Memoirs by Charles Godfrey Leland Part 16

We went to Boston early in December, 1861, and during that winter lived pleasantly at the Winthrop House on the Common. I had already many friends, and took letters to others who became our friends. We were very kindly received. Among those whom we knew best were Mrs. and Mr. H.

Ritchie, Mrs. and Mr. T. Perkins, Mrs. H. G. Otis, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Ward--but I must really stop, for there was no end to the list. Among my literary friends or acquaintances, or "people whom I have very often met," were Emerson, Longfellow, Dr. O. W. Holmes, J. R.

Lowell, E. P. Whipple, Palfrey, G. Ticknor, Aga.s.siz, E. Everett--in a word, all that brilliant circle which shone when Boston was at its brightest in 1862. I was often invited to the celebrated Sat.u.r.day dinners, where I more than once sat by Emerson and Holmes. As I had been editor of the free lance _Vanity Fair_, and was now conducting the _Continental_ with no small degree of audacity, regardless of friend or foe, it was expected--and no wonder--that I would be beautifully cheeky and New Yorky; and truly my education and antecedents in America, beginning with my training under Barnum, were not such as to inspire faith in my modesty. But in the society of the Sat.u.r.day Club, and in the very _general_ respect manifested in all circles in Boston for culture or knowledge in every form--in which respect it is certainly equalled by no city on earth--I often forgot newspapers and politics and war, and lived again in memory at Heidelberg and Munich, recalling literature and art. I heard, a day or two after my first Sat.u.r.day, that I had pa.s.sed the grand ordeal successfully, or _summa c.u.m magna laude_, and that Dr. Holmes, in enumerating divers good qualities, had remarked that I was modest. Every stranger coming to Boston has a verdict or judgment pa.s.sed on him--he is numbered and labelled at once--and it is really wonderful how in a few days the whole town knows it.

I had met with Emerson many years before in Philadelphia, where I had attracted his attention by remarking in Mrs. James Rush's drawing-room that a vase in a room was like a bridge in a landscape, which he recalled twenty years later. With Dr. Holmes I had corresponded. Lowell! "that reminds me of a little story."

There was some "genius of freedom"--_i.e._, one who takes liberties--who collected autographs, and had not even the politeness to send a written request. He forwarded to me this printed circular:

"DEAR SIR: As I am collecting the autographs of distinguished Americans, I would be much obliged to you for your signature. Yours truly, --- ---"

While I was editing _Vanity Fair_ I received one of these circulars. I at once wrote:--

"DEAR SIR: It gives me great pleasure to comply with your request.

CHARLES G. LELAND."

I called the foreman, and said, "Mr. Chapin, please to set this up and pull half-a-dozen proofs." It was done, and I sent one to the autograph- chaser. He was angry, and answered impertinently. Others I sent to Holmes and Lowell. The latter thought that the applicant was a great fool not to understand that such a printed doc.u.ment was far more of a curiosity than a mere signature. I met with Chapin afterwards, when in the war. He had with him a small company of printers, all of whom had set up my copy many a time. Printers are always polite men. They all called on me, and having no cards, left cigars, which were quite as acceptable at that time of tobacco-famine.

Amid all the horrors and anxieties of that dreadful year, while my old school-mate, General George B. McClellan, was delaying and demanding more men--_mas y mas y mas_--I still had as many happy hours as had ever come into any year of my life. If I made no money, and had to wear my old gloves (I had fortunately a good stock gathered from one of Frank Leslie's debtors), and had to sail rather close to the wind, I still found the sailing very pleasant, and the wind fair and cool, though I was _pauper in aere_.

Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis held a ladies' sewing-circle to make garments for the soldiers, at which my wife worked zealously. There were many social receptions, readings, etc., where we met everybody. It was very properly considered bad form in those early days of the war to dance or give grand dinners or great "parties." It was, in fact, hardly decent for a man to dress up and appear as a swell at all anywhere. Death was beginning to strike fast into families through siege and battle, and c.r.a.pe to blacken the door-bells. There was a dark shadow over every life. I had been a.s.sured by an officer that my magazine was doing the work of two regiments, yet I was tormented with the feeling that I ought to be in the war, as my grandfather would surely have been at my age. The officer alluded to wrote to me that he on one occasion had read one of my articles by camp-fire to his regiment, who gave at the end three tremendous cheers, which were replied to by the enemy, who were not far away, with shouts of defiance. As for minor incidents of the war-time, I could fill a book with them. One day a young gentleman, a perfect stranger, came to my office, as many did, and asked for advice. He said, "Where I live in the country we have raised a regiment, and they want me to be colonel, but I have no knowledge whatever of military matters. What shall I do?" I looked at him, and saw that he "had it in him," and replied, "New York is full of Hungarian and German military adventurers seeking employment. Get one, and let him teach you and the men; but take good care that he does not supplant you. Let that be understood." After some months he returned in full uniform to thank me. He had got his man, had fought in the field--all had gone well.

