REFERENCES:
George Ticknor: Life of William Hickling Prescott, 1864.
Rollo Ogden: William Hickling Prescott, ‘American Men of Letters,’ 1904.
H. T. Peck: William Hickling Prescott, ‘English Men of Letters,’ 1905.
I
HIS LIFE
The Prescotts are an ancient family as antiquity is reckoned in the United States. The first Anglo-American of that name, John Prescott, an old Cromwellian soldier, took up residence in this country about 1640, and after living awhile at Watertown, Massachusetts, made a permanent home for himself at Lancaster, then a frontier settlement. When thieving Indians plundered him, it is said that he used to put on helmet, gorget, and cuirass, and start in pursuit. Being a powerful man and stern of countenance, his terrific appearance in his armor had a salutary effect on the red men.
Jonas Prescott, a son of the old warrior, settled at Groton, Massachusetts, and there the family history centres for more than a hundred years. They were a vigorous race, useful and conspicuous in the military and civil affairs of the colony.
William Hickling Prescott, the historian, was born in Salem, Massachusetts, on May 4, 1796. His father, Judge William Prescott, was a man of eminent abilities, esteemed for his great legal acquirements and beloved for his personal worth. His mother, Catharine Hickling, a daughter of Thomas Hickling of Boston, was distinguished for energy and benevolence, as well as for a certain gayety of temperament, a trait which she transmitted to her famous son. The grandfather of the historian was Colonel William Prescott, founder of the town of Pepperell, who, on the night of June 16, 1775, with his force of a thousand men, threw up a redoubt on Bunker (Breed’s) Hill, and on the following day defended it until defence was no longer possible.
Prescott was drilled in the classics by one of old Parr’s pupils, the Reverend Doctor John Gardiner, rector of Trinity Church, Boston. He was an insatiable reader of books; but it were idle to assume that his interest in Spanish history and literature took its first impulse, as has been asserted, from the reading of Southey’s translation of Amadis of Gaul.
He entered Harvard College in the Sophomore year and was graduated in 1814. A misfortune befell him early in his course which changed his whole life and made enormous demands on his philosophy and courage. In one of the frolics attending the breaking up of commons, when small missiles were flying about the room, Prescott was struck full in the left eye with a hard crust of bread. The sight was instantly destroyed, and he lived for years in apprehension of what, fortunately, never overtook him, total blindness.
He began the study of law, but illness and consequent weakening of the power of vision put an end to it. In search of health and diversion he went abroad. After spending some months in the Azores, in the family of his maternal grandfather, Thomas Hickling, then United States consul at St. Michael’s, he visited Italy, France, and England. In London he consulted eminent oculists, who were able, however, to give him but little encouragement.
Shortly after his return home he married Miss Susan Amory of Boston, whose maternal grandfather, Captain Linzee, was in command of a British sloop of war at the outbreak of the Revolution, and had cannonaded the redoubt on Bunker Hill. In 1821 Prescott planned a course of literary study. Beginning oddly enough with grammars and rhetorics, he followed this preliminary reading with a wide survey first of English literature, then of French and Italian. German he tried and gave up. With his enfeebled sight he could do but little of the actual reading for himself; the bulk of it had to be done for him.
Prescott’s literary life was peculiar in that he prepared himself to become a man of letters with no definite conception of what he would write about. He was not, like the literary heroes of whom we read, so possessed of his subject from boyhood that all the ancient neighbors distinctly recall early evidences of his predilection. His first impulse towards the studies in which he won renown came from George Ticknor. To help Prescott pass away his time Ticknor read to his friend the lectures he had been giving to advanced classes at Harvard, lectures which formed the basis of his History of Spanish Literature. This was in 1824. Prescott became enthusiastic over the study of the Spanish language and history. A year later he was thinking what brilliant passages might be written on the Inquisition, the Conquest of Granada, and the exploits of the Great Captain. After balancing Italian and Spanish subjects against each other, he decided, not without misgivings, on a history of Ferdinand and Isabella, and early in 1826 wrote to Alexander H. Everett, United States minister at Madrid, asking his help in collecting materials.
Three and a half years of study preceded the writing of the first chapter; ten and a half years in all were required to make the book. Its enthusiastic reception from scholars and public alike led Prescott to take up cognate subjects. The list of his writings is brief, but, taking into account the difficulties involved, one may say without exaggeration that Prescott’s historical works represent a labor little short of titanic.
