Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70

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[Footnote 2: If any one of my readers is inclined to suspect that I have
drawn upon my imagination for this specimen speech, I will only say,
that, if he were my bitterest enemy, I could wish him no more severe
punishment than to undergo as I have done, (_horresco referens_,) an
hour of the Marquis of Normanby, the Earl of Malmesbury, and a few other
kindred spirits. If he have no opportunity of subjecting the truth of my
statement and the accuracy of my report to this most grievous test, I
beg to assure him that I have given no fancy sketch, but that I have
heard speeches from these noblemen in precisely this tone and to exactly
this effect.]

This is the regular speech, protracted in the same strain for perhaps
half an hour. Of the manner of the noble orator I will not venture a
description. Any attempt to convey an idea of the air of omniscience
with which these dreary platitudes are delivered would surely result in
failure. It is enough to say that the impression which the noble lord
leaves upon an unprejudiced and un-English mind is in all respects
painful. Indeed, one sees at a glance how absolutely hopeless would be
any finite effort to convince him of the absurdity of his positions or
the weakness of his understanding. There he stands, a solemn, shallow,
conceited, narrow-minded, imperturbable, impracticable, incorrigible
blockhead, on whom everything in the shape of argument is utterly
wasted, and from whom all the arrows of wit and sarcasm fall harmless to
the ground. In fact, he is perfectly proof against any intellectual
weapons forged by human skill or wielded by mortal arm, and he awaits
and receives every attack with a stolid and insulting indifference which
must be maddening to an opponent.

I hasten to confess my entire incapacity to describe the uniform
personal bearing of a Chesterton in or out of the House of Lords. It is
strictly _sui generis_. It has neither the quiet, unassuming dignity of
the Derbys, the Shaftesburys, or the Warwicks, nor the vulgar vanity of
the untravelled Cockney. It simply defies accurate delineation. Dickens
has attempted to paint the portrait of such a character in "Bleak
House"; but Sir Leicester Dedlock, even in the hands of this great
artist, is not a success,--merely because, in the case of the Baronet,
selfishness and self-importance are only a superficial crust, while with
your true Chesterton these attributes penetrate to the core and are as
much a part of the man as any limbs or any feature of his face. A
genuine Chesterton is as unlike his stupid caricature in our own
theaters in the person of "Lord Dundreary," as the John Bull of the
French stage, leading a woman by a halter around her neck, and
exclaiming, "G---- d----! I will sell my wife at Smithfield," is unlike
the Englishman of real life. Lord Chesterton does not wear a small glass
in his right eye, nor commence every other sentence with "Aw! weally
now." He does not stare you out of countenance in a _cafe_, nor wonder
"what the Devil that fellaw means by his insolence." So much by way of
negative description. To appreciate him positively, one must see him and
hear him. No matter when or where you encounter him, you will find him
ever the same; and you will at last conclude that his manners are not
unnatural to a very weak man inheriting the traditions of an ancient and
titled family, and educated from childhood to believe that he belongs to
a superior order of beings.

Of course the strong point of a Chesterton is what he calls his
"conservatism." He values everything in proportion to its antiquity, and
prefers a time-honored abuse to a modern blessing. With a former Duke of
Somerset, he would pity Adam, "because he had no ancestors." His
sympathies, so far as he has any sentiments which deserve to be
dignified by that name, are ever on the side of tyranny. He condescends
to give his valuable sanction to the liberal institutions of England,
not because they are liberal, but because they are English. Next after
the Established Church, the reigning sovereign and the royal family, his
own order and his precious self, his warmest admiration is bestowed on
some good old-fashioned, thorough-going, grinding despotism. He defends
the Emperor of Austria, and considers the King of Naples a much-abused
monarch.

If his lordship has ever been in diplomatic life,--an event highly
probable,--he becomes the most intolerable nuisance that ever belied the
noblest sentiments of civilized society or blocked the wheels of public
debate. Flattered by the interested attention of despotic courts, his
poor weak head has been completely turned. He has seen everything _en
couleur de rose_. He assures their lordships that he has never known a
single well-authenticated case of oppression of the lower classes, while
it is within his personal knowledge that many of the best families (in
Italy, for instance) have been compelled to leave all their property
behind them, and fly for their lives before an insolent and unreasoning
mob. How he deluges the House with distorted facts and garbled
statistics! How he warns noble lords against the wiles of Mazzini, the
unscrupulous ambition of Victor Emmanuel, and the headlong haste of
Garibaldi!

