DONALD GRANT MITCHELL.
AUTHOR OF “REVERIES OF A BACHELOR” AND “DREAM LIFE.”
NDER the pen name of “Ik Marvel,” Donald G. Mitchell is among the best known literary men of the world. His chief works consist of a dozen volumes or more ranging back for fifty years; but readers who know the “Reveries of a Bachelor” and “Dream Life,” possess a clear comprehension of this author. In learning those books they have learned him by heart. Except that he has mellowed with age there is little change in his charming style from his first book issued in 1847 to his last—“American Land and Letters”—which appeared in 1897.
Washington Irving spoke of being drawn to Donald G. Mitchell, by the qualities of head and heart which he found in his writings. No doubt if Irving had named these qualities he would have agreed with the general verdict that they consisted in a clearness of conception with which he grasped his theme, the faithfulness with which his thought pursued it, the sympathy with which he treated it and the quality of modesty, grace, dignity and sweetness which characterized his style. Says one of his critics: “Mitchell is a man who never stands in front of his subject, and who never asks attention to himself.” Washington Irving had the same characteristics and it was natural that they should be drawn together. In early life, Mitchell seems to have been much under Irving. “Dream Life” was dedicated to that veteran, and some of the best sketches that can now be found of Irving are in Mitchell’s written recollections of him. The disciple however, was not an imitator. Mitchell’s papers on “The Squire” and “The Country Church” are as characteristic as any thing in the “Sketch Book,” but their writer’s style is his own.
Donald G. Mitchell was born in Norwich, Connecticut, April 12, 1822. He graduated at Yale in 1841 and afterwards worked three years on his grandfather’s farm, thus acquiring a taste for agriculture which has clung to him through life, and which shows itself in his “Edgewood” books. His first contributions were to the “Albany Cultivator,” a farm journal. He begun the study of law in 1847, but abandoned it for literature.
Mr. Mitchell has been several times abroad, always returning with something refreshing for his American readers. He has also lectured on literature at Yale College. In 1853, he was appointed United States Consul to Venice by President Pierce, but resigned after a few months. His home has been, since 1855, on his charming country place, “Edgewood,” near New Haven, Connecticut, and nearly all his books—except “English Lands and Letters” (1890), and “American Lands and Letters” (1897)—are fragrant with the breath of the farm and rural scenery.
Mr. Mitchell was married in 1853 to Miss Mary F. Pringle, of Charleston, South Carolina, who accompanied him when he went as Consul to Venice.
Mr. Mitchell filled a number of semi-public positions, and was one of the first members of the council of the Yale Art School at its establishment in 1865. He was also one of the judges of Industrial Art at the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, and was United States Commissioner at the Paris Exposition in 1878. His contributions to “The Atlantic Monthly,” to “Harper’s Magazine,” and other periodicals, his lectures and addresses on Literature and Agriculture have always been well received.
Among his books not already mentioned are “The Seven Stories with Basement and Attic,” a series of tales of travel; “A Single Novel;” “Doctor Johns;” one juvenile story “About Old Story-Tellers,” and an elaborate genealogy of his mother’s family entitled “The Woodbridge Record.”
WASHINGTON IRVING.
(FROM THE INTRODUCTION TO “DREAM LIFE.”)
N the summer of 1852 Mr. Irving made a stay of a few weeks at Saratoga; and, by good fortune, I chanced to occupy a room upon the same corridor of the hotel, within a few doors of his, and shared many of his early morning walks to the “Spring.” What at once struck me very forcibly in the course of these walks was the rare alertness and minuteness of his observation. Not a fair young face could dash past us in its drapery of muslin, but the eye of the old gentleman—he was then almost seventy—drank in all its freshness and beauty, with the keen appetite and the graceful admiration of a boy; not a dowager brushed past us, bedizened with finery, but he fastened the apparition in his memory with some piquant remark, as the pin of an entomologist fastens a gaudy fly. No rheumatic old hero-invalid, battered in long wars with the doctors, no droll marplot of a boy, could appear within range, but I could see in the changeful expression of my companion the admeasurements and quiet adjustment of the appeal which either made upon his sympathy or his humor. A flower, a tree, a burst of music, a country market man hoist upon his wagon of cabbage—all these by turns caught and engaged his attention, however little they might interrupt the flow of his talk.
