picture of a kindly old gentleman in a cocked hat, with a crutch and a
gouty foot, his pockets bulging with good things for children. This was
the mythical "Peter Parley", and Goodrich tells an amusing story of how,
during a visit in the South, his host's little grandson, after
cautiously inspecting the visitor who had been introduced to him as
Peter Parley, took his grandfather aside and warned him that the guest
must be an impostor, for his foot wasn't bound up and he didn't walk
with a crutch.
Perhaps in your search on the dusty shelves you will be fortunate enough
to find a copy of Goodrich's verses entitled "The Outcast, and Other
Poems," printed in 1841, or an odd number of "The Token," an "annual,"
which Goodrich published from 1828 till 1842 and in which were first
given to the world some of the early productions of such young literary
sparks as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow.
During the course of an eventful life Goodrich came into relations more
or less intimate with many famous people. A few of them, beside those
just mentioned, were Daniel Webster (who had a great admiration for his
writings), James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, Whittier, Jeffery,
founder and editor of the Edinburgh Review, Sir Walter Scott and
Lockhart his son-in-law and biographer. Goodrich was an eye-witness in
Paris of the Revolution of '48 and he draws a vivid portrait of the
third Napoleon on the eve of the Coup d'Etat. His daughter tells of an
informal celebration in Florence, planned in his honor by Charles Lever,
at which there were present the Brownings, the Tennysons, (she liked
Frederic the best) the Storys, Gibson and Powers the sculptors, Lowell,
Lamartine, Longfellow, Trollope, Buchanan Read and others--surely a
brilliant company of which to be the center.
In London he was present at the ceremonies attendant upon the return of
Byron's body from Greece. He heard Clay, Calhoun, John Randolph and
other celebrities of the day speak in the Senate. He was a guest at
levees at the White House and gives a dramatic account of a meeting
there between Jackson and John Quincy Adams on the night of the former's
defeat for the presidency by the latter. He saw John Marshall presiding
over the Supreme Court. He presents a minute description of President
Monroe whom he encountered both at Washington and also at Hartford
during a ceremony at the School for the Deaf, and whose personal
appearance he thought far from prepossessing. In fact, there are few
persons who attained distinction during the first half of the nineteenth
century of whom the reader will not find an entertaining and graphic
sketch in Goodrich's "Recollections of a Life Time."
It is a book well worth reading for not only is it written in an amusing
and racy style and enlivened by anecdote and delightful comment, but it
is a historic review of the politics, literature, international
relations and social life of the time, put together by a writer
eminently qualified for the task. We are chiefly concerned, however,
with Goodrich's picture of life in the old town a century ago.
He came here as a youth of seventeen in 1811 and Hartford was his home,
though he was frequently absent in Europe and elsewhere, till 1826 when
he moved to Boston.
The city when he arrived was, he says, "a small commercial town, of four
thousand inhabitants, dealing in lumber and smelling of molasses and Old
Jamaica--for it had still some trade with the West Indies. . . . There
was a high tone of general intelligence and social respectability about
the place, but it had not a single institution, a single monument that
marked it as even a provincial metropolis of taste, in literature, art,
or refinement." In this latter respect things were changed before he
left. Trinity (then Washington) College, the American School for the
Deaf, the Retreat for the Insane and other philanthropic and educational
institutions were established during his residence in the provincial
capital.
On his arrival he worked as a clerk in a dry goods store and his
intimate friend was George Sheldon, "favored clerk" in the "ancient and
honored firm" of Hudson & Goodwin, publishers of the "Connecticut
Courant," Webster's Spelling Book, and much besides. Mr. Goodwin, of
this firm, he describes as "a large, hale, comely old gentleman, of
lively mind and cheerful manners. There was always sunshine in his bosom
and wit upon his lip. He turned his hand to various things, though
chiefly to the newspaper, which was his pet. His heaven was the upper
loft in the composition room; setting type had for him the sedative
charms of knitting work to a country dame."
