Recollections of a Long Life Part 4

25 RUTLAND STREET, EDINBURGH, May 25, 1872.

_My Dear Dr. Cuyler_

Very many thanks for your kind note, and the little book. It will be my own fault if I am not the better for reading it. I have seen nothing lovelier or more touching than the pictures of those _twin heads_ "like unto the angels"; even there Georgie looks nearer the better world than his brother. There is something perilous about his eyes with their wistful beauty. With him "it is far better"

now, and may it be meet for Theodore to be long with you here. I hoped to leave with you a book of my father's on the same subject, ent.i.tled, "Comfortable Words," but it is out of print. If I can get a copy, I will send it you. There are some letters of Bengel's which, if you do not know, you will enjoy.

I send you a note of introduction to John Ruskin, and I hope to hear you to-morrow in Mr. Candlish's church.

With much regret and best thanks, yours very truly,

JOHN BROWN

P.S. I was in Glen-Garry the other week, and quite felt that look of nakedness, and as if it just came from the Maker's hand; it was very impressive

During the closing years of the Doctor's life he was often shadowed by fits of deep melancholy. One day he was walking with a lady, who was also subject to depression of spirits, and he said to her: "Tell me why I am like a Jew?" She could not answer and he replied: "Because I am _sad-you-see_" Tears and mirth dwelt very closely together in his keen, fervid, sensitive spirit. It is remarkable that one who devoted himself so a.s.siduously to his exacting profession should have been able to master such an immense amount of miscellaneous reading, and to have won such a splendid name in literature. It is the attribute of true genius that it can do great things easily, and can accomplish its feats in an incredibly short time. He affirms that the immortal story of "Rab" was written in a few hours! The precious relics of my friend that I now possess are portraits of his father and of Dr. Chalmers, and of Hugh Miller, which he presented to me, and which now adorn my study walls.

While I have always dissented from some of his theological views and utterances, I have always had an intense admiration for Dean Stanley, in whose character was blended the gentleness of a sweet girl with occasional display of the courage of a lion. Froude once said to me: "I wish that Stanley was a little better hater." My reply was: "It is not in Stanley to hate anybody but the devil." My acquaintance with the Dean of Westminster dates from the summer of 1872. The Rev. Samuel Minton, a very broad Church of England clergyman, was in the habit of inviting ministers of the Established church and non-conformists to meet at lunch parties with a view of bringing them to a better understanding. One day I was invited by Mr. Minton to attend one of these lunch parties, and I found that day at his table, Dr. Donald Frazer, Dr. Newman Hall, Dr.

Joseph Parker, Dean Stanley and Dr. Howard Wilkinson, afterwards Bishop of Truro. Stanley felt perfectly at home among these "dissenters" and asked me to give the company some account of a remarkable discourse, which, he was told, Bishop McIlvaine, of Ohio, had recently delivered in my Lafayette Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn, on "Christian Unity." In the discourse, Bishop McIlvaine had said: "The only difference between the Presbyterian denomination, and Episcopal denomination, is their difference as to the orders of the ministry." The Dean was delighted with my account, and said: "Just imagine the Bishop of London preaching such a sermon in Newman Hall's or Spurgeon's pulpit; it would rock the old dome of St. Paul's." In all of his intercourse with his dissenting brethren the Dean never put on any airs of patronage, for though a loyal Episcopalian, he recognized their equally divine ordination as ministers of Jesus Christ.

A few days afterwards I went up to get a look at Holly Lodge, the residence of Lord Macaulay, in a side street just off Campden Hill. I met the Dean just coming out of the gate. He had been attending a garden party given by Lord Airlie, who then occupied the lodge. It was a pleasant coincidence to meet the most brilliant ecclesiastical historian at the door of the most brilliant civil historian of England. The Dean stopped and chatted about Macaulay, of whom he was very fond, and then said: "Just beyond is Holland House." We went a few paces and got a glimpse of the famous mansion in which Lord Holland had entertained the celebrities of America and Europe. One of the best hours I ever spent with Stanley was at his own table in the Deanery. He was the most delightful of hosts. Lady Augusta Stanley, daughter of the Earl of Elgin, had been a favorite Maid of Honor to the Queen, and the Dean had accompanied the Prince of Wales on his tour to the Orient. The Queen quite frequently slipped away from the palace for a quiet chat at the Deanery with this pair whom she so loved. A marble bust of Victoria, by her daughter, the Princess Louise, stood in the parlor, a gift of the Queen. If the Dean was very broad in his theology, his cultured wife was as decidedly evangelical in hers and her religious influence was very tonic in all respects. After lunch that day the Dean very kindly took me into the famous Jerusalem chamber and showed me where the Westminster a.s.sembly had sat for six years to give birth to our Presbyterian Confession of Faith and Catechism. I was surprised at the small size of the room that had held seventy or eighty commissioners.

