THE CHOICE OF A CAREER
Prescott's return to his home brought him face to face with the
perplexing question of his future. During his two years of absence this
question must often have been forced upon his mind, especially during
those weary weeks when the darkness of his sick-room and the lack of any
mental diversion threw him in upon himself and left him often with his
own thoughts for company. Even to his optimistic temperament the future
may well have seemed a gloomy one. Half-blind and always dreading the
return of a painful malady, what was it possible for him to do in the
world whose stir and movement and boundless opportunity had so much
attracted him? Must he spend his years as a recluse, shut out from any
real share in the active duties of life? Little as he was wont to dwell
upon his own anxieties, he could not remain wholly silent concerning a
subject so vital to his happiness. In a letter to his father, written
from St. Michael's not long before he set out for London, he broached
very briefly a subject that must have been very often in his thoughts.
"The most unpleasant of my reflections suggested by this late
inflammation are those arising from the probable necessity of
abandoning a profession congenial with my taste and recommended by
such favourable opportunities, and adopting one for which I am ill
qualified and have but little inclination. It is some consolation
that this latter alternative, should my eyes permit, will afford me
more leisure for the pursuit of my favourite studies. But on this
subject I shall consult my physician and will write you his
opinion."
Apparently at this time he still cherished the hope of entering upon
some sort of a professional career, even though the practice of the law
were closed to him. But after the discouraging verdict of the London
specialists had been made known, he took a more despondent view. He
wrote:--
"As to the future, it is too evident I shall never be able to
pursue a profession. God knows how poorly I am qualified and how
little inclined to be a merchant. Indeed, I am sadly puzzled to
think how I shall succeed even in this without eyes."
It was in this uncertain state of mind that he returned home in the late
summer of 1817. The warmth of the welcome which he received renewed his
buoyant spirits, even though he soon found himself again prostrated by a
recurrence of his now familiar trouble. His father had leased a
delightful house in the country for his occupancy; but the shade-trees
that surrounded it created a dampness which was unfavourable to a
rheumatic subject, and so Prescott soon returned to Boston. Here he
spent the winter in retirement, yet not in idleness. His love of books
and of good literature became the more intense in proportion as physical
activity was impossible; and he managed to get through a good many
books, thanks to the kindness of his sister and of his former school
companion, William Gardiner, both of whom devoted a part of each day to
reading aloud to Prescott,--Gardiner the classics, and Miss Prescott
the standard English authors in history, poetry, and belles-lettres in
general. These readings often occupied many consecutive hours, extending
at times far into the night; and they relieved Prescott's seclusion of
much of its irksomeness, while they stored his mind with interesting
topics of thought. It was, in reality, the continuation of a system of
vicarious reading which he had begun two years before in St. Michael's,
where he had managed, by the aid of another's eyes, to enjoy the
romances of Scott, which were then beginning to appear, and to renew his
acquaintance with Shakespeare, Homer, and the Greek and Roman
historians.
