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Title: Famous leaders among men
Author: Sarah Knowles Bolton
Release Date: August 10, 2018 [EBook #57666]
Language: English
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[Illustration: NAPOLÉON.]
FAMOUS
LEADERS AMONG MEN
BY
SARAH KNOWLES BOLTON
AUTHOR OF "POOR BOYS WHO BECAME FAMOUS," "GIRLS WHO BECAME FAMOUS,"
"FAMOUS AMERICAN AUTHORS," "FAMOUS AMERICAN STATESMEN,"
"FAMOUS MEN OF SCIENCE," "FAMOUS EUROPEAN ARTISTS,"
"FAMOUS TYPES OF WOMANHOOD," "STORIES FROM LIFE,"
"FROM HEART AND NATURE" (POEMS), "FAMOUS
ENGLISH AUTHORS," "FAMOUS ENGLISH
STATESMEN," ETC., ETC.
The longer I live, the more certain I am that the great difference
between men, the feeble and the powerful, the great and the
insignificant, is _energy_ and _invincible determination_.--SIR THOMAS
FOWELL BUXTON.
NEW YORK: 46 EAST 14TH STREET
THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.
BOSTON: 100 PURCHASE STREET
COPYRIGHT, 1894,
BY
THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.
C. J. PETERS & SON,
TYPE-SETTERS AND ELECTROTYPERS,
145 HIGH STREET, BOSTON.
TO MY SON
Charles Knowles Bolton.
PREFACE.
Napoleon said, "My maxim has always been, _a career open to talent
without distinction of birth_." It will be seen in these pages that most
of these men rose to leadership by their own efforts. Napoleon was poor,
and often without employment in early life, but his industry, good
judgment, will, and ambition carried him to the heights of power.
Nelson was the son of a minister, whose salary did not support his
numerous family, but his boy had the energy and force that won success.
Bunyan, a travelling tinker, twelve years a prisoner in Bedford jail,
could, while poor and in prison, write a book that is read more than any
other in the world, save the Bible.
Arnold, through love for his work, and his untiring energy and good
sense, became the ideal teacher.
Phillips and Beecher, both eloquent, the latter beginning his labors on
a salary of $200 a year, were led into their great careers through a
great motive,--their hatred of slavery.
Kingsley, the Christian socialist, knowing that the pulpit must help in
the solution of the labor problem, lived and preached the brotherhood of
man.
Sherman, the son of a widow, adopted by his father's friend, had early
failures, and won his place of distinction with Grant and Sheridan by
his own ability.
Spurgeon, whose work was marvellous, was poor, and without a college
education.
Phillips Brooks, whose death was an irreparable loss, made his way even
more by his sincerity and unselfishness than by his eloquence.
Napoleon, who was especially fond of biography and history, was always
eager to learn what qualities produced greatness or success. Perhaps
some will find it interesting to trace in these pages what enabled these
men to be leaders in various fields.
S. K. B.
CONTENTS.
PAGE.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 1
HORATIO NELSON 87
JOHN BUNYAN 123
THOMAS ARNOLD 149
WENDELL PHILLIPS 175
HENRY WARD BEECHER 217
CHARLES KINGSLEY 261
GENERAL WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN 288
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON 333
PHILLIPS BROOKS 368
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.
"The series of Napoleon's successes is absolutely the most marvellous in
history. No one can question that he leaves far behind the Turennes,
Marlboroughs, and Fredericks; but when we bring him up for comparison an
Alexander, a Hannibal, a Cæsar, a Charles, we find in the single point
of marvellousness Napoleon surpassing them all....
"Every one of those heroes was born to a position of exceptional
advantage. Two of them inherited thrones; Hannibal inherited a position
royal in all but the name; Cæsar inherited an eminent position in a
great empire. But Napoleon, who rose as high as any of them, began life
as an obscure provincial, almost as a man without a country. It is this
marvellousness which paralyzes our judgment. We seem to see at once a
genius beyond all estimate, a unique character, and a fortune utterly
unaccountable."
Thus wrote John Robert Seeley, Professor of Modern History in the
University of Cambridge, of the man whom he regarded as the greatest
enemy England has ever known.
Napoleon has been more praised and villified, probably, than any man in
history. Lanfrey, though careful as to facts, and Taine, are bitter,
always ready to impute sinister motives. John S. C. Abbott is adulatory;
Walter Scott cannot be impartial; and Bourrienne, the discarded private
secretary, Madame de Rémusat, and the Duchess d'Abrantès, must be read
with allowance for prejudice. Thiers, in his twenty volumes on "The
Consulate and the Empire," gives a most valuable picture of the times,
friendly to the great leader; John Codman Ropes's "First Napoleon" is
able; and the life by William O'Connor Morris of Oxford is generally
fair and interesting.
Napoleon Bonaparte was born at Ajaccio, in the Island of Corsica, Aug.
15, 1769. This date has been disputed by some authors, who claim that
Napoleon was born Jan, 7, 1768. Colonel Jung, in "Bonaparte et son
Temps," thinks the dates of birth of Napoleon and his brother Joseph
were exchanged by the parents, who wished, in 1778, to send Napoleon to
a military school at Brienne supported by the State, and he must needs
be under ten years of age.
As Corsica became subject to France in June, 1769, some persons believe
that Napoleon himself changed the date of his birth from 1768 to 1769,
that he might appear to the French nation as a French subject; but the
date, Aug. 15, 1769, is usually accepted as correct.
The Bonaparte family were originally from the nobility of Florence,
where they had taken a somewhat prominent part in politics and
literature. They had lost their fortune; and Charles Bonaparte, the
father of Napoleon, earned his living by the law. He was an eloquent
man, and an adjutant under Pasquale Paoli, a patriot of Corsica. This
island, in the fourteenth century, was under Genoa. When it gained its
independence under Paoli, such rights as Genoa still possessed she sold
to France. As a result, in 1769 a French army of twenty-two thousand
subjugated the island, and Paoli fled to England, where he lived for
twenty years.
Charles Bonaparte, at eighteen, married a girl not yet fifteen, Letizia
Ramolini, descended from a noble family of Naples, a person of unusual
beauty and strength of character. Although so young, she entered
heartily into the warfare for Corsican independence, and shared the
perils of her husband at the front.
Napoleon was the fourth of her thirteen children, the eldest, a son, and
the second, a daughter, both dying young. He was born in the midst of
war. He wrote Paoli, in 1789, when he was twenty years old, "I was born
when my country was sinking; the cries of the dying, the groans of the
oppressed, and the tears of despair surrounded my cradle from my birth."
The Duchess d'Abrantès tells this story of Napoleon's boyhood. When he
was seven years old, being accused by one of his sisters of eating a
basket of grapes and figs, although he denied the offence, he was
whipped and kept on bread and cheese for three days.
On the fourth day a little friend of the family arrived at the home, and
confessed that she and Napoleon's sister, Marianna (afterward Elisa) had
eaten the fruit. The lad was asked why he had not accused his sister,
and replied that he suspected that she was guilty, but said nothing out
of consideration for the friend.
After the submission of Corsica to France in 1769, Count Marboeuf was
appointed viceroy of the island. He became a friend of the Bonapartes;
and Charles, the father, was made king's assessor to the Judicial Court
for Ajaccio. Through Marboeuf's influence three of the Bonaparte
children were placed in fine schools,--Joseph, Marianna, and Napoleon,
the last at the military school of Brienne, near Paris. Here he
remained for five years. He was a quiet, studious lad, devoted to
Plutarch's Lives and Cæsar's Commentaries. He was always trying to find
out what made certain men great. He was easily at the head of his class
in mathematics. His industry and perseverance were astonishing.
"During play-hours," says Bourrienne, "he used to withdraw to the
library, where he read works of history, particularly Polybius and
Plutarch. I often went off to play with my comrades, and left him by
himself in the library."
He was cold in manner, talked very little with his classmates, and felt
keenly his poverty and the submission of his country to France.
Most of the boys at the school were rich, and they often ridiculed
Napoleon and his country. And yet he bore them no ill-will; and, says
Bourrienne, "when he had the supervision of any duty which they
infringed, he would rather go to prison than denounce the criminals."
During the winter of 1783-84, when the fall of snow was unusually heavy,
Napoleon, then fourteen, suggested to his mates that they build a snow
fort, "divide ourselves into sections, form a siege, and I will
undertake to direct the attacks." This sham war was carried on with
great enthusiasm for a fortnight.
Three of the best scholars were sent every year from each of the twelve
provincial military schools of France to the Military College of Paris.
Napoleon was one of the three sent from Brienne.
Here the young men lived so expensively that the youth of fifteen wrote
a letter of protest to the Vice-Principal Berton of Brienne. He urged
that, instead of so many attendants, and two-course dinners, they
should wait upon themselves, clean their own boots, and eat the coarse
bread made for soldiers. Temperance and activity would fit them, he
said, for the hardships of war.
Napoleon won the admiration of his teachers. The professor in history,
M. de l'Eguille, said: "A Corsican by birth and character, he will do
something great if circumstances favor him."
After a year at this school, he was made second lieutenant of artillery
in the regiment of La Fère, in 1785. The next five years he passed at
different military stations in France. He was always studying. He pored
over maps and plans of fortresses. He read with avidity books on law,
philosophy, theology, political economy, and various forms of
government. He wrote an essay on the question, "What are the
institutions most likely to contribute to human happiness?" He also
wrote a history of Corsica and her wrongs.
Abbott relates that on a day of public festivity at Marseilles, Napoleon
was criticised because he did not join in the amusements. He replied,
"It is not by playing and dancing that a _man_ is to be formed."
At Auxonne, Napoleon and some other officers boarded with a plain
barber. The wife of the barber did not like the taciturn young Napoleon,
who stayed in his room and devoured his books, while the other officers
pleased her from their social ways, and enjoyment of the gossip of the
town.
Years after, Napoleon, who had won several victories, passed that way.
He asked the barber's wife if she remembered an officer by the name of
Bonaparte in her home. "Indeed I do," was the reply, "and a very
disagreeable inmate he was. He was always either shut up in his room,
or, if he walked out, he never condescended to speak to any one."
"Ah, my good woman," said Napoleon, "had I passed my time as you wished
to have me, I should not now have been in command of the army of Italy."
Napoleon was at this time very slight in physique, five feet six and a
half inches tall, with a very large head, pale face, piercing eyes of
grayish blue, brown hair, a smile that could be sweet and captivating,
and beautiful hands.
In 1791, when he was twenty-two years old, Napoleon, now first
lieutenant, visited Corsica on furlough. Remaining too long, his name
was struck off the army lists. He returned to Paris, and anxiously
looked about for some way to earn a living. He met his schoolmate,
Bourrienne, who usually paid for any meal they took together at a
restaurant, as, although poor, he was richer than Napoleon. Each day
they had projects for earning money. They found some houses building,
and desired to rent them, and then underlet them, but the owners asked
too much to realize any profit. Napoleon solicited employment at the war
office. "Everything failed," says Bourrienne.
Bonaparte's mother, left a widow with eight children in 1785, was, of
course, powerless to help Napoleon. Her husband had gone on business to
Montpellier in the south of France, and died of a cancerous ulcer in the
stomach in the thirty-ninth year of his age. His wife was only
thirty-five. Madame Bonaparte was possessed of wonderful energy, great
strength of will, and excellent judgment. These her son Napoleon
inherited in a marked degree.
She proved equal to the care of her fatherless children. "She managed
everything," said Napoleon, "provided for everything with a prudence
which could neither have been expected from her sex nor from her age.
Ah, what a woman! Where shall we look for her equal? She watched over us
with a solicitude unexampled. Every low sentiment, every ungenerous
affection, was discouraged and discarded. She suffered nothing but that
which was grand and elevated to take root in our youthful
understandings. She abhorred falsehood, and would not tolerate the
slightest act of disobedience. None of our faults were overlooked.
Losses, privations, fatigue, had no effect upon her. She endured all,
braved all. She had the energy of a man, combined with the gentleness
and delicacy of a woman."
When Bonaparte was waiting in Paris for some position to open, the
French Revolution had begun. On June 20, 1792, a ragged mob of five or
six thousand men surrounded the Tuileries, put a red cap on the head of
Louis XVI., and made him show himself at the windows to the crowd in the
garden. Napoleon was indignant, and said to Bourrienne, "Why have they
let in all that rabble? They should sweep off four or five hundred of
them with the cannon; the rest would then set off fast enough."
Napoleon also witnessed the storming of the Tuileries on Aug. 10, when
the Swiss guards were massacred. Although a Republican in sentiment, he
had no sympathy with the extreme democracy of the Jacobins, and said:
"If I were compelled to choose between the old monarchy and Jacobin
misrule, I should infinitely prefer the former."
Years later, when Napoleon was Emperor, when asked to allow a person to
return to France who had been prominent in the downfall of the Bourbon
dynasty, he said, "Let him know that I am not powerful enough to protect
the wretches who voted for the death of Louis XVI. from the contempt and
indignation of the public."
Corsica and Paoli (who had returned and become her governor) were
shocked at the excesses of the French Revolution, and hoped and planned
once more for independence. Finding themselves unable to achieve it
alone, they sought the aid of England. Bonaparte and his family favored
adherence to France, and were banished from the island, their home
plundered, and they made their escape at midnight to Marseilles. Here
they were for some time in extreme poverty. Joseph, the eldest son,
found employment as a clerk in an office, and in August, 1794, married
Julia Clari, the daughter of one of the richest merchants of Marseilles.
This was a great pecuniary benefit to the whole family.
Napoleon had finally been reinstated in the army; for with the Reign of
Terror at home, and wars with monarchies abroad, all fearful of the
growth of republican sentiments and consequent revolutions, the French
army was in need of all its able young men.
Napoleon's first important work was at the siege of Toulon. This was the
great naval depot and arsenal of France. The Royalists, or followers of
the Bourbon king, Louis XVI., had centred here, and, opposed to the
republic, had surrendered the city, with its forts and ships, to
England.
The place must be retaken; and the Republic sent out an army under
Carteaux, a portrait painter. For some months the siege was carried on,
but almost nothing was accomplished. Sixty thousand men were needed, and
Carteaux had but twenty-five thousand.
Napoleon, on his way from Avignon to Nice, passed through Toulon,
stopping to see a friend who introduced him to Carteaux. The young
officer saw at once the mistakes of the campaign. "Instead of attacking
the town," said Napoleon, "try and establish batteries which shall sweep
the harbor and the roadstead. If you can only drive away the ships, the
troops will not remain."
Cape l'Eguillette separates the two harbors, and here batteries were
placed to sweep the sea; for Napoleon had said, putting his finger on
the map, at the cape, "Toulon is there!"
As he predicted, the English ships were driven off after a terrible
bombardment; fifteen thousand of the inhabitants of Toulon in dismay
fled to the ships of the allies; the plan of Napoleon had proved a great
success.
He was not responsible for the horrors which followed. The Royalists set
fire to the arsenal and ships before their departure; while the town was
in flames, cannon from the shore sunk boat-loads of fugitives, and
hundreds in the city who could not escape were deliberately shot in the
streets and in their homes, so desperate had become the hate between
Royalists and Republicans, or really Jacobins.
Fouché, afterwards prominent under the Empire, wrote to a friend, Dec.
23: "We have only one way of celebrating victory. This evening we shoot
two hundred and thirteen rebels. Adieu, my friend; tears of joy run down
my cheeks, and my heart is overflowing."
"It was," says Walter Scott, concerning this taking of Toulon, Dec. 17,
1793, "upon this night of terror, conflagration, tears, and blood, that
the star of Napoleon first ascended the horizon; and, though it gleamed
over many a scene of horror ere it set, it may be doubted whether its
light was ever blended with that of one more dreadful."
For this brilliant undertaking Napoleon was made General of Artillery.
General Dugommier, who commanded at Toulon, said, "Promote this young
officer, or he will promote himself." Napoleon was wounded in his thigh
by a bayonet thrust in one of the charges. He was at this time but
twenty-four years of age, poor, ambitious, and with little prospect of
his future wonderful career.
He was sent to defend the coast of Provence, and was denounced by the
Jacobins, who said he was building a bastile at Marseilles to enslave
the people. In March, 1794, he rejoined the army of Italy at Nice, and
was so useful that the commander-in-chief wrote: "I am indebted to the
comprehensive talents of General Bonaparte for the plans which have
insured our victory."
In July, 1794, he was sent on a mission to Genoa, to examine the
fortresses and the neighboring country. Meantime, one set of French
leaders had been superseded by a set equally bad. Through jealousy, and
as a friend of the younger Robespierre, Napoleon was arrested as a
"suspected person," was two weeks in prison, and nearly lost his life.
He seems to have been spared for the selfish reason, "the possible
utility of the military and local knowledge of the said Bonaparte." He
addressed an eloquent letter to his accusers, quoted by Lanfrey, in
which he says: "Remove the oppression which surrounds me; give me back
the esteem of patriots. An hour afterwards, if bad men wish for my life,
I care so little for it, I have so often counted it for nothing.... Yes,
nothing but the idea that it may be of use to the country gives me
courage to bear its weight."
Soon after this, to scatter such officers as himself, who were supposed
to be Jacobin in tendency, Napoleon was ordered to La Vendée to put down
civil dissensions. He rebelled against being separated from the army of
Italy. "You are too young," said Aubrey, the Girondist deputy, "to be
commander-in-chief of artillery."
"Men age fast on a field of battle," said Napoleon, "and I am no
exception."
For refusing to proceed to his post, Napoleon's name was struck off the
army lists, and again he was in Paris, out of employment. When he and
Bourrienne took a stroll at evening on the Boulevards, and saw the rich
young men on horseback, apparently living a life of ease and luxury,
"dandies with their whiskers," says Madame Junot (Duchess d'Abrantès),
Napoleon would exclaim bitterly, "And it is on such beings as these that
Fortune confers her favors. How contemptible is human nature!"
He told Count Montholon, when in exile at St. Helena, that at this time
he came near committing suicide by throwing himself into the river. With
head down, and meditating upon his determination, he ran against a
plainly dressed man, who proved to be Démasis, a former comrade in the
artillery.
"What is the matter?" he said to Napoleon. "You do not listen to me! You
do not seem glad to see me! What misfortune threatens you? You look to
me like a madman about to kill himself."
Napoleon told him his needs, and his mother's poverty. "Is that all?"
said Démasis. "Here are six thousand dollars in gold, which I can spare
without any inconvenience. Take them, and relieve your mother."
Hardly aware of what he was doing, Napoleon grasped the money, and sent
it to his mother. Afterwards he could find nothing of Démasis. Fifteen
years later, when the Empire was near its fall, Napoleon met him, made
him accept sixty thousand dollars to repay the loan of six thousand, and
appointed him director-general of the crown gardens, at a salary of six
thousand dollars a year, and the honors of an officer in the household.
He also provided a good situation for Démasis' brother.
He never forgot a kindness. A humble shoemaker, who worked for him in
these days of poverty, and waited for his pay, was always employed by
Napoleon after he became Emperor, though he was urged to go to some one
more fashionable. A jeweller, who once trusted him, was remembered in
Napoleon's days of prosperity, and thus made his fortune. To a lady, a
stranger to him, who once was kind to him in sickness in these early
years, he sent two thousand dollars, hearing that her circumstances had
changed. To an old man in Jersey, who had once loaned his father
twenty-five louis, he sent ten times that sum.
Reverses began to attend the army of Italy. Whenever it was convenient
to use his services, it seemed always to be remembered that he had
knowledge and sagacity. Napoleon was asked by the director of military
affairs to draw up a plan of operations for the army. It was sent to
Kellermann, commander-in-chief of the army of Italy, who rejected it,
saving, "The author is a fit inmate for a lunatic asylum." Lanfrey and
other historians consider the plan altogether brilliant and admirable.
Napoleon, by years of study, had made himself a master in the science of
war, as well as along other lines. He had made himself ready for a great
opportunity, and a great opportunity came to him.
France, in her struggle for self-government, had adopted a new
constitution, under a Directory of five persons, with a Council of two
hundred and fifty Ancients, and a Council of Five Hundred, somewhat like
our House of Representatives. The new government, though acceptable to
the provinces, did not please either the Royalists or Jacobins of Paris,
and the people, now so used to bloodshed, resorted to force to destroy
the Directory.
Barras, one of the Directors, who knew Napoleon, immediately thought of
him as a young man who could quell a mob. "It is that little Corsican
officer," he said, "who will not stand upon ceremony!" The Directory had
but about eight thousand soldiers; the National Guard numbered forty
thousand. Napoleon spent the whole night in turning the Louvre and the
Tuileries into a sort of camp, with artillery posted at all the outlets.
He armed all the members of the government, that they might defend
themselves if the necessity arose, and he took care to leave a way of
retreat open to St. Cloud.
The National Guards appeared on the morning of Oct. 5, 1795 (13th
Vendémiaire, as the month was called by the Revolutionary Calendar), in
front of Napoleon's troops. All day the two armies were within fifteen
paces of each other. At four o'clock in the afternoon, General Danican
of the National Guards gave the signal for attack. Napoleon mounted his
horse, and the fight began at several places.
The cannon swept them down at every point. At six o'clock the battle was
over, and order was restored in Paris. About eighty only were killed,
and three or four hundred wounded, as the guns were loaded with powder
after two discharges. Napoleon was, as he deserved to be, the hero of
the hour. With the utmost self-possession, with a clear brain and
never-failing courage, he had been equal to the emergency.
Napoleon was made General of the Interior, with the command of Paris.
The days of poverty were over. He found places for several of his
family, and was much sought after by those in high position. He was
especially good to the poor, and the Duchess d'Abrantès tells how he
climbed to attics and went down into cellars to feed the hungry. As he
was stepping out of his carriage one day at the home of the Duchess, a
woman held her dead child before him. It had died from want. She had
come to ask him to save her other children. "If nobody will give me
anything," she said, "I must even take them all five and drown myself
with them." Napoleon remembered how near he had been to drowning himself
only a little time before. He obtained the wages due to her husband, who
had been killed while at work on the roof of the Tuileries, and a
pension was granted her.
Soon after this an attractive boy about fourteen years of age came to
Napoleon and asked for the sword of his father, who was a general of the
Republic, and had been put to death by the Jacobins, because he was a
Girondist, or moderate Republican.
"I was so touched by this affectionate request," said Napoleon, "that I
ordered it to be given to him. This boy was Eugène Beauharnais. On
seeing the sword he burst into tears. I felt so affected by his conduct,
that I noticed and praised him much. A few days afterwards his mother
came to return me a visit of thanks. I was struck with her appearance,
and still more with her _esprit_."
The young general of twenty-six became thoroughly in love with the
graceful and lovable widow of thirty-two. Josephine Tascher, the only
child of French parents, had been born in the Island of Martinique, Jan.
24, 1763. She was married when sixteen to Viscount de Beauharnais, a
major in the army, who introduced her to the court of Marie Antoinette,
but who, with all his wealth and position, did not make her life a happy
one. After four years of marriage and the birth of two children,
Hortense and Eugène, to whom she was most tenderly attached, she and
Beauharnais separated, and she returned to Martinique, but at his
persistent request she came back to him after three years.
On his imprisonment during the Reign of Terror she attempted to save him
and was thrown into prison, where she narrowly escaped the guillotine.
He was beheaded July 23, 1794.
"Josephine," says Meneval, the secretary of Napoleon after Bourrienne,
"was irresistibly attractive.... Her temper was always the same. She was
gentle and kind, affable and indulgent with every one, without
difference of persons. She had neither a superior mind nor much
learning; but her exquisite politeness, her full acquaintance with
society, with the court, and with their innocent artifices, made her
always know the best things to say or do."
Napoleon found at the home of Madame de Beauharnais the most noted
persons in Paris, and, what was more important for his happiness, the
one woman whom he ever after loved.
Years later he said, "Josephine was truly a most lovely woman, refined,
affable, and charming.... She was so kind, so humane--she was the most
graceful lady and the best woman in France. I never saw her act
inelegantly during the whole time we lived together. She possessed a
perfect knowledge of the different shades of my character, and evinced
the most exquisite tact in turning this knowledge to the best
account....
"I was the object of her deepest attachment. If I went into my carriage
at midnight for a long journey, there, to my surprise, I found her,
seated before me and awaiting my arrival. If I attempted to dissuade her
from accompanying me, she had so many good and affectionate reasons to
urge, that it was almost always necessary to yield. In a word, she
always proved to me a happy and affectionate wife, and I have preserved
the tenderest recollections of her."
Barras, the ardent friend of Josephine, urged her marriage with
Napoleon, and her children favored it. She admired him, but hesitated.
She wrote a friend, "Barras assures me that if I marry the general, he
will obtain for him the appointment of commander-in-chief of the army of
Italy. Yesterday Bonaparte, speaking to me of this favor, which has
already caused some jealousy among his companions in arms, although it
is not yet granted, said, 'Do they think I need patronage to insure my
success? Some day they will be only too happy if I grant them mine. My
sword is at my side, and that will carry me a long way.'"
They were married March 9, 1796, Napoleon having been appointed to the
command of the army of Italy on the preceding 23d of February. He
remained in Paris but a few days, and then hastened to his army,
reaching Nice towards the last of March.
He found an army of about thirty thousand men, "without pay, without
provisions, without shoes," opposed to about twice their number of
Austrians and Sardinians. He issued an address to them: "Soldiers, you
are poorly fed and half-naked. The government owes you much, but can do
nothing for you. Your patience, your courage, do you honor, but they
bring you no advantage, no glory. I am about to lead you into the most
fertile plains in the world; there you will find larger cities and rich
provinces; there you will find honor, glory, and wealth. Soldiers of
Italy, shall you lack courage?"
His soldiers, who till his death idolized him and would die for him,
were soon to prove on scores of battle-fields that they never lacked
courage.
This slight, boyish-looking general of twenty-six said to his veteran
officers, "We must hurl ourselves on the foe like a thunderbolt, and
smite like it."
And this was done. The first battle was on April 12, at Montenotte. The
Austrians were routed, leaving their colors and cannon with the French,
and three thousand dead and wounded. Napoleon afterwards said to the
Emperor of Austria, "My title of nobility dates from the battle of
Montenotte."
The battles of Millesimo and Mondovi quickly followed. On the heights of
Monte Zemolo, Napoleon looked out upon the fertile plains of Italy, and
exclaimed, "Hannibal crossed the Alps, but we have turned them!"
Then he addressed his enthusiastic soldiers: "In fifteen days," he said,
"you have won six victories; captured twenty-one flags, fifty cannon,
many fortified places; conquered the richest part of Piedmont; you have
captured fifteen thousand prisoners, and killed and wounded ten thousand
men. You lacked everything; you have gained battles without cannon;
crossed rivers without bridges; made forced marches without shoes;
often bivouacked without bread; the Republican phalanxes were alone
capable of such extraordinary deeds. Soldiers, receive your due of
thanks!"
Murat, his aide-de-camp, who afterwards married Napoleon's sister
Caroline, and became King of Naples, was sent to Paris with the
armistice proposed by the King of Sardinia, and Junot with the flags,
which caused the greatest rejoicing. _Fêtes_ were celebrated at the
Champ de Mars, and Napoleon's name was honored as the conqueror of
Italy.
Napoleon writes to his bride: "Your letters are the delight of my days,
and my happy days are not very many. Junot is carrying twenty-two flags
to Paris. You must come back with him; do you understand? It would be
hopeless misery, an inconsolable grief, continual agony, if I should
have the misfortune of seeing him come back alone, my adorable one....
You will be here, by my side, on my heart, in my arms! Take wings, come,
come! But travel slowly; the way is long, bad, and tiresome."
Almost daily he writes to his wife: "My only Josephine, away from you,
there is no happiness; away from you, the world is a desert, in which I
stand alone, with no chance of tasting the delicious joy of pouring out
my heart. You have robbed me of more than my soul; you are the sole
thought of my life. If I am worn out by all the torment of events, and
fear the issue; if men disgust me; if I am ready to curse life, I place
my hand on my heart,--your image is beating there."
She is not well, and does not come to him, and again he writes: "My
dear, do remember to tell me that you are certain that I love you more
than can be imagined; ... that no hour passes that I do not think of
you; that it has never entered my mind to think of any other woman; ...
that you, as I see you, as you are, can please me and absorb my whole
soul; that you have wholly filled it; that my heart has no corner that
you do not see, no thoughts that are not subordinate to you; that my
strength, my arms, my intelligence, are all yours; ... and that the day
when you shall have changed, or shall have ceased to live, will be the
day of my death; that nature, the earth, is beautiful, in my eyes, only
because you live on it."
General Marmont says in his memoirs: "Bonaparte, however occupied he may
have been with his greatness, the interests intrusted to him, and with
his future, had, nevertheless, time to devote to feelings of another
sort; he was continually thinking of his wife.... He often spoke to me
of her, and of his love, with all the frankness, fire, and illusion of a
very young man.... During a trip we made together at this time, to
inspect the places in Piedmont that had fallen into our hands, one
morning, at Tortona, the glass in front of his wife's portrait, which he
always carried with him, broke in his hands. He grew frightfully pale,
and suffered the keenest alarm."
Again he says, "Never did a purer, truer, or more exclusive love fill a
man's heart, or the heart of so extraordinary a man."
Lanfrey says, "In this love, which has been said to be the only one that
touched his heart, all the fire and flame of his masterful nature showed
itself."
Napoleon pushed on his troops to conquer the Austrian Beaulieu, crossed
the river Po at Piacenza, and overtook the enemy at the town of Lodi on
the Adda River. The town was taken by the French; nut, to cross the
Adda and reach Beaulieu, it was necessary to storm a narrow wooden
bridge, which was defended by artillery and by from twelve to sixteen
thousand Austrians. Napoleon immediately placed a battery on his own
side of the river, sent a detachment of cavalry to ford the river and
attack the enemy's rear, and then, at the head of several thousand men,
bade them force a passage across the bridge.
The French were mowed down by the Austrian cannon. They wavered, when
Napoleon seized a standard, and, with Lannes and one or two other
officers, rushed among the troops and inspired them to gain a complete
victory. Lannes was the first to cross the bridge and reach the Austrian
gunners, who were sabred at their guns, and Napoleon the second. Lannes
was promoted on the spot for his valor. So proud were the troops that
their general should fight in the ranks, that they ever after called him
their "Little Corporal." The conflict was a bloody one. The Austrian
loss was much heavier than the French.
Napoleon said, "It was not till after the _terrible passage of the
bridge of Lodi_ that the idea shot across my mind that I might become a
decisive actor in the political arena. Then arose, for the first time,
the spark of great ambition."
He said to his aide-de-camp, Marmont, "In our time, no one has devised
anything great; I must set an example."
On May 15, 1796, Napoleon entered Milan in triumph. The people hated the
rule of Austria, and hoped for liberty under the French Republic. A
triumphal arch was erected in the city, and flowers were scattered in
the path of the French. To his soldiers, "who had rushed," he said,
"like a torrent from the height of the Apennines," Napoleon gave all the
glory.
In accordance with the wishes of the Directory in France, he levied
twenty million francs on Milan, and took some of her best art works to
Paris. The army was supported by the countries through which it passed,
as was Sherman's in our Civil War.
Late in June, Josephine reached Milan, and for a brief period they were
happy; but Napoleon was obliged very soon to be at the front. The war
now centred about Mantua, which was strongly fortified. Seven or eight
thousand French troops were besieging it, when it was ascertained that
Würmser, the Austrian general, was marching against the French with
seventy thousand men, in three armies, while Napoleon had but about
forty-five thousand.
At once the siege of Mantua was raised, the gun-carriages burned, the
powder thrown into the river, the cannon spiked, and the French forces
were led against Würmser.
Napoleon, with his usual celerity and tact,--he used to say, "War, like
government, is mainly decided by tact,"--managed to defeat each of the
three Austrian armies in turn.
At Lonato the Austrians lost ten thousand in killed, wounded, and
prisoners. The day after the battle, one of the Austrian divisions,
reduced to four thousand men, wandered into Lonato, and demanded the
surrender of the garrison of twelve hundred. Napoleon called his staff
together; and when the bandage was removed from the eyes of the officer,
he said with authority, "Go and tell your general that I give him eight
minutes to lay down his arms!" The Austrians surrendered, and were soon
chagrined to find that four thousand had succumbed to twelve hundred
Frenchmen.
Napoleon said at Lonato, "I was at ease; the Thirty-second was there!"
So rejoiced were the men at these words that they had them embroidered
on their regimental flag.
In this short campaign twenty thousand Austrians had been killed and
wounded, fifteen thousand taken prisoners, with seventy pieces of
artillery, and twenty-two stands of colors. The latter were sent to
Paris.
Early in September, Napoleon again defeated Würmser at Bassano. After
the battle, at midnight Napoleon rode over the battle-field by
moonlight, the quiet broken only by the moans of the wounded and dying.
Suddenly a dog sprang from beneath the cloak of his dead master, rushed
to Napoleon as though asking aid, and then back to the body, licking the
face and hands of the dead, and howling piteously.
Napoleon was strongly moved, and said years afterward, "I know not how
it was, but no incident upon any field of battle ever produced so deep
an impression upon my feelings. 'This man,' thought I, 'must have had
among his comrades friends, and yet here he lies forsaken by all except
his faithful dog.' ... Certainly, in that moment, I should have been
unable to refuse any request to a suppliant enemy."
When at St. Helena, Madame Montholon, seeming to be afraid of a dog,
Napoleon said, "He who does not love a dog has never known what real
fidelity means."
Austria soon put another general in the field with over sixty thousand
men. She was determined not to lose Italy. At first the French army lost
some battles, the general-in-chief not being with them. When he came to
his army, he said to some regiments, "Soldiers, I am not satisfied with
you. You have shown neither discipline, constancy, nor courage.... Let
it be written on the colors, 'They are not of the army of Italy.'"
The men seemed heart-broken. "Place us in the van of the army," they
said, "and you shall then judge whether we do not belong to the army of
Italy."
They were soon put to the test. Napoleon marched out of Verona on the
night of Nov. 14, descended the Adige river, and fell upon the rear of
Alvinzi, the Austrian general, at Arcola. The village is surrounded by
marshes, crossed by causeways or bridges.
When the French rushed upon the bridges, they were repulsed by the guns
of the Austrians. Napoleon sprang from his horse, seized a standard, and
shouted, "Follow your general!" but he was borne by the struggling
soldiers off the bridge into the marsh.
Frenzied at the probable loss of their general, the French fought
desperately. Muiron, who had saved Napoleon at Toulon when he was
wounded in the thigh, covered his general with his own body, and
received his death wound from a shell. Lannes received three wounds in
endeavoring to protect Napoleon, who was finally extricated, and was
again at the head of the column. After three days of battle, the French
were victorious. It is estimated that twenty thousand men perished in
the swamps of Arcola.
Napoleon wrote a letter of sympathy to the young widow of Muiron, who in
a few weeks died at the birth of a lifeless child.
To the Directory he wrote: "Never was a field of battle more valiantly
disputed than the conflict at Arcola. I have scarcely any generals left.
Their bravery and their patriotic enthusiasm are without example."
In the midst of this toil and carnage, Napoleon could find time to write
to Josephine. She had followed him for a while after coming to Milan,
but her dangers were so great that it was soon found to be impossible.
After Arcola he writes her: "At length, my adored Josephine, I live
again. Death is no longer before me, and glory and honor are still in my
breast.... Soon Mantua will be ours, and then thy husband will fold thee
in his arms, and give thee a thousand proofs of his ardent affection. I
shall proceed to Milan as soon as I can; I am a little fatigued. I have
received letters from Eugène and Hortense. I am delighted with the
children.... Adieu, my adorable Josephine. Think of me often. Death
alone can break the union which sympathy, love, and sentiment have
formed. Let me have news of your health. A thousand and a thousand
kisses."
If she does not write often he is distressed; "Three days without a word
from you," he writes, "and I have written you several times. This
absence is horrible; the nights are long, tiresome, dull; the days are
monotonous.... I don't really live away from you; my life's happiness is
only to be with my sweet Josephine. Think of me! write to me often, very
often; it is the only balm in absence which is cruel, but I hope will be
short.... Day before yesterday I was in the field all day. Yesterday I
stayed in bed. A fever and a raging headache prevented me from writing
to my dear one; but I received her letters. I pressed them to my heart
and my lips; and the pang of absence, a hundred miles apart, vanished."
Yet, with all this intensity of feeling, Napoleon had wonderful
self-command. He said, "Nature seems to have calculated that I should
endure great reverses. She has given me a mind of marble. Thunder cannot
ruffle it. The shaft merely glides along."
Austria made another desperate effort to overcome Napoleon and save
Würmser, shut up in Mantua. At four o'clock in the morning, Jan. 14,
1797, the battle of Rivoli began. For twelve hours Napoleon was in the
hottest of the fight. Three horses were shot under him.
After a desperate but victorious battle, the troops marched all night,
conquered Provera before Mantua the next day, and La Favorita on the
third day. The Austrian army had lost thirty thousand men in three days,
of whom twenty thousand were taken prisoners. Napoleon, in his report of
the battle of Favorita, spoke of the terrible Fifty-seventh. Thereafter
the Fifty-seventh adopted the name of "The Terrible," proud of this
distinction of their chief.
Massena's men had marched and fought incessantly for four days and
nights. No wonder the Austrians said, "The French do not march, they
fly." Napoleon wrote, "The Roman legions used to make twenty-four miles
a day; our men make thirty, and fight in the intervals." ...
Würmser surrendered Mantua Feb. 3, 1797. Twenty-seven thousand men had
died of wounds or sickness since the commencement of the siege. The
horses had all been eaten, and the city could sustain itself no longer.
Würmser had declared that he could hold out for a year. But Napoleon
knew that so brave a marshal as Würmser would not surrender unless
reduced to the last extremity.
He therefore allowed Würmser to retire with all his staff and two
thousand cavalry. He surrendered to France eighteen thousand prisoners.
Würmser wished to salute the young conqueror of twenty-seven; but
Napoleon had gone to Bologna, not liking to subject the marshal of
seventy to humiliation. Lanfrey thinks this was done for effect, but
there seems no good reason for always imputing bad motives to Napoleon.
A man so worshipped by his soldiers, and, indeed, by the nation, had
much that was noble and refined in his nature.
Würmser, out of gratitude to Napoleon, saved his life at Bologna, by
making known to him a plot to poison him.
Napoleon now turned his attention towards the Papal States. The Pope had
no love for the "godless Republic." Thousands of priests had fled from
France to Rome. Austria and Rome were closely allied, and both ready to
sustain war against France whenever an opportunity offered.
The Directory had written to Napoleon "that the Roman Catholic religion
would always be the irreconcilable enemy of the Republic," but Napoleon
bore no ill-will towards his mother's faith and the faith in which he
himself died.
He issued a proclamation in which he said, "The French soldier carries
in one hand the bayonet, the guaranty of victory, and in the other an
olive branch, the symbol of peace and pledge of his protection."
When within three days' march of Rome, the Pope sued for peace, and the
treaty of Tolentino was signed Feb. 19, 1797.
Napoleon writes to Josephine on the same day: "Peace has just been
signed with Rome. Bologna, Ferrara, the Romagna, are ceded to the
Republic. The Pope gives us shortly thirty million [francs] and many
works of art....
"My dear, I beg of you think of me often, and write me every day....
You, to whom nature has given intelligence, gentleness, and beauty, you,
who rule alone over my heart, you, who doubtless know only too well the
absolute power you exercise over my heart, write to me, think of me, and
love me. Ever yours."
Austria was not yet humbled. Napoleon determined to march against
Vienna. The young Archduke Charles, brother of the ruler of Austria, was
in command of the Austrian army. "He is a man," said Napoleon, "whose
conduct can never attract blame.... More than all, he is a good man, and
that includes everything when said of a prince."
Charles had beaten Napoleon's generals on the Rhine, but he could not
beat the "Little Corporal." His fifty thousand men melted away as they
fled, wounded and distracted, over the Alps.
When within sight of Vienna, Napoleon proposed peace; and Austria, tired
of war for a time at least, accepted the conditions.
Early in May, France declared war against the Venetian Republic. The
latter had been neutral, although both Austrians and French had crossed
her territory. Her aristocracy had no sympathy with the French Republic,
and preferred Austria. Perhaps to guard herself from both nations, she
raised an army of sixty thousand men, and put herself in the attitude of
armed neutrality. She refused to ally herself to France. "Be neutral,
then," said Napoleon; "but remember, if you violate your neutrality, if
you harass my troops, if you cut off my supplies, I will take ample
vengeance.... The hour that witnesses the treachery of Venice shall
terminate her independence."
Whether or not her government desired to keep the peace, insurrections
arose among the people in Verona and elsewhere, French soldiers were
killed, Napoleon took "ample vengeance," and in the treaty of Campo
Formio, Oct. 17, 1797, Venice was handed over to Austria. The Republic
ceased to exist. In taking the hated oath of allegiance to Austria, the
ex-Doge of Venice became insensible, and died soon after.
Napoleon now returned to Milan, and for a time lived in peace and
happiness at the Serbelloni Palace. Josephine won every heart by her
grace and her kindness. Napoleon said, "I conquer provinces, but
Josephine wins hearts."
Madame de Rémusat wrote: "Love seemed to come every day to place at her
feet a new conquest over a people entranced with its conqueror."
The people waited to see Napoleon pass in and out of his palace. They
did him honor as though he were a king. He had sent for his mother, his
brothers Joseph and Louis, and his beautiful sister Pauline, sixteen
years of age, of whom Arnault, the poet, said, "if she was the prettiest
person in the world, she was also the most frivolous."
Imbert de Saint-Amand, in his "Citizeness Bonaparte," quotes this
incident to show Josephine's power over her husband. "He was absolutely
faithful to her," says Saint-Amand, "and this at a time when there was
not a beauty in Milan who was not setting her cap for him."
Josephine owned a pug dog, Fortuné, which, when she was imprisoned in
the Reign of Terror, was brought to her cell with a letter concealed in
his collar. Ever since she had been extremely fond of him. They were
all at the Castle of Montebello, a few leagues from Milan, during the
warm weather. "You see that fellow there?" said Napoleon to Arnault,
pointing to the dog who lay on the sofa beside his mistress, "he is my
rival. When I married I wanted to put him out of my wife's room, but I
was given to understand that I might go away myself or share it with
him. I was annoyed; but it was to take or to leave, and I yielded. The
favorite was not so accommodating, and he left his mark on my leg."
Fortuné barked at everything, and used to bite other dogs. The cook's
dog, a mastiff, returned the bite one day, and killed Fortuné. Josephine
was in despair; but the mischief was done, and there was no help for it.
Nov. 17 Napoleon left Milan, and, after a continued ovation along the
route, reached Paris Dec. 5, where, a change having taken place in the
government, he thought it wise to be for a time. Though the Directory
was jealous of the rising power of Napoleon, the people demanded a
magnificent reception for him, which was prepared in the Luxembourg.
Napoleon made an address which was eagerly listened to, and the people
were wild with enthusiasm. Thiers says, "All heads were overcome with
the intoxication." Talleyrand gave a great ball costing over twelve
thousand francs. Bourrienne, his secretary, remarked that it must be
agreeable to "see his fellow-citizens so eagerly running after him."
"Bah! the people would crowd as fast to see me if I were going to the
scaffold," was Napoleon's reply. So well did he understand human nature.
He said to Bourrienne, "Were I to remain in Paris long, doing nothing, I
should be lost. In this great Babylon one reputation displaces another.
Let me be seen but three times at the theatre and I shall no longer
excite attention; so I shall go there but seldom."
Napoleon was made a member of the Institute, in the class of the
Sciences and Arts. This honor he greatly valued, writing to the
president of the class, "I feel well assured that, before I can be their
equal, I must long be their scholar.... True conquests--the only ones
which leave no regret behind them--are those which are made over
ignorance. The most honorable, as well as the most useful, occupation
for nations is the contributing to the extension of human knowledge."
"He had," says Bourrienne, "an extreme aversion to mediocrity," or to
people who are too indolent to read and improve themselves. "Mankind,"
he said, "are, in the end, always governed by superiority of
intellectual qualities."
The Directory were anxious for an attack upon England, which had joined
the Coalition against France in 1793, and was her most formidable enemy.
"Go there," said Barras, "and capture the giant Corsair that infests the
seas; go punish in London outrages that have too long gone unpunished."
Arnault said to Napoleon, "The Directory wishes to get you away; France
wishes to keep you."
"I am perfectly willing to make a tour of the coast," said Napoleon to
Bourrienne. "Should the expedition to Britain prove too hazardous, as I
much fear that it will, the army of England will become the army of the
East, and we will go to Egypt." He spent a week in looking over the
ground, and said, "I will not hazard it. I would not thus sport with the
fate of France."
He determined to colonize Egypt. He would take with him men of science,
artists, and artisans. He said to Montholon at St. Helena, "Were the
French once established in Egypt, it would be impossible for the English
to maintain themselves long in India. Squadrons constructed on the
shores of the Red Sea, provisioned with the products of the country, and
equipped and manned by the French troops stationed in Egypt, would
infallibly make us masters of India, and at a moment when England least
expected it."
The fleet set sail from Toulon May 19, 1798, with forty thousand men
besides ten thousand sailors. Josephine came to Toulon to say good-by,
and wished to go with her husband, but this would have been most unwise.
The fleet arrived off Malta June 10, which, with almost no opposition,
surrendered to the French its twelve hundred pieces of cannon, its ten
thousand pounds of powder, its ships, and its forty thousand muskets.
On June 30 the fleet appeared before Alexandria, which was soon
captured. Then the army set out to cross the desert towards Cairo.
The heat was intense, they suffered for lack of water, and murmured at
the Directory. Napoleon bivouacked in their midst, and dined on lentils.
On July 21 they came in sight of the Pyramids. The whole army halted.
"Soldiers," said Napoleon, "from the summit of those pyramids forty
centuries look down upon you!"
Before them lay the intrenched camp of Embabeh, with ten thousand
Mameluke horsemen under Mourad Bey. These charged upon the immovable
squares of the French only to be cut to pieces by bayonets.
They fought desperately, but were routed, and many of them driven into
the Nile. Over two thousand perished, while the French did not lose
over one hundred and fifty in killed and wounded. "The banks of the
Nile," says Bourrienne, "were strewed with heaps of bodies, which the
waves were every moment washing into the sea." The soldiers bent their
bayonets into hooks, and for days fished up the bodies of the Mamelukes,
on each of which they found from five to six hundred louis in gold.
Ten days after this battle of the Pyramids, the French fleet was
destroyed by Nelson in the terrible battle of the Nile. Admiral Brueys
was killed, and the bodies of his men seemed to fill the Bay of Aboukir.
Napoleon was virtually a prisoner in Egypt. The blow was irreparable.
The army was despondent, but Napoleon was calm. "Unfortunate Brueys," he
said, "what have you done!"
It was evident that he must organize Egypt as soon as possible. He
established in Cairo an Institute of Arts and Sciences, he built
factories, and he planned two canals, one uniting the Red Sea with the
Mediterranean across the Isthmus of Suez, and the other connecting the
Red Sea with the Nile at Cairo.
Meantime France was threatened with war on every side. Russia and Turkey
had joined hands with England and Austria. They were sweeping over
Italy. Turkey had raised an army in Syria, and Napoleon hastened thither
with thirteen thousand men over a desert of seventy-five leagues.
He took El Arish Feb. 20, 1799, then Gaza; then Jaffa was taken by
assault, as the garrison refused to yield, and beheaded the messenger
sent to them, putting his head on a pole. The massacre which followed
was horrible. Some two thousand prisoners were taken to the seashore
and shot by Napoleon's order. Bourrienne says, Napoleon "yielded only in
the last extremity, and was one of those, perhaps, who beheld the
massacre with the deepest pain."
Napoleon has been greatly blamed for this act. These men would, of
course, have gone back to the enemy, and the Turks themselves give no
quarter; and yet, for humanity's sake, one wishes that they could have
been spared.
After the battle at Jaffa the French began the siege of St. Jean d'Acre,
where Djezzar, which name signifies butcher, the head of the army,
resided. The siege lasted sixty days. Sir Sidney Smith of England, with
two ships of war, assisted the fort, and Phélippeaux, an old schoolmate
of Napoleon at Brienne, directed the artillery. Napoleon's battering
train, sent forward by sea, had been taken by the English. The siege had
to be raised, four thousand of the French being disabled, and the army
retreated to Jaffa. The plague was decimating the ranks; and Napoleon,
to inspire his men, went among the plague-stricken soldiers and often
touched them. The wounded and sick were carried on horses, while
Napoleon and all his officers went on foot. Napoleon said, "Sir Sidney
Smith made me miss my destiny."
Napoleon defeated the Turks at Aboukir, July 25, with a loss to them of
ten thousand men, and then, learning of the perilous condition of France
in her wars with the allied powers, hastened to Paris, leaving General
Kléber in charge in Egypt. Napoleon narrowly missed being captured by
the English cruisers.
France was overjoyed at his return. Bells were rung and bonfires
kindled. He reached Paris Oct. 16, 1799. Josephine had gone to Lyons to
meet him. He had started for Paris by a different route, and she missed
him.
When she returned Napoleon refused to see her. While in Egypt Junot had
foolishly told him some gossip about Josephine, who was obliged to be
courteous to everybody, which had made him jealous. It probably came
from Napoleon's brothers, who disliked her great influence over him.
Josephine was nearly heart-broken. She had not seen Napoleon for a year
and a half. Both Eugène and Hortense begged that Napoleon would take
their mother back into his heart.
Finally he opened his door, and with a stern look at Josephine, said to
Eugène, then eighteen, who had just returned with him from Egypt, "As
for you, you shall not suffer for your mother's misdeeds; I shall keep
you with me."
With commendable spirit, the boy, who idolized his mother, replied, "No,
General; I bid you farewell on the spot."
Seeing his mistake, he pressed Eugène to his heart, folded Josephine in
his arms, and sent for his brother Lucien, to show him how thoroughly he
and Josephine were reconciled to each other.
Napoleon had reached Paris at an opportune moment. The Directory were
disliked, and he had made up his mind to overturn the government. A
dinner was given to Napoleon at the Temple of Victory by five or six
hundred members of the two Councils, the Ancients, and the Five Hundred.
In the evening Josephine did the honors of the drawing-room at their own
house. "She fascinated every one who came near her," says Saint-Amand,
"by her exquisite grace and charming courtesy. All the brusqueness and
violence of Bonaparte's manners were tempered by the soothing and
insinuating gentleness of his amiable and kindly wife."
Only a few persons were in Napoleon's secret. By a provision of the
Constitution, the Council of the Ancients, in case of peril to the
Republic, could convoke the Legislative Body (the two Councils) outside
the capital to avoid the influence of the multitude, and choose a
general to command the troops to defend the legislature.
The 18th Brumaire (Nov. 9) was the day set for this Council at the
Tuileries to vote to change the place of meeting to St. Cloud. It was
given out that he was to take a journey, so his officers and some
cavalry were to be at his house at six o'clock in the morning to go with
him to the Tuileries, that he might review the troops, to be gathered
there at seven.
At six o'clock, Lefebvre, the commander of the military division, had
arrived. Napoleon said to him, "Here is the Turkish sabre which I
carried at the battle of the Pyramids. Do you, who are one of the most
valiant defenders of the country, accept it? Will you let our country
perish in the hands of the pettifoggers who are ruining it?" It was
gladly accepted.
All rode to the Tuileries. The Ancients voted to meet at St. Cloud on
the morrow, and gave Napoleon the command of the troops.
On the 19th Brumaire the way to St. Cloud was crowded with troops and
carriages. All was excitement and confusion. Napoleon's friends said,
"You are marching to the guillotine." "We shall see," was his cool
reply. When Napoleon arrived at St. Cloud he entered the hall of the
Council of the Ancients and made a brief address. Then he went to the
Council of the Five Hundred. It was five in the afternoon. At the sight
of him they shouted, "Down with the Dictator! Down with the tyrant!"
They brandished daggers and threatened his life. His soldiers hastened
to his aid; and one grenadier, Thomé, had his clothes cut by a dagger.
Bourrienne says they were simply torn. Lucien Bonaparte, the president
of the Five Hundred, left his seat in disgust at the tumult. He called
upon the general and the soldiers "to execute the vote of the Ancients."
The drums were beaten, the soldiers entered the hall, the deputies fled
in every direction, and the old government was a thing of the past.
Three consuls were elected, of whom Napoleon was the First Consul. He
rode home at three in the morning. At thirty he had conquered France as
well as Italy.
There is no doubt that a large majority of the people of France were
rejoiced at the change in government. "Napoleon," says Alison in his
History of Europe, "rivalled Cæsar in the clemency with which he used
his victory. No proscriptions or massacres, few arrests or
imprisonments, followed the triumph of order over revolution. On the
contrary, numerous acts of mercy, as wise as they were magnanimous,
illustrated the rise of the consular throne. The elevation of Napoleon
was not only unstained by blood, but not even a single captive long
lamented the ear of the victor."
On the 19th of February, 1800, Napoleon took up his residence in the
Tuileries. His salary was five hundred thousand francs a year. Ten days
before his removal to the Tuileries, Feb. 9, when the seventy-two flags
taken from the Turks at Aboukir were placed in the Hôtel des Invalides,
a funeral oration was pronounced on Washington, who had died Dec. 14,
1799. Napoleon issued this order to his army: "Washington is dead! That
great man fought against tyranny. He established the liberty of his
country. His memory will be ever dear to the freemen of both
hemispheres, and especially to the French soldiers, who, like him and
the American troops, have fought for liberty and equality. As a mark of
respect, the First Consul orders that, for ten days, black crape be
suspended from all the standards and banners of the Republic."
Feb. 20 he received a letter from Louis XVIII., in which the Bourbon
King said, "Save France from her own violence, and you will fulfil the
first wish of my heart. Restore her king to her, and future generations
will bless your memory." But Napoleon knew that the French did not want
the House of Bourbon. They had put Louis XVI. to death, and still
celebrated that anniversary.
Napoleon devoted all his time to the improvement of the state. He drew
around him the ablest persons. "The men whom he most disliked," says
Bourrienne, "were those whom he called _babblers_, who are continually
prating of everything and on everything." He often said, "I want more
head and less tongue."
He gave France a new constitution, which was accepted by the votes of
the people almost unanimously, over 3,000,000 in the affirmative, and a
few hundreds in the negative. He abolished the annual festival
celebrating the death of Louis XVI. He opened the prisons where those
opposed to the state were confined; hundreds of exiles returned to
France. The country was bankrupt; but now that confidence was restored,
with the help of the best financiers, the Bank of France was
established, a sinking fund provided, judicious taxation adopted, and
an era of prosperity began. Napoleon built canals, roads, and bridges,
and splendid monuments. He restored Sunday as a day of rest, which had
been set aside when the Goddess of Reason was worshipped during the
Revolution.
A little later, duly 15, 1801,--by the Concordat,--he recognized the
Roman Catholic religion as the religion of France. He said, "I am
convinced that a part of France would become Protestant, were I to favor
that disposition. I am also certain that the much greater portion would
continue Catholic, and that they would oppose, with the greatest zeal,
the division among their fellow-citizens. We should then have the
Huguenot wars over again, and interminable conflicts. But by reviving a
religion which has always prevailed in the country, and by giving
perfect liberty of conscience to the minority, all will be satisfied."
He did not like numerous festival days. "A saint's day," he said, "is a
day of idleness, and I do not wish for that. People must labor in order
to live."
Nobody labored harder than Napoleon. He kept several secretaries busy.
Writing fatigued him, and he wrote so hurriedly that the last half of
the word was usually a dash, or omitted. He could go without sleep,
snatching a few minutes in his chair, or in his saddle before a battle.
He seldom took over twenty minutes for dinner, even when he was Emperor,
and rose from the table as soon as he had finished. His time was too
precious to wait long for others. He was very prompt, and required
others to be so.
He said, "Occupation is my element.... I have seen the extent to which I
could use my eyes, but I have never known any bounds to my capacity for
application."
Lanfrey says he "had a prodigious power of work," and "a rapidity of
conception that no other man has probably ever possessed to the same
extent." He used often to say, "Succeed! I judge men only by results."
Nobody knew better the value of time. "I worked all day," said a person
to him, in apology for not having completed some duty. "But had you not
the night also?" was the reply.
"Ask me for whatever you please except _time_," he said to another;
"that is the only thing which is beyond my power."
While taking his bath, Bourrienne read to him. While being shaved, he
read, or somebody read to him. He ate fast, and was irregular at his
meals, sometimes passing a whole day without eating. He always walked up
and down the room, with his arms folded behind him, when dictating to
his secretaries. "He was exceedingly temperate," says Bourrienne, "and
averse to all excess."
"The institutions of modern France date not, as is often said, from the
Revolution, but from the Consulate," says Professor Seeley. "The work of
reconstruction which distinguishes the Consulate, though it was
continued under the Empire, is the most enduring of all the achievements
of Napoleon."
"The institutions now created," says Seeley, "and which form the
organization of modern France, are, 1. The Restored Church, resting on
the Concordat; 2. the University; 3. the judicial system; 4. the Codes:
_Code Civil_, called _Code Napoléon_ Sept. 3, 1807, _Code de Commerce_,
_Code Pénal_, _Code d'Instruction Criminelle_; 5. the system of local
government; 6. the Bank of France; 7. the Legion of Honor."
"My code will outlive my victories," said Napoleon, truly. He put the
best minds of France upon the codification and improvement of her laws,
and he carefully watched every detail.
"Bourrienne," Napoleon used to say, "it is for France I am doing all
this! All I wish, all I desire, the end of all my labors, is, that my
name should be indissolubly connected with that of France!"
Now that France was prosperous and settled, Napoleon wrote to George
III., King of England, proposing peace. Lord Grenville, for his nation,
which had grown more confident since the battle of the Nile and the
successes in Egypt, declined to treat with the Consular Government of
France. Canning spoke of this "new usurper, who, like a spectre, wears
on his head a something that has a phantom resemblance to a crown." Who
would have prophesied then that young Napoleon IV. would have died
fighting the battles of England in Zululand?
He proposed peace to Austria, but she decided like her ally, England.
Napoleon said bitterly, "England wants war. She shall have it. Yes! yes!
war to the death."
He immediately sent General Moreau with one hundred and thirty thousand
men against the Austrian army on the Rhine, and took forty thousand
himself to Italy, crossing the Alps over the Great St. Bernard. The
carriages and wheels were slung on poles; the ammunition boxes were
borne on mules; the cannon were carried in trees hollowed out, each
dragged up the heights by a hundred men; the soldiers crept up the icy
steeps each with sixty or seventy pounds upon his back. At the
well-known Hospice kept by the monks, Napoleon had sent forward supplies
for his men, who, cold and exhausted, were overjoyed at the repast.
The story is told that the young guide who led Napoleon's mule over the
Alps confided to the sympathetic stranger his poverty, his desire to
marry the girl of his choice, and his inability to provide her a home.
The small man in a gray overcoat gave him a note to the head of the
convent. To his astonishment, it provided him with a house and a piece
of ground.
The army then swept down upon Italy. The First Consul entered Milan June
2; Lannes was victorious at Montebello June 9, and on the morning of
June 14 forty thousand Austrians were opposed to a much smaller number
of French on the plain of Marengo. The battle was hotly contested for
twelve hours. At first the Austrians seemed victorious, till Desaix, who
had just come back from Egypt, rushed upon the field with his reserves.
He was shot dead, but his columns were soon avenged.
Six thousand Austrians threw down their arms, a panic spread through
their troops, the cavalry plunged over the infantry to be first in
crossing the Bormida, and thousands perished in the dreadful confusion.
Marengo is regarded by many as Napoleon's most masterful battle.
Desaix's death was a sad blow to Napoleon. Savary found his body
stripped of clothing, wrapped it in a cloak, laid it across a horse, and
Napoleon had it carried to Milan to be embalmed. He said, "Victory at
such a price is dear." Kléber was killed in Egypt on the same day. At
St. Helena, Napoleon said, "Of all the generals I ever had under my
command, Desaix and Kléber possessed the greatest talent--in particular
Desaix.... Kléber and Desaix were irreparable losses to France."
Napoleon returned to Milan and went in state to the Cathedral to the _Te
Deum_, four days after the battle of Marengo. The people everywhere gave
him an ovation. "Bourrienne," he said, "do you hear the acclamations
still resounding? That noise is as sweet to me as the sound of
Josephine's voice." Napoleon reached Paris late in June.
Dec. 3 of this same year, 1800, Moreau fought the famous battle of
Hohenlinden, in the black forests of Germany, at midnight. In the
blinding snowstorm both armies got entangled in the forests. The
Austrians left ten thousand in dead and wounded on the field, with seven
thousand prisoners. The poem of Campbell is well known:--
"On Linden, when the sun was low,
All bloodless lay the untrodden snow,
And dark as winter was the flow
Of Iser rolling rapidly."
Finally a treaty of peace between France and Austria was signed at
Lunéville, Feb. 9, 1801, followed March 27, 1802, by the treaty of
Amiens, between France and England.
Both countries rejoiced in the cessation of hostilities. Fox came over
from England and was received with great cordiality. Napoleon said, "I
considered him an ornament to mankind, and was very much attached to
him."
Four months later, Aug. 4, 1802, by an overwhelming majority of the
votes of the people, over three and a half millions in favor to about
eight thousand against it, Napoleon was declared Consul for life. La
Fayette could not conscientiously favor it, unless liberty of the press
were guaranteed. He said to Napoleon, "A free government, and you at its
head--that comprehends all my desires."
Napoleon said, "He thinks he is still in the United States--as if the
French were Americans. He has no conception of what is required for this
country." Napoleon felt, no doubt sincerely, that France was more stable
under an Emperor than a President. And yet since the fall of Napoleon
III. France has shown that she can live and prosper as a republic.
All through these years the Royalists were plotting to return to the
throne; for when did ever a king reign who did not think it was by
"Divine right"?
Louis XVIII. wrote another letter to Napoleon: "You must have long since
been convinced, General, that you possess my esteem.... We may insure
the glory of France. I say _we_, because I require the aid of Bonaparte,
and he can do nothing without me. General, Europe observes you; glory
awaits you; I am impatient to restore peace to my people." In answer to
this letter, Napoleon wrote, "You must not seek to return to France. To
do so, you must trample over a hundred thousand dead bodies."
Several attempts were made to assassinate Napoleon. Possibly some of
these were the work of Jacobins, who feared that the republic was
slipping into an empire; but they were for the most part traced to
Royalists, the leaders of whom lived in England, and were receiving
yearly pensions, because they had aided her in former wars.
On the evening of Dec. 24, 1800, as Napoleon was going to the opera to
hear Haydn's Oratorio of "The Creation," he was obliged to pass through
the Rue Saint-Nicaise, where an upturned cart covered a barrel of
gunpowder, grape-shot, and pieces of iron. The "infernal machine"
exploded two seconds after he had passed in his carriage. The carriage
was uplifted from the ground, four persons were killed, sixty wounded,
of whom several died, and forty-six houses were badly damaged. One of
the horses of Napoleon's escort was wounded.
Other plans were soon discovered, concocted by Georges Cadoudal, General
Pichegru, and others, all in the confidence of the Comte d'Artois,
afterwards Charles X., the brother of Louis XVIII. He lived in or near
London.
Cadoudal, or Georges as he is usually called, was to meet Napoleon in
the streets, and, with a band of thirty or forty followers, kill him and
his staff. When all was ready, the Bourbon princes were to be near at
hand to head the revolt of the people. Georges was arrested and executed
with eleven of his companions.
The Duke d'Enghien, Louis Antoine, Henri de Bourbon, son of the Duke of
Bourbon, and a descendant of the great Condé who had done so much for
France in her wars, was living at Ettenheim, under the protection of the
Margrave of Baden, to be near the lady whom he loved, the Princess
Charlotte de Rohan, and "to be ready," says Walter Scott, "to put
himself at the head of the royalists in the east of France," if
opportunity offered.
It was reported to Napoleon that the duke came over into France probably
on political errands, and that he was corresponding with disaffected
persons in France.
Napoleon sent some officers to seize the duke on the night of March 15,
1804; he was carried to Strasburg, and thence to the Castle of
Vincennes, near Paris, arriving on the afternoon of Tuesday, March 20.
He was aroused from sleep a little before six on the morning of the
21st, and innocently asked if he were to be imprisoned. He was conducted
outside the castle; by the light of a lantern his sentence was read to
him. He denied any complicity in the conspiracy against the life of the
First Consul, which was doubtless true; requested to see Napoleon, which
was refused; asked an officer to take a ring, a lock of hair, and a
letter to his beloved, and was shot at six in the morning, by his open
grave, his devoted dog by his side. Bourrienne says, "This faithful
animal returned incessantly to the fatal spot.... The fidelity of the
poor dog excited so much interest that the police prevented any one from
visiting the fatal spot, and the dog was no longer heard to howl over
his master's grave."
Josephine had heard of Napoleon's intention to send terror among the
Bourbon conspirators, and had begged him, on her knees and with tears,
to save the life of the young prince. It would have been well for him
had he listened to her entreaties.
France, and Europe as well, were shocked at this death. The Russian
court went into mourning for the Bourbon prince. No doubt Napoleon was
incensed by the Bourbon plots, and after this death these ceased; but
Las Cases, at St. Helena, said Napoleon always regretted it, saying,
"Undoubtedly, if I had been informed in time of certain circumstances
respecting the opinions of the prince, and his disposition, if, above
all, I had seen the letter which he wrote to me, and which, God knows
for what reason, was only delivered to me after his death, I should
certainly have forgiven him."
Napoleon has been blamed for another matter,--the taking of Saint
Domingo, and the imprisonment of Toussaint L'Ouverture. This remarkable
colored man, who had been a slave, had acquired the control of the
island by driving the French and Spanish troops out, and making it a
republic, with a nominal dependence upon France. Napoleon, with a
desire unfortunately shown and carried out by other nations, wished to
enlarge his colonies and also to settle some dissensions in the island,
and sent Dec. 14, 1801, General Leclerc, who had married his pretty
sister Pauline, with 25,000 men to Saint Domingo to re-establish French
sovereignty. He was to send back to France any who rebelled. Toussaint
L'Ouverture, who was among them, was imprisoned in the fortress of Joux,
near Besançon, in Normandy, and died in ten months, away from his own
people, the victim of the spirit of conquest, which is not dead even in
the nineteenth century. The climate destroyed the French army. Only two
or three thousand ever returned. General Leclerc died, like the rest, of
yellow fever.
Napoleon said at St. Helena, "I ought to have been satisfied with
governing it [Saint Domingo] through the medium of Toussaint.... The
design of reducing it by force was a great error."
Only a year after the treaty of Amiens was concluded, it became evident
that it would not last. It was said that Napoleon's power was becoming
too great for the security of Europe. England had determined not to give
up Malta to the Knights as she had promised. Under Pitt's guidance she
was arming and making herself ready for a great combat. The Royalists
were using their pens in their English homes, to abuse the head of the
French nation, held there by the votes of the French people. It was, of
course, exasperating, and tended to produce revolt. Napoleon called
attention to the terms of the treaty, which stipulated that neither of
the two nations should give _any protection_ to those who were injuring
the other. Commercial tariffs bred dislike. English pride was stirred
because Napoleon said, "England, single-handed, is unable to cope with
France."
Finally in May, 1803, the war began. Alison says, and Scott agrees with
him, "Upon coolly reviewing the circumstances under which the contest
was renewed, it is impossible to deny that the British government
manifested a feverish desire to come to a rupture, and that, as far as
the transactions between the two countries are concerned, they are the
aggressors."
Napoleon was determined to invade England,--Bourrienne thinks it was
only a feint, and that his real motive "was to invade Germany and
repulse the Russian troops,"--and he gathered an army of 150,000 in and
around Boulogne, and an immense flotilla which should be able to
transport these men ten leagues across the channel to the English coast.
While these preparations were going on, the French Senate, undoubtedly
in accord with the views of the First Consul, suggested publicly the
idea of an empire over which Napoleon should be the hereditary ruler.
The people were tired of Bourbon plottings, and, if Napoleon were
killed, the scenes of the Revolution might again be witnessed in the
streets of Paris. Napoleon was declared Emperor of the French, May 18,
1804, and publicly crowned by Pope Pius VII., at Notre Dame, Dec. 2 of
the same year.
Paris was thronged with people on the day of the coronation. At
half-past ten in the morning Napoleon and Josephine drove to the
cathedral in a carriage largely of glass, surmounted by a golden crown
upheld by four eagles with outstretched wings, drawn by eight superb
horses. Twenty squadrons of cavalry led the procession, Marshal Murat at
the head. Eighteen carriages, each drawn by six horses, followed.
Napoleon wore a coat of crimson velvet faced with white velvet, white
velvet boots, a short cloak of crimson lined with white satin, and a
black velvet cap with two aigrettes and several diamonds.
At the Archbishop's Palace, Napoleon put on his coronation robes. These
were a tight-fitting gown of white satin, a crimson mantle covered with
golden bees, having an embroidered border with the letter N, and a crown
above each letter, the lining and cape of ermine, the whole weighing
eighty pounds, and held up by four persons. His crown was of golden
laurel; his sword at his left side was in a scabbard of blue enamel,
covered with eagles and bees.
Josephine wore a white satin gown, with a train of silver brocade
covered with bees, a girdle of very expensive diamonds, necklace,
bracelets, and earrings of precious stones and antique cameos, and a
diadem of four rows of pearls with clusters of diamonds. The Emperor was
much struck with Josephine's beauty, and said to his brother Joseph, "If
father could see us!"
As Napoleon entered the cathedral, which was draped in crimson and gold,
twenty thousand spectators shouted, "Long live the Emperor!"
