The Last Leaf / Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America and Europe

by James Kendall Hosmer

AMERICAN HISTORIANS

As a Harvard undergraduate I roomed for a time in Hollis 8, a room occupied in turn by William H. Prescott and James Schouler, and perhaps I may attribute to some contagion caught as a transmittendum in that apartment, an itch for writing history which has brought some trouble to me and to the rather limited circle of readers whom I have reached. I remember debating, as a boy, whether the more desirable fame fell to the hero in a conflict or to the scribe who told the story. Whose place would one rather have? That of Timoleon and Nicias or of Plutarch and Thucydides their celebrants? But the celebrants, no doubt, seemed to their contemporaries very insignificant figures compared to the champions whose fame they perpetuated. The historians of America are a goodly company, scarcely less worthy than the champions whose deeds they have chronicled. With most men who, during the last seventy-five years, have written history in America, I have had contact, sometimes a mere glimpse, sometimes intimacy. Washington Irving and Prescott I never saw, though as to the latter I have just been making him responsible to some extent for my own little proclivity, Parkman, I only saw sitting with his handsome Grecian face relieved against a dignified background as he sat on the stage among the Corporation of Harvard University. Motley I have only seen as he stood with iron-grey curls over a ruddy, strenuous countenance topping a figure of vigorous symmetry as he spoke with animation at a scholars' dinner. But George Bancroft, Justin Winsor, and John Fiske I knew well, the last being in particular one of my best friends. I could tell stories too, of the living lights, but am concerned here with the ghosts and not with men still red-blooded.

I first saw George Bancroft when he was Minister at Berlin. He had read a little book of mine, The Color Guard, my diary as a Corporal of the Nineteenth Army Corps, scribbled off on my cap-top, my gun-stock, or indeed my shoe-sole, or whatever desk I could extemporise as we marched and fought. That book gave me some claim to his notice, but a better claim was that his wife was Elizabeth Davis, whom more than a hundred years ago my grandfather of the ancient First Parish in Plymouth had baptised and who as a girl had been my mother's playmate in gardens near Plymouth Rock. I did not presume upon such credentials as these to obtrude myself, and was pleasantly surprised one day by a note inviting me to the Embassy. It was a retired house near the Thiergarten. I found Mr. Bancroft embarrassed with duties which in those days gave trouble. German emigrants returning after prosperous years to the Fatherland were often pounced upon, the validity of their American citizenship denied, and taxes and military service demanded. It was tough work to straighten out such knots and the Minister was in the midst of such a tangle. But his high, broad forehead smoothed presently, and his grey eyes grew genial, while the vivacious features spoke with the very cordial impulse with which he greeted one who had heard the bullets of the Civil War whistle and was the son of his wife's old friend. Another tie was that his father, Dr. Aaron Bancroft of Worcester, and my grandfather, had stood shoulder to shoulder in the controversy of a century ago which rent apart New England Congregationalism. Presently we sat down to lunch, a party of three, for the board was graced by the presence of Mrs. Bancroft, a woman of fine accomplishments polished through contact with high society in many lands, and a gifted talker. Many readers have found her published letters charming. The talk was largely of the Civil War and Bancroft's words were in the best sense patriotic. During and before that period his course had been much disapproved. He had been Collector of Boston under Democratic auspices and had served under Polk as Secretary of the Navy, where he laid the country lastingly under debt by establishing the Naval Academy at Annapolis. I do not approve or condemn, but I felt him wisely and warmly patriotic, deeply concerned that the outcome of our long national agony should be worthy of the sacrifice. The breath of a pleasant spring day pervaded the elegant apartment while the birds sang in the tall trees stretching out toward the forest of the Thiergarten. I especially associate with the Bancrofts their beautiful outdoor environment. Another day I drove with the Minister, our companions in the carriage being the wife and the daughter of Ernst Curtius, to visit the rose gardens about Berlin. I have met few men readier or more agreeable in conversation. With a pleasant smile and intonation he touched gracefully on this and that, sometimes in reminiscence. I remember in particular a vivid setting forth of an interview with Goethe which he had enjoyed as a boy fifty years before. Sometimes his talk was of poetry in general and I was much struck with his frequent happy application of quotations to the little events of the drive and phases of feeling that came up as the day went on. The sun set gloriously, "So stirbt ein Held," said Bancroft, as he burst with feeling into the beautiful lyric of which these words are a line. The best German poetry seemed to be at his tongue's end and he recited it with sympathy and accuracy which called out much admiration from the cultivated German ladies with whom we were driving. Most interesting of all was Bancroft's evident passion for roses. The gardeners, as we stopped, were plainly surprised at his knowledge of their varieties and the best methods of cultivation. He was so well versed in the lore of the rose and so devoted to its cultivation one might well have thought it his horse and not his hobby. He possessed at Newport a rose garden far famed for the number of its varieties and the perfection of the flowers, and it was an interesting sight at Washington to see Bancroft, even when nearing ninety, busy in his garden in H Street, one attendant shielding his light figure with a sun umbrella, while another held at hand, hoe, shears, and twine, the implements to train and cull. Is there a subtle connection between roses and history? Parkman wrote an elaborate book upon rose culture which I believe is still of authority, and John Fiske had a conservatory opening out of his library and the rose of all flowers was the one he prized. Here is a neat turn of McMaster. At a dinner given in his honour a big bunch of American Beauties was opposite to him as he sat. It fell to me to make a welcoming speech. Catching at the occasion, I suggested a connection between roses and history and referred to McMaster close behind his American Beauties as an instance in point, at the same time expressing with earnestness my strong admiration of that good writer's work. McMaster rose, his face glowing in response to my emphatic compliment. His speech consisted of only one sentence, "I have one bond with the rose, I blush."

