CHAPTER X
SOME FAMOUS PEOPLE AT HOME.
Irvin,--Whittier.--Webster.--Greeley, etc.
Washington Irving has fairly earned the title of the "Father of our American Literature." The profound philosophical and spiritual treatises of our great President Edwards had secured a reading by theologians and deep thinkers abroad; but the American who first caught the popular ear was the man who wrote "The Sketch Book," and made the name of "Knickerbocker" almost as familiar as Sir Walter Scott made the name of "Waverly." During the summer of 1856 I received a cordial invitation from the people of Tarry town to come up to join them in an annual "outing," with their children, on board of a steamer on the Tappan-Zee. I accepted the invitation, and on arrival found the boat already filled with the good people, and two or three hundreds of scholars from the Sabbath schools.
To my surprise and delight I found Washington Irving on board the steamer. The veteran author had laid aside the fourth volume of the "Life of Washington," which he was just preparing, to come away for a bit of rest and recreation. I had never seen him before, but found him precisely the type of man that I had expected. He was short, rather stout, and attired in an old fashioned black summer dress, with "pumps" and white stockings, and a broad Panama hat. As he was no novelty to his neighbors I was able to secure more of his time; and, like the apostle of old, I was exceedingly "filled with his company." He took me to the upper deck of the steamer, and pointed out a glimpse of his own home--"Sunnyside"--which he told me was the original of Baltus Van Tassel's homestead in the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow." He pointed out the route of poor Ichabod Crane on his memorable night ride up the valley, and so on to the Kakout, where his horse should have gone to reach "Sleepy Hollow." Instead of that, obstinate Gunpowder plunged down over that bridge where poor Ichabod encountered his fatal and final catastrophe. The good old man's face was full of fun as he told me the story. Irving was so exceedingly shy that he never could face any public ovation, and yet he had a great deal of quiet enjoyment of his own popularity. For example, one day when he was going with a young relative up Broadway, which was thronged with omnibuses, he pointed out one of the old "Knickerbocker" line of stages to the lad and said: "Billy, you see how many coaches I own in this city, and you may take as many rides in them as you like."
After refreshments had been served to all the guests on board, we gathered on the deck for the inevitable American practice of speech making. In the course of my speech I gave an account of what was being done for poor children in the slums of New York, and then introduced as many Dutch stories as I could recollect for the special edification of old "Geoffrey Crayon." As I watched his countenance, and heard his hearty laughter and saw sometimes the peculiar quizzical expression of his mouth, I fancied that I knew precisely how he looked when he drew the inimitable pictures of Ichabod Crane, and Rip Van Winkle. When the excursion ended, and we drew up to the shore, I bade him a very grateful and affectionate farewell, and my readers, I hope, will pardon me if I say to them that dear old Irving whispered quietly in my ear, "I should like to be one of your parishioners." Three years afterwards, Irving was borne by his neighbors at Tarrytown to his final resting place in the old Dutch churchyard at the entrance of Sleepy Hollow.
Twenty years afterwards my dear friend, Mr. William E. Dodge, drove me up from his summer house at Tarrytown to see the simple tomb of the good old Geoffrey Crayon, whose genius has gladdened innumerable admirers, and whose writings are as pure as the rivulet which now flows by his resting place.