The Emperor and Empress knelt on blue velvet cushions before the Pope,
who anointed Napoleon on the head and hands, and the Empress in the same
way. Then high mass began with three hundred performers. When the moment
came for the Pope to crown the Emperor, Napoleon took the crown from his
hands and placed it upon his own head, and then crowned Josephine. Her
crown was formed of eight branches set in diamonds, emeralds, and
amethysts, under a gold globe surmounted by a cross. Then they proceeded
to the great throne reached by twenty-four steps, Josephine sitting one
step lower than her husband. France had placed her all in the hands of
one man; and Lanfrey justly remarks, "A nation that carries love of ease
so far as to thrust the whole burden of duties and responsibility on a
single man is always punished for it."
After the gorgeous ceremony was over, Napoleon and the Empress dined
alone, and were happy. He said to David, who had painted the coronation
scene at the moment when Napoleon was placing the crown upon the head of
the lovely Josephine, "I thank you for transmitting to ages to come the
proof of affection I wanted to give to her who shares with me the pains
of government." Then he raised his hat to the artist, and said, "David,
I salute you." Josephine had opposed Napoleon's becoming Emperor,
because it meant hereditary succession, and she had no child by
Napoleon. His brothers had for some years urged a divorce, so that
Josephine's life had been one of much sorrow.
Napoleon had said to Bourrienne, "It is the torment of my life not to
have a child. I plainly perceive that my power will never be firmly
established until I have one. If I die without an heir, not one of my
brothers is capable of supplying my place. All is begun, but nothing is
ended. God knows what will happen!"
Josephine had urged her young daughter Hortense into a marriage with
Louis, the brother of Napoleon, Jan. 2, 1802, with the hope that their
child might be the heir to the empire. Each loved another person before
marriage, and their married life was one of constant misery.
Their first child, Charles Napoleon, born Oct. 10, 1802, whom Napoleon
would have adopted, a beautiful and most intelligent boy, died when he
was four years and a half old, of croup, May 5, 1807. "Sometimes when
his parents were quarrelling," says Saint-Amand, "he succeeded in
reconciling them. He used to take his father by the hand, who gladly let
himself be led by this little angel, and then he would say in a
caressing tone: 'Kiss her, papa, I beg of you;' then he was perfectly
happy when his father and mother exchanged a kiss of peace."
Hortense, the mother, was so prostrated with grief, that it was feared
she would lose her reason. Madame de Rémusat says of her, "The Queen has
but one thought, the loss she has suffered; she speaks of only one
thing, of _him_. Not a tear, but a cold, calm, and almost absolute
silence about everything, and when she speaks she wrings every one's
heart. If she sees any one whom she has ever seen with her son, she
looks at him with kindliness and interest, and says, 'You know he is
dead.' When she first saw her mother, she said to her, 'It's not long
since he was here with me. I held him on my knees thus.' ... She heard
ten o'clock strike; she turned to one of the ladies and said, 'You know
it was at ten that he died.' That is the only way she breaks her almost
continual silence."
Josephine was doubly crushed by the blow. She saw her hopes for the
future blighted. The Emperor wrote to her from the seat of war; "I can
well imagine the grief which Napoleon's death must cause. You can
understand what I suffer. I should like to be with you, that you might
be moderate and discreet in your grief.... Let me hear that you are calm
and well! Do you want to add to my regret? Good-by, my dear."
Napoleon was not cold-hearted, but believed that only those accomplish
much in life who have self-control. Two of his soldiers having committed
suicide on account of love affairs, Napoleon caused it to be inserted
in the order-book of the guard, that "there is as much true courage in
bearing up against mental sufferings with constancy as in remaining firm
on the wall of a battery."
Nearly six months after the crowning in Notre Dame, the Emperor was
crowned King of Italy in the cathedral of Milan, May 26, 1805, with the
iron crown of Charlemagne. This crown of gold and precious stones covers
an iron ring said to have been made from a spike which pierced the
Saviour's hand at the crucifixion. Napoleon and the Empress were both
gorgeously arrayed. He placed the crown upon his own head, repeating the
words used in ancient times: "God has given it to me--woe to him that
touches it."
Everywhere Napoleon and Josephine were adored by the people. They went
into the cabin of a poor woman, who was anxious and needy because her
husband could not get work. "How much money would make you perfectly
happy?" asked Napoleon. "Ah, sir, a great deal! As much as eighty
dollars."
The Emperor gave her several hundreds, and told her to rent a piece of
ground and buy some goats.
"Josephine," says Saint-Amand, "had all the qualities that are
attractive in a sovereign,--affability, gentleness, kindliness,
generosity. She had a way of convincing every one of her personal
interest. She had an excellent memory, and surprised those with whom she
talked by the exactness with which she recalled the past, even to
details they had themselves nearly forgotten. The sound of her gentle,
penetrating, and sympathetic voice added to the courtesy and charm of
her words. Every one listened to her with pleasure; she spoke with grace
and listened courteously. She always appeared to be doing a kindness,
and thus inspired affection and gratitude."
"Her only fault," says Saint-Amand, "was extravagance." But it must be
remembered that Napoleon wished her to dress elegantly. It seemed as
though everybody came to ask her to buy, and she bought, says
Saint-Amand, "simply to oblige the dealers. There was no limit to her
liberality. She would have liked to own all the treasures of the earth
in order to give them all away." ... Napoleon, economical by nature,
scolded and forgave. "He could refuse Josephine nothing," says the same
writer, "and she was really the only woman who had any influence over
him."
Napoleon made Josephine's son, Eugène, Viceroy of Italy,--he often said,
"Eugène may serve as a model to all the young men of the age,"--returned
to Paris, and then started for his troops at Boulogne. There he waited
for some days for his feet under Villeneuve, who, having been watched by
the English, and in part crippled by them, failed to appear. He dared
not proceed to Brest, which the English blockaded, and so repaired to
Cadiz, to be crushed soon after by that Napoleon of the sea, Horatio
Nelson, at the battle of Trafalgar. Villeneuve afterwards committed
suicide, stabbing himself to the heart. He left a letter for his wife in
which he said, "What a blessing that I have no children to reap my
horrible heritage and bear the weight of my name!"
Meantime, Russia, Austria, and Sweden had joined themselves to England
to defeat Napoleon. The Emperor, with that quickness of decision and
rapidity of execution for which he was phenomenal, managed to separate
the armies of his foes, and beat them in turn. At Ulm, Oct. 20, 1805,
over thirty thousand Austrians under General Mack, led by sixteen
generals, surrendered, laid down their arms, and retired to the rear of
the French army. More than twenty thousand Austrians had been taken
prisoners in the few days preceding, and the Austrian army of eighty
thousand was well-nigh destroyed.
Napoleon wrote to Josephine Oct. 21: "I am very well, my dear. I have
made an army of thirty-three thousand men surrender. I have taken from
sixty to seventy thousand prisoners, more than ninety flags, and more
than two hundred cannon. In the military annals there is no such
defeat."
Napoleon pushed on to Vienna, which he entered Nov. 14, and went to the
palace of Schönbrunn. The Emperor Francis had fled, and joined the Tsar
and the Russian army at Brunn. Thither Napoleon marched at once. On the
night of Dec. 1, 1805, he mounted his horse to reconnoitre the enemy's
lines. As he returned, going on foot from one watch-fire to another, he
fell to the ground over the stump of a tree. A grenadier lighted a torch
of straw, then the whole line did the same and cheered the Emperor. They
remembered that the next day, Dec. 2, was the anniversary of the
coronation. The Russians thought the French were retreating. Then all
slept for a few hours, and awoke to the battle of Austerlitz.
At daybreak there was a heavy mist, then the sun shone out full and
clear, and the French believed they would win a glorious victory. They
were not disappointed. During the terrible conflict the Russians and
Austrians lost over thirty thousand in killed and wounded, treble the
number of the French. The enemy fled across the lakes, the ice of which
being broken by the French batteries, thousands were ingulfed. Their
cries and groans, says Lanfrey, were heard on the following day.
Napoleon said, "I have fought thirty battles like that, but I have never
seen so decisive a victory, or one where the chances were so unevenly
balanced." The Russian and Austrian forces greatly outnumbered the
French. To his soldiers Napoleon said, "I am satisfied with you; you
have covered your eagles with undying glory."
To Josephine he wrote: "The battle of Austerlitz is the greatest I have
won; forty-five flags, more than one hundred and fifty cannon, the
standards of the Russian guards, twenty generals, more than twenty
thousand killed,--a horrid sight! The Emperor Alexander is in despair,
and is leaving for Russia. Yesterday I saw the Emperor of Germany in my
bivouac; we talked for two hours, and agreed on a speedy peace.... I
shall see with pleasure the time that will restore me to you."
The defeat of the allies at Austerlitz hastened the death of William
Pitt of England. He looked long on the map of Europe, and said,
"Henceforth we may close that map for half a century." He died Jan. 23,
1806.
On Napoleon's return to Paris he erected a column in the Place Vendôme
to the Grand Army. It was constructed of cannon taken from the enemy,
and has illustrations upon it of the campaigns of Ulm and Austerlitz. W.
O'Connor Morris calls Austerlitz "the most perfect of battles on land,
as the Nile was the most perfect on sea." Seeley thinks, in its
historical results, Austerlitz "ranks among the great events of the
world."
The peace of Pressburg was effected between France and Austria, Dec. 26,
1805. Charles James Fox, who had succeeded Pitt in England, was
favorable to peace between the nations, but the war party in England
was strong. Fox soon died, and the peace negotiations failed.
Napoleon said at St. Helena, "The death of Fox was one of the fatalities
of my career. Had his life been prolonged, affairs would have taken a
totally different turn. The cause of the people would have triumphed,
and we should have established a new order of things in Europe."
Meantime Napoleon had placed his brother Joseph on the throne of Naples,
Louis on the throne of Holland, and had formed a Confederation of the
Rhine out of several states in the valley of the Rhine, which had
fourteen million people. Napoleon was elected Protector of the
Confederation.
Russia now became an ally of Prussia, and war was declared against
France Oct. 14, 1806. The double battle of Jena and Auerstädt was
fought, and the Prussians were completely defeated. Alison says, "The
loss of the Prussians was prodigious; on the two fields there fell
nearly twenty thousand killed and wounded, besides nearly as many
prisoners.... Ten thousand of the killed and wounded fell at Auerstädt."
Napoleon entered Berlin in triumph Oct. 27, 1806, and established
himself in the king's palace. He did not like the beautiful Queen
Louise, because he felt that she had inspired the soldiers by her
presence, and urged her husband to make war. He was unjust to her in his
bulletins, and Josephine reproached him for "speaking ill of women."
Napoleon visited the palace of Sans Souci to see the room where
Frederick the Great died, still preserved as he left it, and then went
to the church where he is buried. At the tomb, says General de Ségur,
"Napoleon paused at the entrance in a grave and respectful attitude. He
gazed into the shadow enclosing the hero's ashes, and stood thus for
nearly ten minutes, motionless, silent, as if buried in deep thought."
The sword of Frederick he took with him, and gave it to the Hotel des
Invalides in Paris, with the flags carried by his guard in the Seven
Years' War.
Early in November, Prince Hohenlohe surrendered twenty thousand
Prussians to the French; and Blücher, whom Napoleon was to meet again at
Waterloo, surrendered twenty thousand men and over five hundred
officers.
With all this victory, Josephine was not happy. Napoleon wrote her Nov.
1: "Talleyrand has come, and tells me you do nothing but cry." She wrote
to Hortense, more miserable than herself, that she could not be happy so
far from the Emperor.
Napoleon, while at Berlin, issued, Nov. 21, 1806, his famous "Berlin
Decree," wherein he declared the British Islands blockaded. All commerce
with England and her colonies was prohibited; all property belonging to
an English subject confiscated; every native of England found in a
country occupied by French troops to be made prisoner of war.
Napoleon declared that this was a retaliatory measure against England.
Every French port was, in fact, blockaded by English vessels from the
Elbe to Brest, by a decree of the British Government, passed in May,
1806, according to Alison. Some months after the Berlin Decree, England
issued further prohibitory acts, called Orders in Council. The
consequence of all this was that hate between the two nations was
increased.
After the humiliation of Prussia, the war went on with Russia. After
some minor battles, both armies met on the bloody field of Eylau, Feb.
7, 1807. Jomini thinks the forces about equal, though some historians
place the number at eighty thousand Russians, and sixty thousand French.
Part of Feb. 7 and all of Feb. 8, the armies were in deadly conflict. A
blinding snowstorm part of the time prevented the armies from seeing
each other. The snow and ice were so thick that men fought on ponds and
did not know it.
Fifty thousand dead and wounded lay on the snow. Marshal Augereau's
corps was almost destroyed; three thousand only remained out of fifteen
thousand. Napoleon wrote in his bulletins: "Imagine, on a space a league
square, nine or ten thousand corpses; four or five thousand dead horses;
lines of Russian knapsacks; fragments of guns and sabres; the earth
covered with bullets, shells, supplies; twenty-four cannon surrounded by
their artillerymen, slain just as they were trying to take their guns
away; and all that in plainest relief on the stretch of snow."
He said, as he looked upon the ghastly field, "This sight is one to fill
rulers with a love of peace and a horror of war." At three o'clock in
the morning of Feb. 9, he wrote to Josephine: "We had a great battle
yesterday. I was victorious, but our loss was heavy; that of the enemy,
which was even greater, is no consolation for me. I write you these few
lines myself, though I am very tired, to tell you that I am well and
love you.
Ever yours."
Baron de Marbot, in his most interesting memoirs, tells of his thrilling
experiences in this battle. He was at that time an officer under
Augereau. His horse, Lisette, of whom he was extremely fond, was
addicted to biting, but valued for her speed. At great risk, Marbot
carried a message to the Fourteenth. "I see no means of saving the
regiment," said the major; "return to the Emperor, bid him farewell from
the Fourteenth of the line, which has faithfully executed his orders,
and bear him the eagle which he gave us, and which we can no longer
defend; it would add too much to the pain of death to see it fall into
the hands of the enemy."
Marbot took the eagle, when a cannon ball went through the hinder part
of his hat, forcing, by the shock, the blood from his nose, ears, and
even eyes. His limbs were almost paralyzed. A hand to hand combat raged
around him. Several Frenchmen, not to be struck from behind, set their
backs against the sides of Lisette, who stood quite still. One of the
Russians thrust his bayonet into Marbot's left arm, and then into
Lisette's thigh.
"Her ferocious instincts being restored by the pain," says Marbot, "she
sprang at the Russian, and at one mouthful tore off his nose, lips,
eyebrows, and all the skin of his face, making of him a living
death's-head, dripping with blood. Then, hurling herself with fury among
the combatants, kicking and biting, Lisette upset everything that she
met on the road."
She seized another Russian who had tried to hit Marbot, "tore out his
entrails, and mashed his body under her feet, leaving him dying on the
snow."
When Lisette and her rider reached the cemetery of Eylau, where the
battle was hottest, the poor creature fell exhausted. The young Marbot,
supposed to be dead amid the piles of dead and wounded, was stripped of
his clothing. He was marvellously rescued by a servant, who cut up the
shirt of a dead soldier and bandaged the leg of Lisette, by which she
also was saved. Lisette, after doing service just before Friedland by
galloping twelve leagues on a hot day to carry a message of warning to
the Emperor, was cared for by the wife of an officer, and died of old
age.
Napoleon shared with his soldiers all the dangers and privations of war.
He wrote to his brother Joseph: "The staff-officers have not taken off
their clothes for two months, and some not for four. I have myself been
a fortnight without taking off my boots. We are deep in the snow and
mud.... The wounded have to be carried in open sleighs for fifty
leagues."
Josephine wished to come to him. He wrote: "You couldn't be racing
through inns and camps. I am as anxious as you can be to see you and be
quiet.... All my life I have sacrificed everything--peace, interest,
happiness--to my destiny."
The next great battle was at Friedland, when eighty thousand French met
seventy-five thousand Russians. "This is the anniversary of Marengo,"
said Napoleon, June 14, 1800, "and to-day _fortune is with me_."
And so it proved. The Russians fought desperately, but they were
overpowered. They retreated towards the river, and thousands who were
not captured were drowned. They lost twenty-six thousand, says Marbot,
in dead and wounded, and the French about half that number.
The conquered were glad to make peace, which was concluded at Tilsit,
July 7, 1807, between Alexander I. of Russia, Frederick William III. of
Prussia, and Napoleon. By this treaty, among other articles, some
provinces west of the Elbe were made into the kingdom of Westphalia, and
another brother of Napoleon, Jerome, was placed upon a throne. He had
married, when nineteen, Miss Elizabeth Patterson of Baltimore; but
through Napoleon's influence the union was annulled, and he married, at
twenty-three, Aug. 23, 1807, the daughter of the king of Würtemberg. She
proved a noble woman. When her husband was dethroned in 1814, she
refused to obtain a divorce, writing to her father: "Having been forced,
by reasons of state, to marry the king, my husband, it has been granted
me by fate to be the happiest woman in the world."
Napoleon said of her at Saint Helena, "Princess Catherine of Würtemberg
has, with her own hands, written her name in history."
Napoleon returned to Paris after the peace of Tilsit, and was received
with unbounded love and honor. He made Paris more beautiful with arches
and churches, he developed her industries, and he established schools
and colleges. He said, "We must not pass through this world without
leaving traces which may commend our memory to posterity."
England was still the bitter enemy of Napoleon. The decrees of both
regarding commerce were soon to plunge nearly all Europe into war. By
agreement of Alexander and Napoleon, if England did not consent to
peace, they were to summon Denmark, Sweden, Portugal, and perhaps
Austria, to close their ports against her. Denmark wished to be neutral.
While she hesitated, England, having heard of this project, sent a fleet
against Copenhagen and bombarded it.
Napoleon sent an army under Junot into Portugal to compel her assent,
and Murat into Spain, which at that time was friendly with France,
though distracted by royal dissensions. Napoleon placed his brother
Joseph on the throne. Mr. Ropes thinks, and probably correctly, that
Napoleon supposed "the population of the Spanish peninsula was ready
for the great reforms in government in which France had led the way, and
in which Holland, Western Germany, and Italy were then cheerfully and
hopefully marching, and that the better and more enlightened part of the
Spanish people would be thankful to see a liberal, intelligent, and
conscientious man like Joseph take the place of the bigoted and
profligate Charles IV."
Napoleon said at St. Helena: "It was the subject of my perpetual dreams
to render Paris the real capital of Europe.... My ambition was of the
highest and noblest kind that ever existed,--that of establishing and
consecrating the empire of reason, and the full exercise and complete
enjoyment of all the human faculties."
A dreadful insurrection took place in Spain against the rule of Joseph,
and Napoleon sent a large army to quell it. He succeeded in reinstating
Joseph on the throne for a time. He abolished the Inquisition and began
several reforms.
The insurrection in Spain gave great joy in England. "The general
rapture knew no bounds," says Alison. England sent her armies into Spain
and Portugal, and the Peninsular War resulted, which Napier has
described so vividly. To restore Ferdinand, the son of Charles IV., to
Spain, England spent, says Napier, one hundred millions sterling, about
five hundred million dollars, "and the bones of forty thousand British
soldiers lie scattered on the plains and mountains of the Peninsula."
The heroic Sir John Moore fell at Corunna, and was buried in his bloody
cloak at night by torchlight.
"Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the ramparts we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where our hero we buried."
His last words were, "I hope the people of England will be satisfied. I
hope my country will do me justice." After his death, Sir Arthur
Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, was made commander-in-chief of all
the English troops in the Spanish peninsula. Austria considered this an
opportune time to make war on Napoleon. The latter raised another
immense army,--Lanfrey says with much truth, "France was bleeding to
death,"--marched against Austria, and several bloody battles resulted.
At Eckmühl the Austrians, says Marbot, admitted a loss of five thousand
killed, and fifteen thousand prisoners. Napoleon said at St. Helena,
"The greatest military manoeuvres I ever made, and those for which I
give myself most credit, were performed at Eckmühl."
At Ratisbon the Emperor was wounded in the foot, just before the
retaking. So wild were the soldiers at the news, that as soon as his
wound was dressed he rode in front of the whole line to appease their
anxiety.
After some other successes, Napoleon reached Vienna, May 10, the Emperor
Francis having fled, as before, to a place of safety. Napoleon went at
once to the royal palace of Schönbrunn.
The enemy were now on the left bank of the Danube. The spring rains had
swollen the great river, and the crossing was most hazardous. In the
midst of the thousand yards of water was the huge Island of Lobau, four
and a half miles long. Here the troops of Napoleon intrenched
themselves, and built a bridge of boats to either side of the Danube. As
soon as a portion of the French troops had crossed the river, and
reached the towns of Aspern and Essling, the Austrians fell upon them
with great slaughter, compelling the French to retreat to the Island of
Lobau, in the middle of the river. In these battles the heroic Lannes
had both legs crushed by a cannon-ball. One leg was amputated. The
Emperor knelt beside the stretcher and wept as he embraced Lannes, whose
blood stained Napoleon's white kerseymere waistcoat.
"You will live, my friend, you will live," said the Emperor.
"I trust I may, if I can still be of use to France and your Majesty,"
was the reply.
After his death, said Marbot, "Napoleon embraced the marshal's body,
bathing it with tears, and saying repeatedly, 'What a loss for France
and for me!'"
The losses at this double battle are variously estimated from twenty to
fifty thousand; Lanfrey accepts the latter number. Seeley calls it "one
of the most terrible and bloody battles of the period." Napoleon at once
began to build substantial bridges on piles across the Danube, one of
them eight hundred yards long, broad enough for three carriages to pass
abreast. These bridges were finished in twenty days, and compelled great
admiration.
To the astonishment of the Austrians, he crossed most of his army of
150,000 men during the night of July 4, and on July 6 fought the
dreadful battle of Wagram. About 300,000 were in the battle. Fifty
thousand on both sides were killed and wounded, probably about an equal
number in each army.
The weather was extremely hot, and the corn on the battle-field caught
fire from the shells. "The movements of both armies were hampered by the
necessity of avoiding it," says Marbot; "for if once troops were
overtaken by it, pouches and wagons exploded, carrying destruction
through the ranks.... Of the soldiers who were severely wounded, great
numbers perished in the flames; and of those whom the fire did not
reach, many lay for days hidden by the tall corn, living during that
time on the ears. The Emperor had the plains searched by bands of
cavalry, and vehicles were brought from Vienna to remove the wounded,
friends and foes alike. But few of those even whom the fire had passed
recovered, and the soldiers had a saying that straw-fire had killed
nearly as many as gun-fire."
"After the battle," says General Savary, "the Emperor sent sixty francs
in crown pieces to each wounded soldier, and more than this to each
officer."
Oct. 14, 1809, the peace of Vienna was signed at Schönbrunn, between
France and Austria. "I committed a great fault after the battle of
Wagram," said Napoleon at St. Helena, "in not reducing the power of
Austria still more. She remained too strong for our safety, and to her
we must attribute our ruin."
On Napoleon's return to France he had made up his mind to an act which
will always tarnish his fame, and from which the decadence of his empire
may be dated. He would divorce Josephine, and marry another, with the
hope that he might have an heir to the throne. Undoubtedly he believed
he was doing the best thing for France; and Thiers says the French
people, while they loved Josephine, wished for the divorce.
On Nov. 30, 1809, as he and Josephine were dining together at
Fontainebleau, not a word having been uttered except Napoleon asked one
of the servants what time it was, he communicated to her his decision.
After dismissing the servants, he came to her, took her hand, pressed it
to his heart, and said, "Josephine! my dear Josephine! You know how I
have loved you.... To you, to you alone, I owe the only moments of
happiness I have tasted in this world. But, Josephine, my destiny is not
to be controlled by my will. My dearest affections must yield to the
interests of France."
"I expected this," said poor Josephine, "but the blow is none the less
mortal."
She became at once insensible; and Napoleon, alarmed, hastily called
assistance and bore her to her room. He came to see her in the evening,
and wept.
Eugène determined at once to resign his position as Viceroy of Italy,
but his mother begged him to remain the friend of Napoleon.
On Dec. 15, at the Tuileries, before the officers of the Empire, the
divorce was announced. Josephine was almost overcome by her sobs. "The
Emperor will always find in me his best friend," she said, and so it
proved.
The next day the divorce was consummated before the Senate. Eugène
announced the divorce, saying, "The tears of the Emperor do honor to my
mother." Josephine, in a simple white muslin dress, leaning on the arm
of Hortense, entered and signed the fatal decree. Both mother and
daughter were in tears, as well as many of those present. Eugène, who
idolized his mother, fell fainting to the floor. That evening when
Josephine thought her husband had retired, she came to his room, her
eyes swollen with weeping, and tottering towards the bed fell upon his
neck, and sobbed as though her heart would break. They wept together,
and talked for an hour. The next day Napoleon came to see her,
accompanied by his secretary, Meneval. "He pressed her to his bosom with
the most ardent embraces," says Meneval. "In the excess of her emotion
she fainted."
At eleven o'clock the same day, veiled from head to foot, Josephine
entered a close carriage drawn by six horses, said good-by to the
Tuileries forever, and was driven to Malmaison. She retained the title
of Empress, with $600,000 a year for her support. Napoleon passed eight
days in retirement at Trianon. On his return to the Tuileries, he wrote
to her, "I have been very lonely.... This great palace appears to me
empty, and I find myself in solitude. Adieu, my love."
He frequently visited Malmaison. One day he found Josephine painting a
violet. She says, "He threw himself with transport into the arms of his
old friend.... It seemed impossible for him to cease gazing upon me, and
his look was that of the most tender affection. At length he said, 'My
dear Josephine, I have always loved you. I love you still. Do you still
love me?"
Three months later, Mar. 11, 1810, Napoleon was married by proxy at
Vienna, Archduke Charles representing him at the wedding, to Marie
Louise, the daughter of Emperor Francis I. of Austria. He met her with
his suite at the palace of Compiègne. She was eighteen, with light hair,
and blue eyes, and gentle in manner. Napoleon was forty.
The civil marriage was celebrated at St. Cloud, April 1; and the next
day they made their triumphal entry into Paris, by the Arc de l'Étoile,
to the Tuileries, amid the cheers of three hundred thousand people. The
world must have been amazed at such a union of France and
Austria,--nations which had been at war for years. No wonder Napoleon,
at St. Helena, spoke of it as "an abyss covered with a bed of flowers."
Two weeks later Josephine wrote him, "Your majesty shall never be
troubled in his happiness by an expression of my grief. I offer
incessant prayers that your majesty may be happy."
A year after his marriage, Mar. 20, 1811, a son, Napoleon Francis, was
born to Napoleon, called the King of Rome, as the Roman States had been
annexed to the Empire. All France rejoiced when the firing of one
hundred guns announced the event.
Josephine wrote at once, telling Napoleon, "More than any one in the
world do I rejoice in your joy." Of Marie Louise she wrote, "She cannot
be more tenderly devoted to you than I am, but she has been enabled to
contribute more toward your happiness, by securing that of France....
Not till you have ceased to watch by her bed, not till you are weary of
embracing your son, will you take your pen to converse with your best
friend. I will wait."
Napoleon brought his child to Josephine. "The moment I saw you enter,"
she wrote him, "bearing the young Napoleon in your hands, was
unquestionably one of the happiest of my life."
He said at St. Helena: "Josephine would willingly have seen Marie
Louise. She frequently spoke of her with great interest.... Marie Louise
manifested the utmost dislike, and even jealousy, of Josephine. I wished
one day to take her to Malmaison, but she burst into tears when I made
the proposal. She said she did not object to my visiting Josephine, only
she did not wish to know it. But whenever she suspected my intention of
going to Malmaison, there was no stratagem which she did not employ for
the sake of annoying me."
The emperor was devoted to his son, and always considerate and tender to
Marie Louise. The boy developed into a very beautiful and bright child,
winning the love of everybody.
A little more than a year after the birth of the King of Rome, Russia
and France were again at war. Whatever Alexander's personal feelings
toward Napoleon, his nobles were opposed to him; they disliked his
restrictions on commerce, and feared his growing power. Russia and
England became allies, though Napoleon offered to make peace with the
latter, which offers she always declined. Probably the real truth was
they all wished to humble Napoleon.
Russia and France each raised a great army, the latter about a half
million men.
Napoleon left Paris for Dresden, May 9, taking Marie Louise with him. He
left her at Prague. Before he started from Paris he spent two hours in
earnest conversation with Josephine at Malmaison.
This Grand Army must have made an imposing appearance, with their twenty
thousand carriages, one hundred and eighty thousand horses employed in
the artillery, besides thousands of provision wagons and baggage.
He began to cross the river Niemen, which empties into the Baltic, on
the night of June 23, 1812. The policy of the Russians was to retreat,
burning the towns through which they passed, and destroying all produce,
that the French might find no support in the desolated country.
The first terrible battle was at Borodino, Sept. 7, where the French
lost about thirty thousand, and the Russians fifty thousand, in killed
and wounded.
On Sept. 14, Napoleon and his weary army--many thousands had been
stationed at various places along the route--entered Moscow. Here they
hoped for food and rest. They found the great city deserted. Powder had
been placed under the Kremlin, and shells under the larger palaces,
where Napoleon and his officers would be apt to lodge; water-pipes had
been cut, fountains destroyed; and, the day after Napoleon's arrival,
the whole city was set on fire by Russians detailed for that purpose. No
wonder Napoleon said, years later, of this terrible destruction of a
great city, "It was the most grand, the most sublime, the most terrific
sight the world ever beheld!"
Napoleon wrote to the Tsar proposing peace; but no answer was ever
returned, though he waited some weeks in Moscow, hoping to hear
favorably. The more intelligent serfs offered to rise against their
masters, and aid Napoleon, but he did not desire civil war.
On Oct. 19, 1812, the Grand Army of France, one hundred thousand strong,
commenced its heart-breaking retreat. Deep snow had already come,
earlier than usual. Kutusof, the Russian general, moved his army
parallel to the French, and fought them at every available point.
Marshal Ney covered the rear, and made for himself an immortal record.
Napoleon rightly called him "The Bravest of the Brave." When they
reached Borodino they sadly turned their heads away from the
battle-fields where the bodies of thirty thousand men were half devoured
by wolves. The cold became intense. Horses slipped and fell on the icy
ground. Artillery and baggage were abandoned. There was no food in the
devastated country. Where Napoleon had left provisions on his way to
Moscow the enemy had destroyed them. Men ate their horses for food. They
lay down at night on the snow to sleep, and never rose. "Every morning,"
says Marbot, "we left thousands of dead in our bivouacs.... So intense
was the cold that we could see a kind of vapor rising from men's ears
and eyes. Condensing, on contact with the air, this vapor fell back on
our persons with a rattle such as grains of millet might have made. We
had often to halt and clear away from the horses' bits the icicles
formed by their frozen breath.... Many soldiers of all ranks blew out
their brains to put an end to their misery.... All ranks were
confounded; there were no arms, no military bearings; soldiers,
officers, generals, were clad in rags, and for boots had nothing but
strips of leather or cloth, hardly fastened together with a string." The
Emperor himself was grave, calm, and self-controlled, with no diminution
of courage.
The soldiers of the allies of Napoleon, Austria, Prussia, Spain, and
others, deserted by the thousands, the Russians having sent
proclamations in various languages into the camps, telling them they
should be returned to their homes.
Finally they reached the river Beresina, the bridge over which had been
destroyed by the Russians. Tearing down the hovels in the village, the
French built two bridges at night, the men standing for six or seven
hours in the water. Then the troops surged upon them, and one bridge
broke under the weight of guns and men. In rushing upon the other, great
crowds were forced into the river and drowned. The Russians meantime
swept them with cannon. From twenty to twenty-five thousand men perished
in this dreadful crossing of the Beresina.
On Dec. 5, 1812, they were within the borders of Poland; and Napoleon,
having learned that his death had been proclaimed in Paris, and that a
man had tried to usurp the power, left his army in charge of Murat, and,
with two officers, hastened by sledges to Paris, which he reached Dec.
18.
The loss of the French army and its allies in the Russian campaign
Thiers estimates as 300,000 men; other authorities make it 350,000;
100,000 were killed in the advance and retreat from Moscow; 150,000 died
of hunger, fatigue, and cold; 100,000 were taken prisoners. The Russian
losses were also heavy.
Prussia now joined herself to Russia, and declared war against France.
Napoleon at once raised another army of nearly two hundred thousand by
conscription, and defeated the enemy at Lützen, or Gross-Beeren, and
Bautzen. His young conscripts fought heroically. His beloved Marshal
Duroc was killed just after the latter battle. Napoleon wept as he left
him dying, saying, "Duroc, there is another life.... We shall one day
meet again."
Austria offered to be a mediator, but failing, hastened to join Prussia
and Russia. The marriage with Marie Louise had not won Napoleon friends,
as he had fondly hoped.
The allies now had five hundred thousand men, the Prussians under
Blücher, the Austrians under Schwarzenberg. Upon Aug. 27, 1813, Napoleon
defeated them at Dresden, where they left forty thousand on the field,
half of whom were prisoners, but was himself defeated in the dreadful
battle of Leipsic, Oct. 16-19.
Bavaria and Westphalia had been compelled to join the allies, whose
forces thrice outnumbered the French. The Swedes, under Bernadotte, had
now turned against France. "In the three days' battle," says Alison,
"the French lost 60,000 men, and the allies nearly as many."
In the retreat of the French from Leipsic they were obliged to cross the
Elster river. The bridge had been mined, and by a mistake was exploded
before all the French had passed over. Marbot says, of those who were
left in Leipsic, about 13,000 were killed, and 25,000 made prisoners.
Meantime the English had been victorious over the French in Spain and
Portugal, and Joseph Bonaparte had been driven from the throne. He came
to the United States and lived at Bordentown, New Jersey, for some
years, dying at Florence, Italy, July 28, 1844, at the age of
seventy-six.
The allies now pushed into France, determined to enter Paris and
dethrone Napoleon. The Emperor raised a new army, and with prodigious
energy and courage fought against the coalition of Europe. Often with
his forces greatly inferior in number to the allies, he defeated them,
but finally he was overborne. Marie Louise fled to Blois. The young King
of Rome refused to go. "They are betraying my papa," he said, "and I
will not go away. I do not wish to leave the palace." He wept as he was
taken to the carriage. His governess promised that he should come back,
but she was never able to keep her promise.
Paris capitulated March 30, 1814; and the Senate, through the lead of
Talleyrand, declared that Napoleon and his family had forfeited the
throne.
Napoleon arrived at Paris a few hours after the capitulation, stunned at
the news. Fearless as ever, he wished to attack the allies, but was
persuaded by his marshals to desist.
With agony of soul, but calmness of demeanor, he signed his abdication
at Fontainebleau, April 6, 1814: "The Emperor Napoleon declares that he
renounces, for himself and his heirs, the throne of France and Italy;
and that there is no personal sacrifice, not even that of life itself,
which he is not willing to make for the interests of France."
By the will of the allies, Louis XVIII. was recalled, and Napoleon was
banished to the Island of Elba, east of Corsica, with an annual income
from France of $500,000. He bade the Old Guard an affectionate good-by.
"Adieu, my children," he said. "I would that I could press you all to my
heart. Let me at least embrace your general and your eagle." He put his
arms around General Petit, and kissed the eagle on its silver beak. Amid
the tears and sobs of his brave soldiers, on April 20, Napoleon drove
away from Fontainebleau to Fréjus, and in the British frigate, The
Undaunted, set sail for Elba, April 27, 1814.
He had frequently written to Josephine through these melancholy months.
Once he wrote: "To me death would now be a blessing. But I would once
more see Josephine," and he saw her before his departure.
Four days before he left Fontainebleau for Elba, he wrote, "Adieu, my
dear Josephine. Be resigned, as I am, and never forget him who never
forgot, and who never will forget you. Farewell, Josephine."
She longed to follow him to Elba, but waited to see if Marie Louise
would join him. At first Marie Louise desired to go to him, but was
prevailed upon by her father, the Emperor Francis, to return to Austria,
where she and her son became virtually prisoners. She finally retired to
the Duchy of Parma, which the allies had given her, and later married
her chamberlain, Count de Neipperg, an Austrian general.
Josephine wrote to Napoleon: "I have been on the point of quitting
France to follow your footsteps, and to consecrate to you the remainder
of an existence which you so long embellished. A single motive restrains
me, and that you may divine.... Say but the word, and I depart."
As soon as Napoleon went to Elba, Josephine's health rapidly declined.
She caught cold in driving in the park at Malmaison. When near death she
said to Hortense, "I can say with truth, in this, my dying hour, that
the first wife of Napoleon never caused a single tear to flow."
Napoleon landed at Elba, May 4, 1814. A month later, May 29, Josephine
died, uttering, with her last breath, "Napoleon! Elba!"
"I have seen," said Mademoiselle Avrillon, the first lady of her
bedchamber, "the Empress Josephine's sleeplessness and her terrible
dreams. I have known her to pass whole days buried in the gloomiest
thought. I know what I have seen and heard, and I am sure that grief
killed her!"
Napoleon's mother, a woman of sixty-four, and his sister Pauline, joined
him at Elba. The latter had married Prince Borghese in 1803, but they
soon separated. After several years they were reconciled to each other.
She died at Florence in 1825.
Napoleon remained at Elba ten months, when he escaped, landed at Cannes,
Mar. 1, 1815, raised an army in France as if by magic, and entered Paris
at its head, Mar. 20.
The people seemed glad to be rid of Louis XVIII., who fled at midnight,
Mar. 19. Napoleon said, with much truth, "The Bourbons, during their
exile, had learned nothing, and forgotten nothing." The Grand Army
joyously received their leader. The people shouted themselves hoarse.
They wept, and sang songs of thanksgiving. Paris was brilliant with
illuminations. When he reached the Tuileries, he was seized and borne
aloft above the heads of the throng. The ladies of the court, says
Alison, "received him with transports, and imprinted fervent kisses on
his cheeks, his hands, and even his dress. Never was such a scene
witnessed in history." Hortense and her two children were at the
Tuileries to welcome Napoleon.
The allies cared little whom France wished to rule her. They preferred
the conservative Bourbons or indeed anybody who would not disturb the
so-called balance of power in Europe. They at once banded themselves
together, England, Austria, Russia, Prussia, Portugal, Spain, and
Sweden, to crush this "enemy and disturber of the world."
A million men were soon raised by the allies, and Napoleon brought
together over 200,000. He decided at once to take the offensive rather
than let the allies invade France. He left Paris for Belgium, June 12,
1815, taking with him about 120,000 men. He drove the Prussians out of
Charleroi, and on June 16 gained a victory over the Prussian marshal,
Blücher, at Ligny. Jomini, who is usually authentic, says Napoleon had
72,000 in the battle, and Blücher from 80,000 to 90,000. It was a hotly
contested battle-field in which the Prussians lost from 12,000 to 20,000
men. Thiers says 30,000.
Blücher had his gray charger, given him by the Prince Regent of England,
shot under him, and was nearly killed in the retreat.
The same day occurred the desperate battle of Quatre-Bras, in which
Marshal Ney was defeated.
On June 18, 1815, the decisive battle of Waterloo was fought, nine miles
south-east of Brussels. Napoleon's forces, according to Jomini and
Thiers, were 70,000 in number; Seeley and Ropes say 72,000. Wellington
had about 68,000.
The ground was so drenched by rains that the battle was not begun till
a little past eleven. Both sides fought desperately. Blücher, a few
miles to the right of Wellington, at Wavre, had promised to join him.
Napoleon had told Marshal Grouchy to follow the Prussians and thus
prevent their union with the English. He started too late for Wavre; he
did not take the advice of some of his officers to hasten to Napoleon
when they heard the sound of battle, and his 33,000 men failed to help
at Waterloo. Ropes gives an interesting account of this in the _Atlantic
Monthly_, June, 1881, "Who lost Waterloo?"
All day long the battle raged. Hand to hand combats were constant. The
battle seemed in favor of the French. Meantime Blücher was coming from
Wavre, with his guns sinking axle-deep in the mud. "We shall never get
on," was heard on all sides. "We _must get on_," said the bluff Blücher;
"I have given my word to Wellington."
Napoleon kept watching for Grouchy. Early in the afternoon about 30,000
Prussians under Bulow had come to Wellington's assistance. Night came on
and the firing of musketry was heard. "There's Grouchy!" said the
Emperor. His aide-de-camp, Labédoyère, rushed to announce it to the
army. "Marshal Grouchy is arriving, the Guard is going to charge.
Courage! courage! 'tis all over with the English."
"One last shout of hope burst from every rank," says M. Fleury de
Chaboulon, ex-secretary of the Emperor; "the wounded who were still
capable of taking a few steps returned to the combat, and thousands of
voices eagerly repeated, Forward! forward!"
It was not Grouchy, but Blücher with thirty or forty thousand fresh
troops. The Imperial Guard did indeed charge with all their wonted
impetuosity. They were mowed down like grain. Ney, with five horses shot
under him, marched on foot with his drawn sword. Napoleon watched them,
pale, yet calm. "All is lost!" said he, "the Guard recoils!"
The Emperor was everywhere in the battle. "Death shuns you. You will be
made a prisoner," said his generals, and an officer seized the bridle of
his horse and dragged him away.
The French were completely overcome, and the Prussians pursued them with
great vigor. It is estimated that the French lost thirty thousand on the
field of Waterloo, and the loss of the allies was probably not much
less. It was one of the most bloody battles of modern times.
Napoleon returned to Paris, and then retired to Malmaison. He abdicated
in favor of his son, Napoleon II.; but the allies, when they captured
Paris a second time, July 7, 1815, placed Louis XVIII. again on the
throne.
Napoleon repaired to Rochefort with the hope that he might embark for
America, but the coast was so blockaded by the English steamers that
this was impossible. He surrendered himself to go on board the English
ship, Bellerophon, July 15, with the hope that he should find a generous
foe. He soon learned, to his inexpressible grief, that he was destined
for St. Helena. On Aug. 7 he was transferred to the Northumberland, and
sailed for his lonely place of exile, which he reached Oct. 16, 1815.
The Island of St. Helena, ten miles broad and seven long, is in the
Atlantic Ocean, fourteen hundred miles west of the west coast of South
Africa. It is composed of rugged mountains of volcanic origin, with
little vegetation. Wherever a vessel could approach a fort was planted,
so that the island formed a complete prison.
Lieutenant John R. Glover, who accompanied the British admiral who took
Napoleon to St. Helena, said of the island (_Century_, for November,
1893): "Nothing can possibly be less prepossessing, nay, more horribly
forbidding, than the first appearance of this isolated and apparently
burnt up barren rock, which promises neither refreshment nor
pleasure.... During our eight months' residence we experienced little
variation, and had continued rains. The climate is by no means healthy,
... the children being sickly, and the adults suffering from the liver,
of which complaint many of our men died."
Here Napoleon lived for six years, till his death, May 5, 1821, at the
age of fifty-two, of a cancer in the stomach, the same disease which had
killed his father. He was allowed to take with him to St. Helena three
of his generals and their families, and a secretary, Las Cases.
His jailer, Sir Hudson Lowe, seems to have been a most unfortunate
choice in the surveillance of a high-spirited and remarkable man.
Napoleon was allowed to walk or ride only within certain limits, with a
British officer near at hand. His accommodations were poor and plain.
"The rats," says Dr. O'Meara, "are in numbers almost incredible. I have
frequently seen them assemble like broods of chickens round the offal
thrown out of the kitchen." Besides he says, through the roof "the rain
entered in torrents." Napoleon's letters were all opened, both those
sent or received. He was never addressed as Emperor, England
ungenerously insisting that he be called simply General Bonaparte. Books
addressed to "The Emperor" were not delivered to him. William O'Connor
Morris says: "His humiliation was degrading and needless.... Admitting
that the allies had a right to deprive him of liberty, they had no right
to subject him to insult and wrong; and St. Helena is a blot on the fair
fame of England." From his idolized son he was not permitted to hear.
He said to Countess Montholon, at St. Helena, "On receiving into my arms
that infant, so many times fervently implored of Heaven, could I have
believed that one day he would have become the source of my greatest
anguish? Yes, madame, every day he costs me tears of blood. I imagine to
myself the most horrid events, which I cannot remove from my mind. I see
either the potion or the empoisoned fruit which is about to terminate
the days of that young innocent by the most cruel sufferings."
The boy worshipped his father. "Tell him," said the little King of Rome,
then four years old, when Meneval, Napoleon's former secretary, left
Marie Louise in Austria, "that I love him dearly." He looked like his
father, had his ambition, and, as he grew to manhood, longed to return
to France. When Charles X. was overthrown in 1830, he said, "Why was I
not there to take my chance?" He was then nineteen. Napoleon had
foreseen the fall of the Bourbons, as he said at St. Helena, "They will
not maintain their position after my death; a reaction in my favor will
take place everywhere, even in England."
Napoleon II. died at Vienna, July 22, 1832, at the age of twenty-one, of
consumption, at Schönbrunn, the summer home of the Emperor. He expired
upon the same narrow bed on which his father slept when he came as the
conqueror of Austria. General Hartmann said, "Having passed my life on
battle-fields, I have often seen death, but I never saw a soldier die
more bravely."
When near death, Napoleon II. said, "So young, and is there no remedy?
My birth and my death will be the only points of remembrance." He lies
buried in the plain Church of the Capucines, beside his mother. His
heart is in a small silver urn in St. Augustine's Church.
For six years Napoleon lived in this prison at St. Helena, dictating his
memoirs and commentaries to Count Montholon, Baron Gourgaud, and Count
Las Cases. His health failed rapidly after the first year. Not taking
exercise, on account of the constant espionage, he was finally prevailed
upon by the physician to work a little in a garden, which he found a
relief.
At the end of a year, Las Cases was banished with his son to England,
because he had forwarded a letter to Lady Clavering, telling how badly
the Emperor was treated, and it had not passed through the hands of Sir
Hudson Lowe. This was a great blow to Napoleon, as he was the only one
who could read, speak, and understand English. Dr. O'Meara was also
obliged to leave St. Helena on account of Sir Hudson Lowe's treatment of
him.
After some months of illness, the friends of Napoleon were permitted to
send Dr. Antommarchi, a Corsican, to him. In the spring of 1821,
Napoleon grew feeble and emaciated. He made his will, remembering his
friends most generously. April 22, from perspiration on account of his
great pain, Count Montholon writes, "On this night I changed the
Emperor's linen seven times." April 25, as Montholon watched by his
bedside, at four o'clock in the morning, Napoleon exclaimed, "I have
just seen my good Josephine, but she would not embrace me. She
disappeared at the moment when I was about to take her in my arms. She
was seated there.... She is not changed. She is still the same, full of
devotion to me. She told me that we were about to see each other again,
never more to part. Did you see her?"
Three days later he gave directions about his death, asking that his
heart might be put in spirits of wine, and carried to Parma, to Marie
Louise. "You will tell her that I tenderly loved her," he said, "that I
never ceased to love her."
Five days before his death he dictated for two hours his desires about
the Palace of Versailles, and the organization of the National Guard for
the defence of Paris. To the last he carried out his chosen motto,
"Everything for the French people."
He remembered his servants, and wished to see them and say good-by. One
of them exclaimed excitedly, "I will die for him."
May 2 the Emperor was delirious, and, thinking he was with his army,
shouted, "Desaix! Massena! Ah! victory is declaring. Run! hasten! press
the charge! They are ours!" He sprang from the bed and fell prostrate
upon the floor.
On the night of May 4 a tornado swept the island, uprooting the trees
which the Emperor had planted. During the night, says Count Montholon,
"Twice I thought I distinguished the unconnected words, '_France--armée,
tête d'armée_ (head of the army)--Josephine.'"
During the whole of May 5 he lay quiet and peaceful, conscious, his
right hand out of bed, seemingly absorbed in deep meditation. At eleven
minutes before six o'clock he died.
England would not permit his body to be embalmed or to be carried to
France, as he had requested, or his heart to be given to Marie Louise;
so, at half-past twelve, on May 8, he was buried under some willows at
St. Helena. The English garrison, two thousand five hundred strong,
which had been on the island to keep Napoleon from escaping, now
followed his body to the grave. Three volleys of fifteen guns each were
fired over it. The soldiers had unbounded admiration for the unrivalled
leader, and begged to kiss the blue cloak which he wore at Marengo, and
which was thrown over the coffin.
"We were not allowed," says Dr. Antommarchi, "to place over the grave
either a stone or a modest inscription, the governor [Sir Hudson Lowe]
opposing this pious wish."
The Emperor had written in his will, "It is my wish that my ashes may
repose on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people,
whom I have loved so well."
On May 5, 1840, nineteen years after Napoleon's death, the French, now
that Louis Philippe had become king, asked England that his body might
be removed to France. Consent being given, Prince de Joinville, the son
of the king, with Gourgaud, Bertrand, and the son of Las Cases, with two
armed ships, proceeded on their sad errand, bearing an ebony coffin,
with the one word, "Napoleon," on it in gold letters. Within was a
coffin of lead. The funeral pall was of purple velvet, embroidered with
bees, and bordered with ermine.
At midnight, Oct. 5, 1840, the work of exhuming the body of the Emperor
was begun. At ten o'clock in the forenoon the coffin was reached, so
difficult had it been to remove the heavy stones and cement which
covered the vault. The first coffin of mahogany was opened, then the
leaden one, then one of mahogany, then one of tin. The body was found
wonderfully preserved, and seemed as though recently interred. The hands
were perfect, with the smooth skin as if in life. The clothes retained
their color,--the dark green coat faced with red, the white pantaloons,
and the hat, resting on the thigh. The body was exposed to the air only
two minutes; the coffins were re-sealed and placed in those brought from
France.
The ships reached France early in December. Never was there such a
funeral in Paris. One hundred and fifty thousand soldiers and more than
a million citizens assisted at the magnificent obsequies. The funeral
car, its cenotaph rising fifty feet from the ground, was drawn by
sixteen black horses, four abreast, covered with cloth of gold. The
Emperor's war-horse was draped with a veil of purple crape, embroidered
with bees. The remnants of the Old Guard were there--the hosts who
idolized Napoleon and would have died for him; but the son, the King of
Rome, was sleeping in a coffin in Austria, and Josephine was resting in
the church at Rueil, two miles from Malmaison.
At the funeral service three hundred musicians played Mozart's Requiem
in the Church of the Invalides, where now the great hero rests. The
seemingly countless throng of people were moved to tears. Could he who
was its object have looked forward to all this love and homage, when he
lay dying among the rocks of St. Helena, the agony might have been
lessened. Could he have foreseen how tens of thousands, every year, from
all the world, would stand by that tomb, under the dome of the
Invalides, and do honor to the wonderful soldier and statesman, that
bitter exile and death might not have been quite so desolate and
pathetic.
"Posterity," as he said, "will do him justice." Already the harshness
of his critics is giving place to a correct estimate of his
extraordinary genius.
"I have formed and carried into effect," he said to Dr. O'Meara, "a code
of laws that will bear my name to the most distant posterity. From
nothing I raised myself to be the most powerful monarch of the world."
Napier thought Napoleon "the greatest man of whom history makes
mention." "Never," says Alison, "were talents of the highest, genius of
the most exalted kind, more profusely bestowed upon a human being."
Napoleon worked incessantly. He saved every moment. He believed in
himself. He had great courage, will, and energy. He said to Las Cases
that he liked _two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage_, which he had rarely
met. "I mean," he said, "unprepared courage; that which is necessary on
an unexpected occasion, and which, in spite of the most unforeseen
events, leaves full freedom of judgment and decision."
Napoleon had this courage. Three horses were killed under him at Toulon,
several in Italy, and three or four at the siege of Saint Jean d'Acre.
When his body was prepared for burial, it was found that there were
several scars upon it, some slight, and three very distinct.
He hated selfishness. Madame la Générale Durant, first lady to the
Empress Marie Louise, relates in her book, "Napoleon and Marie Louise,"
that once, when Marie Louise said everybody was selfish, and that she
was also, he replied, "Don't say, my Louise, that you are selfish; I
know no more hideous vice."
He had great dignity combined with kindliness. After a ball, during
which he conversed with Goethe, he wrote Josephine: "I have attended a
ball in Weimar. The Emperor Alexander danced. But I? No! Forty years
are forty years."
"He had a directness of action," says Emerson, "never before combined
with so much comprehension.... Here was a man who, in each moment and
emergency, knew what to do next.... Few men have any next; they live
from hand to mouth, without plan, and are ever at the end of their line,
and, after each action, wait for an impulse from abroad. Napoleon had
been the first man of the world, if his ends had been purely public....
"We cannot, in the universal imbecility, indecision, and indolence of
men, sufficiently congratulate ourselves on this strong and ready actor,
who took occasion by the beard, and showed us how much may be
accomplished by the mere force of such virtues as all men possess in
less degrees; namely, by punctuality, by personal attention, by courage
and thoroughness."
While indomitable in battle, he was, says General Gourgaud, "of all
generals, whether ancient or modern, the one who has paid the greatest
attention to the wounded. The intoxication of victory never could make
him forget them. His first thought after every battle was always of
them."
Count Segur relates that, after the battle of Borodino, when Napoleon
and his escort were going over the field, a horse stepped on a dying
man, who expired with a groan. Napoleon uttered a shriek of pain. Some
one, to soothe him, said, "It was only a Russian." With much warmth,
Napoleon replied, "After victory there are no enemies, but only men."
His despatch was marvellous. He was generous, and never forgot the
poorest who needed his kindness. He was ambitious; but Europe, fearing
him, forced him into many of his wars. He knew how to govern himself as
well as others. He said of Lannes, one of his generals who lost his
temper, that a man could not be great who permitted himself to get
angry. The officer heard of this remark, and ever after controlled his
temper.
Napoleon was more moral than his age. He loved children and nature. "How
many times," says Bourrienne, as they walked toward Rueil from
Malmaison, "has the bell of the village church interrupted our most
serious conversations! He would stop, lest the noise of our footsteps
should drown any portion of the delightful sound."
He believed, in an age of unbelief. He said to Bertrand at St. Helena,
"I know men, and I tell you that Jesus Christ is not a man....
Everything in him astonishes me. His spirit overawes me, and his will
confounds me. Between him and whoever else in the world there is no
possible term of comparison."
Napoleon compared the reign of Christ with that of Cæsar, Alexander,
Hannibal, and of himself; "My armies have forgotten me, even while
living, as the Carthaginian army forgot Hannibal. Such is our power! A
single battle lost crushes us, and adversity scatters our friends....
What an abyss between my deep misery and the eternal reign of Christ,
which is proclaimed, loved, adored, and which is extended over all the
earth! Is this to die? Is it not rather to live? The death of Christ! It
is the death of God."
The life of Napoleon, truly called "the Great," is more interesting and
pathetic than any novel. It will always remain one of the marvels of the
world.
[Illustration: LORD NELSON.]
HORATIO NELSON.
It is a significant fact that the life of a leader is never an easy one.
Nelson's life was one of struggle from beginning to end; a battle with
poverty, lack of appreciation ofttimes by his country, much ill-health,
domestic disquietude, and many hardships. He died at forty-seven, the
greatest naval hero of the age.
Horatio Nelson, the son of a country rector, the Rev. Edmund Nelson, was
born Sept. 29, 1758, at Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk, England. The mother,
Catherine, was descended from a good family, her grandmother being an
elder sister of Sir Robert Walpole, Earl of Oxford. Catherine died when
her little son, Horatio, was nine years old, leaving eight out of eleven
children to mourn their capable mother. Nelson said of her later, just a
short time before he died, "The thought of former days brings all my
mother into my heart, which shows itself in my eyes."
The boy Nelson was fearless and ambitious. It is related of him that,
straying away from the house when a mere child, his grandmother thought
he had been carried off by gypsies. When found sitting beside a brook
which he could not cross, the old lady said, "I wonder, child, that
hunger and fear did not drive you home."
"Fear," said the boy, "I never saw fear; what is it?"
At another time, some pears were wanted from the schoolmaster's garden.
Without debating the question of the sin of stealing, nobody dared
venture for fear of the consequences. Horatio volunteered to get them,
was lowered at night by a sheet from his window, gathered the pears, and
gave them to his mates, keeping none for himself. "I only took them," he
said, "because every other boy was afraid."
His father was poor, always in frail health, and apparently unable to do
much for his numerous progeny. Horatio determined to do something for
himself. Seeing in the newspaper that his uncle on his mother's side,
Captain Maurice Suckling, had been appointed in the navy to the ship
Raisonnable, of sixty-four guns, Horatio said to his brother, a year and
a half older than himself, "Do, William, write to my father, and tell
him that I should like to go to sea with Uncle Maurice."
Mr. Nelson was at Bath for his health. He at once wrote to the captain
about his twelve-year-old son, who was as sickly in body as himself. The
uncle wrote back, "What has poor Horatio done, who is so weak, that he,
above all the rest, should be sent to rough it out at sea? But let him
come, and the first time we go into action, a cannon-ball may knock off
his head, and provide for him at once."
His father took him to London, from whence he found his way to Chatham,
where the ship was lying. His uncle was absent at the time, and the
first few days were lonely in the extreme. The sailors were rough, their
treatment by officers often harsh, not to say cruel, and the lad who had
so yearned for the sea soon came to despise the Royal Navy.
He soon went on a West Indian voyage, in a small merchant ship
commanded by Mr. John Rathbone, who had served as master's mate under
Captain Suckling. Here, with keen observation, and a constant desire to
rise in his profession, he learned rapidly.
Later, young Nelson went as coxswain under Captain Lutwidge in the
Carcass on a Polar voyage. They were beset by the ice; left their ships,
expecting they would be crushed, and dragged their boats by hand; had
the usual fights with walruses and bears, Nelson exposing himself in an
encounter with the latter, that he might carry a skin home to his
father.
Nelson's next voyage, at fifteen, was in the Seahorse, of twenty guns,
to the East Indies in a squadron under Sir Edward Hughes. He was
stationed at the foretop at watch and watch, where his attention to duty
soon made him a midshipman.
After eighteen months in this debilitating climate, he became
dangerously ill, and was sent home in the Dolphin in 1776. The youth of
sixteen became very despondent. "I felt impressed," he says, "with an
idea that I should never rise in my profession. My mind was staggered
with a view of the difficulties I had to surmount, and the little
interest I possessed. I could discover no means of reaching the object
of my ambition. After a long and gloomy revery, in which I almost wished
myself overboard, a sudden flow of patriotism was kindled within me and
presented my king and country as my patrons. My mind exulted in the
idea. 'Well, then,' I exclaimed, 'I will be a hero, and, confiding in
Providence, I will brave every danger.'"
From that time he often told his friend Hardy, "a radiant orb was
suspended in his mind's eye, which urged him onward to renown."
Captain Suckling had now become comptroller of the navy; and as soon as
Nelson was recovered, through his uncle's influence, he was made fourth
lieutenant of the Worcester, a ship of sixty-four guns, commanded by
Mark Robinson, going out to Gibraltar. At nineteen he passed an
excellent examination in naval matters, and was made second lieutenant
on the Lowestoffe, of thirty-two guns, under Captain William Locker,
then fitting out for the West Indies. The vessel arrived at Carlisle
Bay, Barbadoes, July 4, 1777.
Nelson soon showed his usual bravery. An American letter-of-marque was
captured. The first lieutenant was ordered to board her; but, unable to
reach her by reason of the high sea, Nelson volunteered, and though his
boat swept over the deck of the American privateer, he finally got
aboard, and made her his prize.
Soon after Nelson was appointed third lieutenant of the flag-ship
Bristol, and in 1779 commander of the Badger, protecting the Mosquito
Coast and the Bay of Honduras from the privateers. Many French
merchantmen were captured.
During these years from 1777 to 1780, the skirmishes with the Spaniards
and French, though marked with great energy and bravery on the part of
Nelson, were ruinous to him and his men. Hundreds of the latter died
from the malaria of the climate, or were poisoned by the bites of
serpents. Nelson himself, more dead than alive, was carried back to
England, and for many months remained at Bath, endeavoring to regain his
health.
Fretting at his inactive life, he applied for a position which was not
granted for some months; and then he was sent, much against his will, to
the bleak North Sea to protect the home trade. Here he spent a winter
in discomfort, but he learned many things which were of inestimable
value in one of his great battles afterwards.
In 1782 he sailed in his ship, the Albemarle, for Newfoundland and
Quebec, and while cruising along the coast, captured the Harmony, a
schooner which belonged to a fisherman by the name of Carver. Nelson
employed him as a pilot in Boston Harbor, and then restored him the
schooner and cargo, giving him a certificate so that no other vessel
should capture him. This certificate was framed, and hung in the house
of Isaac Davis of Boston. Carver was so grateful to Nelson that he came
afterwards to the Albemarle, at the hazard of his life, bringing a
present of sheep, poultry, and fresh provisions. The scurvy was raging
on board, and the ship's company had not enjoyed a fresh meal for five
months, so that Carver's present was most acceptable.
While at Quebec in 1782, when he was twenty-four, Nelson fell in love
with an American lady, whom he much desired to marry, but was prevented
by the decision of his friend Alexander Davison, who hurried him off to
sea.
In October of this same year, 1782, Nelson sailed for New York, where he
found the Barfleur with twelve sail-of-the-line under command of Lord
Hood. The latter introduced him to Prince William Henry, Duke of
Clarence, afterwards William IV. The duke was greatly pleased with the
boyish-looking captain, dressed in his full laced uniform, with his hair
tied in a stiff Hessian tail of an extraordinary length. The duke says
of his quaint figure, "I had never seen anything like it before, nor
could I imagine who he was nor what he came about. But his address and
conversation were irresistibly pleasing; and when he spoke on
professional subjects, it was with an enthusiasm that showed me he was
no common being."
Under Lord Hood, Nelson sailed to the West Indies, and remained there
till January, 1783, when peace with France was concluded.
"I have closed the war," said Nelson, "without a fortune; but there is
not a speck in my character. True honor, I hope, predominates in my mind
far above riches."
On July 11 Nelson was presented at court, and received much attention
from the king, perhaps on account of the good words of Prince William,
his son, for the sailor. The young man of twenty-five had not
particularly distinguished himself as yet, but he had improved every
opportunity of making himself familiar with naval matters. He would be
ready for the great opportunity if it ever came.
As he was now on half-pay, he determined to go to France for a time to
study the French language. Here he fell in love with Miss Andrews, one
of the three daughters of an English clergyman. As his income was only
£130 a year, he wrote his uncle, William Suckling, asking that he might
be allowed £100 a year in addition, that he might be able to marry. This
request was granted; but Miss Andrews perhaps did not give her consent,
or Nelson thought that £230 would not support a wife in much luxury, for
she afterwards married a clergyman by the name of Farrer, and later
Colonel Warne. Nelson evidently admired her greatly; for he wrote to his
brother William, "She has such accomplishments, that, had I a million of
money, I am sure I should at this moment make her an offer of them."
In the spring of 1784 he was appointed to the Boreas, of twenty-eight
guns, and sailed for the Leeward Islands, taking with him Lady Hughes
and her family to her husband, Sir Richard, who was in command at that
station.
There were about thirty midshipmen on board, and to all Nelson was
extremely kind and sympathetic. When a boy was at first afraid to go up
the masts, Nelson would say, "I am going a race to the masthead, and beg
that I may meet you there." When they met at the top, Nelson would speak
cheerfully and say, "How much any person was to be pitied who could
fancy there was any danger, or even anything disagreeable, in the
attempt."
He was always the first to arrive on deck with his quadrant at noon.
When he made visits of ceremony he always took some of his lads with
him. When he went to dine with the governor of Barbadoes, he said, "Your
Excellency must excuse me for bringing one of my midshipmen. I make it a
rule to introduce them to all the good company I can, as they have few
to look up to besides myself during the time they are at sea."
Through life Nelson showed this same thoughtfulness and tenderness for
his men. He never lost the sensitiveness of his childhood, which made
him cry bitterly when he had hurt a pet lamb in a shoemaker's shop, by
accidentally opening a door against it. He was always opposed to harsh
discipline, and ruled by love rather than by fear. No wonder it was said
of him, when other great men were mentioned, "Nelson was the man to
_love_."
At the Island of Nevis, Nelson fell in love for the third time. The
lady was Mrs. Fanny Nisbet, whose husband, a physician, had died insane,
eighteen months after their marriage. Her uncle, Mr. Herbert, was the
president of Nevis. She had a son Josiah, several years old, to whom
Nelson became attached; and this, of course, helped to win the favor of
the mother.
Three months before their marriage he writes to her from Antigua, where
he has Prince William Henry with him: "What is it to attend on princes!
let me attend on you and I am satisfied. Some are born for attendants on
great men; I rather think that is not my particular province. His Royal
Highness often tells me he believes I am married, for he never saw a
lover so easy or say so little of the object he has a regard for. When I
tell him I certainly am not, then he is sure I must have a great esteem
for you, and that it is not what is vulgarly--I do not much like the use
of that word--called love.
"He is right; my love is founded on esteem, the only foundation that can
make the passion last. I need not tell you what you so well know, that I
wish I had a fortune to settle on you; but I trust I have a good name,
and that certain events will bring the other about; it is my misfortune,
not my fault. You can marry me only from a sincere affection; therefore
I ought to make you a good husband, and I hope it will turn out that I
shall."
Again he writes, "I daily thank God, who ordained that I should be
attached to you. He has, I firmly believe, intended it as a blessing to
me, and I am well convinced you will not disappoint his beneficent
intentions."
These are certainly very different letters from those which he wrote in
after years to Lady Hamilton, whom he idolized. Undoubtedly Nelson
mistook loneliness of heart for love; as he wrote to Lady Hamilton years
after, "I never did love any one else.... I have been the world around,
and in every corner of it, and never yet saw your equal, or even one who
could be put in comparison with you." Nelson and Mrs. Nisbet were
married March 12, 1787, Prince William giving away the bride. Many of
his friends in the service regretted that he had married before his
honors had been more fully won. "The Navy," said Captain Pringle, the
day after the wedding, "yesterday lost one of its greatest ornaments by
Nelson's marriage. It is a national loss that such an officer should
marry; had it not been for that circumstance, I foresaw that Nelson
would become the greatest man in the service."
Nelson took his wife to England, arriving at Spithead July 4, about four
months after their marriage. He had applied for a ship-of-the-line, but
no notice was taken of the request. He retired with his wife to the
parsonage at Burnham Thorpe, and at the request of his aged father
remained there. He was in very poor health and living on half-pay. "From
the 30th of November, 1787, to the 30th of January, 1793," says W. Clark
Russell, in his life of the hero, "Nelson, whose delicate form enclosed
the genius of the greatest sea-captain the world has ever produced, was
compelled by departmental neglect to lie by in an almost
poverty-stricken retirement."
Again and again he asked for employment. The prince recommended him to
Lord Chatham, but nothing was done. In December, 1792, Nelson wrote, "If
your lordships should be pleased to appoint me to a _cockle-boat_ I
should be grateful." He would have left the service, if he had had means
to live on shore. He was irritated beyond measure by this neglect, and
perhaps Mrs. Nelson did not find the parsonage a perfect haven of rest
and peace.
Finally Nelson concluded to take refuge in France. That country had
become a republic Sept. 21, 1792. She soon found herself, on account of
her democratic principles, engaged in war with various countries, Great
Britain among them. Feb. 1, 1793, she declared war against England,
Holland, and Spain. Sardinia was already at war with France. As soon as
England was involved in war, Nelson was needed; and he was assigned to
the Agamemnon, a fine ship of sixty-four guns, called by the seamen,
"Old Eggs-and-Bacon." She sailed for Gibraltar June 27, 1793, with Lord
Hood's fleet, nineteen sail-of-the-line, and a convoy of merchant-ships.
When Lord Hood arrived in the Mediterranean, he stationed his ships off
Toulon, which soon surrendered to the British, without firing a shot.
Nelson was at once ordered to Naples with despatches for Sir William
Hamilton, the British minister, and to ask for ten thousand Italian
troops, to help in the preservation of Toulon.
King Ferdinand and his queen, Maria Caroline, the daughter of Maria
Theresa of Austria, gave Nelson most cordial welcome at Court, feeling
that the English were "the saviours of Italy." Sir William Hamilton told
his wife that he was going to introduce her to a little man, not
handsome, "but an English naval officer, who will become the greatest
man that England ever produced. I know it from the few words I have
already exchanged with him. I pronounce that he will one day astonish
the world.... Let him be put in the room prepared for Prince Augustus."
Lady Hamilton received Nelson with her accustomed grace and cordiality.
He wrote his wife, "She is a young woman of amiable manners, and who
does honor to the station in which she is raised.... She has been
wonderfully kind and good to Josiah."
Nelson was at this time about thirty-five, and Lady Hamilton five years
younger, of the same age as his wife. She was a woman of remarkable
beauty and great sweetness of manner. Southey said, "She was a woman
whose personal accomplishments have seldom been equalled, and whose
powers of mind were not less fascinating than her person." Her history
had been a strange one. Born in extreme poverty, and early left an
orphan by the death of her father, she was for some years a nursery-maid
and servant, then a model for Romney, the famous artist, who painted her
twenty-three times, as Bacchante, Saint Cecilia, a Magdalen, a Wood
Nymph, Joan of Arc, etc., and thought her the most beautiful human being
he had ever looked upon.
At this time she supported herself by her needle. Her beauty attracted
the attention of Mr. Charles Greville, second son of Francis, Earl of
Warwick, and Elizabeth, daughter of Lord Archibald Hamilton. He educated
her, and she became skilled in music and languages. She played finely on
the harp. Her stage talents were so great that she was offered two
thousand guineas to sing for the season at the Opera House in London.
Greville sent her to Naples with his uncle, Sir William Hamilton, with
the avowed object of perfecting her in music, but in reality to abandon
her, as he had become somewhat straitened in circumstances.
