Return to Philadelphia at twelve years of age--Early discipline--School
at Mr. C. Walker's--B. P. Hunt--My first reading of Rabelais--Mr. Robert
Stewart--Hurlbut's school--Boyish persecution--Much strange
reading--Francois Villon--Early studies in philosophy--Transcendentalism
and its influence--Spanish--School of E. C. Wines--The French
teacher--Long illness--The intelligent horse--Princeton University
professors--Albert Dodd and James Alexander--College life--Theology--Rural
scenes--Reading--My first essays--The Freshman rebellion--Smoking--George
H. Boker--Jacob Behmen or Bohme--Stonington--Captain Nat Palmer and
Commodore Vanderbilt--My graduation.
How happy I was again to see my mother and father and Henry! And then
came other joys. My father had taken a very nice house in Walnut Street,
in the best quarter of the city, below Thirteenth Street, and this was a
source of pleasure, as was also a barrel of apples in the cellar, to
which I had free access. They had been doled out to us very sparingly at
school, and I never shall forget the delight with which I one day in
December at Jamaica Plain discovered a frozen apple on a tree! Then
there was the charm of being in a great city, and familiar old scenes,
and the freedom from bad marks, and being ruled into bounds, and sent to
bed at early hours. There is, in certain cases, a degree of moral
restraint and discipline which is often carried much too far, especially
where boys are brought up with a view to pushing themselves in the world.
I was sixteen years of age and six feet high before I was allowed to
leave off short jackets, go to a theatre, or travel alone, all of which
was more injurious to me, I believe, than ordinary youthful dissipation
would have been, especially in America. Yet, while thus repressed, I was
being continually referred by all grown-up friends to enterprising youth
of my own age, who were making a living in bankers' or conveyancers'
offices, &c., and acting "like men." The result really being that I was
completely convinced that I was a person of feeble and inferior capacity
as regarded all that was worth doing or knowing in life, though Heaven
knows my very delicate health and long illnesses might of themselves have
excused all my failings. The vast majority of Americans, however kind
and generous they may be in other respects, are absolutely without mercy
or common-sense as regards the not succeeding in life or making money.
Such, at least, was my experience, and bitter it was. Elders often
forget that even obedience, civility, and morality in youth are luxuries
which must be paid for like all other extravagances at a high price,
especially in children of feeble constitution. The dear boy grows up "as
good as pie," and, being pious, "does not know one card from another,"
nor one human being from another. You make of him a fool, and then call
him one--I mean, what you regard as a fool. I am not at all sure that
one or two cruises in a slaver (there were plenty of them sailing out of
New York in those days) would not have done me far more good of a certain
kind than all the education I had till I left college in America. I am
not here complaining, as most weak men do, as if they were specially
victims to a wretched fate and a might-have-been-better. The vast
majority of boys have not better homes or education, kinder parents, or
advantages greater than mine were. But as I do not recall my boyhood's
days or my youth till I left college with that _joyousness_ which I find
in other men without exception, and as, in fact, there always seems as if
a cloud were over it all, while from below there was a low continual
murmur as of a patient soul in pain, I feel that there was something
wrong in it all, as there indeed was--the wrong of taking all the starch
out of a shirt, and then wondering that it was not stiff. But I must
say, at the same time, that this free expansion is not required by the
vast majority of boys, who are only far too ready and able to spread
themselves into "life" without any aid whatever. What is for one meat
may be for another poison, and mine was a very exceptional case, which
required very peculiar treatment.
My father had sold out his business in 1832 to Mr. Charles S. Boker, and
since then been principally engaged in real estate and stock speculation.
When I returned, he had bought a large property between Chestnut Market
and Third Streets, on which was a hotel called Congress Hall, with which
there were connected many historical associations, for most of the noted
men who for many years visited Philadelphia had lived in it. With it
were stables and other buildings, covering a great deal of ground in the
busiest portion of the city, but still not in its condition very
profitable. Then, again, he purchased the old Arch Street prison, a vast
gloomy pile, like four dead walls, a building nearly 400 feet square. It
was empty, and I went over it and into the cells many times. I remember
thinking of the misery and degradation of those who had been confined
there. The discipline had been bad enough, for the prisoners had been
allowed to herd freely together. My father tore it down, and built a
block of handsome dwelling-houses on its site. As the _trottoir_ or side-
walk was narrow, he, at a considerable loss to himself, made a present to
the city of a strip of land which left a wide pavement. I say "at a
loss," for had the houses been deeper they would have sold for much more.