The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic appeared in 1837. It was followed by The Conquest of Mexico, 1843; Critical and Historical Essays, 1845 (consisting chiefly of papers reprinted from the ‘North American Review’); The Conquest of Peru, 1847; The History of Philip the Second, 1855 (left unfinished at the author’s death). To this list of important works may be added a brief continuation of Robertson’s Charles the Fifth, and a Memoir of Abbott Lawrence.
Prescott’s life was without marked external incident. His surroundings were ideal. Having inherited a fortune, he could give himself to toilsome literary undertakings with no care for the financial result. He took satisfaction in the thought of having refuted Johnson’s dictum that no man could write history unless he had good eyes.
Early in 1858 Prescott was stricken with apoplexy, but so far recovered as to be able to resume work on the History of Philip the Second. A second attack (January 27, 1859) ended in his death.
II
PRESCOTT’S CHARACTER
To those who knew him in varying degrees of intimacy, whether as friends, neighbors, or chance acquaintance, Prescott seemed the incarnation of urbanity, thoughtfulness, good humor. To us who know him only through the story of his life he seems notable for his heroic qualities.
He had enormous courage and force of will. That other men have performed great tasks under like difficulties cannot lessen the glory of his individual achievement. Handicapped by partial blindness, he wrote history, a type of literature which makes the most exacting demands on the physical powers.
Had Prescott’s genius inclined him towards poetry or fiction, the heroic element in his literary life would have been less noteworthy. In general a novelist is not expected to read; what is chiefly required of him in the way of preparation is, that he shall observe, feel, and occasionally think—but not read; much reading makes a dull story-teller. The novelist gleans material as he walks the street. For his purpose an hour of talk with ‘a set of wretched un-idea’d girls,’ as Doctor Johnson half affectionately, half pettishly, called them, is worth ten hours over a book. History is another matter. The historian must often read a thousand pages in order to write one. And the work of preparation is indescribably exhausting; there is so much detail to set in order, so many documents to be consulted, such a wilderness of notes to be arranged, compared, and fitted into place. The task, difficult under the best conditions, must seem endless to any one with an imperfect sense.
A man with good eye-sight is like a man with the free use of his legs, he goes where he pleases. But a scholar with defective vision is an invalid in a wheeled chair. Prescott, being denied one of the greatest conveniences of study, was forced to try expedients. With most writers pen and ink are an indispensable aid to composition. Prescott used memory instead. Not only was the knowledge accumulated, arranged, and weighed, but it was put into literary form, the paragraphs measured and the sentences polished before the actual writing was begun. Prescott often carried in his head, for days at a time, the equivalent of sixty pages of printed text, and on occasion, seventy-five pages. Only by reflecting on the difficulties met and overcome can the amateur of literature arrive at a conception of Prescott’s indomitable courage.
Add to force and persistency of purpose another notable trait, a passion for nobility of character. Prescott, unwearied in self-examination, studied his own moral nature as he studied the pages of his manuscript, that he might weed out the faults. The methods he employed to this end were often whimsical, and even childlike; but in their touching simplicity lies the best proof of the genuineness of the motive that prompted them.
III
THE WRITER
Prescott gave unusual measure of time and thought to the problem of expression. With a view to grounding himself in the technical part of literature, he invoked the aid of those now forgotten worthies, Lindley Murray and Hugh Blair—how greatly to his advantage would be difficult to say. Books of this sort are so often disfigured by a vicious or, what is worse, a commonplace style that it is a question whether one does not lose by example all that he gains by precept.
Escaping these influences, Prescott took up the chief English authors, beginning with Ascham, Sidney, Bacon, Browne, Raleigh, and Milton. His mind was constantly on the alert to discover by what means these masters produced their effects. His journals show how painstaking he was in these studies, with what intense interest he turned the problem of the art of expression over and over in his mind.
When he came to print, it was observed first of all that he had a ‘style.’ The self-conscious literary workman was plainly visible. Prescott had evidently aimed to produce certain effects through the balance of his periods, the choice of his words, the length and structure of his sentences. Every one said: ‘He is an artist.’ Praise could not have been more aptly bestowed. Among many eminent artists in words Prescott was one of the most conscientious.
But the literary style of the Ferdinand and Isabella had the defect of being too apparent. One often found himself taking note of the manner of expression before he took note of the thought. The panoply of words glittered from afar. It was brilliant but metallic, magnificent but artificial.