As I was very desirous of hearing the Dean preach in the Abbey, he sent me a very kind invitation to come on the next Sabbath to the Deanery before the service, and on account of my deafness Lady Augusta would take me into a seat close to his pulpit. Accordingly she stowed me in a small box-pew, which was close against the pulpit, and within arms'

length of the Dean. His sermon was a beautiful essay on Solomon and great men, and in the course of it he said: "Such was the greatness of our Lord Jesus Christ." I felt so pained by _what he did not say_ that I ventured to write him a most frank and loving note, in which I expressed my deep regret that when he referred to the "greatness" of our Saviour he had so entirely ignored what was infinitely His most sublime work,--that of our human redemption by His atoning death on Calvary. The dear Dean, instead of taking offense, accepted the frank letter in the same spirit in which it was written. A day or two after he sent me a characteristic note, whose peculiar hieroglyphics, after much labor, I was able to decipher; for it has been often said that the only reason why he was never made a bishop was that no clergyman in his diocese would ever have been able to read his letters.

THE DEANERY OF WESTMINSTER,

July 22, 1872

Dear Doctor---Pray accept my sincere thanks for your very kind note. I quite appreciate your candor in mentioning what you thought a defect in my sermon. It arose from a fixed conviction which I have long formed, that the only chance there is of my sermons doing any good is by taking one topic at a time. The effect and the nature of the death of Jesus Christ, I quite agree with you in thinking to be a most important part of the Christian doctrine, and Christian history. But as my sermon was on a different subject--that of the right use of greatness--I felt that I could not speak, even by way of allusion, to the other great doctrine on which I had often preached before.

I sincerely wish that I could come to America. Every year that pa.s.ses increases the number of my kind friends in the New World, and my desire to see the United States.

Farewell; and may all the blessings of our State and Church follow you westward

Yours faithfully,

A.P. STANLEY.

When Dean Stanley visited America in the autumn of 1878, I met him several times, and he was especially cordial, and all the more so because of my out-spoken letter. The first time I met him was at the meeting of ministers of New York to give him a reception, and hear him deliver a discourse on Dr. Robinson, the Oriental geographer. He recognized me in the audience, came forward to the front of the platform, beckoned me up, and gave me a hearty grasp of the hand. I arranged to take him to Greenwood Cemetery on the morning before he sailed for home, and after breakfasting with him at Cyrus W. Field's we started for the cemetery. Dr. Phillip Schaff and Dr. Henry M. Field met us at the ferry, and accompanied us. When we entered the elevated railroad car, Stanley exclaimed: "This is like the chariots on the walls of Babylon." With his keen interest in history he inquired when we reached the lower part of the Bowery, near the junction of Chatham Square "Was it not near here that Nathan Hale, the martyr, was executed?" and he showed then a more accurate knowledge of our local history than one New Yorker in ten thousand can boast! That was probably the exact locality, and Dean Stanley had never been there before. Before entering the Greenwood Cemetery he requested me to drive him to the spot where my little child was buried, whose photograph in "The Empty Crib" I have referred to in a previous chapter. When we reached the burial lot he got out of the carriage, and in the driving wind, of a raw November morning, spent some time in examining the marble medallion of the child, and in talking with my wife most sweetly about him. I could have hugged the man on the spot. It was so like Stanley. I do not wonder that everybody loved him. We then drove to the tomb of Dr. Edward Robinson and the Dean said to us: "In all my travels in Palestine I carried Dr.

Robinson's volume, 'Biblical Researches,' with me on horseback or on my camel; it was my constant guide book."

Three years afterward, on my arrival in London, from Palestine I learned that Stanley was dangerously ill. On the door of the Deanery a bulletin was posted: "The Dean is sinking." That night the good, great man, died.

