sympathetic and logical _man_; and it is only a pity that he had
not some Boswell of a friend who could have recorded his wise sayings
and valuable criticism of men and things. He was more of an idealist
than Doctor Johnson, and at the same time like Doctor Johnson in
personal solidity, his English aplomb of character. They were both men
of sterling quality. He was in all things especially human. His
sympathies equalled the breadth of his mind. There was scarcely a
subject in which he did not take an interest, and was not ready to
converse on. As soon as he obtained a little money he wanted to help
those who were in lack of it. His sister's husband being out of work, he
designed the model for a small yacht and gave him an order for it. He
had known the depths of human misery, and could make his experience of
benefit to his friends. Poignant grief for the loss of a relative I
think he never knew, and yet he did not neglect his duty to those in
affliction, little as such duty might be expected of him. He was not a
humorist or wit, and his conversation was only saved from dryness by its
elevated tone; but he had a quick appreciation of the wit of others, and
would sometimes laugh as heartily as Carlyle's professor in "Sartor
Resartus." Ridicule and those books which are written to make people
laugh were intolerable to him. He had a large stock of anecdotes at
command, but he used them wisely and sparingly. He was refined as only a
poet can be.
The general public, as Balzac says, judges only by results; and those
who were themselves only practical in some specialty, or had made
fortunes for themselves out of the gratuity of nature, were wont to look
upon Wasson as a visionary and unpractical person. To those who acted
only from motives of self-interest he was a perpetual puzzle. Neither
was he ignorant of this unfavorable opinion, for he could see through
people almost as if they were glass, and he endured it with true
Emersonian serenity. If they had known what he thought of them they
would not have felt so very comfortable. He was sufficiently practical
for the profession to which he belonged, though not so diplomatic as
some of them are. He could be diplomatic enough on occasion, and knew
how to preserve an impenetrable secrecy when necessity required. He was
too sensitive, and too dead-in-earnest to make much of an orator, but he
was an effective speaker, and if he had remained in the law he would no
doubt have made a success of it, and very likely would have become a
member of Congress.
His adventure with a drunken sea-captain, while crossing from England in
a sailing vessel has become proverbial. He probably saved the ship, and
the lives of all on board, for a terrific storm arose immediately
afterwards, the worst he had ever known, such as only a sober captain
could possibly have weathered. There never was a better seaman when he
was himself, so Wasson said. His judgment in regard to the investment of
money, buying or selling a house, or in most of the small affairs of
life, was excellent, and his advice in more serious matters so good that
wise men might well have gone far to obtain it. Wherever he lived his
house soon became conspicuous among all others for its refined air and
tasteful appearance. In his half acre of a garden, he raised as fine
fruit and vegetables as the most accomplished horticulturist, and even
made wine from his own grapes equal to the best Californian. No man ever
accomplished more with inadequate means. The interior of his house at
West Medford had a pleasant style peculiarly its own. It reminded one of
an old Dutch painting. In one of the last summers of his life he
hybridized a seedling grape of large size and excellent flavor. He hoped
to make a valuable property of this but his strength failed him too
rapidly.
The house in West Medford was the only one he ever owned, and he gave a
number of good reasons for purchasing it. It was cheap, and large enough
for three people; there was a small garden with two fine apple-trees
attached to it, and the salt water came almost to the foot of the
garden. He had noticed also that the streets became dry after a rain
more quickly in that portion of the town than elsewhere and judged from
that it must be a healthy locality. He very quickly remodelled the place
giving it the stamp of his own style and character.
He showed good judgment also in the education of his son George, now a
marine-painter of well recognized merit. The boy inherited his father's
sincerity and artistic feeling but not his intellectual tastes. In many
respects he was more like his mother. He did not take to his studies nor
was he fond of games, but liked bathing and sailing. When he was
thirteen his father remarked that he did not know what he should be able
to do with him. Well-intending friends said, you should get him a place
in a store so that he may be earning something to help his parents, but
Wasson replied: "No! I care too much for my boy to make a drudge of him
for life, if it is possible for him to do better."
Soon after this George began to draw ships and naval engagements on the
black-boards at school, and one of these was so good that the teacher
gave an order to have it remain until his father could be called in to
look at it. Wasson took notice of this talent in the boy and encouraged
it, watching its development as time went on. There were no schools of
art in Boston then, and one reason for his going to Germany in 1872 was
to obtain systematic instruction for him in drawing and painting.
Wasson's friends were now greatly discouraged. "What hope is there for
him," they said, "in such a profession? It is not likely the boy is a
genius, and who is going to purchase his pictures?" Yet his father
persevered bravely in spite of many "outs" and temporary failures and
finally lived to see the merit of his son admitted by those who were at
first most sceptical of it. The son is now a fairly successful artist;
especially noted for his skill in representing the motion of water and
the attitude of floating vessels.
He was never prone to think evil, but he considered it a mischievous
habit to try to think better of people than they were--an injustice to
character and virtue. "Treat people better than they deserve," he would
say, "but see them as they are." His kindness of heart now and then led
him into difficulties which those who care more for their reputation
than anything else, would have avoided. During his Arctic expedition
Bradford took a number of stereopticon-views from icebergs and other
indigenous scenery with the intention of exhibiting them in public on
his return. This he finally did, more as a private celebration than with
a hope of making money from it, and requested Wasson to assist him by
giving an oral explanation of the pictures. Wasson wanted to say, "That
is not my business," but he felt under great obligation to Mr. Bradford
for the partial recovery of his strength, and did not like to refuse. He
had no conception however of what was in store for him. He sent to
Bradford for a list of the different views and prepared an address
suitable for the occasion; but when the performance took place Bradford
either forgot this or lost his presence of mind, for he exhibited the
pictures without order or regularity, so that Wasson soon became
confused and was able to give but a very poor account of them. This
affair was the more vexatious because it was quite impossible to give
any explanation of it.
Matthew Arnold distinguishes between Plato as a great writer and thinker
and Aristotle, who is only a great thinker. In this respect Wasson was
more like Aristotle, though he resembled Plato again in being always an
idealist. His writing shows the influence of his early studies in the
law, and derives much of its virtue as well as some peculiarities from
that source. It usually takes the form of an argument and is clear,
logical and accurate, but also in style rather hard and dry. What it
lacks is the pictorial element--what Carlyle possessed in such
luxuriance. No law book ever was or could be written for entertainment,
and those who expect to be amused by reading Wasson or Aristotle had
better look elsewhere. His essays are like hard wood. He worked hard in
writing them and we must work also when we read them. Sometimes we meet
with passages in them of the purest, most limpid English, though these
are more common in his later than his earlier writings. He said once, "I
make no effort to please my readers, or even to obtain a graceful
diction, I only try to say what I have to in the plainest manner." There
is a decided charm in this perfect plainness, this absence of all
decoration. One likes to think how old Vanderbilt had the brass and
ornaments taken off the locomotives on the New York Central road.
Telling the truth was Wasson's business in life, and he turned neither
to the right nor the left in doing it.
However, he did not reach this philosophy at once. His earlier work is
marred slightly by a love of the grotesque, a sort of plough-boy
rhetoric, which is ill-assorted with the elevated character of his
ideas. He suffers also occasionally by an hair-splitting attempt to
prove his point beyond the possibility of contradiction. In two or three
of his essays there is an unsuccessful effort for liveliness, the result
of complaints from his magazine editors, and now and then will appear an
unconscious imitation of Carlyle; but what does it all amount to? We are
inundated now-a-days with writing that is perfect, or nearly so, in form
and yet brings no message to mankind. It pleases the understanding, but
it does not satisfy the soul. It gives us no new ideas: in fact ideas
are hateful to it.
"Time and space conquering steam,
And the light-out-speeding telegraph
Bears nothing on its beam."
Wasson's writing compared with this is as an old-time stage-coach
journey in which an interesting conversation, moral or political, is
carried on by men like Fisher Ames and Rev. David Osgood, compared with
the empty elegance and despatch of a modern railway-train. It is fresh
because it is genuine; vigorous because it is manly; and original
because it is true. He is more original than Carlyle, and so profound
that it seems as if only a pearl-diver could follow him to such a depth.
Yet his natural element is so pure, calm and tranquil, that we easily
accomplish what seems at first an impossible descent. In "Epic
Philosophy" he has dealt with the problem of good and evil in a manner
more noble and penetrating than was ever before attempted. In his essay
on the "Genius of Woman" he enters on a new and important field of
investigation, a virgin soil as yet untried. In "Unity," the greatest of
his essays, he boldly climbs the Jacob's ladder of philosophy and walks
serene among the stars, grappling even with Infinity. He had achieved
unity for himself; the one complete cosmopolitan mind of his time. In
his highest flights he is never cold or inexorable, but always human,
tender, and sympathetic. He loved the unkind, heedless world; life was
wonderful to him. "What do I think of Wasson?" said Professor James of
Harvard, a few days after his death, "I look upon him as one of the
great instructors of mankind."
It was complained by a critic of Emerson's "Parnassus" that only two of
Wasson's poems were to be found in that collection; and Alcott, who had
a keen scent for superior literature, once turned a visitor out of his
study for denying the superiority of Wasson's poetry. Many of his
sonnets are gems, unsurpassed in any language, and the one called
"Pride" seems to me in its grand simplicity to be without a rival. If
there is any American poem which sings itself like "All's well," it is
Longfellow's ballad of "Mary Garvin." "The Plover" has a pensive grace
which is as rare as its subtile and elevated thought. They are however
few in number and he did not think there was enough of them to publish
in a volume. They were finally published _post mortem_ in what was,
if the truth be told, a rather unfortunate manner. Two of his finest
sonnets, on "Silence" and "Wendell Phillips," were by mischance omitted,
and a good many included that were either failures or written for some
trifling occasion, and never intended for publication. As if to prevent
all chance of popularity, the best pieces were placed at the close of
the book and a long unfinished Hegelian poem at the beginning. Even the
paper they were printed on was such as Wasson especially disliked. It
seems a pity that he should have been denied this little celebrity.
He received better justice from Mr. Frothingham, who has published an
excellent memoir of his life and work together with a number of his
essays,--a handsome volume well bound and printed. Yet one cannot help
thinking that here also the author's fame, as well as the interest of
the general public, might have been better consuited by a more careful
selection and a wider range of subjects. "Epic Philosophy" at least
ought by no means to have been omitted, nor is there any example given
of Wasson's fine literary criticism, in itself enough to have made a
writer celebrated. His essay on Whittier is not only a just estimate,
but seems also in its wise and tender application to include Whittier
poetically, as the sea encircles an island. In this department of
writing he was the equal of Lessing and almost of Goethe; but with
characteristic modesty he celebrated Lowell as the first of American
critics. Wasson's book notices in the "Boston Commonwealth" were most
interesting reading and contained much of his finest thought.
His famous Groveland address was not directed against a faith in the
divinity of Christ, for he held that belief in profound respect, as
signifying the divine origin and mission of mankind. He considered every
spiritually gifted person to be the result of an immaculate conception.
At the close of the essay on "Unity" he says:
"Verily, I believe that he who was born at Bethlehem, that majestic
witness for the soul, was Messias, Christ, one sent from the Father;
that the eternal Godhood concurred in the production of his being; that
the consciousness of a divine inhabitation lived in his heart."
It was no new evil he complained of, but one older than the brazen
serpent in the wilderness. It might be called the fossilization of
religious ideas. He called to his support the testimony of a witness
whose orthodoxy has never been questioned. This was the poet Milton, who
says:
"A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things only
because his pastor says so, or the assembly so determine, without other
reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes
his heresy."