She loved Greville, and was deeply wounded at his treatment. Sir
William, a younger son of Lord Archibald Hamilton, was at that time
sixty-one, and Emma Lyon twenty-eight. He had married for his first wife
a Welsh heiress, who had died nine years previously: In 1791, Sept. 6,
he married Emma, who thus became Lady Hamilton. He was a student of art,
an author of several volumes, and for thirty-six years minister to
Italy.
However blameworthy the previous life of Lady Hamilton, Sir William was
devoted to her, and said at his death, twelve years later, "My
incomparable Emma, you have never, in thought, word, or deed, offended
me; and let me thank you, again and again, for your affectionate
kindness to me all the time of our ten years' happy union."
On leaving Naples, Nelson was despatched to Corsica and Sardinia, to
protect British trade and that of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. He wrote to
his wife, "This island is to belong to England, to be governed by its
own laws, as Ireland, and a viceroy placed here with free ports. Italy
and Spain are jealous of our obtaining possession; it will command the
Mediterranean."
The town of Bastia was taken by Nelson. "I am all astonishment," he
said, "when I reflect on what we have achieved ... four thousand in all,
laying down their arms to twelve hundred soldiers, marines, and seamen!
I always was of opinion, have ever acted up to it, and never had any
reason to repent it, that one Englishman was equal to three Frenchmen."
At the siege of Calvi, by the bursting of a shell in the ground, sand
and small gravel destroyed the sight of Nelson's right eye. For two
years Nelson was almost constantly active. He wrote his wife, Aug. 2,
1796, "Had all my actions been gazetted, not one fortnight would have
passed during the whole war without a letter from me; one day or other I
will have a long gazette to myself. I feel that such an opportunity will
be given me. I cannot, if I am in the field of glory, be kept out of
sight; wherever there is anything to be done, there Providence is sure
to direct my steps."
He had been made colonel of marines, and then commodore. The Agamemnon
had been sent to Leghorn to refit, so badly had she been damaged by
shot.
Corsica was finally evacuated, and Nelson proceeded to Gibraltar. Spain
and France had now become allies. Off Cape St. Vincent, on the coast of
Portugal, a severe battle was fought, February 14, 1797, between the
English and Spanish fleets. The former had fifteen ships-of-the-line,
with four frigates, a sloop, and a cutter. The latter had twenty-seven
ships-of-the-line, with ten frigates, and a brig. Nelson, in the
Captain, was at one time engaged with no less than nine line-of-battle
ships. He and his seamen sprang aboard the San Nicolas and the San
Josef, he exclaiming, it is recorded, "Westminster Abbey or victory!"
received the swords of some of the Spanish officers, and in the midst of
falling spars and blinding smoke, showed themselves heroic.
For this successful battle Nelson received the Knighthood and Order of
the Bath, and was made Rear-Admiral. The sword of the Spanish admiral
given to Nelson on board the San Josef was presented to the mayor and
corporation of Norwich, the capital of the county in which he was born.
The freedom of the city was voted to him.
His aged father wrote him, "The name and services of Nelson have
sounded through this city of Bath--from the common ballad-singer to the
public theatre."
His wife begged him "never to board again. _Leave it for captains...._
You have been most wonderfully protected; you have done desperate
actions enough."
On the night of July 3. 1797, Cadiz, off the coast of Spain, was
bombarded. Nelson was in a most desperate action. In a barge with twelve
men, he was attacked by a Spanish barge of twenty-six oars, with thirty
in her crew. A hand-to-hand fight ensued. The Spanish commander and his
launch were taken, and eighteen of his men were killed. The life of
Nelson was saved by a trusted follower, John Sykes, who interposed his
own head to receive the blow of a Spanish sabre. He recovered from his
dangerous wound, "but did not live long enough," says Southey, "to
profit by the gratitude and friendship of his commander."
On July 15 Nelson sailed in the ship Theseus for Teneriffe, off the
coast of Africa. On the evening of July 24, he determined to attack the
garrison of Santa Cruz. With the help of his step-son, Lieutenant Josiah
Nisbet, he burned his wife's letters before starting to row ashore.
Seeing that the young man was armed, he begged him to remain in the
ship, saying, "Should we both fall, Josiah, what would become of your
poor mother? The care of the Theseus falls to you; stay therefore, and
take charge of her."
"The ship must take care of herself," said Nisbet; "I will go with you
to-night if I never go again."
The expedition was a failure. Several of the boats missed the pier in
the darkness, some were struck by shot and their men
drowned--ninety-seven men went down in the fog--and Nelson was shot
through the right elbow, as he was stepping out of his boat. As he fell
young Nisbet placed him in the bottom of the boat, and laid his hat over
the arm, lest the sight of the blood should increase Nelson's faintness.
Then taking a silk handkerchief from his own neck, he bound it above the
elbow, thus saving the life of the admiral. One of the bargemen, Lovel,
tore his shirt into shreds to make a bandage for the shattered arm.
When his boat reached the Theseus, Nelson declined to be helped on
board, and twisted the rope thrown over the side of the ship round his
left hand, saying, "Let me alone; I have yet my legs and one arm. Tell
the surgeon to make haste and get his instruments. I know I must lose my
right arm; so the sooner it is off, the better."
When asked by the surgeon if he wished the arm embalmed that he might
send it to England for burial, he said, "Throw it into the hammock with
the brave fellow that was killed beside me," whose body was about to be
thrown overboard.
Nelson was greatly depressed after this failure, and said, "A
left-handed admiral will never again be considered as useful; therefore
the sooner I get to a very humble cottage the better, and make room for
a sounder man to serve the state."
He returned to England in September, and went to Bath where his father
and Lady Nelson were staying. She tenderly nursed her husband for three
months, till his arm was healed. In December, 1797, at his request the
following notice was read in St. George's Church, Hanover Square,
London: "An officer desires to return thanks to Almighty God for his
perfect recovery from a severe wound, and also for the many mercies
bestowed on him."
This year, 1797, government settled a pension of a thousand pounds a
year on Sir Horatio Nelson, and at St. James's Palace made him Knight
Companion of the Bath. The freedom of the city of London was conferred
upon him in December, and with it a gold box worth one hundred guineas.
April 1, 1798, he sailed in the Vanguard, of seventy-four guns, to join
Lord St. Vincent and the fleet off Cadiz. It was known that Napoleon and
the French fleet were preparing for an invasion of some country of the
allied forces, either England, Spain, or Italy. Nelson's instructions
were to "take, sink, burn, and destroy it." It is now known that
Napoleon's expedition was against the East Indian Empire, to cripple
England. The Mediterranean was searched for the French ships. Nelson
wrote his wife: "I have not been able to find the French fleet.... I yet
live in hopes of meeting these fellows; but it would have been my
delight to have tried Bonaparte on a bowline, for he commands the fleet
as well as the army. Glory is my object and that alone."
After some months of fruitless search, Nelson obtained a fresh supply of
provisions in July at Syracuse. A treaty between Naples and France
forbade more than two English ships to enter any Neapolitan or Sicilian
port, and it is said that Lady Hamilton gained the needed concession
from her friend, Queen Maria Caroline, without which Nelson (in his
Will, on the last day of his life) declared he could never have gone to
Egypt and fought the glorious battle of the Nile.
On the morning of Aug. 1, 1798, Nelson was off the city of Alexandria in
Egypt. His force amounted to thirteen seventy-four gun ships, one of
fifty guns, and one brig, all carrying 8,068 men, with 1,012 guns. The
French had also thirteen ships of the line, with eight frigates, brigs,
and bomb vessels. They had 11,230 men, with 1,226 guns. The French had
come to anchor in Aboukir Bay, at the mouth of the Nile.
The British were overjoyed at finding the French fleet. Nelson had
scarcely eaten or slept for days; but, now that the enemy were in sight,
he ordered dinner to be served on the Vanguard, and, on rising from the
table, is said to have exclaimed to his officers, "Before this time
to-morrow I shall have gained a peerage or Westminster Abbey."
After talking over the plan of battle with his officers, one of them
said with enthusiasm, "If we succeed, what will the world say?"
"There is no _if_ in the case," replied the admiral; "that we shall
succeed is certain; who may live to tell the story is a very different
question."
A little after six in the evening, Aug. 1, the fierce battle began.
Nelson had six colors flying in different parts of his rigging, lest
they should be shot away. The first two ships of the French line were
dismasted in a quarter of an hour; the third, fourth, and fifth were
taken at half-past eight.
Nelson received a severe wound in the head, which, though he supposed it
would prove fatal, Southey says the admiral would not allow touched
until the other wounded had been cared for. "I will take my turn with my
brave fellows," he said.
About nine the L'Orient, the flagship of the French Admiral de Brueys,
of one hundred and twenty guns, was seen to be on fire. Brueys was dead.
He had received three wounds, but would not leave his post. A fourth
cut him nearly in two. He requested to be left to die on the deck, and
expired a quarter of an hour afterwards.
When Nelson saw the ship on fire, he gave orders that boats should be
sent to the enemy. About seventy of her crew were saved by the English
boats. So heroic were her men that they continued to fire from the upper
decks after the lower were in flames. Between ten and eleven the huge
ship exploded. Officers and men jumped overboard, and most were lost in
that frightful commingling of fire and falling timbers which had been
shot high into the air.
Both fleets seemed paralyzed, and for a quarter of an hour no gun was
fired. All was darkness and silence save the groans of the dying, and
the swell of the ingulfing sea. Among those who perished were Commodore
Casabianca and his brave little son of ten or twelve, whom Mrs. Hemans
has immortalized in her poem:--
"The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck
Shone round him o'er the dead.
Yet beautiful and bright he stood,
As born to rule the storm;
A creature of heroic blood,
A proud, though child-like form."
The battle raged till three in the morning. The French were
overwhelmingly defeated. "Victory is not a name strong enough for such a
scene; it is a conquest," said Nelson.
Of thirteen French sail-of-the-line, nine were taken and two burned; of
the four frigates, one was sunk and another was burned. Of the French,
5,221 were taken, drowned, burned, and missing. The English lost 218
killed and 677 wounded. Long after the battle a great number of bodies
floated about the bay in spite of all efforts to sink them. Many were
cast up on Nelson's Island, and the sailors raised mounds of sand over
them. For four leagues the shore was covered with wrecks. The day after
the battle, Aug. 2, at two o'clock, Nelson's ship gave public
thanksgiving to God. Other ships were recommended to do the same as soon
as convenient.
Part of L'Orient's mainmast was picked up by the English ship Swiftsure,
Benjamin Hallowell, captain. A coffin was made from this and presented
to Nelson with the note:--
"My lord, herewith I send you a coffin made of part of L'Orient's
mainmast, that when you are tired of this life you may be buried in
one of your own trophies; but may that period be far distant, is
the sincere wish of your obedient and much obliged servant,
BEN HALLOWELL."
Nelson was greatly pleased with this gift, and ordered it placed upright
in his cabin. Finally, at the request of his friends, it was carried
below. He was eventually buried in it.
The joy at Napoleon's defeat was inexpressible. England made Nelson a
baron, with a pension of £2,000 a year while he lived, to descend to his
two male successors. The East India Company voted him £10,000, as they
had thus been saved from French conquest. The Emperor Paul of Russia
sent him his portrait set in diamonds, in a gold box. The Sultan of
Turkey sent a pelisse of sable fur valued at five thousand dollars, and
a diamond aigrette valued at eighteen thousand dollars, taken from the
royal turbans. The Sultan's mother sent a box set in diamonds valued at
five thousand dollars; the King of Sardinia a gold box set in diamonds;
the King of the Two Sicilies a sword which once belonged to Charles III.
of Spain. His friend Alexander Davison sent medals to the officers and
men costing £2,000. These were all greatly prized by the men.
Italy was as rejoiced at the defeat of the French as was England. When
the news reached Naples, both the queen and Lady Hamilton fainted. Lady
Hamilton wrote to Nelson of the queen, "She cried, kissed her husband,
her children, walked frantic about the room; cried, kissed and embraced
every person near her, exclaiming, O brave Nelson! O God, bless and
protect our brave deliverer! O Nelson, Nelson, what do we not owe you! O
victor, saviour of Italy! Oh that my swollen heart could now tell him
personally what we owe him!" She was the sister of Marie Antoinette,
and, of course, felt no love for the people who had put her beautiful
sister to death.
On Sept. 22 Nelson and his ships appeared off Naples. Hundreds of boats
and barges went out to meet them with music and banners. He describes
the scene in a letter to Lady Nelson, "I must endeavor to convey to you
something of what passed; but if it were so affecting to those who were
only united to me by bonds of friendship, what must it be to my dearest
wife, my friend, my everything which is most dear to me in this world?
Sir William Hamilton and his wife came out to sea, attended by numerous
boats with emblems, etc. They, my most respectable friends, had nearly
been laid up and seriously ill; first from anxiety, and then from
joy....
"Alongside came my honored friends; the scene in the boat was terribly
affecting; up flew her ladyship, and exclaiming, 'O God! is it
possible?' she fell into my arms more dead than alive. Tears, however,
soon set matters to rights; when alongside came the king. The scene was
in its way as interesting; he took me by the hand, calling me his
'Deliverer and Preserver,' with every expression of kindness." ...
The poor of Italy were no less enthusiastic. They brought cages of
birds, and opening them, allowed the little creatures to fly about the
ship, and alight upon the admiral's shoulder.
Nelson had been very ill, and was taken to the house of Sir William
Hamilton, where his wife nursed the admiral back to health. She arranged
a celebration for him on his fortieth birthday, Sept. 29. Eighteen
hundred people were entertained at a cost of two thousand ducats. "Every
ribbon, every button, has Nelson," etc., writes the admiral. "The whole
service is marked H. N., Glorious 1st of August!"
Encouraged by the victory of Nelson, a second coalition was now formed
against Napoleon, composed of Russia, Austria, England, Portugal,
Naples, and Turkey. Ferdinand of Naples engaged to raise eighty thousand
soldiers for the common cause. A force of thirty-two thousand Italians
were sent to Rome to drive out the French, but were defeated, and the
French in turn entered Naples and compelled the royal family to fly for
safety to Palermo.
Lady Hamilton, with great skill and courage, after having explored a
subterranean passage from the royal palace to the seaside, had two
millions and a half of royal treasures, paintings and the like, removed
to the English ships. She also assisted the king and his family secretly
to reach Nelson's barges on the night of Dec. 21. They were carried to
the Vanguard in a heavy sea.
On the night of Dec. 23 the fleet sailed. A dreadful storm arose; Nelson
says, "the worst I ever experienced since I have been at sea." Almost
all were ill, and Lady Hamilton, who was a good sailor, soothed and
comforted them. Sir William sat with a pistol in his hand, prepared to
shoot himself if the vessel sank. The little Prince Albert was taken ill
on the morning of Dec. 25, and died at seven o'clock that evening in
Lady Hamilton's arms.
Naples for a time was transformed by the French into the Parthenopæan
Republic, which later was abolished, and the insurgents put to death by
Ferdinand. Nelson has been censured, and justly, for the execution, on
board one of his ships, the Foudroyant, of Francesco Caracciolo, who
belonged to one of the noble families of Naples, and, with others, had
been promised protection by a British officer. Caracciolo was tried and
condemned as a rebel by officers of his own country, and Nelson decided
not to interfere. The prisons of Naples were indeed slaughter pens; but
wars are never humane, and struggles between despotism and liberty are
rarely bloodless.
Ferdinand rewarded Nelson with the Sicilian dukedom of Brontë, with an
estate worth about £3,000 per annum. Nelson at once gave from this
estate an annuity of £500 for life to his father. He had already given
out of the £10,000 voted him by the East India Company, five hundred
pounds each to his father, his brother-in-law, Mr. Bolton, his sister,
Mrs. Matcham, and his brothers Maurice and William. When his brother
Maurice died in April, 1801, Nelson gave his blind widow £100 a year
while he lived, and Lady Hamilton cared for her after his death. He
wrote to his wife, "If I were rich I would do more. To my father say
everything which is kind. I love, honor, and respect him as a father and
as a man, and as the very best man I ever saw. May God Almighty bless
you, my dear father, and all my brothers and sisters, is the fervent
prayer of your affectionate--Nelson."
The Queen of Naples gave Nelson the king's picture set in diamonds and
emeralds. She gave Lady Emma Hamilton her portrait set with diamonds,
with the words "Eterna Gratitudine" on the back, hanging it round her
neck by a chain of gold; to Sir William a gold snuffbox, with a picture
of the king and herself set in diamonds; the king sent Sir William and
his wife each a picture of himself richly set in jewels, worth a
thousand guineas. Lady Hamilton also received two coach-loads of costly
dresses from Queen Caroline, and a superb diamond necklace, with the
cipher of the names of all the royal children, ornamented by locks of
their hair. Emperor Paul of Russia sent her the cross of the Order of
Malta, the first Englishwoman upon whom the honor was ever bestowed.
The Island of Zante sent Nelson a golden-headed sword and a truncheon
set round with diamonds, thanking him "for having by his victory
preserved that part of Greece from the horrors of anarchy."
The French having been driven out of Italy, Nelson, in poor health,
asked to return to England. Sir William Hamilton had been superseded by
Hon. Arthur Paget, so he and his wife decided to return at the same
time. The queen and some of her children accompanied them to Vienna.
Here Prince Esterhazy entertained the party in regal style for four
days, a hundred grenadiers, six feet high, waiting at table. At Dresden
the party remained eight days, when two vessels were fitted up for their
conveyance down the Elbe to Hamburg. Everywhere great crowds gathered to
see the hero of the Nile. At Hamburg he met a venerable clergyman who
had travelled forty miles to ask the admiral to write in the parish
Bible. Here Nelson called upon the poet Klopstock. He also bought some
elegant lace trimming for a court dress for his wife.
On Oct. 31 they started for England on a mail packet, and reached
Yarmouth Nov. 6, 1800, after an absence of two years and seven months.
On landing in a harbor radiant with flags, his carriage was drawn by the
eager multitude to the inn; the freedom of the town was given him; and
then, with his officers and people of the town, he went to the church to
return thanks for his safe return to his country. He reached London
Sunday, Nov. 9, and went to Nerot's hotel, King Street, St. James's,
where his father and Lady Nelson had come from Norfolk to meet him. On
the following day the people took his horses from his carriage and drew
him from Ludgate Hill to Guild Hall, where he received the thanks of the
common council, and a golden-hilted sword studded with diamonds.
Rumors of Nelson's devotion to Lady Hamilton had already reached England
and his wife. She received him coldly. Shortly after this, while Lord
and Lady Nelson were with the Hamiltons at the theatre, Lady Nelson,
unable to control her feelings, fainted in the box where they were
sitting.
For two months Lord Nelson and his wife lived, as might be supposed,
most unhappily, when he determined to leave her forever, settling upon
her £1,600 per year. He wrote to his friend Davison, "Sooner than live
the life I did when last I came to England, I would stay abroad
forever." The last time he saw her, Jan. 13, 1801, before he left for
the Baltic, he said at parting, "I call God to witness there is nothing
in you or your conduct I wish otherwise."
In 1801 England found herself engaged in conflict with Denmark, which
had become an ally of Russia, Prussia, and Sweden, in naval rights. On
March 12, 1801, a fleet of fifty-two sail was sent into the Baltic from
England, Nelson acting as second in command under Sir Hyde Parker. On
March 16 the ship Invincible, of seventy-four guns, struck on a
sand-bank called Hammond's Knowl, and went down, taking four hundred
persons with her.
The harbor of Copenhagen was most strongly fortified. The city was
protected by defences which stretched a distance of about four miles.
The Danes had removed all the buoys, so that Nelson was obliged to make
soundings and replace them.
On the morning of April 1, the British fleet anchored within two leagues
of Copenhagen. On April 2, at five minutes past ten in the forenoon, the
battle began. Nelson's squadron being received with the fire of more
than a thousand guns. As some of his ships had become disabled, Admiral
Parker, at a distance, thinking that the fire was too hot for Nelson,
threw out the signal to retreat, knowing that if Nelson could possibly
continue the battle he would do so.
When told of the signal, Nelson put his glass to his blind eye, saying,
"I really do not see the signal! Keep mine for closer battle flying!
That's the way I answer such signals. Nail mine to the mast!"
The men fought heroically on both sides. The battle lasted for five
hours, men fighting knee-deep among the dead on the decks. The Danes
lost 1800 men, including prisoners, 6,000, and the English 253 killed
and 688 wounded.
Nelson said, "I have been in one hundred and five engagements in the
course of my life, but this has been the most terrible of all."
An armistice was effected, and the Crown Prince of Denmark gave a grand
banquet to the Danish commissioners and English officers. At the
banquet, Nelson praised the bravery of the Danes, and asked to be
introduced to Lieutenant Villemoes, a youth of seventeen, who, on a
floating battery or raft, with six small cannon and twenty-four men,
came under the very stern of Nelson's ship, the Elephant, and attacked
her. Twenty of his men were killed; but the boy-commander, standing up
to his waist among his dead comrades, fought till the truce was
proclaimed. Southey gives the number of guns as twenty-four, and the men
one hundred and twenty.
When the lad was brought before Nelson, he embraced him, and told the
prince that the youth deserved to be made an admiral. "If, my lord," was
the answer, "I were to make all my brave officers admirals, I should
have no captains or lieutenants in my service."
Nelson, brave to rashness himself, admired it in others. When, early in
1800, in the Mediterranean, Le Généreux, one of the ships that had
escaped at the battle of the Nile, was captured, Nelson patted the head
of a little midshipman, who was very pale, and asked him how he
relished the music. He told the boy how Charles XII. ran away from the
first shot he heard, but was afterwards called "the Great" for his
bravery. "I therefore hope much from you in future," said the admiral.
Nelson was made a viscount for the battle of Copenhagen. His estates and
titles were to go to his father, to his brother William, and then to the
male heirs of Nelson's sisters, Mrs. Bolton, and next Mrs. Matcham.
In very poor health he returned to England, and was welcomed to the home
of Sir William Hamilton, at 23 Piccadilly.
By the wish of Nelson, Lady Hamilton purchased a country home for him,
called Merton Place, in Surrey, eight miles from London. "It would make
you laugh," wrote Sir William, "to see Emma and her mother fitting up
pig-stys and hen-coops, and already the canal is enlivened with ducks,
and the cock is strutting with his hens about the walks.... I have lived
with our dear Emma several years. I know her merit, have a great opinion
of the head and heart that God Almighty has been pleased to give her,
but a seaman alone could have given a fine woman full power to choose
and fit up a residence for him without seeing it himself."
On Oct. 29, 1821, Viscount Nelson took his seat in the House of Lords.
The following year, in May, the Rev. Edmund Nelson, the father of the
admiral, was coming to live with his son and the Hamiltons at Merton
Place; but he died at Burnham Thorpe, April 26, at the age of
seventy-nine.
During the summer of 1802, Nelson journeyed to Wales with the family of
his brother, the Rev. William Nelson, and the Hamiltons, and everywhere
received the homage of the people. Oxford gave him the freedom of the
city in a gold box, and the degree of D.C.L. to him and to Sir William.
He passed under triumphal arches, medals were struck in his honor, and
crowds escorted him with lighted torches.
The next year, 1803, England and France, or, in reality, England and
Napoleon, were again at war. Nelson wrote a characteristic note to the
Premier:--
"HOUSE OF LORDS, 4 o'clock, March 9, 1803.
"Whenever it is necessary, I am _your_ admiral.
NELSON AND BRONTË."
April 6, 1803, Sir William Hamilton died, holding his wife's and
Nelson's hands, saying, "Protect my dear wife; and may God bless you,
and give you victory and protect you in battle!" He bequeathed to Nelson
a copy of a picture of his wife by Madame Le Brun in enamel. To her he
gave a legacy of £800, and an annuity of £800 for life. Sir William's
pension of £1,200 a year closed with his death, and, as the government
did not continue it, in spite of Sir William's dying wishes, Nelson gave
the amount to her, in monthly portions, while he lived.
A month after Sir William's death, Nelson was appointed to the command
of the Mediterranean squadron, to take part in the war between England
and France. He sailed from Spithead, May 20, in the Victory, and for two
years, lacking ten days, did not step out of his ship. They were long,
weary years of much illness and loneliness, but devotion to duty. He
returned to Merton on the morning of Aug. 20, 1805.
A month later he was again called to serve his country. A third
coalition had been formed by England, Russia, Austria, and Sweden
against France. Spain had become the ally of the latter.
"I will do my best," he wrote to a friend, "and I hope God Almighty will
go with me. I have much to lose, but little to gain; and I go because it
is right, and I will serve the country faithfully."
He left Merton Friday night, Sept. 13, at half-past ten, taking a sad
leave of his sisters and Lady Hamilton, and kneeling by the bedside of
their little girl, Horatia, earnestly prayed that God would protect and
bless her. This child was at that time about four and a half years old,
having been born in January, 1801.
Nelson writes in his private diary that evening, "At half-past ten drove
from dear, dear Merton, where I left all which I hold dear in this
world, to go to serve my king and country.... If it is His good
providence to cut short my days upon earth, I bow with the greatest
submission, relying that He will protect those so dear to me that I may
leave behind. His will be done. Amen! Amen! Amen!"
A great crowd gathered to see him embark. Many were in tears, and many
knelt before him and blessed him as he passed. He remarked to his dear
friend, Captain Hardy, "I had their huzzas before; I have their hearts
now."
Sept. 28 the fleet anchored off Cadiz, on the coast of Spain. Nelson
knew there must be a fearful battle, and seems to have expected to be
killed in it. He took much exercise daily, generally walking the deck
for six or seven hours. Such was the activity of his mind that he rarely
slept more than two hours at a time. He never thought of himself. He
exposed his body, frail as it was, in all kinds of weather, and would
not change his clothing when wet through. He disliked to depend much on
others, as he was obliged to do, from having but one arm and one eye.
He was very prompt, and made good use of time. He once said to General
Twiss, "Time, Twiss, time is everything. Five minutes makes the
difference between a victory and a defeat."
He was extremely generous. When one of his men, Captain Parker, died, he
paid his debts and funeral expenses, about £200. He spent very little
for himself, and much for others.
It was thought that there would be a battle on Saturday, Oct. 19; and
Nelson wrote two letters, one to "my dearest angel," little Horatia, and
the other to Lady Hamilton, whom he would have married, had the divorce
laws of England permitted. To her he writes, "May the God of battles
crown my endeavors with success; at all events, I will take care that my
name shall ever be most dear to you and Horatia, both of whom I love as
much as my own life."
On Monday, Oct. 21, the fleets, now off Cape Trafalgar, below Cadiz,
were ready for action. The English had twenty-seven sail-of-the-line and
four frigates; the French and Spanish thirty-three sail-of-the-line and
seven frigates. The English had 2,542 guns; the French and Spanish,
3,042 guns.
Nelson told the men who removed the picture of Lady Hamilton, which
always hung in his cabin in the Victory, to "take care of his guardian
angel." He wore a miniature of her next his heart. Then he wrote an
earnest prayer, and a codicil to his will, in which he asked his country
to reward Lady Hamilton for her services, leaving her and his child,
Horatia, "a legacy to my king and country, that they will give her
[Lady Hamilton] an ample provision to maintain her rank in life. These
are the only favors I ask of my king and country, at this moment when I
am going to fight their battle."
He wore his admiral's coat, which bore on the left breast his
decorations. When fears were expressed that these would make him a mark
for the enemy, he said, "In honor I gained them, and in honor I will die
with them."
He gave orders for that well-known signal, "England expects that every
man will do his duty," which was received with tremendous cheering. "You
must be quick," he said to Lieutenant Pasco, "for I have one more to
make, which is for close action."
"Now," said Nelson, "I can do no more. We must trust to the great
Disposer of all events, and the justice of our cause. I thank God for
this great opportunity of doing my duty."
The Royal Sovereign, one hundred guns, under Vice-Admiral Collingwood,
was the first to get into action, a little past noon. The men were
ordered to lie down upon the decks as she swept into the foe. She gave
the great Spanish ship, Santa Ana, a broadside with double-shotted guns,
killing and wounding four hundred men. Nelson shouted, "Bravo! What a
glorious salute the Royal Sovereign is in!"
Seven or eight ships soon opened on the Victory. As Nelson and Captain
Hardy walked the deck a splinter struck the foot of the latter, tearing
the buckle from his shoe. "This is too warm work, Hardy, to last long,"
said Nelson with a smile.
About half-past one, as they were walking, Nelson was shot by Sergeant
Robert Guillemard of the French ship Redoubtable, who was stationed in
the rigging of his ship, singling out officers for his aim.
Nelson fell on his face, in the blood where his secretary, Scott, had
been killed. "They have done for me at last, Hardy," he said; "my
backbone is shot through."
He was lifted and carried below, among the dead and dying. On the way
thither, using one hand, he covered his face and his decorations with
his handkerchief, that his men might not see who had fallen.
He was laid on a midshipman's bed, and covered with a sheet. As often as
a ship surrendered, the men of the Victory cheered, and Nelson's dying
face would light up with joy. Nothing could be done for the hero, but to
fan him with paper and give him lemonade to quench his thirst. His
thoughtfulness of others was strong even in his dying hour. A poor
fellow near him was jarred or hurt by another in passing, and Nelson
reproved the man for his carelessness.
He frequently asked for Captain Hardy, whom he loved; but Hardy was not
able to leave his post till an hour and ten minutes after Nelson was
wounded.
When he came, they shook hands in silence, and Hardy turned away to
conceal his grief. "Well, Hardy, how goes the battle?"--"Very well, my
lord. We have got twelve or fourteen of the enemy's ships in our
possession."
"I hope," said Nelson, "that none of our ships have struck?"
"No, my lord, there is no fear of that."
"I am a dead man, Hardy. I am going fast--it will be all over with me
soon. Come nearer to me. Let my dear Lady Hamilton have my hair, and all
other things belonging to me."
Hardy hastened to the deck and returned in about fifty minutes. Nelson
exclaimed, "Anchor, Hardy, anchor! Don't throw me overboard, Hardy."
"Oh, no, certainly not," said Hardy.
"Then you know what to do. Take care of my dear Lady Hamilton, Hardy!
take care of poor Lady Hamilton. Kiss me, Hardy."
The captain knelt and pressed his lips to his cheek. "Now I am
satisfied," he said. "Thank God, I have done my duty." Hardy knelt again
and kissed his forehead. "Who is that?" he said faintly. "It is Hardy."
"God bless you, Hardy," said Nelson, and Hardy went again on deck.
To his chaplain, Dr. Scott, Nelson said, "Doctor, I have _not_ been a
_great_ sinner," and after a short pause, "Remember that I leave Lady
Hamilton and my daughter Horatia as a legacy to my country." His
speaking now became difficult. "Thank God, I have done my duty," were
his last words. At half-past four he passed away peacefully. He lived
long enough to know that a great victory had been won.
Of the thirty-three ships in the French and Spanish fleets, nineteen
were taken and destroyed by the English. Most of the rest became prizes,
but were wrecked in a gale. The English lost in killed and wounded about
three thousand; the French and Spanish about five thousand. "The
greatest sea victory that the world had ever known was won," says W.
Clark Russell, "but at such a cost, that there was no man throughout the
British fleet--there was no man indeed in all England--but would have
welcomed defeat sooner than have paid the price of this wonderful
conquest."
The body of Nelson was carried in a cask of brandy in the Victory till
she reached Spithead, Dec. 12, five weeks after the battle. It was
afterwards placed in the coffin made from the mast of L'Orient, enclosed
in a leaden coffin, with a handsome wooden coffin outside of these.
All England was bowed with grief at the death of Nelson. He was the idol
of the nation, despite his unhappy marriage and his unlawful love for
the devoted Lady Hamilton. The king was unable to speak for a long time
after he heard the news, and the queen wept aloud. In Naples, writes
Coleridge, "Numbers stopped and shook hands with me because they had
seen the tears on my cheek and conjectured that I was an Englishman; and
several, as they held my hand, themselves burst into tears."
Nelson was buried Jan. 9, 1806, in St. Paul's Cathedral, London, at a
public expense of £14,000. Ten thousand troops preceded the body of the
hero to the tomb. The streets were lined with thousands of troops and
hundreds of thousands of weeping spectators. The coffin was drawn
uncovered, under a canopy, upon a car, having at its front and back a
carved representation of the head and stern of the Victory.
At the burial, by a sudden impulse, the sailors who lowered the coffin
seized the flag which covered it and tore it in shreds, to keep as
mementoes of their great leader.
No such funeral had been seen in England. It was felt that the battle of
Trafalgar had saved the nation from an invasion by Bonaparte, and
therefore no honor was too great for her deliverer.
"The battle of Trafalgar," says Bourrienne, in his Memoirs of Napoleon,
"paralyzed our naval force, and banished all hope of any attempt against
England."
England raised monuments in many of her large cities to her heroic
dead. In Trafalgar Square, London, stands the Nelson column, fluted,
surmounted by his statue, while on the sides are representations of his
four great battles, St. Vincent, the Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar,
cast in gun-metal taken from the enemy in these engagements. The four
lions by Landseer are at the base.
The government awarded various honors to Nelson's family. An earldom was
conferred on Nelson's brother, the Reverend William, with a pension of
£5,000 a year, with £120,000 that he might purchase an estate; £20,000
of this gift were to be divided between Nelson's sisters, Mrs. Bolton
and Mrs. Matcham. Lady Nelson received £2,000 per annum till her death,
May 4, 1831, twenty-five years after the death of Lord Nelson.
Nelson's dying request for Lady Hamilton and their child, Horatia, was
disregarded by the government. Nelson left her by will £2,000, an
annuity for life of £500 charged on the Bronte estate, Merton Place, and
the yearly interest on £4,000 settled on Horatia till she became
eighteen.
Lady Hamilton survived Nelson nine years, dying Jan. 16, 1815, in
apartments in the Rue Française at Calais, at the age of fifty-one. She
lost Merton Place, in Surrey, through debts. She was imprisoned for debt
at the King's Bench, 12 Temple Place, in 1813, and was discharged after
some months, by a city alderman, J. J. Smith, who felt that she had been
cruelly treated. Fearing re-arrest, she went to Calais in 1814, with
Horatia, and died in less than a year. Her daughter, who was devoted to
her, wrote, years later, "Although often certainly under very
distressing circumstances, she never experienced actual want."
Lady Hamilton was buried in a cemetery just outside the city limits,
which was soon after used as a timber-yard, and all traces of the graves
disappeared. In accordance with her mother's last wishes, Horatia was
taken to the home of Mrs. Matcham, Lord Nelson's sister, where she
remained two years, and then resided with Mr. Bolton, Lord Nelson's
brother-in-law, till her marriage, in February, 1822, to the Rev. Philip
Ward, Vicar of Tenterden in Kent. She became the mother of a large
family, and died March 6, 1881, in the eighty-first year of her age.
The Rev. William Nelson, made an earl by the successes of his brother,
was succeeded in 1835 by his nephew, Thomas Bolton, as second earl, who
took the name Nelson. Thomas was succeeded the same year by his son
Horatio, the third earl. Lord Nelson is a graduate of Cambridge, where
he took the degree of M.A. in 1844. He married a daughter of the second
earl of Normanton in 1845.
[Illustration: JOHN BUNYAN.]
JOHN BUNYAN.
The first book which Benjamin Franklin owned was "Pilgrim's Progress."
This he read over and over.
Sir Humphry Davy, the great scientist, could repeat a large part of
"Pilgrim's Progress" before he could read it. Nathaniel Hawthorne read
and loved it when he was six years old.
Rufus Choate, the great orator, says E. P. Whipple, "read 'Pilgrim's
Progress' when he was six years old; and he not only got it by heart,
but eloquently expounded it to his companions, dramatically reproducing
the scenes, incidents, and characters of that wonderful allegory, so
that the little people he addressed were made to see in it what he saw."
Dr. Thomas Arnold said, "I cannot trust myself to read the account of
Christian going up to the celestial gate, after his passage through the
river of death.... I hold John Bunyan," he said, "to have been a man of
incomparably greater genius than any of them [our old divines], and to
have given a far truer and more edifying picture of Christianity."
"'Pilgrim's Progress' has been translated into more languages," says
Canon Edmund Venables, in his life of John Bunyan, "than any other book
in the English tongue;" and Southey thinks, "there is no European
language into which it has not been translated."
Who wrote it? A travelling tinker, in prison; "A man," says James
Anthony Froude, "whose writings have for two centuries affected the
spiritual opinions of the English race in every part of the world more
powerfully than any book or books except the Bible."
John Bunyan was born at Elstow, a little village about a mile from
Bedford, England, in 1628. "Few villages," says Canon Venables, "are so
little modernized as Elstow. The old, half-timbered cottages with
overhanging stories, peaked dormers, and gabled porches, tapestried with
roses and honeysuckles, must be much what they were in Bunyan's days."
The parish church is a part of the old Benedictine nunnery, founded here
in 1078 by Judith, niece of William the Conqueror, in honor of the
mother of the Emperor Constantine.
Thomas Bunyan, the father of the renowned author and preacher, was a
tinker, "a mender of pots and kettles." He was married to his first
wife, Anne Pinney, before he was twenty years of age. She died four
years later, apparently without children; and Thomas was soon married
again to Margaret Bentley, who became the mother of John Bunyan.
Poor as the parents were, "of that rank," says Bunyan, "that is meanest
and most despised of all the families in the land ... it pleased God to
put it into their hearts to put me to school, to learn both to read and
write."
There was a school at Bedford at this time, founded in Queen Mary's
reign by the Lord Mayor of London, Sir William Harpur. Thither probably
the lad walked day after day, but he seems to have learned little, and
that little he soon forgot.
At an early age he was obliged to help his father at the forge, where,
he says, he was "brought up in a very mean condition among a company of
poor countrymen."
He soon learned bad habits from the men or boys around him. "From a
child," he says, "I had but few equals (considering my years, which were
then but tender and few) for cursing, swearing, lying, and blaspheming
the holy name of God. Yea, so settled and rooted was I in these things,
that they became as a second nature to me."
In the plain home he must have been taught some religious truths by his
parents, for at ten years of age he was greatly disturbed on account of
his sins. These "did so offend the Lord that even in my childhood he did
scare and affright me with fearful dreams, and did terrify me with
dreadful visions.... These things did so distress my soul, that then in
the midst of my many sports and childish vanities, amidst my vain
companions, I was often cast down and afflicted in my mind therewith;
yet could I not let go my sins."
Books the lad did not read, except the not very edifying life of Sir
Bevis of Southampton, because the poor tinker's home afforded none.
In the midst of his reckless living--he himself protests that he was
never immoral--several remarkable preservations from death had a strong
influence on his mind. Twice he narrowly escaped drowning, once in the
river Ouse at Bedford, and again in "a creek of the sea." At another
time, he says, "Being in the fields with one of my companions, it
chanced that an adder passed over the highway; so I, having a stick in
my hand, struck her over the back, and having stunned her, I forced
open her mouth with my stick, and plucked her sting out with my
fingers; by which act, had not God been merciful to me, I might, by my
desperateness, have brought myself to my end."
When John Bunyan was about seventeen, he was for a time engaged in the
civil wars of the reign of Charles I. Whether he fought for the king or
with the Parliamentary forces will never be known. Dr. John Brown,
minister at Bedford, thinks he was drafted to fight against the Royalist
party.
Here again he was marvellously preserved. "When I was a soldier, I, with
others, was drawn out to go to such a place to besiege it; but when I
was just ready to go, one of the company desired to go in my room; to
which, when I had consented, he took my place; and coming to the siege,
as he stood sentinel, he was shot in the head and died. Here were
judgment and mercy; but neither of them did awaken my soul to
righteousness."
Before Bunyan was twenty, a most important matter came into his life. He
met a poor girl, an orphan, whose name even is not known, and married
her. "I lighted on a wife," he says, "whose father was counted godly.
She also would be often telling me what a godly man her father was, and
how he would reprove and correct vice, both in his house and amongst his
neighbors; what a strict and holy life he lived in his day, both in word
and deed....
"This woman and I came together as poor as poor might be, not having so
much household stuff as a dish or spoon betwixt us both. But she had for
her portion two books, 'The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven,' and 'The
Practice of Piety,' which her father had left her when he died. In
these two books I sometimes read with her. I found some things pleasing
to me, but all this while I met with no conviction." However, they
created in him "some desire to religion."
"The Practice of Piety," by Dr. Lewis Bayley, Bishop of Bangor in King
James's time, was translated into several languages, and passed through
more than fifty editions during a century. The other book was written by
the Rev. Arthur Dent, the Puritan pastor of Shoebury in Essex.
Young Bunyan changed his outward life after his marriage. He says, "I
fell in with the religion of the times, to go to church twice a day,
very devoutly to say and sing as the others did, yet retaining my wicked
life."
Exceedingly fond of athletic sports, it was the fashion of the day to
enjoy them on Sunday after the sermon. Sometimes the people danced on
the village green, or rang the bells for hours, or played tip-cat or
other sports.
James I. had issued a proclamation that "his good people should not be
disturbed, letted, or discouraged, after the end of the divine service
from any lawful recreations, such as dancing, either of men or women;
archery for men; leaping, vaulting, or any such harmless recreations."
Bunyan's minister, Vicar Hall, was opposed to these forms of Sabbath
breaking, and denounced them from the pulpit in words which the young
married man thought were especially aimed at him. He went home "with a
great burden upon his spirit," but after dinner, "shook the sermon out
of his mind," and went out to play tip-cat on the green.
As Bunyan was in the midst of the game, "having struck the cat one blow
from the hole," he says, "just as I was about to strike it a second
time, a voice did suddenly dart from heaven into my soul, which said,
'Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven, or have thy sins and go to
hell?' At this I was put into an exceeding maze. Wherefore, leaving my
cat on the ground, I looked up to heaven, and was as if I had, with the
eyes of my understanding, seen the Lord Jesus looking down upon me, as
being very hotly displeased with me."
The impression soon wore away, and Bunyan became as reckless as ever. A
month went by, and "one day," he says, "as I was standing at a
neighbor's shop-window, cursing and swearing, and playing the madman,
after my wonted manner, there sat within the woman of the house, and
heard me; who, though she was a very loose, ungodly wretch, yet
protested that I swore and cursed at that most fearful rate, that she
was made to tremble to hear me; and told me further, that I was the
ungodliest fellow for swearing that she ever heard in all her life; and
that I, by thus doing, was enough to spoil all the youth in the whole
town, if they came but in my company."
Bunyan was ashamed and hung his head. "While I stood there," he says, "I
wished with all my heart that I might be a little child again, that my
father might teach me to speak without this wicked way of swearing; for,
thought I, I am so much accustomed to it, that it is in vain for me to
think of reformation; for, I thought, that could never be.... How it
came to pass I know not; but I did from this time forward so leave off
my swearing, that it was a great wonder to myself to observe it. And
whereas, before, I knew not how to speak unless I put an oath before
and another behind, to make the words have authority; now I could speak
better without it, and with more pleasantness than ever I could before."
He began to read the Bible at the suggestion of a friend, and attempted
to keep the commandments. He had a hard struggle in giving up his
amusements. While sure that bell-ringing was a foolish use of time, he
"hankered after it still," and would for some time go and see his old
companions ring. He could not bring himself to give up dancing for a
full year.
His neighbors began to think him very pious, and he was "proud of his
godliness.... I thought," he says, "I pleased God as well as any man in
England."
His self-satisfaction was soon spoiled. "Upon a day," he says, "the good
providence of God called me to Bedford, to work at my calling; and in
one of the streets of that town I came where there were three or four
women sitting at a door in the sun, talking about the things of God. And
being now willing to hear what they said, I drew near, to hear their
discourse--for I was now a brisk talker of myself in the matters of
religion--but I may say, I heard, but understood not; for they were far
above, out of my reach.
"Their talk was about a new birth--the work of God in their hearts; as
also, how they were convinced of their miserable state by nature. They
talked how God had visited their souls with his love in the Lord
Jesus.... Methought, they spoke as if joy did make them speak. They
spoke with such pleasantness of Scripture language, and with such
appearance of grace in all they said, that they were to me, as if I had
found a new world; as if they were people that dwelt alone, and were
not to be reckoned among their neighbors....
"I left, but their talk and discourse went with me; also my heart would
tarry with them, for I was greatly affected by their words....
Therefore, I would often make it my business to be going again and again
into the company of these poor people; for I could not stay away."
The result was "a very great softness and tenderness of heart, and a
desire to meditate on good things."
These poor women could not have realized the wonderful work they were
doing in reforming the life of this travelling vender of pots and
kettles. They were simply using every opportunity for good which came in
their way, and the seed was now destined to bring forth an hundred-fold.
They followed up the interest already awakened in Bunyan's heart. They
were in earnest to serve their Lord. They introduced Bunyan to their
minister, the Rev. John Gifford.
This Free Church was founded in Bedford in 1650, with twelve members.
"Now the principle upon which they thus entered into fellowship one with
another, and upon which they did afterwards receive those that were
added to their body and fellowship, was _faith in Christ and holiness in
life_, without respect to this or that circumstance or opinion in
outward and circumstantial things." The Rev. John Gifford is usually
spoken of as a Baptist, though Dr. Brown finds no proof for or against.
In Gifford's last letter to his church, written just before his death,
he appeals to them not to divide the church on such matters as "baptism,
laying on of hands, anointing with oil, psalms, or any externals."
Bunyan himself, in a work written in 1673, "Differences in Judgment
about Water Baptism no Bar to Communion," implies that he believes in
immersion, but his children were baptized in their infancy.
Mr. Gifford had been a young major in the king's army, was defeated, and
with eleven others condemned to the gallows. On the night before he was
to be executed, his sister visited him in prison. The guards were
asleep, and his fellow-prisoners were drunk. She urged him to escape to
the fields. He did so, and for three days hid himself in a ditch, and
lived on water. Coming to Bedford, he practised as a physician, but
continued his bad habits, drinking and losing heavily through gambling.
In the midst of such a course of life he happened one day to take up a
book written by an eminent scholar and Puritan preacher, the Rev. Robert
Bolton, born at Blackburn, Lancashire, 1572. It was probably the volume
entitled, "The Four Last Things, and Directions for Walking with God,"
published in 1626. Mr. Bolton died in 1631, with these words upon his
lips: "By the wonderful mercies of God, I am as full of comfort as my
heart can hold, and feel nothing in my soul but Christ, with whom I
heartily desire to be."
Mr. Bolton's book was the means of the conversion of Gifford, who, in
turn, led Bunyan into the light, and, consequently, to the writing of
that wonderful book, "The Pilgrim's Progress," in which Gifford is
supposed to be the Evangelist, who points out to Pilgrim the wicket
gate. Who shall measure the power of a good book!
For months, even years, Bunyan passed through the struggles which
Pilgrim found in his difficult journey. He has glowingly depicted these
in his "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners."
Sometimes he was in the depths of despair, because he felt that his sins
had been too great to be forgiven. Then he feared that he was not one of
the elect, or that he had committed the unpardonable sin against the
Holy Ghost. Then doubts about the Bible and God took possession of him,
till, under the mental strain, his health became affected, and
consumption seemed imminent.
Sometimes a promise from the Bible would bring him the greatest joy. "I
was now so taken with the love and mercy of God," he writes, "that I
thought I could have spoken of it even to the very crows that sat upon
the ploughed lands before me, had they been capable to have understood
me."
In these days of alternate grief and joy, Bunyan came upon an old copy
of Luther's "Commentary on the Galatians;" "so old, that it was ready to
fall piece from piece if I did but turn it over.... I found my
conditions as largely and profoundly handled, in his experience, as if
his book had been written out of my heart. I do prefer this book of
Martin Luther (excepting the Bible) before all the books that ever I
have seen, as most fit for a wounded conscience."
This book was also most effective in the experience of John Wesley. "I
went," Wesley wrote, "very unwillingly, to a society in Aldersgate
Street, where one was reading Luther's Preface to the Epistle to the
Galatians. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the
change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my
heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for
salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my
sins."
Finally, "the peace of God which passeth understanding" came into
Bunyan's heart. As he was walking in the field, he seemed to hear the
sentence, "Thy righteousness is in heaven;" "and methought I saw," he
says, "with the eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ at God's right hand, there
I say, as my righteousness, so that wherever I was, or whatever I was
doing, God could not say of me, he wants my righteousness, for that was
just before him. Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed. Now went I
home rejoicing for the grace and love of God."
During these years of anxiety, Bunyan worked hard with his hands,
feeling, as did his honest father, that it was one of the first of
duties to be "very careful to maintain his family." He had been
moderately successful at his trade, as a contemporary biographer writes,
that "God had increased his stores so that he lived in great credit
among his neighbors."
In the year 1653, when he was twenty-five,--the year in which Oliver
Cromwell was made Lord Protector of England,--he became a member of Mr.
Gifford's church. He probably removed to Bedford from Elstow, two years
later, and was made a deacon in the church.
About this time his lovely wife, to whom he owed so much, died, leaving
four children, one of them, his idolized blind daughter, Mary, born in
1650. His beloved friend and pastor, Mr. Gifford, died in September of
the same year as his wife.
The members of the church, realizing that the uneducated tinker was
gifted in speech, and believing in his earnestness, asked him "to speak
a word of exhortation unto them."
At first, modest and shrinking as he was, "it did much dash and abash
his spirit," but being entreated, he spoke twice, "but with much
weakness and infirmity."
After this he was asked to go with others and hold meetings in the
country roundabout; and finally, "after solemn prayer, with fasting, he
was set apart to the more ordinary and public preaching of the Word."
"My great desire," he says, "in my fulfilling my ministry, was to get
into the darkest places of the country, even amongst those people that
were furtherest off of profession.... I preached what I felt, what I
smartingly did feel.... Indeed, I have been as one sent to them from the
dead. I went myself in chains, to preach to them in chains; and carried
that fire in my conscience, that I persuaded them to be aware of."
Later, he says, after two years "crying out against men's sins," he
changed his manner of preaching; "I did labor much to hold forth Jesus
Christ in all his offices, relations, and benefits unto the world."
On one occasion, having preached with much feeling, one of his friends
took him by the hand, and spoke of the sweet sermon he had delivered.
"Ay," said the self-searching preacher, "you need not remind me of that,
for the devil told me of it before I was out of the pulpit."
Bunyan preached wherever there was an open door,--in a barn, a church,
or on the village green. Crowds came to listen,--some from
curiosity,--and great numbers were converted.
"No such preacher," says Froude, "to the uneducated English masses was
to be found within the four seas."
Among the crowd gathered in a churchyard in Cambridgeshire on a
week-day, was a Cambridge scholar, "none of the soberest," who had come
to hear "the tinker prate," and gave a boy twopence to hold his horse
while he listened. "But God met him there by his ministry, so that he
came out much changed; and would by his good will hear none but the
tinker for a long time after, he himself becoming a very eminent
preacher in that country afterwards."
Another Cambridge University man asked Bunyan, "How dare you preach,
seeing you have not the original, being not a scholar?"
"Have you the original?" asked Bunyan.
"Yes," said the scholar.
"Nay, but have you the very self-same original copies that were written
by the penmen of the Scriptures, prophets and apostles?"
"No," was the reply, "but we have the true copies of these originals."
"How do you know that?" said Bunyan.
"How?" said the scholar, "why, we believe what we have is a true copy of
the original."
"Then," said Bunyan, "so do I believe our English Bible is a true copy
of the original." Then away rode the scholar.
Bunyan met with many obstacles in his preaching. When Dr. William Dell,
the Puritan master of Caius College, Cambridge, asked him to preach in
the parish church on Christmas, the orthodox parishioners were
indignant. Some of the university professors were "angry with the tinker
because he strove to mend souls as well as kettles and pans." Others
declared him a witch, a highwayman, and accused him of nearly every
vice. All these things deeply wounded the earnest man, but he kept
steadily at work.
His first book, about two hundred pages, "Some Gospel Truths Opened
according to the Scriptures," was published in London, in 1656, when
Bunyan was twenty-eight years old. The Rev. John Burton, the pastor who
succeeded Mr. Gifford, wrote the introduction, and commended the young
author as one who had "neither the greatness nor the wisdom of the world
to commend him ... not being chosen out of an earthly but out of a
heavenly university,--the Church of Christ."
This book being replied to by Edward Burrough, a Quaker, defending his
sect, Bunyan wrote a second book, "A Vindication of Gospel Truths
Opened." His third book, published in 1658, a few days before Oliver
Cromwell's death, was an exposition of the parable of the rich man and
Lazarus. The volume went through nine editions in the author's lifetime.
His fourth book, published in 1659, was entitled "The Doctrine of Law
and Grace Unfolded."
All were written in simple language, with the earnestness of one, who,
as he said, grieved more over the backsliding of one of his converts
"than if one of my own children were going to the grave."
With the restoration of Charles II. the rule of Puritanism was over.
Dissenters' chapels were shut up. The worshippers were commanded to
attend the Established Church. Bunyan had preached for five years; and
he could not give up his work, even now that his pulpit was closed by
law. He continued to preach in barns and private houses.
On Nov. 12, 1600, he went to the little hamlet of Lower Samsell, near
Harlington, to preach. Some one communicated this fact to a magistrate,
and a warrant was issued for his arrest. This was told him, and he had
time to escape; but he said if he were to flee, "the weak and newly
converted brethren would be afraid to stand." He would never play the
coward.
He opened the meeting with prayer, and began to speak from the words,
"Dost thou believe on the Son of God?"
When the officers arrived, he was ordered to cease speaking. He replied
"that he was about his Master's business, and must rather obey his
Lord's voice than that of man." However, knowing that resistance was
useless, as he was arrested in the king's name, he was led away to
prison "with God's comfort," he says, "in my poor soul." He would not
promise to discontinue preaching, saying rather, "If I were out of
prison to-day, I would preach the gospel again to-morrow." He was
sentenced to remain in prison for three months; if at the end of that
time he refused to give up preaching, he would be sent away from his
country, and if he came back without license, he would be hanged. Those
were times of dreadful intolerance, and yet in this age we have not
ceased to be intolerant of those whose beliefs are not like our own!
Bunyan had recently married a second time, and his wife was dangerously
ill. He was a man of deep affections and loved his home. He said, "What
a man is at home, that he is indeed. My house and my closet show most
what I am, to my family and to the angels, though not to the world."
He wrote in prison, "The parting with my wife and poor children hath
often been to me in this place as the pulling of my flesh from my bones;
and that not only because I am too, too fond of those great mercies, but
also because I should have often brought to my mind the hardships,
miseries, and wants my poor family was like to meet with should I be
taken from them, especially my poor blind child, who lay nearer my heart
than all I had beside. Poor child, thought I, what sorrow art thou like
to have for thy portion in this world! Thou must be beaten, suffer
hunger, cold, nakedness, and a thousand calamities, though I cannot now
endure the wind should blow on thee.
"But yet, thought I, I must venture all with God, though it goeth to the
quick to leave you. I was as a man who was pulling down his house upon
the head of his wife and children."
As the coronation of Charles II. took place in the spring of 1661, and
it was customary to pardon prisoners under sentence for any offence
short of felony, it was hoped by the followers of Bunyan that he would
be released. As the local authorities did not put his name on the list
of those who might properly be pardoned, his young wife, Elizabeth,
scarcely recovered from her illness, travelled to London, and with great
courage made her way to the House of Lords, and presented her petition
to one of the peers. He received her kindly, but told her that her
husband's case must be left with the judges at the next assizes.
Three times Elizabeth Bunyan, "with abashed face and trembling heart,"
stood before the judges, pleading for her husband. One of the judges,
Sir Matthew Hale, was very kind to her, though he feared he could not
help her, as the law was against her husband. The other judge, Twisden,
was brutal in his manner, so that she feared he would strike her.
Unsuccessful, the poor woman went back to her home, and John Bunyan
remained for twelve long years in prison.
For the first six months Bunyan was allowed considerable liberty by his
sympathetic jailer. He went to some of the meetings of the Baptists, and
to his home. Some of the bishops heard of it, and sent a messenger from
London to ascertain if this were really so. The officer was told to call
at night at the prison. It happened that Bunyan had been allowed to
remain at his home that night, but he became so uneasy that he told his
wife he must go back to prison. It was so late when he returned that the
jailer chided him for coming at all.
Soon afterward the messenger arrived. "Are the prisoners all safe?" he
asked.
"Yes," was the reply.
"Is John Bunyan safe?"
"Yes."
"Let me see him."
Bunyan was called, and fortunately was able to appear. When the
messenger was gone, the jailer said, "Well, you may go out again just
when you think proper, for you know when to return better than I can
tell you." Soon, however, the jailer was censured, and came near losing
his position, while Bunyan himself was not permitted "to look out at the
door." His name does not appear again at a church meeting for seven
years.
Bunyan's prison life was a very busy one. He did not, says his friend
and biographer, the Rev. Charles Doe, "spend his time in a supine and
careless manner, or eat the bread of idleness. For there I have been
witness, that his own hands have ministered to his and to his family's
necessities, by making many hundred gross of long, tagged, thread laces,
to fill up the vacancies of his time, which he had learned for that
purpose since he had been in prison. There also I surveyed his library,
the least and yet the best that ever I saw, consisting only of two
books, a Bible and the 'Book of Martyrs.'"
Bunyan's Bible and his Foxe's "Book of Martyrs" came into the possession
of Mr. Bohn, the London publisher, and were purchased from him for the
Bedford library, where they have been seen by thousands of visitors.
"With those two books," says Froude, "Bunyan had no cause to complain of
intellectual destitution. Foxe's Martyrs, if he had a complete edition
of it, would have given him a very adequate knowledge of history.... The
Bible, thoroughly known, is a literature of itself--the rarest and
richest in all departments of thought or imagination which exists."
Besides these books, he seems to have had a rosebush, about which he
wrote a poem:--
"This homely Bush doth to mine eyes expose,
A very fair, yea, comely, ruddy rose.
This rose doth always bow its head to me,
Saying, 'Come pluck me; I thy rose will be.'"
He also wrote verses about a spider whose habits he closely watched.
Bunyan's prison, if it had much of discomfort, gave him leisure to read
and write--the one thing for which most persons of brain are struggling.
"Prisons in those days," says Canon Venables, "and indeed long
afterwards, were, at their best, foul, dark, miserable places. A century
later John Howard found Bedford jail, though better than some, in what
would now be justly deemed a disgraceful condition. One who visited
Bunyan during his confinement speaks of it 'as an uncomfortable and
close prison.'"
Once or twice his friends tried to regain his liberty for him, but he
always left the matter with his Lord. When they failed to obtain his
freedom, he said, "Verily, I did meet my God sweetly again, comforting
of me and satisfying of me, that it was his will and mind that I should
be there."
In prison Bunyan's pen was a source of great joy to himself, and a
blessing to all the world. His earliest prison work was "Profitable
Meditations" in verse. He put portions of the Old and New Testament into
poetry. Froude calls the "Book of Ruth" and the "History of Joseph"
"beautiful idylls."
He wrote in prose a treatise on prayer, entitled, "Praying in the
Spirit;" a book on "Christian Behavior;" the "Holy City," an exposition
of the closing chapters of Revelation; a work on the "Resurrection of
the Dead and Eternal Judgment;" and "Grace Abounding," the story of his
own conversion. The latter book, "if he had written no other," says
Canon Venables, "would stamp Bunyan as one of the greatest masters of
the English language of his own or any other age."
This book was published by George Larkin, in London, in 1666, in the
sixth year of Bunyan's imprisonment.
Besides these, he wrote his "Confession of Faith," and his "Defence of
the Doctrine of Justification by Faith."
Bunyan's imprisonment came to an end May 8, 1672. Through the
Declaration of Indulgence, granted by Charles II., Nonconformists were
once more allowed to worship God as they chose.
It seems probable, from Bunyan's later biographers, that "Pilgrim's
Progress" was written during a subsequent imprisonment of six months in
1675, when the Nonconformists were again suffering the rigors of law.
The first edition appeared in 1678, when Bunyan was fifty years old. A
second edition was issued the same year, and a third, with additions,
the year following, 1679.
After it was written in prison, Bunyan, always distrusting his own
abilities, consulted with his friends about the wisdom of publishing it,
as will be seen from the metrical preface:--
"When at first I took my pen in hand,
Thus for to write, I did not understand
That I at all should make a little book
In such a mode; nay, I had undertook
To make another; which, when almost done,
Before I was aware I this begun.
* * * * * *
Well, when I had thus put my ends together,
I showed them others, that I might see whether
They would condemn them, or them justify:
And some said, 'Let them live;' some, 'Let them die.'
Some said, 'John, print it;' others said, 'Not so;'
Some said, 'It might do good;' others said, 'No.'
Now was I in a strait, and did not see
Which was the best thing to be done of me;
At last I thought, since you are thus divided,
I print it will, and so the case decided."
Bunyan was already famous. The day after he was released from prison, he
began to preach in a barn standing in an orchard in Bedford, which one
of the congregation, Josias Ruffhead, acting for the members of the
church, had purchased, "to be a place for the use of such as doe not
conforme to the Church of England, who are of the Persuasion commonly
called Congregationall." The barn was so thronged that many were obliged
to stay outside. Here he preached till his death, sixteen years
afterward.
He had a general oversight of the churches far and near, and was often
called Bishop Bunyan.
He was urged to reside in London, but he would not leave Bedford. Here
he lived in a cottage which had three small rooms on the ground
floor--such a house as laborers now use. Behind the cottage stood a
small building which served as his workshop. A person visiting him found
in his "study" the Bible, "Pilgrim's Progress," and a few other books,
chiefly his own productions, "all lying on a shelf or shelves."
His beloved blind daughter, Mary, had died while he was in prison. The
other children, Thomas, John, Joseph, Sarah, and Elizabeth, four by the
first mother, and two by the second, brightened the plain Bedford
cottage. His son Thomas became a minister in 1673, the year after his
father regained his liberty.
Whenever Bunyan went to London to preach, says Charles Doe, "if there
were but one day's notice given, there would be more people come
together than the meeting-house could hold. I have seen, by my
computation, about twelve hundred at a morning lecture, by seven
o'clock, on a working day, in the dark winter time. I also computed
about three thousand that came to hear him one Lord's Day in London, at
a town's-end meeting-house, so that half were fain to go back again for
want of room, and then himself was fain at a back door to be pulled
almost over people to get up-stairs to his pulpit." To what honor had
the poor tinker already come!
It is said that Charles II. expressed his surprise to Dr. Owen that "a
learned man, such as he, could sit and listen to an illiterate tinker."
"May it please your majesty," was the reply, "I would gladly give up
all my learning if I could preach like that tinker."
The wonderful success attending the "Pilgrim's Progress" must have been
a surprise to modest John Bunyan. Macaulay says, "He had no suspicion
that he was producing a masterpiece." It spread his fame over Europe and
the American settlements. It was translated into many foreign languages
during his life.
Dr. Brown says: "It is found in _Northern Europe_--in Danish, Icelandic,
Norwegian, Lithuanian, Finnish, Lettish, Esthonian, and Russ; in
_Eastern Europe_--in Servian, Bulgarian, Bohemian, Hungarian, and
Polish; and in _Southern Europe_--in French, Italian, Spanish,
Portuguese, and Romaic, or modern Greek. In _Asia_, it may be met with
in Hebrew, Arabic, Modern Syriac, Armeno-Turkish, Græco-Turkish, and
Armenian. Farther to the south, also, it is seen in Pashtu, or Afghani,
and in the great Empire of India it is found in various forms.
"It has been translated into Hindustani or Urdu, Bengali, Uriya or
Orissa, Hindi, Sindhi, Panjabi or Sikh, Telugu, Canarese, Tamil,
Malayaline, Marathi-Balbodh, Gujarati, and Singhalese.
"In Indo-Chinese countries there are versions of it in Assamese, Khasi,
Burmese, and Sgau-Karen. It has been given to the Dyaks of Borneo, to
the Malays, to the Malagasy, to the Japanese, and to the many-millioned
people of China, in various dialects, both classical and colloquial."
It has also been translated into the languages of Western Africa, the
Pacific Islands, the Mexicans, and various tribes of Indians.
The greatest minds of the world have been unanimous in its praise.
Everybody agrees with Toplady, who wrote "Rock of Ages," that "it is the
finest allegorical work extant."
Macaulay said, "Bunyan is the first of allegorists, as Shakespeare is
the first of dramatists," and recommended the study of his simple style
to any who wished to gain command over his mother tongue.
Coleridge said, "I know of no book, the Bible excepted as above all
comparison, which I, according to my judgment and experience, could so
safely recommend, as teaching and enforcing the whole saving truth,
according to the mind that was in Christ Jesus, as 'The Pilgrim's
Progress.'"
Fronde well says it has made Bunyan's "name a household word in every
English-speaking family on the globe." Hallam calls his style "powerful
and picturesque from concise simplicity." Green, the historian, thinks
"Bunyan's English the simplest and homeliest English that has ever been
used by any great English writer.... It is the English of the Bible."
The second part of "Pilgrim's Progress" was published seven years after
the first, in 1685. In 1680 appeared the "Life and Death of Mr. Badman,"
a contrast to the good Pilgrim; in 1681, "Come and Welcome to Jesus
Christ," which went through several editions; and in 1682, the "Holy
War," which, Macaulay says, would have been our greatest allegory if
"Pilgrim's Progress" had never been written. It represents the fall and
recovery of man.
Several small books from Bunyan's pen appeared from year to year. In
1688, the year of his death, five of his works were published,
"Jerusalem Sinner Saved, or a Help to Despairing Souls;" "The Work of
Jesus Christ as an Advocate;" a poetical composition entitled, "The
Building, Nature, and Excellency of the House of God;" the "Water of
Life;" and "Solomon's Temple Spiritualized." "The Acceptable Sacrifice"
was going through the press at the time of his death.
Besides these, Bunyan had prepared the manuscript of fourteen or more
works. Ten were published soon after his death, by his devoted friend,
Charles Doe, who said he thought the best work he could do for God was
to get Bunyan's books printed and sold.
In the summer of 1688, a young man, in whom Bunyan was deeply
interested, told him that his father was about to disinherit him, and
begged the preacher to see him. Though scarcely recovered from an
illness, he at once rode on horseback to Reading, met the father,
obtained a promise of forgiveness, and returned homeward through London,
where he was to preach near Whitechapel.
His forty miles to London were made through a pouring rain. Drenched and
weary, he reached the home of his friend, Deacon John Strudwick, Holborn
Bridge, Snow Hill. With his usual determination to do what he thought to
be his duty, he preached Sunday, Aug. 19, 1688. Twelve days later, Aug.
31, he was dead. In two months he would have been sixty years old. He
was buried in Mr. Strudwick's vault, in the Dissenters' burying-ground
at Bunhill Field. The mother of John Wesley sleeps close by. This place
was called Bunhill or Bonehill, from a vast quantity of human remains
removed to it from the charnel house of St. Paul's Cathedral in 1549.
Bunyan died as he had lived, in complete trust and faith. He asked those
who stood around his bedside to pray, and he joined fervently with
them. "Weep not for me," he said, "but for yourselves. I go to the
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will, no doubt, through the
mediation of his blessed Son, receive me, though a sinner, where I hope
we ere long shall meet to sing the new song, and remain everlastingly
happy, world without end, Amen."
His blind Mary had gone before him; and Elizabeth, his noble wife, died
four years after him, in 1692.
Bunyan's preaching was natural, simple, and earnest, with now and then
an appropriate comparison and anecdote. He said, "I have observed that a
word cast in by-the-by hath done more execution in a sermon than all
that was spoken besides. Sometimes, also, when I have thought I did no
good, then I did the most of all; and at other times, when I thought I
should catch them, I have fished for nothing."
The Rev. Charles Doe describes Bunyan "as tall of stature, strong-boned,
though not corpulent; somewhat of a ruddy face, with sparkling eyes, ...
hair reddish, but in his later days time had sprinkled it with gray, ...
forehead something high, and his habit always plain and modest.... In
his conversation he was mild and affable, not given to loquacity or much
discourse in company.... He had a sharp, quick eye, with an excellent
discerning of persons, being of good judgment and quick wit."
He was careful in preparing his sermons, usually committing them to
writing after he had preached them. In composing his books his habit
was, "first with doing, and then with undoing, and after that with doing
again."
Froude says if Bunyan's "importance may be measured by the influence
which he has exerted over succeeding generations, he must be counted
among the most extraordinary persons whom England has produced.... To
understand, and to make others understand, what Christ had done, and
what Christ required men to do, was the occupation of his whole mind,
and no object ever held his attention except in connection with it." Is
it any wonder that the ministry of the poor, uneducated tinker was a
marvellous success?
Visitors from all parts of the world go to Bedford yearly to look upon
the scenes associated with Bunyan's life. In the Manor are seen his
will, his cabinet, the Church Book, and various editions and foreign
versions of the "Pilgrim's Progress."
Bunyan's chair is also shown, and the oak door with iron crossbars, once
a part of Bedford jail, the home of the great preacher for twelve long
years.
[Illustration: THOMAS ARNOLD.]
THOMAS ARNOLD.
Dr. Thomas Arnold of Rugby, "England's greatest schoolmaster," was born
at West Cowes, Isle of Wight, June 13, 1795. He was the youngest son and
seventh child of William and Martha Arnold. His father died before he
was six years old. His early education was intrusted to his mother's
sister, Mrs. Delafield; and later, at the age of twelve, he was sent to
Winchester.
This aunt he never forgot. When she was seventy-seven he wrote to her,
"This is your birthday, on which I have thought of you, and loved you,
for as many years past as I can remember. No tenth of September will
ever pass without my thinking of you and loving you."
