Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White — Volume 2

by Andrew Dickson White

The first of these journeys was taken when I went with my father and mother from the little country town where we then lived to Syracuse, Buffalo, and Niagara. This must have been in 1838, when I was about six years of age. Every step of it interested me keenly. Like the shop-girl in Emile Souvestre's story, who journeyed from Paris to St. Cloud, I was "amazed to find the world so large." Syracuse, which now has about one hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants, had then, perhaps, five thousand; the railways which were afterward consolidated into the New York Central were not yet built, and we traveled mainly upon the canal, though at times over wretchedly muddy roads. Niagara made a great impression upon me, and Buffalo, with its steamers, seemed as great then as London seems now.

Four years later, in 1842, I was taken to the hills of middle Massachusetts to visit my great-grandfather and great-grandmother, and thence to Boston, where Faneuil Hall, the Bunker Hill Monument, Harvard College, and Mount Auburn greatly impressed me. Returning home, we came by steamer through the Sound to the city of New York, and stayed at a hotel near Trinity Church, which was then a little south of the central part of the city. On another visit, somewhat later, we were lodged at the Astor House, near the City Hall, which was then at the very center of everything, and thence took excursions far northward into the uttermost parts of the city, and even beyond it, to see the newly erected Grace Church and the reservoir at Forty-second Street, which were among the wonders of the town. Most of all was I impressed by the service in the newly erected Trinity Church. The idea uppermost in my mind was that here was a building which was to last for hundreds of years, and that the figures in the storied windows above the altar would look down upon new generations of worshipers, centuries after I, with all those living, should have passed away. My feeling for religious music was then, as since, very deep; and the organ of Trinity gave satisfaction to this feeling; the tremulous ground-tone of the great pedal diapasons thrilling me through and through.

At this period, about 1843, began my visits with the family to Saratoga. My grandfather, years before, had derived benefit from its waters, and the tradition of this, as well as the fact that my father there met socially his business correspondents from different parts of the State, led to our going year after year. Drinking the waters, taking life easily upon the piazzas of the great hotels festooned with Virginia creepers, and driving to the lake, formed then, as now, the main occupations of the day. But there was then one thing which has now ceased: in many of the greater hotels public prayers were held every evening, some eminent clergyman officiating; and a leader in these services was David Leavitt, a famous New York bank president, shrewd, but pious. Now and then, as the political campaigns drew on, we had speeches from eminent statesmen; and I give in the chapters on "My Religion" reminiscences of speeches on religious subjects made by Archbishop Hughes and Father Gavazzi. An occasional visit from Washington Irving or Senator (afterward President) Buchanan, as well as other men of light and leading, aroused my tendencies toward hero-worship; but perhaps the event most vividly stamped into my memory was the parade of Mme. Jumel. One afternoon at that period she appeared in the streets of Saratoga in an open coach-and-four, her horses ridden by gaily dressed postilions. This was regarded by very many visitors as an affront not merely to good morals, but to patriotism, for she had the fame of having been in relations, more intimate than edifying, with Aaron Burr, who was widely considered as a traitor to his country as well as the murderer of Alexander Hamilton; and on the second day of her parade, another carriage, with four horses and postilions, in all respects like her own, followed her wherever she went and sometimes crossed her path: but this carriage contained an enormous negro, black and glossy, a porter at one of the hotels, dressed in the height of fashion, who very gravely rose and doffed his hat to the applauding multitudes on either side of the way. Mme. Jumel and her friends were, of course, furious; and it was said that her postilions would in future be armed with pistols and directed to fire upon the rival equipage should it again get in their way. But no catastrophe occurred; Mme. Jumel took one or two more drives, and that was the end of it.

In my college days, from 1849 to 1853, going to and from New Haven, I frequently passed through New York, and the progress of the city northward since my earlier visits was shown by the fact that the best hotel nearest the center of business had become first the Irving House, just at the upper end of the City Hall Park, and later the St. Nicholas and Metropolitan hotels, some distance up Broadway. Staying in 1853 at a hotel looking out upon what was to be Madison Square, I noticed that all north of that was comparatively vacant, save here and there a few houses and churches.

Going abroad shortly afterward, I gave three years to my attacheship and student life in Europe, traveling across the continent to St. Petersburg and back, as well as through Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and Italy, all of which were then under the old regime of disunion and despotism. To these journeys I refer elsewhere.

Interesting to me, after my return home, were visits to Chicago in 1858 and at various times afterward. At my first visits the city was wretchedly unkempt. Workmen were raising its grade, and their mode of doing this was remarkable. Under lines of brick and stone houses, in street after street, screws were placed; and, large forces of men working at these, the vast buildings went up steadily. My first stay was at the Tremont House, then a famous hostelry; and during the whole of my visit the enormous establishment, several stories in height, was going on as usual, though it was all open beneath and rising in the air perceptibly every day. Years afterward, when Mr. George Pullman had become deservedly one of the powers of Chicago, he gave me a dinner, at which I had the pleasure of meeting a large number of the most energetic and distinguished men of the city. Being asked by a guest as to the time when I first visited Chicago, I stated the facts above given, when my interlocutor remarked, "Yes, and if you had gone down into the cellar beneath the Tremont House you would have found our host working at one of the jack-screws." I had already an admiration for Mr. Pullman; for he had told me of his creation of the Pullman cars, and had shown me through the beautiful artisan town which bears his name; but by this remark my respect for him was greatly augmented.

