_Charles Simmer and His Brother George.—Edwin P. Whipple. James T.
Fields.—Doctor Kane.—Rev. Thomas Starr King.—Prof. Cornelius C.
Felton.—Arthur Hugh Clough.—Frederika Bremer.—Laura Bridgman._
AMONG those who came to “Green Peace” was Charles Sumner, my father’s
most intimate friend. The great Massachusetts Senator towered above his
fellow-men physically as well as intellectually. He was a man of noble
proportions, and his great height and size seemed to correspond with
entire fitness to his massive brain and solid mental acquirements. The
great dignity of his character and manner made him seem even larger than
he really was. I cannot give his exact height, but it was at least six
feet two inches. Brother Harry once said to our younger sister:
“There are two kinds of giants, Laura. There are the ogres who eat
people up, and there are the harmless giants. Now Mr. Sumner is a
harmless giant!”
He was a handsome man, always well dressed and scrupulously exact about
his personal appearance. When I first remember him he usually wore
drab-cloth gaiters with white-pearl buttons, which gave him a look of
immaculate neatness. Yet we know he was not a dandy, because Mr.
Longfellow tells us so. A large man—who is necessarily the target for
many eyes—should certainly be careful about his appearance. Six feet
three with breadth in proportion would make a large area of untidiness
sad to contemplate! We children, as I have said, considered him as a
good-natured giant, but he was not familiar with little people and their
ways. We did not have much intercourse with him, save from an admiring
distance. But he well understood that children like presents. He brought
two dolls for Julia and Flossy from the anti-slavery fair. I am ashamed
to say that, although the younger, I insisted on having the beautiful
wax doll dressed in white with “Effie” marked on her handkerchief! Julia
received the companion doll, dressed in black as a nun. She did not
compare with Effie in beauty.
On a certain evening, as he was going out of the front door of “Green
Peace,” I valiantly called out to him, “Good night, Mr. Sumner.” And a
great voice answered me out of the darkness, “_Good night, child!_” He
was very careful and exact in his use of English, as became a man of
scholarly attainments, and did not like to have other people take
liberties with our mother-tongue. Thus he rebuked our governess for
saying that the clock was out of kilter. There was no such word as
_kilter_, he averred, in the English language. Miss Seegar was rather
indignant at being forbidden the use of this quaint Yankee expression;
after Mr. Sumner had gone she took down the dictionary and found that
_kilter_ was duly recorded there!
It is evidently one of the many so-called Americanisms which are, in
reality, words formerly used in England.
He once went away from a party at our house without taking leave of any
one. My mother was rather troubled at this, and my father, who had known
Mr. Sumner long and intimately, said, “Why, that is Sumner’s idea of
taking French leave.” Whereupon sister Julia observed, “I should as soon
think of an elephant walking incognito down Broadway as of Mr. Sumner’s
taking French leave without being observed.”
Of the attack upon him in the Senate I shall speak later. Suffice it to
say here that the intense and prolonged physical suffering caused by
this murderous assault was not the only form of political martyrdom
which he was destined to endure.
The aristocratic element of Boston was, in ante-bellum days, strongly
opposed to anti-slavery doctrines and those who held them. Charles
Sumner’s heroic defense of the principles of liberty gained for him
social ostracism in his native city. This never fell upon my father,
whose work for the public schools, for the blind, the idiots, the
insane, and other unfortunates, insured him the cordial good-will of the
community, in spite of his anti-slavery activities. It should also be
remembered that he did not, like his friend, hold political office. It
is sad to recall the unkind treatment of Sumner; it is pleasanter to
remember that in his later years the great Senator was fully appreciated
and honored in the city of his birth.
Charles Sumner had not what is called social talent, and I do not think
that he cared much for society. His busy life of constant political
activity did not leave him much leisure, and his tastes were those of a
scholar and lover of books.
As he grew older and busier he had less time to devote to social
functions. But he would show his interest and sympathy on all great
festive occasions in the families of his intimate friends by making his
appearance among the guests, even though he seldom stayed long.
