers for a pillow, and no covering save 
 an old cloak." He slept only from exhaustion, and could 
 hear himself moaning in his sleep ; but his little compan- 
 ion, relieved of fear, and perhaps a little better fed than 
 he, slept soundly and well at all times. He learned to 
 love the poor child as his partner in wretchedness. He 
 made also one other friend, a girl of the streets, named 
 Ann, who was kind to him, and whom he remembered 
 with gratitude to the end of his life. He says of her : — 
 
 " This person was a young woman, and one of that un- 
 happy class who subsist upon the wages of prostitution. . . . 
 Yet, no ! let me not class thee, O noble-minded Ann, with 
 that order of women ; let me find, if it be possible, some gen- 
 tler name to designate the condition of her to whose bounty 
 and compassion — ministering to my necessities when all 
 the world had forsaken me — I owe it that I am at this time 
 alive. . . . She was not as old as myself. . . . O youthful 
 benefactress! how often in succeeding years, standing in 
 solitary places and thinking of thee with grief of heart and 
 perfect love, — how often have I wished that, as in ancient 
 times the curse of a father was believed to have a supernatu- 
 ral power, and to pursue its object with a fatal necessity of 
 self-fulfilment, — even so the benediction of a heart op- 
 pressed with gratitude might have a like prerogative, — might 
 have power given it from above to chase, to haunt, to waylay, 
 to overtake, to pursue thee into the central darkness of a 
 London brothel, or (if it were possible) into the darkness of 
 the grave, there to awaken thee with an authentic message 
 of peace and forgiveness and final reconciliation ! " 
 
 The youthful wanderer was finally discovered by his 
 friends, and placed by his wish at Oxford, where about a 
 year after, in 1804, he began the occasional use of opium. 
 He did this merely as a means of pleasure at first, like 
 the drinking of wine, and took it only at stated intervals 
 for a period of eight years. He seemed to experience no 
 harm from its use in this way ; but a very severe neuralgic 
 atlection of the stomach (caused, it is supposetl, by his pri-
 
 6o HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 rations in London primarily) developed itself at the end 
 of that time, and he resorted to the habitual use of opium 
 as a relief from pain. 
 
 He was married in 1816 to Miss Margaret Simpson, and 
 lived with her in a cottage at Grasmere. Of this wife, with 
 whom he lived for twenty-one years, he thus writes : — 
 
 "But watching by my pillow, or defrauding herself of 
 sleep to bear me company through the heavy watches of the 
 night, sat my Electra; for thou, beloved M., dear companion 
 of my later years, thou wast my Electra! and neither in no- 
 bility of mind nor in long-suffering affection would'st permit 
 that a Grecian sister should excel an English wife. For 
 thou thoughtest not much to stoop to humble offices of kind- 
 ness, and to servile ministrations of tenderest affection ; to 
 wipe away for years the unwholesome dews upon the fore- 
 head, or to refresh the lips when parched and baked with 
 fever ; nor even when thy own peaceful slumbers had by 
 long sympathy become infected with the spectacle of my 
 dread contest with phantoms and shadowy enemies that 
 oftentimes bade me 'sleep no more ' — not even then did'st 
 thou utter a complaint or any murmur, nor withdraw thy 
 angehc smiles, nor shrink from thy service of love, more than 
 did Electra of old. For she too, though she was a Grecian 
 woman, and the daughter of the king of men, yet wept some- 
 times, and hid her face in her robe ! " 
 
 Hard indeed, no doubt, was the wife's lot through all 
 those years ; but the world will never hav^e more than this 
 mere glimpse of her sorrow and her devotion. Yet to a 
 person gifted with imagination, it is enough. He can re- 
 construct from it that long period of patient watchfulness 
 and unwearied devotion ; he can share her hopes when 
 her loved one makes a battle with his enemy, her tears 
 when he is defeated, her rapture when he makes a seem- 
 ing conquest, the bitterness of her anguish when he 
 again falls. For all this was gone through, not once, but 
 three times, in the course of De Quincey's life. It was 
 not until he felt that death was inevitable if he continued 
 the use of opium (which he was then taking in enormous
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 6l 
 
 quantities) that he ever resolved to give up its use. He 
 knew he must die if he kept on, he thought he should die 
 if he gave it up, but he determined to make the effort. 
 His studies had long been abandoned ; he could not even 
 read. For two years he had read but one book; he 
 shrank from study with a sense of infantine povverlessness 
 that gave him great anguish when he remembered what 
 his mind had formerly been. From misery and suffering, 
 he might almost be described as being in a dormant state. 
 His wife managed all the affairs of the household, and 
 attended to necessary business. He did not lose his 
 moral sensibilities or aspirations, as so many opium eaters 
 do, but his intellect seemed dead. His brain had become 
 a theatre, which presented spectacles of more than earthly 
 splendor, but as often painful as pleasurable. He had no 
 control now of the dreams which haunted him. He 
 learned now the awful tyranny of the human face. 
 
 " Upon the rocking waters of the ocean, the human face 
 began to appear ; the sea appeared paved with innumerable 
 faces, upturned to the heavens, — faces imploring, wrath- 
 ful, despairing, surged upwards by thousands, by myriads, 
 by generations, by centuries ; my agitation was infinite, my 
 mind tossed and surged with the ocean. ... I was buried 
 for a thousand years in stone coffins, with mummies and 
 sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyra- 
 mids. I was kissed with cancerous kisses by crocodiles ; and 
 laid confounded with all unutterable slimy things, among 
 reeds and Nilotic mud. . . . The cursed crocodile be- 
 came to me the object of more horror than almost all the 
 rest. I was compelled to live with him for centuries." 
 
 The struggle was a long and hard one, and of it he 
 
 says : — 
 
 " Jeremy Taylor conjectures that it may be as painful to 
 be born as to die. I think it probable ; and during the 
 whole period of my diminishing opium I had the torments 
 of a man passing out of one mode of existence into an- 
 other. . . . One memorial of my former condition still re- 
 mains ; my dreams are not yet perfectly calm ; the dread swell
 
 62 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 and agitation of the storm have not wholly subsided. My 
 dreams are still tumultuous, and like the gates of Paradise to 
 our tirst parents when looking back from afar, it is still, in 
 the tremendous line of Milton, 
 
 ' \\\W\ dreadful faces thronged, and fiery arms.' " 
 
 It is sad to loarii that after all his struggles he never 
 really succeeded in freeing himself from the spell of 
 opium. We learn that " after having at one time 
 abstained wholly for sixty-one days, he was compelled 
 to return to its moderate use, as life was found to be 
 insupportable ; and there is no record of any further 
 attempt at total abstinence." His indulgence was, how- 
 ever, very limited in his later years. Weakly as he was, 
 and with a stomach which could digest but the smallest 
 quantity of food, he lived in tolerable health until he was 
 seventy-four years old. His wife died over twenty years 
 before he passed away ; and his daughters made a home 
 for him during that time, and cared for him, as his wife 
 had done. He could never be trusted with any practical 
 matters whatever. He had a nervous horror of handling 
 money, and would give away bank-notes to get them out 
 of his way. He was very generous when young, and 
 gave Coleridge three hundred pounds at one time, in- 
 sisting upon making it five hundred, which was not 
 allowed. He never had a friend who was not welcome 
 to his purse. While he had no care whatever about his 
 dress, and would frequently enter the drawing-room, even 
 when company was there, with but one stocking on, or 
 minus some other very necessary adjunct of dress, he was 
 very dainty and neat about many things. The greasy, 
 crumpled, Scotch one-pound notes annoyed him. He 
 did his best to smooth and cleanse them, before parting 
 with them, and he washed and polished shillings up to 
 their pristine brightness before giving them aw\ay. He 
 used to complain of Wordsworth, because of a lack of 
 neatness, and describes somewhere his agony at seeing 
 the old poet cut the leaves of a new book with a
 
 THOMAS DE QUIXCEY. 63 
 
 knife taken from the supper-table, where buttered 
 toast had been eaten. Coleridge was also distressed 
 over Wordsworth's treatment of books, and says that 
 one would as soon trust a bear in a tulip-garden as 
 Wordsworth in a library. 
 
 De Quincey was a very charming companion and a 
 most brilliant talker. He says of himself and Lamb, 
 that they both had a childish love of nonsense, — 
 headlong nonsense. While much given to reverie, 
 and somewhat shy, he had a great fund of humor, 
 drollery, and effervescent wit, which made his society 
 much liked by all fortunate enough to be acquainted 
 with him. He was a very abstemious man, and his 
 tastes were of the simplest. His whole manner and 
 speech were imbued with a high-bred courtesy, though 
 he sometimes loved to run counter to the ordinary 
 conventionalities of life. He could never be depended 
 upon for keeping any sort of engagement, and if a friend 
 wanted him to dinner, he must go for him with his 
 carriage, and take him away. His manner to his 
 daughters was the perfection of chivalrous respect, as 
 well as affection. 
 
 What he might have been had he never contracted his 
 fatal habit of opium eating, it is perhaps useless to con- 
 jecture ; but in his youth he was thought to be one who 
 might do anything, — all things. What he really did do, 
 of permanent value, is very litde compared to the ex- 
 pectations of his friends. 
 
 Blameless as was his life in every other respect, the 
 pity of this weakness seems infinitely great, and we 
 mourn over his lot with the same unavailing sorrow with 
 which we weep over the graves of other men of great 
 gifts, but some fatal defect of will, which allows them to 
 be bound and held captive all their lives in the chains of 
 some darling vice. Mingled with the rosemary of our re- 
 membrance for such, must be the fennel and the rue.
 
 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " Day set on Norham's castled steep, 
 And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep, 
 
 And Cheviot's mountains lone. 
 The battled towers, the donjon keep. 
 The loop-hole grates, where captives weep, 
 The flanking walls that round it sweep. 
 
 In yellow lustre shone. 
 The warriors on the turrets high. 
 Moving athwart the evening sky. 
 
 Seemed forms of giant height ; 
 Their armor, as it caught the rays. 
 Flashed back again the western blaze. 
 
 In lines of dazzlin;r light." 
 
 WHO does not remember the ring of the opening 
 lines of •' Marmion," — pronounced by Horace 
 Greeley to be the finest verse of descriptive WTiting in 
 the language? How often were they declaimed from 
 the school rostrums in the days, dear reader, when you 
 and I were young ! What do school boys and girls 
 declaim now, we wonder, equal to the selections from 
 Scott, which formed the greatest part of our stock in 
 trade? Have " Marmion," and "The Lady of the 
 Lake," and the immortal " Lay " been superseded by 
 the trivialities and inanities of modern poetasters? or 
 do the good old lines still hold their own? Does the 
 orator of the class still rise and electrify the whole 
 school, as in the former days, by drawing his cloak 
 around him, like the noble Douglas, and declaring : —
 
 65 
 
 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " M)' manors, halls, and bowers shall still 
 Be open to my Sovereign's will, — 
 To each one whom he lists, howe'er 
 Unmeet to be the ownei's peer. 
 My castles are my King's alone. 
 From turret to foundation-stone: 
 The hand of Douglas is his own ; 
 And never shall in friendly grasp 
 The hand of such as Marmion clasp," 
 
 And is the whole school lost in breathless admiration still 
 as he continues : — 
 
 " Burned Marmion's swarthy cheek like fire, 
 And shook his very frame for ire, 
 And — ' This to me ! ' he said ; 
 'An 'twere not for thy hoary beard. 
 Such hand as Marmion's had not spared 
 To cleave the Douglas' head I ' " 
 
 We wonder does the — 
 
 " Minstrel come once more to view 
 The eastern ridge of Benvenue." 
 
 And if he still sees — 
 
 " the dagger-crest of Mar, 
 Still sees the Moray's silver star, 
 Wave o'er the cloud of Saxon war, 
 That up the lake comes winding far 1 " 
 
 And does the blood of the youthful listener still thrill 
 as he thinks of the glory of that cavalcade, till he feels, 
 as we used of old, that — 
 
 " ' T were worth ten years of peaceful life. 
 One glance at their array." 
 
 And does he still throw the old pathos into the lines, — 
 
 " Where, where was Roderick then ! 
 One blast upon his bugle horn 
 Were worth a thousand men." 
 
 Probably he does not. This is all doubtless very old- 
 fashioned, and we doubt if the modern school would quite 
 rise to the situation, even when Roderick makes liim- 
 
 5
 
 66 HOME LIFE OF GKEA T A UTHORS. 
 
 self known to Fitz -James, " And, stranger, I am Roderick 
 Dhu ; " but in the days we wot of, you and I, this was the 
 most thrilling climax in all literature. Have the boys 
 outgrown " Ivanhoe" too? And do they prefer to hear 
 Du Chaillu tell about the gorillas he invented, or go with 
 Jules Verne twenty thousand leagues under the sea? We 
 hope not, for their sakes, but wish that they may enjoy 
 the tournament as we did, and delight in the " clang of 
 the armor," " the lifting of the vizor," and everything con- 
 nected with " the lists." We trust, too, that they will 
 walk with Sir Waiter everywhere throughout the Highlands, 
 until every mount and loch and ruined castle has be- 
 come their own ; that they will follow poor Jeanie Deans 
 through the " Heart of Mid- Lothian ; " that they will 
 shed true, heartfelt tears over " Kenilworth," and love as 
 did the older generations the " Bride of Lammermoor." 
 
 Let us be steadfast in our love of the old books ; let us 
 never grow weary of the world -read classics. Who cares 
 for the books of the year? Next twelvemonth we shall 
 not know whether we have read them or not ; but what 
 a fadeless possession is the memory of one of the -world- 
 books 1 Life is too brief to be spent upon ephemera ; 
 let us go back from our wanderings in the wilderness of 
 new books, and draw nearer to the wells of English un- 
 defiled. 
 
 To this end let us study this man " than his brethren 
 taller and fairer," — this kingly Sir Walter of the ancient 
 line. 
 
 He says that '-'every Scotchman has a pedigree." It is 
 a national prerogative, as inalienable as his pride and his 
 poverty. Sir Walter's pedigree was gentle, he being con- 
 nected, though remotely, with ancient families upon both 
 sides of the house. He was lineally descended from Auld 
 Watt, an ancient chieftain whose name he often made 
 ring in border ballads. He was one of twelve children, 
 and was not specially distinguished through childhood ; 
 though, being lame, he got much comfort from books. 
 He took the usual amount of Latin, but obstinately
 
 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 67 
 
 rebelled at the Greek, and even in his college days would 
 have none of it. He was distinguished there by the 
 name of "The Greek Blockhead," and even his excel- 
 lent professor was betrayed into saying that "dunce he 
 was and dunce he would remain," — " an opinion," says 
 Scott, "which my excellent and learned friend lived to 
 revoke over a bottle of Burgundy after I had achieved 
 some literary distinction." He read everything he could 
 lay hands on, in English, all through his youth, and his 
 reading seems to have been entirely undirected. He tells 
 about discovering "some odd volumes of Shakspeare," and 
 adds : " Nor can I forget the rapture with which I sat up in 
 my shirt reading them by the light of a fire in my mother's 
 apartment, until the bustle of the family rising from supper 
 warned me it was time to creep back to my bed, where I 
 was supposed to have been safely deposited since nine 
 o'clock." He soon after became enamoured of Ossian and 
 Spenser, whom he thought he could have read forever. 
 
 His first acquaintance with the Highlands he was to 
 immortalize was made in his fifteenth year. The same 
 year he became apprenticed to the law in his father's ofifice. 
 The Highland visits were repeated nearly every year there- 
 after, and firom the first afforded him the greatest delight. 
 Of this first visit he says : " Since that hour the recol- 
 lection of that inimitable landscape has possessed the 
 strangest influence over my mind, and retained its place 
 as a memorable thing, while much that was influential on 
 my own fortunes has fled from my recollections." 
 
 His appearance at this time was very engaging. He had 
 outgrown his early sallowness and had a fresh, brilliant 
 complexion. His eyes were clear, open, and well set, with 
 a changeful expression ; his teeth were dazzling white, and 
 his smile delightful. In very early youth he formed a 
 strong attachment for a young lady very highly connected, 
 and of position far above his own, and of great personal 
 attractions. Their acquaintance began in the Grey Friars 
 Churchyard, where, rain beginning to fall one Sunday 
 as the congregation were dispersing, Scott hapj^ened to
 
 68 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 offer his umbrella, and, the offer being accepted, he es- 
 corted her to her residence. The acquaintance proved 
 pleasant to both, and they met frequently, until it became 
 an understood thing that he should escort her home from 
 church. When Scott's father learned of it he deemed it 
 his duty to warn the young lady's father of the interest 
 the young pair were taking in each other, but the gentle- 
 man did not think it necessary to interfere. This affec- 
 tion was nourished through several years, and Scott had 
 no thought but that marriage would be its final result, as 
 the young lady warmly reciprocated his attachment, and 
 the parents apparently threw no obstacles in the way. 
 But the Mttle romance, like so many other youthful dreams, 
 was destined to be rudely broken, and the lady was mar- 
 ried in due time, by her friends, to a gentleman of high 
 rank and character, who later in life acted the part of a 
 generous patron to his early rival. His hopes of marriage 
 with this lady had rendered him very industrious and de- 
 voted to business, and kept him from all youthful follies. 
 These things were certainly clear gains to the young man 
 from the connection, if we say nothing of the pleasant store 
 of memories with which it furnished his whole after-life. 
 But the blow was a severe one when the parting came, 
 and Scott could not refer to it without emotion even after 
 many years. But he was still quite young — not over 
 twenty-five years of age — and he soon saw a lady in 
 whom he grew much interested. Riding, Lockhart tells 
 us, " one day with Ferguson, they met, some miles from 
 Gilsland, a young lady taking the air on horseback, whom 
 neither of them had previously remarked, and whose ap- 
 pearance instantly struck them both so much they kept 
 her in view until they had satisfied themselves that she 
 also was one of the party at Gilsland. The same evening 
 there was a ball, at which Captain Scott appeared in regi- 
 mentals, and Ferguson also thought proper to be equipped 
 in the uniform of the Edinburgh Volunteers. There was 
 no little rivalry among the young travellers as to who 
 should first get presented to the unknown beauty of the
 
 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 69 
 
 morning's ride ; but though both the gentlemen in scarlet 
 had the advantage of being her dancing-partners, young 
 Walter succeeded in handing the fair stranger to supper ; 
 and such was his first introduction to Charlotte Margaret 
 Carpenter." She was very beautiful, — a complexion of 
 clearest and lightest olive, eyes large, deep-set, and daz- 
 zling, of the finest Italian brown, and a profusion of black 
 hair. Her manners had the well-bred reserve of an Eng- 
 lishwoman, and something of the coquetry of the French 
 from whom she was descended. She spoke with a slight 
 accent, and with much vivacity. Madame Charpentier 
 had made her escape to England during the Revo- 
 lution, — her husband having been a devoted Royalist 
 and Government officer, — and she had brought up her 
 children as Protestants. No lovelier vision than that of 
 Margaret had ever dazzled the eyes of our young hero, 
 and he became her devoted cavalier at once. 
 
 He thus describes her to "his mother when announcing 
 his engagement : — 
 
 " Without flying into raptures, — for I must assure you that 
 my judgment as well as my affections are consulted upon 
 this occasion, — without flying into raptures, then, I may 
 safely assure you that her temper is sweet and cheerful, her 
 understanding good, and, what I know will give you pleas- 
 ure, her principles of religion very serious. Her fortune is 
 five hundred pounds a year." 
 
 These are a few extracts from Miss Carpenter's let- 
 ters : — 
 
 " Before I conclude this famous epistle I will give you a 
 litde hint, — that is, not to put so many 'musts' in your 
 letters, it is beginning rather too soon ; and another thing 
 is that I take the liberty not to mind tliem much, but I ex- 
 pect you to mind me. You must take care of yourself ; you 
 must think of me and believe me yours sincerely. ... I am 
 very glad that you don't give up the cavalry, as I love any- 
 thing that is stylish. Don't forget to find a stand for tlie 
 old carriage, as I shall ]ii<e to keep it in case w« have to go
 
 70 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 a journey ; it will do very well until we can keep our car- 
 riage. What an idea of yours was that to mention where 
 you wish to have your bones laid ! If you were married I 
 should think you had tired of me. A pretty compliment be- 
 fore marriage! If you always have those cheerful thoughts, 
 how very pleasant and gay you must be. Adieu, my dearest 
 friend. Take care of yourself if you love me, as I have no 
 wish that you should visit that beautiful and romantic scene, 
 the burial place ! . . . Arrange it so that we shall see none 
 of your family the night of our arrival. I shall be so tired, 
 and such a fright, I should not be seen to advantage." 
 
 All of which reads as though the young ladies of 1797 
 were not very different from those of our own day. After 
 the marriage they went to reside in Edinburgh, and en- 
 joyed some of the gayeties of that time. They were most 
 particularly attracted by the theatres. Mrs. Scott had a 
 great fondness for the shows and pomps of the world, as 
 she had not concealed from him before marriage, and she 
 never recovered from such fondness ; but she accommo- 
 dated herself well to her surroundings, and the young 
 couple were very happy. 
 
 In 1 8 14 " Waverley " was pubhshed, and received with 
 wonder and delight by the whole reading world. " Guy 
 Mannering " followed closely upon it, and was said to 
 have been written in six weeks' time. It intensified the 
 interest already aroused, and made men wonder anew 
 who this great new light could be. The tragical " Bride 
 of Lammermoor" composed at white heat in a fortnight, 
 added greatly to the sensation, and the whole country 
 was in a fever of excitement over the creations of this 
 enchanted pen. The secret of the authorship of the 
 novels was kept for a long time even from Scott's intimate 
 friends. During the great success of these works, Scott 
 began the building of his house at Abbotsford, and put 
 into the vast and imposing structure so much money 
 that he became very much embarrassed in his finances, 
 and the serious troubles of his life began. The extrav- 
 agance of his outlay upon his estate, together with liabili-
 
 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 ties he had assumed for others, led finally to financial 
 ruin, to overwork, and probably to premature death. Let 
 us make a few extracts from his diary written when these 
 misfortunes were fresh upon him. 
 
 " What a life mine has been ! Half-educated, almost 
 wholly neglected or left to myself; stuffing my head with 
 most nonsensical trash, and undervalued by the most of my 
 companions for a time ; getting forward, and held to be a 
 bold and clever fellow, contrary to the opinion of all who 
 had held me a mere dreamer; broken-hearted for two years, 
 my heart handsomely pieced again, — but the crack will 
 remain till my dying day. Rich and poor four or five times ; 
 once on the verge of ruin, yet opened a new source of wealth 
 almost overflowing. Now to be broken in my pitch of pride 
 and nearly winged (unless good news should come) because 
 London chooses to be in an uproar, and in the tumult of 
 bulls and bears a poor, inoffensive lion like myself is pushed 
 to the wall. Nobody in the end can lose a penny by me, 
 that is one comfort. I have the satisfaction to recollect that 
 my prosperity has been of advantage to many, and to hope 
 that some at least will forgive my transient wealth on ac- 
 count of the innocence of my intentions, and my real wish to 
 do good to the poor. . . . How could I tread my hall again 
 with such a diminished crest? How live a poor, indebted 
 man, where I was once the wealthy, the honored } I was 
 to have gone there Saturday in joy and prosperity to receive 
 my friends. My dogs will wait for me in vain. It is foolish, 
 but the thoughts of parting from these dumb creatures have 
 moved me more than any of the painful reflections I have 
 put down. Poor things, I must get them kind masters. I 
 must end these gloomy forebodings, or I shall lose the tone 
 of mind with which men should meet distress. I feel my 
 dogs' feet on my knees ; I hear them whining and seeking 
 me everywhere. . . . 
 
 " I feel neither dishonored nor broken down by the bad — 
 now really bad — news I have received. I have walked my 
 last on the domains I have planted ; sat the last time in the 
 halls I have built. But death would have taken them from 
 me if misfortune had spared them. My poor people whom 
 I loved so well ! There is just another die to turn up against 
 me in this run of ill-luck, — that is, if I should break my
 
 72 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 magic wand in tlic fall from the elephant, and lose my 
 popularity with my fortune. 
 
 " Read again and for the third time Miss Austen's story 
 of ' Pride and Prejudice.' That young lady has a talent for 
 describing the involvements, the feelings, and characters of 
 ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met 
 with. The Big Bow-wow strain I can do myself like any 
 now going, but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary 
 commonplace things interesting is denied to me." 
 
 Troubles had indeed come thick and fast upon poor 
 Scott, and the heaviest blow was yet to fall. In 1826 
 Lady Scott was taken from him, and about the same time 
 a number of his old friends. He felt his desolation 
 extremely, but kept up bravely for the most part, and 
 worked prodigiously for many months. There is a gran- 
 deur about the way he bore his misfortunes which casts 
 into shade all that was fine in his character during his 
 prosperous years. Most men, even of brave and noble 
 natures, would have been overcome by misfortunes so 
 overwhelming as were his, and would never have thought 
 of extricating themselves ; but he seemed to rise to the 
 occasion in a quite unexampled manner, and to fight with 
 the utmost bravery and fortitude to the last. The wound 
 to his affections was, however, very hard to recover from, 
 and he broke more rapidly after Lady Scott's death than 
 ever before. He writes : — 
 
 "A kind of cloud of stupidity hangs about me, as if all 
 were unreal that men seem to be doing and talking about." 
 
 After the burial he writes : — 
 
 " The whole scene floats as a sort of dream before me, — 
 the beautiful day, the gray ruins covered and hidden among 
 clouds of foliage, where the grave even in the lap of beauty 
 lay lurking and gaping for its prey. Then the grave looks, 
 the hasty, important bustle of the men with spades and 
 mattocks, the train of carriages, the coffin containing the 
 creature that was so long the dearest on earth to me, and 
 whom I was to consign to the very spot wliich in pleasure
 
 WALTER SCOTT. y- 
 
 parties we so frequently visited. It seems still as if it could 
 not be really so. But it is so, and duty to God and to my 
 children must teach me patience." 
 
 His pecuniary troubles were greeted with the liveliest 
 sympathy from all quarters. The Earl of Dudley but 
 voiced the general thought when he exclaimed, on first 
 hearing of them : " Scott ruined ! the author of ' Waverley ' 
 ruined ! Good God ! Let every man to whom he has 
 given months of delight give him a sixpence, and he will 
 rise to-morrow morning richer than Rothschild." When, 
 after a time, he rallied and went on a journey to London, 
 the deep sympathy with which he was received, and the 
 kindness of all with whom he associated, cheered his 
 heart a great deal, and he went back to his unparalleled 
 labors quite refreshed. But he had set himself a task 
 which it was impossible that any man could do, and 
 although he worked himself mercilessly to the end, he 
 failed of accomplishing it. His nervous system became 
 completely shattered, and he had several strokes of paraly- 
 sis ; but it was not until his mind also began to fail in 
 serious fashion that he would give over his work. He 
 seemed determined to die a free man, but the task was 
 too prodigious. He labored like a giant, but he failed. 
 
 The record of those closing days is very sad. The 
 pity they excite is too deep even for tears. One turns 
 from them with a heavy burden at the heart, which nothing 
 can for a time relieve. The only comfort is that he was 
 surrounded by the kindest and tenderest friends, and that 
 he bore everything which came to him with unflinching 
 fortitude and the kindliest spirit. His last words spoken 
 to Lockhart are characteristic of the man : " Be a good 
 man, my dear ; be virtuous, be religious, be a good man. 
 Nothing else will give you any comfort when you come 
 to lie here." There is nothing in the record of Sir Walter's 
 life which any friend would wish to blot. One can but 
 be pained to excess by the record of his business troubles, 
 so hopeless in their entanglements, but through all these
 
 - , HOME LIFE OF GREA T A UTHORS. 
 
 even, liis character glows with undiminished brightness, 
 and we love him ever more and more. He was a man 
 built on a large scale, both in intellect and heart, and, 
 although he doubtless had his failings, there is little that 
 is recorded of him that detracts in any way from his in- 
 nate nobility. Such a funeral as his has seldom been 
 witnessed. 
 
 " The court-yard and all the precincts of Abbotsford were 
 crowded with uncovered spectators as the procession was 
 arranged ; and as it advanced through Darnick and Melrose, 
 and the adjacent villages, the whole population appeared at 
 their doors in like manner, — almost all in black. The train 
 of carriages extended more than a mile; the yeomanry fol- 
 lowed in great numbers on horseback, and it was late in 
 the day ere we reached Dryburg. Some accident, it was 
 observed, had caused the hearse to halt for several minutes 
 on the summit of the hill at Bemerside, — exactly where 
 a prospect of remarkable richness opens, and where Sir 
 Walter had always been accustomed to rein up his horse. 
 The day was dark and lowering, and the wind high. The 
 wide enclosure at the Abbey of Dryburg was thronged with 
 old and young ; and when the coffin was taken from the 
 hearse and again laid on the shoulders of the afflicted 
 serving-men, one deep sob burst from a thousand lips." 
 
 The heart of Scotland was broken at her great loss. 
 And well might she mourn. The sceptre which the 
 great Wizard of the North had so long held was broken, 
 and no successor has yet risen to uphold the fame of 
 Auld Scotia. Nor will a successor arise. No hand like 
 his will ever touch the harp of his native land ; no strains 
 such as he evoked ever again sound through the rocky 
 glens and passes, and echo from the mountain-heights 
 of Scotland.
 
 CHARLES LAMB. 
 
 IF there is a tender and touching story in all the annals 
 of genius, it is surely the life-history of Charles Lamb. 
 Search where we will, there is nothing to equal the pathos 
 of this gentle and lovable hfe. Nowhere else can we find 
 a record of such deep devotion, such heroic endurance, 
 such uncomplaining suffering, such geniality and cheerful- 
 ness under almost unbearable burdens. The world ad- 
 mires many of its men of letters, — it loves Charles Lamb. 
 Save Carlyle's, no voice among all his literary brethren has 
 ever said a bitter or an unkind word of the gentle humor- 
 ist. And when we compare the lives of the two men, how 
 brightly glows the page whereon is written the record of 
 Lamb's untiring and unselfish love, exacting nothing for 
 himself, but giving all with lavish prodigality, compared 
 with the pages given to the account of the selfish and ex- 
 acting life which Carlyle lived with the woman who was 
 his wife, and whom he really loved, but over whom he 
 tyrannized in so petty a manner ! Carlyle's characteriza- 
 tion of Lamb is really the most damaging thing to himself 
 of the many bitter and biting sarcasms which he has left 
 in regard to the men and women of his day. That he did 
 not know Lamb — had not the slightest appreciation of 
 the man — is evident nt a glance. And perhaps this is not 
 to be so much wondered at, for there was very little in 
 common between the two ; but it does seem that some 
 hint of the heroism of Lamb's apparently commonplace
 
 76 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 and perhaps vulgar life might have penetrated even to the 
 heart of the crusty Scotchman, for he could not have been 
 ignorant of the tragic life-story of gentle Elia. 
 
 They were very humble people, the Lambs, — poor and 
 obscure, and unfortunate to a degree. No pretensions to 
 gentility had ever been in the family, but an acceptance of 
 their commonplace lot, with litde striving for higher things. 
 There was something more, too, than poverty and obscu- 
 rity and vulgarity in their antecedents ; a fearful curse 
 was in the family, the heritage of almost every genera- 
 tion, — the curse of madness. What the contemplation 
 of this frightful inheritance must have been to a youth like 
 Charles Lamb, gifted with the fatal sensibility of genius, 
 and endowed with that imagination which can conceive 
 of a horror before it falls, we can form some sort of con- 
 ception, but probably a very vague and inadequate one 
 indeed. 
 
 The family were very poor, living in humble lodgings. 
 The father was in his dotage, the mother was a paralytic, 
 and Charles with his pen, and his sister Mary with her 
 needle, worked to support the family. They both over- 
 worked themselves fearfully, and lived in apprehension of 
 the doom which hung over them. They were very fondly 
 attached to each other, and the only pleasure they had in 
 their cheerless youth was their intercourse. They were 
 both gifted, and of gentle and kind disposition, and their 
 affection for each other 'was more sympathetic and filled 
 with a deeper insight into each other's characters and 
 feelings than is common between brothers and sisters. 
 In little intervals between their varied labors they wrote 
 and read to each other many things which would have 
 a rare value in these days had they been preserved ; and 
 this, with wandering together through the streets in the 
 evenings and looking at the outside of the theatres, seems 
 to have constituted their only youthful pleasure. At the 
 age of twenty-one Charles showed symptoms of the family 
 curse, and his sister herself almost lost her reason in un- 
 availing sorrow over his condition. So young, so gifted.
 
 CHARLES LAMB. y- 
 
 and threatened with such dread disaster, — his lovin^r 
 Mary could not have it so. She even rebelled against 
 Heaven in the extreme of her agony, and called upon 
 God to relieve them both from such ill-fated life. But all 
 her prayers and tears and rebellious risings up against 
 destiny did not avail, and Charles was placed in a mad- 
 house, where he passed a portion of the year 1 796. In 
 one of his lucid intervals he wrote a sonnet, " Mary, to 
 thee, my sister, and my friend," which is a touching and 
 tender tribute to her love. Long afterward he was able 
 to write of the experience quite cheerfully : — 
 
 " I look back upon it at times with a gloomy kind of 
 envy ; for while it lasted I had many, many hours of pure 
 happiness. Dream not, Coleridge, of having tasted all the 
 grandeur and wildness of fancy till you have gone mad !" 
 
 But there is a painful commentary upon the bitterness 
 of after-life to him in the thought that he could look back 
 upon this dreadful season as a period when he had some 
 happiness. The attack in his case was of brief duration, 
 and it never recurred, which, considering all the sorrows 
 and all the irregularities of his life, seems remarkable. 
 He had not been long in a condition to be responsible 
 when the tragedy took place which cast its blight upon 
 his life. In September of the year 1796 Mary Lamb, 
 *' worn down to a state of extreme nervous misery by at- 
 tention to needle-work all day and by watching with her 
 mother at night, broke into uncontrollable insanity, and 
 seizing a knife from the table spread for dinner, stabbed 
 her mother to the heart. The coroner's jury brought in a 
 verdict of lunacy." Charles writes to Coleridge : — 
 
 "With me the former things are passed away, and I have 
 something more to do than to feel. God Almighty has us 
 well in his keeping." 
 
 The horror of the event made so deep an impression 
 upon his mind that he thought he never fully recovered 
 from it. For many, many years it hung over him like a 
 pall, casting a sort of despairing darkness over all that
 
 •jS HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 might have been bright in life. Think of that tender and 
 sensitive soul in the awful solitude of the nights which 
 followed the tragedy : the sister he loved removed from 
 him to an asylum ; the mother sleeping in her unhonored 
 grave ; the father, worse than dead, in almost drivelling 
 idiocy, to be cared for at his hands ; the awful doom of 
 the family ever hanging over his own head, — what depths 
 of passionate sorrow must he have waded through in those 
 bitter hours, what unavailing tears he must have shed, 
 what rebellious thoughts may there not have been in his 
 heart ! 
 
 But he kept a cheerful front, and went about his daily 
 toil, as he needs must, with as little outward show of pain 
 as possible. 
 
 Mary soon grew better, and he exerted himself to have 
 her released from confinement. He succeeded in doing 
 so by entering into a solemn agreement to make her his 
 charge for life, and to watch over her that she should do 
 no harm. When she was returned to him he was almost 
 happy again, in spite of the shadow caused by the memor>' 
 of what had happened, as well as by the uncertainty of the 
 future. He had but one hundred pounds a year from his 
 clerkship, and there was a maiden aunt as well as the 
 father to be cared for. But he says cheerfully : — 
 
 " If my father, my aunt, my sister, and an old maid ser- 
 vant cannot live comfortably on one hundred and twenty or 
 one hundred and thirty pounds a year, we ought to burn by 
 slow fires ; and I almost would, that Mary might not go to a 
 hospital." 
 
 And he hoped to earn the twenty or thirty pounds by 
 literature. His father had to be amused by cribbage ; and 
 many were the weary hours that Charles would sit playing 
 with him, to the neglect of his correspondence, his friends, 
 the thousand-and-one private interests which filled up his 
 little leisure. Sometimes he would try to be let off", but 
 the old man would say, reproachfully, " If you won't play 
 with me, you might as well not come home at all ; " and
 
 CHARLES LAMB. ^g 
 
 the dutiful son set to afresh. There is a sort of heroism 
 in this which only those people can appreciate who really 
 value their time. These people will give all else cheer- 
 fully, — money, strength, the heart's deep devotion, — but 
 they give very grudgingly their precious moments ; they 
 feel as though they were being robbed in every hour thus 
 lost. Oh, the agony of impatience ! oh, the restlessness 
 of the fever which consumes them when they feel the 
 moments fleeing away, and the unconscious thief perhaps 
 deriving little pleasure or profit from the loss ! Rebellion 
 against fate is often a virtue under such circumstances ; 
 and we are inclined to think it would have been so in the 
 case of poor Elia, even though the poor old man should 
 have gone to his grave with a few less games of cribbage 
 recorded against him. 
 
 Think of the delicious essays which might have been 
 written in those misspent hours, in those days of youth 
 when Elia was at his best, before the sorrowful touches of 
 Time had been left upon his genius ; think of the exqui- 
 site letters his friends might have received, and which 
 would have enriched all the coming time ; think of the 
 inimitable drolleries which would have sent a smile over 
 the face of the world ; think of the little pathetic touches 
 he would have given in sketches of characteristic humor, 
 all with the freshness of his dawn upon them, — and 
 mourn, O world of letters, for your loss ! But the old 
 man, — he for whom the light had gone out in dark- 
 ness ; over whose brain the cobwebs had been woven ; 
 who had no joy in the great things of this life ; who saw 
 no beauty or splendor in the outer world ; who had no 
 treasure in the world of thought ; who could not be stirred 
 again by any of the absorbing passions of life ; who knew 
 no love, no hate, no ambition, no great impulse to do or 
 to dare ; who could not enter into the realm of books or 
 art or music ; who had not even a friend in all the uni- 
 verse of God ; think of the old man who had only this 
 one thing, — cards, — and pause a moment before you 
 say that gentle Elia did not well.
 
 8o HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 Finally the old man, too, went his way, and there were 
 only Charles and Mary left. He had long since given up 
 the hope of there being a third in their life-drama, al- 
 though there had been one to whom his heart was given, 
 and whose presence had been with him always, even in 
 his days of madness, — sweet Alice W., as he always called 
 her, but of whom the world has lost all trace save this, 
 that she was Charles Lamb's early and only love, and that 
 he treasured her memory until all were gone, " the old 
 familiar faces." Long after she was married to another. 
 Lamb used to be seen at evening pacing up and down in 
 front of her house, hoping to catch a glimpse of her 
 through the windows. But after he had taken Mary to be 
 his charge it was impossible to think of marriage. He 
 could not ask another to share his sad vigils with the af- 
 flicted sister, nor hope that another would look upon her 
 with his eyes ; so he buried his romance out of sight, and 
 never turned to that phase of a man's life again. At 
 twenty-two one does not easily give up the thoughts of 
 love, or the hopes of home with wife and children, — and 
 Charles had his struggle, as any strong man would have 
 had; but he conquered himself once again, and went 
 bravely on. Day by day he toiled at the India House, 
 never losing time, never taking a vacation, ever at his 
 post till he was fifty years old, when he " came home 
 forever." 
 
 During those thirty years of steady toil he went through 
 many sad experiences with Mary ; but he must earn their 
 daily bread, and he never left his post. Many were the 
 nights he spent in anxious watchings with her, — for she 
 had periodical returns of her insanity during all this time, 
 — when, sleepless and harassed to the point of exhaustion 
 with her dangerous vagaries, he must still rise in the morn- 
 ing and go to his desk. Many were the days when he ran 
 in hot haste the moment he was released, to see that she 
 was still safe ; even many hand-to-hand encounters he had 
 with her in her dangerous hours, — but no murmur ever 
 escaped his lips at all this. When she became very bad
 
 CHARLES LAMB. 8 1 
 
 he took her back to the asylum, and she remained some- 
 times for weeks, sometimes for months ; but he always 
 eagerly reclaimed her the moment she was better. He 
 took her with him on little journeys, — a strait-jacket al- 
 ways safely packed in her portmanteau by herself, — and 
 one time she went mad while they were travelling in the 
 diligence and far from home. Often he wrote to their 
 friends in the later days, when he had become somewhat 
 famous and friends had grown plenty, to apologize for 
 not keeping engagements or accepting invitations, " My 
 sister is taken ill." As George W. Curtis once wrote, — 
 
 "In those few words how much tragedy lies hidden! 
 What a life of patient heroism do they suggest ! — in compar- 
 ison with which the career of Lamb's huge contemporary, 
 Bonaparte, shrinks into the meanest melodrama ; while the 
 misanthropic mouthings of Lord Byron become maudlin 
 when we recall the sweet, hfe-Iong, heroic silence of Charles 
 Lamb." 
 
 "What sad, large pieces it cuts out of life," Lamb 
 writes in 1809, — " out of her life, who is getting rather 
 old ; and we may not have many years to live together." 
 Once again when she was in confinement he ^\Tites : — 
 
 " It cuts out great slices of the time — the little time — we 
 shall have to live together. But I won't talk of death ; I 
 will imagine us immortal, or forget that we are otherwise. 
 By God's blessing, in a few weeks we may be taking our 
 meal together, or sitting in the front row of the pit at Drury 
 Lane, or taking our evening walk past the theatres, to look 
 at the outside of them at least, if not to be tempted in. 
 Then we forget that we are assailable ; we are strong for the 
 time as rocks, — the wind is tempered to the shorn Lambs." 
 
 Then away on in 1833 he writes to Wordsworth : — 
 
 " Mary is ill again. Her illnesses encroach yearly. The 
 last was three months, followed by two of depression most 
 dreadful. ... I look back upon her earlier attacks with 
 longing, — nice little durations of six weeks or so, followed by 
 complete restoration, — shocking as they were to me then." 
 
 6
 
 82 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 This sister was a woman quite worthy of his devotion. 
 Possessed of genius somewhat akin to that of her brother, 
 she also handled a deUcate pen, and but for her misfor- 
 tune would have been well known in the world of books. 
 She was in complete sympathy with her brother, in heart 
 as well as in mind. And the record of their lives is one 
 of the most beautiful pictures of brotherly and sisterly 
 affection in all literature. 
 
 Let us turn from the dark picture, and see some of the 
 brighter sides of this life, sketched so far in Rembrandt- 
 like color. Throughout all this darkness and dread, he 
 had joked and jested his way on, amusing his friends in 
 private, and entertaining the world of letters by his genial 
 humor. It welled up as from a hidden fountain, and that 
 fountain never failed but with life. So easily and sponta- 
 neously did it flow, that if he wanted an order to see the 
 play, for some friends, he would scribble something like 
 this to Ayrton : — 
 
 " I would go to the play 
 In a very economical sort of a way, 
 
 Rather to see 
 
 Than be seen ; 
 Though I 'm no ill sight 
 
 Neither — 
 
 By candle-light, 
 And in some kinds of weather, 
 You might pit me for height 
 
 Against Kean ; 
 But in a grand tragic scene 
 
 I 'm nothing. 
 It would create a kind of loathing 
 
 To see me act Hamlet ; 
 There 'd be many a damn let 
 
 Fly 
 At my presumption, 
 
 If I should try, — 
 Being a fellow of no gumption." 
 
 And SO on through half a dozen verses of exquisite 
 nonsense. And in every little note to his many friends 
 there was always some characteristic touch to excite their 
 ready smiles ; as in the note to Coleridge, who had carried
 
 CHARLES LAMB. 
 
 ^l 
 
 off some of his books : — "There is a devilish gap in my 
 shelf where you have knocked out the two eye-teeth," and 
 where he goes on to beg him in a whimsical way to return 
 them — because, although he had himself borrowed them 
 of somebody else, they had long adorned his shelf Truly, 
 most people who own books at all can sympathize with 
 Lamb in this, though they may think he got off lightly to 
 have only the two eye-teeth knocked out. We have 
 known of cases where cuspids, bicuspids, and molars 
 have all been extracted. These letters are all exquisitely 
 droll, the most of them containing a gentle oath or two, 
 
 as where he wrote " Some d d people have come in, 
 
 and I must stop ; " and then recollecting that he was writ- 
 ing to a " proper " person, making a postscript which says, 
 
 "when I wrote d d I only meant deuced." But one 
 
 would as soon think of dropping out Shakspeare's adjec- 
 tive, and saying (as a very prim lady we once knew did 
 in reading Lady Macbeth's soliloquy), " Out, spot ! " as to 
 drop out any of Lamb's qualifying words. He was some- 
 times accused of being irreverent, as in his article upon 
 " Saying Graces," where he affirms that he is more dis- 
 posed to say grace upon twenty other occasions in the 
 course of the day than before his dinner, and inquires 
 why not say them over books, those spiritual repasts. 
 But he was very far indeed from being irreverent, and 
 had much of genuine religious feehng. 
 
 His hospitality was unbounded, and the evenings at his 
 home have become as well known in literature as the 
 grand evenings at Holland House. 
 
 His friends were the first literary men of the day, — 
 Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt, Barry Cornwall, Talfourd, Haz- 
 litt, Southey, Coleridge, — all the giants of that day and 
 generation, and he was loved by them all. Not that they 
 did not know and deplore his faults, — or his one fault ; 
 for if he could have conquered his fondness for wine he 
 would have had none of much moment left. But even 
 this was overlooked by his friends at the time, and has not 
 been considered as entirely inexcusable by posterity. That
 
 84 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 he smoketl much and drank hard, even for that day, may 
 bo true ; but it can scarcely justify the bitter sneers of Car- 
 lyle, or tlie holding of him up as an awful warning without 
 putting in any plea in mitigation, as is sometimes done by 
 severe moralists in our own day. He abased himself in 
 awful shame over it many a time in life, and suffered in 
 his own person all the fearful retribution which such hab- 
 its bring in their train. Let this be sufficient for us, and 
 let us but pity and pass on. One of the most beautiful 
 things in his later life was his fatherly tenderness toward a 
 friendless young girl whom he and Mary had befriended 
 and finally adopted, — Emma Isola, who was afterwards 
 married to Moxon, the publisher. He was extremely 
 fond of her, and she brightened his home much in the 
 later years, although she married before his death. It is 
 sad to think that he should have died before his sister. 
 He had often prayed that this might not be. But he pro- 
 vided for her tenderly, and gave her to the care of his 
 friends. 
 
 Lamb is described as having a face of " quivering sweet- 
 ness, nervous, tremulous, and so slight of frame that he 
 looked only fit for the most placid fortune." 
 
 Fit or not, he had to contend with the hardest thing 
 a man can have in life, — he had to live a life-long wit- 
 ness of the sufferings of one he dearly loved, and whom 
 he was entirely powerless to help, the daily and hourly 
 pathos of whose sufferings he was fitted to appreciate 
 keenly, and for whom in all this wide weltering chaos of a 
 world there was no hope. He renounced everything else 
 in life to try to mitigate this dreadful lot. His kindness 
 was unceasing, his pity was both fatherly and motherly ; 
 it was more, — Godlike ; and yet it was of small avail. 
 He toiled physically that she might live at ease. He ex- 
 erted his mind constantly when in her presence, that she 
 might be cheerful. He watched over her with the ten- 
 derness of both brother and lover ; and this shall be his 
 justification, if he needs one : he loved much.
 
 CHRISTOPHER NORTH. 
 
 HAZLITT has a long paper " On Persons One would 
 Wish to have Seen." And surely, if he had lived 
 at this time, he would have added genial and lovable Kit 
 North to the list of those thus honored. There are few 
 of those who belonged to his day and generation to whom 
 we should have a stronger wish to be presented, than to 
 Wilson, — the student, the Bohemian, the bookworm, the 
 sportsman, the professor, the kindliest, merriest, and most 
 entertaining of genial companions, — the great hero of the 
 " Noctes Ambrosianae." 
 
 Not even Lamb — the quaint and merry companion, so 
 full of quips and puns that laughter lingered with any 
 company he graced with his pathetic little body and 
 quizzical countenance — could rival Christopher as a 
 fountain of merriment and eternal good-cheer. His hu- 
 mor was not quiet and subtle like Lamb's, but broad, 
 rich, bordering on farce, and of " imagination all com- 
 pact." And Lamb could by no means rival him in splen- 
 dor of description, vivacity of retort, energy of criticism, 
 or in riotous and uproarious mirth. De Quincey alone 
 could match the splendor of his diction when describing 
 outward sights and sounds, and De Quincey had not a 
 tithe of his intense love of Nature, and appreciation of 
 her glory and magnificence. Ruskin alone equals him 
 in this, and he scarcely reaches the height of rhetorical 
 eloquence to which Wilson soars so easily.
 
 S6 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 In these same " Noctes " we have descriptions of some 
 of those nights when, as Carlylc would have said, " there 
 was mucli good talk." And AVilson was mainly the talker. 
 The chief characteristic of his discourse was its prodi- 
 gality of humor and its infinite variety. His imagination 
 too ran riot, and his wit sparkled ever and anon with a 
 radiance all its own. 
 
 His memory was prodigious, and in his conversation 
 he taxed it for anecdotes and illustrations drawn from the 
 four quarters of the globe, and from the most remote and 
 unusual stores of literary hoarding. His mind was many- 
 sided as well as keen, and he kept all his faculties in full 
 play, not excepting his sympathies, which were as broad 
 as the world of men. 
 
 Can we wonder that those who crowded the table where 
 he sat, lingered on till the daylight drove them from the 
 board? or that no man who had had him for a boon 
 companion could ever be satisfied with another? Can 
 we wonder that the students who crowded his lecture- 
 room after he became a professor thought every other 
 lecturer commonplace and dull? Not that he gave them 
 more information than others — perhaps he did not give 
 them as much ; but he excited and inspired them. He 
 quickened their minds, and wakened their dormant facul- 
 ties. Some of the white heat of his own enthusiasm he 
 communicated to their colder natures, and they enjoyed 
 the unusual warmth. Those who listened to those won- 
 derful discourses can never be persuaded that eloquence 
 did not die with Christopher North. They were all ad- 
 dressed to the hearts of his listeners, and thrills, and tears, 
 and laughter that was not loud but deep, accompanied 
 his speech from the beginning to the very end. Let 
 one who thus listened to him speak : — 
 
 " We have heard him in the assembly-rooms, speaking 
 on the genius of Scott, a little after the death of the Wizard, 
 and in the tremble of his deep voice could read his sorrow 
 for the personal loss, as well as his enthusiasm for the univer- 
 sal genius. We have heard him in his class-room, in those
 
 CHRISTOPHER NORTH. gy 
 
 wild and wailing cadences, which no description can ade- 
 quately re-echo, in those long, deep-drawn, slowly expiring 
 sounds, which now resembled the moanings of a forsaken 
 cataract, and now seemed to come hoarse and hollow from 
 the chambers of the thunder, advocating the immortality of 
 the soul, describing Caesar weeping at the grave of Alexan- 
 der, repeating, with an energy which might have raised the 
 dead, Scott's lines on the landing of the British in Portugal, 
 and discovering the secret springs of laughter, beauty, sub- 
 limity, and terror, to audiences whom he melted, electrified, 
 subdued, solemnized, exploded into mirth, or awed into si- 
 lence, at his pleasure." 
 
 His eloquence gained little from his personal appear- 
 ance, about which there was something savage, leonine, 
 massive, but little that was refined or attractive in the 
 usual sense of that word. Still his face is described by 
 some as magnificent, and his gray, flashing eyes, as being 
 remarkably expressive. In his dress he was exceedingly 
 slovenly except upon state occasions. His professor's- 
 gown, as he stalked along the college-terraces, flew in 
 tattered stripes behind him, his shirts were usually but- 
 tonless, and his hat like a reminiscence of a pre-historic 
 age. His yellow hair always floated over his shoulders, 
 in confusion worse confounded, and he wore immense 
 unkempt whiskers hanging upon his breast. Dickens 
 thus describes him : — 
 
 " At his heels followed a wiry, sharp-eyed shaggy devil of a 
 terrier, dogging his steps as he went slashing up and down, 
 now with one man beside him, now with another, and now 
 quite alone, but always at a fast rolling pace, with his head 
 in the air, and his eyes as wide open as he could get them. 
 A bright, clear-complexioned, mountain-looking fellow, he 
 looks as if he had just come down from the Highlands, and 
 had never taken a pen in hand." 
 
 His carelessness of appearances extended to his rooms, 
 which looked like small sections from the primeval chaos. 
 The book-shelves were of unpainted wood, knocked to- 
 gether in the rudest fashion, and the books were many
 
 8S HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 of them tattered and without backs. A case containing 
 foreign birds was used also as a wardrobe, and all of his 
 rare possessions in natural history were mixed up with a 
 most motley collection of books and papers, — these lat- 
 ter consisting of all sorts of scraps, of which no one else 
 could ha\e made anything. He always seemed to be 
 able to find them when wanted, even in the worst con- 
 fusion ; but how he did it was a mystery to his friends. 
 " Here and there, in the interstices between books, were 
 stuffed what appeared to be dingy, crumpled bits of 
 paper, but they were in reality bank-notes, his class fees ; 
 which he never carried in a purse, but stuffed away wher- 
 ever it seemed most convenient at the moment." He 
 never, even in the coldest weather, had a fire in his room. 
 
 No account of Kit North would be complete that left 
 out entirely the convivialities of the table, though we 
 should make a great mistake if we took the humorous 
 caricatures of the " Noctes Ambrosianae " for accounts of 
 literal feats in that line. This has sometimes been done, 
 and he is frequently represented as a glutton and a 
 drunkard. He was neither, although he did perform 
 some remarkable feats both of eating and drinking in 
 his day. His life of constant out-of-door exercise gave 
 him a keen appetite, and a perfect digestion, and he 
 loved the hilarity of the table as well as any man of his 
 day. But in his later life he became a teetotaller. Even 
 in his earUer days it was often the excitement of com- 
 pany which quickened all of his powers to their utmost 
 tension, when the effect was attributed to wine. So fond 
 was he of all sorts and kinds of out-of-the-way company, 
 that he was at one time in the habit of going at midnight 
 to the Angel Inn, where many of the up and down Lon- 
 don coaches met, and there to preside at the passengers' 
 supper, carving for them, inquiring all about their respec- 
 tive journeys, and astonishing them with his wit and 
 pleasantry. He would also linger about with coachmen 
 and guards, and was present at, and took a hand in, many 
 a street row, unknown by those with whom he mingled.
 
 CHRISTOPHER NORTH. 
 
 89 
 
 He is said to have remained for three months in the 
 back room of a Highland blacksmith, strolling daily about 
 the hills, and performing some of his prodigious pedestrian 
 feats, to the great surprise of the rustics. He is also said 
 to have followed the lady who became his wife all over the 
 lake country of Scotland in the disguise of a waiter, serv- 
 ing her at table wherever the party happened to be, until 
 the suspicions of her father were aroused by seeing the 
 same waiter at every inn. Wilson then made himself 
 known, declared his admiration for the lady, and finally 
 became her accepted suitor. After their marriage he 
 took her with him all over the Highlands on foot, assur- 
 ing her that only so could she become really acquainted 
 with their beauties. No man perhaps ever loved the 
 Highlands as Christopher North loved them, — with the 
 possible exception of Walter Scott, — and we can truly 
 envy his young bride to be thus escorted through their 
 deepest labyrinths, and introduced to their most dehcate 
 and hidden beauties. Here he introduced his beloved 
 also to the cottages of the peasants, and made her ac- 
 quainted with the poetry of that life which has inspired 
 some of the finest of modern literature. He knew as 
 well as Hogg, or Scott, or Lockhart, that the characteris- 
 tic romance of a people like the Scotch is to be sought 
 chiefly in the cottages of the poor, and that the finest 
 poetry of such a people has for the most part a like in- 
 spiration. And these same peasants showed to their best 
 advantage always when Christopher was around. They 
 loved him instinctively, although they knew him only as a 
 sportsman, or in some cases, perhaps, as a naturalist. But 
 his large heart ahvays shone forth in his intercourse with 
 the poor, and he seemed conscious of no superiority to 
 them, meeting them always on the common ground of 
 humanity, and sympathizing, in his hearty and genial way, 
 in all their joys and sorrows. They took to him just as 
 dogs and children did. 
 
 And his descriptions of their cramped and narrow lives, 
 enlivened by his characteristic humor, are among the best
 
 go HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 pictures the world has cherished of Scottish rural life. 
 He did not spare their vices, but gave many dramatic 
 pictures of the darker sides of peasant life, with which he 
 gained a close acquaintance during those long foot-jour- 
 neys which he was so fond of making, living really what 
 we would call the life of a tramp, for long periods. Some- 
 times he camped with gypsies for weeks, and at all times 
 was intimate with all of the so-called lower classes. 
 Tinkers, cairds, poachers, were his familiar roadside ac- 
 quaintances, and he extracted great amusement from their 
 peculiarities. Sometimes he had to win the respect of 
 these worthies by knocking them down in the beginning 
 of the acquaintance, but after that they usually stood by 
 him to the end. He usually figured as the champion of 
 the weak in these games at fisticuffs, but sometimes he 
 managed things on his own account. 
 
 Although he loved to wander in the Highlands, he 
 made his home among the lakes at Elleray. This home 
 was a rambling, mossy-roofed cottage, of very picturesque 
 appearance, overhung by a giant sycamore. 
 
 " Never," he says, " in this well-wooded world, not even in 
 the days of the Druids, could there have been such another 
 tree. It would be easier to suppose two Shakspeares. Oh, 
 sweetest and shadiest of sycamores, we love thee beyond all 
 other trees." 
 
 And he thus discourses of the lakes amid wliich he 
 lived, — and about whose borders he wandered so 
 continually : — 
 
 " Each lake hath its promontories, that every step you 
 walk, every stroke you row, undergo miraculous metamor- 
 phoses, accordant to the change that comes o'er the spirit of 
 your dream, as your imagination glances again over the 
 transfigured mountains. Each lake hath its bays of bliss, 
 where might ride at her moorings, made of the stalks of 
 water-lilies, the fairy bark of a spiritual life. Each lake 
 hath its hanging terraces of immortal green, that along her 
 shores run glimmering far down beneath the superficial
 
 CHRISTOPHER NORTH. oi 
 
 sunshine, where the poet in his becalmed canoe, amono- the 
 lustre, could fondly swear by all that is most beautiful on 
 earth, and air, and water, that these three are one, blended 
 as they are by the interfusing spirit of heavenly peace." 
 
 Lover of beauty as he was, yet he was well content with 
 what he could find in Scotland ; he cared little for Eng- 
 land, and nothing for the Continent. There was enough 
 to exhaust the seeing possibilities of a lifetime in his own 
 little land, with its rocks and lakes and heathery hills. 
 This was because he really had the poet's eye and heart. 
 Such do not need to traverse the whole wide world to 
 find enough of beauty ; it is only the mediocre and the 
 commonplace who care to gaze superficially at the land- 
 scapes of two continents. But Wilson knew his land not 
 only with the eye of a poet, but also with that of a natu- 
 ralist. His favorite pastime was ornithology, and he made 
 fine collections of specimens in this line. 
 
 He was a great sportsman, and a story is told by his 
 daughter, Mrs. Gordon, of his travelling seventy miles in 
 one day, to fish in a certain favorite loch among the 
 braes of Glenarchy, called Loch Toila. He was also a 
 good shot, and very enthusiastic in sport even to old age. 
 Boating was another favorite pastime : and engaged in one 
 or another of these out-of-door pursuits, he passed a very 
 large portion of his whole life. When he did write, he 
 did it with great rapidity, composing one of the " Noctes " 
 at a sitting. His love for the animal creation was very 
 deep, and he would never submit to seeing any creature 
 abused. He one day saw a man cruelly beating his 
 horse, which was overloaded with coals, and could not 
 move. He remonstrated with the driver, who, exasper- 
 ated at the interference, took up the whip in a threatening 
 way, as if with intent to strike the professor. In one in- 
 stant the well-nerved hand of Wilson, not new to these 
 encounters, twisted the whip from the coarse fist of the 
 driver, and walking up to the cart, he unfastened the 
 trams and hurled the whole weight of the coals into 
 the street. He then took the horse and led it away, de-
 
 92 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 positing it in the hands of the authorities, with injunctions 
 to see that the beast was better treated in future. 
 
 He made great pets of game-birds, the aristocracy of 
 the species, with their delicate heads and exquisite plum- 
 age, and kept at one time no less than sixty-two in the 
 back yard of his house. The noise was simply unendur- 
 able to all but Wilson, who was never annoyed by it in 
 the least. He kept one lame sparrow for eleven years, 
 caring for it with the tenderest solicitude. 
 
 He was always well known in the houses of the poor, 
 and he never gave up one of his humble friends. He 
 was tender and gentle always to these, as to the members 
 of his own household, where it was said the very strength 
 of his hand was softened, that he might caress the infant, 
 or play with the little ones at his feet. With all children 
 he was a prime favorite, and in his declining years his 
 grandchildren were his daily playmates. Noah's ark, 
 trumpets, drums, pencils, puzzles, dolls, were all supposed 
 by them to possess interest in his eyes equal to their 
 own. 
 
 He was thrown much upon these children for his pleas- 
 ures near the close of his life. That frame of gigantic 
 build and of gigantic strength became almost helpless 
 from paralysis, and he was cared for till death by his 
 daughter, the mother of these favored little ones. Oh, it 
 is sad to think of it ! Poor Christopher, — the active, the 
 alert, the keen-sighted, the fleet-footed, the gay and rol- 
 licking sportsman, the famous angler, the champion boxer, 
 too, upon occasions, — laid low, and propped helpless upon 
 pillows within walls, which he had always hated so sin- 
 cerely. He writes : — 
 
 " Our spirit burns within us, but our limbs are palsied, 
 and our feet must brush the heather no more. Lo, how beau- 
 tifully those fast-travelling pointers do their work on that 
 black mountain's breast: intersecting it into parallelograms 
 and squares and circles, and now all a-stoop on a sudden, as 
 if frozen to death. Higher up among the rocks and cliffs 
 and stones, we see a stripling whose ambition it is to strike
 
 CHRISTOPHER NORTH. p^ 
 
 the sky with his forehead, and wet his hair in the misty 
 cloud, pursuing the ptarmigan. . . . Never shall eld deaden 
 our sympathies with the pastimes of our fellow-men, any 
 more than with their highest raptures, their profoundest 
 griefs." 
 
 It is safe to say that he kept his word, and was to the 
 last, the same genial, warm-hearted, impulsive, wayward 
 man who had by these and other engaging qualities made 
 for himself so large a place in the heart of his country, 
 men, during the long years he had wandered over her 
 moors and hills, seeing all her beauties, and describing 
 them as no other had done. 
 
 He was almost the last of that band of strong men 
 who cast such lustre over the beginning of this century. 
 Coleridge had gone before, and Wordsworth, Byron, and 
 Campbell, Shelley, and Canning, and Peel, and Jeffrey, and 
 Moore, and he lingered on in a solitude made greater by 
 that last stroke of calamity which deprived him of motion 
 for a time that was weary and heart-breaking to him, and 
 over which the world yet sheds its sympathizing tears. He 
 died at the age of sixty-eight.
 
 LORD BYRON. 
 
 So many volumes have been written about the domes- 
 tic life and the loves of Lord Byron, that it would 
 be a hopeless undertaking to attempt to say anything new 
 about them. But the story of Byron's life will never lose 
 its fascination, and to every new generation of readers 
 the romance will be fresh. Marvellously beautiful, won- 
 derfully gifted, unfortunately constituted man ; wronged 
 by his birth, wronged by his education, wronged most 
 of all by himself, the world will never cease to wonder 
 and to weep when his tragic story is told. While the 
 language remains his words will live. Immortal poetry 
 for youth ! — new generations will learn it by heart, when 
 the older generations are forgetting ; and long after all 
 memory of his waywardness and folly has faded from the 
 world, his deathless songs will still sing on. 
 
 In any attempt to understand Byron, his ancestry must 
 be much considered. It will never do to compare him 
 with cool-headed, calm-blooded, matter-of-fact people. 
 He was the peculiar product of a peculiar race. Com- 
 ing through generations of hot, turbulent blood, which 
 was never once mastered or tamed by its possessors, he 
 entered the world with a temperament and disposition 
 which made it simply impossible that he should lead the 
 ordinary life of the British Philistine of his day. 
 
 As far back as they have been traced, the family were 
 violent, passionate, high-spirited, but unrestrained in the
 
 LORD BYRON. ge 
 
 indulgence of their desires by any of the cardinal prin- 
 ciples of morality. Byron's father, one of Byron's biogra- 
 phers tells us, had outraged in his previous family life not 
 only the principles of religion, but also the laws of society ; 
 and when, in 1783, he married Catherine Gordon, the 
 wealthy heiress of Gight, Aberdeenshire, it was chiefly 
 for the purpose of paying off his debts with her fortune. 
 Within two years after the marriage the heiress of Gight 
 was reduced to a pittance of one hundred and fifty pounds 
 a year. In 1790, for economy's sake, they removed from 
 London to Aberdeen, but soon separated. 
 
 Even after this, Captain Byron was mean-spirited enough 
 to solicit money from his wife, and she had not the heart 
 to refuse him. With a small supply thus obtained he 
 crossed the channel, and in 1791 died in Valenciennes, 
 in the North of France. Of the violent temper of Byron's 
 mother many stories are told, and of her heartless treat- 
 ment of him in his early years ; so that upon neither side 
 can we find much upon which we could expect to build a 
 very noble or well-balanced character, and the fact seems 
 to be that the eccentricities of the Byron family were so 
 great as to be dangerously near the point called insanity. 
 
 A youth inheriting such blood as this, and brought up 
 without even a pretence of moral or religious training, 
 could hardly be expected to develop many of the domes- 
 tic virtues. Neither could high-mindedness or lofty prin- 
 ciple be predicted of him. And in truth, Byron possessed 
 neither of these things. With this fiery Norman blood 
 flowing in his veins, restlessness was the habitual condi- 
 tion of his existence, such restlessness as drove him to 
 seek excitement at whatever cost, — quiet, as he expressed 
 it, to the quick bosom being hell. This restlessness led 
 him into all sorts of folly and excess, in the pursuit of 
 new excitements. Then he was cursed with an exag- 
 gerated sensibility, which, while it gave him many rare 
 delights in life, inflicted upon him also the keenest 
 tortures. His massive egotism was the cause, doubtless, 
 of many of his most marked eccentricities. He was so
 
 96 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 anxious to have the world's gaze fixed upon him that 
 he said and did things continually for the mere purpose 
 of holding its attention. In this way he frequently made 
 himself appear worse than he really was. Society was 
 held willingly in the thrall of his personality. A dull 
 world likes to have laid bare for its inspection the pulses 
 of a vivid existence. Byron may have been no worse 
 than many other men of his day, for it was a time of 
 general immorality, but he never concealed even his 
 worst vices. While hypocrisy is a national vice in 
 England, Byron, though essentially English in most 
 things, never possessed this marked characteristic of his 
 countrymen. He flaunted his vices in the light of day ; 
 and the world took a speedy revenge upon him for his 
 audacity. The little episode of his love for Mary 
 Chaworth occurred at so early an age that it seems 
 scarcely probable that it affected him as seriously as he 
 claimed ; yet he was a very precocious child, and his 
 account of the strength of his passion, and its disap- 
 pointment, may not be wholly an affectation. It is diffi- 
 cult, too, to arrive at his real feeling toward Miss 
 Milbank, there was so much of contradiction both in 
 his words and in his conduct. Miss Milbank probably 
 loved him but feared to marry him, having heard of the 
 irregularities of his life. And certainly the sort of life 
 which Byron had led was a very poor preparation for hap- 
 piness at the fireside, and if all other causes of unhappi- 
 ness had been wanting would doubtless have wrecked 
 his union with Miss Milbank. But there were not want- 
 ing numberless other sources of misery to this ill-mated 
 couple, first among which was the complete incompati- 
 bility of their tastes, feelings, characters. That she was a 
 noble, intelligent, and high-principled woman, none have 
 ever denied. The wonder was, not that she would not 
 live with such a man as Byron, but that she could ever 
 have married him. In charity we must decide that she 
 was ignorant of the unspeakable degradation of such an 
 act. That he was a famous man of genius, the most
 
 LORD BYRON. py 
 
 wonderfully gifted poet of his time, might have been a 
 temptation, but it was no excuse, if she entered into the 
 contract with her eyes open. But aside from the question of 
 vice or virtue, there was nothing in common between them. 
 She felt that she had fallen from the unalterable serenity and 
 dignity of her existence, into chaos. Her natural reserve 
 and his natural frankness were the occasion of continual 
 clashings. Her formality and his bluntness caused con- 
 stant unrest. Accustomed to the regularity of a well- 
 ordered English household, she was miserable at the utter 
 demoralization of their home, — of which the bailiff had 
 possession nine times during the short year they occu- 
 pied it. Formed for a calm, domestic life, she would 
 probably have been a most admirable wife to a man 
 suited to her virtuous tastes, but her very virtues irritated 
 Byron. 
 
 Lady Caroline Lamb, who had loved him so madly, 
 and on whom he had expended a temporary passion, 
 was in her ardent nature and erratic genius much better 
 suited to his tastes ; and yet it had not taken him long 
 to tire of her, beautiful as she had been. And were 
 ever such bitter and cruel words addressed to a wronged 
 woman, even though she had herself been fearfully to 
 blame in the matter, as those sent by Byron to this 
 poor creature, who had sent him a last touching appeal 
 to remember her ? He wrote : — 
 
 " Remember you ! remember you ! Until the waters of 
 Lethe have flowed over the burning torrent of your existence, 
 shame and remorse will cry in your ears, and pursue you 
 with the delirium of fever. Remember you ! Do not 
 doubt it, I will remember. And your husband will also 
 remember you. Neither of us can ever forget you. To him 
 you have been an unfaithful wife, and to me — a devil ! " 
 
 Terrible words, which apparently changed her love to 
 hate, for she was his relentless enemy for many years. 
 But one day the great poet died, in Greece, the death of 
 a hero. His body was taken back to England for burial, 
 
 7
 
 ^8 HOME LIFE OF GREA T A UTHORS. 
 
 and Caroline Lamb stood at her window and saw the 
 procession go by. The cofifin was followed by a dog, 
 howling piteously. Caroline uttered a heartrending cry, 
 and sunk to the floor insensible. They raised her and 
 placed her in her bed, from which she never rose ; she 
 was borne from it to her grave. 
 
 Such was the devotion which his fatal beauty and fas- 
 cination won from women, from many women, in his 
 brief life. It is not probable that his wife ever loved him 
 in this way, but had she done so it seems very unlikely 
 that they could have lived a happy life together. 
 
 For one reason, he had no faith in women. " False as 
 a woman or an epitaph " expressed his deliberate opinion 
 of the sex ; and it must be confessed that the sort of women 
 with whom he had best acquaintance were not calculated 
 to give him high ideas upon the subject. This low esti- 
 mate of women would have stood in the way of domestic 
 happiness under any circumstances. 
 
 He was not ignorant of this, and in " Childe Harold " 
 states the case thus : — 
 
 " For he through sin's long labyrinth had run, 
 
 Nor made atonement when he did amiss ; 
 
 Had sighed to many, though he loved but one, 
 
 And that loved one, alas ! could ne'er be his. 
 
 Ah, happy she ! to 'scape from him whose kiss 
 
 Had been pollution unto aught so chaste ! 
 
 Who soon had left her charms for vulgar bliss. 
 
 And spoiled her goodly lands to gild his waste, 
 Nor calm domestic bliss had ever deigned to taste." 
 
 It has been thought by some that had Byron had the 
 good fortune to meet his latest love, the Countess Guic- 
 cioli, in his youth, all his stormy life might have been 
 changed and redeemed. However this may be, she seems, 
 so far as we can judge of her, to have been more likely 
 to be a poet's one great love than any of the others 
 who for a time held his wandering fancy. Beautiful as a 
 poet's wildest dream, young, ardent, gifted, and passion- 
 ately devoted to him, what more could even his exacting 
 nature demand ? —
 
 LORD BYRON. 
 
