Well-fed, rollicking priest is Father O'Toole of Dublin, with a big, round face, a double chin, and a brogue that you can cut with a knife.
My letter of introduction from Monseigneur Satolli caused him at once to bring in a large, suspicious, black bottle and two glasses. Then we talked—talked of Ireland's wrongs and woman's rights, and of all the Irishmen in America whom I was supposed to know. We spoke of the illustrious Irishmen who had passed on, and I mentioned a name that caused the holy father to spring from his chair in indignation.
"Shwift is it! Shwift! No, me lad, don't go near him! He was the divil's own, the very worsht that ever followed the swish of a petticoat. No, no; if ye go to his grave it'll bring ye bad luck for a year. It's Tom Moore ye want—Tom was the bye. Arrah! now, and it's meself phat'll go wid ye."
And so the reverend father put on a long, black coat and his Saint Patrick's Day hat, and we started. We were met at the gate by a delegation of "shpalpeens" that had located me on the inside of the house and were lying in wait.
All American travelers in Ireland are supposed to be millionaires, and this may possibly explain the lavish attention that is often tendered them. At any rate, various members of the delegation wished "long life to the iligant 'merican gintleman," and hinted in terms unmistakable that pence would be acceptable. The holy father applied his cane vigorously to the ragged rears of the more presumptuous, and bade them begone, but still they followed and pressed close about.
"Here, I'll show you how to get rid of the dirty gang," said his holiness. "Have ye a penny, I don't know?"
I produced a handful of small change, which the father immediately took and tossed into the street. Instantly there was a heterogeneous mass of young Hibernians piled up in the dirt in a grand struggle for spoils. It reminded me of football incidents I had seen at fair Harvard. In the meantime, we escaped down a convenient alley and crossed the River Liffey to Old Dublin; inside the walls of the old city, through crooked lanes and winding streets that here and there showed signs of departed gentility, where now was only squalor, want and vice, until we came to Number Twelve Angier Street, a quaint, three-story brick building now used as a "public." In the wall above the door is a marble slab with this inscription: "Here was born Thomas Moore, on the Twenty-eighth day of May, Seventeen Hundred Seventy-eight." Above this in a niche is a bust of the poet.
Tom's father was a worthy greengrocer who, according to the author of "Lalla Rookh," always gave good measure and full count. It was ever a cause of regret to the elder Moore that his son did not show sufficient capacity to be trusted safely with the business.
The upper rooms of the house were shown to us by an obliging landlady. Father O'Toole had been here before, and led the way to a snug little chamber and explained that in this room the future poet of Ireland was found under one of his father's cabbage-leaves.
We descended to the neat little barroom with its sanded floor and polished glassware and shining brass. The holy father ordered 'arf-and-'arf at my expense and recited one of Moore's ballads. The landlady then gave us Byron's "Here's a Health to Thee, Tom Moore." A neighbor came in. Then we had more ballads, more 'arf-and-'arf, a selection from "Lalla Rookh," and various tales of the poet's early life, which possibly would be hard to verify.
And as the tumult raged, the smoke of battle gave me opportunity to slip away. I crossed the street, turned down one block, and entered Saint Patrick's Cathedral.
Great, roomy, gloomy, solemn temple, where the rumble of city traffic is deadened to a faint hum:
Other worshipers were there. Standing beside a great stone pillar I could make them out kneeling on the tiled floor. Gradually, my eyes became accustomed to the subdued light, and right at my feet I saw a large brass plate set in the floor and on it only this:
On the wall near is a bronze tablet, the inscription of which, in Latin, was dictated by Swift himself:
"Here lies the body of Jonathan Swift, Dean of this Cathedral, where fierce indignation can no longer rend his heart. Go! wayfarer, and imitate, if thou canst, one who, as far as in him lay, was an earnest champion of liberty——"
Above this is a fine bust of the Dean, and to the right is another tablet:
"Underneath lie interred the mortal remains of Mrs. Hester Johnson, better known to the world as 'Stella,' under which she is celebrated in the writings of Doctor Jonathan Swift, Dean of this Cathedral. She was a person of extraordinary endowments and accomplishments, in body, mind and behavior; justly admired and respected by all who knew her, on account of her eminent virtues as well as for her great natural and acquired perfections."
These were suffering souls and great. Would they have been so great had they not suffered? Who can tell? Were the waters troubled in order that they might heal the people?
