An hour before dawn, I awoke from a refreshing sleep; and, after a hearty replenishment of my vitals with biscuit and molasses, I conceived myself to be fresher than on Sunday morning. While awaiting day-break, I gathered from other early risers their ideas in regard to the events of yesterday. They were under the impression that we had gained a great victory, though we had not, as we had anticipated, reached the Tennessee River. Van Dorn, with his expected reinforcements for us, was not likely to make his appearance for many days yet; and, if General Buell, with his 20,000 troops, had joined the enemy during the night, we had a bad day’s work before us. We were short of provisions and ammunition, General Sidney Johnston, our chief Commander, had been killed; but Beauregard was safe and unhurt, and, if Buell was absent, we would win the day.
At daylight, I fell in with my Company, but there were only about fifty of the Dixies present. Almost immediately after, symptoms of the coming battle were manifest. Regiments were hurried into line, but, even to my inexperienced eyes, the troops were in ill-condition for repeating the efforts of Sunday. However, in brief time, in consequence of our pickets being driven in on us, we were moved forward in skirmishing order. With my musket on the trail I found myself in active motion, more active than otherwise I would have been, perhaps, because Captain Smith had said, ‘Now, Mr. Stanley, if you please, step briskly forward!’ This singling-out of me wounded my amour-propre, and sent me forward like a rocket. In a short time, we met our opponents in the same formation as ourselves, and advancing most resolutely. We threw ourselves behind such trees as were near us, fired, loaded, and darted forward to another shelter. Presently, I found myself in an open, grassy space, with no convenient tree or stump near; but, seeing a shallow hollow some twenty paces ahead, I made a dash for it, and plied my musket with haste. I became so absorbed with some blue figures in front of me, that I did not pay sufficient heed to my companion greys; the open space was too dangerous, perhaps, for their advance; for, had they emerged, I should have known they were pressing forward. Seeing my blues in about the same proportion, I assumed that the greys were keeping their position, and never once thought of retreat. However, as, despite our firing, the blues were coming uncomfortably near, I rose from my hollow; but, to my speechless amazement, I found myself a solitary grey, in a line of blue skirmishers! My companions had retreated! The next I heard was, ‘Down with that gun, Secesh, or I’ll drill a hole through you! Drop it, quick!’
Half a dozen of the enemy were covering me at the same instant, and I dropped my weapon, incontinently. Two men sprang at my collar, and marched me, unresisting, into the ranks of the terrible Yankees. I was a prisoner!
When the senses have been concentrated upon a specific object with the intensity which a battle compels, and are forcibly and suddenly veered about by another will, the immediate result is, at first, stupefying. Before my consciousness had returned to me, I was being propelled vigorously from behind, and I was in view of a long, swaying line of soldiers, who were marching to meet us with all the precision of drill, and with such a close front that a rabbit would have found it difficult to break through. This sight restored me to all my faculties, and I remembered I was a Confederate, in misfortune, and that it behoved me to have some regard for my Uniform. I heard bursts of vituperation from several hoarse throats, which straightened my back and made me defiant.
‘Where are you taking that fellow to? Drive a bayonet into the —— ——! Let him drop where he is!’ they cried by the dozen, with a German accent. They grew more excited as we drew nearer, and more men joined in the opprobrious chorus. Then a few dashed from the ranks, with levelled bayonets, to execute what appeared to be the general wish.
I looked into their faces, deformed with fear and fury, and I felt intolerable loathing for the wild-eyed brutes! Their eyes, projected and distended, appeared like spots of pale blue ink, in faces of dough! Reason had fled altogether from their features, and, to appeal for mercy to such blind, ferocious animalism would have been the height of absurdity, but I was absolutely indifferent as to what they might do with me now. Could I have multiplied myself into a thousand, such unintellectual-looking louts might have been brushed out of existence with ease—despite their numbers. They were apparently new troops, from such back-lands as were favoured by German immigrants; and, though of sturdy build, another such mass of savagery and stupidity could not have been found within the four corners of North America. How I wished I could return to the Confederates, and tell them what kind of people were opposing them!
Before their bayonets reached me, my two guards, who were ruddy-faced Ohioans, flung themselves before me, and, presenting their rifles, cried, ‘Here! stop that, you fellows! He is our prisoner!’ A couple of officers were almost as quick as they, and flourished their swords; and, amid an expenditure of profanity, drove them quickly back into their ranks, cursing and blackguarding me in a manner truly American. A company opened its lines as we passed to the rear. Once through, I was comparatively safe from the Union troops, but not from the Confederate missiles, which were dropping about, and striking men, right and left.
Quickening our pace, we soon were beyond danger from my friends; after which, I looked about with interest at the forces that were marching to retrieve their shame of yesterday. The troops we saw belonged to Buell, who had crossed the Tennessee, and was now joined by Grant. They presented a brave, even imposing, sight; and, in their new uniforms, with glossy knapsacks, rubbers undimmed, brasses resplendent, they approached nearer to my idea of soldiers than our dingy grey troops. Much of this fine show and seeming steadiness was due to their newer equipments, and, as yet, unshaken nerves; but, though their movements were firm, they were languid, and lacked the élan, the bold confidence, of the Southerners. Given twenty-four hours’ rest, and the enjoyment of cooked rations, I felt that the Confederates would have crumpled up the handsome Unionists within a brief time.
Though my eyes had abundant matter of interest within their range, my mind continually harked back to the miserable hollow which had disgraced me, and I kept wondering how it was that my fellow-skirmishers had so quickly disappeared. I was inclined to blame Captain Smith for urging me on, when, within a few minutes after, he must have withdrawn his men. But it was useless to trouble my mind with conjectures. I was a prisoner! Shameful position! What would become of my knapsack, and my little treasures,—letters, and souvenirs of my father? They were lost beyond recovery!
On the way, my guards and I had a discussion about our respective causes, and, though I could not admit it, there was much reason in what they said, and I marvelled that they could put their case so well. For, until now, I was under the impression that they were robbers who only sought to desolate the South, and steal the slaves; but, according to them, had we not been so impatient and flown to arms, the influence of Abe Lincoln and his fellow-abolitionists would not have affected the Southerners pecuniarily; for it might have been possible for Congress to compensate slave-owners, that is, by buying up all slaves, and afterwards setting them free. But when the Southerners, who were not averse to selling their slaves in the open market, refused to consider anything relating to them, and began to seize upon government property, forts, arsenals, and war-ships, and to set about establishing a separate system in the country, then the North resolved that this should not be, and that was the true reason of the war. The Northern people cared nothing for the ‘niggers,’—the slavery question could have been settled in another and quieter way,—but they cared all their lives were worth for their country.
At the river-side there was tremendous activity. There were seven or eight steamers tied to the bank, discharging troops and stores. The commissariat stores and forage lay in mountainous heaps. In one place on the slope was a corral of prisoners, about four hundred and fifty in number, who had been captured the day before. I was delivered to the charge of the officer in command of the guards, and, in a few minutes, was left to my own reflections amid the unfortunates.
The loss of the Union troops in the two days’ fight was 1754 killed, 8408 wounded, and 2885 captured; total, 13,047. That of the Confederates was 1728 killed, 8012 wounded, and 959 missing; total, 10,699.