 99 
 
 " Educated in the gloom of the convent, the notes of the 
 organ, the clouds of incense, the waxen tapers burning at 
 the feet of the Virgin, the litanies of the nuns, — all this had 
 filled her mind with the poetry of the cloister, and with that 
 mystic and indefinable love which at the first contact with 
 the world was ready to change into a violent passion when 
 it should meet with an object upon which to fix itself." 
 
 Married as soon as she left the convent to a man se- 
 lected by her parents, whom she had barely seen, and 
 who was old enough to be her father, she was at the time 
 Byron first saw her a melancholy and unhappy woman, 
 much given to the reading of poetry and of the immoral 
 novels of that time and place. 
 
 That she should love Byron at first sight was inevitable, 
 and that which followed was almost as inevitable. She 
 herself thus describes her first acquaintance with him : — 
 
 "His noble and exquisitely beautiful countenance, the 
 tone of his voice, his manners, the thousand enchantments 
 that surrounded him, rendered him so different and so su- 
 perior a being to any by whom I was surrounded or had 
 hitherto seen that it was impossible he should not have left 
 the most profound impression upon me. From that evening, 
 during the whole of my subsequent stay at Venice, we met 
 every day." 
 
 Almost the only glimpses of quiet happiness which 
 Byron ever enjoyed came from this association. The 
 lovers seemed to be admirably adapted to each other, 
 and their love knew no diminution during the short re- 
 mainder of his hfe. And she cherished his memory with 
 the utmost fondness throughout a long life, \vriting of him 
 with unbounded enthusiasm, in her own account of her ac- 
 quaintance with him, many years after his death. Byron 
 has probably exaggerated his own unhappiness, yet there 
 can be no doubt that much of what he describes was very 
 real. The nobler elements of his character were con- 
 stantly at war with the lower, and although he did not 
 have sufficient strength of character to lead the noble life
 
 100 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 of which he had frequent visions, he had enough innate no- 
 bility to despise himself for the life he did lead. Doubt- 
 less there was much of truth in what he wrote in his 
 journal in Switzerland : — 
 
 " But in all, the recollections of bitterness, and more espe- 
 cially of recent and more home desolation, which must ac- 
 company one through life, have preyed upon me here ; and 
 neither the music of the shepherd, the crashing of the ava- 
 lanche, or the torrent, the mountain, the glacier, the forest, 
 or the cloud, have for one moment lightened the weight 
 upon my heart, or enabled me to lose my own wretched 
 identity in the majesty, and the power, and the glory around, 
 above, and beneath me." 
 
 The close of Byron's life, in Greece, seems to have 
 been one of peculiar desolation. There is something 
 really tragic in the utter loneliness of such a death-bed. 
 Years before, he had written concerning his death : — 
 
 " When time or soon or late shall bring 
 
 The dreamless sleep that lulls the dead, 
 Oblivion ! may thy languid wing 
 Wave gently o'er my dying bed. 
 
 " No band of friends or heirs be there 
 To weep, or wish the coming blow ; 
 No maiden with dishevelled hair 
 To feel, or feign, decorous woe. 
 
 " But silent let me sink to earth, 
 
 With no officious mourners near ; 
 I would not mar one hour of rest 
 Or startle friendship with a tear." 
 
 Never was wish more literally fulfilled than this. There 
 were none but servants about him in his last hours : — 
 
 " In all these attendants," says Parry, " there was an 
 over-officiousness of zeal ; but as they could not understand 
 each other's language their zeal only added to the confusion. 
 This circumstance, and the want of common necessaries.
 
 LORD BYRON. 
 
 lOl 
 
 made Byron's apartment such a picture of distress and even 
 anguish during the last two or three days of his life as I 
 never before beheld, and have no wish to witness again." 
 
 His remains were taken to England and interred in the 
 family vault in the Church of Hucknall. His poems are 
 his imperishable monument. 
 
 ^i^^4*®***'
 
 SHELLEY. 
 
 THE beautiful face of Shelley is one that is familiar 
 to all students of literary biography, and contends 
 with that of Byron for the distinction of being the hand- 
 somest among the men of letters of his day. Bums 
 was also a picture of manly beauty, whose features have 
 long been familiar in engravings ; but Byron and Shelley 
 look the ideal poet far more than their sturdier Scottish 
 brother. The face of Schiller was also one of great charm, 
 and Tennyson and Longfellow in their youth were also 
 beautiful ; but the world is more familiar with the repre- 
 sentations of their later years, and has almost forgotten 
 the alluring eyes and the flowing locks of the youthful 
 bards. 
 
 Shelley always had a girlish look, caused perhaps by a 
 feeble constitution, and he suffered much from poor health, 
 which added to the delicacy of his face. But there was 
 a wonderful charm about his countenance even in child- 
 hood, and his eyes seemed like wells into which one 
 might fall. There was rare sweetness in his smile, too. 
 He was a tall man and very slender, with a certain square- 
 ness of shoulder, and great bodily litheness and activity. 
 He had an oval face and delicate features. His forehead 
 was high. His fine dark-brown hair disposed itself in 
 beautiful curls over his brow and around the back of his 
 neck. The eyes were brown, and the coloring of his face 
 as soft as that of a girl's, in youth, though he bronzed 
 somewhat during his life in Italy.
 
 SHELLEY. J 03 
 
 His countenance changed with every passing emotion ; 
 his usual look was earnest, but when joyful he was very 
 bright and animated in expression. When sad there was 
 something peculiarly touching in his face, and there was 
 sometimes expressed in his look a mournful weariness 
 of everything. But there was something noble and com- 
 manding in his aspect through all changes, something 
 hinting of his high and noble birth, as well as of his 
 genius. He had a pecuhar voice, not powerful, but musi- 
 cal and expressive, and fine agreeable manners when once 
 the shyness of youth had worn off. 
 
 That youth was a period of great unhappiness in many 
 ways. He was irritable and sensitive, and much given 
 to reading and brooding, at which the other children — or, 
 as he called them "the little fiends — scoffed incessantly." 
 He had thoughts beyond his years, and found in these 
 his greatest happiness.. He was impatient and full of 
 impulse, with a strong dash of egotism, like most men of 
 genius. 
 
 That he was eccentric beyond the usual eccentricities 
 of genius is known to all the world. That he set out fully 
 determined to live the ideal life and to reform the world, 
 is as well known ; also, that he failed in both these at- 
 tempts, — partly through the limitations of his own nature, 
 and partly that the contract was too large, even for a man 
 of his undoubted genius. 
 
 Shelley was born in the County of Sussex, on the 4th of 
 August, 1792. His most characteristic childish amuse- 
 ment seems to have been the making of chemical experi- 
 ments ; and his brothers and sisters were often terrified at 
 the experiments in electricity which he tried upon them. 
 He was also fond of making the children personate spirits 
 or fiends, while he burned some inflammable hquid. 
 
 He was full of cheerful fun, and had all the comic vein 
 so agreeable in a household. His benevolent impulses 
 displayed themselves in his earliest childhood in his wish 
 to educate some child ; and he talked seriously of pur- 
 chasing a little girl for that purpose, and actually entered
 
 I04 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 into negotiations to that effect with a tumbler who came 
 to the back door. His hatred of tyranny also showed 
 itself at the earliest age, in rebellion against the rule of 
 the old schoolmistress who educated his sisters. 
 
 He was exceedingly precocious, and was thus sent to 
 Eton at an age much younger than other boys. He was 
 perhaps a little proud of his birth and breeding ; but it 
 was probably more from his inborn hatred of tyranny 
 than from the former reason, that he utterly refused to 
 " fag " for the older boys, and in this way got himself at 
 once into trouble in the school. Neither the cruel vitu- 
 peration of his fellows nor menaces of punishment upon 
 the part of his superiors could bend his will to an obedi- 
 ence which could only be yielded at the expense of 
 self-respect. He was soon withdrawn from Eton, and 
 was afterwards sent to Oxford. Here his first great en- 
 thusiasm was for chemistry ; and the appearance of his 
 room is thus described by a fellow-student : — 
 
 " Books, boots, papers, shoes, philosophical instruments, 
 clothes, pistols, linen, crockery, ammunition, and phials 
 innumerable, with money, stockings, paints, crucibles, bags, 
 and boxes, were scattered on the floor and in every place ; 
 as if the young chemist, in order to analyze the mystery of 
 creation, had endeavored first to reconstruct the primeval 
 chaos. The tallies, and especially the carpet, were already 
 stained with large spots of various hues, which frequently 
 proclaimed the agency of fire. An electrical macliine, an 
 air-pump, the galvanic trough, a solar microscope, and large 
 glass jars were conspicuous amidst the mass of matter. 
 More than one hole in the carpet could elucidate the ulti- 
 mate phenomena of combustion, — especially a formidable 
 aperture in the middle of the room, where the floor had also 
 been burned by spontaneous combustion ; and the horrible 
 wound was speedily enlarged by rents, — for the philoso- 
 pher as he hastily crossed the room in pursuit of truth, was 
 frequently caught in it by the foot." 
 
 No student ever read more assiduously than he ; and 
 one of his chums said to him, after he had literally read 
 all day : —
 
 SHELLEY. 105 
 
 " If I read as long as you read, Shelley, my hair and my 
 teeth would be strewed about on the floor, and my eyes 
 would slip down into my waistcoat pockets." 
 
 It was only by attracting his attention by some extrava- 
 gance that he could be drawn away from his books. He 
 seldom stopped to take a regular meal, but would have 
 his pockets stuffed with bread, from which he ate from 
 time to time, anywhere he chanced to be. When he was 
 walking in London he would suddenly run into a baker's 
 shop, purchase a supply, and breaking a loaf, offer half 
 of it to his companion ; if it was refused he would won- 
 der that his friend did not like bread, and could scarcely 
 appreciate the joke when they laughed at him for de- 
 vouring two or three pounds of dry bread in the streets. 
 Very early in life he began to have decided opinions 
 upon religious topics ; and for some of his so-called athe- 
 istic tendencies, embodied in his writings, he was expelled 
 from Oxford at the age of seventeen, without a word of 
 friendly remonstrance upon the part of the authorities, or 
 any attempt whatever to counteract the errors which he 
 had imbibed from the reading of French philosophy. We 
 can scarcely believe it at this day, but it was true. 
 
 " At seventeen," says Mrs. Shelley, " fragile in health 
 and frame, of the purest habits in morals, full of devoted 
 generosity and universal kindness, glowing with ardor to 
 attain wisdom, resolved at every personal sacrifice to do 
 right, burning with a desire for affection and sympathy, he 
 was treated as a reprobate, cast forth as a criminal." 
 
 Even his father cast him off on account of his impious 
 opinions, and added his curse ; and had he been in the 
 way of procuring a lettre de cachet, like Mirabeau's father, 
 he would certainly have sent him to Newgate and kept him 
 there. As it was, all his friends deserted him, and he lived 
 in lodgings in London, in a very irregular manner, for some 
 time. Even his cousin Harriet Grove, with whom he had 
 been in love in his boyish way for a long time, gave him 
 up, and soon after married another. The affoir was not
 
 I06 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 a serious one upon the part of either ; but it cost Shelley 
 some tears at the time. He soon consoled himself, how- 
 ever, with a schoolmate of his sisters whom he sometimes 
 met when he went to visit them. Harriet Westbrook 
 was empowered by his sisters to convey to Percy such 
 sums of money as they could gather for him ; for his 
 father had refused to assist him, and he was in absolute 
 want at this time. She appeared to Shelley in the guise 
 of a ministering angel, and his imagination at once took 
 fire. She was a comely, pleasing, amiable, ordinary girl, 
 who felt herself oppressed because obliged to go to school, 
 and excited Shelley's sympathy by appearing unhappy. 
 He soon became entangled with her and her sister, who 
 was older, and who is accused of furthering the intrigue 
 out of ambition, thinking that the son of a baronet must be 
 a great match. He writes to a friend in May, 1811 : — 
 
 " You will perhaps see me before you can answer this ; 
 perhaps not ; Heaven knows. I shall certainly come to 
 York, but Harriet Westbrook will decide whether now or 
 in three weeks. Her father has persecuted her in a most 
 horrible way by endeavoring to compel her to go to school. 
 She asked my advice ; resistance was the answer, — at the 
 same time that I essayed to mollify Mr. W. in vain. And 
 in consequence of my advice, she has thrown herself upon 
 my protection." 
 
 The whole history of Shelley's courtship of Harriet — or 
 of her courtship of him, as many of his friends put it — 
 will probably never be written. It seems to have been 
 promoted by others quite as much as by themselves. 
 That her father was not averse to her marriage with the 
 eldest son of a baronet may be taken for granted, and 
 Shelley was the very man to be duped by designing par- 
 ties ; of this there can be no doubt. He was but nine- 
 teen years old, and she but sixteen, when they eloped, — 
 of which proceeding there does not seem to have been 
 any especial need, — and proceeded to Edinburgh, where 
 they were married. By the time they reached Edinburgh 
 their money was gone, and Shelley laid the case before
 
 SHELLEY. I0» 
 
 his landlord, and asked him to advance money enough 
 so that they might be married. To this the landlord 
 consented, and the ceremony was performed. But the 
 landlord, it appears, presumed somewhat upon the aid he 
 had rendered, and in the evening, when Shelley and his 
 bride were alone together, he knocked at the door and 
 told them it was customary there for the guests to come 
 in, in the middle of the night, and wash the bride with 
 whiskey. 
 
 "I immediately," says Shelley, " caught up my brace of 
 pistols, and pointing them both at him, said to him, ' I have 
 had enough of your impertinence ; if you give me any more 
 of it I will blow your brains out ; ' on which he ran or rather 
 tumbled downstairs, and I bolted the doors." 
 
 Even before the honeymoon was over, Harriet's sister 
 Eliza, the evil genius of the pair, appeared upon the scene. 
 The friend who was with them at the time thus describes 
 her advent : — 
 
 " The house lay, as it were, under an interdict ; all our 
 accustomed occupations were suspended ; study was for- 
 bidden ; reading was injurious ; to read aloud might termi- 
 nate fatally. To go abroad was death ; to stay at home the 
 grave. Bysshe became nothing ; I of cour.se much less than 
 nothing, — a negative quantity of a very high figure." 
 
 That Harriet already had peculiar notions of her own 
 was soon evident. The same friend writes : — 
 
 " ' What do you think of suicide ? ' said Harriet one day. 
 'Did you ever think of destroying yourself?' It was a 
 puzzling question, for indeed the tliought had never entered 
 my head. ' What do you think of matricide, of higli trea- 
 son, of rick-burning? Did you ever think of killing any 
 one? of murdering your mother? or setting rick-yards on 
 fire ?' I replied." 
 
 But Harriet often discoursed at great length, in a calm, 
 resolute manner, of her purpose of killing herself some 
 day or other. Of their after-housekeeping in Ix)ndon 
 lodgings Hogg writes : —
 
 loS HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 *' Our dinners therefore were constructive, a dumb show, 
 a mere empty idle ceremony ; our only resource against 
 absolute starvation was tea. Penny-buns were our assured 
 resource. The survivors of those days of peril and hardship 
 are indebted for their existence to the humane interposition 
 and succor of penny-buns. A shilling's worth of penny- 
 buns for tea. If the purchase was intrusted to the maid, 
 she got such buns as none could believe to have been made 
 on earth, proving thereby incontestably that the girl had 
 some direct communication with the infernal regions, where 
 they alone could have been procured." 
 
 The married life was on the whole, when not a roaring 
 farce, almost a tragedy. Harriet's sister was, like the 
 poor, always with them. Shelley grew to hate her, and 
 tried in every way to be delivered from her presence, 
 but in vain. Harriet would not live without her, and 
 paid little attention to anybody else when she was present. 
 Two children were born to them, but even the children 
 Shelley was not permitted to enjoy without the constant 
 supervision of Eliza. He became nearly frantic from 
 the constant annoyance, and finally a separation came 
 about between the ill-mated pair. The women them- 
 selves became tired of the moping and inefficient youth, 
 who still remained poor and unsettled, with a father des- 
 perately healthy and inexorable. They grew tired and 
 went away, — the wife, like Lady Byron, refusing to go 
 back to such an aimless, rhapsodizing husband. And 
 in truth, the hardship of living with such a man as 
 Shelley, for a woman like Harriet, must have been very 
 great. It is easy to understand how a limited nature like 
 hers should be worn out by the exaction and impractica- 
 bility of one like Shelley ; for to her, most impracticable 
 would seem his lofty and ideal requirements. The part- 
 ing was not unfriendly, and Shelley always spoke of her 
 with deep kindness and pity, and she continued to write 
 to him for some time after he had formed his con- 
 nection with Mary Godwin, of which she did not seem 
 to disapprove. He had found a sort of comfort in his 
 intercourse with Mary from his first acquaintance with her,
 
 SHELLEY. 
 
 109 
 
 and she was probably the first woman he had ever known 
 who in any way understood or appreciated him. Some 
 lines have been given in the " Relics," written to her at 
 this time, which run thus : — 
 
 " Upon my heart thy accents sweet 
 Of peace and pity fell like dew 
 On flowers half-dead. . . . 
 
 " We are not happy, sweet ! our state 
 Is strange and full of doubt and fear ; 
 More need of words that ills abate ; — 
 Reserve or censure come not near 
 Our sacred friendship, lest there be 
 No solace left for thee or me." 
 
 Shelley and Mary seem to have been very happy with 
 each other from the first, although they felt the keenest 
 sorrow at his being deprived by the Court of Chancery of 
 the guardianship of his children, on the alleged grounds 
 of his atheism, and although they were inexpressibly 
 pained and shocked at the suicide of Harriet, which 
 occurred about two years after the separation. 
 
 Her death seems to have had no immediate connec- 
 tion with any act of Shelley's, but he mourned over it 
 with great bitterness to the end of his life. He married 
 Mary in a legal manner soon after Harriet's death, and of 
 course a most violent storm of detraction and denuncia- 
 tion burst upon his head. He soon retired to Italy, 
 where he first met Byron, and he passed nearly all the 
 rest of his life there. Poor Harriet was only twenty-two 
 at the time of her tragic death. Whatever may have 
 been the errors of her life, she had suffered much in their 
 expiation. After her return to her father's house it ap- 
 pears that she was treated with unkindness, and fell into 
 some irregularities of life, — how great, remains still a dis- 
 puted point. But no one charges anything against her 
 up to the time of her separation from Shelley, except that 
 she was almost as foolish and impracticable as himself. 
 
 Shelley's fancy for her was that of a mere boy, and his 
 friend Mr. Peacock thus describes the conflict of his feel- 
 ings after meeting Mary Godwin : —
 
 no HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 " Between his old feelings towards Harriet, from whom he 
 was not then separated, and his new passion for Mary, he 
 showed in his looks, in his gestures, in his speech, the state 
 of a mind suffering, like a little kingdom, the nature of an 
 insurrection. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair and dress dis- 
 ordered. He frequently repeated the lines from Sophocles, — 
 
 ' Man's happiest lot is not to be ; 
 
 And wlien we tread life's thorny steep, 
 Most blest are they who, earliest free, 
 Descend to death's eternal sleep.' " 
 
 Godwin, it appears, tried hard to re-unite Shelley and 
 Harriet, and disapproved entirely of the new connection. 
 Mary was but seventeen years old, very beautiful, and 
 possessed of genius ; and her father, moral considerations 
 entirely aside, did not look upon Shelley as a suitable 
 husband for her. But Shelley had conceived for her 
 the one violent, uncontrollable passion of his life, and she 
 was very easily brought under his influence, in spite of the 
 disapproval of her father. Mary had not been brought 
 up with conventional ideas upon the subject of marriage 
 (her own mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, having had very 
 unusual opinions upon that subject), and she fell an easy 
 victim to Shelley's impassioned eloquence, when he urged 
 her to flee with him from an uncongenial home. Shelley 
 appeared to I\Iary as almost a divine being, and her wor- 
 shipful love never waned, even during her long widow- 
 hood of thirty years' duration. For Shelley, in the whole 
 matter, there seems to be no vahd excuse. He deliber- 
 ately defied the world and the world's ways, and even his 
 memory must bear the fatal consequences. If we allow 
 his genius to excuse his acts, we are setting up a prece- 
 dent which we have only to imagine universally carried 
 out to produce not only moral revolution but chaos 
 throughout the social world. He sinned like an ordi- 
 nary mortal, he suffered also in the same wise, and in the 
 memory of man he must be held to the same responsi- 
 bility as his fellows. But his unworldliness may well be 
 taken into the account. He lived in a sort of dream-
 
 SHELLEY. Ill 
 
 world of his own, and the thoughts and opinions and feel- 
 ings of ordinary men upon matters of life and conduct 
 were so different from his that he could hardly compre- 
 hend the value they had in the eyes of their possessors. 
 Born to rank and wealth, he desired to induce every rich 
 man to despoil himself of superfluity, and to create a 
 brotherhood of property and service, and was ready to 
 be the first one to lay down the advantages of his birth. 
 Born with the most fanatical love of liberty, he looked 
 upon all the conventionalities of the world as tyranny, and 
 defied all restraints of authority from his earliest youth. 
 He believed the opinions he entertained to be true, and 
 he loved truth with a martyr's love ; he was ready to sacri- 
 fice station and fortune and his dearest affections at her 
 shrine. With the rashness of youth he proclaimed all the 
 wildest of his opinions, and upheld them with uncompro- 
 mising zeal. In his acts he rushed into the face of the 
 world in the same defiant manner ; and the world did not 
 fail to take her revenge upon him. But posterity will 
 do him justice ; it will see him, noble, kind, passionate, 
 generous, tender, brave, with an unbounded and unques- 
 tioning love for his fellow-men, with a holy and fervid hope 
 in their ultimate virtue and happiness, and an intense and 
 passionate scorn for all baseness and oppression. 
 
 Already about his grave in a foreign land there gather 
 many pilgrims, not only from his o\vn country, but from 
 beyond the sea ; and as they read the inscription there, — 
 
 " Nothing of him that doth fade, 
 But doth suffer a sea change 
 Into something rich and strange," — 
 
 they think that the misconceptions which hung over him 
 during life are gradually suffering such a change, and they 
 thank God amid their tears.
 
 <r€/^^ 
 
 WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 IT is a little over one hundred years since Washington 
 Ir\dng was born ; and it is nearly thirty years since 
 he ceased to charm the reading world by the work of his 
 genial and graceful pen. For fifty long and fruitful years 
 he was our pride and boast, and his memory will for many 
 a long year yet be green in the hearts of his countrymen. 
 He was our first and best humorist. Before his advent, 
 what little writing had been done in this country was 
 mostly of the sentimental and tearful sort. And for many 
 years after he began to write, it was much the same. 
 Weeping poetesses filled whole columns with their tears, 
 and in every local sheet new Werthers were trying to 
 tell of the worthlessness of life and the beauties of dy- 
 ing. Young bards were inditing odes to melancholy, and 
 everybody was chanting in chorus, if not the words, at 
 least the sentiment of, " how sublime a thing it is to suffer 
 and be strong." There was no laughter in the land. 
 
 Could a collection of these mournful melodies have 
 been made, and these lorn lyrists have been induced to 
 glance over it, it seems to us that they must have received 
 it with inextinguishable laughter. Each delicate litde wail 
 when taken by itself was not so bad, but the united wail 
 of this band of broken-hearted singers would have pro- 
 duced, instead of tears, laughter both long and deep. 
 This doleful period lasted long after Irving had begun to 
 write in a different vein, and has lasted in too large a
 
 WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 113 
 
 measure even to this day ; but he began the corrective 
 process, and has had more influence for good in that di- 
 rection than any of our other writers. At a later day Dr. 
 HohTies began to write almost, if not quite, " as funny 
 as he could." Charles G. Leland, in his " Sunshine-in- 
 Thought " series, in the old " Knickerbocker," ridiculed the 
 prevailing weakness so forcibly and effectually that some 
 stopped groaning through sheer shame. Charles Dudley 
 Warner sent a smile over the set features of the nation 
 when he wrote of his " Summer in a Garden ; " and Willis 
 told in his " Fun Jottings " about some of the laughs he 
 had taken a pen to. But none of these had the magic 
 touch of Irving, although each in his own way was inim- 
 itable ; and during these later years, when the professional 
 humorist has become one of our established institutions, 
 no writer has arisen to wear the mantle which fell from 
 the shoulders of Washington Irving. Bret Harte, doubt- 
 less, made us laugh more. Irving could by no possibility 
 ever have written the " Heathen Chinee," or those other 
 bits of compressed humor called Poems ; but Bret Harte 
 is not exactly a lineal descendant of Irving. Mark Twain 
 also can produce a roar, a thing which Irving never did. 
 But, though it has been a good thing for the American peo- 
 ple to roar with Mark Twain, we are all desirous to see 
 some wTiter arise who, with as keen an eye as his for the 
 humorous side of life, shall have a delicacy of touch which 
 he lacks, and a refinement of expression to which he is a 
 stranger. 
 
 Washington Irving was born in the city of New York 
 in 1783, the youngest of eleven children born to his par- 
 ents. At that time New York was a rural city of twenty- 
 three thousand inhabitants clustered about the Battery. 
 The Irvings were descendants of the old Scotch Cove- 
 nanters, and were strict Presbyterians. The home rule 
 was one of austerity and repression. The children were 
 brought up on the catechism and the Thirty-Nine Articles. 
 As they grew older all were repelled from the church of 
 the father by the severity of its dogmas, and all except
 
 114 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 one attached themselves to the Episcopal Church. Wash- 
 ington, we are told by Mr. Warner, " in order to make 
 sure of his escape and feel safe, while he was still con- 
 strained to attend his father's church, went stealthily to 
 Trinity Church at an early age and received the rite of 
 confirmation." He was of a joyous and genial tempera- 
 ment, full of life and vivacity, and not at all inclined 
 to religious seriousness. He was born with a passion for 
 music, and was also a great lover of the theatre. These 
 things, in the eyes of his father, were serious evils, and he 
 felt great anxiety for the son's spiritual welfare. The 
 gladsomeness and sportiveness of the boy's nature were 
 things which he could not understand, and he feared that 
 they were of the Evil One. There was no room in the 
 darkness of his religious creed for anything that was sim- 
 ply bright and joyous. To save one's soul was the busi- 
 ness of life ; all things else were secondary and of small 
 importance. Of course, he worried much over this hand- 
 some, dashing, susceptible, music-loving, laughter-loving 
 son, and doubtless shed many tears over his wayward- 
 ness. Yet there was nothing wild about the boy. The 
 writing of plays seems to have been his worst boyish of- 
 fence. His first published writings were audacious satires 
 upon the theatre, the actors, and the local audiences. 
 They had some promise, and attracted some attention in 
 the poverty of those times. 
 
 At the age of twenty-one he was in such delicate health 
 that a voyage to Europe was looked upon as the only 
 means of saving his life. He accordingly embarked for 
 Bordeaux and made an extended tour of Europe, loiter- 
 ing in many places for weeks at a time, and laying up a 
 store of memories which gave him pleasure throughout 
 life. In Rome he came across Washington Allston, then 
 unknown to fame. He was about three years older than 
 Irving, and Just establishing himself as a painter. Irving 
 was completely captivated with the young Southerner, 
 and they formed a very romantic friendship for each 
 other.
 
 WASHING TON IR VING. 1 1 r 
 
 Irving even dreamed of remaining in Rome and turn- 
 ing artist himself, that he might always be near his friend. 
 He had a great dread of returning to the New World and 
 settling down to the uncongenial work of the law, and he 
 fancied he had some talent for art. He certainly had 
 one essential qualification, — a passionate love of color, 
 and an eye for its harmonies. This love was a great source 
 of pleasure to him throughout life. He always thought 
 that he might have succeeded as a landscape painter. 
 However this might be, the gift of color-loving is in itself 
 a rich endowment to any mind. There are few purer and 
 higher sources of enjoyment in this life than this love of 
 color, and it is a possession which ought to be cultivated 
 in every child. 
 
 But the art scheme was soon abandoned, and he went 
 on to London, where he began his literary work. His 
 name of Washington attracted considerable attention 
 there, and he was frequently asked if he was a relative of 
 General Washington. A few years later, after he had 
 written the " Sketch Book," two women were overheard 
 in conversation near the bust of Washington in a large 
 gallery. "Mother, who was Washington?" " Why, my 
 dear, don't you know ? " was the reply, " he wrote the 
 ' Sketch Book.' " 
 
 Soon after the book was published Irving was one 
 night in the room with Mrs. Siddons, the Queen of 
 Tragedy. She carried her tragic airs even into private 
 life, it is said, and when Irving was presented to her, he, 
 being )^oung and modest, was somewhat taken aback on 
 being greeted with the single sentence, given in her 
 grandest stage voice and with the most lofty stateliness, 
 " You have made me weep." He could find no words to 
 reply, and shrank away in silence. A very short time 
 after he met with her again, and, although he sought to 
 avoid her, she recognized him and repeated in tones as 
 tragic as at first, " You have made me weep ; " which salu- 
 tation had the effect of discomfiting Irving for the second 
 time.
 
 Ii6 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 He returned to New York in iSo6, and was much 
 sought after in society from that time on. It was a very 
 convivial company, that of old New York in the early 
 part of the century, and Irving entered into its pleasures 
 with the rest of his friends. Late suppers and good wine 
 sometimes rendered these young men rather hilarious, 
 and one evening, going home, Harry Ogden, Ining's 
 chum, fell through a grating into a vault beneath. He 
 told Irving next day that the solitude was rather dismal at 
 first, but in a little while, after the party broke up, several 
 other guests came along and fell in one by one, and then 
 they all had a pleasant night of it. " Who would have 
 thought," said Irving to Governor Kemble, in alluding, 
 at the age of sixty-six, to these scenes of high jollity, " that 
 we should ever have lived to be two such respectable 
 old gentlemen ! " 
 
 It was during these years that he made the acquaint- 
 ance and learned to love so deeply Matilda Hoffman, a 
 beautiful young girl, daughter of one of his older friends. 
 She was a most lovely person, in body and mind, and in 
 his eyes the paragon of womanhood. He was young, ro- 
 mantic, full of sensibility, and his love for this beautiful 
 girl filled his whole life. He was poor and could not 
 marry, but he had many arguments with himself about 
 the propriety of doing so even without an income. " I 
 think," he finally writes, " that these early and improvident 
 marriages are too apt to break down the spirit and energy 
 of a young man, and make him a hard-working, half- 
 starving, repining animal all his days." And again : 
 " Young men in our country think it a great extravagance 
 to set up a horse and carriage without adequate means, 
 but they make no account of setting up a wife and family, 
 which is far more expensive." But while he was looking 
 about on every side for some way to better his fortunes, 
 that he might take to his home this woman he loved so 
 tenderly, her health began to fail, and in a short time he 
 was deprived by death of her companionship. His sor- 
 row was life-loner, and it was a sorrow which he held
 
 WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 117 
 
 sacredly in his own heart. He never mentioned her name, 
 even to family friends, and they learned to avoid any al- 
 lusion to her, he was so overcome with emotion when 
 merely hearing her name spoken. This was in his early 
 youth, and throughout a long life he held himself faithful 
 to her memory, — never, it is believed, wavering once in 
 his allegiance. Thackeray refers to this as one of the 
 most pleasing things he knew of Irving. 
 
 It was at this time that he was writing the " History of 
 New York." He wrote afterward : — 
 
 " When I became more calm and collected I applied my- 
 self by way of occupation to the finishing of my work. I 
 brought it to a close as well as I could, and published it ; but 
 the time and circumstances in which it was produced ren- 
 dered me always unable to look upon it with satisfaction." 
 
 His countenance long retained the trace of his melan- 
 choly, and he was ever after a more subdued and quiet 
 man. After his death a beautiful picture and lock of hair 
 were found among his private papers marked in his hand- 
 writing, " Matilda Hoffman." He also kept by him 
 throughout life her Bible and Prayer- Book. He lay with 
 them under his pillow in the first days of his anguish, and 
 carried them with him always in all lands to the end of 
 his life. In a little private notebook intended only for 
 his own eye were found these words after his death : 
 " She died in the beauty of her youth, and in my memory 
 she will ever be young and beautiful." Truly, not an un- 
 happy fate as the world goes, — to live thus in the memory 
 of such a man. What would years and cares and the 
 commonplace of existence have done for such a love as 
 this, we wonder? We shall never know. But we have 
 all seen loves apparently as pure and as strong, worn away 
 by the attritions of hfe, — by the daily labor for daily 
 bread, by little incessant worries and faults and foibles 
 upon the part of one or both, — until there was nothing 
 left of the early color of romance ; only a faded web of 
 life where once was cloth of gold. How sweet to many a
 
 iiS HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 faded and careworn woman would be the thought of being 
 ahvays young and beautiful to the man she loved. For- 
 tunate Matilda Hoffman of the olden time ! 
 
 In I Si 7 he went again to Europe, and while there defi- 
 nitely made up his mind to look upon literature as his pro- 
 fession, — an almost unheard of thing in America at that 
 time. He writes to his brother : — 
 
 " For a long while past I have lived almost entirely at 
 home, sometimes not leaving the house for two or three 
 days, and yet I have not had an hour pass heavily ; so that 
 if I could see my brothers around me prospering, and be re- 
 lieved from this cloud that hangs over us all, I feel as if I 
 could be contented to give up all the gayeties of life ; I cer- 
 tainly think that no hope of gain, however flattering, would 
 tempt me again into the cares and sordid concerns of traf- 
 fic. ... In protracting my stay in Europe, I certainly do 
 not contemplate pleasure, for I look forward to a life of lone- 
 liness and of parsimonious and almost painful economy." 
 
 Some time after this he wrote to a friend : — 
 
 " Your picture of domestic enjoyment indeed raises my 
 envy. With all my wandering habits, which are the result 
 of circumstances rather than of disposition, I think I was 
 formed for an honest, domestic, uxorious man ; and I cannot 
 hear of my old cronies snugly nestled down with good wives 
 and fine children round them, but I feel for the moment 
 desolate and forlorn. Heavens ! what a hap-hazard, scheme- 
 less life mine has been, that here I should be at this time of 
 life, youth slipping away, and scribbling month after month, 
 and year after year, far from home, without any means or 
 prospect of entering into matrimony, which I absolutely be- 
 lieve indispensable to the happiness and even comfort of the 
 after-part of existence." 
 
 He was thus described at this time : — 
 
 " He was thoroughly a gentleman, not merely in external 
 manners and looks, but to the innermost fibres and core of 
 his heart ; sweet-tempered, gentle, fastidious, sensitive, and 
 gifted with warmest affections ; the most delightful and in- 
 variably interesting companion ; gay and full of humor, even
 
 WASHING TON IR VING. j j g 
 
 in spite of occasional fits of melancholy, which he was, how- 
 ever, seldom subject to when with those he liked ; a gift of 
 conversation that flowed like a full river in sunshine, — bright, 
 easy, and abundant." 
 
 In his fiftieth year he returned to America, far from 
 rich, though he had made money from his books. Al- 
 though he had thought he could not support a family of 
 his own, he found himself with two brothers and several 
 nieces upon his hands for whom he must provide. He 
 was very fond of them all ; and, being the least selfish of 
 men, enjoyed making them all comfortable. But to do 
 so he had to be industrious with his pen, and he never 
 gave himself much rest. He bought a home at Tarry- 
 town, upon the Hudson, which he called Sunnyside, and 
 where he resided till his death. The farm had on it a 
 small Dutch cottage, built about a century before, and 
 inhabited by the Van Tassels. This was enlarged, still 
 preserving the quaint Dutch characteristics ; it acquired 
 a tower and a whimsical weathercock, the delight of the 
 owner, and became one of the most snug and picturesque 
 residences on the river. A slip of Melrose ivy was 
 planted, and soon overrun the house ; and there were 
 shaded nooks and wooded retreats, and a pretty garden. 
 
 It soon became the dearest spot on earth for him ; and 
 although it ate up his money almost as fast as he could 
 earn it, he never thought of parting with it. The little 
 cottage soon became well stocked. He writes : — 
 
 " I have Ebenezer's five girls, and himself also whenever 
 he can be spared from town, sister Catherine and her daugh- 
 ter, and occasional visits from all the family connection." 
 
 Thackeray describes him as having nine nieces on his 
 hands, and makes a woful face over the fact. He dis- 
 pensed a charming hospitality here, and no friend who 
 ever visited him forgot the pleasure. He was a most 
 genial and cordial host, and loved much to have his 
 friends bring the children, of whom he was passionately
 
 120 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 fond. His nieces watched over his welfare with most 
 tender soHcitude ; and the cottage at Sunnyside, although 
 without a mistress, was truly a home. 
 
 It was with great reluctance that he left it after his ap- 
 pointment as minister to Spain, and all the pleasure he 
 received from that high mark of the appreciation of his 
 country did not compensate him for the hardship of 
 leaving home. During this third visit to Europe " it is 
 easy to see that life has grown rather sombre to Irving, — 
 the glamour is gone, he is subject to few illusions. The 
 show and pageantry no longer enchant ; they only weary." 
 He writes home : " Amidst all the splendors of London 
 and Paris I find my imagination refuses to take fire, 
 and my heart still yearns after dear little Sunnyside." 
 Those were exciting times in Spain, and Irving entered 
 into all the dramatic interest of the situation with a real 
 enthusiasm, and wrote most interesting letters to friends 
 at home, describing the melodrama in which he had some- 
 times an even perilous interest. Throughout his four 
 years' stay the excitement continued, and the duties of 
 minister were sometimes perplexing enough. From the 
 midst of court life, in 1845, he wrote : — 
 
 " I long to be back once more at dear little Sunnyside, 
 while I have yet strength and good spirits to enjoy the sim- 
 ple pleasures of the country, and to rally a happy family group 
 once more around me. I grudge every year of absence that 
 rolls by. To-morrow I shall be sixty-two years old. The 
 evening of life is fast drawing over me ; still I hope to get 
 back among my friends while there is a little sunshine left." 
 
 In 1846 he did return, and enjoyed thirteen years more 
 of happy life there. 
 
 George W. Curtis thus dehghtfully sketches the man : — 
 
 " Irving was as quaint a figure as Diedrich Knickerbocker in 
 the preliminary advertisement of the ' History of New York.' 
 Thirty years ago he might have been seen on an autumnal 
 afternoon, tripping with an elastic step along Broadway, 
 with low-quartered shoes neatly tied, and a Talma cloak, —
 
 WASHING TON IR VING. 1 2 1 
 
 a short garment that hung from his shoulders Hke the cape 
 of a coat. There was a chirping, cheery, old-school air in 
 his appearance, which was undeniably Dutch, and most har- 
 monious with the associations of his writings. He seemed, 
 indeed, to have stepped out of his own books ; and the 
 cordial grace and humor of his address were delightfully 
 characteristic." 
 
 Through all the honors which he received — and he 
 was one of the most honored men of his day — he was 
 always modest, unassuming, and even diffident. He was 
 the most cheerful of men, and seemed to diffuse sun- 
 shine wherever he went. He was essentially lovable, and 
 could hardly be said to have made an enemy during his 
 life. Indeed, one of his lacks was that of aggressiveness ; 
 it would have given a deeper force to his character and 
 brought out some qualities that were latent in him. 
 
 He died on the 28th of November, 1859, at the close 
 of a lovely Indian-summer day, and was buried on a little 
 elevation overlooking Sleepy Hollow. Near by winds the 
 lovely Hudson, up and down which go the white-winged 
 boats bearing tourists to view the river he so loved, and 
 over which hangs the blue haze he has so often described, 
 softening everything in its gauzy folds. The feet of those 
 he loved go in and out at Sunnyside, and his memory is 
 a benediction.
 
 wv^ 
 
 
 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 
 
 IN a fragment of autobiography which Mr. Bryant left 
 among his papers, he speaks thus of his child- 
 hood : — 
 
 " So my time passed in study, diversified with labor and 
 recreation. In the long winter evenings and the stormy 
 winter days I read with my brother books from my father's 
 library, — not a large one, but well chosen. I remember well 
 the delight with which we welcomed the translation of the 
 Iliad by Pope when it was brought to the house. I had met 
 with passages from it before, and thought them the finest 
 verses ever written. My brother and myself, in emulation 
 of ancient heroes, made for ourselves wooden shields, swords, 
 and spears, and fashioned old hats in the shape of helmets, 
 with plumes of tow ; and in the barn, when nobody observed 
 us, we fought the battles of the Greeks and Trojans over 
 again. 
 
 " I was always, from my earliest years, a delighted ob- 
 server of external nature, — the splendors of a winter day- 
 break over the wide wastes of snow seen from our windows ; 
 the glories of the autumnal woods: the gloomy approaches 
 of the thunderstorm, and its departure amid sunshine and 
 rainbows ; the return of spring with its flowers ; and the first 
 snowfall of winter. I cannot say, as some do, that I found 
 my boyhood the happiest part of my life. I had more frequent 
 ailments than afterward ; my hopes were more feverish and 
 impatient, and my disappointments were more acute ; the re- 
 straints on my liberty of action, although meant for my good, 
 were irksome, and felt as fetters that galled my spirit and 
 gave it pain. After-years, if their pleasures had not the same 
 zest, were passed in more contentment, and the more free- 
 dom of choice I had, the better, on the whole, I enjoyed life."
 
 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 123 
 
 Among the prayers of his childhood he mentions that 
 he often prayed that he might be endowed with poetic 
 genius, and write verses which should endure. And he 
 began at a very early age to make attempts in this direc- 
 tion, which seem somewhat less crude than the mass of 
 such productions. He was taught Latin by the Rev. 
 Thomas Snell, his uncle, and Greek by the Rev. Moses 
 Hallock, a neighboring minister, who boarded and in- 
 structed him for a dollar a week. He continued his 
 studies at Williams College, although he never was gradu- 
 ated, being taken from college from motives of economy. 
 
 The town of Cummington, where he was born, is a 
 httle hamlet among the hills in Hampshire County in 
 western Massachusetts. The country around is moun- 
 tainous, and the valleys very beautiful. The poet was 
 always much attached to the region, and when he had 
 become an old man bought the old family home and 
 fitted it up as a summer residence, where he used to gather 
 together the remaining members of the family, and enjoy 
 himself highly in exploring the country round about as 
 he had done in the days of his boyhood. Many stories 
 are told of his pedestrian feats, even after he was seventy- 
 five years old ; and he sometimes walked ten or twelve 
 miles when in his eightieth year. He retained his boyish 
 love for plants and flowers, and was as enthusiastic as in 
 youth over a rare specimen or a beautiful bit of land- 
 scape. He further evinced his interest in the old home 
 by presenting the town with a fine library of six thousand 
 volumes, and building a suitable house for its accommo- 
 dation upon a beautiful site which he purchased for that 
 purpose. 
 
 Upon leaving school Mr. Bryant pursued the study of 
 law, and entered upon its practice, first in Plainfield, and 
 afterward in Great Barrington, a pleasant village in Berk- 
 shire County, on the banks of the Housatonic. While 
 studying at Worthington, a distinguished friend of his 
 father came from Rhode Island upon a visit, bringing 
 with him a beautiful and accomplished daughter, to whom
 
 124 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 the young poet at once lost his heart. The passion 
 seems to have been reciprocated, if we can judge by the 
 assiduity with which the correspondence was carried on 
 after her return ; but some unknown cause seems to have 
 broken off the fascinating romance, and after a year or 
 two we hear of it no more. That the end was painful to 
 Mr. Bryant, we have reason to suspect from his poems 
 and letters ; but as to how the lady felt, we have no evi- 
 dence. The verses show little promise of the work which 
 the young poet soon afterward did, but they are not 
 entirely without charm : — 
 
 " The home thy presence made so dear, 
 I leave, — the parting hour is past ; 
 Yet thy sweet image haunts me here, 
 In tears as when I saw thee last. 
 
 " It meets me where the woods are deep. 
 It comes when twilight tints depart, 
 It bends above me while I sleep. 
 With pensive looks that pierce my heart." 
 
 In another little poem we are informed, — 
 
 " The gales of June were breathing by, 
 The twilight's last faint rays were gleaming, 
 And midway in the moonless sky 
 The star of Love was brightly beaming. 
 
 " When by the stream, the birchen boughs 
 Dark o'er the level marge were playing, 
 The maiden of my secret vows 
 I met, alone, and idly straying. 
 
 " And since that hour, — for then my love 
 Consenting heard my passion pleaded, — 
 Full well she knows the star of Love, 
 And loves the stream with beeches shaded." 
 
 The poet had quite a lengthened season of darkness 
 and despair after this love-dream came to an end, and 
 it must be confessed wrote a good deal of very bad 
 poetr}', none of which he placed in collections of his 
 poems, but some of which have been published by his 
 biographer. They are rather worse than the usual run
 
 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 125 
 
 of such poems, which may indicate that the feehng was 
 really deeper, — too deep for expression in verse, — or that 
 it was not as deep and lasting as some of the first loves 
 of poets. As he had already written " Thanatopsis " 
 and other fine poems, it is rather surprising that there 
 are so few gleams of the true poetic fire in these amatory 
 verses. 
 
 As is usual in such cases, he did not recover from the 
 old love until he had discovered a new one, and he did 
 this in his new residence, not long after his arrival there. 
 The second lady of his choice was Miss Fanny Fairchild, 
 daughter of a well-to-do and respectable farmer on the 
 Green River. She was nineteen years old at the time, a 
 " very pretty blonde, small in person, with light- brown hair, 
 gray eyes, a graceful shape, a dainty foot, transparent and 
 delicate hands, and a wonderfully frank and sweet ex- 
 pression of face." She was as sensible as beautiful, and 
 had great charm of manner, which she retained to the 
 end of her life. He soon engaged himself to Miss Fair- 
 child, and the course of their love ran smoothly through- 
 out a long life. To show with what deep feeling and 
 earnestness they entered upon their new relations, the 
 following prayer, dated 1820, has been printed, which 
 was found among Mr. Bryant's private papers after his 
 death : — 
 
 " May God Almighty mercifully take care of our happiness 
 here and hereafter. May we ever continue constant to each 
 other, and mindful of our mutual promises of attachment 
 and truth. In due time, if it be the will of Providence, may 
 we become more nearly connected with each other, and to- 
 gether may we lead a long, happy, and innocent life, without 
 any diminution of affection till we die. May there never be 
 any jealousy, distrust, coldness, or dissatisfaction between 
 us, nor occasion for any, — nothing but kindness, forbear- 
 ance, mutual confidence, and attention to each other's happi- 
 ness. And that we may be less unworthy of so great a 
 blessing, may we be assisted to cultivate all the benign and 
 charitable affections and offices, not only toward each other, 
 but toward our neighbors, the human race, and all the
 
 126 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 creatures of God. And in all things wherein we have done 
 ill, may we properlj' repent our error, and may God forgive 
 us, and dispose us to do better. When at last we are called 
 to render back the life we have received, may our deaths be 
 peaceful, and may God take us to his bosom. All which 
 may He grant for the sake of the Messiah." 
 
 If ever a prayer was granted, it seems to have been so 
 in this instance, for in every detail it was fulfilled in the 
 lives which followed. So rarely beautiful a marriage has 
 seldom been seen, as the one which was entered into 
 in this solemn and lofty manner, by this young and high- 
 minded couple. The days of their pilgrimage were many, 
 but they grew more and more beautiful until the final 
 parting; and when the separation at last came, in the 
 fulness of time, the old poet mourned, with a grief which 
 could not be comforted, for the companion of his youth, 
 the delight of his mature years, and the idol of his old 
 age. Forty-five years they lived together, and after her 
 death he wrote to his brother : — 
 
 " We have been married more than forty-five years, and 
 all my plans, even to the least important, were laid with some 
 reference to her judgment or her pleasure. I always knew 
 it would be the greatest calamity of my life to lose her, but 
 not till the blow fell did I know how heavy it would be, and 
 what a solitude the earth would seem without her." 
 
 To another brother he said : — 
 
 "Her life seemed to me to close prematurely, so useful 
 was she, and so much occupied in doing good ; and yet she 
 was in her seventieth year. It is now more than forty-five 
 years since we were married, — a long time, as the world goes, 
 for husband and wife to live together. Bitter as the sepa- 
 ration is, I give thanks that she has been spared to me so 
 long, and that for nearly a half-century I have had the bene- 
 fit of her counsel and her example." 
 
 In a brief memoir of their intercourse, prepared for the 
 eyes of his daughters alone, he said : —
 
 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 127 
 
 " I never wrote a poem that I did not repeat to her, and 
 take her judgment upon it. I found its success with the 
 public to be precisely in proportion to the impression it 
 made upon her. She loved my verses, and judged them 
 kindly, but did not like them all equally well." 
 
 One who knew her well thus describes her character : — 
 
 " Never did poet have a truer companion, a sincerer 
 spiritual helpmate, than Mr. Bryant in his wife. Refined 
 in taste, and elevated in thought, she was characterized 
 alike by goodness and gentleness. Modest in her ways, 
 she hved wholly for him ; his welfare, his happiness, his 
 fame, were the chief objects of her ambition. To smooth 
 his pathway, to cheer his spirit, to harmonize every discord- 
 ant element of life, were purposes for the accomplishment 
 of which no sacrifice on her part could be too great." 
 
 Another who visited them familiarly in their home 
 wrote : — 
 
 " In the autumn of 1863, we visited Mr. and Mrs. Bryant 
 at West Point, where they occupied Mr. John Bigelow's 
 charming cottage, 'The Squirrels.' From there we accom- 
 panied them to Roslyn, and spent a week under their own 
 roof-tree. How much we enjoyed those days, I need not 
 say. Mrs. Bryant's health was very delicate, and she sat 
 much in her large arm-chair by the open wood-fire which 
 blazed under the old tiles of the chimney-place. Mr. Bryant 
 sat at her feet when he read in the autumn twilight those 
 exquisite lines, ' The Life that Is.' Such was our last meet- 
 ing with our dear Mrs. Bryant. I never saw her again, but 
 the thought of her dwells like a sweet strain of music amid 
 the varied notes of human life, and will be ours again when 
 'beyond these voices there is peace.' The union between 
 Mr. and Mrs. Bryant was a poem of the tenderest rhythm. 
 Any of us who remember Mr. Bryant's voice when he said 
 'Frances' will join in his hope that she kept the same be- 
 loved name in heaven. I remember alluding to those ex- 
 quisite lines, ' The Future Life,' to Mrs. Bryant, and her 
 replying, 'Oh, my dear, I am always sorry for any one who 
 sees me after reading those lines, they must be so dis- 
 appointed.' Beatrice and Laura have not received such
 
 I2S HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 tributes from tlieir poets, for Mrs. Bryant's husband was her 
 poet and her lover at seventy as at seventeen." 
 
 After Mrs. Bryant had been dead seven years, Mr. 
 Bryant wrote the following poem, showing how tenderly 
 he cherished her memory: — 
 
 The morn hath not the glory that it wore, 
 
 Nor doth the day so beautifully die. 
 Since I can call thee to my side no more. 
 To gaze upon the sky. 
 
 For thy dear hand, with each return of Spring, 
 
 I sought in sunny nooks the flowers she gave ; 
 I seek them still, and sorrowfully bring 
 The choicest to thy grave. 
 
 Here, where I sit alone, is sometimes heard, 
 
 From the great world, a whisper of my name. 
 Joined, haply, to some kind commending word, 
 By those whose praise is fame. 
 
 And then, as if I thought thou still wert nigh, 
 
 I turn me, half-forgetting thou art dead, 
 To read the gentle gladness in thine eye 
 That once I might have read. 
 
 I turn, but see thee not ; before my eyes 
 
 The image of a hillside mound appears. 
 Where all of thee that passed not to the skies 
 Was laid with bitter tears. 
 
 And I, whose thoughts go back to happier days 
 That fled with thee, would gladly now resign 
 All that the world can give of fame or praise 
 For one sweet look of thine. 
 
 Thus ever, when I read of generous deeds. 
 
 Such words as thou didst once delight to hear, 
 My heart is wrung with anguish as it bleeds 
 To think thou art not near. 
 
 And now that I can talk no more with thee 
 
 Of ancient friends and days too fair to last, 
 A bitterness blends with the memory 
 Of all that happy past. 
 
 That past had, indeed, been happy and most success- 
 ful from every worldly point of view. He had published
 
 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 129 
 
 his poems, while still a young man, and they had made 
 him famous at once. For more than fifty years he was 
 honored as' one of the first of the poets of America, and 
 for a large part of that time he was held as indisputably 
 the first in rank. His work received honors and com- 
 mendation over the sea as well as at home, almost from 
 the first. It seems very curious to us now to think of 
 his selling the very finest of his poems for two dollars 
 apiece ; yet he did that, and seemed satisfied with the 
 compensation. In later life, when two hundred dollars 
 would have been gladly paid him for such poems, he 
 declined to write, saying that no man should write 
 poetry in old age. The greater part of his poetry was 
 written before he went to New York and became editor- 
 in-chief of the " Evening Post." After that time he was 
 always driven by newspaper work and involved in politi- 
 cal controversy, and rarely wrote verses. In old age he 
 made his translations of the " Iliad " and the " Odyssey," 
 which were very remarkable works for a man of his 
 years ; but he seldom wrote an original poem, although 
 what he did write scarcely showed a falling off from the 
 work of his prime. 
 
 He was very conscientious in his work as an editor, 
 and was honored by the entire nation for the noble and 
 patriotic course he took at the time of the anti-slavery 
 excitement, and throughout the Civil War. Men will 
 long remember the brave and spirited utterances of 
 his paper during that time that so tried men's souls. 
 He did much, during his long career as an editor, for 
 American literature, for American art, and for the 
 general culture of his countrymen. In his numerous 
 visits to Europe he learned much of the workings of 
 the institutions of the Old World, and gave his readers 
 the benefit of his studies of the comparative merits of 
 Old and New World methods ; and while always fair 
 in his judgments, he was always patriotic, and stood 
 gallantly by his own land. He was much honored 
 while abroad, as well as at home, and made acquaint- 
 
 9
 
 130 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 aiice with many ilistiiiguUhcd men in foreign lands. Mr. 
 Bryant had been brought up a Unitarian, and he main- 
 tained his connection with that church ihrdughout life. 
 MvXny of his dearest triends were among the minister of 
 that denomination, and he wrote many of his most beau- 
 tiful hymns for occasions connected with that church. 
 He was iilways a devoutly religious man. but grew even 
 more so in later life. During a long sickness which his 
 wite had in Naples in 1S5S, his thoughts became more 
 and more fixed upon this subject ; and meeting with an 
 old friend there, the Rev. Mr. ^^■aterson, he opened his 
 mind to him as perhaps he had never done to any one 
 before. Mr. Waterson tells us : — 
 
 " At this time I received a note from him stating that 
 there was a subject of interest upon which he would like 
 to converse with me. On the following day, the weather 
 being delighttul. we walked in the Villa Reale, the royal 
 park or garden, overlooking the Bay of Naples. Never can 
 I forget the beautiful spirit that breathed through every 
 word he uttered, — the reverent love, the contiding trust, 
 the aspiring hope, the rooted taith. Everv thought, every 
 view, was generous and comprehensive. Anxiously watch- 
 ing, as he had been doing, in that twilight boundary be- 
 tween this world and another, over one more precious to 
 him than life itself, the divine trutlis and promises had 
 come home to his mind with new power. He said he had 
 never united himself witli the Church, wliich with his 
 present feelings he would most gladly do. He then asked 
 if it would be agreeable to me to come to his room on the 
 morrow, and administer the Communion. — adding that as he 
 had not been baptized, he desired that ordinance at the 
 same time. The day tbllowing was the Sabbath, and a 
 most heavenly day. In fullilment of his wishes, in his 
 own quiet room, a company of seven persons celebrated 
 together the Lord's Supper. With hymns, selections from 
 the Scripture, and devotional exercises, we went back in 
 thought to the large upper-room where Christ first insti- 
 tuted the Holy Supper in the midst of his disciples. Pre- 
 vious to the breaking of bre.ad. William Cullen Bryant was 
 baptized. With snow-white head and flowing beard, he
 
 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 13 j 
 
 stood like one of the ancient prophets ; and never, perhaps, 
 since the days of the Apostles, has a truer disciple pro- 
 fessed allegiance to the Divine Master." 
 
 A purer and nobler life than Mr. Bryant led has hardly 
 been chronicled in our day ; and the quiet and calm of 
 his closing years was a fitting end to such a life. He was 
 tenderly cared for during these years by his daughters, to 
 whom he was most devotedly attached. His son-in-law, 
 Parke Godwin, thus writes of the closing years : — 
 
 " It was very curious to his friends to observe how he 
 had mellowed with time. The irritabilities of his earlier 
 days had been wholly overcome ; his reluctance to mingle 
 with men was quite gone ; and old age,'which makes so many 
 of us exacting and crabbed, if not morose, imparted to him 
 additional gentleness and sweetness. He had learned to live 
 more and more in the happiness of others, and was rewarded 
 for his unconscious devotion by new streams of happiness 
 constantly opening in his bosom." 
 
 He even learned to take good-naturedly what had 
 annoyed him a good deal in an earlier time, namely, the 
 results of his fame. He writes thus to a friend in ex- 
 treme old age : — 
 
 " Is there a penny-post, do you think, in the world to 
 come ? Do people there write for autographs to those 
 who have gained a little notoriety ? Do women there 
 send letters asking for money ? Do boys persecute liter- 
 ary men with requests for a course of reading ? Are there 
 offices In that sphere which are coveted, and to obtain 
 which men are pestered to write letters of recommenda- 
 tion .' If anything of this kind takes place in the spirit- 
 world it may, perhaps, be of a purgatorial nature, or 
 perhaps be the fate of the incorrigible sinner. Here on 
 earth this discipline never ends ; and if it exists at all in 
 the other world, it is of a kind which will, of course, never 
 cease. On this account I am inclined to believe that the 
 punishment for sin may be of endless duration ; for here the 
 annoyances and miseries which I have mentioned only cease 
 with death, and in the other world, where there is no death, 
 they will, of course, never come to an end."
 
 132 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 To another correspondent he writes : — 
 
 " How is it in the world to come ? Will patience have 
 had her perfect work in this sphere, or is the virtue to be 
 exercised there, until we shall have acquired an evenness of 
 temper which no possible provocation can disturb ? Are the 
 bores to be all penned in a corner by themselves, or are they 
 to be let loose to educate the saints to the sublimest degree 
 of patience of which our nature is capable ? These are deep 
 questions. I do not remember that you have given any spe- 
 cial attention to the use of bores in the moral government of 
 the world in your book on 'The Problem of Human Destiny.' 
 I admit their utility as a class ; they serve a most excellent 
 purpose ; but whether we are to be annoyed with them in 
 the next world is the doubt. Some of them are most worthy 
 people, and capital Christians, and cannot be kept out of 
 Paradise ; but will they be allowed to torment the elect 
 there ? " 
 
 Probably the title of the Great American could be 
 as fittingly applied to Bryant as to any man our 
 nation has produced. He has been happily called the 
 Puritan Greek ; and this epithet applies equally well to his 
 hfe and to his writings. If he was a Stoic in his earlier 
 years, he was as unmistakably a Christian in later life. 
 During both periods he was pure as ice, lofty in thought, 
 noble in deed, — an inspiration toward the True Life to 
 all who watched his course. No errors of passion or of 
 overheated blood did he have to mourn over, even in 
 youth; yet he was not cold or unimpassioned, as his 
 deep devotion throughout life to the woman of his 
 choice proved. He led emphatically the intellectual 
 life, with as little admixture of the flesh as possible ; yet 
 the warm currents of feeling were never dried up in his 
 nature, but bubbled up freshly to the end. He lived 
 largely on the heights of life, yet he was not unchari- 
 table to the weaknesses and follies he saw everywhere 
 about him, but rather looked upon them with a half- 
 pitying tenderness ; and he dropped a tear occasionally 
 where the integrity of his own nature counselled a stern 
 reproof.
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 I 
 
 HAVE seen Emerson, the first man I have ever 
 seen," wrote George Eliot in her diary many years 
 ago. Carlyle uses similar expressions in his letters at 
 least a score of times. Sentences like the following ap- 
 pear very often : — 
 
 " It remains true and will remain, what I have often told 
 you, that properly there is no voice in this world which is 
 completely human to me but your voice only." 
 
 Again : — 
 
 " In the whole world I hardly get to my spoken human word 
 any other word of response that is authentically Juiman. 
 God help us, this is growing a very lonely place, this dis- 
 tracted dog-kennel of a world." 
 
 Indeed, the personality of Emerson seems to have pro- 
 duced a very marked effect upon all the great men and 
 women with whom he came in contact. We find that he 
 was often described as an angel in appearance in his 
 younger days. Here are one or two instances : Of his 
 appearance to them in their stony solitude at Craigen- 
 puttoch Carlyle afterwards wrote to Emerson : — 
 
 " Among the figures I can recollect as visiting us in our 
 Nithsdale hermitage, — all like apparitions now, bringing with 
 them airs from heaven, or else blasts from the other region, 
 — there is perhaps not one of a more undoubtedly supernal 
 character than yourself, — so pure and still, with intents so 
 charitable ; and then vanishing, too, so soon into the azure 
 inane, as an apparition should."
 
 13^ ^o^rE life of great authors. 
 
 Mrs. Carl vie always spoke of this visit of Emerson to 
 them there as a visitation from an angel. 
 
 Mr. Charles Congdon thus writes in the " Reminis- 
 cences of a Journalist : " — 
 
 "One day there came into our pulpit the most gracious of 
 mortals, with a face all benignity, who gave out the first 
 hymn and made the first prayer as an angel might have read 
 and prayed. Our choir was a pretty good one, but its best 
 was coarse and discordant after Emerson's voice." 
 
 The ancestors of Emerson were all of clean pure blood. 
 Behind him were many generations of fine old New Eng- 
 land ministers, and he was but the natural product of his 
 race in character, — though from what source sprang the 
 consummate flower of his genius it is hard to tell. He was 
 brought up to all good things, under the immediate eyes 
 of a superior mother and a gifted aunt. He was a fine 
 scholar during his college days, and entered the Unitarian 
 ministry when quite young. He also married young, but 
 early lost his wife, and soon afterw^ard retired from the 
 ministry to devote himself to hterature. 
 
 In September, 1835, Emerson was married for the 
 second time, to Miss Lydia Jackson of Plymouth. The 
 wedding took place in the fine old mansion known as 
 the Winslow house. After the marriage they went to 
 reside in Concord, in the house Avhere he passed the 
 rest of his life, and where his family still live. This is the 
 plain, square, wooden house, wdth horse-chestnuts in the 
 front yard and evergreens around it, which has often been 
 described by visitors to Concord. Near by is the orchard 
 planted by Emerson, and two miles away his wood-lot, 
 which he describes to Carlyle as his new plaything, and 
 where he proposed to build a tower to which to flee 
 from intrusive visitors. Of the planting of the orchard 
 he thus \mtes : — 
 
 "You are to know that in these days I lay out a patch of 
 orchard near my liouse, very much to the improvement, as all 
 the household affirm, of our homestead. Though I have
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. i^e 
 
 little skill in these things, and must borrow that of my nei2;h- 
 bors, yet the works of the garden and orchard at this 
 season are fascinating, and will eat up days and weeks ; and 
 a brave scholar should shun it like gambling, and take refuge 
 in cities and hotels from these pernicious enchantments. 
 For the present I stay in the new orchard." 
 
 In due time came the little troop of children, to gladden 
 the home and to be a perpetual wonder and delight to 
 the father. In his essay on " Domestic Life " he thus 
 talks of the little one : — 
 
 " The size of the nestler is comic, and its tiny beseeching 
 weakness is compensated perfectly by the happy, patronizing 
 look of the mother, who is a sort of high reposing Providence 
 toward it. Welcome to the parents the puny struggler, 
 strong in his weakness, — his little arms more irresistible 
 than the soldier's, his lips touched with persuasion which 
 Chatham and Pericles in manhood had not. His unaffected 
 lamentations when he lifts up his voice on high, or, more 
 beautiful, the sobbing child, soften all hearts to pity and to 
 mirthful and clamorous compassion. His ignorance is more 
 charming than all knowledge, and his little sins more be- 
 witching than any virtue." 
 
 Emerson was never a rich man, and his home was al- 
 ways so ordered as to come within the scope of his limited 
 income ; but it was always attractive and charming, and 
 pervaded by an air of dignity and repose. And that in 
 it he could dispense hospitality in the old royal manner 
 is shown by the many times he invites Carlyle to come 
 and spend a year with him, and seriously urges him to do 
 so. Thoreau availed himself of such invitation, and spent 
 months at a time in Emerson's home. One wonders if Mrs. 
 Emerson received such instruction as her husband gives 
 in the essay just mentioned, and if she profited by it : — 
 
 " I pray you, O excellent wife, not to cumber yourself and 
 me to get a rich dinner for this man or this woman who has 
 alighted at our gate, nor a bed-chamber made ready at too 
 great a cost. These things, if they are curious in, they can 
 get for a dollar at any village. But let this stranger, if lie will,
 
 136 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 in your looks, in your accent and behavior, read your heart 
 and earnestness, your thought and will, — which he cannot 
 buy at any price in any village or city, and which he may well 
 travel fifty miles, and dine sparely and sleep hard, in order 
 to behold. Certainly let the board be spread, and let the 
 bed be dressed for the traveller, but let not the emphasis 
 of hospitality lie in these things. Honor to the house where 
 tiiey are simple to the verge of hardship, so that there the 
 intellect is awake and reads the law of the universe, the soul 
 worships truth and love, honor and courtesy flow into all 
 deeds." 
 
 If the American people had heeded such wise words 
 as these the old-fashioned virtue of hospitality would not 
 have become so rare among us. The " emphasis of hos- 
 pitality" has been placed upon the material things to such 
 an extent that one hardly dares to invite his friend now, 
 unless it be to an elaborate feast ; and the labor, to say 
 nothing of the expense, of preparing the elaborate feast is 
 so great that more and more we neglect to call our friends 
 around us, and to bind their hearts to ours by loving and 
 tender ministrations. 
 
 Let us learn of Emerson the meaning of economy. 
 He says : — 
 
 " Parched corn eaten to-day that I may have roast fowl 
 to my dinner Sunday is a baseness ; but parched corn and 
 a house with one apartment, that I may be free of ail per- 
 turbations, that I may be serene and docile to what the mind 
 shall speak, and quit and road-ready for the lowest mission 
 of knowledge or good-will, is frugality for gods and heroes." 
 
 This Avas the sort of frugality that Tlioreau practised in 
 his hut on Walden Pond, and it is a frugality which has 
 made him famed throughout the hero-worshipping world. 
 
 The charm of Emerson's home life lay largely in his 
 manners, w-hich were simple, yet faultless. He greeted 
 his friends with all the mildness and serenity of the very 
 god of repose, and induced in them that most enjoyable 
 sensation, a feeling of entire contentment with all the 
 world. No heat, no fret, no hurry, no great call to
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 137 
 
 strenuous exertion to appear well or make a fine impres- 
 sion. All was ease, calm, unstudied attention to every 
 little want, and talk fit for the noblest and the best. He 
 was an example of what he himself honored most. 
 
 " I honor that man whose ambition it is, not to win laurels 
 in the state or the army, not to be a jurist or a naturalist, not 
 to be a poet or a commander, but to be a master of living 
 well, and to administer the offices of master or servant, of 
 husband, father, and friend." 
 
 In all these relations Emerson shone resplendently, 
 and in the old-fashioned relation of neighbor he was 
 always at his best. To the family of his old friend Alcott 
 he was as a special providence for many years, and beau- 
 tiful indeed was the affection in which he was held by them. 
 When, during Emerson's absence in Europe, his house 
 was partly burned, his neighbors promptly rebuilt it, 
 ready for his return. Of these helpers Emerson wrote, 
 in accepting their gift : — 
 
 "Judge Hoar has up to this time withheld from me the 
 names of my benefactors ; but you may be sure I shall not 
 rest till I have learned them, every one, to repeat to myself 
 at night and at morning." 
 
 Emerson's personal appearance was that of a scholar 
 and the descendant of scholars, — tall, slender, and with 
 the complexion which is bred in the alcove and not in 
 the open air. His hair was brown, fine, and thick. His 
 eyes were of the deepest blue. His mode of living was 
 very simple, but he was constitutionally fastidious, and 
 very much averse to vulgar or commonplace companion- 
 ship. He loved all children and simple-minded people, 
 and the very babies in Concord knew and lo\ed him. 
 "Incorrigible spouting Yankee " he called himself; but 
 he was rather a silent man in reality, and did not care 
 to talk excepting when he had somewhat to say. He 
 did not prate eternally of silence, as Carlyle did, while 
 wTcaking himself upon speech in the most frantically 
 vehement manner all his days, but he knew when and
 
 138 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 how to be silent. The glimpses he gives of Mrs. Emerson, 
 in the long correspondence with Carlyle, are all of the 
 most pleasing nature, and his home life was ai)parently 
 as perfect as music all his life long. Of the boy Waldo, 
 who died, he was fond of speaking, and he evidently 
 mourned him very deeply for a long time. Of his other 
 children he never boasted, but always spoke most kindly. 
 The niost entire revelation that Emerson ever made of 
 himself was doubtless in the letters to Carlyle ; and it 
 must be said that nowhere else has Carlyle appeared to so 
 good advantage as in this correspondence with Emerson. 
 One loves the grim, sardonic old man better after seeing 
 that he could love his friend faithfully and loyally for 
 so many years, and after reading all the tender and touch- 
 ing things he puts into his letters to him. Especially is 
 this the case in the later days, when both had grown to 
 be old men, and had been saddened by their life expe- 
 rience. Carlyle's letters after his wife's death are very 
 touching. In the first after the sad event he says : — 
 
 " By the calamity of last April I lost my little all in this 
 world, and have no soul left who can make any corner of 
 this world into a ho7ne for me any more. Bright, heroic, 
 tender, true, and noble was that lost treasure of my heart, 
 who faithfully accompanied me in all the rocky ways and 
 climbings ; I am forever poor without her. She was snatched 
 from me in a moment as by a death from the gods. Very 
 beautiful her death was; radiantly to those who understood 
 it, had all her life been : quid phcra ? " 
 
 This which follows in the same letter, written while Car- 
 lyle was still in the unbroken possession of his faculties, 
 makes us not only sad but indignant that his determina- 
 tion had not been allowed to be carried out ; and that the 
 poor old man, when broken down by age, should have 
 been permitted to expose to view all those sacred things 
 which, when sane and sound, he would so carefully have 
 covered from the prying eyes of the world. He says : — 
 
 " All summer last my one solacement in the form of work 
 was writing: and sorting of old documents and recollections ;
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 1^9 
 
 summoning out again into clearness old scenes that had 
 now closed on me without return. Sad, and in a sense 
 sacred ; it was like a kind of worship, — the only devout time 
 I had had for a great while past. These things I have half 
 or wholly the intention to burn out of the way before I my- 
 self die ; but such continues still mainly my employment, 
 to me if to no other useful. To reduce matters to writing 
 means that you shall know them, see them in their origins 
 and sequences, in their essential lineaments, considerably 
 better than you ever did before. To set about writing my 
 own life would be no less than horrible to me ; and shall 
 of a certainty never be done. The common, impious, vulgar 
 of this earth — what has it to do with my hfe or me.'' Let 
 dignified oblivion, silence, and the vacant azure of eternity 
 swallow me ; for my share of it, that verily is the handsomest 
 or one handsome way of settling my poor account with the 
 canaille of mankind, extant and to come." 
 
 How would his sad old heart have been torn could 
 he have foreseen that in the weakness of senility he 
 would expose to the ' impious vulgar ' all the most sacred 
 secrets of his home life ! Oh, the pity of it ! As a 
 slight offset to the sad revelations thus made, let us 
 accept this little note in Emerson's diary during one of 
 his visits to Chelsea : — 
 
 " C. and his wife live on beautiful terms. Their ways 
 are very engaging, and in her bookcase all his books are 
 inscribed to her as they came, year by year, each with some 
 significant lines." 
 