I remember, as an incident worth noting, that one evening while visiting Jas. R. Lowell at his house in Cambridge, awaiting supper, there came a great bundle of proofs. They were the second series of the Biglow Papers adapted to the new struggle, and as I was considered in Boston at that time as being in my degree a literary political authority or one of some general experience, he was anxious to have my opinion of them, and had invited me for that purpose. He read them to me, manifested great interest as to my opinion, and seemed to be very much delighted or relieved when I praised them and predicted a success. I do not exaggerate in this in the least; his expression was plainly and unmistakably that of a man from whom some doubt had been banished.

My brother Henry had at once entered a training-school for officers in Philadelphia, distinguished himself as a pupil, and gone out to the war in 1862. The terrible ill-luck which attended his every effort in life overtook him speedily, and, owing to his extreme zeal and over-work, he had a sunstroke, which obliged him to return home. He was a first-lieutenant. The next year he went as sergeant, and was again invalided. What further befell him will appear in the course of my narrative.

The _Continental Magazine_ had done its work and was evidently dying. I had never received a cent from it, and it had just met the expenses of publication. It had done much good and rendered great service to the Union cause. Gilmore had very foolishly yielded half the ownership to Robert J. Walker, of whom I confess I have no very agreeable recollections. So it began to die. But I have the best authority for declaring that, ere it died, it had advanced the time of the Declaration of Emanc.i.p.ation, which was the turning-point of the whole struggle, and all my friends in Boston were of that opinion. This I can fully prove.

The summer of 1862 I pa.s.sed in Dedham, going every day to my office in Boston. We lived at the Phoenix Hotel, and occupied the same rooms which my father and mother had inhabited thirty-five years before. We had many very kind and hospitable friends. I often found time to roam about the country, to sit by Wigwam Lake, to fish in the river Charles, and explore the wild woods. I have innumerable pleasant recollections of that summer.

I returned in the autumn with my wife to Philadelphia, and to my father's house in Locust Street. The first thing which I did was to write a pamphlet on "Centralisation _versus_ States Rights." In it I set forth clearly enough the doctrine that the Const.i.tution of the United States could not be interpreted so as to sanction secession, and that as the extremities or limbs grew in power, so there should be a strengthening of the brain or greater power bestowed on the central Government. I also advocated the idea of a far greater protection of general and common industries and interests being adopted by the Government.

There was in the Senate a truly great man, of German extraction, named Gottlieb Orth, from Indiana. He was absolutely the founder of the Bureaus of Education, &c., which are now nourishing in Washington. He wrote to me saying that he had got the idea of Industrial bureaus from my pamphlet. In this pamphlet I had opposed the commonly expressed opinion that we must do nothing to "aggravate the South." That is, we should burn the powder up by degrees, as the old lady did who was blown to pieces by the experiment. "Do not drive them to extremes." I declared that the South would go to extremes in any case, and that we had better antic.i.p.ate it. This brought forth strange fruit in after years, long after the war.

While I was in Boston in 1862, I published by Putnam in New York a book ent.i.tled "Sunshine in Thought," which had, however, been written long before. It was all directed against the namby-pamby pessimism, "lost Edens and buried Lenores," and similar weak rubbish, which had then begun to manifest itself in literature, and which I foresaw was in future to become a great curse, as it has indeed done. Only five hundred copies of it were printed.

I was very busy during the first six months of 1863. I wrote a work ent.i.tled "The Art of Conversation, or Hints for Self-Education," which was at once accepted and published by Carleton, of New York. It had, I am a.s.sured, a very large sale indeed. I also wrote and ill.u.s.trated, with the aid of my brother, a very eccentric pamphlet, "The Book of Copperheads." When Abraham Lincoln died two books were found in his desk. One was the "Letters of Petroleum V. Nasby," by Dr. R. Locke, and my "Book of Copperheads," which latter was sent to me to see _and return_. It was much thumbed, showing that it had been thoroughly read by Father Abraham.