The City Council graciously accepted the gift, with the special condition
that my father should pay all the expenses of the transfer! From which I
learned the lesson that in this life a man is quite as liable to suffer
from doing good as doing evil, unless he employs just as much foresight
or caution in the doing thereof. Some of the most deeply regretted acts
of my life, which have caused me most sincere and oft-renewed repentance,
were altogether and perfectly acts of generosity and goodness. The
simple truth of which is that a _gush_, no matter how sweet and pure the
water may be, generally displaces something. Many more buildings did my
father buy and sell, but committed withal the very serious error of never
buying a house as a permanent home or a country place, which he might
have easily done, and even to great profit, which error in the long-run
caused us all great inconvenience, and much of that shifting from place
to place which is very bad for a growing family. The humblest man in
such case in a house of his own has certain great advantages over even a
millionaire in lodgings.
Mr. S. C. Walker had given over his school to a younger brother named
Joseph, but it was still kept in the old house in Eighth Street, where
also I had taken my lessons in the rudiments of Transcendentalism from
the Orphic Alcott. It was now a fairly good school as things went in
those days, with the same lectures in Natural Philosophy and
Chemistry--the same mild doses of French and Latin. The chief assistant
was E. Otis Kimball, subsequently a professor of astronomy, a very
gentlemanly and capable instructor, of a much higher type than any
assistant-teacher whom I had ever before met. Under him I read
Voltaire's "Charles the Twelfth." George H. Boker, who was one year
older than I, and the son of my father's old partner, went to this
school. I do not remember that for the first year or eighteen mouths
after my return to Philadelphia there was any incident of note in my
life, or that I read anything unless it was Shakespeare, and reviews
which much influenced me. However, I was very wisely allowed to attend a
gymnasium, kept by a man named Hudson. Here there was a sporting tone,
much pistol-shooting at a mark, boxing and fencing, prints of
prize-fighters on the wall, and cuts from _Life in London_, with copious
cigar-smoke. It was a wholesome, healthy place for me. Unfortunately, I
could not afford the shooting, boxing, &c., but I profited somewhat by
it, both morally and physically. At this critical period, or a little
later, a few pounds a year judiciously invested in sport and
"dissipation" would have changed the whole current of my life, probably
much for the better, and it would certainly have spared my poor father
the conviction, which he had almost to his death, that I was a sad and
mortifying failure or exception which had not paid its investment; for
which opinion he was in no wise to blame, it being also that of all his
business acquaintances, many of whose sons, it was true, went utterly to
the devil, but then it was in the ancient intelligible, common-sensible,
usual paths of gambling, horsing, stock-brokering, selling short, or
ruining all their relatives by speculating with their money. However,
there was also the--rather forlorn--hope ahead that I would do something
in a profession.
The school went on, Mr. Walker studying law meantime till he had passed
his examination, when it was transferred to Mr. B. P. Hunt. With this
man, who became and remained my intimate friend till his death, thirty
years after, came the first faint intimation of what was destined to be
the most critical, the most singular, and by far the most important
period of my life.
Mr. Hunt was, as he himself declared to me in after years, not at all
fitted to be a schoolmaster. He lacked the minor or petty earnestness of
character, and even the training or preparation, necessary for such work.
On the other hand, he had read a great deal in a desultory way; he was
very fond of all kinds of easy literature; and when he found that any boy
understood the subject, he would talk with that boy about whatever he had
been reading. Yet there was something real and stimulative in him, for
there never was a man in Philadelphia who kept school for so short a time
and with so few pupils who had among them so many who in after life
became more or less celebrated. For he certainly made all of us who were
above idiocy think and live in thought above the ordinary range of school-
boy life. Thus I can recall these two out of many incidents:--
Finding me one day at an old book-stand, he explained to me Alduses, and
Elzevirs, and bibliography, showing me several specimens, all of which I
remembered.