On the 25th of July the august funeral service took place in Westminster Abbey. Outside the Abbey thousands of people were a.s.sembled, for the Dean was loved by all London. From a small gallery over the "Poets' Corner" I looked down on the group, which contained Gladstone, Shaftesbury, Matthew Arnold, and scores of England's mightiest and best.

After the "Dead March," began a long procession headed by Stanley's lifelong friend, Archbishop Tait, of Canterbury, and the Prince of Wales (his pupil), and followed by Browning, Tyndall, and a long line of bishops, and poets and scholars moved slowly along under the lofty arches to the tomb in Henry VII.'s Chapel. A fresh wreath of flowers from the Queen was laid on the coffin. Many a tear was shed on that sad day beside the tomb in which the Church of England laid her most fearless and yet her best beloved son. I never have visited the Abbey since, without halting for a few moments beside the chapel in which the Dean and his beloved wife are slumbering. Greater than all his books or literary achievements was Arthur Penryn Stanley, the modest, true-hearted, unselfish, childlike, Christian man.

Soon after I had begun my pastorate in New York, I became a member of the Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation, which was one of the first that was organized in this country. Since that time I have delivered more than one hundred addresses, in behalf of this inst.i.tution, in my own country and abroad. In June, 1857, the New York organization honored me with what was then a novelty in America--a public breakfast, and commissioned me as a delegate to the original parent a.s.sociation in London. I there met that remarkable Christian merchant, Mr. George Williams, who was the founder of the a.s.sociation, and who had got much of his first spiritual inspiration from reading the writings of our American, Charles G. Finney. He is now Sir George Williams, my much loved friend, and I do not hesitate to say that there is not another man living who has accomplished such a world-wide work for the glory of G.o.d and the welfare of young men. The President of that first organized London a.s.sociation was the celebrated philanthropist, the Earl of Shaftesbury, a man whom I had long desired to meet. My acquaintance with him began in Exeter Hall, at a Sabbath service held to reach the non-church going cla.s.ses. With one or two others we knelt together in a small side room to invoke a blessing on the service in the great hall, and he prayed most fervently. The Earl of Shaftesbury was not only the author of great reformatory legislation in Parliament, and the acknowledged leader of the Low Church Party in the Established Church.

He was also a leader of city missions, ragged schools, shoe-black brigades, and other organizations to benefit the submerged cla.s.ses in London. He once invited all the thieves in London to meet him privately in a certain hall, and there pleaded with them to abandon their wretched occupation, and promised to aid those who desired to reform. He was fond of telling the story of how, when his watch was stolen, the thieves themselves compelled the rascal to come and return it, because he had been the benefactor of the "long-fingered fraternity." The last time that I saw the venerable philanthropist was just before his death (at the age of eighty-four years). He was presiding at a convention of the Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation in Exeter Hall. In my speech I said: "To-day I have seen Milton's Mulberry Tree at Cambridge University, and the historic old tree is kept alive by being banked around with earth clear to its boughs; and so is all Christendom banking around our honored President to-night to keep him warm and hale, and strong, amid the frosts of advancing age," The grand old man rewarded me with a bow and a gracious smile, and the audience responded with a shout of appreciation.

CHAPTER X

SOME FAMOUS PEOPLE AT HOME.

_Irvin,--Whittier.--Webster.--Greeley, etc_.

Washington Irving has fairly earned the t.i.tle of the "Father of our American Literature." The profound philosophical and spiritual treatises of our great President Edwards had secured a reading by theologians and deep thinkers abroad; but the American who first caught the popular ear was the man who wrote "The Sketch Book," and made the name of "Knickerbocker" almost as familiar as Sir Walter Scott made the name of "Waverly." During the summer of 1856 I received a cordial invitation from the people of Tarry town to come up to join them in an annual "outing," with their children, on board of a steamer on the Tappan-Zee.

I accepted the invitation, and on arrival found the boat already filled with the good people, and two or three hundreds of scholars from the Sabbath schools.

