THE FRIENDS AND RELATIONS OF JAMES.
MR. ZEBEDEE MARVYN, the father of James, was the sample of an
individuality so purely the result of New England society and education
that he must be embodied in our story as a representative man of the
times.
He owned a large farm in the immediate vicinity of Newport, which he
worked with his own hands and kept under the most careful cultivation.
He was a man past the middle of life, with a white head, a keen blue
eye, and a face graven deeply with the lines of energy and thought. His
was one of those clearly-cut minds which New England forms among her
farmers, as she forms quartz crystals in her mountains, by a sort of
gradual influence flowing through every pore of her soil and system.
His education, properly so called, had been merely that of those common
schools and academies with which the States are thickly sown, and
which are the springs of so much intellectual activity. Here he had
learned to think and to inquire,—a process which had not ceased with
his schooldays. Though toiling daily with his sons and hired man in all
the minutiæ of a farmer’s life, he kept an observant eye on the field
of literature, and there was not a new publication heard of that he did
not immediately find means to add it to his yearly increasing stock of
books. In particular was he a well-read and careful theologian, and
all the controversial tracts, sermons, and books, with which then, as
ever since, New England has abounded, not only lay on his shelves, but
had his pencilled annotations, queries, and comments thickly scattered
along their margins. There was scarce an office of public trust which
had not at one time or another been filled by him. He was deacon of
the church, chairman of the school committee, justice of the peace,
had been twice representative in the State legislature, and was in
permanence a sort of adviser-general in all cases between neighbour and
neighbour. Among other acquisitions, he had gained some knowledge of
the general forms of law, and his advice was often asked in preference
to that of the regular practitioners.
His dwelling was one of those large, square, white, green-blinded
mansions—cool, clean, and roomy—wherein the respectability of New
England in those days rejoiced. The windows were shaded by clumps of
lilacs; the deep yard with its white fence enclosed a sweep of clean,
short grass and a few fruit-trees. Opposite the house was a small
blacksmith’s shed, which, of a wet day, was sparkling and lively
with bellows and ringing forge, while Mr. Zebedee and his sons were
hammering and pounding and putting in order anything that was out
of the way in farming-tools or establishments. Not unfrequently the
latest scientific work or the last tractate of theology lay open by
his side, the contents of which would be discussed with a neighbour
or two as they entered; for, to say the truth, many a neighbour, less
forehanded and thrifty, felt the benefit of this arrangement of Mr.
Zebedee, and would drop in to see if he ‘wouldn’t just tighten that
rivet,’ or ‘kind o’ease out that ’ere brace,’ or ‘let a feller have a
turn with his bellows or a stroke or two on his anvil,’—to all which
the good man consented with a grave obligingness. The fact was, that
as nothing in the establishment of Mr. Marvyn was often broken or lost
or out of place, he had frequent applications to lend to those less
fortunate persons, always to be found, who supply their own lack of
considerateness from the abundance of their neighbours.
He who is known always to be in hand, and always obliging, in a
neighbourhood, stands the chance sometimes of having nothing for
himself. Mr. Zebedee reflected quietly on this subject, taking it, as
he did all others, into grave and orderly consideration, and finally
provided a complete set of tools, which he kept for the purpose of
lending; and when any of these were lent, he told the next applicant
quietly that the axe or the hoe was already out, and thus he reconciled
the Scripture which commanded him to ‘do good and lend’ with that law
of order which was written in his nature.
Early in life Mr. Marvyn had married one of the handsomest girls
of his acquaintance, who had brought him a thriving and healthy
family of children, of whom James was the youngest. Mrs. Marvyn was,
at this time, a tall, sad-eyed, gentle-mannered woman, thoughtful,
earnest, deep-natured, though sparing in the matter of words. In all
her household arrangements, she had the same thrift and order which
characterized her husband; but hers was a mind of a finer and higher
stamp than his.