I had read Watson's "Annals of Philadelphia." [By the way, I knew the
daughter of the author.] There was an allusion in it to Cornelius
Agrippa, and Mr. Hunt explained and dilated on this great sorcerer to me
till I became half crazy to read the "Occult Philosophy," which I did at
a roaring rate two years later.
One day I saw Mr. Hunt and Mr. Kendall chuckling together over a book. I
divined a secret. Now, I was a very honourable boy, and never pried into
secrets, but where a quaint old book was concerned I had no more
conscience than a pirate. And seeing Mr. Hunt put the book into his
desk, I abode my time till he had gone forth, when I raised the lid, and
. . .
Merciful angels and benevolent fairies! it was Urquhart's translation of
Rabelais! One short spell I read, no more; but it raised a devil which
has never since been laid. Ear hath not heard, it hath not entered into
the heart of man to conceive, what I felt as I realised, like a young
giant just awakened, that there was in me a stupendous mental strength to
grasp and understand that magnificent mixture of ribaldry and learning,
fun and wisdom, deviltry and divinity. In a few pages' time I knew what
it all meant, and that I was gifted to understand it. I replaced the
book; nor did I read it again for years, but from that hour I was never
quite the same person. The next day I saw Callot's "Temptation of St.
Anthony" for the first time in a shop-window, and felt with joy and pride
that I understood it out of Rabelais. Two young gentlemen--lawyers
apparently--by my side thought it was crazy and silly. To me it was more
like an apocalypse.
I am speaking plain truth when I say that that one quarter of an hour's
reading of Rabelais--standing up--was to me as the light which flashed
upon Saul journeying to Damascus. It seems to me now as if it were the
great event of my life. It came to such a pass in after years that I
could have identified any line in the Chronicle of Gargantua, and I also
was the suggester, father, and founder in London of the Rabelais Club, in
which were many of the best minds of the time, but beyond it all and
brighter than all was that first revelation.
It should be remembered that I had already perused Sterne, much of Swift,
and far more comic and satiric literature than is known to boys, and,
what is far more remarkable, had thoroughly taken it all into my _cor
cordium_ by much repetition and reflection.
Mr. Hunt in time put me up to a great deal of very valuable or curious
_belletristic_ fair-lettered or black-lettered reading, far beyond my
years, though not beyond my intelligence and love. We had been
accustomed to pass to our back-gate of the school through Blackberry
Alley--
"Blackberry Alley, now Duponceau Street,
A rose by any name will smell as sweet"--
which was tenanted principally by social evils. He removed to the corner
of Seventh and Chestnut Streets. Under our schoolroom there was a
gambling den. I am not aware that these surroundings had any effect
whatever upon the pupils. Among the pupils in Seventh Street was one
named Emile Tourtelot. We called him Oatmeal Turtledove. I had another
friend who was newly come from Connecticut. His uncle kept a hotel and
often gave him Havanna cigars. We often took long walks together out of
town and smoked them. He taught me the song--
"On Springfield mountains there did dwell,"
with much more quaint rural New England lore.
About this time my grandfather Leland died. I wept sadly on hearing it.
My father, who went to Holliston to attend the funeral, brought me back a
fine collection of Indian stone relics and old American silver coins, for
he had been in his way an antiquarian. _Bon sang ne peut mentir_. I had
also the certificate of some Society or Order of Revolutionary soldiers
to which he had belonged. One of his brothers had, as an officer, a
membership of the hereditary Order of the Cincinnati. This passed to
another branch of the family.
For many years the principal regular visitor at our house was Mr. Robert
Stewart, a gentleman of good family and excellent education, who had
during the wars with Napoleon made an adventurous voyage to France, and
subsequently passed most of his life as Consul or diplomatic agent in
Cuba. He had brought with him from Cuba a black Ebo-African slave named
Juan. As the latter seemed to be discontented in Philadelphia, Mr.