To my surprise and delight I found Washington Irving on board the steamer. The veteran author had laid aside the fourth volume of the "Life of Washington," which he was just preparing, to come away for a bit of rest and recreation. I had never seen him before, but found him precisely the type of man that I had expected. He was short, rather stout, and attired in an old fashioned black summer dress, with "pumps"

and white stockings, and a broad Panama hat. As he was no novelty to his neighbors I was able to secure more of his time; and, like the apostle of old, I was exceedingly "filled with his company." He took me to the upper deck of the steamer, and pointed out a glimpse of his own home--"Sunnyside"--which he told me was the original of Baltus Van Ta.s.sel's homestead in the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow." He pointed out the route of poor Ichabod Crane on his memorable night ride up the valley, and so on to the Kakout, where his horse should have gone to reach "Sleepy Hollow." Instead of that, obstinate Gunpowder plunged down over that bridge where poor Ichabod encountered his fatal and final catastrophe. The good old man's face was full of fun as he told me the story. Irving was so exceedingly shy that he never could face any public ovation, and yet he had a great deal of quiet enjoyment of his own popularity. For example, one day when he was going with a young relative up Broadway, which was thronged with omnibuses, he pointed out one of the old "Knickerbocker" line of stages to the lad and said: "Billy, you see how many coaches I own in this city, and you may take as many rides in them as you like."

After refreshments had been served to all the guests on board, we gathered on the deck for the inevitable American practice of speech making. In the course of my speech I gave an account of what was being done for poor children in the slums of New York, and then introduced as many Dutch stories as I could recollect for the special edification of old "Geoffrey Crayon." As I watched his countenance, and heard his hearty laughter and saw sometimes the peculiar quizzical expression of his mouth, I fancied that I knew precisely how he looked when he drew the inimitable pictures of Ichabod Crane, and Rip Van Winkle. When the excursion ended, and we drew up to the sh.o.r.e, I bade him a very grateful and affectionate farewell, and my readers, I hope, will pardon me if I say to them that dear old Irving whispered quietly in my ear, "I should like to be one of your parishioners." Three years afterwards, Irving was borne by his neighbors at Tarrytown to his final resting place in the old Dutch churchyard at the entrance of Sleepy Hollow.

Twenty years afterwards my dear friend, Mr. William E. Dodge, drove me up from his summer house at Tarrytown to see the simple tomb of the good old Geoffrey Crayon, whose genius has gladdened innumerable admirers, and whose writings are as pure as the rivulet which now flows by his resting place.

The pleasant little town of Burlington, N.J., in which I spent my earliest ministry, was the headquarters of orthodox Quakers. I was thrown much into the society of their most eminent people, and very delightful society I found it. The venerable Stephen Grellet, their apostle, who had held many interviews with the crowned heads of Europe, resided a little way from me up the street; and I saw the good old man with broad brimmed hat and straight coat pa.s.s my window every day.

Richard Mott lived but a little way from the town, and on the other side resided the widow of the celebrated Joseph John Gurney. The wittiest Quaker in the town was my neighbor, William J. Allinson, the editor of the "Friends Review," and an intimate friend of John G. Whittier. One afternoon he ran over to my room, and said: "Friend Theodore, John G.

Whittier is at my house, and wants to see thee; he leaves early in the morning." I hastened across the street and, in the modest parlor of Friend Allinson, I saw, standing before the fire, a tall, slender man in Quaker dress, with a very lofty brow, and the finest eye I have ever seen in any American, unless it were the deep ox-like eye of Abraham Lincoln. We had a pleasant chat about the anti-slavery, temperance and other moral reforms; and I went home with something of the feeling that Walter Scott says he had after seeing "Rabbie Burns," Whittier was a retiring, home-keeping man. He never crossed the ocean and seldom went even outside of his native home in Ma.s.sachusetts. During the summer of 1870 he ventured down to Brooklyn on a visit to his friend, Colonel Julian Allen. On coming home one day, my servant said to me, "There was a tall Quaker gentleman called here, and left his name on this piece of paper." I was quite dumb-founded to read the name of "John G. Whittier,"