He was utterly incapable of being “lionized.” Time and again, under the trees in the court of the hotel, did I hear him enter upon some pleasant story, lighted up with that rare turn of his eye and by his deft expressions; when, as chance acquaintances grouped around him, as is the way of watering-places, and eager listeners multiplied, his hilarity and spirit took a chill from the increasing auditory, and drawing abruptly to a close, he would sidle away with a friend, and be gone....
I saw Mr. Irving afterwards repeatedly in New York, and passed two delightful days at Sunnyside. I can never forget a drive with him on a crisp autumn morning through Sleepy Hollow and all the notable localities of his neighborhood, in the course of which he called my attention, in the most unaffected and incidental way, to those which had been specially illustrated by his pen, and with a rare humor recounted to me some of his boyish adventures among the old Dutch farmers of that region.
Most of all it is impossible for me to forget the rare kindliness of his manner, his friendly suggestions, and the beaming expression of his eye. I met it last at the little stile from which I strolled away to the railway station. When I saw the kind face again, it was in the coffin at the little church where he attended services. But the eyes were closed, and the wonderful radiance of expression gone. It seemed to me that death never took away more from a living face. It was but a cold shadow lying there of the man who had taught a nation to love him.
GLIMPSES OF “DREAM-LIFE”
By Ik Marvel
With original illustrations by Corwin K. Linson.
SHAW!—said my Aunt Tabithy—have you not done with dreaming?
“PSHAW! SAID MY AUNT TABITHY”
My Aunt Tabithy, though an excellent and most notable person, loves occasionally a quiet bit of satire. And when I told her that I was sharpening my pen for a new story of those dreamy fancies, and half-experiences, which lie grouped along the journeying hours of my solitary life, she smiled as if in derision.
It is very idle to get angry with a good-natured old lady: I did better than this: I made her listen to me.
Exhausted, do you say, Aunt Tabithy? Is life then exhausted, is hope gone out, is fancy dead?
No, no, Aunt Tabithy—this life of musing does not exhaust so easily. It is like the springs on the farm-land, that are fed with all the showers and the dews of the year, and that from the narrow fissures of the rock send up streams continually. Dream-land will never be exhausted until we enter on the land of dreams; and until, in “shuffling off this mortal coil,” thought will become fact and all facts will be only thought.
“ISAAC, YOU ARE A SAD FELLOW”
It was warm weather, and my aunt was dozing. “What is this all to be about?” said she, recovering her knitting-needle.
“About love, and toil, and duty, and sorrow,” said I.
My aunt finished the needle she was upon—smoothed the stocking-leg over her knee, and went on to ask me in a very bantering way, if my stock of youthful loves was not nearly exhausted.
A better man than myself—if he had only a fair share of vanity—would have been nettled at this; and I replied somewhat tartly, that I had never professed to write my experiences. Life after all is but a bundle of hints, each suggesting actual and positive development, but rarely reaching it. And as I recall these hints, and in fancy, trace them to their issues, I am as truly dealing with life, as if my life had dealt them all to me.
“MY AUNT WAS DOZING”
This is what I would be doing in the present book;—I would catch up here and there the shreds of feeling, which the brambles and roughnesses of the world have left tangling on my heart, and weave them out into those soft and perfect tissues, which—if the world had been only a little less rough—might now perhaps enclose my heart altogether.
“Ah,” said my Aunt Tabithy, as she smoothed the stocking-leg again, with a sigh—“there is after all but one youth-time; and if you put down its memories once, you can find no second growth.”
My Aunt Tabithy was wrong. There is as much growth in the thoughts and feelings that run behind us, as in those that run before us. You may make a rich, full picture of your childhood to-day; but let the hour go by, and the darkness stoop to your pillow with its million shapes of the past, and my word for it, you shall have some flash of childhood lighten upon you that was unknown to your busiest thought of the morning.
“THE JUSTICE OF THE PEACE”
I know no nobler forage-ground for a romantic, venturesome, mischievous boy, than the garret of an old family mansion on a day of storm. It is a perfect field of chivalry. There is great fun in groping through a tall barrel of books and pamphlets, on the look-out for startling pictures; and there are chestnuts in the garret, drying, which you have discovered on a ledge of the chimney; and you slide a few into your pocket, and munch them quietly—giving now and then one to Nelly, and begging her to keep silent;—for you have a great fear of its being forbidden fruit.
