time a great problem. This, and the confusion of getting settled, of
unpacking loads of furniture, of arranging the contents of two hundred
and twenty-four boxes that arrived from Washington, while Mrs. Welles
was confined to her room as the result of a fall, "have made me," he
writes, "unused as I am to these matters, exceedingly uncomfortable."
Nevertheless, there is some mitigation, as this entry shows:
"Met Mr. Hamersley--who invited me to his store, where
we had an hour, on political subjects chiefly. It is
somewhere about fifteen years since we have had such
and so long a conversation. So far as I have met and
seen old friends, I have had every reason to be
satisfied. Though not very demonstrative or forward in
calling, they have without exception been cordial and
apparently sincere."
During the nine remaining years of his life Mr. Welles lived quietly,
devoting most of his time to writing, his chief pieces of work being an
elaborate article claiming for the navy, which he felt had never
received its proper share of the credit, the most important part in the
capture of New Orleans, and a little volume entitled "Lincoln and
Seward."
The career which he looked back upon in these last years was one which
should have brought to any man the satisfactions that come from
important work well done. There were, of course, elements that would
naturally interfere with such satisfactions--and these a man like Gideon
Welles took to heart more seriously than another might have done. No one
could have served as he did in high administration during those eight
eventful years without a sense of the blundering, the waste, the
cross-purposes, the petty motives, and even the treachery that were
exhibited in such a disheartening fashion to those behind the scenes.
But through all this he pursued steadfastly his honest and able way, not
exempt from bitter criticism, like all his colleagues, nor from spiteful
intrigue. He seems such a unique and stalwart figure that one is led to
inquire, as one reads his history and his personal record, why he was
not more famous in his day and time.
Perhaps one reason is that while he had a remarkable gift of common
sense, he lacked a sense of humor and the sense of proportion that
accompanies it. His diary, it is quite true, is at times what one would
call humorous reading, but the humor is either unconscious or partakes
of sarcasm. He took life pretty seriously--and indeed he had occasion to
do so.
Then one infers another characteristic which is so difficult to define
and in its way so subtle that one hesitates to be dogmatic about it. Yet
reading between the lines of the diary, which is one of the frankest
human documents in the world, one reader at least gains the impression
that the author, perhaps realizing the innate tendency, which the diary
shows, to pronounce judgment, felt before the world the necessity of
putting a curb upon this propensity. In public he never seems to have
asserted himself in the Rooseveltian manner. He had decided opinions of
his own and was altogether an independent, fearless person, but he
appears to have been one of the rather reticent members of the cabinet.
A friend tells him on one occasion that he should have been more forward
in expressing his views and the diary has many references to times when
he judged silence the better course--as very likely it was--for with him
silence never went so far as to constitute consent to anything he
disapproved. Far more single-minded and straightforward than some of the
other cabinet ministers, he apparently lacked the art, which many men of
smaller caliber possessed, of getting his personality in a large way
before the country.
One feels that here was a capable and high-minded public servant, with
many qualities which in another personality would have produced a great
leader of men. But there was always this reticence. Was it possibly the
inheritance of a New England ancestry?
However, if in his life-time Gideon Welles lacked the gift for
individual prominence that with some of his contemporaries seemed to be
the main object of life, the publication of his remarkable "Diary" has,
long after his death, immortalized him. In this journal we have both a
revelation of personal character that is illuminating and a historic
document that is invaluable.
It is fortunate for us that when Gideon Welles sat down to his diary all
restraint and repression disappeared. His clarity of vision, his
firmness in his belief of what was just and right, his devotion to duty,
his singular ability to estimate men and to portray character--all this
gives even a casual reader a very clear conception of what manner of man
he himself was. As for others, the figures that live forever in these
pages are real people, wrestling in their various characteristic ways
with portentous problems, the solutions of which we now look back upon
as historic matters long since worked out, but which in many instances
presented very different aspects at the time from those which now are
obvious to us. It is remarkable how the judgment of posterity as to
individuals has confirmed Welles's contemporary estimate.