Did Swift misuse this excellent woman, is a question that has been asked and answered again and again.
A great author has written:
"A woman, a tender, noble, excellent woman, has a dog's heart. She licks the hand that strikes her. And wrong nor cruelty nor injustice nor disloyalty can cause her to turn."
Death in pity took Stella first; took her in the loyalty of love and the fulness of faith from a world which for love has little recompense, and for faith small fulfilment.
Stella was buried by torchlight, at midnight, on the Thirtieth day of January, Seventeen Hundred Twenty-eight. Swift was sick at the time, and wrote in his journal: "This is the night of her funeral, and I am removed to another apartment that I may not see the light in the church which is just over against my window." But in his imagination he saw the gleaming torches as their dull light shone through the colored windows, and he said, "They will soon do as much for me."
But seventeen years came crawling by before the torches flared, smoked and gleamed as the mourners chanted a requiem, and the clods fell on the coffin, and their echoes intermingled with the solemn voice of the priest as he said, "Dust to dust, ashes to ashes."
In Eighteen Hundred Thirty-five, the graves were opened and casts taken of the skulls. The top of Swift's skull had been sawed off at the autopsy, and a bottle in which was a parchment setting forth the facts was inserted in the head that had conceived "Gulliver's Travels."
I examined the casts. The woman's head is square and shapely. Swift's head is a refutation of phrenology, being small, sloping and ordinary.
The bones of Swift and Stella were placed in one coffin, and now rest under three feet of concrete, beneath the floor of Saint Patrick's.
So sleep the lovers joined in death.
WALT WHITMAN
Max Nordau wrote a book—wrote it with his tongue in his cheek, a dash of vitriol in the ink, and with a pen that scratched.
And the first critic who seemed to place a just estimate on the work was Mr. Zangwill (he who has no Christian name). Mr. Zangwill made an attempt to swear out a "writ de lunatico inquirendo" against his Jewish brother, on the ground that the first symptom of insanity is often the delusion that others are insane; and this being so, Doctor Nordau was not a safe subject to be at large. But the Assize of Public Opinion denied the petition, and the dear people bought the book at from three to five dollars a copy. Printed in several languages, its sales have mounted to a hundred thousand volumes, and the author's net profit is full forty thousand dollars. No wonder is it that, with pockets full to bursting, Doctor Nordau goes out behind the house and laughs uproariously whenever he thinks of how he has worked the world!
If Doctor Talmage is the Barnum of Theology, surely we may call Doctor Nordau the Barnum of Science. His agility in manipulating facts is equal to Hermann's now-you-see-it and now-you-don't, with pocket-handkerchiefs. Yet Hermann's exhibition is worth the admittance fee, and Nordau's book (seemingly written in collaboration with Jules Verne and Mark Twain) would be cheap for a dollar. But what I object to is Professor Hermann's disciples posing as Sure-Enough Materializing Mediums, and Professor Lombroso's followers calling themselves Scientists, when each goes forth without scrip or purse with no other purpose than to supply themselves with both.
Yet it was Barnum himself who said that the public delights in being humbugged, and strange it is that we will not allow ourselves to be thimblerigged without paying for the privilege.
Nordau's success hinged on his audacious assumption that the public knew nothing of the Law of Antithesis. Yet Plato explained that the opposites of things look alike, and sometimes are alike—and that was quite a while ago.
The multitude answered, "Thou hast a devil." Many of them said, "He hath a devil and is mad." Festus said with a loud voice, "Paul, thou art beside thyself." And Nordau shouts in a voice more heady than that of Pilate, more throaty than that of Festus, "Mad—Whitman was—mad beyond the cavil of a doubt!"
In Eighteen Hundred Sixty-two, Lincoln, looking out of a window (before lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed) on one of the streets of Washington, saw a workingman in shirt-sleeves go by. Turning to a friend, the President said, "There goes a MAN!" The exclamation sounds singularly like that of Napoleon on meeting Goethe. But the Corsican's remark was intended for the poet's ear, while Lincoln did not know who his man was, although he came to know him afterward.
Lincoln in his early days was a workingman and an athlete, and he never quite got the idea out of his head (and I am glad) that he was still a hewer of wood. He once told George William Curtis that he more than half expected yet to go back to the farm and earn his daily bread by the work that his hands found to do; he dreamed of it nights, and whenever he saw a splendid toiler, he felt like hailing the man as brother and striking hands with him. When Lincoln saw Whitman strolling majestically past, he took him for a stevedore or possibly the foreman of a construction gang.