“A PERFECT FIELD OF CHIVALRY”
Old family garrets have their stock, as I said, of cast-away clothes, of twenty years gone by; and it is rare sport to put them on; buttoning in a pillow or two for the sake of good fulness; and then to trick out Nelly in some strange-shaped headgear and old-fashioned brocade petticoat caught up with pins; and in such guise, to steal cautiously down stairs, and creep slyly into the sitting-room—half afraid of a scolding, and very sure of good fun;—trying to look very sober, and yet almost ready to die with the laugh that you know you will make. And your mother tries to look harshly at little Nelly for putting on her grandmother’s best bonnet; but Nelly’s laughing eyes forbid it utterly, and the mother spoils all her scolding with a perfect shower of kisses.
“TRICKED OUT”
After this, you go marching, very stately, into the nursery; and utterly amaze the old nurse; and make a deal of wonderment for the staring, half-frightened baby, who drops his rattle, and makes a bob at you, as if he would jump into your waistcoat pocket.
“THERE IS AFTER ALL BUT ONE YOUTH-TIME”
You have looked admiringly many a day upon the tall fellows who play at the door of Dr. Bidlow’s school; you have looked with reverence. Dr. Bidlow seems to you to belong to a race of giants; and yet he is a spare, thin man, with a hooked nose, a large, flat, gold watch-key, a crack in his voice, a wig, and very dirty wristbands.
“LONG, WEARY DAYS OF CONFINEMENT”
You, however, come very little under his control; you enter upon the proud life in the small-boys’ department—under the dominion of the English master. He is a different personage from Dr. Bidlow: he is a dapper, little man, who twinkles his eye in a peculiar fashion, and steps very springily around behind the benches, glancing now and then at the books—cautioning one scholar about his dog’s ears, and startling another from a doze by a very loud and odious snap of his forefinger upon the boy’s head.
There are some tall trees that overshadow an angle of the schoolhouse; and the larger scholars play surprising gymnastic tricks upon their lower limbs.
“OLD BID”
In time, however, you get to performing some modest experiments yourself upon the very lowest limbs,—taking care to avoid the observation of the larger boys, who else might laugh at you: you especially avoid the notice of one stout fellow in pea-green breeches, who is a sort of “bully” among the small boys.
One day you are well in the tops of the trees, and being dared by the boys below, you venture higher—higher than any boy has gone before. You feel very proud, so you advance cautiously out upon the limb: it bends and sways fearfully with your weight: presently it cracks: you try to return, but it is too late; then comes a sense of dizziness—a succession of quick blows, and a dull, heavy crash!
“STARTLING ANOTHER FROM A DOZE”
After this, come those long, weary days of confinement, when you lie still, through all the hours of noon, looking out upon the cheerful sunshine, only through the windows of your little room. Yet it seems a grand thing to have the whole household attendant upon you; and when you groan with pain, you are sure of meeting sad, sympathizing looks.
“AND EAT A DINNER IN A TAVERN”
To visit, is a great thing in the boy-calendar:—to go away on a visit in a coach, with a trunk, and a greatcoat, and an umbrella:—this is large! As you journey on, after bidding your friends adieu, and as you see fences and houses to which you have not been used, you think them very odd indeed; but it occurs to you, that the geographies speak of very various national characteristics, and you are greatly gratified with this opportunity of verifying your study.
“AWAY ON A VISIT IN A COACH”
Your old aunt, whom you visit, you think wears a very queer cap, being altogether different from that of the old nurse, or of Mrs. Boyne,—Madge’s mother. As for acquaintances, you fall in the very first day with a tall boy next door, called Nat, which seems an extraordinary name. Besides, he has traveled; and as he sits with you on the summer nights under the linden trees, he tells you gorgeous stories of the things he has seen. He has made the voyage to London; and he talks about the ship (a real ship) and starboard and larboard, and the spanker, in a way quite surprising; and he takes the stern oar in the little skiff, when you row off in the cove abreast of the town, in a most seaman-like way.
“IT IS RATHER A PRETTY NAME TO WRITE”
Besides Nat, there is a girl lives over the opposite side of the way, named Jenny, with an eye as black as a coal. She has any quantity of toys, and she has an odd old uncle, who sometimes makes you stand up together, and then marries you after his fashion,—much to the amusement of a grown-up housemaid, whenever she gets a peep at the performance. And it makes you somewhat proud to hear her called your wife; and you wonder to yourself, dreamily, if it won’t be true some day or other.
Jenny is romantic, and talks of Thaddeus of Warsaw in a very touching manner, and promises to lend you the book. She folds billets in a lover’s fashion, and practices love-knots upon her bonnet strings. She looks out of the corners of her eyes very often, and sighs. She is frequently by herself, and pulls flowers to pieces.
