My birthplace--Count Bruno and Dufief--Family items--General
Lafayette--The Dutch witch-nurse--Early friends and
associations--Philadelphia sixty years ago--Early reading--Genealogy--First
schools--Summers in New England--English influences--The Revolutionary
grandfather--Centenarians--The last survivor of the Boston Tea-party and
the last signer of the Declaration--Indians--Memories of relations--A
Quaker school--My ups and downs in classes--Arithmetic--My first ride in
a railway car--My marvellous invention--Mr. Alcott's school--A
Transcendental teacher--Rev. W. H. Furness--Miss Eliza Leslie--The
boarding-school near Boston--Books--A terrible winter--My first poem--I
return to Philadelphia.
I was born on the 15th of August, 1824, in a house which was in
Philadelphia, and in Chestnut Street, the second door below Third Street,
on the north side. It had been built in the old Colonial time, and in
the room in which I first saw life there was an old chimney-piece, which
was so remarkable that strangers visiting the city often came to see it.
It was, I believe, of old carved oak, possibly mediaeval, which had been
brought from some English manor as a relic. I am indebted for this
information to a Mr. Landreth, who lived in the house at the time. {1}
It was then a boarding-house, kept by a Mrs. Rodgers. She had taken it
from a lady who had also kept it for boarders. The daughter of this
latter married President Madison. She was the well-known "Dolly
Madison," famous for her grace, accomplishments, and _belle humeur_, of
whom there are stories still current in Washington.
My authority informed me that there were among the boarders in the house
two remarkable men, one of whom often petted me as a babe, and took a
fancy to me. He was a Swedish Count, who had passed, it was said, a very
wild life as pirate for several years on the Spanish Main. He was
identified as the Count Bruno of Frederica Bremer's novel, "The
Neighbours." The other was the famous philologist, Dufief, author of
"Nature Displayed," a work of such remarkable ability that I wonder that
it should have passed into oblivion.
My mother had been from her earliest years devoted to literature to a
degree which was unusual at that time in the United States. She had
been, as a girl, a special _protegee_ of Hannah Adams, the author of many
learned works, who was the first person buried in the Mount Auburn
Cemetery of Boston. She directed my mother's reading, and had great
influence over her. My mother had also been very intimate with the
daughters of Jonathan Russell, the well-known diplomatist. My maternal
grandfather was Colonel Godfrey, who had fought in the war of the
Revolution, and who was at one time an aide-de-camp of the Governor of
Massachusetts. He was noted for the remarkable gentleness of his
character. I have heard that when he went forth of a morning, all the
animals on his farm would run to meet and accompany him. He had to a
miraculous degree a certain sympathetic power, so that all beings, men
included, loved him. I have heard my mother say that as a girl she had a
tame crow who was named Tom, and that he could distinctly cry the word
"What?" When Tom was walking about in the garden, if called, he would
reply "What?" in a perfectly human manner.
When I was one month old, General Lafayette visited our city and passed
in a grand procession before the house. It is one of the legends of my
infancy that my nurse said, "Charley shall see the General too!" and held
me up to the window. General Lafayette, seeing this, laughed and bowed
to me. He was the first gentleman who ever saluted me formally. When I
reflect how in later life adventure, the study of languages, and a French
Revolution came into my experiences, it seems to me as if Count Bruno,
Dufief, and Lafayette had all been premonitors of the future.
I was a great sufferer from many forms of ill-health in my infancy.
Before my second birthday, I had a terrible illness with inflammation of
the brain. Dr. Dewees (author of a well-known work on diseases of women
and children), who attended me, said that I was insane for a week, and
that it was a case without parallel. I mention this because I believe
that I owe to it in a degree whatever nervousness and tendency to
"idealism" or romance and poetry has subsequently been developed in me.
Through all my childhood and youth its influence was terribly felt, nor
have I to this day recovered from it.
I should mention that my first nurse in life was an old Dutch woman named
Van der Poel. I had not been born many days before I and my cradle were
missing. There was a prompt outcry and search, and both were soon found
in the garret or loft of the house. There I lay sleeping, on my breast
an open Bible, with, I believe, a key and knife, at my head lighted
candles, money, and a plate of salt. Nurse Van der Poel explained that
it was done to secure my rising in life--by taking me up to the garret. I
have since learned from a witch that the same is still done in exactly
the same manner in Italy, and in Asia. She who does it must be, however,
a _strega_ or sorceress (my nurse was reputed to be one), and the child
thus initiated will become deep in darksome lore, an adept in _occulta_,
and a scholar. If I have not turned out to be all of this _in
majoribus_, it was not the fault of my nurse.
Next door to us lived a family in which were four daughters who grew up
to be famous belles. It is said that when the poet N. P. Willis visited
them, one of these young ladies, who was familiar with his works, was so
overcome that she fainted. Forty years after Willis distinctly recalled
the circumstance. Fainting was then fashionable.
Among the household friends of our family I can remember Mr. John
Vaughan, who had legends of Priestley, Berkeley, and Thomas Moore, and
who often dined with us on Sunday. I can also recall his personal
reminiscences of General Washington, Jefferson, and all the great men of
the previous generation. He was a gentle and beautiful old man, with
very courtly manners and snow-white hair, which he wore in a queue. He
gave away the whole of a large fortune to the poor. Also an old Mr.
Crozier, who had been in France through all the French Revolution, and
had known Robespierre, Marat, Fouquier Tinville, &c. I wish that I had
betimes noted down all the anecdotes I ever heard from them. There were
also two old ladies, own nieces of Benjamin Franklin, who for many years
continually took tea with us. One of them, Mrs. Kinsman, presented me
with the cotton quilt under which her uncle had died. Another lady, Miss
Louisa Nancrede, who had been educated in France, had seen Napoleon, and
often described him to me. She told me many old French fairy-tales, and
often sang a ballad (which I found in after years in the works of
Cazotte), which made a great impression on me--something like that of
"Childe Roland to the dark tower came." It was called _Le Sieur
Enguerrand_, and the refrain was "_Oh ma bonne j'ai tant peur_."
That these and many other influences of culture stirred me strangely even
as a child, is evident from the fact that they have remained so vividly
impressed on my memory. This reminds me that I can distinctly remember
that when I was eight years of age, in 1832, my grandmother, Mrs. Oliver
Leland, told my mother that the great German poet Goethe had recently
died, and that they bade me remember it. On the same day I read in the
_Athenaeum_ (an American reprint of leading articles, poems, &c., from
English magazines, which grandmother took all her life long) a
translation of Schiller's "Diver." I read it only once, and to this day
I can repeat nearly the whole of it. I have now by me, as I write, a
silver messenger-ring of King Robert, and I never see it without thinking
of the corner of the room by the side-door where I stood when grandmother
spoke of the death of Goethe. But I anticipate.
My father was a commission merchant, and had his place of business in
Market Street below Third Street. His partner was Charles S. Boker, who
had a son, George, who will often be mentioned in these Memoirs. George
became in after life distinguished as a poet, and was Minister for many
years at Constantinople and at St. Petersburg.
From Mrs. Rodgers' my parents went to Mrs. Shinn's, in Second Street. It
also was a very old-fashioned house, with a garden full of flowers, and a
front doorstep almost on a level with the ground. The parlour had a
large old fireplace, set with blue tiles of the time of Queen Anne, and
it was my delight to study and have explained to me from them the story
of Joseph and his brethren and AEsop's fables. Everything connected with
this house recurs to me as eminently pleasant, old-fashioned, and very
respectable. I can remember something very English-like among the
gentlemen-boarders who sat after dinner over their Madeira, and a
beautiful lady, Mrs. Stanley, who gave me a sea-shell. Thinking of it
all, I seem to have lived in a legend by Hawthorne.
There was another change to a Mrs. Eaton's boarding-house in Fifth
Street, opposite to the side of the Franklin Library. I can remember
that there was a very good marine picture by Birch in the drawing-room.
This was after living in the Washington Square house, of which I shall
speak anon. I am not clear as to these removals. There were some men of
culture at Mrs. Eaton's--among them Sears C. Walker, a great astronomer,
and a Dr. Brewer, who had travelled in Italy and brought back with him
pieces of sculpture. We were almost directly opposite the State House,
where liberty had been declared, while to the side, across the street,
was the Library founded by Dr. Franklin, with his statue over the door.