Whitman was fifty-one years old then. His long, flowing beard was snow-white, and the shock that covered his Jove-like head was iron-gray. His form was that of an Apollo who had arrived at years of discretion. He weighed an even two hundred pounds and was just six feet high. His plain, check, cotton shirt was open at the throat to the breast; and he had an independence, a self-sufficiency, and withal a cleanliness, a sweetness and a gentleness, that told that, although he had a giant's strength, he did not use it like a giant. Whitman used no tobacco, neither did he apply hot and rebellious liquors to his blood and with unblushing forehead woo the means of debility and disease. Up to his fifty-third year he had never known a sick day, although at thirty his hair had begun to whiten. He had the look of age in his youth and the look of youth in his age that often marks the exceptional man.
But at fifty-three his splendid health was crowded to the breaking strain. How? Through caring for wounded, sick and dying men, hour after hour, day after day, through the long, silent watches of the night. From Eighteen Hundred Sixty-four to the day of his death in Eighteen Hundred Ninety-two, he was, physically, a man in ruins. But he did not wither at the top. Through it all he held the healthy optimism of boyhood, carrying with him the perfume of the morning and the lavish heart of youth.
Doctor Bucke, who was superintendent of a hospital for the insane for fifteen years, and the intimate friend of Whitman all the time, has said: "His build, his stature, his exceptional health of mind and body, the size and form of his features, his cleanliness of mind and body, the grace of his movements and gestures, the grandeur, and especially the magnetism, of his presence; the charm of his voice, his genial, kindly humor; the simplicity of his habits and tastes, his freedom from convention, the largeness and the beauty of his manner; his calmness and majesty; his charity and forbearance—his entire unresentfulness under whatever provocation; his liberality, his universal sympathy with humanity in all ages and lands, his broad tolerance, his catholic friendliness, and his unexampled faculty of attracting affection, all prove his perfectly proportioned manliness."
But Whitman differed from the disciple of Lombroso in two notable particulars: He had no quarrel with the world, and he did not wax rich. "One thing thou lackest, O Walt Whitman!" we might have said to the poet; "you are not a financier." He died poor. But this is no proof of degeneracy, save on 'Change. When the children of Count Tolstoy endeavored to have him adjudged insane, the Court denied the application and voiced the wisest decision that ever came out of Russia: A man who gives away his money is not necessarily more foolish than he who saves it.
And with Horace L. Traubel I assert that Whitman was the sanest man I ever saw.
Some men make themselves homes; and others there be who rent rooms. Walt Whitman was essentially a citizen of the world: the world was his home and mankind were his friends. There was a quality in the man peculiarly universal: a strong, virile poise that asked for nothing, but took what it needed.
He loved men as brothers, yet his brothers after the flesh understood him not; he loved children—they turned to him instinctively—but he had no children of his own; he loved women, and yet this strongly sexed and manly man never loved a woman. And I might here say as Philip Gilbert Hamerton said of Turner, "He was lamentably unfortunate in this: throughout his whole life he never came under the ennobling and refining influence of a good woman."
It requires two to make a home. The first home was made when a woman, cradling in her loving arms a baby, crooned a lullaby. All the tender sentimentality we throw around a place is the result of the sacred thought that we live there with some one else. It is "our" home. The home is a tryst—the place where we retire and shut the world out. Lovers make a home, just as birds make a nest, and unless a man knows the spell of the divine passion I hardly see how he can have a home at all. He only rents a room.
Camden is separated from the city of Philadelphia by the Delaware River. Camden lies low and flat—a great, sandy, monotonous waste of straggling buildings. Here and there are straight rows of cheap houses, evidently erected by staid, broad-brimmed speculators from across the river, with eyes on the main chance. But they reckoned ill, for the town did not boom. Some of these houses have marble steps and white, barn-like shutters, that might withstand a siege. When a funeral takes place in one of these houses, the shutters are tied with strips of mournful, black alpaca for a year and a day. Engineers, dockmen, express-drivers and mechanics largely make up the citizens of Camden. Of course, Camden has its smug corner where prosperous merchants most do congregate: where they play croquet in the front yards, and have window-boxes, and a piano and veranda-chairs and terra-cotta statuary; but for the most part the houses of Camden are rented, and rented cheap.