In her bedroom, near by her work-basket, stood a table covered with
books,—and so systematic were her household arrangements, that she
never any day missed her regular hours for reading. One who should
have looked over this table would have seen there how eager and hungry
a mind was hid behind the silent eyes of this quiet woman. History,
biography, mathematics, volumes of the encyclopædia, poetry, novels,
all alike found their time and place there,—and while she pursued
her household labours, the busy, active soul within travelled cycles
and cycles of thought, few of which ever found expression in words.
What might be that marvellous music of the _Miserere_, of which she
read, that it convulsed crowds and drew groans and tears from the most
obdurate? What might be those wondrous pictures of Raphael and Leonardo
da Vinci? What would it be to see the Apollo, the Venus? What was the
charm that enchanted the old marbles—charm untold and inconceivable
to one who had never seen even the slightest approach to a work of
art? Then those glaciers of Switzerland, that grand, unapproachable
mixture of beauty and sublimity in her mountains!—what would it be to
one who could see it? Then what were all those harmonies of which she
read,—masses, fugues, symphonies? Oh, could she once hear the Miserere
of Mozart, just to know what music was like! And the cathedrals, what
were they? How wonderful they must be, with their forests of arches,
many-coloured as autumn-woods with painted glass, and the chants
and anthems rolling down their long aisles! On all these things she
pondered quietly, as she sat often on Sundays in the old staring,
rattle-windowed meeting-house, and looked at the uncouth old pulpit,
and heard the choir fa-sol-la-ing or singing fuguing tunes; but of all
this she said nothing.
Sometimes, for days, her thoughts would turn from these subjects and
be absorbed in mathematical or metaphysical studies. ‘I have been
following that treatise on Optics for a week, and never understood it
till to-day,’ she once said to her husband. ‘I have found now that
there has been a mistake in drawing the diagrams. I have corrected it,
and now the demonstration is complete.—Dinah, take care, that wood is
hickory, and it takes only seven sticks of that size to heat the oven.’
It is not to be supposed that a woman of this sort was an inattentive
listener to preaching so stimulating to the intellect as that of Dr.
H. No pair of eyes followed the web of his reasonings with a keener
and more anxious watchfulness than those sad, deep-set, hazel ones;
and as she was drawn along the train of its inevitable logic, a close
observer might have seen how the shadows deepened over them. For, while
others listened for the clearness of the thought, for the acuteness
of the argument, she listened as a soul wide, fine-strung, acute,
repressed, whose every fibre is a nerve, listens to the problem of its
own destiny,—listened as the mother of a family listens, to know what
were the possibilities, the probabilities of this mysterious existence
of ours to herself and those dearer to her than herself.
The consequence of all her listening was a history of deep inward
sadness. That exultant joy, or that entire submission, with which
others seemed to view the scheme of the universe, as thus unfolded,
did not visit her mind. Everything to her seemed shrouded in gloom and
mystery; and that darkness she received as a token of unregeneracy,
as a sign that she was one of those who are destined, by a mysterious
decree, never to receive the light of the glorious gospel of Christ.
Hence, while her husband was a deacon of the church, she for years
had sat in her pew while the sacramental elements were distributed, a
mournful spectator. Punctilious in every duty, exact, reverential, she
still regarded herself as a child of wrath, an enemy to God, and an
heir of perdition; nor could she see any hope of remedy, except in the
sovereign, mysterious decree of an Infinite and Unknown Power, a mercy
for which she waited with the sickness of hope deferred.
Her children had grown up successively around her, intelligent and
exemplary. Her eldest son was mathematical professor in one of the
leading colleges of New England. Her second son, who jointly with his
father superintended the farm, was a man of wide literary culture and
of fine mathematical genius; and not unfrequently, on winter evenings,
the son, father, and mother worked together, by their kitchen fireside,
over the calculations for the almanac for the ensuing year, which the
son had been appointed to edit.