One of his nieces often told me that this was an absolutely perfect
likeness. The old iron railing, now removed--more's the pity!--surrounded
the Square, which was full of grand trees.
It was believed that the spirit of Dr. Franklin haunted the Library,
reading the books. Once a coloured woman, who, in darkey fashion, was
scrubbing the floor after midnight, beheld the form. She was so
frightened that she fainted. But stranger still, when the books were
removed to the New Library in Locust Street, the ghost went with them,
and there it still "spooks" about as of yore to this day, as every negro
in the quarter knows.
In regard to Franklin and his apparition, there was a schoolboy joke to
this effect: that _whenever_ the statue of Franklin over the Library door
heard the clock strike twelve at night, it descended, went to the old
Jefferson Wigwam, and drank a glass of beer. But the sell lay in this,
that a statue cannot hear.
And there was a dim old legend of a colony of Finns, who, in the Swedish
time, had a village all to themselves in Wiccacoe. They were men of
darksome lore and magic skill, and their women were witches, who at tide
and time sailed forth merrily on brooms to the far-away highlands of the
Hudson, where they held high revel with their Yankee, Dutch, and Indian
colleagues of the mystic spell. David MacRitchie, in a recent work, has
made a note of this curious offshoot of the old Philadelphia Swedes.
And I can also remember that before a marble yard in Race Street there
were two large statues of very grim forbidding-looking dogs, of whom it
was said that when there was any one about to die in the quarter, these
uncanny hounds came down during a nightly storm and howled a death duet.
And when I was very young there still lingered in the minds of those
invaluable living chronicles (whether bound in sheepskin or in calf), the
oldest inhabitants, memories from before the Revolution of the Indian
market, when on every Saturday the natives came from their rural
retreats, bringing pelts or skins, baskets, moccasins, _mocos_ or birch
boxes of maple-sugar, feathers, and game for sale. Then they ranged
themselves all along the west side of Independence Square, in tents or at
tables, and sold--or were sold themselves--in bargains. Even now the
Sunday-child, or he who is gifted to behold the departed, may see the
ghostly forms of Red-men carrying on that weekly goblin market. Miss
Eliza Leslie's memory was full of these old stories, which she had
collected from old people.
As for the black witches, as there were still four negro sorcerers in
Philadelphia in 1883 (I have their addresses), it may be imagined to what
an extent _Voodoo_ still prevailed among our Ebo-ny men and brothers. Of
one of these my mother had a sad experience. We had a black cook named
Ann Lloyd, of whom, to express it mildly, one must say that she was "no
good." My mother dismissed her, but several who succeeded her left
abruptly. Then it was found that Ann, who professed to be a witch, had
put a spell of death on all who should take her place. My mother learned
this, and when the last black cook gave warning she received a good
admonition as to a Christian being a slave to the evil one. I believe
that this ended the enchantment. There is or was in South Fifth Street
an African church, over the door of which was the charming inscription,
"Those who have walked in Darkness have seen a great light." But this
light has not even yet penetrated to the darksome depths of Lombard or
South Streets, if I may believe the strange tales which I have heard,
even of late, of superstition there.
Philadelphia was a very beautiful old-fashioned city in those days, with
a marked character. Every house had its garden, in which vines twined
over arbours, and the magnolia, honeysuckle, and rose spread rich perfume
of summer nights, and where the humming-bird rested, and scarlet tanager
or oriole with the yellow and blue bird flitted in sunshine or in shade.
Then swallows darted at noon over the broad streets, and the mighty
sturgeon was so abundant in the Delaware that one could hardly remain a
minute on the wharf in early morn or ruddy evening without seeing some
six-foot monster dart high in air, falling on his side with a plash. In
the winter-time the river was allowed to freeze over, and then every
schoolboy walked across to Camden and back, as if it had been a
pilgrimage or religious duty, while meantime there was always a kind of
Russian carnival on the ice, oxen being sometimes roasted whole, and all
kinds of "fakirs," as they are now termed, selling doughnuts,
spruce-beer, and gingerbread, or tempting the adventurous with
thimblerig; many pedestrians stopping at the old-fashioned inn on Smith's
Island for hot punch. Juleps and cobblers, and the "one thousand and one
American fancy drinks," were not as yet invented, and men drank
themselves unto the devil quite as easily on rum or brandy straight,
peach and honey, madeira and punch, as they now do on more varied
temptations. Lager beer was not as yet in the land. I remember drinking
it in after years in New Street, where a German known as _der dicke
Georg_ first dealt it in 1848 to our American public. Maize-whisky could
then be bought for fifteen cents a gallon; even good "old rye" was not
much dearer; and the best Havanna cigars until 1840 cost only three cents
a-piece. As they rose in price they depreciated in quality, and it is
now many years since I have met with a really aromatic old-fashioned
Havanna.
It was a very well-shaded, peaceful city, not "a great village," as it
was called by New Yorkers, but like a pleasant English town of earlier
times, in which a certain picturesque rural beauty still lingered. The
grand old double houses, with high flights of steps, built by the
Colonial aristocracy--such as the Bird mansion in Chestnut Street by
Ninth Street--had a marked and pleasing character, as had many of the
quaint black and red-brick houses, whose fronts reminded one of the
chequer-board map of our city. All of this quiet charm departed from
them after they were surrounded by a newer and noisier life. I well
remember one of these fine old Colonial houses. It had been the old
Penington mansion, but belonged in my early boyhood to Mr. Jones, who was
one of my father's partners in business. It stood at the corner of
Fourth and Race Streets, and was surrounded on all sides by a garden.
There was a legend to the effect that a beautiful lady, who had long
before inhabited the house, had been so fond of this garden, that after
death her spirit was often seen of summer nights tending or watering the
flowers. She was a gentle ghost, and the story made a great impression
on me. I still possess a pictured tile from a chimney-piece of this old
mansion.
The house is gone, but it is endeared to me by a very strange memory.
When I was six or seven years of age, I had read Shakespeare's "Tempest,"
and duly reflected on it. The works of Shakespeare were very rare indeed
in Quaker Philadelphia in those days, and much tabooed, but Mr. Jones,
who had a good library in the great hall upstairs, possessed a set in
large folio. This I was allowed to read, but not to remove from the
place. How well I can remember passing my Saturday afternoons reading
those mighty tomes, standing first on one leg, then on the other for very
weariness, yet absorbed and fascinated!
About this time I was taken to the theatre to see Fannie Kemble in "Much
Ado About Nothing"--or it may have been to a play before that time--when
my father said to me that he supposed I had never heard of Shakespeare.
To which I replied by repeating all the songs in the "Tempest." One of
these, referring to the loves of certain sailors, is not very decent, but
I had not the remotest conception of its impropriety, and so proceeded to
repeat it. A saint of virtue must have laughed at such a declamation.
As it recurs to me, the spirit which was over Philadelphia in my boyhood,
houses, gardens, people, and their life, was strangely quiet, sunny, and
quaint, a dream of olden time drawn into modern days. The Quaker
predominated, and his memories were mostly in the past; ours, as I have
often said, was a city of great trees, which seemed to me to be ever
repeating their old poetic legends to the wind of Swedes, witches, and
Indians.
Among the street-cries and sounds, the first which I can remember was the
postman's horn, when I was hardly three years old. Then there were the
watchmen, "who cried the hour and weather all night long." Also a
coloured man who shouted, in a strange, musical strain which could be
heard a mile:
"_Tra-la-la-la-la-la-loo_.
Le-mon-ice-cream!
An'-wanilla-too!"
Also the quaint old Hominy-man:
"De Hominy man is on his way,
Frum de Navy-Yard!
Wid his harmony!"
(Spoken) "Law bess de putty eyes ob de young lady! Hominy's good fur
de young ladies!
"De Harmony man is on his way," &c.
Also, "Hot-corn!" "Pepper-pot!" "Be-au-ti-ful Clams!" with the "Sweep-
oh" cry, and charcoal and muffin bells.
One of the family legends was, that being asked by some lady, for whom I
had very little liking, to come and visit her, I replied with great
politeness, but also with marked firmness, "I am very much obliged to
you, ma'am, and thank you--but I _won't_."