I also translated Heine's "Book of Songs." Most of these had already been published in the "Pictures of Travel." I restored them to their original metres. I also translated the "Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing"

from the German, and finished up, partially ill.u.s.trated, and published two juvenile works. One of these was "Mother Pitcher," a collection of original nursery rhymes for children, which I had written many years before expressly for my youngest sister, Emily, now Mrs. John Harrison of Philadelphia. In this work occurs my original poem of "Ping-Wing the Pieman's Son." Of this Poem _Punch_ said, many years after, that it was "the best thing of the kind which had ever crossed the Atlantic." Ping- Wing appeared in 1891 as a full-page cartoon by Tenniel in _Punch_, and as burning up the Treaty. I may venture to say that Ping-Wing--once improvised to amuse dear little Emily--has become almost as well known in American nurseries as "Little Boy Blue," at any rate his is a popular type, and when Mrs. Vanderbilt gave her famous masked ball in New York, there was in the Children's Quadrille a little Ping-Wing. Ping travelled far and wide, for in after years I put him into Pidgin-English, and gave him a place in the "Pidgin-English Ballads," which have always been read in Canton, I daresay by many a heathen Chinese learning that childlike tongue. I also translated the German "Mother Goose."

And now terrible times came on, followed, for me, by a sad event. The rebels, led by General Lee, had penetrated into Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia was threatened. This period was called the "Emergency." I could easily have got a command as officer. I had already obtained for my brother an appointment as major with secretary's duty on Fremont's staff, which he promptly declined. But it was no time to stand on dignity, and I was rather proud, as was my brother, to go as "full private" in an artillery company known as "Chapman Biddle's," though he did not take command of it on this occasion. {252} Our captain was a dealer in cutlery named Landis.

After some days' delay we were marched forth. Even during those few days, while going about town in my private's uniform, I realised in a droll new way what it was to be a _common_ man. Maid-servants greeted me like a friend, other soldiers and the humbler cla.s.s talked familiarly to me. I had, however, no excuse to think myself any better than my comrades, for among the hundred were nearly twenty lawyers or law-students, and all were gentlemen as regards position in society.

Among them was R. W. Gilder, now the editor of the _Century_, who was quite a youth then, and in whose appearance there was something which deeply interested me. I certainly have a strange Gypsy faculty for divining character, and I divined a genius in him. He was very brave and uncomplaining in suffering, but also very sensitive and emotional. Once it happened, at a time when we were all nearly starved to death and worn out with want of sleep and fatigue, that I by some chance got a loaf of bread and some mola.s.ses. I cut it into twelve slices and sweetened them, intending to give one to every man of our gun. But I could only find eleven, and, remembering Gilder, went about a long mile to find him; and when I gave it to him he was so touched that the tears came into his fine dark eyes. Trivial as the incident was, it moved me. Another was Theodore Fa.s.sitt, a next-door neighbour of mine, whose mother had specially commended him to me, and who told me that once or twice he had stolen ears of maize from the horses to keep himself alive. Also Edward Penington, and James Biddle, a gentleman of sixty; but I really cannot give the roll-call. However, they all showed themselves to be gallant gentlemen and true ere they returned home. The first night we slept in a railroad station, packed like sardines, and I lay directly across a rail.

Then we were in camp near Harrisburg for a week--_dans la pluie et la misere_.

We knew that the rebels were within six miles of us, at Shooter's Hill--in fact, two of our guns went there. Penington was with them, and had a small skirmish, wherein two of the foemen were slain, the corporal being, however, called off before he could secure their scalps. That afternoon, as I was on guard, I saw far down below a few men who appeared to be scouting very cautiously, and hiding as they did so. They seemed mere specks, but I was sure they were rebels. I called on Lieutenant Perkins, who had a gla.s.s, but neither he nor others present thought they were of the enemy. Long after, this incident had a droll sequel.

Hearing that the rebels were threatening Carlisle, we were sent thither on a forced march of sixteen miles. They had been before us, and partially burned the barracks. We rested in the town. There was a large open s.p.a.ce, for all the world like a stage. Ladies and others brought us refreshments; the scene became theatrical indeed. The soldiers, wearied with a long march, were resting or gossipping, when all at once--_whizz- bang_--a sh.e.l.l came flying over our heads and burst. There were cries--the ladies fled like frightened wild-fowl! The operatic effect was complete!

About ten thousand rebel regulars, hearing that we had occupied Carlisle, had returned, and if they had known that there were only two or three thousand raw recruits, they might have captured us all. From this fate we were saved by a good strong tremendous lie, well and bravely told.

