Mr. Charles W. Greene was a portly, ruddy, elderly Boston gentleman of
good family, who had been in early life attached in some diplomatic
capacity to a Legation, and had visited Constantinople. I think that he
had met with reverses, but having some capital, had been established by
his many friends as a schoolmaster. He was really a fine old gentleman,
with a library full of old books, and had Madeira in quaint little old
bottles, on which, stamped in the glass, one could read GREENE 1735. He
had a dear little wife, and both were as kind to the boys as possible.
Once, and once only, when I had really been very naughty, did he punish
me. He took me solemnly into the library (oh, what blessed beautiful
reading I often had there!), and, after a solemn speech, and almost with
tears in his eyes, gave me three blows with a folded newspaper! That was
enough. If I had been flayed with a rope's end, it would not have had a
greater moral effect than it did.
Everything was very English and old-fashioned about the place. The house
was said in 1835 to be a hundred and fifty years old, having been one of
the aristocratic Colonial manors. One building after another had been
added to it, and the immense elms which grew about testified to its age.
The discipline or training was eminently adapted to make young gentlemen
of us all. There was almost no immorality among the boys, and no
fighting whatever. The punishments were bad marks, and for every mark a
boy was obliged to go to bed an hour earlier than the others. Extreme
cases of wickedness were punished by sending boys to bed in the daytime.
When two were in a room, and thus confined, they used to relieve the
monotony of their imprisonment by fighting with pillows. Those who had
bad marks were also confined within certain bounds. Good boys, or those
especially favoured, were allowed to chop kindling wood, or do other
light work, for which they were paid three cents per hour.
The boy who was first down in the morning had an apple given to him. This
apple was greatly despised by the bolder spirits, who taunted those who
arose promptly with a desire to obtain it.
Candour compels me to admit that, as a teacher of learning, Mr. Greene
was not pre-eminent. He had two schoolrooms, and employed for each as
good a teacher as he could hire. But we were not at all thoroughly well
taught, although we were kept longer in the schoolroom than was really
good for us; for in summer we had an hour's study before breakfast, then
from nine till twelve, and again from two to five. In winter we had,
instead of the early lesson, an hour in the evening. Something was
wanting in the system, and I believe that after a year and a half I knew
no more, as regards studies, than I did when I first entered.
When a boy's birthday came, he was allowed to have some special dainty
for us all. I was very much disgusted with the Boston boys when they
selected pork and beans, which I loathed. Some would choose
plum-pudding, others apple-pies. There were always two or three dishes
for breakfast, as, for instance, fried potatoes and butter, or cold meat,
or pan-dowdy--a kind of coarse and broken up apple-pie--with the tea and
bread and coffee, but we could only eat of one. There was rather too
much petty infant-schoolery in all this, but we got on very well. Pepper
and mustard were forbidden, but I always had a great natural craving for
these, and when I asked for them, Mr. Greene would shake his head, but
always ended by handing them to me. He was a _bon vivant_ himself, and
sympathised with me. There were one or two books also of a rather
peppery or spicy nature in his library, such as a collection of
rollicking London songs, at which he likewise shook his head when I asked
for them--but I got them. There I read for the first time all of Walter
Scott's novels, and the Percy Ballads, and some of Marryatt's romances,
and Hood's Annual, and Dr. Holmes's first poems.
