Читать книгу The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 70, August, 1863 - Various - Страница 2

"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

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. Praisèd 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!'"

Or Jake's droll commentary on the story of Old Bridger, ousted from his fort, and robbed of his goods, by the Saints, in the name of the Prophet Brigham.

"'It's olluz so,' says Jake; 'Paul plants, and Apollyon gets the increase. Not that Bridger's like Paul, any more 'n we're like Apollyon; but we're goan to have all the cider off his apple-trees.'"

Or, again, Jake's compliments to "Armstrong of Oregon," that galloping Vigilant Committee of one.

"I'll help you, if I know how, Armstrong. I ha'n't seen no two in my life, Old Country or New Country, Saints or Gentiles, as I'd do more for 'n you and your brother. I've olluz said, ef the world was chock full of Armstrongs, Paradise wouldn't pay, and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob mout just as well blow out their candle and go under a bushel-basket,—unless a half-bushel would kiver 'em."

But the true hero of the book is the horse Don Fulano. It is easy to see that Winthrop was a first-rate horseman, from the loving manner in which he describes and dwells on the perfections of the matchless stallion. None but one who knew every point of a horse, none but one of the Centaur breed, could have drawn Don Fulano,—just as none but a born skater could have written those inimitable skating-scenes in his story of "Love and Skates."

"He was an American horse,—so they distinguish in California one brought from the old States,—A SUPERB YOUNG STALLION, PERFECTLY BLACK, WITHOUT MARK. It was magnificent to see him, as he circled about me, fire in his eye, pride in his nostril, tail flying like a banner, power and grace from tip to tip. No one would ever mount him, or ride him, unless it was his royal pleasure. He was conscious of his representative position, and showed his paces handsomely."

This is the creature who takes the lead in that stirring and matchless "Gallop of Three" to the Luggernel Spring, to quote from which would be to spoil it. It must be read entire.

In the "Canoe and Saddle" is recorded Winthrop's long ride across the continent. Setting out in a canoe, from Port Townsend, in Vancouver's Island, he journeyed, without company of other white men, to the Salt Lake City and thence to "the States,"—a tedious and barbarous experience, heightened, in this account of it, by the traveller's cheery spirits, his ardent love of Nature, and capacity to describe the grand natural scenery, of the effect of which upon himself he says, at the end,—

"And in all that period, while I was so near to Nature, the great lessons of the wilderness deepened into my heart day by day, the hedges of conventionalism withered away from my horizon, and all the pedantries of scholastic thought perished out of my mind forever."

He bore hardships with the courage and imperturbable good-nature of a born gentleman. It is when men are starving, when the plating of romance is worn off by the chafe of severe and continued suffering,—it is then that "blood tells." Winthrop had evidently that keen relish for rough life which the gently nurtured and highly cultivated man has oftener than his rude neighbor, partly because, in his case, contrast lends a zest to the experience. Thus, when he camps with a gang of "road-makers," in the farthest Western wilderness,—a part of Captain McClellan's Pacific Railroad Expedition,—how thoroughly he enjoys the rough hospitality and rude wit of these pioneers!

"In such a Platonic republic as this a man found his place according to his powers. The cooks were no base scullions; they were brethren, whom conscious ability, sustained by universal suffrage, had endowed with the frying-pan."

"My hosts were a stalwart gang.... Their talk was as muscular as their arms. When these laughed, as only men fresh and hearty and in the open air can laugh, the world became mainly grotesque: it seemed at once a comic thing to live,—a subject for chuckling, that we were bipeds, with noses,—a thing to roar at, that we had all met there from the wide world, to hobnob by a frolicsome fire with tin pots of coffee, and partake of crisped bacon and toasted dough-boys in ridiculous abundance. Easy laughter infected the atmosphere. Echoes ceased to be pensive, and became jocose. A rattling humor pervaded the forest, and Green River rippled with noise of fantastic jollity. Civilization and its dilettante diners-out sneer when Clodpole at Dives's table doubles his soup, knifes his fish, tilts his plate into his lap, puts muscle into the crushing of his méringue, and tosses off the warm beaker in his finger-bowl. Camps by Tacoma sneer not at all, but candidly roar, at parallel accidents. Gawky makes a cushion of his flapjack. Butterfingers drops his red-hot rasher into his bosom, or lets slip his mug of coffee into his boot drying at the fire,—a boot henceforth saccharine. A mule, slipping his halter, steps forward unnoticed, puts his nose into the circle, and brays resonant. These are the jocular boons of life, and at these the woodsmen guffaw with lusty good-nature. Coarse and rude the jokes may be, but not nasty, like the innuendoes of pseudo-refined cockneys. If the woodsmen are guilty of uncleanly wit, it differs from the uncleanly wit of cities as the mud of a road differs from the sticky slime of slums.

"It is a stout sensation to meet masculine, muscular men at the brave point of a penetrating Boston hooihut,—men who are mates,—men to whom technical culture means nought,—men to whom myself am nought, unless I can saddle, lasso, cook, sing, and chop,—unless I am a man of nerve and pluck, and a brother in generosity and heartiness. It is restoration to play at cudgels of jocoseness with a circle of friendly roughs, not one of whom ever heard the word bore,—with pioneers, who must think and act, and wrench their living from the closed hand of Nature."