 Emerson's regard for Mrs. Carlyle was very great, and 
 there is not one of the many letters but sends a kindly 
 and a warm greeting to her over the sea. 
 
 For the rest, this correspondence exhibits Emerson in 
 the light of a true and very useful friend to Carlyle, — 
 taking infinite trouble in the early days to introduce 
 Carlyle's books in America, and to secure to the author 
 in his poverty some return for their publication here. In 
 this he was successful, and sent with great delight little 
 sums of money to his friend. The books met with a
 
 I40 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 quicker recognition in America than in England ; and 
 after Emerson had said something to Carlyle of a new 
 edition of " Sartor Resartus," Carlyle writes : — 
 
 " As for Fraser, however, the idea of a new edition is 
 frightful to him, or rather ludicrous, unimaginable. Of 
 him no man has inquired for a ' Sartor.' In his whole won- 
 derful world of Tory pamphleteers, Conservative younger 
 brothers, Regent-street lawyers, Crockford gamblers, Irish 
 Jesuits, drunken reporters, and miscellaneous unclean per- 
 sons (whom water and much soap will not make clean), not 
 a soul has expressed the smallest wish that way. He 
 shrieks at the idea." 
 
 There is also much writing, on both sides, of Carlyle's 
 coming to America. For years this was the most enchant- 
 ing topic, of which they never grew weary. In one of 
 his saddest moods, while yet almost unknown and very 
 poor, Carlyle wrote : — ■ 
 
 " In joy, in grief, a voice says to me, ' Behold, there is one 
 that loves thee ; in thy loneliness, in thy darkness, see how 
 a hospitable candle shines from far over seas, how a friendly 
 heart watches ! ' It is very good and precious to me." 
 
 There is, of course, a great deal of mutual admiration 
 of each other's work, very genuine, ever pleasant to hear 
 about, expressed in the warmest language, — even in those 
 superlatives which Emerson derided. 
 
 There are also lovely bits of home life upon both sides, 
 — faultless interiors over which the mind will linger with 
 delight in times far away from these, when the students 
 of another age strive to make to themselves a picture of 
 what sort of men these the great of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury really were. There is nothing told in these volumes 
 that will detract from the fame of either, but much that 
 will add to the kindly impression which they have made 
 upon their time. One cannot but think, as the letters 
 grow more infrequent, and are written with greater labor, 
 of how old age was a weariness to these great men as to 
 others, — how the very grasshopper became a burden,
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 141 
 
 and how inexpressibly sad was the decay of their great 
 powers. Emerson begins to lag first, although a few 
 years younger than Carlyle, and Carlyle implores him, 
 almost piteously, to write. There is an interval of one, 
 two, and even three years in the correspondence toward 
 the end ; and after Emerson's last visit to England they 
 wrote no more. Carlyle's gentleness and tenderness show 
 themselves very beautifully in these last letters to his 
 one best friend. When he finds that it has become hard 
 for Emerson to write, he begs at first that he be not 
 forsaken, but after a little says in effect : Never mind, 
 my friend, if it wearies you to write, write to me no 
 more. I will still write to you, and thus our friendship 
 shall not lack for a voice. When the sweet bells had 
 become a little jangled in Emerson's brain, when memory 
 had left him or played him false, and there was a weak- 
 ening of all his powers, — he sat still in his own home 
 among his friends and kindred, his household intact, 
 and surrounded by the fondest care and affection ; while 
 his old friend over the seas — the broken giant, the god 
 of thunder, now grown silent — sat in utter desolation in 
 the home he had reared after infinite struggle and en- 
 deavor, and wrapped in a solitude so utter and so black 
 that the heart which can look upon it without pity must 
 be a heart of stone. Carlyle died on the 5th of April, 
 1 88 1, being eighty-five years old. Emerson died on the 
 27th of April, 1 88 2, at the age of seventy-nine. In 
 death they were not long divided.
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 CARLYLE is one of the many great men who have 
 suffered severely at the hands of their biographers, 
 and from the pen clan in general. When the world knew 
 him alone or chiefly through the lurid splendors of " The 
 French Revolution," — that book which, as he himself 
 would have expressed it, was a truth, though a truth writ- 
 ten in hell-fire, — or through the uncanny labyrinths of 
 " Sartor Resartus," or the subtle analysis of the " Hero- 
 Worship," or the more pleasing pages of his " Burns," or 
 "Milton," or the "Characteristics," it would stand aloof 
 in wonder, in admiration, almost in awe. But when with 
 his own hand — for he was primarily the cause of all — he 
 stripped aw^ay the privacy which he had guarded so jeal- 
 ously through life, and through the " Reminiscences " and 
 his wife's letters, which he prepared for publication, took, 
 as we may say, the roof off from the house, that all the 
 world might look in, then indeed he fell from his lofty 
 pedestal and became like one of us. Hero-worship was 
 no longer possible, but loud abuse and recrimination, or 
 apology and a cry for charitable construction, became the 
 order of the day. We may say that he had only himself 
 to thank for it ; but who can help regretting that the man 
 in his old age should so have destroyed the fair fabric of 
 his own fame ? We are not so rich in heroes that we can 
 afford to lose even the least of the kingly band ; and we have 
 felt that we have sustained an irreparable loss ever since the
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. i^^ 
 
 luckless day when we took up the first of the intensely in- 
 teresting but most painful books relating to this great life. 
 
 Let us look a little at this hero's domestic life. What 
 was its foundation, what its outcome? That there was 
 something wrong at the foundation seems to be clear. 
 And it was not so much the fact that neither party married 
 the first choice of the heart, — though it is true that Jane 
 Welsh loved with all the ardor of her nature Edward 
 Irving first, and that Carlyle undoubtedly would have 
 married his first love, the fair and amiable Margaret Gor- 
 don, the original of Blumine in "Sartor Resartus," had 
 not poverty prevented, — but rather was it their unsuitability 
 to each other. She was a lady, delicately reared, and with 
 a taste for society and the refinements of life ; with a love 
 for admiration, too, and a wish to shine in her little sphere. 
 He was a peasant, coarsely bred, and scorning the ameni- 
 ties of life to which he was unaccustomed, — scorning, too, 
 the chivalric feeling with which better bred men look upon 
 women and treat their wives. He told her this, bluntly 
 and brutally, before marriage. They two were to be one, 
 and he that one. He had the peasant idea of being mas- 
 ter, and to the end of his days held fast to it. They 
 were never, to his mind, equals, but he was the chief and 
 she the subject. This was what put her down intellectu- 
 ally. In her youth she had literary tastes and ambitions, 
 and doubtless much ability ; but after marriage we hear no 
 more of that. Even in the seven years at Craigenputtoch, 
 when one would think that out of sheer weariness and 
 want of occupation she would have written or studied, we 
 hear nothing of any such attempts. Her married life 
 seems to have quenched all this utterly. 
 
 Then all the domestic drudgery, which to her seemed 
 such a burden, and appears to have afflicted her to 
 the end of life, seemed to him to be the natural and 
 proper thing for a woman. He had all his life been ac- 
 customed to see his mother and sisters at their tasks, 
 naturally and uncomplainingly, and he could never under- 
 stand why all women should not feel in the same way.
 
 144 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 Then he was fond of solitude, and looked upon a visitor 
 as an emissary of the devil ; and he failed to see that a gay, 
 pleasure-loving, volatile, sparkling girl could not share his 
 feelings. So he shut her up remorselessly, — never dream- 
 ing that he was cruel. That she was fond of admiration 
 was nothing to him, though he was fond of it himself in 
 his own grim way ; he was the central figure of this 
 household, and if she was deprived of a natural enjoy- 
 ment it seemed a trifle to him. In short, their whole 
 philosophy of life was different, their characters unsuited 
 to each other, and their tempers of the order described 
 as " difficult." It is not necessary to blame one or the 
 other entirely for what followed. He saw everything in 
 one light, she in another ; what but disappointment and 
 unrest could ensue? 
 
 Had she clung to her original determination not to 
 marry him, would it have been better? Doubdess, yet it 
 is certain that she learned to love him, even too much for 
 her peace of mind ; and it is foolish to picture her, as some 
 have done, as a loveless wife. Probably at marriage she 
 was not what is usually styled " in love " with him, but 
 that she did love him through life is not to be doubted. 
 And that, spite of all his neglect and harshness and sel- 
 fishness, he truly loved her and was essentially loyal to her 
 is as little to be doubted. Whence then came the unhap- 
 piness, — an unhappiness which, we think, has in some 
 places been gi-eatly exaggerated? As we said before, 
 from their different points of view. Take, for instance, 
 the hardships of Craigenputtoch. They seemed nothing 
 to him, brought up as he had been, but much to her, who 
 from her youth had been the petted darling of a handsome 
 home. This terrible place, which has been described as 
 worse than a desert island, was a large and recently reno- 
 vated old manor-house standing in fields of its own, only 
 fifteen miles from where her mother lived, and twelve 
 miles from Dumfries. Everything had been made comfort- 
 able for them by her mother, and in the farm-cottage near 
 were his brother and sister, Jane and Alexander Carlyle,
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. ^.r 
 
 who had three men and two women ; and Mrs. Carlyle 
 herself ahvays one servant. Much has been written of her 
 hardships here, — and they were very real hardships to 
 her \ but from his point of view they did not seem so bad. 
 She did some work, but one cannot help thinking that 
 with so many about her, if she habitually did such drudg- 
 ery as is represented, it was her own fault. There will 
 come domestic crises in all households, when the hands 
 of the mistress must take hold to save from chaos ; but 
 on the whole it would seem that she was not so very great 
 a martyr in this. 
 
 The lack of society was the real evil ; and this Carlyle 
 did not feel, absorbed as he was in his mighty work, his 
 brain burning with the great thoughts to which he must 
 give utterance. How could he appreciate the vacuity of 
 her life, — who had always had young and cheerful com- 
 pany about her, and a mother to pity and cheer her small- 
 est sorrow ? It was very pitiful that he could not see, but 
 not so very strange. Many another man would have been 
 equally obtuse. 
 
 His sisters would not have minded it ; he did not mind 
 it, and it was not given him to see that she minded it 
 as much as she really did. For it is certain that those 
 seven years left marks upon her which she never outgrew. 
 They almost seem to have changed her very nature. Yet 
 Carlyle with his peasant nature did not see it, but wrote 
 cheerfully upon a time, " Jane is far heartier, now that she 
 has got to work." A mistake, says Froude : " Mrs. Carlyle 
 had not strength for household work, and doing it, she 
 permanently broke down her health." 
 
 And again Carlyle writes, with a little more appreciation 
 of the situation : — 
 
 " Her life beside me, constantly writing here, is but a dull 
 one ; however, she seems to desire no other. ... I tell her 
 many times there is much for her to do, if she were trained 
 for it, — her whole sex to deliver from the bondage of frivol- 
 ity, doUhood, and imbecility, into the freedom of valor and 
 womanhood.'' 
 
 10
 
 146 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 Of the solitude which had nearly killed his wife, he after 
 a time wearied himself; and then he effected a change. 
 One laughs to think of the second moving, and wonders 
 if it was as bad as the first, which he thus described : — 
 
 " In this mansion we have had a battle like that of Saint 
 George and the dragon. Neither are we yet conquerors. 
 Smoke, and wet, and chaos! May the good Lord keep all 
 Christian men from moving." 
 
 If it seemed as bad as this to him, what did it seem to 
 her, delicately reared and hating the disagreeables of Hfe ? 
 Still she did not complain, but wrote to his mother about 
 this time : " I could wish him a little less yellow, and a 
 little more peaceable ; otherwise he is perfect." And she 
 soon learned, compelled to it possibly by dire necessity, 
 to take upon herself all of the practical and prosaic part of 
 the management of their affairs. 
 
 It is painful, although it is also comical, to read of her 
 domestic battles and defeats. She put infinite wit and 
 talent into her descriptions of them in her letters to her 
 friends, and the whole world has read them with smiles 
 and tears ; but they were not light troubles to her, as they 
 would have been to many commonplace women. Proba- 
 bly upon a majority of wives, even if they have not men 
 of genius for husbands, fall nearly as great a part of the 
 domestic duties and cares as upon Mrs. Carlyle ; yet 
 few consider this a great hardship, and the sympathies of 
 the world are not invoked in their behalf. It was not this 
 so much in Mrs. Carlyle's case as it was the moodiness 
 and fault-finding and general irascibility of the husband 
 w^hich aggravated ever}'thing, and made little things seem 
 great. 
 
 That her spirits were entirely gone and her whole viva- 
 cious nature changed at the end of the Craigenputtoch 
 period is proved by sentences from her letters. To his 
 mother she writes : — 
 
 " It is my husband's worst fault with me that I will not or 
 cannot speak. Often when he has talked to me for an hour
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 M7 
 
 without answer, he will beg for some sign of life on my part, 
 and all that I can give him is a little kiss." 
 
 And she was a woman who loved to talk, and he the 
 best and most brilliant talker of his day. Surely, this is 
 pitiful. But after they went up to London this aspect of 
 things was improved for her, and had it not been that 
 thereafter she suffered from constant ill-health she would 
 doubtless have been quite comfortable. But her health 
 was bad, and in the ignorance of the day the dosing was 
 bad ; and when we read of the medicine which she took as 
 she took her daily bread, we only wonder that she lived to 
 tell the tale. It speaks a great deal for her Scotch consti- 
 tution that she survived her remedies. 
 
 Carlyle was soon in the zenith of his fame, and the great 
 men of the day sat at his feet, figuratively speaking, and 
 would literally have done so had not his growl been so 
 fierce that it kept them at bay. Of those who did " beard 
 the lion in his den, the Douglas in his hall," many were 
 immolated in his diary ; and we see them, now that it has 
 been published, like so many flies with pins stuck through 
 them, fastened to the paper. Poor Charles Lamb stands 
 there, bloodless, fleshless ; but we think scarcely the less 
 of gentle Elia as we look upon him, but far less of the 
 cruel perpetrator of the atrocity. Leigh Hunt, too, has 
 a pin quite through his warm heart ; and Stuart Mill, 
 and many others. One wonders sometimes if Froude 
 himself escaped, or if he were there too, like a giant 
 bluebottle, desiccated as the rest ; and was that the 
 reason why he did not suppress all the damaging letters 
 and recollections, but maliciously gave them to the 
 world ? 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle's pen could be dipped in acid also, as has 
 been proved in her comments upon the men and women 
 of her time. These, to be sure, are very brief and frag- 
 mentary, and it has been a source of much wonder that, 
 knowing intimately as she did many of the notable per- 
 sons of her time, she has not left behind in any single
 
 1 48 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 letter a valuable portrait or even sketch of any of these 
 great people. What priceless words of Darwin she might 
 have gathered up, which all the world would ha\e eagerly 
 read ; what characteristic anecdotes she could have told of 
 Tennyson, — what an insight she might have given into 
 the man behind the poet ; what noble things she must 
 have known of Stuart Mill ; what inimitable facetiae con- 
 cerning the Hunts ; what spirited stories she could have 
 told of Jeffrey ; what a light she could have cast over 
 dark places in the life of Edward Irving ! Why did she 
 not do this, we wonder. Did the dread of assassination 
 hover over her? For Charles Buller, Carlyle's friend, had 
 just made his plea for the man who killed his wife for 
 keeping a diary : " What else could a poor fellow do with 
 a wife who kept a diary, but murder her? " 
 
 W^e cannot but regret that the sketches were not writ- 
 ten. They would have been immortal ; for her power in 
 this line has been unequalled by any one who has written 
 in these later days. As it is, she has, unconsciously to 
 herself, left a picture of the greatest of all the men she 
 knew — Carlyle himself — which can never be blotted out. 
 The portrait is full-length, full of Rembrandt-like light and 
 shadow, and remorselessly faithful. Painted not for the 
 public eye, but sketched in a thousand little parts, in mat- 
 ter-of-fact every-day letters to humble friends, with no 
 remotest thought that other eyes would ever see them, — 
 it is this by which Carlyle as a man will be known to all 
 coming time. Not a hero, not a monster, as some have 
 claimed, but a faulty man, with the defects of his qualities, 
 described by a woman faulty like himself. A constitu- 
 tional growler, with a warm heart withal, and infinite ca- 
 pacities for tenderness ; selfish it may be, but inexorably 
 just ; cold to all the outside world, but warm-hearted and 
 generous and magnificently loyal to his family, throughout 
 all his distinguished career. No trace of snobbery or false 
 shame in him. Not liking the reformers of his own day, 
 but almost deifying the reformers of the past, and him- 
 self making it his mission, from earliest youth to hoary age,
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. i^g 
 
 to reform the world in his own particular Carlylean way ; 
 fiercely assailing much that passed for religion, but being 
 always deeply and truly religious at heart. What a vast 
 contradictory Titan he seems in it all ! If a lovely wind- 
 flower, fresh and fragrant as the breath of morning, was 
 crushed in the arms of this god of thunder, what shall we 
 say? Shall we reject the god of thunder, who gave us the 
 " Heroes," and the " Cromwell," and the " Frederick," 
 and wish that he might have been a gentle poet singing 
 to a lute ; or shall we thank God for him, even as he was, 
 though we give a tear to the wind-flower?
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 THE times of Napoleon and the First Empire seem 
 to be more than a lifetime away from us ; and yet 
 it was in that day that Victor Hugo lived as a child in 
 the old convent of the Feuillantines so graphically de- 
 scribed in " Les Mis^rables." Here he and his two 
 brothers lived with their mother in the strictest seclusion, 
 while the father, General Hugo, a soldier of the Empire, 
 was off with the Grand Army at some distant point, either 
 in garrison or in the field. The child, who was afterwards to 
 hold Napoleon the Little up to the execration of the world, 
 felt his earliest emotions of patriotism stirred by the glori- 
 ous conquests of Napoleon the Great. General Hugo was 
 one of the most gallant soldiers of the day, and placed in 
 many positions of trust and of responsibility, as well as of 
 danger, by Napoleon. He it was who conducted the 
 terrible retreat from Spain just before the fall of Napo- 
 leon. His soldiers were the only protection to the lives 
 of twenty thousand French fugitives, who were fleeing 
 from Madrid wild with terror ; for the pursuing Spaniards 
 would not have hesitated to massacre the helpless multi- 
 tude, had they found it in their power to do so. From 
 every bush projected the muzzle of a gim, charged with 
 the death of an invader; every pass concealed an am- 
 bush ; every height bristled with guns in the hands of the 
 patriots. But General Hugo conducted the fugitives
 
 VICTOR HUGO. irj 
 
 through in safety, and proceeded to take command of 
 the fortress at Thionville, soon to be besieged. 
 
 He defended this outpost of the Empire with great 
 gallantry, and it was the last citadel over which the tri- 
 color waved. But at last General Hugo was forced to 
 surrender it to the AUies, and the star of Napoleon had 
 set forever. Madame Hugo had been a royalist always, 
 although she had not been allowed to influence the minds 
 of the children in that direction ; but after the fall of the 
 Emperor she openly proclaimed her sympathy with the 
 Bourbons, and was so demonstrative in her enthusiasm 
 that it led to a complete estrangement between herself 
 and her husband. Victor as a boy sided with his mother, 
 and was royalist to the core ; but as soon as he became a 
 man he gravitated at once to his father's side. The years 
 which he passed with his mother and brothers, and the 
 priest who was their tutor, in the old garden of the 
 Feuillantines, were as peaceful and happy as the years of 
 childhood should always be. It was in an almost de- 
 serted quarter of Paris, and the grounds were spacious, 
 being the remains of a park once attached to the convent. 
 They were, however, neglected ; and everything had run 
 wild here, until it seemed to the city children almost like 
 a forest. A ruined chapel was in this wood, which always 
 excited the imagination of the boys, who were thoughtful 
 and fanciful beyond their years. Beautiful horse-chestnut 
 trees cast their shadows round this ruin, and were the 
 home of innumerable birds who nested there. Upon the 
 walls among the cankered and unnailed espaliers were 
 niches for Madonnas and fragments of crucifixes ; and 
 vines hung there in ragged festoons to the ground. 
 Through these dismantled cloisters and spacious abbey- 
 chambers the imagination of the boys ran riot, and it cast 
 a sort of poetic glamour over their young and solitary 
 lives. 
 
 To this secluded place came, at one period of Victor's 
 childhood. General Lahorie, his godfather, hiding from 
 the authorities, who had set a price upon his head ; and here
 
 1-2 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 he was securely hidden by Madame Hugo for two years, 
 as \'ictor Hugo afterwaixls pictured Jean Valjean as being 
 concealed there by the old gardener. Lahorie was im- 
 plicated in Moreau's plot against Napoleon, and was be- 
 ing diligently sought after by the police all the time he 
 occupied the ruined chapel in the old convent-garden. 
 His camp bed was under the shelter of the altar ; in a 
 corner were his pistols ; and although the rain and snow 
 came in through the dilapidated windows, he bivouacked 
 here in winter as well as summer. The children never 
 knew who he was; he was called simply "the General," 
 and was much loved by the boys, to whom he talked 
 much of their country and of liberty. After a time, under 
 the promise of pardon if he came forward to receive it, 
 he was betrayed into giving himself up ; was arrested at 
 once, cast into prison, and afterward shot, — one of 
 the most infamous of the acts of Napoleon, noted 
 throughout his whole career for treachery and insatiable 
 bloodthirstiness. 
 
 This devilish betrayal of his early friend did not fail to 
 impress the mind of such a boy as Victor Hugo, and to 
 add to his natural hatred of tyrants and their deeds. It 
 was perhaps the most lasting and impressive lesson that 
 he ever learned, and the world has seen its results in his 
 life. Throughout all the varied years of a long and event- 
 ful career, it was ever at the shrine of liberty that he paid 
 his devotions, ever her praises that he sung in his loftiest 
 verse, ever for her that he struck the strongest blows of 
 which his arm was capable. 
 
 Almost solitary as were the lives of the children under 
 Madame Hugo's watchful eyes, the one visitor who was 
 admitted to their companionship was welcomed with more 
 than the accustomed warmth of children. This was a lit- 
 tle girl named Adele Foucher (about thirteen or fourteen 
 years old when she first visited them), who used occasion- 
 ally to spend the day with the boys in the garden. Victor 
 soon felt for her the most tender and chivalric regard. 
 He has himself described it once and again, the first time
 
 VICTOR HUGO. TC- 
 
 in the story of Pepita, in " Le Dernier Jour d 'un Con- 
 damn^," where " he sees her in all her charms, just 
 fourteen years of age, with large lustrous eyes and luxuri- 
 ant hair, with rich golden-brown skin and crimson lips ; 
 he dwells on the proud emotion which he felt as she 
 leaned upon his arm ; he recounts how they wandered, 
 talking softly, along the shaded walks ; he tells how he 
 picked up for her the handkerchief she had dropped, and 
 was conscious of her hands trembling as they touched his 
 own. And he recollects how they talked about the birds, 
 the stars, and the golden sunset, — sometimes, too, about 
 her school-fellows, her dresses, and her ribbons; they 
 blushed together over the most innocent of thoughts." 
 Again, in " Les Mis^rables," Victor Hugo reverts to the 
 scenes of his youth, and to his child-love. 
 
 " Marius " is but a free variation of himself; the circum- 
 stances are changed, but the character is the same, and 
 the garden scenes between Marius and Cosette are but 
 faint reproductions of passages in the courtship of the 
 poet and Mile. Foucher. Victor had begun to write 
 poetry by this time, and some of his earlier efforts had 
 attracted considerable attention. His whole ambition lay 
 in this direction. We are told by his biographer that — 
 
 "his greatest pleasure was to accompany his mother to 
 M. Foucher's house, and there spend long evenings in un- 
 spoken admiration of the maiden to whom his whole heart 
 was devoted. It was not long before these admiring glances 
 were noticed by the parents, to whom the danger of encour- 
 aging such a passion was apparent, as both the young people 
 were of an age when marria2;e was out of the question. By 
 mutual consent the two famihes broke off their intimacy for 
 a time. Victor Hugo found expression for his grief at the 
 separation, in a poem that is full of sad and gentle dig- 
 nity. ... In spite of apparent resignation, the obstacles 
 placed in tiie way of his passion only increased its intensity, 
 and absence, instead of extinguishing his love, served only to 
 increase it. His fevered imagination devised a thousand 
 means by which he miglit catch a glimpse of one without 
 whom he felt it impossible to exist. Numberless are the
 
 154 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 stratagems he contrived, and incredible the ini;enuity with 
 which they were executed ; the freshness of his romance 
 was itself an exquisite idyl. . . . Victor never despaired ; 
 but in the midst of his anticipations he was overwhelmed by 
 a terrible blow." 
 
 Madame Hugo died very suddenly in the summer of 
 182 1, and the grief of her son was deep and lasting. He 
 could no longer remain away from the one being he felt 
 could afford him comfort, and he went boldly to the house 
 of M. Foucher and declared his love for Mile. Ad^le, 
 asking of her parents her hand in marriage. Although 
 both were so young, and they had as yet no means of 
 living, the parents did not deny the suit, only stipulating 
 that there should be no present thought of marriage. 
 Victor was very poor at this time, his allowance from his 
 father having been withdrawn, and he having no settled 
 employment ; so the lovers were unwillingly forced to 
 accept these terms. They were very happy at this time, 
 despite his privations, which were very real, and hard for 
 one brought up in conifort, as he had been, to endure. 
 For a whole year he lived on seven hundred francs, which 
 he earned by his pen, cooking his own meals in his 
 humble lodgings, and finding them sometimes scanty and 
 unsatisfactory. He tells us he had but three shirts at this 
 time, and sometimes found it difficult to be as neat as he 
 desired. It was not long, however, before the verses of 
 the young poet attracted the attention of the king, who 
 bestowed a pension upon him of one thousand francs, 
 from his private purse. This enabled the poet to consum- 
 mate his marriage witli Mile. Foucher, which was done in 
 October, 1822. The bridegroom, whose fortune consisted 
 of eight hundred francs, presented his bride with a wed- 
 ding dress of French cashmere. The brightness of the 
 occasion was destroyed by a sudden attack of insanity 
 which overtook Victor's brother Eugene, — an attack from 
 which he never recovered. Victor now began in earnest 
 his literary work, and soon published his first novel, " Han 
 dTslande," which is said to bear a marked resemblance to
 
 VICTOR HUGO. J-- 
 
 the works of Walter Scott. He soon followed this with 
 his plays, " Marion Delorme " and " Hernani," the former 
 of which was soon prohibited by the Government. 
 
 The first representation of " Hernani " was an event 
 long remembered in Paris. It was supposed that the 
 classical school would receive the new drama with litde 
 favor, and would perhaps drive it from the stage ; so the 
 friends of the new movement in literature determined 
 to organize for its defence ; and as Victor Hugo had de- 
 cided against having the usual paid daquers, they deter- 
 mined to form themselves into such a body and carry 
 the play through at all hazards. Fired with zeal, all the 
 young litterateurs of the day organized in companies, each 
 under a captain of its own, and at an early hour in the 
 afternoon of the day set for the performance, appeared 
 before the theatre. Among those selected as captains 
 was Th^ophile Gautier, then but nineteen years old. He 
 determined to appear in a dress worthy of the occasion, 
 and demanded such a costume of his tailor as that worthy 
 man had never before prepared for a human being, — not 
 even a poet. The waistcoat was of scarlet satin, and, 
 according to Gautier's directions, it was made to open 
 behind. The trousers were of a pale-green tint, with a 
 stripe of black velvet down the seams, a black coat with 
 broad velvet facings, and a voluminous gray overcoat 
 turned up with green satin. A piece of watered ribbon 
 did duty both for collar and neck-tie. ^^'ith his long hair 
 streaming down his back, and in this remarkable cos- 
 tume, Gautier must certainly have presented a picturesque 
 appearance. Many other of the " Hernani " partisans 
 appeared in costumes quite as eccentric. The passers- 
 by stopped and stared at them in astonishment. Some 
 of them wore soft felt hats, some appeared in coats of 
 velvet or satin, frogged, broidered, or trimmed with fur ; 
 others were enveloped in Spanish cloaks, and the array 
 of caps was quite miraculous. Most of them wore pro- 
 digious beards and long hair, at a time when every well- 
 regulated citizen was closely cropped and shaven. They
 
 1^6 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 waited more than six hours in the street, and the moment 
 tlie doors were opened rushed in and took possession of 
 the theatre. They had brought their lunches ; and eggs, 
 sausages, and bottles of wine were consumed in the seats 
 of the theatre where the fine ladies usually sat. The 
 evening was tumultuous in the extreme ; but whenever the 
 classics hissed, the disciples of Romanticism not only 
 cheered, but rose to their feet and howled. When the 
 groans of the Philistines became unbearable, the enthusi- 
 asts of the pit would drown them by shouting " To the 
 guillotine with the sycophants." But though the evening 
 was a continual uproar, no doubt was entertained at its 
 close that the victory was with the Romanticists ; and at 
 the conclusion of the performance the name of the author 
 was proclaimed as that of a victorious general, and the 
 shouts of acclamation overwhelmed the storm of hisses. 
 Victor Hugo was the great star of the French capital 
 from that day. 
 
 Meanwhile, all was happiness in the poet's household. 
 The wife of his youthful dreams presided with tact and 
 grace over his home, and her dark Spanish beauty was 
 much admired by the crowds of youthful friends who now 
 began to frequent the house. This type of beauty ap- 
 pears almost as constantly in Victor Hugo's books as the 
 head of La Fornarina did in the pictures of Raphael. He 
 seems constantly to seek to immortalize her whom he had 
 chosen for his own. Madame Hugo's picture was painted 
 for the Salon by their friend M. Louis Boulanger, and 
 was thus described at the time : — 
 
 " A full, well-developed bust, white arms of perfect form ; 
 a pair of plump, delicate hands that a queen might envy ; 
 the hips high, and setting off a figure that was faultless in its 
 contour and flexibility." 
 
 She performed her duties as hostess with infinite grace, 
 and her salon was filled with celebrities like Lamartine, 
 who would write verses in her album, and with women 
 like Madame de Girardin. The house was always filled
 
 VICTOR HUGO. jry 
 
 with visitors, attracted by the fascinations of the hostess 
 as much as by the joyousness of the poet. As Victor 
 Hugo's fame increased, we are told that — 
 
 " the calm serenity of his early years of married life was 
 somewhat disturbed by the cares and anxieties that glory 
 brings ; but at the time of his residence in the Place Royale, 
 of which we have been speaking, there was great happiness 
 in the household, with the young and beautiful children." 
 
 The beautiful Madame Drouet, then an actress upon the 
 Parisian stage, was said to have come between the poet 
 and his wife at a later day ; and it is certain that she 
 shared his banishment, assisting him much in his literary 
 labor, and finally, after the death of the poet's wife, came 
 to preside over his home in the last days, cherishing her 
 love for him to the very close of his life. She is said to 
 have been very beautiful, even in old age, when her hair, 
 Alphonse Daudet tells us, was as white as swan's-down. 
 
 It is not our purpose to deal with the public life of 
 Victor Hugo, and we pass over all that occurred up to 
 the time of the exile, after the coup d'etat of Louis 
 Napoleon. The historian tells us that — 
 
 " Victor Hugo had asked the Assembly whether, hav- 
 ing had a Napoleon the Great, they were now to have 
 a Napoleon the Little ; he had inquired of the Royalists 
 how it was that they entered into such strange fellow- 
 ship with the Empire, pointing out significantly how tlie 
 Imperialists who had murdered the Due D'Enghien, and 
 the Legitimatists who had shot Murat, were now grasping 
 each other's blood-stained hands. From the tribune he 
 had proclaimed that the Republic is invincible, and that in 
 France it would prove itself indestructible, as being identical 
 on the one hand with the age, on the other with the people. 
 In lofty language, alike prophetic of the future and condem- 
 natory of the present, he had poured out his indignation in 
 the ears of the nation. The result of all this was that 
 Bonaparte wrote his name at the head of the list of the 
 proscribed."
 
 1 58 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 Feeling that if he remained in Paris his life would be 
 sacrificed to no purpose, he endeavored to get away from 
 the city. This was no easy matter to accomplish, and 
 had it not been for the active and skilful assistance of 
 Madame Drouet, he would doubtless have been impris- 
 oned, with his many friends, who crowded all the jails of 
 Paris. A price was set upon his head ; twenty-five thou- 
 sand francs was offered to any one who would either kill 
 or arrest him, and there were many assassins lurking 
 about in waiting for him. Madame Drouet took him in 
 a fiacre, and secretly started out to seek for him a refuge. 
 She thought she had friends who would shelter him, as 
 Madame Hugo had sheltered Lahorie during the troub- 
 lous times of the first Empire. She applied to friend 
 after friend in vain. She wept, she implored, she tried 
 to bribe, — in vain. The citizens were too much intimi- 
 dated to dare shelter one of the proscribed, — even 
 Victor Hugo, perhaps the most honored man in the 
 nation. Madame Drouet, however, would not yield to 
 despair, but pursued her way with undaunted determina- 
 tion. The drive was terrible, — past ruined barricades 
 and pointed cannon, through bloody patrols, and among 
 the police so thoroughly accustomed to the hunting of 
 men. They passed more than one Javert in that fearful 
 ride ; and when Victor Hugo afterwards described the 
 sensations of a man pursued like Jean Valjean, he did 
 not have to draw very strongly upon his imagination. 
 The horrible feeling of doubt and distrust, and the cold 
 thrills of dread at every change of circumstance, were 
 well known to his own soul. Madame Drouet's perse- 
 verance was at last rewarded by finding a temporary 
 retreat for her charge under the roof of a distant rela- 
 tive of the poet, where he remained five days, filled Avith 
 the most harrowing anxiety for the friends whom he was 
 endangering, as well as for himself. His two sons were 
 already in prison, and fears for their safety were added 
 to his other burdens. But he escaped at last, in disguise, 
 and fled to Brussels, now filled with French exiles. He
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 159 
 
 managed to communicate with his wife, but his sons in 
 their prison-cells could only conjecture as to his fate. 
 But they heard the roar of cannon and the rattle of 
 musketry outside the walls, and knew that the prison 
 was overflowing with victims ; and they feared the worst. 
 Madame Hugo soon joined her husband in Brussels, 
 and he immediately set to work to write "L'Histoire 
 d'un Crime," and completed it in five months. With the 
 power of a Tacitus he describes the scenes of the great 
 historical drama he has taken part in, and with the pen 
 of a Juvenal lashes the betrayers of the Republic. The 
 book was not published till 1877, but it will tell the story 
 of a shameful epoch in French history to the remotest 
 time. He was not allowed to enjoy his refuge in Brussels 
 long ; almost as soon as he had printed his " Napoleon 
 the Little," which book he wrote after completing the 
 " History of a Crime," he was requested by the Belgian 
 government to leave the country. 
 
 He repaired to the Island of Jerse)^, where he was 
 joined by his sons upon their release, and by quite a 
 party of friends. He took a small house known as 
 Marine Terrace, on the sea-shore, and there set up his 
 household gods once more. The house was only one 
 story high, but it had a balcony, a terrace, and a gar- 
 den ; and it overlooked the sea, which seemed more 
 than all to Victor Hugo. His income was now but 
 seven thousand francs, and he had nine persons to 
 provide for. No more money could be expected 
 from France, and probably no more from literature, at 
 present. But his busy pen kept at its work, trusting to 
 the future ; and the time passed not altogether unpleas- 
 antly to the little body of exiles. Jersey is of itself 
 delightful, and the poet found great pleasure in its 
 climate, its scenery, and its luxuriant vegetation. But 
 Napoleon did not at all enjoy the proximity of his great 
 enemy, and soon took measures to drive him from his 
 retreat. Hearing of the new move against him, Victor 
 Hugo took occasion to defy Napoleon, and to " warn
 
 l6o HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 him that whether it be from France, from Belgium, from 
 England, or from America, my voice shall never cease 
 to declare that sooner or later he will have to expiate 
 the crime of the 2d of December. What is said is true : 
 there is a personal quarrel between him and me ; there 
 is the old quarrel of the judge upon the bench and the 
 prisoner at the bar." They were ordered to quit the 
 Island of Jersey, and were treated to some scenes of 
 violence before departing, which they did with consider- 
 able regret, having found life in that favored region com- 
 fortable, if not inspiring. They received a warm welcome 
 at Guernsey, whither they retreated, and soon made a 
 new home on thaj: hospitable shore. A large and con- 
 venient residence, known as Hauteville House, situated 
 on the top of a cliff, was rented and repaired, and served 
 as a home for the poet and his friends during all the 
 remaining years of his exile, which were destined to be 
 many. Victor Hugo changed and beautified the house 
 according to his own ideas, doing much of the work with 
 his own hands ; and the result is something eminently 
 characteristic of the man. 
 
 On the third story is the study, a kind of belvedere, 
 with its sides and roof composed of glass. In this study, 
 which overlooked the little town of St. Sampson and its 
 picturesque promontory, the poet did his work. Here 
 he finished " Les Mis^rables," which had been begun 
 in the Place Royale ; here was produced the magnificent 
 essay on Shakspeare ; and here he worked almost liter- 
 ally from morning until night. The house became a 
 refuge for exiles from many lands, and a chamber, still 
 known as " Garibaldi's room," was fitted up expressly for 
 that hero, under the expectation that he would accept 
 the invitation of Victor Hugo to share his home, at a 
 time when his fortunes were at their lowest ebb. Many 
 literary men were here at different times, generously cared 
 for by the host, who called the retreat "the raft of 
 Medusa." There were many pets also, especially dogs, 
 as Victor Hugo almost shared the sentiment of Madame
 
 VICTOR HUGO. l5i 
 
 de Stael concerning these animals, "The more I know 
 men, the better I love dogs." 
 
 The wonderful success of " Les Miserables," when it 
 was published in 1862, called the attention of the whok 
 world to the illustrious exile on the sea-girt isle, and after 
 that time he was overwhelmed with visitors from all parts 
 of the earth, anxious to see one who had come to be 
 looked upon as the greatest man of his time. The suc- 
 cess of the book was unprecedented, the sales were enor- 
 mous, and the enthusiasm of readers and critics almost 
 without a parallel. 
 
 Madame Hugo died in 1868, and it was always a great 
 grief to her husband that she could not have lived to 
 share his return to his native land, which took place 
 after the downfall of Louis Napoleon in 1870. After 
 nineteen years of exile, he returned to his country 
 only to find it in the hands of the Prussians first, and 
 of the Commune afterward. One of his companions on 
 that eventful journey thus describes the feelings of the 
 returned exile : — 
 
 " Making good their retreat from Mezieres, on their 
 way to Paris, the remnant of Vinoy's corps, poor, harassed 
 creatures, covered with dust and discolored with powder, 
 pale with exertion and discouragement, were lying all along 
 the road. Close beliind them were the Uhlans. There 
 was no alternative for them but flight, if they would escape 
 the disaster that had befallen the army at Sedan. Defeat 
 was written in their faces, demoralization was evident in 
 their attitude, they were dejected and dirty, they were like 
 pebbles driven along by a hurricane. But what of that ? 
 Anyhow, they were soldiers of France ; their uniform pro- 
 claimed their nationality ; they wore the blue tunic and the 
 red trousers, — but what was of infinitely more consequence, 
 they were carrying their colors back with them. Their 
 defeat did not prevent them bringing back the tri-color 
 safe and sound. 
 
 " Great tears rolled from Victor Hugo's eyes. He leaned 
 from the carriage-window, and with a voice thrilling in its 
 earnestness, he kept shouting : ' Vive la France, vive 
 II
 
 I 62 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 ^ar^u\^ vive la patrie ! ' Exhausted as they were with 
 hunger and fatigue, the bewildered soldiers looked up. 
 They scarcely comprehended what he said, but he con- 
 tinued his shouting, and it was almost like an order of 
 quick march to them all, wlien they made out that they 
 were being assured that they had done their duty, and 
 that it was by no fault of theirs that they had sustained 
 defeat. 
 
 ''And so the train went on. The tears still lost themselves 
 in Victor Hugo's snowy beard. He had lived in the proud 
 illusion that France was invincible ; he was a soldier's son, 
 and could not conceive that the soldiers of his country were 
 not pledged to glory." 
 
 It was ten o'clock when the train reached Paris, but 
 a great crowd which had been gathering for hours was 
 there to receive him. With continued acclamations 
 they bore him to the house of his friend Paul Meurice, 
 where he was to stay, and called upon him continually 
 for a speech. He said a few words to the crowd, at the 
 station and at the house, but gladly sought the seclusion 
 of his new home, being completely overcome with emo- 
 tion. This was at the beginning of the investment of the 
 city by the Prussian troops, and he witnessed the whole 
 of the siege of Paris, and endured its privations with the 
 people. He also witnessed the terrible deeds of the 
 Communists, but — sympathizing, as he always had done, 
 with the poor and the downtrodden — only to condemn 
 them with the utmost vehemence of his nature. Still, he 
 desired their pardon when all was over, feeling for the 
 ignorance which had caused their misguided zeal. About 
 this time his son Charles died very suddenly, which was 
 a great blow to him, and he began to feel that all things 
 were falling away from him. 
 
 The death of his youngest son, Frangois, in 1873, 
 removed the last prop of his age, and only two young 
 grandchildren remained of all who had composed his 
 beloved family. The mother of these children, and her 
 second husband, however, were very much loved by the
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 163 
 
 old poet, and watched very tenderly over his declining 
 years. The children were a source of constant interest 
 and pleasure to him, and have become well known to the 
 world through his work upon " The Art of being a Grand- 
 father." Of the honors which were showered upon him 
 from every side in his closing years, it is useless to write. 
 All are familiar with them, as with the magnificent demon- 
 strations after his death. It is safe to say that few men 
 have been so honored while living, or held in such sacred 
 remembrance after death.
 
 GEORGE SAND. 
 
 UPON no woman of the century has the public fixed 
 its eye with a more eager interest and curiosity 
 than upon Aurore Dudevant, known to the world as 
 George Sand. 
 
 The utmost heights of panegyric and adulation have 
 been scaled in describing her and her work ; also the 
 lowest depths of denunciation and of calumny. Her 
 admirers describe her as being not only the greatest 
 genius of her time, which perhaps few will dispute, but 
 as being the most magnificent and adorable of women 
 as well ; while her detractors can find no language in 
 which to express the depths of their loathing both for 
 her life and some of her works. As usual, a just estimate 
 of such a character as this will be found between the 
 two extremes. She was neither a monster nor a saint, 
 but a woman of magnificent qualities and of defects upon 
 a corresponding scale. As with her life, so with her 
 works. Some are undoubtedly pernicious to an alarming 
 degree, while the influence of others cannot by any stretch 
 of imagination be called bad. The two kinds may per- 
 haps be divided under the head of earlier and later works. 
 When the tumultuous feelings and wild visions of youth 
 were calmed by age, a new kind of literary product came 
 forth. And her life in its latter years was as quiet as her 
 books, and ran as little against the traditions and usages 
 of mankind.
 
 GEORGE SAND. 
 
 165 
 
 George Sand was born in 1804, and descended from 
 Marshal Saxe, the natural son of the King of Poland. 
 This Marshal Saxe was one of the bravest but most licen- 
 tious men of his time, — a time not noted for its domestic 
 virtues. She was brought up in the country until fifteen 
 years of age, in the midst of the elegancies of an aristo- 
 cratic home. But her unbounded vitality called loudly 
 for an out-of-door life, and she lived the life of a boy, 
 never wearying of its rude sports, and enjoying its some- 
 times dangerous excitements. At the close of her fifteenth 
 year she was taken to the Augustine Convent in Paris, 
 where she remained for three years, and where she passed 
 through a very intense religious experience and came 
 near becoming a nun. It is a curious piece of specula- 
 tion to try to imagine what her life as a nun would have 
 been, had this design been carried out. Would the 
 prayers and litanies, the penances and the fasts, have 
 tamed her wild blood? Would her nature have still 
 asserted itself under the cap of the sister? Would she 
 have led a revolt against authority within the church as 
 she did without? Are there any such fierce, tumultuous 
 natures as hers to-day kneeling on stony cloister floors ? 
 Can matins and vespers, the odors of incense, and the 
 sacred ceremonial of the church fill up for an ardent 
 nature all that the service of the world supplies? We 
 shall never know \ for the real history of a faithful daugh- 
 ter of the church will never be written. The story of 
 the three years of George Sand's convent life is very 
 charming, full of variety and sincerity, and matchless in 
 point of style ; but it is a fragment. 
 
 She came out of the convent a young woman know- 
 ing absolutely nothing of real life. The object of all 
 who have charge of young girls in France is to keep 
 them in perfect ignorance of the world. The safety that 
 lies in knowledge is utterly forbidden to them. They 
 are supposed to be children, and are watched over as 
 such until a marriage can be arranged. And this mar- 
 riage, whatever it may be, is usually accepted by the girl
 
 1 66 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 as an escape from a sort of slavery. She is always told 
 that she may only do the things she desires to tlo after 
 marriage. And it is very unusual for any girl to object 
 to the wishes of her friends in this matter. The whole 
 system of marriage in France is so utterly abominable 
 that no other civilized land would tolerate it ; and this 
 sacrifice of the young and ignorant is only one of its 
 diabolical features. Aurore Dudevant did not seem to 
 object more than the rest. She was married, and lived 
 for eight years with her husband, becoming the mother 
 of two children. 
 
 She then left him and her estate of Nohant, and went 
 up to Paris, taking her two children with her. She sac- 
 rificed her personal fortune — which was considerable — 
 in doing so, and was obliged to earn her own living. She 
 tried various things in the artistic line before she essayed 
 the writing of books. At last with one grand bound she 
 leaped before the world in "Indiana." Of course she 
 had written some things of small value before this, but 
 that wonderful book was really her introduction to the 
 world. And it brought the whole literary world to her 
 feet. Thereafter her friends were the first men of France. 
 De Lamennais, Pierre Leroux, Michel, Alfred de Musset, 
 Chopin, Liszt, Delacroix, B^ranger, Sainte-Beuve, Gustave 
 Planche, Mazzini, were her friends, her intimates, or her 
 lovers. 
 
 Alfred de Musset was the first who found favor with 
 her heart, it appears ; and they were inseparably asso- 
 ciated for about three years. This brilliant young poet, 
 so sceptical, so sad, so audacious, so dissolute, was the 
 first of this famous coterie of men to become madly 
 infatuated with George Sand, — but far from the last. It 
 is asserted that each in turn, and many more besides, 
 were the victims of her luring wiles. For many years 
 the wildest stories were afloat concerning her and her 
 enchantments. And the fact that two or three of her 
 most ardent worshippers ended their lives for her sake 
 only added to the interest and the horror with which
 
 GEORGE SAND. 
 
 167 
 
 the world of respectability and morality looked upon 
 this strange woman. She had brolcen once for all with 
 the world of conventionality, and was free to follow what- 
 ever inclination seized upon her, unrestrained by aught 
 but conscience, — for we are far from thinking that she 
 ever parted permanently with that disagreeable but useful 
 monitor. 
 
 So she lived out her brief romance with De Musset, 
 and, apparently unmindful of his tragic end, entered upon 
 a new epoch of her life with that most remarkable 
 modern musical genius, Chopin. 
 
 Poor Alfred de Musset has had the sympathy of all 
 classes and conditions of men, apparently, from that day 
 to this. She tried to vindicate herself in the affair by 
 publishing a book entitled " Elle et Lui," " wherein she 
 depicted the sufferings of an angelic woman, all tender- 
 ness, love, and patience, whose fate was joined to that 
 of a man all egotism, selfishness, sensuousness, and 
 eccentricity." How grandly the woman suffered, and 
 how wantonly the man flung happiness away, is told with 
 all the impassioned fervor of George Sand in her early 
 writings. The taste of the whole proceeding was revolt- 
 ingly low, and no more than matched by that of the re- 
 joinder, which was made in a book called " Lui et Elle," 
 written by Paul de Musset after his brother's death. In 
 this book the picture is reversed : " a hideous woman is 
 portrayed, utterly selfish, dissolute, heartless ; and her 
 lover, who is easily recognized as Musset himself, is de- 
 scribed as having almost all of the heroic virtues." Both 
 books were thoroughly French, — thoroughly execrable. 
 
 Chopin at first feared Madame Sand very much, and 
 refused to be presented to her ; but as she persisted in her 
 desire to make the acquaintance of so fine and delicate 
 a genius, they at last met, and the fate of poor Chopin 
 was at once sealed. He was consumed from the very 
 first by an absorbing passion, to which no other name but 
 morbid infatuation could be applied. INIadame Sand her- 
 self describes it in " Lucrezia Floriani " thus : —
 
 1 68 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 "For it seemed as if this fragile being was absorbed and 
 consumed by liis affection. . . . Others seek happiness in 
 their attachments ; when they no longer find it, the attach- 
 ment gently vanishes. But he loved for the sake of 
 lovino-. No amount of suffering was sufficient to discourage 
 him. He could enter upon a new phase, that of woe ; but 
 the phase of coldness he could never arrive at. It would 
 have been indeed a phase of physical agony, — for his love 
 was his life, and, delicious or bitter, he had not the power 
 of withdrawing himself a single moment from its domi- 
 nation." 
 
 Chopin, sufifering from severe sickness, was ordered to a 
 warmer climate; and in the fall of 1837 Madame Sand 
 accompanied him to the Island of Majorca, where she 
 nursed him back to life, although his friends at the time 
 of his departure never thought to see him again, and al- 
 though he was dangerously ill for a long time after their 
 arrival. This solitude, surrounded by the blue waves of 
 the Mediterranean, and shaded by groves of orange, 
 seemed fitted by its exceeding loveliness for the ardent 
 vows of youthful lovers, still believing in their naive and 
 sweet illusions, sighing for happiness in some desert 
 isle. In this case it was the refuge of those who had 
 grown weary and disenchanted with life, but who hoped 
 in deep devotion to each other to find some solace for 
 their sadness. The memory of those days, like the re- 
 membrance of an entrancing ecstasy which Fate grants 
 but once in a lifetime to her most favored children, al- 
 ways remained dear to the heart of Chopin. When he 
 was restored to health they returned to Paris, where their 
 friendship was continued for about eight years. She then 
 severed her connection with him. Liszt asks in regard to 
 this, in his life of Chopin : — 
 
 "Has genius ever attained that utter self-abnegation, that 
 sublime humility of heart which gives the power to make 
 those strange sacrifices of the entire Past, of the whole 
 Future ; those immolations as courageous as mysterious ; 
 those mystic and utter holocausts of self, not temporary and
 
 GEORGE SAND. 169 
 
 changing, but monotonous and constant, — through whose 
 might alone tenderness may justly claim the higher word 
 devotion? Has not the force of genius its own exclusive 
 and legitimate exactions, and does not the force of woman 
 consist in the abdication of all exactions ? Can the purple 
 and burning flames of genius ever float over the immaculate 
 azure of a woman's destiny ? " 
 
 Liszt also tells us that — 
 
 " Chopin spoke frequently and almost by preference of 
 Madame Sand, without bitterness or recrimination. Tears 
 always filled his eyes when he named her ; but with a kind 
 of bitter sweetness he gave himself up to the memories of 
 past days, alas, now stripped of their manifold significance. 
 . . . All attempts to fix his attention upon other objects 
 were made in vain ; he refused to be comforted, and would 
 constantly speak of the one engrossing subject. ... He 
 was another great and illustrious victim to the transitory 
 attachments occurring between persons of difierent charac- 
 ter, who, experiencing a surprise full of delight in their first 
 sudden meeting, mistake it for a durable feeling, and build 
 hopes and illusions upon it which can never be realized. It 
 is always the nature the most deeply moved, the most ab- 
 solute in its hopes and attachments, for which all transplan- 
 tation is impossible, which is destroyed and ruined in the 
 painful awakening from the absorbing dream. . . . Chopin 
 felt, and often repeated, that the sundering of this long 
 friendship, the rupture of this strong tie, broke all the cords 
 which bound him to life." 
 
 Her friends say, upon her part, that he was a morbid, 
 dreary invalid, jealous beyond endurance, and that she 
 suffered much at his hands, and separated from him only 
 when she could endure his exactions no longer. He did 
 not long survive the sundering of their relations, and died 
 in Paris in 1849, ^^^7 deeply deplored by all admirers of 
 his genius. Chopin was a wonderfully gifted and very re- 
 markable man, exceedingly reserved, and with little of the 
 egotism of genius. His eyes were blue and dreamy, his 
 smile very sweet, his complexion very fair and delicate, his 
 hair light in color, soft and silky, his nose slightly aquiline. 
 His bearing was so distinguished, and his manners stamped
 
 I -o HOME LIFE OF GREA T A UTHORS. 
 
 with so much high breeding, that involuntarily he was al- 
 ways treated en prince. His gestures were many and 
 graceful, yet he was on the whole serene in his bearing, 
 and generally gay in company, though subject to moods of 
 deep melancholy. He was passionately devoted to Poland 
 all his life, and when he was dying requested the Countess 
 Potocka to sing to him the melodies of his country. He 
 was deeply religious in nature, a devout Catholic. 
 
 It was during the years of which we have been speaking 
 that George Sand produced her most famous works. 
 " Indiana " was followed by " Valentine," " Lelia," and 
 " Lettres d'un Voyageur." Others followed in quick suc- 
 cession, many of them dealing with the subject of marriage 
 in such a manner as to raise a most violent storm about 
 her head. People who had never read these books de- 
 scribed them as being of revolting indecency ; and that 
 impression prevails in many quarters even yet. In point 
 of fact, she is no more open to the charge of indelicacy 
 than any prominent English novelist of the day. The 
 opinions are bad enough many times, but the style is 
 always pure and perfect. This is the answer she herself 
 made to her critics : — 
 
 " I was astounded when a few Saint Simonians, con- 
 scientious and sincere philanthropists, estimable and sincere 
 seekers of truth, asked me what I would put in the place of 
 husbands. I answered them naively that it was marriage ; 
 in the same way as in the place of priests who have so much 
 compromised religion, I believe it is religion which ought to 
 be put. . . . That /£'7/<? which I erect and crown over the ruins 
 of the infamous, is my Utopia, my dream, my poetry. That 
 love is grand, noble, beautiful, voluntary, eternal ; but that 
 love is marriage such as Jesus made it, such as Saint Paul 
 explained it. This I ask of society as an innovation, as an 
 institution lost in the night of ages, which it would be op- 
 portune to revive, to draw from the dust of aeons, and the 
 shrine of habits, if it wishes to see real conjugal fidelity, 
 real repose, and the real sanctity of the family, replace the 
 species of shameful contract and stupid despotism bred by 
 the infamous decrepitude of the world."
 
 GEORGE SAND. 
 
 171 
 
 It must always be remembered that she wrote of French 
 marriages, in which there is no pretence of having love 
 to start with ; and if we remember this, her language can 
 scarcely be considered too strong. The system is ut- 
 terly vile, and her hatred of it an honor to her in every 
 sense. Had she done nothing worse than to protest 
 against this form of marriage few would condemn her; 
 her condemnation comes rather from the life she felt it 
 consistent with her theories to live for many years. 
 
 What the world said was : " The welfare of the human 
 family demands that a marriage legally made shall never be 
 questioned or undone. Marriage is not a union depending 
 on love, or congeniality, or any such condition. It is just as 
 sacred when made for money, or for ambition, or for lust of 
 the flesh, or for any other purpose, however ignoble or 
 base, as when contracted in the spirit of the purest mutual 
 love." Against all this, George Sand, both with pen and 
 life, protested. She contended that it was love alone which 
 made marriage anything but a disgusting sin. We have 
 heard much of this in these latter days, even in our own 
 country, but it was George Sand who first struck the key- 
 note; the doctrine is essentially hers in all its parts. 
 That she denounced the whole system of marriages of 
 convenience, is an honor to her ; that she proclaimed love 
 as the only true foundation for marriage, is equally an 
 honor ; but that she assailed the institution of legal 
 marriage as a whole, and overleaped its bounds and 
 became a law to herself in the matter, is her weakness 
 and her shame. It is frequently denied that she did 
 this. It is said that she did not assail the institution 
 of marriage, but only the things that are perpetrated in 
 its name. 
 
 " But all the same [as another has well said], her eloquent 
 expositions of ill-assorted unions, her daring appeals from 
 the obligations they impose to the affections they outrage, 
 her assertion of the riglits of nature over the conventions 
 of society, have the final effect of justifying the violation of 
 duty on the precarious ground of passion and inclination.
 
 1-2 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 " Nobody who knows what the actual life of George Sand 
 has been can doubt for a moment the true nature of her 
 opinions on the subject of marriage. It is not a pleasant 
 subject to touch, and we should shrink from it if it were not 
 as notorious as everything else by which she has become 
 famous in her time. It forms in reality as much a part of 
 the philosophy she desires to impress upon the world as the 
 books through which she has expanded her theory. It is 
 neither more nor less than her theory of freedom and inde- 
 pendence in the matter of passion (we dare not dignify it by 
 any higher namej put into action, — rather vagrant action, 
 we fear, but on that account all the more decisive." 
 
 Society and she were naturally at war from the begin- 
 ning of her career ; and she suffered from it, though she 
 dealt many bitter blows at it even while she suffered. 
 " What has it done," she says in one place, — 
 
 " what has it done for our moral education, and what is it 
 doing for our children, this society shielded with such care ? 
 Nothing. Those whom it calls vain complainers, and rebels, 
 and madmen, may reply: Suffer us to bewail our martyrs, 
 poets without a country that, we are, forlorn singers well 
 versed in the causes of their misery and of our own. You 
 do not comprehend the malady which killed them ; they 
 themselves did not comprehend it. If one or two of us at 
 the present day open our eyes to a new light, is it not by a 
 strange and unaccountable good Providence ? and have we 
 not to seek our grain of faith in storm and darkness, com- 
 bated by doubt, irony, the absence of all sympathy, all ex- 
 ample, all brotherly aid, all protection and countenance in 
 high places? Try yourselves to speak to your brethren heart 
 to heart, conscience to conscience ! Try it ! but you can- 
 not, busied as you are with watching and patching up in all 
 directions your dykes which the flood is invading: the ma- 
 terial existence of this society of yours absorbs all your cares, 
 and requires more than all your efforts. Meanwhile the 
 powers of human thought are growing into strength and rise 
 on all sides around you. Among these threatening appari- 
 tions there are some which fade away and re-enter the dark- 
 ness, because the hour of life has not yet struck, and the fiery 
 spirit which quickened them could strive no longer with the
 
 GEORGE SAND. j»^ 
 
 horrors of the present chaos ; but there are others that can 
 wait, and you will find them confronting you, up and alive to 
 say, 'You have allowed the death of our brethren, and we 
 we do not mean to die.' " 
 
 But she rises after a while out of her depths of passionate 
 contention with a world out of joint, with the reign of 
 stupidity and the tyranny of convention, into serener 
 heights ; and in her later books she gives us exquisite 
 pictures of nature, with which she has the closest sym- 
 pathy ; lovely stories of rural life and gentle tales of per- 
 fectly pure love. Her passionate resentment against the 
 world has worn itself out, and she is calmer, wiser now. 
 Her daughter, too, Solange, has grown to be a woman 
 and has a lover of her own, and the household thoughts 
 and cares, and the tenderness of a serious and unselfish 
 cast which creep into a mother's heart upon such occa- 
 sions, shed their sweetness upon this wayward soul, and 
 inspire it with congenial utterances. Now she looks back 
 and says : — 
 
 "My poor children, my own flesh and blood, will perhaps 
 turn upon me and say : ' You are leading us wrong ; you 
 mean to ruin us as well as yourself. Are you not unhappy, 
 reprobated, evil spoken of? What have you gained by these 
 unequal struggles, by these much-trumpeted duels of 3'ours 
 with Custom and Belief.'' Let us do as others do ; let us get 
 what is to be got from this easy and tolerant world.' This 
 is what they will say to me. Or at best, if, out of tenderness 
 for me, or from their own natural disposition, they give ear 
 to my words and believe me, whither should I guide them ? 
 Into what abysses shall we go and plunge ourselves, we 
 three? for we shall be our own three upon earth, and not 
 one soul with us. What shall I reply to them, if they come 
 and say to me : ' Yes, life is unbearable in a world like this. 
 Let us die tofjether. Show us the patli of Bernica, or the 
 Lake of St(fnio, or the glaciers of Jacques ' ? " 
 
 Again, in the later times, she said : — 
 
 " Let us all try to be saints, and if we succeed we will 
 know all the more how difficult a thing it is, and what indul-
 
 174 
 
 JIOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 gence is owed to those who are not yet saints. Then we 
 shall acknowledge that there is sometiiing to be modified, 
 either in law or opinion ; for the aim of society should be to 
 render perfection accessible to all, and man is very feeble 
 when he struggles alone against the mad torrent of custom 
 and of ideas." 
 
 A very wise, saying truly, written out of her own experi- 
 ence. Sad, too, as is much of her later writing, though 
 there is not in it the passionate despair of her earlier 
 work. 
 
 She lived to be seventy-two years old, and had known 
 and experienced many phases of life, — the tumultuous 
 passions and the wild revolt of youth, the cooler and 
 more self-contained life of middle age, and the sombre 
 color of a rather hopeless old age. Even in age she had 
 her pleasures, however. She delighted in her grandchil- 
 dren, in books, in pictures, in nature, and in work. Her 
 unwearied pen moved until the last, and did not lose its 
 cunning. There was much of the old strength and power 
 to the last. But she had ceased to desu-e to destroy; 
 she sought at last to build up. 
 
 Here are two descriptions of her as she appeared to 
 different observers, in youth and in later life. Heine, 
 who saw with the eye of an artist and wrote with the pen 
 of a critic, described her in youth : — 
 
 " George Sand, the greatest of French writers, is a woman 
 of remarkable beauty. Like the genius revealed in her 
 writings, her countenance may rather be called beautiful 
 than fascinating. The face of George Sand has precisely 
 the character of Grecian regularity. The cut of her features 
 has not exactly the severity of antique models ; her face is 
 softened by modern sentiment, which veils it with sadness. 
 Her forehead is not high, and her rich and luxuriant brown 
 hair falls from either side of her head upon her shoulders. 
 Her eyes are not brilliant ; has their fire gone out under fre- 
 quent tears, or only in her writings ? George Sand's eyes 
 are soft and tranquil. Her nose is neither aquiline, nor 
 spiritual, nor pugged ; it is a straight and ordinary nose. 
 Around her mouth habitually plays a smile of kindness and
 
 GEORGE SAND. 
 
 175 
 
 benevolence, but not very bewitching ; her inferior lip pro- 
 trudes a little, and seems to reveal a fatigue of the senses. 
 Her chin is finely formed. Her shoulders are magnificent ; 
 also her hands, her arms, her feet, which are very small. 
 George Sand is beautiful like the Venus of Milo." 
 
 Now hear one who described her in old age : — 
 
 "She was not at all hke the woman of my imagination; 
 she looked very little like the bold and vigorous thinker she 
 is ; one would have taken her at first sight for a gentle, se- 
 rene old grandmother. She is short, and inclined to embon- 
 point. Her hair, which is still abundant, though faded by 
 time, was simply arranged. Her features are not striking ; 
 her eyes have that vague, dreamy look which she herself 
 refers to in her ' Histoire de Ma Vie ' as one of her marked 
 characteristics." 
 
 Most people in her youth found her beautiful, though 
 some thought her face heavy, and even coarse ; but she 
 had a matchless charm of manner which had far more 
 effect than any mere beauty. She seemed to enslave men 
 at her will. Poets, artists, statesmen, and priests, were all 
 at her side, or at her feet. Her manner, at least in later 
 life, was very retiring, and she was singularly modest and 
 free from literary vanity. When asked once which of her 
 works she preferred, she answered, apparently quite sin- 
 cerely, " Mon Dieu, I detest them all." 
 
 Let us close with Matthew Arnold's tribute of re- 
 spect : — 
 
 " It is silent, that eloquent voice ; it is sunk, that noble, 
 that speaking head ; we sum up as we best can what she 
 said to us, and we bid her adieu. From many hearts, in 
 many lands, a troop of tender and grateful regrets converge 
 toward her humble churchyard in Berry. Let them be 
 joined by these words of sad homage from one of a nation 
 which she esteemed, and which knew her very little and very 
 ill. Her guiding thought, the guiding thought which she did 
 her best to make ours too, 'the sentiment of the ideal life, 
 which is none other than man's normal life as we shall one
 
 176 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 day know it,' is in harmony with words and promises fami- 
 liar to that sacred place where she lies." 
 
 Over her grave might well be written those words over 
 another grave in Pere-la-Chaise : — 
 
 He Knoweth.
 
 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 
 
 IN the beginning of the eighteenth century the great- 
 grandfather of the famous Lord Macaulay, the author 
 of the glowing and impassioned History of England, was 
 minister of Tiree and Coll, when his stipend was taken 
 from him at the instance of the Laird of Ardchattan. 
 The slight inconvenience of having nothing to live upon 
 did not seem to incline the old minister in the least de- 
 gree to resign his charge and to seek a flock who could 
 feed their shepherd. He stayed valiantly on, doing his 
 duty faithfully by his humble people. But after some 
 time had elapsed, " his health being much impaired, and 
 there being no church or meeting-house, he was exposed 
 to the violence of the weather at all seasons ; and having 
 no manse or glebe, and no fund for communion ele- 
 ments, and having no mortification for schools or other 
 pious purposes in either of the islands, and the air being 
 unwholesome," — he was finally compelled to leave, much 
 to his own regret and that of his poor little flock. 
 
 The reasons enumerated certainly seem sufificient to us 
 in these later days for a change of parishes ; and indeed 
 some modern ministers have been known to change 
 upon provocations less than these. There was fine stuff" 
 in the old Scotch ministers of that day, and it is pleasant 
 to hear that this one found a new charge to which he 
 ministered for half a century. There were many other 
 
 12
 
 i-jS HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 ministers in the Macaulay family during several genera- 
 tions ; but Zachary Macaulay, the father of the his- 
 torian, seemed born with a taste for business, and was 
 accordingly sent out to Jamaica to learn mercantile af- 
 fairs, when quite young. Here he saw much of negro 
 slavery, and became so much impressed with its horrors, 
 and so filled with sympathy for the black race, that he re- 
 solved to devote himself to their interests. He accord- 
 ingly resigned his position in Jamaica and returned to 
 Scotland, where until his death he labored in the unpojD- 
 ular and misunderstood ranks of the abolitionists. A 
 colony was projected in Sierra Leone for freed slaves, and 
 young Macaulay was appointed a member of the council, 
 and sailed for Africa to take practical part in the work for 
 the negro. Soon after his arrival there he succeeded to 
 the position of Governor, and for some time worked he- 
 roically in that capacity. But in the very midst of the 
 Reign of Terror in France, a French fleet bore down upon 
 the little colony and almost wiped it out of existence. 
 Zachary Macaulay stayed for a year after the attack, 
 heroically trying to rehabilitate the little colony, and par- 
 tially succeeded in doing so, when, his health failing, he 
 returned to England, where he gave almost the entire 
 remaining years of his life to the work of negro emanci- 
 pation in one form or another. 
 
 Thomas Babington Macaulay was bom the 25 th of 
 October, 1800, the day of St. Crispin and the anniversary 
 of Agincourt. He drew in the love of freedom with his 
 earliest breath, and he was reared with the utmost care 
 by those high moralists, his noble parents. He was a 
 prodigy from babyhood. From the time he was three 
 years old he read incessantly, for the most part lying on 
 the rug before the fire. Many laughable stories are told 
 of his precocity, particularly of the fine language he used 
 when a mere infant. For instance, when four years old 
 some hot coffee was spilled on his legs, and after a little 
 time a lady inquired of him if he felt better now, when 
 the phenomenon replied, " Thank you, madam, the
 
 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 
 
 179 
 
 agony is abated." Of course so quaint and remarkable a 
 child was much petted and spoiled, and probably rendered 
 somewhat conceited and priggish. But he was docile and 
 affectionate, and was then, as always thereafter, the idol of 
 his family. 
 
 After he left Cambridge he went up to London, and 
 soon after wrote his article on Milton for the " Edinburgh 
 Review." Like Byron, he awoke one morning and found 
 himself famous. Compliments and enthusiastic letters 
 poured in upon him from all sides. The one compliment 
 which he said gave him the most pleasure was Jeffrey's 
 word at the end of a business note : " The more I think, 
 the less I can conceive where you picked up that style." 
 And no wonder ; that style was not a thing to be picked 
 up every day. Jeffrey did well to wonder. Macaulay at 
 once became the fashion, and invitations were showered 
 upon him from every side, many of which he accepted. 
 The first flush of such a success as Macaulay's must have 
 been very sweet to a young man of his genial nature. 
 He was thus described by Praed : — 
 
 " There came up a short, manly figure, marvellously up- 
 right, with a bad neckcloth, and one hand in his waistcoat 
 pocket. Of regular beauty he had little to boast ; but in 
 faces where there is an expression of great power or of great 
 good-humor, or both, you do not regret its absence." 
 
 He had a massive head, and features powerful and 
 rugged, but peculiarly expressive. His face was often- 
 times all aglow with emotion. He dressed badly but not 
 cheaply ; indeed, his wardrobe, Trevelyan tells us, was 
 always enormously overstocked. " Later in life he in- 
 dulged himself in an apparently inexhaustible succession 
 of handsome embroidered waistcoats, which he used to 
 regard with much complacency." 
 
 Among the first places to which the new lion was in- 
 vited was of course the famous resort of celebrities, Hol- 
 land House ; and in his letters to his two younger sisters, 
 — to whom he was always the most devoted of brothers.
 
 1 So HOME LIFE OF GREA T A UTI/ORS. 
 
 — he frctiucntly narrates his experiences there. Let us 
 glance at a few oi these pictures : — 
 
 " Well, my dear, I have been to Holland House. I took 
 a glass coach, and arrived, through a fine avenue of elms, at 
 tlie great entrance about seven o'clock. The house is de- 
 lii^htful, the very perfection of the old Elizabethan style, — 
 a considerable number of very large and very comfortable 
 rooms, rich with antique carving and gilding, but carpeted 
 and furnished with all the skill of the best modern uphol- 
 sterers. Lady Holland is certainly a woman of considerable 
 talent and great acquirements. To me she was excessively 
 courteous ; yet there was a haughtiness in her courtesy 
 which, even after all that I had heard of her, surprised me. 
 The centurion did not keep his soldiers in better order than 
 she keeps her guests. It is to one, ' Go,' and he goeth ; and 
 to another, ' Do this,' and it is done. ' Ring the bell, Mr. 
 Macaulay.' ' Lay down that screen, Lord Russell ; you will 
 spoil it.' ' Mr. Allen, take a candle and show Mr. Cradock 
 the picture of Bonaparte.' Her ladyship used me as well, I 
 believe, as it is her way to use anybody. . . . 
 
 " I had a good deal of pleasant conversation with Rogers. 
 He was telling me of the curiosity and interest which 
 attached to the persons of Sir Walter Scott and Lord 
 Byron. When Scott dined at a gentleman's house in 
 London not long ago, all the servant-maids in the house 
 asked leave to stand in the passage and see him pass. He 
 was, as you may conceive, greatly flattered. About Lord 
 Byron, whom he knew well, he told me some curious an- 
 ecdotes. When Byron passed through Florence, Rogers 
 was there. The inn had fifty windows in front. All were 
 crowded with women, mostly Englishwomen, to catch a 
 glimpse of their favorite poet. Among them were some at 
 whose houses he had been in England oftentimes, and with 
 whom he had lived on friendly terms. He would not notice 
 them or return their salutations. Rogers was the only per- 
 son he spoke to. The worst thing that I know about Lord 
 Byron is the very unfavorable impression which he made on 
 men who certainly were not inclined to judge him harshly, 
 and who were not personally ill-used by him. Sharp 
 and Rogers both speak of him as an unpleasant, affected, 
 splenetic person. I have heard hundreds and tliousands of
 
 THOMAS BASING TON MA CA ULA V. j 8 1 
 
 persons who never knew him rant about him, but I never 
 heard a single expression of fondness for him fall from the 
 lips of any one who knew him well. Yet even now there are 
 those who cannot talk a quarter of an hour about Charles 
 Fox without tears — after twenty-five years. . . . 
 