The shy, retiring boy was early fond of books. When he was three, he
received a present from his father of Smollett's "History of England,"
"as a reward," says Dean Stanley, in his life of Arnold, "for the
accuracy with which he had gone through the stories connected with the
portraits and pictures of the successive reigns; and at the same age he
used to sit at his aunt's table arranging his geographical cards, and
recognizing by their shape at a glance the different counties of the
dissected map of England."
His first childish literary work was at the age of seven,--a play, on
"Piercy, Earl of Northumberland." Between eight and twelve, when at
school at Warminster, he rejoiced in Homer. A schoolmate writes:
"Arnold's delight was in preparing for some part of the Siege of Troy;
with a stick in his right hand, and the cover of a tin box, or any flat
piece of wood, tied upon his left arm, he would come forth to the
battle, and from Pope's Homer would pour forth fluently the challenge or
the reproach.... Every book he had was easily recognized as his property
by helmet and shields, and Hectors and Achilleses, on all the blank
leaves; many of mine had some token of his graphic love of those
heroes."
The home life seems to have been full of affection. Rose E. Selfe, in
the _World's Worker_ series, gives these letters. His brother Matthew
writes him from school, in 1800, before he is five years old, asking him
for a letter, "with all the news you can think of. What new books you
have, whether you like the great Bible as well as you did, how your
garden and the flowers come on."
"My _darling little_ Tom...." his sister Susannah writes, "I shall
expect to find you _very much_ improved, particularly in your
_reading_. As you know you are _fond_ of kissing, give our DEAREST,
DEAREST, DEAREST Mamma and Aunt ten each from Fan and myself. Oh,
how I wish I could see and kiss them _myself_, and _you, too_, my
_sweet dear_ Tom! I should like to know _very much_ if you are as
fond of geography as you were last Christmas; tell _me_ when _you
honour_ us with a letter. Adieu now, my _lovely_ Boy. With
_sincerely_ wishing you _health_ and _happiness_,
I remain, your truly affectionate and loving sister,
SUE ARNOLD."
This sister, an invalid for twenty years, was most unselfish and
lovable in character. She died at Laleham in 1832.
At the Winchester school he was called the poet Arnold to distinguish
him from another boy of the same name. He used to recite ballad poetry
for the pleasure of his schoolmates, and wrote a long poem, "Simon de
Montfort," in imitation of Scott's "Marmion."
He had read Gibbon and Mitford through twice before he left Winchester,
at sixteen. At fourteen he enjoyed "the modest, unaffected, and
impartial narratives of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon," and did
not like "the numerous boasts which are everywhere to be met with in the
Latin writers." He thought Roman history "scandalously exaggerated," and
had no idea that he was thereafter, in his manhood, to write a fair and
delightful Roman history himself.
In 1811 he was elected a scholar at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and
four years later became a Fellow at Oriel College. He gained in 1815 and
in 1817 the Chancellor's prize for the two University essays, Latin and
English. In college he had a passion for Aristotle and Thucydides. Next
to these he loved Herodotus. Though delicate in appearance, he took long
walks, in which he studied nature, being a lover of flowers, birds, and
clouds.
His friendships were warm and lasting. John Keble, author of "The
Christian Year," Whately, later Archbishop of Dublin, and Coleridge,
afterwards chief-justice, were his especial friends.
During his four years as a Fellow in Oriel College, he took private
pupils, and read in the Oxford libraries. His plan was to make himself
master of some one period, like the fifteenth century, and write full
notes upon it.
Oxford was always very dear to Arnold. He wrote years later, "If I live
till I am eighty, and were to enjoy all the happiness that the warmest
wish could desire, I should never forget or cease to look back with
something of a painful feeling on the years we were together there, and
on all the delights that we have lost."
During these college years he was often restless and weary of duty,
inclined to indolence, and an early riser with the greatest difficulty.
These things he overcame in later life. He had some religious doubts,
which completely vanished as he studied and thought more deeply.
In 1819 Arnold removed to Laleham, with his mother, sister, and aunt,
and remained here for the next nine years, preparing private pupils for
the universities.
A year after coming to Laleham, he married, when he was twenty-five,
Mary, youngest daughter of the Rev. John Penrose, in Nottinghamshire,
and sister of one of his best college friends, Trevenen Penrose. She was
a worthy helper through all the laborious years which followed.
Although Arnold had fitted himself for the Church, he loved the work of
teaching. He wrote to a friend about to engage in a similar occupation.
"I know it has a bad name, but my wife and I always happened to be fond
of it.... I enjoyed and do enjoy the society of youths of seventeen or
eighteen; for they are all alive in limbs and spirits at least, if not
in mind, while in older persons the body and spirits oftener become lazy
and languid without the mind gaining any vigor to compensate for it....
"The misery of private tuition seems to me to consist in this, that men
enter upon it as a means to some further end; are always impatient for
the time when they may lay it aside; whereas, if you enter upon it
heartily as your life's business, as a man enters upon any other
profession, you are not then in danger of grudging every hour you give
to it....
"I should say, have your pupils a good deal with you, and be as familiar
with them as you possibly can. I did this continually more and more
before I left Laleham, going to bathe with them, leaping, and all other
gymnastic exercises within my capacity, and sometimes sailing or rowing
with them. They, I believe, always liked it, and I enjoyed it myself
like a boy, and found myself constantly the better for it."
"Large private schools," he thought, "the worst possible system; the
choice lies between public schools, and an education whose character may
be strictly private and domestic."
The home at Laleham was very dear to him. Here six of his children were
born. He loved the quiet walks along the banks of the Thames, his garden
back of his house, where, he said, "there is always something to
interest me even in the very sight of the weeds and litter, for then I
think how much improved the place will be when they are removed," and
the churchyard, where in after years his mother, his infant child, and
now his distinguished son Matthew are resting.
One of his pupils at Laleham thus writes of Arnold: "His great power as
a private tutor resided in this, that he gave such an intense
earnestness to life. Every pupil was made to feel that there was a work
for him to do,--that his happiness as well as his duty lay in doing
that work well.... His hold over all his pupils perfectly astonished me.
It was not so much an enthusiastic admiration for his genius or learning
or eloquence which stirred within them; it was a sympathetic thrill
caught from a spirit that was earnestly at work in the world....
"In all this there was no excitement, no predilection for one class of
work above another ... but an humble, profound, and most religious
consciousness that work is the appointed calling of man on earth, the
end for which his various faculties were given, the element in which his
nature is ordained to develop itself."
Arnold used to say, "one must always expect to succeed, but never think
he had succeeded."
Besides teaching, Arnold devoted his spare time to philology and
history, preparing a Lexicon of Thucydides and articles on Roman
History. He learned the German language that he might read Niebuhr's
"History of Rome," and thereafter became deeply interested in German
literature.
He wrote a friend concerning his little study "where I have a sofa full
of books, as of old, and the two verse books lying about on it, and a
volume of Herodotus; and where I sit up and read or write till twelve or
one o'clock." Plato's "Phædo" was a great favorite. He thought it
"nearly the perfection of human language."
To another he wrote, "One of my most useful books is dear old Tottle's
(Aristotle's) 'Politics,' which give one so full a notion of the state
of society and opinions in old times, that by their aid one can pick out
the wheat from the chaff in Livy with great success."
Arnold was always a learner. He studied Hebrew when he was forty-three
and Sanscrit when he was forty-five. He urged ministers not to study
works on "Divinity" only. "A man requires," he said "first, the general
cultivation of his mind, by constantly reading the works of the very
greatest writers, philosophers, orators, and poets, and next, an
understanding of the actual state of society, ... and of political
economy as teaching him how to deal with the poor.... Further, I should
advise a constant use of the biography of good men."
Arnold's friends were urging him to a wider sphere of influence. Laleham
had become too expensive for his means, and he had determined to move
elsewhere. Just at this time the head-mastership of Rugby became vacant.
There were about thirty applicants, and his testimonials were sent in
late. His college friend, Dr. Hawkins, afterwards Provost of Oriel,
wrote the twelve trustees a letter about Arnold, predicting that if he
were elected, "he would change the face of education all through the
public schools of England." He was elected in December, 1827, and the
words of Dr. Hawkins were fully verified.
In 1828 he received the degree of D.D., and entered upon his new duties.
It cost the Arnold family many a struggle to leave Laleham. "I cannot
tell you," Dr. Arnold writes J. T. Coleridge, "how we both love it, and
its perfect peace seems at times an appalling contrast to the publicity
of Rugby. I am sure that nothing could stifle this regret, were it not
for my full consciousness that I have nothing to do with rest here, but
with labor."
To another friend he writes, "On Tuesday, if God will, we shall leave
this dear place, this nine years' home of such exceeding happiness. But
it boots not to look backwards. Forwards, forwards, forwards,--should
be one's motto."
For fourteen years Arnold lived at Rugby and did his great work, which
has made his name known and honored among all educated nations. "What a
pity," said some persons, "that a man fit to be a statesman should be
employed in teaching school-boys."
But Arnold knew the greatness of his chosen work. "It is a most touching
thing to me," he said, "to receive a new fellow from his father, when I
think what an influence there is in this place for evil as well as for
good. I do not know anything which affects me more. If ever I could
receive a new boy from his father without emotion, I should think it was
high time to be off."
With much firmness he united great tenderness. "Lenity is seldom to be
repented of," he wrote a friend who had asked his advice in dealing with
a difficult pupil. "In cases," says Dean Stanley, "when it might have
been thought that tenderness would have been extinguished by
indignation, he was sometimes so deeply affected in pronouncing sentence
of punishment on offenders as to be hardly able to speak."
Once, when he heard of some great fault in one of his pupils, "I felt,"
he said--and his eyes filled with tears as he spoke, "as if it had been
one of my own children, and, till I had ascertained that it was really
true, I mentioned it to no one, not even to any of the masters."
At another time he said to one of the masters, speaking of a promising
lad, "If he should turn out ill, I think it would break my heart."
He wrote a friend, "I believe that boys may be governed a great deal by
gentle methods and kindness, and appealing to their better feelings, if
you show that you are not afraid of them; I have seen great boys, six
feet high, shed tears when I have sent for them up to my room and spoken
to them quietly, in private, for not knowing their lesson, and I have
found that this treatment produced its effect afterwards in making them
do better. But of course deeds must second words when needful, or words
will soon be laughed at."
When occasion demanded, Arnold could be very firm. If a boy were
habitually idle, or doing harm in the school, he was expelled, for a
time or permanently. "Often it would be wholly unknown who were thus
dismissed or why," says Dean Stanley; "latterly, Arnold generally
allowed such cases to remain till the end of the half-year, that their
removal might pass altogether unnoticed."
Many parents were displeased, but Arnold never hesitated for a moment in
what he believed to be his duty. The result was that the tone of the
school became so elevated that more wished to come than could be
accommodated.
He always appealed to the honor of the pupils. Once he said, with great
spirit, in an address in which he had spoken of bad feeling amongst the
boys, "Is this a Christian school? I cannot remain here if all is to be
carried on by constraint and force; if I am to be here as a jailer, I
will resign my office at once."
He said, "My great desire is to teach my boys to govern themselves--a
much better thing than to govern them well myself."
At another time, when several boys had been sent away, and there was
much discontent in consequence, he said, "It is _not_ necessary that
this should be a school of three hundred, or one hundred, or of fifty
boys; but it _is_ necessary that it should be a school of Christian
gentlemen."
He trusted the boys, and never seemed to watch them. Their word was not
doubted. "If you say so, that is quite enough; _of course_ I believe
your word," was his frequent statement.
"There grew up in consequence," says Stanley, "a general feeling that it
was a shame to tell Arnold a lie--he always believes one." If falsehood
was discovered, the punishment was severe.
He usually had great patience. When living at Laleham he once spoke
sharply to a dull pupil. "Why do you speak angrily, sir?" said the
youth, looking up in his face; "indeed, I am doing the best that I can."
Years afterward Arnold used to say to his children, "I never felt so
much ashamed in my life--that look and that speech I have never
forgotten."
For mere "intellectual acuteness" he had no admiration, unless united
with goodness. "If there be one thing on earth which is truly
admirable," he said, "it is to see God's wisdom blessing an inferiority
of natural powers, where they have been honestly, truly, and zealously
cultivated.... I would stand to that man _hat in hand_."
Arnold's consistent and noble life won the undying regard of his pupils.
One pupil writes: "I am sure that I do not exaggerate my feelings when I
say that I felt a love and reverence for him as one of quite awful
greatness and goodness, for whom, I well remember, that I used to think
I would gladly lay down my life.... I used to believe that I, too, had a
work to do for him in the school, and did, for his sake, labor to raise
the tone of the set I lived in."
Who can ever forget the description of Arnold in that natural and
fascinating book, "Tom Brown's School Days"?
"And then came that great event in his, as in every Rugby boy's life of
that day--the first sermon from the Doctor.... The tall, gallant form,
the kindling eye, the voice, now soft as the low notes of a flute, now
clear and stirring as the call of the light infantry bugle, of him who
stood there Sunday after Sunday, witnessing and pleading for his Lord,
the King of righteousness, and love, and glory, with whose spirit he was
filled, and in whose power he spoke....
"But what was it, after all, which seized and held these three hundred
boys, dragging them out of themselves, willingly or unwillingly, for
twenty minutes on Sunday afternoon? True, there always were boys
scattered up and down the school, who in heart and head were worthy to
hear and able to carry away the deepest and wisest words there spoken.
But those were a minority always, generally a very small one....
"What was it that moved and held us, the rest of the three hundred
scholars, childish boys, who feared the Doctor with all our hearts, and
very little besides in heaven or earth; who thought more of our sets in
the school than of the Church of Christ, and put the traditions of Rugby
and the public opinion of boys in our daily life above the laws of God?
"We couldn't enter into half that we heard: we hadn't the knowledge of
our own hearts or the knowledge of one another, and little enough of the
faith, hope, and love needed to that end. But we listened, as all boys
in their better moods will listen (ay, and men, too, for the matter of
that), to a man whom we felt to be, with all his heart, and soul, and
strength, striving against whatever was mean and unmanly and unrighteous
in our little world."
Another pupil writes of these sermons: "I used to listen to them from
first to last with a kind of awe, and over and over again could not join
my friends at the chapel door, but would walk home to be alone; and I
remember the same effects being produced by them, more or less, on
others, whom I should think Arnold looked on as some of the worst boys
in the school."
The influence at Rugby under Arnold was thoroughly Christian, though
never sectarian. Harry East, the friend of Tom Brown (Thomas Hughes)
went to Arnold to talk with him about being confirmed. "When I stuck,"
says East, "he lifted me, just as if I had been a little child; and he
seemed to know all I'd felt, and to have gone through it all. And I
burst out crying--more than I've done this five years; and he sat down
by me and stroked my head; and I went blundering on.... And he wasn't
shocked a bit, and didn't snub me, or tell me I was a fool ... and he
didn't give me any cut-and-dried explanation. But when I'd done, he just
talked a bit--I can hardly remember what he said yet; but it seemed to
spread round me like healing, and strength, and light; and to bear me up
and plant me on a rock, where I could hold my footing and fight for
myself. I don't know what to do, I feel so happy."
While Arnold loved his boys, and felt the keenest interest in them, he
did not forget his own mental requirements. "He is the best teacher of
others," he said, "who is best taught himself; that which we know and
love we cannot but communicate.... I hold that a man is only fit to
teach so long as he is himself learning daily. If the mind once becomes
stagnant, it can give no fresh draught to another mind; it is drinking
out of a pond instead of from a spring.... I think it essential that I
should not give up my own reading, as I always find any addition of
knowledge to turn to account for the school in some way or other."
While his great desire for his boys was "moral thoughtfulness: _the
inquiring love of truth going along with the devoted love of goodness_,"
he insisted on liveliness in his teachers: "It is a great matter to make
these boys understand that liveliness is not folly and thoughtlessness.
A schoolmaster's intercourse is with the young, the strong, and the
happy; and he cannot get on with them unless in animal spirits he can
sympathize with them, and show them that his thoughtfulness is not
connected with selfishness or weakness.... He who likes boys has
probably a daily sympathy with them."
One great secret of Arnold's success was that he loved his work. Not
that he had not strong ambitions like other men. He said, "I believe
that, naturally, I am one of the most ambitious men alive," and thought
that "the three great objects of human ambition" which would attract
him, were "to be the prime minister of a great kingdom, the governor of
a great empire, or the writer of works which should live in every age
and in every country." But he felt that God had opened a great school to
him, and that his path of duty was clearly marked out.
He grew tired, as do others, with what he felt to be very hard work, as
all know who have tried teaching, and almost yearly took a journey on
the Continent for rest and change.
"I hunger sometimes," he said, "for more time for writing; but I do not
indulge the feeling, and on the other hand, I think my love of tuition
rather grows upon me.... The work here is more and more engrossing
continually, but I like it better and better; it has all the interest of
a great game of chess, with living creatures for pawns and pieces." No
one ever studied the game more intently.
"Do you see those two boys walking together?" he said to an assistant
master. "I never saw them together before; you should make an especial
point of observing the company they keep; nothing so tells the changes
in a boy's character."
He deprecated such long terms for boys or masters as twenty-one weeks,
and wished for more "co-operation in our system of public education,
including both the great schools and the universities."
Besides his teaching, Arnold did much writing of pamphlets and books. "I
must write or die," was an expression which he often used. His pamphlet
on "The Christian Duty of Conceding the Roman Catholic Claims," in 1828,
whereby many of their civil and political disabilities were to be
removed, created great bitterness of feeling against him. Sir Robert
Peel, the leader of the House of Commons, was also fighting the battles
for the Roman Catholics of Ireland, and probably saved England from a
civil war by his advocacy. But toleration was as rare nearly a century
ago as it is to-day, and Arnold soon received abuse from pulpit and pew.
He was the devoted friend of the poor and the laborers. In 1831 Arnold
started the _Englishmen's Register_, a weekly newspaper, with the hope
of telling the people "the evils that exist, and lead them, if I can, to
their causes and their remedies."
"If the clergy would come forward," he writes to his beloved sister
Susannah, "as one man, from Cumberland to Cornwall, exhorting
peaceableness on the one side and justice on the other, denouncing the
high rents and the game laws, and the carelessness which keeps the poor
ignorant, and then wonders that they are brutal, I verily believe they
might yet save themselves and the State." ...
To the Rev. Augustus Hare, he writes; "Unquestionably our aristocratic
manners and habits have made us and the poor two distinct and
unsympathizing bodies; and from want of sympathy I fear the transition
to enmity is but too easy when distress embitters the feelings, and the
sight of others in luxury makes that distress still more intolerable.
This is the plague-spot, to my mind, in our whole state of society,
which must be removed, or the whole must perish."
He rejoiced that some of the leading manufacturers "are considering that
their workmen have something else besides hands belonging to them, and
are beginning to attend to the welfare of that something."
The _Register_ soon died, because Arnold could not give all the time
needed to conduct it, or the large amount of money necessary to start
and carry on a weekly paper. His articles, however, about laborers were
copied into the _Sheffield Courant_, and he was asked to continue his
writings for its columns.
He was always a noble friend to the poor. At Laleham and Rugby he gave
lectures in their interest, and was often seen in their homes. "I never
knew such an humble man as the doctor," said the parish clerk at
Laleham; "he comes and shakes us by the hand as if he was one of us." At
his later home in Westmoreland a poor woman said, "He used to come into
my house and talk to me as if I was a lady."
"Prayer and kindly intercourse with the poor," said Arnold, "are the two
great safeguards of spiritual life; its more than food and raiment."
Dr. Arnold held that there "are but two things of vital importance,"
which Algernon Sidney calls Religion and Politics, "but which I would
rather call our duties and affections toward God, and our duties and
feelings toward men; science and literature are but a poor make-up for
the want of these."
At one time Arnold was very anxious to start a journal, a portion of
which should be devoted regularly to such subjects as history,
statistics of different countries, and the like. "All instruction must
be systematic," he said, "and it is this which the people want."
Without doubt Arnold was right. He could not then foresee how the
newspapers of to-day, with their syndicate novels, travels, and
biography, were to take the place of books in very many families. The
life and times of Lincoln in the _Century_ Magazine was a great step in
the right direction. Sometime, it is to be hoped, our newspapers,
instead of containing so much that is neither helpful nor lasting, will
be the schools of the people, teaching history, political economy, and
helpful biography.
While Arnold was, above all things, devoted to one central idea, "One
name there is, and one alone--Jesus Christ, both God and man," yet he
said, "I never wanted articles on religious subjects half so much as
articles on common subjects written with a decidedly Christian tone.
History and biography are far better vehicles of good, I think, than any
direct comments on Scripture, or essays on evidences."
Arnold used to say, "Above all, be afraid of teaching nothing; it is
vain now to say that questions of religion and politics are above the
understanding of the poorer classes--so they may be, but they are not
above their _misunderstanding_, and they will think and talk about them,
so that they had best be taught to think and talk rightly."
In 1833 Arnold published a pamphlet on Church Reform. He believed in a
union of Church and State, but wished to bring Dissenters within the
pale of the Established Church. He would give them the use of the
churches for worship, with different hours for their services. He did
not believe in the Apostolical succession, and deprecated all divisions
among Christians. He longed to see all united on one foundation stone,
the Saviour of men.
The Church Reform pamphlet went rapidly through four editions, and
aroused a perfect whirlwind of invective. Arnold was denounced by the
Established Church because too liberal; by Dissenters as not liberal
enough; by Conservatives in politics as one revolutionary in doctrine
and too thoroughly a friend of the people; by other educators as the
unwise head of a new system which bade fair to destroy the old. The sale
of his sermons--he had published two or three volumes--was stopped. Some
of his friends even dropped their intercourse with him.
"The strong, great man was startled," says Dean Stanley, "but not moved
by this continued outcry."
He resolved not to answer anybody through the newspapers. "All that is
wanted," he said, "is to inspire firmness into the minds of those
engaged in the conduct of the school, lest their own confidence should
be impaired by a succession of attacks, which I suppose is unparalleled
in the experience of schools."
When the controversy was at its height, he voted for the Liberal
candidate, "foreseeing," as Stanley says, "as he must have done, the
burst of indignation which followed."
"I should like," he said, "to write a book on 'The Theory of Tides,' the
flood and ebb of parties. The English nation are like a man in a
lethargy; they are never roused from their conservatism till mustard
poultices are put to their feet."
He wrote in 1833, "May God grant to my sons, if they live to manhood, an
unshaken love of truth and a firm resolution to follow it for
themselves, with an intense abhorrence of all party ties, save that one
tie which binds them to the party of Christ against wickedness."
Two years later he wrote, "The only hope is with the young, if by any
means they can be led to think for themselves without following a party,
and to love what is good and true, let them find it where they will."
Arnold went steadily forward with his scholarly work, bringing out in
1835 the last volume of his edition of Thucydides, and resumed his labor
on his "Roman History." He thought "brevity and simplicity" two of the
greatest merits which style can have, and applied these rules to his own
accurate and thorough workmanship.
His eyes were often turned towards America, which he foresaw would solve
many of the old world problems. To Jacob Abbott he wrote concerning "The
Young Christian," "The publication of a work like yours in America was
far more delightful to me than its publication in England could have
been. Nothing can be more important to the future welfare of mankind,
than that God's people, serving Him in power and in love, and in a
sound mind, should deeply influence the national character of the United
States."
Later he writes to his friend Chevalier Bunsen, "so beautifully good, so
wise, and so noble-minded!" "I hear, both from India and the
Mediterranean, the most delightful account of the zeal and resources of
the American missionaries, that none are doing so much in the cause of
Christ as they are. They will take our place in the world, I think not
unworthily, though with far less advantages, in many respects, than
those which we have so fatally wasted."
While the storm raged around him, he enjoyed great peace and comfort in
his home life. He romped with his children, gathered flowers with them,
and climbed mountains like a boy. "I do not wonder," he said, "that it
was thought a great misfortune to die childless in old times, when they
had not fuller light--it seems so completely wiping a man out of
existence." He wrote Coleridge, "What men do in middle life without a
wife and children to turn to, I cannot imagine; for I think the
affections must be sadly checked and chilled, even in the best men, by
their intercourse with people, such as one usually finds them in the
world.... But with a home filled with those whom we entirely love and
sympathize with, and with some old friends, to whom one can open one's
heart fully from time to time, the world's society has rather a bracing
influence to make one shake off mere dreams of delight."
Archbishop Whately said of Arnold, "He was attached to his family as if
he had no friends; to his friends as if he had no family; and to his
country as if he had no friends or relations."
Dr. Arnold's married life was very happy. He wrote his "Dearest Mary"
on their wedding-day; "How much of happiness and of cause for the
deepest thankfulness is contained in the recollections of this day; for
in the ten years that have elapsed since our marriage, there has been
condensed, I suppose, as great a portion of happiness, with as little
alloy, as ever marked any ten years of human existence."
To his servants he was extremely kind and considerate, as are all true
gentlemen and well-bred women. "He was in the habit," says Stanley,
"whether in travelling or in his own house, of consulting their
accommodation and speaking to them familiarly as to so many members of
the domestic circle."
In 1832 Arnold had purchased a small estate, Fox How, between Rydal and
Ambleside, among the English lakes. "It is," he said, "with a mixed
feeling of solemnity and tenderness that I regard our mountain nest,
whose surpassing sweetness, I think I may safely say, adds a positive
happiness to every one of my waking hours passed in it." He loved every
tree, every rock, every flower, "as a child loves them." The three roads
he often used to walk upon with his children he called "Old Corruption,"
an irregular, grassy path; "Bit-by-Bit Reform;" and "Radical Reform," a
straight, good road.
The mountains were an especial delight. The impression they gave him, he
said, "was never one of bleakness or wildness, but of a sort of paternal
shelter and protection to the valley."
Here the work went on as elsewhere. "All the morning, till one o'clock,"
he wrote, "I used to sit in one corner of the drawing-room, not looking
towards Fairfield lest I should be constantly tempted from my work, and
there I worked on at the 'Roman History' and the 'Tudor Tables,' and
Appius Claudius and Cincinnatus, and all the rest of them."
The "Roman History" was never finished. The third volume, published
after his death, Archdeacon Hare thinks the first history which "has
given anything like an adequate representation of the wonderful genius
and noble character of Hannibal."
Dr. Arnold took an active part in the opposition to "The Tracts for the
Times," when John Henry Newman went from the High Church Party of Oxford
to the Roman Catholic Church, and became a cardinal. "I groan," he said,
"over the divisions of the church, of all our evils I think the greatest
... that men should call themselves Roman Catholics, Church of England
men, Baptists, Quakers, all sorts of appellations, forgetting that only
glorious name of CHRISTIAN, which is common to all, and a true bond of
union."
In 1835 Arnold accepted a fellowship in the Senate of the new London
University, with the hope that he could make it as he said, "Christian,
yet not sectarian." He wished an examination in the Scriptures to be a
part of the University work, but as the University from its charter was
intended for all denominations, without regard to belief, he was
overruled, and resigned his position. While he thanked Parliament "for
having done away with distinctions between Christian and
Christian"--Dissenters had been excluded heretofore from degrees at the
universities because not belonging to the Established Church--"I would
pray," he said, "that distinctions be kept up between Christians and
non-Christians."
It is surprising to read that a man so broad and great as Dr. Arnold
thought the Jews, because unbelievers, "have no claim whatever of
political right,"--"no claim to become citizens, but by conforming to
our moral law, which is the Gospel,"--and petitioned against the removal
of their civil disabilities. Mr. Gladstone was also against the removal,
but happily changed his opinions, and spoke in behalf of the Jews in
1847.
When the Chartists were demanding a people's charter with universal
suffrage for men, and other reforms, Arnold was greatly moved. He began
a correspondence with Carlyle, urging that a society be formed "for
drawing public attention to the state of the laboring classes throughout
the kingdom." He believed that the "upper classes would make
sacrifices," if the real condition of the poor and the workers could be
brought to their knowledge. "Men do not think of the fearful state in
which we are living," he said; and he did not despair of a remedy, "even
though it is the solution of the most difficult problem ever yet
proposed to man's wisdom, and the greatest triumph over selfishness ever
yet required of his virtue."
We in America are facing the same problems; and there was never more
need for the "upper classes to make sacrifices," and live unselfish
lives for the good of their country, than now. We need to keep ever
before us the Bible message, "For none of us liveth to himself."
Arnold believed rightly in each one doing his share of the world's work
and duties. "There is no earthly thing," he said, "more mean and
despicable in my mind than an English gentleman destitute of all sense
of his responsibilities and opportunities, and only revelling in the
luxuries of our high civilization, and thinking himself a great person."
He wrote to a pupil who had become a physician, "It is a real pleasure
to me to find that you are taking steadily to a profession, without
which I scarcely see how a man can live honestly. I use the term
'profession' in rather a large sense ... a definite field of duty, which
the nobleman has as much as the tailor, but which he has not, who,
having an income large enough to keep him from starving, hangs about
upon life, merely following his own caprices and fancies."
Again he writes to a friend, "I would far rather send a boy to Van
Diemen's Land, where he must work for his bread, than send him to Oxford
to live in luxury, without any desire in his mind to avail himself of
his advantages." As the years went by, the spirit of opposition against
Arnold seemed to die out, and the school at Rugby gained continually in
numbers and influence. He was presented to the Queen; he went up to
Oxford to see degrees conferred upon Wordsworth and Bunsen; he published
more volumes of sermons--six in all--and two volumes of his admirable
"Roman History."
In 1841 he was appointed by Lord Melbourne, Regius Professor of Modern
History at Oxford, the chair being made vacant by the death of Dr.
Nares. This gave him great pleasure, and with enthusiasm he began to
prepare his lectures.
He gave his first lecture Dec. 2, 1841, in the "theatre," the usual
lecture-rooms in the Clarendon Buildings being too small for the
hundreds who crowded to hear him. "It was an audience," says Dean
Stanley, "unprecedented in the range of academical memory."
He designed to give a yearly course of eight lectures, beginning with
the fourteenth century. Some of his lectures were to be biographical:
"The life and times of Pope Gregory, or the Great," Charlemagne,
Alfred, Dante, and "the noblest and holiest of monarchs, Louis IX."
He wrote Coleridge before going to Oxford, "If I do go up, many things,
I can assure you, have been in my thoughts, which I wished gradually to
call men's attention to; one in particular, which seems to me a great
scandal--the debts contracted by the young men, and their backwardness
in paying them. I think that no part of this evil is to be ascribed to
the tradesmen, because so completely are the tradesmen at the mercy of
the undergraduates, that no man dares refuse to give credit; if he did,
his shop would be abandoned."
Arnold still continued his work at Rugby, remaining in part because two
of his sons were being educated there. He was also making final
arrangements for an edition of St. Paul's Epistles.
The last lecture of his first year at Oxford, June 2, 1842, was
abandoned for the time, on account of a brief, but sudden illness. June
5 he preached his farewell sermon to the Rugby boys, before the
vacation; and Friday, June 10, was the public-day for school speeches.
Saturday he was in high spirits, taking his usual walk and bath, and
conversing with his guests on social and historical topics. In the
evening he gave a supper to some of the higher classes of the school.
He wrote in his diary that evening, June 11, 1842: "The day after
to-morrow is my birthday, if I am permitted to live to see it--my
forty-seventh birthday since my birth. How large a portion of my life on
earth is already passed.... But above all, let me mind my own personal
work--to keep myself pure and zealous and believing--laboring to do
God's will, yet not anxious that it should be done by me rather than by
others, if God disapproves of my doing it."
Between five and six o'clock on Sunday morning he awoke with a sharp
pain across his chest. He lay with his hands clasped and his eyes raised
upwards, while he repeated, "And Jesus said unto him, Thomas, because
thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not
seen, and yet have believed."
Against Arnold's wish, his wife sent for a physician. Meantime she read
to him in the Prayer Book, the fifty-first psalm. The twelfth verse, "O
give me the comfort of thy help again, and establish me with thy free
spirit," he repeated after her very earnestly.
The physician soon came, and Arnold, asking the cause of the pain, was
told that it was spasm of the heart.
"Is it generally fatal?" asked Arnold. "Yes, I am afraid it is," was the
reply.
Soon after the doctor left the house for medicine, and the son Thomas
entered the room. "Thank God, Tom," said Arnold, "for giving me this
pain; I have suffered so little pain in my life, that I feel it is very
good for me; now God has given it to me, and I do so thank Him for it."
His son said, "I wish, dear papa, we had you at Fox How." He made no
reply, but smiled tenderly upon the boy and his mother.
The doctor soon came; and as he was dropping the laudanum into a glass,
Arnold asked what medicine it was. On being told, he replied, "Ah, very
well."
In a moment there was a convulsive struggle, then a few deep gasps, and
the work of the great teacher was over.
Five of their nine children were waiting for their father at Fox How,
to celebrate his forty-seventh birthday, and returned to Rugby for the
burial. The news brought bewilderment and deep sorrow to Rugby, to
Oxford, to London, and indeed to the whole of England.
On the following Friday he was buried in the chancel, immediately under
the communion-table. How many of us Americans have stood by that sacred
spot, and remembered how one good man can bring honor to his work and
nation!
Out of gratitude for his services in the cause of education, a public
subscription was at once started. The money subscribed was used to erect
his monument in Rugby Chapel, Chevalier Bunsen writing an epitaph for it
in imitation of those on the tombs of the Scipios, and of the early
Christian inscriptions; and for scholarships, first to be used by his
sons, and afterwards for the promotion of general study at Rugby, and
history at Oxford.
[Illustration: WENDELL PHILLIPS.]
WENDELL PHILLIPS.
The great orator, thinker, and leader was of the best blood of New
England. Educated, brilliant, aristocratic, he gave his life to the
lowly. No such self-sacrifice can ever be forgotten. His name will live
as long as American history is read.
Wendell Phillips was born in a stately mansion on Beacon Street, Boston,
Nov. 29, 1811, the eighth in a family of nine children. The father was
the Hon. John Phillips, a rich merchant, a judge of the Court of Common
Pleas, a member of the corporation of Harvard College, and of the
convention which revised the Constitution of the State; elected to the
House of Representatives, and later to the Senate till his death; the
first mayor of Boston; honored for a noble heart as well as for gifts of
speech, and worthy to be the parent of such a son as Wendell.
Sally Walley, the mother, the daughter of a wealthy merchant,
well-educated and of strong nature, soon perceived the unusual talents
of her son. Her earliest gift to him was a Bible, which was one of his
most prized treasures for seventy years.
Affectionate and domestic by nature, "Wendell's love for his mother was
a passion," says the Rev. Carlos Martyn, in his life of Phillips. Her
advice to him always was, "Be good and do good; this is my whole desire
for you." From her he learned his Bible and the catechism; and years
after, when he stood like a great oak in the forest, beat upon by wind
and storm, he never forgot to keep his trust where his mother first
taught him to place it.
From her knowledge and common sense in political and mercantile affairs,
he judged that other women must be able to take part in the world's
work, and therefore through life he asked for them an equal place in
home and state.
When a child he enjoyed tools, and would have made a good carpenter or
engineer. As his ancestors were mostly preachers--he was descended from
the Rev. George Phillips, who came from Great Britain in 1630, and was
settled at Watertown, Mass., for fourteen years, till his death--Wendell
seemed inclined to follow in their footsteps; for when he was four or
five years old, he would put a Bible in the chair before him, and
arranging other chairs in a circle, would address them by the hour.
"Wendell," said his father, "don't you get tired of this?"
"No," said the boy, "_I_ don't get tired, but it's rather hard on the
chairs!"
His most intimate playmate was J. Lothrop Motley, afterward the
celebrated historian. Often, in the Motley garret, they dressed
themselves in fancy costume, and declaimed poetry and dialogue; a good
preparation for the after years.
At eleven years of age Wendell was sent to the Boston Latin School, then
on School Street, where the Parker House now stands. Here he met and
became the warm friend of the studious Charles Sumner.
While noted for his love of books and power in declamation, he was also
fond of sports,--boating, horseback-riding, and all gymnastic exercises.
He was tall, graceful, and handsome.
In 1827, when he was sixteen, he entered Harvard College, whose
buildings, noble trees, and shaded walks have become dear to thousands,
and will be through all time. The widowed mother--John Phillips had been
dead four years--gave her promising boy her blessing, and sent him out
into the world to make a man of himself by virtuous and noble living, or
to spoil himself by yielding to temptation, as he should elect. He chose
the former course.
He became the intimate friend of Edmund Quincy, the son of the president
of the college, Josiah Quincy. He stood high in his classes, besides
reading extensively in general history and mechanics. He was also
greatly interested in genealogy.
Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Harry Vane, Oliver Cromwell, Lady Mary Wortley
Montague, and James Watt were among his English heroes, and Benjamin
Franklin, Samuel Adams, and Eli Whitney among his American. Scott and
Victor Hugo were great favorites. Elizabeth Barrett Browning he regarded
as the first of modern poets. Through life he was an omniverous reader
of newspapers.
He was versed in several languages,--German, Italian, and Spanish, but
French was his favorite among the modern tongues. He was always skilled
in Latin.
Already his life had become more serious through the preaching of Dr.
Lyman Beecher. The Rev. Dr. O. P. Gifford relates that Phillips once
told a friend that he asked God "that whenever a thing be wrong it may
have no power of temptation over me; whenever a thing be right, it may
take no courage to do it. From that day to this it has been so. Whenever
I have known a thing to be wrong, it has held no temptation. Whenever I
have known a thing to be right, it has taken no courage to do it."
The Rev. Dr. Edgar Buckingham, secretary of the class of 1831, says: "I
remember well his appearance of devoutness during morning and evening
prayers in the chapel, which many attended only to save their credit
with the authorities. Doddridge's 'Expositor' Wendell bore to college in
his Freshman year (a present, I think, from his mother, a new volume),
to be his help in daily thought and prayer."
Another of his classmates says: "Before entering college he had been the
subject of religious revival. Previous to that he used to give way to
violent outbursts of temper, and his schoolmates would sometimes amuse
themselves by deliberately working him into a passion. But after his
conversion they could never succeed in getting him out of temper."
"He had a deep love for all that was true and honorable," said his
room-mate, the Rev. John Tappan Pierce of Illinois, "always detested a
mean action. His Bible was always open on the centre-table. His
character was perfectly transparent; there were no subterfuges, no
pretences about him. He was known by all to be just what he seemed....
As an orator, Phillips took the highest stand of any graduate of our
day. I never knew him to fail in anything or hesitate in a recitation."
Dr. Buckingham speaks of his "kindly, generous manner, his brightness of
mind, his perfect purity and whiteness of soul; ... with a most
attractive face, 'a smile that was a benediction,' with manners of
superior elegance, with conversation filled with the charms of
literature, with biography and history, full of refined pleasantry, ...
it was no wonder that his society was courted and respected by those who
had wealth at their command, and still more by those young men who came
from the South."
He was a member of the "Phi Beta Kappa," on account of his scholarship,
and president of the exclusive "Porcellian" and "Hasty-Pudding Club."
After graduation Phillips entered the Harvard Law School, under the
brilliant Judge Story, and was admitted to the bar when he was
twenty-three.
His first honor, after leaving the law school, was the invitation to
deliver a Fourth of July address at New Bedford.
Charles T. Congdon, the well-known journalist, says: "When Phillips
stood up in the pulpit, I thought him the handsomest man I had ever
seen. When he began to speak, his elocution seemed the most perfect to
which I had ever listened.... He was speaking of the political history
of the State, and of its frequent isolation in politics, and electrified
us all by exclaiming, 'The star of Massachusetts has shone the brighter
for shining alone!'" How little he foreknew his own isolation and the
brightness of the star which shone almost alone for so many years!
He opened an office on Court Street, Boston, and began regular work,
knowing that idleness brings no fame. He drew up legal papers, wills,
etc., and, as he told a friend, during "those two opening years I paid
all my expenses, and few do it now."
On the afternoon of Oct. 21, 1835, sitting beside an open window on
Court Street, he saw a noisy crowd on Washington Street; and curiosity
prompted him to put on his hat, and learn the reason of the commotion.
He found a mob of four or five thousand men trying to force their way
into the office of the Anti-Slavery Society, No. 46 Washington Street,
where the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society was holding its meeting.
Warning handbills had been circulated about the city, and threats had
been heard concerning the women if they attempted to assemble; yet
nobody really believed that, in a rich and cultivated city, a company of
thirty women would be mobbed on account of free speech. It had not then
become apparent that the North was bound hand and foot by the
slave-power.
While the women prayed, the "broadcloth" mob, of well-dressed men, in
large part "gentlemen of property and standing," were yelling and
cursing outside. Mayor Lyman appeared on the scene, and commanded the
women to disperse, as he was powerless to protect them from bloodshed.
He besought the mob to lay down their arms; but they pushed their way
into the hall, appropriated the Testaments and Prayer-books, and then
began to search for William Lloyd Garrison, who was in an adjoining
room. He escaped across a roof, by the advice of the Mayor, but was
caught by the mob, who coiled a rope around his body, and dragged him,
bare-headed, and with torn garments, into State Street, toward the City
Hall, shouting, "Kill him!" "Hang the Abolitionist!"
He was taken to the Mayor's room, provided with needful clothing, thrust
into a closed carriage, and driven rapidly to jail, "as a disturber of
the peace," but in reality to save his life. The mob clung to the
wheels, dashed open the doors, seized the horses, and tried to upset
the carriage; but the driver laid his whip on horses and heads of
rioters alike, and Garrison was finally safely locked in a cell.
Wendell Phillips looked on bewildered, and seeing, near by, the colonel
of his own Suffolk regiment, in which he also was an officer, said, "Why
does not the Mayor call out the regiment? We would cheerfully take arms
in such a case as this."
The reply was, "Don't you see that the regiment is in the mob?"
The young lawyer went back to his office sadly and thoughtfully.
He said, twenty years later, before the anti-slavery meeting on the
anniversary of this mob: "Let me thank the women who came here twenty
years ago, some of whom are met here to-day, for the good they have done
me. I thank them for all they have taught me. I had read Greek and Roman
and English history; I had by heart the classic eulogies of brave old
men and martyrs; I dreamed, in my folly, that I heard the same tone in
my youth from the cuckoo lips of Edward Everett;--these women taught me
my mistake. They taught me that down in those hearts, which loved a
principle for itself, asked no man's leave to think or speak, true to
their convictions, no matter at what hazard, flowed the real blood of
'76, of 1640, of the hemlock-drinker of Athens, and of the martyr-saints
of Jerusalem. I thank them for it!"
The year after the Garrison mobbing scene, Phillips began to take part
in the lyceum lectures, which at that time were popular, as the
University Extension lectures are now. He spoke usually upon some topic
in natural science, being more fond of this evidently than of the law.
The colored people were refused admittance to lectures; and this fact
so incensed Emerson, Sumner, George William Curtis, and Phillips, that
they refused to speak where the negroes were not admitted. This refusal
soon broke the exclusive and unnatural custom.
In this year, 1836, Phillips met a young lady two years younger than
himself, Ann Terry Greene, the daughter of a wealthy Boston merchant.
Her cousin, Miss Grew, was to go by stage-coach with her intended
husband to Greenfield, Mass., and Miss Greene was to accompany them.
Phillips was asked to join the party. The brilliant young woman, as she
herself said, "talked abolition to him all the way up." Mr. Phillips was
never a great talker, but a good listener. He said, "I learn something
from every one."
Both parents were dead; and she had been received as a daughter into the
home of her uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Henry G. Chapman, who lived in
Chauncy Place, near Summer Street. Both were warm friends of Garrison,
and deeply interested in the anti-slavery movement. The young girl, with
all the enthusiasm of youth, and the impulse of a strong and noble
nature, espoused the cause of the slave, and was not afraid to stand for
the right in a choice so unpopular among the rich and aristocratic.
The acquaintance begun on the stage-coach resulted in an engagement the
same year; and the following year, Oct. 12, 1837, they were married.
Like Mrs. Browning, Miss Greene was an invalid at the time of her
marriage, and remained thus all her life.
"Of Mr. Phillips's unbounded admiration and love for his wife," writes
Francis Jackson Garrison in his memorial sketch of "Ann Phillips," "of
his chivalrous devotion to her, and absolute self-abnegation through
the more than forty-six years of their married life, and of his
oft-confessed indebtedness to her for her wise counsel and inspiration,
matchless courage, and unswerving constancy, the world knows in a
general way; but only those who have been intimately acquainted with
them both can fully realize and appreciate it all. They also know how
ardent was her affection for him, and how great her pride in his labors
and achievements."
When his speeches were first published in book form, in 1863, he wrote
on the title-page of one volume, and gave it to his wife, "Speeches and
Lectures. By Ann Phillips." Thus thoroughly did he appreciate her
helpfulness.
Mrs. Phillips wrote to a friend regarding her husband, whom she called
her "better _three-quarters_," "When I first met Wendell, I used to
think, 'It can never come to pass; such a being as he is could never
think of me.' I looked upon it as something as strange as a fairy-tale."
A month after her marriage, she wrote a friend, Nov. 19, 1837: "Only
last year, on my sick-bed, I thought I should never see another
birthday, and I must go and leave him in the infancy of our love, in the
dawn of my new life; and how does to-day find me? the blessed and happy
wife of one I thought I should never perhaps live to see. Thanks be to
God for all his goodness to us, and may he make me more worthy of my
Wendell! I cannot help thinking how little I have acquired, and Wendell,
only two years older, seems to know a world more."
And yet, with all this depreciation of self, she had such a fine mind
and sound judgment that Phillips deferred to her constantly, talked over
with her the arguments of his speeches, and valued her approval more
than that of all the world beside. As in the case of John Stuart Mill
and his wife, intellectual companionship seemed the basis of their
extremely happy married life.
Four years later they moved into a modest brick house, 26 Essex Street,
given to Mrs. Phillips by her father, where they lived for forty years.
From here Mrs. Phillips writes to a friend concerning herself: "Now what
do you think her life is? Why, she strolls out a few steps occasionally,
_calling_ it a walk; the rest of the time from bed to sofa, from sofa to
rocking-chair; reads generally the _Standard_ and _Liberator_, and that
is pretty much all the literature her aching head will allow her to
peruse; rarely writes a letter, sees no company, makes no calls, looks
forward to spring and birds, when she will be a little freer.... I am
not well enough even to have friends to tea, so that all I strive to do
is to keep the house neat and keep myself about. I have attended no
meetings since I helped fill 'the negro pew.' What anti-slavery news I
get, I get second-hand. I should not get along at all, so great is my
darkness, were it not for Wendell to tell me that the world is still
going.... We are very happy, and only have to regret my health being so
poor, and our own sinfulness. Dear Wendell speaks whenever he can leave
me, and for his sake I sometimes wish I were myself again; but I dare
say it is all right as it is."
In 1846 Mrs. Phillips writes: "Dear Wendell has met with a sad
affliction this fall in the death of his mother.... She was everything
to him--indeed, to all her children; a devoted mother and uncommon
woman.... So poor unworthy I am more of a treasure to Wendell than ever,
and a pretty frail one. For his sake I should love to live; for my own
part I am tired, not of life, but of a sick one. I meet with but little
sympathy; for these long cases are looked upon as half, if not wholly,
_make-believes_,--as if _playing well_ would not be far better than
playing sick."
On the same sheet of paper Mr. Phillips writes: "Dear Ann has spoken of
my dear mother's death. My good, noble, dear mother! We differed utterly
on the matter of slavery, and she grieved a good deal over what she
thought a waste of my time, and a sad disappointment to her; but still I
am always best satisfied with myself when I fancy I can see anything in
me which reminds me of my mother. She lived in her children, and they
almost lived in her, and the world is a different one, now she is gone!"
Nearly a dozen years later Mr. Phillips writes to a friend: "We are this
summer at Milton, one of the most delightful of our country towns, about
ten miles from Boston. Ann's brother has a place here, and we are with
him. She is as usual--little sleep, very weak, never goes down-stairs,
in most excellent and cheerful spirits, interested keenly in all good
things, and, I sometimes tell her, so much my motive and prompter to
every good thing, that I fear, should I lose her, there'd be nothing of
me left worth your loving."
After they had been married thirteen years, having no children of their
own, Mr. and Mrs. Phillips took into their home, as a daughter, Phoebe
Garnaut, twelve years old, the daughter of the lovely Eliza Garnaut, who
had died of cholera the year before, through her unselfish devotion to
others. This child remained to brighten the Phillips' home for ten
years, when she married Mr. George Washburn Smalley, the London
correspondent of the _New York Tribune_, and made her home abroad.
Dr. Buckingham says truly that Wendell Phillips "was a lover all his
life,--not with the instinctive love of youth alone, but with the
secured attachment, the quiet confidence of the heart, the beautiful
affectionateness, which, in the later years of the pure and good, is a
far superior development of character, and a far richer enjoyment, than
the effervescence of youthful days. She was, as he wrote me once, his
counsel, his guide, his inspiration."
As long as Mr. Phillips lived, whenever he was at home, he visited the
markets daily, searching for things which should tempt the appetite of
"Ann." Lovely flowers were in her windows from one year's end to the
other, placed there by his thoughtfulness or that of other dear friends.
Fond of music, he daily left her money for the hand-organs played
beneath her window. Her love, her cheer, her enthusiastic devotion to
the great causes which he pleaded with inimitable grace and power, more
than paid him for all his care and self-sacrifice.
Two months after their marriage came the event which made him, like
Byron, "awake to find himself famous."
On Nov. 7, 1837, the Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy was murdered by a
pro-slavery mob in Alton, Ill. He was a Presbyterian clergyman from
Maine, a graduate of Waterville College. Going West, he became the
editor of the St. Louis _Observer_, a weekly religious paper of his own
denomination.
A negro having been chained to a tree and burned to death for killing an
officer who attempted to arrest him, the judge decided in favor of the
mob. Rev. Mr. Lovejoy protested against such barbarity, and his
printing-office was at once destroyed by the lawless. He moved his
paper to Alton, Ill., but the slavery sympathizers destroyed his press.
Some citizens reimbursed him for the loss. Another press was purchased
and destroyed, and then another. The fourth press, the mayor and
law-abiding citizens determined should be defended.
In the evening a mob gathered from the saloons,--their usual place of
starting,--and threatened to burn the building where it was stored. The
officials seemed powerless, the building was fired, and the Rev. Mr.
Lovejoy received three balls in his breast.
The death of this young minister in a free State sent a thrill of
indignation throughout the North. Dr. William Ellery Channing and one
hundred others called a meeting at Faneuil Hall, Boston, for the morning
of Dec. 8.
The Hon. Jonathan Phillips, a relative of Wendell Phillips, presided
over the crowded assemblage. Dr. Channing spoke eloquently. Soon in the
gallery, James T. Austin, the Attorney-General of Massachusetts, a
prominent lawyer, and member of Dr. Channing's congregation, arose and
declared that Lovejoy "died as the fool dieth," and compared his
murderers to the men who destroyed the tea in Boston harbor. The
audience was intensely excited.
Young Phillips, twenty-six years old and comparatively unknown, standing
among the people,--there are no seats in the hall,--said to his
neighbor, "Such a speech in Faneuil Hall must be answered in Faneuil
Hall."
"Why not answer it yourself?" whispered the man.
"Help me to the platform and I will," was the reply; and pushing his way
through the turbulent crowd he reached the rostrum.
He began with all the grace and self-control which characterized him in
after years. There were mingled cries of, "Question," "Hear him," "Go
on," "No gagging," and the like.
"Riding the whirlwind undismayed," says George William Curtis, in his
eulogy, "he stood upon the platform in all the beauty and grace of
imperial youth--the Greeks would have said a god descended--and in words
that touched the mind and heart and conscience of that vast multitude,
as with fire from heaven, recalling Boston to herself, he saved his
native city and her cradle of liberty from the damning disgrace of
stoning the first martyr in the great struggle for personal freedom."
"Mr. Chairman," he said, "when I heard the gentleman lay down principles
which place the murderers of Alton side by side with Otis and Hancock,
with Quincy and Adams, I thought those pictured lips (pointing to the
portraits on the wall) would have broken into voice to rebuke the
recreant American--the slanderer of the dead.... Sir, for the sentiments
he has uttered, on soil consecrated by the prayers of Puritans and the
blood of patriots, the earth should have yawned and swallowed him up."
This was received with applause and hisses, with cries of, "Make him
take back 'recreant.' He sha'n't go on till he takes it back."
As soon as he could proceed he said, "Fellow-citizens, I cannot take
back my words. Surely the Attorney-General, so long and well-known here,
needs not the aid of your hisses against one so young as I am,--my voice
never before heard within these walls!"
"In the annals of American speech," says Curtis, "there had been no
such scene since Patrick Henry's electrical warning to George the
Third.... Three such scenes are illustrious in our history. That of the
speech of Patrick Henry at Williamsburg, of Wendell Phillips in Faneuil
Hall, and of Abraham Lincoln in Gettysburg--three, and there is no
fourth."
From this time Wendell Phillips was famous; but, save for the
approbation of his young wife, he stood nearly alone. He had already
spoken once before an Anti-Slavery Convention at Lynn, Mass. He was now
a despised abolitionist. His family were disappointed, his college was
surprised, his law constituency well-nigh disappeared. He was socially
ostracized.
James Russell Lowell, who also knew what it cost to be on the unpopular
side, spoke thus nobly of Phillips:
"He stood upon the world's broad threshold; wide
The din of battle and of slaughter rose;
He saw God stand upon the weaker side,
That sank in seeming loss before its foes;
Many there were, who made great haste and sold
Unto the cunning enemy their swords;
He scorned their gifts of fame and power and gold,
And, underneath their soft and flowery words,
Heard the cold serpent hiss; therefore he went
And humbly joined him to the weaker part,
Fanatic named, and fool, yet well content
So he could be the nearer to God's heart,
And feel its solemn pulses sending blood
Through all the wide-spread veins of endless good."
Mr. Phillips turned his time and thought more than ever to the lecture
platform, because in this way he could mould public opinion. He began to
deliver "The Lost Arts," in 1838, which gives a glimpse of early
civilization in glass-making, in gems, colors, metals, canals, etc.,
and gave it over two thousand times during the next forty-five years,
receiving for it, Dr. Martyn says, which statement he heard from
Phillips's own lips, a net result of $150,000.
When asked to lecture he would state his price if he were to speak on
science or biography, of which he was especially fond, but would make no
charges and pay his own expenses if he might speak on slavery or
temperance. If he spoke once he was sure to be sought again, and sooner
or later the people heard concerning the subjects to which he had
dedicated his life.
Having been made the general agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery
Society, Phillips organized a strong lecture force, and made every
schoolhouse and church where he was allowed to enter the centre for
discussions. Mrs. Phillips's health seeming to fail more and more, it
was deemed wise to cross the ocean for her sake. They accordingly sailed
from New York for London, June 6, 1839, arriving in July. They visited
France, Italy, and Germany, and remained abroad two years, without,
however, any improvement for the invalid wife.
On June 12, 1840, a World's Anti-Slavery Convention began its sessions
in London. A call had been issued, addressed to the "Friends of the
slave of every nation and of every clime." American societies sent
delegates, Wendell Phillips and his wife, already abroad, Lucretia Mott,
the distinguished Quaker, Garrison, and many others.
When they reached England, the women were refused as delegates. They
asked Wendell Phillips to plead their cause. When he left the house in
London to do so, his wife said to him, "Wendell, don't shilly-shally."
He spoke with his usual politeness and power: "It is the custom there
[America] not to admit colored men into respectable society; and we have
been told again and again that we are outraging the decencies of
humanity when we permit colored men to sit by our side. When we have
submitted to brickbats and the tar-tub and feathers in America, rather
than yield to the custom prevalent there of not admitting colored
brethren into our friendship, shall we yield to parallel custom or
prejudice against women in Old England?
"We cannot yield this question if we would, for it is a matter of
conscience, ... and British virtue ought not to ask us to yield."
The women were not admitted, however, and were obliged to sit in the
gallery as spectators. None the less the women of both nations owe
Phillips hearty thanks for his appreciation and his justice. Father
Mathew, the great temperance leader of Ireland, deeply regretted the
exclusion of the women delegates.
After the convention, Phillips and his wife went, by way of Belgium and
the Rhine, to Kissingen, in Bavaria. He writes to a friend in England:
"To Americans it was especially pleasant to see at Frankfort the oldest
printed Bible in the world, and two pairs of Luther's shoes, which Ann
would not quit sight of till I had mustered German enough to ask the man
to let the 'little girl' feel of them."
Again he writes: "We started for Florence, by Bologna, that jewel of a
city; ... for she admits women to be professors in her university, her
gallery guards their paintings, her palaces boast their sculptures. I
gloried in standing beside a woman-professor's monument, set up side by
side with that of the illustrious Galvani."
To Garrison he writes from Naples, having then the same sympathy for
the poor and the laborer which he showed through life: "When you meet in
the same street a man encompassed with all the equipage of wealth, and
the beggar, on whose brow disease and starvation have written his title
to your pity, the question is, involuntarily, Is this a Christian city?
To my mind the answer is, No....
"I hope the discussion of the question of property will not cease until
the Church is convinced that, from Christian lips _ownership means
responsibility for the right use_ of what God has given; that the title
of a needy brother is as sacred as the owner's own, and infringed upon,
too, whenever that owner allows the siren voice of his own tastes to
drown the cry of another's necessities.... None know what it is to live
till they redeem life from monotony by sacrifice."
After the return of the Phillipses, the anti-slavery work was taken up
more vigorously than ever. Colored children were not allowed to study in
the schools with white in Boston. Phillips agitated till separate
colored schools were abolished. He appealed to the Legislature of his
native State to compel railroads, as common carriers, to admit the negro
to the cars, and finally was successful.
He shared, like Henry Ward Beecher and Lucretia Mott, the discomforts of
the colored man. Frederick Douglass said, in his oration on Phillips,
given before his own race, in Washington, 1884: "On one occasion, after
delivering a lecture to the New Bedford Lyceum, before a highly
cultivated audience, when brought to the railroad station (as I was not
allowed to travel in a first-class car, but was compelled to ride in a
filthy box called the 'Jim Crow' car), he stepped to my side, in the
presence of his aristocratic friends, and walked with me straight into
this miserable dog-car, saying, 'Douglass, if you cannot ride with me, I
can ride with you.'
"On the Sound, between New York and Newport, in those dark days, a
colored passenger was not allowed abaft the wheels of the steamer, and
had to spend the night on the forward deck, with horses, sheep, and
swine. On such trips, when I was a passenger, Wendell Phillips preferred
to walk the naked deck with me to taking a state-room. I could not
persuade him to leave me to bear the burden of insult and outrage
alone."
In 1850 the "irrepressible conflict" between freedom and slavery was
reaching its climax. The Fugitive-Slave Law, fathered by Henry Clay,
and, to the dismay of a large portion of the North, upheld by Daniel
Webster in his 7th of March speech, had been signed by the President,
Millard Fillmore, Sept. 18, 1850. This bill made slave-hunting and the
return of slaves to their masters a duty.
A great company, presided over by Charles Francis Adams, and addressed
by Phillips and others, in Faneuil Hall, protested; but the North was
powerless or suppliant. Mobs broke up anti-slavery meetings in New York
City. Colored men, on one pretext or another, were seized and carried
back to slavery.
On April 3, 1851, Thomas Sims, a slave, was arrested in Boston, and,
after a hurried examination before the United States Commissioner, was
given up to his pursuers. The poor slave youth begged this favor: "Give
me a knife," he said, "and when the commissioner declares me a slave, I
will stab myself to the heart, and die before his eyes."
At midnight the Mayor of Boston, with two or three hundred policemen,
heavily armed, placed Sims on board the ship Acorn, and sent him back
into bondage.
Great meetings were held on Boston Common and in Tremont Temple to
protest against this action, but they were of no avail. A year later, on
the anniversary of the rendition of Sims, Phillips gave a thrilling
address at the Melodeon. Looking towards the future, he said, "I know
what civil war is.... And yet I do not know that, to an enlightened
mind, a scene of civil war is any more sickening than the thought of a
hundred and fifty years of slavery. Take the broken hearts, the bereaved
mothers, the infant wrung from the hands of its parents, the husband and
wife torn asunder, every right trodden under foot, the blighted hopes,
the imbruted souls, the darkened and degraded millions, sunk below the
level of intellectual life, melted in sensuality, herded with beasts,
who have walked over the burning marl of Southern slavery to their
graves, and where is the battle-field, however ghastly, that is not
white--white as an angel's wing--compared with the blackness of that
darkness which has brooded over the Carolinas for two hundred years?"
Meantime, what had become of Sims? On arriving at Savannah he was
severely whipped, and confined in a cell for two months. He was then
sent to a slave-market at Charleston, and thence to another market at
New Orleans. Finally he was purchased by a brick-mason, taken to
Vicksburg, and in 1863 he escaped to the besieging army of Grant, and
was given transportation to the North.
Three years later, May 14, 1854, Anthony Burns, a slave, was arrested,
and on June 2, marched through Court Street and State Street, over the
ground where Crispus Attucks, a colored man, fell as the first victim in
the Boston Massacre in the Revolution, to the wharf, in the centre of a
concourse of people, guarded by companies of militia and protected by
cannon. The streets were draped in black by the indignant citizens, and
the bells tolled a dirge, as the bound slave was thrust into the hold of
a vessel ready to start for Virginia. Burns was the last black man
carried back to his masters from Massachusetts.
Meantime, Wendell Phillips had been fighting other battles. In October,
1850, the first National Woman Suffrage Convention was held at
Worcester, Mass. Nine States responded. Phillips spoke earnestly, but no
full report of his address or of others was taken.
The next year, 1851, at Worcester, he made a brilliant speech at the
second National Woman Suffrage Convention. Of that speech, given in full
in Mr. Phillips's "Speeches and Lectures" published in 1863, Mr. Curtis
says, in his eulogy of Phillips: "In his general statement of principle
nothing has been added to that discourse; in vivid and effective
eloquence of advocacy it has never been surpassed."
"What we ask is simply this," said Phillips, "what all other classes
have asked before: Leave it to woman to choose for herself her
profession, her education, and her sphere. We deny to any portion of the
species the right to prescribe to any other portion its sphere, its
education, or its rights.... The sphere of each man, of each woman, of
each individual, is that sphere which he can, with the highest exercise
of his powers, perfectly fill. The highest act which the human being can
do, that is the act which God designed him to do.... The tools, now, to
him or her who can use them....
"While woman is admitted to the gallows, the jail, and the tax-list, we
have no right to debar her from the ballot-box."
He had no fears that woman's natural grace or tenderness would be marred
by depositing her vote in the ballot-box. "Let education," he said,
"form the rational and moral being, and nature will take care of the
woman."
On another occasion Mr. Phillips gave this illustration: "Goethe said,
that, 'if you plant an oak in a flower-pot, one of two things was sure
to happen,--either the oak will be dwarfed, or the flower-pot will
break.' So we have planted woman in a flower-pot, hemmed her in by
restrictions; and, when we move to enlarge her sphere, society cries
out, 'Oh, you'll break the flower-pot!' Well, I say, let it break. Man
made it, and the sooner it goes to pieces the better. Let us see how
broadly the branches will throw themselves, and how beautiful will be
the shape, and how glorious against the moonlit sky or glowing sunset
the foliage shall appear!"
He thought the idea that woman would have no time for political matters
an absurdity, when the soldier, the busy manufacturer, the lawyer, the
president of a college, and the artisan have time to vote.
"Responsibility," he said, "is one instrument--a great instrument--of
education, both moral and intellectual. It sharpens the faculties. It
unfolds the moral nature. It makes the careless prudent, and turns
recklessness into sobriety.... Woman can never study those great
questions that interest and stir most deeply the human mind, until she
studies them under the mingled stimulus and check of this
responsibility.... The great school of this people is the jury-box and
the ballot-box.... Great political questions stir the deepest nature of
one-half the nation; but they pass far above and over the heads of the
other half. Yet, meanwhile, theorists wonder that the first have their
whole nature unfolded, and the others will persevere in being dwarfed."
In 1861, in Cooper Institute, New York, Mr. Phillips said: "Let public
opinion only grant that, like their thousand brothers, those women may
go out, and, wherever they find work to do, do it without a stigma being
set upon them. Let the educated girl of twenty have the same liberty to
use the pen, to practise law, to write books, to serve in a library, to
tend in a gallery of art, to do anything that her brother can do." And
he asked for woman equal wages with man for the same work.
The anti-slavery war was still waging. The Kansas and Nebraska Act, by
which the people were left to fight out the battle of slavery or freedom
on their own soil, resulted, as might have been expected, in bloodshed.
Among those who went to Kansas, determined to help make it a free State,
was John Brown, whose pathetic life has been written recently by that
eminent anti-slavery worker and author, Frank B. Sanborn, Esq., of
Concord, Mass.
During those dreadful years of civil war in Kansas, Brown and his family
suffered all manner of hardships. Some of his sons were in prison, and
some murdered. He had always wished to free the slaves, had helped many
to escape, and in 1859 carried out a plan, long in his mind, to
establish a station in Virginia, near enough to a free State, where
fugitive slaves could defend themselves for a time, till they could be
helped into Canada.
On Sunday evening, Oct. 16, 1859, Brown, with eighteen men, arrived at
Harper's Ferry, broke down the armory-gate, and took possession of the
village, without firing a gun. The citizens soon armed, several men were
killed, and, before the next night, Brown and his company, now reduced
to six, were barricaded in the engine-house. Colonel Robert E. Lee,
afterwards the Confederate general, arrived with some United States
marines from Washington, and Brown was ordered to surrender, which he
refused to do. When he was finally captured, his two sons were dead, and
he was thought to be dying from his wounds.
He met his death bravely on the scaffold at Charlestown, Va., Dec. 2.
1859.
He wrote a friend, a short time before his death, "I think I cannot
better serve the cause I love so much than to die for it; and in my
death I may do more than in my life."
The day he died, he wrote on a piece of paper and handed it to one of
the guards, "I, John Brown, am now quite _certain_ that the crimes of
this _guilty land_ will never be purged away but with _blood_. I had, as
I now think vainly, flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it
might be done."
As he rode on the wagon to the scaffold, at eleven o'clock, looking out
over the two thousand Virginian soldiers, the distant hills, and the
Blue Ridge Mountains, he said, "This is a beautiful country; I have not
cast my eyes over it before--that is, in this direction." He thanked his
jailer for his kindness, and said, "I am ready at any time--do not keep
me waiting;" and died without a tremor.
Victor Hugo said, "His hangman is the whole American Republic.... What
the South slew last December was not John Brown, but slavery."
Brown's body was delivered to his wife, and she bore it to New York.
Wendell Phillips met the funeral company at that city, and they carried
the body to North Elba, in the Adirondack Mountains. He was buried Dec.
8, 1859, Mr. Phillips speaking eloquently and touchingly at the grave.
"He has abolished slavery in Virginia," said Phillips.... "History will
date Virginia emancipation from Harper's Ferry. True, the slave is still
there. So, when the tempest uproots a pine on yon hill, it looks green
for months--a year or two. Still, it is timber, not a tree. John Brown
has loosened the roots of the slave system; it only breathes,--it does
not live,--hereafter."
How strange it was that only a few short months afterward thousands of
Union soldiers were marching to battle, singing that inspiring strain,--
"John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
And his soul is marching on!"
While Brown lay in prison at Charlestown, Va., a meeting was held in
Tremont Temple, Boston, to raise money for his impoverished family. John
A. Andrew, not then governor, presided. Emerson, Phillips, and the Rev.
J. M. Manning, Congregationalist, of the "Old South" Church, made
earnest addresses. The latter said, "I am here to represent the church
of Sam Adams and Wendell Phillips; and I want all the world to know that
I am not afraid to ride in the coach when Wendell Phillips sits on the
box."
In New York a meeting for the same purpose was confronted by a fierce
mob. On Staten Island, when Phillips attempted to lecture, George
William Curtis presiding, a mob gathered on the road and sidewalk. A
lady driving up, a man from West Brighton rushed to the carriage-door,
followed by several rough men, and exclaimed, "I advise you, madam, not
to go in; there is going to be trouble."
"What trouble, sir?" said she calmly.
"Two hundred of us," said the leader, "have sworn to tear this man from
the desk and plant him in the Jersey marshes."
"I don't think that will be allowed, sir," she replied.
"Well, if you have force enough to prevent it, go ahead."
"I do not say any such thing," she answered; "but this is not a
political meeting. I have come to hear a literary lecture, and I think
there will be decent men enough here to check any disturbance."
The bravery of the woman seemed to abash the crowd. Though some climbed
on ladders to the windows of the church and shouted, "Fetch him out!"
they did not attempt to batter down the doors. They threw stones and
cursed after the lecture was over, but Phillips was not harmed.
An attempt was made to mob him in Philadelphia. He wrote to his wife's
cousin, Miss Grew, "I have become so notorious, that at Albany,
Kingston, and Hartford the Lyceum could not obtain a church for me; and
the papers riddled me with pellets for a week; but that saved
advertising, and got me larger houses gratis. At Troy they even thought
of imitating Staten Island, and getting up a homoeopathic mob, but
couldn't."
Phillips was becoming accustomed to mobs. He had, says Mr. Higginson, "a
careless, buoyant, almost patrician air, as if nothing in the way of
mob-violence were worth considering." Dec. 2, 1860, on the anniversary
of John Brown's execution, being debarred from speaking in Tremont
Temple, a crowded meeting was held in the Belknap-street colored church.
The mob determined to get him into their hands, says Charles W. Slack,
in George Lowell Austin's life of Phillips, and were only prevented "by
a cordon of young men, about forty or more in number, who with locked
arms and closely compacted bodies, had Phillips in the centre of their
circle, and were safely bearing him home."