There was in Mr. Greene's library a very curious and now rare work in
three volumes, published in Boston at some time in the twenties, called
"The Marvellous Depository." It consisted of old legends of Boston, such
as the story of "Peter Rugg," "Tom Walker and the Devil," "The Golden
Tooth," "Captain Kidd," "The Witch Flymaker," and an admirable collection
of unearthly German tales, such as "The Devil's Elixir," by Hoffmann
(abridged), "Jacob the Bowl," "Rubezahl," "Der Freyschutz," and many
more, but all of the unearthly blood-curdling kind. Singly, they were
appalling enough to any one in those days when the supernatural still
thrilled the strongest minds, but taken altogether for steady reading,
the book was a perfect Sabbat of deviltry and dramatic horrors. The
tales were well told, or translated in very simple but vigorous English,
and I pored over the collection and got it by heart, and borrowed it, and
took it to Dedham in the holidays, and into the woods, where I read it in
sunshine or twilight shade by the rippling river, under wild rocks, and
so steeped my soul in the supernatural, that I seemed to live a double
life. As was natural, my schoolmates read and liked such tales, but they
sunk into my very soul, and took root, and grew up into a great
overshadowing forest, while with others they were only as dwarf bushes,
if they grew at all. All of this--though I did not know it--was
unconsciously educating my bewitched mind to a deep and very precocious
passion for mediaeval and black-letter literature and occult philosophy,
which was destined to manifest itself within a few years.
There was another book which greatly influenced my mind and life. I have
forgotten the title, but it was a very remarkable collection of
curiosities, such as accounts of a family of seven children who had every
one some strange peculiarity, dwarfs and giants, and mysteriously-gifted
mortals, and all kinds of odd beings and inventions. I obtained in a
very mysterious way; for one day I found it in my desk, a blessed gift
indeed from some unknown friend who had rightly judged of my tastes. This
work I literally lived upon for a long time. Once a lady friend of my
mother's came in winter and took me a-sleighing, but I had my dear book
under my jacket, and contrived now and then to re-read some anecdote in
it. In after years I found a copy of it in the Mercantile Library,
Philadelphia, but I have never seen it elsewhere. {56} I had at Mr.
Alcott's carefully studied all the Percy Anecdotes, and could repeat most
of them when recalled by some association; also Goldsmith's "Animated
Nature," the perusal of which latter work was to me as the waving of a
forest and the sighing of deep waters. Then, too, I had read--in fact I
owned--the famous Peter Parley books, which gave me, as they have to
thousands of boys, a desire to travel and see the world. I marvelled
greatly at finding that Peter Parley himself, or Mr. S. G. Goodrich, had
a beautiful country-house very near our school, and his son Frank, who
was a very pleasant and wonderfully polite and sunshiny boy, sat by me in
school. Frank Goodrich in after life wrote a novel entitled "Flirtation
and its Consequences," of which my brother said, "What are its
consequences, Frank; good rich husbands? By no means." I can remember
being invited to a perfectly heavenly garden-party at the Goodrichs', and
evening visits there with my mother. And I may note by the way, that
Frank himself lived abroad in after years; that his father became the
American Consul in Paris, and that in 1848 he introduced to the
_Gouvernement Provisoire_ the American delegation, of which I was one,
and how we were caricatured in the _Charivari_, in which caricature I was
specially depicted, the likeness being at once recognised by everybody,
and how I knew nothing of it all till I was told about it by the
beautiful Miss Goodrich, Frank's younger sister, on a Staten Island
steamboat, many, many years after. And as a postscript I may add, that
it is literally true that before I was quite twenty-three years of age I
had been twice caricatured or pictorially jested on in the Munich
_Fliegende Blatter_ and twice in the Paris _Charivari_, which may show
that I was to a certain degree about town in those days, as I indeed was.
While I am about it, I may as well tell the Munich tale. There was a
pretty governess, a great friend of mine, who had charge of two children.
Meeting her one day in the park, at a sign from me she pressed the
children's hats down over their eyes with "Kinder, setzt eure Hute fester
auf!" and in that blessed instant cast up her beautiful lips and was
kissed. I don't know whether we were overseen; certain it is that in the
next number of the _Fliegende Blatter_ the scene was well depicted, with
the words. The other instance was this. One evening I met in a
_Bierhalle_ a sergeant of police with whom I fraternised. I remember
that he could talk modern Greek, having learned it in Greece. This was
very _infra dig._ indeed for a student, and one of my comrades said to me
that, as I was a foreigner, I was probably not aware of what a fault I
had committed, but that in future I must not be seen talking to a
soldier. To which I, with a terrible wink, replied, "Mum's the word;
that soldier is _lieutenant of police in my ward_, and I have squared it
with him all right, so that if there should be a _Bierkrawall_ (a drunken
row) in our quarter he will let me go." This, which appeared as a grand
flight of genial genius to a German, speedily went through all the
students' _kneipe_, and soon appeared, very well illustrated, in the "_F.