Many of the domiciles are frame and have the happy tumbledown look of the back streets in Charleston or Richmond—those streets where the white trash merges off into prosperous colored aristocracy. Old hats do duty in keeping out the fresh air where Providence has interfered and broken out a pane; blinds hang by a single hinge; bricks on the chimney-tops threaten the passersby; stringers and posts mark the place where proud picket fences once stood—the pickets having gone for kindling long ago. In the warm, Summer evenings, men in shirt-sleeves sit on the front steps and stolidly smoke, while children pile up sand in the streets and play in the gutters.
Parallel with Mickle Street, a block away, are railway-tracks. There noisy switch-engines that never keep Sabbath, puff back and forth, day and night, sending showers of soot and smoke when the wind is right (and it usually is) straight over Number 328, where, according to John Addington Symonds and William Michael Rossetti, lived the mightiest seer of the century—the man whom they rank with Socrates, Epictetus, Saint Paul, Michelangelo and Dante.
It was in August of Eighteen Hundred Eighty-three that I first walked up that little street—a hot, sultry Summer evening. There had been a shower that turned the dust of the unpaved roadway to mud. The air was close and muggy. The houses, built right up to the sidewalks, over which, in little gutters, the steaming sewage ran, seemed to have discharged their occupants into the street to enjoy the cool of the day. Barefooted children by the score paddled in the mud. All the steps were filled with loungers; some of the men had discarded not only coats but shirts as well, and now sat in flaming red underwear, holding babies.
They say that "woman's work is never done," but to the women of Mickle Street this does not apply—but stay! perhaps their work IS never done. Anyway, I remember that women sat on the curbs in calico dresses or leaned out of the windows, and all seemed supremely free from care.
"Can you tell me where Mr. Whitman lives?" I asked a portly dame who was resting her elbows on a windowsill.
"Who?"
"Mr. Whitman!"
"You mean Walt Whitman?"
"Yes."
"Show the gentleman, Molly; he'll give you a nickel, I'm sure!"
I had not seen Molly. She stood behind me, but as her mother spoke she seized tight hold of one of my fingers, claiming me as her lawful prey, and all the other children looked on with envious eyes as little Molly threw at them glances of scorn and marched me off. Molly was five, going on six, she told me. She had bright-red hair, a grimy face and little chapped feet that made not a sound as we walked. She got her nickel and carried it in her mouth, and this made conversation difficult. After going one block she suddenly stopped, squared me around and pointing said, "Them is he!" and disappeared.
In a wheeled rattan chair, in the hallway, a little back from the door of a plain, weather-beaten house, sat the coatless philosopher, his face and head wreathed in a tumult of snow-white hair.
I had a little speech, all prepared weeks before and committed to memory, that I intended to repeat, telling him how I had read his poems and admired them. And further I had stored away in my mind a few blades from "Leaves of Grass" that I purposed to bring out at the right time as a sort of certificate of character. But when that little girl jerked me right-about-face and heartlessly deserted me, I stared dumbly at the man whom I had come a hundred miles to see. I began angling for my little speech, but could not fetch it.
"Hello!" called the philosopher, out of the white aureole. "Hello! come here, boy!"
He held out his hand and as I took it there was a grasp with meaning in it.
"Don't go yet, Joe," he said to a man seated on the step smoking a cob-pipe.
"The old woman's calling me," said the swarthy Joe.
Joe evidently held truth lightly. "So long, Walt!"
"Good-by, Joe. Sit down, lad; sit down!"
I sat in the doorway at his feet.
"Now isn't it queer—that fellow is a regular philosopher and works out some great problems, but he's ashamed to express 'em. He could no more give you his best than he could fly. Ashamed, I s'pose, ashamed of the best that is in him. We are all a little that way—all but me—I try to write my best, regardless of whether the thing sounds ridiculous or not—regardless of what others think or say or have said. Ashamed of our holiest, truest and best! Is it not too bad?
