THE FIRST OF PATRIOTS AT HOME
A noble private school first made Lebanon of the cedars famous. It had
been founded by the prosperous hill farmers under the influence of
the Governor. To this school the latter sent his five children, who
prepared there for college or the higher schools.
The Governor possessed a strong mind, that was so clear and full of
imagination as to be almost poetic and prophetic.
The Scriptures were his book of poems, and he read many books――_Job_ in
Hebrew, and _John_ in Greek.
At home among his five children, all of whom were destined to be
notable, and two of them famous, he was an ideal father. His one
thought was to educate his children for usefulness.
One of his sons was named John, born in 1756. Nearly all of my readers
have seen his work, for it was his gift to paint the dramatic scenes of
the Revolutionary War, and these great historical paintings adorn not
only the rotunda of the Capitol at Washington, but several of them most
public halls, and tens of thousands of patriotic homes in the country,
especially The Battle of Bunker Hill, The Signers of the Declaration
of Independence, The Death of Wolf, The Surrender of Cornwallis, and
Washington’s Farewell to his Army.
The home of the Governor may have been matted, but was not carpeted.
It was the custom at that time to strew white sand over floors and to
“herring-bone” spare rooms. Of this sand we have a curious story.
Two of the daughters, Faith and Mary, were born to a love of art. They
were sent to school in Boston after graduating at the Lebanon school,
and there Faith began to admire portraits painted in oil.
She studied painting in oil, and she returned to her plain and simple
home. She hung upon the walls two portraits painted by her own hand
that were a local wonder.
The Governor looked upon his gifted daughter’s work with commendable
pride.
“You have done well, Faith. I did not expect such gifts of you. To
detain age, in keeping the face at the age in which it is painted, is
indeed a noble art. It is worthy of you, Faith.”
At this time John Trumbull was a little boy. He had been housed and
nursed tenderly by his mother, because he had a misformed head which
had to be shaped out of a defect by pressure.
This boy turned his face to his sister Faith’s paintings with surprise,
as they transformed the walls of the room.
“I want to paint, too,” said he.
“No, no,” said the Governor, “painting is not for boys.”
He asked his sister for oils.
“You are too young,” thought the artistic Faith, who was a loving,
noble sister.
“But I must, I must.”
One day his mother entered the sanded room. The white sand had been
disturbed. It was lying about in curious angles. She stopped; the sand
had formed a picture. Whose picture――probably it was intended for
herself.
The boy’s face met hers, possibly at an opposite door.
“My son, what have you been doing with the sand?”
“Painting, mother.”
“But what led you to paint in that way?”
“Faith’s pictures on the wall. I had to paint. I must. I will be a
painter if I grow up. The things that father does will not live unless
they are painted. Pictures make the past _now_――they hold the past;
they make it live.”
“My little boy sees the value of the art like a philosopher. You and
Faith have a gift that I little expected. I have nursed that little
head of yours many an hour; there may be pictures in it――who knows?”
“But father thinks that painting is girlish. How can I get him to let
me paint?”
“You may be able to paint so well, that he will be proud of your art.”
The next day the sand took new form; another picture filled the floor,
and so day by day new pictures came to delight the good mother’s heart.
The Governor saw them.
“There is a gift in them,” said he. “It is all right for a little
shaver like him. Boys will have to wield something stronger than the
brush in the new age that is upon us. But we must not crush any gift of
God.”
He turned away.
His family loved to be near him, and he told them wonderful tales from
the Hebrew Scriptures.
Queer tales of early times in the colonies he related to them, too;
stories that tended to correct false views of life and character.
Suppose we spend an hour with the good Governor in his own home.
* * * * *
It was early evening; snow was falling on the green boughs of the
cedars of Lebanon. A great fireplace blazed before the sitting-room
table, on which were the Bible and books.
On one side of the fireplace hung quartered apples drying; on the other
a rennet and red peppers, and on the mantelpiece were shells from the
Indies, candlesticks, and pewter dishes.
The room became silent. The Governor’s thoughts were far away,
planning, planning, almost always planning.