Of course, his lordship's bitterest hatred and intensest aversion are
reserved for democratic institutions. Against these he wages a constant
crusade. Armed _cap-a-pie_ in his common-sense-proof coat of mail, he
charges feebly upon them with his blunt lance, works away furiously with
his wooden sword, and then ambles off with a triumphant air very
ludicrous to behold. Democracy is the _bete noir_ of all the
Chestertons. They attack it not only because they consider it a recent
innovation, but also because it threatens the permanence of their order.
About the practical working of a republic they have no better
information than they have about the institutions of Iceland or the
politics of Patagonia. It is quite enough for them to know that the
theory of democracy is based on the equality of man, and that where
democracy prevails a privileged class is unknown.

It is hardly necessary to add, that the present condition of the United
Stales is a perfect godsend to the whole family of Chestertons. Have
they not long predicted our disgrace and downfall? Have they not,
indeed, ever since our unjustifiable Declaration of Independence,
anticipated precisely what has happened? Have they not always and
everywhere contended that a republic had no elements of national
cohesion? In a word, have they not feared our growing power and
population as only such base and ignoble spirits can fear the sure and
steady progress of a rival nation? Unhappily, their influence in the
councils of the kingdom is by no means inconsiderable. The prestige of
an ancient family, the obsequious deference paid in England to exalted
social position, and the power of patronage, all combine to confer on
the Chestertons a commanding and controlling authority absurdly out of
proportion to their intrinsic ability.

There has been a prevalent notion in this country that England was
slowly, but certainly, tending towards a more democratic form of
government, and a more equal and equitable distribution of power among
the different orders of society. This is very far from being the case.
It has been well said, that "it is always considered a piece of
impertinence in England, if a man of less than two or three thousand a
year has any opinions at all upon important subjects." But if this
income is quadrupled, and the high honor of a seat in the House of Lords
is superadded, it is not difficult to understand that the titled
recipient of such a revenue will find that his opinions command the
greatest consideration. The organization of the present Cabinet of
England is a fresh and conclusive illustration of this principle. It is
not too much to say, that at this moment the home and foreign
administration of the government is substantially in the hands of the
House of Lords. Indeed, the aristocratic element of English society is
as powerful to-day as it has been at any time during the past century.
To fortify this statement by competent authority, we make an extract
from a leader in the London "Times," on the occasion of the elevation of
Lord John Russell to the peerage. "But however welcome to the House of
Lords may be the accession of Lord John Russell, the House of Commons,
we apprehend, will contemplate it with very little satisfaction. While
the House of Lords does but one-twentieth part of the business of the
House of Commons, it boasts a lion's share of the present
administration. Three out of our five Secretaries of State, the
Lord-Chancellor, the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Lord-President of
the Council, the Postmaster-General, the Lord Privy Seal, all hold seats
in the Upper House, while the Home-Secretary, and the Secretary for
India, the First Lord of the Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
the President of the Board of Trade, the President of the Poor-Law
Board, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and the Secretary for
Ireland hold seats in the House of Commons. Lord John Russell goes to
give more to that which had already too much. At the present moment, the
two ministers whose united departments distribute between twenty and
thirty millions of the national revenue sit in the House which does not
represent the people. In voting the army and navy estimates, the House
of Commons received this year from the Under-Secretaries that
information which they ought to have from the best and most authentic,
sources. To these is now added the all-important department of Foreign
Affairs; so that, if things remain as they are, the representatives of
the people must be content to feed on second-hand information.... Most
of us can remember a time when it was a favorite topic with popular
agitators to expatiate on the number of lords which a government
contained, as if every peer of Parliament wielded an influence
necessarily hostile to the liberties of the country. We look down in the
present age with contempt on such vulgar prejudices; but we seem to be
running into the contrary extreme, when we allow almost all the
important offices of our government to be monopolized by a chamber where
there is small scope for rhetorical ability, and the short sittings and
unbusiness-like habits of which make it very unsuited for the
enforcement of ministerial responsibility. The statesmen who have charge
of large departments of expenditure, like the army and navy, and of the
highest interests of the nation, ought to be in the House of Commons, is
necessarily superior to a member of the House of the House of Lords, but
it is to the House of Commons that these high functionaries are
principally accountable, and because, if they forfeit the confidence of
the House of Commons, the House of Lords can avail them but little. The
matter is of much importance and much difficulty. We can only hope that
the opportunity of redressing this manifest imperfection in the
structure of the present government will not be lost, and that the House
of Commons may recover those political privileges which it has hitherto
been its pride to enjoy."