From reading literature, it was a short step to attempting its
production. Pledging his sister to secrecy, Prescott composed and
dictated to her an essay which was sent anonymously to the _North
American Review_, then a literary fledgling of two years, but already
making its way to a position of authority. This little _ballon d'essai_
met the fate of many such, for the manuscript was returned within a
fortnight. Prescott's only comment was, "There! I was a fool to send
it!" Yet the instinct to write was strong within him, and before very
long was again to urge him with compelling force to test his gift. But
meanwhile, finding that his life of quiet and seclusion did very little
for his eyes, he made up his mind that he might just as well go out into
the world more freely and mingle with the friends whose society he
missed so much. After a little cautious experimenting, which apparently
did no harm, he resumed the old life from which, for three years, he had
been self-banished. The effect upon him mentally was admirable, and he
was now safe from any possible danger of becoming morbidly
introspective from the narrowness of his environment. He went about
freely all through the year 1818, indulging in social pleasures with the
keenest zest. His bent for literature, however, asserted itself in the
foundation of a little society or club, whose members gathered
informally, from time to time, for the reading of papers and for genial
yet frank criticism of one another's productions. This club never
numbered more than twenty-four persons, but they were all cultivated
men, appreciative and yet discriminating, and the list of them contains
some names, such as those of Franklin Dexter, Theophilus Parsons, John
Ware, and Jared Sparks, which, like Prescott's own, belong to the record
of American letters. For their own amusement, they subsequently brought
out a little periodical called _The Club-Room_, of which four numbers in
all were published,[5] and to which Prescott, who acted as its editor,
made three contributions, one of them a sort of humorous editorial
article, very local in its interest, another a sentimental tale called
"The Vale of Allerid," and the third a ghost story called "Calais." They
were like thousands of such trifles which are written every year by
amateurs, and they exhibit no literary qualities which raise them above
the level of the commonplace. The sole importance of _The Club-Room's_
brief existence lies in the fact that it possibly did something to lure
Prescott along the path that led to serious literary productiveness.
One very important result of his return to social life was found in his
marriage, in 1820, to Miss Susan Amory, the daughter of Mr. Thomas C.
Amory, a leading merchant of Boston.[6] The bride was a very charming
girl, to whom her young husband was passionately devoted, and who filled
his life with a radiant happiness which delighted all who knew and loved
him. His naturally buoyant spirits rose to exuberance after his
engagement. He forgot his affliction. He let his reading go by the
board. He was, in fact, too happy for anything but happiness, and this
delight even inspired him to make a pun that is worth recording.
Prescott was an inveterate punster, and his puns were almost invariably
bad; but when his bachelor friends reproached him for his desertion of
them, he laughed and answered them with the Vergilian line,--
"_Omnia vincit amor et nos cedamus Amori_"--
a play upon words which Thackeray independently chanced upon many years
later in writing _Pendennis_, and _a propos_ of a very different Miss
Amory. It is of interest to recall the description given by Mr. Ticknor
of Prescott as he appeared at the time of his marriage (May 4, 1820)
and, indeed, very much as he remained down to the hour of his death.
"My friend was one of the finest looking men I have ever seen; or,
if this should be deemed in some respects a strong expression, I
shall be fully justified ... in saying that he was one of the most
attractive. He was tall, well formed, manly in his bearing but
gentle, with light brown hair that was hardly changed or
diminished by years, with a clear complexion and a ruddy flash on
his cheek that kept for him to the last an appearance of
comparative youth, but above all with a smile that was the most
absolutely contagious I ever looked on.... Even in the last months
of his life when he was in some other respects not a little
changed, he appeared at least ten years younger than he really was.
And as for the gracious sunny smile that seemed to grow sweeter as
he grew older, it was not entirely obliterated even by the touch of
death."
After Prescott had been married for about a year, the old question of a
life pursuit recurred and was considered by him seriously. Without any
very definite aim, yet with a half-unconscious intuition, he resolved to
store his mind with abundant reading, so that he might, at least in some
way, be fitted for the career of a man of letters. Hitherto, in the
desultory fashion of his boyhood, he had dipped into many authors, yet
he really knew nothing thoroughly and well. In the classics he was
perhaps best equipped; but of English literature his knowledge was
superficial because he had read only here and there, and rather for the
pleasure of the moment than for intellectual discipline. He had a slight
smattering of French, sufficient for the purposes of a traveller, but
nothing more. Of Italian, Spanish, and German he was wholly ignorant,
and with the literatures of these three languages he had never made even
the slightest acquaintance. Conning over in a reflective mood the sum
total of his acquisitions and defects, he came to the conclusion that he
would undertake what he called in a memorandum "a course of studies,"
including "the principles of grammar and correct writing" and the
history of the North American Continent. He also resolved to devote one
hour a day to the Latin classics. Some six months after this, his
purpose had expanded, and he made a second resolution, which he recorded
in the following words:--
"I am now twenty-six years of age, nearly. By the time I am thirty,
God willing, I propose with what stock I have already on hand to be
a very well read English scholar; to be acquainted with the
classical and useful authors, prose and poetry, in Latin, French,
and Italian, and especially in history--I do not mean a critical or
profound acquaintance. The two following years I may hope to learn
German, and to have read the classical German writers; and the
translations, if my eye continues weak, of the Greek."