Stewart, who was kindness itself, offered to send him back freed to Cuba
or Africa, and told him he might buy a modest outfit of clothing, such as
suited his condition. The negro went to a first-class tailor and ordered
splendid clothes, which were sent back, of course. The vindictive Ebo
was so angry at this, that one summer afternoon, while Mr. Stewart slept,
the former fell on him with an axe and knife, mangled his head horribly,
cut the cords of his hand, &c., and thought he had killed him. But
hearing his victim groan, he was returning, when he met another servant,
who said, "Juan, where are you going?" He replied, "Me begin to kill
Mars' Stewart--now me go back finish him!" He was, of course, promptly
arrested. Mr. Stewart recovered, but was always blind of one eye, and
his right hand was almost useless. Mr. Stewart had in his diplomatic
capacity seen many of the pirates who abounded on the Spanish Main in
those days. He was an admirable _raconteur_, abounding in reminiscences.
His son William inherited from an uncle a Cuban estate worth millions of
dollars, and lived many years in Paris. He was a great patron of
(especially Spanish) art.
So I passed on to my fourteenth year, which was destined to be the
beginning of the most critical period of my life. My illnesses had
increased in number and severity, and I had shot up into a very tall weak
youth. Mr. Hunt gave up teaching, and became editor of _Littell's
Magazine_. I was sent to the school of Mr. Hurlbut--as I believe it was
then spelled, but I may be wrong. He had been a Unitarian clergyman, but
was an ungenial, formal, rather harsh man--the very opposite of Mr. Hunt.
My schoolmates soon found that though so tall, I was physically very
weak, and many of them continually bullied and annoyed me. Once I was
driven into a formal stand-up fight with one younger by a year, but much
stronger. I did my best, but was beaten. I offered to fight him then in
Indian fashion with a hug, but this he scornfully declined. After this
he never met me without insulting me, for he had a base nature, as his
after-life proved. These humiliations had a bad effect upon me, for I
was proud and nervous, and, like many such boys, often very foolish.
But I had a few very good friends. Among these was Charles Macalester.
One day when I had been bullied shamefully by the knot of boys who always
treated me badly, he ran after me up Walnut Street, and, almost with
tears in his eyes, assured me of his sympathy. There were two other
intimates. George Patrullo, of Spanish parentage, and Richard Seldener,
son of the Swedish Consul. They read a great deal. One day it chanced
that Seldener had in his bosom a very large old-fashioned flint-lock
horse-pistol loaded with shot. By him and me stood Patrullo and William
Henry Hurlbut, who has since become a very well-known character. Thinking
that Seldener's pistol was unloaded, Patrullo, to frighten young Hurlbut,
pulled the weapon suddenly from Seldener's breast, put it between
Hurlbut's eyes and fired. The latter naturally started to one side, so
it happened that he only received one shot in his ear. The charge went
into the wall, where it made a mark like a bullet's, which was long
visible. George Patrullo was drowned not long after while swimming in
the Schuylkill river, and Richard Seldener perished on an Atlantic
steamer, which was never heard of.
On the other hand, something took place which cast a marvellous light
into this darkened life of mine. For one day my father bought and
presented to me a share in the Philadelphia Library. This was a
collection which even then consisted of more than 60,000 well-chosen
volumes. And then began such a life of reading as was, I sincerely
believe, unusual in such youth. My first book was "Arthur of Little
Britaine," which I finished in a week; then "Newes from New Englande,
1636," and the "Historie of Clodoaldus." Before long I discovered that
there were in the Loganian section of the library several hundred volumes
of occult philosophy, a collection once formed by an artist named Cox,
and of these I really read nearly every one. Cornelius Agrippa and
Barret's "Magus," Paracelsus, the black-letter edition of Reginald Scot,
Glanville, and Gaffarel, Trithemius, Baptista Porta, and God knows how
many Rosicrucian writers became familiar to me. Once when I had only
twenty-five cents I gave it for a copy of "Waters of the East" by
Eugenius Philalethes, or Thomas Vaughan.