The loss of Hindman’s Brigade was 109 killed, 546 wounded, 38 missing; total, 693,—about a fifth of the number that went, on the Sunday morning, into action.
Referring to these totals, 1754 + 1728 = 3482, killed, General Grant, however, says, in his article on Shiloh: ‘This estimate of the Confederate loss must be incorrect. We buried, by actual count, more of the enemy’s dead in front of the divisions of McClernand and Sherman alone than here reported; and 4000 was the estimate of the burial parties for the whole field.’[9]
Nine days after the battle of Shiloh, a conscript law was passed by the Confederate Congress which annulled all previous contracts made with volunteers, and all men between eighteen and thirty-five were to be soldiers during the continuance of the war. General T. C. Hindman, our brigade commander, was appointed, fifty days after Shiloh, commanding general of Arkansas, and enforced the conscript law remorselessly. He collected an army of 20,000 under this law, and such as deserted were shot by scores, until he made himself odious to all by his ruthlessness, violence, and tyranny.
While at Atlanta, Georgia, in March, 1891, I received the following letter (which is copied verbatim) from ‘old Slate,’ as we used to call him, owing to a certain quaint, old-mannish humour which characterised him.
Blue Ridge, Ga.
March 28th, 1891.
Dear Sir,—I am anxious to know if you enlisted in Company E., Dixie Greys, 6th Arkansas Regiment, Col. Lyon commanding, Lieut.-Col. Hawthorn, Capt. Smith commanding Dixie Greys, Co. E. Col. Lyons was accidently killed on the Tennessee River, by riding off Bluff and horse falling on him.
On the 6th April, 1862, the Confederates attacked the Yankees at Shiloh. Early in the morning I was wounded, and I never saw our boyish-looking Stanley no more, but understood he was captured, and sent North. I have read everything in newspapers, and your Histories, believing you are the same Great Boy. We all loved you, and regretted the results of that eventful day. This is enough for you to say, in reply, that you are the identical Boyish Soldier. You have wrote many letters for me. Please answer by return mail.
Very truly yours,
James M. Slate.
Address:
J. M. Slate, Blue Ridge.
ON the 8th of April we were embarked on a steamer, and despatched to St. Louis. We were a sad lot of men. I feel convinced that most of them felt, with myself, that we were ill-starred wretches, and special objects of an unkind Fate. We made no advances to acquaintanceship, for what was the value of any beggarly individual amongst us? All he possessed in the world was a thin, dingy suit of grey, and every man’s thoughts were of his own misfortune, which was as much as he could bear, without being bothered with that of another.
On the third day, I think, we reached St. Louis, and were marched through the streets, in column of fours, to a Ladies’ College, or some such building. On the way, we were not a little consoled to find that we had sympathisers, especially among the ladies, in the city. They crowded the sidewalks, and smiled kindly, and sometimes cheered, and waved dainty white handkerchiefs at us. How beautiful and clean they appeared, as compared with our filthy selves! While at the college, they besieged the building, and threw fruit and cakes at the struggling crowds in the windows, and in many ways assisted to lighten the gloom on our spirits.
Four days later, we were embarked on railroad cars, and taken across the State of Illinois to Camp Douglas, on the outskirts of Chicago. Our prison-pen was a square and spacious enclosure, like a bleak cattle-yard, walled high with planking, on the top of which, at every sixty yards or so, were sentry-boxes. About fifty feet from its base, and running parallel with it, was a line of lime-wash. That was the ‘dead-line’ and any prisoner who crossed it was liable to be shot.
One end of the enclosure contained the offices of the authorities. Colonel James A. Milligan, one of the Irish Brigade (killed at Winchester, July 24th, 1864) commanded the camp. Mr. Shipman, a citizen of Chicago, acted as chief commissary. At the other end, at quite three hundred yards distance, were the buildings allotted to the prisoners, huge, barn-like structures of planking, each about two hundred and fifty feet by forty, and capable of accommodating between two hundred and three hundred men. There may have been about twenty of these structures, about thirty feet apart, and standing in two rows; and I estimated that there were enough prisoners within it to have formed a strong brigade—say about three thousand men—when we arrived. I remember, by the regimental badges which they wore on their caps and hats, that they belonged to the three arms of the service, and that almost every Southern State was represented. They were clad in home-made butternut and grey.
To whatever it was due, the appearance of the prisoners startled me. The Southerners’ uniforms were never pretty, but when rotten, and ragged, and swarming with vermin, they heightened the disreputability of their wearers; and, if anything was needed to increase our dejection after taking sweeping glances at the arid mud-soil of the great yard, the butternut and grey clothes, the sight of ash-coloured faces, and of the sickly and emaciated condition of our unhappy friends, were well calculated to do so.
We were led to one of the great wooden barns, where we found a six-foot wide platform on each side, raised about four feet above the flooring. These platforms formed continuous bunks for about sixty men, allowing thirty inches to each man. On the floor, two more rows of men could be accommodated. Several bales of hay were brought, out of which we helped ourselves for bedding. Blankets were also distributed, one to each man. I, fortunately, found a berth on the right-hand platform, not far from the doorway, and my mate was a young sprig of Mississippi nobility named W. H. Wilkes (a nephew of Admiral C. Wilkes, U. S. Navy, the navigator, and captor of Mason and Slidell, Confederate Commissioners).
Mr. Shipman soon after visited us, and, after inspection, suggested that we should form ourselves into companies, and elect officers for drawing rations and superintending of quarters. I was elected captain of the right-hand platform and berths below it. Blank books were served out to each captain, and I took the names of my company, which numbered over one hundred. By showing my book at the commissariat, and bringing a detail with me, rations of soft bread, fresh beef, coffee, tea, potatoes, and salt, were handed to me by the gross, which I had afterwards to distribute to the chiefs of messes.
On the next day (April 16th), after the morning duties had been performed, the rations divided, the cooks had departed contented, and the quarters swept, I proceeded to my nest and reclined alongside of my friend Wilkes, in a posture that gave me a command of one-half of the building. I made some remarks to him upon the card-playing groups opposite, when, suddenly, I felt a gentle stroke on the back of my neck, and, in an instant, I was unconscious. The next moment I had a vivid view of the village of Tremeirchion, and the grassy slopes of the hills of Hiraddog, and I seemed to be hovering over the rook woods of Brynbella. I glided to the bedchamber of my Aunt Mary. My aunt was in bed, and seemed sick unto death. I took a position by the side of the bed, and saw myself, with head bent down, listening to her parting words, which sounded regretful, as though conscience smote her for not having been so kind as she might have been, or had wished to be. I heard the boy say, ‘I believe you, aunt. It is neither your fault, nor mine. You were good and kind to me, and I knew you wished to be kinder; but things were so ordered that you had to be what you were. I also dearly wished to love you, but I was afraid to speak of it, lest you would check me, or say something that would offend me. I feel our parting was in this spirit. There is no need of regrets. You have done your duty to me, and you had children of your own, who required all your care. What has happened to me since, was decreed should happen. Farewell.’
I put forth my hand and felt the clasp of the long, thin hands of the sore-sick woman, I heard a murmur of farewell, and immediately I woke.
It appeared to me that I had but closed my eyes. I was still in the same reclining attitude, the groups opposite were still engaged in their card games, Wilkes was in the same position. Nothing had changed.
