Reminiscences, 1819-1899 Part 9

[Ill.u.s.tration: WENDELL PHILLIPS

At the age of 48

_From a photograph lent by Francis J. Garrison, Boston._]

The last time that I heard Wendell Phillips speak in public was in December, 1883, at the unveiling of Miss Whitney's statue of Harriet Martineau, in the Old South Meeting-House. Mrs. Livermore was one of the speakers of the occasion. When the stated exercises were at an end, she said to me, "Let us thank Mr. Phillips for what he has just said. We shall not have him with us long." I expressed surprise at this, and she said further, "He has heart disease, and is far from well." Soon after this followed his death, and the splendid public testimonial given in his honor. I was one of those admitted to the funeral exercises, in which friends spoke of him most lovingly. I also saw his remains lying in state in Faneuil Hall, on the very platform where, in his ardent youth, he had uttered his first scathing denunciation of the slave power and its defenders. The mournful and reverent crowd which gathered for one last look at his beloved countenance told, better than words could tell, of the tireless services which, in the interval, had won for him the heart of the community. It was a sight never to be forgotten.

I first heard of Theodore Parker as the author of the sermon on "The Transient and the Permanent in Christianity." At the time of its publication I was still within the fold of the Episcopal Church, and, judging by hearsay, was prepared to find the discourse a tissue of impious and sacrilegious statements. Yet I ventured to peruse a copy of it which fell into my hands. I was surprised to find it reverent and appreciative in spirit, although somewhat startling in its conclusions.

At that time the remembrance of Mr. Emerson's Phi Beta address was fresh in my mind. This discourse of Parker's was a second glimpse of a system of thought very different from that in which I had been reared.

Not long after my marriage, being in Rome with my husband, I was interested to hear of Parker's arrival there. As Dr. Howe had some slight acquaintance with him, we soon invited him to dine with us. He was already quite bald, and this untimely blemish appeared in strange contrast with the youthful energy of his facial expression. He was accompanied by his wife, whose mild countenance, compared with his, suggested even more than the usual contrast between husband and wife.

One might have said of her that she came near being very handsome. Her complexion was fair, her features were regular, and the expression of her face was very naf and gentle. A certain want of physical maturity seemed to have prevented her from blossoming into full beauty. It was a great grief both to her and to her husband that their union was childless.

Theodore Parker's reputation had already reached Rome, and there as elsewhere brought him many attentions from scholars, and even from dignitaries of the Catholic Church. He remained in the Eternal City, as we did, through the winter, and we saw him frequently.

When, in the spring, my eldest child was born, I desired that she should be christened by Parker. This caused some uneasiness to my sisters, who were with me at the time. One of them took occasion to call upon Parker at his lodgings, and to inquire how the infant was to be christened, in what name. Our friend replied that he had never heard of any baptismal formula other than the usual one, "in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." My sister was much relieved, and the baptism was altogether satisfactory.

This was the beginning of a family intimacy which lasted many years, ending only with Parker's life. After our return to America my husband went often to the Melodeon, where Parker preached until he took possession of the Music Hall. The interest which my husband showed in these services led me in time to attend them, and I remember as among the great opportunities of my life the years in which I listened to Theodore Parker.

Those who knew Parker only in the pulpit did not half know him. Apart from the field of theological controversy, he was one of the most sympathetic and delightful of men. I have rarely met any one whose conversation had such a ready and varied charm. His idea of culture was encyclopaedic, and his reading, as might have been inferred from the size of his library, was enormous. The purchase of books was his single extravagance. One whole floor was given up to them, and in spite of this they overflowed into hall and drawing-room. He was very generous in lending them, and I often profited by his kindness in this respect.

His affection for his wife was very great. From a natural love of paradox, he was accustomed to style this mild creature "Bear," and he delighted to carry out this pleasantry by adorning his _etagere_ with miniature bears, in wood-carving, porcelain, and so on. His gold shirt stud bore the impress of a bear. At one Christmas time he showed me a breakfast cup upon which a bear had been painted, by his express order, as a gift for his wife. At another he granted me a view of a fine silver candlestick in the shape of a bear and staff, which was also intended for her.

To my husband Parker often spoke of the excellence of his wife's discernment of character. He would say, "My quiet little wife, with her simple intuition, understands people more readily than I do. I sometimes invite a stranger to my house, and tell her that she will find him as pleasant as I have found him. It may turn out so; but if my wife says, 'Theodore, I don't like that man; there's something wrong about him,' I always find in the end that I have been mistaken,--that her judgment was correct."

Parker's ideal of culture included a knowledge of music. His endeavors to attain this were praiseworthy, but unsuccessful. I have heard the late John S. Dwight relate that when he was a student in Harvard Divinity School, Parker, who was then his fellow student, desired to be taught to sing the notes of the musical scale. Dwight volunteered to give him lessons, and began, as is usual, by striking the dominant _do_ and directing Parker to imitate the sound. Parker responded, and found himself able to sing this one note; but when Dwight pa.s.sed on to the second and the third, Parker could only repeat the note already sung. He had no ear for music, and his friend advised him to give up the hopeless attempt to cultivate his voice. In like manner, at an earlier date, Dr.

Howe and Charles Sumner joined a singing cla.s.s, but both evincing the same defect were dismissed as hopeless cases. Parker attended sedulously the concerts of cla.s.sical music given in Boston, and no doubt enjoyed them, after a fashion. I remember that I once tried to explain to him the difference between having an ear for music and not having one. I failed, however, to convince him of any such distinction.

The years during which I heard him most frequently were momentous in the history of our country and of our race. They presaged and preceded grave crises on both sides of the Atlantic. In Europe was going on the ferment of ideas and theories which led to the revolutions of 1848 and the temporary upturning of states and of governments. In the United States, the seed of thought sown by prophetic minds was ripening in the great field of public opinion. Slavery and all that it involved became not only hateful but intolerable to men of right mind, and the policy which aimed at its indefinite extension was judged and condemned.

Parker at this time had need in truth of the two-edged sword of the Spirit. On the one hand he encountered the foes of religious freedom, on the other the advocates and instruments of political oppression. His sermons on theism belonged to one of these domains, those which treated of public men and measures to the other. Among these last, I remember best that on Daniel Webster, and the terrible "Lesson for the Day" which denounced Judge Loring for the part he had taken in the rendition of Anthony Burns.

The discourse which treated of Webster was indeed memorable. I remember well the solemnity of its opening sentences, and the earnest desire shown throughout to do justice to the great gifts of the great man, while no one of his public misdeeds was allowed to escape notice. The whole performance, painful as it was in parts, was very uplifting, as the exhibition of true mastery must always be. Its unusual length caused me to miss the omnibus which should have brought me to South Boston in good time for our Sunday dinner. As I entered the house and found the family somewhat impatient of the unwonted delay, I cried, "Let no one find fault! I have heard the greatest thing that I shall ever hear!"

At the time of the attempted rendition of the fugitive slave Shadrach a meeting was held in the Melodeon, at which various speakers gave utterance to the indignation which aroused the whole community. Parker had been the prime mover in calling this meeting. He had written for it some verses to be sung to the tune of "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled,"

and he made the closing and most important address. It was on this occasion that I first saw Colonel Higginson, who was then known as the Rev. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, pastor of a religious society in Worcester, Ma.s.s. The part a.s.signed to him in the exercises was to read portions of Scripture appropriate to the day. This he did with excellent effect. Parker, in the course of his address, held up a torn coat, and said, "This is the coat of our brother Shadrach," reverting in his mind to the Bible story of the torn coat of Joseph over which his father grieved so sorely. As I left the hall I heard some mischievous urchins commenting upon this. "Nonsense!" cried one of them, "that wasn't Shadrach's coat at all. That was Theodore's coat." Parker was amused when I told him of this.

From time to time Parker would speak in his sermons of the position which woman should hold in a civilized community. The question of suffrage had not then been brought into prominence, and, as I remember, he insisted most upon the claim of the s.e.x to equality of education and of opportunity. On one occasion he invited Lucretia Mott to his pulpit.

