MIGRATION NORTHWARD—ACCLIMATION—ALBERT EDWARD, PRINCE OF WALES, IN NEW
YORK—POLITICAL PORTENTS
ONE who had known my husband well for fifty years, wrote of him soon
after his translation: “More than any other man I ever knew, he had a
genius for friendship.”
This testimony is amply supported by the fact that he kept, to his
journey’s end, the friends whose loving confidence he gained during
the five years of his Charlotte pastorate. Those who loved him in his
youth loved him to the end—or so many of them as remained to see the
beautiful close of his long day.
We left our Parsonage home and the parish, which was our first love,
laden with proofs of the deep affection inspired by devoted service in
behalf of a united constituency, and the rare personal gifts of the man
who suffered, in the parting, a wrench as sharp as that which made the
separation a grief to each member of the flock he was leaving. It was a
just tribute to his integrity of purpose and conscientiousness that the
purity of his motives in deciding upon the step were never questioned.
Leading men in the church said openly that they could not have hoped to
keep him, after his talents and his ability to fill worthily a wider
field were recognized in the world outlying this section of the Great
Vineyard. They had foreseen that the parting must come, and that before
long. He was a growing man, and the sphere they offered was narrow.
It was in no spirit of Christian philosophy that I dismantled the nest
among the oaks, and packed my Lares and Penates with a fair show of
cheerfulness. Inly, I was in high revolt for a full week after the die
was cast. The final acceptance of the inevitable, and the steadfast
setting of my face Northward, ensued upon the persuasion that the one
and only thing for a sensible, God-fearing woman to do was to make the
very best of what no human power could avert.
It is a family saying, based upon the assertion of my eldest daughter,
that “if mother were set down in the middle of the Desert of Sahara,
and made to comprehend that she must spend the rest of her days there,
she would, within ten minutes, begin to expatiate upon the many
advantages of a dry climate as a residential region.”
By the time we stayed our flight in Richmond, where we spent our
Christmas, I took from the worn and harassed man of the hour the burden
of explanation and defence of the reasons for tearing ourselves up
by the roots and transplanting the tender vine into what some of our
best wishers called, “alien soil.” I had worked myself into an honest
defender of the Middle States in contradistinction to “Yankee land,”
before we departed, bag, baggage, and baby, for the new home.
Mr. Terhune had preached twice in Newark, in December, after formally
accepting the call. We removed to that city in February of 1859.
With the Saharan spirit in full flow, I met the welcoming “people”;
settled in the house we bought in a pleasant quarter of the
growing city—then claiming a population of less than seventy-five
thousand—installed white servants; received and returned calls, and
was, for the first time in my life, homesick at heart for three months.
In the recollection of the eighteen years that succeeded that period of
blind rebellion against the gentle leading which was, for us, wisdom
and loving-kindness throughout, I write down the confession in shame
and confusion of face, and abasement of soul.
I stay the course of the narrative at this point to record, devoutly
and gratefully, that never had pastor and pastor’s wife, in any section
of our land, a parish in which “pleasant places” did more richly
abound. I would write down, yet more emphatically and thankfully, the
amazing fact that, in the dozen-and-a-half years of my dwelling among
them, I never had a word of unkind criticism of myself and my ways; not
a remark that could wound or offend was ever addressed to me.
I wish I might have that last paragraph engraved in golden capitals and
set to the everlasting credit of that Ideal Parish! To this hour, I
turn instinctively in times of joy and of sorrow, as to members of the
true household of faith, to the comparatively small band of the once
large congregation who are left alive upon the earth.
For eighteen years I walked up the central aisle of the church, as
I might tread the halls and chambers of my father’s house in that
far Southern town, with the consciousness that we were surrounded by
an atmosphere of affectionate appreciation, at once comforting and
invigorating.