 " In the evening Lord John Russell came, and old Talley- 
 rand. I had seen Talleyrand before. I now had the pleas- 
 ure of listening to his conversation. He is certainly the 
 greatest curiosity I ever fell in with. His head is sunk 
 down between two high shoulders. One of his feet is hide- 
 ously distorted. His face is pale as that of a corpse, and 
 wrinkled to a frightful degree. His eyes have an odd, glassy 
 stare. His hair, thickly powdered and pomatumed, hangs 
 down his shoulders on each side as straight as a pound of 
 tallow candles. His conversation, however, soon makes you 
 forget his ugliness and infirmities." 
 
 One more glimpse of Lady Holland : — 
 
 " Her ladyship is all courtesy and kindness to me; but her 
 demeanor to some others, particularly to poor Allen, is such 
 as quite pains me to witness. He is really treated like a 
 negro slave. ' Mr. Allen, go into my drawing-room and 
 bring my reticule.' ' Mr. Allen, go and see what can be the 
 matter that they do not bring up dinner.' ' Mr. Allen, there 
 is not turtle-soup enough for you. You must take gravy- 
 soup or none.' Yet I scarcely pity the man. He has an 
 independent income, and if he can stoop to be ordered 
 about like a footman I cannot so much blame her for the 
 contempt with which she treats him." 
 
 Here are one or two touches of nature : — 
 
 " Get Blackwood's new number. There is a description 
 of me in it: 'A little, splay-footed, ugly dumpling of a fellow, 
 with a mouth from ear to ear.' Conceive how such a charge 
 must affect a man so enamoured of his own beauty as I am." 
 
 " After the debate I walked about the streets with Bulwer 
 till near three o'clock. I spoke to him about his novels with 
 perfect sincerity, praising warmly and criticising freely. He 
 took the praise as a greedy boy takes an apple-pie, and the 
 criticism as a good, dutiful boy takes senna-tea. At all 
 events I shall expect him to puff me well. I do not see why 
 I should not have my puffers as well as my neighbors."
 
 iS2 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 Here is a glimpse of the domestic economy of tlie 
 great Holland House : — 
 
 " The dinner was not as good as usual, and her ladyship 
 kept up a continued lamentation during the whole repast. 
 I should never have found out that everything was not as it 
 should be, but for her criticisms. The soup was too salt ; 
 the cutlets were not exactly comr/ie il faitt ; and the pudding 
 was hardly enough boiled. I was amused to hear from the 
 splendid mistress of such a house the same sort of apologies 
 
 which made when her cook forgot the joint and sent 
 
 too small a dinner to table." 
 
 All these artless details were given to amuse his young 
 sisters at home, — the beings he loved best on earth, not 
 only at this time but throughout life. If he ever had any 
 deeper love for another, there is no hint given of it in his 
 life or letters. Probably for many reasons he never con- 
 templated marriage. When he was young he was too 
 poor to think of it ; when he was older he had his own 
 family upon Kis hands, and cared for them munificently to 
 the end. He was very generous with his money and never 
 learned the art of saving. It would seem scarcely possi- 
 ble that a man of his warm heart and ardent temperament 
 could have gone through life with no romance ; but if he 
 had any such experience it has not been given to the 
 world. He loved his sisters, and his nephews and nieces, 
 with the most passionate devotion, and was in turn idolized 
 by them. His nephew says : — 
 
 " It must be acknowledged that where he loved, he loved 
 more entirely and more exclusively than was well for him- 
 self. It was improvident in him to consecrate such intensity 
 of feeling upon relations who, however deeply they were 
 attached to him, could not always be in a position to requite 
 him with the whole of their time and the whole of their heart. 
 He suffered much for that improvidence, but he was too just 
 and kind to permit others to suffer with him ; and it is not 
 for one who obtained by inheritance a share of his inestima- 
 ble affection to regret a weakness such as this."
 
 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 183 
 
 This refers to his grief at the marriage of his sisters, 
 which was really great and enduring. He had planned 
 to have them in his home, and not to be in theirs ; and 
 when it turned out otherwise he could not at first be 
 reconciled to it. His sister Nancy went out with him to 
 India after his appointment there, and soon fell in with 
 young Trevelyan, — to whom she became engaged, with 
 her brother's approval but to his great grief. He calls it 
 "a tragical denouement to an absurd plot." After the 
 marriage they formed one household during his stay in 
 India, and her home was to all intents and purposes his 
 own during life. His youngest sister died during his stay 
 abroad, and of her he thus writes : — 
 
 " The last month has been the most painful I ever went 
 through. Indeed, I never knew before what it was to be 
 miserable. Early in January letters from England brought me 
 news of the death of my sister. What she was to me no words 
 can express. I will not say that she was dearer to me than 
 anything in the world, for my sister who was with me was 
 equally dear; but she was as dear to me as one human 
 being can be to another. Even now, when time has begun 
 to do its healing work, I cannot write about her without 
 being altogether unmanned." 
 
 His only solace was found in books. He could at any 
 time bury himself in these and forget all the world. Proba- 
 bly there never was such a reader before. He devoured 
 books like a gourmand. He read everything — Greek, 
 Latin, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese ; 
 and books of all kinds in these languages, — history, 
 belles-lettres, poetry, novels, old chronicles. He seemed 
 to have a passion for all. He would read a book in an 
 hour which it would take any one else half a day to get 
 through in the poorest shape. And he would know what 
 was in it, too. He read enormous quantities of novels 
 always, and was very fond of poor ones, — none too 
 poor for him were written at that time. It is a question 
 whether if he had lived till this day the same thing could
 
 iS4 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 liave been said of liim. It is not recorded whether he 
 ever encountered any of Anthony Trollopc's works during 
 his Hfe. 
 
 If Macaulay had not been known as a great man of 
 letters he would probably have been known as a great 
 orator. He was, indeed, one of the best speakers of his 
 day, and the House of Commons, that listens to so few 
 speakers, always gave its attention to him. It seems a 
 great pity that he should have given so many years of his 
 life to Parliament, and to official work, when his true 
 career undoubtedly was literature pure and simple, for 
 which no man of his time was so splendidly equipped, 
 both by nature and by preparation. We ought to have 
 had from him more enduring historical works, and more of 
 his masterly estimates of the works of other men. After 
 his retirement into private hfe, in 1847, he enjoyed his 
 freedom intensely, and much regretted that he had not ob- 
 tained it sooner. He enjoyed the pleasures of society 
 greatly at this time. He was the centre of a gifted circle 
 of men — the most brilliant of their time — all of whom 
 were his close friends and admirers. How brilliantly these 
 men talked is already a matter of tradition. Macaulay 
 was the most wonderful conversationalist, probably, since 
 Dr. Johnson, not even excepting Carlyle, or Sydney Smith, 
 or Coleridge. Very laughable stories are told, of course, 
 of a man who would talk three hours without pause, 
 and undoubtedly there were many people sadly bored by 
 him in his day ; but to those who could appreciate the 
 remarkable stores of information he possessed, and the 
 lucidity with which he could deal them forth, — to say 
 nothing of his rhetorical splendors, — those discourses of 
 his were never tedious, but full of supreme interest. To 
 be sure, Sydney Smith sneered at his "wonderful stores 
 of ver)' accurate — misinformation," but he was one who 
 did not like a rival near the throne ; and in Macaulay's 
 absence he was himself the sun around which the social 
 universe revolved. Thackeray wrote after Macaulay's 
 death : —
 
 THOMAS BA BING TON MA CAUL AY. 185 
 
 " Now that wonderful tongue is to speak no more, will not 
 many a man grieve that he no longer can Hsten ? To re- 
 member the talk is to wonder, to think not only of the treas- 
 ures he had stored, but of the trifles which he could produce 
 with equal readiness. What a vast, brilliant, wonderful 
 store of learning he had ; what strange lore would he not 
 fetch at your bidding." 
 
 No report of these conversations exists, except such as 
 is found scattered in private diaries. In these there are 
 records of many an Attic night, and still more agreeable 
 morning. Lord Carlisle's journal contains as many of 
 these records, perhaps, as any one's. He makes glowing 
 mention of Macaulay and his eloquence, after nearly every 
 meeting of the famous circle. The only criticism he made, 
 and it is one that was frequently made on Macaulay, was 
 that it was remarkable what quantities of trash he remem- 
 bered. He could repeat pages of the very dreariest stuff 
 that ever was written, and was in danger of doing so on 
 small provocation, — an infliction it must have been hard 
 for his friends to have endured sometimes. Great stories 
 are told of his remarkable memory, — one seldom equalled 
 by any man. He was always willing to accept a friendly 
 challenge to a feat of memory. One day in the board- 
 room of the British Museum he handed to Lord Aberdeen 
 a sheet of foolscap covered with writing arranged in parallel 
 columns down each of the four pages. This document, 
 on which the ink was still wet, proved to be a full list of 
 the Senior Wranglers at Cambridge, with their dates and 
 colleges for the hundred years during which the names 
 of Senior Wranglers had been recorded in the University 
 Calendar. On another occasion Sir David Dundas 
 asked : — 
 
 '"Macaulay, do you know your Popes?' ' No,' was the 
 answer; ' I always get wrong among the Innocents.' ' But 
 you can say your Archbishops of Canterbury ? ' ' Any fool,' 
 said Macaulay, ' could say his Archbishops of Canterbury 
 backwards ; ' and he went off at a score, drawing breath only 
 once in order to remark on some oddity."
 
 iS6 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 He was easily bored in general society, and in later life 
 rarely went beyond his little circle of intimates. Children 
 were the only people of whom he never tired, and he was 
 a royal companion to them always. He was unrivalled in 
 the invention of games, and never wearied of repeating 
 them. He had an inexhaustible repertory of small dramas 
 for his nieces, and sustained a great variety of parts with 
 much skill. An old friend of the family writes : — 
 
 " There was one never-failing game of building up a den 
 with newspapers behind the sofa, and of enacting robbers 
 and tigers ; we shrieking with terror, but always begging 
 him to begin again, of which we never grew weary." 
 
 He writes to a friend concerning Dickens, that he did 
 not think it possible for fiction to affect him as the death of 
 little Nell had done, and adds : — 
 
 " Have you seen the first number of ' Dombey ' ? There 
 is not much in it, but there is one passage which made me 
 cry as if my heart would break. It is the description of a lit- 
 tle girl who has just lost her mother, and is unkindly treated 
 by everybody. Images of that kind always overpower me 
 even when the artist is less skilful than Dickens." 
 
 In truth, his extreme sensibility was often a great annoy- 
 ance to him. He strove very hard to overcome it, but in 
 vain ; and he was moved to tears upon a great many occa- 
 sions, when he would have given much to be able to con- 
 trol Mmself. 
 
 Let us quote a little more from Thackeray's tribute to 
 him. 
 
 " All sorts of successes were easy to him. As a lad he 
 goes down into the arena with others, and wins all the 
 prizes to which he has a mind. A place in the Senate is 
 straightway offered to the young man. He takes his seat 
 there, he speaks when so minded, without party anger or 
 intrigue, but not without party faith and a sort of heroic 
 enthusiasm for his cause ; and speech is also a success to him. 
 Still he is a poet and philosopher even more than orator. 
 . . . Years ajjo there was a wretched outcrv raised because
 
 THOMAS BASING TON MA CAUL AY. 187 
 
 he dated a letter from Windsor Castle, where he was staying. 
 Immortal gods! was not this man a fit guest for any palace 
 in the world, or a fit companion for any man or woman in it? 
 The place of such a natural chief was among the first in the 
 land." 
 
 Macaulay died, in 1S60, a sudden and painless death, 
 and lies buried in Westminster Abbey, in the Poet's Cor- 
 ner, near the west wall of the South Transept, at the feet 
 of Addison.
 
 
 EDWARD BULWER LYTTON. 
 
 THE British aristocracy has given to literature a few 
 names which the world will not willingly let die. 
 But its contribution to the world's genius has not been 
 great in proportion to its numbers, its exceptional oppor- 
 tunities for culture, and the great prominence which has 
 naturally been given to its achievements. From out 
 its ranks have come few of the great names in English 
 literature. 
 
 Among these the name of Lord Lytton, or Bulwer, as 
 he is more generally known in literature, holds a promi- 
 nent place. For the period of a long life he lived in the 
 world's eye, and the world feels a great interest in the 
 character of the man as well as in his writings. 
 
 His paternal ancestors had been settled in Norfolk 
 since the Conquest, The name of Bulwer attests the 
 Scandinavian origin of the Norman soldier. The great- 
 grandfather of Edward Bulwer married the heiress of the 
 Earles of Heydon Hall, which became the family resi- 
 dence. Our hero's father " contracted a romantic, if 
 illicit, attachment to a young person of great beauty, who 
 eloped with him from a boarding-school in which she 
 was a teacher, and, though too haughty a man to marry 
 beneath him, he had at least the justice to say that while 
 she lived he would never marry any one else. And when 
 the hand of a great and noble heiress was offered him.
 
 EDWARD BULWER LYTTOJSF. 189 
 
 although a very ambitious man, he refused her upon the 
 ground that he was not quite satisfied with the shape of 
 her ladyship's nose." General Bulwer built for his mistress 
 a villa in the neighborhood of London, and as he was 
 driving into the yard on his return from some military 
 duties which had detained him longer than usual, she ran 
 out to meet him. In this hurried action she received a 
 kick from one of the horses, and died of the injury. 
 
 After this, the General, who is described by his son as 
 being of a very powerful, self-willed nature, wholly uncul- 
 tivated by literature, but with that ability for action which 
 takes lessons from life, — married the mother of our hero, 
 a delicate girl, with intelligent, dark-blue eyes, with shy 
 sensitive temper, passionately fond of poetry, and deeply 
 under the influences of religion. Her family was as ancient 
 as that of the Bulwers, the Lyttons having intermarried 
 with many houses famous in history. But family concord 
 was not one of the characteristics of the Lytton family, 
 and Bulwer's grandfather and grandmother had lived 
 stormily together for a few years, and separated by mutual 
 consent. The essential faults are said to have been all 
 on the side of the grandfather. The only daughter of the 
 uncongenial pair was not permitted to dwell permanently 
 with either. She was sent at the age of five to a large 
 school, where she lived a sad life for a long time, without 
 any of the tender care and affection which such a child 
 craves, and must have, for anything like a healthful child- 
 life. After a while she went to live with her father, and 
 still later with her mother, from whose house she was 
 married to General Bulwer. He was not a man who 
 could appreciate the rarer qualities of Miss Lytton. He 
 could have no share in her intellectual life and no sym- 
 pathy with her religious nature. But the elegance of her 
 manners satisfied his pride, her domestic habits gave him 
 promise of a peaceful home, and, greatest merit of all, 
 her features suited him. He hked an aquihne nose. A 
 nose that turned up the least bit, his son tells us, would 
 have disgusted him with a Venus. The lady's nose in
 
 I go 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 this instance proving satisfactory, a happy marriage was 
 anticipated, although the bridegroom had buried his iieart 
 ui the grave of a mistress, and the bride had but partially 
 recovered from an unhappy attachment for a man beneath 
 herself in rank, — in fact, a merchant's son. But the mar- 
 riage proved far from a happy one, and was closed after 
 a few years by the sudden death of General Bulvver. Our 
 hero thus writes of him : — 
 
 "Peace to thy dust, O my father! Faults thou hadst, 
 but those rather of temper than of heart, — of deficient edu- 
 cation and the manlike hardness of imperious will than of 
 ungenerous disposition or epicurean corruption. If thou 
 didst fail to give happiness to the woman whom thou didst 
 love, many a good man is guilty of a similar failure. It had 
 been otherwise, I verily believe, hadst thou chosen a partner 
 of intellectual cultivation more akin to thine own, — of hardier 
 nerve and coarser fibre, — one whom thy wrath would less 
 have terrified, whom thy converse would more have charmed; 
 of less moral spirit and more physical courage." 
 
 Verily we are tempted to ask when we read of this 
 marriage — as well as of the son's own marriage and the 
 marriages of many other members of the English aris- 
 tocracy whose domestic lives have latterly seen the light 
 of day — whether less of moral spirit and more of phys- 
 ical courage is not the great need among women who 
 aspire to the peerage. Strong nerves and a martial spirit, 
 if they could not secure peace, would at least place the 
 combatants upon a more equal footing, and the world 
 would be spared the spectacle of the mild-mannered and 
 meek bullied by the overbearing and violent. 
 
 As for Bulwer himself, he had the hot blood, imperious 
 temper, and remorseless will of the combined Bulwers 
 and Lyttons ; and, it must be added, a vanity and ego- 
 tism so boundless as to be peculiarly his own, and an 
 arrogance and superciliousness which throughout life were 
 a constant drawback, and which interfered materially with 
 the acknowledgment by the world of his really great 
 powers.
 
 EDWARD BU LIVER LYTTON. 191 
 
 At the early age of seventeen this precocious young 
 man, who had akeady been several years in society, felt 
 his first sensations of love ; and he talked of it to the 
 end of his days as being the one genuine passion of his 
 life. He tells the pretty story very feelingly, and no 
 doubt it was a genuine boyish romance. Hear him : — 
 
 " Ah, God ! how palpably, even in hours the least friendly 
 to remembrance, there rises before me when I close my eyes 
 that singularly dwarfed tree which overshadowed the little 
 stream, throwing its boughs half-way to the opposite margin. 
 I dare not revisit that spot, for there we were wont to meet 
 (poor children that we were !), thinking not of the world we 
 had scarce entered, dreaming not of fate and chance, full only 
 of our first-born, our ineffable love. It was so unlike the love 
 of grown-up people ; so pure that not one wrong thought 
 ever crossed it, and yet so passionate that never again have 
 I felt any emotion comparable to the intensity of its tumul- 
 tuous tenderness." 
 
 When the meetings so feelingly described became 
 known to the lady's father, she was sent away at once, 
 and Bulwer never saw her again. Very soon after, she 
 was forced into a marriage against which her heart pro- 
 tested. For three years she strove to smother the love 
 which consumed her ; and when she sunk under the con- 
 flict, and death was about to relieve her, she wrote to 
 Bulwer informing him of the sufferings she had under- 
 gone, affirming her deathless love, and begging him to 
 visit her grave. 
 
 His son says : — 
 
 "The impressions left on my father by this early phantom 
 of delight were indelible and colored the whole of his after- 
 life. He believed that far beyond all other influences they 
 shaped his character, and they never ceased to haunt his 
 memory. Allusions to it are constantly recurring in all his 
 published works, and in none of them more than in the last 
 of all. He was much affected by them, and not knowing to 
 what they referred, we wondered that the creations of his 
 fancy should exercise such power over him. They were not 
 creations of fancy, but the memories of fifty years past."
 
 19: 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 After the abrupt cinl of his first romance he conceived 
 a sort of friendsliip for Lady Caroline Lamb, which came 
 very near the verge of love. Lady Caroline was between 
 thirty and forty years old at this time, it being subsequent 
 to her intrigue with Lord Eyron. She looked much 
 younger than her age, — thanks, perhaps, to a slight 
 rounded figure and a child-like mode of wearing her 
 pale golden hair in loose curls. She had large hazel eyes, 
 good teeth, and a pleasant laugh. She had to a surpass- 
 ing degree the qualities that charm, and never failed to 
 please. Her conversation was remarkable, and she was 
 the only woman, Byron said, who never bored him. She 
 was a creature of caprice, and impulse, and whim, and 
 had been known to send a page around to all her guests 
 at Brocket at three o'clock in the morning to say that she 
 was playing the great organ on the staircase, and re- 
 quested the pleasure of their company. And it is added 
 that the invitation was never refused, and that daylight 
 would find them listening, spellbound and without a 
 thought of bed. Here is Bulwer's own account of the 
 close of this little episode with Lady Caroline. He was 
 staying at her house, and had become very jealous of a 
 Mr. Russell. 
 
 " I went downstairs. Russell sat opposite me. He wore 
 a ring. It was one which Lord Byron had given Lady 
 Caroline ; one which was to be worn only by those she 
 loved. I had often worn it myself. She had wanted me 
 to accept it, but I would not, because it was so costly. And 
 now he wore it. Can you conceive my resentment, my 
 wretchedness ? After dinner I threw myself upon a sofa. 
 Music was playing. Lady Caroline came to me. 'Are you 
 mad ? ' said she. I looked up. The tears stood in my eyes. 
 I could not have spoken a word for the world. What do 
 you think she said aloud ? ' Don't play this melancholy air, — 
 it affects Mr. Bulwer so that he is actually weeping.' My 
 tears, my softness, my love were over in a moment. When 
 we broke up in the evening I said to her, ' Farewell forever. 
 It is over. Now I see you in your true light. Instead of 
 jealousy I only feel contempt. Farewell. Go and be happy."
 
 EDWARD BULWER LYTTON. to" 
 
 This account reads very much like a page from "Pelham " 
 or " Devereux," and the whole account of his affairs of 
 the heart is written in a similar manner. 
 
 All this had passed before he was twenty-two. At 
 that age he first met Rosina Wheeler, at an evening party. 
 He was talking busily to his mother when she suddenly 
 exclaimed : " O Edward, what a singularly beautiful face ! 
 Do look. Who can she be?" 
 
 An elderly gentleman was leading through the room 
 in which they sat a young lady of remarkable beauty, 
 who, from the simplicity of her costume, seemed to be 
 unmarried. He turned his head languidly, as he says, 
 with a strangely troubled sensation, and beheld his fate 
 before him, — in other words, his future wife. 
 
 Rosina Wheeler was at this time twenty-three, and in 
 the full blossom of a very remarkable beauty. Her father 
 was an Irish squire, who at the age of seventeen had 
 married a very beautiful girl two years younger than him- 
 self. The natural result of this marriage was a separation, 
 after the birth of two children, one of them the future 
 Lady Lytton. Domestic infelicity seems to have been 
 the heritage of every one connected with the Bulwer 
 family even in the remotest manner. 
 
 And now it appears again in the family of the woman 
 to whom the latest scion of the old house is to be united. 
 Bulwer's mother opposed the match strenuously from the 
 first. Her pride, her prudence, her forebodings, and her 
 motherly susceptibilities all rose up agamst it. And she 
 never gave her consent to it, or became really reconciled 
 to it after it had taken place. Although very unwilling to 
 displease his mother in so vital a matter, Bulwer seems 
 to have gone steadily on to such a consummation ; not 
 borne away certainly by strong passion, but rather influ- 
 enced, it would seem, by a tender regard for the feelings 
 of Miss Wheeler, who had grown much attached to him. 
 Not without many a struggle with himself, however, did 
 he yield. He was tenderly attached to his mother, and 
 it was a great grief to him to do so important a thing 
 
 13
 
 194 
 
 HOyrE LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 without her approval ; and, moreover, his income and all 
 his worldly prospects depended upon her. He does not 
 seem to have been particularly happy over his own 
 prospects, for in one of the last letters he wrote before 
 marriage he says : — 
 
 " My intended is very beautiful, very clever, very good ; 
 but, alas ! the human heart is inscrutable. I love and am 
 loved. My heart is salistied, my judgment, too. And still 
 I am wretched." 
 
 There have been published within a few years a great 
 number of the love-letters written by Bulvver to Miss 
 AVheeler about this time. His son publishes none of 
 them in the late biography, and it is safe to say that 
 in all the range of literature there are no other letters 
 filled with such drivelling idiocy as these. Had they 
 been written by some Cockney coachman to some sen- 
 timental housemaid, they should stand as the finest speci- 
 mens of that grade of literature extant; but that they 
 should have been written by one of the foremost literary 
 men of his time is a marvel, and seems to show to what 
 extremes of imbecility love may reduce even wise men. 
 As for Lady Lytton herself, one cares to know little more 
 than that she could have married a man who habitually 
 addressed her as his " sugar-plum," his " tootsy-wootsy," 
 and his " sweety-weety." A woman clothed and in her 
 right mind, who could deliberately accept such a person- 
 age for a life-long companion, calls for small sympathy 
 from a matter-of-fact world, unless, indeed, it be that we 
 bestow our sympathy simply upon the grounds of her 
 feeble-mindedness. 
 
 In less than three years began the vulgar quarrels 
 which finally ended the marriage. Bulwer is described by 
 a visitor to the house about this time as appearing " like 
 a man who has been flayed and is sore all over." His 
 temperament was by nature extremely sensiti\'e and irri- 
 table. And the combined Bulwer and Lytton blood was 
 hot, turbulent, and at times quite uncontrollable. There
 
 EDWARD BULWER LYTTO.V. 
 
 I9S 
 
 are records of scenes of absolute personal violence against 
 his wife, and one instance is given where at dinner, 
 during the momentary absence of the servant, he bit her 
 cheek till the blood flowed freely. After marriage, his 
 income being cut off by his mother, he for a time wTOte 
 for his bread ; and the work, close and confining as it 
 was, told very much upon his health. 
 
 " His feelings became morbidly acute, and all the petty 
 household worries were to his exasperated brain what 
 frictions and jostlings are to highly inflamed flesh. His 
 wife had little of his society. He was nearly always writing 
 or making preparation for writing, and when they were to- 
 gether his nervous irritability vented itself at every unwel- 
 come circumstance in complaints, or taunts, or fits of anger. 
 To harsh words and unjust reproaches his wife returned 
 meek replies. Any distress his conduct occasioned her she 
 concealed from him. She was studious to please him, and 
 endeavored to anticipate every want and wish. Her gentle- 
 ness and forbearance increased his gratitude and devotion 
 to her, and whenever he perceived that she was wounded he 
 was full of remorse." 
 
 So says her son, and continues : — 
 
 "The mischief was aggravated by the unfortunate occur- 
 rence that my mother being unable to suckle her first-born 
 child, it had been nursed out of the house. Her maternal 
 instinct, thus thwarted in its origin, never revived. The 
 care of children was ever after distasteful to her. Losing 
 this satisfaction to her affections, unless she had company 
 in the house she was lonely. As it was, neither of them saw 
 the issue to which the divided life was tending." 
 
 That issue, as all the world knows, was a separation of 
 the husband and wife, and a life-long quarrel of almost 
 unimagined bitterness. No wonder that Bulwer's hand 
 faltered when he tried to write of it, and that, having 
 brought his autobiography up to this point, he laid it by, 
 not daring to go on. He always cherished the intention 
 of resuming it, but could never bring himself to the point 
 of doing so. He could not tell the story ; but Lady Lytton
 
 196 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 could, and did, continuing to do so till her dying day. 
 The picture of her which her son has given does not 
 seem like that of a woman who would do all the things 
 which she notoriously did. But doubtless she had her 
 amiable and engaging side, and was half maddened by 
 her wrongs. Justin McCarthy says : — 
 
 '• I do not know whether I ought to call it a quarrel. Can 
 that be called a quarrel, piteously asks the man in 'Juvenal,' 
 where my enemy only beats and 1 am beaten ? Can that be 
 called a quarrel in which, so far as the public could judge, 
 the wife did all the denunciation, and the husband made no 
 reply ? Lady Lytton wrote novels for the purpose of satiriz- 
 ing her husband and his friends, — his parasites, she called 
 them. Lady Lytton attributed to her husband the most 
 odious meannesses, vices, and cruelties ; but the public, 
 with all its love of scandal, seems to have steadfastly refused 
 to take her ladyship's word for these accusations. Dickens 
 she denounced and vilified as a mere parasite and sycophant 
 of her husband. Disraeli she caricatured under the title of 
 Jericho Jabber. This sort of thing she kept always going 
 on. Sometimes she issued pamphlets to the women of Eng- 
 land, calling on them to take up her quarrel, which, some- 
 how, they never did. Once, when Sir Edward was on the 
 hustings addressing his constituents at a county election, 
 her ladyship suddenly appeared, mounted the platform, and 
 ' went ' for him. I do not know anj'thing of the merits of 
 the quarrel, but have always thought that something like 
 insanity must have been the explanation of much of her 
 conduct. But it is beyond doubt that her husband's con- 
 duct was remarkable for its quiet, indomitable patience and 
 dignity." 
 
 Let the veil drop over the blighted lives, knowing as 
 we do that the human heart is so dark and intricate a 
 lab}Tinth that we cannot claim to understand it by half 
 knowledge, and that however we might judge these two 
 with any light which we can possibly have in our day, we 
 should be in danger of doing each a grievous wrong.
 
 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 IT is related by Miss Thackeray that the grandfather of 
 Alfred Tennyson, when that poet was young, asked 
 him to write an elegy on his grandmother, who had re- 
 cently died, and when it was written gave him ten shil- 
 lings, with the remark, " There, that is the first money you 
 have ever earned by your poetry, and, take my word for 
 it, it will be the last." How httle he foresaw at that time 
 the fame and fortune which the youth's poetry was to 
 bring him, and the lasting honor he was to bestow upon 
 the family name ! That name was already an honorable 
 one, for the Tennysons were an old family, and had good 
 blood in their veins. The home was the old rectory of 
 Somersby, where George Clayton Tennyson, LL.D., held 
 sway in the old-time priestly fashion for a lifetime. He is 
 described as a man of strong character and high principle, 
 full of accomplishments, and gifted withal ; a strikingly 
 handsome man, with impressive manners. Twelve chil- 
 dren were given to his hands, of whom Alfred was the 
 third. The eldest, Frederick, and the second, Charles, 
 were both poets, and not without merit, — especially 
 Charles, who published a volume of sonnets, which gave 
 great pleasure to so good a judge as Coleridge ; and the 
 Laureate is himself very fond of his brother's work.
 
 i,^S HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 The cliildrcn led a \cry free and unconstrained life in 
 that beautiful part of Lincolnshire, and had a few friends 
 to whom the}- attaclied themselves for life. Arthur Hal- 
 lam was Alfred's intimate, and later on he became en- 
 gaged to one of his sisters. Young Hallam's early death 
 was the first shadow upon their lives. But who would 
 not willingly die at twenty-three to be immortalized in 
 such a poem as '" In Memoriam "? 
 
 Of Arthur Hallam's own quality as a poet we get a 
 pleasant glimpse in the sonnet addressed to his betrothed 
 when he began to teach her Italian : — 
 
 " Lady, I bid thee to a sunny dome, 
 Ringing witli echoes of Italian song ; 
 Henceforth to thee these magic halls belong, 
 And all the pleasant place is like a home. 
 Hark, on the right, with full piano tone, 
 Old Dante's voice encircles all the air ; 
 Hark yet again, like flute-tones mingling rare 
 Comes the keen sweetness of Petrarca's moan. 
 Pass thou the lintel freely ; without fear 
 Feast on the music. I do better know thee 
 Than to suspect this pleasure thou dost owe me 
 Will wrong thy gentle spirit, or make less dear." 
 
 After Tennyson had made his first literary successes, 
 and after the family life at Somersby was broken up, we 
 next hear of him through a warm and hfe-long friend. 
 Away back in 1844 Carlyle in one of his letters to Emer- 
 son gives the following description of the then young and 
 rising poet. It is an authentic glimpse of the real man, 
 as he then appeared to one of the shrewdest and most 
 critical of the men of that day. 
 
 " Tennyson is now in town, and means to come and see 
 me. Of this latter result I shall be very glad : Alfred is 
 one of the few British or Foreign Figures (a not increasing 
 number I think) who are and remain beautiful to me, — a true 
 human soul, or some approximation thereto, to whom your 
 own soul can say, Brother! However, I doubt he will not 
 come; he often skips me, in these brief visits to Town ; skips 
 everybody indeed, being a man solitary and sad, as certain 
 men are, dwelling in an element of gloom, — carrying a bit of
 
 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 199 
 
 Chaos about him, in short, which he is manufacturing into 
 Cosmos ! 
 
 " Alfred is the son of a Lincolnshire Gentleman Farmer, I 
 think ; indeed, you see in his verses that he is a native of 
 'moated granges,' and green fat pastures, not of mountains 
 and their torrents and storms. He had his breeding at 
 Cambridge, as if for the Law or Church ; being master of a 
 small annuity, on his Father's decease, he preferred clubbing, 
 with his mother and some sisters, to live unpromoted and 
 write Poems. In this way he Hves still, now here, now there ; 
 the family always within reach of London, never in it; he 
 himself making rare and brief visits, lodging in some old 
 comrade's rooms. I think he must be under forty, not much 
 under it. One of the finest looking men in the world. A great 
 shock of rough dusty-dark hair ; bright, laughing hazel eyes; 
 massive aquiline face, most massive, yet most delicate ; of 
 sallow-brown complexion, almost Indian looking; clothes 
 cynically loose, free-and-easy ; smokes infinite tobacco. 
 His voice is musical metallic, — fit for loud laughter and 
 piercing wail, and all that may lie between ; speech and 
 speculation free and plenteous : I do not meet in these de- 
 cades such company over a pipe ! We shall see what he 
 will grow to. He is often unwell ; very chaotic — his way is 
 through Chaos and the Bottomless and Pathless ; not handy 
 for making out many miles upon." 
 
 To this graphic description little need be added of the 
 Tennyson of that time. He was in the midst of his great- 
 est literary successes, and just beginning to reap some of 
 the rewards of his labors. His fame increased rapidly 
 from that time forward, and his fortune with his fame. 
 For many years he has been a rich man, being a sharp 
 and shrewd manager of his worldly affairs. His invest- 
 ments have always proved to be paying ones ; and for a 
 long time he has had whatever prices he named for his 
 poems. He has a beautiful place at Farringford, Isle of 
 Wight, and another country seat at Aldworth, in Surrey. 
 He also owns a house in London, although he spends 
 very little time there. He kept up his visits to the Carlyles 
 during his occasional stays in the metropolis, until the 
 death of his old friends. He was very fond of Mrs.
 
 200 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 Carlyle, her sharp wit amusing him, and her appreciation 
 of his own work flattering him. She gives occasional 
 pleasant mention of him in her letters. Over his later 
 work Carlyle was not enthusiastic, although he retained 
 his friendship for the man. In 1867, after the death of 
 his wife, he gives us his last glimpse of the poet, which is 
 as characteristic as the other : — 
 
 " We read at first Tennyson's ' Idyls,' with profound rec- 
 ognition of the finely elaborated execution, and also of the 
 inward perfection of vacancy — and, to say truth, with consid- 
 erable impatience at being treated so very like infants though 
 the lollipops were so superlative. We gladly changed for 
 one Emerson's ' English Traits;' and read that with increas- 
 ing and ever increasing satisfaction every evening ; blessing 
 heaven that there were still books for grown-up people too." 
 
 According to Carlyle, what Tennyson needed was a 
 Task ; and wanting that, he almost lost his way among 
 the will-o'-wisps. High art, in the eyes of Carlyle, was 
 but a poor "task" for a man like Tennyson. Upon this 
 point the world will not be likely to agree with him, nor 
 in his judgment of the wonderful " Idyls of the King." 
 Although Tennyson, like Carlyle himself, has written too 
 far into the shadows of age, he will not be judged by the 
 labors of his old age, but by the matchless products of his 
 prime. These are surely a priceless possession for the 
 readers of the future, as well as for the men of his own 
 time. 
 
 In the autobiography of Sir Henry Taylor we have this 
 glimpse of the poet, in a letter from Mrs. Cameron to that 
 gentleman : — 
 
 " Alfred has grown, he says, much fonder of you since 
 your last visit here. He says he feels now he is beginning 
 to know you and not to feel afraid of you ; and that he is 
 beginning to get over your extreme insolence to him when 
 he was j-oung and you were in your meridian splendor and 
 glory. So one reads your simplicity. He was very violent 
 with the girls on the subject of the rage for autographs. He 
 said he believed every crime and every vice in the world was
 
 ALFRED TENNYSON. 201 
 
 connected with the passion for autographs and anecdotes and 
 records ; that the desiring anecdotes and acquaintance with 
 the lives of great men was treating them like pigs, to be 
 ripped open for the public ; that he knew he himself should 
 be ripped open like a pig; that he thanked God Almighty 
 with his whole heart and soul that he knew nothing, and that 
 the world knew nothing, of Shakspeare but his writings." 
 
 All of which sounds not unlike what Carlyle himself 
 might have said in those days ; and yet what personal 
 revelations he made to the world before his death ! 
 
 The news that Lord Tennyson is writing his autobiogra- 
 phy may be sent by cable almost any day now, and the 
 world will not receive it with any great surprise, but with 
 very great interest and pleasure. This dislike of being 
 lionized and overrun by celebrity hunters is probably 
 one great reason why the poet prefers the solitude of the 
 country to a residence in London. His servants and 
 family guard him very securely from unwelcome visitors 
 in his country home. The injunctions against disturbing 
 him while at his work are so strong, that one day during 
 the life of Prince Albert that distinguished attache of roy- 
 alty was refused admittance at the door. The poet 
 formed a friendship with the Prince, however, later in life, 
 and is now an occasional visitor to the Queen at Windsor. 
 He is also a favorite with the Princess of Wales and 
 other members of the royal family. But even such august 
 friends as these do not draw him often from his solitude. 
 Mr. Gladstone begs him in vain for a visit, and his invita- 
 tions to the houses of the great lords are of course many 
 and importunate ; but of late he refuses them all. He 
 says he will never again voluntarily pass a week in London, 
 and he is not more fond of visits to country houses than 
 to the city. Nor can we wonder much at this. He has 
 never been a society man, and now that he is old, and 
 growing somewhat feeble, the effort to conform to the de- 
 mands of a conventional life is harder than ever. He 
 tried taking a house in London and spending the season 
 there, not many years ago, but wearied of it very cjuickly.
 
 203 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 and gave up the idea forever. While in London at that 
 time he ahvays appeared in pubHc in the picturescjue 
 wide-awake hat of the Itahan bancUt, and ahvays, even in 
 warm weather, wore a cloak. The costume is very be- 
 coming, and the poet can afford to indulge his individual 
 tastes in the matter of dress ; so everybody said how poeti- 
 cal he looked, and, on the whole, his eccentricity was a 
 success. He has always had a great contempt for the 
 conventionalities of dress, and many laughable anecdotes 
 have been told concerning his appearance at the Isle of 
 Wight. When young he was really handsome, though he 
 always wore his hair long, and looked as if he would be 
 the better for a barber ; but now he is very gray and 
 wizened, stoops badly, and shows that he has smoked, 
 as Carlyle said, infinite tobacco. Tennyson has always 
 exercised a judicious hospitality, but never overburdened 
 himself with company. His favorite time for guests is 
 from Saturday until Monday, and those who are so fortu- 
 nate as to be invited enjoy very greatly the distinction. 
 Among his favorite guests is Henry Irving. A few years 
 before his death Garibaldi paid the poet a visit, which was 
 much enjoyed by both. Years ago, when the poet was 
 more in London than now, a little knot of literary friends 
 had a standing engagement to dine together once a month, 
 and the parties were almost the ideal of unconventional 
 friendliness. Among the number were Carlyle, Cunning- 
 ham, Mill, Thackeray, Forster, Stirling, Landor, and 
 Macready. Here the conversation was of the best, Car- 
 lyle always coming out strong, and all the rest content 
 to listen. However, Carlyle, unlike many great convers- 
 ers, never monopolized the conversation. It was always 
 dialogue and not monologue with Carlyle in any mixed 
 company, though he would discourse at length to one 
 or two visitors. Tennyson, like many men of letters, 
 loves to talk about his own work, and is very fond of 
 reading his poems to his friends. This is, of course, very 
 delightful to those friends, if the reading be not too pro- 
 longed, although he is said to chant them in rather a dis-
 
 ALFRED TENNYSON. 203 
 
 agreeable manner. He is a great egotist, and does not 
 like to listen to other people when they talk about them- 
 selves. We are told that Charles Sumner once paid him 
 a visit, and bored him very much by a long talk upon 
 American affairs in which Tennyson took no interest. 
 When Sumner finally made a sufficient pause, Tennyson 
 changed the subject by inquiring if his visitor had ever 
 read " The Princess." Sumner replied that it was one of 
 his favorite poems, whereupon Tennyson handed him the 
 book and asked him to read. Sumner began, but was 
 soon stopped by Tennyson, who wished to show him how 
 a passage should be read. He went on reading aloud in 
 his high nasal voice, until Sumner grew very weary, but 
 did not dare to move for fear of being thought unappre- 
 ciative. On and on read the poet, page after page, never 
 making a moment's pause or giving Sumner any chance 
 to escape, until he had read the whole poem. It is said 
 that Sumner never dared pay him another visit. Being a 
 decided egotist himself, it was painfully hard for the dis- 
 tinguished American to subordinate himself for so long a 
 time, and his friends amused themselves very much at the 
 idea. 
 
 Tennyson undoubtedly has a high opinion of his work ; 
 but he does not go quite to the length of Wordsworth in 
 such self-admiration, as Wordsworth would read no poetry 
 but his own, while Tennyson is a generous admirer of the 
 work of fellow-poets. 
 
 Tennyson's married Hfe has been one of the happiest 
 on record. He addresses his wife in these lines : — 
 
 " Dear, near, and true — no truer Time himself 
 Can prove you, though he make you evermore 
 Dearer and nearer." 
 
 One cannot think, when he witnesses the devotion of the 
 poet to his wife, that he ever regrets the " Amy shallow- 
 hearted," the " Amy mine no more," of his youth ; and 
 the reader certainly cannot regret her, if it is really to her 
 that we owe " Locksley Hall." Mrs. Tennyson has been 
 something of an invalid, and the poet and his sons, Hallam
 
 2 04 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 and Lionel, may often be seen wheeling her on the lawn 
 at Farringford. Of the house at Farringford Miss Thacke- 
 ray, wlio is an old friend of the family, as was her father 
 before Ikt, tells us : — 
 
 " The house itself seemed like a charmed palace, with 
 green walls without and speaking walls within. There hung 
 Dante with his solemn nose and wreath ; Italy gleamed over 
 the doorways; friends' faces lined the way; books filled the 
 shelves, and a glow of crimson was everywhere ; the great 
 oriel window in the drawing-room was full of green and 
 golden leaves, of the sound of birds, and of the distant sea." 
 
 She continues : — 
 
 " I first knew the place in the autumn, but perhaps it is 
 even more beautiful in spring-time, when all day the lark 
 trills high overhead, and then when the lark has flown out of 
 our hearing the thrushes begin, and the air is sweet with 
 scents from the many fragrant shrubs. The woods are full of 
 anemones and primroses ; narcissus grows wild in the lower 
 fields ; a lovely creamy stream of flowers flows along the 
 lanes, and lies hidden in the levels ; hyacinth-pools of blue 
 shine in the woods ; and then with a later burst of glory 
 comes the gorse, lighting up the country round about, and 
 blazing round about the beacon hill. The beacon hill stands 
 behind Farringford. If you follow the httle wood of night- 
 ingales and thrushes, and follow the lane where the black- 
 thorn hedges shine in spring-time (lovely dials that illuminate 
 to show the hour), you come to the downs, and climbing 
 their smooth steps you reach ' Mr. Tennyson's Down,' 
 where the beacon-staff stands firm upon the mound. Then 
 following the Ime of the coast you come at last to the 
 Needles, and may look down upon the ridge of rocks that 
 rises crisp, sharp, shining, out of the blue wash of fierce 
 delirious waters." 
 
 Since Tennyson's elevation to the peerage there has 
 been an infinite amount of squibbing at his expense, and 
 some very good parodies upon his poems have been cir- 
 culated. The " Pall Mall Gazette " parodies " Lady Clara 
 Vere de Vere " thus : —
 
 ALFRED TENNYSON. 205 
 
 " Baron Alfred Vere de Vere, 
 
 Of me you win no new renown : 
 You thought to daze the country-folk 
 
 And cockneys when you came to town. 
 See Wordsworth, Shelley, Cowper, Burns, 
 
 Withdraw in scorn, and sit retired ; 
 The last of some six hundred earls 
 Is not a place to be desired. 
 
 " Baron Alfred Vere de Vere, 
 
 We thought you proud to bear your name ; 
 Your pride is yet no mate for ours. 
 
 Too proud to think a title fame. 
 We had the genius — not the lord ; 
 
 We love the poet's truer charms, 
 A simple singer with his dreams 
 
 Is worth a hundred coats-of-arms." 
 
 And SO on to the close : — 
 
 " Alfred, Alfred Vere de Vere, 
 
 If time be heavy on your hands, 
 Are there no toilers in our streets. 
 
 Nor any poor in all these lands ? 
 Oh, teach the weak to strive and hope ; 
 
 Oh, teach the great to help the low ■, 
 Pray Heaven for a noble heart, 
 
 And let the foolish title go." 
 
 There was undoubtedly much disappointment that Ten- 
 nyson did not refuse the title bestowed upon him, as he had 
 previously declined to be knighted, and was looked upon 
 as something of a liberal. He probably was this when 
 young; judging by some things in his writings ; but he is 
 now looked upon as a tory of the tories. 
 
 Tennyson has probably received higher prices for his 
 poems than any other poet. When he was paid ten 
 pounds a line for " Sea Dreams," it was considered a 
 fabulous price ; but he has received much more than 
 that since. 
 
 During his long literary life — for he has been writing 
 over fifty years — he has of course written a great deal ; 
 yet he is very slow and laborious in composition, and 
 spends much time in rewriting and polishing. The gar- 
 den song in '' Maud " was rewritten fifty times, and almost 
 as great labor has been given to other famous bits of
 
 2o6 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 writing. He was seventeen years in writing " In Memo- 
 riam,'' and he brought it ahiiost to perfection of finish ; but 
 he lias sjKMit laborious years upon poems which are com- 
 parative failures. After the inspiration has waned, or if 
 the inspiration is wanting in the first place, the pains taken 
 in revision go for little in the making of a poem which will 
 live. Given the inspiration, and the labor usually, though 
 not always, adds to its chances for immortality. Tennyson, 
 with all his fastidious delicacy in writing, is a robust, manly 
 man, — strong, healthy, active, fond of out-of-door life, and 
 not greatly given to study. He spends whole days in the 
 open air, and has all an Englishman's fondness for walk- 
 ing. He is martial in spirit, too, and rejoices in the heroic 
 deeds of his countrymen. He can write a spirited war 
 song, as he proved a {qw years ago when he thrilled all 
 England with the l}Tic : — 
 
 " Form, form, riflemen, form ; 
 Ready, be ready to meet the storm." 
 
 On the whole, Tennyson must be said to have had a 
 very prosperous and well-ordered life. He has enjoyed 
 more of the blessings of this world than almost any one 
 of his famous contemporaries ; and his name is likely to 
 live after that of most of the others shall have passed 
 away. He has had the appreciation and the applause 
 of all of the great men of his time, and the friendship of 
 such as he desired ; and his old age is full of honor, and 
 ministered unto by loving and faithful hands. May it still 
 be long before an admiring world shall read at the end 
 of his life's story the words, " In Memoriam, Alfred 
 Tennyson." 
 
 ^^
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 "/^~^OME to Concord," wrote Ellery Charming to Haw- 
 V_y thorne once upon a time ; " Emerson is away, and 
 nobody here to bore you," — which sentence contains a 
 gentle hint to the posterity of the two most distinguished 
 men of letters America has produced that even the mystic 
 and the seer sometimes palled upon the appetites of his 
 personal friends. If any man could be supposed to be a 
 hero to his valet, that man was surely Emerson ; but his 
 gifted neighbor seems not to have had any strong relish 
 for his society. Neither did Hawthorne really enjoy 
 Thoreau, who would seem to have been a sufficiently 
 original person to have interested him, merely as a study 
 of cliaracter. But it does not appear that Hawthorne was 
 ever particularly fond of the society of men of letters, even 
 though they were also men of genius. He refused to go 
 to the Saturday Club of Authors, but would play cards 
 with sea-captains in the smoking-room of his boarding- 
 house in Liverpool, evening after evening. Indeed, he 
 liked the piquant flavor of what is commonly called low 
 society, when he required any society outside his home, 
 better than that which would have seemed more adapted 
 to his taste. We mean simply by this the society of back- 
 woodsmen, sailors, laborers, and old hard-headed farmers 
 of New England stock, with their strong provincial dialect.
 
 2oS HOME LIFE OF GREA T A UTHORS. 
 
 Mr. Emerson himself liked the raciness of the conver- 
 sation of such men, and, indeed, we think almost all men 
 of genius have something of the same taste. When we 
 read what Mrs. Hawthorne says of the manner of con- 
 versation between her husband and Emerson, it can 
 scarcely be considered remarkable that Hawthorne should 
 not have cared to confine himself to the society of the 
 sage. She says, speaking of Hawthorne : — 
 
 " Mr. Emerson delights in him ; he talks to him all the 
 time, and Mr. Hawthorne looks answers. He seems to fas- 
 cinate Emerson. Whenever he comes to see him he takes 
 him away, so that no one may interrupt him in his close and 
 dead-set attack upon his ear." 
 
 There is a one-sidedness to a conversation of this nature 
 which might well weary a person in the body ; and only 
 a disembodied spirit, it may be surmised, could thor- 
 oughly enjoy it. A fine thing to do would be to put two 
 of those great conversationaHsts against each other, as was 
 sometimes done with Sydney Smith and Macaulay. It is 
 said that the two would sit glaring at each other and main- 
 tain perfect silence ; whereas either one of them apart 
 from the other would discourse for three hours without 
 taking breath. Imagine the horrible agony of those 
 among the auditors who w^ere not interested in the sub- 
 ject of the oration ! — and there must always have been 
 some among the number so situated. 
 
 One remembers how Shelley got rid of the old woman 
 down in Conway, and wonders why the ruse was never 
 tried upon Macaulay by some of his victims. Shelley, it 
 is said, was once riding in a stage in that region, and 
 the only passenger beside himself was an old woman 
 with two huge baskets filled with onions and cabbage 
 respectively. She was huge herself and much incumbered 
 with fat, and the day was excessively warm. Shelley was 
 one of those delicate mortals who have been known to 
 " die of a rose in aromatic pains," and after a while the 
 presence of the old woman nearly drove him to distrac-
 
 NA THANIEL HA WTHORNE. 
 
 209 
 
 tion. He pretended that it had quite done so, and sud- 
 denly throwing himself into the bottom of the stage he 
 glared at the old woman and shouted : — 
 
 " For God's sake let us sit upon the ground, 
 And tell sad stories of the death of kings : 
 How some have been deposed, some slain in war, 
 Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed, 
 Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed, — 
 All murdered." 
 
 Before the last two words — which he rendered with 
 more than an actor's effect — were fairly out of his mouth, 
 the old woman by her shrieks had summoned the guard, 
 and was released from the company of the madman. 
 Shelley was often induced by his friends to show them 
 how he got rid of the old woman, and the exhibition 
 always called for uproarious applause. There is a hint in 
 it for any well-bred company who may be bored to the 
 point of extinction by a distinguished member. The only 
 wonder is that in some cases the sudden madness is not 
 real rather than assumed. 
 
 Hawthorne was eminently capable of being bored to 
 this point of desperation, and his mother and elder sister 
 saved themselves from any danger of this kind by volun- 
 tarily living the lives of recluses. Julian Hawthorne 
 tells us : — 
 
 " His mother, a woman of fine gifts but extreme sensibility 
 lost her husband in her twenty-eighth year ; and from an 
 exaggerated, almost Hindoo-like, construction of the law of 
 seclusion which the public taste of that day imposed upon 
 widows, she withdrew entirely from society and permitted the 
 habit of solitude to grow upon her to such a degree that she 
 actually remained a strict hermit to the end of her long life, 
 or for more than forty years after Captain Hawthorne's death. 
 Such behavior on the mother's part could not fail to have its 
 effect upon the children. They had no opportunity to know 
 what social intercourse meant ; their peculiarities and eccen- 
 tricities were at least negatively encouraged ; they grew to re- 
 gard themselves as something apart from the general world. 
 
 14
 
 r 
 
 210 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 It is saying much for the sanity and healthfulness of the 
 minds of these three children, that their loneliness distorted 
 their judgment — their perception of the relation of things — 
 as little as it did." 
 
 The sister is described as having in many respects an 
 intellect as commanding and penetrating as that of her 
 brother, and yet she followed in the way of her mother 
 and passed her life in almost complete seclusion, caring 
 for nothing but the reading of books and the taking of 
 long walks, sleeping always until noon, and sitting up until 
 two or three o'clock in the morning in perfect solitude. 
 She boarded for many years after her mother's death at a 
 farm-house on the seashore, and could not be induced to 
 come out, even to attend the funeral of her brother at 
 Concord, although he was her pride and idol throughout 
 life. 
 
 Had Hawthorne himself been less fortunate in his mar- 
 riage, there is little doubt that his own peculiarities would 
 have become exaggerated, perhaps even to the extent of 
 those of his sister. But he married a woman who both 
 understood and appreciated him, and whom he idolized. 
 From this union grew all the happiness and success of his 
 hfe. His son says : — 
 
 "To attempt to explain and describe his career without 
 taking this event into consideration would be like trying to 
 imagine a sun without heat or a day without a sun. Nothing 
 seems less likely than that he should have accomplished his 
 work in literature independently of her sympathy and com- 
 panionship. Not that she afforded him any direct and literal 
 assistance in the composition of his books and stories: her 
 gifts were wholly unsuited to such employment, and no one 
 apprehended more keenly than she the solitariness and 
 uniqueness of his genius, insomuch that she would have 
 deemed it something not far removed from profanation to 
 have offered to advise or sway him in regard to his literary 
 productions. She believed in his inspiration, and her office 
 was to promote, as far as in her lay, the favorableness of the 
 conditions under which it should manifest itself."
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 211 
 
 It was to this that she devoted her Hfe, — to comfort, 
 to cheer, to soothe, to inspire, to guard from all out- 
 ward annoyances, the poetical and sensitive man who 
 believed in her so implicitly and leaned upon her so con- 
 fidently. They led a very quiet and secluded life during 
 the most of his literary career, and seemed almost to re- 
 sent any intrusion of the outside world upon them, not 
 only as regarded persons, but even as regarded agitating 
 questions and pressing ideas. 
 
 They took very slight interest in the questions which 
 stirred New England life in their day, and held entirely 
 aloof from the reforms which shook the social life around 
 them from centre to foundation-stone. Indeed, he had a 
 deep-seated dislike to the genus Reformer, and presented 
 his picture of the whole race in " Hollingsworth." Per- 
 haps he had known some individual reformer of that 
 odious type, and out of this grew his dislike of the whole 
 species. At any rate, the men — of whom New England 
 was full at that time — who 
 
 " Blew the fiery breath of storm 
 Through the hoarse trumpet of Reform " 
 
 never received much aid or sympathy from Nathaniel 
 Hawthorne or his wife. Nor will they, apparently, from 
 his son, who says of his father, " He was not a teetotaler 
 any more than he was an abolitionist or a Thug." 
 
 But if their sympathies did not go out very widely to 
 the outside world, there was the most perfect sympathy^ 
 and companionship in the home life, and no more beauti- ) 
 ful record of a perfect marriage has ever been made than , 
 this life of the Hawthornes presents. Yes, it was a happy 
 life they led, these two in their married isolation, despite 
 poverty and obscurity and a lack of appreciation in the 
 early time, and of trial, from ill-health and other causes, 
 in later years. He lived like Carlyle, a good deal in the 
 shadows of his famous books, and was sometimes for months 
 in the possession of the demon of composition. While com- 
 posing " The Marble Faun " he thus writes in a letter :
 
 212 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 '• I sternly shut myself up, and come to close grips with 
 the romance which I am trying to tear from my brain." 
 
 He was always discouraged about his work, and needed 
 a deal of cheering regarding it. He says in one place : 
 
 " My own individual taste is for an altogether different 
 class of books from what I write. If I were to meet with 
 such books as mine by another writer, I do not believe 1 
 should be able to get through with them." 
 
 And again : — 
 
 " I will try to write a more genial book, but the Devil him- 
 self always gets into my inkstand, and I can only get him 
 out by penfuls." 
 
 Still again : — 
 
 " Heaven sees fit to visit me with the unshakable convic- 
 tion that all this series of articles is good for nothing. I 
 don't think that the public will bear with much more of this 
 sort of thing." 
 
 His letters are often full of this moody discouragement, 
 though lighted up always by some gleams of his humor. 
 For instance, he writes to Fields : — 
 
 " Do make some inquiries about Portugal, — in what part 
 of the world it lies, and whether it is a Kingdom, an Em- 
 pire, or a Republic. Also the expenses of living there, and 
 whether the Minister would be much pestered with his own 
 countrymen." 
 
 And later, when he was in Rome : — 
 
 " I bitterly detest this Rome, and shall rejoice to bid it 
 adieu forever ; and I fully acquiesce in all the mischief and 
 ruin that has ever happened to it from Nero's conflagration 
 downward. In fact, I wish the very site of it had been 
 obliterated before I ever saw it." 
 
 His complaints about his pens are really very amusing 
 to those people — and their name is legion — who have had
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 213 
 
 a like difficulty in pleasing themselves. He writes to 
 Fields : — 
 
 " If you want me to write you a good novel, send me a 
 good pen ; not a gold one, but one which will not get stiff 
 and rheumatic the moment I get attached to it. I never met 
 with a good pen in my life." 
 
 To this last sentiment we think that a great multitude 
 which no man can number will respond Amen. He says 
 of them again : — 
 
 " Nobody ever suffered more from pens than I have, and 
 I am glad that my labor with the abominable little tool is 
 drawing to a close." 
 
 In private conversation he enlivened his more serious 
 thoughts often with vivid surprises of expression ; and 
 he had a mild way of making a severe remark, which 
 reminded Charlotte Cushman of a man she once saw 
 making such a disturbance in the gallery of a theatre 
 that the play could hardly proceed. Cries of ''Throw 
 him over 1 " arose from all parts of the house, and the 
 noise became furious. All was tumultuous chaos until a 
 sweet and gende female voice was heard in the pit, when 
 all grew silent to hear : — 
 
 " No, I pray you, my friends, don't throw him over. I 
 beg that you will not throw him over, but — kill him where 
 he is ! " 
 
 It was only in the company of intimate personal 
 friends, from whom all restraint was removed, that 
 Hawthorne ever indulged in his natural buoyancy of 
 spirits. Among them he occasionally condescended to 
 uproarious fun. But he was like Dr. Johnson, who, 
 when indulging in a scene of wild hilarity, suddenly 
 exclaimed to his friends, as Beau Brummel approached, 
 " Let us be grave ; here comes a fool." If there was the 
 slightest suspicion of there being a fool in the company 
 Hawthorne always wore his armor. The pretentious and
 
 214 nOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 N 
 
 transcendental fools he hated worst of all ; and the 
 young man who had no taste for the finite, but thought 
 the infinite was the thing for him, always left him with a 
 feeling as of asphyxia. 
 
 Hawthorne's atmosphere was really unhealthy for tran- 
 \ scendentalists. No doubt his dislike of Margaret P\iller 
 arose from this feeling of his that she was always acting a 
 par^, always straining after an effect.__jl£_loi:£d- simple, 
 natural, unaffected people, and the part of a sibyl was 
 very distasteful to him. He suspected the inspiration 
 of green tea in much that Margaret said, and very 
 ungallantly pronounced her a humbug. But as he did 
 this only upon the paper of his own private diary, with 
 no thought of it ever being paraded before a critical and 
 captious world, we should not blame him too severely. 
 And if he was mistaken in what he wrote concerning her 
 husDand and her life in Rome, as seems to be the fact, 
 no doubt he was deceived by gossip-loving friends in 
 Rome concerning the matter. One does not write gratu- 
 itous falsehoods upon the pages of one's private note- 
 book about acquaintances, as a general rule. If he had 
 desired to injure Margaret he would have put his sup- 
 posed facts in a different place, no doubt, and not 
 merely written them in a moment of spleen where he 
 never expected them to be seen. 
 
 The publication of such comment as this, and Carlyle's 
 mention of Charles Lamb and others, seems to be due 
 entirely to the total depravity of literary executors. As 
 George Eliot says, it is like uncovering the dead Byron's 
 club-foot, when he had been so sensitive about it through 
 life, as his friend Trelawny boasts that he did. Margaret 
 Fuller was a large-brained, big-hearted w'oman, but that 
 she and Hawthorne could not thoroughly fraternize is not 
 a strange thing. We see another instance of such lack of 
 appreciation of each other's qualities in Henry James and 
 the Bostonians of the present time. Even the admirers 
 of the Boston type get a little quiet amusement from his 
 delicious satire, although their admiration of the reformers
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 2r5 
 
 may remain unshaken. That the world has got a httle 
 weary of the mutual admiration of the Boston coterie is 
 an open secret. We have had a trifle too much of 
 it from the day of Fields, who apparently invented 
 Hawthorne, and would have put a patent upon him if 
 possible, down to the present era of worship of that real 
 hero, Emerson, who, if he suiTives the laudations of his 
 present army of admirers, may well hope for immortality. 
 
 The wife of Hawthorne was so different a person from ' 
 the noble army of literary and artistic women who are so i 
 numerous to-day, but who in his time had just begun V 
 to assert themselves, that, believing her to be the per- / 
 feet flower of womanhood, as he did, he could scarcely / 
 be expected to appreciate the Zenobias of that or of the / 
 present time. / 
 
 Mrs. Hawthorne's sister, Elizabeth Peabody, was one 
 of the women of the new era, and has spent her entire 
 life in noble efforts to improve the world into which she 
 was born ; and who shall say whether Mrs. Hawthorne or 
 Miss Peabody was the higher type of woman ? 
 
 If we were obliged to compare Mrs. Hawthorne with 
 the caricatures of tlie strong-minded woman in which nov- 
 elists so delight, — those " housekeepers by the wrath of 
 God," — like Mrs. Jellaby and similar monstrosities, then 
 the answer would not be hard. We could all cry, Mrs, 
 Hawthorne, now and forever ! But when we compare 
 her to the strong-minded women like George Eliot, per- 
 fect wives, perfect home-makers, perfectly sympathetic 
 and loyal comrades of their husbands, and lacking noth- 
 ing of womanly softness or tenderness with all their 
 strength, then the answer is not so simple. But doubt- 
 less the fact that God created both types may be 
 accepted as evidence that He saw uses for both, and 
 that even the women whom He made " fools to match 
 the men " are not without their purpose in the economy 
 of the universe. 
 
 Such thoughts as the following in regard to her hus- 
 band, written by Mrs. Hawthorne after eight years of mar-
 
 2i6 JI'\ME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS 
 
 riage, souinl not unlike the rhapsodies of Cieorge Eliot 
 concerning Mr. Lewes : — 
 
 " He has perfect dominion over himself in every respect, 
 so that to do the highest, wisest, loveliest thing is not the 
 least effort to him, any more than it is for a baby to be 
 innocent. It is his spontaneous act, and a baby is not 
 more unconscious of its innocence. I never knew such 
 loftiness so simply borne. I have never known him to 
 stoop from it in the most trivial household matter any more 
 than in the larger or more public ones. If the Hours make 
 out to reach him in his high sphere their wings are very 
 strong. Happy, happiest is the wife who can bear such and 
 so sincere testimony to her husband after eight years' inti- 
 mate union. Such a person can never lose the prestige 
 which commands and fascinates. I cannot possibly con- 
 ceive of my happiness, but in a kind of blissful confusion 
 live on. If I can only be so great, so high, so noble, so 
 sweet as he, in any phase of my being, I shall be glad. I 
 am not deluded nor mistaken, as the angels know now, and 
 as all my friends will know in open vision." 
 
 \\'e will quote but this one passage from her letters 
 about him, though the Life is filled with similar ones, 
 and will give but one of his love-letters to her, and that 
 not entire. He says : — 
 
 " Sometimes during my solitary life in our old Salem house 
 it seemed to me as if I had only life enough to know that I 
 was not alive, for I had no wife then to keep my heart warm. 
 But at length you were revealed to me in the shadow of a 
 seclusion as deep as my own. I drew nearer and nearer to 
 you, and opened my heart to you, and you came to me, and 
 will remain forever, keeping my heart warm, and renewing 
 my life with your own. You only have taught me that I 
 have a heart ; you only have thrown a light deep downward 
 and upward into my soul. You only have revealed me to 
 myself, for without your aid my best knowledge of myself 
 would have been merely to know my own shadow — to watch 
 it flickering on the wall, and mistake its fantasies for my 
 own real actions. ... If the whole world stoo^l between us 
 we must have met ; if we had been born in different ages we 
 could not have been sundered! "
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 217 
 
 What was poverty and obscurity and isolation unto 
 these two souls, so complete in each other that nothing 
 else was desired ? How deep a lesson might the young 
 of these later days, who hesitate to take each other unless 
 all things else may be added unto them, learn from this 
 perfect marriage ! How much, too, could they learn from 
 the dignity and the refinement and the charm of that 
 early home, where all was so simple, so humble, and yet 
 so rich and satisfying ! Would that we had more such 
 homes of royal poverty in these days of vulgar pretence 
 and showy unreality. More homes where there is no 
 shamefacedness over the want of the luxuries of their 
 neighbors, but a simple content with what it is possible to 
 have honorably; where plain living is a religion, and 
 where there is no insatiable longing for the unattainable. 
 The worship of wealth, the feeling that there is no other 
 good than money, is one of the most degrading features 
 of our modern life. It is a falsehood, too. There is 
 everything good in the world, and the most of the things 
 which are best in life can be had with but a little money. 
 No man is poor unless he feels poor. If a family are 
 wiUing to live their own noble life, pitched in a high key, 
 and with little regard for what their neighbors may say 
 and think, it is still possible to be happy in this goodly 
 world, though the bank account may be small, or there 
 be no bank account in the case. The Ways and 
 Means Committee of which Mrs. Hawthorne was chair- 
 man in her day could impart a world of wisdom to the 
 fretful and ambitious wives of a generation of young men 
 now upon the stage of action, who strive so hard to live 
 like the people who have wealth at their command that 
 they spoil the beautiful homes they might enjoy by an 
 unceasing strife to appear to live better than they can 
 afford to do. 
 
 When Fortune began to smile upon the Hawthornes, 
 after the immortal " Scarlet Letter " had been written and 
 " The Blithedale Romance " had been added to it, they 
 received her favors with thankful hearts, and knew how
 
 2iS HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 to spend wisely nntl well what came to them. But, as so 
 often happens, it tloes not appear that they were any 
 happier in their easier circumstances than in their poverty ; 
 probably not as happy, for the glamour of youth was gone, 
 and the first zest of being had become dulled. Ill health, 
 too, had come ujion him, once so strong and perfect in 
 body ; and their home was measurably broken up after 
 they first went abroad. The days at the Old Manse com- 
 prised the idyl of their lives. 
 
 Here is what Hawthorne himself says of this time : — 
 
 " My wife is in the strictest sense my sole companion, and 
 I need no other; there is no vacancy in my mind any more 
 than in my heart. In truth, I have spent so many years in 
 total seclusion from all human society that it is no wonder if 
 now I feel all my desires satisfied by this sole intercourse. 
 But she has come to me from the midst of many friends and 
 acquaintances ; yet she lives from day to day in this solitude, 
 seeing nobody but myself and our Molly, while the snow of 
 our avenue is untrodden for weeks by any footstep save mine. 
 Yet she is always cheerful. Thank God that I suffice for her 
 boundless heart." 
 
 And, again, to her he writes : — 
 
 " Dear Little Wife, — Afcer finishing my record in the 
 journal, I sat a long time in grandmother's chair thinking of 
 many things ; but the thought of thee, the great thought of thee, 
 was among all other thoughts, like the pervading sunshine 
 falling through the boughs and branches of a tree and ting- 
 ing every separate leaf. And surely thou shouldst not have 
 deserted me without manufacturing a sufficient quantity of 
 sunshine to last till thy return. Art thou not ashamed .?" 
 
 Concord was never the same to them after their return 
 from Rome. The shadow of the coming separation was 
 already around them. He writes, after the appearance of 
 Longfellow's poem : " I, too, am weary, and look forward 
 to the Wayside Inn." And, spite of the most loving minis- 
 trations of family and friends, he was soon brought to the 
 rest which awaited him there. None could really regret
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 219 
 
 that he had found the peace he sought ; but the world 
 seemed more thinly populated when it was known that 
 the hand which had written "The Scarlet Letter," "The 
 House of the Seven Gables," and " The Marble Faun " 
 would write no more. " We carried him," said Fields, 
 " through the blossoming orchards of Concord, and laid 
 him down under a group of pines on a hill-side overlook- 
 ing historic fields ; the unfinished romance which had 
 cost him such anxiety laid upon his coffin." And there, 
 upon that Concord height vvhich he has rendered world- 
 famous, made a Delphian vale or a Mecca to so many 
 pilgrims from his own land and from over sea, he sleeps 
 well. There the sweet spring flowers of dear old New 
 England bloom for him ; there the Mayflower pierces 
 the melting snow, and the shy, sweet violet gems the earli- 
 est green ; there the dandelion glows in golden splendor, 
 and the snowy daisies star the grass, and all the sweet 
 succession of summer flowers troop in orderly array, until 
 Autumn waves her torch, and the sumach and the golden- 
 rod blaze out in wild magnificence, and the blue-fringed 
 gentian hides in secret coverts. These are the fitting 
 decorations of that grave. Piled marble or towering gran- 
 ite would lie too heavy on the heart of this child of Nature. 
 And as the years shall pass, still will the humble grave 
 continue to be visited. " Forgotten " will never be writ- 
 ten upon the tombstone of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Still 
 through the clear brilliance of New England winter nights 
 will the stars look down tenderly upon it. Arcturus will 
 stand guard over it, golden-belted Orion will send down 
 quivering lances of light to illumine it, the pomp of blaz- 
 ing Jupiter shall envelop it, and the first radiance of the 
 dawn shall silver its sacred slopes forever.
 
 -^ym^' 
 
 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. 
 
 IN the city of Portland, that "beautiful towii that 
 is seated by the sea," in the year 1807 Henry 
 Wadsworth Longfellow was born, and in the delightful 
 old ancestral home there he passed his youth. The 
 house had been his mother's home since early child- 
 hood ; in it she was married, and in it passed almost 
 her entire life. It had been built by Mrs. Longfellow's 
 father. General Peleg Wadsworth, in the year 1784, and was 
 one of the finest mansions in the city at that time, stand- 
 ing, not as now, in the heart of the city, but out in the 
 open fields. Mr. and Mrs. Longfellow passed here a 
 long, beautiful, and happy life, devotedly attached to 
 each other, fond and proud of their children, and much 
 given to good works. Mr. Longfellow was a man of con- 
 sequence in the community, much honored for his learn- 
 ing and ability, and much esteemed for his integrity, his 
 cordial and kind manners, and his generous hospitality. 
 He had graduated at Harvard College when very young, 
 where he was a classmate of Dr. Channing, Judge Story, 
 and other distinguished men, and much esteemed by 
 them for the same qualities which made him popular in 
 after-life. He was regarded as one of the purest and 
 most high-minded youths who had at that time honored 
 the college and been honored by it. Mrs. Longfellow 
 was a very beautiful woman, fond of poetry and music, 
 of dancing and social gayety, and a profound lover of
 
 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. 221 
 
 Nature in all her varied aspects. She was a tender and 
 faithful wife and a most devoted mother. From her Mr. 
 Longfellow doubtless inherited his poetic temperament 
 and much that was most pleasing in his disposition. 
 
 Longfellow's childhood seems to have been a very 
 happy one, passed in this beautiful home, with such 
 parents, and surrounded by a delightful group of young 
 friends. He was very fond of reverting to it, and all 
 through his life cherished the memory of 
 
 " The friendships old, and the early loves " 
 
 which used to come back to him 
 
 " With a Sabbath sound as of doves 
 In quiet neighborhoods." 
 
 He remembered, too, more vividly than many men of 
 mature years, 
 
 " The gleams and glooms that dart 
 
 Across the school-boy's brain ; 
 The song and the silence in the heart 
 That in part are prophecies and in part 
 
 Are longings wild and vain." 
 
