A Century of Science, and Other Essays

by John Fiske

After the return from the wilderness Parkman found his physical condition rather worse than better. The trouble with the eyes continued, and we begin to find mention of a lameness which was sometimes serious enough to confine him to the house, and which evidently lasted a long time; but from this he seems to have recovered. My personal acquaintance with him began in 1872, and I never noticed any symptoms of lameness, though I remember taking several pleasant walks with him. Perhaps the source of lameness may be indicated in the following account of his condition in 1848, cited from the fragment of autobiography in which he uses the third person: "To the maladies of the prairie succeeded a suite of exhausting disorders, so reducing him that circulation of the extremities ceased, the light of the sun became insupportable, and a wild whirl possessed his brain, joined to a universal turmoil of the nervous system which put his philosophy to the sharpest test it had hitherto known. All collapsed, in short, but the tenacious strength of muscles hardened by long activity." In 1851, whether due or not to disordered circulation, there came an effusion of water on the left knee, which for the next two years prevented walking.

It was between 1848 and 1851 that Parkman was engaged in writing "The Conspiracy of Pontiac." He felt that no regimen could be worse for him than idleness, and that no tonic could be more bracing than work in pursuance of the lofty purpose which had now attained maturity in his mind. He had to contend with a "triple-headed monster:" first, the weakness of the eyes, which had come to be such that he could not keep them open to the light while writing his own name; secondly, the incapacity for sustained attention; and thirdly, the indisposition to putting forth mental effort. Evidently, the true name of this triple-headed monster was nervous exhaustion; there was too much soul for the body to which it was yoked.

"To be made with impunity, the attempt must be made with the most watchful caution. He caused a wooden frame to be constructed of the size and shape of a sheet of letter paper. Stout wires were fixed horizontally across it, half an inch apart, and a movable back of thick pasteboard fitted behind them. The paper for writing was placed between the pasteboard and the wires, guided by which, and using a black lead crayon, he could write not illegibly with closed eyes. He was at the time absent from home, on Staten Island, where, and in the neighbouring city of New York, he had friends who willingly offered their aid. It is needless to say to which half of humanity nearly all these kind assistants belonged. He chose for a beginning that part of the work which offered fewest difficulties and with the subject of which he was most familiar; namely, the Siege of Detroit. The books and documents, already partially arranged, were procured from Boston, and read to him at such times as he could listen to them; the length of each reading never without injury much exceeding half an hour, and periods of several days frequently occurring during which he could not listen at all. Notes were made by him with closed eyes, and afterwards deciphered and read to him till he had mastered them. For the first half-year the rate of composition averaged about six lines a day. The portion of the book thus composed was afterwards partially rewritten.

"His health improved under the process, and the remainder of the volume—in other words, nearly the whole of it—was composed in Boston, while pacing in the twilight of a large garret, the only exercise which the sensitive condition of his sight permitted him in an unclouded day while the sun was above the horizon. It was afterwards written down from dictation by relatives under the same roof, to whom he was also indebted for the preparatory readings. His progress was much less tedious than at the outset, and the history was complete in about two years and a half."

The book composed under such formidable difficulties was published in 1851. It did not at once meet with the reception which it deserved. The reading public did not expect to find entertainment in American history. In the New England of those days the general reader had heard a good deal about the Pilgrim Fathers and Salem Witchcraft, and remembered hazily the stories of Hannah Dustin and of Putnam and the wolf, but could not be counted on for much else before the Revolution. I remember once hearing it said that the story of the "Old French War" was something of no more interest or value for Americans of to-day than the cuneiform records of an insurrection in ancient Nineveh; and so slow are people in gaining a correct historical perspective that within the last ten years the mighty world struggle in which Pitt and Frederick were allied is treated in a book entitled "Minor Wars of the United States"! In 1851 the soil was not yet ready for the seed sown by Parkman, and he did not quickly or suddenly become popular. But after the publication of the "Pioneers of France" in 1865 his fame grew rapidly. In those days I took especial pleasure in praising his books, from the feeling that they were not so generally known as they ought to be, particularly in England, where he has since come to be recognized as foremost among American writers of history. In 1879 I had been giving a course of lectures at University College, London, on "America's Place in History," and shortly afterwards repeated this course at the little Hawthorne Hall, on Park Street, in Boston. One evening, having occasion to allude briefly to Pontiac and his conspiracy, I said, among other things, that it was memorable as "the theme of one of the most brilliant and fascinating books that have ever been written by any historian since the days of Herodotus." The words were scarcely out of my mouth when I happened to catch sight of Mr. Parkman in my audience. I had not observed him before, though he was seated quite near me. I shall never forget the sudden start which he gave, and the heightened colour of his noble face, with its curious look of surprise and pleasure,—an expression as honest and simple as one might witness in a rather shy schoolboy suddenly singled out for praise. I was so glad that I had said what I did without thinking of his hearing me.

In May, 1850, while at work upon this great book, Mr. Parkman married Catherine, daughter of Jacob Bigelow, an eminent physician of Boston. Of this marriage there were three children,—a son, who died while an infant, and two daughters, who still survive. Mrs. Parkman died in 1858, and her husband never married again.

During these years, when his complicated ailments for a time made historical work impossible even to this man of Titanic will, he assuaged his cravings for spiritual creation by writing a novel, "Vassall Morton." Of his books it is the only one that I have never seen, and I can speak of it only from hearsay. It is said to be not without signal merits, but it did not find a great many readers, and its author seems not to have cared much for it. The main current of his interest in life was too strong to allow of much diversion into side channels.

"Meanwhile," to cite his own words, "the Faculty of Medicine were not idle, displaying that exuberance of resource for which that remarkable profession is justly famed. The wisest, indeed, did nothing, commending his patient to time and faith; but the activity of his brethren made full amends for this masterly inaction. One was for tonics, another for a diet of milk; one counselled galvanism, another hydropathy; one scarred him behind the neck with nitric acid, another drew red-hot irons along his spine with a view of enlivening that organ. Opinion was divergent as practice. One assured him of recovery in six years; another thought that he would never recover. Another, with grave circumlocution, lest the patient should take fright, informed him that he was the victim of an organic disease of the brain which must needs dispatch him to another world within a twelvemonth; and he stood amazed at the smile of an auditor who neither cared for the announcement nor believed it. Another, an eminent physiologist of Paris, after an acquaintance of three months, one day told him that from the nature of the disorder he had at first supposed that it must, in accordance with precedent, be attended with insanity, and had ever since been studying him to discover under what form the supposed aberration declared itself; adding, with a somewhat humorous look, that his researches had not been rewarded with the smallest success."