In Washington Square, three doors from us, at the corner of Walnut
Street, lived Dr. George McClellan. He had two sons, one, John, of my
own age, the other, George, who was three years younger. Both went to
school with me in later years. George became a soldier, and finally rose
to the head of the army in the first year of the War of Rebellion, or
Emancipation, as I prefer to term it.
Washington Square, opposite our house, had been in the olden time a
Potter's Field, where all the victims of the yellow fever pestilence had
been interred. Now it had become a beautiful little park, but there were
legends of a myriad of white confused forms seen flitting over it in the
night, for it was a mysterious haunted place to many still, and I can
remember my mother gently reproving one of our pretty neighbours for
repeating such tales.
I have dreamy yet very oft-recurring memories of my life in childhood,
as, for instance, that just before I was quite three years old I had
given to me a copy of the old New England Primer, which I could not then
read, yet learned from others the rhymes with the quaint little cuts.
"In Adam's fall
We sin-ned all."
"My book and heart
Shall never part," &c.
Also of a gingerbread toy, with much sugar, colour, and gilding, and of
lying in a crib and having the measles. I can remember that I understood
the meaning of the word _dead_ before that of _alive_, because I told my
nurse that I had heard that Dr. Dewees was dead. But she replying that
he was not, but alive, I repeated "live" as one not knowing what it
meant.
I recollect, also, that one day, when poring over the pictures in a toy-
book, my Uncle Amos calling me a good little boy for so industriously
reading, I felt guilty and ashamed because I could not read, and did not
like to admit it. Whatever my faults or follies may be, I certainly had
an innate rectitude, a strong sense of honesty, just as many children
have the contrary; and this, I believe, is due to inherited qualities,
though these in turn are greatly modified by early association and
influences. That I also had precocious talent and taste for the
romantic, poetic, marvellous, quaint, supernatural, and humorous, was
soon manifested. Even as an infant objects of _bric-a-brac_ and of
antiquity awoke in me an interest allied to passion or awe, for which
there was no parallel among others of my age. This was, I believe, the
old spirit which had come down through the ages into my blood--the spirit
which inspired Leland the _Flos Grammaticorum_, and after him John
Leland, the antiquary of King Henry VIII., and Chrs. (Charles) Leland,
who was secretary of the Society of Antiquaries in the time of Charles I.
Let me hereby inform those who think that "Chrs." means Christopher, that
there has been a Charles in the family since time immemorial, alternated
with an Oliver since the days of Cromwell.
John Leyland, an Englishman, now living, who is a deep and sagacious
scholar, and the author of the "Antiquities of the Town of Halifax" (a
very clever work), declares that for _four hundred years_ there has not
been a generation in which some Leland (or Leyland) of the old Bussli de
Leland stock has not written a work on antiquity or allied to
antiquarianism, though in one case it is a translation of Demosthenes,
and in another a work on Deistical Writers. He traces the connection
with his own family of the Henry Leland, my ancestor, a rather prominent
political Puritan character in his time, who first went to America in
1636, and acquired land which my grandfather still owned. It was very
extensive.
There is a De la Laund in the roll of Battle Abbey, {13} but John says
our progenitor was _De Bussli_, who came over with the Conqueror, ravaged
all Yorkshire, killing 100,000 men, and who also burned up, perhaps
alive, the 1,000 Jews in the Tower of York. For these eminent services
to the state he was rewarded with the manor of Leyland, from which he
took his name. The very first _complete_ genealogical register of any
American family ever published was that of the Leland family, by Judge
Leland, of Roxbury, Mass. (but for which he was really chiefly indebted
to another of the name), in which it is shown that Henry Leland had had
in 1847 fifteen thousand descendants in America. In regard to which I am
honoured with a membership in the Massachusetts Genealogical Society. The
crest of Bussli and the rest of us is a raven or crow transfixed by an
arrow, with a motto which I dearly love. It is _Cui debeo_, _fidus_.
Very apropos of this crow or raven is the following: Heinrich Heine, in
his "Germany" (vol. ii. p. 211, Heinemann's edition), compares the same
to priests "whose pious croaking is so well known to our ears." This is
in reference to such birds which fly about the mountain of Kyffhauser, in
which the Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa is sleeping, and where he will
sleep till they disappear. And then, praising himself, Heine adds: "But
old age has weakened them, and there are good marksmen who know right
well how to bring them down. I know one of these archers, who now lives
in Paris, and who knows how, even from that distance, to hit the crows
which fly about the Kyffhauser. When the Emperor returns to earth, he
will surely find on his way more than one raven slain by this archer's
arrows. And the old hero will say, smiling, 'That man carried a good
bow.'" In my note to this I remarked that "the raven or crow transfixed
by an arrow is the crest of the coat-of-arms of the name of Leland, or of
my own. I sincerely trust that Bussli, the first who bore it, did not
acquire the right to do so by shooting a clergyman." As a single crow is
an omen of ill-luck, so the same transfixed signifies misfortune
overcome, or the forcible ending of evil influences by a strong will. It
is a common belief or saying among all the Lelands, however widely
related, that there has never been a convicted criminal of the name. _Dii
faxint_!
At four years of age, while still living in Washington Square, I was sent
to an infant school in Walnut Street, above Eighth Street, south side,
near by. It was kept by the Misses Donaldson. We all sat in a row, on
steps, as in an amphitheatre, but in straight lines. Miss Donaldson,
senior, sat at a desk, prim and perpendicular, holding a rod which was
fifteen or twenty feet in length, with which she could hit on the head or
poke any noisy or drowsy child, without stirring from her post. It was
an ingenious invention, and one which might be employed to advantage in
small churches. I can remember that at this time I could not hear a tune
played without stringing my thoughts to it; not that I have any special
ear for music, but because I am moved by melody. There was a rhyme that
was often sung to me to the tune of "Over the Water"--
"Charley Buff
Had money enough,
And locked it in his store;
Charley die
And shut his eye,
And never saw money no more."
The influence of this and other tunes on my thought was so great, that I
have often wondered whether anybody ever realised how much we may owe to
metre acting on thought; for I do not believe that I ever penned any
poetry in my life unless it was to a _tune_; and even in this prose which
I now write there is ever and anon a _cadence_ as of a brook running
along, then rising, anon falling, perceptible to me though not to you,
yet which has many a time been noted down by critics speaking gently of
my work. This induced me to learn betimes an incredible number of songs;
in fact, at the age of ten or eleven I had most of Percy's "Relics" by
heart. This naturally enough led me to read, and reading understand, an
amount of poetry of such varied character that I speak with strictest
truth in saying that I have never met with, and never even read of, any
boy who, as a mere little boy, had mastered such a number and variety of
ballads and minor poems as I had done--as will appear in the course of
this narrative.
While living at Mrs. Eaton's I was sent to a school kept by two very nice
rather young Quaker ladies in Walnut Street. It was just opposite a very
quaint old-fashioned collection of many little dwellings in one (modelled
after the Fuggerei of Augsburg?) known as the Quaker Almshouse. One
morning I played truant, and became so fearfully weary and bored lounging
about, that I longed for the society of school, and never stayed from
study any more. Here I was learning to read, and I can remember "The
History of Little Jack," and discussing with a comrade the question as to
whether the word _history_ really meant _his_ story, or was ingeniously
double and inclusive. I also about this time became familiar with many
minor works, such as are all now sold at high prices as chap-books, such
as "Marmaduke Multiply," "The World Turned Upside Down,"
"Chrononhotonthologos," "The Noble History of the Giants," and others of
Mr. Newberry's gilt-cover toy-books. All of our juvenile literature in
those days was without exception London made, and very few persons can
now realise how deeply Anglicised I was, and how all this reading
produced associations and feelings which made dwelling in England in
later years seem like a return to a half-forgotten home, of which we
have, however, pleasant fairy-tale reminiscences.
The mistress of the school was named Sarah Lewis, and while there,
something of a very extraordinary nature--to me, at least--took place.
One day, while at my little desk, there came into my head with a strange
and unaccountable intensity this thought: "I am I--I am _Myself_--I
myself _I_," and so on. By forcing this thought on myself very rapidly,
I produced a something like suspension of thought or syncope; not a
vertigo, but that mental condition which is allied to it. I have several
times read of men who recorded nearly the same thing among their youthful
experiences, but I do not recall that any of them induced this _coma_ by
reflecting on the ego-ism of the I, or the me-ness of the Me. {16} It
often recurred to me in after years when studying Schelling and Fichte,
or reading works by Mystics, Quietists, and the like. At a very early
age I was indeed very much given to indulging in states of mind
resembling metaphysical abstraction--a kind of vague marvelling what I
_was_ and what others were; whether they and everything were not spirits
playing me tricks, or a delusion--a kind of psychology without material
or thought, like a workman without tools.