‘What could happen?’ said he. ‘What makes you ask? It is but a moment ago you were speaking to me.’
‘Oh, I thought I had been asleep a long time.’
On the next day, the 17th April, 1862, my Aunt Mary died at Fynnon Beuno!
I believe that the soul of every human being has its attendant spirit,—a nimble and delicate essence, whose method of action is by a subtle suggestion which it contrives to insinuate into the mind, whether asleep or awake. We are too gross to be capable of understanding the signification of the dream, the vision, or the sudden presage, or of divining the source of the premonition, or its purport. We admit that we are liable to receive a fleeting picture of an act, or a figure, at any moment; but, except being struck by certain strange coincidences which happen to most of us, we seldom make an effort to unravel the mystery. The swift, darting messenger stamps an image on the mind, and displays a vision to the sleeper; and if, as sometimes follows, among tricks and twists of an errant mind, or reflex acts of the memory, it happens to be a true representation of what is to happen, or has happened, thousands of miles away, we are left to grope hopelessly as to the manner and meaning of it, for there is nothing tangible to lay hold of.
There are many things relating to my existence which are inexplicable to me, and probably it is best so; this death-bed scene, projected on my mind’s screen, across four thousand five hundred miles of space, is one of these mysteries.
After Wilkes and I had thoroughly acquainted ourselves with all the evil and the good to be found at Camp Douglas, neither of us saw any reason at first why we could not wait with patience for the exchange of prisoners. But, as time passed, we found it to be a dreary task to endure the unchanging variety of misery surrounding us. I was often tempted with an impulse to challenge a malignant sentry’s bullet, by crossing that ghastly ‘dead-line,’ which I saw every day I came out. A more unlovely sight than a sick Secessionist, in a bilious butternut, it is scarcely possible to conceive. Though he had been naked and soiled by his own filth, there would still have remained some elements of attractiveness in him; but that dirty, ill-made, nut-coloured homespun aggravated every sense, and made the poor, sickly wretch unutterably ugly.
In our treatment, I think there was a purpose. If so, it may have been from a belief that we should the sooner recover our senses by experiencing as much misery, pain, privation, and sorrow as could be contained within a prison; and, therefore, the authorities rigidly excluded every medical, pious, musical, or literary charity that might have alleviated our sufferings. It was a barbarous age, it is true; but there were sufficient Christian families in Chicago, who, I am convinced, only needed a suggestion, to have formed societies for the relief of the prisoners. And what an opportunity there was for such, to strengthen piety, to promote cheerfulness, soothe political ferocity, and subdue the brutal and vicious passions which possessed those thousands of unhappy youths immured within the horrible pen!
Left to ourselves, with absolutely nothing to do but to brood over our positions, bewail our lots, catch the taint of disease from each other, and passively abide in our prison-pen, we were soon in a fair state of rotting, while yet alive. The reaction from the excitement of the battle-field, and the cheerful presence of exulting thousands, was suspended for a few days by travel up the Mississippi, the generosity of lady-sympathisers in St. Louis, and the trip across Illinois; but, after a few days, it set in strong upon us, when once within the bleak camp at Chicago. Everything we saw and touched added its pernicious influence—the melancholy faces of those who were already wearied with their confinement, the numbers of the sick, the premature agedness of the emaciated, the distressing degeneration of manhood, the plaints of suffering wretches, the increasing bodily discomfort from ever-multiplying vermin, which infested every square inch.
Within a week, our new draft commenced to succumb under the maleficent influences of our surroundings. Our buildings swarmed with vermin, the dust-sweepings were alive with them. The men began to suffer from bilious disorders; dysentery and typhus began to rage. Day after day my company steadily diminished; and every morning I had to see them carried in their blankets to the hospital, whence none ever returned. Those not yet delirious, or too weak to move unaided, we kept with us; but the dysentery—however they contracted it—was of a peculiarly epidemical character, and its victims were perpetually passing us, trembling with weakness, or writhing with pain, exasperating our senses to such a degree that only the strong-minded could forego some expression of their disgust.
The latrines were all at the rear of our plank barracks, and each time imperious nature compelled us to resort to them, we lost a little of that respect and consideration we owed our fellow-creatures. For, on the way thither, we saw crowds of sick men, who had fallen, prostrate from weakness, and given themselves wholly to despair; and, while they crawled or wallowed in their filth, they cursed and blasphemed as often as they groaned. In the edge of the gaping ditches, which provoked the gorge to look at, there were many of the sick people, who, unable to leave, rested there for hours, and made their condition hopeless by breathing the stenchful atmosphere. Exhumed corpses could not have presented anything more hideous than dozens of these dead-and-alive men, who, oblivious to the weather, hung over the latrines, or lay extended along the open sewer, with only a few gasps intervening between them and death. Such as were not too far gone prayed for death, saying, ‘Good God, let me die! Let me go, O Lord!’ and one insanely damned his vitals and his constitution, because his agonies were so protracted. No self-respecting being could return from their vicinity without feeling bewildered by the infinite suffering, his existence degraded, and religion and sentiment blasted.
Yet, indoors, what did we see? Over two hundred unwashed, unkempt, uncombed men, in the dismalest attitudes, occupied in relieving themselves from hosts of vermin, or sunk in gloomy introspection, staring blankly, with heads between their knees, at nothing; weighed down by a surfeit of misery, internal pains furrowing their faces, breathing in a fine cloud of human scurf, and dust of offensive hay, dead to everything but the flitting fancies of the hopeless!
One intelligent and humane supervisor would have wrought wonders at this period with us, and arrested that swift demoralization with which we were threatened. None of us were conspicuously wise out of our own sphere; and of sanitary laws we were all probably as ignorant as of the etiology of sclerosis of the nerve-centres. In our colossal ignorance, we were perhaps doing something half-a-dozen times a day, as dangerous as eating poison, and constantly swallowing a few of the bacilli of typhus. Even had we possessed the necessary science at our finger-tips, we could not have done much, unaided by the authorities; but when the authorities were as ignorant as ourselves,—I cannot believe their neglect of us was intentional,—we were simply doomed!
Every morning, the wagons came to the hospital and dead-house, to take away the bodies; and I saw the corpses rolled in their blankets, taken to the vehicles, and piled one upon another, as the New Zealand frozen-mutton carcases are carted from the docks!
The statistics of Andersonville are believed to show that the South was even more callous towards their prisoners than the authorities of Camp Douglas were. I admit that we were better fed than the Union prisoners were, and against Colonel Milligan and Mr. Shipman I have not a single accusation to make. It was the age that was brutally senseless, and heedlessly cruel. It was lavish and wasteful of life, and had not the least idea of what civilised warfare ought to be, except in strategy. It was at the end of the flint-lock age, a stupid and heartless age, which believed that the application of every variety of torture was better for discipline than kindness, and was guilty, during the war, of enormities that would tax the most saintly to forgive.
Just as the thirties were stupider and crueller than the fifties, and the fifties were more bloody than the seventies, in the mercantile marine service, so a war in the nineties will be much more civilized than the Civil War of the sixties. Those who have survived that war, and have seen brotherly love re-established, and reconciliation completed, when they think of Andersonville, Libby, Camp Douglas, and other prisons, and of the blood shed in 2261 battles and skirmishes, must in this present peaceful year needs think that a moral epidemic raged, to have made them so intensely hate then what they profess to love now. Though a democratic government like the American will always be more despotic and arbitrary than that of a constitutional monarchy, even its army will have its Red Cross societies, and Prisoners’ Aid Society; and the sights we saw at Camp Douglas will never be seen in America again.
