established himself and his family there in the woods and on the
shore of a beautiful sheet of water--surroundings congenial to his
fancy and his restrained ambition. About ten years of his life, in
periods of two or three years, passed as a blank in literary labor;
and during the remainder of the time, frequent and long interruptions
broke the line of his efforts. Such an experience at the opening of
his career would have been unendurable without some absorbing pursuit;
and having a favorable site for gardening and an unfailing love of
nature, he took up the study of horticulture. By 1859 it had become his
chief occupation--one that filled happily several years, and to the
last occupied more or less time according to the amount of literary
work he could do. His labors were made fruitful to the public in a
professorship at the Bussey Institution, the publication of “The Book
of Roses” in 1866, the presidency of the Massachusetts Horticultural
Society, and in careful experiments extending over ten or twelve years
in the hybridization of lilies and other flowers. Among the most noted
of his floral creations is the magnificent _lilium Parkmanni_, named
by the English horticulturist who purchased the stock. Mr. Parkman’s
summer home, at the Pond, was a plain but sunny and cheerful house,
in the midst of a garden sloping down to the water; his study window
looked to the north, the light least trying to sensitive eyes. The
charming site, the landscapes about, the greenhouse and grounds in
summer full of rare flowers, were the chief interests of the place;
for his library and principal workshop were in Boston. As much exercise
was necessary to him, he was a familiar figure in this pretty suburb of
the city, either riding on horseback, rowing on the pond, or walking in
the fields and woods.
But in the midst of all these discouraging delays and extraneous
occupations, his literary aims were not forgotten; he pushed on, when
he could, his investigations and composition by the help of readers and
an amanuensis. Those who are unacquainted with the labor of historic
research can scarcely imagine the difficulty, extent, and tedium
of his investigations. The reader can glance over a book and pick
out the needle he seeks in the haystack; but he who uses another’s
eyes must examine carefully the entire stack in order not to miss a
possible needle. Mr. Parkman’s ground has been won inch by inch. On
finishing “The Conspiracy of Pontiac,” he had extended his first plan
of writing the Seven Years’ War, and determined to take up the entire
subject of French colonization in North America; and instead of making
a continuous history, to write a series of connected narratives. He
therefore continued, and extended, his journeys for investigation, in
this country, in Canada, and in Europe; and by the help of readers and
copyists he selected and acquired the necessary documents. But even
with all the aid possible, the preparation of the first volume of the
series consumed fourteen years. “The Pioneers of France in the New
World” appeared in 1865, “The Jesuits in North America” in 1867, “La
Salle and the Discovery of the Great West” in 1869, “The Old Régime in
Canada” in 1874, “Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV.” in 1877,
“Montcalm and Wolfe” in 1884.
Mr. Parkman’s winter home, where he did the most of his work, was in
the house of his sister, Miss Parkman, at 50 Chestnut Street, Boston--a
quiet locality on the western slope of Beacon Hill. His study was
a plain, comfortable, front room at the top of the house, with an
open fire, a small writing-table beside the window, and shelves of
books covering the walls. The most valuable of his treasures were
manuscript copies of both public and private documents. For the sake
of greater safety and more general usefulness he parted with some of
these manuscripts--gave a lot of _fac-simile_ maps to Harvard College,
and a collection of thirty-five large volumes to the Massachusetts
Historical Society. The latter embrace eight volumes of documents from
the Archives of Marine and Colonies and other archives of France,
relating to Canada, from 1670 to 1700; twelve volumes from the same
sources, from 1748 to 1763; four volumes from the Public Record Office
of London, from 1750 to 1760; one volume from the National Archives
of Paris, from 1759 to 1766; one volume from the British Museum, from
1751 to 1761; one volume of diverse letters to Bourlamaque by various
officers in Canada during the war of 1755-63; one volume of letters
to the same by Montcalm while in Canada (Montcalm had requested
Bourlamaque to burn them, but Mr. Parkman, fifteen years before he
could find them, believed in their existence, and finally discovered
them in a private collection of manuscripts); one volume of Montcalm’s
private letters to his wife and his mother, written while he was in
America--obtained from the present Marquis de Montcalm; and one volume
of Washington’s letters to Colonel Bouquet, from the British Museum.
The most recent publication, “Montcalm and Wolfe,” takes in twenty-six
of these volumes, besides a large lot of printed matter and notes made
at the sources of information. The above collection constitutes about
half of Mr. Parkman’s manuscripts. A considerable part of them cannot
be estimated by pages and volumes, being unbound notes and references
representing a vast amount of research. Two sets of copyists sent him
from France and England copies of the papers he designated.