All this time, for you are making your visit a very long one, so that autumn has come, and the nights are growing cool, and Jenny and yourself are transferring your little coquetries to the chimney-corner;—poor Charlie lies sick at home. Boyhood, thank Heaven, does not suffer severely from sympathy when the object is remote.
“THE DOCTOR LIFTS YOU IN HIS ARMS”
It is on a frosty, bleak evening, when you are playing with Nat, that the letter reaches you which says Charlie is growing worse, and that you must come to your home. It is quite dark when you reach home, but you see the bright reflection of a fire within, and presently at the open door Nelly clapping her hands for welcome. But there are sad faces when you enter. Your mother folds you to her heart; but at your first noisy outburst of joy, puts her finger on her lip, and whispers poor Charlie’s name. The Doctor you see, too, slipping softly out of the bed-room door with glasses in his hand; and—you hardly know how—your spirits grow sad, and your heart gravitates to the heavy air of all about you.
“WHO SOMETIMES MAKES YOU STAND UP TOGETHER”
You drop to sleep after that day’s fatigue, with singular and perplexed fancies haunting you; and when you wake up with a shudder in the middle of the night, you get up stealthily and creep down stairs; the bed-room door stands open, a little lamp is flickering on the hearth, and the gaunt shadow of the bedstead lies dark upon the ceiling. Your mother is in her chair, with her head upon her hand—though it is long after midnight. The Doctor is standing with his back toward you, and looks very solemn as he takes out his watch. He is not counting Charlie’s pulse, for he has dropped his hand; and it lies carelessly, but oh, how thin! over the edge of the bed.
He shakes his head mournfully at your mother; and she springs forward, and lays her fingers upon the forehead of the boy, and passes her hand over his mouth.
“Is he asleep, Doctor?” she says, in a tone you do not know.
“Dear Madam, he will never waken in this world.”
There is no cry—only a bowing down of your mother’s head upon the body of poor, dead Charlie!—and only when you see her form shake and quiver with the deep, smothered sobs, your crying bursts forth loud and strong.
“LISTENING ATTENTIVELY TO SOME GRIEVOUS COMPLAINT”
The Doctor lifts you in his arms, that you may see—that pale head,—those blue eyes all sunken,—that flaxen hair gone,—those white lips pinched and hard!—Never, never, will the boy forget his first terrible sight of Death!
“SOME OF BIDLOW’S BOYS”
Frank has a grandfather living in the country, a good specimen of the old-fashioned New England farmer. He is a Justice of the Peace, and many are the country courts that you peep upon, with Frank, from the door of the great dining-room. You watch curiously the old gentleman, sitting in his big arm-chair, with his spectacles in their silver case at his elbow, and his snuff-box in hand, listening attentively to some grievous complaint; you see him ponder deeply—with a pinch of snuff to aid his judgment,—and you listen with intense admiration, as he gives a loud, preparatory “Ahem,” and clears away the intricacies of the case with a sweep of that strong practical sense which distinguishes the New England farmer,—getting at the very hinge of the matter, without any consciousness of his own precision, and satisfying the defendant by the clearness of his talk, as much as by the leniency of his judgment. He farms some fifteen hundred acres,—“suitably divided,” as the old-school agriculturists say, into “woodland, pasture, and tillage.” The farm-house, a large irregularly built mansion of wood, stands upon a shelf of the hills looking southward, and is shaded by century-old oaks. The barns and outbuildings are grouped in a brown phalanx a little to the northward of the dwelling. Between them a high timber gate opens upon the scattered pasture-lands of the hills. Opposite to this, and across the farmyard, which is the lounging-place of scores of red-necked turkeys, and of matronly hens, clucking to their callow brood, another gate of similar pretensions opens upon the wide meadow-land.
“A SQUIRE”
So it is, that as you lie there upon the sunny greensward, at the old Squire’s door, you muse upon the time when some rich-lying land, with huge granaries and cozy old mansion sleeping under the trees, shall be yours;—when the brooks shall water your meadows, and come laughing down your pasture-lands;—when the clouds shall shed their spring fragrance upon your lawns, and the daisies bless your paths.
“SOME TIDY OLD LADY IN BLACK”
You will then be a Squire, with your cane, your lean-limbed hound, your stocking-leg of specie, and your snuff-box. You will be the happy and respected husband of some tidy old lady in black and spectacles,—a little phthisicky, like Frank’s grandmother,—and an accomplished cook of stewed pears, and Johnny-cakes!