For a short time, while five or six years old, and living at Mrs.
Eaton's, I was sent to a school of boys of all ages, kept by a man named
Eastburn, in Library Street, whom I can only recall as a coarse, brutal
fiend. From morning to night there was not a minute in which some boy
was not screaming under the heavy rattan which he or his brother always
held. I myself--infant as I was--for not learning a spelling-lesson
properly, was subjected to a caning which would have been cruel if
inflicted on a convict or sailor. In the lower story this man's sister
kept a girls' school, and the ruffian was continually being called
downstairs to beat the larger girls. My mother knew nothing of all this,
and I was ashamed to tell that I had been whipped. I have all my life
been opposed to corporal punishment, be it in schools or for criminals.
It brings out of boys all that is evil in their nature and nothing that
is good, developing bullying and cruelty, while it is eminently
productive of cowardice, lying, and meanness--as I have frequently found
when I came to hear the private life of those who defend it as creating
"manliness." It was found during the American war that the soldiers who
had been most accustomed to beating and to being beaten were by far the
greatest cowards, and that "Billy Wilson's" regiment of pugilists was so
absolutely worthless as to be unqualified for the field at any time. One
thing is very certain, that I have found that boys who attend schools
where there is no whipping, and little or no fighting, are freest from
that _coarseness_ which is so invariably allied to meanness, lying, and
dishonesty. I had about 2000 children in the _public schools_ of
Philadelphia pass under my teaching, and never met with but one instance
of direct rudeness. There was also only one of dishonesty or theft, and
that was by a fighting boy, who looked like a miniature pugilist.
Philadelphia manners were formed by Quakers. When I visited, in 1884,
certain minor art-work classes established in the East End of London, Mr.
Walter Besant said to me that I would find a less gentle set of pupils.
In fact, in the first school which I examined, the girls had, the week
before, knocked down, kicked, and trampled on an elderly lady who had
come to teach them art-work out of pure benevolence. I am often told
that whipping put an end to garroting. If this be true, which it is
_not_ (for garroting was a merely temporary fancy, which died out in
America without whipping), it only proves that the garotters, who were
all fighting and boxing roughs, were mere cowards. Red Indians never
whip children, but they will die under torture without a groan.
My parents were from Massachusetts, and every summer they returned to
pass several months in or near Boston, generally with their relatives in
Worcester county, in Dedham, in the "Hub" itself, or in Milford, Mendon,
or Holliston, the home of my paternal grandfather, Oliver Leland. Thus I
grew to be familiar with New England, its beautiful scenery and
old-fashioned Yankee rural ways. Travelling was then by stage-coach, and
it took two days to go from Philadelphia to Boston, stopping on the way
overnight at Princeton, Perth Amboy, or Providence. This is to me a very
interesting source of reminiscences. In Dedham, for three summers, I
attended school. I remember that we stayed with Dr. Jeremy Stimson, who
had married a sister of my mother. I studied French; and can recall that
my cousins Caroline and Emily, who were very beautiful young ladies,
generally corrected my exercises. I was then seven or eight years of
age. Also that I was very much alone; that I had a favourite bow, made
by some old Indian; that I read with great relish "Gil Blas" and "Don
Quixote," and especially books of curiosities and oddities which had a
great influence on me. I wandered for days by myself fishing, strolling
in beautiful wild places among rocks and fields, or in forests by the
River Charles. I can remember how one Sunday during service I sat in
church unseen behind the organ, and read Benvenuto Cellini's account of
the sorcerer in the Colosseum in Rome: I shall see his Perseus ten
minutes hence in the Signoria of Florence, where I now write.
Then there were the quiet summer evenings in the drawing-room, where my
cousins played the piano and sang "The Sunset Tree," "Alknoomuk," "I see
them on the winding way," and Moore's melodies. _Tempi passati_--"'Tis
sixty year's since." Caroline meantime married a Mr. Wight, who had
passed most of his life in England, and was thoroughly Anglicised. There
was also an English lady visiting America who stayed a while in Dedham to
be with my cousin. She was _jeune encore_, but had with her a young
English gentleman relative who _would_ call her "Mamma!" which we thought
rather _niais_. From my reading and my few experiences I, however,
acquired a far greater insight into life than most boys would have done,
for I remembered and thought long over everything I heard or learned.
Between my mother and cousins and our visitors there was much reading and
discussion of literary topics, and I listened to more than any one noted,
and profited by it.
I was always reading and mentally reviewing. If my mother made a call, I
was at once absorbed in the first book which came to hand. Thus I can
remember that one summer, when we came to Dr. Stimson's, during the brief
interval of our being shown into the "parlour," I seized on a Unitarian
literary magazine and read the story of Osapho, the Egyptian who trained
parrots to cry, "Osapho is a god!" Also an article on Chinese
acupuncture with needles to cure rheumatism; which chance readings and
reminiscences I could multiply _ad infinitum_.
My cousin Caroline, whom I remember as very beautiful and refined, with a
_distinguee_ manner, had a small work-box, on the cover of which was a
picture of the Pavilion in Brighton. She spoke of the building as a
rubbishy piece of architecture; but I, who felt it through the "Arabian
Nights," admired it, and pitied her want of taste. _Now_ I have lived
altogether three years in Brighton, but I never saw the Pavilion without
recalling the little yellow work-box. In some mysterious way the picture
seems to me to be grander than the original. Dickens has expressed this
idea. I was too grave and earnest as a child to be called a cheerful or
happy one, which was partly due to much ill-health; yet, by a strange
contradiction not uncommon in America, I was gifted with a precociously
keen sense of humour, and not only read, but collected and preserved
every comic almanac and scrap of droll anecdote which I could get. Thus
there came into my possession half-a-dozen books of the broadest London
humour of the time, all of which entered into my soul; such things as:--
'"Ladies in furs and gemmen in spurs,
Who lollop and lounge all day;
The Bazaar in Soho is completely the go,
Walk into the shop of Grimaldi."
Reader mine, you can have no conception how deeply I, as a mere little
boy, entered into and knew London life and society from such songs,
sketches, anecdotes, books, and caricatures as I met with. Others read
and forget them, but I took such trifles deep into my soul and _dwelt_ on
them. It is only of late years, since I have lived in England, that I
have learned how extensively--I may say incredibly well--I was informed
for my age as to many phases of English life. Few of us know what may be
got out of reading the current light literature of the day, if we only
read it _earnestly_ and get it by heart. This I did to a great extent,
as my reminiscences continually awakened in England prove.
There was in Dedham a very old house of somewhat superior style, which
had been built, if not in 1630, at least within a very few years after.
It was inhabited by three sisters named Fairbanks, who were very peculiar
indeed, and their peculiarity consisted in a strange devotion to the
past, and above all to old _English_ memories of colonial times before
the Revolution. Even in England this resistance can hardly be understood
at the present day, and yet it may still be found alive in New England.
In the house itself was a well, dug to supply water when besieged by
Indians, and the old ladies used to exhibit an immense old gun once used
by Puritans, and an ox-saddle and other relics. They had also a very
ancient book of prayer of the Church of England, and an old Bible, and
thereby hangs a tale. They were all still living in 1849 or 1850, when I
visited them with my very pretty cousin Mary Elizabeth Fisher, and as I
professed the Episcopal faith, and had been in England, the precious
relics were shown to me as to one of the initiated. But they showed a
marked aversion to letting Miss Fisher see them, as she was a Unitarian.
So they went on, as many others did in my youth, still staunch adherents
to England, nice old Tories, believers in the King or Queen, for whom
they prayed, and not in the President. I remember that Miss Eliza Leslie
told me in later years of just such another trio.
My grandfather in Holliston was, as his father and brothers and uncles
had all been, an old Revolutionary soldier, who had been four years in
the war and taken part in many battles. He had been at Princeton (where
I afterwards graduated) and Saratoga, and witnessed the surrender of
Burgoyne to Gates. I was principally concerned to know whether the
conqueror had _kept the sword_ handed to him on this occasion, and was
rather disappointed to learn that it was given back. Once I found in the
garret a bayonet which my grandma said had been carried by grandfather in
the war. I turned it with a broom-handle into a lance and made ferocious
charges on the cat and hens.