"You are twenty-five now? Well, boy, you may grow until you are thirty and then you will be as wise as you ever will be. Haven't you noticed that men of sixty have no clearer vision than men of forty? One reason is that we have been taught that we know all about life and death and the mysteries of the grave. But the main reason is that we are ashamed to shove out and be ourselves. Jesus expressed His own individuality perhaps more than any other man we know of, and so He wields a wider influence than any other. And this though we only have a record of just twenty-seven days of His life. Now that fellow that just left is an engineer, and he dreams some beautiful dreams; but he never expresses them to any one—only hints them to me, and this only at twilight. He is like a weasel or a mink or a whippoorwill—he comes out only at night.
"'If the weather was like this all the time, people would never learn to read and write,' said Joe to me just as you arrived. And isn't that so? Here we can count a hundred people up and down this street, and not one is reading, not one but that is just lolling about, except the children—and they are happy only when playing in the dirt. Why, if this tropical weather should continue we would all slip back into South Sea Islanders! You can raise good men only in a little strip around the North Temperate Zone—when you get out of the track of a glacier, a tender-hearted, sympathetic man of brains is an accident."
Then the old man suddenly ceased and I imagined that he was following the thought out in his own mind. We sat silent for a space. The twilight fell, and a lamplighter lit the street lamp on the corner. He stopped an instant to salute the poet cheerily as he passed. The man sitting on the doorstep, across the street, smoking, knocked the ashes out of his pipe on his boot-heel and went indoors. Women called their children, who did not respond, but still played on. Then the creepers were carried in, to be fed their bread-and-milk and put to bed; and, shortly, shrill feminine voices ordered the other children indoors, and some obeyed.
The night crept slowly on.
I heard Old Walt chuckle behind me, talking incoherently to himself, and then he said, "You are wondering why I live in such a place as this?"
"Yes; that is exactly what I was thinking of!"
"You think I belong in the country, in some quiet, shady place. But all I have to do is to shut my eyes and go there. No man loves the woods more than I—I was born within sound of the sea—down on Long Island, and I know all the songs that the seashell sings. But this babble and babel of voices pleases me better, especially since my legs went on a strike, for although I can't walk, you see I can still mix with the throng, so I suffer no loss.
"In the woods, a man must be all hands and feet. I like the folks, the plain, ignorant, unpretentious folks; and the youngsters that come and slide on my cellar-door do not disturb me a bit. I'm different from Carlyle—you know he had a noise-proof room where he locked himself in. Now, when a huckster goes by, crying his wares, I open the blinds, and often wrangle with the fellow over the price of things. But the rogues have got into a way lately of leaving truck for me and refusing pay. Today an Irishman passed in three quarts of berries and walked off pretending to be mad because I offered to pay. When he was gone, I beckoned to the babies over the way—they came over and we had a feast.
"Yes, I like the folks around here; I like the women, and I like the men, and I like the babies, and I like the youngsters that play in the alley and make mud pies on my steps. I expect to stay here until I die."
"You speak of death as a matter of course—you are not afraid to die?"
"Oh, no, my boy; death is as natural as life, and a deal kinder. But it is all good—I accept it all and give thanks—you have not forgotten my chant to death?"
"Not I!"
I repeated a few lines from "Drum-Taps."
He followed me, rapping gently with his cane on the floor, and with little interjectory remarks of "That's so!" "Very true!" "Good, good!" And when I faltered and lost the lines he picked them up where "The voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird."
In a strong, clear voice, but a voice full of sublime feeling, he repeated those immortal lines, beginning, "Come, lovely and soothing Death."
The last playing youngster had silently disappeared from the streets. The doorsteps were deserted—save where across the way a young man and maiden sat in the gloaming, conversing in low monotone.
The clouds had drifted away.
A great, yellow star shone out above the chimney-tops in the East.
I arose to go.
"I wish you'd come oftener—I see you so seldom, lad," said the old man, half-plaintively.
I did not explain that we had never met before—that I had come from New York purposely to see him. He thought he knew me. And so he did—as much as I could impart. The rest was irrelevant. As to my occupation or name, what booted it!—he had no curiosity concerning me. I grasped his outstretched hand in both of my own.
He said not a word; neither did I.
I turned and made my way to the ferry—past the whispering lovers on the doorsteps, and over the railway-tracks where the noisy engines puffed. As I walked on board the boat, the wind blew up cool and fresh from the West. The star in the East grew brighter, and other stars came out, reflecting themselves like gems in the dark blue of the Delaware.
There was a soft sublimity in the sound of the bells that came echoing over the waters. My heart was very full, for I had felt the thrill of being in the presence of a great and loving soul.