To cite these portraits in detail would be to give a catalogue of the
prominent characters of the day. At once the greatest and, to the modern
reader the most interesting, is that of Abraham Lincoln. His personality
does not appear complete and finished in any one description, but is a
composite of comment, conversation and action recounted from time to
time in the pages covering the period that elapsed before his death.
Thus we see the gradual growing appreciation of his character from that
early day when Welles noted that "much had been said and was then
uttered by partisans of the incompetency of Mr. Lincoln and his
unfitness," to that later cloudy morning when, by the bed on which the
murdered President had to be laid diagonally because of his great
height, Welles "witnessed the wasting life of the good and great man who
was expiring before me." Any reader of the diary who is also familiar
with the latest study of the war President--that by Lord Charnwood--and
who has read or seen Drinkwater's "Lincoln," is instantly aware of the
value of this journal to the historian and the dramatist.
Perhaps the ability to depict personality is the most conspicuous trait
of Gideon Welles as a writer. In this respect he adds to his ability to
gauge character the expressive qualities of the literary artist. While
his estimates of men are startlingly frank and definite, he is always
fair, even toward those whom he disliked. Even in those biting, incisive
phrases relating to his _bête noir_, Senator John P. Hale, there is
something of the inevitable, impersonal condemnation of a court.
The suggestions of a certain reserve in public must not be interpreted
as implying any hesitation to express the diarist's convictions when he
considered that the occasion called for them. Far otherwise. Read, for
example, the careful recitals of those deliberate, overwhelming,
sledgehammer conversational blows the secretary inflicted on the head of
Senator Hale when the opportunity at last came of loosing long pent-up
emotions. The senator must have emerged from that interview a stunned,
if wiser, man.
And very early in their mutual official connection the Secretary of
State discovered that Mr. Welles, and only Mr. Welles, was going to run
the Navy Department. When Seward attempted to interfere surreptitiously
with the naval expedition to relieve Sumter he found himself in a great
deal of trouble, the net result of which may be summarized in the
following quotation from the diary:
"On our way thither [to see the President] Mr. Seward
remarked that, old as he was, he had learned a lesson
from this affair, and that was, he had better attend
to his own business and confine his labors to his own
department. To this I cordially assented."
The return of the Secretary to Hartford brought many memories of old
times--days, when as editor of the "Hartford Times" he had worked for
Jackson's election, later days when, slavery being injected as a moral
issue into politics, he had abandoned the democratic creed and adopted
the republican. Then there were the years when he had served as
postmaster, as member of the general assembly, as state
comptroller--and, again, that searching period when for the sake of his
convictions he was willing to face sure defeat as republican candidate
for governor. For eight years he had served as a member of the
republican national committee and he was chairman of his state
delegation to the convention that nominated for the presidency the man
who was to be afterward his chief and his staunch friend--Abraham
Lincoln. We have Lincoln's own word for it, as reported verbatim in the
diary, that there was no wire-pulling in connection with Gideon Welles's
appointment. The fact that he was a New England man may have had
something to do with it, but the real consideration was his record.
It was a life full of service for his country and of devotion to the
faith that was in him, that the old man looked back upon in the closing
years.
_IX: Our Battle Laureate_
ABOUT six months before Gideon Welles returned to his old home, an
ensign in that navy of which Mr. Welles was, under the President,
commander-in-chief, landed in the port of New York on the U. S. steam
frigate "Franklin". The "Franklin" bore the flag of Admiral Farragut,
who was returning from a two-year command of our European Squadron, and
the ensign, Henry Howard Brownell, of East Hartford, was a member of the
great sailor's personal staff on which he had served during the war.
It was the end of Brownell's service and travels. Four years later, on
October 31, 1872, at the height of the Grant-Greeley campaign, he died
at the family homestead after a long and distressing illness. He had
been born in 1820. Seven years before his death Dr. Holmes, in a review
in the "Atlantic" of one of his slim volumes of verse, had called him
"Our Battle Laureate."