B_."
We were allowed sixpence a week spending-money at Mr. Greene's, two
cents, or a penny, being deducted for a bad mark. Sometimes I actually
got a full week's income; once I let it run on up to 25 cents, but this
was forbidden, it not being considered advisable that the boys should
accumulate fortunes. A great deal of my money went for cheap comic
literature, which I carefully preserved. In those days there were
Crockett's almanacs (now a great fund of folk-lore), and negro songs and
stories were beginning to be popular. It is very commonly asserted that
the first regular negro minstrel troupe appeared in 1842. This is quite
an error. While I was at Mr. Greene's, in 1835, there came to Dedham a
circus with as regularly-appointed a negro minstrel troupe of a dozen as
I ever saw. I often beheld the pictures of them on the bill. Nor do I
think that this was any novelty even then. The Crockett almanacs greatly
stimulated my sense of American humour (they do indeed form collectively
a very characteristic work), and this, with some similar reading, awoke
in me a passion for wild Western life and frontier experiences, which was
fully and strangely gratified in after years, but which would certainly
have never happened had it not been for this boyish reading.
For I beg the reader to observe that it is a very deeply-seated
characteristic that whatever once takes root in my mind invariably grows.
This comes from the great degree to which I have always gone over,
reviewed, and _reflected on_, or nursed everything which ever once really
interested me. And as I have thus far written, and shall probably
conclude this work without referring to a note, the reader will have
ample opportunity of observing how very strangely in all cases the phases
of my life were predetermined long before by the literary education which
I gave myself, aided very much by hereditary or other causes quite beyond
my control. Now, as the object of a _Life_ is to understand every cause
which created it, and as mine was to a very unusual degree created by
reading and _reflecting_, even in infancy, I beg the reader not to be
impatient with me for describing so much in detail the books which made
my mind at different times. That is, I pray this much allowance and
sympathy from possible readers and critics, that they will kindly not
regard me as vain or thinking over-much of, or too much over, myself. For
to get oneself forth as one really is requires deep investigation into
_every_ cause, and the depicting all early characteristics, and the man
never lived who ever did this truly and accurately without much egoism,
or what the ill-disposed may treat as such. And I promise the possible
reader that when this subjective analysis shall be fairly disposed of,
there will be no lack of mere incident or event of objective nature and
more general interest.
My first winter at Jamaica Plains was the terrible one of 1835, during
which I myself saw the thermometer at 50 degrees Fahrenheit below zero,
and there was a snow-bank in the play-ground from October till May. The
greatest care possible was taken of us boys to keep us warm and well, but
we still suffered very much from chilblains. Water thrown into the air
froze while falling. Still there were some happy lights and few shadows
in it all. The boys skated or slid on beautiful Jamaica Pond, which was
near the school. There was a general giving of sleds to us all; mine
broke to pieces at once. I never had luck with any plaything, never
played ball or marbles, and hardly ever had even a top. Nor did I ever
have much to do with any games, or even learn in later years to play
cards, which was all a great pity. Sports should be as carefully looked
to in early education as book-learning. I had also a pair of dear
gazelle-skates given to me with the rest, but they also broke up on first
trial, and I have never owned any since. Destiny was always against me
in such matters.
The boys built two large snow-houses, roofed in or arched over with hard
snow. One was ingeniously and appropriately like an Eskimo hut, with a
rather long winding passage leading into it. Of these I wrote in the
spring, when the sun had begun to act, "one is almost annihilated, and of
the other not a _vestage_ remains." I found the letter by chance many
years later.