THE CHOIR
The country church is a square old building of wood, without paint or decoration, and of that genuine, Puritanic stamp, which is now fast giving way to Greek porticos, and to cockney towers. The unpainted pews are ranged in square forms, and by age have gained the color of those fragmentary wrecks of cigar-boxes, which you see upon the top shelves in the bar-rooms of country taverns. The minister’s desk is lofty, and has once been honored with a coating of paint;—as well as the huge sounding-board, which, to your great amazement, protrudes from the wall, at a very dangerous angle of inclination, over the speaker’s head.
The singing has a charm for you. There is a long, thin-faced, flax-haired man, who carries a tuning-fork in his waistcoat pocket, and who leads the choir. His position is in the very front rank of gallery benches, facing the desk; and by the time the old clergyman has read two verses of the psalm, the country chorister turns around to his little group of aids—consisting of the blacksmith, a carroty headed school-master, two women in snuff-colored silks, and a girl in a pink bonnet, somewhat inclined to frivolity,—to announce the tune.
“FAT OLD LADIES IN IRON SPECTACLES”
This being done in an authoritative manner, he lifts his long music-book,—glances again at his little company, clears his throat by a powerful “Ahem,” followed by a powerful use of a bandanna pocket-handkerchief,—draws out his tuning fork, and waits for the parson to close his reading. He now reviews once more his company,—throws a reproving glance at the young woman in the pink hat, who at the moment is biting off a stout bunch of fennel,—lifts his music-book, thumps upon the rail with his fork, listens keenly, gives a slight “Ahem,” falls into the cadence,—swells into a strong crescendo,—catches at the first word of the line, as if he were afraid it might get away,—turns to his company,—lifts his music-book with spirit,—gives it a powerful slap with the disengaged hand, and, with a majestic toss of the head, soars away, with half the women below straggling on in his wake, into some such brave old melody as—Litchfield!
THE DEACON
Being a visitor, and in the Squire’s pew, you are naturally an object of considerable attention to the girls about your age; as well as to a great many fat old ladies in iron spectacles, who mortify you excessively by patting you under the chin after church; and insist upon mistaking you for Frank; and force upon you very dry cookies, spiced with caraway seeds.
“IN TONES OF TENDER ADMONITION”
The farmers you have a high respect for;—particularly for one weazen-faced old gentleman in a brown surtout, who brings his whip into church with him, who sings in a very strong voice, and who drives a span of gray colts. Another townsman, who attracts your attention is a stout deacon, who before entering always steps around the corner of the church and puts his hat upon the ground to adjust his wig in a quiet way. He then marches up the broad aisle in a stately manner, and plants his hat, and a big pair of buckskin mittens, on the little table under the desk. When he is fairly seated in his corner of the pew, with his elbow upon the top-rail—almost the only man who can comfortably reach it,—you observe that he spreads his brawny fingers over his scalp, in an exceedingly cautious manner; and you innocently think again, that it is very hypocritical in a deacon to be pretending to lean upon his hand when he is only keeping his wig straight.
“THE OLD MEN GATHER ON THE SUNNY SIDE OF THE BUILDING”
After the morning service, they have an “hour’s intermission,” as the preacher calls it; during which the old men gather on a sunny side of the building, and, after shaking hands all around, and asking after the “folks” at home, they enjoy a quiet talk about the crops, branching off, now and then, it may be, into politics.
Little does the boy know, as the tide of years drifts by, floating him out insensibly from the harbor of his home upon the great sea of life,—what joys, what opportunities, what affections, are slipping from him.
“THE FIRELIGHT GLIMMERS UPON THE WALLS OF YOUR HOME”
But now, you are there. The fire-light glimmers upon the walls of your cherished home, like the Vestal fire of old upon the figures of adoring virgins, or like the flame of Hebrew sacrifice, whose incense bore hearts to heaven. The big chair of your father is drawn to its wonted corner by the chimney-side; his head, just touched with gray, lies back upon its oaken top. Little Nelly leans upon his knee, looking up for some reply to her girlish questionings. Opposite, sits your mother; her figure is thin, her look cheerful, yet subdued;—her arm perhaps resting on your shoulder, as she talks to you in tones of tender admonition, of the days that are to come.
The cat is purring on the hearth; the clock is ticking on the mantel. The great table in the middle of the room, with its books and work, waits only for the lighting of the evening lamp, to see a return to its stores of embroidery, and of story.