Mr. Parkman’s experience offers a valuable and encouraging example in
the history of literature. On the one side he had poor health and
poor sight for a vast amount of labor; on the other he had money,
time, capacity, a tough, sinewy, physique, a resistant, calm, cheerful
temper, and an indomitable perseverance and ambition. As in some other
cases, his disabilities seem to have been negative advantages, if we
may judge by his productions; for his frequent illnesses, by retarding
his labors, increased his years and experience before production, and
forced the growth of departments of knowledge generally neglected by
students. He was led to give equal attention to observing nature,
studying men, and digesting evidence. His studies and manual labors
in horticulture and his practical familiarity with forest life and
frontier life quickened his sympathy with nature. His extensive travels
gave him a wide knowledge of life, manners, and customs, from the
wigwam to the palace. Far from being a recluse, he was, until his death
in 1893, a man of the world, often locked out of his closet and led
into practical and public interests (for six years he was President
of the St. Botolph Club of Boston, and for ten years one of the seven
members of the Corporation of Harvard University). He was naturally
a student of men, and a keen observer of character and motives.
His discouraging interruptions from literary work, while not often
stopping the above studies, forced upon him time for reflection, for
weighing the evidence he collected, and for perfecting the form of
his works. Doubtless human achievements do proceed from sources more
interior than exterior; but the circumstances of Mr. Parkman’s life
must have conduced to the realism, strength, and picturesqueness of
his descriptions; to the distinctness of his characters, their motives
and actions; to the thoroughness of his investigations; and to the
impartiality of judgment and the truth of perspective in his histories.
C. H. FARNHAM.
GOLDWIN SMITH
GOLDWIN SMITH
AT “THE GRANGE”
Beverly Street, though it lies in the heart of the city, is one of the
most fashionable quarters of Toronto. About the middle of its eastern
side a whole block is walled off from curious eyes by a high, blank
fence, behind which rises what seems a bit of primeval forest. The
trees are chiefly fir-trees, mossed with age, and sombre; and in the
midst of their effectual privacy, with sunny tennis-lawns spread out
before its windows, is The Grange. The entrance to the grounds is in
another street, Grange Road, where the fir-trees stand wide apart, and
the lawns stretch down to the great gates standing always hospitably
open. The house itself is an old-fashioned, wide-winged mansion of
red brick, low, and ample in the eaves, its warm color toned down by
the frosts of many Canadian winters to an exquisite harmony with the
varying greens which surround it. The quaint, undemonstrative doorway,
the heavy, dark-painted hall-door, the shining, massy knocker, and the
prim side-windows,--all savor delightfully of _United Empire Loyalist_
days. Just such fit and satisfactory architecture this as we have fair
chance of finding wherever the makers of Canada came to a rest from
their flight out of the angry, new-born republic. As the door opens
one enters a dim, roomy hall, full of soft brown tints and suggestion
of quiet, the polished floor made noiseless with Persian rugs. On the
right hand open the parlors, terminated by an octagonal conservatory.
The wing opposite is occupied by the dining-room and a spacious library.
The dining-room has a general tone of crimson and brown, and its walls
are covered with portraits in oil of the heroes of the Commonwealth.
Milton, Cromwell, Hampden, Pym, Vane, _et al._--they are all there,
gazing down severely upon the well-covered board. The abstemious host
serenely dines beneath that Puritan scrutiny; but to me it has always
seemed that a collection of the great cavaliers would look on with a
sympathy more exhilarating. From here a short passage leads to the
ante-room of the library, which, like the library itself, is lined
to the ceiling with books. At the further end of the library is the
fireplace, under a heavy mantel of oak, and near it stands a massive
writing-desk, of some light colored wood. A smaller desk, close by,
is devoted to the use of the gentleman who acts as librarian and
secretary. The ample windows are all on one side, facing the lawn;
and the centre of the room is held by a billiard-table, which, for the
most part, is piled with the latest reviews and periodicals. The master
of The Grange is by no means an assiduous player, though he handles
the cue with fair skill. In such a home as this, Mr. Goldwin Smith may
be considered to have struck deep root into Canadian soil; and as his
wife, whose bright hospitality gives The Grange its highest charm, is
a Canadian woman, he has every right to regard himself as identified
with Canada. In person, Mr. Smith is very tall, straight, spare; his
face keen, grave, almost severe; his iron-gray hair cut close; his
eyes restless, alert, piercing, but capable at times of an unexpected
gentleness and sweetness; his smile so agreeable that one must the
more lament its rarity. The countenance and manner are preëminently
those of the critic, the investigator, the tester. As he concerns
himself earnestly in all our most important public affairs, his general
appearance, through the medium of the Toronto _Grip_, our Canadian
_Punch_, has come to be by no means unfamiliar to the people of Canada.
