EARLY YEARS
To the native-born New Englander the name of Prescott has, for more than
a century, possessed associations that give to it the stamp of genuine
distinction. Those who have borne it have belonged of right to the true
patriciate of their Commonwealth. The Prescotts were from the first a
fighting race, and their men were also men of mind; and, according to
the times in which they lived, they displayed one or the other
characteristic in a very marked degree. The pioneer among them on
American soil was John Prescott, a burly Puritan soldier who had fought
under Cromwell, and who loved danger for its own sake. He came from
Lancashire to Massachusetts about twenty years after the landing of the
_Mayflower_, and at once pushed off into the unbroken wilderness to mark
out a large plantation for himself in what is now the town of Lancaster.
A half-verified tradition describes him as having brought with him a
coat of mail and a steel helmet, glittering in which he often terrified
marauding Indians who ventured near his lands. His son and grandson and
his three great-grandsons all served as officers in the military forces
of Massachusetts; and among the last was Colonel William Prescott, who
commanded the American troops at Bunker Hill. Later, he served under the
eye of Washington, who personally commended him after the battle of
Long Island; and he took part in the defeat of Burgoyne at Saratoga--a
success which brought the arms of France to the support of the American
cause.
In times of peace as well, the Prescotts were men of light and leading.
Their names are found upon the rolls of the Massachusetts General Court,
of the Governor's Council in colonial days, of the Continental Congress,
and of the State judiciary. One of them, Oliver Prescott, a brother of
the Revolutionary warrior, who had been bred as a physician, made some
elaborate researches on the subject of that curious drug, ergot, and
embodied his results in a paper of such value as to attract the notice
of the profession in Europe. It was translated into French and German,
and was included in the _Dictionnaire des Sciences Medicales_--an
unusual compliment for an American of those days to receive. Most
eminent of all the Prescotts in civil life, however, before the
historian won his fame, was William Prescott,--the family names were
continually repeated,--whose career was remarkable for its distinction,
and whose character is significant because of its influence upon his
illustrious son. William Prescott was born in 1762, and, after a most
careful training, entered Harvard, from which he was graduated in 1783.
Admitted to the bar, he won high rank in his profession, twice receiving
and twice declining an appointment to the Supreme Court of the State.
His widely recognised ability brought him wealth, so that he lived in
liberal fashion, in a home whose generous appointments and cultivated
ease created an atmosphere that was rare indeed in those early days,
when narrow means and a crude provincialism combined to make New
England life unlovely. Prescott was not only an able lawyer, the worthy
compeer of Dexter, Otis, and Webster--he was a scholar by instinct,
widely read, thoughtful, and liberal-minded in the best sense of the
word. His intellectual conflicts with such professional antagonists as
have just been named gave him mental flexibility and a delightful
sanity; and though in temperament he was naturally of a serious turn, he
had both pungency and humour at his command. No more ideal father could
be imagined for a brilliant son; for he was affectionate, generous, and
sympathetic, with a knowledge of the world, and a happy absence of
Puritan austerity. He had, moreover, the very great good fortune to love
and marry a woman dowered with every quality that can fill a house with
sunshine. This was Catherine Hickling, the daughter of a prosperous
Boston merchant, afterward American consul in the Azores. As a girl, and
indeed all through her long and happy life, she was the very spirit of
healthful, normal womanhood,--full of an irrepressible and infectious
gayety, a miracle of buoyant life, charming in manner, unselfish,
helpful, and showing in her every act and thought the promptings of a
beautiful and spotless soul.