All of this led me to the Mystics and Quietists. I read Dr. Boardman's
"History of Quakerism," which taught me that Fox grew out of Behmen; and
I picked up one day Poiret's French work on the Mystics, which was quite
a handbook or guide to the whole literature. But these books were but a
small part of what I read; for at one time, taking another turn towards
old English, I went completely through Chaucer and Gower, both in black
letter, the collections of Ritson, Weber, Ellis, and I know not how many
more of mediaeval ballads and romances, and very thoroughly and earnestly
indeed Warton's "History of English Poetry." Then I read Sismondi's
"Literature of Southern Europe" and Longfellow's "Poets and Poetry of
Europe," which set me to work on Raynouard and other collections of
Provencal poetry, in the knowledge of which I made some progress, and
also St. Pelaye's, Le Grand's, Costello's, and other books on the
Trouveurs. I translated into rhyme and sent to a magazine, of which I in
after years became editor, one or two _lais_, which were rejected, I
think unwisely, for they were by no means bad. Then I had a fancy for
Miscellanea, and read the works of D'Israeli the elder and Burton's
"Anatomy."
One day I made a startling discovery, for I took at a venture from the
library the black-letter first edition of the poems of Francois Villon. I
was then fifteen years old. Never shall I forget the feeling, which
Heine compares to the unexpected finding of a shaft of gold in a gloomy
mine, which shot through me as I read for the first time these
_ballades_. Now-a-days people are trained to them through second-hand
sentiment. Villon has become--Heaven bless the mark!--_fashionable_! and
aesthetic. I got at him "straight" out of black-letter reading in
boyhood as a find of my own, and it was many, many years ere I ever met
with a single soul who had heard of him. I at once translated the "Song
of the Ladies of the Olden Time"; and I knew what _bon bec_ meant, which
is more than one of Villon's great modern translators has done! Also
_heaulmiere_, which is _not_ helmet-maker, as another supposes.
I went further in this field than I have room to describe. I even read
the rococo-sweet poems of Joachim du Bellay. In this year my father gave
me "The Doctor," by Robert Southey, a work which I read and re-read
assiduously for many years, and was guided by it to a vast amount of odd
reading, Philemon Holland's translation of Pliny being one of the books.
This induced me to read all of Southey's poems, which I did, not from the
library, but from a bookstore, where I had free run and borrowing
privileges, as I well might, since my father lost 4,000 pounds by its
owner.
While at Mr. Greene's school I had given me Alsopp's "Life and Letters of
Coleridge," which I read through many times; then in my thirteenth year,
in Philadelphia, I read with great love Charles Lamb's works and most of
the works of Coleridge. Mr. Alcott had read Wordsworth into us in
illimitable quantities, so that I soon had a fair all-round knowledge of
the Lakers, whom I dearly loved. Now there was a certain _soupcon_ of
Mysticism or Transcendentalism and Pantheism in Coleridge, and even in
Wordsworth, which my love of rocks and rivers and fairy lore easily
enabled me to detect by sympathy.
But all of this was but a mere preparation for and foreshadowing of a
great mental development and very precocious culture which was rapidly
approaching. I now speak of what happened to me from 1838 to 1840,
principally in the latter year. If I use extravagant, vain words, I beg
the reader to pardon me. Perhaps this will never be published, therefore
_sit verbo venia_!
I had become deeply interested in the new and bold development which was
then manifesting itself in the Unitarian Church. Channing, whom I often
heard preach, had something in common with the Quietists; Mr. Furness was
really a thinker "out of bounds," while in reality as gentle and purely
Christian as could be. There was something new in the air, and this
Something I, in an antiquated form, had actually preceded. It was really
only a _rechauffe_ of the Neo-Platonism which lay at the bottom of
Porphyry, Proclus, Psellus, Jamblichus, with all of whom I was fairly
well acquainted. Should any one doubt this, I can assure him that I
still possess a full copy of the "Poemander" or "Pimander" of Hermes
Trismegistus, made by me in my sixteenth year, which most assuredly no
mortal could ever have understood or made, or cared to make, if he had
not read the Neo-Platonists; for Marsilius Ficinus himself regarded this
work as a pendant to them, and published it as such. Which work I
declared was not a Christian Platonic forgery, but based on old Egyptian
works, as has since been well-nigh proved from recent discoveries. (I
think it was Dr. Garnett who, hearing me once declare in the British
Museum that I believed Hermes was based on an ancient Egyptian text, sent
for a French work in which the same view was advanced.)
