Cataclysmic adventures--On the trail of dazzling fortunes--
"Lovely, but reprehensible Madham"--The throne saves the
artist--English robin redbreast--A sad and weary old man--
"Most indelicate woman I've ever known"--Perfectly chaste--
Something human stirred dimly--"She loves me; she loves
me!"--The Prince of Wales and half-a-crown--Portentous and
thundering title--Honest English simplicity--"The spirit
lacking"--Abelard, Isaac Newton, and Ruskin--A famous and
charming woman of genius--Deep and wide well of human
sympathy--The whooping-cough.
In the spring of 1854 we were visited by John O'Sullivan, his wife and
mother, and a young relative of theirs, Miss Ella Rogers. O'Sullivan
had been appointed Minister to the Court of Portugal, and was on his way
thither. He was a Democrat of old standing; had edited the Democratic
Review in 1837, and had made my father's acquaintance at that time
through soliciting contributions from him; later they became close
friends, and when my sister Una was born, he sent her a silver cup,
and was ever after called "Uncle John" in the family, and, also,
occasionally, "the Count"--a title which, I believe, had some warrant in
his ancestry. For, although an American, Uncle John was born at sea
off the coast of Spain, of an Irish father and a mother of aristocratic
connections or extraction (I am a little uncertain, I find, on this
point); I think her parents were Italian. Uncle John had all the
charming qualities of the nations mentioned, and none of their
objectionable ones; though this is not to say that he was devoid of
tender faults, which were, if anything, more lovable than his virtues.
Beneath a tranquil, comely, and gentle exterior burned all the fire
and romance of the Celt; his faith and enthusiasm in "projects" knew no
bounds; he might be deceived and bankrupted a hundred times, and
would toe the mark the next time with undiminished confidence. He was
continually, and in the quietest way, having the most astonishing and
cataclysmic adventures; he would be blown up, as it were, by a dynamite
explosion, and presently would return from the sky undisturbed, with
only a slight additional sparkle in his soft eyes, and with the lock of
hair that fell gracefully over his forehead only a trifle disordered.
The most courteous and affectionate of men, with the most yielding and
self-effacing manners, he had the spirit of a paladin, and was afraid of
nothing. He would empty his pockets--or if, as too often happened, they
were already empty, he would pledge his credit to help a friend out of
a hole; and, on the other hand, he was always hot upon the trail of
a dazzling fortune, which, like Emerson's Forerunners, never was
overtaken. It would not long have availed him, had it been otherwise,
for never was there a Monte Cristo who lavished wealth as O'Sullivan
habitually did in anticipation, and would undoubtedly have done in
fact had the opportunity been afforded him. He was gifted with a low,
melodious, exquisitely modulated voice, and a most engaging and winning
manner, and when he set out to picture the simple and easy methods
whereby he proposed to make millions, it was next to impossible to
resist him. He was like a beautiful, innocent, brilliant child, grown
up, endowed with an enchanter's wand, which was forever promising all
the kingdoms of the earth to him, but never (as our modern phrase is)
delivered the goods. He regarded my father as a king of men, and he had,
times without number, been on the very edge of making him, as well as
himself, a multifold millionaire. However, President Pierce did what he
could for him by giving him the Portuguese mission (after first offering
it to my father), and O'Sullivan did excellent work there. But he became
interested--abstractly--in some copper-mines in Spain, which, as he
clearly demonstrated, could be bought for a song, and would pay a
thousand per cent, from the start. Partly to gratify him, and partly
with the hope of at least getting his money back, my father finally, in
1858 or 1859, advanced him ten thousand dollars to finance the scheme. I
saw the dear old gentleman, a generation later, in New York; he had the
same clear, untroubled, tranquil face as of old; his hair, though
gray, was as thick and graceful as ever; his manner was as sweet and
attractive; but though, in addition to his other accomplishments, he had
become an advanced spiritualist, he had not yet coined into bullion his
golden imagination. He had forgotten the Spanish copper-mines, and I
took care not to remind him of them. Peace to his generous, ardent, and
loving soul!
Uncle John's wife was a good mate for him, in her own way as brilliant
and fascinating as he and with an unalterable belief in her husband's
destiny. She was a tall, slender woman, with kindling eyes, a lovely
smile, and a wonderful richness and vivacity of conversation; nor have
I ever since known so truly witty a woman. But she lacked the delightful
mellowness and tenderness for which Uncle John was so remarkable.