Were Colonel Milligan living now, he would admit that a better system of latrines, a ration of soap, some travelling arrangements for lavatories, a commissioned superintendent over each barrack, a brass band, the loan of a few second-hand books, magazines, and the best-class newspapers (with all war-news cut out), would have been the salvation of two-thirds of those who died at Camp Douglas; and, by showing how superior the United States Government was to the Confederate States, would have sent the exchanged prisoners back to their homes in a spirit more reconciled than they were. Those in authority to-day also know that, though when in battle it is necessary to fight with all the venom of fiends for victory, once the rifle is laid down, and a man becomes a prisoner, a gracious treatment is more efficacious than the most revolting cruelty. Still, the civilized world is densely ignorant. It has improved immensely in thirty years, but from what I have seen in my travels in many lands, it is less disposed to be kind to man than to any other creatures; and yet, none of all God’s creatures is more sadly in need of protection than he!
The only official connected with Camp Douglas whom I remember with pleasure is Mr. Shipman, the commissary. He was gentlemanly and white-haired, which, added to his unvarying benevolence and politeness, caused him to be regarded by me as something of an agreeable wonder in that pestful yard. After some two days’ acquaintance, while drawing the rations, he sounded me as to my intentions. I scarcely comprehended him at the outset, for Camp Douglas was not a place to foster intentions. He explained that, if I were tired of being a prisoner, I could be released by enrolling myself as a Unionist, that is, becoming a Union soldier. My eyes opened very wide at this, and I shook my head, and said, ‘Oh, no, I could not do that.’ Nothing could have been more unlikely; I had not even dreamed that such an act was possible.
A few days later, I said to Mr. Shipman, ‘They have taken two wagon-loads of dead men away this morning.’ He gave a sympathetic shrug, as if to say, ‘It was all very sad, but what can we do?’ He then held forth upon the superiority of the North, the certainty of defeat for the South, the pity it was to see young men throw their lives away for such a cause as slavery, and so on; in short, all that a genuinely kind man, but fervidly Northern, could say. His love embraced Northerners and Southerners alike, for he saw no distinction between them, except that the younger brother had risen to smite the elder, and must be punished until he repented.
But it was useless to try and influence me by political reasons. In the first place, I was too ignorant in politics, and too slow of comprehension, to follow his reasonings; in the second place, every American friend of mine was a Southerner, and my adopted father was a Southerner, and I was blind through my gratitude; and, in the third place, I had a secret scorn for people who could kill one another for the sake of African slaves. There were no blackies in Wales, and why a sooty-faced nigger from a distant land should be an element of disturbance between white brothers, was a puzzle to me. I should have to read a great deal about him, ascertain his wrongs and his rights, and wherein his enslavement was unjust and his liberty was desirable, before I could venture upon giving an opinion adverse to 20,000,000 Southerners. As I had seen him in the South, he was a half-savage, who had been exported by his own countrymen, and sold in open market, agreeable to time-honoured custom. Had the Southerners invaded Africa and made captives of the blacks, I might have seen some justice in decent and pious people exclaiming against the barbarity. But, so far as I knew of the matter, it was only the accident of a presidential election which had involved the North and South in a civil war, and I could not take it upon me to do anything more than stand by my friends.
But, in the course of six weeks, more powerful influences than Mr. Shipman’s gentle reasoning were undermining my resolve to remain as a prisoner. These were the increase in sickness, the horrors of the prison, the oily atmosphere, the ignominious cartage of the dead, the useless flight of time, the fear of being incarcerated for years, which so affected my spirits that I felt a few more days of these scenes would drive me mad. Finally, I was persuaded to accept with several other prisoners the terms of release, and enrolled myself in the U. S. Artillery Service, and, on the 4th June, was once more free to inhale the fresh air.
But, after two or three days’ service, the germs of the prison-disease, which had swept so many scores of fine young fellows to untimely graves, broke out with virulence in my system. I disguised my complaint as much as was possible, for, having been a prisoner, I felt myself liable to be suspected; but, on the day of our arrival at Harper’s Ferry, dysentery and low fever laid me prostrate. I was conveyed to the hospital, and remained there until the 22nd June, when I was discharged out of the service, a wreck.
My condition at this time was as low as it would be possible to reduce a human being to, outside of an American prison. I had not a penny in my pocket; a pair of blue military trousers clothed my nethers, a dark serge coat covered my back, and a mongrel hat my head. I knew not where to go: the seeds of disease were still in me, and I could not walk three hundred yards without stopping to gasp for breath. As, like a log, I lay at night under the stars, heated by fever, and bleeding internally, I thought I ought to die, according to what I had seen of those who yielded to death. As my strength departed, death advanced; and there was no power or wish to resist left in me. But with each dawn there would come a tiny bit of hope, which made me forget all about death, and think only of food, and of the necessity of finding a shelter. Hagerstown is but twenty-four miles from Harper’s Ferry; but it took me a week to reach a farm-house not quite half-way. I begged permission to occupy an out-house, which may have been used to store corn, and the farmer consented. My lips were scaled with the fever, eyes swimming, face flushed red, under the layer of a week’s dirt—the wretchedest object alive, possibly, as I felt I was, by the manner the good fellow tried to hide his disgust. What of it? He spread some hay in the out-house, and I dropped on it without the smallest wish to leave again. It was several days before I woke to consciousness, to find a mattress under me, and different clothes on me. I had a clean cotton shirt, and my face and hands were without a stain. A man named Humphreys was attending to me, and he was the deputy of the farmer in his absence. By dint of assiduous kindness, and a diet of milk, I gained strength slowly, until I was able to sit in the orchard, when, with open air, exercise, and more generous food, I rapidly mended. In the early part of July, I was able to assist in the last part of the harvest, and to join in the harvest supper.
The farm-house where my Good Samaritan lived is situated close to the Hagerstown pike—a few miles beyond Sharpsburg. My friend’s name is one of the few that has escaped my memory. I stayed with him until the middle of August, well-fed and cared for, and when I left him he insisted on driving me to Hagerstown, and paying my railway fare to Baltimore, viâ Harrisburg.[10]
UP to this point Stanley has told his own story. The chapter which follows is almost wholly a weaving together of material which he left.
That material consists, first, of an occasional and very brief diary, which he kept from 1862; then, at irregular intervals through many years, entries in a fuller journal, and occasional comments and retrospects in his note-books, during the last peaceful years of life.
He was discharged from Harper’s Ferry, June 22, 1862. Then he seems to have turned his hand to one resource and another, to support himself; we find him ‘harvesting in Maryland,’ and, later, on an oyster-schooner, getting upon his feet, and out of the whirlpool of war into which he had naturally been drawn by mere propinquity, so to speak; now his heart turned with longing to his own kin, and the belated affection which he trusted he might find.
