With thy rare single-mindedness, so resented by the ambidextrous
double-dealers, a virtue putting thee in a worldly sense almost as much
at disadvantage with them as thy single arm (the other lost in the
Wilderness under Grant) assuredly would in a personal encounter; the
genial humour of thy club-chat, garnished, as not unfrequently it is,
even like to a holiday barn, with sprigs of classic parsley set about it
or inserted cloves of old English proverbs, or yet older Latin ones
equally commonplace, yet never losing the verity in them, their
preservative spice; thy yellow, wrinkled parchment from Harvard hung up
framed in thy bachelor quarters (so convenient to the Club); thy
cherished eagle of the Society of the Cincinnati, a golden insignia thou
polishest up and sportest on occasion; and--be it never omitted--thy
high relish for the qualities of M. de Grandvin, through frequent
communion with whom thou hast caught much of his generous spirit
enhancing what is naturally thine own, yes, and something of his beaming
aspect as well; insomuch that unto thee--after him--belong all the
titles of good fellowship. Dean of the Burgundians, but I love thee!
Though some of the points just cited might of themselves avail to denote
thee, Dean, two other characteristics there are which peradventure may
serve to signalise. Though a soldier of the Civil War, and a gazetted
one, thou at all times, even upon that legal holiday which has
undesignedly become the annual commemoration of that war, refrainest
from wearing on thy person any memorial thereof. And, ever since the
Peace, even as during the entire military contest, no superfluous
syllable ever fell from thy lips touching the Southern half of thy
country.
Now, as to the personal memorial, honourably worn by so many, if thou
declined to wear it, was this because thou wert in sympathy with the
spirit of thy deplored New England friend, Charles Sumner--whom, for
what was sterling in him, thou didst so sincerely honour, though far
from sharing in all his advocated measures? Years ago Grant and Lee
joined hands at Appomattox. Art thou such an old-fashioned Roman in thy
patriotism that thou wouldst consign to oblivion the fact that thy
countrymen, claiming the van of Adam’s alleged advance, were but
yesterday plunged in patricidal strife? And, for thy never being a
partisan animadverter, is that because for all the free thought that
beats in thy brain, at heart thou art the captive of Christ, yea, even
something of a Christian, and though but dimly conscious of it, perhaps,
art not unmindful of the divine text which implies that if sinners
abound they are not in vain demarked from the saints by any parallel of
latitude. Or, rather, that there are no saints, but that all mankind,
not excluding Americans, are sinners--miserable sinners, as even no few
Bostonians themselves nowadays contritely respond in the liturgy.
However this be, both the omission and the abstention referred to are in
significant contrast with thy words relative to that elder war wherein
thy grandfather was one of the ‘rebels,’ a contrast emphasised though
involuntarily in thy social utterances upon every recurrence of our one
national holiday.
On the fourth morning of each July, about the tenth hour by the club
clock, spruced up in thy goodly person and decked at lapel with the
golden eagle suspended by the white-bordered blue ribbon, an order which
Washington and Lafayette and thy grandfather and father wore before
thee, thou takest thy customary place at the club’s bay-window. There
thou comfortably settlest thyself till lunch-time, discoursing at whiles
with whomsoever may, fortunately for himself, happen to be at hand.
Now thy Fourth-of-July outgivings, though indeed yearly varying in
expression, yet in spirit are much the same. Dost thou remember all that
thou saidest on the last Fourth, Major? Hardly. But I do; and will try
to refresh thy memory by reproducing it, with some accompanying
circumstances, and as if all were of to-day.
