But, I am gratified to state, the young Yankee made a stubborn resistance to the British form of white slavery in the school known as “fagging;” and what with his own obstinacy and the old man’s constant harassing the school authorities with remonstrances, the rule was suspended in the case of Zerah—probably the first and last case of such an alarming innovation on good old brutal British customs. Having won this emancipation the old father submitted with equanimity to being hooted off the “campus” with cries of “Yankee.”
But the elder Colburn next quarreled with his generous patron, and took the boy from school. We may venture to doubt if this was after all a great privation to the lad. The curriculum of Westminster school the first four years consisted of Latin and fagging; the next four years of Greek and fagging. They had made it elective in Zerah’s case to the extent of omitting the fagging, taking away the live part of the curriculum and leaving him only the dead. Zerah himself tells us that the same time which was thus spent in linguistic body-snatching if spent in the French seminary would have afforded an excellent general education. This fatuity regarding dead languages has been since well maintained in English high schools and colleges, and, what is more remarkable, has been pretty faithfully imitated in higher institutions in America.
Thrown on their own resources again, they found the novelty of Zerah’s performance had worn off, and he did not “draw.” The father now conceived the brilliant plan of making an actor of the boy. After four months’ training by Kemble, he appeared on the stage at Margate, with a little success; went with strolling companies through England and Ireland during four months more, and then returned to London and ended the histrionic career. Next Zerah was prompted by the fond father to attempt play-writing, but as he says himself, his compositions “never had any merit or any success”—though this is substantially his opinion of all his own efforts through life.[B] Extreme poverty followed, almost the only means of subsistence being genteel begging from former friends. The last and kindest of these was at length worn out, and directed his footman to slam the door in the poor boy’s face when he presented himself on some alleged errand from his father.
Zerah in his autobiography, subsequently written, speaks of these dark days with sorrow, but without one word of complaint of his father; indeed, the memoir seems to have been written more for the purpose of vindicating the father’s name than to do himself justice. He constantly laments that the mysterious faculty had been given him, and attributes to it and to his own general incapacity, all the misfortunes and sufferings of his father and himself. He called his gift “a peculiarly painful circumstance which destroyed all pleasing anticipations, blasted every prospect of social happiness, and after years of absence consigned the husband and father to a stranger’s grave.” Poor boy! He must have suffered more than he confesses. He hints at their want, his disgust with asking charity, the alienation of friends, and, above all his afflictions, he chafes at his idleness; and he naively sums up the whole experience as one of “comparative unhappiness!” How did Dickens ever miss these unique studies from real life?
A situation as usher in a school was now obtained for young Zerah (ætat 17) and he soon after set up a school on his own account. This was probably the first legitimate money he ever earned, and he mentions the chance, poor as it was, with more satisfaction than he does any of the achievements of his genius. It was far better than depending on patronage—which seems to have galled his pride. Before anything could come of school teaching, however, the father and son went off to other cities on a begging expedition. The usual humiliation and misery followed the undertaking, and they returned to London, where the young man reopened his school. Here, in 1824, his father died of consumption brought on by want and anxiety. One of Zerah’s biographers has said of the father: “Unhappily he had from the first discovery of his son’s extraordinary gifts, worked upon them with mercenary feelings, as a source of revenue. It is true he had a father’s love for his child, and in this respect Zerah, in the simple memoir of his own life, does his parent more than justice; but still it was this short-sighted selfishness which made him convert his child’s endowments into a curse to him, to his friends, and to Zerah himself. His expectations had been lifted to such a pitch that nothing could satisfy them. The most generous offers fell short of what he felt to be his due; liberality was turned in his mind to parsimony, and even his friends were regarded as little short of enemies. Such a struggle could not always last. His mind was torn with thoughts of his home and family, neglected for twelve years; of his life wasted, his prospects defeated; of fond dreams ending at last in failure, shame, and poverty.”
After the death of his father, Zerah’s course of life was not less vacillating and unsuccessful, however, so it seems that his failures were not altogether due to his father’s bad counsels. He remained a while in London, making astronomical calculations and doing other mathematical work, as chance offered it. Aided by his old benefactor, Lord Bristol, he at last set out to seek his mother and family. She had done better alone. “During the long absence of her husband, with a family of eight children, and almost entirely destitute of property, she had sustained the burthen with indomitable energy. She wrought with her own hands in house and field; bargained away the little farm for a better one; and as her son says, ‘by a course of persevering industry, hard fare and trials such as few women are accustomed to, she has hitherto succeeded in supporting herself, beside doing a good deal for her children.’” Lucky for the family that one of them was not a genius. Mathematics, however, seems to be a form of monomania from which her sex is generally exempt. In fact, in the long list of eccentric Americans from which I can choose subjects for this series of sketches, I fear there is not to be one eccentric woman. This can be taken as complimentary to the sex or not, according as the reader regards eccentricity.
Our arithmetical prodigy, now twenty years old, went to teaching a country school for a living, and at last fetched up in that other safe retreat of preaching the gospel. He followed this vocation with more persistence and credit than he had brought to any other of his numerous professions, though on his own modest representation he was not much of a preacher. His last venture was to become professor of—not mathematics—but languages in the “Vermont University” at Norwich. In this situation his life terminated, March 2, 1840. He plaintively, but in a somewhat pedantic style, sums up his career as follows:
“Perhaps it has fallen to the lot of very few, if any individuals, while attracting curiosity and notice, to receive at the same time so many flattering marks of kindness, and it is not unfrequently a sorrowful reflection to him that after all the sympathy and benevolence shown by the liberal and scientific, certain unforeseen and unfortunate causes have prevented and still prevent his reaching and sustaining that distinguished place in the mathematical literature of the age to which, on account of the singular gift bestowed on him, he seemed to be destined. Now, after possessing that talent twenty-two years, he feels unable to account for its donation, and is unaware of its object.”
Some facts regarding this singular gift may furnish suggestions to those who think upon educational matters.
1. His peculiar faculty was arithmetical, not generally mathematical. He had little or no taste for higher mathematics: those which, like geometry and surveying, appeal to the perceptions, those which, like algebra, appeal to the imagination, and those which, like pure mathematics, appeal to the analytical reasoning powers, he disliked. His gift was natural, rudimentary and unreasoning, and as he reached adult life it passed from him, either because he outgrew it or lost it by over-use or disuse. Constant and long continued practice in mental calculation brought the possessor of this special mathematical gift, as he says, neither intellectual growth nor better capacity for mental application. In fact, the more he used it the stupider he grew.