And here is a dinner "in the open."

"Upon the carte du jour at Restaurant Sowee was written Grouse. 'How shall we have them?' said I, cook and convive, to Loolowcan, marmiton and convive. 'One of these cocks of the mountain shall be fried, since gridiron is not,' responded I to myself, after meditation; 'two shall be spitted and roasted; and, as Azrael may not want us before breakfast to-morrow, the fourth shall go upon the carte de déjeuner'.

"'O Pork! what a creature thou art!' continued I, in monologue, cutting neat slices of that viand with my bowie-knife, and laying them fraternally, three in a bed, in the frying-pan. 'Blessed be Moses, who forbade thee to the Jews, whereby we, of freer dispensations, heirs of all the ages, inherit also pigs more numerous and bacon cheaper! O Pork! what could campaigners do without thy fatness, thy leanness, thy saltness, thy portableness?'

"Here Loolowcan presented me the three birds, plucked featherless as Plato's man. The two roasters we planted carefully on spits before a sultry spot of the fire. From a horizontal stick, supported on forked stakes, we suspended by a twig over each roaster an automatic baster, an inverted cone of pork, ordained to yield its spicy juices to the wooing flame, and drip bedewing on each bosom beneath. The roasters ripened deliberately, while keen and quick fire told upon the frier, the first course of our feast. Meanwhile I brewed a pot of tea, blessing Confucius for that restorative weed, as I had blessed Moses for his abstinence from porkers.

"Need I say that the grouse were admirable, that everything was delicious, and the Confucian weed first chop? Even a scouse of mouldy biscuit met the approval of Loolowcan. Feasts cooked under the greenwood tree, and eaten by their cooks after a triumphant day of progress, are sweeter than the conventional banquets of languid Christendom."

"Life in the Open Air"—containing sketches of travel among the mountains and lakes of Maine, as well as the story of "Love and Skates," which has been spoken of, "The March of the Seventh Regiment," "Washington as a Camp," an essay descriptive of Church's great picture, "The Heart of the Andes," and two fragments, one of them the charming commencement of a story which promised to be one of his best and most enjoyable efforts in this direction—is the concluding volume of Winthrop's collected writings. I speak of it in this place, because it is in some part a companion-book to the volumes we have been discussing. It is as full of buoyant life, of fresh and noble thought, of graceful wit and humor, as those; in parts it contains the most finished of his literary work. Few Americans who read it at the time will ever forget that stirring description of the march of the New-York Seventh; it is a piece of the history of our war which will live and be read as long as Americans read their history. It moved my blood, in the reading, tonight, as it did in those days—which seem already some centuries old, so do events crowd the retrospect—when we were all reading it in the pages of the "Atlantic." In the unfinished story of "Brightly's Orphan" there is a Jew boy from Chatham Street, an original of the first water, who, though scarce fairly introduced, will, I am sure, make a place for himself and for his author in the memories of all who relish humor of the best kind.

"Cecil Dreeme" and "Edwin Brothertoft" are quite other books than these we have spoken of. Here Winthrop tried a different vein,—two different veins, perhaps. Both are stories of suffering and crime, stories of the world and society. In one it is a woman, in the other a man, who is wronged. One deals with New York city-life of the very present day; the other is a story of the Revolutionary War, and of Tories and Patriots. The popular verdict has declared him successful, even here. "Cecil Dreeme" has run through no less than fifteen editions.

In this story we are shown New York "society" as doubtless Winthrop knew it to be. Yet the book has a curious air of the Old-World; it might be a story of Venice, almost. It tells us of Old-World vices and crimes, and the fittings and furnishings are of a piece. The localities, indeed, are sketched so faithfully, that a stranger to the city, coming suddenly, in his wanderings, upon Chrysalis College Buildings, could not fail to recognize them at once,—as indeed happened to a country friend of mine recently, to his great delight. But the men are Americans, bred and formed—and for the most part spoiled—in Europe; Americans who have gone to Paris before their time, if it be true, what a witty Bostonian said, that good Americans go to Paris when they die. With all this, the book has a strange charm, so that it takes possession of you in spite of yourself. It is as though it drew away the curtain, for one slight moment, from the mysteries which "society" decorously hides,—as though he who drew the curtain stood beside it, pointing with solemn finger and silent indignation to the baseness of which he gives you a glimpse. Yet even here the good carries the day, and that in no maudlin way, but because the true men are the better men.

These, then, are Winthrop's writings,—the literary works of a young man who died at thirty-two, and who had spent a goodly part of his mature life in the saddle and the canoe, exploring his own country, and in foreign travel. As we look at the volumes, we wonder how he found time for so much; but when we have read, we wonder yet more at the excellence of all he wrote. In all and through all shines his own noble spirit; and thus these books of his, whose printed pages he never saw, will keep his memory green amongst us; for, through them, all who read may know that there wrote a true gentleman.

Once he wrote,—

Even so he fell; but in these written works, as in his gallant death, he left with us lessons which will yet win battles for the good cause of American liberty, which he held dearest in his heart.