Read Ebook: Authors at home: Personal and biographical sketches of well-known American writers by Gilder Jeannette L Jeannette Leonard Editor Gilder Joseph Benson Editor

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s; and some of the lines in his massive lower face indicated the resoluteness which underlay his natural urbanity and kindness. Although his father came from Massachusetts and he himself was born in Providence, Mr. Curtis was identified with New York. In 1839, at the age of fifteen, he moved with his father to this city. Three years later he enlisted with the Brook Farm enthusiasts, but in 1844 withdrew to Concord, as Hawthorne had done. There, with his brother, he worked at farming, and continued to study until 1846, when he came back to New York, still bent upon preparing himself for a literary life, though he chose not to go to college. He went, instead, to Europe, remaining there and in the East for four years, six months of which he spent as a student at the University of Berlin.

Yet, New Yorker as he was by long association, residence and interest, he had a close relationship with Massachusetts; partly through his marriage into a Massachusetts family of note--the Shaws; partly, perhaps, through the ties formed in those idyllic days at Brook Farm and Concord. And in Massachusetts he had another home, at Ashfield, to which he repaired every summer. It is an old farm-house on the outskirts of the village, which lies among beautiful maple-clad hills, between the Berkshire valley and the picturesque neighborhood of the Deerfields and Northampton. A number of years ago, with his friend Charles Eliot Norton, Mr. Curtis aided in founding a library for Ashfield, and he was so much of a favorite with his neighbors there, that they were anxious to make him their representative in Congress. He, however, seemed to prefer their friendship, and the glorious colors of their autumn woods, to their votes. Throughout the greater part of the fierce presidential campaign of 1884 Mr. Curtis conducted his voluminous work as editor and as independent chieftain in this quiet retreat. In 1875 it was to him that Concord turned when seeking an orator for the centenary of her famous "Fight"; and it was he again whom Boston, in the spring of 1883, invited to pronounce the eulogy upon Wendell Phillips. These are rather striking instances of Massachusetts dependence on a New York author and orator, discrepant from a theory which makes the dependence all the other way.

Mr. Curtis's adversaries, in whatever else they may have been right, were apt to make two serious mistakes about him. One was, that they considered him a dilettante in politics; the other, that they overlooked his "staying-power." For over thirty-four years he not only closely studied and wrote upon our politics, but he also took an active share in them.

A teacher of a true State policy, rather than a statesman--an inspiring leader, more than he was an organizer or executant--he yet did much hard work in organizing, and tried to perpetuate the desirable tradition that culture should be joined to questions of right in Government, and of the popular weal. Twenty years a lecturer, without rest; twenty-five years a political editor; thirty-six years the suave and genial occupant of the "Easy Chair"; always steadfast to the highest aims, and ignoring unworthy slurs;--may we not say reasonably that he had "staying power"? One source of it was to be found in the serene cheer of his family life in that Staten Island cottage to which he clung so closely, and among the well-loved Ashfield hills, where he long continued to show that power.

GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP.

