Children's Stories in American Literature, 1660-1860 Part 7

In _Hiawatha_ Longfellow gave to the Indian the place in poetry that had been given him by Cooper in prose. Here the red man is shown with all his native n.o.bleness still unmarred by the selfish injustice of the whites, while his inferior qualities are seen only to be those that belong to mankind in general.

_Hiawatha_ is a poem of the forests and of the dark-skinned race who dwelt therein, who were learned only in forest lore and lived as near to nature's heart as the fauns and satyrs of old. Into this legend Longfellow has put all the poetry of the Indian nature, and has made his hero, Hiawatha, a n.o.ble creation that compares favorably with the King Arthur of the old British romances. Like Arthur, Hiawatha has come into the world with a mission for his people; his birth is equally mysterious and invests him at once with almost supernatural qualities. Like Arthur, he seeks to redeem his kingdom from savagery and to teach the blessing of peace.

From first to last Hiawatha moves among the people, a real leader, showing them how to clear their forests, to plant grain, to make for themselves clothing of embroidered and painted skins, to improve their fishing-grounds, and to live at peace with their neighbors. Hiawatha's own life was one that was lived for others. From the time when he was a little child and his grandmother told him all the fairy-tales of nature, up to the day when, like Arthur, he pa.s.sed mysteriously away through the gates of the sunset, all his hope and joy and work were for his people. He is a creature that could only have been born from a mind as pure and poetic as that of Longfellow.

All the scenes and images of the poem are so true to nature that they seem like very breaths from the forest. We move with Hiawatha through the dewy birchen aisles, learn with him the language of the nimble squirrel and of the wise beaver and mighty bear, watch him build his famous canoe, and spend hours with him fishing in the waters of the great inland sea, bordered by the pictured rocks, painted by nature herself. Longfellow's first idea of the poem was suggested, it is said, by his hearing a Harvard student recite some Indian tales.

Searching among the various books that treated of the American Indian, he found many legends and incidents that preserved fairly well the traditional history of the Indian race, and grouping these around one central figure and filling in the gaps with poetic descriptions of the forests, mountains, lakes, rivers, and plains, which made up the abode of these picturesque people, he thus built up the entire poem. The metre used is that in which the Kalevala, the national epic of the Finns is written, and the Finnish hero, Wainamoinen, in his gift of song and his brave adventures, is not unlike the great Hiawatha. Among Longfellow's other long poems are: _The Spanish Student_, a dramatic poem founded upon a Spanish romance; _The Divine Tragedy_, and _The Golden Legend_, founded upon the life of Christ; _The Courtship of Miles Standish_, a tale of Puritan love-making in the time of the early settlers, and _Tales of a Wayside Inn_, which were a series of poems of adventure supposed to be related in turn by the guests at an inn.

But it is with such poems as _Evangeline_ and _Hiawatha_, and the shorter famous poems like _A Psalm of Life_, _Excelsior_, _The Wreck of the Hesperus_, _The Building of the Ship_, _The Footsteps of Angels_ that his claim as the favorite poet of America rests.

_Evangeline_ and _Hiawatha_ marked an era in American literature in introducing themes purely American, while of the famous shorter poems each separate one was greeted almost with an ovation. _The Building of the Ship_ was never read during the struggle of the Civil War without raising the audience to a pa.s.sion of enthusiasm, and so in each of these shorter poems Longfellow touched with wondrous sympathy the hearts of his readers. Throughout the land he was revered as the poet of the home and heart, the sweet singer to whom the fireside and family gave ever sacred and beautiful meanings.

Some poems on slavery, a prose tale called _Kavanagh_, and a translation of _The Divine Comedy_ of Dante must also be included among Longfellow's works; but these have never reached the success attained by his more popular poems which are known by heart by millions to whom they have been inspiration and comfort.

Longfellow died in Cambridge in 1882, in the same month in which was written his last poem, _The Bells of San Blas_, which concludes with these words:

"It is daybreak everywhere."

CHAPTER XIII

JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY

1814-1877

One day in the year 1827, a boy of thirteen first entered the chapel of Harvard College to take his seat there as a student. His schoolfellows looked at him curiously first, because of his remarkable beauty, and second because of his reputation as a linguist, a great distinction among boys who looked upon foreign tongues as so many traps for tripping their unlucky feet in the th.o.r.n.y paths of learning.