It was of this admirably mated pair that William Hickling Prescott,
their second son, was born, at Salem, on the 4th of May, 1796. The elder
Prescott had not yet acquired the ample fortune which he afterward
possessed; yet even then his home was that of a man of easy
circumstances,--one of those big, comfortable, New England houses,
picturesquely situated amid historic surroundings.[2] Here young
Prescott spent the first twelve years of his life under his mother's
affectionate care, and here began his education, first at a sort of dame
school, kept by a kindly maiden lady, Miss Mehitable Higginson, and
then, from about the age of seven, under the more formal instruction of
an excellent teacher, Mr. Jacob Newman Knapp, quaintly known as "Master
Knapp." It was here that he began to reveal certain definite and very
significant traits of character. The record of them is interesting, for
it shows that, but for the accident which subsequently altered the whole
tenor of his life, he might have grown up into a far from admirable man,
even had he escaped moral shipwreck. Many of his natural traits, indeed,
were of the kind that need restraint to make them safe to their
possessor, and in these early years restraint was largely lacking in the
life of the young Prescott, who, it may frankly be admitted, was badly
spoiled. His father, preoccupied in his legal duties, left him in great
part to his mother's care, and his mother, who adored him for his
cleverness and good looks, could not bear to check him in the smallest
of his caprices. He was, indeed, peculiarly her own, since from her he
had inherited so much. By virtue of his natural gifts, he was, no doubt,
a most attractive boy. Handsome, like his father, he had his mother's
vivacity and high spirits almost in excess. Quick of mind, imaginative,
full of eager curiosity, and with a tenacious memory, it is no wonder
that her pride in him was great, and that her mothering heart went out
to him in unconscious recognition of a kindred temperament. But his
school companions, and even his elders, often found these ebullient
spirits of his by no means so delightful. The easy-going indulgence
which he met at home, and very likely also the recognised position of
his father in that small community, combined to make young Prescott
wilful and self-confident and something of an _enfant terrible_. He was
allowed to say precisely what he thought, and he did invariably say it
on all occasions and to persons of every age. In fact, he acquired a
somewhat unenviable reputation for rudeness, while his high spirits
prompted him to contrive all sorts of practical jokes--a form of humour
which seldom tends to make one popular. Moreover, though well-grown for
his age, he had a distaste for physical exertion, and took little or no
part in active outdoor games. Naturally, therefore, he was not
particularly liked by his school companions, while, on the other hand,
he attained no special rank in the schoolroom. Although he was quick at
learning, he contented himself with satisfying the minimum of what was
required--a trait that remained very characteristic of him for a long
time. Of course, there is no particular significance in the general
statement that a boy of twelve was rude, mischievous, physically
indolent, and averse to study. Yet in Prescott's case these qualities
were somewhat later developed at a critical period of his life, and
might have spoiled a naturally fine character had they not been
ultimately checked and controlled by the memorable accident which befell
him a few years afterward.
In 1803, the elder Prescott suffered from a hemorrhage from the lungs
which compelled him for a time to give up many of his professional
activities. Five years after this he removed his home to Boston, where
the practice of his profession would be less burdensome, and where, as
it turned out, his income was very largely increased. The change was
fortunate both for him and for his son; since, in a larger community,
the boy came to be less impressed with his own importance, and also fell
under an influence far more stimulating than could ever have been
exerted by a village schoolmaster. The rector of Trinity Church in
Boston, the Rev. Dr. John S. Gardiner, was a gentleman of exceptional
cultivation. As a young man he had been well trained in England under
the learned Dr. Samuel Parr, a Latinist of the Ciceronian school. He
was, besides, a man possessing many genial and very human qualities, so
that all who knew him felt his personal fascination to a rare degree. He
had at one time been the master of a classical school in Boston and had
met with much success; but his clerical duties had obliged him to give
up this occupation. Thereafter, he taught only a small number of boys,
the sons of intimate friends in whom he took a special and personal
interest. His methods with them were not at all those of a typical
schoolmaster. He received his little classes in the library of his home,
and taught them, in a most informal fashion, English, Greek, and Latin.
He resembled, indeed, one of those ripe scholars of the Renaissance who
taught for the pure love of imparting knowledge. Much of his instruction
was conveyed orally rather than through the medium of text-books; and
his easy talk, flowing from a full mind, gave interest and richness to
his favourite subjects. Such teaching as this is always rare, and it was
peculiarly so in that age of formalism. To the privilege of Dr.
Gardiner's instruction, young Prescott was admitted, and from it he
derived not only a correct feeling for English style, but a genuine
love of classical study, which remained with him throughout his life. It
may be said here that he never at any time felt an interest in
mathematics or the natural sciences. His cast of mind was naturally
humanistic; and now, through the influence of an accomplished teacher,
he came to know the meaning and the beauty of the classical tradition.