The stillness became lonesome. Then little John, the painter in the
sand, ventured to ask his mother for a story, and she said:
“I am narrowing now in my knitting; ask your father, he is
wool-gathering; call him home.”
Little John touched his father on the arm.
“It is a story that you would have,” said the Governor. “I am thinking
all by myself on a case that comes up before me to-morrow, of a young
man who has broken the law, but did not know that there was any such
law to break. He had just come in from sea.
“Now, what would you do in such a case as that, Johnny? I am thinking
how to be merciful to the man and just to others.”
“I would do what mother would do――mother, what would you do in a case
like that?”
“I do not know; there may be things to be considered. I would follow my
heart; if it would not endanger others.”
“Father, what will you do? Animals break laws about which they do not
know. I pity them.”
“Well said, John,” said the Governor.
He added, beating on the back of his chair:
“I may have to follow my heart; but I will tell you a story of an old
Connecticut judge who followed his heart, and something unexpected
happened.”
The Governor dropped his stately tone, and used the language of home.
That was a charm, the home tone.
* * * * *
“It was at the time of the blue-laws,” he said. “Those laws in one part
of the State were so strict as to forbid the making of mince pies at
Christmas-time.
“One of these laws forbid a man to kiss his wife in public on Sunday.”
The Governor seldom used story-book language. He was going to do so
now, and it would make the very fire seem friendly.
“Wandering Rufus was a merry lad. He married a young wife, a very
handsome girl, and he loved her. Soon after his marriage he went to
sea, and it was after he went to sea that the law was enacted against
the Sunday kissing. The lawmakers little thought of the men at sea.
“His wife looked out for him to come back, as a good wife should. She
pressed her nose against the pane. She dreamed and dreamed of how happy
she should be when he should come leaping up from the wharf to greet
her.
“Three years passed, for he was a whaler as well as a sailor.
“Three years!
“One day there was heard a boom at sea――boom off New Haven. The ship
was coming in, and it was Sunday.
“The young wife dressed herself in her best gown, and she never looked
so pretty before. Her cheeks glowed like roses in dew-time.
“She hurried down toward the wharf to meet him, just as the bells were
ringing and the people were all going to meeting.
“He came up the highway to greet her, leaping――not a becoming thing,
I will allow. And he rushed into her arms, and gave her smack after
smack, and her bonnet fell off, and the people stopped and wondered.
The magistrate wondered, too.
“There was a man in the seaport who was like Mr. Legality in the
Pilgrim’s Progress. The next day he had the young sailor arrested for
unbecoming conduct on the street on Sunday, and I mind me that his
conduct was not altogether becoming.
“The judge came into court, and read the law, and asked:
“‘Rufus, my sailor boy, what have you to plead?’
“‘I did not know that there was any such law, your Honor; else I would
have obeyed it.’
“You may see that he had a true heart, like a robin on a cherry bough.
“‘I must condemn you to have thirty lashes at the whipping-post,’ said
the judge――‘No, twenty lashes――no, considering all the points of the
case, ten; or five will do. Five lashes at the whipping-post. This is
the lightest sentence that I ever imposed. But _he_ did not know the
law; and he was a married man, and he had not seen his wife for nearly
three years; I must be merciful in this particular case, and I will not
say in this same case how hard the lashes shall be laid on.’
“So the young sailor was whipped, and Mr. Legality said that five
lashes would not have scampered a cat.
“Rufus, the wanderer, prepared to go whaling again.
“Now, the captain of the ship had caused a chalk-mark to be drawn
across the deck of the ship, and had made a ship law that if any one
but an officer of the ship should cross the mark, the person violating
the law should be whipped with a cat-o’-nine-tails.
“I am sorry to say that our young sailor should have had a revengeful
spirit, but he seems to have shown a disposition not altogether
benevolent. He invited Mr. Legality to go on board the ship with him,
just as the ship was about to sail. Mr. Legality to atone for his want
of charity went, and he had hardly got on board before he stepped over
the chalk-line.
“‘Halt, halt!’ said Rufus. ‘We have a law that if any one steps over
the chalk-line he must be whipped.’