On Jan. 24, 1861, the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-slavery
Society was held in Tremont Temple. Mrs. Lydia Maria Child describes the
scene: "Soon the mob began to yell from the galleries. They came
tumbling in by hundreds.... Such yelling, screeching, and bellowing I
never heard....
"Mr. Phillips stood on the front of the platform for a full hour, trying
to be heard whenever the storm lulled a little. They cried, 'Throw him
out! Throw a brickbat at him! Your house is afire; go put out your
house!' Then they'd sing, with various bellowing and shrieking
accompaniments, 'Tell John Andrew, tell John Andrew, John Brown's dead!'
I should think there were four or five hundred of them. At one time they
all rose up, many of them clattered down-stairs, and there was a surging
forward toward the platform. My heart beat so fast I could hear it; for
I did not then know how Mr. Phillips's armed friends were stationed at
every door, and in the middle of the aisle. At last it was announced
that the police were coming. Mr. Phillips tried to speak, but his voice
was again drowned. Then ... he stepped forward and addressed his speech
to the reporters stationed directly below him."
He said to the reporters--the noisy crowd shouted, "Speak louder! We
want to hear what you're saying!"--"While I speak to these pencils, I
speak to a million of men. What, then, are these boys? We have got the
press of the country in our hands.... My voice is beaten by theirs, but
they cannot beat types. All hail and glory to Faust, who invented
printing, for he made mobs impossible." Nothing seemed to fire the great
orator like opposition. He was the very soul of courage.
The Civil War had begun. Phillips, who had been in favor of disunion,
because he and other anti-slavery men and women wished no union with
slavery, now that the first shot had been fired on April 12, 1861,
became a firm supporter of the Union.
He said in his lecture "Under the Flag," delivered in Music Hall, April
21, 1861, and contained in the first volume of his speeches: "The cannon
shot against Fort Sumter has opened the only door out of this hour.
There were but two. One was compromise; the other was battle.... The
South opened this with cannon shot, and Lincoln shows himself at the
door. The war, then, is not aggressive, but in self-defence, and
Washington has become the Thermopylæ of liberty and justice. Rather than
surrender that capital, cover every square foot of it with a living
body; crowd it with a million of men, and empty every bank vault at the
North to pay the cost. Teach the world once for all, that North America
belongs to the Stars and Stripes, and under them no man shall wear a
chain."
The speech was reported for the _Boston Journal_; but fearing that the
war Democrats would not be pleased, it was suppressed. The friends of
Phillips, learning of this, had it printed as an extra, and scattered
one hundred thousand copies of it.
Through these early years of the war Phillips was urging the arming of
the negroes; and when some white men doubted their courage, he lectured
through the land upon Toussaint L'Ouverture, the great leader of Hayti,
whom he thus pictures:--
"Of Toussaint, Hermona, the Spanish general, who knew him well, said,
'He was the purest soul God ever put into a body.' Of him history bears
witness, 'He never broke his word.'"
When he was captured by the French and taken to France, "As the island
faded from his sight, he turned to the captain and said, 'You think you
have rooted up the tree of liberty, but I am only a branch; I have
planted the tree so deep that all France can never root it up.'"
He was thrown into a stone dungeon, twelve feet by twenty. "This dungeon
was a tomb. The story is told that, in Josephine's time, a young French
marquis was placed there, and the girl to whom he was betrothed went to
the Empress and prayed for his release. Said Josephine to her, 'Have a
model of it made and bring it to me.' Josephine placed it near Napoleon.
He said, 'Take it away, it is horrible!' She put it on his footstool,
and he kicked it from him. She held it to him the third time, and said,
'Sire, in this horrible dungeon you have put a man to die.' 'Take him
out,' said Napoleon, and the girl saved her lover.
"In this tomb Toussaint was buried, but he did not die fast enough.
Finally the commandant was told to go into Switzerland, to carry the
keys of the dungeon with him, and to stay four days; when he returned,
Toussaint was found starved to death....
"'No RETALIATION,' was his great motto and the rule of his life; and
the last words uttered to his son in France were these, 'My boy, you
will one day go back to St. Domingo; forget that France murdered your
father.'"
Early in 1863 Phillips saw colored troops, the Fifty-fourth and
Fifty-fifth Regiments, march through the same street where Garrison had
been mobbed and Anthony Burns carried back into slavery by United States
troops, singing the John Brown song. Times were indeed changed since
Phillips himself was mobbed for suggesting negro soldiers.
When the war was over, and Abraham Lincoln lay dead, Phillips spoke in
Tremont Temple to a hushed and mourning company: "What the world would
not look at, God has set to-day in a light so ghastly bright that it
dazzles us blind. What we would not believe, God has written all over
the face of the continent with the sword's point, in the blood of our
best and most beloved. We believe the agony of the slave's hovel, the
mother, and the husband, when it takes its seat at our own board....
"He was permitted himself to deal the last staggering blow which sent
rebellion reeling to its grave; and then, holding his darling boy by the
hand, to walk the streets of its surrendered capital, while his ears
drank in praise and thanksgiving which bore his name to the throne of
God in every form piety and gratitude could invent; and finally to seal
the sure triumph of the cause he loved with his own blood. He caught the
first notes of the coming jubilee, and heard his own name in every one.
Who among living men may not envy him?"
In the great matters of reconstruction and constitutional changes,
Phillips took an ardent and helpful part. He criticised sharply, perhaps
not always wisely, (for who can be infallible in judgment?) but he was
always earnest and unselfish. When asked to let his name be used for
Congress, he refused, preferring to hold no party allegiance where
principle was at stake.
He constantly urged the ballot for the negro. "Reconstruct no State," he
said, "without giving to every loyal man in it the ballot. I scout all
limitations of knowledge, property, or race. Universal suffrage for me;
that was the Revolutionary model. Every freeman voted, black or white,
whether he could read or not. My rule is, any citizen liable to be
hanged for crime is entitled to vote for rulers. The ballot insures the
school."
When the slavery question was settled, Wendell Phillips could not stop
working. He wrote to a meeting of his old abolition comrades, two months
before his death, "Let it not be said that the old abolitionist stopped
with the negro, and was never able to see that the same principles
claimed his utmost effort to protect all labor, white and black, and to
further the discussion of every claim of humanity."
He said to a friend, "Now that the field is won, do you sit by the
camp-fire, but I will put out into the underbrush."
He had for years been a total abstainer, and now more than ever was an
earnest advocate of prohibition. In Tremont Temple, Jan. 24, 1881, he
reviewed Dr. Crosby's "Calm view of Temperance."
Phillips stood manfully for the temperance pledge. "We make a pledge by
joining a church," he said. "The husband pledges himself to his wife,
and she to him, for life. Is the marriage ceremony, then, a curse, a
hindrance to virtue and progress?
"Society rests in all its transactions on the idea that a solemn
promise, pledge, assertion, strengthens and assures the act.... The
witness on the stand gives solemn promise to tell the truth; the officer
about to assume place for one year, or ten, or for life, pledges his
word and oath; the grantor in a deed binds himself for all time by
record; churches, societies, universities, accept funds on pledge to
appropriate them to certain purposes and no other.... No man ever
denounced these pledges as unmanly.... The doctor's principle would
unsettle society; and if one proposed to apply it to any cause but
temperance, practical men would quietly put him aside as out of his
head."
Phillips told this story concerning the pledge. A man about sixty came
to sit beside him as he was travelling in a railway car. He had heard
Phillips lecture on temperance the previous evening. "I am master of a
ship," said he, "sailing out of New York, and have just returned from my
fiftieth voyage across the Atlantic. About thirty years ago I was a sot,
shipped, while dead drunk, as one of the crew, and was carried on board
like a log. When I came to, the captain sent for me. He asked me, 'Do
you remember your mother?' I told him she died before I could remember
anything. 'Well,' said he, 'I am a Vermont man. When I was young I was
crazy to go to sea. At last my mother consented I should seek my fortune
in New York.'
"He told how she stood on one side the garden gate and he on the other,
when, with his bundle on his arm, he was ready to walk to the next town.
She said to him, 'My boy, I don't know anything about towns, and I
never saw the sea; but they tell me those great towns are sinks of
wickedness, and make thousands of drunkards. Now, promise me you'll
never drink a drop of liquor.'
"He said, 'I laid my hand in hers and promised, as I looked into her
eyes for the last time. She died soon after. I've been on every sea, and
seen the worst kinds of life and men. They laughed at me as a milksop,
and wanted to know if I was a coward; but when they offered me liquor, I
saw my mother across the gate, and I never drank a drop. It has been my
sheet-anchor. I owe all to that. Would you like to take that pledge?'
said he."
He took it. "It has saved me," he said. "I have a fine ship, wife and
children at home, and I have helped others."
Dr. Crosby favored license. Phillips said, "The statute books in forty
States are filled with the abortions of thousands of license laws that
were never executed, and most of them were never intended to be."
"No one supposes," said Phillips later, "that law can make men
temperate.... But law can shut up those bars and dram-shops which
facilitate and feed intemperance, which double our taxes, make our
streets unsafe for men of feeble resolution, treble the peril to
property and life, and make the masses tools in the hands of designing
men to undermine and cripple law."
Phillips also worked untiringly for labor reform. He wrote to Mr. George
J. Holyoake, in England, "There'll never be, I believe and trust, a
class-party here, labor against capital, the lines are so indefinite,
like dove's-neck colors. Three-fourths of our population are to some
extent capitalists; and, again, all see that there is really, and ought
always to be, alliance, not struggle, between them." Again he said,
"Capital and labor are only the two arms of a pair of scissors,--useless
when separate, and only safe when fastened together, cutting everything
before them."
He urged fewer hours for labor, better wages, and united effort among
workingmen. He said to them, "Why have you not carried your ends before?
Because in ignorance and division you have let the other side have their
own way. We are ruled by brains.... You want books and journals.... When
men have wrongs to complain of they should go to the ballot-box and
right them.... Men always lose half of what is gained by violence. What
is gained by argument is gained forever."
In an address in 1872 he said to labor, "If you want power in this
country, if you want to make yourselves felt, ... write on your banner,
so that every political trimmer can read it, so that every politician,
no matter how short-sighted he may be, can read it: 'We never forget! If
you launch the arrow of sarcasm at labor, we never forget; if there is a
division in Congress, and you throw your vote in the wrong scale, we
never forget.'"
Mr. Phillips carried out his ideas of labor under his own roof. So kind
and considerate was he to his servants, that his cook, who was his nurse
in childhood, used to leave the door open into the kitchen, that she
might hear him pass and repass. She said, "Bless him, there is more
music in his footfall than in a cathedral organ!"
When she was too old for work, he placed her in a home of her own, and
went to see her every Saturday, when possible, with many gifts for her
comfort, till she died. He paid the best wages to servants of anybody in
the neighborhood. "Good pay, good service," he used to say.
He was always generous. One day on the cars he met a woman thinly clad,
a lecturer from the South, a niece of Jefferson Davis, as he afterwards
learned. She had received five dollars for her work. Mr. Phillips said,
"I don't want to give offence, but you know I preach that a woman is
entitled to the same as a man if she does the same work. Now, my price
is fifty or a hundred dollars; and, if you will let me divide it with
you, I shall not have had any more than you, and the thing will be
even."
The lady at first refused, but was persuaded to take it. When she
reached home she found there were fifty dollars--all he had received for
his lecture at Gloucester.
In 1870 Phillips accepted the nomination for the governorship of
Massachusetts from the prohibition and the labor parties, though he
said, and undoubtedly with truth, that he had no desire to be governor.
He received over twenty thousand votes.
When blamed because he favored General Butler for governor, he replied
that he did not know a man among all the candidates whom he would make a
saint of. "The difficulty is," said he, with his natural love of humor,
"saints do not come very often; and, when they do, it is the hardest
thing in the world to get them into politics."
When Andrew Johnson was not impeached, as Phillips hoped he would be, he
used to say, "Congress has deposed him without impeachment. 'Friend,
I'll not shoot thee,' said the Quaker to the footpad, 'but I'll hold thy
head in the water until thee drown thyself.' The Republican party has
taken a leaf out of that scrupulous Christian's book."
Phillips was a Protectionist. In early life he was a free-trader, but
changed his views. "Under free trade," he said, "our country would be
wholly agricultural.... Should we lose our diversified occupations, we
would suffer a great loss, though there might be a pecuniary gain.... If
all the world were under one law, and every man raised to the level of
the Sermon on the Mount, free trade would be so easy and charming! But
while nations study only how to cripple their enemies,--that is, their
neighbors,--and while each trader strives to cheat his customer, and
strangle the firm on the other side of the street, we must not expect
the millennium."
He smiled at the "shoals of college-boys, slenderly furnished with Greek
and Latin, but steeped in marvellous and delightful ignorance of life
and public affairs, filling the country with free-trade din."
Phillips pleaded the cause of the Irish in his wonderful lecture on
Daniel O'Connell. He was also the friend and advocate of the Indian.
He opposed capital punishment, because he thought the old Testament
law--about which scholars disagree--was no more binding upon us than
scores of others given to the Jews about "abstaining from meats offered
to idols, and from blood and from things strangled," etc. Once men were
hanged in England for stealing a shilling. We are gradually learning
that reform is what society needs--not revenge.
Mr. Phillips spoke on finance before the American Social Science
Association. His plan was, says Austin: "Take from the national banks
all right to issue bills; let the nation itself supply a currency ample
for all public needs; reduce the rate of interest."
In the summer of 1880 Mr. Phillips and his wife spent some time at
Princeton, Mass. He was then sixty-nine years old. He wrote a friend: "I
laze and ride on horseback, exploring the drives.... The rest of the
time I sleep. I weigh a hundred and seventy-five pounds, and don't feel
as old as I am."
To another friend he wrote of the extreme stillness of the place: "A
passer-by is an event. The only noise ever made is by the hens. The only
thing that ever happens is when we miss the cat. But we always keep
awake at the sunsets, they are splendid."
The next year, June 30, 1881, he was asked to give the address at
Harvard College, on the Centennial Anniversary of the Phi Beta Kappa.
His subject was "The Scholar in a Republic."
"It was," says Thomas Wentworth Higginson, "the tardy recognition of him
by his own college and his own literary society, and proved to be, in
some respects, the most remarkable effort of his life. He never seemed
more at his ease, more colloquial and more extemporaneous; and he held
an unwilling audience spellbound, while bating absolutely nothing of his
radicalism."
He pleaded for the great reforms for which he had labored all his life.
"The fathers," he said, "touched their highest level when, with
stout-hearted and serene faith, they trusted God that it was safe to
leave men with all the rights he gave them. Let us be worthy of their
blood, and save this sheet-anchor of the race,--universal
suffrage,--God's church, God's school, God's method of gently binding
men into commonwealths in order that they may at last melt into
brothers....
"These agitations are the opportunities and the means God offers us to
refine the taste, mould the character, lift the purpose, and educate the
moral sense of the masses, on whose intelligence and self-respect rests
the State. God furnishes these texts. He gathers for us this audience,
and only asks of our coward lips to preach the sermons....
"If in this critical battle for universal suffrage ... there be any
weapon, which, once taken from the armory, will make victory certain, it
will be, as it has been in art, literature, and society, summoning woman
into the political arena.... The literary class, until half a dozen
years, has taken note of this great uprising only to fling every
obstacle in its way.
"The first glimpse we get of Saxon blood in history is that line of
Tacitus in his 'Germany,' which reads, 'In all grave matters they
consult their women.' Years hence, when robust Saxon sense has flung
away Jewish superstition and Eastern prejudice, and put under its foot
fastidious scholarship and squeamish fashion, some second Tacitus, from
the Valley of the Mississippi, will answer to him of the Seven Hills,
'In all grave questions we consult our women.' ...
"To be as good as our fathers we must be better.... With serene faith
they persevered. Let us rise to their level. Crush appetite and prohibit
temptation if it rots great cities."
In the winter of 1882 he made his last lecture tour, when he was
seventy-one. He had the same noble presence, the same exquisitely toned
voice which began his speech as in ordinary conversation, the same calm
self-poised manner, as in middle life. The eyes were blue and small, the
smile sweet, the figure straight, the whole bearing one of perfect
mastery of both self and audience. I have heard, "his attitude was a
study for the sculptor--yet unconscious and natural," truly says Mr.
Martyn. "The weight of the body was usually supported upon the left
foot, with the right slightly advanced at an easy angle--an attitude of
combined firmness and repose."
His speeches were never written out. He disliked writing, and thought it
"a mild form of slavery--a man chained to an ink-pot." He said, "The
chief thing I aim at is to master my subject. Then I earnestly try to
get the audience to think as I do."
He once wrote a young man, who had asked him about public speaking: "I
think practice with all kinds of audiences the best of teachers. Think
out your subject carefully. Read all you can relative to the themes you
touch. Fill your mind; and then talk simply and naturally. Forget
altogether that you are to make a speech or are making one.... Remember
to talk up to an audience, not down to it. The commonest audience can
relish the best thing you can say if you say it properly. Be simple, be
earnest."
"He faced his audience," says Curtis, "with a tranquil mien, and a
beaming aspect that was never dimmed. He spoke, and in the measured
cadence of his quiet voice there was intense feeling, but no
declamation, no passionate appeal, no superficial and feigned emotion.
It was simply colloquy--a gentleman conversing. Unconsciously and surely
the ear and heart were charmed.
"How was it done? Ah! how did Mozart do it, how Raphael? The secret of
the rose's sweetness, of the bird's ecstasy, of the sunset's glory--that
is the secret of genius and of eloquence."
Phillips's habit in travelling was to carry a large shawl, which he
always spread between the sheets of his bed in the various hotels, to
prevent a cold; an example to other speakers. His supper before an
address was usually, it is said, three raw eggs and a cup of tea.
Mr. Phillips had already moved his home from 26 Essex Street, in the
spring of 1881, to No. 37 Common Street, not far away, as his home had
to be torn down for the widening of the street. It was a severe trial to
both, but it did not remain their earthly home for long.
Mr. Phillips made his last public address at the unveiling of Anne
Whitney's statue of Harriet Martineau at the "Old South" Church, Boston,
Dec. 26, 1883.
His wife was seriously ill through January, and he watched most
devotedly by her bedside. On the 26th of the month he was taken ill with
angina pectoris. He felt that the end was near. He said, "I have no fear
of death. I have long foreseen it. My only regret is for poor Ann. I had
hoped to close her eyes before mine were shut." To a friend who spoke to
him of his always expressed belief in the divinity of Christ, though
many of his friends were Unitarian, he said, quoting the words of an
eminent Semitic scholar: "I find the whole history of humanity before
him and after him points to him, and finds in him its centre and its
solution. His whole conduct, his deeds, his words, have a supernatural
character, being altogether inexplicable from human relations and human
means. I feel that here there is something more than man."
"Then you have no doubt about a future life?" said the friend.
"I am as sure of it as I am that there will be a to-morrow," was the
reply.
On Saturday evening, Feb. 2, 1884, at fifteen minutes past six, he
closed his eyes calmly and quietly forever.
All Boston, all America, was moved at the death of the great
leader--patrician born, yet the people's advocate. The funeral was held
at eleven o'clock Wednesday, Feb. 6, at Hollis-street Church, and then
the body was borne to Faneuil Hall, two colored companies forming a
guard of honor.
There, where he had won his first fame in youth at the Lovejoy meeting,
where he had stirred the whole land by his eloquence in the cause of the
oppressed, it was fitting he should sleep at last.
The Irish National League of Boston sent a mound of flowers, three feet
by four, with the word "Humanity" in the centre, in violets on a bed of
carnations. The Irish-American Societies of Boston sent a harp four feet
high of ivy leaves and japonicas, with the word "Ireland" in the centre.
One of the harp strings was broken. Others sent a sheaf of ripened
wheat, a crown of ivy and roses, and a wreath of laurel.
From one o'clock till four, thousands passed the form of their beloved
dead; rich and poor, Irish and American, black and white, children and
adults. One old colored woman, with tears flowing down her cheeks, said,
"Our Wendell Philips has gone." Another said, "He was de bes' fren' we
ever hed. We owes him a heap!"
Frederick Douglass looked on in sorrow. "I wanted to see this throng,"
he said, "and to see the hold that this man had upon the community. It
is a wonderful tribute."
Thousands were unable to enter Faneuil Hall, and filled every available
inch of space in the street, and windows and balconies of buildings. A
vast crowd followed up State Street to Washington, up School to
Tremont, to the old Granary burying-ground, where the body was laid in
the family vault.
Mrs. Phillips died Saturday, April 24, 1886, two years after her
husband. She had been closely confined to her home for the greater part
of fifty years. "She lay as if asleep," says Francis J. Garrison, "with
all the purity and guilelessness of her youthful face ripened into
maturity. It seemed transfiguration."
The body of Wendell Phillips was carried with that of his wife to
Milton, a beautiful suburb where they had often spent their summers; and
both were buried in the same grave, side by side, in a lot which he had
purchased a year or two before his death. A noble pine-tree stands near
the spot. On a plain slab at the head of the grave are the words, "Ann
and Wendell Phillips."
HENRY WARD BEECHER.
"The most brilliant and fertile pulpit-genius of the nineteenth century,
and the most widely influential American of his time," says John Henry
Barrows in his masterly life of Henry Ward Beecher. "To the sensitive
heart of a woman, he added a lion-like courage, and a Miltonic loftiness
of spirit. To the more than royal imagination of Jeremy Taylor, he added
a zeal as warm as Whitefield's. In him the wit of Sydney Smith was
combined with the common-sense of John Bunyan.
"In the annals of oratory his place is near that of Demosthenes. Among
reformers he need fear no comparison with Wendell Phillips, John Bright,
Mazzini, or Charles Sumner. In moral genius for statesmanship he was the
brother of Abraham Lincoln; and, in the annals of the pulpit, he can
only be mentioned with the greatest names,--Chrysostom, Bernard, Luther,
Wesley, Chalmers, Spurgeon."
Dr. Mark Hopkins, in Edward W. Bok's "Memorial Volume," said of Henry
Ward Beecher's forty years in Plymouth pulpit, "No such instance of
prolonged, steady power at one point, in connection with other labors so
extended and diversified, and magnificent in their results, has ever
been known."
Dr. Thomas Armitage of the Fifth-avenue Baptist Church, New York, his
life-long friend, gave Beecher "the first place among the preachers of
the world to-day." Dr. Robert Collyer said, "To my mind, he was the
greatest preacher on this planet.... Men will be his debtors for ages to
come."
June 24, 1891, the statue of this great American leader, by John Quincy
Adams Ward, was unveiled in front of Brooklyn City Hall. Three hundred
children from Plymouth Church Sunday-school sang his favorite hymn,--
"Love divine, all love excelling,"
accompanied by the band of the Thirteenth Regiment.
Henry Ward Beecher, the son of the Rev. Lyman Beecher and Roxana Foote,
was born in Litchfield, Conn., June 24, 1813. The father was an
eloquent, fearless, great-hearted man, the son and grandson of a sturdy
blacksmith; the mother a refined, dignified, intellectual, beautiful,
and superior woman. Her family connections were of the best in New
England. Her ancestor, James Foote, an English officer, aided Charles
II. of England to hide himself in the Royal Oak which grew in a field of
clover, and for this was knighted; the family coat-of-arms bearing an
oak for its crest with a clover-leaf in its quarterings.
Roxana, the granddaughter of General Ward of Revolutionary fame, was
remarkably well educated for the times. She was versed in literature and
history, which she studied while she spun flax, tying her books to the
distaff,--no wonder that her great son was an omniverous reader,--she
wrote and spoke the French language fluently, drew with the pencil, and
painted with the brush on ivory, sang and played on the guitar, and was
an expert with her needle.
[Illustration: HENRY WARD BEECHER.]
After her marriage with Mr. Beecher, she opened a school for girls in
their parish at East Hampton, Long Island, to eke out a living on their
four hundred dollars salary. From here they were called in 1810, eleven
years after their marriage, to the hilly, lonely town of Litchfield,
Conn., bringing their six little children with them.
Henry Ward was the ninth child, the eighth then living.
So many cares and privations broke down the beautiful mother, who died
when Henry was three years old.
A friend of the family writes: "She told her husband that her views and
anticipations of heaven had been so great that she could hardly sustain
it, and if they had been increased she should have been overwhelmed, and
that her Saviour had constantly blessed her; that she had peace without
one cloud, and that she had never during her sickness prayed for life.
She dedicated her sons to God for missionaries, and said that her
greatest desire was that her children might be trained up for God....
"She attempted to speak to her children; but she was extremely
exhausted, and their cries and sobs were such that she could say but
little. She told them that God could do more for them than she had done
or could do, and that they must trust him."
After Lyman Beecher had prayed, "she fell into a sweet sleep from which
she awoke in heaven. It is a moving scene to see eight little children
weeping around the bed of a dying mother."
"They told us," says Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, "at one time that she
had been laid in the ground, at another that she had gone to heaven.
Whereupon Henry, putting the two things together, resolved to dig
through the ground and go to find her; for being discovered under sister
Catherine's window one morning digging with great zeal and earnestness,
she called to him to know what he was doing, and, lifting his curly
head, with great simplicity he answered, 'Why, I am going to heaven to
find ma!'"
The benign influence of this lovely mother was never forgotten by Henry
Ward Beecher. He said: "I have only such a remembrance of her as you
have of the clouds of ten years ago, faint, evanescent, and yet, caught
by imagination and fed by that which I have heard of her, and by what my
father's thought and feeling of her were, it has come to be so much to
me that no devout Catholic ever saw so much in the Virgin Mary as I have
seen in my mother, who has been a presence to me ever since I can
remember.... Do you know why so often I speak what must seem to some of
you rhapsody of woman? It is because I had a mother, and if I were to
live a thousand years I could not express what seems to me to be the
least that I owe to her....
"She has been part and parcel of my upper life--a star whose parallax I
could not take, but nevertheless, shining from afar, she has been the
light that lit me easier into the thought of the invisible and the
presence of the Divine."
Again her distinguished son wrote: "There are few born into this world
that are her equals. She was a woman of extraordinary graces and gifts;
a woman not demonstrative, with a profound philosophical nature, of a
wonderful depth of affection, and with a serenity that was simply
charming. From her I received my love of the beautiful, my poetic
temperament; from her also I received simplicity and childlike faith in
God."
When Henry Ward was eighteen, he found some letters of his mother to his
father. He wrote in his diary: "O my mother! I could not help kissing
the letters. I looked at the paper and thought that her hand had rested
upon it while writing it. The hand of my mother! She had formed every
letter which I saw. _She_ had _looked_ upon that paper which I now
looked upon. She had folded it. She had sent it."
The Rev. Lyman Beecher said of her, "I never heard a murmur, ... I never
witnessed a movement of the least degree of selfishness; and if there
ever was any such thing in the world as disinterestedness, she had it."
Henry Ward repeats this incident told him by his father: "One day, being
much annoyed by some hogs that kept getting into his garden, he seized
his gun and rushed to the door. My mother anxiously followed, and cried,
'O father, don't shoot the poor things!' He flashed back at her, 'Woman,
go into the house!' and when he was telling me of it years afterwards he
said: 'Without a word or look she turned, quietly, majestically, and
went in--but she didn't get in before I did. I threw my arms around her
in an agony of self-reproach, and cried "Forgive me, oh, forgive me!"
She uttered no word, but she looked at me like a queen--and smiled--and
kissed my face; my passion was gone, and my offence forgiven.' Up to the
last of his life he never spoke of her but with intensest admiration and
loving remembrance."
About a year after Roxana's death, Dr. Lyman Beecher found an estimable
woman willing to be a mother to the eight motherless children, and to
take summer boarders to help support the family, whose income was eight
hundred dollars a year. She must have been a woman of great
self-sacrifice.
Young Henry thought her saintly, but cold. "Although I was longing to
love somebody," he writes, "she did not call forth my affection; and my
father was too busy to be loved. Therefore I had to expend my love on
Aunt Chandler, a kind soul that was connected with our family, and the
black woman that cooked, who was very kind to me. My mother that brought
me up I never thought of loving. I revered her, but I was not attracted
to her.... I knew that about twilight she prayed; and I had a great
shrinking from going past her door at the time. I had not the slightest
doubt that she had set her affections on things above, and not on things
beneath."
At four years of age Henry went to Ma'am Kilbourn's school, where he
repeated his letters twice a day, and later to the district school, for
which he had in those days no affection. "In winter," he says, "we were
squeezed into the recess of the farthest corner, among little boys, who
seemed to be sent to school to fill up the chinks between the bigger
boys. We were read and spelt twice a day, unless something happened to
prevent, which _did_ happen about every other day. For the rest of the
time we were busy in keeping still.
"And a time we always had of it. Our shoes always would be scraping on
the floor or knocking the shins of urchins who were also being educated.
All our little legs together (poor, tired, nervous, restless legs with
nothing to do!) would fill up the corner with such a noise that, every
ten or fifteen minutes, the master would bring down his two-foot hickory
ferule on the desk with a clap that sent shivers through our breasts to
think how that would have felt if it had fallen somewhere else; and then
with a look that swept us all into utter extremity of stillness, he
would cry, 'Silence in that corner!' ...
"Besides this our principal business was to shake and shiver at the
beginning of the school for very cold; and to sweat and stew for the
rest of the time before the fervid glances of a great iron box stove,
red-hot." Those of us who have attended district schools in New England
will recognize the truthfulness of the picture.
Henry longed for birds and flowers and books, as indeed he did all
through college, and was ever a deeper student of nature than of books.
And yet in after years he was glad for some of these school experiences.
"I am thankful," he says, "that I learned to hem towels--as I did. I
know how to knit suspenders and mittens. I know a good deal about
working in wood-sawing, chopping, splitting, planing, and things of that
sort. I was brought up to put my hand to anything; so that when I went
West, and was travelling on the prairies and my horse lost a shoe, and I
came to a cross-road where there was an abandoned blacksmith's shop, I
could go in and start the fire, and fix the old shoe and put it on
again. What man has done man can do; and it is a good thing to bring up
boys so that they shall think they can do anything. I could do
anything."
The lad was sensitive to praise or blame, and extremely diffident. "To
walk into a room where 'company' was assembled, and to do it erect and
naturally, was as impossible as it would have been to fly.... Our
backbone grew soft, our knees lost their stiffness, the blood rushed to
the head, and the sight almost left our eyes. We have known something
of pain in after years, but few pangs have been more acute than some
sufferings from bashfulness in our earlier years."
Mr. Beecher felt all through his life that he owed much to a colored
man, Charles Smith, who worked on his father's farm when he was a boy.
"He used to lie upon his humble bed," says Mr. Beecher, "(I slept in the
same room with him) and read his Testament, unconscious, apparently,
that I was in the room.... I never had heard the Bible really read
before; but there, in my presence, he read it, and talked about it to
himself and to God.... He talked to me about my soul more than any
member of my father's family."
Henry was taken to Bethlehem, seven miles from Litchfield, to the school
of the Rev. Mr. Langdon; but he seems here also to have loved the woods
and flowers so much better than books, that he was finally sent to
Hartford to the care of his sister Catherine, who taught a school for
young ladies. Though a favorite on account of his sunny disposition, he
proved a poor scholar, and was sent home at the end of six months. When
the boy was thirteen, Dr. Lyman Beecher moved with his family to Boston,
having been called to the pastorate of the Hanover-street Congregational
Church at the North End.
Here he loved Christ Church chimes, listened to their music "with a
pleasure and amazement," he says, "which I fear nothing will ever give
me again till I hear the bells ring out wondrous things in the New
Jerusalem," and studied ships as he strolled along the docks, or
lingered in Charlestown Navy Yard.
At the latter place he stole a six-pound shot, and not knowing how to
get it home unobserved, carried it rolled in a handkerchief on the top
of his head under his hat. With the greatest difficulty he brought it
home, and then did not know what to do with it, not daring to show it,
nor tell where he got it.
"But after all," he says, "that six-pounder rolled a good deal of sense
into my skull. I think it was the last thing I ever stole; and it gave
me a notion of the folly of coveting more than you can enjoy, which has
made my whole life happier."
The boy who had so loved the country among the hills of Connecticut,
became gloomy and restless shut in by the treeless city. His father gave
him the lives of Nelson and Captain Cook to read, and the lad resolved
to go to sea. He could not bring himself to run away without telling his
father, which he did. With rare tact Dr. Beecher replied that Henry
would not wish to be an ordinary sailor.
"No," said the boy. "I want to be a midshipman, and after that a
commodore."
"I see," said the father; "and in order for that you must begin a course
of mathematics and study navigation.... I will send you up to Amherst
next week, to Mount Pleasant, and there you'll begin your preparatory
studies, and if you are well prepared I presume I can make interest to
get you an appointment."
At fourteen the lad entered Mount Pleasant Institute, the father hoping
and praying that his boy "would be in the ministry yet."
With Lord Nelson and other great commanders in mind, he determined to
master his studies and be somebody. Hard mathematics became easier, and
he liked the drill in elocution. He enjoyed sport among the boys, and
the semi-military methods of the school, but best of all he liked
spending his play-hours in caring for beds of pansies and asters.
During a revival at Mount Pleasant, Henry was much moved, and wrote to
his father, who advised his coming home to join the church. He did so,
though he felt afterwards that the change in his life was not as
thorough as he could have wished. However, it obliterated the desire of
being a sailor, and turned his thoughts toward the ministry.
When he was seventeen, in 1830, he entered Amherst College. The great
beauty of the scenery always had for him an especial charm. "I used to
look across the beautiful Connecticut River valley, and at the blue
mountains that hedged it in, until my heart swelled and my eyes filled
with tears."
In college he was fond of athletic sports, ready in wit, beginning to
show his eloquence in debate, an ardent temperance advocate, a lover of
rhetoric, botany, and geology, and a warm friend to his classmates. He
cared little for the classics; but he read much, especially the old
English authors, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and others.
Dr. Roswell D. Hitchcock, who was at Amherst with young Beecher, says,
"He was by all odds the best debater of his college generation. I should
be glad to know how he acquired his mastery of the English language....
The four books which probably helped him most were the Bible,
Shakespeare, Milton's 'Paradise Lost,' and Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's
Progress.'"
"He was," said Dr. John Haven, a classmate, "a great reader, and
probably had more general knowledge than any one of his classmates when
he graduated."
He necessarily used the greatest economy in college, his board costing
him but one dollar and fifty cents a week, a mile from college grounds;
and when vacation came he walked more than a hundred miles to Boston,
because he had no money to pay the stage-coach fare.
Charles Beecher, the youngest of Roxana's children, was in college with
his brother Henry. Dr. Beecher became so straitened in money matters
that it seemed probable that the sons must leave college. He and his
wife talked the matter over till finally he said, "Well, the Lord always
has taken care of me, and I am sure he always will." The mother lay
awake after she had gone to bed, and cried over it; evidently she was
not as cold at heart as the young Henry Ward thought.
The next morning was the Sabbath. The door-bell rang, and a one hundred
dollar bill was handed in from Mr. Homes, as a thank-offering for the
conversion of one of his children. The way was now opened for the boys
to continue their college course.
After Henry had been at Amherst less than a year, in the spring vacation
of 1831, he and another student walked fifty miles to the home of a
classmate, and there fell in love with the sister of the latter, Eunice
White Bullard, daughter of Dr. Artemas Bullard of West Sutton, Mass.
"After our outside work was done," writes Mrs. Beecher, years later,
"mother and I took knitting and sewing and sat down with them. I was
going to wind a skein of sewing-silk (that was before spools were
common), and, as was my custom, put it over the back of a chair. More
gallant and thoughtful, _apparently_, than his older companions, this
young gentleman insisted upon holding it for me to wind. For some
reason--_perfectly unaccountable_, if one judged only by his quiet,
innocent face, without watching the eyes and mouth--that skein became
as intricately tangled as if tied by Macbeth's witches.
"'A badly tangled skein is it not?' said he, when I had lost half my
evening in getting it wound.
"'Rather more troublesome, I imagine, than if I had kept it on the
chair,' I replied. 'It was a good trial of patience, anyhow,' was his
response to the laugh that followed."
The students remained for several days, and had a merry time. One day,
after some pies had been taken out of the old-fashioned brick oven, a
few ashes falling upon one, the mother asked Eunice to get them off.
Henry offered to help, and respectfully taking the pie from her hands
carried it into the garden, where he and his two other college friends
ate it up. "There, we have cleared the plate nicely," said Henry Ward,
as he handed it back to the mother.
Dr. Bullard said of young Beecher, "He's smart. If he lives, he'll make
his mark in the world."
The next winter, January, 1832, Henry Ward taught school near the town
where Eunice was teaching. He asked, "If she would go to the West with
him as a missionary?" and was referred to her parents. Mrs. Bullard was
grieved; but Dr. Bullard was angry, and said, "Why, you are a couple of
babies. You don't know your own minds yet, and won't for some years to
come." Young Beecher was a little over eighteen, and Miss Bullard ten
months older.
About this time Henry earned five dollars for giving a temperance
lecture, using the money to buy for his future wife the unusual
love-gift of Baxter's "Saints' Rest."
Soon after, he walked to Brattleborough, Vt., fifty miles each way, gave
a lecture, for which he received ten dollars, and with a part of the
money bought an engagement-ring for Miss Bullard, which was also her
wedding-ring, and with the rest the works of Edmund Burke.
This money gave him great satisfaction. "Oh, that bill!" he says. "How
it warmed me and invigorated me! I looked at it before going to sleep; I
examined my pocket the next morning, to be sure that I had not dreamed
it. How I pitied the _poor_ students, who had not, I well knew, ten
dollars in _their_ pockets. Still, I tried to keep down pride in its
offensive forms. I would not be lifted up."
After he had bought the books, he says, "I was a man that owned a
library! I became conservative and frugal. Before, I had spent at least
a dollar and a half a year for knickknacks; but, after I had founded a
library, I reformed all such wastes, and every penny I could raise or
save I compelled to transform itself into books!" When he graduated, he
owned about fifty volumes.
Dr. Lyman Beecher having left Boston to become the President of Lane
Theological Seminary at Cincinnati, Ohio, Henry and Charles went thither
to study theology. The three years spent there were full of pathetic,
and sometimes comic, incidents. In this, at that time far West, the
fences were poor, and cattle were apt to stray at will over flower-beds
and across the gardens. One day Henry found a strange cow lying down on
the barn floor. He quickly drove her out, chased her down the street,
and, hot and tired, came to the house and threw himself on the sofa.
"There, I guess I have taught one old cow to know where she belongs," he
remarked to his father.
"What do you mean?" said the doctor, growing excited. "Well, you have
done it. I have just bought that cow, and had to wade the Ohio River
twice to get her home; and, after I have got her safely into the barn,
you have turned her out. You have done it, and no mistake." And the cow
was vigorously hunted up.
During all these years affectionate letters were sent to Eunice Bullard.
"What a noble creation E---- is," young Beecher writes in his journal.
"I could have looked through ten thousand and never found one so every
way suited to me. How dearly do I love her!"
Some of this time was darkened by doubt and disbelief; but, like John
Bunyan, after about two years of unsettled condition of mind, peace was
assured. "It came to me," he says, "like the bursting of spring. It was
as if yesterday there was not a bird to be seen or heard, and as if
to-day the woods were full of singing birds. There rose up before me a
view of Jesus as the Saviour of sinners,--not of saints, but of sinners
unconverted, before they were any better,--because they were so bad and
needed so much; and that view has never gone from me.... Never for a
single moment have I doubted the power of Christ's love to save me, any
more than I have doubted the existence in the heaven of the sun by day
and the moon by night."
The second Mrs. Beecher had died, triumphing in her faith. Dr. Beecher,
tried for heresy, was fighting theological battles, which his son Henry
learned to abhor.
"I see no benefit in a controversy," he wrote. "It will be a fierce
technical dispute about propositions, at the expense in the churches of
vital godliness.... Others may blow the bellows, and turn the doctrines
in the fire, and lay them on the anvil of controversy, and beat them
with all sorts of hammers into all sorts of shapes; but I shall busy
myself with _using_ the sword of the Lord, not in _forging_ it."
Pro-slavery riots had begun, and the printing-press of James G. Birney
was destroyed by a mob of Kentucky slaveholders. Young Beecher was sworn
in as a special constable, and for several nights, well armed, patrolled
the streets with others, to protect the colored people. He was learning
bravery early, and he had need of it through life.
Mr. Beecher graduated in 1837 from Lane Seminary, and through the
influence of a Yankee woman, Martha Sawyer, was asked to go to
Lawrenceburg, Ind., to preach. "There was a church in that place," says
Mr. Beecher, "composed of about twenty members, of which she was the
factotum. She collected the money, she was the treasurer, she was the
manager, she was the trustee, she was the everything of that church."
There were about fifteen hundred persons in the little town, situated at
the junction of the Ohio and Miami Rivers. There were four big
distilleries in the place, and a steamboat load of liquor was carried
away from it every day.
"When I went there and entered upon my vocation of preaching," says Mr.
Beecher, "I found a church, occupying a little brick building, with
nineteen or twenty members. There was one man, and the rest were women.
With the exception of two persons, there was not one of them who was not
obliged to gain a livelihood by the labor of the hands. So you will
understand how very poor they were....
"I was sexton in the church. There were no lamps there, so I went and
bought some and filled them and lit them. I swept the church, and
lighted my own fires. I did not ring the bell because there was none. I
opened the church before every meeting, and shut and locked it after
every meeting. I took care of everything in the church."
The salary was to be $300--it was raised from $250--of which the Home
Missionary Society was to give $150.
His friends in Cincinnati opposed his going to so small a field; but he
carried out the advice which he gave years afterward to theological
students: "_Don't hang_ round idle, waiting for a _good offer_. Enter
the first field God opens for you. If he needs you in a larger one, he
will open the gate for you to enter."
Young Beecher, having waited nearly seven years to claim his bride,--he
was now but twenty-four,--wrote to Miss Bullard that he would be ready
for the marriage Aug. 3. Arriving at her home on the evening of July 29,
he picked over and stoned with her the raisins for the wedding-cake,
beat the eggs, and in every way helped on the joyful event. At the hour
chosen for the ceremony, a heavy thunder-storm came on. The bride
determined to wait; and an hour after the appointed time, under a
brilliant rainbow, they were married, and started for their missionary
labors in the West.
They boarded for a short time, and then decided to go to housekeeping.
Mrs. Beecher, during the absence of her husband at a synodical meeting,
found two rooms over a stable, at a rental of forty dollars per year.
She went to Cincinnati by boat, to the home of the Beechers, and
received, to help in furnishing these rooms, a bedstead, a stove, some
sheets and pillow-cases, and a piece of carpet. Through the sale of her
cloak for thirty dollars, she obtained a husk mattress, a table,
wash-tubs, and groceries.
On Mr. Beecher's return he helped scrub the floors--the landlord
objected to their being painted, as it _would injure the wood_!
Mrs. Beecher found in the back yard a broken table and shelves, which
had been thrown away as useless; and covering the former with the skirts
of Mr. Beecher's old coat, it became quite an elegant writing-table for
the young minister. The flour-barrel and sugar-barrel--sent in by
friends--were curtained from the rest of the room by a piece of
four-cent calico.
Mrs. Beecher helped support the family by taking in sewing and keeping
boarders. Mr. Beecher soon became the idol of his people. Mr. John R.
Howard, in his life of Beecher, repeats these words of the famous
preacher: "There lived over on the other side of the street in
Lawrenceburg, a very profane man who was counted ugly. I understood that
he had said some very bitter things of me. I went right over to his
store, and sat down on the counter to talk with him. I happened in
often--day in and day out. My errand was to make him like me. I did make
him like me,--and all the children too; and when I left, two or three
years later, it was his house that was opened to me and all my family
for the week after I gave up my room. And to the day of his death, I do
not believe the old man could mention my name without crying."
"Once," says a brother minister, "he called to a poor German emigrant
woman that if she would bring him her clothes-line, he would show her
how to get her winter's supply of fuel. She brought it, and he tied a
stone to one end, and flinging it out from the shore over the logs,
would draw them in. In a little while their combined efforts had brought
in a dray-load."
Mr. Beecher began his work modestly: "I never expected that I could
accomplish much," he said. "I merely went to work with the feeling: 'I
will do as well as I can, and I will stick to it, if the Lord pleases,
and fight his battle the best way I know how.' And I was thankful as I
could be. Nobody ever sent me a spare-rib that I did not thank God for
the kindness which was shown me. I recollect when Judge ---- gave me his
cast-off clothing, I felt that I was sumptuously clothed. I wore old
coats and second-hand shirts for two or three years, and I was not above
it, either, although sometimes, as I was physically a somewhat
well-developed man, and the judge was thin and his legs were slim, they
were rather a tight fit."
"At first," he says, "I preached some theology.... But my horizon grew
larger and larger in that one idea of Christ.... After I had gone
through two or three revivals of religion, when I looked around, he was
all in all. And my whole ministry sprang out of that."
After two years at Lawrenceburg, Mr. Beecher was called to the Second
Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis, then a place of four thousand
inhabitants, with a salary of six hundred dollars. He declined the call
twice, but finally, laying the matter before the Synod, was constrained
to accept.
Here, as at Lawrenceburg, the church was filled to overflowing to hear
the young, original, earnest preacher. During his ministry of eight
years at Indianapolis, there were three seasons of revival. In the
spring of 1842 about one hundred persons joined the church. One spring
Mr. Beecher preached for seventy consecutive nights. He loved to recall
those days. He said, "Talk of a young mother's feelings over her first
babe--what is that compared with the solemnity, the enthusiasm, the
impetuosity of gratitude, of humility, of singing gladness, with which a
young pastor greets the incoming of his first revival? He stands upon
the shore to see the tide come in! It is the movement of the infinite,
ethereal tide! It is from the other world! There is no color like heart
color. The homeliest things dipped in that forever after glow with
celestial hues."
Other churches besides his own were blessed with his ministrations. He
says, "For eight or ten years I labored for the poor and needy, in
cabins, in camp-meetings, through woods, up and down, sometimes riding
two days to meet my appointments. I had no books but my Bible; and I
went from one to the other--from the Bible to men, and from men to the
Bible."
Yet when he could be at home he was a diligent reader of other
books,--the sermons of Jonathan Edwards, of Isaac Barrow, and of Robert
South. He pored over Loudon's Encyclopædias of Horticulture,
Agriculture, and Architecture. He became the editor of the _Indiana
Farmer and Gardener_.
He loved to work among flowers and raise vegetables, which he often took
to market before daylight. He believed in manual labor. He painted his
own house, and did not hesitate to bring his groceries home in a
wheelbarrow. He said: "It is my deliberate conviction that physical
labor is indispensable to intellectual and moral health."
He was as fearless as he was industrious. One man had taken offence at
Mr. Beecher's plain-speaking about some of his brutal acts. He stationed
himself on the hotel steps, pistol in hand, to meet the pastor as he
should return from the post-office.
"Did you say thus in your sermon yesterday?" asked the man.
"I did," was the reply.
"Did you intend those remarks for me, or were you meaning me?"
"I most certainly did."
"Then,"--with an oath, "take it back right here, or I'll shoot you on
the spot."
"Shoot away," said Mr. Beecher, looking the man squarely in the face,
and passed on. The man followed for a few steps, and then went down a
side street.
Although one of Mr. Beecher's elders had said, "If an Abolitionist comes
here, I will head a mob and put him down," the brave preacher sat on the
platform at an Abolitionist meeting, and in his pulpit preached so
earnestly against slavery that it was predicted that his influence for
all time would be destroyed. He lectured as earnestly against
intemperance and other sins; and these "Lectures to Young Men" became
his first volume, dedicated to his father. The book had a wide reading,
both in England and America.
While at Indianapolis his little son George died. Years later he said,
"I remember, to-night, as well as I did at the time, the night that my
eldest son died. That was my first great sorrow.... It was in March, and
there had just come up a great storm, and all the ground was covered
with snow.
"We went down to the graveyard with little Georgie, and waded through it
in the snow. I got out of the carriage and took the little coffin in my
arms, and walked knee-deep to the side of the grave, and looking in I
saw the winter down at the very bottom of it.... If I should live a
thousand years I could not help shivering every time I thought of it."
Mr. Beecher loved the West, and expected to remain permanently in it;
but the East had learned of his earnestness and his eloquence, and
called him to Brooklyn. For a long time he refused to consider it; but
his wife having suffered much from chills and fever, he finally accepted
the call to the newly organized Plymouth Church, with twenty-one
members, in the fall of 1847, at a salary of fifteen hundred dollars. In
two years the membership had grown to over four hundred, and a new
church had been built--the other having been badly damaged by fire--at a
cost of $36,000.
A month after Mr. Beecher's arrival in Brooklyn, his little girl,
"Caty," died, and began, as he says, "her quiet march toward the
once-opened gate, to rejoin the brother."
From this time onward till Mr. Beecher's death in 1887, for forty years,
Plymouth Church became the centre of almost unparalleled influence. Dr.
Barrows says with truth, "It is probable that, except Westminster Abbey,
no other church of English-speaking nations has in this century been
visited by so many men and women of renown."
The church, accommodating three thousand persons, was year by year
crowded to repletion, often as many going away as could find
standing-room within. Everybody wanted to hear the most eloquent pulpit
orator in America.
When Mr. Beecher first came to Plymouth Church, some said he would not
please the cultivated East, but his earnestness soon satisfied all
cavillers. He had one message, as he said, "The love of Christ to men.
This, to me, was a burning reality.... Consequently I went into this
work with all my soul, preaching night and day."
The slavery question had now come to be the foremost question among the
people. By the Missouri Compromise of 1821, slavery was not to extend
north beyond latitude 36° 30´. When, in 1849, California asked
admittance to the Union as a free State, the South, feeling that the
balance of power would be on the side of freedom, bitterly opposed it.
Henry Clay, the great compromiser, brought forward his "Omnibus Bill" in
1850, the principal features of which were that California should be a
free State, and the Fugitive Slave Law should be more stringent, so that
Southerners might reclaim slaves in the Northern States, and take them
back to bondage, and it should be the duty of Northerners to help them.
President Millard Fillmore signed these measures.
Mr. Beecher wrote for the New York _Independent_ a three-column article,
entitled, "Shall We Compromise?" The dying John C. Calhoun had it read
twice to him. "The man who says that is right," he repeated. "There is
no alternative. It is liberty or slavery."
When Daniel Webster, in his fatal speech of March 7, 1850, favored
compromise, "Then it was that I flamed," said Mr. Beecher, and from that
time till the Civil War was over he was at a white heat.
When Wendell Phillips was denied a place to speak because he was an
Abolitionist, and no one dared to rent a hall for him through fear of a
mob, Henry Ward Beecher opened Plymouth pulpit. He went to every trustee
for his consent. It the man hesitated, Mr. Beecher said, "You and I
will break if you don't give me this permission," and he signed.
A great audience assembled, and men were ready with revolvers to use
them if the mob molested the speaker.
Mr. Beecher would not ride in omnibuses where colored persons were
refused. He invited Frederick Douglass to sit beside him on the platform
in Plymouth Church--he would not have a pulpit, which half hid the
pastor from his people. Mr. Beecher's sister, Mrs. Stowe, had published
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" as a serial in 1851, and in book form in 1852, which
electrified the North and infuriated the South.
When Stephen A. Douglas proposed the repeal of the Missouri Compromise,
which was carried in 1854, Kansas became a battle-ground between
slaveholders and lovers of freedom. Houses were burned, men were
murdered, and all the horrors of civil war continued for four years. Mr.
Beecher's voice and pen were never silent: "Peace in Kansas," he said,
"means peace everywhere; war there will be war all over the land....
What is done must be done quickly. Funds must be freely given, arms must
be had, even if bought at the price mentioned by our Saviour: 'He that
hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.'"
He took up collections in Plymouth Church and elsewhere for Sharp's
rifles, and for Bibles as well. Some of the rifles were sent, it is
said, in boxes marked Bibles, though without his knowledge, and were
therefore called "Beecher's Bibles."
When John C. Frémont was the first nominee of the Republicans in 1856,
Mr. Beecher, with the hearty concurrence of his church, spoke for the
party two or three times a week all through the State of New York. An
amusing incident occurred at Rome, N.Y., which illustrated Beecher's
graphic utterance.
He said: "My friends, in this great campaign there are but two sides,
and we must range ourselves upon one side or the other; there is no
middle ground for any of us. On the one side is Buchanan, with the black
shield of slavery, and upon the other is Frémont, with the white banner
of liberty, and with one or the other of these two you must take your
stand; but who is this that I see crawling under the fence? Oh, that is
Millard Fillmore." Immediately a little fellow in the front row jumped
up, looked under the chairs, and shouted out, "Where is he?" The people
laughed so heartily, that the lad got up and left the hall.
Mr. Beecher was always quick at repartee, either in conversation or
address. Before an audience of ten thousand people in Chicago, he was
lecturing on "Communism," and said, "The voice of the people is the
voice of God." A man in the gallery shouted, "The voice of the people is
the voice of a fool." Beecher replied simply, "I said the voice of the
people, not the voice of one man."
In one of his anti-slavery speeches he said "that it was a penitentiary
offence to teach a slave." A man in the corner of the gallery exclaimed,
"It's a lie!"
"Well," said Beecher, "I shall not argue with the gentleman in the
corner, as doubtless he has been there and ought to know."
Very stirring scenes were witnessed in these times. Two Edmonson
sisters, of light complexion, whose mother was born a slave, but whose
father was free, had been brought up in Washington. The former owner of
the mother, finding that they were uncommonly attractive, determined to
send them to New Orleans to be sold in the slave market. The girls tried
to escape, but could not.
Their heart-broken father went to New York to see if he could raise the
two thousand dollars demanded for their purchase. He was advised to see
Mr. Beecher. He reached his home in Brooklyn; but having met many
rebuffs, he feared to ring the bell, and sat down on the steps, while
tears coursed down his cheeks. Mr. Beecher finally heard his story and
arranged for a meeting at the Broadway Tabernacle. He spoke with
wonderful power, as did also the Rev. Dr. John Dowling, the father of
the brilliant Rev. Dr. George Thomas Dowling. The sum of twenty-two
hundred dollars was raised, and the girls were set free.
Mr. Beecher said, "I think that of all the meetings that I have attended
in my life, for a panic of sympathy I never saw one that surpassed that.
I have seen a great many in my day."
Mrs. Stowe became responsible for the education of the sisters, and
later raised enough money to purchase the freedom of the mother and two
other children.
Among several who were bought for liberty "on the auction-block of
Plymouth pulpit," was "Pinky," a little colored girl. "She was bought
and overbought," said Mr. Beecher. "The rain never fell faster than the
tears fell from many that were here." Rose Terry Cooke threw her ring
into the contribution box, and Mr. Beecher put it on the child's hand
and told her "it was her freedom-ring." Her expression was such a happy
one that Eastman Johnson, the artist, painted her on canvas, looking at
her freedom-ring. Later she was sent for a year to Lincoln University at
Washington, and went back to her own people to become a teacher and a
missionary among them.
In these years of incessant toil, Mr. Beecher's home was gladdened by
the birth of twin boys, Alfred and Arthur, in December, 1852. They both
died on the fourth of July in the following year, and were buried in one
grave. Mr. Beecher could not hear their names mentioned for years, so
overwhelming was the loss to the man who idolized children.
In the autumn of 1854, by the aid of friends, he purchased a farm of
nearly one hundred acres at Lenox, Berkshire County, Mass. He was a
devoted lover of trees. Speaking of a large elm, he said, "It was with a
feeling of awe that we looked up into its face; and when I whispered to
myself, 'This is mine,' there was a shrinking, as if there were
sacrilege in the very thought of _property_ in such a creature of God as
this cathedral-topped tree! Does a man bare his head in some old church?
So did I, standing in the shadow of this regal tree, and looking up into
that completed glory at which three hundred years have been at work with
noiseless fingers!... Thou belongest to no man's hand, but to all men's
eyes that do love beauty, and that have learned through beauty to behold
God! Stand, then, in thine own beauty and grandeur! I shall be a lover
and a protector, to keep drought from thy roots and the age from thy
trunk."
Though he said, "The chief use of a farm is to lie down upon," knowing
as all brain workers know, how restful it is to stretch one's self upon
the ground, yet he always cultivated flowers and vegetables, and made
the whole farm a thing of beauty.
He felt that he owed much to Ruskin's works. "The sky, the earth, and
the waters are no longer what they were to us. We have learned a
language and come to a sympathy in them more through the instrumentality
of Ruskin's works than by all other instrumentalities on earth,
excepting, always, the nature which my mother gave me--sainted be her
name."
When the slavery struggles had culminated in war, and the South had
fired the first gun at Fort Sumter, April 12, 1861, Beecher's heart was
aflame. In his pulpit he said, "Give me war redder than blood and
fiercer than fire, if this terrific infliction is necessary that I may
maintain my faith in God, in human liberty, my faith of the fathers in
the instruments of liberty, my faith in this land as the appointed abode
and chosen refuge of liberty for all the earth!"
When his eldest son--he had already enlisted--said, "Father, may I
enlist?" the instant reply was, "If you don't, I'll disown you."
After helping to fit out two regiments, Mr. Beecher took upon himself
the entire equipping of a new one, called "The Long Island Volunteers,"
afterwards the Sixty-seventh New York.
Plymouth Church parlors became a workshop, where, under Mrs. Beecher's
direction, women made articles for the soldiers at the front. By
personal solicitation large sums were raised from families and
merchants. Mr. Beecher told his wife to use all his salary except the
smallest amount necessary for family expenses. He made patriotic
addresses which were read and talked about the country over. "It is
probable," said the well-known journalist, Frederick Hudson, "that there
is not another man in the United States who is as much heard and read as
Henry Ward Beecher, unless the other man is Wendell Phillips."
The first anniversary Sunday of the attack on Fort Sumter, Henry Ward
Beecher said, "We will give every dollar that we are worth, every child
that we have, and our own selves; we will bring all that we are and all
that we have, and offer them up freely--but this country shall be one
and undivided. We will have one Constitution and one liberty, and that
universal. The Atlantic shall sound it, and the Pacific shall echo it
back, deep answering to deep, and it shall reverberate from the Lakes on
the North to the unfrozen Gulf on the South--'One nation, one
constitution, one starry banner!' Hear it, England!--one country, and
indivisible; one hope; one baptism; one constitution; one government;
one nation; one country; one people--cost what it may, we will have it!"
He urged _immediate_ and _universal emancipation_, with all the fire and
eloquence of his nature. He became the warm friend of President Lincoln,
with whom he had many confidential conferences. When the immortal
Emancipation Proclamation was issued, declaring that after Jan. 1, 1863,
the slaves "shall be thenceforward and forever free," Beecher said in
his lecture-room talk, Dec. 31: "As for myself, let come what will come,
I care not. God may peel me and bark me and strip me of my leaves, and
do as he chooses with my earthly estate. I have lived long enough.... I
have uttered some words that will not die, because they are incorporated
into the lives of men that will not die."
In June, 1863, worn out with continuous speaking, Mr. Beecher went to
Europe with Dr. John Raymond, then president of Vassar College. He had
been over before, in 1850, thirteen years previously. He travelled in
Switzerland, Italy, and Germany, and at the request of the United
States Minister, talked with King Leopold of Belgium, a wise and able
man, about American affairs.
The king, asking Mr. Beecher what he thought of sending Maximilian to
Mexico, he replied, "Your Majesty, any man that wants to sit upon a
throne in Mexico, I would advise to try Vesuvius first; if he can sit
there for a while, then he might go and try it in Mexico." His words
proved true for the unfortunate Maximilian and Carlotta.
Henry Ward Beecher found in England much sympathy with the slave-holding
South, and a disbelief in the ultimate success of the North, and
continuance of the Union. Going to Europe for rest, he did not intend to
speak, but was finally persuaded that it was his duty to win friends for
the North, so that England should not declare for the Southern
Confederacy.
The first meeting was held at Manchester, Oct. 9, 1863. The streets were
placarded with huge posters in red ink, and threats were heard on every
side that the speaker should never leave Free Trade Hall alive.
As soon as Beecher began to speak, there were hisses and yells by the
mob, so that not a word could be heard. Standing erect before the
howling crowd, he said, "My friends, we will have a whole night's
session, but we will be heard." When not a word could reach the people,
he leaned over to the reporters present, and said: "Gentlemen, be kind
enough to take down what I say. It will be in sections, but I will have
it connected by and by."
Finally by courage and wit and eloquence the crowd was subdued and won
over to the speaker, who discussed the dire effects of slavery upon the
manufacturing interests of the world, and stated the real condition of
America in her struggle between slavery and liberty.
He said: "If the day shall come in one year, in two years, or in ten
years hence, when the old stars and stripes shall float over every State
of America; if the day shall come when that which was the accursed cause
of this dire and atrocious war--slavery--shall be done away with; if the
day shall come when through all the Gulf States there shall be liberty
of speech, as there never has been; when there shall be liberty of the
press, as there never has been; when men shall have common schools to
send their children to, which they have never had in the South ... it
will be worth all the dreadful blood and tears and woe."
Just as Beecher was closing, a telegram from London was read that "Her
Majesty has to-night caused the 'broad arrow' to be placed on the rams
in Mr. Laird's yard at Birkenhead." This meant the stoppage of the ships
which were building for the South, to destroy our shipping as the
Alabama had done. The whole audience rose and cheered, men waving their
hats and women their handkerchiefs as they wept.
So moved were the people that a big fellow in the gallery, who could not
shake hands with Mr. Beecher, cried out, "Shake my umbrella," as he
reached it down to the platform. Mr. Beecher did as requested. "By
Jocks!" said the man, "nobody sha'n't touch that umbrella again."
On Oct. 13 Beecher spoke to an immense audience at Glasgow, telling them
that in building ships to destroy free labor in America, "they were
driving nails in their own coffins."
The interruptions, though great here, were not as bad as at Manchester.
The next evening he spoke to a packed house at Edinburgh, being lifted
over the people's heads to reach the platform. These speeches were
reported verbatim all over England.
On Oct. 16 he spoke at the great Philharmonic Hall at Liverpool, at that
time the headquarters of Southern sympathies. The meeting was a perfect
bedlam. "Three cheers for Jeff Davis" were given every now and then,
with cries of "Turn him out!" hisses and yells, till Beecher sat down on
the edge of the platform and waited for a calm. For three hours,
sentence by sentence, his voice was hurled against a threatening,
hooting mob.
Four days later Henry Ward Beecher spoke to a dense crowd in Exeter
Hall, London. With satire and pathos and burning eloquence, he spoke
like one inspired. Dr. William M. Taylor, of the Broadway Tabernacle,
New York, said, "I believe there has not been such eloquence in the
world since Demosthenes."
Dr. Lyman Abbott and the Rev. S. B. Halliday, in their life of Mr.
Beecher, say with truth, that "he changed the public sentiment, and so
the political course of the nation, and secured and cemented an alliance
between the mother country and our own land, which needs no treaties to
give it expression, which has been gaining strength ever since, and
which no demagogism on this side of the water, and no ignorance and
prejudice on that, have been able to impair."
The physical strain while in England was great. "I thought at times," he
says, "that I should certainly break a blood-vessel or have apoplexy. I
did not care; I was willing to die as ever I was, when hungry and
thirsty, to take refreshment, if I might die for my country."
Mr. Beecher on his return was welcomed with open arms and grateful
hearts by the American people. Great receptions were given him at the
Academy of Music, Brooklyn, and the Academy of Music, New York.
When the heart-breaking war was over, and General Lee had surrendered to
General Grant under the apple-tree at Appomattox, April 9, 1865, and it
was decided to raise over Fort Sumter, April 14, the flag that had been
pulled down four years before, the great preacher and orator, who had
helped to save the Union, was asked to deliver the address.
When Major-General Robert Anderson ran up the flag, it was saluted by a
hundred guns from Fort Sumter and by a national salute from every fort
that had fired upon Sumter at the beginning of the war.
Henry Ward Beecher's address was masterly; a review of the dreadful war,
and our duties in the future.
That very night, April 14, 1865, President Lincoln was assassinated by
the actor, J. Wilkes Booth. Mr. Beecher said in his sermon the following
Sunday: "The blow brought not a sharp pang. It was so terrible that at
first it stunned sensibility.... There was a piteous helplessness.
Strong men bowed down and wept.... Men walked for days as if a corpse
lay unburied in their dwellings. There was nothing else to think of. All
business was laid aside. Pleasure forgot to smile.... Even avarice stood
still, and greed was strongly moved to generous sympathy and universal
sorrow. Rear to his name monuments, found charitable institutions, and
write his name above their lintels; but no monument will ever equal the
universal, spontaneous, and sublime sorrow that in a moment swept down
lines and parties, and covered up animosities, and in an hour brought a
divided people into unity of grief and indivisible fellowship of
anguish."
Beecher took an active part in the reconstruction and readmission of the
seceded States, urging that the greatest leniency be shown, now that
they had surrendered; opposed the hanging of Jefferson Davis; urged the
right of suffrage for the colored people:--"It is always inexpedient and
foolish," he said, "to deny a man his natural rights." He did not
believe that the freedmen should be cared for permanently by a military
power at the South, placed there by the North. "We are to educate the
negroes, and to Christianly educate them. We are to raise them in
intelligence more and more, until they shall be able to prove themselves
worthy of citizenship. For, I tell you, all the laws in the world cannot
bolster a man up so as to place him any higher than his own moral worth
and natural forces put him."
For a letter stating such views as these, written to the National
Convention of Soldiers and Sailors held at Cleveland, O., in the autumn
of 1866, Mr. Beecher was assailed all over the country. "The rage and
abuse of excited men," he said, "I have too long been used to, now to be
surprised or daunted.... I stood almost alone, my church, in my absence,
full of excitement; all my ministerial brethren, with a few honorable
exceptions, either aloof or in clamor against me; well-nigh the whole
religious press denouncing me, and the political press furious."
He spoke boldly against the corrupt judges in New York City in the time
of the Tweed dictatorship. Years later when Beecher voted and spoke for
Grover Cleveland for the presidency, because he believed a change of
parties wise for the country at the time, on account of "the corruption
of too long held power," and did not trust James G. Blaine, the opposing
candidate, the same denunciation and bitterness were shown; all of which
proves that toleration for opinions differing from our own requires a
very high type of character.
Beecher's liberal views in theology were likewise bitterly antagonized.
The truth was that he cared little for creeds, believing that to preach
Christ as the Saviour of the world was the paramount and vital need of
men. He believed the theology of the future "would be far more powerful
than the old--a theology of hope, and of love, which shall cast out
fear." He felt with Whittier in the "Eternal Goodness,"--
"Yet, in the maddening maze of things,
And tossed by storm and flood,
To one fixed trust my spirit clings,--
I know that God is good!
And so beside the Silent Sea
I wait the muffled oar:
No harm from Him can come to me
On ocean or on shore.
I know not where His islands lift
There fronded palms in air;
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care."
His sermons were translated into German, French, Spanish, and Italian,
and were read the world over; and men and women grew more gentle and
lovable from the reading.
After the war the busy life went on as busy as ever. One volume of the
"Life of Christ," rich in his wonderful imagination and beauty of
language, was written. He did not live to complete the second volume.
His one novel, "Norwood," a story of New England, was published as a
serial in the New York _Ledger_ in 1867, Mr. Bonner giving him $25,000
for it.
In 1870, having resigned the editorship of the _Independent_, Beecher
became the editor of the _Christian Union_. In 1872 he gave a course of
twelve lectures on "Preaching" to the Divinity School of Yale College,
Mr. Henry W. Sage of Plymouth Church having founded at New Haven the
Lyman Beecher Lectureship of Preaching.
When asked by Mr. John R. Howard if he knew what he should say at these
lectures, he replied, "Yes; in a way. I know what I am going to aim at,
but of course I don't get down to anything specific. I brood it, and
ponder it, and dream over it, and pick up information about one point
and another; but if ever I _think_ I see the plan opening up to me, I
don't dare to look at it or put it down on paper. If I once write a
thing out, it is almost impossible for me to kindle up to it again. I
never dare nowadays to write out a sermon during the week; that is sure
to kill it. I have to think around and about it, get it generally ready,
and then _fuse it_ when the time comes."
Beecher was a great student of the Bible, reading it on the cars as he
travelled to his lecture appointments, and, like Emerson, jotting down
in little note-books thoughts and suggestions.
He prepared his Sunday morning sermon in an hour and a half, between
breakfast and the time of service. Locked into his room, he wrote with
his goose-quill pen the headings and a few illustrations. Then in the
pulpit the eloquent words came pouring from his lips, born of the time
and place. His evening sermon he prepared after tea. When asked how he
was able to do so much work, he said it was partly owing to a good
constitution; "much, also, to an early acquired knowledge of how to take
care of myself, to secure invariably a full measure of sleep, to regard
food as an engineer does fuel (to be employed economically, and entirely
with reference to the work to be done by the machine); much to the habit
of economizing social forces, and not wasting in needless conversation
and pleasurable hilarities the spirit that would carry me through many
days of necessary work; but, above all, to the possession of a hopeful
disposition and natural courage, to sympathy with men, and to an
unfailing trust in God; so that I have always worked for the love of
working."
He never used stimulants except as a medicine. He wrote to a friend, "I
am a _total abstainer, both in belief and practice_.... I hold that no
man in health _needs_ or is the better for alcoholic stimulants; that
great good will follow to the whole community from the total disuse of
them as articles of diet or luxury; and that so soon as the moral sense
of society will sustain such laws, it will be wise and right to enact
prohibitory liquor laws.... I should as soon think of offering a well
man a dose of rhubarb as a dose of brandy."