Under Gardiner, Prescott's indifference to study disappeared, and he
applied himself so well that he was rapidly advanced from elementary
reading to the study of authors so difficult as AEschylus. His
biographer, Mr. Ticknor, who was his fellow-pupil at this time, has left
us some interesting notes upon the subject of Prescott's literary
preferences. It appears that he enjoyed Sophocles, while Horace
"interested and excited him beyond his years." The pessimism of Juvenal
he disliked, and the crabbed verse of Persius he utterly refused to
read. Under private teachers he studied French, Italian, and Spanish,--a
rather unusual thing for boys at that time,--and he reluctantly acquired
what he regarded as the irreducible minimum of mathematics. It was
decided that he should be fitted to enter the Sophomore Class in
Harvard, and to this end he devoted his mental energies. Like most boys,
he worked hardest upon those studies which related to his college
examination, viewing others as more or less superfluous. He did,
however, a good deal of miscellaneous reading, opportunities for which
he found in the Boston Athenaeum. This institution had been opened but a
short time before, and its own collection of books, which to-day numbers
more than two hundred thousand, was rather meagre; but in it had been
deposited some ten thousand volumes, constituting the private library
of John Quincy Adams, who was then holding the post of American Minister
to Russia. At a time when book-shops were few, and when books were
imported from England with much difficulty and expense, these ten
thousand volumes seemed an enormous treasure-house of good reading.
Prescott browsed through the books after the fashion of a clever boy,
picking out what took his fancy and neglecting everything that seemed at
all uninteresting. Yet this omnivorous reading stimulated his love of
letters and gave to him a larger range of vision than at that time he
could probably have acquired in any other way. It is interesting to note
the fact that his preference was for old romances--the more extravagant
the better--and for tales of wild and lawless adventure. An especial
favourite with him was the romance of _Amadis de Gaule_, which he found
in Southey's somewhat pedestrian translation, and which appealed
intensely to Prescott's imagination and his love of the fantastic.
His other occupations were decidedly significant. His most intimate
friend at this time was William Gardiner, his preceptor's son; and the
two boys were absolutely at one in their tastes and amusements. Both of
them were full of mischief, and both were irrepressibly boisterous,
playing all sorts of tricks at evening in the streets, firing off
pistols, and in general causing a good deal of annoyance to the sober
citizens of Boston. In this they were like any other healthy boys,--full
of animal spirits and looking for "fun" without any especial sense of
responsibility. Something else, however, is recorded of them which seems
to have a real importance, as revealing in Prescott, at least, some of
those mental characteristics which in his after life were to find
expression in his serious work.
The period was one when the thoughts of all men were turned to the
Napoleonic wars. The French and English were at grips in Spain for the
possession of the Peninsula. Wellington had landed in Portugal and,
marching into Spain, had flung down the gage of battle, which was taken
up by Soult, Massena, and Victor, in the absence of their mighty chief.
The American newspapers were filled with long, though belated, accounts
of the brilliant fighting at Ciudad Rodrigo, Almeida, and Badajoz; and
these narratives fired the imagination of Prescott, whose eagerness his
companion found infectious, so that the two began to play at battles;
not after the usual fashion of boys, but in a manner recalling the
_Kriegspiel_ of the military schools of modern Germany. Pieces of paper
were carefully cut into shapes which would serve to designate the
difference between cavalry, infantry, and artillery; and with these bits
of paper the disposition and manoeuvring of armies were indicated, so
as to make clear, in a rough way, the tactics of the opposing
commanders. Not alone were the Napoleonic battles thus depicted, but
also the great contests of which the boys had read or heard at
school,--Thermopylae, Marathon, Leuctra, Cannae, and Pharsalus. Some
pieces of old armour, unearthed among the rubbish of the Athenaeum,
enabled the boys to mimic in their play the combats of Amadis and the
knights with whom he fought.
Side by side with these amusements there was another which curiously
supplemented it. As Prescott and his friend went through the streets on
their way to school, they made a practice of inventing impromptu
stories, which they told each other in alternation. If the story was
unfinished when they arrived at school, it would be resumed on their way
home and continued until it reached its end. It was here that Prescott's
miscellaneous reading stood him in good stead. His mind was full of the
romances and histories that he had read; and his quick invention and
lively imagination enabled him to piece together the romantic bits which
he remembered, and to give them some sort of consistency and form.
Ticknor attaches little importance either to Prescott's interest in the
details of warfare or to this fondness of his for improvised narration.
Yet it is difficult not to see in both of them a definite bias; and we
may fairly hold that the boy's taste for battles, coupled with his love
of picturesque description, foreshadowed, even in these early years, the
qualities which were to bring him lasting fame.
