The house was full, and murmurous with the pleasant chat and rustling
movement of well-dressed persons of both sexes who waited patiently
the coming of the orator, looking at the expanse of stage, which was
carpeted, and covered with rows of settees that went backward from the
footlights to a landscape of charming freshness of color, that might
have been set for the "Maid of Milan" or the pastoral opera. Between
the seats and the foot-lights was a broad space, upon which stood a
small table and two or three chairs; and if the orator of the evening,
like a _primo tenore_, had been surveying the house through the
friendly chinks of the pastoral landscape, he would have felt a warm
suffusion of pleasure that his name should be the magic spell to
summon an audience so fair, so numerous, and so intelligent.
There were ushers who showed ladies to seats, and with their
dress-coats and bright badges looked like a milder Metropolitan
police. But no greater force was presumed to be required of them than
pressing aside a too discursive crinoline. In the soft, ample light,
as the audience sat with fluttering ribbons and bright gems and
splendid silks and shawls, so tranquilly expectant, so calmly smiling,
so shyly blushing (if, haply, in all that crowd there were a pair of
lovers!), it was hard to believe that civil war was wasting the land,
and that at the very moment some of those glad hearts were broken--but
would not know it until the sad news came. Yet it was easy, in the
same glance, to feel that even the terrible shape that we thought we
had eluded forever did not seem, after all, so terrible; that even
civil war might be shaking the gates and the guests still smile in the
chambers.
But while leaning against the wall, under the balcony, the Easy Chair
looks around upon the humming throng and thinks of camps far away, and
beating drums and wild alarms and sweeping squadrons of battle, there
is a sudden hush and a simultaneous glance towards one side of the
house, and there, behind the seats at the side, and making for the
stage door, marches a procession, two and two, very solemn, very bald,
very gray, and in evening dress. They are the invited guests, the
honored citizens of Brooklyn, the reverend clergy, and others; a body
of substantial, intelligent, decorous persons. They disappear for a
moment within the door, and immediately emerge upon the stage with a
composed bustle, moving the seats, taking off their coats, sedately
interchanging little jests, and finally seating themselves, and gazing
at the audience evidently with a feeling of doubt whether the honor of
the position compensates for its great disadvantage; for to sit behind
an orator is to hear, without seeing, an actor.
The audience is now waiting, both upon the stage and in the boxes,
with patient expectation. There is little talking, but a tension of
heads towards the stage. The last word is spoken there, the last joke
expires; all attention is concentrated upon an expected object. The
edge of eagerness is not suffered to turn, but precisely at the right
moment a figure with a dark head and another with a gray head are seen
at the depth of the stage, advancing through the aisle towards the
foot-lights and the audience. They are the president of the society
and the orator. The audience applauds. It is not a burst of
enthusiasm; it is rather applausive appreciation of acknowledged
merit. The gray-headed orator bows gravely and slightly, lays a roll
of MS. upon the table, then he and the president seat themselves side
by side. For a moment they converse, evidently complimenting the
brilliant audience. The orator, also, evidently says that the table is
right, that the light is right, that the glass of water is right, and
finally that he is ready.
In a few neat words "the honored son of Massachusetts" is introduced,
and he rises and moves a few steps forward. Standing for a moment, he
bows to the applause. He is dressed entirely in black; wearing a
dress-coat, and not a frock. Before he says a word, although it is but
a moment, a sudden flash of memory reveals to the attentive Easy Chair
all that he has heard and read of the orator before him; how he
returned an accomplished scholar from Germany, graced with a delicacy
of culture hitherto unknown to our schools; how the youthful professor
of Greek at Harvard, transferred to the pulpit of Brattle Street, in
Boston, held men and women in thrall by the splendor of his rhetoric
and the pleading music of his voice, drawing the young scholars after
him, who are now our chief glory and pride; how his Phi Beta Kappa
oration in 1824 and its apostrophe to Lafayette, who was present, is
still the fond tradition of those who heard it; and how as he passed
on from triumph to triumph in his art of oratory, the elegance, the
skill, the floridity, the elaboration, the unfailing fitness and
severe propriety of his art, with all its minor gifts, consoled Boston
that it was not Athens or Rome, and had not heard Demosthenes or
Cicero.