This distribution of power in the English Cabinet furnishes a sufficient
solution of the present attitude of the English Government towards this
country. The ruling classes of England can have no sincere sympathy with
the North, because its institutions and instincts are democratic. They
give countenance to the South, because at heart and in practice it is
essentially an aristocracy. To remove the dangerous example of a
successful and powerful republic, where every man has equal rights,
civil and religious, and where a privileged order in Church and State is
impossible, has become in the minds of England's governing classes an
imperious necessity. Compared with the importance of securing this
result, all other considerations weigh as nothing. Brothers by blood,
language, and religion, as they have been accustomed to call us while we
were united and formidable, we are now, since civil war has weakened us
and great national questions have distracted our councils, treated as
aliens, if not as enemies. On the other hand, the South, whose leaders
have ever been first to take hostile ground against England, and whose
"peculiar institution" has drawn upon us the eloquent and unsparing
denunciations of English philanthropists, is just now in high favor with
the "mother-country." Not only has the ill-disguised dislike of the
Tories ripened into open animosity, not only are we the target for the
shallow scorn of the Chestertons, (even a donkey may dare to kick a
dying lion,) but we have lost the once strongly pronounced friendship of
such ardent anti-slavery men as Lord Brougham and the Earl of
Shaftesbury. Why is this? Does not the explanation lie in a nutshell? We
were becoming too strong. We were disturbing the balance of power. We
were demonstrating too plainly the inherent activity and irresistible
energy of a purely democratic form of government. Therefore _Carthago
delenda est_. "But yet the pity of it, Iago!" Mark how a Christian
nation deals with a Christian ally. Our destruction is to be
accomplished, not by open warfare, but by the delusive and dastardly
pretence of neutrality. There is to be no diplomatic recognition of an
independent Southern Confederacy, but a formidable navy is to be
furnished to our enemies, and their armies are to be abundantly supplied
with the munitions of war. But how? By the English Government? Oh, no!
This would be in violation of solemn treaties. Earl Russell says, "We
have long maintained relations of peace and amity" with the United
States. England cannot officially recognize or aid the South without
placing herself in a hostile attitude towards this country. Yet
meanwhile English capitalists can publicly subscribe to the loan which
our enemies solicit, and from English ship-yards a fleet of iron-clad
war-vessels can be sent to lay waste our commerce and break our blockade
of Southern ports. What the end will be no one may venture to foretell;
but it needs no prophet to predict that many years will not obliterate
from the minds of the American people the present policy of the English
Cabinet, controlled as it is by the genius of English aristocracy.

* * * * *

THEODORE WINTHROP'S WRITINGS.

"The first time I saw Theodore Winthrop," said one to me a few days ago,
"he came into my office with a common friend. They were talking as they
entered, and Winthrop said, 'Yes, the fellows who came over in the
Mayflower can't afford to do that!'

"'There,' thought I to myself, 'there's another of the Mayflower men! I
wish to my soul that ship had sunk on her voyage out!' But when I came
to know him, I quickly learned that with him origin was not a matter of
vain pride, but a fact inciting him to all nobleness of thought and
life, and spurring him on to emulate the qualities of his ancestor."

That is to say, he was not a prig, or a snob, but a gentleman. And if he
remembered that he "came over in the Mayflower," it was because he felt
that that circumstance bound him to higher enterprises, to better work,
than other men's. And he believed in his heart, as he wrote in the
opening chapter of "John Brent," that "deeds of the heroic and chivalric
times do not utterly disdain our day. There are men," he continues, "as
ready to gallop for love and strike for love now as in the age of
Amadis." Ay, and for a nobler love than the love of woman--for love of
country, and of liberty--he was ready to strike, and to die.

