THE AMERICAN DEFOE, RICHARD HENRY DANA, JR.
Richard Henry Dana, Jr., to whose intervention in the Burns case we
owe it that Judge Loring was compelled to grant Burns something in
the nature of a trial, was a man whom Massachusetts may well be
content to remember as one of her representatives for all time. By
descent, and in himself, he was a chosen son of that chosen people.
His father, Richard Henry, his grandfather, Francis, his
great-grandfather, Richard, were all jurists, all patriots, all men
of letters. Take one step more, and you come to Daniel, then to
Richard again, who, if not quite a voyager to New England in the
_Mayflower_, is heard of as a resident in Cambridge in 1640. Six
Danas--nay, five, since our Dana survived his father but three
years--span two centuries and a half: from father to son as they took
their march down these eventful years, an unbroken line, a race of
gentlemen.
It used to be made a reproach to the Dana of whom I write that he was
a gentleman. Beyond doubt he deserved the reproach. When a
candidate for Congress in 1868 in the Essex district against Ben
Butler that eminent warrior called {42} him a kid-gloved aristocrat.
"Not even gloved has my hand ever touched his," answered Dana in the
heat of a redhot campaign. Butler's rancour lasted to the end, as we
shall see.
This, of course, is no biography of Dana. I am writing of what I saw
and heard; or not much more. I dealt with the Burns case as a record
of personal impressions. But let me quote as an example of Dana's
method of statement his account of Burns's arrest. He said to Judge
Loring:
Burns was arrested suddenly, on a false pretence, coming home at
nightfall from his day's work, and hurried into custody, among
strange men, in a strange place, and suddenly, whether claimed
rightfully or claimed wrongfully, he saw he was claimed as a
slave, and his condition burst upon him in a flood of terror.
This was at night. You saw him, sir, the next day, and you
remember the state he was then in. You remember his stupefied
and terrified condition. You remember his hesitation, his timid
glance about the room, even when looking in the mild face of
justice. How little your kind words reassured him.
That is the same hand which wrote _Two Years Before the Mast_--the
touch of Defoe, with Defoe's direct simplicity of method and power of
getting the effect he wanted by the simplest means; the last word in
art, in all arts. Dana was incapable of rhetorical extravagance or
of insincerity of any kind. His _Two Years Before the Mast_ is as
much a classic in England as at home. One proof of it is the number
of pirated editions, before there was an international copyright law.
He wrote to me once: "I hear there is a cheap English edition of {43}
the book which has had, because of its cheapness, a great
circulation. Published, I think, in Hull. Could you send me a copy
as a curiosity?" I sent it; a little fat volume with a red cloth
cover, much gilt, very closely printed, and sold at a shilling, long
before the days of cheap books. It had sold by scores of thousands.
It is a book always in print, in one edition or another. Copyright
profited Dana no more in America than in England, or not for a long
time. Bryant, to whom Dana's father sent the manuscript, hawked it
about from one publisher to another in vain, till finally he sold it
outright to Harpers for two hundred and fifty dollars, copyright and
all. In my copy, with the imprint of James R. Osgood & Co., Boston,
is a Preface dated 1869, in which Dana says: "After twenty-eight
years the copyright of this book has reverted to me"; and so he
presents the first "author's edition" to the public. My copy was a
gift from Dana; it is among the treasures I possess and care for
most, with this inscription in Dana's clear, quiet handwriting:
My dear Smalley,--Will you accept this volume from me and believe
me ever truly yours,
RICH'D H. DANA, JR.
_Boston, Feb._ 17, 1876.
My real acquaintance with Dana had begun ten years before, when, in
June or July, 1866, we crossed the Atlantic together in what was then
the crack ship of the Cunard line, the _China_, the first {44} screw
that carried the Cunard flag, capable of fourteen knots. The
Cunarders then sailed from Boston, touched at Halifax, and thence
steamed to Queenstown direct, and so on to Liverpool. Halifax was an
experience; it took us, with all the Cunard seamanship, and there was
none better, four hours to get alongside the pier, the currents
running I know not how many miles an hour.