The mother, Madame O'Sullivan, as she was called, was a type of the
finegrained, gently bred aristocrat, every outline softened and made
gracious by the long lapse of years through which she had lived. She sat
like a picture of reverend but still animated age, with white, delicate
lace about her pale cheeks and dark, kindly, weary eyes, and making a
frost-work over her silvery hair. As for Miss Ella Rogers, it is with
some embarrassment that I refer to her; inasmuch as I fell violently in
love with her at first sight, and I have reason to think that she never
fully appreciated or adequately responded to my passion, though, at the
time, I was nearly one-third of her age--she being five-and-twenty. She
was a dark and lively beauty, thoroughly self-possessed, and versed in
social accomplishments, and gifted with dramatic talent. She afterwards
made a great impression in the court of the Portuguese monarch, and more
than once the King himself chose her as his partner in the ball. Reports
of these gayeties came to my ears; and I found the other day part of
a letter which I addressed to her, remonstrating against these royal
flirtations. It is written in pencil, upon the blue office-paper of
the consulate, and I can recall distinctly the small, indignant boy and
knight-errant, sitting at the desk opposite his hugely diverted father,
and beginning his epistle thus: "Lovely, but reprehensible Madham!"
I suspect that I consulted my father as to the spelling of the second
adjective, for it shows signs of having been overhauled; but after that
my feelings became too strong for me, and the remainder of the letter is
orthographically so eccentric that it was probably cast aside and a copy
made of it. But the rough draught, by some inconceivable chance, was
kept, and turns up now, after half a century, with a strange thread of
pathos woven by time into the texture of its absurdity. Poor, little,
lovely reprehensible Madham! Her after-career was not a happy one.
These agreeable persons filled our stuccoed villa full, and gave
poignant addition to the quiet, gray beauty of that English spring. A
year or so later, when my mother's health compelled her to escape to a
warmer climate from fog-ridden Liverpool, she went with my sisters to
Lisbon, where the O'Sullivans were by that time established, and spent
several months with them, and saw all the splendors of the naive but
brilliant little court of Dom Pedro V. She brought home a portfolio
of etchings presented to her, and done by his youthful Majesty; which
indicate that his throne, little as he cared for it, preserved him from
the mortification of failing as an artist.
Early in the winter of the following year (1855), Mr. James Buchanan,
appointed Minister to the Court of St. James, found his way to my
father's retreat in Rock Park. The English winter was a mild affair
compared with our recent experiences of the arctic snows of Lenox; there
was no coasting, and not much snow-balling; but we had the pleasure of
making friends with the English robin-redbreast, a most lovable little
creature, who, every morning, hopped confidingly on our window-sill and
took bread-crumbs almost from our hands. The old American diplomatist
and President that was to be (though he vehemently disclaimed any such
possibility) distracted our attention from robin for a day or two.
He had the aspect, perhaps cultivated for political and democratic
purposes, of a Pennsylvania farmer; he was, I believe, born on a farm in
Franklin County, in that State, at the beginning of the last decade of
the eighteenth century. He was tall and ungainly in figure, though he
bore himself with a certain security and dignity; his head was high
and thinly covered with gray hair; he carried it oddly, a little on
one side; it was said at the time that this was due to his having once
attempted suicide by cutting his throat. His visage--heavy, long, and
noticeable--had the typical traits of the American politician of that
epoch; his eyes were small, shrewd, and twinkling; there was a sort of
professional candor in his bearing, but he looked like a sad and weary
old man. He talked somewhat volubly to my father, who kept him going by
a question now and then, as his way generally was with visitors. There
was a flavor of rusticity in his speech; he was not a man of culture or
polish, though unquestionably of great experience of the world. He was
dressed in a wide-skirted coat of black broadcloth, and wore a white
choker put on a little askew. The English, who were prone to be critical
of our representatives, made a good deal of fun of Mr. Buchanan, and
told anecdotes about him which were probably exaggerated or apocryphal.
It was alleged, for example, that, speaking of the indisposition of a
female relative of his, he had observed that it was due to the severity
of the English climate. "She never enjoyed delicate health at home," he
had declared; "in fact, she was always one of the most indelicate women
I've ever known." And it was asserted that he had been admonished by
the Lord High Chamberlain, or by the Gold Stick-in-Waiting, for
expectorating upon the floor of her Majesty's palace at a levee. Such
ribaldries used to be popular in English mouths concerning American
visitors before the war; they were all of similar tenor. Mrs. Abbott
Lawrence was described as having bought a handsome shawl at a shop
on Lord Street, in Liverpool, and to have walked down that populous
thoroughfare with her new purchase on her shoulders, ignorant that
it bore the legend, inscribed on a white card, which the salesman had
neglected to remove, "Perfectly chaste." The same lady was reported as
saying, in asking an invitation to a ball on behalf of Mrs. Augustus
Peabody, of Boston, "I assure you, on our side of the water, Mrs.
