It was the same with his doctrine of living according to nature. He never thought of doing this himself, except so far as a sensible mode of life and unaffected behavior may be considered so. He was the most conventional man in Concord, and as scrupulous of etiquette as an English clergyman. He was oftener seen with a silk-hat—what Mr. Howells calls a cylinder-hat—than any other person in the town. In his later years he declined to wear a wig, because it was not according to nature; but neither had he formerly worn a beard, which was quite as little according to nature.
In his earlier writings he celebrates the advantages of living in the country, but at sixty he concludes that the city is after all the best, if one has sufficient means,—especially for women, who require a current of human life to keep their minds healthy and cheerful. This reminds one of Thorwaldsen's four seasons; in which spring and summer are represented by an out-of-door life, in autumn the corner of a house appears, and winter is wholly within doors. We expect a certain change of opinion in the course of years: it is the sign of a veracious character. Neither is it inconsistent for a practical man to sometimes deviate from the rules he has laid down for himself.
Emerson's real fault, if he may be said to have had one, was his optimism. Because he had been born with genius and was otherwise fortunate he thought every one else might succeed as easily as he had. In this way he often did people great injustice. If they were unfortunate he concluded that it must be their own fault. "Wherever there is failure," he said, "there is some giddiness, some lack of adaptation of means to ends." If he heard of anyone who could not obtain work he would say there is always plenty to do for willing hands. Those who were incapacitated by nature from earning their own living fared no better. He thought there was something which every one could do better than anybody else—which might possibly be true if there were as many professions as individuals. When some one spoke of a young German poet, whom it was thought but for his untimely death might have been the rival of Schiller, he said, "Yes, but he died: that was against him."
This line of thought logically resulted also in a kind of pessimism. He seemed at times to despise human nature. Somewhere about 1860 he wrote to a friend, "There is not one man in twenty that is worth the ground he stands on"; and speaking of Napoleon he affirms that, in the well-nigh universal negligence and inefficiency of mankind, we cannot be too thankful for this prompt and ready actor. No one who realizes the hard and bitter struggle for daily bread with which three-fourths of the human race are constantly occupied, would have written such a sentence. The transition from optimism to pessimism is very much like that from democracy to imperialism. [Footnote: The peculiar type of Emerson's optimism is illustrated in his poem called "Sea Shore" where he makes a fine catalogue of the gifts and advantages which the ocean brings to mankind, but says nothing of the terrible destructive power of the sea. He forgot that his old friend the Greek represented Neptune as even more cruel than the god of war. Did this man of heroic nature lack the courage to face tragedy?]
We regret to see him deciding the discovery of etherization in favor of his brother-in-law, Dr. Jackson; a question which a Congressional committee found itself unable to determine.
He had one trait of character which his biographers have not mentioned, and which might pass by the name of incredulity. He was the most difficult of men to persuade of any strange and remarkable event. Neither did he take the least pains to conceal his disbelief; and when you were telling him the living truth this was rather difficult to bear. When we said that a woodpecker had been seen in Walden woods nearly as large as a crow and quite as black, he shook his head and looked up at the pine trees. That was not according to his idea of a woodpecker. Neither did he like to hear anything which tended to prove the depravity of human nature. Stories of fraud and corruption in commercial or political life were not pleasant to his ears; and if the perpetrators escaped punishment he was evidently much annoyed. He liked to tell the truth better than he did to hear it.
When nearly sixty years of age both Emerson and Alcott fell in love with a charming young school-teacher of the transcendental sort, and it is rather pleasant to think that there was so much human nature still left in those grave old philosophers.
He was the most famous American of his time; not so celebrated perhaps in his own country as President Lincoln, but in foreign countries he surpassed all others,—such is the deep impression which a great writer makes on the minds of men. In Europe he was looked upon as the best representative of our Western Hemisphere. Carlyle celebrated him in England, and Grimm in Germany. The latter said, "There is no other living writer to whom I feel that I owe so much."
He had no public receptions in foreign cities, but everywhere the finest people united to honor him. On his second visit to England he complained that his time was almost consumed in answering letters of invitation. An English guest at the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa dinner said that when he returned home he would be asked two questions,—if he had seen Niagara Falls, and if he had met Emerson. He was a particular favorite with the English nobility, and whenever we saw a glittering carriage rolling down Concord turn-pike we felt sure it contained some earl or viscount who was paying his compliments to the poet of the pines. Emerson liked to entertain these distinguished visitors in his modest little parlor, but he never slighted his old friends for them; for he lived the wisdom that he taught, and the final virtue of this man was the religious humility of his nature.
MATTHEW ARNOLD'S LECTURE.
During the earlier part of Emerson's career his religious philosophy met with such decided opposition that his friends were, very properly, all the more enthusiastic in his defence; and when the tide turned in his favor, and his fame rose continually higher and higher, the enthusiasm of his admirers reached a climax, and, like Webster before him, he became a veritable subject of idolization. His opponents, finding the current too strong for them, retreated into smooth water, waiting, like a defeated political party, for a favorable change of the tide. When, therefore, Matthew Arnold came to America in the autumn of 1883 expressly to lecture on Emerson, as a writer and thinker, there was great expectation on both sides, and both were equally disappointed. His friends who knew that he liked Emerson, thought he had found too much fault with him, and the other party considered he had praised him too highly.
Few men have ever done so much good in England as Matthew Arnold. Somewhere about the year 1830 Goethe remarked, that Englishmen, as such, were without reflection; party politics and the interests of trade interfered to prevent it; but they were great as practical men. This continued to be the order of the day, in spite of an occasional warning from Macaulay, for thirty years more, until finally Matthew Arnold came forward and said, "Do not be blinded any longer by the prejudices of self-interest, but endeavor to see things as they actually are." This was the continual chant of his life, repeated in a hundred different forms. He made use of the popularity he had gained by his fine, classic poetry, to teach his countrymen a lesson in culture. [Footnote: Lowell also made an excellent point when he warned Englishmen, at the Coleridge memorial, that if they were to regain the intellectual altitude of their ancestors, they must give up the adoration of common-sense, and pay more respect to imagination and ideality.]
Never did Demosthenes expose their faults to the Athenians more frankly and fearlessly, and with such manliness that at the time of his death there was no person in the British Islands more generally respected. On a trial vote that was taken by a London newspaper for membership to a proposed British Academy, Gladstone received the largest number of ballots, Tennyson the next and Matthew Arnold came third. He was considered the best literary critic in England, and if he had outlived Tennyson he would have succeeded him as laureate. He showed a dignified reserve in only publishing a very few books. Two small volumes of poetry, his "Essays in Criticism", which has become a standard work, and his American essays, are all that I know of. For all that, few writers were more celebrated in his own time, and it may be said that he fully deserved his monument in Westminster Abbey.
However, it must be admitted that as a critic he had certain peculiarities. He was, perhaps, too sensitive and impressible; too easily thrown off his guard by qualities in a writer for which he had an aversion. He would not only mention them once, but again and again. He ignored Schiller, who was at least one of the world's greatest dramatists; he was dissatisfied with Tennyson and could not endure Shelley at all. His attack on Francis Newman's translation of the "Iliad" was so severe that he finally discovered the fact himself. His preference for the classic style in literature was rather too decided; for we must never forget that Shakespeare himself was chiefly romantic. He liked poetry which was like his own, and seems to have unconsciously judged other poets by that standard. He had no patience with idiomatic writing like that of Carlyle or Jean Paul; and he made incessant warfare on the subjective method. It is true that subjectivity may be called the peculiar vice of the nineteenth century, and yet it is a vice like the self-consciousness of the early Christians, that ought finally to end in virtue. There are thousands of readers whose minds cannot be reached in any other way.