Uneven as his verse was, he was a true poet. A spark of the divine fire
had fallen upon him. Other activities had been attempted, but for him
there clearly was in them no satisfaction. As a youth he tried
mercantile life in New York, but abandoned it after less than a year.
Teaching seems to have been the practical--if poetry is not
"practical"--pursuit which proved most congenial and it is singular that
his first work as a teacher was in Mobile near which the great
experience of his life later occurred. This short sojourn in the South
came after his graduation in 1841 from Trinity College and was followed
by study of the law in Hartford where he was admitted to the bar and for
a short time practiced in partnership with his brother Charles.
But the law was not for him. The poetic muse was always whispering in
his ear. He saw visions and dreamed dreams--witness his "Song of the
Archangels." Yet he was rather a direct and rugged sort of poet.
Subtlety and indirection, fine shadings, carefully wrought lines, had
little place in his methods. He appears to have been impatient of
revision. He felt deeply and the need of expression was instant. Often
he wrote, as he states in the preface to "Lyrics of a Day," _currente
calamo_, and most of his verses were seen first in the pages of the
Hartford newspapers. In the light of modern technique many of them seem
already a little old-fashioned. Perhaps the present-day undergraduate
would call some of them "simple." Yet any of our young intellectuals
might be proud of having written "In Articulo Mortis"; surely there is
nothing very simple about "The Sphinx." And one is occasionally startled
by lines that have the perfect, the inevitable phrase--as in these from
"The Tomb of Columbus"--
". . . . the fragrant breath
Of unknown tropic flowers came o'er my path,
Wafted--how pleasantly! for I had been
Long on the seas, and their soft, waveless glare
Had made green fields a longing."
It would be difficult to improve on that last line. Again--to most
readers there will come a swift and dramatic vision from the two stanzas
of "Qu'il Mourut"--
"Not a sob, not a tear be spent
For those who fell at his side--
But a moan and a long lament
For him--who might have died!
"Who might have lain, as Harold lay,
A King, and in state enow--
Or slept with his peers, like Roland
In the Straits of Roncesvaux."
In all his early verse there is much that is haunting and memorable,
together with much that is trivial and even flippant, It was the coming
of the Civil War that made Henry Brownell known as a poet. Indeed he
published little before that time.
In our own day we have had great moral issues in war and we have known
what the response to them could be. These issues were, however, involved
with many other peoples, their application was, in a way, diffused; to
different races they presented different aspects. But the Civil War was
our _own_ war, its issues were concentrated; it not only involved
national honor, it concerned, and vitally concerned, the question
whether the nation should live.
To these portentous messages and alarms, borne on every breath of the
wandering breezes of those tense days, the spirit of Henry Brownell
responded with an intuitive instinct, a poetic eloquence, akin to that
of the seers and the prophets.
"World, art thou 'ware of a storm?
Hark to the ominous sound,
How the far-off gales their battle form,
And the great sea swells feel ground!"
In 1860, the Hartford papers were full of his "fiery lyrics" and the
writer--was it Hawley or Warner?--of an appreciation of Brownell in the
"Courant" shortly after his death tells how well he remembered the day
in the anxious winter of 1860-61 when Brownell brought into the office
of the old "Evening Press" the manuscript of "Annus Memorabilis"--verses
breathing a resolution and exaltation of courage that brought a generous
measure of fame. There is something about "Annus Memorabilis"--not only
the meter which is the same--that suggests Macaulay's "Naseby,"
something, too, remotely suggestive of Kipling. Into this mood of
exaltation there ran occasionally a vein of humor that only deserves
mention in the case of the verses "Let Us Alone," inspired by Jefferson
Davis's statement in his inaugural address, "All we want is to be left
alone." Though of little poetic merit these lines caught the popular
fancy and were long remembered and quoted.