Peabody is much more accustomed to grant favors than to ask them." Such
anecdotes seem to bear upon them the stamp of the British manufacturer.
There would not seem to be much harm in them, yet it is such things
that sometimes interfere most acutely with the entente cordials between
nations. We had another glimpse of Mr. Buchanan, in London, about a year
later, and he then remarked to my mother, indirectly referring to such
reports, that the Queen had treated him very kindly. For the present, he
faded from the Rock Park horizon, and we returned to the robin; nor have
I been able to understand how it happened that he made so distinct an
impression upon my memory. But a child's memory is unaccountable, both
in what it loses and in what it retains.
One Sunday forenoon, when it was not too cold for the young folks to
be swinging on that gate which has been mentioned, and the elders were
in-doors, enjoying the holiday in their own way, we descried an old
gentleman approaching up the winding street. As he drew nearer he
presented rather a shabby, or, at least, rusty appearance. His felt hat
was not so black as it had been; his coat was creased and soiled; his
boots needed a blacking. He swung a cane as he stumped along, and there
was a sort of faded smartness in his bearing and a knowingness in
his grim old visage, indicating some incongruous familiarity with the
manners of the great world. He came to a halt in front of the house,
and, after quizzing it for a moment, went up the steps and beat a
fashionable tattoo with the knocker.
Summoned in-doors soon afterwards, we found this questionable personage
sitting in the drawing-room. His voice was husky, but modulated to the
inflections of polite breeding; he used a good many small gestures, and
grinned often, revealing the yellow remains of his ancient teeth; he
laughed, too, with a hoarse sound in his throat. There was about him
an air of determined cheerfulness and affability, though between the
efforts the light died down in his wrinkled old eyes and the lines of
his face sagged and deepened. He offered to kiss my sisters, but they
drew back; he took my hand in his own large, dry one with its ragged
nails and swollen joints. At length he inveigled my younger sister to
his knee, where she sat gazing unflinchingly and solemnly into him with
that persistence which characterizes little girls of four or five who
are not quite sure of their ground. Her smooth, pink-and-white cheeks
and unwinking eyes contrasted vividly with his seamed yellowness and
blinking grin; for a long time he coquetted at her, and played peep-bo,
without disturbing her gravity, making humorous side comments to the
on-lookers meanwhile. There was a ragged and disorderly mop of gray
hair on his head, which showed very dingy beside the clear auburn of
the child's. One felt a repulsion from him, and yet, as he chatted and
smirked and acted, there was a sort of fascination in him, too. Some
original force and fire of nature still glowed and flickered in his
old carcass; something human stirred dimly under the crust of
self-consciousness and artificiality. Rose's adamantine seriousness
finally relaxed in a faint smile, upon which he threw up his hands,
emitted a hoarse cackle of triumph, and exclaimed, "There--there it is!
I knew I'd get it; she loves me--she loves me!" He then permitted her to
slip down from his knee and withdraw to her mother, and resumed the talk
which our entrance had interrupted. It was chiefly about people of whom
we youngsters knew nothing--though our ignorance only argued ourselves
unknown, for he named persons all famous in their day. He had seen
George IV., Napoleon, Talleyrand, Wellington; he had been intimate with
Coleridge, De Quincey, Wordsworth, Lamb, Monk Lewis; he was a sort of
elder brother or deputy uncle to Tennyson, Browning, Dickens; he
had quaffed mountain-dew with Walter Scott and had tramped the moors
shoulder to shoulder with Kit North; the courts of Europe were his
familiar stamping-grounds; he had the nobility and gentry at his
finger-ends; he was privileged, petted, and sought after everywhere; if
there were any august door we wished to enter, any high-placed personage
we desired to approach, any difficult service we wanted rendered, he was
the man to help us to our object. Who, then, was he? He has long been
utterly forgotten; but he was well known, or notorious, during the first
half of the last century; he was such a character as could flourish only
in England. His name was William Jerdan; he was born in 1785, and was
now, therefore, about seventy years old. He had started in life
poor, with no family distinction, but with some more or less useful
connections either on the father's or the mother's side. He had somehow
got an English education, and he had pursued his career on the basis of
his native wits, his indomitable effrontery and persistence, his
faculty of familiarity, his indifference to rebuffs, his lack of shame,
conscience, and morality. How he found the means to live nobody could
tell, but he uniformly lived well and had enjoyed the good things of the
world. After maintaining his ground during the first twenty or thirty
years, it had probably been easier for him to forge along afterwards,
for he could impose upon the new generation with his stories of success
in the former one. Uncouth and ugly though he was by nature, the
external polish and trick of good form which he had acquired, and, no
doubt, some inner force of social genius in him, had influenced men
to tolerate and often to like him, and had given him extraordinary
good-fortune with women. He had not only been twice married, and had
many children born in wedlock, but his intrigues and liaisons had been
innumerable, and they had by no means been confined to the lower ranks
of society. That he was a practised liar there can be no doubt, but he
had the long memory which the proverb recommends to liars, and he was
so circumspect that few of his claims and pretensions lacked solid basis
enough to make them pass current in a hurrying and heedless world. Now,
however, in his age, he was wellnigh at the end of his tether; what we
should call his "pull" was losing its efficiency; he was lapsing to the
condition where he would offer to introduce a man to the Prince of Wales
or to Baron Rothschild, and then ask him for the loan of five pounds--or
half a crown, as the case might be. He was a character for Thackeray. He
haunted my father for a year or two more, and then vanished I know not
where.