November, 1862. I arrived, in the ship ‘E. Sherman,’ at Liverpool. I was very poor, in bad health, and my clothes were shabby. I made my way to Denbigh, to my mother’s house. With what pride I knocked at the door, buoyed up by a hope of being able to show what manliness I had acquired, not unwilling, perhaps, to magnify what I meant to become; though what I was, the excellence of my present position, was not so obvious to myself! Like a bride arraying herself in her best for her lover, I had arranged my story to please one who would, at last, I hoped, prove an affectionate mother! But I found no affection, and I never again sought for, or expected, what I discovered had never existed.
I was told that ‘I was a disgrace to them in the eyes of their neighbours, and they desired me to leave as speedily as possible.’
This experience sank so deep, and, together with the life in earlier years, had so marked an effect on Stanley’s character, that it seemed best to give it to the reader just as he noted it down as he mused over his life, near its close. When fame and prosperity came to him, he was just to the claims of blood, and gave practical help; but the tenderness which lay deep in his nature, and the repeated and hopeless rebuffs it encountered, produced, in the reaction, an habitual, strong self-suppression. The tenderness was there, through all the stirring years of action and achievement; but it was guarded against such shocks as had earlier wounded it, by an habitual reserve, and an austere self-command.
He returned to America, and, with a sort of rebound towards the world of vigorous action, threw himself, for a time, into the life of the sea. The motive, apparently, was partly as a ready means of livelihood, and partly a relish for adventure; and adventure he certainly found. Through 1863, and the early months of 1864, he was in one ship and another, in the merchant service; sailing to the West Indies, Spain, and Italy.
He condenses a ship-wreck into a two-line entry: ‘Wrecked off Barcelona. Crew lost, in the night. Stripped naked, and swam to shore. Barrack of Carbineers ... demanded my papers!’
The end of 1863 finds him in Brooklyn, New York, where we have another brief chronicle:—
Boarding with Judge X——. Judge drunk; tried to kill his wife with hatchet; attempted three times.—I held him down all night. Next morning, exhausted; lighted cigar in parlour; wife came down—insulted and raved at me for smoking in her house!
In August, 1864, he enlisted in the United States Navy, on the receiving ship ‘North Carolina,’ and was then assigned to the ‘Minnesota,’ and afterwards to the ‘Moses H. Stuyvesant,’ where he served in the capacity of ship’s writer. Nothing shows that he was impelled by any special motive of sympathy with the national cause. It has been told how he went into the Confederate service, as a boy naturally goes, carried along with the crowd. At this later time he may have caught something of the enthusiasm for the Union that filled the community about him; or, very probably, he may have gone on a fighting ship simply as more exciting to his adventurous spirit than a peaceful merchantman. In any case, he embarked on what proved to be the beginning of his true occupation and career, as the observer and reporter of stirring events; later, he was to play his part as a maker of events.
There is nothing to show just how or why he became a newspaper correspondent, but we know the where; and no ambitious reporter could ask a better chance for his first story than Stanley had when he witnessed the first and second attacks of the Federal forces on Fort Fisher, North Carolina. Those attacks are part of the history of the great war; how, in December, 1864, General Butler assailed the port from the sea, the explosion under its walls of a vessel charged with powder being a performance as dramatic as many of Butler’s military exploits; how, a year later, a carefully-planned expedition under General Terry, attacked the fort; how, after a two days’ bombardment by the fleet, two thousand sailors and marines were landed, under instructions to ‘board the fort in a seaman-like manner’; how they were repelled by a murderous fire, while a force of soldiers assaulting from another side drove the defenders back, in a series of hand-to-hand contests, till the fort was won.
On both those occasions, it fell to Stanley to watch the fight, to tell the story of it in his own lucid and vigorous style, and to have his letters welcomed by the newspapers, and given to the world.
Three months later, in April, 1865, the war was ended, and Stanley left the Navy. Then, for a twelve-month, his diary gives only such glimpses of him as an occasional name of a place with date. ‘St. Joseph, Missouri,—across the Plains,—Indians,—Salt Lake City,—Denver,—Black Hawk,—Omaha.’ Apparently through this time, he was impelled by an overflowing youthful energy, and an innate love of novelty and adventure.
In his later years, he told how, in his early days, his exuberant vigour was such, that when a horse stood across his path his impulse was, not to go round, but to jump over it! And he had a keen relish for the sights and novelties, the many-coloured life of the West. So he went light-heartedly on his way,—
Through this period he seems to have done more or less newspaper correspondence, and to have tended towards that as a profession. Here belongs an episode which is told in one of the autobiographic fragments; the reckless frolic of boys recounted with the sobriety of age.
Being connected with the press, my acquaintance was sought by some theatrical people in Omaha; at which, being young and foolish, I was much gratified. After a benefit performance, which I was principally the means of getting up for them, I supped with them, and for the first time, I drank so much wine that I tasted the joys and miseries of intoxication. My impression will not be forgotten, for though the faculty of self-restraint was helpless, the brain was not so clouded that I did not know what I was about. I was conscious of an irrepressible hilarity, which provoked me to fling decorum to the winds, and of being overwhelmingly affectionate to my boon companions.
The women of the party appeared more beautiful than houris, especially one for whom I felt ecstatic tenderness. When we had supped and drank and exhausted our best stories, about two o’clock in the morning we agreed to separate, the ladies to their own homes, but we men to a frolic, or lark, in the open. The effect of wine was at its highest. We sallied out, singing, ‘We won’t go home till morning.’ I was soon conscious that my tread was different, that the sidewalk reminded me of the deck of a ship in a gale, the lamp-posts were not perpendicular, and leaned perilously over, which made me babble about the singular waywardness and want of uprightness in houses and lamp-posts and awning columns, and the curious elasticity of the usually firm earth. I wished to halt and meditate about this sudden change of things in general. Scraps of marine songs about the ‘briny ocean,’ ‘brave sailor boys,’ and ‘good ships be on her waters,’ were suggested to me by the rocking ground, and burst in fluent song from my lips; a noisier set than we became, it is scarcely possible to imagine.
I wonder now we were not shot at, for the Omaha people were not very remarkable for forbearance when angered, and a charge of small shot would have been no more than we each of us well deserved. But someone suggested that vengeful men were after us, and that was enough to send us scampering, each to his home, at four o’clock in the morning. I reached my place without accident, and without meeting a single constable; and, plunging into bed, I fell into a deep sleep. My first waking made me aware of a racking headache, and a deep conviction that I had behaved disgracefully.
I was enriched, however, by an experience that has lasted all my life, for I then vowed that this should be the last time I would have to condemn myself for a scandalous act of the kind. ‘What an egregious fool I have been! Hang N—— and all his gang!’ was my thought for many a day.
Like David Copperfield’s first supper-party, one such lesson was enough for a man who was to do a man’s part; he never again fell under Circe’s spell. But the hunger for robust exploit was there, and he had found a companion of kindred tastes. With W. H. Cook, in May, 1866, he started for Denver. ‘We bought some planking and tools, and, in a few hours, constructed a flat-bottomed boat. Having furnished it with provisions and arms against the Indians, towards evening we floated down the Platte River. After twice up-setting, and many adventures and narrow escapes, we reached the Missouri River.’ From Omaha they travelled to Boston, where in July, 1866, they took a sailing-ship for Smyrna.
They had planned to go far into Asia. The precise nature of their plan is not recounted; but there is little doubt that Stanley was acting partly as a newspaper-correspondent. What was the base of supplies, or how ambitious were their hopes, is not told; but they went on their own resources, and were well provided with money. Stanley seems from the first to have commanded good prices for his newspaper work, and he notes that he early took warning from the extravagance and dissipation which brought many a bright young fellow in the profession to grief.