Ready to do, when the time came; but also--what required a greater
soul--ready to wait in cheerful content till the fitting time should
come. Think of these volumes lying in his desk at home, and he, their
author, going about his daily tasks and pleasures, as hearty and as
unrepining as though no whisper of ambition had ever come to his
soul,--as though he had no slightest desire for the pleasant fame which
a successful book gives to a young man. Think of it, O race of
scribblers, to whom a month in the printer's hands seems a monstrous
delay, and who bore publishers with half-finished manuscripts, as
impatient hens begin, untimely, to cackle before the egg is laid.

That a young man, not thirty-three when he died, should have written
these volumes, so full of life, so full of strange adventure, of wide
reading, telling of such large and thorough knowledge of books and men
and Nature, is a remarkable fact in itself. That he should have let the
manuscripts lie in his desk has probably surprised the world more. But,
much as he wrote, Winthrop, perhaps, always felt that his true life was
not that of the author, but of the actor. He has often told me that it
was a pleasure to write,--probably such a pleasure as it is to an old
tar to spin his yarns. His mind was active, stored with the accumulated
facts of a varied experience. How keen an observer of Nature he was,
those who have read "John Brent" or the "Canoe and Saddle" need not be
told; how appreciative an observer of every-day life, was shown in that
brilliant story which appeared in these pages some eighteen months ago,
under the title of "Love and Skates." Our American life lost by his
death one who, had he lived, would have represented it, reported it to
the world, soul and body together; for he comprehended its spirit, as
well as saw its outer husk; he was in sympathy with all its
manifestations.

That quick, intelligent eye saw everything; that kindly, sympathetic
spirit comprehended always the soul of things; and no life, however
common, rugged, or coarse, was to him empty. If he added always
something of his own nobility of heart, if he did not pry out with
prurient eyes the meannesses of life around him, the picture he drew was
none the less true,--was, indeed, it seems to me, all the more true.
Therefore I say that his early death was a loss to American literature,
or, to speak more accurately, to that too small part of our literature
which concerns itself with American life. To him the hard-featured
Yankee had something besides hard features and ungainly manners; he saw
the better part as well as the grosser of the creature, and knew that

"Poor lone Hannah,
Sitting by the window, binding shoes,"

had somewhat besides coarse hands and red eyes. He was not tainted with
the vicious habit of caricature, which is the excuse with which
superficial and heartless writers impose their false art upon the
public. Nor did he need that his heroes should wear kid gloves,--though
he was himself the neatest-gloved man I knew. "Armstrong of Oregon" was
a rough figure enough; but how well he knew how to bring out the kindly
traits in that rude lumberman's character! how true to Nature is that
sketch of a gentleman in homespun! And even Jake Shamberlain, the Mormon
mail-carrier, a rollicking, untidy rover, fond of whiskey, and doubtless
not too scrupulous in a "trade," has yet, in Winthrop's story, qualities
which draw us to him.

To sit down to "John Brent" after rending one of the popular novels of
these days, by one of the class of writers who imagine photography the
noblest of arts, is like getting out of a fashionable "party" into the
crisp air of a clear, starlight, December night. And yet Winthrop was a
"society" man; one might almost say he knew that life better than the
other, the freer, the nobler, which he loved to describe, as he loved to
live it.

A neat, active figure of a man, carefully dressed, as one who pays all
proper honor to the body in which he walks about; a gentleman, not only
in the broader and more generous sense, but also according to the
narrower, conventional meaning of the term; plainly a scholarly man,
fond of books, and knowing the best books; with that modest, diffident
air which bookish men have; with a curious shyness, indeed, as of one
who was not accustomed and did not like to come into too close contact
with the every-day world: such Theodore Winthrop appeared to me. I
recollect the surprise with which I heard--not from him--that he had
ridden across the Plains, had camped with Lieutenant Strain, had
"roughed it" in the roughest parts of our continent. But if you looked a
little closely into the face, you saw in the fine lines of the mouth the
determination of a man who can bear to carry his body into any peril or
difficulty; and in the eye--he had the eye of a born sailor, an eye
accustomed to measure the distance for a dangerous leap, quick to
comprehend all parts of a novel situation--you saw there presence of
mind, unfaltering readiness, and a spirit equal to anything the day
might bring forth.

