Autobiography of Seventy Years Part 8

These lines fit Henry Th.o.r.eau exactly. Most people think Emerson had him in mind when he wrote them. But as a matter of fact, they were written before he knew Henry Th.o.r.eau.

I wonder how many know the woodc.o.c.k's evening hymn. I have known many sportsmen and naturalists who never heard it or heard of it. When the female is on her nest the male woodc.o.c.k flies straight up into the sky, folds his wings and falls down through the air, coming down within a foot or two of the nest from which he ascended, pouring out a beautiful song, which he never sings at any other time. He is said to be one of the best and sweetest of our song birds.

It is a singular fact that Emerson did not know Henry Th.o.r.eau until after Th.o.r.eau had been some years out of college. Henry walked to Boston, eighteen miles, to hear one of Emerson's lectures, and walked home again in the night after the lecture was over. Emerson heard of it, and invited him to come to his house and hear the lectures read there, which he did.

People used to say that Th.o.r.eau imitated Emerson, and Lowell has made this charge in his satire, "A Fable for Critics";

There comes ----, for instance; to see him's rare sport, Tread in Emerson's tracks with legs painfully short.

I think there is nothing in it. Th.o.r.eau's style is certainly fresh and original. His tastes and thoughts are his own.

His peculiarities of bearing and behavior came to him naturally from his ancestors of the isle of Guernsey.

I retained his friendship to his death. I have taken many a long walk with him. I used to go down to see him in the winter days in my vacations in his hut near Walden. He was capital company. He was a capital guide in the wood. He liked to take out the boys in his boat. He was fond of discoursing.

I do not think he was vain. But he liked to do his thinking out loud, and expected that you should be an auditor rather than a companion.

I have heard Th.o.r.eau say in private a good many things which afterward appeared in his writings. One day when we were walking, he leaned his back against a rail fence and discoursed of the shortness of the time since the date fixed for the creation, measured by human lives. "Why," he said, "sixty old women like Nabby Kettle" (a very old woman in Concord), "taking hold of hands, would span the whole of it." He repeats this in one of his books, adding, "They would be but a small tea-party, but their gossip would make universal history."

Another man who was famous as a writer went to school and afterward tended store in Concord in my childhood. This was George H. Derby, better known as John Phoenix. He was also very fond of small boys. I remember his making me what I thought a wonderful and beautiful work of art, by taking a sheet of stiff paper of what was called elephant foolscap, and folding it into a very small square, and then with a penknife cutting out small figures of birds and beasts. When the sheet was opened again these were repeated all over the sheet, and made it appear like a piece of handsome lace.

He did not get along very well with his employer, who was a snug and avaricious person. He would go to Boston once a week to make his purchases, leaving Derby in charge of the store. Derby would lie down at full length on the counter, get a novel, and was then very unwilling to be disturbed to wait on customers. If a little girl came in with a tin kettle to get some mola.s.ses, he would say the mola.s.ses was all out, and they would have some more next week. So the employer found that some of his customers were a good deal annoyed.

Another rather famous writer who lived in Concord in my time was Mr. A. Bronson Alcott. He used to talk to the children in the Sunday-school, and occasionally would gather them together in the evening for a long discourse. I am ashamed to say that we thought Mr. Alcott rather stupid. He did not make any converts to his theories among the boys.

He once told us that it was wicked to eat animal food; that the animal had the same right to his life that we had to ours, and we had no right to destroy the lives of any of G.o.d's creatures for our own purposes. He lived only on vegetable food, as he told us. But he had on at the time a very comfortable pair of calfskin boots, and the boys could not reconcile his notion that it was wicked to kill animals to eat, with killing animals that he might wear their hides. When such inconsistencies were pointed out to him he gave a look of mild rebuke at the audacious offender, and went on with his discourse as if nothing had happened.

The people who do not think very much of Alcott ought to speak with a G.o.d deal of modesty when they remember how highly Emerson valued him, and how sure was Emerson's judgment; but certainly n.o.body will attribute to Alcott much of the logical faculty. Emerson told me once:

"I got together some people a little while ago to meet Alcott and hear him converse. I wanted them to know what a rare fellow he was. But we did not get along very well. Poor Alcott had a hard time. Theodore Parker came all stuck full of knives. He wound himself round Alcott like an anaconda; you could hear poor Alcott's bones crunch."

Margaret Fuller used to visit Concord a good deal, and at one time boarded in the village for several months.

She was very peculiar in her ways, and made people whom she did not like feel very uncomfortable in her presence. She was not generally popular, although the persons who knew her best valued her genius highly. But old Doctor Bartlett, a very excellent and kind old doctor, though rather gruff in manner, could not abide her.

About midnight one very dark, stormy night the doctor was called out of bed by a sharp knocking at the door. He got up and put his head out of the window, and said, "Who's there?

What do you want?" He was answered by a voice in the darkness below, "Doctor, how much camphire can anybody take by mistake without its killing them?" To which the reply was, "Who's taken it?" And the answer was "Margaret Fuller." The doctor answered in great wrath, as he slammed down the window, and returned to bed: "A peck."