‘I practiced a rigid economy, punished my appetites, and, little by little, the sums acquired through this abstinence began to impart a sense of security, and gave an independence to my bearing which, however I might strive to conceal it, betrayed that I was delivered from the dependent state.’ Thus, presumably, he had saved the sinews of war for this expedition. The opening stage, from the approach to the Asian shore, was crowded with interest. Stanley records with enthusiasm the appeal of classic and biblical association, the strangeness and fascination of Oriental scenery, the aspects of country and people. On leaving Smyrna, they plunged into the interior. It was his first draught of the wonder-world of the Orient, and he drank eagerly.
But a speedy change fell on the travellers. First, the American lad whom they had brought with them as an attendant, out of sheer mischief set a fire ablaze, which spread, and threatened wide destruction, bringing upon them a crowd of infuriated villagers, whom they had great difficulty in appeasing. Then, when they had penetrated into wilder regions, they fell in with a treacherous guide, who brought upon them a horde of Turkomans. They were severely beaten, and robbed of all their money,—twelve hundred dollars,—their letter of credit, and all their personal equipment; then dragged to a village, and arraigned as malefactors; then hustled from place to place for five days, with indignity and abuse, to escape imminent death only by the intervention of a benevolent old man.
The semi-civilized prison to which they were at last consigned proved a haven of refuge, for there appeared on the scene a Mr. Peloso, Agent of the Imperial Ottoman Bank at Constantinople, who bestirred himself in the friendliest manner on their behalf. Setting the facts of the case before the Turkish Governor, he completely turned the tables on the ruffianly accusers by getting them put in prison to await their trial, while Stanley and his companions moved on their way to Constantinople. There, again, they received most effective friendship at the hands of Mr. Edward Joy Morris, the American Minister, and Mr. J. H. Goodenow, the American Consul-general. Warm hospitality was shewn them; Mr. Morris advanced £150 for their needs, their assailants were tried, found guilty, and punished; ultimately the Turkish Government made good the money stolen.
That was the end of the Stanley-Cook exploration of Asia. The explorer’s first quest had met a staggering set-back. But, ‘repulse is interpreted according to the man’s nature,’ as Morley puts it; ‘one of the differences between the first-rate man and the fifth-rate lies in the vigour with which the first-rate man recovers from this reaction, and crushes it down, and again flings himself once more upon the breach.’
INDIAN WARS OF THE WEST.—ABYSSINIAN CAMPAIGN, ETC.
STANLEY writes: ‘My first entry into journalistic life as a selected “special” was at St. Louis after my return from Asia Minor. Hitherto, I had only been an attaché, or supernumerary, as it were, whose communications had been accepted and most handsomely rewarded, when, as during the two bombardments of Fort Fisher, they described events of great public interest. I was now instructed to “write-up” North-western Missouri, and Kansas, and Nebraska. In 1867, I was delegated to join General Hancock’s expedition against the Kiowas and Comanches, and, soon after the termination of a bloodless campaign, was asked to accompany the Peace Commission to the Indians.’
These two expeditions he reported in a series of letters to the ‘Missouri Democrat,’ which, in 1895, he made into the first of two volumes, ‘My Early Travels and Adventures.’ It is the graphic story of a significant and momentous contact of civilization with savagery. Two years after the close of the Civil War, the tide of settlers was swiftly advancing over the great prairies of the West. The Union Pacific Railroad was being pushed forward at the rate of four miles a day. The Powder River military road was being constructed to Montana, and forts erected along its line, through the best and most reliable hunting-grounds of the Sioux, and without their consent. The Indians throughout a wide region were thrown into a ferment, and there were outbreaks against the white settlers. In March, a force was sent out under General Hancock, which Stanley accompanied, with the general expectation of severe fighting. But General Hancock soon imparted to Stanley his views and purposes, which were to feel the temper of the Indians, to see who were guilty, and who were not; to learn which tribes were friendly-disposed; to separate them from the tribes bent on war; to make treaties wherever practicable; and to post more troops on certain roads.
In a march of four hundred and fifty miles, he practically accomplished this plan. The hostile Sioux and Cheyennes were detached from their allies, the Kiowas, Arapahoes, and Comanches; and when the hostiles stole away from the conference, and began outrages on the settlers, they were punished by the destruction of their villages. But after Hancock’s return, the plains still seethed with menace and occasional outbreaks, and a general Indian war seemed imminent.
In July, Congress met the emergency by the appointment and despatch of a Peace Commission. At its head was General Sherman, with a group of distinguished officers, two chief Indian Commissioners, and Senator Henderson, of Missouri. Sherman, after some very effective speeches to the Indians, left the further work to the other Peace Commissioners, who travelled far and wide over the Plains, for two thousand miles. They met the principal tribes in council, and made a series of treaties, which, with the distribution of presents, and the general view impressed upon the Indians in addresses, frank, friendly, and truthful, brought about a general pacification.
In Stanley’s picturesque story of all this, perhaps the most striking feature is the speeches of the Indian chiefs as they set forth the feelings and wishes of their people. Said old Santanta; ‘I love the land and the buffalo, and will not part with them. I don’t want any of those medicine houses built in the country; I want the papooses brought up exactly as I am. I have word that you intend to settle us on a Reservation near the mountains. I don’t want to settle there. I love to roam over the wide prairie, and, when I do it, I feel free and happy; but, when we settle down, we grow pale and die.’
‘Few,’ writes Stanley, ‘can read the speeches of the Indian chiefs without feeling deep sympathy for them; they move us by their pathos and mournful dignity. But they were asking the impossible. The half of a continent could not be kept as a buffalo pasture and hunting-ground.’ Reviewing the situation many years later, he pronounces that the decline and disappearance of the Indians has been primarily due, not to the wrongs by the whites, but to their innate savagery, their mutual slaughter, the ravages of disease, stimulated by unsanitary conditions; and, especially, the increased destructiveness of their inter-tribal wars, after they had obtained fire-arms from the whites. His account of the complaints laid before the Commissioners shows that there were real and many wrongs on the part of the whites. To one story of a wanton murder, and the comment, ‘Those things I tell you to show you that the pale-faces have done wrong as well as the Indians,’ that stout old veteran of the Plains, General Harney, replied: ‘That’s so, the Indians are a great deal better than we are.’ But of the broad purpose of the Government, and the spirit in which the Commission acted, Stanley writes: ‘These letters describe the great efforts made by the United States Government to save the unfortunate Indians from the consequences of their own rash acts. The speeches of General Hancock and General Sherman and the Peace Commissioners faithfully reflect the sentiments of the most cultivated Americans towards them, and are genuine exhortations to the Indians to stand aside from the overwhelming wave of white humanity which is resistlessly rolling towards the Pacific, and to take refuge on the Reservations, where they will be fed, clothed, protected, and educated in the arts of industry and Christian and civilised principles.’ The replies of the Indian chiefs no less faithfully reflect their proud contempt of danger, and betray, in many instances, a consciousness of the sad destiny awaiting them.