Allowances must sometimes be made also for the physical condition of a writer. Not always; for Carlyle wrote the greatest of dramatic histories while he was suffering from dyspepsia in the most distressing manner. However, I think in Matthew Arnold's case something may be conceded to him. He came to lecture in America for a double purpose—to tell the truth and to repair his fortunes. It was a sad story. His son had failed in business; his father, of course, had endorsed his notes, and he found himself at the threshold of old age as poor as in the beginning. Such a shock is felt severely enough by tough, hard-fisted men of the world, but to the tender sensibility of a poet it must have been a crushing blow. There can be as little doubt that it brought on the malady that abbreviated his life, as that it gave a melancholic tone to his thought and filled his mind with gloomy forebodings.
The opening of his address was very beautiful. He recalls the impression made upon him in his youth by the writing of Carlyle, Goethe, Emerson and Francis Newman, and says:
"Forty years ago, when I was an undergraduate at Oxford, voices were in the air which haunt my memory still. Happy the man who in that susceptible season of youth hears such voices! they are a possession to him forever. No such voices are there now. Oxford has more criticism now, more knowledge, more light; but such voices as those of our youth it has no longer. The name of Cardinal Newman is a great name to the imagination still; his genius and his style are things of power….. A greater voice still,—the greatest voice of the century,—came to us in those youthful years through Carlyle: the voice of Goethe. To this day,—such is the force of youthful associations,—I read his 'Wilhelm Meister' with more pleasure in Carlyle's translation than in the original. The large, liberal view of human life in 'Wilhelm Meister,' how novel it was to the Englishman in those days! and it was salutary, too, and educative for him, doubtless, as well as novel….. And besides those voices, there came to us in that old Oxford time a voice also from this side of the Atlantic,—a clear and pure voice, which for my ear, at any rate, brought a strain as new, and moving, and unforgettable, as the strain of Newman, or Carlyle, or Goethe…. He was your Newman, your man of soul and genius visible to you in the flesh, speaking to your bodily ears, a present object for your heart and imagination. That is surely the most potent of all influences!"
I confess I enjoy these clear classic sentences so full of tenderness, and yet with the latent fire of manhood in them, much better than Emerson's weird, concentrated epigrams, wonderful as those sometimes are. Comparatively speaking it is like the difference between a living elm and oak timber. But the writer does not long maintain this elevated tone. He soon becomes despondent, and his glorious sunrise, like that in Shakespeare's sonnet, is lost to him again.
"For out alack, he was but one hour mine;
The region cloud hath veiled him from me now."
He remembers that Francis Newman is now Cardinal Newman; that Carlyle's career had ended with his furious "Latter-day Pamphlets," and even in Emerson he had found a certain kind of disappointment.
Yet there may be a deeper reason in this;—the reason that sometimes underlies a coincidence. We too in early life were strengthened and filled with enthusiasm by the earnest voice of Emerson, the trenchant eloquence of Wendell Phillips, and the brilliant wit and penetrating humor of Lowell; but the public activity of Emerson soon afterwards ceased; Phillips became a socialist and ultimately a demagogue; while Lowell changed his verses for foreign missions and after-dinner speeches. There is a prevalent feeling that the nineteenth century, which was ushered in to the sound of Napoleon's cannon and is now going rather tamely out in a discussion of the laws of economics, has not more than half accomplished the work that was assigned it. There is everywhere among thinking men a feeling of distrust and half disappointment. Lowell felt it here, George Eliot in England; and Herman Grimm in Germany, a sanguine man, speaks of the deep-seated unrest which almost drives us to despair.
As I turn from my desk to the morning's newspaper I find in it the following extract from one of Emerson's earlier essays:
"Trust the time. What a fatal prodigality to condemn our age—we cannot overvalue it—it is our all. As the wandering sea-bird which, crossing the ocean, alights on some rock or islet to rest for a moment its wings, and to look back on the wilderness of waves behind, and onward to the wilderness of waters before—so stand we perched on this rock or shoal of time, arrived out of the immensity of the past, bound and road-ready to plunge into immensity again. Not for nothing it dawns out of everlasting peace, this great discontent, this self-accusing reflection. The very time sees for us, thinks for us. It is a microscope such as philosophy never had. Insight is for us which was never for any, and doubt not, the moment and the opportunity are divine. Wondering we come into this lodge of watchmen, this office of espial; let us not retreat astonished and ashamed. Let us go out of the hall door, and doubt never but a good genius brought us in and will carry us out."
Now this is a prose poem, so beautiful that it seems hardly to need the help of rhyme and metre to make it sing; and, as high art always must, it covers a profound truth,—truth that lies at the foundation of all tragedy,—namely, that we are obliged to trust time though time destroys us; that we must trust our fellow men though they often deceive us; that we must trust the ground we stand on though the earthquake devour us.
But Emerson does not say this, and I doubt if he anywhere says it. He was too much of an optimist to perceive it. He wished all the stories he read to turn out fortunately, and if they did not so much the worse for them. Gladstone is the same kind of a man. He believes that the right will always finally conquer; and so it may when the day of judgment arrives and the affairs of the universe are at last wound up. It gives him, as it did Emerson, a tremendous energy,—almost like fanaticism, but it must in the nature of things affect his political judgment. The lives of these two stretch nearly across the nineteenth century, and their popularity is evidence that they represent their own time better than most others.
What does Emerson intend by trusting the time? Does he mean the spirit of the age? If we replace the word time by Divine Providence, the passage becomes intelligible and notably significant; but if he meant the prevailing spirit of the time, the earlier part of Emerson's career is a perfect contradiction of it. If in his youth he had trusted the prevailing tendency of his time he would have become a conservative formalist, and never heard of as an independent thinker. It might even be said that few men have ever trusted their own time less. Like Gladstone, he was dissatisfied with the present and looked toward the future. They both exerted themselves with all their might to revolutionize public opinion and give to the future the stamp of their own ideas. The old Hebrew prophets whom Emerson so much resembled did not trust their own time, but were constantly complaining of it. So Cicero cried out, "O tempora, O mores!" and Savonarola, and many others.
It would seem as if in this poetic rhapsody the writer had lost sight of his subject almost immediately upon stating it, and had substituted Providence for it in his mind. This was not unfrequently the case with him, and may account for those vague aerial flights which his commentators have referred to. Hawthorne says, "Mr. Emerson is a great searcher for facts, but they seem to melt away and become unsubstantial in his grasp." However, it was not facts but ideas that he was in quest of.
The whole of Matthew Arnold's essay is thoughtful and interesting, but it has one grand defect. After saying that Emerson's writings constituted the most important prose work of the nineteenth century, he fails to support the statement by sufficient arguments. If he had developed this point to such a length as its importance deserved, and then finished his discourse with a glowing tribute to Emerson as a man, his audience might have found slight cause to complain of him; but after simply stating the fact, he proceeded to a lengthy discussion of Emerson's stoical philosophy, and finally branched off on a criticism of Carlyle and the consideration of happiness as the true end of life. We will only pause here to remark that the true end of life does not seem to us to be happiness so much as development, and the evolution of such characters as Emerson and Matthew Arnold.