William Ellery Channing, the poet, was a constant visitor of my sister, and later of my brother Edward. He was a moody and solitary person, except in the company of a few close friends who testified to the charming and delightful quality of his companionship. I suppose his poems will outlast a great many greater reputations. But they will always find very few readers in any generation.

Channing visited my elder sister almost every day or evening for a good while, but rarely remained more than two or three minutes if he found anybody else in the room.

George William Curtis, afterward the famous orator, and his brother, Burrill, occupied for a year or two a small farmhouse or hut, with one or two rooms in it, in Concord, on the Lincoln road. They had been at Brook Farm and came to Concord, I suppose attracted by Emerson. They came to my father's house during their stay there every afternoon, and their call was as much a regular incident of the day as any stated meal.

Each of them was a boy of a very pleasant and delightful nature.

I think if George Curtis had dwelt almost anywhere but in New York city, he would have been a very powerful influence in the public life of his generation. But he did not find any congenial a.s.sociates in the men in New York who had any capacity to effect much good. His pure and lofty counsel fell unheeded upon the ears of his near neighbors, and the people of Ma.s.sachusetts did not listen very patiently to lectures on political purity or reform in civil service from New York city.

I never maintained any considerable intimacy with Curtis, although I have a few letters from him, expressing his regard for some of my kindred or his interest and sympathy in something I had said or done. These I value exceedingly. One of the very last articles he wrote for _Harper's Weekly,_ written just before his death, contains a far too kind estimate of my public service.

The Concord quality has come down with its people from the first settlement. The town was founded by Peter Bulkeley.

He was a clergyman at Odell in Bedfordshire, where the church over which he was settled is still standing. He was a gentleman of good family and of a considerable estate which he spent for the benefit of the people whom he led into the wilderness.

He encountered the hostility of Laud and, to use the phrase of that time, was "silenced for non-conformity." With Major Simon Willard, he made a bargain with the Indians, just to both parties, and with which both parties were perfectly satisfied, which rendered the name of Concord so appropriate, although in fact the name was given to the settlement before the company left Boston. That pulpit was occupied by Bulkeley and his descendants either by blood or marriage, from 1635 to 1696; from 1738 to 1841; and from 1882 to 1893.

I was able some forty years ago to settle in Concord a matter which had puzzled English historians, as to the legitimacy of the famous statesman and Chief Justice, Oliver St. John.

Lord Campbell, in his "Lives of the Chief Justices," says: "It is a curious circ.u.mstance that there should be a dispute about the parentage of such a distinguished individual, who flourished so recently. Lord Clarendon, who knew him intimately from his youth, who practised with him in the Court of King's Bench, who sat in the House of Commons with him, and who was both a.s.sociated with him and opposed to him in party strife, repeatedly represents him as illegitimate; and states that he was 'a natural son of the house of Bolingbroke.' Lord Bacon's account of his origin is equivocal--calling him 'a gentleman as it seems of an ancient house and name.' By genealogists and heralds a legitimate pedigree is a.s.signed to him, deducing his descent in the right male line from William St. John, who came in with the Conqueror; but some of them describe him as the son of Sir John St. John, of Lydiard Tregose in Wiltshire, and others as the son of Oliver St. John of Cagshoe in Bedfordshire, and they differ equally respecting his mother.

Lord Clarendon could hardly be mistaken on such a point, and I cannot help suspecting that the contrary a.s.sertions proceed from a desire to remove the bar sinister from the shield of a Chief Justice."

Lord Campbell has had diligent search made in the archives of Oxford and Lincoln's Inn, but does not find anything to change his opinion.

Fortunately we are able to settle the question about which Lord Campbell and Lord Bacon and Lord Clarendon were misled, in Old Concord. Peter Bulkeley was the uncle of Oliver St.

John. He speaks of him in his will, and leaves him his Bible.

Bulkeley's Gospel-Covenant, a book the substance of which was originally preached to his congregation, is dedicated to Oliver St. John. In the Epistle Dedicatory, he speaks of the pious and G.o.dly lives of St. John's parents, and alludes to the dying words of St. John's father as something which he and St. John had heard, but which was not known to other men. "I speak a mystery to others but not unto your Lordship."

So it is quite clear that St. John could not have been born out of wedlock, and the son of a man who had seduced the sister of this eminent and pious clergyman.

In n.o.ble's "Memoirs of the Cromwell Family," published about seventy-five years after the death of St. John, he is said to be the son of Oliver St. John of Cagshoe in Bedfordshire.

When the "Lives of the Chief Justices" was first published, I wrote to Lord Campbell, telling him these facts, and received the following letter in reply:

LONDON, July 9th, 1861.

_Sir_

I thank you very sincerely for your interesting letter of December 13th, respecting Lord Chief Justice St. John. I think you establish his legitimacy quite satisfactorily and in any future edition of my Lives of the Chief Justices I shall certainly avail myself of your researches.

I have the honor to be Sir Your obliged and obedient Servant CAMPBELL.

The Honorable Geo. F. h.o.a.r.