In all this, Stanley was unconsciously acquiring a preliminary lesson in dealing with savage races. The tone in which Sherman, Henderson, and Commissioner Taylor, spoke to the Indians, now as to warriors, now as to children, gave hints which, later, Stanley put to good use. And the experience of the Indians suggests a parallel with that of the Congo natives as each met the whites. The wise and generous purposes of men like Sherman and Taylor, as afterwards of Stanley, were woefully impeded in their execution by the less fine temper of their subordinates.
And now, from the West, Stanley goes to the East. The point of departure is given in the Journal.
January 1st, 1868. Last year was mainly spent by me in the western Territories, as a special correspondent of the ‘Missouri Democrat,’ and a contributor to several journals, such as the ‘New York Herald,’ ‘Tribune,’ ‘Times,’ ‘Chicago Republican,’ ‘Cincinnati Commercial,’ and others. From the ‘Democrat’ I received fifteen dollars per week, and expenses of travel; but, by my contributions to the other journals, I have been able to make on an average ninety dollars per week, as my correspondence was of public interest, being the records of the various expeditions against the warlike Indians of the plains. By economy and hard work, though now and then foolishly impulsive, I have been able to save three thousand dollars, that is, six hundred pounds. Hearing of the British expedition to Abyssinia, and as the Indian troubles have ceased, I ventured at the beginning of December last to throw up my engagement with the ‘Democrat,’ proceeded to Cincinnati and Chicago, and collected my dues, which were promptly paid to me; and in two cases, especially the ‘Chicago Republican,’ most handsomely.
I then came over to New York, and the ‘Tribune’ and ‘Times’ likewise paid me well. John Russell Young, the Editor of the New York ‘Tribune,’ was pleased to be very complimentary, and said he was sorry he knew of nothing else in which he could avail himself of the services of ‘such an indefatigable correspondent.’ Bowing my thanks, I left the ‘Tribune,’ and proceeded to the ‘Herald’ office; by a spasm of courage, I asked for Mr. Bennett. By good luck, my card attracted his attention, and I was invited to his presence. I found myself before a tall, fierce-eyed, and imperious-looking young man, who said, ‘Oh, you are the correspondent who has been following Hancock and Sherman lately. Well, I must say your letters and telegrams have kept us very well informed. I wish I could offer you something permanent, for we want active men like you.’
‘You are very kind to say so, and I am emboldened to ask you if I could not offer myself to you for the Abyssinian expedition.’
‘I do not think this Abyssinian expedition is of sufficient interest to Americans, but on what terms would you go?’
‘Either as a special at a moderate salary, or by letter. Of course, if you pay me by the letter, I should reserve the liberty to write occasional letters to other papers.’
‘We do not like to share our news that way; but we would be willing to pay well for exclusive intelligence. Have you ever been abroad before?’
‘Oh, yes. I have travelled in the East, and been to Europe several times.’
‘Well, how would you like to do this on trial? Pay your own expenses to Abyssinia, and if your letters are up to the standard, and your intelligence is early and exclusive, you shall be well paid by the letter, or at the rate by which we engage our European specials, and you will be placed on the permanent list.’
‘Very well, Sir. I am at your service, any way you like.’
‘When do you intend to start?’
‘On the 22nd, by the steamer “Hecla.”’
‘That is the day after to-morrow. Well, consider it arranged. Just wait a moment while I write to our agent in London.’
In a few minutes he had placed in my hands a letter to ‘Colonel Finlay Anderson, Agent of the “New York Herald,” The Queen’s Hotel, St. Martin’s Le Grand, London’; and thus I became what had been an object of my ambition, a regular, I hope, correspondent of the ‘New York Herald.’
On the 22nd, in the morning, I received letters of introduction from Generals Grant and Sherman, which I telegraphed for, and they probably will be of some assistance among the military officers on the English expedition. A few hours later, the mail steamer left. I had taken a draft on London for three hundred pounds, and had left the remainder in the bank.
The letters to the ‘New York Herald,’ narrating the Abyssinian campaign, were afterwards elaborated into permanent form, the last half of Stanley’s book, ‘Coomassie and Magdala.’ The campaign has become a chapter of history; the detention of Consul Cameron by the tyrannical King Theodore, of Abyssinia, continued for years; the imprisonment and abuse of other officers and missionaries, to the number of sixty; the fruitless negotiations for their release; the despatch from India of a little army of English and Punjabis, under Sir Robert Napier, afterwards Lord Napier, of Magdala; the marching columns of six thousand men, with as many more to hold the sea-coast, and the line of communication; the slow advance for months through country growing more wild and mountainous, up to a height of ten thousand feet; Napier’s patient diplomacy with chiefs and tribes already chafing against Theodore’s cruelties; the arrival before the stronghold; the sudden impetuous charge of the King’s force; the quick repulse of men armed with spears and match-locks before troops handling rocket-guns, Sniders, and Enfields; the surrender of the captives, and their appearance among their deliverers; the spectacle of three hundred bodies of lately-massacred prisoners; the next day’s assault and capture of the town; Theodore shot by his own hand; the return to the coast: all this Stanley shared and told.
His telling, in its final form,[11] has for setting an account of antecedent events, the early success and valour of Theodore, his degeneracy, the queer interchange of courtesies and mutual puzzlements between Downing Street and Magdala, and the organisation of the rescue force. These historical prefaces were characteristic of Stanley’s books; the story of what he saw had an illuminating background of what had gone before, worked out by assiduous study. The record of the campaign is told with plentiful illustration of grand and novel landscape, of barbaric ways, of traits in his companions. There is a pervading tone of high spirits and abounding vitality. At first looked at a little askance, as an American, by the other correspondents, he soon got on very good terms with them. ‘Their mess,’ he writes, ‘was the most sociable in the army, as well as the most loveable and good-tempered’; and he names the London correspondents, individually, as his personal friends. Lord Napier was courteous, and gave him the same privileges as his English colleagues. With the officers, too, he got on well. There is occasional humorous mention in the book, and more fully in the Journal, of a certain captain whose tent he shared for a while, and whom he names ‘Smelfungus,’ after Sterne; he might have been dubbed ‘Tartarin de Tarascon,’ for he was a braggadocio, sportsman, and warrior, whose romances first puzzled, and then amused, Stanley, until he learned that a severe wound, and a sun-stroke, had produced these obscurations in a sensible and gallant fellow.
As a correspondent he scored a marked success, for which he had good fortune, as well as his own pains, to thank. On his way out, he had made private arrangements with the chief of the telegraph office, at Suez, about transmitting his despatches. ‘My telegrams,’ he notes in the Journal, ‘are to be addressed to him, and he will undertake that there shall be no delay in sending them to London, for which services I am to pay handsomely if, on my return, I hear that there had been no delay.’ This foresight was peculiarly characteristic of Stanley. On the return march, he could not get permission to send an advance courier with his despatches; these had to go in the same bag which carried the official and the other press bulletins. In the Red Sea, the steamer stuck aground for four days; and, under the broiling heat, an exchange of chaff between a colonel and captain generated wrath and a prospective duel; Stanley’s mediation was accepted; reconciliation, champagne, and—Suez at last; but only to face five days of quarantine! Stanley manages to get a long despatch ashore, to his friend in the telegraph office. It is before all the others, and is hurried off; then the cable between Alexandria and Malta breaks, and for weeks not another word can pass! Stanley’s despatch brings to London the only news of Theodore’s overthrow. Surprise, incredulity, denunciations of the ‘Herald’ and its ‘imposture,’—then conviction, and acceptance! Stanley had won his place in the world’s front rank of correspondents! He notes in his Journal, ‘Alexandria, June 28th, 1868. I am now a permanent employee of the “Herald,” and must keep a sharp look-out that my second “coup” shall be as much of a success as the first. I wonder where I shall be sent to next.’