His condemnation of Emerson's poetry was a still severer blow. Emerson's friends had endured enough already on that score. Nothing was ever made so much fun of by parodists and other small wits. In any social company, if Emerson's poetry was mentioned somebody was sure to raise a laugh; and there was nothing that could be done about it. It was hoped that Matthew Arnold's prestige would put a final end to this nonsense, which was nothing but a fashionable habit; but he added the weight of his position as professor of literature to the other side of the scale. He praised certain portions very highly, but averred that these were exceptional, and concluded with what seems to be a "reductio ad absurdum," namely, that Longfellow's poem of "The Bridge" or Whittier's "School Days" was worth the whole body of Emerson's verse. As these were anything but the best of Longfellow and Whittier it seemed rather inconsistent in Matthew Arnold to have praised Emerson's poetry at all; and this was the more surprising after his courageous defence of Wadsworth a short time before. Those who like Emerson's poetry usually like Wordsworth's and vice versa.
But Emerson's poetry is a peculiar subject. Carlyle and Lowell, both eminent critics, did not condemn it, but at the same time they were slow to praise it. Dr. F. H. Hedge, who probably knew more about literature than either of them, considered it poetry of a very high order, and Rev. William Furness of Philadelphia, when some one spoke slightingly of Emerson as a poet, exclaimed, "He is heaven high above our other poets!" In many obituary notices at the time of his death, he was mentioned as being easily the first of American poets. Professor Tyndall has a great admiration for his poetry; and so has another professor we know of whom we will not mention, but who is an equally good chemist. Dr. O. W. Holmes' life of Emerson was dreaded by many for fear of the position he might assume on this question, but to the general surprise of the public, he took strong grounds in favor of it; so that since that time, whenever people laugh at Emerson's poetry it is only necessary to ask them if they have read Dr. Holmes' biography of him.
Immediately after the lecture, a lively discussion began about it in the newspapers, in which leading writers, scholars and professors took an active part. How much soever they might disagree in regard to Emerson, they all united in a disapproval of the lecturer's estimate of him. Matthew Arnold did not seem to have a partisan in the country. The discussion was renewed a year later when his book of discourses in America was published, and then David A. Wasson wrote the following letter which was published in the "Christian Register":
ARNOLD ON EMERSON.
"It may be doubted whether Matthew Arnold's critical estimate of Emerson as a prose writer is well understood by most of those who take it in ill part. The judgment expressed is that Emerson is the pre-eminent prose writer of his century, not as being either a great philosopher or great in his style of workmanship, but for the reason that he is a great spiritual light, the purest, whitest, serenest, of a century now drawing toward its close. This taken together is valuable praise, and converted into disparagement by its denial to Emerson of two special distinctions; and in respect to both, the denial is taken, I think, to cover much more ground than it was intended to cover. To keep within the limits, I will here attend to but one of these, where it must be confessed, Mr. Arnold is himself to blame for the misconstruction put upon him, since he has expressed himself in a way to facilitate, if not to invite, such a mistake. Emerson, it is said, was the most important writer of this century, yet was not a great writer. How should this be, unless, indeed, the century as a whole is inferior, and prominence in it is no token of greatness? In truth, Mr. Arnold has used the term 'writer' in two widely different senses. In the one use it refers to the content of the writing, to its intellectual and moral import, its spiritual significance; in the other use it refers to the writing itself considered as showing more or less of literary power,—that is, of power in the ordering and verbal embodiment of thoughts and conceptions.
"Declining to be misled by this ambiguity, let us inquire what is meant, when it is said that Emerson was not a great writer. To my apprehension the meaning is simply that his literary execution, taken by and for itself, was not of the highest order. A cotton fabric may be better woven than one of silk, a chain of copper be better wrought and linked than a chain of gold. He that should recognize the better workmanship where it exists would not thereby set the cheaper material above the more precious, for he would not institute a comparison to any effect whatsoever between the two. Nor would he betray a shallow and petty mind, as making much of things trivial. Mr. Arnold says of Emerson's writings, the matter is gold, but the workmanship does not evince the highest skill. Were this last urged as determining the value of the writer we might indeed say that the critic offends by exalting a subordinate distinction to the first place. But it is not so urged, nor is there anything to indicate that Mr. Arnold makes perfection of literary execution the be-all and end-all of excellence in literature; indeed one does not see that he at all exaggerates its importance. Those whom he mentions as great writers were for the most part second-rate men—second-rate men that is as measured by the standard of the ages; and it does not appear that he thinks of them otherwise than as such. Cicero receives the title while it is not given to Marcus Antoninus; but it is sufficiently apparent that Mr. Arnold sets a higher value upon Marcus Antoninus than upon Cicero. Voltaire is one of the great writers; but in the world's literature he is at best but first among the lesser lights, and there is no sign that Matthew Arnold attributed to him a higher importance. Or take the case of Swift. The literary talents of this unhappy man were indeed prodigious: he performed feats to which we cannot say that any other would have been equal: he is as unique as Shakespeare,—though, of course, in a vastly lower way. But did he contribute one great thought or one grand and salutary imagination to the world's stock? Not to my knowledge. Did he shed light upon any important province of human interest, upon religion, morals, politics, art, science, history, education, manners or whatever else? I cannot report that he did so. Did he lay a noble emphasis upon any great truth or order of truths and so recommend it effectually to the attention and consideration of mankind? Or did he even write a single sentence which one treasures up as an imperishable jewel? In fine, does his work serve to enlarge the souls, enlighten the minds, direct the wills or quicken and inspire the better powers of man? Does it so much as breathe upon them a salubrious air? Alas no! To all such questions the answer, or mine own at least, will be negative. Yet he was indeed a great writer: that is, he had a great, a truly wonderful power of conception and representation. Mr. Arnold, who for aught one can discover to the contrary, distinguishes the nature of Swift's genius and prizes it only for what it is worth, does not claim that Emerson was a greater writer in the same sense, but thinks his deliverance somewhat faulty, especially as wanting that continuity which belongs to good literary tissue, as to every other.
"Suppose him quite wrong in this, still the error is not one to be warm about, since it leaves the Concord essayist in his place of pre-eminence, and is put forth only by way of determining the kind of value which shall be attributed to his writings.
"D. A. Wasson."
This was forwarded to Matthew Arnold, who was then at his own home, and in due time this reply was received from him:
"COBHAM, SURREY,
"Jan. 7th., 1886.
"Dear Sir,
"I have just had, on my return to England, your letter and Mr. Wasson's paper, and must thank you for them.
"Very much of what Mr. Wasson says is true; yet literary style is more than he makes it—the mere dressing up of a material which may be inferior; it is itself in the material and has an extraordinary value. No great writer is to be disposed of as Mr. Wasson disposes of Addison and Swift; he says, nothing is to be learned from Swift; why, a sense for the blatant nonsense and claptrap which constitutes three-fourths of our public writing and speaking, and which is a greater curse to your country that even to ours, is to be got from him. Addison has his valuable criticism of life too; I doubt whether to a Taine, a hundred years hence, he will not seem of more importance than Emerson, who was above all things of value in his own day. But I love Emerson.
"Truly yours,
"Matthew Arnold."
[Illustration: AUTOGRAPH LETTER FROM MATTHEW ARNOLD.]
[Illustration: AUTOGRAPH LETTER FROM MATTHEW ARNOLD.]
Taine, who preferred Macaulay to Carlyle, might also prefer Addison to Emerson; but it is not likely that a future Grimm or another Sainte-Beuve would do so. In his "Essays in Criticism," Matthew Arnold enters a general complaint against English prose writers for a lack of mental flexibility, and against Addison particularly for the commonplaceness of his ideas. He was a severe and exacting critic.
DAVID A. WASSON.