I owe many favours to Bancroft; the greatest perhaps that he allowed me to consult to my heart's content the papers of Samuel Adams, a priceless collection which he possessed. For this he gave me carte blanche to use his library in Washington, though he himself was absent, a favour which he said he had never accorded to an investigator before. It was an inspiring place for a student, the shelves burdened with treasures in manuscript as well as print. The most interesting portrait of Bancroft presents him as a nonagenarian, against this impressive background, at work to the last. The critics of our day minimise Bancroft and his school. History in that time walked in garments quite too flowing, it is said, and with an overdisplay of the Horatian purple patch. Our grandsons may feel that the history of our time walks in garments too sad-coloured and scant. Research and accuracy are, of course, primary requisites in this field, but there should be some employment of the picturesque. The world was beautiful in the old days and human life was vivid. Ought we to deny to all this a warm and graphic setting forth? If we do we shall do it to our cost. Is it the proper attitude of the historian simply to write, without thought of anything so irrelevant as a reader? Bancroft was a pioneer, breaking the way ponderously perhaps, but he delved faithfully. If the orotund rolls too sonorously in his periods it was an excess in which his age upheld him. He was a good path-breaker and ought not to be lightly esteemed by those who now go to and fro with ease through the roads he opened.

My first touch with Justin Winsor was in my Freshman year at Cambridge. We both had rooms under the roof of an uncle of mine. His room was afterwards occupied, I believe, by Theodore Roosevelt. It had been rubbed into me by many snubs that a vast gulf interposed between the Freshman and upper-class man. I used to pass his door with reverence, for the story went that, even as a boy, he had written a history of Duxbury, Massachusetts. Once during his temporary absence, his door standing open, I dared to step into the apartment and surveyed with awe the well-filled shelves and scribbled papers; but in later years when I had won some small title to notice I found him most kind and approachable. The abundance of the Harvard Library and still better the rich accumulations in the cells of his own memory he held for general use. He loaned me once for months at St. Louis a rarely precious seventeenth-century book, which had belonged to Carlyle, and whose margins were sometimes filled with Carlyle's notes. He imparted freely from his own vast information and it was pleasant indeed to hold a chair for an hour or two in his hospitable home. In our last interview the prose and the solemn romance of life were strangely blended. We had just heard the burial service in Appleton Chapel read by Phillips Brooks over the coffin of James Russell Lowell; then we rode together on the crowded platform of a street-car to the grave at Mount Auburn; a rough and jostling company on the platform, and in my mind a throng of deep and melancholy thoughts. I never saw him again. In his calling he was a master of research extracting with unlimited toil the last fragment of evidence from the blindest scribblings of earlier times. These results, painfully accumulated, he set down with absolute faithfulness; his bibliographies supplementing his own contributions and also those of the many writers whom he inspired and guided in like labours are exhaustive. Rarely is there a wisp to be gleaned where Winsor has garnered. If he was deficient in the power of vivid and picturesque presentment, it is only that like all men he had his limitations.