It was the first time and the last that I ever saw Walt Whitman.
A good many writers bear no message: they carry no torch. Sometimes they excite wonder, or they amuse and divert—divert us from our work. To be diverted to a certain degree may be well, but there is a point where earth ends and cloud-land begins, and even great poets occasionally befog the things they would reveal.
Homer was seemingly blind to much simple truth; Vergil carries you away from earth; Horace was undone without his Mæcenas; Dante makes you an exile; Shakespeare was singularly silent concerning the doubts, difficulties and common lives of common people; Byron's corsair life does not help you in your toil, and in his fight with English Bards and Scotch Reviewers we crave neutrality; to be caught in the meshes of Pope's "Dunciad" is not pleasant; and Lowell's "Fable for Critics" is only another "Dunciad." But above all other poets who have ever lived, the author of "Leaves of Grass" was the poet of humanity.
Milton knew all about Heaven, and Dante conducts us through Hell, but it was left for Whitman to show us Earth. His voice never goes so high that it breaks into an impotent falsetto, neither does it growl and snarl at things it does not understand and not understanding does not like. He was so great that he had no envy, and his insight was so sure that he had no prejudice. He never boasted that he was higher, nor claimed to be less than any of the other sons of men. He met all on terms of absolute equality, mixing with the poor, the lowly, the fallen, the oppressed, the cultured, the rich—simply as brother with brother. And when he said to an outcast, "Not till the sun excludes you will I exclude you," he voiced a sentiment worthy of a god.
He was brother to the elements, the mountains, the seas, the clouds, the sky. He loved them all and partook of them all in his large, free, unselfish, untrammeled nature. His heart knew no limits, and feeling his feet mortised in granite and his footsteps tenoned in infinity he knew the amplitude of time.
Only the great are generous; only the strong are forgiving. Like Lot's wife, most poets look back over their shoulders; and those who are not looking backward insist that we shall look into the future, and the vast majority of the whole scribbling rabble accept the precept, "Man never is, but always to be blest."
We grieve for childhood's happy days, and long for sweet rest in Heaven and sigh for mansions in the skies. And the people about us seem so indifferent, and our friends so lukewarm; and really no one understands us, and our environment queers our budding spirituality, and the frost of jealousy nips our aspirations: "O Paradise, O Paradise, the world is growing old; who would not be at rest and free where love is never cold." So sing the fearsome dyspeptics of the stylus. O anemic he, you bloodless she, nipping at crackers, sipping at tea, why not consider that, although evolutionists tell us where we came from, and theologians inform us where we are going to, yet the only thing we are really sure of is that we are here!
The present is the perpetually moving spot where history ends and prophecy begins. It is our only possession: the past we reach through lapsing memory, halting recollection, hearsay and belief; we pierce the future by wistful faith or anxious hope; but the present is beneath our feet.
Whitman sings the beauty and the glory of the present. He rebukes our groans and sighs—bids us look about on every side at the wonders of creation, and at the miracles within our grasp. He lifts us up, restores us to our own, introduces us to man and to Nature, and thus infuses into us courage, manly pride, self-reliance, and the strong faith that comes when we feel our kinship with God.
He was so mixed with the universe that his voice took on the sway of elemental integrity and candor. Absolutely honest, this man was unafraid and unashamed, for Nature has neither apprehension, shame nor vainglory. In "Leaves of Grass" Whitman speaks as all men have ever spoken who believe in God and in themselves—oracular, without apology or abasement—fearlessly. He tells of the powers and mysteries that pervade and guide all life, all death, all purpose. His work is masculine, as the sun is masculine; for the Prophetic Voice is as surely masculine as the lullaby and lyric cry are feminine.
Whitman brings the warmth of the sun to the buds of the heart, so that they open and bring forth form, color, perfume. He becomes for them aliment and dew; so these buds become blossoms, fruits, tall branches and stately trees that cast refreshing shadows.
There are men who are to other men as the shadow of a mighty rock in a weary land—such is Walt Whitman.
Man is neither master of his life nor of his fate. He can but
offer to his fellowmen his efforts to diminish human suffering;
he can but offer to God his indomitable faith in the growth of
liberty.