The gods were ever wont, however, to make brief visits among the
children of men—and if Charles Sumner stayed only fifteen minutes and
said only a dozen words, at a wedding or a class-day, we rejoiced that
he had been there, and his smile brightened the feast as much as the
sun. His smile was one of rare sweetness and beauty; beneath the
reserved exterior which distinguished him there beat a warm and true
heart. He had, be it said, beautiful white teeth, and my mother
remembered with amusement a certain dinner in his younger days when he
resolutely refused, for obvious reasons, to eat huckleberry pie.
The reserve and apparent coldness which we New Englanders have inherited
from our English forefathers—and, owing to the severity of the climate,
have been unable to modify—are often a misfortune to their possessor and
cause him to be considered as unsympathetic, when he is not so in
reality. The great Massachusetts Senator was a man without guile and of
an almost childlike simplicity of nature. His pocket was constantly
picked, literally as well as figuratively. He would go to the station to
start for Washington, and, presto! his pocketbook would be gone. At
fairs, he was an easy victim—and at the great fair held in Boston, for
the benefit of the sailors of the navy, I should be afraid to say in how
many raffles he was induced to invest. My contemporaries will remember
that we had not then discovered the wickedness of raffles. To have them
prohibited by law is a great protection to the modern purse.
While no one could attack a political enemy with greater vigor than
Charles Sumner, he seldom bore personal malice or ill-will. He met in
the street, one day, a gentleman, Mr. Robert C. Winthrop, whose
political opinions he had, in the discharge of his public duty,
vigorously denounced. He held out his hand, and was surprised and pained
to have it refused. It may be said in Mr. Winthrop’s excuse that Mr.
Sumner’s action contributed to his being politely shelved!
Charles Sumner’s conversation was very interesting and instructive, and
he would sometimes pour out very freely the treasures of his well-stored
mind. But while one felt that he was a man of learning, he was almost
wholly destitute of the sense of humor. This is very evident in the
correspondence of the “Five of Clubs,” the other members occasionally
making merry at his expense. Who can blame them when dear Mr. Sumner, in
the innocence of his heart, advised his office-boy, a young fellow from
the country, to visit Mount Auburn, Boston’s principal cemetery, on the
Fourth of July?
I had the pleasure of hearing him speak in public, two hours at a time,
after the political fashion of that day. That as a young girl I was able
to listen so long proves that the speech must have been interesting. The
following sketch of him as a public speaker was given me by my mother:
“Mr. Sumner was a forcible speaker. His custom was to recapitulate the
chief points of his discourse, with ever-increasing amplification and
emphasis. In this way he established his points in the minds of his
hearers, whom he led step by step to his own conclusions. He was
majestic in person, habitually reserved and rather distant in manner,
but sometimes unbent to a smile in which the real geniality of his soul
seemed to shed itself abroad. His voice was ringing and melodious, his
gestures somewhat constrained, his whole manner, like his matter,
weighty and full of dignity.”
Among the many interesting men and women who were guests in the
household of my father and mother, none was more amusing than Mr. Edwin
P. Whipple, author of _Character and Characteristic Men_ and well known
as a lecturer and essayist. He was a homely man, but his homeliness was
of an agreeable character. He had large and prominent blue eyes, which
gave him somewhat the appearance of a good-natured frog. These eyes
seemed to be dancing with fun behind his spectacles. As he was also
pitted with smallpox, he could not be called handsome. Nevertheless, Mr.
Whipple’s face was an attractive one, and he had an absurd manner of
saying funny things which made them doubly amusing.
I remember a picnic at the “Glen,” near Newport, where he kept us all
laughing by his sallies of wit. If any one else said anything funny on
this occasion, Mr. Whipple would gravely feel in his waistcoat pocket
and, drawing thence a dime, would offer it to the perpetrator of the
joke, saying, “If you’ll let me have that joke I’ll give you ten cents
for it.” His connection with the press gave a realistic flavor to this
performance.
On a certain rainy evening, when he and his wife were attending one of
my mother’s parties, Mrs. Whipple lingered after the announcement of her
carriage. Mr. Whipple came up to her and said, with a low bow and in a
tone of mock gravity:
“Madam, stay or go, just as you like, but before you make up your mind
you should come to the front door and listen to your coachman, who is
blaspheming so that he can be heard all the way up and down Blank
Street.”