This grandfather, Oliver Leland, exerted an extraordinary influence on
me, and one hard to describe. He was great, grim, and taciturn to
behold, yet with a good heart, and not devoid of humour. He was gouty,
and yet not irritable. He continually recurs to me while reading
Icelandic sagas, and as a kind of man who would now be quite out of the
age anywhere. All his early associations had been of war and a half-wild
life. He was born about 1758, and therefore in a rude age in rural New
England. He, I may say, deeply interested me.
All boys are naturally full of the romance of war; the Revolution was to
us more than the Crusades and all chivalry combined, and my grandfather
was a living example and chronicle of all that I most admired. Often I
sat on a little cricket at his feet, and listened to tales of battles,
scoutings, and starving; how he had been obliged to live on raw wheat,
which produced evil results, and beheld General Washington and other
great men, and had narrow escapes from Indians, and been at the capturing
of a fort by moonlight, and seen thousands of pounds' worth of stores
destroyed. I frequently thought of old grandfather Oliver when "out"
myself during the Civil War, and was half-starved and chilled when
scouting, or when doing rough and tough in West Virginia.
My grandfather often told me such stories of the war, and others of his
father and grandfather, who had fought before him in the old French war
in Canada, and how the latter, having gone up to trade among the Indians
one winter, endeared himself so much to them that they would not let him
go, and kept him a captive until the next summer. I came across traces
of this ancestor in an old Canadian record, wherein it appears that he
once officiated as interpreter in the French and Indian tongues. Whereby
critics may remark that learning French and Algonkin runs in our blood,
and that my proclivity for Indians is legitimately inherited. I would
that I knew all the folklore that my great-grandsire heard in the Indian
wigwams in those old days!
I can remember seeing my grandfather once sitting and talking with five
other veterans of the war. But I saw them daily in those times, and once
several hundreds, or it may be thousands, of them in a great procession
in Philadelphia in 1832. And here I may mention that in 1834 I often saw
one named Rice, whose age, as authenticated by his pension papers, was
106, and that in 1835 I shook hands with Thomas Hughes, aged 95, who was
the last survivor of the Boston Tea party. He had come to visit our
school, and how we boys cheered the old gentleman, who was in our eyes
one of the greatest men alive! But all the old folk in my boyhood could
tell tales of the Revolution, which was indeed not very much older then
than the Rebellion is to us now.
I can also recollect seeing Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the last of
the signers of the Declaration of Independence, though my memory of the
man is now confused with that of a very perfect portrait which belonged
to his granddaughter, Mrs. Jackson, who was a next-door but one neighbour
in after years in Walnut Street, Philadelphia. He was a very venerable-
looking man.
My father served for a short time in the war of 1812, and I have heard
him relate that when the startling news of peace arrived in Boston, where
he was, he at once took a sleigh and fast horses and drove full speed,
being the first to disseminate the news in the country. That was as good
as Browning's "Ride to Ghent" in its way--_apropos_ of which Mr. Browning
once startled me by telling me, "I suppose you know that it is an
invention of mine, and not founded on any real incident." But my
father's headlong sleigh-ride--he was young and wild in those days--was
real and romantic enough in all conscience. It set bells to ringing,
multitudes to cheering, bonfires a-blazing on hills and in towns, and
also some few to groaning, as happened to a certain old deacon, who had
invested his all in English goods, and said, when he heard the cheers
caused by the news, "Wife, if that's war news, I'm saved; but if it's
peace, I'm ruined!" Even so it befell me, in after years, to be the
first person to announce in the United States, far in advance of any
others, the news of the French Revolution of 1848, as I shall fully prove
in the sequence.
It may be here remarked, that, though not "professionals," all of our
family, without a break in the record, have successively taken turns at
fighting, and earned our pay as soldiers, since time lost in oblivion;
for I and my brother tried it on during the Rebellion, wherein he indeed,
standing by my side, got the wound from a shell of which he eventually
died; while there were none who were not in the old Indian wars or the
English troubles of Charles the Second and First, and so on back, I dare
say, to the days of Bussli de Leland, who laid all Yorkshire waste.
My grandfather, though not wealthy, owned a great deal of land, and I can
remember that he one afternoon showed me a road, saying that he owned the
land on each side for a mile. I myself, in after years, however, came to
own in fee-simple a square mile of extremely rich land in Kansas, which I
sold for sixteen hundred dollars, while my grandfather's was rather of
that kind by which men's poverty was measured in Virginia--that is to
say, the more land a man had the poorer he was considered to be. It is
related of one of these that he once held great rejoicing at having got
rid of a vast property by the ingenious process of giving some person one
half of it to induce him to take the other. However, as there is now a
large town or small city on my grandfather's whilom estate, I wish that
it could have been kept. _Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan_, or the
ducats of Panurge?
There was a "home-pasture," a great field behind my grandfather's house,
where I loved to sit alone, and which has left a deep impression on my
memory, as though it were a fairy-haunted or imagined place. It was very
rocky, the stones being covered with clean, crisp, dry lichens, and in
one spot there was the gurgling deep down in some crevice of a mysterious
unseen spring or rivulet. Young as I was, I had met with a line which
bore on it--
"Deep from their vaults the Loxian murmurs flow."
And there was something very voice-like or human in this murmur or
chattering of the unseen brook. This I distinctly remember, that the
place gave me not only a feeling, but a faith that it was haunted by
something gentle and merry. I went there many a time for company, being
much alone. An Indian would have told me that it was the _Un a games-
suk_--the spirit-fairies of the rock and stream. These beings enter far
more largely, deeply, and socially into their life or faith than elves or
fairies ever did into those of the Aryan races, and I might well have
been their _protege_, for there could have been few little boys living,
so fond as I was of sitting all alone by rock and river, hill and
greenwood tree. There are yet in existence on some of this land which
was once ours certain mysterious walls or relics of heavy stone-work,
which my friend Eben C. Horsford thinks were made by the Norsemen. I
hope that they were, for I have read many a saga in Icelandic, old
Swedish, and Latin, and the romance thereof is deep in my soul; and as my
own name is Godfrey, it is no wonder that the god Frey and his Freya are
dear to me. In my boyhood--and it may be still the case--the "Injuns"
got the credit of having built these mysterious works.
Not far from Holliston is Mendon, where I had an uncle, Seth Davenport,
who had a large, pleasant, old-fashioned New England farm, which was more
productive than my grandfather's, since there were employed on it sixteen
men, three of whom were Natick Indians of the old local stock. There
were many of them when my mother was young, but I suppose that the last
of the tribe has long since died. One of these Indians, Rufus Pease, I
can recall as looking like a dark-ruddy gypsy, with a pleasant smile. He
very was fond of me. He belonged to a well-known family, and had a
brother--and thereby hangs a tale, or, in this case, a scalp-lock.
"Marm" Pease, the mother of Rufus, had on one occasion been confined, and
old Doctor--I forget his name--who officiated at the birth, had been
asked to give the infant a name. Now he was a dry wag, of the kind so
dear to Dr. Holmes, and expressed much gratification and gratitude at
such a compliment being paid to him. "He had long been desirous," he
said, "of naming a child after his dear old friend, Dr. Green." So the
name was bestowed, the simple Indians not realising for some time after
the christening that their youngest bore the name of Green Pease. Whether
he was ever called a duck, I know not.
Everything about Uncle Seth and Aunt Betsy was, as I remember,
delightfully comfortable, old-fashioned, and in a way beautiful. There
was their daughter Rebecca, who was pretty and gentle, so that several
wild birds came every morning to feed from her hand and perch on her
fingers. Uncle Seth himself wore a scarlet waistcoat, and, as I recall
him, seemed altogether in figure to belong to the time of Cromwell, or to
earlier days. There was a hall, hung round with many old family
portraits in antique dresses, and an immense dairy--the pride of Aunt
Betsy's heart--and a garden, in which I was once shown a humming-bird's
nest; and cousin Rebecca's mantelpiece, over a vast old fireplace, heaped
with mosses, birds' nests, shells, and such curiosities as a young girl
would gather in the woods and fields; and the cider-press, in which Uncle
Seth ground up the sixteen hundred bushels of apples which he had at one
crop, and the new cider gushing in a stream, whereof I had a taste. It
was a charming, quiet old homestead, in which books and culture were not
wanting, and it has all to me now something of the chiaroscuro and
Rembrandt colour and charm of the _Mahrchen_ or fairy-tale. The reality
of this charm is apt to go out of life as that of literature or culture
comes in. To this day I draw the deepest impression or sentiment of the
_pantheism_ or subtle spiritual charm of Nature far more from these early
experiences of rural life than from all the books, poetry included, which
I have ever perused. Note this well, ye whose best feelings are only a
_rechauffe_ of Ruskin and Browning--_secundem ordinem_--for I observe
that those who do not think at second hand are growing rare.