At the home of his uncle, Senator Chauncey Goodrich, he met all the
prominent members of the famous "Hartford Convention," which finds in
him a vigorous defender against the charge of unpatriotism.
During the War of 1812 he served at New London as a member of a Hartford
artillery battery, a sort of _corps d'élite_, under the command of
Captain Nathan Johnson, a well known lawyer who afterward became general
of militia. Though he was for a few brief moments under the bombardment
of the British ships that were blockading Decatur, Biddle and Jones in
the Thames, his service was bloodless and he narrates it with humor and
gusto.
He began his career as a publisher in partnership with Sheldon whose
early death terminated that enterprise. Goodrich himself, however, here
published by subscription the poems of John Trumbull, whom he knew well,
eight volumes of the Waverly novels, then arousing intense interest,
and several school books and "toy books," as he calls them, for
children. He was a leading member of a literary club which included
Bishop J. M. Wainwright, Isaac Toucey, William M. Stone, Jonathan Law
and S. H. Huntington.
Another literary "cotery," of which Mrs. Sigourney was the presiding
genius, met generally at Daniel Wadsworth's home. Some of the poems and
papers read at the first of these clubs were published by Goodrich in a
short-lived periodical called "The Round Table."
We find gossipy sketches of Jeremiah Wadsworth, Dr. Cogswell and his
deaf and dumb daughter Alice, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, Theodore Dwight,
the poets Brainard and Percival, Dr. Strong, pastor of the "Middle
Brick" (the Center) Church, Colonel John Trumbull, the artist and his
beautiful wife, who was supposed to be the daughter of an English earl
but about whose lineage there was an impenetrable mystery. Many others
of the old Hartford characters live again in these pages which furnish
us what is doubtless a very accurate, as well as a very charming
impression of the social life of the old town one hundred years ago.
But the great world called the future "Peter Parley" and his ambitions
and love of variety drew him away from the place of his earliest
literary experience to foreign residence and travel and to the little
brown house that he afterward built at Jamaica Plain. Later in life he
returned again to Europe and for two years was American Consul at Paris.
He had his failures as well as his successes, his days of financial
losses, as well as of affluence. He experienced, too, his periods of
feeble health. But he possessed the courage that ancestry like his often
seems to breed and one cannot fail to accord a hearty tribute to the
resolution with which, in an impaired physical condition, he set
himself, like Mr. Clemens, to overcome adversity with hard work, with
his pen.
His Parley books were the outgrowth of two impulses or
characteristics--his innate love of children and his personal rebellion
on the one hand against the dull school books of his boyhood and on the
other against what he considered such ridiculous and deleterious old
fairy stories as "Little Red Riding Hood" and "Jack the Giant Killer."
He did not think the climax of "Little Red Riding Hood" was healthy
reading for children and he did not at all approve of Jack the Giant
Killer's morals. In his opinion there was no particular sense in the
Mother Goose jingles.
And so he tried to give children, in the guise of perfectly proper but
at the same time interesting stories and verses, the information and a
good deal of the education they required. He may have carried his theory
to some extremes, but he was one of the first among us to realize that
with children effective educational methods must take into consideration
the securing at the outset of interest and attention.
What extraordinary success he achieved has already been intimated. Yet
it is pathetic to note that he himself was the first to acknowledge the
fact that his fame would be temporary. "I have written too much," he
says at the height of his reputation, "and have done nothing really
well. You need not whisper it to the public, at least until I am gone;
but I know, better than anyone can tell me, that there is nothing in
this long catalogue [of his books] that will give me a permanent place
in literature."
Yet it is safe to say that as long as the human mind loves to dip into
the past and to re-create in familiar surroundings the scenes and
people of long ago his "Recollections of a Life Time" will have its
readers. And many of us would cheerfully relinquish any hope of immortal
memory could we be assured of the love of the countless children to whom
"Peter Parley" was a dear friend and companion.
