MARSHFIELD, THE HOME OF DANIEL WEBSTER
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Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free!
Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!
Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,
Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won
God out of knowledge, and good out of infinite pain,
And sight out of blindness, and purity out of a stain.
It was these mighty marshes--this ample sweep of grass, of sea and
sky--this vast earthly and heavenly spaciousness that must forever stand
to all New Englanders as a background to the powerful personality who
chose it as his own home. Daniel Webster, when his eyes first turned to
this infinite reach of largeness, instinctively knew it as the place
where his splendid senses would find satisfaction, and his splendid mind
would soar into an even loftier freedom. Webster loved Marshfield with
an intensity that made it peculiarly his own. Lanier, in language more
intricate and tropical, exclaimed of his "dim sweet" woods: "Ye held me
fast in your heart, and I held you fast in mine." Webster wielded the
vital union between his nature and that of the land not only by profound
sentiment, but by a vigorous physical grappling with the soil.
Is it that vivid natures unconsciously seek an environment
characteristic of them? Or are they, perhaps, inevitably forced to
create such an environment wherever they find themselves? Both facts
seem true in this case. This wide world of marsh and sea is not only
beautifully expressive of one who plunged himself into a rich communion
with the earth, with her full harvests and blooded cattle, with her
fruitful brooks and lakes; but it is still, after more than half a
century, vibrant with the spirit of the man who dwelt there.
We of another generation--and a generation before whom so many
portentous events and figures have passed--find it hard to realize the
tremendous magnetism and brilliancy of a man who has been so long dead,
or properly to estimate the high historical significance of such a life.
The human attribute which is the most immediately impelling in direct
intercourse--personality--is the most elusive to preserve. If Webster's
claim to remembrance rested solely upon that attribute, he would still
be worthy of enduring fame. But his gifts flowered at a spectacular
climax of national affairs and won thereby spectacular prominence. That
these gifts were to lose something of their pristine repute before the
end infuses, from a dramatic point of view, a contrasted and heightened
luster to the period of their highest glory.
Let us, casual travelers of a later and more careless day, walk now
together over the place which is the indestructible memorial of a great
man, and putting aside the measuring-stick of criticism--the sign of
small natures--try to live for an hour in the atmosphere which was the
breath of life to one who, if he failed greatly, also succeeded greatly,
and whose noble achievement it was not only to express, but to vivify a
love for the Union which, in its hour of supreme trial, became its
triumphant force.
Could we go back--not quite a hundred years--a little off the direct
route to Plymouth, on a site overlooking the broad marshes of Green
Harbor and the sea, where there now stands a boulder erected in 1914 by
the Boston University Law School Association, we would find a
comfortable, rambling house, distinguished among its New England
neighbors by an easy and delightful hospitality--the kind of hospitality
we call "Southern." There are many people in the house, on the veranda
and lawns: a hostess of gentle mien and manners; children attractive in
the spontaneity of those who continually and happily associate with
their elders; several house guests (yonder is Audubon the great
naturalist, here is an office-seeker from Boston, and that chap over
there, so very much at home, can be no other than Peter Harvey,
Webster's fond biographer). Callers there are, also, as is shown by the
line of chaises and saddle horses waiting outside, and old Captain
Thomas and his wife, from whom the place was bought, and who still
retain their original quarters, move in and out like people who consider
themselves part of the family. It is a heterogeneous collection, yet by
no means an awkward one, and every one is chatting with every one else
with great amiability. It is late afternoon: the master of the house has
been away all day, and now his guests and his family are glancing in the
direction from which he may be expected. For although every one is
comfortable and properly entertained, yet the absence of the host
creates an inexpressible emptiness; it is as if everything were
quiescent--hardly breathing--merely waiting until he comes. Suddenly the
atmosphere changes; it is charged with a strong vibrant quality;
everything--all eyes, all interest--is instantly focused on the figure
which has appeared among them. He is in fisherman's clothes--this
newcomer--attired with a brave eye for the picturesque, in soft hat and
flowing tie; but there are no fisherman's clothes, no, nor any other
cloakings which can conceal the resilient dignity of his bearing, his
impressive build, and magnificent, kingly head. Sydney Smith called
Webster a cathedral; and surely there must have been something in those
enormous, burning eyes, that craglike brow, that smote even the most
superficial observer into an admiration which was almost awe.
Many men--perhaps even the majority--whatever their genius in the outer
world, in their own houses are either relegated to--or choose--the
inconspicuous rôle of mere masculine appendages. But here we have a man
who is superbly the host: he knows and welcomes every guest and caller;
he personally supervises the disposal of their baggage and the selection
of their chambers; he himself has ordered the dinner--mutton which he
has raised, fish which he has caught--and it is being cooked by Monica,
the Southern slave whose freedom he purchased for her. He carves at
table, priding himself on his dispatch and nicety, and keeps an eye on
the needs of every one at the long board. Everything, every one in the
house is irresistibly drawn about this magnetic center which dominates
by its innate power of personality more than by any deliberate
intention. His children worship him; his wife idolizes him; each man and
woman on the place regards him with admiring affection. And in such
congenial atmosphere he expands, is genial, kindly, delightful. But
devoted as he is to his home, his family, and his friends, and charming
as he shows himself with them, yet it is not until we see him striding
over the farm which he has bought that we see the Daniel Webster who is
destined to live most graphically in the memories of those who like to
think of great men in those intimate moments which are most personally
characteristic of them.