And so the war came on, and the poet's vision, which had been laughed at
by some readers, was justified by events. There came defeats, almost
countless deaths, occasional victories, doubts of final victory--all the
ebb and flow and waste of war--and to it all the sensitive but vigorous
spirit responded in many chords. Of the gentler lays, the most winning
to the writer are the verses called "The Battle Summers." Here are a few
of the stanzas--
"All vain--Fair Oaks and Seven Pines!
A deeper hue than dying Fall
May lend, is yours!--yet over all
The mild Virginian autumn smiles,
. . . . .
"We pass--we sink like summer's snow--
Yet on the mighty Cause shall move,
Though every field a Cannae prove,
And every pass a Roncesvaux.
"Through every summer burn anew
A battle summer,--though each day
We name a new Aceldema,
Or some dry Golgotha re-dew."
On the whole, however, it was the magnificence, the drama, of the
struggle that possessed him--sometimes the realization of the
tremendous stakes for which the game was played, sometimes the actual,
objective romance of events, as in the beginning of the famous "River
Fight"--
"Would you hear of the River Fight?
It was two of a soft spring night--
God's stars looked down on all,
And all was clear and bright.
But the low fog's chilling breath--
Up the River of Death
Sailed the Great Admiral."
His own participation in the fighting came about in a strange way. He
paraphrased in verse, first published in the "Evening Press," the rather
dramatic general orders preparatory to the "River Fight." Poetically it
was not a great performance, but in some way it came to the attention of
Farragut who was greatly impressed. The acquaintance thus begun resulted
in the unusual appointment of Brownell as master's mate on Farragut's
staff and, shortly thereafter, as ensign, with the duties of secretary.
One can fancy the lift and glory in the heart of this rather retiring
poet and teacher, with a hitherto unsatisfied thirst for action and
drama, as he stood on the quarter-deck of the "Hartford" fighting her
way up Mobile Bay on that early August morning in 1864. At last he was
in the midst of great events. This was his crowded hour--and the gods
gave him full measure. Even in plain prose it is a gallant story. What a
life-time must have been lived in those moments when Craven's monitor
"Tecumseh", off to port, making for the Confederate ram "Tennessee",
struck a torpedo and went down; when the "Brooklyn", leading the column,
just ahead of the "Hartford", backed down upon the flag-ship, in fear of
more torpedoes; when Farragut, lashed in the rigging, saw his line
doubling up in confusion close under the Confederate batteries! It was
then occurred the famous colloquy and order. "What is the trouble?" was
asked of the "Brooklyn" by the flag-ship and the answer--"Torpedoes."
"Damn the torpedoes!" shouted the Admiral. "Captain Drayton, go ahead!
Jouett, full speed!" And the "Hartford," increasing speed rapidly,
passed under the stern of the "Brooklyn" and took the lead, firing her
starboard batteries as fast as the men could work. One did not need to
be a poet to secure a thrill from such a situation, but what must it
have meant to the creative imagination that till then had pictured such
scenes only in fancy!
And this was only the early part of the fight. Through it all Brownell
took notes, as he had been ordered, of the progress of the action and
literally wrote at least one stanza of "The Bay Fight." During the
battle he dropped one of his papers which was later found and returned
to him with an expression of admiration that he could write so legibly
in the midst of such excitement. "If I were killed," he replied, "I
didn't want any of you to think I'd been afraid."
Probably "The Bay Fight" was Brownell's most famous poem, though "The
River Fight" is generally classed with it. The ballad has its faults. It
is too long and too detailed for modern taste. It is ragged in
places--the poet made his own versification much of the time. But it has
vigor, vividness and sincere emotion, and through it all runs the
turmoil and thunder of the battle. "The Bay Fight" has been compared to
the work of Campbell, Drayton and Tennyson--yet no one has suggested a
special likeness in temper and methods, in its narrative portions, to
"The Ballad of the Revenge" of which it reminded one reader. At the
close, where the meter changes to a quieter rhythm, there are a
tenderness and aspiration and felicity of phrasing that arrest even the
casual reader--
"To-day the Dahlgren and the drum
Are dread Apostles of his name;
His Kingdom here can only come
By chrism of blood and flame.