_VII: A Preacher of the Gospel_
IT is not often claimed that the small city or country town produces
proportionately more of the human phenomena popularly denominated
"characters" than does the larger municipality. Whether this is indeed a
fact, or whether the truth is that in the small group variations from
type are more conspicuous, is perhaps immaterial. At all events the
memories and traditions of pronounced personalities seem to be
frequently associated with the less populous communities, especially in
New England.
In any review of the personages that lived in the capital of Connecticut
in the last century the individuality of one of the life-long pastors of
its oldest church stands forth as a shining example of the capricious
and at the same time engaging forms in which humanity may be clothed.
Above all else the Rev. Doctor Joel Hawes was a "character."
To begin with, his personal appearance was sufficiently extraordinary.
Tall, gaunt, awkward, with large hands and feet, he would have attracted
attention--and did attract attention--anywhere. His face was homely and
in repose unprepossessing, but when he became interested in talk his
expression gathered from the play of thought an animation which caused
his listeners to forget the essential unattractiveness of his features.
In many respects there was something Lincoln-like about him, though he
lacked the fine eyes, the wistful, haunting look, that distinguish the
later portraits of his great contemporary. Like Lincoln, too, he came
from the common stock and was trained in a rough school. The story of
his tacking loose leaves from the Bible on the walls of the store, where
in his youth he worked, and memorizing verses between visits of
customers recalls somewhat similar methods of self-education employed by
the boy who became president. With no money, with no friends except of
his own making, with no "advantages" or "background," with not even a
fair start, he early developed a tremendous courage and determination;
when to this was added a sense that the hand of God was upon him
nothing could stop him. That in his day he should become one of the
foremost divines in the country was inevitable.
It was his earnestness and force that made him what he was and not, it
must be confessed, any outstanding brilliancy of mind. His
fellow-citizen, Doctor Bushnell, far excelled him in mental power, in
breadth and originality of thought, in versatility and imagination. In
Horace Bushnell was always something of the poet, much of the mystic.
His books are bought today and his name remembered, while Dr. Hawes,
except in his old church and city, is forgotten. Yet it is to be doubted
whether, considering Joel Hawes's early difficulties and his moderate
mental equipment, one could find a better example than his life
furnished of what may be accomplished by a man who cherishes a
conviction of personal destiny. He became assured that God intended him
to preach the gospel and he proceeded to do just exactly that with
confidence, single-mindedness and consequent success during a long life.
His last sermon was delivered three days before his death.
Here is his theory of the preacher's mission: "Truth, God's truth
especially, is _eternally_, and _must_ be, interesting to the mind of
man; and, if I can succeed in getting that truth before the minds of my
people, I shall not fail to interest and instruct all classes of them,
be their cultivation and tastes and habits ever so dissimilar. This,
then, shall be the great, leading object of my preaching: I will get as
much of God's truth into my sermons as I can" . . . .
Might not this principle be adopted to advantage by many a modern
clergyman?
It was in a rough-shod manner, regardless of obstacles, that Doctor
Hawes plowed his way through life. He did not know how to compromise.
Tact, adaptability, adjustment, finesse,--these words were not included
in his vocabulary. He paid little attention to the amenities of
existence, but went directly to his object, as on the occasion when in
prayer meeting, after lamenting the fact that ordinarily only a few
persons took active part in these gatherings, he suddenly called upon
one diffident attendant, whose voice had never been heard, with the
peremptory request, "Brother Jones, will you lead us in prayer--and we
won't take any excuse."
He spoke the plain truth as he saw it, regardless of whether it was
appropriate, or sometimes whether it hurt. A distinguished lawyer, no
longer living, once told the writer that when he was a small boy the
doctor met him one day in the street, stopped him, put his hand on his
head, and, after gazing intently at him for so long that the child
became rather frightened, at last ejaculated, "Charles, you remind me so
much of your grandfather--_he_ was a hard-featur'd man!"