John Fiske I met soon after his graduation at Cambridge. It is odd to recall him when one thinks of his later physique, as a youth with fresh ruddy face, tall and not broad, a rather slender pillar of a man, corniced with an abundant pompadour of brown hair. He was just then making fame for himself in the domain of philosophy, contributing to the New York World papers well charged with revolutionary ideas which were then causing consternation, so lucidly and attractively formulated that they interested the most cursory reader. Perhaps John Fiske ought always to have kept to philosophy. Mrs. Mary Hemenway, that princess among Ladies Bountiful, told me once the story of his change. He made to her a frank statement of his situation. He was conscious of power to do service; he was married, had children, and was embarrassed with care about their bread, butter, and education after the usual fashion of the scholar. John Fiske said in those days the difficult problem of his life was to get enough corn-beef for dinner to have hash for breakfast the next day. Must he descend to desk and courtroom work to make a way, or could a way be found by which he might do his proper task and at the same time be a bread-winner? "Write American history," said Mrs. Hemenway, "and I will stand behind you." She was inspired with the idea of making America in the high sense American and saw in the young genius a good ally. The chance was embraced and John Fiske after that dipped only fitfully into philosophical themes, writing, however, The Destiny of Man, The Idea of God, Cosmic Roots of Loveland Self-sacrifice, and Life Everlasting. He gave his main strength, to a thing worth while, the establishment in America of Anglo-Saxon freedom. Would he have served the world better had he adhered to profound speculations? As the patriarch in a household into which have been born a dozen children and grandchildren, I have had good opportunity for study. What so feeble as the feebleness of the babe! It depends upon its mother for its sustenance, almost for its breath and its heart-beats. The sheltering arms and the loving breast must always be at hand as the very conditions of its existence. I have watched in wife and daughters, as what grandsire has not, the persistent sleepless care which alone kept the baby alive, and noted the sweet effusion of affection which the need and constant care made to flow abundantly, nor do the care and consequent outflow of love cease with babyhood. The child must ever be fed, clothed, trained, and counselled; and the youth, too, of which the baby is father, must be watchfully guided till the stature is completed. The rod of Moses smiting the rock evoked the beneficent water, the unremitting parent-care striking the indifferent heart evokes the beautiful mother and father love which grows abroad. We cannot love children well without loving others, their companions, and at last the great worldly environment in which they and we all are placed. Hence, from the extension of infancy, through a period of long years, proceeds at last from the hearts which are subjected to its influence the noble thing which we call altruism: love for others than ourselves and the other high spiritual instincts which are the crown of human nature. The recognition of the extension of infancy as the source from which in our slow evolution comes the brightest thing in the universe belongs to our own time. It is perhaps the climax of our philosophic speculation. What more feeble than the snowflakes! But accumulated and compressed they become the glacier which may carapace an entire zone and determine its configuration into mountain and valley. What more feeble than the feebleness of the babe! And yet that multiplied by the million through aeons of time and over continents of space fashions humanity after the sublime pattern shown on the Mount. If to John Fiske belongs the credit of first recognising in the scheme of evolution the significance of this mighty factor, the extension of infancy (he himself so believed and I do not think it can be questioned that he was the first to recognise it), what philosophic thinker has to a greater extent laid the world in debt? This I shall not further discuss. I am touching in these papers only upon light and exterior things, nor am I competent to deal with philosophical problems and controversies. John Fiske gave his strength to the writing of history, where, too, there are controversies into which I do not propose to enter. I will only say that I resent the account of him which makes him to have been a mere populariser whose merit lies solely or for the most part in the fact that, while appropriating materials accumulated by others, he had only Goldsmith's faculty of making them graceful and attractive to the mass of readers. His philosophical instinct, on the other hand, discovered, as few writers have done, the subtle links through which in history facts are related to facts and are weighed wisely, in the protagonists, the motives and qualities which make them foremost figures. He saw unerringly where emphasis should be put, what should be salient, what subordinate. Too many writers, German especially, perhaps, have the fault of "writing a subject to its dregs," giving to the unimportant undue place. In Fiske's estimation of facts there is no failure of proper proportion, the great thing is always in the foreground, the trifle in shadow or quite unnoticed. To do this accurately is a fine power. He delved more deeply himself perhaps than many of his critics have been willing to acknowledge, but I incline to say that his main service to history was in detecting with unusual insight the subtle relations of cause and effect, links which other and sometimes very able men failed adequately to recognise. In a high sense he was indeed a populariser. He wore upon himself like an ample garment a splendid erudition under which he moved, however, not at all oppressed or trammelled. Much of the lore of Greece, Rome, the Orient, and also of modern peoples was as familiar to him as the contents of the morning papers. With acumen he selected and his memory retained; the cells of his capacious brain somehow held it ready for instant use. With good discrimination he could touch lightly or discourse profoundly as occasion required, his learning and insight always telling effectively, either at the breakfast-table of the plain citizen, or in the pages of the school text-book. "John," said such a plain man the other day to a friend who also had been in touch with Fiske, "the biggest thing that ever came into your life or mine was when that broad thinker familiarly darkened our doors." The two men stood reverently under John Fiske's portrait, the autograph signature underneath seeming in a way to connect the living with the dead, acknowledging the force of the personality which had made real to them as nothing else had ever done the deepest and finest things.