All these boyish amusements, however, came to an end when, in August,
1811, Prescott presented himself as a candidate for admission to
Harvard. Harvard was then under the presidency of the Rev. Dr. John
Thornton Kirkland, who had been installed in office the year before
Prescott entered college. President Kirkland was the first of Harvard's
really eminent presidents.[3] Under his rule there definitely began that
slow but steady evolution, which was, in the end, to transform the small
provincial college into a great and splendid university. Kirkland was an
earlier Eliot, and some of his views seemed as radical to his
colleagues as did those of Eliot in 1869. Lowell has said of him,
somewhat unjustly: "He was a man of genius, but of genius that evaded
utilisation." It is fairer to suppose that, if he did not accomplish all
that he desired and attempted, this was because the time was not yet
ripe for radical innovations. He did secure large benefactions to the
University, the creation of new professorships on endowed foundations,
and the establishment of three professional schools. President Kirkland,
in reality, stood between the old order and the new, with his face set
toward the future, but retaining still some of the best traditions of
the small college of the past. It is told of him that he knew every
student by name, and took a very genuine interest in all of them,
helping them in many quiet, tactful ways, so that more than one
distinguished man in later life declared that, but for the thoughtful
and unsolicited kindness of Dr. Kirkland, he would have been forced to
abandon his college life in debt and in despair. Kirkland was a man of
striking personal presence, and could assume a bearing of such
impressive dignity as to verge on the majestic, as when he officially
received Lafayette in front of University Hall and presented the
assembled students to the nation's guest. The faculty over which he
presided contained at that time no teacher of enduring reputation,[4] so
that whatever personal influence was exerted upon Prescott by his
instructors must have come chiefly from such intercourse as he had with
Dr. Kirkland.
It is of interest to note just how much of an ordeal an entrance
examination at Harvard was at the time when Prescott came up as a
candidate for admission. The subjects were very few in number, and would
appear far from formidable to a modern Freshman. Dalzel's _Collectanea
Groea Minora_, the Greek Testament, Vergil, Sallust, and several
selected orations of Cicero represented, with the Greek and Latin
grammars, the classical requirements which constituted, indeed, almost
the entire test, since the only other subjects were arithmetic, "so for
as the rule of three," and a general knowledge of geography. The
curriculum of the College, while Prescott was a member of it, was meagre
enough when compared with what is offered at the present time. The
classical languages occupied most of the students' attention. Sallust,
Livy, Horace, and one of Cicero's rhetorical treatises made up the
principal work in Latin. Xenophon's _Anabasis_, Homer, and some
desultory selections from other authors were supposed to give a
sufficient knowledge of Greek literature. The Freshmen completed the
study of arithmetic, and the Sophomores did something in algebra and
geometry. Other subjects of study were rhetoric, declamation, a modicum
of history, and also logic, metaphysics, and ethics. The ecclesiastical
hold upon the College was seen in the inclusion of a lecture course on
"some topic of positive or controversial divinity," in an examination on
Doddridge's Lectures, in the reading of the Greek Testament, and in a
two years' course in Hebrew for Sophomores and Freshmen. Indeed, Hebrew
was regarded as so important that a "Hebrew part" was included in every
commencement programme until 1817--three years after Prescott's
graduation. In place of this language, however, while Prescott was in
college, students might substitute a course in French given by a tutor;
for as yet no regular chair of modern languages had been founded in the
University. The natural sciences received practically no attention,
although, in 1805, a chair of natural history had been endowed by
subscription. An old graduate of Harvard has recorded the fact that
chemistry in those days was regarded very much as we now look upon
alchemy; and that, on its practical side, it was held to be simply an
adjunct to the apothecary's profession. A few years later, and the
Harvard faculty contained such eminent men as Josiah Quincy, Judge
Joseph Story, Benjamin Peirce, the mathematician, George Ticknor, and
Edward Everett, and the opportunities for serious study were broadened
out immensely. But while Prescott was an undergraduate, the curriculum
had less variety and range than that of any well-equipped high school of
the present day.