On another its privileges were accorded to Mrs. Seba Smith. I was present one Sunday when he announced to his congregation that the Rev.

Antoinette L. Brown would address them on the Sunday following. As he p.r.o.nounced the word "Reverend," I detected an unmistakable and probably unconscious curl of his lip. The lady was, I believe, the first woman minister regularly ordained in the United States. She was a graduate of Oberlin, in that day the only college in our country which received among its pupils women and negroes. She was ordained as pastor by an Orthodox Congregational society, and has since become better known as Antoinette Brown Blackwell, a strenuous advocate of the rights of her s.e.x, an earnest student of religious philosophy, and the author of some valuable works on this and kindred topics.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THEODORE PARKER

_From a photograph by J. J. Hawes._]

I am almost certain that Parker was the first minister who in public prayer to G.o.d addressed him as "Father and Mother of us all." I can truly say that no rite of public worship, not even the splendid Easter service in St. Peter's at Rome, ever impressed me as deeply as did Theodore Parker's prayers. The volume of them which has been published preserves many of his sentences, but cannot convey any sense of the sublime att.i.tude of humility with which he rose and stood, his arms extended, his features lit up with the glory of his high office. Truly, he talked with G.o.d, and took us with him into the divine presence.

I cannot remember that the interest of his sermons ever varied for me.

It was all one intense delight. The luminous clearness of his mind, his admirable talent for popularizing the procedures and conclusions of philosophy, his keen wit and poetic sense of beauty,--all these combined to make him appear to me one of the oracles of G.o.d. Add to these his fearlessness and his power of denunciation, exercised in a community a great part of which seemed bound in a moral sleep. His voice was like the archangel's trump, summoning the wicked to repentance and bidding the just take heart. It was hard to go out from his presence, all aglow with the enthusiasm which he felt and inspired, and to hear him spoken of as a teacher of irreligion, a pest to the community.

As all know, this glorious career came too soon to an end. While still in the fullness of his powers, and at the moment when he was most needed, the taint of hereditary disease penetrated his pure and blameless life. He came to my husband's office one day, and said, "Howe, that venomous cat which has destroyed so many of my people has fixed her claws here," pointing to his chest. The progress of the fatal disease was slow but sure. He had agreed with Dr. Howe that they should visit South America together in 1860, when he should have attained his fiftieth year. Alas! in place of that adventurous voyage and journey, a sad exodus to the West Indies and thence to Europe was appointed, an exile from which he never returned.

Many years after this time I visited the public cemetery in Florence, and stood before the simple granite cross which marks the resting-place of this great apostle of freedom. I found it adorned with plants and vines which had evidently been brought from his native land. A dear friend of his, Mrs. Sarah Shaw Russell, had said to me of this spot, "It looks like a piece of New England." And I thought how this piece of New England belonged to the world.

One of the most imposing figures in my gallery of remembrance is that of Charles Sumner, senator and martyr. When I first saw him I was still a girl in my father's house, from which the father had then but recently pa.s.sed. My eldest brother, Samuel Ward, had made Mr. Sumner's acquaintance through a letter of introduction given to the latter by Mr.

Longfellow. At his suggestion we invited Mr. Sumner to pa.s.s a quiet evening at our house, promising him a little music. Our guest had but recently returned from England, where letters from Chief Justice Story had given him access both to literary and to aristocratic circles. His appearance was at that time rather singular. He was very tall and erect, and the full suit of black which he wore added to the effect of his height and slenderness of figure. Of his conversation, I remember chiefly that he held the novels of Walter Scott in very light esteem, and that he quoted with approbation Sir Adam Ferguson as having said that Manzoni's "Promessi Sposi" was worth more than all of Sir Walter's romances put together.