We must rise early in the morning if we would accompany him on his day's
round. He himself is up at sunrise, for the sunrise is to him signal to
new life. As he once wrote: "Among all our good people not one in a
thousand sees the sun rise once a year. They know nothing of the
morning. Their idea of it is that part of the day which comes along
after a cup of coffee and a beefsteak or a piece of toast. With them
morning is not a new issuing of light, a new bursting forth of the sun,
a new waking up of all that has life from a sort of temporary death, to
behold again the works of God, the heavens and the earth.... The first
faint streak of light, the earliest purpling of the east which the lark
springs up to greet, and the deeper and deeper coloring into orange and
red, till at length the 'glorious sun is seen, regent of the day'--this
they never enjoy, for they never see it."
So four o'clock finds Webster up and dressed and bound for the little
study in his garden (the only building spared by the fire which
destroyed the house in 1878) and beginning his correspondence. If he has
no secretary he writes himself, and by time breakfast is announced
twenty letters, all franked and sealed, are ready to be posted.
"Now," he says, smiling benignantly down the long breakfast table of
family and friends, "my day's work is done--I have nothing to do but
fish."
Although this is, indeed, his favorite sport, and there is hardly a
brook or lake or pond within a radius of twenty miles which does not
bear the charmed legend of having been one of his favorite fishing
grounds, he does not spend his days in amusement, like the typical
country gentleman. Farming to him, the son of a yeoman, is no mere
possession of a fine estate, but the actual participation in ploughing,
planting, and haying. His full animal spirits find relief in such labor.
We cannot think of any similar example of such prodigious mental and
physical energy. Macaulay was a great parliamentary orator, but he was
the most conventional of city men; Burke and Chatham had no strength for
such strenuousness after their professional toil. But Webster loved to
know and to put his hand to every detail of farming and stock-raising.
When he first came to Marshfield the soil was thin and sandy. It was he
who instituted scientific farming in the region, teaching the natives
how to fertilize with kelp which was easily obtainable from the sea, and
also with the plentiful small herring or menhaden. He taught them the
proper care of the soil, and the rotation of crops. This passionate love
of the earth was an integral part of the man. As the force of his mind
drew its power, not from mere rhetorical facility, but from fundamental
principles, so his magnificent body, like that of the fabled Antæus,
seemed to draw perennial potency from contact with the earth. To acquire
land--he owned nearly eighteen hundred acres at the time of his
death--and to cultivate it to the highest possible degree of
productiveness was his intense delight. The farm which he purchased from
Captain Thomas grew to an estate of two or three dozen buildings,
outhouses, tenant houses, a dairyman's cottage, fisherman's house,
agricultural offices, and several large barns. We can imagine that he
shows us all of these things--explaining every detail with enthusiasm
and accuracy, occasionally digressing upon the habits of birds or fish,
the influence of tides and currents, the changes of sky and wind. All
natural laws are fascinating to him--inspiring his imagination and
uplifting his spirit--and it is these things, never politics or
business, which he discusses in his hours of freedom. He himself
supervises the planting and harvesting and slaughtering here and on his
other farm at Franklin--the family homestead--even when obliged to be
absent, or even when temporarily residing in Washington and hard pressed
with the cares of his office as Secretary of State.
Those painters who include a parrot in the portrait of some fine
frivolous lady do so to heighten their interpretation of character. We
all betray our natures, by the creatures we instinctively gather about
us. One might know that Jefferson at Monticello would select high-bred
saddle horses as his companions; that Cardinal Richelieu would find no
pet so soothing, so alluring, as a soft-stepping cat; that Charles I
would select the long-haired spaniel. So it is entirely in the picture
that of all the beasts brought under human yoke, that great oxen, slow,
solemn, strong, would appeal to the man whose searching eyes were never
at rest except when they swept a wide horizon; whose mind found its
deepest satisfaction in noble languages, the giant monuments of
literature and art, and whose soul best stretched its wings beside the
limitless sea and under the limitless sky. Webster was fond of all
animal life; he felt himself part of its free movement. Guinea hens,
peacocks, ducks, flocks of tamed wild geese, dogs, horses--these were
all part of the Marshfield place, but there was within the breast of the
owner a special responsiveness to great herds of cattle, and especially
fine oxen, the embodiment of massive power. So fond was he of these
favorite beasts of his, that often on his arrival home he would fling
his bag into the hall without even entering the house, and hasten to the
barn to see that they were properly tied up for the night. As he once
said to his little son, as they both stood by the stalls and he was
feeding the oxen with ears of corn from an unhusked pile lying on the
barn floor: "I would rather be here than in the Senate," adding, with
his famous smile, "I think it is better company." So we may be sure as
we walk in our retrospect about the farm with him--he never speaks of it
as an "estate" but always as a farm--he will linger longest where the
Devon oxen, the Alderneys, Herefordshire, and Ayrshire are grazing, and
that the eyes which Carlyle likened to anthracite furnaces will glow and
soften. Twenty years from now he will gaze out upon his oxen once again
from the window before which he has asked to be carried, as he lies
waiting for death. Weariness, disease, and disappointment have weakened
the elasticity of his spirit, and as they pass--his beloved oxen,
slowly, solemnly--what procession of the years passes with them! Years
of full living, of generous living; of deep emotions; of glory; years of
ambition; of bereavement; of grief. It is all to pass--these happy days
at Marshfield; the wife he so fondly cared for; the children he so
deeply cherished. Sycophants are to fill, in a measure, the place of
friends, the money which now flows in so freely is to entangle and
ensnare him; the lofty aspiration which now inspires him is to
degenerate into a presidential ambition which will eat into his soul.