A letter written by Prescott on August 23d, the day after he had passed
through the ordeal of examination, is particularly interesting. It
gives, in the first place, a notion of the quaint simplicity which then
characterised the academic procedure of the oldest of American
universities; and it also brings us into rather intimate touch with
Prescott himself as a youth of fifteen. At that time a great deal of the
eighteenth-century formality survived in the intercourse between fathers
and their sons; and especially in the letters which passed between them
was there usually to be found a degree of stiffness and restraint both
in feeling and expression. Yet this letter of Prescott's might have
been written yesterday by an American youth of the present time, so easy
and assured is it, and indeed, for the most part, so mature. It might
have been written also to one of his own age, and there is something
deliciously naive in its revelation of Prescott's approbativeness. The
boy evidently thought very well of himself, and was not at all averse to
fishing for a casual compliment from others. The letter is given in full
by Ticknor, but what is here quoted contains all that is important:--
"BOSTON, August 23rd.
"DEAR FATHER:--I now write you a few lines to inform you of my
fate. Yesterday at eight o'clock I was ordered to the President's
and there, together with a Carolinian, Middleton, was examined for
Sophomore. When we were first ushered into their presence, they
looked like so many judges of the Inquisition. We were ordered down
into the parlour, almost frightened out of our wits, to be examined
by each separately; but we soon found them quite a pleasant sort of
chaps. The President sent us down a good dish of pears, and treated
us very much like gentlemen. It was not ended in the morning; but
we returned in the afternoon when Professor Ware [the Hollis
Professor of Divinity] examined us in Grotius' _De Veritate_. We
found him very good-natured; for I happened to ask him a question
in theology, which made him laugh so that he was obliged to cover
his face with his hand. At half past three our fate was decided and
we were declared 'Sophomores of Harvard University.'
"As you would like to know how I appeared, I will give you the
conversation _verbatim_ with Mr. Frisbie when I went to see him
after the examination. I asked him,'Did I appear well in my
examination?' Answer. 'Yes.' Question. 'Did I appear _very_ well,
sir?' Answer. 'Why are you so particular, young man? Yes, you did
yourself a great deal of credit.' I feel today twenty pounds
lighter than I did yesterday.... Love to mother, whose affectionate
son I remain,
"WM. HICKLING PRESCOTT."
Prescott entered upon his college life in the autumn of this same year
(1811). We find that many of those traits which he had exhibited in his
early school days were now accentuated rather sharply. He was fond of
such studies as appealed to his instinctive tastes. English literature
and the literatures of Greece and Rome he studied willingly because he
liked them and not because he was ambitious to gain high rank in the
University. To this he was more or less indifferent, and, therefore,
gave as little attention as possible to such subjects as mathematics,
logic, the natural sciences, philosophy, and metaphysics, without which,
of course, he could not hope to win university honours. Nevertheless, he
disliked to be rated below the average of his companions, and,
therefore, he was careful not to fall beneath a certain rather moderate
standard of excellence. He seems, indeed, to have adopted the Horatian
_aurea mediocritas_ as his motto; and the easy-going, self-indulgent
philosophy of Horace he made for the time his own. In fact, the ideal
which he set before himself was the life of a gentleman in the
traditional English meaning of that word; and it was a gentleman's
education and nothing more which he desired to attain. To be socially
agreeable, courteous, and imbued with a liberal culture, seemed to him a
sufficient end for his ambition. His father was wealthy and generous. He
was himself extremely fond of the good things of life. He made friends
readily, and had a very large share of personal attractiveness. Under
the circumstances, it is not to be wondered at if his college life was
marked by a pleasant, well-bred hedonism rather than by the austerity of
the true New England temperament. The Prescotts as a family had some
time before slipped away from the clutch of Puritanism and had accepted
the mild and elastic creed of Channing, which, in its tolerant view of
life, had more than a passing likeness to Episcopalianism. Prescott was
still running over with youthful spirits, his position was an assured
one, his means were ample, and his love of pleasure very much in
evidence. We cannot wonder, then, if we find that in the early part of
his university career he slipped into a sort of life which was probably
less commendable than his cautious biographers are willing to admit. Mr.
