The house in West Medford was the only one he ever owned, and he gave a number of good reasons for purchasing it. It was cheap, and large enough for three people; there was a small garden with two fine apple-trees attached to it, and the salt water came almost to the foot of the garden. He had noticed also that the streets became dry after a rain more quickly in that portion of the town than elsewhere and judged from that it must be a healthy locality. He very quickly remodelled the place giving it the stamp of his own style and character.
He showed good judgment also in the education of his son George, now a marine-painter of well recognized merit. The boy inherited his father's sincerity and artistic feeling but not his intellectual tastes. In many respects he was more like his mother. He did not take to his studies nor was he fond of games, but liked bathing and sailing. When he was thirteen his father remarked that he did not know what he should be able to do with him. Well-intending friends said, you should get him a place in a store so that he may be earning something to help his parents, but Wasson replied: "No! I care too much for my boy to make a drudge of him for life, if it is possible for him to do better."
Soon after this George began to draw ships and naval engagements on the black-boards at school, and one of these was so good that the teacher gave an order to have it remain until his father could be called in to look at it. Wasson took notice of this talent in the boy and encouraged it, watching its development as time went on. There were no schools of art in Boston then, and one reason for his going to Germany in 1872 was to obtain systematic instruction for him in drawing and painting. Wasson's friends were now greatly discouraged. "What hope is there for him," they said, "in such a profession? It is not likely the boy is a genius, and who is going to purchase his pictures?" Yet his father persevered bravely in spite of many "outs" and temporary failures and finally lived to see the merit of his son admitted by those who were at first most sceptical of it. The son is now a fairly successful artist; especially noted for his skill in representing the motion of water and the attitude of floating vessels.
He was never prone to think evil, but he considered it a mischievous habit to try to think better of people than they were—an injustice to character and virtue. "Treat people better than they deserve," he would say, "but see them as they are." His kindness of heart now and then led him into difficulties which those who care more for their reputation than anything else, would have avoided. During his Arctic expedition Bradford took a number of stereopticon-views from icebergs and other indigenous scenery with the intention of exhibiting them in public on his return. This he finally did, more as a private celebration than with a hope of making money from it, and requested Wasson to assist him by giving an oral explanation of the pictures. Wasson wanted to say, "That is not my business," but he felt under great obligation to Mr. Bradford for the partial recovery of his strength, and did not like to refuse. He had no conception however of what was in store for him. He sent to Bradford for a list of the different views and prepared an address suitable for the occasion; but when the performance took place Bradford either forgot this or lost his presence of mind, for he exhibited the pictures without order or regularity, so that Wasson soon became confused and was able to give but a very poor account of them. This affair was the more vexatious because it was quite impossible to give any explanation of it.
Matthew Arnold distinguishes between Plato as a great writer and thinker and Aristotle, who is only a great thinker. In this respect Wasson was more like Aristotle, though he resembled Plato again in being always an idealist. His writing shows the influence of his early studies in the law, and derives much of its virtue as well as some peculiarities from that source. It usually takes the form of an argument and is clear, logical and accurate, but also in style rather hard and dry. What it lacks is the pictorial element—what Carlyle possessed in such luxuriance. No law book ever was or could be written for entertainment, and those who expect to be amused by reading Wasson or Aristotle had better look elsewhere. His essays are like hard wood. He worked hard in writing them and we must work also when we read them. Sometimes we meet with passages in them of the purest, most limpid English, though these are more common in his later than his earlier writings. He said once, "I make no effort to please my readers, or even to obtain a graceful diction, I only try to say what I have to in the plainest manner." There is a decided charm in this perfect plainness, this absence of all decoration. One likes to think how old Vanderbilt had the brass and ornaments taken off the locomotives on the New York Central road. Telling the truth was Wasson's business in life, and he turned neither to the right nor the left in doing it.
However, he did not reach this philosophy at once. His earlier work is marred slightly by a love of the grotesque, a sort of plough-boy rhetoric, which is ill-assorted with the elevated character of his ideas. He suffers also occasionally by an hair-splitting attempt to prove his point beyond the possibility of contradiction. In two or three of his essays there is an unsuccessful effort for liveliness, the result of complaints from his magazine editors, and now and then will appear an unconscious imitation of Carlyle; but what does it all amount to? We are inundated now-a-days with writing that is perfect, or nearly so, in form and yet brings no message to mankind. It pleases the understanding, but it does not satisfy the soul. It gives us no new ideas: in fact ideas are hateful to it.
"Time and space conquering steam,
And the light-out-speeding telegraph
Bears nothing on its beam."
Wasson's writing compared with this is as an old-time stage-coach journey in which an interesting conversation, moral or political, is carried on by men like Fisher Ames and Rev. David Osgood, compared with the empty elegance and despatch of a modern railway-train. It is fresh because it is genuine; vigorous because it is manly; and original because it is true. He is more original than Carlyle, and so profound that it seems as if only a pearl-diver could follow him to such a depth. Yet his natural element is so pure, calm and tranquil, that we easily accomplish what seems at first an impossible descent. In "Epic Philosophy" he has dealt with the problem of good and evil in a manner more noble and penetrating than was ever before attempted. In his essay on the "Genius of Woman" he enters on a new and important field of investigation, a virgin soil as yet untried. In "Unity," the greatest of his essays, he boldly climbs the Jacob's ladder of philosophy and walks serene among the stars, grappling even with Infinity. He had achieved unity for himself; the one complete cosmopolitan mind of his time. In his highest flights he is never cold or inexorable, but always human, tender, and sympathetic. He loved the unkind, heedless world; life was wonderful to him. "What do I think of Wasson?" said Professor James of Harvard, a few days after his death, "I look upon him as one of the great instructors of mankind."
It was complained by a critic of Emerson's "Parnassus" that only two of Wasson's poems were to be found in that collection; and Alcott, who had a keen scent for superior literature, once turned a visitor out of his study for denying the superiority of Wasson's poetry. Many of his sonnets are gems, unsurpassed in any language, and the one called "Pride" seems to me in its grand simplicity to be without a rival. If there is any American poem which sings itself like "All's well," it is Longfellow's ballad of "Mary Garvin." "The Plover" has a pensive grace which is as rare as its subtile and elevated thought. They are however few in number and he did not think there was enough of them to publish in a volume. They were finally published post mortem in what was, if the truth be told, a rather unfortunate manner. Two of his finest sonnets, on "Silence" and "Wendell Phillips," were by mischance omitted, and a good many included that were either failures or written for some trifling occasion, and never intended for publication. As if to prevent all chance of popularity, the best pieces were placed at the close of the book and a long unfinished Hegelian poem at the beginning. Even the paper they were printed on was such as Wasson especially disliked. It seems a pity that he should have been denied this little celebrity.
He received better justice from Mr. Frothingham, who has published an excellent memoir of his life and work together with a number of his essays,—a handsome volume well bound and printed. Yet one cannot help thinking that here also the author's fame, as well as the interest of the general public, might have been better consuited by a more careful selection and a wider range of subjects. "Epic Philosophy" at least ought by no means to have been omitted, nor is there any example given of Wasson's fine literary criticism, in itself enough to have made a writer celebrated. His essay on Whittier is not only a just estimate, but seems also in its wise and tender application to include Whittier poetically, as the sea encircles an island. In this department of writing he was the equal of Lessing and almost of Goethe; but with characteristic modesty he celebrated Lowell as the first of American critics. Wasson's book notices in the "Boston Commonwealth" were most interesting reading and contained much of his finest thought.