There lived in Boston some friends of my mother's named Gay. In the
family was an old lady over eighty, who was a wonderfully lively spirited
person. She still sang, as I thought, very beautifully, to the lute, old
songs such as "The merry days of good Queen Bess," and remembered the old
Colonial time as if it were of yesterday. One day Mr. Gay came out and
took me to his house, where I remained from Saturday until Monday; during
which time I found among the books, and very nearly read through, all the
poems of Peter Pindar or Doctor Wolcott. Precious reading it was for a
boy of eleven, yet I enjoyed it immensely. While there, I found in the
earth in the garden an oval, dark-green porphyry pebble, which I, moved
by a strange feeling, preserved for many years as an amulet. It is very
curious that exactly such pebbles are found as fetishes all over the
world, and the famous conjuring stone of the Voodoos, which I possess, is
only an ordinary black flint pebble of the same shape. Negroes have
travelled a thousand miles to hold it in their hands and make a wish,
which, if uttered with _faith_, is always granted. Its possession alone
entitles any one to the first rank as master in the mysteries of Voodoo
sorcery. Truly I began early in the business! I may here say that since
I owned the Voodoo stone it has been held in several very famous and a
few very beautiful hands.
While I was at Mr. Greene's I wrote my first poem. I certainly exhibited
no great precocity of lyrical genius in it, but the reader must remember
that I was only a foolish little boy of ten or eleven at the time, and
that I showed it to no one. It was as follows:
"As a long-bearded Sultan, an infidel Turk,
Who ne'er in his life had done any work,
Rode along to the bath, he saw Hassan the black,
With two monstrous water-skins high on his back.
"'Ho, Hassan, thou afreet! thou infidel dog!
Thou son of a Jewess and eater of hog!
This instant, this second, put down thy skin jugs,
And for my sovereign pleasure remove both the plugs!'
"The negro obeyed him, put both on the ground,
And opened the skins and the water flew round;
The Sultan looked on till he laughed his fill;
Then went on to the bath, feeling heated and ill.
"When arrived at the bath, 'Is all ready?' he cries.
'Indeed it is not, sire,' the bath-man replies;
'For to fetch the bath-water black Hassan has gone,
And your highness can't have it till he shall return.'"
In after years my friend, Professor E. H. Palmer, translated this into
Arabic, and promised me that it should be sung in the East. It is not
much of a poem, even for a boy, but there is one touch true to life in
it--which is the _cursing_. This must have come to me by revelation; and
in after years in Cairo I never heard a native address another as
"_Afrit_! _Ya-hinzeer_--_wa Yahud_--_yin uldeen ak_?"--"curse your
religion!"--but I thought how marvellous it was that I, even in my
infancy, had divined so well how they did it! However, now I come to
think of it, I had the year before read Morier's "Haji-Baba" with great
admiration, and I doubt not that it was the influence of that remarkable
book which produced this beautiful result. In after years I met with a
lady who was a daughter of Morier. Apropos of the _book_, it reminds me
that I specially recall my _reviewing_ it mentally many times.
I have reviewed my early life in quiet, old-fashioned, shaded
Philadelphia and in rural New England so continually and carefully all
the time ever since it passed that I am sure its minutest detail on any
day would now be accurately recalled at the least suggestion. As I shall
almost certainly write this whole work without referring to a note or
journal or other document, it will be seen that I remember the past
pretty well. What is most remarkable in it all, if I _can_ make myself
intelligible, is that what between the deep and indelible impression made
on my mind by _books_, and that of scenery and characters now passed
away--the two being connected--it all seems to me now to be as it were
vividly depicted, coloured, or _written_ in my mind, like pages in an
illuminated or illustrated romance. As some one has said that dreams are
novels which we read when asleep, so bygone memories, when continually
revived and associated with the subtle and delicate influences of
_reading_, really become fixed literature to us, glide into it, and are
virtually turned to copy, which only awaits type. Thus a _scene_ to one
highly cultivated in art is really a picture, to a degree which few
actually realise, though they may fancy they do, because to actually
master this harmony requires so many years of study and thought that I
very rarely meet with perfect instances of it. De Quincey and Coleridge
are two of the best illustrations whom I can recall, while certain
analytical character-sifters in modern novels seem the farthest remote
from such genial naturalness.