Ticknor's very guarded intimations seem to imply in Prescott a
considerable laxity of conduct; and it is not unfair to read between the
lines of what he has written and there find unwilling but undeniable
testimony. Thus Ticknor remarks that Prescott "was always able to stop
short of what he deemed flagrant excesses and to keep within the limits,
though rather loose ones, which he had prescribed to himself. His
standard for the character of a gentleman varied, no doubt, at this
period, and sometimes was not so high on the score of morals as it
should have been." Prescott is also described as never having passed the
world's line of honour, but as having been willing to run exceedingly
close to it. "He pardoned himself too easily for his manifold neglect
and breaches of the compacts he had made with his conscience; but there
was repentance at the bottom of all." It is rather grudgingly admitted
also that "the early part of his college career, when for the first time
he left the too gentle restraints of his father's house, ... was the
most dangerous period of his life. Upon portions of it he afterwards
looked back with regret." There is a good deal of significance,
moreover, in some sentences which Prescott himself wrote, long
afterwards, of the temptations which assail a youth during those years
when he has attained to the independence of a man but while he is still
swayed by the irresponsibility of a boy. There seems to be in these
sentences a touch of personal reminiscence and regret:--
"The University, that little world of itself ... bounding the
visible horizon of the student like the walls of a monastery, still
leaves within him scope enough for all the sympathies and the
passions of manhood.... He meets with the same obstacles to success
as in the world, the same temptations to idleness, the same gilded
seductions, but without the same power of resistance. For in this
morning of life his passions are strongest; his animal nature is
more sensible to enjoyment; his reasoning faculties less vigorous
and mature. Happy the youth who in this stage of his existence is
so strong in his principles that he can pass through the ordeal
without faltering or failing, on whom the contact of bad
companionship has left no stain for future tears to wash away."
Just how much is meant by this reluctant testimony can only be
conjectured. It is not unfair, however, to assume that, for a time,
Prescott's diversions were such as even a lenient moralist would think
it necessary to condemn. The fondness for wine, which remained with him
throughout his life, makes it likely that convival excess was one of his
undergraduate follies; while the flutter of a petticoat may at times
have stirred his senses. No doubt many a young man in his college days
has plunged far deeper into dissipation than ever Prescott did and has
emerged unscathed to lead a useful life. Yet in Prescott's case there
existed a peculiar danger. His future did not call upon him to face the
stern realities of a life of toil. He was assured of a fortune ample for
his needs, and therefore his easy-going, pleasure-loving disposition,
his boundless popularity, his handsome face, his exuberant spirits, and
his very moderate ambition might easily have combined to lead him down
the primrose path where intellect is enervated and moral fibre
irremediably sapped.
One dwells upon this period of indolence and folly the more willingly,
because, after all, it reveals to us in Prescott those pardonable human
failings which only serve to make his character more comprehensible.
Prescott's eulogists have so studiously ignored his weaknesses as to
leave us with no clear-cut impression of the actual man. They have
unwisely smoothed away so much and have extenuated so much in their
halting and ambiguous phrases, as to create a picture of which the
outlines are far too faint. Apparently, they wish to draw the likeness
of a perfect being, and to that extent they have made the subject of
their encomiums appear unreal. One cannot understand how truly lovable
the actual Prescott was, without reconstructing him in such a way as to
let his faults appear beside his virtues. Moreover, an understanding of
the perils which at first beset him is needed in order to make clear the
profound importance of an incident which sharply called a halt to his
excesses and, by curbing his wilful nature, set his finer qualities in
the ascendant. It is only by remembering how far he might have fallen,
that we can view as a blessing in disguise the blow which Fate was soon
to deal him.
In the second (Junior) year of his college life, he was dining one day
with the other undergraduates in the Commons Hall. During these meals,
so long as any college officers were present, decorum usually reigned;
but when the dons had left the room, the students frequently wound up by
what, in modern student phrase, would be described as "rough-house."
There were singing and shouting and frequently some boisterous
scuffling, such as is natural among a lot of healthy young barbarians.
On this particular occasion, as Prescott was leaving the hall, he heard
a sudden outbreak and looked around to learn its cause. Missiles were
flying about; and, just as he turned his head, a large hard crust of
bread struck him squarely in the open eye. The shock was great,
resembling a concussion of the brain, and Prescott fell unconscious. He
was taken to his father's house, where, on recovering consciousness, he
evinced extreme prostration, with nausea, a fluttering pulse, and all
the evidences of physical collapse. So weak was he that he could not
even sit upright in his bed. For several weeks unbroken rest was
ordered, so that nature, aided by a vigorous constitution, might repair
the injury which his system had sustained. When he returned to
Cambridge, the sight of the injured eye (the left one) was gone forever.