“‘But I did not know that there was any such a law,’ said Mr. Legality.
“‘But it is the law,’ said Wandering Rufus.
“‘But how could I have known?’ asked Mr. Legality.
“‘How could I have known that there was a law that a man must not kiss
his wife on the street on Sunday?’ asked Rufus.
“‘I see, I see; but don’t let me be whipped with the cat-o’-nine-tails.’
“‘That I will not, for I am a hearty sailor. If any one is whipped it
shall be me. I wanted to show you how the human heart feels.’
“Mr. Legality left the ship as fast as his legs would carry him, and
somehow that story sometimes rises before me like a parable. I think I
shall follow my heart with this new case that comes off to-morrow.”
“Do, do,” said the children, all five; and the mother, lovely Faith
Trumbull, said, “Yes, Jonathan, do.”
“And now,” said the Governor, “let us read together the most beautiful
chapter, as I mind, in all the Epistles.”
The snow fell gently without; the fire cracked, and they read together
the chapter containing “Charity suffereth long, and is kind.”
“Beareth all things, endureth all things,” read little John. Then tears
filled his eyes, and he said:
“Father, I love you.”
But there was another side to the love and loyalty of this sheltered
town in the cedars. There were Tories here, and they did not like the
patriarchal Governor. You must meet some of them, if it does change the
atmosphere of the narrative.
It has been said that no dispute could ever stand before Brother
Jonathan; it would melt away like snow on an April day when he lifted
his benignant eyes and put the finger of one hand on the other, and
said, “Let me make it clear to you.”
Queer old Samuel Peters, the Episcopal agent, or missionary in
the colony, made so much fun of the good people in his History of
Connecticut, and so led England and America to laugh by his marvelous
anecdotes and description of the blue-laws, that the really thrifty and
heroic character of these people has been misjudged.
A wonderful family had Brother Jonathan. His children who lived to
become of age became famous, and they were all remarkable as children.
Jonathan Trumbull, Jr., could read Virgil at five, and had read Homer
at twelve, and could talk with his father in Latin and Greek, and
discuss Horace and Juvenal when a boy. He, as we have said, became a
great painter, and commenced by drawing pictures in the sand which was
sprinkled on his father’s floor. They used “herring-bone” to tidy rooms
in those days, spare rooms, by dusting clean sand on the floor, in a
wavy way, leaving the floor in the angles of a herring-bone. We do not
know that it was in such herring-boning sand that young Trumbull began
to draw pictures, but it may have been so.
We have visited the rooms in the old perpendicular house where he began
to draw. His good father did not approve of his purpose to become a
painter, but he thought that genius should be allowed to follow its own
course. A man is never contented or satisfied outside of his natural
gifts and haunting inclinations. So the battles into which his father’s
spirit entered, John made immortal by painting, and his work may be
seen not only in the rotunda of the Capitol at Washington, but in the
“Trumbull Collection” at Yale College.
Young Trumbull was led to continue to paint by his sisters Faith and
Mary, who went to Boston to school. This was the Copley age of art in
Boston. You may see Copley’s pictures at the Art Museum, Boston, and
among them the almost living portrait of Samuel Adams. When these girls
returned from visits to Boston, Mary began to paint inspiring pictures
and to adorn the rooms with them.
She and her brother studied the lives and works of the old masters.
How? We do not know, but genius makes a way.
A thrifty farmer and merchant was Col. Jonathan Trumbull in his young
days. You laugh at these old-fashioned men, but look at what this
man, who could discuss Homer and Horace with his boys, and the arts
of Greece with his girls, accomplished through the good judgment and
private thrift in his early life. Says his principal biographer, G. W.