After gazing out of the open window for a time, noting the strange
Sabbatarian quiet of the Avenue, on other week-days so abounding with
diversified life, thou mutterest to thyself a strange litany of
lamentations touching the general falling-off in the old-time
celebration. ‘Well, well,’ thou mutterest, ‘it is getting along now in
its second century, this anniversary, and nearly everything falls off
with years. In Victoria’s reign is Guy Fawkes’ Day what it was in
Elizabeth’s? I trow not. _Sic transit, Sic transit!_’
Here some swift return of thought to its everyday channel causes thee
suddenly to wheel in thy revolving chair and face inward. Thou remarkest
the vacant lounges and sofas, thou absorbest the drear silence. Is it
the tabernacle on a week-day? Evidently, thou bethinkest thee of the
many absentees. Anon, with thy ample white handkerchief mopping the
beads from thy brow, thou exclaimest, ‘Shame upon them! Why, even the
thermometer, though a creature metallic, is more sensitive than these
renegades to the momentous occasion. Sure, the mercury rises to it! But
they--they run from it. Now degenerate, not only from their sires, but
their own boyhood. Ah, my good sir,’ giving another impulsive turn to
the revolving chair so as directly to face the one person present, a
somewhat reserved gentleman of mature years engaged in methodically
refolding a letter just perused, ‘Ah, my good sir, it is your boy who is
your true patriot. _He_ made on the _Third_ for Long Branch or
elsewhere? Nay, sir, on the Third, if not before, he lays in his
ammunition, his powder-crackers; at early dawn on the blessed Fourth he
crams his breeches-pockets with them, and though in his heedless
enthusiasm, mixing them up there with his matches, they get ignited and
suddenly begin going off like minute-guns hurried up, making him a
spluttering blunderbuss to himself and the crowd, what recks he if but
luckily he come out of it unharmed? Another boy, a yet more devoted
young acolyte of the Salii, should repeated discharges at last burst his
toy-cannon, and he go to Hades for it, what then? _Ducit amor patriae!_
That’s the inscription, sir, on General Worth’s monument you and I pass
every day. Ten to one you never noticed it--the inscription, I mean. Ah,
but he was a paladin, a homespun paladin, General Worth. And happy in
his surname, though indeed his _worth_ was of another sort than that of
the purse.’
‘And did you personally know the General, Dean?’ inquires the solitary
auditor, his curiosity here doing away with a taciturnity seldom
yielding but through the persuasive mediation of wine. ‘Did you,
personally, know the General, sir?’ ‘Ay, indeed!’ And, after losing thee
in revery awhile, and reminiscently ejaculating something to thyself,
‘The last time I saw Will Worth was on the night-boat coming down from
Albany--by Jove, it seems but a week or two ago--he then being bound for
Mexico to pay his military respects to General Santa Anna in the field.
But he came back horizontal who went forth so erect! Ay, but like the
great Gustavus, sir, from Lützen field, if dirged yet laurelled. Pray,
sir, can you repeat the battle-names on the monumental shaft?
Chermbusco, Buena Vista, Resaca de la Palma, San Antonio, Cerro Gordo.
There’s a valley for you of vowels and victory! Ay, and Monterey, too,
that superb dash of arms, one inspiring my chivalric friend, Charlie
Fenno Hoffman--remember Charlie, sir? No, no; you don’t go back so
far--inspired his fine lyric.’ Now, after a moment’s pause, to rally the
memory belike, thou didst kindle, and springing from thy seat, leaving
it spinning on its pivot, thy adorned chest expanded, thou didst
sonorously declaim this stanza:--
‘The foe himself recoiled aghast,
When striking where he strongest lay,
We swoopt his flanking batteries past,
And braving full their murderous blast
Stormed home the towers of Monterey!’
Then reseating thee, a little panting, and pressing one hand to thy
side: ‘Ay, stirring deeds beget stirring rhymes. But stirring rhymes
bestir overmuch the cardiac arteries in an old fellow like me. Well,
well,’ in reaction lapsing into a muffled mutter, a sort of audible
musing, ‘Well, well--they are gone, both gone, hero and bard--long ago.
_Sic transit._--They sleep, sleep.--_In pace, in pace--Requiescant!_’
And slowly removing thy gold-rimmed glasses and assiduously rubbing them
with thy ample handkerchief, in tone a bit tremulous, thou addressest
the mild gentleman thy hearer. ‘The heat of this unwonted season, sir,
would not be so inconvenient but for the confounded humidity dampening
one’s spectacles so. But where, where now was I? Astraying I’ve been:
Let me see----’ shutting thine eyes and clapping a hand to brow, ‘ah,
yes, yes--patriotism of boyhood. Well, such a spluttering blunderbuss as
I was speaking of a while ago, or rather such a _feu de joie in persona_
our venerable friend, Judge van Groot, inadvertently made himself as a
boy, recruiting his fagged patriotism on doughnuts and cider in one of
those booths which in _auld lang syne_ belted about our City Hall Park
every Fourth. I hear the sharp, quick percussion even now--see the lad
starting up, clapping his hands to his exploding powder-houses, and yet
more rapidly withdrawing them, till the booth-keeper put him out by
dashing a handy bucket of cider on his trowsers. That was--bless my
soul--nigh threescore years ago!--And now? Yesterday with one foot in
prunella, his Honour limped off to Saratoga, and, I dare say, sir,
without so much as a single powder-cracker in his vest pocket; nay, and
very likely never once recalling the circumstances that Saratoga as a
great Revolutionary battlefield, or giving name to one, is signally
associated with this blessed day.’ Then after a few moments of
meditative silence, ‘Myndert van Groot is--let me see--yes, about mine
own age. His bay-tree, though planted by the rivers of Burgundy, won’t
flourish more than a hundred years longer.--Well, well--_tempus_ does
_fugit_--_Memento mori!_--die we must--consign to dust--leave all!’