Bryant, Longfellow, Emerson, Hawthorne and Whittier were all nearly of the same age, and formed a literary galaxy such as has been rare enough in any country or period of history. They are distinguished, however, by one peculiarity—a slight sentimentalism which belonged to the time in which they grew up, and is most strongly marked in Longfellow and least so in Hawthorne. Fifteen or twenty years later there appeared, as usually happens, a number of talented imitators or admirers, and with them two men of equal genius who may be looked upon as the corrective and antidote for their predecessors. These were James Russell Lowell and David Atwood Wasson.
They were as different as Goldsmith and Dr. Johnson. Lowell was a fine poet, a humorist and man of the world. He wrote easily and lived easily. He was the companion of wealthy and distinguished men. He acquired prosperity, as it were, by natural inclination. Next to the King of Prussia he was the most fortunate man of his time. He knew something of sorrow, but of hardship and misfortune only by hearsay. He was the child of summer, and revelled in it; but this continual happiness brought with it certain limitations. Though he was a veracious man, he was rarely a serious one. He never became thoroughly in earnest until he was stimulated by partisan feeling. His best poems were inspired by the anti-slavery conflict, and the rendition of Mason and Slidell; and it was just on these occasions that his humor was most brilliant and pleasant flavored. His productiveness was not great, and his other writings do not make a strong impression. It is said that he often tried to write a book, but was never able to concentrate himself on one subject for a sufficient length of time. He is easily the first of American humorists. The greatest compliment ever paid Thoreau was that such a man as Lowell could not understand him.
Wasson must have been born under the constellation of the Little Bear. As the Germans say, his life was always winter. Every possible obstacle was placed in his way, and misfortune came to him at one time or another in almost every shape. The difficulties he encountered in life were too great for him, and prevented the full fruition of his genius. The wonder is that they did not crush him altogether. He never acquired the sufficient public influence nor received the recognition his merit deserved. He was by nature a thinker—a seeker after truth. There was no problem,—social, political or philosophical,—which he was not ready to grapple with. He could plunge into these subjects like a pearl-diver who means to touch bottom, and would never come out till his last breath was spent. This mental habit and his continual suffering made him only too serious, too much in earnest. Jests were not in his line, but he sometimes wrote poetry of the very highest order. He is the first and most original of American thinkers.
What these two dissimilar men had in common was good Anglo-Saxon manliness—which is after all the foundation of common-sense. They wished to live as other men had lived before them, and not in any new, unusual, or eccentric manner. They believed that virtue was to be found in the great world rather than out of it; among human habitations, and in dealing with all kinds of people rather than by an isolated life at Brook Farm or in Walden Woods. They sought not after any rare and Utopian excellencies, but contented themselves with a plain, sensible, every-day morality. They were neither vegetarians, teetotalers, non-resistants, nor socialists. They considered it no sin to love a woman or to fight a man. They may be called anti-sentimentalists.
Neither were they blind followers of custom and tradition. They wished to be in the vanguard of civilization, and they were conscious that to do this they must not only accept the results of others, but add something of their own. They endeavored to become acquainted with the best that was thought and known in their time, both in literature and in other matters. They thus became excellent critics, as well as versatile and many-sided men. They were among the most cultivated men of the century, and are the most cosmopolitan of American writers. That they should not have possessed greater influence was largely owing to the tendencies of their time. The current of the age was too strong for them, and in their later years they both expressed gloomy forebodings of the future, both for their own country and the rest of the civilized world.
Wasson went to Concord in 1859 intending to make it his permanent abode, but the offer of a philanthropic gentleman who wished to take him into his own house for a year and care for him, as Mr. Badams of Manchester entertained Carlyle, induced him to emigrate again. He continued however in friendly communication with the literary people there, often visited them, and now lies buried in Sleepy Hollow cemetery, so that he deserves to be classed among them, rather than with any other group of literary men.
He was born in Brooksville, Maine, on the fourteenth of May, 1823. He was named David for his father, and Atwood for Miss Harriet Atwood, a female preacher and missionary who was at that time his mother's devoted friend,—and it has been said that Wasson attributed his unusual mental activity largely to her influence. His mother died while he was still too young to recollect her, but her place was fortunately supplied by a kindly and sensible stepmother; not such a rare phenomenon as some people think. His father belonged to a class of men only to be found on the coast of Maine, who are at once fishermen, farmers and navigators; a much more intelligent and cultivated class than the agricultural people of the interior. It is a beautiful sail among the islands from Rockland to Mount Desert, and the pleasantest part of it, to me at least, is the sight of the well kept farms with their handsome cattle and clean-shaven hay-fields, which line the coast. Our best ship-builders have originated among these people.
Brooksville is a thinly scattered settlement on the westerly side of a rocky and even mountainous peninsula. A deep and narrow strait separates it from Castine, which has to be crossed in a ferry-boat. The house of David Wasson, Senior, is something more than half-a-mile from the ferry landing; a large, commodious, two-story house, much better than the average of farm-houses, with two large barns and numerous out-buildings. Between it and the street is an orchard, and on one side a latticed porch or piazza. West of it there is a trout-brook and beyond that a hemlock grove, and the blue hills of Camden in the distance. On the south side the sea comes up to the edge of the farm, and the road to Sedgwick winds about the ridge on the East. It was a fitting birthplace for a poet or a painter.
He has left us a valuable and quite unique sketch of his early boyhood, [Footnote: Essays, Religious, Social, Political. D. A. Wasson. Boston: Lee and Shepard.] in which he confesses to having been a sensitive, excitable and passionate little fellow such as the more cool-headed and phlegmatic sort could tease and worry at pleasure. Since he was also very high-spirited, this resulted inevitably in a good many fights, and from being naturally peaceable and tender-hearted he became at last the most noted pugilist in that community. It is said that at seventeen he could smash a door-panel with his fist. That he disliked work on the farm is not surprising. Manual labor is injurious to boys physically and mentally; and they should be saved from it, except perhaps in the haying or harvesting seasons, as much as possible. Otherwise he was modest, orderly, truthful, and the finest scholar that had ever been known about Castine. His father recognized his superior abilities, and made an effort to send him to Bowdoin College.
There were many obstacles in the way, however, and he did not enter until 1845. He never told me much about his college life. He was older than his companions and more serious. The light spirit that makes it a joyous festival to many was not in him. Of the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty he knew nothing. He distinguished himself in mathematics (especially in geometry, which is the most logical of studies) and in the students' debating-societies. He was also an excellent gymnast.
In almost every college class there are a number of over-grown boys who had better have been sent to the reform-school. On the occasion of a class supper, or some such celebration, young Wasson saved half-a-dozen of these roaring blades from disgrace and suspension, by his timely interference. It was already far into the night, and being fairly intoxicated, they took it into their minds to return and attend morning prayers in the college chapel. In order to prevent this catastrophe, Wasson arranged a bowling match for a fictitious sum of money with the most sober man he could find, and in that way delayed the party until the dangerous hour had passed. It was supposed to have been some of the same set who the following autumn set fire to and consumed the college wood-pile—a severe loss, and a dangerous precedent. No trace of the incendiaries could be discovered and the college faculty suspended on suspicion right and left. Among those whom the lightning struck were several that Wasson knew or felt sure could have had nothing to do with it; and he accordingly went to the president and argued the case with him. This resulted in his being summoned before the next faculty meeting. When asked whether he knew who the perpetrators of the outrage were, he declined to answer, not because he had positive knowledge but because he felt morally certain in regard to them. A few weeks later, after he had gone into the country to teach school for the winter, he received word that he had been suspended. Indignant at what he considered an injustice to his character and scholarship, he left Bowdoin forever: nor did he perhaps lose much by this. The philosophical studies of the senior year could be mastered as easily by a mind like Wasson's without an instructor as with one. He never studied for rank and cared little or nothing for college honors or degrees.