DR. EDWARD EGGLESTON

DR. EDWARD EGGLESTON

AT LAKE GEORGE

Owl's Nest, the summer retreat of Dr. Edward Eggleston, is picturesquely situated on Dunham's Bay, an arm of Lake George that deeply indents the land on the southeastern shore of the lake. This site was chosen partly because the land hereabout is owned by his son-in-law, and partly because of the seclusion the place affords from the main current of summer business and travel. With the utmost freedom of choice, a spot better suited to the needs of a literary worker with a family could hardly have been selected within the entire thirty-six miles covering the length of Lake George. Here, a few years ago, among black rocks, green woods, and blue waters, all pervaded by the breath of balsam, cedar, and pine, the author of "The Hoosier Schoolmaster," after various flights to other northern places of resort, built the nest which he has since continued to occupy during six months of the year , and in which he does the better part of his literary work, with material about him prepared at his winter home in Brooklyn. Owl's Nest consists of three architecturally unique and tasteful buildings, occupying a natural prominence on the western shore of the bay. One, the family cottage, is a handsome-looking and commodious structure of wood, liberally furnished in a manner becoming the artistic and literary proclivities of its occupants. A little below this, to the right, and nearer the lake shore, is a summer boarding-house, built by the owner of the farm for the accommodation of the friends and admirers of Dr. Eggleston, who annually follow his flight into the country--so impossible, as it would seem, is it to escape the consequences of fame. The third and most striking structure upon the grounds is Dr. Eggleston's workshop and library--his lasting and peculiar mark on the shores of Lake George, and the most prominent and elaborate piece of work of its kind to be found anywhere in northern New York. This was laid out by a Springfield, Mass., architect, after plans of the proprietor's own. It is built of brown sandstone quarried on the spot, and laid by local stone-workers, finished in native chestnut and cherry by home mechanics, and decorated without with designs, and within with carvings, by the hand of the author's artist-daughter, Allegra. Thus are secured for it at once a sturdy native character of its own, and a sylvan harmony and grace most pleasing to the fancy. Within this stronghold are arranged in due order the weapons of the literary champion--historian, novelist, and essayist--as well as the tools of his daughter, who has long been working in conjunction with her father in the production of the illustrated novel, "The Graysons," given to the world in 1888.

It is into this stronghold that one is conducted on a Sunday afternoon, after the usual hearty hand-shake; especially if one's visit relates in any way to things literary, or to questions that are easiest settled in an atmosphere of books. You are led through a door opening at the rear of the building, toward the cottage; immediately opposite to which, upon entering, appears the entrance to the artist's studio; thence along a narrow passage traversing the length of the west wall and lined to the ceiling with books, through a doorway concealed by a pair of heavy dropping curtains, and into the author's study, occupying the south end of the building. Here you are seated in a soft chair beside a deep, red brick fireplace , and before a modern bay-window opening to the south.

This window is, structurally, the chief glory and ornament of Dr. Eggleston's study--broad, deep, and high, filling fully one-third of the wall-space in the south end, and so letting into the room, as it were, a good portion of all out-doors. From this window is obtained a charming view of the finest points in the surrounding scenery. Directly in front stretches out for miles to the southward a broad expanse of marsh, through which winds in sinuous curves a sluggish creek that ends its idling course where the line of blue water meets the rank green of the swale. Just here extends from shore to shore a long causeway of stone and timber, over which runs the highway through the neighborhood. Flanking the morass on each side are two parallel lines of mountains, looking blue and hazy and serene on a still day, but marvelously savage and wild and threatening when a storm is raging. These are, respectively, the French Mountain spur on the west; and on the east a long chain of high peaks, which begins with the Sugar Loaf, three miles inland, approaches the eastern shore, and forms with the grand peaks of Black, Buck and Finch mountains a magnificent border to the lake as far down as the Narrows, where it terminates in the bold and picturesque rock of Tongue Mountain.

This view constitutes almost the whole outlook from the spot, which is otherwise encroached upon by an intricate tangle of untamed nature--woods, cliffs and ravines, that back it up on the west, and flank it on either side down to the water's edge. Turning from the view of things outside to consider the things within, you find yourself, apart from the necessary furniture of the room, walled in by books, to apparently interminable heights and lengths. I think Dr. Eggleston told me he has here something like four thousand volumes, perhaps one-fourth of which may be classed as general literature; the rest being volumes old and new, of ever conceivable date, style and condition, bearing upon the subject of colonial history. These have been gathered at immense pains from the libraries and bookstalls of Europe and America. In his special field of work Dr. Eggleston long ago proved himself a profound student and a thorough and successful operator. But if books tire you, there is at hand a most interesting collection of souvenirs of foreign travel--pictures, casts, quaint manuscripts, etc.--besides rare autographs, curios, and relics of every sort, gathered from everywhere, all of which he shows you with every effort and desire to entertain. In common with other distinguished persons, Dr. Eggleston has undergone persecution by the inveterate collector of autographs. One claimant for a specimen of his penmanship, writing from somewhere in the Dominion, solicited a "few lines" to adorn his album withal; whereupon he went to his desk and, taking a blank sheet, drew with pen and ink two parallel black lines across it, added his signature, and mailed it promptly to the enclosed address.