The pleasant little town of Burlington, N.J., in which I spent my earliest ministry, was the headquarters of orthodox Quakers. I was thrown much into the society of their most eminent people, and very delightful society I found it. The venerable Stephen Grellet, their apostle, who had held many interviews with the crowned heads of Europe, resided a little way from me up the street; and I saw the good old man with broad brimmed hat and straight coat pass my window every day. Richard Mott lived but a little way from the town, and on the other side resided the widow of the celebrated Joseph John Gurney. The wittiest Quaker in the town was my neighbor, William J. Allinson, the editor of the "Friends Review," and an intimate friend of John G. Whittier. One afternoon he ran over to my room, and said: "Friend Theodore, John G. Whittier is at my house, and wants to see thee; he leaves early in the morning." I hastened across the street and, in the modest parlor of Friend Allinson, I saw, standing before the fire, a tall, slender man in Quaker dress, with a very lofty brow, and the finest eye I have ever seen in any American, unless it were the deep ox-like eye of Abraham Lincoln. We had a pleasant chat about the anti-slavery, temperance and other moral reforms; and I went home with something of the feeling that Walter Scott says he had after seeing "Rabbie Burns," Whittier was a retiring, home-keeping man. He never crossed the ocean and seldom went even outside of his native home in Massachusetts. During the summer of 1870 he ventured down to Brooklyn on a visit to his friend, Colonel Julian Allen. On coming home one day, my servant said to me, "There was a tall Quaker gentleman called here, and left his name on this piece of paper." I was quite dumb-founded to read the name of "John G. Whittier," and I lost no time in making my way up to the house where he was staying. When I inquired how he had come to do me the honor of a call, he said: "Well, yesterday, when I arrived and my friend Allen drove me up here, we passed a meeting house with a tall steeple, and when I heard it was thine, I determined to run down to thy house and see thee." As I was to have the "Chi Alpha," the oldest and the most celebrated clerical association of New York at my house the next afternoon, I invited him to come and sup with them. He cordially consented, and it may be supposed that the "Chi Alpha" was very glad to put aside for that evening all other matters, and listen to the fresh, racy and humorous talk of the great poet. Underneath his grave and shy sobriety, flowed a most gentle humor. He could tell a good story, and when he was describing the usages of the Quakers in regard to "Speaking in Meetings," he told us that sometimes the voluntary remarks were not quite to the edification of the meeting. It once happened that a certain George C---- grew rather wearisome in his exhortations, and his prudent brethren, after solemn consultation, passed the following resolution: "It is the sense of this meeting that George C.---- be advised to remain silent, until such time as the Lord shall speak through him more to our satisfaction and profit." A resolution of that kind would not be out of place in some ecclesiastical assemblies, nor in certain prayer gatherings that I wot of. After the circle broke up I told him that in addition to the kind and characteristic letters he had written to me I wanted a scrap of his poetry to add to those which Bryant and others had contributed to my collection of autographs. "What shall it be?" he said. I told him that, while some of his hymns and devoutly spiritual pieces, like "My soul and I," were very dear to me, and while "Snow Bound" was his acknowledged masterpiece, yet none of his verses did I oftener quote than this one, in his poem on Massachusetts, He smiled at the selection, and accordingly sat down and wrote:
"She heeds no skeptic's puny hands,
While near the school the church-spire stands,
Nor fears the bigot's blinded rule,
While near the church-spire stands the school."
Our walk to his place of sojourn in the moonlight was very delightful. On the way I told him that not long before, when I quoted a verse of Bryant's to Horace Greeley, Mr. Greeley replied: "Bryant is all very well, but by far the greatest poet this country has produced is John Greenleaf Whittier." "Did our friend Horace say that?" meekly inquired Whittier, and a smile of satisfaction flowed over his Quaker countenance. The man is not born yet who does not like an honest compliment, especially if it comes from a high quarter. In the course of my life I have received several very pleasant letters from my venerable friend, the Quaker poet; but immediately after his eightieth birthday he addressed me the following letter, which, believing it to be his last, I framed and hung on the walls of my library:
OAK KNOLL,
12th month, 17th, 1887.
_My dear Dr. Cuyler_,
I thank thee for thy loving letter to me on my birthday, which I would have answered immediately but for illness; and, my friend, I wish I was more worthy of the kind and good things said of me. But my prayer is, "God be Merciful to me." And I think my prayer will be answered, for His Mercy and His Justice are one. May the Lord bless thee. Thy friend sincerely,
JOHN G. WHITTIER
This note, so redolent of humility, was written a few days after he had received a most superb birthday ovation from the public men of Massachusetts, and from the most eminent literary men in all parts of the nation.
In the days of my boyhood the most colossal figure, physically and intellectually, in American politics, was Daniel Webster. I well remember when I first put eye upon him. It was when I was pursuing my studies in the New York University Grammar School in preparation for Princeton College. I was strolling one day on the Battery, and met a friend who said to me: "Yonder goes Daniel Webster; he has just landed from that man-of-war; go and get a good look at him." I hastened my steps and, as I came near him, I was as much awe-stricken as if I had been gazing on Bunker Hill Monument, He was unquestionably the most majestic specimen of manhood that ever trod this continent. Carlyle called him "The Great Norseman," and said that his eyes were like great anthracite furnaces that needed blowing up. Coal heavers in London stopped to stare at him as he stalked by, and it is well authenticated that Sydney Smith said of him, "That man is a fraud; for it is impossible for any one to be as great as he looks."