He had come to Harvard from Mr. Bancroft's school at Northampton, where he was famous as a reader, writer, and orator, and was more admired, perhaps, than is good for any boy. Both pupils and masters recognized his talents and overlooked his lack of industry. But neither dreamed that their praise was but the first tribute to the genius of the future historian, John Lothrop Motley.

Motley was born in Dorchester, a suburb of Boston, April 15, 1814. As a child he was delicate, a condition which fostered his great natural love for reading. He devoured books of every kind, history, poetry, plays, orations, and particularly the novels of Cooper and Scott. Not satisfied with reading about heroes, he must be a hero himself, and when scarcely eight he bribed a younger brother with sweetmeats to lie quiet, wrapped in a shawl, while he, mounted upon a stool, delivered Mark Antony's oration over the dead body of Caesar. At eleven he began a novel, the scene of which was laid in the Housatonic Valley, because that name sounded grand and romantic. On Sat.u.r.day afternoon he and his playmates, among whom was Wendell Phillips, would a.s.semble in the garret of the Motley house, and in plumed hats and doublets enact tragedies or stirring melodramas. Comedy was too frivolous for these entertainments, in which Motley was always the leading spirit; the chief bandit, the heavy villain, the deadliest foe.

In the school-room also Motley led by divine right, and expected others to follow. Thus, in spite of his dislike for rigid rules of study, he was always before the cla.s.s as one to be deferred to and honored wherever honor might be given. While still at college Motley seems to have had some notion of a literary career. His writing-desk was constantly crammed with ma.n.u.scripts of plays, poetry, and sketches of character, which never found their way to print, and which were burned to make room for others when the desk became too full. With the exception of a few verses published in a magazine, this work of his college days served only for pastime. Graduated from Harvard at seventeen, Motley spent the next two years at a German university, where he lived the pleasant, social life of the German student, one of his friends and cla.s.smates being young Bismarck, afterward the great Chancellor, who was always fond of the handsome young American, whose wit was the life of the student company and whose powers of argument surpa.s.sed his own.

Coming back to America, Motley studied law until 1841, when, in his twenty-seventh year, he received the appointment of Secretary of Legation to St. Petersburg.

His friends now looked forward to a brilliant diplomatic career for him, but the unfavorable climate soon led him to resign the appointment and return to America. But the St. Petersburg visit was not fruitless, for three years afterward he published an essay in the _North American Review_ which showed a keen appreciation of Russian political conditions. The article was called "A Memoir of the Life of Peter the Great," and its appearance surprised the critics who had justly condemned a novel previously published by the young author. His essay portrayed the character of the great Peter, half king and half savage. It showed a full appreciation of the difficulties that hindered the establishment of a great monarchy, and paid due honor to that force of will, savage courage, and ideal patriotism that laid the foundations of Russia's greatness. The reader is made to see this fiery Sclav, building up a new Russia from his ice-fields and barren valleys; a Russia of great cities, imperial armies, vast commerce, and splendid hopes. It was a brilliant and scholarly narrative of the achievement of a great man, and it placed Motley among the writers of highest promise.

A year later he began collecting materials for the serious work of his life. For his subject he chose the story of the old Frisians or Hollanders who rescued from the sea a few islands formed by the ooze and slime of ages, and laid thereon the foundations of a great nation.

They raised d.y.k.es to keep back the sea, built ca.n.a.ls to serve as roads, turned bogs into pasture-lands and mora.s.ses into grain-fields, fought with the Romans, founded cities, laid the foundations of the vast maritime commerce of to-day, and finally, in the sixteenth century, when the wealth of their merchants, the power of their cities, and the progress of their arts were the wonder of the world, met their worst foe in the person of their own king, Philip II.

From the beginning the Hollanders or Netherlanders had cherished a savage independence which commanded respect even in barbarous ages, and this characteristic insured a quarrel between them and their ruler. Philip II. was King of Spain and of Sicily as well as of Holland. Born in Spain, he could not speak a word of Dutch. He was haughty, overbearing, and unscrupulous, and he resolved to make the Hollanders see in him a master as well as a king. Already in his father's reign there had been trouble because of the growing Protestantism which many of the Hollanders favored. Already some of the chief Dutch cities had been punished for resisting the Emperor's authority, and their burghers sentenced to kneel in sackcloth and beg him to spare their homes from destruction. These things happened in his father's time and had made an impression upon Philip II., who saw that in every case the royal power had been triumphant, and he believed himself invincible.