Then Wasson adds: "And it is no more than a different application of
this aphorism to say that one may be an idolater in the reverence of
that which is truly venerable; for if he render it homage only in blind
conformity to custom, and in implicit submission to the discipline of
ancient use and wont, though the object be worthy, yet his worship is an
idolatry." It is indeed a type of idolatry which becomes continually
more subtle and dangerous with the progress of civilization.
In politics Wasson was a republican without being a democrat. He hailed
the advent of the republican party in 1856 as indicating an improvement
in our political consciousness. Democracy, he said, led to political
selfishness and disintegration. He pointed out many years before Von
Holst that the secession of the southern states was the legitimate fruit
of democratic principles. He thought that suffrage ought not to be a
right, but a privilege, the privilege of good citizenship. He was also
the first to argue in favor of civil-service reform, and a selection of
officials by competitive examination. He might have found sufficient
arguments from experience, but he was not content with that. He went
back to the first principles of political science as indicated in the
social organization of mankind. He laid down the rule that society is
not more for the benefit of the individual than the individual for the
benefit of society; and our last war sufficiently proved the truth of
this. When he first brought forward these arguments at the Boston
Radical Club in 1879 he was met by a storm of opposition and almost
personal invective. One reason for this was that a large portion of his
audience was composed of what is sometimes called strong-minded women,
who fully expected to acquire the right of suffrage on democratic
principles. His hearers had been accustomed to think of a republic and a
democracy as one and the same thing, and they could not understand
Wasson at all. They concluded that he must be a monarchist, an emissary
of Bismarck. They had no arguments to oppose him with, for it was a
subject they had never reflected upon; so they complained that he was
illiberal, re-actionary, and lacked faith in human nature. Since they
were in a numerical majority they thought they had the best of the
discussion, but the most impartial of his listeners did not find it so.
Louisa Alcott said once after a lively discussion, in her decisive
manner, "I like Mr. Wasson, and I admire the way in which he fights
against odds." His views on politics were similar to those held by
Washington, Adams, Hamilton, and most of the founders of the
Constitution, as also by all the great minds of history, by Aristotle,
Cicero, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, and Leibnitz. Wasson however did not
look to the past, but wished to improve in a rational manner on what we
already have. He considered woman suffrage as a political monstrosity,
and considered it even more dangerous in its tendencies than socialism.
The true reward of a man of genius lies not in his fame but in his
influence. His celebrity is of more value to those who receive the rich
gifts of his intellect than to himself. Wasson's direct influence during
his life was limited to a very small circle; but who can tell how far it
extended indirectly beyond this? To those who knew him the thought of
this patient, indomitable truth-seeking hero was like an elixir of moral
and spiritual vitality. So the orders of a field-marshal are carried to
the generals of division, and from these pass onward till every
private-soldier feels the impulse of a single will. Perhaps the time
will come when he will be better appreciated. The future historian of
our literature cannot well neglect so independent and original a
thinker, and perhaps Americans of the next century may find him more
congenial to their modes of thought than do those of the present era. If
he lives at all, it is likely he will outlive every other writer of his
time. One may read Plato or Bacon or Goethe, and then return to Wasson
and still find something new and instructive in his essays--something we
did not know before.
WENDELL PHILLIPS
If Hawthorne was the antipodes of Emerson, Wendell Phillips was of
Wasson. One might form a proportion out of these four, in which Phillips
and Hawthorne would be the extremes, and Emerson and Wasson the mean
terms. He was, in his way, as perfect an artist as Hawthorne, while he
differed from him as the sea does from the land. He was more like
Emerson in his mental methods, and was a man of action. While he took
the same interest in public affairs as Wasson, the slavery question was
the only point on which the two could ever agree. One was an ardent and
unreflecting revolutionist; the other a systematic thinker and
conservative supporter of the general order of affairs.