In the town of Milford lived my uncle, William Godfrey, with my aunt
Nancy, and of them and their home I have many pleasant memories. The
very first of them all was not so pleasant to me at the time. My parents
had just arrived, and had not been ten minutes in the house ere a
tremendous squall was heard, and my mother, looking from the window,
beheld me standing in the open barn-door holding a tiny chicken in my
right hand, while an old hen sat on my head flapping her wings and
pecking me in wrath. I, seeing the brood, had forthwith captured one,
and for that was undergoing penance. It was a beautiful tableau, which
was never forgotten! We went there on visits for many summers. Uncle
William was a kind-hearted, "sportive" man, who took _Bell's Life_, and I
can remember that there was a good supply of English reading in the
house. My uncle had three sons, all much older than I. The eldest,
Stearns, was said to have first popularised the phrase "posted up," to
signify well-informed. The second, Benjamin, became in after years a
great manufacturer and somewhat noted politician, and owner of a famous
racehorse. The third, Samuel, went into business in Philadelphia, and
crossed the Atlantic with me. He died quite young. All of them, like
their father and grandfather, were very good-natured or gentle, and men
of perfect integrity. The Lelands, however, were rather _dour_ and grim
in their honesty, or more Northern than the Godfreys. This was accounted
for by the fact, that while my father's family was Puritan of the purest,
and only intermarried with Puritan stock, the Godfreys had in Rhode
Island received an infusion of French Huguenot blood, which was indeed
very perceptible in their faces and lively pleasant manner.
There was a strange tradition, to which my mother sometimes jestingly
referred, that there had been among her Rhode Island ancestors a High
German (_i.e._, not a Hollander) doctor, who had a reputation as a
sorcerer or wizard. He was a man of learning, but that is all I ever
heard about him. My mother's opinion was that this was a very strong
case of atavism, and that the mysterious ancestor had through the ages
cropped out again in me. Something tells me that this was the High
German doctor who, according to Washington Irving, laid the mystic spell
on Sleepy Hollow, which made of it such a pleasant, ancient, dreamy fairy-
land. Whether his friendly spirit still watches over me, or whether I am
the man himself, is a problem which I leave to my friend Francis Galton,
who indeed personally often reminds me of Irving. High German sorcerers
were not common in those days north of Pennsylvania, so that I trow mine
was the very man referred to by Geoffrey Crayon. And it is true beyond
all doubt that even in infancy, as I have often heard, there was a quaint
uncanniness, as of something unknown, in my nature, and that I differed
in the main totally from every relative, and indeed from any other little
boy, known to anybody; though I was a perfect Godfrey in face when very
young, as I am now a typical Leland. I was always given to loneliness in
gardens and woods when I could get into them, and to hearing words in
birds' songs and running or falling water; and I once appalled a visitor
by professing seriously that I could determine for him some question as
to what would happen to him by divination with a bullet in an Indian
moccasin. We had two servants who spoke old Irish; one was an
inexhaustible mine of legends, which she related to me--she surpassed
Croker; the other, less versed, still knew a great deal, and told me how
her own father, Jackey Mooney, had seen the fairies with his own eyes.
Both of these sincerely and seriously regarded me as "gifted" or elfin-
favoured, and the latter said in proof thereof, "Only listen to his
voice; sure whin he spakes he'd while a burred aff a tree." For my
uncanny ways made a deep impression on them, as also on the darkies.
Once I had a wonderful dream. I thought that I was in Dr. Furness's
chapel, but that, instead of the gentle reverend clergyman, the devil
himself was in the pulpit preaching. Feeling myself inspired, I went up
into the pulpit, threw the Evil One out, and preached myself in his
place. Now our nurse had a dream-book, and made some pretence to mystic
fairy knowledge learned in Kilkenny, and she interpreted this dream as
signifying that I would greatly rise in this world, and do strange
things. But she was greatly struck with such a vision in such an infant.
Now, I was a great reader of Scripture; in fact, I learned a great deal
too much of it, believing now that for babes and sucklings about
one-third of it had better be expurgated. The Apocrypha was a favourite
work, but above all I loved the Revelations, a work which, I may say by
the way, is still a treasure to be investigated as regards the marvellous
mixture of Neo-Platonic, later Egyptian (or Gnostic), and even Indian
Buddhistic ideas therein. Well, I had learned from it a word which St.
John applies (to my mind very vulgarly and much too frequently) to the
Scarlet Lady of Babylon or Rome. What this word meant I did not know,
but this I understood, that it was "sass" of some kind, as negroes term
it, and so one day I applied it experimentally to my nurse. Though the
word was not correctly pronounced, for I had never heard it from anybody,
its success was immediate, but not agreeable. The passionate Irish woman
flew into a great rage and declared that she would "lave the house." My
mother, called in, investigated the circumstances, and found that I
really had no idea whatever of the meaning of what I had said. Peace was
restored, but Annie declared that only the divil or the fairies could
have inspired such an infant to use such language.
I was very fond of asking my nurse to sing in old Irish or to teach me
Irish words. This she did, but agreed with her sister Biddy that it was
all very uncanny, and that there must have been a time when I was
perfectly familiar with the owld language, as I had such unearthly
fondness for it.
I must have been about seven years old when my parents took a house in
Arch Street, above Ninth Street, Philadelphia. Here my life begins to be
more marked and distinct. I was at first sent, _i.e._, walked daily to
the school of Jacob Pierce, a worthy Quaker, who made us call him Jacob,
and who carefully taught us all the ordinary branches, and gave us
excellent lectures on natural philosophy and chemistry with experiments,
and encouraged us to form mineralogical collections, but who objected to
our reading history, "because there were so many battles in it." In
which system of education all that is good and bad, or rather _weak_, in
Quakerism is fully summed up. Like the Roman Catholic, it is utterly
unfit for _all_ the world, and incapable of grappling with or adapting
itself to the natural expansion of science and the human mind. Thus the
Quaker garb, which was originally intended by its simplicity to avoid the
appearance of eccentricity or peculiarity (most dress in the time of the
Stuarts being extravagant), has now become, by merely sticking to old
custom, the most eccentric dress known. The school was in a very large
garden, in which was a gymnasium, and in the basement of the main
building there was a carpenter's shop with a turning-lathe, where boys
were allowed to work as a reward for good conduct.
I could never learn the multiplication table. There are things which the
mind, like the stomach, spasmodically rejects without the least
perceptible cause or reason. So I have found it to be with certain words
which _will_ not be remembered. There was one Arab word which I verily
believe I looked out one hundred times in the dictionary, and repeated a
thousand, yet never could keep it. Every teacher should be keen to
detect these antipathies, and cure them by gentle and persuasive means.
Unfortunately no one in my youth knew any better way to overcome them
than by "keeping me in" after school to study, when I was utterly weary
and worn--a very foolish punishment, as is depriving a boy of his meals,
or anything else levelled at Nature. I think there must have been many
months of time, and of as much vain and desperate effort on my part to
remember, wasted on my early arithmetic. Now I can see that by _rewards_
or inducements, and by the very simple process of only learning "one time
one is one" for the first lesson, and that and one line more for the
second, I could have mastered the whole book in time. But oh! the weary,
dreary days, and the sad waste of time, and the anxious nervous
suffering, which arithmetic cost me in my youth, and mathematics in after
years!
But there was one class at Jacob's in which I was _facile-princeps_ and
habitual past-grand-master. This was the class which was, like the
professorship of Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, for Matters and Things in
General. That is to say, we read aloud from some book--it may have been
selections from English writers--and then Jacob, picking out the hard
words or facts or phrases, required of them definition or explanation.
