Early in life John Fiske aimed high and thought himself capable of
great things. He also believed that the world accepted a man at the
estimate he placed upon himself.
Fiske was born at Hartford in Eighteen Hundred Forty-two. His mother's
maiden name was Fiske and his father's name was Green, and until
well-nigh manhood, John Fiske was called Edmund Green.
His father died while Edmund was a baby, and the wee youngster was taken
charge of by his grandmother Fiske of Middletown, Connecticut.
When his mother married again, Edmund did not approve of the match.
Parents often try to live their children's lives for them, and to hold
the balance true, children occasionally attempt to dictate to parents in
affairs of the heart. A young man by the name of Hamlet will be recalled
who, having no special business of his own, became much distressed and
had theories concerning the conduct of his mother. As a general
proposition the person who looks after the territory directly under his
own hat will find his time fairly well employed.
They say Edmund Green made threats when his mother changed her name, but
all he did was to follow her example and change his. Thereafter he was
plain John Fiske. "I must have a name easy to take hold of: one that
people can remember," he said. And they do say that John Fiske's
reverence for John Ruskin had something to do with his choice of name.
Just here some curious one of the curious sex, which by the way holds no
monopoly on curiosity, may ask if the second venture of Mrs. Green was
fruitful and fortunate. So I will say, yes, eminently so; and in one way
it seemed to serve, for John Fiske's stepfather waived John's
displeasure with his stepfather's wife, and did something toward sending
the young man to Harvard University, and also supplied the funds to send
him on a tour around the world.
However, the second brood revealed no genius, at sight of which the
defunct Mr. Green from his seat in Elysium must have chortled in glee,
assuming, of course, that disembodied spirits are cognizant of the
doings of their late partners, as John Fiske seemed to think they were.
If Alexander Humboldt's mother had not married again, we would have had
no Alexander Humboldt. Second marriages are like first ones in this:
Sometimes they are happy and sometimes not. In any event, I occasionally
think that mother-love has often been much exaggerated. Love is a most
beautiful thing, and it does not seem to make very much difference who
supplies it. Stepmother-love, Lincoln used to say, was the most precious
thing that had ever come his way. I know a man who loves his
mother-in-law, because she pitied him. Our Oneida friends had
"Community Mothers," who took care of everybody's babies, just as if
they were their own, and with marked success, for the genus hoodlum
never evolved at Oneida. Grandmother-love served all purposes for little
Isaac Newton, just as it did for John Fiske.
John Fiske's grandmother was his first teacher, and she started out with
the assumption that genius always skips one generation. She believed
that she was dealing with a record-breaker, and she was. What she did
not know about the classics was known by others whom she delegated to
teach her grandchild.
When her baby genius was just out of linsey-woolsey dresses and wore
trousers buttoned to a calico waist, she began preparing him for
college. The old lady had loved a college man in her youth, and she
judged Harvard by the Harvard man she knew best. And the Harvard man she
saw in her waking dreams, she created in her own image. Harvard requires
perspective, and viewed over the years through a mist of melancholy it
is very beautiful. At close range we often get a Jarrett Bumball flavor
of cigarettes and a sight of the foam that made Milwaukee famous. To a
great degree, Gran'ma Fiske created her Harvard out of the stuff that
dreams are made of. When her little charge was six years old, she began
preparing him for Harvard by teaching him to say, "amo, amas, amat."
At seven years of age he was reading Cæsar's "Commentaries" and making
wise comments over his bowl of bread-and-milk about the Tenth Legion;
and he also had his opinions concerning the relationship of Cæsar with
Cleopatra. At this time he read Josephus for rest, and discovered for
himself that the famous passage about Jesus of Nazareth was an
interpolation.
When he was eight, he was familiar with Plato, had read all of
Shakespeare's plays, and propounded a few hypotheses concerning the
authorship of the "Sonnets."
At nine he spoke Greek with an Attic accent. When ten he had read
Prescott, Gibbon and Macaulay; and about this time, as a memory test he
wrote a history of the world from the time of Moses down to the date of
his own birth, giving a list of the greatest men who had ever lived,
with a brief mention of what they had done, with the date of their birth
and death.
This book is still in existence and so far as I know has never been
equaled by the performance of any infant prodigy, save possibly John
Stuart Mill.
When twelve years of age he had read Vergil, Sallust, Tacitus, Ovid,
Juvenal and Catullus. He had also mastered trigonometry, surveying,
navigation, geometry and differential calculus.
Before his grandmother had him discard knee-breeches, he kept his diary
in Spanish, spoke German at the table, and read German philosophy in the
original. The year he was sixteen he wrote poems after Dante in Italian
and translated Cervantes into English.
At seventeen he read the Hebrew scriptures like a Rabbi, and was
familiar with Sanskrit.
Now, let no carpist imagine I have dealt in hyperbole, or hand-illumined
the facts: I have merely stated some simple truths about the early
career of John Fiske.
One might imagine that with all his wonderful achievements this youth
would be top-heavy and a most insufferable prig. The fact was, he was a
fine, rollicking, healthy young man much given to pranks, and withal
generous and lovable.
He was admitted to Harvard without examination, for his fame had
preceded him. Students and professors alike looked at him in wonder.
At Cambridge, as if to keep good his record, he studied thirteen hours a
day, for twelve months in the year. He ranged through every subject in
the catalog, and all recorded knowledge was to him familiar.
Prophecies were freely made that he would eclipse Sir Isaac Newton and
Humboldt. But there were others who had a clearer vision.
John Fiske made a decided success in life and left his personality
distinctly impressed upon his time, but it is no disparagement to say of
him that Autumn did not fulfil the promise of Spring. And Fiske himself
in his single original contribution to the evolution crusade explains
the reason why.
Professor Santayanna of Harvard once said that John Fiske made three
great scientific discoveries, as follows: