Carlyle's laugh, and other surprises

by Thomas Wentworth Higginson

We thus find him quite ready to turn his varied knowledge and his executive power towards schemes for the relief of the operative, schemes of which he left many.

Mr. Atkinson, a year or two later (1890), wrote a similarly popularized statement of social science for an address on “Religion and Life” before the American Unitarian Association. In his usual matter-of-fact way, he had prepared himself by inquiring at the headquarters of different religious denominations for a printed creed of each. He first bought an Episcopal creed at the Old Corner Bookstore for two cents, an Orthodox creed at the Congregational Building for the same amount, then a Methodist two-cent creed also, a Baptist creed for five cents, and a Presbyterian one for ten, Unitarian and Universalist creeds being furnished him for nothing; and then he proceeds to give some extracts whose bigotry makes one shudder, and not wonder much that he expressed sympathy mainly with the Catholics and the Jews, rather than with the severer schools among Protestants. And it is already to be noticed how much the tendency of liberal thought, during the last twenty years, has been in the direction whither his sympathies went.

As time went on, he had to undergo the test which awaits all Northern public men visiting the Southern States, but not met by all in so simple and straightforward a way as he. Those who doubt the capacity of the mass of men in our former slave states to listen to plainness of speech should turn with interest to Atkinson’s plain talk to the leading men of Atlanta, Georgia, in October, 1880. He says, almost at the beginning: “Now, gentlemen of the South, I am going to use free speech for a purpose and to speak some plain words of truth and soberness to you.... I speak, then, to you here and now as a Republican of Republicans, as an Abolitionist of early time, a Free-Soiler of later date, and a Republican of to-day.” And the record is that he was received with applause. He goes on to say as frankly: “When slavery ended, not only were blacks made free from the bondage imposed by others, but whites as well were redeemed by the bondage they had imposed upon themselves.... When you study the past system of slave labor with the present system of free labor, irrespective of all personal considerations, you will be mad down to the soles of your boots to think that you ever tolerated it; and when you have come to this wholesome condition of mind, you will wonder how the devil you could have been so slow in seeing it. [Laughter.]”

Then he suddenly drops down to the solid fact and says: “Are you not asking Northern men to come here, and do you not seek Northern capital? If you suppose either will come here unless every man can say what he pleases, as I do now, you are mistaken.” Then he goes on with his speech, rather long as he was apt to make them, but addressing a community much more leisurely than that which he had left at home; filling their minds with statistics, directions, and methods, till at last, recurring to the question of caste and color, he closes fearlessly: “As you convert the darkness of oppression and slavery to liberty and justice, so shall you be judged by men, and by Him who created all the nations of the earth.”

After tracing the course and training of an eminent American at home, it is often interesting to follow him into the new experiences of the foreign traveler. In that very amusing book, “Notes from a Diary,” by Grant Duff (later Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant Duff), the author writes that he came unexpectedly upon a breakfast (June, 1887), the guests being “Atkinson, the New England Free Trader, Colonel Hay, and Frederic Harrison, all of whom were well brought out by our host and talked admirably.” I quote some extracts from the talk:—

“Mr. Atkinson said that quite the best after-dinner speech he had ever heard was from Mr. Samuel Longfellow, brother of the poet. An excellent speech had been made by Mr. Longworth, and the proceedings should have closed, when Mr. Longfellow was very tactlessly asked to address the meeting, which he did in the words: ‘It is, I think, well known that worth makes the man, but want of it the fellow,’ and sat down.” After this mild beginning we have records of good talk.

“Other subjects [Grant Duff says] were the hostility of the Socialists in London to the Positivists and to the Trades Unions; the great American fortunes and their causes, the rapid melting away of some of them, the hindrance which they are to political success; and servants in the United States, of whom Atkinson spoke relatively, Colonel Hay absolutely, well, saying that he usually kept his from six to eight years....

“Atkinson said that all the young thought and ability in America is in favor of free trade, but that free trade has not begun to make any way politically. Harrison remarked that he was unwillingly, but ever more and more, being driven to believe that the residuum was almost entirely composed of people who would not work. Atkinson took the same view, observing that during the war much was said about the misery of the working-women of Boston. He offered admirable terms if they would only go a little way into the country to work in his factory. Forty were at last got together to have the conditions explained—ten agreed to go next morning, of whom one arrived at the station, and she would not go alone!”

On another occasion we read in the “Diary”: