SUCCESS
Dr. Johnson, in his rather unsympathetic life of Milton, declares that
it is impossible for a blind man to write history. Already, before
Prescott began historical composition, this dictum had been refuted by
the brilliant French historian, Augustin Thierry, whose scholarly study
of the Merovingian period was composed after he had wholly lost his
sight.[7] Moreover, Prescott was not wholly blind, for at times he could
make a cautious use of the right eye. Nevertheless, the task to which he
had set himself was sufficiently formidable to deter a less persistent
spirit. In the first place, all the original sources of information were
on the other side of the Atlantic. Nowhere in the United States was
there a public library such as even some of our smaller cities now
possess. Prescott himself, moreover, had at this time done comparatively
little special reading in the subject of which he proposed to write; and
the skilled assistance which he might easily have secured in Europe was
not to be had in the United States. Finally, though he was not blind in
the ordinary sense, he could not risk a total loss of sight by putting
upon his remaining eye the strain of continuous and fatiguing use.
In spite of all these obstacles and discouragements, however, he began
his undertaking with a touch of that stoicism which, as Thomas Hughes
has somewhere said, makes the Anglo-Saxon find his keenest pleasure in
enduring and overcoming. Prescott had planned to devote a year to
preliminary studies before putting pen to paper. The work which he then
had in mind was intended by him to be largely one of compilation from
the works of foreign writers, to be of moderate size, with few
pretensions to originality, and to claim attention chiefly because the
subject was still a new one to English readers. He felt that he would be
accomplishing a great deal if he should read and thoroughly digest the
principal French, Spanish, and Italian historians--Mariana, Llorente,
Varillas, Flechier, and Sismondi--and give a well-balanced account of
Ferdinand and Isabella's reign based upon what these and a few other
scholarly authorities had written. But the zeal of the investigator soon
had him in its grip. Scarcely had the packages of books which he had
ordered from Madrid begun to reach his library than his project
broadened out immensely into a work of true creative scholarship. His
year of reading now appeared to him absurdly insufficient. It had,
indeed, already been badly broken into by one of his inflammatory
attacks; and his progress was hampered by the inadequate assistance
which he received. A reader, employed by him to read aloud the Spanish
books, performed the duty valiantly but without understanding a single
word of Spanish, very much as Milton's daughters read Greek and Hebrew
to their father. Thinking of his new and more ambitious conception of
his purpose and of the hindrances which beset him, Prescott wrote:
"Travelling at this lame gait, I may yet hope in five or six years to
reach the goal." As a matter of fact, it was three years and a half
before he wrote the opening sentence of his book. It was ten years
before he finished the last foot-note of the final chapter. It was
nearly twelve years before the book was given to the public.
Some account of his manner of working may be of interest, and it is
convenient to describe it here once for all. In the second year, after
he had begun his preliminary studies, he secured the services of a Mr.
James English, a young Harvard graduate, who had some knowledge of the
modern languages. This gentleman devoted himself to Prescott's
interests, and henceforth a definite routine of study and composition
was established and was continued with other secretaries throughout
Prescott's life. Mr. English has left some interesting notes of his
experiences, which admit us to the library of the large house on Bedford
Street, where the two men worked so diligently together. It was a
spacious room in the back of the house, lined on two sides with books
which reached the ceiling. Against a third side was a large green
screen, toward which Prescott faced while seated at his table; while
behind him was an ample window, over which a series of pale blue muslin
shades could be drawn, thus regulating the illumination of the room
according to the state of Prescott's eye and the conditions of the
weather. At a second window sat Mr. English, ready to act either as
reader or as amanuensis when required.
Allusion has been made from time to time to Prescott's written memoranda
and to his letters, which, indeed, were often very long and very
frequent. It must not be thought that in writing these he had to make
any use of his imperfect sight. The need of this had been obviated by an
invention which he had first heard of in London during his visit there
in 1816. It was a contrivance called "the noctograph," meant for the use
of the blind. A frame like that of a slate was crossed by sixteen
parallel wires fastened into the sides and holding down a sheet of
blackened paper like the carbon paper now used in typewriters and
copying-machines. Under this blackened paper was placed a sheet of plain
white note-paper. A person using the noctograph wrote with a sort of
stylus of ivory, agate, or some other hard substance upon the blackened
paper, which conveyed the impression to the white paper underneath. Of
course, the brass wires guided the writer's hand and kept the point of
the stylus somewhere near the line.[8]
Of his noctograph Prescott made constant use. For composition he
employed it almost altogether, seldom or never dictating to a scribe.
Obviously, however, the instrument allowed no erasures or corrections to
be made, and the writer must go straight forward with his task; since to
go back and try to alter what had been once set down would make the
whole illegible. Hence arose the necessity of what Irving once described
as "pre-thinking,"--the determination not only of the content but of the
actual form of the sentence before it should be written down. In this
pre-thinking Prescott showed a power of memory and of visualisation
that was really wonderful. To carry in his mind the whole of what had
been read over to him in a session of several hours,--names, dates,
facts, authorities,--and then to shape his narrative, sentence by
sentence, before setting down a word, and, finally, to bear in mind the
whole structure of each succeeding paragraph and the form in which they
had been carefully built up--this was, indeed, an intellectual and
literary achievement of an unusual character. Of course, such a power as
this did not come of itself, but was slowly gained by persistent
practice and unwearied effort. His personal memoranda show this: "Think
closely," he writes, "gradually concentrating the circle of thought."
And again: "Think continuously and closely before taking up my pen. Make
corrections chiefly in my own mind." And still again: "Never take up my
pen until I have travelled over the subject so often that I can write
almost from memory."
But in 1827, the time had not yet come for composition. He was hearing
books read to him and was taking copious notes. How copious these were,
his different secretaries have told; and besides, great masses of them
have been preserved as testimony to the minute and patient labour of the
man who made and used them. As his reader went on, Prescott would say,
"Mark that!" whenever anything seemed to him especially significant.
These marked passages were later copied out in a large clear hand for
future reference. When the time came, they would be read, studied,
compared, verified, and digested. Sometimes he spent as much as five
days in thus mastering the notes collected for a single chapter. Then at
least another day would be given to reflection and (probably) to
composition, while from five to nine days more might go to the actual
writing out of the text. This power of Prescott's increased with
constant exercise. Later, he was able to carry in his head the whole of
the first and second chapters of his _Conquest of Peru_ (nearly sixty
pages) before committing them to paper, and in preparing his last work,
_Philip II._, he composed and memorised the whole fifth, sixth, and
seventh chapters of Book II., amounting to seventy-two printed pages.
Prescott had elaborated a system of his own for the regulation of his
daily life while he was working. This system was based upon the closest
observation, extending over years, of the physical effect upon him of
everything he did. The result was a regimen which represented his
customary mode of living. Rising early in the morning, he took outdoor
exercise, except during storms of exceptional severity. He rode well and
loved a spirited horse, though sometimes he got a fall from letting his
attention stray to his studies instead of keeping it on the temper of
his animal. But, in the coldest weather, on foot or in the saddle, he
covered several miles before breakfast, to which he always came back in
high spirits, having, as he expressed it, "wound himself up for the
day." After a very simple breakfast, he went at once to his library,
where, for an hour or so, he chatted with Mrs. Prescott or had her read
to him the newspapers or some popular book of the day. By ten o'clock,
serious work began with the arrival of his secretary, with whom he
worked diligently until one o'clock, for he seldom sat at his desk for
more than three consecutive hours. A brisk walk of a mile or two gave
him an appetite for dinner, which was served at three o'clock, an hour
which, in the year 1827, was not regarded as remarkable, at least in
Massachusetts. This was a time of relaxation, of chat and gossip and
family fun; and it was then that Prescott treated himself to the amount
of wine which he had decided to allow himself. His fondness for wine has
been already casually mentioned. To him the question of its use was so
important, that once, for two years and nine months, he recorded every
day the exact amount that he had drunk and the effect which it had had
upon his eye and upon his general health. A further indulgence which
followed after dinner was the smoking of a mild cigar while his wife
read or talked to him. Then, another walk or drive, a cup of tea at
five, and finally, two or more industrious hours with his secretary,
after which he came down to the library and enjoyed the society of his
family or of friends who happened in.
This, it will be seen, was not the life of a recluse or of a Casaubon,
though it was a life regulated by a wise discretion. To adjust himself
to its routine, Prescott had to overcome many of his natural tendencies.
In the first place, he was, as has been already noted, of a somewhat
indolent disposition; and a steady grind, day after day and week after
week, was something which he had never known in school or college. Even
now in his maturity, and with the spurring of a steady purpose to urge
him on, he often faltered. His memoranda show now and then a touch of
self-accusation or regret.
"I have worked lazily enough, or rather have been too busy to work
at all. Ended the old year very badly."
"I find it as hard to get under way, as a crazy hulk that has been
boarded up for repairs."
How thoroughly he conquered this repugnance to hard work is illustrated
by a pathetic incident which happened once when he was engaged upon a
bit of writing that interested him, but when he was prevented by
rheumatic pains from sitting upright. Prescott then placed his
noctograph upon the floor and lay down flat beside it, writing in this
attitude for many hours on nine consecutive days rather than give in.
He tried some curious devices to penalise himself for laziness. He used
to persuade his friends to make bets with him that he would not complete
certain portions of writing within a given time. This sort of thing was
a good deal of a make-believe, for Prescott cared nothing about money
and had plenty of it at his disposal; and when his friends lost, he
never permitted them to pay. He did a like thing on a larger scale and
in a somewhat different way by giving a bond to his secretary, Mr.
English, binding himself to pay a thousand dollars if within one year
from September, 1828, Prescott should not have written two hundred and
fifty pages of _Ferdinand and Isabella_. This number of pages was
specified, because Prescott dreaded his own instability of purpose, and
felt that if he should once get so far as two hundred and fifty pages,
he would be certain to go on and finish the entire history. Other wagers
or bonds with Mr. English were made by Prescott from time to time, all
with the purpose of counteracting his own disposition to _far niente_.
His settled mode of life also compelled him in some measure to give up
the delights of general social intercourse and the convivial pleasures
of which he was naturally fond. There were, indeed, times when he did
let his work go and enjoyed a return to a freer life, as when in the
country at Pepperell he romped and rollicked like a boy; or when in
Boston, he was present at some of the jolly little suppers given by his
friends and so much liked by him. But on the whole, neither his health
nor the arduous researches which he had undertaken allowed him often to
break the regularity of his way of living. Nothing, indeed, testifies
more strikingly to his naturally buoyant disposition than the fact that
years of unvarying routine were unable to make of Prescott a formalist
or to render him less charming as a social favourite. In his study he
was conspicuously the scholar, the investigator; elsewhere he was the
genial companion, full of fun and jest, telling stories and manifesting
that gift of personal attractiveness which compelled all within its
range to feel wholly and completely at their ease. No writer was ever
less given to literary posing. It is, indeed, an extraordinary fact that
although Prescott was occupied for ten whole years in preparing his
_Ferdinand and Isabella_, during all that time not more than three
persons outside of his own family knew that he was writing a book. His
friends supposed that his hours of seclusion were occupied in general
reading and study. Only when a formal announcement of the history was
made in the _North American Review_ in 1837, did even his familiar
associates begin to think of him as an author.
The death of Prescott's little daughter, Catherine, in February, 1829,
did much to drive him to hard work as a relief from sorrow. She was his
first-born child, and when she died, she was a few months over four
years of age,--a winsome little creature, upon whom her father had
lavished an unstinted affection. She alone had the privilege of
interrupting him during his hours of work. Often she used to climb up to
his study and put an end to the most profound researches, greatly, it is
recorded, to the delight of his secretary, who thus got a little moment
of relief from the deciphering of almost undecipherable scrawls. Her
death was sudden, and the shock of it was therefore all the greater.
Years afterward, Prescott, in writing to a friend who had suffered a
like bereavement, disclosed the depths of his own anguish: "I can never
suffer again as I then did. It was my first heavy sorrow, and I suppose
we cannot twice feel so bitterly." His labour now took on the character
of a solace, and perhaps it was at this time that he formed the opinion
which he set down long after: "I am convinced that intellectual
occupation--steady, regular, literary occupation--is the true vocation
for me, indispensable to my happiness."
And so his preparation for _Ferdinand and Isabella_ went on apace.
Prescott no longer thought it enough to master the historians who had
already written of this reign. He went back of them to the very
_Quellen_, having learned that the true historical investigator can
afford to slight no possible source of information,--that nothing, good,
bad, or indifferent, can safely be neglected. The packets which now
reached him from Spain and France grew bulkier and their contents more
diversified. Not merely modern tomes, not merely printed books were
there, but parchments in quaint and crabbed script, to be laboriously
deciphered by his secretary, with masses of black-letter and copies of
ancient archives, from which some precious fact or chance corroboration
might be drawn by inquisitive industry. The sifting out of all this
rubbish-heap went on with infinite patience, until at last his notes and
memoranda contained the substance of all that was essential.
Prescott had given a bond to Mr. English pledging himself to complete by
September, 1829, two hundred and fifty printed pages of the book. Yet it
was actually not until this month had ended that the first line was
written. On October 6, 1829, after three months devoted to reviewing his
notes for the opening chapter, he took his noctograph and scrawled the
initial sentence. A whole month was consumed in finishing the chapter,
and two months more in writing out the second and the third. From this
time a sense of elation filled him, now that all his patient labour was
taking concrete form, and there was no more question of putting his task
aside. His progress might be, as he called it, "tortoise-like," but he
had felt the joy of creation; and the work went on, always with a firmer
grasp, a surer sense of form, and the clearer light which comes to an
artist as his first vague impressions begin under his hand to take on
actuality. There were times when, from illness, he had almost to cease
from writing; there were other times when he turned aside from his
special studies to accomplish some casual piece of literary work. But
these interruptions, while they delayed the accomplishment of his
purpose, did not break the current of his interest.
The casual pieces of writing, to which allusion has just been made, were
oftenest contributions to the _North American Review_. One of them,
however, was somewhat more ambitious than a magazine article. It was a
life of Charles Brockden Brown, which Prescott undertook at the request
of Jared Sparks, who was editing a series of American biographies. This
was in 1834, and the book was written in two weeks at Nahant. It
certainly did nothing for Prescott's reputation. What is true of this is
true of everything that he wrote outside of his histories. In his
essays, and especially in his literary criticisms, he seemed devoid of
penetration and of a grasp upon the verities. His style, too, in all
such work was formal and inert. He often showed the extent of his
reading, but never an intimate feeling for character. He could not get
down to the very core of his subject and weigh and judge with the
freedom of an independent critic. His life of Brown will be found fully
to bear out this view. In it Prescott chooses to condone the worst of
Brown's defects, and he gives no intimation of the man's real power.
Prescott himself felt that he had been too eulogistic, whereas his
greatest fault was that the eulogy was misapplied. Sparks mildly
criticised the book for its excess of generalities and its lack of
concrete facts.
How thoroughly Prescott prepared himself for the writing of his book
reviews may be seen in the fact that, having been asked for a notice of
Conde's _History of the Arabs in Spain_, he spent from three to four
months in preliminary reading, and then occupied nearly three months
more in writing out the article. In this particular case, however, he
felt that the paper represented too much labour to be sent to the _North
American_, and therefore it was set aside and ultimately made into a
chapter of his _Ferdinand and Isabella_.
It was on the 25th of June, 1836, that his history was finished, and he
at once began to consider the question of its publication. Three years
before, he had had the text set up in type so far as it was then
completed; and as the work went on, this private printing continued
until, soon after he had reached the end, four copies of the book were
in his hands. These printed copies had been prepared for several
reasons. First of all, the sight of his labour thus taking concrete form
was a continual stimulus to him. He was still, so far as the public was
concerned, a young author, and he felt all of the young author's joy in
contemplating the printed pages of his first real book. In the second
place, he wished to make a number of final alterations and corrections;
and every writer of experience is aware that the last subtle touches can
be given to a book only when it is actually in type, for only then can
he see the workmanship as it really is, with its very soul exposed to
view, seen as the public will see it, divested of the partial nebulosity
which obscures the vision while it still remains in manuscript. Finally,
Prescott wished to have a printed copy for submission to the English
publishers. It was his earnest hope to have the book appear
simultaneously in England and America, since on the other side of the
Atlantic, rather than in the United States, were to be found the most
competent judges of its worth.
But the search for an English publisher was at first unsuccessful.
Murray rejected it without even looking at it. The Longmans had it
carefully examined, but decided against accepting it. Prescott was hurt
by this rejection, the more so as he thought (quite incorrectly, as he
afterward discovered) that it was Southey who had advised the Longmans
not to publish it. The fact was that both of the firms just mentioned
had refused it because their lists were then too full to justify them in
undertaking a three-volume history. Prescott, for a time, experienced
some hesitation in bringing it out at all. He had written on the day of
its completion: "I should feel not only no desire, but a reluctance to
publish, and should probably keep it by me for emendations and
additions, were it not for the belief that the ground would be more or
less occupied in the meantime by abler writers." The allusion here is to
a history of the Spanish Arabs announced by Southey. But what really
spurred Prescott on to give his book to the world was a quiet remark of
his father's, in which there was something of a challenge and a taunt.
"The man," said he, "who writes a book which he is afraid to publish is
a coward." "Coward" was a name which no true Prescott could endure; and
so, after some months of negotiation and reflection, an arrangement was
made to have the history appear with the imprint of a newly founded
publishing house, the American Stationers' Company of Boston, with which
Prescott signed a contract in April, 1837. By the terms of this contract
Prescott was to furnish the plates and also the engravings for the book,
of which the company was to print 1250 copies and to have five years in
which to sell them--surely a very modest bargain. But Prescott cared
little for financial profits, nor was he wholly sanguine of the book's
success. On the day after signing the contract, he wrote: "I must
confess I feel some disquietude at the prospect of coming in full bodily
presence before the public." And somewhat earlier he had written with a
curious though genuine humility:--
"What do I expect from it, now it is done? And may it not be all in
vain and labour lost, after all? My expectations are not such, if I
know myself, as to expose me to any serious disappointment. I do
not flatter myself with the idea that I have achieved anything very
profound, or, on the other hand, that will be very popular. I know
myself too well to suppose the former for a moment. I know the
public too well, and the subject I have chosen, to expect the
latter. But I have made a book illustrating an unexplored and
important period, from authentic materials, obtained with much
difficulty, and probably in the possession of no one library,
public or private, in Europe. As a plain, veracious record of
facts, the work, therefore, till some one else shall be found to
make a better one, will fill up a gap in literature which, I should
hope, would give it a permanent value,--a value founded on its
utility, though bringing no great fame or gain to its author.
"Come to the worst, and suppose the thing a dead failure, and the
book born only to be damned. Still, it will not be all in vain,
since it has encouraged me in forming systematic habits of
intellectual occupation, and proved to me that my greatest
happiness is to be the result of such. It is no little matter to be
possessed of this conviction from experience."
But Prescott had received encouragement in his moods of doubt from Jared
Sparks, at that time one of the most scientific American students of
history. Sparks had read the book in one of the first printed copies,
and had written to Prescott, in February, 1837: "The book will be
successful--bought, read, and praised." And so finally, on Christmas Day
of 1837,--though dated 1838 upon the title-page,--the _History of the
Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella_ was first offered for sale. It was in
three volumes of about four hundred pages each, and was dedicated to his
father.