Motley painted the life of Philip from the day of his inauguration through all the years of revolt, bloodshed, and horror which marked his reign. He saw that this rebellion of the Hollanders meant less the discontent of a people with their king than the growth of a great idea, the idea that civil and religious liberty is the right of all men and nations. To Motley's mind the struggle seemed like some old battle between giants and t.i.tans. Unlike other historians, who looked over the world for a subject, rejecting first one and then another, Motley's subject took possession of him and would not be rejected. His work was born, as a great poem or picture is born, from a glimpse of things hidden from other eyes.

But at once he discovered that Prescott had already in contemplation a history of Philip II. This was a severe blow to all his hopes. But he resolved to see Prescott, lay the matter before him, and abide by his decision, feeling that the master of history, who was the author of the _Conquest of Mexico_ and the _Conquest of Peru_, would be the best adviser of a young and unknown writer.

Prescott received the idea with the most generous kindness, advised Motley to undertake the work, and placed at his disposal all the material which he himself had collected for his own enterprise.

After several years the book appeared in 1856, under the t.i.tle _The Rise of the Dutch Republic_.

To write this book Motley dwelt for years in the world of three hundred years ago, when the whole of Europe was shaken by the new Protestantism, when Raleigh and Drake were sailing the Atlantic and adding the sh.o.r.es of the new world to English dominion, the French settling Canada and the Mississippi Valley, Spain sending her mission priests to California, and the Huguenots establishing themselves in Florida. Thus the foundations of the American Republic were being laid, while Philip was striving to overthrow the freedom of the Netherlands.

Leaving the nineteenth century as far behind him as he could, Motley established himself successively at Berlin, Dresden, The Hague, and Brussels, in order to consult the libraries and archives of state which contained doc.u.ments relating to the revolt of the Netherlands against Philip II. In speaking of his work in the libraries of Brussels, he says that at this time only dead men were his familiar friends, and that he was at home in any country, and he calls himself a worm feeding on musty mulberry leaves out of which he was to spin silk. Day after day, year after year, he haunted the old libraries, whose shadows held so many secrets of the past, until the personalities of those great heroes who fought for the liberty of Holland were as familiar as the faces of his own children. William of Orange, called the Silent, the Washington of Dutch independence, Count Egmont, Van Horn, and all that band of heroes who espoused the cause of liberty, came to be comrades.

And the end rewarded the years of toil. Out of old mouldy doc.u.ments and dead letters Motley recreated the Netherlands of the sixteenth century. Again were seen the great cities with their walls miles in extent, their gay streets, their palaces and churches, and public buildings, and the great domains of the clergy, second to none in Europe. The n.o.bles possessed magnificent estates and entertained their guests with jousts and tourneys like the great lords of England and France. The tradespeople and artisans who comprised the population of the cities were divided into societies or guilds, which were so powerful that no act of state could be pa.s.sed without their consent, and so rich that to their entertainments the proudest n.o.bles came as guests, to see a luxuriousness which vied with that of kings. The Dutch artists were celebrated for their n.o.ble pictures, for their marvellous skill in wood and stone carving, and for the wonderful tapestries which alone would have made Dutch art famous.

In the midst of this prosperity Philip II. came to the throne, and soon after his coronation the entire Netherlands were in revolt.

Motley has described this struggle like an eye-witness. We see the officers of the Inquisition dragging their victims daily to the torture-chamber, and the starved and dying rebels defending their cities through sieges which the Spanish army made fiendish in suffering. Motley's description of the siege of Leyden, and his portrait of William the Silent, are among the finest specimens of historical composition.

The work ends with the death of the Prince of Orange, this tragic event forming a fitting climax to the great revolution which had acknowledged him its hope and leader.

Motley carried the completed ma.n.u.script of _The Rise of the Dutch Republic_ to London, but failing to find a publisher willing to undertake such a work by an unknown author, he was obliged to produce it at his own expense. It met with the most flattering reception, and the reviews which appeared in England, France, and America placed Motley's name among the great historians. The book was soon translated into Dutch, German, and Russian.

Motley's two other great works were similar in character to the first.

The second work, called _The History of the United Netherlands_, began with the death of William the Silent, and ended with the period known as the Twelve Years' Truce, when by common consent the independence of the Netherlands was recognized throughout Europe.

This work consists of four volumes, the first two having been published in 1860, and the remaining two in 1867.