There was a somewhat ungainly, innocent, rustic-looking youth in our company, from whose eyes simple truth peeped out like two country girls at two Sunday-school windows. He, having been sent to the barracks to get some fodder, with strict injunction to return immediately, of course lay down at once in the hay and had a good long nap. The rebels came and roused him out, but promised to let him go free on condition that he would tell the sacred truth as to how many of us Federal troops were in Carlisle. And he, moved by sympathy for his kind captors, and swearing by the Great Copperhead Serpent, begged them to fly for their lives; "for twenty regiments of regulars, and Heaven only knew how many, volunteers, had come in that afternoon, and the whole North was rising, and trains running, and fresh levies pouring in."

The rebels believed him, but they would not depart without giving us a touch of their quality, and so fired sh.e.l.l and grape in on us till two in the morning. There were two regiments of "common fellows," or valiant city roughs, with us, who all hid themselves in terror wherever they could. But our company, though unable to fire more than a few shots, were kept under fire, and, being all gentlemen, not a man flinched.

I did not, to tell the truth, like our captain; but whatever his faults were, and he had some, cowardice was not among them. Some men are reckless of danger; he seemed to be absolutely insensible to it, as I more than once observed, to my great admiration. He was but a few feet from me, giving orders to a private, when a sh.e.l.l burst immediately over or almost between them. Neither was hurt, but the young man naturally shied, when Landis gruffly cried, "Never mind the sh.e.l.ls, sir; they'll not hurt you till they hit you."

I was leaning against a lamp-post when a charge of grape went through the lamp. Remembering the story in "Peter Simple," and that "lightning never strikes twice in the same place," I remained quiet, when there came at once another, smashing what was left of the gla.s.s about two feet above my head.

Long after the war, when I was one day walking with Theodore Fa.s.sitt, I told him the tale of how I had awakened the family at the fire in Munich.

And Theodore dolefully exclaimed, "I don't see why it is that _I_ can never do anything heroic or fine like that!" Then I said, "Theodore, I will tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a boy only eighteen years of age, and it happened in the war that he was in a town, and the rebels sh.e.l.led it. Now this boy had charge of four horses, and the general had told him to stay in one place, before a church; and he obeyed. The sh.e.l.ls came thick and fast--I saw it all myself--and by-and- bye one came and took off a leg from one of the horses. Then he was in a bad way with his horses, but he stayed. After a while the general came along, and asked him 'why the devil he was stopping there.' And he replied, 'I was ordered to, sir!' Then the general told him to get behind the church at once."

"Why!" cried Theodore in amazement, "_I was that boy_!"

"Yes," I replied; "and the famous Roman sentinel who remained at his post in Pompeii was no braver, and I don't think he had so hard a time of it as you had with that horse."

I was put on guard. The others departed or lay down to sleep on the ground. The fire slackened, and only now and then a sh.e.l.l came with its diabolical scream like a dragon into the town. All at last was quiet, when there came shambling to me an odd figure. There had been some slight attempt by him to look like a soldier--he had a _feather_ in his hat--but he carried his rifle as if after deer or racc.o.o.ns, and as if he were used to it.

"Say, Cap!" he exclaimed, "kin you tell me where a chap could get some ammynition?"

"Go to your quartermaster," I replied.

"Ain't got no quartermaster."

"Well, then to your commanding officer--to your regiment."

"Ain't got no commanding officer nowher' this side o' G.o.d, nor no regiment."

"Then who the devil are you, and where do you belong?"

"Don't belong nowher'. I'll jest tell you, Cap, how it is. I live in the south line of New York State, and when I heard that the rebs had got inter Pennsylvany, forty of us held a meetin' and 'pinted me Cap'n. So we came down here cross country, and 'rived this a'ternoon, and findin'

fightin' goin' on, went straight for the bush. And gettin' cover, we shot the darndest sight of rebels you ever _did_ see. And now all our ammynition is expended, I've come to town for more, for ther's some of 'em still left--who want killin' badly."

"See here, my friend," I replied. "You don't know it, but you're nothing but a bushwhacker, and anybody has a right to hang or shoot you out of hand. Do you see that great square tent?" Here I pointed to the general's marquee. "Go in there and report yourself and get enrolled."

And the last I saw of him he was stumbling over the sticks in the right direction. This was my first experience of a real _guerillo_--a character with whom I was destined to make further experience in after days.

An earlier incident was to me extremely curious. There was in our battery a young gentleman named Stewart Patterson, noted for his agreeable, refined manners. He was the gunner of our cannon No. Two. We had bra.s.s Napoleons. At the distance of about one mile the rebels were sh.e.l.ling us. Patterson brought _his_ gun to bear on theirs, and the two exchanged shots at the same instant. Out of the smoke surrounding Patterson's gun I saw a sword-blade fly perhaps thirty feet, and then himself borne by two or three men, blood flowing profusely. The four fingers of his right hand had been cut away clean by a piece of sh.e.l.l.