Mr. Sumner was at this time one of a little group of friends which an ironical lady had christened "the Mutual Admiration Society." The other members were the poet Longfellow, George S. Hillard, Cornelius Felton, professor of Greek at Harvard College, of which at a later day he became president, and Dr. Howe. These gentlemen were indeed bound together by ties of intimate friendship, but the humorous designation just quoted was not fairly applicable to them. They rejoiced in one another's successes, and Sumner on one occasion wrote to Dr. Howe, apropos of some new poem of Mr. Longfellow's, "What a club we are! I like to indulge in a little _mutual_." The developments of later years made some changes in these relations. When the Boston public became strongly divided on the slavery question, Hillard and Felton were less p.r.o.nounced in their views than the others, while Longfellow, Sumner, and Dr. Howe remained united in opinion and in feeling. Hillard, who possessed more scholarship and literary taste than Sumner, could never understand the reason of the high position which the latter in time attained. He remained a Webster Whig, to use the language of those days, while Sumner was elected to Webster's seat in the Senate. Felton was a man of very genial temperament, devoted to the duties of his Greek professorship and to kindred studies. He was by nature averse to strife, and the encounters of the political arena had little attraction for him. The five always remained friends and well-wishers. They became much absorbed in the cares and business of public and private life, and the club as such ceased to be spoken of.

In the days of their great intimacy, a certain grotesqueness of taste in Sumner made him the object of some good-natured banter on the part of the other "Mutuals." It was related that on a certain Fourth of July he had given his office boy, Ben, a small gratuity, and had advised him to pa.s.s the day at Mount Auburn, where he would be able to enjoy quiet and profitable meditation. Felton was especially merry over this incident; but he, in turn, furnished occasion for laughter when on a visit to New York, in company with the same friends. A man-servant whom they had brought with them was ordered to carry Felton's valise to the Astor House. This was before the days of the baggage express. The man arrived late in the day, breathless with fatigue, and when questioned replied, "Faith! I went to all the _oyster_ houses in Broadway before I could find yees."

I little thought when I first knew Mr. Sumner that his most intimate friend was destined to become my own companion for life. Charles Sumner was a man of great qualities and of small defects. His blemishes, which were easily discerned, were temperamental rather than moral. He had not the sort of imagination which enables a man to enter easily into the feelings of others, and this deficiency on his part sometimes resulted in unnecessary rudeness.

His father, Sheriff Sumner, had been accounted the most polite Bostonian of his day. It was related of him that once, being present at the execution of a criminal, and having trodden upon the foot of the condemned man, the sheriff took off his hat and apologized for the accident. Whereupon the criminal exclaimed, "Sheriff Sumner, you are the politest man I ever knew, and if I am to be hanged, I had rather be hanged by you than by any one else." It was sometimes remarked that the sheriff's mantle did not seem to have fallen upon his son.

Charles Sumner's appearance was curiously metamorphosed by a severe attack of typhoid fever, which he suffered, I think, in 1843 or 1844.

After his recovery he gained much in flesh, and entirely lost that ungainliness of aspect which once led a friend to compare him to a geometrical line, "length without breadth or thickness." He now became a man of strikingly fine presence, his great height being offset by a corresponding fullness of figure. His countenance was strongly marked and very individual,--the features not handsome in themselves, but the whole effect very pleasingly impressive.

He had but little sense of humor, and was not at home in the small cut-and-thrust skirmishes of general society. He was made for serious issues and for great contests, which then lay unguessed before him. Of his literalness some amusing anecdotes have been told. At an official ball in Washington, he remarked to a young lady who stood beside him, "We are fortunate in having these places; for, standing here, we shall see the first entrance of the new English and French ministers into Washington society."

The young girl replied, "I am glad to hear it. I like to see lions break the ice."

Sumner was silent for a few minutes, but presently said, "Miss ----, in the country where lions live there is no ice."

During the illness of which I have spoken, he was at times delirious, and his mother one day, going into his room, found that he was endeavoring to put on a change of linen. She begged him to desist, knowing him to be very weak. He said in reply, "Mother, I am not doing it for myself, but for some one else."