Mrs. Whipple was as handsome as her husband was plain. She was a decided
brunette, with black hair and eyes, sweet-tempered and sympathetic, yet
not wanting in firmness. She must have been of very vigorous, physical
habit, for, meeting a friend in the street, she would grasp her warmly
by the hand and detain her in conversation longer than the sharp Boston
east wind rendered agreeable to one of a chilly disposition. It was Mrs.
Whipple, if I remember aright, who once lay in a stupor during an attack
of smallpox. The doctor, supposing her to be unconscious, purred gently
that she would not recover. Aroused by his words, she proceeded to do
so. The same thing happened to one of the idiots under my father’s
charge during an attack of the same dread disease. Three of them lay in
the same room, one being seriously ill, the others not in so dangerous a
condition. The first, hearing his companions discuss his probable fate,
connected with a tarred sheet and lowering out of the window, roused
himself from his lethargy and recovered!
Another couple who came often to “Green Peace” were Mr. and Mrs. James
T. Fields. When I can first remember them the latter was still a young
woman and very comely. She wore her dark wavy hair in puffs at the side,
which later expanded to a size that was no doubt artistic, but not
pleasing to the conservative eye of childhood. I did admire, however,
her beautiful golden net. Mr. Fields was a fine-looking man, his long
black beard giving him something the look of a Jewish prophet. The
expression of his face was humorous rather than serious, as I remember
it. I saw him, however, in his lighter moods, when he was witty and
amusing. The Whipples and the Fields once made a visit at Lawton’s
Valley, our summer home, where the two humorists led each other on to
say one funny thing after another.
Mr. Fields told a story of a lady who desired to be thought a person of
culture, despite the defects in her early education. Espying the
approaching carriage of certain literary persons, she called out to her
son:
“Oh, James! There are the So-and-sos driving up. _Do_ get out the works
of Mr. Ensign-Clompedos and give the place a litt’ry and
conversashioshonary appearance!”
In those days of “high thinking and plain living” it was the pleasant
custom, at informal dinners, for the host or hostess to peel and cut
fruit in slices. These were then handed around the table, each person
taking a piece. I remember a dinner at the Fields’ house in Charles
Street, where red bananas were served in this fashion. In my childhood
they were comparatively rare, costing sometimes fifteen cents apiece!
As Ticknor & Fields published our mother’s writings, my sister and I
were accustomed to go to their well-known corner book-store for our new
school-books. My delight in these was connected more with their
appearance than with the stores of knowledge they contained. Those
fresh, new, clean books with their crisp paper well finished at the
edges appealed to my childish imagination. Did they not preach, too, a
lesson of neatness? I am so sorry for the children who, at some public
schools, are obliged to use old, worn books! Why should we not make
learning attractive by clothing it in a nice fresh dress?
Doctor Kane, the Arctic explorer, came at least once to “Green Peace.” I
was so young at the time that I thought, on account of his name, he must
be in some way connected with a cane. A small and slender man, he did,
as I think, appear with one, and so justify my youthful imaginings. I
remember a dinner in the room with the Gobelin carpet where Rev. Thomas
Starr King, the noted divine, and his handsome wife, were among the
guests. Mr. King had large white teeth, and wore his brown hair parted
far on one side. Not long after this time he went to the Pacific coast,
where his splendid advocacy of the cause of the Union had a large share
in keeping California loyal. Alas! He paid the penalty of over-exertion
with his life soon afterward. But his memory is cherished and revered on
both shores of our great continent. At the East, the everlasting hills
are his monument, for “Thomas Starr King” is one of the peaks of the
White Mountain range.
The following letter to my mother explains itself.
SAN FRANCISCO, _January 20, 1862_.
MY DEAR MRS. HOWE,—How I long to get back into
civilization,—where they speak the English language, raise
regiments for the war, and write about Lyons looms.[5]
Do you know why I have the impudence to write to you? Simply for
your card photograph and the Doctor’s and your autograph under a
copy of the “Weave no more silks.”[5]
You see how modest my requests are. That quality is a grace that
thrives in California air.
You ought not to refuse. I am a missionary and should be
encouraged by all good Christians.... You are patriotic. I read
your glorious verses to a crowded house in San Francisco at a
festival for Volunteers, and the spirit so upheld the reading
that the audience were thrilled....
Do be gracious!...
Love to everybody and to you, if you send the cards, etc.; if
not, _not_.
Conditionally your friend,
Unconditionally your admirer,