There is no good art without a sense of delicacy; and this mental delicacy is usually matched by some kind of physical sensitiveness. Artists are, according to the vulgar phrase, more thin-skinned than other people. Both at Bowdoin College, and afterwards while at the divinity-school, Wasson worked hard in summer and taught school in winter so as to help in defraying the expense of his education. In this mode of life he encountered many hardships that were too severe for him. I notice among my own classmates that very few of those who lived in this manner reached the age of thirty-five. The food which Wasson encountered during his winter peregrinations was anything but what human beings are intended to eat. On one occasion he returned from his school to dine as usual in a cold room, and found himself provided there with the skeleton of a chicken, two large beets, a pie made of preserved barberries, and biscuits which pulled out when separated, like a telescope. The meat, unless fried, was always cooked too much; bread and vegetables insufficiently. Like many another young hero he believed in facing these obstacles, and overcoming them by main force. A strain which he received in a wrestling match during the celebrated Tippecanoe campaign may have done him harm; but a more serious injury was incurred while on a trip to Bangor in one of his father's schooners the summer after he was suspended from college. The captain of the schooner appears to have been a sea-faring brute who had a secret grudge, a sort of town-and-gown feeling, against the scholar, and was ready to do him any mischief he could. They were to take on a cargo of lumber at Bangor and the captain requested Wasson, who was not actually under his orders, to stow it away in the hold while two men on deck handed the boards to him as fast as possible. Wasson felt that something was wrong and might have protested against it, but his youthful pride, and perhaps a feeling of indifference in regard to his fate, prevented him. I believe he finally fainted from over-exertion and the close air, and was never a well man again. The trouble was not very bad at first, and might easily have been cured by suitable treatment, and a quiet, methodical life: but there was no doctor in that part of Maine who could prescribe properly for him. He tried some short sea-voyages, but these did him little good. So Prescott injured his eyesight through the same proud spirit; but it was this pride which made him afterwards what he was.
His ill-health however did not prevent him from studying and writing. The following autumn he went into the office of a lawyer and member of Congress in Castine and read "Blackstone," "Chitty on Bills," and some other law-books. The study of law is in itself an excellent nerve tonic, balancing the mind and strengthening the character. Nothing could have been better for him at this juncture, and it is an unlimited pity that he did not continue it longer. But the law could never have satisfied the aspirations of his nature any more than Columbus might have been satisfied with sailing a packet in the Mediterranean. He liked the study of it, and once spoke with great respect of "Chitty on Bills" wishing he could find a work on theology or politics that contains so much good sense; but he longed for something beyond it. The congressman had a good opinion of his abilities and held out the prospect of a partnership to him, but personal ambition was not an ingredient in Wasson's nature. He was discontented and ready for a change.
One day in June 1849 he was sent to a distant town on what was to his sensitive moral nature a most disgusting expedition; namely, to help a lucrative client take the poor debtor's oath, and so avoid a partially unjust debt. On his return home he stopped at a country store to make a small purchase, and there at the end of the shelf he saw a cheap dingy copy of Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus." He purchased it, and read it in his wagon by the evening light. He had tried to read it before, but failed to make his way in it. It was the first clear message and sure token of a spiritual life that had yet reached him. He had lived through the "everlasting no," and here was the "everlasting yea" set plainly before him. Years afterward M. D. Conway told Carlyle of walking in the woods at Groveland with Wasson, and how his face became radiant with internal light when he spoke of "Sartor Resartus."
This new-birth from above seized upon him like a fever. He now felt that he had a mission in life; a message to mankind. And in what way could he deliver this message? How could he make known to others what was in his full heart, except from the pulpit? For the first time he conceived the ministry as a high-minded and ennobling profession. He decided accordingly to go into the church. His family were Calvinists, and Calvinism was the only mode of faith of which he knew very much. That such a step should have been inspired by the writings of a heretic like Carlyle was in itself a contradiction which foreboded an ultimate collision. Yet no man perhaps ever lived who had a clearer sense of a Divine Presence in the universe than Thomas Carlyle, and it was this which Wasson recognized in him. Poets and philosophers are naturally heretical, because they take the short road of genius which others find it difficult to follow. But all believers finally arrive at the same destination.
He entered the theological seminary at Bangor in 1849 and graduated in 1851. It may be he went there with a youthful idea of reforming the church. At any rate his boldness of thought and free utterance brought him into suspicion with his fellow students, and at one time reports were in circulation that he was to be expelled for heresy. With his customary directness he went to the president, Dr. Pond, and inquired if there was any truth in this. The doctor, who really liked Wasson, received him with a kindly, patriarchal manner and said: "Do not be troubled, my young friend, we all have our seasons of doubt. I have had mine; but take my word for it that it is all right. For look at those saints up there in glory. How did they get there?" Such an argument was not likely to relieve the fermentation in his mind. Walking the streets of Bangor at this time was Dr. Frederick Henry Hedge, the man of all others who might have solved Wasson's doubts in a satisfactory manner, and with whom Wasson afterwards found himself in more complete moral and intellectual sympathy than with any other of his friends. Wasson saw him frequently, but had no opportunity of making his acquaintance. So nearly do we either hit it, or miss it, all through life!
The only person who sympathized with him in his progressive views of religion was Miss Abbie Smith, the daughter of an apothecary in Newburyport, Massachusetts. She was visiting at the house of her brother who was one of the instructors at the Seminary. That he should have fallen in love with her, and soon become engaged to her is therefore not surprising. They were married the year after his graduation, and she continued a faithful, industrious and uncomplaining wife; his mainstay in ill-health and misfortune till the end. They were not always happy together; but it is a rare marriage where that is the case. Wasson's struggle with the world was often reflected in his own family, disturbing the harmony and comfort of it. His wife once said quite gravely, that there were others from whom her husband would probably have made a selection if he had not offered himself to her. He was always a favorite with the other sex, and equally fond of their society. As he never troubled himself much as to what people said of him, this gave rise to a good deal of talk which his opponents took advantage of to disparage his character. He was once a witness in a divorce case, and a rather tricky lawyer who had a remarkable faculty for what Bacon calls "turning the cat in the pan," succeeded in making him appear at a disadvantage; but Mrs. Wasson told me that he was in the right. If his wife had no suspicion of him we need have none.
He went directly from Bangor to Groveland, a pleasant village beautifully situated on the Merrimack, which from Haverhill to the sea is one of the finest American rivers. His fiancee had numerous relatives in the place, and it was owing to her influence that he received a call there. At first all the signs were favorable; the young minister was well liked, and his parishioners were only afraid that a man of such rare ability would soon gravitate to a larger congregation. So he might have done, if his ardent, aspiring soul would have permitted him to temporize with his conscience, and to be content with mere popularity and doing good on a small scale. But the thought that was matured within him could no longer be restrained. The dangerous seed sown by reading "Sartor Resartus" had now become a strong young tree and must have air and light or it would perish. In October 1852 he preached a sermon that fairly astounded his amiable parishioners. He argued that regeneration and salvation were not to be obtained by blind faith in Jesus, but by intelligent moral culture and spiritual development. This view was, as far as I know, original with Wasson, and should be distinguished from the anti-miraculous standpoint of Parker and the natural supernaturalism of Emerson. Almost at the same hour an English naturalist was applying the same principle to the origin of species, and the evolution of the human race from the lower animals. The Englishman's clear, inductive insight was matched by the philosophical penetration of an American. The Darwinian theory now stands uncontested among scientific men, and whether admitted or not there is quite as surely an evolution apparent in the history of religion, not very unlike it. This is the lesson of the nineteenth century.