Oddly enough, in view of the severity of the blow, the organ was not
disfigured, and only through powerful lenses could even the slightest
difference be detected between it and the unhurt eye. Dr. James Jackson,
who attended Prescott at this time, described the case as one of
paralysis of the retina, for which no remedy was possible. This
accident, with the consequences which it entailed, was to have a
profound effect not only upon the whole of Prescott's subsequent
career, but upon his character as well. His affliction, indeed, is
inseparably associated with his work, and it must again and again be
referred to, both because it was continually in his thoughts and because
it makes the record of his literary achievement the more remarkable.
Incidentally, it afforded a revelation of one of Prescott's noblest
traits,--his magnanimity. He was well aware of the identity of the
person to whom he owed this physical calamity. Yet, knowing as he did
that the whole thing was in reality an accident, he let it be supposed
that he had no knowledge of the person and that the mishap had come
about in such a way that the responsibility for it could not be fixed.
As a matter of fact, the thing had been done unintentionally; yet this
cannot excuse its perpetrator for never expressing to Prescott his
regret and sympathy. Years afterwards, Prescott spoke of this man to
Ticknor in the kindest and most friendly fashion, and once he was able
to confer on him a signal favour, which he did most readily and with
sincere cordiality.
Prescott returned to the University in a mood of seriousness, which
showed forth the qualities inherited from his father. Hitherto he had
been essentially his mother's son, with all her gayety and mirthfulness
and joy of life. Henceforth he was to exhibit more and more the strength
of will and power of application which had made his father so honoured
and so influential. Not that he let his grave misfortune cloud his
spirits. He had still the use of his uninjured eye, and he had recovered
from his temporary physical prostration; but he now went about his work
in a different spirit, and was resolved to win at least an honourable
rank for scholarship. In the classics and in English he studied hard,
and he overcame to some extent his aversion to philosophy and logic.
Mathematics, however, still remained the bane of his academic existence.
For a time he used to memorise word for word all the mathematical
demonstrations as he found them in the text-books, without the slightest
comprehension of what they meant; and his remarkable memory enabled him
to reproduce them in the class room, so that the professor of
mathematics imagined him to be a promising disciple. This fact does not
greatly redound to the acumen of the professor nor to the credit of his
class-room methods, and what followed gives a curious notion of the
easy-going system which then prevailed. Prescott found the continual
exertion of his memory a good deal of a bore. To his candid nature it
also savoured of deception. He, therefore, very frankly explained to the
professor the secret of his mathematical facility. He said that, if
required, he would continue to memorise the work, but that he knew it to
be for him nothing but a waste of time, and he asked, with much
_naivete_, that he might be allowed to use his leisure to better
advantage. This most ingenuous request must have amused the gentleman of
whom it was made; but it proved to be effectual. Prescott was required
to attend all the mathematical exercises conscientiously, but from that
day he was never called upon to recite. For the rest, his diligence in
those studies which he really liked won him the respect of the faculty
at large. At graduation he received as a commencement honour the
assignment of a Latin poem, which he duly declaimed to a crowded
audience in the old "meeting-house" at Cambridge, in August, 1814. This
poem was in Latin elegiacs, and was an apostrophe to Hope (_Ad Spem_),
of which, unfortunately, no copy has been preserved. At the same time,
Prescott was admitted to membership in the Phi Beta Kappa, from which a
single blackball was sufficient to exclude a candidate. His father
celebrated these double honours by giving an elaborate dinner, in a
pavilion, to more than five hundred of the family's acquaintances.
Prescott had now to make his choice of a profession; for to a New
Englander of those days every man, however wealthy, was expected to have
a definite occupation. Very naturally he decided upon the law, and began
the study of it in his father's office, though it was evident enough
from the first that to his taste the tomes of Blackstone made no very
strong appeal. He loved rather to go back to his classical reading and
to enlarge his knowledge of modern literature. Indeed, his legal studies
were treated rather cavalierly, and it is certain that had he ever been
admitted to the bar, he would have found no pleasure in the routine of a
lawyer's practice. Fate once more intervened, though, as before, in an
unpleasant guise. In January, 1815, a painful inflammation appeared in
his right eye--the one that had not been injured. This inflammation
increased so rapidly as to leave Prescott for the time completely blind.
Nor was the disorder merely local. A fever set in with a high pulse and
a general disturbance of the system. Prescott's suffering was intense
for several days; and at the end of a week, when the local inflammation
had passed away, the retina of the right eye was found to be so
seriously affected as to threaten a permanent loss of sight. At the
same time, symptoms of acute rheumatism appeared in the knee-joints and
in the neck. For several months the patient's condition was pitiable.