If you ventured curiously to question this fond recollection, to ask
whether the eloquence was of the heart and soul, or of the mind and
lips; whether it were impassioned oratory, burning, resistless, such
as we suppose Demosthenes and Patrick Henry poured out; or whether it
were polished and skilful declamation--those old listeners were like
lovers. They did not know; they did not care. They remembered the
magic tone, the witchery of grace, the exuberant rhetoric; they
recalled the crowds clustering at his feet, the gusts of emotion that
in the church swept over the pews, the thrills of delight that in the
hall shook the audience; their own youth was part of it; they saw
their own bloom in the flower they remembered, and they could not
criticise or compare.
All this recollection flashed through the mind of the Easy Chair
before the orator had well opened his lips. The tradition was
overpowering. It was not fair, but it was inevitable. If we could see
and hear Patrick Henry, with uplifted finger, shouting, "Charles First
had his Cromwell, and George Third--may take warning by his example!"
would it be, could it be, even with all our expectation, what we
believe it to have been? After the tremendous blare of trumpets in
advance that shake our very souls within us, no ordinary mortal can
satisfy the transcendent anticipation. We lift the leathern curtain of
St. Peter's, and catching our breath, look in. Alas! we see plainly
the other end of the great church, but with secret disappointment,
because we imagined there would be but a dim immensity of space. For
the first time we behold Niagara, and resentfully we ask, "Is that
all?" The illimitable expectation is too bewildering an overture. So
the eyes with which the Easy Chair saw were touched with glamour. The
ears with which it heard were full of eloquence beyond that of mortal
lips. And there was the orator just beginning to speak. It was not
fair; no, it was not fair.
The first words were clearly cut, simply and perfectly articulated.
"It is often said that the day for speaking has passed, and that of
action has arrived." It was a direct, plain introduction; not a florid
exordium. The voice was clear and cold and distinct; not especially
musical, not at all magnetic. The orator was incessantly moving; not
rushing vehemently forward or stepping defiantly backward, with that
quaint planting of the foot, like Beecher; but restlessly changing his
place, with smooth and rounded but monotonous movement. The arms and
hands moved harmonious with the body, not with especial reference to
what was said, but apparently because there must be action. The first
part of the discourse was strictly a lucid narrative of events and
causes: a compact and calm chapter of our political history by a man
as well versed in it as any man in the country; and it culminated in a
description of the fall of Sumter. This was an elaborate picture in
words of a perfectly neutral tint. There was not a single one which
was peculiarly picturesque or vivid; no electric phrase that sent the
whole striking scene shuddering home to every hearer; no sudden light
of burning epithet, no sad elegiac music. The passage was purely
academic. Each word was choice; each detail was finished; it was
properly cumulative to its climax; and when that was reached, loud
applause followed. It was general, but not enthusiastic. No one could
fail to admire the skill with which the sentence was constructed; and
so elaborate a piece of workmanship justly challenged high praise. But
still--still, do you get any thrill from the most perfect mosaic?
Then followed a caustic and brilliant sketch of the attitude of
Virginia in this war. In this part of his discourse the orator was
himself an historic personage; for it was to him, when editor of the
_North American Review_, that James Madison wrote his letter
explanatory of the Virginia resolutions of '98. The wit that sparkled
then in the pages of the _Review_ glittered now along the speech. Here
was Junius turned gentleman and transfixing a State with satire. The
action of the orator was unchanged. But, in one passage, after
describing the wrongs wrought by rebels upon the country, he turned,
with upraised hand, to the rows of white-cravated clergymen who sat
behind him, and apostrophized them: "Tell me, ministers of the living
God, may we not without a breach of Christian charity exclaim,
"'Is there not some hidden curse,
Some chosen thunder in the stores of heaven,
Red with uncommon wrath to blast the man
That seeks his greatness in his country's ruin?'"