—Victor Hugo
VICTOR HUGO
The father of Victor Hugo was a general in the army of Napoleon, his mother a woman of rare grace and brave good sense. Victor was the third of three sons. Six weeks before the birth of her youngest boy, the mother wrote to a very dear friend of her husband, this letter:
"Soon to become the mother of a third child, it would be very agreeable to me if you would act as its godfather. Its name shall be yours—one which you have not belied and one which you have so well honored: Victor or Victorine. Your consent will be a testimonial of your friendship for us.
"Please accept, Citizen-General, the assurance of our sincere attachment.
Victorine was expected, Victor came. General Lahorie acted as sponsor for the infant.
A soldier's family lives here or there, everywhere or anywhere. In Eighteen Hundred Eight, General Hugo was with Joseph Bonaparte in Spain. Victor was then six years old. His mother had taken as a residence a quaint house in the Impasse of the Feullantines, Paris.
It was one of those peculiar old places occasionally seen in France. The environs of London have a few; America none of which I know. This house, roomy, comfortable and antiquated, was surrounded with trees and a tangle of shrubbery, vines and flowers; above it all was a high stone wall, and in front a picket iron gate. It was a mosaic—a sample of the Sixteenth Century inlaid in this; solitary as the woods; quiet as a convent; sacred as a forest; a place for dreams, and reverie, and rest. At the back of the house was a dilapidated little chapel. Here an aged priest counted his beads, said daily mass, and endeavored to keep moth, rust and ruin from the house of prayer. This priest was a scholar, a man of learning: he taught the children of Madame Hugo.
Another man lived in this chapel. He never went outside the gate and used to take exercise at night. He had a cot-bed in the shelter of the altar; beneath his pillow were a pair of pistols and a copy of Tacitus. This man lived there Summer and Winter, although there was no warmth save the scanty sunshine that stole in through the shattered windows. He, too, taught the children and gave them little lectures on history. He loved the youngest boy and would carry him on his shoulder and tell him stories of deeds of valor.
One day a file of soldiers came. They took this man and manacled him. The mother sought to keep her children inside the house so that they should not witness the scene, but she did not succeed. The boys fought their mother and the servants in a mad frenzy trying to rescue the old man. The soldiers formed in columns of four and marched their prisoner away.
Not long after, Madame Hugo was passing the church of Saint Jacques du Haut Pas: her youngest boy's hand was in hers. She saw a large placard posted in front of the church. She paused and pointing to it said, "Victor, read that!" The boy read. It was a notice that General Lahorie had been shot that day on the plains of Grenville by order of a court martial.
General Lahorie was a gentleman of Brittany. He was a Republican, and five years before had grievously offended the Emperor. A charge of conspiracy being proved against him, a price was placed upon his head, and he found a temporary refuge with the mother of his godson.
That tragic incident of the arrest, and the placard announcing General Lahorie's death, burned deep into the soul of the manling, and who shall say to what extent it colored his future life?
When Napoleon met his downfall, it was also a Waterloo for General Hugo. His property was confiscated, and penury took the place of plenty.
When Victor was nineteen, his mother having died, the family life was broken up. In "Les Miserables" the early struggles of Marius are described; and this, the author has told us, may be considered autobiography. He has related how the young man lived in a garret; how he would sweep this barren room; how he would buy a pennyworth of cheese, waiting until dusk to get a loaf of bread, and slink home as furtively as if he had stolen it; how carrying his book under his arm he would enter the butcher's shop, and after being elbowed by jeering servants till he felt the cold sweat standing out on his forehead, he would take off his hat to the astonished butcher and ask for a single mutton-chop. This he would carry to his garret, and cooking it himself it would be made to last for three days.
In this way he managed to live on less than two hundred dollars a year, derived from the proceeds of poems, pamphlets and essays. At this time he was already an "Academy Laureate," having received honorable mention for a poem submitted in a competition.
In his twentieth year, fortune came to him in triple form: he brought out a book of poems that netted him seven hundred francs; soon after the publication of this book, Louis the Eighteenth, who knew the value of having friends who were ready writers, bestowed on him a pension of one thousand francs a year; then these two pieces of good fortune made possible a third—his marriage.
Early marriages are like late ones: they may be wise and they may not. Victor Hugo's marriage with Adele Foucher was a most happy event.
A man with a mind as independent as Victor Hugo's is sure to make enemies. The "Classics" were positive that he was defiling the well of Classic French, and they sought to write him down. But by writing a man up you can not write him down; the only thing that can smother a literary aspirant is silence.
