Children of the Market Place

by Edgar Lee Masters

After this we started on a round of the theaters. I prevailed upon our friends to prolong their stay, to be our guests. We saw Burton and Edwin Booth. We went to the Opera, saw the ballet which Fannie Ellsler had previously inaugurated. The Independent was denouncing the theater as an unmitigated evil; the ballet was a shocking exhibition of legs. Still they had come, and New York had them.

We dined at Niblo's, at Castle Garden. We drove about the city. We went out to see Trenton Falls where Jenny Lind had been taken as part of her entertainment, and where she had sung in the woods and been answered by the birds.

I began to notice that Dorothy was unusually quiet. She complained of fatigue, of pain. We had done too much perhaps. One morning she could not arise. Abigail and Aldington were returning to Chicago. We had expected to go with them. But Dorothy could not travel now—she could not stand that terrible journey of boats and cars, of changes and delays. So we bade adieu to our friends.

Dorothy did not rally, as I had expected. She grew weaker day by day. She became gravely ill. In the midst of the extra labor thrown upon Mammy, she too was compelled to take to her bed. I was forced to look about for servants, finding two Irish girls at last. Then quite suddenly Mammy died. She was very old. And thus we were cut off from all our past, Nashville, the old days. And I stayed almost constantly by Dorothy's side, trying to bring back her strength. It entered my mind at times that after all I was not as tender a husband to Dorothy as I should have been. I was with her a good deal, to be sure. At the same time, I was much preoccupied. She did not like politics, and could not share my interest in that direction. The condition of the country really distressed her. She had seen slavery in its benign aspect, and she was impatient with any criticism of the institution.

It was months before Dorothy sat up and began to walk again. I could see that she was frailer than before and might never be strong again. Our boy Reverdy was not robust. And the winter was coming on. At the same time Dorothy did not wish to return to Washington. She wanted to hear no more of politics. I had to select her books for her, something that soothed her, led her into dreams. Uncle Tom's Cabin was now appearing in serial form. I was reading it with great amusement. But I dared not show it to Dorothy. I had heard Beecher and knew his sentimental attitude. This book had for me the same quality. Yet it helped me to pass many hours while watching by Dorothy's side. Somehow I felt that it would produce a storm akin to the religious psychology which was sweeping the country. Critics were already noting its moral effect. Mrs. Stowe was hailed by Sumner as a "Christian genius," a Joan of Arc. Garrison said that it would make two million abolitionists. In Paris it was compared to Dumas' The Three Guardsmen as a popular tour de force. Others detected in it a resemblance to Rousseau's Nouvelle Héloise. One pleaded for the liberty of the slave, the other for the rights of the peasant. But I knew that the book was not really true. It forefronted the brutality of slavery, it minimized the benevolent aspects of the institution, which I had myself seen. It was written with intensity of feeling, with the revivalist's method and emotion. It was like her brother's sermons, and equally unauthentic. Yet how strangely was this book received. It won Macaulay and Longfellow and George Sand, and stirred the heart of Heine. It exasperated the South. The winds of destiny previously let loose were blowing madly now.

In the midst of my own cares I awoke one morning to read that Douglas was on his way to Cuba. The thought went through my mind, why not take Dorothy and go in order to give her the benefit of this summer climate through the winter? As Douglas had traveled by way of New Orleans he had stopped in Memphis and I read in the Tribune what he had said to the people there: "If old Joshua R. Giddings should raise a colony in Ohio and settle down in Louisiana he would be the strongest advocate of slavery in the South; he would find when he got there that his opinion would be very much modified; he would find on those sugar plantations that it was not a question between the white man and the negro, but between the negro and the crocodile. You come right back to the principle of dollars and cents."

At New Orleans he had uttered the God of nature doctrine: "There is a line or belt of country meandering through the valleys and over the mountain tops which is a natural barrier between free territory and slave territory, on the south of which are to be found the productions suitable to slave labor, while on the north exists a country adapted to free labor alone. But in the great central region, where there may be some doubt as to the effect of natural causes, who ought to decide the question except the people residing there, who have all their interests there, who have gone there to live with their wives and children?"

No recognition of a right and a wrong, to be sure. But no express advocacy of a wrong. I could not see then, and have never been able to see since, why Douglas with this practical facing of the business of life could not fare equally well with public opinion as Hamilton has fared with it, who advocated corruption in government as a means to a national power.

I went to Dorothy with my plan about Cuba, telling her that Douglas had gone there. It stirred her languid spirits. She was all eagerness to start. We took passage from New York, sailing around Florida, at last around Morro Castle into the harbor of Havana. The blueness of the water, with the balmy wind blowing almost incessantly began to restore Dorothy. The Spanish city lying before our eyes, yellow and continental, awoke her interest. At the dock there were crowds of idlers, Spaniards, negroes, to see us fasten and disembark. With Dorothy and our son and two maids we made our way to a hotel near the water. I was anxious to look up Douglas; but it was impossible the first evening, owing to Dorothy's indisposition. She had been seasick and the journey had fatigued her. Nevertheless we went to the roof of the hotel together and sat there until nearly midnight, inhaling the luxurious breeze from the gulf and gazing up at the brilliant stars of this tropical sky.

The next morning I was down to breakfast early, leaving Dorothy to be served in her room. The hotel was drab and decayed exteriorly; but the dining room was a continental elegance of marble, gilt, and mirrors. Douglas was not stopping here, as I had already learned. I concluded that he would be at one of the better known hotels on the Prado, and I hurried thither as fast as I could. I soon located him; but he had gone out for a few days, was making something of a tour of the island, including a visit to the celebrated cave of Matanzas. Leaving a note for Douglas which apprised him of my hotel, I hurried back to Dorothy. The city was so brilliant under the golden sunshine, and the air so delightful, that I wished to spend these wonderful hours in seeing the city.