 When only fifteen years of age he entered Bowdoin 
 College, with a brother two years older than himself, and 
 graduated fourth in his class in 1825. His Commence- 
 ment oration was upon " The Life and Writings of 
 Chatterton." He was also invited to deliver a poem the 
 day after Commencement, as he had already begun to 
 write verses which had been printed in the local news- 
 papers. Almost immediately after his graduation he was 
 offered a professorship in the college, and requested to 
 visit Europe to prepare himself for its duties, making 
 further studies in the modern languages for that purpose. 
 
 The proposal was eagerly accepted, and he sailed the 
 following spring in a packet-ship from New York. The 
 voyage occupied a month, and was a remarkably pleasant 
 one, thoroughly enjoyed by the young traveller. There is 
 nothing remarkable in the letters he wrote home during
 
 2 22 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 this first trip to Europe, wlien he visited France, Spain, 
 Germany, Italy (where he spent a year), and l-'ngland. 
 He assumed the duties of his professorship immecUately 
 upon his return, at a salary of" one thousand dollars a year. 
 He was very popular with the students from the first, and 
 became quite a power in the University. At this time he 
 became a contributor to the " North American Review," 
 and may be said to have fairly begun his literary career. 
 In the year 1831 he was married to Mary Storer Potter, 
 a young lady of Portland, to whom he had long been 
 attached. She was one of the famous beauties of that 
 town, noted for its beautiful women, and a member of 
 the social circle in which the Longfellows moved. The 
 marriage was in every way suitable, and pleasing to the 
 friends of both parties. She was a lady highly educated 
 for that day, and possessed of a mind of unusual power. 
 She was also of a most cheerful and amiable disposition ; 
 and the world opened very brightly before the young 
 professor. They began housekeeping in Brunswick in 
 a house still standing in Federal Street. He gives this 
 picture of a morning there : — 
 
 " I can almost fancy myself in Spain, the morning is so 
 soft and beautiful. The tessellated shadow of the honey- 
 suckle lies motionless upon my study floor, as if it were a 
 figure in the carpet ; and through the open window comes 
 the fragrance of the wild-brier and the mock-orange. The 
 birds are carolling in the trees, and their shadows flit across 
 the window as they dart to and fro in the sunshine ; while 
 the murmur of the bee, the cooing of doves from the eaves, 
 and the whirring of a little humming-bird that has its nest in 
 the honeysuckle, send up a sound of joy to meet the rising 
 sun." 
 
 Here was passed a very busy and happy period of Mr. 
 Longfellow's life. He was young, gifted, fortunately situ- 
 ated, and beloved, and as yet no shadow had darkened 
 his life. He employed his leisure in writing a series of 
 sketches of travel which were afterwards published as 
 " Outre-Mer," and he began to write poetry again after
 
 HENRY IV. LONGFELLOW. 
 
 223 
 
 an interval of nearly eight years. He also began a scrap- 
 book devoted to notices of his writings, which he christ- 
 ened " Puffs and Counter Blasts," and kept for the greater 
 part of his life. 
 
 He passed five and a half years in Brunswick, perhaps 
 the happiest years of his life, for he had youth and health 
 and high hope at this time ; and then he began to long 
 for a somewhat wider sphere. Very opportunely came 
 the offer of a professorship in Harvard University, which 
 was at once accepted, in April, 1S35. He sailed for 
 Europe to make himself familiar with the Scandinavian 
 tongues and to pass some further time in Germany. He 
 was accompanied by his wife and two of her young lady 
 friends. They remained in London for a few weeks, 
 and made acquaintance with many distinguished peo- 
 ple, — among others the Carlyles, to whom they had 
 brought an introduction from Mr. Emerson. They paid 
 a visit to the seer at Chelsea, of which Mrs. Longfellow 
 wrote : — 
 
 " Mr. Carlyle of Craigenputtock was soon after announced, 
 and passed a half-hour with us much to our delight. He has 
 very unpolished manners, and a broad Scottish accent, but 
 such fine language and beautiful thoughts that it is truly 
 delightful to listen to him. He invited us to take tea with 
 them at Chelsea, where they now reside. We were as much 
 charmed with Mrs. C. as with her husband. She is a lovely 
 woman with very simple and pleasing manners. She is 
 also very talented and accomplished ; and how delightful 
 it is to see such modesty combined with such power to 
 please I " 
 
 They left London for Copenhagen and Stockholm in 
 June, and were much delighted with the new land they 
 visited. To read in the public square at midnight ; to 
 pass through groves of pine and fir with rose-colored 
 cones ; to hear the watchman call from the church tower 
 four times toward the four quarters of the heaven, " Ho, 
 watchmen, ho ! Twelve the clock hath stricken. God 
 keep our town from fire and brand, and enemy's hand;"
 
 224 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 to have boys and girls run before to open the gates j 
 to hear the peasants cry, "God bless you," when you 
 sneezed, — all these little things gave them the delight 
 which young travellers alone can experience. 
 
 But alas ! that delight was of short duration. Mrs. Long- 
 fellow was taken sick in Amsterdam in October, and they 
 were detained there for a month. She seemed to recover, 
 and they journeyed on to Rotterdam, where she fell ill 
 again and died the 29th of November. Her husband 
 wrote of her that " she closed her peaceful life by a still 
 more peaceful death, and though called away when life 
 was brightest, went without a murmur and in perfect will- 
 ingness to the bosom of her God." Mr. Longfellow 
 immediately resumed his journey, going on to Dusseldorf 
 and from there to Bonn. He took a carriage and jour- 
 neyed along the banks of the Rhine, by the " castled 
 crag of Drachenfels " and the other storied places of 
 that famous river, in complete silence, though with a 
 pleasant companion by his side. They visited castles and 
 cathedrals, and wonderful ruins, and some of the most 
 picturesque points of that picturesque land, but in a 
 gloom which nothing could break or even lighten. So 
 on to Heidelberg, where they were to sojourn for a time, 
 and where Mr. Longfellow was to pursue his studies. 
 Here he found Mr. Bryant, whom he had never met, but 
 who cheered and soothed him as only a fellow-country- 
 man and a man like-minded with himself could have done. 
 Mr. Bryant did not remain long in Heidelberg, however, 
 though his wife and daughters stayed through the winter 
 and continued to cheer Mr. Longfellow's loneliness. He 
 made work his chief consoler, however, and accomplished 
 a great deal in the line of his chosen career. 
 
 Like Paul Fleming, into whose story he wove many of 
 the experiences of this part of his life, " he buried him- 
 self in books, in old dusty books. He worked his way 
 diligently through the ancient poetic lore of Germany 
 into the bright sunny land where walk the modern bards 
 and sing." Into the Silent Land he walked with Salis ;
 
 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. 
 
 225 
 
 he wept with the melancholy Werther, or laughed with the 
 gentle Meister ; he pondered deeply over the congenial 
 Schiller, but delighted most of all in Jean Paul the Only, 
 in whose prodigal fancy he lost for a time the memory 
 of his sorrows. But ever at his side, as he walked on the 
 banks of the beautiful Neckar and gazed up at the lofty 
 mountains which surround Heidelberg, there seemed to 
 walk the Being Beauteous who had whispered with her 
 dying breath, " I will be with you and watch over you." 
 Many years afterwards he embalmed the memory of this 
 young and beautiful wife in the poem called " The Foot- 
 steps of Angels." The summer following his bereavement 
 he started on a tour through Switzerland, finding at the 
 very outset of that journey the tablet containing the in- 
 scription which he made the motto of " Hyperion " and 
 of his future life : " Look not mournfully into the Past, 
 it comes not back again ; wisely improve the Present, it 
 is thine ; go forth to meet the shadowy Future without 
 fear and with a manly heart." At Interlachen he met 
 Miss Frances Appleton, and in the pages of " Hyperion " 
 the world has read of the romance which followed that 
 meeting. We also read, in the journals published recently, 
 some records of those days. Here is one of the earliest : — 
 
 " A day of true and quiet enjoyment, travelling from 
 Thun to Entelbuch on our way to Lucerne. The time glided 
 too swiftly away. We read the ' Genevieve ' of Coleridge, 
 and the ' Christabel,' and many scraps of song, and little 
 German ballads of Uhland, simple and strange. At noon 
 we stopped at Langnau, and walked into the fields, and sat 
 down by a stream of pure water that turned a mill ; and a 
 little girl came out of the mill and brought us cherries ; and 
 the shadow of the trees was pleasant, and my soul was filled 
 with peace and gladness." 
 
 And a little later : — 
 
 " Took a carriage to St. Germain-en- Laye to see the 
 Fete des Layes. The day was pleasant, with shifting clouds 
 and sunshine. They told me I was in good spirits. It was 
 
 IS
 
 2-6 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 the surface only, stirred by the passing breeze and catching 
 the sunshine of the moment. I have often observed, amid 
 a chorus of a hundred voices and the sound of a hundred 
 instruments, amid all this whirlwind of the vexed air, that 
 I could distinguish the melancholy vibration of a single 
 string touched by a finger. It had a mournful, sobbing 
 sound. Thus amid the splendor of a festival, — the rushing 
 crowd, and song, and sounds of gladness, and a thousand 
 mingling emotions, — distinctly audible to the mind's ear are 
 the pulsations of some melancholy chord of the heart, touched 
 by the finger of memory. And it has a mournful, sobbing 
 sound." 
 
 But tearing himself away from the sadness of the old 
 memory and the fascination of the new presence alike, 
 Mr. Longfellow returned to America in December, 1836, 
 and assumed the duties of his professorship at Cambridge. 
 Here he soon formed those friendships which were to 
 him a life -long blessing and delight. They fall naturally 
 into two groups, the earlier and later, though some of the 
 most intimate of these friendships formed in youth lasted 
 until near the close of Mr. Longfellow's life. Among 
 the early friends were George W. Greene, with whom 
 he corresponded most affectionately for many years ; Mr. 
 Samuel Ward, a brother of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe ; 
 Professor Felton ; Hilliard, Mr. Sumner's law partner ; 
 Cleveland, a scholar living at ease in Brookline ; Haw- 
 thorne ; and always and ever Mr. Sumner himself. Emer- 
 son, also, and Prescott were his friends, but not so intimate 
 as the others. Here is a glimpse of the author of that 
 series of fascinating histories, since so popular, in a letter 
 to Greene : — 
 
 "This morning, as I was sitting at breakfast, a gentleman 
 on horseback sent up word that I should come down to 
 him. It was Prescott, author of ' Ferdinand and Isabella.' 
 He is an early riser, and rides about the country. There 
 on his horse sat the great author. He is one of the best 
 fellows in the world, and much my friend ; handsome and 
 forty ; a great diner-out ; gentle, companionable, and modest; 
 quite astonished to find himself famous."
 
 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. 227 
 
 Then comes a glimpse of the as yet unknown author 
 of "The Scarlet Letter:" — 
 
 " I shall see Hawthorne to-morrow. He lives in Salem, 
 and we meet and sup together to-morrow evening at the 
 Tremont House. Your health shall be remembered. He 
 is a strange owl; a very peculiar individual, with a dash of 
 originality about him very pleasant to behold. How I wish 
 you could be with us ! Ach ! my beloved friend, when I 
 one day sit with you in Italy again, with nothing on the 
 snow-white tablecloth save bread still whiter, and fruit, and 
 that most delicate wine ' in beakers full of the warm South,' 
 will we pledge the happy present time and those sorrows 
 and disappointments which are our schoolmasters. Sumner 
 is the nearest and warmest thing I can send you. When 
 you have him you will think you have me, he can tell you 
 so much of me." 
 
 To this early group were added, later on, Agassiz, 
 Lowell, Dana, James T. Fields, Norton, Dr. Holmes, and 
 others ; but those mentioned were his real intimates 
 throughout life. With Emerson he maintained a calm 
 and admiring friendship, but saw less of him than of the 
 others. Bryant and Whittier and George W. Curtis he 
 loved and admired, but they were more distant and not 
 his every-day companions. Dr. Samuel G. Howe be- 
 longed, if not exactly to the earliest group of friends, 
 yet among friends both early and late. These men are 
 all historic now, and it seems strange to find Longfellow 
 writing of them as he does in letters and journals. For 
 instance : — 
 
 " Also Mr. Emerson, a clergyman, with new views of life, 
 death, and immortality; author of 'Nature,' and friend of 
 Carlyle. He is one of the finest lecturers I ever heard, with 
 magnificent passages of true prose poetry. But it is all 
 dreamery, after all." 
 
 Strange, too, to find Carlyle writing to the young 
 poet after the receipt of a volume of his poems, before 
 reading them, as is said to be the fashion of great men
 
 2 28 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 when they wish to let unknown authors down easily and 
 gracefully : — 
 
 "About the same time there came an indistinct message 
 that a copy of your poems had been left for me at Fraser 
 the bookseller's. It now beckons to me from one of my 
 shelves, asking always, ' When wilt thou have a cheerful, 
 vacant day ? ' " 
 
 Very natural it seems, though, to find that Carlyle is 
 already writing from " a hideous immeasurable treadmill, a 
 smoky, soul-confusing Babylon," and that he addresses 
 " only one prayer to the heavens, — that he were well out 
 of it before it takes the life out of him." 
 
 Pleasantest and -strongest perhaps of all his friendships 
 was that for Charles Sumner, who was lecturing at the Law 
 School when Mr. Longfellow first came to Cambridge. 
 Begun when both were young men just launching forth 
 on their great but so different career, it continued until 
 death separated them, without a shadow of estrangement 
 or disloyalty, but with ever increasing ardor of affection. 
 Sumner was incKned to literature at that time, and indeed 
 for many years afterwards, his political career being rather 
 forced upon him by the stormy times. A club was formed 
 at this time, called the " Five of Clubs," consisting of 
 Longfellow, Sumner, Hilliard, Cleveland, and Felton. 
 They read and criticised each other's writings, and en- 
 joyed a hearty social intercourse. Awhile afterwards, 
 when they began to speak well of each other's articles in 
 the reviews, the newspapers gave them the name of the 
 " Mutual Admiration Society." Not inapplicable, prob- 
 ably, but applicable to the literary men of all time. Wha' 
 is the great literary guild anywhere but a mutual admira 
 tion society ? What a large portion of our best literature 
 would be blotted out if what one great writer has said of 
 another should be destroyed ! Would we have this so ? 
 Nay, verily ! Certainly there was no lack of warm admira- 
 tion, and warm expression of it, among this httle group 
 of friends; and between Sumner and Longfellow, at least,
 
 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. 
 
 229 
 
 these expressions continued throughout life, and were 
 heartily sincere to the last. One after another Long- 
 fellow's poems were submitted to his friends' criticism, 
 and each received its due meed of praise or gentle cen- 
 sure. Mr. Sumner's speeches were received by Longfellow 
 with great enthusiasm always, and praised heartily and 
 unreservedly. Every step in his career was watched with 
 the most eager interest and intense sympathy. It is one 
 of the most beautiful friendships on record. One wonders 
 in reading the journal what Longfellow's life would have 
 been without these constant visits and letters from Sum- 
 ner. Every Sabbath was spent by the statesman at the 
 poet's house, when the former was in the vicinity of 
 Boston, and many and many are the records during the 
 week, — Sumner to dine, Sumner to tea, Sumner to pass 
 the night, and always some note made of the late and 
 pleasant talk the pair had together. When Sumner goes 
 to Washington he is sadly missed, and such little notes as 
 this sent after him in tender remembrance : — 
 
 " Your farewell note came safe and sad ; and Sunday no 
 well-known footstep in the hall, nor sound of cane laid upon 
 the table. We ate our dinner somewhat silently by ourselves 
 and talked of you far off, looking at your empty chair. Away, 
 phantoms ! I will not think of this too much for fear that 
 which you say may prove truer than I want it to be. Let us 
 not prophesy sadness." 
 
 When Sumner was expected to make a speech all were 
 alert at Craigie House, and often his friend would send 
 him some such greeting as this : — 
 
 " It is now eleven o'clock of the forenoon, and you have 
 just taken your seat in the Senate and arranged your artillery 
 to bombard Nebraska ! We listen with deepest interest, but 
 shall not hear the report of your guns till to-morrow, you are 
 so far off. If, after all, the enemy prevails, it will be one 
 dishonest victory more in the history of the world. But the 
 enemy will not prevail. A seeming victory will be a real 
 defeat." 
 
 Then, after the speech was read : —
 
 230 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 " All this morning of my birthday, my dear Senator, I have 
 devoted to your speech on Nebraska, which came by the 
 morning's mail. It is very noble, very cogent, very eloquent, 
 very complete. How any one can get over it or under it or 
 through it or round it, it is impossible to imagine." 
 
 Tlien, after the cowardly and fiendish attack upon Sumner 
 in the Senate Chamber : — 
 
 " I have no words to write you about this savage atroc- 
 ity ; only enough to express our sorrow and sympathy for 
 yourself. We have been in great distress. Owen came to 
 tell us of this great feat of arms of the ' Southern chivalry.' 
 He was absolutely sobbing. I was much relieved on seeing 
 your despatch to your mother, and to hear that George was 
 going to you directly. A brave and noble speech you made, 
 never to die out of the memories of men." 
 
 Then, a day or two later : — 
 
 "I have just been reading again your speech. It is the 
 greatest voice on the greatest subject that has been uttered 
 since we became a nation. No matter for insults — we feel 
 them with you; no matter for wounds — we also bleed in 
 them." 
 
 But in the days of which we are writing, all these stormy 
 troublous times were yet far in the future, and the world 
 looked bright and pleasant to these afterward saddened 
 friends. The acquaintance with Miss Appleton had been 
 renewed after her return to Boston, and the poet w^as by 
 this time deeply devoted to her, and hopeful of one day 
 winning her for his own. He became something of a 
 dandy in those days, and showed a fondness for color in 
 coats, waistcoats, and neckties ; and the ladies looked at 
 him a little doubtfully, thinking perhaps, as they had done 
 of Paul Fleming, that " his gloves were a shade too light 
 for a strictly virtuous man." Six years passed after the 
 first meeting with Miss Appleton in Europe before Mr. 
 Longfellow finally claimed her for his bride. He had 
 been a patient as well as an ardent lover, and was re- 
 warded in 1S43 by the hand of her he sought. She was
 
 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. 
 
 231 
 
 now a woman of twenty-five, of stately presence, cultivated 
 mind, and calm but gracious manners. Her face was not 
 " faultily faultless " nor " icily regular," but both beautiful 
 and expressive. Mr. Longfellow was now thirty-six years 
 old, and a man of rapidly widening fame. Mr. Apple ton 
 purchased for the newly married couple the old Craigie 
 House in Cambridge, which had been Mr. Longfellow's 
 home ever since his arrival there. Most visitors to Cam- 
 bridge are familiar with this old Colonial mansion which 
 had once been the headquarters of General Washington. 
 It stands far back in the ample grounds which surround 
 it, and is painted in yellow and white. It is on Brattle 
 Street as one goes from Harvard College to Mount 
 Auburn. The front is about eighty feet in length, in- 
 cluding the verandas, and a wooden railing extends around 
 the roof. There is an Italian balustrade along the 
 first terrace, and a hedge of lilacs leads up to the door. 
 Old historic elms throw their broad arms all about the 
 place. The interior of the house is very handsome, and 
 is considered a fine specimen of the old Colonial style. 
 Altogether it made a most delightful home for the poet 
 and his bride, and there they spent the remainder of their 
 lives. 
 
 About the time of his marriage Mr. Longfellow's eyes 
 failed him on account of overstraining them, and one of 
 Mrs. Longfellow's first wifely duties was to furnish eyes 
 for her husband. She read to him and Avrote for him a 
 great deal for several years, and the close companionship 
 which this required was very pleasant to both. He was a 
 very busy man in those days ; for, contrary to the popular 
 impression, Mr. Longfellow did a great deal of hard work 
 at the college for a good many years. His was no hon- 
 orary position, but a genuine working professorship, involv- 
 ing the preparation of a great number of lectures during 
 each year and close class-work besides. He enjoyed 
 this work very much for the first few years, but long before 
 he resigned his position it became exceedingly burden- 
 some to him. The college should have relieved him of
 
 232 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 the (Iriulgery of his professorship, and allowed him time 
 for the preparation of special lectures upon really scholarly 
 themes ; but it had not the wisdom to do so, and exacted 
 the labors of a dray-horse from this chained Pegasus. In 
 the journal are many entries like the following : — 
 
 " I seriously tiiink of resigning my professorship. My 
 time is so fully takeii up by its lectures and other duties 
 that I have none left for writing. Then my eyes are suffer- 
 ing, and the years are precious ; and if I wish to do any- 
 thing in literature it must be done now. Few men have 
 written good poetry after fifty." 
 
 Again : — 
 
 " I get very tired of the routine of this life. The bright 
 autumn weather draws me away from study, and the brown 
 branches of the leafless trees are more beautiful than books. 
 We lead but one life here on earth. We must make that 
 beautiful. And to do this, health and elasticity of mind are 
 needful, and whatever endangers or impedes these must be 
 avoided." 
 
 And again : — 
 
 " The day of rest — the ' truce of God ' between contend- 
 ing cares — is over, and the world begins again to swing round 
 with clash and clang, like the wings of a windmill. Grind, 
 grind, grind." 
 
 Some hint of real work may be found in this : — 
 
 " The seventy lectures to which I am doomed next year 
 hang over me like a dark curtain. Seventy lectures ! who 
 will have the patience to hear them ? If my eyes were strong 
 I should delight in it. But it will eat up a whole year, and 
 I was just beginning so cheerily on my poem and looking 
 forward to pleasant work on it next year." 
 
 Oh, the pity of it ! Many men could have lectured to 
 college boys on the modern languages and literature, if 
 not as well as Longfellow, at least well enough ; but who 
 was there who could write his poems ? That he should
 
 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. 233 
 
 drudge on through his best years, giving only the odds 
 and ends of his time to his real life-work, seems an in- 
 finite pity. ^Vhat might he not have done in those earlier 
 years could he have gone fresh and untired to his musings 
 and his dreams ? 
 
 Emerson was wiser than he, when early in life he re- 
 solved to be content with the most modest means and to 
 have possession of himself. He never drudged in a pro- 
 fession, but gave his full strength to his literary work. 
 Longfellow should have done this at least ten years before 
 he did. But five children had come into the family during 
 the years of his last marriage, and poetry has not long been 
 a paying investment in this country, although Longfellow 
 in the later years received large sums for his work. He 
 probably dropped his college work as soon as he felt that 
 he could afford to do so ; and after that, much of his im- 
 portant work was done. But it was not done with the 
 buoyancy and freshness which the earlier years might have 
 furnished, although some of his best poems were written 
 after the change. 
 
 But the last twenty years of Mr. Longfellow's life were 
 saddened inexpressibly by the loss of his wife, and all 
 his later work is of a sombre hue, filled through and 
 through, unconsciously, with his own sadness. Uncon- 
 sciously we say, for he never intentionally rhymed his 
 own sorrows. There is no personal mention of his griefs 
 in all his later poems. The death of his wife occurred on 
 the 9th of July in 1861, and was caused by burns re- 
 ceived from having her clothing ignited by a match upon 
 which she trod in their library, where she had been seal- 
 ing up some packages of the children's curls, which she 
 had just cut. Mr. Longfellow was badly burned in trying 
 to save her, and when the funeral took place was confined 
 to his bed. She was buried upon the anniversary of her 
 marriage-day, and was crowned with a wreath of orange 
 blossoms. She was long remembered in Cambridge as 
 the most beautiful woman of her time, — beautiful not 
 alone in body, but in spirit and life. Mr. Longfellow never
 
 2^4 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 recovered from the tragedy, but mourned her in silence 
 for twenty years. Heart-breaking are the entries in the 
 journal during all this time, — entries telling at frequent 
 intervals of his ever increasing desolation. Litde was 
 known of all this by the world until the publication of his 
 journal, for it was one of the peculiarities of his grief that 
 he could speak of it to no one. Only after months had 
 passed did he allude to it in his letters even to his brothers, 
 and then in the briefest fashion : " And now of what we 
 both are thinking I can ^vrite no word. God's will be 
 done." The first entry in the journal after the break 
 made at the time of her death is this : — 
 
 " Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace ! 
 Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul ! 
 While the stars bum, the moons increase, 
 And the great ages onward roll." 
 
 The entries in the journal are all brief, but they are 
 frequent and like these : " Walk before breakfast with 
 
 E and afterw^ard alone. The country is beautiful, 
 
 but oh, how sad ! How can I live any longer ! " " The 
 glimmer of golden leaves in the sunshine ; the lilac hedge 
 shot with the crimson creeper ; the river writing its silver 
 S in the meadow; everything without full of loveliness. 
 But within me the hunger, the famine of the heart!" 
 "Another walk under the pines, in the bright morning 
 sunshine." 
 
 " Known and unknown ; human, divine : 
 Sweet human hand and lip and eye ; 
 Dear heavenly friend, who canst not die : 
 Mine, mine forever ; ever mine," 
 
 " How inexpressibly sad are all holydays ! But the 
 dear little girls had their Christmas-tree last night, and 
 an unseen presence blessed the scene ! " 
 
 No mention of his loss was ever made in his published 
 verse, though the whole of his poetry was much sadder 
 after that loss ; but after his own death the following
 
 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. 235 
 
 poem was found in his desk, written eighteen years after 
 his wife's death : — 
 
 " In the long, sleepless watches of the night 
 A gentle face — the face of one long dead — 
 Looks at me from the wall, where round its head 
 The night lamp casts a halo of pale light. 
 Here in this room she died, and soul more white 
 Never through martyrdom of fire was led 
 To its repose; nor can in books be read 
 The legend of a life more benedight. 
 There is a mountain in the distant West 
 That, sun-defying in its deep ravines, 
 Displays a cross of snow upon its side : 
 Such is the cross I wear upon my breast 
 These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes 
 And seasons changeless since the day she died." 
 
 It was a long time before he could work again. When 
 he felt that he could do so, he began his translation of 
 Dante, and frequently produced a canto in a day, find- 
 ing in this absorbing occupation the first alleviation of his 
 sorrow. In a sonnet " On Translating Dante," he said : — 
 
 " I enter here from day to day, 
 And leave my burden at this minster gate." 
 
 But when his work was done he always found that his 
 burden was still awaiting him on the outside, and he took 
 it up and bore it as patiently as he could. But he began 
 earnestly to long for 
 
 " The Wayside Inn, 
 Where toil should cease and rest begin," 
 
 and to feel that the approach of old age without the be- 
 loved companionship was hard indeed to contemplate. 
 But his children were beautiful and promising and affec- 
 tionate, and he a most loving and conscientious father ; 
 so they gradually came to occupy his thoughts and much 
 to cheer his solitude. He was a famous man too by this 
 time, indeed long before ; and the world made demands 
 upon him which could not always be disregarded, and he
 
 236 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 began to mingle with it somewhat again. But the little 
 group of friends to whom allusion has been made were 
 his best comforters, and were more and more prized as 
 the years went on. During the translation of Dante they 
 assembled at very short intervals to listen to the reading 
 of the work, and to criticise, and suggest such changes as 
 were deemed advisable ; and these occasions were much 
 enjoyed. As the years went by, one after another of the 
 early friends fell by the way, leaving gaps in his life which 
 could never be filled. Felton was the first to go, and he 
 was very deeply mourned by Longfellow, who felt " as if 
 the world were reeling and sinking under his feet." His 
 death made, as his friend expressed it, " a chasm which 
 not only nothing can fill up, but which nothing has a ten- 
 dency to fill up." Hawthorne and Agassiz followed soon 
 after Felton ; and later Charles Sumner, most deeply 
 mourned of all. He said, in allusion to these friends, in 
 one of his most beautiful sonnets : — 
 
 " I also wait ! but they will come no more, 
 Those friends of mine, whose presence satisfied 
 The thirst and hunger of my heart. Ah me ! 
 They have forgotten the pathway to my door ! 
 Something is gone from Nature since they died, 
 And summer is not summer, nor can be." 
 
 Mr. Longfellow made a final visit to Europe in 1868, 
 accompanied by his children, two sisters, and a brother, 
 and his brother-in-law Thomas Appleton. This journey 
 was much enjoyed by all, although Mr. Longfellow was 
 not a very good sight-see:-^ and impatient of delays. The 
 remainder of his life passed placidly at his old home, and 
 he died at the age of seventy-five, in the midst of his 
 family and friends. Upon his cofiin they placed a palm- 
 branch and a spray of passion-flower, — symbols of vic- 
 tory and the glory of suffering; and he was buried at 
 Mount Auburn, beside her he had so long mourned. 
 What his work was we may tell in the eloquent words 
 of his brother poet and most appreciative critic, Mr. 
 Stedman : —
 
 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. 
 
 237 
 
 "His song was a household service, the ritual of our 
 feastings and mournings; and often it rehearsed for us the 
 tales of many lands, or, best of all, the legends of our own. 
 I see him, a silver-haired minstrel, touching melodious keys, 
 playing and singing in the twilight, within sound of the rote 
 of the sea. There he lingers late ; the curfew-bell has tolled 
 and the darkness closes round, till at last that tender voice 
 is silent, and he softly moves unto his rest."
 
 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 THE poet Whittier always calls to mind the prophet- 
 bards of the olden time. There is much of the old 
 Semitic fire about him, and ethical and religious subjects 
 seem to occupy his entire mind. Like his own Tauler, he 
 walks abroad, constantly 
 
 " Pondering the solemn Miracle of Life; 
 As one who, wandering in a starless night, 
 Feels momently the jar of unseen waves, 
 And hears the thunder of an unknown sea 
 Breaking along an unimagined shore." 
 
 His poems are so thoroughly imbued with this relig- 
 ious spirit that they seem to us almost hke the sacred 
 writings of the different times and nations of the world. 
 They come to the lips upon all occasions of deep feeling 
 almost as naturally as the Scriptures do. They are cur- 
 rent coin with reformers the world over. They are the 
 Alpha and Omega of deep, strong religious faith. Whoever 
 would best express his entire confidence in the triumph of 
 the right, and his rehance upon God's power against the 
 devices of men, finds the words of Whittier upon his lips ; 
 and to those who mourn and seek for consolation, how 
 naturally and involuntarily come back lines from his poems 
 they have long treasured, but which perhaps never had 
 a personal application until now ! To the wronged, the 
 down-trodden, and the suffering they appeal as strongly
 
 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 239 
 
 as the Psalms of David. He is the great High Priest of 
 Literature. But few priests at any time have had such an 
 audience and such influence as he. The moral and re- 
 ligious value of his work can scarcely be overstated. Who 
 can ever estimate the power which his strong words had 
 in the days that are now but a fading memory, — in the 
 great conflict which freed the bodies of so many million 
 slaves? And who can ever estimate the power his strong 
 words have had throughout his whole career in freeing the 
 minds of other millions from the shackles of unworthy old 
 beliefs? His blows have been strong, steady, persistent. 
 He has never had the fear of man before his eyes. No 
 man has done more for freedom, fellowship, and character 
 in religion than he. Hypocrisy and falsehood and cant 
 have been his dearest foes, and he has ridden at them 
 early and late with his lance poised and his steed at full 
 tilt. Indeed, for a Quaker, Mr. Whittier must be said to 
 have a great deal of the martial spirit. The fiery, fighting 
 zeal of the old reformers is in his blood. You can imagine 
 him as upon occasion enjoying the imprecatory Psalms. 
 In his anti-slavery poems there is a depth of passionate 
 earnestness which shows that he could have gone to the 
 stake for his opinions had he lived in an earlier age than 
 ours. That he did risk his life for them, even in our own 
 day, is well known. During the intense heat of the anti- 
 slavery conflict he was mobbed once and again by excited 
 crowds; but he was not to be intimidated by all the 
 powers of evil, and continued to speak his strong words 
 and to sing his inspiring songs, whether men would hear 
 or whether they would forbear. And those Voices of 
 Freedom, whatever may be thought of them by mere 
 critics and litterateurs, will outlast any poems of their day, 
 and sound '' down the ringing grooves of Time " when 
 much that is now honored has been forgotten. He will 
 be known as the Poet of a great Cause, the Bard of Free- 
 dom, as long as the great anti-slavery conflict is remem- 
 bered. He is a part, and an important part, of the history 
 of his country, a central figure in the battalions of the
 
 240 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 brave. Those wild, stirring bugle-calls of his cheered the 
 little army, and held it together many a time when the 
 cause was only a forlorn hope ; and they came with their 
 stern defiance into the camp of the enemy with such 
 masterful power that some gallant enemies deserted to his 
 side. They were afraid to be found fighting against God, 
 as Whittier had convinced them they were doing. There 
 is the roll of drums and the clash of spears in these stirring 
 strains ; there are echoes from Thermopylae and Mara- 
 thon, and the breath of the old Greek heroes is in the 
 air ; there is a hint of the old Border battle-cries from 
 Scotland's hills and tarns ; from Jura's rocky wall we can 
 catch the cheers of Tell ; and the voice of Cromwell can 
 often be distinguished in the strain. 
 
 There is also the sweep of the winds through the pine 
 woods, and the mountain blasts of New England, and the 
 strong fresh breath of the salt sea ; all tonic influences, 
 in short, which braced up the minds of the men of those 
 days to a fixed and heroic purpose, from which they never 
 receded until their end was achieved. It has become the 
 fashion in these days of dilettanteism to say that earnest- 
 ness and moral purpose have no place in poetry, and 
 small critics have arisen who claim that Mr, "Whittier has 
 been spoiled as a poet by his moral teachings. To these 
 critics it is only necessary to point to the estimation in 
 which !Mr. Whittier's poetry is held by the world, and to 
 the daily widening of his popularity among scholars and 
 men of letters as well as among the people, to teach 
 them that this ruined poetry is likely to live when all the 
 merely pretty poetry they so much admire is forgotten 
 forever. The small poets who are afraid of touching a 
 moral question for fear of ruining their poems would do 
 well to compare Poe, who is the leader of their school 
 and its best exponent, with Mr. \Miittier, and to ask them- 
 selves which is the more likely to survive the test of time. 
 Let them also ponder the words of Principal Shairp, one 
 of the finest critics of the day, when he says of the true 
 mission of the poet, that " it is to awaken men to the
 
 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 241 
 
 divine side of things ; to bear witness to the beauty that 
 clothes the outer world, the nobility that lies hid, often 
 obscured, in human souls ; to call forth sympathy for 
 neglected truths, for noble and oppressed persons, for 
 down-trodden causes ; and to make men feel that through 
 all outward beauty and all pure inward affection God 
 himself is addressing them." They would do well also to 
 ponder the words of Ruskin, who believes that only in as 
 far as it has a distinct moral purpose is any literary work 
 of value to the world. Is not the opinion of such men as 
 these to be considered of weight in this matter? And is 
 it not an impertinence in Httle men like some of those 
 who have lately written of Mr. Whittier, to speak in a 
 patronizing and supercilious tone of his work, as if the 
 very qualities which distinguish it from the work of the 
 weaklings had ruined it as poetry ? 
 
 It is perhaps to Mr. VVhittier's ancestry that we may 
 trace this intense consecration of life to all its higher pur- 
 poses ; for he came of a people who had endured persecu- 
 tion for conscience' sake for generations, and who had 
 loved liberty with a love passing that of woman, and sac- 
 rificed much for her sake. The depths of feeling which 
 Mr. Whittier has always sounded when the persecutions 
 of the Quakers have risen before his vision can only be 
 understood by those who are thoroughly familiar with the 
 details of these persecutions, and who know the harmless 
 character of the men and women thus outraged. Mr. 
 Whittier knows this well, and it stirs his blood to this day, 
 as it stirred the blood of his father and mother when they 
 recounted these things to his childish ears. Though so 
 much deep feeling was latent in their natures, the out- 
 ward lives of his parents were serene and calm. Mr. 
 Whittier has, in that exquisite litde idyl " Snowbound," 
 given us a graphic and authentic picture of his childhood's 
 home, and in a measure of the life lived there. It is a 
 quiet litde New England interior, painted by a master's 
 hand from love of his work. It is every whit as delight- 
 ful as " The Cotter's Saturday Night ; " and it is realisti- 
 
 16
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 cally true in every detail. Here we have the family 
 I^ortraits drawn to life, — the father, who 
 
 " Rode again his ride 
 On Mcmphremagog's wooded side; 
 Sat down again to moose and samp 
 In trapper's hut and Indian camp ; 
 Lived o'er the old idyllic ease 
 Beneath St. Francois' hemlock trees ; " 
 
 and showed how 
 
 The mother, 
 
 "Again for him the moonlight shone 
 On Norman cap and bodiced zone ; 
 Again he heard the violin play 
 Which led the village dance away, 
 And mingled in its merry whirl 
 The grandam and the laughing girl." 
 
 " While she turned her wheel 
 Or run the new-knit stocking-heel, 
 Told how the Indian hordes came down 
 At midnight on Cocheco town, 
 And how her own great-uncle bore 
 His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore. 
 Recalling in her fitting phrase, 
 So rich and picturesque and free, 
 (The common unrhymed poetry 
 Of simple life and country ways,) 
 The story of her early days." 
 
 The uncle, 
 
 " Innocent of books, 
 Was rich in lore of fields and brooks, — 
 The ancient teachers never dumb 
 Of Nature's unhoused lyceum. 
 In moons and tides and weather wise, 
 He read the clouds as prophecies. 
 And foul or fair could well divine 
 By many an occult hint and sign. 
 Holding the cunning-warded keys 
 To all the woodcraft mysteries." 
 
 The picture is very attractive of this 
 
 " Simple, guileless, childlike man, 
 Content to live where life began; 
 Strong only on his native grounds. 
 The little world of sights and sounds."
 
 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 243 
 
 Next, 
 
 " The dear aunt, whose smile of cheer 
 And voice in dreams I see and hear, — 
 The sweetest woman ever Fate 
 Perverse denied a household mate, 
 Who, lonely, homeless, not the less 
 Found peace in love's unselfishness." 
 
 Then the elder sister, 
 
 "A full, rich nature, free to trust. 
 Truthful and almost sternly just, 
 Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act, 
 And make her generous thought a fact, 
 Keeping with many a light disguise 
 The secret of self-sacrifice." 
 
 The youngest sister, with " large, sweet, asking eyes," 
 and the 
 
 " Brisk wielder of the birch and rule, 
 The master of the district school," 
 
 make up the customary group ; and it is safe to say that 
 they were royal company on that winter night. 
 
 Another description of the life of his boyhood may be 
 found in " The Barefoot Boy." No other language will de- 
 scribe so well those careless, happy years of the genuine 
 country boy. 
 
 " Oh for boyhood's time of June, 
 Crowding years in one brief moon, 
 When all things I heard or saw. 
 Me, their master, waited for. 
 I was rich in flowers and trees. 
 Humming-birds and honey-bees; 
 For my sport the squirrel played. 
 Plied the snouted mole his spade; 
 For my taste the blackberry cone 
 Purpled over hedge and stone ; 
 Laughed the brook for my delight 
 Through the day and through the night, 
 Whispering at the garden wall. 
 Talked with me from fall to fall ; 
 Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond, 
 Mine the walnut slopes beyond, 
 Mine, on bending orchard trees, 
 Apples of Hesperides !
 
 244 HOME LIFE OF GREA T A UTHORS. 
 
 " Oh for festal dainties spread, 
 Like my bowl of milk and bread, — 
 Pewter spoon and bowl of wood, 
 On the door-stone, gray and rude ! 
 O'er me, like a regal tent, 
 Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent. 
 Purple-curtained, fringed with gold, 
 Looped in many a wind-swung fold ; 
 While for music came the play 
 Of the pied frogs' orchestra ; 
 And, to light the noisy choir, 
 Lit the fly his lamp of fire. 
 I was monarch : pomp and joy 
 Waited on the barefoot boy." 
 
 Is not this an accurate picture of wliat a poet's childhood 
 should be ? 
 
 In his early youth we have the one hint of a romance 
 which his life contains, and he shall give us that also in 
 his own words : — 
 
 " How thrills once more the lengthening chain 
 
 Of memory, at the thought of thee ! 
 Old hopes which long in dust have lain, 
 Old dreams, come thronging back again, 
 
 And boyhood lives again in me ; 
 I feel its glow upon my cheek, 
 
 Its fulness of the heart is mine. 
 As when I leaned to hear thee speak. 
 
 Or raised my doidDtful eye to thine. 
 I hear again thy low replies, 
 
 I feel thy hand within my own, 
 And timidly again uprise 
 The fringed lids of hazel eyes. 
 
 With soft brown tresses overblown. 
 Ah ! memories of sweet summer eves. 
 
 Of moonlit wave and willowy way. 
 Of stars and flowers and dewy leaves, 
 
 And smiles and tones more dear than they." 
 
 It is very tender, very beautiful and touching, and, 
 doubtless, it left on him " an impress Time has worn not 
 out." And we doubt if even yet, when the shadows of 
 age are gathering very deeply around the gentle poet, that 
 memory has faded. 
 
 " Not yet has Time's dull footstep worn 
 To common dust that path of flowers."
 
 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 245 
 
 We cannot but wonder who the favored " Playmate " of 
 the poet was, and we sympathize with him when he asks, — 
 
 " I wonder if she thinks of them, 
 And how the old time seems, — 
 If ever the pines of Ramoth wood 
 Are sounding in her dreams. 
 
 " I see her face, I hear her voice : 
 Does she remember mine? 
 And what to her is now the boy 
 Who fed her father's kine ? " 
 
 And we feel an intense interest in knowing whether or 
 not she cares, when he tells her, — 
 
 " The winds so sweet with birch and fern, 
 A sweeter memory blow ; 
 And there in spring the veeries sing 
 The song of long ago. 
 
 " And still the pines of Ramoth wood 
 Are moaning like the sea, — 
 The moaning of the sea of change 
 Between myself and thee ! " 
 
 Mr. Whittier has never married, and his favorite sister 
 long presided over his home in Amesbury, where his 
 mother and the dear aunt also came after the father's 
 death. It was the bitterest loss of his life when this beau- 
 tiful sister died, and he has written nothing more touch- 
 ing than his tribute to her in " Snowbound " : — 
 
 " With me one little year ago, 
 The chill weight of the winter snow 
 
 For months upon her grave has lain ; 
 And now, when summer south winds blow 
 
 And brier and harebell bloom again, 
 I tread the pleasant paths we trod, 
 I see the violet-sprinkled sod 
 Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak 
 The hillside flowers she loved to seek. 
 Yet following me where'er she went 
 With dark eyes full of love's content. 
 The birds are glad ; the brier-rose fills 
 The air with sweetness ; all the hills 
 Stretch green to June's unclouded sky ; 
 But still I wait with ear and eye 
 For something gone which should be nigh, 
 A loss in all familiar things. 
 In flower that blooms, and bird that sings.
 
 246 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 And while in life's late afternoon, 
 
 Wiiere cool and long the shadows grow, 
 I walk to meet the night that soon 
 
 Shall shape and shadow overflow, 
 I cannot feel that thou art far, 
 Since near at need the angels are ; 
 And when the sunset gates unbar, 
 
 Shall I not see thee waiting stand, 
 And, white against the evening star, 
 
 The welcome of thy beckoning hand ? " 
 
 This sister Elizabeth was herself a remarkable woman, 
 and one of whom the world would have heard more but 
 for her great modesty. She was gifted with a fine poetic 
 taste, and was not only appreciative, but might have been 
 creative as well. A few of her poems appear in her 
 brother's collected works. She was beautiful in person, 
 delicate and dark-eyed, and possessed of exquisite taste in 
 everything. The village of Amesbury still cherishes her 
 memory and recounts her virtues. The tie between the 
 sister and brother was of the closest kind, and their home 
 life together for so many years as beautiful as any re- 
 corded in literature. After her death a niece kept his 
 house for some time ; but though she was all devotion to 
 him, the old home was never home after the dear sister 
 had left it. 
 
 Mr. Whittier is a man to feel very much the loneliness 
 of his later life, bereft as he has been of all his family 
 friends except one brother. But he is very lovingly and 
 tenderly cared for by some distant relatives, who live at 
 Oak Knoll, Danvers, Mass., where he has passed the 
 most of his time the last few years. It is a most beautiful 
 place, and the poet takes great delight in it, preferring 
 it even to his own home at Amesbury, where he lived so 
 long and where the greater part of his literary work was 
 done. The house and grounds remind one of an old 
 English manor-house and its surroundings. The old 
 forest trees still beautify it, while clumps of evergreens 
 have been planted here and there, with many shrubs 
 and flowers. In the distance rise the blue hills of Essex 
 and Middlesex, and near at hand babbles a noisy brook,
 
 JOHN G. WHITTIER. 247 
 
 seeking the not distant sea. All the beautiful trees of 
 New England grow here, — hickories, chestnuts, maples, 
 birches, pines, and beeches ; and Whittier, who is a 
 famous lover of trees, passes much time in these shady 
 coverts. 
 
 Mr. VVhittier's own house at Amesbury is a plain white 
 painted wooden house, consisting of an upright and ell, 
 like many old-fashioned farm-houses, and surrounded 
 by a picket-fence. It is roomy and comfortable, and 
 the study is a very cosey and attractive place, with its 
 open wood-fire and its well-filled book-shelves. One 
 familiar with its appearance thus describes it : — 
 
 "One side is filled with a desk and books, among which 
 Irish ballads have a place of honor ; and an old-fashioned 
 Franklin fireplace with polished brasses throws its cheerful 
 blaze over carpet, lounge, and easy-chairs, and on walls cov- 
 ered with many souvenirs, — a water-color of Harry Fenn's, 
 Hill's picture of the early home, fringed gentians painted 
 by Lucy Larcom, and other trifles which give character to 
 the room. In this nook the 'lords of thought' have been 
 made welcome ; here came Alice and Phcebe Cary on their 
 romantic pilgrimage, and here have come many others of 
 the illustrious women of the day, most of whom he reckons 
 as his friends in this generation as he did Lydia Maria Child 
 and Lucretia Mott and their contemporaries in the last." 
 
 Mr. VVhittier's personal appearance is thus described 
 by George W. Bungay in his " Crayon Sketches : " — 
 
 " His temperament is nervous bilious ; he is tall, slender, 
 and straight as an Indian; has a superb head; his brow 
 looks like a white cloud under his raven hair ; eyes large, 
 black as sloes, and glowing with expression, . . . those star- 
 like eyes flashing under such a magnificent forehead." 
 
 Another writer tells of : — 
 
 " The fine intellectual beauty of his expression, the blend- 
 ing brightness and softness of the clear dark eye, the union 
 of manly firmness and courage with womanly sweetness and 
 tenderness alike in countenance and character."
 
 J4S IIO.UE LIFE OF GKEAT ACTHORS. 
 
 That clear and bright observer Mr. Wasson says : — 
 
 "The high cranium, so lofty, especially in the dome ; the 
 slight and symmetrical backward slope of the whole head; 
 the powerful level brows, and beneath these the dark, deep 
 eyes, so full of shadowed tire ; the Arabian complexion ; the 
 sharp-cut, intense lines of the face ; the light, tall, erect 
 stature ; the quick, axial poise of the movement, — all tliese 
 traits reveal the fiery Semitic prophet." 
 
 His smile is spoken of by all as irradiating his whole face. 
 He is the most modest and one of the shyest of men. 
 He can rarely be exhibited as a lion in Boston, though 
 the celebrity-hunters often try to induce him thus to show 
 himself. His fame has been a great surprise to him, 
 and he can scarcely believe in it even now. When his 
 seventieth birthday was celebrated by the publishers of 
 the " Atlantic Monthly " by a Whittier Banquet, to which 
 all the great writers in the country were invited, and 
 where many fine tributes were paid to his genius, he 
 especially wondered that all this honor was for him. The 
 " Literary World " at the same time published many fine 
 poems from distinguished authors addressed to him, and 
 he replied in that journal to them, saying : — 
 
 " Beside that mile-stone where the level sun 
 Nigh unto setting sheds his List low rays 
 On word and work irrevocably done, 
 Life's blending threads of good and ill outspun, 
 I hear, O friends, your words of cheer and praise, 
 Half doubtful if myself or otherwise. 
 Like him who in the old Athenian days 
 A beggar slept, and crownM Caliph woke." 
 
 Although shy in formal society, Mr. Whittier is of a 
 social nature, and very much enjoys unrestrained inter- 
 course with his friends. Visitors were always made wel- 
 come at Amesbury, and while his sister presitled there 
 the house was very attractive to those who enjoyed its 
 hospitality. She was a witty and bright woman, who 
 enlivened every social circle she graced ; and Mr. AMiittier 
 himself has a fund of delicate humor, which lights up
 
 JOHN G. WHITTTER. 249 
 
 his conversations with those with whom he is on familiar 
 terms, and he has a quiet way of drawing out the best 
 there is in others, which causes every one to appear well 
 in his presence. Children are his loyal and enthusiastic 
 friends everywhere ; and he was known among them in 
 Amesbury as " the man with the parrot," that remarkable 
 bird " Charlie " serving as a sort of connecting link be- 
 tween the poet and the little ones. He is always ready 
 for a game of romps with the children even now, and they 
 very much admire the stately old man who condescends 
 to them so kindly. Long ago, when his little niece wanted 
 the scarlet cape which other children wore, and there 
 was objection upon the part of her Quaker mother, Mr. 
 Whittier pleaded so well for the little one that she was 
 allowed to indulge in the bright trappings of her mates. 
 Mr. Whittier himself has never gone to the extremes of 
 Quaker dress, and could hardly be distinguished from 
 the world by that alone. But he uses the " thee " and 
 " thou " of the Friends, and it is very charming to hear 
 them from his lips. He has always been a faithful attend- 
 ant, also, upon their meetings. 
 
 The kindliness of Mr. Whittier's nature has always led 
 him to help others, especially young literary aspirants, 
 and he has spent a great deal of his valuable time upon 
 this class. He cannot bear to leave a letter unanswered 
 or a request ungranted, and his correspondence has be- 
 come very burdensome these latter years. He has long 
 been subject to very severe neuralgic headaches, and can 
 write now but a few minutes at a time ; and those few 
 ' precious minutes he often wastes on some impertinent 
 stranger who has sent a great mass of manuscripts to him 
 for criticism. The little time which these insatiable cor- 
 respondents leave to him, he occupies very pleasantly in 
 and about the grounds at Oak Knoll. He enjoys work- 
 ing in the fine flower-garden, feeding the squirrels, playing 
 with the dogs, and driving the fine horses. He has many 
 friends within a morning's drive, — Harriet Preston, Gail 
 Hamilton, and others, — and driving about the country
 
 250 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 has always been one of his choice diversions. He is 
 now seventy-eight years old, — a cheerful, kindly, essen- 
 tially lovable old man. He still goes up to Boston 
 occasionally to meet friends and look about the city, 
 and runs over to Amesbury, where friends occupy his 
 house and make him welcome ; but for the most part 
 he remains in his quiet retreat, cheerfully awaiting the 
 change which must be near.
 
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 
 
 THE genial " Autocrat of the Breakfast Table " was 
 born in the city of Cambridge, in Massachusetts, 
 in the year 1809, upon the day given to the Commence- 
 ment exercises of Harvard College. It was the day of 
 small things in that institution, and the day of small 
 things in American literature. The child who was born 
 that day was destined to add much to the estimation in 
 which both were held. He occupied a professor's chair 
 in the University for thirty-five years, and did good work 
 in it too ; and he is one of the little group of illustrious 
 men who have helped to make a distinctively American 
 literature, which is now honored throughout the world. 
 As we believe with Dr. Holmes that " it is an ungenerous 
 silence which leaves all the fair words of honestly-earned 
 praise to the writer of obituary notices and the marble- 
 worker," we shall endeavor to set forth in this paper some 
 of the good points in the character and work of this dis- 
 tinguished man, — perhaps the best beloved of our native 
 authors. 
 
 The Rev. Abiel Holmes, the father of our hero, was 
 one of the typical New England ministers of that day ; 
 the mother, Sarah Wendell, was from a Dutch fam- 
 ily, who came to Boston from Albany in the eighteenth 
 century. The old gambrel-roofed house where the poet 
 was born stood close to the buildings of Harvard Uni-
 
 252 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 versity, and to tlie south flows the Charles River, so often 
 celebrated by Holmes and Longfellow and Lowell. The 
 environs of Cambridge are particularly beautiful, and have 
 been the subjects of many charming descriptions by all 
 these writers. The old yellow hip-roofed house was about 
 one hundred and sixty years old when it was moved 
 away to make room for modern improvements. The 
 New England colonists knew how to build a house, and 
 the work of their hands puts to shame the sham edifices 
 of the present day, wliich come up like Jonah's gourd in a 
 night. The mansion-houses of New England are among 
 her most precious inheritances ; and we can scarcely 
 blame the families, in whose hands they have remained 
 until this time, for feeling a certain pride in them. 
 
 The study was the great attraction to Oliver and his 
 brother John. It was a large heavy-beamed room, lined 
 upon all sides with books, — which was almost an unheard- 
 of thing in this country at that time. Here the boys were 
 allowed to choose for themselves what they would read, 
 and here they doubtless formed the scholarly tastes of 
 after-days. The contrast between this library and that 
 of the Whittier household, with its less than a dozen 
 books, is a great one, and has something to do with the 
 distinctive flavor of the work of the two men. There is 
 a wild woodsy flavor about Whittier to this day, pungent 
 and stimulating ; and about all that Holmes has written 
 is the atmosphere of books, — a smell of Russia-leather, as 
 it were, and the mustiness of old tomes. The childhood 
 of Oliver was very happy, and the memory of it has lin- 
 gered with him through life ; he has always been very- 
 fond of talking of it and writing about it. Of the old 
 garden surrounding the manse, he has written eloquently, 
 and one can almost see it for himself from his descrip- 
 tion, — with its lilac-bushes, its pear-trees, its peaches (for 
 they raised peaches in New England in those days), its 
 lovely nectarines, and white grapes. Old-fashioned flowers 
 grew in the borders, — hyacinths, coming up even through 
 the snow; tulips, adding their flaming splendor to the
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 
 
 253 
 
 spring, although they are so much more like autumn 
 flowers \ peonies, of mammoth size and gorgeous coloring ; 
 flower-de-luce, lilies, roses — damask, blush, and cinna- 
 mon, — larkspurs, lupines, and royal hollyhocks. Then 
 there were the vegetables growing with the flowers, — 
 " beets, with their handsome dark-red leaves, carrots, with 
 their elegant filagree foliage, parsley, that clung to the 
 earth like mandrakes, radishes, illustrations of total de- 
 pravity, a prey to every evil underground emissary of the 
 powers of darkness." 
 
 The Holmes boys were lively and frolicsome, not un- 
 like what we have been accustomed to hear of ministers' 
 sons in general, and some of their pranks were remem- 
 bered in Cambridge for many a year. In one of Dr. 
 Holmes's college poems he hints at some of these " high 
 old times : " — 
 
 " I am not well to-night ; methinks the fumes 
 Of overheated punch have something dimmed 
 The cerebellum or pineal gland, 
 Or where the soul sits regnant." 
 
 Still, there was nothing worse than boyish fun in any of 
 their larks, and they were studious beyond their years. 
 
 Among their schoolmates was Margaret Fuller. Dr. 
 Holmes says of her : — 
 
 " Her air to her schoolmates was marked by a certain 
 stateliness and distance, as if she had other thoughts than 
 theirs, and was not of them. I remember her so well, as 
 she appeared at school and later, that I regret that she had 
 not been faithfully given to canvas or marble in the day of 
 her best looks. None know her aspect who have not seen 
 her living. Margaret, as I remember her at school and 
 afterwards, was tall, fair-complexioned, with a watery aqua- 
 marine lustre in her light eyes, which she used to make small, 
 as one does who looks at the sunshine. A remarkable point 
 about her was that long flexile neck, arching and undulating 
 in strange sinuous movements, which one who loved her 
 would compare to those of a swan, and one who loved her 
 not, to those of the opliidian who tempted our common
 
 -54 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 mother. Her talk was affluent, magisterial, de /taut en bas, 
 some would say euphuistic, but surpassing the talk of women 
 in breadth and aiulacity." 
 
 In due time young Holmes was graduated from 
 Harvard, with a class which he has helped to make well 
 known by his annual college poems. The boys of '29 
 were a noble and talented set of men, and quite a num- 
 ber of them still live, among our most honored citizens. 
 Some of his well-known humorous poems were written 
 for the college papers, among them " The Dorchester 
 Giant," " Evening, by a Tailor," "The Spectre Pig," and 
 "The Height of the Ridiculous." For a few years after 
 he left college he went on "writing as funny as he could," 
 then discontinued his literary work for some time, and 
 only permanently renewed it with the starting of the 
 "Atlantic Monthly" in 1857. Here he began "The 
 Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," and followed it with 
 that brilliant series of papers and of novels which made 
 him known the world over, as one of our most original 
 and characteristic writers. Long before this he had been 
 married, and settled down for life in the city of Boston. 
 His wife, to whom he was united in 1 840, was Amelia Lee 
 Jackson, daughter of Judge Jackson of the Massachu- 
 setts Supreme Court. They lived in one house for over 
 twenty years, in Montgomery Place, near Bromfield Street. 
 Holmes says of it, in " The Professor at the Breakfast 
 Table : " — 
 
 " When he entered that door, two shadows glided over the 
 threshold ; five lingered in the doorway when he passed 
 through it for the last time, — and one of the shadows was 
 claimed by its owner to be longer than his own. What 
 changes he saw in that quiet place ! Death rained through 
 every roof but his ; children came into life, grew into matu- 
 rity, wedded, faded away, threw themselves away; the whole 
 drama of life was played in that stock-company's theatre of 
 a dozen houses, one of which was his, and no deep sorrow 
 or severe calamity ever entered his dwelling. Peace be to 
 those walls forever, for the many pleasant years he passed 
 in them."
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 
 
 255 
 
 The three children born to him were Oliver Wendell, 
 Amelia Jackson, and Edward. They all live near the old 
 home, and the second generation is beginning to be a 
 prominent factor in the family affairs. The daughter is 
 Mrs. John T. Sargent, of Beverly Farms, near Boston, 
 where Dr. Holmes has passed the summer months for 
 several years past. All readers will remember the Doc- 
 tor's famous " Hunt after the Captain," published in the 
 " Atlantic " during the war, and the thrilling interest the 
 country took in it. The " Captain " was the elder son, then 
 just graduated from Harvard, and belonging to the Fourth 
 Battalion of Infantry. He was thrice wounded, and the 
 terror and anxiety of his friends at home cannot be de- 
 scribed in words. He is now an associate justice of the 
 Supreme Court of Massachusetts. 
 
 For a few years Dr. Holmes was much in demand as a 
 lecturer ; but he never enjoyed that business very well, 
 and after a while refused to go upon any terms. In 1856 
 he thus defined his terms to an apphcant for a lecture : — 
 
 " My terms, when I stay over night, are fifteen dollars and 
 expenses, a room with a fire in it, in a public-house, and a 
 mattress to sleep on, — not a feather-bed. As you write in 
 your individual capacity, I tell you at once all my habitual 
 exigencies. I am afraid to sleep in a cold room; I can't 
 sleep on a feather-bed; I will not go to private houses." 
 
 In the ''Autocrat" there is an account of his lecturing 
 experiences by the landlady, which gives a pretty good 
 idea of some of his personal traits : — 
 
 " He was a man who loved to stick around home, as much 
 as any cat you ever see in your life. He used to say he 'd 
 as lief have a tooth pulled as go anywheres. Always got 
 sick, he said, when he went away, and never sick when he 
 didn't. Pretty nigh killed himself goin' about lecterin' two 
 or three winters; talkin' in cold country lyceums; as he 
 used to say, goin' home to cold parlors and bein' treated to 
 cold apples and cold water, and then goin' up into a cold 
 bed in a cold chamber, and comin' home next mornin' with 
 a cold in his head as bad as a horse distemper. Then he'd
 
 256 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 look kind of sorry for havin' said it, and tell how kind some 
 of the good women was to him ; how one spread an edder- 
 down comforter for him, and another fixed up somethin' hot 
 for him after the lecter, and another one said, ' There, 
 now you smoke that cigar of yours after the lecter just as 
 if you was at home,' — and if they'd all been like that, 
 he 'd have gone on lecterin' forever ; but as it was, he got 
 pooty nigh enough of it, and preferred nateral death to 
 puttin' himself out of the world by such violent means as 
 lecterin'." 
 
 In fact, Holmes is eminently a Bostonian, and has 
 never been really happy off his native pavements. He, 
 however, studied medicine in Paris in his youth, and has 
 made one or two visits to Europe since. 
 
 The Atlantic Club for a long time furnished Holmes 
 excellent company, and he in turn furnished the club with 
 the wittiest and most sparkling talk which this country 
 probably has known : — 
 
 " Such jests, that, drained of every joke, 
 The very bank of language broke ; 
 Such deeds that laughter nearly died 
 With stitches in his belted side." 
 
 Among those who took part in these delightful re-unions 
 were Emerson, Longfellow, Felton, Holmes, Agassiz, 
 Lowell, Whipple, Motley, Charles Eliot Norton, Edmund 
 Quincy, Francis H. Underwood, Judge Hoar, J. Elliot 
 Cabot, and others. Lowell and Holmes were the wits 
 par excellence, though Judge Hoar did not fall far behind. 
 Emerson sat always with a seraphic smile upon his face, 
 and Longfellow thoroughly enjoyed every good sally, 
 though not adding to the mirth-making himself. Dr. 
 Appleton, who met Dr. Holmes at the Saturday Club, 
 writes : — 
 
 " Dr. Holmes was highly talkative and agreeable ; he con- 
 verses very much like the Autocrat at the Breakfast Table, — 
 wittily, and in a literary way, but perhaps with too great an
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 
 
 257 
 
 infusion of physiological and medical metaphor. He is a 
 little deaf, and has a mouth like the beak of a bird ; indeed, 
 he is, with his small body and quick movements, very like a 
 bird in his general aspect." 
 
 When Charles Kingsley was in Boston he met Holmes, 
 who came in, frisked about, and talked incessantly, Kings- 
 ley intervening with a few words only occasionally. At 
 last Holmes whisked himself away, saying, " And now I 
 must go." " He is an insp-sp-sp-ired j-j-j-h-ack-daw," 
 said Kingsley. 
 
 Mr. Kennedy, in his life of the poet, thus describes 
 him : — 
 
 " In person Holmes is a little under the medium height, 
 though it does not strike you so when you see him, especially 
 on the street, where he wears a tall silk hat and carries a 
 cane. As a young man, he was, like Longfellow, a good deal 
 of an exquisite in dress ; and he has always been very neat 
 and careful in his attire. He is quick and nervous in his 
 movements, and conveys, in speaking, the impression of en- 
 ergy and intense vitality ; and yet he has a poet's sensitive- 
 ness to noises, and a dread of persons of superabundant 
 vitality and aggressiveness. When the fountain of laughter 
 and smiles is stirred within him his face lights up with a 
 winning expression, and a laughing, kindly glance of the eye. 
 When he warms up to a subject in conversation he is a very 
 rapid, vivacious speaker." 
 
 Dr. Holmes has been accused of being an egotist, 
 and he undoubtedly does like to talk of himself; but he 
 talks always in such charming fashion that nobody regrets 
 the subject of his discourse, but would fain have him go 
 on and on without pause or limit. He is a hearty, happy 
 man, who is a good deal in love with life, and seldom 
 dwells upon its darker side. But he has a very earnest 
 and serious side to his nature, and is far from being a 
 mere laughing philosopher. He enjoys out-of-door life, as 
 every poet must, and though he likes best to live in the 
 city, he takes great delight in the country also. He spent 
 
 '7
 
 2'S HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 M-von siiiuniers upon a farm of his own in the enchanting 
 IJcrkshire region, near Tittsfield, and he says these seven 
 summers stand in liis memory like the seven golden can- 
 dlesticks scon in the beatific vision of the holy dreamer. 
 Ho loves rowing, racing, and walking through green 
 country lanes. The New England wild-flowers are espe- 
 cially dear to him, and he has all a poet's love for that 
 shyest and most beautiful of all, the trailing arbutus. 
 He is very fond also of perfumes, and likes the odorous 
 blossoms best. He has always had his dream of fair 
 women, and he is a great favorite with women of all ages. 
 He is not averse to the pleasures of the table, and likes 
 plenty of friends around him, with mirth and good cheer, 
 at his dinner hour. 
 
 He has been accused of being somewhat aristocratic in 
 his feelings, and is doubtless a lover of the best society, 
 as he interprets that word, — not mere wealth or fashion, 
 but good blood, generous culture through more than one 
 generation, and a general refinement in manners and in 
 thought. What he calls the Brahmin caste of New Eng- 
 land is doubtless verj- good society indeed ; and who shall 
 blame the good Autocrat if he visits in that circle by 
 choice? He would not, perhaps, like the old scholar of 
 whom he tells, give as his toast " to all the people who on 
 the earth do dwell," but he would select some very choice 
 and rare little coterie of those people, and toast them with 
 the most contagious enthusiasm. 
 
 That he is a man of fastidious tastes goes without saying, 
 and rather critical of men and women, in manners as well 
 as morals. An acute observer of small social phenomena, 
 he does not deem it beneath his dignity to criticise the 
 man who cannot pronounce " view," and the woman, even 
 if it be Margaret Fuller, who says "nawvels." That he is 
 a sensitive man he told us long ago, and that — 
 
 " There are times 
 When all this fret and tumult that we hear 
 Do seem more stale than to the sexton's ear 
 His own dull chimes.
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 259 
 
 " From crib to shroud ! 
 Nurse o'er our cradle screameth lullaby, 
 And friends in boots tramp round us as we die, 
 Snuffling aloud. 
 
 " Children with drums 
 Strapped round them by the fond paternal ass, 
 Peripatetics with a blade of grass 
 Between their thumbs. 
 
 " Cockneys that kill 
 Thin horses of a Sunday, — men with clams. 
 Hoarse as young bisons roaring for their dams, 
 From hill to hill. 
 
 " Soldiers with guns, 
 Making a nuisance of the blessed air, 
 Child-crying bellmen, children in despair, 
 Screeching for buns. 
 
 " Storms, thunders, waves ! 
 Howl, crash, and bellow, till ye get your fill. 
 Ye sometimes rest ; men never can be still 
 But in their graves." 
 
 Sometimes these daily trials are exaggerated to a quite 
 unbearable point, as in the case of Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle, 
 who suffered intense tortures in later life from the ordi- 
 nary every-day noises ; but in the case of Dr. Holmes, as 
 with most people with healthy nerves, these things only give 
 a whimsical annoyance. The battles of Mrs. Carlyle with 
 Chanticleer, as she depicts them, have all the interest of a 
 new Iliad, and the days before Troy have not been studied 
 with more breathless interest than some of her encounters 
 with the makers of the many noises with which London is 
 filled. Dr. Holmes, too, has had his battle with the music- 
 grinders, as who has not ? Do we not all know " these 
 crusaders sent from some infernal clime"? and have we 
 not all felt with him the relief when " silence like a poul- 
 tice comes to heal the blows of sound " ? Do we not all 
 know the "Treadmill Song," also, in practical life? and 
 are we not intensely weary of it sometimes ? Not many 
 of us can say with him, at the close of one of our 
 " treadmill " days, —
 
 ,60 J/OME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 " It 's pretty sport j suppose we take 
 A round or two for fun." 
 
 or aiKl, — 
 
 " If ever they should turn me out 
 When 1 have better grown, 
 Now liang me but I mean to have 
 A treadmill of my own." 
 
 1)111 this has been the good Doctor's spirit through life. 
 He has taken his troubles lightly, and his labors have sat 
 easily upon him. He has laughed where many would have 
 wept, and he has joked where some would have been 
 serious, if not savage. But that he has done serious work, 
 and that it has been work which has borne fruit, who can 
 doubt ? His professional labors are perhaps least known 
 of any of his various activities, but they were many and 
 varied, and not barren of good results. As a single illus- 
 tration, take his treatise upon " The Contagiousness of 
 Puerperal Fever," concerning which he has said : — 
 
 "When, by permission of Providence, I held up to the 
 professional public the damnable facts connected with the 
 conveyance of poison from one young mother's chamber to 
 another's, — for doing which humble office I desire to be 
 thankful that I have lived, though nothing else good should 
 ever come of my life, — I had to bear the sneers of those 
 whose position I had assailed, and, as I believe, have at last 
 demolished, so that nothing but the ghosts of dead women 
 stir among the ruins." 
 
 He fought Homoeopathy in the liveliest manner for 
 many years, and latterly threw some hot shot into the 
 ranks of the Allopathists themselves, in an attack upon the 
 excessive use of drugs in medical practice. The Medical 
 Society were considerably excited by this vigorous on- 
 slaught, the ripe result of thirty years' study and experi- 
 ence, and disclaimed all responsibility for its sentiments. 
 
 " Throw out opium," said Dr. Holmes ; " throw out a few 
 specifics which a physician is hardly needed to apply ; throw 
 out wine, which is a food, and the vapors of ether producing
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 261 
 
 anaesthesia ; and then sink the whole materia medica, as now 
 used, to the bottom of the sea : the result would be all the 
 better for mankind, and all the worse for the fishes." 
 
 Of his life-long battle against the Calvinistic theology 
 all his readers know. He has never lost an opportunity 
 of declaring his antipathy to the theology of his fathers, 
 and of pouring sarcasm and ridicule upon it. His father 
 was a Calvinistic divine of the strictest sect; but Dr. 
 Holmes himself has been a life-long Unitarian, and an 
 aggressive one. He owns a pew in King's Chapel and is 
 a regular attendant. Perhaps he is a little of a fatalist. 
 At any rate he always has eyes for — 
 
 THE TWO STREAMS. 
 
 Behold the rocky wall 
 
 That down its sloping sides 
 Pours the swift rain-drops, blending as they fall 
 
 In rushing river-tides. 
 
 Yon stream, whose sources run 
 
 Turned by a pebble's edge, 
 Is Athabasca, rolling toward the sun 
 
 Through the cleft mountain-ledge. 
 
 The slender rill had strayed, 
 
 But for the slanting stone, 
 To evening's ocean, with the tangled braid 
 
 Of foam-flecked Oregon. 
 
 So from the heights of will 
 
 Life's parting stream descends. 
 And, as a moment turns its slender rill. 
 
 Each widening torrent bends. 
 
 From the same cradle's side, 
 
 From the same mother's knee, — 
 One to long darkness and the frozen tide, 
 
 One to the Peaceful Sea.
 
 :^. 
 
 '%L^*V^' 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 IN the old manor-house of Ehnvvood in Cambridge, 
 close to what is now Mount Auburn Cemetery, our 
 finest representative man of letters, James Russell Lowell, 
 was born and bred. His father and his grandfather be- 
 fore him lived here, the former a Unitarian clergyman of 
 the old school, well read, earnest, somewhat narrow, but 
 an essentially religious man. His mother was a gifted 
 woman, and a woman of high culture for those days. 
 She read foreign languages, was a musician, and a woman 
 of high breeding, and she stamped her own individuality 
 strongly upon at least three of her children. 
 
 The house is a large three-story structure, built of 
 wood, and is eminently picturesque. The tone of the 
 rooms is sombre, and the furniture is antique and solid. 
 Nearly everything remains as it was in the poet's child- 
 hood ; although the study has been removed from the 
 second floor to two connected rooms on the first, spa- 
 cious and impressive, and lined with well-selected books. 
 The poet has lived in this house throughout his entire 
 life, — a thing which seldom happens to an American 
 citizen. In the hall are ancestral portraits, a stately 
 Dutch clock, and the portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Lowell 
 taken by Page in their youth. The grounds about Elm- 
 wood have been kept as nearly as possible in a state of
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 263 
 
 nature. They are ample, and filled with magnificent 
 trees. The elms of Cambridge are among the most 
 beautifiil to be found anywhere, and on this estate, 
 though not very numerous, there are fine specimens. In 
 front of the house are splendid ash-trees, and a thick 
 hedge of trees surrounds the whole enclosure. This 
 hedge bristles with pines, droops with willows, and is 
 overtopped by gigantic horse-chestnuts. Near the house 
 are pines, elms, lilacs, syringas ; and at the back, apple 
 and pear trees. Huge masses of striped grass light up 
 the thick turf here and there ; and all over the grounds 
 the birds, unmolested from time immemorial, build and 
 sing in perfect freedom and content. Long ago Long- 
 fellow sang of the herons of Elmwood, and they are still 
 to be found in the wooded slopes behind the house, 
 where the Lowell children played in their happy child- 
 hood. 
 