The criticism of his first book taught Prescott the futility of worrying about style—after one has worried sufficiently. He was no less anxious to improve; he noted the mannerisms into which he had fallen, resolved to correct them, and that was the conclusion of the whole matter. He stopped dwelling overmuch on the fashion of his writing, and at once gained in ease and naturalness. After ten years of labor he had mastered the materials of his art. His workmanship improved to the last. The volumes of the History of Philip the Second have literary characteristics so gracious as to add sharpness to the regret that this noble work had to be left unfinished.
IV
THE HISTORIES
The Ferdinand and Isabella is not a formidable book for size. A timid reader, shrinking from fifteen hundred pages of any literature but fiction, need not fear mortgaging too much of his time in the perusal. Compared with a reading of Freeman’s Norman Conquest or Carlyle’s Frederick, his task is light.
In an introductory section Prescott traces the growth of Castile and Aragon, with their dependencies, up to the time when Ferdinand and Isabella come on the stage of history. Perhaps there is a lack of detail here and there. One would like to know the steps of the process by which the Spaniards regained the territory from which they had been driven by the Saracenic invasion of the Eighth Century. Bitter as were the jealousies and quarrels of the various petty states, they made common cause against the Mohammedans. They hated the hereditary enemy both as infidels and usurpers. Hatred fostered the national spirit.
The history proper is divided into two parts. The first has chiefly to do with the internal policy of Ferdinand and Isabella. It was the period when law displaced anarchy. The law might be severe or even unjust, but it was at all events law. Here is shown how the power of the nobles was curbed, warring factions pacified, banditti of all sorts kept within bounds, and that too whether they lived in castles or lurked in dark corners, heresy suppressed in a truly rigorous fashion, above all the national ideal strengthened. To use a homely figure, Ferdinand and Isabella took up the problem of national housekeeping and handled it as it had never been handled before. A reign of order and economy was inaugurated. Thieving servants were put under restraint or discharged, poachers were apprehended, and the gypsies who had impudently camped on the best part of the estates were driven off. A government which for years had run at loose ends was now under masterful control.
The second part illustrates the foreign policy of the two monarchs. Having made a nation out of an assemblage of turbulent states, Ferdinand and Isabella were enabled to take a conspicuous place among the sovereigns of Europe. By good fortune in war and in discovery, by diplomatic shrewdness and religious zeal, their influence was felt throughout Europe and over the seas. Spain was no longer isolated. Her name carried weight; her will was respected.
Much of the narrative proceeds by divisions each of which might have been printed as a monograph. A certain amount of space is given to the Inquisition, so much to the war in Granada, so many chapters to the history of Columbus, so many to the colonial policy, to the Italian wars, to the life of Gonsalvo of Cordova, to the career of Cardinal Ximenes.
While in no sense neglecting the constitutional side of the problems before him, the historian’s bent is to the biographical and pictorial phases of the reign. On these he dwells with satisfaction and often in detail. To him history is a pageant. The rich coloring of the period first attracted Prescott; he can hardly be blamed for painting his canvas in lively hues, for so he conceived the design. Neutral tints and dull tones are wholly wanting. The blackness of certain events only serves to bring out in stronger relief the resplendent brightness of virtuous acts and the goodness of noble characters. Torquemada offsets Isabella; the cruelty of war is forgotten in the splendor of chivalric deeds.
It is not a history of the people of Spain. The people are not forgotten; the struggle of the commons for recognition, for justice, for the right to be themselves and express their individuality—these things are taken into account. But the work belongs rather to that older school of history which concerns itself for the most part with wars and royal progresses, with the intrigues of councillors, the machinations of prelates, the rivalries of great houses and powerful orders.
The History of the Conquest of Mexico is of about the same length as its predecessor. The narrative, simpler in some ways and more vivacious in others, is gorgeously colored throughout. Prescott was disturbed by the picturesqueness of his own treatment. ‘Very like Miss Porter’ and ‘Rather boarding schoolish finery’ were his comments on certain chapters.
The first of the seven ‘books’ into which the work is divided contains an account of Aztec civilization. Sixty years have elapsed since these pages were written, during which time American archæology has made great advances. That the value of Prescott’s introduction is not wholly destroyed is due to the healthy sceptical spirit which controlled his work.