When in 1870 he was candidate for governor of Massachusetts, on a
hopeless ticket, and was taunted with being ambitious, he proudly
replied, "Born of six generations of Yankees, I knew the way to office
and turned my back on it thirty years ago." His family was one of the
earliest and most generally respected in New England; and at one time
was influential and flourishing, but now nearly extinct. Rev. George
Phillips of Rainham in Norfolk, England, was a graduate of Cambridge
University, and entered the Church of England, but soon became a
dissenter, and embarked with Governor Winthrop on the ship Arabella, in
1630, for the western world. He was the first minister at Watertown; a
position in those days as important as the presidency of a trunk line is
in our own. Cotton Mather and the early writers speak of him almost as
the founder of the Congregational Church in New England; and he and his
descendants were all cultivated gentlemen. Two of his great-grandsons
founded the preparatory academies at Andover and Exeter, called by that
name. John Phillips, the father of Wendell, graduated at Harvard in
1788. He was the president of the Massachusetts senate for one term, and
the first mayor of Boston, distinctly so called. His wife was a Miss
Sarah Walley of Brookline, and Wendell himself was their eighth child,
born November 29th, 1811--a year memorable for the appearance of a comet
with six tails.
During his boyhood, the family lived in a large mansion house in Old
Cambridge, which has since been occupied by Professor Andrews Norton and
his son. In a large and amiable household, with a mother for whom he
always showed the deepest respect, his earlier years must have been
happy much beyond the lot of ordinary mortals. He was fitted for college
at the Boston Latin School, where he was distinguished both for
scholarship, faultless behavior, and fine declamations. Charles Sumner
was his companion there, as well as in college and at the law-school.
They are both said to have given striking proof of their oratorical
talent, though perhaps not more so than many others have before and
since. He entered at Harvard in 1827, while Sumner was a sophomore, and
Dr. Holmes and his celebrated twenty-niners were in their junior year.
His college life was a dream of wonder-land. Rich, gifted, full of
good-humor, handsome in form and feature, a brilliant scholar, he seemed
above all others to be Fortune's favored child. Work was easy to him,
and his play was the sport of genius. He was everywhere among the first;
president of the Porcellian Club, president and orator of the Hasty
Pudding Club--the Apollo Belvedere of his classmates. He also belonged
to a society called "The Owls," which only met at midnight, and the one
who could control his face so as to look most like an owl was considered
the best fellow.
Yet in the midst of this happiness, like the Hindoo prince, the spirit
of sadness comes over him when he reflects that very few are so
fortunate as himself, and that a great many seem to be born to positive
misfortune. The change in him was so marked that his classmates took
notice of it and attributed it to too much of a religious interest; but
it was not that. He accepted religion as he found it, and lived and died
in the faith of his ancestors. What is called a religious experience
never came to him; but from this time forward he showed an especial
tenderness and consideration for unfortunate people. It is well we bear
this trait of his character in mind, for it is the interpretation of the
various phases of his career.
He studied law, but does not appear to have ever taken a serious
interest in it. Sumner, on the contrary, became a shining light in the
law-school, and there laid the solid foundation of his future eminence.
Looking back at the past, we see now how the lives of these two men
diverged. In tact and readiness, in mental gifts, and fineness of
nature, Phillips was slightly the superior of Sumner, but Sumner easily
surpassed him in greatness of design. Phillips wished to be an orator,
and afterwards confessed that at this period of his life his admiration
for Webster knew no legitimate bounds. But oratory is an art which
requires a liberal profession for its basis; and Webster and Sumner
became orators by virtue of their profession. An orator merely as such
is simply an actor, and it requires a strong and well-balanced character
to withstand the temptations of the stage and the platform. Wendell
Phillips afterwards found a basis for his oratory in the anti-slavery
conflict; and then, when that came to an end, his occupation was gone.
It is also to be doubted if he had the right sort of intellect to make a
lawyer of, though no man could be better qualified in other respects for
practice in the courts.
Although one of his professors predicted a term in Congress for him, he
did not obtain any clients for several years; which is more remarkable
as there could have been no question in regard to his capacity or
popularity. Another strange fact is that when he went to Europe and
asked Judge Story for letters-of-introduction, he failed to obtain them;
while Sumner, who was Story's favorite, was presented a few days later
with more than a dozen. Had Judge Story already discovered a centrifugal
and uncontrollable element in the man?