These volumes embrace much of the history of England, which became the ally and friend of Holland, and are full of the great events which made up that epoch of English history. The names of Queen Elizabeth, the Duke of Leicester, Lord Burghley, and the n.o.ble and chivalrous Sir Philip Sidney, who lost his life on one of the battle-fields of this war, figure as largely in its pages as those of the Dutch themselves.

The war had ceased to be the revolt of Holland against Spain, and had become a mighty battle for the liberty of Europe. Every nation was interested in its progress, and all men knew that upon its success or failure would depend the fate of Europe for many centuries. In this work Motley's pen lost none of its art. The chapters follow one another in harmonious succession, the clear and polished style giving no hint of the obscurities of diplomatic letters, the almost illegible ma.n.u.scripts, and the contradictory reports which often made up the original materials.

Like its predecessor, it was at once cla.s.sed among the great histories of the world. _The Life of John of Barneveld_, who shares with William of Orange the glory of achieving Dutch independence, was the subject of Motley's next and last work. The book is not in a strict sense a biography. It is rather a narrative of the quarrel of the Netherlands among themselves over theological questions. The country was now Protestant, and yet the people fought as fiercely over the different points of doctrine as when they were struggling for their independence. The book appeared in 1874, completing the series, which the author called _The History of the Eighty Years' War for Independence_.

During this period of literary work Motley was twice appointed to represent the United States at foreign courts. He was Minister to Austria from 1861 to 1866, and during the stormy period of the Civil War showed his powers as a statesman in his diplomatic relations with the Austrian Court, which honored him always both as a diplomatist and as a patriot, his devotion to his country being a proverb among his fellows.

In 1868 he was appointed Minister to England, but held the office only two years. On both these occasions Motley proved his ability to meet and master questions of state, and there is no doubt that, had fortune led him into active political life, he would have made a brilliant reputation.

He died in May, 1877, and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, near London, England.

CHAPTER XIV

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

1811-1896

Harriet Beecher Stowe, the first distinguished woman writer of America, was born at Litchfield, Conn., in those old New England days when children were taught that good little girls must always speak gently, never tear their clothes, learn to knit and sew, and make all the responses properly in church. Such is her own story of her early education, to which is also added the item that on Sunday afternoons she was expected to repeat the catechism, and on the occasion of a visit to her grandmother, her aunt made her learn two catechisms, that of her own faith, the Episcopal, and that of Harriet's father, who was a Presbyterian minister. This discipline, however, had no depressing effect upon the child, whose family consisted of a half-dozen healthy, clever brothers and sisters, a father who was loved more than revered even in those days when a minister was regarded with awe, and a stepmother whose devotion made the home-life a thing of beauty to be held in all after-years in loving memory.

The old Presbyterian parsonage where Harriet was born had in it one room that was the child's chief delight. This was her father's study, in a corner of which she loved to ensconce herself with her favorite books gathered around her, and read or day-dream, while her father sat opposite in his great writing-chair composing the sermon for the next Sunday. Children's books were not plentiful in those days, and Miss Edgeworth's _Tales_ and Cotton Mather's _Magnalia_ were her princ.i.p.al resource, until one joyful day, rummaging in a barrel of old sermons, she came upon a copy of _The Arabian Nights_. These flowers of fairy lore took healthy root in the imagination of the little Puritan child, whose mind had hitherto resembled the prim flower-beds of the New England gardens, where grew only native plants. The old stories opened a new world of thought, and into this unknown realm she entered, rambling amid such wonderful scenes that never again could their mysterious charm cease; when some time later her father came down from his study one day with a volume of _Ivanhoe_ in his hand, and said: "I did not intend that my children should ever read novels, but they must read Scott," another door into the realm of fairy was opened to the delighted child.

This power to lift and lose herself in a region of thought so different from her own, became thereafter the peculiar gift by which she was enabled to undertake the work which made her name distinguished.

The library corner, however, did not hold all the good things of life, only part of them. Outside was the happy world of a healthy country child, who grew as joyously as one of her own New England flowers.

In the spring there were excursions in the woods and fields after the wild blossoms that once a year turned the country-side into fairy-land; in the summer was the joy of picnics in the old forests, and of fishing excursions along the banks of the streams; in the autumn came nutting parties, when the children ran races with the squirrels to see who could gather the most nuts; and in the winter, when the snow and ice covered the earth, life went on as gayly as ever, with coasting and snow-balling, and the many ways in which the child's heart tunes itself to the spirit of nature.