The ignorance, narrow-mindedness, and _odium theologicum_ which prevailed
in America until 1840 was worse than that in Europe under the Church in
the Middle Ages, for even in the latter there had been an Agobard and an
Abelard, Knight-Templar agnostics, and _illuminati_ of different kinds.
The Unitarians, who believed firmly in every point of Christianity, and
that man was saved by Jesus, and would be damned if he did not put faith
in him as the Son of God, were regarded literally and truly by everybody
as no better than infidels because they believed that Christ was _sent_
by God, and that Three could not be One. Every sect, with rare
exceptions, preached, especially the Presbyterians, that the vast
majority even of Christians would be damned, thereby giving to the devil
that far greater power than God against which Bishop Agobard had
protested. As for a freethinker or infidel, he was pointed at in the
streets; and if a man had even seen a "Deist," he spoke of it as if he
had beheld a murderer. Against all this some few were beginning to
revolt.
There came a rumour that there was something springing up in Boston
called Transcendentalism. Nobody knew what it was, but it was dreamy,
mystical, crazy, and infideleterious to religion. Firstly, it was
connected with Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and finally with
everything German. The new school of liberal Unitarians favoured it. I
had a quick intuition that here was something for me to work at. I
bought Carlyle's _Sartor Resartus_, first edition, and read it through
forty times ere I left college, of which I "kept count."
My record here as regards some books may run a little ahead; but either
before I went to college or during my first year there (almost all before
or by 1840-'41), I had read Carlyle's "Miscellanies" thoroughly,
Emerson's "Essays," a translation of Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason,"
the first half of it many times; Dugald Stewart's works, something of
Reid, Locke, and Hobbes's "Leviathan"; had bought and read French
versions of Schelling's "Transcendental Idealism" and Fichte's
fascinating "Destiny of Man"; studied a small handbook of German
philosophy; the works of Campanella and Vanini (Bruno much later, for his
works were then exceeding rare. I now have Weber's edition), and also,
with intense relish and great profit, an old English version of Spinoza's
_Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_. In which last work I had the real key
and clue to all German philosophy and Rationalism, as I in time found
out. I must here modestly mention that I had, to a degree which I
honestly believe seldom occurs, the art of _rapid_ yet of
carefully-observant reading. George Boker once, quite unknown to me,
gave me something to read, watched my eyes as I went from line to line,
timed me by watch, and finally examined me on what I had read. He
published the incident long after, said he had repeated it more than once
_a mon insu_, and that it was remarkable.
Such a dual life as I at this time led it has seldom entered into the
head of man to imagine. I was, on the one hand, a school-boy in a
jacket, leading a humiliated life among my kind, all because I was sickly
and weak; while, on the other hand, utterly alone and without a living
soul to whom I could exchange an idea, I was mastering rapidly and boldly
that which was _then_ in reality the tremendous problem of the age. I
can now see that, as regards its _real_ antique bases, I was far more
deeply read and better grounded than were even its most advanced leaders
in Anglo-Saxony. For I soon detected in Carlyle, and much more in
Emerson, a very slender knowledge of that stupendous and marvellous
ancient Mysticism which sent its soul in burning faith and power to the
depth of "the downward-borne elements of God," as Hermes called them. I
missed even the rapt faith of such a weak writer as Sir Kenelm Digby,
much more Zoroaster! Vigourous and clever and bold writers they
were--Carlyle was far beyond me in literary _art_--but true Pantheists
they were _not_. And they were men of great genius, issuing essays to
the age on popular, or political, or "literary" topics; but
_philosophers_ they most assuredly were _not_, nor men tremendous in
spiritual truth. And yet it was precisely as _philosophers_ and
thaumaturgists and revealers of _occulta_ that they posed--especially
Emerson. And they dabbled or trifled with free thought and "immorality,"
crying Goethe up as the Light of Lights, while all their inner souls were
bound in the most Puritanical and petty goody-goodyism. Though there
were traces of grim Scotch humour in Carlyle, my patron saint and master,
Rabelais, or aught like him, had no credit with them.
