I think I have never known a man on whom a striking scene in nature had so powerful an effect. He would look upon a beautiful or wild landscape for hours at a time. There could have been no affectation in this, for he rarely expressed his admiration audibly; and when he did, it was in some brief exclamation that was forcible or original.
I shall always remember the evening when we sat upon the quarter-deck of a steamboat at a backwoods landing, on one of the great Western rivers, where for some reason we were detained. We were sitting alone, I think. It was nearly midnight, and there was scarcely a cloud in the heavens or a ripple in the water. The moon was shining grandly, duplicating in shadow the thick forests for miles along the stream. The Governor had been looking in silence at the magnificent scene for as much as a half-hour when I took occasion to remark that I thought I would go to my state-room.
The words were scarcely uttered when he startled me by jumping suddenly to his feet and exclaiming, his voice all a-quiver: “Great God! a man does not see three such nights as this in a lifetime; how can you—how can they sleep? I shall not go to bed till the moon does!”
And as I left him, he sat down again with the determined yet injured look of one who had been insulted through nature.
The Governor liked to pass for a great literary character, and I believe he succeeded in his ambition among his peculiar associates. By a lucky chance I have found, between the leaves of an old diary which I kept spasmodically at that time, a specimen of his production. It is an elaborate “Life of Michael Mitchell, the Comedian and Dancer.” I cut it out of a Cincinnati paper,—the Commercial, if I am not mistaken; and I am not sure that I did not once admire it almost as much as did the Governor himself.
I see now, by the light of greater technical knowledge in such matters, that this rare bit of biography was printed bodily as an advertisement. It has, after the manner of special patent-medicine notices, “Communicated” just over it, in brackets. I observe, too, that it has at the left-hand bottom corner these cabalistic signs: “d1t.” I am glad, nevertheless, to be able to give an extract or so.
The opening sentence has, as will be seen, a striking though inadvertent allusion to one of the games with which the old gambler was doubtless much more familiar than he could have been with the hazardous Latin. “The subject of this sketch,” writes the biographer, “was born in Ireland, on the 20th of November, Anno Domino 1831.”
A more extended extract, taken at random,—say from his account of Mitchell’s first triumph,—will be all that is needed as a specimen of the Governor’s average literary manner. It is better still, however, as an autobiographical reminiscence of the biographer himself, or, perhaps I should say, as a photograph of his own picturesque mind. You will observe how his style reeks of the drama and yellow-covered memories. That was the exact manner of his ordinary conversation.
It cannot be that he has weathered the years which have intervened since he made this contribution to literature; but it will always have this peculiarity for me, that I shall never read it without seeing the old adventurer, living and swaggering before me, the same insolvable riddle in human nature. Here is the paragraph:—
“We next find Mike in the difficult situation of vocalist and bone-player; he becomes a troubadour the 10th of March, 1842, a day sacred to men of genius (for on that day Tyrone Power, that excellent wit and comedian, left the shores of this country on the ill-fated President, never to return). On that identical day there was bustle and excitement in the castle of the Mitchells, No. 222 Greenwich Street, New York City. Young Michael was to be caparisoned and enter the lists ‘armed cap-a-pie,’ as a knight or troubadour of olden time (vide James). The eventful eve of that eventful day arrived precisely at nightfall, at the moment that ‘Old Trinity’ proclaimed with brazen notes the hour of 7 P.M. There issued from the outer gate of the Mitchells’ guarded palace a youth armed with four bones. The night looked lowering as dark Fate itself, no portents were in the sky, no Corsican Brothers illusions; but something made our hero tremble,—it was the uncertainty of the future. Sustaining himself with a glass of root-beer, he made his way through the obscurity of the gas-light to a dilapidated house, No. 450 Broadway, gave the countersign or word of the night (Daniel Tucker, Esq.), the door flew open at the magical sound, and Michael entered. At first sight of the interior of that magnificent arena our hero’s cheek slightly paled, and well it might. ‘The Chamber of Horrors of Madame Tassarend’ could not move the redoubtable Michael now, for he has grown bold in his profession. But on that night, armed only with youth and ‘bones,’ surrounded by a live rattlesnake, a six-legged horse, three ladies in wax, the counterpart of three of flesh that had ‘shuffled off this mortal coil’ by the hands of midnight murders [sic],—six little orphan boys armed all with bones, and looking precious hungry, and seated on six little chairs, a seventh chair vacant for Mike himself, like that of Banquo’s,—six junk-bottles with six tallow-candles therein, throwing their furtive, flickering, melancholy light upon these cadaverous and superannuated ‘Tarmon’ musicians, playing upon bass-drum, cracked fife, and hurdy-gurdy. No wonder that poor Mike’s blood rushed to his heart, and that he trembled in his boots; the sight would have intimidated stronger and older artists. The trio commenced their overture,—the music, that beautiful air, ‘The Light of Other Days’ (poor fellows! the light of their days had surely faded,—they were blind), and as they proceeded with their soul-stirring drum and ear-piercing fife, Mike recovered his self-possession. The martial music over, and the Germans having retired to the shades of a lager-beer saloon, Michael’s turn came next. Taking the vacant chair and seating himself thereon, he drew his American castanets (the younger brother of the banjo) from his pocket (he had but one at that time), and threw himself in an attitude to sustain himself for the coming fray; it came at last,—the rattle, the crash of seven juvenile bone-players in the difficult overture to the opera of Daniel Tucker. It was awful,—it ended, and the applause shook the old tenement to its foundation.”