Stephen Girard was born at Bordeaux, France, in Seventeen Hundred Fifty. He died at Philadelphia in Eighteen Hundred Thirty-one.
Immediately after his death there was printed a book which purported to be his biography. It was the work of a bank-clerk who had been discharged by Girard. This man had been close enough to his employer to lend plausibility to much that he had to say, and as the author called himself Girard's private secretary, people with prejudices plus pointed to the printed page as authority. The volume served to fill the popular demand for pishmince. It was written with exactly the same intent that Cheetham, who wrote his "Life of Thomas Paine," brought to bear. The desire was to damn the subject for all time. Besides that, it was a great business stroke—calumny was made to pay dividends. To libel the dead is not, in the eyes of the law, a crime.
No such book as this "Life of Girard" could ever have been circulated about a living man. "Once upon a time an ass kicked a lion, but the lion was dead."
Yet this libelous production was reprinted as late as Eighteen Hundred Ninety. Cheetham's book was quoted as an authority on Thomas Paine until the year Nineteen Hundred, when Moncure D. Conway's exhaustive "Life" made the pious prevaricators absurd.
From being a bitter "infidel," a hater of humanity, grossly ignorant and wholly indifferent to the decencies, we now view Girard as a lonely and pathetic figure, living out his long life in untiring industry, always honest, direct, frank, handicapped by physical defects, wistful in his longing for love, helpless to express what he felt, with a heart that went out to children in a great welling desire to give them what Fate had withheld from him.
Stephen Girard's parents were lowly and obscure people. They were Catholics. His father was a sailor and fisherman. Fear, hate, superstition, ignorance, ruled the household. When the father had money it went for strong drink, or to the priest. Probably it would have been as well if the priest had gotten it all. The mother went out as servant and worked by the day for her more fortunate neighbors. The children cared for one another, if the word "care" can be used to express a condition of neglect and indifference.
It might be pleasant to show, if possible, that the mother of Stephen Girard had certain tender, womanly qualities, but the fact is that no such qualities were ever manifested. If there was ever any soft sentiment in her character, the fond father of his flock had kicked it out of her. That she was usually able to hold her own in fair fight was the one redeeming memory that the son held concerning her.
Stephen was the eldest of the brood. He attended the parochial school and learned to read. His playmates called him by a French term meaning "Twisted." He was eight years of age before he realized that the names his mother called him by, were of contempt and not of endearment—"Wall-Eye" and "Mud-Sucker"—literally the vocabulary of a fishwife. Then he knew for the first time that his eyes were not like those of other children—that one eye had a bluish cast in it and turned inward. That night he cried himself to sleep thinking over his dire misfortune.
At school when he read he closed one eye, and this made the children laugh. So much did their taunts prey upon him that he ran away from school to escape their gibes.
One of the Friars Gray caught him; whipped him before the whole school; put a dunce-cap on his head, and stood him on a high chair. Then his humiliation seemed complete. He prayed for death. At home when he tried to tell his mother about his trouble she laughed, and boxed his ears for being a "cry-baby brat."