 Mr. Lowell entered Harvard College in his sixteenth 
 year, and, though never what was called a brilliant stu- 
 dent, was graduated in due time, and entered upon the 
 study of law. He passed through the usual course and 
 took his degree of LL. B., but he was not noted for his 
 love of study in the law school, more than in college. 
 He was noted for his love of reading in both places, but 
 it was of books outside the established course. His 
 literary bent was strongly marked from the first, and 
 his poetic talent developed itself at an early day. When 
 only twenty-two years of age he published his first vol- 
 ume of poems, much like the youthful poems of other 
 bards, and far inferior to the work of Bryant at the same 
 age. Three years later he put forth a volume of verses 
 much more worthy of his genius, some of them being 
 favorites still, — like the " Shepherd of King Admetus," 
 " The Forlorn," '' The Heritage," which achieved the 
 immortality of the school-books, and a few others. 
 
 There was not a large sale for books of poetry in this 
 country at that time, and these first ventures of Lowell 
 fared much like other books of that day. If he was not
 
 .^64 
 
 HOME LIFE OF -GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 quite ns badly oH" as poor Thoreau, who, a year after his 
 first thousaml was printed, wrote to a friend that he was 
 now the owner of a Hbrary of about a thousand volumes, 
 over nine hundred of which he wrote himself, he cer- 
 tainly was not ixx ahead of that original writer in the 
 matter of sales. His books, however, attracted some atten- 
 tion, and could hardly be classed under the head he 
 juoposes for certain books, in the " Fable for Critics," 
 namely, " literature suited to desolate islands," — 
 
 " Such as Satan, if jirinting had then been invented. 
 As the climax of woe would to Job have presented." 
 
 Mr. Lowell was married in 1844 to Miss Maria White, 
 of W'atertown near Cambridge, the lady to whom some 
 of his first poems were addressed, and who was herself 
 a writer of very sweet and tender verse. Mrs. Lowell 
 was most beautiful and accomplished, a fit wife for a 
 poet, and the maker of a restful but inspiring home. 
 Beautifiil children came to them to gladden their lives 
 for a little season ; but all except one were recalled in 
 early infancy, and the grief of the parents was both acute 
 and lasting. Many a time, as he tells us, he — 
 
 " looked at the snow- -fall, 
 And thought of the leaden sky 
 That arched o'er our first great sorrow 
 When that mound was heaped so high." 
 
 And only in after-years he — 
 
 " Remembered the gradual patience 
 That fell from that cloud like snow, 
 Flake by flake, healing and hiding 
 The scar of our deep-plunged woe." 
 
 For many years a pair of tiny baby-shoes, half-worn, 
 hung over a picture-frame in the poet's study, and told 
 their sad tale of the little feet that had gone on before. 
 Like Sydney Smith, Lowell learned to think that " children 
 are horribly insecure, — that the life of a parent is the life 
 of a gambler ; " and he held the one who still remained
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 265 
 
 to him with a trembling grasp for a long time. Happily, 
 she was spared to him, and still adds interest and pleasure 
 to his life. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Lowell went to Europe in 185 1, and 
 spent a year in travel, partly for the benefit of Mrs. 
 Lowell's health, which was always delicate. They spent 
 the greater part of their time in Italy, although they made 
 brief tours in France, Switzerland, and England. About 
 a year after their return Mrs. Lowell died, and another 
 little mound in Sweet Auburn was 
 
 " Folded close under deepening snow." 
 
 During the nine years of their married life all had 
 been peaceful and beautiful, and now there seemed 
 nothing left but — 
 
 " To the spirit its splendid conjectures, 
 To the flesh its sweet despair," 
 
 and many hopeless tears over — 
 
 " the thin-worn locket 
 With its anguish of deathless hair." 
 
 For a long time the heart of the poet would admit of 
 no consolation. He replied to every attempt to soften 
 his grief, — 
 
 " There 's a narrow ridge in the graveyard. 
 Would scarce stay a child in his race ; 
 But to me and my thought it is wider 
 Than the star-sown vague of Space. 
 
 " Your logic, my friend, is perfect, 
 Your morals most drearily true ; 
 But since the eartli clashed on her coffin, 
 I keep hearing that, and not you. 
 
 "Console if you will, I can bear it; 
 'Tis a well-meant alms of breath ; 
 But not all the preaching since Adam, 
 Has made Death other than Death.
 
 a66 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 "It is pagan ; but wait till you feel it, — 
 That jar of the earth, that dull shock, 
 When the ploughshare of deeper passion 
 Tears down to our primitive rock. 
 
 '♦ Communion in spirit 1 forgive me, 
 Uut I , who am earthy and weak. 
 Would give all my incomes from dream-land 
 For a touch of her hand on my cheek. 
 
 " That little shoe in the corner, 
 
 So worn and wrinkled and brown, 
 With its emptiness confutes you, 
 And argues your wisdom down." 
 
 On the same day that Mrs. Lowell died a child was 
 born to Mr. Longfellow, who sent to his friend the beau- 
 tiful poem, " The Two Angels." 
 
 " 'T was at thy door, O friend, and not at mine. 
 The angel with the amaranthine wreath 
 Pausing, descended, and with voice divine 
 Whispered a word that had a sound like death." 
 
 In 1854 Mr. Lowell was appointed as Mr. Longfellow's 
 successor to the chair of belles-lettres in Harvard Univer- 
 sity, — a place for which he was most admirably fitted by 
 nature and by training. He went abroad again and studied 
 for two years, chiefly in Dresden, when he returned and 
 began his lectures, which were much enjoyed by his 
 cultivated audience. He dwelt with loving care upon 
 Dante, Chaucer, Shakspeare, and Cervantes, in partic- 
 ular, and made a deep impression upon all who listened 
 to him. 
 
 In 1857 Mr. Lowell was married for the second time, 
 to Miss Frances Dunlap of Portland, Maine, who had had 
 charge of the education of his daughter while he was 
 abroad. They returned to the ancestral home at Elm- 
 wood soon after the marriage, and continued to reside 
 there until the poet was appointed Minister to Spain by 
 President Hayes, when they repaired together to that 
 country. Upon his transfer to the Court of St. James,
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 267 
 
 they removed to London, where both were universally 
 and justly popular. Few ladies have received such warm 
 encomiums in England as Mrs. Lowell, and few have 
 as richly deserved them. No man whom our nation 
 has sent to represent us in England has been so highly 
 praised by the English press as Mr. Lowell, and prob- 
 ably no one has been so much liked by the class of 
 people with whom he came chiefly in contact. There 
 seemed to be much wonder in court circles there that 
 America could produce so finished a gentleman as Mr. 
 Lowell ; and perhaps they had had some reason to doubt 
 this, if they judged by the average American tourist. 
 They wondered, too, at his delightful public speaking, — 
 a thing to which Englishmen are not as much accustomed 
 as Americans. They have a heavy, labored way of speak- 
 ing, extremely painful to listeners accustomed to the ease 
 of American speakers ; and they were never weary of lis- 
 tening to the pleasing and graceful oratory of Mr. Lowell. 
 He was called upon constantly to address the people, 
 upon all sorts of occasions, and invariably received the 
 highest praise for his efforts. Much regret was felt in 
 England when he was called home ; much also in this 
 country by those who had the honor of the nation at 
 heart, although the whole people were glad to welcome 
 him back to his native land once more. Mrs. Lowell 
 died during their residence in London, and the sympathies 
 of the world went out to the husband in his affliction. 
 
 Mr. Lowell came to the aid of the despised Abolition- 
 ists at an early day. While it was still inviting social 
 ostracism and public indignity to do so, he bravely hfted 
 up his voice in their defence, and began lending his vigo- 
 rous and powerful pen to the cause they represented. All 
 the traditions of his life seemed to bind him to the conser- 
 vative classes ; but he broke away from them, and boldly 
 faced their derision and their sneers, to do what seemed 
 right in his own eyes. As far back as the publication of 
 the " Fable for Critics," he had dared to praise Whittier, 
 whom all the conservatives affected to despise, —
 
 J 68 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 " l'"or singing and striking in front of the war, 
 And liitting his foes with the mallet of Thor." 
 
 It Still rciiuircd l)ravery as well as kindliness to say of the 
 despiscil Quaker : — 
 
 " All honor and praise to the right-hearted bard 
 Who was true to The Voice when such service was hard ; 
 Who himself was so free he dared sing for the slave, 
 When to look but a protest in silence was brave 1 
 All honor and praise to the women and men 
 Who spoke out for the dumb and the down-trodden then 1 " 
 
 And greater bravery still was required in those days to 
 dare introduce the name of Parker into literature without 
 denunciation or derision. Of the church which had put 
 its ban upon " the Orson of parsons " he said : — 
 
 " They had formerly damned the Pontifical See, 
 And the same thing, they thought, would do nicely for P. ; 
 But he turned up his nose at their muniiuring and shamming, 
 
 And cared (shall I say) not a d for their damning. 
 
 So they first read him out of their church, and next minute 
 Turned round and declared he had never been in it. 
 But the ban was too small, or the man was too big ; 
 For he recks not their bells, books, and candles a fig 
 (He don't look like a man who would stay treated shabbily, 
 Sophroniscus' son's head o'er the features of Rabelais) ; 
 He bangs and bethwacks them, — their backs he salutes 
 With the whole tree of knowledge torn up by the roots." 
 
 He concluded his long description of the great arch-heretic 
 in these words : — 
 
 " Every word that he speaks has been fierily fumaced 
 In the blast of a life that has struggled in earnest. 
 There he stands, looking more like a ploughman than priest. 
 If not dreadfully awkward, not graceful at least ; 
 His gestures all downright, and some, if you will, 
 As of brown-fisted Hobnail in hoeing a drill ; 
 But his periods fall on you, stroke after stroke, 
 Like the blows of a lumberer felling an oak : 
 You forget the man wholly, you 're thankful to meet 
 With a preacher who smacks of the field and the street ; 
 And to hear, you 're not over particular whence, 
 Almost Taylor's profusion, quite Latimer's sense." 
 
 The first of the Biglow Papers had appeared even be- 
 fore this, — as early as 1846, during the progress of the
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 269 
 
 Mexican war, — and had showed his countrymen very 
 plainly where he was to be found in the coining struggle. 
 These brilliant coruscations of wit were the first gleams of 
 light which irradiated the sombre anti-slavery struggle. 
 The Abolitionists were men too much in earnest to enliven 
 their arguments with wit or humor, and the whole conflict 
 thus far had been stern and solemn in the extreme. This 
 had prevented much popular enthusiasm, except in natures 
 as earnest as their own ; and many men who had before 
 been indifferent to the subject were at once attracted and 
 interested by the raillery and satire of Lowell. They en- 
 joyed his keen thrusts, and began to talk with one another 
 about them, and unconsciously imbibed a little of their 
 spirit. Some of the more jingling rhymes caught the ear 
 of the street, and in a little while 
 
 "John P. 
 Robinson he 
 Sez he wun't vote for Governor B." 
 
 was heard on every hand. And even across the sea, we 
 are told, travellers would hear some one repeating the 
 catch, — 
 
 " But John P. 
 Robinson he 
 Sez they didn't know everything down in Judee." 
 
 The first series of these papers undoubtedly had a 
 powerful influence in forming public opinion upon the 
 subject of the abolition of slavery ; and the second series 
 exerted a still more potent influence in favor of sustaining 
 the government in the prosecution of the war, and in 
 urging it to the emancipation of the slaves. Early in the 
 war he wrote, — 
 
 " It 's slavery that 's the fangs and thinkin' head, 
 And ef you want salvation, cresh it dead." 
 
 He suffered much in his own family from the war, three 
 of his feverite nephews being killed, — one at Winchester, 
 one at Seven Pines, and one at Ball's Bluff. Another 
 relative was the gallant Colonel Shaw, who led the colored 
 troops in the assault on Fort Wagner, and who there gave
 
 ,;o HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 up his heroic life. In the "Commemoration Ode"— the 
 greatest poem which Lowell has ever written — he cele- 
 brates the death of these young heroes in fitting verse, 
 and gives their names to immortality. The effect of the 
 poem at tiie time was simply overpowering, so many other 
 hearts were bleeding with his own ; and it at once took 
 its place as one of the noblest poems in the language. 
 The poet William W. Story came over from Rome pur- 
 posely to hear Lowell deliver this ode, and felt abun- 
 dantly paid for the journey by the pathos and sublimity 
 of the scene, which has seldom been equalled in this 
 country. 
 
 Mr. Underwood tells us that — 
 
 "In person Lowell is of medium height, rather slender, 
 but sinewy and active. His movements are deliberate rather 
 than impulsive, indicating what athletes call staying qualities. 
 His hair at maturity was dark auburn or ruddy chestnut in 
 color, and his full beard rather lighter and more glowing in 
 tint. The eyes of men of genius are seldom to be classified 
 in ordinary terms, though it is said their prevailing color is 
 gray. . . . Lowell's eyes in repose have clear blue and gray 
 tones, with minute, dark mottHngs. In expression they are 
 strongly indicative of his moods. When fixed upon study, 
 or while listening to serious discourse, they are grave and 
 penetrating; in ordinary conversation they are bright and 
 cheery ; in moments of excitement they have a wonderful 
 lustre. Nothing could be finer than his facial expression 
 while telling a story or tossing a repartee. The features are 
 alive with intelligence ; and eyes, looks, and voice appear to 
 be working up dazzling effects in concert, like the finished 
 artists of the Comedie Frangaise." 
 
 As a conversationalist Mr. Lowell is unrivalled. His 
 wit is apparently inexhaustible, and irradiates his whole 
 conversation, as it does all his writing except his serious 
 poetry. His " Fireside Travels " was pronounced by Bryant 
 the wittiest book ever written ; and it is not more witty 
 than much of his conversation. The brilliancy of his 
 conversation and the charm of his manners unite to make
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 271 
 
 him one of the most fascinating companions in the world ; 
 and this charm is felt by all who come in contact with the 
 man, and is not a thing reserved for his more favored 
 companions. One who has witnessed an encounter of 
 wit between Lowell and Dr. Holmes has witnessed one of 
 the finest exhibitions of mental pyrotechnics of the day. 
 His reading has been wide and varied, and he has all 
 his resources at command. His observation of men and 
 things has also been keen, and every variety of anecdote 
 and illustration come forth from apparently inexhaustible 
 sources as the needs of the moment demand. His love 
 of Nature and his observation of all her finer moods 
 make him a most delightful out-of-doors companion. In 
 the beautiful environs of Cambridge he used to take those 
 long walks which furnished him with such a fund of accu- 
 rate observation of the sights and sounds of the natural 
 world. No man has a keener eye for a bird than he, 
 nor a quicker ear to distinguish between their songs ; and 
 no unusual sound of insect life escapes his scrutiny, — he 
 is keenly alert to know what is going on under his feet as 
 well as over his head. The most modest flower does not 
 escape his eye, nor any peculiarly marked leaf, nor any 
 rich bed of leafy mould. He sees everything with his 
 poet's eye, even to " those rifts where unregarded mosses 
 be." He has never been what is called a society man, 
 though latterly he has gone more into general society. 
 Formerly, dinner-parties and balls were his pet aversions, 
 as one might suspect from his poem " Without and 
 Within : " — 
 
 " My coachman, in the moonlight there, 
 Looks through the sidelight of the door ; 
 I hear him with his brethren swear, 
 As I could do, — but only more. 
 
 " Flattening his nose against the pane, 
 He envies me my brilliant lot ; 
 Blows on his aching fists in vain, 
 And dooms me to a place more hot.
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 " Miunwhilc, I inly curse the bore 
 
 Of hunting still the same old coon ; 
 And envy him outside the door, 
 In golden quiets of the moon. 
 
 " I envy him the ungyved prance 
 
 l»y which his freezing feet he warms, 
 And dnig my lady's chain and dance, — 
 The galley-slave of dreary forms. 
 
 " Oh, could he have my share of din, 
 .\nd I his quiet ! — past a doubt, 
 ' r would still be one man bored within, 
 And just another bored without." 
 
 liut he was always fond of good company, and collected 
 around him in Cambridge, in the old days, a brilliant circle 
 of congenial friends. Of these, Longfellow, and Professor 
 Felton, and Agassiz, and Dr. Estes Howe his brother-in- 
 law, were perhaps the closest ; but John Holmes and Ed- 
 mund Quincy and Robert Carter were very warm friends, 
 — members of the famous Whist Club, and royal compan- 
 ions all. Dr. Holmes was not far away, and always a con- 
 stant visitor at Cambridge ; and James T. Fields was a 
 cherished friend. William Page, the painter, and W. W. 
 Story, the sculptor, were also among his earlier friends. 
 It was to the latter that the series of letters collected under 
 the title of " Fireside Travels " were addressed. But there 
 is scarcely a man of note in the literary world whom he 
 has not known in the course of his life ; and he has made 
 friends of nearly all he has known. He has been a busy 
 worker, too, all his Hfe, — industrious, concentrated, and 
 indefatigable. A man who could write the whole of "Sir 
 Launfal " in two days knows how to toil, and has been 
 accustomed to concentrate his faculties. Mr. Lowell has 
 an utter disbelief in the materialistic theory of the Universe, 
 and expresses it many times in his later poems. He at 
 least — 
 
 " envies science not her feat 
 To make a twice-told tale of God." 
 
 And to his reverential eyes —
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 273 
 
 " The Ages one great minster seem, 
 That throbs with praise and prayer." 
 
 And his hope for the world is expressed in " Godminster 
 Chimes," where he says : — 
 
 " O chime of sweet Saint Charity, 
 
 Peal soon that Easter morn 
 When Christ for all shall risen be, 
 
 And in all hearts new born ! 
 That Pentecost when utterance clear 
 
 To all men shall be given, 
 When all shall say My Brother here, 
 
 And hear My Son in heaven 1 " 
 
 Of his own personal trust he gives a picture in " Sea- 
 Weed:"— 
 
 " The drooping sea-weed hears, in night abyssed, 
 Far and more far the wave's receding shocks, 
 Nor doubts, for all the darkness and the mist. 
 That the pale shepherdess will keep her tryst, 
 And shoreward lead again her foam-fleeced flocks. 
 
 " For the same wave that rims the Carib shore 
 With momentary brede of pearl and gold. 
 Goes hurrying thence to gladden with its roar 
 Lorn weeds bound fast on rocks of Labrador, 
 By love divine on one sweet errand rolled. 
 
 " And though Thy healing waters far withdraw, 
 I too can wait, and feed on hope of Thee 
 And of the dear recurrence of Thy law. 
 Sure that the parting grace my morning saw 
 Abides its time to come in search of me." 
 
 18
 
 ROBERT AND ELIZABETH 
 BROWNING. 
 
 COMPAR.\TIVELY little has been known of the lives 
 of these poets. The fact of their having lived in 
 Italy tliroughout their married life kept them somewhat 
 aloof from the gossip-loving writers of their own country ; 
 and the tourists, both from England and America, who 
 were so fond of calling upon them there, seldom succeeded 
 in establishing anything like intimate relations with them. 
 The little that is known can be briefly stated. Brown- 
 ing's father was a gentleman of wealth and of original 
 character, who allowed the striking individuality of his 
 son Robert to develop itself in a natural way instead of 
 attempting to cramp him into the mould of the other 
 young Englishmen of his rank and time. At an early age 
 he went to Italy, where he passed several years in diligent 
 study of the institutions and art of that favored land as 
 well as of her literature both ancient and modern. Young 
 Browning had a great passion for these studies, and a great 
 fondness for Italian life, with which he familiarized himself 
 in all the different provinces and all the principal cities, 
 living for long periods in each favorite resort where there 
 was anything either in art or nature to please his fine 
 critical taste. He studied both painting and music, and 
 has always been a fine amateur in each. He wrote poetry 
 from childhood, but published nothing until he was about
 
 ROBERT AND ELIZABETH BROWNING. 
 
 275 
 
 twenty-three years old, when " Paracelsus," a dramatic 
 poem, appeared. The genius of the writer was recognized 
 at once, as well as those faults which have clung to him 
 persistently through life. Two years after, a tragedy en- 
 titled "Strafford" was produced, and a little later, "Sor- 
 dello." We are interested in these, for the purposes of this 
 article, only as they made him known to Elizabeth Barrett, 
 a young invalid in England, who at once felt the power of 
 the high genius which had appeared in the literary world. 
 She had written some poems herself, but was almost un- 
 known, and, indeed, expected to live but a very short time. 
 Returning to England at this time, Browning, through 
 some knowledge of her poems, made her acquaintance, 
 and a mutual attachment followed, which proved very 
 strong and lasting. This love between two poets of such 
 high rank is unique in the annals of literature. At first 
 she is afraid of her own love, and bids him 
 
 " Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand 
 Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore 
 Alone upon the threshold of my door 
 Of individual life, I shall command 
 The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand 
 Serenely in the sunshine as before. 
 Without the sense of that which I forebore . . . 
 Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land 
 Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine 
 With pulses that beat double. What I do 
 And what I dream, include thee as the wine 
 Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue 
 God for myself, He hears that name of thine 
 And sees within my eyes the tears of two." 
 
 The whole outlook of life soon changed to the gentle 
 invalid, as she tells him later. 
 
 " The face of all the world is changed, I think, 
 Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul 
 Move still, oh, still beside me, as they stole 
 Betwi.xt me and the dreadful outer brink 
 Of obvious death, where I who thought to sink 
 Was caught up into love and taught the whole
 
 >7(, HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 Of life in a new rliythm. The cup of dole 
 
 God gave for baptism, I am fain to drink, 
 
 And praise its sweetness, sweet with tliec anear. 
 
 The name of country, heaven, arc changed away 
 
 For where thou art or siialt be, there or here ; 
 
 And this . . . this lute and song . . . loved yesterday 
 
 (The singing angels know) are only dear 
 
 Because thy name moves right in what they say." 
 
 The wonder of how she could have been able to live 
 without him impresses her much. 
 
 " Beloved, my beloved, when I think 
 That thou wast in the world a year ago, 
 What time I sat alone here in the snow 
 And saw no footprint, heard the silence sink 
 No moment at thy voice . . . but link by link 
 Went counting all my chains as if that so 
 They never could fall off at any blow 
 Struck by thy possible hand . . . why, thus I drink 
 Of life's great cup of wonder. Wonderful, 
 Never to feel thee thrill the day or night 
 With personal act or speech, nor ever cull 
 Some prescience of thee with the blossoms white 
 Thou sawest growing ! Atheists are as dull, 
 Who cannot guess God's presence out of sight." 
 
 But in order to tell the whole story we should have to 
 quote all the " Sonnets from the Portuguese," — and they 
 would make an alluring chapter certainly, — but we must 
 refrain. The result was that, 
 
 " As brighter ladies do not count it strange 
 For love to give up acres and degree, 
 I yield the grave for thy sake, and exchange 
 My near, sweet view of Heaven for earth with thee." 
 
 The two poets were married, and removed at once to 
 Italy, where the lady's health improved, and where they 
 passed many years of happy married life. Miss Barrett's 
 father did not approve the marriage, and he cast her off in 
 consequence, and never became reconciled to her, which 
 was the one great grief of her happy and fortunate life. 
 She had before marriage lost a favorite brother by drown- 
 ing, for whom she had mourned so deeply as seriously to
 
 ROBERT AND ELIZABETH BROWNING. 
 
 277 
 
 affect her health. These were the only abiding sorrows of 
 her life, as far as the world knows. The perfect compan- 
 ionship of these two gifted souls has been described by 
 Browning himself : — 
 
 " When if I think but deep enough 
 You are wont to answer prompt as rhyme, 
 And you too find without a rebuff 
 The response your soul seeks, many a time 
 Piercing its fine flesh stuff." 
 
 Their perfect union he describes thus : — 
 
 " My own, see where the years conduct. 
 At first 't was something our two souls 
 Should mix as mists do ; each is sucked 
 Into each now, on the new stream rolls, 
 Whatever rocks obstruct. 
 
 " Think when our one soul understands 
 The great Word which makes all things new, 
 When earth breaks up and heaven expands, 
 How will the change strike me and you 
 In the house not made with hands ? 
 
 " Oh, I must feel your brain prompt mine. 
 
 Your heart anticipate my heart, 
 
 You must be just before in fine, 
 
 See and make me see for my part 
 
 New depths of the Divine." 
 
 The whole poem "By the Fireside " should be quoted 
 to tell the story from his side ; but we will select only the 
 close for our purpose. After describing how their love 
 had led on to its own consummation, he says : — 
 
 " I am named and known by that hour's feat, 
 There took my station and degree. 
 So grew my own small life complete 
 As Nature obtained her best of me — 
 One born to love you, sweet I 
 
 " And to watch you sit by the fireside now, 
 Back again, as you mutely sit 
 Musing by fire-light, that great brow 
 And the spirit-small hand propping it 
 Yonder, my heart knows how I
 
 ..-S I/OME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 •' So ll>e earth has gained by one man more, 
 And thi- gain of earth must be Heaven's gain too, 
 And tlic whole is well worth thinking o'er 
 When the autumn conies; as I mean to do 
 One day, as 1 said before." 
 
 The autumn time has come now to Browning, and he 
 has had ample time to think it o'er; for the "perfect 
 wife," the " Leonor," has lain under the grasses and vio- 
 lets of the ICnglish burying-ground in Florence for twenty- 
 five years. In the same poem from which we have quoted, 
 he says : — 
 
 " How well I know what I mean to do 
 When the long dark autumn evenings come ! 
 And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue? 
 With the music of all thy voices dumb 
 In Ufe's November, too ! 
 
 " I shall be found by the fire, suppose, 
 0"er a great wise book as beseemeth a;;;e, 
 While the shutters flap as the cross wind blows, 
 And I turn the page, and I turn the page. 
 Not verse now, only prose ! " 
 
 It is sad to think that he should be left solitary by his 
 fire and with his books, but he has much that is beautiful 
 to look back upon, — much, too, that is beautiful to look 
 fonvard to, let us hope ; and he is surrounded by many 
 friends, and devotedly attached to the one son who was 
 the only fruit of this royal marriage of genius. 
 
 The house where the poets lived together for fourteen 
 years in Florence has been thus described : — 
 
 '• Those who have known ' Casa Guidi ' as it was can never 
 forget the square anteroom with its great picture and piano- 
 forte at which the boy Browning passed many an hour, — 
 the little dining-room covered with tapestry, and where hung 
 medallions of Tennyson, Carlyle, and Robert Browning, — 
 the long room filled with plaster casts and studies, which 
 was Mr. Browning's retreat, — and dearest of all, the large 
 drawing-room where she always sat. It opens upon a bal- 
 cony filled with plants, and looks out upon the old iron-gray 
 church of Santa Felice.
 
 ROBERT AND ELIZABETH BROWNING. 
 
 279 
 
 "There -nas something about this room which seemed to 
 make it a proper and especial haunt for poets. The dark 
 shadows and subdued hghtgave it a dreamy look, which was 
 enhanced by the tapestry-covered walls and the old pictures 
 of saints that looked out sadly from their carved frames of 
 black wood. Large bookcases constructed of specimens of 
 Florentine carving were brimming over with wise-looking 
 books. Tables were covered with more gayly-bound vol- 
 umes, the gifts of brother authors. Dante's grave profile, a 
 cast of Keats's face and brow taken after death, a pen-and- 
 ink sketch of Tennyson, little paintings of the boy Browning, 
 all attracted the eye in turn, and gave rise to a thousand 
 musings. A quaint mirror, easy-chairs and sofas, and a 
 hundred nothings, which always add an indescribable charm, 
 were all massed in this room. But the glory of all, and that 
 which sanctified all, was seated in a low arm-chair near the 
 door. A small table strewn with writing-materials, books, 
 and newspapers, was always by her side." 
 
 Here Mrs. Browning held her small court, and here she 
 entertained in the course of those years many of the most 
 famous men and women of her time. Almost all visitors 
 to Florence, especially English and American, sought 
 her acquaintance, and all were kindly received by her. 
 The conversation was always earnest there ; she de- 
 manded a great deal of a person, — one felt it instinc- 
 tively ; and few came to waste her time upon trifles. 
 Her own conversation was especially earnest, sometimes 
 vivid, and lighted up by a humor peculiarly her own. 
 She cared nothing for talk about people. Books and 
 humanity, great deeds, and the great questions of the 
 day, were the staple of her conversation. Religion, too, 
 was an ever present topic. She was one of the most 
 religious women of her day, and she interwove it in all 
 her conversation, as she did in her writings. Indeed, her 
 religion was a part of herself, and whoever knew her must 
 know of this strong, deep feeling. One cannot conceive 
 of Mrs. Browning apart from her religion. She would 
 not have been herself, but another. It was a rare sight, 
 indeed, to see this frail, spiritual-looking woman, when
 
 2 So HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 she talked upon some phase of her favorite theme, with 
 her great expressive eyes fairly glowing with the inten- 
 sity of her feeling, and a light shining through her face, 
 as from the soul beyond. Her other great theme was 
 Italv. and upon this she was always eloquent. Indeed, 
 l)oth Mr. and Mrs. Browning may almost be said to have 
 adopted Italy for their home, and to have transferred their 
 home affections to her soil. Many great Englishmen have 
 loved Italy, but none more warmly than the Brownings. 
 They suffered with her through all those dark hours which 
 preceded her final emancipation from the foreign yoke, 
 and they aided by their strong, brave words in bringing 
 about that emancipation. Their pens were used in her 
 behalf, perhaps too much for their own fame, because 
 many of the subjects on which they wrote were of some- 
 what transient interest and more political than poetical. 
 They were both friends and helpers to the great states- 
 man Cavour in all his labors for the reconstruction of 
 Italy, and one of the deepest interests of their lives was 
 that reconstruction. Mrs. Browning's frail health was 
 really injured at times by the serious grief she felt for 
 temporary reverses, and by the absorbing interest she 
 took in the cause. 
 
 The dream of her life, a free and united Italy, was ful- 
 filled in Napoleon's formal recognition of Italian freedom 
 and unity, the very week she died. It is given to few 
 in this world thus to see the fruition of their fondest 
 desires, and to pass away just as the clear morning 
 light is dispelling the shadows of a long night of watch- 
 ing and waiting. The Napoleonic poems added nothing 
 to her reputation as a poet, and were much regretted by 
 some of her friends ; but her literary reputation was noth- 
 ing to her compared with her love for Italy, and she at 
 least had faith in Napoleon's promises. 
 
 Mr. Hilliard, in his " Six Months in Italy," says of the 
 home behind the Casa Guidi windows : — 
 
 " A happier home and a more perfect union than theirs it 
 is not easy to imagine ; and this completeness arises not only
 
 ROBERT AND ELIZABETH BROWNING. 281 
 
 from the rare qualities which each possesses, but from their 
 perfect adaptation to each other. ... As he is full of manly 
 power, so she is a type of the most sensitive and delicate 
 womanhood. ... I have never seen a human frame which 
 seemed so nearly a transparent veil for a celestial and 
 immortal spirit. She is a soul of fire enclosed in a shell 
 of pearl. . . . Nor is she more remarkable for genius and 
 learning than for sweetness of temper, tenderness of 
 heart, depth of feeling, and purity of spirit. It is a privi- 
 lege to know such beings singly and separately ; but to see 
 their powers quickened and their happiness rounded by the 
 sacred tie of marriage, is a cause for peculiar and lasting 
 gratitude." 
 
 The boy Browning was very beautiful in his childhood, 
 and occupied a large place in the lives of his parents, who 
 felt great pride in showing him to their visitors. It is a 
 pleasant story told of the street beggars who walked 
 through the Via Maggio in those days, under the win- 
 dows of Casa Guidi, that they always spoke of Mrs. 
 Browning, simply and touchingly, as " the mother of the 
 beautiful child." But her love for this one beautiful dar- 
 ling taught her the whole possibility of motherhood. It 
 made her heart go out in deepest sympathy to all mothers, 
 as " to the friends unknown, and a land unvisited over 
 the sea," to whom she writes : — 
 
 " Shall I speak like a poet, or run 
 
 Into weak woman's tears for relief? 
 Ah, children ! I never lost one, — 
 Yet my arm 's roimd my own little son. 
 
 And love knows the secret of grief." 
 
 In the Italian poem " Mother and Poet," she has 
 expressed a mother's feelings as truthfully and vividly 
 as any writer who has ever touched that great theme. 
 She can describe, too, in language that almost blisters 
 the page on which it is written, that other class of mothers 
 which it is bitter to feel that the earth does contain, — the 
 monsters who would sell their daughters for gold. In 
 that most powerful story of Marian in "Aurora Leigh," 
 she writes thus : —
 
 ..Sj home life of great authors. 
 
 '• The cliiltl turned round 
 And looked up piteous in the mother's face 
 (He sure tl>at mother's deatli-bed will not want 
 Another devil to damn, than such a look). 
 'Oh, mother I ' then with desperate glance to heaven, 
 ' (iod free me from my motJier,' she shrieked out, 
 * These mothers are too dreadful.' And with force 
 As passionate as fear, she tore her hands, 
 Like lilies from the rocks, from hers and his, 
 And sprang down, bounded headlong down the steep, 
 Away from both, away, if possible. 
 As i.>r as God — away. They yelled at her 
 As famished hounds at a hare. 
 
 She heard them yell, 
 And felt her name hiss after her from the hills 
 Like shot from guns." 
 
 The whole of that wonderful poem of " Aurora Leigh " 
 is full of such impassioned sympathy with womanhood, 
 and shows the great heart of the poet as perhaps none of 
 her other poems do. AN'ritten in the maturity of her 
 powers, and after she had learned much of life in all its 
 intricate depths, it contains perhaps more passion and 
 power and fiery-burning eloquence than any other poem 
 in the English language. Only an inspired womanly 
 hand, which had soun&ed all the deeps of the world's 
 scanty wisdom, could have penned it. 
 
 But Mrs. Browning shows great wealth of human sym- 
 pathy in all her poems. Oppression and wrong sink into 
 the very depths of her nature, and she cannot bear that 
 they shall go unreproved in the universe while she exists. 
 Her sympathy with our labors for the emancipation of the 
 slaves was well known, in a time when little sympathy was 
 to be found among the English, and her feeling for the 
 poor and oppressed of her native land was always deep 
 and strong. Her " Cry of the Children " will never be 
 forgotten while there are suffering children in the world, 
 and while there are human hearts to listen to their wail. 
 It is as sacred a piece of inspiration as the Psalms of 
 David ; and the need for such an expression of the woe 
 of the outcast poor of England is almost as great to-day 
 as when the immortal poem was written. Still can we 
 ask of the English people : —
 
 ROBERT AND ELIZABETH BROWNING. 283 
 
 " Do you hear the children weeping, my brothers, 
 
 Ere the sorrow comes with years ? 
 They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, 
 
 And that cannot stop their tears. 
 The young Iambs are bleating in the meadows ; 
 
 The young birds are chirping in their nest ; 
 The young fawns are playing with the shadows ; 
 
 The young flowers are blowing toward the west. 
 But the young, young children, O my brothers, 
 
 They are weeping bitterly ; 
 They are weeping in the playtime of the others, 
 
 In the country of the free." 
 
 This poem, Hood's " Song of the Shirt," and a few 
 others, have added their mite to the influence of Dickens 
 in benefiting a little the poorest of England's poor ; yet 
 how much remains to be done is shown in the present 
 deplorable condition of the lower orders in that country. 
 What might not such a poet as Robert Browning have 
 done, could he have emancipated himself from his in- 
 volved and difficult style, and written in a manly and 
 straightforward way of the world of men and women 
 around him, instead of going off" in his exasperating man- 
 ner into the Red Cotton Night-Cap Country, to tell us 
 of Prince Hohenstiel Tebwangan Saviour of Society. The 
 pity of it is beyond expression, when so great a poet as 
 Browning makes himself so needlessly unintelligible, and 
 loses the vast influence he might exert over the minds 
 of his generation and the minds of posterity. But the 
 thoughts hidden in his rugged verse are worth delving 
 for, and already societies are being formed in England 
 and America to study them. These societies will do 
 something to popularize him, but he can never be 
 made what he was really capable of being, the poet 
 of the people. His circle of readers will always be 
 small, but it will be of the world's best. The thinkers 
 will never make a vast throng in this world, while the 
 highways of folly will always swarm with a great multi- 
 tude which no man can number. But there is a day 
 after to-day, and sometime, when the thought of the 
 world shall have risen to a higher level, the name of
 
 .S4 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 Robert Hrowiiiiig will bo oftcncr than now upon the lips 
 of men. 
 
 Personally, Browiiing is almost unknown to his coun- 
 tn-juon ; his name even has never been heard by the 
 nniltituile. He is never pointed out to strangers, as are 
 other men of letters, and never attracts any notice in a 
 public place. But he is well known to a select circle, 
 where he is a favorite, and he goes a good deal into 
 society in London these later years. He is a great 
 lavorite with women everywhere ; and he deserves to 
 be, for he has always shown himself capable of sympa- 
 thizing with what is truest and best in womanhood. He 
 has been loyal to the memory of his wife during all his 
 long years of solitude, and it still seems that she holds her 
 old place in his heart. He is now seventy-four years 
 old, — a fine, well-preserved man, with a light step and an 
 easy carriage. He was a handsome man in his prime, 
 with a charmingly expressive face and a good figure. His 
 hair is now snow-white, but otherwise he is not old in 
 his looks. His manners are somewhat precise, and after 
 the old school. He is fond of admiration, and is ac- 
 counted egotistical, although reserved in general society. 
 His talk, like his writings, is a good deal upon out-of-the- 
 way subjects, and is often deemed unintelligible by those 
 unfamiliar with his thought. To his enthusiastic admirers 
 it seems like inspiration. He is still busy with his pen, 
 although his volumes of poetry now number twenty or 
 more. He has really created a literature of his own. 
 How life appears to him now, from the vantage-ground 
 of his almost fourscore years, it would be interesting to 
 know. Many years ago he wrote, a little wearily : — 
 
 " There's a fancy some lean to and others hate, — 
 
 That when this life is ended begins 
 New work for the soul in another state, 
 
 Where it strives and gets weary, loses and wins, — 
 Where the strong and the weak this world's congeries 
 
 Repeat in large what they practised in small. 
 Through life after life in an infinite series, — 
 
 Only the scale 's to be changed, that 's all.
 
 ROBERT AND ELIZABETH BROWNING. 285 
 
 " Yet I hardly know. When a soul has seen 
 
 By the means of Evil that Good is best, 
 And through earth and its noise what is heaven's serene, — 
 
 When its faith in the same has stood the test, — 
 Why, the child grown man, we bum the rod ; 
 
 The uses of labor are surely done. 
 There remaineth a rest for the people of God, 
 
 And I have had troubles enough for one."
 
 CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 
 
 IN the crowiled little churchyard at Haworth, in the 
 wild, bleak Yorkshire region, are eight mounds 
 which mark the extinction of a family whose genius and 
 sorrows have made them known the world over. In 
 the little church there is a mural tablet which tells the 
 names of this illustrious group, and the many visitors to 
 this little out-of-the-way house of worship read with a 
 melancholy interest these sad inscriptions. First we are 
 told of Maria Brontd, the mother, who died in 182 1, 
 when only thirty-nine years old, leaving the six children 
 whose names follow, all in the helplessness of early child- 
 hood. Next to her come Maria and Elizabeth, both of 
 whom followed her in 1825 ; then Branwell and Emily, 
 who died in 1848, and Anne, who lived one year longer. 
 But it is to the last of the inscriptions that all eyes are 
 turned with the greatest interest, for there we read — 
 
 CHARLOTTE, 
 
 Wife of the Rev. Arthur Bell Nichols, A. B. 
 
 And Daughter of the Rev. E. P. Bronte, A. M., Incumbent. 
 
 SHE DIED March 3ist, 1853, in the 39TH year of her agk. 
 
 There is no sadder history in all literature than the his- 
 tory of this gifted family and their early doom. A pathos 
 clings about it which is really painful, so few are the 
 gleams of light which are thrown upon the dark picture. 
 From the time when the Rev. Patrick Bronte (himself a 
 gifted but somewhat erratic man) brought his young wife
 
 CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 287 
 
 into the solitude of tliis moorland parsonage and shut her 
 up in a seclusion from which she was only removed by 
 death, all the way down through the lonely childhood 
 of the little motherless children, and on into their no less 
 lonely and more afflicted womanhood, even to the deaths 
 of all the gifted group, there is a depth of sombre gloom 
 from which the sympathetic heart must turn away with a 
 bitter pain and almost a feeling of hot rebellion against 
 Fate. 
 
 The utter loneliness of that part of Yorkshire at the 
 time when Mr. Bronte settled there can hardly be ima- 
 gined to-day. In winter all communication with the out- 
 side world was cut off by almost impassable mud or 
 entirely impassable snow. Travellers whom actual neces- 
 sity compelled to start forth were often snowed in for a 
 week or ten days within a few miles of home, and nobody 
 thought of stirring from that shelter except through the 
 pressure of absolute necessity. Isolated as were the little 
 hill villages like Haworth, they were in the world, com- 
 pared with the loneliness of the gray ancestral houses to 
 be seen here and there in the dense hollows of the moors. 
 
 The inhabitants of this rough country were themselves 
 of wild, turbulent nature, much given to deadly feuds and 
 really dangerous in their enmities. Their amusements 
 were all of the lowest order, and hard riding and deep 
 drinking were the characteristics of all the male popula- 
 tion, while cock-fighting and bull-baiting were thought 
 refined amusements for both sexes. 
 
 The ministers were not much above their flocks in gen- 
 eral culture, and the incumbents of Haworth had been 
 noted for their eccentricities for generations. Many of 
 them attended the horse-racings and the games of foot- 
 ball which were played on Sunday afternoons, and took 
 as deep a part as any of the flock in the drunken carouse 
 which always followed a funeral. Mr. Bronte was a very 
 different man from his predecessors, but was many years 
 in subduing his congregation to an even nominal obser- 
 vance of common moralities. He was, however, a man
 
 ,SS HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 ol" high spirit and imperious will, and, bending himself to 
 the task with all his i)owers, made a decided impression 
 upon the life around him. The gentle mother soon 
 passeil away, aiul Mr. Bront^ became a stern and silent 
 man who kept his children at a distance from himself and 
 allowed them little intercourse with the outside world. 
 They were allowed to walk out on the wild heathery 
 moors, but not down in the village street ; and they ac- 
 (juired a i)assionate love of those purple moors, which re- 
 maineil with them through life. When angry, Mr. Bronte 
 would say nothing, but they could hear him out at the 
 door firing pistol-shots in quick succession as a relief to 
 his feelings. The children were unnaturally quiet and 
 well-behaved. The old nurse says : — 
 
 "You would never have known there was a child in the 
 house, they were such noiseless, good little creatures. I 
 used to think them spiritless, they were so different from 
 any children I had ever seen." 
 
 They used to read the newspapers, w-rite little stories, 
 and act plays, and at one time conducted a magazine of 
 their own. Like all imaginative children, they played in 
 stories, each one taking part in the stirring romances they 
 invented. They were great believers in the supernatural, 
 too, and the denizens of the adjoining churchyard played 
 quite a prominent part in their childish lives. This church- 
 yard, which was so near the parsonage, added much to the 
 gloom and unhealthiness of the old manse, and many 
 people have attributed the ill health of all the girls to its 
 close proximity. It was depressing, to say the least, to 
 such imaginative children as those of Mr. Bronte. 
 
 It was not long after the mother's death that the two 
 older girls, Maria and Elizabeth, were taken to a school at 
 Cowan's Bridge, a small hamlet in the north of England, 
 and the younger children were left more lonely than ever. 
 This school, which had been selected on account of its 
 cheapness, had been established for the daughters of cler- 
 gymen, and the entire expenses were fourteen pounds a
 
 CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 289 
 
 year. Cowan's Bridge is prettily situated, just where the 
 Leck-fells sweep into the plain ; and by the course of 
 the beck, alders and willows and hazel bushes grow. 
 This little shallow, sparkling stream runs through long 
 green pastures, and has many httle falls over beds of gray 
 rocks. The school-house had been made from an old 
 bobbin-mill, and the situation proved to be remarkably 
 unhealthy. This is the school so realistically described 
 by Charlotte in "Jane Eyre." "Helen Burns" is an 
 exact transcript of Maria Bronte, and every scene is a 
 literal description of events which took place at this school. 
 The whole thing was burned into Charlotte's memory so 
 indeUbly that she reproduced it with photographic exact- 
 ness. Emily and Charlotte had followed the other sisters 
 there, after a year or two, so that all of them suffered- to a 
 greater or less extent from the privations and abuses they 
 underwent in that female Dotheboys Hall. The eldest 
 sister died, and the second became very ill ; yet still 
 Mr. Bronte, who believed in the hardening process for 
 children, kept them there until the health of each one 
 failed in turn, and they were permanently injured by their 
 privations. The food, which would perhaps have been 
 wholesome enough if properly cooked, was ruined by a 
 dirty and careless woman, who served it up in such dis- 
 gusting messes that many a time the fastidious little Bron- 
 tes could not eat a mouthful, though faint with hunger. 
 There was always the most delicate cleanliness in the fru- 
 gal Bronte household, and the children had early learned 
 to be dainty in such matters. Their fare at home was of 
 the simplest nature, but always well cooked ; and they sim- 
 ply fasted themselves ill at Cowan's Bridge because they 
 could not eat what was set before them. 
 
 There was another trial of health to the girls, and that 
 was being obliged in all kinds of weather to attend church, 
 which was two miles away. The road was a very bleak 
 and unsheltered one, where cutting winds blew in winter 
 and where the snows were often deep. The church was 
 never warmed, as there was no provision made for any 
 
 19
 
 300 J/OME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 heating apparatus ; ami when the ill-fed and half-clothed 
 girls had reached its shelter, they were often in actual 
 chills from the exi)Osure, and could not hope to gain any 
 additional warmth there. Colds were taken in this way, 
 from w hich the girls never recovered. They also suffered 
 troni colli in the school itself, and from the tyranny of one 
 of the teachers, whom Charlotte has mercilessly depicted 
 as Miss S<.:atcherd in " Jane Eyre." To the day of Miss 
 r>ronte's death, she would blaze with indignation at any 
 mention of this school ; and who can wonder? 
 
 •After the death of the second daughter, Elizabeth, Char- 
 lotte and Emily were taken from Cowan's Bridge, and 
 spent some time at another school, where they were much 
 happier, and where they made a few life-long friends, par- 
 ticularly Miss Woolner, tlie principal. One of her school- 
 mates gives this description of Charlotte's arrival at the 
 school : — 
 
 " I first saw her coming out of a covered cart, in very old- 
 £.ishioned clothes, and looking very cold and miserable. 
 When she appeared in the school-room her dress was 
 changed, but just as old. She looked a little old woman, so 
 short-sighted that she always appeared to be seeking some- 
 thing, and moving her head from side to side to catch a sight 
 of it. She was very shy and nervous, and spoke with a 
 strong Irish accent. When a book was given her she 
 dropped her head over it till her nose nearly touched it; and 
 when she was told to hold her head up, up went the book 
 after it, still close to her nose, so that it was not possible to 
 help laughing." 
 
 She was a close student here, and a favorite with the 
 girls, whom she would frighten half out of their senses by 
 her wonderful stories. So great was their effect at times, 
 that her listeners were thrown into real hysterics. After 
 leaving this school, Charlotte returned home, and began 
 keeping house and teaching her sisters. Here several 
 quiet years were passed, busy but monotonous. The girls 
 spent their time in study, in household tasks, walking, 
 and drawing, of which they were very fond. They also
 
 CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 
 
 291 
 
 read very thoroughly the few books which were accessible 
 to them. At nineteen Charlotte went as a teacher to 
 Miss Woolner's school, where she was very happy, and 
 remained until her health failed. It was a nervous 
 trouble, which seemed at one time like a complete break- 
 ing down, but from which she gradually recovered after 
 her return home. Emily now took her turn in teaching, 
 going to a school at Halifax, where she came near literally 
 dying from homesickness. Emily could never live away 
 from Haworth and her moors ; and in this school she 
 labored incessantly from six in the morning till eleven at 
 night, with only one half-hour for exercise between. To 
 a free, wild, untamable spirit like Emily's, this was indeed 
 slavery. She returned home after a time, and Charlotte 
 again went out to teach. They felt the necessity of earn- 
 ing money, as their father's stipend was small, and he was 
 both liberal and charitable, — and there was their brother 
 Branwell to be provided for. Of this brother we have 
 not before spoken ; but he occupied an important place in 
 their home and in their lives. He had been the pride 
 and the hope of the family from early youth. He was 
 possessed of brilliant talents, and was full of noble im- 
 pulses, but was very fond of pleasure, and soon formed 
 irregular habits, which were the ruin of his life and the 
 source of unmeasured grief to his whole family. They 
 had desired to send him to study at the Royal Academy, 
 as he had the family's fondness for drawing, and they fan- 
 cied he would develop great talent as an artist. Had his 
 habits been good, their hopes might have been realized ; 
 but he fell so early into profligacy, that the idea of be- 
 coming an artist was given up, and he took a place as a 
 private tutor. He had formed his intemperate habits 
 when a mere boy, at the public house in Haworth village, 
 where he was esteemed royal company, — as no doubt he 
 was, with his brilliant conversational powers, — and was 
 often sent for to entertain chance guests, in whom he de- 
 lighted, as they could tell him so much of that distant 
 world beyond the confining hills, for which he yearned.
 
 2^2 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 'Hk* pity of it was infinite ; for had he been kej^t in regu- 
 Kir courses for a few years longer, his own ambition and 
 love of the good opinion of others might have restrained 
 hini altogether from excess. As it was, before his judg- 
 ment was matureil or he had any real knowledge of the 
 fatiU elTect of the habits he was forming, he was firmly 
 fixed in the chains of a degrading habit from which death 
 alone could free him. His struggles with this fatal fasci- 
 nation, and his sufTerings, were cruel in the extreme, and 
 inllicted pangs bitterer than death on all who loved him. 
 He was rather weak of will, and had been allowed to grow 
 up self-indulgent, through the over-fondness of his family, 
 who were almost ascetic in their own habits, but could 
 deny him nothing. He had great power of attracting 
 people and of attaching them to him, — a power almost 
 wanting in other members of the family, and which might 
 have been of great advantage to him through life, had he 
 started on the right course. As it was, it only helped to 
 drag him down. He had enough of Irish blood in him 
 to make his manners frank and genial, with a kind of nat- 
 ural gallantry about them. He was generally esteemed 
 handsome. His forehead was massive, his eyes good, 
 his mouth pleasant though somewhat coarse, his hair and 
 complexion sandy. Mrs. Gaskell, in her life of Charlotte 
 Bront(5, thus tells of the second great grief he caused his 
 family : — 
 
 " Branwell, I have mentioned, had obtained a situation as 
 a private tutor. Full of available talent, a brilliant talker, a 
 good writer, apt at drawing, ready of appreciation, and with 
 a not unhandsome person, he took the fancy of a married 
 woman twenty years older than himself. It is no excuse 
 for him to say that she began the first advances, and ' made 
 love ' to him. She was so bold and hardened that she did 
 it in the very presence of her children, fast approaching ma- 
 turity; and they would threaten her that if she did not grant 
 them such and such indulgences, they would tell their bed- 
 ridden father how she went on with Mr. Bronte. He was 
 so beguiled by this mature and wicked woman that he went 
 home for his holiday reluctantly, stayed there as short a time
 
 CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 
 
 293 
 
 as possible, perplexing and distressing them all by his ex- 
 traordinary conduct, — at one time in the highest spirits, at 
 another in deepest depression, — accusing himself of blackest 
 guilt and treachery, without specifying what they were ; and 
 altogether evincing an irritability of disposition bordering 
 on insanity. Charlotte and her sister suiTered acutely from 
 his mysterious behavior. They began to lose all hope in his 
 future career. He was no longer the family pride ; an indis- 
 tinct dread was creeping over their minds that he might 
 turn out the family disgrace. 
 
 " After a time the husband of the woman with whom he had 
 intrigued, died. Branwell had been looking forward to this 
 with guilty hope. After her husband's death his paramour 
 would be free ; strange as it seems, the young man still loved 
 her passionately, and now imagined the time had come when 
 they might look forward to being married, and might live to- 
 gether without reproach or blame. She had offered to elope 
 with him ; she had written to him perpetually ; she had sent 
 him money, twenty pounds at a time, — he remembered the 
 criminal advances she had made ; she had braved shame 
 and her children's menaced disclosures for his sake ; he 
 thought she must love him ; he little knew how bad a de- 
 praved woman can be. Her husband had made a will, in 
 which he left her his property solely on the condition that 
 she should never see Branwell Brontd again. At the very 
 time the will was read, she did not know but that he might 
 be on his way to her, having heard of her husband's death. 
 She desjmtched a servant in hot haste to Haworth. He 
 stopped at the Black Bull, and a messenger was sent to the 
 parsonage for Branwell. He came down to the little inn, 
 and was shut up with the man some time. Then the groom 
 went away, and Branwell was left in the room alone. More 
 than an hour elapsed before sign or sound was heard; then 
 those outside heard a noise like the bleating of a calf, and 
 on opening the door he was found in a kind of fit, succeed- 
 ing to tlie stupor of grief which he had fallen into on hear- 
 ing that he was forbidden by his paramour ever to see her 
 again, as, if he did, she would forfeit her fortune. . . . Let 
 her live and flourish. He died, his pockets filled with her let- 
 ters, which he carried about his person perpetually in order 
 that he might read them as often as he pleased. He lies 
 dead, and his doom is only known to God's mercy."
 
 2(j4 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 iJut he dill not die at once. He lived as an abiding 
 care and sorrow and ilisgrace to his lamily for three years. 
 He began taking opium, and drank more than ever. 
 " l'\)r .some time before his death he had attacks of de- 
 lirium tremens, of the most frightful character ; he slept 
 in his Other's room, and he would sometimes declare that 
 cither lie or his father would be dead before morning." 
 The trembling sisters, sick with fright, watched the night 
 through before the door, in such agony as only loving hearts 
 can feel at the ruin of a loved one. The scenes at the old 
 manse at this time would serve to answer the question 
 so often asked, Where did three lonely women like the 
 Bronte sisters ever form their conceptions of such char- 
 acters as they depicted? How their pure imaginations 
 could conceive of such beings as Heathcote and the 
 Tenant of Wildfell Hall may perhaps be guessed by 
 those who learn what sort of a man Branwell Bront^ had 
 grown to be. But the long agony was over at last, and 
 Branwell found his rest ; and the sisters, although they 
 could not but feel the reUef of his death, mourned for him 
 with passionate sorrow. 
 
 Let us turn to pleasanter glimpses of the life at Haworth, 
 some of them preceding the events of which we have 
 been writing. Charlotte had spent a year or two in Brus- 
 sels, teaching in a school there, and gaining some of those 
 experiences which she afterwards embodied in her novels. 
 Then she had returned home, and the sisters had talked 
 of establishing a school. None of the famous books had 
 yet been written. To show some of Charlotte's ideas at 
 this time, one or two extracts from her letters may be 
 of interest. She writes in 1 840 : — 
 
 " Do not be over-persuaded to marry a man you can never 
 respect, — I do not say love ; because I think if you can re- 
 spect a person before marriage, moderate love at least will 
 come after ; and as to intense passion, I am convinced that 
 that is no desirable feeling. In the first place it seldom or 
 never meets with a requital ; and in the second place, if it 
 did, the feeling would be only temporary ; it would last the
 
 CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 
 
 295 
 
 honeymoon, and then perhaps give place to disgust. Cer- 
 tainly this would be the case on the man's part ; and on the 
 woman's — God help her if she be left to love passionately 
 and alone. 
 
 " I am tolerably well convinced that I shall never marry 
 at all. Reason tells me so, and I am not so utterly the slave 
 of feeling but that I can occasionally hear her voice." 
 
 This does not sound much like the woman who could 
 write of Jane Eyre and Rochester ; but there were depths 
 of passion in the little woman, probably unsuspected by 
 herself. 
 
 Again she writes, in 1845 : — 
 
 " I know that if women wish to escape the stigma of hus- 
 band-hunting, they must act and look like marble or clay, — 
 cold, expressionless, bloodless ; for every appearance of feel- 
 ing, of joy, sorrow, friendliness, antipathy, admiration, dis- 
 gust, are alike construed by the world into an attempt to 
 hook a husband. Never mind ! well-meaning women have 
 their own consciences to comfort them, after all. Do not 
 therefore be too much afraid of showing yourself as you are, 
 affectionate and good-hearted ; do not harshly repress senti- 
 ments and feelings excellent in themselves, because you 
 fear that some puppy may fancy you are letting them come 
 out to fascinate him; do not condemn yourself to live only 
 by halves, because if you showed too much animation some 
 pragmatical thing in breeches might take it into his pate to 
 imagine that you desired to dedicate your life to inanity. 
 Write again soon, for I feel rather fierce and want stroking 
 down." 
 
 That the sisters were not without their own perturba- 
 tions and heart troubles, even in the deep seclusion of 
 their lonely home, may be judged by some extracts from 
 a poem written by Emily, who never confided anything 
 to any friend but her own sombre muse. 
 
 " Cold is the earth, and the deep snow piled above thee, 
 Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave. 
 Have I forgot, my only love, to love thee. 
 Severed at last by Time's all-severing wave?
 
 J/OMK LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 " Now, when removcil, do my thoughts no longer hover 
 DviT :hc mount.iins on tlut niirtliern shore, 
 Kc-slini; ihoir wings wliere lieatli and fern leaves cover 
 Thy noble heart forever, evermore ? 
 
 " Cold in the grave, and fifteen wild Decembers 
 
 From these brown hills have melted into spring ; 
 Faithful indeed the love is that remembers 
 After such years of change and suffering." 
 
 Tluit Charlotte hatl some admirers among her father's 
 curates is well known, and that Mr. Nichols paid court 
 to her eight years previous to the time of her marriage 
 with him. That she was capable of intense and passion- 
 ate devotion there can be no doubt, but we have no 
 hint as to whom she had lavished it upon, in any of her 
 letters. 
 
 She was always extremely sensitive about her personal 
 appearance, considering herself irredeemably ugly, and 
 always thinking that people must be disgusted with her 
 looks. She purposely made her heroine in " Jane Eyre " 
 unattractive, as she felt it an injustice that a woman must 
 always be judged by her looks, and she felt that novelists 
 were somewhat to blame in the matter, as they always 
 made their heroines beautiful in person, however unat- 
 tractive in mind or character. She was extremely short, — 
 " stunted," as she herself calls it, — never having grown any 
 after the days of her starvation at Cowan's Bridge. She 
 had soft brown hair, and good and expressive eyes, though 
 she was so near-sighted ; a large mouth ; and a broad, 
 square, somewhat overhanging forehead. Her voice was 
 very sweet, and she was not at all the unattractive person 
 she fancied herself, though by no means beautiful. She 
 was exquisitely neat in her dress, and dainty about her 
 gloves and shoes. She had a keen and delicate touch, 
 and could do any difficult work with her hands, which 
 were the smallest perhaps ever seen upon a grown woman. 
 Her needlework was marvellous, and she was an exquisite 
 housekeeper, attending to the minutest details herself. 
 Her circle of friends and acquaintances was a very narrow
 
 CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 297 
 
 one all her life, though after the publication of "Jane 
 Eyre " it of course widened and improved. 
 
 Harriet Martineau and Mrs. Gaskell proved themselves 
 warm and enthusiastic friends to Charlotte ; and Thack- 
 eray, who met her in London, where she visited her pub- 
 lishers, was much pleased with her, and wrote very kindly 
 of her after her death. Sir James and Lady Kay Shutde- 
 worth became much interested in her, and she enjoyed her 
 visits to them in Westmoreland very highly. The Lake 
 country was a revelation to her, though she was somewhat 
 oppressed by seeing it all in company. She writes : — 
 
 " If I could only have dropped unseen out of the carriage, 
 and gone away by myself in amongst those grand hills and 
 sweet dales, I should have drunk in the full power of this 
 glorious scenery. In company, this can hardly be." 
 
 Again she writes to another : — 
 
 " Decidedly I find it does not agree with me to prosecute 
 the search for the picturesque in a carriage. A wagon, a 
 spring-cart, even a post-chaise might do ; but a carriage up- 
 sets everything. I longed to slip out unseen, and to run 
 away by myself in amongst the hills and dales. Erratic and 
 vagrant instincts tormented me ; and these I was obliged to 
 control, or rather suppress, for fear of growing in any de- 
 gree enthusiastic, and thus drawing attention to ' the lioness,' 
 the authoress." 
 
 The fact of her having sprung into sudden fame imme- 
 diately after she was known as the author of "Jane Eyre " 
 — the most wonderful book of her day — was a matter of 
 great surprise to her, and would doubtless have afforded her 
 very keen pleasure, only that she was so overburdened with 
 home cares and sorrows at that time. Even the sweet- 
 ness of her literary triumph was embittered by the sadness 
 of the home life. " Jane Eyre " had been written during 
 their worst trials with Bran well, and " Shirley "just after his 
 death and during the illness of Emily and Anne, both works 
 being the product of the very darkest hours of her dark- 
 ened life. If these works are morbid and unhealthy, as
 
 29S 
 
 J/OMi: LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 has been assorted, is it any wonder, when we consider 
 wliat must have been the state of her mind while writing 
 them ? She was most devotedly attached to her sisters ; 
 indeed, her very life may be said to have been bound up 
 in theirs ; and it was peculiarly hard for her to lose them 
 just when success appeared to be at hand, and they might 
 have looked forward to something of happiness during the 
 remainder of their lives. Charlotte gives her own affect- 
 ing account of Emily's death, which throws some light 
 upon the character of that remarkable woman, as remark- 
 able perhaps as Chadotte herself, although she did not 
 live to do any work as lasting as that of her elder sister. 
 She says : — 
 
 " But a great cliange approached. Affliction came in that 
 sliape which to anticipate is dread ; to look back on, grief. 
 In the very heat and burden of the day the laborers failed 
 over their work. My sister Emily first declined. . . . Never 
 in all her life had she lingered over any task that lay before 
 her, and she did not linger now. She sank rapidly. She 
 made haste to leave us. Day by day, when I saw with what 
 a front she met suffering, I looked on her with an anguish 
 of wonder and love. I have seen nothing like it ; but indeed 
 I have never seen her parallel in anything. Stronger than a 
 man, simpler than a child, her nature stood alone. The aw- 
 ful point was that, while full of ruth for others, on herself she 
 had no pity, the spirit was inexorable to the flesh ; from the 
 trembling hands, the unnerved limbs, the fading eyes, the 
 same service was exacted as they had rendered in health. 
 To stand by and witness this, and not dare to remonstrate, 
 was a pain no words can render." 
 
 Emily never left the house after Branwell's death. 
 She made no complaint, but her friends could see that 
 she was deadly ill. Yet she would have no doctor, and 
 insisted upon going on with her work as usual. This she 
 did until she was actually dying. Branwell had insisted 
 upon standing up to die ; and poor Emily had scarcely 
 consented to lie down, when she was gone. Their will- 
 power in their last agonies was something almost fearful
 
 CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 
 
 299 
 
 to contemplate. As the old bereaved father and Char- 
 lotte and Anne followed the coffin to the grave, Emily's 
 old, fierce, faithful bull-dog, to which she had been so 
 much attached, came out and walked beside them. 
 Wlien they returned he lay down by Emily's door, and 
 howled pitifully for many days. Charlotte recurred to 
 this death-scene continually. In one letter she says : — 
 
 " I cannot forget Emily's death-day ; it becomes a more 
 fixed, a darker, a more frequently recurring idea in my mind 
 than ever. It was very terrible. She was torn, conscious, 
 panting, reluctant, though resolute, out of a happy life. But 
 it will not do to dwell on these things." 
 
 Anne Bronte did not long survive her sister, and 
 Charlotte was now alone except that she had the care 
 of her aged father, who was feeble and nearly blind. 
 The awful loneliness of the old house almost crazed her, 
 but she went faithfully to work, and bore up with un- 
 heard of fortitude. Two or three solitary years went by, 
 when Mr. Nichols, her father's curate, renewed his suit 
 to Miss Bronte. Mrs. Gaskell tells us that he was one 
 who had known her intimately for years, and was not 
 a man to be attracted by any kind of literary fame. He 
 was a grave, reserved, conscientious man, with strong 
 religious feeling. In silence he had watched and loved 
 her long. 
 
 She thus describes the meeting ; — 
 
 " Instead I heard a tap, and like lightning it flashed upon 
 me what was coming. He entered. He stood before me. 
 What his words were you can imagine ; his manner you can 
 hardly realize, nor can I forget it. He made me for the first 
 time feel what it costs a man to declare affection when he 
 doubts response. . . . The spectacle of one ordinarily so 
 statue-like, thus trembling, stirred, and overcome, gave me a 
 strange shock. I could only entreat him to leave me then, 
 and promise a reply on the morrow." 
 
 Mr. Bronte, when consulted, was so displeased with 
 the whole proceeding, and was so weak at this time,
 
 ,oo HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 that Charlotte, fearing ill consequences to him, gave Mr. 
 Nicliols a refirsal, whereupon he resigned his curacy and 
 left the country. l]ut a year or two after, seeing that Char- 
 lotte was unhappy, and fearing for her health, her flither 
 withdrew his opposition ; Mr. Nichols was recalled, and 
 llie marriage finally took place. Mrs. Gaskell says : — 
 
 "She expressed herself as thankful to One who had 
 guided Iier through much difficulty and much distress and 
 perplexity of mind ; and yet she felt what most thoughtful 
 women do, who marry when the first flush of careless youth 
 is over, that there was a strange, half-sad feeling in making 
 announcements of an engagement, for cares and fears come 
 mingled inextricably with hopes. One great relief to her 
 mind at this time was derived from the conviction that her 
 fatlier took a positive pleasure in all the thoughts about and 
 preparations for her wedding. He was anxious that things 
 should be expedited, and much interested in preparations 
 for Mr. Nichols's reception into the household." 
 
 Again : — 
 
 "The news of the wedding had slipt abroad before the 
 little party came out of the church, and many old and hum- 
 ble friends were there, seeing her look ' like a snowdrop ' as 
 they say. Her dress was white embroidered muslin, with a 
 lace mantle, and white bonnet trimmed with green leaves, 
 which perhaps might suggest the resemblance to the pale 
 wintry flower." 
 
 Her married love and happiness were of very brief 
 duration ; a few short months, and she lay upon the bed 
 from which she would rise no more. Waking for an in- 
 stant, we are told, " from this stupor of intelligence, she 
 saw her husband's woe-worn face, and caught the sound 
 of some murmured words of prayer that God would spare 
 her. * Oh,' she whispered forth, ' I am not going to die, 
 am I ? He will not separate us, we have been so happy.' " 
 But love or prayer could not stay the hand of death, 
 which had marked all of this family for an early doom, 
 and she passed sweetly away in the arms of her devoted
 
 CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 
 
 301 
 
 husband. Thank God for the Httle ghmpse of womanly 
 happiness which He gave her at the last, and for the faith- 
 ful mourner who held her memory so sacred for many 
 years in the old gray manse. Mr. Nichols watched faith- 
 fully over the old father in his last days, and only left 
 Haworth when duty held him there no longer, although 
 the place had grown inexpressibly sad to him after his 
 affliction. To the graves of the gifted women who sleep 
 there, pilgrimages are made to this day. The York- 
 shire region has changed much ; and many now seek its 
 wild heathery moors, not only for its own sake, but for 
 the sake of those who so loved and suffered in the little 
 gray parsonage among its bleak hills. Long will the 
 genius which created "Jane Eyre" and " Villette " and 
 " Shirley " delight the world ; but the remembrance of the 
 writer's womanly virtues will linger when all these shall 
 have passed away.
 
 MARGARET FULLER. 
 
 THI'RIC was little in the life of the people of New 
 England in the early part of the present century 
 upon which to feed the imagination of a precocious and 
 romantic child like Margaret Fuller ; and her childhood, 
 though outwardly fortunate and well placed, was one of 
 labor and repression, and far from happy, if we may judge 
 by her own account of it. The theology of the people 
 was gloomy. They made everything connected with re- 
 ligion unlovely, and this austerity was particularly distaste- 
 ful to one of Margaret's imaginative temperament and 
 heroic disposition. Her ungratified imagination brought 
 her early into conflict with the circumstances and sur- 
 roundings of her life. 
 
 All the poetry of her nature cried out against the lives 
 of toil and care by which she was surrounded, — lives at 
 that time lighted up by little of art or literature or music, 
 but held to a stern standard of duty and self-abnegation. 
 Margaret's nature craved beauty and poetry and art 
 and lavish affection, and it was nursed on a somewhat 
 grim diet of hard work and little expressed affection, 
 although her parents were both loving and intelligent. 
 Her father himself educated her, being a Harvard gradu- 
 ate, and a lawyer and politician of that day. He taught 
 her Latin at the age of six years ; and she says that the 
 lessons set for her were as many and various as the hours 
 would allow, and on subjects far beyond her age. These
 
 MARGARET FULLER. 
 
 303 
 
 lessons were recited to her father after office hours, which 
 kept the poor tired child up till late in the evening, and 
 as a result the youthful prodigy was terrified at night by 
 dreams and illusions, and given to sleep-walking. The 
 result of such over-tension of a childish mind was a 
 morbid and unhealthy state of both body and mind ; 
 and though she loved study, these great demands 
 made upon her powers almost overcame her with their 
 weight. She had a natural passion for reading, and 
 when a mere child singled out Shakespeare, Cervantes, 
 and Moliere, from all the books in the library, for her 
 especial favorites. 
 
 She was but eight years old when she took a passion- 
 ate interest in " Romeo and Juliet," and was disgraced 
 in the family for perusing it on Sunday ; and the im- 
 aginative child was always seeking for the heroic 
 figures of her Shakespearian world in the every-day life 
 about her, and was always disappointed. Altogether, 
 we must call it an unhappy and unfortunate childhood, 
 and cannot but think much finer intellectual as well as 
 moral results would have followed a different treatment 
 in her home. 
 
 In her early girlhood she mixed much in the college 
 society at Cambridge, and would have been taken for a 
 much older person than she really was. She was not 
 handsome, but her animated countenance made its own 
 impression, and awakened interest in almost all who saw 
 her. She made some of her life-long friends at this time. 
 Dr. Hedge, James Freeman Clarke, and William Henry 
 Channing were among them. With Emerson she made 
 acquaintance a little later, through IMiss Martineau, then 
 visiting in this country. She was not at this time an agree- 
 able person. She was much derided for her self-esteem 
 by people who knew her slightly, and was also accused of 
 hauteur and arrogance. Even Lowell was thus impressed 
 by her, and put her in the pillory in the " Fable for 
 Critics." He proposes to establish new punishments for 
 criminals, thus : —
 
 304 JIOME LIFE OF GREA T A UTIIORS. 
 
 " I propose to sliiit up every doer of wrong 
 Willi these desperate books, for such terms, short or long, 
 As by statute ill such cases made and provided 
 Shall be by our wise legislators decided : 
 Thus : — Let murderers be shut, to grow wiser and cooler, 
 At hard labor for life on the works of Miss ." 
 
 And again : — 
 
 " For a woman must surely see well, if she try, 
 The whole of whose being 's a capital I." 
 
 And Still further : — 
 
 " Phoebus ! you know 
 That the infinite Soul has its infinite woe, 
 As I ought to know, having lived cheek by jowl, 
 Since the day I was born, with the Infinite Soul." 
 
