Читать книгу Children's Stories in American Literature 1861-1896 - Henrietta Christian Wright - Страница 5

In a certain American classic there is a picture of a boy standing in the shadow of an old warehouse and living, in imagination, a day that belonged to another generation. The boy was George William Curtis, and it was in his charming book, Prue and I, that he embodied this experience of his boyhood. In the pages which describe the past glories of Providence the author is picturing his native city, and reproducing with an artist's touch the atmosphere which surrounded his childish days.

At that time Providence was sharing the fate of many New England seaport towns whose importance was passing away. The old, red, steep-roofed brick storehouses were falling into ruins, the docks were crumbling away, and the business part of the town was almost deserted. In place of a fleet of great East India merchant-vessels moored to the big posts, there were only a few insignificant sloops idly rocking with the tides. Instead of the shouting and confusion of unlading, there was but a group of idle old sailors gathered in the warehouse doors.

But to the boy-dreamer who looked on, the silence and shadow of the old stores seemed like those of royal treasure-houses. There were still to be seen piles of East India wares—oriental stuffs, dyes, coffees, and spices whose fragrance brought Arabia and China to the senses. Occasionally a chance ship drifted into the harbor, and for a few hours the Providence wharves lived their old life. Once when this happened, young Curtis crept along the edge of the dock after the unloading was over, and at great risk leaned over and placed his hand against the black hulk. And thus, he records, he "touched Asia, Cape of Good Hope, and the Happy Islands; saw palm-groves, jungles, and Bengal tigers, and the feet of Chinese fairies."

From the gloom of the old warehouses he would very often go to the sunny fields that lay upon the hills back of the town, and watch some sea-bound ship, taking it for a type of his fortunes, which should sail "stately and successful to all the glorious ports of the future." The picture is bright and beautiful with the pure hopes of youth. It is good to know that the dream of the boy was a prophecy of the noble life it realized.

Providence was the home of young Curtis until his sixth year, when, with his elder brother, Burrill, he went for a time to school at Jamaica Plain, near Boston. From some fragments of description written many years afterward we learn that this experience was a pleasant one. The school was provided with large play-grounds, play-hours were long and study-hours short. Near by was a pond for boating and fishing, and beyond the village were groves for nutting and picnics. The master's wife always took tea with the boys, and the master himself was a good-natured man with a great fondness for playing practical jokes. Once when he knocked at the dormitory door during an exciting pillow-fight, the boys turned the joke upon him by putting out the lights, and, pretending that they thought him one of their schoolmates, pounded him so unmercifully that he was glad to rush from the room.

But there were serious moments, too, in life. In one of these Curtis, then about seven, arrayed himself in ministerial garb and solemnly preached a sermon, from the landing of the stairs, upon the consequences of evil-doing. Perhaps it was from the text of this sermon that he a little later wrote a treatise on murder, which, he said, always started with Sabbath-breaking; the Sabbath-breaker became in turn a user of profane language, then a thief, and so went downward by easy gradations until he committed murder. Such grave subjects, however, only occasionally depressed the spirits of this happy flock of boys. Curtis said that possibly they did not learn anything at this school, but that they had plenty of good beef.

There was a very deep love and sympathy between the Curtis brothers, and their life at Jamaica Plain, and afterward when they returned to Providence, is reflected in the work of later years where the picture of the brother is sketched with a loving hand.

While they were still very young boys they heard in their school-room, at Providence, a lecture by Emerson, who was then beginning to be known as an essayist and lecturer. Into these hearts, which had just left childhood, the words of Emerson fell full of gracious inspiration. He became their teacher of noble thoughts, their leader into the realm of moral beauty. Much as the page of chivalric days looked up to his chosen knight, they revered with boyish hero-worship the great teacher. He gave them the best things that Puritanism could bestow, and he became a far-reaching influence in their lives.

The Curtis family removed to New York in 1839, and the Providence school-days came to an end. But above all others Curtis always called Emerson his teacher; another tribute to the master to whom American thought owes so much.

The new home was in Washington Square, then the upper part of the city, with the open country not far away. The best-known people of the day—writers, artists, musicians, lovers of all art—found their way to the Curtis home. This companionship, together with systematic study, fostered rapid intellectual growth; the boys made progress, but city life did not entirely please them. About this time the Community of Brook Farm was founded by the men destined to be among the intellectual leaders of America. Every member was pledged to help with the manual labor, and to contribute his share toward the intellectual life. It was a dream of the old Utopia, where life was simple and happiness abounded. The Curtis brothers begged their father to let them go and share this ideal home, and he consented. Although they went as boarders and did not become actual members of the community, its life was theirs. Here, where Emerson, Hawthorne, and Dana ploughed and hoed and planted, the two boys did their share. They drove cows, raked hay, and pulled weeds in the morning; in the afternoon they studied German, chemistry, and music; in the evening they danced or sang, had theatrical representations or talked philosophy.