Everything in the family arrangements was marked by a sober precision,
a grave and quiet self-possession. There was little demonstrativeness
of affection between parents and children, brothers and sisters, though
great mutual affection and confidence. It was not pride, nor sternness,
but a sort of habitual shamefacedness, that kept far back in each soul
those feelings which are the most beautiful in their outcome; but
after a while, the habit became so fixed a nature, that a caressing
or affectionate expression could not have passed the lips of one to
another without a painful awkwardness. Love was understood, once for
all, to be the basis on which their life was built. Once for all, they
loved each other, and after that, the less said the better. It had cost
the woman’s heart of Mrs. Marvyn some pangs, in the earlier part of
her wedlock, to accept of this _once for all_, in place of those daily
out-gushings which every woman desires should be like God’s loving
kindness, ‘new every morning;’ but hers, too, was a nature strongly
inclining inward, and, after a few tremulous movements, the needle of
her soul settled, and her life-lot was accepted,—not as what she would
like or could conceive, but as a reasonable and good one. Life was a
picture painted in low, cool tones, but in perfect keeping; and though
another and brighter style might have pleased better, she did not
quarrel with this.
Into this steady, decorous, highly-respectable circle, the youngest
child, James, made a formidable irruption. One sometimes sees launched
into a family circle a child of so different a nature from all the
rest, that it might seem as if, like an aërolite, he had fallen out
of another sphere. All the other babies of the Marvyn family had been
of that orderly, contented sort who sleep till it is convenient to
take them up, and while awake suck their thumbs contentedly and look
up with large, round eyes at the ceiling when it is not convenient
for their elders and betters that they should do anything else. In
farther advanced childhood, they had been quiet and decorous children,
who could be all dressed and set up in chairs, like so many dolls, of
a Sunday morning, patiently awaiting the stroke of the church-bell
to be carried out and put into the waggon which took them over the
two miles’ road to church. Possessed of such tranquil, orderly, and
exemplary young offshoots, Mrs. Marvyn had been considered eminent for
her ‘faculty’ in bringing up children.
But James was destined to put ‘faculty,’ and every other talent which
his mother possessed, to rout. He was an infant of moods and tenses,
and those not of any regular verb. He would cry of nights, and he would
be taken up of mornings, and he would not suck his thumb, nor a bundle
of caraway-seed tied in a rag and dipped in sweet milk, with which the
good gossips in vain endeavoured to pacify him. He fought manfully with
his two great fat fists the battle of babyhood, utterly reversed all
nursery maxims, and reigned as baby over the whole prostrate household.
When old enough to run alone, his splendid black eyes and glossy
rings of hair were seen flashing and bobbing in every forbidden place
and occupation. Now trailing on his mother’s gown, he assisted her
in salting her butter by throwing in small contributions of snuff or
sugar, as the case might be; and again, after one of those mysterious
periods of silence which are of most ominous significance in nursery
experience, he would rise from the demolition of her indigo-bag,
showing a face ghastly with blue streaks, and looking more like a
gnome than the son of a respectable mother. There was not a pitcher of
any description of contents left within reach of his little tiptoes
and busy fingers that was not pulled over upon his giddy head without
in the least seeming to improve its steadiness. In short, his mother
remarked that she was thankful every night when she had fairly gotten
him into bed and asleep: James had really got through one more day and
killed neither himself nor any one else.
As a boy, the case was little better. He did not take to study, yawned
over books, and cut out moulds for running anchors when he should have
been thinking of his columns of words in four syllables. No mortal knew
how he learned to read, for he never seemed to stop running long enough
to learn anything; and yet he did learn, and used the talent in conning
over travels, sea-voyages, and lives of heroes and naval commanders.
Spite of father, mother, and brother, he seemed to possess the most
extraordinary faculty of running up unsavoury acquaintances. He was a
hail-fellow well-met with every Tom and Jack and Jim and Ben and Dick
that strolled on the wharves, and astonished his father with minutest
particulars of every ship, schooner, and brig in the harbour, together
with biographical notes of the different Toms, Dicks, and Harrys, by
whom they were worked.
There was but one member of the family that seemed to know at all what
to make of James, and that was their negro servant, Candace.