To this memorandum he adds the comment that such a course of study would
be sufficient "for general discipline"--a remark which proves that he
had not as yet any definite plan in undertaking his self-ordered task.
For several years he devoted himself with great industry to the course
which he had marked out. He went back to the pages of Blair's Rhetoric
and to Lindley Murray's Grammar, and he read consecutively, making notes
as he read, the older masters of English prose style from Roger Ascham,
Sidney, Bacon, and Raleigh down to the authors of the eighteenth
century, and even later. In Latin he reviewed Tacitus, Livy, and Cicero.
His reading seems to have been directed less to the subject-matter than
to the understanding and appreciation of style as a revelation of the
writer's essential characteristics. It was, in fact, a study of
psychology quite as much as a study of literature. Passing on to French,
he found the literature of that language comparatively unsympathetic,
and he contrasted it unfavourably with the English. He derived some
pleasure from the prose of Montaigne and Bossuet, and from Corneille and
Moliere; but, on the whole, French poetry always seemed to him too rigid
in its formal classicism to be enjoyable. Side by side with his French
reading, he made the acquaintance of the early English ballad-poetry and
the old romances, and, in 1823, he took up Italian, which appealed to
him intensely, so that he read an extraordinary amount and made the most
voluminous notes upon every author that interested him, besides writing
long criticisms and argumentative letters to his friend Ticknor, full of
praises of Petrarch and Dante, and defending warmly the real existence
of Laura and the genuineness of Dante's passion for Beatrice. For Dante,
indeed, Prescott conceived a most enthusiastic admiration, which found
expression in many a letter to his friend.
The immediate result of his Italian studies was the preparation of some
articles which were published in the _North American Review_--the first
on Italian narrative poetry (October, 1824). This was the beginning of a
series; since, nearly every year thereafter, some paper from his pen
appeared in that publication. One article on Italian poetry and romance
was originally offered to the English _Quarterly Review_ through Jared
Sparks, and was accepted by the editor; but Prescott, growing impatient
over the delay in its appearance, recalled the manuscript and gave it to
the _North American_. These essays of Prescott were not rated very
highly by their author, and we can accept his own estimate as, on the
whole, a just one. They are written in an urbane and agreeable manner,
but are wholly lacking in originality, insight, and vigour; while their
bits of learning strike the more modern reader as old fashioned, even if
not pedantic. This literary work, however, slight as may be its
intrinsic merit, was at least an apprenticeship in letters, and gave to
Prescott a useful training in the technique of composition.