Mr. Webster, as I saw him that day, was in the vigor of his splendid prime. When he spoke in the Senate chamber it was his custom to wear the Whig uniform, a blue coat with metal buttons and a buff waistcoat; but that day he was dressed in a claret colored coat and black trousers. His complexion was a swarthy brown. He used to say that while his handsome brother Ezekiel was very fair, he "had all the soot of the family in his face." Such a mountain of a brow I have never seen before or since. I followed behind him until he entered the carriage of Mr. Robert Minturn that was waiting for him, and as he rode away he looked like Jupiter Olympus. Although I saw Mr. Webster several times afterwards, I never heard him speak until the closing year of his life. The Honorable Lewis Condit, of Morristown, N.J., was in Congress at the time when Webster had his historic combat with Senator Hayne, of South Carolina, and was present during the delivery of the most magnificent speech ever delivered in our Senate. He described the historic scene to me minutely.
Before twelve o'clock on the 26th day of January, 1830, the Senate chamber was overflowing into the rotunda, and people were offering prices for a few inches of breathing room in the charmed enclosure. Senator Dixon H. Lewis, from Alabama, who weighed nearly four hundred, became wedged in behind the Vice President's chair, unable to move, and became imbedded in the crowd like a broad-bottomed schooner settled at low tide into the mud. Being unable to see, he drew out his knife and cut a hole through the stained glass screens that flanked the presiding officer's chair. That aperture long remained as a memorial of Lewis's curiosity to witness the greatest of American orators deliver the greatest of American orations. The place was worthy of the hour and of the combatants. It was the old Senate chamber, now occupied by the United States Supreme Court, the same hall which had once resounded to the eloquence of Rufus King, as it afterwards did to the eloquence of Rufus Choate, and which had echoed the bursts of applause that once greeted Henry Clay of Kentucky. On that memorable morning the Vice-President's chair was occupied by that intellectual giant of the South, John C. Calhoun. Before him were Van Buren, Forsyth, Hayne, Clayton, the omniverous Benton, the sturdy John Quincy Adams, and, in the seething crowd, was the gaunt skeleton form of John Randolph of Roanoke. Mr. Condit told me that when Webster exclaimed: "The world knows the history of Massachusetts by heart. There is Lexington, and there is Bunker Hill and there they will remain forever,"--the group of Bostonians seated in the gallery before him, broke down, and wept like little children. Quite as effective as his eulogy of the "Old Bay State," was his sudden and awful assault upon Senator Levi Woodbury, of New Hampshire. This representative of Webster's native State had supplied Colonel Hayne with a quantity of party pamphlets and documents to be used as ammunition. Webster knew this fact and determined to punish him. Turning suddenly towards Woodbury, he thundered out in a tone of indignant scorn, as he shook his fist over his head: "I employ no scavengers;" and the poor New Hampshire Senator ducked his bald head as if struck by a bombshell. The closing passage of that memorable speech could not have been extemporized. No mortal man could have thrown off that magnificent piece of Miltonic prose at the heat, without some deep premeditation. It is well known now that Mr. Webster afterwards pruned, amended and decorated it until it is recognized as one of the grandest passages in the English language. I take down my Webster and read it occasionally, and it has in it the majestic "sound of many waters." That great passage is the prelude of the mighty conflict which thirty years afterwards was to be waged on the soil of Gettysburg and Chickamauga. It became the condensed creed, and the battle-cry of the long warfare for the nation's life. Well have there been placed in golden letters on the pedestal of Webster's monument in Central Park the last sublime line of that sentence: "Liberty and Union, now and forever: one and inseparable." Mr. Webster's power in sarcastic invective was terrific. After he had made his angry and ferocious rejoinder to the charges of Mr. Charles J. Ingersoll, of Pennsylvania, the witty Dr. Elder was asked, when he came out of the Senate chamber: "What did you think of that speech?" Elder's reply was: "Thunder and lightning are peaches and cream to such a speech as that." Mighty as Webster was in intellectual power he had some lamentable weaknesses. He was indeed a wonderful mixture of clay and iron. The iron was extraordinarily massive, but the clay was loose and brittle. He had the temptations of very strong animal passions, and sometimes to his intimate friends he attempted to excuse some of his excesses of that kind. There has been much controversy about Mr. Webster's habits in regard to intoxicants. The simple truth is that during his visit to England in 1840 he was so lionized and feted at public dinners that he brought home some convivial habits which rather grew upon him in advancing years. On several public occasions he gave evidence that he was somewhat under the influence of deep potations. I once saw him when his imperial brain was raked with the chain-shot of alcohol. The sight moved me to tears, and made me hate more than ever the accursed drink that, like death, is no "respecter of persons."