Mr. Beecher was an earnest advocate of woman suffrage as well as
temperance. He believed in equality of privilege in the pulpit, in
medicine, everywhere, though he said, "People may talk about equality of
the sexes!... The silent smile of a sensible, loving woman will vanquish
ten men." Of woman, he said, "She is the right hand of the charities of
the church.... She is not only permitted in the great orthodox churches
of New England to speak in meeting, but when they send her abroad,
ordained to preach the gospel to the heathen, there she is permitted to
preach; and when they come home, women may still teach in a hall, but
not in a church, and dear old men there are yet so conservative that
they are reading through golden spectacles their Bibles, and saying: 'I
suffer not a woman to preach.'"
Mr. Beecher found his recreation from hard work in his love of country
life. His farm at Lenox, Mass., proving too far from Brooklyn, he
bought, in 1859, thirty-six acres at Peekskill-on-the-Hudson, and named
it Boscobel. The old farmhouse was said to have been the headquarters of
General Israel Putnam of Revolutionary fame.
He watched like a child for the first note of the bluebird and robin,
for the first arbutus, anemone, and violet of early spring. He loved
roses as fondly as Professor Child of Harvard College. He raised
hollyhocks, dahlias, geraniums, pansies, lilies, and chrysanthemums. He
said, "The wonder is, that every other man is not an enthusiast, and in
the month of June a gentle fanatic. Floral insanity is one of the most
charming inflictions to which man is heir."
He bought trees of almost every variety, chickens of various kinds,
Jersey cows and honey-bees, and a large family of dogs,--a St. Bernard,
a mastiff, an Eskimo, a terrier, and others.
He once said, "If the dog isn't good for anything else, it is good for
you to love, and that is a good deal." Speaking of those at Peekskill,
he said, "They are practically good for nothing, but I sometimes think
they are worth more to me than the whole place."
He used to say that he felt really sorry that his dog Tommy could not
talk. "If ever there was a dog that was distressed to think that he
could not talk, that dog is. I sit by him on the bank, of a summer
evening, and I say, 'Tommy, I am sorry for you;' and he whines, as much
as to say, 'So am I.' I say, 'Tommy, I should like to tell you a great
many things that you are worthy of knowing;' and I do not know which is
the most puzzled, he or I--I to get any idea into his head, or he to get
any out of mine."
Mr. Beecher finally built a beautiful house of granite and brick,
natural woods throughout the interior: first story cherry; second, ash;
and third, pine, where he gathered his valuable library. "Where is human
nature so weak as in a book-store?" he said; and in books and flowers
and works of art he found that money melted away, so that, say his sons,
William C. Beecher and the Rev. Samuel Scoville, in the life of their
father, "it was in part to meet this heavy outlay that he projected and
carried out the series of lecture-tours that ran through the last ten
years of his life."
He had learned what many another learns, that "the most profitable kind
of land-owning" is to "enjoy all that there is of beauty and
peacefulness in my neighbor's lands as much as they, without the
responsibility or the taxes." And yet people have to build once, to
learn _not_ to build again.
In 1872, Mr. Beecher having preached for twenty-five years in Plymouth
Church, a "Silver Wedding" was celebrated by his people. Monday, Oct. 7,
was the first day of the jubilee. In the sunny afternoon the three
thousand children in the three Sunday-schools connected with the church
marched past Mr. Beecher's house, as he stood upon his doorstep, and
each child laid a flower at his feet, until he stood "literally
embanked in flowers." Each day through the week had its appropriate
exercises. On Thursday, the historical day, the brilliant and learned
Dr. Richard S. Storrs of Brooklyn gave an eloquent address. "May your
soul," said the speaker, "as the years go on, be whitened more and more
in the radiance of God's light, and in the sunshine of His love!"
That soul was soon to be tested and whitened in a furnace heated almost
beyond endurance. Theodore Tilton, a member of Mr. Beecher's church,
had, through the influence of the latter, become the editor of the
_Independent_. Having lost his position, apparently by his own misdeeds,
and made his family unhappy, Mr. and Mrs. Beecher advised his wife to
separate from him. Tilton determined to drive Beecher from his pulpit,
and forced his wife to criminate the latter in character, which
statements she afterwards declared again and again were untrue in every
particular. Plymouth Church dropped its obnoxious member. He took the
case into the courts, asking one hundred thousand dollars damages. For
six months the details were read all over the world. Mr. Beecher was
acquitted by his church, by the jury, and by a National Advisory Council
of one hundred and seventy-two churches. Mr. William A. Beach, the
leading counsel for Tilton, said later, "I had not been four days on the
trial before I was confident that he was innocent.... I felt and feel
now that we were a pack of hounds trying in vain to drag down a noble
man." Judge Neilson, who had not known Mr. Beecher previously, became
his warm friend.
Most persons who will take the trouble to go over the testimony now,
after twenty years have cooled the passions of the hour, will agree
with Mr. Beach. Dr. Barrows says truly, "That any man should have
endured the fires which surrounded Mr. Beecher, and have come forth so
radiant, so pure, so self-respecting, and so widely trusted and beloved,
is a moral miracle, the parallel of which it would be difficult to
find."
The expenses of the trial year were $118,000; and though Plymouth Church
raised Mr. Beecher's salary for that year to $100,000, he found himself
deeply in debt. To pay this indebtedness he gave a series of lectures
during the next two or three years. "The Reign of the Common People,"
"The Burdens of Society," "Conscience," "The Uses of Wealth," "The
Ministry of the Beautiful," "Evolution and Religion," were among his
most popular lectures. Upon the last, though a deep subject, I have seen
five thousand persons strangely moved by his eloquence.
Although in some places he was jeered at by the rabble, yet year by year
he found great strength and comfort in the love of the people. He wrote
home that preaching Sunday evening in Boston, "Ten thousand people
couldn't get in. Shook hands with whole audiences. Papers next morning
with kind notices. Went to Congregational ministers' meeting on Monday
morning. Cheered and clapped when I entered. After prayer for day was
finished it was moved that I address the meeting. I did so, and closed
with prayer. All wept, and it broke up like a revival meeting."
In 1886, when Mr. Beecher was seventy-three years of age, he consented
to go a third time to England, to see his friends and lecture. Mrs.
Beecher accompanied him, with his friend and lecture agent, Major J. B.
Pond. Three thousand Plymouth Church people came to see him set sail in
the early morning of June 19. Dodworth's band played "Hail to the
Chief;" and then, as the vessel moved away, the great crowd sang,
"Praise God from whom all blessings flow." One friend had sent a basket
of twenty homing pigeons; and these in the afternoon carried back
messages to the loved ones.
Everywhere in England Henry Ward Beecher was received with a royal
welcome. There were no more meetings like those at Manchester and
Liverpool in the days of the Civil War. So vast were the crowds to hear
him preach, that the congregations had to be admitted by ticket.
Thousands were necessarily turned away. His first lecture was at Exeter
Hall, London.
"Between July 4 and Oct. 21, fifteen and one-half weeks," says Mr. Pond
in his book, "A Summer in England with Henry Ward Beecher," "Mr. Beecher
preached seven times, gave nine public addresses, and delivered
fifty-eight lectures. For the fifty-eight lectures he cleared the sum of
$11,600, net of all expenses for himself and Mrs. Beecher from the day
they sailed from New York."
It is estimated that Mr. Beecher earned by his pen and voice during
forty years in Brooklyn nearly a million and a half dollars, most of
which he gave away.
But much as he enjoyed England, the brave man was growing weary with the
work of life. He wrote, "I want to come home.... I long every year to
lay down my tasks and depart.... It is simply a quiet longing of the
spirit, a brooding desire to be through with my work, although I am
willing to go on, if need be."
He came home Oct. 31, 1886, and soon promised to complete the second
volume of the "Life of Christ." He also made a contract with a
publishing firm to have his autobiography ready before July 1, 1888.
He wrote some on each book during the winter. March 3 he went to New
York with his wife, who said, "I never knew my husband so lively,
tender, or joyous before, or not in a long time." That night he retired
early, feeling weary. The next day, Friday, he slept nearly all day,
and, being aroused to go to a prayer-meeting, said he did not feel like
getting up. A physician came in the afternoon and in the evening, and
asked Mr. Beecher to raise his hand. He could not. The left side showed
signs of paralysis. It was apoplexy.
The great man watched the faces of his wife and the doctor, seemed to
divine the result, closed his eyes, gave the hand of his wife "a long,
strong, loving, and earnest pressure. It was the realization of the
inevitable. It was farewell. He never opened his eyes again. His sleep,
thereafter, was constant.... From Saturday morning until the end were
silence, sleep, heavy but regular breathing, and unconsciousness....
Mrs. Beecher held his hand in hers continually. When the end approached
all the household were gathered.... Not one of them shed a tear or gave
expression to a sob--then and there. The supreme self-control was in
obedience to Mr. Beecher's often expressed hope and wish that around his
bed of release no tears should fall, but the feeling should prevail as
those who think of a soul gone to its crowning."
At half-past nine, Tuesday morning, March 8, 1887, the end came. He had
often said, "Provide flowers for me, not crape, when I am gone;" so at
once a wreath of pink and white roses were hung upon the door-knob.
Private funeral services were held at the house on Thursday, conducted
by the Rev. Charles H. Hall, Rector of Trinity Church, Brooklyn, who in
Mr. Beecher's time of trial, seeing him in his congregation, went down
the aisle, took him by the hand, and led him to a seat within the
chancel. Mr. Beecher never forgot a kind act, and wished Dr. Hall to
attend at his burial.
"There was no man whom I ever heard," said Dr. Hall, "or whose works I
have ever read, who inspired me so deeply with the inspiration of the
Holy Spirit. He was a man of men, the most manly man I ever met; but he
was also a man of God in the pre-eminent sense of the word."
The body was escorted to the church by Company G of the Thirteenth
Regiment--"My boys," Mr. Beecher called them, as many were of Plymouth
Church.
The coffin was laid in a perfect bower of flowers, lilies of the valley,
maidenhair fern, and smilax entirely covering it. The organ, platform,
and pulpit chair were a mass of bloom,--roses and pinks and graceful
plants.
All day long, until ten at night, the throng of people, half or
three-quarters of a mile in extent, passed by to look at the beloved
face. On Friday, only those were admitted who had tickets. Four churches
were open for services, and all were crowded. All public offices and
schools were closed, and business was suspended.
Dr. Hall made the address at the funeral. Very tenderly he said of the
dead preacher, "On his last Sunday evening in this place, two weeks ago,
after the congregation had retired from it, the organist and one or two
others were practising the hymn,--
"'I heard the voice of Jesus say,
Come unto me and rest.'
"Mr. Beecher, doubtless with that tire that follows a pastor's Sunday
work, remained and listened. Two street urchins were prompted to wander
into the building; and one of them was standing in the position of the
boy whom Raphael has immortalized, gazing up at the organ. The old man,
laying his hands on the boy's head, turned his face upward and kissed
him; and with his arms about the two, left the scene of his triumphs,
his trials, and his successes forever.
"It was a fitting close to a grand life, the old man of genius and fame
shielding the little wanderers, great in breasting traditional ways and
prejudices, great also in the gesture, so like him, that recognized, as
did the Master, that the humblest and poorest were his brethren, the
great preacher led out into the night by the little nameless waifs."
After the services the doors were opened, and one hundred thousand
people passed through the church by the coffin.
On Saturday, March 12, the body was taken to Greenwood Cemetery, and
temporarily placed in a receiving vault filled with abundant flowers.
Later it was buried on Dawn Path, near Hillside Avenue, on the
south-easterly slope of Ocean Hill, with a simple headstone.
"When I fall," said the great preacher, "and am buried in Greenwood, let
no man dare to stand over the turf and say, 'Here lies Henry Ward
Beecher;' for God knows that I will not lie there. Look up! if you love
me, and if you feel that I have helped you on your way home, stand with
your feet on my turf and look up; for I will not hear anybody that does
not speak with his mouth toward heaven."
[Illustration: CHARLES KINGSLEY.]
CHARLES KINGSLEY.
On a white marble cross in Eversley churchyard, England, under a spray
of the passion-flower, are the Latin words, "_Amavimus, Amamus,
Amabimus_" (we have loved, we love, we shall love); and above them,
around the cross, "God is love." Those were the words chosen by the
famous preacher and author; and they were the key-note of the life of
one who lived for his people.
Charles Kingsley, the son of a minister, was born at Holne Vicarage,
Devonshire, England, June 12, 1819. Of his father, he wrote in 1865, "He
was a magnificent man in body and mind, and was said to possess every
talent except that of using his talents. My mother, on the contrary, had
a quite extraordinary practical and administrative power; and she
combines with it, even at her advanced age (seventy-nine), my father's
passion for knowledge, and the sentiment and fancy of a young girl."
From his father, Charles seems to have inherited his love of art,
natural history, and athletic sports; from his mother, his love of
poetry and romance, and the force and originality which made him a
marked character in his town and nation.
When four years of age, he used to make a pulpit in his nursery, arrange
the chairs for a congregation, and preach as follows, his mother taking
down the words unobserved: "It is not right to fight. Honesty has no
chance against stealing. We must follow God, and not follow the Devil;
for if we follow the Devil, we shall go into that everlasting fire, and
if we follow God, we shall go to heaven." His poems at this time were
remarkable for a child.
He studied and loved nature, and delighted in sunsets, rocks, flowers,
and the wonders of the sea. At Clovelly, whither the rector had moved
his family, Charles found great delight in the study of shells, and in
the company of the warm-hearted fishermen. But for this early
association, it is probable that the beautiful song of the "Three
Fishers" would never have been written.
When the lad was twelve years old he was sent, with his brother Herbert,
to a preparatory school at Clifton, under the Rev. John Knight. Here he
showed an affectionate and gentle nature, only excited to anger when the
servant swept away the precious shells and grasses collected in his
walks on the Downs.
Afterwards he and Herbert were sent to the grammar school at Helston,
which was in charge of the Rev. Derwent Coleridge, son of Samuel Taylor
Coleridge. Here he became the intimate friend of Richard Cowley Powles,
afterwards fellow and tutor of Exeter College, Oxford.
Mr. Powles wrote of his friend later, "Of him, more than of most men who
have become famous, it may be said, 'The boy was father of the man.' The
vehement spirit, the adventurous courage, the love of truth, the
impatience of injustice, the quick and tender sympathy, that
distinguished the man's entrance on public life, were all in the boy....
For botany and geology he had an absolute enthusiasm.... He liked
nothing better than to sally out, hammer in hand and his botanical tin
slung round his neck, on some long expedition in quest of new plants,
and to investigate the cliffs within a few miles of Helston, dear to
every geologist."
"In manner," says the Rev. Mr. Coleridge, "he was strikingly courteous,
and thus, with his wide and ready sympathies and bright intelligence,
was popular alike with tutor, schoolfellows, and servants."
Kingsley always regretted that he did not go to school at Rugby, as he
thought nothing "but a public school education would have overcome his
constitutional shyness."
The Kingsley family removed to Chelsea when Charles was seventeen, and
he became a day student at King's College. Two years later, in 1838, he
went to Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he stood first in classics
and mathematics at the examinations. For his prize he selected a fine
edition of Plato in eleven volumes.
In the summer of 1839, July 6, when he was twenty, he met Fanny,
daughter of Pascoe Grenfell, whom he afterwards married. "That was my
real wedding-day," he said years later. At that time his mind was full
of religious doubt, and he was far from happy. The young lady proved a
most valuable intellectual and spiritual helper; and after two months of
companionship, when he returned to Cambridge, she loaned him many books
and wrote him letters which proved a life-long blessing. Carlyle's
"French Revolution" had a great effect upon his mind, in establishing
his belief in God's righteous government of the world; also Maurice's
"Kingdom of Christ," to which he said he owed more than to any book he
had ever read.
Young Kingsley was at this time robust in health, able to walk from
Cambridge to London, fifty-two miles, starting early and reaching the
latter city at nine P.M. For many years he delighted in a country walk
of twenty or twenty-five miles.
In 1841, after the struggle through which most persons pass before
deciding upon a life-work, he gave himself to the ministry, rather than
to the law, for which his name had been entered at Lincoln's Inn. He
wrote to Fanny, June 12,--
"My birth-night. I have been for the last hour on the seashore, not
dreaming, but thinking deeply and strongly, and forming determinations
which are to affect my destiny through time and through eternity. Before
the sleeping earth, and the sleepless sea and stars, I have devoted
myself to God; a vow never (if He gives me the faith I pray for) to be
recalled."
After taking honors at Cambridge, and reading for Holy Orders, he began
to write the life of his ideal saint, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, for his
intended wife, if, indeed, he should ever win her.
The curacy of Eversley was offered him, and he accepted it at
twenty-three. The fir-trees on the rectory lawn were a great comfort. He
wrote to Fanny, "Those delicious self-sown firs! Every step I wander
they whisper to me of you, the delicious past melting into the more
delicious future."
But from the opposition of friends the correspondence was broken, and
for a year the hard parish work was carried on alone. In his parting
letter to her he says, urging her to practise music, "Music is such a
vent for the feelings.... Study medicine.... I am studying it.... Make
yourself thoroughly acquainted with the wages, wants, and habits and
prevalent diseases of the poor, wherever you go....
"I have since nine this morning cut wood for an hour; spent an hour and
more in prayer and humiliation ... written six or seven pages of a
difficult part of my essay; taught in the school; thought over many
things while walking; gone round two-thirds of the parish visiting and
doctoring, and written all this." ...
The young curate lived in a thatched cottage, and found a remedy for his
loneliness in hard work. The church services had been neglected, and the
ale-houses were preferred on Sunday to the house of worship. There were
no schools for the children worthy of the name, and the minister had to
be teacher as well as preacher.
Finally the long silence was broken, and Kingsley wrote again to his
Fanny, "I have been making a fool of myself for the last ten minutes,
according to the world's notion of folly; for there have been some
strolling fiddlers under the window, and I have been listening and
crying like a child. Some quick music is so inexpressively mournful. It
seems just like one's own feelings,--exultation and action, with the
remembrance of past sorrow wailing up.... Let us never despise the
wandering minstrel!... And who knows what tender thoughts his own sweet
music stirs within him, though he eat in pot-houses and sleep in barns!"
Again he wrote, looking forward to the home they would some time have
together, "We will hunt out all the texts in the Bible about masters and
servants, to form rules upon them.... Our work must be done by praying
for our people, by preaching to them, ... and by setting them an
example,--an example in every look, word, and motion; in the paying of a
bill, the hiring of a servant, the reproving of a child."
He carried out his Christian principles in his relations with his
employees. At his death all the servants in his house had lived with him
from seventeen to twenty-six years.
Early in 1844 Kingsley, then twenty-five, was married to the woman he
loved, and the curate became the rector at Eversley. The house was damp,
from the rain flooding the rooms on the ground floor, and the land
required much drainage. But the happy husband was full of energy, and
set to work to make the place habitable and attractive.
At once the young preacher established among the laborers a shoe-club,
coal-club, loan-fund, and lending-library. A school for adults was held
at the rectory three nights a week all through the winter; a class in
music; a Sunday-school met there every Sunday morning and afternoon; and
in the outlying districts weekly lectures were held at the cottages for
the aged and feeble. None of the grown-up men and women among the
laborers could read or write, and the minister became their devoted
teacher. He taught them to love the nature he loved,--the flowers,
trees, birds, and ever-changing sky. He visited the poor, the sick, and
the dying, and soon became the idol of his people. He fed their minds as
well as their souls; he knew, as so few really know, the all-important
work which the pastor has committed to his hands. No wonder that London
and England, and America finally, heard of this model preacher, and came
to love him.
The year after his marriage, 1845, was saddened by the death of his
brother, Lieut. Gerald Kingsley, in Torres Straits, on board Her
Majesty's ship Royalist. All the officers and half the crew died of
fever. His brother Herbert had died of heart-disease in 1834, when they
were boys together at school.
The drama of "St. Elizabeth" was now finished; and in 1847 the young
preacher started for London, on a serious mission,--to find a publisher.
He read the poem to his noble friend, Mr. Maurice, who wrote a preface
for it; and to Coleridge, who gave him a commendatory letter to a
publisher. The poem met the usual fate,--declined with thanks.
He wrote his wife, "I am now going to Parker's in the Strand. I am at
once very happy, very lonely, and very anxious. How absence increases
love! It is positively good sometimes to be parted, that one's affection
may become conscious of itself, and proud and humble and thankful
accordingly." ...
Later he wrote to Mr. Powles, "'St. Elizabeth' is in the press, having
been taken off my hands by the heroic magnanimity of Mr. J. Parker, West
Strand, who, though a burnt child, does not dread the fire. No one else
would have it."
Having earned a little money by extra Sunday services at Pennington, he
took his wife and his two small children, Rose and Maurice, for a six
weeks' holiday to the seaside, near the edge of the New Forest. Here,
revelling in the scenery, he wrote several ballads.
When the drama "The Saints' Tragedy" was published, it was fiercely
attacked by the High Church party at Oxford. In Germany it was read and
liked, and Chevalier Bunsen wrote heartily in praise of it.
When Kingsley, now twenty-nine, went for a few weeks to Oxford, to visit
his friend, Mr. Powles, Fellow of Exeter, he received much attention on
account of his book. He wrote to his wife, "They got up a meeting for
me, and the club was crowded with men merely to see poor me, so I found
out afterwards: very lucky that I did not know it during the process of
being trotted out. It is very funny and new.... Froude gets more and
more interesting. We had such a conversation this morning!--the crust is
breaking, and the _man_ coming through that cold, polished shell. My
darling babies! kiss them very much for me."
The parish work at Eversley increased month by month. A writing-class
for girls was held in the empty coach-house, and a cottage school for
infants was begun. He wrote his first article for _Fraser's Magazine_ on
Popery. He preached to his congregation on the topics of the
day,--emigration, and the political and social disturbances of the time.
He was, in fact, what a preacher should be,--a leader of the people.
He accepted the professorship of English literature and composition at
Queen's College, Harley Street, of which Mr. Maurice was president, and
went up to London once a week to lecture. He became the devoted friend
of Thomas Hughes, author of "School Days at Rugby;" of Bishop Stanley of
Norwich and his distinguished son, Dean Stanley, and of many others.
During this year, 1847-48, on account of great distress among the
people, there were riots in London and in other large cities. The troops
were called out under Wellington to disperse the Chartists, who demanded
a "People's Charter" from Parliament, with more rights for the laborers.
Kingsley threw himself heartily into the conflict. He wrote a
conciliatory letter to the "Workmen of England," which was posted up in
London.
"You say that you are wronged. Many of you are wronged, and many besides
yourselves know it. Almost all men who have heads and hearts know
it--above all, the working clergy know it. They go into your houses;
they see the shameful filth and darkness in which you are forced to live
crowded together; they see your children growing up in ignorance and
temptation, for want of fit education; they see intelligent and
well-read men among you, shut out from a freeman's just right of voting;
and they see, too, the noble patience and self-control with which you
have as yet borne these evils. They see it, and God sees it."
And then he urges them "to turn back from the precipice of riot, which
ends in the gulf of universal distrust, stagnation, starvation....
Workers of England, be wise, and then you _must_ be free; for you will
be _fit_ to be free."
For four years, 1848-52, he wrote for three periodicals, _Politics for
the People_, _The Christian Socialist_, and the _Journal of
Association_.
Many friends and relations begged him to desist from fighting the
battles of the people, as such sympathy "was likely to spoil his
prospects in life." But he wrote his wife in reference to this matter,
"I will not be a liar. I will speak in season and out of season. I will
not shun to declare the whole counsel of God.... My path is clear, and I
will follow in it. He who died for me, and who gave me you, shall I not
trust Him through whatsoever new and strange paths He may lead me?"
He always felt "that the party-walls of rank and fashion and money were
but a paper prison of our own making, which we might break through any
moment by a single hearty and kindly feeling."
In the autumn of 1848, while writing "Yeast," a novel which was first
published in _Fraser's Magazine_, doing the work at night, when his
other duties were finished and the house was still, he broke down, and
for months was unable to do more than walk along the seashore and gather
shells, even conversation being too exhausting for him.
Friends came to show their sympathy and fondness for the great-hearted
man--among them Mr. Froude, who met Charlotte, the sister of Mrs.
Kingsley, and married her.
Returning to the work at Eversley, where a low fever had broken out
among the people, and where it was almost impossible to obtain nurses,
Kingsley cared for the sick, watching all night with a laborer's wife,
the mother of a large family, that she might receive nourishment every
half-hour, and soon broke down again, and was obliged to go to
Devonshire.
On his return to Eversley, cholera had once more appeared in England,
and early and late he carried on a crusade against dirt and bad
drainage.
As his means were limited, he usually took two or more pupils to fit
them for the ministry; and now began his "Alton Locke," the
autobiography of a tailor and a poet, in the interest of workingmen.
"God grant," he says in the preface, "that the workmen of the South of
England may bestir themselves ere it be too late, and discover that the
only defence against want is self-restraint." He urges that they
"organize among themselves associations for buying and selling the
necessaries of life, which may enable them to weather the dark season of
high prices and stagnation, which is certain, sooner or later, to follow
in the footsteps of war."
To write this book, he got up at five every morning and worked till
breakfast, devoting the rest of the day to his sermons, his pupils, and
the various schools and societies of his parish. "His habit," says his
wife, in her life of Kingsley, "was thoroughly to master his subject,
whether book or sermon, always out in the open air,--in his garden, on
the moor, or by the side of a lonely trout stream; and never to put pen
to paper till the ideas were clothed in words.... For many years his
writing was all done by his wife, from his dictation, while he paced up
and down the room."
When "Alton Locke" was finished, the old difficulty of finding a
publisher began. Messrs. Parker, who had brought out "Yeast," which had
caused much theological discussion, refused to take another book.
Finally, through the influence of Carlyle, Messrs. Chapman & Hall were
induced to bring it out.
The press, as in the case of "Yeast," was severe on "Alton Locke;" but
brave Thomas Carlyle wrote Kingsley to "pay no attention at all to the
foolish clamor of reviewers, whether laudatory or condemnatory."
Kingsley's correspondence increased day by day. One person wrote about
going over to the Romish Church; another about his atheistic doubts;
another desired to reform his life; and others asked advice on almost
numberless matters.
To an atheist, who was later converted under Kingsley, he wrote, "As for
helping you to Christ, I do not believe I can one inch. I see no hope
but in prayer, in going to Him yourself, in saying, Lord, if Thou art
there, if Thou art at all, if this all be not a lie, fulfil Thy reputed
promises, and give me peace and a sense of forgiveness."
Kingsley would say to his wife, as a letter was answered, or another
chapter of a book finished, "Thank God, one more thing done!--and oh,
how blessed it will be when it is all over, to lie down in that dear
churchyard!" The work of the great world, with all its sorrows, had
tired Kingsley at thirty-two.
"Hypatia," one of the novels which will last for centuries, was begun in
1851. He writes to the Rev. Mr. Maurice in January, "If I do not use my
pen to the uttermost in earning my daily bread, I shall not get through
this year.... My available income is less than £400. I cannot reduce my
charities, and I am driven either to give up my curate or to write; and
either of these alternatives, with the increased parish work, for I have
got either lectures or night school every night in the week, and three
services on Sunday, will demand my whole time."
As to "Hypatia," he writes, "My idea in the romance is to set forth
Christianity as the only really democratic creed, and philosophy, above
all, spiritualism, as the most exclusively aristocratic creed."
In October he writes to a friend, "'Hypatia' grows, little darling, and
I am getting very fond of her."
When the book was published in 1853, two years after it was begun, it
aroused most bitter criticism from a portion of the English Church. But
no adverse criticism could prevent its being read and loved by the
people of two continents. Thirty years later it had gone through
thirteen editions.
Our own Whittier wrote Mrs. Kingsley, after her husband's death, "My
copy of his 'Hypatia' is worn by frequent perusal, and the echoes of his
rare and beautiful lyrics never die out of my memory. But since I have
seen _him_, the man seems greater than the author.... His heart seemed
overcharged with interest in the welfare, physical, moral, and
spiritual, of his race. I was conscious in his presence of the bracing
atmosphere of a noble nature. He seemed to me one of the manliest of
men."
No man could have drawn that masterful picture of the beautiful maid of
Alexandria, philosopher, mathematician, teacher, and leader of her time,
who had not the greatest reverence for woman, and a belief in her
marvellous power. Such a man could never limit the sphere of woman by
any human barriers. He said to a friend that his aim was, in every book
he wrote, to set forth "woman as the teacher, the natural, and therefore
divine, guide, purifier, inspirer of the man."
One learns to love the brilliant Hypatia, as did the monk, Philammon,
and the Jew, Raphael Aben-Ezra, and shudders when she is torn in pieces
about the age of forty by the mob.
The book holds one spell-bound from beginning to end, and many another
copy besides that of Whittier "is worn by frequent perusal."
Mr. C. Kegan Paul, the London publisher, was staying at the home of the
Kingsleys when much of "Hypatia" was written. "I was struck," he says,
speaking of the author, "not only with his power of work, but with the
extraordinary pains he took to be accurate in detail. We spent one whole
day in searching the four folio volumes of Synesius for a fact he
thought was there, and which was found there at last." "When I have done
'Hypatia,'" he writes Mr. Ludlow, "I will write no more novels. I will
write poetry--not as a profession, but I will keep myself for it; and I
do think I shall do something that will live. I feel my strong faculty
is that sense of _form_, which, till I took to poetry, always came out
in drawing, drawing; but poetry is the true sphere, combining painting
and music and history all in one."
"At that time," says a friend, "in his books and pamphlets, and often in
his daily, familiar speech, he was pouring out the whole force of his
eager, passionate heart in wrath and indignation against starvation
wages, stifling workshops, reeking alleys, careless landlords, roofless
and crowded cottages.... No human being but was sure of a patient,
interested hearer in him. I have seen him seat himself, hatless, beside
a tramp on the grass outside of his gate in his eagerness to catch
exactly what he had to say, searching him, as they sat, in his keen,
kindly way with question and look."
About the time of the opening of the Great Exhibition, so dear to the
heart of the noble Prince Albert, Kingsley was asked to preach a sermon
to workingmen in a London church near by, which he did with great
sympathy and tenderness. Just as the blessing was to be pronounced, the
clergyman who had invited Kingsley rose and remarked that it was his
painful duty to say that he believed much of what Mr. Kingsley had said
"was dangerous and untrue."
Kingsley, wounded beyond expression, quietly left the church, and a riot
of the workmen was with difficulty prevented. That night in his sadness
and exhaustion he wrote that immortal song of the "Three Fishers," which
seemed to soothe and rest him.
"Three fishers went sailing out into the west,
Out into the west as the sun went down:
Each thought of the woman who loved him the best,
And the children stood watching them out of the town;
For men must work and women must weep,
And there's little to earn, and many to keep,
Though the harbor bar be moaning.
Three wives sat up in the lighthouse tower,
And they trimmed the lamps as the sun went down;
They looked at the squall, and they looked at the shower,
And the night-rack came rolling up ragged and brown.
But men must work and women must weep,
Though storms be sudden and waters deep,
And the harbor bar be moaning.
Three corpses lay out on the shining sands,
In the morning gleam as the tide went down;
And the women are weeping and wringing their hands,
For those that will never come back to the town.
For men must work and women must weep,
And the sooner it's over, the sooner to sleep,
And good-by to the bar and its moaning."
The winter and spring of 1854 were spent at Torquay, Mrs. Kingsley
having become ill from the damp rectory at Eversley. Mr. Kingsley also
had become worn in mind and body from the constant attacks of the
religious press against his supposed liberal views. He and his children
passed happy days along the seashore, gathering specimens to send to the
scientist, Mr. H. P. Gosse, in London, and collecting materials for his
articles in the _North British Review_ on "The Wonders of the Shore."
Before leaving Torquay he made a list of about sixty species of
Mollusks, Annelides, Crustacea, and Polypes found on the shore, nearly
all new to him.
In February he made his first visit to Scotland, to deliver before the
Philosophical Institute at Edinburgh four lectures on the "Schools of
Alexandria." He writes to his wife, "The lecture went off well. I was
dreadfully nervous, and actually cried with fear up in my room
beforehand; but after praying I recovered myself, and got through it
very well, being much cheered and clapped."
When his wife was saddened on account of debts incurred through
illness, Mr. Kingsley cheered her with his brave heart. "To pay them,"
he said, "I have thought, I have written, I have won for us a name
which, please God, may last among the names of English writers.... So
out of evil God brings good; or, rather, out of necessity He brings
strength ... and the meanest actual want may be the means of calling
into actual life the possible but sleeping embryo of the very noblest
faculties."
In the winter of 1851 Kingsley wrote "Brave Words to Brave Soldiers,"
several thousand copies of which were distributed among the suffering
soldiers before Sebastopol in the Crimea; also his novel, "Westward Ho!"
Many letters of appreciation came after the publication of this book. A
naval officer wrote from Hong Kong, "Among the many blessings for which
I have had to thank God this night, the most special has been for the
impressions produced by your noble sermon of 'Westward Ho!' Some months
ago I read it for the first time, then sailed on a long cruise; and now
on returning have read it again with prayer that has been answered, for
God's blessing has gone with it."
Kingsley gave lectures in London before the Working Men's College, and a
series to women interested in laborers. To the latter he said, "Instead
of reproving and fault-finding, encourage. In God's name encourage! They
scramble through life's rocks, bogs, and thorn-brakes clumsily enough,
and have many a fall, poor things!"
As to teaching boys, he said, "It will be a boon to your own sex, as
well as to ours, to teach them courtesy, self-restraint, reverence for
physical weakness, admiration of tenderness and gentleness; and it is
one which only a lady can bestow.... There is a latent chivalry, doubt
it not, in the heart of every untutored clod."
In the summer of 1856, when he was thirty-seven, Kingsley spent a happy
vacation with Mr. Thomas Hughes and Mr. Tom Taylor at Snowdon, Wales,
which resulted in the writing of "Two Years Ago."
In June, 1857, Kingsley writes to his friend Thomas Hughes, "Eight and
thirty years old am I this day, Thomas, whereof twenty-two were spent in
pain, in woe, and vanities, and sixteen in very great happiness, such as
few men deserve, and I don't deserve at all.... Well, Tom, God has been
very good to me.... The best work ever I've done has been my plain
parish work."
Diphtheria, then a new disease in England, appeared at Eversley. "Some
might have smiled," says Mrs. Kingsley, at seeing her husband "going in
and out of the cottages with great bottles of gargle under his arm."
The earnest preaching, the lectures, the books and correspondence,
continued. Many guests came now to Eversley,--Harriet Beecher Stowe and
others from America, where his literary work seemed at first more
appreciated than at home; Miss Bremer, the Swedish novelist, who after
she went home sent him Tegnèr's "Frithiof's Saga," with this
inscription: "To the Viking of the New Age, Charles Kingsley, this story
of the Vikings of the Old, from a daughter of the Vikings, his friend
and admirer, Fredrika Bremer."
Dean Stanley came; Max Müller also, and spent the first week of his
married life at the rectory--he had married a beloved niece of
Kingsley's, the G. to whom he wrote the poem,--
"A hasty jest I once let fall."
When Kingsley was forty, he preached for the first time before the Queen
and Prince Albert at Buckingham Palace, and was soon made one of Her
Majesty's chaplains. He preached at the Chapel Royal, St. James's, and
before the Court in the private chapel at Windsor Castle. From this time
onward he received the utmost consideration and appreciation from the
royal household. Having been made Professor of Modern History at
Cambridge, which position he filled admirably for nine years, he was
requested by the Prince Consort to give private lectures to the Prince
of Wales, who had just left Oxford. The Prince came to Mr. Kingsley's
house three times a week, twice with the class, and every Saturday to go
over the week's work alone.
Every now and then Mr. Kingsley, from his ardent nature, broke down from
overwork. Then he would go with his wife to the Isle of Wight to see
Tennyson and his wife, or with James Anthony Froude to Ireland.
Death was beginning to enter the family circle. His father died in the
winter of 1860. He wrote Mr. Maurice, "How every wrong word and deed
toward that good old man, and every sorrow I caused him, rise up in
judgment against one; and how one feels that right-doing does not atone
for wrong-doing."
In the spring Charlotte, Mrs. Kingsley's sister, the wife of Froude, was
laid under the fir-trees in Eversley churchyard. "Her grave," says Mrs.
Kingsley, "was to him during the remainder of his own life a sacred
spot, where he would go almost daily to commune in spirit with the
dead, where flowers were always kept blooming, and where on the Sunday
morning he would himself superintend the decorations,--the cross and
wreaths of choice flowers placed by loving hands upon it." Prince Albert
died in 1861, a great personal loss to Kingsley, as to all England.
In the spring of 1862 "The Water-babies" was written, and dedicated to
his youngest son, Grenville Arthur, then four years old, named after his
godfather, Dean Stanley, and Sir Richard Grenvil, one of the heroes of
"Westward Ho!" from whom Mrs. Kingsley's family claimed descent.
The strange experiences of poor little Tom, the chimney-sweep, after he
left the hard work in the chimneys, under his brutal master, Grimes, to
enjoy the wonders of the sea, as a water-baby, are most amusing and
graphic. The book has always had a great circulation.
Three years after this, Queen Emma of the Hawaiian Islands spent two
days at the Eversley Rectory. She said to Mrs. Kingsley, "It is so
strange to me to be staying with you and to see Mr. Kingsley. My husband
read your husband's 'Water-babies' to our little prince." On her return
she sent to Mr. Kingsley the Prayer Book in Hawaiian, translated by her
husband, King Kamehameha IV.
Kingsley did not forget how hard it had been for an unknown author to
find a publisher. Mr. Charles Henry Bennett, a man of genius, but
struggling with poverty, had illustrated "Pilgrim's Progress," but could
get no one to take it. Kingsley wrote a preface, and Messrs. Longman at
once undertook to bring it out. Thus did the noble man help artist and
author, tramp and sick laborer, seeker after knowledge or after the
comfort of the gospel.
In 1863 Kingsley was made a Fellow of the Geological Society, proposed
by his friend Sir Charles Bunbury, and seconded by Sir Charles Lyell. He
was already a Fellow of the Linnean Society. His name was proposed for
the degree of D.C.L. at Oxford by the Prince of Wales, but was withdrawn
on account of opposition from the extreme High Church party.
He now gave lectures to the boys at Wellington College, to which his son
Maurice had gone, and assisted them in forming a museum; he brought out
a volume of poems and one or two volumes of sermons. No wonder he failed
in health, and was obliged to go to France with Froude, the latter going
on into Spain for historical work.
The labors of the devoted preacher and author increased year after year.
Impressed more than ever with the monotonous life of the English laborer
and his hard-worked wife, Kingsley started Penny Readings for the
people, and village concerts, in which friends from London helped.
He attended the national science meetings; he preached in Westminster
Abbey; he brought out a series of papers for children on natural
science, called "Madam How and Lady Why;" he read sixteen volumes of
Comte's works in preparation for his Cambridge lectures--he had already
given a course on the History of America.
In 1869 he was appointed Canon of Chester. Here he started a class in
botany,--a walk and a field lecture were enjoyed once a week by a
hundred or more persons,--which has resulted in the Chester Natural
History Society, with about six hundred members. He also gave many
geological lectures. "The Soil of the Field," "The Pebbles in the
Street," "The Stones in the Wall," "The Coal in the Fire," "The Lime in
the Mortar," "The Slates on the Roof," were published in a book called
"Town Geology." How broadened would be the minds of many in our
congregations, especially the minds of our young men and women, if more
of our ministers would teach the wonders of the world in which we live!
Kingsley was made President of the Education Section of the Social
Science Congress at Bristol, and one hundred thousand copies of his
valuable inaugural address were distributed. At this Congress he met Dr.
Elizabeth Blackwell from America, and she became a welcome guest at
Eversley. He was an ardent advocate of medical education for women.
He wrote to John Stuart Mill that his "Subjection of Woman" seemed to
him "unanswerable and exhaustive, and certain, from its moderation as
well as from its boldness, to do good service in this good cause." ...
After a journey with his daughter to the West Indies, from which came
his book, "At Last," he returned to his multifarious duties. As
President of the Midland Institute at Birmingham, he spoke on the
Science of Health. As a result, a manufacturer gave £2,500 to found
classes and lectures on Human Physiology and the Science of Health,
believing that physical improvement would be followed by mental and
moral improvement.
In the spring of 1873 Mr. Gladstone, with the sanction of the Queen,
asked Kingsley to become Canon of Westminster. His aged mother, now
eighty-six, who had made her home at Eversley since the death of her
husband, lived long enough to rejoice in his appointment to the Abbey,
and died April 16.
The Archbishop of Canterbury welcomed him heartily. "It is a great
sphere," he wrote, "for a man who, like you, knows how to use it."
But those who knew him best had grave fears that he would not long fill
the place. He was urged to make a sea voyage, and with his daughter Rose
started for America in January, 1874, taking with him a few lectures, to
meet his expenses.
They landed Feb. 11, in New York. His daughter wrote home to the anxious
mother, "Before my father set foot on American soil, he had a foretaste
of the cordial welcome and generous hospitality which he experienced
everywhere, without a single exception, throughout the six months he
spent in the United States and Canada. The moment the ship warped into
her dock, a deputation from a literary club came on board, took
possession of us and our baggage."
Mr. Kingsley wrote home Feb. 12, "As for health, this air, as poor
Thackeray said of it, is like champagne. Sea air and mountain air
combined; days already an hour longer than in England, and a blazing hot
sun and blue sky. It is a glorious country, and I don't wonder at the
people being proud of it.... I dine with the Lotus Club on Saturday
night, and then start for Boston with R., to stay with Fields next
week."
He took great interest in Salem and Cambridge. He dined with Longfellow,
whom he greatly admired. "Dear old Whittier called on me, and we had a
most loving and like-minded talk about the other world," he writes home.
"He is an old saint. This morning I have spent chiefly with Asa Gray and
his plants, so that we are in good company."
In New York he met William Cullen Bryant; was entertained by that
considerate and lovely friend to everybody, the late Mrs. Botta; spoke
in the Opera House at Philadelphia to nearly four thousand persons, the
aisles crowded; received cordial welcome from President Grant, and from
the scientific men at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington; talked
with Charles Sumner an hour before he was seized with his fatal illness;
visited Mark Twain at Hartford, Conn.; preached in Baltimore to a large
congregation; stopped on his way West at Niagara, where he longed for
his wife "to sit with him, and simply look on in silence whole days at
the exquisite beauty of form and color."
Then with a party of several English and Americans, in a Pullman car,
Kingsley and his daughter journeyed to California. He preached at Salt
Lake City to a crowded congregation. The scenery everywhere delighted
him. "The flowers," he wrote, "are exquisite, yellow ribs over all the
cliffs, etc., and make one long to jump off the train every five
minutes, while the geology makes one stand aghast; geologizing in
England is child's play to this."
Again he preached in the Yosemite. The Dean of Westminster in the old
Abbey said that Kingsley, "who is able to combine the religious and
scientific aspects of nature better than any man living, is on this very
day, and perhaps at this very hour, preaching in the most beautiful spot
on the face of the earth, where the glories of nature are revealed on
the most gigantic scale,--in that wonderful Californian Valley, to whose
trees the cedars of Lebanon are but as the hyssop that groweth out of
the wall,--where water and forest and sky conjoin to make up, if
anywhere on the globe, an earthly paradise."
Mr. Kingsley was ill of pleurisy for some time in California. He began
to long for home. "I am very homesick," he writes to his wife, "and
counting the days till I can get back to you."
He returned to Eversley in August, and, as there was much sickness,
began at once his self-sacrificing ministrations. He preached his last
sermon in the Abbey Nov. 29, with great fervor. Dec. 3 he and his wife
went to Eversley, where she was taken very ill. When told that there was
no hope for her, he said, "My own death-warrant was signed with those
words."
He cared for her tenderly, and on Dec. 28 was stricken with pneumonia.
He had been warned that he must not leave his room, as a change of
temperature would prove fatal; but one day he sprang out of bed, came to
his wife's room for a few moments, and, taking her hand in his, said,
"This is heaven, don't speak;" but soon a severe fit of coughing came
on: he went back to his bed, and they never met again.
A correspondence was kept up for a few days in pencil, but this became
too painful. Towards the last he said, "No more fighting--no more
fighting," and then he prayed earnestly. Again he murmured, "How
beautiful God is!"
For two days he sent no messages to his wife, thinking that she had gone
before him. He said to the nurse who cared for them both, "I, too, am
come to an end; it is all right--all as it _should be_."
His last words were the Burial Service, "Shut not Thy merciful ears to
our prayers ... suffer us not, at our last hour, from any pains of
death, to fall from Thee." On Jan. 23, 1875, without a struggle, his
life went out.
Dean Stanley telegraphed, "The Abbey is open to the Canon and the Poet;"
but Kingsley had said, "Go where I will in this hard-working world, I
shall take care to get my last sleep in Eversley churchyard;" and under
the fir-trees he was buried.
A great crowd of all classes stood around that open grave, and later,
little children who had loved the "Water-babies" came often and laid
flowers upon the mound.
"Few eyes were dry," says Max Müller, "when he was laid in his own
gravel bed, the old trees which he had planted and cared for waving
their branches to him for the last time.... He will be mourned for,
yearned for, in every place in which he passed some days of his busy
life."
A Memorial Fund was at once raised by friends in England and America.
Eversley church was enlarged and improved; at Chester a prize was
founded in connection with the Natural History Society; a marble bust of
him placed in the Cathedral Chapter-house, and a stall restored in the
Cathedral, which bears his name. In Westminster Abbey a marble bust of
Kingsley, by Mr. Woolner, was unveiled Sept. 23, 1875, with appropriate
services.
Mrs. Kingsley survived her husband sixteen years, dying at Leamington,
Dec. 12, 1891, at the age of seventy-seven.
His daughter Rose, and Mary who married the Rev. William Harrison, are
both authors, the latter using the name "Lucas Malet." Kingsley,
himself, wrote thirty-five volumes.
Charles Kingsley was as lovable in his home-life as he was brilliant and
noble in his public career. Said an intimate friend of him, "To his
wife--so he never shrank from affirming in deep and humble
thankfulness--he owed the whole tenor of his life, all that he had
worth living for. It was true. And his every word and look and gesture
of chivalrous devotion for more than thirty years seemed to show that
the sense of boundless gratitude had become part of his nature, was
never out of the undercurrent of his thoughts."
His son-in-law, the Rev. Mr. Harrison, says, "Home was to him the
sweetest, the fairest, the most romantic thing in life; and there all
that was best and brightest in him shone with steady and purest lustre."
With his children he was like an elder brother. He built them a little
house, where they kept books and toys and tea-things, and where he often
joined them, bringing some rare flower or insect to show them. He was
always cheerful with them and his aged mother. He used to say, "I wonder
if there is so much laughing in any other home in England as in ours."
Corporal punishment was never allowed in his home. "More than half the
lying of children," he said, "is, I believe, the result of fear, and the
fear of punishment."
He was especially tender to animals. "His dog Dandy," says his wife, "a
fine Scotch terrier, was his companion in all his parish walks, attended
at the cottage lectures and school lessons, and was his and the
children's friend for thirteen years. He lies buried under the great
fir-trees on the rectory lawn, with this inscription on his gravestone,
'Fideli Fideles;' and close by, 'Sweep,' a magnificent black retriever,
and 'Victor,' a favorite Teckel given to him by the Queen, with which he
sat up during the two last suffering nights of the little creature's
life."
Cats, too, were his especial delight, a white one and a black. "His love
of animals," says Mrs. Kingsley, "was strengthened by his belief in
their future state--a belief which he held in common with John Wesley
and many other remarkable men. On the lawn dwelt a family of
natter-jacks (running toads) who lived on from year to year in the same
hole in the green bank, which the scythe was never allowed to approach.
He had two little friends in a pair of sand-wasps, who lived in a crack
of the window in his dressing-room, one of which he had saved from
drowning in a hand-basin, taking it tenderly out into the sunshine to
dry; and every spring he would look out eagerly for them or their
children, who came out of, or returned to, the same crack."
His guests were one day amused when his little girl opened her hand and
begged him to "look at this _delightful_ worm."
Mr. Harrison tells this characteristic incident. One Sunday morning, in
passing from the altar to the pulpit, he disappeared, and was searching
for something on the ground, which he carried into the vestry. It was
found later that he had discovered a beautiful butterfly, which, being
lame, he feared would be trodden upon. Thus great in all little
humanities was the great preacher of Eversley and Westminster Abbey.
His life was like his own poem,--
"Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long:
And so make life, death, and that vast forever,
One grand, sweet song."
GENERAL WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN.
Like Grant, Sherman was born in Ohio; the former in a log house at Mt.
Pleasant, 1822, the latter at Lancaster, Feb. 8, 1820.
His ancestor, Edmund Sherman, came from Dedham, England, to
Massachusetts, with his three sons, in 1634. From his son Samuel, who
was one of the original proprietors of Woodbury, Conn., came the noted
general, through a line of ministers and lawyers.
The grandfather, Taylor Sherman, was a judge in Norwalk, Conn., and one
of the commissioners appointed by the State to go to Huron and Erie
Counties, Ohio, to settle some land matters with regard to the Indians.
He received two sections of land for his services.
His wife, Betsey, was a woman, says E. V. Smalley, in the _Century_ for
January, 1884, "of uncommon strength of character, who was always called
on to give advice in times of trouble to her whole circle of relatives
and descendants--a strong-willed, intelligent, managing woman.... To
Grandmother Betsey might be attributed the talent of the later members
of the family."
Her son Charles, admitted to the bar at twenty, married Mary Hoyt, and
soon went to Lancaster, Ohio. He returned in a year, and took his young
wife and baby over six hundred miles on horseback to the new home in
the West, where ten other children were born, the eleven comprising six
boys and five girls.
[Illustration: WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN.]
The third son, William, was named Tecumseh after the famous Indian
chief, who died at the battle of Tippecanoe. When the child was four
years old, the father was appointed a judge of the supreme court of
Ohio, but died suddenly in Lebanon while on the bench, after he had held
the position for five years.
Mrs. Sherman found her home full of children, with an annual income of
only two hundred and fifty dollars with which to support them. Her
husband had been loved for his genial nature and his generous heart, so
that friends were not wanting to help the young mother bear her burdens.
John, the now well-known senator, was sent to an uncle in Mount Vernon,
another to a friend in Cincinnati, and Tecumseh to the home of the Hon.
Thomas Ewing, a prominent United States Senator from Ohio.
The lad of nine attended the village schools till he was sixteen, when,
through the influence of Mr. Ewing, he entered the Military Academy at
West Point. He had no love for warlike pursuits, but looked forward to
becoming a civil engineer in the far West.
He had all along cared for history, travel, and fiction, but never
especially for battles. He enjoyed out-door sports, and long rambles
with rod and gun. He studied well while at West Point, standing high in
drawing, chemistry, mathematics, and philosophy, reaching the sixth
place in a class of forty-three at his graduation in 1840.
He was never fond of display, and had no relish for the minutiæ of dress
and drill. "Men who have successfully conducted great campaigns, and
fought great battles, have not," says Mr. Smalley, "as a rule, taken
much interest in the polishing of buttons, or the exact alignment of a
company of troops."
Soon after graduating, young Sherman, tall, slender, with auburn hair
and hazel eyes, a second lieutenant in the Third Artillery, was sent to
Florida to keep in check the Seminole Indians. After two winters he was
transferred to Fort Moultrie, near Charleston, South Carolina, as first
lieutenant, where he remained for four years. Here he enjoyed Southern
hospitality, and learned the character of the people and the topography
of the country, both here and in Georgia. More than twenty years later,
this knowledge was invaluable when he fought his battles at Atlanta and
made his immortal March to the Sea.
War with Mexico was threatening; and in 1846 Sherman was sent to New
York, and afterwards to Ohio, as a recruiting officer. When he heard of
the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, May 8 and 9, he was
eager to be at the front: recruiting, as he says in his memoirs, while
"his comrades were actually fighting, was intolerable."
He was soon ordered to California, which his company reached, after a
voyage of nearly two hundred days, by way of Cape Horn. At Rio Janeiro,
"the beauty of whose perfect harbor words will not describe," they
remained for a week, and the young Ohio officer enjoyed the delights of
travel. He saw Dom Pedro and his Empress, the daughter of Louis Philippe
of France, the Palace, the Botanic Gardens, the Emperor's coffee
plantation, where the coffee-tree reminded him of "the red haw-tree of
Ohio; and the berries were somewhat like those of the same tree, two
grains of coffee being enclosed in one berry."
At Cape Horn, "an island rounded like an oven, after which it takes its
name (_ornos_, oven)," they were followed by Cape-pigeons and
albatrosses of every color. At Valparaiso they remained ten days, and
enjoyed large strawberries in November. The last of January, 1847, they
entered Monterey Bay, and saw live-oaks and low adobe houses, with
red-tiled roofs, amid dark pine-trees.
The camp was soon established, and some of their six months' provisions
hauled up the hillside in the old Mexican carts with wooden wheels,
"drawn by two or three pairs of oxen yoked by the horns."
They brought a saw-mill and a grist-mill with them to the new country.
Living was cheap, as cattle cost but eight dollars and fifty cents for
the best, or about two cents a pound.
Sherman soon met Colonel Frémont, afterwards a candidate for the
Presidency, General Kearney, and other officers noted in those early
days of California. San Francisco was called Yerba Buena, and Sherman
felt almost insulted when asked if he wished to invest money in land "in
such a horrid place as Yerba Buena."
The best houses were single-story adobes; the population was about four
hundred, mostly Kanakas, natives of the Hawaiian Islands.
Sherman spent much time in hunting deer and bear in the mountains back
of the Carmel Mission, and could often in a single day load a pack-mule
with the geese and ducks which he had shot. These geese would appear in
profusion as soon as the fall rains caused the young oats to come up.
"The seasons in California," he writes, "are well marked. About October
and November the rains begin, and the whole country, plains and
mountains, becomes covered with a bright green grass, with endless
flowers. The intervals between the rains give the finest weather
possible. These rains are less frequent in March, and cease altogether
in April and May, when gradually the grass dies and the whole aspect of
things changes, first to yellow, then to brown, and by midsummer all is
burnt up, and dry as an ash-leaf."
The "gold-fever" broke out in the spring of 1848. Thomas Marshall found
some placer-gold fifteen miles above Mormon Island, in the bed of the
American Fork of the Sacramento River. He had worked for Captain Sutter
in his saw-mills, and seeing this gold in the tailrace of the saw-mill,
tried at first to keep it a secret, after telling Sutter; but others
soon found the yellow metal, and not only California, but the whole
civilized world, was excited over the discovery.
Sutter's saw and grist mills soon went to decay. Men earned fifty, a
hundred, and sometimes thousands of dollars a day, if they found a
"pocket" of gold. Prices became fabulous. Flour and bacon and other
eatables sold for a dollar a pound. A meal usually cost three dollars.
Miners slept at night on the ground. All day they worked in cold water
in the river-beds, their clothes wet; but no complaints were heard.
Soldiers deserted from the coast to join the gold-diggers. At one time
six hundred ships were anchored at San Francisco, and could not get away
for lack of crews. Sherman and his officers were obliged to pay three
hundred dollars a month for a servant, or go without, as their own pay
was but seventy dollars a month. Often they did their own work. Sherman
cooked, and Lieutenant Ord cleaned the dishes, but "was deposed as a
scullion because he would only wipe the tin plates with a tuft of grass,
according to the custom of the country," says Sherman; "whereas, Warner
insisted on having them washed after each meal with hot water. Warner
was, in consequence, promoted to scullion, and Ord become the hostler."
Twice Sherman and some other officers visited the mines, being obliged
to cross the Sacramento River in an Indian dug-out canoe. The unwilling
horses and mules were driven into the water, following the one led by
the man in the canoe. When across, several of the frightened creatures
escaped into the woods, where they were recovered and brought back by
the Indians.
The winter of 1848-49 was a serious one to the thousands of homeless men
and women who had come to seek their fortunes in the mountains. The
president had made the gold-finding the subject of a special message to
Congress, and emigrants were pouring into California by land and by sea.
Of course there was much hardship, much disregard of law, and extremes
of poverty and wealth.
The winter of 1849-50 only deepened the distress. In crossing the plains
and mountains many animals of the emigrants perished, and they
themselves lacked food. One hundred thousand dollars were used to buy
flour, bacon, etc., for these people, and men and mules were sent out by
General Persifer F. Smith to meet and relieve them. In San Francisco,
after the long rains, Sherman says: "I have seen mules stumble in the
streets and drown in the liquid mud. Montgomery Street had been filled
up with brush and clay, and I always dreaded to ride on horseback along
it, because the mud was so deep that a horse's legs would become
entangled in the brushes below, and the rider was likely to be thrown,
and drown in the mud."
A room twenty by sixty feet for a store or gambling-saloon rented for a
thousand dollars a month. Sherman took a share in a store, and thereby
made fifteen hundred dollars, which helped him to live with these
exorbitant prices. Later he made about six thousand dollars in three
lots in Sacramento.
He returned East in January, 1850, on a leave of absence for six months.
His comrades had fought great battles in Mexico, which he had not been
able to share. "I thought it the last and only chance in my day," he
writes, "and that my career as a soldier was at an end."
He visited his mother, then living at Mansfield, Ohio, and on the 1st of
May, 1850, married, after an engagement of some years, Miss Ellen Boyle
Ewing, daughter of the man who had adopted him in his childhood. Mr.
Ewing was then Secretary of the Interior, and, of course, the wedding,
on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, was a brilliant one. President
Taylor and his cabinet, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and other leaders
were present. In the fall of 1851 Sherman was made a captain in the
Commissary Department, and ordered to St. Louis. The following year he
was sent to New Orleans, to which city Mrs. Sherman went with her two
children.
Seeing little prospect of advancement in the army, in 1853 Captain
Sherman resigned his position, and became manager of a bank in San
Francisco, a branch of a house in St. Louis.
On his way to California, when near the Pacific coast, the ship Lewis
struck on a reef, and all came near losing their lives. Sherman, with
his usual mastery over circumstances, sat on the hurricane deck with the
captain, and while others prayed, or called for help, waited calmly,
and was among the last to leave the ship. When all were safely on the
beach, he scrambled up the bluff, and finally saw a schooner loaded with
lumber, on which he asked a passage to the city of San Francisco, that
he might send help to the wrecked.
This schooner capsized, and Sherman found himself in the water, mixed up
with planks and ropes, steadily drifting out to sea. He was finally
picked up by a boat, and as soon as possible he sent two steamers to the
relief of the passengers of the Lewis, which went to pieces the night
after they got off.
In the unsettled state of the country, the bank did not prove a success,
and was closed May 1, 1857. Mrs. Sherman and her three children, Minnie,
Lizzie, and Willie, returned to Lancaster, Ohio.
For a time Sherman became agent in New York for the St. Louis house; but
the latter failing in the financial disturbances of the country, his
business ventures seemed at an end, and Sherman returned to Lancaster,
July 28, 1858.
"I was then perfectly unhampered," he says, "but the serious and greater
question remained, what was I to do to support my family, consisting of
a wife and four children, all accustomed to more than the average
comforts of life?"
Like General Grant, he had resigned from the regular army that he might
earn enough to support his family. Banking had been no more successful
than Grant's leather business.
Two sons of Mr. Ewing had gone to Leavenworth, Kansas, where they had
bought some land, and opened a law office. They offered Sherman a
partnership, as he had read law considerably. He accepted the position,
but soon found that he did not earn money enough, so began to manage a
farm, forty miles west of Leavenworth, for his father-in-law.
This not proving more remunerative than Grant's farming, he offered
himself to the army again in 1859, feeling, that a sure, though small,
amount was better for his family than the uncertainties of business. He
was soon appointed the superintendent of a military college about to be
organized at Alexandria, Louisiana.
This position did not prove an easy one. The building was a large and
handsome one in the midst of four hundred acres of pine-land, but there
was not a table, chair, or black-board ready for beginning. Sherman
immediately engaged some carpenters, and went to work with his usual
energy.
Meantime, the slavery question bade fair to rend the Union asunder.
South Carolina seceded Dec. 20, 1860, and Mississippi soon after. In the
middle of January, 1861, Sherman wrote to the Governor of the State: "If
Louisiana withdraw from the Federal Union, I prefer to maintain my
allegiance to the Constitution as long as a fragment of it survives....
I beg you to take immediate steps to relieve me as superintendent, the
moment the State determines to secede, for on no earthly account will I
do any act or think any thought hostile to, or in defiance of, the old
Government of the United States."
Sherman soon came North and visited his brother, Senator John Sherman.
Both called upon Lincoln, and the President asked the soldier "how the
people of the South were getting along." "They think," was the reply of
Sherman, "they are getting along swimmingly--they are preparing for
war."
"Oh, well!" said Lincoln, "I guess we'll manage to keep house."
April 1, through the influence of friends, Sherman was made President of
the Fifth Street Railroad, in St. Louis, at a salary of twenty-five
hundred dollars a year, and moved his family thither. Five days later,
and six days before the attack on Sumter, April 12, 1861, he was asked
to accept the chief clerkship of the War Department, with the promise
that, when Congress met, he should be made Assistant Secretary of War.
This offer he declined, as he had already moved his family to St. Louis,
and did not feel at liberty to change his position.
He wrote later to Simon Cameron, Secretary of War, that he would not
volunteer for _three months_, "Because," said he, "I cannot throw my
family on the cold charity of the world," but for a _three-years_' call,
good service might be done. He was appointed Colonel of the Thirteenth
Regular Infantry, May 14, 1861, and again his family returned to
Lancaster, Ohio.
The war feeling had been greatly intensified at the North by the death
of Colonel E. Elmer Ellsworth, a young man of twenty-four, who had
organized a body of Zouaves in Chicago, and had escorted President
Lincoln to Washington. On May 24, when the Union forces crossed into
Virginia, Ellsworth's Zouaves occupied Alexandria. A part of the troops
were proceeding towards the centre of the town, when they saw a
secession flag flying from the Marshall House.
Ellsworth ascended to the roof and pulled it down. The hotel keeper,
James T. Jackson, shot him through the heart, and attempted to shoot
Private Francis E. Brownell, who was with Ellsworth. Brownell at once
shot Jackson through the head.
Brownell died at Washington, D.C., March 15, 1894.
The body of Colonel Ellsworth lay in state in the East Room of the White
House for several hours. President Lincoln, and indeed the whole North,
were deeply affected by his death.
Mr. Lincoln soon called for four hundred thousand men and four hundred
million dollars, to carry on the war. Two Confederate armies were
already before Washington; one at Manassas Junction under General
Beauregard, the other at Winchester under General Joseph E. Johnston.
General Irvin S. McDowell, aged forty-three, of the Mexican War
soldiers, had command of the Union forces, and Sherman held a brigade
under him. The battle of Bull Run, or Manassas, was fought Sunday, July
21, with a loss on our side of 2,896, and on the Confederate of 1,982.
Over thirty thousand men were in each army.
General John D. Imboden, in vol. 1 of that most interesting and valuable
series, "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War," edited by Messrs.
Johnson and Buel, tells the following incident of "Stonewall" Jackson in
this battle. He had been wounded in the hand, but paid no attention to
it, binding it up with his handkerchief, saying, "Only a scratch, a mere
scratch," and galloped along his line. Three days later General Imboden
found him at a little farm-house near Centreville. Jackson was bathing
his hand at sunrise, in spring water. It was swollen and very painful.
Mrs. Jackson had already come to him. "General," said Imboden, "how is
it that you can keep so cool, and appear so utterly insensible to
danger, in such a storm of shell and bullets as rained about you when
your hand was hit?" referring to the Bull Run battle.
"Captain," he said, "my religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in
battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern
myself about _that_, but to be always ready, no matter when it may
overtake me." After a pause, he said, "Captain, that is the one way all
men should live, and then all would be equally brave."
Imboden apologized for the use of profanity on the battle-field, and
Jackson simply remarked, "Nothing can justify profanity."
The men idolized Jackson, in part because he almost always succeeded.
They trusted him without questioning. "Where are you going?" was once
asked of some of his troops.
"We don't know," was the reply, "but old Jack does."
"It is now generally admitted," says Sherman, "that it [the Battle of
Bull Bun] was one of the best planned battles of the war, but one of the
worst fought.... Nearly all of us for the first time then heard the
sound of cannon and muskets in anger, and saw the bloody scenes common
to all battles, with which we were soon familiar. We had good
organization, good men, but no cohesion, no real discipline, no respect
for authority, no real knowledge of war. Both armies were fairly
defeated, and whichever had stood fast, the other would have run."
Though the Union army retreated in great disorder, and the North was
saddened thereby, Sherman and some others were made brigadier-generals
for their bravery.
President Lincoln and Seward came to the Union camps soon after the
battle. Lincoln said, in his homely fashion, "We heard that you had got
over the big scare, and we thought we would come over and see the
'boys.'"
He stood up in the carriage and made a most feeling address, telling
them how much devolved upon them, and how all looked for brighter days.
When they began to cheer, he said, "Don't cheer, boys. I confess, I
rather like it myself; but Colonel Sherman here says it is not military,
and I guess we had better defer to his opinion."
A little later an officer who had attempted to go to New York without
leave, and whom Sherman had threatened to shoot if he deserted at that
critical time, approached the President, saying that he had a grievance,
and that Colonel Sherman had threatened to shoot him.
With that rare good sense for which Lincoln was famous, and knowing that
his leaders must be supported in authority, he bent over toward the
aggrieved officer, and said in a loud whisper, "Well, if I were you, and
he threatened to shoot, I would not trust him, for I believe he would do
it." Sherman afterwards thanked the President for his confidence.
Soon after this General Sherman was assigned to the department of the
Cumberland, under General Robert Anderson, formerly at Fort Sumter.
Anderson's health failing, Sherman soon took his place. Mr. Cameron,
Secretary of War, having a consultation with Sherman, the latter
complained that he had only eighteen thousand men, whereas two hundred
thousand men were needed to destroy all the opposition in the
Mississippi Valley.
It soon came out in the papers that Sherman was "crazy," as at that time
the North seemed to have no adequate idea of the immensity of the work
in hand. The succeeding years proved that Sherman was right in his
estimate of the power and purpose of the South in its war against the
Union.
Sherman was relieved by General Buell, and the "insane" general was
ordered to take charge of a Camp of Instruction. Hurt by the cruel
charge, he still performed his duties "for a country and government,"
as he said, "worth fighting for, and dying for if need be."
Early in 1862 Grant had won some great victories at Forts Henry and
Donelson, on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. The latter fort, under
General Buckner, surrendered Feb. 16, with sixty-five guns, seventeen
thousand six hundred small arms, and nearly fifteen thousand troops.
Major-General Grant was now commanding the Army of the Tennessee under
Halleck, and Sherman was assigned to a division under Grant. The latter
held about the same "crazy" idea that Sherman held,--that the
Southerners were hard and brave fighters, and would never surrender till
forced to it through exhaustion of men and money.
The next great battle was at Shiloh, or Pittsburg Landing, begun by the
Confederates Sunday, April 6, 1862, and lasting two days. The first day
our men were driven back a mile with heavy loss. General Albert Sidney
Johnston, the commander-in-chief of the Confederates, was struck about
2 P.M. by a minie-ball in the calf of the leg, which penetrated the boot
and severed the main artery. His horse was shot in four places. He would
not leave the field till compelled by loss of blood, and died soon
after.
Dr. D. W. Yandell, who had been with Johnston, left him to establish a
hospital for the wounded, among them many Federals. "These men were our
enemies a moment ago," said Johnston; "they are our prisoners now. Take
care of them." Had Yandell remained with him, his life would probably
have been saved, as the wound would have been attended to.
"During the whole of Sunday," says Grant, "I was continually engaged in
passing from one part of the field to another, giving directions to
division commanders. In thus moving along the line, I never deemed it
important to stay long with Sherman. Although his troops were then under
fire for the first time, their commander, by his constant presence with
them, inspired a confidence in officers and men that enabled them to
render services on that bloody battle-field worthy of the best of
veterans.
"A casualty to Sherman that would have taken him from the field that day
would have been a sad one for the troops engaged at Shiloh. And how near
we came to this! On the 6th, Sherman was shot twice--once in the hand,
once in the shoulder, the ball cutting his coat and making a slight
wound, and a third ball passed through his hat. In addition to this, he
had several horses shot during the day."
Later, Colonel James B. McPherson's horse was shot quite through, just
back of the saddle, but the poor creature carried his rider out of
danger before he dropped dead.
Both armies slept on their arms that night in a pouring rain, and the
next morning, April 7, renewed the fight, with a hard won victory for
the Union forces. So dreadful was the conflict that Grant writes, "I saw
an open field, in our possession on the second day, over which the
Confederates had made repeated charges the day before, so covered with
dead that it would have been possible to walk across the clearing in any
direction, stepping on dead bodies, without a foot touching the
ground.... On one part, which had evidently not been ploughed for
several years, probably because the land was poor, bushes had grown up,
some to the height of eight or ten feet. There was not one of these
left standing unpierced by bullets. The smaller ones were all cut down."
Our loss in killed, wounded, and missing was 13,573; the Confederates
reported their loss as 10,699, but General Grant thinks it was much
greater.
The battle had been bravely and desperately fought on both sides. About
five hundred yards east of Shiloh meeting-house there had been a deadly
combat. Several times cartridges gave out; but Sherman appealed to the
regiments to "stand fast," as their retiring would have a bad effect on
others, and the men heroically kept their posts. Sherman's division lost
over two thousand men.
Grant said, in his official report, "I feel it a duty to a gallant and
able officer, Brigadier-General W. T. Sherman, to make mention that he
was not only with his command during the entire two days of action, but
displayed great judgment and skill in the management of his men."
Halleck said, "Sherman saved the fortunes of the day on the 6th, and
contributed largely to the glorious victory on the 7th."