I have seen in one of the older anthologies a poem entitled "The Helper," of which I remember these words:

"There was a man, a prince among his kind, And he was called the Helper."

These verses, ever since I read them, have had a certain fascination for me. There is that in them suggestive of the flavor of rare old wine. There are helpers and helpers, from some types of which we pray evermore to be delivered. But there are the true, the born helpers, whom those in need of effectual advice and furtherance should as heartily pray to fall into the way of. These last do not always appear duly classified, labeled and shelved, to be taken down in answer to all trivial and promiscuous complaints, since, as has been noted, the true helper always proceeds, not by system, but by instinct, which through practice becomes in him unerring, and sufficient to guide him without stumbling. Such a helper is Edward Eggleston. He is a philanthropist who exists chiefly for the sake of doing good to his fellows, and who grows fat in doing it. It is a destiny from which he can not escape, and would not if he could.

One who observes much has often to deplore the absence from our modern life and institutions of any sphere large enough for the exercise and display of the full sum of the powers and faculties of any of our recent or contemporary great men of the people. Compare one of our most gifted men with the stage upon which he is compelled to act, and the disproportion is startling. How much that is above price is thus lost beyond recovery, and often how little we get from such beyond the results of some special popular talent, perhaps itself not representative of the strongest faculties of the person. I first got acquainted with Dr. Eggleston through his novels "The Circuit Rider" and "Roxy," and being then in the novel-reading phase of intellectual development, I of course believed them unrivaled in contemporary literature, as they fairly are of their kind. My enthusiasm lasted till I heard him preach from the pulpit, and straightway my admiration for the writer was lost in astonishment at the preacher. Never had I heard such sermons; and I still believe I never have. But upon closer acquaintance, my astonishment at the preacher was swallowed up in wonder at the conversational powers of my new friend. Never had I heard such a talker--never have I heard such a one. But the best unveiling was the last, when I discovered under all these multifarious aspects the characteristics and attributes of a born philanthropist. Hitherto I had known only the writer, the preacher, and the talker; now I began to know the man.

In Paris, London, Venice, Florence, in the remote towns and villages of England and the Continent, wherever it has been the fortune of Dr. Eggleston to pitch his tent for a season, his domicile has everywhere been known and frequented by those in need of spiritual or material comfort; and few of such have ever had occasion to complain of failure in getting their reasonable wants satisfied. In these dispensations he has the warmest encouragement and support of Mrs. Eggleston and their daughters, by whom these beautiful and humane traits are fully shared. I once expressed my wonder as to how, amidst the severest professional labors, he could stand so much of this extraneous work, without detriment to his constitution. "What! do you call that work?" was the characteristic answer. Fortunately a splendid physique defeats the ill-effects that would seem inevitable. And indeed every literary man should possess the nerves of a farmer and the physique of a prize-fighter as a natural basis of success. Dr. Eggleston is a good sailor and an expert climber, and with these accomplishments, and a perpetually cheerful humor, he manages to keep his body in trim. He can row you out to Joshua's Rock, or to Caldwell, if that lies in your way; or lead you with unerring precision through tangled labyrinths, to visit the choice nooks and scenes of the neighborhood, such as the lovely Paradise, the dark Inferno, and the mysterious Dark Brook.

There is something broadly and deeply elemental in Dr. Eggleston's joyous appreciation of nature, his touching love of little children, and his insight into the springs of animal life. His home habits are simple and beautiful, abounding in all the Christian graces, courtesies, and cordialities which help to maintain the ideal household. Everybody knows something of his personal appearance, if not by sight, then by report--the great bulk of frame, the large leonine head, now slightly grizzled, the deep, sharp, kindly eyes, the movements deliberate but not slow; and more, perhaps, of his conversation--precise, rapid, multifarious, swarming with ideas and the suggestions of things which the rapidity of his utterance prevents him from elaborating--original, opulent of forms, rich in quotation and allusion. And then the laugh--vast, inspiriting, uplifting. But there is such a thing as friendship becoming too friendly!