The story has every element of romance. A young Spanish gentleman, handsome, witty, daring, an idler in college and a libertine, joins the army of adventurers in the New World. For ten or fifteen years he leads the life of men of his class. He becomes a planter in Hayti and varies the monotony of watching Indians till the soil by suppressing insurrections of their brother Indians.
He goes to Cuba as secretary to the governor of that island, quarrels with his chief, makes his peace, and quarrels with him again. Thrown repeatedly into prison, he escapes with the ease of a Baron Trenck. Reconciled to the governor, he is appointed to lead an expedition into the newly discovered kingdom of Mexico. On this venture he stakes his every penny. With five hundred soldiers he proposes to subdue the natives; two priests go along to convert the natives as fast as they are subdued. His sailors number one hundred and ten; his pilot had served under Columbus.
Arriving on the coast, he secretly scuttles his ships, all but one, that there may be no retreat, and then begins that wonderful march to the great city of the Aztecs. He fights by craft as well as by physical force. The jealousy of mutually hostile tribes helps to win his battles. Superstition comes to his aid, for the Spaniards are thought to be gods, and the horses they bestride carry terror into the hearts of the natives.
At length he makes his entry into the city of flowers, and takes up his abode there, Cortés and his little army of four hundred and fifty Spaniards, with twice as many native allies, among sixty thousand cannibals. Boldness marks every step of his course. He seizes the native ‘king,’ suppresses plots with rigor, and proves his divinity by tearing down one of the sacrificial pyramids and planting the cross in its stead. Leaving a lieutenant in command, he hastens back to the seashore to transact military business there. The lieutenant precipitates a quarrel and slaughters Indians by the hundred. Cortés returns and finds his work must be done again. This time it is thoroughly done. Every step of his progress is marked with blood, and the story of la noche triste and the siege of Mexico are among the most romantic passages in the history of the New World.
In estimating men Prescott aimed to employ the standard of their day. When Cortés lifts up his hands, red with the blood of the miserable natives, to return thanks to Heaven for victory, the historian does not permit himself to forget that this savage Spaniard was a typical soldier of the Cross. ‘Whoever has read the correspondence of Cortés, or, still more, has attended to the circumstances of his career, will hardly doubt that he would have been among the first to lay down his life for the Faith.’ According to Prescott, the charge of cruelty cannot be brought against Cortés. ‘The path of the conqueror is necessarily marked with blood. He was not too scrupulous, indeed, in the execution of his plans. He swept away the obstacles which lay in his track; and his fame is darkened by the commission of more than one act which his boldest apologists will find it hard to vindicate. But he was not wantonly cruel. He allowed no outrage on his unresisting foes.’ The historian likens the Spaniard to Hannibal in his endurance, his courage, and his unpretentiousness.
Later scholarship has assailed portions of The Conquest of Mexico with needless asperity. Prescott could hardly be expected to avail himself prophetically of archæological facts not known until thirty years after his time. Nor was his faith in the early Spanish accounts of the Conquest quite as childlike and uncritical as it is sometimes represented. Historians are the most substantial of men of letters; but they now and then build card houses which topple down under the breath of a single new fact. And they take a very human delight in blowing over one another’s structures. For which reason the reading of history is a fearful joy, like skating on thin ice. The pleasure is intense so long as nothing gives way. Perhaps the layman is unreasonable in his demand for knowledge that shall not require too frequent revision. He can at least read for pleasure, hoping that a part of what he reads is true, and holding himself prepared to relinquish the parts he likes best when the time comes.
In the History of the Conquest of Peru the author brings fresh proof that whatever may be said of his morals, the Spanish soldier cannot be over-praised for his valor. Pizarro was a marvel of courage and endurance. Fanaticism, which explains much in his character, does not explain where such tremendous physical power came from. And he had the true theatrical bravado of the Sixteenth-century adventurer. Add to the native histrionic gifts of the Latin race a special training, such as life in the New World gave, and men like Ojeda, Balboa, Cortés, and Pizarro come into existence quite naturally. They did wonders in the coolest possible way, and with a fine sense of the pictorial aspect of their undertakings. Pizarro, drawing a line from east to west on the sand with his sword and calling on his comrades to choose each man what best becomes a brave Castilian (‘For my part I go to the south’), is a figure for romantic drama. An Englishman equally daring would have been more or less awkward in a pose of this sort, but the Spaniard was perfectly at home. Of what clay were these men compounded that they could imagine such exploits and succeed in them too?