Poor, dingy old Jerdan purported to be himself a literary man,
though the only thing of his that I ever heard of was a work in
four pretentious volumes of "wretched twaddle"--as my father called
them--which he published under the title of My Autobiography. It
contained a long array of renowned names, with passages appended of
perfectly empty and conventional comment.
But other men crossed our path who had much sounder claims to renown in
literature; among them Samuel Warren, author of half a dozen books, two
of which are still sometimes heard of--_The Diary of a Late Physician_
and _Ten Thousand a Year_. He lived upon the reputation which these
brought him, though they were published, the first as long ago as 1830
and the other only ten years later. Like many other authors, he fancied
himself capable of things far better than belonged to his true metier;
and among the books in my father's library is one called _The Moral and
Intellectual Development of the Present Age_--a thin volume, despite
its portentous and thundering title--it carries the gloss, in Warren's
handwriting, "the fruit of many a long year's reflection." So does every
light comedian imagine that he can play Hamlet. Of Warren himself I
barely recall a slight, light figure with a sharp nose and a manner
lacking in repose; indeed, he was very much like a light comedian in
light comedy, eager to hold the centre of the stage, full of small
movements and remarks, and--which more interested us children--with
a gift for turning himself into other people by slight contortions
of countenance and alterations of voice. The histrionic abilities of
Dickens probably affected the social antics of many writers at this
epoch. Warren also told stories in a vivacious and engaging manner,
though, as they were about things and people out of the sphere of his
younger auditors, I remember only the way of the telling, not what was
told. I recalled, later, his anecdotes of Kit North, who was a friend of
his, on account of the contrast between the stalwart proportions of that
old worthy and the diminutive physique of the novelist; they must have
looked, together, like a bear and a monkey. Warren was born in Wales,
though whether of Welsh ancestry I know not.
When we saw him he was only a trifle over five-and-forty years of age,
so his famous books must have been written when he was hardly more than
a boy.
As for Layard, eminent in his time for his work in Nineveh and Babylon,
and afterwards as a statesman, he did not, I think, come to Rock Park,
nor am I sure that I ever saw him. And yet it seems to me that I have
the picture in my mind of a vigorous, frank, agreeable personage who
was he; not a large man, still less a handsome one, but full of life,
manliness, and honest English simplicity. He was at this time, like so
many of his countrymen, very anxious concerning the Crimean War, then in
its first stages, and vehemently opposed to the policy which had brought
it about, for, up to that time, England and Russia had been on friendly
terms, and Layard could see no promising or useful future for the
Turk. My father shared his views, and he wrote the following passage
in commenting upon the general European situation of that day and the
prospects for England. It has never been printed, because it stood only
for the sentiment of the moment, but may be opportunely quoted now that
the aspect of European politics shows symptoms of soon undergoing vital
changes. "The truth is," wrote my father, "there is a spirit lacking in
England which we in America do not lack; and for the want of it she will
have to resign a foremost position among the nations, even if there
were not enough other circumstances to compel her to do so. Her good
qualities are getting out of date; at all events, there should be
something added to them in the present stage of the world." England has
a good deal changed since those words were written, and the changes have
probably been mainly for the better, though all the important ones have
caused our old mother discomfort and embarrassment. The medicine of
a new age, the subtle infiltration of anti-insular ideas, the slow
emergence of the democracy have given her many qualms, but they are
wholesome ones. Her best and most cultivated minds are now on the side
of progress, instead of holding by the past, and, should the pinch come,
these may avail to save her better than martinet generals or unwieldy
fleets. The "spirit lacking" in her in 1855 may, perhaps, be found in
them. Whether the spirit in question be as conspicuous with us as it
used to be is another matter.