But to-day let us, as long as we may, see him as he is in the height of
his powers. Let us walk with him under the trees which he planted. Those
large elms, gracefully silhouetted against the house, were placed there
with his own hands at the birth of his son Edward and his daughter
Julia, and he always refers to them gently as "brother" and "sister." To
plant a tree to mark an event was one of his picturesque customs--an
unconscious desire, perhaps, to project himself into the future. I am
quite sure, as we accompany him, he will expatiate on the improvement in
the soil which he has effected; that he will point out eagerly not only
the domestic but the wild animals about the place; and that he will
stand for a few moments on the high bluff overlooking the sea and the
marshes and let the wind blow through his dark hair. He is carefully
dressed--he always dresses to fit the occasion--and to-day, as he stands
in his long boots reaching to the knee and adorned with a tassel, his
bell-crowned beaver hat in his hand, and in his tight pantaloons and
well-cut coat--a magnificent specimen of virile manhood--the words of
Lanier, although written at a later date, and about marshes far more
lush than these New England ones, beat upon our ears:
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"Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea?
Somehow my soul seems suddenly free
From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,
By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn."
On the way back he will show us the place where three of his favorite
horses are buried, for he does not sell the old horses who have done him
good service, but has them buried "with the honors of war"--that is,
standing upright, with their halters and shoes on. Above one of them he
has placed the epitaph:
"Siste Viator!
Viator te major his sistit."
I do not know if, as we return to the house where already a fresh group
of visitors has arrived, he will pause by a corner of the yard set off
by an iron fence. He has chosen this spot as the place where he shall
lie, and here, in time, are to repose under the wide and simple vault
of sky the wife and children whose going before is to bring such
desolation. It is a place supremely fitting for that ample spirit which
knew for its own the nobility of large spaces, and the grandeur of
repose.
The life of Daniel Webster is one of the most dramatic and touching of
any of our great men. He was an orator of such solid thought and chaste
eloquence that even now, without the advantage of the marvelously rich
and flexible voice and the commanding presence that made each word burn
like a fire, even without this incalculable personal interpretation, his
speeches remain as a permanent part of our literature, and will so long
as English oratory is read. He was a brilliant lawyer--the foremost of
his day--and his statesmanship was of equal rank. In private life he was
a peculiarly devoted and tender son, husband, father, and friend. That
he should have become saddened by domestic losses and somewhat vitiated
by flattery were, perhaps, inevitable. He was bitterly condemned--more
bitterly by his contemporaries than by those who now study his words and
work--for lowering his high standard in regard to slavery. It is
impossible to refute the accusation, at the end of his life, of a
carelessness approaching unscrupulousness in money matters. His personal
failings, which were those of a man of exceptional vitality, have been
heavily--too heavily--emphasized. He ate and drank and spent money
lavishly; he had a fine library; he loved handsome plate and good
service and good living. He was generous; he was kind. That he was
susceptible to adulation and, after the death of his first wife, drifted
into associations less admirable than those of his earlier years, are
the dark threads of a woof underrunning a majestic warp. He adored his
country with a fervor that savors of the heroic, and when he said,
"There are no Alleghanies in my politics," he spoke the truth. The
intense passion for the soil which animated him at Marshfield was only a
fragment of that higher passion for his country--feeling never tainted
by sectionalism or local prejudice. It was this profound love for the
Union, coupled with his surpassing gift of eloquence in expressing that
love and inspiring it in all who heard him, that distinguishes him for
all time.
There are other memorable things about Marshfield. Governor Edward
Winslow, who was sent to England to represent the Plymouth and
Massachusetts Bay Colonies, and whose son Josiah was the first native
Governor of the Colony, may both be called Marshfield men. Peregrine
White, the first white child born in this country, lies in the Winslow
Burying Ground. One of the most singular changes on our coast occurred
in this vicinity when in one night the "Portland Breeze" closed up the
mouth of the South River and four miles up the beach opened up the mouth
of the North River, making an entrance three quarters of a mile wide
between Third and Fourth Cliff.
These and many other men and events of Marshfield are properly given a
place in the history of New England, but the special glory of this spot
will always be that Daniel Webster chose to live, chose to die, and
chose to be buried under the vast vault of her skyey spaces, within the
sound of her eternal sea.
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