This absolute sincerity, this disdain of any pretense or artificiality,
this almost childlike naïveté, while they furnished many amusing and
sometimes embarrassing incidents, had no small part in endearing the
good man in the hearts of his people. Indeed the significant thing about
the numerous anecdotes of him that are still occasionally quoted is that
while so many of them turn on his peculiarities and eccentricities, none
of them seems to detract from the affection and esteem in which the man
and his memory are held in the traditions of his church. Doubtless the
reason is that these stories essentially serve to delineate and illumine
the portrait of an intensely earnest, able and vigorous servant of God
and his fellow men.
His humor was not all unconscious. He had his own notions of the
incongruous and diverting. On one of his journeys abroad he wrote of
the tombs in Westminster Abby--"There lie in promiscuous assemblage
kings, queens, statesmen, warriors, poets, scholars, prostitutes, and
villains, each, by his epitaph, now in heaven, but all awaiting the
decisions of the last day, which, in a great majority of cases, will, it
cannot be doubted, reverse forever the judgment of man."
There was, too, another side to him. Hidden in the uncouth body was a
kindly and sympathetic heart. Children, at first awed and possibly
repelled by his appearance and manners, soon grew to love him. His
biographer quotes him as saying that he could never go past a hand-organ
in the street without stopping to listen with the children and see the
monkey.
Sorrow and suffering found in him an instant response and the
instinctive impulse to comfort and help. Generally these traits, while
partly inherent, are emphasized and made of value to others, as well as
to one's self, by experience. Doctor Hawes's life had its tragic sorrows
and these were translated into a singular ability to comfort and help.
Then, too, while he would never compromise for an instant with
temptation, weakness and sin, he could understand. As in the case of
most forceful, passionate natures, his early days, before he discovered
the Bible, had their period of wildness, brief though it was. In the
practical conduct of life he was no theorist, no amateur. He had
struggled against poverty and loneliness, as he had fought and conquered
the devil in his own life, and he recognized his old adversary and knew
how to deal with him when he saw the fight going on in the experience of
others.
Perhaps it was all this as much as anything that constituted the
foundation for his interest in the youth of his church and city. In 1827
this interest resulted in a series of "Lectures to Young Men" delivered
on successive Sunday evenings to crowded and enthusiastic assemblies in
his own church, and later repeated at Yale College where subsequently he
became a member of the corporation. The following year the lectures were
published "at the united request" of his hearers and instantly became
famous. "Few books," says Doctor Walker in his history of the First
Church, "attained a like circulation." Nearly a hundred thousand copies,
in various editions, were issued in this country and more in Great
Britain. One Scotch publisher alone, asserts Doctor Walker, printed
fifty thousand copies.
Reading these lectures today, nearly a century after their composition,
one is impressed by the fact that here is a compendium, as valuable now
as at the time of delivery, of practical rules for a good and useful
life. The titles of the five original addresses indicate the subject
matter--"Claims of Society on Young Men;" "Dangers of Young Men;"
"Importance of Established Principles;" "Formation and Importance of
Character;" "Religion the Chief Concern."
The lectures deal with plain, fundamental truths, in a straightforward
business-like way. There is as little ornament as imagination about
them; they have more vigor than originality, but they are bristling with
common sense and set forth with tremendous earnestness the principles of
a practical Christian philosopher. Epigrammatic touches, indeed, are not
wanting. "A lover of good books," says the lecturer, "can never be in
want of good society;" and again, "He who cares not for others will soon
find that others will not care for him." "The Gospel may be neglected,"
he asserts, "but it cannot be understandingly disbelieved." "Character
is power; character is influence," he says, "and he who has character,
though he may have nothing else, has the means of being eminently
useful, not only to his immediate friends, but to society, to the church
of God, and to the world."
Today the mind of youth is questioning. It is seeking not only rules for
the conduct of life but a rational interpretation of religious creed and
aspiration that will prove a guide in explorations on ground that
perhaps Doctor Hawes would have considered forbidden. He was not a
meta-physician. To him the way was plain. The fundamental truths, the
orthodox acceptances, were good enough for him. The questions that for
long troubled Doctor Bushnell not only did not worry Doctor Hawes--he
did not understand why one should ask them. Doctor Bushnell was ahead of
his time. He began where Doctor Hawes left off, and soon about the
younger man gathered a school of disciples who shared in sympathy, if
not with equality of intellectual penetration, the tenets of the
religious philosopher, the visions of the seer and poet.