They _paddled_ in Pantheism, but as regards it, both lacked the
stupendous faith and inspiration of the old adepti, who flung their whole
souls into God; and yet they sneered at Materialism and Science.
I did not then see _all_ of this so clearly as I now do, but I very soon
found that, as in after years it was said that Comteism was Catholicism
without Christianity, so the Carlyle-Emersonian Transcendentalism was
Mysticism without mystery. Nor did I reflect that it was a calling
people from the nightmared slumber of frozen orthodoxy or bigotry to come
and see a marvellous new thing. And when they came, they found out that
this marvellous thing was that they had been _awakened_, "only that and
nothing more"; and _that_ was the great need of the time, and worth more
than any magic or theosophy. But I had expected, in simple ignorant
faith, that the sacred mysteries of some marvellous cabala would be
revealed, and not finding what I wanted (though indeed I discovered much
that was worldly new to me), I returned to the good old ghost-haunted
paths trodden by my ancestors, to dryads and elves and voices from the
stars, and the _archaeus_ formed by the astral spirit (not the modern
Blavatsky affair, by-the-bye), which entyped all things . . . and so went
elving and dreaming on 'mid ruins old.
Be it observed that all this time I really did not know what I knew. Boys
are greatly influenced by their surroundings, and in those days every one
about me never spoke of Transcendentalism or "Germanism," or even
"bookishness," without a sneer. I was borne by a mysterious inner
impulse which I could not resist into this terrible whirlpool of _belles-
lettres_, occulta, facetiae, and philosophy; but I had, God knows, little
cause for pride that I read so much, for it was on every hand in some way
turned against me. If it had only been reading like that of other human
beings, it might have been endured; but I was always seen coming and
going with parchment-bound tomes. Once I implored my father, when I was
thirteen or fourteen, to let me buy a certain book, which he did. This
work, which was as dear to me as a new doll to a girl for a long time,
was the _Reductorium_ or moralisation of the whole Bible by Petrus
Berchorius, black-letter, folio, Basle, 1511. It was from the library of
a great and honest scholar, and, as the catalogue stated, "contained MS.
notes on the margin by Melanchthon."
Promising, this, for an American youth who was expected to go into
business or study a profession!
While at Hurlbut's school I took lessons in Spanish. There was a Spanish
boy from Malaga, a kind of half-servant, _half-protege_ in a family near
us, with whom I practised speaking the language, and also had some
opportunity with a few Cubans who visited our family. One of them had
been a governor-general. He was a Gallician by birth, but I did not know
this, and innocently asked him one day if _los Gallegos no son los
Irlandeses d'Espana_?--if the Gallicians were not the Irish of
Spain--which drew a grave caution from my brother, who knew better than I
how the land lay. I really attained some skill in Spanish, albeit to
this day "Don Quixote" demands from me a great deal of dictionary. But,
as I said before, I learn languages with _incredible_ difficulty, a fact
which I cannot reconcile with the extreme interest which I take in
philology and linguistics, and the discoveries which I have made; as, for
instance, that of _Shelta_ in England, or my labours in jargons, such as
Pidgin-English, Slang, and Romany. But, as the reader has probably
perceived, I was a boy with an inherited good constitution only from the
paternal side, and a not very robust one from my mother, while my mind,
weakened by long illness, had been strangely stimulated by many
disorders, nervous fevers being frequent among them. In those days I
was, as my mother said, almost brought up on calomel--and she might have
added quinine. The result of so much nervousness, excessive stimulating
by medicine, and rapid growth was a too great susceptibility to poetry,
humour, art, and all that was romantic, quaint, and mysterious, while I
found it very hard to master any really dry subject. What would have set
me all right would have been careful physical culture, boxing, so as to
protect me from my school persecutors, and _amusement_ in a healthy
sense, of which I had almost none whatever.