John Fiske was often a guest in my home and I have sat, though less frequently, with him in his library in Berkeley Street in Cambridge, the flowers from the conservatory sending their perfumes among the crowded books and the south wind breathing pleasantly from the garden which had been Longfellow's, in the rear, to the garden of Howells in front. His passion for music was scarcely less than his interest in speculation and history. He knew well the great composers, and had himself composed. Though the master of no instrument, he could touch the piano with feeling. He had a pleasant baritone voice, and nothing gave him more refreshment after a week of study or lecturing than to pour himself out in song. His accompanist had need not only of great technical skill but of stout vertebrae, and strong wrists; for hours at a time the piano stool must be occupied while the difficult melodies of various lands were unriddled and interpreted. Those were interesting afternoons when, dropping his pen, he plunged into music as a strong confident swimmer plunges into the stream which he especially loves, interpreting with warm feeling Mendelssohn and Beethoven, wandering unlost in the vocal labyrinths of Dvorak and Wagner, but never happier than when interpreting the emotions of simple folk-songs, or some noble Shakespearian lyrics like "Who is Sylvia, what is she, that all the swains commend her?" Music stimulated him to vivacity and in the pauses would come outbursts of abandon. One day the pet dog of a daughter of mine ensconced himself unawares under the sofa and was disrespectfully napping while John Fiske sang. In a pause the philosopher broke into an animated declamation over some matter while standing near the sofa, whereat the pug thinking himself challenged tore out to the front with sudden violent barks. The two confronted each other, the pug frantically vindicating his dignity while the philosopher on his side fixing his eye upon the interrupter declaimed and gesticulated. As to volubility and sonorousness they stood about equal. I am bound to say the pug prevailed. John Fiske retired in discomfiture while the pug was carried off in triumph in the arms of his little mistress. He had fairly barked the great man down. I once shared with him the misery of being a butt. In St. Louis in those days the symposium was held in honour, and particularly N.O. Nelson, the well-known profit-sharing captain of industry, was the entertainer of select groups whose geniality was stimulated by modest potations of Anheuser-Bush, in St. Louis always the Castor and Pollux in every convivial firmament. Such a symposium was once held in special honour of Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson, a transient visitor. "Dr. Emerson," said a guest, "in the diary of your father just edited by you occurs a passage which needs illumination. 'Edward and I tried this morning for three quarters of an hour to get the calf into the barn without success. The Irish girl stuck her finger into his mouth and got the calf in in two minutes. I like folks that can do things.' Now," said the guest, "we all know what became of Emerson, we all know what became of Edward, for you are here to-night, but what became of the Irish girl and the calf?" Dr. Emerson laughingly explained the probable fate of the girl and the calf, and in the hilarity that followed, the question arose as to why the Irish girl's finger had been so persuasive. I, city-bred and green as grass as to country lore, rashly attempted to explain; the inserted finger gave a good purchase on the calf which in its pain became at once tractable, but the men present who had been farm-boys, with loud laughter ridiculed the suggestion. Did I not know that nature had provided a conduit through which the needed sustenance was conveyed from the maternal udder, and that it was quite possible to delude the unsuspecting calf into the belief that the slyly inserted finger was that conduit? The triumph of the Irish girl was explained, and I sank back, covered with confusion. Fiske, however, blurted out: "Why, I never should have thought of that in all my life," whereat he too became the target of ridicule.