The _China_ belonged to the old school; of all new schools the Cunard
people, now foremost in everything, had at that time an abhorrence.
The saloon aft and tapering to a point, racks over the table filled
with table glass, long benches for seats, cabins crowded and dimly
lighted with one smoking and smelling oil lamp in a triangular glass
case between two cabins; sanitary arrangements unspeakable. I, on my
first Atlantic voyage, thought it all the height of luxury; and so it
was, for that time. The modern comforts and splendours of sea life
date from 1889 with the White Star _Teutonic_, launched in that year,
first of the "floating palaces." The _China_ made her way from
Halifax to Queenstown through a continuous fog at undiminished speed.
The captain, for an exception among the Cunard captains of those
days, regarded a passenger as a human being, and not merely as a
parcel to be safely carried from port to port and dumped safely on
the wharf, intermediate sufferings of no account. He would answer a
question. I asked him, with the audacity of a novice, whether it was
safe to steam day and night through a fog at full speed.
{45}
"Safe, good God, no."
"Then why do you do it?"
"Why? I will tell you why. First, we have got to get to Queenstown
and Liverpool. Second, fogs don't last for ever, and the faster we
go the sooner we shall get out of this one. And third, if there's a
collision, the vessel going at the greatest speed has the best
chance."
So antedating by many years the famous saying of another Cunard
captain, summoned to the bridge when a collision seemed imminent,
finding the engines reversed, and instantly ordering "full speed
ahead"; remarking to the first officer who had reversed the engines:
"If there's any running down to be done on this voyage, I propose to
do it." But there was none.
When I told Dana of my talk with the _China's_ captain, that
experienced seaman and author of _The Seaman's Manual_ observed: "I
like a captain to have the courage of his opinions, but not to tell
his passengers. Keep it to yourself." And I have kept it for forty
years; the captain and ship are gone to Davy Jones's locker. Nothing
happened, but something very nearly happened. There had been no
chance of an observation since leaving Halifax, and we made the Irish
coast rather suddenly, some miles further north than we expected,
came near enough to hear the breakers, and swung to the south in
safety.
His mind full of sea lore and of sea romance as well, Dana was the
most delightful of companions on shipboard. Beneath an exterior
which people {46} thought cold, he had a great kindliness of nature.
He made no professions; his acts spoke for him. He gave freely of
the riches of his mind. He knew England and the ways of the English,
and was full of illustrative stories; among them was one of his first
visit to the House of Commons.
I heard that night one of the best speeches to which I ever
listened: fluent, rich in facts, sound in argument; well phrased
and well delivered. I said to myself, "That man must carry the
House with him." When he sat down a member rose on the opposite
side and spoke for perhaps ten minutes. He stumbled along,
hesitated, grew confused, his sentences without beginning or end;
nothing but a knowledge of the subject and a great sincerity to
recommend him.
But it was perfectly evident that the first speech had no weight
with the House, and that the second convinced everybody. The
first speaker was Whiteside, a brilliant Irishman and
Solicitor-General; the second a county member whose name I never
knew. The House thought Whiteside merely an advocate and his
speech forensic. His opponent was a man whom everybody trusted.
It was character that carried the day. And you will find it
generally does with the English.
Dana brought to the study of the law a philosophic mind, and to the
trial of causes in court a power of lucid exposition invaluable alike
with the Bench and with a jury. The law was to him a body of
symmetrical doctrine. He referred everything to principles, the only
real foundation for anything. He stood very high at the Bar, for he
had learning and would take immense pains, and when he brought a case
into court it {47} was a work of art. Moreover, he brought a
conscience with it. And he was one of the lawyers, none too
numerous, to whom even Chief Justice Shaw listened. Out of many
anecdotes I have heard from him I will choose one.
