Common. I had already many friends, and took letters to others who became our friends. We were very kindly received. Among those whom we knew best were Mrs. and Mr. H. Ritchie, Mrs. and Mr. T. Perkins, Mrs. H. G. Otis, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Ward—but I must really stop, for there was no end to the list. Among my literary friends or acquaintances, or “people whom I have very often met,” were Emerson, Longfellow, Dr. O. W. Holmes, J. R. Lowell, E. P. Whipple, Palfrey, G. Ticknor, Agassiz, E. Everett—in a word, all that brilliant circle which shone when Boston was at its brightest in 1862. I was often invited to the celebrated Saturday dinners, where I more than once sat by Emerson and Holmes. As I had been editor of the free lance Vanity Fair, and was now conducting the Continental with no small degree of audacity, regardless of friend or foe, it was expected—and no wonder—that I would be beautifully cheeky and New Yorky; and truly my education and antecedents in America, beginning with my training under Barnum, were not such as to inspire faith in my modesty. But in the society of the Saturday Club, and in the very general respect manifested in all circles in Boston for culture or knowledge in every form—in which respect it is certainly equalled by no city on earth—I often forgot newspapers and politics and war, and lived again in memory at Heidelberg and Munich, recalling literature and art. I heard, a day or two after my first Saturday, that I had passed the grand ordeal successfully, or summa cum magna laude, and that Dr. Holmes, in enumerating divers good qualities, had remarked that I was modest. Every stranger coming to Boston has a verdict or judgment passed on him—he is numbered and labelled at once—and it is really wonderful how in a few days the whole town knows it.
I had met with Emerson many years before in Philadelphia, where I had attracted his attention by remarking in Mrs. James Rush’s drawing-room that a vase in a room was like a bridge in a landscape, which he recalled twenty years
later. With Dr. Holmes I had corresponded. Lowell! “that reminds me of a little story.”
There was some “genius of freedom”—i.e., one who takes liberties—who collected autographs, and had not even the politeness to send a written request. He forwarded to me this printed circular:
“Dear Sir: As I am collecting the autographs of distinguished Americans, I would be much obliged to you for your signature. Yours truly, --- ---”
While I was editing Vanity Fair I received one of these circulars. I at once wrote:—
“Dear Sir: It gives me great pleasure to comply with your request. Charles G. Leland.”
I called the foreman, and said, “Mr. Chapin, please to set this up and pull half-a-dozen proofs.” It was done, and I sent one to the autograph-chaser. He was angry, and answered impertinently. Others I sent to Holmes and Lowell. The latter thought that the applicant was a great fool not to understand that such a printed document was far more of a curiosity than a mere signature. I met with Chapin afterwards, when in the war. He had with him a small company of printers, all of whom had set up my copy many a time. Printers are always polite men. They all called on me, and having no cards, left cigars, which were quite as acceptable at that time of tobacco-famine.
Amid all the horrors and anxieties of that dreadful year, while my old school-mate, General George B. McClellan, was delaying and demanding more men—mas y mas y mas—I still had as many happy hours as had ever come into any year of my life. If I made no money, and had to wear my old gloves (I had fortunately a good stock gathered from one of Frank Leslie’s debtors), and had to sail rather close to the wind, I still found the sailing very pleasant, and the wind fair and cool, though I was pauper in ære.
Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis held a ladies’ sewing-circle to make garments for the soldiers, at which my wife worked zealously.