Young Curtis absorbed the healthy atmosphere of this unconventional yet inspiring life, as he breathed the air from the dewy meadows and wild-rose hedges. It was a part of the hope and aspiration of youth brought down to actual touch, and he formed here more than one abiding and uplifting friendship.

The charm of the life did not quite dissolve when the brothers returned to New York, for within a few months they were again in the country as inmates of a farmhouse near Concord. Here they did farm work, made their own beds, cultivated a little garden, joined a club of which Emerson and Hawthorne were members, and, in fact, lived and did quite as they pleased. It was camp life with some of the discomforts left out and some privileges added, and it was an idyllic existence for a youth who did not know just what he should make of life, but who had determined that he would make of it something noble.

While at Concord Curtis wrote two charming little stories that may be called a prelude to his literary career. One of these tales is that of the strange sights seen by a little girl who possesses a pair of magic spectacles. It is full of the poetic grace of a genuine folk-story. In the chapter on Titbottom's Spectacles in Prue and I, the same motif is used. Neither of the stories has ever been published.

His career was still undecided when, in his twenty-second year, Curtis sailed for Europe and a trip to the East. Although calling no college his Alma Mater he was still the representative cultivated young American of his day. He was well read in the German, Italian, and English classics, appreciated the best music, was a student of æsthetics, and had an earnest and intelligent interest in politics. He believed that America, as embodying the idea of self-government of states, had a mission to the world. In his soul he consecrated his best powers to the service of humanity, and he was ready, when the moment came, to serve it without thought of cost to himself. The ocean travellers of those days took passage in packet-ships, and Curtis was forty-six days in crossing to France. He spent four years abroad, making the usual tours. He kept a diary, which became a record of charming interest, but most of which remained unpublished. During this time he sent letters to the New York Tribune, devoted to the public questions of the day. The fact that he chose to write thus, while surrounded by the Old World impressions, shows the trend of his mind toward the higher political interests in which he became a leader.

During this trip Curtis seems to have made up his mind to a literary career. Soon after his return he began to lecture, and a little later went on the staff of the Tribune. The Nile Notes of a Howadji is the record of a trip up the Nile, and was the first book that Curtis published. Like Longfellow's Hyperion, it has more than a literary value as being the actual experience of one who was to become prominent in American literature. In these chapters the author did not aim at literal description. He was rather the happy traveller transcribing for absent friends the pictures of the lands they have so often visited together in imagination.

He made himself story-teller to the fireside group, and scene after scene was sketched with faithful hand. To this young dreamer Egypt still remained the land of wonder and inspiration, though its temples lay in ruins and its people had sunk to the lowest level of humanity. There is a wondrous charm in his sympathy with that great past, and in his appreciation of the ideals of the race whose art and science laid their mark ineffaceably upon the world. The paintings in the pyramids and tombs of the common people, illustrating the victories of the kings, the occupations of the lower classes, and even the games of the children, all pictured in colors still fresh, had a wonderful fascination for the young traveller. In gazing at them he forgot the Egypt that he actually saw and seemed to touch hands with a vanished race.

It throws a bright light on the character of the author to see him thus able to make that old inspiration his own. Without the Nile Notes we should never have known so well the ambitions of his young manhood when he was a dreamer of dreams. The chapters on the every-day occurrences of the trips are also full of interest, and touched with the author's characteristic humor.

The natives called all travellers howadji—shopkeepers—for such they conceived to be the occupation of the wandering Europeans and Americans who visited their land. To the native imagination the howadji was a being created to bestow bakshish, or alms, to buy bits of mummy bones, or even whole mummies, and to be cheated upon every occasion. Curtis refused to be cheated, gave bakshish only to the "miserable, old, and blind," and struck his followers dumb by insisting upon doing nothing for long hours but sit gazing upon a pyramid or ruined temple.

The journey up and down the Nile occupied two months, and the record of it will always be interesting as embodying the experiences of the Nile traveller in 1848. The literary charm of the book is great, many of the passages being in reality unrhymed poems of peculiar beauty. This volume was published in the spring of 1851, and was well received. There was an English edition which received many flattering notices, and this success confirmed the author in his determination to make literature his profession.

Mr. Curtis's next book, A Howadji in Syria, continued his journeyings in the East through Syria and Palestine. It is written in the style of the earlier work, and partakes of the same charm.

His third book, Lotus-Eating, had originally appeared in the Tribune as a series of letters written during a summer's journeyings through the Berkshire Hills, at Newport, and other sea-coast places, and at Niagara. This book is in Curtis's most delicate vein. Lotus-Eating was illustrated by Kensett, one of the most popular artists of the day, and a warm friend of the author. Both text and drawings recall to-day the grace and beauty of some old miniature in its quaint setting, a reflection of another and more picturesque age.