He had defended in the United States Circuit Court a man indicted for
aiding in the escape of a fugitive slave. "The case against him,"
said Dana, "was perfectly clear; there was really no defence; he had
beyond a doubt committed the crime of helping rescue a man from
slavery. I looked for a conviction as a matter of course. But after
the judge had charged the jury, hour after hour went by and still
they stayed out. The judge sent for them and asked if they required
any further guidance in law or in fact. The foreman said 'No'; but
they could not agree, and finally were discharged.
"Some years later," said Dana, "as I stood on the steps of the Parker
House, a man came up to me and said, 'You don't remember me, Mr.
Dana?' I did not, and he went on:
"'Well, Mr. Dana, I expect you remember trying that case where a man
named Tucker was indicted for aiding and abetting in the escape of a
fugitive slave. I was on the jury in that case.'
"At this I instantly recalled the facts, and said: 'Since you were on
that jury, I wish you would tell me what I have always wanted to
know--why they disagreed.'
"'Well, Mr. Dana, I don't mind telling you we {48} stood eleven to
one for conviction, and that one obstinate man wouldn't budge.
Perhaps you remember it was proved on the trial that the negro was
got away from Boston, taken to Concord, New Hampshire, and there was
handed over to a man who drove him in a sleigh across the border into
Canada.'
"'Oh, yes, I remember that.'
"'Well, Mr. Dana, I was the man who drove him in the sleigh across
the border into Canada.'"
I knew something of the preposterous charge against Dana, that in
editing Wheaton's _International Law_ he had appropriated the labours
of a dull predecessor, Mr. William Beach Lawrence. When President
Grant nominated Dana Minister to England in succession to that
General Schenck who is still quoted as an authority on poker, the
Lawrence charge was pressed before the Senate Committee on Foreign
Relations. It was an _ex parte_ hearing, and Dana had no opportunity
to defend himself. Whether that or the unsleeping malignity of
General Butler did him the more harm I know not, but President Grant,
as his honourable habit was, stood by his nominee; and the Senate
rejected Dana by thirty-one votes to seventeen. The matter naturally
attracted attention in England, and there were comments, none too
just. I wrote a letter to _The Times_, of which Mr. Delane was then
editor. A long letter, something over a column, but Delane published
it next morning in his best type, first striking out a number of
censorious sentences about Butler {49} and Zach Chandler and other
eminent persons who had engineered Dana's defeat. In my wish to do
justice to Dana and upon his enemies I had not remembered that I was
writing in an English newspaper, and had no business to be rebuking
Americans to an English audience. When I read my letter and noted
Delane's excisions I saw how wrong I had been, and I wrote to Delane
to thank him for suppressing all those ferocities. There came in
reply such a note as only Delane would have written.
"It is the first time anybody ever thanked me for using a blue pencil
on a correspondent's letter. Thank _you_."
This was in 1876. Dana's letter to me on my letter about him was
characteristic. I think I might print it, but it is with other
papers in New York. He was grateful and kindly, but also critical.
He was always capable of looking at his own case as if it were a
third person's; his mind detached from everything that was personal
to himself. He thought the legal points might have been pressed.
But the public, especially the English public, will not have too much
law. I suppose the Beach-Lawrence suit and the Minister-to-England
business troubled Dana more than anything else in his career. He
ought, of course, to have been Minister. He would have been such a
Minister as Charles Francis Adams was, or as Phelps was, two of the
American Ministers whom the English liked best; out of the half-dozen
who have held in this country a {50} pre-eminent position among
Ministers and Ambassadors, including the present Ambassador and his
two immediate predecessors, Hay and Choate. That brilliant list
ought to have been enriched with Dana's name; but it was not to be.
Dana came abroad again in 1878, and I saw him once more. He spent
his time chiefly in Paris and Rome, and died in Rome, January 7th,
1882. He lies near Keats and Shelley in the Protestant cemetery at
Porte Pià; and there is a monument. In Boston he is remembered;
whether he is remembered elsewhere I have no means of knowing. But
we cannot, in whatever part of America, we cannot afford to forget a
man who had all the American virtues in one of the heroic ages of
America.
{51}