At the end of the first year my brother returned to Philadelphia. I
passed the summer at Dr. Stimson's, in Dedham, wandering about in the
woods with my bow, fishing in the river, reading always whatever fate or
a small circulating library provided--I remember that "The Devil on Two
Sticks" and the "Narrative of Captain Boyle" were in it--and carving
spoons and serpents from wood, which was a premonition of my later work
in this line, and of my "Manual of Wood-Carving."
At this time something took place which deeply impressed me. This was
the two hundredth anniversary of the building of the town of Dedham,
which was celebrated with very great splendour: speeches, tents with pine-
boughs, music-booths, ginger-beer, side-shows--in short, all the pomp and
circumstance of a country fair allied to historic glory. I had made one
or two rather fast and, I fear me, not over-reputable acquaintances of my
own age, with whom I enjoyed the festival to the utmost. Then I returned
to school, and autumn came, and then winter. At this time I felt
fearfully lonely. I yearned for my mother with a longing beyond words,
and was altogether home-sick.
I was seated one Saturday afternoon, busily working in the drawing-class
under a little old Englishman named Dr. Hunt, when there came the
startling news that a gentleman had come to take me home! I could hardly
believe my senses. I went down, and was presented to a man of about
thirty, of extremely pleasant and attractive appearance, who told me that
his name was Carlisle, that he was a friend of my father's, and that I
was at once to return with him to Philadelphia. I wonder that I did not
faint with joy. Mr. Carlisle was a man of very remarkable intelligence,
kindness, and refinement. Nearly sixty years have passed since then, and
yet the memory of the delightful impression which he made on me is as
fresh as ever. My trunk was soon packed; we were whirled away to Boston,
and went to a hotel, he treating me altogether like a young gentleman and
an equal.
It had been the dream and hope and wild desire of my life to go to the
Lion Theatre in Boston, where circus was combined with roaring maritime
melodramas, of which I had heard heavenly accounts from a few of my
schoolmates. And Mr. Carlisle took me there that evening, and I saw
"Hyder Ali." Never, never in my life before did I dream that dramatic
art, poetry, and _mimesis_ could attain to such ideal splendour. And
then a sailor came on the stage and sang "Harry Bluff," and when he came
to the last line--
"And he died like a true Yankee sailor at last,"
amid thundering hurrahs, it seemed to me that romance could go no
farther. I do not think that Mr. Carlisle had any knowledge of boys,
certainly not of such a boy as I was, but I am sure that he must have
been amply repaid for his kindness to me in my delight. And there were
acrobatic performances, such as I had never seen in my life, and we
returned to the hotel and a grand supper, and I was in heaven.
The next morning Mr. Carlisle put into my hand, with great delicacy, such
a sum as I had never before possessed, telling me that I "would need it
for travelling expenses." All the while he drew me out on literature. On
the Long Island Sound steamer he bade me notice a young gentleman (whom I
was destined to know in after years), a man with curly hair and very
foppish air, accompanied by a page "in an eruption of buttons," and told
me that it was N. P. Willis. And so revelling in romance and travel,
with mince-pie and turkey for my daily food, my pocket stuffed with
money, in the most refined and elegant literary society (at least it was
there on deck), I came to Philadelphia. I may here say that the memory
of Mr. Carlisle has made me through all my life kinder to boys than I
might otherwise have been; and if, as a teacher, I have been popular
among them, it was to a great degree due to his influence. For, as will
appear in many passages in this book, I have to a strange degree the
habit of thinking over marked past experiences, and drawing from them
precedents by which to guide my conduct; hence it has often happened that
a single incident has shown itself in hundreds of others, as a star is
reflected in countless pools.