Hurlbut's became at last simply intolerable, and my parents, finding out
in some way that I was worse for being there, removed me to a far better
school kept by E. C. Wines, who had written books on education, and
attained some fame thereby. This was in 1839-'40, and I was there to be
prepared for college. We were soon introduced to an old French
gentleman, who was to teach us, and who asked the other boys what French
works they had read. Some had gone through _Telemaque_, or _Paul et
Virginie_, _Florian_, _etcetera_. The good-goody nature of such reading
awoke in me my sense of humour. When it came to my turn, and I was
asked, I replied, "_La Pucelle d'Orleans_ and _Dictionnaire
Philosophique_ of Voltaire, the Confessions of Rousseau, the Poems of
Villon, _Charles d'Orleans_, _Clotilde de Surville_, and more or less of
Helvetius, D'Holbach, and Condillac." Here the professor, feeling
himself quizzed, cast forth his hands as in disgust and horror, and
cried, "_Assez_! _assez_! Unhappy boy, you have raked through the
library of the devil down to the dregs!" Nor was I "selling" him, for I
certainly had read the works, as the records of the Philadelphia Library
can in a great measure prove, and did not speak by hearsay.
I had at this time several severe long attacks of illness with much pain,
which I always bore well, as a matter of course or habit. But rather
oddly, while in the midst of my Transcendentalism, and reading every
scrap of everything about Germany which I could get, and metaphysics, and
study--I was very far gone then, and used to go home from school and
light a pipe with a long wooden stem, and study the beloved "Critic of
Pure Reason" or Carlyle's Miscellanies, having discovered that smoking
was absolutely necessary in such reading--[De Quincey required a quart of
laudanum to enable him to enjoy German metaphysics]--there came a strange
gleam of worldly dissipation, of which I never think without pleasure. I
had passed one summer vacation on a farm near Philadelphia, where I
learned something in wood-ranging about wild herbs and catching
land-tortoises and "coon-hunting," and had been allowed to hire and ride
a horse.
I did not know it, but this horse had thrown over his head everybody who
had ever mounted him. He was a perfect devil, but also a perfect
gentleman. He soon took my measure, and resolved to treat me kindly as a
_protege_. When we both wanted a gallop, he made such time as nobody
before had dreamed was in him; when he was lazy, he only had to turn his
head and look at me, and I knew what that meant and conformed unto him.
He had a queer fancy at times to quietly steal up and put his hoof on my
foot so as to hurt me, and then there was an impish laugh in his eye. For
he laughed at me, and I knew it. There is really such a thing as a horse-
laugh. One day we passed through a drove of sheep, and he did not like
it--no horse does. After a while I wanted to go by a certain road, but
he refused sternly to take it. I found soon after that if I had done so
we must have met the sheep again. He had, in fact, understood the route
far better than I. I once got a mile out of him in three minutes--more
or less; but he had seen me look at my watch, and knew that I wanted to
see what he could do. He never did it again. I _may_ have been mistaken
here, but it was my impression at the time. Perhaps if I had gone on
much longer in intimacy with him I might have profited mentally by it,
and acquired what Americans call "horse-sense," of which I had some need.
It is the sixth--or the first--sense of all Yankees and Scotchmen. When
I returned to the city I was allowed to hire a horse for a few times from
a livery stable, and went out riding with a friend. This friend was a
rather precociously dissipated youth, and with him I had actually now and
then--very rarely--a glass at a bar and oysters. He soon left me for
wilder associates, and I relapsed into my old sober habits. Strange as
it may seem, I believe that I was really on the brink of becoming like
other boys. But it all faded away. Now it became imperative that I
should study in earnest. I used to rise at three or four in the morning.
What with hard work and great fear of not passing my matriculation, I
contrived to get up so much Latin, Greek, and mathematics, that Mr. Wines
thought I might attempt it, and so one fine summer day my father went
with me to Princeton. I was in a fearful state of nervous anxiety.