This passage was uttered with more force than any in the oration. The
orator's hands were clasped and raised; he moved more rapidly across
the stage; the words were spoken with artistic energy, and loudly
applauded.
Thus far the admirable clearness of statement and perfect propriety of
speech, added to the personal prestige which surrounds any man so
distinguished as the orator, had secured a well-bred attention. But
there was not yet that eager, fixed intentness, sensitive to every
tone and shifting humor of the speaker, which shows that he thoroughly
possesses and controls the audience. There was none of that charmed
silence in which the very heart and soul seem to be listening; and at
any moment it would have been easy to go out.
But when leaving the purely historical current the orator struck into
some considerations upon the views of our affairs taken by foreign
nations, the vivacious skill of his treatment excited a more vital
attention. There was a truer interest and a heartier applause. And
when still pressing on, but with unchanged action, he glanced at the
consequences of a successful rebellion, the audience was, for the
first time, really aroused.
Let us suppose, said the orator, that secession is successful, what
has been gained? How are the causes of discontent removed? Will the
malcontents have seceded because of the non-rendition of fugitive
slaves? But how has secession helped it? When, in the happy words of
another, Canada has been brought down to the Potomac, do they think
their fugitives will be restored? No: not if they came to its banks
with the hosts of Pharaoh, and the river ran dry in its bed.
Loud applause here rang through the building.
Or, continued the orator, more vehemently, do they think, in that
case, to carry their slaves into territories now free? No, not if the
Chief-justice of the United States--and here a volley of applause
rattled in, and the orator wiped his forehead--not if the venerable
Chief-justice Taney should live yet a century, and issue a Dred Scott
decision every day of his life.
Here followed the sincerest applause of the whole evening; and the
Easy Chair pinched his neighbor to make sure that all was as it
seemed; that these were words actually spoken, and that the orator was
Edward Everett.
The hour and a half were passed. The peroration was upon the speaker's
tongue, closing with an exhortation to old men and old women, young
men and maidens, each in his kind and degree, to come as the waves
come when navies are stranded--to come as the winds come when forests
are rended--to come with heart and hand, with purse and
knitting-needle, with sword and gun, and fight for the Union.
He bowed: the audience clapped for a moment, then rose and bustled
out.
--It was not fair; no, it was not fair. The Easy Chair did not
find--how could it find?--the charm which those of another day
remembered. The oration was an admirable and elaborate address, full
of instruction and truth and patriotism, the work of a remarkably
accomplished man of great public experience. It was written in the
plainest language, and did not contain an obscure word. It was
delivered with perfect propriety, with the confidence that comes from
the habit of public speaking, and with artistic skill of articulation
and emphasis. As an illustration of memory it was remarkable, for it
was but the second time that the address had been spoken. It occupied
an hour and a half in the delivery, and yet the manuscript lay
unopened upon the table. Only three or four times was there any
hesitation which reminded the hearer that the speaker was repeating
what he had already written. His power in this respect has been often
mentioned. He is understood to have said that, if he reads anything
once, he can repeat it correctly; but if he has written it out, he can
repeat it exactly and always. This unusual facility secures to all his
addresses a completeness and finish which very few orators command. He
can say exactly what he means, and nothing more, being never betrayed
by confusion or sudden emotion to say, as so many speakers say, more
than they really think.
But, on the other hand, it is doubtful whether all that electric
eloquence by which the hearer is caught up as by a whirlwind and swept
onward at the will of the orator, is not now a tradition in the
speeches of the orator. The glow of feeling, the rush of rhetoric, the
fiery burst of passionate power--the overwhelming impulse which makes
senates adjourn and men spring to arms--were they in the orator or in
the fascinated youth of those who remember the sermon in Brattle
Street, the apostrophe to Lafayette?