Only five hundred copies of the book had been printed as a first
edition, and of these only a small number had been bound in readiness
for the day of publication. The demand for the book took both author and
publishers by surprise. This demand came, first of all, and naturally
enough, from Prescott's personal friends. One of these, a gentleman of
convivial habits, and by no means given to reading, rose early on
Christmas morning and waited outside of the bookshop in order to secure
the first copy sold. Literary Boston, which was also fashionable Boston,
adopted the book as its favourite New Year's present. The bookbinders
could not work fast enough to supply the demand, and in a few months the
whole of the 1250 copies, which it had been supposed would last for at
least five years, had been sold. Other parts of the country followed
Boston's lead. The book was praised by the newspapers and, after a
little interval, by the more serious reviews,--the _North American_, the
_Examiner_, and the _Democratic Review_, the last of which published an
elaborate appreciation by George Bancroft.
Meanwhile, Prescott had succeeded in finding a London publisher; for in
May, Mr. Richard Bentley accepted the book, and it soon after appeared
in England. To the English criticisms Prescott naturally looked forward
with interest and something like anxiety. American approval he might
well ascribe to national bias if not to personal friendship. Therefore,
the uniformly favourable reviews in his own country could not be
accepted by him as definitely fixing the value of what he had
accomplished. In a letter to Ticknor, after recounting his first
success, he said:--
"'Poor fellow!'--I hear you exclaim by this time,--'his wits are
actually turned by this flurry in his native village,--the Yankee
Athens.' Not a whit, I assure you. Am I not writing to two dear
friends, to whom I can talk as freely and foolishly as to one of my
own household, and who, I am sure, will not misunderstand me? The
effect of all this--which a boy at Dr. Gardiner's school, I
remember, called _fungum popularitatem_--has been rather to depress
me, and S---- was saying yesterday, that she had never known me so
out of spirits as since the book has come out."
What he wanted most was to read a thoroughly impartial estimate written
by some foreign scholar of distinction. He had not long to wait. In the
_Athenoeum_ there soon appeared a very eulogistic notice, written by
Dr. Dunham, an industrious student of Spanish and Portuguese history.
Then followed an admirably critical paper in the _Edinburgh Review_ by
Don Pascual de Gayangos, a distinguished Spanish writer living in
England. Highly important among the English criticisms was that which
was published in the _Quarterly Review_ of June, 1839, from the pen of
Richard Ford, a very accurate and critical Spanish scholar. Mr. Ford
approached the book with something of the _morgue_ of a true British
pundit when dealing with the work of an unknown American;[9] but, none
the less, his criticism, in spite of his reluctance to praise, gave
Prescott genuine pleasure. Ford found fault with some of the details of
_Ferdinand and Isabella_, yet he was obliged to admit both the sound
scholarship and literary merit of the book. On the Continent appeared
the most elaborate review of all in a series of five articles written
for the _Bibliotheque Universelle de Geneve_, by the Comte Adolphe de
Circourt. The Comte was a friend of Lamartine (who called him _la
mappemonde vivante des connaissances humaines_) and also of Tocqueville
and Cavour. Few of his contemporaries possessed so minute a knowledge of
the subject which Prescott treated, and of the original sources of
information; and the favourably philosophical tone of the whole review
was a great compliment to an author hitherto unknown in Europe. Still
later, sincere and almost unqualified praise was given by Guizot in
France, and by Lockhart, Southey, Hallam, and Milman, in England.
Indeed, as Mr. Ticknor says, although these personages had never before
heard of Prescott, their spirit was almost as kindly as if it had been
due to personal friendship. The long years of discouragement, of
endurance, and of patient, arduous toil had at last borne abundant
fruit; and from the time of the appearance of _Ferdinand and Isabella_,
Prescott won and held an international reputation, and tasted to the
full the sweets of a deserved success.