Victor Hugo coined the word when he could not find it, transposed phrases, inverted sentences, and never called a spade an agricultural implement. Not content with this, he put the spade on exhibition and this often at unnecessary times, and occasionally prefaced the word with an adjective. Had he been let alone he would not have done this.
The censors told him he must not use the name of Deity, nor should he refer so often to kings. At once, he doubled his Topseys and put on his stage three Uncle Toms when one might have answered. Like Shakespeare, he used idioms and slang with profusion—anything to express the idea. Will this convey the thought? If so, it was written down, and, once written, Beelzebub and all his hosts could not make him change it. But in the interest of truth let me note one exception:
"I do not like that word," said Mademoiselle Mars to Victor Hugo at a rehearsal of "Hernani"; "can I not change it?"
"I wrote it so and it must stand," was the answer.
Mademoiselle Mars used another expression instead of the author's, and he promptly asked her to resign her part. She wept, and upon agreeing to adhere to the text was reinstated in favor.
Rehearsal after rehearsal occurred, and the words were repeated as written. The night of the performance came. Superb was the stage-setting, splendid the audience. The play went forward amid loud applause. The scene was reached where came the objectionable word. Did Mademoiselle Mars use it? Of course not; she used the word she chose—she was a woman. Fifty-three times she played the part, and not once did she use the author's pet phrase; and he was wise enough not to note the fact. The moral of this is that not even a strong man can cope with a small woman who weeps at the right time.
The censorship forbade the placing of "Marion Delorme" on the stage until a certain historical episode in it had been changed. Would the author be so kind as to change it? Not he.
"Then it shall not be played," said M. de Martignac.
The author hastened to interview the minister in person. He got a North Pole reception. In fact, M. de Martignac said that it was his busy day, and that playwriting was foolish business anyway; but if a man were bound to write, he should write to amuse, not to instruct. And young Hugo was bowed out.
When he found himself well outside the door he was furious. He would see the King himself. And he did see the King. His Majesty was gracious and very patient. He listened to the young author's plea, talked book-lore, recited poetry, showed that he knew Hugo's verses, asked after the author's wife, then the baby, and—said that the play could not go on. Hugo turned to go. Charles the Tenth called him back, and said that he was glad the author had called—in fact, he was about to send for him. His pension thereafter should be six thousand francs a year.
Victor Hugo declined to receive it. Of course, the papers were full of the subject. All cafedom took sides: Paris had a topic for gesticulation, and Paris improved the opportunity.
Conservatism having stopped this play, there was only one thing to do: write another; for a play of Victor Hugo's must be put upon the stage. All his friends said so; his honor was at stake.
In three weeks another play was ready. The censors read it and gave their report. They said that "Hernani" was whimsical in conception, defective in execution, a tissue of extravagances, generally trivial and often coarse. But they advised that it be put upon the stage, just to show the public to what extent of folly an author could go. In order to preserve the dignity of their office, they drew up a list of six places where the text should be changed.
Both sides were afraid, so each was willing to give in a point. The text was changed, and the important day for the presentation was drawing nigh. The Romanticists were, of course, anxious that the play should be a great success; the Classics were quite willing that it should be otherwise; in fact, they had bought up the claque and were making arrangements to hiss it down. But the author's friends were numerous; they were young and lusty; they held meetings behind locked doors, and swore terrible oaths that the play should go.
On the day of the initial performance, five hours before the curtain rose, they were on hand, having taken the best seats in the house. They also took the worst, wherever a hisser might hide. These advocates of liberal art wore coats of green or red or blue, costumes like bullfighters, trousers and hats to match or not to match—anything to defy tradition. All during the performance there was an uproar. Theophile Gautier has described the event in most entertaining style, and in "L'Historie de Romanticisme" the record of it is found in detail.
Several American writers have touched upon this particular theme, and all who have seen fit to write of it seem to have stood under umbrellas when God rained humor. One writer calls it "the outburst of a tremendous revolution in literature." He speaks of "smoldering flames," "the hordes that furiously fought entrenched behind prestige, age, caste, wealth and tradition," "suppression and extermination of heresy," "those who sought to stop the onward march of civilization," etc. Let us be sensible. A "cane-rush" is not a revolution, and "Bloody Monday" at Harvard is not "a decisive battle in the onward and upward march."