The following day one of the deacons of the church called upon Wasson to inform him that his sermon had given offence and that he must retract from his position. "But," replied the minister, "I cannot! I am not going to retract it." Thirty years after this Wasson laughed as heartily, as a suffering person very well could, while he recollected the expression of astonishment on the worthy deacon's face. That a man should do wrong for the sake of money or some material advantage was conceivable to him—he had known instances of that; but that any man should so stand in his own light both for this world and the next, was a moral incongruity which he could not understand. Wasson would not withdraw from his position, but followed it up the next Sunday by a still more energetic statement. There was nothing left now but deposition. A conference was called and Wasson regularly expelled from the Congregational brotherhood. Even some Unitarians also shared in the horror. About a third part of his congregation, however, were converted by him and established an independent church; so that after all he achieved a kind of victory.
Wasson had now escaped in a two-fold sense from the fog-banks and shallow waters of his native coast and henceforward was to sail forth bravely upon the high seas. The conflict he had passed through attracted no little attention from thoughtful and cultivated people, and even those who did not wholly agree with him admired the honest manliness with which he defended his views. Polite society opened its doors to him. Wherever he went now he was received as a distinguished guest. He soon made the acquaintance of eminent scholars and men of letters,—of Sumner, Parker and Emerson. He made friends everywhere. He began to publish essays and poems; at first in the "Christian Examiner," and afterwards in the "Atlantic Monthly." In those days of plain living and high thinking it was not customary for magazine writers to sign their names, (so modest were they,) to their contributions; and in this way Wasson just missed the general celebrity which they might have brought him, but their merit was recognized by those of whose good opinion he was chiefly desirous.
The effort, however, had been too much for him. The only chance of recovery from a nervous disorder lies in freedom from mental agitation. An injured nerve requires a longer time to heal than a broken bone and quite as much care and self-denial. Any serious disturbance to the circulation produces a pressure in the blood vessels of the nervous centres, and tears away the improvement that has commenced there. Then nature has to begin her work over again; and if this happens repeatedly nature becomes tired of working in vain and refuses to give further assistance. This was Wasson's misfortune. He was sensitive and excitable by temperament, the injury to his spine had made him still more so, and the mental agitation he experienced during 1852 and 1853 was enough to prevent him from ever being restored to perfect health. During these two years he must have endured nothing less than the tortures of the inquisition; and no doubt some of his Calvinistic neighbors considered it a judgment on him for his heresy. A mutilated life is not so very bad after one is used to it, but the beginning is terrible. It is like being surrounded with invisible barbed fences, which we inevitably run against and lacerate ourselves with, until we learn to bear in mind their exact position. Accidents too happen to nervous invalids which other people seem generally to escape from. Wasson was at one time making fair progress in his condition when suddenly one day, as he was walking through Boston, the door of a house opened and a lady slipping on some ice and tripping over the steps fell right into his arms. This was a highly diverting adventure for a young clergyman, but it cost him weeks of suffering. A somewhat similar strain came upon him when his first child was born. He does not seem to have ever met with a physician who understood his case. One worthy doctor in Worcester invited him to his house and drove with him in his sulky for more than half a year, without accomplishing anything for him. He went on a voyage to London and another to Smyrna, without any better result than suffering from bad food and stormy weather. After the first voyage his condition was so bad that, as he said of it once, he scarcely knew whether it was day or night: but the climate of Asia Minor agreed with him and he returned from Smyrna at least better for so much experience. I think his first real improvement came during his stay at my father's house. There he had plentiful repose, both of mind and body, and if good medical treatment had been added he might have made a substantial gain.
In the spring of 1864 Bradford, the marine artist, being ambitious to paint icebergs in their native wilds, organized a sailing party for Labrador and invited Wasson to go with them. This was the first enterprise of the kind that gave him permanent benefit. Fortunately they encountered no severe storms. The cool, bracing air of the polar regions was better than galvanism and stimulated his nerves to work in the proper way. Sailing along the coast they were able to anchor almost every night in smooth water. The fish they caught, the strange birds they saw and stranger human creatures, were a cheerful entertainment to him. He became quite a sportsman, and even joined one day in the pursuit of a polar bear. He returned in the autumn practically cured of his trouble, but to regain his strength was out of the question: he suffered besides very badly from dyspepsia. However he was able to preach regularly, to make speeches in public, to work in his garden and write perhaps three hours a day. Such a person is not greatly to be pitied, and if he had fortunately possessed a small competency we might now look upon him as a prosperous man: but his only property consisted of a good working library and five hundred dollars which a friend had given him. The next eight years were the best and most productive of his life; and he might have continued in the same course but for another most unfortunate accident. The supply of coal in his government office gave out, and the requisition for a fresh quantity was not promptly filled. Wasson sat writing in a cold room. There was a sudden change of weather, a severe snow squall, and the result was—pleurisy. This changed to bronchitis which worried and weakened him for the following ten years, and finally carried him off in his sixty-fifth year. That he went through a severe fever at the house of his friend Henry A. Page of Medford is hardly worth considering, for he was so tenderly and beautifully cared for there as almost to make it an enviable experience; but in 1879 cataracts formed on both eyes, one of which had been injured long before, and when they were operated on, two years later, the sight was restored to his injured eye (such as it was previously) but not to the other, so that he was left very nearly blind. He attributed this catastrophe to the quantity of belladonna which had been prescribed for him.
Such was his pathological history and a truly terrible one it is. Who can remember the like of it? Certainly Job's trials were not heavier nor were they borne with more fortitude and patience. In the midst of his severest troubles he wrote "All is well:" a noble religious poem equal to the hymn of Cleanthes or the twelfth ode of Horace; and in one of his earlier essays he speaks of tragedy as possessing such beauty and grandeur that he is almost ready to believe it is the proper goal and destination of earthly life. In "Epic Philosophy" he says: "Strife is around man, and strife is within him; the lightning thrusts its blazing scymitar through his roof, the thief creeps in at his door, and remorse at his heart. Who, looking on these things, does not acknowledge that man is indeed fearfully as well as wonderfully made? Who would not sometimes cry, 'O that my eyes were a fountain of tears, that I might weep, not the desolations of Israel alone, but the hate of Israel to Edom and of Edom to Israel, the jar, the horror, the ensanguined passion and ferocity of Nature'? But when we would despair, behold we cannot. Out of the conscious heart of humanity issues forever, more or less clearly, a voice of infinite, pure content. 'Through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for THOU art with me.' Sometimes, when our trial is sorest, that voice is clearest, singing as from the jaws of death and the gates of hell. And now, though the tears fall, they become jewels as they fall; and the sorrow that begot them wears them in the diadem of its more than regal felicity."
This is the echo of his own experience; the spiritual diagnosis of his case. With what fortitude he endured his maladies those who knew him best can bear witness. He was no ideal Stoic nor self-conscious martyr; but more like an Homeric hero fighting his troubles, bearing them bravely, talking of them sensibly, always glad to receive sympathy but never seeking it, and complaining when he could endure no longer. He never tried to comfort himself by sophistical reflections, but elevated thoughts were always his chief consolation. Conversation about great writers and thinkers always seemed to strengthen him.