One day there arose in these questions a sum in arithmetic, when I shot
down to the tail of the class as a plummet drops to the bottom of the
well. I shall never forget the proud fierce impatience which I felt,
like an imprisoned chieftain who knows that he will speedily be delivered
and take dire vengeance on his foes. I had not long to wait.
"'Refectory,' what is a 'refectory'? Hillburn Jones, does thee know?
Joseph Widdifield, does thee?" But none of them knew till it came to me
"down tail," when I cried "An oyster-cellar." "That is quite right,
Charley; thee can go up head," said Jacob, and as I passed Hillburn Jones
he whispered, half in fun, half enviously, the "Kemble Refectory." This
was an oyster-cellar which had been recently opened under the Arch Street
Theatre, and whence Hillburn and I had derived our knowledge of the word,
the difference being that I remembered more promptly and risked more
boldly. But I missed it one day when I defined a _peasant_ as "a nest
full of young birds;" the fact being that I recalled a picture in AEsop's
fables, and confused _peasant_ with _pheasant_. One day Jacob rebuked
the class for letting me always be at their head, when Hillburn Jones,
who was a very honest little boy, said, "Indeed, Jacob, thee must know
that all that we do know, Charley tells us." For I was already an
insatiable reader, and always recalling what I read, and always
communicating my knowledge to others in the form of small lectures. I
had a book of Scripture stories, with a picture of Pharaoh in his
chariot, with the title, "Pharaoh's host sunk in the Red Sea." Hence I
concluded that a _host_ was a vehicle of a very superior description. A
carriage-builder in our neighbourhood had executed a chaise of very
unusual magnificence, and as I stood admiring it I informed Hillburn that
this was what was called by the learned a _host_, and that it was in such
a host that Pharaoh perished. I remember elevating my voice somewhat for
the benefit of a bystander, being somewhat proud of this bit of
knowledge.
Unfortunately, not only my father, but also my teacher, and with them the
entire population of North America, in those days regarded a good
knowledge of arithmetic as forming nine-tenths of all that was most
needful in education, while indulgence in a taste for general
information, and "literature" especially, was glared at with a very evil
eye indeed, as tending to injure a "practical business man." That there
could be any kind of profitable or respectable calling not based upon
arithmetic did not enter into the heart of man to conceive, while among
the bankers and merchants of Boston, New York, or Philadelphia there was
a deeply-seated conviction that even a wealthy and successful editor,
literary man, or artist, was really an inferior as compared to
themselves. As this sublime truth was severely rubbed into me several
times daily during the greater portion of my youthful life, and as in its
earlier stage I rarely met with a man grown who did not look down on me
as an unfortunate non-arithmetical, unbusinesslike creature, and let me
know it too, I very naturally grew up with a low estimate of my own
capacities; and as I was proud and sensitive, this was to me a source of
much suffering, which often became terrible as I advanced in years. But
at that time the position of the literary man or scholar, with the
exception of a very few brilliant magnates who had "made money," was in
the United States not an enviable one. Serious interest in art and
letters was not understood, or so generally sympathised with, as it now
is in "Quakerdelphia." There was a gentleman in Philadelphia who was a
scholar, and who having lived long abroad, had accumulated a very curious
black-letter and _rariora_ library. For a long time I observed that this
library was never mentioned in polite circles without significant smiles.
One day I heard a lady say very meaningly, "I suppose that you know what
kind of books he has _and how he obtained them_?" So I inquired very
naturally if he had come by them dishonestly. To which the reply, half-
whispered in my ear lest it should be overheard, was, "They say his books
are all _old_ things, which he did not buy at any first-class stores, but
picked up at old stalls and in second-hand shops at less than their
value; in fact, _they did not cost him much_."
Yet these remarks must not be regarded as too sweeping or general.
Firstly, I am speaking of sixty years since. Secondly, there were many
people of literary tastes in Philadelphia--a little isolated, it is true;
and finally, there was a great culture of science, founded by Franklin,
and fostered by the medical schools. I could cite a brilliant array of
names of men distinguished in these matters. What I am writing is simply
a sincere record of my own--somewhat peculiar--or personal experiences.
There are doubtless many who would write very differently. And now times
are _very_ greatly changed.
I have again a quaint early reminiscence. It would happen that now and
then a new carriage, always of the same sober description, with two very
good, but seldom showy, horses would appear in the streets. Then its
owner would be greeted on Market Street with the remark, "Well, Sammy, I
see thee's got thee fifty thousand dollars." This sum--ten thousand
pounds--constituted the millionaireism or moneyed aristocracy of those
days. On it, with a thriving business, Samuel could maintain a family in
good fashion, and above all, in great comfort, which was sensibly
regarded as better than fashion or style. Fifty thousand dollars
entitled a man to keep a carriage and be classed as "quality" by the
negroes.
It may be worth noting that although the Quakers did not allow the piano
in their families, as being too worldly, they compromised by having
musical boxes. And I have heard that in the country, where still older
fashioned ideas prevailed, the one bit of finery allowed to a Quaker
damsel was a red ribbon; but it must be red, not of any other colour.
Let it be remembered that at this time Philadelphia, and even the world,
were as yet to a great degree in the Middle Ages as compared to the
present day. We had few steamboats, and no railroads, or telephones, or
percussion-caps, or a tremendous press, or Darwinism, or friction
matches. Even the introduction of ice-cream, and stone coal as fuel, and
grates was within the memory of our elders. Apropos of matches, the use
of tinderbox and brimstone matches was universal; bold young men had
tinder pistols; but the wood fire was generally kept under ashes all
night, and I can well remember how our negro servants, when it had gone
out, were used early on winter mornings to borrow a shovelful of coals
from the cook of our next-door neighbour, and how it was handed over the
garden fence, the recipient standing on our pump handle and the donor on
hers.
I forget in what year the railroad (with locomotives) was first built
from Philadelphia to Columbia, a distance of sixty miles. I believe it
was the first real road of the kind in America. On the day when the
first train ran, the City Council and certain honoured guests made the
journey, and among them was my father, who took me with him. There were
only a few miles of the road then completed. It was a stupendous marvel
to me, and all this being drawn by steam, and by a great terrible iron
monster of a machine. And there was still in all souls a certain
unearthly awe of the recently invented and as yet rather rare steamboats.
I can (strangely enough) still recall this feeling by a mental
effort--this meeting the Horror for the first time! My father
remembered, and had been in the first steamboat which was a success on
the Delaware. I saw its wreck in after years at Hoboken. The earlier
boat made by John Fitch is still preserved in Bordentown.
I can remember that when gas was introduced to light the city, it was
done under a fearful opposition. All the principal people signed a
petition against it. I saw the paper. It would burst and kill myriads;
it was poisonous; and, finally, it would ruin the oil trade. However, we
got it at last. Somebody had invented hand gas-lamps; they were sold in
the Arcade; and as one of these had burst, it was naturally supposed that
the gasworks would do the same.
The characteristics of old Philadelphia were in those days so marked, and
are, withal, so sweet to the memory, that I cannot help lingering on
them. As Washington Irving says of the Golden Age of Wouter van Twiller,
"Happy days when the harvest moon was twice as large as now, when the
shad were all salmon, and peace was in the land." Trees grew abundantly
in rows in almost every street--one before every house. I had two before
mine till 1892, when the Street Commissioners heartlessly ordained that
one must be cut down and removed, and charged me ten dollars for doing
it. It is needless to say that since Street Commissioners have found
this so profitable, trees have disappeared with sad rapidity. Then at
twilight the _pea-ak_ of the night-hawk could be heard all over Arasapha,
which is the Indian name for the place where our city stands; there were
in Coaquannoc, or the Schuylkill, abundant gold fish and perch, of which
I angled divers. Yes, there was, and still is, a Fisher Club, which
claims to be the oldest gentleman's club in Anglo-Saxony, and which has
for two centuries brewed for itself a "fish-house punch" as delicious as
that of London civic banquets. There be no fish in the fair river now;
they have all vanished before the combined forces of petroleum and the
offal of factories and mines, but the Fish-House Club still has its merry
banquets in its ancient home; for, as the French say, "_Chacun peche a sa
maniere_." In graveyards lone or over gardens green glittered of summer
nights millions of fireflies; there was the scent of magnolias, roses,
pinks, and honeysuckles by every house; for Philadelphians have always
had a passion for flowers, and there never was a Quaker, much less a
Quakeress, who has not studied botany, and wandered in Bartram's Garden
and culled blue gentians in the early fall, or lilies wild in
Wissahickon's shade. There still remains a very beautiful relic of this
olden time in the old Swedes Church, which every stranger should visit.