Something of Bulkeley's character may be gathered from this extract from the Gospel-Covenant, which Mr. Emerson, who was his descendant, loved to quote. Think of these words, uttered to his little congregation in the wilderness; the only company of white men in the Western Hemisphere who dwelt away from tide-water:

"And for ourselves, the people of New England, wee should in a speciall manner, labour to shine forth in holinesse above other people; we have that plenty and abundance of ordinances and meanes of grace as few people enjoy the like; wee are as a City set upon a hill, in the open view of all the earth, the eyes of the world are upon us, because wee professe ourselves to be a people in Covenant with G.o.d, and therefore not only the Lord our G.o.d, with whom we have made Covenant, but heaven and earth, Angels and men, that are witnesses of our profession, will cry shame upon us, if we walk contrary to the Covenant which we have professed to walk in; if we open the mouthes of men against our profession, by reason of the scandalousnesse of our lives, wee (of all men) shall have the greater sinne.

"To conclude, let us study so to walk, that this may be our excellency and dignity among the Nations of the world, among which we live; That they may be constrained to say of us, onely this people is wise, an holy and blessed people: that all that see us, may see and know that the name of the Lord is called upon us: and that we are the seed which the Lord hath blessed. Deut. 28. 10 Esay. 61. 9. There is no people but will strive to excell in something: what can we excell in if not in holinesse? If we look to number, we are the fewest; If to strength, we are the weakest; If to wealth and riches, we are the poorest of all the people of G.o.d throughout the whole world, we cannot excell (nor so much as equall) other people in these things; and if we come short in grace and holiness too, we are the most despicable people under heaven; our worldy dignitie is gone, if we lose the glory of grace too, then is the glory wholly departed from our Israel, and we are become vile; strive we therefore herein to excell, and suffer not this crown to be taken away from us: Be we a holy people, so shall we be honorable before G.o.d and precious in the eyes of his Saints."

To these eminent Concord authors should be added the name of William S. Robinson. He was one of the brightest and wittiest men of his time. He very seldom had praise for anybody, although for a few of his old Anti-Slavery friends he had a huge liking.

When I was a little boy he was in a newspaper office in Concord, where he got most of his education. Afterward he was a.s.sociated with William Schouler in editing the Lowell _Courier,_ a Whig paper. When Schouler became editor of the _Atlas,_ Robinson succeeded to the paper. But when the Free Soil movement came in, he would not flinch or abate a jot in his radical Anti-Slavery principles, which were not very agreeable to the proprietors of the cotton mills in Lowell, who depended both for their material and their market largely upon the South. Sumner described their alliance with their Southern customers as an alliance between the Lords of the Loom and the Lords of the Lash. So Robinson was compelled to give up his paper, in doing which he voluntarily embraced poverty instead of a certain and lucrative employment. He started an Anti-Slavery weekly paper in Lowell known as the Lowell _American._ That afforded him a bare and difficult living for a few years. After the Anti-Slavery people got into power he was made Clerk of the Ma.s.sachusetts House of Representatives.

Then he began to write his famous letters to the Springfield _Republican,_ which he signed Warrington. They were full of wit and wisdom and displayed great knowledge of the best English literature. He made many enemies and finally, by a concert among them, was turned out of office. He lost his health not long after, and died prematurely.

He was quite unsparing in his attacks on anybody who offended him, or against whom he took a dislike; and he seemed to dislike everybody whom he did not know. It was said of him that, like the rain of Heaven, he "fell alike on the just and on the unjust." He attacked some of the most venerable and worthy citizens of the Commonwealth without any apparent reason.

He used to call Chief Justice Chapman, one of the worthiest and kindest of men, Chief Justice Wheelgrease. He had a controversy in his paper of long standing with a man named Piper, a pompous and self-important little personage, who edited the Fitchburg _Reveille._ That was a Whig paper which circulated in the country towns where Robinson's paper was chiefly taken. He made poor Piper's life unhappy. One of the issues of his paper contained a life of Piper. It begun by saying that Piper began life as the driver of a fish-cart in Marblehead, and that he was discharged by his employer on account of the diffuseness of his style. He quoted with great effect on Otis P. Lord the toast given by the Court Jester of Archbishop Laud's time: "Great Laud be to G.o.d, and Little Lord to the Devil."

When he was clerk of the House of Representatives there was a story in the newspapers that he was preparing a treatise on Parliamentary law. He published a letter denying the statement.

But he added, that if he did write such a treatise, he should sum it up in one sentence: "Never have an a.s.s in the chair."

I was a.s.sociated with him one day on the Committee on Resolutions of the Republican State Convention, held in Worcester. The Committee went over to my office to consult. While we were talking together Robinson broke out with his accustomed objurgations levelled at several very worthy and excellent men. I said: "William, it is fortunate that you did not live in the Revolutionary time. How you would have hated General Washington." He replied, with a smile that indicated the gratification he would have had if he could have got at him: "He was an old humbug, wasn't he?"

But Robinson was always on the righteous side of any question involving righteousness. He was kind, generous, absolutely disinterested, and a great and beneficent power in the Commonwealth.

CHAPTER VI FARM AND SCHOOL