Here, settling back in thy chair, thine eyes fixed upon vacancy, thou
murmurest from thy Horace in quite other tones than those which late
rolled forth the Monterey stanza:--
‘The purple vineyard’s luscious stores,
Secured by trebly bolted doors,
Excite in vain your care;
Soon shall the rich and sparkling hoard
Flow largely o’er the festive board
Of your unsparing heir.’
Silence again. Then, suddenly brisking up, ‘But _à propos_, as the
Marquis says’; and, pulling out thy big watch, ‘ay, the lunch hour is at
hand. Tobias, hither, thou Rose of Sharon,’ summoning a ruddy-cheeked
young servitor, ‘go, see if the steward has ordered it as I directed,
kept that _Chambertin_ three leagues from his refrigerator and the
bottles in readiness to be gently immersed up to the neck--mind, up to
the neck in a water-cooler, the water of its natural temperature at this
season. Go, lad, it is important.’ Then turning to the quiet listener,
‘Sir, for myself I am not so particular about these matters, but the two
friends I expect to dine with me--Jerry Bland and Captain Don Tempest of
the Navy--well, you know them--are; and one must humour the peculiar
tastes of one’s friends, you know.’ Here, suddenly reminded that an
immediate courtesy was due. ‘Of course, my good sir, you will join us.
Nay, I insist upon it. Not good for a man to be alone, especially on the
immortal Fourth. Tobias, come back. Tut, he’s gone. William! Go, say we
will dine at the round table in the south-west corner, and let there be
four covers--four, mind.’
Even so, Major, or much so, on the last Fourth, sitting in the club
parlour didst thou by turns ruminate and expatiate, and humorously rail
and feelingly evoke the bygone and glow as in the poetic fervour of
youth, and involuntarily sigh the sigh of old philosophy, till in the
end the home-sense of the eternal sagacity of all things did but result
in awakening in thee but the more vividly thy relish for life and the
_Chambertin_.
But on the forenoon of each thirtieth of May, seated--minus the
aforesaid historic decoration--in thy reserved corner of the club
balcony, in graven sort thou lookest down on the floral march of the
_Grand Army_. Then seemed thou even less intent on returning the
greetings from some hale comrade in the ranks, or less hearty hero borne
along in open barouche; less dwelling, too, on the processional wains of
nodding flowers, followed close by nodding plumes of the escort--to thee
and the other veterans--a new generation of Mars--less absorbed by all
this, than musing on the many mounds those same flowers ere nightfall
shall dress. Thy constitutional good spirits seem strangely overcast
that day. Thou forgoest the banquet. Nevertheless, it is observable that
in the balcony thy empty sleeve is disposed more picturesquely, nay,
somehow more conspicuously on that aforesaid thirtieth of every May,
than on any other morning of the year. It more catches the eye. Now and
then, during pauses in the procession, the crowd on the sidewalk below
glance up at it, and expressively, and thou turnest not aside.
‘Ah, Major,’ I said, ‘I love thee; yes, and it is as much for thy queer
little human foibles as thy not-so-common virtues. Come now, for all thy
annual megrims, prouder art thou of that empty sleeve of thine than even
of thy grandfather’s Revolutionary insignia, for _this_ thou didst but
inherit, the other, conferred on thee at first hand, and by the God of
Battles.’
