Recollections of a Varied Life Part 11

"We'll see," I said. Then turning to my brother, who was my second in command, I quietly gave the order:

"Touch up the Railroad Iron Battery, Joe."

Thirty seconds later the storm was in full fury about us, but my visitors did not seem to mind it. Instead of retiring to the covered way, they nonchalantly stood there by my side on the mound of the magazine. Every now and then, between explosions, one of them would ask a question as to the geography of the lines to our right and left.

"What battery is that over there?"

"What is the Federal work that lies in front of it?"

"What is the lay of the land," etc., etc.

Obviously they were officers new to this part of our line and as they offered no criticism upon the work of my guns, and gave me no orders, I put aside the antagonism I had felt, and in all good-fellowship explained the military geography of the region round about.

Meanwhile, Joe had quietly stopped the fire on the Railroad Iron Battery, and little by little that work ceased its activity. Finally my visitors politely bade me good evening and took their leave.

I asked Joe who they were, but he did not know. I inquired of others, but n.o.body knew. Next morning I asked at General Gracie's headquarters what new troops had been brought to that part of the line, and learned that there had been no changes. There and at General Bushrod Johnson's headquarters I minutely described my visitors, but n.o.body knew anything about them, and after a few days of futile conjecture I ceased to think of them or their visit.

In July, 1865, the war being over, I took pa.s.sage on the steamer "Lady Gay," bound from Cairo to New Orleans. There were no women on board, but there was a pa.s.senger list of thirty men or so. Some of us were ex-Confederates and some had been Federal soldiers.

[Sidenote: The Outcome of a Strange Story]

The two groups did not mingle. The members of each were polite upon accidental occasion to the members of the other, but they did not fraternize, at least for a time--till something happened.

I was talking one morning with some of my party when suddenly a man from the other group approached as if listening to my voice. Presently he asked:

"Didn't you command a mortar fort at Petersburg?"

I answered that I did, whereupon he asked:

"Do you remember----" and proceeded to outline the incident related above.

"Yes," I answered in astonishment, "but how do you happen to know anything about it?"

"I was one of your visitors on that occasion. I thought I couldn't be mistaken in the voice that commanded, 'Touch up the Railroad Iron Battery, Joe.'"

"But I don't understand. You were a Federal officer, were you not?"

"Yes."

"Then what were you doing there?"

"That is precisely what my friend and I were trying to find out, while you kept us for two hours under a fire of h.e.l.l from our own batteries."

Then he explained:

"You remember that to the left of your position, half a mile or so away, there lay a swamp. It was utterly impa.s.sable when the lines were drawn, and both sides neglected it in throwing up the breastworks. Well, that swamp slowly dried up during the summer, and it left something like a gap in both lines, but the gap was so well covered by the batteries on both sides that neither bothered to extend earthworks across it. My friend and I were in charge of pickets and rifle-pits that day, and we went out to inspect them. Somehow--I don't know how--we got lost on the swamplands, and, losing our bearings, we found ourselves presently within the Confederate lines. To say that we were embarra.s.sed is to put it mildly. We were scared. We didn't know how to get back, and we couldn't even surrender for the reason that we were not in uniform but in fatigue dress, and therefore technically, at least, in disguise.

There was nothing about us to show to which army we belonged. As an old soldier, you know what that meant. If we had given ourselves up we should have been hanged as spies caught in disguise within your lines.

In our desperate strait we went to you and stood there for an hour or two under the worst fire we ever endured, while we extracted from you the geographical information that enabled us to make our way back to our own lines under cover of darkness."

At that point he grasped my hand warmly and said:

"Tell me, how is Joe? I hope he is 'touching up' something that responds as readily as the Railroad Iron Battery did that evening."

From that hour until we reached New Orleans, four days later, there was no barrier between the two groups of pa.s.sengers. We fraternized completely. We told stories of our several war experiences that had no touch or trace of antagonism in them.

Incidentally, we exhausted the steamer "Lady Gay's" supplies of champagne and cigars, and when we reached New Orleans we had a dinner together at the St. Charles hotel, no observer of which would have suspected that a few months before we had been doing our best to slaughter each other.

x.x.xII

[Sidenote: The Beginning of Newspaper Life]

Let me pa.s.s hurriedly over the years that immediately followed the end of the war. I went West in search of a living. In Cairo, Illinois, I became counsel and attorney "at law and in fact," for a great banking, mining, steamboating, and mercantile firm, whose widely extending interests covered the whole West and South.

The work was uncongenial and by way of escaping from it, after I had married, I removed to Mississippi and undertook the practice of law there.

That work proved still less to my liking and in the summer of 1870 I abandoned it in the profoundest disgust.

With a wife, one child, a little household furniture, and no money at all, I removed to New York and secured work as a reporter on the Brooklyn _Union_, an afternoon newspaper.