Stuart, of the fine young farmer, who had ships on the sea, and was
beginning to turn from a farmer to a notable merchant:
“So the first years of Trumbull’s life as a merchant passed in
successful commerce abroad, in profitable trade at home, and with high
reputation in all his contacts, negotiations, and adventures. And ‘his
corn and riches did increase.’ A house and home-estate worth over four
thousand pounds; furniture, and a library, worth six hundred pounds;
a valuable store adjacent to the dwelling; a store, wharf, and land
at East Haddam; a lot and warehouse at Chelsea in Norwich; a valuable
grist-mill near his family seat at Lebanon; ‘a large, convenient
malt-house;’ several productive farms in his neighborhood, carefully
tilled, and beautifully spotted with rich acres of woodland; extensive
ownership, too, in the ‘Five-mile Propriety,’ as it was called, in
Lebanon, in whose management as committeeman, and representative at
courts, and moderator at meetings of owners, Trumbull had much to do;
a stock of domestic animals worth a hundred and thirty pounds――these
possessions, together with a well-secured indebtedness to himself,
in bonds, and notes, and mortgages, resulting from his mercantile
transactions, of about eight thousand pounds, rewarded, at the close
of the year 1763, the toil of Trumbull in the field of trade and
commerce. In all it was a property of not less than eighteen thousand
pounds――truly a large one for the day――but one destined, by reverses
in trade which the times subsequently rendered inevitable, and by
the patriotic generosity of its owner during the great Revolutionary
struggle, to slip, in large part, from his grasp.”
Here is a picture of thrifty life in a country village estate in old
New England days.
He preached at first, then became a judge, and he “doctored.”
They were queer people who doctored then, with wig and gig. Brother
Jonathan doctored the poor. He doctored out of his goodly instincts
more than from a medical code, though he could administer prescriptions
from Latin that it was deemed presumptuous for the patient to inquire
about. Now people know what medicine they take, but it was deemed
audacious then to ask any questions about Latin prescriptions, or
to seek to penetrate such an awful mystery as was contained in the
“Ferrocesquicianurit of the Cynide of Potassium,” or to find out that a
ranunculus bulbosus was only a buttercup.
Among the good old tavern tales of such old-time doctors was one of a
notional old woman, who used to send for the doctor as often as she saw
any one passing who was going the doctor’s way. Once when there was
coming on one of these awful March snow-storms that buried up houses,
she saw a teamster hurrying against the pitiless snow toward the town
where the doctor’s office was.
“Hay, hay!” said she to the half-blinded man. “Whoa, stop! Send the
doctor to me――it is going to be a desperate case.”
The doctor came to visit his patient, and found her getting a bountiful
meal.
“The dragon!” said he. “Hobgoblins and thunder, what did you make me
come out here for in all this dreadful storm?”
“Oh, pardon, doctor,” said she, “it was such a good chance to send.”
In ill temper, the country doctor faced the storm again.
There was both an academy and an Indian school in the town, and all the
children loved Brother Jonathan.
The children of Boston used to follow Sam Adams in the street in
the latter’s benign old age, and the white children and red tumbled
over their dogs to meet Brother Jonathan, when he appeared in his
three-cornered hat, ruffles and knee-breeches, and all, in the snug
village green around which the orioles sung in the great trees.
He had some kind word for them all. When his face lighted up, all was
happiness.
Among his neighbors was William Williams, a signer of the Declaration
of Independence, and a man of beautiful soul.
The old church gleamed in air over the green. On the country roads they
held meetings in smaller churches and in schoolhouses.
A queer story is told of one of these churches at the time of
foot-stoves; how a good woman took a foot-stove to church and hid it
under her cloak. The stove smoked, and the warm smoke rose up under her
cloak, which was spread around her like a tent, and caused her to go
to sleep. As she bent over the smoke came out of her cloak at the back
of her neck and ascended into the sunlight of a window. Now smoke is
likely to form a circle as it ascends, and the good people, who did not
know of the foot-stove, thought that they saw a crown of glory hanging
over her head, and that a miracle was being performed.
Brother Jonathan and his good wife and children were always in their
pew on Sunday. Probably there was a sounding-board in the primitive
church and an hour-glass. Possibly, a tithing man went about with a
feather to tickle sleepy old women on the nose, who lost consciousness
between the 7thlys and the 10thlys, and so made them jump and say, “O
Lud, massy sakes alive!” or something equally surprising and improper.