Not often dost thou discuss the tactics of thy Virginia campaigns, but
what things hast thou told us of its byplay--the scouting, the foraging,
the riding up to lovely mansions garrisoned by a faithful old slave or
two, servants to lovely damsels more terrible than Mars in their
feminine indignation at the insolent invader; in other instances being
coquettishly served at an improvised lunch on some broad old piazza by
less implacable beauties reduced by the calamities to dispensing
hospitality for the enemy’s greenbacks. In such and similar passages of
the war thou aboundest, passages luckily not susceptible of being
formalised into professed history.
But the better for the felicity of thy friends, thou hast more than one
string to thy harp, Major. Did any listener ever tire of thy
reminiscences of European travel? What signifies that they date so far
back, before some of us were born? Even so do sundry inestimable
vintages in the Club’s cellar. Pleasant it is when weary of the
never-ending daily news, the same sort of thing forever, how pleasant to
be spirited back by a tale, by some veteran’s living voice and eloquent
gestures, to a period that is no news at all, a time prior to those more
pronounced changes which have come over so few portions of that ancient
and manifold world across the Atlantic, a world to which we are bound by
unsunderable ties of genealogy.
Highly, Major, didst thou relish that title whereby, as regards so many
of us Americans, a rare son of New England with happiest simplicity
designated that Elder England, from which his progenitor came--_Our Old
Name_. But if thy filial appreciation of the historic Past has something
of Nathaniel Hawthorne in it, the medium, Dean, through which thou
recallest it, viewing it as through an irradiated vapour, this is not
without a touch of _our incomparable friend_, the Marquis. He, as well
thou knowest, never is so happy, never so blissfully serene, as when
wandering in a haze along that enchanted beach.
Among all thy over-sea reminiscences not the least entertaining to us
juniors is thy liberal version of that famous _Afternoon in Naples_. In
the wee hours, more especially if inspired by the beaming presence of M.
de Grandvin, how affluent hast thou been on that theme; how vivid in
description; and, for the rest, how frolic, pathetic, indignant,
philosophic; and throughout how catholic and humane. But shall such a
recital be confined to the small group of the convivially elect,
brothers of the _Burgundy_? Savours that not a little of the exclusive?
Have a care, Dean. With even more than is implied in that term, one not
lightly to be applied in a democracy, thou hast, unbeknown to thee,
perhaps, been reproached.
When General Grant, a bigot for his friends--and thou wert one of his
military family in the field--when he, as President, nominated thee
consul at that very Naples thou so entertainest us with, what whisper,
doubtless started by some rival applicant, what ridiculous whisper, was
it buzzed in the lobbies, that in spite even of Grant’s nomination,
stranded thee unconfirmed by the Senate? But ‘Pshaw!’ thou exclaimest,
amused at the enthusiasm of sophomores, when, ending thy Neapolitan
romance we contendingly fire away with:--
‘Bravissimo!’
‘Encore!’
‘Write it out, Major!’
‘Put it in verse!’
‘Good, it will immortalise thee!’
‘And consider, Dean, the glory redounding to the Club!’
To all which thy expression ‘Pshaw!’ and the politely proffered
snuff-box by way of an added parry, and little more do we get from thee,
O Dean of the Burgundians!
Well, Major, what thou in thy impatience of pen-drudgery and
indifference to any reputation except that old-fashioned one of being a
man of honour; what thou, for these reasons, perchance, never couldst be
persuaded to undertake, I, even I, unsolicited have had the temerity to
essay.
And in so doing I have adopted thy earlier rendering of _That Afternoon
in Naples_ ere yet thou begannest to exclaim, ‘I don’t know what the
dogs is the reason, but I can’t remember anything’; that version seeming
to me akin to what engravers call the first proofs, less free from the
blur that ensues after repeated impressions from the plate. Moreover,
not unmindful of the enthusiastic injunction, ‘Put it in verse,’ I have
after a fashion done accordingly. As to the interspersed ballads and
ditties--at the which, peradventure, thou mayest stare even as Rip van
Winkle, after his resurrection, did at his son--I do assure thee, Dean,
they are essentially but thoughts and conceits of thine own, the product
of seeds which planted and spontaneously developing in me, eventually
effloresced into rhyme.
But to soften the liberty here taken, as well as the licence throughout,
yes, and not without hope to propitiate and even please thee, I have so
contrived matters that thou personated the part here allotted thee at
the special instance of M. de Grandvin; thus in a literary way
associating thee with one whose social companionship thou so
unaffectedly lovest, and whose magnanimous spirit thou art ever fain to
imbibe. Vale!
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