"Be strong; already slants the gold
Athwart these wild and stormy skies;
From out this blackened waste, behold,
What happy homes shall rise!
. . . . . .
"And never fear a victor foe--
Thy children's hearts are strong and high,
Nor mourn too fondly--well they know
On deck or field to die."
The verse of the Great War and that of the Civil War show one marked
contrast. The best poetry of the recent titanic struggle is
individualistic. It reflects the re-actions of personality to the stress
and tension, the long-drawn, desperate drudgery, the tragedy, and
sometimes the humor, of the strange experience. It pictures the dreams
of home and peace. Most of the best of it has been written by young
soldiers, many of whom were novices in the poetic rôle. On the whole
the well-known poets did not come up to expectations. There were of
course exceptions, but most of this recent verse, appealing and
beautiful as it is, misses the higher vision, perhaps because the
immediate scene and the personal experience were so overwhelming. The
poets of our Civil War, however, were obsessed with the meaning of it
all, with the hopes and fears for the country's future. Have we as yet
anything in American verse about the Great War that we can place beside
the best war poetry of Holmes and Whittier? Can we find sustained poetic
inspiration that compares with Lowell's "Commemoration Ode"? Whereas to
this recent conflict is the lyric power of the "The Battle Hymn of the
Republic"? And, coming down to mere narrative and descriptive verse,
what incident of this modern Armageddon has found among us its immortal
ballad, as the battle of Mobile Bay found its eloquent poetic record in
"The Bay Fight"?
_X: The Temple of the Muses_
TO older citizens the Wadsworth Atheneum has an especial and peculiar
charm. Doubtless more recent residents also feel this attraction, but it
is natural that to those who as children lived in its shadow, as it
were, the appeal should be strongest.
Here we were wont to go on rainy afternoons to look at the illustrated
papers in the reading room. In the historical society's quarters
upstairs it used to give one a peculiar thrill to sit on the link of the
chain which during the Revolution was stretched across the Hudson at
West Point, and which we had read about in the "Boys of 'Seventy-Six."
There was, too, a certain ghastly emotional experience to be derived
from an inspection of the sword holes, just over the heart, in the
waistcoat and shirt of Colonel Ledyard. Then there were those Saturday
mornings spent with the good friend of all children in the weekly
proceedings at the Atheneum of the old "Agassiz Association."
In those days we were reading "Kenilworth" and "Woodstock" and the
castellated structure acquired in our minds a quality of mystery and
romance. Certain precincts of the building were denied us and an
impression gained credence that somewhere in the edifice, the plan of
which we never fathomed, were secret rooms, passages and staircases.
Certainly if ghosts walked anywhere the place where you would be most
likely to find them was on some Hallowe'en midnight among these relics
of the past. But we never got in at midnight--in fact nothing could have
persuaded us to attempt such an entry.
More mature experience removed something of the mystery, but the charm
never entirely vanished. It came, however, to be exercised in different
ways. Perhaps it was necessary during vacations to supplement college
reading by the use of the historical society's library, then installed
in the delightful quarters that had been the first home of the Watkinson
collection. In many ways it seems a pity that this old library, with its
oak bookshelves, arranged in alcoves, its galleries and delightful
little staircases, has been abandoned for modern, but less atmospheric
quarters. It was a charming room and the only place of its kind in the
state, except the old library at Yale, the proposed alteration of which
recently created such a storm of opposition.
It was discovered, however, that the newer and larger Watkinson Library
also offered a quiet refuge when one wanted to study or read without
interruption. Here, too, were and still are alcoves, galleries and
staircases, but loftier, more imposing and triumphant than in the
intimate and friendly and older library. The main room of the Watkinson
is, however, an alluring spot where one may escape from the financial
implications of the immediate environment into a world with which money
and business have little to do.