and I lost no time in making my way up to the house where he was staying. When I inquired how he had come to do me the honor of a call, he said: "Well, yesterday, when I arrived and my friend Allen drove me up here, we pa.s.sed a meeting house with a tall steeple, and when I heard it was thine, I determined to run down to thy house and see thee." As I was to have the "Chi Alpha," the oldest and the most celebrated clerical a.s.sociation of New York at my house the next afternoon, I invited him to come and sup with them. He cordially consented, and it may be supposed that the "Chi Alpha" was very glad to put aside for that evening all other matters, and listen to the fresh, racy and humorous talk of the great poet. Underneath his grave and shy sobriety, flowed a most gentle humor. He could tell a good story, and when he was describing the usages of the Quakers in regard to "Speaking in Meetings," he told us that sometimes the voluntary remarks were not quite to the edification of the meeting. It once happened that a certain George C---- grew rather wearisome in his exhortations, and his prudent brethren, after solemn consultation, pa.s.sed the following resolution: "It is the sense of this meeting that George C.---- be advised to remain silent, until such time as the Lord shall speak through him _more to our satisfaction and profit_." A resolution of that kind would not be out of place in some ecclesiastical a.s.semblies, nor in certain prayer gatherings that I wot of. After the circle broke up I told him that in addition to the kind and characteristic letters he had written to me I wanted a sc.r.a.p of his poetry to add to those which Bryant and others had contributed to my collection of autographs. "What shall it be?" he said. I told him that, while some of his hymns and devoutly spiritual pieces, like "My soul and I," were very dear to me, and while "Snow Bound" was his acknowledged masterpiece, yet none of his verses did I oftener quote than this one, in his poem on Ma.s.sachusetts, He smiled at the selection, and accordingly sat down and wrote:

"She heeds no skeptic's puny hands, While near the school the church-spire stands, Nor fears the bigot's blinded rule, While near the church-spire stands the school."

Our walk to his place of sojourn in the moonlight was very delightful.

On the way I told him that not long before, when I quoted a verse of Bryant's to Horace Greeley, Mr. Greeley replied: "Bryant is all very well, but by far the greatest poet this country has produced is John Greenleaf Whittier." "Did our friend Horace say that?" meekly inquired Whittier, and a smile of satisfaction flowed over his Quaker countenance. The man is not born yet who does not like an honest compliment, especially if it comes from a high quarter. In the course of my life I have received several very pleasant letters from my venerable friend, the Quaker poet; but immediately after his eightieth birthday he addressed me the following letter, which, believing it to be his last, I framed and hung on the walls of my library:

OAK KNOLL, 12th month, 17th, 1887.

_My dear Dr. Cuyler_,

I thank thee for thy loving letter to me on my birthday, which I would have answered immediately but for illness; and, my friend, I wish I was more worthy of the kind and good things said of me. But my prayer is, "G.o.d be Merciful to me." And I think my prayer will be answered, for His Mercy and His Justice are one. May the Lord bless thee. Thy friend sincerely,

JOHN G. WHITTIER

This note, so redolent of humility, was written a few days after he had received a most superb birthday ovation from the public men of Ma.s.sachusetts, and from the most eminent literary men in all parts of the nation.

In the days of my boyhood the most colossal figure, physically and intellectually, in American politics, was Daniel Webster. I well remember when I first put eye upon him. It was when I was pursuing my studies in the New York University Grammar School in preparation for Princeton College. I was strolling one day on the Battery, and met a friend who said to me: "Yonder goes Daniel Webster; he has just landed from that man-of-war; go and get a good look at him." I hastened my steps and, as I came near him, I was as much awe-stricken as if I had been gazing on Bunker Hill Monument, He was unquestionably the most majestic specimen of manhood that ever trod this continent. Carlyle called him "The Great Norseman," and said that his eyes were like great anthracite furnaces that needed blowing up. Coal heavers in London stopped to stare at him as he stalked by, and it is well authenticated that Sydney Smith said of him, "That man is a fraud; for it is impossible for any one to be as great as he looks."

Mr. Webster, as I saw him that day, was in the vigor of his splendid prime. When he spoke in the Senate chamber it was his custom to wear the Whig uniform, a blue coat with metal b.u.t.tons and a buff waistcoat; but that day he was dressed in a claret colored coat and black trousers. His complexion was a swarthy brown. He used to say that while his handsome brother Ezekiel was very fair, he "had all the soot of the family in his face." Such a mountain of a brow I have never seen before or since. I followed behind him until he entered the carriage of Mr. Robert Minturn that was waiting for him, and as he rode away he looked like Jupiter Olympus. Although I saw Mr. Webster several times afterwards, I never heard him speak until the closing year of his life. The Honorable Lewis Condit, of Morristown, N.J., was in Congress at the time when Webster had his historic combat with Senator Hayne, of South Carolina, and was present during the delivery of the most magnificent speech ever delivered in our Senate. He described the historic scene to me minutely.