I never saw John Fiske happier than once at Concord. Our host had invited us for a day and had prepared a programme that only Concord could furnish. The prelude was a performance of the Andante to a Sonata of Rubinstein, Opus 12, rendered exquisitely by the daughter of our host. I saw the great frame of my fellow-guest heave with emotion while his breath came almost in sobs as his spirit responded to the music. Then came a canoe-trip on the river to which John Fiske joyfully assented though some of the rest of us were not without apprehension. Fiske in a canoe was a ticklish proposition, but there he was at last, comfortably recumbent, his head propped up on cushions, serenely at ease though a very narrow margin intervened between water-line and gunwale. The performer of the Sonata, who was as deft at the paddle as she was at the piano, served as his pilot and propeller while the rest of us formed an escort which could be turned into a rescue party if occasion required. A stout, capacious rowboat followed immediately in the wake of the canoe. We went down the dark, placid current in the fine summer weather to the Battleground, and then looked into the solemn forest aisle which arches over the narrow Assabeth. The day was perfect, the flowers and birds were at their best, the pleasant nature was all about us. All this John Fiske drank in to the full but still more was he touched by the great associations of the environment. From the bank yonder had been "fired the shot heard round the world." The hill-tops, meadows, the gentle river had been loved and frequented by Hawthorne, Thoreau, and Emerson; in these surroundings had bloomed forth the finest flowering of American literature. No heart could be more sensitive than was his to influences of this kind. As we moved cautiously about him, anxious about the equilibrium, though he was calm, he discoursed with animation. The afternoon waned gloriously into the dusk of the happy day.

The little hill-town of Petersham in the back of Worcester County was John Fiske's summer home, a spot he tenderly loved. It is a retired place made very attractive in later years through the agency of his brother-in-law, who with wise and kindly art has added to the natural beauty. I saw John Fiske here in his home of homes to which his heart clung more and more fondly as his end approached. The weight of his great body, accumulating morbidly in a way which could not be counteracted, fairly overwhelmed at last his bright and noble life. As the doctors put it, a heart made for a frame of one hundred and sixty pounds could not do the work for three hundred. When, in his weakness, death was suggested to him as probably near, "Death!" said he simply and sweetly, "why, that only means going to Petersham to stay!" and there among the flowers and fields, remote from the world, though his spirit remains widely and solemnly pervasive, he has gone to stay.