One of the first and truest of our Cambridge friends was that exquisite
intelligence, who, in a world where so many people are grotesquely
miscalled, was most fitly named; for no man ever kept here more perfectly
and purely the heart of such as the kingdom of heaven is of than Francis
J. Child. He was then in his prime, and I like to recall the outward
image which expressed the inner man as happily as his name. He was of
low stature and of an inclination which never became stoutness; but what
you most saw when you saw him was his face of consummate refinement: very
regular, with eyes always glassed by gold-rimmed spectacles, a straight,
short, most sensitive nose, and a beautiful mouth with the sweetest smile
mouth ever wore, and that was as wise and shrewd as it was sweet. In a
time when every other man was more or less bearded he was clean shaven,
and of a delightful freshness of coloring which his thick sunny hair,
clustering upon his head in close rings, admirably set off. I believe he
never became gray, and the last time I saw him, though he was broken then
with years and pain, his face had still the brightness of his
inextinguishable youth.
It is well known how great was Professor Child’s scholarship in the
branches of his Harvard work; and how especially, how uniquely, effective
it was in the study of English and Scottish balladry to which he gave so
many years of his life. He was a poet in his nature, and he wrought with
passion as well as knowledge in the achievement of as monumental a task
as any American has performed. But he might have been indefinitely less
than he was in any intellectual wise, and yet been precious to those who
knew him for the gentleness and the goodness which in him were protected
from misconception by a final dignity as delicate and as inviolable as
that of Longfellow himself.
We were still much less than a year from our life in Venice, when he came
to see us in Cambridge, and in the Italian interest which then commended
us to so many fine spirits among our neighbors we found ourselves at the
beginning of a life-long friendship with him. I was known to him only by
my letters from Venice, which afterwards became Venetian Life, and by a
bit of devotional verse which he had asked to include in a collection he
was making, but he immediately gave us the freedom of his heart, which
after wards was never withdrawn. In due time he imagined a home-school,
to which our little one was asked, and she had her first lessons with his
own daughter under his roof. These things drew us closer together, and
he was willing to be still nearer to me in any time of trouble. At one
such time when the shadow which must some time darken every door, hovered
at ours, he had the strength to make me face it and try to realize, while
it was still there, that it was not cruel and not evil. It passed, for
that time, but the sense of his help remained; and in my own case I can
testify of the potent tenderness which all who knew him must have known
in him. But in bearing my witness I feel accused, almost as if he were
present; by his fastidious reluctance from any recognition of his
helpfulness. When this came in the form of gratitude taking credit to
itself in a pose which reflected honor upon him as the architect of
greatness, he was delightfully impatient of it, and he was most amusingly
dramatic in reproducing the consciousness of certain ineffectual alumni
who used to overwhelm him at Commencement solemnities with some such
pompous acknowledgment as, “Professor Child, all that I have become, sir,
I owe to your influence in my college career.” He did, with delicious
mockery, the old-fashioned intellectual poseurs among the students, who
used to walk the groves of Harvard with bent head, and the left arm
crossing the back, while the other lodged its hand in the breast of the
high buttoned frock-coat; and I could fancy that his classes in college
did not form the sunniest exposure for young folly and vanity. I know
that he was intolerant of any manner of insincerity, and no flattery
could take him off his guard. I have seen him meet this with a cutting
phrase of rejection, and no man was more apt at snubbing the patronage
that offers itself at times to all men. But mostly he wished to do
people pleasure, and he seemed always to be studying how to do it; as for
need, I am sure that worthy and unworthy want had alike the way to his
heart.
Children were always his friends, and they repaid with adoration the
affection which he divided with them and with his flowers. I recall him
in no moments so characteristic as those he spent in making the little
ones laugh out of their hearts at his drolling, some festive evening in
his house, and those he gave to sharing with you his joy in his
gardening. This, I believe, began with violets, and it went on to roses,
which he grew in a splendor and profusion impossible to any but a true
lover with a genuine gift for them. Like Lowell, he spent his summers in
Cambridge, and in the afternoon, you could find him digging or pruning
among his roses with an ardor which few caprices of the weather could
interrupt. He would lift himself from their ranks, which he scarcely
overtopped, as you came up the footway to his door, and peer purblindly
across at you. If he knew you at once, he traversed the nodding and
swaying bushes, to give you the hand free of the trowel or knife; or if
you got indoors unseen by him he would come in holding towards you some
exquisite blossom that weighed down the tip of its long stem with a
succession of hospitable obeisances.
He graced with unaffected poetry a life of as hard study, of as hard
work, and as varied achievement as any I have known or read of; and he
played with gifts and acquirements such as in no great measure have made
reputations. He had a rare and lovely humor which could amuse itself
both in English and Italian with such an airy burletta as “Il Pesceballo”
(he wrote it in Metastasian Italian, and Lowell put it in libretto
English); he had a critical sense as sound as it was subtle in all
literature; and whatever he wrote he imbued with the charm of a style
finely personal to himself. His learning in the line of his Harvard
teaching included an early English scholarship unrivalled in his time,
and his researches in ballad literature left no corner of it untouched. I
fancy this part of his study was peculiarly pleasant to him; for he loved
simple and natural things, and the beauty which he found nearest life.
At least he scorned the pedantic affectations of literary superiority;
and he used to quote with joyous laughter the swelling exclamation of an
Italian critic who proposed to leave the summits of polite learning for a
moment, with the cry, “Scendiamo fra il popolo!” (Let us go down among
the people.)