William Hickling Prescott

by Harry Thurston Peck

A letter written by Prescott on August 23d, the day after he had passed through the ordeal of examination, is particularly interesting. It gives, in the first place, a notion of the quaint simplicity which then characterised the academic procedure of the oldest of American universities; and it also brings us into rather intimate touch with Prescott himself as a youth of fifteen. At that time a great deal of the eighteenth-century formality survived in the intercourse between fathers and their sons; and especially in the letters which passed between them was there usually to be found a degree of stiffness and restraint both in feeling and expression. Yet this letter of Prescott's might have been written yesterday by an American youth of the present time, so easy and assured is it, and indeed, for the most part, so mature. It might have been written also to one of his own age, and there is something deliciously naïve in its revelation of Prescott's approbativeness. The boy evidently thought very well of himself, and was not at all averse to fishing for a casual compliment from others. The letter is given in full by Ticknor, but what is here quoted contains all that is important:—

"BOSTON, August 23rd.

"DEAR FATHER:—I now write you a few lines to inform you of my fate. Yesterday at eight o'clock I was ordered to the President's and there, together with a Carolinian, Middleton, was examined for Sophomore. When we were first ushered into their presence, they looked like so many judges of the Inquisition. We were ordered down into the parlour, almost frightened out of our wits, to be examined by each separately; but we soon found them quite a pleasant sort of chaps. The President sent us down a good dish of pears, and treated us very much like gentlemen. It was not ended in the morning; but we returned in the afternoon when Professor Ware [the Hollis Professor of Divinity] examined us in Grotius' De Veritate. We found him very good-natured; for I happened to ask him a question in theology, which made him laugh so that he was obliged to cover his face with his hand. At half past three our fate was decided and we were declared 'Sophomores of Harvard University.'

"As you would like to know how I appeared, I will give you the conversation verbatim with Mr. Frisbie when I went to see him after the examination. I asked him,'Did I appear well in my examination?' Answer. 'Yes.' Question. 'Did I appear very well, sir?' Answer. 'Why are you so particular, young man? Yes, you did yourself a great deal of credit.' I feel today twenty pounds lighter than I did yesterday.... Love to mother, whose affectionate son I remain,

"WM. HICKLING PRESCOTT."

Prescott entered upon his college life in the autumn of this same year (1811). We find that many of those traits which he had exhibited in his early school days were now accentuated rather sharply. He was fond of such studies as appealed to his instinctive tastes. English literature and the literatures of Greece and Rome he studied willingly because he liked them and not because he was ambitious to gain high rank in the University. To this he was more or less indifferent, and, therefore, gave as little attention as possible to such subjects as mathematics, logic, the natural sciences, philosophy, and metaphysics, without which, of course, he could not hope to win university honours. Nevertheless, he disliked to be rated below the average of his companions, and, therefore, he was careful not to fall beneath a certain rather moderate standard of excellence. He seems, indeed, to have adopted the Horatian aurea mediocritas as his motto; and the easy-going, self-indulgent philosophy of Horace he made for the time his own. In fact, the ideal which he set before himself was the life of a gentleman in the traditional English meaning of that word; and it was a gentleman's education and nothing more which he desired to attain. To be socially agreeable, courteous, and imbued with a liberal culture, seemed to him a sufficient end for his ambition. His father was wealthy and generous. He was himself extremely fond of the good things of life. He made friends readily, and had a very large share of personal attractiveness. Under the circumstances, it is not to be wondered at if his college life was marked by a pleasant, well-bred hedonism rather than by the austerity of the true New England temperament. The Prescotts as a family had some time before slipped away from the clutch of Puritanism and had accepted the mild and elastic creed of Channing, which, in its tolerant view of life, had more than a passing likeness to Episcopalianism. Prescott was still running over with youthful spirits, his position was an assured one, his means were ample, and his love of pleasure very much in evidence. We cannot wonder, then, if we find that in the early part of his university career he slipped into a sort of life which was probably less commendable than his cautious biographers are willing to admit. Mr. Ticknor's very guarded intimations seem to imply in Prescott a considerable laxity of conduct; and it is not unfair to read between the lines of what he has written and there find unwilling but undeniable testimony. Thus Ticknor remarks that Prescott "was always able to stop short of what he deemed flagrant excesses and to keep within the limits, though rather loose ones, which he had prescribed to himself. His standard for the character of a gentleman varied, no doubt, at this period, and sometimes was not so high on the score of morals as it should have been." Prescott is also described as never having passed the world's line of honour, but as having been willing to run exceedingly close to it. "He pardoned himself too easily for his manifold neglect and breaches of the compacts he had made with his conscience; but there was repentance at the bottom of all." It is rather grudgingly admitted also that "the early part of his college career, when for the first time he left the too gentle restraints of his father's house, ... was the most dangerous period of his life. Upon portions of it he afterwards looked back with regret." There is a good deal of significance, moreover, in some sentences which Prescott himself wrote, long afterwards, of the temptations which assail a youth during those years when he has attained to the independence of a man but while he is still swayed by the irresponsibility of a boy. There seems to be in these sentences a touch of personal reminiscence and regret:—

"The University, that little world of itself ... bounding the visible horizon of the student like the walls of a monastery, still leaves within him scope enough for all the sympathies and the passions of manhood.... He meets with the same obstacles to success as in the world, the same temptations to idleness, the same gilded seductions, but without the same power of resistance. For in this morning of life his passions are strongest; his animal nature is more sensible to enjoyment; his reasoning faculties less vigorous and mature. Happy the youth who in this stage of his existence is so strong in his principles that he can pass through the ordeal without faltering or failing, on whom the contact of bad companionship has left no stain for future tears to wash away."

Just how much is meant by this reluctant testimony can only be conjectured. It is not unfair, however, to assume that, for a time, Prescott's diversions were such as even a lenient moralist would think it necessary to condemn. The fondness for wine, which remained with him throughout his life, makes it likely that convival excess was one of his undergraduate follies; while the flutter of a petticoat may at times have stirred his senses. No doubt many a young man in his college days has plunged far deeper into dissipation than ever Prescott did and has emerged unscathed to lead a useful life. Yet in Prescott's case there existed a peculiar danger. His future did not call upon him to face the stern realities of a life of toil. He was assured of a fortune ample for his needs, and therefore his easy-going, pleasure-loving disposition, his boundless popularity, his handsome face, his exuberant spirits, and his very moderate ambition might easily have combined to lead him down the primrose path where intellect is enervated and moral fibre irremediably sapped.

One dwells upon this period of indolence and folly the more willingly, because, after all, it reveals to us in Prescott those pardonable human failings which only serve to make his character more comprehensible. Prescott's eulogists have so studiously ignored his weaknesses as to leave us with no clear-cut impression of the actual man. They have unwisely smoothed away so much and have extenuated so much in their halting and ambiguous phrases, as to create a picture of which the outlines are far too faint. Apparently, they wish to draw the likeness of a perfect being, and to that extent they have made the subject of their encomiums appear unreal. One cannot understand how truly lovable the actual Prescott was, without reconstructing him in such a way as to let his faults appear beside his virtues. Moreover, an understanding of the perils which at first beset him is needed in order to make clear the profound importance of an incident which sharply called a halt to his excesses and, by curbing his wilful nature, set his finer qualities in the ascendant. It is only by remembering how far he might have fallen, that we can view as a blessing in disguise the blow which Fate was soon to deal him.