The Potiphar Papers followed Lotus-Eating, and showed Curtis in the light of a teacher of manners and morals to what was called the best society. The Potiphar family was a picture of the rich American without cultivation, and with no other ambition than to live in finer houses, have better horses, and give more expensive dinners than the rest of the world. In a series of letters by Mr. and Mrs. Potiphar and their friends the author shows the folly of such silly ambitions.

But the book which brought Mr. Curtis the most fame, both because of its artistic excellence and high literary value, is that charming idyll, Prue and I. In these pages the hero is an old book-keeper who lives in a humble way in an unfashionable street. But the book-keeper counts himself rich because of his many castles in Spain, whither he often travels, and about which he writes many delightful descriptions. There are other characters in the book who also own castles in Spain. Titbottom, the under-book-keeper, and Bourne, the millionnaire, share and share alike in this wonderful property, which one is never too poor to own, and never too rich not to desire. Each one tells stories in which Moorish palaces, marble fountains, moonlit balconies, West Indian sunsets, and tropical flowers are woven into an arabesque of color; but somehow all suggest a dreamy-eyed boy lying upon a sunny hill-slope watching an East Indian merchantman sail out of Providence harbor and fade away into a dim horizon.

There is one sweet and touching chapter called "My Cousin the Curate," in which Curtis pays loving tribute to the character of his brother Burrill. In the pages "Sea from Shore" is found that charming description of Providence in his youth, and "The Flying Dutchman" is the immortal legend transformed anew. Throughout the book are many pictures of the New York of forty years ago; what was then fashionable in manner, dress, and appointment; the favorite actor, the most popular opera, the newest book, all are gossiped about by the old book-keeper who looks on. The descriptions, with their quaint fancies and poetic rendering, are alike rich in retrospective value.

Both the Potiphar Papers and Prue and I appeared first serially in Putnam's Monthly, of which Curtis was for a time associate editor. Five years after the publication of his first book Mr. Curtis took a position on Harper's Magazine, and inaugurated the Easy Chair. These delightful papers, which now are collected in several volumes, included criticisms on art, literature, music, social events, and similar topics, and were a never-ending source of interest and delight to his audience. Like that of Holmes, in the Atlantic, it was a purely literary office, and it showed, as no other review could, the wide intellectual sympathy of the editor. The Easy Chair was conducted for thirty-eight years by Mr. Curtis, being discontinued at his death.

In 1863 Curtis accepted the position of editor of Harper's Weekly. Perhaps no other American writer has ever been in such peculiar touch with the people as was the editor of the Weekly at this time. It was not a purely literary sympathy, for from the beginning his interest in public questions was reflected in the editorial page. Whatever vexing problem faced Congress, whatever measure in relation to government or reform was before the people, was used as a text by the lay preacher of the Weekly. The most unbounded respect was his, even from those whose opinion differed from his own, while his admirers learned to wait for the cool judgment and the wise word which never failed. Mr. Curtis was a strong friend of the anti-slavery cause, and both before and during the war he unflinchingly advocated its rights, though his course cost him more than one personal friend. During this period as a lecturer and delegate to conventions he reflected the creed of the national party. He was nominated for Congress and accepted the nomination, though he anticipated the defeat that awaited him in a State where his party was weak. Throughout the entire struggle he stood side by side with the great reformers, one of the most interesting figures of that stormy period.

Perhaps the public movement with which Mr. Curtis's name will remain most closely associated is the Civil Service Reform Commission, of which he was the first president and always the leading spirit. The object of this commission was to obtain legal power to advance all Government clerks and employees by regular promotions, in place of the political patronage which then obtained. This campaign for purer public service was begun in 1871, and from that time Mr. Curtis's work for it was unceasing, until the hopes of the reformers were fulfilled by the passage of the Civil Service Reform Law, which led the way in time to the needed reform.

From the beginning of his literary career Mr. Curtis had been known as a lecturer of singular power. His lectures embraced a wide variety of subjects, some of the most famous being those delivered before colleges and at the meetings of the Chamber of Commerce in New York. Seventeen of these addresses alone were devoted to the civil service reform cause. His orations on the "Reunion of the Army of the Potomac;" on "Wendell Phillips;" "James Russell Lowell;" "Burns;" "The Puritan Principle;" "The Duty of the American Citizen to Politics," and other varied topics indicate the wide scope of this work. The abiding affection which he had inspired in the people at large made him one of the favorite orators at many commemorations of national importance. His orations and addresses are collected in thirteen volumes, and, with the Harper's Weekly editorials, form a scholarly review of one of the most interesting periods of American history.

Mr. Curtis's home was on Staten Island, where he died, in 1893.