In 1824, something of great moment happened in the course of Prescott's
search for a life career. He had, in accordance with the resolution
already mentioned, taken up the study of German; but he found it not
only difficult but, to him, uninteresting. After several months he
became discouraged; and though he read on, he did so, as he himself has
recorded, with no method and with very little diligence or spirit. Just
at this time Mr. George Ticknor, who had been delivering a course of
lectures in Harvard on the subject of Spanish literature, read over some
of these lectures to Prescott, merely to amuse him and to divert his
mind. The immediate result was that Prescott resolved to give up his
German studies and to substitute a course in Spanish. On the first day
of December, 1824, he employed a teacher of that language, and commenced
a course of study which was to prove wonderfully fruitful, and which
ended only with his life. He seems to have begun the reading of Spanish
from the very moment that he took up the study of its grammar, and there
is an odd significance in a remark which he wrote down only a few days
after: "I snatch a fraction of the morning from the interesting treatise
of M. Josse on the Spanish language and from the _Conquista de Mexico_,
which, notwithstanding the time I have been upon it, I am far from
having conquered." The deadening effects of German upon his mind seem
to have endured for a while, since at Christmas time he was still
pursuing his studies with a certain listlessness; and he wrote to
Bancroft, the historian, a letter which contained one remark that is
very curious when we read it in the light of his subsequent career:--
"I am battling with the Spaniards this winter, but I have not the
heart for it as I had for the Italians. _I doubt whether there are
many valuable things that the key of knowledge will unlock in that
language._"
Another month, however, found him filled with the joy of one who has at
last laid his hand upon that for which he has long been groping. He
expressed this feeling very vividly in a letter quoted by Mr. Ticknor:--
"Did you never, in learning a language, after groping about in the
dark for a long while, suddenly seem to turn an angle where the
light breaks upon you all at once? The knack seems to have come to
me within the last fortnight in the same manner as the art of
swimming comes to those who have been splashing about for months in
the water in vain."
Spanish literature exercised upon his mind a peculiar charm, and he
boldly dashed into the writing of Spanish even from the first. Ticknor's
well-stored library supplied him with an abundance of books, and his own
comments upon the Castilian authors in whom he revelled were now written
not in English but in Spanish--naturally the Spanish of a beginner, yet
with a feeling for idiom which greatly surprised Ticknor. Even in after
years, Prescott never acquired a faultless Spanish diction; but he wrote
with clearness and fluency, so that his Spanish was very individual,
and, in this respect, not unlike the Latin of Politian or of Milton.
Up to this time Prescott had been cultivating his mind and storing it
with knowledge without having formed any clear conception of what he was
to do with his intellectual accumulations. At first, when he formed a
plan of systematic study, his object had been only the modest one of
"general discipline," as he expressed it. As he went on, however, he
seems to have had an instinctive feeling that even without intention he
was moving toward a definite goal. Just what this was he did not know,
but none the less he was not without faith that it would ultimately be
revealed to him. Looking back over all the memoranda that he has left
behind, it is easy now to see that his drift had always been toward
historical investigation. His boyish tastes, already described, declared
his interest in the lives of men of action. His maturer preferences
pointed in the same direction. It has heretofore been noted that, in
1821, when he marked out for himself his first formal plan of study, he
included "the compendious history of North America" as one of the
subjects. While reading French he had dwelt especially upon the
chroniclers and historians from Froissart down. In Spanish he had been
greatly attracted by Mariana's _Historia de Espana_, which is still one
of the Castilian classics; and this work had led him to the perusal of
Mably's acute and philosophical _Etude de l'Histoire_. He himself long
afterward explained that still earlier than this he had been strongly
attracted to historical writing, especially after reading Gibbon's
_Autobiography_, which he came upon in 1820. Even then, he tells us, he
had proposed to himself to become an historian "in the best sense of the
term." About 1822 he jotted down the following in his private notes:--
"History has always been a favourite study with me and I have long
looked forward to it as a subject on which I was one day to
exercise my pen. It is not rash, in the dearth of well-written
American history, to entertain the hope of throwing light upon this
matter. This is my hope."
Nevertheless, although his bent was so evidently for historical
composition, he had as yet received no impulse toward any especial
department of that field. In October, 1825, we find him making this
confession of his perplexity: "I have been so hesitating and reflecting
upon what I shall do, that I have in fact done nothing." And five days
later, he set down the following: "I have passed the last fortnight in
examination of a suitable subject for historical composition." In his
case there was no need for haste. He realised that historical research
demands maturity of mind. "I think," he said, "thirty-five years of age
full soon enough to put pen to paper." And again: "I care not how long a
time I take for it, provided I am diligent in all that time."