In those days, when domestic slavery prevailed in New England, it
was quite a different thing in its aspects from the same institution
in more southern latitudes. The hard soil, unyielding to any but the
most considerate culture, the thrifty, close, shrewd habits of the
people, and their untiring activity and industry, prevented, among
the mass of the people, any great reliance on slave labour. It was
something foreign, grotesque, and picturesque in a life of the most
matter-of-fact sameness: it was even as if one should see clusters of
palm-trees scattered here and there among Yankee wooden meeting-houses,
or open one’s eyes on clumps of yellow-striped aloes growing among
hardhack and huckleberry bushes in the pastures.
Added to this, there were from the very first, in New England, serious
doubts in the minds of thoughtful and conscientious people in reference
to the lawfulness of slavery; and this scruple prevented many from
availing themselves of it, and proved a restraint on all, so that
nothing like plantation-life existed, and what servants were owned were
scattered among different families, of which they came to be regarded
and to regard themselves as a legitimate part and portion,—Mr. Marvyn,
as a man of substance, numbering two or three in his establishment,
among whom Candace reigned chief. The presence of these tropical
specimens of humanity, with their wide, joyous, rich physical abundance
of nature and their hearty _abandon_ of outward expression, was a
relief to the still clear-cut lines in which the picture of New England
life was drawn, which an artist must appreciate.
No race has ever shown such infinite and rich capabilities of
adaptation to varying soil and circumstances as the negro. Alike to
them the snows of Canada, the hard, rocky land of New England, with
its set lines and orderly ways, or the gorgeous profusion and loose
abundance of the Southern States. Sambo and Cuffy expand under
them all. New England yet preserves among her hills and valleys the
lingering echoes of the jokes and jollities of various sable worthies,
who saw alike in orthodoxy and heterodoxy, in Dr. This-side and
Dr. That-side, only food for more abundant merriment;—in fact, the
minister of those days not unfrequently had his black shadow, a sort of
African Boswell, who powdered his wig, brushed his boots, defended and
patronized his sermons, and strutted complacently about, as if through
virtue of his blackness he had absorbed every ray of his master’s
dignity and wisdom. In families, the presence of these exotics was a
godsend to the children, supplying from the abundant outwardness and
demonstrativeness of their nature that aliment of sympathy so dear
to childhood, which the repressed and quiet habits of New England
education denied. Many and many a New Englander counts among his
pleasantest early recollections the memory of some of these genial
creatures, who by their warmth of nature were the first and most potent
mesmerizers of his childish mind.
Candace was a powerfully built, majestic black woman, corpulent,
heavy, with a swinging majesty of motion like that of a ship in a
ground swell. Her shining black skin and glistening white teeth were
indications of perfect physical vigour which had never known a day’s
sickness; her turban, of broad red and yellow bandanna stripes, had
even a warm tropical glow; and her ample skirts were always ready to
be spread over every childish transgression of her youngest pet and
favourite, James.
She used to hold him entranced long winter evenings, while she sat
knitting in the chimney-corner, and crooned to him strange, wild
African legends of the things that she had seen in her childhood and
early days,—for she had been stolen when about fifteen years of age;
and these weird, dreamy talks increased the fervour of his roving
imagination, and his desire to explore the wonders of the wide and
unknown world. When rebuked or chastised, it was she who had secret
bowels of mercy for him, and hid doughnuts in her ample bosom to be
secretly administered to him in mitigation of the sentence that sent
him supperless to bed; and many a triangle of pie, many a wedge of
cake, had conveyed to him surreptitious consolations which his more
conscientious mother longed, but dared not, to impart. In fact, these
ministrations, if suspected, were winked at by Mrs. Marvyn, for two
reasons: first, that mothers are generally glad of any loving-kindness
to an erring boy, which they are not responsible for; and second, that
Candace was so set in her ways and opinions that one might as well come
in front of a ship under full sail as endeavour to stop her in a matter
where her heart was engaged.
[Illustration: _Candace’s defence of James_
_Page 70._
Sampson Low, Son & Co. Feby. 25th, 1859]
To be sure, she had her own private and special quarrels with ‘Massa
James,’ when he disputed any of her sovereign orders in the kitchen,
and would sometimes pursue him with uplifted rolling-pin and floury
hands when he had snatched a gingernut or cooky without suitable
deference or supplication, and would declare, roundly, that there
‘never was sich an aggravatin’ young-un.’ But if, on the strength of
this, any one else ventured a reproof, Candace was immediately round on
the other side: ‘Dat ar chile gwin’ to be spiled, ’cause dey’s allers
a’pickin’ on him; he’s well enough on’y let him alone.’