Mr. Frothingham in his excellent memoir speaks of Wasson as a self-consuming nature. Such a statement may apply to men like Schiller and John Sterling but it can hardly be said of one who lived to be sixty-four years old. If he had not been a remarkably patient, prudent, temperate and altogether practical man his disorder would have consumed him long before that time. It gave him no margin for wilfulness. Except when he spoke in public, his life was regulated with mathematical accuracy. There was something almost death-like in his self-control, and yet at times that also had to give way. If he had lived otherwise his case would have grown continually worse. The only recreation he had was working in his garden, and an occasional game of billiards. Four or five times a year he would go to a symphony concert, to hear Matthew Arnold lecture, or to see a distinguished actor. People who blamed him for not recovering his health knew not what they did. A Philadelphia doctor has made himself quite famous by curing women who have become nervous and debilitated from an unhealthy mode of life and drinking strong tea, but that is a very different thing from curing a true nervous disorder. Sumner's case was almost exceptional. He was cured in three years by Dr. Brown-Sequard and made perfectly well; but he had temperament, climate, and everything that money might give, in his favor. A good many invalids have been helped by Brown-Sequard after other doctors had failed to help them. A sturdy New Hampshire farmer wounded his foot with an axe and was supposed to have split a nerve in it. The wound healed perfectly but he never was able to do a whole day's work afterward. An oarsman in the international regatta of 1869 who was a man of enormous physical strength, deranged his nerves in some way and shot himself rather than endure the kind of life that was forced upon him.
The Wasson family was of Ulster-Irish descent, or as it is often improperly called Scotch-Irish. There is little Scotch blood in Ulster however, and the Wassons claimed to be descended from the Lollard heretics who were driven out of England in Henry the Fifth's time. John C. Calhoun belonged also to this class of men, who are noted for their industry, sobriety, mental vigor and inflexible tenacity. The county of Ulster contains only about one-eighth of the population of Ireland and yet it pays forty-six per cent of the Irish taxes. David Wasson, Senior, was trial justice for Brooksville, and was greatly dreaded by disorderly persons. He presided with dignity, and maintained better order than is often found in a country court-room. Wasson himself was more than Saxon; he was a German in mind, body and character, though he never went to Germany till after he was fifty. He had a German figure, much like his father's but broader; high square shoulders, a straight forehead and wide mouth. His features were strong and refined without being specially handsome. His brow was very fine and the eyes beneath it of so clear a blue as to be noticeable even at some distance.
There are men whom it is a delight to be with, whose "actions are as pleasant as roses," whose absence we regret as soon as they leave the room; but Wasson was not one of these. He had no personal charm like Longfellow or Wendell Phillips. He was more of a gentleman than many who pride themselves on that distinction, and he had very good manners, but not a very good style. A noted snob of those days and parasite of distinguished people said that he could have no faith in the genius of a man who dressed like Mr. Wasson. He would probably have dressed much better if he had possessed more abundant means, but I never saw him dressed in a way that anyone could rightfully complain of. His voice was pleasant but there was neither grace nor elegance in his speech. Usually it was direct, forcible, monotonous, with a very distinct enunciation; but sometimes it became drawling and wearisome with a peculiar accent on certain words which struck the ear too pointedly. This however was only among his friends; it did not happen in public. But all thought of human imperfections vanished as soon as he began to talk on one of his favorite topics; and there was a long list of them. You recognized that you were in the presence of a master mind, an analytical genius, who could take the world to pieces and put it together before your very eyes.
His conversation was better than his writing; in form, in freedom, and in warmth of feeling. He must have been the finest talker of his time. Carlyle could match him perhaps in quite a different manner; but I have never heard of any others. Lowell was what would have been called in Shakespeare's time a "witty and conceited gentleman" and John Weiss still more so; but neither of them could give the flow of original thought which came from Wasson like a pure mountain stream. Neither were they such complete masters of their subject. Like Carlyle he required suitable auditors to bring him forth at his best: but while Carlyle was mightiest when, his hearers were opposed to him Wasson always needed a somewhat sympathetic audience. If he saw unfriendly faces around him his ideas became congealed and his discourse controversial. At other times it was like following the course of a great unknown river, full of grand views and surprising discoveries. Nothing interests like imagination, or is more wholesome than good criticism. Yet he had no desire to be an autocrat of the drawing-room. He welcomed the opinions of others and encouraged free discussion. No man could be more ready to accept amendments to his propositions. Pride of opinion was nowhere to be found in him: he was only too modest and unassuming. If his friends did not agree with him he would reply with a mildly interrogative "Yes?" and then proceed as before. The finest rhetoric and even splendid oratory seemed poor compared with the plain statement of this unswerving seeker of the truth.
His knowledge was prodigious. He was a good linguist, a fine mathematician and versed in all the different schools of philosophy. He knew English literature as well as Macaulay; French and German as well as Carlyle. There seemed to be no period of history with which he was unacquainted. He remembered everything. If he had not read a book he had heard of it and had a pretty clear notion of what it contained. The only picture-gallery he ever visited was the small National Gallery in London, but from the few master-pieces he saw there he formed a quite correct judgment of the art of painting and could talk about any picture in an interesting way. He had also a good ear for music and divided with Lowell the honor among American literati of being able to appreciate music of the best quality. Besides this, his knowledge of practical affairs such as farming, gardening, housebuilding, fishing, sailing and other industrial arts was well-nigh endless also. How his head, which was not one of the largest, could contain it all I do not know. He could not recite the odes of Horace from memory; but he was able to repeat lengthy quotations from both English and foreign authors, and that without ever having committed them. In religious writings and controversies he was as much at home as a good lawyer in the statutes. In his wanderings he had become acquainted with many curious, strange and original people, and had gained their confidence by his friendly, open-hearted manner. Perhaps he had learned as much from the great book of human nature as from all other books; so that his fund of information was fairly inexhaustible. He may almost be said to have contained the material for another Shakespeare.
In 1877 just after the Turco-Russian war had begun we found him one evening in a smoking-car on the railway, surrounded by a crowd of young men who were listening eagerly to his account of the various wars which had already taken place between Russia and Turkey, and the political significance of the present one. "A man who possesses such a fund within has need of little from without." He cannot be called poor so long as he has a roof to shelter him and a single suit of clothes. Yet the acquisition of knowledge was never with Wasson for its own sake, though a good deal of adventitious knowledge came to him incidentally, but always for the attainment of wisdom. He did not believe in the Emersonian doctrine of obtaining inspiration through nature. "That was not the way," he would say, "in which the great minds of history became what they were. If we are to do lasting work we must know what the world is made of. Emerson himself does not work in that way." He quoted Schiller as saying, "He who would do benefit to the age in which he lives must bathe deep in the spirit of classical antiquity and then return to his own time to be in it, but not of it." That is, if we are to move the world with Archimedes' lever, we must have an historical basis to rest on. If a man ever had this it was Wasson. He went back to the Vedas in his study of religion; to the German forests and the pyramids in his investigation of politics and history. It was this which gave his arguments such cogency and made his discourse so fresh, vigorous and original. Arguments, however, will only serve for reasonable people. The ram that butted the locomotive had to learn from experience.
His sincerity was absolute. A devoted friend says of him: "During twelve years of familiar intercourse and eight more of less frequent communication, I never knew him once to take on the slightest color of insincerity. For it is not only in the use of words but in the tone of voice, the expression of the face and the movement of the body that duplicity can be detected." Like Sumner, he would rather lose a case than make use of an unfair argument. This may seem to many a super-sensitive morality, but it was not so for the work which these men had to do. Wasson believed in telling lies; to save life, to protect innocence, or even to prevent people from obtaining information which they had no right to. He considered it justifiable not only to deceive insane people, but also those demented creatures who do more mischief than lunatics because they cannot be shut up.