At the instant I saw the blade flash in its flight, I recalled seeing precisely the same thing long before in Heidelberg. There was a famous duellist who had fought sixty or seventy times and never received a scratch. One day he was acting as _second_, when the blade of his princ.i.p.al, becoming broken at the hilt by a violent blow, flew across the room, rebounded, and cut the second's lip entirely open. It was remarkable that I should twice in my life have seen such a thing, in both instances accompanied by wounds. Long after I met Patterson in Philadelphia, I think, in 1883. He did not recognise me, and gave me his left hand. I said, "Not that hand, Patterson, but the other. You've no reason to be ashamed of it. I saw the fingers shot off."

But on that night there occurred an event which, in the end, after years of suffering, caused the deepest sorrow of my life. As we were not firing, I and the rest of the men of the gun were lying on the ground to escape the sh.e.l.ls, but my brother, who was nothing if not soldierly and punctilious, stood upright in his place just beside me. There came a sh.e.l.l which burst immediately, and very closely over our heads, and a piece of it struck my brother exactly on the bra.s.s buckle in his belt on the spine. The blow was so severe that the buckle was bent in two. It cut through his coat and shirt, and inflicted a slight wound two inches in length. But the blow on the spine had produced a concussion or disorganisation of the brain, which proved, after years of suffering, the cause of his death. At first he was quite senseless, but as he came to, and I asked him anxiously if he was hurt, he replied sternly, "Go back immediately to your place by the gun!" He was like grandfather Leland.

A day or two after, while we were on a forced march to intercept a party of rebels, the effect of the wound on my brother's brain manifested itself in a terrible hallucination. He had become very gloomy and reserved. Taking me aside, he informed me that as he had a few days before entered a country-house, contrary to an order issued, to buy food, he was sure that Captain Landis meant as soon as possible to have him shot, but that he intended, the instant he saw any sign of this, at once to attack and kill the captain! Knowing his absolute determined and inflexibly truthful character, and seeing a fearful expression in his eyes, I was much alarmed. Reflecting in the first place that he was half- starved, I got him a meal. I had brought from Philadelphia two pounds of dried beef, and this, carefully h.o.a.rded, had eked out many a piece of bread for a meal. I begged some bread, gave my brother some beef with it, and I think succeeded in getting him some coffee. Then I went to Lieutenant Perkins--a very good man--and begged leave to take my brother's guard and to let him sleep. He consented, and my brother gradually came to his mind, or at least to a better one. But he was never the same person afterwards, his brain having been permanently affected, and he died in consequence five years after.

I may note as characteristic of my brother, that, twelve years after his death, Walt Whitman, who always gravely spoke the exact truth, told me that there was one year of his life during which he had received no encouragement as a poet, and so much ridicule that he was in utter despondency. At that time he received from Henry, who was unknown to him, a cheering letter, full of admiration, which had a great effect on him, and inspired him to renewed effort. He sent my brother a copy of the first edition of his "Leaves of Gra.s.s," with his autograph, which I still possess. I knew nothing of this till Whitman told me of it. The poet declared to me very explicitly that he had been much influenced by my brother's letter, which was like a single star in a dark night of despair, and I have indeed no doubt that the world owes more to it than will ever be made known.

During the same week in which this occurred my wife's only brother, Rodney Fisher, a young man, and captain in the regular cavalry, met with a remarkably heroic death at Aldie, Virginia. He was leading what was described as "the most magnificent and dashing charge of the whole campaign," when he was struck by a bullet. He was carried to a house, where he died within a week. He was of the stock of the Delaware Rodneys, and of the English Admiral's, or of the best blood of the Revolution, and well worthy of it. It was all in a great cause, but these deaths entered into the soul of the survivors, and we grieve for them to this day.

Our sufferings as soldiers during this Emergency were very great. I heard an officer who had been through the whole war, and through the worst of it in Virginia, declare that he had never suffered as he did with us this summer. And our unfortunate artillery company endured far more than the rest, for while pains were taken by commanding officers of other regiments, especially the regulars, to obtain food, our captain, either because they had the advance on him, or because he considered starving us as a part of the military drama, took little pains to feed us, and indeed neglected his men very much. As we had no doctor, and many of our company suffered from cholera morbus, I, having some knowledge of medicine, succeeded in obtaining some red pepper, a bottle of Jamaica ginger, and whisky, and so relieved a great many patients. One morning our captain forbade my attending to the invalids any more.

"Proper medical attendance," he said, "would be provided." It was not; only now and then on rare occasions was a surgeon borrowed for a day.