In becoming a Canadian, Goldwin Smith has not ceased to be an
Englishman; he has also desired to become an American, by the way. He
holds his English audience through the pages of _The Contemporary_
and _The Nineteenth Century_, and he addresses Americans for some
weeks every year from a chair in Cornell University. In Canada he
chooses to speak from behind an extremely diaphanous veil--the _nom de
plume_ of “A Bystander”; and under this name he for some time issued
a small monthly (changed to a quarterly before its discontinuance),
which was written entirely by himself, and treated of current events
and the thought of the hour. That periodical has now been succeeded
by _The Week_, to which the Bystander has been a contributor since
the paper was founded. It were out of place to speak here of Goldwin
Smith’s career and work in England; it would be telling, too, what is
pretty widely known. In Canada his influence has been far deeper than
is generally imagined, or than, to a surface-glance, would appear. On
his first coming here he was unfairly and relentlessly attacked by
what was at the time the most powerful journal in Canada, the Toronto
_Globe_; and he has not lacked sharp but irregular antagonism ever
since. Somewhat relentless himself, as evinced by his attitude toward
the Irish and the Jews, and having always one organ or another in his
control, he has long ago wiped out his score against the _Globe_, and
inspired a good many of his adversaries with discretion. He devotes
all his energy and time, at least so far as the world knows, to work
of a more or less ephemeral nature; and when urged to the creation
of something permanent, something commensurate with his genius, he
is wont to reply that he regards himself rather as a journalist
than an author. He would live not by books, but by his mark stamped
on men’s minds. It does, indeed, at first sight, surprise one to
observe the meagreness of his enduring literary work, as compared
with his vast reputation. There is little bearing his name save the
volume of collected lectures and essays--chief among them the perhaps
matchless historical study entitled “The Great Duel of the Seventeenth
Century,”--and the keen but cold monograph on Cowper contributed to the
English Men-of-Letters. His visible achievement is soon measured, but
it would be hard to measure the wide-reaching effects of his influence.
Now, while a sort of conservatism is creeping over his utterances with
years, doctrines contrary to those he used so strenuously to urge seem
much in the ascendant in England. But in Canada he has found a more
plastic material into which, almost without either our knowledge or
consent, his lines have sunk deeper. His direct teachings, perhaps,
have not greatly prevailed with us. He has not called into being
anything like a Bystander party, for instance, to wage war against
party government, and other great or little objects of his attack. For
this his genius is not synthetic enough--it is too disintegrating. But
his influence pervades all parties, and has proved a mighty shatterer
of fetters amongst us--a swift solvent of many cast-iron prejudices.
He has opened, liberalized, to some extent deprovincialized, our
thought, and has convinced us that some of our most revered fetishes
were but feathers and a rattle after all. But he sees too many sides
of a question to give unmixed satisfaction to anybody. The Canadian
Nationalists, with whom he is believed to be in sympathy, owe him
both gratitude and a grudge. He has made plain to us our right to our
doctrines, and the rightness of our doctrines; he has made ridiculous
those who would cry “Treason” after us. But we could wish that he would
suffer us to indulge a little youthful enthusiasm, as would become
a people unquestionably young; and also that he would refrain from
showing us quite so vividly and persistently all the lions in our path.
We think we can deal with each as it comes against us. His words go far
to weaken our faith in the ultimate consolidation of Canada; he tends
to retard our perfect fusion, and is inclined to unduly exalt Ontario
at the expense of her sister Provinces. All these things trouble us, as
increasing the possibility of success for a movement just now being
actively stirred in England, and toward which Goldwin Smith’s attitude
has ever been one of uncompromising antagonism--that is, the movement
toward imperial federation.
Speaking of Mr. Smith and Canadian Nationalism, as the Nationalist
movement is now too big to fear laughter, I may mention the sad fate
of the first efforts to institute such a movement. A number of years
ago, certain able and patriotic young men in Toronto established a
“Canada First” party, and threw themselves with zeal into the work of
propagandizing. Mr. Smith’s cooperation was joyfully accepted, and he
joined the movement. But it soon transpired that it was the movement
which had joined him. In very fact, he swallowed the “Canada First”
party; and growing tired of propagandizing when he thought the time was
not ripe for it, and finding something else to do just then than assist
at the possibly premature birth of a nation, he let the busy little
movement fall to pieces. The vital germ, however, existed in every one
of the separate pieces, and has sprung up from border to border of the
land, till now it has a thousand centers, is clothed in a thousand
shapes, and is altogether incapable of being swallowed.
As I am writing for an American audience, it may not be irrelevant to
say, before concluding, that while Goldwin Smith is an ardent believer
in, and friend of, the American people, he has at the same time but
a tepid esteem for the chief part of American literature. He rather
decries all but the great humorists, for whom, indeed, his admiration
is unbounded. He has a full and generous appreciation for the genius of
Poe. But he misses entirely the greatness of Emerson, allows to Lowell
no eminence save as a satirist, and is continually asking, privately,
that America shall produce a book. As he has not, however, made this
exorbitant demand as yet in printer’s ink, and over his sign and seal,
perhaps we may be permitted to regard it as no more than a mild British
joke.
CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS.
FREDERICTON, N. B.
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN
EDMUND C. STEDMAN
IN NEW YORK AND AT “KELP ROCK”
New York is an ugly city, with only here and there a picturesque
feature. Still the picturesque exists, if it be sought for in remote
corners. When about to choose a permanent home, Mr. Stedman did not
exile himself to the distance at which alone such advantages are to be
obtained. For he may be said to be the typical literary man of his day,
in that he is the man of his epoch, of his moment--of the very latest
moment. There is that in his personality which gives him the air of
constantly pressing the electric button which puts him in relation with
the civilized activities of the world. He was born man of the world as
well as poet, with a sensitive response to his age and surroundings
which has enabled him to touch the life of the day at many divergent
points of contact. He owes to an equally rare endowment, to his talent
for leading two entirely separate lives, his success in maintaining
his social life free from the influences of his career as an active
business man. The broker is a separate and distinct person from the
writer and poet. The two, it is true, meet as one, on friendly terms,
on the street or at the club. But the man of Wall Street is entertained
with scant courtesy within the four walls of the poet’s house.
Once within these, Mr. Stedman’s true life begins. It is an ardent,
productive, intellectual life, only to be intruded upon with impunity
by the insistent demands of his social instincts. Mr. Stedman has the
genius of good-fellowship. His delight in men is only second to his
delight in books. How he has found time for the dispensing of his
numerous duties as host and friend is a matter of calculation which
makes the arithmetic of other people’s lives seem curiously at fault.
He has always possessed this talent for forcing time to give him twice
its measure. That expensive mode of illumination known as burning the
candle at both ends would probably be found to be the true explanation.
I have said that Mr. Stedman’s town house could not be characterized
as rich in picturesque external adjuncts. The street in which it
is situated--West Fifty-fourth--is of a piece with the prevailing
character of New York domestic architecture. It is a long stretch of
brown-stone houses, ranged in line, like a regiment of soldiers turned
into stone. But the impassive chocolate features, like some mask worn
by a fairy princess, conceal a most enchanting interior. Once within
the front door, the charm of a surprise awaits one. Color, warmth, and
grace greet the eye at the outset. If it be the poet’s gift to turn
the prose of life into poetry, it is certain that the same magical
art has here been employed to make household surroundings minister to
the æsthetic sense. There is a pervading harmony of tone and tints
throughout the house, the rich draperies, the soft-toned carpets, and
the dusk of the tempered daylight, are skillfully used as an effective
background to bring into relief the pictures, the works of art, and the
rare bits of bric-à-brac. One is made sensible, by means of a number
of clever devices, that in this home the arts and not the upholstery
are called upon to do the honors. These admirable results are due
almost entirely to the taste and skill of Mrs. Stedman, who possesses
an artist’s instinct for grouping and effect. She has also the keen
scent and the patience of the ardent collector. A tour of the house is
a passing in review of her triumphs, of trophies won at sales, bits
picked up in foreign travel, a purchase now and then of some choice
collection, either of glass or china, or prints and etchings. Among
the purchases has been that of a large and beautiful collection of
Venetian glass, whose delicate grace and iridescent glow make the
lower rooms a little museum for the connoisseur. But more beautiful
even than the glass is the gleam of color from the admirable pictures
which adorn the walls. Mr. Stedman is evidently a believer in the
doctrine that there is health in the rivalry of the arts. His pictures
look out from their frames at his books, as if to bid them defiance.
The former are of an order of excellence to make even a literary critic
speak well of them; for Mr. Stedman has a passion for pictures which he
has taken the pains to train into a taste. He was a familiar figure,
a few years ago, at the Academy of Design receptions on press-night.
He was certain to be found opposite one of the best water-colors or
oil-paintings of the Exhibition, into the frame of which, a few minutes
later, his card would be slipped, on which the magic word “Sold” was
to be read. It was in this way that some charming creations of Wyant,
of Church, and other of our best artists, were purchased. Perhaps the
pearl of his collection is Winslow Homer’s “Voice from the Cliffs,” the
strongest figure-picture this artist has yet produced. The walls divide
their spaces between such works of art and a numerous and interesting
collection of gifts and souvenirs from the poet’s artist and literary
friends. Among these is a sketch in oil of Miss Fletcher, the author
of “Kismet,” by her stepfather, Eugene Benson; a bronze bas-relief
of Bayard Taylor, who was an intimate friend of Mr. Stedman’s; and a
companion relief of the latter poet, hanging side by side with that of
his friend as if lovingly to emphasize their companionship.