Henry Bright was still our most frequent visitor, and he brought us the
news and gossip of the world. It was in 1855 that Millais married the
lady who had been Mrs. Ruskin. English society was much fluttered
by this event, and many of Ruskin's friends cut him for a time in
consequence of it. Ruskin was a man of a rare type, not readily
understood in England, where a man is expected, in the fundamental
qualities of his nature at least, to be like everybody else. There are
two noted characters in history with whom, in some respects, he might be
compared, Isaac Newton being one and Abelard the other. All three were
men in whom, owing to causes either natural or accidental, the intellect
was able to absorb all the energies of the nature. The intellect thus
acquired extraordinary power and brilliance, and appropriated to itself,
in a sort of image, as it were, the qualities which no longer possessed
manifestation on the material plane. Nothing out of the way would,
therefore, be noticed, unless or until some combination of circumstances
should bring the exceptional condition into every-day light. This
happened with Ruskin, and he was, of course, unable to regard the
matter in the same light as his critics did. He viewed his wife's
disinclination towards him by the light of mere cold logic; and the
reason his friends were alienated from him was, not that her grounds
of objection to him were justifiable, but that Ruskin (according to the
common report of the time, as quoted by Mr. Bright) did not see why he
and she and Millais should discontinue their life in common as before.
Neither Millais nor Mrs. Ruskin would, of course, accede to this
proposition, and the divorce was accordingly obtained. Ruskin intended
simply to show magnanimity, and in the course of years this was
recognized and he was forgiven, just as we forgive a person for being
color-blind. In our present stage of civilization we must, in certain
matters, follow strict convention on peril of ostracism, and nothing
is less readily condoned in a man's conduct than any suspicion of
complaisance. I did not see either Ruskin or Millais until 1879 or 1880,
of which beholding I will speak when the time comes.
But we had with us for a short time a famous and charming woman of
genius, who made me for a season forget my infatuation for the beautiful
Ella Rogers. This was Charlotte Cushman. The acquaintance then begun was
renewed in Italy, and maintained till the end of her life. Such is the
power of the spiritual in nature and character to dominate and even
render invisible the physical, that I was astonished, in after years, to
hear Charlotte referred to as a woman of plain or unattractive features.
To me, won from the first by the expression, the voice, the sphere, the
warmth, strength, and nobility of her presence, she had always seemed
one of the handsomest as well as most delightful of women. She was in
her fortieth year, but she had already announced her purpose of retiring
from the stage. Some of her best work was done in the following twenty
years. Critics might call her face plain, or ugly, if they chose, but
there was no doubt that its range of expression was vast and poignant,
that it could reflect with immense energy the thoughts of the mind, and
could radiate the very soul of tragedy. Her figure was tall and superb
and her carriage stately without any stiffness, and appalling though she
was as Lady Macbeth or Meg Merrilies, in our little drawing-room she was
only simple, sincere, gentle, and winning. Born actress though she was,
her horizon was by no means restricted to things histrionic; she talked
well on many subjects, and was at no loss for means to entertain even so
small and inexperienced a person as myself. I had never seen a theatre,
and did not know what an actress was, but I loved her, and she was good
to me. It was not the interest of the stories she told me, so much as
the personal influence that went with them, that entranced me. I was
sensible of her kindness, and of the hearty good-will with which she
bent her great and gracious self to the task of making me happy. That
wonderful array of tiny charms on her watch-chain was beautiful and
absorbing, owing less to anything intrinsic in themselves than to some
sparkling and lovable communication from their wearer. If a woman be
only large enough and vigorous enough to begin with, the stage seems to
develop her as nothing else could--to bring out the best in her. It was
perhaps the deep and wide well of human sympathy in Charlotte Cushman
that was at the bottom of her success in her profession, though, of
course, she was greatly aided by her mental and physical gifts. I
suppose there may be women now capable of being actresses as great as
she was, but the audience to call forth their latent powers and ambition
seems, just at present, to be lacking.
Our social diversions at Rock Park were interrupted, at about this
period, by the whooping-cough, which seized upon all of us together,
and I well remember my father almost climbing up the wall of the room in
some of his paroxysms; but he treated it all as a joke, and was always
ready to laugh as soon as he got through coughing. It left no ill
effects except upon my mother, who had bronchial trouble which, as I
have intimated, finally led to the breaking-up of our household. She was
not made for England.