All this—and I understate, rather than exaggerate, the real state of
circumstance and feeling I am trying to depict—was the more surprising,
because I went to this people young, and with little experience as a
clergyman’s wife. In Charlotte, I had, as we have seen, done no “church
work.” I was petted and made much of, in consideration of my position
as the wife of the idolized pastor, and my newness to the duties of
country housekeeping and the nursery. In Newark, I was gradually to
discover that I could not shirk certain obligations connected with
parish and city charities. The logic of events—never the monitions of
friends and parishioners—opened my eyes to the truth. When, at length,
I took charge of a girls’ Bible Class, and, some years after, worked
up the Infant Class from tens to hundreds, there was much expression
of unfeigned gratification and eager rallying to my help, not an
intimation of relief that I “had, at last, seen my way clear to the
performance of what everybody else had expected of a minister’s wife.”
I have never had a higher compliment than was paid me by the
invitation, a dozen years back, to address the Alumni of Union
Theological Seminary in New York City upon the subject of “Ministers’
Wives.”
I took occasion, in the presence of that grave and reverend assembly of
distinguished theologues, to pay a brief tribute, as strong as words
could make it, to that Ideal Parish. I could not withhold it then. I
cannot keep it back now. I believe my experience in this regard to be
highly exceptional. More’s the pity and the shame!
Five children were born to us in those happy, busy years. Each was
adopted lovingly by the people, so far as prideful affection and
generous deeds implied adoption. We were all of one family.
Returning to the direct line of my narrative—the spring of 1860 found
us well, at work, and contented. I had good servants, kindly neighbors,
and a growing host of congenial acquaintances. Our proximity to New
York was an important factor in the lives of both of us, bringing us,
as it did, within easy reach of the best libraries and shops in the
country, and putting numberless means of entertainment and education at
our very door. There were two babies by now—healthy, happy, bright—in
every way thoroughly satisfactory specimens of infant humanity. In
the matter of children’s nurses, I have been extraordinarily blessed
among American women. In the twenty-one years separating the birth of
our elder boy from the day when the younger was released from nursery
government, I had but three of these indispensable comforts. Two
married after years of faithful service; the third retired upon an
invalid’s pension. All were Irish by birth. After much experience in,
and more observation of, the Domestic Service of these United States,
I incline to believe that, as a rule, we draw our best material from
Celtic emigrant stock.
So smoothly ran the sands of life that I recall but one striking
incident in the early part of 1860. That was the visit of the Prince of
Wales to this country. We witnessed the passage of the long procession
that received and escorted him up-town, to his quarters at the, then,
new and fashionable hostelry—the Fifth Avenue Hotel. My husband went
down to the Battery to see the princeling’s review of the regiments
drawn up in line before him, as he rode from end to end of the
parade-ground.
Joining us at the window, from which we had a splendid view of the
pageant, the critic, who was an accomplished horseman, reported
disdainfully that “the boy was exceedingly awkward. He had no seat to
speak of, leaning forward, until his weak chin was nearly on a line
with the horse’s ears, and sticking his feet out stiffly on each side.”
Our impression of the imperial youth was not more agreeable. He sat
back in the open coach, “hunched” together in an ungainly heap, looking
neither to the right nor the left, evincing no consciousness of the
existence of the shouting throngs that lined the pavements ten deep,
other than by raising, with the lifeless precision of a mechanical toy,
the cocked hat he wore as part of the uniform of a British colonel.
There was a big ball the next night, at which gowns of fabulous prices
were sported, and reported by the newspapers, and Albert Edward flitted
on to his mother’s dominions of Canada, leaving not a ripple in the
ocean of local and national happenings.
That ocean was stilling and darkening with the brooding of a
threatening storm. Newspapers bristled with portents and denunciations;
demagogues bellowed themselves hoarse in parks and from stumps;
torchlight processions displayed new and startling features.
“So much for so little!” sighed I, upon our return from a lookout
at the nearest corner, commanding long miles of marching men. “It
was ingenious and amusing; but what a deal of drilling those embryo
patriots must have gone through to do it so well! And for what? The
President will be elected, as other Presidents have been, and as maybe
a hundred others will be, and there the farce will end. Does it pay to
amuse themselves so very hard?”
“If we could be sure that it _would_ end there!” answered my husband,
with unexpected gravity. “The sky is red and lowering in the South.
Between politicians, and the freedom of the press to play with all
sorts of explosives, there is no telling what the rabble may do.”