Well, under this miscellaneous assortment of influences,—through
the order and gravity and solemn monotone of life at home, with the
unceasing tick-tack of the clock for ever resounding through clean,
empty-seeming rooms,—through the sea, ever shining, ever smiling,
dimpling, soliciting, like a magical charger who comes saddled and
bridled and offers to take you to fairyland,—through acquaintance with
all sorts of foreign, outlandish ragamuffins among the ships in the
harbour,—from disgust of slow-moving oxen, and long-drawn, endless
furrows round the fifteen-acre lot,—from misunderstandings with grave
elder brothers, and feeling somehow as if, he knew not why, he grieved
his mother all the time just by being what he was and couldn’t help
being,—and, finally, by a bitter break with his father, in which
came that last wrench for an individual existence which some time or
other the young growing mind will give to old authority,—by all these
united, was the lot at length cast; for one evening James was missing
at supper, missing by the fireside, gone all night, not at home to
breakfast,—till, finally, a strange, weird, most heathenish-looking
cabin-boy, who had often been forbidden the premises by Mr. Marvyn,
brought in a letter, half-defiant, half-penitent, which announced that
James had sailed in the ‘Ariel’ the evening before.
Mr. Zebedee Marvyn set his face as a flint, and said, ‘He went out
from us because he was not of us,’—whereat old Candace lifted her
great floury fist from the kneading-trough, and, shaking it like a
large snowball, said, ‘Oh, you go ’long, Massa Marvyn; ye’ll live to
count dat ar boy for de staff o’ your old age yet, now I tell ye; got
de makin’ o’ ten or’nary men in him; kittles dat’s full allers will
bile over; good yeast will blow out de cork,—lucky ef it don’t bust de
bottle. Tell ye, der’s angels has der hooks in sich, and when de Lord
wants him dey’ll haul him in safe and sound.’ And Candace concluded her
speech by giving a lift to her whole batch of dough, and flinging it
down in the trough with an emphasis that made the pewter on the dresser
rattle.
This apparently irreverent way of expressing her mind, so contrary to
the deferential habits studiously inculcated in family discipline, had
grown to be so much a matter of course to all the family that nobody
ever thought of rebuking it. There was a sort of savage freedom about
her, which they excused in right of her having been born and bred a
heathen, and of course not to be expected to come at once under the
yoke of civilization. In fact, you must all have noticed, my dear
readers, that there are some sorts of people for whom everybody turns
out as they would for a railroad-car, without stopping to ask why—and
Candace was one of them.
Moreover, Mr. Marvyn was not displeased with this defence of James,
as might be inferred from his mentioning it four or five times in the
course of the morning, to say how foolish it was,—wondering why it was
that Candace and everybody else got so infatuated with that boy,—and
ending, at last, after a long period of thought, with the remark that
these poor African creatures often seemed to have a great deal of
shrewdness in them, and that he was often astonished at the penetration
that Candace showed.
At the end of the year James came home, more quiet and manly than he
had ever been known before,—so handsome with his sunburnt face, and
his keen, dark eyes and glossy curls, that half the girls in the front
gallery lost their hearts the first Sunday he appeared in church. He
was tender as a woman to his mother, and followed her with his eyes,
like a lover, wherever she went: he made due and manly acknowledgments
to his father, but declared his fixed and settled intention to abide by
the profession he had chosen; and he brought home all sorts of strange
foreign gifts for every member of the household. Candace was glorified
with a flaming red and yellow turban of Moorish stuff from Mogadore,
together with a pair of gorgeous yellow morocco slippers with peaked
toes, which, though there appeared no call to wear them in her common
course of life, she would put on her fat feet, and contemplate with
daily satisfaction. She became increasingly strengthened thereby in the
conviction that the angels who had their hooks in Massa James’s jacket
were already beginning to shorten the line.