The performance of Pizarro was less splendid than that of Cortés and the man himself less interesting. The conqueror of Mexico was a gentleman; not so the hard soldier who subdued the kingdom of the Incas. His was a violent career, steeped in blood, and ending in assassination. Not only was Pizarro without fear, but of two courses he seized upon the more dangerous as the better suited to his genius. Too ignorant to sign his own name, he could control not alone the brutal soldier but as well the lawyer and the priest. Aside from his masterfulness there was little to admire in his character. Brute force excites wonder, but the exhibition of it becomes wearisome at last. To Prescott ‘the hazard assumed by Pizarro was far greater than that of the Conqueror of Mexico.’ Otherwise the man was a mere bungler upon whom Fortune, with characteristic levity, chanced for a time to smile. Prescott describes him in a sentence: ‘Pizarro was eminently perfidious.’ Furthermore, the conqueror of Peru was not original; he repeated what he had learned from Balboa and Cortés. Had he chanced upon a country less rich and civilized, it may well be doubted whether he would have made any considerable figure in history. The argument from gold was entirely conclusive in those days; just as at the present time an undertaking is said to ‘succeed’ if it pays financially. Manners have improved, but ideals of ‘success’ are pretty much what they were four hundred years ago. When Pizarro extorted from the wretched Atahualpa a promise to fill a room twenty-two feet by seventeen to the height of nine feet with gold, his place in history was assured. The swineherd had become immortal.
Strange is it that the name of Francisco Pizarro should be a household word while that of his brother Gonzalo is but little known and seldom repeated. Yet there are few episodes in the history of Spanish colonization more striking than the story of Gonzalo Pizarro’s march across the Andes and the discovery of the river Amazon. It is a tale of horror and suffering to which only the pen of a Defoe could do justice. Gonzalo not only survived the fearful journey, but had strength enough left to head a party for revolt against the viceroy, Blasco Nuñez, and the execution of the Ordinances. Like a true Pizarro, this conqueror died a violent death. He was beheaded; it seemed the only fitting way for one of that family to take his departure from life. The Pizarros used to behead their victims and then show themselves conspicuously at the funeral. When it came their turn to die, they were treated with scantier courtesy.
Philip the Second was Prescott’s most ambitious work. Though but a fragment, the fragment is of noble dimensions, being longer by many pages than the Ferdinand and Isabella. The narrative is extraordinarily vivid. Few pages can match for interest those in which are described Philip’s coming to Flanders and his assumption of power at the hands of his father Charles the Fifth. Here are exhibited at their best the much-praised qualities of Prescott’s style. His prose grew better as he grew older.
The characters stand out like the figures of a play: the great princes, Charles the Fifth, Philip, Mary of England, and Elizabeth; the great warriors and statesmen, Guise, Montmorency, Alva, Egmont, and William of Orange; noble ladies like Margaret of Parma and the beautiful Elizabeth of France. The events were of high and tragic importance, for during this reign was to be settled the great question of freedom of thought and the right to worship God as the conscience and the reason dictated. The very contrasts of costume came to the aid of the historian in dealing with this romantic age. It would seem as if the writer must be picturesque in spite of himself.
The modern reader, whatever be his natural bent, finds himself impelled by the critical spirit of the times into distrusting all history which is not technical and hard to grasp. Prescott’s books are incorrigibly ‘literary’ and therefore more or less under suspicion. Because they are attractive, it is taken for granted that they are unsound. Certain unhappy beings have gone so far as to slander them outright by calling them romances. But this is mere impatience with the kind of historical writing which Prescott’s work exemplifies. He was a master of the art of narrative; and history which stops with narrative is in the minds of severe students little better than the more vicious forms of literary idleness, such as poetry and fiction. Prescott gratifies his reader’s curiosity about the past, but is not over solicitous to ‘modify his view of the present and his forecast of the future.’ In other words, he is well content to look at the surface of history, leaving it to others to look below the surface and philosophize on what they find there.
Nevertheless these brilliant volumes have a value which is something more than literary even if it be a good deal less than scientific. It is perhaps not extravagant to pronounce them an indispensable propædeutic to the study of Spanish-American history. They cannot be displaced by works which ‘go much deeper into the subject.’ Depth is not what is at all times most needed. We need stimulus, and encouragement to face the discipline awaiting us in deep books. He who, having read Prescott, was content to read no farther would be an odd sort of student; but not so odd as he who labored under the impression that Prescott was a historian whom he could afford to do without.