The more honor to him therefore for his truthfulness. In the case of a strong temperance woman who refused to allow a gentleman to marry her daughter unless he took the pledge, which he did with the deliberate intention of breaking it afterwards, he said, "I do not like to approve of his action, but she might just as well have held a pistol to his head." Neither did his own virtue make him uncharitable towards others. He recognized how impossible it is for servants and many other people to be always veracious, and claimed that the impostures practised by Frederick in the Seven Years' War might be justified by the strait he was in and the importance of the matter in hand. The main thing was to do honest work. For careless, sleazy, or fraudulent work he had no patience. He was greatly amused at the story of Dr. Francia ordering an army contractor who had cheated the government of Paraguay to be promenaded for an hour under the gallows, and he wished that more of them might be treated in that manner. He thought the torrent of mendacity which accompanies our presidential elections must have a bad influence on the morals of the American people.
The question of veracity was once discussed at the Chestnut Street Club, and Emerson said that Desdemona's lie seemed to him the best thing in the play of Othello. But there is, as Plato remarks, a more insidious evil than the deception of others and that is deceiving oneself. To detect an intentional falsehood is not very difficult, but when people tell lies with perfect assurance of their own sincerity the confusion that results is endless. The wisest of men are some times misled in this way. When we try to deceive others we have before us the danger of public exposure, while in self-deception we have only our own consciences to deal with. Neither do the two always go hand in hand. There are persons who are formally careful in regard to the truth, and yet live in perpetual delusion. Wasson recognized this danger and protected himself against it by a constant and severe self-examination. He knew himself at least better than most, and if he erred anywhere it was in too moderate an opinion of his own value. He had visually a clear consciousness of what he was about, in spite of his lively imagination.
He was in fact an American Doctor Johnson: a large hearted, high minded, sympathetic and logical man; and it is only a pity that he had not some Boswell of a friend who could have recorded his wise sayings and valuable criticism of men and things. He was more of an idealist than Doctor Johnson, and at the same time like Doctor Johnson in personal solidity, his English aplomb of character. They were both men of sterling quality. He was in all things especially human. His sympathies equalled the breadth of his mind. There was scarcely a subject in which he did not take an interest, and was not ready to converse on. As soon as he obtained a little money he wanted to help those who were in lack of it. His sister's husband being out of work, he designed the model for a small yacht and gave him an order for it. He had known the depths of human misery, and could make his experience of benefit to his friends. Poignant grief for the loss of a relative I think he never knew, and yet he did not neglect his duty to those in affliction, little as such duty might be expected of him. He was not a humorist or wit, and his conversation was only saved from dryness by its elevated tone; but he had a quick appreciation of the wit of others, and would sometimes laugh as heartily as Carlyle's professor in "Sartor Resartus." Ridicule and those books which are written to make people laugh were intolerable to him. He had a large stock of anecdotes at command, but he used them wisely and sparingly. He was refined as only a poet can be.
The general public, as Balzac says, judges only by results; and those who were themselves only practical in some specialty, or had made fortunes for themselves out of the gratuity of nature, were wont to look upon Wasson as a visionary and unpractical person. To those who acted only from motives of self-interest he was a perpetual puzzle. Neither was he ignorant of this unfavorable opinion, for he could see through people almost as if they were glass, and he endured it with true Emersonian serenity. If they had known what he thought of them they would not have felt so very comfortable. He was sufficiently practical for the profession to which he belonged, though not so diplomatic as some of them are. He could be diplomatic enough on occasion, and knew how to preserve an impenetrable secrecy when necessity required. He was too sensitive, and too dead-in-earnest to make much of an orator, but he was an effective speaker, and if he had remained in the law he would no doubt have made a success of it, and very likely would have become a member of Congress.
His adventure with a drunken sea-captain, while crossing from England in a sailing vessel has become proverbial. He probably saved the ship, and the lives of all on board, for a terrific storm arose immediately afterwards, the worst he had ever known, such as only a sober captain could possibly have weathered. There never was a better seaman when he was himself, so Wasson said. His judgment in regard to the investment of money, buying or selling a house, or in most of the small affairs of life, was excellent, and his advice in more serious matters so good that wise men might well have gone far to obtain it. Wherever he lived his house soon became conspicuous among all others for its refined air and tasteful appearance. In his half acre of a garden, he raised as fine fruit and vegetables as the most accomplished horticulturist, and even made wine from his own grapes equal to the best Californian. No man ever accomplished more with inadequate means. The interior of his house at West Medford had a pleasant style peculiarly its own. It reminded one of an old Dutch painting. In one of the last summers of his life he hybridized a seedling grape of large size and excellent flavor. He hoped to make a valuable property of this but his strength failed him too rapidly.
The house in West Medford was the only one he ever owned, and he gave a number of good reasons for purchasing it. It was cheap, and large enough for three people; there was a small garden with two fine apple-trees attached to it, and the salt water came almost to the foot of the garden. He had noticed also that the streets became dry after a rain more quickly in that portion of the town than elsewhere and judged from that it must be a healthy locality. He very quickly remodelled the place giving it the stamp of his own style and character.
He showed good judgment also in the education of his son George, now a marine-painter of well recognized merit. The boy inherited his father's sincerity and artistic feeling but not his intellectual tastes. In many respects he was more like his mother. He did not take to his studies nor was he fond of games, but liked bathing and sailing. When he was thirteen his father remarked that he did not know what he should be able to do with him. Well-intending friends said, you should get him a place in a store so that he may be earning something to help his parents, but Wasson replied: "No! I care too much for my boy to make a drudge of him for life, if it is possible for him to do better."
Soon after this George began to draw ships and naval engagements on the black-boards at school, and one of these was so good that the teacher gave an order to have it remain until his father could be called in to look at it. Wasson took notice of this talent in the boy and encouraged it, watching its development as time went on. There were no schools of art in Boston then, and one reason for his going to Germany in 1872 was to obtain systematic instruction for him in drawing and painting. Wasson's friends were now greatly discouraged. "What hope is there for him," they said, "in such a profession? It is not likely the boy is a genius, and who is going to purchase his pictures?" Yet his father persevered bravely in spite of many "outs" and temporary failures and finally lived to see the merit of his son admitted by those who were at first most sceptical of it. The son is now a fairly successful artist; especially noted for his skill in representing the motion of water and the attitude of floating vessels.
He was never prone to think evil, but he considered it a mischievous habit to try to think better of people than they were—an injustice to character and virtue. "Treat people better than they deserve," he would say, "but see them as they are." His kindness of heart now and then led him into difficulties which those who care more for their reputation than anything else, would have avoided. During his Arctic expedition Bradford took a number of stereopticon-views from icebergs and other indigenous scenery with the intention of exhibiting them in public on his return. This he finally did, more as a private celebration than with a hope of making money from it, and requested Wasson to assist him by giving an oral explanation of the pictures. Wasson wanted to say, "That is not my business," but he felt under great obligation to Mr. Bradford for the partial recovery of his strength, and did not like to refuse. He had no conception however of what was in store for him. He sent to Bradford for a list of the different views and prepared an address suitable for the occasion; but when the performance took place Bradford either forgot this or lost his presence of mind, for he exhibited the pictures without order or regularity, so that Wasson soon became confused and was able to give but a very poor account of them. This affair was the more vexatious because it was quite impossible to give any explanation of it.