O. C. AURINGER.

EDWARD EVERETT HALE

EDWARD EVERETT HALE

ON ROXBURY HEIGHTS, BOSTON

The pulpit of Boston--what a fellowship of goodly names the phrase recalls! Knotty old stub-twist Cotton Mather,

"With his wonderful inkhorn at his side";

Mr. Hale's home is in Roxbury , five-minutes' ride, by steam car, from the heart of Boston. "Rocksbury," as it was spelled in the old documents, is a rocky and craggy place, as its name indicates. If you are curious to know where the rocks came from, just turn to Dr. Holmes's "Dorchester Giant," and read about that plum-pudding, as big as the State House dome, which was demolished by the giant's wife and screaming boys:

"They flung it over to Roxbury hills, They flung it over the plain, And all over Milton and Dorchester too Great lumps of pudding the giants threw; They tumbled as thick as rain."

Speaking of rocks, there is still to be seen, hardly a stone's-throw beyond Mr. Hale's residence, a natural Cyclopean wall--sheer, somber, Dantesque, overgrown with wilding shrubs, the rocks cramped and locked together in the joints and interspaces by the contorted roots of huge black and scarlet oaks, which, directly they emerge from the almost perpendicular cliff, turn and shoot straight up toward the zenith. On the summit of these rocks is the Garrison residence, presented to the anti-slavery agitator by his admirers, and now the home of his son, Mr. Francis J. Garrison. Other neighbors of Mr. Hale are William Lloyd Garrison, Jr., and the venerable Charles K. Dillaway, President of the Boston Latin School Association, and master of the school fifty years ago, when young Hale was conjugating his ????? ???? on its old teetering settees. Mr. Dillaway bears his years well, and recently celebrated his golden wedding. They have a well-combed and fruity look, these old walled and terraced lawns and gardens of steep Roxbury Height. In the Loring, the Hallowell, and the Auchmuty houses, and in Shirley Hall, there yet remain traces of the slave-holding Puritan aristocracy of two centuries ago. The Hale residence, by its old-time hugeness and architectural style, seems as if it ought to be storied in a double sense; but it really has no history other than that which its present occupant is giving it. It is none too large for one who has seen grow up in it a family of five sons and a daughter,--none too large for its owner's ever-growing collection of books and manuscripts. The house, which is of a cream color with salmon facings, is set back from the street some fifty feet, affording a small front lawn, divided from the sidewalk by a row of trees. The second-story front windows are beneath the roof of the great Doric porch, and between the pillars of this porch clamber the five-leaved woodbine and the broad-leaved aristolochia, or Dutchman's pipe. It is characteristic of Mr. Hale that he supports in his Roxbury home an old, an almost decrepit man-servant, who has lived with him for half a lifetime, and may be, for all I know, the original of "My Double." A picture of this "Old Retainer" was exhibited by Mr. Hale's daughter this year in the Paris Salon, over the title of "A New England Winter." I may, perhaps, be pardoned for mentioning, in this connection, that Mrs. Hale is, on the mother's side, a Beecher--the niece of Henry Ward Beecher--and inherits the moral enthusiasm of that religious family.

Mr. Hale being, by his own frequent confessions, the most terribly be-bored man in the universe, and having always had a hankering after Sybaritic islands where map-peddlers, book agents, and pious beggars might never mark his flight to do him wrong, it seemed providential, in a twofold sense, that a wealthy friend in Roger Williams's city, the writer of a work on the labor question, should have carried out the brilliant idea of building the hard-worked author a summer retreat in the soft sea-air of Rhode Island. For the dreary romance of the Newport region--its vast, warm, obliterating Gulf Stream fogs, and the crusty lichens that riot and wax fat in the moisty strength thereof, the warm tints of rock and sky, naiad caves and tangled wrack and shell, and reveries by fire of flotage wood--you must peep into Colonel Higginson's "Oldport Days" or Mr. Hale's "Christmas in Narragansett." The latter book is full of charming description and autobiographical chit-chat. Manuntuck, where for twelve years the Hales have summered, is a little hamlet to the south of Newport and far down on the opposite side of the bay. It is six or eight miles from anywhere; it is almost at the jumping-off point; if the organizer of charities gets there, he will either have to walk or hire a team. The real southern limit of New England, according to Mr. Hale, is formed by a certain "long comb of little hills, of which the ends are gray stones separate from each other." On a high ridge of these hills is Colonel Ingham's cottage. In front of the house is the geological beach, about a mile and a half wide. In good weather Montauk Point--the end of Long Island--is visible, as is also Gay's Head on Martha's Vineyard. Just back of the house is a lovely lake, and further back are other lakes bordered by swamps filled with pink and white rhododendrons, and many plants interesting to botanists. It is the region dwelt in of old by the Narragansett Indians. The swamp where in 1675 the great battle was fought is not far away. The Indians called the region Pettaquamscut.