Again and again there was a recurrence of the inflammation in the eye,
alternating with the rheumatic symptoms, so that for sixteen weeks
Prescott was unable to leave his room, which had to be darkened almost
into blackness. Medical skill availed very little, and no doubt the
copious blood-letting which was demanded by the practice of that time
served only to deplete the patient's strength. Through all these weary
months, however, Prescott bore his sufferings with indomitable courage,
and to those friends of his who groped their way through the darkness to
his bedside he was always cheerful, animated, and even gay, talking very
little of his personal affliction and showing a hearty interest in the
concerns of others. When autumn came it was decided that he should take
a sea voyage, partly to invigorate his constitution and partly to enable
him to consult the most eminent specialists of France and England. First
of all, however, he planned to visit his grandfather, Mr. Thomas
Hickling, who, as has been already mentioned, was American consul at the
island of St. Michael's in the Azores, where it was thought the mildness
of the climate might prove beneficial.
Prescott set out, on September 26th of the same year (1815), in one of
the small sailing vessels which plied between Boston and the West
African islands. The voyage occupied twenty-two days, during which time
Prescott had a recurrence both of his rheumatic pains and of the
inflammatory condition of his eye. His discomfort was enhanced by the
wretchedness of his accommodations--a gloomy little cabin into which
water continually trickled from the deck, and in which the somewhat
fastidious youth was forced to live upon nauseous messes of rye pudding
sprinkled with coarse salt. Cockroaches and other vermin swarmed about
him; and it must have been with keen pleasure that he exchanged this
floating prison for the charming villa in the Azores, where his
grandfather had made his home in the midst of groves and gardens,
blooming with a semi-tropical vegetation. Mr. Hickling, during his long
residence at St. Michael's, had married a Portuguese lady for his second
wife, and his family received Prescott with unstinted cordiality. The
change from the bleak shores of New England to the laurels and myrtles
and roses of the Azores delighted Prescott, and so appealed to his sense
of beauty that he wrote home long and enthusiastic letters. But his
unstinted enjoyment of this Hesperian paradise lasted for little more
than two short weeks. He had landed on the 18th of October, and by
November 1st he had gone back to his old imprisonment in darkness,
living on a meagre diet and smarting under the blisters which were used
as a counter-irritant to the rheumatic inflammation. As usual, however,
his cheerfulness was unabated. He passed his time in singing, in
chatting with his friends, and in walking hundreds of miles around his
darkened room. He remained in this seclusion from November to February,
when his health once more improved; and two months later, on the 8th of
April, 1816, he took passage from St. Michael's for London. The sea
voyage and its attendant discomforts had their usual effect, and during
twenty-two out of the twenty-four days, to which his weary journey was
prolonged, he was confined to his cabin.
On reaching London his case was very carefully diagnosed by three of the
most eminent English specialists, Dr. Farre, Sir William Adams, and Mr.
(afterward Sir) Astley Cooper. Their verdict was not encouraging, for
they decided that no local treatment of his eyes could be of any
particular advantage, and that the condition of the right eye would
always depend very largely upon the general condition of his system.
They prescribed for him, however, and he followed out their regimen with
conscientious scrupulosity. After a three months' stay in London, he
crossed the Channel and took up his abode in Paris. In England, owing to
his affliction, he had been able to do and see but little, because he
was forbidden to leave his room after nightfall, and of course he could
not visit the theatre or meet the many interesting persons to whom Mr.
John Quincy Adams, then American Minister to England, offered to present
him. Something he saw of the art collections of London, and he was
especially impressed by the Elgin Marbles and Raphael's cartoons. There
was a touch of pathos in the wistful way in which he paused in the
booksellers' shops and longingly turned over rare editions of the
classics which it was forbidden him to read. "When I look into a Greek
or Latin book," he wrote to his father, "I experience much the same
sensation as does one who looks on the face of a dead friend, and the
tears not infrequently steal into my eyes." In Paris he remained two
months, and passed the following winter in Italy, making a somewhat
extended tour, and visiting the most famous of the Italian cities in
company with an old schoolmate. Thence he returned to Paris, where once
more he had a grievous attack of his malady; and at last, in May of
1817, he again reached London, embarking not long after for the United
States. Before leaving England on this second visit, he had explored
Oxford and Cambridge, which interested him extremely, but which he was
glad to leave in order to be once more at home.