I heard the last speech that Mr. Webster ever made. It was a few months before his death in 1852. The speech was delivered at Trenton, N.J., in the celebrated India rubber case, Goodyear vs. Day, in which Webster was the leading counsel for Goodyear, and Rufus Choate headed the list of eloquent advocates in defense of Mr. Day. In that speech Webster was physically feeble, so that after speaking an hour, he was obliged to sit down for a time, while Mr. James T. Brady made a new statement with regard to a portion of the evidence. At that time Webster was broken in health. The most beautiful passage in his speech was his tribute to woman, and at another point he indulged in a very ludicrous description of the character of the first India rubber, which was offered as a marketable article. He said: "When India rubber was first brought to this country we had only the raw material, and they made overshoes and hats of it. A present was sent to me of a complete suit of clothes made of this India rubber, and on a cold winter day I found my rubber overcoat was frozen as rigid as ice. I took it out on my lawn, set it upright, put a broad brim hat on top of it, and there the figure stood erect, and my neighbors, as they passed by thought they saw the old farmer of Marshfield standing out under his trees." Some of his sarcastic attacks upon Mr. Day were very bitter, and when he showed his great, white teeth he looked like an enraged lion.
A few months after that Trenton speech in October, 1852, he went to his Marshfield home to die. His spirits were broken and he was sore from political disappointments. His last few days were spent in a fight by his powerful constitution against the inevitable. The last time he walked feebly from his bed to his window he called out to his servant man: "I want you to moor my yacht down there where I can see it from my window; then I want you to hoist the flag at the mast head, and every night to hang the lamp up in the rigging; when I go down I want to go down with my colors flying and my lamp burning." He told them to put on his monument, "Lord, I believe; help Thou my unbelief." In the final moment he started up from his pillow long enough to say: "I still live." He does live, and will ever live in the grateful memories of his countrymen.
While no one can deplore more than the writer the weaknesses and mistakes of Daniel Webster, yet when I remember his intellectual prowess and his magnificent services in defense of the Constitution, and the integrity of our national union, I am ready to say: "Let us to all his failings and faults be charitably kind and only remember the glorious services he wrought to the country he loved."
During the summer of 1840, when I was a college student at Princeton, I went with a friend to the office of the Log Cabin, a Whig campaign newspaper then published in Nassau Street, New York. It was during the famous Tippecanoe campaign, which resulted in the election of General Harrison. I was introduced to a singular looking man in rustic dress. He was writing an editorial. His face had a peculiar infantile smoothness, and his long flaxen hair fell down over his shoulders. I little dreamed then that that uncouth man in tow trousers was yet to be the foremost editor in America, and a candidate, unwisely, for President of the United States. Horace Greeley, for it was he, who sat before me, has been often described as a man with the "face of an angel, and the walk of a clod-hopper." Ten years later I became well acquainted with him, and from that time a most cordial friendship existed until his dying day. He visited me as a speaker at our State convention in Trenton, N.Y. I had him at my house at supper when my mother asked him if he would take coffee. His droll reply was: "I hope to drink coffee, madame, in heaven, but I cannot stand it in this world." After supper I informed my guest that it was customary for my good mother and myself (for I was not yet married), to have family worship immediately at the close of that meal and asked him whether he would not join us. He cordially replied that he would be most happy to do so, and it is quite probable that I may be one of the few,--perhaps the only--clergyman in this land who ever had Horace Greeley kneeling beside him in prayer. He attired himself in the famous old white coat, and shambled along with my mother to the place of meeting. He quite captivated her with a most pathetic account of his idolized boy "Pickie," who had died a short time before. Mr. Greeley was one of the most simple-hearted, great men whom I have ever met; without a spark of ordinary vanity he was intensely affectionate in his sympathies and loved a genuine kind word that came from the heart. He relished more a quiet talk with an old friend in his home at Chappaqua than all the glare of public notoriety. "Come up," he often said to me, "and spend a Saturday at the farm. The good boys do come and see me up there sometimes." Probably no man lived a purer life than Horace Greeley. He was the most devoted of husbands to one of the most eccentric of wives. His defenses of the spiritual sanctity of marriage in reply to Dale Owen are among the most powerful productions of his ever powerful pen. It were well that they should be reproduced now at a time when the laxity of wedlock and the wicked facilities for divorce are working such peril to our domestic life.