I knew nothing of the business, art, or mystery of newspaper making, and I knew nothing of the city. I find it difficult to imagine a man less well equipped for my new undertaking than I was. But I had an abounding confidence in my ability to learn anything I wanted to learn, and I thought I knew how to express myself lucidly in writing. For the rest I had tireless energy and a good deal of courage of the kind that is sometimes slangily called "cheek." This was made manifest on the first day of my service by the fact that while waiting for a petty news a.s.signment I wrote an editorial article and sent it in to Theodore Tilton, the editor, for use. I had an impulse of general helpfulness which was left unrestrained by my utter ignorance of the distinctions and dignities of a newspaper office. I had a thought which seemed to me to deserve editorial utterance, and with the mistaken idea that I was expected to render all the aid I could in the making of the newspaper, I wrote what I had to say.

Theodore Tilton was a man of very hospitable mind, and he cared little for traditions. He read my article, approved it, and printed it as a leader. Better still, he sent for me and asked me what experience I had had as a newspaper man. I told him I had had none, whereupon he said encouragingly:

"Oh well, it doesn't matter much. I'll have you on the editorial staff soon. In the meantime, learn all you can about the city, and especially about the shams and falsities of its 'Society' with a big 'S.' Study state politics, and equip yourself to comment critically upon such things. And whenever you have an editorial in your mind write it and send it to me."

The _Union_ had been purchased by Mr. Henry C. Bowen, the owner of the New York _Independent_, then the most widely influential periodical of its cla.s.s in America. Theodore Tilton was the editor of both.

[Sidenote: An Old School Man of Letters]

Theodore Tilton was at the crest of the wave of success at that time, and he took himself and his genius very seriously. Concerning him I shall write more fully a little later on. At present I wish to say only that with all his self-appreciation he had a keen appreciation of other men's abilities, and he sought in every way he could to make them tributary to his own success in whatever he undertook. To that end he had engaged some strong men and women as members of his staff on the _Union_, and among these the most interesting to me was Charles F.

Briggs, the "Harry Franco" of an earlier literary time, the a.s.sociate and partner of Edgar Allan Poe on the _Broadway Journal_, the personal friend or enemy of every literary man of consequence in his time, the a.s.sociate of George William Curtis and Parke G.o.dwin in the conduct of _Putnam's Monthly_; the coadjutor of Henry J. Raymond on the _Times_, the novelist to whom Lowell dedicated "The Fable for Critics,"

and whose personal and literary characteristics Lowell set forth with singular apt.i.tude in that poem. In brief, he was in his own person a representative and embodiment of the literary life of what I had always regarded as the golden age of American letters. He talked familiarly of writers who had been to me cloud-haloed demiG.o.ds, and made men of them to my apprehension.

Let me add that though the literary life of which he had been a part was a turbulent one, beset by jealousies and vexed by quarrels of a bitter personal character, such as would be impossible among men of letters in our time of more gracious manners, I never knew him to say an unjust thing about any of the men he had known, or to withhold a just measure of appreciation from the work of those with whom he had most bitterly quarreled.

Perhaps no man among Poe's contemporaries had juster reason to feel bitterness toward the poet's memory than had Mr. Briggs. Yet during my intimacy with him, extending over many years, I never heard him say an unkind word of Poe. On the other hand, I never knew him to fail to contradict upon occasion and in his dogmatic fashion--which was somehow very convincing--any of the prevalent misapprehensions as to Poe's character and life which might be mentioned in his presence.

It was not that he was a meekly forgiving person, for he was, on the contrary, pugnacious in an unusual degree. But the dominant quality of his character was a love of truth and justice. Concerning Poe and the supposed immorality of his life, he once said to me, in words that I am sure I remember accurately because of the impression they made on my mind:

"He was not immoral at all in his personal life or in his work. He was merely _un_moral. He had no perception of the difference between right and wrong in the moral sense of those words. His conscience was altogether artistic. If you had told him you had killed a man who stood annoyingly in the way of your purposes, he would have thought none the worse of you for it. He would have reflected that the man ought not to have put himself in your way. But if you had been guilty of putting forth a false quant.i.ty in verse, he would have held you to be a monster for whom no conceivable punishment could be adequate."

Often Mr. Briggs's brusquerie and pugnacity were exaggerated, or even altogether a.s.sumed by way of hiding a sentiment too tender to be exhibited. Still more frequently the harshest things he said to his friends--and they were sometimes very bitter--were prompted, not by his displeasure with those who were their victims, but by some other cause of "disgruntlement." On such occasions he would repent him of his fault, and would make amends, but never in any ordinary way or after a fashion that anybody else would have chosen.

One morning he came into the editorial room which he and I jointly occupied. I bade him good-morning as usual, but he made no reply. After a little while he turned upon me with some bitter, stinging utterance which, if it had come from a younger man, I should have hotly resented.

Coming from a man of his age and distinction, I resented it only by turning to my desk and maintaining silence during the entire morning.