He was sent to examine the Suez Canal, which he found giving promise of completion within a year. Then, on to Crete, to describe the insurrection; and here he found no startling public news, but met with a personal experience which may be given in full.
The Island of Syra, Greece, August 20th, 1868. Christo Evangelides seems desirous of cultivating my acquaintance. He has volunteered to be my conductor through Hermopolis. As he speaks English, and is a genial soul, and my happiness is to investigate, I have cordially accepted his services. He first took me on a visit of call to Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, of Boston, and then to the Greek seminary, where I saw some young Greeks with features not unworthy of the praise commonly ascribed to Greek beauty. On the way to the Square, Evangelides, observing my favourable impressions, took advantage of my frank admiration and suggested that I should marry a Greek girl. Up to this moment it never had entered my mind that it must be some day my fate to select a wife. Rapidly my mind revolved this question. To marry requires means, larger means than I have. My twelve hundred pounds would soon be spent; and on four hundred pounds a year, and that depending on the will of one man, it would be rash to venture with an extravagant woman. Yet the suggestion was delicious from other points of view. A wife! My wife! How grand the proprietorship of a fair woman appeared! To be loved with heart and soul above all else, for ever united in thought and sympathy with a fair and virtuous being, whose very touch gave strength and courage and confidence! Oh dear! how my warm imagination glows at the strange idea!
Evangelides meanwhile observes me, and cunningly touches the colours of my lively fancy, becomes eloquent upon Greek beauty, the virtues, and the constant affections of Greek women. ‘But, how is it possible for a wanderer like myself to have the opportunity of meeting such a creature as you describe? I have no resting-place, and no home; I am here to-day, and off to-morrow. It is not likely that a man can become so infatuated with a woman at a glance, or that she would follow a stranger to the church, and risk her happiness at a nod. Why will you distract a poor fellow with your raptures upon the joy of marriage?’ And much else, with breathless haste, I retorted.
I looked at Evangelides and saw his age to be great, beard white as snow, though his face was unwrinkled. Swiftly, I tried to dive beneath that fair exterior, and, somehow, I compared him to a Homer, or some other great classic, who loved to be the cicerone of youth, and took no note of his own years. The charm of Hellas fell upon me, and I yielded a patient hearing to the fervid words, and all discretion fled, despite inward admonitions to beware of rashness.
He said he would be my proxy, and would choose a damsel worthy of every praise for beauty and for character. Like one who hoped and yet doubted, believed and yet suspected, I said: ‘Very well, if you can show me such a girl as you describe, I will use my best judgement, and tell you later what I think of her.’ And so it was agreed.
In the evening I walked in the Square with Evangelides, who suddenly asked me what I thought of his own daughter, Calliope. Though sorely tempted to laugh, I did not, but said gravely that I thought she was too old for me. The fact is, Calliope is not a beauty; and though she is only nineteen according to her father, yet she is not one to thaw my reserve.
August 21st. This morning Evangelides proposed his daughter in sober, serious earnest, and it required, in order not to offend, very guarded language to dispel any such strange illusion. Upon my soul, this is getting amusing! It is scarcely credible that a father would be so indifferent to his daughter’s happiness as to cast her upon the first stranger he meets. What is there in me that urges him to choose me for a son-in-law? Though he claims to be a rich man, I do not think he has sufficient hundreds to induce me to entertain the offer. My liberty is more precious than any conceivable amount of gold.
August 22nd. Rode out during the morning into the country beyond Hermopolis, and crossed the mountains to the village of Analion. I was delighted with all I saw, the evidences of rural industry, the manifest signs of continuous and thoughtful care of property, the necessity for strictest economy, and unceasing toil, to make both ends meet, the beauty of the stainless sky, and the wide view of dark blue sea, which lay before me on every side. If it was calculated on the part of Evangelides, he could scarcely have done anything better than propose this ride; for what I saw during the ride, by recalling all I had read of Greece, made Greek things particularly dear to me. When I returned to the town, I quite understood Byron’s passion for Hellas.
In the evening Evangelides walked with me on a visit to a family which lived on another side of the Square. We were received by a very respectable old gentleman in sober black, and a stout lady who, in appearance, dress, and surroundings, showed that she studied comfort. Evangelides seemed to be on good terms with them, and they all bandied small change of gossip in a delightfully frank and easy manner. Presently, into the sitting-room glided a young lady who came as near as possible to the realisation of the ideal which my fancy had portrayed, after the visions of marriage had been excited by Evangelides’s frolicsome talk. She, after a formal introduction, subsided on a couch, demure, and wrapped in virgin modesty.
Her name was Virginia, and well it befitted her. Where had I seen her face, or whom did she recall? My memory fled over scores of faces and pictures, and instantly I bethought me of the Empress Eugénie when she was the Countess Montijo. A marvellous likeness in profile and style! She is about sixteen, and, if she can speak English, who knows? Simultaneously with the drift of my thoughts, Evangelides in the easiest manner led the conversation with the seniors to marriage of young people. He was so pointed that I became uneasy. My face began to burn as I felt the allusions getting personal. Jove! what a direct people these Greeks are! Not a particle of reserve! No shilly-shallying, or beating about the bush, but, ‘I say, is your daughter ripe for marriage? If so, here is a fine young fellow quite ready.’
Evangelides was nearly as plain as this. Then the mother turned to me, and asked, ‘Are you married?’
‘Heaven forbid!’ said I.
‘Why?’ she said, smiling, with proud consciousness of superior knowledge on her face. ‘Is marriage so dreadful?’
‘I am sure I don’t know, but I have not thought of the subject.’
‘Oh, well, I hope you will think of it now; there are many fair women in Greece; and Greek women make the best wives.’
‘I am quite ready to believe you, and if I met a young Greek lady who thought as much of me as I of her, I might be tempted to sacrifice my independence,’ I answered, more with a view to avoid an awkward silence than with a desire to keep up such a terribly personal conversation with strangers.
‘I am sure,’ said the lady, ‘if you look around, you will find a young lady after your heart.’
I bowed, but my face was aflame.
With astonishing effrontery Evangelides maintained the pointed conversation until I saw my own uneasiness reflected in Virginia’s face, who grew alternately crimson and pale. Both colours agreed with her, and I pitied her distress, and frowned on Evangelides, who, however, was incorrigible. Then I began to ask myself, was this really Greek custom, or was it merely a frantic zeal on Evangelides’s part? Was this the Sirens’ Isle, wherein the famed Ulysses was so bewitched, or was the atmosphere of the Cyclades fatal to bachelorhood? It would never do to tell in detail all I thought, or give all my self-questionings; but, ever and anon in my speculations, I stole a glance at Virginia’s face, and each glance started other queries. ‘Is this to be a farcical adventure, or shall it be serious’? I felt that only the mute maiden could answer such a question. Susceptible and romantic I know I am, but it requires more than a pretty face to rouse passionate love.