John Bright once said: "Horace Greeley is the greatest of living editors." He once told me that he had written editorials for a dozen papers at one time. He also told me that while he was preparing his history of the "American Conflict" he was in the habit of writing three columns of editorials every day. His articles were freighted with great power, for he was one of the strongest writers of the English language on this continent. They were always brimful of thought, for Mr. Greeley seldom wrote on any subject which he had not thoroughly mastered. Speaking of a certain popular orator, who afterwards went as our minister to China, he said to me: "Mr. B.---- is a pretty man, a very pretty man, but he does not study, and no man ever can have permanent power in this country unless he studies"
Mr. Greeley prided himself upon his accuracy as an editor, but one day, when writing an editorial, in which he denounced some political misdemeanor in the County of Chatauqua, by a slip of his pen he wrote the name of the adjoining county Cattaraugus. The next morning when he saw it in the paper he went up into the composing room in a perfect rage and called out, "Who put that Cattaraugus?" The printers all gathered around him amused at his anger until one of them pulling down from the hook the original editorial showed him the word "Cattaraugus" "Uncle Horace," when he saw the word, with a most inexpressible meekness, drawled out: "Will some one please to kick me down those stairs?"
He abominated mendicancy and, although his native goodness of heart often led him to give to the hundreds who came to him for pecuniary aid, he one day said to me: "Since I have lived in New York I have given away money enough to set up a merchant in business, and I sometimes doubt whether I have done more good or harm by the operation. I am continually beset by various clubs and societies all over the land to donate to them the Tribune. I always tell them if it is worth reading it is worth paying for. The curse of this country is the deadhead. I pay for my own Tribune every morning."
From my old friend's theology I strongly dissented, but in practical philanthropy he gave me many a lesson and still better stimulant of his own unselfish example. He was always ready to work in the cause of reform without pay and without applause. When temperance meetings were held in my church he very gladly lent his effective services, refusing any compensation, and there was no man in the city whose evening hours were worth more in solid gold than his. It is said that he was once called upon, in the absence of his minister, in a Universalist Church, to go into the pulpit. He did so, and delivered a very pungent sermon on the text, "The fool hath said in his heart there is no God." The strongest points made by Mr. Greeley in the best of his printed essays are those which emphasize the authority of God. A letter in his characteristic hieroglyphics, the last one he ever wrote to me, and which now lies before me, was in reply to one of mine, criticising the Tribune for speaking of Dr. Tyng's as a "church" and of Dr. Adams's house of worship as a "meeting house." I told him if one was a church, then the other was equally so. He replied: "I am of Puritan stock, on one side, in America since 1640, and on the other since 1720. My people worshiped God in a meeting house; they gave it the name, not I, and they called the body of believers who met therein 'a church.' Episcopalians speak otherwise. It is a bad sign that we do not seem disposed to hold fast the form of sound words."
I am not aware of any Scriptural authority for calling a steepled house "a church."
The last evening I ever spent with him was at a temperance meeting of plain working people, to which he came several miles through a snow storm. He spoke with great power, and when I told him afterwards it was one of the finest addresses I had ever heard from him he said to me: "I would rather tell some truths to help such plain people as we had to-night than address thousands of the cultured in the Academy of Music." As he bade me good-night at yonder corner of Fulton Street, I said to him: "Uncle Horace, will you not come and spend the night with me?" He said, "No, I have much work to do before morning. I am coming over soon to spend a week in Brooklyn with my brother-in-law, and I will come and have a night with you." Alas, it was not long before he came to spend a night in Brooklyn,--that night that knows no morning. On a chilly November day, towards twilight, I was one of the crowd that followed him to his resting place in Greenwood, and I always, when on my way to my own plot, stop to gaze on the monument that bears the inscription, "Founder of the New York Tribune."