When on the 8th it was found that the enemy had retreated, "leaving
killed, wounded, and much property by the way," says Sherman, "we all
experienced a feeling of relief. The struggle had been so long, so
desperate and bloody, that the survivors seemed exhausted and nerveless.
We appreciated the value of the victory, but realized also its great
cost of life."
Sherman was promoted to the position of major-general May 1. During June
and July he was "building railroad-trestles and bridges, fighting off
cavalry detachments coming from the South, and waging an everlasting
quarrel with planters about the negroes and fences, they trying, in the
midst of moving armies, to raise a crop of corn."
The desire now was to get complete possession of the Mississippi River.
Admiral Farragut had taken New Orleans, after the dreadful passage of
Forts Jackson and St. Philip. The brave old admiral had said, "If I die
in the attempt, it will only be what every officer has to expect. He who
dies in doing his duty to his country, and at peace with his God, has
played the drama of life to the best advantage."
With his six sloops-of-war, sixteen gunboats, twenty-one schooners, and
five other vessels, forty-eight in all, carrying two hundred guns, all
led by the Hartford, Farragut pushed his way through a sea of fire. Five
fire-rafts--flat boats, filled with dry wood smeared with tar and
turpentine--blazed among his ships, while shot and shell strewed his
decks with the dead; but he cut his way to victory, and won immortal
honor.
Memphis had been captured by our gunboats and rams, under Admiral Davis,
June 6. Of the eight Confederate gunboats in the flotilla, three, the
Lovell, Beauregard, and Thompson, were destroyed by our vessels; four
were captured and repaired for our use; while one, the Van Dorn,
escaped. Five transports and some cotton were taken, and a large ram and
two tugs on the stocks were destroyed.
Sherman was ordered to go to Memphis to take command of the district of
West Tennessee. When he entered the city, the stores, churches, and
schools were closed. He caused these and the places of amusement to be
opened, and put the fugitive slaves to work on the fortifications, and
gave them food and clothing.
The story is told of an Episcopal clergyman who came to Sherman, saying
that he was embarrassed about his prayer for the President.
"Whom do you regard as President?" said Sherman.
"Mr. Davis," was his reply.
"Very well; pray for Jeff Davis if you wish. He needs your prayers
badly. It will take a great deal of praying to save him."
"Then I will not be compelled to pray for Mr. Lincoln?"
"Oh, no. He is a good man, and don't need your prayers. You may pray for
him if you feel like it, but there's no compulsion."
To some of the editors in Memphis, Sherman said, "If I find the press of
Memphis actuated by high principle and a sole devotion to their country,
I will be their best friend; but if I find them personal, abusive,
dealing in innuendoes and hints at a blind venture, and looking to their
own selfish aggrandizement and fame, then they had better look out; for
I regard such persons as greater enemies to their country and to mankind
than the men who, from a mistaken sense of State pride, have taken up
muskets, and fight us about as hard as we care about."
Sherman went to the _Argus_ office one day, and, in his familiar manner,
said to the young editors, as he sat down and rested his feet on the
table: "Boys, I have been ordered to suppress your paper, but I don't
like to do that. I just dropped in to warn you not to be so free with
your pencils. If you don't ease up, you'll get into trouble."
When some complained of the acts of the soldiers, Sherman replied that
he knew of several instances where their conduct had been provoked by
sneering remarks about "Northern barbarians" and "Lincoln's hirelings."
"People who use such language," he said, "must seek redress through some
one else, for I will not tolerate insults to our country or cause."
All sorts of ruses were adopted by the Southern army to obtain things
from Memphis. While General Van Dorn was at Holly Springs, he desired
supplies for his men. Some of our soldiers found, in a farmer's barn, a
large hearse with pall and plumes, which had been used at a big funeral.
It was filled with medicines for Van Dorn's army! "It was a good trick,"
said Sherman, "but diminished our respect for such pageants afterward."
In December there was a concerted movement by Grant and Sherman to
capture Vicksburg. The latter was to move down the river, and with
Admiral Porter's gunboats, "proceed," said Grant, "to the reduction of
that place in such manner as circumstances and your own judgment may
dictate." Sherman was to make the attack by land, in the rear, while
Porter attacked by river front. Three divisions of Sherman's army were
landed in the low, marshy lands, cut by the Chickasaw Bayou and other
creeks, where a slight rise in the Mississippi River would drown them
all. The bluffs of Walnut Hills, on which Vicksburg stands, are two
hundred feet high, and impregnable.
Against these the fearless troops were led Dec. 29, with great
slaughter. De Courcy's brigade of Morgan's division, and Frank Blair's
brigade of Steele's division, with the Fourth Iowa, were under the
hottest fire. De Courcy lost 700, Blair 743, and the Fourth Iowa 111
men; the Confederate loss was only about 187.
Sherman says, "The men of the Sixth Missouri actually scooped out with
their hands caves in the bank, which sheltered them against the fire of
the enemy, who, right over their heads, held their muskets outside the
parapet vertically, and fired down. So critical was the position, that
we could not recall the men till after dark, and then one at a time. Our
loss had been pretty heavy, and we had accomplished nothing."
It was evident that Vicksburg must be taken in some other manner. Grant
decided to cut a canal across the peninsula opposite Vicksburg, that he
might get below the city. All through January and February, Sherman's
men were digging the canal, planned to be sixty feet wide and nine feet
deep, and fighting off the Mississippi, which continued to rise, and
threatened to drown them. When the men were not digging canals, they
were clearing bayous, which were filled with cypress and cottonwood
trees. Sometimes they marched at night through canebrakes, carrying
lighted candles, Sherman walking with them, the water above his hips.
The drummer-boys carried their drums on their heads, and the men slung
their cartridge-boxes around their necks.
Admiral Porter, from his gunboats, used to send Sherman messages,
written on tissue paper, concealed in a piece of tobacco. A negro
carried them through the swamps.
Many weeks were spent on other canals, but all proved useless. Finally
it was decided to move all the troops down the west bank of the river,
cross over below Vicksburg, and attack it on the land side.
A series of battles followed at Port Gibson, Raymond, Jackson, Champion
Hills, and Big Black. Grant had inflicted a loss upon the enemy during a
few days of eight thousand in killed, wounded, and missing; had captured
eighty-eight pieces of their artillery, and driven them into their
defences at Vicksburg. "We must go back to the campaigns of Napoleon,"
says Francis Vinton Greene, lieutenant of engineers, "to find equally
brilliant results accompanied in the same space of time with such small
loss."
In these days of carnage, incidents even amusing happened. While Sherman
and his troops were at Jackson, a fat man came to him and hoped that his
hotel would not be burned, as he was a law-abiding Union man. Sherman
said that this fact was manifest from the sign on his hotel, where the
words "United States" had been faintly painted out and "Confederate
Hotel" painted over it!
On May 22 the last assault was made on Vicksburg; and, though severe and
bloody, it was unsuccessful, on account of the strength of the position,
and the earnest fighting of the garrison.
"I have since seen the position at Sevastopol," writes Sherman, "and
without hesitation I declare that at Vicksburg to have been the more
difficult of the two."
It was during this dreadful assault that the drummer boy, Orion P. Howe,
came to Sherman, calling out in a childish voice that one of the
regiments was out of ammunition, and must abandon its position unless
relief was sent. The general looked down from his horse upon the lad,
and saw the blood running from a wound in the leg.
"All right, my boy," said Sherman, "I'll send them all they need; but as
you seem to be badly hurt, you had better go to the rear and find a
surgeon and let him fix you up."
The boy saluted and started for the rear; but again he came running
back, shouting, "General, calibre fifty-eight, calibre fifty-eight!"
fearing that the wrong size might be sent, and prove useless. He was
afterwards, through Sherman, appointed a cadet at the Naval Academy,
Annapolis.
The siege of Vicksburg was begun at once. Mines were dug by both sides
and exploded. Chief Engineer S. H. Lockett, of the Confederates, tells
how a private suggested the firing of a wicker case filled with cotton,
which protected the Federals in their sapping. He took a piece of
port-fire, put it into cotton soaked with turpentine and fired it from
an old-fashioned bore musket. The wicker case took fire and burned up.
Barrels of powder, lighted by a time-fuse, were thrown into the ranks of
the besiegers.
As the weeks went by, the provisions for the soldiers and citizens of
Vicksburg were well-nigh consumed. They ate rats and mules. Flour was
five dollars a pound. Some of the people built rooms in the yellow clay
banks, and thus escaped the shells.
The soldiers grew desperate. General Pemberton hoped they could cut
their way out, and caused boats to be made out of some of the
houses,--they planned to make two thousand,--which they could use in
their escape down the river.
Finally, when all became hopeless, Pemberton said, "Far better would it
be for me to die at the head of my army, even in a vain effort to force
the enemy's lines, than to surrender it and live and meet the obloquy
which I know will be heaped upon me. But my duty is to sacrifice myself
to save the army which has so nobly done its duty to defend Vicksburg."
July 4, 1863, Pemberton surrendered his garrison of over thirty-one
thousand men, sixty thousand muskets, and over one hundred and seventy
cannon.
Grant said of Sherman, "His untiring energy and great efficiency during
the campaign entitled him to a full share of all the credit due for its
success. He could not have done more if the plan had been his own."
Before sunset of July 4, Sherman, with fifty thousand men, was in
pursuit of Johnston, who had been trying to aid Pemberton. Johnston
marched rapidly, driving all cattle, hogs, and sheep into the ponds, and
shooting them, so that they should not furnish food for the Federals,
and also to spoil the water. Johnston made a stand at Jackson, but soon
evacuated the place.
For bravery and success in this campaign, Grant was made major-general
in the regular army, the highest grade then allowed by law, and Sherman
and McPherson brigadier-generals in the regular army.
After the fall of Vicksburg, Sherman's family, Mrs. Sherman, Minnie,
Lizzie, Willie, and Tom, came from Ohio to visit him. Willie was nine
years old, fond of the parade of war, and was made a "sergeant" in the
regular battalion. He became ill in the low marshy country, and died of
typhoid fever, just after the family reached the Gayoso Hotel in
Memphis.
This death was a great blow to Sherman, as he showed in a letter which
he wrote to Captain C. C. Smith, commanding Battalion Thirteenth United
States Regulars: "I cannot sleep to-night till I record an expression of
the deep feelings of my heart to you, and to the officers and soldiers
of the battalion, for their kind behavior to my poor child.... The child
that bore my name, and in whose future I reposed with more confidence
than I did in my own plan of life, now being carried by steamer a mere
corpse, seeking a grave in a distant land, with a weeping mother,
brother, and sisters clustered about him. For myself I ask no sympathy.
On, on I must go, to meet a soldier's fate, or live to see our country
rise superior to all factions, till its flag is adored and respected by
ourselves and by all the powers of the earth....
"Child as he was, he had the enthusiasm, the pure love of truth, honor,
and love of country, which should animate all soldiers.... Assure each
and all, if in after years they call on me or mine, and mention that
they were of the Thirteenth Regulars when Willie was a sergeant, they
will have a key to the affections of my family that will open all it
has; that we will share with them our last blanket, our last crust!"
In the spring of 1867, Willie's body was removed from Lancaster, Ohio,
to St. Louis, and buried by the side of another child, Charles, born in
1864. Sherman's officers and men erected a beautiful monument to Willie,
and had inscribed on it, "Our little Sergeant Willie, from the First
Battalion Thirteenth United States Infantry."
After the dreadful battle of Chickamauga, Ga., Sept. 20, 1863, in which
we lost 15,851 men, and the Confederates 17,804, Grant went to
Chattanooga to retrieve that disaster. In this battle Thomas, "who,"
says General Fullerton, "never retreated and had never been defeated,"
so wonderfully held his ground that he was ever afterwards called the
"Rock of Chickamauga."
"With but twenty-five thousand men," said General Garfield, "formed in a
semicircle, of which he himself was the centre and soul, he successfully
resisted for more than five hours the repeated assaults of an army of
sixty-five thousand men, flushed with victory and bent on his
annihilation.
"Towards the close of the day his ammunition began to fail. One by one
of his division commanders reported but ten rounds, five rounds, and two
rounds left. The calm, quiet answer was returned, 'Save your fire for
close quarters, and when your last shot is fired give them the bayonet.
"On a portion of this line the last assault was repelled by the bayonet,
and several hundred rebels were captured. When night had closed over the
combatants, the last sound of battle was the booming of Thomas's shells
bursting among his baffled and retreating assailants."
Grant telegraphed to Thomas to hold Chattanooga at all hazards; and
Thomas, with his troops on less than half rations for the past month,
replied, "We will hold the town till we starve." He urged Sherman to
come at once. Then followed those memorable battles of Lookout Mountain,
when Hooker fought his "Battle above the clouds," and Missionary Ridge,
when Wood's and Sheridan's divisions under Thomas lost in one hour's
storming 2,287 men.
"Sherman was fighting the heavy column of the enemy on our left," said
General Henry M. Cist, "and the main part of the battle had been his
share." He lost about two thousand men.
At three o'clock the first rifle-pits on the ridge were to be carried,
and there they were to halt to await orders. There was some delay, so
that the order was not given till half-past three, when the guns
sounded, one, two, up to six, for the charge.
The enemy had four lines of breastworks, but one had been captured by
Thomas the day before. Three rifle-pits remained. As our men approached,
cheering, and breaking into a double-quick, the enemy poured upon them
shot and shell from their batteries, changing it soon to grape and
canister, with a terrific fire of musketry.
"Dashing through this over the open plain," says General Cist, "the
soldiers of the army of the Cumberland swept on, driving the enemy's
skirmishers, charging down on the line of works at the foot of the
ridge, capturing it at the point of the bayonet, and routing the rebels,
sending them at full speed up the ridge, killing and capturing them in
large numbers. These rifle-pits were reached simultaneously by the
several commands, when the troops, in compliance with their
instructions, lay down at the foot of the ridge awaiting further
orders."
Here they waited under a hot fire. The orders did not come; and then
without orders, first one regiment and then another, with their colors
raised, pushed up the mountain covered with rocks and fallen timber.
The centre of Sheridan's division reached the crest first, and almost at
the same time the ridge was carried in six places. Almost entire
regiments were taken from the enemy, and batteries, the Confederates
often bayoneted at their guns. In an hour the work had been
accomplished, and the storming of Missionary Ridge had passed into
history as a memorable instance of bravery. "After it was over," says
General Fullerton, "some madly shouted, some wept from very excess of
joy, some grotesquely danced out their delight,--even our wounded forgot
their pain to join in the general hurrah."
Grant and Thomas were watching the battle through their glasses. Grant
asked, "By whose orders are those troops going up the hill?"
"I don't know," said Thomas, "I did not."
"I didn't order them up," said Sheridan, "but we are going to take the
ridge."
Grant remarked that "it was all right if it turned out all right, but,
if not, some one would suffer."
By the capture of the ridge, Sherman was enabled to take the tunnel as
he had been ordered. Captain S. H. M. Byers, who was captured at the
tunnel with sixty of his regiment and put in Libby prison for seven
months--the sixty were soon reduced to sixteen by death--thus describes
the scene. "As the column came out upon the ground, and in sight of the
rebel batteries, their renewed and concentrated fire knocked the limbs
from the trees above our heads.... In front of us was a rail-fence.
'Jump the fence, boys,' was the order, and never was a fence scaled more
quickly. It was nearly half a mile to the rebel position, and we started
on the charge, running across the open fields. I had heard the roaring
of heavy battle before, but never such shrieking of cannon balls and
bursting of shells as met us on that run."
Sherman, in his official report, gave his officers and men due credit
for their "patience, cheerfulness, and courage." "For long periods," he
said, "without regular rations or supplies of any kind, they have
marched through mud and over rocks, sometimes barefooted, without a
murmur. Without a moment's rest after a march of over four hundred
miles, without sleep for three successive nights, we crossed the
Tennessee, fought our part of the battle of Chattanooga, pursued the
enemy out of Tennessee, and then turned more than a hundred and twenty
miles north, and compelled Longstreet to raise the siege of Knoxville."
Congress soon passed a resolution of thanks to Sherman and his army for
their "gallant and arduous services in marching to the relief of the
Army of the Cumberland, and for their gallantry and heroism in the
battle of Chattanooga, which contributed in a great degree to the
success of our arms in that glorious victory."
The grade of lieutenant-general was now revived in the army, and
bestowed upon Grant. He wrote Sherman at once to "express my thanks to
you and McPherson, as _the men_ to whom, above all others, I feel
indebted for whatever I have had of success. How far your advice and
suggestions have been of assistance, you know. How far your execution of
whatever has been given you to do entitles you to the reward I am
receiving, you cannot know as well as I do."
And Sherman wrote back: "I believe you as brave, patriotic, and just as
the great prototype Washington; as unselfish, kind-hearted, and honest
as a man should be; but the chief characteristic in your nature is the
simple faith in success you have always manifested, which I can liken to
nothing else than the faith a Christian has in his Saviour.
"This faith gave you victory at Shiloh and Vicksburg. Also, when you
have completed your best preparations, you go into battle without
hesitation, as at Chattanooga--no doubts, no reserve; and I tell you
that it was this that made us act with confidence. I knew, wherever I
was, that you thought of me, and if I got in a tight place you would
come--if alive."
Sherman at this time was put in command of the military division of the
Mississippi, with Schofield, Thomas, McPherson, and Steele under him.
Grant was to conquer Robert E. Lee and his large army at the East; and
Sherman, Joseph E. Johnston's army at the West and South.
Supplies were at once gathered by Sherman at Chattanooga for one
hundred thousand men, which would necessitate one hundred and thirty
cars, of ten tons each, to reach that city daily. Confederate raids
under Forrest and others were frequent; but, as in the case of Grant,
nothing could deter Sherman.
On May 5, 1864, the great army started for Atlanta, Ga., prepared to
fight its way. The men fought bravely at Resaca, at Allatoona Pass, and
elsewhere.
During the month of May, Sherman had advanced his army, as he says,
"nearly a hundred miles of as difficult a country as was ever fought
over by civilized armies. The fighting was continuous, almost daily,
among trees and bushes, on ground where we could rarely see a hundred
yards ahead." Sherman had lost 9,299 men; nearly two thousand in killed
and missing, and over seven thousand wounded. The enemy's loss was a
little over half that number.
From June 10 to July 3 an almost constant battle was waged about Kenesaw
Mountain, with a loss on our side of nearly eight thousand, and the
Confederate loss considerably less.
An amusing remark came to Sherman's ear at Kenesaw. One of the
Confederate soldiers said to another, "Well, the Yanks will have to git
up and git now, for I heard General Johnston himself say that General
Wheeler had blown up the _tunnel_ near Dalton, and that the Yanks would
have to retreat, because they could get no more rations."
"Oh," said the listener, "don't you know that old Sherman carries a
_duplicate_ tunnel along?"
The enemy were constantly driven back towards Atlanta. On July 22 a
bloody battle was fought near Atlanta, usually called the Battle of
Atlanta, in which the brave General McPherson was killed in the hottest
of the fight when passing from one column to another. He rode into a
wood, and soon his horse returned, wounded, bleeding, and riderless. His
body was recovered, with his gauntlets on and boots outside his
pantaloons, but his pocket-book with his papers was gone. The spot where
he fell was soon retaken by our men, and the pocket-book and its
contents were found in the haversack of a prisoner of war, captured at
the time.
McPherson was only thirty-four years old, over six feet high,
universally beloved, and apparently destined for a great future. Sherman
could not look long upon the body. "Better start at once, and drive
carefully," said the bluff but tender-hearted general to McPherson's
staff, as he covered the body with the flag. It was taken home to Clyde,
Ohio, where it was received with great honor, and buried near his
mother's house in a small cemetery, part of which is the family orchard
where he played when a boy.
General John A. Logan took the command after the death of McPherson, and
fought bravely. The attack was made upon his line seven times, and seven
times repulsed.
Sherman was often in extreme danger. Once, when he, Logan, and a few
others were talking together, a minie-ball passed through Logan's
coat-sleeve, scratching the skin, and struck Colonel Taylor in the
breast. A memorandum-book saved his life. At another time a cannon-ball
passed over Sherman's shoulder and killed the horse of an orderly
behind. Another ball took off the head of a negro close by Sherman.
The month of July was an extremely hot one, but the soldiers had been
in almost constant conflict. Our loss in that month was about ten
thousand men, and that of the enemy perhaps greater by a few hundreds.
Sherman's men tore up railroad-tracks, made bonfires of the ties,
wrapped the heated rails round trees and telegraph poles, and left them
to cool,--such rails could not be used again,--and filled up deep cuts
with trees, brush, and earth, commingled with loaded shells, so arranged
that they would explode if disturbed. Thus the devastation of war went
on.
Atlanta was full of foundries, arsenals, and machine-shops, and was
called the "Gate City of the South." "I knew that its capture," says
Sherman, "would be the death-knell of the Southern Confederacy."
Sept. 2 Atlanta could bear the Federal guns no longer, was evacuated by
the enemy, and our troops marched into the city with great rejoicing.
The losses during these four months had been over thirty thousand on
each side.
President Lincoln wrote to Sherman: "The marches, battles, sieges, and
other military operations, that have signalized the campaign, must
render it famous in the annals of the war, and have entitled those who
have participated therein to the applause and thanks of the nation."
Grant wrote from City Point, Va., "In honor of your great victory, I
have ordered a salute to be fired with _shotted_ guns from every battery
bearing on the enemy.... I feel that you have accomplished the most
gigantic undertaking given to any general in this war."
Sherman at once required all the citizens and families resident in
Atlanta to leave the city and go North or South as they chose, with a
reasonable amount of furniture and bedding. This order was denounced by
Hood, who had relieved Johnston, as unprecedented and cruel. A bitter
correspondence took place, in which Sherman said, "War is cruelty, and
you cannot refine it.... You might as well appeal against the
thunder-storms as against these terrible hardships of war. They are
inevitable; and the only way the people of Atlanta can hope once more to
live in peace and quiet at home, is to stop the war, which can only be
done by admitting that it began in error and is perpetuated in pride....
"I want peace, and believe it can only be reached through union and war,
and I will ever conduct war with a view to perfect and early success.
When peace does come, you may call on me for anything. Then will I share
with you the last cracker, and watch with you to shield your homes and
families against danger from every quarter."
Hood then took his army into Tennessee, and much of the old battle
ground was fought over. Allatoona Pass was wonderfully defended by
General John M. Corse, who lost a cheek-bone and an ear by a ball
cutting across his face, but still led his men, holding the pass and
killing the enemy three to one. Mr. John C. Ropes regards this fight "as
one of the most memorable occurrences of the war."
At Resaca, when General Hood demanded its surrender, Colonel Clark R.
Weaver said, "In my opinion, I can hold this post. If you want it, come
and take it." But Hood did not attempt it after his losses at Allatoona.
Sherman saw the impossibility of holding the country and defending the
railroads without constant losses. He telegraphed Grant, "With
twenty-five thousand infantry and the bold cavalry he has, Hood can
constantly break my road. I would infinitely prefer to make a wreck of
the road and of the country from Chattanooga to Atlanta ... and with my
effective army move through Georgia, smashing things to the sea."
On the morning of Nov. 15, 1864, this great army of about 65,000 men
began its march from Atlanta to the sea. The depot, round-house, and
machine-shops of the Georgia railroad had been burned. The fire
destroyed the heart of the city, but did not reach the mass of the
dwelling-houses. The army carried sixty-five guns, or one to each
thousand men. Each gun, caisson, and forge was drawn by four teams of
horses. There were twenty-five hundred wagons, with six mules each, and
six hundred ambulances with two horses each. Every soldier carried on
his person forty rounds of ammunition, and in the wagons were enough
cartridges to make up two hundred rounds to a man. The procession
occupied five miles or more of road.
Corps commanders alone were intrusted with the power of destroying
mills, cotton-gins, etc. "Where the army is unmolested," said Sherman,
"no destruction of such property should be permitted."
The cavalry and artillery were allowed to take horses, mules, and
wagons, especially from the rich, who were not usually as friendly as
the poor. Soldiers were not to enter the dwellings of the inhabitants,
but might gather vegetables and stock. Regular foraging parties might
gather provisions at any distance from the road travelled.
As the great company moved out of Atlanta, the black smoke of her
buildings rising high in air, the men sang "John Brown's body lies
a-mouldering in his grave." "Never before or since," says Sherman, "have
I heard the chorus of 'Glory, glory, hallelujah!' done with more
spirit, or in better harmony of time and place."
As Sherman moved past his men, some of them called out, "Uncle
Billy,"--they usually called him this,--"I guess Grant is waiting for us
at Richmond!"
The first night they camped by the roadside near Lithonia. All night
long groups of men were tearing up railroads and bending the heated
rails around trees or telegraph poles.
At the towns the white people came out to look upon the hated intruders,
and the colored people were frantic with joy. Each day foraging parties,
"Sherman's bummers" as they were called, usually about fifty men from a
brigade, would go out to the plantations for food.
"The foragers," says Major-General Jacob D. Cox in his "March to the
Sea," "turned into beasts of burden oxen and cows, as well as horses and
mules. Here would be a silver-mounted family carriage drawn by a jackass
and a cow, loaded inside and out with everything the country produced,
vegetable and animal, dead and alive. There would be an ox-cart,
similarly loaded, and drawn by a nondescript tandem team, equally
incongruous. Perched upon the top would be a ragged forager, rigged out
in a fur hat of a fashion worn by darkies of a century ago, or a
dress-coat which had done service at stylish balls of a former
generation." Many of the horses and mules collected were shot, as it
produced a bad effect on the infantry when too many idlers were mounted.
The usual march for the army was about fifteen miles per day. The
Southern press urged that the invading army be destroyed, starved,
obstructed by gun, spade, and axe. But the great host swept on.
At Milledgeville the arsenal and such public buildings as could be used
easily for hostile purposes were burned, while several mills and
thousands of bales of cotton were spared. Other places shared the same
fate.
As the army neared Savannah, they were assured by some prisoners whom
they took, that it would be found strongly fortified. On one of the
roads torpedoes had been planted, one of which exploded when touched by
a horse's hoof, killing the animal and literally blowing off the flesh
from the legs of the rider. This so angered General Sherman, that he
made some rebel prisoners, much against their will, pass over the road
to explode their own torpedoes, or to discover and dig them up.
Sherman demanded of General Hardee the surrender of Savannah. This
Hardee declined to do; but he evacuated the city about the time the
assault was to have been made, leaving behind his heavy guns, cotton,
railway-cars, steamboats, and other property, but destroying his iron
clads and navy-yards. The ground outside the forts was filled with
torpedoes, as was also the Savannah River. Log piers were stretched
across the channel below the city, and filled with the cobble-stones
that formerly paved the streets. A heavy force at once set to work to
remove the torpedoes and other obstructions from the river, and Savannah
became the great depot of supply for the troops. Very many destitute
Southern families were fed by Sherman.
Sherman telegraphed the President, Dec. 22, 1864: "I beg to present you,
as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with over one hundred and
fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, also about twenty-five
thousand bales of cotton."
There was great rejoicing at the capture of the city, as now Sherman
could march into the Carolinas and lay them waste, and then join his
army to that of Grant, who was besieging Lee in Richmond. Thomas had
conquered Hood at Nashville. The end of the war could be plainly seen.
Grant congratulated Sherman on his brilliant campaign. "I never had a
doubt," he said, "of the result. When apprehensions for your safety were
expressed by the President, I assured him, with the army you had, and
you in command of it, there was no danger but you would _strike_ bottom
on salt water some place; that I would not feel the same security, in
fact, would not have intrusted the expedition to any other living
commander."
Lincoln wrote, "The undertaking being a success, the honor is all yours;
for I believe none of us went further than to acquiesce.... But what
next? I suppose it will be safer if I leave General Grant and yourself
to decide."
Congress passed a vote of thanks to Sherman and his men for the great
March to the Sea, of three hundred miles in twenty-four days. This march
greatly interested Europe, though Sherman never considered it so
important as the passage of the army afterwards through the Carolinas.
The _London Times_ said: "Since the great Duke of Marlborough turned his
back upon the Dutch, and plunged hurriedly into Germany to fight the
famous battle of Blenheim, military history has recorded no stranger
marvel than this mysterious expedition of General Sherman, on an unknown
route, against an undiscovered enemy." Noted army men regard it as
having "scarcely a parallel in the history of war."
In January the whole army left Savannah, Ga., for Columbia, S.C.
Sometimes, in pouring rains, they waded up to their shoulders through
swamps previously considered impassable, or made roads for miles through
the mud by corduroying them with rails and split trees.
The Confederate General Johnston said later, in the hearing of General
Cox, concerning this part of the march, "he had made up his mind that
there had been no such army since the days of Julius Cæsar."
"Whoever will consider," says General Cox, "the effect of dragging the
artillery and hundreds of loaded army wagons over mud roads, in such a
country, and of the infinite labor required to pave these roads with
logs, levelling the surface with smaller poles in the hollows between,
adding to the structure as the mass sinks in the ooze, and continuing
this till the miles of train have pulled through, will get a constantly
increasing idea of the work, and a steadily increasing wonder that it
was done at all."
On Feb. 16 Sherman camped near an old prison bivouac opposite Columbia,
called Camp Sorghum, "where remained," he says, "the mud-hovels and
holes in the ground which our prisoners had made to shelter themselves
from the winter's cold and the summer's heat."
When the army entered Columbia, they found a long pile of burning
cotton-bales, which Sherman was told had been fired by General Wade
Hampton's men before their departure. At night a high wind fanned these
flames; and though Sherman's men assisted in trying to put out the fire,
the heart of the city was burned--several churches, the old State House,
hotels, and dwellings. About half the city was in ashes. Sherman gave
the mayor five hundred cattle to feed the people, and one hundred
muskets to preserve order after the departure of his army.
One lady saved her home from pillage by showing to the troops a book
which Sherman had given her years before. The boys knew Uncle Billy's
writing. They guarded her house, and a young man from Iowa tended her
baby while she was receiving a social call from Sherman.
While in Columbia, a poem was presented to Sherman by Adjutant S. H. M.
Byers of the Fifth Iowa Infantry, written while a prisoner in that city,
where it was arranged and sung by the prisoners. It was entitled
"Sherman's March to the Sea," beginning,--
"Our camp-fires shone bright on the mountains
That frowned on the river below,
As we stood by our guns in the morning,
And eagerly watched for the foe;
When a rider came out of the darkness
That hung over mountain and tree,
And shouted, 'Boys, up and be ready!
For Sherman will march to the sea!'"
Sherman at once attached Byers to his staff.
Several foundries, the factory of Confederate money, and the state
arsenal at Columbia, were destroyed by Sherman before leaving.
Charleston was evacuated Feb. 18, for fear of its falling into Federal
hands; and Wilmington was captured by General Terry Feb. 22. At Cheraw a
large number of guns and thirty-six hundred barrels of powder were
taken; at Fayetteville a magnificent United States arsenal was destroyed
by our men.
Two battles were fought at Averysboro and at Bentonville, Johnston now
commanding the Confederates, our loss being over two thousand men in
both battles. March 23 Sherman's army entered Goldsborough, N.C., after
a march from Savannah of four hundred and twenty-five miles, across five
large rivers, and innumerable swamps, in fifty days, the army being
almost as fresh as when they started from Atlanta.
General Sherman then left his army under Schofield, and started for City
Point, Va., to meet Lincoln and Grant on March 28. "When I left
Lincoln," says Sherman,--this proved to be their last meeting,--"I was
more than ever impressed with his kindly nature, his deep and earnest
sympathy with the afflictions of the whole people, resulting from the
war, and by the march of hostile armies through the South." He wanted no
more blood shed, and was anxious for the men on both sides to return to
their homes.
"Of all the men I ever met," said Sherman, "he seemed to possess more of
the elements of greatness, combined with goodness, than any other."
Sherman returned to his army, and made ready for one more march, to meet
Grant. He was to start April 10. However, April 6 Richmond fell, and Lee
and his whole army surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House, Va.,
April 9, 1865.
Sherman's army were resting, April 11, at the end of the hour's march,
when a staff-officer galloped along the lines, shouting, "Lee has
surrendered!" The soldiers were wild with delight, and flung their caps
at him, as they shouted, "You're the man we've been looking for these
three years!"
A Southern woman came to the gate with her children as the columns
passed, and, learning the reason of the commotion, looked at her little
ones, while the tears fell down her cheeks, and said tenderly, "Now
father will come home."
April 13 Johnston asked for a suspension of hostilities; on the evening
of April 14 Lincoln was assassinated, to the great grief of the nation;
April 18 a basis of agreement was effected between Sherman and Johnston,
which was modified at Washington, so as to correspond with the terms
made between Grant and Lee. On April 26 Johnston surrendered to Sherman
his whole force, 36,817 men, and the troops in Georgia and Florida,
52,453, making 89,270 men. The march to the sea and through the
Carolinas had helped, as Sherman believed it would, to end the Civil
War.
There remained only for the closing scene the grand review of the Army
of the West for six hours and a half along Pennsylvania Avenue,
Washington, May 24, the day following the review of the Army of the
Potomac. Some of the division commanders, by way of variety, had added
goats, cows, and mules, loaded with poultry, hams, etc. There were also
families of freed slaves in the procession, the women leading the
children. Each division was preceded by its corps of black helpers, with
picks and spades.
In Sherman's farewell to his army he urged those who remained in the
service to continue the same hard work and discipline which they had had
in the past, and those who went to their homes "not to yield to the
natural impatience sure to result from our past life of excitement and
adventure," but to make a home and occupation in our grand, extensive,
diversified country.
"Your general," he said, "now bids you farewell, with the full belief
that, as in war you have been good soldiers, so in peace you will make
good citizens; and if, unfortunately, new war should arise in our
country, 'Sherman's Army' will be the first to buckle on its old armor,
and come forth to defend and maintain the Government of our
inheritance."
After the war Sherman was in command of the military division of the
Mississippi, with headquarters at St. Louis. He took especial interest
in the development of the Northern and Southern Pacific railroads. When
Grant was made General, July 25, 1866, Sherman was made
Lieutenant-General. In 1869 when Grant became President, Sherman was
made General, with the provision that the office should go to no other
person. Sheridan was made Lieutenant-General with the same provision.
From Nov. 10, 1871, to Sept. 17, 1872, General Sherman travelled abroad
in Turkey, Russia, Austria, and Western Europe, and received
distinguished honors. He kept full notes. After his return he published
his memoirs in two volumes, which the _Nation_ characterises as "one of
the most noteworthy examples of self-revealing in the whole range of
autobiography."
He received degrees from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, and Princeton
colleges. To Harvard college he sent a large picture of himself, which
now hangs in the library. He was much sought after in social circles,
and was an interesting speaker and writer. Once when speaking on the
American flag to the pupils of the Packer and Polytechnic Institutes in
Brooklyn, he said of the "Stars and Bars," the Confederate flag, "They
cut out the blue. They left heaven out of their flag, and so were
destined to defeat."
To the cadets at West Point he said: "When war comes you can have but
one purpose--your country--and by your country I mean the whole country,
not part of it." Everywhere he was outspoken, of simple manners,
humorous, brave, unselfish, and comprehensive in mind and actions.
"The two or three great captains in any age," says the _Nation_, "are
alike in the supreme qualities which make a general. They have the
unruffled presence of mind which makes their intellectual operations
most sure and true in the greatest and most sudden peril, and the true
greatness which makes the most momentous decision and unhesitating
action under vast responsibility, as if these were the every day work of
their lives. The present generation has in our army seen two such, Grant
and Sherman. It is doubtful if it has seen a third."
General Oliver O. Howard, who lost an arm under Sherman, writes, "Take
him all in all, General Sherman was not only one of the greatest
military geniuses in history, but a model of a kindly, generous, and
faithful man in every position in life."
Sherman's soldiers idolized him. To them he was always "Old Tecums" or
"Uncle Billy." He believed in fighting at the front. He said in his
Memoirs: "No man can properly command an army from the rear. He must be
at its front.... Some men think that modern armies may be so regulated
that a general can sit in an office and play on his several columns as
on the keys of a piano. This is a fearful mistake. The directing mind
must be at the very head of the army--must be seen there, and the effect
of his mind and personal energy must be felt by every officer and man
present with it, to secure the best results."
General Sherman was strongly urged to become a candidate for the
Presidency. He declined absolutely, as he did not wish its cares and
duties; knowing also that the religion of his wife and children, Roman
Catholicism, though he was not a Romanist, would cause opposition. His
son, Thomas Ewing Sherman, though educated for the law, became a
Catholic priest.
After retiring from the army, as the law requires at sixty-four years of
age, though allowed full pay, thirteen thousand five hundred dollars
yearly to the end of his life, Sherman removed to New York, living at 75
West Seventy-first Street. Here, in the midst of his children and
grandchildren, he passed his last days happily. Of his four sons,
Willie, Charles, Thomas, and Philemon Tecumseh, the first two died. Of
his four daughters, Minnie, Lizzie, Ella, and Rachel, Minnie was married
to Lieutenant Fitch, Ella to Lieutenant Thackara, and Rachel to Dr.
Thorndike.
General Sherman was always partial to the West, and believed in its
great future.
Mrs. Sherman died Nov. 27, 1888, and was buried in Calvary Cemetery, St.
Louis, in a plot selected by herself and husband over twenty years
before. Here their two sons and three grandchildren were also buried.
Early in February, 1891, General Sherman took cold, which resulted in
his death from bronchial trouble and asthma, Saturday afternoon at 1.50,
Feb. 14. He died without apparent pain, all his family about him, except
the Rev. Thomas E. Sherman, his son, who was on his way home from
Europe.
Though requesting that his body should not lie in state, the family were
finally persuaded to allow the thousands of the General's friends to
pass by the coffin in his own parlors from ten to four o'clock. There
was deep and unfeigned sorrow. The funeral was one never to be
forgotten. New York City was draped with mourning. All the shipping
bore the emblems of grief, with flags at half-mast. Business was
practically suspended and the streets crowded.
For two hours and a half, while bells were tolling, the great procession
moved past, with inverted muskets, muffled drums, torn battle-flags,
cavalry and artillery, all following the caisson with its heroic dead
wrapped in the flag. The caisson in its funereal trappings was drawn by
five black horses, three of these abreast. Two of the horses were ridden
by artillerymen in blue uniforms, with black helmets and red plumes.
Behind the caisson was a soldier leading a handsome black riderless
horse, covered with black velvet, on whose back were Sherman's saddle
and his riding boots reversed.
The great of the nation were present to do Sherman honor. Among the
distinguished generals was Joseph E. Johnston from the South, who was
also at the funeral of Grant, and for whom both the Northern generals
had great respect and admiration.
As the funeral _cortège_ passed along, appropriate selections were
played by the bands. Gilmore's band electrified all hearts by the song
turned into a dirge, composed for Sherman by Henry C. Work.
"Bring the good old bugle, boys, we'll have another song,
Sing it with a spirit that will start the world along,
Sing it as we used to sing it, fifty thousand strong,
While we were marching through Georgia.
CHORUS.
'Hurrah! Hurrah! we bring the jubilee!
Hurrah! Hurrah! the flag that makes you free!'
So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea,
While we were marching through Georgia.
* * * * * * *
"So we made a thoroughfare for Freedom and her train,
Sixty miles in latitude--three hundred to the main;
Treason fled before us, for resistance was in vain,
While we were marching through Georgia."
As the body was taken on board the ferry-boat, for the west, the Marine
Band played the hymn:--
"Here bring your bleeding hearts,
Here tell your anguish;
Earth has no sorrow
That Heaven cannot heal."
All along the route to St. Louis great crowds gathered at the stations,
the old soldiers weeping like children. At Coshocton, Ohio, five hundred
school-children stood near the train, and sang "Nearer, my God, to
Thee." At Columbus, Ohio, at the depot, was a large picture of Sherman
surmounted by an eagle, and underneath the words, "Ohio's son, the
nation's hero."
At St. Louis in the midst of thousands, after a brief service by his
son, General Sherman was laid to rest in Calvary Cemetery by the side of
his wife, who had died a little more than two years previously. Richard
Watson Gilder voiced the sentiment of the nation:
"But better than martial awe, and the pageant of civic sorrow;
Better than praise of to-day, or the statue we build to-morrow;
Better than honor and glory, and history's iron pen,
Is the thought of duty done, and the love of his fellowmen."
[Illustration: CHARLES H. SPURGEON.]
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON.
No one who has sat in the great London Tabernacle, with its six thousand
or more eager listeners, and heard Spurgeon preach, natural, brotherly,
earnest, and eloquent, can ever forget it. I have seen a whole
congregation moved to tears, as he talked of the relationship between
God and His children, from the words, "Abba, Father." To hear a man like
this, is always to ask the secret of his power. What was the childhood
and youth that ushered in this rare manhood? Did he have more talent,
more grace, more learning, than other men? He had no wealth, no superior
education, no fortuitous circumstances, yet his career has been a
remarkable one.
"He is a wonderful man," said Lord Shaftesbury, "full of zeal,
affection, faith; abounding in reputation and authority, and,
yet--perfectly humble, with the openness and simplicity of a child."
The _London Speaker_ calls him "one of those born orators of whom this
generation has seen only two,--himself and John Bright. Gifted with
splendid common-sense, with a genuine humor, with a large-hearted love
for his fellow-creatures." ...
Charles Haddon Spurgeon was born at Kelvedon, Essex, England, June 19,
1834, the eldest of seventeen children. His father, the Rev. John
Spurgeon, was a pastor of the Independent or Congregational Church, a
genial, warm-hearted man, and of fine presence. His mother, a Miss
Jarvis, was a devoted Christian woman, esteemed for her good works
wherever she resided. The Rev. John Spurgeon tells this story of his
wife: "I had been from home a great deal, trying to build up weak
congregations, and felt that I was neglecting the religious training of
my own children while I toiled for the good of others. I returned home
with these feelings.
"I opened the door, and was surprised to find none of the children about
the hall. Going quietly up the stairs, I heard my wife's voice. She was
engaged in prayer with the children. I heard her pray for them, one by
one, by name. She came to Charles, and specially prayed for him, for he
was of high spirit and daring temper. I listened till she had ended her
prayer, and I felt and said, 'Lord, I will go on with Thy work. The
children will be cared for.'"
It is related of her, after her brilliant son Charles had become a
Baptist; that she said to him, "I have often prayed that you might be
saved, but never that you should become a Baptist;" to which he
answered, with his accustomed humor, "The Lord has answered your prayer
with His usual bounty, and given you more than you asked."
Mrs. Spurgeon died May 18, 1888, having lived to see the wonderful
success of her son, and be thankful for it. Mr. Spurgeon was much
devoted to his mother, and her death brought on a severe attack of
illness.
When Charles was quite young he was carried to the house of his
grandfather, the Rev. James Spurgeon, who preached for fifty-four years
in the Independent Church in Stambourne. When more than eighty years old
he said, "I have not had one hour's unhappiness with my church since I
have been over it.... I will never give up so long as God inclines
people to come, and souls are saved."
He possessed the not unusual combination, a large family and a small
income, and therefore cultivated a few acres of ground, and kept a cow.
The latter died suddenly, and Mrs. Spurgeon was much worried over the
matter.
"James," she said, "how will God provide for the dear children now? What
shall we do for milk?"
"Mother, God has said that He will provide, and I believe that He could
send us fifty cows if He pleased," was the reply.
That very day in London, a committee were distributing funds to poor
ministers. The Rev. James Spurgeon had never asked aid, but all must
have known how meagre was the salary of a village pastor.
One of the committee remarked, "There is a Mr. Spurgeon down at
Stambourne, in Essex, who needs some help."
One person said he would give five pounds. Another said, "I will put
five pounds to it; I know him: he is a worthy man." Others added, till
there were twenty pounds subscribed and sent by letter.
When the letter reached the preacher's house, Mrs. Spurgeon hated to pay
the postage, ninepence. When it was opened she was greatly astonished to
find twenty pounds, about one hundred dollars. Her husband said, "Now
can't you trust God about a cow?"
The Rev. Mr. Spurgeon, dressed in his knee-breeches, buckled shoes, silk
stockings, and frilled shirts, must have been an interesting figure. He
died when he was eighty-eight years old.
At the home of this grandfather in his early years, Charles found
especial delight in reading Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," Foxe's "Book
of Martyrs," and De Foe's "Robinson Crusoe."
He read the Scriptures at family prayer, and on one occasion persisted
in knowing what the "bottomless pit" in the Book of Revelation meant. If
it had no bottom, where did the people go to who dropped into it? These
were inconvenient questions to answer.
The Rev. Richard Knill visited the family, and was shown about the
garden by the young Charles. In the great yew-tree arbor the good man
knelt with the lad, and, with his arm about his neck, prayed for his
conversion. In the house, taking him on his knee, Mr. Knill said, "I do
not know how it is, but I feel a solemn presentiment that this child
will preach the gospel to thousands, and God will bless him to many
souls.
"So sure am I of this, that when my little man preaches in Rowland
Hill's chapel, as he will do one day, I should like him to promise me
that he will give out the hymn commencing,--
"God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform!"
Years later the famous Charles Spurgeon preached in the pulpit of
Rowland Hill, in the largest Non-conformist Church in London, before the
Metropolitan Tabernacle was built, and read the hymn desired by Mr.
Knill.
Charles attended school in Colchester, to which town his family had
moved, and became well versed in Latin and mathematics. At an
Agricultural College at Maidstone he spent a year, and then went to
Newmarket, as an assistant in the school. After a year at the latter
place, he removed to Cambridge, to assist a former teacher, Mr. Henry
Leeding, in a school for young men. Here he taught, and carried on his
own studies as well.
In January, 1850, at the age of sixteen, young Spurgeon was converted in
Colchester. He had been for some time troubled at heart, and determined
to visit every place of worship in the town, to see if he could not find
help. "What I wanted to know," he says, "was, 'How can I get my sins
forgiven?' and they never told me that. I wanted to hear how a poor
sinner, under a sense of sin, might find peace with God; and when I went
I heard a sermon on, 'Be not deceived; God is not mocked,' which cut me
up worse, but did not say how I might escape. I went again another day,
and the text was something about the glories of the righteous; nothing
for poor me!...
"At last one snowy day--it snowed so much I could not go to the place I
had determined to go to, and I was obliged to stop on the road; and it
was a blessed stop to me--I found rather an obscure street, and turned
down a court, and there was a little chapel. I wanted to go somewhere,
but I did not know this place. It was the Primitive Methodist Chapel."
Spurgeon went in and sat down, waiting for the service to begin. "At
last," he says, "a very thin-looking man came into the pulpit, and
opened his Bible, and read these words, 'Look unto Me, and be ye saved,
all the ends of the earth.' Just setting his eyes upon me, as if he knew
all my heart, he said, 'Young man, you are in trouble.' Well, I was,
sure enough. Says he, 'You will never get out of it unless you look to
Christ.' And then, lifting up his hands, he cried out, as only a
Primitive Methodist could do, 'Look, look, look! It is only look,' said
he. I saw at once the way to salvation. Oh, how I did leap for joy at
that moment! I know not what else he said. I did not take much notice of
it; I was so possessed with that one thought."
While at Newmarket, young Spurgeon was immersed in the River Lark, at
Isleham Ferry, May 3, 1850, on his mother's birthday. He had read the
Scriptures for himself, and believed that they favored this method of
Baptism, rather than sprinkling. At first the youth of sixteen, in his
round jacket and broad white turn-down collar, felt timid at seeing the
crowds on either side of the river; but once in the water, his fears
left him, and he enjoyed great peace at heart.
Some years later, Spurgeon related a most suggestive incident. "I was a
member of the church at Newmarket," he said, "when I first joined the
church, and was afterwards transferred to the church at Cambridge, one
of the best in England. I attended for three Lord's Days at the
communion, and nobody spoke to me. I sat in a pew with a gentleman, and
when I got outside I said, 'My dear friend, how are you?'
"He said, 'You have the advantage of me; I don't know you.'
"I said, 'I don't think I have, for I don't know you. But when I came to
the Lord's table, and partook of the memories of His death, I thought
you were my brother, and I thought I would speak to you.'
"I was only sixteen years of age, and he said, 'Sweet simplicity!'
"Oh, is it true, sir?' I said. 'Is it true?'
"He said, 'It is; but I am glad you did not say this to any of the
deacons.'"
The stranger asked the lad home to supper, and they become good
friends.
At once young Spurgeon began the Christian work for which he has ever
been renowned. He revived a society for tract distribution. He talked in
the Sunday-school, and in the vestry of the Independent Chapel, where
many gathered to hear him.
Removing to the school in Cambridge, he joined the "Lay Preachers'
Association." He was asked to go to the village of Teversham, four miles
from Cambridge, to accompany a friend, for an evening service. On the
way, Spurgeon said, "I trust God will bless your labors to-night."
"My labors?" said the friend; "I never preached in my life; I never
thought of doing such a thing. I was asked to walk with _you_, and I
sincerely hope God will bless _you_ in _your_ preaching."
Spurgeon was astonished; as he says, "My inmost soul being all in a
tremble, as to what would happen." The youth of sixteen preached his
first sermon from the words, "Unto you, therefore, which believe he is
precious," and spoke to the edification of all present.
He was soon asked to go to Waterbeach, a small village, to supply the
pulpit. The chapel was a rude one, made out of a barn. In a few months
the membership rose from forty to nearly one hundred. The Rev. Mr.
Peters had been their pastor for twenty-two years, receiving five pounds
for each quarter of the year.
At this time, says one of the deacons, speaking of the young teacher.
"He looked so white, and I thought to myself, _he'll_ never be able to
preach. What a boy he is!... I could not make him out: and one day I
asked him wherever he got all the knowledge from that he put into his
sermons."
"'Oh,' said Spurgeon, 'I take a book, and I pull the good things out of
it by the hair of their heads.'"
The mayor of Cambridge one day asked Spurgeon if he had really told the
people at Waterbeach "that if a thief got into heaven, he would pick the
angels' pockets."
"Yes," replied Spurgeon, "I told them that if it were possible for an
ungodly man to go to heaven without having his nature changed, he would
be none the better for being there; and then, by way of illustration, I
said that were a thief to get in he would remain a thief still, and go
round the place picking the angels' pockets."
"But, my dear young friend, don't you know that the angels have no
pockets?"
"No, sir," answered the youthful preacher; but added, with ready wit,
"but I am glad to be assured of the fact from a gentleman who does know.
I will set it all right."
Being urged by his father and some others to take a college course, he
agreed to meet Dr. Angus, the tutor of Stepney College, now Regents
Park, at the house of Macmillan, the publisher, at Cambridge. Spurgeon
went at the time appointed, and was shown into a room, where he waited
for two hours for the tutor. Meantime, Dr. Angus had waited in another
room, each not having been informed of the presence of the other by the
servant; and, unable to wait longer, had taken the train for London. The
result was that Spurgeon never went to College. At Cambridge, on the
anniversary of the Sunday-school Union in 1853, Spurgeon, then nineteen,
was asked to make an address. Mr. Gould, a Baptist deacon, liked the
address so much, that he spoke of it to Mr. Thomas Olney, one of the
deacons in New Park Street Chapel, Southwark, which had been one of the
largest and richest of the Baptist churches in London. Mr. Gould thought
the Waterbeach youth might put new life into the deteriorating church.
Spurgeon was invited to London to preach a sermon in December, 1853.
Scarcely two hundred were in the chapel, which would seat twelve
hundred. He preached earnestly from the words, "Every good gift, and
every perfect gift, is from above." He was invited to come again for
three Sundays in January, and soon asked to preach six months on
probation.
He would not promise for more than three months. At the end of that time
the church had filled so rapidly, that he was called to the pastorate;
and before he was twenty, in 1854, was installed over the Baptist
Church, with a salary of £150 a year. He came, as he says, to the great
city of London, "a country lad," "wondering, praying, fearing, hoping,
believing, ... all alone, and yet not alone; expectant of Divine help,
and inwardly borne down by our sense of the need of it."
The church building soon became too small for the crowds which gathered
to hear him. He was caricatured in the newspapers, standing beside a
"polished" preacher, with his sermon on a velvet cushion. Spurgeon being
called "Brimstone and Treacle." Again he was placarded as a man selling
fly-paper, with judges, lords, and workingmen all sticking to his hat,
or buzzing around him. This was called, "Catch-em-alive-O!" He was
represented as "The Fast Train," his hair streaming in the wind, driving
the engine. He was again pictured as a gorilla. But Mr. Spurgeon kept on
preaching, and the interest deepened.
He has followed the dying words of the great Welsh Baptist minister,
Christmas Evans, who used to drive from town to town in his evangelistic
work, "Drive on! Drive on!"
"There is such a tendency," Spurgeon once said, "to pull up to refresh;
such a tendency to get out of the gig and say, 'What a wonderful horse!
Never saw a horse go over hill and down dale like this horse--the best
horse that ever was; real sound Methodist or Baptist horse.' Now,
brother, admire your horse as much as ever you like, but drive on!"
He worked day and night among his people when the cholera scourge came
in the first year of his London pastorate. Neither praise nor blame
deterred him in his work. His constant question of his deacons was, both
there and at Waterbeach, "Have you heard of anybody finding the Lord?"
One said, "I am sure there has been." "Oh," said Spurgeon, "I want to
know it, I want to see it;" and he would at once seek out the inquirer.
"I have had nothing else to preach," said Mr. Spurgeon, "but Christ
crucified. How many souls there are in heaven who have found their way
there through that preaching, how many there are still on earth, serving
the Master, it is not for me to tell; but whatever there has been of
success has been through the preaching of Christ in the sinner's stead."
The church building soon became too cramped; and while it was being
enlarged, from February to May, 1855, the congregation met in Exeter
Hall. As the Strand became blocked with people, a Music Hall in Surrey
Gardens was used, where ten thousand people gathered to hear him.
A serious accident soon occurred here through the cry of "Fire!" by
some malicious person; and in the eagerness to rush out, seven persons
were killed and twenty-eight removed to hospitals, badly injured. For
days Mr. Spurgeon was prostrated on account of the accident, and unable
to preach.
After this, services were held only in the morning, attended by the
Prime Minister, the nobility, and the poor. Large numbers were
converted. Thirty-five years after this time a Surrey Gardens Memorial
Hall was erected near this spot, at a cost of £3,000, as one of the many
mission-homes in connection with the Tabernacle work. This commemorates
the many conversions in these early days, before the Tabernacle was
built.
The "Greville Memoirs" thus describes the minister of twenty-three,
preaching to nine thousand people in the Music Hall. "He is certainly
very remarkable, and undeniably a fine character,--not remarkable in
person; in face resembling a smaller Macaulay; a very clear and powerful
voice, which was heard through the hall; a manner natural, impassioned,
and without affectation or extravagance; wonderful fluency and command
of language, abounding in illustration, and very often of a very
familiar kind, but without anything ridiculous or irreverent. He gave me
an impression of his earnestness and sincerity; speaking without book or
notes, yet his discourse was evidently very carefully prepared.... He
preached for about three-quarters of an hour, and, to judge by the use
of the handkerchiefs and the audible sobs, with great effect."
The corner-stone of the new Tabernacle was laid Aug. 16, 1859, by Sir
Samuel Morton Peto. The building was ready for occupancy in 1861. The
opening services lasted a month, the first service being a
prayer-meeting, held at seven o'clock on Monday morning, March 18. One
thousand persons were present.
The Tabernacle is one hundred and forty-six feet in length, and
eighty-one in width. There are five thousand five hundred sittings, and
many more can be accommodated. Besides the audience-room, there are
rooms for Sunday-schools, working-meetings, and the like. The cost was a
little over £31,000, all raised by voluntary effort. All denominations
gave, and all parts of the country responded. Mr. Spurgeon spoke in
Scotland, giving half the receipts to some needy pastorate, and
reserving half for his new church. The church building has always been
crowded, so that pewholders were admitted at the side doors by ticket.
For many years there have been over five thousand members in the church.
Mr. Spurgeon once said, "Somebody asked me how I got my congregation. I
never got it at all.... Why, my congregation got my congregation! I had
eighty, or scarcely a hundred, when I first preached. The next time I
had two hundred--every one who had heard me was saying to his neighbor,
'You must go and hear this young man.' Next meeting we had four hundred,
and in six weeks, eight hundred."
It was not enough for Mr. Spurgeon that crowds were flocking to hear him
preach; that in Scotland twenty thousand gathered at a time to listen to
him; that at the Crystal Palace, when he was but twenty-three, more than
twenty-three thousand people came together to hear him preach, Oct. 7,
1857, the day of national humiliation on account of the Indian mutiny.
Others had been converted, and he wanted them to preach the gospel.
They were for the most part poor, and could provide neither clothing nor
books for their term of study. He needed a Pastor's College.
It began with one student, and increased to several, cared for in a
minister's home, and supported by Mr. Spurgeon.
This incident is related by the Rev. James J. Ellis, of the first
student, Mr. T. W. Medhurst. He called upon Spurgeon, and said that he
feared he had made a mistake in entering the ministry.
"What do you mean?" asked Spurgeon.
"Well, I've been preaching for five or six months, and have not heard of
any conversions."
"You don't expect conversions every time you preach, do you?"
"No, I don't expect them every time," said Mr. Medhurst.
"Then be it unto you according to your faith," was the reply. "If you
expect great things from God, you'll get them; if you don't, you won't."
"The large sale of my sermons in America, together with my dear wife's
economy," writes Mr. Spurgeon, "enabled me to spend from £600 to £800 a
year in my own favorite work; but on a sudden--owing to my denunciations
of the then existing slavery in the States--my entire resources from
that 'Brook Cherith' were dried up. I paid as large sums as I could from
my own income, and resolved to spend all I had, and then take the
cessation of my means as a voice from the Lord to stay the effort; as I
am firmly persuaded that we ought, under no pretence, to go into debt."
This was Mr. Spurgeon's life-long rule. He once related this story of
his childhood. He wanted a slate-pencil, and had no money to buy it. So
he went to the shop of a Mrs. Dearson, who kept nuts, cakes, and tops,
and got trusted for one, the amount of debt being one farthing. His
father heard of it, and reprimanded him severely; told the young
Charles, "how a boy who would owe a farthing, might one day owe a
hundred pounds, and get into prison, and bring his family into
disgrace." The child cried bitterly, and hastened to pay the farthing.
Mr. Spurgeon said in later life, "Debt is so degrading, that if I owed a
man a penny, I would walk twenty miles, in the depth of winter, to pay
him, sooner than to feel that I was under an obligation.... Poverty is
hard, but debt is horrible.... Without debt, without care; out of debt,
out of danger; but owing and borrowing are bramble-bushes full of
thorns. If ever I borrow a spade of my neighbor, I never feel safe with
it for fear I should break it."
"I was reduced to the last pound," says Mr. Spurgeon, "when a letter
came from a banker in the city, informing me that a lady, whose name I
have never been able to discover, had deposited a sum of £200, to be
used for the education of young men for the ministry.... Some weeks
after, another £100 came in from the same bank, as I was informed, from
another hand.... A supper was given by my liberal publishers, Messrs.
Passmore & Alabaster, to celebrate the publishing of my five-hundredth
weekly sermon, at which £500 were raised and presented to the funds. The
college grew every month, and the number of the students rapidly
increased from one to forty."
A "weekly offering" was soon taken at the church for the Pastor's
College. This in the year 1869 amounted to £1,869. When "seasons of
straitness" came, as Spurgeon says, the "Lord always interposed." On one
occasion, £1,000 came from an unknown source.
Mr. G. Holden Pike says of these weekly offerings, "How high a figure
the total reached nobody knew; for, as Sunday is a day of rest, the
money would not be counted until the following morning. Gold, silver,
and copper pieces, together with little packets neatly tied with thread,
made up the motley heap. One miniature parcel enclosed fifteen shillings
from 'A workingman.' When the whole mass was placed in a strong black
bag, I ventured to raise it for the sake of testing its weight.... It
was certainly the 'heaviest' collection I had ever set eyes upon, for it
was as much as one could conveniently raise from the table with one
arm."
A yearly supper was provided by Mr. Spurgeon, at which guests gave as
they were able or inclined. At this supper in 1891, £3,000 were
subscribed.
After a time the College buildings were erected near the Tabernacle
property. A lady gave £3,000 as a memorial to her husband; £2,000 were
left as a legacy by a reader of the sermons. The cost of the buildings,
£15,000, was paid as soon as the work was done.
The whole number added to the churches by these men educated at the
Pastor's College is, as nearly as can be ascertained, considerably over
one hundred thousand. Some of these men have gone to India, China, the
West Indies, Africa, Australia, among the Jews, and elsewhere.
The annual address of the President, Mr. Spurgeon, was eagerly looked
for. That given in 1891, "The Greatest Fight in the World," in defence
of the Inspiration of the Bible, has been translated into French,
German, Danish, and other languages.
In 1866 another important work was laid upon the busy preacher, whose
hands seemed already full. The widow of an Episcopal clergyman, Mrs.
Hillyard, was desirous of giving £20,000 to found an orphanage for boys.
She was personally unknown to Mr. Spurgeon, but had read his sermons,
and had great faith in his spirituality and sense.
Another lady, her husband having given her £500 on the twenty-fifth
anniversary of their marriage, made a present of it to the Orphanage.
One house was built with it, called "The Silver Wedding House." A
gentleman gave £600 for another house; an unknown donor £1,000 for two
other houses, and soon after £2,000 more.
In 1868 the Baptist churches of England gave Mr. Spurgeon £1,765 for the
Orphanage. One building is called "The Merchant's House;" another, "The
Workmen's House."
At the close of 1869, all the buildings or houses for the orphan boys
were completed in Stockwell, on the Clapham Road, free from debt, at a
cost of £10,200, Mrs. Hillyard's funds being used for endowment.
When the funds were low,--for Mr. Spurgeon says, "Our boys persist in
eating, and wearing out their clothes,"--money was raised by a bazaar,
by a _fête_ on his birthday, or in some other way.
The long row of attractive houses for boys did not fill Mr. Spurgeon's
heart; there must be similar homes for girls.
In September, 1879, Mr. Spurgeon writes, "Our friends know that we
bought a house and grounds called 'The Hawthorns,' for £4,000. This we
needed to pay for. For various reasons the payment of the purchase-money
for 'The Hawthorns' was delayed until July 30; and _on that very
morning_ we received a letter telling us that a gentleman had died, and
left £1,500 for the Girls' Orphanage, thus bringing up our total to
within a very small sum of the amount required. The whole £4,000 is now
secured, including this legacy, and the property is our own."
Not long after, the £11,000 necessary for the first block of buildings
was obtained.
In January, 1882, a great bazaar was held, which in three days netted
the sum of £2,000 for the Girls' Orphanage. In his opening speech at
this bazaar Mr. Spurgeon said, "We don't want to sell anything that is
not worth the money paid for it; for we think that such should not be
the case when the object is to benefit orphan children. When you leave
here, you need not be in the plight of the gentleman who was met by
footpads on his way home. 'Your money or your life!' demanded one of
them.
"'My dear fellow, I have not a farthing about me. Do you know where I
have been? I have been to a bazaar.'
"'Oh, if you've been to a bazaar, we should not think of taking any
money from you. We'll make a subscription all round, and give you
something to help you home.' That is a bazaar as it ought not to be."
About one thousand boys and girls are now in the Stockwell Orphanage,
the larger number of the children coming from Church of England
families. Some are also from Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, and Methodist
families, as well as Baptist.
Mr. Spurgeon tells this story: "Sitting down in the Orphanage grounds,
upon one of the seats, we were talking with a brother trustee, when a
funny little fellow, we should think about eight years of age, left the
other boys who were playing around us, and came deliberately up to us.
He opened fire in this fashion, 'Please, Mister Spurgeon, I wants to
come and sit down on the seat between you two gentlemen.'
"'Come along, Bob and tell us what you want.'
"'Please, Mister Spurgeon, suppose there was a little boy who had no
father, who lived in an orphanage with a lot of other little boys who
had no fathers; and suppose those little boys had mothers and aunts who
_comed_ once a month and brought them apples and oranges, and gave them
pennies; and suppose this little boy had no mother and no aunt, and so
never came to bring him nice things; don't you think somebody ought to
give him a penny? 'Cause, Mister Spurgeon, _that's me_!'"
Bob received a sixpence from Mr. Spurgeon, and went away with face all
aglow.
The Orphanage covers four acres. Each house is complete in itself, and
has its own "mother." The boys dine in a common hall; the girls in their
respective houses. Both boys and girls assist in domestic duties. "The
children are not dressed in a uniform," says Mr. Spurgeon, "to mark them
as the recipients of charity."
In 1876 the Redpath Lecture Bureau of Boston asked Mr. Spurgeon to come
to America and lecture, they offering to pay him $1,000 in gold for each
lecture, and all expenses from England to America and return; but he
declined the offer. He did not care to lecture, and would not preach for
money.
On Wednesday evening, June 18, 1884, a remarkable jubilee service was
held in the Tabernacle on Mr. Spurgeon's fiftieth birthday. Among the
speakers was Mr. Spurgeon's father, the Rev. John Spurgeon; his
brother, the Rev. James A. Spurgeon, of whom Charles said, "If there is
a good man on the earth, I think it is my brother;" and the son of the
great preacher, young Charles Spurgeon, one of the twins, affectionately
called by the people, Charlie and Tommy. Both are ministers of the
gospel. D. L. Moody from America also made an earnest address.
On the following evening the good Earl of Shaftesbury presided, and
spoke with his wonted power. "Whatever Mr. Spurgeon is in private he is
in the pulpit," said the earl; "and what he is in the pulpit he is in
private. He is one and the same man in every aspect; and a kinder,
better, honester, nobler man never existed on the face of the earth."
Canon Basil Wilberforce, the son of the Bishop, the Rev. Dr. Newman
Hall, and others spoke. The Rev. Dr. O. P. Gifford presented an address
from the Baptist ministers of Boston and vicinity.
A Spurgeon Jubilee Fund of £45,000 was given at this time. Five years
previously a larger sum was given him, £3,000 of it being raised by a
bazaar; and a large part of this money was used for seventeen
almshouses, in which are the aged members of the Tabernacle. These are
near the Elephant and Castle Station.
Another important agency for Christian work in connection with the
Tabernacle is the Colportage Association, founded in 1866. The
colporteurs sell religious books, conduct temperance and open-air
meetings, distribute tracts, visit the sick, and are really home
missionaries. The yearly distribution is about a half million Bibles,
and as many, or more, books and periodicals.
Mr. Spurgeon loved to give away the Bible. He once said before the
British and Foreign Bible Society, "Somebody may say it is of very
little use to give away Bibles and Testaments. That is a very great
mistake. I have very seldom found it to be a labor in vain to give a
present of a Testament. I was greatly astonished about a month ago. A
cabman drove me home, and when I paid him his fare, he said, 'It is a
long time since I drove you last, sir.'
"'But,' said I, 'I do not recollect you!'
"'Well,' he said, 'I think it is fourteen years ago; but,' he added,
'perhaps you will know this Testament?' pulling one out of his pocket.
"'What,' I said, 'did I give you that?'
"'Oh, yes!' he said; 'and you spoke to me about my soul, and nobody had
done that before, and I have never forgotten it.'
"'What,' said I, 'haven't you worn it out?'
"'No,' he said, 'I would not wear it out; I have had it bound.'"
Besides this society, there are ten Bible classes in the Tabernacle; a
Loan Tract Society, for the distribution of Mr. Spurgeon's sermons in
the neighborhood, and another to spread them in country districts; a
Flower Mission, Maternal Society, Mothers' Meetings, Training Class for
workers, and the like. There are twenty-three mission stations in
connection with the Tabernacle, and twenty-seven Sunday-schools, with
over eight thousand scholars.
With all this work, Mr. Spurgeon was a voluminous writer, as well as
speaker. He published thirty-seven volumes of sermons, all of which have
had an immense circulation. These were regularly printed in many papers.
In Australia some of these were published and paid for as
advertisements, at a fabulous price, by a gentleman deeply interested in
doing good.
The Rev. Thomas Spurgeon wrote home to his father, from Australia, "I
received a visit, in Geelong, from a man who produced from his pocket a
torn and discolored copy of _The Australasian_, dated June, 1868, which
contained a sermon by C. H. Spurgeon, entitled, 'The Approachableness of
Jesus' (No. 809). To this sermon my visitor attributed his conversion.
"He lived alone, about twenty miles from Geelong, and had not entered a
place of worship more than four or five times in twenty years, and had
taken to drink, until delirium tremens seized upon him. When partially
recovered, with not a human being near, his eye lighted on the sermon in
the newspaper, which brought him to Jesus."
Mr. Pike says an admirer of Mr. Spurgeon gave away a quarter of a
million copies of these sermons. Many were elegantly bound, and
presented to the crowned heads of Europe. Others were sent to every
member of Parliament, and to all the students of Oxford and Cambridge.
Many of these sermons have been translated into German, French, Welsh,
Italian, Swedish, Danish, Russian, Spanish, Gaelic, Hungarian, Arabic,
Telegu, Hindustani, Syriac, and other languages.
These sermons have been scattered all over the world. At Bryher, one of
the Scilly Isles, with a population of one hundred and twenty persons,
Spurgeon's sermons are often read in the chapel. In Silesia and Russian
Poland, many asked about "Brother Spurgeon," and read his sermons. On
the Labrador coast they were read in a mission church Sunday after
Sunday.
In 1880 a Red Kaffir, living at Port Elizabeth, South Africa, wrote to
Mr. Spurgeon:--
"Dear Sir,--I don't know how to describe my joy and my feelings in this
present moment. We never did see each other face to face, but still
there is something between you and me which guided me to make these few
lines for you. One day, as I was going to my daily work, I met a friend
of mine in the street. We spoke about the word of God, and he asked me
whether I had ever seen one of Mr. Spurgeon's books....