It is a quaint structure of more than two hundred years, and in its large
churchyard (which is not, like Karamsin's graves, "deserted and drear,"
but charming and garden-like) one can imagine himself in rural England.
In the spring of the year there was joyous activity on the Delaware, even
in town; for, as the song hath it--
"De fishin' time hab come at last,
De winter all am gone and past;"
and there was the casting of immense seines and the catching of myriads
of shad, the typical fish or emblem of the Quaker Philadelphian, because
in the profile outline of the shad people professed to discern the form
according to which the Quaker coat was cut. With the shad were many
herring, and now and then a desperate giant of a sturgeon, who in his
struggles would give those concerned enough to do. Then the yells of the
black fishermen, the flapping of the horny knife-backed prey--often by
the flashing of a night-fire--formed a picture worthy of Rembrandt.
Apropos of these sturgeon, the fresh caviare or roe (which has been
pronounced at St. Petersburg to surpass the Russian) was always thrown
away, as was often the case with sweetbreads, which were rarely eaten.
But if the caviare or roe was really in those days "caviare to the
general" multitude, the _nose_ of the fish was not, it being greatly
coveted by us small boys wherewith to make a ball for "shinny," which for
some occult reason was preferred to any other. Old people of my
acquaintance could remember when seals had been killed at Cape May below
the city, and how on one or two occasions a bewildered whale of no small
dimensions had found its way to Burlington, some miles above.
Now and then there would be found in the bay below the city a tremendous,
square-shaped, hideous, unnatural piscatorial monster, known as a devil-
fish, or briefly devil. It was a legend of my youth that two preachers
or ministers of the Presbyterian faith once went fishing in those waters,
and having cast out a stout line, fastened to the mast, for shark, were
amazed at finding themselves all at once careering through the waves at
terrible speed, being dragged by one of the diabolical "monsters of the
roaring deep" above mentioned. Whereupon a friend, who was in the boat,
burst out laughing. And being asked, "Wherefore this unrestrained
hilarity?" replied, "Is it not enough to make a man laugh to see the
Devil running away with two clergymen?"
There was a very excellent and extensive museum of Matters and Things in
General, founded by an ancient artist named Peale, who was the
head-central charm and delight of all young Philadelphia in those days,
and where, when we had been good all the week, we were allowed to repair
on Saturday afternoons. And here I may say by the way, that
miscellaneous collections of "curiosities," oddities, and relics are far
more attractive to children, and stimulate in them far more interest and
inquisitiveness and desire for general information, than do the best
scientific collections, where everything is ranked and numbered, and
wherein even an Etruscan tiara or a Viking's sword loses much of its
charm when placed simply as a "specimen" in a row of others of the kind.
I am not arguing here in the least against scientific or properly
arranged archaeologic collections, but to declare the truth that for
_children_ museums of the despised curiosities are far more attractive
and infinitely more useful.
I owe so very much myself to the old Peale's Museum; it served to
stimulate to such a remarkable degree my interest in antiquities and my
singular passion for miscellaneous information, and it aided me so much
in my reading, that I cannot pass it by without a tribute to its memory.
How often have I paused in its dark galleries in awe before the
tremendous skeleton of the Mammoth--how small did that of a great
elephant seem beside it--and recalled the Indian legend of it recorded by
Franklin. And the stuffed monkeys--one shaving another--what exquisite
humour, which never palled upon us! No; _that_ was the museum for us,
and the time will come when there will be such collections made expressly
for the young.
"Stuffed monkey" was a common by-word, by the way, for a conceited
fellow. Therefore the _Louisville Journal_, speaking of a rival sheet,
said: "Reader, if you will go into the Louisville Museum, you will see
two stuffed monkeys reading the _Courier_. And if you will then go into
the office of the _Louisville Courier_, you may see two living stuffed
monkeys editing the same." The beautiful sallies of this kind which
appeared in these two newspapers for years would make a lively volume.
Never shall I forget one evening alone in that Museum. I had come with
Jacob Pierce's school, and strayed off alone into some far-away and
fascinating nook, forgetful of friends and time. All the rest had
departed homewards, and I sought to find them. The dark evening shades
were casting sombre tones in the galleries--I was a very little boy of
seven or eight--and the stuffed lions and bears and wolves seemed looming
or glooming into mysterious life; the varnished sharks and hideous shiny
crocodiles had a light of awful intelligence in their eyes; the gigantic
anaconda had long awaited me; the grim hyaena marked me for his own; even
deer and doves seemed uncanny and goblined. At this long interval of
sixty years, I can recall the details of that walk, and every object
which impressively half-appalled me, and how what had been a museum had
become a chamber of horrors, yet not without a wild and awful charm. Of
course I lost my way in the shades, and was beginning to speculate on
having to pass a night among the monsters, and how much there would be
left for my friends to mourn over in the morning, when--Eureka!
Thalatta!--I beheld the gate of entrance and exit, and made my latter as
joyously as ever did the souls who were played out of Inferno by the old
reprobate of the Roman tale.
Since that adventure I never mentioned it to a living soul till now, and
yet there is not an event of my life so vividly impressed on my memory.
My father took me very rarely to the theatre; but my Quaker school-mates
had never seen the inside of such places at all, and therefore listened
greedily to what I could tell them of the sights. One of the wonders of
my youth was the seeing the great elephant Columbus perform in a play
called "The Englishman in Siam." It was indeed very curious, and it is
described as such in works on natural history. And I saw Edwin Forrest
(whom I learned to know in later years) in "Metamora," and Fanny Kemble
in "Beatrice," and so on. As for George Boker, he went, I believe, to
every place of amusement whenever he pleased, and talked familiarly of
actors, some of whom he actually knew, and their lives, in a manner which
awoke in me awe and a feeling as being humble and ignorant indeed. As we
grew older, Boker and I, from reading "Don Quixote" and Scott, used to
sit together for hours improvising legends of chivalry and marvellous
romances. It was in the year when it first appeared that I read (in the
_New Monthly_) and got quite by heart the rhyming tale of "Sir Rupert the
Fearless," a tale of the Rhine, one of the Ingoldsby legends, by Barham.
I can still repeat a great part of it. I bore it in mind till in after
years it inspired (allied to Goethe's _Wassermadchen_) my ballad of _De
Maiden mit Nodings on_, which has, as I now write, been very recently
parodied and pictured by _Punch_, March 18, 1893. My mother had taught
me to get poetry by heart, and by the time I was ten years of age, I had
imbibed, so to speak, an immense quantity; for, as in opium-eating, those
who begin by effort end by taking in with ease.
There was something else so very characteristic of old Philadelphia that
I will not pass it by. In the fall of the year the reed-bird, which is
quite as good as the ortolan of Italy, and very much like it (I prefer
the reed-bird), came in large flocks to the marshes and shores of the
Delaware and Schuylkill. Then might be seen a quaint and marvellous
sight of men and boys of all ages and conditions, with firearms of every
faculty and form, followed by dogs of every degree of badness, in all
kinds of boats, among which the _bateau_ of boards predominated,
intermingled with an occasional Maryland dug-out or poplar canoe. Many,
however, crept on foot along the shore, and this could be seen below the
Navy Yard even within the city limits. Then, as flock after flock of
once bobolinks and now reed-birds rose or fell in flurried flight, there
would be such a banging, cracking, and barking as to suggest a South
American revolution aided by blood-hounds. That somebody in the _melee_
now and then got a charge of shot in his face, or that angry parties in
dispute over a bird sometimes blazed away at one another and fought _a
l'outrance_ in every way, "goes without saying." Truly they were
inspiriting sights, and kept up the martial valour, aided by frequent
firemen's fights, which made Philadelphians so indomitable in the
Rebellion, when, to the amazement of everybody, our Quaker city
manifested a genius or love for hard fighting never surpassed by mortals.
There were, of course, some odd episodes among the infantry or gunners on
foot, and one of these was so well described by my brother Henry in a
poem, that I venture to give it place.