It was inevitable that two such divergent personalities as Hawes and
Bushnell, laborers in the same field, living in the same city, should
come into conflict. The story of that famous difference, of the
struggles to find common ground and of the final reconciliation, have
today a note of pathos. For the lay reader it is not easy at first
glance to see what it is all about, and yet what feeling and bitterness
were aroused!
There is no space here to go into the details of that old dispute. The
letters the two ministers exchanged, like all sincere letters, are
typical of their respective characters and a memorialist of Doctor Hawes
finds nothing for which to apologize in his side of the correspondence.
His letters, indeed, evidence what a modern theologian might consider
his speculative limitations, but they show, too, beneath his
determination to adhere to his principles, a genuine grief at the
separation and a hope that the two churches might be "rooted and
grounded in the truth, and their pastors as happily united in fellowship
and love."
The church of which Doctor Hawes was minister was, and still is,
something more than an ecclesiastical organization. It is a civic
institution. It founded the town. Its minister takes rank as a public
personage. In this character Dr. Hawes was interested in many local
activities. An example of this was his connection with the famous
Hartford Female Seminary--and this may serve also as another
illustration of his interest in young people. On the Seminary's
organization he was chosen a trustee--an office he held till his death.
For many years he was its president. At the reunion of its graduates in
1892, a speaker who had been one of his "boys," and who was the executor
of his will, gave a little address on his old pastor which is one of the
best portraits of him that remains.
". . . the Hartford Female Seminary," said this speaker, "was his especial
delight. To its principals he was a devoted friend; its teachers were
his protegés and assistants; the pupils his spiritual garden. It was to
him the nursery of all that was best in womanhood. I do not know how his
sober judgment would have ranked, in relative importance, Yale College,
the A. B. C. F. M., and the Seminary; but I know that in his affection
this school had the warmest place. How regularly on Monday morning he
opened its sessions with fervent prayer; how benignantly his benediction
fell on the school as he took his departure, you all know who were in
attendance in his time. And although you may have smiled at his
peculiarities, I do not believe a doubt ever crossed one of your minds
that Joel Hawes was a loving, faithful friend, and truly a man of God."
_VIII: A Friend of Lincoln_
IN the Spring of 1869 Gideon Welles, who had been appointed Secretary of
the Navy by Lincoln and had served to the end of the Johnson
administration, returned to Hartford where he lived till his death in
1878. His diary for May 2, 1869, contains the following entry:
"We left New York at 3 P. M. and reached Hartford at
seven, stopping at the Allyn House. Nearly four years
have passed since I have been here, more than eight
since I left and took up my residence in Washington. . . .
Hartford itself has greatly altered--I might say
improved--for it has been beautified and adorned by
many magnificent buildings, and the population has
increased. These I see and appreciate; but I feel more
sensibly than these, other changes which come home to
my heart. A new and different people seem to move in
the streets. Few, comparatively, are known to me. A new
generation which knows not Joseph is here."
Perhaps it was natural that the retiring secretary of the navy,
returning quietly and unannounced and with possibly a trace of the
depression that comes with the relinquishment of great affairs, should
fancy a certain lack of enthusiasm in his welcome. But a little later,
when he had bought the house, now No. 11 Charter Oak Place, which was to
be his future home, and his presence was more widely known, he found his
friends more appreciative.
"During the week," he writes some days later, "old
friends have called and welcomed me back. . . . My old
friend, Calvin Day, was absent from the city when I
arrived and did not get home till midnight on
Saturday. As soon as he knew I was here, on Monday
morning, he called. H. A. Perkins, Mrs. Colt, Beach,
Seymour, etc., etc., called. Mark Howard is absent.
Governor Hawley saw me at breakfast on Wednesday last
and immediately came and greeted me."