When a young man of eighteen, Hale had the same fluent speech, the same gift of telling, impromptu oratory, that makes him to-day so much sought after as the spokesman of this cause and that. He likes to be at a meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society, or the Oriental Society at Worcester, but finds it not profitable or possible regularly to attend clubs or ministers' meetings. Like the two earthenware pots floating down the stream of AEsop's fable, there are in Mr. Hale's nature two clashing master-traits--the social, humanitarian, and democratic instinct, and the dignified reserve and exclusiveness of the Edward Everett strain in his blood. He is a tremendous social magnet turning now its attracting and now its repelling pole to the world; to-day bringing comfort and hope to a score of drowning wretches, and to-morrow barricading himself in his study and sending off to the printer passionate and humorous invectives against the ineffable brood of the world's bores. It is naturally, therefore, a rather formidable matter for a stranger to get access to the penetralia of the Roxbury mansion.

Mr. Hale's plain dressing is said to be something of a grievance to certain well-meaning members of his congregation, but it is an indispensable part of his personality, and is, I doubt not, adopted for moral example as much as from inherent dislike of show and sham. I have a picture in my mind now of Mr. Hale as I saw him crossing the Harvard College yard, one Commencement Day, in a by-no-means glossy suit of black, and wearing the inevitable soft slouch hat. A work-worn, weary, and stooping figure it was, the body slightly bent, as if from supporting such a weight of head. There are certain photographs of Hale in which I see the powerful profile of Huntington, the builder of the Central Pacific Railroad.

W. S. KENNEDY.

JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS

JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS

AT ATLANTA

ERASTUS BRAINERD.

PROF. J. A. HARRISON

PROF. J. A. HARRISON

W. M. BASKERVILL.

COL. JOHN HAY

COL. JOHN HAY

IN WASHINGTON

Great political revolutions are the results or causes of literary schools; and the future student of our literature will note with more emphasis than we, that one of the incidents or results of the war between the sections was the birth of a new school of writers whose works are distinctively original and distinctively American. To this class, who have won, and are winning, fame for themselves while conferring it upon their country, belongs Col. Hay. His earlier writings have the characteristics of freshness, vigor and intensity which indicate an absence of the literary vassalage that dwarfed the growth and conventionalized or anglicized American writers as a class. Travel and indwelling among the shrines of the Old World's literary gods and goddesses, have not un-Americanized either the man or the author. The facile transition from "Jim Bludso" to "A Woman's Love" is paralleled by that from a bull-fight to a Bourbon duel.

Though not at all ubiquitous, Col. Hay is a man of many homes,--that of his birth, Indiana; that of his Alma Mater, "Brown," whose memory he has gracefully and affectionately embalmed in verse; that of his Mother-in-Law, Illinois, having been admitted to her bar in 1861. This great year--1861--the pivot upon which turned so many destinies,--saw him "at home" in the White House. Next to his own individual claims upon national recognition, his relations to the martyred President, the well-known confidence, esteem and affection which that great guider of national destiny felt for his youthful secretary, have rendered his name as familiar as a household word. At home in the tented fields of the Civil War, at home in the diplomatic circles of Paris, Vienna, and Madrid, Col. Hay, after an exceptionally varied experience, planted his first vine and fig-tree in Cleveland, Ohio, and his second in the City of Washington. Between these two homes he vibrates. The summer finds him in his Euclid Avenue house, which occupies the site where that of Susan Coolidge once stood. Around its far-reaching courtyard and uncramped, unfenced spaciousness, she moved--that happiest of beings, one endeared to little stranger hearts all over the land.