It is clear from one of the passages just quoted, that his first thought
was to choose a distinctively American theme. This, however, he put
aside without any very serious consideration, although he had looked
into the material at hand and had commented upon its richness. His love
of Italian literature and of Italy drew him strongly to an Italian
theme, and for a while he thought of preparing a careful study of that
great movement which transformed the republic of ancient Rome into an
empire. Again, still with Italy in mind, he debated with himself the
preparation of a work on Italian literature,--a work (to use his own
words) "which, without giving a chronological and minute analysis of
authors, should exhibit in masses the most important periods,
revolutions, and characters in the history of Italian letters." Further
reflection, however, led him to reject this, partly because it would
involve so extensive and critical a knowledge of all periods of Italian
literature, and also because the subject was not new, having in a way
been lately treated by Sismondi. Prescott makes another and very
characteristic remark, which shows him to have been then as always the
man of letters as well as the historian, with a keen eye to what is
interesting. "Literary history," he says, "is not so amusing as civil."
The choice of a Spanish subject had occurred to him in a casual way soon
after he had taken up the study of the Spanish language. In a letter
already quoted as having been written in December of 1825, he balances
such a theme with his project for a Roman one:--
"I have been hesitating between two topics for historical
investigation--Spanish history from the invasion of the Arabs to
the consolidation of the monarchy under Charles V., or a history of
the revolution of ancient Rome which converted the republic into an
empire.... I shall probably select the first as less difficult of
execution than the second."
He also planned a collection of biographical sketches and criticisms,
but presently rejected that, as he did, a year later, the Roman subject;
and after having done so, the mists began to clear away and a great
purpose to take shape before his mental vision. On January 8, 1826, he
wrote a long memorandum which represents the focussing of his hitherto
vague mental strivings.
"Cannot I contrive to embrace the _gist_ of the Spanish subject
without involving myself in the unwieldy barbarous records of a
thousand years? What new and interesting topic may be admitted--not
forced--into the reigns of Ferdinand and Isabella? Can I not
indulge in a retrospective picture of the constitutions of Castile
and Aragon--of the Moorish dynasties and the causes of their decay
and dissolution? Then I have the Inquisition with its bloody
persecutions; the conquest of Granada, a brilliant passage; the
exploits of the Great Captain in Italy; ... the discovery of a new
world, my own country.... A biography will make me responsible for
a limited space only; will require much less reading; will offer
the deeper interest which always attaches to minute developments of
character, and the continuous, closely connected narratives. The
subject brings me to a point whence [modern] English history has
started, is untried ground, and in my opinion a rich one. The age
of Ferdinand is most important.... It is in every respect an
interesting and momentous period of history; the materials
authentic, ample. I will chew upon this matter and decide this
week."
Long afterward (in 1847) Prescott pencilled upon this memorandum the
words: "This was the first germ of my conception of _Ferdinand and
Isabella_." On January 19th, after some further wavering, he wrote down
definitely: "I subscribe to the _History of the Reign of Ferdinand and
Isabella_." Opposite this note he made, in 1847, the brief but emphatic
comment,--"A fortunate choice."
From this decision he never retreated, though at times he debated with
himself the wisdom of his choice. His apparent vacillation was due to a
return of the inflammation in his eye. For a little while this caused
him to shrink back from the difficulties of his Spanish subject,
involving as it did an immense amount of reading; and there came into
his head the project of writing an historical survey of English
literature. But on the whole he held fast to his original resolution,
and soon entered upon that elaborate preparation which was to give to
American literature a masterpiece. In his final selection of a theme we
can, indeed, discern the blending of several currents of reflection and
the combination of several of his earlier purposes. Though his book was
to treat of two Spanish sovereigns, it nevertheless related to a reign
whose greatest lustre was conferred upon it by an Italian and by the
discovery of the Western World. Thus Prescott's early predilection for
American history his love for Italy, and his new-born interest in Spain
were all united to stimulate him in the task upon which he had now
definitely entered.