In the Memoir prefixed to "Cecil Dreeme" Curtis has drawn a portrait,
tender and true, of his friend and neighbor. The few words which have
written themselves here tell of him only as he appeared to one who knew
him less intimately, who saw him not often.

I come now to speak of the writings which Winthrop left. These have the
singular merit, that they are all American. From first to last, they are
plainly the work of a man who had no need to go to Europe for characters
or scenery or plot,--who valued and understood the peculiar life and
the peculiar Nature of this continent, and, like a true artist and poet,
chose to represent that life and Nature of which he was a part. His
stories smack of the soil; his characters--especially in "John Brent,"
where his own ride across the continent is dramatized--are as fresh and
as true as only a true artist could make them. Take, for instance, the
"Pike," the border-ruffian transplanted to a California "ranch,"--not a
ruffian, as he says, but a barbarian.

"America is manufacturing several new types of men. The Pike is one of
the newest. He is a bastard pioneer. With one hand he clutches the
pioneer vices; with the other he beckons forward the vices of
civilization. It is hard to understand how a man can have so little
virtue in so long a body, unless the shakes are foes to virtue in the
soul, as they are to beauty in the face.

"He is a terrible shock, this unlucky Pike, to the hope that the new
race on the new continent is to be a handsome race. I lose that faith,
which the people about me now have nourished, when I recall the Pike. He
is hung together, not put together. He inserts his lank fathom of a man
into a suit of molasses-colored homespun. Frowzy and husky is the hair
Nature crowns him with; frowzy and stubby the beard. He shambles in his
walk. He drawls in his talk. He drinks whiskey by the tank. His oaths
are to his words as Falstaff's sack to his bread. I have seen Maltese
beggars, Arab camel-drivers, Dominican friars, New-York aldermen, Digger
Indians; the foulest, frowziest creatures I have ever seen are
thorough-bred Pikes."

This is not complimentary, but any one who has seen the creature knows
that it is a portrait done by a first-rate artist.

Take, again, that other vulgarer ruffian, "Jim Robinson," "a little man,
stockish, oily, and red in the face, a jaunty fellow, too, with a
certain shabby air of coxcombry even in his travel-stained attire,"--and
how accurately does he describe the metamorphosis of this nauseous grub
into a still more disgusting butterfly!

"I can imagine him when he arrives at St. Louis, blossomed into a purple
coat with velvet lappels, a brocaded waistcoat, diamond shirt-studs, or
a flamboyant scarf pinned with a pinchbeck dog, and red-legged,
patent-leather boots, picking his teeth on the steps of the Planters'
House."

Or, once more, that more saintly villain, the Mormon Elder Sizzum.

"Presently Sizzum appeared. He had taken time to tone down the pioneer
and develop the deacon in his style, and a very sleek personage he had
made of himself. He was clean shaved: clean shaving is a favorite
coxcombry of the deacon class. His long black hair, growing rank from a
muddy skin, was sleekly put behind his ears. A large white blossom of
cravat expanded under his nude, beefy chin, and he wore a black
dress-coat, creased with its recent packing. Except that his pantaloons
were thrust into boots with the maker's name (Abel Gushing, Lynn, Mass.)
stamped in gold on a scarlet morocco shield in front, he was in correct
go-to-meetin' costume,--a Chadband of the Plains."

When you see one of these men, you will know him again. Winthrop has
sketched these rascals with a few touches, as felicitous as any of
Dickens's, and they will bear his mark forever: _T.W. fecit._

As for Jake Shamberlain, with his odd mixture of many religious and
irreligious dialects, what there is of him is as good as Sam Weller or
Mrs. Poyser.

"'Hillo, Shamberlain!' hailed Brent, riding up to the train.

"'Howdydo? Howdydo? No swap!' responded Jake, after the Indian fashion.
'Bung my eyes, ef you're not the mate of all mates I'm glad to see! Pax
vobiscrum, my filly! You look as fresh as an Aperel shad. Praised be the
Lord,' continued he, relapsing into Mormon slang, 'who has sent thee
again, like a brand from the burning, to fall into paths of pleasantness
with the Saints, as they wander from the Promised Land to the mean
section where the low-lived Gentiles ripen their souls for hell!'"

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