"He said he bought it from a bookseller. I asked the name of the book,
and he said it was 'The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit;' and I went
straight to the shop and bought one. I have read a good bit of it. On my
reading it, I arrived on a place where Job said, 'Though he slay me, yet
will I trust in Him.'
"I am sure I can't tell how to describe the goodness you have done to
us, we black people of South Africa. We are black not only outside, even
inside; I wouldn't mind to be a black man only in color. It is a
terrible thing to be a black man from the soul to the skin; but still I
am very glad to say your sermons have done something good to me." ...
David Livingstone carried one of these sermons with him, No. 408,
entitled "Accidents not Punishments," in his last sad journey to Africa.
Yellow and travel-stained it was found by his daughter Mrs. Bruce in his
boxes after his death. He had written across the top, "_Very good._ D.
L."
His son Thomas writes his mother from Auckland, New Zealand, concerning
sermon No. 735, "Loving Advice for Anxious Seekers," copied into the
_Melbourne Argus_, "This scrap of newspaper has been given to me by a
town missionary here, who regards it as a very precious relic. It came
to him from a man who died in the hospital, and bequeathed it to his
visitor as a great treasure. The man found it on the floor of a hut in
Australia, and was brought by its perusal to a knowledge of the truth as
it is in Jesus. He kept it carefully while he lived (for it was
discolored and torn when he found it), and on his death-bed gave it to
the missionary as the only treasure he had to leave behind him."
In writing "The Treasury of David," seven volumes, Mr. Spurgeon spent a
considerable part of twenty years. "During the whole of that period,"
says the Rev. Robert Shindler, in his valuable life of Spurgeon, "Mr. J.
L. Keys, one of Mr. Spurgeon's secretaries, continued to search the
library of the British Museum, and other libraries, and to cull from
every available source everything worthy of quotation upon the book of
Psalms." Over one hundred and twenty thousand volumes have been sold.
Dr. Philip Schaff thought it "the most important homiletical and
practical work of the age on the Psalter."
Of Spurgeon's "Morning by Morning" and "Evening by Evening," for home
reading and devotions, over two hundred thousand copies have been sold.
"Commenting and Commentaries" was a work of great labor, showing his
students and others what to use. "If I can save a poor man," he wrote,
"from spending his money for that which is not bread, or, by directing a
brother to a good book, may enable him to dig deeper into the mines of
truth, I shall be well repaid. For this purpose I have toiled, and read
much, and passed under review some three or four thousand volumes."
Twenty-seven volumes of the _Sword and Trowel_, Mr. Spurgeon's magazine,
have had an enormous circulation. This is also true of "Lectures to My
Students," abounding in sensible suggestions. To those about to become
ministers he says:--
"Avoid little debts, unpunctuality, gossiping, nicknaming, petty
quarrels, and all other of those little vices which fill the ointment
with flies....
"Even in your recreations, remember that you are ministers.... His
private life must ever keep good tune with his ministry, or his day will
soon set with him, and the sooner he retires the better; for his
continuance in his office will only dishonor the cause of God and ruin
himself."
Spurgeon urged private prayer upon his young men, and related this
incident from Father Faber: "A certain preacher, whose sermons converted
men by the scores, received a revelation from heaven that not one of the
conversions was owing to his talents or eloquence, but all to the
prayers of an illiterate lay brother, who sat on the pulpit steps,
pleading all the time for the success of the sermon."
The great John Knox used to say he "wondered how a Christian could lie
in his bed all night and not rise to pray."
Of public prayer, Spurgeon said, "Do not let your prayer be long.... 'He
prayed me into a good frame of mind,' George Whitefield once said of a
certain preacher, 'and if he had stopped there, it would have been very
well; but he prayed me out of it again by keeping on.'"
Of the sermon he said, "Preach Christ always and evermore. He is the
whole gospel.... Your pulpit preparations are your first business. A man
great at tea-drinkings, evening parties, and Sunday-school excursions is
generally little everywhere else.
"The sensible minister will be particularly gentle in argument," said
Spurgeon. "He should take care not to engross all the conversation," and
at the same time, "do not be a dummy."
"Have a good word to say to each and every member of the family,--the
big boys and the young ladies and the little girls and everybody. No one
knows what a smile and a hearty sentence may do. A man who is to do much
with men must love them, and feel at home with them. An individual who
has no geniality about him had better be an undertaker, and bury the
dead, for he will never succeed in influencing the living."
"Be cool and confident. As Sydney Smith says, 'A great deal of talent is
lost to the world for want of a little courage.' ... When a speaker
feels, 'I am master of the situation,' he usually is so."
"If a man would speak without any present study, he must usually study
much." This Mr. Spurgeon exemplified in his own life. Dr. Theodore
Cuyler of New York wrote, after visiting Spurgeon at his home,
"Westwood," Beulah Hill, Upper Norwood, "a rural paradise," as he says,
"Saturday afternoon is his holiday. For an hour he conducted us over his
delightful grounds, and through his garden and conservatory, and then to
a rustic arbor, where he entertained us with one of his racy talks,
which are as characteristic as his sermons....
"It was six o'clock on Saturday when we bade him 'Good-by,' and he
assured us that he had not yet selected even the texts for next day's
discourses. 'I shall go down in the garden presently,' said he, 'and
arrange my morning discourse and choose a text for that in the evening;
then to-morrow afternoon, before preaching, I will make an outline of
the second one.' ... He never composes a sentence in advance, and
rarely spends over half an hour in laying out the plan of a sermon.
Constant study fills his mental cask, and he has only to turn the spigot
and draw."
Again he says, "To acquire the art of impromptu speech, one must
practise it. It was by slow degrees, as Burke says, that Charles Fox
became the most brilliant and powerful debater that ever lived. He
attributed his success to the resolution which he formed when very young
of speaking well or ill at least once every night. 'During five whole
seasons,' he used to say, 'I spoke every night but one, and I regret
only that I did not speak on that night too.' At first he may do so with
no other auditory than the chairs and books of his study."
Mr. Spurgeon's suggestions about voice, gesture, and throat are helpful.
"Think nothing little," he says, "by which you may be even a little more
useful. But, gentlemen, never degenerate in this business into pulpit
fops, who think gesture and voice to be everything.... When you have
done preaching, take care of your throat by _never wrapping it up
tightly_.... If any brother wants to die of influenza, let him wear a
warm scarf round his neck, and then one of these nights he will forget
it, and catch such a cold as will last him the rest of his natural life.
You seldom see a sailor wrap his neck up." Mr. Spurgeon used beef-tea,
strong with pepper, for his throat, or a little glass of Chili vinegar
and water.
"Beware of being actors! Never give earnest men the impression that you
do not mean what you say, and are mere professionals. To be burning at
the lips and freezing at the soul is a mark of reprobation....
"Away with gold rings and chains and jewellery! Why should the pulpit
become a goldsmith's shop?"
To gain and keep the attention, he says, "The first golden rule is,
always say something worth hearing.... Let the good matter which you
give them be very clearly arranged.... Be sure, moreover, to speak
plainly.... Do not make the introduction too long.... Be interested
yourself, and you will interest others.... Many ministers are more than
half asleep all through the sermon; indeed, they never were awake at any
time, and probably never will be unless a cannon should be fired off
near their ear.
"A very useful help in securing attention is a pause. Pull up short
every now and then, and the passengers on your coach will wake up....
The next best thing to the grace of God for a preacher is oxygen. Pray
that the windows of heaven may be opened, but begin by opening the
windows of your meeting-house.
"Be masters of your Bibles, brethren.... Having given precedence to the
inspired writings, neglect no field of knowledge.... Know nothing of
parties and cliques, but be the pastor of all the flock, and care for
all alike."
He urged them not to mind gossips, "who drink tea and talk vitriol;" and
"to opinions and remarks about yourself turn also, as a general rule,
the blind eye and the deaf ear."
Of Mr. Spurgeon's most popular books, "John Ploughman's Talk; or, Plain
Advice for Plain People," and "John Ploughman's Pictures; or, More of
His Plain Talk for Plain People," over four hundred and fifty thousand
volumes have been sold. These are full of helpful words in homely garb,
but most useful for rich and poor alike.
"Don't wait for helpers," he says. "Try those two old friends, your
strong arms.... Don't be whining about not having a fair start.... The
more you have to begin with, the less you will have at the end. Money
you earn yourself is much brighter and sweeter than any you get out of
dead men's bags.... As for the place you are cast in, don't find fault
with that. You need not be a horse because you were born in a stable....
A fool may make money, but it needs a wise man to spend it. If you give
all to back and board, there is nothing left for the savings bank. Fare
hard and work hard while you are young, and you have a chance of rest
when you are old.... No matter what comes in, if more goes out you will
always be poor.... Plod is the word. Every one must row with such oars
as he has.... Never be security for more than you are quite willing to
lose."
Spurgeon was an untiring worker. He had no respect for idleness. "Many
of our squires," he said, "have nothing to do but to part their hair in
the middle; and many of the London grandees, ladies and gentlemen both
alike, as I am told, have no better work than killing time.... The
greater these people are, the more their idleness is noticed, and the
more they ought to be ashamed of it.
"I don't say they ought to plough, but I do say that they ought to do
something for the state, besides being like the caterpillars on the
cabbage, eating up the good things; or like the butterflies, showing
themselves off, but making no honey....
"Let me drop on these Surrey Hills, worn out ... sooner than eat bread
and cheese and never earn it; better die an honorable death, than live a
good-for-nothing life.
"Rash vows are much better broken than kept. He who never changes,
never mends.... Learn to say 'No,' and it will be of more use to you
than to be able to read Latin.
"An open mouth shows an empty head. Still waters are the deepest, but
the shallowest brook brawls the most.... Beware of every one who swears;
he who would blaspheme his Maker would make no bones of lying or
stealing.... Commit all your secrets to no man ... seeing that men are
but men, and all men are frail."
In "John Ploughman's Pictures" he says, "He who cannot curb his temper
carries gunpowder in his bosom, and he is neither safe for himself nor
his neighbors.... Anger is a fire which cooks no victuals, and comforts
no households; it cuts and curses and kills, and no one knows what it
may lead to.... It takes a great deal out of a man to get in a towering
rage; it is almost as unhealthy as having a fit.... Shun a furious man
as you would a mad dog.... A man in a thorough passion is as sad a sight
as to see a neighbor's house on fire, and no water handy to put out the
flames." Mr. Spurgeon's books number about one hundred volumes.
Mr. Spurgeon was blest in his home-life. On Jan 8, 1856, he married
Susannah Thompson, daughter of Mr. Robert Thompson, of Falcon Square. He
was married in new Park Street Chapel, before the Tabernacle was built.
The church was full at the ceremony, while two thousand persons outside
were unable to enter.
Their twin sons, Charles and Thomas, their only children, have always
been a comfort to them. The wife has long been an invalid, but has been
enabled to do great good in her home and out of it.
Mr. Spurgeon once said of her, "My experience of my first wife, who
will, I hope, live to be my last, is much as follows: Matrimony came
from Paradise, and leads to it. I never was half so happy before I was a
married man as I am now.... I have no doubt that where there is much
love there will be much to love, and where love is scant, faults will be
plentiful. If there is only one good wife in England, I am the man who
put the ring on her finger, and long may she wear it. God bless the dear
soul! if she can put up _with_ me, she shall never be put down _by_ me."
From Hull he once wrote her a poem, beginning,--
"Over the space that parts us, my wife,
I'll cast me a bridge of song:
Our hearts shall meet, O joy of my life,
On its arch unseen, but strong."
"Unkind and domineering husbands," he said, "ought not to pretend to be
Christians, for they act clean contrary to Christ's commands."
Mr. Spurgeon once said of home, "That word _home_ always sounds like
poetry to me. It sings like a peal of bells at a wedding, only more soft
and sweet, and it chimes deeper into the ears of my heart."
Concerning beer-shops he wrote, "Beer-shops are the enemies of home, and
therefore the sooner their licences are taken away the better.... Those
beer-shops are the curse of this country; no good ever can come of them,
and the evil they do no tongue can tell.... I wish the man who made the
law to open them had to keep all the families that they have brought to
ruin."
Again he writes, "Certain neighbors of mine laugh at me for being a
teetotaller, and I might well laugh at them for being drunk, only I feel
more inclined to cry that they should be such fools."
Mrs. Spurgeon's "Book Fund"[1] is well known. In the summer of 1875 Mr.
Spurgeon published the first volume of "Lectures to My Students." His
wife, feeling that they would do great good, desired to place them in
the hands of ministers. Speaking to her husband about it, he said. "Why
not do so? _How much will you give?_"
She had been keeping for years all the crown-pieces which came in her
way; and on counting them, found that she had just enough to send away
one hundred copies of the book. Others learned of this work, and were
glad to aid it.
During the fifteen years since the Book Fund was started, up to 1890,
there have been distributed by Mrs. Spurgeon to needy ministers of all
denominations, a hundred and twenty-two thousand one hundred and
twenty-nine volumes, largely Mr. Spurgeon's sermons, "The Treasury of
David," and other works. The books of other authors have also been used.
Besides books, clothing and other needed things have been sent to
ministers whose salary was the meager sum of sixty-five pounds per
annum, or less. One village pastor for twenty years had received but
sixty pounds yearly, and sometimes only forty-five pounds. Some had not
purchased a new book in several years, and wrote back most thankful
letters.
The money for this work has been furnished by the very poor as well as
the rich. After the death of a woman who had had a struggle to support
herself by her needle, more than two pounds, all in three-penny pieces,
were found wrapped up in a drawer "dedicated to the Lord's work under
the hand of Mrs. Spurgeon."
Mr. Spurgeon had suffered from rheumatism for many years, and had been
obliged sometimes in winter to go to Mentone, in the South of France. In
the middle of May, 1891, he had an attack of _la grippe_, from which,
after a serious illness, he seemed to rally; but this was only
temporary.
On all sides there was the greatest interest and sympathy. The Prince of
Wales, Gladstone, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Chief Rabbi Hermann
Adler, and scores of the highest in the land, all religious sects, all
classes, sent letters or telegrams, to hear about the distinguished
sufferer. Gladstone wrote of his "cordial admiration, not only of his
splendid powers, but still more of his devoted and unfailing character."
And Spurgeon added to the letter sent back by his wife, July 18, 1891,
these lines, "Yours is a word of love such as those only write who have
been into the King's country, and have seen much of His face--My heart's
love to you."
Mr. Spurgeon was always an admirer of Mr. Gladstone, which was heartily
reciprocated. In the year 1880 the former took, for him, an unusually
active part in politics. Having to preach for a friend, the Rev. John
Offord, Mr. Spurgeon said to him, "I should have been here a quarter of
an hour sooner, only I stopped to vote."
"My dear friend," said Offord, "I thought you were a citizen of the New
Jerusalem, and not of this world."
"So I am," was the reply; "but I have an old man in me yet, and he is a
citizen of the world."
"But you ought to mortify him."
"So I do; for he's an old Tory, and I make him vote Liberal," replied
Spurgeon.
In the autumn of 1891, the month of October, the preacher started for
Mentone, his friends singing the Doxology as he left Hearne Hill
Station, London. "Baron Rothschild's private saloon-carriage was placed
at Mr. Spurgeon's service to travel in throughout France to Mentone."
Mr. Spurgeon grew better in the warm climate for a time, and wrote back
letters to his church. He soon failed, however; and on the last day of
January, 1892, on Sunday, at five minutes past eleven at night, at Hotel
Beau Rivage, he passed away. At half-past three he had been unable to
recognize his wife, or other friends. He grew weaker, and the end was
painless.
The next day the body was almost hidden from sight by the flowers sent
by friends. It was embalmed, sealed up in a leaden case, and this was
enclosed in a coffin of olive-wood. On it were the last Scripture words
uttered by Mr. Spurgeon to his secretary, Mr. J. W. Harrald, before his
death, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have
kept the faith."
After service, Thursday, Feb. 4, at the Scottish Church at Mentone, the
body was taken to London, where an immense crowd awaited its coming.
Through all of Tuesday, Feb. 9, the body lay in state in his beloved
Tabernacle. Friends had been requested not to send flowers, but to use
the money which they would have expended thus, for the Stockwell
Orphanage. Yet the body was covered with flowers notwithstanding the
request. Wednesday was spent in memorial services, the Tabernacle being
crowded until after midnight.
At eleven o'clock Thursday, the 11th, the public funeral service was
held. Deputations from sixty religious associations were present.
Members of the House of Commons, the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, bishops
and laity, all came to honor the distinguished preacher.
The boys of Stockwell Orphanage sang the last hymn announced by Mr.
Spurgeon before he became ill,--
"The sands of time are sinking,
The dawn of heaven breaks,
The summer morn I've sighed for,
The fair sweet morn awakes."
Dr. A. T. Pierson of the United States delivered an earnest address, and
the coffin was borne down the aisle, while the great congregation rose
and sang,--
"There is no night in Homeland."
Through four miles of streets, crowds lining the way, the large mourning
procession passed,--forty coaches and a vast number of private
carriages. Flags were at half-mast, bells were tolled, and houses were
draped with black.
At Stockwell Orphanage, on a raised platform covered with the emblems of
mourning, five hundred boys and girls, who had loved the great man, once
as poor as they, saw the solemn procession pass to the grave. Norwood
Cemetery, where none had been admitted save by ticket, was already
thronged. After a brief service, the Bishop of Rochester pronounced the
benediction, and the sorrowing crowd went back to their homes.
More than two years afterwards, March 21, 1894 the Rev. Thomas Spurgeon
was called to succeed his father at the Metropolitan Tabernacle.
The manifold work of Charles Haddon Spurgeon will go on forever,
through his books, and through those whose steps he has turned
heavenward.
Say not his work is done;
No deed of love or goodness ever dies,
But in the great hereafter multiplies:
Say it is just begun.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] An account of her work may be found in my book, "Social
Studies in England."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
"I never met any man, or any ecclesiastic, half so natural, so manly, so
large-hearted, so intensely Catholic in the only real sense, so loyally
true in his friendships, so absolutely unselfish, so modest, so
unartificial, so self-forgetful.... A blessing and a gracious presence
has vanished out of many lives. With a very sad heart I bid him farewell
... the noblest, truest, and most stainless man I ever knew." Thus wrote
Canon Farrar of London in _The Review of Reviews_ for March, 1893, two
months after the death of Phillips Brooks.
The various pulpits, the press, the millionnaires, the poor, and the
lonely, all felt and said nearly the same thing. Canon Farrar wrote
elsewhere, before Dr. Brooks's death, "I cannot recall the name of a
single divine among us, of any rank, who either equals him as a
preacher, or has the large sympathies and the rich endowments which
distinguish him as a man."
The _Nation_ said, "The death of Phillips Brooks strikes down the
greatest figure left to the American church."
[Illustration: PHILLIPS BROOKS.]
The Rev. Stopford W. Brooke, of the First Unitarian Church of Boston,
said, "He was so vigorous, so noble, so persuasive, so ever welcome a
guest of all our hearts, that we had almost forgotten he, too, was
mortal.... We never once doubted his sincerity, or his large, pure,
generous humanity. There was a power in his presence, his smile, the
grasp of his hand, that deep and magnificent eye, which triumphed,
unconsciously to himself, over all our haggling differences of
temperament and opinion, and drew, by the same unconsciousness of
itself, our best manhood to his side. I think this long consistent
unconsciousness of himself was one of the great qualities that so
endeared him to us all. Here was a man possessed of most remarkable
gifts,--an extraordinary vitality, an astonishing 'volume velocity' and
beauty of language, a rich and fertile imagination which idealized
everything it touched, a power of feeling which rose and swept into his
audience like the tides in the Bay of Fundy; and yet he never seemed
aware that he was anything exceptional.... I believe that greatness is
more common, goodness is far more common, than that unconsciousness with
which he wore his greatness and goodness."
Stopford Brooke speaks of another remarkable characteristic of Phillips
Brooks,--"His radiance and his joy. No one who has read at all carefully
the literature of our time can have failed to remark how dominant in it
is the note of sadness. The leaders of the past generation bore, with a
certain sombre melancholy, the burden of the chaos, as Carlyle puts it,
which they were endeavoring to fashion into cosmos."
Not so Phillips Brooks. "Goodness and happiness, duty and joy, were
constant companions in his life. We looked at him, listened to him,
talked with him, and knew he had saved and kept through many long years
the soul's best secret. Through all that he said and did there ran this
river, fresh, clear, and abundant, of inner joy. What an inspiration
that joy was to us!"
Dr. Samuel Eliot, a member of Phillips Brooks's church, and his
life-long friend, says in the eulogy of him, delivered at the Boston
Memorial Meeting, "He was blessed with a hopefulness of which most of us
have but a comparatively scanty share. No trait of his was more
conspicuous. No single source of his power over his generation was more
abundant or more effective. Whatever the foreground might harbor in
shadows, he looked beyond into the distance and saw it radiant....
"How he helped others to be hopeful also, how many shackles he thus
loosed from the heavy-laden, how he thus encouraged his people to work
their way forward to a future filled with promise, is a familiar story.
His hopefulness gave him his strong hold upon young men. To them, always
looking before and not behind, he stood beckoning, and the fire caught
from him spread through them and out from them. Neither they, nor any
others, may have known all the hope that was in him; indeed, he may not
have known it all himself. It often seemed as if he were hoping for
brighter days and holier lives than are consistent with human
imperfections."
Dr. Eliot, after speaking of Phillips Brooks's affection, playfulness of
conversation with his friends, his humor, which rendered his
companionship charming, his delight in children, his unconsciousness of
all his distinctions and successes, the unchangeable simplicity of his
habits, his manners, his opinions, says, "These are pleasant
recollections to all who loved him.... They linger like the soft glow of
a summer twilight, now that his day on earth is over....
"This great man was never greater than he was in the sight of those who
knew him best. 'I shall not change,' he said to a brother clergyman who
seems to have been doubtful whether he would be the same after being a
bishop,--'I shall not change, and you will always find me just as you
have found me heretofore.'"
The Rev. Arthur Brooks, D.D., in a memorial sermon preached in the
Church of the Incarnation, New York City, says that on the afternoon of
the day of the consecration of his brother as a bishop, fearing that
some of his friends might not come to see him as often as heretofore, he
said earnestly, "Don't desert me."
Phillips Brooks was born Dec. 13, 1835, on High Street, Boston, the
second in a family of six sons. His mother, Mary Ann Phillips, the
granddaughter of Judge Phillips, the founder of Phillips Academy,
Andover, was a woman of fine intellect and unusually earnest piety. His
father, William Gray Brooks, a hardware merchant, whose ancestors, like
the Phillipses, held high social position, and power in the State as
well, was a man of refinement and scholarly tastes.
The son Phillips, says the Rev. Julius H. Ward in the _New England
Magazine_ for January, 1892, "seems to have inherited from his mother
the deep and earnest piety and intellectual strength which have always
been his characteristics, and from his father the robust physical
constitution, the strong and resolute spirit, which he has shown in
using them."
"Parents whose praise," says Dr. Arthur Brooks, "because of this great
son, is in the churches to-day, earned it by self-denial and the
subordination of all interests and ambitions to the training and
education of a family of boys.... That love to Christ which glowed in
his words and flashed in his eye, was caught from a mother's lips, and
was read with boyish eyes as the central power of a mother's soul and
life."
Mother-love was always a strong force in the heart of Phillips Brooks.
It is related that when some one asked him if he was not afraid when he
first preached before Queen Victoria, he replied, "Oh no; I have
preached before my mother."
He said in one of his sermons, "The purest mingling of all elements into
one character and nature which we ever see, is in the Christian mother,
in whom the knowledge of all that she knows, and the love which she
feels for her child, make not two natures, as they often do in men, in
fathers, but perfectly and absolutely one."
He often spoke of "that self-sacrifice which is the very essence of her
motherhood."
At eight years of age, Phillips and his brother William Gray, a year and
a half older, were at the Adams School in Mason Street, and entered the
Latin School, then on Bedford Street, in 1846, when Phillips was eleven
years old. Here he was a quiet, good scholar, excelling in the
languages, and all unconscious of his great future. His teacher, Francis
Gardner, was a sad, earnest man, whom Phillips Brooks described nearly
forty years later, when he spoke, April 23, 1885, at the two hundred and
fiftieth anniversary of the Latin School, the oldest school in America.
"Tall, gaunt, muscular ... impressing every boy with the strong sense of
vigor, now lovely and now hateful, but never for a moment tame or dull
or false; indignant, passionate, an athlete both in body and mind.... He
was not always easy for the boys to get along with. Probably it was not
always easy for him to get along with himself. But it has left a
strength of truth and honor and devoted manliness which will always be
a treasure in the school he loved."
In this school young Brooks learned his fondness for and advocacy of the
public school system. He said in his anniversary address, "The German
statesman, if you talk with him, will tell you that, with every evil of
his great military system, which makes every citizen a soldier for some
portion of his life, it yet has one redeeming good. It brings each young
man of the land once in his life directly into the country's service;
lets him directly feel its touch of dignity and power; makes him proud
of it as _his_ personal commander, and so insures a more definite and
vivid loyalty through all his life.
"More graciously, more healthily, more Christianly, the American public
school does what the barracks and the drill-room try to do. Would that
its blessing might be made absolutely universal! Would that it might be
so arranged that once in the life of every Boston boy, if only for three
months, he might be a pupil of a public school; might see his city
sitting in the teacher's chair; might find himself, along with boys of
all degrees and classes, simply recognized by his community as one of
her children! It would put an element into his character and life which
he would never lose. It would insure the unity and public spirit of our
citizens."
These words of Phillips Brooks. Mr. Edwin D. Mead thinks, should "be
printed in letters of gold, and hung up in every home where parents are
thinking of sending their children into private schools, thereby
condemning them to a narrower and less sturdy education than that given
by the State, while also thus withdrawing their own personal interest
from the public schools, which need the personal interest and love of
every earnest citizen to-day as they have never needed them before."
From the Boston Latin School young Brooks went to Harvard College when
he was about fifteen and a half years old. "The college attracted him
with its promises," writes the Rev. Dr. Alexander McKenzie, in the May,
1893, _New England Magazine_. "Even the Triennial Catalogue was
stimulating as he read there of twenty-five men named Phillips and
twenty named Brooks, who had graduated from this university. The place
for his own name which should join the two lines was inviting."
And yet Phillips Brooks in no way distinguished himself in college,
save, perhaps, in composition. His professors were such men as Agassiz,
Longfellow, Asa Gray, Lowell, and others. During his junior year he
roomed in Massachusetts Hall, and his senior year in Stoughton.
One of Brooks's class writes, "He was a general favorite, always hearty
and kindly, with an abounding sense of humor, which he carried with him
through life.... No one could have surmised what profession he would
choose, and almost any calling would have seemed appropriate."
Mr. Robert Treat Paine, his classmate, says, "At college he cared little
for sport, but preferred to read omniverously almost everything and
anything that came in his way." Tennyson was an especial favorite.
After graduation Brooks returned to the Boston Latin School, and became
a tutor. Here he failed. He could not or would not be a strict
disciplinarian, and he left the position.
Francis Gardner, his former teacher, had said that he "never knew a man
who had failed as a schoolmaster to succeed in any other occupation."
In one case at least he was mistaken. The young man might and did fail
as a schoolteacher; he was a great success as a preacher and a man.
He went back to his college president, James Walker, to advise about his
future work in life, and decided to enter the ministry.
At the suggestion of his pastor, Dr. Alexander H. Vinton, of St. Paul's
Church on Tremont Street, he went to a theological seminary at
Alexandria, Va., in 1856. Here his piety seemed to deepen, as he gave
himself to study and to mission work.
He preached his first sermon in a little hamlet called Sharon, two or
three miles from the seminary, urged to go thither by a classmate. The
people were mostly poor whites and negroes, who, being plain themselves,
enjoyed the plain preaching. The schoolhouse was soon crowded, and more
came than could be accommodated.
His classmate told, at his home in Philadelphia, of this good work. The
Church of the Advent in that city needed a rector. A committee came to
hear Brooks, of course without his knowledge, were delighted, and called
him to their poor parish.
Fearful that he would not give satisfaction, young Brooks, now
twenty-four years of age, consented to preach for three months, and at
the end of that time accepted the call for a year, at a salary of one
thousand dollars.
"The dissatisfaction with his work," says Dr. Arthur Brooks, "and the
eagerness to press on to something better and more complete, while all
the time men were praising what he had done, was always a recognized
feature of his power."
Fortunately for young Brooks, Dr. Vinton had moved to Philadelphia, and
had become rector of the Church of the Holy Trinity, in a wealthy part
of the city.
Not forgetting his former parishioner, he invited the young preacher to
occupy his pulpit Sunday afternoons. Both here and at the Advent,
Phillips Brooks soon won a place in the hearts and lives of his hearers.
Dr. Vinton was called to St. Mark 's Church, in New York, and Phillips
Brooks was asked to take his place at the Holy Trinity. He did not
accept till invited the third time, and finally became rector Jan. 1,
1862, when he was twenty-seven.
During Phillips Brooks's ten years in Philadelphia, he took a fearless
stand for the colored people, and in all that related to the Civil War.
When the three months' men were called out to defend Philadelphia from a
feared attack of the Confederates, young Brooks, with a shovel on his
shoulder, was in the van to help throw up earthworks.
In his Thanksgiving sermon, Nov. 26, 1863, he thanked God "that the
institution of African slavery in our beloved land is one big year
nearer to its inevitable death than it was last Thanksgiving Day."
When Abraham Lincoln lay dead at Independence Hall, in the journey from
Washington to Springfield, Ill., Phillips Brooks preached a noble
sermon, April 23, 1865. Many have recalled these words, which might be
written of himself, now that he has gone from us.
"In him," said Phillips Brooks, "was vindicated the greatness of real
goodness and the goodness of real greatness.... How many ears will never
lose the thrill of some kind word he spoke--he who could speak so kindly
to promise a kindness that always matched his word. How often he
surprised the land with a clemency which made even those who questioned
his policy love him the more for what they called his weakness; seeing
the man in whom God had most embodied the discipline of freedom not only
could not be a slave, but could not be a tyrant....
"The gentlest, kindest, most indulgent man that ever ruled a state!...
The shepherd of the people!... What ruler ever wore it like this dead
President of ours? He fed us faithfully and truly. He fed us with
counsel when we were in doubt, with inspiration when we sometimes
faltered, with caution when we would be rash, with calm, clear, trustful
cheerfulness through many an hour when our hearts were dark. He spread
before the whole land feasts of great duty and devotion and patriotism,
on which the land grew strong. He fed us with solemn, solid truths....
"He showed us how to love truth, and yet be charitable--how to hate
wrong and all oppression, and yet not treasure one personal injury or
insult. He fed _all_ his people, from the highest to the lowest, from
the most privileged to the most enslaved. Best of all, he fed us with a
reverent and genuine religion."
When Harvard celebrated the close of the war, and Lowell gave his
immortal "Commemoration Ode," Phillips Brooks offered the prayer, as
only one with his great heart and eloquent lips could pray. Nobody ever
forgot that prayer. Harvard from that day forward knew and honored her
son.
A few years later, May 30, 1873, Phillips Brooks spoke at the dedication
of Memorial Hall in Andover. He said, "They saw that their country was
like a precious vase of rarest porcelain, priceless while it was whole,
valueless if it was broken into fragments. What they died to keep whole
may we in our several places live to keep holy!"
In 1869 Phillips Brooks was called to Trinity Church, Boston. He loved
his native city, "the home of new ideas," as he called it, and accepted.
At that time the church edifice of Quincy granite was on Summer Street.
It was burned in the great fire of 1872, whereupon the wealthy
congregation, idolizing their pastor, built on the Back Bay, at Copley
Square, the present Trinity Church edifice, costing about one million
dollars, one of the handsomest and most complete church buildings on
this continent. It was designed by the famous architect, Mr. H. H.
Richardson. It is in the form of a Latin Cross.
"The style of the church," says Mr. Richardson, "may be characterized as
a free rendering of the French Romanesque, inclining particularly to the
school that flourished in the eleventh century in Central France,--the
ancient Aquitaine."
Four thousand five hundred piles were driven to support the building,
the tower of which, resting on four piers, weighs nearly nineteen
million pounds. Mr. John La Farge decorated the building with great
skill and beauty. Dr. Vinton, the venerable pastor of Phillips Brooks's
boyhood, preached the consecration sermon in the new church, Feb. 9,
1877.
Phillips Brooks did not wish that this grand church should be for the
people of Trinity only. The galleries were made free, and the rented
pews could be occupied by strangers after a stated hour. He said, "Such
a church as this has no right to exist, or to think that it exists, for
any limited company who own its pews. It would not be a Christian
parish if it harbored such a thought. No, let the world come in. Let all
men hear, if they will, the truths we love. Let no soul go unsaved
through any selfishness of ours."
This year Mr. Brooks was made a Doctor of Divinity by Harvard
University. He had already been one of her overseers for several years.
In 1881 the beloved Dr. Andrew P. Peabody resigned his office as
preacher at Harvard, and the President and Fellows naturally turned to
Phillips Brooks as the one of all others who could win and hold the
students to a higher spiritual life. He was chosen preacher to the
university, and Plummer Professor of Christian Morals.
Dr. Brooks loved his Alma Mater, and hated to refuse, but Trinity Church
and Boston could not spare him. When he gave his answer, President Eliot
says, "He was very pale and grave, and he spoke like a man who had seen
a beatific vision which he could not pursue."
More and more, however, Phillips Brooks became a part of the higher life
of Harvard. The religious work at the college is divided among six
preachers. In each half-year, for two or three weeks, a minister
conducts morning prayers, preaches Sunday evenings, and each forenoon is
at Wadsworth House, to talk with any students who may choose to come.
These were precious seasons to Phillips Brooks: for he loved young men,
and they loved him. The Rev. Julius Ward tells of a letter written by
Dr. Brooks to the father of a freshman, in which the warm heart of the
preacher exclaims. "What dear, beautiful creatures these boys are!"
For twenty-two years Phillips Brooks did his grand work in Trinity
Church, and, indeed, in the whole city and the whole land. He said, "No
man has come to true greatness who has not felt in some degree that his
life belongs to his race, and that what God gives him He gives him for
mankind."
When the Rev. Dr. George A. Gordon of Boston remarked to Dr. Brooks,
after hearing his twentieth anniversary sermon, that he had also heard
him preach his ninth, he replied, "Twenty years is a long time in a
man's life, and I cannot expect more than another twenty;" and then with
a serious but eager look, added, "And then I hope something better will
come."
He preached to overflowing congregations at Trinity, at the Young Men's
Christian Union, the Moody Tabernacle, Appleton Chapel at Harvard, and
elsewhere. He did not seem to realize that men crowded the house to hear
_him_. To a brother minister in a Boston suburb, where he frequently
preached, and where every inch of standing-room was utilized when he
came, he remarked, "Grey, what a splendid congregation you have!"
He was extremely modest. When invited to furnish some data for his
college class record, he wrote, "I have had no wife, no children, no
particular honors, no serious misfortune, and no adventures worth
speaking of. It is shameful at such times as these not to have a
history, but I have not got one, and must come without."
Phillips Brooks was as great in pastoral work as in preaching. He said
in his "Lectures on Preaching," delivered at the Yale Divinity School,
in January and February, 1877, "The preacher needs to be pastor, that he
may preach to real men. The pastor must be preacher, that he may keep
the dignity of his work alive. The preacher who is not a pastor grows
remote. The pastor who is not a preacher grows petty.... Be both; for
you cannot really be one unless you also are the other."
He visited his people, both poor and rich. Two young men had attended
Trinity Church for a time, and then ceased going. They roomed at the top
of a high building in a plain quarter of the city. One day, answering a
rap at their door, they beheld the majestic figure of Phillips Brooks.
"Well, boys," he said, grasping them cordially by the hand, "you did not
expect to see _me_ here, did you?"
Indeed, they did not, for they supposed that the rector did not know
them even by sight. They went regularly to Trinity after that friendly
visit.
A physician tells this story, which has appeared in the press. He said
to a poor woman whom he had visited, "You don't need any more medicine.
What you need now is nourishment and fresh air. You need to get out."
"But I have nobody to leave with the children," was the reply.
"Well, you must manage to get out somehow," was the response.
The doctor dropped in a day or two later to see how the poor woman had
"managed." She had told her troubles to the man who bore many burdens
cheerfully, Phillips Brooks; and he was there caring for the children
while the poor mother took the air.
Dr. Brooks loved mission work. Like Charles Kingsley, he was always very
close in heart with the poor and the laborers. He said, "It is not
wealth simply in itself,--it is the pride of wealth, the indifference of
wealth, the cruelty of wealth, the vulgarity of wealth, in one great
word, the selfishness of wealth, which really makes the poor man's
heart ache and the poor man's blood boil, and constitutes the danger of
a community where poor men and rich men live side by side." He was
especially interested in St. Andrew's Church on Chambers Street, which
was under the care of Trinity. Here one of the first, if not the first,
girls' clubs in the country was organized, to which Dr. Brooks delighted
to speak of his travels abroad. The Vincent Hospital, the Guild Hall of
St. Andrew's, hung with pictures, gifts from him, the Kindergarten for
the Blind,--all were dear to his heart.
Phillips Brooks was a generous man, with both money and time. He helped
many a boy through college. On one occasion he received a check for one
hundred dollars from a parish where he had preached, and immediately
sent it to a poor clergyman. To a chapel in a suburban town he gave five
hundred dollars towards paying its debt.
He did not like to have his photograph taken and sold; but when informed
by those who were holding a fair for St. Andrew's Mission that they
would probably make fifty dollars through such sale, he immediately sent
a check for that amount.
He was finally prevailed upon to sit for his picture in 1887. In the
following eight months more than three thousand photographs were sold.
Four years later an arrangement was made whereby a royalty was paid on
each picture, and the proceeds used in mission work.
A lady desired some instruments for a medical missionary about to start
for Japan. She applied to Phillips Brooks, with the thought that some of
his wealthy parishioners might provide them. "A good set will cost one
hundred dollars," she said; "but an inferior one can be bought for fifty
dollars."
"Would you send your son to the war with an old-fashioned musket," he
said, "instead of a rifle? The man who goes to fight Satan in his
strongholds must have the best appliances that can be obtained." And Dr.
Brooks paid the money from his own pocket.
A printer, the husband of a woman attending Dr. Brooks's church, became
ill, and the men in the office raised money to send their fellow-workman
to California. The preacher heard of it, and called at the building. The
cashier spoke through the tube to the foreman in the composing-room,
saying that a gentleman wished to see him. "Send him up," was the reply.
And up four flights walked Phillips Brooks, and quietly slipped twenty
dollars into the foreman's hands, though refusing to allow his name to
be put on the subscription paper.
He gave his time generously. When his private secretary, the Rev.
William Henry Brooks, DD., said to him that in using so much time for
others he had none left for himself, he replied, "I have plenty of
time." Being asked "Where?" he answered, "In the railroad cars."
Soon after Phillips Brooks became bishop he was urged to have office
hours, but refused. He said, writes his secretary, in a sketch of the
great leader, "A clergyman may come from a distance to see me, and be
compelled to return very soon. Not knowing my office hours (should there
be such), he might fail of the accomplishment of his errand, and so have
his journey to no purpose. Or a layman, leaving his business to consult
with me, not knowing of the observance of office hours, might find his
time wasted, and be disappointed of the desired interview. No, I am not
willing to have office hours. If people wish to see me I ought to and
will see them."
When some one expressed fear that these numberless calls would wear him
out, he said, "God save the day when they won't come to me."
When I had occasion myself two or three times to consult him, he never
seemed in a hurry, never cold or indifferent, never ostentatious,--only
small souls are that,--and never exclusive. He had so mastered himself
as not to be annoyed; and such mastery over self gives mastery over
others.
He answered letters by the thousands; indeed, none ever went unanswered.
He was like Longfellow in this respect,--a true gentleman.
He received letters from all countries, and upon all subjects. A lady
wrote from the South, wishing a position in the house of one of the
diocesan institutions, with her two children, and if that were not
possible, asked that he would recommend a boarding-place. Phillips
Brooks was abroad, but sent the letter to his secretary, asking that he
send her the desired information. "Be sure," wrote Dr. Brooks, "and tell
her that the answer was not delayed any longer than was absolutely
necessary. Explain to her that I am in Europe."
A widow in Minnesota, whose husband, a Massachusetts man, had been
killed in the war, could not prove that he was her husband, as she had
lost her marriage certificate, and therefore could not obtain a pension.
She knew the name of the minister who married her, but he was dead.
Phillips Brooks took time to find evidence of her marriage, and she
received her pension.
A letter came from New York City, asking that a list of all the papers
and periodicals published by the several parishes in Dr. Brooks's
diocese be sent. It was a work of many hours, but it was done.
The _Girls' Friendly Magazine_ tells this incident. Phillips Brooks
said to a friend in his study, "Who is this man who writes this letter?
You ought to be able to tell me, for he comes from your town. He wants
to know if I think it is right to play chess."
"That man," said the friend, "is a poor old crank. There is nothing for
you to do but to throw his letter in the waste-basket."
"That I will not do," was the answer of Phillips Brooks. "He has written
me a courteous letter, and I am going to return him a courteous answer,
like a gentleman."
Phillips Brooks was extremely fond of children, as one may see from his
letters to his nieces, published in the August, 1893, _Century
Magazine_, or from the beautiful picture in "The Child and the Bishop,"
where, in 1890, Dr. Brooks holds, as he says, "'Beautiful Blessing' in
my happy arms."
In 1882-83 he spent over a year in Europe, sailing in the Servia about
the middle of June, 1882, with his friend, the Rev. Dr. McVickar of
Philadelphia, with other friends. Dr. Brooks visited England, France,
Italy, India, and Spain.
From Venice he writes to his niece Gertie, the daughter of William Gray
Brooks, in a Boston bank, "Do go into my house, when you get there, and
see if the doll and her baby are well and happy, but do not carry them
off; and make the music-box play a tune, and remember your affectionate
uncle,
PHILLIPS."
The people of Trinity Church had built for their pastor a beautiful home
on Clarendon Street. In one of the closets were kept dolls for his
nieces. This home was the scene of many merry-makings for the children
of his brothers, and for other children.
From Jeypoor he writes to Gertie about the monkeys of India, and the
nose-jewels of the women, and tells her he has got a nose-jewel for her.
He rides on a great elephant, "almost as big as Jumbo."
To Josephine, the little daughter of the Rev. John Cotton Brooks, his
brother, in Springfield, Mass., be sends an amusing poem of his own
composition. From England he writes that he wished the strawberries grew
on trees, as it was difficult for him to pick them, as one might imagine
from his great size,--six feet four inches tall, and large frame in
proportion.
At Badgastein he takes a bath for Gertie, who has rheumatism, back in
America; and from Chamouni, he writes her that she must get well and
strong, "to play with me."
He writes to his brother William interesting accounts of India. Bombay,
with its great hospital for sick and wounded animals, where "they cure
them if they can, or keep them till they die," is very curious. It is to
be hoped that we, with our boasted civilization, will some time be as
kind to animals as they are in India.
He preaches at Delhi. He is extremely interested in Benares, with its
five thousand Hindoo temples, the "very Back Bay of Asia." He sees
thousands of pilgrims bathing in the sacred Ganges to wash their sins
away, or burn their dead upon its banks.
Phillips Brooks preached during his absence at St. Botolph's Church,
Boston, Lincolnshire, England; at the Chapel Royal, Savoy, London; at
St. Paul's Cathedral, the Temple Church, St. Margaret's, at Westminster
Abbey, at Lincoln Cathedral, Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and
elsewhere, always to the great delight of his hearers. He met such men
as Browning and Tennyson. He was the warm friend of the lamented Dean
Stanley.
Of Browning he writes, in "Letters of Travel," "He was one of the men
whom I wanted most to see here; a pleasant gentleman, full of talk about
London and London people, with not a bit of the poet about him
externally."
Again he writes, "I dined with Mr. Forster and Mr. Bright, and had our
great English friend pretty much to myself for two hours. He is a great
talker, especially when he gets onto America; and he knows what he is
talking about. Both he and Forster are friends worth having. Bright,
personally, wins you in a minute by his frankness and cordialness and
manliness of his greeting."
He attended one of Mrs. Gladstone's receptions; met Mr. Gladstone at
dinner at Mr. Bryce's; breakfasted with Matthew Arnold, "and liked him
very much;" met Jean Ingelow, Mrs. Ritchie (Thackeray's daughter),
Hughes, and many others.
Dr. Brooks returned to Boston Sept. 22, and the people received him with
open arms.
Dr. Brooks was a Broad Churchman, and broad in every sense of the word.
His secretary tells of a conversation he had with the rector, when,
after differing in opinion, he said to Phillips Brooks, "I am very sorry
that I have said what I have just said."
"Why?" was asked.
"Because it is not pleasant to me to differ with you in opinions," was
the reply of the secretary. Dr. Brooks answered with much earnestness,
"This is a free country, and every man has the right to express his own
opinions."
Phillips Brooks was one of the most tolerant of men. In two lectures on
"Tolerance," delivered before the students of several divinity schools
of the Episcopal Church, he said, "Tolerance is the willing consent that
other men should hold and express opinions with which we disagree, until
they are convinced by reason that those opinions are untrue.
"I know some ministers," he said, "who want all their parishioners to
think after their fashion, and are troubled when any of their people
show signs of thinking for themselves, and holding ideas which the
minister does not hold. Thank God, the human nature is too vital,
especially when it is inspired with such a vital force as Christian
faith, to yield itself to such unworthy slavery....
"Bidden to believe that souls would be punished for wrong-thinking,
people have come to doubt whether souls would be punished for anything
at all. The only possibility of any light upon the darkness, any order
in the confusion, must lie in the clear and unqualified assertion that
such as God is can punish such as men are for nothing except wickedness,
and that honestly mistaken opinions are not wicked....
"The only ground for us to take is simply the broad ground that error is
not punishable at all. Error is not guilt. The guilt of error is the
fallacy and fiction which has haunted good men's minds."
Again he said, "Insincerity (whether it profess to hold what we think is
false or what we think is true), cant, selfishness, deception of one's
self or of other people, cruelty, prejudice,--these are the things with
which the Church ought to be a great deal more angry than she is. The
anger which she is ready to expend upon the misbeliever ought to be
poured out on these."
"The noblest utterance of hopeful tolerance in all that noble century,"
said Dr. Brooks of the Pilgrims, "was in the famous speech in which John
Robinson, their minister, bade loving farewell to his departing flock at
Leyden, in which occur those memorable words, 'I am verily persuaded, I
am very confident, that the Lord has more truth to break out of His holy
word.'"
"At the consecration of Trinity Church," says the Rev. Julius H. Ward,
"he invited prominent Unitarian clergymen, and at least one layman, to
receive the communion." And yet Phillips Brooks's one gospel message, in
which he believed and spoke, was the power of Christ unto salvation.
"Of the Episcopal Church," he said, "there are some of her children who
love to call her in exclusive phrase The American Church. She is not
that; and to call her that would be to give her a name to which she has
no right. The American Church is the great total body of Christianity in
America, in many divisions, under many names ... as a whole bearing
perpetual testimony to the people of America of the authority and love
of God, of the redemption of Christ, and of the sacred possibilities of
man....
"The church which to-day effectively denounces intemperance and the
licentiousness of social life, the cruelty or indifference of the rich
to the poor, and the prostitution of public office, will become the real
church of America. Our church has done some good service here. She ought
to do more.... She ought to blow her trumpet in the ears of the young
men of fortune, summoning them from their clubs and their frivolities to
do the chivalrous work which their nobility obliges them to do for
their fellow-men. She ought to speak to Culture, and teach it its
responsibility."
Five volumes of Dr. Brooks's sermons have been published and read
widely: one in 1878; another in 1881, "The Candle of the Lord and Other
Sermons,"--the first sermon was preached in London, and attracted wide
attention; in 1883, "Sermons in the English Churches;" in 1886, "Twenty
Sermons," dedicated to the memory of Frederick Brooks, his brother; and
in 1890, "The Light of the World and Other Sermons," dedicated to the
memory of his "brother, George Brooks, who died in the great war."
The Rev. Frederick Brooks, who was the talented young pastor of St.
Paul's Church in Cleveland, Ohio, was drowned by falling one dark
evening through the Charlestown draw of the Boston and Lowell Railroad
bridge. The last inspiring talk which he made was at one of the
Temperance Friendly Inns in Cleveland, where he encouraged us with his
words of sympathy and interest.
Phillips Brooks wrote two other books, "Lectures on Preaching," and the
"Bohlen Lectures," on "The Influence of Jesus." Besides these he has
written several Christmas carols of extreme beauty, and some pamphlets.
All his books have gone through many editions, and, like Spurgeon's,
have been read by thousands.
In an address on "Biography," delivered at Phillips Exeter Academy, he
said that he would rather have written a great biography than any other
great book.
The "Lectures on Preaching" abound, like all his work, in short, concise
sentences full of meaning, and should be read especially by every one
who intends to preach.
He tells young men that the talk about prevalent aversion to hearing
the gospel is foolish. "The age," he says, "has no aversion to preaching
as such. It may not listen to your preaching. If that prove to be the
case, look for the fault first in your preaching, and not in the age. I
wonder at the eagerness and patience of congregations.... Never fear, as
you preach, to bring the sublimest motive to the smallest duty, and the
most infinite comfort to the smallest trouble."
The necessary qualities in a preacher, Phillips Brooks thinks, are,
"Personal piety,--nothing but fire kindles fire,"--hopefulness; such
physical condition as comes from a due regard to health; enthusiasm;
"the quality that kindles at the sight of men, that feels a keen joy at
the meeting of truth and the human mind."
First among the elements of power, Phillips Brooks puts "personal
uprightness and purity." "No man permanently succeeds in the ministry
who cannot make men believe that he is pure and devoted; and the only
sure and lasting way to make men believe in one's devotion and purity is
to be what one wishes to be believed to be." He said. "No man can do
much for others who is not much himself.... The priest must be the most
manly of all men."
The second element of power is "freedom from self-consciousness." "No
man ever yet thought whether he was preaching well without weakening his
sermon."
The third element is "genuine respect for the people whom he preaches
to." "There is no good preaching in the supercilious preacher."
The fourth is "gravity." Dr. Brooks thinks the "merely solemn ministers
are very empty ... cheats and shams;" but thinks the "clerical jester"
merits "the contempt of Christian people." "He is full of Bible
jokes.... There are passages in the Bible which are soiled forever by
the touches which the hands of ministers who delight in cheap and easy
jokes have left upon them.... Refrain from all joking about
congregations, flocks, parish visits, sermons, the mishaps of the
pulpit, or the makeshifts of the study. Such joking is always bad, and
almost always stupid; but it is very common, and it takes the bloom off
a young minister's life." Dr. Brooks was especially careful in remarks
about any person.
The fifth element of power is "courage." "If you are afraid of men, and
a slave to their opinion, go and do something else. Go and make shoes to
fit them."
Phillips Brooks then turns to the dangers which beset young preachers.
The first is self-conceit. "He who lives with God must be humble," he
has said in his sermon, "How to Abound." Another danger is narrowness.
Still another is self-indulgence. "We are apt to become men of moods,
thinking we cannot work unless we feel like it.... The first business of
the preacher is to conquer the tyranny of his moods, and to be always
ready for his work. It can be done.... Resent indulgences which are not
given to men of other professions. Learn to enjoy and be sober; learn to
suffer and be strong. Never appeal for sympathy."
Again he said, "The clergy are largely what the laity make them.... It
was not good that the minister should be worshipped and made an oracle.
It is still worse that he should be flattered and made a pet. And there
is such a tendency in these days among our weaker people.... It is
possible for such a man, if he has popular gifts, to be petted all
through his ministry, never once to come into strong contact with other
men, or to receive one good hard knock of the sort that brings out
manliness and character."
Dr. Brooks liked to have ministers share their knowledge; giving such
lectures as Norman Macleod's on geology to the weavers at Newmilns.
"Would that more of us were able to follow his example." This was what
Charles Kingsley loved to do.
Of political preaching, Dr. Brooks said to the students, "I despise, and
call upon you to despise, all the weak assertions that a minister must
not preach politics because he will injure his influence if he does, or
because it is unworthy of his sacred office.
"When some clear question of right and wrong presents itself, and men
with some strong passion or sordid interest are going wrong, then your
sermon is a poor, untimely thing if it deals only with the abstractions
of eternity, and has no word to help the men who are dizzied with the
whirl and blinded with the darkness of to-day."
He constantly urged men of all classes to do their best. "The primary
fact of duty lies at the core of everything," he said.
He preached his own sermons with the single motive "of moving men's
souls." He wrote rapidly, and spoke rapidly, over two hundred words a
minute. Two stenographers were always necessary to record his sermons or
addresses. His Lenten noonday sermons at Trinity Church, New York, or at
St. Paul's Church, Boston, were crowded with the busiest business men of
both cities. He could preach with or without notes. He could write a
sermon in six hours, at two sittings of three hours each; but he had
been studying and thinking all his life for it.
In 1886 Dr. Brooks was elected assistant-bishop of Pennsylvania, but
declined.
In 1889 the freshmen of Wellesley College made him an honorary member of
their class. He accepted the position, as had Dr. Holmes and others with
former classes. He enjoyed meeting with the young women, for he always
treated men and women alike, with no increased suavity for the latter.
About a week before his death, says an article in the Feb. 15, 1894,
_Golden Rule_, he went to Wellesley College to address the students, and
afterwards received them in the large parlors. "I met my class here one
Sunday afternoon," he said, "and they asked me questions, ten to the
minute. It was very interesting. They did not differentiate at all
between the questions that may be answered and the questions that may
not."
In 1891 Phillips Brooks was chosen Bishop of Massachusetts, after a
heated contest between the High and Broad Churchmen. Dr. Brooks wisely
kept silent during the whole controversy.
He possessed, what he said impressed him most about Mr. Moody,
"astonishing good sense."
He was consecrated with most impressive services, Oct. 14, 1891, in
Trinity Church; Bishop Potter of New York preaching the consecration
sermon.
It is said that the regular salary of the former Massachusetts bishop
was six thousand dollars. As Phillips Brooks received eight thousand
from Trinity, it was suggested that he be given eight as bishop, but
this he would not permit.
Bishop Brooks took up his work with his wonted earnestness and zeal.
"The amount of speaking that he did was appalling," says Bishop William
Lawrence; "four to seven sermons and addresses on a Sunday, with
sermons, addresses, and speeches in quick succession through the week."
"He was the most unselfish man I ever knew," says his secretary. "He was
always sacrificing himself for others. Not only did he never speak of
himself, but he never even thought of himself." He seemed never to waste
a moment of time, and yet had time for everything. He was careful always
to keep appointments promptly.
Bishop Brooks lived the frankness which he preached. "To keep clear of
concealment," he said, "to keep clear of the need of concealment, to do
nothing which he might not do out on the middle of Boston Common at
noonday--I cannot say how more and more that seems to me to be the glory
of a young man's life. It is an awful hour when the first necessity of
hiding anything comes. The whole life is different thenceforth."
Phillips Brooks kept his warm heart through life. "Sentiment," he said,
"is the finest essence of the human life. It is, like all the finest
things, the easiest to spoil.... Let him glow with admiration, let him
burn with indignation, let him believe with intensity, let him trust
unquestioningly, let him sympathize with all his soul. The hard young
man is the most terrible of all. To have a skin at twenty that does not
tingle with indignation at the sight of wrong, and quiver with pity at
the sight of pain, is monstrous." He thought a young man should "go
responsive through the world, answering quickly to every touch, knowing
the burdened man's burden just because of the unpressed lightness of his
own shoulders, ... buoyant through all his unconquerable hope,
overcoming the world with his exuberant faith.... Be not afraid of
sentiment, but only of untruth. Trust your sentiments, and so be a man."
Phillips Brooks urged the joy which he always showed in his own life.
"Joy, not sadness, is the characteristic fact of young humanity. To know
this, to keep it as the truth to which the soul constantly
returns,--that is the young man's salvation. Whatever young depression
there is, there must be no young despair. In the morning, at least, it
must seem a fine thing to live."
He loved his work better than all else on earth. He wrote a friend in
England, "I have had a delightful life; and the last twenty years of it,
which I have spent in Trinity Church, have been unbroken in their
happiness."
Bishop Brooks was courageous. In his sermon, "The Man with Two Talents,"
he says, "To do great things in spite of difficulties, that is a very
bugle-call to many men."
Again he says, in "Going up to Jerusalem," "Oh, do not pray for easy
lives! Pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your
powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks! Then the doing of your work
shall be no miracle. But you shall be a miracle!"
He emphasizes this in his sermon, "The Choice Young Man," in his Fifth
Series. "Sad is it when a community grows more and more to abound in
young men who worship wealth, and think they cannot live without luxury
and physical comfort. The choicest of its strength is gone."
Of gambling he said, "In social life, in club, in college, on the
street, the willingness of young men to give or receive money on the
mere turn of chances is a token of the decay of manliness and
self-respect, which is more alarming than almost anything besides."
Bishop Brooks was grandly optimistic. Dr. Samuel Eliot says, "A mother
wrote, asking him to baptize her little boy, and he wrote back, 'What a
glorious future before a child born at the close of our century!'"
"I don't want to be old," he used to say, "but I should like to live on
this earth five hundred years."
"Believe in man with all your childhood's confidence," he wrote in
"Visions and Tasks," "while you work for man with all a man's prudence
and circumspection. Such union of energy and wisdom makes the completest
character, and the most powerful life."
He said, "I always like men who believe terribly in other men."
"Nothing was more remarkable in him," says Canon Farrar, "than his royal
optimism. With him it was a matter of faith and temperament. I think he
must have been born an optimist. Often, when I was inclined to despond,
his conversation, his bright spirits, his friendliness, his illimitable
hopes, came to me like a breath of vernal air."
The summer of 1892 was spent in Europe by Dr. Brooks. He wrote
Archdeacon Farrar after his return, on his birthday, Dec. 13, "In the
midst of a thousand useless things which I do every day, there is always
coming up the recollection of last summer, and how good you were to me,
and what enjoyment I had in those delightful idle days. Never shall I
cease to thank you for taking me to Tennyson's, and letting me see the
great dear man again. How good he was that day!... and how perfect his
death was!... And Whittier, too, is gone.... How strange it seems, this
writing against one friend's name after another that you will see his
face no more!... I hope that you are well and happy. Do not let the
great world trouble you."
While he enjoyed England, he was thoroughly American. He wrote from
London, "I think that the more one travels here the more he feels that,
while there is very much to admire and desire in these English ways, the
simplicity and directness of our American fashions of doing things are
far more satisfactory."
Two weeks later he preached a Christmas sermon at the Church of the
Incarnation, New York, for his brother, Dr. Arthur Brooks. This was the
day of all days which he loved. He enjoyed giving and receiving
Christmas gifts.
He said in his sermon, "One of the very wonderful things about our human
life is the perpetual freshness, the indestructible joy, that clings
forever about the idea of birth. You cannot find the hovel so miserable,
the circumstances and the prospects of life so wretched, that it is not
a bright and glorious thing for a child to be born there.
"Hope flickers up for an instant from its embers at the first breathing
of the baby's breath. No squalidness of the life into which it came can
make the new life seem squalid at its coming. By and by it will grow
dull and gray, perhaps, in sad harmony with its sad surroundings; but at
the first there is some glory in it, and for a moment it burns bright
upon the bosom of the dulness where it has fallen, and seems as if it
ought to set it afire.
"And so there was nothing that could with such vividness represent the
newness of Christianity in the world as to have it forever associated
with the birth of a child.
"It is a strange, a wonderful, birth.... I do not care to understand
that story fully. It is enough for me that in it there is represented
the full truth about the wondrous child of Christmas Day. He is the
child of heaven and earth together. It is the spontaneous utterance of
the celestial life. It is likewise the answer to the cry of need with
which every hill and valley of the earth has rung, that lies here in the
cradle....
"The humble birth of Jesus in the stable of the inn at Bethlehem was a
proclamation of the insignificance of circumstances in the greatest
moments and experiences of life."
A few days later, Jan. 14, 1893, Bishop Brooks took cold at the
consecration of a church in East Boston, and a soreness of throat
resulted. Five days later, Thursday, he seemed somewhat ill, and went to
bed. A physician came, but no alarm was felt. Sunday night the throat
grew diphtheretic, and the bishop became delirious. Monday morning, Jan.
23, at 6.30, Phillips Brooks ceased to breathe.
His last words, spoken to his brother William and the faithful servants
and nurse who stood by the bedside, as he waved his hand, were,
"Good-by; I am going home. I will see you in the morning."
The sad news could scarcely be believed. The great, strong man, bishop
for only a year and three months, had fallen in his very prime. Men's
faces were blanched, and women wept. The poor and the rich had a common
sorrow. Even children felt the bereavement. A little five-year-old girl
was told by her mother that "Bishop Brooks had gone to heaven."
The child knew and loved him, and had always delighted to meet him. "O
mamma!" she replied, "how happy the angels will be!"
On Thursday, Jan. 26, Bishop Brooks was buried. No other funeral was
ever like it in Boston. At 7.45 in the morning the coffin was borne from
the bishop's residence, at the corner of Clarendon and Newbury Streets,
to the vestibule of Trinity Church, accompanied by a guard of the Loyal
Legion, of which Phillips Brooks was chaplain. The colors of the Loyal
Legion covered the coffin, on which lay some Easter lilies among palms.
It is estimated that from eight to eleven o'clock twelve or fifteen
thousand persons passed by the body as it lay in state, and looked once
more upon the face of the man they loved and honored. A heavy plate
glass was over the face, and the coffin was hermetically sealed.
Rich and poor, children and adults, sobbed as they passed on. A
gray-haired and very poorly dressed woman drew a cluster of roses from
her bosom, and, with tears flowing down her cheeks, laid them reverently
upon the casket.
A pale-faced woman, with a little boy scantily dressed for the winter
weather, who could not enter the church for the crowd, begged a
policeman to let her in. He replied brusquely, telling her to get into
line.
"Oh, but I must see him once more!" she sobbed; "he paid for the
operation which gave sight to my boy, and I must see him again."
The people about her were moved by her entreaty, and an usher quietly
told the officer to allow the mother and her child to come in.
Meantime Trinity Church had become filled with the various
delegations,--from Harvard College, Boston University, the Governor and
Committee of the Legislature, clergymen from a distance, theological
schools, officers of the Young Men's Christian Association and Young
Men's Christian Union, and various other organizations.
The church was beautifully decorated. At the back of the chancel was an
arch of laurel, fifteen feet high and nine feet wide, with a spruce-tree
eight feet high on each side. In front of this was a tall cross of
Easter lilies, and the baptismal font was filled with the same flowers.
Roses and lilies sent by friends were heaped everywhere, although a
request had been made that no flowers should be sent.
Among the flowers was a cross with the words, "From Helen." This was the
gift of the little blind girl, Helen Keller, at the South Boston
Institute for the Blind, of whom the dead preacher was very fond.
Just before noon the body, borne on the shoulders of eight strong men,
picked from the various athletic teams of Harvard, passed up the aisle
of the church, headed by the bishops and honorary pall-bearers. The
whole congregation joined in singing "Jesus, lover of my soul," the
music broken by audible sobbing. After brief services, while the people
remained standing, and the organ played its low, solemn notes, the body
was borne out into Copley Square in front of Trinity, and placed on a
draped platform, where an out-door service was held for the more than
twenty thousand persons who could not get inside the church.
A memorial service was held at the same hour in the First Baptist
Church, near by.
After the Lord's Prayer, in which all joined, the hymn beginning,--
"O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home;"
was sung. Copies of it had been distributed among the people. Three
cornetists led the singing.
It was an hour never to be forgotten. Eyes unused to tears were wet that
day.
The funeral procession of fifty carriages then moved towards Mount
Auburn, across Harvard Bridge, through a line of thousands of people.
Places of business throughout the city were closed, and the bells upon
the churches and public buildings in Boston and other cities were
tolled.
When the head of the procession reached Beck Hall, Cambridge, the
university bell began tolling, with the old bell in Harvard Hall, and
the bells of Christ Church, chiming,--
"Heaven's morning breaks
And earth's vain shadows flee."
Two thousand college students, standing several deep, with heads
uncovered, were formed in two lines from the University building to the
West Gate. Through their ranks, entering from Harvard Street, the body
of their beloved preacher was borne. "Never in all our college life,"
writes Dr. McKenzie, "has there been a burial like his."
From the college grounds the procession moved to Mount Auburn, where the
brothers, John and Arthur, conducted the services. Flowers, which the
dead bishop loved, lay everywhere upon the pure, white snow,--lilies,
roses, carnations, and sheaves of wheat. The fence about the family lot
was hung with ivy and violets tied with purple ribbon.
The crowd drew aside to let three weeping women look into the open
grave, before the dirt fell upon the coffin. They were three
sisters,--servants who had long ministered in the bishop's home, and
whose devotion had been repaid by constant appreciation and kindness.
The world went back to its work, but we are never the same after a great
life has touched our own. Phillips Brooks said in his sermon on
"Withheld Completion of Life," "The ideal life is in our blood, and
never will be still. We feel the thing we ought to be beating beneath
the thing we are. Every time we see a man who has attained our human
ideal a little more fully than we have, it awakens our languid blood and
fills us with new longings."
All who ever knew or heard Phillips Brooks will forever strive after his
unselfishness, his courage, his thoughtfulness, his eagerness to make
the world better.
Bishop William Lawrence, who succeeded Phillips Brooks, wrote of him in
the March-April, 1893, _Andover Review_, "When all has been said about
his eloquence, his mastery of language, and his tumult of thought, we
are turned back to the thought that the sermons were great because the
man was great. His was a great soul. He stood above us; he moved in
higher realms of thought and life; he had a wider sweep of spiritual
vision; he was gigantic. And yet he was so completely one of us, so
sympathetic, childlike, and naturally simple, that it was often only by
an effort of thought that we could realize that he was great. Kingly in
character, we buried him like a king."
Memorial services were held in scores of churches; in Boston, in Lowell,
in Worcester, in New York, in Maine, in Rhode Island, and elsewhere. At
the old South Church in Boston, Protestants and Roman Catholics united
in the service.
The Rev. Dr. Philip S. Moxom of the First Baptist Church well said of
Phillips Brooks, "He was a loyal Episcopalian in the very best sense in
which a man can be loyal to the church of his choice; but he was not and
could not be confined in the Episcopal Church. He belonged to no church
or party or sect; rather he belonged to all churches and parties and
sects in so far as they represent elemental truths and express elemental
sympathies. The Congregationalists claimed him, the Unitarians claimed
him, the Baptists claimed him, the Methodists claimed him; and the
claims of all were just, because beneath all these names and party
badges is the common human heart and the one universal church of God;
and to that human and that church of God, Phillips Brooks belonged." The
next generation will not remember the rush of his voice in the pulpit,
or the warm clasp of his hand, or his kindling eye, but his influence
will go on forever.
As he himself said, "He whose life grows abundant grows into sympathy
with the lives of fellow-men, as when one pool among the many on the
seashore rocks fills itself full, it overflows, and becomes one with the
other pools, making them also one with each other all over the broad
expanse."
For such a life there are no seashore limits; no limits of time or
space. His words will have fulfilment. We shall "see him in the
morning."
Mrs. Sarah K. Bolton's Famous Books.
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POOR BOYS WHO BECAME FAMOUS.
By SARAH K. BOLTON. Short biographical sketches of George Peabody,
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Mrs. Sarah Knowles Bolton
Comes from good New England ancestry; descended on her father's side
from Henry Knowles, who came to Rhode Island from London, England, in
1635, and on her mother's side from Colonel Nathaniel Stanley, of
Hartford, Conn., one of the leading men of the colony, and from Colonel
William Pynchon, one of the twenty-six incorporators of Massachusetts
Bay Colony. She was graduated from the Hartford Seminary, established by
Catharine Beecher; published a volume of poems, and in 1860 married
Charles E. Bolton, A.M., of Massachusetts, an Amherst College graduate
of '65. They removed to Cleveland, O., where, besides writing for
various periodicals, she did much charitable work. She was secretary of
the Woman's Christian Association, and Asst. Cor. Sec. of the Nat. W. C.
T. U. She has twice visited Europe, spending two years in England,
France, Italy, Germany, Russia, Norway, and Sweden studying literary and
educational matters, and the means used by employers for the mental and
moral elevation of their employees. On the latter subject she read a
paper before the American Social Science Association in 1883. She was
for three years one of the editors of the Boston _Congregationalist_.
She prepared several small books for the Cleveland Educational Bureau,
conducted gratuitously by her husband, and described by Dr. Washington
Gladden in the _Century_ magazine, January, 1885. The Bureau was
discontinued when Mr. Bolton gave his time to lecturing.
[Illustration]
Mrs. Bolton has written: How Success is Won, 1884; Poor Boys who became
Famous, 1885; Girls who became Famous, 1886; Stories from Life
(fiction), 1886; Social Studies in England, 1886; Famous American
Authors, 1887; From Heart and Nature (poems), 1887, half the book
written by her son, Charles Knowles Bolton, Harvard College, class '90;
Famous American Statesmen, 1888; Some Successful Women, 1888; Famous Men
of Science, 1889; Famous English Authors of the Nineteenth Century,
1890; Famous European Artists, 1890; Famous English Statesmen of Queen
Victoria's Reign, 1891; Famous Types of Womanhood, 1892.
Miss Frances E. Willard says of Mrs. Bolton, "She is one of the
best-informed women in America, the chief woman biographer of our
times."
Mrs. Bolton's books are for sale by all booksellers, or will be sent
postpaid upon receipt of price by the publishers. Complete catalogue
sent free to any address upon application.
THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO., New York and Boston.
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