THE UNIQUE CASE OF WILLIAM MUDGE OF LYNN, MASSACHUSETTS.
This narrow-breasted, delicate boy of about twenty-one years,
enlisted in the Thirty-third Massachusetts Infantry, and, with his
regiment, went into the battle of Chancellorsville on Sunday morning,
May 2d, 1863. After once regaining the field they were defeated with
considerable loss in prisoners and many wounded. Mudge fell by a
shot passing entirely through his head, cutting both optic nerves.
A friend in the regiment from his city, tied a handkerchief about
his head and left him to die, then ran to join his regiment, fearing
capture by the enemy. As soon as a chance offered he wrote to Mudge’s
father, who was president of a Lynn bank, telling him that his son
had been left dying on the battlefield.
Mr. Mudge started at once to find the dead body of his son, and
succeeded in reaching the Confederate lines, where they began to
search for the body, which could not be found on the battlefield. The
boy was at last discovered alive, lying neglected in the Confederate
field hospital.
It was often impossible for the surgeons and detailed nurses to care
for all the wounded, and so they gave their time to those having
a chance of living, which poor Mudge certainly did not seem to
have. The gunshot wound had caused his face to turn quite black, so
that his father, in hunting among the hopelessly wounded, did not
recognize him; but the boy knew his father’s voice and called out,
and so was rescued from a slow death. Mudge told his story to me
essentially as follows:
[Illustration: WILLIAM MUDGE]
“I lay all night on the field, drenched by a shower (which often
happens after a battle). In the morning Confederate soldiers were
detailed to bury the dead, and were preparing to carry me to the
open trench near by. When I spoke to them feebly they gave me water
from a canteen, and left me, feeling sure I would die before morning.
Imagine what a night that must have been! The brushwood near where I
was lying took fire, and I narrowly escaped being burned to death.
When the men came on the third day to bury the dead, I had become so
weak I could only move my little finger to show life. The Johnnies
then said--‘This fellow is good stuff, let’s take him in.’”
It was easy for the father to get permission to take away this
apparently dying prisoner. Going by easy stages to Washington, it
was found on examination that the boy was permanently blind and had
lost an eye. His skull was said to have been fractured so that there
were not two inches of solid cranium, the jaw bones and teeth were
destroyed.
Surgeons with much skill trepanned a hole in the skull with a silver
plate, and with the assistance of skilled dentists, they manufactured
jaw bones and teeth. They had fitted him with a glass eye, and
green glasses to cover the defects, so that some months after, when
I met him at the New England Rooms, he had the appearance of a
well-dressed, refined, though rather frail blind man.
During the fair I had taken care of him and walked him about the
great halls explaining many things that he could not, of course, see
or understand, and he came to consider my opinions final. He carried
to his home in Lynn about three hundred dollars from the fair
subscription and other benevolent sources.
A few weeks later his mother wrote me, saying that William had
become so unhappy and irritable that they could not manage him, and
he had so often said that if Miss Smith were there, she would know
what would make him more contented. Mrs. Mudge begged me to come, if
only for a short visit. This I could not well refuse; and I found
a pleasant refined family in a comfortable home of their own. Mr.
Mudge, William’s father, was a gentleman and a bank president. I will
digress here for a few words on an observation, quite surprising
to me. Early on Sunday morning I saw Mr. Mudge and several other
gentlemen coming up the street, each carrying a newspaper and two
large bundles. This seemed quite strange, but was explained at
breakfast by the inevitable down-east baked beans in a crock, and a
loaf of hot brown bread which had been at the bake shop all night. It
was the custom for gentlemen to bring them home on Sunday morning.
Certainly they were delicious. Being of New York blood, I was not “au
fait” on the customs regarding baked beans and brown bread.
William’s mother told me that he was almost transformed when under
my influence. His was a restless nervous temperament, and this,
added to his blindness, made life miserable. His fastidious tastes
and conventionality continued. One Sunday, in church, he whispered,
“Is my back hair parted straight?”--this being the style for men at
that time. And again, “Am I holding my prayer-book right side up?” He
needed occupation; but what could the blind boy do?
Accidentally I saw in a newspaper an advertisement for young men to
sell a book of the early history of the war, and I proposed to Mudge
that he could sell this book. But his aristocratic ideas were hard to
overcome, until I insinuated that he might have a valet to carry the
books and take care of him. This modified his ideas on my suggestion.
His memory of locality was surprising. When he escorted me to Boston
“to see the town” he would say, “Now over there is the bird-cage (a
shop) and there is the flat-iron sign, so we must go this way.” Only
once he failed, and then he said we must go back to the bird-cage,
after which we started again all right.
I went with him to Boston, and had an interview with the agent, who
was greatly pleased to have a martyr of the war to sell the book.
I imperatively urged Mudge to start at once, which he did with his
valet the next day; when I also left Lynn. He wrote from memory
in a good clear hand, with a little slat to guide his pen, of his
phenomenal success, which was such as we expected. During his tour
about Massachusetts he called at the home of the poet Longfellow, who
sent me a much prized photograph with his autograph.
Many bought of the poor boy, out of sympathy and patriotism, this
very imperfect book, which, doubtless, they never read. In the course
of a year he again wrote that he had opened a stationery store in
Lynn, and was doing a good business; and later he employed four
clerks. Still later I was dumbfounded on receiving an announcement of
his marriage.
[Illustration: HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW]
Three years after, when I visited their pretty cottage on Lynn
Beach, near that of Fanny Davenport the actress, William was not at
home, but I saw his charming wife and their handsome, healthy boy of
sixteen months.