Some debates on prison discipline, held in Boston in the year 1845, attracted a good deal of attention. Dr. Howe had become much dissatisfied with the management of prisons in Ma.s.sachusetts, and desired to see the adoption of the Pennsylvania system of solitary confinement. Mr. Sumner entered warmly into his views. The matter was brought before the Boston public, and the arguments for and against the proposed change were very fully stated and discussed. Mr. Sumner spoke several times in favor of the solitary system, and on each occasion carried off the honors of the meeting. The secretary of the prison discipline a.s.sociation at that time, a noted conservative, opposed very strenuously the introduction of the Pennsylvania system. In the course of the debates, Mr. Sumner turned upon him in a sudden and unexpected manner, with these words: "In what I am about to say, I shall endeavor to imitate the secretary's candor, but not his temper." Now the secretary was one of the magnates of Boston, accustomed to be treated with great consideration. The start that he gave on being thus interpellated was so comic that it has impressed itself upon my memory.

The speaker proceeded to apply to this gentleman a well-known line of Horace, descriptive of the character of Achilles:--

"Impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer."

I confess that to me this direct attack appeared uncalled for, and I thought that the cause could have been as well advocated without recourse to personalities.

I once invited Mr. Sumner to meet a distinguished guest at my house. He replied, "I do not know that I wish to meet your friend. I have outlived the interest in individuals." In my diary of the day I recorded the somewhat ungracious utterance, with this comment: "G.o.d Almighty, by the latest accounts, has not got so far as this." Mr. Sumner was told of this, in my presence, though not by me. He said at once, "What a strange sort of book your diary must be! You ought to strike that out immediately."

Sumner was often robbed in the street or at a railroad station; his tall figure attracting attention, and his mind, occupied with things far away, giving little heed to what went on in his immediate presence.

Members of his family were wont to say, "It is about time now for Charles to have his pocket picked again." The fact often followed the prediction.

Mr. Sumner's eloquence differed much in character from that of Wendell Phillips. The two men, although workers in a common cause, were very dissimilar in their natural endowments. Phillips had a temperament of fire, while that of Sumner was cold and sluggish. Phillips had a great gift of simplicity, and always made a bee line for the central point of interest in the theme which he undertook to present. Sumner was recondite in language and elaborate in style. He was much of a student, and abounded in quotations. In his senatorial days, I once heard a satirical lady mention him as "the moral flummery member from Ma.s.sachusetts, quoting Tibullus!"

The first political speech which I heard from Mr. Sumner was delivered, if I mistake not, at a schoolhouse in the neighborhood of Boston. I found his oratory somewhat overloud and emphatic for the small hall and limited attendance. He had not at that time found his proper audience.

When he was heard, later on, in Faneuil Hall or Tremont Temple, the ringing roll of his voice was very effective. His gestures were forcible rather than graceful. In argument he would go over the same ground several times, always with new amplifications and ill.u.s.trations of his subject. There was a dead weight of honesty and conviction in what he said, and it was this, perhaps, that chiefly gave him his command over an audience. He had also in a remarkable degree the trait of mastery, and the ability to present his topic in a large way.

I am not sure whether Sumner's idea of culture was as encyclopaedic as that of Theodore Parker, but he certainly aspired to be what is now called "an all-round man," and especially desired to attain connoisseurship in art. He had not the many-sided power of appreciation which distinguished Parker, yet a reverence for the beautiful, rather moral than aesthetic, led him to study with interest the works of the great masters. In his later years, he never went abroad without bringing back pictures, engravings, or rare missals. He had little natural apprehension of music, but used to express his admiration of some favorite operas, among them Mozart's "Don Giovanni" and Rossini's "Barbiere di Seviglia." In the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, of which he was chairman for many years, his acquaintance with foreign languages was much valued. I remember a line of Ta.s.so which he sometimes quoted when beautiful hands were spoken of:--

"Dove ne nodo appar, ne vena eccede."

On the other hand, I have heard him say that mathematics always remained a sealed book to him; and that his professor at Harvard once exclaimed, "Sumner, I can't whittle a mathematical idea small enough to get it into your brain."