The author's house is situated at the corner of H and Sixteenth Streets. Its southern windows look out upon Lafayette Park, and beyond it at the confronting White House, peculiarly suggestive to Col. Hay of historic days and men; and as he labors on his History of Lincoln, I imagine, the view of the once home of the martyr is a source at once of sadness and of inspiration. In the same street, one block to the west, lived George Bancroft; diagonally across the park, and in full view, is the house where was attempted the assassination of Secretary Seward, and near where Philip Barton Key was killed by Gen. Sickles; opposite the east front of Col. Hay's house is St. John's, one of the oldest Episcopal churches in the District of Columbia, much frequented by the older Presidents. It was here that Dolly Madison exhibited her frills and fervor. Before the days of American admirals, tradition says that one of the old commodores, returning from a long and far cruise in which he had distinguished himself, and starting for St. John's on a Sunday morning, entered the church as the congregation was about repeating the Creed. As soon as he was in the aisle, the people stood up, as is the custom. The old commodore, being conscious of meritorious service, mistook the movement for an expression of personal respect, and with patronizing politeness, waved his hand toward the Rev. Dr. Pyne and the congregation, and said: "Don't rise on my account!" The whitened sepulchre of a house to the west of Col. Hay's, was the residence of Senator Slidell--the once international What-shall-we-do-with-him? The eastern corner of the opposite block was the home and death-place of Sumner. In the immediate neighborhood are the three clubs of Washington--the Metropolitan, Cosmos, and Jefferson. The first has the character of being exclusive, the second of being scientific, and the third liberal. In the one they eat terrapin; in the other, talk anthropology; while in the last, Congressmen, Cabinet officers and journalists are "at home," and a spirit of cosmopolitanism prevails.

The author of "Pike County Ballads" and "Castilian Days," and the biographer of Lincoln, is about sixty-four years of age. In person, of average height; gray hair, mustache and beard, and brown eyes; well built, well dressed, well bred and well read, he is pleasant to look at and to talk with. He is a good talker and polite listener, and altogether an agreeable and instructive companion. As a collector he seems to be jealous as to quality rather than greedy as to quantity. His shelves are not loaded down with so many pounds of print bound in what-not, and his pictures and works of art "have pedigrees." I found great pleasure in examining a fine old edition of Lucan's "Pharsalia," printed at Strawberry Hill, with notes by Grotius and Bentley. A much more interesting work was "The Hierarchie of the Blessed Angells, Printed by Adam Islip, 1635." On the fly-leaf was written: "E. B. Jones, from his friend A. C. Swinburne." My attention was called to the following lines:

Mellifluous Shake-speare, whose enchanting quill, Commanded mirth and passion, was but Will.

They suggested the Donnelly extravaganza; and I discovered Col. Hay to be of the opinion which well-informed students of English literature generally hold--namely, that Mr. Donnelly's ingenuity is equalled only by his ignorance. There was also a presentation copy of the first edition of Beckford's "Vathek," and De Thou's copy of Calvin's Letters, with De Thou's and his wife's ciphers intertwined in gilt upon its side and back, expressive of a partnership even in their books; and rare and costly editions of Rogers's "Italy" and "Poems." It will be recollected that the banker-poet engaged Turner to illustrate his verses, and the total cost to the author was about ,000. Among objects of special interest are the bronze masks of Mr. Lincoln, one by Volk , the other by Clark Mills . It is a test of credulity to accept them as the counterfeit presentments of the President. There is such a difference in the contour, lines and expression, that, as Col. Hay remarked, the contrast exhibits the influences and effects of the great cares and responsibilities under which Mr. Lincoln labored; and although both casts were made in life, and at an interval of only five years, the latter one represents a face fifteen years older than the first.

Reflecting that though scientific workers were plentiful in Washington there was but a sprinkling of literary men, I asked Col. Hay what he thought of the capital's possibilities as a "literary centre." His opinion was that the great presses and publishing-houses were the nucleus of literary workers; but that the advantages afforded, or to be afforded, by the National Library and other Government facilities, must of necessity invite authors to Washington, from time to time, on special errands, or for temporary residence.

B. G. LOVEJOY.

THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON

THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON

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