Before twelve o'clock on the 26th day of January, 1830, the Senate chamber was overflowing into the rotunda, and people were offering prices for a few inches of breathing room in the charmed enclosure.

Senator Dixon H. Lewis, from Alabama, who weighed nearly four hundred, became wedged in behind the Vice President's chair, unable to move, and became imbedded in the crowd like a broad-bottomed schooner settled at low tide into the mud. Being unable to see, he drew out his knife and cut a hole through the stained gla.s.s screens that flanked the presiding officer's chair. That aperture long remained as a memorial of Lewis's curiosity to witness the greatest of American orators deliver the greatest of American orations. The place was worthy of the hour and of the combatants. It was the old Senate chamber, now occupied by the United States Supreme Court, the same hall which had once resounded to the eloquence of Rufus King, as it afterwards did to the eloquence of Rufus Choate, and which had echoed the bursts of applause that once greeted Henry Clay of Kentucky. On that memorable morning the Vice-President's chair was occupied by that intellectual giant of the South, John C. Calhoun. Before him were Van Buren, Forsyth, Hayne, Clayton, the omniverous Benton, the st.u.r.dy John Quincy Adams, and, in the seething crowd, was the gaunt skeleton form of John Randolph of Roanoke. Mr. Condit told me that when Webster exclaimed: "The world knows the history of Ma.s.sachusetts by heart. There is Lexington, and there is Bunker Hill and there they will remain forever,"--the group of Bostonians seated in the gallery before him, broke down, and wept like little children. Quite as effective as his eulogy of the "Old Bay State," was his sudden and awful a.s.sault upon Senator Levi Woodbury, of New Hampshire. This representative of Webster's native State had supplied Colonel Hayne with a quant.i.ty of party pamphlets and doc.u.ments to be used as ammunition. Webster knew this fact and determined to punish him. Turning suddenly towards Woodbury, he thundered out in a tone of indignant scorn, as he shook his fist over his head: "I employ no scavengers;" and the poor New Hampshire Senator ducked his bald head as if struck by a bombsh.e.l.l. The closing pa.s.sage of that memorable speech could not have been extemporized. No mortal man could have thrown off that magnificent piece of Miltonic prose at the heat, without some deep premeditation. It is well known now that Mr. Webster afterwards pruned, amended and decorated it until it is recognized as one of the grandest pa.s.sages in the English language. I take down my Webster and read it occasionally, and it has in it the majestic "sound of many waters." That great pa.s.sage is the prelude of the mighty conflict which thirty years afterwards was to be waged on the soil of Gettysburg and Chickamauga. It became the condensed creed, and the battle-cry of the long warfare for the nation's life. Well have there been placed in golden letters on the pedestal of Webster's monument in Central Park the last sublime line of that sentence: "Liberty and Union, now and forever: one and inseparable." Mr. Webster's power in sarcastic invective was terrific. After he had made his angry and ferocious rejoinder to the charges of Mr. Charles J. Ingersoll, of Pennsylvania, the witty Dr.

Elder was asked, when he came out of the Senate chamber: "What did you think of that speech?" Elder's reply was: "Thunder and lightning are peaches and cream to such a speech as that." Mighty as Webster was in intellectual power he had some lamentable weaknesses. He was indeed a wonderful mixture of clay and iron. The iron was extraordinarily ma.s.sive, but the clay was loose and brittle. He had the temptations of very strong animal pa.s.sions, and sometimes to his intimate friends he attempted to excuse some of his excesses of that kind. There has been much controversy about Mr. Webster's habits in regard to intoxicants.

The simple truth is that during his visit to England in 1840 he was so lionized and feted at public dinners that he brought home some convivial habits which rather grew upon him in advancing years. On several public occasions he gave evidence that he was somewhat under the influence of deep potations. I once saw him when his imperial brain was raked with the chain-shot of alcohol. The sight moved me to tears, and made me hate more than ever the accursed drink that, like death, is no "respecter of persons."