 But people who knew her well soon lost this unfavor- 
 able impression, and she was almost idoHzed by her real 
 friends. Mr. Emerson thus records his first impressions 
 of her : " She had a face and frame that would indicate 
 fulness and tenacity of life. . . . She was then, as always, 
 carefully and becomingly dressed, and of lady-like self- 
 possession. For the rest, her appearance had nothing pre- 
 possessing. Her extreme plainness, a trick of incessantly 
 opening and shutting her eyelids, the nasal tone of her 
 voice, — all repelled ; and I said to myself, ' We shall 
 never get far.' " He adds : " I believe I fancied her too 
 much interested in personal history ; and her talk was a 
 comedy in which dramatic justice was done to everybody's 
 foibles. I remember she made me laugh more than I 
 liked." But, " soon her wit had effaced the impression 
 of her personal unattractiveness, and the eyes, which were 
 so plain at first, swam with fun and drolleries and the 
 very tides of joy and superabundant life," and he saw 
 " that her satire was only the pastime and necessity of her 
 talent ; " and as he came to know her better, " her plane 
 of character rose constantly in my estimation, disclosing 
 many moods and powers in successive platforms or ter- 
 races, each above each." All superior women were
 
 MARGARET FULLER. 
 
 305 
 
 drawn to her at once, and even those noted only for 
 beauty or social talent vied in their devotion to her. A 
 few years later, it was for this circle that her famous con- 
 versation classes were held in Boston ; and so great was 
 their popularity that she continued them for six years. 
 These conversations were entirely unique in character, 
 and attracted great attention in their day. The novelty 
 of such a departure in the Boston of forty years ago may 
 be imagined, and the criticism drawn upon a woman 
 who should inaugurate such an innovation was in some 
 cases very severe. In regard to these same conversations, 
 as in other things, the impression she made was twofold. 
 Mrs. Howe says : " Without the fold of her admirers stood 
 carping, unkind critics ; within were enthusiastic and grate- 
 ful friends." But as to her great eloquence and ability, 
 there was but one opinion. Even critics admitted that no 
 woman had spoken like this before. And she addressed 
 her fine audience of Boston's most cultivated women with 
 entire ease and freedom, and gave many of them an 
 impulse toward an intellectual career which nothing else 
 at that time could have done. 
 
 Here was the real beginning of what may be called the 
 woman question in this country. Before Margaret Fuller's 
 day the agitation regarding woman's career and work in 
 the world was practically unknown here ; and all the ideas 
 which have now become incorporated into the platform 
 of the woman's party found in her their first and perhaps 
 their best exponent. Very little that is new has since 
 been urged upon this question. Her powerful mind 
 seemed to have grasped the whole subject, and to have 
 given it the best expression of which it was capable. She 
 embodied her ideas after a time in her book, " Woman in 
 the Nineteenth Century ; " and although the literature of 
 the subject is now voluminous, that book is still read and 
 referred to. 
 
 Finding it necessary to support herself and to care for 
 her motlier and brothers after her father's death, she at 
 first taught school, at one time in Mr. Alcott's famous
 
 ,o6 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 school in lUiston and afterwards in Providence, and then 
 took a position upon the " New York Tribune," kindly 
 oflercil her by Mr. Greeley. She supported her brothers 
 in collcj,'c. anil aiiled her mother for some years, putting 
 bv iier own ambitions with a cheerful outward appearance, 
 though oftentimes with a heavy heart. She had many 
 and very ambitious literary projects, few of which were 
 ever destined to be carried out. For a woman who occu- 
 pied so much tlie minds of the men of her day and of a 
 succeeding generation, she really left little upon which to 
 base their admiration. What she was, rather than what 
 she did, seems to have made its impression upon her time. 
 That her vocation was to speak rather than to write, 
 there seems little doubt. She had the rare but much- 
 prized gift of eloquence, and in these latter days would 
 no doubt have made a very large success as a speaker. 
 Some who listened to her think that she might have been 
 the peer of Wendell Phillips in oratory, had she bent 
 her powers entirely in that direction. As it is, her genius 
 has become almost wholly a tradition. There are many 
 to-day who cannot guess the secret of the continued in- 
 terest the world feels in her. That secret lies largely in 
 the impression she made upon many of the famous men 
 of her time. They have transmitted her name to posterity 
 along with their own. Horace Greeley at first determined 
 not to like her personally, and avoided her even after she 
 became a member of his family ; but he ended by grow- 
 ing as enthusiastic over her as the rest. Even crabbed 
 Carlyle, though much prejudiced against women of her 
 sort, bore testimony to his liking for her. He writes to 
 Emerson : — 
 
 " Margaret is an excellent soul ; in real regard with both 
 of us here. Since she went I have been reading some of 
 her papers in a new book we have got ; greatly superior to 
 all I knew before, — in fact, undeniable utterances of a truly 
 heroic mind, altogether unique, so far as I know, among the 
 writing women of this generation ; rare enough too, God 
 knows, among the writing men. She is very narrow, but
 
 MARGARET FULLER. 
 
 307 
 
 she is truly high. Honor to Margaret, and more and more 
 good speed to her ! " 
 
 It was not until 1846 that Margaret's long desire to 
 visit Europe was gratified. It had been the dream of her 
 life, and one cannot but be sad at thought of its tragic 
 ending. She spent some time in London, seeing all the 
 celebrities of the day there, and then crossed over to Paris. 
 Like London, Paris had then some brilliant men and 
 women, whose peers she has not seen since. Rachel was 
 the queen of the tragic stage, George Sand queen of the 
 literary domain. De Balzac, Eugene Sue, Dumas pere, 
 and Beranger were all alive, and the centre of the Parisian 
 literary coterie. Liszt and Chopin held the musical world 
 in the bondage of sweet sounds. Into this little inner 
 circle Margaret entered, and did not fail to make her 
 mark there. She was a second Madame de Stael in con- 
 versation, and in her little circle was recognized as such. 
 
 From Paris she went to Italy, where the real romance 
 of her life was enacted and its tragic de?ioiiement pre- 
 pared for. Italy had been her promised land from early 
 youth. She had longed for its sunny clime, amid the 
 storms and winds of bleak New England ; for its historic 
 associations, amid the poverty of a land without a past ; 
 for its architectural splendors, amid the bareness and 
 baldness of the New World cities ; for the grandeur of its 
 ancient art, amid the poverty of the America of that day ; 
 for its impassioned music, in a land almost devoid of mu- 
 sical culture ; and she had longed for the beautiful, sen- 
 suous, idle life of its people, through all the strain of a 
 strenuous and overworked existence. Her vision had 
 been fair, and at first she was much disappointed. In 
 artistic or architectural magnificence St. Peter's and the 
 Transfiguration could not disappoint a soul like Margaret's, 
 but she was deeply disappointed in the life of the Italian 
 people and in the general charm of the country. 
 
 She fell upon exciting times in Italy. There had grown 
 up the fiercest hatred of the Austrian rule, which had
 
 308 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 recently been aggravated by foolish acts of repression and 
 violence. The whole country was in a ferment. Mazzini, 
 whom Margaret had met in London, was here awaiting his 
 ojiportunity. Mrs. Howe says : " Up and down \vent the 
 hopes and the hearts of the Liberal party. Hither and 
 thither r.in the tides of popular affection, suspicion, and 
 resentment. The Pope was the idol of the moment. 
 The Oram! Duke of Tuscany yielded to pressure when- 
 ever it became severe. The minor princes, who had from 
 their birth been incapable of an idea, tried as well as they 
 could to put on some semblance of concession without 
 really yielding anything." Margaret was soon in close 
 relations witli leading Liberals, and shared all their hopes 
 and fears and some of their dangers. 
 
 At this time she first met the young Italian nobleman, 
 Ossoli, who became her husband. She became separated 
 from her party one day at some service at St. Peter's, 
 and, wandering around trying to find them, became tired 
 and somewhat agitated. A young man of gentlemanly 
 address offered his services to her as guide ; and after 
 looking in vain for her friends, she was obliged to accept 
 his escort home, night having come on and no carriages 
 being in attendance. They became mutually attracted, 
 and the acquaintance continued, with that disregard of 
 conventionality for which American women are noted 
 when abroad. Although much younger than Margaret, 
 he seemed to be greatly interested in her ; and although 
 he had none of her intellectual tastes, she was equally 
 interested in him. 
 
 A very romantic attachment sprang up between them, 
 which ended after a few months in a secret marriage. 
 Her reason for the secrecy lay in the troubled times, and 
 the fear of Ossoli's being deprived of his paternal inher- 
 itance on account of marrying a Protestant. They had 
 great hopes of the coming revolution, and trusted to a 
 more liberal government to give him his rights despite the 
 fact of his marrying outside the Church of Rome. He 
 was as poor as Margaret herself; and this was another
 
 MARGARET FULLER. 209 
 
 reason for living apart for a time. He was a captain in 
 the Civic Guard, and at this time much occupied with 
 military duties. It was at this time that the Roman Re- 
 public was proclaimed, with great pomp of rejoicing ; 
 and Margaret chronicles the opening of the Constitutional 
 Assembly, with great display of processions and banners. 
 In one procession walked a Napoleonic prince side by 
 side with Garibaldi, both having been chosen as deputies. 
 All this raised the hopes of the Liberals throughout Europe 
 to the highest point, and Margaret was almost transported 
 with happy excitement, — probably not understanding as 
 well as the natives of Italy how ill prepared that country 
 was for liberty, and how soon the despotic power would 
 again close around the people. In point of fact, the Re- 
 public lasted but a few days, and Margaret's brief time for 
 rejoicing was over, and her own personal troubles became 
 very urgent and oppressive. 
 
 A son had been born to her some months before, and 
 had of necessity been left in the hands of a nurse in the 
 country, as the marriage had not yet been made known. 
 During all the pomp of processions and the ringing of 
 bells and firing of cannon, she had heard the voice of her 
 infant crying at Rieti. She had not seen him for three 
 months, on account of the troublous times. She lay awake 
 whole nights contriving how she might end the separation 
 which seemed kiUing her ; but circumstances were too 
 strong for her, and the object so dear to her heart could 
 not be compassed. The French were already in Italy. 
 The siege of Rome soon ended in the downfall of the 
 Republic, and the government was placed in the hands of 
 a triumvirate. The city once invested, military hospitals 
 became a necessity. Margaret was named superintendent 
 of the hospital of the Fate Bene Fratelli. " Night and day," 
 writes Mrs. Story, " Margaret was occupied, and with the 
 Princess Belgiojoso so ordered and disposed the hospitals 
 that their conduct was admirable. Of money they had very 
 little, and they were obliged to give their time and thoughts 
 in its place. I have walked through the wards with Mar-
 
 .,o HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 garot, and have seen how comforting was her presence to 
 tlie poor sulTering men. For each one's peculiar taste 
 she hail a care. To one she carried books ; to another 
 she toKl the news of the day ; and listened to another's 
 oft-repeated tale of wrongs, as the best sympathy she could 
 give. They raised themselves on their elbows to get a 
 last glimpse of her as she went away." Ossoh was sta- 
 tioned with his command on the walls of the Vatican, and 
 in great danger. He refused to leave his post even for 
 food and rest. The provisions which Margaret sent him 
 he shared with his comrades. Sometimes she could visit 
 him at his post and talk about the little Angelo, now always 
 in her thoughts. As the wounded men were brought into 
 the hospital she was always expecting to see her husband ; 
 and as the nurse had threatened to abandon the babe, and 
 it was utterly impossible for Margaret to get outside the 
 lines now investing the city, the two horrors were almost 
 more than she could bear. It was only in trying to help 
 the helpless that she found any consolation in this dreadful 
 time. The night of the 20th of June, the French effected 
 an entrance into the city ; and although the defence was 
 gallantly continued until the 30th, there was really no hope 
 for the patriots. 
 
 At that time Garibaldi informed the Assembly that fur- 
 ther resistance would be useless. The French occupation 
 then began, and the end of all liberties. The gates once 
 open, Margaret, with all her sorrow for Rome, was happy 
 in the thought of reaching her child. She did reach him 
 just in time to save his life. He had been forsaken by his 
 nurse, and his mother found him "worn to a skeleton, 
 too weak to smile or lift his wasted litde hand." All that 
 Margaret had endured seemed slight compared to this. 
 She could but compare the women of the Papal States to 
 wolves. The child, however, recovered with good nursing, 
 and the family, now united, enjoyed a little season of re- 
 pose and happiness. The marriage was announced, and 
 Margaret's many friends in Rome extended their help and 
 sympathy. Life in Italy had now become so painful to
 
 MA A' GARE T FULLER. 3 1 1 
 
 them that she resolved to return to the New World. Her 
 husband was willing to accompany her. They accordingly 
 engaged passage upon a merchant-vessel from Leghorn, 
 the same vessel being engaged to bring over the heavy 
 marble of Powers's " Greek Slave." She seemed to have 
 great forebodings about this voyage, and was almost in- 
 duced to give up their passage on the vessel at the last 
 moment ; but she overcame her fears, and they embarked. 
 After a few days the captain died of small-pox. The dis- 
 ease spread ; and Margaret, as courageously as ever, went 
 about the ship nursing the sick. Soon the little Angelo 
 was taken with the dread disease ; they nursed him safely 
 through it, however, and after many dangers and trials 
 the vessel arrived off the Jersey coast in thick weather. 
 At night, the mate promised them a landing in New York 
 in the morning ; but the vessel ran upon the sand-bars 
 near Long Island, and on Fire Island beach she struck at 
 four o'clock on the morning of July 19. Margaret, with 
 husband and child, was lost, after refusing to be separated 
 in the efforts at rescue. They went down together, and 
 the career of a great and noble woman ended thus tragi- 
 cally on that desolate coast.
 
 JJ^ 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 AMONG the names that were occasionally mentioned 
 in the brief and fleeting annals of the stage from 
 the year 179S to the year 181 1, were those of Mr. David 
 Poe and the beautiful Miss Arnold — afterward Mrs. Poe, 
 — the father and mother of that most brilliant but erratic 
 genius Edgar A. Poe. 
 
 David Poe was the son of old General Poe, who won 
 his honors in Revolutionary times and was a man of 
 sterling character and many heroic qualities. Miss Arnold 
 belonged to the stage by birth, and from earliest youth had 
 been attached to the theatre in some capacity. It is a 
 most miserable fate for a child, but she knew of nothing 
 better. She came before the public with a naivete that 
 was touching, and played her little airs on the piano and 
 sung her little songs and uttered her childish sentences 
 always to the very best of her ability, putting up with the 
 late hours and the hasty and often scanty meals and the 
 general discomfort of her lot with the utmost amiability 
 and good-nature. No sheltered home, no days of care- 
 less pleasure, no constant and watchful care over health 
 or manners or morals, fell to her lot ; but the frowns and 
 sometimes the curses of the older actors, the ill-nature of 
 the manager, and the wearied fretfulness of her mother, 
 who was growing old in the drudgery of her profession, — 
 for she never rose above that at any time. Nor does it 
 appear that Miss Arnold had any particular talent, though
 
 EDGAR ALLAN FOE. 
 
 Z^Z 
 
 she won a moderate share of favor upon the stage ; but 
 she was ahvays much esteemed by those who knew her in 
 private. She sung and sometimes danced, as did her 
 husband, who was an actor of inferior merit. There is 
 something very pathetic in the story of the little second- 
 rate actress who was so conscientious and so persevering, 
 and one cannot but hope that she received her due share 
 of the applause which lends such a fascination to the life 
 of the actor that he rarely abandons it for any other 
 career. 
 
 There is a hint of the hardship of her life in the fact 
 that there are but three short breaks in her dramatic ca- 
 reer through all those years, — the times when the three 
 children were born to them. Edgar was born Jan. 19, 
 1809, and his mother appeared ^upon the stage again 
 February 10, and played to the end of the season almost 
 incessantly. The family were poor to the verge of desti- 
 tution at all times, and the little woman had need of a 
 brave heart when the children came crowding into the 
 poor unfurnished nest. One cannot doubt that there was 
 much of pain and worry in the little creature's heart before 
 the birth of Edgar ; and no doubt the paint covered the 
 traces of many tears on the faded cheeks, and the smilps 
 which wreathed her face were more artificial than the 
 usual stage smiles during all those weary months. In 
 181 1 she and her husband were playing in Richmond, 
 when her health failed her, and they were brought to 
 great straits for the means of life. The actors gave her a 
 benefit, but the receipts were small, and the following 
 card was inserted in the Richmond papers : — 
 
 "To THE Humane : On this night Mrs. Poe, lingering on 
 the bed of disease and surrounded by her children, asks your 
 assistance ; and asks it, perhaps, for the last time.'''' 
 
 Before the second benefit night the Richmond ladies 
 had come to her relief, and she was tenderly cared for dur- 
 ing the brief remainder of her life by stranger hands. She 
 had never had a home. She had passed her whole life in
 
 ,, . HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 poor, mean lodgings, about which no household charm 
 could linger. In these desolate places had been passed 
 c\ on her honeymoon ; in some garret lodgings had her 
 chiklren been born ; here all that she had known of do- 
 mestic joy or sorrow had been enacted ; here she had 
 doubtless weiit her hot tears and had her little triumphs, 
 anil here she had died. Poor little variety-actress of the 
 olden time ! there is one heart at least that is touched by 
 your lot, even at this distant day, and has dropped a tear 
 to your memory on the page where she has read your 
 history. 
 
 The three children were cared for by the kind people 
 of Richmond, and Edgar was adopted by Mrs. John Allan, 
 whose husband gave but a reluctant consent to the arrange- 
 ment. Edgar was a most beautiful and precocious child, 
 and attracted much attention in the new home. If the 
 poor mother on her dying-bed could have known of the 
 good fortune which awaited him, it would have eased some- 
 what the bitter pangs of her parting with her beautiful and 
 idolized child. He was taken to England, where he spent 
 several years of his childhood, and when he returned, en- 
 tered a classical school, where he was prepared for college. 
 He was described as " self-willed, capricious, inclined to be 
 imperious, and, though of generous impulses, not steadily 
 kind or even amiable." He was a facile scholar and fond 
 of Latin and English poetry. He was nearly always alone, 
 making few friends among his schoolmates, and was of a 
 dignified and reserved disposition and inclined to melan- 
 choly. He entered the University of Virginia at the age 
 of seventeen, and it was here that his fatal habit of drink- 
 ing was first formed. One of his schoolmates writes : — 
 
 " Poe's passion for strong drink was as marked and pecu- 
 liar as that for cards. It was not the taste of the beverage 
 that influenced him. Without a sip or smack of the mouth 
 he would seize a full glass, without water or sugar, and send 
 it home at a single gulp. Tliis frequently used him up ; but 
 if not, he rarely returned to the charge."
 
 EDGAR ALLAN FOE. 
 
 315 
 
 This, for a lad of seventeen, with an excitable tempera- 
 ment, was sufficient to sow the seeds of all his future 
 woe. The youthful brain inflamed with alcohol never 
 really recovers its normal condition, even when absti- 
 nence follows, and Poe's life-long struggle with his adver- 
 sary began at this tender age. Dr. Day, long connected 
 with the inebriate asylum at Binghamton, N. Y., once 
 had an opportunity to examine the brain of a man who, 
 after having been a drunkard, reformed and lived for some 
 years as a teetotaller. He found to his surprise that the 
 globules of the brain had not shrunk to their natural size. 
 They did not exhibit the inflammation of the drunkard's 
 brain, but they were still enlarged, and seemed ready on 
 the instant to absorb the fumes of alcohol and resume their 
 former condition. He thought he saw in this morbid con- 
 dition of the brain the physical part of the reason why a 
 man who has once been habituated to liquor falls so easily 
 under its sway again in spite of every moral reason for re- 
 fraining. Doubtless he was right, and poor Poe was only 
 one of a vast number of men of brilliant intellects and kind 
 hearts, who after a life-long struggle are defeated by the 
 enemy they have taken into their stomachs to destroy 
 their brains. 
 
 It is not our purpose to trace the poet through all the 
 devious windings of his life, but to dwell for a little while 
 upon the course of his domestic life and give some of the 
 striking points in his character. We will pass over the 
 close of his college career and the episode at West Point, 
 as well as the publication of his earliest volume of poems, 
 and look at him as we find him in the summer of 1833, 
 living in Baltimore. He had a home here with his father's 
 widowed sister, Mrs. Clemm, who witli her daughter Vir- 
 ginia lived in a very humble way in that city. The little 
 Poe could earn — for he was then at one of his lowest 
 financial periods — went into the common stock, and the 
 three struggled along together. Virginia was a child of 
 eleven, beautiful, delicate, refined ; and Mrs. Clemm was 
 then, as always thereafter, the best and kindest of friends
 
 , , 6 HOME LIFE OF GKEA T A UTIIORS. 
 
 to llic poet. She had little to offer him, save kindness 
 ami motherly love ; but she gave these most abundantly, 
 and they were of priceless value to Poe. For many 
 months he kept himself from his besetting sin, and worked 
 faithfully at whatever literary work he could get to do. 
 Hut he was poor to the point of destitution, and the men- 
 tal strain upon him was great, with his extraordinary pride 
 and sensitiveness. He had been well reared, with fine 
 anil delicate tastes, and accustomed to money ; and priva- 
 tion was very bitter to him. He was naturally an aristo- 
 crat, too, and found in the associations to which he was 
 almost compelled by poverty a heavy cross. At the end 
 of two years he felt himself forced to leave Baltimore, 
 and thought he could obtain employment in Richmond. 
 He had become greatly attached to Virginia, and she was 
 equally so to him ; and although she was but a child of 
 thirteen, Poe proposed to marry her and take her and 
 Mrs. Clemm with him to his new destination. The youth 
 of Virginia seems to have been the only obstacle in the 
 mind of Mrs. Clemm, who had conceived the deepest 
 affection for Poe and had great confidence in his abilities. 
 She was friendless and unable to take care of herself and 
 her daughter, and after some hesitation she consented to 
 the marriage. It did not take place, however, till Vir- 
 ginia was fourteen years old. 
 
 Ill-starred and ill-timed as this marriage seemed to be, 
 it was the one bright and beautiful thing about the life of 
 Poe. He remained passionately dev'oted to the youthful 
 wife as long as she lived ; and it is thought by those 
 who knew him best that, despite his numerous romantic 
 passages with ladies after her death, Virginia was the 
 only woman he ever really loved. In spite of the 
 bad habits which clung to him so persistently, he seems 
 to have been a really kind and devoted husband to the 
 end. She, on her part, worshipped him with a supreme 
 infatuation that was blind to all his faults. The ro- 
 mance of the first months of married life seemed never 
 to wear off, and through all their sorrows — and they
 
 EDGAR ALLAN FOE. 
 
 317 
 
 were many and bitter — their love burned as brightly 
 as at first. 
 
 To Mrs. Clemm, also, Poe was always a devoted son, and 
 through all his waywardness and folly and sin she clung 
 to him with the devotion of a true mother. The sturdy 
 figure of this woman shows through all the dark spots of 
 his life, casting a gleam of brightness. She was a strong, 
 masculine-looking woman, full of energy, and took upon 
 herself all the practical affairs of the little household. She 
 received the money from Poe, and expended it in her own 
 way ; and she had a faculty of getting a good deal of com- 
 fort out of a very little money. So their home was almost 
 always comfortable, even when they were poorest. And 
 she never gave way to reproaches, even when Poe was at his 
 worst. She seemed to consider his failing only in the 
 light of a misfortune, and never blamed but always pitied 
 him. She worshipped his genius almost as blindly as did 
 Virginia, and it is pleasant to think that with all their 
 misfortunes and privations, they had much real happiness 
 in their little home. Poe was very proud and very fond 
 of Virginia, and liked to take strangers to see her. She 
 had a voice of wonderful sweetness and sung exquisitely, 
 and in some of their more prosperous days she had her 
 harp and piano. One evening when she was singing she 
 ruptured a blood-vessel, and for a time her life was de- 
 spaired of. Poe describes the affliction long afterwards 
 in a letter as follows : — 
 
 " Six years ago a wife whom I loved as no man ever loved 
 before, ruptured a blood-vessel in singing. I took leave of 
 her forever, and underwent all the agonies of her death. She 
 recovered partially, and I again hoped. At the end of a 
 year the vessel again broke. I went through precisely the 
 same scene. Then again — again — and even once again at 
 varying intervals. Each time I felt all the agonies of her 
 death, and at each accession of the disorder I loved her 
 more dearly and clung to her life with more desperate perti- 
 nacity. But I am constitutionally sensitive, — nervous to an 
 unusual degree. I became insane, with long intervals of
 
 3i8 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 possible sanity. During; tlicse fits of absolute unconscious- 
 ness. 1 drank - God only knows how often or how much. 
 As a matter of course, my enemies referred the insanity to 
 tlie drink, ratlier than the drink to the insanity." 
 
 Although Poe's word is not always to be taken in re- 
 gard to his own affairs, this doubtless describes his feel- 
 ings over Virginia's condition quite truthfully ; and whether 
 the drinking was cause or effect we shall probably never 
 really know. 
 
 During one of the periods of Virginia's improved health 
 Poe took her and went to New York, leaving Mrs. Clemm 
 behind to setde up domestic affairs. In a letter which he 
 wrote to his mother-in-law, we have a glimpse of the kind- 
 lier side of the man's nature and of his real affection for 
 this devoted friend, as well as some hints of the straits of 
 poverty to which they had been accustomed, by the ful- 
 ness of his descriptions of the plenty upon which they 
 had fallen. He is speaking of his boarding-house : — 
 
 " I wish Catarina [the cat] could see it ; she would faint. 
 Last night for supper we had the nicest tea you ever drank, 
 — strong and hot, — wheat and rye bread, cheese, tea-cakes 
 (elegant — a great dish), two dishes of elegant ham and two 
 of cold veal, piled up like a mountain and large slices, three 
 dishes of the cakes, and everything in the greatest profusion. 
 No fear of starving here. The landlady seemed as if she 
 could n't press us enough, and we were at home directly. 
 For breakfast we had excellent-flavored coffee, hot and 
 strong, — not very clear and no great deal of cream, — veal- 
 cutlets, elegant ham and eggs, and nice bread and butter. 
 I never sat down to a more plentiful or a nicer breakfast. I 
 wish you could have seen the eggs and the great dishes of 
 meat. Sis is delighted, and we are both in excellent spirits. 
 She has coughed hardly any, and had no night-sweat. She 
 is now busy mending my pants, which I tore against a nail. 
 I went out last night and bought a skein of silk, a skein of 
 thread, two buttons, a pair of slippers, and a tin pan for the 
 stove. The fire kept all night. We have now got four dol- 
 lars and a half left. To-morrow I am going to try and bor- 
 row three dollars, so that I may have a fortnight to go upon.
 
 EDGAR ALLAN FOE. ^ip 
 
 I feel in excellent spirits, and haven't drank a drop — so 
 that I hope soon to get out of trouble. The very instant I 
 scrape together enough money I will send it on. You can't 
 imagine how much we both do miss you. Sissy had a hearty 
 cry last night because you and Catarina were n't here. We 
 hope to send for you very soon." 
 
 It is hard to read of" the straits to which Poe was often 
 reduced for a little money, and to know that all this time 
 he was writing those immortal tales which would now 
 make a man's fortune as soon as produced. It is true 
 that he had two or three times good salaried positions, — 
 good for that day, — but he never kept them long, and 
 his chronic state was one of poverty, if not of destitution. 
 
 Mrs. Osgood, who knew him in the later days in New 
 York, says of him : — 
 
 " I have never seen him otherwise than gentle, generous, 
 well-bred, and fastidiously refined. To a sensitive and deli- 
 cately nurtured woman there was a peculiar and irresistible 
 charm in the chivalric, graceful, and almost tender reverence 
 with which he invariably approached all women who won his 
 respect." 
 
 The home in the suburbs where he lived in the last 
 days of his wife's life is described as a story-and-a-half 
 house at the top of Fordham Hill. Within on the ground 
 floor were two small apartments, — a kitchen and sitting- 
 room, — and above, up a narrow stairway, two others, one 
 Poe's room, — a low, cramped chamber lighted by litde 
 square windows like port-holes, — the other a diminutive 
 closet of a bedroom, hardly large enough to lie down in. 
 The furnishing was of the scantiest, but everything fault- 
 lessly neat. 
 
 " Mrs. Clemm, now over sixty, in her worn black dress 
 made upon all who saw her an impression of dignity, refine- 
 ment, and deep motherly devotion to her children. Virginia, 
 at the age of twenty-five, retained her beauty, but the large 
 black eyes and raven hair contrasted sadly with the pallor of
 
 ,jo HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 her f.ice. Poe Iiimsclf, poor, proud, and ill, anticipating grief 
 and nursing the bitterness that springs from helplessness in 
 tlic sight of suffering borne by those dear to us, was restless 
 and variable, the creature of contradictory impulses." 
 
 Virginia now failed rapidly, Poe was ill, and the house- 
 hold was reduced almost to the starving-point. Winter 
 was upon them j and when at last a sympathizing friend 
 found theMii she thus describes the situation : — 
 
 "There was no clothing upon the bed, which was only 
 straw, but a snow-white counterpane and sheets. The 
 weather was cold, and the sick lady had the dreadful chills 
 that accompany the hectic fever of consumption. She lay 
 on the straw bed wrapped in her husband's great-coat, with 
 a large tortoise-shell cat in her bosom. The wonderful cat 
 seemed conscious of her great usefulness. The coat and 
 the cat were the sufferer's only means of warmth, except as 
 her husband held her hands and her mother her feet. Mrs. 
 Clemm was passionately fond of her daughter, and her dis- 
 tress on account of her illness and poverty and misery was 
 dreadful to see." 
 
 This friend at once interested some benevolent people 
 in the case, and poor Virginia's last days were made com- 
 fortable by their aid. Poe's heart seemed filled with in- 
 expressible gratitude to all who aided him in this sorest 
 crisis of his life ; and although he was much broken by his 
 loss, he rallied once more and was sober and industrious 
 for a time. Mrs. Clemm stood faithfully by him, and 
 even watched over him through some of the fearful sea- 
 sons of delirium which followed his complete giving up to 
 the habits of drinking and of taking opium. 
 
 Of the final scenes of this unhappy life it is needless to 
 uTite. They have been often described, and though the 
 accounts vary, the sum and substance are the same. Poe 
 was attacked with delirium-tremens in Baltimore, and died 
 in a hospital in that city in October, 1849. Beautiful, 
 gifted, and sensitive, proud, ambitious, and daring, en- 
 dowed with a subtle charm of manner as well as of person,
 
 EDGAR ALLAN FOE. 321 
 
 amiable and generous in his home life, loyal and devoted 
 to his family, a very pleasing picture is presented of 
 the man if we look but on this side. Could he have 
 overcome the fatal fascination of drink, we might never 
 have seen the reverse side of all this. As it is, let us 
 cover his follies with our mantle of charity and dwell only 
 upon his genius and his virtues. 
 
 ^4^***^
 
 -^\ 
 
 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 
 
 DURING a portion of Thackeray's life there seemed 
 to be in the public mind a complete misappre- 
 hension of the character of the man. Superficial readers 
 of his books, who knew nothing of him personally, were 
 fond of applying the name of cynic to him ; and he was 
 even accused by some of these of being a hater of his 
 kind, a misanthropist, a bitter satirist, a hard, ungenial 
 man. 
 
 As no adequate personal memoir of him has ever been 
 written, it being understood by his family that such a pub- 
 lication would have been distasteful to him, it has taken 
 time to correct all the false impressions that have gained 
 credence in regard to the great humorist ; but at the pres- 
 ent time his character has been practically cleared of the 
 former false charges. As one by one the friends who 
 knew him personally have spoken, it has been discovered 
 that this cynic was one of the tenderest and kindest men 
 that our time has produced ; this hater of his kind, a man 
 so soft-hearted and full of sensibility that it was really a 
 serious drawback to him in life ; this misanthropist, one 
 of the most genial and kindly companions in the world ; 
 this bitter satirist, a man who never made an enemy by 
 his speech ; this hard man, one who actually threw money 
 away, as all his friends thought, by bestowing it upon every 
 applicant whether he could afford it or not.
 
 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 
 
 Z^l 
 
 So great a change in the world's estimate of a man has 
 seldom been made after the man's death. It is to be ac- 
 counted for by the fact that while he was living his friends 
 never told what they knew of him, and that only very 
 gradually did they reveal his virtues, even after he had 
 gone, feeling always that he would have preferred them to 
 be silent ; and by the other fact that he often appeared 
 other than he was, to cover up his excessive sensibility, of 
 which he was very much ashamed. 
 
 The world will come to a truer knowledge of him still 
 some day ; and then it will be found what a great, loving, 
 noble heart was hidden behind his thin crust of cynicism, 
 — what gentleness, what tenderness, what wise kindness he 
 was capable of, — what loyalty to his friends and to his 
 principles, what reverence for sacred things, what infinite 
 depths of pathos, lay beneath that mocking exterior. Let 
 us gather together a few of these personal traits as they 
 have been given us by different hands, and try to make 
 thus a true likeness of the man as he appeared to those 
 who knew him best. The events of his life were few and 
 by no means striking. 
 
 He was born in Calcutta in 1811, and brought to Eng- 
 land when six years of age. At eleven he was placed in 
 Charter-House School, where he is described as a rosy- 
 faced boy, with dark curling hair, and a quick intelligent 
 eye, ever twinkling with good-humor. For the usual 
 school sports he had no taste, and was only known to en- 
 joy theatricals and caricatures, for which he retained his 
 taste throughout life. He was wonderfully social and 
 vivacious, and the best of good company, even at this 
 early day. Merry, light-hearted, unselfish, not very in- 
 dustrious, but a fair classical scholar, and possessed of a 
 wonderful memory, — so he is remembered by those who 
 knew him at this time. In a great school, where nearly 
 all the boys bullied those who were beneath them, he was 
 noted for his invariable kindness to the smaller boys, and 
 it was remarked of him, even at this age, that for one who 
 had such powers of sarcasm he made very few wounds
 
 ,,, HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 bv his tongue. At eighteen he entered Cambridge Uni- 
 versity, but left it at nineteen and went to study art in Paris. 
 Here lie remained for several years, and began his literary 
 work. Here, too, he was married, when twenty-six years 
 of age, to Miss Isabella Shawe, and here they passed the 
 first happy days of their married life together. He has 
 himself sketched a picture of the time, in these words : — 
 
 "The humblest painter, be he ever so poor, may have a 
 friend watcliing at his easel, or a gentle wife sitting by with 
 her work in her lap, and with fond smiles or silence, or both, 
 cheering his labors." 
 
 For a few short years they were very happy together, 
 and three children were born to them. Then the most 
 terrible misfortune of his life fell upon him, — his wife, after 
 a severe illness, became hopelessly insane. For some time 
 Thackeray refused to believe that it was more than an 
 illness from which she would recover, but at last the terri- 
 ble truth was forced upon him that he had lost her for- 
 ever, and in a way so much more cruel than death. She 
 was placed in the home of a kind family employed to 
 care for her, and there she remained until death released 
 her. His grief was of the most hopeless kind, and it 
 made a melancholy man of him throughout life. At 
 times and seasons his natural gayety would return to him ; 
 but he was a sad man at heart from that dreadful day 
 when the horror of her fate was revealed to him. He 
 never spoke directly of his grief, but once in a while he 
 would speak of it in parable, as when he talked to a 
 friend about somebody's wife whom he had known be- 
 coming insane, and that friend says : — 
 
 "Never shall I forget the look, the manner, the voice, 
 with which he said to me, ' It is an awful thing for her to con- 
 tinue to live. It is awful for her so to die. But has it ever 
 occurred to you how awful the recovery of her lost reason 
 would be, without the consciousness of the loss of time ? 
 She finds the lover of her youth a gray-haired old man, and
 
 WILLI A 31 MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 325 
 
 her infants young men and women. Is it not sad to think 
 of this ? ' " 
 
 His mother came to live with him, and his children grew 
 to maturity beneath his roof, one of them the Miss Thack- 
 eray now so well known as a novelist. But tenderly as he 
 was attached to them, — and there could have been no 
 fonder father, — he no doubt felt all the sadness of the 
 thought that 
 
 " The many make the household, 
 But only one the home." 
 
 In one of the " Roundabouts " he says : — 
 
 " I own, for my part, that in reading papers which this hand 
 formerly penned, I often lose sight of the text under my 
 eyes. It is not the words I see, but that past day, that by- 
 gone page of life's history, that tragedy — comedy it may be 
 — which our little home company were enacting, that merry- 
 making which we shared, that funeral which we followed, 
 that bitter, bitter grief which we buried." 
 
 That he should live much in that vanished past, was but 
 natural ; yet it was hard for a man like Thackeray, who 
 had naturally such great capacity for the enjoyment of 
 life. 
 
 That his home was a pleasant and goodly place, all 
 who have ever visited it bear witness. He made it his 
 refuge from all outer troubles, and practised a genial and 
 kindly hospitality there. It was a long time before he 
 was able to buy a house, though he made a good deal of 
 money from his books, his free-handed generous ways 
 always keeping him back financially : but when he was 
 enabled to buy one, he took great pride and pleasure in 
 it, and decorated it according to his artistic tastes. To 
 make a little more money for his daughters, that they might 
 be independent when he was gone, he began lecturing, 
 and was twice induced to come to America for that pur- 
 pose, much as he dreaded leaving home, and especially 
 crossing the ocean.
 
 .;;6 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 Mis speech at the farewell dinner given him before 
 leaving for America the last time, expressed this dread 
 in a very comical manner, and was received with great 
 cheering and uj^roar. " I have before me," he said, " at 
 this minute the horrid figure of a steward with a basin 
 perhaps, or a glass of brandy and water, which he will 
 press me to drink, and which I shall try to swallow, and 
 which won't make me any better. I know it won't." This 
 with a grimace which put the whole table in a roar. Then 
 he went on to tell of the last dinners given to criminals 
 and convicts, and how they were allowed always to choose 
 what they would have, in a manner so droll that all 
 thought him in the happiest mood, while he was scarcely 
 able to keep up, so sad was his heart at the prospect 
 of leaving home. Next morning, we are told by a spec- 
 tator, " he had been round crying in corners ; and when 
 the cab finally came, and the luggage had all been be- 
 stowed, and the servants stood in the hall, 'This is the 
 moment I have dreaded,' said Thackeray, as he entered 
 the dining-room to embrace his daughters, and when he 
 hastily descended the steps to the door, he knew that 
 they would be at the window to cast one loving, lingering 
 look. 'Good-by,' he murmured in a suppressed tone, 
 ' keep close behind me, and try to let me jump in unseen.' 
 The instant the door of the vehicle closed behind him, 
 he threw himself back in the comer, and buried his face 
 in his hands." 
 
 His allusion to his little girls, in the poem of "The 
 White Squall," is well known, and shows how constantly 
 he had them in his thoughts : — 
 
 " And when, its force expended, 
 The harmless storm was ended, 
 And as the sunrise splendid 
 Came bUisliing o'er the sea, 
 I thought, as day was breaking. 
 My little girls were waking, 
 And smiling, and making 
 A prayer at home for me." 
 
 His love for these little girls, to whom he felt he must
 
 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 327 
 
 be both father and mother, gave him unusual tenderness 
 for all children, and he once said he never could see a 
 boy without wanting to give him a sovereign. This he did 
 very often too in England, where children, like servants, 
 are allowed to receive "tips" from their parents' friends; 
 and when in this country he felt it quite a hardship that 
 the children of his friends were not allowed to take his 
 money. 
 
 His American visits afforded him much pleasure — 
 and profit too ; and he always spoke kindly of us 
 atter his return. His light way of expressing his feeling 
 towards us was extremely characteristic, as when he said 
 he hoped he should never be guilty of speaking ill 
 either of the North or the South, as he had been offered 
 equally good claret by both. His frequent allusions to 
 eating and drinking give the idea of a much more con- 
 vivial person than he really was ; he was temperate in 
 both, but he loved to write of these things. In the 
 " Memorials of Gormandizing," he writes in the most 
 appetizing manner of all the good dinners he has eaten 
 in many lands. Each dinner is an epic of the table. 
 They make one hungry with an inappeasable hunger, 
 and make him long to have Thackeray at his own 
 board as a most appreciative guest. He was quite a 
 diner-out in London, and a great favorite wherever he 
 went. He was not one of the professional talkers, but 
 always had one or two good things to say, which he did 
 not repeat until they were stereotyped, as so many do. 
 Though he said witty things now and then, he was not a 
 wit in the sense that Jerrold was. He shone most in little 
 subtle remarks on life, litde off-hand sketches of char- 
 acter, and descriptive touches of men and things. He 
 could be uproariously funny on occasion, and even sing 
 his •'' Jolly Doctor Luther " at table to a congenial com- 
 pany ; but he was often very dignified, and always gen- 
 tlemanly. The bits of doggerel with which he was 
 wont to diversify his conversation are spoken of by all 
 his friends as irresistibly ludicrous, and he seems to have
 
 ,.S HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 iiululi;oil in this pastime from a boy, as he did in those of 
 caricaturing and parodying. Mr. Fields tells us that — 
 
 " In the midst of the most serious topic under discussion 
 he was fond of asking permission to sing a comic song, or 
 he would beg to be allowed to enliven the occasion by the 
 instant introduction of a double shuffle. . . . During his 
 first visit to America his jollity knew no bounds, and it 
 became necessary often to repress him when walking in 
 the street. I well remember his uproarious shouting and 
 dancing when he was told that the tickets to his first course 
 of readino's were all sold ; and when we rode together from 
 his hotel to the lecture-hall, he insisted on thrusting both 
 his long legs out of the carriage window, in deference, as 
 he said, to his magnanimous ticket-holders." 
 
 Some of his fun was a little embarrassing to his friends, 
 as when Mr. Fields had taken him to the meeting of a 
 scientific club at the house of a distinguished Boston 
 gentleman, and Thackeray, being bored by the proceed- 
 ings, stole into a little anteroom, where he thought no 
 one could see him but his friend, and proceeded to 
 give vent to his feelings in pantomime. 
 
 " He threw an imaginary person (myself, of course) upon 
 the floor, and proceeded to stab him several times with a 
 paper-folder which he caught up for that purpose. After 
 disposing of his victim in this way, he was not satisfied, for 
 the dull lecture still went on in the other room, and he fired 
 an imaginary revolver several times at an imaginary head ; 
 still the droning speaker proceeded ; and now began the 
 greatest pantomimic scene of all, namely, murder by poison, 
 after the manner in which the player King is disposed of 
 in 'Hamlet.' Thackeray had found a small phial on the 
 mantel-shelf, and out of it he proceeded to pour the imagi- 
 nary 'juice of cursed hebenon ' into the imaginary porches 
 of somebody's ears. The whole thing was inimitably done, 
 and 1 hoped nobody saw it but myself; but years afterwards 
 a ponderous fat-witted young man put the question squarely 
 to me : ' What was the matter with Mr. Thackeray that 
 night the club met at M 's house ? ' "
 
 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 
 
 329 
 
 Thackeray's playfulness was indeed a marked pecu- 
 liarity, and innumerable stories are told of his dancing 
 pirouettes, singing impromptu songs, and rhyming a 
 whole company to their infinite amusement. Each one of 
 his personal friends, in talking of him, says, " But if you 
 could only have heard him " at such a time ; but of course 
 no one can repeat such unpremeditated jests, and the 
 flavor is gone from them when any one tries to do so. 
 He was the life of the clubs he frequented, and spent 
 much time in them and at theatres, of which he was pas- 
 sionately fond. His duties as a man of fashion took much 
 of his time, and his friends were always wondering when 
 he wrote his books. Much of the jollity and boyish 
 hilarity of his life in society was a rebound from the strain 
 of these books. He was wont to live much, as did Dick- 
 ens, in the creations of his fancy, and sometimes his 
 emotional nature became overwrought in his work. Mr. 
 Underwood tells us : — 
 
 " One day while the great novel of ' The Newcomes ' was 
 in course of publication, Lowell, who was then in London, 
 met Thackeray on the street. The novelist was serious in 
 manner, and his looks and voice told of weariness and 
 affliction. He saw the kindly inquiry in the poet's eyes, and 
 said, ' Come into Evans's and I '11 tell you all about it. / 
 have killed the Colonel f So they walked in and took a 
 table in a remote corner; and then Thackeray, drawing the 
 fresh manuscript from his breast-pocket, read through that 
 exquisitely touching chapter which records the death of 
 Colonel Newcome. When he came to the final Adsum, 
 the tears which had been swelling his lids for some time 
 trickled down his face, and the last word was almost an 
 inarticulate sob." 
 
 Thackeray's sensibility was really extreme, and he could 
 not read anything pathetic without actual discomfort, 
 — never could get through " The Bride of Lammermoor," 
 for instance, — and would not listen to any sad tales of 
 suffering in real life if he could escape them. If he did 
 hear of any one in want or distress, he relieved his feelings
 
 330 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 bv instantlv ajipropriating to their use all the money he 
 found himself in possession of at the time. When he was 
 editor of the "Cornhill Magazine," this soft-heartedness 
 was a great drawback to him. He was always paying for 
 contributions he could not use, if they were sent, as 
 so many are, with some pitiful tale accompanying ; and 
 was always wasting his \-aluable time by writing to poor 
 creatures about their dreary verses, which there was no 
 hope of his being able to improve. When quite young, he 
 loaned — or rather gave, though he called it a loan — 
 three hundred pounds to poor old Maginn, when he was 
 beaten in the battle of life and lay in the Fleet Prison. 
 But he denied this act with the utmost vehemence when 
 accused of it, and berated the old fellow in a laborious 
 manner for ha\ing been beaten when he should have 
 fought on. Indeed, he was very much ashamed of his 
 soft-heartedness always, and would oftentimes bluster and 
 appear very fierce when appealed to for assistance. 
 
 Anthony Trollope tells a story about going to him one 
 day and telling him of the straits to which a mutual friend 
 was reduced. 
 
 " ' Do you mean to say that I am to find two thousand 
 pounds ?' he said angrily, with some expletives. I explained 
 that I had not even suggested the doing of anything, — only 
 that we might discuss the matter. Then there came over his 
 face a peculiar smile, and a wink in his eye, and he whispered 
 his suggestion, as if ashamed of his meanness. ' I '11 go 
 half,' he said, 'if anybody will do the rest.' And he did go 
 half at a day or two's notice. I could tell various stories of 
 the same kind." 
 
 These things were not easy for him to do ; for he was 
 never a rich man, and he had constant calls upon his char- 
 ity. He kept a small floating fund always in circulation 
 among his poorer acquaintances ; and when one returned 
 it to him he passed it to another, never considering it as 
 his own but for the use of the unfortunate. He liked to 
 disguise his charides as jokes, — as filling a pill-box with
 
 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 
 
 Zl"^ 
 
 gold pieces and sending it to a needy friend, with tlie in- 
 scription, "To be taken one at a time, as needed; " and 
 various devices of this kind. He was as generous of his 
 praise as of his money, and ahvays had a good word for 
 his literary friends. His line tribute to Macaulay will be 
 remembered, and his praise of Washington Irving, of 
 Charlotte Bronte, and many others. While he had an 
 exaggerated contempt for the foibles of the world at large, 
 he had an almost equally exaggerated sympathy for the 
 joys and sorrows of individuals ; and much of the scorn 
 which he gives to humanity collectively may be taken as 
 a sort of vent to his feelings when he is ashamed of hav- 
 ing been too foolishly weak in dealing with some of these 
 fellow-mortals in real life. 
 
 He never encouraged his companions in being cynical, 
 but always encouraged them in admiration. "I am glad 
 he worships anybody," he said, when some friends were 
 satirizing an absent companion for his devotion to a great 
 man. Neither would he encourage any unkind talk about 
 the absent, or laugh at any good hit which was aimed at a 
 friend. " You fiend ! " he said to a friend who was laugh- 
 ing over a sharp attack on an acquaintance, and he refused 
 to read or hear a word of it. Indeed, for steadfast loyalty 
 to his friends, his equal has seldom been seen. He made 
 common cause with them in everything, and nothing so 
 enraged him as treachery or deceit among friends. 
 
 He was a man of aristocratic feeling, and resented famil- 
 iarity. He was also in general a reserved man, and allowed 
 few people really to know him. He had a surface nature 
 which was all his mere acquaintances knew. Even his 
 friends were long in finding him out. Douglas Jerrold 
 was once heard to say, " I have known Thackeray eigh- 
 teen years, and I don't know him yet ; " and this was the 
 case with the majority of his friends. His great griefs he 
 kept closely within his own heart, and the more serious 
 side of his nature was all hidden from the world as much 
 as he could hide it. Those who read between the lines 
 discovered it in his books, and those who looked deeply
 
 ..2 I/O ME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 enough into luinian nature found it in the man, but super- 
 ficial observers saw only the mocking man of the world. 
 ^Vhen suddenly observed, his face always had a sad, grave 
 aspect, and it was often hard for him to throw off this seri- 
 ousness and to put on his harlequin's mask. Upon reli- 
 gious matters he was always reticent, but reverent. Only 
 upon rare occasions would he discuss serious subjects at 
 all, and only with a chosen few. In one letter which has 
 been published he departs from his usual custom and 
 writes : — 
 
 " I never feel pity for a man dying, only for survivors if 
 there be such passionately deploring him. You see the 
 pleasures the undersigned proposes to himself here in future 
 years, — a sight of the Alps, a holiday on the Rhine, a ride 
 in the Park, a colloquy with pleasant friends of an evening. 
 If it is death to part with these delights (and pleasures they 
 are, and no mistake), sure the mind can conceive others after- 
 ward ; and I know one small pliilosopher who is quite ready 
 to give up these pleasures, — quite content (after a pang or 
 two of separation from dear friends here) to put his hand into 
 that of the summoning angel, and say, 'Lead on, O messen- 
 ger of God our Father, to the next place whither the divine 
 goodness calls us.' We must be blindfolded before we can 
 pass, I know; but I have no fear about what is to come, any 
 more than my children need fear that the love of their father 
 should fail them. I thought myself a dead man once, and 
 protest the notion gave me no disquiet about myself, — at 
 least the philosophy is more comfortable than that which is 
 tinctured with brimstone." 
 
 He hated those who make a stock in trade of their reli- 
 gion, and, like Dr. Johnson, would have advised them to 
 clear their minds of cant; but no genuine evidence of 
 religious feeling or experience was ever treated lighdy by 
 him, and he was greatly shocked at any real desecration 
 of sacred things. He had a simple, childlike faith in God 
 and in the Saviour, and a firm hope in the everlasting life. 
 
 In person Thackeray was a tall, ruddy, simple-looking 
 Englishman, with rather a full face, florid, almost rubicund, 
 and keen, kindly eyes, and, after forty, abundant gray hair.
 
 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 
 
 333 
 
 He had a conspicuous, almost a commanding figure, with 
 a certain awkwardness in his gait. He had a misshaped 
 nose, caused by an accident in boyhood, and a sarcastic 
 twinkle oftentimes in his eyes, which changed the expres- 
 sion of his whole face. 
 
 He dressed well, but unpretendingly, and his voice and 
 manner were always courteous and cordial. He smiled 
 easily, and had a humorous look when not oppressed with 
 sadness, which was often the case in later life. He died 
 suddenly in middle hfe, leaving, like Dickens, an unfinished 
 novel in the press. No other literary man, save perhaps 
 Macaulay, has been mourned as Thackeray was mourned. 
 There was universal sorrow for his premature loss, and great 
 personal grief among his friends. Twenty-three years have 
 passed since that time, and no successor has arisen to repay 
 the world for that loss. When the curtain fell upon 
 Becky Sharpe and Beatrix, upon Ethel Newcome and the 
 good Colonel, upon Laura and Pendennis, upon Esmond 
 and Warrington, and upon all the deeply studied char- 
 acters of his mimic stage, that curtain fell to rise no more 
 upon such creatures as his hands had made. He will have 
 no successor. He is the One, the Only. Such pathos, 
 such wit, such wisdom, will not dawn upon us again — in 
 time. 
 
 When he wrote Finis for the last time at the close of 
 one of those matchless volumes, it was an epoch closed 
 in the history of literature. When the recording angel 
 wrote Finis at the close of that sad and weary but bravely 
 spent and useful life, it was a sad day for the world of men, 
 who will not look upon his like again. Who that felt a 
 love for the writer and the man could fail to rejoice that 
 the end was quick and painless ? One of our own poets 
 has well described the scene : — 
 
 " The angel came by night 
 
 (Such angels still come down). 
 And like a winter cloud 
 
 Passed over London Town, 
 Along its lonesome streets, 
 
 Where want had ceased to weep,
 
 534 
 
 /OME LII-E OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 Until it reached a liouse 
 
 Wliere a great man lay asleep; 
 The man t)f all his time 
 
 Who knew the most of men, — 
 The soundest head and heart, 
 The sharpest, kindest pen. 
 It paused beside his bed 
 
 And whispered in his ear; 
 He never turned his head. 
 
 But answered, ' I am here,' 
 Into the night they went ; 
 
 At morning, side by side. 
 They gained the sacred place 
 
 Where the greatest dead abide : 
 Where grand old Homer sits. 
 
 In godlike state benign ; 
 Where broods in endless thought 
 
 The awful Florentine ; 
 Where sweet Cervantes walks, 
 
 A smile on his grave face ; 
 Where gossips quaint Montaigne, 
 
 The wisest of his race ; 
 Where Goethe looks through all 
 
 With that calm eye of his ; 
 Where — little seen, but light — 
 
 The only Shakspeare is ! 
 When the new spirit came. 
 
 They asked him, drawing near, 
 'Art thou become like us ? ' 
 
 He answered, ' I am here.' "
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 NO novelist has dealt so directly with the home life of 
 the world as Charles Dickens, He has painted 
 few historic pictures ; he has dealt mostly in interiors, — 
 beautiful bits of home life, full of domestic feeling. In- 
 deed, we may say that his background is always the home, 
 and here he paints his portraits, often like those of Ho- 
 garth for strength and grotesque effect. Here, too, he 
 limns the scenes of his comedy- tragedy, and depicts the 
 changing fashions of the time. The color is sometimes a 
 little crude, laid on occasionally with too coarse a brush ; 
 but the effect is always lifelike, and our interest in it is 
 never known to flag. 
 
 Nowhere else in all the range of literature have we such 
 tender description of home life and love, such intuitive 
 knowledge of child life, such wonderful sympathy with 
 every form of domestic wrong and suffering, such delicate 
 appreciation of the shyest and most unobtrusive of social 
 virtues ; nowhere else such indignation at any neglect or 
 desecration of the home, as in Mrs. Jellyby with her mis- 
 sion, in Mrs. Pardiggle with her charities, Mr. Pecksniff 
 with his hypocrisy, and Mr. Dombey with his unfeeling 
 selfishness. In short, Dickens is pre-eminently the prophet 
 and the poet of the home. 
 
 Now, can it be possible that we must say of such a 
 man as this, that in his own life he was the opposite of all
 
 >36 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 that which he so feelingly describes, — that he desecrated 
 the very lioine he so apostrophizes, — that he put all his 
 warmth, geniality, and tenderness into his books and kept 
 fur his own firesitle his sour humors and unhappy moods, — 
 that he was "ill to live with," as Mrs. Carlyle puts it? 
 We cannot believe it in so bald a form, but we are forced 
 to admit that his married life seems to have been in every 
 way unhappy and unfortunate. No one could state this 
 more strongly than Dickens himself, in the letter he wTote 
 at the time of the separation. He said : — 
 
 " Mrs. Dickens and I have lived unhappily for many years. 
 Hardly any one who has known us intimately can fail to 
 have known that we are in all respects of character and tem- 
 perament wonderfully unsuited to each other. I suppose 
 that no two people, not vicious in themselves, were ever 
 joined together, who had greater difficulty in understanding 
 one another, or who had less in common. An attached 
 woman-servant (more friend to both of us than servant), who 
 lived with us sixteen years and had the closest familiar ex- 
 perience of this unhappiness in London, in the country, in 
 France, in Italy, wherever we have been, year after year, 
 month after month, week after week, day after day, will bear 
 testimony to this. Nothing has on many occasions stood 
 between us and a separation but Mrs. Dickens's sister, 
 Georgina Hogarth. From the age of fifteen, she has devoted 
 herself to our home and our children. She has been their 
 playmate, nurse, instructress, friend, protectress, adviser, 
 companion. In the manly consideration towards Mrs. Dick- 
 ens, which I owe to my wife, I will only remark of her that 
 the peculiarity of her character has thrown all the children 
 on some one else. I do not know, I cannot by any stretch 
 of fancy imagine, what would have become of them but for 
 this aunt, who has grown up with them, to whom they are de- 
 voted, and who has sacrificed the best part of her youth and 
 life to them. She has remonstrated, reasoned, suffered, 
 and toiled, and come again to prevent a separation between 
 Mrs. Dickens and me. Mrs. Dickens has often expressed 
 to her her sense of her affectionate care and devotion in 
 the house, — never more strongly than within the last 
 twelve months."
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 337 
 
 Again, in the public statement which he prepared for 
 " Household Words," alluding to a multitude of damaging 
 rumors which were quickly put in circulation, he says : — 
 
 " By some means, arising out of wickedness or out of 
 folly or out of inconceivable wild chance, or out of all three, 
 this trouble has been made the occasion of misrepresenta- 
 tions most grossly false, most monstrous, and most cruel, — 
 involving not only me, but innocent persons dear to my 
 heart, and innocent persons of whom I have no knowledge, 
 if indeed they have any existence, — and so widely spread 
 that I doubt if one reader in a thousand will peruse these 
 lines by whom some touch of the breath of these slanderers 
 will not have passed like an unwholesome air. 
 
 " Those who know me and my nature need no assurance 
 under my hand that such calumnies are as irreconcilable 
 with me as they are in their frantic incoherence with one an- 
 other. But there is a great multitude who know me through 
 my writings and who do not know me otherwise, and I can- 
 not bear that one of them should be left in doubt or hazard 
 of doubt through my poorly shrinking from taking the un- 
 usual means to which I now resort of circulating the truth. 
 I most solemnly declare then — and this I do both in my 
 own name and my wife's name — that all lately whispered 
 rumors touching the trouble at which I have glanced are 
 abominably false ; and that whosoever repeats one of them, 
 after this denial, will lie as wilfully and as foully as it is pos- 
 sible for any false witness to lie before heaven and earth." 
 
 This denial, coming from a man of truth and honor like 
 Charles Dickens, must, once for all, dispose of that con- 
 venient way of accounting for the sad estrangement. 
 
 The reasons for the unhappy state of things were of a 
 much more complicated nature than this. Only the most 
 intimate of his friends ever knew them in full, and of 
 course they were debarred from making tliem public. 
 But Professor Ward of Cambridge University, who has 
 written a very kind and appreciative Life of Dickens, and 
 one which gives a far more pleasing idea of his character 
 than the bulky and egotistical Life by Forster, gives a 
 
 22
 
 333 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 clue to the whole trouble in the following statement. He 
 
 savs 
 
 " If lie ever loved his wife with that affection before which 
 so-called incompatibilities of habits, temper, or disposition 
 fade into nothinj^ness, there is no indication of it in any of 
 the numerous letters addressed to her. Neither has it ever 
 been pretended that he strove in the direction of that res- 
 ignation which love and duty made possible to David Cop- 
 perfield, or even that he rehiained in every way master of 
 himself as many men have known how to remain, the story 
 of whose wedded life and its disappointments has never been 
 written in history or figured in fiction." 
 
 And this troublous condition of things was very much 
 intensified by Dickens having fallen violently in love with 
 Mary Hogarth, Mrs. Dickens's youngest sister. This 
 beautiful girl died at their house at the early age of seven- 
 teen. No sorrow seems ever to have touched the heart 
 and possessed the imagination of Charles Dickens like 
 ' that for the loss of this dearly loved girl. " I can solemnly 
 say," he wTOte to her mother a few months after her death, 
 " that waking or sleeping I have never lost the recollection 
 of our hard sorrow, and I never shall." " If," he writes in 
 his diar}^ at the beginning of a new year, " she was with 
 me now, — the same winning, happy, amiable companion, 
 sympathizing with all my thoughts and feelings more than 
 any one I ever knew did or will, — I think I should have 
 nothing to wish but a continuance of such happiness." 
 Throughout life her memory haunted him with great vivid- 
 ness. After her death he wrote : " I dreamed of her 
 every night for many weeks, and always with a kind of 
 quiet happiness, which became so pleasant to me that I 
 never lay down without a hope of the vision returning." 
 The year before he died he Avrote to a friend : " She is so 
 much in my thoughts at all times, especially when I am 
 successful, that the recollection of her is an essential part 
 of my being, and is as inseparable from my existence as 
 the beating of my heart is." In a word, she was the one
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 339 
 
 great imaginative passion of his life. He is said to have 
 pictured her in Litde Nell, and he writes after finishing 
 that book, " Dear Mary died yesterday when I think of 
 it." 
 
 Have we not in this the key to all the sorrows of his 
 domestic life? Could he have married the woman he 
 loved in this manner, he would doubtless have been one 
 of the tenderest and most devoted of husbands, and a 
 family life as beautiful as any of the ideal ones he has 
 depicted would have resulted. It is probable that he did 
 not know Mary Hogarth until after his marriage, when 
 she came to live in his house, and when his youthful 
 fancy for his wife had begun to decline. Miss Hogarth 
 died instantly of heart-disease, without even a premonitory 
 warning. 
 
 All accounts agree in calling Mrs. Dickens a very pretty, 
 amiable, and well-bred woman ; and even if she was as 
 infinitely incapable as represented, that alone would seem 
 to be insufficient cause for so serious a trouble. Miss 
 Georgina Hogarth, whom all describe as a very lovely 
 and superior person, possessed the executive ability Mrs. 
 Dickens lacked, it would seem ; for all visitors both to 
 Tavistock House and Gad's Hill describe with enthusiasm 
 the perfect order which prevailed in the large establish- 
 ments, attributing this in part at least to Dickens's own 
 intense love of method and passion for neatness. But no 
 man without the aid of feminine head and hands would 
 have succeeded in attaining to this perfect housekeeping, 
 especially where the family consisted of nine children, as 
 in this case. 
 
 Hans Christian Andersen thus describes a visit to Gad's 
 Hill : — 
 
 " It was a fine new house, with red walls and four bow- 
 windows, and a jutting entrance supported by pillars ; in the 
 gable a large window. A dense hedge of cherry-laurel sur- 
 rounded the house, in front of which extended a neat lawn, 
 and on the opposite side rose two mighty cedars of Leba- 
 non, whose crooked branches spread their green far over
 
 ,^0 nOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 another large lawn surrounded by ivy and wild vines, the 
 hedi;e beini; so dense and dark that no sunbeam could 
 penetrate it. 
 
 '* As soon as I stepped into the house, Dickens came to 
 meet me kindly and cordially. He was now in the prime of 
 life, — still so youthful, so active, so eloquent, so rich in the 
 most pleasant humor, through which his sterling kind-hearted- 
 ness always beamed forth. As he stood before me in the 
 first hour, so he was and remained during all the weeks I 
 passed in his company, — merry, good-natured, and full of 
 charming sympathy. Dickens at home seems to be perpet- 
 ually jolly, and enters into the interests of games with all the 
 ardor of a boy. My bedroom was the perfection of a sleep- 
 ing-apartment: the view across the Kentish hills, with a 
 distant peep of the Thames, charming. In every room I 
 found a table covered with writing-materials, headed note- 
 paper, envelopes, cut quill-pens, wax, matches, sealing-wax, 
 and all scrupulously neat and orderly. There are magnificent 
 specimens of Newfoundland dogs on the grounds, such ani- 
 mals as Landseer would love to paint. One of these, named 
 Bumble, seems to be a favorite with Dickens." 
 
 Mr. Mackenzie writes : — 
 
 " Eminently social and domestic, he exercised a liberal 
 hospitality, and though he lived well as his means allowed, 
 avoided excesses. It is said of him that he never lost a friend, 
 never made an enemy." 
 
 From all sources comes the same report of his geniality, 
 of his devotion to his children and their devotion to him, 
 of his constant generosity and good-humor. Byron's old 
 servant said that Lady Byron was the only woman he ever 
 saw who could not manage his master. Was this also true 
 of Mrs. Dickens ? Was she the only one who found him 
 " ill to live with " ? It may be ; and yet one can easily 
 imagine him to have been a man of moods, and that in 
 some of these moods i-t would be best to give him a wide 
 berth. The very excess of his animal spirits may have 
 been wearying to one who could not share them ; and 
 that he was egotistical to a degree, and vain, and fond of
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 341 
 
 flattery, goes without saying. A lady in the " EngHsh- 
 woman's Magazine " tells this story of his wild and reck- 
 less fun, and it is matched by many others. They were 
 down on the seashore in the moonlight, and had been 
 dancing there. 
 
 " We then strolled farther down to watch the fading light. 
 The tide came rippling in. The night grew darker, — star- 
 less, moonless. Dickens seemed suddenly to be possessed 
 with the spirit of mischief ; he threw his arm around me, and 
 ran me down the inclined plane to the end of the jetty till we 
 reached the toll-post. He put his other arm around this, 
 and exclaimed in theatrical tones that he intended to hold 
 me there till the sad sea waves should submerge us. ' Think 
 of the sensation we shall create.' Here I implored him to 
 let me go, and struggled" hard to release myself. ' Let your 
 mind dwell upon the column in the " Times " wherein will be 
 vividly described the pathetic fate of the lovely E. P., 
 drowned by Dickens in a fit of dementia. Don't struggle, 
 poor little bird ; you are helpless.' By this time the last 
 gleam of light had faded out, and the water close to us 
 looked uncomfortably black. The tide was coming up 
 rapidly, and surged over my feet. I gave a loud shriek, and 
 tried to bring him back to common-sense by reminding him 
 that my dress — my best dress, my only silk dress — would 
 be ruined. Even this climax did not soften him ; he still 
 went on with his serio-comic nonsense, shaking with laughter 
 all the time, and panting with his struggles to hold me. 
 'Mrs. Dickens,' I shrieked, 'help me! Make Mr. Dickens 
 let me go — the waves are up to my knees.' ' Charles,' cried 
 Mrs. Dickens, ' how can you be so silly ? You will both be 
 carried off by the tide ! ' And it was not until my dress had 
 been completely ruined that I succeeded in wresting myself 
 from him. Upon two other occasions he seized me and ran 
 with me under the cataract, and held me there until I was 
 thoroughly baptized and my bonnets a wreck of lace and 
 feathers." 
 
 The same writer says, — and she is one who writes 
 from familiar personal acquaintance, — " To describe 
 Dickens as always amiable, always just, and always in the 
 right, would be simply false and untrue to Nature ; " and
 
 ,,a HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 she relates several anecdotes going to prove that he was 
 sometimes capricious, not always responsive to appeals 
 for help, and other things of that sort ; all of which 
 may be true and not be very damaging. This writer 
 tells still another story of his reckless fun-making, as 
 follows : — 
 
 " \Vc were about to make an excursion to Pegwell Bay, 
 and lunch there. Presently Dickens came in in high glee, 
 flourishing about a yard of ballads, which he had bought from 
 a beggar in the street. ' Look here,' he cried exultingly, ' all 
 for a penny. One song alone is worth a Jew's eye, — quite 
 new and original, the subject being the interesting announce- 
 ment by our gracious Queen.' He commenced to give us a 
 specimen, but after hearing one verse there arose a cry of 
 universal execration. He pretended to be vexed at our 
 'shutting him up,' said there was nothing wrong in it, he 
 had written a great deal worse himself ; and when we were 
 going to enter the carriages he said : ' Now, look here ! I 
 give due notice to all and sundry, that I mean to sing that 
 song, and a good many others, during the ride ; so those 
 ladies who think them vulgar can go in the other carriages. 
 I am not going to invest my hard-earned penny for nothing.' 
 I was quite certain that Charles Dickens was the last man in 
 the world to shock the modesty of any female, and too much 
 of a gentleman to do anything that was annoying to us, but 
 I thought it as well to go in the other carriage ; and so he 
 
 had no ladies with him but his wife and Mrs. S . I was 
 
 not sorry, however, to be where I was, as I heard for the 
 next half-hour portions of those songs wafted on the breeze ; 
 and the bursts of laughter from ladies and gentlemen and 
 the mischievous twinkle in Dickens's eye proved that he was 
 in such a madcap mood that it was as well there were none 
 but married people with him, — the subject being of a 
 ' Gampish ' nature. But he was not always full of spirits or 
 even-tempered, — indeed, I was sometimes puzzled by the 
 variability of his moods." 
 
 Anecdotes like the following, told by Blanchard Jerrold, 
 abound in all writers who wrote of Dickens from personal 
 knowledge : —
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 343 
 
 " A very dear friend of mine, and of many others to whom 
 literature is a staff, had died. To say that his family had 
 claims upon Dickens is to say that they were promptly ac- 
 knowledged and satisfied, with the grace and heartiness which 
 double the gift, sweeten the bread, and warm the wine. I 
 asked a connection of our dead friend whether he had seen 
 the poor wife and children. ' Seen them ? ' he answered. ' I 
 was there to-day. They are removed into a charming cot- 
 tage. They have everything about them ; and just think of 
 this : when I burst into the room, in my eager survey of the 
 new home, I saw a man in his shirt-sleeves up some steps, 
 hammering away lustily. He turned. It was Charles Dick- 
 ens, and he was hanging the pictures for the widow. , . . 
 Dickens was the soul of truth and manliness as well as kind- 
 ness, so that such a service as this came as naturally to him 
 as help from his purse.' " 
 
 Jerrold continues : — 
 
 " There was that boy-element in him which has been so 
 often remarked of men of genius. ' Why, "we played a game 
 of knock 'em down only a week ago,' a friend remarked to 
 me last June, with beaming eyes, ' and he showed all the old 
 astonishing energy and delight in taking aim at Aunt Sally.' 
 My own earliest recollections of Dickens are of his gayest 
 moods, when the boy in him was exuberant, and leap-frog 
 and rounders were not sports too young for the player who 
 had written ' Pickwick ' twenty years before. The sweet and 
 holy lessons which he presented to humanity out of the 
 humble places in the world could not have been evolved out 
 of a nature less true and sympathetic than his. It wanted 
 such a man as Dickens was in his life to be such a writer as 
 he was for the world." 
 
 One more anecdote. J. C. Young tells us that one day 
 Mrs. Henry Siddons, a neighbor and intimate of Lord 
 Jeffrey, who often entered his library unannounced, 
 opened the door very gently to see if he were there, and 
 saw enough at a glance to convince her that the visit was 
 ill-timed. The hard critic of the " Edinburgh Review " 
 was sitting in his chair with his head on the table in deep 
 grief. As Mrs, Siddons was retiring, in the hope that her
 
 ,,, HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 entrance had been unnoticed, Jeffrey raised his head and 
 kindly beckonctl her back. Perceiving that his cheek 
 was flushetl and his eyes suffused with tears, she begged 
 permission to withdraw. When he found that she was 
 intcnthng to leave him, he rose from his chair, took her 
 by both hands, and led her to a seat. 
 
 " Don't go, my dear friend ; I shall be right again in 
 another minute." 
 
 " I had no idea you had had any bad news, or cause 
 for grief, or I would not have come. Is any one dead? " 
 
 '* Yes, indeed. I 'm a great goose to have given way 
 so ; but I could not help it. You '11 be sorry to hear that 
 little Nelly, Boz's little Nelly, is dead." 
 
 Dear, sweet, loving little Nell ! We doubt if any other 
 creation of poet or novelist in any language has received 
 the tribute of as many tears as thou. From high, from 
 low, on land, on sea, wherever thy story has been read, 
 there has been paid the spontaneous tribute of tears. 
 Whether or not many of the fantastic creations of the 
 great master's hand will live in the far future we cannot 
 tell, but of thy immortality there is no more question than 
 there is of that of Hamlet or of Lear. Bret Harte tells us 
 of a camp among the stern Sierras, where a group of wan- 
 derers gathered about the fire, and one of them arose, 
 and "from his pack's scant treasure" drew forth the 
 magic book ; and soon all their own wants and labors 
 were forgotten, and 
 
 " The whole camp with Nell on English meadows 
 Wandered and lost their way." 
 