My first visit to the upper Mississippi left an indelible impression on my mind. No description of that vast volume of water slowly moving before my eyes ever seemed at all adequate until, years afterward, I read Mark Twain's "Tom Sawyer," and his account of the scene when his hero awakes on a raft floating down the great river struck a responsive chord in my heart. It was the first description that ever answered at all to the picture in my mind. Very interesting to me were sundry later excursions to Boston, generally on university or other business. At one of these I purchased the library of President Sparks for the university, and, staying some days, had the pleasure of meeting many noted men—among them Mr. Josiah Quincy, whose reminiscences were to me very interesting, his accounts of conversations with John Adams perhaps more so than anything else. At various clubs I met most charming people, the most engrossing of these being Arthur Gilman, the architect: then, and at other times, I sat up with him late into the night,—once, indeed, the entire night,—listening to his flow of quaint wit and humor. The range of his powers was perhaps best shown in a repetition of what he claimed to be the debate in the city council of Boston on his plans for a new city hall, which were afterward adopted. The speeches in Irish brogue, Teutonic Jargon, and down-east Yankee dialect, with utterances interposed here and there by solemnly priggish members, were inimitable. His pet antipathy seemed to be the bishop of the diocese, Dr. Eastburn. Stories were told to the effect that Gilman, early in life, had desired to take orders in the Protestant Episcopal Church, but that the bishop refused to ordain him, on the ground that he lacked the requisite discretion. Hence, perhaps his zeal in preaching what he claimed to be the bishop's sermons. Dr. Eastburn was much given to amplification, and Gilman always insisted that he had heard him once, when preaching on the parable of Dives and Lazarus, discuss the prayer of Dives in torments for a drop of water, as follows: "To this, my brethren, under the circumstances entirely natural, but, at the same time, no less completely inadmissible request, the aged patriarch replied."

The bishop, who enjoyed a reputation for eloquence, was wont to draw his lungs full of air at frequent periods during his discourses, thus keeping his voice strong, as skilful elocutionists advise; and on one very warm summer afternoon, according to Gilman's account, a little boy in the congregation, son of one of the most distinguished laymen in the diocese, becoming very uneasy and begging his mother to allow him to go home, she had quieted him several times by assuring him that the bishop would soon be through, when, just at one of the most impressive passages, the bishop having drawn in his breath as usual, the little boy screamed so as to be heard throughout the church, "No, he won't stop, mama; no, he won't stop; don't you see he has just blowed hisself up again?"

Gilman also told us a story of the bishop's catechizing the children in a Boston church, when, having taken the scriptural account of Jonah and carried the prophet into the whale's belly, he asked very impressively, "And now, children, how do you suppose that Jonah felt?" Whereupon little Sohier, son of the noted lawyer, piped out, "Down in the mouth, sir." Gilman insisted that the bishop was exceeding wroth, and complained to the boy's father, who was unable to conceal from the bishop his delight at his son's answer.

At one visit or another, mainly during the years of my connection with Cornell University, I met at Boston, pleasantly, the men who were then most distinguished in American literature. One of these, who interested me especially, was Ticknor, author of the "History of Spanish Literature." Longfellow always seemed to me a most lovely being, whether at Nahant or at Cambridge. Lowell was wonderfully brilliant as well as kindly, and Edward Everett Hale delightful. It was the time of Hale's short stories in the "Atlantic Monthly," which seem to me the best ever written. Oliver Wendell Holmes I met so rarely that I have little memory of his brilliant conversation. Emerson I met then and at other times,—once, especially, in a railway train during one of his Western lecture tours; he was then reading the first volume of Carlyle's "Frederick the Great," and, on my asking him how he liked it, instead of showing his usual devotion to the author, he burst forth into a stream of protests against Carlyle's "everlasting scolding at Dryasdust." A man who was as much overrated then as he is underrated now was Whipple, the essayist; he was always bright, and often suggestive; but too reliant upon a style which is now out of date,—frequently summoning "alliteration's artful aid," and resorting to other devices, fashionable then, but now discarded. Perhaps the best of all his sentences was the one on the three great statesmen of that period, to the effect that Webster was INductive, Calhoun DEductive, and Clay SEductive; which was not only well stated but true. Very vividly comes back to me a supper-party given early in 1875 at the house of James T. Fields, in celebration of Bayard Taylor's birthday. Besides Mr. and Mrs. Fields and Taylor were present Richard H. Dana, eminent in law and letters; Cranch, then known both as a painter and poet; Mr. Osgood; and myself. Taylor recited, as I had heard him do at other times, from the productions of the Georgia poet, Chivers, and especially from the "Eonx of Ruby." Chivers, according to Taylor's showing, had become infatuated with Poe, and adorned his verses with every sort of beautiful word which he could coin, the result being as nonsensical a medley as was ever known. Earlier in the evening, Taylor, Fields, and myself had each of us been giving a lecture, and this led Taylor to speak of a recent experience of his while holding forth in one of the smaller towns of Massachusetts. The chairman of the lecture committee, being seated beside him on the platform, and wishing to entertain him with edifying conversation while the audience was coming in remarked that they had had rather a trying experience during the lecture of the week before. On Taylor's asking what it was, the chairman answered: "The lecturer was seized by a virago on the stage." He meant vertigo. Dana told good stories of old Dr. Osgood of Medford, whose hatred of Democracy was shown not only in his well-known reading of Governor Gerry's proclamation, but in his bitter sermon at the election of Thomas Jefferson. At this some one gave a story regarding our contemporary Dr. Osgood, the eminent Unitarian clergyman, who, toward the end of his life, had gone into the Protestant Episcopal Church. I had known him as a man of much ability and power, but with a rather extraordinary way of asserting himself and patronizing people. He had recently died, and a legend had arisen that, on his arrival in the New Jerusalem, being presented to St. Paul, he said: "Sir, I have derived both profit and pleasure from your writings, and have commended them to my congregation."