 And from many different sources come stories of her influ- 
 ence upon the hearts and minds of all classes and condi- 
 tions of men. 
 
 Of Dickens's personal appearance and of the leading 
 traits of his character much has been written, and by 
 some of the keenest observers of his time. He is said to 
 have been a very small and sickly boy, subject to attacks 
 of violent spasm. Although so fond of games and sports
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 345 
 
 when a man, as a boy he evinced Httle interest in them, 
 probably on account of his ill health. We should natu- 
 rally think of him as the autocrat of the playground, and 
 the champion in all games of strength and skill ; but such 
 was not the fact. He was extremely fond of reading, at a 
 very early age, and of acting little plays, and showing pic- 
 tures in a magic lantern ; he even sang at this time, and 
 was as fond of fun as in later life. When quite young he 
 and his companions mounted a small theatre, and got 
 together scenery to illustrate "The Miller and his Men," 
 and one or two other plays. 
 
 Mr. Forster describes him thus : — 
 
 "The features were very good. He had a capital fore- 
 head, a firm nose, with full, wide nostril, eyes wonderfully 
 beaming with intellect and running over with humor and 
 cheerfulness, and a rather prominent mouth, strongly marked 
 with sensibility. The head was altogether well-formed and 
 symmetrical, and the air and carriage of it extremely spirited. 
 The hair, so scant and grizzled in later days, was then of a 
 rich brown and the most luxuriant abundance, and the 
 bearded face of the last two decades had hardly a vestige of 
 hair or whisker, but there was that in the face, as I first rec- 
 ollect it, which no time could change, and which remained 
 implanted on it unalterably to the last. This was the quick- 
 ness, keenness, and practical power, the eager, restless, en- 
 ergetic look on each several feature, that seemed to tell so 
 little of a student or writer of books, and so much of a man 
 of action and business in the world. Light and motion 
 flashed from every part of it." 
 
 Another keen observer writes : — 
 
 " The French painter's remark that 'he was more like one 
 of the old Dutch admirals we see in picture galleries than 
 a man of letters,' conveyed an admirably true idea to his 
 friends. He had, indeed, much of the quiet, resolute man- 
 ner of command of a captain of a ship. He trod along 
 briskly as he walked ; as he listened, his searching eye rested 
 on you, and the nerves in his face quivered, much like those 
 in the delicately formed nostrils of a finely bred dog. There 
 was a curl or two in his hair at each side, which was charac-
 
 346 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 terislic ; anil tlie jaunty way he wore his httle morning hat, 
 rather on one side, adtlod to tlie effect. But when tliere was 
 anything droll suggested, a delightful sparkle of lurking hu- 
 mor began to kindle and spread to his mouth, so that, even 
 before he uttered anything, you felt that something irresisti- 
 bly droll was at hand." 
 
 Mr. Mackenzie tells us : — 
 
 " Dickens's personal taste in dress was always ' loud.' He 
 loved gay vests, glittering jewelry, showy satin stocks, and 
 everything rather prononcc ; yet no man had a keener or 
 more unsparing critical eye for these vulgarities in others. 
 He once gave to a friend a vest of gorgeous shawl pattern. 
 Soon after, at a party, he quizzed his friend most unmerci- 
 fully for his stunning vest, although he had on him at that 
 very moment its twin brother or sister, whichever sex vests 
 belong to." 
 
 There was an almost morbid restlessness in the man, 
 out of which arose his habit of excessive walking. When 
 he was writing one of his great books he could not be 
 away from London streets, and he used to walk about in 
 them at night for hours at a time, until his body was com- 
 pletely exhausted ; in this way only could he get sleep. 
 When not composing he loved long country walks, and 
 probably injured his health much in later life by the great 
 length of these tramps across country. His restlessness 
 showed itself also in many other ways. The element of 
 repose was not in him. " My last special feat," he wTites 
 once when unable to sleep, " was turning out of bed at 
 two, after a hard day, pedestrian and otherwise, and walk- 
 ing thirty miles into the country to breakfast." 
 
 The story is told, too, of a night spent in private theat- 
 ricals, following a very laborious day for Dickens, and of 
 his being so much fresher than any of his companions that 
 towards morning he jumped leap-frog over the backs of 
 the whole weary company, and was not willing to go to bed 
 even then. His animal spirits were really inexhaustible, 
 and this was the great unfailing charm of his companion- 
 ship. He never drooped or lagged, but was always alert.
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 347 
 
 keen, and ready for any emergency. Out-of-door games 
 he entered into with great hilarity, and was usually the 
 youngest man in the party. There was a positive sparkle 
 and atmosphere of holiday sunshine about him, and to 
 no man was the word " genial " ever more appropriately 
 applied. 
 
 He carried an atmosphere of good cheer with him in 
 person as he did in his books, and was fond of the senti- 
 ment of joviality ; wrote, indeed, a great deal about feast- 
 ing, but was really abstemious himself, though he liked to 
 brew punch and have little midnight suppers with his 
 friends. Yet at these same suppers he ate and drank 
 almost nothing, though he furnished the hilarity for the 
 whole party. 
 
 His powers of microscopic observation have seldom 
 been equalled. As Arthur Helps said of him, he seemed 
 to see and observe nine facts while his companion was 
 seeing the tenth. His books are full of the results of this 
 accurate obser\^ation. Comparatively little in them is in- 
 vention ; the major part of everything is description of 
 something he has seen and noted. When he was en- 
 gaged in reporting, among eighty or ninety reporters, he 
 occupied the very highest rank, not merely for accuracy 
 in observing, but for marvellous quickness in transcribing. 
 His wonderful ability as an actor is known to all. Proba- 
 bly he would have been the greatest comedian of his 
 day if he had not been one of its greatest writers. His 
 love for the theatre was an absorbing passion. He was 
 quite as good a manager as actor, and could bring order 
 out of the chaos of rehearsals for private theatricals, as no 
 other man has ever been known to do. Carlyle, who was 
 one of the keenest observers of men our time has pro- 
 duced, said : " Dickens's essential faculty, I often say, is 
 that of a first-rate play-actor." Macready also gave it as 
 his opinion that Dickens was the only amateur with any 
 pretensions to talent that he had ever seen. 
 
 Among the weaknesses of his character were his love of 
 display, which amounted to ostentation sometimes; his
 
 ,,^ HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 fear of being slighted ; his vanity, which was prodigious i 
 anil a certain hardness, which at times amounted to ag- 
 gressiveness and almost to fierceness. I'he displays of 
 this latter (luality were very rare ; but they left an inefface- 
 able impression upon all witnesses. 
 
 The only political questions which deeply moved him 
 were those social problems to which his sympathy for the 
 poor had always directed his attention, — the Poor Law, 
 temperance, Sunday observance, punishment and prisons, 
 labor and strikes. But that he much influenced the legis- 
 lation of his country by his writings, no man can doubt. 
 In religion he was a Liberal. Born in the Church of 
 England, we are told by Professor Ward that he had so 
 strong an aversion for what seemed dogmatism of any 
 kind, that for a time — in 1843 — he connected himself 
 with a Unitarian congregation, and to Unitarian views his 
 own probably continued during his life most nearly to 
 approach. 
 
 Li his will he says : — 
 
 " I commit my soul to the mercy of God through our Lord 
 and Saviour Jesus Christ, and I exhort my dear children hum- 
 bly to try to guide themselves by the teaching of the New 
 Testament, in its broad spirit, and to put no faith in any 
 man's narrow construction of its letter here or there." 
 
 Although a man of deep emotional nature, his religion 
 was, after all, mostly a rehgion of good deeds. Helpfulness, 
 kindliness, — these were to him the supreme things. One 
 who knew him well wrote after his death : — 
 
 "I frankly confess that having met innumerable men and 
 "had dealings with innumerable men, I never met one with 
 an approach to his genuine, unaffected, unchanging kindness, 
 or one that ever found so sunshiny a pleasure in doing one a 
 kindness. I cannot call to mind that any request I ever 
 made to him was ungranted, or left without an attempt to 
 grant it." 
 
 Upon this point all who ever knew the man are well
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 349 
 
 agreed. It will suffice. To him who loved so much, if 
 need be much will be forgiven. 
 
 As we close this paper, how softly pass before us the 
 long procession of the men and women he has created, — 
 for they all seem thus to us, — not characters, but people, 
 many of them personal acquaintances of our own. There 
 are actual tears in our eyes as the little company of chil- 
 dren pass in review, led by David Copperfield, and fol- 
 lowed by Oliver Twist, with Paul Dombey in his wake, 
 and little Nell timidly pressing near ; while trooping after, 
 sad, tearful, or grotesque, come Florence Dombey, poor 
 Joe, Pip and Smike, Sloppy and Peepy, Little Dorrit and 
 Tiny Tim, and many more of those with whose sorrows 
 we have sympathized, and over each and all of whom we 
 have Avept hot tears in the days that are no more. Dream- 
 children, he calls them ; but the great world acknowledges 
 them as real beings, and sorrows and rejoices with them, 
 even more, it is to be feared, than it does sometimes with 
 the children of flesh and blood, homeless and forsaken as 
 many of them are. But for the sake of Tiny Tim many 
 an old Scrooge has softened his hard heart somewhat ; 
 and in memory of poor Joe many a hardened city man 
 has been a little less imperious to the beggar-boy about 
 "moving on." Even poor Smike has served the purpose 
 of ameliorating a trifle the hard lot of such unfortunates as 
 he, who are tyrannized over in public institutions ; and, 
 altogether, Dickens's dream-children can be said to have 
 been useful in their day and generation. 
 
 How the other old friends come following on ! We 
 have our own peculiar greeting for each. We cannot 
 help holding our sides as Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller 
 go by, followed by Captain Cuttle with his hook, the fin- 
 est gentleman of them all ; by the Major and Mrs. Bag- 
 net, by whom discipline is maintained in the group ; by 
 Micawber, with his large outlines and flowing periods ; 
 and by Mrs. Micawber and her relations, senseless imbe- 
 ciles or unmitigated scoundrels all, as her husband testi- 
 fies ; by Mrs. Gamp, by Barkis, and even the young man
 
 350 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 by the name of Guppy. A smile spreads over the face 
 of the whole reading world at the bare mention of their 
 names. How the smiles deepen into tears as we think 
 over the other friends to whom he has introduced us, — 
 mutual friends of us all ; of whom we talk when we con- 
 gregate together, with just as much of real feeling and 
 interest as we do of other friends of flesh and blood, 
 laugh over their foibles and follies, pity their sorrows, 
 blame their acts, and all with no other feeling than that of 
 utter reality. 
 
 Will little Nell's friend, the old schoolmaster, ever cease 
 to draw tears from our eyes? Shall we ever weary of 
 gentle Tom Pinch ? Shall we not always touch our hats 
 to Joe Gargery ? Shall we ever cease loving Mr. Jarn- 
 dyce, even when the wind is in the east? And will 
 Agnes and Esther ever pall upon our taste? Not, we 
 verily believe, until the sources of feeling are dried up in 
 us forever, and we have grown indifferent to all of earth. 
 What an array of them there are, too ! The bare cata- 
 logue of their names would fill a volume, and it would not 
 be bad reading to the genuine Dickens lover, — recalling, 
 as each name would, so much of vivid portrayal, and 
 starting so many associations in the mind. But there is 
 no need to repeat the names ; the big, dull old world 
 long ago learned them by heart. Nor will they soon be 
 relegated to the shades. While the tide of English speech 
 flows on, they will linger, component parts of the language 
 itself.
 
 GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 WHILE the great woman who wrote under the novt 
 de plume of George Eliot was ahve, there was 
 much appreciative interest and much unlawful curiosity 
 felt regarding her private life. This as a matter of course. 
 No such striking personality as hers could project itself into 
 a time of dulness and mediocrity without exciting unusual 
 interest and attention. And the half-knowledge which had 
 been gained of her life and character served as an active 
 stimulus to this curiosity. One or two leading facts in her 
 history had become known and had been made the most of 
 by a gossip-loving time ; but aside from these isolated facts 
 there was very little known of George Eliot, except by a 
 little close circle of personal friends, who seem to have 
 refrained in a remarkable manner from writing of her in 
 the newspapers. That modern and almost purely Ameri- 
 can institution, the interviewer, allowed her to escape, 
 and even up to the time of her death comparatively little 
 was said of her except as a writer of books. But the in- 
 terest in her as a woman has been deepening constantly 
 since her death, fed by some half-revelations which have 
 been made ; and few books of our own time have been 
 so eagerly anticipated and so universally sought after as 
 the biography by her husband, which lately appeared. 
 Here at last we have that wonderful woman painted by 
 her own hand ; not in an autobiography, where a person 
 poses for the public, but in the private letters and journals
 
 ^-2 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 of n lifetime. Like Mrs. Cniiyle, she had unconsciously 
 drawn her own portrait from day to day. An admiring 
 worlii looks upon the work, and with one voice must pro- 
 noimce it well done. For it is easy to gather from these 
 unconscious touches everything of real importance in re- 
 gard to the character and life of this woman. Much as 
 we should have enjoyed the letters and journals in a 
 complete form, untouched by pruning fingers, we cannot 
 but heartily approve the wisdom of Mr. Cross in carefully 
 selecting and editing them. He has shown himself a 
 person of excellent taste and judgment, and one could 
 scarcely ask to fall into better hands, if one's life must be 
 given to the public at all when one has travelled away 
 from the things of time and sense. 
 
 Let us see, tlien, what manner of woman this was who 
 held a world entranced by the splendor of her genius for 
 so many years. Here is one of the earliest glimpses of 
 the child : — 
 
 " Any one who happened to look through the windows of 
 Griff House would have seen a pretty picture in the dining- 
 room Saturday evening after tea. The powerful, middle- 
 aged man, with the strongly marked features, sits in his 
 deep leather-covered arm-chair at the right-hand corner of 
 the ruddy fire-place, with the head of the ' little wench ' be- 
 tween his knees. The child turns over the book with pic- 
 tures which she wishes her father to explain to her, or 
 that perhaps she prefers explaining to him. Her rebellious 
 hair is all over her eyes, much vexing the pale, energetic 
 mother who sits on the opposite side of the fire, cumbered 
 with much service, letting no instant of time escape the in- 
 evitable click of the knitting-needles. The father is already 
 proud of the astonishing and growing inteUigence of his little 
 girl. An old-fashioned child, already living in a world of her 
 own imagination, impressible to her finger-tips, and ready 
 to give her views upon any subject." 
 
 To readers of " The Mill on the Floss " little descrip- 
 tion of her childdife will be necessary. She has, in 
 Maggie, pictured herself as nearly as possible during 
 childhood. Here is her own description : —
 
 GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 353 
 
 " A creature full of eager, passionate longings for all that 
 was beautiful and glad ; thirsty for all knowledge ; with an 
 ear straining after dreamy music that died away, and would 
 not come to her ; with a blind, unconscious yearning for 
 something that would link together the wonderful impres- 
 sions of this mysterious life and give her soul a sense of 
 home in it. No wonder, when there is this contrast between 
 the outward and the inward, that painful collisions come 
 of it." 
 
 In Adam Bede we have a partial portrait of her father, 
 and there are other striking resemblances to him in Caleb 
 Garth, although neither character is to be really identified 
 with him. Mrs. Poyser bears the same partial relation to 
 her mother. With these people for the dramatis persofice, 
 the drama could scarcely fail to be a striking one. The 
 relation existing between herself and her sister is described 
 in " Dorothea and Celia," — no intellectual affinity, but 
 strong family affection. The repression of these early 
 years she afterwards refers to in saying, — 
 
 *' You may try, but you can never imagine, what it is to 
 have a man's force of genius in you, and yet to suffer the 
 slavery of being a girl." 
 
 During her early youth she writes thus to a friend : — 
 
 " I really feel for you, sacrificing as you are your own 
 tastes and comforts for the pleasure of others, and that in a 
 manner the most trying to rebellious flesh and blood ; for I 
 verily believe that in most cases it requires more of a martyr's 
 spirit to endure with patience and cheerfulness daily cross- 
 ings and interruptions of our petty desires and pursuits and 
 to rejoice in them, if they can be made to conduce to God's 
 glory and our own sanctification, than even to lay down our 
 lives for the truth." 
 
 Deep religious feeling was one of the most striking 
 characteristics of this period of her youth. On her nine- 
 teenth birthday she writes : — 
 
 23
 
 ,-, HO.VE LIFE OF CKEAT Ai'THOKS. 
 
 ■* M2T the Lord give me such an insight into what is tmlj 
 good that I mar not rest contented with making Christianitj 
 a mere addendum to mj parsnits, or with tacking it as a 
 mere fringe to mj gannents ! Uaj I se^ to be sanctified 
 wfaoUj!" 
 
 age was the ir. ^orid, for 
 
 winch she ' -' :ae of 
 
 i eipres: i* love was al- 
 
 lii her strength 
 
 "as shown 
 
 ??? home
 
 GEORGE ELIOT. 3-- 
 
 kved to her dying day. It was shown iater on in tie 
 pasionate and absoibing love she gave to J.Ir. Lewes 
 throughout a lifetime, and which seemed bat to deepen 
 and widen with the yeais; and in the tenderness and 
 thoughtfulness of the mother-love she gnve to his children, 
 and which seems to lack not one of die elements erf" 
 real maternal feeling. This strong, pitying passionate 
 love of heis — a love hardly to be conceived (rf by odd 
 and self-contained natares — is the key to the (me actioTi 
 of her life requiring apology and charitable constmcz:-. 
 In the first place, she pitied Mr. Lewes for ti.f -— :— 5 
 of his life and for the nriiairhfuliiess of the ;- 
 
 whom he had lavished his heart's devotion, an e 
 
 had forgiven for the first onence. only tc : e 
 
 second time. Xext, the strong feeling- : 
 characterized her narore rebelled ar 
 
 bound him to this unfaithml wife sin^ -. -~ _- 
 
 orice forgiven her ; and. finally, the desire she :'r .: : : :: n:- 
 fort his loneliness and redeem his life overcn 
 scruples which the int^rity of her natnre mz5. 
 fi^onted her with, and she defied the law which was : 
 to her and the conventionalities which were den- - - 
 the same act, and assumed tiie tie which held 
 lo}-al allegiance until death sever-" "• "~ v 
 iaDusion she made to it in all he: ; r - ;^ 
 
 we know. This was written : , n. ; . 1;. 
 
 Mis. Eray. 
 
 ** If there is any one actxm or lelafion of my life vliidi is« 
 and always has been. prc^oondlT sokhzs. it is my rdatkn to 
 
 Mr. Lewes- It is. however, natural enough that voa should 
 mistake me in many ways, for not onlv are vou miacqnamted 
 with Mr. Lewes *s real character, and the coarse of his ac- 
 tions, but also it is several years since yoa and I were much 
 together, and it is p>ossib]e that the modincatioas my mind 
 has undergone tray be quite in the cppv>site direcdcm of what 
 yoa imagine. Xo one can be better aw^re than yoaisdf that 
 it is possible for two people to hold diferen: opinions on 
 momentous subjects with equal sincerity and aa equally ear-
 
 ^,36 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 nest conviction that tlicir respective opinions are alone the 
 truly moral ones. If we clitTer on the subject of the marriage 
 laws. I at least can believe that you cleave to what you be- 
 lieve to be good, and I don't know of anything in the nature 
 of your views that should prevent you from believing the 
 same of me. How far we differ I think we neither of us 
 know ; for I am ignorant of your precise views, and appar- 
 ently you attribute to me both feelings and opinions which 
 are not mine. We cannot set each other right in letters; 
 but one thing I can tell you in few words. Light and easily 
 broken ties are what I neither desire theoretically nor could 
 live for practically. Women who are satisfied with such ties 
 do not act as I have done. That any unworldly, unsupersti- 
 tious person who is sufficiently acquainted with the realities 
 of life can pronounce my relation to Mr. Lewes immoral, I 
 can only understand by remembering how subtle and com- 
 plex are the influences which mould opinion. But I do re- 
 member this, and I indulge in no arrogant or uncharitable 
 thoughts about those who condemn us, even though we 
 might have expected a somewhat different verdict. From 
 the majority of persons we never, of course, looked for any- 
 thing but condemnation. We are leading no life of self- 
 indulgence, except, indeed, that being happy in each other 
 we find everything easy. We are working hard to provide 
 for others better than we provide for ourselves, and to fulfil 
 every responsibility that lies upon us." 
 
 These responsibilities were not light, for they were poor 
 and not yet famous, and must support by their pens not 
 only themselves, but three boys of Mr. Lewes, and their 
 mother. This they found no easy thing to do at first; 
 but when the great success of George EHot's novels had 
 been attained, their financial affairs became easy, and 
 continued so to the end. 
 
 Their life together seemed to be one of unbroken love 
 and confidence, their delight in each other increasing, if 
 possible, with time. The letters and journals of George 
 Eliot are full of expressions of this love and trust, and 
 give us very pleasing pictures of the character and life of 
 Mr. Lewes. He seems to have been an eminently genial, 
 kind, loving, and appreciative man ; a man, too, of fasci-
 
 GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 357 
 
 nating manners and wonderfully keen intellect, though 
 totally lacking in any such genius as that which has made 
 George Eliot immortal. Charming glimpses of their 
 home hfe occur on every page, — a home life that was 
 sweet and well ordered, pervaded by such a spirit of 
 love and devotion as would sanctify any home. George 
 Eliot was the most womanly of women, despite what 
 is often called her mascuhne intellect; and she made 
 a genuine home, after the true and womanly fashion, de- 
 lighting in good order and neatness and such attention 
 to details as is an absolute necessity in the formation 
 of a happy home. She never allowed her literary work 
 to prevent her from overseeing that home, and in her 
 younger days seems to have had a real taste for executing 
 these housekeeping details herself. There was no re- 
 mote hint of Mrs. Jellyby in her, but strong, practical 
 common-sense in all the management of her family affairs, 
 and a real delight in having all things well ordered and 
 agreeable in her home. This is one of the most pleasing 
 of the many revelations of this book. We love to know 
 that she was a true woman, and no intellectual monstrosity. 
 The glimpses that are given of her nursing her father 
 through his long last sickness are very sweet and touching, 
 and everything connected with her devotion to Mr. Lewes's 
 children, down to poor Thornie's death, makes us love 
 her more and more. Indeed, it is a strong, pure, loving, 
 and noble woman that is brought out on every page of 
 this Life. But a very sad and deep-thoughted woman, 
 too ; one to whom pity goes out as naturally as love. 
 She was afflicted with ill health all her life, and the record 
 of all this suffering is at times oppressive. One can- 
 not help wishing that we might have had the same 
 woman strong and well, and wondering what sort of books 
 would have been the result. Far pleasanter and more 
 cheering, no doubt, for some of them are heart- breakingly 
 sad as it is, but perhaps no deeper or truer. Then, too, 
 she suffered keenly through her sympathies, feeling for all 
 loss and wrong with the acutest pain ; and her lack of
 
 .rS HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 faith intensified all her suffering. So did lack of hope ; 
 for she was almost as destitute of this cheering friend 
 of man as Carlyle himself, and was given to despond- 
 ency as the sparks fly upward. In her earlier writing the 
 tears and smiles are blended, her humor lighting up the 
 dark places ; but the deepening years deepened her 
 gloom, and her later writing is sombre almost throughout. 
 Vet she had great capacity for joy as well as for sorrow, 
 and enjoyed with the utmost intensity the brighter parts 
 of life, and retained this sense of the pleasure of life even 
 to the end. She speaks much of the intense happiness 
 of her life with Mr. Lewes, and they seem never to have 
 been separated, taking all journeys and holidays together, 
 and never wearying of what she calls their '■^solitude a 
 deux." Such expressions as these are very frequent 
 throughout the book : — 
 
 " I never have anything to call out my ill-humor or discon- 
 tent, — which you know was always ready enough to come 
 on slight call, — and I have everything to call out love and 
 gratitude. I am very happy, — happy in the highest blessing 
 life can give us, the perfect love and sympathy of a nature 
 that stimulates my own to healthful activity. My life has 
 deepened unspeakably during the last year. I feel a greater 
 capacity for moral and intellectual enjoyment, a more acute 
 sense of my deficiencies in the past, a more solemn desire to 
 be faithful to coming duties, than I remember at any former 
 period of my life. And my happiness has deepened, too ; 
 the blessedness of a perfect love and union grows daily. 
 Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think 
 the long, sad years of youth were worth living for the sake 
 of middle age." 
 
 And this extract from the journal of Mr. Lewes leaves 
 us his thought about their life, which is so like her 
 own : — 
 
 " I owe Spencer another and a deeper debt. It was 
 through him that I learned to know Marian, — to know her 
 was to love her, — and since then my life has been a new
 
 GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 359 
 
 birth. To her I owe all my prosperity and all my happiness. 
 God bless her ! " 
 
 That her great books would ever have been written 
 without this loving sympathy and appreciation on the part 
 of Mr. Lewes, seems extremely doubtful. She needed 
 encouragement at every step, being prone to despair about 
 her writings, and she had the utmost reliance upon the 
 judgment and taste of the companion of her life. And 
 he seems to have been everything that heart could desire 
 as loving critic and counsellor. Her sympathy with the 
 lives and hopes of others is very charming, particularly 
 with the love and marriage of their eldest boy, though 
 it is shown constantly in a true womanly way ; as, for 
 instance : — 
 
 "A pretty thing has happened to an acquaintance of mine, 
 which is quite a tonic to one's hope. She has all her life 
 been working in various ways, as housekeeper, governess, 
 etc., — a dear little dot about four feet eleven in height; 
 pleasant to look at and clever ; a working-woman without 
 any of those epicene queernesses that belong to the class. 
 More than once she has told me that courage quite forsook 
 her. She felt there was no good in living and striving. 
 Well, a man of fortune and accomplishments has just fallen 
 in love with her — now she is thirty-three. It is the prettiest 
 story of a swift-decided passion, and made me cry for joy. 
 
 Madame B and I went with her to buy her wedding 
 
 clothes. If you will only imagine all I have not said, you 
 will think this a very charming fairy tale." 
 
 In 1878 her happy companionship with the man she 
 had so passionately loved was ended by his death. The 
 only entry in her diary in 1879 is this : " Here I and sor- 
 row sit." The desolation of her life told terribly upon 
 her health and spirits. She saw no one, wrote to no one, 
 had no thoughts, as she tells us, for many months. Among 
 the first lines she wrote were these : — 
 
 " Some time, if I live, I shall be able to see you, — perhaps 
 sooner than any one else, — but not yet. Life seems to get
 
 ■^Co IfO.VE LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 Inrder instead of easier. When I said some time, I meant 
 still a distant time. I want to live a little time, that I may 
 do certain things for his sake. So I try to keep up my 
 strength, and I work as much as I can to save my mind from 
 imbecility. But that is all at present. But what used to be 
 joy is joy no longer, and what is pain is easier, because he 
 has not to bear it." 
 
 Again : — 
 
 "You must excuse my weakness, remembering that for 
 nearly twenty-five years I have been used to find my happiness 
 in his. I can find it nowhere else. But we can live and be 
 helpful without happiness, and I have had more than myriads 
 who were and are better fitted for it." 
 
 As soon as she was able to see any friends, Mr. Cross, 
 who was an old and valued one, began to visit her and 
 be helpful to her in many ways, and he soon became a 
 comfort to that gentle nature to which some prop was 
 indispensable. She grew accustomed to him, and began 
 to rely upon his support. After a while she could read 
 with him, and her mind renewed its vigor. Still later she 
 could play for him, and the consolation of music was 
 added to her life. As the months went by she leaned 
 upon him more and more, and found real comfort in his 
 kindly ministrations. This is the first allusion to him in 
 her letters : — 
 
 " I have a comfortable country practitioner to watch over 
 me from day to day, and there is a devoted friend who 
 is backward and forward continually to see that I lack 
 nothing." 
 
 Of the outcome of that watchful tenderness Mr. Cross 
 says : — 
 
 " As the year went on George Eliot began to see all her 
 old friends again. But her life was nevertheless a life of 
 heart-loneliness. Accustomed as she had been for so many 
 years to solitude a deux, the want of close companionship 
 continued to be very bitterly felt. She was in the habit of 
 going with me very frequently to the National Gallery and
 
 GEORGE ELIOT. 361 
 
 to other exhibitions of pictures. This constant companion- 
 ship engrossed me completely and was a new interest to her. 
 A bond of mutual dependence had been formed between us. 
 It was finally decided that our marriage should take place as 
 soon and as privately as possible." 
 
 She writes thus of this marriage : — 
 
 " All this is wonderful blessing falling to me beyond my 
 share, after I had thought that my life was ended, and that, 
 so to speak, my coffin was ready for me in the next room. 
 Deep down below there is a hidden river of sadness, but this 
 must always be with those who have lived so long ; but I 
 am able to enjoy my newly reopened life. I shall be a better, 
 more loving creature than I could have been in solitude. To 
 be constantly, lovingly grateful for the gift of a perfect love 
 is the best illumination of one's mind to all the possible good 
 there may be in store for man on this troublous little planet- 
 I was getting hard, and if I had decided differently I think I 
 should have become selfish. 
 
 " The whole history is something like a miracle-legend. 
 But instead of any former affection being displaced, I seem 
 to have recovered the loving sympathy that I was in danger 
 of losing. I mean that I had been conscious of a certain 
 drying-up of tenderness in me, and that now the spring 
 seems to have risen again." 
 
 The consolations of this new love and tenderness were 
 to cheer her but a little time, for they were scarcely 
 settled in the new home after the trip abroad, during 
 which time she had excellent health and enjoyed every- 
 thing much, before the final illness came, and '' the fever 
 called living was over at last." 
 
 Amid the falling of the bitter rain of winter, in the 
 deadliest desolation of the year, they bore her to her rest 
 amid the silent. She whose speech has endeared her to 
 the whole thinking world, whose thoughts have borne 
 us like an anthem ever upward to the loftiest and the 
 best, all her sacred service done, shall know hereafter no 
 more work, no more device, but the deep calm of rest, 
 untroubled by the vexing sights and shows of time.
 
 362 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 We cannot think that she met the solennn, swift re- 
 lease with dread. She looked too deeply into hfe to 
 make of it a mere thing of daily bread, of common 
 homely joys and trifling labors ; but all its sorest problems 
 weighetl her down, ami all its deepest doubt and dull de- 
 spairing went with her to the last, saddening even the 
 happiest moments of her hfe. And the falling of that 
 cold and solemn winter rain into that grave, about which 
 gathered many of the greatest minds in England with 
 reverent tears, seems not sad but sweet, — a kind re- 
 lease from the stress and strain of a tumultuous existence. 
 Nevermore will that still heart be crushed and riven by 
 wrongs and woes which she has no power to aid ; never- 
 more life's terrors hold and o'ermaster her ; nevermore a 
 questioning world look upon her in judgment. With the 
 great of every time and nation she has at last taken her 
 place, and will hold it evermore.
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY was born at Holne Vicar- 
 age, under the brow of Dartmore, in 1819 ; but his 
 family removed almost immediately into Nottinghamshire, 
 although he always felt himself to be, and called himself, a 
 Devonshire man. Of his parents he himself gives account 
 as follows : — 
 
 " We are but the disjecta membra of a most remarkable 
 pair of parents. Our talent, such as it is, is altogether hered- 
 itary. My father was a magnificent man in body and mind, 
 and was said to possess every talent except that of using his 
 talents. My mother, on the contrary, had a quite extraor- 
 dinary practical and administrative power ; and she com- 
 bines with it, even at her advanced age (seventy-nine), my 
 father's passion for knowledge, and the sentiment and fancy 
 of a young girl." 
 
 The product of the union of such characters could 
 hardly be otherwise than unique ; and we see in Charles 
 Kingsley a man of powerful nature, — strong, aggressive, 
 administrative, — but at the same time deeply poetical, 
 and tender almost to weakness. We find in him a union 
 of the intensest sympathy with the weak and helpless, 
 and a comprehension of the flaws and defects which 
 make up their character, which seems at times merciless 
 and almost heartless. We find in him remarkable com- 
 bative power, united to a desire to use that power purely 
 and simply for the defence and protection of those who
 
 ^64 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 are unnble to protect and help themselves. We find a 
 man who can deal heaviest blows, who loves the excite- 
 ment of a battle, and never shuns an occasion for a fight 
 in behalf of Inmianity, but who was so sensitive to an 
 unfair tlirust from an opponent that his life was perma- 
 nently embittered by the injustice and malignity of literary 
 and political critics of the opposing party. In short, he 
 united a royal aggressiveness shaped and guided entirely 
 by his Christian principles, and a tenderness and sensitive- 
 ness such as are rarely found in so strong and fearless 
 a man. 
 
 In childhood he is described as strong and active, but 
 not expert at any games ; while he bore pain wonderfully 
 well, and excelled in all feats that required nerve and 
 daring. He was well prepared when he went to Cam- 
 bridge, and obtained a scholarship at Magdalen the first 
 year. He disliked the prescribed course intensely, and 
 sometimes neglected his work and gave himself up to 
 wild sport in the fens, which then presented much of 
 the bleak picturesqueness which he has immortalized in 
 his prose idyls. He was very popular, but not very 
 sociable, and lived then, as afterwards, a most strenuous 
 life. On July 6, 1839, while visiting in Oxfordshire, he 
 met his future wife, Fanny, the daughter of Pascoe 
 Grenfell and Georgiana St. Leger his wnfe. Circum- 
 stances seemed to give the lover very Httle hope, and 
 in intervals of recklessness Kingsley often dreamed and 
 talked of going to America and joining the wild hunters 
 on the prairies. Had he done so, what bits of strong 
 and striking description should we not have had 1 Few 
 writers have the photographic accuracy of Kingsley, 
 united to so vivid an imagination; consequently his 
 pictures are all of striking quality. Look at this char- 
 acteristic bit, when Amyas and his friends walk to the 
 cliffs of Lundy : — 
 
 "As they approached, a raven, who sat upon the topmost 
 stone, black against the bright blue sky, flapped lazily away,
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 365 
 
 and sunk down the abysses of the cliff, as if he had scented 
 the corpses beneath the surge. Below them from the gull- 
 rock rose a thousand birds, and filled the air with sound ; 
 the choughs cackled, the hacklets wailed, the great black- 
 backs laughed querulous defiance at the intruders, and a 
 single falcon with an angry bark darted out beneath their 
 feet, and hung poised high aloft, watching the sea-fowl which 
 swung slowly round and round below." 
 
 In all his books we have these glowing pictures of 
 the natural world, intense, graven in as it were with a 
 burin, and colored with tropical magnificence. 
 
 Soon after taking orders Charles Kingsley was given 
 the living of Eversley, which he retained to the end of his 
 life. His work there was full of hardship ; but he was 
 young and strong, and had a superabundant energy which 
 no toil daunted. Eversley was a democratic parish of 
 "heth croppers," and there were few gentry within its 
 borders. These peasants were hereditary poachers on 
 Windsor Forest and other preserves in the neighborhood, 
 and possessed one and all with a spirit of almost lawless 
 independence. But it was one of Kingsley's most ami- 
 able characteristics through life to be able to make friends 
 of uncultivated people without any painful effort of con- 
 descension. He visited these poor people of his parish 
 constantly, until he knew every person intimately, and 
 could speak to each with a knowledge of his inmost 
 needs ; and their needs, in most cases, were of a very 
 earthly and commonplace kind. 
 
 " What is the use," he would say, "of my talking to a 
 lot of hungry paupers about heaven? Sir, as my clerk 
 said to me yesterday, there is a weight on their hearts, 
 and they care for no hope and no change, for they know 
 they can be no worse off than they are." But he did 
 better for them than to preach far-away sermons above 
 their comprehension. " If a man or woman were suffer- 
 ing or dying, he would go to them five or six times a 
 day, — and night as well as day, — for his own heart's sake 
 as well as for their soul's sake." And he won the respect
 
 366 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 of these people for the Church which they had long neg- 
 loctctl, aixl which had ceased to stand for anything to 
 them, until, " when he announced the first confirmation, 
 and invited all who wished to take advantage of it to 
 come to the rectory on a certain evening for instruction, 
 the stud groom from Sir John Cope's, a respectable man 
 of five-and-thirty, was among the first to come, bringing a 
 message from the whips and stablemen to say that they had 
 all been confirmed once, but if Mr. Kingsley wished it they 
 would all be happy to come again." This was at a time 
 when England was in a really dangerous state of tumult 
 and discontent, and when the Church, through the heart- 
 lessness and folly of its leaders, had lost almost all hold 
 upon the people. Is there not in it a hint to the unsuc- 
 cessful preachers of our time ? 
 
 In a few years he had raised the whole parish of Eversley 
 to a higher level, and had set his mark upon every indi- 
 vidual soul in his keeping. And after he had been 
 appointed to the canonry of Westminster, and was 
 called to preach to immense congregations there, he 
 felt the burden of these new souls, as he had felt that 
 of his more humble charge. He felt that he was per- 
 sonally called to speak some vital word to every soul 
 within his hearing, and the strain upon him was great, as 
 he realized how difficult a thing this was to do in these 
 later days. He expressed his sense of this responsibility 
 in his characteristic way. " Whenever," he said, " I walk 
 along the choir to the pulpit I wish myself dead ; and 
 whenever I walk back I wish myself more dead." But 
 though his sense of failure was great, it is certain that those 
 noble sermons in the grand abbey left their ineffaceable 
 mark upon some of that multitude of young men who 
 crowded the north and south transepts of the abbey, and 
 stood there for two hours through a long musical service, 
 that they might hear Kingsley when he spoke ; for he 
 spoke with characteristic power and eloquence, moving all 
 by his earnestness and evident sincerity. " If you want to 
 be stirred to the very depths of your heart," said one of
 
 CHARLES KINGS LEY. 367 
 
 the minor canons to Canon Farrar, " come to the abbey 
 and hear Canon Kingsley." And when he preached, as 
 he often did, to classes of college boys, even the youngest, 
 they always found something pertinent to their own cases 
 in what he said. 
 
 He had married in the early days of Eversley the one 
 woman he ever loved, and the marriage was one of pecu- 
 liar happiness, so that his home life was always of the 
 brightest. A family of beautiful children sprung up around 
 him, and in his peculiar fondness for pets he always had 
 dogs about him that were scarcely less dear than his 
 children. He mourned the death of one after another 
 of his favorites, until, when the last one died, he said he 
 would have no more, — the pang of parting with them was 
 too keen. 
 
 The influence of his books as they came along one after 
 another — "Yeast," "Alton Locke," "Hypatia," "West- 
 ward Ho," " Two Years Ago " — was of a stimulating, even 
 of an exciting, nature, particularly that of the earlier ones. 
 Like nearly all men of genius, when young he was a rad- 
 ical, and upon the pubhcation of his first books the con- 
 servatives all took up arms against him. In review after 
 review, all learning, all sincerity, all merit was denied him. 
 He bore up under a storm of obloquy and misrepresenta- 
 tion. This simply because he had shown some of the 
 sufferings of the poor, — given some vivid pictures of 
 life in England as it was in those days, before the repeal 
 of the Corn Laws had mitigated a little the sufferings of the 
 dependent masses ; and had expressed some human sym- 
 pathy with all this fruitless pain, and a manly indignation 
 at some forms of atrocious wrong. But there was nothing 
 in his teaching of the people which should have given 
 offence to the veriest conseivative. The main burden 
 of it was that " workingmen must emancipate themselves 
 from the tyranny of their own vices before they could be 
 emancipated from the tyranny of bad social arrangements ; 
 that they must cultivate the higher elements of a com- 
 mon humanity in themselves before they could obtain
 
 36S 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 their share in the heritage of national civilization. He 
 discouraged every approach to illegality or violence, and 
 ihiring the riots of that exciting time worked as hard as 
 the Uuke of \\'cllington to keep the peace." But the 
 rhilistincs of that day looked upon it as crime in a ben- 
 eficed clergyman to enter into friendly intercourse for 
 any purpose whatever with revolutionists, as they called 
 the agitators, who were engaged in what seem to us now 
 to have been great reforms. They denounced him for a 
 Chartist, a name which he proudly owned, although he 
 never went the lengths of the real leaders in that move- 
 ment ; and owning, as his enemies did, all the powerful 
 papers and reviews, they systematically belittled his work 
 and prejudiced the minds of many people against him to 
 his dying day. 
 
 This misinterpretation of his work and misinterpreta- 
 tion of his motives was a keen grief to him throughout 
 life. He never became hardened to such attacks, and 
 they afflicted him to the end. " * Hypatia,' " he once 
 said, " was written with my heart's blood, and was 
 received, as I expected, with curses from many of the 
 very churchmen whom I was trying to warn and save." 
 But he was more than repaid for this misinterpretation 
 and persecution by the orthodox and conservative classes, 
 by seeing the efforts he had put forth — some of them, at 
 least — crowned with considerable success even in his life- 
 time ; while he was conscious of having sown much seed 
 that would ultimately take root in reform. He never 
 faltered, although he grew very weak and discouraged at 
 times. He writes thus to a friend : — 
 
 " Pray for me ; I could lie down and die sometimes. A 
 poor fool of a fellow, and yet feeling thrust upon all sorts of 
 great and unspeakable paths, instead of being left in peace 
 to classify butterflies and catch trout." 
 
 Long before his death he saw the condition of the 
 English poor very materially modified. Bad as things
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 369 
 
 are in England to-day, they are much better than in the 
 days when Charles Kingsley began his labors. 
 
 He was accused of growing conservative in later life, 
 and doubtless he did so, as it is natural that man should 
 do ; but he had witnessed great improvement during his 
 life, and perhaps felt that the forces which had been 
 called into play needed guiding and directing now, 
 rather than further stimulation. But, like all dreamers, 
 he was obliged to bid farewell to many of his dreams 
 for the good of his fellow-men as he grew older. There 
 was intense sadness to him in this, and Kingsley during 
 all his later hfe was a very sad man. Striving to be cheery 
 and helpful, as he had ever been, there was yet in his 
 face the look of a defeated man, — the look of a man 
 upon whom hfe had palled, and who had scarcely hope 
 enough left to carry him through to the end. There was 
 remarkable pathos in many of his sermons, and ineffable 
 sadness in many of his letters. Doubtless much of this 
 was due to overwork, for he had overworked himself sys- 
 tematically for many years, and could not escape the con- 
 sequences. He paid the penalty in flagging spirits and 
 a growing weariness of hfe. During the journey in 
 America, near the close of his life, there was but a 
 forced interest where once the feeling would have been 
 real and keen; and we find him once writing like 
 this : — 
 
 " As I ride I jog myself and say, ' You stupid fellow, wake 
 up ! Do you see that ? and that 1 Do you know where you 
 are?' And my other self answers, 'Don't bother, I have seen 
 so much I can't take in any more ; and I don't care about it 
 at all. I longed to get here, I have been more than satisfied 
 with being here, and now I long to get back again.'" 
 
 And, again, from St. Louis he writes : — 
 
 " I wish already that our heads were turned homeward, 
 and that we had done the great tour, and had it not to do." 
 
 There was also much of pathos in his speech at the 
 Lotos Club in 1874, where he said : — 
 
 24
 
 ,.o HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 " One of the kind wishes expressed for me is long life. 
 Let anything be asked for me except that. Let us live hard, 
 work hard, go at a good pace, get to our journey's end as 
 soon as possible ; then let the post-horse get the shoulder 
 out of the collar. ... I have lived long enough to feel like 
 the old post-horse, — very thankful as the end draws near. 
 . . . Long life is the last thing that I desire. It may be that 
 as one grows older one acquires more and more the painful 
 consciousness of the difference between what ought to be 
 done and what can be done, and sits down more quietly 
 when one gets the wrong side of fifty to let others start up 
 to do for us things we cannot do ourselves. But it is the 
 highest pleasure that a man can have who has (to his own 
 exceeding comfort) turned down the hill at last, to believe 
 that younger spirits will rise up after him and catch the lamp 
 of truth — as in the old lamp-bearing race of Greece — out of 
 his hand before it expires, and carry it on to the goal with 
 swifter and more even feet." 
 
 He did not live long after his return from America. 
 He took cold Advent Sunday, and soon was down with 
 the sickness from which he never recovered. His wife 
 was dangerously ill at the same time, and he made him- 
 self seriously worse by leaving his bed once or twice to 
 go to her, where he said " heaven was." To this wife 
 he had been a devoted lover for over thirty years, and 
 retained to the last moment his chivalric devotion. To 
 his children and his servants he was the ideal parent and 
 master, and to every one who had known him personally 
 the ideal friend. His parish was only a large family, 
 where he was held in like honor and esteem. Would 
 that we all in these restless times might find some of the 
 secret springs of his life, and thus make, like him, 
 
 " Life, death, and that vast forever 
 One grand, sweet song " 1 
 
 His wife remained for a little time to mourn his loss, 
 although he believed at the time of his death that she 
 would not live, and spoke of the supreme blessing of not 
 being divided in the hour of death from her he had loved
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 371 
 
 SO well. She lived to tell to the world, in a touching and 
 tender manner, the story of that life of " deep and strange 
 sorrows," as he once expressed it ; and then followed him, 
 gladly, into the rest that remains for all who toil earnestly 
 and worthily as he had done. It was proposed to bury 
 him in Westminster Abbey, but agreeably to his own 
 wishes in the matter he was buried in the little church- 
 yard at Eversley, where he had familiar acquaintance with 
 every tree and shrub, and where the poor, to whom he 
 had been so much while living, could still feel him near 
 to them though dead. Upon the white marble cross are 
 carved the words, "God is Love," — the words which 
 had been the central thought of all his eloquent and effec- 
 tive preaching, and the words by which he had shaped 
 his whole life ; for, in imitation of that God he so rever- 
 enced, he had made his life one of active love and help- 
 fulness toward the whole brotherhood of man. Few men 
 of loftier aims, higher purposes, purer spirit, have ever 
 lived ; few men who fulfilled the priestly office in so high 
 and conscientious a manner have been known in our day ; 
 few reformers who have been so aggressive, and yet so 
 temperate in action ; few men personally so loved by 
 those who knew him intimately. Soft be the turf at Ever- 
 sley upon him, and sweet the sighing of her summer 
 winds about his 2:rave !
 
 t^r^Vl 
 
 C^"6 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 IN the very heart of the great city of London, shut in 
 by dingy brick walls that closed upon him to such 
 an extent that it was only by going into the middle of 
 the street and looking up that he could ever see the sky, 
 in the early part of the century, was born the man who has 
 the finest eye for the beauties of the natural world, and 
 the most eloquent pen in describing them, that the century 
 has produced. 
 
 We will make no exception of poet or painter in this 
 statement ; for John Ruskin sees more and better than 
 any poet of the day, and can give in words a more vivid 
 picture of a scene he loves than any painter can produce. 
 Indeed, few men have lived at any time who could color 
 a landscape as Ruskin colors it, or who have so delicate 
 an eye for the shyest and most sequestered beauties, as 
 has this poet-painter. Probably Wordsworth comes nearer 
 to Ruskin than any other modern writer in his love of 
 the natural world, and he has given us the finest descrip- 
 tions we have of some phases of Nature ; but there is a 
 glow and a depth of feeling about Raskin's descriptions 
 which even Wordsworth lacks. A real worship of Nature 
 runs through all that he has written. Think of a child 
 with such a nature as this brought up in a crowded city, 
 — a city unlike many others, especially in this country 
 and on the Continent, where lovely glimpses of Nature 
 may be had from open squares, or streets leading out
 
 JOHN RUSKIN. T^'jT^ 
 
 into lovely country roads. In New York one can hardly 
 walk anywhere without catching glimpses of the water 
 and the shores of New Jersey or Long Island. Most 
 boys, we fancy, penetrate to the Battery and enjoy its 
 superb outlook ; or they have the run of Central Park, 
 where they make a sort of acquaintance with Nature, which, 
 if somewhat artificial, is much better than no knowledge 
 at all. In Edinburgh the inhabitants live under the shadow 
 of its two fantastic mountains, and from their windows can 
 trace the windings of its glittering frith. Not even the 
 lofty houses of the Canongate or the battlements of the 
 castle afford the eye an equal pleasure. In Venice not 
 even the Palace of the Doge, the most beautiful building 
 in the world, or the matchless walls of fair St. Mark's, can 
 keep the eye from seeking the blue waters of the Adriatic 
 or the purple outlines of the Alps. Beautiful Verona has 
 a broad and rushing river of deep blue sweeping through 
 the heart of it ; it has an environment of cliffs, where grow 
 the cypress and the olive, and a far-away view of the St. 
 Gothard Alps. Rome, from its amphitheatre of hills, has 
 views of unrivalled loveliness, and its broad Campagna is 
 a picture in itself. Paris even has its charms of external 
 nature, as have all the cities of the New World ; but London 
 is grim and gray, and bare and desolate, wrapped in eter- 
 nal fog. To be sure, it has the Thames, and there are 
 lovely suburbs ; but we mean that vast, densely crowded 
 part of the city proper which we think of when we say 
 London. 
 
 The father of John Ruskin was a London wine-mer- 
 chant, who made and bequeathed to him a large fortune. 
 But they were very plain people, and the youth knew 
 nothing of ostentation or luxury. He says of his child- 
 hood : — 
 
 " Nor did I painfully wish what I was never permitted for 
 an instant to hope, or even imagine, the possession of such 
 things as one saw in toy-shops. I had a bunch of keys to 
 play with as long as I was capable only of pleasure in what 
 glittered and jingled : as I grew older I had a cart and a ball,
 
 ^-, HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 ami wlicii I was five or six years old, two boxes of well-cut 
 wooden bricks. With these modest, but, I still think, entirely 
 sutlicient possessions, and being always summarily whipped if 
 I cried, did not do as I was bid, or tumbled on the stairs, I 
 soon attained serene and secure methods of life and motion ; 
 and could pass my days contentedly in tracing the square and 
 comparing the colors of my carpet, examining the knots in 
 the wood of the floors, or counting the bricks in the opposite 
 houses, with rapturous intervals of excitement during the 
 filling of the water-cart through its leathern pipe from the 
 dripping iron post at the pavement edge, or the still more 
 admirable proceedings of the turncock, when he turned and 
 turned till a fountain sprang up in the middle of the street. 
 But the carpet, and what patterns I could find in bed-covers, 
 dresses, or wall-papers to be examined, were my chief re- 
 sources ; and my attention to the particulars in these was 
 soon so accurate that when at three and a half I was taken 
 to have my portrait painted by Mr. Northcote, I had not been 
 ten minutes alone with him before I asked him why there 
 were holes in his carpet." 
 
 He was once taken when a child to the brow of the 
 crags overlooking Derwentwater, and he tells of the "intense 
 joy, mingled with awe, that I had in looking through the 
 hollows in the mossy roots over the crag into the dark lake, 
 and which has associated itself more or less with all twin- 
 ing roots of trees ever since." He also speaks of his joy 
 in first treading on the grass ; and, indeed, each fresh bit 
 of acquaintance which he made with Nature gave him un- 
 bounded delight. He says in his late " Recollections : " — 
 
 "To my further great benefit, as I grew older I saw nearly 
 all the noblemen's houses in England, in reverent and healthy 
 delight of uncovetous admiration, — perceiving, as soon as I 
 could perceive any political truth at all, that it was probably 
 much happier to live in a small house and have Warwick 
 Castle to be astonished at, than to live in Warwick Castle 
 and have nothing to be astonished at; but that, at all events, 
 it would not make Brunswick Square in the least more pleas- 
 antly habitable to pull Warwick Castle down. And at this 
 day, though I have kind invitations enough to visit America,
 
 JOHN RUSK IN. 372 
 
 I could not, even for a couple of months, live in a country so 
 miserable as to possess no castles." 
 
 Again he says : — 
 
 " For the best and truest beginning of all blessings, I had 
 been taught the perfect meaning of Peace, in thought, act, 
 and word. Angry words, hurry, and disorder I never knew 
 in the stillness of my childhood's home. Next to this quite 
 priceless gift of Peace, I had received the perfect under- 
 standing of the natures of Obedience and Faith. I obeyed 
 word or lifted finger of father or mother, simply as a ship 
 her helm : not only without idea of resistance, but receiving 
 the direction as a part of my own life and force, — a helpful 
 law, as necessary to me in every moral action as the law of 
 gravity in leaping. And my practice in Faith was soon com- 
 plete; nothing was ever promised me that was not given, 
 nothing ever threatened me that was not inflicted, and noth- 
 ing ever told me that was not true." 
 
 Ruskin's father began to read Byron to him soon after 
 he entered his teens, the first passage being the shipwreck 
 in " Don Juan." 
 
 "I recollect that he and my mother looked across the table 
 at each other with something of alarm, when on asking me 
 a ievf festas afterwards what we should have for after-dinner 
 reading, I instantly answered, 'Juan and Haidee.' My se- 
 lection was not adopted, and feeling there was something 
 wrong somewhere, I did not press it, attempting even some 
 stutter of apology, which made matters worse. Perhaps I 
 was given a bit of 'Childe Harold' instead, which I liked at 
 that time nearly as well ; and, indeed, the story of Haidee 
 soon became too sad for me. But very certainly by the end 
 of this year, 1834, I knew my Byron pretty well all through. 
 ... I never got the slightest harm from Byron ; what harm 
 came to me was from the facts of life and from books of a 
 baser kind, including a wide range of the works of authors 
 popularly considered extremely instructive, — from Victor 
 Hugo down to Dr. Watts." 
 
 Byron became a great favorite with the young student, 
 as will be seen from the following passage : —
 
 76 
 
 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 "I rejoiced in all the sarcasm of 'Don Juan.' But my 
 firm decision, as soon as I got well into the later cantos of it, 
 that Bvron was to be my master in verse, as Turner in color, 
 was made, of course, in that gosling, or say cygnet, epoch of 
 existence, witliout consciousness of the deeper instincts that 
 prompted it Only two things I consciously recognized, — 
 that his truth of observation was the most exact and his 
 chosen expression the most concentrated that I had yet 
 found in literature. By that time my father had himself put 
 me through the first two books of Livy, and I knew, there- 
 fore, what close-set language was ; but I saw then that Livy, 
 as afterward that Horace and Tacitus, were studiously, often 
 laboriously, and sometimes obscurely concentrated ; while 
 Bvron wrote, as easily as a hawk flies and as clearly as a 
 lake reflects, the exact truth in the precisely narrowest terms, 
 — not only the exact truth, but the most central and useful 
 one. Of course I could no more measure Byron's greater 
 powers at that time than I could Turner's ; but I saw that 
 both were right, in all things that I knew right from wrong 
 in, and that they must henceforth be my masters, each in his 
 own domain. But neither the force and precision nor the 
 rhythm of Byron's language was at all the central reason 
 for my taking him for master. Knowing the Song of Moses 
 and the Sermon on the Mount by heart, and half the Apoca- 
 lypse besides, I was in no need of tutorship either in the 
 majesty or simplicity of English words ; and for their logical 
 arrangement I had had Byron's own master, Pope, since I 
 could lisp. But the thing wholly new and precious to me 
 in Byron was his measured and living truth, — measured as 
 compared with Homer, and living as compared with every- 
 body else." 
 
 He began to be an obser\'er of beauty at a very early 
 age, and then, as afterwards, placed beauty first, utility 
 second. He says : — 
 
 " So that very early, indeed, in my thoughts of trees I had 
 got at the principle, given fifty years afterwards in Proser- 
 pina, that the seeds and fruits of them were for the sake of 
 the flowers, not the flowers for the fruit. The first joy of the 
 year being in its snowdrops, the second and cardinal one 
 was in the almond-blossom, every other garden and wood-
 
 JOHN R US KIN. 377 
 
 land gladness following from that in an unbroken order of 
 kindling flower and shadowy leaf ; and for many and many a 
 year to come — until, indeed, the whole of life became autumn 
 to me — my chief prayer for the kindness of Heaven, in its 
 flowerful seasons, was that the frost might not touch the 
 almond-blossom." 
 
 His mother, who was a very religious woman, used to 
 oblige him to learn long chapters of the Bible by heart 
 at a very early age, and his favorite chapters were always 
 from the Psalms, where there is so much of grand and 
 glowing poetry. It was a fine diet for such a child as he, 
 or, indeed, for any child ; and he attributes his taste for 
 the grand things in literature to his early knowledge of the 
 matchless poetry of the Bible. Doubtless it gave also that 
 devotional bent to his mind which has been one of his 
 many striking characteristics through life. He is as essen- 
 tially religious as one of the old Hebrew prophets, and has 
 brought forward his religious precepts in season and out 
 of season ever since he began to write. 
 
 He was taken on his travels when but a boy, and saw 
 many of the beauties of Europe before he went to Oxford. 
 He made acquaintance at that early age with most of the 
 beautiful buildings about which he has since written so 
 eloquently. The old Gothic buildings pleased him most 
 of all, — even the rugged Gothic of the North. He spent 
 much time in Italy and in Switzerland, which he says is 
 a country to be visited and not lived in. He thinks that 
 such sublimity of scenery should only be looked upon rever- 
 ently, and that those who view it habitually lose their rever- 
 ence, and, indeed, do not appreciate it at any time. 
 
 At Oxford he produced a prize poem ; but he has 
 never been heard of as a poet since, although there is 
 more of poetry in his prose than in the verse of many of 
 his contemporary poetical brethren, and if any man of his 
 time has been endowed with the true poetic temperament, 
 it is surely he. 
 
 His constitution has always been feeble, and he 
 can bear no excitement, and has been known to sink
 
 ,-q HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 into such exhaustion from a little over-tension of the 
 nerves that it has been very difficult to bring him back to 
 consciousness. 
 
 A person of this nature was probably very romantic in 
 his youth, and he fell very violently in love with a Scottish 
 lady when quite young. He says that never having been 
 indulged with much affection in youth, or been allowed to 
 bestow a great deal even upon his parents, when in later 
 life love did come, " it came with violence, utterly ram- 
 pant and unmanageable, at least to me, who never before 
 had anything to manage." 
 
 He lived in a world of his own dreams for a long time, 
 endowing the object of his affections with every grace and 
 charm. He was an exacting as well as a passionate lover, 
 and the lady was of far cooler blood than he. But after a 
 variety of experiences, such as fall to the lot of most lovers, 
 the lady became his wife. Of course the world knows 
 little of the inner secrets of that married Hfe, for John 
 Ruskin is not a man to cry his sorrows in the market- 
 place ; but the world does know that the marriage proved 
 very unhappy, and that it was finally followed by a separa- 
 tion. Of course there was a world of scandal at the time, 
 which is now happily forgotten ; for all this was very, very 
 long ago, and the first scandal was as nothing compared 
 to that which followed the lady's marriage with Millais, the 
 artist of whom London is so proud. There was no moral 
 blame imputed to either party at the time of the separa- 
 tion ; and it was understood to have been only one of the 
 numerous cases of incompatibility, of which the world is 
 so full. 
 
 This most deplorable event in Ruskin's life was followed 
 by long years of seclusion. He had never gone much 
 into society, but after this he lived in almost utter solitude 
 for years, writing his wonderful books, and making long 
 stays in Venice and other distant cities. He was born to 
 wealth, and never had to trouble himself about the more 
 prosaic affairs of the world. In this country we have had 
 until recendy no large leisure class, and those who are
 
 JOHN RUSKLV. 3yg 
 
 now taking that place are few in number, and seem utterly 
 at a loss how to pass their time amid the business and bustle 
 of our hurrying life. More and more are they going to 
 Europe, as is natural ; for there they find people like them- 
 selves, and multitudes of them, who have nothing to do, 
 and who therefore seek to enjoy their leisure. With such 
 a man as Ruskin this was not diiificult, and he became a 
 hard worker, not from necessity, but from the pressure 
 from within. He never made or sought to make any 
 money from his books, but they gave him great delight 
 in the writing, and brought him fame, which he did not 
 disdain. One of the cardinal principles of his morality 
 has always been that poverty is no bar to happiness, but 
 that all that is best in life is open to poor as well as rich. 
 This he proclaimed loudly in lectures to workingmen, 
 which he inaugurated in London, Edinburgh, and other 
 cities. If men can only be taught to see, and to think, 
 and to worship, according to Ruskin they have always 
 sources of happiness at hand, of which no outward force 
 of circumstances can deprive them. This is a great and a 
 true gospel, and would there were more such eloquent pro- 
 claimers of it as Ruskin ! What could be better doctrine 
 for the men and women of this generation than this : — 
 
 " In order to teach men how to be satisfied, it is necessary 
 fully to understand the art and joy of humble life; this at 
 present, of all arts and sciences, being the one most needing 
 study. Humble life, — that is to say, proposing to itself no 
 future exaltation, but only a sweet continuance ; not excluding 
 the idea of forethought, but only of fore-sorrow, and taking 
 no troublous thought for coming days. The life of domestic 
 affection and domestic peace, full of sensitiveness to all ele- 
 ments of costless and kind pleasure, therefore chiefly to the 
 loveliness of the natural world." 
 
 Again he sums up these costless pleasures in sentences 
 weighty with meaning : — 
 
 " To watch the corn grow, and the blossoms set ; to draw 
 hard breath over plough, hoe, and spade ; to read, to think,
 
 vSo HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 to love, to hope, to pray, — these are the things which make 
 men happy: they have always had the power to do this, and 
 they always will. The world's prosperity or adversity depends 
 upon our knowing and teaching these few things, but upon 
 iron or glass, or electricity or steam, in nowise." 
 
 Ruskin has always had a quarrel with the railroads, and 
 says that all travelling becomes dull in proportion to its 
 rapidity. "Going by railroad," he affirms, " I do not call 
 travelling at all ; but it is merely ' being sent ' to a place, 
 and very little different from becoming a parcel. A man 
 who really loves travelling would as soon consent to pack 
 a day of such happiness into an hour of railroad as one 
 who loved eating would agree, if it were possible, to con- 
 centrate his dinner into a pill." Walking he commends 
 most heartily to young men, and considers it one of the 
 rarest pleasures of life. In this country walking-parties are 
 as yet almost unknown, but in Europe they are extremely 
 common, especially among students. What could be bet- 
 ter for the youth of our land than such a pastime as this 
 for their vacations ? 
 
 He has also a great contempt for some of the feats of 
 modern science, and exclaims somewhere : — 
 
 " The scientific men are as busy as ants examining the sun 
 and the moon and the seven stars ; and can tell me all about 
 them, I believe, by this time, and how they move, and what 
 they are made of. And I do not care, for my part, tw^o cop- 
 per spangles how they move or of what they are made. I 
 can't move them any other way than they go, nor make them 
 of anything else better than they are made." 
 
 It is over forty years ago that Ruskin startled the 
 literary and artistic world with that marvellous book 
 entitled " Modern Painters ; Their Superiority in the Art 
 of Landscape Painting to All the Ancient Masters." The 
 title contained the argument of the book, and it was a 
 monumental heresy to utter at that time. Not that there 
 was the least doubt as to its truth, but no voice had 
 then been raised to proclaim it. The English people at
 
 JOHN R US KIN. 381 
 
 that time were blind worshippers of Claude and one or 
 two other old masters ; and here was a daring youth — 
 reminding one of David with his sling — going forth to 
 do battle against all the received art opinions of his 
 day, and boldly proclaiming Turner a better painter than 
 Claude, Salvator Rosa, Caspar Poussin, and the various 
 Van-Somethings who had until that time held undisputed 
 sway in conventional art circles. The young Oxford 
 graduate was greeted with a perfect tempest of ridicule 
 and denunciation. Every critic in the land hurled his 
 lance at him, and every artist looked upon him with 
 sovereign contempt. The young Oxford man, however, 
 valiantly held his ground. He possessed genius, pro- 
 found conviction, and a magnificent self-conceit ; and he 
 hurled back defiance to the whole art-clan, and rode for- 
 ward. Criticism beat upon the book in vain. Everybody 
 read it, and everybody talked about it, and it conquered 
 criticism at last. No such sensation in the art line has 
 been made in Ruskin's day. His teachings in the course 
 of a few years well-nigh revolutionized art opinion in Eng- 
 land. The sum and substance of it was Nature against 
 conventionality. People must look at Nature with their 
 own eyes and judge art by the help of Nature. This 
 seems simple enough to-day, but it was a new doctrine in 
 Ruskin's youth. 
 
 Ruskin has always been an extremest in everything, 
 and he went so far as to denounce Raphael's " Charge to 
 Peter " on the grounds that the Apostles are not dressed 
 as men of that time and place would have been when 
 going out fishing. He held to an almost brutal realism in 
 everything, and preached his doctrine whether men would 
 hear or whether they would forbear. He soon rallied a 
 little coterie of artists about him, and formed a school 
 styled the Pre-Raphaelites. The principal founder of the 
 school was Dante Gabriel Rossetti, since better known as 
 a poet than an artist. He held his litde court in London 
 for many years, and a great number of young men sat at 
 his feet. His chief supporters at first were Holman Hunt
 
 3^2 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 and Millais. These latter soon left Rossetti far behind in 
 execution \ but Rossetti was the soul of the movement. 
 He had received his inspiration directly from Ruskin. 
 Among the reminiscences of this art movement are Oscar 
 Wilde and the esthetes of London to-day, with their 
 "symphonies" in blue and their "arrangements" in 
 yellow, and the hideous females who go about London 
 drawmg-rooms in limp dresses of sulphur color and sage 
 green loosely hanging from their shoulders, after the 
 manner of ancient Greece. But they have had real art- 
 ists among them, — these apostles of the sunflower and 
 knights of the lily, — and although some of the better 
 class have repudiated the antics of their followers, the 
 movement known as Pre-Raphaelitism has really been an 
 artistic success. 
 
 Ruskin followed the " Modern Painters " in due time 
 with his " Seven Lamps of Architecture " and his " Stones 
 of Venice." They were masterpieces of eloquent descrip- 
 tion and rhetoric. No such vivid writing had been seen 
 for many a day, and no such zeal and earnestness. The 
 wealth of gorgeous imagery was dazzling ; the declamation 
 imparted to it the eloquence of an earlier day, and the 
 lofty thought and moral purpose were peculiarly the 
 author's own. The books exerted a remarkable influence. 
 He has written much since, but he has never reached the 
 height he attained in those earlier books. 
 
 As he grew older, he grew dogmatic and crotchety in 
 the extreme. He imitated Carlyle in his scoldings, and 
 indeed was much influenced by Carlyle in many ways. 
 He has always been an impracticable theorist, and in 
 these latter years he has put forth a thousand foolish and 
 subversive vagaries. People have not taken him quite 
 seriously for some time. They laugh at his follies, ridicule 
 his philanthropic schemes, — of which he has an infinite 
 number, for he is a man of the kindest heart, — they tell 
 excruciating stories of his colossal self-conceit, and they 
 go home and read his books because no such books can 
 be found written by any other man, search they never so
 
 JOHN RUSKIJSr. 383 
 
 widely. He has always been a wrong-headed man, entirely 
 out of accord with the world around him, and consequently 
 almost sure to be on the wrong side of every practical 
 political question. He and Carlyle had much in common 
 in all this, and it would have been a rich treat to have 
 heard Ruskin proclaiming his political creed, " I am a 
 King's man, and no mob's man ; " and to have heard 
 Carlyle answer with denunciations of his millions of fellow- 
 countrymen, " mostly fools." 
 
 Ruskin lives in one of the most beautiful of London 
 suburbs, — on Denmark Hill, at the south side of the 
 river, near Dulwich and the exquisite Sydenham slopes, 
 where the Crystal Palace stands. His home is beautiful, 
 filled with wonderful art treasures and numberless books, 
 with many rare and costly editions. He has lectured 
 much at Oxford ; and of late years his lectures have been 
 so crowded that tickets had to be procured to attend 
 them. This, when the lectures of the most learned pro- 
 fessors of the university are often given to a beggarly array 
 of empty boxes. 
 
 He has given away during his lifetime the greater part 
 of his large fortune, — not always wisely, but always in a 
 manner characteristic of the man. He has acted upon 
 the belief that it is wrong to take interest in excess 
 of the principal, and has made the property over to his 
 debtors whenever he has had interest to this extent. He 
 gave seventeen thousand pounds to his poor relations as 
 soon as he came into his fortune ; and fifteen thousand 
 pounds more to a cousin, tossing it to him as one would a 
 sugar-plum ; fourteen thousand pounds to Sheffield and 
 Oxford ; and numberless other gifts to different charities, 
 mostly of an eccentric nature. He retained for himself three 
 hundred and sixty pounds a year, upon which he says " a 
 bachelor gentleman ought to live, or if he cannot, deserves 
 speedily to die." Of course such a royal giver has been 
 besieged during his whole life by an innumerable company 
 of beggars for every conceivable object ; but he has always 
 chosen to select for himself his beneficiaries, and has often
 
 -S4 HOME LIFE OF GREAT AUTHORS. 
 
 sent sharp answers to appeals ; like the following to the 
 secretar)' of a Protestant Blind Pension Society : " To my 
 mind, the prefix of ' Protestant ' to your society's name 
 indicates far stonier blindness than any it will relieve." 
 And in reply to a letter asking aid in paying off a church 
 debt he replies : — 
 
 " I am sorrowfully amused at your appeal to me, of all 
 people in the world the precisely least likely to give you a 
 farthing. My first word to all men and boys who care to 
 hear me is, ' Don't get into debt. Starve, and go to heaven ; 
 but don't borrow. Try, first, begging. I don't mind, if it 's 
 really needful, steahng. But don't buy things you can't pay 
 for.' And of all manner of debtors, pious people building 
 churches they can't pay for are the most detestable nonsense 
 to me. Can't you preach and pray behind the hedges, or 
 in a sandpit, or in a coal-hole, first ? And of all manner of 
 churches thus idiotically built, iron churches are the damna- 
 blest to me. And of all the sects and believers in any rul- 
 ing spirit — Hindoos, Turks, Feather Idolaters, and Mumbo 
 Jumbo Log and Fire Worshippers — who want churches, 
 your modern English Evangelical sect is the most absurd 
 and objecdonable and unendurable to me. All of which you 
 might very easily have found out from my books. Any other 
 sort of sect would, before bothering me to write it to them." 
 
 Ruskin is the poet and the high-priest of Nature. To 
 him she reveals her mysteries, and he interprets them to a 
 dull and commonplace world in language as glowing and 
 impassioned as that of the prophets and priests of the 
 olden time. No man, apparently, has seen the sea as Rus- 
 kin has seen it, — not even Byron, who wTote so majestic a 
 hymn to it ; no man has so seen the mountains, with his 
 very soul transfixed in solemn awe ; no one has felt as he 
 the holy stillness of the forest aisles, or so described even 
 the tiny wild flowers of the fields. And he has not only 
 seen their outward glories, but he has interpreted their hid- 
 den meanings. He has carried the symbolism of Nature 
 on into the moral world. There is no greater moralist than 
 he. He is stem in his demands for right, and truth, and
 
 JOHN RUSK IN. 385 
 
 sincerity in life and in work. This has been the keynote 
 of his teachings throughout life. He hates a falsehood or 
 a sham as much as Browning or Carlyle. He has taught 
 his countrymen many things. No people love Nature 
 better than the English of the present day, and John 
 Ruskin has opened the eyes of many of them to the beau- 
 ties that lie everywhere about them. Then his long 
 agitation for a better architecture has not been wholly in 
 vain. Though the architects all laughed at him when his 
 lectures were given, many of his ideas slowly made their 
 way, and the new demand for strength and solidity and 
 sincerity in building has been largely due to him. 
 
 But much greater than all his art influence has been 
 the weight of his moral teachings. No preacher of the 
 day has preached to such an audience as he, and he 
 has always held men to the best that is in them. Long 
 after his idiosyncrasies shall have been forgotten, and his 
 faults and foibles given over to oblivion, his precepts will 
 remain to influence the life and thought of the coming 
 time. 
 
 25
 
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